The Latest
The UK’s Meducation, an online education network for medical students and practitioners, has raised $1 million in seed funding. Part of the round — approx. $300,000 — comes from the…
Media & Entertainment
Google Takes The Chromecast Beyond The U.S. — To 11 Markets In Europe & Canada
1:52 am PDT • March 19, 2014
Google’s USB dongle, the Chromecast, which plugs into your TV so you can stream Google’s browser/OS over your Wi-Fi network to the big screen to watch terrible quality YouTube clips…
Media & Entertainment
First-Gen YotaPhone, The Dual-Screen E-Ink Hybrid Smartphone, Goes On Sale In UK — Its 6th Market
12:00 am PDT • March 19, 2014
The dual-screen Android-powered e-ink hybrid YotaPhone smartphone, which bites its thumb at those that say there’s nothing new in smartphone hardware, has gone on sale in the U.K.
Startups
What eCommerce Boom? From Amazon Textbooks To New Seed Funds, Education Technology Is Exploding In Brazil
11:48 pm PDT • March 18, 2014
Over the last decade, Brazil has “come online” in a big way. The percentage of people using the Web in Brazil leapt from 9 percent in 2002 to about 50…
Y Combinator’s new head macher has taken to the blogosphere to renew a call made roughly five years ago for the U.S. to create a “founders visa.” Initially proposed by…
Sony Announces Project Morpheus, A Virtual Reality Headset For The PS4
5:58 pm PDT • March 18, 2014
And just like that, the Virtual Reality wars have begun. Firing a shot across the bow of Oculus (the company responsible for getting many people excited about virtual reality again,…
Over a decade ago I was a happy man. In about 2002 I bought an Archos Jukebox. It was 6GB monstrosity, clad in metal and full of huge batteries, and…
Bitcoin Gains Ballast As Investors Continue To Pile In
3:14 pm PDT • March 18, 2014
The demise of Mt.Gox has been met with the launch of Bitcoin’s Ft. Knox and the establishment of new proprietary exchanges from institutional investment trading platforms as investors attempt to…
Snowden Leak: NSA Is Recording All Calls From At Least One Country
2:57 pm PDT • March 18, 2014
The National Security Agency has the capability to replay all telephone calls for 30 days from an entire country, according to documents obtained from Edward Snowden by the Washington Post.
Pandora is getting a little more expensive. Starting in May, and for new subscribers, the Pandora One monthly subscription service will cost $5. Existing subscribers that remain active will keep…
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Hardware
Pebble Founder Emphasizes Multi-Year Lead On Android Wear And Google’s Smartwatch Ambitions
2:32 pm PDT • March 18, 2014
Pebble is one company that came to mind when Google unveiled its Android Wear smartwatch (and eventually, other wearables) development platform. The small startup has been creating smartwatch hardware for…
Startups
Social News Startup Nuzzel Opens To Everyone, Announces Former Friendster Exec Kent Lindstrom As COO
1:12 pm PDT • March 18, 2014
Nuzzel, the social news service created by Friendster founder Jonathan Abrams, is leaving beta testing and opening to all users. Previously, you had to request an invite before you could…
Just A Google Co-Founder Chillin’ With Robo-Snowden
1:10 pm PDT • March 18, 2014
So, this happened Today: Google Co-Founder Sergey Brin hung out with whistleblower Edward Snowden, who was attending the TED conference via a telepresence robot. You may want to read that…
Enterprise
Cloudera Raises $160M From T. Rowe Price, Google Ventures And Michael Dell
1:09 pm PDT • March 18, 2014
Cloudera, the startup that commercially distributes and services Apache Hadoop based data management software and services, has raised $160 million led led by T. Rowe Price, and including an investment…
Media & Entertainment
Apple CEO Tim Cook Calls ‘Haunted Empire’ Nonsense, Says It Fails To Depict Company Or Culture
1:08 pm PDT • March 18, 2014
In case you hadn’t heard, there’s a new book out about Apple by ex-WSJ reporter Yukari Iwatani Kane called Haunted Empire. Kane covered the Apple beat at WSJ for years,…
Media & Entertainment
Inside Facebook’s Efforts To Fortify Security In A Post-Snowden World
12:44 pm PDT • March 18, 2014
At Facebook, the security team isn’t holed up in some basement wearing tinfoil hats. It’s embedded across the company so any department dealing with sensitive data or access has security…
Startups
YC-Backed Boostable Offers A New Way For Online Sellers To Advertise
12:40 pm PDT • March 18, 2014
Boostable, which is part of the current class of startups at incubator Y Combinator, says it’s giving the individual sellers on online marketplaces a smarter way to promote themselves. If…
Media & Entertainment
Draw Something Designer Debuts Sneeky, An Anonymous Social App Which Focuses On Photos
12:27 pm PDT • March 18, 2014
Anonymous social networking is the new social media. (Or the new “SoLoMo.” We’ll see.) Developers are attacking the space right and left these days, it seems, despite the controversies surrounding…
Startups
Birchbox Founders To Share Subscription Commerce Insights At Disrupt NY
11:51 am PDT • March 18, 2014
There’s no question that the future of commerce lies in providing a more personalized experience to consumers. And Birchbox has quietly created an $80 million business out of a subscription…
Startups
Backed By Boost VC And Tim Draper, Globevestor Helps Startups In Emerging Markets Get Funded Online
11:35 am PDT • March 18, 2014
Entrepreneurs in India’s nascent but fast growing startup ecosystem are realizing that getting an early investor who appreciates their idea is increasingly becoming difficult. Sometimes it’s even tougher than finding…
