Author: Josh Constine

HQ Trivia replaces Quiz Daddy Scott Rogowsky Quiz Khalifa aka Host Malone aka Trap Trebek aka HQ Trivia’s Scott Rogowsky has been pushed out of the live mobile gaming startup. The two split due to disagreements about Rogowsky attempting to take a second full-time job hosting sports streaming service DAZN’s baseball show ChangeUp while moving to only hosting HQ on weekends, TMZ first reported. HQ wanted someone committed to their show. Now HQ co-founder and CEO Rus Yusupov confirms to TechCrunch that Rogowsky will no longer host HQ Trivia. He tells…

Instagram now demotes vaguely “inappropriate” content Instagram is home to plenty of scantily-clad models and edgy memes that may start to get fewer views starting today. Now Instagram says “We have begun reducing the spread of posts that are inappropriate but do not go against Instagram’s Community Guidelines”. That means if a post is sexually suggestive, but doesn’t depict a sex act or nudity, it could still get demoted. Similarly, if a meme doesn’t constitute hate speech or harassment, but is considered in bad taste, lewd, violent, or hurtful, it…

To stop copycats, Snapchat shares itself Evan Spiegel has finally found a way to fight back against Mark Zuckerberg’s army of clones. For 2.5 years, Snapchat foolishly tried to take the high road versus Facebook, with Spiegel claiming “Our values are hard to copy”. That inaction allowed Zuckerberg to accrue over 1 billion daily Stories users across Instagram, WhatsApp, and Facebook compared to Snapchat’s 186 million total daily users. Meanwhile, the whole tech industry scrambled to build knock-offs of Snap’s vision of an ephemeral, visual future. But Snapchat’s new strategy…

Snapchat launches Mario Party-style multiplayer games platform Snap is unlocking a new revenue stream while giving you something to do in between chats and Stories. Today Snapchat debuts its Snap Games platform that lets you play real-time, multiplayer games while texting and talking with your friends. The platform is based off Snap’s secret late-2017 acquisition of PrettyGreat, an Australian game studio with talent from Halfbrick which built Fruit Ninja. That team built Bitmoji Party, a Mario Party-style mini-game fest, to show off the platform that includes five games from developers…

Snapchat launches Scan, its AR utility platform Point and shoot? No, point and interact. Snapchat can now help with your homework. The app’s camera is becoming the foundation of an augmented reality developer platform known as “Scan”. Snap today announced partnerships with Photomath to add the ability to solve math problems, and Giphy for detecting objects which then spawn related GIFs on screen. Scan will roll out to all Snapchat users soon, and developers interested in joining the platform can contact Snap. Snapchat Scan spawns Giphy GIFs based on what’s…

Torch takes M to teach empathy to executives When everyone always tells you ‘yes’, you can become a monster. Leaders especially need honest feedback to grow. “If you look at rich people like Donald Trump and you neglect them, you get more Donald Trumps” says Torch co-founder and CEO Cameron Yarbrough about our gruff president. His app wants to make executive coaching (a polite word for therapy) part of even the busiest executive’s schedule. Torch conducts a 360 interview with a client and their employees to assess weaknesses, lays out…

Foursnap? Snapchat tries “Status” location checkins Today’s teens missed the Foursquare era so Snapchat is giving them another shot with a new feature to aid in-person meetups. Snapchat is now testing Status, an option to share to the Snap Map a Bitmoji depicting what you’re up to at a certain place. You could show your little avatar playing video games, watching TV, asking friends to hit you up, and more. And Snapchat will compile these into a private diary of what you’ve been doing called Passport This fixes the biggest…

Facebook launches searchable transparency library of all active ads Now you can search Facebook for how much Trump has spent on ads in the past year, which Pages’ ads reference immigration, or what a Page’s previous names were. It’s all part of Facebook’s new Ad Library launching today that makes good on its promise to increase transparency after the social network’s ads were used to try to influence the 2016 US presidential elections. Facebook’s Ads Archive that launched in May 2018 previously only included ads related to politics or policy…

Ocean drone startup merger spawns SoFar, the DJI of the sea What lies beneath the murky depths? SolarCity co-founder Peter Rive wants to help you and the scientific community find out. He’s just led a $7 million Series A for SoFar Ocean Technologies, a new startup formed from a merger he orchestrated between underwater drone maker OpenROV and sea sensor developer Spoondrift. Together, they’re teaming up their 1080p Trident drone and solar-powered Spotter sensor to let you collect data above and below the surface. They can help you shoot awesome…

Proxy raises .6M to unlock anything with Bluetooth identity You know how kings used to have trumpeters heralding their arrival wherever they went? Proxy wants to do that with Bluetooth. The startup lets you instantly unlock office doors and reserve meeting rooms using Bluetooth Low Energy signal. You never even have to pull out your phone or open an app. But Proxy is gearing up to build an entire Bluetooth identity layer for the world that could invisibly hover around its users. That could allow devices around the workplace and…