Wonderful? Or Just Plain Weird?
What weird and wonderful technology gadgets were announced this week in Berlin? What do McDonalds & AI have in common? What's HSBC's secretive Project Iceberg? Who is using Drones to save lives?
All this, and more, in this weeks Grapevine.
Love what you read? Click here to forward this email to a friend.
Let's build this together 🚀
IFA 2K18 ❤️
Read time = 103 Seconds
Berlins annual IFA is no ordinary technology show. Alongside exhibits from big names such as Samsung and Sony, IFA is home to the weird and wonderful.
We’ve read the press releases, watched the videos and spoken to attendees so we can bring you the very best (and worst) from this years event.
The Predator Thronos – It’s not often TechCrunch refer to something as “Stupid”, but they’ve made an exception here. This is a 500 pound motorised gaming chair that can only be described as resembling a turret gun from the Millennium Flacon. The chair, spins, rotates, vibrates and is equipped with three 27 inch monitors. Without a doubt you have to check this out.
OneStep+ - a digital polaroid camera. This awesome little gadget has the look and feel of vintage polaroid camera but with the features, functionality and quality you except in 2018. The camera links to a mobile app and has kicked up quite a storm at this years IFA. See the camera in action here.
The Aurai Eye Massager - Yes, you read that right, an eye massager. This headset like device uses water propulsion to slowly roll warm water over your eyes and relieve tension. Check out a demo / review here. Would you use this?
The Samsung Q900R 8K – Catchy name, right? All jokes aside, this is a pretty serious TV. This television has an 8K resolution (33,177,600 pixels) and is equipped with “AI Upscaling”, a technology that makes low resolution film look crisp and clean. The cost? It won’t be cheap, with rumours circulating north of the $10,000 point. Have a look here.
Nano Leaf – This lighting start-up (yes, that's a thing) wants you to cover your house in little square panels that change colour with touch. At multi thousand £ price tags we’re not so sure this ones for us. Have a peak at the tiles in action here.
The Grapevine Newsflash 🔥
10 key tech & startup stories in 122 Seconds
Funding Circle IPO? Peer to peer lender Funding Circle raises $387m and announces plans for an IPO. To date the firm has facilitated £3.8bn in loans to 39,000 UK businesses. Check out how their product works here.
Fast Food AI: Fed up of repeating yourself 6 times to the person in the McDonalds drive through? Fear no more. Clink is developing conversation AI for fast food restaurants. See a demo here.
The Uber of Taxis: How do you pitch your start up in just 30 seconds? Get the answer to this question from Y-Combinator CEO & Partner Michael Seibel.
Project Titan: Apple’s secret autonomous car programme, named Project Titan, has been thrown into the spotlight this week as one of its test vehicles suffered a minor crash, read more here.
Booming Lagos Startup! Paystack, Nigeria's equivalent of Stripe, has raised $8m from the likes of Tencent, Visa, Y Combinator and Stripe. The firm offers APIs that enable merchants to build online payment features in just a few lines of code, leveraging the booming e-commerce scene in Nigeria.
Cloud 3.0: DFINITY has raised $102m from A16z for what it’s calling “Cloud 3.0”. Put simply, DFINITY is looking to build a decentralised cloud based super computer with immense processing power. Read more here.
3D Printing....The Top 25: From Space travel to music, what are the top 25 industries set to be disrupted by 3D Printing? CB insights have done the hard work for you, see the list here.
Dronbulance: A North Carolina Hospital is trailing the delivery of medical equipment via drone. Get the full scoop here.
Project Iceberg: HSBC has repotedly hired 100 + people to build a digital stand-alone bank for small businesses. Will their new proposition compete with competitors like Tide, Starling and Coconut?
As always - much love,
Louis & Nick
DO IT 👇