Leica’s a strange one. It only puts out a handful of cameras every year, and most of them are remixes or minor iterations on previous models. Since 2017 its flagship has been the solid but still somewhat archaic M10, but now the company has revealed its successor: the even more solid and also still somewhat […]
Abbott tells CES it’s getting into consumer biowearables
US medical device maker, Abbott, is moving into making general purpose consumer biosensing wearables. The company has been making continuous glucose monitor (CGM) hardware for diabetes management for years (since 2014) — but in a healthtech keynote at CES yesterday, Abbott’s chairman and CEO, Robert B Ford, announced it’s developing a new line of consumer […]
Four weeks as an Ultrahuman ‘Cyborg’
For four weeks during 2021, this TechCrunch reporter took the plunge and tested a “metabolic fitness” service from Bangalore-based startup Ultrahuman. The tracker program, branded Cyborg, uses arm-mounted medical grade hardware to get a real-time read-out of your blood glucose — using that dynamic data-point to power a quantified health service that scores what you […]
Look upon my CES 2022 work from home setup and despair
Working from home has been my normal for more than a decade, but it’s getting a bit stale. Time to spice it up — with some of CES 2022’s hottest items, all of which definitely kind of exist. First off let’s upgrade these dinky twin 27-inch Dells I’ve been attempting to work on for the […]
Morphée triples down on your relaxation with the Zen
As a journalist and investor, I’m always a little suspicious of single-product, super-niche companies; there are just so many things that can go wrong, and one of the ways that direct-to-consumer brands do well is having the ability to cross-sell to its customers. Morphée was one of those brands, starting with its frankly ludicrously over-designed […]
How Meituan is redefining food delivery in China with drones
On a congested sidewalk next to a busy mall in Shenzhen, a 20-something woman uses a smartphone app to order a milk tea on Meituan, a major food delivery company. In under ten minutes, the pearl-white drink arrives, not on the back of one of the city’s ubiquitous delivery bikes, but descending from the cloudy […]
Fisher-Price’s Chatter phone has a simple but problematic Bluetooth bug
As nostalgia goes, the Fisher-Price Chatter phone doesn’t disappoint. The classic retro kids toy was given a modern revamp for the holiday season with the new release for adults which, unlike the original toy designed for kids, can make and receive calls over Bluetooth using a nearby smartphone. The Chatter — despite a working rotary […]
Ameelio’s free video calling service for inmates goes live at first facilities
Ameelio, a nonprofit startup that intends to replace inmate-paid video calling in prisons with a free service, is making inroads against the companies that have dominated the space for decades. With nine facilities in Iowa up and running and talks progressing with dozens more ahead of a planned 2022 launch, the company may soon usher […]
US puts drone maker DJI and seven other Chinese companies on investment blocklist
The US government will place eight Chinese companies including drone manufacturer DJI on an investment blocklist for alleged involvement in surveillance of Uyghur Muslims.
Gift Guide: 10 great cameras for when a smartphone lens just isn’t enough
As we wade into the second pandemic-era holiday season, there’s no better time to throw yourself headlong into a new hobby. Or that’s what you should tell your loved ones when you gift them one of the cameras on our list of photography gift ideas this year.