Author: pekandesigns

Spotify’s battle with Apple Music is continuing to heat up. On Monday, the company introduced upgrades to its Premium Family plan which now offers parental controls and other exclusive features, like a family playlist. Today, Spotify is going head-to-head with Apple on its free trial offer. Previously, new users to the Spotify Premium subscription could […]

Making the VR experience simple and portable was the main goal of the Oculus Quest, and it definitely accomplishes that. But going from things in the room tracking your headset to your headset tracking things in the room was a complex process. I talked with Facebook CTO Mike Schroepfer (“Schrep”) about the journey from “outside-in” […]

The dessert naming scheme was one of the best-loved legacies from Google (though some were notably better than others). Every time the company got ready to release a new version of the mobile operating system, speculation would mount about which sweet foodstuff the company would ultimately select. But while P offered confections a-plenty, Q has […]

The CareVoice, a Shanghai-based health insurance software startup with ambitions to expand throughout Asia, announced today that it has raised about $10 million in Series A funding. The investment was led by LUN Partners Group and an undisclosed global investment manager that specializes in financial services, with participation from DNA Capital and returning investors SOSV […]

Remediant, a startup that helps companies secure privileged access in a modern context, today announced a $15 million Series A led by Dell Technologies Capital and ForgePoint Capital. Remediant’s co-founders, Paul Lanzi and Tim Keeler, worked in biotech for years and saw a problem first-hand with the way companies secured privileged access. It was granted […]

Twitter’s ongoing, long-term efforts to make conversations easier to follow and engage with on its platform is getting a boost with the company’s latest acquihire. The company has picked up the team behind Lightwell, a startup that had built a set of developer tools to build interactive, narrative apps, for an undisclosed sum. Lightwell’s founder and […]

Earlier this year, Google said it would transition all Hangouts users on G Suite to Hangouts Chat and Meet by October 2019 and then retire the classic version of Hangouts. But a lot of G Suite users love their classic Hangouts, so Google has now revised Hangouts’ retirement date to “no sooner than June 2020.” […]

The Daily Crunch is TechCrunch’s roundup of our biggest and most important stories. If you’d like to get this delivered to your inbox every day at around 9am Pacific, you can subscribe here. 1. DoorDash acquires autonomous driving startup Scotty Labs DoorDash seems to be very interested in self-driving technology — not only did it […]

Multiple reports this week claimed Google had quietly rolled out a more in-depth app review process to all developers — changes designed to keep the Play Store safer from spam, malware, and copycat apps. Those reports are inaccurate, Google tells TechCrunch. Instead, the company is giving itself more time to review apps from new, unestablished […]

Disrupt San Francisco 2019, our flagship event on October 2-4, features three full days of programming, more than 10,000 attendees, over 1,200 exhibiting startups and sponsors — and that’s just for starters. That’s a lot of ground to cover. Here’s a hot tip: take advantage of group discounts, saddle up and bring your whole posse […]