blogger better: 2017-11-19

Saturday, November 25, 2017

OnePlus 5T makes the best deal in smartphones even better

{rss:content:encoded} OnePlus 5T makes the best deal in smartphones even better http://ift.tt/2iPixzi http://ift.tt/2BaIPmi November 25, 2017 at 11:46PM

Three years and seven phones later, it’s hard to argue with OnePlus’s methods. That’s not to say it hasn’t made its share of missteps along the way (it definitely has), but the company has produced quality phones at affordable prices basically since day one. Read More

Pokémon Go creator raises $200 million ahead of Harry Potter game launch

{rss:content:encoded} Pokémon Go creator raises $200 million ahead of Harry Potter game launch http://ift.tt/2A4GTPd http://ift.tt/2AuzyZV November 24, 2017 at 09:24PM

Pokémon Go creator Niantic has raised a new $200 million in funding, reports The Wall Street Journal. The Series B raise was led by Spark Capital, and includes participation from Founders Fund, Meritech, Javelin Venture Capital, You & Mr. Jones and NetEase, Inc. Spark partner Megan Quinn is also joining Niantic’s board as part of the new financing deal. Niantic is known for its… Read More

Snap Inc’s stock tanked after missing revenue expectations by $30 million last quarter, so Snapchat is looking to win over businesses with immersive new ads formats. This week it introduced two new forms of ads: Promoted Stories which string together multiple Snaps into a longer-form slideshows openable from a tile on the Stories page that’s shown to everyone in a given country,… Read More

from Social – TechCrunch http://ift.tt/2jjBfP0 Snapchat seeks salvation in long-form and “hands-on” AR ads Josh Constine http://ift.tt/2iNlWic
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Snapchat seeks salvation in long-form and “hands-on” AR ads

{rss:content:encoded} Snapchat seeks salvation in long-form and “hands-on” AR ads http://ift.tt/2iNlWic http://ift.tt/2jjBfP0 November 24, 2017 at 07:04PM

A number of bed-in-a-box startups have taken different approaches to selling their mattresses and bed ware in the last year. Casper launched it’s own branded physical store locations, same goes for Tuft and Needle. However, Purple, a mattress startup out of Utah that recently merged with a New York shell company, took a different approach; instead striking a distribution deal with… Read More

http://ift.tt/2A4vyhU Mattress startup Purple launches in 13 Mattress Firm store locations http://ift.tt/2hReDVO

Twitter is experimenting with a new feature that will show how many people are “talking about” individual, popular tweets. The metric shows up under some embedded tweets when they appear elsewhere on the web, and seems to replace both the retweet and replies totals with one, cumulative total. The new look for embeds as seen above is just a small experiment according to Dan Jackson,… Read More

from Social – TechCrunch http://ift.tt/2jiSz6Q Twitter testing a feature that shows how many are ‘talking about’ tweets Darrell Etherington http://ift.tt/2ziD8Cf
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Revolut now has a million customers for its banking alternative

{rss:content:encoded} Revolut now has a million customers for its banking alternative http://ift.tt/2zi9UDy http://ift.tt/2mWbk4X November 24, 2017 at 08:01AM

Fintech startup Revolut has reached a big milestone. The company now has over a million customers across Europe two years and a half after launch. The company says that customers have saved $160 million in foreign exchange fees compared to a traditional bank account (£120 million). The startup tries to match the interbank rates as much as possible and charges 0.5 percent on your transaction… Read More

Revolut now has a million customers for its banking alternative

The Moto Z’s Alexa Smart Speaker is mostly useless

{rss:content:encoded} The Moto Z’s Alexa Smart Speaker is mostly useless http://ift.tt/2A7EbpU http://ift.tt/2jjFlGL November 23, 2017 at 09:50PM

The Moto Z is a phone built around a strong gimmick, but it’s a gimmick nonetheless. A little over a year after release, the company has added some interesting Mods to its selection, but none have offered an entirely compelling justification for the phone’s modular system. That certainly applies to the new Alexa Smart Speaker. Read More

Last month, Twitter started work on a new “save for later” feature for Tweets in your timeline that you wanted to flag to refer back to in the future. Now it’s given the feature a name — it will be called Bookmarks — and is running tests with it. The news was made public last night in a series of Tweets from Tina Koyama, a staff product designer at the company,… Read More

from Social – TechCrunch http://ift.tt/2tUv4Ft Twitter is testing Bookmarks, a feature to privately flag Tweets for later Ingrid Lunden http://ift.tt/2hZ1nCk
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Welcome to Thanksgiving table talk circa 2017. It’s true that AI and machine learning are changing the world, and in a few years, it will be embedded in all of the technology in our lives. So maybe it makes sense to help folks at home better understand machine learning. After all, without deep knowledge of current tech, autonomous vehicles seem dangerous, Skynet is coming, and the… Read More

http://ift.tt/2ArsjCh Putting the “AI” in ThAInksgiving http://ift.tt/2A2hyp8

Everyone loves drones, including companies with very specific needs. Drones once were the hot new thing and the perfect birthday gift. But drone makers are now realizing that there’s a bigger opportunity with commercial use cases, from farming to inspection. That’s why we’re excited to announce that three founders of three amazing companies in the drone industry will join us… Read More

http://ift.tt/2yFeH5S Let’s talk about commercial drones at TechCrunch Disrupt Berlin http://ift.tt/2zvZAfC

In another example of Starling Bank jumping on the Open Banking/PSD2 train before legislation in the U.K. and Europe next year will force banks to do so, it is launching its latest API partnership: this time with Yoyo Wallet, the U.K.-based mobile payment and loyalty platform. Read More

http://ift.tt/2hMn7xp Mobile payment and loyalty platform Yoyo Wallet integrates with Starling Bank http://ift.tt/2A7baea

Indian home healthcare platform Portea Medical raises $26M Series C

Portea Medical, one of India’s biggest platforms for home healthcare visits, has raised $26 million in Series C funding to expand its service range. The round was led by Sabre Partners and MEMG CDC, with participation from returning investors Accel (which led Portea’s Series B two years ago), the World Bank Group’s International Finance Corporation and Qualcomm Ventures. Read More

http://ift.tt/2zuLqew Indian home healthcare platform Portea Medical raises $26M Series C http://ift.tt/2iHJPaX

Net Neutrality advocates plan protests for December 7 at Verizon stores

{rss:content:encoded} Net Neutrality advocates plan protests for December 7 at Verizon stores http://ift.tt/2B1UJz2 http://ift.tt/2B4oMWv November 22, 2017 at 06:35PM

On December 14, the FCC will vote on whether or not to roll back Obama-era policies protecting a free and open internet. In fact, during yesterday’s announcement of the upcoming vote, the FCC neglected to mention the historic 22 million comments on the issue, the majority of which were opposed to its rollback. Read More

French startup Snips is now helping you build a custom voice assistant for your device. Snips doesn’t use Amazon’s Alexa Voice Service or Google Assistant SDK — the company is building its own voice assistant so that you can embed it on your devices. And the best part is that it doesn’t send anything to the cloud as it works offline. If you want to understand how a… Read More

http://ift.tt/2wFe2MN Snips lets you build your own voice assistant to embed into your devices http://ift.tt/2BdUFga

Facebook is building out a tool to show which Facebook Pages or Instagram accounts associated with Russian Internet Research Agency election troll farm you Liked or followed. Launching by the end of the year as part of the Facebook Help Center, the tool will show a list of all the IRA accounts you followed. The IRA is a group based in St. Petersburg, Russia with ties to Kremlin. It’s… Read More

from Social – TechCrunch http://ift.tt/2tQKa27 Facebook will show which Russian election troll accounts you followed Josh Constine http://ift.tt/2AnbZm3
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Minted rolls out an on-demand photography service for around $100 per session

{rss:content:encoded} Minted rolls out an on-demand photography service for around $100 per session http://ift.tt/2B3XFv1 http://ift.tt/2B3Yd43 November 22, 2017 at 06:00PM

When you go through a big life event — say a milestone birthday for a parent or a wedding — there are probably going to be a lot of mini-events that happen before and after the big one. But you might not think to hire a professional photographer for them and stick with a couple phone cameras because it can be tough to find those photographers. So Minted, a company that’s… Read More