Year: 2018

AWS today announced that its Neptune graph database, which made its debut during the platform’s annual re:Invent conference last Novemberr, is now generally available. The launch of Neptune was one of the dozens of announcements the company made during its annual developer event, so you can be forgiven if you missed it.

Neptune supports graph APIs for both TinkerPop Gremlin and SPARQL, making it compatible with a wide variety of applications. AWS notes that it built the service to recover from failures within 30 seconds and promises 99.99 percent availability.

“As the world has become more connected, applications that navigate large, connected datasets are increasingly more critical for customers,” said Raju Gulabani, Vice President, Databases, Analytics, and Machine Learning at AWS. “We are delighted to give customers a high-performance graph database service that enables developers to query billions of relationships in milliseconds using standard APIs, making it easy to build and run applications that work with highly connected data sets.”

Standard use cases for Neptune are social networking applications, recommendation engines, fraud detection tools, and networking applications that need to map the complex topology of an enterprise’s infrastructure.

Neptune already has a couple of high-profile users, including Samsung, AstraZeneca, Intuit, Siemens, Person, Thomson Reuters and Amazon’s own Alexa team. “Amazon Neptune is a key part of the toolkit we use to continually expand Alexa’s knowledge graph for our tens of millions of Alexa customers—it’s just Day 1 and we’re excited to continue our work with the AWS team to deliver even better experiences for our customers,” said David Hardcastle, Director of Amazon Alexa in today’s announcement.

The service is now available in AWS’s US East (N. Virginia), US East (Ohio), US West (Oregon), and EU (Ireland) regions, with others coming online in the future.

Apple announced today that it’s placed a straight-to-series order for Dickinson, a show that will star Hailee Steinfeld as poet Emily Dickinson.

Steinfeld is an actress and singer who was Oscar-nominated for her performance in True Grit and more recently performed in Pitch Perfect 2 and 3. Dickinson, meanwhile, is generally considered one of the great American poets, but given her reputation as an eccentric recluse, her life doesn’t seem to be the stuff of great drama (a recent biopic was called A Quiet Passion).

It sounds like this won’t be a standard biography, however — Dickinson is being billed as a coming-of-age story with a modern sensibility and tone.

The series will be written and executive produced by Alena Smith, who previously wrote for The Affair and The Newsroom. And it will be directed and executive produced by David Gordon Green, best known for directing comedies like Pineapple Express and episodes of HBO’s Vice Principals (though he’s also directed non-comedic films like the recent biopic Stronger).

Dickinson joins a varied list of original series in development at Apple, ranging from a reboot of Steven Spielberg’s Amazing Stories, to a Reese Witherspoon- and Jennifer Anniston-starring series set in the world of morning TV and an adaptation of Isaac Asimov’s Foundation books. Apple reportedly plans to launch the first shows in this new lineup (presumably as part of a new subscription service) next March.

Blockchain, cryptocurrencies and digital assets took center stage at the Code Conference today. During a panel, Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse said Bitcoin could end up becoming the “Napster of digital currency,” noting how Napster “showed us what’s possible, but in the end, it was Spotify and iTunes and Pandora that won the day because they engaged with regulators,” he said onstage at the Code Conference today.

But it’s a bit of the Wild West out there regarding blockchain and cryptocurrency. In terms of when we’ll see regulation around cryptocurrencies and the blockchain, it will be years, Kathryn Haun, a professor at the Stanford Graduate School of Business and board member at Coinbase and HackerOne, said at the Code Conference.

There are parallels between the early days of the internet and blockchain, Haun said. In the early days of the internet, for example, people called for a single regulator. That didn’t happen, but now we’re seeing that happen with cryptocurrencies and blockchain, she said.

“We don’t want regulation to outpace understanding,” she said.

For example, if regulation were to have come out a year ago, it would already be outdated thanks to the rise of ICOs, she said.

She added, “It’s important to wait and see how the technology develops.”

Nvida launched a monster box yesterday called the HGX-2, and it’s the stuff that geek dreams are made of. It’s a cloud server that is purported to be so powerful it combines high performance computing with artificial intelligence requirements in one exceptionally compelling package.

You know you want to know the specs, so let’s get to it: It starts with 16x NVIDIA Tesla V100 GPUs. That’s good for 2 petaFLOPS for AI with low precision, 250 teraFLOPS
for medium precision and 125 teraFLOPS for those times when you need the highest precision. It comes standard with a 1/2 a terabyte of memory and 12 Nvidia NVSwitches, which enable GPU to GPU communications at 300 GB per second. They have doubled the capacity from the HGX-1 released last year.

Chart: Nvidia

Paresh Kharya, group product marketing manager for Nvidia’s Tesla data center products says this communication speed enables them to treat the GPUs essentially as a one giant, single GPU. “And what that allows [developers] to do is not just access that massive compute power, but also access that half a terabyte of GPU memory memory as a single memory block in their programs,” he explained.

Graphic: Nvidia

Unfortunately you won’t be able to buy one of these boxes. In fact, Nvidia is distributing them strictly to resellers, who will likely package these babies up and sell them to hyperscale datacenters and cloud providers. The beauty of this approach for cloud resellers is that when they buy it, they have the entire range of precision in a single box, Kharya said

“The benefit of the unified platform is as companies and cloud providers are building out their infrastructure, they can standardize on a single unified architecture that supports the entire range of high performance workloads. So whether it’s AI, or whether it’s high performance simulations the entire range of workloads is now possible in just a single platform,”Kharya explained.

He points out this is particularly important in large scale datacenters. “In hyperscale companies or cloud providers, the main benefit that they’re providing is the economies of scale. If they can standardize on the fewest possible architectures, they can really maximize the operational efficiency. And what HGX allows them to do is to standardize on that single unified platform,” he added.

As for developers, they can write programs that take advantage of the underlying technologies and program in the exact level of precision they require from a single box.

The HGX-2 powered servers will be available later this year from partner resellers including Lenovo, QCT, Supermicro and Wiwynn.

Stitch Fix CEO Katarina Lake did not express much concern over Amazon and its entrance into fashion with Prime Wardrobe at the Code Conference today. Lake says that while she does think about Amazon, that Amazon offers a “fundamentally different” value proposition.

With Amazon, Lake said, the value proposition is about having a “sea of choice.” With Stitch Fix,”in a lot of ways ours is almost the opposite,” she said.

Stitch Fix is an e-commerce company that aims to figure out your personal style, and then send you a handful of items the company thinks you’ll like. As a side note, this product has worked horribly for me but quite well for some other people.

Stitch Fix went public last year and part of being public, Lake said, is having fiduciary duty to do what is best for the company and its shareholders. With that in mind, Lake said, “I can’t say never” on selling to Amazon, “but I think this is a company that has a lot of value in and of itself.”

To date, Stitch Fix has not “had any serious discussions around combining companies” with Amazon.

“Right not, we feel really confident on the path that we’re on,” Lake said.

Coffee Meets Bagel scored a $12 million Series B this week. The round, led by U.K. VC firm Atami Capital, brings the popular dating app’s total up to just under $20 million since launching back in 2012.

The San Francisco-based dating app has worked to distinguish itself from competitors like Bumble and Tinder by limiting the number of matches it offers during a 24-hour window. Late last year, it expanded its offering with a video feature, to add an extra dimension to profiles. This month, it introduced additional CMB Experiences to bring users together in the real world.

Of course, Coffee Meets Bagel is battling a juggernaut in the form of the billion-dollar Match Group, which currently owns OkCupid, Tinder, PlentyofFish and Match, among others. According to the company, this latest round will drive investments into more CMB Experiences along with international expansion for the service, along with other “product innovation.” 

Co-CEO Arum Kang also notes that the Series B brings a number of VC firms with “prominent female investors,” including Gingerbread Capital. “We’re excited for the next phase of Coffee Meets Bagel, and are pleased to have some wonderful international and female investors on board,” Kang says in a release tied to the news. “Given our focus on female experience, it was very important that we have a female perspective at the investor level.”

Airbnb brings in billions of dollars of revenue annually and is profitable on an EBITDA basis, so many wonder if and when the home-sharing company will go public. At the Code Conference today, Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky said the company will “be ready to IPO next year, but I don’t know if we will.”

He added that he wants to make sure it’s a major benefit to the company when Airbnb does go public. Following some more probing, Chesky said he has “no issues with [going public] at all. It could happen.”

Meanwhile, Airbnb has been struggling from a regulatory standpoint since at least 2010. Specifically, San Francisco and New York are two of the most difficult cities from a regulatory standpoint, Chesky said.

In New York, for example, there has been a standstill since 2010. At this point, Chesky said he expects it to take a few more years to overcome the challenge in New York.

“It doesn’t seem like the end is in sight with that challenge,” Chesky said. That challenge, Chesky said, involves the hotel industry and unions that “have galvanized people in these perpetual battles.”

Another general critique of Airbnb is its effect on rising rent costs and displacement. Chesky added that if it was simply a business decision, “it probably wouldn’t be worth it to stay there” in New York. But Chesky said there are hosts who have come to rely on Airbnb to earn income.

At Code, Chesky also touted Airbnb’s experiences product and how it’s growing 10x faster than its homes product. Airbnb Experiences sees 1.5 million bookings a year, Chesky said. Experiences, which Airbnb started testing in 2014 and officially launched in 2016, is Airbnb’s product that helps travelers find things to do in cities throughout the world.

When it first launched, Airbnb didn’t verify the experiences, but after some bad experiences, Airbnb has started verifying them.

“They’re doing incredibly well,” Chesky said. He added that the “experience economy” is growing and “there will probably be a massive economy around experiences.”

Google is adding a small but useful feature to Google Calendar. Starting today, when you change or delete an event, a dialog box now pops up that allows you to attach a short message to the event to explain why you are making the change and what’s changing.

Here is how this new feature will work: When you make a change, a dialog box will pop up and allow you to enter a message for your guests. On the event page in Google Calendar itself — and in the email that alerts your guests of the change — that message will then appear at the top of the event details section.

I’m guessing that at least half of the calendar invites I get change a few times before I actually get on the call. It’s generally unclear what has changed, though. The new dialog box appears automatically, so far more people will now explain their changes than before.

It’s nothing fancy and it’s actually a surprise that Google hasn’t done this before, but chances are that people will be using it all day long.

This new feature is now rolling out to all G Suite users and should be available to everybody (no matter whether their admins have them on the rapid release or schedule release schedule) within the next three days.

Facebook’s Messenger Kids application, which allows children under 13 to chat with parents’ approval, is today rolling out a small, but notable change – it no longer requires that the children’s parents be Facebook friends with one another, in order for the children to connect. This solves one of the problems with the app’s earlier design, where it operated more like an extension of a parents’ own social circle, instead of one for their child.

Of course, parents still have to approve every contact their child adds, as usual.

As any parent understands, there are always going to be those friends of your child where you have an acquaintance-type, friendly but casual relationship with the parents that falls short of earning “Facebook friend” status. While you might text them for the occasional play date or nod politely at drop-off, you’re not necessarily “friends.” But your kids are friends with each other. And you’re fine with that.

The Messenger Kids update now allows those kids to connect, if you okay it.

The new feature will still require that both parents are on Facebook.

On Facebook, the parent visits the Messenger Kids section in Facebook’s own main navigation menu, as per usual, and does a search for the name of the parents of the child’s friends. You can then invite them to get the app and allow the children to connect.

This change could potentially help the app grow beyond the 325,000 installs it had as of April, according to Sensor Tower data – especially once the kids figure out how this invite system works. (And don’t put it past them to just inform you.)

Facebook says it made this decision as a direct result of parent feedback.

However, there is one challenge in not being good friends with the other kids’ parents: it can be harder to discuss problems like bullying or bad behavior, if they come up. With my daughter’s half a dozen or so friends on Messenger Kids (hey, I know), I’m not worried about these things because I know the parents well enough to have a discussion if the kids start fighting. We’d work together to resolve the problems, were they to occur. (And obviously, her family connections on the app are not an issue).

But when you start approving connections with those families you’re less close to, you may run into issues and not have a good way to communicate about them.

That’s why Facebook should be working to roll out systems that flag concerns in kids’ chat sessions – if a bad word is used, for example, or if the child says something rude – that alerts the child’s own parents. The company already has A.I.-based anti-bullying technology that could do this now. And I imagine many parents would opt into a system that asks if you wanted to be alerted to offensive language in chats.

Even a simple chat and call log could help parents address problems – like tell me how often I need to remind my daughter that we don’t place video calls to friends before 9 AM…even if you see them playing Animal Jam and know they’re online. Rules are rules, kiddo.

As it stands now, the best way to monitor the child’s chats is to install a second copy of the app on your own device and actually read them. That takes time and can be a little bit invasive for older kids, who have more of a sense of privacy.

The update is live today on the Messenger Kids app.

Disrupt San Francisco 2018, TechCrunch’s flagship technology conference, is back this fall on September 5-7, and it’s bigger and bolder than ever. That’s not just hyperbole, people. We’ve staked out new digs at Moscone Center West — that means three times the floor space and more than 10,000 attendees.

Bigger crowds lead to more opportunities, especially when you have a tool to help you cut through the clutter and connect with the right early-stage startup founder — or find the perfect venture capitalist to fund your dream. CrunchMatch is that tool.

We first introduced CrunchMatch, our free, founder-investor connection platform (powered by Brella), at Disrupt SF 2017. Buy a Founder, Investor or Insider pass and you’ll be invited to fill out a CrunchMatch profile. Through the service you can suggest meetings, send, accept or decline invitations and reserve dedicated, private meeting spaces in the CrunchMatch Lounge.

Last year investors and founders used CrunchMatch to set up more than 1,300 meetings. This year, we expect that number to triple. Here’s what Luke Heron, CEO of TestCard.com, had to say about his CrunchMatch experience:

We used the CrunchMatch platform to schedule a bunch of meetings on our second day of the show. We met with six or seven VCs and, by and large, they were very positive meetings.

Whether your company meets the investment criteria of a venture capitalist you just heard speak on the main stage or you see the perfect early-stage company pitch during Startup Battlefield, CrunchMatch will let you send a meeting invitation quickly and easily.

As a reminder, you’ll find a special focus on these tech categories at Disrupt SF 2018: AI, AR/VR, Blockchain, Biotech, Fintech, Gaming, Healthtech, Privacy/Security, Space, Mobility, Retail and Robotics.

You’ll find them all exhibiting in Startup Alley. Or you can join them and place your early-stage startup in front of thousands of potential customers, partners and investors. CrunchMatch will really save you time as you work your way through the Alley.

If you’re looking to invest in early-stage startups — or looking for funding — Disrupt San Francisco 2018 is where you want to be on September 5-7, and CrunchMatch is the tool you need to use. Don’t wait, purchase your Founder, Investor or Insider passes today.