Month: September 2018

Airbnb, Uber, Lyft, Warby Parker and a long list of other startups of the 21st century have appointed C-level employees to roles focused exclusively on data science. These digital-age companies have established “data cultures,” which provide employees broad access to high-quality data, advocate for data literacy and have data-driven decision-making processes, according to Carl Anderson, who
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DevOps automation service Chef today announced a number of new integrations with Microsoft Azure. The news, which was announced at the Microsoft Ignite conference in Orlando, Florida, focuses on helping enterprises bring their legacy applications to Azure and ranges from the public preview of Chef Automate Managed Service for Azure to the integration of Chef’s
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OYO, the India-based startup that operates a network of budget hotels, has pulled in $1 billion in new funding to grow its business in China and expand into other international markets. The majority of the funding — $800 million, to be exact — was led by SoftBank’s Vision Fund with participation from Lightspeed, Sequoia and Greenoaks Capital. OYO
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It’s been five years since T-Mobile picked up MetroPCS, and now the prepaid service is finally getting a fresh coat of paint. The “PCS” bit is getting the old heave-ho, while the brand’s owners are letting you know who’s boss with the new Metro by T-Mobile brand name. The new name involves some new plans,
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Everyone’s favorite endless, serene snowboarding game just made the leap from mobile to the Mac App Store. Available now for $9.99, Alto’s Adventure for Mac is a desktop port of the side-scrolling snowscape game that’s won hearts and accolades since it first hit iOS in 2015. Earlier this year, the team behind Alto’s Adventure introduced
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Dust off your old Bose 501 speakers. New devices are coming that will give traditional audio equipment a voice. Amazon recently announced a mess of new Echo devices and among the lot are several small, diminutive add-ons. These models did not have a smart speaker built into the devices but rather turned other speakers into
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Following an acquisition by FTD Companies earlier this year for a reportedly small amount of cash, on-demand flower service BloomThat is pausing its services as it works “to figure out how to best integrate BloomThat as part of the FTD portfolio of brands,” the founders wrote to its customers a few days ago. “Before we
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See, snap, sale. In a rare partnership for Amazon, the commerce giant will help Snapchat challenge Instagram and Pinterest for social shopping supremacy. Today Snapchat announced it’s slowly rolling out a new visual product search feature, confirming TechCrunch’s July scoop about this project, codenamed “Eagle.” Users can use Snapchat’s camera to scan a physical object
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True Ventures has led the $3 million round for Mode, a real-time database that gives companies instant access to sensor data. GigaOm founder and True Ventures partner Om Malik has joined the startup’s board of directors as part of the deal. Sensor data is collected from vehicles, cell phones, appliances, medical equipment and other machines. Businesses deploying these
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Facebook Ad Breaks, the social network’s pre-roll and mid-roll video ads, are launching in 21 new countries. Facebook announced that Ad Breaks were generally available last month in five countries: the United States, United Kingdom, Ireland, Australia and New Zealand. Now it’s adding territories in Europe, Latin and South America and Asia to the list.
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Groups of UberEats couriers are continuing to strike over pay and calling for a minimum £5 per delivery fee. Several strikes have been reported in London over the past few days, as well as other UK cities including Glasgow, Cardiff and Plymouth. Late last week Uber revealed a new pay structure which shrinks the per
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Apple and Salesforce are both highly successful, iconic brands, who like to put on a big show when they make product announcements. Today, the two companies announced they were forming a strategic partnership with an emphasis on mobile strategy ahead of Salesforce’s enormous customer conference, Dreamforce, which starts tomorrow in San Francisco. For Apple, which is
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India is the new tech outsourcing destination for ride-hailing companies. Southeast Asia’s Grab and Go-Jek both have sizable engineering teams in the country, and now that duo is joined by another billion-dollar company. Careem, which is based in the Middle East and valued at over $1 billion, has entered the fray after it snapped up the
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SiriusXM and Pandora have announced acquisition plans before the stock market opens. SiriusXM is offering to acquire Pandora for $3.5 billion in stock, or $10.14 per share. Pandora would continue to exist as an independent service. For Pandora shareholders, this offer represents a 13.8 percent premium over the volume-weighted average share price of the past
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It’s been 10 years since Google took the wraps off the G1, the first Android phone. Since that time the OS has grown from buggy, nerdy iPhone alternative to arguably the most popular (or at least populous) computing platform in the world. But it sure as heck didn’t get there without hitting a few bumps
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