Category: Tech news

Educational guitar maker Loog returned to Kickstarter this week, some eight years after it first hitting the crowdfunding site. This fourth campaign from the company features a trio of instruments aimed at helping accelerating the learning process.

There are three models, each aimed at a different age group: the Loog Mini (ages 3+), Loog Pro (ages 8+) and Loog Pro VI (ages 12+). The latter of which is the company’s first guitar to sport the standard six strings (versus the three it usually offers).

All have a built-n speaker and amp, reducing the need for additional accessories for a kid’s first instrument. They’re also designed to work with the company’s app, which now utilizes augmented reality (guitAR, if you will), to overlay instructions when using the front facing camera on a mobile device. The are flash cards (for chords), videos and games on-board, as well.

The app also has a song book, featuring a wide variety of popular artists, ranging from The Beatles to Taylor Swift. Kids can slow down and mute tracks to play along karaoke-style, while recording themselves in the process.

Kickstarter prices start at $99 for the Mini, versus $150 at retail. The company keeps going back to the crowdfunding well, but the model has worked pretty well so far. Loog’s started to gain some traction in the music education world and, as evidence by its Kickstarter video, landed in the hands of a couple of actual rockstars in the process.

Mike Isaac’s meticulously reported account of Uber’s trajectory avoids the easy paths.

Catch up on the most important news from today in two minutes or less.

An investigative reporter in Mexico suffers retaliatory attacks and a Tanzanian journalist is detained by police.

UPS is introducing 15 new vehicles to its U.K. fleet that offer extended driving range versus traditional EVs, but that are also capable of operating in fully electric mode when required to do so, as in emission-free zones and dense city cores. The trucks, developed in partnership with commercial electric vehicle tech startup Tevva, can switch between hybrid and fully electric modes for a total range of up to 400km (~250 miles), with the same cargo carrying capacity of same-sized, diesel-powered trucks.

The trucks can operate at a much longer range than fully electric delivery trucks, which typically top out at around 60 miles of range. They also can switch between modes to stay fair of local transportation bylaws. This is especially helpful where they’re rolling out in Birmingham and Southampton in the U.K., as Birmingham will introduce a clean air zone to block non-electric commercial vehicles in its city center by sometime next year.

UPS has already made use of electric delivery vehicles, but the range of its existing trucks meant they couldn’t make the trip from central depots to in-city drop-off points in every case. Plus, this hybridized solution will be able to carry a lot more packages than the fully electric trucks, which should lead to fewer cars on the road overall and less congestion, according to UPS.

The crucial difference between these trucks and standard hybrid vehicles is that they’re capable of fully autonomously switching between purely electric motors and their diesel hybrid powertrains — and can do so with geofencing whenever they cross into and out of a clean air or reduced emissions regulated zone.

UPS has taken delivery of 15 of these vans already, serving customers in both Tamworth and Southampton in the U.K. They’re just one part of UPS’s overall effort to decrease their emissions footprint and environmental impact.

Reach Robotics, the company behind the spider-like MekaMon robot you might’ve seen on the shelves at the Apple Store, is closing down.

Billed as the “world’s first gaming robot,” MekaMon is part video game, part STEM tool. You could plop it down on the carpet and point your phone at it to battle virtual augmented reality enemies, face off against other MekaMon owners in multiplayer battles or build custom programs for the robot on top of Apple’s Swift Playgrounds.

Here’s a video we did on Reach Robotics a few years back:

Reach Robotics was founded in 2013. They released their MekaMon robot in November of 2017, just a few months after raising a $7.5 million Series A.

News of the shutdown comes from Reach Robotics co-founder Silas Adekunle on LinkedIn (as first noted by The Robot Report), where he writes:

The consumer robotics sector is an inherently challenging space – especially for a start-up. Over the past six years, we have taken on this challenge with consistent passion and ingenuity. From the first trials of development to accelerators and funding rounds, we have fought to bring MekaMon to life and into the hands of the next generation of tech pioneers.

Unfortunately, for Reach Robotics, in its current form at least, today marks the end of that journey.

It doesn’t sound like Adekunle is finished with robotics altogether though. In a public Instagram post, he notes that while “Reach Robotics is closing down today due to tough business circumstances,” he is “looking forward to sharing some exciting new ventures in the Robotics space in Europe and Education in Africa and the Middle East.”

Co-founder John Rees, meanwhile, writes on LinkedIn:

I’m still taking stock of it all but the short version is that it is true what they say – that “hardware is hard” and consumer hardware is even harder due to the reliance on the Christmas sales period.

2019 has been a fairly brutal year for consumer robotics. In March, Jibo, a social robot meant to be cheery and entertaining, personally delivered to owners the news of its impending shutdown with an oh-so-depressing shutdown speech:

“Maybe someday, when robots are way more advanced than today, and everyone has them in their homes,” said the robot, “you can tell them I said hello.”

Anki, creator of self-driving RC cars and the WALL-E-like robot buddy Cozmo, shut down in April.

The most anticipated part of every real estate transaction is being done with it.

Every seller looks forward to the moment of closing: the period where all involved parties put a bow on the sale and the keys get handed over to the happy new owners. The closing is by nature the most complicated part of the proceedings. The task of tying together every loose end and officially sealing the deal can end up dragging on and on, a proceeding somewhat at odds with today’s lightning-paced business environment.

There’s also the fact that, for an everyday homebuyer unaccustomed to the ins and outs of real estate purchases, the process shuts them out and leaves them waiting.

It’s a bit ironic that an industry that’s been streamlined through tech in so many ways has left its most complex aspect nearly untouched. Today’s real estate customer has an amazing number of tools at hand to make the process easier for them. They can trawl the web to find the ideal neighborhood for their new dwelling or business, skim through listings on multiple websites (complete with floor plans and detailed photo albums) and deal directly with sellers or landlords to eliminate traditional brokers’ fees. The front end of the process has become nearly painless. It’s the back end, getting to the finish line, where many find that the speed they were previously enjoying has slowed to a crawl.

Many readers may now be thinking: If closings are simultaneously incredibly important but also incredibly immobile and opaque, isn’t there a better way to make it happen? As with many other long-standing speed bumps in business and elsewhere, the tech community has come forth with several different attempts at a solution. A number of competing startups have produced tools that claim to bring this month-plus process down to a much more manageable time frame. 2018 saw two prominent attempts at becoming the top dog in this niche get nearer to the top: Modus, formed by vets of food-delivery startup Peach, and JetClosing, which closed a $20 million round of funding after two years of existence.

While each company’s founders can likely enumerate their differences better than I could, the services perform essentially the same task: shrinking closing times from the 44-day average down to a more manageable span. They do this thanks to the communicative powers of the internet, cutting down waiting time by enabling several different steps to happen at once.

Much of the closing process is done by rote, so there’s room for automation — as long as every step is open and transparent. The potential for legal hiccups is lessened when tech tools can assure everyone is on the same page. JetClosing even throws in a title scoring system to sweeten the deal.

The big-bucks excitement over these companies’ potential is the clearest signal possible that the industry is on the precipice of a transformation. When it comes to title and escrow and other financial details that snag real estate closings, the involved parties are often long-standing institutions with little interest in making their work more transparent. Thanks to the expected rise of closing-quickening tech, some hoary old standbys may be in for a rude awakening. But it may be the case that real estate won’t be the only beneficiary of these new software rollouts.

It stands to reason that if these startups can fix the logjam in real estate closings, there are more ways businesses of all types can take advantage of their process-management tools. The mind wanders: Perhaps even onerous courtroom procedures can use an injection of smart technology to bring down waiting times for trial lawyers and defendants. If the legal hurdles involved in keeping a big-money real estate transaction both fast and transparent can be negotiated, why not apply the same tactics to the achingly slow process of appeals courts? With the use of cloud-based tech inhabiting more and more of public life, it’s not too far-fetched an idea.

In the world of real estate, we may finally be entering an era when the once-meandering part of the process is as easy as turning the keys for the first time. There’s sure to be near-universal interest on the part of all involved to speed up closing; after all, each are likely champing at the bit to either move in to their new space or get paid for their former property. With so much competition to be the go-to closing handling service, it seems clear that no matter who wins that battle, both buyers and sellers will end up feeling victorious.

Pandora today announced a new integration with Instagram that will allow users to share to their Instagram Story their favorite music and podcasts. The feature comes well over a year after Spotify launched a similar integration with Instagram Stories, and only days after Spotify introduced sharing to Facebook Stories, as well.

In Pandora’s case, accessing the feature is also a quick and easy process — you just tap the “Share” button from the Now Playing screen in the app, then choose “Instagram Stories” as the destination.

A cover art card for the music or podcast will then be generated on your Instagram Story, which you can further decorate with text and stickers, as usual. You also can choose to send the story as a direct message to a friend or a group chat instead of all your followers.

Where Pandora’s experience differs from Spotify’s is what happens when that story is viewed.

When a friend taps the “Play on Pandora” button from the Instagram story, they can gain direct access to that content — even if they don’t have a Premium account. Those who aren’t paid subscribers will be able to view a short ad then gain access to both the shared content as well as a session of free, unlimited, on-demand music.

This is made possible through Pandora’s Premium Access ad solution, which rewards users with free, on-demand sessions for watching video ads.

That means Pandora’s take on Instagram sharing won’t just be useful to artists looking to promote their music, or fans looking to engage their friends — it also will potentially serve as a way to convert free users to paid subscribers after they get a free taste of what Pandora has to offer.

The feature also can be used to promote podcasts, which is a newer battleground between Spotify and Pandora these days. The former has spent on acquisitions and hosts a number of exclusive shows while Pandora is now benefiting from (new owner) SiriusXM’s talk radio programming and its own “Genome” classification technology. 

Pandora says the Instagram Story-sharing feature is launching today for select users, and will support sharing songs, albums, podcasts and playlists.

It’s rolling out to a limited number of Pandora users to start, and will gradually reach the rest of the user base in the weeks ahead.

Clever engineering and x-rayed tires pushed the latest version of the Chiron past the 300 mph barrier.

Starboard Value, LP revealed in an SEC Form 13D filing last week that it owns a 7.5% stake in Box, the cloud content management company.

It is probably not a coincidence that Starboard Value looks for undervalued stocks. Box stock has been on a price roller coaster ride, since it went public in 2015 at a price of $14.00 per share before surging to $23.23 per share. It had high share price of $28.12 in May 2018, but the price dipped into the teens in March and was at $14.85 as we went to press. It has a 52-week low price of $12.46 per share.

As for Box, it wasn’t saying much. “While we do not comment on interactions with our investors, Box is committed to maintaining an active and engaged dialogue with stockholders. The Board of Directors and management team are focused on delivering growth and profitability to drive long-term stockholder value as we continue to pioneer the Cloud Content Management market,” a Box spokesperson told TechCrunch.

The company, which began life as a consumer storage company, made the transition to enterprise software several years after it launched in 2005. It raised more than $500 million along the way, and was a Silicon Valley SaaS darling until it filed its S-1 in 2014.

The S-1 revealed massive sales and marketing spending, and critics came down hard on the company. That led to one of the longest IPO delays in memory, taking 9 month from the time the company filed until it finally had its IPO in January 2015.

In its most recent earnings report last week, Box announced  $172.5M in revenue for for the quarter, putting it on a run rate close to $700M.

Levie will be appearing at TechCrunch Sessions: Enterprise on Thursday.

We emailed Starboard Value for comment on this article. Should it respond, we will update the article.

The organizations behind the widely used USB standard have released some new info on the latest iteration of the interface, and it’s nothing but good news for consumers. It’ll be faster and bring improved compatibility, with no need to pay close attention to which cable or port you’re using. And pedants take note: there’s no longer a space after “USB” and the number.

USB4, as it’s now styled (versus USB 4), was announced in March with a few promises regarding features, but now the actual technical specifications have been released to anyone who cares to inspect them. It’s another step in the process of bringing a major standard from idea to reality.

There are three main improvements in USB4 over USB 3 (or 3.2, or 3.1 gen2v2… the naming system is a mess):

Better speed. USB4 tops out at 40 gigabits per second, twice the speed of the latest version of USB 3 and 8 times the speed of the original USB 3 standard, which was of course itself way faster than what it was replacing. It’ll also support the max speed of previous cables and interfaces.

Universal Thunderbolt 3 compatibility. Thunderbolt 3 is Intel’s proprietary implementation of USB 3, which you’d find on Intel boards and those of any company that had licensed the tech. But Intel has come to realize that it was counterproductive to split things off like this, so they’re providing the Thunderbolt 3 spec for free. Anyone making a USB4 device or cable can make it compatible with Intel’s standard; it’s possible, but unlikely, that some will choose not to. There’s no reason for it, but who knows?

Improved display/data splitting. USB 3 introduced the ability to use a single cable to send power, data and a video signal (basically just more but specialized data) over a single cable. Great! But sometimes, depending on how you set it up, it could only send one or the other, or speeds were greatly reduced. USB4 does this much better, so if you have a monitor that uses 8 Gbps for its video bandwidth, the full 32 Gbps will be available for other purposes. It’s just one of those behind the scenes changes that will make things better and easier for everyone.

The other good news about USB4 is that it doesn’t use a new connector. We’re still in the transition period from the big rectangular port, the small trapezoidal one, the big trapezoidal one and so on, to the sleek USB-C plugs that you can’t do wrong even if you try. Changing that again would be disastrous — so the connector will be the same.

Two not-so-good pieces of news, though: It won’t be here for a while and it might be a little more expensive. These ports are complicated things and the ability to send more data, power and so on means it’s a little harder to make. And despite the spec being published today, it’ll almost certainly be at least a year before any products come out that use it.

Lastly is the name. The computing hardware industry is notoriously bad at naming stuff, and USB 3 was no exception to the rule. It was always annoying trying to figure out which version of USB was supported, what that meant and so on. So from now on, USB4 is the name until they come up with USB5.

Speaking to Tom’s Hardware, USB Promoter Group CEO Brad Saunders said they just wanted to simplify things, and prevent the profusion of products sporting version number badges that could confuse consumers.

“We don’t plan to get into a 4.0, 4.1, 4.2 kind of iterative path,” he explained. “We want to keep it as simple as possible. When and if it goes faster, we’ll simply have the faster version of the certification and the brand.”

Brokers of so-called zero day exploits are paying out more for Android than iOS—which would have been unthinkable until recently.

Also, YouTube has removed a lot of hateful content and Taylor Swift has a new No. 1 album.

Within hours of the president’s post, amateur satellite trackers had hunted down the secret spy satellite that photographed a charred Iranian launchpad.

If you opened Google Calendar sometime in the last few weeks only to find your schedule filled with things like “WIN A FREE iPHONE!” or “CHEAP RAYBANS HERE”, you’re by no means the only one.

Spammers have found a way to trick Google Calendar into adding these things to your calendar without you doing anything. Google says it’s aware of the issue, and is working on it.

So what’s going on here?

At some point, Google Calendar picked up a feature that automatically adds right onto your calendar any event you’re invited to, presumably to keep the invite from getting lost in your inbox. The problem: there… doesn’t seem to be much of a filter. If a bot gets your email address and throws it on an invite which gets past Google’s anti-spam system, bam — it’s on your calendar as if you added it yourself.

Google’s acknowledgement of the issue, first spotted by Engadget, comes in the form of a pinned post on the Google Calendar support forum. It reads, simply:

We’re aware of the spam occurring in Calendar and are working diligently to resolve this issue. We’ll post updates to this thread as they become available. Learn how to report and remove spam. Thank you for your patience.

In the meantime: If your calendar is filled with repeating spam events, you should be able to remove them in batches by going to Google Calendar on your computer, clicking one of the recurring spam events in question, clicking the three-dot button near the top right of the pop up, and hitting “Report as spam”.

You also can outright disable the feature that is auto-adding invites to your calendar until Google figures out a better way to keep spammers out.

To disable the “automatically add invite” function:

• Go to Google Calendar on your computer
• Click the cog in the upper right, then hit settings
• On the list on the left, click “Event settings”
• Look for the “Automatically add invitations” option. Change this to “No, only show invitations to which I have responded”

As security researcher Brian Krebs points out, a lot of these invites come with URLs attached. For a whole list of reasons (like avoiding malicious pages, phishing sites, etc.), you probably don’t want to go clicking those.