Swarming Robots Can Now Follow Your Fingertips
Controlling large swarms of robots is hard, at least on a human scale. But what if you trained them to follow your finger – via a tablet – much like you’d train a swarm of cats to follow a laser pointer. Now you’re cooking with gas. Georgia Tech’s GRITS Lab has created a system for moving multiple independent robots around just by touching a screen. Wherever… Read MoreU.S. Mobile Users Spend The Most Time In Facebook And Instagram, Elsewhere Messaging Apps Dominate
Messaging apps are becoming the most heavily-used type of app in a majority of key markets worldwide, based on both smartphone sessions and time spent in apps. However, according to new data from App Annie, the U.S. is an exception to that trend. Here, Facebook still dominates in terms of smartphone sessions, while both Facebook and Instagram led by time spent in apps. The data collected… Read MoreWaitChatter Helps You Learn A New Language While You Wait For IM Replies
Despite the pace of online communications, we still spend a lot of time waiting: staring at an IM window is a common occurrence for anyone who spends a better part of their day at a computer. WaitChatter wants to make use of that standby time to promote a vital skill, letting users brush up on their vocabulary for a second language while they wait for their colleague or friend to respond to… Read MoreShould You Build Or Acquire?
“You could regret this decision for the rest of your life… from the beach of your own private island.” That was the advice my lawyer gave me when I was staring at a nine-figure acquisition offer as the sole shareholder of my five-year-old startup. The valuation was good, the terms were clean, but I just couldn’t say yes. Lots of people say they aren’t in it for… Read MoreRing’s Smart Doorbell Gets A Smart Speaker
Ring, the connected doorbell with built-in video and two-way talking features, now has a partner in crime: Ring Chime, a Wi-Fi speaker that activates when a visitor presses your Ring, and which can use custom tones you can upload yourself through the Ring mobile app. The Ring Chime is available at a discounted price of $19.95 when it launches for pre-order at the start of June, and will cost… Read MoreOn-Demand Laundry Service Cleanly Hangs Up $2.3 Million In Seed Funding
Cleanly, the YC-backed on-demand company focused on handling your laundry (and dry-cleaning) as soon as you need it done, has today announced the close of a $2.3 million seed round. Investors include Ludlow Ventures, Initialized Capital, Paul Buchheit, Semil Shah from Haystack, Joe Montana, 500 Startups, Funders Club, Soma Capital, Altair Capital and Chloe Sladden from #Angels. Cleanly… Read MoreTo-Do App Wunderlist Debuts An API, Early Integrations Of Slack, Sunrise, HipChat And More
Wunderlist, the to-do app based out of Berlin, is now approaching 13 million free and paid accounts. And today it is adding a new feature that it hopes will make the app a lot more useful and more used: it’s finally turning on an API so that people can create or modify Wunderlist tasks in other apps, and get alerts for Wunderlist tasks when they’re in those apps. The first wave… Read MoreTencent Is Putting More News Feed Ads Inside Its Blockbuster App WeChat
One of the 549 million people who use WeChat? Based in China? Expect to see more ‘sponsored’ content inside your in-app news feed because parent company Tencent is gearing up to increase monetization of the blockbuster messaging service. Read MoreParrot’s Drone Revenues Were Up 356% Year-Over-Year
Parrot saw a big bump in drone sales between its first quarter for 2015, and the same period last year – there was a 356 percent increase in revenue derived from the category between those two measurement spans, with consumer drones leading the big increase with 483 percent revenue growth. Pro drones, like Parrot’s eBee Ag agricultural model, also saw revenues rise 164 percent… Read More
NEWSLETTERS
The Muse Raises $10M From Aspect Ventures To Scale A Career Site For Millennials
It was only a few years ago that I met Kathryn Minshew, Alexandra Cavoulacos, and Melissa McCreery through Y Combinator. They were three women who set out to make a career site for other young women like them with rich, photo-intensive profiles of employers featuring interviews with their teams. Today that site, The Muse, sees more than 3 million active users per month and Minshew says the… Read MoreBrothers In VC — Index’s Neil And Danny Rimer To Speak At TechCrunch Disrupt London
We always like to have the most influential and knowledgeable speakers at our Disrupt conferences. And there are few people as well qualified in those departments as Neil and Danny Rimer, general partners of Index Ventures. They will be joining us at TechCrunch Disrupt London, which will bring together the leading lights of the European tech scene. Stay tuned for many more speaker announcements… Read MoreTencent Beats With Q1 Sales Of $3.6B, $1.1B Profit On Strong Games And Video Ads
Growth in revenue from games and advertising on mobile helped Chinese internet giant Tencent beat analyst expectations for its Q1 2015. Read MoreEurope’s Search De-Listing Ruling Is Mostly About Social Media Privacy Invasions
It’s one year since the European Court of Justice made Wikipedia’s Jimmy Wales spit out his breakfast crumpet and spew crumbs of outrage all over the Internet. I am of course talking about the so-called ‘Right to be forgotten ruling’ (rtbf) which extends European citizens’ personal data protection rights over search engine results by judging the latter data… Read MoreTelegram Says It’s Hit 62M MAUs And Messaging Activity Has Doubled
Telegram, the multi-platform messaging app startup created by Pavel Durov (who previously created and later departed VK, the ‘Russian Facebook’ amid controversy), has released its latest numbers exclusively to TechCrunch. Telegram now says it is delivering 2 billion messages daily. In other words, that’s double the number of messages sent daily since they last released figures… Read MoreSamsung Launches ARTIK, Its New Platform For Connected Devices
Samsung Electronics has launched a new open platform that it says will make developing smart devices faster and easier. ARTIK includes three circuit boards, software support, developer tools, and embedded encryption for security. Read MoreFacebook Starts Hosting Publishers’ “Instant Articles”
You can check out Instant Articles for yourself by visiting the feature’s Facebook Page on an iPhone. For more on Facebook’s strategy, read our feature piece: Facebook’s Quest To Absorb The Internet. Assuaging publishers’ fears that Facebook would keep all the data, the social network will share analytics, and Instant Articles is compatible with audience measurement… Read MoreThe Ultimate Interface Is Your Brain
The final frontier of the digital technology is integrating into your own brain. DARPA wants to go there. Scientists want to go there. Entrepreneurs want to go there. And increasingly, it looks like it’s possible. You’ve probably read bits and pieces about brain implants and prosthesis. Let me give you the big picture. Read More
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