Author: pekandesigns

Before pivoting to smart glasses, Thalmic Labs (now North) tried its best to make its Myo gestural arm band controller the future of user input. Now, another startup is picking up the baton, acquiring patents related to the product and customer data. The IP is being bought by CTRL-labs, a New York-based startup full of […]

Amazon’s strategy to bring more brick-and-mortar options into its vast e-commerce empire, and its ambition to sell more pharmaceutical products, today may have found themselves a little more knitted together. The company announced a new service in the US called Counter, a free in-store pick-up service where Amazon shoppers can arrange to collect packages. And […]

YouTube today announced a series of changes designed to give users more control over what videos appear on the Homepage and in its Up Next suggestions — the latter which are typically powered by an algorithm. The company also says it will offer more visibility to users as to why they’re being shown a recommended […]

Ever since the notch was first added to smartphones, everyone in the world except the deeply deluded and my editor have wished it gone. Oppo has done it — or at least shown that it can be done — with a demonstration unit at Mobile World Congress in Shanghai. iPhone users can console themselves that […]

Verizon (disclosure: the company that owns the company that owns TC) celebrated an FCC victory this week, as the agency approved a request for a temporary network lockdown on new phones. The carrier request the feature in February as part of a “safety check period.” The ruling presents a kind of temporary waiver on an […]

When Facebook unveiled Libra a few days ago, the company also announced the Libra Association, a not-for-profit that will oversee all things Libra. Facebook wants to make sure that everyone is aware that Libra was created by Facebook but isn’t controlled by Facebook. And yet, given Facebook’s reputation, it seems useful to evaluate the project […]

International money transfer service TransferWise, has made a significant incursion into the US market today, launching a MasterCard debit card alongside a multicurrency account. Mirroring the card it has already launched in the UK and Europe last year, the card will work in over 40 currencies without balance limits, and conversion fees will be competitive […]

Last year Shopify announced Shopify Ping, a free unified messaging platform for merchants to communicate directly with customers in a chat context. Today, it announced it’s adding support for Apple Business Chat to Shopify Ping. The real benefit to this is that users can not only use Apple’s business chat product to communicate with customers, […]

Automaker Tesla is looking into how it might own another key part of its supply chain, through research being done at a secret lab near its Fremont, CA HQ, CNBC reports. The company currently relies on Panasonic to build the battery pack and cells it uses for its vehicles, which is one of, if not […]

Two months ago, we reported that Carbon was set to raise up to $300 million, bringing the 3D printing company’s valuation up to a lofty $2.5 billion. The real numbers released this week by the company aren’t quite so lofty, but are impressive nonetheless. The Series E fetched $260 million, putting its valuation at closer […]