Urban transportation app Citymapper quietly rolled out an app update that lets you find many alternative mobility services in the app. You can now find the nearest dockless bike or electric scooter around you (not the Bird and Lime kind, the motorcycle kind). The integrations are already live in many cities. The company didn’t add new buttons for each service because it was already getting quite crowded with buses, subways and ride-sharing services. If you tap the bike button, you get a map view of the streets around you. In addition to traditional bike-sharing services, you’ll now find colored dots…
Author: geekfenceblogger
In what appears to be the latest salvo in a new, wired form of protest, developer Sam Lavigne posted code that scrapes LinkedIn to find Immigration and Customs Enforcement employee accounts. His code, which basically a Python-based tool that scans LinkedIn for keywords, is gone from Github and Gitlab and Medium took down his original post. The CSV of the data is still available here and here and WikiLeaks has posted a mirror. “I find it helpful to remember that as much as internet companies use data to spy on and exploit their users, we can at times reverse the…
Fresh on the heels of the launch of betaworks Studios, the startup factory is opening its doors once again as applications have opened for LiveCamp. LiveCamp is the fourth installment of betaworks’ accelerator program, following the progress of BotCamp, VoiceCamp and VisionCamp. LiveCamp is a bit less straightforward with its thesis. Inspired by Twitch streamers and platforms like HQ Trivia, LiveCamp is looking for companies that are interested in digital live experiences, where the line between performer and audience is blurred. “You can think of eSports with commenting as the 1.0,” said Camps General Manager Danika Laszuk. “HQ really brought…
Tinder will begin testing a new feature aimed at helping people find more matches who fit their particular interests across areas like education, job type, hobbies and other details. “Tinder Picks,” as the new feature is being called, will be available only to those on Tinder Gold – the existing subscription offering that includes a number of Tinder Plus features, like Passport, Rewind, Unlimited Likes and more, but also allows users to see who has already liked them. Combined, Tinder Plus and Gold had an average of 3.5 million paid subscribers in Q1, but Tinder doesn’t break down the two offerings…
Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines. This week TechCrunch’s Silicon Valley Editor Connie Loizos and I jammed out on a couple topics as Alex Wilhelm was out managing his fake stock game spreadsheets or something. (The jury is out on whether this was a good or bad thing.) First up is Twitter buying Smyte, a startup targeting fixes for spam and abuse. This is, of course, Twitter’s perennial problem and it’s one that it’s been trying to fix for some time — but definitely not there yet. The deal…
Labstep, an app and online platform to help scientists record and reproduce experiments, has raised £1 million in new funding, including from existing investors. The company, whose team has a background in commercial R&D and academic research, including at Oxford University, is backed by Seedcamp and says it plans to use the new capital to double its team to 12, and for further product development. This will include the launch of a marketplace for lab supplies, and is one of the ways Labstep plans to generate revenue. The startup will also add features to its app that streamline how scientists…
There are only 10 more days until The Europas where the winners of this year’s startup awards will be announced at our gala dinner, in association with TechCrunch! The Europas half-day “Unconference” will have a fantastic lineup of panels taking place in the afternoon before the awards. This year, we’ve done away with mainstage lectures, and we’ve created a series of more tightly focused discussion panels that give you a front-row seat to the biggest investors, founders and thought leaders in tech. No more seeing a huge investor or founder on stage and not even getting to talk to them!…
TechCrunch is hosting its first startup competition for entrepreneurs across the Middle East and North Africa! We’ve wanted to bring TechCrunch to the region for a long time, and now thanks to our sponsor Facebook, TechCrunch is bringing the Startup Battlefield competition to Beirut on October 3 this year, hosted at the Beirut Digital District (BDD), in the heart of the Lebanese startup scene. We’re looking for the Middle East and North Africa’s best innovators, makers and technical entrepreneurs to participate in TechCrunch Startup Battlefield MENA 2018. Startups of all kinds shooting for an exit or IPO should apply. TechCrunch…
Twitter today announced it was acquiring the “trust and safety as a service” startup Smyte to help it better address issues related to online abuse, harassment, spam, and security on its platform. But it also decided to immediately shut down access to Smyte’s API without warning, leaving Smyte’s existing customers no time to transition to a new service provider. The change left Smyte’s current customer base stranded, with production issues related to the safety of their own platforms. Needless to say, many were not happy about this situation and took to Twitter to register their complaints. According to Smyte’s website, its clients…
Welcome to Bag Week 2018. Every year your faithful friends at TechCrunch spend an entire week looking at bags. Why? Because bags — often ignored but full of our important electronics — are the outward representations of our techie styles, and we put far too little thought into where we keep our most prized possessions. I’ve always been wary of modular, rail-based bag systems. They’ve always struck me as rather military and imposing, which I suppose is kind of the point. Even Mission Workshop, whose other bags I have always enjoyed, put out one that seemed to me excessive. But…