Specializing in Computer Repair, Networking, Internet Solutions, Web Designing, Hybrid App Designing and Windows Operating systems.
Lauren Goode / Wired:
Developers say they have mixed feelings about the “Sign In With Apple” button and Apple's decision to make it mandatory for apps with other sign-in systems — APPLE ISN'T ALWAYS the first company to introduce a particular product or service. But when it does finally decide …
Which State Has The Same Plant As Its Official Fruit And Vegetable? |
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Fabiola Moura / Bloomberg:
SoftBank is leading a $300M investment in Gympass, a fitness app giving employees at 2,000+ companies access to ~47K partner gyms worldwide, at a $1B+ valuation — - Brazilian fitness startup makes gym workouts more accessible — SoftBank wants to build global champions out of Latin America
Jonathan Shieber / TechCrunch:
ADDI, a Colombia-based point-of-sale lending startup, reveals it had raised $12.5M Series A from a16z in April, following $3.8M in seed rounds since Sept. 2018 — Andreessen Horowitz <3 Latin American startups. — Latin America is the only region outside of the U.S. where the venture firm …
Junko Yoshida / EE Times:
Edge Case Research, which is developing AI-based safety assessment tech for autonomous vehicles, raises $7M seed round led by Aurora CEO Chris Urmson and ANSYS — Chris Urmson and ANSYS to invest in Edge Case Research — “Making autonomy safe” is perhaps one of the hardest nuts for designers …
Dean Takahashi / VentureBeat:
Paris-based video game developer Novaquark, which had raised $11.4M on Kickstarter in 2018 for its Dual Universe MMO game, has raised $11.2M in VC funding — French video game developer Novaquark has raised $11.2 million in funding for its fan-created Dual Universe science fiction massively multiplayer online game.
Sarah Dai / South China Morning Post:
Waterdrop, a Tencent-backed Chinese online health care platform, raises more than 1B yuan, ~$145M, Series C led by private equity company Boyu Capital — Funding will go toward building a professional team in health care insurance and adopting AI in its products China is home …
Jordan Crook / TechCrunch:
Lemonade, the digital insurance company that has raised $480M, is expanding into Europe, with its first launch in Germany — Lemonade, the insurance company that's raised $480 million, is today expanding into Europe with the launch of Lemonade in Germany. — As part of the launch …
Kyle Wiggers / VentureBeat:
Scoutbee, which develops and sells access to an AI-driven supplier discovery platform, raises $12M Series A, says its marketplace has more than 9.5M suppliers — Procuring parts and settling on suppliers are two of the most challenging undertakings in supply chain management, it's safe to say.
Sarah Dai / South China Morning Post:
Alibaba partners with Audi, Renault, and Honda to offer a range of in-car voice services like finding restaurants using its AI platform Tmall Genie Auto — Tie-up will offer car owners a range of voice-controlled services, including identification of nearby attractions and restaurants …
Fifteen months after shutting down, Shyp is getting ready to launch again. The startup tweeted today that “We are back! We’re hard at work to rebuild an unparalleled shipping experience. Before we begin operations again, we’d love to hear your feedback in this quick survey. We look forward to working with you and can’t wait to change the future of shipping!”
We are back!
We’re hard at work to rebuild an unparalleled shipping experience. Before we begin operations again, we’d love to hear your feedback in this quick survey.
We look forward to working with you and can’t wait to change the future of shipping!https://t.co/VqyxGOMrIG
— Shyp (@shyp) June 14, 2019
Most of the survey questions focus on online shopping returns, asking how easy or difficult it was to package the product for return, print the prepaid label, purchase postage or ship the product. The last question offers a hint about what direction the rebooted Shyp might take, asking “When returning a product, how likely would you be to use a service that picked up and shipped the product instead of having to ship it yourself?”
Shyp’s website doesn’t say when it will be back or what services it will offer, but it does mention that Shyp restarted in January 2019 under new management and backed by angel investors “with plans to disrupt the industry with what it does best: cutting-edge technology and a superior customer experience.”
Once one of the hottest on-demand startups, Shyp shut down in March 2018 after missing targets to expand to cities outside of San Francisco. When it first launched in 2014, Shyp initially offered on-demand service for almost anything customers wanted shipped, charging $5 plus postage to pick up, package and bring the item to a shipping company. Eventually it introduced a pricing tier in 2016 as it tried to find new approaches to its business model, before closing down two years later.
If the new Shyp does focus on making online returns easier, it will be bringing back one of its most popular services. The company expanded into online returns in 2015 after noticing that many customers used the app to return products they had purchased online.
TechCrunch has emailed Shyp for more information.
Steve O'Hear / TechCrunch:
Farming-as-a-service startup Infarm raises $100M Series B for its remotely operated modular farms placed in grocery stores, restaurants, other urban locations — Infarm, the Berlin-based startup that has developed vertical farming tech for grocery stores and restaurants, is disclosing $100 million in in Series B investment.
Parmy Olson / Wall Street Journal:
The holding company that owns the dating apps Bumble, Lumen, and Chappy has been renamed as Magic Lab, says it will spend $100M on an array of new dating apps — 'We're looking for the big, big monsters who can partner with me,' billionaire behind Bumble says in an interview
Gregory Barber / Wired:
Wyoming's laws exempting some digital tokens from state securities rules, and cryptocurrency from state property taxes, spawned dozens of crypto LLCs there — IF YOU BELIEVE you may have stumbled into a cryptocurrency conference (godspeed, my friend), there are a few telltale signs.
Days Gone is repetitive, typical, predictable, and mostly uninspired. But after looking past its shortcomings, I realized something: it’s also a blast. Not every game has to be revolutionary, and Days Gone is a perfect example of that.
Zombie games (and most other horror-survival titles) make up a lot of my gaming time, so when I saw the launch trailer for Days Gone three years ago, I was psyched. Watching Deacon St. John—a character I would later come to know as “Deek”—run from a massive horde of what the game calls “Freakers” in that first look was exciting. While it was more cinematic than gameplay, it looked intense, fast-paced, strategic, and most of all, horrifying. It instantly sold me.
Fast-forward three years and several delays, and I got the game in my hands on launch day, April 26, 2019. I popped that bad boy into my PlayStation 4 Pro to get rolling (literally—the motorcycle action was something I was looking forward to), hoping for what would ultimately become one of my new top five games.
I went into the game as blindly as I could. I watched the trailers and gameplay teasers as they were released, but avoided reviews so I could go in without preconceived ideas about what the game is, isn’t, should, or shouldn’t be. The intensity of the launch trailer made me think of a specific moment from my favorite game of all time—the hotel basement from The Last of Us—so I had high hopes that it would live up to that. Spoiler: It didn’t.
And that’s okay. Let’s talk about why.
Warning: Major Days Gone spoilers ahead.
A great game makes players care genuinely about the characters and what they’re going through—I love Joel and Ellie (The Last of Us) on what feels like a personal level. In Horizon: Zero Dawn, I cared about Aloy’s quest—I wanted her to find the answers she was so desperately seeking. In God of War (2018), Kratos showed a side we’ve never seen before and is such an incredibly dynamic, multi-faceted character who makes you feel.
The Citizen Lab:
An in-depth report on stalkerware apps: a technical assessment of their invasive surveillance capabilities, marketing for abusive spouses, security risks, more — Executive Summary — Persons who engage in technology-facilitated violence, abuse, and harassment sometimes install spyware on a targeted person's mobile phone.
Barclay Bram / Nautilus:
WeChat's data centralization has inextricably linked it to all aspects of daily life in China and made it a cornerstone of the government's social-credit system — Living in China with the app that knows everything about me. — It's 9 a.m. on a typical morning in Chengdu and I'm awakened by the sound of my phone alarm.
Apollo Astronauts Saw Streaks Of Light Caused By What? |
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New York Times:
Researchers find some sleep apps and trackers provide inaccurate data and can cause an increased fixation on sleep, which can worsen anxiety and insomnia — Are you sabotaging your sleep in your quest to improve it? — Many new tools are becoming available to monitor your sleep or help …
Paul Sawers / VentureBeat:
Testim, which makes AI-based tools for automated software testing, raises $10M Series B led by SignalFire, with participation from Lightspeed and others — Automated software testing platform Testim has raised $10 million in a series B round of funding led by SignalFire …
Sarah Perez / TechCrunch:
Amazon shuts down Spark, its Instagram rival launched in 2017; URL directs to #FoundItOnAmazon, its product discovery site similar to its Interesting Finds tool — Amazon's two-year-old Instagram competitor, Amazon Spark, is no more. — Hoping to capitalize on the social shopping trend …
Amazon’s two-year-old Instagram competitor, Amazon Spark, is no more.
Hoping to capitalize on the social shopping trend and tap into the power of online influencers, Amazon in 2017 launched its own take on Instagram with a shoppable feed of stories and photos aimed at Prime members. The experiment known as Amazon Spark has now come to an end. However, the learnings from Spark and Amazon’s discovery tool Interesting Finds are being blended into a new social-inspired product, #FindItOnAmazon.
Amazon Spark had been a fairly bland service, if truth be told. Unlike on Instagram, where people follow their friend, interests, brands like they like, and people they find engaging or inspiring, Spark was focused on the shopping and the sale. While it tried to mock the Instagram aesthetic at times with fashion inspiration images or highly posed travel photos, it lacked Instagram’s broader appeal. Your friends weren’t there and there weren’t any Instagram Stories, for example. Everything felt too transactional.
Amazon declined to comment on the apparent shutdown of Spark, but the service is gone from the website and app.
The URL amazon.com/spark, meanwhile, redirects to the new #FoundItOnAmazon site — a site which also greatly resembles another Amazon product discovery tool, Interesting Finds.
Interesting Finds has been around since 2016, offering consumers a way to browse an almost Pinterest-like board of products across a number of categories. It features curated “shops” focused on niche themes, like a “Daily Carry” shop for toteable items, a “Mid Century” shop filled with furniture and décor, a shop for “Star Wars” fans, one for someone who loves the color pink, and so on. Interesting Finds later added a layer of personalization with the introduction of a My Mix shop filled with recommendations tailored to your interactions and likes.
The Interesting Finds site had a modern, clean look-and-feel that made it a more pleasurable way to browse Amazon’s products. Products photos appeared on white backgrounds while the clutter of a traditional product detail page was removed.
We understand from people familiar with the products that Interesting Finds is not shutting down as Spark has. But the new #FoundItOnAmazon site will take inspiration from what worked with Interesting Finds and Spark to turn it into a new shopping discovery tool.
Interesting Finds covers a wide range of categories, but #FoundItOnAmazon will focus more directly on fashion and home décor. Similar to Interesting Finds, you can heart to favorites items and revisit them later.
The #FoundItOnAmazon site is very new and isn’t currently appearing for all Amazon customers at this time. If you have it, the amazon.com/spark URL will take you there.
Though Amazon won’t talk about why its Instagram experiment is ending, it’s not too hard to make some guesses. Beyond its lack of originality and transactional nature, Instagram itself has grown into a far more formidable competitor since Spark first launched.
Last fall, Instagram fully embraced its shoppable nature with the introduction of shopping features across its app that let people more easily discover products from Instagram photos. It also added a new shopping channel and in March, Instagram launched its own in-app checkout option to turn product inspiration into actual conversions. It was certainly a big move into Amazon territory. And while that led to headlines about Instagram as the future of shopping, it’s not going to upset Amazon’s overall dominance any time soon.
In addition to the shifting competitive landscape, Spark’s primary stakeholder, Amazon VP of Consumer Engagement Chee Chew departed at the beginning of 2019 for Twilio. While at Amazon, Chew was heavily invested in Spark’s success and product managers would even tie their own efforts to Spark in order to win his favor, sources said.
For example, Amazon’s notifications section had been changed to include updates from Spark. And Spark used to sit a swipe away from the main navigation menu on mobile.
Following Spark’s closure, Amazon’s navigation has once again been simplified. It’s now a clutter-free hamburger menu. Meanwhile, Amazon’s notifications section no longer includes Spark updates — only alerts about orders, shipments, and personalized recommendations.
In addition, it’s likely that Spark wasn’t well adopted. Just 10,000 Amazon customers used it during its first 24 hours, we heard. With Chew’s departure, Spark lost its driving force. No one needed to curry favor by paying it attention, which may have also helped contribute to its shuttering.
6/14/19, 10:20 PM ET: Updated with further context after publication.
