Author: TechBrunch
Spotify is enhancing its audiobook streaming service by adding a feature familiar to app music consumers: countdown pages. These YouTube-like countdown pages were launched last year alongside Spotify's other new additions for artists, giving artists a dedicated space on their profiles where they can count down to new releases with a timer. Now, the same option will be available to audiobook publishers and authors, the company announced today at the London Book Fair. For audiobooks, Countdown Pages allows Spotify users to pre-save books before release. When a book becomes available, Spotify alerts users through a notification. This new option allows…
When electric vehicle startup Telo Trucks announced its light pickup truck, people predictably went wild. Some executives see light trucks as more than just a convenience, they're a lifestyle, but major automakers have largely ignored them for the past two decades in pursuit of higher-margin full-size pickups. With just a few renderings and early prototypes, the company secured nearly 3,000 reservations for him. But over the past few months, something unexpected has happened. Fleet customers were also hooked. Jason Marks, co-founder and CEO of Telo Truck, told TechCrunch that “there is a tacit understanding that urban fleet companies are no…
Simulation is an essential step in physical product engineering. This allows engineers to create prototypes and understand how they will behave in the real world, taking into account factors such as aerodynamic drag, air and water flow, and pressure and temperature distribution. However, according to Jason Lango, CEO of Luminary Cloud, today's engineering simulators tend to be very slow and difficult to scale up. “Most engineers are using legacy software that runs on on-premises infrastructure, which slows down the design workflow and causes each simulation to take days or weeks,” Lango told TechCrunch in an interview. Ta. “This decades-old legacy…
Stashpad, a “DM to yourself” style notes app for developers, is pivoting into a documentation app that can be used without logging in. The company will continue to maintain its original Notes app and call it “Stashpad Lists.” StashPad Docs is a new product from the company that doesn't require a login and supports Markdown format. The product is browser-first and document history is stored locally, allowing users to search for documents without contacting the server. The company said that there is no offline support at this time, but this is a feature that the startup will introduce in the…
Spotify is adding music videos to its mobile and desktop apps in select markets. The streaming giant allows you to seamlessly switch between audio and music videos on your mobile and desktop apps, which are tightly integrated with the company's music library. However, the music video is currently only available in beta in 11 select markets, and the US is not included in this initial rollout. Here's the full list of countries where the music video will be released starting today: Brazil, Colombia, Germany, Indonesia, Italy, Kenya, Netherlands, Poland, Philippines, Sweden, and the United Kingdom. “For this beta rollout, we…
Teachers' Venture Growth, the late-stage venture and growth investment arm of the Ontario Teachers' Pension Plan, is investing $80 million in Perfios, an Indian fintech that provides real-time credit underwriting solutions to banks and other financial institutions. . This new investment values Perfios at more than his $1 billion valuation. Fifteen-year-old Perfios, which raised a $229 million funding round in September, said it would use the new funding to expand internationally and explore opportunities for inorganic growth (read: acquisitions). The company said earlier that the previous transactions are expected to be listed by next year. Bengaluru-based Perfios provides real-time data…
Kolet is a new French startup founded by four co-founders who are experienced in the French tech ecosystem and wants to make it easy to stay connected while traveling. The company has developed an interesting distribution strategy for travel eSIM cards to simplify the experience, as eSIM is still a confusing technology for most people. Chances are that the smartphone in your pocket supports virtual eSIM cards. For example, in recent years it has been the default option on iPhones sold in the United States. Therefore, many companies are taking advantage of that feature and selling temporary eSIM cards with…
Bluesky, a decentralized Twitter/X competitor, today announced that it will open source Ozone, a tool that allows individuals and teams to collaboratively review and label content on the network. Later this week, the company plans to enable individuals and teams to run their own independent moderation services, meaning users will be able to subscribe to additional moderation services on top of Bluesky's default moderation. Masu. Bluesky said in a blog post that the changes will give users “unprecedented control” over their social media experiences. The company's vision for moderation is an ecosystem of stackable services, so it plans to allow…
At the SXSW conference in Austin this afternoon, a whiff of anti-AI sentiment drew loud applause. Award-winning writers and directors Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert, collectively known as “The Daniels,” originally premiered their film “Everywhere All at Once” at his 2022 SXSW Did. The film later won him seven Oscars, including Best Picture and Best Picture. Winner of director and screenplay awards. In a conversation about the future of storytelling, the pair commented on the inevitable rise of AI and how to approach it, calling the technology both “amazing” and “scary.” As Kwan first explained, modern capitalism worked only because…
The future of recycling is here. Of course, it involves robots and artificial intelligence. Rebecca Hu, co-founder of the robotics company Glacier, creates robots that help recycling plants separate, or recycle, materials. Previously, separating recyclable materials was a manual process that took hours for someone to do. Currently, Glacier is using his AI camera to help robots better identify recyclable materials. Hu said training a robot to find materials is similar to teaching a young child how to distinguish between two things. “If you give them an example of 100, 1,000, 1 million aluminum cans, they get pretty good at…