Month: May 2018

Rackspace today announced that it has acquired RelationEdge, a Salesforce implementation partner and digital agency. The companies did not disclose the financial details of the acquisition.

At first, this may sound like an odd acquisition. Rackspace is still best known for its hosting and managed cloud and infrastructure services, after all, and RelationEdge is all about helping businesses manage their Salesforce SaaS implementations. The company clearly wants to expand its portfolio, though, and add managed services for SaaS applications to its lineup. It made the first step in this direction with the acquisition of TriCore last year, another company in the enterprise application management space. Today’s acquisition builds upon this theme.

Gerard Brossard, the executive VP and general manager of Rackspace Application Services, told me that the company is still in the early days of its application management practice, but that it’s seeing good momentum as it’s gaining both new customers thanks to these offerings and as existing customers look to Rackspace for managing more than their infrastructure. “This allows us to jump into that SaaS management practice, starting with the leaders in the market,” he told me.

Why sell RelationEdge, a company that has gained some good traction and now has about 125 employees? “At the end of the day, we’ve accomplished a tremendous amount organically with very little funding,” RelationEdge founder and CEO Matt Stoyka told me. “But there is a huge opportunity in the space that we can take advantage of. But to do that, we needed more than was available to us, but we needed to find the right home for our people and our company.” He also noted that the two companies seem to have a similar culture and mission, which focuses more on the business outcomes than the technology itself.

For the time being, the RelationEdge brand will remain and Rackspace plans to run the business “with considerable independence under its current leadership.” Brossard noted that the reason for this is RelationEdge’s existing brand recognition.

Source: Tech Crunch

Though content creators in the augmented reality space are still struggling to find engaging use cases for early mobile augmented reality platforms, there is still a feverish amount of excitement inside the space from big tech companies and makers of key components that are plugging along in developing technologies that will enable consumer AR headsets.

One such startup, augmented reality display manufacturer DigiLens, announced today that they have raised $25 million of a Series C round from automotive parts manufacturing giant Continental.

DigiLens manufactures “waveguide displays,” which have been in use for a while but are pretty much the best technology available for making AR headset displays. While VR headset manufacturers are able to use conventional LCD or OLED displays to render an entirely new world while perhaps relying on passthrough feeds from cameras to simulate “mixed reality” environments, hardware manufacturers interested in making glasses-like AR headsets that aren’t incredibly ugly have had to rely on waveguides, which reflect light that is shined into the edge of a sheet of glass and bounced around inside by reflective elements before being shined directly into a user’s eyes. It’s all a bit more complicated than that, but importantly it allows for a mostly transparent screen that users can gaze through to see what’s going on in the real world.

What distinguishes DigiLens is that their manufacturing process relies on them “printing” these reflective elements directly onto the sheets of glass, a feature the company says helps them keep costs lower than its competitors.

Though Sunnyvale-based DigiLens has perhaps gotten the most press for its work on miniature waveguide displays perfect for the first generation of augmented reality headsets, like many other display makers in that space they’ve found more immediate opportunity in making heads-up displays for cars and motorcycle helmets. This significant investment from Continental now pins the company’s equity stake in DigiLens at 18 percent, the company tells me.

DigiLens has raised $60 million in funding to date from investors, including Sony and Foxconn according to Crunchbase.

Source: Tech Crunch

The Senate today voted 52-47 to disapprove the FCC’s recent order replacing 2015’s net neutrality rules, a pleasant surprise for internet advocates and consumers throughout the country. Although the disapproval will almost certainly not lead to the new rules being undone, it is a powerful statement of solidarity with a constituency activated against this deeply unpopular order.

Senate Joint Resolution 52 officially disapproves the rule under the Congressional Review Act, which allows Congress to undo recently created rules by federal agencies. It will have to pass in the House as well and then be signed by the President for the old rules to be restored.

On the other hand, forcing everyone in Congress to officially weigh in will potentially make this an issue in the upcoming midterms.

“‘Do you support net neutrality?’ Every candidate in America is going to be asked that question,” said Senator Ed Markey at a press conference after the vote.

Until yesterday Senate Democrats, who brought the resolution, had 50 supporters including one Republican, more than enough to force the issue to be voted on, but not enough to actually pass.

Two more Republicans, Alaska’s Lisa Murowski and Louisiana’s John Kennedy joined Maine’s Susan Collins to vote aye on the measure, making the final tally 52-47.

“We salute them for their courage,” said Senate minority leader Diane Feinstein at the press conference.

FCC Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel commended the Senate’s action.

“Today the United States Senate took a big step to fix the serious mess the FCC made
when it rolled back net neutrality late last year,” she said in a statement. “Today’s vote is a sign that the fight for internet freedom is far from over. I’ll keep raising a ruckus to support net neutrality and I hope others will too.”

Chairman Ajit Pai, however, was less congratulatory in his own statement.

“It’s disappointing that Senate Democrats forced this resolution through by a narrow margin,” he said, “But ultimately, I’m confident that their effort to reinstate heavy-handed government regulation of the Internet will fail.”

Representative Mike Doyle, who has been working on the corresponding effort in the House, said he is taking the next step.

With the Majority Leadership in the House opposed to this bill, the only way to bring it before the full House for a vote is through a discharge petition. Under the rules of the House, a bill must be brought to the House Floor for a vote if a majority of Representatives sign a discharge petition demanding it. I’m filing a discharge petition to force a vote on the legislation to save Net Neutrality, and we just need to get a majority of Representatives to sign it. I’m sure that every Member of the House will want to know where their constituents stand on this issue.

This story is developing, check back for updates.

Source: Tech Crunch

Drive.ai, the company that’s gearing up to launch an autonomous ride-hailing pilot in Frisco, Texas, just released a video showing off its driverless capabilities. Drive.ai’s service will initially launch with safety drivers in July, but the goal is to ultimately operate the ride-hailing platform without a driver behind the wheel.

In the video below, you can see a Drive.ai-powered car navigate both public and private roads without even a safety driver. On the lower right hand corner, you can see an augmented reality visualization that shows how the perception system works to identify cars, pedestrians, cyclists and other objects.

Before the July launch, Drive.ai will be collecting data along the routes and working with the city to educate people about self-driving technology. During this trial period, which starts in July and will run for six months, the service will be limited to employees, residents and patrons of Hall properties. Down the road, the goal is to open up the program to all residents of Frisco.

Source: Tech Crunch

It seems Virginia is for tech lovers.

According to a report in The Washington Post, Apple has been searching for places to put hubs as it contemplates how to spend the $30 billion it has committed for new facilities and 20,000 new employees in the U.S. over the next five years — and it looks like Virginia is on the list.

If Virginia makes the cut, Apple would be the second large tech company to call the state a (second or third) home, as Amazon is also reportedly looking at Virginia as a site for its second U.S. headquarters.

The Post is reporting that Apple could seek to put up to 20,000 employees in a potential Northern Virginia campus that would total 4 million square feet of office space.

Citing conversations between the company and Virginia Governor Ralph Northam, the Post reported that state officials had proposed several sites for the Apple campus, which would be two-thirds the size of the Pentagon and half of what Amazon is looking for in its new HQ.

All of the attention from Amazon and Apple speaks to the new realty for tech companies, which is that Washington, DC has its eye on them… and, conversely, these companies need to have a closer eye on Washington.

Facebook and Google, which is owned by parent company Alphabet, have both also expanded their presence in the DC area. Four years ago, Google opened new offices in the capital to much fanfare and ballyhoo, while Facebook plans to site a $1 billion data center in the Richmond area.

Source: Tech Crunch

Welcome back to CTRL+T, the TechCrunch podcast where Megan Rose Dickey and I talk about the stories we want to talk about and connect them to the culture in which we’re all trying to live.

We first tackled the flying taxi phenomenon that isn’t really a phenomenon anymore. It’s more like we’re all going to be ducking under the near-distant hum of electric vertical take-off and landing vehicles, or eVTOLs (really rolls off the tongue), sooner than later. You see, Uber already has deals with flying taxi manufacturers, electric vehicle battery and charger manufacturers and firms that want to build the “skyports” from which these things are going to have to take off and land. And the public learned all about it at Uber Elevate.

But before we talked about Uber, we spent some time discussing the inside of Megan’s mouth. Regular readers might recall a recent visit she made to Uniform Teeth to find out about the startup’s funding round. She tried out their 3D imaging tech and received some news she wasn’t quite prepared for. And recorded the audio.

It’s a rip-roaring episode, folks, so click play below to have a listen. Or better yet, subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, Overcast, CastBox or whatever other podcast platform you can find.

Source: Tech Crunch

Lime, the electric scooter and bike company, is looking to raise up to $500 million in new funding, Axios reports, citing sources. The round could come in the form of both equity and debt, according to Axios.

To date, Lime has raised $132 million from investors. Its most recent round was just in February, when it raised $70 million from Fifth Wall. I’ve reached out to Lime about this potential new round and will update this story if I hear back.

Earlier this month, Lime announced a partnership with Segway to build version two of its electric scooters. Lime, along with its competitors Bird and Spin, all ultimately rely on Ninebot, a Chinese scooter company that has merged with Segway. Ninebot is backed by investors including Sequoia Capital, Xiaomi and ShunWei.

Without taking into account Lime’s potential round, here’s where Lime compares to Bird and Spin.

The electric scooter space has been under scrutiny as of late — partly due to the fact that Bird, Spin and Lime deployed their respective scooters without explicit permission in San Francisco back in March.

Less than one month ago, the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Authority announced its permitting process for electric scooters. You can read more about that here.

And if you want the full breakdown of what the deal is in San Francisco as it pertains to electric scooters, here’s the story.

Source: Tech Crunch

Shortly after Uber announced the end of its forced arbitration policy for individual claims of sexual assault or harassment by Uber drivers, riders or employees, Lyft has done the same, Recode first reported. This means anyone who alleges sexual misconduct at the hands of Lyft drivers, riders or employees won’t have to argue their case behind closed doors. Instead, they can take the claim straight to court.

“Lyft has a longstanding track record of action in support of the communities we serve, from our commitment to the ACLU to standing up for pay equity and racial equality,” a Lyft spokesperson told TechCrunch. “The #metoo movement has brought to life important issues that must be addressed by society, and we’re committed to doing our part. Today, 48 hours prior to an impending lawsuit against their company, Uber made the good decision to adjust their policies. We agree with the changes and have removed the confidentiality requirement for sexual assault victims, as well as ended mandatory arbitration for those individuals so that they can choose which venue is best for them. This policy extends to passengers, drivers and Lyft employees.”

As the Lyft spokesperson noted in their comment, Uber made the decision to drop mandatory arbitration about 48 hours before the company had to respond to a lawsuit filed by 14 women who alleged they were assaulted by their drivers. The women also asked Uber to waive its arbitration clause.

Source: Tech Crunch

Twitter’s latest effort to curb trolling and abuse on the site takes some of the burden off users and places it on the company’s algorithms.

If you tap on a Twitter or real-world celebrity’s tweet, more often than not there’s a bot as one of the first replies. This has been an issue for so long it’s a bit ridiculous, but it all has to do with the fact that Twitter really only arranges tweets by quality inside search results and in back-and-forth conversations.

Twitter is making some new changes that calls on how the collective Twitterverse is responding to tweets to influence how often people see them. With these upcoming changes, tweets in conversations and search will be ranked based on a greater variety of data that takes into account things like the number of accounts registered to that user, whether that tweet prompted people to block the accounts and the IP address.

Tweets that are determined to most likely be bad aren’t just automatically deleted, but they’ll get cast down into the “Show more replies” section where fewer eyes will encounter them. The welcome change is likely to cut down on tweets that you don’t want to see in your timeline. Twitter says that abuse reports were down 8 percent in conversations where this feature was being tested.

Much like your average unfiltered commenting platform, Twitter abuse problems have seemed to slowly devolve. On one hand it’s been upsetting to users who have been personally targeted, on the other hand it’s just taken away the utility of poring through the conversations that Twitter enables in the first place.

It’s certainly been a tough problem to solve, but they’ve understandably seemed reluctant to build out changes that take down tweets without a user report and a human review. This is, however, a very 2014 way to look at content moderation and I think it’s grown pretty apparent as of late that Twitter needs to lean on its algorithmic intelligence to solve this rather than putting the burden entirely on users hitting the report button.

Source: Tech Crunch