Technology: What Geeks are talking about from TechCrunch

Facebook Messenger launches Group Calling to become your phone
 Jump on the party line or hear the voices of your whole family with Facebook Messenger’s latest feature. Rolling out globally over the next 24 hours on Android and iOS for free, users can start a group VoIP audio call from any group chat. Just tap the Phone icon, select which of the group chat members you want included and they’ll all receive a Messenger call simultaneously.… Read More

Zeitgeist wants to be the Warby Parker of electric bikes
 The Zeitgeist electric bike was designed to solve one problem: getting uphill on a bike. That led to other goals, like creating a battery that only had to be charged every two weeks and was hidden within the structure of the bike. This, then, led to favoring design and performance over the cost of the bike. “We want to be the Warby Parker of bikes,” said Zeitgeist CEO Kartik Ram.… Read More

Influencer marketing startup Captiv8 raises $2M
 Captiv8 announced today that it has raised $2 million in seed funding. Created by the founders of mobile ad exchange Moblix, Captiv8 is one of a number of companies connecting marketers with influencers on social platforms like Instagram and Twitter. However, the startup says it uses a technology- and data-driven approach, examining things like geography and demographics to predict which… Read More

AI is not a threat to humanity, but an Internet of ‘Smart’ Things may be!
 After more than 60 years since its conceptual inception — and after too many hype-generating moments — AI is yet again making its presence felt in mainstream media. Following a recent WEF report, many perceive AI as a threat to our jobs, while others even go so far to assert that it poses a real threat to humanity itself. What is clear for the time being is that there are many… Read More

Mike Arrington takes on reduced role at CrunchFund
 Michael Arrington — who famously cofounded TechCrunch in 2005 and just as famously parted ways with the outlet in 2011, one year after selling it to AOL — is now taking on a reduced role at the venture fund that he cofounded when he left TC. After an SEC filing surfaced earlier today showing that CrunchFund is targeting $40 million for its third fund and even more notably not… Read More

Rolltape adds Radio feature so you can share voice messages with the world
 Rolltape is a voice messaging app that’s supposed to help you share personal, emotional moments with friends. Now, with the launch of Rolltape Radio, it can help you share those stories on a broader scale. The change is pretty straightforward. Previously, Rolltape messages (which are recommended to be five minutes or less, but have no hard limit) could only be shared with friends,… Read More

Shots acquires Mindie to build a teen video app empire
 Mindie does with soundtracks what Instagram did with filters: it makes boring imagery interesting. And with the insane amount of video that teens are sharing, the music video making app seemed too useful to die when its creators shut down Mindie in December. So Mindie’s technology is getting dug out of its grave thanks to an acquisition by Shots, the selfie app turned comedy feed backed… Read More

Viber defends new end-to-end encryption protocol against criticism
 Messaging app Viber rolled out its own end-to-end encryption update yesterday, following in the footsteps of its competitor, WhatsApp, and allowing users to keep their calls and messages private. But researchers are questioning whether Viber’s messages are really as secure as the company claims. In a blog post announcing the change, Viber COO Michael Shmilov says that the new feature… Read More

Now you can listen to podcasts right in Google’s mobile app
 Google today is making it easier for Android users to listen to podcasts, by introducing podcast support right into its Google app for Android. That means you’re able to search for podcasts using Google’s search engine, then click a button to begin listening without having to subscribe or switch over to another app. The feature also includes standard audio controls at the bottom of… Read More

LeEco wheels out its own self-driving electric concept car, following deals with Faraday Future and Aston Martin
 If you know LeEco at all, it’s likely for the Chinese company’s smartphones. Or, maybe you’ve caught wind of its video streaming services or smart televisions — it was known as LeTV until fairly recently, after all. Those elements were present in a massive Beijing press conference held earlier today (including a trio of new smartphones that have done away with the… Read More

Inbox by Gmail now helps you track calendar events, save links and stay on top of newsletters
 Google is launching an update to Inbox by Gmail today that adds three new features to the company’s Gmail-based next-gen email client for the web and mobile. Probably the most interesting of these new features is that Inbox can now help you keep track of events and the emails you send back and forth about them. This feature is linked to Calendar invites, similar to how trip bundles… Read More

Citus launches Citus Cloud beta delivering Postgres database as a cloud service
 Citus has been making headlines lately. Just a couple of weeks ago it announced Citus 5, the latest version of its Postgres database product, but even bigger news was that it was open sourcing it, a bold move for sure. Today, it announced it was releasing a beta of Citus Cloud, its shiny new Database as a Service offering. Citus 5 brought some important scaling ability around memory and… Read More

Scandy raises $1M to capture & print 3D photographs
 Scandy is aiming to make it easier to print full-color 3D prints of photographs, from sources such as depth aware cameras, and technology like Google’s Project Tango. Scandy today announced it raised a $1m angel/seed round from Callais Capital, in an effort to bring the technology to a broader audience. Read More

Snapchat’s new Bob Marley filter prompts ‘blackface’ backlash
 Happy 4/20 day everybody! To celebrate, Snapchat teamed up with the estate of Bob Marley, and the results were … unfortunate. Snapchat created a lens that makes your face look more like the legendary musician’s by adding Marley-like features — a cap, dreadlocks, a beard and darker skin. Amusing? Probably for some users, but it comes with some really awful historical… Read More

Miss D is a dictionary app for the linguistically curious
 If you’re seriously attempting to learn another language then at least one dictionary app will be a staple on your smartphone homescreen. And familiarity with its UX foibles will have long ago set your teeth on edge. Read More

Google says Chrome now has more than 1 billion users on mobile
 Google released version 50 of its Chrome browser last week and it has been rolling out to users for the last few days. The major new feature in Chrome 50 is support for improved push notifications. To celebrate this release, Google today announced a number of new stats for Chrome, which originally launched back in 2008. Maybe the most significant of these is that Chrome now has more than… Read More

MIT explains self-driving cars with rubber duckies
 Self-driving cars seem an awful lot like magic. Containing elements of automotive technology, computer vision, artificial intelligence and many other cutting-edge fields of tech. So, if you wanted to learn how it all hangs together, where would you even start? MIT decided to start with… rubber duckies. Read More

Tesla Model X owners finding car doors won’t shut, windows won’t close
 Earlier this month, Tesla Motors recalled 2,700 Model X cars to fix a third-row seat latch that could allow the seat to fold forward during a collision. But owners of the $138,000 sport utility vehicle — whose many features include falcon-wing doors, seating for seven, a 200-plus-mile battery range and proximity sensors that prevent it from coming into contact with other cars —… Read More

Sony’s streaming service Crackle unveils its plans for VR content…and VR ads
 VR content will soon be arriving on yet another digital streaming service – this time, Sony’s Crackle. But it will also include VR-enabled ads, the company announced today. That is, in addition to streaming its entire content library – including movies and original programs –  in a special “VR theater,” it will also allow advertisers to… Read More

Google gives speedier AMP-powered web pages a top spot in Google News
 Google announced today it’s giving higher placement to articles in Google News that come from those publishers who have embraced the Google-backed “Accelerated Mobile Pages Project” (or, AMP). The company debuted this open source initiative last year, as something of a rival to Facebook’s Instant Articles. The project’s overall goal is to speed up web browsing… Read More

Google Keep gets support for #labels and a new Chrome extension
 Keep, Google’s note-taking service, is getting an update today that introduces support for hashtag-style labels and an update Chrome extension that will make it easier to save links to sites and add notes right from the browser. None of these updates are revolutionary, but they are definitely welcome additions to a service that is essentially Google’s version of Apple’s… Read More

SkySafe lands $3 million led by Andreessen to disable badly behaving drones
 SkySafe, a six-month-old, San Diego, Ca.-based company whose technology can disable drones that are flying where they shouldn’t, has raised $3 million in seed funding. Andreessen Horowitz led the round, with participation from Founder Collective and SV Angel. No doubt the company is serving a fast-growing need, particularly given the number of drones poised to wreak havoc on… Read More

FreedomPop expands to Spain, adds in zero-rated WhatsApp voice and text to its free plan
 FreedomPop — the startup that has built a mobile service based on the premise of a free basic tier of voice and data services — has announced plans to launch its services in Spain, its second market in Europe after the UK. And to woo users in one of the world’s most competitive and saturated markets, it’s throwing in something new: usage of WhatsApp will be… Read More

Giphy for Android gets a small update
 Giphy is updating its Android app to follow the app’s progress on the iOS platform. Today, Giphy for Messenger will be phased out via an update to become a standard Giphy app. This comes on the heels of Facebook integrating Giphy into its own Messenger platform. The standard Giphy app offers ways to message GIFs on a number of platforms, including Messenger, as well as browse and… Read More

Stealthy Finnish mobile gaming startup Armada Interactive picks up $3M backing led by Initial Capital
 Helsinki-based mobile gaming startup Armada Interactive, which is still a way off from launching its first title, has closed a $3 million seed round. Investment is being led by Initial Capital, with participation from Index Ventures, PROfounders Capital, Backed VC, Reaktor Ventures, Sisu Game Ventures, Chris Lee, Reynir Hardarson, and Ben Feder. That’s a pretty decent line up for the… Read More

Children’s magazine Highlights reinvents itself as a subscription service with videos, activities and more
 If you’re of a certain age, you may remember flipping through the classic children’s magazine Highlights while in the waiting room of your doctor’s office, many years ago. Now this long-running, 70-year old print magazine is making a serious attempt at transitioning into the digital age with the launch of a mobile, subscription-based service that costs less than a Netflix… Read More

Innovation in genomics and the future of medtech 
 The field of medicine is in the process of being profoundly transformed by new technologies; much of this transformation comes from exciting advances in genomics. Although genomics is relatively unknown to the general public, innovations in the field have started to make headlines: Genetic testing startup 23andMe, the “gene editing” technology CRISPR and the ambitious 100,000… Read More

1mg gets $16 million Series B to make India’s health industry more transparent
 India’s pharmaceutical market is filled with generic options—but they don’t always save consumers money. In fact, some drugs are even more expensive than their branded counterparts. Created to give patients more power over their health costs, startup 1mg announced today that it has raised a $16 million Series B led by Maverick Capital Ventures, with participation from… Read More

UK’s upper House urges privacy kitemark for online platforms
 A report into the market power of large online platforms such as Google, Facebook, Amazon and Airbnb has concluded that more needs to be done to bolster consumer trust in tech giants’ handling of their data. The review was carried out by the UK’s upper House of Parliament responding to a European Commission consultation aimed at furthering the latter’s digital single… Read More

Europe’s antitrust chief confirms Android objections
 Europe’s antitrust chief has confirmed the Commission is stepping up an ongoing investigation into whether Google’s Android mobile OS is in breach of regional competition law, issuing a formal Statement of Objections today. Read More