Eric David
Latest from Eric David
Kickstarter relaunches Drip as a subscription crowdfunding service like Patreon’s
Kickstarter made a name for itself as one of the first and most successful crowdfunding platforms, but since it launched in 2009, Kickstarter has had one major limitation: It only works for onetime projects. That changed today with the launch of Drip, a new crowdfunding platform that uses a subscription model similar to the one ...
MekaMon lets you live out your robot battle fantasies in augmented reality
Augmented reality may still be just a toy for most, but that toy just became a lot more interesting with the launch today of MekaMon, a small spiderlike robot that you can control and fight in AR. Designed by U.K.-based robotics company Reach Robotics, MekaMon is a modular robot that can be customized with different ...
FDA approves digital pill that alerts doctors when you take your medicine
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has approved a digital pill for the first time today, paving the way for other forms of connected medicine that could shape the future of healthcare. The newly approved pill is called Abilify MyCite, and it’s designed to sense when patients have taken their dose of Abilify, an antipsychotic that is commonly ...
TrueAccord raises $22M to make debt collection less stressful with machine learning
Anyone who has had to deal with debt collection knows how terrifying and stressful the experience can be. TrueAccord thinks machine learning could be the solution to that problem, and today the company announced that it has raised $22 million funding to prove it out. The Series B funding round was led by Arbor Ventures, and ...
Startup employee compensation could suffer serious blow in GOP tax plan
Updated Silicon Valley and other U.S. startup hubs are outraged at a provision in the newly revealed Republican tax plan that some tech leaders say could have a devastating impact on the way startups are funded. Under the new plan, the Senate would place a tax on stock options at the time when they are vested rather ...
Google takes steps to crack down on vulgar YouTube videos made from kids’ shows
A recent report by the New York Times and a viral blog post by artist James Bridle called attention to a disturbing trend on YouTube: Some explicit and violent videos are slipping through the platform’s content filters by using popular children’s show characters such as Peppa Pig. YouTube owner Google LLC is not happy about this, so today the ...
Facebook Events lives again as Local, a Yelp-like app for finding things to do
Facebook Inc. had high hopes last year when it launched Events, a standalone app aimed at making it easier for users to find things to do in their local communities. Unfortunately, the app did not make the same kind of splash as Facebook Messenger, and Events never gained much of a following even among diehard Facebook users. Now it looks ...
Facebook Community Boost will teach social media skills to business owners
Social media has become a vital tool for nearly every business to engage with their customers, but many small business owners have no idea where to start. Facebook Inc. wants to solve that problem with the launch of a new outreach program called Facebook Community Boost, which is aimed at teaching digital and social media skills to business owners, ...
Google Chrome will soon block those annoying site redirects
Anyone who has visited a website only to have the browser hijacked and taken to another site knows how annoying these site “redirects” can be. More than annoying, they can also be a major security risk, which is why Google LLC will soon introduce new features to Google Chrome that could eliminate redirects for good. According to Ryan ...
Fintech data startup Crux Informatics raises $10M to ‘make data delightful’
Crux Informatics Inc. wants to help big companies wrangle their data into something a little easier to digest. Today, it emerged from stealth mode and announced that it has raised $10 million in a Series A funding round led by financial giant Goldman Sachs Group Inc. The San Francisco-based company calls itself a “data engineering concierge ...