A few months ago we reported that Facebook may begin testing paywalls and subscriptions for Instant Articles beginning in October. Well now it’s October, and surprise – Facebook has started testing subscription support for instant articles! Here’s how it will work: Facebook will start with two paywalled options for publishers to choose from: The first option
Google today is announcing a number of changes to its Google Play app store, the most notable being a new way to try apps immediately without having to first install them on your mobile device. The new feature takes advantage of “Android Instant Apps” technology – Google’s attempt at bridging the mobile web world with
Romeo Power has just announced what looks to be the mobile charging device of my dreams. Its wand-shaped “Saber,” using the company’s proprietary power management technology, is a compact little charger that seems ideal for keeping my three-year-old, busted-up MacBook running when I’m on the go. My computer shuts down within five minutes if it’s
While Yammer (launched at TechCrunch Disrupt, BTW) might have pioneered what was, at the time, dubbed “Twitter for work”, it wasn’t until Slack came along that people started to realise just how powerful this method of communication could be. From open source integration to new kinds of collaborative tools built by developers on its platform,
PayKey’s team Banks face an increasingly crowded battlefield in the fight for millennial customers. Not only do they have to compete with services like Venmo, but many messaging apps are adding their own peer-to-peer payment services. Tel Aviv-based startup PayKey thinks it has the solution with a smartphone keyboard that lets bank customers access financial
A report by an EU consumer watchdog has flagged up myriad problems with smartwatches designed for children, including security flaws, privacy concerns, and risks posed by unreliable features. Based on the analysis it argues that the core ‘peace of mind’ proposition of GPS smartwatches aimed at kids does not stand up to scrutiny. And that parents
MongoDB made its public debut with a bang, with jumping more than 25%, today after spending the past several days revising up its expectations throughout the IPO process — which seems to have landed on the right spot. The company provides open-source technology that can be attractive for early-stage startups that want to get off
Ride-hailing company Lyft has raised a new $1 billion funding round, putting its post-money valuation at $11 billion total. The round was led by Alphabet’s CapitalG, its growth-focused investment fund, and CapitalG partner David Lawee will join Lyft’s board as part of the transaction. Lyft shared the news in an official blog post, and noted
In what could amount to a sea change in the way we transmit data over fiber optics, researchers at University College London have found a new way speed things up by changing the color of the transmitted light. “To maximise the capacity of optical fibre links, data is transmitted using different wavelengths, or colours, of
Snaps has raised $6 million in Series A funding for what it calls its Conversational Marketing Cloud. By that, it’s referring to a suite of tools that allows businesses to promote themselves through messaging. CEO Christian Brucculeri said Snaps is differentiated by its “write once and deploy everywhere approach,” allowing marketers to build things like
A lot of the conversation today about on-demand transportation is focused on how new players like Uber and Lyft are rapidly expanding and disrupting the established transportation market (alongside whether they have been overvalued and overplayed in their rapid ascent), but today comes news about how one of those newer players is teaming up with
Cisco announced today that it intends to acquire Perspica, a machine learning-driven operations analytics firm that has raised $8.5 million. Cisco intends to fold Perspica’s team into AppDynamics, the company it purchased earlier this year for $3.7 billion. Cisco did not share the Perspica purchase price. All of these machinations have a purpose. Cisco is
The furniture rental industry is stuck in the last. Current options involve old-school companies like CORT where most of the inventory will make your apartment look like a dorm room, or a place like Rent-A-Center where you’ll almost certainly pay many times what the item is actually worth. Enter Feather, a company trying to breathe
The smart home market continues to heat up, and the legacy giants do not want to get locked out: quite literally. This morning, Assa Abloy, the $23 billion Swedish lock giant that owns Yale and many other brands — announced that it is buying US-based smart lock maker August Home to double down on new technology. Terms
Jinn, the London-based startup that offers a same-hour ‘shop on your behalf’ delivery app that operates quite similarly to Postmates in the U.S., has shut down, with the company in the process of going into administration. TechCrunch understands that the remaining fifteen or so people still working in Jinn’s London office were let go on
CNET shows you how to enable the Amazon Echo voice assistant to control your Sonos speaker system Subscribe to CNET: http://cnet.co/2heRhep Check out …
Hiya came to life a year ago when it was spun out by Whitepages to take on TrueCaller and others in the world of smart caller ID services. Using machine learning analytics on a vast database of calling data (3.5 billion calls to date), Seattle-based Hiya’s mission has been to supercharge the humble phone call
Movinga, the European platform for house removals that was seemingly written off last year, continues to perform what appears to be an impressive turn around. The Berlin-headquartered startup has closed a new funding round of up to €22 million led by Santo Venture Capital, the venture arm of the Strüngmann family office, with participation from
If you like playing console games with the younger generation, you may have come across the issue of their tiny hands being unable to perform certain combos, reach certain buttons easily, and so on. While this makes them satisfying opponents, it might be better if they had a controller more suited to their physiology. Well,
MongoDB has finished up what is essentially the final step in going public, pricing its IPO at $24 and raising $192 million in the process. The company will debut on the public markets tomorrow and will once again test the waters for companies that are looking to build full-fledged businesses on the back of open-sourced
Atlas Informatics, whose Atlas Recall promised an intuitive and powerful way to index all your information across many services, is shutting down less than a year after launch. There will be no long sunset period: all user data will be deleted next Friday, the 27th. I wrote about the Seattle-based company last November; the idea
While you’ve already got Yelp and other apps to help you figure out where to eat, Truffle is designed specifically for sharing recommendations with friends and other people you know. A new update should make that sharing even easier. The big addition is an iMessage app, which means (you guessed it) that Truffle is now
As Blue Apron approaches its next earnings report in a couple of weeks, the company said Wednesday that it is laying off 6 percent of its staff as part of “a company-wide realignment of personnel to support its strategic priorities.” Blue Apron was one of the big — and most anticipated — consumer IPOs of the year,
eBay is not having a great afternoon after posting a pretty ho-hum third quarter that fit roughly in line with analyst estimates, but perhaps not seeing the kinds of leaps that Wall Street is looking for heading into the fourth quarter. The company said it added an additional 2 million active buyers and now says
In a textbook illustration of the conflict of interest between Facebook and Google’s ostensible dedication to free speech and their ostensible espousal of progressive values, the internet giants reportedly took millions in advertising money from a major anti-immigration group at the same time as both were engaged in pro-immigration advocacy. Bloomberg reports that both companies
The lighter and slimmer Trekz Air takes bone-conduction headphones to a new level. Subscribe to CNET: http://cnet.co/2heRhep Check out our playlists: …
Facebook has come under fire for its role in influencing the U.S. presidential election, particularly when it comes to “fake news” and Russian-sponsored ads. When asked about this at WSJ D.Live in Laguna Beach on Wednesday, Facebook VP David Marcus at first deflected, talking at length about all the positive impacts that the social media
There’s no doubt that our collective mobile device addictions are hurting real-world engagement for advertisers. This is especially true in professional sports stadiums, where looking down at your phone means you’re not paying attention to announcements, advertisements, and sometimes even the live game. One New Zealand-based startup think they have an answer to this problem.
If you’re looking to get pretty much all the benefits of a smartwatch without a watch, and to track your activity and sport performance with tools that are more than up to the task, Garmin’s Vivosport is a strong option, with a price tag that comes in well under that of most dedicated smartwatches. It
There isn’t much to say about the new Sonos One that hasn’t been said about Sonos already. The company has long been the gold standard in wireless whole-home audio and their speakers, while small, are powerful and more than usable for music, home entertainment, and general merriment. So how do you make a good speaker