Whether you are lucky to wake up on the right side of the bed or your friends constantly refer to you as ‘Debbie Downer,’ feeling happy and content can be a daily challenge to overcome. By: Lourdes Mestre 18 Game-Changing Tactics To Achieve & Maintain Everyday Happiness Image Credit: Pixabay Achieving […]
Research shows that we find our jobs more fulfilling when we have positive relationships with the people we work with. This isn’t something that will happen on its own, so be purposeful and systematic about it. For example, you could organize a social event with your colleagues to get to know one another better. Or, […]
Hey Google, what happened at Google I/O today? Artificial intelligence. Okay, that’s non-specific. I heard Android P was released today. What’s new? Artificial intelligence. Hmm. Has Google added any features to make battery life longer on Android? Artificial intelligence. Let’s move on. What about the brightness settings? I heard there was something new there too? […]
Messaging apps collectively passed the 5 billion mark for monthly active users last year, with Facebook’s WhatsApp and Messenger on track now to pass 2 billion users apiece. With messaging’s popularity showing no signs of slowing down, a new app is entering the fray in hopes of catching the wave. Yahoo has quietly launched a new iOS […]
App revenue continues to climb year-over-year, a large part which can be contributed to the growth of subscription services. Now, Google is looking to make subscribing to apps easier for both consumers and developers alike, with a series of new features announced today at Google’s I/O conference. On the user’s side of things, the company […]
Social media stars have always been treated like nobodies instead of VIPs on Snapchat. Despite pioneering the Stories and creative tools they love, the lack of support saw many drift to YouTube’s ad dollars and Instagram’s bigger audience. Now Snap CEO Evan Spiegel is finally stepping up to win back their favor and their content. […]
The 2017 hack of Equifax, already among the largest ever recorded, just got bigger. Well, they’re admitting that it was bigger than they had previously, which amounts to the same thing. Documents filed with the SEC reveal that more people, more IDs, and more info in general was stolen when the company utterly failed to […]
Google today announced a new version of Google Maps that will launch later this summer. All of the core Google Maps features for getting directions aren’t going away, of course, but on top of that, the team has now built a new set of features that are all about exploration. “About a year ago, when […]
A new report published by security researched Troy Mursch details how the cryptocurrency mining code known as Coinhive is creeping onto unsuspecting sites around the web. Mursch recently detected the Coinhive code running on nearly 400 websites, including ones belonging to the San Diego Zoo, Lenovo and another for the National Labor Relations Board. The […]
With so much focus on consumer-facing updates, it can be easy to forget that the rest of I/O is all about developers. So, when the company announces a rare piece of first-party hardware at the event, it should come as no surprise that it’s just not for the rest of us. A month after passing […]
Facebook was a mess. The independence it dangled to close acquisition deals with Instagram and WhatsApp turned the company into a tangle of overlapping products. Every app had its own messaging and Stories options. Economies of scale were squandered. Top innovators led mature products already bursting at the seams with features while new opportunities went […]
Google managed to elicit an audible gasp from the crowd at I/O today when it showed off a new augmented feature for Maps. It was a clear standout during a keynote that contained plenty of iterative updates to existing software, and proved a key glimpse into what it will take to move AR from interesting […]
Routines are probably one of the best features the Google Assistant team has rolled out in recent months. Just say “Hey Google, good night” and the Assistant will shut down your lights and start playing some nature sounds to soothe you into deep sleep (or whatever else you want it to do). One limitations so […]
After four years at the helm of Messenger, David Marcus will be leaving the team to lead a small group of Facebook employees to explore what blockchain technologies can do for the social media giant. In a post on Facebook, Marcus noted that he would be “starting from scratch” in these efforts surrounding blockchain tech. […]
Multiplayer has been one of the huge limitations of early smartphone AR platforms, it’s a tough thing to tackle and relies on a lot of computer vision smarts to match what one user’s phone is seeing with another’s to create a shared virtual space. Google is tackling this problem. Onstage at I/O today, VR exec Nathan […]
Google Assistant is catching up with – and in some cases, passing – Alexa on a variety of fronts, with a wealth of new features announced today at Google’s I/O developer conference. The company is launching support for digital subscriptions in Actions (Google Assistant’s voice apps), as well as a variety of tools to help […]
The big question in the media world today is whether MoviePass parent company Helios and Matheson can stanch the bleeding of its cash flows before it becomes insolvent. In a new filing today with the SEC, Helios informed investors that it had $15.5 million in available cash, with another $27.9 million in accounts receivable from […]
Google today said it is rolling out Lighthouse 3.0, an update to its tools that help developers optimize their websites and audit their performance. The new update is centered around more precise and actionable metrics, such as page load time and the components of the site that might be slowing it down. Google has been […]
Facebook is undergoing one of the biggest executive reshuffles in its history, the company announced internally today, Recode reports. Mark Zuckerberg is still the king of the castle, but everything below him is taking a different shape as WhatsApp, Messenger and Facebook’s Core app get new leaders. The company has been reorganized into three main […]
Gamalon wants to change the game when it comes to understanding text-based customer communications. Instead of using neural networks to learn about a vast corpus of information, the startup takes a different approach, putting the text in a database and building decision trees to very rapidly train the data to arrive at the required information. […]
Intel Capital, the investment arm of the computer processor giant, is today announcing $72 million in funding for the 12 newest startups to enter its portfolio, bringing the total invested so far this year to $115 million. Announced at the company’s global summit currently underway in southern California, investments in this latest tranche cover artificial […]
Instant Apps for Android have been one of Google’s of the most interesting technologies for mobile developers. In their earliest incarnation, Instant Apps were mostly useful for developers of relatively straightforward apps. Earlier this year, Google launched its beta of Instant Apps for games, too, which allows players to get a sense of the gameplay before […]
Since 2014, Material Design has been Google’s design language for its apps. Now, the company is greatly expanding its services around its design system by offering a set of new tools around theming and working on design iterations, as well as new open-source components that developers con implement into their own apps. In addition to […]
For the longest times, developers have taken Chrome OS machines and run tools like Crouton to turn them into Linux-based developer machines. That was a bit of a hassle, but it worked. But things are getting easier. Soon, if you want to run Linux apps on your Chrome OS machine, all you’ll have to do […]
Google today announced Android App Bundles, a new tool for developers that will make apps radically smaller. The trick here is that developers can now say which of their apps’ assets should be included for a given device so there’s no need to ship every visual asset for every screen size and support for every […]
Android’s development studio is getting a new update as Google rolls out Android Studio 3.2 Canary, adding new tools for visual navigation editing and Jetpack. The new release includes build tools for the new Android App Bundle format, Snapshots, a new optimizer for smaller app code and a new way to measure an app’s impact […]
At its I/O developer conference, Google today announced Jetpack, a major update to how developers write applications for Android today. Jetpack represents the next generation of the Android Support Library, which virtually every Android App in the Play Store uses because it provides a lot of the basic functionality that you would expect from a mobile […]
Jake Bright Contributor More posts by this contributor Safaricom rolls out Bonga social networking platform to augment M-Pesa Business solutions firm Africa’s Talking closes $8.6M round led by IFC March and April saw fresh VC in Africa, mobile money merge with social media, motorcycle taxis digitize, and TechCrunch in Nigeria and Ghana. Africa’s Talking with more […]
Google today showed off new ways it’s combining the smartphone camera’s ability to see the world around you, and the power of A.I. technology. The company, at its Google I/O developer conference, demonstrated a clever way it’s using the camera and Google Maps together to help people better navigate around their city, as well as […]
Uber has teamed up with Karem Aircraft to develop electric vertical takeoff and landing (eVTOL) vehicles for the ride-hailing company’s upcoming flying taxi service, the companies announced today at Uber Elevate. Karem Aircraft, which has patented Optimum Speed Tiltroter technology for military and commercial applications, has been working with Uber for about a year to […]
Google I/O is nowhere near done. While the mainstream keynote just ended, the company is about to unveil the next big things when it comes to APIs, SDKs, frameworks and more. The developer keynote starts at 12:45 PM Pacific Time (3:45 PM on the East Cost, 8:45 PM in London, 9:45 PM in Paris) and you […]
Google will soon launch a new version of Google Maps that will give you for more personalized recommendations than before. Google has long worked to make Maps seem more personalized, but since Maps is now about far more than just directions, the company is introducing new features to give you better recommendations for local places. […]
Along with the A.I.-powered changes coming to the Google Photos app, Google today also announced a new way for developers to work with Google Photos’ service. The company is launching a developer API that will allow other apps and services access to connect to, upload to, and share to a users’ Google Photos library, as […]
Google unveiled some of the new features in the next version of Android at its developer conference. One feature looked particularly familiar. Android P will get new navigation gestures to switch between apps. And it works just like the iPhone X. “As part of Android P, we’re introducing a new system navigation that we’ve been […]
There was plenty of talk about Android P at today’s big I/O kickoff — but when can you actually download the thing? Right now, as a matter of fact, if you’ve got one of a handful of compatible handsets. You can find the upgrade here, if you dare. The list includes the Pixel, naturally, but […]
Google today announced at its I/O developer conference a new suite tools for its new Android P operating system that will help users better manage their screen time, including a more robust do not disturb mode and ways to track your app usage. The biggest change is introducing a dashboard to Android P that tracks […]
At its I/O developer conference, Google today introduced ML Kit, a new software development kit (SDK) for app developers on iOS and Android that allows them to integrate a number of pre-built Google-provided machine learning models into their apps. One nifty twist here is that these models, which support text recognition, face detection, barcode scanning, […]
No surprise here, Android P was the highlight of today’s Google I/O keynote. The new version of the company’s mobile operating system still doesn’t have a name (at least not as of this writing), but the company’s already highlighted a number of key new features, including, notable, Adaptive Battery. Aimed at taking on basically everyone’s […]
With Instant Apps, Google offers a feature for Android users that allows them to load a small part of an app right from the search results and get a native app experience. With Slices, Google is launching a new feature today that may look somewhat similar at first glance, but which solves a very different […]
As Slack looks to woo larger and larger companies with the prospect of a simpler workplace collaboration tool, the company said it has now hit 8 million daily active users. The company said it also has 3 million paid users. A darling in Silicon Valley, Slack was initially able to capitalize on pent-up demand for […]
Google wants to bundle its voice assistant into every device and app. And it’s true that it makes sense to integrate Google Assistant in Google Maps. It’ll be available on iOS and Android this summer. At Google I/O, director of Google Assistant Lilian Rincon showed a demo of Google Maps with Google Assistant. Let’s say […]
Google just showed a crazy (and terrifying) new feature for the Google Assistant at its I/O developer conference. The Assistant will soon be able make calls for you to make a reservation — maybe for a salon appointment or to reserve a table at a restaurant that doesn’t take online bookings. For now, this was […]
Google said it is rolling out its visual assistant, which brings ups information as well as ways to interact with apps with a Google Assistant voice request in a full-screen experience, to Android phones this summer. When an Android user makes a query through Google Assistant, Google will provide a more interactive visual experience on […]
No more rudely yelling at your Google Home smart speaker, kids. Google today announced at its I/O developer conference a new Google Assistant setting for families called “Pretty Please.” The feature will teach children to use polite language when interacting with the Google Assistant, and will receive thanks from the virtual assistant in response. For […]
Uber’s holding a big conference today in Los Angeles, Uber Elevate, to share more about its ambitions to launch a flying taxi service. For those unfamiliar, Uber’s goal is to start testing these vertical takeoff and landing vehicles in 2020 and have its first official ride in 2023. At the Summit today, Uber Head of […]
Smart Displays were the talk of Google’s big push at CES this year — but there’s been nary a peep in the intervening months. As expected, we got a little more insight into the company’s Echo Show competitor at today’s big I/O kickoff — though the actual devices are still a few months out, officially […]
While plenty of the scathing criticism aimed at the cryptocurrency world is well deserved, sometimes a jab fails to land. In the midst of the mostly grossly-worded slew of insults that the institutionally rich lobbed at the bitcoin crowd over the weekend, Bill Gates may have landed the furthest from the mark. “Bitcoin and other […]
Google today announced a major update to the Google Assistant at its I/O developer conference. The main idea here is to allow you to have more natural conversations with the Google Assistant. Instead of having to say “Hey Google” or “Ok Google” every time you want to say a command, you’ll only have to do […]
Google is adding morse code input to its mobile keyboard. It’ll be available as a beta on iOS and Android later today. The company announced that new feature at Google I/O after showing a video of Tania Finlayson. Finlayson has been having a hard time communicating with other people due to her condition. She found […]
Not to be outdone by recent upgrades to Alexa and Siri, Google today announced that it’s adding not one, but six new voices to its Assistant offering. The company announced today at I/O that it’s been working on newer, more lifelike version of its spoken AI that features a more natural voice that is “closer […]
Following the recent Gmail revamp, Google today announced another new feature for Gmail called “Smart Compose,” which will actually help you write your emails using machine learning technology. As you type, Smart Compose pops up suggestions about what you might want to write next – similar to Google autocomplete. Google CEO Sundar Pichai briefly demoed the […]
As the war for creating customized AI hardware heats up, Google is now rolling out its third generation of silicon, the Tensor Processor Unit 3.0. Google joins pretty much every other major company in looking to create custom silicon in order to handle its machine operations. And while multiple frameworks for developing machine learning tools […]
Google Photos already makes it easy for users to correct their photos with built-in editing tools and clever, A.I.-powered features for automatically creating collages, animations, movies, stylized photos, and more. Now the company is making it even easier to fix photos with a new version of the Google Photos app that will suggest quick fixes […]
Tesla CEO Elon Musk managed to freak out investors last Thursday by acting dismissively toward analysts during an earnings call, calling a question about the company’s capital requirements “boring” and “bone-headed” and “not cool,” a strange performance that seemed to lead to a side in the shares’ performance afterward. More bravura was on display the […]
In 2016, Walmart announced that it would begin testing grocery delivery in conjunction with Uber and Lyft. Today, however, Reuters reports that those partnerships have come to an end, which was confirmed by Walmart and Uber. TechCrunch first reported in 2015 about Uber’s plans to launch a merchant delivery system, wherein goods from retailers would […]
In the fractured, spammy world that is consumer PC software downloads, Microsoft is looking to make their Microsoft Store a more central hub but they need the help (and enthusiasm) of developers. In a major showing of good will, Microsoft is changing up their revenue sharing structure to give developers a bigger cut. Developers of […]
The New York Stock Exchange is working on its own bitcoin trading platform. According to a new report from the New York Times, the NYSE’s parent company is developing an online exchange geared toward large institutional investors — the kind of financial heavyweights that the cryptocurrency community is waiting for with bated breath. Details of […]
Instagram is unveiling new features for businesses that want to use their profiles to message with customers and even facilitate transactions. Even if you’re not a business on Instagram, you might still notice the addition of action buttons, which will allow you to make a reservation, buy a ticket, start an order or make a […]
Happy I/O day! The big show hasn’t actually kicked off, but the Google news continues to trickle in. If you’re among those using Gmail on iOS, check the App Store right now for an update that brings a couple of key new features to the app. The more interesting of the two is the addition […]
Increasingly we are going to be having bots conducting business on a company’s behalf. As that happens, it is going to require a trust mechanism to ensure that bot-to-bot communication is legitimate. BotChain, a new startup out of Boston wants to be the blockchain for registering bots. The new blockchain, which is built on Ethereum, […]
With Google’s I/O developer conference kicking off later today, Google is setting the scene for what it expects to be one of the big themes of the event: artificial intelligence. Today, the company rebranded the whole of its Google Research division as Google AI, with the old Google Research site now directing to a newly […]
Town Hall Ventures launches today as the latest venture investment firm to take a stab at transforming the woefully broken U.S. health care market through technology. What Town Hall has that many other firms trying to invest in healthcare technology don’t is a group of founders who have spent time in the trenches of the […]
Between Microsoft Build and Google I/O, there are probably more people saying “AI” this week than any previous week in history. But the AI those companies deploy tends to live off in a cloud somewhere — XNOR puts it on devices that may not even be capable of an internet connection. The startup has just […]
Square, which has already made its way into retail stores and service-based businesses (think hair salons, massage therapists, etc), is officially getting into the restaurant business with the launch of Square for Restaurants. Square for Restaurants is a point-of-sale system that handles everything from menu updates, floor layouts, employee scheduling, performance tracking to tip splitting. […]
Microsoft and Red Hat are deepening their existing alliance around cloud computing. The two companies will now offer a managed version of OpenShift, Red Hat’s container application platform, on Microsoft Azure. This service will be jointly developed and managed by Microsoft and Red Hat and will be integrated into the overall Azure experience. Red Hat […]
True friends share everything, from purses to lawnmowers to the limitless energy they pull from the sun, wind, and deep underground. Green Power Exchange aims to make one of those sharing scenarios a bit simpler. Green Power Exchange or GPX is running an ICO to create a coin that lets you trade energy. While there […]
Facebook is making some updates to its Live video platform which should streamline the process of getting a stream set up and in front of the widest possible audience. The company notes in a blog post that the daily average of Live streams from verified Pages is up 1.5x this year over the past year. […]
Uber sees a future where users can request a flying uber. And it’s what, as CEO Dara Khosrowshahi calls it, a big, bold bet. He says in an interview with CBS This Morning that big bold bets are what built Uber. “We want to create the network around those vehicles so regular people can take […]
Generations ago, the internet spoke of an old saying that involved a man exhibiting excitement about hearing of a person’s love of an object, so he did favor, and put that something inside of something else. That’s what Netgear did here. Netgear heard people like the internet so much that the company put an internet […]
As we plunge into our baffling future, it is believed that, at some point, we will be trading in cryptographically secure kittens, monsters, and playing cards. While it is unclear why this will happen, Rare Bits and their new service, Fan Bits, is ready for the oncoming rush. Founded by Daniel Lee, a former Zynga/FarmVille […]
There are times where voice-driven systems don’t work all that well because of background noise or other voices. That’s because it’s hard for machines (and humans) to pull out a particular voice when there are many others speaking. This is sometimes called ‘the cocktail party problem.’ Yobe was created out of research at MIT on […]
Dreamlines, which claims to be Europe’s largest online travel agency specialising in cruise-related travel, is disclosing that it has raised €45 million in series E funding. The round is led by Princeville Global, with participation from existing investors that include Holtzbrinck Ventures, Target Global, Dimaventures, Hasso Plattner Ventures, TruVenturo, and Rocket Internet’s Global Founders Capital. […]
The strong climate for tech IPOs at the moment is leading yet more mature startups to set up their own plans to list, and the latest development on that front is coming out Sweden. iZettle, the payments and small business financial services startup that is often referred to as the “Square of Europe,” with some […]
How did you find Microsoft Build yesterday? We don’t really have time for your answer because Google I/O is already here! Google is kicking off its annual developer conference today. As usual, there will be a consumer keynote with major new products in the morning, and a developer-centric keynote in the afternoon. The conference starts […]
Alibaba has expanded its e-commerce empire into South Asia after the Chinese internet giant acquired Daraz in an undisclosed deal. Daraz was founded in 2012 by Rocket Internet and today it operates in Pakistan as well as Bangladesh, Myanmar, Sri Lanka and Nepal. Rocket said in a statement that Alibaba has acquired the entire Daraz business. […]
Yariv Bash, the chief executive of drone delivery startup Flytrex, wants to make drone delivery “as easy as using your iPhone“. Flytrex chief executive Yariv Bash Meanwhile, Ran Krauss, the CEO of Airobotics, has helped his startup raise over $70 million for its mission to bring the autonomous revolution to the drone industry. Both men are […]
When a disagreement with a colleague gets heated, it’s normal to feel all sorts of emotions: disappointment, anger, or frustration, for example. But should you express what you’re feeling? It depends. If you’re experiencing what psychologists call a hot emotion — one that comes with an urgent sense of entitlement or even revenge (“I have […]
Singapore-based e-commerce startup ShopBack came on the radar when it raised $25 million last November, and now the company is making its first acquisition. ShopBack said today it has picked up Seedly, a fellow Singaporean startup that offers a personal finance service, in an undisclosed deal. The entire team will move over and Seedly will continue as […]
Nintendo has finally revealed the details of its paid online service after months of speculation by fans. The pricing is pretty much as expected ($20 per year), but the additions of online save game backups and NES games with added online multiplayer sweeten the deal. We first heard the pricing last June, including the $3.99 […]
Hidden inside the code of Facebook’s Android app is an unreleased feature called Facebook Avatars that lets people build personalized, illustrated versions of themselves for use as stickers in Messenger and comments. It will let users customize their avatar to depict their skin color, hair style and facial features. Facebook Avatars is essentially Facebook’s version […]
Hidden inside the code of Facebook’s Android app is an unreleased feature called Facebook Avatars that lets people build personalized, illustrated versions of themselves for use as stickers in Messenger and comments. It will let users customize their avatar to depict their skin color, hair style and facial features. Facebook Avatars is essentially Facebook’s version […]
Snap Chief Financial Officer Drew Vollero is going to be leaving his post at the Snapchat parent company next week and will be replaced by Amazon VP of finance Tim Stone, according to financial documents filed with the SEC today. Vollero was the company’s first CFO and has presided over Snap finances since joining less […]
Google has been rolling out news at a steady rate since last week, in what feels like a bit of a last-minute clearinghouse ahead of tomorrow. The company’s already taken the wraps off of news about Android TV, Google Home, Wear OS Assistant, you name it. If this were practically any other company, we’d be […]
Barnes & Noble, that once proud anchor to many a suburban mall, is waning. It is not failing all at once, dropping like the savaged corpse of Toys “R” Us, but it also clear that its cultural moment has passed and only drastic measures can save it from joining Waldenbooks and Borders in the great, […]
Going to the dentist can be anxiety-inducing. Unfortunately, it was no different for me last week when I went to discuss Uniform Teeth’s recent $4 million seed funding round from Lerer Hippeau, Refactor Capital, Founder’s Fund and Slow Ventures. Uniform Teeth is a clear teeth aligner startup that competes with the likes of Invisalign and […]
This Friday, TechCrunch launches the West Coast debut of TC Sessions: Robotics at UC Berkeley on May 11. There are still a few tickets left, including $45 student tickets, that will get you access to the conference, workshops, and networking reception. With robots as far as the eye can see and top robotics experts abounding, […]
Anshu Sharma Contributor Anshu Sharma is a serial entrepreneur and a former venture partner at Storm Ventures. More posts by this contributor The unbeatable advantage of Apple and Amazon An engineer’s guide to picking a startup We are spending a lot of time discussing what happens to data when you explicitly or implicitly share it. […]
Conceiving a product and turning it into a successful high-growth startup is challenging work, but it can be absolutely punishing for underrepresented founders. While a strong product and a great go-to-market is critical for early success, that’s not enough to ensure a successful venture capital fundraise. Instead, what often matters is building relationships with investors, […]
If a company like Facebook can’t even understand why its moderation tools work they do, then its users certainly don’t have a fighting shot. Anyway, that’s the idea behind what a coalition of digital rights groups are calling the Santa Clara Principles, “a set of minimum standards” aimed at Facebook, Google, Twitter and other tech […]
Microsoft Pay — Microsoft’s answer to Android Pay and Apple Pay that was originally launched in 2016 as Microsoft Wallet — is getting a little more useful today. At Build, Microsoft announced that it will be integrating its digital wallet service into Outlook. This means that, for the first time, when a company sends you […]
Drive.ai, the self-driving car startup with roots in Stanford’s Artificial Intelligence Lab, has partnered with Friso, Texas and the Hall Group to deploy the first autonomous ride-hailing platform in the state of Texas. Initially, the platform will be available to over 10,000 members of Hall Group’s commercial and residential communities. Through the service, people will be […]
The cause of the fatal crash of an Uber self-driving car appears to have been at the software level, specifically a function that determines which objects to ignore and which to attend to, The Information reported. This puts the fault squarely on Uber’s doorstep, though there was never much reason to think it belonged anywhere […]
At its Build developer conference, Microsoft today announced that Live Share, its previously announced collaborative development feature for Visual Studio and Visual Studio code is now available to developers who want to give it a try. Until now, this feature, which allows developers to better work together, was only available in a private preview — […]
Microsoft still isn’t giving a timeline as to when its virtual assistant, Cortana, will support integration with Amazon Alexa – something the companies had announced last year. But the company at its Build developer conference today did show off how that integration will work, in an on-stage demo with support from Amazon, and it launched a new […]
Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella talked briefly about a major update to the company’s conversational AI tools. You can now more easily create, test and improve bots that run on Azure or your own servers and work across multiple platforms. “At this conference, we’re launching a hundred plus features for the bot framework so that you […]
China’s government has made technological independence from the United States one of its highest priorities. And now, it appears to be putting its money where its messaging has been. According to the Wall Street Journal, China is close to finalizing a $47 billion investment fund that would finance semiconductor research and chip startup development. The […]
Today at Microsoft’s BUILD keynote, AR and VR were definitely a sideshow, but the company did have some announcements related to enterprise apps on the HoloLens. The company detailed two new apps, Remote Assist and Layout which will be coming May 22. The new Remote Assist app from Microsoft is the company’s realization of a […]
Instagram is preparing to let you add music to your Stories, judging by code found inside its Android app. “Music stickers” could let you search for and add a song to your posts, thanks to licensing deals with the major record labels recently struck by Facebook. Music stickers would make Instagram Stories much more interesting […]
Purple Carrot announced this morning that it has raised $4 million in strategic funding from Fresh Del Monte Produce. The company, which delivers completely plant-based (vegan) meal kits to subscribers, was founded in 2014. It has, in part, gotten attention through celebrity involvement, first by enlisting food writer Mark Bittman as its chief innovation officer […]
Oculus Research is getting a new name. As the AR/VR-focused research group grows more instrumental to the future of Facebook at large, the group will now be called Facebook Reality Lab. The announcement was made by Oculus Chief Scientist Michael Abrash in a post on his personal Facebook page. It’s just a name change, but […]
Android Things, Google IoT platform for developers who want to build connected devices, is now out of beta, as the company today announced. After eight release candidates, the last of which launched less than a month ago, Google now deems Android Things ready for primetime. Despite its beta status, quite a few companies started building […]
Given the downright deluge of news over the past couple of weeks, one has to wonder what, precisely, Google isn keeping up its sleeve for I/O. The big event doesn’t kick off until tomorrow morning, but the company just dropped another interesting announcement: JBL Link Bar. Created in partnership with Google, the living room entertainment […]
Transcripts, diplomas, resumes — simple documents with enormously important economic consequences for their holders. The right classes or GPA on a transcript can radically change the career prospects of a young graduate, and yet, the infrastructure that manages these critical documents still centers on mailing official paper to processing centers. Now, a startup called Learning […]
As part of its Build developer conference, Microsoft today announced Project Ink Analysis, a new service under its Cognitive Services brand of AI products that will allow developers to add support for handwriting and other shape recognition to their apps. The company says that this service will be available for Windows and other platforms. Microsoft […]
The Microsoft Graph is an interesting but also somewhat amorphous idea. It’s core to the company’s strategy, but I’m not sure most developers understand its potential just yet. Maybe it’s no surprise that Microsoft is putting quite a bit of emphasis on the Graph during its Build developer conference this week. Unless developers make use […]
At the Microsoft Build developer conference today, Microsoft and Chinese drone manufacturer DJI announced a new partnership that aims to bring more of Microsoft’s machine learning smarts to commercial drones. Given Microsoft’s current focus on bringing intelligence to the edge, this is almost a logical partnership, given that drones are essentially semi-autonomous edge computing devices. DJI […]
At its Build developer conference in Seattle this week, Microsoft is putting a lot of emphasis on its AI and machine learning services. For the most part, that means launching new services and bringing some existing services to new places. With the plethora of different AI services the company now offers, it’s maybe also no […]
Microsoft today announced IntelliCode, a new experimental developer tool for Visual Studio users that brings more of the company’s artificial intelligence smarts to software development. With IntelliSense, Visual Studio has long featured a smart code completion feature that makes writing code faster and less error-prone. With IntelliCode, Microsoft is going a step further. This new […]
Microsoft’s Kinect motion-sensing camera for its Xbox consoles was walking dead for the longest time. Last October, it finally passed away peacefully — or so we thought. At its Build developer conference today, Microsoft announced that it is bringing back the Kinect brand and its standout time-of-flight camera tech, but not for a game console. […]
Microsoft today announced at its Build conference the preview launch of Project Brainwave, its platform for running deep learning models in its Azure cloud and on the edge in real time. While some of Microsoft’s competitors, including Google, are betting on custom chips, Microsoft continues to bet on FPGAs to accelerate its models, and Brainwave […]
Late last year, Microsoft launched Visual Studio App Center, its new unified mobile app development lifecycle solution for developers who want to write iOS, Android, Windows and macOS apps. The service allows developers to automate the building, testing, distribution and monitoring of their Objective-C, Swift, Java, C#, Xamarin and React Native apps through a single […]
At its Build developer conference this week, Microsoft is putting a lot of emphasis on artificial intelligence and edge computing. To a large degree, that means bringing many of the existing Azure services to machines that sit at the edge, no matter whether that’s a large industrial machine in a warehouse or a remote oil-drilling […]
At its Build developer conference, Microsoft today announced that over 700 million devices now run Windows 10. Almost exactly a year ago, that number stood at 500 million. In addition, the company also today noted that Office 365 now has 135 million monthly active commercial users, up from 120 million last October. Back in 2015, […]
If you’ve read Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella’s recent book, you know that making technology more accessible to people with disabilities is personal for him. Over the course of the last few years, large parts of the company have dedicated themselves to building tools that enable people with disabilities and mental health conditions to do more. Today, […]
Microsoft is launching a couple of features to Excel today that make the ubiquitous spreadsheet software a bit more powerful. Among the new features is support for Azure Machine Learning and custom JavaScript functions to Excel to extend its capabilities. Excel now also allows Power BI developers to bring the custom visuals they created for Power […]
Microsoft may have retreated from the smartphone operating system wars but that doesn’t mean it has given up on trying to get a foothold on other platforms. Today, at its Build developer conference, the company announced three new services that bring its overall cross-platform strategy into focus. On Android, the company’s Trojan Horse has long […]
The whole-home wireless craze peaked and waned last year with the rise of Orbi, Eero, Google WiFi, and Linksys’ Velop. These routers use mesh technology to blanket your home in soft, velvety Wi-Fi, ensuring that everything from the front camera/lamp to the Wi-Fi-connected grill in the back yard are connected to the Internet. I’ve tested […]
Notable, a new startup digitizing the checkup through automatic recording of doctor’s visits and updating of electronic health records, is launching its first product for the Apple Watch. Billing itself as a white-label solution for wearables, the company’s technology uses natural language processing and voice recognition technology to automatically record doctor-patient interactions and structure the […]
Starting in Norway and Sweden, vehicles from Volvo cars and Volvo trucks are now able to share traffic information through Volvo’s Connected Cloud. Let’s say car A runs into a road hazard. Car A will then upload that information to the Volvo Connected Cloud where it will broadcast the information to Volvo Cars and Trucks […]
To date, child location trackers have failed to live up to consumer expectations. They’ve arrived as oversized, bulky watches too large for little wrists, and some have even been designed so insecurely, that it would be safer to not use them at all. A new kid tracker from Jiobit, launching today, wants to address these […]
Fitbit announced its new female health tracking feature alongside the Versa at an event back in March. The offering is finally starting to roll out on the company’s iOS and Windows apps, letting users track their menstrual cycle in the space they track their activity and sleep patterns. The feature is available for both of […]
Kubernetes, the open source container orchestration tool, came out of Google several years ago and has gained traction amazingly fast. With each step in its growth, it has created opportunities for companies to develop businesses on top of the open source project. The beauty of open source is that when it works, you build a […]
Microsoft is holding its annual Build developer conference this week and the company is kicking off the event with its inaugural keynote this morning. You can watch the live stream right here. The keynote is scheduled to start at 8:30 am on the West Coast, 11:30 am on the East Coast, 4:30 pm in London […]
Treating issues with mental health can be a daunting and very sensitive task for anyone that is suffering from any kind of mental illness — but the problem for many is that a lot of patients just don’t know where to start, according to David Ebersman. That’s where Lyra Health hopes to help. The service works […]
Mesosphere, a company that created an operating system of sorts for the modern datacenter, announced today that it has raised $125 million for their Series D round. Today’s investment brings the company’s total funding since it formed in 2013 to almost $250 million. The round was led by T. Rowe Price Associates and Koch Disruptive […]
Nokia last week said that it was selling off its digital health business, after failing to develop it into a substantial business itself, but this week the Finnish company is announcing an acquisition that underscores how it is doubling down in another one of its business areas, the Internet of Things. Nokia has acquired SpaceTime Insight, […]
Stress and distraction can form a dangerous cycle. When we can’t focus at work, we often feel stressed about not being productive — which causes us to focus even less. You can break this cycle by using self-awareness. Pay attention to what’s going on the next time you get distracted: Are you bored by what […]
