Technapping

American Greetings Since American Greetings went private in early 2013, it has pivoted to a new strategy, focusing on making greeting cards relevant in a digital age. It has done so by adopting an empathy-laden approach, focused on millennial consumers. The brand has encouraged meaningful conversations including tough or uncomfortable situations like infertility, for example, and also dabbled in live events A young girl walks into a tattoo parlor visibly on edge, shuffling her feet and nudging her hair behind her ear. She settles into the chair, as an artist begins inscribing her wrist. When he’s done, she pulls out a greeting card and we finally see what the tattoo says: "Keep Shining," written in her mother’s handwriting from the card. "I think she would have liked it," the girl says, confirming that the tattoo wasn’t a rebellious teen act, but rather, a touching tribute to her mother that has probably passed. "Tattoo," released on Mother’s Day this Ma...

In the tech industry, "dogfooding" is a common term that describes when companies make their employees use the software and hardware they make, so that bugs can be caught and everyday improvements can be dreamed up before the product ever hits the market. Recently, the most powerful companies in Silicon Valley have shown significant interest in augmented reality, a technology that integrates computer graphics and software into the real world. Eventually, supporters say, when "AR" technology becomes advanced enough, a pair of smartglasses may be able to replace every screen you typically use, from your smartphone to your work computer. But to get to that point, technologists are going to have to eat a lot of dogfood — they're going to have to actually replace their beloved computers and smartphones with AR headsets. One Silicon Valley company is actually doing this right now. Meta is a startup making an AR headset, and it's asking its employees to put away t...

Y Combinator President Sam Altman has visions for the future that transcend those found in Silicon Valley.Drew Angerer/Getty In a not-too-distant future city, superintelligent robots will carry out the majority of vital tasks. Driverless cars will ferry passengers to and from points of interest. Housing and healthcare will be affordable, if not free to all. Political leaders and technologists will speak the same language. And life is good. Sam Altman, the 32-year-old president of Y Combinator, the most prestigious startup accelerator in Silicon Valley, has laid out this utopian vision over the years, and most definitively in a job listing posted on YC's blog in June 2016. "We're seriously interested in building new cities and we think we know how to finance it if everything else makes sense," the post read. "We need people with strong interests and bold ideas in architecture, ecology, economics, politics, technology, urban planning, and much more." Free ho...

Node Searching on Google can often feel like a useless pursuit. Type something into the search box, and millions of results pop up with endless information that can take hours to sort through. San Francisco-based startup Node wants to change that. Led by founder and CEO Falon Fatemi, Node emerged from stealth on Tuesday ready to take on its lofty goal of changing the way we discover information. By using AI to connect you or your business with the right opportunity at the right time, Node wants to "accelerate serendipity" on the web. Node’s patent-pending technology works by indexing people, places, products, and companies instead of web pages, and using this data to connect customers to opportunities. So far, it has half a billion profiles. The AI understands the relationships between people and companies, and can marry its data layer with a customer's personal data. Node is currently integrated with Salesforce, and customers can ask questions like "What company wi...

Facebook Founder and CEO Mark ZuckerbergAP With Facebook stock rising about 42% year to date, and about 13% in the past three months, expectations were undoubtedly high ahead of the social network's second-quarter earnings release on Wednesday. But its results didn't disappoint. Driven by its rapidly rising advertising revenue, total revenue and profit both surged during the quarter. Here's a close look at Facebook's monster second quarter, including an update on user growth, management's outlook, and more. Revenue increased 45% year over year. Though the growth rate was down from the 49% revenue growth Facebook posted in Q2, the social network's total revenue of $9.3 billion exceeded analysts' consensus estimate for revenue of $9.2 billion. Revenue growth during the quarter was entirely driven by growth in advertising revenue. Accounting for 98% of the quarter's revenue, advertising revenue was up 47% year over year. Facebook's "payments and o...

Keep an eye out for these companies.Alex Grimm/Reuters In 2009, Ira Sager of Businessweek magazine set a challenge for Quid AI's CEO Bob Goodson: programme a computer to pick 50 unheard of companies that are set to rock the world. The domain of picking "start-up winners" was — and largely still is — dominated by a belief held by the venture capital (VC) industry that machines do not play a role in the identification of winners. Ironically, the VC world, having fuelled the creation of computing, is one of the last areas of business to introduce computing to decision-making. Nearly eight years later, the magazine revisited the list to see how "Goodson plus the machine" had performed. The results surprised even Goodson: Evernote, Spotify, Etsy, Zynga, Palantir, Cloudera, OPOWER – the list goes on. The list featured not only names widely known to the public and leaders of industries, but also high performers such as Ibibo, which had eight employees in 2009 when sel...

Despite being slammed by scandals, Samsung just recorded a record quarter of business with a net profit of $9.9 billion for Q2 2017. The Korea firm has been rocked by the recall of the Galaxy Note 7 and the prosecution of de facto leader Jay Y. Lee on bribery charges , but that didn’t stop it from pulling in revenue of $54.8 billion during the three-month period. That revenue figure rose by 20 percent year-on-year, but net profit jumped 89 percent thanks primarily to strong Galaxy S8 sales and Samsung’s components businesses. Despite the results, Samsung did caution that high component prices had eaten into some of the profit from its mobile business. Likewise, it forecast that its mobile profits may decline due to marketing costs associated with the upcoming launch of its next Note smartphone, and declining sales of the Galaxy S8 now that it is out of its post-launch period. Samsung also shed light on Harman, which is its most expensive acquisition at $8 billion . The business did $...

Carwow , a platform that helps you buy a new car, has closed $39 million in Series C funding. The round was led by new investor Vitruvian Partners, with existing investors Accel Partners and Balderton Capital also participating. At today’s exchange rate it brings total funding to approximately $62.6 million. Founded in late 2010, Carwow originally launched as a car review aggregator before pivoting to become a site that claims to improve the experience of buying a new car. It allows consumers to compare offers online and buy directly from ‘trusted’ dealers that are registered with the platform, specifically avoiding the arduous but otherwise necessary requirement to haggle over price and in a way that potentially introduces more transparency. Specifically, through Carwow you can research, select and configure new cars before receiving and offers from U.K. franchised dealers. The idea is that you can then make an informed decision on those offers based on price, location, dealer rating...

In 10 years, when autonomous driving is mainstream, we’ll have a fundamentally different relationship with our cars and driving in general. Every major car company is fully aware of this, but not all are reacting to this change with the same degree of urgency. Earlier this month, BMW hosted its Innovation Days at its technology office in Chicago, where the company showcased the current state of its connectivity services and laid out its vision for the future. Unlike other manufacturers, BMW has decided that it wants to retain full control over the in-car experience and that it doesn’t want to outsource this to a big technology firm. While the company offers support for Apple CarPlay, it’s not going to support Android Auto anytime soon (and even the CarPlay support isn’t something it seems all that excited about). Instead, BMW has decided that its job as a premium brand is to own the customer experience and make it fit the rest of the driving experience. “We work with the latest and gr...

Facebook could jumpstart its Snapchat clone by letting social media stars and public figures post Stories publicly. When  Facebook Stories launched globally in March , you could only share to all their friends or a subset of them. Now if you allow public followers, you can post your Story publicly so anyone can watch. Social media researcher  Carlos Gil  first pointed out the  privacy feature , and now a Facebook spokesperson confirms to TechCrunch that “This is something we rolled out a few weeks ago. The Public setting allows your Followers to see your story, in addition to your Friends.” As for if or when Pages will be able to post Stories, Facebook tells me “For Pages – no specific timing to share there quite yet.” How to share Facebook Stories publicly Public sharing gives Facebook Stories the potential to mint or popularize internet celebrities the same way Snapchat and Instagram Stories can. My initial experience with posting publicly saw over 1000 ...

Indian Railways The Indian Railways is planning to discontinue giving blankets in some AC trains, following criticism that it gives dirty blankets to passengers. Recently, a CAG report criticised the railways on cleanliness and hygiene in trains and stations. Instead, railways is working on a pilot project to maintain the temperature of the AC coaches. The railways will work on a pilot project and maintain the temperature at 24°C in these AC coaches, up from the current 19°C. According to initial estimates, the move to do away with blankets is an economical option, considering that it takes Rs 55 to clean the bedroll while passengers are charged just Rs 22 for it. Railways guidelines stipulate that the blankets are to be washed every one to two months, which was not being followed, resulting in the transporter being flooded with complaints. More@ https://www.technapping.com

Indian Space Research Organisation India is going to witness launch of two lunar missions in 2018. The two moon missions will be launched by the Indian Space Research Organisation (Isro) and Team Indus, respectively. ISRO will launch the Chandrayaan-2 mission, which will be an advanced version of its previous 2018 mission with the objective of deeper lunar surface probe. Whereas, the moon mission launched by Team Indus will unfurl the Indian National Flag on the moon's surface as part of a global lunar competition. Team Indus, which has many young engineers and is led by IIT-Delhi alumnus Rahul Narayan, will compete to win $30 million Google Lunar XPRIZE. The competition states the competing team has to move 500 metre on the moon's surface and should be able to beam back high-definition images back to Earth. To fulfil its ambition, Team Indus has roped in investors like Infosys co-founder and former UIDAI chairman Nandan Nilekani and space experts such as former Isro chairman ...

The Tesla Model 3 is now a known quantity – we have information about the different kit options available at launch, as well as interior and exterior measurements, and car performance and cabin comforts. Tesla CEO Elon Musk said that the whole point was to make car that is “the best car, hands down,” for “anything close to the same cost,” and it makes a strong case for that on paper. The Model 3 starts at $35,000, as previously announced, but now we know exactly what that will get you. Here’s the base level configuration for the new EV: 220 miles of range 130 miles of range recouped via 30 minutes of charging with Supercharger 30 miles of range per hour with home 240V, 32A charger 0-60 mph in 5.6 seconds 130 mph top speed For an additional $9,000, you can upgrade to the long-range battery version, which comes to $44,000 in total before tax or credits. That includes the following boosted specs: 310 miles of range 170 miles of range achieved in just 30 minutes of charging via Supercharg...

The Chinese government’s crackdown on the internet continues with the news that Apple has removed all major VPN apps, which help internet users overcome the country’s censorship system, from the App Store in China. The move was first noted by ExpressVPN , a provider based outside of China, which said in a blog post “all major VPN apps” including its own had been purged from Apple’s China-based store. The company shared a note from Apple (below) explaining that its app was removed because “it includes content that is illegal in China.” The app continues to be available for users across the world outside of China, the company said. However, the process to create an App Store account in a different country is unknown to many users, so it is unlikely to fill the void of the missing Chinese app. Another provide, Star VPN, tweeted that its app had also been removed. Apple had not replied for comment at the time of writing. ExpressVPN shared a note from Apple notifying it of the removal o...

In an insurer’s ideal world, there’d be a profitable policy for every conceivable risk. Click once, and you’re covered. In the real world, however, insurance coverage hasn’t kept up with the social and economic changes of recent years. Sharing economies have gained scale. Jobs have gone from full-time to gig-based . And the vast millennial generation has entered adulthood intent on completing any complex transaction in a couple of minutes online. Insurance policies, in contrast, look the same as they always have. But if it seems like old-school terms and sales methods no longer fit, give it some time. If there’s a way to make money selling coverage, assume insurers are working on it. If not a big insurer, then probably a startup. “Insurance is such a big sector that even niche categories have the potential for building large businesses,” says Caribou Honig, a founding partner at QED Investors , a VC firm with a number of insurance investments. Startups are also competing wi...

Most would agree that the worst part of traveling is timing the hotel check in. Either you get off a redeye and have to figure out what to do all day while waiting to check in, or you arrive late at night and waste money paying for a room you didn’t get to use all day. Enter HotelFlex . Part of Y Combinator’s summer 2017 batch, the startup wants to change the way hotels operate so guests can check in and check out at whatever times they want – and pay accordingly. So if you just need a place to sleep and check in at midnight but leave town the next morning at 7am, you’d pay a lot less for the room than someone checking in at 3pm and out at noon. Or you could check in five hours late and leave five hours late and pay the same price as you would for standard check in times. There are also benefits for hotels – they can generate additional revenue by getting guests to pay a little extra to check in early to rooms that would otherwise be empty during the day. Right now the pricing is esse...

After a quick fight, Apple and Nokia settled a patent lawsuit back in May . But the two companies didn’t comment on the value of this settlement. While terms of the deal are still undisclosed, Nokiamob first spotted that Nokia announced that it has received a $2 billion upfront cash payment from Apple (€1.7 billion). This seems like quite a lot of money, but Nokia won’t get $2 billion every quarter — this was non-recurring catch-up revenue. Nokia hasn’t said what it plans to do with all this cash. The lawsuit began late last year. Nokia first accused Apple of infringing some of Nokia’s patents as well as patents from NSN and Alcatel-Lucent — Nokia owns those companies and their respective patent portfolios. According to Nokia, it’s been a longstanding infringement as Apple has allegedly relied on some of Nokia’s patents since the iPhone 3GS. Those patents are related to software, video coding, chipsets, display, UI and antenna. It looked like an intense fight at first as Apple remove...

Amazon and its enterprise cloud division AWS have been making a number of moves to expand the company as a platform to build and host games. One of the latest developments has been an acquisition: Amazon in the last quarter reportedly quietly acquired a company called GameSparks , a “backend as a service” for game developers to build various features like leaderboards into games, and then manage them, all in the cloud. According to documents from deal analytics firm PitchBook , the acquisition price was $10 million. Rumors of the acquisition first surfaced earlier this month with no detail about the price nor confirmation from Amazon, which told us that it would not comment on rumor and speculation when we asked about it. GameSparks never responded to our questions. Subsequent to that, though, we’ve tracked down more information. Two people close to the deal, both GameSparks investors, told us they could not speak about the company due to non-disclosure agreements they had signed. W...

Sporting stars have followed Hollywood and music industry celebrities into the world of startups and tech investing, but until now the world’s biggest soccer player, Cristiano Ronaldo, has played the tech ball close to his feet. Not any more. The highest paid player in the world has bought the lion’s share of one of Portugal’s biggest digital agencies with a view to create a new tech brand and a vehicle to launch new tech products. To achieve this Ronaldo now purchased a majority stake in Portugal’s Thing Pink. The agency, led by Luis Parafita, has been involved in a number of high-profile projects on the Iberian peninsula. Thing Pink previously described themselves as “a multidisciplinary team of thinkers, strategists, designers, engineers, producers, pirates and proud geeks, reshaping digital experiences and ecosystems.” Ronaldo’s vision for a new vehicle will be called “ 7EGEND ”, replacing the Thing Pink brand. The team is now working with the Madeira-based Craque to launch the br...