Sequoia Capital has made a minority investment in the do-it-yourself home security company Simplisafe in a play on the home security and automation market, TechCrunch has learned. The investment from Sequoia came on the heels of Google’s $3.2 billion acquisition of Nest Labs, which showed just how lucrative the home market can be. That deal netted a healthy return for investors, including… Read More
Savioke, a robotics startup out of Sunnyvale led by the former CEO of the now-defunct but influential Willow Garage robotics startup, is announcing a seed round of funding today, $2 million from Jerry Yang’s AME Cloud Ventures, Google Ventures, Morado Venture Partners and other individual investors. It is planning to use the money to develop and build its first robot, an as-yet unnamed piece of… Read More
You might say the day is never really done in consumer technology news. Your workday, however, hopefully draws to a close at some point. This is the Daily Roundup on Engadget, a quick peek back at the top headlines for the past 24 hours — all handpicked by the editors here at the site. Click on through the break, and enjoy.
Remember that partnership between OnStar and RelayRides we wrote about last March? Well it’s finally coming to fruition today, with the peer-to-peer car sharing service launching support for remote door unlocking via OnStar’s proprietary API. As a result, RelayRides members with OnStar-enabled vehicles no longer have to exchange keys in person if they so choose. Another benefit is that participants can list their automobile on RelayRides directly from their OnStar account — renters then benefit from the added safety and security that comes with OnStar.
We had the chance to test an early version of the functionality on a Chevy Volt at SXSW a few months ago and it worked pretty much as advertised. There was a bit of a delay between the time we sent the unlock command from RelayRides’ website on the demo iPad and the moment the doors actually unlocked on the car, but we’re told this has been significantly improved since our hands-on. Of course, RelayRides also supports remote unlocking via text message. Take a look at the galleries below then hit the break for our hands-on video, RelayRides’ video and OnStar’s PR.
Gallery: RelayRides with OnStar hands-on
Gallery: RelayRides with OnStar PR
Filed under: Cellphones, Tablet PCs, Transportation, Software
OnStar seals partnership with RelayRides, makes renting out your car even easier (hands-on video) originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 17 Jul 2012 07:00:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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