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At their peak, pagers were used by more than 10m people in Japan - but just 1,500 subscribers remained. from BBC News - Technology https://ift.tt/2o32UKd

A two-year trial found an improvement in symptoms for military veterans with PTSD. from BBC News - Technology https://ift.tt/2ndXKLd

Schools report growing worries about young people being tricked by emotional appeals online. from BBC News - Technology https://ift.tt/2mrhue1

Even as tens of millions of Indians have come online for the first time in recent years, most businesses in the nation remain offline. They continue to rely on long notebooks to keep a log of their financial transactions. A nine-month old startup that is helping them digitize their bookkeeping and accept online payments just raised a significant amount of capital to expand its operations. Khatabook , a Bangalore-based startup, said on Tuesday it has raised $25 million in a new financing round. The Series A round for the startup was funded by GGV Capital, Partners of DST Global, RTP Ventures, Sequoia India (Khatabook was part of its Surge accelerator program ), Tencent, and Y Combinator. A clutch of high-profile angel investors including Gokul Rajaram, James Viraldi, Aditya Agarwal, Sriram Krishnan, Amrish Rau, Anand Chandrasekharan, Deep Nishar, Gokul Rajaram, Jitendra Gupta, Kunal Bahl, and Kunal Shah also participated in the round. The startup has raised $29 million to date. Khata

You may know Max Deutsch from Month to Master , his yearlong self-improvement program where he tried to master one “expert-level” skill each month — such as solving a Rubik’s Cube in 20 seconds, holding a 30-minute conversation in a foreign language and even  challenging world champion Magnus Carlsen to a game of chess (Deustch lost). Now, Deustch and his co-founder Valentin Perez are launching Monthly , which Deustch told me is designed to “leverage technology to help scale this kind of learning to many more people.” Specifically, Monthly offers 30-day classes taught by experts and celebrities— the instructors often have hundreds of thousands or millions of YouTube subscribers. For example, Andrew Huang is teaching a class on music production, Daria Callie is teaching a class on realistic portrait painting and  Stevie Mackey is teaching a class on singing. When you enroll in a class, you’ll be assigned a different task every day; you might watch an instructional video one day,

A pilot project at Rotterdam airport plans to capture CO2 from the air and turn it into jet fuel. from BBC News - Technology https://ift.tt/2nfOK8f

Two years after the Los Angeles-based fintech startup Dave launched with a suite of money management tools to save consumers from overdraft fees , the company is now worth $1 billion thanks to a nascent banking practice that had investors lining up. The company used its overdraft protection service and money management display to shift customers’ focus away from the total balance that their account would show by giving them a sense of how much was actually left in their accounts once debits were included in their statements. “What was cool about our financial management product was that we were trying to use Dave as a replacement for their current bank,” says Jason Wilk, Dave’s co-founder and chief executive. Dave now counts over 4 million users for its financial management app and has roughly 800,000 people on the waiting list to use its banking services, Wilk says. The company has taken a methodical approach to opening its doors as a digital bank, in part because it wants to have

Project A , the Berlin-based VC, just raised a new $200 million fund (€180 million) to continue backing European startups at Seed and Series A stage. In addition, the firm — whose investments include WorldRemit, Catawiki, Voi and Uberall — announced it will now have a presence in London and Stockholm in order to put people on the ground in what it says are “two of its favorite ecosystems.” What better time, therefore, to catch up with the team at Project A, where we talked investment thesis, why Stockholm and London, and the increasing interest in Europe from U.S. LPs and VCs. Other subjects we touched on include diversity in venture, and, of course, Brexit! TechCrunch: You last raised a fund in 2016, totaling €140 million, what changes have you noticed since then with regards to the types of companies you are seeing and the European ecosystem as a whole? Uwe Horstmann: Entrepreneurs definitely matured a lot over the last few years. We see more and more of serial founders who

Boris Johnson says everyone in the UK should have fast full-fibre broadband, but what is it? from BBC News - Technology https://ift.tt/2oIC36B

Since launching in the United States five years ago, SmartNews , the news aggregation app that recently hit unicorn status , has quietly built a reputation for presenting reliable information from a wide range of publishers. The company straddles two very different markets: the U.S. and its home country of Japan, where it is one of the leading news apps. SmartNews wants readers to see it as a way to break out of their filter bubbles, says Jeannie Yang, its senior vice president of product, especially as the American presidential election heats up. For example, it recently launched a feature, called “News From All Sides,” that lets people see how media outlets from across the political spectrum are covering a specific topic. The app is driven by machine-learning algorithms, but it also has an editorial team led by Rich Jaroslovsky, the first managing editor of WSJ.com and founder of the Online News Association. One of SmartNews’ goal is to surface news that its users might not seek

Since launching in the United States five years ago, SmartNews , the news aggregation app that recently hit unicorn status , has quietly built a reputation for presenting reliable information from a wide range of publishers. The company straddles two very different markets: the U.S. and its home country of Japan, where it is one of the leading news apps. SmartNews wants readers to see it as a way to break out of their filter bubbles, says Jeannie Yang, its senior vice president of product, especially as the American presidential election heats up. For example, it recently launched a feature, called “News From All Sides,” that lets people see how media outlets from across the political spectrum are covering a specific topic. The app is driven by machine-learning algorithms, but it also has an editorial team led by Rich Jaroslovsky, the first managing editor of WSJ.com and founder of the Online News Association. One of SmartNews’ goal is to surface news that its users might not seek

Chinese mobile phone and device maker Transsion has listed in an IPO on Shanghai’s STAR Market, a Transsion spokesperson confirmed to TechCrunch.  Headquartered in Shenzhen, Transsion is a top seller of smartphones in Africa under its Tecno brand. The company has also started to support venture funding of African startups. Transsion issued 80 million A shares at an opening price of 35.15 yuan (≈ $5.00) to raise 2.8 billion yuan (or ≈ $394 million). A shares are the common shares issued by mainland Chinese companies and are normally available for purchases only by mainland citizens.   Transsion’s IPO prospectus is  downloadable (in Chinese)  and its STAR Market listing  application is available  on the Shanghai Stock Exchange’s website. STAR is the Shanghai Stock Exchange’s new Nasdaq-style board for tech stocks that went live in July with some 25 companies going public. Transsion plans to spend 1.6 billion yuan (or $227 million) of its STAR Market raise on building more phone

The EcoFlow Delta is a new battery generator available on Kickstarter with incredible features claimed. Most are true, some are not. Devices like the Delta offer incredible battery storage capacity. Designed for more than just recharging phones and tablets, these can run refrigerators, pumps, power tools and medical equipment. They’re great for emergencies, camping and general use where power is not available. Similar devices have been on the market for some years, so I was eager to verify EcoFlow’s claims. The EcoFlow Delta can recharge from a wall outlet to 80% in an hour. It’s amazing. The GoalZero Yeti battery of a similar size takes 25 hours. This capability means the Delta can be used and then reused more than competitors. The device is currently on Kickstarter, where it quickly acquired more than $2 million from over 2,000 backers. The device’s features listed on the Kickstarter page are clear, but after testing a pre-production unit, I found several of these advertised capa

Patricia Nakache Contributor Patricia Nakache is a general partner at Trinity Ventures . More posts by this contributor The next frontier in real estate technology Defensible strategies for food tech entrepreneurs facing the Amazon juggernaut Across the political, social and economic stage, women’s issues are finally receiving heightened attention and priority. There are  more women than ever seeking political office ;  funding for female-founded startups is reaching record levels  (even if they still have a long way to go to reach gender parity);  a sizable cohort of female-founded and led companies have achieved billion-dollar unicorn valuations ; and several women-led companies, including  PagerDuty ,  The RealReal , and  Eventbrite , have entered the public markets with successful IPOs. What’s driving so much positive change? Clearly, broadened awareness of gender and power issues, largely due to #MeToo, as well as an increase in the number of female investors, t

WeWork’s parent organization The We Company just  announced  that it’s withdrawing the S-1 filing for its IPO . The coworking company has had a turbulent month since the filing went public, around both the general state of its finances and the behavior of co-founder/CEO Adam Neumann . As a result, Neumann stepped down down as CEO last week (he will continue to serve as non-executive chairman). In addition, the company is looking to focus on its core co-working business, which means it’s  planning major layoffs and even reportedly looking to sell some of the companies it acquired over the last couple years — namely Managed by Q, Conductor and Meetup. So it was widely expected that The We Company would delay its IPO Today, it made things official with the release of a statement from new co-CEOs Artie Minson and Sebastian Gunningham: We have decided to postpone our IPO to focus on our core business, the fundamentals of which remain strong. We are as committed as ever to serving

The Office for National Statistics has begun to analyse internet data use for the first time. from BBC News - Technology https://ift.tt/2nPq6LL

Elliott Gunton demanded payment in cryptocurrency, in a bid to hide his criminal activity from police. from BBC News - Technology https://ift.tt/2nOJ4SS

Virgin Media will deliver internet download speeds 20 times the national average to 100,000 Southampton homes. from BBC News - Technology https://ift.tt/2nRHdwq

Amboss , the Berlin-based ‘medtech’ startup that originally offered a learning app for students but has since pivoted to a knowledge platform for medical professionals, has raised €30 million in Series B funding. The round is led by Partech’s growth fund, with Target Global acting as a co-investor. Existing investors, Cherry Ventures, Wellington Partners and Holtzbrinck Digital, also participated. Launched in 2014 as a study platform for medical students, Amboss has since evolved to offer what it claims is the “most comprehensive and technologically-advanced” knowledge platform for medical professionals. It has been developed by a group of 70 doctors and 40 software engineers who work together in small cross functional teams. “Medical Knowledge does not find its way into practice efficiently,” argues Amboss co-CEO Benedikt Hochkirchen. “This has two main root causes: the way we educate doctors is outdated, and the way doctors access knowledge is inefficient”. Specifically, he says

Police used drones to track down a man who evaded detection for almost two decades. from BBC News - Technology https://ift.tt/2nJLnXa

The firm blames hackers for hours of pornography showing on the flagship's outdoor screen. from BBC News - Technology https://ift.tt/2ouwyIB

An anti-hate group says the finger-and-thumb sign is being used as an "expression of white supremacy". from BBC News - Technology https://ift.tt/2n9oPig

A smartphone app can make a detailed virtual avatar allowing you to try on a whole range of clothes. from BBC News - Technology https://ift.tt/2mJMia9

According to Dropbox CEO Drew Houston, 80% of the product’s users rely on it, at least partially, for work. It makes sense, then, that the company is refocusing to try and cement its spot in the workplace; to shed its image as “just” a file storage company (in a time when just about every big company has its own cloud storage offering) and evolve into something more immutably core to daily operations. Earlier this week, Dropbox announced that the “new Dropbox” would be rolling out to all users . It takes the simple, shared folders that Dropbox is known for and turns them into what the company calls “Spaces” — little mini collaboration hubs for your team, complete with comment streams, AI for highlighting files you might need mid-meeting, and integrations into things like Slack, Trello and G Suite. With an overhauled interface that brings much of Dropbox’s functionality out of the OS and into its own dedicated app, it’s by far the biggest user-facing change the product has seen since

Retailers are struggling to make their products accessible, and customers are taking them to court. from BBC News - Technology https://ift.tt/2nu2KeC

The US entrepreneur says prototype flights of his Moon-Mars rocket system will begin in months. from BBC News - Technology https://ift.tt/2mEz7aq

By BY DAVEY ALBA from NYT Technology https://ift.tt/2ofQmPy

The app industry shows no signs of slowing down, with 194 billion downloads in 2018 and over $100 billion in consumer spending. People spend 90% of their mobile time in apps and more time using their mobile devices than watching TV. In other words, apps aren’t just a way to spend idle hours — they’re a big business. And one that often seems to change overnight. In this new Extra Crunch series, we’ll help you keep up with the latest news from the world of apps — including everything from the OS’s to the apps that run upon them, as well as the money that flows through it all. This week, alternatives to the traditional app store is a big theme. Not only has a new, jailbreak-free iOS marketplace called AltStore just popped up, we’ve also got both Apple and Google ramping up their own subscription-based collections of premium apps and games. Meanwhile, the way brands and publishers want to track their apps’ success is changing, too. And App Annie — the company that was the first to sta

Cars might still reign supreme, but things they are a changin’. And companies are lining up to provide new ways — and some recycled ones — for people to get from Point A to Point B. The past several years have seen an explosion in startups, automakers and tech companies launching and testing products from scooters and electric bike share to ride-hailing, electric vehicles, autonomous vehicles and even flying taxis. Or heck, even space travel. Even as more mobility startups pop up, the shine of these new new things is starting to fade and companies are facing big technical challenges, regulatory hurdles, hiring and economic headwinds. TechCrunch is at the center of this mobility storm and we’re bringing some of the industry’s leaders on stage at Disrupt SF, including Bird founder and CEO Travis VanderZanden, Kitty Hawk CEO Sebastian Thrun and Zoox CEO Aicha Evans, to hear firsthand how these companies are trying to change how people and packages move in the world and the challenges t

Hello and welcome back to Startups Weekly, a weekend newsletter that dives into the week’s noteworthy news pertaining to startups and venture capital. Before I jump into today’s topic, let’s catch up a bit. I’ve been on a bit of startup profile kick as of late. Last week, I wrote a little bit about Landline , a bus network backed by Upfront Ventures. Before that, I profiled an e-commerce startup called Part & Parcel. Remember, you can send me tips, suggestions and feedback to kate.clark@techcrunch.com or on Twitter @KateClarkTweets . If you don’t subscribe to Startups Weekly yet, you can do that here . Startup Spotlight I’ve made a habit of highlighting one startup per week in this newsletter, so why stop now? This week, I want to talk about Alpha Medical , an early-stage healthtech startup on a “mission to rebuild women’s healthcare,” founder and CEO Gloria Lau tells TechCrunch. The early-stage telemedicine business, which focuses on providing reproductive and dermatologi