For the second quarter in a row, Netflix has handily beaten industry watchers — and its own expectations — in adding a mountain of additional new subscribers. Netflix today said it added 5.2 million additional new subscribers this quarter, a number well above the 3.2 million new subscriber additions that it set itself — and
After years of research and development, Reach Robotics has closed a $7.5 million Series A, co-led by Korea Investment Partners (KiP) and IGlobe, to bring its augmented reality bots to market in a big way. The Bristol-based startup is looking to expand into the U.S., and the team is exploring opportunities for growth into other European and
Headset-based VR and AR may be a bit slower out of the gates than many had hoped, but investors are still pouring money into startups looking to change how consumers interact with the digital world. Leap Motion, a hand-tracking company based in San Francisco, has raised $50 million in Series C funding led by clients
Okoli is new service by developer Jack Deneut which aims to replace those ugly little cards you find in tourist hotels. The web app, which currently works in Prague, Budapest, Berlin, and Paris, lets you reserve a nearly private tour with a professional guide and you’re guaranteed groups of no bigger than eight people. It
Since going public last month, things have not gone particularly well for Blue Apron, thanks to the specter of Amazon and its $13.7 billion acquisition bid for Whole Foods. The bad news, again, continues to roll in as what may have been a competitor in theory now seems more and more like an existential threat.
Back in 2016, when Microsoft announced that SQL Server would soon run on Linux, the news came as a major surprise to users and pundits alike. Over the course of the last year, Microsoft’s support for Linux (and open source in general), has come into clearer focus and the company’s mission now seems to be all
Professional development is one of the hot areas for big corporates grappling with their millennials influx who are hungry to learn, so it makes sense that new platforms are now appearing to service this need. Today, Learnerbly, a “curated professional development SaaS platform” based in London announces that it has raised £1.6 million in seed
Judy Wert is the co-founder of Wert & Company, a leading international executive search firm specializing in design – for top-tier startups and Fortune 500 corps. In this episode, she shares how she’s been recruiting the best designers for more than two decades, what she sees in the top 1 percent of designers she’s worked
Apple has revealed a few of the emoji it’ll be releasing on iOS, watchOS and macOS later this year, a little gift just in time for World Emoji Day. The new expressive icons include a T-Rex and an Elf for Jurassic Park and LOTR fans tired of typing out the names of their heroes, as
Samsung users will be able to choose PayPal as their preferred method of payment in-app, online and in retail stores through the Samsung Pay mobile payments platform, the companies announced today. The strategic partnership will initially be available to Samsung Pay users in the United States before expanding to other countries, says Samsung. In addition
Science can be cute as hell when it wants to be – take the JEM Internal Ball Camera (“Int-Ball” for short). The device, created by the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), was delivered to the International Space Station on June 4, 2017, and now JAXA is releasing its first video and images. The purpose of
Retro consoles are the new next-gen consoles, and nothing’s more retro console than Atari. That’s why the teases from the gaming company about its upcoming ‘Ataribox’ have been so intriguing to gaming fans – it could be amazing. Now, we know what it looks like, and thanks to an email update (via The Verge), also
WaveOptics, a UK startup that builds waveguide-based optics — technology based on hologram physics and photonic crystals — for augmented reality hardware, has raised $16 million (£12 million) to help build the next phase of its business. The Series B round of funding — which comes from previous investors Octopus Ventures, Touchstone Innovations plc and Robert Bosch Venture
These apps want to find you companionship in some unusual ways. Subscribe to CNET: http://cnet.co/2heRhep Check out our playlists: http://cnet.co/2g8kcf4 …
IBM is doing its damnedest to keep the mainframe relevant in a modern context, and believe it or not, there are plenty of monster corporations throughout the world who still use those relics from the earliest days of computing. Today, the company unveiled the z14, its latest z-Series mainframe, which comes with the considerable draw
Nicotine vaporizer companies have a bit of a conundrum. While, legally, they can’t market themselves as smoking cessation devices, most vapers are current or former cigarette smokers. In fact, the CDC says that fewer than 4 percent people who had never tried traditional cigarettes have ever tried using a vaporizer. I’m a smoker. It’s disgusting.
Broadly, the venture capital industry is thriving. But still, too often, women seeking funding are left out of the boom because of hidden biases, sexism and a general unawareness. Because of this — and recent reports of incredibly low-brow behavior among high-profile investors — it is more important than ever to understand where women founders stand when fundraising. Since 2015,
French startup Alan launched a brand new full-stack health insurance last year. This week, the company is launching corporate-owned life insurance so that it can become a one-stop shop for all your corporate insurance needs. When Alan launched its health insurance product, it was the first new one in France in decades. The life insurance
Borrowed location databases are paying off big time for Snapchat. They allow users to turn any nearby landmark or business into a stylized geofilter that they can overlay on their photos and videos. Before Snapchat partnered with location data providers Foursquare and Factual, only a few popular neighborhoods, cities, and places had their own geofilters.
Sketchfab wants to become a sort of YouTube for 3D models and scenes. While the service started as a way to show off static 3D objects, the company has added a ton of interactive tools over time, making it a solid platform to preview virtual reality content. This week, Sketchfab added sound support. So if
In this week’s wrap-up, stepping into virtual reality just got a lot cheaper. Meanwhile, Microsoft plans to bridge the digital divide in the US by using TV frequencies …
Messaging apps today are one of the most popular ways consumers communicate today, not just with each other but, increasingly, with businesses and services. Now there are signs that we could see another big player enter the messaging fray, alongside more established services from Facebook, Snapchat, Wechat and more. Amazon appears to be sounding out
Indoor mapping is one of those stubborn problems that seems to only have solutions that involve a great deal of money and infrastructure: beacons, lasers, emitters, scanners… who wants to install those in malls and office complexes across the world? Microsoft Research has produced an indoor navigation app that keeps things simple, utilizing existing sensors
Light’s L16 was a radical design concept when it was originally introduced in October, 2015 — but the concept has become a reality, as the company is now shipping the first production units to its pre-order customers. The final design is quite similar to the concept it showed off back then, with a few minor
AdQuick is looking to make billboard advertising easier and more transparent. The startup is announcing that it has raised $1.1 million in seed funding from Initialized Capital (founded by former Y Combinator partners Garry Tan and Alexis Ohanian), VTF Capital (founded by Tony Hsieh of Zappos) and Haystack Ventures. AdQuick founder Matthew O’Connor said he ran
Beatrice Kim is suing her former employer, BetterWorks, and its CEO Kris Duggan for allegedly assaulting her in a sexual manner during a company retreat. The lawsuit also implicates the performance management software startup’s regional VP Matt Hart and VP of People Operations Tamara Cooksey for allowing sexual harassment in the workplace and not taking action
Facebook confirmed it has begun testing a new GIF maker in the camera feature of the main Facebook mobile application. The feature, which is available with the tap of a button at the top of the screen, lets you shoot footage that you can then save in GIF format to your device’s photo gallery, post
Why would Uber buy a team that builds Snapchat competitors? To make its driver app feel more human. Uber has acqui-hired Swipe Labs, the social product studio run by Marwan Roushdy. He and a selection of engineers from the dozen-person startup will join Uber to work on the driver experience within the driver earnings team.
Earlier this year, Facebook was spotted testing a new type of News Feed – one that designed to help you discover content across the social network, beyond posts from friends and Pages you already follow. During tests, the feed was available through the Facebook app underneath a “rocket ship” icon – something that seemed to
Assent Compliance, an Ottawa-based startup, isn’t in a sexy space. The company focuses on helping enterprises collect the necessary data to keep their global supply chains in compliance with local and international regulations. But while that may not sound like the most exciting space to be in, the company today announced that it has raised