Indigo Fair raises $12M to connect wholesalers with smaller retail outlets with a smarter service

 Max Rhodes was walking around that weird little parklet in Hayes Valley in San Francisco after taking a break from a five-year stint at Square to figure out what he wanted to do next — and he kept seeing Square registers everywhere. It was spotting them over and over again in smaller retail shops dotted throughout the city that made him think about the connections between the average… Read More

China's Xinjiang surveillance is the dystopian future nobody wants

In July 2009, deadly riots broke out in Urumqi, the capital of Xinjiang, China. Nearly 200 people died, the majority ethnic Han Chinese, and thousands of Chinese troops were brought in to quell the riots. An information battle soon followed, as mobil...

Backgrounder: Five innovative projects will move forward in the greater Québec City area

Government of Canada awards more than $830,000 in financial assistance to businesses and organizations in the greater Québec City area

The Collaborative Health Research Projects

The Collaborative Health Research Projects

Robinhood rolls out zero-fee crypto trading as it hits 4M users

 Coinbase has some serious competition. Today, Robinhood starts rolling out its no-commission cryptocurrency trading feature in California, Massachusetts, Missouri, Montana and New Hampshire. Users there can buy and sell Bitcoin and Ethereum with no extra fees, and everyone can track those and 14 other coins in its sleek app. Read More

By 2020, 30% of search is voice-conducted. Here’s what that means for your business.

Bought an Amazon Echo last Christmas? You were not the only one. According to a statement released by Amazon, “millions” of Echo Dots — the manufacturer’s smart home devices featuring voice assistant Alexa — were sold during the holidays, making it the best-selling item on their website. Indeed, virtual assistants like Siri and Alexa are increasingly being used in everyday life — and this changes the way consumers browse the web. Gartner predicts that by 2020, 30 percent of our browsing sessions will be voice conducted. In addition, audio-centric technologies such as Apple’s AirPods, Google Home and Amazon’s Echo, are…

This story continues at The Next Web

Backgrounder: Six Montérégie businesses can complete their growth projects

Government of Canada awards more than $1,600,000 in financial assistance to a number of businesses in the region

Big Data — useful tool or fetish?

In 2012, the Obama administration unveiled a two hundred million dollar initiative to facilitate the growth of the Big Data industry and demonstrate its potential in large-scale markets. However, the initiative was an apparent failure. Despite government endorsement, Big Data has been unable to develop into an industry in its own right; the analysis and evaluation of billions of data points remain a trend rather than an emerging technology. Tom Kalil, Deputy Director for Policy at OSTP, released a statement on behalf of the Obama administration in which he declared that “to launch the initiative, six Federal departments and agencies will announce…

This story continues at The Next Web

SpaceX misses catching Falcon 9 rocket fairing with a giant net on a big ship

 SpaceX nearly succeeded in catching the fairing used in its PAZ Falcon 9 mission on Thursday, using a barge called ‘Mr. Steven’ that uses four giant arms with a net strung between them to secure the used nosecone once it floats back from space. The fairing missed the boat by just a few hundred meters, but did land intact in the water, at least. SpaceX CEO Elon Musk noted that… Read More