TechCrunch Industry News

Boston-based robotic gardening startup Tertill this morning announced that it has appointed Helen Greiner as CEO and Chairman. The executive is best known for cofounding iRobot in 1990 along with fellow MIT Artificial Intelligence Lab members Rodney Brooks and Colin Angle (the company’s longtime CEO). At first glance, Tertill is a pretty natural fit for […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Greylock Partners has teamed up with Management Leadership for Tomorrow to address issues of diversity and inclusion in the technology industry. “Our view is this has to be a comprehensive approach,” MLT Founder and CEO John Rice told TechCrunch. “This is not just a coding program, mentor program, fellowship program. There are plenty of great […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Grammarly, the popular spelling and grammar checker, is launching a few new features for its paying users today that go beyond some of its traditional tools to help its users make their overall writing not just technically correct but also more legible. That means the service can now help you restructure sentences for clarity, help […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

TechCrunch is embarking on a major new project to survey the venture capital investors of Europe, and their cities. Our survey of VCs in Rome and Milan will capture how the cities are faring, and what changes are being wrought amongst investors by the coronavirus pandemic. (Please note, if you have filled the survey […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

A U.S. federal court has said a ban on TikTok will not go into effect on Monday as scheduled. The move to delay the anticipated ban will allow Americans to continue using the app while the court considers the ban’s legality and whether the app poses a risk to national security as the Trump administration claims. […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Amazon today announced a lot of new products including the new Echo speaker line. And the products looks dramatically different. Gone are the cylinders. They’re spheres now and look like nothing else on the market. The lights are now on the bottom, while there are still rounded buttons on the top. The Alexa software got […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Last month, Facebook introduced support for paid online events — and since many of the businesses offering those events have struggled during the coronavirus pandemic, the company also said it would not collect fees for the next year. At the same time, it complained that Apple had “dismissed” its requests to waive the App Store’s […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Twitter’s experiment to get people to actually read the content they’re sharing is going so well the company plans to expand it to the platform at large “very soon.” In June, Twitter introduced a test feature on Android to promote “informed discussion” on the platform — something social media’s staccato conversational bursts are rarely conducive […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

It happens to the best of us. Some newer, flashier model comes along and we’re no longer the latest and greatest new thing. The iPad’s had a plenty good run, of course. Ten years ago, the device redefined what a tablet is and has maintained a dominant spot atop the category, as countless competitors have […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The pandemic has caused K-12 classrooms, chaotic at the best of times, to descend into Zoom call chaos. What’s more, thousands of teachers who must wrangle this new, weird system are doing so with just a single monitor, making it difficult to see their students and the lesson at the same time. Two Screens for […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices