Apple’s first AirPods ad reminds me of the iPod ads
Ever since the iPhone, iPad and Apple Watch took the spotlight, most of Apple ads have been focused on those devices. So it’s always nice to see the company try new things for less important devices, such as the AirPods. With today’s new ad, Apple is going back in time to the good old days of the iPod. I can’t exactly put my finger on it, but I instantly thought about the… Read More
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Romain Dillet – TechCrunch
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Just when you thought wearables were dead, Plume Labs is coming up with an interesting wearable device focused on tracking pollution around you. It’s a sort of Fitbit for air quality. The Flow tracker works both inside and outside and could be particularly useful if you live in a polluted city. It tracks particulate matter (PM2.5), nitrogen dioxide, ozone, volatile organic compounds… 
Samsung is always betting big on CES, and this year should be no exception. Today at 2 PM Pacific, 5 PM Eastern, 10 PM in London, the company will unveil its new lineup of consumer electronics devices. You should expect a wide range of new products, from smart watches to washing machines. We’ll have a team on the ground, so you should also check out our live blog for our first-hand… 
French company Parrot has had a rough year and missed its sales expectations. That’s why the company will lay off 290 employees who were working on drones. In total, Parrot currently has 840 employees on the drone team and more than a thousand employees in total. While the company isn’t just selling drones, it represents a good chunk of the business. But it looks like other… 
Last year, I was on vacation in Goa in India with my brother. We ended up renting a motor scooter and buying exactly two liters of gas in the middle of nowhere (pictured above). The shop gave us two plastic water bottles filled with gasoline. Ever since, I’ve wondered how a remote village in the middle of a rural area in India manages to get oil and gas. There are some interesting… 
Last month, Consumer Reports came up with some interesting battery test results with the latest MacBook Pro models. Results ranged from 3.75 hours to 19.5 hours. Many in the Apple community thought that something was off, either a software bug or a benchmarking issue — it turns out it was both. Apple worked with Consumer Reports over the holidays to find out why the battery test… 
Sony is holding its traditional press conference at CES in the Las Vegas Convention Center starting at 5 PM Pacific, 8 PM Eastern, 1 AM in London. The company is closing the press day of CES, and you should expect some exciting new devices from Sony. The company has a wide range of products, including some top notch cameras, some interesting phones and the usual TVs and Bluetooth speakers.… 
Startups are taking over CES. While the Sonys and Samsungs of the consumer electronics industry are presenting their latest and greatest devices today, hundreds of companies are also making their way to Las Vegas to present some nifty hardware products. That’s the reason why TechCrunch is organizing the Hardware Battlefield. It’s just like the Battlefield startup competition at… 
Just in time for the Golden Globes Awards on Sunday, Apple released a brand new ad showing off what you can do with the Portrait mode that works with the iPhone 7 Plus and its two cameras. As a bonus, the ad was shot in Greece and now I want to go to Greece. The beginning of the ad looks like a movie segment more than anything else. It starts with a couple of ambiance shots and then you can see… 
These companies had a very special CES experience as they all pitched in front of multiple groups of judges on stage at the Sands Expo. The startups were competing for $ 50,000 and being named the winner of the Hardware Battlefield. After many deliberations, our judges narrowed the list down to four finalists: wearable device for pregnant mothers Bloomlife, smart sensors for construction… 
Somehow, I can never find a direct flight from Paris to Las Vegas. This year, even though I had to make a stop in London, my transatlantic flight was filled with French entrepreneurs going to CES, ready to show their latest and greatest products to an international audience. I already wrote that French startups were taking over CES last year, but it’s worth using this opportunity to… 
Meet Blitab, an Android tablet combined with a smart Braille surface. It’s one of the most affordable Braille devices out there and could change the way visually impaired people use computing devices. The company is participating in TechCrunch’s Hardware Battlefield at CES. The devices for this niche market are really disappointing. There are specialized devices called Braille… 
Nvidia’s press conference starts at 6:30 PM Pacific, 9:30 PM Eastern, 2:30 AM in London. Nvidia may have missed the smartphone boat, but the company accidentally became an essential chipmaker thanks to machine learning. Graphics processing units let developers run a ton of image processing tasks in parallel. That’s why carmakers are using Nvidia chips for their self-driving… 
French hardware company Netatmo is announcing a bunch of new products for your home. Interestingly, some of these products go beyond the usual connected lightbulbs and cameras. With a brand new approach and a wide range of products, Netatmo is slowly but surely becoming one of the most prominent advocates for the smart home. Let’s have a look at what they have in store. First, the company… 
American chipmaker Qualcomm is in trouble in South Korea. The country’s antitrust regulator has fined the company roughly $ 850 million (1.03 trillion won) for its patent royalty activities in South Korea. Many of you are familiar with Qualcomm for its chips. The next time you read the tech specs of your favorite smartphone, chances are that you’ll find a Qualcomm chip. The… 
The off-duty police officer who killed the Russian ambassador in Turkey was shot by Turkish special forces minutes after the crime. He had an iPhone 4S on him, and now, according to MacReports and Habertürk, Turkish authorities asked for Russia’s help to unlock the iPhone. Given that it’s an iPhone 4S and it has a 4-digit passcode, it should be quite easy to unlock the device.… 
Spark is a neat email client with a few tricks up its sleeve. While it has been available on iOS for a while, Readdle is launching the app in the Mac App Store today so that you can use the same email client on all your Apple devices. Readdle is a popular iOS app developer. Chances are you’ve already used a few Readdle apps over the years, such as Scanner Pro, Documents or Calendars 5.… 
Music streaming startup Spotify is introducing a new series of original artist recordings called Spotify Singles. The company plans to record a couple of songs from each artist in its in-house New York studio and update the main Spotify Singles playlists every Wednesday. As the name suggests, the Spotify Singles concept channels back the good old days of vinyl and CD singles. You… 
Apple is putting a lot of effort to improve its Apple Maps data and design. According to a new report from Bloomberg, the company plans to use drones to track changes and improve mapping data over time. It would apparently be faster to use a fleet of drones rather than vans with sensors. Apple already admitted that mapping data is a harder problem than the company first anticipated. You need… 
YayPay is focusing on an interesting yet underserved niche — collecting payments from your customers. The startup is launching the second version of its platform today and now focuses on big companies with accounts receivable teams. The company first launched on stage at Disrupt London exactly one year ago. At the time, the company wanted to help small and medium companies get paid on time. 
Some of them were participating in our event for the first time, while others were regular hackers. Their challenge was to come up with a neat, funny and smart hack in just 24 hours. We could all feel the excitement in the air when the 63 teams took the stage to present a short one-minute demo to impress fellow hackers and our judges. But only one team could take home the grand prize and £4,000. 
WorldRemit founder and CEO Ismail Ahmed took the stage at TechCrunch Disrupt London to talk about his company and his views on the future of remittances. While you might be more familiar with companies like Western Union, MasterCard and TransferWise, WorldRemit has become an essential service when it comes to sending money to developing countries, and helping the unbanked receive that money.… 
Station F (formerly known as la Halle Freyssinet) is quite an ambitious project and is bound to change the face of the tech ecosystem in Paris. Financed by Xavier Niel and directed by Roxanne Varza, Station F is going be the world’s biggest startup campus with companies like Facebook and TechShop opening offices there. “We’re talking about a startup campus because… 
Berlin-based startup N26 got its own banking license a few months ago. As N26 is building a mobile-first bank without any physical branch, the startup can expand to new countries much more easily. N26 co-founder and CEO Valentin Stalf is announcing on stage at TechCrunch Disrupt that the startup is now active in 17 countries across Europe. As a European banking license works across the… 
It’s hard to know if the Apple Watch is a hit or a miss. The company doesn’t disclose sales numbers directly, but Tim Cook wanted to react to IDC’s report on wearables, saying that sales are doing just fine. According to the report, Apple is only the fourth wearable company now behind Fitbit, Xiaomi and Garmin. It represents a stark 71 percent decline in shipments compared… 
European startup studio eFounders is raising an additional $ 5.3 million (€5 million) from entrepreneurs and family offices. eFounders has been behind some very promising software-as-a-service startups, providing human and financial resources for the first year or so before the startups can go and do great things on their own. In exchange, the startup studio takes a significant portion of… 
French startup Molotov launched five months ago, but a key feature had yet to go live. Molotov users can now bookmark TV shows and movies in the cloud so that they can watch them later. That’s not all, the startup has also raised $ 23.3 million (€22 million). I’ve already written quite a few words about Molotov, but it’s worth reiterating that it’s the best way to watch… 
French VC firm Partech Ventures announced that they closed their seed fund of $ 107 million (€100 million) for early stage startups. Partech Entrepreneur II is focusing on seed rounds, and the firm plans to invest in 80 different startups. The firm already announced the creation of the seed fund 18 months ago. At the time, Partech had $ 65 million (€60 million) under management. So it looks… 
Citymapper founder and CEO Azmat Yusuf took the stage today at TechCrunch Disrupt London to talk about the future of cities and Citymapper. Now that the startup works in dozens of cities, it plans to start monetizing in 2017. While Citymapper is a mobile star in Europe and most people living in big cities are using it every day to use public transportation, it has been a long ride. Originally,… 
Startups participating in the Startup Battlefield have all been hand-picked to participate in our highly competitive startup competition. They all presented in front of multiple groups of VCs and tech leaders serving as judges for a chance to win £40,000 and the coveted Disrupt Cup. After hours of deliberations, TechCrunch editors pored over the judges’ notes and narrowed the list down… 
Meet Oxehealth, a startup that plans to turn any regular security camera into a health monitor. The British company wants to make it easier to monitor patients in a hospital, police station, psychiatric hospital or an assisted living residence. It’s a non-intrusive way to make sure that everybody is doing well. The startup is launching onstage at Disrupt London. Finger pulse oximeters… 
Nobody can touch the peach butt emoji, not even Apple. A couple of weeks ago, Apple dropped the first iOS beta for iOS 10.2 with dozens of new and redesigned emojis. The world needs more emojis, I’m all for it. But Apple also accidentally redesigned the peach emoji and was a bit too literal — it didn’t quite look like a butt. Calm down, no need to grab the pitchforks.… 
