File it under ‘it seemed great on paper’… but Google’s project Ara modular smartphone concept is — for all intents and purposes — dead. If you want to be a little more generous, you can say Google has pivoted away from attempting to engineer the impossible — i.e. total smartphone modularity — to strip it back to a few swappable units that will… Read More
Powered by WPeMatico
The company behind a device that helps parents enforce their home’s internet rules and restrictions, Circle with Disney, launched last winter in partnership with Disney for its included media content, will now allow parents to manage children’s devices outside the home. The company announced this morning the launch of a subscription-based companion service called Circle Go that… Read More
Powered by WPeMatico
China’s Internet giant Tencent has been expanding its international reach in areas like games and advertising, and as part of that, the company is picking up its dealmaking in Europe. The Wall Street Journal is reporting that the owner of the popular WeChat messaging platform is in early talks to buy a majority stake in Supercell — the mobile gaming phenomenon based out of… Read More
Powered by WPeMatico
If swiping left and right for your next adventure is starting to feel a bit last year, the team behind 3nder has a trick up its proverbial wizard’s sleeve. The app — arriving for Android imminently — assists its users in establishing less conventional relationships of the triangular persuasion, helping them find one or two additional participants for boudoir gymnastics. Read More
Powered by WPeMatico
Over the past few weeks, Twilio has had the opportunity to meet with members of Congress and their staff who have taken on the difficult task of balancing security and privacy. We were struck by the sincere desire to understand how actions proposed by those in Washington impact smaller technology businesses. It’s been clear to us for some time that in order to get the full picture,… Read More
Powered by WPeMatico
In the world of kitchen appliances, everyone wants to be the next Keurig, it seems. First, there were single-cup coffee brewers that followed and claimed to be better than Keurig, from Nespresso, Mr. Coffee and Lavazza to name a few. Later came cold drink machines like the Bartesian for cocktails, or PicoBrew for craft beer. And most recently, the Juicero cold press juice machine promised to… Read More
Powered by WPeMatico
I played a lot of StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty online when it launched. And by that I mean a lot. I inevitably drifted into watching streams of other players competing in order to improve my game. Eventually I stopped playing as much, and even stopped following the e-sports scene. But since then, professional e-sports has become a global industry, with revenues in the hundreds of millions… Read More
Powered by WPeMatico
This week’s Technotopia features Haseeb Awan, founder of a YC bitcoins startup who is creating a new way to reduce currency volatility. Haseeb is pretty bearish on the current financial markets but he sees the growth of Asia and India as a true powerhouse that will be able to use all of the cool new stuff the world is building in a very real way.
You can download the podcast here or… Read More
Powered by WPeMatico
We’re hearing from multiple sources that there’s a new fund coming out of Betaworks, and Twitter is chipping money into it. Twitter is investing at least $10 million in the new fund, according to one source. We don’t know the total size of the venture. In the past, Betaworks has focused on smaller seed investments and has stayed away from outsized funds. Another previous… Read More
Powered by WPeMatico
Motorola’s RAZR surely stands as one of the most recognizable phones of yesteryear (although myself I preferred the Samsung Trace) — and while the brand has been desultorily maintained by Verizon, a new video from Lenovo suggests a more serious throwback device is nearly at hand, so to speak. Read More
Powered by WPeMatico