New York EdTech Week, the global education innovation festival in NYC taking place December 18-20, 2017, attracts over a thousand tech innovators, investors, policymakers, and others, with the goal of making new advancements in education technology. Jonathan Harber, Co-Founder of StartEd and Producer of the event, was with us to discuss the upcoming event.
NYC-based EdTech firms have received $1 billion in venture capital investment between 2008 and 2017, making up 12.5% of VC investment in the industry across the country. Forty-seven companies have been acquired since 2000, the most of any city in the country. San Francisco/Silicon Valley had the second-most acquisitions in that time with twenty-nine. Harber breaks down how NYC has been able to position itself ahead of Silicon Valley as a hub for EdTech.
Harber points to the extensive ecosystem that has built the foundation for New York to be a hub for EdTech innovation. He emphasizes that the city is home to the most significant learning infrastructure in the world, including 55 public and private colleges and universities, 2,666 K-12 schools, and nearly 2 million students.
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Skype users are scrambling to find an alternative after Microsoft shut down the pioneering internet phone service which let people make cheap long distance calls and chat with other users. Google Voice lets users make calls from a smartphone or a desktop web browser but it's only available to people in the U.S. Viber users can call phone numbers but can't get a number to receive calls. Zoom offers phone options too. You could get a number from a low cost virtual carrier or try other internet phone services. Microsoft says some Skype features will migrate to Teams, but its Teams Phone feature is only for businesses.
Amid a backdrop of ongoing tariff uncertainty, more and more gamers are facing price hikes. Microsoft raised recommended retailer pricing for its Xbox consoles and controllers around the world this week. Its Xbox Series S, for example, now starts at $379.99 in the U.S. — up $80 from the $299.99 price tag that debuted in 2020. And its more powerful Xbox Series X will be $599.99 going forward, a $100 jump from its previous $499.99 listing. The tech giant didn’t mention tariffs specifically, but cited wider “market conditions and the rising cost of development.” Beyond the U.S., Microsoft also laid out Xbox price adjustments for Europe, the U.K. and Australia. The company said all other countries would also receive updates locally.
