World Of News

French startup Memo Bank has unveiled three different plans for its new customers. The company is building a business bank for small and medium companies that generate between €2 million and €50 million in annual turnover. Earlier this year, Memo Bank obtained licenses from the French regulator (ACPR) and the European Central Bank to become a credit institution. It can provide all the services you’d expect from a business bank, from current accounts to credit lines. On paper, Memo Bank’s current accounts look a lot like a software-as-a-service product. There are three different plans. For €49 per month, you get one user account and each additional account costs €10 per month. You get 20 transactions in and out per month, each additional transaction costs €0.40 per transaction. For €149 per month, you can create as many user accounts as you want and you get 200 transactions per month. Once again, additional transactions cost €0.40 per transaction. And if you handle a lot of trans...

Hailo, a Tel Aviv-based startup best known for its high-performance AI chips, today announced the launch of its M.2 and Mini PCIe high-AI acceleration modules. Based around its Hailo-8 chip, these new models are meant to be used in edge devices for anything from smart city and smart home solutions to industrial applications. Today’s announcement comes about half a year after the company announced a $60 million Series B funding round . At the time, Hailo said it was raising those new funds to roll out its new AI chips, and with today’s announcement, it’s making good on this promise. In total, the company has now raised $88 million. “Manufacturers across industries understand how crucial it is to integrate AI capabilities into their edge devices. Simply put, solutions without AI can no longer compete,” said Orr Danon, CEO of Hailo, in today’s announcement . “Our new Hailo -8 M.2 and Mini PCIe modules will empower companies worldwide to create new powerful, cost-efficient, innovative AI...

Earlier this month, Microsoft announced that Xbox Game Pass Ultimate subscribers would be able to access EA Play for no additional cost. The company shared more details about the rollout. Console players will be able to activate their complimentary EA Play subscription on November 10th. Microsoft is also launching the Xbox Series X and Xbox Series S on November 10th. As a reminder, EA Play includes back-catalog games from EA, such as Fifa 20, Madden NFL 20, Battlefield V, Mass Effect games, Dead Space games, etc. The Xbox Game Pass Ultimate subscription include access to Microsoft’s library of games, an Xbox Live Gold subscription, Microsoft’s cloud gaming service xCloud and soon EA Play. It costs $14.99 per month. If you just subscribe to the Xbox Game Pass for $9.99 per month, you won’t get EA Play. On Windows, Xbox Game Pass (and Xbox Game Pass Ultimate) subscribers will able to download EA games in December. Unfortunately, you’ll have to create an EA account, download the EA ...

It looks like Apple is scouring its Chinese App Store for any remaining services that may not sit well with Chinese censors. Two RSS reader apps, Reeder and Fiery Feeds , said this week that their iOS apps have been removed in China over content that is considered “illegal” in the country. Apps get banned in China for all sorts of reasons. Feed readers of RSS, or Real Simple Syndication, are particularly troubling to the authority because they fetch content from third-party websites, allowing users to bypass China’s Great Firewall and reach otherwise forbidden information. Those who use RSS readers in China are scarce, as the majority of China’s internet users — 940 million as of late  — receive their dose of news through domestic services, from algorithmic news aggregators such as ByteDance’s Toutiao, WeChat’s built-in content subscription feature, to apps of mainstream local outlets. Major political events and regulatory changes can trigger new waves of app removals, but it’...

While the current version of iOS is iOS 14.0.1, Apple is already testing iOS 14.2. The company released an early beta version of the update yesterday, and it includes a new set of emojis, as Emojipedia spotted . Apple already shared an early look of the new emojis back in July . Overall, there will be dozens of new emojis this year. Emojis will also be more diverse and inclusive than ever with new variations of existing emojis. Earlier this year, the governing body in charge of approving new emojis, the Unicode Consortium, approved 117 new emojis as part of Unicode 13.0. Operating system developers and social network companies, such as Apple, Google, Microsoft, Twitter, Facebook and Mozilla, then draw their own versions of the new emojis and release them on their platforms. In this release, you’ll find a transgender flag, a smiling face with tear, pinched fingers, two people hugging, some insects and animals, a disguised face and more. My favorite is arguably disguised face: ...

Inshorts, which operates a popular news aggregator app in India, has raised $35 million in a new financing round led by Lee Fixel’s Addition as the Indian startup looks to scale its adjacent, social network platform. For Fixel, who wrote several high-profile checks to Indian firms while running Tiger Global , InShorts is the first Indian startup he is backing from his new VC firm. Fixel, who also invested in InShorts when he was at Tiger Global, has backed about six startups through Addition including New York Area-headquartered Odeko, which offers ordering and supply chain tools to cafes, Synk, which develops tools used to identify vulnerabilities, and dLocal, which operates a cross-border payment processor to connect global merchants to emerging markets. SIG Global and Tanglin Venture Partners, also participated in Inshorts’ new round, which values the startup at about $125 million, a person familiar with the matter told TechCrunch. Azhar Iqubal, founder and chief executive of ...

Barcelona-based Emjoy , an audio app for women that sells a narrative of sexual self-care and empowerment, has picked up $3 million in seed funding led by JME Ventures, with existing investor Nauta Capital participating. The femtech startup believes it has lit on a major opportunity to target women with sex-positive subscription audio content that’s focused on sexual empowerment, intimate education and sensuous entertainment — all wrapped in unapologetically direct digital marketing. Nor is it alone in seeking to build a brand around such ‘female first’ audio content. (Another startup that springs to mind in this ‘mindful sex’ space is Ferly , for example.) But Emjoy reckons there’s all to play for in this nascent space — which it says is benefitting not only from progress toward female empowerment in recent years but the rise in popularity of podcasting and audiobooks. “My inspiration for founding Emjoy is based on my personal experience and the experiences of many girlfriends of...