Category: Tech news

 Austin-based Capital Factory is one of the jewels of the city’s startup scene, offering up an accelerator program and space for community events and workshops. The accelerator has a flexible, rolling application process that allows startups to join and use its coworking space for generally as long as they need. Read More

 Directr, an app that we’ve covered a few times since its launch back in 2012, has just been snatched up by Google.
In an age of ultra-brief videos, Directr existed to help users and businesses shoot videos that were a bit longer than your average Vine — think ads, or promo clips, or family holiday videos. Read More

 A few months ago, I asked a simple question: “Can Google ever be beat?” The query was less about Google itself, and more a question about the potential of startups to disrupt the largest companies in our economy. Do we have the talent and capital infrastructure needed for nascent companies to grow and compete against mature incumbents? I argued strongly that we do not, but I based… Read More

 A civil class action lawsuit being brought against Facebook on privacy grounds by Europe vs Facebook campaigner Max Schrems has hit its current maximum of 25,000 participants less than a week after the action was announced. Read More

 DC-based SocialTables has announced its latest raise, an $8 million Series A round led by Bessemer Venture Partners with Thayer Ventures joining. The company previously raised $1.6 million to help streamline event planning with collaborative tools. Founded by Dan Berger, a programmer and event-planner, we’ve been following this company since 2012 when I was impressed by their clever… Read More

 No one will argue against the outcome of a case which saw a man arrested on child pornography charges, after Google tipped off authorities about illegal images found in the Houston suspect’s Gmail account. But the nature of how the discovery came about led some to questions about the methodologies used behind the scenes. Was Google actively scanning Gmail for illegal activity? Was… Read More

 News broke today that Microsoft is offering employees in China a Lumia 630 device to leave the company voluntarily. Microsoft’s mass layoffs are not going over smoothly in China. Reports of protest have cropped up, with workers reacting in anger about the company’s impending job cuts that will eventually total 18,000 across the company. When Microsoft purchased most of… Read More

 Back when the PC was king, a number of software programs were available that would let you analyze your hard drive utilization, allowing you to delete and relocate files in order to free up more storage space. But now that we’ve moved to using cloud services, where overuse isn’t just an annoyance, but incurs additional monthly charges, gaining that same sort of visibility is… Read More

 Yahoo announced this morning that it has hired Mike Kail, formerly of Netflix, to take on its chief information officer role, along with the title of senior vice president of infrastructure. Kail’s background in video is fitting, given Yahoo’s recent attempts to bolster its video content efforts. Yahoo also recently hired Alex Stamos to be its chief information security… Read More

 The days of the $100+ activity tracker might be over; Movo, a consumer tech company out of NYC, is kicking off pre-orders today for a $29 wearable wrist band that tracks steps, distance traveled and calories burned, collecting and reporting that data via an iOS and Android app. The Movo Wave, as the device is called, is expected to launch this fall following its self-hosted pre-order campaign.… Read More

 Google has acquired Emu, a new mobile messaging application that just exited beta earlier this year. Emu was at heart an IM client, but it differentiated itself from the crowded market with smart features that incorporated a virtual assistant not unlike Siri to automate tasks based on your conversations – meaning you could do things like schedule appointments to your calendar, set… Read More

 London-based digital design studio ustwo is working on a project with the Royal London Society for Blind People (RLSB) to determine whether iBeacons/Bluetooth Low Energy beacon technology can be used to help visually impaired individuals navigate public transport by mapping their location dynamically and providing audio cues to direct them through stations and onto trains via an app. Read More

I love stuff that looks good and works well in the wild. Salewa’s new Ramble urban travel shoe, which comes in both men’s and women’s sizes, is one of those rare pieces of outdoor gear that does both.

 There are a lot of dogs on Tinder lately. Like, actual dogs. East Village-based animal rescue organization Social Tees, long with creative agency internship program The Barn at BBH have whipped up a few doggy dating profiles for rescue dogs in the New York City area. BBH’s The Barn received award-winning recognition for awareness initiative Underheard in New York. Now it’s… Read More

 Component to Windows Phone 8.1’s first update — Update 1, of course — are Live Folders, which will allow users of Microsoft’s smartphone platform to group applications on the main screen of their handsets, saving space. It’s part of a larger set up feature upgrades that Update 1 will bring. Microsoft has only released screenshots to date. A video, uploaded by… Read More