Weekly#180

  • a half second difference in page load times can make a 10% difference in sales for an online retailer.
  • Machine Intelligence 2.0 in charts and graphs (Venture Beat)
  • All U.S. Energy Consumption in a Giant Diagram
  • Seven months into the year, videogame deals totaled $25.1 billion, eclipsing the previous full-year record of $14.9 billion in 2014, according to Digi-Capital LLC. Of the deals, 88% have been for mobile-game makers, including three acquisitions totaling $18.9 billion. (WSJ)
  • Every major cable TV company lost subscribers last quarter
    Top pay-TV operators lost 665,000 subscribers in Q2 2016. (Arstechnica)
  • Uber’s route to the driverless future just got a little clearer. In the next few weeks, Uber will begin deploying a 100-car test fleet of autonomous Volvos in Pittsburgh (beating Google to the consumer market in the process). (Recode)
  • Uber paid $680 million for self-driving truck company Otto for the tech, not the trucks (Recode)
  • Uber and Volvo commit $300 million to developing autonomous cars together (Recode)
  • Rakuten buys struggling bitcoin startup Bitnet to create a ‘blockchain research lab (TechCrunch)
  • Tencent, the owner of popular social messaging app WeChat, overtook e-commerce giant Alibaba to become China’s most valuable technology company on Thursday. (cnbc) (2016 Q2 Results pdf)
  • New lithium metal batteries could make smartphones, drones, and electric cars last twice as long. (MIT)
  • DIY Algorithmic programming
  • Onboarding With The IKEA Effect: How To Use UX Friction To Build Retention
  • This is why Walmart is purchasing jet.com
  • Eleven Reasons To Be Excited About The Future of Technology
  • Amazon now lets you rent its virtual desktops, Amazon WorkSpaces, by the hour (Tech Crunch)

Weekly#179

  • Rumor has it Apple’s next iPhone may be waterproof (QZ)
  • SpaceX successfully lands its sixth Falcon 9 rocket after launch
    and the fourth drone ship landing (The Verge)
  • Innovation has become the key to survival. A Standard & Poor’s company can expect to survive just 15 years. That’s down from 67 years in 1920. By 2027, 75% of the S&P 500 firms today will be replaced by new ones. (WEF)
  • Google is building a completely new operating system. As in, not just an upgrade to Android or Chrome OS, but instead, a new system that’s not derived from the Linux kernel. It’s called Fuchsia. (The Next Web)
  • How does fog computing differ from edge computing?
    … When compared to edge computing, fog computing is more scalable as it gives a centralized processing body a more big-picture view of the network as it has multiple data points feeding it information….
    … To better explain how these computing methods differ, we will examine a simple use case of a smart, robotic vacuum cleaner… As it relates to our vacuum, a centralized fog node or IoT gateway would receive information continuously from the dirt-detecting sensors, process that information, and deploy the vacuum when and where it determines that dirt is present… In our vacuum scenario, an edge computing solution would enable each dirt-detecting sensor to determine itself whether or not dirt is present and signal the vacuum alerting it of such    . (Ryan Matthew Pierson Read Write)
  • The head of Google’s Brain team is more worried about the lack of diversity in artificial intelligence than an AI apocalypse (Recode)
  • World’s largest vertical farm grows without soil, sunlight or water in Newark… It makes a befitting setting for a company that is promising to increase crop yields by as much as 70 times compared to traditional field farms, without using any pesticides or fertilizers…. (The Guardian)
  • IBM’s New Artificial Neurons a Big Step Toward Powerful Brain-LikeComputers
  • Microsoft Research working on the ultimate wearable: a tattoo to control devices remotely

 

DuoSkin:Functional, stylish on-skin user interfaces from MIT Media Lab on Vimeo.

 

 

Weekly#175

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Weekly#174

  • “The other big change coming for any industrial plant is the ability to take data from a single factory, upload it to the cloud and then gain the ability to access the data from anywhere. This means that experts in certain processes no longer have to travel from manufacturing site to manufacturing site to troubleshoot or improve things. Instead of going to the data, it can come to them”. (link) (Source : Stacey Knows Things)
  • Facebook Messenger adds end-to-end encryption in a bid to become your primary messaging app (Tech Crunch)
  • The virtual reality era has arrived, and three major players — Sony, Facebook and Taiwanese smartphone maker HTC — are setting out to enchant consumers with one-of-a-kind experiences. (Nikkei)
  • How Hardware-as-a-Service will save IoT (TechCrunch)
  • What will happen to global economics in the next 34 years (Oxford University Press Blog)
  • Virtual reality could become an $80B industry by 2025: Goldman (cnbc)
  • A NASA spacecraft has arrived at the solar system’s largest planet after a picture-perfect orbital insertion.NASA’s Juno space probe ended a five-year, 1.7-billion mile trek to Jupiter on Monday, nailing a do-or-die braking burn to shave its speed and settle into orbit around the largest planet in the solar system. (Seeker)
  • German churches now offer free and secure wifi hotspots (QZ)

Weekly#173

  • Apple Inc. is in talks to acquire Tidal, a streaming-music service run by rap mogul Jay Z, according to people familiar with the matter.Apple is exploring the idea of bringing on Tidal to bolster its Apple Music service because of Tidal’s strong ties to popular artists such as Kanye West and Madonna. (WSJ)
  • Jury Says Oracle Should Pay $3 Billion in Damages to Hewlett Packard Enterprise (WSJ)
  • According to a new report from Re/Code, the streaming music service is claiming that Apple has rejected a new version of its app because of “business model rules” and stated that Spotify must use Apple’s billing system.Spotify general counsel Horacio Gutierrez explained the company’s stance in a recent letter to Apple:“This latest episode raises serious concerns under both U.S. and EU competition law,” Gutierrez wrote. “It continues a troubling pattern of behavior by Apple to exclude and diminish the competitiveness of Spotify on iOS and as a rival to Apple Music, particularly when seen against the backdrop of Apple’s previous anticompetitive conduct aimed at Spotify … we cannot stand by as Apple uses the App Store approval process as a weapon to harm competitors.” (AppAdvice)
  • 10 Facebook Messenger Secrets You Need to Know (gizmodo)
  • Top 10 Tech Jobs for 2016 (Slideshare)
  • Meta-Council on Emerging Technologies (World Economic Forum)1. Nanosensors and the Internet of Nanothings
    2. Next Generation Batteries
    3. The Blockchain
    4. 2D Materials
    5. Autonomous Vehicles
    6. Organs-on-chips
    7. Perovskite Solar Cells
    8. Open AI Ecosystem
    9. Optogenetics
    10. Systems Metabolic Engineering
  • Amazon’s Alexa virtual assistant can now order millions of items (CNET)
    Just tell your Echo: “Alexa, order Old Spice deodorant” or (hopefully not yelling across the house) “Alexa, order Charmin toilet paper.”Alexa previously was limited to reordering items someone had already purchased or recommending company-selected printers or laptops through a service called Amazon’s Choice. All the items now available for purchase must be eligible for Prime, Amazon’s membership service that includes unlimited two-day shipping. New items are being added daily to the list.

    Items ineligible for purchase through Alexa include apparel, shoes, jewelry, watches, Amazon Fresh, Amazon Prime Pantry, Amazon Prime Now and add-on items.

  • Bank of America Trends in Consumer Mobility Report [PDF]
  • Burger-flipping robot invasion is headed to the Bay Area. A few years ago, startup Momentum Machines unveiled a robot that could churn out 400 burgers an hour, and now, Tech Insider reports, the company is creating a restaurant concept around it. (recode)
  • The urban sidewalk kiosks from Sidewalk Labs will sport a battery of sensors to monitor cities, traffic and suspicious packages.

    The free Wi-Fi kiosks that Alphabet’s urban innovation division Sidewalk Labs is selling — similar to those already on the streets of New York — will come with eyes, ears and a host of environmental, air and digital sensors to give the tech giant an unprecedented snapshot of urban life, according to documents obtained by Recode.

    The documents, which formed part of Sidewalk Labs’ pitch to cities participating in the U.S. Department of Transportation’s Smart City Challenge, show that Alphabet — Google’s parent company — wants to monitor pedestrian, bike and car traffic, track passing wireless devices, listen to street noise and use the kiosks’ built-in video cameras to identify abandoned packages. Each kiosk will also generate an estimated $30,000 a year for the company from digital advertising. (recode)

  • Can Flipboard survive without a new new thing?
    Eight months ago, it looked like Flipboard was on its way out.

    The six-year-old company had lost key executives. Twitter had taken a hard look at Flipboard as an acquisition target — and passed. A report in the Wall Street Journal spelled out Flipboard’s struggle to hit revenue goals. And on top of it all, the app’s initial appeal — offering a more visual way to consume news — had been replicated and in many ways surpassed by other, bigger players, like Snapchat and Facebook and even Apple. (recode)

Weekly#172

  • Uber Customers Will Get Upfront Pricing in New App Version
    App will eliminate lightning-bolt icon previously used to indicate surge pricing (WSJ)
  • YouTube Will Soon Let You Stream Live Video From Your Phone
    The Google unit, Twitter and Facebook all want to be your mobile app of choice for live video (WSJ)
  • Tencent Seals Deal to Buy ‘Clash of Clans’ Developer Supercell for $8.6 Billion
    Tencent is little known in the West, but the company’s market capitalization was about $207 billion based on Tuesday’s closing price, more than that of Oracle Corp. and Intel Corp.
    Online games accounted for more than half of Tencent’s $15 billion in revenue last year. “We are very bullish on the [mobile games] market,” Tencent President Martin Lau said on a conference call. (WSJ)
  • Self-driving cars may one day face decision of who to save, kill (Wtop)
  • WhatsApp hits 100 million calls per day (TechCrunch)
  • Twitter quietly launches tags to location feeds with Foursquare
  • How Brands Can Put IoT Insights To Work For Them (Forbes)







Weekly#171

  • Salesforce.com Inc. lost out on its own bid for LinkedIn Corp. to Microsoft Corp., which acquired the professional social network site for $26.2 billion on Monday, according to a person familiar with the matter.Salesforce.com’s offer price isn’t known, but Brent Thill, an analyst at UBS Group, said purchasing LinkedIn would have been a stretch for the company, which makes web-based software for salespeople. The price Microsoft paid is nearly half of Salesforce.com’s $55.9 billion market capitalization. (WSJ)
  • Watch Apple’s Two-Hour 2016 WWDC Keynote in 7 Minutes (MacRumors)
  • Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. released an annual revenue forecast for the first time, projecting a 48% increase for the fiscal year ending in March as the Chinese e-commerce company seeks to alleviate investors’ concerns about its growth prospects. (WSJ)
  • LinkedIn also could supercharge Microsoft’s Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software, used to identify and track sales leads. Microsoft is in fourth place in market share among the large CRM players, including Salesforce.com Inc., SAP SE and Oracle Corp.
    Salesforce is the market leader, but it holds a minority of the complex and sometimes ill-defined market.LinkedIn already has its own CRM-type product, LinkedIn Sales Navigator, but more important, it has the data and reach that any CRM company would covet.(WSJ)