Welcome to the Week in Tech – your roundup of the week’s top technology news.
In this episode, we bring you Buzzmove’s £6m seed funding round, the government’s new innovation initiative, Google’s answer to video chat and a tattoo that can control your smartphone!
Watch the video, or read on for all this and more.
Investments
Live Better With, a healthcare platform that seeks to improve the daily lives of cancer patients, has closed a $2m late-seed funding round.
This investment will allow the firm to expand its services globally, reaching more of those living with cancer.
Tenancy deposit platform Reposit secured £400,000 in seed funding from Seedcamp and the London Co-Investment Fund.
The startup, which emerged from the first London cohort of Newcastle-based accelerator Ignite, also drew support from angel investors and VCs.
PropTech platform Buzzmove closed a £6m seed funding round. The firm said it will use the funds to continue developing its platform, which enables consumers to create a digital inventory of their belongings via a mobile app, and to purchase home and contents insurance.
For a full list of this year’s UK tech investments to date, take a look at our new Investment Tracker for 2016.
Best of British
Following recent protests by Deliveroo drivers against changes to their pay structure, the government issued a statement clarifying the rules around the National Living Wage.
A spokesperson for the Department of Business, Energy and Industry Strategy (BEIS) said neither employers nor employees can decide to opt out of the basic rate of pay without first going through a formal court process.
Under the proposed changes, Deliveroo drivers would be paid £3.75 per delivery, rather than the current £7 per hour plus £1 per delivery. However, the company has since guaranteed at least £7.50 an hour and petrol for those who continue to participate.
The government has also launched a new innovation initiative, which will see £800m invested in tech for the Ministry of Defence.
Types of tech set to be backed by the fund include surveillance drones inspired by dragonflies and virtual reality helmets that simulate air strikes.
International story
This was the week Google launched its video chat app. With Duo, calls are encrypted and only require a person’s phone number to connect.
This app represents Google’s response to Apple’s FaceTime and Microsoft’s Skype. It is being released as a free service on Android and iOS.
Download of the week
Our ‘Download of the Week’ is Fyuse. It’s a spatial photography app that allows anyone with a smartphone to capture 3D images, or ‘Fyuses’.
Capturing a moment from all angles as you tilt your phone or swipe your screen, Fyuse images can then be shared to social media directly from the app.
And Finally…
And finally, humans may be one step closer to becoming cyborgs. MIT researchers have created transfer tattoos that operate as interfaces for smartphones and other devices.
One version of the smart tattoo acts as a controller for your smartphone, another detects your mood through your body temperature and heartbeat.
That’s all for this episode of The Week in Tech. For more weekly technology updates, subscribe to our YouTube channel, and follow us on Twitter.