The Latest
Microsoft Will Ship A Kinect-Free Xbox One For $399 On June 9th
8:11 am PDT • May 13, 2014
Microsoft has just announced that they will begin shipping a $399 version of the Xbox One console that doesn’t include the Kinect. When the Xbox One was first announced, Microsoft…
Startups
SocialRank Raises $1M To Help Brands Find Their Competitors’ Most Valuable Followers
8:05 am PDT • May 13, 2014
SocialRank, the startup that promises to help users find their most valuable, engaged, and all-around “best” followers, is announcing that it has raised $1 million in seed funding. It’s also…
Microsoft Will Drop Xbox Live As A Requirement For Netflix, Hulu, Others
7:56 am PDT • May 13, 2014
It’s never really made a whole lot of sense: to use Netflix or Hulu on an Xbox 360 or Xbox One, you need an Xbox Live Gold subscription. So, to…
Startups
Edtech Startup LearnSprout Takes In $4.2M To Unlock More Insights From Schools’ Data
7:53 am PDT • May 13, 2014
U.S. edtech startup LearnSprout has taken in more funding — announcing today a $4.2 million round which it actually closed last August. Investors in the new round are prior investor…
Sonos Updates Its Controller App, Bringing Whole Home Music Control Into The Jony Ive Age
7:36 am PDT • May 13, 2014
Sonos has updated their decidedly dated and frustrating app to reflect a more modern, user-forward aesthetic. What’s changed? Pretty much everything. If you’ve used Sonos in the past few years,…
Media & Entertainment
Spell Up, A Chrome Experiment, Uses Voice Recognition, Gaming To Improve Your English
7:32 am PDT • May 13, 2014
No stranger to rolling out services in extended beta and temporary projects, Google today unveiled its latest “experiment” for Chrome: Spell Up, a browser-based game that uses voice recognition and speech synthesis to help…
Media & Entertainment
Google Glass Gets A Keyboard Thanks To Minuum’s Minimal Tap-And-Turn Typing
7:02 am PDT • May 13, 2014
Google Glass can do a lot of things, but until now it was mostly limited to single tap, scroll or voice-based input. Now, there’s a keyboard for Glass, courtesy of…
Media & Entertainment
Square Launches A $10 Per Month Customer Feedback Tool For Sellers
6:55 am PDT • May 13, 2014
Square continues to reach for additional revenue streams with today’s announcement of yet another new product called Square Feedback – a tool that turns a company’s digital receipts into a customer feedback…
Hardware
China’s HAXLR8R Hardware Accelerator Projects Hit Over $3.5 Million In Funding
6:50 am PDT • May 13, 2014
HAXLR8R, a Shenzhen-based accelerator, held its demo day in San Francisco yesterday and has announced they’ve raised over $3.5 million in crowdfunding pledges with many projects reaching six figures. The…
LG is getting into the fitness tracking game with the Heart Rate Earphones and Lifeband. Both products will be available on May 18th. Prices have yet to be released.
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Hardware
Apple Said To Be Planning Split-Screen iPad Multitasking In iOS 8
6:43 am PDT • May 13, 2014
A new report from 9to5Mac’s Mark Gurman, who has a strong track record in predicting the future of Apple’s software, says that Apple will be building split-screen multitasking into iOS…
Hardware
Phenox Makes A Drone More Of A Companion By Dropping The Controller
6:26 am PDT • May 13, 2014
Drones are great, but for the most part, they can get old pretty quickly. A new Kickstarter project wants to throw some additional variety into the mix with a programmable,…
Enterprise
To Battle Yammer, Slack And Hipchat, Convo Adds GIFs And In-Stream Doc Support
6:22 am PDT • May 13, 2014
Convo, a platform that lets workers post messages to and converse with others in their company in real time, is today releasing an update with a couple of notable features that alternately make…
Startups
Comparison Site FindTheBest Adds Real Estate Data To Help Home Buyers
6:20 am PDT • May 13, 2014
FindTheBest, a site where users can find data-driven comparisons of everything from smartphones to colleges, is getting a facelift today, along with a new comparison category — homes. Alex Rosenberg,…
BlazeMeter, which provides the JMeter-based performance testing cloud, has secured $6.5 million in a series A financing round led by YL Ventures, a previous investor.
Hardware
BlackBerry Officially Unveils The Z3 “Jakarta Edition,” Its $200 Foxconn Phone
6:02 am PDT • May 13, 2014
BlackBerry’s future, especially in the hardware biz, is uncertain, but it did take the wraps off a new handset today (via MobileSyrup). The Z3 “Jakarta” edition is unique to the…
Jawbone Jambox Mini Update Adds Social Jamming
6:00 am PDT • May 13, 2014
The Jawbone Mini is the de facto small Bluetooth speaker. It sounds good, is compact enough, and thanks to Jawbone’s dominance in the market, is widely available at multiple retailers.…
Former Digg CEO Matt Williams Launches Pro.com To Connect Homeowners With Nearby Contractors
6:00 am PDT • May 13, 2014
A new marketplace for home service professionals called Pro.com seeks to reduce the pain associated with hiring someone, by providing price transparency around the jobs that need to be done…
Wholesale Shopping App Boxed Raises $6.5M From Greycroft, First Round, And Signia
6:00 am PDT • May 13, 2014
Last summer, mobile commerce startup Boxed launched its app to enable customers to buy wholesale goods and have them shipped to their doors. With ultra-fast growth over the last several…
Hollywood’s worst nightmare just went mobile. A popular fork of Popcorn Time just launched its Android app. Time4Popcorn’s Popcorn Time app is now available for consumption on the developer’s website and brings…
