May 2015

There were 5 posts published in May 2015 (this is page 1 of 1).

Weekly#116

    • 5 Things From Google I/O That You Should Know About (WSJ)
    • Oculus Gives Ballpark Pricing for Running the Rift: $1,500 (WSJ)
    • Airbnb Is Approaching One Million Guests Per Night (re/code)
    • Google Brings Turn-By-Turn Directions To Offline Maps (Tech Crunch)
    • 4 ways Netflix data is used to improve service
    • The domestic airline industry, looking to capitalize on luggage fees and other new revenue streams after a string of profitable years, is turning to an unlikely inspiration in a new service push: Amazon.com  Airlines, including Alaska Air Group Inc., Virgin America Inc. and JetBlue Airways  re developing software to facilitate in-flight purchases through passenger mobile devices and to analyze transaction data. (WSJ)
    • Will Your Job Be Done By A Machine? (NPR)Will_Your_Job_Be_Done_By_A_Machine____Planet_Money___NPR

    • “Google Jump, unveiled at the company’s I/O developer conference, deals with the other side of the equation: How will content creators be able to easily create media for these elaborate headsets?… Jump is all about making more of that stuff. The camera system, which Google is open-sourcing, provides a way for creators to capture high-quality 3D video relatively easily. “Relatively” because you still need multiple cameras to do it — the first Jump camera, made by GoPro, has 16 of them. But Jump does the heavy lifting of ensuring all those cameras are synchronized, not to mention splicing all the footage together.” (Mashable)

    • GoPro: Land, Air and Sea – A Virtual Reality Experience

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Weekly#115

  • The Next Billion: London, Quartz’s forum on the mobile world (QZ) (Video Stream)
  • Google’s YouTube will now allow for live video streams that run at a high rate of 60 frames per second, double its prior limit of 30 fps. 60 fps is important for fast-growing market of videogames as spectator sports (WSJ)
  • Google added shopping elements to YouTube’s skippable pre-roll video advertisements, known as TrueView ads. During some TrueView ads, viewers will also see product offers from the same advertiser, with prices, images and a button to click that will take them to the advertiser’s website. (WSJ)
  • Google reportedly developing ‘Brillo,’ an OS for the Internet of Things
    The lightweight version of mobile operating system Android would help smart devices communicate better with each other, according to a report in The Information. (Cnet)
  • Spotify wants to keep you locked into its service by morphing into a one-stop media shop. (Cnet)
  • How accurate is the Apple Watch’s step counter and distance tracking? (Cnet)

  • 10 New Jobs People Will Have By the Year 2030

 

 

 


 

 

 

 


 

 

 

 

Weekly#114

  • Google Says Driverless Cars Involved in 11 ‘Minor’ Accidents in 6 Years (WSJ)
  • Tesla Motors Inc. is looking at the good old-fashioned turn signal as a potential solution to a liability debate associated with driverless vehicle technology.

    The Palo Alto, Calif., electric-car maker soon will begin activating semiautonomous features, including the capability to pass other cars without driver intervention, in its Model S sedans. A driver can trigger the passing function by hitting the turn signal, according to people familiar with the technology. That action not only tells the car it can pass, but also means the driver has given thought to whether the maneuver is safe. (WSJ)

  • Uber is positioning itself as a logistics company. The goal is to deliver people and things within cities as quickly as possible — relying heavily on Google’s Maps in the process…Uber has submitted a bid for Here (Nokia Digital Mapping Service) (Nytimes)

  • Uber Fund-Raising Points to $50 Billion Valuation (Nytimes)
  • Robots, Hungry for Power, Are Too Weak to Take Over the World
    “Even the best ones are roughly 10 times less energy dense than the sugar and fat [humans eat],” Gill Pratt, Darpa’s program director for the robotics contest said on a media call.

    Worse, the robots ungainly movements consume a lot of energy.

    “Robots are also much less efficient than animals,” said Dr. Pratt, using as much as 100 times more energy to complete the same task. “You should expect to see a lot of robots fall down,” he added. (WSJ)

  • Long-Range Iris Scanning : An engineering professor at Carnegie Mellon says he’s invented technology that can identify someone from across the room with the precision of a fingerprint. (The Atlantic)
  • Carl Icahn Takes $100 Million Stake in Lyft (WSJ)

  • Dropbox has acquired Umano, a startup that provides voice actors who can read content for recordings that can be added to websites and applications. Umano announced the news today in a posting on its website. The service is shutting down. (Venture Beat)

  • Nasdaq OMX Group Inc. is testing a new use of the technology that underpins the digital currency bitcoin, in a bid to transform the trading of shares in private companies.

    The experiment joins a slew of financial-industry forays into bitcoin-related technology. If the effort is deemed successful, Nasdaq wants to use so-called blockchain technology in its stock market, one of the world’s largest, and potentially shake up systems that have facilitated the trading of financial assets for decades. (WSJ)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Weekly#113

  • Oculus VR said Wednesday the debut consumer version of its headset will ship in the first quarter of 2016, with preorders beginning later this year (WSJ)
  • Spotify, which is laying plans to enter the hotly competitive Web-video business, according to people familiar with the matter, posted a net loss of €162 million last year, compared with a net loss of €55.9 million in 2013. Revenue soared 45% to €1.08 billion from €747 million in the same period. (WSJ)
  • Tesla CEO Elon Musk stated today in its first quarter earnings call that the company received more than 38,000 reservations for the Powerwall, which includes roughly 2,800 businesses looking to purchase the commercial version called the Powerpack.
    Last week, Tesla unveiled two versions of the Powerwall – a 10kWh configuration that’s optimized for use as a backup system and a 7kWh designed for daily cycling. These devices go for $3,500 and $3,000, respectively. (The Next Web)
  • Best practices from the most active Slack users (Fast Company)

  • Robinhood, a Snoop Dogg and Marc Andreessen-backed app that lets you buy and sell stocks without a fee, just raised $50 million (Business Insider)

  • Alibaba, just released earnings, it announced that COO Daniel Zhang will replace Jonathan Lu as CEO. (Business Insider)

  • 15 predictions Bill Gates made in 1999 that became true (WEF)
  • Charlie Rose : Megan Smith, chief technology officer of the United States, on data, innovation, and women in technology.

  • Shockwave of Traffic Jams