Tech news 27 Jan, 2021

Meet the early stage founder community at TC Early Stage 2021

Building a startup is never easy, especially when you’re in the early innings and navigating a huge learning curve. Education, support and sage advice are arguably as essential to startup success as fundraising. Find all that — and connect with your early fou…

India retains ban on TikTok, UC Browser and 57 other Chinese apps

TikTok, UC Browser, UC News, Baidu Map, Xiaomi’s Video and Community and 53 other Chinese apps that India banned in late June won’t be returning to the country anytime soon, the Indian government has decided, a source familiar with the matter told TechCrunch.…

How to Get Funding for Your Ecommerce Business

With the increased demand for online shopping, ecommerce businesses are struggling to get cash to keep up with demand.

How to Create an Ecommerce Website

The future of ecommerce shines brighter than ever. E-retail sales account for 14.1% of all retail sales across the world. Statista has predicted that the above figure will grow and reach 22% in 2023. Despite global economic uncertainty, ecommerce continues to…

Algolia acquires MorphL to turbocharge ‘search-as-a-service’ platform with AI

Algolia, the so-called "search-as-a-service" platform, has acquired Romanian AI and machine learning (ML) startup MorphL.

Zero, a plastic-free grocery-delivery startup, to launch in LA

Plastic-free grocery-delivery startup Zero is gearing up to launch in Los Angeles on February 10, after solely operating in the San Francisco Bay Area. Zero works directly with suppliers to sell food and other household items in jars, boxes and other types of…

Daily Crunch: Calendly valued at $3B

A popular scheduling startup raises a big funding round, Twitter makes a newsletter acquisition and Beyond Meat teams up with PepsiCo. This is your Daily Crunch for January 26, 2021. The big story: Calendly valued at $3B Calendly, which helps users schedule a…

How Atlanta’s Calendly turned a scheduling nightmare into a $3B startup

One big theme in tech right now is the rise of services to help us keep working through lockdowns, office closures, and other Covid-19 restrictions. The “future of work” — cloud services, communications, productivity apps — has become “the way we work now.” A…

ClassDojo’s second act comes with first profits

ClassDojo’s first eight years as an edtech consumer startup could look like failure: zero revenue; no paid users; and a team that hasn’t aggressively grown in years. But the company, which helps parents and teachers communicate about students, has raised tens…

Span, the smart fusebox replacement founded by an ex-Tesla engineer, gets an Alexa upgrade

Automating and controlling devices and energy usage in homes has potentially become a bit easier thanks to an integration between Span, the startup making a digital fusebox replacement, and  Amazon’s voice recognition interface, Alexa. The integration also co…

Treadly’s next-gen compact treadmill is ideal for small spaces and features app-based social workouts

As the global pandemic continues, having options for keeping active at home is increasingly top-of-mind. Treadly is a startup focused on building a home treadmill that’s compact and convenient, with smart connected features that boost engagement. The company …

SetSail nabs $26M Series A to rethink sales compensation

SetSail wants to upend the way sales people get compensated by paying them throughout the sales cycle, rather than a single commission after the sale closes. Today, the startup announced a $26 million Series A. Insight Partners led the round with participatio…

Mealco raises $7M to launch new delivery-centric restaurants

Mealco, a startup promising to help chefs launch new restaurants designed around delivery, is announcing that it has raised $7 million in seed funding. It’s probably not news to anyone reading this that opening a restaurant can be an expensive, risky proposit…

Twitter acquires newsletter startup Revue - Reuters

Twitter Inc said on Tuesday it had acquired email newsletter startup, Revue, as the microblogging platform seeks to attract users who want to make money from their followers.

New RISC-V hardware designs from 5G startup EdgeQ

Extending an open RISC-V CPU design is easier than building standalone ASICs.

U.S. fintech startup Albert raises $100 million - Reuters Canada

US financial technology startup Albert has raised $100 million in a round led by General Atlantic, the company said on Tuesday.

Why BlackBerry (TSX:BB) Stock Just Soared 40% - The Motley Fool Canada

<ol><li>Why BlackBerry (TSX:BB) Stock Just Soared 40%  The Motley Fool Canada </li><li>Why BlackBerry's stock has been skyrocketing  Yahoo Canada Finance </li><li>Investor exuberance pushes BlackBerry share price to 9 year high — for no rational reason  CBC…

Artificial intelligence at the service of talent selection

They present Hitch, the startup that through artificial intelligence and machine learning helps companies find the talent most compatible with their organizational culture.

How to Transfer Outlook Attachments to Microsoft Teams

You can finally drag-and-drop email attachments from Outlook into Microsoft Teams. Sure, it took nearly five years for the feature to show up, but it’s here.Read more...

Twitter Acquires Newsletter Startup Revue To Expand Business

Twitter acquired the newsletter publishing company Revue for an undisclosed sum, part of an effort to expand its business and give writers who distribute their work on Twitter more features. From a report: Revue's service, which lets people manage newsletter …

UPDATE 1--U.S. Mountain Valley gas pipeline facing more delays - Reuters

After a series of setbacks, the companies building the U.S. Mountain Valley natural gas pipeline now plan to seek individual permits to cross each stream remaining in its path, and analysts say that will delay its startup until 2022.

The Endless Browser Wars

The term "browser wars" typically refers to Microsoft's attempts to dominate the World Wide Web with its Internet Explorer browser in the 1990s. That effort was thwarted by antitrust efforts and the rise of the free browser now known as Firefox; ever since, …

How WooCommerce, WordPress' secret weapon for e-commerce, has helped over 2 million merchants grow online sales and compete with Shopify

Summary List PlacementWith e-commerce witnessing unprecedented growth during the COVID-19 pandemic, WooCommerce is having quite a moment. Still, the WordPress plugin's recent success has been nearly a decade in the making, according to its CEO. WooCommerce, a…

Google’s BeyondCorp Enterprise security platform is now generally available

Google today announced that BeyondCorp Enterprise, the zero trust security platform modeled after how Google itself keeps its network safe without relying on a VPN, is now generally available. BeyondCorp Enterprise builds out Google’s existing BeyondCorp Remo…

Growth Hacking: What it is and How SaaS Businesses Can Use it to Optimize Growth

In this article, we'll discuss growth hacking tips for SaaS entrepreneurs, founders, growth leads or anyone else who is trying to grow a startup in a short amount of time or on a tight budget.

Firefox 85 hammers the final nail into the Adobe Flash coffin - CNET

Safari, Chrome and Edge have also removed the once popular technology for pepping up the web with video, animation and games.

Firefox 85 Hammers the Final Nail Into the Adobe Flash Coffin

With Mozilla's release of Firefox 85 on Tuesday, Adobe's once ubiquitous Flash technology is really gone for good. The software had been widely used to expand gaming, video and animation on the web, though Adobe stopped supporting it at the end of 2020. Firef…

SoftBank-backed travel platform Klook raises $200M amid COVID-19

Klook, the Hong Kong-based travel activities platform backed by SoftBank Vision Fund, announced the closure of $200 million in funding for its Series E round, lifting the startup’s total capital raised to date to $720 million. Aspex Management, an investment …

Evaluating JavaScript in the browser for a low code product

Appsmith is an open-source low code platform for developers to build internal apps and workflows. In Appsmith, our developer users define business logic by writing any JS code in between {{ }} dynamic bindings almost anywhere in the app. They can us...

Your Chromebook can now double as a smart display with Chrome OS 88

The Chrome OS lockscreen just got a lot more functional. What you need to know Google's Chrome OS 88 is now live. It brings the new smart display-like lockscreen spotted in testing earlier in 2020. Google is also adding in support for WebAuthn. Now, Chro…

Extending enterprise zero trust models to the web

For over a decade, Chrome has been committed to advancing security on the web, and we’re proud of the end-user and customer safety improvements we’ve delivered over the years. We take our responsibility seriously, and we continue to work on ways to better pro…

How To Grow Your Startup, According To Steve Jobs, Arianna Huffington And 18 Other Hyper-Successful Founders (Infographic)

The biggest names in business think about more than just money.

Google Says It May Have Found a Privacy-Friendly Substitute To Cookies

Google says its new machine learning algorithms could replace cookie-based ad targeting without invading your privacy. Axios reports: Google has been testing a new API (a software interface) called Federated Learning of Cohorts (FLoC) that acts as an effectiv…

Fleksy adds an art marketplace to spice up its keyboard app

Fleksy, an autocorrecting AI keyboard which competes with big-guns like Google’s Gboard and Microsoft’s Swiftkey, has a new way to catch users’ eyes: Art keyboards. It’s just launched FleksyArt: A marketplace for artists to sell digital works to its users so …

How Success Happened for Evan Goldberg of Oracle NetSuite

How Evan Goldberg built the first cloud software company.

Aeva to supply lidar sensors to self-driving truck firm TuSimple - Reuters

Aeva Inc, a firm founded by former Apple Inc engineers to supply a key self-driving car sensor, said on Tuesday it had reached a deal to supply the sensors for self-driving heavy duty trucks being developed by TuSimple.

Plex launches a subscription-based retro game streaming service, ‘Plex Arcade’

Plex, the media software maker that’s expanded into streaming in recent years, is adding to its service once again with today’s launch of game streaming. Unlike other game streaming efforts from companies like Microsoft or Google, the new “Plex Arcade” isn’t …

What I learned from Google for Startups Founders Academy

For years, I struggled with eczema and dry, itchy, sensitive skin. I looked endlessly for products that were healthy, effective and designed for the Black community. When I couldn’t find what I was looking for, I decided to create my own. As a former human ri…

Twitter jumps into newsletters with Revue acquisition

Twitter wants a piece of the fast-growing newsletter industry. Today, the company announced that it’s acquired Revue for an undisclosed sum. The latter is one of the best-known services for creating and managing a newsletter — the other being Substack — that …

NextEra Energy posts loss on $1.2 billion Mountain Valley pipeline charge - Reuters

NextEra Energy Inc, the world's largest producer of wind and solar energy, swung to a loss in the fourth quarter, dented by an impairment charge of $1.2 billion on its investments in the Mountain Valley natural gas pipeline.

Sana Biotechnology has filed to go public. Here are the investors that stand to make the most upon its debut.

Summary List PlacementCell and gene editing startup Sana Biotechnology has filed to go public.  From the moment it filed its S-1 document with the Securities and Exchange Commission in January, Sana's stock market launch has been anticipated to be one of the …

Goalsetter looks to drive engagement by boosting financial literacy among kids

Summary List PlacementThe kids-focused banking startup will apply its newly raised $3.9 million in seed funding to expand its mobile app and accelerate subscriber growth, CNBC reports . Goalsetter offers peer-to-peer (P2P) payments and a debit card for purc…

Tweetbot 6 Launches With Design Updates and Subscription Pricing

Tapbots today launched the newest version of the Tweetbot Twitter client, introducing a subscription-based payment requirement and a few new design tweaks and features. The update adds support for Twitter's V2 API, adding interface options for polls and …

Twitter enters the newsletter business with Revue acquisition

Twitter hasn't disclosed the financial terms of the deal. What you need to know Twitter has acquired Dutch newsletter startup Revue. Twitter says it acquired Revue to help writers to monetize their audience on its platform. To encourage more users to cre…

Militia-related groups kicked out of Amazon Smile charitable giving program - CNET

The five nonprofits share names with either the Oath Keepers and the Three Percent movement.

Uncover the Thinking Techniques of History's Greatest Geniuses

Growing your business could be as simple as learning to how to think correctly.

How to delete your YouTube channel and permanently erase its content, or temporarily hide it

Summary List PlacementMaybe you still have embarrassing high school videos on your YouTube channel, or you just have no use for it anymore. Whatever your reason, deleting your YouTube channel is simple and can be done quickly.  Just note that deleting your ch…

Google finally fixes this awkward privacy-invading feature on Chrome

Notifications are now more private when you're sharing your screen. What you need to know Google addresses a big privacy issue on Chrome by "hiding" notifications when screen sharing. Notifications on Google Chrome's desktop app will still appear, but the …

Relive the good times with these classic Atari games on Plex Arcade

Plex is expanding its catalog to offer an arcade of retro games to stream from anywhere. What you need to know Plex partnered with Atari to launch a library of retro video games. The cloud gaming service was created through a partnership with Parsec to ach…

Celeste Classic Gets A Sequel

The incredible (and incredibly introspective) Celeste graced our home consoles in 2018, sending us all on a journey of air-dashing, strawberry gathering, and self-reflection. Now, three years to the day, the team at Extremely OK Games have released a sequel…o…

Google unveils privacy-friendly AI cookie killer

Third-party cookies might have a tasty name, but they can be pretty poisonous when they’re quietly tracking your online behavior. A new Google machine learning initiative aims to replace the rancid cookies with a privacy-first alternative. The search giant ca…

Security deposit insurer Rhino raises $95 million in pre-IPO round led by hedge fund giant Tiger Global

Summary List PlacementSecurity deposit insurance firm Rhino announced today that it has raised a $95 million pre-IPO round, valuing the company at $500 million. The round, led by hedge fund giant Tiger Global Management, also included funding from Kairos, the…

Take Care of Your Network - So It Will Take Care of You

Podcast host Jordan Harbinger has made a habit of checking in with the people in his professional network on a regular basis - and he makes sure to pay it forward.

How Chriselle Lim Creates Her Daily Schedule

Entrepreneur and influencer Chriselle Lim juggles countless projects by scheduling everything - even social-media scrolling.

Google is testing new ways to make your browsing data more private

Google and ad companies could stop looking at individual browsing when it comes to ad data. What you need to know Google's Privacy Sandbox is a number of proposals for moving away from internet-based cookies. One proposal suggests grouping users together b…

Tealbook, a supplier intelligence startup that crawls and aggregates procurement data from across the web, raises $14.4M Series A led by RTP Global (Kyle Wiggers/VentureBeat)

Kyle Wiggers / VentureBeat: Tealbook, a supplier intelligence startup that crawls and aggregates procurement data from across the web, raises $14.4M Series A led by RTP Global  —  Tealbook, a self-described supplier intelligence startup, today announced that …

Tech Startup Fosters Political Ideas

Startup develops paper-plastic combo bottles

Ecologic converts cardboard and plastic waste products into bottles and liners that are shipped flat and assembled by customers The post Startup develops paper-plastic combo bottles appeared first on Springwise.

A fintech automating the back office just raised a $60 million Series C led by Sequoia at a $600 million valuation. Investors explain why they're impressed with the 'elite team' of cofounders.

Summary List PlacementAs most business owners will tell you, the back office is critical to running a sustainable company. But it's often a major pain point, especially for entrepreneurs that don't have experience as a chief financial officer.  And while the …

Bloomreach, which helps e-commerce customers with search and website creation, raises $150M led by Sixth Street Growth at a $900M valuation (Ron Miller/TechCrunch)

Ron Miller / TechCrunch: Bloomreach, which helps e-commerce customers with search and website creation, raises $150M led by Sixth Street Growth at a $900M valuation  —  Bloomreach, an API company that helps eCommerce customers with search and web site creatio…

Evcxr: A Rust REPL and Jupyter Kernel

Contribute to google/evcxr development by creating an account on GitHub.

Opal cuts off your apps’ internet access to help you stop doomscrolling

The coronavirus pandemic has had us spend more time on our phones. Last year gave birth to doomscrolling and it was hard to take your eyes off the screen. Now a new app called Opal has a novel approach to disconnecting your apps from the internet to help you …

Firefox 85 launches with network partitioning, a new feature to block supercookies by partitioning Firefox's browser cache on a per-website basis (Catalin Cimpanu/ZDNet)

Catalin Cimpanu / ZDNet: Firefox 85 launches with network partitioning, a new feature to block supercookies by partitioning Firefox's browser cache on a per-website basis  —  Firefox now joins Chrome and Edge, both of which removed support for Flash earlier t…

Span, the smart fusebox replacement founded by an ex-Tesla engineer, gets an Alexa upgrade

Automating and controlling devices and energy usage in homes has potentially become a bit easier thanks to an integration between Span, the startup making a ...

The long road to the Qualtrics IPO

Speculation around the Qualtrics public offering is nothing new. All the way back in 2016, CEO Ryan Smith was dropping not-so-subtle hints about his intentions to file for IPO. After a decade bootstrapping, and growing to $50 million in annual revenue, the co…

India issues permanent ban for 59 Chinese apps including TikTok and WeChat

The Indian government banned over 250 mobile apps in the span of several months, citing issues with data collection and user privacy. Some of them include the popular TikTok, WeChat, Baidu, Alibaba’s main browser UC Browser, several Xiaomi-related apps, and l…

Linux Release Roundup: GParted, Lightworks, Google Chrome + More

This week's roundup includes a Google Chrome update, improvements to the Plasma Browser Integration extension, and a major addition to disk manager GParted. This post, Linux Release Roundup: GParted, Lightworks, Google Chrome + More is from OMG! Ubuntu!. Do n…

The Trump Plaza near Mar-a-Lago in Florida will be renamed following riots at the US Capitol

While physical ‘Trump’ signs have been gone since last year, the latest move would fully remove the ex-president’s name from the condo’s official title

The CEO of major health insurer Humana laid out why he's betting big on primary care

Summary List PlacementLong before Humana became the dominant health insurer it is today, its business revolved around operating hospitals. Now, decades later, Humana is getting back to its roots of providing medical care. This time, the company is hyper-focus…

Fast raises $102M as the online checkout wars continue to attract huge investment

This morning Fast, a startup that provides online checkout and identity products, announced that it has closed a $102 million Series B. The new funding event was led by Stripe, a previous investor in Fast. Stripe, an online payments giant, also led Fast’s Ser…

Tips for Debugging Kubernetes CrashLoopBackOff

If you’ve used Kubernetes (k8s), you’ve probably bumped into the dreaded CrashLoopBackOff. Learn how to debug this scenario.

Which browser has the best Tab Snoozing / Sleeping / Freezing implementation?

Tab snoozing, also known as tab sleeping or freezing, is not a new feature, but it is getting added to more and more web browsers natively. The feature is designed to save […] Thank you for being a Ghacks reader. The post Which browser has the best Tab Snoozi…

Mozilla cracks down on supercookies with Firefox 85

Mozilla on Tuesday detailed what’s new in Firefox 85, which we talked about last week when the update was released on Android. There are a lot of changes in this update, but one of the biggest is Firefox’s crackdown on “supercookies.” Firefox has already gone…

Plex Arcade launches to let users curate and play ROM games and Atari classics on iPhone, Apple TV

Plex has built a following over the years as one of the best options to curate your media collection and make it available to stream across your Apple and other devices. Now the company is diving into gaming with a notable partnership with Atari to bring some…

Sources: Didi Chuxing's on-demand trucking unit Didi Freight is close to raising $1.5B from Temasek, Jack Ma's Yunfeng Capital, IDG Capital, and others (Coco Liu/Bloomberg)

Coco Liu / Bloomberg: Sources: Didi Chuxing's on-demand trucking unit Didi Freight is close to raising $1.5B from Temasek, Jack Ma's Yunfeng Capital, IDG Capital, and others  —  - Didi Freight surpassed its target as China's economy recovers  — The startup co…

Microsoft has a new Edge extension menu, here’s how you can enable it

Microsoft is working on a new Extensions menu for their Edge browser. Old vs New The new menu is slightly different from the Chromium version, featuring a new “Find new extensions” option, the “Show or hide from toolbar” icons are different, and the toolbar s…

A David vs. Goliath battle in Vietnam’s B2B ecommerce sector

A race to digitize mom-and-pop shops has begun in Vietnam. How will startups and investors capture this opportunity?

Firefox Proton will give the browser another facelift

It’s hard to argue that Google Chrome is probably the most-used web browser in the market, especially if you add browsers based on the same Chromium foundations. What may be harder to determine is which is Number Two. There was a time when Mozilla Firefox was…

Chrome will mute browser notifications when sharing your screen

Virtual meetings have become pretty much a fact of working life in the past months but talking isn’t the only activity that takes place there. From time to time, especially in more formal meetings, attendees are required to show their computer screens. Most p…

A look at content moderation on Clubhouse, where some talks include homophobia, anti-Semitism, harassment, and the like, as media attention on the startup grows (Ellen Huet/Bloomberg)

Ellen Huet / Bloomberg: A look at content moderation on Clubhouse, where some talks include homophobia, anti-Semitism, harassment, and the like, as media attention on the startup grows  —  When Clubhouse, a private social app, debuted in March of last year, i…

Sundance Film Festival brings big movie premieres straight to your home for the first time - CNET

This year, Sundance will let you stream film premieres from your couch and try the hottest VR storytelling from your living room. Here's how it works.

DOCTYPE Inside the HTML Document.

Describes the doctype's importance in an HTML page document and reveals the rendering modes of the browser.

Chrome Remote Desktop is good, like, REALLY good, on Windows 10

If you need to do some remote desktop-ing, you should use Chrome Remote Desktop. It even works with Microsoft Edge. It's been a while since I needed to do any real amount of remote desktop use, after all, I work from home and have an office filled with my eq…

How to Use Video Ads to Build Consumer Trust in Your eCommerce Company

Learn how your eCommerce company can project competence, knowledge, and empathy with video ads to earn your prospects' trust!

Plex is launching a video game subscription service full of Atari games

Plex has entered the arena and if offering a game streaming service for classic titles from the '80s and '90s. What you need to know Plex is a digital media streaming service with free and premium memberships. The company will soon be offering Plex Arcade,…

Tails OS 4.15 released with updated Tor Browser

Tails OS 4.15 has just been released bringing very important security updates for the Tor Browser. It also adds support for more hardware with the inclusion of the newer Linux 5.9.15 kernel. Read more...

Best Chromebook for 2021: Acer, HP, Asus, Lenovo and more compared - CNET

Experience the best of what Google's Chrome OS has to offer with one of these laptops or two-in-ones.

How to Get Funding for Your Ecommerce Business

With the increased demand for online shopping, ecommerce businesses are struggling to get cash to keep up with demand.

Snap acquired Ariel AI, a computer vision startup set up by ex-Facebook and Google scientists (SNAP)

Summary List PlacementSnap has acquired British artificial intelligence startup Ariel AI, a specialist computer vision company cofounded by ex-Facebook and Google scientists. Insider uncovered the acquisition after analyzing Ariel AI's publicly available UK f…

Female-Founded Telehealth Startup Calibrate Announces $22.5 Million Series A

Calibrate announced Tuesday that it has closed a $22.5 million Series A round of funding led by Emily Melton at Threshold Ventures.

Apple says iOS 14.4 patches 3 security flaws that ‘may have been actively exploited’

In addition to the new features detailed earlier today, iOS 14.4 also brings a trio of notable security improvements. In a new Support document published this afternoon, Apple said that iOS 14.4 fixes a kernel vulnerability and two WebKit vulnerabilities, all…

Tealbook Raises $14.4 Million To Improve Procurement With AI

Procurement processes for all too many companies are still very manual and outdated. This startup is using data and modern tech to help.

Twitter Acquires Newsletter Startup Revue to Expand Business - Bloomberg

Twitter Acquires Newsletter Startup Revue to Expand Business  Bloomberg

Extending enterprise zero trust models to the web

For over a decade, Chrome has been committed to advancing security on the web, and we’re proud of the end-user and customer safety improvements we’ve delivered over the years. We take our responsibility seriously, and we continue to work on ways to better pro…

Try AskGit SQL in your browser

Remember Patrick DeVivo’s super cool AskGit project where you can query your git repo’s history with SQL? Well, now you can kick the tires without installing a thing by using AskGit’s new web interface! Here’s an example query where we learn that I do most of…

Malaysian e-fulfullment startup lands $5.5m in Gobi-led round

With the new funds, iStore iSend plans to expand to neighboring countries and acquire online-to-offline clients in existing markets.

Atlanta scheduling startup Calendly raises $350M, surpasses $3B valuation - Atlanta Business Chronicle

Atlanta scheduling startup Calendly raises $350M, surpasses $3B valuation  Atlanta Business Chronicle

Satellite fires up iodine-fueled ion thruster for the first time

In a development that could help slow the proliferation of space junk, the orbit of a communications satellite has for the first time been altered using solid iodine as a propellant. The Beihangkonshi-1 smallsat made the maneuver earlier this month using a se…

Plex announces retro gaming subscription service Plex Arcade

Plex has partnered with Atari to bring classic games to its app platform and will allow users to host their own game ROMs via a paid subscription service.Play anywhere Plex is available Popular content hosting platform Plex is opening its doors to a new form …

Sono Motors and EasyMile embed solar cells in driverless shuttle

At the online-only CES 2021 earlier this month, German mobility startup Sono Motors revealed a collaboration with EasyMile to install its solar technology on driverless shuttles. Now we have a few more details.Continue ReadingCategory: Urban Transport, Transp…