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Apple’s short film on autism proves that accessibility features matter
Apple has released a couple of videos over the weekend starring Dillan Barmache, a 16-year-old kid who is autistic and non-verbal. These two films are powerful and also make a strong point in favor of accessibility features, specialized apps for autistic people and more. Autism affects social and communication behaviors. Autistic people have a hard time communicating with the world. But… Read More
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Crunch Network
IoT and the development of a circular economy
Few topics receive greater hype in the media today than the Internet of Things (IoT), and still a report produced by McKinsey & Co. last summer argued that the potential impact of IoT technologies might actually be understated. An estimated economic impact of $3.9-11.1 trillion a year by 2025 was the bottom line of McKinsey’s research. Read More
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Crunch Network
Hardware is hard: How we built a hardware startup with two engineers and some free time
Hardware is hard. Building a hardware startup is even harder. The good news is that the staggering amount of innovation in rapid prototyping, 3D printing and backend-as-a-service platforms has made hardware development move at Internet-development speeds. It’s not easy, but it is faster. Read More
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The top 5 startups from Y Combinator Fellowship’s Virtual Demo Day
Pre-natal genetic testing, VR drones, and fracking nanoparticles were a few of the products featured in Y Combinator’s first Virtual Demo Day. They come from the YC Fellowship, a program designed to let the startup school help idea- or prototype-stage companies, beyond the full-fledged businesses in its main accelerator. The 8-week full-time fellowship mostly offers remote guidance… Read More
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Sorry, Oculus, but HoloLens gets my money
The battle between headsets you strap to your heads is being brought to a rolling boil this week, as Microsoft’s HoloLens Dev Kit and Oculus Rift both start shipping to customers. Being a lover of cutting-edge tech, you’d expect I’d be in lust with both technologies, but no. HoloLens did something to me that Oculus never managed: It made me think I was leaping into the… Read More
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Flex is a tampon alternative you can wear during sex
Things can get messy if you have sex on your period, so many couples avoid it. But The Flex Company wants to replace outdated pads and tampons with a sleek, disc-shaped blood blocker. Flex can be worn during sex to prevent making a mess. The Flex discs are disposable, can be worn for up to 12 hours and even come in a stylish little packet. They’re doctor-approved to be… Read More
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Apple releases iOS 9.3.1 with fix for bug that causes tapping links to crash iPhones
Well that was quick. A couple of days after a bug affecting iOS started making the news, Apple has released a fix. iOS 9.3.1, now available on the iPhone and iPad, fixes this bug. The changelog is quite short as there’s only one item. “Fixes an issue that caused apps to be unresponsive after tapping on links in Safari and other apps,” it says. Read More
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Airware snatches $30M to sell complete drones to the Fortune 500
Airware used to sell drone operating systems. Now it’s swiveling to sell the whole flying kit and caboodle: drone hardware, the software to control them, and the cloud where their data goes. It discovered that big enterprise companies didn’t know how to piece together drone systems themselves, so they were slow to adapting to the tech that could save them money and keep employees… Read More
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Sure, why not? FBI agrees to unlock iPhone for Arkansas prosecutor
The FBI, which just a few days ago was attempting to convince the country of its helplessness in the face of encrypted iPhones, has generously offered its assistance in unlocking an iPhone and iPod for a prosecutor in Arkansas Read More
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Dyson’s new purifier fan purportedly tackles the problem of home air quality
“Fresh air” is a concept most often associated with the “great outdoors”. Dyson is looking to make your home nature fresh by ridding it of indoor pollutants with the Pure Cool Link purifier fan. Hopefully, the engineering that went into James Dyson’s new gadget is better than the branding. The company’s proposed ingenuity is that the Pure Cool Link is a… Read More
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Teardown of Oculus Rift finds good design that’s somehow relatively easy to repair
When a new category of gadget appears, it’s understandable when the vanguard devices aren’t the most well designed, or are resistant to disassembly and repair. Fortunately, that doesn’t seem to be the case with the first headset from Oculus, iFixit has found. Read More
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Citizen scientists, you can now DIY your own DNA analysis with Bento Lab
Want to know if you have the “athlete gene” or if you’re actually related to the weirdos who claim you as a family member? Get your collection tubes ready, citizen scientists, Bento Lab’s DIY DNA analysis kit is here and ready for the in-home lab. Normally you’d order a kit somewhere like 23andMe, spit in a tube and mail it off for results in six to eight weeks. Read More
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ACLU map shows locations of 63 ongoing phone-unlocking cases
In case you thought the recently and abruptly terminated fracas in San Bernardino was an isolated incident, the ACLU has put together a handy map of cases around the country where the All Writs Act has been used to justify an order to unlock a smartphone. Read More
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Crunch Network
Why the Oculus Rift won’t go the way of Google Glass
On a recent episode of our podcast we spoke about the VR industry with Matt Hartman, director of seed investments at Betaworks. When evaluating VR companies, Hartman looks for whether the company is delivering a “10X experience.” Ultimately, can you deliver 10 times the value of comparable offerings with your solution? For VR companies, the vision of their given solution may not… Read More
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Microsoft now lets you turn any Xbox One into a development kit
The Xbox One is about to become a far more interesting (and accessible) platform for indie game developers — and regular users will soon be able to use their console to chat with Microsoft’s Cortana personal assistant, too. Ever since Microsoft launched its Xbox One console, the company promised it would allow any developer to develop apps for it — but until now, you… Read More
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Watch the Microsoft Build 2016 keynote live right here
Microsoft is holding its annual Build developer conference in San Francisco this week and the company is kicking off the event with its first of two major keynotes this morning. You can watch the live stream right here. The keynote is scheduled to start at 8:30am Pacific, 11:30am Eastern, and 17:30 Central European Time. Read More
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Parrot’s Henri Seydoux to talk about the future of drones at Disrupt NY
Parrot has been a pioneer in the drone industry. The company started working on drones nearly ten years ago before it was cool. That’s why we’re glad to announce that Parrot founder and CEO Henri Seydoux will join us on stage at TechCrunch Disrupt New York on May 9-11, 2016. Read More
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Apple strikes a deal with MLB to put iPads in dugouts
The MLB is taking a page from the NFL’s playbook and equipping teams with tablets to use during games for the 2016 season. But, instead of Microsoft Surface Tablets, the MLB has made a deal with Apple to provide all 30 MLB teams with iPad Pros to use. The iPads will give coaches the ability to get historical game statistics, pull up video from previous games, and even simulate… Read More
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Crunch Network
What’s trending in the IoT space
Our team has been active as investors in the Internet of Things and hardware space over the past two years. We’ve read pitches from hundreds of companies, met with dozens, read hundreds of research reports and spoken with various experts. We’ve invested in six IoT/hardware companies from our global seed fund and seven from our startup accelerator. With this accumulated knowledge… Read More
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Razer takes aim at game streaming community with Ripsaw capture card
Razer’s Ripsaw is far from the first game capture card, but it leapfrogs the competition nicely and takes aim at a growing population of streamers who are willing to pay good money for an easily set up solution with industrial-strength capabilities. Read More
