Author: pekandesigns

TC Sessions: Mobility 2019, TechCrunch’s day-long intensive event focused on the current and future state of mobility, takes place in San Jose, Calif. on July 10. More than 1,000 of the industry’s top technologists, founders, investors, engineers and researchers will join us to discuss, explore and demo transformational technologies that will have a profound effect […]

When it officially launches on Friday, New York City’s contactless fare pilot will have no shortage of options. Following similar announcements from Google and Apple, Fitbit just announced that its own mobile Pay system will work with the MTA program. Starting Friday, straphangers sporting a Fitbit Charge 3 Special Edition, Versa Special Edition or Fitbit […]

Kids gaming platform Roblox has its sights set on China with today’s news that it has entered into a strategic relationship with Chinese tech giant, Tencent. The companies announced a strategic partnership that will initially focus on education — specifically, coding fundamentals, game design, digital citizenship, and entrepreneurial skills. The joint venture — still unnamed […]

For a founder building a consumer-facing business, overseas Chinese students might just be one of the most coveted targets: they’re young, well educated and have access to the ‘bank’ of mom and dad. This is a large addressable audience since millions of Chinese families send their children out West to study every year. It doesn’t […]

The UK’s first 5G consumer mobile network is launching tomorrow in six cities. Mobile network operator EE will switch on the next-gen cellular connectivity in select locations in London, Cardiff, Edinburgh, Belfast, Birmingham and Manchester — promising “increased speeds, reliability and connectivity”. Though of course consumers will also need to have a 5G handset and […]

Bose announced a trio of new headphones today. The company used the opportunity to primarily focus on the dryly named Noise Cancelling Headphones 700, which purport to sport “the biggest leap forward in headphones since the iconic QuietComfort.” A big claim, to be sure, especially given how much that line has come to define the […]

Talkspace, the platform that lets patients and therapists communicate online, has today announced the close of a $50 million financing round led by Revolution Growth. Existing investors, such as Norwest Venture Partners, Omura Capital, Spark Capital, and Compound Ventures are also participating in the round. As part of the deal, Revolution Growth’s Patrick Conroy will […]

The city of Paris is doing something I didn’t expect — they’re launching their own data center to host their digital services. The data center is going to be operated by city employees, so Paris plans to control their digital destiny from end to end. I visited the data center yesterday. Located in the north of […]

Google and Facebook are increasingly slurping up every ad dollar on the internet. Their dominant position is upending the business models of traditional and startup media companies alike. The click-driven ad model of yore is leaving a graveyard in its wake, as once high-flying companies like Mic collapse. Learning from the wave of SaaS startups […]

Uber is now requiring the same good behavior from riders that it has long expected from its drivers. Uber riders have always had ratings, but they were never really at risk of deactivation — until now. Starting today, riders in the U.S. and Canada are now at risk of deactivation if their rating falls significantly […]