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Artland closes $1M seed for its social art marketplace
Danish startup Artland has closed $1M in seed funding for a social art marketplace app that aims to connect galleries and professional buyers. It’s also hoping to attract newcomers with an appetite to buy art but who don’t necessarily know how to go about learning about the market. We covered the startup last fall. At…
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RapidAPI, an API marketplace that processes 400B API calls each month, raises $9M led by A16Z
APIs — lightweight application interfaces that developers use both to integrate third-party services into their own apps, and to let their apps get used more easily by other developers — have become an essential, and fast-growing, building block of the tech world. Now, a startup that helps app builders find, use, pay for and track…
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YouTube’s mobile app gets a dark mode
YouTube’s mobile app is getting a dark mode. The company announced this morning its dark theme, first introduced on its desktop site last year, is launching today on the YouTube iOS app and arriving soon after on Android. With the setting enabled, YouTube’s background turns from white to black throughout the YouTube experience as you…
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Pilot raises $15M to bring bookkeeping into the modern era
The first time Waseem Daher, Jessica McKellar, and Jeff Arnold worked together on a startup, they built one that allowed administrators to patch security updates to a system without having to restart it. So it might come as a bit of a surprise that the next big technical challenge the three MIT graduates want to tackle…
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France takes legal action against Apple and Google for their app stores
France’s Economy Minister Bruno Le Maire criticized Apple and Google for the way they run the App Store and Play Store. According to him, Google and Apple have too much power against app developers. Le Maire will ask a court to look at it and fine tech giants if necessary. “When developers want to develop…
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Spotify tests native voice search, groundwork for smart speakers
Now Spotify listens to you instead of the other way around. Spotify has a new voice search interface that lets you say “Play my Discover Weekly,” “Show Calvin Harris” or “Play some upbeat pop” to pull up music. A Spotify spokesperson confirmed to TechCrunch that this is “Just a test for now,” as only a…
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nuqneH? yIjatlh! You can now learn Klingon with Duolingo
If you’re a real Star Wars Star Trek fan, chances are you’ve always dreamt of learning Klingon. It’s one of the most lovely and melodic tongues in the pantheon of fake languages, after all. Well, here is your chance: Duolingo today announced the launch of the official Klingon course on its service. “Many Star Trek fans become curious about…
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Facebook opens Instant Games to all developers
Facebook’s Instant Games are now open to all developers, Facebook announced this week in advance of the Game Developers Conference. First launched in 2016, the platform lets developers build mobile-friendly games using HTML5 that work on both Facebook and Messenger, instead of requiring users to download native apps from Apple or Google’s app stores. The…
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SwiftKey gets stickers
Back in 2016, Microsoft bought the popular SwiftKey keyboard for Android and iOS for $250 million. It’s still one of the most popular third-party keyboard on both platforms and today, the company is launching one of its biggest updates since the acquisition. With SwiftKey 7.0, which is out now, the company is adding stickers — because…
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PUBG soft-launches on mobile in Canada with Android release
Player Unknown’s Battlegrounds, the ‘battle royale’ style game where everyone tries to be the last player standing while scrounging for supplies to keep them alive, has launched on Android in Canada MobileSyrup reports, which could presage a future release in the U.S. The arrival of the mobile version of the game more generally known as…
