• Tencent: Inside China’s ‘killer app’ factory
• Instagram hits 600m user milestone
• Ikea’s smart home (source)
• Live on Twitter: Broadcasting Video From the App
• GE’s Software Future Starts With Selling Computer Hardwaret o help industrial customers move data between their equipment and its cloud services
• General Electric to Buy Two Tech Startups for Its Digital Business
  GE is acquiring Wise.io Inc., a machine learning firm, and Bit Stew Systems Inc., which enables the ‘ingestion’ of masses of data for industrial applications
• Let’s build an Airport – How to estimate large scale projects
• Apple, Spotify Face Upstart Rival in Streaming Music: China’s Tencent
  (Joox music-streaming service)
• Amazon reportedly building app to connect truckers with shippers, possibly putting pressure on Convoy
• ‘Super Mario Run’ Jumps to Top of App-Store Charts
• Azure in the car: Microsoft and TomTom partner on location services for U.S. automakers
• Subscriptions offer a more stable base of recurring revenue than traditional licenses, but Adobe hasn’t simply been replacing one form of sales for the other.
• Another one bites the dust: Cisco discontinues its $1B cloud initiative as AWS, Azure and others expand
• Air-launched rocket puts eight CYGNSS microsatellites in orbit to study hurricanes

2017 Trends

• The Future 100, emerging trends for 2017 [JWT]
• Fjord Trends 2017
• PSFK Forecast 2020

• Over the past 18 months, Accenture estimates that it has automated 17,000 tasks and roles, saving it around 20m hours of work per year
• Amazon Go Video (Youtube)
• Uber in Artificial-Intelligence Drive After Buying Startup (Geometric Intelligence)
• Bill Gates On His Five Favorite Books Of 2016
• Charlie Rose : A look at virtual reality with Brendan Iribe, the co-founder and C.E.O. of Oculus.
• Charlie Rose : A look at artificial intelligence with John Kelly, senior vice president of cognitive solutions and research for the IBM Corporation.
• New Nordstrom mobile chatbot is ready to help shoppers find the perfect holiday gift
• Amazon Web Services expands with its first Canadian region
• Moving to the cloud requires (and attracts) scarce, expensive talent, say 3 big AWS users
• Microsoft just completed its $26B LinkedIn acquisition: Here’s what they’re going to do first
• Magic Leap is actually way behind, like we always suspected it was
• AngelList Buys Product Hunt, a Marriage of Two Beloved Silicon Valley Sites
• The Hierarchy of Engagement
• 2017 Google will reach 100% renewable energy for global operations
• Google Opens its Digital Assistant to Developers in Race Against Amazon’s Alexa
• Google Asisstant API
• Facebook Messenger Platform v1.3 Features
• Amazon Alexa API
• Apple Music Hits 20 Million Paid Subscribers
• Fast Path to a Great UX — Increased Exposure Hours

Twitter

• @cdixon : Steve Jobs: “there is a tremendous amount of craftsmanship between a great idea and a great product.”
• @cdixon :
  2016 League of Legends finals: 43M viewers
  2016 NBA finals: 30.8M viewers
• @morellimarcp : #Robotics market 2015 by @BCG ($ 26B)
• @lukew: “no one will ever…”

• Rise of the robot music industry : AI is transforming music streaming, talent spotting, promotion and even composition
• The Next Fashion Trend: Weather Forecasting
  At a recent class at the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York City, students were asked—and promised a Dunkin’ Donuts gift card for the right answer to—the question: When should a Los Angeles store stock swimsuits?
• Twitter Names Keith Coleman as Product Chief
• Fitbit Set to Acquire Smartwatch Maker Pebble (Fitbit interested in Pebble’s operating system, intellectual property, will likely shut down brand)
• AWS re:Invent 2016 Keynote: Werner Vogels (Youtube)
• AWS re:Invent 2016 Keynote: Andy Jassy (Youtube)
• AWS re:Invent 2016: From Monolithic to Microservices: Evolving Architecture Patterns (ARC305)
• AWS re:Invent 2016: How JPL Leverages Alexa to Further Space Exploration (ALX301)
• GeekWire re:Invent Special Coverage
• How Amazon Gets Its Holiday Hires Up to Speed in Two Days (Touch screens and robots help to prepare new hires for warehouse jobs)
  ... shrink the time it takes to train new hires to as little as two days, compared with up to six weeks for a conventional warehouse job …The shorter training period saves Amazon money, and could give the company room to offer higher wages as it seeks to expand its workforce about 40% by adding 120,000 temporary workers at its U.S. warehouses for the peak sales season that runs roughly from November through December.
• Netflix Now Lets You Download, But Many Top Shows Are Off Limits
• Atlassian has opened an engineering office in Mountain View in a bid to attract talent from the area’s tech giants.
• Indian Startup Plans to Land on the Moon in January 2018
• Meet Starbucks’ next CEO: Here’s what former colleagues say about tech vet Kevin Johnson (…$84 billion global coffee corporation prioritizes new technology opportunities at more than 25,000 stores in 75 countries…)
• Starbucks has more customer money on cards than many banks have in deposits
• Forget personal assistants, The real battle is for voice UIs
• “We are as much a tech company as we are a pizza company,” he told the audience, pointing out that of the 800 people working at headquarters, fully 400 work in software and analytics“
• Twitter: @justinshanes : Amazon thinks my recent humidifier purchase was merely the inaugural move in a newfound hobby of humidifier collecting.
• On Writing Product Specs

• Between 2011 and the third quarter of 2016, the percentage of tech deals with Chinese investment grew from 1.7% to 4.1%
• Airbnb in Talks to Buy China Rival Xiaozhu
• Amazon in Talks to Buy Dubai’s Souq.com in $1 Billion Deal
• Skyscanner acquired for £1.4 billion by China’s Ctrip
• Twitter: The % of mobile-only shoppers is astonishing. 50%+ for many of the top 15 retailers.
• Twitter: Two-thirds (CEOs) said they believe technology will create greater value in the future than their workforce will, and 44% believe that automation, artificial intelligence and robotics will make people “largely irrelevant” in the years to come.
• Twitter: Friday through Dec 25, estimated 1,500,000,000 packages will be delivered in the US by UPS+FEDEX+USPS (source: @parcelpending via @CNBC)
• Stripe Inc., whose software is used by businesses to accept and track digital payments, will be valued at $9.2 billion in a new funding round that is being completed, the company said.
• Universities’ AI Talent Poached by Tech Giants (Google, Baidu, Facebook lure away top computer science researchers responsible for training students)
• Google Brain AI is now using its own language to translate between languages
• Apple raked in a record 91 per cent of all smartphone profits in the third quarter
• Japan plans supercomputer to leap into technology future
• In the future, will farming be fully automated?
• Tesla hires HoloLens designer, second Microsoft employee from the augmented reality program
• Voice search has created a huge vulnerability at the heart of Google’s business

• Samsung Charges Into Auto Tech With $8 Billion Deal for Harman
• Jaguar Shows Its Concept for a Luxury Electric SUV
• Siemens to Buy Mentor Graphics Amid Push to Digitize Heavy Industry
• China Internet Giant Tencent’s Profit Jumps on Games Gains ($1.55 billion net profit in latest quarter)
• Airbnb moves beyond accommodation into tours and immersive trips
• Airbnb’s share of London lets triples in a year, agents say 7.6% of overnight stays in capital now via gig economy website
• Skype Users Make Around 3 Billion Minutes Of Calls Every Day
• You’re probably shopping for the most nutritious produce in the wrong aisle
• Amazon is going to sell cars onlineAccording to Reuters, Fiat Chrysler will sell three models — the 500, the 500L, and the Panda — on Amazon’s Italian site at a price that is up to 30% cheaper than other dealerships. The service will only be available in Italy.
• Tesla, SolarCity Merger Gets Shareholder Approval, Here’s everything you need to know about the solar roof Tesla plans to build with SolarCity
• Amazon Challenges Netflix by Taking Video Service Global
• Starry, an internet service provider (ISP) that promises to deliver super-fast internet access wirelessly, launched its first closed beta in the Boston area this week.
• Apple has a secret team working to make the iPhone’s camera a portal to augmented reality
• French technology group Sigfox, which is building a wireless network for connected devices, has launched a new funding round to raise €150m for further international expansion.
• “The feeling when you realize the robots will steal your job.”

• These 3-wheeled nanocars are the size of just one molecule
• Harvard University researchers have made the first entirely 3-D-printed organ-on-a-chip with integrated sensing.
• From mobile first to mobile native
• 2 billion active Chrome installs
• Snapchat’s Spectacles go on sale via Minion-like vending machines
• Amazon’s private label brands are taking over market share
• A robot fight club
• Five industries that should take a cue from Netflix and crowdsource parts of its tech
• Rogue One: International Trailer #2
• Enter the Digital Dragon, can you really learn karate on the internet? A second-degree black belt investigates
• The Unicode Consortium on Thursday approved 51 new playful images for emoji
• Tesla’s Autopilot chip supplier NVIDIA on new self-driving system: ‘It’s basically 5 yrs ahead and coming in 2017’
• YouTube on TV or TV on YouTube? The Blurred Lines of Online Video Consumption
• Fix iOS 10’s Confusing Email Thread Problem
• How to Gamify Your Life to Quickly Accomplish Big Goals
• Twitter traffic doubled, Facebook up by 30% on election night
• Nintendowned: Amazon sells out of the NES Classic Edition in (null) seconds

• Sony Second-Quarter Profit Falls Nearly 86%
• GoPro Reports Another Loss, 40% Revenue Drop
• China’s ‘Artificial Sun’ achieves fusion breakthrough
• Robotics and automation will reduce mining employment by about 50% by 2030
• Jeff Bezos, Mayo Clinic back anti-aging startup Unity Biotechnology for $116 million
• A new startup wants to turn drones into guardian angels for our homes.
• OK, Alexa: A Google Home Versus Amazon Echo IQ Test
• DeepMind and Blizzard to release StarCraft II as an AI research environment
• Android just hit a record 88% market share of all smartphones
• 1.79 billion people logged onto facebook at least once per month,
• Another quarter, another $3.2 billion in revenue for Amazon Web Services.
• The space industry’s new bet: putting an “app store” in orbit
• Play-Doh Brings Kids’ Creations To Life In A Virtual World
• REPORT : The Future of Automotive 
• REPORT : Digital Transformation Playbook 

• Ikea uses 1 percent of the planet’s lumber (The Weird Economics Of Ikea)
• “Friday, the American Academy of Pediatrics validated my experiment, recommending that children younger than 18 months get zero screen time, and those ages 2 to 5 be limited to one hour a day—half of its prior recommendation.”
• IT Industry Outlook Holds Steady, Software vendors and other IT firms say they’re on track to meet or surpass revenue goals this year
• Uber’s Self-Driving Truck Makes Its First Delivery: 50,000 Beers
• AT&T Undercuts Cable TV With $35 Internet Streaming Service
• Microsoft Surface Studio PC announced for $2,999
• Audi’s legendary Le Mans program to end in 2016
• Microsoft could be unveiling Teams, its Slack competitor, next week, Previously known as Skype Teams, Microsoft has built a Web-based chat system.
• This week, Apple will announce a new Apple TV feature that allows people to discover new TV shows from a single app, USA Today reports.
• Scientists want to send a team of robots into space to build a telescope
• The Japanese car manufacturer reports that the number of charging points in the country has surged past 40,000, compared to fewer than 35,000 petrol stations.
• From Atlanta to Beijing, these are the world’s busiest airports
• VR cafe in Seoul
• Soon you’ll be able to play ‘Minecraft’ on your Apple TV
• Qualcomm to Buy NXP Semiconductors for $39 Billion
  Biggest chip deal adds the top supplier of automotive chips to the San Diego company
• Twitter to Cut 9% of Workforce as Revenue Growth Slows
• An economic history of the world in 1 minute, 5 seconds

• The Global Competitiveness Index 2015–2016 Rankings (World Economic Forum)
  Top 10 (Switzerland, Singapore, United States, Germany, Netherlands, Japan, Hong Kong, Finland, Sweden, United Kingdom)
• Comcast’s NBCUniversal Invests Another $200 Million in BuzzFeed
• Facial-recognition apps use smartphone snapshots to verify identity of customers
• ‘Grand Theft Auto’ is so influential, the company’s stock just exploded after teasing a new game
• Netflix posted robust subscriber growth for the quarter, adding 370,000 net memberships in the U.S. and 3.2 million internationally, for a total of about 3.6 million. 86.7 million subscribers worldwide.
• Lessons Learned From Scaling Uber To 2000 Engineers, 1000 Services, And 8000 Git Repositories
• A recent CityLab report suggests that driverless car technology for evacuations might be a good solution for minimizing loss of life and the amount of destruction that occurs during hurricane season.
• Meet the Giant Robot That Builds Boeing’s Airplane Wings
• Airbus delivered the 10,000th plane.
• “… But as Schadt has learned, it’s not enough to plumb the depths of an individual’s DNA. It requires a universe of data—exabytes worth—to detect patterns in a population, apply machine learning, find the network of mutations responsible for disease, and do something about it. The bigger these data sets become, the more accurate and powerful the models and the predictors become…”
• Tesla Motors Inc. said it plans to charge buyers of its newest cars $8,000 to activate autonomous-driving technology (WSJ)
• Video : Full Self-Driving Hardware on All Teslas
• Microsoft Corp.’s cloud-computing businesses kicked into high gear as sales of the software giant’s Azure service more than doubled.
• AT&T Inc. is in advanced talks to acquire Time Warner Inc (CNN,HBO, Warner Bros), according to people familiar with the matter, a deal that would create a new hallmark in the rapidly converging realms of media, communications and the internet.
• Nintendo’s next console, Switch, is a console/tablet hybrid coming in March
  Tablet system docks to connect to HDTV, comes with detachable controllers.
• Nissan’s autonomous chairs commence a public trial in Japan 2017
• A group of Japanese scientists from Kyushu University has successfully turned mouse skin cells into baby mice without the use of egg cells.
• Facebook Live broadcasting up 4X since May, gets TV and outdoor promo
• Microsoft Fiscal Year 2017 First Quarter Earnings Conference Call, Slides
• Researchers are using 3D motion capture to document kung fu before it disappears
• Who Should a Startup Hire First?