Kiran Upadhyay

Google was showing off its Project Jacquard at I/O 2015, a connected fabric tech that lets you build connected surfaces right into your clothes, in a way that makes it easy to connect to devices and power, while letting clothes makers make stuff that actually looks good. It seems promising, especially because they’ve already signed on Levi’s as a first partner. Levi’s, the SF-based maker of jeans and various other clothing, came on stage at the I/O ATAP special presentation today, and discussed why it decided to jump into this new tech. Basically, they were looking to make it easier to integrate our device use into our daily lives, making it easier to access and less generally obtrusive. The company is looking to build its own apps, but is also seeking contributions from the developer community, which it called “fashion designers” now with the advent of this new tech. Right now the partnership seems to be in very early stages, with no product announcements just yet. But the te...

Facebook this afternoon confirmed that it will now support animated GIFs in the Facebook News Feed. Not everyone will see the added functionality immediately, we understand, as the update is still rolling out. The move represents a significant change in direction for Facebook, which has historically made a conscious decision to avoid supporting GIFs, claiming that doing so would make its News Feed “too chaotic.” Instead of allowing GIFs, Facebook’s focus to date has been on video. The company introduced support for auto-playing videos in late 2013, but despite bringing a more lively, animated feel to the News Feed, the move did not lead Facebook to rolling out support for GIFs. Neither did the introduction of support for GIFs on Twitter last summer — a change that some felt might force Facebook’s hand in the matter. Though Facebook had built in support for GIFs for quite some time, the company has long felt that GIFs could lead to the site being cluttered with low-quality memes,...

If you’re looking to turn your WordPress site into an online shop, one option reigns supreme: WooCommerce. With roughly 7.5 million downloads, it’s easily the most popular e-commerce WordPress plugin — hell, it’s one of the top 10 most popular WordPress plugins overall. And now it’s officially a part of the WordPress family. Automattic, the company behind WordPress.com, has just acquired WooCommerce. Automattic isn’t disclosing the price of the acquisition, but tells me that it’s by far “the biggest acquisition by Automattic to date.” We’ll keep digging for details beyond that, of course. So why might Automattic snatch up an e-commerce plugin? Because it’s what the people want. “I remember a few years ago I was at [a WordPress conference],” says WordPress founder Matt Mullenweg in a video announcing the acquisition. “Someone stood up in the Q&A and asked me ‘When are you going to make it as easy to publish stores online as you’ve made it to publish websites?’… and there ...

Home security and automation starts and ends with the front door. It needs to keep the bad guys out yet let the good guys in without hassle. Either a system gets it right or it doesn’t, and, until now, I had yet to see a system that’s truly impressive. Meet the Vivint Sky Smart Home — a home security and automation system that offers a tantalizing glimpse into the future but is available today. When a person approaches the door, the Vivint Sky Smart Home’s inconspicuous doorbell cam starts recording. Ring the doorbell, and the homeowner gets a live video feed (with 2-way audio) through a smartphone app or on the system’s wall panel installed in the home. If the person inputs the correct code on the deadbolt, the system disarms and performs any number of set actions from turning on lights to adjusting the climate control. Like good technology, the experience is magical. The Vivint Sky Smart Home is pricey but it’s more complete than anything offered by Google, Samsung or ADT. ...

Real-time search-as-a-service provider Algolia just raised $18.3 million with Accel Partners leading the round — Philippe Botteri will join the board. This represents some serious funding following Algolia’s $1.2 million second seed round. As a reminder, Algolia makes your website’s search box suck less. It feels like using OS X’s Spotlight feature on the web. Moreover, Algolia is very easy to implement on your website as the company opted for a SaaS strategy. It means that you can implement the company’s search engine for database objects in just a few lines of code thanks to its hosted API, feed the service with JSON-formatted data, and customize it to your needs. After that, your users can start searching right away. They will interact with Algolia’s servers without ever leaving your site. With 12 different data centers across the world, Algolia tries to make the experience as responsive as possible for its users. On most websites, search is a painful process. You don’t know ...

Spotify’s press event today wasn’t just about adding video and other content types. The company also revealed that it’s adding new features to improve the experience for anyone who listens to the app during their runs. To do that, Chief Product Officer Gustav Söderström said Spotify will now use the sensors on your phone to detect the pace at which you’re running. Then, when you hit the running man button in Spotify, the app uses your tempo to select the right tracks. And if you want to change the tempo, Söderström said, “We’ll find the right music for that, again and again and again.” Even more impressive, he said Spotify is working with musicians (including Tiesto, who made a brief appearance at the event) to create specific tracks for running. After all, he noted that when his team talked to runners, they said that when the right song comes on, it makes them “feel like a hero.” But that effect only lasts for about a minute and a half, and then wears off — at least until the n...

Immediately, a startup building mobile tools for salespeople, is announcing that it has raised $2 million in funding. Here’s the pitch, from the funding release: “We believe the future of sales is not CRM, but a beautiful data­-driven, highly automated, and platform­-agnostic integrated sales experience.” More specifically, the company says it helps salespeople manage their workflow — they can connect Immediately with their existing email and sales database accounts (including Google Apps and Salesforce.com), then track their leads, detect when their emails are opened, log their phone calls and more. The team started out working on email organization app SquareOne before deciding to focus specifically on sales with Immediately. ReTargeter founder Arjun Dev Arora recently joined the team as co-founder and chief revenue officer. Co-founder and CEO Branko Cerny said Immediately is now on-boarding its first pilot customers, including Tapsense, UserVoice, NatureBox, Spark Centra...