Confusing Traffic Lights

Bad UX kills

It clogs systems, causes accidents, wastes energy and makes people unhappy. It’s more than a bad experience on a website — in cities, bad user experience (UX) design can actually kill. We’re talking about signage, public spaces, civic and emergency communications and other forms of urban design that influence our daily routines and, in some cases, are there expressly for… Read More

nasa-rovers

NASA’s Curiosity rover can now pick which bits of Mars to scan on its own

Curiosity may be an older dog (the rover landed on Mars in 2012), but it’s still picking up new tricks. NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory recently revealed (via Verge) that the robot can now pick its own targets when choosing rocks to scan with its laser spectrometer, a task formerly reserved for remote operation by scientists back here on Earth. JPL created the software that now… Read More

olapic-coach

Monotype will acquire marketing startup Olapic for $130M

Monotype, a publicly traded company focused on font design and technology, announced today that it’s acquiring Olapic, a startup that helps brands promote themselves with user-generated photos. The deal is expected to close in the third quarter of this year — at that point, Olapic will operate as a division of Monotype. The purchase price is $130 million, plus $19 million in… Read More

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Now anyone can build features for Cola messenger

Cola, a messaging app that integrates apps into chats, is opening up its developer kit today to enable anyone to build new apps.
The updated version available today comes with 12 “bubbles” that are essentially applications that run inside the messaging app. Users can share weather and flight information, gifs, and more without creating accounts with individual tools. The… Read More

Grover lets you rent electronics on the cheap

 Shopping online for electronics can be overwhelming. First you have the tech blog reviews, and then the forums, and then the product page itself. Finding the right product, at the right price, can be difficult. That’s where Grover (formerly ByeBuy) comes in. For roughly 5 percent of the retail price, users can rent electronics for a month and try before they buy. Plus, users can extend… Read More

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Print your own triple-axis tourbillon (trust me, it’ll be cool)

In the world of horology there are few things fancier than the tourbillion and there are few things extra fancier than a triple-axis model. Originally invented by Abraham Louis Breguet, the tourbillion was a modification designed to ensure that a watch would keep good time in any number of positions – in a pocket, on a desk, or jostling around in a bag. It does this by spinning… Read More

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Inkbox’s short-term tattoos raise $1M from Alison Sweeney, Jeff Probst and more

Inkbox’s two-week tattoos made waves when the company debuted its product on Kickstarter last year – Toronto-based founders Tyler and Braden Handley raised nearly $300,000 for their organic limited-time body art invention, which was a refinement of their original product offering that cut application time to just 10 minutes. A year later, they’ve raised $1 million in seed… Read More

tinderfeature

Tinder Social, helping friend groups plan their night out, launches globally

Get ready for a new era — Tinder is about to launch Tinder Social globally. What is Tinder Social, you might ask? Well, Tinder Social is exactly the social planning app that has failed in the past, but backed by the world’s biggest young adult dating app. Tinder, the dating app to rule them all, has long teased other verticals for meeting and creating connections with the people… Read More

ios beta

Apple just dropped another iOS 10 public beta for you crazy testers

That didn’t take long. Just a day after releasing the third iOS 10 developer beta, the second public beta of iOS 10 is now available to download. The second public beta of macOS Sierra was also released today. And of course, you won’t have to pay $99 a year for a developer account. But things are still rough at this stage so I wouldn’t recommend installing it on your main… Read More