Grab CEO: Didi victory shows we can beat Uber in Southeast Asia

 Didi Chuxing’s proposed acquisition of Uber’s Chinese business hasn’t even been confirmed, but the gravity of the deal — Didi will hold stakes in all of the planet’s top ride-sharing firms — has already prompted responses from others in the industry. Read More

from TechCrunch http://tcrn.ch/2aaNhIN

Line’s beauty and fashion portal rolls out its Persian carpet

 Benita, a portal designed to deliver the latest news on fashion, beauty and lifestyle, debuted in Iran this May. The portal will offer daily content produced by a team of local Iranian staff writers and a forum where users are encouraged to share and discuss the topics that matter most to them. Read More from […]

Facebook is disabling messaging in its mobile web app to push people to Messenger

 Facebook is removing the messaging capability from its mobile web application, according to a notice being served to users: “Your conversations are moving to Messenger,” it reads. Welcome news to the millions like me who switched to the web app in order to avoid Messenger in the first place! Read More from TechCrunch http://ift.tt/1U0pFUZFiled under: […]

Are buyouts the new IPOs?

 Buyouts may replace IPOs as the exit of choice for tech companies in the coming months. This comes as the number of startups unable to exit into a frozen market continues to grow. With only two tech IPOs so far in 2016 and poor market returns for the majority of those already public, companies are turning elsewhere to cash in […]

VOEZ is an addictive anime-themed rhythm game

 VOEZ is a new game out of Taiwan that is climbing the app gaming charts. It is part Rock Band, part DDR, but in a karaoke-esque setting. Put simply, VOEZ is an anime-themed rhythm game. You need to tap, hold and swipe as colorful commands fall to the target line. There are only a few […]

Hey, I’m John, a new summer writing intern at TechCrunch

 Hi, I’m John and I am super pumped to be TechCrunch’s new summer writing intern. As a venture-capital obsessed Michigan Wolverine, I’m thrilled to be thawing out in the startup mecca of SOMA, San Francisco. Read More from TechCrunch http://ift.tt/1XX70fhFiled under: U Tagged: TechCrunch

Gawker CEO Nick Denton goes after thin-skinned Silicon Valley billionaires

 Gawker Media CEO Nick Denton joined Kara Swisher on stage at Vox Media’s Code Conference next to an empty chair — reserved for Peter Thiel, who is involved in a lawsuit against Gawker, who did not attend the conference. The conversation centered around Gawker’s decision to publish a story that noted that Thiel was gay […]

Edtech startup Udemy raises $60 million from Naspers for international expansion

 The venture arm of Naspers Ltd. has invested $60 million in Udemy, an online marketplace for education. For the unfamiliar, Naspers is a Johannesburg-listed tech and media firm that operates robust online classifieds businesses in emerging markets, with a strong presence in India. Udemy CEO Dennis Yang said that after closing a $65 million Series […]

Prima donna engineers

 In a world where engineers truly are the new rock stars and markets continue to be moderately funded, it is not uncommon to witness or experience the engineering “prima donna effect.” I’ve gently suggested this term in the past and it struck a nerve. Read More from TechCrunch http://tcrn.ch/1VzIG31Filed under: U Tagged: TechCrunch

VSCO is rolling out redesigned iOS and Android apps

 VSCO, the popular image editing app, is getting a complete redesign on both the Android and iOS platforms, which will be rolling out in the coming weeks. Most of the new key features are improvements, like a new camera interface, gesture-based navigation, a redesigned personal space for images and journal posts within the VSCO network and better […]

Stanford’s ‘Jackrabbot’ robot will attempt to learn the arcane and unspoken rules of pedestrians

 It’s hard enough for a grown human to figure out how to navigate a crowd sometimes — so what chance does a clumsy and naive robot have? To prevent future collisions and awkward “do I go left or right” situations, Stanford researchers are hoping their “Jackrabbot” robot can learn the rules of the road. Read […]

Medium acquires Superfeedr, a real-time API that supercharges your feeds

 Medium has acquired a small startup called Superfeedr, an API to turbocharge the way you handle RSS, Atom and JSON feeds. For a company like Medium, Superfeedr can generate feeds with a ton of items and push them in real time to PubSubHubbub-compliant services. According to Superfeedr’s <a href="https://super Read More from TechCrunch http://tcrn.ch/1Y4Rle9Filed under: […]

Money transfer company TransferWise raises further $26M at $1.1B valuation

 After months of rumours, TransferWise, the London headquartered money transfer startup and fintech darling, has confirmed that it has raised a further round of funding. Described as ‘top-up funding’, the $26 million round was led by investment management firm Baillie Gifford, with participation from existing investors. TechCrunch understands this values TransferWise at $1.1… Read More […]

ShoCard and SITA want to store your ID details on the blockchain to authenticate travelers

 ShoCard and SITA, the IT company for the air transport industry, have been working together on an interesting project. They’ve been looking at ways to store your ID details on the blockchain to manage traveler identification. More generally, ShoCard has been working on a seamless service that lets you store your identity onto the bitcoin […]

The UK’s Deliverd launches ‘Chef Box’ to take food delivery service nation-wide

 Deliverd, the U.K. startup that sends you restaurant-prepared dishes that you reheat at home or work, is launching a new service today that will enable it to expand to most of the country. In its original incarnation, the company only serviced a smart part of the North of England, relying on a network of restaurants utilising spare […]

Microsoft is laying off 1,850 to “streamline” its smartphone business, takes $950M charge

 Following last week’s news about its feature phone business, today Microsoft turned its attention to smartphones: the company said it would lay off 1,850 staff and take a charge of $950 million, including $200 million in severance payments, as it “streamlines” to focus on enterprises and niche areas where it feels it can better differentiate. […]

Tech in Brazil is booming despite the country’s political troubles

It was a balmy night in Rio de Janeiro and a pretty J.P. Morgan Private Wealth representative was buying drinks for newly paper-rich entrepreneurs. Nearby at the pool mingled investors who had flown in from New York, San Francisco, London and Berlin. The next morning, entrepreneurs presented their well-funded ideas to the participants of Founders […]

Samsung and SK Telecom to launch world’s first nationwide network for the Internet of Things in South Korea

 Samsung Electronics said today that it will partner with SK Telecom to build a LoRaWAN network for the Internet of Things that will cover all of South Korea. The two companies claim that this the world’s first nationwide IoT network. Read More from TechCrunch http://ift.tt/20zOsRpFiled under: U Tagged: TechCrunch

Opera’s shareholders greenlight $1.2B sale to Chinese consortium

 Browser maker Opera’s proposed $1.2 billion acquisition by a consortium of Chinese companies just took a major step towards completion after its shareholders voted in favor of the deal. Read More from TechCrunch http://ift.tt/1XUej7YFiled under: U Tagged: TechCrunch

Garmin’s new GPS running watch tracks heart rate, knows how hard you try

 Navigation system turned wearable manufacturer Garmin debuted a new running watch today that packs in a slew of tracking tools. The high-end Forerunner 735XT features built-GPS tracking, along with built-in heart-rate monitoring, the latter of which presents a number of available analytics, including the user’s “Suffer Score.” Strava Live, the company behind that last bit… […]