Starbucks Corp., a pioneer in getting consumers to pay for products with a mobile phone, is boosting spending on digital ventures this year as it enhances the capability of its app in Asia, Europe and Latin America.The coffee chain is promoting a new feature, introduced last year nationwide at U.S. stores, that lets customers order and pay for beverages in advance and pick them up without waiti...

Infographic: VCs in real estate. On-demand delivery of prescriptions. As everyone knows, fintech is en vogue these days. It’s not AI or deep learning hot, but it’s definitely up there. In fact, we have a 62-page report on it and have a 3-day event dedicated to it.One interesting thing about the financial services landscape is how large the megabanks have become. This graphic from American Ban...

Today the U.S. Department of Transportation’s National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) and the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) announced that 20 major automakers signed a commitment to make Automatic Emergency Braking and Forward Collision Warning standard on vehicles starting 2022. Volvo has had Automatic Emergency Braking standard since 2014, with Forward Collisio...

Take a thermo-selfie and show it to your boss as an excuse for not going to work.With the flu season in full swing, early detection of symptoms is a key to fast recovery. Theraflu wanted to create a tool which enables passersby to check if they have a fever quickly, without interrupting their daily commutes. As a result, Saatchi & Saatchi/Interactive Solutions Poland and Saatchi & Saatc...

Smart blinds make your home feel a lot smarter, but they also cost a boatload. For motorized and app-connected shades like Somfy's or Lutron's, you're looking at prices ranging from $250 to upward of $1,000, £700 or AU$1,325 -- and that's per unit.In response, a few startups have endeavored to design retrofit devices that smarten your blinds and shades for under 100 bucks. The FlipFlic, now op...

Got milk? As children we were told that if we want to grow up big and strong, we should drink our milk.It’s full of protein for our muscles and calcium for our bones, and it’s just the right consistency to stick to our upper lips for the perfect milk mustache. But in the U.S., traditional milk is moo-ving over as almond milk is taking center stage.In fact, almond milk is now America’s favori...

The AdrenaCard is a new easy to carry device from a startup company of the same name based in Minneapolis, Minnesota.EpiPens save lives in cases of anaphylactic shock by letting patients with severe allergies deliver epinephrine quickly and easily. Yet, a lot of people don’t carry them because they’re the size of highlighters and are easy to ignore or forget about. The new autoinjector is sim...

The Harvard-trained neurobiologist was taking advantage of one of his own inventions, a device called Thync, which promises to help users activate their body's “natural state of energy or calm” — for a retail price of a mere $199.Americans’ obsession with wellness is fueling a new category of consumer electronics, one that goes far beyond the ubiquitous Fitbits and UP activity wristbands th...

Designed with "handheld electronics" in mind.If Apple really wants the iPad to be the future of computing, then it would help if the tablet could easily connect with multiple peripherals at once. A recently published patent from the iPhone-maker shows one way this might work, with the document outlining plans for a "stackable, magnetically-retained connector interface" designed particularly for...