The following is an excerpt from my new book Don’t Go Back to School: a handbook for learning anything.
To someone who has never tried, it’s not obvious how to learn the things you want to learn outside of school. I’m on a mission to show you how. To do that, I became obsessed with how other people learn best, and how they do it without going to school. → Read More
A number of startups have been trying their hand at subscription-based children’s books services, or something like a “Netflix for kids’ books,” so to speak. Today, another entry called Zoobean joins the flock, with the debut of its own handpicked catalog which parents can either subscribe to, or choose to just shop online like a standard e-commerce website. The company was… → Read More
Google continues to increase the reach of its Google+ platform, and today the company is launching a new mobile content recommendation service powered by Google+. These recommendations will appear as small widgets at that bottom of the screen as users browse a news site that has enabled this service. Google’s launch partner for this service is Forbes, but others can implement these recommendations… → Read More
I’ve heard some suggestions that our extreme fascination with Google Glass is more a symptom of desperation for some kind of genuine gadget innovation than anything to do with the product’s merits, and a new gadget from Sony (via The Verge) has me wondering whether or not other companies are flailing about for something novel. Sony introduced a new 13.3-inch e-ink prototype reader device today… → Read More
E-commerce leviathan Amazon today is taking a step into social gaming: Amazon Coins, its new virtual currency, is now live in the U.S. To kick it off, Amazon announced that it would put $5 worth of the currency — equivalent to 500 Coins — into all Kindle Fire users’ accounts to use on apps and in-app purchases on its platform. The company says that this is equivalent to “tens of millions of… → Read More
On-demand helper startup WunWun has for the past few months offered consumers the ability to get pretty much anything delivered for a flat rate. Now, the company is offering its service to businesses who want to make local, same-day delivery a perk for their customers. → Read More
Users are getting increasingly comfortable with the idea of booking and even listing spaces on Airbnb through their mobile phones. The company has tried to reach that demand through on mobile devices with frequently updated iOS and Android apps. Today, the Android app gets an update aimed at making the experience for hosts better than ever. → Read More
Flipboard has just updated its iOS app to add a few more features for its 50 million+ readers. Back in March, Flipboard announced a new feature that would include user-created magazines, which seems to have excited Flippers.
In fact, the company announced that users have already created 500,000 curated magazines. Like our’s. → Read More
Finnish MeeGo startup Jolla has been trailing the launch of its first handset ever since it started work on its Sailfish UI back in 2012. Since then, Jolla has shown off its MeeGo-based Sailfish software and released an SDK but kept its hardware plans tightly under wraps. That’s set to change very soon though, judging by a press invite sent out today. → Read More
Google’s Sundar Pichai spoke to Wired in an interview published today ahead of Google I/O this week, describing what it’s like to be taking the helm of both Android and Chrome going into the annual conference. Pichai took over for Andy Rubin, who stepped out of his role heading up Android back in March.
These days, he says not much has changed around his thinking about Chrome and Android, but… → Read More
Groupon is once again expanding its portfolio of mobile payment services, putting it in closer competition with the likes of Square and PayPal’s here targeting local merchants: today it has released Groupon POS, which appears to be an iPad-specific version of its mobile payments service aimed at local merchants, working as a dashboard to make and track payments. → Read More
Posted without comment because it really doesn’t need a comment. I mean, it’s the new Arrested Development trailer — just watch it and count down the days until the Bluth family returns to Netflix on May 26. → Read More
Samsung is moving quickly to diversify its phone line, with variants of the S4 popping out of the woodwork left and right, including the Galaxy S4 Zoom, which features a rumored 10x optical zoom on its rear camera. Today the Galaxy S4 Active, a ruggedized, smaller version of the flagship S4 has hit the Bluetooth Special Interest Group for certification, which means it could be coming along… → Read More
Grotech Ventures, the Virginia-based VC firm behind LivingSocial, HelloWallet and others; is announcing the raise of its eighth fund, Grotech Ventures II (“GV II”), with $225 million in committed capital. The firm says the fund was oversubscribed by more than 10 percent, and was raised from both existing and new limited partners. GV II bringsGrotech’s total capital under management to $1.3… → Read More
Disqus is launching a new feature today that the company says will help publishers get more value from everyone commenting on their site.
The company already offers something called Disqus Single Sign-On, where users who are registered on a given site can sign into the Disqus commenting system automatically. A company blog post describes AudeinceSync as the “flip side” of that feature, where… → Read More
Japanese carrier NTT DoCoMo has announced it plans to invest around $50M into Japanese digital entertainment company Pioneer Corporation, which makes in-car electronics, to acquire approximately seven per cent of the company. The pair described the investment as “a business and capital alliance”, and said they plan to jointly develop an intelligent transport system for launch this year. → Read More
Today UK startup VirtualMob is officially launching its Augmented Reality self-service — Point-at-Me (PAM) — which mixes drag ‘n’ drop content creation, e-commerce, and analytics in a bid to make it even easier for companies to get in on the AR action. → Read More
With India’s annual GDP growth of about 5 to 6 percent per year, a new wave of affluent consumers is coming. While there have been e-commerce successes like Flipkart, a handful of local startups are targeting the upper-end of the market. Squarekey is a startup that brings high-end fashion brands to India for the same prices as ones that a consumer would pay in the West. “Retail is… → Read More
Rocket Internet, the German-based e-commerce startup incubator from the Samwer brothers, is today announcing another round of funding for its strategy to build out its footprint into emerging markets. Today it’s the turn of Middle-East-based fashion commerce site Namshi, which is getting $13 million from Summit Partners. This is the second time Summit, a Rocket regular, has invested in Namshi… → Read More
Twitter CEO Dick Costolo has quit his position as a U.K. director of the company, days after Twitter subsidiary Tweetdeck was dissolved as a separate U.K. business by business registrar Companies House, according to Sky News. We’ve reached out to Twitter for confirmation and comment and will update this story with any response. → Read More
Samsung Electronics has developed core technology that will allow it to deliver high-speed 5G wireless data connections to consumers by 2020, the company announced today. The system allows data transmission up to several hundred times faster than current 4G networks. → Read More
Video is becoming an increasingly important part of news coverage online. But it’s also expensive and time-consuming to produce, and many publishers don’t have the resources to create them on their own. A startup called Wochit is changing the economics around video production for breaking news, and has raised $4.75 million to make their technology available to more publishers. → Read More
My parents have yet to receive their Christmas gift. Because they are avid skiers, I bought them gift cards to Heavenly Mountain last December, and because of some issue with either the ZIP code or security code on my credit card, my charge keeps getting rejected. I have tried five different cards.
I have called AmEx. I’m about to call Chase since I just got a new card, and sit there and go… → Read More
Though it’s but a baby in the app world, Vine is already making brands, advertisers, and especially media industry members chomp at the bit for some 6-second looping action.
The latest to join the herd is Marvel, who has posted a six-second teaser trailer for its upcoming “Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.” TV series. For those who were fans of the Avengers and other Marvel films, this should be a sweet… → Read More
The global mobile messaging app space is the new social battleground. Startups that would have had little chance of unseating Facebook’s dominance on the web are attacking Zuckerberg’s empire by refocusing social networking around the mobile phone contacts book. Enter your phone number, and these apps already know who all your friends are. No need to go laboriously recreating your social… → Read More
We all know that big changes are happening in games, with the profusion of formats. What less of us realize is how much those changes have affected the underlying idea that one console or platform is the “gaming king”. Some of us even pine for a return to those days, but they are gone. Likely forever. → Read More
We’re just a few days away from the start of Google I/O, the search giant’s annual developer conference, and while we actually know very little about what Google plans to announce during its massive, three-hour keynote on Wednesday, there is something brewing in Mountain View that has Microsoft’s Office division on edge. Over the course of the last week, Microsoft started a very negative… → Read More
It’s a rare fall rainy day in Palo Alto and SAP Executive Board Member Dr. Vishal Sikka is as sick as a dog. It’s less than a week until SAP Sapphire in Madrid and the community around him are like a worrying family. I had told them that it is okay. I could make the trip another time. But they were insistent I make the trip. Fast forward to May. It has been several months since that… → Read More
Google Now is a great feature for Android users, and now those who are on iOS devices. The idea is that the more you use Google products, the more it learns about you and the better information it can spit at you proactively. However, if you try and interact with Google Now, specifically on which sports teams you’d like to follow, the app will crash. Not only will Google Now crash, but… → Read More
SideCar co-founder and CEO Sunil Paul was part of what may have been the most spirited and feisty panel at our Disrupt NY conference earlier this month. Sharing the stage with Hailo CEO Jay Bregman (I’ll be posting an interview with Bregman later) and NY TLC Deputy Commissioner Ashwini Chhabra, Paul positioned his ridesharing startup as an organization standing up for innovation and choice in the… → Read More
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