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In the latest chapter of GAFAM’s continuing bid to conquer online gaming, Microsoft has acquired PlayFab which helps game developers launch their titles online more quickly with simplified backend services. The startup will be integrated into Microsoft’s Azure gaming group.
The Seattle-based startup had raised around $13 million in funding from investors. Terms of the deal… Read More
Source: Tech Crunch
The address book is the last, worst default app you rely on. It’s time it got as smart as the rest of our phones. That’s the idea behind SuperPhone. Email isn’t how you build relationships anymore. Yet most business software sanctifies the spammy inbox when it’s the immediacy of text messaging that keeps people in touch today. Musician Ryan Leslie learned that when… Read More
Source: Tech Crunch
The U.S. military has responded to privacy concerns over a heatmap feature in the Strava app which displays users’ fitness activity — and has been shown exposing the location of military facilities around the world — by saying it’s reviewing the rules around usage of wireless devices and apps by its personnel. Read More
Source: Tech Crunch
Microsoft’s Slack competitor, Microsoft Teams, rolled out its biggest update since the software’s launch last year, the company says. The focus of the new set of features is allowing users to better work with apps – something Microsoft Teams accomplishes via integrations, new search and discovery features, commands, and more.
Some of the features are, in fact, quite… Read More
Source: Tech Crunch
By now you’ve probably heard that the Dell board is supposed to be convening later this month to figure out how it might reorganize itself to deal with the mountain of debt it took on when it bought EMC in 2015 for $67 billion. The rumors began on Friday and involved a couple of possible scenarios including Dell going public or Dell buying the remainder of VMware (which I’m not… Read More
Source: Tech Crunch
Don’t have a TV or just want to watch Kesha, Cardi B and Lady Gaga walk the red carpet from the comfort of your laptop? Thanks to modern tech, that’s possible tonight. James Corden kicks off the 60th annual Grammy awards this evening, Sunday, January 28, at 7:30 pm EST/4:30 pm PST, which is set to run for three and a half hours (though, fair warning, these types of awards shows… Read More
Source: Tech Crunch
At first, I wasn’t impressed by The Shape of Water‘s visual effects.
That might seem like a strange thing to say about a movie whose effects have been nominated for multiple awards (though not an Oscar, despite the film’s 13 nominations). What I mean is this: When I was watching, I never wondered about the technology behind the merman — the sometimes-monstrous… Read More
Source: Tech Crunch
One of the great entrepreneurs of the 20th century, Ingvar Kamprad, the founder of IKEA, passed away today. As Reuters pointed out in its short biography, Kamprad created a store — as a teenager mind you — that today has more than 400 locations, revenues of $62 billion, and a cultural ubiquity that very few consumer products could ever hope to attain. Having read the IKEA story… Read More
Source: Tech Crunch
I don’t like tech conferences. I mean, of course I don’t, they’re not meant for people like me. I’m an introvert, so I find them exhausting, and am (presumably) less likely than an extrovert to meet interesting or contributory people. I read much faster than people talk, so they’re not a good way for me to learn things. But there’s more to my dislike than… Read More
Source: Tech Crunch
So that flamethrower that Elon Musk teased The Boring Company would start selling after it ran out of its 50,000 hats? Yeah, it’s real – and you can pre-order one now if you want need a ridiculous way to spend $500. Musk revealed the flamethrower on Saturday, after some digging tipped its existence late last week. The Boring Company Flamethrower is functional, too, as you can see… Read More
Source: Tech Crunch