Weekly#192

  • 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

Weekly#191

  • 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 

Weekly#190

  • 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

Weekly#189

  • 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?

Weekly#188

 

  • Netflix is 12 times as popular as its streaming competitors among younger viewers
  • Microsoft open-sources P language for IoT
  • Larry Ellison says Oracle’s new cloud will crush Amazon — but the rest of the world isn’t so sure
  • AWS is 10-times bigger than its next 14 competitors combined
  • New Q2 data from Synergy Research Group shows that Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft, IBM and Google combined control well over half of the worldwide cloud infrastructure service market.
  • Within 24 hours of plugging in her Amazon Echo, Carla Martin-Wood says she felt they were best friends. “It was very much more like meeting someone new,” she says.
  • The Three Software Stacks Required for IoT Architectures [PDF]
  • Kindergarten. For robots.
  • Panasonic’s new prototype TV can hide in plain sight
  • Planet Earth II: Official Extended Trailer – BBC Earth
  • 5 Japanese innovations that changed the world
  • Here’s Arianna Huffington’s Recipe For A Great Night Of Sleep
  • DeepMind’s new computer can learn from its own memory
  • Rogue One: A Star Wars Story Trailer #2
  • SoftBank and Saudi Arabia Team Up for $100 Billion Tech Fund

 

 

 

 

 

Weekly#187

Facebook
How Facebook Is Dominating the 2016 Election
 …100,000 different webpages, each micro-targeted at a different segment of voters…
…the firm has a database of 220 million U.S. adults with 4,000 to 5,000 data points on each…
…the value of targeting lies in making campaign spending more efficient…
Facebook  is in talks with several countries for trial broadcasts of internet content from highflying drones to provide bandwidth to poorly connected parts of the globe.
Facebook  launched  “Facebook Marketplace,” Craigslist & eBay competitor to allow individual users to easily buy and sell a range of items, such as clothing electronics, household goods, furniture, jewelry, art and cars.
VR
PlayStation VR Review: The Best Way to Bring Virtual Reality Home
After Stumbles, Oculus Tries to Regain Its Footing in Virtual Reality
Facebook’s Oculus Working on Stand-Alone Virtual-Reality Device, won’t require a personal computer
Google
On October 4, Google  announced several new hardware products, ranging from smartphones to speakers to a new intelligent router.
  • Google’s Pixel and Pixel XL phones start at $649 and $769
  • Google’s “Daydream View” VR headset is smartphone-powered VR for $79
  • The Chromecast does 4K: Google announces the $69 Chromecast Ultra
  • Google Wifi: Google’s second attempt at a home router
 
Space
 
Elon Musk: A Million Humans Could Live on Mars By the 2060s
Blue Origin’s New Shepard rocket lands in the Texas desert after a successful escape system test
Blockchain
J.P. Morgan Created Transactions Platform based on Ethereum Blockchain. The platform called Quorum will enable the multinational banking company located in New York to use a publicly available system for confidential transactions.
Self Driving Cars
Google’s head of self-driving tech: We’re not building a car, we’re building the driver
10 million self-driving cars will be on the road by 2020
50 Mind-Blowing Implications of Self-Driving Cars (and Trucks) / What to expect from the next 3–20 years of autonomous vehicles
After two million miles, Google’s robot car now drives better than a 16-year-old
AI
Salesforce Agrees to Buy Marketing-Data Startup Krux $ 700 million…Krux uses AI  to analyze trillions of signals to better identify audience segments…
The UCL team has written what it calls an Intelligent Autopilot System that uses ten separate ANNs (Artificial Neural Networks). Each is tasked with learning the best settings for different controls (the throttle, ailerons, elevators and so on) in a variety of different conditions. Hundreds of ANNs would probably be needed to cope with a real aircraft, says Dr Bentley. But ten is enough to check whether the idea is fundamentally a sound one…the new autopilot will probably find its first uses in drones.
Other
Snap Inc. is working on an initial public offering
Techstars to Launch Accelerator for Music-Industry Tech Startups
Program will accept 10 participants for funding and mentoring
Software maps immune system in 17 days
The possible variation of immune receptors far exceeds the number of genes in our genome, at roughly 10 million times more than the number of stars in the Milky Way galaxy, notes Adam Buntzman, a research assistant professor and immunologist at the University of Arizona.
Financial Times hopes faster website will boost readership. The London-based publication, which is expected to unveil its new website Tuesday, has halved the time it takes a story to load on desktop to slightly over one second. Mobile devices can now load a story in a little over 2 seconds, down from 6 seconds.
Nobel Prize in Chemistry Awarded to Three Scientists for Design, Synthesis of Molecular Machines, in a first stage, the technology can lead to the creation of new smart materials able to adapt themselves to their environment, and minuscule sensors that can be controlled remotely.
Under Neil Hunt, chief product officer of Netflix, the effort includes overhauling the company’s algorithm for recommendations
Netflix
2012 Catalog : close to 11,000 movies and TV shows.
Current Library has about 5,300 titles.
Tesla delivers 24,500 vehicles in the third quarter
Reports
Car-generated data may become a USD 450 – 750 billion market by 2030 (McKinsey)
Gaming Industry Overview (PDF)
Video
Watch some of Steve Jobs’s best interviews

Weekly#186

  • Pay-TV providers could lose nearly $1 billion in revenue as 800,000 customers cut the cord during the next 12 months, according to a new study from the firm cg42.(WSJ)
  • How to Make Sure Your Uber Doesn’t Drive Past You
    Avoiding the pin drop can help you get door-to-door service that is actually door-to-door (WSJ)
  • Gartner Cape Town: 10 strategic tech trends for 2017
    1. Conversational systems
    2. Augmented and virtual reality
    3. Digital twin
    4. Artifical intelligence and machine learning
    5. Intelligent applications
    6. Intelligent things
    7. Adaptive security
    8. Blockchain and distributed ledger
    9. Mesh app and service architecture
    10. Digital technology platforms
  • Drew Houston CEO of Dropbox, if he had a cheat sheet he could give himself at 22, it would have three things on it: “a tennis ball, a circle, and the number 30,000. (BI)
  • Spotify launches in Japan, As Billboard noted in an earlier article, physical formats such as CDs and LPs are still popular in Japan — more than 80 percent of music sales were on physical formats in 2015. (Mashable)
  • Salesforce.com to Press Regulators to Block Microsoft-LinkedIn Deal
    Company says Microsoft’s $26.2 billion acquisition of social network would be anticompetitive (WSJ)
  • Google spent $9 billion on cloud business in past 12 months. (Bloomberg)
  • Amazon Eyes Living Rooms by Adding Gaming Features to Prime (Bloomberg)
  • A Japanese Company Wants to Build a Space Elevator by 2050
  • Microsoft forms new 5,000-person AI division
  • Amazon Web Services (AWS) has announced that it plans to launch a French datacentre region which will be open for customer use in 2017.
  • Google’s Got a Plan to Unify the World’s Wi-Fi Hotspots
  • iPhone 8 rumors: All glass everything with an OLED display
  • According to this VAB report, which aims to address the relationship between streaming, TV and advertisers, just 6 percent of the U.S. population does 87 percent of the streaming.
  • Why Siri, Alexa And Cortana Will Destroy SEO
  • The Google of product search is…Amazon.
  • WinTel market cap, 1995: $105bn GAFA, 2016: $1.9tr

Weekly#185

  • GoPro Inc. on Monday unveiled two new cameras and its first drone and also cloud storage (WSJ)
  • Pokémon to Create Games for Nintendo’s Next System (WSJ)
  • Europe Hangs Up on Cross-Border Roaming Fees
    European Commission revises its original plan to limit free roaming to 90 days a year (WSJ)
  • MIT scientists built a device that uses radio waves to detect your true emotions—even when you’re not showing any
    The device, which the team is calling EQ-Radio, emits a harmless radio frequency signal. If the waves hit a person in the room, they bounce off, changed very slightly by that person’s breathing and heartbeats. EQ-Radio notes these minute changes in the reflected waves, and uses them to record those vital signs. It does this over and over again, tracking variation in breathing and heart rate. Changes in vital signs like these are often related to how we feel. (QZ)
  • Apple approached British supercar-maker McLaren to discuss an acquisition or a strategic investment in the firm.(TheVerge)
  • Google or Salesforce could be about to bid for Twitter
  • Estimote announces the Mirror, a dongle that turns any TV into a smart beacon system (TechCrunch)
  • For every 20 nights an employee sleeps seven hours or more, Aetna rewards them with US$25…
    Aetna brought in Duke University to study the effectiveness of its wellness program, which also includes better sleep information, yoga, and meditation. CEO Mark Bertolini said he’s seen “69 minutes more a month of [worker] productivity on the part of us just investing in wellness and mindfulness. (WEF)
  • Expanded Netflix research shows how quickly viewers get hooked to series (TheDrum)
  • The importance of Branded IP in Cinema
  • Forecasted Market Trend of Image Sensors
  • Google’s ‘Show and Tell’ AI can tell you exactly what’s in a photo (almost): System generates captions with nearly 94% accuracy
  • Allo brings Google’s smarts to messaging (Tech Crunch)
  • The McKinsey Global Institute’s latest research is optimistic that China’s strategy will succeed. It foresees continued growth in the number and income of urban consumers, and predicts that 700 Chinese cities will generate US$7 trillion, or 30 per cent, of global urban consumption growth between now and 2030.
  • Netflix’s spooky 12-minute film noir only makes sense to engineers and developers (QZ)
  • The cultural differences between East and West, according to one artist (QZ)
  • Stephen Hawking: If aliens call, we should be ‘wary of answering‘
  • The world’s first hydrogen-powered passenger train is coming to Germany (TheVerge)
  • Rosetta will crash into comet 67P next week
  • Here’s how Snapchat’s new Spectacles will work

Weekly#184

  • Your First 10 Hires Must Be All-Stars (Jackie Xu)
  • Apple is loading up talent for its push into Google Glass territory (BI)
  • 3 of the biggest Android smartwatch makers aren’t launching new devices this year (LG, Huawei, and Lenovo) (BI)
  • MIT website makes you decide who a self-driving car should kill in an accident (BI)
  • Fidget Cube: A Vinyl Desk Toy (Kickstarter)
  • Machine-Learning Can Read Your EEG and Uncover Your Habits (Futurism)
  • Canva raises $15 million at a $345 million valuation for its online design tool (VB)
  • Uber’s Self-Driving Cars Debut in Pittsburgh
    Up to 1,000 Uber customers in the city will be part of the first real-world tests for regular people (WSJ)
  • Apple has fully autonomous vehicles on closed routes, but is rebooting its Car project again (9to5Mac)
  • Samsung Plans Software Update to Cut Galaxy Note 7 Fire Risk
    The software would limit the battery to a 60% charge (WSJ)
  • Twitter Arrives on Apple TV, Fire TV, Xbox One
    Company shifts into video with new app as it seeks to revive user growth (WSJ)
  •  Alexa and Amazon Echo Now Available in the UK and Germany (VB)
  • The 10 best launch partners for Amazon Echo’s Alexa (Wired UK)
  • Raspberry Pi just sold its 10 millionth computer (The credit card-sized computer sold 100,000 on the first day it went on sale in 2012) (Wired UK)
  • Apple is likely to continue making iPhones without headphone jacks, and next year’s iPhone will have a full-screen face with the virtual button built directly into the screen, according to two people at the company who spoke on condition of anonymity because the product details are private. (NYTimes)
  • Unearth millions of years of natural history in new @GoogleArts exhibit: http://g.co/naturalhistory
  • Atlas robot adds high-wire balancing to its list of human tricks (Mashable)
  • The combined revenues of AWS, Microsoft Azure, and GCP are still less than $15B for a market penetration of just 1%-2% of the Total Available Market (TAM).
    (Forbes)
  • Technicians are now using Microsoft Hololens to repair elevators.
  • Google acquires Urban Engines to bring its location-based analytics to Google Maps (VB)
  • Germany’s first smart bridge to open next month (RW)
  • Spotify hits 40 million paying subscribers, up 10 million in 6 months (VentureBeat)
    • Spotify, 40 m, Sep 2016
    • Apple Music 17 m, Sep 2016
    • Pandora 3.9 m, Jun 2016
    • Rhapsody, Napster  3.5 m, Dec 2015
    • Tidal 3m, Mar 2016
    • Deezer 3m, Jun 2015 (Source:Business Insider and Company Announcements)
  • Tesla Motors has new Autopilot Software, primary information will be derived from radar.
    To understand the update, it is important to know how AutoPilot previously worked. A rear-view mirror camera, front bumper radar sensor and 12 ultrasonic sensors developed an image of the car’s surroundings. AutoPilot looked at the image from the camera, to recognize signs, obstacles, and movement and react accordingly.
    In AutoPilot 8.0, Tesla has moved the primary information sensor from the camera to radar. The benefits of this move include six times more information per object, ability to work well in fog and heavy rain, and longer range. (ReadWrite)
  • This pioneering tech company figured how to make work-from-home work (QZ)
    Automattic, the maker of WordPress.com
    With a staff of 450 spread over 45 countries, Automattic is often regarded as one of the largest and most successful examples of a fully distributed workforce.
  • Report : Ten Digital Ideas, Oliver Wyman [PDF]
    • MOVE AT CLOCK SPEED
      Companies need to behave like digital disruptors | p. 4
    • BEWARE OF DIGITAL BUZZ
      What it takes for complex innovations like blockchain
      to work out | p. 6
    • SHARE OR SHRIVEL
      Why no business can ignore the rise of the sharing economy | p. 8
    • BECOME DIGITALLY LEAN
      German manufacturing is leading a digital industrial revolution | p.10
    • BE MODULAR
      A lesson for financial services | p.12
    • PREPARE FOR THE NEW DRONE DATA WAVE
      Companies are turning drones into a competitive advantage | p.14
    • DON’T JUST DIGITIZE, HUMANIZE
      Companies’ digital futures will depend on emotional bonds as
      much as functional superiority | p.16
    • STAY AHEAD OF SMARTER APPS
      Make way for uber-trucking | p.18
    • LEARN FROM ONLINE RETAILERS
      Personalized recommendation engines are coming to healthcare | p. 20
    • GO TO CYBER EXTREMES
      What to do when digitalization goes wrong | p. 22

Weekly#183

  • Google to buy cloud software company Apigee for $625 million (Reuters)
  • Elon Musk calls SpaceX blast a ‘most difficult, complex failure’ (Reuters)
  • Turning vans into rolling distribution hubs for package-dropping robots could greatly improve the efficiency of delivery networks.( Technology Review)
  • a16z Podcast: All about Microservices (thx Murat for the link)
  • Sony announces powerhouse PlayStation 4 Pro and slimmer PS4. More than 43 million PlayStation 4 consoles have been sold to date (WSJ)
  • Google’s DeepMind makes progress in computer-generated speech (FT)
    Researchers usually avoid modelling raw audio because it ticks so quickly: typically 16,000 samples per second or more, with important structure at many time-scales.
  • When You Change the World and No One Notices (Morgan Housel)
  • Which Industries Are the Most Digital (and Why)? (HBR)
  • Twitter launches an Alexa app
  • Sending a container from Shanghai to Europe costs half what it did in 2014 (Economist)
  • Apple’s iPhone 7 Event in Under 5 Minutes
  • The Uber effect: the cost of a New York taxi license has halved in two years
  • Cassandra keeps growing at Apple, now 115,000+ nodes in production
  • Smartphones vs Digital Cameras