Microsoft HoloLens is finally heading to seven new countries in addition to the United States and Canada. As of Dec. 2, the device became available for preorder in Australia, Ireland, France, Germany, New Zealand and the United Kingdom. Customers living in Japan can also avail of the preorder but they will have to wait a little longer since the device will ship in that location next month. Microsoft […]
Facebook, Google, Microsoft and Twitter on Monday announced they had joined forces in an attempt to curb explicit terrorist imagery online. The move follows criticism from Brussels that big US social media groups have made insufficient effort to clamp down on hate speech. In a statement, the technology groups said they were building new technology that would identify extremist content, including terrorist recruitment videos and images of […]
Holiday shoppers eyeing tech devices from Microsoft will be pleased to learn that the company’s annual 12 Days of Deals promotion is back to lure consumers. So, if one missed out on the Cyber Monday and Black Friday specials on the Xbox One or Surface Pro 4, this is a great period to snag some discounts. “Whether you prefer to skip the madness of Black Friday and Cyber Monday […]
A new battle is breaking out among the titans of cloud computing, as competition in the fast-growing sector shifts to a fresh arena: artificial intelligence. Amazon is the latest tech company to join the fray, boosting its focus on artificial intelligence at a time when Amazon Web Services, its cloud computing division, is locked in competition with Microsoft and Google. AWS, which sells computing and data storage […]
A new scientific approach uses a model inspired from Google’s algorithm to determine the degree of stability of the planetary systems. The researchers employed a machine learning technique in order to create a mechanism that is 1,000 times faster than traditional methods when it comes to predicting stability. The study, published Nov. 23 in the journal Astrophysical Journal Letters, was carried out at the University of Toronto Scarborough […]
Bizarrely enough, it’s difficult to determine what constitutes a “small business” in the United States. The US Small Business Administration has a table of standards [PDF] that ranges from about 250 to over a thousand employees. On the other hand, the Affordable Care Act kicks in certain requirements for businesses with over 50 employees. So, what exactly is small? When I researched my book, How To Save […]
Microsoft Ventures, Microsoft’s venture-funding group, has been adding more companies to its investment portfolio over the last couple of months. In May, Microsoft announced plans to create Microsoft Ventures, a small early-stage investment group targeting startups in the cloud, security and machine-learning markets. In October, Microsoft created a new site for its Ventures arm that listed 10 concerns in which it had invested to date. (At that […]
In London last month, Arabian Business was treated to a behind-the-scenes explanation of how in March Google’s AlphaGo computer programme thrashed the world’s best player at the ancient board game Go. The match represented a breakthrough in artificial intelligence (AI) research being undertaken by Google’s DeepMind since the start-up was acquired for a reported $400m in 2014. Go involves two contestants moving black and white stones on […]
For the past few months, a number of Microsoft watchers have been predicting and hoping (incorrectly) that Microsoft was ready to roll out a competitor to Amazon’s Echo and Google Home. A discovery by Microsoft sleuth The Walking Cat, a k a @h0x0d, of something called “Home Hub” further fueled this rumor. However, as Walking Cat also discovered, Home Hub wasn’t hardware; it was some kind of […]
Juniper Networks announced Thursday it plans to acquire AppFormix, providers of cloud operations management and optimization technology. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. Founded in 2013 by former Microsoft and Cisco executive Sumeet Singh, AppFormix’s software platform leverages streaming analytics and machine learning in a distributed architecture for use in cloud environments. The platform works with any OpenStack or Kubernetes distribution and includes services for […]
Starbucks Chief Executive Howard Schultz’s decision to step down is unlikely to hamper growth at the world’s biggest coffee chain as his successor Kevin Johnson is well suited to take the helm, analysts said. Starbucks Corp (SBUX.O) said on Thursday that Schultz would step down as CEO on April 3 to focus on new high-end coffee shops, handing the top job to Chief Operating Officer Johnson, a […]
Apple’s new MacBook Pro lineup adds something unique: a Touch Bar atop the keyboard that I believe is an important evolution of the laptop user experience. The first time I saw and played with the Touch Bar, the macros of yore popped into my mind. MacBook power users all know the value of creating macros to speed up a particular business process we may use […]
Image: Getty Images/iStockphoto Neural networks, machine-learning systems, predictive analytics, speech recognition, natural-language understanding and other components of what’s broadly defined as ‘artificial intelligence’ (AI) are currently undergoing a boom: research is progressing apace, media attention is at an all-time high, and organisations are increasingly implementing AI solutions in pursuit of automation-driven efficiencies. The first thing to establish is what we’re not talking about, which is human-level AI […]
In a wide-ranging interview, Steve Ballmer this week was asked to explain what went wrong with Microsoft’s smartphone business. He pointed to skepticism over iPhone carrier subsidies, but I have another idea. As someone who was burned by the iPhone, I know why Microsoft screwed up. Since I was unable to secure any hands-on time with the iPhone prior to its release, I based the […]
In this Feb. 25, 2014 file photo, theSamsung Galaxy S5 is displayed at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain, Tuesday, Feb. 25, 2014. Leading tech companies are increasingly nudging consumers to use their own fingers, faces and eyes as digital key to unlock phones and other gadgets. But there are downsides: Hackers could still steal your fingerprint, or its digital representation. And police may have broader […]
Fitbit is in advanced talks to acquire Pebble, the smartwatch pioneer and darling of crowdfunding site Kickstarter, according to several people close to the negotiations. The deal, which is in its closing stages but has not been completed, would bring intellectual property and new expertise in wearable devices to Fitbit at a time when the fitness-tracker maker is looking to expand its product range. Pebble has raised […]
Submitted by Giuseppe Macri via InsideSources.com, The Obama administration’s revolving door with Google has been anything but subtle over the last eight years, and a new report from a government watchdog out this week shows the Silicon Valley giant hoped to extend that relationship to what many expected would be a Hillary Clinton presidency. According to Campaign for Accountability, a non-profit government watchdog, that door was already […]
Source: GSMA Singapore’s three mobile operators have announced plans to support a global authentication standard that will allow their customers to access online services with their mobile number. In a joint statement released Tuesday, M1, StarHub, and Singtel said they would adopt the GSMA authentication standard, Mobile Connect, which would create a single digital user identity. This would enable their mobile customers to access supporting services including […]
Malwarebytes Ransomware continues to evolve and it is becoming more and more of a challenge for the general public to stay shielded from such threats and security experts to stay on top of the evolving strains of ransomware being found in the wild. It is not just the malicious code itself, however, which is a problem. Now, support scammers are taking tips from ransomware developers to make […]
Every tech magazine comes out with a “best products of the year” list at around this time. Readers love lists—and it is shopping season, after all. Plus, it’s an easy story to do: Just open up a Web browser and start searching for the best of everything, then rewrite what you read online. Maybe throw in a few outliers, so the list is less generic than the […]
American Airlines has selected IBM Cloud to be a service provider as it moves its internal applications to the public cloud. The airline has said that it was looking to move some of its customer web site and back office applications to the public cloud. American Airlines was evaluating Amazon Web Services, IBM and Microsoft. Terms of the deal weren’t disclosed. IBM said that American will use […]
Small to midsize businesses (SMBs) looking for a soup-to-nuts Voice over IP (VoIP) telephony system will do very well with 8×8 Virtual Office Pro. The service offers both basic and a good selection of advanced features as part of its base pricing bundle, which starts at $24.99 per user per month. There’s a good selection of calling plans and, perhaps most important, a good number of integrations […]
Astro Gaming’s new A50 wireless gaming headset follows its predecessors as one of the most impressive, and pricey, headsets on the market. It rings in at a hefty $300, but justifies its price tag with excellent audio quality and a full feature set, including an attractive charging cradle. It’s light, comfortable, sounds fantastic for both games and music, and it can work with your Sony PlayStation 4 […]
The Surface Phone is probably closer than most people think, at least according to a report by Chinese financial publication Commercial Times, who claims that Pegatron, a main supplier for Apple, is reportedly working with Microsoft and is already administering production trials of the enigmatic Surface Phone. Surface Phone Rumors The Surface-branded phone has enjoyed its wealth of rumors in recent months. Others predict it as a high-end […]
