Intuit Inc. has acquired San Francisco based StartX alumni Playbook HR for an undisclosed amount. Playbook HR offers a solution for on-demand marketplaces to manage the hiring, on-boarding and compliance needs of independent contractors. Its initial product release offers an applicant tracking system, but the company had plans to move into workforce management and, later, ...

Large-scale simulated worlds startup Improbable Ltd. has raised $20 million Series A in a round that included Chris Dixon and Andreessen Horowitz. Founded in 2012, the company is developing an operating environment that makes building simulated worlds possible. No, it’s not the Sims, versus actual simulated worlds which are run in real time and simulate the ...

Apple Inc. has acquired NoSQL database startup FoundationDB Inc. for an unknown sum. According to reports, the acquisition was due to FoundationDB’s attractiveness in the speed at which it handled Atomic, Consistent, Isolated, Durable (ACID) compliant transactions coupled with strong scalability. Founded in 2009, the company has as it mission to provide data storage technology “that frees engineers ...

Vessel Group, Inc. (Vessel), the company founded by former Hulu CEO Jason Kilar, now offers exclusive content from YouTube stars for a price. The service was launched Tuesday after a period of private beta testing. The site, which according to reports provides a range of YouTube stars for a fee, has been recruiting YouTube stars since mid-to-late 2014, ...

Following the worst trends in forced viewership as pioneered by Facebook, Twitter, Inc. is now testing the abomination of auto-playing videos. According to Adage, the microblogging come messaging service is currently testing it in the United States only with “some users” of their iPhone and iPad apps. The test is, rather bizarrely, said to be a test ...

Mobile operating system startup Cyanogen Inc. has raised $80 million Series C financing in a round led by Premji Invest included Twitter Ventures, Qualcomm Incorporated, Telefónica Ventures, Smartfren Telecom, Index Ventures, Access Industries, Rupert Murdoch, Vivi Nevo, and existing investors Benchmark Capital, Andreessen Horowitz, Redpoint Ventures, and Tencent Holdings. Founded in 2009, Cyanogen pitches itself ...

Netflix Inc. has finally come to the antipodes, by way of Australia Tuesday local time (March 24th,) and despite the bizarre, and completely made up claims by the mainstream Australian media Monday that the details had been “leaked,” the details were actually released by Netflix early Monday morning Australian time via media release to the ...

Bitcoin to Altcoin provider Paybase appears to be in severe trouble Monday with reports from users that they have been unable to withdraw funds. The company, owned by Josh Garza (pictured) who is also behind related companies including Bitcoin mining firm GAW Miners, first struck trading issues in January when reports said that the firm was ...

Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd. formally announced its Galaxy A7 smartphone back in January, and since that time it has gone on sale in various global markets. Billed as Samsung’s thinnest phone yet at a thickness of only 6.3 mm, the phone packs a serious punch without the serious price likely to be asked for by ...

The freemium music model favored by Spotify Inc. is under pressure with reports that at least one major record company is pressuring the company to change its free tier. The Financial Times reports that Universal Music Group is using license negotiations with Spotify to push for changes to the company’s free service “privately arguing that it is ...