Devin Coldewey
Devin Coldewey is a Seattle-based writer and photographer. He first wrote for TechCrunch in 2007. He has also written for MSNBC.com, NBC News, DPReview, The Economist/GE’s Look Ahead, and others.
His personal website is coldewey.cc.
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Latest from Devin Coldewey
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E Ink brings rich color to ePaper, but not to e-readers
E Ink, maker of the ePaper displays found in many e-readers (maddening to have three different e prefixes in one sentence, but it’s unavoidable), announced a brand new type of reflective display that can show a huge range of colors — but the tech is only going to be deployed as signage for now. Read More
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Apple prepping Siri SDK and Echo-like home assistant gadget
Apple is preparing an SDK that would allow developers much greater access to Siri — and the improved assistant will power a stationary hub device like Amazon’s Echo. A report from The Information tallies with what we’ve heard over the last few weeks; expect an announcement, if not the device itself, at WWDC in June. Read More
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Non-profit RideAustin looks to fill void left by Uber and Lyft
Charity or opportunism? It’s so hard to tell, sometimes. In RideAustin’s case, it looks to be a bit of both. It’s a non-profit car-for-hire service that’s happy to abide by the city’s rules — and adds a layer of budget- and conscience-friendly features that may help it stay differentiated (and alive). Read More
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Facebook denies bias in Trending Topics, but vows changes anyway
Facebook responded today to official queries regarding its Trending Topics feature, specifically allegations made over the last few weeks that the team responsible for it was deliberately suppressing conservative views and arbitrarily elevating stories with little oversight. It denied the accusations, but nevertheless announced changes it would make to the process. Read More
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Tim Cook admits ‘prices are high’ for iPhones in India
Apple CEO Tim Cook made an uncharacteristic admission today in an interview with Indian news channel NDTV — that iPhones are too expensive. He immediately qualified it, and the context really is important, but it’s just one of those things you don’t hear very often. Read More
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Elizabeth Warren takes on the ‘so-called gig economy’ in speech
Senator Elizabeth Warren has some choice words for Uber, TaskRabbit, Alfred and all the other companies taking part in the “so-called gig economy,” as she put it in a speech Thursday for the New America Foundation’s annual conference. She isn’t against them by any means, but urged both the companies and lawmakers to make labor-friendly changes: “No worker should… Read More
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Lenovo video teases return of Motorola’s iconic RAZR flip phone
Motorola’s RAZR surely stands as one of the most recognizable phones of yesteryear (although myself I preferred the Samsung Trace) — and while the brand has been desultorily maintained by Verizon, a new video from Lenovo suggests a more serious throwback device is nearly at hand, so to speak. Read More
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Google’s new 360-degree short ‘Pearl’ puts you in the passenger seat with dad and daughter
It’s Friday, so you can probably spare a few minutes to watch a heartwarming little 360-degree animated film, the latest in Google’s “Spotlight Stories.” This one, entitled “Pearl,” takes place entirely inside a beat-up ’80s sedan, and traces the story of a girl and a guitar. Read More
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FireChat Alerts could help spread vital information in offline and disaster-stricken areas
Decentralized chat app FireChat is adding a new feature that could help disseminate critical info like storm warnings, health advisories and so on when the normal communications grid is down. Truth be told, Alerts aren’t terribly different from the normal chat function, which passes data from phone to phone over an ad-hoc network that doesn’t rely on cellular signals. In the case… Read More
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3D-printed bespoke wheelchair debuts at Design Week in London
For all their being motion-enabling platforms, wheelchairs are themselves rather static. A frame of steel and aluminum supporting foam-filled leather or plastic, with a handful of settings that may or may not accommodate the user’s specific condition. A London design firm has worked for two years to create an alternative: a 3D-printed wheelchair made to fit the shape and needs of its rider. Read More
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Google asks the Internet for N-words — what could possibly go wrong?
What’s worse than asking the Internet at large to name your product? Telling them it has to start with N. Let’s just take a moment to appreciate the stupefying magnitude of Google’s naiveté here. Read More
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Katamari Damacy creator is making an augmented reality game called Woorld for Project Tango phones
Keita Takahashi, creator of the famously bizarre ball-rolling game Katamari Damacy, has a new title, but it’s not for the PS4 or Xbox One — you’ll need a Project Tango-compatible device to play this one. Read More
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Study finds that police body cameras may increase assaults — if used improperly
Putting body cameras on police seems like a net good for everyone involved, but how to deploy them and what the subtler effects will be are questions that would be better answered sooner than later. Otherwise, as a new large-scale study shows, we risk making things worse — body cameras could actually increase incidents of violence. Read More
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This machine 3D prints metal structures in midair by lasering nanoparticles
One limitation of run-of-the-mill 3D printers is that the structure must essentially be built as a series of layers, each one supporting the next. A new device from Harvard’s Wyss Institute allows metal filaments to essentially be drawn in midair with no support whatsoever. And it uses lasers! Read More
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AI learns and recreates Nobel-winning physics experiment
Australian physicists, perhaps searching for a way to shorten the work week, have created an AI that can run and even improve a complex physics experiment with little oversight. The research could eventually allow human scientists to focus on high-level problems and research design, leaving the nuts and bolts to a robotic lab assistant. Read More
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Our favorite companies from 500 Startups’ 16th Demo Day
It’s that time of year again: more than 40 500 Startups companies presented and launched in Mountain View this afternoon. From acne consultations by dermatologists through your smartphone, to selling sewing patterns, today’s Demo Day hit quite a few pretty interesting areas. Here are a couple of our favorite ones from the batch. Read More
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GearVR update brings much-needed native viewcapture tool to compatible phones
Here’s the thing: when your eyes are synthesizing information from multiple screens into a three-dimensional virtual space, the word “screenshot” fails to describe what it is doing almost as badly as it fails to document what you are experiencing. So I’m calling it viewcapture. Read More
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SeaDrone simplifies underwater exploration and inspection
It’s the year, or perhaps the decade, of the drone, and the popular craft are only getting cheaper, better and easier to control — but why should drones be limited to the air? The SeaDrone, demonstrated onstage at Disrupt NY today, brings the benefits and simplicity of multi-rotor airborne drones to underwater applications. Read More
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Spinn’s unique coffee brewer brings ‘third wave’ roasters to your countertop
There’s no shortage of ways to get a satisfactory caffeine fix these days, and some of them are mighty high-tech. Spinn Coffee’s new machine, demonstrated on stage at Disrupt NY today, claims one of the most high-tech of all — but this elaborate centrifugal brewing method may be the most versatile as well. Read More
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Ultra-cute bugbots cooperate to climb a step together
Anything is possible if we all work together — and no one gets left behind. That is the lesson these tiny “VelociRoACH” robots taught me today. Read More
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