Virtual reality got me interested in technology in the early 1990′s.  Two decades ago, “cyberspace” was still an exciting new concept.  I’ve met several virtual reality pioneers over the years, including VPL Research co-founder Jaron Lanier, hardware hacker Mitch Altman, and cyberpunk sci-fi author Rudy Rucker.  The vision for virtual reality was the ability to put on a […]

Cue has been acquired by Apple, various sources have reported.  Cue was “a free service that helps people make the most of their day.”  The genesis of Cue was Greplin, funded in YC W10 as a personal web search engine that indexes information stored in online services.  In September 2012, Cue co-founder Daniel Gross and Robert Scoble did […]

Flutter has been acquired by Google, announced on Flutter’s website.  The YC W12 company makes a popular Mac app that enables Kinect-like control by gestures at the webcam.  Flutter was included by Apple on its 2012 Mac App Store “Best Mac Apps of the Year”.  This past February, Flutter added support for Google Chrome.

New York Fashion Week is going on right now.  Samsung also just showed off their new Gear smartwatch.  Coincidence?  I think not.  I intentionally wrote 8 Fashion-Related Startups Funded By YC earlier this year when wearable electronics were being widely discussed.  More collaboration between these two markets, Fashion and Devices, could result in some very inspiring products.  Here are […]

Y Combinator is having its semi-annual Demo Day today.  This time it’s for YC S13, which contains 53 companies.  By Demo Day, most of these companies have already launched in the technical press.  As of writing this, I already have 45 of the 53 companies in YC S13 on my complete list of known Y […]

How much longer can Dropbox charge for something everybody else is now offering for free?  The answer to that question seems to involve developers.  Dropbox DBX was held Tuesday, the company’s first ever developer conference.  New developer resources were announced.  There was also a Q & A session with questions about the company’s business model and […]

Xobni has been acquired by Yahoo!  The company, from YC S06, made the announcement today on the Xobni company blog.  Xobni “makes your inbox and address book smarter by making it easy to search and discover all your contacts.”  It provides “a full view of each contact, complete with their photo, job title, company details, and email […]

Crocodoc has been acquired by Box, announced by Box via press release and Crocodoc’s company blog.  Crocodoc is a YC W10 company that makes document-management technology that is used primarily by businesses.  Crocodoc’s products include software that converts Microsoft Office files into HTML5, secure document embedding and sharing solutions, and workflow collaboration tools.  This acquisition is an exciting […]

Reddit, from YC’s original batch in 2005, has recently hired startup investor Ellen Pao.  According to the announcement, the past few months have been a time of unprecedented growth for reddit.  Ms. Pao’s role at the company involves managing strategic partnerships that benefit the community.  She’s previously served as an advisor to reddit.

COLOURlovers enables you to create color palettes, share custom patterns, name colors, and discuss color inspiration ideas.  Over a million user-submitted color palettes is the site’s feature attraction, all of which can be downloaded in various formats.  COLOURlovers has various tools for selecting colors that work well together, gathering color palettes from photos, and customizing the Twitter. […]