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Saturday 6 April 2019

My mad Marvel race to watch every MCU movie before Avengers: Endgame - CNET

Update: I just finished Captain America: Winter Soldier. My favorite so far is The Avengers. Nine down, 12 to go, and the clock is ticking.

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AutoComplete: Volvo issues a recall for XC60 and S90 seat hardware video - Roadshow

Plus, Mercedes debuts the CLA35 and VW is giving the I.D. R a Spanish holiday.

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Tinder-style 'Reigns' in Game of Thrones game for Nintendo Switch - CNET

Strategize and swipe right to rule Westeros in Reigns: Game of Thrones​.

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Turn your iPhone photos into works of art video - CNET

iOS 12 puts new, free photo filters at your disposal. In this Tech Minute, learn how to wow your friends by using features in the latest iPhone OS to make your pictures look like they were drawn by hand.

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SpaceX Falcon Heavy and 'Starhopper' could soon get off the ground - CNET

Elon Musk's rocket company is working toward an important launch for Heavy and groundbreaking tests for its Mars vehicle.

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Facebook, Google, Twitter to face US lawmakers about tech 'censorship' - CNET

Company officials are expected to testify before a Senate Judiciary subcommittee next week.

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How to watch Mets baseball in 2019 without cable - CNET

Meet the Mets, meet the Mets, step right up and stream the Mets! On SYN or MLB.TV.

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Ecobee rumored to be launching a smart home camera - CNET

The company seems to still be competing with Nest.

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Killing Eve, Season 2: A new killer, a few fashion crimes and more cat-and-mouse games - CNET

Jodie Comer and Sandra Oh again put on the not-always-fashionable shoes of professional assassin Villanelle and MI6 rookie Eve Polastri in the new season of this acclaimed TV show.

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Best smart lock for a keyless home

Keys are yesterday’s tech, your smart home needs a smart door lock.

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Best gaming keyboards: Our picks for the top budget, mid-tier, and RGB boards

This week in games: Borderlands 3 is an Epic exclusive, Obsidian shows off The Outer Worlds

The Full Nerd ep. 89: The state of VR and geeking out about PCs with The Foo Show's Will Smith

The best graphics cards for PC gaming

Embrace the convenience of wireless charging with this killer deal on a Qi-certified Anker pad

Blanket your home in Wi-Fi with these excellent Netgear Orbi mesh router deals

HyperX Alloy FPS RGB review: Rainbow lights and silver switches at an affordable price

TP-Link Smart Wi-Fi Light Switch, Dimmer HS220 review: A solid competitor in the in-wall dimmer space

This dimmer switch is a smooth operator, but it has a couple of notable drawbacks.

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Array by Hampton smart deadbolt review: It solves the battery problem, but falls short on integration

An onboard solar panel keeps the battery topped off, but you can’t use this smart lock with any smart home hub.

from PCWorld http://bit.ly/2I0ohVe
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iPad mini (2019) review: Petite, portable power

Apple’s smallest tablet is back! It doesn’t look much different than it did in 2015, but it’s packing far better hardware. That makes all the difference.

from PCWorld http://bit.ly/2IbfGOy
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Microsoft powers up Windows 10's Game Bar with truly useful tools for PC enthusiasts

Apple cuts the price of HomePod by $50, but it’s still too expensive

Apple has lowered the price of its HomePod smart speaker to $299, which is better but still not great.

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Microsoft will ship the Windows 10 May 2019 Update in late May, giving you power over updates

This cheaper-than-ever Kindle for Kids bundle helps children learn to love reading

The zippy 1TB Crucial P1 SSD is on sale for just $95 today—under 10 cents per gig!

iPad Air (2019) review: Apple finds the sweet spot

The sweet spot for most users is here, sandwiched between the basic budget iPad and the pricey iPad Pro.

from PCWorld http://bit.ly/2TXthvf
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WD Blue SN500 NVMe SSD review: Great bang for the buck

USB4: What this future standard means for USB chaos and Thunderbolt 3

Hulu is the cure for your Netflix nostalgia

Tired of Netflix losing your favorite shows? They probably wound up at Hulu.

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The Powerbeats Pro ‘totally wireless’ earphones are the most Apple product Beats has ever made

Apple has unveiled a new true wireless version of its Beats Powerbeats earphones, and there’s a lot of AirPods tech inside.

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Best Ultra HD Blu-ray players

Caavo's Control Center unifies your remotes and streaming services. Today it's cheaper than ever

Amazon's today-only TP-Link blowout includes killer deals on routers, smart home gear, and more

Best Fitbit: We help you choose the right one for your lifestyle

What is the best Fitbit? Our guide will help you find the one that best matches your activity level and habits, without spending more than you need.

from PCWorld http://bit.ly/2TVIGMx
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Fitbit Versa Lite review: Lower cost with little sacrifice

The Versa Lite is a low-cost version of Fitbit’s most affordable smartwatch, but there’s nothing cut-rate about it.

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How Excel creates barcodes

Panasonic DP-UB9000 Ultra HD Blu-ray player review: Here’s one manufacturer that’s not bailing on Blu-ray

Streaming offers instant gratification, but only a high-end Blu-ray player like this can reveal just incredible your 4K TV can look.

from PCWorld http://bit.ly/2YWMRf1
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Lenovo ThinkPad L390 Yoga review: A chunky convertible business laptop that almost has it all

Remo+ RemoBell S video doorbell review: This one’s priced to sell, but the app needs a lot of work

You can buy this modern doorbell cam for the same price as the comparatively ancient original Ring, but should you?

from PCWorld http://bit.ly/2YUGwAr
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UK government launches £10 million Edtech strategy

Education secretary, Damian Hinds, wants schools across the UK to “take advantage of all of the opportunities available through Edtech” in the government's new strategy

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Embrace the convenience of wireless charging with this killer deal on a Qi-certified Anker pad

Blanket your home in Wi-Fi with these excellent Netgear Orbi mesh router deals

Why your Photos and iPhoto libraries take more space on a Mac’s external drive

Three Apple products in the danger zone

TP-Link Smart Wi-Fi Light Switch, Dimmer HS220 review: A solid competitor in the in-wall dimmer space

This dimmer switch is a smooth operator, but it has a couple of notable drawbacks.

from Macworld http://bit.ly/2WO4sUa
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Array by Hampton smart deadbolt review: It solves the battery problem, but falls short on integration

An onboard solar panel keeps the battery topped off, but you can’t use this smart lock with any smart home hub.

from Macworld http://bit.ly/2I0ohVe
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iPad mini (2019) review: Petite, portable power

Best Lightning cables: Top-notch cables that are meant to last

Apple cuts the price of HomePod by $50, but it’s still too expensive

This cheaper-than-ever Kindle for Kids bundle helps children learn to love reading

Can’t select a drive to use with Time Machine? It might need reformatting

Apple News+ makes a poor case for its existence, as its weak initial subscriber count shows

iPad Air (2019) review: Apple finds the sweet spot

Hulu is the cure for your Netflix nostalgia

Tired of Netflix losing your favorite shows? They probably wound up at Hulu.

from Macworld http://bit.ly/2WKhCSf
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The Powerbeats Pro ‘totally wireless’ earphones are the most Apple product Beats has ever made

Caavo's Control Center unifies your remotes and streaming services. Today it's cheaper than ever

Amazon's today-only TP-Link blowout includes killer deals on routers, smart home gear, and more

Best Fitbit: We help you choose the right one for your lifestyle

Fitbit Versa Lite review: Lower cost with little sacrifice

4 things I hate about Apple News+ after one week

Panasonic DP-UB9000 Ultra HD Blu-ray player review: Here’s one manufacturer that’s not bailing on Blu-ray

Streaming offers instant gratification, but only a high-end Blu-ray player like this can reveal just incredible your 4K TV can look.

from Macworld http://bit.ly/2YWMRf1
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Pro or no? How the high-end 2019 iMac measures up

Remo+ RemoBell S video doorbell review: This one’s priced to sell, but the app needs a lot of work

You can buy this modern doorbell cam for the same price as the comparatively ancient original Ring, but should you?

from Macworld http://bit.ly/2YUGwAr
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Best smart thermostat: Reviews and buying advice

There are so many smart thermostats to choose from today. We'll help you pick the right one.

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Best VPN services: Reviews and buying advice

Surfing the web through a virtual private network (VPN) can keep your identity and data safe and secure online. We show you what to look for in a VPN and help you pick the best one for your needs.

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Apple’s Clips iOS app gets new posters, titles and captions, and ClassKit support

Amazon signs nine-figure deal with 'Westworld' creators


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'Elder Scrolls: Blades' mobile game opens its doors to more players


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Google surprises Android TV owners with unwanted advertisements


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Tesla investigated Elon Musk after he reportedly pushed a former employee


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Facebook, Google and Twitter will join a hearing on tech censorship next week


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Researchers want to store excess renewable energy as methane


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'Fortnite' takes a cue from 'Apex Legends' with respawn points


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Amazon’s earbuds are a shot at Google, not Apple


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'Super Meat Boy Forever' will miss April release date


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Microsoft may combine Xbox Live and Game Pass into single subscription


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EU charges Valve and five publishers with geo-blocking games


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UN says US fears over Huawei’s 5G are politically motivated


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The best immersion blender


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Facebook groups for buying and selling credit cards still abound


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EU believes BMW, Daimler and VW colluded over clean emissions tech


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Sidewalk Labs is under pressure to explain its smart city dream


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TikTok's next idea: To find new K-pop and J-pop stars


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Spotify, memes and voice chat come to Windows 10's game bar


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HTC's Viveport Video service will work on rival VR headsets


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PlayStation Classic owners: Write your own review!


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Japan's Hayabusa2 spacecraft bombs Ryugu asteroid


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Burned alive for using a smartphone


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Apple lures another of Google's top experts to its AI team


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The Morning After: A 'perfect' ultraportable laptop?


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Panasonic's G95 is a do-it-all hybrid mirrorless camera


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On balance, the cloud has been a huge boon to startups

Today’s startups have a distinct advantage when it comes to launching a company because of the public cloud. You don’t have to build infrastructure or worry about what happens when you scale too quickly. The cloud vendors take care of all that for you.

But last month when Pinterest announced its IPO, the company’s cloud spend raised eyebrows. You see, the company is spending $750 million a year on cloud services, more specifically for AWS. When your business is primarily focused on photos and video, and needs to scale at a regular basis, that bill is going to be high.

That price tag prompted Erica Joy, a Microsoft engineer, to publish this tweet and start a little internal debate here at TechCrunch. Startups, after all, have a dog in this fight, and it’s worth exploring if the cloud is helping feed the startup ecosystem, or sending your bills soaring, as they have with Pinterest.

For starters, it’s worth pointing out that Ms. Joy works for Microsoft, which just happens to be a primary competitor of Amazon’s in the cloud business. Regardless of her personal feelings on the matter, I’m sure Microsoft would be more than happy to take over that $750 million bill from Amazon. It’s a nice chunk of business; but all that aside, do startups benefit from having access to cloud vendors?



via Startups – TechCrunch https://tcrn.ch/2FQLRjx

Snap is channeling Asia’s messaging giants with its move into gaming

Snap is taking a leaf out of the Asian messaging app playbook as its social messaging service enters a new era.

The company unveiled a series of new strategies that are aimed at breathing fresh life into the service that has been ruthlessly cloned by Facebook across Instagram, WhatsApp and even its primary social network. The result? Snap has consistently lost users since going public in 2017. It managed to stop the rot with a flat Q4, but resting on its laurels isn’t going to bring back the good times.

Snap has taken a three-pronged approach: extending its stories feature (and ads) into third-party apps and building out its camera play with an AR platform, but it is the launch of social games that is the most intriguing. The other moves are logical, and they fall in line with existing Snap strategies, but games is an entirely new category for the company.

It isn’t hard to see where Snap found inspiration for social games — Asian messaging companies have long twinned games and chat — but the U.S. company is applying its own twist to the genre.



via Startups – TechCrunch https://tcrn.ch/2YTNLZm

Boomplay, a Spotify-style music and video streaming service for African music and Africa, raises $20M

While Spotify dukes it out with Apple and other big tech names to target high-end users in mostly developed markets, a startup out of China has raised some money to expand its music streaming business in the massive but still nascent market of Africa.

Boomplay, a service founded by Transsnet — a joint venture between Chinese phone maker Transsion and Chinese consumer apps giant NetEase — has raised $20 million in outside funding as it looks to break into more sub-Saharan countries and continue to build up its database of music tracks.

The company currently has some 5 million music tracks and videos on its platform — with a huge emphasis on African artists — with 42 million monthly active users, some 85 percent of which are on the African continent (primarily Nigeria, Ghana, Kenya and Tanzania). It is adding on average about 2 million users each month, a mix of paid and free subscribers, the latter seeing ads when they use the service.

Relatively speaking, this is just a small dent in the African market, which has around 1.2 billion inhabitants.

The funding is coming from Chinese investors Maison Capital and Seas Capital, with other undisclosed investors. Boomplay is not disclosing its valuation, but Phil Choi, the head of international partnerships at Boomplay, confirmed that it was up on its previous round and that the company has raised $25.5 million to date — modest numbers, considering the hundreds of millions that have been poured into Spotify, Deezer and many other streaming services, but a size that fits what is still a very nascent target market.

“The board feels it’s better to be a stable company and work at a slower pace rather than taking on more funding and going too fast,” Choi added.

The Apple Music of Africa?

Some have described Boomplay as the Spotify of Africa (the same description one of its local competitors, Spinlet, also gets), but I think it sounds more like the Apple Music of Africa.

The company got its start in 2015 when Transsion — the biggest supplier of phones to the African market, with about a 40 percent share at the moment, a mix of feature and smartphones, says Choi — decided to build mobile data services that it could sell to consumers to make its mobile phones more attractive, and to potentially make a little extra service margin on top of hardware sales.

It turned to NetEase — one of the big Chinese mobile content developers that publishes games, has its own music service and more (it even has its own TikTok clone, Vskit, pronounced “V-skit”) — in 2017 to help develop it and other content services, which were tightly integrated into the phone’s platform. In 2017 they formed a JV to run it called Transsnet. Boomplay — which also offers video and entertainment news (another Apple parallel) — is now a partially owned subsidiary of Transsnet; it does not disclose the size of its stake.

The service still benefits from Transsion’s large market share, but it has also published mobile apps for Android and iOS that tap users on a wider range of smartphones.

And it’s also tapping an international growth opportunity, specifically by marketing itself to Africans that have emigrated to other parts of the world and continue to listen to music from the continent.

“Music has no borders, and we’re committed to providing a rich and high-quality music experience for all users — not just in Africa, but around the world,” said Boomplay CEO Joe He. “This investment will help us do just that, by fostering cultural interchange and helping people communicate through the universal language of music.”

Boomplay’s rise in Africa, meanwhile, comes at a time when streaming services that dominate in other parts of the world, such as Spotify and Apple Music, have yet to really break into the African continent. Spotify launched its first service in Africa in the continent’s most developed market — South Africa — in March 2018, and has yet to expand to more countries, while Apple — with its premium pricing — has by Choi’s estimate sold less than 1 million iPhones in the region, which limits its potential growth.

Boomplay’s growth has — predictably — mirrored that of the handsets where it is preinstalled, but notably covers a number of countries in the sub-Saharan region, as well as a strong range of local music alongside more international tracks, by way of deals with large labels like Universal Music and Warner Music.

The role that China has played in developing tech in Africa has been an interesting one. It started years ago when Chinese companies like ZTE — looking for growth outside their home market — were winning big deals to build telecoms infrastructure at a time when tele-density on the continent was the lowest in the world. Rather than building fixed-line infrastructure, they built mobile infrastructure, and that eventually led to a wave of Chinese OEMs, making cheap feature and smartphones, becoming some of the biggest handset suppliers. “The Chinese government has really pushed investing in Africa since they see a lot of potential there,” Choi said.

Despite the very homegrown nature of the arts in Africa — specifically in areas like music and cinema — the development of services like Boomplay to deliver that content has been a natural progression in China’s wider tech growth in the region.

But if you follow the African market, you know that despite the big potential — of the 1.2 billion inhabitants, the average age is 21, Choi said, a great market for streaming music services — the economy is still underdeveloped, which hinders significant growth.

In the case of Boomplay, that translates not just to adding more users in countries that rank as some of the poorest in the world, but in getting them efficient ways to pay if they do want to do so.

“We’ve seen healthy growth, but one of the problems is that there isn’t really a sustainable or efficient mobile payment system,” Choi noted. Processing payments, he said, “takes really long and can be unreliable, for example, halfway through a transaction, errors may occur.” He said the company already accepts Mpesa, one of the key mobile payment services that was originally founded in Kenya, along with other payment methods, but the plan is to add more to that soon.

Longer term, Choi said that will likely lead to more funding being raised. Whether that comes from China again or elsewhere will be interesting to watch. “Chinese investors see Africa as the China of 10 years ago,” he said, “so they feel they can apply the same models to it, and bring it up to being a very prosperous region.”

“Africa is full of opportunity, from its young demographics to its vibrant culture, and Boomplay sits in the middle of all of that greatness,” said Tony Li, managing director of Maison Capital, in a statement. “Boomplay has incorporated NetEase’s experience in the music streaming business with Transsion’s expertise in local operations, and in doing so Boomplay became the dominant player in the region in a very short period of time. As more of Africa comes online, we are confident that Boomplay will continue to be a major force in business and culture.”



via Startups – TechCrunch https://tcrn.ch/2WUqC7F

Landed raises $7.5 million Series A to help teachers buy homes

Teachers are notoriously underpaid, and buying homes is notoriously expensive. This is where Landed, which just raised a $7.5 million Series A round led by Initialized Capital, comes in.

Landed helps educators buy homes by providing them with down-payment assistance. That’s because many teachers leave their jobs due to a lack of stable housing. In Berkeley, Calif., for example, more than half of the school district’s employees reported they considered leaving because of the high costs of housing.

“Our mission is to help these people build financial security and help them remain committed to their communities,” Landed co-founder Alex Lofton said. “We try to stay flexible to people’s realities. We don’t require people to buy in any particular city.”

To date, Landed has helped more than 200 educators buy homes in the San Francisco Bay Area, Denver and Seattle.

Currently, the maximum amount of support Landed gives is $120,000 in the Bay Area, but Lofton says people generally take less than that. Unlike some of the city-run housing programs, there’s no income restriction with Landed.

“A lot of people we work with make a bit too much money to qualify for those programs,” Lofton said.

Landed, which manages the funds it sets up, offers down-payment assistance in exchange for a cut of the home’s appreciated value. Landed, Inc., which is a licensed real estate brokerage, gets money on every transaction.

Given the influx of new cash into the SF Bay Area via IPOs from tech companies, Landed expects the market to become more challenging.

“With all of these economic booms in a market that’s already really supply-constrained with housing, it will be even more challenging,” he said.

While that’s surely discouraging to potential homebuyers, Landed is prepared to expand into additional markets and diversify where it offers support.

“[IPOs] will affect us but it won’t end our mission,” Lofton said. “For the community that we’re a part of, in our backyard, it does make us all here a bit nervous.”

With the funding, Landed will be able to expand to more cities and serve educators beyond K-12.

“I’ve followed the team at Landed for several years in their mission of providing more equitable access to homeownership to some of the most important community members – our educators and teachers,” Initialized Capital partner Kim Mai-Cutler* said in a statement. “Not only is Landed attacking a profound issue affecting teacher retention in metros and school districts throughout the country, this is a promising market opportunity to build a trusted brand and institution to help essential professionals achieve their lifetime financial goals.”

*Kim-Mai Cutler is a former colleague of mine, but this relationship had no bearing on coverage.



via Startups – TechCrunch https://tcrn.ch/2I1Mpqe

Lotame pitches an ‘unstacked’ approach to selling data tools

Lotame is unveiling what it says is a new approach to the data management business, with what it calls an “unstacked” strategy.

Adam Solomon, a former Time Inc. and Viacom executive who recently joined Lotame as chief marketing officer, said this new strategy is illustrated by the launch of Data Stream, which allows publishers and marketers to combine their first-party data with Lotame’s device graph connecting consumer data across devices.

The company offered these capabilities before, but Solomon said Data Stream allows Lotame to break it out as an individual product, separate from a larger data management platform.

“Very specifically, what we’re doing is decoupling products and services from the broader platform to solve business challenges for our customers,” said CEO Andy Monfried.

Solomon added that as Lotame customers face an increasingly complicated data landscape, the company has been doing more specialized work with individual clients. So it has created a product strategy (and catchy marketing term) based on that work.

“Now we’ve taken those bespoke, solutions-oriented features and productized them,” Solomon said. “Instead of a DMP, we really have an unbundled collection of technologies, where we can license individual components of our platform.”

Solomon said a DMP can basically be broken down into four areas: data ingestion at the center (that’s where Data Stream sits), audience segmentation, analytics and a data marketplace. The strategy is to create products focused on each of those areas.

Monfried contrasted this approach with the larger marketing clouds, which he said are trying to sell customers “the full stack of all their products.”

“What we say to clients is, ‘We don’t want to replace a full stack from Adobe or Salesforce it if makes sense [for] your business,’ ” he said. “But there are opportunities to augment, or specific tasks they need to solve for.”

In the announcement, IBM Audience Application Lead Tanya Cross described Lotame’s approach as “essential for a large global organization like ours,” adding, “It allows us to pick and choose the right tools for our data needs, giving us the ability to create more informed marketing campaigns and improve our business results.”



via Startups – TechCrunch https://tcrn.ch/2KbeWM0

The future of a16z, Lyft’s sinking stock and another IPO to watch

Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast, where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.

This week your humble Equity squad (Kate Clark, Alex Wilhelm) were stoked to take on as much as we could with what little time we had. We kicked off with a speed round that turned out to not be very quick and then dug into the biggest news of the week.

The Not-So-Speed-Round:

  • Affirm raised $300 million at nearly $3 billion valuation. The round marks another win for Max Levchin’s company and is another point on the board for the PayPal mafia.
  • Clearbanc announced a new campaign to rapidly back 2,000 e-commerce businesses with $1 billion, called “The 20-Min Term Sheet.”
  • Rippling raised $45 million, making for both an interesting financing story and a redemption arc, packaged neatly alongside a few dozen million dollars. Parker Conrad is part of the Rippling team, meaning whatever the company does will court attention.
  • The femtech sector is on pace to hit $1 billion in investment this year — finally — with organic tampon retailer Cora being the latest startup in the space to garner the attention of VCs.
  • And finally, we took a brief look at the world of corporate venture capital; a few notes: Okta has a new $50 million fund, Chevron has a $90 million fund, Intel Capital has been busy and more. Seems like every corporation wants to get into the game, or get in bigger.

After all that, we turned to Forbes’ big Andreessen Horowitz cover story. There was a lot to unpack. Long story short, a16z has given up its status as a venture capital firm and registered all 150 of its employees as financial advisors. Curious what that means and why it matters? We were too, so we found answers.

Next, we turned back to the newly public Lyft. Since its IPO, Lyft’s stock price has taken quite the dive. Now, Lyft is back to its IPO price, which we think means it priced its IPO quite well. Still, where’d all the bullish Lyft investors go and why are so many people shorting the stock? We answer these questions and discuss what the falling numbers mean for other IPO-ready unicorns.

Next up was a look into the Jumia IPO, which Alex wrote about here. We need to pay more attention to startups outside the U.S., like Jumia, an African e-commerce platform. So listen to our plea. We want to hear from you! Email us at alex@Crunchbase.com or kate.clark@techcrunch.com if you have suggestions.

Finally, the Midas List. Does it matter? Why are we talking about it? Why do lists exist? Who’s on top? Who’s not? Who’s sad? Who cares? And more questions left unanswered.

Equity drops every Friday at 6:00 am PT, so subscribe to us on Apple PodcastsOvercast, Pocket Casts, Downcast and all the casts.



via Startups – TechCrunch https://tcrn.ch/2Uk9Xxo