Samsung acquires Greek text-to-speech startup Innoetics for under $50M

 With the launch of Bixby and reports that Samsung is building its own competitor to Amazon’s Echo, the consumer electronics giant has now made an acquisition that could help power its next generation of voice-powered services. Samsung has acquired Innoetics, a startup out of Greece that has developed text-to-speech and voice-to-speech technology that can, among other things, listen to… Read More

Kids app maker Toca Boca debuts its first consumer product collection at Target

 Toca Boca, a hugely popular kids’ app maker, has grown to over 170 million downloads across its line of 38 apps, which 13 million children use every month. Now, the company is transitioning its brand beyond the digital space to become a maker of real-world products, as well. In an exclusive deal with Target, announced today, Toca Boca will launch its own collection of… Read More

Twitter lets you avoid trolls by muting new users and strangers

 When trolls barge into people’s notifications with offensive replies or user names, they might not keep coming back to Twitter. So today the company rolled out new tools to help you silence the riff-raff. There are now options to mute notifications from newly registered accounts, people you don’t follow, and people who don’t follow you. These can be configured in the… Read More

The ‘Beat Shazam’ TV show allows viewers to play along at home

 Beat Shazam is one of those TV game shows that you don’t just watch — you can play along at home, using the Shazam app. In fact, the company recently added the ability to sync your gameplay to recorded footage of the show. Let’s back up a second, for people who haven’t watched: Beat Shazam is hosted by Jamie Foxx and premiered on May 25, on Fox. During each episode… Read More

Google Maps now lets users add wheelchair accessibility details for locations

 Back in December, Google finally added accessibility details to Maps. It was a long awaited addition, but an extremely welcome one for the more than three million people in the U.S. who require wheelchair accessibility. As we noted at the time, however, the available information still left a lot to be desired. Maps has currently collected accessibility data for almost seven million places,… Read More

Make your Nokia 3310 great again with a special $2,500 Putin-Trump gold and titanium edition

 It’s time for the big G-20 summit in Hamburg, and Russian phone customizers Caviar are commemorating the occasion with a very special Nokia 3310 (the new one). Encased in the best metals, titanium and gold, the back features a touching double profile of Trump and Putin. Only 149,000 rubles, or about $2,500. Read More

RED launches pre-orders of bizarre $1,600 titanium ‘holographic’ smartphone

 Camera companies have had to adapt their business models quickly over the past decade to account for the rise of smartphone cameras. Part of that has involved some interesting developments on the high-end. RED has built incredibly high-powered cameras that have become the darling of many in the film industry, now they’re setting their sights on the smartphone market with what seems to be… Read More

Facetune maker’s newest app, Enlight Photofox, is a powerful image editor

 Lightricks, the maker of the popular selfie-correcting app Facetune is debuting a new photo-editing app today called Enlight Photofox. This is the second time that Lightricks has launched the next generation of an existing app as an entirely new, standalone application – a strategy that’s still somewhat rare on today’s App Store, outside of sequels to games, like Monument 2… Read More

You can now reply to Instagram Stories with photos and video

 Instagram has updated its Stories feature with the ability to reply to stories with either photos or video. This means you can use all the creative tools found in the Instagram camera, including filters, Boomerang, rewind and stickers to show the original poster exactly how your really feel about what they’re sharing. The replies feature also lets you use a new sticker that actually… Read More

This Apple patent could describe facial recognition for the next iPhone

 One of the greatest problems with tech is that there is little room for nostalgia. Aside from Nintendo and potentially Fujifilm, few companies are willing to stick with what’s comfortable. And with good reason! Take Apple, for instance. I may still be butthurt over the fact that my iPhone doesn’t have a proper headphone jack, dismayed each time I lose my dongle, but it’s hard… Read More

Snapchat lets you add links, voice filters, and backdrops to Snaps

 Snapchat is breaking its long-standing ‘no links’ rule today while also providing some novel new creative tools to keep it one step ahead of Instagram. The new features are rolling out globally on iOS and Android today, Snap Inc tells TechCrunch. Here’s a demo of how these creative tools work, and descriptions of how to use them. Paperclip lets you attack a website to a… Read More

How this year’s tech IPOs have fared so far

 Blue Apron has finally gone public, and we’re at about the halfway point of the year. We’ve seen a lot of IPOs for the first half of 2017, which followed a huge drought last year. All this started when Snap opened up the so-called “IPO window” when it made its debut with a bang, popping the normally-expected 20% or so on its first day of trading. But since then… Read More