Blog

 Instacart has today announced the acquisition of Unata, a Toronto-based company that offers a platform for both grocers and consumers to interact digitally. The terms of the deal were not disclosed. Unata’s product, unlike Instacart’s, is a white-label grocery platform, letting grocers anywhere create apps and websites for consumers to order products, complete with coupons,… Read More

 Cloud providers love to brag about their customer wins and Amazon got a big one today when it announced that Comcast had chosen AWS as its preferred cloud provider. What does that mean exactly? Presumably Comcast is going to put the majority of its cloud workloads on AWS. In a time when Comcast is fighting the cable cutting trend, being able to produce cloud services and apps that differentiate… Read More

 Social Bicycles, now officially known as Jump Bikes, has just closed a $10 million Series A round led by Menlo Ventures with participation from Sinewave Ventures, Esther Dyson and others. “At Menlo Ventures, our investment team supports entrepreneurs who are on a mission to change the world—including, how consumers move through it,” Menlo Ventures Managing Director Shawn… Read More

 Lyft has a new report out detailing its ‘economic impact’ for 2017, and the document includes a lot of stats on its performance throughout the year. The ride-hailing provider claims 375.5 million rides for the year, which is 130 percent growth measured year-over-year. It served 23 million different passengers, itself a 92 percent YoY increase, and had 1.4 million drivers on the… Read More

 After a big fundraise and subsequent reorganization last year at Coursera — which saw a change of CEO, as well as the departure of its COO, CFO, CMO and CPO (along with some 40 others) — the online education startup is today launching a new IT course with Google to underscore its message that the ship is still sailing as it passes 30 million users and 2,500 courses. Today, the… Read More

 Wichita police have arrested a 25-year-old online troll who calls himself SWAuTistic, charging him with involuntary manslaughter after sending police to a Kansas address. When police arrived at the address they opened fire on the resident, a father of two named Andrew Finch. SWAuTistic, real name Tyler Raj Barriss, could face 11 years in prison. SWATting is the process of calling in a fake… Read More

 BMW has acquired Parkmobile, an app that provides guidance and services for those looking for parking in North America, including on-street and garage parking payments and spot reservation. BMW Group had already held a minority investment in the company, and owned its Parkmobile Group Europe affiliate, but today it increased its holdings to reach majority ownership of Parkmobile, LLC, which… Read More

 Companies like New Relic and AppDynamics have been offering applications performance management solutions to help operations teams track external performance issues for years. Nyansa (pronounced ‘knee-ans-sah’) is bringing that kind of performance management to internal networks. Today, the company announced a $15 million Series B investment. The round was led by Intel Capital… Read More

 WhatsApp appears to be testing a new feature aimed at trying to limit the spread of chain letter style spam messages on its platform. Read More

 Look away now if you own bitcoin or other cryptocurrencies. This won’t be breaking news to you if you are invested, but today has seen the entire crypto market fall by double-digit percentages. The price of bitcoin slumped by 15 percent to drop below $12,000 for the first time since December 4. Ethereum, meanwhile, fell by over 20 percent to hover above $1,000 and Ripple is down 33… Read More