Author: Greg Kumparak

TECHCRUNCH Rachio, the company that builds WiFi controllers for your garden sprinklers (think Nest Thermostat, but for watering your plants instead of heating your house), is back with a new one. They’ve also raised $10M in a Series B round. So what’s new in this Gen 3 version? A new hardware design, which the company tells me is meant to feel “sort of like an MP3 player” 5ghz WiFi support (in addition to the existing 2.4ghz support) Support for a new Flow Meter that the company says will ship in May, allowing the Rachio to know exactly how much...

TECHCRUNCH Here’s a curious bit of news for your Monday morning: Amazon wants to be the backend for gaming tournaments. They’ve built a new, AWS-powered platform called “GameOn” for third-party developers, allowing them to easily add things like tournaments, leaderboards and leagues to their games. Fittingly for Amazon, there’s a product fulfillment aspect to the new API — competition organizers can offer up real-world prizes to players (assuming said prize is available on Amazon), and Amazon will handle the process of getting it to the winner. The developer would have to pay for the prize, of course — but...

TECHCRUNCH Back in September of last year, Nest announced its first smart doorbell. When it would actually ship, however, was left sort of up in the air; all the company said at the time was to expect it sometime in Q1 of 2018. Turns out, that means today. The Nest doorbell — or the Nest Hello, as it’s known — is now shipping for $229. Nest also mentioned a few other bits of news: The front door lock/touchpad they built in partnership with Yale, also announced back in September of last year, is now shipping They’re now making external,...

TECHCRUNCH A bit of fun news for Amazon / Twitch Prime users: you’re going to get some free games each month. Twitch has just announced Free Games With Prime, a program in a similar vein as Microsoft’s Games with Gold on Xbox Live, or Sony’s offerings alongside PlayStation Plus. In short: each month, they’ll offer a selection of PC games. Download them within the offering window, and they’re yours to keep (though it’s unclear, at this point, if you can keep them if your Prime subscription lapses; we’re asking). Miss the window and you’re probably out of luck —...

TECHCRUNCH Just a few weeks back, Waymo got the thumbs up to start testing its self-driving cars in Arizona without the need for a human “safety net” behind the wheel. Wonder what it’s like to ride in one? This morning at SXSW, the company released a video showing off the experience had by the first few riders. The folks in the video up above are part of Waymo’s “Early Rider” program — in other words, folks who opted in to riding without a safety driver. Waymo CEO John Krafcik said that around 20,000 people around Phoenix, Arizona had signed...

TECHCRUNCH A bit of fun news for Amazon/Twitch Prime users: you’re going to get some free games each month. Twitch has just announced Free Games With Prime, a program in a similar vein as Microsoft’s Games With Gold on Xbox Live, or Sony’s offerings alongside Playstation Plus. In short: each month, they’ll offer a selection of PC games. Download them within the offering window, and they’re yours to keep (though it’s unclear, at this point, if you can keep them if your Prime subscription lapses. We’re asking.) Miss the window and you’re probably out of luck — but as...