(Image: CNET) The Amazon Echo was the first mass-market, consumer-level device responding to voice control with general purpose functions, such as playing music. It was launched in the US in 2015. Then, in 2016, Google released its competing device, Google Home. Framingham, Mass.-based digital agency Stone Temple collected 5,000 questions to ask both Google Home and Amazon Alexa. Itverbally asked the devices each question and noted many […]
Good morning. Here’s our morning roundup of all the media news you need to know. Want to get this briefing in your inbox every morning? Subscribe here. Nate Silver’s “March Madness” analysis is out and, knock on hardwood, he’s not picking Hillary Clinton. I know, I know. Cheap (jump) shot. It’s that time of year when FiveThirtyEight, the ESPN-owned politics and sports data site founded by Silver, […]
Rumor has it that the successor to OnePlus 3T will skip the “4” and just jump into OnePlus 5, a la Note 5 jumping into the Note 7 naming scheme. The 3T has only been out for a few months, becoming available this past November. Yet, because of how fast-paced smartphone development has become, we’re now seeing rumors of the OnePlus 5, and they’re all sounding pretty good […]
The Wikum interface provides readers with detailed summaries of online discussions. Credit: Jason Dorfman/MIT CSAIL From Reddit to Quora, discussion forums can be equal parts informative and daunting. We’ve all fallen down rabbit holes of lengthy threads that are impossible to sift through. Comments can be redundant, off-topic or even inaccurate, but all that content is ultimately still there for us to try and untangle. Sick of […]
Snapchat is displayed on a smartphone on September 27, 2016 in Berlin, GermanyImage: Thomas Trutschel/Photothek via Getty Images By Kerry Flynn2017-03-01 06:19:41 UTC Snap Inc. has been playing with drones. The New York Times reported Tuesday that the company has worked on building its own drones, citing three people “briefed on the project who asked to remain anonymous because the details are confidential.” The piece doesn’t get […]
Image by Arafat Uddin (Creative Commons) The financial services industry is undergoing digital disruption and change. Insurance, as part of that industry, also faces new opportunities and challenges. To explore these issues, I spoke with the CIO for Information at Swiss reinsurance giant, Swiss Re. Rainer Baumann handles the data and tools that experts inside the company use to understand and evaluate a broad range of insurance […]
The Shepherds Flat Wind Farm is an 845 MW wind farm in the U.S. state of Oregon. Credit: Steve Wilson / Wikipedia. The sight of propeller-like rotating blades positioned high up the pole of a tall horizontal-axis wind turbine (HAWT) may be familiar to many. Often grouped in wind farms, HAWTs provide significant amounts of energy for local communities. One drawback to HAWTs is the large space they […]
February in Romania has brought 27 consecutive days of protests against the current government, at a scale unmatched since the Revolution in 1989. In a record day, more than 600,000 people gathered in the capital’s Victory Square and around the country to overturn a decision by the current ruling party to decriminalize some acts of corruption and abuse of office. This decision was especially self-serving given the […]
This much we can tell you for sure: the still-untitled Han Solo spin-off movie will not be called “Red Cup.” That’s the working title, a nod to the fact that George Lucas named Solo’s character for the plastic drinks brand. (True story.) But what about the actual title for the standalone film, which as of Tuesday is scheduled for May 25, 2018? Thus far Lucasfilm has it […]
iPad sales are in serious decline, but Apple CEO Tim Cook remain “very bullish” about the tablet. Can a March refresh turn things around? Must read: OLED iPhone 8 may finally have the feature that owners have been craving The Internet of Things 10 types of enterprise deployments As businesses continue to experiment with the Internet of Things, interesting use cases are emerging. Here are some of […]
Trump Is Playing You Note: Soren K is a group of 4 writers to whom I contribute on commodity market posts-Vince Lanci Written by Soren K and MarketSlant. There is one thing Hillary and Donald agree on. You are idiots. She said it. He thinks it. In fact the voting populace is largely brain damaged. And those who aren’t quite vegetables yet will become pacified with iphones, slot machines, […]
Yesterday´s Future is Today´s Reality. In the area of Business applications, cloud seems to be all over the place. But it has many facets which all have its right to exist, though it´s a fatal misunderstanding to see cloud simply as an alternative technical deployment option. From the new millennium SaaS models that have been adopted, initially with huge appetite in dedicated Line of Business areas. We […]
In light of the recent flurry of leaks by the so-called “deep state”, which includes such agencies as the NSA and FBI and which last week lead to the resignation of Mike Flynn after a phone recording of his phone conversation with the Russian ambassador was leaked to the WaPo and other anti-Trump publications, an article published on January 12 by the NYT has generated renewed interest. […]
In my view right now I can see six smartphone and tablet chargers. They’re all plugged in, and there are no devices attached to them. How much power are they using? Should I unplug them? See also: Yes, you can build your own smartphone The Internet of Things 10 types of enterprise deployments As businesses continue to experiment with the Internet of Things, interesting use cases are […]
Michigan Republicans are reportedly mulling a Senate run for heartland heartthrob Kid Rock, a country and rock star, who loves to “sit in the backyard sun and drink beer with dad,” according to his autobiographical song, “Drinking Beer With Dad.” Once unthinkable, Kid Rock for Senate is hardly unthinkable now: A professional wrestler has served multiple terms as governor of Minnesota, Christine “I dabbled in witchcraft” O’Donnell […]
Current economic conditions around the world provide a good foundation for growth. But unprecedented levels of market uncertainty mean that organizations have to be ready to change strategy faster than ever before. Growth around the world In the US, President Donald Trump has inherited an economy with strong fundamentals: low inflation, and the lowest unemployment rate since 2007. He has promised a pro-business economic agenda with lower […]
Paraphrasing Garrison Keillor, it’s been a quiet week in the Apache Spark community – at least compared to last year, where the definitive Spark 2.0 was unveiled. Last week, Spark Summit pulled into Boston, and so did one of those nor’easters that make Boston so alluring in February. And so the Spark project, for now, is engaging in the blocking and tackling chores of cleaning up or […]
Submitted by Nick Kaman of Letters from Norway Introduction: Norwegians are just now starting to grapple with the effects of their “single cylinder” economy, mostly dependent on oil and gas (ca. 60% of exports). Despite optimism about $50-$70/barrel oil, American crude output is surging, on track to be the highest ever, since 1970, while cracks start to form in OPEC’s latest agreement. In addition to the oil […]
Good morning. Critique by “Sid Vicious” not pretty If things had gone differently, Washington would now be gossiping about the role of Sidney Blumenthal within a Clinton White House. A congressional inquisition over his much-publicized emails with then-Secretary of State Clinton, his longtime friend, now seems so distant, doesn’t it? But it’s still fitting the journalist-activist and historian should weigh in on Donald Trump. A cerebral but […]
“Now we have all the prospects of a fresh start,” Ilnur Cevik, a senior adviser to Mr. Erdogan, said during an interview at the presidential palace in Ankara, the Turkish capital. “We have an opening with Mr. Trump.” Continue reading the main story Turkish-American relations frayed over differing views on the war in Syria and the widespread belief in Turkey that the United States played a role […]
The phone’s display acts as the light source, beaming colors at an object while the camera captures details about the reflected color. Image: Udo Seiffert/Fraunhofer IFF The makers of an industrial hyperspectral camera called HawkSpex have created an app that lets you use your smartphone’s existing camera and display to scan an object and see what’s inside it. German firm Fraunhofer Institute for Factory Operation hopes consumers […]
When searching for a picture of a “gang” on the internet, you’d better not go with an image of your average rap group. It’s too late for the Daily Mail, whose Australian iteration published a photo of UK rappers Section Boyz in an article about a local gang in Melbourne. The picture has since been removed from the article, following a tweet from TV show Media Watch […]
Image from Wikipedia User experience is not just about pretty design and attractive software screens. It encompasses every link in the chain that influences interactions between a user and the system. Historically, the enterprise software industry prioritized features and functions over usability. The industry’s poor reputation is a predictable result of this legacy. Although front-end design is most obvious, it is almost impossible to create a great […]
Nick Thompson was on his way to the subway when he got an email from his boss, New Yorker Editor David Remnick. The subject line? “Morning piece.” It was 8:17 a.m. on Sept. 8, and Remnick had just watched libertarian presidential candidate Gary Johnson ask “what is Aleppo?” live on national television. “I wrote back and said, ‘great!’” said Thompson, the former digital editor at The New […]
