Google gets TrueCar president as new head of self-driving cars division

Google’s showing how serious they are about their self-driving initiative as they announce the new head of the division. TrueCar’s President John Krafcik will be joining Google starting September 15^th as the CEO of the aforementioned division. Krafcik has been with the automotive pricing and information website for the past year and a half and will still remain as a member of the company’s board. Krafcik has been in the auto industry for a while. He started out at New United Motor Manufacturing Inc., a then-joint venture between GM and Toyota. And he has worked for both Ford and Hyundai as well.

Google spokesperson Kara Berman told the LA Times, “We’re investing in building out a team that can help us bring this technology to its full potential in the coming years. John’s combination of technical expertise and auto industry experience will be particularly valuable as we collaborate with many different partners to achieve our goal of transforming mobility for millions of people.”

Source: LA Times | Via: SlashGear

Twitter is making it easier for you to shop on its app

Whether you like it or not, e-commerce is coming to your favorite apps. This time, Twitter is partnering with payments startup Stripe to help merchants sell their goods right on Twitter. The project called Relay lets merchants reach Twitter’s audience with tweets from participating brands now showing a “Buy” button. The button will pull up a pop-up screen where you can select the products you want to purchase. You’ll then give your credit card information to Twitter once and it’ll store that information for future Relay payments.

Stripe already works behind the scenes to power payment systems of apps like Lyft and Instacart. They hope Relay will help simplify the mobile buying experience for Twitter users. Right now, Warby Parker is one of the merchants trying out Twitter’s new Relay system. At the moment, people can select a color and size of a particular nonprescription sunglasses style without having to leave Twitter. 

Source: Stripe | Via: BuzzFeed News

VideoLAN developing VLC app for Apple TV

VideoLAN, the team behind VLC app, is making its presence felt on Apple’s ecosystem. According to VideoLAN’s lead developer Jean-Baptiste Kempf, the VLC app for Apple TV is still in its early stages but they are making progress with it. “Finally, some code to build VLCKit for the new tvOS was merged. It’s very early though, but we have video playback!”

VLC is an app that lets users play video and audio files in a variety of formats. But they aren’t alone in supporting Apple TV. The company behind Plex, an app that lets you stream files from your computer, also has plans for Apple’s set-top box. We should be hearing more about these in the near future.

Source: JBKempf.com | Via: The Verge

IDC: Android Wear market share expected to double by 2019

Health trackers have been popular because they focus on a singular feature, which is to track health and fitness.Smart watches have been the more elusive market because a) they are more expensive and b) marketed as fashion accessories makes them subjective.

IDC believes that Android Wear, Google's wearable fork of their mobile operating system, will double in market share by 2019. While Android Wear has been around for over a year in various devices, it has just recently exploded in the number of OEMs that are keen on making hardware to run on Google's OS.

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