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Editor’s Note: Christine Magee is an editor for CrunchBase. If Hollywood’s depiction of artificial intelligence were accurate, we would be falling in love with operating systems, sharing our homes with Stepford wives, and fending off cyborg attacks by now. While movies like Ex Machina and Her stoke the fears and desires of our imaginations, new innovations in robotics and… Read More - TechCrunch24

Late last year the UK government commissioned an independent (or not-so independent) report into the so-called sharing economy, epitomised by companies such as Airbnb and Zipcar, and how to position the country to be a leader in the space. That report — headed up by Debbie Wosskow, CEO of holiday home-swapping startup Love Home Swap — was issued a few months later, and today (to… Read More - TechCrunch24

Apple has a new patent application that modifies one of their existing inventions based on one of their newly announced techs: Taptics. The application, published by the USPTO today (via Patently Apple) features a virtual keyboard design that resembles the current Magic Trackpad accessory in its construction, with a smooth piece of aluminum used instead of physical buttons. Virtual buttons… Read More - TechCrunch24

Meet Jellynote, a French startup that provides a new experience to music learning. With Jellynote, you can find scores and see YouTube covers at the same time, create a songbook and suggest different versions. But the killer feature is a Guitar Hero-like mode that takes advantage of your microphone. It’s like playing the video game, but with a real guitar — you can see in real time… Read More - TechCrunch24

Today the Swiss watch industry makes a major leap into embracing the smartwatch. LVMH Watch Group head Jean-Claude Biver is not a man to ignore pop culture and all that is modern even though he made his money running companies that sell traditional, mechanical watches. Today, sitting as the CEO of Swiss watchmaker TAG Heuer, he stands with representatives from Intel and Google announcing the… Read More - TechCrunch24

Your next Android Wear watch could be a Tag Heuer. Intel and Google are today announcing a partnership with the iconic watch brand that will result in a Tag-branded Swiss watch powered by Android Wear. The announcement came at the start of Baselworld, the world-famous watch show in Basel, Switzerland where companies like Tag and Swatch are looking to retain market share. The partnership is… Read More - TechCrunch24

Fundbox, a company that loans businesses money for outstanding invoice payments, has raised $40 million to grow its own business in the trillion dollar alternative lending market. The Series B round was led by General Catalyst with participation from NyCa Investment Partners and help from existing backers Khosla Ventures, Shlomo Kramer and Blumberg Capital. If a small business owner… Read More - TechCrunch24

Music streaming service Deezer has opened its HD-quality offering up to all, following an initial launch in the U.S. which included a period of exclusivity with Sonos. Read More - TechCrunch24

Opera, makers of a suite of software for browsing the web on mobile and desktop devices used by some 350 million consumers, has made another acquisition to build out the services it offers to users. It has acquired SurfEasy, makers of a virtual private network (VPN) app that lets users browse the web more securely. This is Opera’s first security-focused acquisition, and it is made in… Read More - TechCrunch24

Another day, another new “most affordably priced Lumia” from Microsoft. Or at least that’s how it seems. Just weeks after outing the $81 Lumia 435 (and slightly more expensive $93 Lumia 532), Microsoft is back with another: the $70 Lumia 430. Read More - TechCrunch24

Rakuten is beefing up its digital content chops after it announced the acquisition of e-book and audio-book marketplace OverDrive for $410 million. Read More - TechCrunch24

The promise of mobile in India is attracting venture capital at a rate never seen before. The latest deal of note involves Hungama, a media company that provides music, videos and movies on mobile, desktop and beyond, which is on the cusp of raising more than $100 million. Read More - TechCrunch24

Yahoo is bidding adios to China with the closure of its research center in Beijing — its only location in the country — as SCMP first reported. Hundreds of staff are expected to be laid off. Read More - TechCrunch24

SXSW is a zoo in and of itself, but the Interactive portion of the festival actually had a robot petting zoo within the event this year. While some may think of robots as scary things that could destroy us all and lead to some sort of dystopian future, the robots in this zoo were created with natural disaster relief efforts in mind. Attendees who wandered into the ballroom at the JW Marriott… Read More - TechCrunch24

For nearly two years, eighteen-year-old Chris Galzerano has been working on Playr, an app that lets anyone make their own games. Unlike engines and kits like Unity or GameSalad, Playr doesn’t require a powerful PC or professional-tier tools to get started — all development takes place in the phone. Read More - TechCrunch24

If you use Slack on Windows, you’ve probably found yourself feeling a bit… unloved. Despite making up over a quarter of Slack’s userbase, using Slack on Windows has always meant running it in a browser tab — unlike with OS X, Android, or iOS, there was no dedicated Windows app. Well, today’s your day. Slack has, at long last, released a Windows app. In case… Read More - TechCrunch24

Just when you thought you were safe the card skimmers are at it again. This time they are placing their card readers inside the door locks that require you to dip your card before you can enter an ATM vestibule. According to Brian Krebs, the scammers hide the readers inside the comparatively unnoticed locks and then add a small hidden camera around the ATM. They grab your card data via the… Read More - TechCrunch24

Unlike the robots in Five Nights At Freddy’s, Clearpath’s new products won’t sneak up on you in the dark while you’re guarding an abandoned warehouse. In fact, their products are aimed at making warehouse workers’ lives easier and decidedly non-scary. The company, which recently raised a $11.2 million (CAD) Series A from RRE Ventures after six years in business,… Read More - TechCrunch24

Uber isn’t just Uber. It’s Google Maps, Checkr background checks, Braintree payments, and Twilio texts. The best way to do business isn’t to build it all in-house. Top companies are increasingly piecing together a composite of APIs from specialized startups. That lets them concentrate on their unique value-add rather than reinventing the wheel. Now, those building blocks… Read More - TechCrunch24

Congressman Darrell Issa, a Republican from California showed up at South by Southwest in Austin, Texas  last week and he had a lot to say about the government’s role when it comes to technology entrepreneurs — mostly that it should stay the heck out of the way. When talking about disrupted industries Issa said, “First of all, it’s not our job to protect dinosaur… Read More - TechCrunch24

This afternoon, Microsoft released a new Windows 10 build for participants in its beta program for the forthcoming operating system. The build, build 10041 for those keeping score, includes a number of new features and fixes that we’ll get to in a moment, but more importantly Microsoft has retooled its release program to get new, fresher code more quickly in the market. The more than… Read More - TechCrunch24

New Jersey governor Chris Christie just signed a law that will allow Tesla to start selling its vehicles again to residents of the state. About a year ago, New Jersey started enforcing a law that required vehicles to be sold to consumers through dealerships. Tesla doesn’t play nicely with dealerships. It sells its vehicles directly to consumers through company-owned showrooms instead… Read More - TechCrunch24

With iOS 8, Apple introduced a way for mobile applications to add widgets to its Notification Center that offered snapshots of information, like today’s weather, stock quotes, headlines, and more. But one clever app called Launcher took advantage of the new functionality to turn its widget into a tool that allowed you to tap to launch other apps installed your phone. Last fall, Apple… Read More - TechCrunch24

Three-year-old Sentisis is a natural language processing (NLP) startup whose founder spotted an opportunity to do technology-powered sentiment analysis of Spanish language conversations on social media, given the prevailing focus on data-mining online English had left Spanish speech relatively overlooked. Read More - TechCrunch24

A former Facebook employee is suing the social networking giant for alleged sex discrimination and harassment, racial/ national origin discrimination and harassment, and wrongful discharge from the company, among other charges. In a lawsuit filed this week in San Mateo, plaintiff Chia Hong said that she worked at Facebook from June 2010 until she was fired in October 2013. Hong, who is… Read More - TechCrunch24

On-demand delivery service Postmates just announced that it has entered a deal with Starbucks to deliver the coffee giant’s addictive wares to customers who order via the Starbucks mobile app. Read More - TechCrunch24

A new application called Fradio is officially launching today, offering a service that allows anyone to become a DJ, broadcasting their favorite tracks to their friends or fans, and even talking over the tunes with a push of a button in order to engage their audience. The app, which is backed by Australian music service Guvera, is making its debut at the SXSW music festival in Austin where… Read More - TechCrunch24

Supercell and Angry Birds maker Rovio may grab most of the gaming headlines in Finland, but beyond those two hugely successful companies, there’s what some are calling a second boom in the country’s games industry. So when a new Finnish games studio founded by industry ‘veterans’ launches, it’s hard not to take notice. That’s just happened in the form of… Read More - TechCrunch24

Sosh has today launched Concierge, the Uber equivalent for dining, in New York city. Concierge essentially reserves tasting menu inventory for the Sosh community, allowing users to reserve a table at a hot restaurant and pay for their prix fixe meal all through the app. This means the user simply arrives at the restaurant, eats, and bounces out of there, Uber-style. In fact, Concierge even… Read More - TechCrunch24

PlayStation is officially debuting its live streaming video service in the U.S. today, launching PlayStation Vue in New York, Chicago and Philadelphia with pricing beginning at $50 per month. The on-demand and live-streaming video service includes content partners like Fox News, AMC and Turner Broadcasting and offers channels like CBS, Discovery, Animal Planet, Syfy, Food Network and many… Read More - TechCrunch24

We all know that fantasy sports is a huge and growing business. But when it comes to fantasy sports on mobile, most apps are just companion experiences used by fantasy sports players to track how their teams are doing. A new fantasy sports app called Draft hopes to change that, and has raised $3.5 million in Series A funding to do so. Draft was founded by Jeremy Levine and Nicolo Giorgi, the… Read More - TechCrunch24

Early-stage venture firm SoftTechVC is bringing on a new venture partner today. With an eye on SaaS and enterprise investments, it’s hired Huddle co-founder Andy McLoughlin to join the team and work with companies in that area. Read More - TechCrunch24