Spotify doubled down on podcasts last week with a double deal to buy podcast networks Gimlet and Anchor. Those acquisitions were initially undisclosed, but Spotify has quietly confirmed that it spent €300 million, just shy of $340 million, to capture the companies. That’s according to an SEC filing — hat tip Recode’s Peter Kafka — which deals the…
With 5G phones debuting at MWC in mere days, there is discussion about whether they will be clunky bricks that die after a few hours? A reference design from Qualcomm offerrs a glimpse of the future: This is what 5G phones will look like. The post Exclusive: Take a look at what a next-generation 5G…
The Washington Post is reporting that Facebook’s row with the FTC could result in fines an order of magnitude larger than any levied against a tech company by the regulatory body before. While the talks appear to be ongoing, The Washington Post spoke with two people familiar with the situation who said the FTC is…
Like the initial HQ2 plan, today’s news that Amazon will no longer be setting up shop in Queens has been met with a flood of mixed reactions. Business advocacy and real estate are decrying the retail giant’s decision to pack up and leave. I know I’ve been flooded with responses from various corners all afternoon.…
Today, Zendesk announced it has hired three new executives — Elisabeth Zornes, former general manager of global support for Microsoft Office, as Zendesk’s first chief customer officer; former Adobe executive Colleen Berube as chief information officer and former Salesforce executive Shawna Wolverton as senior vice president, product. The company emphasized that the hirings were about…
General Motors announced last year it was getting into the electric bike business. But besides a crowdsourcing name competition and a few teasers, details were scant. Now, GM has given this new brand a name — ARĪV — as well as names for its two electric bikes, and some information about its go-to-market plan. The name…
Email is certainly not dead, despite many such exclamations, but there’s no question that it’s a bloated, seeping hog of a platform on which it’s incredibly difficult for businesses to develop meaningful relationships with customers. Postscript, a startup launching out of Y Combinator’s latest class, wants to learn from what email marketing got right and…
The WMA codec may be great when it comes to multi-channel surround sound, but unfortunately, it falters in terms of compatibility. Check out our guide on how to convert WMA files to MP3 via web-based or desktop methods. The post Here’s how to convert a file from WMA to MP3 appeared first on Digital Trends.…
So, we’ve already announced that Anca Dragan, Alexei Efros, Hany Farid, Melonee Wise, Peter Barrett, Rana el Kaliouby, Arnaud Thiercelin and Laura Major will all be appearing at April’s big robotics show on April 18 at UC Berkeley (Early Bird sale is on now!) This week we’ve got another big name to add to the…
Sight Diagnostics, an Israeli medical devices startup that’s using AI technology to speed up blood testing, has closed a $27.8 million Series C funding round. The company has built a desktop machine, called OLO, that analyzes cartridges manually loaded with drops of the patient’s blood — performing blood counts in situ. The new funding is…
