Lifeboat Foundation

Anyone ready to visit Mars for your next vacation in 2018?

Volvo’s driverless car will take on the roads of London. Looking for the latest headlines in small business, innovation and tech? While some tech companies suffered last quarter, Facebook announced a surge in users and revenue. In a series of tweets yesterday, Elon Musk announced plans to land an unmanned craft on Mars by 2018. Volvo will test its driverless car in London’s heavy traffic to collect data and make improvements, according to The Christian Science Monitor.

Nice

SAN DIEGO, Calif.—(BUSINESS WIRE)— SLANTRANGE, pioneers of a smarter approach to aerial remote sensing and analytics for agriculture, today announced its $5 million Series A equity financing from a consortium of investors led by The Investor Group, a leading San Diego based investment firm. The funding will accelerate the development and scaling of SLANTRANGE’s proprietary drone sensor and analytics technology to help farmers improve operations amid a rapidly transforming business landscape.

“Farmers are continually seeking ways to improve crop yields with minimal risk. Drones offer an exciting solution, but historically haven’t been built for the precise needs of the agriculture industry,” said Mike Ritter, CEO of SLANTRANGE. “SLANTRANGE delivers on the promise of drones with an intelligence system that combines hardware and software to bring farmers crop information they need to make better operational decisions. This investment enables us to scale our technology and team to meet the soaring demand we’re seeing from the agricultural community in the United States and beyond.”

Continue reading “SLANTRANGE Secures $5M to Scale Sensor and Analytics Technology for Agricultural Drones” »

“[Using DNA,] you could fit all the knowledge in the whole world inside the trunk of your car,” Twist Bioscience CEO Emily Leproust told TechCrunch.

Twist Bioscience, a startup making and using synthetic DNA to store digital data, just struck a contract with Microsoft and the University of Washington to encode vast amounts of information on synthetic genes.

Big data means business and the company able to gather a lot of it is very valuable to investors and stockholders. But that data needs to be stored somewhere and can cost a lot for the upkeep.

Continue reading “Genetics startup Twist Bioscience is working with Microsoft to store the world’s data in DNA” »

“The point of this excursion into tech history is that a technology often produces its best results just when it’s ready to be replaced — it’s the best it’s ever been, but it’s also the best it could ever be.”

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“HTC is launching a $100 million accelerator program for startups that want to use its VR technology. The program, called Vive X, will launch in Beijing, Taipei, and San Francisco, with the possibility of expanding to more cities over time.”

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Using Google Glass, Augmedix has developed a platform for doctors to collect, update and recall patient and other medical data in real time, technology website TechCrunch reported on Tuesday.

Google Glass is no longer available for consumers but its enterprise business continues to rise especially in the health care sector.

“When you are with doctors without Glass, they are charting and clicking on computers for a lot of the time and not focusing on their patients,” Ian Shakil, CEO of Augmedix was quoted as saying.

Continue reading “Google Glass to ‘rehumanise’ doctor-patient relationship” »

Google innovation lab — where innovators can join; but can never leave.

Google wants to retain its top talent and now has a plan for it! According to a report by TheInformation the company plans on building an in-house startup incubator internally known as Area 120.

This entrepreneurial space will let Google employees develop their ideas, which will be supported and funded by Google. The report further adds that executives Don Harrison and Bradley Horowitz will be managing the incubator. Once the business plan is drafted by employees, teams can work full time on the said project. After some months they get the option to either pitch for more funding and set out as a whole new company, adds the report.

Continue reading “Google building Area 120, an in-house incubator to avoid talent from leaving” »

I was talking to someone only last week about this plus leveraging GPU chips.

The United States Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is advertising for a business to assist it in building a secure messaging app using distributed ledger (Blockchain) technology for the Department of Defense (DoD).

An advertisement for the role appeared on the Defense Business portal and states that there is a “critical DoD need to develop a secure messaging and transaction platform accessible via web browser or standalone native application.”

Continue reading “DARPA wants someone to build the DoD a new secure Blockchain based messaging platform” »

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The consumer version of Google Glass smart wearable probably won’t be coming to the market anytime soon, but it seems like the project is far from dead. Namely, one of the startups which came to being after Google originally revealed its hi-tech headset several years ago is now raising new capital in order to bring Google’s optical head-mounted display into more hospitals and other health care facilities. The company in question is Augmedix, one of the ten official “Google Glass for Work” partners. Its main activity is developing software for wearable devices utilized in the medical industry, i.e. co-developing inventions which should make doctors’ lives easier. As Augmedix’s CEO Ian Shakil puts it, the doctors are “engaging with patients in front of them” while his company’s inventions are taking care of the “burdensome work in the background”.

Augmedix managed to raise $17 million of strategic investment capital from five institutions: TriHealth Inc., Sutter Health, Catholic Health Initiatives, Dignity Health, and a fifth, yet unnamed entity. This is the second round of funding the Silicon Valley company managed to secure in just over a year after raising $16 million in 2015. In total, the groups which financed Augmedix’s endeavors represent more than 100,000 health care providers. Naturally, the company can’t yet aim to deliver 100,000 of smart wearables designed for the medical industry, but it’s slowly getting there. Specifically, it’s currently providing equipment and services to hundreds of physicians and surgeons and is hoping to do the same with “thousands” more by 2017. No concrete figures have been provided by Augmedix, though the startup did confirm that it’s currently achieving a “multi-million dollar revenue” on a yearly basis.

Continue reading “New Funding Could Bring Google Glass To More Hospitals” »