startup

Tech companies may score a victory in their hopes to get immigration reform passed for skilled tech workers.

President Obama urged Congress today to work on immigration policy that would allow foreign-born startup founders to stay in the country. At the same time, several U.S. senators introduced a bill focusing on the same. As U.S. immigration policy currently stands, U.S.-educated computer programmers and engineers could be deported once finishing school.

"Right now in one of those classrooms there's a student wrestling with how to turn their big idea -- their Intel or Instagram -- … Read more

LAS VEGAS -- It's time to fix a broken immigration system that encourages smart engineers to study at U.S. universities but prevents them from staying afterward, a Republican senator said at the Consumer Electronics Show.

Sen. Jerry Moran from Kansas said here today that he was disappointed Congress hadn't acted on his legislation, called the Startup Act 2.0, which was introduced last spring but has languished in committee.

Engineers and other people in science-related disciplines who are "foreign-born but U.S.-educated" should be allowed to remain here, Moran said. Chile and other countries &… Read more

If you like a little high-tech help when fishing for dinner, leave the fishfinder at home and try this electronic rod.

The SmartRod has an accelerometer that tells you when a fish bites your line. A sound or light alarm goes off so you can try reeling it in promptly.

Billed as the first of its kind in the world, the SmartRod is the subject of an Indiegogo campaign that's aiming to amass $50,000 for development with 20 days remaining. It's got a long way to go. … Read more

Pinterest and one of its early investors have been sued by a man who alleges that the investor nicked his ideas -- including the concept of boards -- and handed them to the now hugely popular Web site.

The suit alleges that the plaintiff, Theodore F. Schroeder, of Ocean City, N.J., developed a site called RendezVoo, which started as a place where users could share their locations but evolved into a site where people "meet to share opinions, views, items, and tastes on a variety of subjects -- product, services, events, politics, economics -- nearly anything of human … Read more

The Consumer Electronics Association (CEA) has launched a new membership category to try and bring more startups into the consumer electronics fold.

The CEA -- which represents thousands of consumer electronics firms -- has created the new $95 membership category as a means of "fostering innovation" in a stagnant economy.

Regular membership fees begin at $850 per year and can go as high as $40,000, depending on a company's annual revenues. Membership includes free registration for the Consumer Electronics Show.

The trade association says it can better serve both "new and established" companies with … Read more

If you've been hit by a natural disaster recently, you know you can't put too high a price on mobile power supplies.

If your phone is dead and the grid is unreliable, JuiceCans are one way to keep communicating with loved ones.

This Indiegogo fundraising project centers on a stackable USB power pack called a JuiceCan. Add more packs to form a JuiceCane and you get more power. … Read more

PARIS -- After a year doing its Apple-centric groundwork, start-up Everpix is ready to find a wider audience for its photo sync and organization service.

Today, the company announced version 1.0 of its Windows software, an out-of-the-way utility that slurps photos from people's hard drives and uploads them to company's servers. There, Everpix analyzes each photo mathematically for a variety of characteristics then synchronize the files with iPhones, iPads, and the Everpix Web site.

Everpix, though, isn't really about syncing files like Dropbox or Google Drive. It's also not about online photo communities such as … Read more

In April, Facebook said it would buy the young but fast-growing, photo-sharing service Instagram for a jaw-dropping $1 billion. By early December, consumer and entertainment startups were complaining they were having a hard time finding early-stage funding. So what happened? It would be easy to blame Bravo's nausea-inducing reality TV show for the reversal of startup fortunes, but the reality is something a little less Hollywood: Lack of good ideas, economic fears, and poor returns from many of the startups that have already been funded.

In other words, an investment cycle obsessively focused on consumer-tech startups may have finally … Read more

PARIS -- Indiegogo, a site that lets people fund projects and companies in exchange for assorted products and perks, is expanding internationally.

Co-founder Danae Ringelmann announced today at the LeWeb conference here that the company today started accepting payments in euros, British pounds, and Canadian dollars, not just U.S. dollars, and has versions of the Web site in German and French.

"Thirty percent of our business is outside U.S., but it's all been in English in U.S. dollars," Ringelmann said. Internationalization of the business will make Indiegogo work more easily elsewhere. "If you'… Read more