| Uber loses comms lead in the midst of crisis, Toyota robots help humans walk again and more in The Daily Crunch for April 12, 2017. And Amazon now quantifies your children for you. 1. Uber's head of comms departs Uber's losing its head of communications. Rachel Whetstone is leaving the company after acting as a rudder during its recent troubled times. Whetstone's departure means Uber's Jill Hazelbaker takes over as comms lead, coming to the role from a position as SVP of global policy and communications at the company. It sounds like she's plenty well-qualified, but the timing of this departure is not great for the beleaguered company. 
2. Toyota's new robot helps people walk again Toyota works on a lot of robots, but its most recent that's actually going to ship is a frame designed for therapeutic use in helping patients with partial paralysis walk again. The robot can provide exactly as much support as is needed to help a patient walk, and tweak how much it offers over time. 3. Amazon FreeTime adds parental dashboard Amazon will give parents more control over FreeTime, the subscription service for kids' books and content, with a new dashboard that lets them see how their kids are spending their time. Kind of like an offspring analytics platform. 4. Amazon now has a wallet license in India Amazon picked up a wallet license in India that will allow it to provide less frictionful payments and top-ups for Amazon account holders in the country. It's a big advantage for Amazon, if used correctly. 5. Walmart will charge you less for online items if you pick them up in-store Walmart wants to better compete with Amazon, and as part of that it's offering discounts on online-only items – provided you're willing to go to a Walmart to pick them up. It makes sense, since Walmart can both save money on shipping and potentially rack up halo sales once you're in the retail location. 6. The Galaxy S8 won't launch with a voice assistant after all Samsung's Galaxy S8 won't launch with a voice assistant onboard, as Bixby will have to wait. The miss isn't a huge one, despite how much the press is making of the news; voice assistants still aren't all that useful, and Samsung has time to make up for it post-launch. 7. Lyft raised $600 million Lyft just added to its war chest, which is good because now is a prime time for it to spend on fighting chief rival Uber. You can get your very own war chest of sorts, though one of information, not money: Our new weekly startups newsletter, curated by Anthony Ha. Just follow the link below and check the "TC Startups" checkbox to subscribe. 
| 
No comments:
Post a Comment