blogger better: 2020-01-05

Friday, January 10, 2020

Instagram’s Boomerang evolves with SloMo, Echo, & Duo effects

Nearly five years after launching, Instagram’s back-and-forth video loop maker Boomerang is finally getting a big update. Users around the globe can now add SlowMo, “Echo” blurring, and “Duo” rapid rewind special effects to their Boomerangs, as well as trim their length. This is the biggest creative upgrade yet for one of mobile’s most popular content creation tools. The effects could help keep Instagram interesting. After so many years of Boomerangs, many viewers simply skip past them in Stories after the first loop since they’re so consistent....

{rss:content:encoded} Instagram’s Boomerang evolves with SloMo, Echo, & Duo effects https://ift.tt/39XXzY8 https://ift.tt/2R2vUwk January 10, 2020 at 09:53PM Nearly five years after launching, Instagram’s back-and-forth video loop maker Boomerang is finally getting a big update. Users around the globe can now add SlowMo, “Echo” blurring, and “Duo” rapid rewind special effects to their Boomerangs, as well as trim their length. This is the biggest creative upgrade yet for one of mobile’s most popular content creation tools. The effects...

A cannabis company won a CES award for 2020. Called Keeps, the desktop storage device features biometric security to secure cannabis products, and looks good while doing it. The CTA gave them an Innovations Award Nominee in October and then weeks later told the company they were unable to use the word “cannabis” when exhibiting. Keep Labs decided to stay home and not exhibit at the massive Consumer Electronics Show, potentially missing out on distribution deals, funding and increased brand awareness. Vaporizers, cannabis and tobacco alike have...

This week we’ve covered layoffs at unicorns both inside the Vision Fund and out. This afternoon we add two more to our list: Oyo and Rappi. The staff reductions are surprising — and not. They are surprising, as Oyo (India-based, low-cost hotels) and Rappi (Latin America-focused e-commerce) were bright lights in the Vision Fund’s crown. And the layoffs are not surprising as other famous unicorns have recently cut staff in a bid to reduce costs, diminish losses and aim closer to profitability. Our net lack of shock is underscored by the Vision Fund...

E-commerce phenom and D2C bright light Casper has filed to go public. The New York-based company that raised nearly $340 million while private, according to Crunchbase data, expects to trade on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker symbol “CSPR.” Its S-1 filing includes a $100 million placeholder figure for its possible capital raise. The company will need the money, as it loses money and burns cash. Let’s explore just how a mattress company does that. Growth, loss In the full years of 2017 and 2018, Casper recorded revenue of $250.9 million...

Hello and welcome back to our regular morning look at private companies, public markets and the gray space in between. A million dollars isn’t cool. You know what’s cool? Positive adjusted EBITDA, or something close to it. That’s the message from scooter unicorn Lime, which announced this week that it was cutting about 14% of its staff and closing a dozen markets. The staff reductions, numbering about 100, come as the company has touted efforts to improve its profitability — going as far as setting targets for when it might reach capital freedom,...

Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast, where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines. This week we had TechCrunch’s Alex Wilhelm and Danny Crichton on hand to dig into the news, with Chris Gates on the dials and more news than we could possibly cram into 30 minutes. So we went a bit over; sorry about that. We kicked off by running through a few short-forms to get things going, including: Alex wanted to talk about his recent story on Lily AI’s $12.5 million Series A. Canaan led the round into the ecommerce-focused...

Just Spices, the German-founded spice mix brand, is disclosing €13 million in Series B funding. The round is led by Five Seasons Ventures and Coefficient Capital, with Bitburger Ventures also joining. A direct to consumer play, Just Spices offers two main product lines: Spice Mixes and “IN MINUTES”. The first consists of various spice blends, with new blends being developed based on the sales and customer feedback data the startup is amassing. The second, launched in 2018, is recipe-driven, offering 27 “fix” meal preparations that sees Just Spices...

Scoodle, a U.K.-based startup that, in its own words, wants to help tutors become influencers, is disclosing $760,000 in pre-seed funding. Backing the round is Twitter co-founder Biz Stone, alongside Tiny VC, IFG Ventures and a number of unnamed angels. Scoodle is also the first edtech company to join the University of Oxford’s accelerator, Oxford Foundry. Launched in late 2018, Scoodle might be thought of as Quora-meets-tutoring. The platforms lets students post questions which tutors are then invited to answer as a way of boosting their reputation...

PayU acquires controlling stake in Indian credit business PaySense, to merge it with LazyPay

PayU is acquiring a controlling stake in fintech startup PaySense at a valuation of $185 million and plans to merge it with its credit business LazyPay as the nation’s largest payments processor aggressively expands its financial services offering. The Prosus-owned payments giant said on Friday that it will pump $200 million — $65 million of which is being immediately invested — into the new enterprise in the form of equity capital over the next two years. PaySense, which employs about 240 people, has served more than 5.5 million consumers to date,...

At CES 2020, one of the more well-represented gadget categories was definitely consumer robots – but none was more adorable than MarsCat, a new robo-pet from industrial robot startup Elephant Robotics. This robot pet is a fully autonomous companion that can respond to touch, voice and even play with toys, and it’s hard not to love the thing after spending even just a brief amount of time with it. MarsCat’s pedigree is a bit unusual, since Elephant Robotics is focused on building what’s known as ‘cobots,’ or industrial robots that are designed to...

Security and encryption experts from around the world are joining a number of organizations to call on India to reconsider its proposed amendments to local intermediary liability rules. In an open letter to India’s IT Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad on Thursday, 27 security and cryptography experts warned the Indian government that if it goes ahead with its originally proposed changes to the law, it could weaken security and limit the use of strong encryption on the internet. The Indian government proposed (PDF) a series of changes to its intermediary...

Mark Zuckerberg won’t be spending 2020 focused on wearing ties, learning Mandarin, or just fixing Facebook. “Rather than having year-to-year challenges, I’ve tried to think about what I hope the world and my life will look in 2030” he wrote today on Facebook. As you might have guessed, though, Zuckerberg’s vision for an improved planet involves a lot more of Facebook’s family of apps. His biggest proclamations in today’s notes include that: AR – Phones will remain the primary computing platform for most of the decade by augmented reality could...

{rss:content:encoded} Zuckerberg ditches annual challenges, but needs cynics to fix 2030 https://ift.tt/36Kz5zC https://ift.tt/39QFRFX January 09, 2020 at 08:35PM Mark Zuckerberg won’t be spending 2020 focused on wearing ties, learning Mandarin, or just fixing Facebook. “Rather than having year-to-year challenges, I’ve tried to think about what I hope the world and my life will look in 2030” he wrote today on Facebook. As you might have guessed, though, Zuckerberg’s vision for an improved planet involves a lot more of Facebook’s family of apps. His...

Lime is hoping to achieve profitability this year by laying off about 14% of its workforce and ceasing operations in 12 markets, Axios first reported. “Financial independence is our goal for 2020, and we are confident that Lime will be the first next-generation mobility company to reach profitability,” Lime CEO Brad Bao said in a statement to TechCrunch. “We are immensely grateful for our team members, riders, Juicers and cities who supported us, and we hope to reintroduce Lime back into these communities when the time is right.” That means Lime...

OrCam is expanding its product lineup with new devices that tackle new use cases. OrCam’s best-known device is the OrCam MyEye 2 — a tiny device for people with visual impairment that you clip on your glasses to help you navigate the world around you. At CES, OrCam announced that the MyEye 2 is getting new features. In addition to being able to point at text and signs to read text aloud, recognize faces and identify objects and money notes, you’ll be able to let the device guide you. For instance, you can say “what’s in front of me?” and the device...

Now that 2020 has started, Uber, DoorDash and Lyft are taking additional steps to undermine a new California law that would help more gig workers qualify as full-time employees. These moves entail product changes, lawsuits and ramped-up efforts to get a ballot initiative in front of voters that would roll back the new legislation. Let’s start with the most recent development; yesterday, Uber sent a note to users announcing that it’s getting rid of upfront pricing in favor of estimated prices, unless they’re Uber Pool rides. “Due to a new state...

The Daily Crunch is TechCrunch’s roundup of our biggest and most important stories. If you’d like to get this delivered to your inbox every day at around 9am Pacific, you can subscribe here. 1. Farewell, don’t @ me. Twitter will test a way to let you limit replies to your tweets Twitter users will soon have four options to “tailor” the replies to their tweets: anyone can reply, only those followed by the user can reply, only those tagged can reply, or setting a tweet to allow no replies at all. At CES, Twitter’s head of conversations Suzanne Xie...

Dana Stalder Contributor Share on Twitter Dana Stalder is a partner at Matrix Partners, where he invests predominantly in fintech, consumer marketplaces and enterprise software. More posts by this contributor Financial technology startups emerged as serious challengers to financial services in 2017 New rules for hiring executive candidates Jake Jolis Contributor Share on Twitter Jake Jolis is a partner at Matrix Partners and invests in seed and Series A technology companies including marketplaces and software. Two years ago,...

Hello and welcome back to our regular morning look at private companies, public markets and the gray space in between. Today, we’re exploring fundraising from outside the venture world. Founders looking to raise capital to power their growing companies have more options than ever. Traditional bank loans are an option, of course. As is venture capital. But between the two exists a growing world of firms and funds looking to put capital to work in young companies that have growing revenues and predictable economics. Firms like Clearbanc are rising...

Sisense, an enterprise startup that has built a business analytics business out of the premise of making big data as accessible as possible to users — whether it be through graphics on mobile or desktop apps, or spoken through Alexa — is announcing a big round of funding today and a large jump in valuation to underscore its traction. The company has picked up $100 million in a growth round of funding that catapults Sisense’s valuation to over $1 billion, funding that it plans to use to continue building out its tech, as well as for sales, marketing...

Pages

Search

Labels

blogger better

Followers

Blog Archive

Total Pageviews

Labels

Download

Blogroll

Friday, January 10, 2020

Thursday, January 9, 2020

blogger better Headline Animator

Popular Posts

Advertise Here

Labels

DRAGON FRUIT ON FACEBOOK

Blog Archive

Subscribe To

ADVERTISEMENT

Labels