Forget the calendar invite. Just jump into a conversation. That’s the idea powering a fresh batch of social startups poised to take advantage of our cleared schedules amidst quarantine. But they could also change the way we work and socialize long after COVID-19 by bringing the free-flowing, ad-hoc communication of parties and open office plans […]
Instagram founders Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger have teamed up to launch their first product together since leaving the Facebook mothership. Rt.live is an up-to-date tracker of how fast COVID-19 is spreading in each state. “Rt” measures the average number of people who become infected by an infectious person. The higher above the number 1, […]
Cognizant, one of the largest tech and consulting companies in the Fortune 500, has confirmed it was hit by a ransomware attack. Details remain slim besides a brief statement on its site, confirming the incident. “Cognizant can confirm that a security incident involving our internal systems, and causing service disruptions for some of our clients, […]
Cities around the world have become home this decade to distributed tech teams and homegrown startup successes. Each of these additional layers of experience and specialization help to make each local community stronger, like what began happening in Silicon Valley many decades ago. Now layoffs are striking deep into these fragile, complex ecosystems. Yes, companies […]
We discussed our initial impressions of “Devs” on an episode of the Original Content podcast a few weeks ago, shortly after the show launched on FX/Hulu. At the time, we observed that even the show made time for bits of Silicon Valley satire, the mood was mostly one of mystery and dread. Now that we know […]
Welcome back to This Week in Apps, the Extra Crunch series that recaps the latest OS news, the applications they support and the money that flows through it all. The app industry is as hot as ever, with a record 204 billion downloads in 2019 and $120 billion in consumer spending in 2019, according to App Annie’s “State […]
One of the best tools we have to slow the spread of the coronavirus is, as you have no doubt heard by now, contact tracing. But what exactly is contact tracing, who does it and how, and do you need to worry about it? In short, contact tracing helps prevent the spread of a virus […]
Here’s a nice thing. It’s not revolutionary or life-changing, but it’s nice. And right now we can all use a little bit of nice. Earlier this month, Samsung announced an addition to its line of “eco-packing” that will turn TV boxes in a wide variety of different “furniture.” I use furniture in quotes here because […]
The diagnostics startup Curative has received an emergency use authorization from the Food and Drug Administration for its novel test to determine COVID-19 infection. The company says that its tests have already been used by the City of Los Angeles since late March and have tested over 53,000 city residents. Curative’s tests use an oral-fluid […]
Chinese investors, who have poured about $6 billion into Indian startups in the last two years, will be subjected to tougher scrutiny for their future investments in the world’s second largest internet market. India amended its foreign direct investment policy on Saturday to require all neighboring nations with which it shares a boundary to seek […]