Today’s retail economy is focused on acquisition and retention costs. Getting into people’s homes and turning them into long-term brand buyers is the goal, and appliance makers control an untapped resource — the Internet of Things — that can effectively extend a brand or retailer’s supply chain visibility into the home. Read More
Pre-natal genetic testing, VR drones, and fracking nanoparticles were a few of the products featured in Y Combinator’s first Virtual Demo Day. They come from the YC Fellowship, a program designed to let the startup school help idea- or prototype-stage companies, beyond the full-fledged businesses in its main accelerator. The 8-week full-time fellowship mostly offers remote guidance,… Read More
Hardware is hard. Building a hardware startup is even harder. The good news is that the staggering amount of innovation in rapid prototyping, 3D printing and backend-as-a-service platforms has made hardware development move at Internet-development speeds. It’s not easy, but it is faster. Read More
Things can get messy if you have sex on your period, so many couples avoid it. But The Flex Company wants to replace outdated pads and tampons with a sleek, disc-shaped blood blocker. Flex can be worn during sex to prevent making a mess.
The Flex discs are disposable, can be worn for up to 12 hours and even come in a stylish little packet. They’re doctor-approved to be hypoallergenic… Read More
The battle between headsets you strap to your heads is being brought to a rolling boil this week, as Microsoft’s HoloLens Dev Kit and Oculus Rift both start shipping to customers. Being a lover of cutting-edge tech, you’d expect I’d be in lust with both technologies, but no. HoloLens did something to me that Oculus never managed: It made me think I was leaping into the… Read More
Well that was quick. A couple of days after a bug affecting iOS started making the news, Apple has released a fix. iOS 9.3.1, now available on the iPhone and iPad, fixes this bug. The changelog is quite short as there’s only one item. “Fixes an issue that caused apps to be unresponsive after tapping on links in Safari and other apps,” it says. Read More
The Xbox One is about to become a far more interesting (and accessible) platform for indie game developers — and regular users will soon be able to use their console to chat with Microsoft’s Cortana personal assistant, too. Ever since Microsoft launched its Xbox One console, the company promised it would allow any developer to develop apps for it — but until now, you… Read More
