Tag Archives: startups

As computers around the world get smarter and more powerful, internet heavyweight Google is determined to stay ahead of the game. The company said on Wednesday that it is buying a French artificial intelligence company called Moodstocks that specializes in image recognition. Moodstocks focuses on building image-recognition capabilities into phones, and first introduced software that …

Walking alone through a parking garage or down a side street, you feel uneasy. You wonder how you’d signal for help if you were truly in danger. You’re not alone. One in five women is sexually assaulted before graduating from college, said Anna Voremberg, managing director of End Rape on Campus. And it’s not just young women who worry about …

Instead of waiting for manufacturers to add a second camera to their phones, why not do it yourself with Weeview’s Eye-Plug dongle? Adding a 2-megapixel camera to your phone may not seem like much, but with the Eye-Plug, which costs $40 (around £30 or AU$55), you’re able to take 3D video as well as pictures that can be refocused. Now, …

Who says artificial intelligence doesn’t involve humans? Try telling that to Silicon Valley startup Unanimous AI. After recently achieving the rare “superfecta” — picking the top four finishers in the Kentucky Derby — using UNU, a new form of human-based AI using algorithms, the company is ready to share its formula with the public. After more than a year of …

Acadine Technologies, a startup trying to give phone users a software alternative to the dominant powers of Google and Apple, is on its last legs. With no new funding in hand, last month’s warnings of possible layoffs at Acadine are materializing. The company’s entire engineering staff will lose their jobs this week. In addition, the Hong Kong-based startup is warning …

An attempt to breathe new life into old-school flip phones is in trouble because a Chinese investor is withholding funds from a startup whose software is at the core of the effort. Tsinghua Unigroup International paid only the initial portion in 2015 of its planned $100 million investment in Hong Kong-based Acadine Technologies, leading the startup to warn dozens of …

Virtual reality is amazing, but there’s not a lot to do in VR quite yet. Now the maker of the HTC Vive virtual-reality headset is doing something about that. HTC is launching a global startup accelerator with $100 million in funding, with the hopes of investing in ambitious software and hardware ideas for virtual reality. The pilot program will begin …

If your laptop takes its sweet time booting up, then here are some things you can do to put a little pep back in its startup step. Get an SSD You can breathe new life and faster boot times into old laptops by replacing spinning hard drives (HDD) with a new solid-state drive (SSD). Without needing to physically spin a …

Ron Johnson is best known for developing the look of Apple’s iconic stores as its head of retail operations, then for nearly ruining J.C. Penney as its short-lived CEO. You can be excused for not knowing Johnson for his attempt at a third act, this time as the founder and CEO of e-commerce electronics retailer Enjoy, which hand-delivers and helps …

Xiaomi, the Chinese phone maker that has taken Asia and Brazil by storm, has its sights set on the US. The world’s second-most-valuable startup plans to sell its phones in the States by the end of 2017, Hugo Barra, former Googler and Xiaomi’s global vice president, said in an interview Wednesday. “I think we have to be in the western …