blogger better: 2016-04-17

Saturday, April 23, 2016

Technology is finally eliminating geography as a barrier to real estate investing

Real estate investing has long elicited a variety of emotions, running the gamut from excitement to anxiety. When dealing with significant sums of capital, feelings of apprehension tend to creep in, especially regarding neighborhood quality, tenant and property management issues and liquidity. But those feelings of apprehension should be balanced by the knowledge that real estate as an asset… Read More

http://ift.tt/1WOiKk8 Technology is finally eliminating geography as a barrier to real estate investing http://ift.tt/1T6hPGb

Two years after launching Casper prepares for European expansion

It’s been exactly two years since Casper started selling mattresses, and CEO Philip Krim said it’s already turned into a big business, with $100 million in revenue (not to mention a $550 million valuation) in 2015. Next up is international expansion, with the New York City-headquartered startup opening an office in Berlin. That office currently has four employees, but Krim said… Read More

http://ift.tt/1BIkALC Two years after launching, Casper prepares for European expansion http://ift.tt/1VHfW9e

mNectar introduces force touch to its playable ads

{rss:content:encoded} mNectar introduces force touch to its playable ads http://ift.tt/1VHa8N3 http://ift.tt/1WhoRwz April 22, 2016 at 06:21PM mnectar

mNectar allows mobile game developers to promote their games with ads that people can actually play before downloading. That means its technology needs to evolve with the games, so now it’s announcing support for force touch interactions. Also known as 3D touch, the term refers to touch interfaces that are affected by the amount of pressure applied by the user. mNectar CEO Wally Nguyen… Read More

Fortune 500 company Avery Dennison and IoT startup EVRYTHNG have done a big deal to ‘switch on’ the apparel industry. This will enable a minimum of 10 billion apparel and footwear products to be created with unique digital identities and data profiles in the cloud over the next three years. Read More

http://ift.tt/247g7Mg Over 10 billion shirts and shoes will soon talk back to you via your phone http://ift.tt/1r3RzWl

The number of people using the Tor anonymizing browser to access Facebook has passed the one million mark this month for the first time, Facebook has announced. Read More

from Social – TechCrunch http://ift.tt/1OgYAfa Facebook usage over Tor passes 1M per month Natasha Lomas http://ift.tt/213YE5I
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If you’re addicted to Facebook or prone to getting lost in bowels of your newsfeed, then Focusbook is a neat Chrome plug-in that might help. Read More

from Social – TechCrunch http://ift.tt/1SzZF57 Focusbook helps you fight your Facebook addiction Jon Russell http://ift.tt/1SzZBT1
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A year ago, Twitter ramped up its game in location services when it announced an integration with Foursquare to provide venue suggestions when you wanted to tag where you were Tweeting. Interestingly, that deal appears to have applied only to the U.S., and now that Twitter’s expanding the service, it has partnered with one of Foursquare’s big competitors, Yelp, to power it.… Read More

from Social – TechCrunch http://ift.tt/1YKpLB1 Twitter integrates with Yelp for location tags in the UK and Japan, bypassing Foursquare Ingrid Lunden http://ift.tt/2474d56
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Twitter integrates with Yelp for location tags in the UK and Japan bypassing Foursquare

{rss:content:encoded} Twitter integrates with Yelp for location tags in the UK and Japan, bypassing Foursquare http://ift.tt/2474d56 http://ift.tt/1YKpLB1 April 22, 2016 at 12:47PM yelp twitter

Snapchat lets you Face-Swap with your camera roll drops paid replays

{rss:content:encoded} Snapchat lets you Face-Swap with your camera roll, drops paid replays http://ift.tt/1Vo15jB http://ift.tt/1YJuEKD April 22, 2016 at 12:41AM Snapchat Face Swap Camera Roll

Snapchat is done selling you stuff. As of today’s update, every snap can be replayed once, but you can no longer buy extra replays. That means people with more money can’t break the rules of Snapchat any more. Snapchat launched $0.99 replays on top of the one free one you got per day, but along with the shut down of the Lens store that launched in November and closed in January… Read More

Medium, the online publishing platform led by Twitter co-founder Ev Williams, just announced that it has raised $50 million in Series C funding. It’s been less than a year since Medium raised a $57 million Series B, but Williams wrote that the company decided to raise additional funding “to bolster our resources now given the demand we’ve seen for the vision we are… Read More

http://ift.tt/1zEg0qB Medium raises another $50M http://ift.tt/1Sx1EnQ

Alphabet slides 5% after missing earnings expectations on revenue of $20.3B

{rss:content:encoded} Alphabet slides 5% after missing earnings expectations on revenue of $20.3B http://ift.tt/23MjzPD http://ift.tt/1QYis56 April 21, 2016 at 10:12PM alphabet-earnings

For a split second, Alphabet was the most valuable company in the world. Not so much any more, however, with the company’s market cap continuing to slide after it reported its first-quarter earnings. Relatively speaking, shares of Alphabet are only down around 5 percent in extended trading. But for a company worth more than $500 billion, that’s erasing tens of billions of dollars… Read More

Quick: you can send 20 gigabytes of data to the moon. What’s it going to be? Time’s up! Wikipedia? What a coincidence — that’s what the Part-Time Scientists, a team working on a homegrown lunar rover for Google’s Lunar XPRIZE, decided too! And they’re really planning to do bring Wikipedia to the Moon. Read More

from Social – TechCrunch http://ift.tt/23Mu2dP To the Moon! Lunar XPRIZE team looks to send Wikipedia into space aboard homemade rover Devin Coldewey http://ift.tt/1SyNq99
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Plastiq lets you pay any bill with your credit or debit card just by snapping a photo

{rss:content:encoded} Plastiq lets you pay any bill with your credit or debit card just by snapping a photo http://ift.tt/1VIMFdY http://ift.tt/26h519u April 21, 2016 at 07:52PM plastiq-bill-stack-ios

A new iPhone application launching today called Plastiq lets you pay any bill with your credit or debit card just by snapping a photo. The goal with the app is to offer something designed for mobile, that’s also more convenient than using a bank’s online bill pay feature. And more importantly, it allows bills to be paid with plastic – hence the name – as opposed to… Read More

Home loans are the Holy Grail of online lending. They come with high loan balances, steady returns and hefty fees. There also is a healthy liquid market for the securitized loans, and the debt is asset backed, which reduces risk and opens up the investor pool. On top of that, “establishment” mortgage lenders are not leading the pack with innovation, which means there is a lot of… Read More

http://ift.tt/1YJab8I Why startups can’t disrupt the mortgage industry http://ift.tt/1VEIhwU

TaskRabbit announced a detailed plan to improve the diversity of its workforce today. The plan is part of the Congressional Black Caucus’ Tech 2020 initiative, which aims to increase black representation and inclusion throughout the tech industry. Read More

http://ift.tt/1CdzeYM TaskRabbit announces plan to increase hiring of black employees http://ift.tt/1YIZYsX

Sean Parker relaunches Airtime a video chat room for watching together

{rss:content:encoded} Sean Parker relaunches Airtime, a video chat room for watching – together http://ift.tt/1Sw41qK http://ift.tt/26gTJSO April 21, 2016 at 06:00PM Airtime feature

Social networks make us lonely, and messaging feels transactional. There’s still no vibrant, real-time place to hang out with friends online. That’s why four years after Sean Parker’s chat roulette website Airtime fell flat, he’s reviving it as a mobile chat room where friends can share photos, music, and videos that they all experience simultaneously. Launching on iOS… Read More

Here are some great improvements that should be in iOS 10

{rss:content:encoded} Here are some great improvements that should be in iOS 10 http://ift.tt/1VIoZWT http://ift.tt/26gRHBW April 21, 2016 at 05:39PM Screen Shot 2016-04-21 at 5.34.49 PM

Let’s be honest, most concept videos suck. They show you an imaginary device that looks nothing like the final product and defy the laws of physics. But some software concept videos tick all the right boxes, like this one from MacStories. Federico Viticci and Sam Beckett teamed up to create the following iOS 10 concept video. It’s a beautified wish list for the upcoming release of iOS. Read More