Gadgets

By John Biggs We want to see you in New York for Disrupt NY 2015, our annual celebration of all things startup. It’s a great time. You get to meet great funders and VCs and I’d love to meet you. Hardware is my favorite thing in the world and you’re some of my favorite people.…

By Darrell Etherington Apple has issued invites for a new media event on March 9, with the tagline “Spring Forward,” which likely refers to time, hence the Apple Watch is a good guess for the star of the show. The event kicks off at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco beginning…

By Darrell Etherington You know when you have a good idea for a game or blog and you tell a friend who might actually make it, since you don’t have time? That’s kind of like what Elon Musk did with his ambitious Hyperloop, a next-level transportation system that uses near friction-free tubes to zip capsules…

By Natasha Lomas Encrypted comms company Silent Circle, one half of the SGP Technologies joint venture behind the pro-privacy Android smartphone Blackphone, has just announced it’s reached an agreement to buy out its hardware partner, Spanish smartphone maker Geeksphone. Read More …read more Source: TechCrunch Gadgets

By Darrell Etherington SolarCity, the solar power startup whose chairman is the seemingly ever-present Elon Musk, has announced a new $750 million fund created to help fund residential solar projects, including defraying the upfront costs of solar panel installation at homes in 14 different states across the U.S. and in D.C. The new fund includes…

By Jon Russell LG is developing its own software for smartwatches after the company announced that one version of its upcoming LG Watch Urbane will run on its own “proprietary” platform. Read More …read more Source: TechCrunch Gadgets

By Kyle Russell Earlier this month, Razer launched the second generation of its ultra-high resolution gaming laptop, the Blade. I’ve since gotten a few weeks to play with the laptop, and can confirm that its hardware lives up to the crazy QHD+ screen. Read More …read more Source: TechCrunch Gadgets

By Darrell Etherington Google has built an artificial intelligence system that can learn – and become amazing at – video games all on its own, given just a simple instruction to play titles without any additional commands. The project, detailed by Bloomberg, is the result of research from the London-based DeepMind AI startup Google acquired…

By Sarah Perez Kickstarter says that the roughly two-hour-long outage that took place today was unrelated to the massive traffic sent to its service by those backing the Pebble smartwatch’s latest, and now record-breaking, campaign. According to a company spokesperson, it was only a coincidence that the Kickstarter website went down today, even though yesterday…

By Darrell Etherington Just this morning, Motorola sent over its brand new Moto E, a $149 (off-contract) Android smartphone that wants to give budget-conscious shoppers a device choice with fewer compromises. We’ve spent the AM putting the Moto E to the test, and based on initial impressions, it’s a pretty capable device, with a nice…

By James Peckham Motorola just sent us through a box of goodies the company has been teasing for a while now. We predicted it may come with the long rumoured launch of the Moto E (2015) and low and behold we were correct. The new Moto E arrived in a little presentation box with a…

By James Peckham Motorola just sent us through a box of goodies the company has been teasing for a while now. We predicted it may come with the long rumoured launch of the Moto E (2015) and low and behold we were correct. The new Moto E arrived in a little presentation box with a…

By Darrell Etherington Motorola has a brand new Moto E, which packs a quad-core processor and LTE into a low-cost package that’s available to everyone. The Moto E starts at just $149, and goes on sale today in 40 markets around the world. It’s a good deal, especially now that Motorola has brought a number…

By Jon Russell Iotera, a U.S.-company that produces GPS devices with months of battery life, has closed a $1 million seed funding round led by ZenShin Capital Partners. Read More …read more Source: TechCrunch Gadgets

By Greg Kumparak Early this morning, we noted that the Pebble Time — Pebble’s new color e-ink smartwatch — had smashed through its $500,000 goal in an absolutely preposterous seventeen minutes. We don’t generally do play-by-play updates on Kickstarter campaigns, but this one is a bit too crazy not to note. The Pebble train just…