Chinese taxi hailing app Didi Kuaidi (Xiaoju Kuaizhi Inc.,) the combined company from previous competitors KuaiDi Dache and Didi Dache, is said to be seeking to raise atleast $1.5 billion. According to Bloomberg Business, the first round for the newly combined company will be on a valuation of $15 billion. Didi Kauidi itself came into ...

Spotify AG has soft-launched a new product called Spotify Taste Rewind, that suggests songs from the past you might like based on musicians you currently like. Announced by Spotify Engineer Juan Manuel Serruya on Facebook, the new service is pitched with the lines: “Ever wondered which artists you would be listening to if you were ...

Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. announced Sunday that it was planning to launch a Netflix-style online video streaming service in China. According to reports, the new service will be called Tmall Box Office (TBO,) and like Netflix will feature a mix of original content, along with content for providers both within China and from abroad. “Our ...

Because you can never have enough internet connected devices, a French company has launched the worlds first Connected Bikini (in French: bikini connecté.) The idea for the bikini came from the designer seeing sunburned people at a beach, with Marie Spinali, Head of Design at Spinali, the company behind the design, telling The Telegraph the project ...

In the first case of its kind involving crowdfunding, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) announced Thursday that it had taken legal action against a Kickstarter project founder who raised money for the project, then both failed to deliver the product and refused to give refunds. According to the FTC’s complaint, Erik Chevalier, doing business under ...

The days of Blackberry Ltd. flogging phones running its own operating system may be nearing an end with a report Thursday suggesting that the company is preparing to sell a phone running Android. The report from Reuters quotes “four sources familiar with the matter” saying that a phone that Blackberry showed at the Mobile World ...

Putting pirated applications and emulators on an iOS device has now become easier with news that Apple now allows non-paid up developers to sideload applications on their devices via the new version of XCode. The latest version of Apple’s integrated development environment for OSX and iOS, XCode 7, now allows anyone to install apps on ...

Adult video streaming site Pornhub wants to take one small step for man, and one giant leap for pornography with a new crowdfunding campaign to raise money to shoot the world’s first pornography film in space. The “Pornhub Space Program” project, known as “Sexploration” (we should note we’re not making any of this up,) aims ...

Free crowdsourced language learning site Duolingo, Inc. has raised $45 million Series D in a round led by Google Capital that included previous investors Union Square Ventures, New Enterprise Associates, Tim Ferris, Ashton Kutcher, and Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers. According to reports, the round valued the company at $470 million. Pittsburgh, PA-based Duolingo offers ...

Microsoft Corp. has acquired application management and transaction monitoring startup Blue Stripe Software, Inc. (BlueStripe.) Founded in 2007, BlueStripe’s solutions help map, monitor and troubleshoot distributed applications across heterogeneous operating systems and multiple data center and cloud environments. Software from the company is said to be used by customers to extend the value of Microsoft ...