If you and your Bay Area hedge fund friends have a spare $8 billion lying around and you’d like a weekend project, a nice fixer-upper to dedicate your spare time to, you should head over to Craigslist to see what’s currently on offer. There you’ll find a once great internet and media company, Yahoo.com, available for purchase. You’ll just have to head over to Sunnyvale, Calif., to pick it up.
Last year, Samsung introduced a virtual reality headset that only cost $100. The catch: You needed one of Samsung’s flagship smartphones to power the device, and those cost about $700. To fix this, at the company’s developer conference in San Francisco April 27, Samsung announced plans to build a more complete VR device, potentially to rival Facebook’s Oculus Rift—its partner on the existing Samsung Gear VR.
It was a “Kitty Hawk moment” for the drone industry, in the words of Matt Sweeney, the CEO of the Australian drone delivery company Flirtey.
Police were called to Apple’s Cupertino, California headquarters today, after a body of an Apple employee was found in a conference room, Fox affiliate KTVU reported.
Yahoo announced today that it has reached an agreement with the hedge fund Starboard Value, a shareholder that has been calling for a massive overhaul of the company’s board. It will add four directors nominated by the fund, including its CEO, Jeffrey Smith, in a move that will likely ensure that Yahoo is either sold or broken up.
The next big thing for Nintendo is just around the corner. The company announced, as part of its quarterly earnings statement earlier today, that its next-generation games console, which it has been referring to as the “Nintendo NX” will be released globally in March of 2017.
Apple reported its second-quarter results today, and as expected, the company announced its first year-over-year decline in iPhone sales, and quarterly revenue in over a decade. Shares fell roughly 8% in after-hours trading.
The European Patent Office (EPO) today announced its annual shortlist for its European Inventor Awards, which honors a range of scientists across industries. Much like last year, it’s packed with some inventions that could be truly groundbreaking.
In the near future, our skies may be full of drones buzzing around, delivering us our take-out dinners, and shopping orders. But considering how many of us live in densely settled areas and don’t have the lawn space that Amazon envisions us having to receive our drone-delivered goods, how are we going to get these packages? Google has a few ideas.
When Apple announces earnings for the second quarter of its fiscal 2016 today, it may report a quarterly decline in revenue for the first time in over a decade. (Quartz will be live-charting the earnings call starting at 4pm ET today.)
It’s been a rough year for MakerBot, and the dream of 3D printing your shoes, dinner, or electronics at home.
In the future, if you want to go somewhere or have your robot do something, you might only have to think about it.
If you can’t go more than a few hours without an artisanal pour-over coffee, a Pabst Blue Ribbon in a mason jar, or blogging about why your music tastes are more refined than your friends’, then there’s a new travel app that’s perfect for you. But you probably haven’t heard of it.
On Sunday, April 17, it was reported that a British Airways flight arriving from Geneva collided with a small consumer drone at London’s Heathrow Airport. The plane suffered no damage, according to the BBC—and that may well have been the case because the so-called drone was possibly, in fact, a plastic bag.
The artist formerly, and forever, known as Prince passed away at his home in suburban Minneapolis today (April 21). He was a singular musician, showman, songwriter. He was arguably one of the most underrated guitarists of his generation, if not all time. His style, much like another musical great that passed away earlier this year, was unparalleled, and a large part of that was his zany, custom-designed guitars. While many musicians have signature custom guitars, few actually design entirely new, original designs like Prince did.
In the near future, if you need a few things from Amazon, or perhaps you forgot to pick up the dry cleaning, there’s a chance a small robot will deliver your goods right to your front door.
On Wednesday (April 20), Microsoft announced that it will stop manufacturing the Xbox 360, the games console it first released in 2005. In the last 11 years, it’s sold at least 84 million units, according to GameSpot, making it the most popular console Microsoft has released—by quite some margin—as well as the fourth-most popular home console of all time.
The lights dim on the stage, and the rocker steps out as the crowd starts to cheer. He plugs in his guitar, and gets ready to play his favorite song. As the cheers fade, he presses the buttons on his guitar and taps his way toward greatness.
Apple has denied reports that it’s working on a car, but it now has the engineering know-how to design a pretty beautiful car.
Many are declaring 2016 to be the year of virtual reality. There are multiple virtual reality headsets rolling out this year, and Samsung gave away its Gear VR headset to anyone that preordered its newest smartphones. Mark Zuckerberg, the CEO of Facebook, which owns VR company Oculus, thinks we’ll all be wearing VR headsets at some point in the future. Facebook last week announced a 17-camera rig for shooting immersive video.
In 1983, Apple co-founder Steve Jobs was looking for a new CEO to run his burgeoning company. He tapped John Sculley, the CEO of Pepsi-Cola and the marketeer who had devised the Pepsi Challenge, which helped the soda company take on Coca-Cola. Jobs wanted someone who could help upstart Apple challenge all-powerful IBM. To convince Sculley to take the job, he asked the Pepsi exec: ”Do you want to spend the rest of your life selling sugared water, or do you want a chance to change the world?”
IBM announced its quarterly earnings today, and as many analysts expected, the technology giant posted its 16th quarter in a row of falling sales, when compared to the same quarter the year before. IBM’s revenue for the first quarter of the year was $18.7 billion, down about 5% from a year earlier, the company said in a release.
There’s a hotel in Williamsburg—the expensive part of Brooklyn that still feels ‘edgy’ to a certain set—called the Wythe. It’s a trendy restored warehouse that often hosts hip soirees and parties for famous brands. On a freezing January evening, its exposed-brick walls and man-bunned bartenders hosted a launch party for a new sports league, called The Drone Racing League. It’s the brainchild of Nick Horbaczewski, who previously helped turn Tough Mudder endurance runs into something that people enjoy doing, and Ryan Gury, a former advertising creative director and drone racer. The two have created a company that intends to be the cool face of drone racing. DRL has secured over $8 million in funding from venture capital firms, as well as the owner of the Miami Dolphins, and the lead singer of the band Muse. Rapper 50 Cent shows up to their races. They intend to take what’s fun about watching small objects the size of a dinner plate hurtle through the air, and turn it into a global sport.
I didn’t preorder the Apple Watch, or stand in line the day it came out. But I read every article about it, and when someone suggested that it would complement my “personal cloud,” I eventually felt compelled to buy one. I wear it every day, possibly out of determination to get something out of the $400 I spent on it, but when someone asks me if I think they should buy one, I usually tell them no.
