Impala raises $20 million to build the API of the hotel industry

Impala has raised another round of funding just a few months after raising an $11 million Series A round. This time, the startup is raising a $20 million Series B round led by Lakestar. Latitude Ventures is also participating in the round.

The company is building a service that works pretty much like Plaid, but for hotel rooms. The hotel industry relies on old school “property management systems” to manage rooms, room types, pricing, extras, taxes, etc.

Instead of asking hotels to switch to an entirely different property management system, the company is upgrading those systems with a modern API. This way, you can build applications that query hotel data directly with a few lines of code. You get a standardized JSON response from the API.

Impala is currently compatible with a handful of property management systems. The company is still adding more systems in order to cover a wider range of hotels.

300 hotels are currently working with Impala, such as Accor hotels (Mercure) and Hyatt-branded hotels. The company currently has a backlog of 3,500 hotels. It really shows that the industry has been waiting for a product like this.

While Impala is still focused on surfacing data in an easy-to-code manner, the company is already thinking beyond read-only data. The startup wants to let developers book rooms directly using the Impala API.

It could open up hotel bookings to many other services. For instance, you could imagine being able to book rooms on Lonely Planet’s website. Services selling train tickets and flights could upsell you with hotel rooms.

In order to offer rooms on the usual hotel booking services from Booking Holdings websites (Booking.com, Priceline, Agoda, Kayak…) and Expedia Group websites (Expedia, Hotels.com, HomeAway, Trivago…), many hotels currently work with channel managers to send out information to multiple services at once. In the future, Impala could replace those channel managers with its API.

Impala builds a single API for the entire hotel industry

Sony paid ~$229M, mostly in cash, for Insomniac Games according to Sony's latest financial report; Sony acquired Insomniac in fall 2019 (Ryan Gilliam/Polygon)

Ryan Gilliam / Polygon:
Sony paid ~$229M, mostly in cash, for Insomniac Games according to Sony's latest financial report; Sony acquired Insomniac in fall 2019  —  But still no follow up to Ratchet & Clank (2016)!  —  In fall of 2019, Sony acquired Insomniac Games, developer of Marvel's Spider-Man, the Ratchet & Clank series, the Spyro series, and more.

Sources: the T-Mobile-Sprint merger trial judge is expected to rule in favor of the merger, and the decision will be revealed Tuesday; Sprint stock up over 60% (New York Times)

New York Times:
Sources: the T-Mobile-Sprint merger trial judge is expected to rule in favor of the merger, and the decision will be revealed Tuesday; Sprint stock up over 60%  —  A last-ditch attempt by a coalition of state attorneys general is said to have failed to halt T-Mobile's purchase of a smaller rival.

Do morning people do better in school because school starts early?

Enlarge / Zzz... (credit: Sarah / Flickr)

The terms "night owl" and "early bird" have floated around in conversation for ages before scientists developed the jargon "chronotype" to describe a set of somewhat stable behavioral differences among people. Some individuals really are morning people, going to bed earlier and having their peak performance in the morning. Late-night sorts also exist, and there's a spectrum of people somewhere in between. Leading a lifestyle that doesn't match your chronotype leads to what's called a social jet lag, which has been linked to everything from school performance to frequency of car crashes.

But the "somewhat" portion of the "somewhat stable" description of chronotype is very real. People's chronotypes change as they age, and there's some indication that it can adapt to everything from light exposures to lifestyle.

All of that seemingly comes together at a rather important point in people's lives. School tends to start early, which studies have indicated works out well for the grades of morning people. And exacerbating this is the fact that adolescents normally see their chronotype shift ever later, typically reaching a lifetime peak in the late teens. Now, a group of Argentinian scientists has tracked what happens to students performance when there's different mismatches between chronotype and school start times.

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https://arstechnica.com

TNPSC Result 2020 – CCSE-I (Group-I Services) Provisional Appointment List Released

Tamil Nadu Public Service Commission (TNPSC) has released provisional appointment list for Group I/ CCSE I.

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TNPSC CCSE-I Result 2020 – Provisional Appointment List Released

Tamil Nadu Public Service Commission (TNPSC) has released provisional appointment list for Group I/ CCSE I.

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Amazon withdraws from MWC over coronavirus-related concerns

Amazon is the latest company to cancel its plans for the Mobile World Congress, which will take place later this month in Barcelona, over coronavirus-related concerns.

In a statement emailed to TechCrunch, an Amazon spokesperson said “due to the outbreak and continued concerns about novel coronavirus, Amazon will withdraw from exhibiting and participating in Mobile World Congress 2020, scheduled for Feb. 24-27 in Barcelona, Spain.”

Other companies that have cancelled or scaled back their plans for MWC due to the outbreak include LG, NVIDIA and Ericsson. The event’s organizer, GSMA, recently issued a new statement about precautions it is taking, including a ban on visitors from Hubei province, where the epidemic is believed to have begun.

As top exhibitors pull out of MWC, organizers implement stringent safeguards

 

The vast majority of people affected by coronavirus are in China, where there have been 908 deaths and 40,171 confirmed infections, as of the time this article was posted. The outbreak has also led to a wave of anti-Asian racism and xenophobia across the world.

Netflix’s movies only won two Oscars this year

Although Netflix received 24 nominations (the most of any studio) at this year’s Oscars, its films only ended up winning two awards.

Laura Dern was named Best Actress in a Supporting Role for playing Nora, a flashy divorce attorney in “Marriage Story” — the only award that “Marriage Story” won from its six nominations.

And “The Irishman” came up empty-handed despite being nominated in 10 categories. Both films were nominated for Best Director and Best Picture, awards that ultimately went to the night’s big winner “Parasite.”

Netflix’s only other Oscar for the evening was for “American Factory,” which won the award for Best Documentary Feature. The film was the first to emerge from Barack and Michelle Obama’s production deal with Netflix. (Despite rumors to the contrary, the Obamas were not on-hand to accept the award.)

Last year, Netflix’s “Roma” won the awards for cinematography, foreign language film and director. There was some speculation that it might have beaten “Green Book” for Best Picture if it had been released by a traditional studio, but it had other disadvantages. For one thing, a foreign language film had never won the big award — until tonight, when “Parasite” emerged victorious.

And perhaps this would have been the year of “Parasite” regardless; it certainly deserved all the awards. Still, “The Irishman” seemed like Netflix’s biggest swing yet. It was made for a reported budget of $160 million, directed by the legendary Martin Scorsese and brought Al Pacino and Robert De Niro back together on-screen. Maybe next year.

Original Content podcast: Netflix goes to the Oscars

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How power companies are turning to AI, drones, battery systems, and sensors to shorten outages, save money, and help run an increasingly complex power grid (Asa Fitch/Wall Street Journal)

Asa Fitch / Wall Street Journal:
How power companies are turning to AI, drones, battery systems, and sensors to shorten outages, save money, and help run an increasingly complex power grid  —  Power companies are turning to AI, drones and sensors to curtail outages, save money and help operate an increasingly complex electricity grid.

This is Samsung's big plan to take on Apple and OnePlus

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Google, Apple, Facebook and 7 other ‘favourite brands’ of scammers to hack you online

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