{rss:content:encoded} Google Maps now lets users add wheelchair accessibility details for locations http://ift.tt/2sC7WL9 http://ift.tt/2tUVqdl July 08, 2017 at 11:33PM 
Back in December, Google finally added accessibility details to Maps. It was a long awaited addition, but an extremely welcome one for the more than three million people in the U.S. who require wheelchair accessibility. As we noted at the time, however, the available information still left a lot to be desired. Maps has currently collected accessibility data for almost seven million places,… Read More
Back in December, Google finally added accessibility details to Maps. It was a long awaited addition, but an extremely welcome one for the more than three million people in the U.S. who require wheelchair accessibility. As we noted at the time, however, the available information still left a lot to be desired. Maps has currently collected accessibility data for almost seven million places,… Read More
Though the region known as Silicon Valley covers dozens of municipalities, a few cities get outsized attention in tech circles. Everyone knows Palo Alto, Mountain View, San Jose and San Francisco as hotbeds for startup innovation. But they’re not the only ones. Less-talked-about cities in the region are also raking in funding. 
Station F is the world’s biggest startup campus. Thousands of entrepreneurs are currently moving into the new building here in Paris. But if you’re still wondering what it actually looks like, we visited Station F and interviewed the two persons behind it — Roxanne Varza and Xavier Niel. Station F is a massive building that has been completely renovated and now features… 
Vidcode, a Y Combinator-backed startup focused on teaching teens how to code, has raised $1.5 million in seed funding for its curriculum. While there are a number of learn-to-code platforms out there today, Vidcode’s approach is to make coding more interesting to teens by connecting it to their existing interests – like Snapchat filters and memes – while also allowing… 
One of the promises of voice-based computing is the ability to make home automation simpler – something that major tech companies, including Amazon, Apple and Google, are now tackling with their own voice assistants and smart speakers. But their solutions are still somewhat clunky, both in terms of the software interface for configuring your smart home and the voice commands you use to… 
As more and more product images get shared on platforms like Instagram, Pinterest and Tumblr, ShareIQ says it can help brands understand what’s going on. Founder and CEO Brian Killen used to work as the head of strategy at marketing company Acxiom, and he recalled being told by a retail marketing executive, “I see my pictures all over Pinterest and websites and all over the globe,… 
Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital podcast, where we dig into the hype, the dollars, and, recently, the down exits. This week was a fun one. Matthew Lynley is out on vacation, so TechCrunch’s own Megan Rose Dickey (the current host of Bullish and general badass) joined Katie Roof and myself — Alex Wilhelm — to dive into the news of the week.… 
George Hotz, aka geohot, is fidgeting in his living room, wearing dark shades and a giant comma on his t-shirt as he shows me his company’s latest product, an $88 universal car interface called Panda. Hotz both lives and works in a residential San Francisco neighborhood with a team of 20-somethings who are helping him build Comma.ai, the self-driving car startup Hotz founded to take… 
The Panoptic Studio is a new body scanner created by researchers at Carnegie Mellon University that will be used to understand body language in real situations. The scanner, which looks like something Doc Brown would stick Marty in to prevent him from committing fratricide, creates hundreds of videos of participants inside the massive dome interacting, talking, and arguing. The team has… 
French startup Side raised another $5.7 million with Xavier Niel leading the round. As the name suggests, Side lets students make some money on the side by working for companies for a few days or weeks. It’s a marketplace that helps you scale your workforce for a product launch, peak season and more. Aglaé Ventures, Jacques-Antoine Granjon, Antoine Martin are also participating in… 
It’s time for the big G-20 summit in Hamburg, and Russian phone customizers Caviar are commemorating the occasion with a very special Nokia 3310 (the new one). Encased in the best metals, titanium and gold, the back features a touching double profile of Trump and Putin. Only 149,000 rubles, or about $2,500. 
Sometimes, it seems like every possible on-demand service that could be created has already come along — and, in some cases, gone away. But Recycle Track Systems (RTS), a two-year-old, New York-based waste and recycling management technology company, serves to remind that there remain plenty of opportunities for startups looking to turn our smartphones into lucrative businesses. 
Camera companies have had to adapt their business models quickly over the past decade to account for the rise of smartphone cameras. Part of that has involved some interesting developments on the high-end. RED has built incredibly high-powered cameras that have become the darling of many in the film industry, now they’re setting their sights on the smartphone market with what seems to be… 
Lightricks, the maker of the popular selfie-correcting app Facetune is debuting a new photo-editing app today called Enlight Photofox. This is the second time that Lightricks has launched the next generation of an existing app as an entirely new, standalone application – a strategy that’s still somewhat rare on today’s App Store, outside of sequels to games, like Monument 2… 
Meet Sticky, the next app from the startup behind Prisma, which turns selfies into stylized and/or animated stickers for sharing to your social feeds. Sticky is launching today on iOS, with an Android version due in a week or two. 
“Markett is seeking to redistribute a piece of these brands’ ad budgets and put it into the pockets of their loyal customers,” says founder and chief executive Franky Bernstein. 
Driverless AI is the latest product from H2O.ai aimed at lowering the barrier to making data science work in a corporate context. The tool assists non-technical employees with preparing data, calibrating parameters and determining the optimal algorithms for tackling specific business problems with machine learning. At the research level, machine learning problems are complex and… 
OnboardIQ wants to make applying for hourly work less of a hassle, with a mobile-first platform that businesses can use to reduce the time they spend finding and hiring qualified workers. Now, three years in the company has raised $9.1 million to expand their product and customer reach. 
Instagram has updated its Stories feature with the ability to reply to stories with either photos or video. This means you can use all the creative tools found in the Instagram camera, including filters, Boomerang, rewind and stickers to show the original poster exactly how your really feel about what they’re sharing. The replies feature also lets you use a new sticker that actually… 
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