gps
Another sizable raise for a pet (cats and dogs) tracking company this morning. Austria-based Tractive has announced a $35 million Series A, led by Guidepost Growth Equity. The round is…
OneNav locates $21M from GV to map our transition to the next generation of GPS
GPS is one of those science fiction technologies whose use is effortless for the end user and endlessly challenging for the engineers who design it. It’s now at the heart…
Family tracking app Life360 to acquire wearable location device Jiobit for $37M
Popular family tracking app Life360 is investing in hardware. The company this morning announced the $37 million acquisition of Chicago-based Jiobit, the maker of a wearable location device designed for…
Google is announcing a handful of major updates to Google Maps today that range from bringing its Live View AR directions indoors to adding weather data to its maps, but…
DOT evaluated 11 GPS replacements and found only one that worked across use cases
The United States’ GPS system, which is operated by the Defense Department, offers every one of us critical infrastructure around what is known as positioning, navigation and timing (PNT). Positioning…
Gift Guide: Camping and backpacking gear that the outdoors lover in your life really wants
Whether it’s a fun day hike, a car camping excursion or a multi-day backcountry backpacking trip, there’s plenty of great camping and hiking gear that can make life easier for…
E-bike subscription service Dance closes $17.7M Series A, led by HV Holtzbrinck Ventures
Three months on since the former founders of SoundCloud launched their e-bike subscription service, Dance today is announcing the close of a $17.7 million (€15 million) Series A funding round…
Buildots raises $16M to bring computer vision to construction management
Buildots, a Tel Aviv and London-based startup that is using computer vision to modernize the construction management industry, today announced that it has raised $16 million in total funding. This…
From Twenty Minute VC to 20VC, Harry Stebbings launches a micro VC off the back of his popular podcast
Podcasts are becoming big business — in part because of how well they can attract and keep audiences at a time when so many other media formats are finding it…
For decades, the United States has had a monopoly on positioning, navigation and timing technology with its Global Positioning System (GPS), a constellation of satellites operated by the military that…
Deep Science: Automated peach sniffers, orbital opportunity and AI accessibility
I see far more research articles than I could possibly write up. This column collects the most interesting of those papers and advances, along with notes on why they may…
Robotics startup lets machines get closer as humans keep their distance
Using micro-location robotics, this MIT spinout is tracking five miles of New York subway, showing the transportation authority where six of its trains are — down to the centimeter.
Astroscale expands into geostationary satellite life extension with new acquisition
Orbital spacecraft sustainability startup Astroscale has acquired the IP, most assets and staff of an Israeli company called Effective Space Solutions in order to broaden its service offering to include…
GM is working on a hands-off advanced driving system for city streets
GM has a “big team” working on an advanced version of its hands-free driving assistance system, Super Cruise, that will expand its capability beyond highways and apply it to city…
COVID-19 could have its own PATRIOT Act, but we need privacy guarantees
The government must mobilize to combat this invisible enemy, but we must also have parameters for how data is protected and used.
Google is now publishing coronavirus mobility reports, feeding off users’ location history
Google is giving the world a clearer glimpse of exactly how much it knows about people everywhere — using the coronavirus crisis as an opportunity to repackage its persistent tracking…
Estimote launches wearables for workplace-level contact tracing for COVID-19
Bluetooth location beacon startup Estimote has adapted its technological expertise to develop a new product designed specifically for curbing the spread of COVID-19. The company created a new range of…
Understanding the opportunities available in the space industry — especially for early-stage companies and new founders — isn’t easy. The pool of people who have deep aerospace technical expertise isn’t…
Trump administration aims to protect GPS with new exec order
GPS increasingly runs the entire planet. Supply chains, oceanic shipping, port docking and even our daily movements in cars, on bikes and walking around cities is dependent on a constellation…
GM adds automated lane changes to its hands-free Super Cruise driving system
GM has improved its hands-free driving assistance system Super Cruise, adding a feature that will automatically change lanes for drivers of certain Cadillac models, including the upcoming 2021 Escalade. This…
NextNav raises $120M to deploy its indoor positioning tech to find people in skyscrapers
NextNav LLC has raised $120 million in equity and debt to commercially deploy an indoor positioning system that can pinpoint a device’s location — including which floor it’s on —…
Dating and fertility apps among those snitching to ‘out of control’ ad tech, report finds
The latest report to warn that surveillance capitalism is out of control — and “free” digital services can in fact be very costly to people’s privacy and rights — comes courtesy…
Ghost wants to retrofit your car so it can drive itself on highways in 2020
A new autonomous vehicle company is on the streets — and unbeknownst to most, has been since 2017. Unlike the majority in this burgeoning industry, this new entrant isn’t trying…
With Garmin Autoland, small planes can land themselves if the pilot becomes incapacitated
Here’s a horror scenario for you: You’re flying in a small plane and suddenly the single pilot who knows how to fly passes out. In the movies, somebody would probably…
Why Maxar CTO Walter Scott thinks now is the time to address the orbital traffic boom
The number of objects in orbit around Earth has been growing, and growing fast. Before 1957, of course, there were a total of zero human-made objects in the orbital region…
Get popcorn for iOS 13’s privacy pop-ups of creepy Facebook data grabs
Privacy-minded changes to smartphone operating systems which foreground the background activity of third party apps are helping to spotlight more of the surveillance infrastructure deployed by adtech giants to track…
Tesla promises up to 30% lower rates with new car insurance play
Tesla said Wednesday it has launched an insurance product, promising owners of its electric vehicles to deliver rates 20% and even as high as 30% lower than other insurance providers.…
Featured Article
How young VCs bootstrap new venture firms
We spend a lot of time talking about new funds, and new startup venture raises, but we spend little time talking about the cash flow challenges of running a venture fund. Let’s change that today. Starting a new venture fund is extremely challenging. In addition to just the monstrous task of fundraising — which can…
Week-in-Review: Alexa’s indefinite memory and NASA’s otherworldly plans for GPS
Hello, weekenders. This is Week-in-Review, where I give a heavy amount of analysis and/or rambling thoughts on one story while scouring the rest of the hundreds of stories that emerged…
If you’re driving your car from Portland to Merced, you probably rely on GPS to see where you are. But what if you’re driving your Moon rover from Oceanus Procellarum…
