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"Gremlin raises $18 million to expand 'failure-as-a-service' testing platform | VentureBeat"
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"https://venturebeat.com/business/gremlin-raises-18-million-to-expand-failure-as-a-service-testing-platform"
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"Artificial Intelligence View All AI, ML and Deep Learning Auto ML Data Labelling Synthetic Data Conversational AI NLP Text-to-Speech Security View All Data Security and Privacy Network Security and Privacy Software Security Computer Hardware Security Cloud and Data Storage Security Data Infrastructure View All Data Science Data Management Data Storage and Cloud Big Data and Analytics Data Networks Automation View All Industrial Automation Business Process Automation Development Automation Robotic Process Automation Test Automation Enterprise Analytics View All Business Intelligence Disaster Recovery Business Continuity Statistical Analysis Predictive Analysis More Data Decision Makers Virtual Communication Team Collaboration UCaaS Virtual Reality Collaboration Virtual Employee Experience Programming & Development Product Development Application Development Test Management Development Languages Gremlin raises $18 million to expand ‘failure-as-a-service’ testing platform Share on Facebook Share on X Share on LinkedIn Gremlin cofounders Kolton Andrus (left) and Matthew Fornaciari Are you looking to showcase your brand in front of the brightest minds of the gaming industry? Consider getting a custom GamesBeat sponsorship.
Learn more.
Gremlin said today it has raised $18 million as the company expanded its product lineup to offer additional ways for companies to stress-test their applications.
The round was led by Redpoint Ventures.
Founded in 2016 by a pair of former engineers from Amazon and Netflix, the company has been designing ways for companies to test their systems by simulating moments when they are hit with surges in traffic to identify weaknesses.
As part of today’s announcement, the company also introduced a new service called Application Level Fault Injection, or ALFI. The service allows a company to deliberately cause part of its systems to fail to see how the rest of the system reacts, and ideally fix any weaknesses that are identified.
“The concept of purposefully injecting harm into systems is still new for many companies, but chaos engineering has been practiced at places like Amazon and Netflix for over a decade,” said Kolton Andrus, CEO and cofounder of Gremlin, in a statement. “We like to use the analogy of a flu shot, injecting small amounts of harm to build an immunity, in order to proactively avoid disasters. Now with ALFI, users will be able to bring this practice to serverless environments, and have much greater control within their applications.” VB Event The AI Impact Tour Connect with the enterprise AI community at VentureBeat’s AI Impact Tour coming to a city near you! With more and more companies migrating their services online, customers have come to expect zero downtime and increased reliability. But the unwieldy patchwork of systems, software, and architectures can lead to vulnerabilities that are hard to spot through routine checks.
“With ALFI one of the first problems we wanted to address was improving the reliability and understanding of serverless providers like AWS Lambda and Azure Functions,” said Matthew Fornaciari, CTO and cofounder of Gremlin, in a statement.
Gremlin has now raised $23.75 million in total funding. Investors include Redpoint Ventures, Index Ventures, and Amplify Ventures.
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4,914 | 2,018 |
"GOeureka uses blockchain to unlock 400,000 hotel rooms with zero commission | VentureBeat"
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"https://venturebeat.com/business/goeureka-uses-blockchain-to-unlock-400000-hotel-rooms-with-zero-commission"
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"Artificial Intelligence View All AI, ML and Deep Learning Auto ML Data Labelling Synthetic Data Conversational AI NLP Text-to-Speech Security View All Data Security and Privacy Network Security and Privacy Software Security Computer Hardware Security Cloud and Data Storage Security Data Infrastructure View All Data Science Data Management Data Storage and Cloud Big Data and Analytics Data Networks Automation View All Industrial Automation Business Process Automation Development Automation Robotic Process Automation Test Automation Enterprise Analytics View All Business Intelligence Disaster Recovery Business Continuity Statistical Analysis Predictive Analysis More Data Decision Makers Virtual Communication Team Collaboration UCaaS Virtual Reality Collaboration Virtual Employee Experience Programming & Development Product Development Application Development Test Management Development Languages GOeureka uses blockchain to unlock 400,000 hotel rooms with zero commission Share on Facebook Share on X Share on LinkedIn Are you ready to bring more awareness to your brand? Consider becoming a sponsor for The AI Impact Tour. Learn more about the opportunities here.
Booking hotels can be an expensive business for consumers once commission fees are added in. And few booking services offer rewards or reasons for travelers to return to the platform, which leads to a “comparison engine” lifestyle.
A hotel booking platform that uses blockchain technology, GOeureka has released the alpha version of its platform, which allows its users to book hotel rooms with zero commission and receive loyalty rewards and benefits, all with no hidden fees.
GOeureka is ahead of many similar blockchain projects, with trial bookings on the blockchain through smart contracts on Ethereum and a significant infrastructure of available hotels. Its board includes C-level executives from Accor Hotels and Agoda, among others.
“ERC-20 smart contracts will be utilized for the security and immutability of data throughout the platform,” GOeureka founder and CEO Manraj Rai told me. “To increase performance and keep transaction fees to a minimum, individual transactions and bookings will be kept outside of the blockchain. The settlement of all transactions will occur off-chain, and fulfilled transactions will be aggregated each day and sent through the smart contract to be validated and stored on the blockchain.” The problem GOeureka is solving is well known. The existing hotel booking infrastructure is controlled by a handful of booking sites that charge between 10 and 30 percent commission on top of the room rate. Those fees are also not transparent, so consumers don’t get to see how they are calculated. That means the retail price of a single room varies widely depending on transactions between the hotel, the bed bank wholesaler, and the online booking site.
GOeureka’s goal is simple. It wants to reduce the cost of hotel bookings, offer transparency and consistency, and cut out intermediaries by letting the hotel deal directly with the customer. It also enables the traveler to accumulate benefits and rewards. For the hotels, this allows them to reduce the supply chain to the bare minimum, making operations cheaper and more efficient.
Blockchain technology and smart contracts are ideally placed to solve these issues and provide consumers with cheaper, faster, more transparent offers.
“GOeureka chose the Ethereum blockchain due to its flexible and extensible nature,” Rai said. “The use of Ethereum smart contracts allows for the creation of autonomous agents that may be implemented throughout GOeureka’s platform to automate many processes and remove various third parties that usually result in a slower process and multiple transaction fees that lead to high costs.” The reward program is a significant part of the platform. It helps GOeureka increase loyalty for both itself and its partners. The company has plans to expand this offering beyond hotels, however.
“Like any loyalty program, we will reward the users for transactions made on our platform. And every GOeureka user will accumulate reward points/credits for repeated bookings, and these can then be used to unlock additional travel rewards, like further discounted rates, free airport transfers, and so on,” Rai said. “These rewards will not be limited to the GOeureka platform, as we are also working on collaborations/partnerships with other companies and plan to open up the usability of our points into the retail sector and across other areas of the hospitality industry.” So what’s next for GOeureka? “We already have a working web platform that has over 400,000 properties available for booking worldwide and have been using it internally to book our hotel stays in cities like London, Dubai, New York, Singapore, and Malaysia,” Rai said. “We have also opened up test bookings to a group of beta testers and will be gathering and analyzing their feedback over the coming weeks. The current version only accepts payment via fiat, so the next phase is very much focused on enabling cryptocurrency payments and testing bookings on the blockchain with our partner hotels.” In addition to the company’s roadmap, it will give a winning investor in its token offering access to free hotels for life. That offer does come with some caveats, however.
The offer includes 15 free nights a year with a cap of $250 per night, which equates to $3,750 per year. Over a lifetime of 50 years, this totals around $187,500, which is equivalent to 1.875 million of the company’s 1 billion GOeureka tokens. In other words, it is 0.1875% of GOeureka’s total token pool.
“This will be funded by our reserve token pool, and the lucky user who has access to this benefit will be entitled to a specific number of free nights a year for the rest of their life, with a cap on the nightly room rate,” Rai said. “Terms and conditions do apply here, and we are also working with our partner hotels to obtain preferential rates for this promotion.” GOeureka’s token sale is ongoing and ends on November 30, 2018.
VentureBeat's mission is to be a digital town square for technical decision-makers to gain knowledge about transformative enterprise technology and transact.
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The AI Impact Tour Join us for an evening full of networking and insights at VentureBeat's AI Impact Tour, coming to San Francisco, New York, and Los Angeles! VentureBeat Homepage Follow us on Facebook Follow us on X Follow us on LinkedIn Follow us on RSS Press Releases Contact Us Advertise Share a News Tip Contribute to DataDecisionMakers Careers Privacy Policy Terms of Service Do Not Sell My Personal Information © 2023 VentureBeat.
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4,915 | 2,018 |
"Founder of #MeToo on maintaining movement's values and focus after it went viral | VentureBeat"
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"https://venturebeat.com/business/founder-of-metoo-on-maintaining-movements-values-and-focus-after-it-went-viral"
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"Artificial Intelligence View All AI, ML and Deep Learning Auto ML Data Labelling Synthetic Data Conversational AI NLP Text-to-Speech Security View All Data Security and Privacy Network Security and Privacy Software Security Computer Hardware Security Cloud and Data Storage Security Data Infrastructure View All Data Science Data Management Data Storage and Cloud Big Data and Analytics Data Networks Automation View All Industrial Automation Business Process Automation Development Automation Robotic Process Automation Test Automation Enterprise Analytics View All Business Intelligence Disaster Recovery Business Continuity Statistical Analysis Predictive Analysis More Data Decision Makers Virtual Communication Team Collaboration UCaaS Virtual Reality Collaboration Virtual Employee Experience Programming & Development Product Development Application Development Test Management Development Languages Founder of #MeToo on maintaining movement’s values and focus after it went viral Share on Facebook Share on X Share on LinkedIn Tarana Burke, founder of the MeToo movement, speaking at the Bits & Pretzels conference in Munich, Germany on September 30, 2018.
Are you ready to bring more awareness to your brand? Consider becoming a sponsor for The AI Impact Tour. Learn more about the opportunities here.
When the #MeToo movement went viral last year after a tweet by actress Alyssa Milano, nobody was more surprised than Tarana Burke. More than a decade earlier, Burke had begun using the term as a way to help survivors of sexual assault speak up and heal.
Suddenly, the work and activism she had led for years in quiet anonymity had gained a global audience that she could have never imagined. And yet, after fighting for a cause mainly aimed at African African girls and women, she saw the baton being seized by famous white women, and then watched as its intentions were distorted by the media.
“This movement is being defined by the media and by the corporations,” she said. “It’s dangerous to reduce what we’ve seen in the past year as mob justice.” On Sunday, Burke arrived in Munich to deliver the keynote address at the Bits & Pretzels technology conference, which embraced the theme of diversity this year. Burke’s story of social media’s role in the movement underscores the complexities of the how such technology intersects with grassroots politics, particularly when race and gender are central factors.
In describing how she reacted to #MeToo’s virality, Burke said that rather than wanting to battle over ownership, she felt the need to put the mission first. Since then, she has been trying to push the issue forward by riding its social media wave while simultaneously fighting to keep the focus on its original mission of helping sexual assault victims.
Burke described herself as a “regular degular schmegular girl from the Bronx.” Her life was changed as a teenager when she read Maya Angelou’s I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings, an autobiography that recounts the author’s experience as a victim of rape. By that time, Burke said she had already suffered two sexual assaults, and she found tremendous relief in knowing that she was not alone.
As an adult and activist, she continued to hear stories from young African Americans. In 2006, she began using the phrase “Me Too” as a way to get girls and women to open up and discuss their experiences.
“I did that because these girls didn’t have the words to describe the pain,” Burke said. “And you can’t heal a pain if you don’t have the words to define it.” That effort grew gradually, by word of mouth, in-person organizing, and fundraising efforts to develop more resources and educational material and services. Eventually, the organizers created a MySpace page, which shocked them by bringing in an outpouring of emails and stories.
“We learned two things really quickly,” Burke said. “Social was getting ready to be [a] wave. We explained what we were doing, and people started reaching out to us and saying thank you for starting this. Can you bring this to my community? How can I be involved? And the second thing was that it confirmed that we were onto something. We knew we had something that people needed.” Still, she continued to build the movement brick by brick over the years. Then she woke up on an October morning last year to Milano’s tweet and the ensuing uproar. Initially, she was confused.
“There were a flurry of Twitter messages saying ‘Congratulations!’ and ‘Is this you?’,” she said. “And I didn’t know what people were talking about. Then within a few hours, my social media pages were flooded.” Considering the impact of this new twist almost immediately caused anxiety.
“I just thought, ‘The white people gonna take my stuff away from me’,” Burke said. “This was a weird thing, seeing this thing I had created for black and brown girls spread to the whole world. I watched it grow and panicked and worried about how I was going to save my work.” Her longtime friends and supporters rushed online to defend and speak up for Burke, demanding she be given credit. Watching all this play out, she came to her own decision about how to react.
“I could have definitely had a fight about this,” Burke said. “I could have spent the next few weeks talking about how this is about me, me, me. But then the question came to me: Are you going to be in conflict or are you going to be in service?” So the next day, she made a video about herself and the movement, asking people to embrace the #MeToo cause. That video also went viral, and since then she’s been flooded with non-stop interview requests and been gratified to watch the movement go global.
“That’s because I stuck to the vision,” she said. “I didn’t try to change the work we’d done for the last decade. I used the vision and tried to explain what #MeToo was really about. They weren’t just two words. They were two words that helped these women open up and heal.” Despite the global recognition and acclaim of the movement sparked by that hashtag, the work remains as challenging as ever, in some ways even more so. In part, there is the challenge of making sure those original communities of African American girls and women remain a vital part of the movement, and benefit from it.
But perhaps an even bigger challenge for Burke is figuring out how to address the way the mission and its goals have been distorted, particularly in the media. As famous and powerful men were toppled by accusations of sexual assault, those stories increasingly became central to stories about #MeToo, which Burke says incorrectly seemed to define that as its central mission.
“We’re in the midst of the backlash,” Burke said. “People say, ‘Oh, I’m so tired of hearing about #MeToo’. And that’s because they think about it all wrong. They think we’re a movement about taking down powerful men. But not only is that not sustainable, it is contrary to our values.” She continued: 12 million people engaged on the MeToo hashtag on Facebook the first day. Every single one of those hashtags is a human being. And every one of them has a story about sexual violence. What the media has done is pivot away from them. But we’re focused on the survivors of sexual violence and not on which powerful man the #MeToo movement is going to take down.
This is a global movement of survivors who are trying to heal from sexual violence, and trying stop the scourge of sexual violence. I’m not invested in seeing us win. I know we will win. But I don’t have to see it happen. I’m more interested in planting the seeds to see it happen.
Going forward, Burke has decidedly mixed feelings about her internet-fueled fame and what activism means in the age of social media.
“Without social media, I was doing that work for 13 years, very slowly,” she said. “Prior to #MeToo going viral, the people I was working with around the country couldn’t see a time where there would be a national, sustained dialogue around sexual violence. Social media and this hashtag were great opening points. Social media can be a gift and a curse. But in this way, it was a gift.” Still, she worries that people just see the social media part and think that was the whole movement without appreciating all the work that led up to that moment.
“One of the problems in the era of social movements is that people don’t feel what they’re doing is valid unless it is big,” she said. “You don’t have to be validated by ‘likes’. Telling your story is the first step to recovering. And that can be done by just talking to a friend. I would like us to remember that. I can do more with 10 really hardworking people who share the vision I have than I can going on Facebook and getting a bunch of likes.” Disclosure: The organizers of the Bits & Pretzels Conference paid for VentureBeat’s travel to the event. Our coverage remains objective.
VentureBeat's mission is to be a digital town square for technical decision-makers to gain knowledge about transformative enterprise technology and transact.
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The AI Impact Tour Join us for an evening full of networking and insights at VentureBeat's AI Impact Tour, coming to San Francisco, New York, and Los Angeles! VentureBeat Homepage Follow us on Facebook Follow us on X Follow us on LinkedIn Follow us on RSS Press Releases Contact Us Advertise Share a News Tip Contribute to DataDecisionMakers Careers Privacy Policy Terms of Service Do Not Sell My Personal Information © 2023 VentureBeat.
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4,916 | 2,018 |
"Microsoft brings Robot Operating System to Windows 10 | VentureBeat"
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"https://venturebeat.com/ai/microsoft-brings-robot-operating-system-to-windows-10"
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"Artificial Intelligence View All AI, ML and Deep Learning Auto ML Data Labelling Synthetic Data Conversational AI NLP Text-to-Speech Security View All Data Security and Privacy Network Security and Privacy Software Security Computer Hardware Security Cloud and Data Storage Security Data Infrastructure View All Data Science Data Management Data Storage and Cloud Big Data and Analytics Data Networks Automation View All Industrial Automation Business Process Automation Development Automation Robotic Process Automation Test Automation Enterprise Analytics View All Business Intelligence Disaster Recovery Business Continuity Statistical Analysis Predictive Analysis More Data Decision Makers Virtual Communication Team Collaboration UCaaS Virtual Reality Collaboration Virtual Employee Experience Programming & Development Product Development Application Development Test Management Development Languages Microsoft brings Robot Operating System to Windows 10 Share on Facebook Share on X Share on LinkedIn Are you looking to showcase your brand in front of the brightest minds of the gaming industry? Consider getting a custom GamesBeat sponsorship.
Learn more.
In recent years, the robotics industry has experienced outsized growth. It’s expected to be worth almost $500 billion by 2025, and judging by recent funding rounds, investors are optimistic about the future. Warehouse robotics company GreyOrange raised $140 million for its platform in early September; in June, Bossa Nova scooped up $29 million in July for its store inventory robots and Starship Technologies secured $25 million for its fleet of automated delivery carts.
One thing many of those startups’ machines share in common is Robot Operating System (ROS), open source robotics middleware originated by Willow Garage and Stanford’s Artificial Intelligence Laboratory that provides low-level device control, hardware abstraction, and other useful services. Previously, ROS was experimentally supported on Windows by the community. (As of September 2018, Core ROS had been ported to Windows.) But today, Microsoft debuted an official — albeit “experimental” — build for Windows 10.
The news was timed to coincide with ROSCon 2018 in Madrid, Spain.
“People have always been fascinated by robots. Today, advanced robots are complementing our lives, both at work and at home,” Lou Amadio, principal software engineer for Windows IoT, wrote in a blog post.
“As robots have advanced, so have the development tools. We see robotics with artificial intelligence as universally accessible technology to augment human abilities … [and] this development will bring the manageability and security of Windows 10 IoT Enterprise to the innovative ROS ecosystem.” VB Event The AI Impact Tour Connect with the enterprise AI community at VentureBeat’s AI Impact Tour coming to a city near you! This first release of ROS on Windows, dubbed ROS1, integrates seamlessly with Visual Studio, Microsoft’s integrated development environment, and exposes features like hardware-accelerated Windows Machine Learning, computer vision, Azure Cognitive Services, and Azure IoT cloud services.
To demonstrate a few of its capabilities, the Seattle company’s devs fired up a ROBOTIS Turtlebot 3 running Windows 10 IoT Enterprise, ROS Melodic Morenia, and a ROS node that leverages hardware-accelerated Windows Machine Learning running on top of an Intel Coffee Lake NUC. Using computer vision, it could recognize and steer toward the person closest to it.
They also showed off a ROS simulation environment running in Azure that “[showed] a swarm of robots” in a virtual world, orchestrated and controlled via Azure IoT Hub.
Microsoft said that in addition to distributing Windows-optimized builds of ROS, it’s working with Open Robotics and the ROS Industrial Consortium to “extend the capabilities” of ROS to manufacturing and “improve the productivity and return on investment” of industrial robots.
“Warehouse robots have enabled next-day deliveries to online shoppers, and many pet owners rely on robotic vacuums to keep their floors clean,” Amadio wrote. “Industries seeing benefits from robots are as diverse as manufacturing, transportation, healthcare, and real estate.” The files and documentation for ROS1 are available now, with ROS2 to come “shortly.” VentureBeat's mission is to be a digital town square for technical decision-makers to gain knowledge about transformative enterprise technology and transact.
Discover our Briefings.
The AI Impact Tour Join us for an evening full of networking and insights at VentureBeat's AI Impact Tour, coming to San Francisco, New York, and Los Angeles! VentureBeat Homepage Follow us on Facebook Follow us on X Follow us on LinkedIn Follow us on RSS Press Releases Contact Us Advertise Share a News Tip Contribute to DataDecisionMakers Careers Privacy Policy Terms of Service Do Not Sell My Personal Information © 2023 VentureBeat.
All rights reserved.
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4,917 | 2,018 |
"Investing in AI: When natural language processing pays off | VentureBeat"
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"https://venturebeat.com/ai/investing-in-ai-when-natural-language-processing-pays-off"
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"Artificial Intelligence View All AI, ML and Deep Learning Auto ML Data Labelling Synthetic Data Conversational AI NLP Text-to-Speech Security View All Data Security and Privacy Network Security and Privacy Software Security Computer Hardware Security Cloud and Data Storage Security Data Infrastructure View All Data Science Data Management Data Storage and Cloud Big Data and Analytics Data Networks Automation View All Industrial Automation Business Process Automation Development Automation Robotic Process Automation Test Automation Enterprise Analytics View All Business Intelligence Disaster Recovery Business Continuity Statistical Analysis Predictive Analysis More Data Decision Makers Virtual Communication Team Collaboration UCaaS Virtual Reality Collaboration Virtual Employee Experience Programming & Development Product Development Application Development Test Management Development Languages Guest Investing in AI: When natural language processing pays off Share on Facebook Share on X Share on LinkedIn Are you ready to bring more awareness to your brand? Consider becoming a sponsor for The AI Impact Tour. Learn more about the opportunities here.
For the past 18 months, my teams at Acxiom Research have worked extensively with a specific form of artificial intelligence called natural language processing (NLP). Our most exciting NLP development is called ABBY — our first artificially intelligent employee. But I’m not just here to talk about ABBY. I’m here to talk about the potential of NLP and how to decide if it’s a technology your own company should be exploring.
I want to leave you with two thoughts about NLP: First, the open source technology around NLP is so robust you can easily build “on the shoulders of giants” and create amazingly effective NLP applications right now using just a small, highly-focused team and a platform approach.
Second, even with such a large amount of powerful technology at your fingertips, creating a front-end NLP (one that “talks back,” which is what most people think of when they think of AI) requires both vision and fortitude. Vision to see the power of the technology and sell it to your internal stakeholders. Fortitude because it will require a significant up-front investment before you see returns from some of the more advanced capabilities you need to develop. You must also be willing to learn the skills of a consumer marketer and deal with issues of changing behaviors already entrained in your user base.
VB Event The AI Impact Tour Connect with the enterprise AI community at VentureBeat’s AI Impact Tour coming to a city near you! Backend NLP is easier and provides a more immediate ROI NLP-based improvements to your business need not have a conversational front end. These backend-driven or linguistic analysis projects often offer the fastest, most cost-effective, highest-return way to use NLP in the short term. These projects involve teams of two-to-three people working for a few months to complete.
Hilary Mason, GM of Machine Learning at Cloudera presented a good example of backend NLP in a keynote at the most recent Strata Conference. Mason explained how Cloudera lowered its call center costs and improved customer satisfaction using NLP. They took a statistical sample of recorded calls from their call centers and transcribed them to text. They performed textual analysis on this corpus, seeking speech patterns tied to specific issues and problem resolution steps. They then deployed predictive models based on the results of this analysis into their call center systems. When a customer called, the underlying algorithms identified patterns of speech and proactively recommended a likely solution to the customer service representative as they were speaking with the customer. The result, Mason said, was reduced calls to the call center as well as increased customer satisfaction (my team saw the same type of positive results in our own similar project).
Conversational NLP costs more and requires long-term vision Once you focus on conversational NLP (or AI), where you want the machine to interact with a human in a way that has something even vaguely like the fluidity and imprecision of normal human speech, the problem becomes technically challenging and expensive. I am not speaking here of chatbots. A chatbot is a very simple machine that can follow a relatively structured conversation for a specific task and sits in certain pre-defined environments like Facebook Messenger. Conversational AIs are completely different. Similar to Alexa, they are ubiquitous (they are wherever you are), can handle multiple applications (also called intents), and can deal with the wide range of responses even one person can give to the same statement. They can also change contexts rapidly — say from providing information about today’s weather to making restaurant reservations.
Multiple open-source platforms already exist to allow your teams to build a functional, if imperfect, AI in a reasonable time frame and at a cost that provides a positive return. Companies like Apple, Google, Microsoft, and Amazon have each poured literally hundreds of millions of dollars, and the efforts of some of the brightest PhDs on the planet, into advanced NLP interfaces. These open source libraries allowed us to build a foundational platform for a simple conversational AI in about a year, with a team of 3-4 people, for approximately $500,000. That early platform has a few simple intents, no pre-conversation awareness of the user (since that requires an interface with secure systems), and no memory of prior user sessions. From there, depending on the complexity of the intent, we have been able to deliver each new function for between $10,000 for a simple intent (e.g. weather) and $25,000 for a more complex intent (e.g. conference room reservations).
We view the platform as an investment to be spread across all apps built in a two-year payback period. Since we expect to add 48 new intents over that period, amortizing the platform adds $10,000 to the cost of each intent. That is one way we cost-justify a new intent. For example, allowing people to self-service on a lost/forgotten password or other simple IT issues saves the time of at least one IT person a year. From some quick calculations using the IRR function in Excel, and assuming that role costs $100,000/year, the quick calculation of the single-year ROI of that “complex” app at ~260 percent, which makes it worth doing. Cost is only one factor we use in prioritizing which intents to build, and sometimes we invest even without a strong ROI. But we do use it as a guideline.
The following table provides an overview of some open-source tools worth looking into.
Adoption by end users and developers A conversational AI platform needs two forms of adoption to succeed. One with end users and, equally important, one with developers.
Achieving adoption of any new technology by a majority of end users is an arduous process. It is particularly difficult when users are reluctant to give up existing tools and ingrained behaviors. Purveyors of new technologies to consumers are well aware of this. They build a substantial adoption curve and associated marketing budgets into their business models. But developers and even product managers at many companies, especially those in B2B markets, have little experience with consumer adoption curves. They don’t factor it into their plans and, equally important, their managers don’t understand that curve either. There is very little patience or capability in many organizations for the kind of persistent messaging and salesmanship needed to gain widespread adoption of conversational interfaces. The result is that many front-end NLP projects never achieve adoption, which limits further investment.
My teams overcame this challenge with our ABBY project by treating the deployment of ABBY’s intents like any other typical new product marketing problem — we assigned a part-time product marketer to develop and execute marketing programs for internal adoption. We also developed a group of early adopters/beta testers who understand that part of their role is to promote the new intents to their peers in the organization. Lastly, our entire team is tasked with selling ABBY’s capabilities wherever we can when interacting with people in the organization. Just like in any standalone small company, everyone on the team is a salesperson.
But no matter how well you execute on internal marketing, front-end NLP is still a long-term evolution, and both the end user’s behavior and the capabilities of the AI are going to evolve over time as developers, the AI, and end users interact. It is for this reason that it is critical to develop an NLP platform for developers across the organization to use. Just as in an open marketplace, no one group can conceive of or build all the apps that may be important to the other various users or groups in your company. One way to enhance adoption is to have lots of teams building NLP apps for the conversational front end. Thus, developer adoption is a second critical element in the adoption cycle. We use many tools to promote adoption. We actively reach out to developers through team meetings, one-on-ones, and an NLP Special Interest Group. We also have NLP projects available for our regular quarterly hackathons.
Efficacy and task-oriented design This brings us to another design issue — efficacy. The intents to invest in are those that make an existing experience more effective, more efficient, or both. If it takes longer to do something conversationally, people will not use your AI. This is especially true where there is an ingrained behavior and significant, conscious extra effort is required for the end user to shift behavior. In our case, our phone directory project was a good investment because it was previously time consuming and inconvenient to get a person’s contact information from our internal systems. Once people used ABBY’s directory intent a few times, they began to switch. The same is true of room reservations. But when users were able to perform Google searches from within ABBY, we got very negative feedback. People thought we were silly to invest in an app when they could just switch to a browser and do a search that provided more robust information content in a format they understood.
Where is the killer app? A question I often get: “Where is the killer app?” The one area where conversational AI is making substantial inroads is customer service. But customer self-service is an instance of a broader class you can think of as diagnostics.
That class of problems may define what can or cannot be a killer app for conversational AI. The question to ask with task-oriented users is, “When do they want or need to talk at length to an AI to accomplish a goal?” The answer is two-fold. One element is where the resolution of a task requires many back and forth interactions between the user and the “helper.” The second is when many words are needed because the item to be described is inexact, so the user is trying to string together a “close enough” description for the listener to guess at the actual item. Computer service is a great example. Buying a complex product like data via an online interface is another. A third is research and tabulation of information from data, which can be thought of as the “diagnosis of data” to determine an information outcome. In all these cases, end users must engage in a “ranging exercise,” where they start with a broad concept or set of possibilities and, through a series of interactive steps, restrict the set of possibilities until a final result is found or set of conclusions is reached.
The reality is, however, there may be no killer app. Very few apps are used by everyone. Given that such a universal intent as a phone directory requires promotion, imagine how much harder it is to gain adoption of intents focused on a single set of users. The analogy is mobile phones. There are very few universal apps in mobile. Most people use 10-15 apps. But the exact 10-15 are unique to each person. App downloads through the app store have a short “head end” and a long tail. App use is very idiosyncratic. It is very similar with apps within an organization with the caveat that the individual’s role has a very strong correlation to which apps they are most interested in. This is why having a platform, and adoption by developers, is so critical. Each department may have its own “killer app” that its end users will adopt gladly, and it is the developers living in that context who will see the need most clearly.
User experience AIs get one chance to make a first impression.
User experience with AIs is one of the most critical factors in adoption and one least appreciated by those not expert in building AIs. Once again, we come back to rules of consumer product design: You get one shot to make a first impression with consumers, who generally have little tolerance for buggy or incomplete functionality. Too many teams without direct experience building products for consumers release a buggy MVP, thinking users will forgive the interface for the better functionality. The opposite is true. Many AI projects die because development teams don’t take the interface far enough on all the deployed platforms (i.e., mobile is very different from desktop) before releasing it. Users have a poor experience and never come back. Ensuring a good experience can be something as simple as the project manager putting him or herself in the shoes of a new user, running through all the basic phrases that someone might use on the AI and fixing those it doesn’t understand before release.
In my mind, the single biggest reason AI projects fail is because their creators do not do enough training and conversational curation prior to release.
Have a human-like interface, but not too human.
AIs do not need to have the same capabilities as people. As I am constantly reminded by my team, people should do what people are good at and AIs should complement that. They should be created to leverage the strengths of the computational environments in which they operate.
Having said that, gaining adoption requires that users can interact with an AI in a way that seems natural to them. This has three aspects: 1. Flexibility in input and response.
Humans don’t always use the same words to say the same thing. How they respond to things depends on the time of day, their emotional state, who they are talking to, and numerous other factors. An AI must also be able to respond in this way to seem intelligent enough to end users to convince them it is worth conversing with the machine. Ten variants of a specific phrase such as “How may I help you?” appear to be enough to mimic human speech variability.
2. Emotional context.
At the same time, we give ABBY an emotional context. So not only will she say different phrases, her responses are also dictated by an emotion setting that ranges from happy to sad and impacts things said around the random phrase. For example, if I say “Good morning, ABBY” and her switch is set to happy, she will respond “Good morning, Arthur. Lovely day today isn’t it?” If her switch flips to sad for the day, she might instead respond “Hi Arthur. Sad to say, I’m having kind of a sucky day, but hope yours is going well.” Another example of emotional context in play is what happens when someone says something disrespectful to ABBY, curses at her, or otherwise uses abusive language that would be offensive to any employee or is outside of Acxiom’s corporate policies or cultural norms. In this case, ABBY is trained to respond as if she were an employee. At first, she shows annoyance: “Please do not speak to me that way. I have a very sensitive nature and do not appreciate abusive or inappropriate language.” If the abusive language continues (which happens because users like to test ABBY’s limits), there is an escalation conversation flow with an increasing emotional content. If the abuse doesn’t stop after several steps, ABBY creates and sends an email to HR, reporting the abusive language and also notifies the user that she has made the report.
3. Cleanly handle what it doesn’t understand.
We constantly remind end users that ABBY is a year-and-a-half old and that they should expect her to have the limitations of understanding. There are many phrases she will not understand, especially in the early deployment of a new intent when training is significant. Unless we set their expectations accordingly, they may anticipate she will respond like an adult with a full vocabulary. So, we remind users that her abilities are limited via a three-step response profile: “I’m sorry I don’t understand that. Can you please rephrase that?” “I’m sorry I still didn’t understand. Can you try one more time, please?” “I’m only one-and-a-half years old and have a lot to learn still. Please be patient with me. I have logged this conversation for review by my team. Please come back again tomorrow and try your question. With your help, I should get better at being able to answer your question.” Lastly, we consciously make design choices so ABBY does not appear too human. Google recently learned that making an AI that cannot be distinguished from a human is “creepy” to a large number of people. Someday, intelligent automation will be so thoroughly woven into the fabric of our daily lives that we will simply assume that most easy tasks — like restaurant reservations — will be handled by a machine, not a human. But until then, people want to know when they are dealing with a machine, not a person. ABBY has built-in limitations that indicate she isn’t human, such as her generally limited vocabulary; and some of her word choices deliberately sound a tad machine-like.
Be task-oriented.
Users don’t want to chat with typical business AIs, except perhaps for the first 10 minutes, mainly out of curiosity for how “human-like” the AI is. Beyond that, people work through an AI to get a task done and move on. Don’t waste a lot of time on what are known as small-talk intents. People hardly use them. Focus your design on completing specific tasks as efficiently as possible. Don’t require people to memorize special codes or to type in long strings, especially for mobile. Use the shortest text possible that a human would understand.
For example, to have ABBY book a conference room on mobile, all you have to type in is “book room <city>.” This finds you a room open right now until the end of the current half hour. Why? Because when people are typing “book room” on a mobile device, they are usually running around the building looking urgently for an open room at that moment. ABBY responds clearly in natural language so they don’t have to guess about what is happening (e.g. the start time or length of booking). “I have booked Mt. Shasta for you for 25 minutes until 3:30 today. It seats 4 people and can be found on 17th Floor East.” That is an elegant, task-oriented user experience that is efficient for the user and makes ABBY seem intelligent. Of course, users can be verbose if they wish to be, and there are also short codes for those who prefer compactness, like “Book room T 2 1 SF,” which means “Book a room today at 2 p.m. for one hour in San Francisco.” Design for ubiquity.
An AI needs to be wherever I am — a ubiquitous companion — if for no other reason than adoption accelerates when the technology is an ambient, continuous presence. Thus, it needs to be available and work in any environment I may work in. Applications like Slack are a wonderful first environment, since end users are in Slack all day and, equally important, Slack has an app for tablets and mobile devices that people use constantly. People use browsers all day as well, so an interface within or attached to a browser can also be important. Even more ubiquitous is having the AI in the background on computing desktops, where it can provide an interface into many applications. It can be on automated check-in systems to buildings, or on tablets that sit on the wall outside conference rooms. Or sitting passively in a conferencing app like Bluejeans awaiting, for example, a request from users (spoken, in this particular use case) to open a document or search for information on google. This last example shows the power of context. Because people are already speaking, it is not interruptive to speak to the AI. Designing for ubiquity means more than having the AI in a specific environment. It also means adapting the design to be most efficacious for users in that specific context.
Role of memory in AI.
A critical factor we associate with intelligence is the ability to remember what we have done in the past. A person you speak with would find it odd if you don’t remember you had a conversation with them yesterday. Similarly, AIs need to have the ability to remember past interactions with a user for several reasons. First, it is an expected function of an intelligence, artificial or otherwise. Second, it implies to the end user true recognition : “I know you because I remember all the things we’ve done together in the past.” Third, history allows for more efficient interactions for the end users. Customers want an AI to remember their prior interactions and purchases so they can easily refer back and thus save the time of having to repeat prior work. Fourth, history allows for improved predictions, more intelligent, more efficient interactions, better service quality, and improved sales. Someone who has purchased certain items in the past may be more likely to buy them again in the future and/or may be likely to buy other associated products at a later time.
Adding memory to AI is the current frontier of the technology. We will see intents with significant memory appearing in AIs sometime in the next 12 – 24 months.
Conclusion We are a very long way from having AIs of the quality we see in movies, so don’t expect Jarvis to appear on your desktop any time soon. But can you use natural language processing today to build applications and interfaces that speed and simplify your business while increasing customer satisfaction for a reasonable cost? Absolutely, thanks to the number of open-source tools already available.
There are gains to be made using both back-end NLP technologies and front-end conversational interfaces. Each provides the business with different kinds of capabilities.
NLP and AI are only going to become an increasingly critical technology for our businesses, and companies ignore them at their peril.
Arthur Coleman is GM of Acxiom Research. He focuses on enhancing cross-channel marketing using emerging technologies such as natural language processing, AI/machine learning, blockchain, digital fingerprinting, and more. He is also actively involved in setting industry standards for consumer privacy with the IAB Tech Lab.
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"How to leap barriers and implement a winning AI strategy (VB Live) | VentureBeat"
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"https://venturebeat.com/ai/how-to-leap-barriers-and-and-implement-a-winning-ai-strategy-vb-live"
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"Artificial Intelligence View All AI, ML and Deep Learning Auto ML Data Labelling Synthetic Data Conversational AI NLP Text-to-Speech Security View All Data Security and Privacy Network Security and Privacy Software Security Computer Hardware Security Cloud and Data Storage Security Data Infrastructure View All Data Science Data Management Data Storage and Cloud Big Data and Analytics Data Networks Automation View All Industrial Automation Business Process Automation Development Automation Robotic Process Automation Test Automation Enterprise Analytics View All Business Intelligence Disaster Recovery Business Continuity Statistical Analysis Predictive Analysis More Data Decision Makers Virtual Communication Team Collaboration UCaaS Virtual Reality Collaboration Virtual Employee Experience Programming & Development Product Development Application Development Test Management Development Languages VB Live How to leap barriers and implement a winning AI strategy (VB Live) Share on Facebook Share on X Share on LinkedIn Without data there’s no AI — but without getting people, process, and principles aligned, there’s no AI strategy for your business. Learn how to ensure your AI deployment is successful, and how to avoid loss of money, trust, and your brand’s reputation along the way, when you join this VB Live event! Register here for free.
Evo, the online and brick and mortar retailer that carries everything from mountain bikes to snowboards , is a data-driven company in a lot of ways, says Nathan Decker, Director of Ecommerce at the company, but he also says that for years artificial intelligence had been a bit out of reach.
“We don’t have the budget or resources to have a full-time data scientist in house,” he explains.
But as the AI vendor world continues to grow rapidly, an AI strategy is now accessible now to companies that were previously just pressing their noses against the tech store window. At evo, they’ve aimed their focus on solving real-world problems — for instance, getting the right brand stories to the right customers at the right time, or targeting and timing.
“Human beings, myself, and my ecommerce team, had come up with some rules that were honestly fairly arbitrary,” he says. They didn’t want an automated email to go out more than once a day, so they stack-ranked the 15 different messages they could send to anyone so that, should someone qualify for more than one particular message, the most relevant would be prioritized.
It worked fine, he says, but once a customer triggered a selection of automated messages by hitting the evo website, one message would be sent and the rest would expire. So they had to go back and add additional rules, which initially started out quite simple — cart abandonment triggers, for instance. And those seemed to be working out so well they went back and built out additional rule sets to fill in the gaps of this manual system.
And soon that manual system not only became overwhelmingly complex, but there was no way to measure whether they were getting it right in their customers’ eyes. Were they choosing the right prioritization? The right frequency? These kind of questions could be answered in regard to specific email campaigns, but tests would add another layer of complication to implement, and the results would be temporary in nature, because at any given time the metrics they were measuring could change.
“We were frustrated with this reality,” Decker says. “But AI lets us home in on the right strategy.” AI enables the shotgun approach: rapid-fire, large-scale experimentation that is impossible to do manually, but learns across a huge variety of frequency and audience and message settings, he says. Over time, as the model trains, it continues to optimize for the performance metrics the team selects, such as open rate, click-through rate, unsubscribe rate, and so on.
Depending on how much data you have and how many messages you’re sending, it takes a while to train the algorithm, as the tool zeroes in on the right combination for each customer.
And at first, they actually saw performance decrease. In the beginning, every potential mix of message and frequency is on the table, and some of those combos are just not going to cut it with customers. But the longer the system trains, the smarter it gets, homing in on how to make audiences happiest, and performance grow.
But even at the end of the official algorithm training period, the system never stops learning, keeping a test group within the normal send and message cadence, which it uses to continually try to find better formulas, and continues to try things that are more or less aggressive and while optimizing for the metrics chosen.
The company is not stopping there, Decker says — and AI is no longer just the purview of huge enterprises.
“There is a high barrier to AI, but those barriers are coming down,” he says. “The vendor community is enabling even small to medium companies to take advantage of AI.” To learn more about how AI is changing the game for every company, where to get started, and the five fundamentals of AI readiness, don’t miss this VB Live event.
Don’t miss out! Register here for free.
Attend this webinar and learn: What you need to do to prepare for AI beyond the data science team Real-world examples and research findings Top 5 best practices for strategic AI implementation Speakers: Nathan Decker , Director of Ecommerce, evo Ken Natori , President, Natori Company Jessica Groopman , Industry analyst and founding partner of Kaleido Insights Rachael Brownell , Moderator, VentureBeat The AI Impact Tour Join us for an evening full of networking and insights at VentureBeat's AI Impact Tour, coming to San Francisco, New York, and Los Angeles! VentureBeat Homepage Follow us on Facebook Follow us on X Follow us on LinkedIn Follow us on RSS Press Releases Contact Us Advertise Share a News Tip Contribute to DataDecisionMakers Careers Privacy Policy Terms of Service Do Not Sell My Personal Information © 2023 VentureBeat.
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"Amazon scientist explains how Alexa resolves ambiguous requests | VentureBeat"
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"https://venturebeat.com/ai/amazon-scientist-explains-how-alexa-resolves-ambiguous-requests"
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"Artificial Intelligence View All AI, ML and Deep Learning Auto ML Data Labelling Synthetic Data Conversational AI NLP Text-to-Speech Security View All Data Security and Privacy Network Security and Privacy Software Security Computer Hardware Security Cloud and Data Storage Security Data Infrastructure View All Data Science Data Management Data Storage and Cloud Big Data and Analytics Data Networks Automation View All Industrial Automation Business Process Automation Development Automation Robotic Process Automation Test Automation Enterprise Analytics View All Business Intelligence Disaster Recovery Business Continuity Statistical Analysis Predictive Analysis More Data Decision Makers Virtual Communication Team Collaboration UCaaS Virtual Reality Collaboration Virtual Employee Experience Programming & Development Product Development Application Development Test Management Development Languages Amazon scientist explains how Alexa resolves ambiguous requests Share on Facebook Share on X Share on LinkedIn Are you looking to showcase your brand in front of the brightest minds of the gaming industry? Consider getting a custom GamesBeat sponsorship.
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During a blockbuster press event last week, Amazon took the wraps off a redesigned Echo Show, Echo Plus, and Echo Spot , and nine other new other voice-activated accessories, peripherals, and smart speakers powered by Alexa. Also in tow: the Alexa Presentation Language , which lets developers build “multimodal” Alexa apps — skills — that combine voice, touch, text, images, graphics, audio, and video in a single interface.
Developing the frameworks that underlie it was easier said than done, according to Amazon senior speech scientist Vishal Naik. In a blog post today, he explained how Alexa leverages multiple neural networks — layered math functions that loosely mimic the human brain’s physiology — to resolve ambiguous requests. The work is also detailed in a paper (“ Context Aware Conversational Understanding for Intelligent Agents with a Screen “) that was presented earlier this year at the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence.
“If a customer says, ‘Alexa, play Harry Potter ,’ the Echo Show screen could display separate graphics representing a Harry Potter audiobook, a movie, and a soundtrack,” he explained. “If the customer follows up by saying ‘the last one,’ the system must determine whether that means the last item in the on-screen list, the last Harry Potter movie, or something else.” Naik and colleagues evaluated three bidirectional long short term memory neural networks (BiLSTM) — a category of recurrent neural network that’s capable of learning long-term dependencies — with slightly different architectures. (Basically, the memory cells in LSTMs allow the neural networks to combine their memory and inputs to improve their prediction accuracy, and because they’re bidirectional, they can access context from both past and future directions.) VB Event The AI Impact Tour Connect with the enterprise AI community at VentureBeat’s AI Impact Tour coming to a city near you! Sourcing data from the Alexa Meaning Representation Language , an annotated semantic-representation language released in June of this year, the team jointly trained the AI models to classify commands by either intent, which designates the action a customer wants Alexa to take, or slot, which designates the entities (i.e., an audiobook, movie, or smart home device trigger) the intent acts on. And they fed them embeddings, or mathematical representations of words.
The first of the three neural networks considered both the aforementioned embeddings and the type of content that would be displayed on Alexa devices with screens (in the form of a vector) in its classifications. The second went a step further, taking into account not just the type of on-screen data, but the specific name of the data type (e.g., “Harry Potter” or “The Black Panther” in addition to “Onscreen_Movie”). The third, meanwhile, used convolutional filters to identify each name’s contribution toward the final classification’s accuracy, and based its predictions on the most relevant of the bunch.
To evaluate the three networks’ performance, the researchers established a benchmark that used hard-coded rules to factor in on-screen data. Given a command like “Play Harry Potter,” it might estimate a 50 percent and 10 percent probability it refers to the audiobook and soundtrack, respectively.
In the end, when evaluated with four different data sets (slots with and without screen information and intents with and without screen information), all three of the AI models that considered on-screen data “consistently outperform[ed]” both the benchmark and a voice-only test set. More importantly, they didn’t exhibit degraded accuracy when trained exclusively on speech inputs.
“[We] verified that the contextual awareness of our models does not cause a degradation of non-contextual functionality,” Naik and team wrote. “Our approach is naturally extensible to new visual use cases, without requiring manual rule writing.” In future research, they hope to explore additional context cues and extend visual features to encode screen object locations for multiple object types displayed on-screen (for example, books and movies).
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"AI Weekly: AI is getting political in Washington, and it's about time | VentureBeat"
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"https://venturebeat.com/ai/ai-weekly-ai-is-getting-political-in-washington-and-its-about-time"
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"Artificial Intelligence View All AI, ML and Deep Learning Auto ML Data Labelling Synthetic Data Conversational AI NLP Text-to-Speech Security View All Data Security and Privacy Network Security and Privacy Software Security Computer Hardware Security Cloud and Data Storage Security Data Infrastructure View All Data Science Data Management Data Storage and Cloud Big Data and Analytics Data Networks Automation View All Industrial Automation Business Process Automation Development Automation Robotic Process Automation Test Automation Enterprise Analytics View All Business Intelligence Disaster Recovery Business Continuity Statistical Analysis Predictive Analysis More Data Decision Makers Virtual Communication Team Collaboration UCaaS Virtual Reality Collaboration Virtual Employee Experience Programming & Development Product Development Application Development Test Management Development Languages AI Weekly: AI is getting political in Washington, and it’s about time Share on Facebook Share on X Share on LinkedIn United States Capitol Building Are you ready to bring more awareness to your brand? Consider becoming a sponsor for The AI Impact Tour. Learn more about the opportunities here.
Amid rage brewing on both sides of the political spectrum over testimony by Christine Blasey Ford and Judge Brett Kavanaugh , it would be understandable if you missed some significant artificial intelligence news in Washington D.C. in recent weeks.
This week, a group of four senators — two Democrats, two Republicans — put forward the AI in Government Act to do things like carry out unique research on federal AI policy, work across agencies, and form an AI advisory board similar to the one created by the European Union earlier this year.
The bill has the support of Microsoft, Intel, and the Internet Association, an organization whose members represent some of the biggest tech companies in AI, including Amazon, Facebook, and Google.
Last week, Senator Kamala Harris (D-CA) and seven of her colleagues in the House and Senate signed and sent letters to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), Federal Trade Commission (FTC), and Equal Employment and Opportunity Commission (EEOC) asking questions about their use of facial recognition software.
VB Event The AI Impact Tour Connect with the enterprise AI community at VentureBeat’s AI Impact Tour coming to a city near you! The FTC and EEOC were asked things like how they address claims of discrimination that may be the result of algorithmic bias and if it has received complaints about facial detection in the workplace or as part of hiring practices.
The Senators also asked the FBI for more information on false positive identifications and performance levels when scanning the faces of people of color, as well as information related to audits.
In 2016, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) recommended the FBI take a series of actions, such as an annual audit to gauge the accuracy of facial recognition systems used by the FBI.
The FBI uses the Next Generation Identification-Interstate Photo System (NGI-IPS), a database of 30 million images, and has access to state driver license photo databases that include 64 million people.
Deadlines for questions put to the FTC and EEOC elapse today, while questions to the FBI requested a response by Oct. 1.
What seems to have been overlooked by many about these letters is the fact that they were signed by Senators Kamala Harris (who also introduced the AI in Government Act), Cory Booker (D-NJ), Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), and Richard Blumenthal (D-CT).
In other words, virtually every signatory to the letters is considered a potential 2020 presidential candidate for the Democratic Party.
When citing potential AI discrimination against women of color, the letters relied heavily on the work of Gender Shades , a research project coauthored by Joy Buolamwini of MIT Media Lab and Microsoft Research’s Timnit Gebru.
Released in February, the study analyzed facial recognition software from leading companies like Face++ and Microsoft and found disparities in accuracy based on gender and skin tone, with performance particularly lacking for women of color.
Microsoft has since taken steps to improve its Face API , and president Brad Smith took the unusual step of asking Congress to regulate facial recognition software.
Both Gebru and Buolamwini have been at an assortment of tech and AI conferences this year to discuss their findings and related work.
Speaking at the C2 conference in Montreal in May, Gebru pointed out that failure to address disproportionate impact of such systems can be dangerous and carry decades-long ramifications.
As an example, she pointed to the auto industry. As women crash test dummies were only recently introduced, women have been more likely to be injured in car accidents for decades.
In 2012, the National Highway and Transportation Safety Administration (NHTSA) required automakers to issue safety ratings for both men and women.
Gebru and others from Microsoft Research recommend datasheets like the kind common in engineering to bring standardization and documentation to datasets, pre-trained models, and AI.
“Currently, any model can be used for anything by anyone. There are no rules that say if you’re going to use facial recognition by law enforcement, what kind of properties should it have? There are no rules that say whoever is using these automated tools needs to let us know why they’re using it. There are no standards [and] there is no documentation,” she said.
Underscoring research by Gebru, Buolamwini, and other scholars cited by the senators is analysis by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) released in July that found Amazon’s Rekognition software misidentified nearly 30 members of Congress as criminals. Among those incorrectly labeled criminals by Amazon, nearly 40 percent were people of color.
For context, about 19 percent of the members of the 115th Congress are African-American, Asian-American, or Hispanic.
The AI in Government Act is the latest but not the first piece of legislation to be introduced in Congress to determine federal policy as it relates to artificial intelligence. Regardless of whether it passes or how each of the institutions questioned by senators respond, it seems clear that bias in AI and federal policy as it relates to AI are growing issues in Washington.
AI will drive efficiencies in businesses and make Gmail much easier to use , but it’s also going to eliminate a number of jobs and impact matters of justice, equality, and opportunity.
And as federal policy around the deployment of AI by federal agencies or how they respond to claims of discrimination by opaque algorithms is clarified and implemented, the decisions should not only shape domestic politics but inform the U.S. government’s stance on AI systems deployed by institutions outside its borders. As Dr. Safiya Noble said, artificial intelligence will be a major human rights issue of the 21st century.
For AI coverage, send news tips to Khari Johnson and Kyle Wiggers — and be sure to bookmark our AI Channel.
Thanks for reading, Khari Johnson AI Staff Writer P.S. Please enjoy this World Economic Forum video about how AI may shake up the job market in China.
From VB Apple tests predictive keyboard that taps AI to read whole documents Apple doesn’t generally let its employees blog, but its Machine Learning Journal is an exception, spotlighting the quiet labors and current projects of its ML research teams. The latest entry previews potential future improvements to Apple’s QuickType predictive keyboard, based on a major challenge: teaching a machine to use all of a document’s content to guess […] Pymetrics raises $40 million for AI-powered job recruitment Pymetrics today announced it has raised $40 million to expand its work using a combination of neuroscience and artificial intelligence to help companies recruit the right job candidates. The funding will allow Pymetrics to continue its product development and expansion in markets outside the United States. More than 60 companies use Pymetrics in their hiring […] Google’s DeepMind and Unity join forces to create simulated environments for AI training Google’s DeepMind and Unity Technologies, creator of one of the best-known game development platforms, today announced plans to collaborate in order to create virtual worlds and move AI forward. The Unity engine is currently used by 50 percent of mobile games and 60 percent of AR/VR experiences. The Unity ML Toolkit for training intelligent agents […] Deep North’s school security system uses AI and cameras to detect threats Deep North (formerly VMAXX), a Silicon Valley startup with offices in China and Sweden, hopes to leverage artificial intelligence (AI) to prevent violence and “other safety issues” facing schools. Today it announced a program that will offer a select number of institutions the opportunity to field-test its threat-detecting object recognition and computer vision technology. It’s […] Google uses AI to make AMP Stories, Google Images, and video search better Artificial intelligence (AI) underlies many, if not most, of Google Search’s features. It’s how Google News personalizes podcast, video, and article recommendations, and how Google’s lightweight Search app for Android Go reads the text of websites in more than two dozen languages. And the Mountain View company is intent on expanding its influence. At an event […] Microsoft launches Cortana Skills Kit for enterprise developers Microsoft today introduced the Cortana Skills Kit for Enterprise to give businesses the power to create custom voice apps for their employees, as well as for users. At launch, the skills kit for enterprise will be available by invite only. Invitations for companies and developers will be made available in the future. Also introduced today […] Beyond VB Germany launches world’s first autonomous tram in Potsdam The Guardian goes for a ride on the new AI-driven Combino vehicle developed by Siemens (via The Guardian) Machine learning confronts the elephant in the room A visual prank exposes an Achilles’ heel of computer vision systems: Unlike humans, they can’t do a double take.
(via Quanta Magazine) Can the EU become another AI superpower? Taking on America and China will be hard.
(via The Economist) Google is using AI to issue flood warnings in India Google is now issuing flood warnings using AI to detect and issue flood warnings – starting in India – to help people prepare better for the situation.
(via The Next Web) VentureBeat's mission is to be a digital town square for technical decision-makers to gain knowledge about transformative enterprise technology and transact.
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"China to inspect ride-hailing companies after Didi Chuxing murder | VentureBeat"
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"https://venturebeat.com/transportation/china-to-inspect-ride-hailing-companies-after-didi-chuxing-murder"
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"Artificial Intelligence View All AI, ML and Deep Learning Auto ML Data Labelling Synthetic Data Conversational AI NLP Text-to-Speech Security View All Data Security and Privacy Network Security and Privacy Software Security Computer Hardware Security Cloud and Data Storage Security Data Infrastructure View All Data Science Data Management Data Storage and Cloud Big Data and Analytics Data Networks Automation View All Industrial Automation Business Process Automation Development Automation Robotic Process Automation Test Automation Enterprise Analytics View All Business Intelligence Disaster Recovery Business Continuity Statistical Analysis Predictive Analysis More Data Decision Makers Virtual Communication Team Collaboration UCaaS Virtual Reality Collaboration Virtual Employee Experience Programming & Development Product Development Application Development Test Management Development Languages China to inspect ride-hailing companies after Didi Chuxing murder Share on Facebook Share on X Share on LinkedIn Zhongshan, China-April 8, 2018. Person booking a car on Didi ChuXing.
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( Reuters ) — China will conduct comprehensive inspections on all ride-hailing service companies, the transport ministry said on Friday, after a driver from dominant firm Didi Chuxing murdered a 20-year-old passenger this month.
The inspections, starting from Sept. 5, will cover all ride-hailing service platforms nationwide, the ministry said in a statement.
Didi said it welcomed the move and would fully cooperate to implement measures for improvement.
“We accept the supervision and will do our best to improve our services to ensure the safety of the public,” Didi said in a statement posted on its official account on China’s Twitter-like Weibo website.
The murder of the passenger who rode in a Didi vehicle took place in the eastern city of Wenzhou, and was the second such incident involving Didi since May.
The latest case sparked outrage and raised concerns about safety in the fast-growing ride-hailing sector in China, prompting the company to say that it would suspend its Hitch service indefinitely until it comes up with a safety mechanism acceptable to its users.
( Reporting by Meg Shen and Twinnie Siu; Editing by Susan Fenton ) VentureBeat's mission is to be a digital town square for technical decision-makers to gain knowledge about transformative enterprise technology and transact.
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The AI Impact Tour Join us for an evening full of networking and insights at VentureBeat's AI Impact Tour, coming to San Francisco, New York, and Los Angeles! VentureBeat Homepage Follow us on Facebook Follow us on X Follow us on LinkedIn Follow us on RSS Press Releases Contact Us Advertise Share a News Tip Contribute to DataDecisionMakers Careers Privacy Policy Terms of Service Do Not Sell My Personal Information © 2023 VentureBeat.
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"Twitter joins Facebook in rolling out issue ads policy | VentureBeat"
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"https://venturebeat.com/social/twitter-joins-facebook-in-rolling-out-issue-ads-policy"
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"Artificial Intelligence View All AI, ML and Deep Learning Auto ML Data Labelling Synthetic Data Conversational AI NLP Text-to-Speech Security View All Data Security and Privacy Network Security and Privacy Software Security Computer Hardware Security Cloud and Data Storage Security Data Infrastructure View All Data Science Data Management Data Storage and Cloud Big Data and Analytics Data Networks Automation View All Industrial Automation Business Process Automation Development Automation Robotic Process Automation Test Automation Enterprise Analytics View All Business Intelligence Disaster Recovery Business Continuity Statistical Analysis Predictive Analysis More Data Decision Makers Virtual Communication Team Collaboration UCaaS Virtual Reality Collaboration Virtual Employee Experience Programming & Development Product Development Application Development Test Management Development Languages Twitter joins Facebook in rolling out issue ads policy Share on Facebook Share on X Share on LinkedIn Are you looking to showcase your brand in front of the brightest minds of the gaming industry? Consider getting a custom GamesBeat sponsorship.
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Two months after releasing its ads transparency center , Twitter announced its new policy on how it will regulate issue ads — ads that “advocate for legislative issues of national importance.” Twitter already said that it was working on establishing an issue ads policy, so today’s news doesn’t come as a surprise. It also comes about three months after Facebook rolled out its own issue ad policy.
Enforcement of the new policy will begin on September 30. For now it only applies U.S. advertisers who run ads that reference a specific election or candidate, or advocate for a certain stance on one of the following topics: abortion, civil rights, climate change, guns, health care, immigration, national security, social security, taxes, and trade.
Organizations and individuals seeking to run issue ads will first have to verify their identity and location with Twitter by supplying a U.S. mailing address, a photo ID, and the Twitter handles they own. Organizations will also have to include an employer or taxpayer identification number. Issue ads will be labeled as such in U.S. Twitter users’ timeline, so they can see who is paying for the ad.
VB Event The AI Impact Tour Connect with the enterprise AI community at VentureBeat’s AI Impact Tour coming to a city near you! Twitter’s issue ads policy differs from Facebook’s in a couple of ways: Twitter’s issue ads policy encompasses 10 topics, while Facebook’s encompasses 20. Some of the topics that Facebook’s issue ads policy covers that Twitter’s doesn’t are education and infrastructure.
Additionally, Twitter said that it is exempting news organizations from adhering to the issue ads policy, while Facebook does not give them an exemption.
In a blog post announcing the issue ads policy, Twitter stated that “we don’t believe that news organizations running ads on Twitter that report on these issues, rather than advocate for or against them, should be subject to this [issue ads] policy.” Publications have to apply for this exemption, and can also apply to have certain journalists exempted from this policy, so that they can pay to promote certain journalists’ tweets.
Exemptions will be granted to publications that have at least 200,000 monthly unique visitors in the U.S., have “contact” and “about” sections on their website, offer a searchable archive for their articles, and include information about their editorial staff. Publications also must not be “primarily a user-generated or aggregated content platform,” or “dedicated to advocating on a single issue,” though it is unclear how Twitter will determine this.
Twitter’s announcement comes just two months before Facebook, Twitter, and Google — among other tech companies — will face a key test in maintaining users’ trust during the 2018 U.S. midterm elections. Before the 2016 U.S. presidential election, it has been revealed, the Internet Research Agency and other Russia-linked groups created accounts and bought ads on social platforms in an attempt to sway voters.
Earlier this month, Facebook and Twitter said that they removed hundreds of accounts determined to be involved in Russian and Iranian propaganda efforts.
VentureBeat's mission is to be a digital town square for technical decision-makers to gain knowledge about transformative enterprise technology and transact.
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4,923 | 2,018 |
"Russia tries more precise technology to block Telegram | VentureBeat"
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"https://venturebeat.com/security/russia-tries-more-precise-technology-to-block-telegram"
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"Artificial Intelligence View All AI, ML and Deep Learning Auto ML Data Labelling Synthetic Data Conversational AI NLP Text-to-Speech Security View All Data Security and Privacy Network Security and Privacy Software Security Computer Hardware Security Cloud and Data Storage Security Data Infrastructure View All Data Science Data Management Data Storage and Cloud Big Data and Analytics Data Networks Automation View All Industrial Automation Business Process Automation Development Automation Robotic Process Automation Test Automation Enterprise Analytics View All Business Intelligence Disaster Recovery Business Continuity Statistical Analysis Predictive Analysis More Data Decision Makers Virtual Communication Team Collaboration UCaaS Virtual Reality Collaboration Virtual Employee Experience Programming & Development Product Development Application Development Test Management Development Languages Russia tries more precise technology to block Telegram Share on Facebook Share on X Share on LinkedIn Telegram app Are you looking to showcase your brand in front of the brightest minds of the gaming industry? Consider getting a custom GamesBeat sponsorship.
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(Reuters) — Russia is experimenting with more precise technology to block individual online services after an attempt to shut down banned messaging service Telegram failed, but Moscow has yet to find a way to shut it down without hitting other traffic.
Telegram, which has 200 million global users and has been popular in countries including Russia and Iran, has been banned in Russia because it refused to comply with a court order to give security services access to users’ encrypted messages.
Russia’s authorities started trying to block the service in April but they inadvertently blocked Russian users’ access to a slew of unrelated online services, including voice calls on the Viber messaging service, cloud-based applications for Volvo cars, and apps that control Xiaomi video cameras.
Because of that hiccup, the attempt to block Telegram was put on hold, and the service is still accessible to Russian users.
VB Event The AI Impact Tour Connect with the enterprise AI community at VentureBeat’s AI Impact Tour coming to a city near you! Since Aug. 6, Russian state communications watchdog Roskomnadzor and state security agency the FSB have been testing systems designed to allow more precise blocking of individual services, according to the minutes of a meeting between officials to discuss the plan.
Anton Pinchuk, co-owner of Russian technology company Protei, which according to the minutes was invited to take part in the testing, confirmed to Reuters the testing was taking place. He said his firm has declined to take part.
The earlier attempt to block Telegram involved targeting Internet Protocol addresses operated by Amazon, Google and others that hosted Telegram traffic. The problem was that these IP addresses often also hosted traffic for multiple other services which were also affected.
The systems being tested now use a technology called Deep Packet Inspection. The technology operates in a more surgical way, analyzing Internet traffic, identifying the data flows of a particular services and blocking them.
However, executives at two of the companies invited to take part said initial tests were not successful, because services other than the ones being targeted were still being blocked unintentionally.
“So far no one has successfully passed the testing,” said one of the executives. They said the testing was scheduled to conclude by Aug. 20, but the deadline has now been pushed back.
Roskomnadzor, in response to Reuters questions about the tests, said it had no information. The FSB did not respond to questions, nor did Telegram’s founder, Russian tech entrepreneur Pavel Durov. Oleg Ivanov, Deputy Minister for Communications and Digital Development, declined to comment.
According to the document, a copy of which was seen by Reuters, nine Russian technology firms were invited to submit their Deep Packet Inspection technology for testing.
A source close to Roskomnadzor and one of the executives at a company invited to take part said the aim was to choose the most effective technology, refine it if necessary, and then install it on the networks of all Russian telecoms operators.
VentureBeat's mission is to be a digital town square for technical decision-makers to gain knowledge about transformative enterprise technology and transact.
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The AI Impact Tour Join us for an evening full of networking and insights at VentureBeat's AI Impact Tour, coming to San Francisco, New York, and Los Angeles! VentureBeat Homepage Follow us on Facebook Follow us on X Follow us on LinkedIn Follow us on RSS Press Releases Contact Us Advertise Share a News Tip Contribute to DataDecisionMakers Careers Privacy Policy Terms of Service Do Not Sell My Personal Information © 2023 VentureBeat.
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"Turtle Beach Elite Pro 2 is a followup to one of my favorite headsets | VentureBeat"
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"https://venturebeat.com/pc-gaming/turtle-beach-elite-pro-2-is-a-followup-to-one-of-my-favorite-headsets"
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"Artificial Intelligence View All AI, ML and Deep Learning Auto ML Data Labelling Synthetic Data Conversational AI NLP Text-to-Speech Security View All Data Security and Privacy Network Security and Privacy Software Security Computer Hardware Security Cloud and Data Storage Security Data Infrastructure View All Data Science Data Management Data Storage and Cloud Big Data and Analytics Data Networks Automation View All Industrial Automation Business Process Automation Development Automation Robotic Process Automation Test Automation Enterprise Analytics View All Business Intelligence Disaster Recovery Business Continuity Statistical Analysis Predictive Analysis More Data Decision Makers Virtual Communication Team Collaboration UCaaS Virtual Reality Collaboration Virtual Employee Experience Programming & Development Product Development Application Development Test Management Development Languages Turtle Beach Elite Pro 2 is a followup to one of my favorite headsets Share on Facebook Share on X Share on LinkedIn The Turtle Beach Elite Pro 2 and SuperAmp combo.
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Up until recently, the headset I used the most often while playing games was the Turtle Beach Elite Pro.
I liked the PC Edition , which plugged directly into the PC with a USB cable. But I had to stop using mine because I damaged the microphone jack, which created some loud static when I would try to record something or talk to people on Discord. So I was looking forward to the inevitable Elite Pro 2, which Turtle Beach has just announced.
The Turtle Beach Elite Pro 2 is launching with the company’s SuperAmp Pro system for $25 0, and it will have models for the Xbox One and PlayStation 4 (both of which should work fine on PC). The package debuts September 16 in North America and October 8 in other territories.
The Elite Pro 2 looks similar to the original, so it should have a comfortable fit with 50mm audio drivers and some decent materials. The SuperAmp is an external control port where you can adjust your volume. This dongle uses the built-in support for Windows Sonic for Headphones on Xbox One and DTS Headphone:X 7.1 on PS4. Turtle Beach also has its Audio Hub mobile app that can connect to the SuperAmp and provide extra controls and features.
Event GamesBeat at the Game Awards We invite you to join us in LA for GamesBeat at the Game Awards event this December 7. Reserve your spot now as space is limited! But I’m worried that this is not the headset I’m looking for because of the microphone. In its press release, Turtle Beach promises to include a “removable high-sensitivity mic with TruSpeak.” That’s probably great for communications, but the reason I used the Elite Pro so much was because of its optional noise-cancelling hypercardioid microphone that it sold separately for $20.
That microphone took the the Elite Pro from a headset with a decent microphone to one that I used to record podcasts and videos for YouTube. It was so nice because I could just put on the headset without having to set up my microphone and headphones.
Here’s my playlist of microphone tests, and only the dedicated Blue Yeti and similar devices compare to the Turtle Beach Elite Pro headset with its Noise-Cancelling Microphone.
But Turtle Beach does does not have a noise-cancelling microphone for the Elite Pro 2, and it doesn’t plan to make one either. I’m sure that it fell victim to appealing to an audience of just me, but I wonder if Turtle Beach is missing an opportunity here by appealing directly to the growing market of aspirational content creators. Of course, that could draw resources away from esports, which is the audience that butters Turtle Beach’s bread.
Still, I’ll try the Elite Pro 2 and SuperAmp at some point. Maybe the included mic is good enough. If it’s not, I’ll go out and get another Elite Pro PC Edition or maybe the Sennheiser PC373D.
GamesBeat's creed when covering the game industry is "where passion meets business." What does this mean? We want to tell you how the news matters to you -- not just as a decision-maker at a game studio, but also as a fan of games. Whether you read our articles, listen to our podcasts, or watch our videos, GamesBeat will help you learn about the industry and enjoy engaging with it.
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Join the GamesBeat community! Enjoy access to special events, private newsletters and more.
VentureBeat Homepage Follow us on Facebook Follow us on X Follow us on LinkedIn Follow us on RSS Press Releases Contact Us Advertise Share a News Tip Contribute to DataDecisionMakers Careers Privacy Policy Terms of Service Do Not Sell My Personal Information © 2023 VentureBeat.
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4,925 | 2,018 |
"Logitech G502 Hero review -- love that new sensor smell | VentureBeat"
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"https://venturebeat.com/pc-gaming/logitech-g502-hero-review-love-that-new-sensor-smell"
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"Artificial Intelligence View All AI, ML and Deep Learning Auto ML Data Labelling Synthetic Data Conversational AI NLP Text-to-Speech Security View All Data Security and Privacy Network Security and Privacy Software Security Computer Hardware Security Cloud and Data Storage Security Data Infrastructure View All Data Science Data Management Data Storage and Cloud Big Data and Analytics Data Networks Automation View All Industrial Automation Business Process Automation Development Automation Robotic Process Automation Test Automation Enterprise Analytics View All Business Intelligence Disaster Recovery Business Continuity Statistical Analysis Predictive Analysis More Data Decision Makers Virtual Communication Team Collaboration UCaaS Virtual Reality Collaboration Virtual Employee Experience Programming & Development Product Development Application Development Test Management Development Languages Logitech G502 Hero review — love that new sensor smell Share on Facebook Share on X Share on LinkedIn Logitech G502 Hero with its optional weights.
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Logitech’s G502 mouse is one of the best-selling PC peripherals in the world. It is a beloved gaming mouse that people love for its form-factor and high-performing optical sensor, but now Logitech has an updated version called the G502 Hero.
But why mess with a good thing? Well, because the holidays are coming, and the company needed to refresh its products — but also, it didn’t mess with much.
The G502 Hero is shipping in October for $80. The big new feature is the inclusion of Logitech’s Hero sensor, which is an updated version of the optical tracking system that it built with manufacturer Pixart. Logitech promises 16,000 counts per inch (CPI) and 400 inches per second (IPS), but as usual, those numbers don’t tell much of the story when it comes to a gaming mouse.
It’s the real-world use where you notice the accuracy and precision of the G502 Hero.
What you’ll like Comfortable and customizable Event GamesBeat at the Game Awards We invite you to join us in LA for GamesBeat at the Game Awards event this December 7. Reserve your spot now as space is limited! The G502 Hero looks a lot like the original G502, which I’ve only briefly used at events and never owned. Like the original, it has a lot of sharp angles that fit into your hand relatively well. It also has the clutch on your thumb, which enables you to push to turn down your sensitivity for brief periods. That’s excellent for sniping and other mechanics that require fine precision.
The 502 has a bit of a taller posterior, and it tapers from stern to bow.
I’ve grown used to the Logitech G90 3 recently, which doesn’t have that sloping angle, and I find that extremely comfortable. The G502 doesn’t quite fit my hand in the exact same way … but I don’t know if that helps you. Your hands are different. Still, I can say that it remained comfortable even if it isn’t perfect.
Logitech also gives you some options to dial in the feel of the 502. The Hero mouse comes with a bunch of additional weights that you can plug into the base of the chassis if you want something with more heft. I put them all of the 3.6-gram weights into the mouse and then started removing them until it felt right. With all of the extra mass, I enjoyed the feeling of moving the mouse around a pad, but I could feel some strain in my wrist when I had to lift it off the surface. Just 3.6 grams extra was enough for me, and that made a great mouse feel even better.
Customization also happens on the software side. You can still use the Logitech Gaming Software to control the G502 Hero, but I’ve never loved that app. It is slow and confusing. It always takes me too long to do things. Thankfully, Logitech is introducing the alternative G Hub app with this mouse. G Hub is in beta, but it seems promising, and it gives you all of the options you need to adjust the sensitivity and other features of your new device.
As accurate as you’ll need But if the sensor is the big feature, it’s a winner. The Pixart PMW3366 sensor that was in the last G502 was no slouch, and the underlying technology isn’t anything revolutionary. But the Hero optical tracker always keeps up with me.
I’m not an esports pro, so I don’t know if I’ll ever need a better sensor than this. And I think that the Hero is on the cusp of surpassing all human capability when it comes to what it can accurately track. Again, we’re seeing these advancements across optical sensors in the $70-plus gaming mice category, but Logitech is leading that pack.
What you won’t like Conflicted aesthetic I’m OK with the design of the G502 Hero. It screams “gamer!” maybe a bit too loud, but it is still subtle in key ways. I think its black paint job looks excellent. The various angled pieces of plastic all look different under lights, which gives the device a futuristic, stealth fighter personality.
But I wish that Logitech would commit to going all-out gamer aesthetic if it’s going to keep the spaceship design. Instead, for the G502, the RGB LED lighting only really shows up in the “G” logo on its back. If I want my mouse to standout, I want it to really stand out. And of all the elements to light up with LEDs, a company logo is my least favorite. It’s tacky.
Conclusion The G502 Hero is an excellent mouse for people who play a lot of shooters. Its performance is top-of-the-category. Its optional weights mean you can get the feel you want. The clutch gives you an advantage in sniping scenarios. I would personally want a wireless one that works with Logitech’s wireless charging Powerplay mat, but I’m probably gonna keep using this one for a while until that happens.
Based on my experience and the mass appeal of the previous G502, it’s easy to recommend this one. You’ll get your money’s worth, and I can’t imagine that you’ll feel the need to upgrade again for years.
The Logitech G502 is shipping in October for $80. The company provided a sample unit for the purpose of this review .
GamesBeat's creed when covering the game industry is "where passion meets business." What does this mean? We want to tell you how the news matters to you -- not just as a decision-maker at a game studio, but also as a fan of games. Whether you read our articles, listen to our podcasts, or watch our videos, GamesBeat will help you learn about the industry and enjoy engaging with it.
Discover our Briefings.
Join the GamesBeat community! Enjoy access to special events, private newsletters and more.
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All rights reserved.
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4,926 | 2,018 |
"GPU shipments confirm that the crypto-mining craze is behind us for now | VentureBeat"
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"https://venturebeat.com/pc-gaming/gpu-shipments-confirm-that-the-crypto-mining-craze-is-behind-us-for-now"
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"Artificial Intelligence View All AI, ML and Deep Learning Auto ML Data Labelling Synthetic Data Conversational AI NLP Text-to-Speech Security View All Data Security and Privacy Network Security and Privacy Software Security Computer Hardware Security Cloud and Data Storage Security Data Infrastructure View All Data Science Data Management Data Storage and Cloud Big Data and Analytics Data Networks Automation View All Industrial Automation Business Process Automation Development Automation Robotic Process Automation Test Automation Enterprise Analytics View All Business Intelligence Disaster Recovery Business Continuity Statistical Analysis Predictive Analysis More Data Decision Makers Virtual Communication Team Collaboration UCaaS Virtual Reality Collaboration Virtual Employee Experience Programming & Development Product Development Application Development Test Management Development Languages GPU shipments confirm that the crypto-mining craze is behind us for now Share on Facebook Share on X Share on LinkedIn Nvidia should have plenty of these left over.
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One day, you’ll have the chance to look a young person in the eye and tell them that you lived through the GPU drought of 2017.
And that young person will turn up the volume on their brain-implanted computer and ignore you. But forget about Generation Omega or whatever we’ll call them — now is a time to celebrate that cult-like speculators are no longer buying every GPU on the market to mine for digital coins.
Demand for GPUs fell last quarter, according to graphics-industry tracking firm Jon Peddie Research.
As a whole, GPU shipments from manufacturers dropped 1.5 percent from the first quarter of 2018 to the second quarter. Throughout 2017 and early 2018, people are using Nvidia and AMD GPUs to do the processing required to create new cryptocurrencies similar to Bitcoin. But the crypto market has fallen, and that has made it GPU mining too inefficient to make money.
Of course, AMD and Nvidia were the hardest hit. Quarter-over-quarter, AMD’s shipments dropped 12.3 percent, and Nvidia’s decreased 7 percent. Intel, which make integrated graphics for its CPUs, saw an increase of 3 percent. And year-over-year, GPU shipments dropped 4.9 percent.
But this isn’t a recession for computer graphics. It’s just a return to sanity.
Event GamesBeat at the Game Awards We invite you to join us in LA for GamesBeat at the Game Awards event this December 7. Reserve your spot now as space is limited! “The PC market is showing more stabilization, and now seems to have shaken off the gold rush fever of cryptomining,” reads the Jon Peddie report. “Overall, volume slipped, albeit with bright spots for the market here and there. But we can mark the first quarter of 2018 as the peak and last hurrah of the cryptomining fever. Desktop GPUs, which went into mining rigs, have dropped back to their normal volume.” The report also claims that the desktop graphics “add-in boards” (AIBs) have also come to an end after dropping 27.96 percent quarter-over-quarter. Cryptominers would use AIBs to get the most mining out of one machine, but Jon Peddie Research doesn’t think it will ever mention them again.
Now that we live in a normal GPU market again, you should have no trouble going to the store or online to buy a 10-series GTX GPU from Nvidia or AMD’s Radeon or Vega cards. Those were all difficult to find throughout 2017, but now they are in plentiful supply. Of course, that comes as Nvidia has announced its new RTX cards , so we’ll see if prices drop to clear out last-gen inventory.
So does this mean that cryptomining is behind us for good? Possibly, but probably not. The RTX cards might not represent enough of a leap forward that they will kick off another craze, but who knows when the next digital coin will come along and change everything.
Let’s hope never.
GamesBeat's creed when covering the game industry is "where passion meets business." What does this mean? We want to tell you how the news matters to you -- not just as a decision-maker at a game studio, but also as a fan of games. Whether you read our articles, listen to our podcasts, or watch our videos, GamesBeat will help you learn about the industry and enjoy engaging with it.
Discover our Briefings.
Join the GamesBeat community! Enjoy access to special events, private newsletters and more.
VentureBeat Homepage Follow us on Facebook Follow us on X Follow us on LinkedIn Follow us on RSS Press Releases Contact Us Advertise Share a News Tip Contribute to DataDecisionMakers Careers Privacy Policy Terms of Service Do Not Sell My Personal Information © 2023 VentureBeat.
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4,927 | 2,018 |
"Black Desert Online's Remastered campaign brings in a huge surge of players | VentureBeat"
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"https://venturebeat.com/pc-gaming/black-desert-onlines-remastered-campaign-brings-in-a-huge-surge-of-players"
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"Artificial Intelligence View All AI, ML and Deep Learning Auto ML Data Labelling Synthetic Data Conversational AI NLP Text-to-Speech Security View All Data Security and Privacy Network Security and Privacy Software Security Computer Hardware Security Cloud and Data Storage Security Data Infrastructure View All Data Science Data Management Data Storage and Cloud Big Data and Analytics Data Networks Automation View All Industrial Automation Business Process Automation Development Automation Robotic Process Automation Test Automation Enterprise Analytics View All Business Intelligence Disaster Recovery Business Continuity Statistical Analysis Predictive Analysis More Data Decision Makers Virtual Communication Team Collaboration UCaaS Virtual Reality Collaboration Virtual Employee Experience Programming & Development Product Development Application Development Test Management Development Languages Black Desert Online’s Remastered campaign brings in a huge surge of players Share on Facebook Share on X Share on LinkedIn Black Desert thrives on its skill-based combat.
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Pearl Abyss and Kakao Games said that Black Desert Online has seen a surge of returning and new users from their Remastered campaign in the past week. Black Desert Online returning users are up 103.6 percent in the past week, and new players are up 24.2 percent in the North American and European markets. That’s a big result for a game that originally launched in 2014, after four years of development at Seoul, South Korea -based Pearl Abyss.
Black Desert Online debuted in North America and Europe in 2016, and the Remastered version of the fantasy massively multiplayer online role-playing game debuted last week with better visuals and a new orchestral score. Kakao Games serves as the publisher in major regions in Asia, Europe and the U.S., while others handle South America and Russia. It’s another sign of how time-consuming MMORPGs, like World of Warcraft and its launch-day record for its Battle for Azeroth expansion, continue to do well in the age of mobile games and nanosecond attention spans.
“Pearl Abyss has done a fantastic job on Black Desert Remastered,” said Minsung Kim, CEO of Kakao Games Europe, in a statement. “The game was already had the best in-game visuals, but with Black Desert Remastered, the developers have really pushed the envelope. It is no wonder that so many players are returning to the game.” Above: Black Desert Online Earlier this year, the companies said that Black Desert Online had 3 million players in North America and Europe, but they didn’t say this week how many the game now has. Throughout its history, Black Desert Online has had 9.5 million players in 150 countries on the PC.
Event GamesBeat at the Game Awards We invite you to join us in LA for GamesBeat at the Game Awards event this December 7. Reserve your spot now as space is limited! “We are ecstatic after seeing that our hard work on Black Desert Remastered has been so positively perceived by the community at large. The heart-warming reactions have definitely been a morale booster. We want to thank our players all over the world for playing our game,” said Jae Hee Kim, executive producer at Pearl Abyss, in a statement. “We are highly motivated to keep the game current and up-to-date by continuing to develop exciting new content while striving for continuous improvements and optimizations.” Pearl Abyss is currently working on a previously announced Drieghan expansion, which is expected to arrive to the Western markets later this year. Mobile and console versions are expected to launch worldwide this year.
GamesBeat's creed when covering the game industry is "where passion meets business." What does this mean? We want to tell you how the news matters to you -- not just as a decision-maker at a game studio, but also as a fan of games. Whether you read our articles, listen to our podcasts, or watch our videos, GamesBeat will help you learn about the industry and enjoy engaging with it.
Discover our Briefings.
Join the GamesBeat community! Enjoy access to special events, private newsletters and more.
VentureBeat Homepage Follow us on Facebook Follow us on X Follow us on LinkedIn Follow us on RSS Press Releases Contact Us Advertise Share a News Tip Contribute to DataDecisionMakers Careers Privacy Policy Terms of Service Do Not Sell My Personal Information © 2023 VentureBeat.
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4,928 | 2,018 |
"Battlefield V delay causes Electronic Arts' stock to dive | VentureBeat"
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"https://venturebeat.com/pc-gaming/battlefield-v-delay-causes-electronic-arts-stock-to-dive"
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"Artificial Intelligence View All AI, ML and Deep Learning Auto ML Data Labelling Synthetic Data Conversational AI NLP Text-to-Speech Security View All Data Security and Privacy Network Security and Privacy Software Security Computer Hardware Security Cloud and Data Storage Security Data Infrastructure View All Data Science Data Management Data Storage and Cloud Big Data and Analytics Data Networks Automation View All Industrial Automation Business Process Automation Development Automation Robotic Process Automation Test Automation Enterprise Analytics View All Business Intelligence Disaster Recovery Business Continuity Statistical Analysis Predictive Analysis More Data Decision Makers Virtual Communication Team Collaboration UCaaS Virtual Reality Collaboration Virtual Employee Experience Programming & Development Product Development Application Development Test Management Development Languages Battlefield V delay causes Electronic Arts’ stock to dive Share on Facebook Share on X Share on LinkedIn See the realistic reflection on the side of the car in Battlefield V with Nvidia RTX.
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Electronic Arts has pushed Battlefield V out of October in favor of a November 20 release date.
The publisher cited the need for “final adjustments,” but investors don’t seem interested in the excuse. EA’s stock price has dropped 9 percent from $128.52 at the end of Wednesday down to $116.68, according to Google Finance.
Battlefield developer DICE says that it will use the delay to improve the mechanics and to add more content to its Tides of War live service, which regularly adds new content to the World War II shooter. Waiting to get a better game at launch seems like a good thing, and Baird Equity Research analyst Colin Sebastian agrees with that — especially because it helps Battlefield dodge some of the holidays bigger games.
“We note this is an unusually late delay for a holiday video game release,” said Sebastian. “But the October release squeezed between COD and RDR was already challenging, and our experience suggests there is usually a favorable trade-off over the longer term when sacrificing near-term sales for improved product quality.” Above: EA’s stock price is hurting.
The market’s negative reaction is in response to EA’s disclosure that the delay has forced the company to reduce its financial outlook. It has dropped its fiscal year guidance down by $350 million — although only a portion of that is due to the Battlefield V delay.
Event GamesBeat at the Game Awards We invite you to join us in LA for GamesBeat at the Game Awards event this December 7. Reserve your spot now as space is limited! But EA’s stock price is likely also going through a corrective period. It is down from an all-time high of nearly $150 in July, and it is looking for its next hit. While it can consistently rely on revenue from FIFA Ultimate Team and Madden, it is looking to establish its next major blockbuster shooter. Battlefield V is looking promising, but it also faces skepticism from some fans and tough competition from Call of Duty: Black Ops 4, PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds, and Fortnite. Then in March, EA’s BioWare team launches its new online role-playing shooter, Anthem.
Even if either of those games are hits, EA still hasn’t proven that it can generate revenue from an ongoing game-as-a-service in a way that does not rely on loot boxes. That business model, where players pay for boxes that may or may not contain a desirable digital item, has fallen out of fashion fast as fans lashed out against it and regulators started looking into it as potential gambling.
So EA may have to prove that it can turn Battlefield V and Anthem into successes, and Sebastian is confident that it will.
“While there may be some lingering concerns over EA product development and execution, we believe a one-month delay in exchange for a stronger game is likely a worthwhile tradeoff,” said Sebastian. “No change to price target or our longer-term positive views on EA.” Sebastian has a price target of $154 for EA and expects it to keep outperforming its current price.
GamesBeat's creed when covering the game industry is "where passion meets business." What does this mean? We want to tell you how the news matters to you -- not just as a decision-maker at a game studio, but also as a fan of games. Whether you read our articles, listen to our podcasts, or watch our videos, GamesBeat will help you learn about the industry and enjoy engaging with it.
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"Official iPhone XS and Apple Watch 4 images leak ahead of Apple event | VentureBeat"
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"https://venturebeat.com/mobile/official-iphone-xs-images-leak-ahead-of-apples-september-event"
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"Artificial Intelligence View All AI, ML and Deep Learning Auto ML Data Labelling Synthetic Data Conversational AI NLP Text-to-Speech Security View All Data Security and Privacy Network Security and Privacy Software Security Computer Hardware Security Cloud and Data Storage Security Data Infrastructure View All Data Science Data Management Data Storage and Cloud Big Data and Analytics Data Networks Automation View All Industrial Automation Business Process Automation Development Automation Robotic Process Automation Test Automation Enterprise Analytics View All Business Intelligence Disaster Recovery Business Continuity Statistical Analysis Predictive Analysis More Data Decision Makers Virtual Communication Team Collaboration UCaaS Virtual Reality Collaboration Virtual Employee Experience Programming & Development Product Development Application Development Test Management Development Languages Official iPhone XS and Apple Watch 4 images leak ahead of Apple event Share on Facebook Share on X Share on LinkedIn iPhone XS, revealed.
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Only hours after Apple announced its September 12 media event, a leak of official images and details at 9to5Mac has confirmed the naming conventions and looks for Apple’s flagship iPhones: the 5.8-inch and 6.5-inch iPhone XS. Another leak has confirmed a larger-screened, redesigned Apple Watch Series 4, which similarly has been rumored for months.
As previously reported , the sequel to the iPhone X will indeed carry the iPhone XS name, and will apparently drop the “Plus” descriptor for the larger model. Moreover, a leaked image confirms a new gold color for the flagship iPhone, which previously was available solely in black/space gray and white/silver versions.
Each version of the iPhone XS is expected to include an OLED screen, a dual-lensed rear camera, and an Apple A12 processor that’s faster and more power efficient than the A11 inside last year’s iPhone X. While the smaller iPhone XS will look virtually identical to the iPhone X, the larger one will include a 6.5-inch screen — the largest yet on an iPhone — with the ability to split into two panes when used in widescreen orientation.
Above: The Apple Watch Series 4, revealed.
As had been rumored, the Apple Watch Series 4 features a larger screen, reducing the bezels around the prior display, which enables its clock face to display even more information. Eight complications — including the ability to tap on sub-apps such as weather, music, activity, and calendar — are featured, with what appears to be a “UVI” reading, giving the wearer a quick Ultraviolet Index display for outdoor use.
Several of the complications go beyond what’s shown on current Apple Watch displays. The current temperature is shown alongside a sliding meter with the day’s highs and lows, an upcoming appointment is wrapped around a circle to fit more text on the screen, and a timer has a completion bar alongside a digital countdown. Clearly, quite a few software changes are in store for watchOS 5 on the new devices.
A few hardware changes are obvious, as well. The image reveals a new hole between the Digital Crown and side button, which could either be a microphone or a speaker hole. Slight differences between the prior Crown and button design are also evident in the new model, including what appears to be a more subtle indicator on the LTE cellular version — a red ring rather than a fully red circle.
Reliable reports have suggested that the Apple Watch Series 4 will include improved battery performance and health tracking capabilities, as well as 15 percent larger screens in both the 38mm and 42mm models. Despite significant internal changes, the new watches are expected to preserve compatibility with prior Apple Watch bands.
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"Huawei debuts Kirin 980, the world's first 7nm mobile chip | VentureBeat"
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"https://venturebeat.com/mobile/huawei-debuts-the-kirin-980-the-worlds-first-7nm-mobile-chip"
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"Artificial Intelligence View All AI, ML and Deep Learning Auto ML Data Labelling Synthetic Data Conversational AI NLP Text-to-Speech Security View All Data Security and Privacy Network Security and Privacy Software Security Computer Hardware Security Cloud and Data Storage Security Data Infrastructure View All Data Science Data Management Data Storage and Cloud Big Data and Analytics Data Networks Automation View All Industrial Automation Business Process Automation Development Automation Robotic Process Automation Test Automation Enterprise Analytics View All Business Intelligence Disaster Recovery Business Continuity Statistical Analysis Predictive Analysis More Data Decision Makers Virtual Communication Team Collaboration UCaaS Virtual Reality Collaboration Virtual Employee Experience Programming & Development Product Development Application Development Test Management Development Languages Huawei debuts Kirin 980, the world’s first 7nm mobile chip Share on Facebook Share on X Share on LinkedIn Are you looking to showcase your brand in front of the brightest minds of the gaming industry? Consider getting a custom GamesBeat sponsorship.
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Smartphones are Huawei’s bread and butter, and business is booming — the Chinese juggernaut is currently the world’s second-largest smartphone vendor. But it has its fingers in lots of pies (like set-top boxes and laptops, for instance), and despite fierce competition domestically and abroad, it has nurtured quite a few of those efforts into revenue drivers. Consider its chip venture.
HiSilicon, Huawei’s Shenzhen-based, wholly owned fabless semiconductor division, has grown to become one of the largest integrated circuit designers in China over the last 14 years. Its Kirin series competes against the likes of Qualcomm, MediaTek, and other ARM offerings, and the newest member of the family — the Kirin 980 — is its strongest showing yet. Not only is it the most powerful system-on-chip Huawei has ever created, but in key benchmarks it leapfrogs Qualcomm’s top-of-the-line Snapdragon 845.
“Last year, we showed the world the potential of On-Device AI with the Kirin 970, and this year we’ve designed an all-around powerhouse that not only features outstanding AI capabilities, but also brings cutting-edge raw performance to consumers,” Richard Yu, head of Huawei’s consumer business group, said during the company’s keynote presentation at IFA 2018. “Equipped with all-new CPU, GPU, and Dual NPU, the Kirin 980 is the ultimate engine to power next-generation productivity and entertainment applications.” A new architecture The Kirin 980 is the world’s first mobile chip fabricated on a 7nm process. In partnership with Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC), Huawei managed to shrink the die size down from 10nm while boosting the number of onboard transistors. There’s a whopping 6.9 billion in all, the company claims, or about 1.6 times what’s on Kirin 970. (Huawei said it took a team of 1,000 senior engineers 36 months and more than 5,000 prototypes to get it right.) VB Event The AI Impact Tour Connect with the enterprise AI community at VentureBeat’s AI Impact Tour coming to a city near you! That’s significant for two reasons: It has led to a 40 percent reduction in overall power consumption and a 20 percent improvement across metrics like app load times, machine learning workloads, and media post-processing. (More on that later.) The Kirin 980 is also the first out of the gate with ARM’s Cortex-A76, a new core architecture built on the company’s DynamiQ technology. DynamiQ, which debuted in 2017, offers fine-grained speed and power management controls, and Huawei’s taken full advantage of them. The Kirin 980 has an eight-core architecture with two Cortex-A76 2.6GHz “high-performance cores” for demanding tasks, two Cortex-A76 1.92GHz “middle cores” that juggle everyday processes, and four 1.8GHz Cortex-A55 “efficiency cores” that step in for light workloads like music playback.
Rarely are all eight of the Kirin 980’s cores used simultaneously. Instead, a “flexible scheduling mechanism” ramps them up individually, as needed — one efficiency core for music decoding, for example, or three middle cores for turn-by-turn navigation. Demanding apps, like high-end games, lean on four efficiency cores and two middle cores or some combination of high-performance cores and middle cores.
It’s this chip-level intelligence that helped Huawei achieve gains not only in app launch times (Facebook launches 0.3 seconds faster on the Kirin 980 than on the 970 while Snapchat spins up 0.2 seconds quicker), but in energy efficiency. Huawei claims the 980 sucks down 33 percent less power than Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 845.
Contributing to the overall uplift is support for 2133MHz RAM, which confers a 20 percent bandwidth advantage, and a powerful new graphics chip — the Mali-G76 — that’s 46 percent faster and 178 percent more efficient than the Kirin 970’s Mali-G72.
Other enhancements come in the form of a dual ISP that processes photos up to 46 percent faster and 23 percent more efficiently than the previous model. The improvements don’t come at the cost of quality — in fact, Huawei claims it’s capable of capturing “better contrast” and “finer details,” thanks to a new high dynamic range (HDR) color reproduction technology and a multi-pass noise reduction algorithm. Also in tow: motion tracking. The ISP can recognize subjects with 97.4 percent accuracy and track them across a frame, and it shoots clips with 33 percent shorter delay, thanks to a new video processing pipeline.
AI inside Huawei’s Neural Processing Unit (NPU) made its first appearance at IFA 2017, where it debuted in the Kirin 970. Boiled down to basics, it’s a coprocessor optimized for the sort of vector math that’s the lifeblood of machine learning frameworks like Facebook’s Caffe2 and Google’s TensorFlow. Microsoft’s Translator app taps into it for tasks like scanning and translating words in pictures, and Huawei says its heterogeneous computing structure — HiAI — automatically distributes voice recognition, natural language processing, and computer vision workloads across it dynamically.
The Kirin 980 isn’t the only chip on the block to accelerate machine learning — Qualcomm’s AI Engine and Apple’s A11 Bionic achieve the same ends through different means — but Huawei claims it’s far and away the fastest. The chip‘s two NPUs (up from one in the Kirin 970) can recognize up to 4,500 images per minute, compared to the Snapdragon 845’s 2,371 images and the A11 Bionic’s 1,458. And it boasts superior object recognition, real-time image processing, and real-time object segmentation, achieving up to 135 percent better performance in benchmarks like ResNet and Inception v3 while consuming 88 percent less power than the Snapdragon 845.
Huawei’s making the most of these advances, using AI to intelligently ramp up the GPU’s clock speed during intense gaming sessions, minimize system lag, and deliver “smoother outdoor gaming experiences” in areas with weak signals. In the coming months, it plans to make the dual NPU’s capabilities available to third-party developers through its HiAI library and API.
Faster modem The Kirin 980’s flagship components extend to the modem, which Huawei claims is the fastest it’s ever produced. The modem can hit speeds up to 1.4Gbps (LTE Cat. 21) and supports carrier aggregation across frequency bands, allowing it to hop between operators with relative ease.
Cellular performance isn’t the only highlight on the wireless side of things. The Kirin 980’s modem has the “world’s fastest Wi-Fi,” according to Huawei, with top downlink speeds reaching 1,732Mbps. (That’s thanks to the company’s in-house Wi-Fi module.) And its GPS receiver taps a new frequency — L5 (1575.42 MHz ) — that helps it deliver 10 times better positioning accuracy than the previous generation.
Availability There’s no doubt about it: The Kirin 980 is Huawei’s most ambitious chip yet. In fact, the company’s claiming nearly a dozen world’s firsts.
Only time will tell how it performs in the real world, of course, but we shouldn’t have long to wait. Honor, Huawei’s budget-oriented subbrand, announced this week that its upcoming Magic 2 smartphone will pack the Kirin 980. And in a pre-briefing with reporters on Thursday, a Huawei executive all but confirmed that it’ll feature prominently in the company’s upcoming Mate 20 series (which is set to be announced at an event in London on October 16).
One thing’s sure, however: Huawei has Qualcomm firmly in its crosshairs. And if Huawei can deliver on its promises, it might just best its San Diego rival at its own game.
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"Holocaust Memorial Museum uses augmented reality to make history visceral | VentureBeat"
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"https://venturebeat.com/mobile/holocaust-memorial-museum-uses-augmented-reality-to-make-history-visceral"
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"Artificial Intelligence View All AI, ML and Deep Learning Auto ML Data Labelling Synthetic Data Conversational AI NLP Text-to-Speech Security View All Data Security and Privacy Network Security and Privacy Software Security Computer Hardware Security Cloud and Data Storage Security Data Infrastructure View All Data Science Data Management Data Storage and Cloud Big Data and Analytics Data Networks Automation View All Industrial Automation Business Process Automation Development Automation Robotic Process Automation Test Automation Enterprise Analytics View All Business Intelligence Disaster Recovery Business Continuity Statistical Analysis Predictive Analysis More Data Decision Makers Virtual Communication Team Collaboration UCaaS Virtual Reality Collaboration Virtual Employee Experience Programming & Development Product Development Application Development Test Management Development Languages Holocaust Memorial Museum uses augmented reality to make history visceral Share on Facebook Share on X Share on LinkedIn Are you looking to showcase your brand in front of the brightest minds of the gaming industry? Consider getting a custom GamesBeat sponsorship.
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Aiming to capture and hold the attention of young students, the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum has launched a smartphone app that allows visitors to view a museum exhibit in augmented reality.
The Washington, D.C.-based museum’s app lets visitors learn more about the lives of Lithuanian villagers who are featured in the Tower of Faces display. When they point their smartphones at photos in the exhibit, information pops up on the phone screen describing the life of the villagers.
The AR exhibit is important, since a study released in the spring reported that two out of three American millennials don’t know what the Nazi death camp Auschwitz was, and nearly half (49 percent) cannot name any ghetto or concentration camp.
As part of a long-term project to deepen young people’s knowledge about the Holocaust, the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum last year experimented with AR to give visitors a different and unique experience: a personal connection to the families who lost their lives during the Holocaust. About 80 students participated in the pilot program already, with plans to add more participants next year.
Event GamesBeat at the Game Awards We invite you to join us in LA for GamesBeat at the Game Awards event this December 7. Reserve your spot now as space is limited! Viewers can learn about the individuals photographed, including whether they perished during the Holocaust.
Above: Augmented reality app at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum.
“This initiative aims to make Holocaust history relevant, engaging and personal for visitors, especially youth who are developing different expectations for their Museum visit compared to other generations,” said Michael Haley Goldman, the museum’s director of future projects, in a statement. “We’re exploring how to use this technology appropriately in a memorial and a museum such as ours that deal with a difficult history. We’re also interested in whether participants think this is a worthwhile addition to their visitor experience.” The museum’s latest tech foray comes as museums around the country embrace virtual reality and AR experimentation. In 2015, The Smithsonian’s Museum of Natural History implemented Skin & Bones, a 3D augmented reality application that animates skeletons on display in the Bone Hall. Earlier this year, the Detroit Institute of Arts implemented 3D animation software that allows visitors to explore its artifact collections. The Tech Museum of Innovation in San Jose, California, used AR for its Body Worlds Decoded exhibit, and the Smithsonian just created a VR exhibit on the Art of Burning Man, for people to visit remotely.
Currently, Mt. Vernon and other U.S.-based museums and historic sites are looking at using ARt Glass , a headset-based augmented reality technology, which has been popular in Europe.
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"4 ways the AR cloud is connecting digital content with the physical world | VentureBeat"
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"https://venturebeat.com/mobile/4-ways-the-ar-cloud-is-connecting-digital-content-with-the-physical-world"
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"Artificial Intelligence View All AI, ML and Deep Learning Auto ML Data Labelling Synthetic Data Conversational AI NLP Text-to-Speech Security View All Data Security and Privacy Network Security and Privacy Software Security Computer Hardware Security Cloud and Data Storage Security Data Infrastructure View All Data Science Data Management Data Storage and Cloud Big Data and Analytics Data Networks Automation View All Industrial Automation Business Process Automation Development Automation Robotic Process Automation Test Automation Enterprise Analytics View All Business Intelligence Disaster Recovery Business Continuity Statistical Analysis Predictive Analysis More Data Decision Makers Virtual Communication Team Collaboration UCaaS Virtual Reality Collaboration Virtual Employee Experience Programming & Development Product Development Application Development Test Management Development Languages Guest 4 ways the AR cloud is connecting digital content with the physical world Share on Facebook Share on X Share on LinkedIn Magic Leap Are you looking to showcase your brand in front of the brightest minds of the gaming industry? Consider getting a custom GamesBeat sponsorship.
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Since Apple’s release of ARKit, it’s become easier than ever to make AR experiences. However, an initial stumbling block for the nascent mobile AR ecosystem was the fact that AR experiences were solitary.
That is, it wasn’t possible to make seamless real-time multiplayer AR experiences, and content didn’t persist in the spaces where these AR sessions unfolded.
Subsequently, a number of “ AR cloud ” startups have emerged from stealth in 2018, enabling developers to build persistent multiuser AR experiences. The capability for digital content to be “pinned” to real-world objects such as enterprise machinery, retail merchandise, and tourist landmarks means that the physical world has become a 3D interface for peer-to-peer communication.
I’ve interviewed four industry experts who have provided insights on how the AR Cloud will be immediately practical for several specific use cases.
Seamless enterprise training Above: Hadley Harris True geospatial persistence has been one of the primary roadblocks to AR adoption. Most enterprise applications would be useless if they couldn’t retain state between sessions and content couldn’t be found in the exact same place users left them. Like the mobile ecosystem in general, many of the early winners in AR have been in gaming but there are also significant opportunities in the enterprise.
Event GamesBeat at the Game Awards We invite you to join us in LA for GamesBeat at the Game Awards event this December 7. Reserve your spot now as space is limited! Hadley Harris is a founding general partner at Eniac Ventures.
He expands on this theme: “One area we’ve thought about at Eniac is onboarding and engagement for employees, partners and customers. Imagine detailed content overlaying an office, factory, worksite or residence showing not only where things are but rich content about how to use them.” Harris continues, “For example, a new worker at a factory could utilize detailed instructions, tutorials and safety reminders overlaying the machinery, components and controls through the facility. It’s this precise meshing of the physical world with digital content that will unlock a multitude of opportunities for B2B AR.” Navigate the city more easily When the iPhone first came out, skeptics emerged in full force. This was initially justified by the fact that the mobile web and applications were not natively designed for the new interface of a pocket-sized computer, and that developers had still not leveraged the new and unique capabilities of smartphones. However, once apps like Uber, Instagram, and Snapchat emerged, it became clear that the iPhone was revolutionary. In a similar sense, developers today should ask themselves: what is native to AR? What can ONLY be done in AR? Matt Miesnieks is the CEO of 6D.ai and a partner at Super Ventures.
He elaborates on this point: “Being able to communicate digitally in 3D and in context, in situ, with the real world around us – this is a richer type of communication that has never been possible before. The AR Cloud enables users to find specific locations with an accuracy of millimeters, both indoors and outdoors. Suddenly, the world is more easily and intuitively navigable.” Miesnieks continues: “The AR cloud can help us navigate our world beyond just getting from point A to point B, however. It can provide much deeper layers of context about these destinations. For example, have you ever attempted to get a cab on a Saturday night outside of a crowded bar? With current GPS technologies, it’s often difficult to determine which car is the one picking you up. With new AR capabilities, you’ll be able to see a giant animated pin floating above your driver’s car – or be able to stick a floating batman logo above your head for your driver to identify you in a crowd.” The internet of places A stack of technology, including the combination of geo-location and computer vision, will make the real world clickable. Messages, such as pictures of food, and reviews, can be placed in the location they were made for local discovery at a time and a place when relevant. This has been referred to as “the AR Cloud”, but this is arguably an oversimplification. There are many clouds, as many as there are apps, but they will be woven together by a visual browser and a system of filters to ensure we get the data when and where we want it, but it doesn’t otherwise clutter our field of view.
Charlie Fink is an AR/VR consultant, columnist, speaker, and the author of “ Charlie Fink’s Metaverse, An AR Enabled Guide to VR & AR.
” He expands on this idea: “the past decade has been dominated by an ‘internet of screens’, in which we stare at little glowing windows on our laptops, tablets, and phones. You might comment on a thread on Reddit or tag yourself in a Facebook picture of you and your friends at a cafe. However, the AR cloud turns the real world into a dynamic interface where you’ll be able to consume and place content into physical places.” Fink continues, “There are myriad possibilities here. Cities will be able to turn local landmarks into 3D wikis annotated with stories about famous people and events that occurred on that spot. Airbnb hosts will be able to drop digital content on top of the coffee maker or first aid kit in their properties to better serve guests – in the specific time and place when they need help. This kind of ‘in-situ’ training will also be valuable in the workplace, as visual and 3D content, accessible on-demand, will help employees intuitively retain information about what has to be done in specific locations on a worksite.” Collaborative shopping experiences Most use cases for AR in retail showcase the single-user experience – like AR apps from Zara, Sephora , and IKEA. However, good experiences are meant to be shared, and multiplayer mobile AR can immediately unlock value for companies and brands.
Above: Cathy Hackl demoing the Magic Leap One Cathy Hackl is a Futurist (VR & AR) at You Are Here Labs in Atlanta. She dives deeper into how collaborative shopping experiences can be immediately useful: “In the next few years, we will see multiplayer/collaborative AR impact the at-home shopping experience with v-commerce, as well as the in-store and in-shelf shopping experience in brick and mortar retail. All of which will be shared via social media platforms.” Hackl continues, “In some way, our mobile cameras are portals into a new dimension for shopping and purchasing that is collaborative, social and interactive. For instance, if you are at the store and you see a dress you like, you could launch the store’s app, point your smartphone camera at the dress, and a previously-captured 3D body scan of you starts modeling the dress in front of you. You can then share it with friends and family for immediate feedback on whether you should buy it. You either tap and purchase right at the store or you wait and order it at home, leveraging VR or augmented reality.” Michael Park is the CEO and founder of Spatial Canvas , a platform that lets you build, explore, and share augmented realities.
VentureBeat's mission is to be a digital town square for technical decision-makers to gain knowledge about transformative enterprise technology and transact.
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"Esports is hiring -- and you don't need to be a player | VentureBeat"
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"https://venturebeat.com/esports/esports-is-hiring-and-you-dont-need-to-be-a-player"
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"Artificial Intelligence View All AI, ML and Deep Learning Auto ML Data Labelling Synthetic Data Conversational AI NLP Text-to-Speech Security View All Data Security and Privacy Network Security and Privacy Software Security Computer Hardware Security Cloud and Data Storage Security Data Infrastructure View All Data Science Data Management Data Storage and Cloud Big Data and Analytics Data Networks Automation View All Industrial Automation Business Process Automation Development Automation Robotic Process Automation Test Automation Enterprise Analytics View All Business Intelligence Disaster Recovery Business Continuity Statistical Analysis Predictive Analysis More Data Decision Makers Virtual Communication Team Collaboration UCaaS Virtual Reality Collaboration Virtual Employee Experience Programming & Development Product Development Application Development Test Management Development Languages Guest Esports is hiring — and you don’t need to be a player Share on Facebook Share on X Share on LinkedIn Team Liquid, competing at the ECS Season 5 Finals Are you looking to showcase your brand in front of the brightest minds of the gaming industry? Consider getting a custom GamesBeat sponsorship.
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Chances are you’ve heard about how huge esports is becoming. It’s on TV channels like ESPN and TBS, it has hundreds of thousands –or even millions — of dollars in prizes. And it’s the industry that’s drawn investment from a number of mainstream brands, and even A-list celebrities such as Jennifer Lopez and Shaquille O’Neal.
And while you might be aware of the gigantic sums of money these players (often teens) are playing for, you’re probably not aware just how many other career paths exist in esports.
Gone are the days where you could only make a living in professional gaming if you in the top 0.001 percent of players in the world. Account managers, business development executives, digital marketers and all of the conventional job titles now exist in esports as the industry has reached a size where any skill set can lead to a full-time paid career.
Multiple career paths One of the websites we operate at ghostwhite is the largest esports jobs website there is, HitmarkerJobs.com , which posted 2,497 jobs in esports in just the first half of 2018. We’ve seen it all from internal travel agents for esports tournament organizers, to managing a gaming house for a team on a full-time basis, to even being a freelance meme specialist earning $17 an hour! Event GamesBeat at the Game Awards We invite you to join us in LA for GamesBeat at the Game Awards event this December 7. Reserve your spot now as space is limited! There certainly hasn’t been a better time to get involved in the scene than now, but to understand the significance of why so many full-time careers is such a warming sight we must journey back to the dark days of esports, where passion funded people’s exploits, and absolutely nothing else.
Our Phil Huggan, founder of ghostwhite, joins many in esports as someone who experienced the scene when it was undeveloped like this. In April 2011, he assisted in running EGL2, an esports event in the U.K. Despite it being the first competitive PlayStation event in Europe for Call of Duty Black Ops and despite him creating the event’s schedule, organizing attending teams, sorting where everyone was playing in the arena, running the broadcast and even commentating a few of the games, he didn’t get paid. Phil stayed in an elderly woman’s spare room with two other people and slept on a futon, and still finished the event out of pocket.
Stories like this aren’t uncommon if you journey back into esports’ youth. Working for free was the norm, not the exception. To see esports jobs evolve into what they are now is truly a brilliant thing to see.
By the numbers So what exactly do esports jobs look like in the here and now? Well, since we run a jobs website in the space we have the data to paint a pretty accurate picture and recently published an infographic depicting the trends in esports jobs from the first six months of 2018. We produced this from the data of 2,497 jobs: Above: A statistical breakdown of esports jobs in the first six months of 2018 at HitmarkerJobs One of the most notable points in the infographic is how almost a quarter of jobs are still unpaid. This may seem shocking to people not fully familiar with esports, and it certainly isn’t something anyone in the scene is happy to see, but the progress being made is incredible.
A wide variety Thirty-six countries hired for people in esports in the first half of 2018, showing how the industry is now a global phenomenon. Careers are available in all shapes and sizes, too. Management and marketing make up just over 20 percent of what’s out there, but with everything from product management with industry veterans Turtle Beach to part-time, remote team management for Method, you’re sure to find your fit in this industry if you have the passion for it.
Take these jobs as your proof. Just recently the Philadelphia Fusion, a team competing in the Overwatch League — which had its Season One finals aired on ESPN at the end of July — was looking for a full-time house manager to run the team’s gaming residence. Some of the responsibilities included handling the maintenance of the house through ordering furniture and booking cleaners, planning team-building activities to help the players bond, and liaise with the marketing team to produce content around the players. Just to reiterate, this was a full-time career.
ESL, one of the elite tournament organizers in esports, was hiring for a travel agent earlier this year. They needed someone to arrange and book travel for players and hired talent coming to and from the event.
Unbelievably, neither of these have even been the coolest jobs we’ve seen this year! Philadelphia Fusion posted a job advert for a meme specialist to work on a seasonal basis. Earning $17 an hour, the candidate would be creating memes for their digital channels to help boost the brand’s visibility.
These are just some of the jobs that have been available in esports recently, and more great careers appear everyday. And the best thing is it’s possible for anyone to get into esports.
How to break in If you’re interested in getting into esports then a platform you absolutely need to be visible on is Twitter. Every esports title has an active presence on Twitter, and you can use it to build your own brand, connect with like-minded people in the scene and even find jobs. It’s a pet peeve of ours, but a lot of people and organizations will post that they’re looking for employees/freelancers on Twitter. One of our employees actually got approached on Twitter directly to freelance for an esports news website.
Another thing that will serve you well to get into esports is showing your passion and attending events. In a YouTube video from CompLexity Gaming , one of their employees tells the story of how he got into esports, which concludes with him taking a train ride with a 6-hour layover to an event in Atlanta to hand out resumes to anyone who’d take one. This ultimately netted him a salary from CompLexity and the chance to work with them in Texas. Esports was built by hustlers, so you’ll find a lot of organizations are very open to helping people who demonstrate their eagerness to get involved.
In a Medium post that gives advice on how to get a job in esports from the CompLexity CEO Jason Lake, he suggests doing whatever you can to give yourself a body of work you can apply to jobs with. He uses the examples of starting a daily blog of your own if you’re an aspiring journalist, or by commentating over past games and uploading them to YouTube if you dream of being an esports commentator (or “shoutcaster”).
This a great point and something we frequently recommend. The benefits to it are endless. It provides you with a working example to show prospective employers if you haven’t got any relevant experience, it will hone your skills and it shows you’re proactive and passion about esports. Following this advice bodes well to locking down a career in esports.
If you have the passion for esports and follow these pointers, getting a career in the scene is doable. There are paid careers in every sector now and people who want to help other gamers make their way into the scene. It’s a wonderful industry going through a growth spurt that keeps on breaking records, and it would love to have you! Rich Huggan is the managing director of ghostwhite, an esports entity that operates various brands within the scene. One of which is HitmarkerJobs.com, the largest jobs board in esports.
GamesBeat's creed when covering the game industry is "where passion meets business." What does this mean? We want to tell you how the news matters to you -- not just as a decision-maker at a game studio, but also as a fan of games. Whether you read our articles, listen to our podcasts, or watch our videos, GamesBeat will help you learn about the industry and enjoy engaging with it.
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"Zoom is using blockchain to match freelancers with businesses and manage projects | VentureBeat"
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"https://venturebeat.com/entrepreneur/zoom-is-using-blockchain-to-match-freelancers-with-businesses-and-manage-projects"
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"Artificial Intelligence View All AI, ML and Deep Learning Auto ML Data Labelling Synthetic Data Conversational AI NLP Text-to-Speech Security View All Data Security and Privacy Network Security and Privacy Software Security Computer Hardware Security Cloud and Data Storage Security Data Infrastructure View All Data Science Data Management Data Storage and Cloud Big Data and Analytics Data Networks Automation View All Industrial Automation Business Process Automation Development Automation Robotic Process Automation Test Automation Enterprise Analytics View All Business Intelligence Disaster Recovery Business Continuity Statistical Analysis Predictive Analysis More Data Decision Makers Virtual Communication Team Collaboration UCaaS Virtual Reality Collaboration Virtual Employee Experience Programming & Development Product Development Application Development Test Management Development Languages Zoom is using blockchain to match freelancers with businesses and manage projects Share on Facebook Share on X Share on LinkedIn Are you ready to bring more awareness to your brand? Consider becoming a sponsor for The AI Impact Tour. Learn more about the opportunities here.
Several resources already help startups and entrepreneurs employ contractors and freelancers. But since it is 2018, the market is ready for a blockchain-powered service that can provide access to temporary and permanent employees, as well as help manage projects.
Project management and outsourcing platform Zoom is utilizing blockchain technology to enable business relationships, project planning, and secure payments. Zoom will connect freelancers and virtual companies using a blockchain ID system, artificial intelligence, and smart contracts.
Zoom will use the security and transparency of the blockchain to build an ecosystem that supports and simplifies multi-stage and multi-stakeholder projects. It also provides an employment portal for virtual companies that need to hire freelancers. Virtual companies and individuals on the platform can post projects and request available freelancers they find through the employment portal.
Once listed, freelancers can enter the portal and see an overview of both the posted projects and the businesses that want to hire those with relevant skills. When either party wishes to connect, a chat window appears, and they can begin negotiating the terms of work. Using a structure that Zoom calls “Contract Trees,” freelancers can be organized into structures to solve complex projects.
VB Event The AI Impact Tour Connect with the enterprise AI community at VentureBeat’s AI Impact Tour coming to a city near you! At present, the Zoom platform is not fully operational, but the company expects to bring on freelancers quickly.
“We do have several partners that will be on-boarded to the platform at launch, and that are helping us figure out the needs and challenges of different user groups,” founder and CEO Plamen Nedyalkov told me.
With so many options available for freelancer-to-business matching and employment, why is Zoom using blockchain for this platform instead of traditional matching, payment, and ID mechanisms? “As it stands right now, the systems in place for payment are slow and still rely on a third party to be the authority during a business transaction, but those third parties have very limited jurisdiction,” Nedyalkov said.
The use of blockchain technology also extends to payments.
“We are using blockchain to handle the escrow and transaction services of the platform, equalizing the power differential between client and contractor because the payment is held in the hand of neither,” Nedyalkov said.
The Zoom platform consists of a “milestone infrastructure” that separates contracts based on delegating staff to specific stages and deliverables of a project that need to be completed by a specific time, and a “tribunal” system that offers a jury-like structure to review and resolve reported conflicts within projects and milestones.
It also has an ID system that confirms the identities of potential employees and employers using a consensus algorithm that verifies, validates, and authenticates private data, and it creates validated work histories and reputations tied to those secure IDs to limit fraud.
So what’s next for Zoom? “We are continuing development of our platform, building up the systems for the interface between a standard web app and smart contract especially,” Nedyalkov said. “We are looking to start onboarding partner companies for our MVP in about a month and a half, and launching our ICO around that time as well.” The focus, then, is to get the platform fully operational as quickly as possible.
“Short-term we are continuing development and getting users up and running, and then we have some very cool things we can do with the data from that later,” Nedyalkov said. “Currently we are also opening up for investors.” Zoom’s utility token is integrated into the platform’s ecosystem and serves as a user incentive for purchasing products and services at a reduced cost. Built upon the Ethereum blockchain, users also have the option to use ETH to make purchases and access Zoom’s features. Zoom’s upcoming ICO for the Zoom Token will begin in late October or early November, and will have a hard cap of $24.5 million.
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"Why 80-year-old inventor Gil Hyatt says patent office is waiting for him to die | VentureBeat"
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"https://venturebeat.com/entrepreneur/why-80-year-old-inventor-gil-hyatt-says-patent-office-is-waiting-for-him-to-die"
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"Artificial Intelligence View All AI, ML and Deep Learning Auto ML Data Labelling Synthetic Data Conversational AI NLP Text-to-Speech Security View All Data Security and Privacy Network Security and Privacy Software Security Computer Hardware Security Cloud and Data Storage Security Data Infrastructure View All Data Science Data Management Data Storage and Cloud Big Data and Analytics Data Networks Automation View All Industrial Automation Business Process Automation Development Automation Robotic Process Automation Test Automation Enterprise Analytics View All Business Intelligence Disaster Recovery Business Continuity Statistical Analysis Predictive Analysis More Data Decision Makers Virtual Communication Team Collaboration UCaaS Virtual Reality Collaboration Virtual Employee Experience Programming & Development Product Development Application Development Test Management Development Languages Why 80-year-old inventor Gil Hyatt says patent office is waiting for him to die Share on Facebook Share on X Share on LinkedIn Patents, patents, patents.
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Gil Hyatt has gotten many rewards from his days as an inventor. In 1990, he received a fundamental but controversial patent on what he called the first microprocessor, or computer on a chip. It was 22 years late, but he nosed out rivals such as Intel in being the first to file for a patent application in 1968. He then licensed that patent and 22 of his 69 other patents to Philips Electronics, which then began enforcing them on the rest of the electronics industry and collecting royalties.
Philips’ efforts netted Hyatt more than $150 million, though the state of California would try for 24 years to take a big chunk of that money for taxes. It argued that Hyatt pretended to move to Las Vegas in 1991, but in 2017, he finally prevailed in convincing the tax board that he really did move. But at 80 years old, Hyatt still isn’t resting on the rewards he got. In fact, he’s still in a bitter battle with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.
He claims the office is sitting on his remaining applications, and is waiting for him to die.
Hyatt sued to get the patent office to issue his remaining patent applications. The patent office declined to comment, citing the litigation.
And what he’s discovered in that legal fight is pretty alarming for all individual inventors, Hyatt said in an interview last week with me. I interviewed Hyatt back in 2014, and multiple times decades ago when I was at the Los Angeles Times and he was still living in La Palma, California, in Orange County. Back in 1990, we talked about his dispute with electronics companies like Intel, which claimed its employees Federico Faggin, Stan Mazor, and Ted Hoff invented the microprocessor in 1971.
Hyatt knows he was never much loved in Silicon Valley, as he was viewed as one of the worst cases of a “ submarine patent ,” filing continuation after continuation until the industry grew to a huge size and he eventually got his patent — allowing for a huge payday from royalties. Patent law gives inventors 17 years of royalties, based on the issue date.
Hyatt claims he has waiting for more than 40 years for the patent office to rule on two applications he filed in the 1970s. The typical wait time is now 18 months. Hyatt hasn’t disclosed how much he made from his deal with Philips, but he noted you can see which products cited his patent numbers in product materials. Sony alone built millions of products that cited Hyatt’s patents.
Above: Gil Hyatt in 2014 at age 76. He is now 80 years old, and still seeking his patents.
And the state of California went after him for a tax bill for more than $10 million, and so that tells you his royalties were huge. ( Hyatt won that case in 2017, after 24 years).
Four years ago, Hyatt told me he wanted “justice.” But during discovery in his ongoing litigation, he was further outraged to find that the patent office had a special way of flagging potentially controversial patents. Those flagged applications went all the way to the leadership of the patent office, and they were often never granted by the office. The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office called this the Sensitive Applications Warning System (or SAWS), and it operated in secret for decades, based on the results of 31 Freedom of Information Act requests and court discovery unearthed by Hyatt and his nonprofit American Center of Equitable Treatment.
“The patent office has delayed and delayed. I’m finally hoping to get to the board of appeals and to the courts to stop the delays and get my patents issued,” Hyatt said in our interview.
He alleges that the SAWS program, which was started in 1994 not long after Hyatt’s case generated huge publicity, disproportionately targeted individual inventors or small businesses. The SAWS program came to light in late 2014, and Hyatt and his attorneys allege that patent office officials used the program to secretly exercise powers with which they were never vested by law, allowing them to choose winners and losers in controversial patent cases.
A patent with the SAWS designation could not be issued without approval from higher ups, and Hyatt found that his applications were designated as such. Patent examiners were instructed not to tell applicants that their applications had the SAWS flag. After getting 75 patents, Hyatt did not get another one since the 1990s, and for a long time he didn’t know why.
“They were down on independent inventors and I was a prominent independent inventor,” Hyatt said. “For the past 25 years I’ve been trying to overcome that illegal rule that they had, and in fact I have a major case now filed in federal court , a mandamus case to order them to properly examine my patent applications.” Hyatt put two and two together after word of SAWS surfaced in 2014, and discovery revealed emails that showed SAWS was targeted at submarine patents, which typically generated a lot of bad publicity for the patent office. Evidence in the case showed the patent “office shall not notify applicant or any other party that any particular application has been identified as a SAWS application.” Another SAWS case Above: Corliss “Cob” Burandt had a patent flagged for SAWS.
Hyatt said that other inventors have been affected by SAWS, but most never knew to inquire about it.
Another Minneapolis inventor, Corliss “Cob” Burandt, told me in an interview that he discovered SAWS by accident in 2011. His application for a new automobile engine belt (with variable timing) had been flagged under SAWS. In denying the issuance of the patent, the patent examiner told Burandt (without having the permission to do so) that his application had the SAWS designation, and so it could not be issued even though it had been technically approved. Only high-level officials could remove the SAWS designation, court papers show.
“It’s hard to believe the government would favor the big companies over the individual inventors,” said George McDonald, a patent attorney who has been working with Burandt in his spare time for decades, in an interview. He said the application was really Burandt’s only remaining asset that could still change his life. The case has generated 4,000 pages of discovery.
Since the application has been pending since 1988, Burandt said he has suffered huge mental anguish. Burandt said, “You have to have a sense of humor. If you don’t, you would be crying on the phone.” After hearing about Hyatt’s case, Burandt joined together to talk about being victimized by the SAWS program. They’re still fighting the case. In March 2015, a few months after SAWS became public, the patent office announced it was “retiring” the program, saying “only a small number of applications examined over the last twenty years were ever referred to the SAWS program.” McDonald didn’t know why the case had a SAWS flag, except for the fact that big car companies would have had to pay Burandt royalties if he won the case. At this point, because of filing rules, Burandt can only capture about 2.5 years of royalties if he wins. But that would make a huge difference in his life, Burandt said.
The scarlet letter of SAWS Above: Gil Hyatt set up a nonprofit to tangle with the patent office.
Hyatt found one of his applications had a SAWS designation and had been approved on several of its claims by the patent office’s appeal board. But the patent office has not issued the patent, despite more than a 15-year wait. When Hyatt sued, the office started the examination of that patent all over again.
On another Hyatt patent, discovery revealed that an examiner approved the patent for issuance in 2002. The examiner wrote, “We are done with the case, it is ready for issue complete with that most ancient form of allowance a blue slip. … I have been waiting for a resolution concerning whether it is cleared for issue by ‘the powers to be’ who have been holding up the issue for the past several years. … If you know anything more please let me know I’d love to get the thing out of the office.” The patent office never issued that patent.
“Once a SAWS flag is put on a patent application, we know now that you can never take it off,” Hyatt said. “That patent application is essentially dead.” Patent purgatory Above: The seal of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.
Hyatt’s patent applications are still in patent purgatory.
“I have an enormous amount of evidence. I had an appeal to the federal court, the judge allowed us to take discovery, and we got thousands of pages of very incriminating evidence from the patent office and the depositions we were permitted to take,” Hyatt said. “We have a very significant bad faith case against them. We’ve articulated many of these things briefly in the complaint we filed about three months ago. It’s now pending in the federal court of the eastern district of Virginia.” At 80, Hyatt said he is aware the patent office may very well be trying to wait him out. He said he is healthy.
But he has set up a foundation that could still collect money if the case results in a legal victory, and the foundation could reap the rewards if Hyatt is awarded more money. Hyatt believes that the patent office leaders set themselves up as a “ Star Chamber ,” the name for a corrupt extra-judicial and secret court. And while SAWS has been retired, Hyatt believes the essential elements of it are still in operation.
“The truth of the matter is, they’ll outlast me,” Hyatt said. “But the other side of the coin is, will they have to issue my patents while I’m still around? I’m planning on creating a foundation to exploit them for human rights purposes. I’d like to be around while that’s in effect.” VentureBeat's mission is to be a digital town square for technical decision-makers to gain knowledge about transformative enterprise technology and transact.
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"Malala Yousafzai on the importance of technology, education, and ... magic | VentureBeat"
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"https://venturebeat.com/entrepreneur/malala-yousafzai-on-the-importance-of-technology-education-and-magic"
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"Artificial Intelligence View All AI, ML and Deep Learning Auto ML Data Labelling Synthetic Data Conversational AI NLP Text-to-Speech Security View All Data Security and Privacy Network Security and Privacy Software Security Computer Hardware Security Cloud and Data Storage Security Data Infrastructure View All Data Science Data Management Data Storage and Cloud Big Data and Analytics Data Networks Automation View All Industrial Automation Business Process Automation Development Automation Robotic Process Automation Test Automation Enterprise Analytics View All Business Intelligence Disaster Recovery Business Continuity Statistical Analysis Predictive Analysis More Data Decision Makers Virtual Communication Team Collaboration UCaaS Virtual Reality Collaboration Virtual Employee Experience Programming & Development Product Development Application Development Test Management Development Languages Malala Yousafzai on the importance of technology, education, and … magic Share on Facebook Share on X Share on LinkedIn Malala Yousafzai (R) onstage with Aaron Skonnard (L) at the second annual Pluralsight Live conference on August 30, 2018 in Salt Lake City, Utah.
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Malala Yousafzai, Pakistani activist for female schooling and the youngest Nobel Prize laureate, spoke today about the role of technology in helping spread education, the importance of raising awareness for the various injustices in the world, and the inspiration she draws from magic.
Malala made a wide variety of comments onstage at Pluralsight Live in Salt Lake City, Utah, but the ones about technology stood out to us. The conversation veered from sharing personal anecdotes with Pluralsight CEO Aaron Skonnard to cracking jokes at every opportunity, much to the audience’s delight.
Last month, the Malala Fund launched Assembly , a digital publication written by girls, for girls, seeking to educate and inspire the next generation of female leaders. Malala, who herself was only 11 when she started blogging under the pen name Gul Makai, said she is now inspired by the amazing stories girls tell her.
“We’re hearing these powerful and inspiring stories from girls, not just the difficulties they go through, but how they overcome that,” Malala said. “Always when I meet these girls, when I visit these girls, it is their stories that actually push me to continue the campaign that I’m running. And these are the stories that inspire me and should inspire all of you because these girls are fighting each and every day for their right to education, for their right to quality education, because they know that their future is in their school.” The hope is that Assembly can elevate these stories so they get the attention they deserve, something that the internet is particularly good at enabling. Imagine if Malala never had access to an open platform to share her story. She began blogging at “a really cruel time” — there were curfews, schools were banned, and people were executed every morning.
“You are in a war zone,” Malala described. “Imagining life there is just — I have lived through that, but when I look back, I say ‘how did we survive through that?’ I’m amazed by the courage of all those people who are going through wars and conflicts right now and are staying brave and strong, have also become refugees but are still not giving up and are hopeful. But technology plays a key role. This is a resource that we have got; now we need to explore how we can use it for the benefit of society. And in education, it can play a big role. We’ve already seen that.” She pointed to Lebanon, where Tabshoura in a Box lets Syrian refugees connect up to 30 devices even when there is no electricity.
The government is now exploring how to leverage Tabshoura across the country, Malala said.
“It would be amazing if you could share your skills, your talents, your technology, the resources that you have,” Malala explicated. “It means a lot. Sometimes you may not realize, but one electronic device can play a huge role in a girl’s life — allowing her to have access to information. Many women are not aware that they deserve equality. That it is their right to get education. That it is their right to be paid equally. That it is their right to be treated equally. They just are not aware. That’s just how they are brought up. They are told they are not equal. They are told ‘you don’t deserve to be outside and working.’ And we need to change that. We need to tell women that they deserve equal rights. That there are people who are standing with them, that there are institutions that are there to protect their rights, and that they should speak out. So, raising awareness is crucial for that, and hopefully we can use technology and your support and all the resources that we have to raise that awareness and ensure that women are empowered and girls are getting their education.” Skonnard then asked Malala about her desire, when she was younger, to become an inventor. And so the conversation shifted slightly to … magic.
“I used to believe in magic. I used to think if I could invent this machine that could demolish all the bad people from the world — not harm them ( audience bursts out laughing ) — just click this one button and the world just becomes good. Just click this button and there’s peace and there’s nobody standing there and stopping students from going to school. That was my dream.” She explained she thought it was possible because of all the fairytales, TV dramas, and magic stories she consumed. She wanted a magic pencil, which she has written about , that let her draw anything and it would become real.
“But then I realized, maybe it was not working,” Malala explained. “I prayed for too long ( more laughter ). Then I finally realized the magic was in the pen, in the actual pen that I was using in school. The magic was in my voice. We all need to find that magic, which is not maybe in the magic pencil but in the pens and pencils we use every day. Voice can have that magic. Or art can have that magic. And that’s what we need to teach our kids: Find that magic and change the world.” Then came the inevitable link between magic and technology; Malala noted that technology was magic to her father as he was simply not exposed to it, and then dove into how her generation takes it for granted.
“The world has changed a lot. For this generation, because they are seeing these things every day and it has just become so normal for us. Every year we want something new and we want updated versions of every technology. We are taking it for granted. But this is a blessing if we use it for the right purpose. … We need to appreciate it and think about how we can use it for all good, for people’s good, and for those people that don’t have access to many of the rights that we have.” There were a few more tech-related tidbits from the interview. Malala touched on her first coding lesson at Apple’s headquarters: “It was good, it was really good. It became more challenging and harder, but I did not give up. I carried on.” The jokes just kept coming.
Her thoughts on the differences between Facebook and Instagram were particularly entertaining.
Well, they’re owned by the same people. If I say good things about one and bad things about the other, it’s fine.
We use Facebook more for groups in our college. We have committees, we have societies, so Facebook is used a lot for that.
Some people call us the last generation to use Facebook. I don’t know why. They say the new generation is not on Facebook.
Whatever.
I felt really old when I heard that.
And I think Insta is more photos, so it’s more interesting.
But these things can waste a lot of your time, so be careful.
One final piece of advice? “People often ask me ‘why did you start speaking out?’ I had only two options: To speak out or not. If I did not speak out, that means things were going to be worse. Nothing was going to change. I wanted to see change and this is why I decided to speak out. If you do want to see change, if you want this world to be a better place for all us, to be a healthier, wealthier, and safer place for everybody, then we have to do something. Always believe in the work you are doing. Sometimes we do not see the outcomes or the results soon, and we feel like it’s not actually worth it, but it is. Every small step that we take is changing the lives of many people.” Disclosure: Pluralsight paid my way to Salt Lake City. Our coverage remains objective.
VentureBeat's mission is to be a digital town square for technical decision-makers to gain knowledge about transformative enterprise technology and transact.
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"Improving tech education doesn't start with tech | VentureBeat"
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"https://venturebeat.com/entrepreneur/improving-tech-education-doesnt-start-with-tech"
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"Artificial Intelligence View All AI, ML and Deep Learning Auto ML Data Labelling Synthetic Data Conversational AI NLP Text-to-Speech Security View All Data Security and Privacy Network Security and Privacy Software Security Computer Hardware Security Cloud and Data Storage Security Data Infrastructure View All Data Science Data Management Data Storage and Cloud Big Data and Analytics Data Networks Automation View All Industrial Automation Business Process Automation Development Automation Robotic Process Automation Test Automation Enterprise Analytics View All Business Intelligence Disaster Recovery Business Continuity Statistical Analysis Predictive Analysis More Data Decision Makers Virtual Communication Team Collaboration UCaaS Virtual Reality Collaboration Virtual Employee Experience Programming & Development Product Development Application Development Test Management Development Languages Guest Improving tech education doesn’t start with tech Share on Facebook Share on X Share on LinkedIn Are you ready to bring more awareness to your brand? Consider becoming a sponsor for The AI Impact Tour. Learn more about the opportunities here.
Automation is stripping away jobs from entire industries in the United States — and the pace of job loss is accelerating. Whole segments of the population are forced to work harder for less money. Our education has been stagnating for centuries.
Leaders like Alibaba CEO Jack Ma argue that we are heading for disaster if we continue to train students to compete with machines. Employers, and our society, need to train individuals for the new world of work , where automation will rule.
It’s natural to assume technology will spark a massive change in the way we educate our citizens. It has not just disrupted, but completely remade entire industries in the last decade. Retail, manufacturing, transportation, media, and even hospitality companies are all being deeply reshaped thanks to advances in software from companies like Facebook, Google, Amazon, Lyft, and others. Even though the internet has put the sum of human knowledge in our pockets, it has so far failed to disrupt, much less solve, the education puzzle.
Schools like the Mark Zuckerberg-backed AltSchool, which touts a personalized learning platform, have not produced improved results so far either. Parents report, in fact, that they have to provide “ tutoring to supplement what our kids aren’t learning.
” The school decided to close several locations last year.
VB Event The AI Impact Tour Connect with the enterprise AI community at VentureBeat’s AI Impact Tour coming to a city near you! It was also predicted that Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) would completely change education with all the knowledge that students needed becoming accessible at their fingertips. But we soon realized that MOOCs might not be the silver bullet that education was waiting for. Even the vice president of Udacity, which is among the leading MOOCs, has said that “ MOOCs are dead.
” The education crisis cannot be solved by putting students in front of tablets. George Mason University professor of economics Tyler Cowen argues that if humans would follow rules and behave rationally, MOOCs might be the solution. The problem is we don’t. He suggests that students will not learn as efficiently when sitting alone in front of a computer than when surrounded by peers: Students learn better when they are within a community of learners.
Technology might not, this time, be the main source of disruption. This is because education, which is arguably one of our society’s most important industries, might be different: It’s about working with people.
John Hennessy, a former Stanford University president and board member of Google and Cisco, sees promise in the flipped classroom model , in which students consume knowledge online, on their own, and class time is devoted to discussions and interactive problem-solving. The teacher in this scenario would not act as a gateway between knowledge and students (which in the middle ages made sense because of the scarcity of books) but instead act as learning facilitators. Finland, known for having among the best school systems in the world, has already moved toward this approach.
Instead of having students sitting passively in front of their teacher listening to lectures and waiting to be questioned, students work on group projects, developing their soft and problem-solving skills.
This concept is also core to project and peer-learning based institutions such as Holberton School , 42 , and Epitech.
Students learn by working on projects with their peers — there are no formal lectures and no teachers — they acquire knowledge by searching the Internet, reading books, and chatting with their peers. By working in groups, students become mentors; they are able to communicate and listen, developing their soft skills.
As we are entering the fourth industrial revolution, bringing advanced robotics, autonomous transport, and artificial intelligence, the World Economic Forum ranks problem-solving as the top skill for workers to have. And Google reported that its top-performing employees were all exceeding at soft skills.
While regular schools give students the solution and then the problem (the exam), project-based schools do the opposite. By doing so, students develop their ability to problem solve, using their creativity and ultimately becoming self-learners. That produces professionals who can follow and, even better, lead the continuous evolution business must maintain to stay relevant.
Another similar path forward is through apprenticeships, which emphasize learning-on-the-job. The methodology recently received a boost when Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff argued that the U.S. should create five million apprenticeship opportunities within the next five years and President Donald Trump agreed. Education Secretary Betsy DeVos doubled down on this by saying that apprenticeships should not only be for “ welders and carpenters.
” Tech companies are also starting to embrace apprenticeships. IBM’s New Collar initiative , Microsoft’s LEAP , and LinkedIn’s REACH program are now filling white-collar positions with apprenticeships — in particular to reach learners who decide against the long and often costly four-year-college route.
Obviously, the education puzzle will not be solved by one type of education that fits us all. We all learn differently, and this diversity should be reflected in what the education industry offers.
So while we should not force students to sit in classrooms to passively take in crumbs of knowledge, we also cannot ask them to learn without guidance, mentorship, and personal attention. We should urge students to explore for themselves, and to learn how to learn for themselves — a life-long skill who everybody will need.
Sylvain Kalache is the cofounder of Holberton School.
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"Gil Hyatt interview: Why patent examiners gave controversial patents a scarlet letter | VentureBeat"
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"https://venturebeat.com/entrepreneur/gil-hyatt-interview-why-patent-examiners-gave-controversial-patents-a-scarlet-letter"
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"Artificial Intelligence View All AI, ML and Deep Learning Auto ML Data Labelling Synthetic Data Conversational AI NLP Text-to-Speech Security View All Data Security and Privacy Network Security and Privacy Software Security Computer Hardware Security Cloud and Data Storage Security Data Infrastructure View All Data Science Data Management Data Storage and Cloud Big Data and Analytics Data Networks Automation View All Industrial Automation Business Process Automation Development Automation Robotic Process Automation Test Automation Enterprise Analytics View All Business Intelligence Disaster Recovery Business Continuity Statistical Analysis Predictive Analysis More Data Decision Makers Virtual Communication Team Collaboration UCaaS Virtual Reality Collaboration Virtual Employee Experience Programming & Development Product Development Application Development Test Management Development Languages Gil Hyatt interview: Why patent examiners gave controversial patents a scarlet letter Share on Facebook Share on X Share on LinkedIn The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office Are you ready to bring more awareness to your brand? Consider becoming a sponsor for The AI Impact Tour. Learn more about the opportunities here.
Gil Hyatt’s patience has been tested. After a 22-year delay, the inventor received a patent in 1990 for what he called the first microprocessor, or a computer on a chip. After cutting a deal with Philips Electronics, he began collecting royalties on a lot of electronics products that used the fundamental technology.
In Silicon Valley and elsewhere, Hyatt was viewed as a carpetbagger, a man who created a “ submarine patent ” by continually following up his patent application with new details. He claims he was a diligent individual inventor who protected his rights. But after the controversial patent award, and after getting 75 patents, the patent office never approved one of his applications again.
More than 40 years later, Hyatt said his important applications are still in limbo.
(The typical wait time is 18 months.) He has made at least $150 million from the Philips deal, but he said he is fighting for “justice.” The case took a twist in 2014, when news emerged that the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office had a special way of flagging potentially controversial patents.
The flagged applications went all the way to the leadership of the patent office, and they were often never granted by the office. The patent office called this the Sensitive Applications Warning System (or SAWS), and it operated in secret for decades, based on the results of 31 Freedom of Information Act requests and court discovery unearthed by Hyatt and his nonprofit American Center of Equitable Treatment.
Hyatt — and even a former patent commissioner — called the SAWS flag a “scarlet letter.” Hyatt sued the patent office.
I interviewed Hyatt multiple times in the 1990s, and again four years ago. But now he’s 80 years old, and he has a new crusade against the patent office over SAWS. He believes the patent office is waiting for him to die, rather than granting him any more patents. Hyatt said that what he discovered in his legal fight is pretty alarming for all individual inventors. At least one other inventor, Corliss Burandt, found out that his application carried the SAWS flag, and Burandt is still fighting for issuance. I talked to Hyatt about this controversy again last week. The patent office declined to comment on Hyatt’s ongoing litigation.
Here’s an edited transcript.
Above: Gil Hyatt in 2014 at age 76. He is now 80 years old, and still seeking his patents.
VentureBeat: Could you walk me back and review some of the timeline of when big things happened with you? It was around 1990-ish or so, wasn’t it, that we first talked about the microprocessor patent? I was at the Los Angeles Times.
Gil Hyatt: Yes. It was 1990. Another one of my patents was widely licensed, and then — I had a lot of patent applications pending. There was a change in the law in 1995, with the GATT treaty. They grandfathered us old guys in, so I filed more patent applications dating back to the earlier inventions. They’re still pending right now.
VentureBeat: How long would you say some of your longest-running applications have been pending, then? Hyatt: I just filed an appeal brief on a patent application that the patent office has delayed for about 40 years. That was filed back in 1977. About a year ago I filed an appeal brief on another patent application of mine that I filed in 1972, about 45 years ago. The patent office has delayed and delayed. I’m finally hoping to get to the board of appeals and to the courts to stop the delays and get my patents issued.
VentureBeat: How many would you say are granted now? Hyatt: I have more than 70 patents granted. At some point in time the patent office unlawfully decided, no more patents for Hyatt. They were down on independent inventors, and I was a prominent independent inventor. For the past 25 years I’ve been trying to overcome that illegal rule that they had, and in fact I have a major case now filed in federal court, a mandamus case to order them to properly examine my patent applications.
VentureBeat: How many do you think are pending still, these applications? Hyatt: Originally I had almost 400 of them, because I had a lot of great technology that I needed to cover. But they’ve been unlawfully abandoning my applications recently. That’s an issue in the mandamus, the bad faith case we have filed against the patent office.
VentureBeat: I remember the Philips license was worth a lot of money for you. Did that wind up being the biggest you had? Hyatt: Philips had exclusive authority to license my patents. They licensed them worldwide. The microcomputer patent was one of a portfolio of 23 patents they were licensing.
VentureBeat: Was that successful for you, the licensing that Philips handled? Hyatt: Yes, it was very successful. The business community embraced my patent portfolios. A lot of major companies like Sony and Sharp and Toshiba licensed my patents. It was a very successful program. Philips did a great job.
VentureBeat: Has that ended now? Hyatt: No, those patents have since expired. I’m hoping to get my more recent patent applications issued, if the patent office will ever stop delaying and give me a fair examination.
Above: Inventing VentureBeat: Did you find some evidence that they have deliberately delayed your patents? Hyatt: Yes, I have an enormous amount of evidence. I had an appeal to the federal court, the judge allowed us to take discovery, and we got thousands of pages of very incriminating evidence from the patent office and the depositions we were permitted to take. We have a very significant bad faith case against them. We’ve articulated many of these things briefly in the complaint we filed about three months ago. It’s now pending in the federal court of the eastern district of Virginia.
VentureBeat: The time period it covers — is that all the way up to the present day, or is it a specific time in the past where you found something that showed a deliberate delay happening? Hyatt: This has been ongoing since 1995, when the new applications were filed, up through the present. It turns out that the patent office has been adversarial to independent inventors for a very long time.
VentureBeat: What do you think motivated this change? For a while they were granting you patents, and then this change in attitude happened. Did somebody specifically complain about you, causing this to happen? I don’t know if Intel complained to the patent office or what-have-you, but did somebody trigger this breakdown in your patent applications? Hyatt: The patent office — the commissioner of patents at the time was very outspoken about what he called “submarine patents.” They unfairly blamed me for being a “submariner,” without checking into the facts. They needed someone to hold up as a perpetrator. Then, once they poisoned the well against me, the withholding of patents from me continued from administration to administration. We’re in the process of trying to break that chain and get the courts to order a fair examination of my applications.
VentureBeat: How old are you now, by the way? Hyatt: I’m 80 years old. God’s been kind to me.
VentureBeat: Are you still in Las Vegas? Hyatt: Yes, I’m in Las Vegas. I’ve lived here for the past 25 years or so. I moved here in 1991. One of the biggest problems the patent office created is they created this secret program called SAWS, Sensitive Application Warning System. It’s supposed to be a warning system for the directors of the PTO so they could deal with press. But instead, they used it to keep patent applications from issuing. If the truth be known, there were thousands of patent applications that should have issued and have been kept from issuing because of this secret program.
Even more significant, the board of appeals is supposed to be an independent and impartial entity, but the board was given secret information about patent applications. Applicants didn’t know about this. They weren’t permitted to argue against it. It’s a star chamber type of proceeding.
Above: The seal of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.
VentureBeat: Did you find something that referenced them saying they’d just wait until you died? Hyatt: We have testimony on that from several sources, yes. We articulate that in the complaint as well.
VentureBeat: Have you had any favorable developments with regard to this — any progress? Hyatt: Yes, very favorable. Judge [Royce] Lamberth, in federal court, gave me four decisions in four different trials that were very favorable, ordering the patent office to issue my patents, and taking away one of their biggest issues.
VentureBeat: Have they responded to that yet? Hyatt: That decision just came down in the last month. We don’t know how it will play out yet.
VentureBeat: What do you think is the most significant patent you’re waiting on? Hyatt: I’d prefer not to talk about that at this time.
VentureBeat: What have you continued to work on since the time of the microprocessor patent? Hyatt: I did the work on the microprocessor back with a company I formed called Micro Computer Inc., back in 1969 and 1970. From there I continued with my research and development for more than 20 years and filed a bunch of patent applications, many of which are still pending with the patent office through their delays. It’s a whole sequence of research and development, one technology building on another.
1 2 View All The AI Impact Tour Join us for an evening full of networking and insights at VentureBeat's AI Impact Tour, coming to San Francisco, New York, and Los Angeles! VentureBeat Homepage Follow us on Facebook Follow us on X Follow us on LinkedIn Follow us on RSS Press Releases Contact Us Advertise Share a News Tip Contribute to DataDecisionMakers Careers Privacy Policy Terms of Service Do Not Sell My Personal Information © 2023 VentureBeat.
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"Up to One Million Dollars in Financing to Be Awarded to Ethnic Minority Companies in "Shark Tank"-like Business Competition | VentureBeat"
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"https://venturebeat.com/business/up-to-one-million-dollars-in-financing-to-be-awarded-to-ethnic-minority-companies-in-shark-tank-like-business-competition"
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"Artificial Intelligence View All AI, ML and Deep Learning Auto ML Data Labelling Synthetic Data Conversational AI NLP Text-to-Speech Security View All Data Security and Privacy Network Security and Privacy Software Security Computer Hardware Security Cloud and Data Storage Security Data Infrastructure View All Data Science Data Management Data Storage and Cloud Big Data and Analytics Data Networks Automation View All Industrial Automation Business Process Automation Development Automation Robotic Process Automation Test Automation Enterprise Analytics View All Business Intelligence Disaster Recovery Business Continuity Statistical Analysis Predictive Analysis More Data Decision Makers Virtual Communication Team Collaboration UCaaS Virtual Reality Collaboration Virtual Employee Experience Programming & Development Product Development Application Development Test Management Development Languages Press Release Up to One Million Dollars in Financing to Be Awarded to Ethnic Minority Companies in “Shark Tank”-like Business Competition Share on Facebook Share on X Share on LinkedIn Applications Open Now Through September 12, 2018 (BUSINESS WIRE)–August 30, 2018– Metropolitan Economic Development Association (Meda): WHY: Minority business owners have historically found it difficult to gain access to capital. This funding often plays a big part in determining between the success and failure of the business. Studies have shown that financial, human, and social capital, as well as racial discrimination, are primarily responsible for disparities between non-minority and minority businesses. Achieving parity is key to significant U.S. economic growth, creating new jobs and raising wages in economically disadvantaged communities.
WHAT: To help solve this dilemma and bring attention to this issue, the Metropolitan Economic Development Association (Meda) and the City of Saint Paul, Minn., are hosting the first-ever national ethnic minority Million Dollar Challenge – modeled on the television show “Shark Tank” – where early stage businesses will compete for up to $1 million in financing.
WHO: Ethnic-minority owned businesses from across the country will meet in Saint Paul, Minn. and will participate in a speed pitching event to qualify for up to one million dollars in financing. The challenge is being held by Meda, the U.S. Department of Commerce’s top-performing minority business development agency in the nation.
WHEN: Round one will be held on October 10, 2018 as part of Twin Cities Startup Week and adjacent to the national Blacks in Technology conference. Up to 10 finalists will move on to the next round – an “accelerator” offering investor and industry feedback, mentorship, exposure and professional connections. These finalists will return to Saint Paul, Minn. in January for the final event, which will award up to one million dollars in financing. Financing will be in the form of a convertible note.
WHERE: The October 10, 2018 event will be held at the Travelers Insurance corporate headquarters auditorium at 345 Washington Avenue, Saint Paul, Minn. A reception begins at 5:00 p.m. CT and the speed-pitch competition will run from 6 p.m. to 8:15 p.m.
HOW: Potential ethnic minority businesses wanting to apply can do so at www.meda.net and complete a nine-question online questionnaire. Applications are due by 5 p.m. CT on Wednesday, September 12.
Persons with questions may contact Andy O’Leary at [email protected].
View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20180830005844/en/ For Meda: John Scally, 202-878-8333 or Paxton Alto, 612-455-1719 or Andy O’Leary, [email protected] VentureBeat's mission is to be a digital town square for technical decision-makers to gain knowledge about transformative enterprise technology and transact.
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"Samsung and BBH tap AR and ‘Family Guy‘ to demonstrate the wonders of smart appliances | VentureBeat"
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"https://venturebeat.com/business/samsung-and-bbh-tap-ar-and-family-guy-to-demonstrate-the-wonders-of-smart-appliances"
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"Artificial Intelligence View All AI, ML and Deep Learning Auto ML Data Labelling Synthetic Data Conversational AI NLP Text-to-Speech Security View All Data Security and Privacy Network Security and Privacy Software Security Computer Hardware Security Cloud and Data Storage Security Data Infrastructure View All Data Science Data Management Data Storage and Cloud Big Data and Analytics Data Networks Automation View All Industrial Automation Business Process Automation Development Automation Robotic Process Automation Test Automation Enterprise Analytics View All Business Intelligence Disaster Recovery Business Continuity Statistical Analysis Predictive Analysis More Data Decision Makers Virtual Communication Team Collaboration UCaaS Virtual Reality Collaboration Virtual Employee Experience Programming & Development Product Development Application Development Test Management Development Languages Samsung and BBH tap AR and ‘Family Guy‘ to demonstrate the wonders of smart appliances Share on Facebook Share on X Share on LinkedIn Are you looking to showcase your brand in front of the brightest minds of the gaming industry? Consider getting a custom GamesBeat sponsorship.
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What do Family Guy and smart refrigerators have in common? Not much, you’d think, but Samsung and London-based advertising agency BBH found inspiration in the strangest of places. They today launched Doorways, an augmented reality (AR) experience at IFA 2018 that lets users step into a Griffin house outfitted with Samsung smart home appliances.
Much of the AR magic takes place in a cordoned-off Doorways display area, where participants point their cameras at walls wallpapered with QR codes. A special Family Guy app overlays scenes from a narrative featuring Peter Griffin, who instructs the viewers to interact with the Samsung SmartThings-compatible appliances arranged in the digital scene.
One homemaking task involves choosing a playlist; users walk up to a Samsung Smart Refrigerator, launch the Spotify app from its touchscreen, and beam a song to a nearby Samsung Smart TV. Others include learning how to pair the aforementioned television to the fridge to view its contents, running a load of laundry in a Samsung Wi-Fi Washing Machine, and turning on an oven.
“For many consumers, smart devices and the Internet of Things can seem like a complicated concept,” Ian Heartfield, chief creative officer at BBH London, said in a statement. “It can be difficult for them to see what these devices can do and how they can all work together to benefit them. This need to bring it all to life for consumers is why we developed Doorways. Harnessing AR and the wit of Family Guy gives Samsung a unique solution to a complex challenge.” Event GamesBeat at the Game Awards We invite you to join us in LA for GamesBeat at the Game Awards event this December 7. Reserve your spot now as space is limited! For BBH, the Samsung/ Family Guy experience is just the start. Doorways, which leverages Google’s ARCore platform for positional tracking, will be rolled out at tech events globally and in “prominent locations” in cities such as London and New York. The next few experiences will aim to “educate consumers on different aspects of IoT,” BBH said.
Augmented reality marketing is a lucrative business; it’s expected to reach $117.4 billion by 2022. There’s a good reason for all the enthusiasm: It can capture people’s attention for more than a minute and a half, increase attention rates by 20 percent, and improve click-through rates to purchase by 33 percent, according to The Drum.
Brands like Home Depot and Anthropologie offer AR apps that let customers “see” what couches, tablets, and beds might look like in a space before they step foot in a store. Sephora’s Virtual Artist allows users to “try on” makeup via their smartphones’ front camera. And there’s plenty more where they came from.
VentureBeat's mission is to be a digital town square for technical decision-makers to gain knowledge about transformative enterprise technology and transact.
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The AI Impact Tour Join us for an evening full of networking and insights at VentureBeat's AI Impact Tour, coming to San Francisco, New York, and Los Angeles! VentureBeat Homepage Follow us on Facebook Follow us on X Follow us on LinkedIn Follow us on RSS Press Releases Contact Us Advertise Share a News Tip Contribute to DataDecisionMakers Careers Privacy Policy Terms of Service Do Not Sell My Personal Information © 2023 VentureBeat.
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"ProBeat: Firefox is hitting Chrome right in the ads | VentureBeat"
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"https://venturebeat.com/business/probeat-firefox-is-hitting-chrome-right-in-the-ads"
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"Artificial Intelligence View All AI, ML and Deep Learning Auto ML Data Labelling Synthetic Data Conversational AI NLP Text-to-Speech Security View All Data Security and Privacy Network Security and Privacy Software Security Computer Hardware Security Cloud and Data Storage Security Data Infrastructure View All Data Science Data Management Data Storage and Cloud Big Data and Analytics Data Networks Automation View All Industrial Automation Business Process Automation Development Automation Robotic Process Automation Test Automation Enterprise Analytics View All Business Intelligence Disaster Recovery Business Continuity Statistical Analysis Predictive Analysis More Data Decision Makers Virtual Communication Team Collaboration UCaaS Virtual Reality Collaboration Virtual Employee Experience Programming & Development Product Development Application Development Test Management Development Languages Opinion ProBeat: Firefox is hitting Chrome right in the ads Share on Facebook Share on X Share on LinkedIn Are you looking to showcase your brand in front of the brightest minds of the gaming industry? Consider getting a custom GamesBeat sponsorship.
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Mozilla made a surprise announcement yesterday: Firefox will soon block web trackers by default.
This is a privacy and performance gain that Google is going to have a hard time matching in Chrome.
Let me explain.
I’ve been hoping Firefox would start blocking trackers by default for a while now, ever since the company added Tracking Protection to Firefox 42’s private browsing mode in November 2015. With the release of Firefox 57 (Firefox Quantum) in November 2017, Mozilla added an option to enable Tracking Protection outside of private browsing, but to this day it still isn’t on by default. It is in Firefox for iOS , however, and Firefox for Android is expected to follow suit, but on desktop, Tracking Protection remains something users must turn on manually.
While I still wish Mozilla would have simply turned on Tracking Protection by default in Firefox for all platforms, my understanding is that simply too many sites break for this to be a viable strategy, at least right now. And yet, we learned yesterday that the company is building three tracker-blocking features into Firefox for desktop, specifically targeting trackers that slow down page loads (to improve page load performance), trackers that work across sites (strip cookies and block storage access from third-party tracking content), and other trackers that fingerprint users or mine cryptocurrencies.
VB Event The AI Impact Tour Connect with the enterprise AI community at VentureBeat’s AI Impact Tour coming to a city near you! The second one, removing cross-site tracking, is the real game-changer. This is what I mean when I say Firefox is hitting Chrome in the ads. I’m not talking about straight-up blocking ads. Sure, Chrome has started blocking some ads by default , but its implementation is by no means a full-blown ad blocker. Mozilla’s declaration of war on trackers also isn’t going to block ads directly. But it is going to significantly hinder how advertisers can target users. Blocking cross-site tracking by default is a massive win for users.
Chrome can’t respond to Firefox with the same functionality without some serious soul-searching. Google’s parent company Alphabet derives most of its revenue from ads , and cross-site tracking is critical to thousands of advertisers.
When pop-ups got out of control in the early '00s Firefox took a stand and killed them all dead. Now Firefox is taking a stand against tracking on the web because it too has gotten out of control. More here: https://t.co/NFHik6BVCB — Asa Dotzler (@asadotzler) August 30, 2018 Google will likely continue cracking down on “bad ads” in Chrome. That might look good on the surface, but in terms of performance and privacy, Mozilla’s new Firefox strategy will be much more effective. Mozilla doesn’t owe advertisers anything.
As I’ve argued before, Chrome and Firefox are bringing back the browser wars.
While Google beat everyone to the punch with its selective ad blocker , Mozilla is hitting back right where it hurts.
ProBeat is a column in which Emil rants about whatever crosses him that week.
VentureBeat's mission is to be a digital town square for technical decision-makers to gain knowledge about transformative enterprise technology and transact.
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"Microsoft releases new Windows 10 preview without performance visualizations in the Game bar | VentureBeat"
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"https://venturebeat.com/business/microsoft-releases-new-windows-10-preview-without-performance-visualizations-in-the-game-bar"
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"Artificial Intelligence View All AI, ML and Deep Learning Auto ML Data Labelling Synthetic Data Conversational AI NLP Text-to-Speech Security View All Data Security and Privacy Network Security and Privacy Software Security Computer Hardware Security Cloud and Data Storage Security Data Infrastructure View All Data Science Data Management Data Storage and Cloud Big Data and Analytics Data Networks Automation View All Industrial Automation Business Process Automation Development Automation Robotic Process Automation Test Automation Enterprise Analytics View All Business Intelligence Disaster Recovery Business Continuity Statistical Analysis Predictive Analysis More Data Decision Makers Virtual Communication Team Collaboration UCaaS Virtual Reality Collaboration Virtual Employee Experience Programming & Development Product Development Application Development Test Management Development Languages Microsoft releases new Windows 10 preview without performance visualizations in the Game bar Share on Facebook Share on X Share on LinkedIn Windows 10 Are you looking to showcase your brand in front of the brightest minds of the gaming industry? Consider getting a custom GamesBeat sponsorship.
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Microsoft today released a new preview for PCs with 12 bug fixes and a few changes. This build is from the RS5 branch, which represents the Windows 10 update the company plans to release in October. The company is also releasing builds from the 19H1 branch, which, as its name indicates, will arrive in the first half of next year.
Windows 10 is being developed as a service , meaning it receives new features on a regular basis. Microsoft has released five major updates so far: November Update , Anniversary Update , Creators Update , Fall Creators Update , and April 2018 Update.
Microsoft today also shared that the next update will be called “ Windows 10 October 2018 Update.
” Also known as Windows 10 version 1809, it is expected to be finalized for Windows Insiders in September and roll out to the public in October.
Event GamesBeat at the Game Awards We invite you to join us in LA for GamesBeat at the Game Awards event this December 7. Reserve your spot now as space is limited! Microsoft may have stopped adding features to this update, but it’s not done removing them. The performance visualizations (see your game’s framerate, CPU usage, GPU VRAM usage, and system RAM usage) added to the Game bar in build 17692 have been removed. The team wants to “re-evaluate the best possible approach going forward and work on giving you a great gaming experience on your PC.” This desktop build also includes the following general bug fixes and improvements: The build watermark at the lower right-hand corner of the desktop is no longer present in this build. This does not mean this is the final build.
Fixed the issue where logging out of your user profile or shutting down your PC would cause the PC to bugcheck (GSOD).
Fixed a recent issue where color and wallpaper settings weren’t correctly applied after a system upgrade when migration was done in offline mode.
Fixed an issue where, when installing a font for a single user (rather than installing as admin “for all users”), the install would fail with an unexpected error saying that the file was not a valid font file.
Fixed an issue where explorer.exe would crash if you were in Tablet Mode and opened Task View while in portrait orientation.
Fixed an issue where you might unexpectedly get an error saying no supported app is installed, after clicking certain activities in Timeline, even though a supported app was installed.
Fixed an issue resulting in the amount of time it took to launch Settings having noticeably increased recently.
Fixed an issue where if your PC transitioned from battery power to being plugged in while Windows Update Settings was open and downloading an update, you might unexpectedly see it switch to “You’re up to date” immediately afterwards instead of continuing to show the downloading update.
Fixed an issue where the “Logged” drop down box was unexpectedly large in Event Viewer’s filter dialog at high DPI.
Fixed an issue resulting in some people unexpectedly seeing an “Ask for permission” message from Microsoft family features for Windows Shell Experience.
Fixed an issue where in high contrast the icons for items in Windows Security’s navigation pane wouldn’t change color with the rest of the item when mouse hovering over the item, making them difficult to see.
Fixed an issue where when using the Chinese (Simplified) IME it would leak memory on focus switch, adding up over time.
Fixed a recent issue that could result in some flakey network connectivity (including networks stuck “identifying”, and stale network flyout connectivity state). Note, there are a variety of factors that may impact your networking experience, so if you continue to experience flakiness after upgrading to this build, please log feedback.
The messaging in Snipping Tool has been updated and Microsoft is still exploring renaming the updated snipping experience.
Today’s update bumps the Windows 10 build number for the RS5 branch from 17746 (made available to testers on August 24) to build 17751.
This build has three known issues: When you use the Ease of Access Make Text bigger setting, you might see text clipping issues, or find that text is not increasing in size everywhere.
Narrator sometimes does not read in the Settings app when you navigate using Tab and arrow keys. Try switching to Narrator Scan mode temporarily. And when you turn Scan mode off again, Narrator will now read when you navigate using Tab and arrows key. Alternatively, you can restart Narrator to work around this issue.
Clicking on web links in PWAs such as Twitter doesn’t open the browser in this build.
As always, don’t install this on your production machine.
GamesBeat's creed when covering the game industry is "where passion meets business." What does this mean? We want to tell you how the news matters to you -- not just as a decision-maker at a game studio, but also as a fan of games. Whether you read our articles, listen to our podcasts, or watch our videos, GamesBeat will help you learn about the industry and enjoy engaging with it.
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"Microsoft announces Windows 10 October 2018 Update | VentureBeat"
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"https://venturebeat.com/business/microsoft-announces-windows-10-october-2018-update"
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"Artificial Intelligence View All AI, ML and Deep Learning Auto ML Data Labelling Synthetic Data Conversational AI NLP Text-to-Speech Security View All Data Security and Privacy Network Security and Privacy Software Security Computer Hardware Security Cloud and Data Storage Security Data Infrastructure View All Data Science Data Management Data Storage and Cloud Big Data and Analytics Data Networks Automation View All Industrial Automation Business Process Automation Development Automation Robotic Process Automation Test Automation Enterprise Analytics View All Business Intelligence Disaster Recovery Business Continuity Statistical Analysis Predictive Analysis More Data Decision Makers Virtual Communication Team Collaboration UCaaS Virtual Reality Collaboration Virtual Employee Experience Programming & Development Product Development Application Development Test Management Development Languages Microsoft announces Windows 10 October 2018 Update Share on Facebook Share on X Share on LinkedIn Windows 10 Are you looking to showcase your brand in front of the brightest minds of the gaming industry? Consider getting a custom GamesBeat sponsorship.
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Microsoft today revealed that the next free Windows 10 update is called the Windows 10 October 2018 Update. For those keeping track, this is Windows 10 version 1809. Although the company had not announced this update before today, Windows Insiders have been getting builds from Windows 10’s RS5 branch since February.
Windows 10 October 2018 Update includes a dark theme for File Explorer, a new snipping experience, a cloud-powered clipboard, support for extended line endings in Notepad, integration with the Your Phone app , new web sign-in and fast sign-in features, a mixed reality flashlight feature, SwiftKey in the touch keyboard, and many other improvements. The highly anticipated Sets feature did not make the cut.
Windows 10 is being developed as a service , meaning it receives new features on a regular basis. Microsoft has released five major updates so far: November Update , Anniversary Update , Creators Update , Fall Creators Update , and April 2018 Update.
As you can see, with the fifth one Microsoft stopped naming Windows 10 updates. The company is now simply sticking with the month and year of release (two free feature updates are expected every year).
Event GamesBeat at the Game Awards We invite you to join us in LA for GamesBeat at the Game Awards event this December 7. Reserve your spot now as space is limited! If all goes according to plan, Windows Insiders will see October 2018 Update finalized in September, and the public will get it a month later. Microsoft does indeed expect this update to become available for customers starting in October, sources say. That said, the company will delay it if the quality isn’t up to snuff (the April 2018 Update had to be pushed back a bit, but it did arrive on the last day of that month).
Microsoft today also said “nearly 700 million devices” are running Windows 10. That’s, uh, the same figure the company’s outgoing Windows chief shared in March. So Windows 10 adoption has definitely slowed — Microsoft’s latest and greatest operating system passed 600 million devices in November 2017. As I’ve argued before, however, it’s the adoption of these free updates that’s really impressive.
GamesBeat's creed when covering the game industry is "where passion meets business." What does this mean? We want to tell you how the news matters to you -- not just as a decision-maker at a game studio, but also as a fan of games. Whether you read our articles, listen to our podcasts, or watch our videos, GamesBeat will help you learn about the industry and enjoy engaging with it.
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The AI Impact Tour Join us for an evening full of networking and insights at VentureBeat's AI Impact Tour, coming to San Francisco, New York, and Los Angeles! VentureBeat Homepage Follow us on Facebook Follow us on X Follow us on LinkedIn Follow us on RSS Press Releases Contact Us Advertise Share a News Tip Contribute to DataDecisionMakers Careers Privacy Policy Terms of Service Do Not Sell My Personal Information © 2023 VentureBeat.
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"AgTech Company Bear Flag Robotics Raises $3.5 Million Seed Round Led by True Ventures | VentureBeat"
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"https://venturebeat.com/business/agtech-company-bear-flag-robotics-raises-3-5-million-seed-round-led-by-true-ventures"
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"Artificial Intelligence View All AI, ML and Deep Learning Auto ML Data Labelling Synthetic Data Conversational AI NLP Text-to-Speech Security View All Data Security and Privacy Network Security and Privacy Software Security Computer Hardware Security Cloud and Data Storage Security Data Infrastructure View All Data Science Data Management Data Storage and Cloud Big Data and Analytics Data Networks Automation View All Industrial Automation Business Process Automation Development Automation Robotic Process Automation Test Automation Enterprise Analytics View All Business Intelligence Disaster Recovery Business Continuity Statistical Analysis Predictive Analysis More Data Decision Makers Virtual Communication Team Collaboration UCaaS Virtual Reality Collaboration Virtual Employee Experience Programming & Development Product Development Application Development Test Management Development Languages Press Release AgTech Company Bear Flag Robotics Raises $3.5 Million Seed Round Led by True Ventures Share on Facebook Share on X Share on LinkedIn Bear Flag’s autonomous driving technology for farm tractors allows growers to automate common tasks and improve efficiency of operations SUNNYVALE, Calif.–(BUSINESS WIRE)–August 31, 2018– Bear Flag Robotics today announced a $3.5 million seed funding round led by True Ventures. The Silicon Valley-based agtech company is developing autonomous technology for farms, which will help growers lower operational costs and increase yields. As part of the raise, they have welcomed Rohit Sharma, venture partner at True Ventures, to the board. Including this round of funding, the company has raised $4.5 million total since Bear Flag Co-Founders Igino Cafiero and Aubrey Donnellan started the company in 2017.
Today’s growers compete for skilled labor with the construction, mining and trucking industries.
Research suggests that autonomous robots can lower labor expenses and also increase yields by up to 15 percent. Projected yield gains are possible through the reduced soil compaction of smaller tractors. This gain cannot be realized with today’s high cost of labor.
Bear Flag Robotics’ autonomous driving technology for farm tractors solves these problems by equipping tractors and implements with technology that allows growers to automate many of their most common tasks. These include spraying and mowing operations in specialty crops such as nuts, fruits and grapes in addition to common ground prep tasks such as discing and ripping. As a result, Bear Flag enables a single supervisor to operate a fleet of vehicles, where an entire crew was once required.
Autonomous technology is already enabling advancements in the manufacturing, mining and aviation industries. However, farming has yet to leverage this technology, which will be needed to meet the 70 percent increase in global food demand by 2050.
“We’re incredibly interested in how automation and technology can fundamentally aid the farmer in their constant struggle against the elements including changing climate patterns and soil health,” said Sharma. “Bear Flag’s autonomous driving technology for farm machines can increase crop yields, lower operational costs and ultimately lay the groundwork for more sustainable food production.” Bear Flag will provide leasing options to growers who wish to operate their own fleet of autonomous equipment. Additionally, they will offer both full-service and hybrid models, where operations are supervised by a central location. Operations will begin by the end of 2018.
About Bear Flag Robotics Bear Flag Robotics is developing autonomous driving and implement control technology for agricultural tractors, freeing growers from hours of monotonous driving and the high cost of labor to fill tractor seats. For more on Bear Flag, follow along on Instagram @Bear_Flag_Robotics or Twitter @BFRobotics.
About True Ventures Founded in 2005, True Ventures is a Silicon Valley-based venture capital firm that invests in early-stage technology startups. With more than $1.4 billion under management, True provides seed and Series A funding to the most talented entrepreneurs in today’s fastest growing markets. The firm maintains a strong community that supports founders and their teams, helping True companies achieve higher levels of success and impact. To date, True has helped more than 250 companies launch and scale their businesses, creating over 10,000 jobs worldwide. To learn more about True Ventures, visit www.trueventures.com.
View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20180831005046/en/ Bear Flag Robotics Aubrey Donnellan, 650-799-0620 [email protected] VentureBeat's mission is to be a digital town square for technical decision-makers to gain knowledge about transformative enterprise technology and transact.
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"Stop your gamers from screwing themselves and you over (VB Live) | VentureBeat"
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"https://venturebeat.com/ai/stop-your-gamers-from-screwing-themselves-and-you-over-vb-live"
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"Artificial Intelligence View All AI, ML and Deep Learning Auto ML Data Labelling Synthetic Data Conversational AI NLP Text-to-Speech Security View All Data Security and Privacy Network Security and Privacy Software Security Computer Hardware Security Cloud and Data Storage Security Data Infrastructure View All Data Science Data Management Data Storage and Cloud Big Data and Analytics Data Networks Automation View All Industrial Automation Business Process Automation Development Automation Robotic Process Automation Test Automation Enterprise Analytics View All Business Intelligence Disaster Recovery Business Continuity Statistical Analysis Predictive Analysis More Data Decision Makers Virtual Communication Team Collaboration UCaaS Virtual Reality Collaboration Virtual Employee Experience Programming & Development Product Development Application Development Test Management Development Languages VB Live Stop your gamers from screwing themselves and you over (VB Live) Share on Facebook Share on X Share on LinkedIn With every instance of fraud, your game’s reputation takes a nose dive, driving away customers and directly impacting your bottom line. But fraud has always been notoriously difficult to combat — until now. To learn how machine learning and AI can keep your game and players safe from online criminals, don’t miss this VB Live event! Access this VB Live event on demand right here.
Something that’s unique to gaming is that sometimes, in the interests of advancing a character, like abilities and in-game currency, gamers will often go to less than reputable means, says Jeff Sakasegawa, trust and safety architect at Sift Science. They end up downloading scripts or visiting hacker websites in the interest of up-leveling their play.
“But what’s not seen until much later, until they have their aha moment, is that script they thought might get them some gold or give them a skin for free, is ultimately a mechanism that gets their account hacked, taken over, or locked out,” Sakasegawa says. “It’s when you take the legitimate interest of a gamer and use it against them, and thereby perpetrate some fraud.” Fraudsters are especially interested in ways to take advantage of that gamer eagerness to level up, agrees Scott Adams, CEO at FraudPvP.com and former director of fraud and risk at Riot Games. Most of the time, in fraud, you look for the profit — and in most cases, you think in terms of money.
“But what makes it harder in gaming is that often it’s not money, it’s trying to get something within a game,” he says. “They’re generally pretty smart about it, too. They’ll create a site that looks like your site. They’ll target a region that’s having trouble anyway. That makes it really hard, because these gamers –all they want to do is play the game.” You’re usually dealing with a good gamer, he adds. But you end up hurting them when you have to come in and sweep up the damage that’s been done — and the only thing to do in that case is get on top of your fraud issues, protect your IP, and prevent fraud from ever happening in the first place.
Account takeover is something they’ve been seeing a lot, and not just in the gaming industry. But it’s a particularly insidious way to exploit the passion of dedicated gamers.
“When you think about a gamer who’s invested a lot of time and resources, or has a sense of identity tied to their profile, you can see how restoring that identity and getting back to gaming, can be used eventually to ask for some kind of crypto payment,” Sakasegawa says. And account takeover can happen regardless of the initial fraud approach, and it’s the most common way to monetize that exploitation. And then there’s the fact that once a fraudster gains access to those accounts, they almost always have access to some form of payment.
Bots are another big avenue of fraud in games, taking advantage of the churning that most games include, in which a player has to mine for gold or log in lots of time to gain experience points, Sakasegawa adds. The fraudster will create a ton of fake accounts which use bots to level up in the game.
“If a bot can spend time in the game for you, the players don’t think anything of it — they’ll just buy one of these accounts so they don’t have to waste time,” he says.
And that style of fraud is particularly treacherous and difficult to detect, because one of the best indicators for fraud used to be how long an account has been active. But now, with bots being so much easier to create, and with things like virtual machines at Amazon and other web hosts, it’s easy to create a bot that plays for you. They don’t have to be good at it. They just have to interact, and they keep the game client active.
So how can the gaming industry secure gamer data and build trust, in a world where expecting online fraud is just part of navigating the internet? “Ideally, as you’re building your game, thinking about fraud in the first place is huge,” Adams says. “Then you’re actually building in mechanisms right away, as you launch your company, as you add that new product, as you add that new game. If you’re thinking about it in the first place, it’s much easier to do.” It’s the concept of security by design, Sakasegawa agrees. And partnering with a fraud prevention company is key, especially if they’re honest enough to talk to you about things like what kind of community you’re trying to build, and what kind of engagements you want to have on your platform.
You also need to get your program managers and other stakeholders in your company on board with that idea, and create a shared pool of interests that can really help expedite and further security conversations you might have later.
“Hopefully you can address this before you’re burned by some sort of fraud, and then your community base is up in arms, and you’re trying to deal with that, plus trying to remediate some issues,” he says. “That can be a tremendous way to help yourself out from the get-go.” To learn more about creating trust with your game community, why machine learning solutions are key to detecting ever-evolving types of fraud, and how to use data and intelligence well to benefit your company and your game at scale, and more, catch up on this VB Live event! Get free access on demand right here.
In this webinar, you’ll learn: How the gaming industry can secure gamer data and build trust How account takeover, fake licensing, spam, and scams pose a particular challenge to gamers and gaming platforms What policies your company should have in place around data breach ransom How to combat trolling Speakers: Jeff Sakasegawa , Trust and Safety Architect, Sift Science Dean Takahashi , Lead Writer, GamesBeat Scott Adams , CEO FraudPvP.com, Former Director of Fraud & Risk, Riot Games Rachael Brownell , Moderator, VentureBeat Sponsored by Sift Science The AI Impact Tour Join us for an evening full of networking and insights at VentureBeat's AI Impact Tour, coming to San Francisco, New York, and Los Angeles! VentureBeat Homepage Follow us on Facebook Follow us on X Follow us on LinkedIn Follow us on RSS Press Releases Contact Us Advertise Share a News Tip Contribute to DataDecisionMakers Careers Privacy Policy Terms of Service Do Not Sell My Personal Information © 2023 VentureBeat.
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"Netgear Orbi Voice combines mesh WiFi, Alexa-enabled smart speaker, and Harman Kardon audio | VentureBeat"
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"https://venturebeat.com/ai/netgear-debuts-orbi-mesh-wifi-with-alexa-enabled-smart-speaker-and-harman-kardon-audio"
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"Artificial Intelligence View All AI, ML and Deep Learning Auto ML Data Labelling Synthetic Data Conversational AI NLP Text-to-Speech Security View All Data Security and Privacy Network Security and Privacy Software Security Computer Hardware Security Cloud and Data Storage Security Data Infrastructure View All Data Science Data Management Data Storage and Cloud Big Data and Analytics Data Networks Automation View All Industrial Automation Business Process Automation Development Automation Robotic Process Automation Test Automation Enterprise Analytics View All Business Intelligence Disaster Recovery Business Continuity Statistical Analysis Predictive Analysis More Data Decision Makers Virtual Communication Team Collaboration UCaaS Virtual Reality Collaboration Virtual Employee Experience Programming & Development Product Development Application Development Test Management Development Languages Netgear Orbi Voice combines mesh WiFi, Alexa-enabled smart speaker, and Harman Kardon audio Share on Facebook Share on X Share on LinkedIn Orbi Voice Smart Speaker is chubby, but it has 3 products in 1.
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Once a maker of only routers and switches, Netgear is getting more hip with each new product launch. Today, the company is unveiling the Orbi Voice Smart Speaker, a router that includes a mesh Wi-Fi system based on its Orbi WiFi extension networking technology , a built-in Amazon Alexa smart speaker, and high-quality Harman Kardon audio.
The Orbi Voice Smart Speaker can link to any Orbi WiFi System, expanding the wireless networking coverage in a home to 4,500 square feet with performance up to 2.2 gigabits per second within the home. It has a built-in Amazon voice assistant in an Orbi Voice Satellite unit, and it has premium audio from Harman Kardon. It ships in September for $300 to $430.
The San Jose, California-based company showed off the new networking device at the IFA tech trade show in Berlin. With the Orbi Voice Smart Speaker, you can ask Alexa to do anything, like playing music from the most popular music services, setting alarms, controlling internet of things devices, checking traffic, getting the weather, accessing sports scores, and more. And you don’t need a separate Amazon Echo device. The device is built on the Qualcomm mesh networking platform , and Qualcomm noted that this is the first in a line of products that logically connects both a networking function and a client device.
Above: Orbi Voice fits right in.
Orbi Voice has a built-in four-microphone array and far-field voice recognition, enabling Orbi Voice to hear you from across the room. To easily adjust the volume and equalizer controls, you can simply use the Orbi mobile app to adjust the treble and bass emanating from the 3.5-inch front-facing woofer and 1-inch tweeter.
VB Event The AI Impact Tour Connect with the enterprise AI community at VentureBeat’s AI Impact Tour coming to a city near you! Netgear product manager Amit Rele said in an interview with VentureBeat that the tri-band Wi-Fi and Fastlane3 tech built into the Orbi enable fast Wi-Fi networking within the home, at a longer range than traditional routers can do. As a result, mesh Wi-Fi systems have grown 59 percent in the U.S. since 2016, according to market researcher NPD. Smart speakers with Alexa have also been growing quickly.
“People are putting voice assistants, smart speakers, and internet of things devices in different parts of the house,” Rele said. “They buy a smart speaker and realize they need better Wi-Fi in the bedroom.” Harman Kardon offered its expertise on how to design the smart speaker, like how big to make the speaker elements, how much power to put in each frequency range, and how to tune it to make it sound right, Rele said. The device has a 3.5-inch woofer, a 1-inch tweeter, 35 watts of peak power, and 63-20KHz response. I listened to a bit of “Billie Jean” by Michael Jackson on the device, and it was pounding out the bass like it should.
“It’s not just a marketing thing,” he said. “It’s about designing it right.” The Orbi Voice has a sleek, modern design. You won’t be embarrassed to display it on a bookshelf, side table, or kitchen counter. It’s a little fatter than an Amazon Echo, but maybe slightly smaller than an Apple HomePod. Still, combining a voice service, high-end audio, and high-performance Wi-Fi in one device eliminates the clutter of three individual products to deliver the same features.
“If a bunch of people are coming over for dinner or a barbecue, you want to be able to put this where the people are going to be, and that’s not always where you have strong Wi-Fi,” Rele said.
With Orbi Voice, you can ask Alexa to play music from the most popular music streaming providers, including Spotify, Amazon Music, Pandora, iHeartRadio, TuneIn, Deezer, and other services. You can also turn to Orbi Voice and ask Alexa to play audiobooks from Audible, podcasts, radio stations, news briefs, and more.
Above: Orbi Voice lets you ask any Amazon Alexa commands.
The new Orbi System is ready right out of the box and will work with current internet service providers. Setup for an Orbi System is easy using a mobile device through the free Orbi app. It offers easy network management and helps to keep the device current with automated Orbi software updates for new features and Wi-Fi enhancements. Through the Orbi app, you can set Circle Smart Parental Controls on Netgear to manage content and time spent online on a per-child or per-device basis.
Each Orbi Voice Satellite has two Gigabit Ethernet ports for connecting wired devices for even faster file transfers and reliable connections.
An Orbi Mesh WiFi System (RBK50V), consisting of the Orbi Tri-Band WiFi Router plus one Orbi Voice Smart Speaker and WiFi Satellite, will be available later next month for $430.
For those who already have an Orbi WiFi system, the add-on Orbi Voice Smart Speaker and WiFi Mesh satellite (RBS40V) by Netgear will be available this fall at ecommerce sites and major retailers for $300.
VentureBeat's mission is to be a digital town square for technical decision-makers to gain knowledge about transformative enterprise technology and transact.
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The AI Impact Tour Join us for an evening full of networking and insights at VentureBeat's AI Impact Tour, coming to San Francisco, New York, and Los Angeles! VentureBeat Homepage Follow us on Facebook Follow us on X Follow us on LinkedIn Follow us on RSS Press Releases Contact Us Advertise Share a News Tip Contribute to DataDecisionMakers Careers Privacy Policy Terms of Service Do Not Sell My Personal Information © 2023 VentureBeat.
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"Neato unveils Botvac D4 Connected and Botvac D6 Connected robot vacuums | VentureBeat"
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"https://venturebeat.com/ai/neato-unveils-botvac-d4-connected-and-botvac-d6-connected"
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"Artificial Intelligence View All AI, ML and Deep Learning Auto ML Data Labelling Synthetic Data Conversational AI NLP Text-to-Speech Security View All Data Security and Privacy Network Security and Privacy Software Security Computer Hardware Security Cloud and Data Storage Security Data Infrastructure View All Data Science Data Management Data Storage and Cloud Big Data and Analytics Data Networks Automation View All Industrial Automation Business Process Automation Development Automation Robotic Process Automation Test Automation Enterprise Analytics View All Business Intelligence Disaster Recovery Business Continuity Statistical Analysis Predictive Analysis More Data Decision Makers Virtual Communication Team Collaboration UCaaS Virtual Reality Collaboration Virtual Employee Experience Programming & Development Product Development Application Development Test Management Development Languages Neato unveils Botvac D4 Connected and Botvac D6 Connected robot vacuums Share on Facebook Share on X Share on LinkedIn Are you looking to showcase your brand in front of the brightest minds of the gaming industry? Consider getting a custom GamesBeat sponsorship.
Learn more.
Leave it to Neato , a startup operating within 130-year-old German company Vorwerk Group, to shake up the robotic vacuum market. During a press conference at IFA 2018 today, it debuted a new lineup of ultra-efficient vacuums that connect to your home Wi-Fi network and send cleaning reports to a companion smartphone app.
The $499 Botvac D4 Connected replaces Neato’s Botvac D3. The entry-level vacuum has an updated look and feel, with a cube-textured pattern and laser-cut metal inlay that belies its price point. Run time has been improved from 60 minutes to 75 minutes, and it ships with Neato Quick Boost Charging onboard, a feature that automatically figures out how much power is needed to finish a cleaning job and charges accordingly.
Next up: the $699 Botvac D6 Connected. It also sports a new brushed metal look, plus a battery with a 120-minute runtime (up from 90 minutes) and a Turbo mode that increases suction and makes the brush rotate faster. Also in tow are enhanced brushes — a spiral combo brush and a side brush — and a filter that’s designed to sweep up pet hair and allergens.
Existing Botvac D7 owners aren’t getting left out in the cold, though. Neato announced an update — Zone Cleaning — that allows users to target “trouble areas” (e.g., beneath the kitchen table) with more frequent cleaning. It’ll be available this fall for new and existing owners.
VB Event The AI Impact Tour Connect with the enterprise AI community at VentureBeat’s AI Impact Tour coming to a city near you! Both the Botvac D6 and Botvac D4 are available for purchase immediately.
Market-shaking innovation is nothing new for Neato, which was one of the first to integrate Alexa and Google Home with its vacuums. Its other claim to fame: No-Go Lines, which lets you identify areas on floor plans where the robots won’t clean. (In July, an over-the-air software update improved upon it with multiple floor maps.) In addition to No-Go Lines, all of Neato’s new vacuums feature its signature LaserSmart mapping tech, which uses lidar sensors to map the floor. The company says its vacuums average just 22 minutes to clean a room, compared to the next-closest competitor’s 70 minutes.
“We believe in the notion of personalized cleaning,” Neato Robotics vice president of marketing Stephane Maes told VentureBeat in a phone interview. “Everyone’s idea of ‘clean’ is different, and we design products that adapt to them.” Folks are buying what Neato’s selling. Maes said that this year it’s seen close to 50 percent growth and that it’s among the “top 10” market leaders in vacuums.
Of course, there’s plenty of competition. Also at AFI this week, Chinese startup Anker announced the Eufy RoboVac 30C, which boasts up to 1500 pa (pascals) of dirt-sucking power; the second generation of Anker’s BoostIQ technology, which automatically increases the suction power as needed; and compatibility with Alexa and the Google Assistant.
VentureBeat's mission is to be a digital town square for technical decision-makers to gain knowledge about transformative enterprise technology and transact.
Discover our Briefings.
The AI Impact Tour Join us for an evening full of networking and insights at VentureBeat's AI Impact Tour, coming to San Francisco, New York, and Los Angeles! VentureBeat Homepage Follow us on Facebook Follow us on X Follow us on LinkedIn Follow us on RSS Press Releases Contact Us Advertise Share a News Tip Contribute to DataDecisionMakers Careers Privacy Policy Terms of Service Do Not Sell My Personal Information © 2023 VentureBeat.
All rights reserved.
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"Misty Robotics CEO Tim Enwall: Everyone will have a home robot in 10-20 years | VentureBeat"
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"https://venturebeat.com/ai/misty-robotics-ceo-tim-enwall-everyone-will-have-a-home-robot-in-10-20-years"
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"Artificial Intelligence View All AI, ML and Deep Learning Auto ML Data Labelling Synthetic Data Conversational AI NLP Text-to-Speech Security View All Data Security and Privacy Network Security and Privacy Software Security Computer Hardware Security Cloud and Data Storage Security Data Infrastructure View All Data Science Data Management Data Storage and Cloud Big Data and Analytics Data Networks Automation View All Industrial Automation Business Process Automation Development Automation Robotic Process Automation Test Automation Enterprise Analytics View All Business Intelligence Disaster Recovery Business Continuity Statistical Analysis Predictive Analysis More Data Decision Makers Virtual Communication Team Collaboration UCaaS Virtual Reality Collaboration Virtual Employee Experience Programming & Development Product Development Application Development Test Management Development Languages Misty Robotics CEO Tim Enwall: Everyone will have a home robot in 10-20 years Share on Facebook Share on X Share on LinkedIn The Misty II robot for developers.
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In June 2017, when Misty Robotics spun out of Colorado-based startup Sphero — the folks behind the eponymous Sphero toy series, a motorized R2-D2 , and a miniature replica of Lightning McQueen from Disney’s Cars franchise — it announced intentions to develop a “mainstream” home robot with the help of hobbyists, enthusiasts, and crowdfunding backers. With $11.5 million in capital from Venrock and Foundry Group in the bank, the team wasted no time in getting to work. And the startup unveiled the first fruits of its 11-month labor — a robotic development platform called Misty I — at the 2018 Consumer Electronics Show.
In May, Misty Robotics took the wraps off the second iteration of its robot — Misty II — and made 1,500 units available for preorder, starting at $1,499. (The first units are expected to ship by December 4.) The robot weighs in at six pounds, stands 14 inches tall, and packs electronics like a 4K Sony camera, a 4.3-inch LCD display, two hi-fi speakers, eight time-of-flight sensors, and three far-field microphone arrays. It’ll work with third-party services such as Amazon’s Alexa, Microsoft’s Cognitive Services, and the Google Assistant when it launches and will allow owners to create custom programs and routines — including ones that tap into machine learning frameworks like Google’s TensorFlow and Facebook’s Caffe2.
Misty Robotics isn’t exactly rushing to market. It has a 10-year plan, and it’s taking a hands-on approach to development. While a few preprogrammed skills (like autonomous driving and voice recognition) are available on GitHub, the idea is to let developers come up with use cases that the founding team might not have thought of.
I caught up with Misty Robotics CEO Tim Enwall ahead of IFA 2018 in Berlin to talk progress, the state of the home robotics industry, and what the future might hold.
VB Event The AI Impact Tour Connect with the enterprise AI community at VentureBeat’s AI Impact Tour coming to a city near you! Here’s an edited transcript of our interview.
VentureBeat: So tell me what you’ve been up to lately.
Tim Enwall: We went out and raised money. Around July 4 of last year, we moved into our own offices and started building out a team. Then in May, we did a crowdfunding campaign, and we’re super excited about how it went — we raised almost a million dollars. It proved to me that without a shadow of a doubt, we’d got a business worth tens of millions of dollars.
Now, we’re driving toward shipping our product in December and doing all the hard work required to create the most advanced, affordable, useful, and easily programmable robots out there.
VentureBeat: Right. Maybe you can talk a bit more about Misty II. From where I’m standing, a lot seems to have changed since you announced it. Anki unveiled a home robot — Vector — and [Bosch-funded startup] Mayfield Robotics announced that it’s shuttering its doors after years of iterating its robot, Kuri. So what do you think sets Misty apart from what’s out there and what’s come before? What will make it successful? Enwall : The short answer to that question is the usefulness of the Misty platform.
When I speak to investors, journalists, and others about Misty, I like to ask them a couple of questions to set the stage. The first is, do you believe that in the relatively near future, there will be robots in every home and every office? Let’s not debate the definition of “relative” for the moment. Yes or no? VentureBeat: Possibly. I’m not convinced — I haven’t come across or encountered a home robot I really thought was indispensable.
Enwall: But that’s not the question. The question isn’t, is there one that exists today? The question is, do you believe in the relatively near future, robots will exist in our offices in our homes in a widespread way? I’m talking the next 10 to 20 years.
The next question is, do you believe that in the future, we’ll be buying 30 to 50 single-use robots like those that exist today? I’m referring to robot vacuum cleaners, lawnmowers, telepresence robots, security robots, et cetera … Are we going to buy all of these, or are we going to buy one that does 30, 50, or even 100 things for us? There is no company on the planet today — or in the future, for that matter — that can deliver a robot that’ll perform all of the hundreds of things that robots will eventually do in the office or the home. To be clear: There’s no company on the planet that has the resources and the talent to deliver a robot that does 50 things that are different for you in your home than the 50 things I want and the 50 things that somebody else wants. The only way to get there is through crowdsourcing.
So that’s the concept behind Misty. Therefore, we have to deliver something that is powerful enough to create usefulness. And the only other product out there on the market that comes anywhere close to being able to provide a level of usefulness is … [SoftBank’s] Pepper, and that’s a $15,000 product.
VentureBeat: You’ve talked in the past about all the ways the Misty II platform will remain open and already, you’re integrating with the many third-party services out there [like Alexa and the Google Assistant]. Was that a strategic decision? Do you think it’ll help you gain traction? Enwall: Yeah, definitely. Again, I’m a huge believer that the consumer who wants a robot in their house wants Rosie [from The Jetsons ] … and that class of robot does 100 things for the consumer.
Right now, every robot maker has decided to go the single-purpose route to serve the mass market. As a result, you’ve got this expectation gap between robots that can, say, vacuum the floor and Rosie. We believe that the only way to close it is by building a robot platform that can eventually do physically what Rosie can do, with the help of a software foundation that lets thousands of developers create the skills and the accessories.
VentureBeat: I’m guessing your open approach has guided Misty’s hardware design. I mean, it can’t be easy to figure out which components to include and which not to include. I’m sure price point is top of mind for you, and you probably can’t fit everything you want and maintain affordability. Perhaps you could talk a bit about how the Misty II’s design has evolved throughout the campaign and what your backers are telling you.
Enwall: From a hardware perspective, it’s not going to change much from now to December — I mean, we’re already piloting production runs in China. The decision-making process was guided by this question: How can we tack the most usefulness and stay within budget? We wanted a robot that could do a lot of AI locally, and AI at all skill levels. Whether it’s a college student or a professional who’s experimenting with an independent robot can do for them, we wanted the robot to be very capable from an API perspective. We also wanted it to be autonomously mobile.
That’s why we chose a pretty expensive but super capable 3D depth sensor so that it can not only navigate its way around, but produce a manipulable 3D map of the world for object detection and other features. We wanted Misty II to have high fidelity speakers so that when it does leverage natural language processing from Amazon or Google, it sounds great. We wanted the robot to have great microphones so that it’s capable of working with voice.
Those are the sort of the basics we thought Misty II needed for it be useful. It had to be able to navigate by itself, and it had to have great eyes, great ears, and a great brain that’s capable of capable of doing quite a bit of AI.
VentureBeat: So AI is a core part of the platform, I take it. That makes sense — artificial intelligence is what most people think of when they think of a robot. So was that a natural area of emphasis for you? Did you choose the Misty II’s internals with that in mind, and are you going to supply developer tools that make it easy to get things like computer vision applications and natural language processing up and running? Enwall: Yeah, absolutely. We put two powerful cell phone processors in there so that you can do some AI-related things, and we also opened up the pipeline for developers and gave them frameworks by which to access it.
We believe that with a mobile real-time platform, you’ve got all kinds of auditory and visual data that can feed learning systems. Most learning systems are off in the cloud somewhere, and they’re fed data mainly in a non-real-time manner. When you’re at the edge, you can feed a bunch of these learning systems and have them work collaboratively with the cloud to do additional processing.
VentureBeat: I’m glad you brought that up. There seems to be an ongoing debate about on-device processing versus cloud processing. It makes a difference whether you’re talking about inference or model training, of course. But is it something you considered in the development of the Misty platform? Did you design it to ensure that it’s not incomplete, so to speak, if there’s not a reliable internet connection available? Enwall: Oh yeah, we’ve done a lot to design it so that it’s independent and autonomous of the internet. Most of our work, actually, concentrate on making this robot robust and effective and useful without being connected to the internet. Stuff like face detection, face recognition, autonomous mapping, and navigation — none of that requires any internet connectivity.
We think that’s a pretty big distinction. When you’re moving around in the real world and you’re mobile, you have to respond in milliseconds. Regardless of what anybody would like to imagine about the latency of a round trip back to the cloud, it’s just more latency than decisions that you can make locally.
I think there’s a privacy component there, too. People will be even more aware of it with robots moving around offices and homes. It’s certainly a vector that we believe in and spend time thinking about.
VentureBeat: With the remaining time we have, I’d like to ask about the future. When the Misty II launches and it starts to arrive in people’s homes and places of work, where are do you go from there? Is there going to be some kind of marketplace where people can download creations from other users? Are there going to be frequent updates that enhance its capabilities? Enwall: Absolutely. That’s already part of the plan — there’s a mechanism for developers to share their skills and accessories with each.
You can expect to see some skills emerging that might make your robot more valuable and useful to you, even in the earliest days, and it will continue to get better and smarter.
On our website, we’ve made our product roadmap publicly available. We only want to work on the things that our customer base finds valuable. We hope to every month be issuing a new feature, a new capability, so that the robot gets more powerful.
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"Huawei's first smart speaker is the AI Cube, with Alexa and built-in 4G router | VentureBeat"
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"https://venturebeat.com/ai/huaweis-first-smart-speaker-is-the-ai-cube-with-alexa-and-built-in-4g-router"
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"Artificial Intelligence View All AI, ML and Deep Learning Auto ML Data Labelling Synthetic Data Conversational AI NLP Text-to-Speech Security View All Data Security and Privacy Network Security and Privacy Software Security Computer Hardware Security Cloud and Data Storage Security Data Infrastructure View All Data Science Data Management Data Storage and Cloud Big Data and Analytics Data Networks Automation View All Industrial Automation Business Process Automation Development Automation Robotic Process Automation Test Automation Enterprise Analytics View All Business Intelligence Disaster Recovery Business Continuity Statistical Analysis Predictive Analysis More Data Decision Makers Virtual Communication Team Collaboration UCaaS Virtual Reality Collaboration Virtual Employee Experience Programming & Development Product Development Application Development Test Management Development Languages Huawei’s first smart speaker is the AI Cube, with Alexa and built-in 4G router Share on Facebook Share on X Share on LinkedIn Are you looking to showcase your brand in front of the brightest minds of the gaming industry? Consider getting a custom GamesBeat sponsorship.
Learn more.
Smart speakers. It seems everyone and their mother has one these days, and that’s not too far from the truth — 91 million people (about a third of the U.S. population) use a voice assistant, such as Apple’s Siri, Amazon’s Alexa, Microsoft’s Cortana, or the Google Assistant, at least once a month, according to eMarketer.
Moreover, sales of smart home speakers are on the upswing, growing 187 percent in Q2 2018.
So it’s not surprising that Huawei wants in on the action.
During its IFA 2018 keynote in Berlin today, the Shenzhen company took the wraps off the Huawei AI Cube, a smart speaker meant to compete with heavyweights like the Google Home Amazon’s Echo lineup. It’s not your average voice-recognizing, command-performing assistant, though — the AI Cube has a 4G router built into it and proprietary audio technology it claims delivers “unprecedented” sound quality.
“The Huawei AI Cube represents a new easy and convenient way to control your smart home devices and deliver high-quality audio,” a Huawei executive said during a pre-briefing. “It also represents our commitment to innovation and collaboration between telecommunication, technology, and new AI technology … We think we can build a better-connected world with more AI devices.” VB Event The AI Impact Tour Connect with the enterprise AI community at VentureBeat’s AI Impact Tour coming to a city near you! Let’s unpack that a little.
AI Cube The AI Cube’s diminutive plastic-and-fabric body almost invites you to carry it around. It’s 116mm x 116mm x 218mm and weighs about 900g, and in my brief time with it, it seemed noticeably lighter and more compact than the Google Home. The ports are hidden inconspicuously beneath the base, giving it a streamlined, minimalist appearance (save a circular array of LEDs on the top that light up when it hears or responds to a command), and the fabric speaker mesh is to an extent customizable — it comes in several different colors (yet to be announced).
Members of the press weren’t given a chance to try the AI Cube’s hotspot feature, but it’s powered by a 4G LTE modem that can hit speeds up to 300Mbps (Cat. 6); a SIM card slot and Huawei’s HiLink app help you get connected in minutes. If cellular doesn’t float your boat, the AI Cube packs an 802.11ac dual-band (2.4GHz/5GHz) Wi-Fi chip that transmits data at speeds of up to 1,200Mbps.
Huawei opted not to follow in Samsung’s footsteps by developing an assistant of its own, instead partnering with Amazon to get Alexa up and running on the AI Cube (via Alexa Voice Services). It’s a bone-stock configuration that supports the standard array of Alexa commands (“Alexa, set a timer”) and integrations (it works with more than 20,000 smart home devices from 3,500 brands), and provides unfettered access to the roughly 50,000 apps — skills, in Amazon’s parlance — in the Alexa Skills Store.
Alexa-powered smart speakers are a dime a dozen, but few can match the AI Cube’s sound quality, Huawei claims. It’s got a 400ml sound cavity and aluminum diaphragm that enable it to produce “full, rounded bass,” and suite technology — Huawei Histen (pronounced “ High- sen”) — comprising virtual bass, linear phase equalization, and adaptive gain control, among other features.
So how does it sound? Surprisingly good. I was impressed by the bass coming out of the little thing, which seemed well-balanced and not too boomy to my ears. The jury’s out on how it handles less acoustically forgiving rooms, but I’d put what I heard on par with anything my Google Home has produced.
Less impressive is its voice recognition. Huawei says it’s using four “far-field microphones” to listen for commands, but whatever tech lies under the hood, it definitely needs some work. More than once, I couldn’t get it to respond to the hotword (“Alexa”) after repeated attempts.
To be fair, Huawei’s engineers have plenty of time to recalibrate. AI Cube is a way out from launch — it’s set to hit store shelves “this holiday” in Europe, with pricing to be announced at a later date.
I’ll reserve full judgment for now, but I’m struggling to see a standout selling point here. Sure, the AI Cube’s 4G hotspot might come in handy in a pinch (if your smartphone doesn’t have that feature), and the audio quality seems decent enough. However, there’s not much else to differentiate it, and with smart speaker competition from Bose, Anker, Samsung, and dozens of others, Huawei better have a trick up its sleeve if it hopes to gain any ground.
Huawei Locator and New Mate P20 Colors Alongside the AI Cube, Huawei announced the Huawei Locator, a Tile-like locating beacon with cellular connectivity. The IP68 dust- and water-resistant puck has a gyroscope and accelerometer, lasts up to 15 days on a charge and up to 60 days on standby, and boasts superior accuracy (within 5 meters outdoors and within 30 meters indoors, Huawei claims). That’s thanks to support for all four major satellite positioning systems, including GPS, GLONASS, Galileo, and Beidou, plus Assisted GPS (which triangulates location from nearby cell towers) and Skyhook’s Wi-Fi Positioning System.
The Huawei Locator works with all major cell bands (and can automatically switch between them) and pairs to devices via Bluetooth Low Energy. There’s an SOS button that triggers an alarm when pressed and a proximity-based service that buzzes the device if you take it outside a predefined, geofenced area.
Huawei said it’s intended for “pets, kids and elders, baggage, and valuables.” As with the AI Cube, Huawei Locator pricing has yet to be announced, but it has a firm European launch date: October.
Last, but not least, Huawei debuted the Mate P20 and P20 Pro in four new colors: two in a shimmery gradient (Morpho Aurora and Pearl White) and two in leather. All have with 8GB of RAM and 256GB of storage.
Per Huawei: “The Morpho Aurora was inspired by the Morpho butterfly, while the Pearl White exudes the same elegance as the iridescent mother-of-pearl.” Pricing and availability are forthcoming.
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"Huawei's AI Cube smart speaker is a round peg in a square hole | VentureBeat"
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"https://venturebeat.com/ai/huaweis-ai-cube-smart-speaker-is-a-round-peg-in-a-square-hole"
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"Artificial Intelligence View All AI, ML and Deep Learning Auto ML Data Labelling Synthetic Data Conversational AI NLP Text-to-Speech Security View All Data Security and Privacy Network Security and Privacy Software Security Computer Hardware Security Cloud and Data Storage Security Data Infrastructure View All Data Science Data Management Data Storage and Cloud Big Data and Analytics Data Networks Automation View All Industrial Automation Business Process Automation Development Automation Robotic Process Automation Test Automation Enterprise Analytics View All Business Intelligence Disaster Recovery Business Continuity Statistical Analysis Predictive Analysis More Data Decision Makers Virtual Communication Team Collaboration UCaaS Virtual Reality Collaboration Virtual Employee Experience Programming & Development Product Development Application Development Test Management Development Languages Opinion Huawei’s AI Cube smart speaker is a round peg in a square hole Share on Facebook Share on X Share on LinkedIn Huawei AI Cube Are you looking to showcase your brand in front of the brightest minds of the gaming industry? Consider getting a custom GamesBeat sponsorship.
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Huawei has had much to celebrate in 2018, with the Chinese technology firm passing Apple to nab the No. 2 spot for smartphone shipments in Q2 as sales surged more than 40 percent.
With swooning reviews for high-end phones such as the P20 Pro and slick mesmerizing devices courtesy of its Honor subbrand, it’s fair to say Huawei is now a major player in the global smartphone sphere.
At IFA 2018 in Berlin earlier today, Huawei unveiled plans to infiltrate the burgeoning smart speaker space, too.
The Huawei AI Cube is a little Alexa-powered device that ticks most of the boxes in terms of what we’ve come to expect from a virtual assistant-infused smart speaker — it supports the usual range of Alexa voice commands and integrations and works with more than 20,000 smart home contraptions from 3,500 brands.
However, on closer inspection, Huawei’s inaugural smart speaker emerges as something of a strange beast. Firstly, there is the oddity of its name.
VB Event The AI Impact Tour Connect with the enterprise AI community at VentureBeat’s AI Impact Tour coming to a city near you! To digress just a little, you may recall that a few months back Amazon launched a $119 streaming box called the Fire TV Cube. Without going into too much detail about its capabilities, the Fire TV Cube is most certainly a cube by anyone’s estimation.
Above: Amazon’s new Fire TV Cube.
But a quick peek at Huawei’s AI Cube reveals that it’s not a symmetrical 3D shape constituting six equal-sized squares. It is … how can we put it … a cylinder. It’s kind of like an elongated Google Home , without the slanted angle at the top.
Above: Huawei AI Cube It‘s not a huge deal in the scheme of things, but any company that shoehorns a geometric shape into a product’s brand name should at least ensure that the product roughly matches the description.
LTE Branding aside, it’s worth delving a little deeper into the AI Cube. The device can double as an 802.11ac Wi-Fi router, meaning it can serve as the internet distributor for your entire connected home. But oddly, Huawei has also chosen to squeeze a 4G modem and SIM card slot into the AI Cube’s svelte casing — this baby can dance without home Wi-Fi.
At 116mm x 116mm x 218mm and 900g, the AI Cube isn’t the smallest smart speaker on the market, but it is easy enough to pick up and take away with you. And with 4G LTE capabilities built in, that could be one of its selling points, as a portable travel smart speaker that works anywhere you want. Except there is no on-board battery, so it isn’t really designed for such a use case — you can’t easily use this while camping, for example.
As with its competitors, the Huawei AI Cube is evidently designed for use in domestic situations, such as your home, where Wi-Fi is likely to be in plentiful supply. So it’s not entirely clear why the company feels the need to ship its first smart speaker with 4G LTE.
Huawei does, of course, have a background in networking equipment, which may explain why its smart speaker is 4G connected, but it could be trying too hard to differentiate here. Is this a smart speaker with a built-in router or a router with a built-in smart speaker? Whatever it is, it’s a bit of a square peg in a round hole — or, to put it a little more aptly, a round peg in a square hole.
VentureBeat's mission is to be a digital town square for technical decision-makers to gain knowledge about transformative enterprise technology and transact.
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The AI Impact Tour Join us for an evening full of networking and insights at VentureBeat's AI Impact Tour, coming to San Francisco, New York, and Los Angeles! VentureBeat Homepage Follow us on Facebook Follow us on X Follow us on LinkedIn Follow us on RSS Press Releases Contact Us Advertise Share a News Tip Contribute to DataDecisionMakers Careers Privacy Policy Terms of Service Do Not Sell My Personal Information © 2023 VentureBeat.
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"Google Assistant can now speak two languages at once | VentureBeat"
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"https://venturebeat.com/ai/google-assistant-can-now-speak-two-languages-at-once"
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"Artificial Intelligence View All AI, ML and Deep Learning Auto ML Data Labelling Synthetic Data Conversational AI NLP Text-to-Speech Security View All Data Security and Privacy Network Security and Privacy Software Security Computer Hardware Security Cloud and Data Storage Security Data Infrastructure View All Data Science Data Management Data Storage and Cloud Big Data and Analytics Data Networks Automation View All Industrial Automation Business Process Automation Development Automation Robotic Process Automation Test Automation Enterprise Analytics View All Business Intelligence Disaster Recovery Business Continuity Statistical Analysis Predictive Analysis More Data Decision Makers Virtual Communication Team Collaboration UCaaS Virtual Reality Collaboration Virtual Employee Experience Programming & Development Product Development Application Development Test Management Development Languages Google Assistant can now speak two languages at once Share on Facebook Share on X Share on LinkedIn Google Home.
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Starting today, Google Assistant can now speak two languages at once. At feature launch, Google Assistant will be able to speak a combination of English, French, German, Italian, Japanese, and Spanish. Multilingual support will expand to include more languages in the coming months, a company spokesperson told VentureBeat in an email.
Google Assistant is the first among competitors like Siri, Bixby, Alexa, and Cortana to be able to speak two languages at once.
Multilingual Google Assistant support is available on many devices that speak with Assistant today, including Android smartphones, Home speakers, and Android tablets. The one exception to this rule is smart speakers with a screen and Google Assistant inside, like the Lenovo Smart Display released last month and the JBL Link View due out in the weeks ahead.
To add support for two languages, go to the Settings menu in the Google Assistant app, choose Preferences, then choose Assistant Languages. Once enabled, users can switch freely between their two languages of choice.
VB Event The AI Impact Tour Connect with the enterprise AI community at VentureBeat’s AI Impact Tour coming to a city near you! Google was able to make Assistant multilingual automatic speech recognition by using the LangID model to identify language and simultaneously deploying automatic speech recognition models. Another algorithm is then used to rank the confidence level of each speech-to-text language transcription in a matter of milliseconds. Google will next try to enable Assistant to speak three languages at once, according to a Google AI blog post explaining the process to make it bilingual.
Google has extended support to new languages like Spanish, Swedish, and Dutch this year, and has committed to making Google Assistant available in more than 30 languages by the end of 2018.
Extension to new markets and non-English speaking parts of the world presents its own challenge, as Alexa and Google Assistant’s language understanding has been found to be 30 percent less accurate when hearing accents from outside the United States.
As smart speaker adoption grows and conversational computing becomes more available around the world, tech giants with AI-powered assistants, including Google, have made efforts to laud their technology’s ability to speak multiple languages.
This summer, Amazon announced that Alexa can now speak French and Echo speakers are coming to Mexico , and Apple lauded Siri’s growing use of location data to deliver accurate speech recognition.
The fight for consumers abroad appears to be increasingly important.
A Canalys report released earlier this month found that Google Home sales have outpaced Echo speaker sales worldwide for the second quarter in a row. The report also found demand growing at a healthy pace in other parts of the world, with Alibaba and Xiaomi now ranked third and fourth in the world in global smart speaker sales.
Also announced today: Google Home Max speakers are now available in the United Kingdom, France, and Germany.
The news comes a day ahead of the start of IFA, an international consumer electronics conference in Berlin where third-party manufacturers are putting Google Assistant into their devices such as the XBoom AI ThinQ smart speaker from LG and Voice, the first smart speaker from Marshall.
VentureBeat's mission is to be a digital town square for technical decision-makers to gain knowledge about transformative enterprise technology and transact.
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"Facebook is using unsupervised machine learning for translations | VentureBeat"
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"https://venturebeat.com/ai/facebook-is-using-unsupervised-machine-learning-for-translations"
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"Artificial Intelligence View All AI, ML and Deep Learning Auto ML Data Labelling Synthetic Data Conversational AI NLP Text-to-Speech Security View All Data Security and Privacy Network Security and Privacy Software Security Computer Hardware Security Cloud and Data Storage Security Data Infrastructure View All Data Science Data Management Data Storage and Cloud Big Data and Analytics Data Networks Automation View All Industrial Automation Business Process Automation Development Automation Robotic Process Automation Test Automation Enterprise Analytics View All Business Intelligence Disaster Recovery Business Continuity Statistical Analysis Predictive Analysis More Data Decision Makers Virtual Communication Team Collaboration UCaaS Virtual Reality Collaboration Virtual Employee Experience Programming & Development Product Development Application Development Test Management Development Languages Facebook is using unsupervised machine learning for translations Share on Facebook Share on X Share on LinkedIn A Facebook like button is pictured at the Facebook France headquarters in Paris, France, November 27, 2017.
Are you ready to bring more awareness to your brand? Consider becoming a sponsor for The AI Impact Tour. Learn more about the opportunities here.
Facebook has begun using unsupervised machine learning to translate content on its platform when it doesn’t have many examples of translations from one language to another — such as from English to Urdu.
The method was devised by Facebook AI Research (FAIR) and is being used on the platform in a collaborative effort between FAIR and the Applied Machine Learning division of the company, FAIR Paris lab director Antoine Bordes told VentureBeat in a phone interview.
The approach performs about as well as supervised models with 100,000 translations from one language to another, and it outperforms systems for language pairings for which Facebook has few examples.
“When you are on cases like English-Urdu, where there’s very few [translations], there we show that our system is better than the supervised system. So it’s better to train an unsupervised system than a supervised system that doesn’t have enough data,” Bordes said.
VB Event The AI Impact Tour Connect with the enterprise AI community at VentureBeat’s AI Impact Tour coming to a city near you! The results of the effort led by Facebook AI researchers Guillaume Lample and Marc’Aurelio Ranzato will be presented at EMNLP 2018 this fall.
Bordes was an early FAIR hire and called the research some of the best he’s ever seen. The study puts attention on translation, a crucial task for Facebook and an issue FAIR has been focused on since its began in 2013, Bordes said.
“We could go now on a planet where people speak a language that nobody else speaks — okay, the aliens — and you can actually go and try to have a decent translation of what is said there,” Bordes said. “You could go to an ancient manuscript for language that has not been deciphered, and you could actually get a sense of what it does, so this is really the kind of breakthrough that this work has achieved, and I think that’s why I’m pretty excited.” Like other FAIR projects, the AI system will be open-sourced and made available for download on GitHub.
Earlier this year, Facebook open-sourced Translate , an AI system currently used to power translation on Facebook.
Systems like Translate required huge amounts of labeled data to be trained. Completing a translation from French to English, for example, required millions of sample sentences to create a system capable of understanding both languages. Because of this, translations have been difficult when Facebook doesn’t have many examples of translations from one particular language to another.
The AI system now being used in these sorts of cases was put together with a combination of three elements: word-for-word translation, language models, and back translation.
Word-for-word translation is trained to predict words based on context drawn from the five words preceding and the five words following a specific word in a sentence. This word embedding method was laid out in a paper co-authored by Lample and Ranzato last fall.
Language models trained with large amounts of data — like books or other written text — are then used to arrange sentences in a structure that makes sense for an English speaker or Urdu speaker, for example.
Finally, back-translation is used to improve upon translation carried out with word-for-word translation and language models. The methods aren’t new, but the combination of the three is producing results, he said.
“Using these two systems [and] translating back and forth between the two languages, I can train them together to try to improve against each other, so this is really the core of the paper, using the words [translation model], using the language model to do first translation, then using the back translation idea to try to improve,” he said.
Facebook will explore this AI system for other forms of translation in the future, but more data and work with specialized translators is needed to verify the results, Bordes said.
VentureBeat's mission is to be a digital town square for technical decision-makers to gain knowledge about transformative enterprise technology and transact.
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"Apple says one of its self-driving cars was rear-ended | VentureBeat"
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"https://venturebeat.com/ai/apple-says-one-of-its-self-driving-cars-was-rear-ended"
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"Artificial Intelligence View All AI, ML and Deep Learning Auto ML Data Labelling Synthetic Data Conversational AI NLP Text-to-Speech Security View All Data Security and Privacy Network Security and Privacy Software Security Computer Hardware Security Cloud and Data Storage Security Data Infrastructure View All Data Science Data Management Data Storage and Cloud Big Data and Analytics Data Networks Automation View All Industrial Automation Business Process Automation Development Automation Robotic Process Automation Test Automation Enterprise Analytics View All Business Intelligence Disaster Recovery Business Continuity Statistical Analysis Predictive Analysis More Data Decision Makers Virtual Communication Team Collaboration UCaaS Virtual Reality Collaboration Virtual Employee Experience Programming & Development Product Development Application Development Test Management Development Languages Apple says one of its self-driving cars was rear-ended Share on Facebook Share on X Share on LinkedIn Are you looking to showcase your brand in front of the brightest minds of the gaming industry? Consider getting a custom GamesBeat sponsorship.
Learn more.
( Reuters ) — An Apple self-driving car was rear-ended while merging onto an expressway near the company’s Silicon Valley headquarters this month, the company said in an accident report posted on Friday that confirmed the iPhone maker is still in the race to build autonomous vehicles.
Apple executives have never publicly spoken about the company’s self-driving car program , but filings in a criminal court case last month confirmed that the company had at least 5,000 employees working on the project and that it was working on circuit boards and a “proprietary chip” related to self-driving cars.
Apple is entering a crowded field where rivals such as Alphabet’s Waymo unit and traditional carmakers such as General Motors’ Cruise Automation, as well as startups such as Silicon Valley’s Zoox, are pouring billions of dollars into cars that can drive themselves.
On Aug. 24, one of Apple’s Lexus RX 450h self-driving test vehicles in “autonomous mode” was merging south on the Lawrence Expressway in Sunnyvale, California at less than 1 mile per hour when it was rear-ended by a 2016 Nissan Leaf going about 15 miles per hour, according to the report posted on the California Department of Motor Vehicles website.
VB Event The AI Impact Tour Connect with the enterprise AI community at VentureBeat’s AI Impact Tour coming to a city near you! The accident happened at about 3 p.m. as the Apple vehicle had slowed and was waiting for a safe gap in traffic to complete the merge, the report said.
Both vehicles sustained damage but there were no injuries, the report said. Under a safety plan filed with California regulators, a human driver must be able to take control of Apple’s self-driving test cars.
An Apple spokesman confirmed that the company had filed the report but did not comment further. He declined to respond to questions about whether the trailing car could have been at fault.
Apple’s efforts remained shrouded in secrecy until years after its rivals like Google had begun testing on public roads. The iPhone maker’s first public acknowledgement of interest in the field came in a letter to U.S. transportation regulators in late 2016 urging them not to restrict testing of the vehicles.
Last year, Apple secured a permit to test autonomous vehicles in California. It has been testing cars on the road since last year and now has permits for more than 60 vehicles. Apple researchers also last year published their first public research on cars, a software system that could help spot pedestrians more readily.
The safety of self-driving cars has become a source of concern for U.S. transportation regulators this year after one of Uber’s vehicles struck and killed a woman in March in Arizona, prompting the company to shut down its testing efforts for a time. Uber has said it plans to have self-driving cars back on the road by the end of the year.
The California DMV said it has received it has received 95 autonomous vehicle collision reports as of Aug. 31. Dozens of companies have received permits to test self-driving vehicles on California roads, but those permits require the presence of a human safety driver.
VentureBeat's mission is to be a digital town square for technical decision-makers to gain knowledge about transformative enterprise technology and transact.
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The AI Impact Tour Join us for an evening full of networking and insights at VentureBeat's AI Impact Tour, coming to San Francisco, New York, and Los Angeles! VentureBeat Homepage Follow us on Facebook Follow us on X Follow us on LinkedIn Follow us on RSS Press Releases Contact Us Advertise Share a News Tip Contribute to DataDecisionMakers Careers Privacy Policy Terms of Service Do Not Sell My Personal Information © 2023 VentureBeat.
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"Alexa voice control is coming to Toshiba televisions | VentureBeat"
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"https://venturebeat.com/ai/alexa-voice-control-is-coming-to-toshiba-televisions"
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"Artificial Intelligence View All AI, ML and Deep Learning Auto ML Data Labelling Synthetic Data Conversational AI NLP Text-to-Speech Security View All Data Security and Privacy Network Security and Privacy Software Security Computer Hardware Security Cloud and Data Storage Security Data Infrastructure View All Data Science Data Management Data Storage and Cloud Big Data and Analytics Data Networks Automation View All Industrial Automation Business Process Automation Development Automation Robotic Process Automation Test Automation Enterprise Analytics View All Business Intelligence Disaster Recovery Business Continuity Statistical Analysis Predictive Analysis More Data Decision Makers Virtual Communication Team Collaboration UCaaS Virtual Reality Collaboration Virtual Employee Experience Programming & Development Product Development Application Development Test Management Development Languages Alexa voice control is coming to Toshiba televisions Share on Facebook Share on X Share on LinkedIn Are you ready to bring more awareness to your brand? Consider becoming a sponsor for The AI Impact Tour. Learn more about the opportunities here.
Starting next year, many of Toshiba’s OLED, 4K, and Full HD Smart Range televisions will respond to Alexa voice control, the company announced today. Alexa in Toshiba televisions will be able to do things like change the channel or volume, deliver movie recommendations, read the news, or launch more than 45,000 Alexa skills.
Toshiba also unveiled its first-ever Android TV offering today with Google Assistant voice control. The 55-inch device will be able to do similar things as Alexa in that it can control smart home devices, launch apps, search for movies, or change the volume. Google Assistant voice control for Android TVs first became available last fall.
Like JBL, Harman Kardon, and many other manufacturers, Toshiba has chosen to sell appliances with voice control from both Alexa and Google Assistant.
VB Event The AI Impact Tour Connect with the enterprise AI community at VentureBeat’s AI Impact Tour coming to a city near you! Control of televisions and content like music and videos have been key to the adoption of AI assistants like Alexa and Google Assistant. That’s part of the reason why Amazon and Google have each tried to brand its assistant as the second coming of the television remote.
Speaking of the TV remote, last month Toshiba introduced Amazon Dash Replenishment for its televisions, so when the batteries die in your remote control, replacements can be automatically sent to you by Amazon.
Toshiba also announced today the debut of a series of new televisions, such as its first-ever 8K prototype for European customers, a bezel-free 65-inch 4K TV and 65-inch 4K television that’s only 2.5 millimeters thin.
Above: Toshiba’s 65-inch 8K prototype The news was announced today a day ahead of the start of IFA, a consumer electronics conference scheduled to begin Friday in Berlin.
Several bits of smart assistant integration news have been made ahead of IFA, including Alexa and Google Assistant smart speakers from Marshall , Alexa voice control for Sony soundbars and headphones, and the introduction of Bose’s first smart speaker with Alexa voice control.
Google also announced today that its Assistant is now able to speak two languages at once , and that Home Max speakers will go on sale in more European nations like the United Kingdom and Germany.
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"AI Weekly: Trump, forget Google -- focus on national security | VentureBeat"
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"https://venturebeat.com/ai/ai-weekly-trump-forget-google-focus-on-national-security"
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"Artificial Intelligence View All AI, ML and Deep Learning Auto ML Data Labelling Synthetic Data Conversational AI NLP Text-to-Speech Security View All Data Security and Privacy Network Security and Privacy Software Security Computer Hardware Security Cloud and Data Storage Security Data Infrastructure View All Data Science Data Management Data Storage and Cloud Big Data and Analytics Data Networks Automation View All Industrial Automation Business Process Automation Development Automation Robotic Process Automation Test Automation Enterprise Analytics View All Business Intelligence Disaster Recovery Business Continuity Statistical Analysis Predictive Analysis More Data Decision Makers Virtual Communication Team Collaboration UCaaS Virtual Reality Collaboration Virtual Employee Experience Programming & Development Product Development Application Development Test Management Development Languages AI Weekly: Trump, forget Google — focus on national security Share on Facebook Share on X Share on LinkedIn Donald Trump.
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This week, President Trump took shots at Google for what he calls unfair search results for his name and unfair treatment of conservatives by Silicon Valley liberals.
In this same vein, he talked about how some people see “ an antitrust situation ” with Google, Amazon, and Facebook.
Before Trump’s latest Twitter tirade began, on Sunday the New York Times reported that Defense Secretary Jim Mattis wrote a memo to President Trump earlier this year asking him to create a national strategy for AI akin to the kind China has created. China’s strategy was introduced last year and aims to make China the world leader in AI by 2030 , in part through “military-civil fusion” with companies like Baidu and Tencent.
Mattis reportedly said in the memo the United States isn’t keeping pace with China and recommended a presidential commission be created. While quoting an article by former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger , Mattis wrote that the commission should be established in order to inspire “a whole country effort that will ensure the U.S. is a leader not just in matters of defense but in the broader ‘transformation of the human condition.'” The memo was apparently sent weeks after the Trump administration formed an AI advisory council.
Do not consider the Mattis memo and Trump’s argument with Google in isolation.
VB Event The AI Impact Tour Connect with the enterprise AI community at VentureBeat’s AI Impact Tour coming to a city near you! The president more than likely doesn’t believe he’s being discriminated against or care about antitrust regulation and is just teeing off on big tech companies to win points with his far-right base. But even if he does actually believe Google treated him unfairly, it may not be in the best interest of the United States to argue with a company closely associated with the growth of AI and tools like TensorFlow.
Right now, he should probably be listening to his defense secretary and thinking about what a national AI strategy should look like for the United States, and exploring the topic with companies like Google.
Recent months have been marked by friction between tech workers and the federal government.
Thousands of Google employees spoke up in opposition to working with the Department of Defense on Project Maven, opposition that led Google to discontinue its contract with the DOD and CEO Sundar Pichai to declare Google will not participate in the creation of autonomous weaponry.
Many Microsoft employees also shared their unwillingness to support ICE due to President Trump’s program to separate families at the U.S.-Mexico border.
Employees at some tech companies have quit in protest in response to military contracts, but not everyone is against the idea. Computer vision startup Clarifai also participated in Maven, and CEO Matt Zeiler said Clarifai chose to work with the government in the interest of national security.
More work between tech companies and defense or intelligence officials is likely on the way. The Joint AI Center (JAIC) established by the Department of Defense in June is scheduled to open next month, and director Brendan McCord apparently plans to seek help from academia and industry.
In calling for a “whole country effort,” Mattis’ memo appears to allude to more partnerships with private companies, but even if that doesn’t happen, stakeholders making influential tools for AI like the Microsoft Cognitive Toolkit, PyTorch, or TensorFlow should probably be consulted when considering a national AI strategy.
Algorithmic bias and the need to regulate tech giants are serious issues worth consideration, but right now the president should be having conversations with companies like Google about how they can cooperate with the JAIC or put in their two cents on a national AI strategy, not sending tweets about how Google didn’t promote his inauguration.
If you believe, as Vladimir Putin does, that the nation that leads in AI will control the world , apparently there’s a lot at stake, and national security is a president’s first responsibility.
For AI coverage, send news tips to Kyle Wiggers and Khari Johnson — and be sure to bookmark our AI Channel.
Thanks for reading, Khari Johnson AI Staff Writer P.S. Please enjoy this video titled “Everybody Dance Now.” Made by UC Berkeley AI researchers on how to manipulate videos to make people dance, the video uploaded by Caroline Chan a little over a week ago had been viewed more than 400,000 times at the time this story was published.
From VB Facebook is using unsupervised machine learning for translations Facebook has begun using unsupervised machine learning to translate content on its platform when it doesn’t have many examples of translations from one language to another — such as from English to Urdu. The method was devised by Facebook AI Research (FAIR) and is being used […] Read the full story Google and Harvard use AI to predict earthquake aftershocks Researchers from Google’s AI division and Harvard University have created an AI model capable of predicting the location of aftershocks up to one year after a major earthquake. The model was trained on 199 major earthquake events, followed by 130,000 aftershocks, and was found to be more accurate than a method used to predict aftershocks […] Read the full story Microsoft Azure now supports Nvidia GPU Cloud for deep learning Microsoft Azure cloud customers can now use Nvidia’s GPU Cloud for the training and inference of deep learning models. The Nvidia GPU Cloud provides software containers to accelerate high-performance computing (HPC) and deep learning for researchers and developers. Powered by Nvidia Volta and its Tensor Core GPU architecture, the GPU Cloud launched in spring 2017. The […] Read the full story How Android Pie’s Adaptive Battery and Adaptive Brightness work Two of the most interesting AI features in Android Pie are Adaptive Battery and Adaptive Brightness. Both work automatically in the background — machine learning handles all the heavy lifting. Google has now shared how these two features work and their impact on Android users.
Read the full story Google’s light search app Go can now read you articles and web pages EXCLUSIVE: Google today announced that the light version of its search, called Go, can now read virtually any website to you. The Go app can now read content in more than two dozen languages, allowing more people to listen to articles and web pages. The service was made for people interested in listening to long-form articles, news […] Read the full story Google releases open source reinforcement learning framework for training AI models Google’s releasing a reinforcement learning framework that makes it easier to train AI models with cutting-edge techniques.
Read the full story Alexa can now play your favorite song when you walk into a room Amazon today announced a new API that gives Alexa the ability to communicate with sensors that detect motion and those used to monitor when a door or window opens. The new smart home skill feature will enable more automation and interaction with home security systems. The Contact and Motion Sensor API introduced today […] Read the full story Beyond VB Franken-algorithms: the deadly consequences of unpredictable code The death of a woman hit by a self-driving car highlights an unfolding technological crisis, as code piled on code creates ‘a universe no one fully understands.’ (via The Guardian) Read the full story If we ever want artificial general intelligence, governments need to invest in it Pretty much every tech startup that boasts its use of artificial intelligence is actually focused on an ultra-specific problem.
(via Futurism) Read the full story Want to make robots more human? Try artificial stupidity Welcome to the AI era. We missed the official announcement too, but it’s obvious that’s what we’re in. This new paradigm requires the acceptance or denial of a new brand of faith: artificial general intelligence (AGI).
(via The Next Web) Read the full story China is quickly becoming an AI superpower Last year, China’s government put out its plan to lead the world in AI by 2030.
(via SingularityHub) Read the full story VentureBeat's mission is to be a digital town square for technical decision-makers to gain knowledge about transformative enterprise technology and transact.
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"Facebook suspends 32 more suspicious accounts and pages ahead of U.S. midterm elections | VentureBeat"
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"https://venturebeat.com/social/facebook-suspends-32-more-suspicious-accounts-and-pages-ahead-of-u-s-midterm-elections"
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"Artificial Intelligence View All AI, ML and Deep Learning Auto ML Data Labelling Synthetic Data Conversational AI NLP Text-to-Speech Security View All Data Security and Privacy Network Security and Privacy Software Security Computer Hardware Security Cloud and Data Storage Security Data Infrastructure View All Data Science Data Management Data Storage and Cloud Big Data and Analytics Data Networks Automation View All Industrial Automation Business Process Automation Development Automation Robotic Process Automation Test Automation Enterprise Analytics View All Business Intelligence Disaster Recovery Business Continuity Statistical Analysis Predictive Analysis More Data Decision Makers Virtual Communication Team Collaboration UCaaS Virtual Reality Collaboration Virtual Employee Experience Programming & Development Product Development Application Development Test Management Development Languages Facebook suspends 32 more suspicious accounts and pages ahead of U.S. midterm elections Share on Facebook Share on X Share on LinkedIn Are you looking to showcase your brand in front of the brightest minds of the gaming industry? Consider getting a custom GamesBeat sponsorship.
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As Facebook is determined to prove that it can proactively stop election meddling on its platform, the company announced today that it has suspended a group of pages and accounts involved in “ coordinated inauthentic behavior.
” In total, it removed 32 pages and accounts from Facebook and Instagram this morning, created between March 2017 and May 2018. The company didn’t say who it believes to be behind the pages and accounts, but say that some of the activity exhibited by the pages is “consistent with what we saw from the [Russian-based Internet Research Agency] IRA before and after the 2016 elections.” And while the company didn’t speculate on what the goals of the suspicious accounts and pages were, some of them were involved in encouraging political protests.
Facebook’s findings have been shared with law enforcement, members of Congress, other technology companies — though the company didn’t say which ones — and a research lab Facebook has been working with , the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab.
The New York Times first reported that Facebook had been briefing lawmakers on its findings, and that the suspicious activity had been discovered two weeks ago. The Times also cited two people familiar with Facebook’s findings who said that some of the suspicious activity dealt with the #AbolishICE hashtag — a leftist movement that’s been most prominent on Twitter and calls for an end to the U.S. Immigration and Customs Agency — but Facebook didn’t discuss any findings about activity around that hashtag in a blog post addressing its findings.
VB Event The AI Impact Tour Connect with the enterprise AI community at VentureBeat’s AI Impact Tour coming to a city near you! Facebook said that more than 290,000 accounts followed at least one of the flagged pages — “Aztlan Warriors,” “Black Elevation,” “Mindful Being,” and “Resisters” being the ones with the most followers.
Above: Facebook released the following two posts as examples of the content and ads the suspected pages were running.
Some of the suspicious accounts also tried to organize Facebook events around political protests — which IRA-linked accounts did before and after the 2016 U.S. presidential election. About 30 events were created since May 2017. One of the pages, Resisters, was an admin for an event created to protest an August “Unite the Right” event in Washington, D.C. Facebook said that in addition to Resisters, the five other cohosters of the event were admins with legitimate pages. This afternoon, Facebook is notifying the more than 2,600 users interested in the event of their findings.
Facebook said that the Atlantic Council plans to release a report in the coming weeks with more detail on the Pages, profiles, and accounts disabled today, as well as a report on a Facebook group that it determined was created by Russian government actors and included about 4,000 members. Facebook disabled the group’s admins last year.
Before and after the 2016 U.S. presidential elections, Russia-linked pages and accounts, with the goal of swaying the outcome of the election, published about 80,000 posts that may have been been seen by up to 126 million Americans.
Since then, Facebook has increased its partnerships with third-party fact-checkers to stop the spread of misinformation and invested in more technology to proactively catch bad actors who are trying to meddle in elections. For example, the company said that it removed dozens of Facebook accounts impersonating politicians running for office ahead of the Mexican presidential elections on July 1, as well as tens of thousands of “fake likes” purported to be from real political candidates. In a July conference call with reporters , Diego Bassante, a member of Facebook’s Latin American politics and government team, said that “we know there were some areas where we could have done better, such as moving faster against bad actors.” VentureBeat's mission is to be a digital town square for technical decision-makers to gain knowledge about transformative enterprise technology and transact.
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The AI Impact Tour Join us for an evening full of networking and insights at VentureBeat's AI Impact Tour, coming to San Francisco, New York, and Los Angeles! VentureBeat Homepage Follow us on Facebook Follow us on X Follow us on LinkedIn Follow us on RSS Press Releases Contact Us Advertise Share a News Tip Contribute to DataDecisionMakers Careers Privacy Policy Terms of Service Do Not Sell My Personal Information © 2023 VentureBeat.
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"Developers report Facebook's revised app review is slow and confusing | VentureBeat"
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"https://venturebeat.com/social/developers-report-facebooks-revised-app-review-is-slow-and-confusing"
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"Artificial Intelligence View All AI, ML and Deep Learning Auto ML Data Labelling Synthetic Data Conversational AI NLP Text-to-Speech Security View All Data Security and Privacy Network Security and Privacy Software Security Computer Hardware Security Cloud and Data Storage Security Data Infrastructure View All Data Science Data Management Data Storage and Cloud Big Data and Analytics Data Networks Automation View All Industrial Automation Business Process Automation Development Automation Robotic Process Automation Test Automation Enterprise Analytics View All Business Intelligence Disaster Recovery Business Continuity Statistical Analysis Predictive Analysis More Data Decision Makers Virtual Communication Team Collaboration UCaaS Virtual Reality Collaboration Virtual Employee Experience Programming & Development Product Development Application Development Test Management Development Languages Developers report Facebook’s revised app review is slow and confusing Share on Facebook Share on X Share on LinkedIn Mark Zuckerberg on stage at F8.
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When news broke in March that data analytics firm Cambridge Analytica had improperly used tens of millions of users’ data for ad targeting, it became clear that Facebook would have to make significant changes to its developer platform. The company quickly shut down its app review process, as well as a number of API endpoints.
Two months later, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced at the company’s annual WWDC conference that the process was opening back up, this time with tighter standards. The company gave developers with existing access to a handful of APIs — including Pages, Groups, Events, and Messenger — a deadline of August 1 to resubmit their apps for review or have their access to these APIs revoked.
“I know it hasn’t been easy being a developer these past couple months, and that’s probably an understatement,” Zuckerberg said.
But the process for submitting apps for approval — which developers now have less than 24 hours to do — has remained rocky.
On July 2 , the company said it was completing Messenger bot reviews in an average of three days — but the review process for apps looking to access Facebook Login, Pages API, and Groups API was taking an average of seven weeks.
VentureBeat spoke with six developers who had been through the app review since the company reopened the process in May. Three got their apps approved and said the process took anywhere from three days to two months — consistent with what Facebook told developers to expect. But three were still waiting for their apps to be approved after submitting their applications approximately two months, one month, and two weeks ago, respectively.
“While the review is pending, we still have access to permissions they granted us in the past. However, I need a new permission to release a new feature,” Nicolas Le Roux, creator of a newsletter bot for Messenger called Botletter , told VentureBeat. Botletter’s review has been pending for two months.
In the July 2 post, Facebook said it hoped to reduce this wait time significantly in the coming weeks. When contacted by VentureBeat, a Facebook spokesperson said that the company didn’t have an update to share at this time regarding whether it has been able to reduce the wait time.
“As always, we continue work to improve the App Review process, including making it more streamlined and transparent. We will continue to communicate these changes to developers, including on the Facebook for Developer blog and our App Review website ,” a Facebook spokesperson told VentureBeat.
Additionally, three of the developers VentureBeat spoke with had to resubmit their apps for review after failing the first time. Two of these developers said Facebook told them it was because they hadn’t done a clear enough job explaining why their apps needed access to the requested data, which seems to have been the biggest challenge developers have encountered. As part of the app review process, developers now have to submit a “screencast that clearly demonstrates the end-to-end experience [of the app].” “Apparently [our] first video wasn’t explicit enough with showing how the data helped the end user,” James Hall, founder of Atlanta-based creative development agency Hall and All , told VentureBeat in an email. He said it took him about two months to get an app approved for a client.
When asked by VentureBeat what the company looks for in screencasts, a Facebook spokesperson simply said that the reviewers work with “each of these developers individually to make sure we have what we need for the review.” Friendly social media APIs are ‘going the way of the dodo’ In conversations with developers, a few themes emerged. For one thing, this isn’t the first time Facebook has made sudden API changes. One of the most well-known examples was in 2015, when Facebook announced that it was shutting down the Friends data API that allowed developers to access Facebook data of the friends of people who had downloaded their apps. Piotr Gajos, chief innovation officer of digital innovation firm Sourcebits, told VentureBeat that he’s advised his customers to avoid integrating with Facebook’s APIs in any manner besides authentication for the past three years.
Most third-party developers will still go where their customers are. But while the API changes Facebook has made in the wake of Cambridge Analytica haven’t changed how many developers view and work with Facebook, some of their customers are proving less eager to integrate their products with Facebook in the wake of the news.
“I think if anything the [Cambridge Analytica] stuff has done for us, is made it easier to explain to our clients WHY it’s hard to get data now,” Hall told VentureBeat. “Unfortunately, the days of friendly APIs from big social companies are going the way of the dodo.” Still, the amount of data that Facebook holds is a powerful lure for some companies. Thomas Reiter, cofounder of Vienna, Austria-based Chatpointment, said his company had no plans to abandon Facebook, as it’s still an important channel for messaging. Chatpointment allows companies to connect its chatbot to their Facebook page so customers can book appointments via Messenger. Reiter said it took Chatpointment about a month to get its app approved and that it failed the process once, which he detailed in a Medium post.
VentureBeat also spoke with two developers who are holding off on submitting their apps for review or moving ahead with new integrations, as they anticipate that Facebook will make more changes to its developer platform in the coming months.
“I’d rather wait for [more policy changes] than put ourselves into an uncertain situation,” Jeff Standard, cofounder and head of product for Drivemode , told VentureBeat in a phone interview. Drivemode makes a phone’s interface safer for driving by enabling voice reply on a number of apps.
In mid-March, Drivemode submitted an app that allows users to upload photos or videos from a road trip to Facebook. Standard said he was expecting the app to be approved in one to two days — that is, until the first Cambridge Analytica story broke. Standard said he ended up withdrawing Drivemode’s application after not hearing anything from Facebook for two months.
Nearly all of the developers VentureBeat spoke with said they understand why Facebook reacted the way they did — to show that it is proactively trying to stop future Cambridge Analytica-type incidents. Still, they wish that the company had provided more updates to developers and been more clear about what they needed to do in order to pass the app review.
“The feedback we got with our [first] rejection was generic and scarce. It would have helped if the rejection included some concrete feedback relating to specific issues in our app, or if there was a way to directly communicate with the reviewers,” said Chatpointment’s Reiter.
VentureBeat's mission is to be a digital town square for technical decision-makers to gain knowledge about transformative enterprise technology and transact.
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"Netgear launches Armor service to protect your home's networked devices | VentureBeat"
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"https://venturebeat.com/security/netgear-launches-armor-service-to-protect-your-homes-networked-devices"
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"Artificial Intelligence View All AI, ML and Deep Learning Auto ML Data Labelling Synthetic Data Conversational AI NLP Text-to-Speech Security View All Data Security and Privacy Network Security and Privacy Software Security Computer Hardware Security Cloud and Data Storage Security Data Infrastructure View All Data Science Data Management Data Storage and Cloud Big Data and Analytics Data Networks Automation View All Industrial Automation Business Process Automation Development Automation Robotic Process Automation Test Automation Enterprise Analytics View All Business Intelligence Disaster Recovery Business Continuity Statistical Analysis Predictive Analysis More Data Decision Makers Virtual Communication Team Collaboration UCaaS Virtual Reality Collaboration Virtual Employee Experience Programming & Development Product Development Application Development Test Management Development Languages Netgear launches Armor service to protect your home’s networked devices Share on Facebook Share on X Share on LinkedIn The Netgear Nighthawk AC2300 router now has Netgear Armor protection.
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Netgear is launching a new serviced — dubbed Netgear Armor — to protect your home’s networked devices. Powered by Bitdefender , the Netgear Armor service can provide network security for any device connected to a Netgear router.
Netgear Armor is currently available for two router models — the Nighthawk AC2300 Smart WiFi router (R7000P) and the Nighthawk AC1900 Smart WiFi Dual Band Gigabit Router (R6900P) — via firmware updates and a subscription fee. The idea is to protect your entire home network and all the devices connected to it.
The San Jose, California company said that cybersecurity needs to be a top-of-mind concern for all households and individuals because security breaches are so common. In 2016 alone, more than 4,000 ransomware attacks occurred every day, a 300 percent increase from the year prior, according to the FBI ‘s “How to Protect Your Networks from Ransomware Guide.” Cybersecurity Ventures ‘ recent report said that an average of 1.4 million phishing websites are created every month, with fake pages designed to mimic the companies they’re spoofing. Additionally, hacker attacks occur every 39 seconds , affecting one in three Americans every year, according to research conducted by the University of Maryland.
VB Event The AI Impact Tour Connect with the enterprise AI community at VentureBeat’s AI Impact Tour coming to a city near you! And our homes are now filled with numerous smart devices that connect to the network to provide advanced features and remote access. With the introduction of internet of things (IoT) devices such as smart thermostats, TVs, garage door openers, refrigerators, light bulbs, and more, home networks are increasingly vulnerable.
Many of these devices are not equipped to provide proper protection against online intruders, so households will need to start adopting safeguards that used to mainly be the purview of businesses in the enterprise space.
Running directly on the Netgear router itself, Netgear Armor actively detects and protects devices from cyber threats such as viruses, malware, spyware, ransomware, phishing, and even those pesky botnets by blocking attempts to access websites, URLs, or IP addresses from intruders who could steal your information or identity.
With the Nighthawk App, you can also receive instant notifications when malicious threats are detected.
At no extra charge, customers who subscribe to Netgear Armor can also install Bitdefender Total Security software on any Windows, MacOS, iOS, and Android device. The software provides additional local protection, such as the ability to remotely locate and wipe your device from the Armor portal.
Netgear Armor powered by Bitdefender is available for a 90-day free trial. After that, the annual subscription cost is $70.
VentureBeat's mission is to be a digital town square for technical decision-makers to gain knowledge about transformative enterprise technology and transact.
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The AI Impact Tour Join us for an evening full of networking and insights at VentureBeat's AI Impact Tour, coming to San Francisco, New York, and Los Angeles! VentureBeat Homepage Follow us on Facebook Follow us on X Follow us on LinkedIn Follow us on RSS Press Releases Contact Us Advertise Share a News Tip Contribute to DataDecisionMakers Careers Privacy Policy Terms of Service Do Not Sell My Personal Information © 2023 VentureBeat.
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"Sword Legacy: Omen shows us a darker take on Arthurian legend on August 13 | VentureBeat"
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"https://venturebeat.com/pc-gaming/sword-legacy-omen-shows-us-a-darker-take-on-arthurian-legend-on-august-13"
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"Artificial Intelligence View All AI, ML and Deep Learning Auto ML Data Labelling Synthetic Data Conversational AI NLP Text-to-Speech Security View All Data Security and Privacy Network Security and Privacy Software Security Computer Hardware Security Cloud and Data Storage Security Data Infrastructure View All Data Science Data Management Data Storage and Cloud Big Data and Analytics Data Networks Automation View All Industrial Automation Business Process Automation Development Automation Robotic Process Automation Test Automation Enterprise Analytics View All Business Intelligence Disaster Recovery Business Continuity Statistical Analysis Predictive Analysis More Data Decision Makers Virtual Communication Team Collaboration UCaaS Virtual Reality Collaboration Virtual Employee Experience Programming & Development Product Development Application Development Test Management Development Languages Sword Legacy: Omen shows us a darker take on Arthurian legend on August 13 Share on Facebook Share on X Share on LinkedIn Are you looking to showcase your brand in front of the brightest minds of the gaming industry? Consider getting a custom GamesBeat sponsorship.
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Just as the phrase “steampunk” might conjure up images of zeppelins and gaslamps, “candlepunk” evokes dingy dungeons filled with half-light. That’s where Sword Legacy: Omen lives — a world that re-imagines Arthurian legend and throws players into tactical battles. Developers Firecast Studios and Fableware Narrative Design have teamed up with publisher Team17 to launch their strategic role-playing game on August 13 on PC.
Sword Legacy stars Uther, King Arthur’s father, who is on a quest to reclaim the legendary sword Excalibur. Players will guide him and his scrappy crew through levels with various terrain and scattered with enemies. The characters each have different abilities, like lockpicking, and some can manipulate parts of the environment, like flammable barrels.
While a lot of games have explored the steampunk aesthetic, Sword Legacy is the only one to go for candlepunk, which Fableware narrative designer John Pine says takes its cues from medieval history rather than Victorian.
“We thought it was a good fit for our medieval world, especially the alchemical undertone we have. We have lots of potions in the game, and the potions always have side effects,” said Pine in a previous interview with GamesBeat.
Event GamesBeat at the Game Awards We invite you to join us in LA for GamesBeat at the Game Awards event this December 7. Reserve your spot now as space is limited! Sword Legacy’s story unfolds in a grim fantasy world that has a dark graphic novel look and nefarious enchantments — the famed wizard Merlin is one of your party members, but rather than casting clean spells like a magic bolt or fireballs, he uses alchemy and blood magic.
Firecast Studios and Fableware Narrative Design view the game as their first step, and they’ve built out its world so that it might translate to sequels — or animated series and comic books. It’s a bold move to try to invoke a transmedia property out of entirely new IP, but the developers are hopeful that Sword Legacy’s stories are rich enough to support the idea.
Sword Legacy is the first Brazilian game Team17 has signed on, and it shows how the English publisher is keen to expand to new markets. Four months after it inked a deal with Firecast Studios and Fableware Narrative Design, it announced a partnership with the Chinese developer Pathea Games for its open-world RPG My Time at Portia.
GamesBeat's creed when covering the game industry is "where passion meets business." What does this mean? We want to tell you how the news matters to you -- not just as a decision-maker at a game studio, but also as a fan of games. Whether you read our articles, listen to our podcasts, or watch our videos, GamesBeat will help you learn about the industry and enjoy engaging with it.
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VentureBeat Homepage Follow us on Facebook Follow us on X Follow us on LinkedIn Follow us on RSS Press Releases Contact Us Advertise Share a News Tip Contribute to DataDecisionMakers Careers Privacy Policy Terms of Service Do Not Sell My Personal Information © 2023 VentureBeat.
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"Lucah: Born of a Dream unleashes its nightmares August 21 | VentureBeat"
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"https://venturebeat.com/pc-gaming/lucah-born-of-a-dream-unleashes-its-nightmares-august-21"
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"Artificial Intelligence View All AI, ML and Deep Learning Auto ML Data Labelling Synthetic Data Conversational AI NLP Text-to-Speech Security View All Data Security and Privacy Network Security and Privacy Software Security Computer Hardware Security Cloud and Data Storage Security Data Infrastructure View All Data Science Data Management Data Storage and Cloud Big Data and Analytics Data Networks Automation View All Industrial Automation Business Process Automation Development Automation Robotic Process Automation Test Automation Enterprise Analytics View All Business Intelligence Disaster Recovery Business Continuity Statistical Analysis Predictive Analysis More Data Decision Makers Virtual Communication Team Collaboration UCaaS Virtual Reality Collaboration Virtual Employee Experience Programming & Development Product Development Application Development Test Management Development Languages Lucah: Born of a Dream unleashes its nightmares August 21 Share on Facebook Share on X Share on LinkedIn Are you looking to showcase your brand in front of the brightest minds of the gaming industry? Consider getting a custom GamesBeat sponsorship.
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Lucah: Born of a Dream is an action role-playing game that’s set in a hellish world scratched from scraps of neon and wriggling darkness. It’s indie developer Colin Horgan’s latest title, and it will launch on PC on August 21.
Under the moniker Melessthanthree , Horgan has developed a few short games like the shooter Together We Can End This All and the adventure game Tatakai. He successfully ran a Kickstarter campaign for Lucah in 2017, and he has released a few side games, Sacrament I and Sacrament IV, to complement it. Lucah has personal roots, dealing with themes of guilt and self-discovery. The titular character confronts their demons made manifest, fighting against their fate as a Marked Child. Though the game has a narrative, its core is its battle system, which features a frenetic blend of melee and range attacks which players can remix through the Paradigm system. The fights are deliberately punishing, though the game’s difficulty level is adjustable.
“Every in-game failure is really another opportunity to grow, because Lucah will always get back up,” said Horgan in a previous interview with GamesBeat.
“By the end of the game, I want the player to grow with Lucah and gain that confidence that comes with self-acceptance, because they were able to survive and triumph alongside Lucah and learn to love themselves for who they are, whatever that means to them.” To develop Lucah, Horgan teamed up with sound designer and composer Nicolo Telesca; Brianna Lei, who developed the adorable visual novel Butterfly Soup ; and Team OK’s Kevin Wong, who was project lead on the stylish multiplayer game Chambara.
GamesBeat's creed when covering the game industry is "where passion meets business." What does this mean? We want to tell you how the news matters to you -- not just as a decision-maker at a game studio, but also as a fan of games. Whether you read our articles, listen to our podcasts, or watch our videos, GamesBeat will help you learn about the industry and enjoy engaging with it.
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"India is gaming's next boomtown | VentureBeat"
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"https://venturebeat.com/pc-gaming/india-is-gamings-next-boomtown"
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"Artificial Intelligence View All AI, ML and Deep Learning Auto ML Data Labelling Synthetic Data Conversational AI NLP Text-to-Speech Security View All Data Security and Privacy Network Security and Privacy Software Security Computer Hardware Security Cloud and Data Storage Security Data Infrastructure View All Data Science Data Management Data Storage and Cloud Big Data and Analytics Data Networks Automation View All Industrial Automation Business Process Automation Development Automation Robotic Process Automation Test Automation Enterprise Analytics View All Business Intelligence Disaster Recovery Business Continuity Statistical Analysis Predictive Analysis More Data Decision Makers Virtual Communication Team Collaboration UCaaS Virtual Reality Collaboration Virtual Employee Experience Programming & Development Product Development Application Development Test Management Development Languages Guest India is gaming’s next boomtown Share on Facebook Share on X Share on LinkedIn Jetpack Joyride released content specific to India Are you looking to showcase your brand in front of the brightest minds of the gaming industry? Consider getting a custom GamesBeat sponsorship.
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While the gaming industry grossed over $108 billion globally in 2017, the digital gaming landscape in India was marked at $890 million which is roughly one percent of the global share. But the Indian gaming industry will develop rapidly to touch double digit growth in a year.
In the recently concluded CII’s International Conference on Indian Gaming Industry, the Minister of State for Electronics and IT said that “pegged at around $890 million, Indian gaming industry is projected to grow in double digits in next five years.” The billion-dollar market India is ranked among the top five countries in terms of highest number of game downloads in the world. The number of game development companies have also increased tenfold to reach over 250 in last five years.
If the current trends continue, Indian mobile games market will cross the billion dollar mark by 2020.
A significant reason behind this unprecedented jump in digital gaming in India is the rise in smartphone adoption among people over the past years and the increased internet penetration across the country.
Event GamesBeat at the Game Awards We invite you to join us in LA for GamesBeat at the Game Awards event this December 7. Reserve your spot now as space is limited! Above: Data consumption and number of gamers in India By 2021, the average data consumption of Indian users is set to reach seven gigabytes per person, which was just above one GB per person in 2016 as reported by a national daily. Also, the number of gamers in India will cross 300 million by 2021. And, that’s a huge number of potential customers that are ready to consume games! Top-grossing mobile games in India “Over 1 billion apps are downloaded from the Play Store by Indians every month. Such a large user base definitely opens up tremendous opportunity for games from all genres to do well,” says Karan Gambhir , head of business development, Google Play Apps & Games.
In 2017, the games that became the obsession of the country was Ludo King , an online multiplayer strategy-game based on traditional Indian board game called Ludo. It generated more than 10 million daily active users and still growing at a good pace. If we talk about the revenue, casino games like Teen Patti or Poker have been topping the charts on Google Play.
This year trends from Google Play Store rankings suggest that real-time player versus player games will be seen dominating the charts such as 8-Ball Pool and similar games. Indian gamers are seen to be more interested in free-to-play games as the number of downloads of free games are way higher than the paid ones. But, the difference is set to diminish faster with more rewarding games to enter the PlayStore.
Opportunity for investors Seeing the immense growth opportunities, industry leaders are putting their eggs in the baskets of Indian gaming companies.
Earlier this year in January, Paytm and AGTech Holdings (both backed by Alibaba Group) launched a gaming platform named Gamepind which aims to offer popular social games, casual games and sports games playing which the users can earn exclusive coupons and points.
Meanwhile, Tencent, the world’s largest gaming firm, is planning to invest up to $200 million in Indian gaming landscape this year. Last year, Vietnam-based StomStudio also joined hands with mobile game publisher Gamesbond to create mobile games in India.
In a very recent development, Halfbrick, the company behind popular game Jetpack Joyride (2011), partnered with Bengaluru-based games company Mech Mocha and launched exclusive India edition of their game, Jetpack Joyride, in April 2018. To attract Indian gamers, they have revamped the whole game with new design inspired by Rajasthan, Kerala etc and even cameo characters of Indian comedians are introduced in the game.
The future aspects With advancement of technologies such virtual reality, augmented reality and artificial intelligence, the gaming industry will see major development in India.
Though VR and AR are more in global scene than in India because of the lack of access and availability of high-end gaming accessories.
But with the rise in market share of Xbox, PS4 and other gaming consoles in India, VR games are sure to enter in the scene, augmented reality games have already had a good start in India.
The AR game Pokemon Go became instant hit in India with the country ranking 4th in the number of downloads. More such games like Harry Potter which got released in April this year, and has seen immense acceptance from the Indian gamers to become No. 2 Top Grossing Adventure game in Google Play store.
With so much money moving in this Indian gaming industry, investors are definitely expecting exceptional results and return on investment. This, one hand has given gaming startups are space for rapid growth, while we can finally expect some amazing games being developed in India and going viral worldwide. Though there are some challenges involved, but in my opinion, there will not more right time to invest in Indian gaming industry than now.
Lalit Sharma is the co-founder of Vowelor and has been working in digital marketing landscape for last three years.
GamesBeat's creed when covering the game industry is "where passion meets business." What does this mean? We want to tell you how the news matters to you -- not just as a decision-maker at a game studio, but also as a fan of games. Whether you read our articles, listen to our podcasts, or watch our videos, GamesBeat will help you learn about the industry and enjoy engaging with it.
Discover our Briefings.
Join the GamesBeat community! Enjoy access to special events, private newsletters and more.
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"Jon Peddie: Computer graphics hardware will dip to $124.5 billion in 2018 | VentureBeat"
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"https://venturebeat.com/pc-gaming/computer-graphics-hardware-hits-124-5-billion-in-2018"
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"Artificial Intelligence View All AI, ML and Deep Learning Auto ML Data Labelling Synthetic Data Conversational AI NLP Text-to-Speech Security View All Data Security and Privacy Network Security and Privacy Software Security Computer Hardware Security Cloud and Data Storage Security Data Infrastructure View All Data Science Data Management Data Storage and Cloud Big Data and Analytics Data Networks Automation View All Industrial Automation Business Process Automation Development Automation Robotic Process Automation Test Automation Enterprise Analytics View All Business Intelligence Disaster Recovery Business Continuity Statistical Analysis Predictive Analysis More Data Decision Makers Virtual Communication Team Collaboration UCaaS Virtual Reality Collaboration Virtual Employee Experience Programming & Development Product Development Application Development Test Management Development Languages Jon Peddie: Computer graphics hardware will dip to $124.5 billion in 2018 Share on Facebook Share on X Share on LinkedIn Star Wars stormtroopers rendered in real time with ray tracing.
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Video games have become a $137.9 billion market in 2018. And computer graphics is expected to hit $124.5 billion this year, according to market researcher Jon Peddie Research.
But while games drive demand for better computer graphics, it’s interesting to see that the two markets don’t move together in lockstep. While games are expected grow 13 percent in 2018, according to market researcher Newzoo , Jon Peddie Research estimates that the computer graphics market will dip 4.3 percent from $130.2 billion in 2017.
One of the reasons is that computer graphics hardware sales are also driven by sales of non-game computer graphics software, which is pretty flat at about $16.49 billion. That includes computer-aided design, modeling and animation, digital video, visualization simulation, and imaging.
“There’s a tremendous amount happening in computer graphics, but the top line doesn’t show that because the category is so broad,” said Jon Peddie, president of Jon Peddie Research and a longtime graphics expert, in an interview with GamesBeat. “It covers everything from computer simulations for bombs to special effects for movies. It’s hard to get your arms around it.” Event GamesBeat at the Game Awards We invite you to join us in LA for GamesBeat at the Game Awards event this December 7. Reserve your spot now as space is limited! Above: The computer graphics market is pretty steady.
But parts of the market are definitely exciting, such as games. Game console sales are in a decline in 2018, as the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One are starting to near the end of a buying cycle, even as the Nintendo Switch is still growing strong. There’s also constant pricing pressure on hardware.
With computer graphics hardware, gaming PCs are expected to grow from $33.5 billion in 2017 to $36.6 billion in 2021, while game consoles are expected to grow from $15.4 billion in 2017 to $16.3 billion in 2021. The shift to the common hardware architecture of x86-based processors has made it a lot easier for game developers to spread their games across the consoles and the PC, Peddie said.
“Game developers have been able to reallocate their investment, accelerate game development, and bring out games across new platforms including the PC at the same time,” he said. “In the past, the PC was last and it got a crippled version built from the console game. Now PC games come out at maximum performance and that has led to a rise in sales on the PC.” Another exciting part of the industry is the arrival, or near arrival, of real-time ray tracing. The industry has been trying to hit this holy grail since 1981, and at the upcoming Siggraph computer graphics show in Vancouver, a number of companies will show their version of the technology, which enables speedy and ultra-realistic imagery in games, Peddie said.
“Whereas the software aspects of the market have been slow to flat, the hardware segments have been varied, influenced by consumer products such as game consoles,” the report said. “Virtual reality, which has gained so much attention, is hardly a factor in either hardware or software, and despite some glowing forecasts, we don’t think it will be for a while. The main point of exploration for VR today is in content creation and design for professionals.” By 2021, Jon Peddie Research estimates the computer graphics market will drop slightly from 2017 numbers to $129.6 billion, with software growing slightly better than hardware.
The hardware segment of the CG industry has seen steady overall growth, with some ups and downs due to product cycles and the irregularity of the PC market, the report said. The largest growth has been in game consoles, gaming PCs, and workstations, with the mobile graphics segment declining due to fewer units being sold and dropping average selling prices as the suppliers compete in a rapidly shifting market.
2017 did not see the introduction of new graphics processing units (GPUs) and add-in boards (AIBs), however, several new CPUs, and upgraded game consoles were introduced. This year, Nvidia and Advanced Micro Devices are both expected to launch new GPUs.
Mobile devices graphics hardware is expected to decline from $71.9 billion in 2017 to $65.7 billion in 2021.
Above: Color Noise by Linus Zoll.
The market for CG software in 2017 was worth $16.1 billion (not counting services, maintenance and other aspects) and is expected to grow to $17.7 billion by 2021 as the industry shifts its sales model moving more services to the cloud, and transitioning to a subscriber system.
“The demand for programmers, artists, scientists, and designers continues to be strong and we’re seeing startups arrive in emerging and reborn markets such as augmented reality, virtual reality, and casual games,” the report said. “The arrival of new applications programming interfaces (APIs), and platforms are also stimulating development. Firms are actively looking for people who can use and exploit these new programs and their associated hardware accelerators.” One of the mainstream opportunities is grown in social web and consumer applications, as social networks are encouraging people to use new tools that alter the graphics in pictures or animations.
“What used to be a very closed society of experts is now opening up due to the democratization of computer graphics, fueled by Moore’s law and price-elasticity due to lower software costs,” the report said. “We believe a new generation of content creators is being born. Video is rapidly replacing text as a form of communication and 3D is finding new outlets. Early examples include the Creative edition of Windows, Adobe’s Project Felix now known as Dimension CC, game engine tools such as Unreal and Unity, rendering programs galore.” One of the new areas for software is cloud-based creation tools.
But Jon Peddie Research said they have been a “bit of a disappointment.” The report said, “Those designed to be easy are usually not easy enough and the results are unsatisfactory and professional tools are also not designed for the creatives, but for engineers. However, attractive pricing models are emerging, and the tools will adapt.” GamesBeat's creed when covering the game industry is "where passion meets business." What does this mean? We want to tell you how the news matters to you -- not just as a decision-maker at a game studio, but also as a fan of games. Whether you read our articles, listen to our podcasts, or watch our videos, GamesBeat will help you learn about the industry and enjoy engaging with it.
Discover our Briefings.
The AI Impact Tour Join us for an evening full of networking and insights at VentureBeat's AI Impact Tour, coming to San Francisco, New York, and Los Angeles! VentureBeat Homepage Follow us on Facebook Follow us on X Follow us on LinkedIn Follow us on RSS Press Releases Contact Us Advertise Share a News Tip Contribute to DataDecisionMakers Careers Privacy Policy Terms of Service Do Not Sell My Personal Information © 2023 VentureBeat.
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"BlitzWolf soundbar review -- a sound upgrade for under $100 | VentureBeat"
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"https://venturebeat.com/pc-gaming/blitzwolf-soundbar-review-a-sound-upgrade-for-under-100"
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"Artificial Intelligence View All AI, ML and Deep Learning Auto ML Data Labelling Synthetic Data Conversational AI NLP Text-to-Speech Security View All Data Security and Privacy Network Security and Privacy Software Security Computer Hardware Security Cloud and Data Storage Security Data Infrastructure View All Data Science Data Management Data Storage and Cloud Big Data and Analytics Data Networks Automation View All Industrial Automation Business Process Automation Development Automation Robotic Process Automation Test Automation Enterprise Analytics View All Business Intelligence Disaster Recovery Business Continuity Statistical Analysis Predictive Analysis More Data Decision Makers Virtual Communication Team Collaboration UCaaS Virtual Reality Collaboration Virtual Employee Experience Programming & Development Product Development Application Development Test Management Development Languages Review BlitzWolf soundbar review — a sound upgrade for under $100 Share on Facebook Share on X Share on LinkedIn The BlitzWolf soundbard with its remote control.
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A few years after almost everyone upgraded to HD televisions, we began thinking about other ways to upgrade our home theater experiences. The soundbar was the easy answer to that as it enabled a plug-and-play solution to get better sound than the dinky speakers that are in our televisions. Today, the market has countless soundbar options from familiar brands like Samsung and Vizio as well as up-and-coming competitors like TaoTronics and BlitzWolf.
I’ve spent the last few weeks testing out the $100 2.0 60W BlitzWolf soundbar that is looking to make a dent in this space. And it should because it is an affordable and significant upgrade over what you probably have inside your TV — although you can get quite a bit more by spending a bit more as well.
What you’ll like Rich sound Event GamesBeat at the Game Awards We invite you to join us in LA for GamesBeat at the Game Awards event this December 7. Reserve your spot now as space is limited! The No. 1 objective of a soundbar should be to take any audio source and add clarity, volume, and scale to it. The BlitzWolf soundbar easily accomplishes that goal with its six powerful speakers. It almost never struggles to reproduce loud, robust sound.
Character voices sound full and husky. Explosions are stunning without any crackling or distortion. Enemy footsteps are clear and distinct. And even without a dedicated subwoofer, the bass is noticeable and booming.
The BlitzWolf soundbar doesn’t handle space great. Environmental sounds, character voices, and the music tracks often feel bunched up together. This is only noticeable in the most cacophonous of moments, though. In quiet moments, where you have one voice, or a soft soundtrack playing against Foley work, the BlitzWolf is always great.
Relatively compact At 36 inches long, the BlitzWolf isn’t exactly small, so it’s not going to fit on your desk. But it has a nice sound-to-price ratio that means you’ll get a lot of high-quality audio out of it and yet it should still fit nicely in your entertainment center or mounted to your wall.
It’s not going to fit on your computer desk like an under-monitor soundbar, but it obviously isn’t made for that.
What you won’t like Minimal inputs and display information The BlitzWolf soundbar is very light when it comes to input/output ports. It also doesn’t always tell you exactly the information you need to know to properly use it.
The only ports on the back are a USB, an HDMI ARC, an AUX, an optical jack, and an RCA jack. Having an HDMI ARC is nice. The ARC stands for audio return channel, and it means that an ARC-capable TV will return audio to the soundbar even if you’re using a different HDMI port. But I still want a few extra HDMI ports to make it easier to get audio from my devices when using with a non-ARC set.
The info display is also just a series of LED lights on the front and a woman’s voice who tells you which sound setting preset you’re using. The color-coded LEDs are annoying because they take a while to figure out what they refer to. Thankfully, the remote control has dedicated buttons for each input.
Conclusion The BlitzWolf soundbar is great for $100 especially if you have a TV with an HDMI ARC port. You have dozens of options at this price for soundbars, but the BlitzWolf delivers what you should want unless you’re willing to spend a bit more. If you are willing to spend $150-to-$200, however, you can get a soundbar that sounds as rich and has a dedicated wireless subwoofer. If you absolutely don’t want to spend the extra $50, though, this device sounds great and does just enough bass that you can get by without a sub.
The BlitzWolf soundbar is available now for $100. The company provided a sample unit to GamesBeat for the purpose of this review.
GamesBeat's creed when covering the game industry is "where passion meets business." What does this mean? We want to tell you how the news matters to you -- not just as a decision-maker at a game studio, but also as a fan of games. Whether you read our articles, listen to our podcasts, or watch our videos, GamesBeat will help you learn about the industry and enjoy engaging with it.
Discover our Briefings.
Join the GamesBeat community! Enjoy access to special events, private newsletters and more.
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"WhatsApp rolls out group calls for up to 4 people | VentureBeat"
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"https://venturebeat.com/mobile/whatsapp-rolls-out-group-calls-for-up-to-4-people"
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"Artificial Intelligence View All AI, ML and Deep Learning Auto ML Data Labelling Synthetic Data Conversational AI NLP Text-to-Speech Security View All Data Security and Privacy Network Security and Privacy Software Security Computer Hardware Security Cloud and Data Storage Security Data Infrastructure View All Data Science Data Management Data Storage and Cloud Big Data and Analytics Data Networks Automation View All Industrial Automation Business Process Automation Development Automation Robotic Process Automation Test Automation Enterprise Analytics View All Business Intelligence Disaster Recovery Business Continuity Statistical Analysis Predictive Analysis More Data Decision Makers Virtual Communication Team Collaboration UCaaS Virtual Reality Collaboration Virtual Employee Experience Programming & Development Product Development Application Development Test Management Development Languages WhatsApp rolls out group calls for up to 4 people Share on Facebook Share on X Share on LinkedIn WhatsApp: Android Are you looking to showcase your brand in front of the brightest minds of the gaming industry? Consider getting a custom GamesBeat sponsorship.
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WhatsApp is finally rolling out group video and voice calls to its 1.5 billion users around the world. The news was first teased by parent company Facebook at its annual F8 developers conference in May, but now the feature is ready for prime time.
Above: WhatsApp: Group Video Call Facebook first introduced group audio calls to its own Messenger app back in April 2016, followed by group video calls later that year.
Group video calling has surged in recent years across WhatsApp’s rival messaging apps, while WhatsApp itself only rolled out one-to-one video calling less than two years ago.
But while some of its rivals support up to 200 people in a single group call, WhatsApp is keeping things sensible by letting up to four people at any one time chat on a single call. And you can add new participants to a call while it’s already in progress, something that Facebook Messenger started enabling earlier this year.
Group calls will certainly be a welcomed by WhatsApp’s global users, and if nothing else the company will be glad to focus on its core product features rather than having to fight fake news.
Meanwhile, Apple is also preparing to launch group video calls with the upcoming public release of iOS 12.
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"Samsung's profit growth slows in Q2 2018 despite stellar chip sales | VentureBeat"
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"https://venturebeat.com/mobile/samsungs-profit-growth-slows-in-q2-2018-despite-stellar-chip-sales"
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"Artificial Intelligence View All AI, ML and Deep Learning Auto ML Data Labelling Synthetic Data Conversational AI NLP Text-to-Speech Security View All Data Security and Privacy Network Security and Privacy Software Security Computer Hardware Security Cloud and Data Storage Security Data Infrastructure View All Data Science Data Management Data Storage and Cloud Big Data and Analytics Data Networks Automation View All Industrial Automation Business Process Automation Development Automation Robotic Process Automation Test Automation Enterprise Analytics View All Business Intelligence Disaster Recovery Business Continuity Statistical Analysis Predictive Analysis More Data Decision Makers Virtual Communication Team Collaboration UCaaS Virtual Reality Collaboration Virtual Employee Experience Programming & Development Product Development Application Development Test Management Development Languages Samsung’s profit growth slows in Q2 2018 despite stellar chip sales Share on Facebook Share on X Share on LinkedIn Samsung's Galaxy S9.
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(Reuters) — Samsung Electronics posted its slowest quarterly profit growth in more than a year on Tuesday as the sluggish global smartphone market weighed on earnings, although the chip business continued to perform well.
Operating profit for the world’s biggest chipmaker and smartphone maker rose 5.7 percent to 14.9 trillion won ($13.3 billion) in the second quarter, Samsung said in a regulatory filing, compared with 14.8 trillion won it had estimated.
The Apple components supplier and smartphone rival said operating profit from the mobile business sank 34 percent from a year ago, and warned of stiffer competition in the second half due to the release of new models.
The South Korean tech giant added however that demand for memory chips, its biggest earnings contributor by far, would remain strong in the second half thanks to the growth of server data centers.
Revenue for the April-June period fell 4 percent to 58.5 trillion won, broadly in line with Samsung’s earlier estimate.
Like other big electronics firms, Samsung faces challenges from the U.S.-China trade war, falling prices of some memory chips and the rise of cheap Chinese-made handsets.
Samsung’s difficulties in the mobile market, which accounts for about 40 percent of its revenue, have been exacerbated by its recent lack of innovation to drive sales of its premium Galaxy series gadgets. The mobile business booked 2.7 trillion won in quarterly operating profit.
Data released by market tracker Counterpoint Research in July showed Samsung’s latest Galaxy 9 Plus premium handset had been overtaken by Apple’s iPhone 8 as the world’s top-selling smartphone.
Competition from cheaper Chinese brands like Xiaomi and Huawei have already seen Samsung lose market share in China and India, the world’s top smartphone markets.
Samsung regained its lead in India’s smartphone market in the second quarter thanks to solid sales in its budget segment according to Counterpoint Research.
While the mobile business struggles, the chip business remained Samsung’s top earner in the second quarter as sales to the cloud-computing and crypto-currency industries propped up DRAM chip prices even as NAND flash memory prices slipped.
Samsung’s chip unit posted a record 11.6 trillion won operating profit, up 45 percent from a year ago.
Samsung shares were down 0.5 percent in early trading, compared with 0.2 percent drop in the broader marke.
VentureBeat's mission is to be a digital town square for technical decision-makers to gain knowledge about transformative enterprise technology and transact.
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The AI Impact Tour Join us for an evening full of networking and insights at VentureBeat's AI Impact Tour, coming to San Francisco, New York, and Los Angeles! VentureBeat Homepage Follow us on Facebook Follow us on X Follow us on LinkedIn Follow us on RSS Press Releases Contact Us Advertise Share a News Tip Contribute to DataDecisionMakers Careers Privacy Policy Terms of Service Do Not Sell My Personal Information © 2023 VentureBeat.
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"RR Donnelley reveals role as Apple's photo printer, debuts Motif plug-in | VentureBeat"
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"https://venturebeat.com/mobile/rr-donnelley-reveals-role-as-apples-photo-printer-debuts-motif-plug-in"
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"Artificial Intelligence View All AI, ML and Deep Learning Auto ML Data Labelling Synthetic Data Conversational AI NLP Text-to-Speech Security View All Data Security and Privacy Network Security and Privacy Software Security Computer Hardware Security Cloud and Data Storage Security Data Infrastructure View All Data Science Data Management Data Storage and Cloud Big Data and Analytics Data Networks Automation View All Industrial Automation Business Process Automation Development Automation Robotic Process Automation Test Automation Enterprise Analytics View All Business Intelligence Disaster Recovery Business Continuity Statistical Analysis Predictive Analysis More Data Decision Makers Virtual Communication Team Collaboration UCaaS Virtual Reality Collaboration Virtual Employee Experience Programming & Development Product Development Application Development Test Management Development Languages RR Donnelley reveals role as Apple’s photo printer, debuts Motif plug-in Share on Facebook Share on X Share on LinkedIn Motif from RR Donnelley gives Mac users the ability to print Apple-quality photo books -- a service Apple recently announced it was discontinuing.
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When Apple announced plans to discontinue its photo printing service, it guided users to several third-party alternatives. But one option has an advantage over the rest: Top commercial printer RR Donnelley has revealed itself as Apple’s longtime provider of photo printing services and released an app called Motif that lets macOS Photos users continue to purchase its products.
In an email to VentureBeat, an RR Donnelley representative noted that the company has printed Apple’s photo books since 2005 — a detail that was rumored within the industry but unconfirmed during the contract with Apple. Donnelley has been the world’s largest commercial printer for years, and its Consolidated Graphics (CGX) division was said to be responsible for Apple’s printed products.
Above: Motif runs inside Photos for macOS and includes support for macOS Mojave.
As a plug-in extension for Apple’s Photos app, Motif enables Mac users to create printed photo books, calendars, and cards similar to the ones Apple historically offered. In addition to auto-flowing and automatically laying out photo books, Motif’s intuitive user interface lets users select individual photos, create size-adjusted layouts, and modify text directly on the printable pages. It also automatically flags both duplicates and images that won’t print well so you can avoid making costly mistakes.
Donnelley cites its Apple-approved printing quality as a major asset. “In a field where low quality runs rampant,” the company said, “Motif uses sustainable and durable materials that are built to stand the test of time.” Books start at $9.99 for an 8-by-6-inch satin softcover and climb to $49.99 for a 13-by-10 deluxe hardcover, while calendars are $19.99, flat cards are 99 cents each, and folded cards start at $1.49. The company says it will reprint or refund any product that isn’t to your complete satisfaction.
Motif is available now as a free download from the Mac App Store. It’s currently compatible with macOS High Sierra but may not work fully with the beta version of macOS Mojave.
VentureBeat's mission is to be a digital town square for technical decision-makers to gain knowledge about transformative enterprise technology and transact.
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"IDC: Smartphone shipments down 1.8% in Q2 2018, Huawei passes Apple for second place | VentureBeat"
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"https://venturebeat.com/mobile/idc-smartphone-shipments-down-1-8-in-q2-2018-huawei-passes-apple-for-second-place"
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"Artificial Intelligence View All AI, ML and Deep Learning Auto ML Data Labelling Synthetic Data Conversational AI NLP Text-to-Speech Security View All Data Security and Privacy Network Security and Privacy Software Security Computer Hardware Security Cloud and Data Storage Security Data Infrastructure View All Data Science Data Management Data Storage and Cloud Big Data and Analytics Data Networks Automation View All Industrial Automation Business Process Automation Development Automation Robotic Process Automation Test Automation Enterprise Analytics View All Business Intelligence Disaster Recovery Business Continuity Statistical Analysis Predictive Analysis More Data Decision Makers Virtual Communication Team Collaboration UCaaS Virtual Reality Collaboration Virtual Employee Experience Programming & Development Product Development Application Development Test Management Development Languages IDC: Smartphone shipments down 1.8% in Q2 2018, Huawei passes Apple for second place Share on Facebook Share on X Share on LinkedIn Huawei campus in Shenzhen, Guangdong, China.
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For the first time in seven years, Samsung and Apple have not taken the top two positions in the worldwide smartphone market. All hail Huawei. Although Samsung held onto first place — the South Korean giant typically dominates the first three quarters of the year, with the U.S. company winning the fourth quarter — Huawei passed Apple for second place this past quarter.
Smartphone vendors shipped a total of 348.2 million smartphones worldwide in Q2 2018, down 1.8 percent from the 348.2 million units in Q2 2017. Of the top five (Samsung, Huawei, Apple, Xiaomi, and Oppo), only Samsung shipped fewer units than the year before. The Q2 2018 figures come from IDC (though Canalys and Strategy Analytics both agree that Huawei passed Apple in the quarter), which summarized its findings in the following chart: As you can see above, Samsung lost 2.0 percentage points (from 22.9 percent to 20.9 percent) as it shipped 8.3 million fewer smartphones (71.5 million). Samsung typically owns about a fifth of the market, and that remains unchanged. The Galaxy S9 and Galaxy S9+ simply did not deliver.
Samsung blamed the slowdown on intensified competition at the high end and an overall sluggish smartphone market. All eyes are now on the Galaxy Note9, to be announced on August 9.
Huawei gained a whopping 4.8 points, hitting a new high of 15.8 percent market share. Passing Apple required quite the jump. Huawei is still closer to Apple than it is to Samsung, but if it can keep the momentum going, the Chinese company will have successfully dismantled the duopoly held by its two biggest competitors. Huawei’s P20/P20 Pro series found strong demand, as did Honor models sold via online channels.
Apple’s share, meanwhile, grew 0.3 points (from 11.8 percent to 12.1 percent), thanks to slight iPhone gains.
The iPhone 8, iPhone 8 Plus , and iPhone X are chugging along, as well, with Apple specifically noting that the iPhone X was the top seller.
The expected launch of three next-generation iPhone models this fall could help the company reclaim second place.
Xiaomi jumped 2.9 points (to 9.3 percent) and Oppo gained 0.6 points (to 8.6 percent). Huawei has a bigger lead over Apple than Apple has over Xiaomi, which was unfathomable just a few quarters ago.
Companies outside of the top five together lost 6.9 points. The top five leaders are increasingly dominating, and it wouldn’t surprise me if they all soon held double-digit shares of the pie. Consumers no longer seem to be as obsessed with upgrading to the latest and greatest, but when they do, they’re increasingly considering the Chinese trio instead of the de facto Samsung or Apple options.
“Globally, as well as in China, a key bellwether, smartphone consumers are trading up to more premium devices, but there are no longer as many new smartphone converts, resulting in shipments dropping,” IDC associate research director Melissa Chau said in a statement. “When we look at it from a dollar value perspective, the smartphone market is still climbing and will continue to grow over the years to come as consumers are increasingly reliant on these devices for the bulk of their computing needs.” “The continued growth of Huawei is impressive, to say the least, as is its ability to move into markets where, until recently, the brand was largely unknown,” IDC program vice president Ryan Reith said in a statement. “It is worth noting that Apple moved into the top position each of the last two holiday quarters following its product refresh, so it’s likely we’ll see continued movement among the top-ranked companies in 2018 and beyond. For most markets, the ultra-high end ($700+) competition is largely some combination of Apple, Samsung, and Huawei, depending on the geography, and this is unlikely to change much in the short term. At the same time, Xiaomi, OPPO, and vivo are all slowly pushing their customer base upstream at a price tier slightly lower than the top three. This is an area they should all watch closely, as the builds in this segment are getting increasingly more advanced.” VentureBeat's mission is to be a digital town square for technical decision-makers to gain knowledge about transformative enterprise technology and transact.
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"Apple’s Q3 2018 earnings call: iPhone X and subscriptions drove growth | VentureBeat"
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"https://venturebeat.com/mobile/apples-q3-2018-earnings-call-iphone-x-and-subscriptions-drove-growth"
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"Artificial Intelligence View All AI, ML and Deep Learning Auto ML Data Labelling Synthetic Data Conversational AI NLP Text-to-Speech Security View All Data Security and Privacy Network Security and Privacy Software Security Computer Hardware Security Cloud and Data Storage Security Data Infrastructure View All Data Science Data Management Data Storage and Cloud Big Data and Analytics Data Networks Automation View All Industrial Automation Business Process Automation Development Automation Robotic Process Automation Test Automation Enterprise Analytics View All Business Intelligence Disaster Recovery Business Continuity Statistical Analysis Predictive Analysis More Data Decision Makers Virtual Communication Team Collaboration UCaaS Virtual Reality Collaboration Virtual Employee Experience Programming & Development Product Development Application Development Test Management Development Languages Apple’s Q3 2018 earnings call: iPhone X and subscriptions drove growth Share on Facebook Share on X Share on LinkedIn Tim Cook at Apple's Worldwide Developer Conference (WWDC) 2018 Are you looking to showcase your brand in front of the brightest minds of the gaming industry? Consider getting a custom GamesBeat sponsorship.
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After releasing record third-quarter financial results today, Apple CEO Tim Cook and CFO Luca Maestri hosted their quarterly live question-and-answer session for financial analysts. We are covering the session live, with updates below in chronological order as the call proceeds.
Today’s Q&A comes as Apple’s executives once again celebrate double-digit percentage revenue growth across every territory except Japan, which grew by 7 percent. China was up 19 percent year-over-year, versus 16 percent for the rest of the Asia-Pacific region, 14 percent for Europe, and 20 percent in the Americas. The company is predicting between 16 and 19 percent overall growth for the next quarter.
iPhone and Services Tim Cook opened the call by noting that iPhone had a very strong quarter: The active install base grew by double-digits, due to switchers, first-time buyers, and existing customers. iPhone X was the top-seller for the quarter again, with 98 percent customer satisfaction.
Another major area for the company is stellar Services growth, helped by growth of Apple’s active installed base. The company is on target to double Services revenue by 2020. Paid subscriptions have now surpassed $300 million, up 60 percent in the past year. Subscription revenue is an increasing percentage of the Services business, and the number of apps offering subscriptions is now at nearly 30,000.
The App Store has exceeded Apple’s wildest expectations and generated twice the revenue of Google Play so far for the year. Apple Music grew 50 percent, AppleCare has grown, and cloud services were up 50 percent year-over-year.
Apple’s free services are also surging. The company saw all-time highs for use of Messages and FaceTime; Siri requests are already at 100 billion for the year; and the number of articles read on Apple News has doubled. Apple Pay usage has also increased, tripling from a year ago.
Apple Watch and Wearables Cook said that Wearables is the third major area — up 60 percent year-over-year, and now up to $10 billion in revenue for the year. Apple Watch grew in the mid-40 percent range for the quarter, and AirPods growth is beginning to resemble the early days of iPod, as they’re becoming increasingly visible in public. With watchOS 5’s release in the fall, Apple Watch will become stronger for fitness, communication, and quick access to information, including workout data.
Maestri noted that Apple Watch is the best-selling smartwatch by a wide margin, and AirPods have been selling as fast as Apple can make them since they were introduced roughly a year and a half ago.
iOS 12: Siri and ARKit 2 Starting with iOS 12, Siri will take a “major step forward” with Siri Shortcuts, which let any app work with Siri, significantly expanding its adoption and making it more useful. iOS 12’s under-the-hood enhancements make it much faster, and its activity-monitoring features will let users understand how much time they’re spending on their devices.
ARKit 2 will enable the creation of more dynamic AR apps, and Apple is uniquely positioned to provide the best AR experience, Cook said, because of the integrated Apple software and hardware.
Mac and macOS While Cook only briefly discussed macOS Mojave, noting that Safari will be adding privacy features this year, he spent a bit more time discussing the iOS-to-macOS porting initiative previewed at WWDC — previously codenamed Marzipan.
Cook said that Mac developers will be empowered to bring their best iOS apps to the Mac. While he says that they’re different OSes, iOS frameworks are being brought over with specific Mac behaviors to make it possible to easily port iOS apps to Mac. Apple will release its first in-house-ported titles with Mojave and will bring the iOS-to-Mac tools to developers next year.
Maestri noted that the MacBook Pro launched later this year than last, putting it at a sales disadvantage, but that it still did well in a number of countries.
Apple TV and HomePod After noting that HomePod availability has expanded into several additional markets, Cook said that the Apple TV has seen major growth since the introduction last fall of Apple TV 4K. As noted at WWDC, video providers across the world are choosing Apple TV 4K to deliver subscriptions — Charter will be offering it later this year to 50 million households within the Spectrum app. iTunes will have the largest collection of Dolby Atmos-supported movies anywhere by this fall.
Q&A How will services grow further over the next three to five years, given that they’re already on track to hit the company’s expectations, and will margins continue to be in the 38 to 38.5 percent range? Cook says that while Apple couldn’t be happier with the way things are going, the company is planning new services in addition to current ones to boost services growth further. Maestri says the margin should be flat — Apple was able to offset potential margin issues this quarter, and between foreign currency exchange costs and the costs of introducing new products, offset by growing services and the falling cost of memory, it should be balanced out for the September quarter.
Any color on individual members of the iPhone family, and iPhone’s competitive position, given that there have now been nine months of experience with iPhone X? Cook says that Apple has continued to see iPhone X growth week by week, despite its higher price, and that it’s been the top-selling product. The iPhone X, 8, and 8 Plus are growing nicely as a fraction of the family’s sales. This cycle, they’ve learned that customers want innovative products (!). iPhone X was even the top-selling phone in urban China.
What about the trade situation with China? Cook says this is the fourth consecutive quarter of double-digit growth in China, and they have had such growth in iPhone, iPad, Services, and the Watch. In terms of the tariffs: Our view on tariffs is that they show up as a tax on the consumer and wind up resulting in lower economic growth. Sometimes they can bring about a significant risk of unintended consequences.
It’s clear that some of the details between China and the U.S. are in need of modernizing, but Apple doesn’t think tariffs are the way to do that. In terms of ones that have exited the comment period, there are three of them — U.S.-imposed tariff on steel and aluminum, plus two others on $50 billion on goods coming out of China. None of Apple’s products was directly affected by them.
There’s a fourth tariff for $200 billion of goods, and that one is out for public comment; Apple will share its views on that one before the end of the public comment process. It might not be obvious, but Apple needs to analyze both its purchases from other companies and its own products that could be impacted from a revenue process. The impact to Apple is very difficult to quantify, but all of that said, Cook is optimistic that it will be sorted out, as there is an inescapable mutuality between the U.S. and China, which means the world only prospers if both do, and both countries prosper working with each other. They’re hoping that calm heads prevail.
What’s the situation with the Oprah partnership, and how is Apple Music doing? Cook says they’re “very excited to work with Oprah,” who has an unmatched ability to connect with audiences around the world. Apple hired two highly respected TV executives last year and has been working on a project that it is not yet ready to share all the details about, but the company feels really good about what it will offer. The key catalyst is cord-cutting — it’s only going to continue to accelerate and is likely to happen faster than people thought.
Apple TV grew by very, very strong double digits in Q3, Cook says, and different providers are picking up the Apple TV to use for their services. Within 300 million-plus-paid subscriptions, there are third-party video services growing 100 percent year-over-year. All the outside information Apple sees points to dramatic changes speeding up in the content industry, so the company’s glad to be working on the service it won’t discuss further today.
In terms of Apple Music, there are well over 50 million listeners now, including paid and trial subscribers. Apple has a leadership position in Japan and is making strong inroads in countries where it’s been for a long time. It’s not a competition between existing players — the real challenge is to grow the market. Outside of China, less than 200 million people are using subscription music systems around the world, so there’s a chance to build the overall market.
How healthy is the smartphone market, given that iPhone unit sales have been pretty flat for years? Cook says that the market is healthy — the best market in the world to be in, for a consumer tech company. Whether it grows 1-2 percent, 5 percent, 10 percent, or shrinks, it’s still a huge market. iPhone revenues are up 20 percent for the quarter, and given “the cycle” of an iPhone, unit sales are single-digit, revenues are up double-digit.
Some replacement cycles are lengthening, based on subsidy plans becoming a much smaller percentage of sales around the world. But for Apple, coming out with a great, innovative product brings enough people to the table to make for really good business. Apple’s installed base is one of the key drivers of services, and the active installed base for iPhone grew double digits over the year-ago quarter, which you can see in services numbers. Apple doesn’t really care whether someone buys a replacement battery instead of a replacement phone — it’s just focused on making great new products people want to buy.
Given that there’s a war on in the home — internet of things and connected homes — how important is it to have a beachhead in the home and outside? Cook: HomePod and Apple TV are only a small part of what’s at home, including the Mac, iPhone, and iPad all being used at home. Siri is now being used a lot for home-related functions, and Cook is using Apple Watch, iPhone, iPad, and HomePod to control home automation. The smartphone has become the repository across the whole of your life, and Apple is focused on everything.
Is the iPhone the onroad into the Apple ecosystem, or is it the Beats headphone or smaller accessories that are attracting new people into the Apple market? Cook says that the AirPods, Apple Watch, etc. are products within the ecosystem. However, he’s heard that some users are coming to the iPhone because of the Apple Watch, but also the other way around; it’s not always a linear path, as it is different for each user.
VentureBeat's mission is to be a digital town square for technical decision-makers to gain knowledge about transformative enterprise technology and transact.
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"China blames Apple for gambling and porn texts as trade war escalates | VentureBeat"
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"https://venturebeat.com/media/china-blames-apple-for-gambling-and-porn-texts-as-trade-war-escalates"
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"Artificial Intelligence View All AI, ML and Deep Learning Auto ML Data Labelling Synthetic Data Conversational AI NLP Text-to-Speech Security View All Data Security and Privacy Network Security and Privacy Software Security Computer Hardware Security Cloud and Data Storage Security Data Infrastructure View All Data Science Data Management Data Storage and Cloud Big Data and Analytics Data Networks Automation View All Industrial Automation Business Process Automation Development Automation Robotic Process Automation Test Automation Enterprise Analytics View All Business Intelligence Disaster Recovery Business Continuity Statistical Analysis Predictive Analysis More Data Decision Makers Virtual Communication Team Collaboration UCaaS Virtual Reality Collaboration Virtual Employee Experience Programming & Development Product Development Application Development Test Management Development Languages China blames Apple for gambling and porn texts as trade war escalates Share on Facebook Share on X Share on LinkedIn Are you looking to showcase your brand in front of the brightest minds of the gaming industry? Consider getting a custom GamesBeat sponsorship.
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Growing economic tensions between the United States and China have begun to affect Apple, the Wall Street Journal reports today, as Chinese government agencies and state-controlled media have initiated a new campaign to block “prohibited content” from Apple devices. If Apple refuses to cooperate, authorities could shut down services that are violating Chinese laws, the report says.
Five state-supported media outlets raised the first issue, together claiming that Apple is not adequately filtering banned content — texts and images featuring pornography, gambling, and counterfeit goods — from its iMessage service. Shortly after the media reports surfaced, several Chinese government agencies announced that they will impose new requirements requiring Apple and other phone makers to “include spam-filtering features,” though it’s unclear whether the authorities are solely concerned about pornographic, gambling, and counterfeiting spam.
State-owned broadcaster CCTV raised a second issue today, claiming that Apple’s App Store distributes illegal gambling apps that have been disguised as official lottery apps. In the past, Apple has willingly removed otherwise legal apps from its App Store to comply with China-specific laws, so if there are actually illegal gambling apps in the Store, addressing that issue should be straightforward.
China’s “media first, police next” approach is no surprise to observers, as the country has historically used state-supported press to publicize accusations against countries and companies ahead of government actions against them. As the Journal points out, a dispute last year with South Korea led the Chinese media to call for retaliation against South Korean companies, damaging sales of Korean products. Since China and the United States are in the midst of a trade war, Apple’s U.S.-designed, Chinese-manufactured products have been mentioned as a likely target , though they’ve generally been spared up until now.
Apple faces profound risks if Chinese authorities clamp down on its business. Roughly one-fifth of the company’s revenue currently comes from China, notably including an ever-growing percentage of App Store revenues and generally (if not consistently) improving device sales. Moreover, the company depends heavily on Chinese manufacturing facilities to fabricate its products, and would be unable to replenish inventories worldwide if its Chinese supply, manufacturing, and shipping activities were disrupted.
Addressing China’s stated concerns could either prove to be easy or incredibly difficult for Apple, depending on whether the issue is actually “spam” or otherwise “prohibited content.” Apple’s messaging service iMessage doesn’t have spam filters like Google’s Android, which allows third-party plugins to view and filter unwanted messages. While Apple lets users filter out unknown senders, manually block senders, and report spammers, its anti-spam tools have been criticized as fairly basic.
Facing incredible levels of call and text spam, India’s government has threatened to ban iPhones from the country’s networks — and Apple appears to be at least partially responding. It has said that iOS 12 will include some additional spam reporting features when it launches in September, and it’s possible that Chinese authorities will be satisfied with them.
But if the Chinese government expects Apple to filter or censor users’ private texts and images for morally or legally questionable content, resolution may be virtually impossible. The company has unambiguously declined to patrol or permit access to its users’ private messages, and utilizes end-to-end encryption to guarantee what it describes as a personal right to privacy. While a Chinese government-controlled company holds encryption keys for iCloud users in China, Apple has maintained that it is committed to maintaining user privacy.
VentureBeat's mission is to be a digital town square for technical decision-makers to gain knowledge about transformative enterprise technology and transact.
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"Magic Leap One’s field of view leak signals another AR disappointment | VentureBeat"
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"https://venturebeat.com/games/magic-leap-ones-field-of-view-leak-signals-another-ar-disappointment"
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"Artificial Intelligence View All AI, ML and Deep Learning Auto ML Data Labelling Synthetic Data Conversational AI NLP Text-to-Speech Security View All Data Security and Privacy Network Security and Privacy Software Security Computer Hardware Security Cloud and Data Storage Security Data Infrastructure View All Data Science Data Management Data Storage and Cloud Big Data and Analytics Data Networks Automation View All Industrial Automation Business Process Automation Development Automation Robotic Process Automation Test Automation Enterprise Analytics View All Business Intelligence Disaster Recovery Business Continuity Statistical Analysis Predictive Analysis More Data Decision Makers Virtual Communication Team Collaboration UCaaS Virtual Reality Collaboration Virtual Employee Experience Programming & Development Product Development Application Development Test Management Development Languages Magic Leap One’s field of view leak signals another AR disappointment Share on Facebook Share on X Share on LinkedIn Are you looking to showcase your brand in front of the brightest minds of the gaming industry? Consider getting a custom GamesBeat sponsorship.
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Though Magic Leap has shared more information on its augmented reality headset in recent months, its latest revelations have been somewhat disappointing. Add this one to the pile: Developers have apparently unearthed details on Magic Leap One’s field of view — the “augmented” portion of your vision — and it’s only a little better than Microsoft’s HoloLens, not the great leap forward people have been expecting.
Developer documentation suggests that Magic Leap One’s augmented field of view will be 40 degrees horizontal by 30 degrees vertical, a 4:3 aspect ratio akin to iPad screens. By comparison, HoloLens has a 16:9 aspect ratio with a 30-degree horizontal and 17-degree vertical field of view, while Sony’s PlayStation VR has a 16:9 aspect ratio with a roughly 100-degree horizontal field of view.
This means that looking through Magic Leap One will not provide a sense that you’re fully immersed in a combined real and digital world — instead, you’ll see a digital window floating on top of a larger real space. The company says that the digital window will be big enough to depict a “large house cat” at a distance of 40 inches away, or a large widescreen television at a distance of 110 inches away.
Event GamesBeat at the Game Awards We invite you to join us in LA for GamesBeat at the Game Awards event this December 7. Reserve your spot now as space is limited! The image above illustrates generally what this means. By comparison with Sony’s popular virtual reality headset (green), which provides a wider and taller field of view that is nearly but not wholly immersive, Magic Leap One’s field of view (blue) will be considerably smaller, though not as small as HoloLens (red). To make the presence of the digital window less obvious, Magic Leap is suggesting that developers use a technique to gently fade content in and out as it hits the window’s edges.
Above: In this 2014 image from the Magic Leap website, a tiny, photorealistic elephant dances in someone’s hands.
It should be noted that the AR viewing area was discovered in the source code of a “field of view” document for Magic Leap developers, buried under the phrase “Coming soon on launch day!” So it’s possible that the hidden details are inaccurate, though it’s more likely that they’re correct and that Magic Leap didn’t want to share the disappointing information until the product was out in the wild.
The text in the source code reads: Field of View is widely used in XR to measure the viewable area a person can see through a device like Magic Leap One. While helpful in providing a baseline measure, Field of View can be misleading as it is a 2D concept and does not fully describe the three-dimensional attributes of space directly visible through our device. A 2D Field of View is a relative measure and is dependent upon the depth and scale of the content being viewed.
Instead, the term Viewing Frustum (or View Frustum) better describes the three-dimensional space within which lightfield objects are viewed. With a focus on design guidelines and best practices, our volumes can range from hand sized characters to larger objects like 90″ TV screens or even spaceships. Spatial computing is about working in volumes and spaces, not just a 2D Field of View.
For context, here’s a list of real world items and the distance from the you at which they’d be fully contained within the viewing frustum of the device: At 40 inches away a large house cat, laying down (29″ long, 21″ high) would be fully within the viewing frustum.
At 75 inches away a standing large dog such as a labrador or a retriever (54″ long, 40″ high) would be fully in the viewing frustum.
At 110 inches away a 90 inch widescreen TV (80″ long, 58″ high) would be fully in the viewing frustum.
At 144 inches away you can fully fit a family of three 6 foot tall humans, standing upright side by side within the viewing frustum. At 144 inches the viewable area is 104 inches long and 77 inches high.
That all said, as a developer you need to know operational values of the device. Magic Leap One has a horizontal FOV of 40 degrees, a vertical FOV of 30 degrees, and a diagonal FOV of 50 degrees. Check out the following documents and samples for more information on ways to work with the device to have larger content, and experiences, that feel good to your users.
Above: One of Magic Leap’s video demos suggested that it would be able to augment reality with relatively large, photorealistic digital objects.
As photos and demo videos for the Magic Leap One have depicted seemingly immersive experiences, it’s an open question at this point whether the headset will actually deliver on that promise. But it’s difficult to imagine a device with a relatively narrow field of view serving as a viable platform for games, or other experiences that benefit from surrounding your eyes. Much to the consternation of AR fans, truly immersive augmented reality may still be years away.
Magic Leap One is supposed to begin shipping to most developers this summer and will apparently be generally available to consumers in 2019. Microsoft is reportedly developing a second-generation, 2019 version of its HoloLens with around double the current 30-degree field of view, and Leap Motion has developed a North Star augmented reality headset with a 100-degree field of view.
GamesBeat's creed when covering the game industry is "where passion meets business." What does this mean? We want to tell you how the news matters to you -- not just as a decision-maker at a game studio, but also as a fan of games. Whether you read our articles, listen to our podcasts, or watch our videos, GamesBeat will help you learn about the industry and enjoy engaging with it.
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"Microsoft's M12 joins $12 million funding extension for fintech startup BlueVine | VentureBeat"
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"https://venturebeat.com/entrepreneur/microsofts-m12-joins-72-million-investment-in-fintech-startup-bluevine"
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"Artificial Intelligence View All AI, ML and Deep Learning Auto ML Data Labelling Synthetic Data Conversational AI NLP Text-to-Speech Security View All Data Security and Privacy Network Security and Privacy Software Security Computer Hardware Security Cloud and Data Storage Security Data Infrastructure View All Data Science Data Management Data Storage and Cloud Big Data and Analytics Data Networks Automation View All Industrial Automation Business Process Automation Development Automation Robotic Process Automation Test Automation Enterprise Analytics View All Business Intelligence Disaster Recovery Business Continuity Statistical Analysis Predictive Analysis More Data Decision Makers Virtual Communication Team Collaboration UCaaS Virtual Reality Collaboration Virtual Employee Experience Programming & Development Product Development Application Development Test Management Development Languages Microsoft’s M12 joins $12 million funding extension for fintech startup BlueVine Share on Facebook Share on X Share on LinkedIn Are you looking to showcase your brand in front of the brightest minds of the gaming industry? Consider getting a custom GamesBeat sponsorship.
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Fintech startup BlueVine has added $12 million to its recently announced series E round of funding, bringing Microsoft’s venture capital (VC) unit M12 onboard alongside the VC arm of finance giant Nationwide.
The additional funding brings BlueVine’s total series E round to $72 million, after the company announced an initial $60 million cash injection just two months ago.
Founded out of Redwood City, California in 2013, BlueVine helps small businesses access working capital so they can grow and cover costs when clients take a little too long to pay. BlueVine’s cloud-based platform offers invoice factoring, a payments system that advances companies a percentage of their outstanding invoices, in addition to credit facilities.
BlueVine has now raised around $590 million in funding since its inception, though it’s worth noting that around three-quarters of that came in the past year via debt financing. In May alone, the company announced a $200 million revolving credit facility with Credit Suisse. However, BlueVine has attracted some high-caliber VC investors, with the likes of Menlo Ventures, Silicon Valley Bank, Lightspeed Venture Partners, and 83North all contributing to its series E round.
Small business lending has become big business as traditional lenders are often reluctant to lend to small companies, leaving a sizeable opening for competitors. Last week, eBay announced a tie-up with Square Capital to offer sellers loans of up to $100,000, while Amazon has loaned billions of dollars to small businesses selling on its platform. And PayPal recently acquired Swift Financial to expand its working capital program , which launched back in 2013.
In addition to its funding extension, BlueVine also revealed that it has facilitated $1 billion in working capital funding since it first started a little more than four years ago.
“The company’s [BlueVine] market traction to date has been impressive, and we believe their technology and talent have set them on the path for continued growth,” said M12 partner Elliott Robinson. “We look forward to seeing what they do next.” VentureBeat's mission is to be a digital town square for technical decision-makers to gain knowledge about transformative enterprise technology and transact.
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The AI Impact Tour Join us for an evening full of networking and insights at VentureBeat's AI Impact Tour, coming to San Francisco, New York, and Los Angeles! VentureBeat Homepage Follow us on Facebook Follow us on X Follow us on LinkedIn Follow us on RSS Press Releases Contact Us Advertise Share a News Tip Contribute to DataDecisionMakers Careers Privacy Policy Terms of Service Do Not Sell My Personal Information © 2023 VentureBeat.
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"GV leads $30 million investment in Verana Health to improve clinical research using EHR data | VentureBeat"
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"https://venturebeat.com/entrepreneur/gv-leads-30-million-investment-in-verana-health-to-improve-clinical-research-using-ehr-data"
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"Artificial Intelligence View All AI, ML and Deep Learning Auto ML Data Labelling Synthetic Data Conversational AI NLP Text-to-Speech Security View All Data Security and Privacy Network Security and Privacy Software Security Computer Hardware Security Cloud and Data Storage Security Data Infrastructure View All Data Science Data Management Data Storage and Cloud Big Data and Analytics Data Networks Automation View All Industrial Automation Business Process Automation Development Automation Robotic Process Automation Test Automation Enterprise Analytics View All Business Intelligence Disaster Recovery Business Continuity Statistical Analysis Predictive Analysis More Data Decision Makers Virtual Communication Team Collaboration UCaaS Virtual Reality Collaboration Virtual Employee Experience Programming & Development Product Development Application Development Test Management Development Languages GV leads $30 million investment in Verana Health to improve clinical research using EHR data Share on Facebook Share on X Share on LinkedIn New Verana Health CEO Miki Kapoor Are you looking to showcase your brand in front of the brightest minds of the gaming industry? Consider getting a custom GamesBeat sponsorship.
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Verana Health , a platform that’s setting out to help the life sciences industry enhance clinical studies with analytics and data, has raised $30 million in a series C round of funding led by Alphabet’s VC arm GV. The round included participation from Biomatics Capital; GE Ventures; Lagunita Biosciences; and Brook Byers, cofounder of Kleiner, Perkins, Caufield & Byers.
The company has been known as DigiSight Technologies since its inception in 2008, but alongside today’s funding news it has also unveiled a new name.
Verana Health said that it meshes analytics with “longitudinal” electronic health record (EHR) data to support the development of new pharmaceuticals and devices. Though its long-term plan is to support multiple health care specialties, it will first focus on eye care. It will initially use EHR data from the American Academy of Ophthalmology’s IRIS registry on eye diseases, though it plans similar tie-ups to gain access to clinical databases from other medical bodies in the future.
Launched in 2014, the IRIS (Intelligent Research in Sight) registry features contributions from more than 10,000 ophthalmology clinicians who have registered to contribute patient data electronically, covering 50 million patients across 211 million visits. Verana Health started to develop its data platform in 2017 after it was chosen by the American Academy of Ophthalmology — an association of eye physicians and surgeons — to develop commercial applications from the registry data.
VB Event The AI Impact Tour Connect with the enterprise AI community at VentureBeat’s AI Impact Tour coming to a city near you! “The data collected in the IRIS registry is a tremendous resource that can be leveraged to advance patient care and scientific knowledge,” noted Dr. David W. Parke II, CEO of the American Academy of Ophthalmology. “Working with Verana gives us the opportunity to realize the potential of the IRIS registry and protect patient sight by empowering drug and device innovators and physicians through data insights.” The main problem Verana Health is seeking to fix is the cost and length of time it takes to get new medical devices and therapeutics to market. By analyzing billions of data points, Verana Health said that it can help life scientists gain greater insights into patient needs so they can “optimize drug and device development from clinical research through to post-commercialization,” according to a statement issued by the company. In real terms, it wants to speed up trials by refining the study parameters and improving patient targeting.
Verana Health had previously raised around $15 million in funding, and with another $30 million chunk of cash it plans to double down on efforts to bring its health care data platform to more areas of medicine.
New CEO Alongside its funding, Verana Health announced the appointment of new CEO Miki Kapoor, who joins from health care data company Tea Leaves Health. Existing CEO Doug Foster is stepping into the role of chief strategy officer.
“Health care in the United States is evolving quickly in response to the unprecedented availability of data,” Kapoor said. “Verana Health has assembled a group of leading health care investors with expertise in big data applications, and a deep bench of talented, experienced health care and technology professionals. I am excited to lead this team as we build intelligent data solutions that provide actionable insights for industry and physicians alike.” GV has been making an increasing number investments in life sciences, having recently joined Kleiner Perkins in a $21 million funding round in AI health care startup Viz.ai. Elsewhere, GV also invested in machine learning medical research startup Owkin, vaccine development startup SpyBiotech, and clinical trial technology company Science 37.
“Verana Health generates highly differentiated, deep clinical insights for ophthalmology, creating significant new opportunities for patients, physicians, and the pharmaceutical industry at large,” noted GV general partner Dr. Krishna Yeshwant. “With the strong technical backgrounds and health care expertise of the executive team, the company is well positioned to transform the way data is leveraged to further innovation in eye care and other health care sectors.” VentureBeat's mission is to be a digital town square for technical decision-makers to gain knowledge about transformative enterprise technology and transact.
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"Freshworks raises $100 million, at $1.5 billion valuation, from Sequoia, Accel, and CapitalG as it plans for IPO | VentureBeat"
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"https://venturebeat.com/entrepreneur/freshworks-raises-100-million-from-sequoia-accel-and-capitalg-as-it-prepares-for-ipo"
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"Artificial Intelligence View All AI, ML and Deep Learning Auto ML Data Labelling Synthetic Data Conversational AI NLP Text-to-Speech Security View All Data Security and Privacy Network Security and Privacy Software Security Computer Hardware Security Cloud and Data Storage Security Data Infrastructure View All Data Science Data Management Data Storage and Cloud Big Data and Analytics Data Networks Automation View All Industrial Automation Business Process Automation Development Automation Robotic Process Automation Test Automation Enterprise Analytics View All Business Intelligence Disaster Recovery Business Continuity Statistical Analysis Predictive Analysis More Data Decision Makers Virtual Communication Team Collaboration UCaaS Virtual Reality Collaboration Virtual Employee Experience Programming & Development Product Development Application Development Test Management Development Languages Freshworks raises $100 million, at $1.5 billion valuation, from Sequoia, Accel, and CapitalG as it plans for IPO Share on Facebook Share on X Share on LinkedIn Are you looking to showcase your brand in front of the brightest minds of the gaming industry? Consider getting a custom GamesBeat sponsorship.
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Freshworks , which offers a range of customer support and sales software, has raised $100 million in a series G round of funding co-led by Sequoia and Accel Partners, with participation from Alphabet’s late-stage growth fund CapitalG.
The company was apparently valued at around $750 million during its last round of funding in November, 2016. But following its latest series G round, Freshworks confirmed to VentureBeat that it has now reached a valuation of double that — $1.5 billion.
Founded out of Chennai, India in 2010, Freshworks was known as Freshdesk until it rebranded last year to reflect an expansion beyond its core helpdesk product. Companies use the cloud-based Freshdesk product to track customer conversations, manage tickets, and collaborate with team members. Freshworks now also offers IT service management software, sales CRM software, call center software, and more.
“When we started Freshworks in 2010, we were a single product company with a goal of offering better, easier-to-use customer service software than what was in the market,” explained Freshworks CEO and cofounder Girish Mathrubootham. “We’ve since scaled our company to $100 million in annual recurring revenue and built a full SaaS platform where all of our products — like Freshsales, Freshdesk, and Freshservice — work together seamlessly, without requiring additional integration resources or consultants to make the software simply work.” VB Event The AI Impact Tour Connect with the enterprise AI community at VentureBeat’s AI Impact Tour coming to a city near you! Above: Freshworks CEO: Girish Mathrubootham Prior to now, Freshworks had raised around $150 million, with CapitalG, Sequoia, and Accel all participating in previous rounds. With a fresh $100 million in the bank, the company said it plans to expand globally and continue investing in its suite of software-as-a-service (SaaS) products.
Interestingly, Freshworks has also hired AppDynamics’ former VP of finance and treasury, Suresh Seshadri, as its chief financial officer. Seshadri helped AppDynamics prepare for its IPO in 2016 before it was eventually snapped up by Cisco , so this latest hire suggests that Freshworks has something big brewing for the near future. The company wouldn’t divulge any specific plans to go public — but Mathrubootham did provide some strong hints that this was a path it will pursue.
“With the addition of Suresh leading our financial management and strategy toward a path of free cash flow break even and our latest, and likely last, private funding round in place, we believe we have a unique opportunity to attract customers from around the globe who have been let down by legacy solutions,” he said.
Separately, a spokesperson confirmed to VentureBeat that while Freshworks doesn’t have a specific timeline in mind, it will likely go public in the U.S. in the future. “Right now, we’re focused on growing the business,” they said. “We don’t have a deadline on [an] IPO … it will eventually happen, but now we are focused on growing a business.” Freshworks claims more than 150,000 clients around the world, including the likes of Honda, Toshiba, Hugo Boss, and the NHS. This puts the company in a good position as it prepares to go public. Rival Zendesk has been riding on the crest of a wave since it went public four years ago — from its $9 IPO price in May 2014, Zendesk’s share price is now sitting at more than $60.
“Freshworks has been riding an incredible wave of growth,” added Seshadri. “Coming on board to work with Girish and the rest of the executive team is an incredible opportunity, and I am confident that we are well-positioned to reach the next phase of Freshworks’ expansion.” Though Freshworks was founded in India, it opened an office in San Francisco in 2014, and its global headquarters is now in San Bruno, California. However, the bulk of its employees are still based in India, where it claims around 1,400 people working on product development out of Chennai, with additional offices in London, Berlin, and Sydney.
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"Early-stage VC funding remains elusive in most U.S. cities | VentureBeat"
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"https://venturebeat.com/entrepreneur/early-stage-vc-funding-remains-elusive-in-most-u-s-cities"
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"Artificial Intelligence View All AI, ML and Deep Learning Auto ML Data Labelling Synthetic Data Conversational AI NLP Text-to-Speech Security View All Data Security and Privacy Network Security and Privacy Software Security Computer Hardware Security Cloud and Data Storage Security Data Infrastructure View All Data Science Data Management Data Storage and Cloud Big Data and Analytics Data Networks Automation View All Industrial Automation Business Process Automation Development Automation Robotic Process Automation Test Automation Enterprise Analytics View All Business Intelligence Disaster Recovery Business Continuity Statistical Analysis Predictive Analysis More Data Decision Makers Virtual Communication Team Collaboration UCaaS Virtual Reality Collaboration Virtual Employee Experience Programming & Development Product Development Application Development Test Management Development Languages Early-stage VC funding remains elusive in most U.S. cities Share on Facebook Share on X Share on LinkedIn Are you ready to bring more awareness to your brand? Consider becoming a sponsor for The AI Impact Tour. Learn more about the opportunities here.
With Silicon Valley getting more expensive by the day, there’s plenty of talk of businesses forgoing the area for other U.S. cities, a phenomenon often called “ Rise of the Rest.
” But is startup activity in markets typically underserved by venture capital actually rising? The nonprofit Center for American Entrepreneurship published a report today that aims to measure this by looking at the number of startups in a variety of U.S. metros that have received their first round of VC financing and how those numbers have changed since 2009, using data from PitchBook. The report’s author, Ian Hathaway, told VentureBeat that he chose to look at “first financings” as a measure of startup activity, as this is an indication, albeit an imperfect one, that the firm has potential for high growth. Additionally, an increase in the number of startups receiving first financings could be a sign that more high-growth firms are being created in the city.
Hathaway initially researched the distribution of first financings in 2015, and he found that a greater number of early-stage startups were being backed in more places across the U.S. than had been in years past. Cities like Columbus, Denver, and Indianapolis saw as much as a 21 percent increase in the number of early-stage startups receiving their first VC money between 2009-2010 and 2013-2014.
But in the three years since then, the number of first financings in most U.S. metros has decreased. This is consistent with national trends, as the total number of first financings in the U.S. dropped from 6,772 during 2013 to 5,220 by the end of 2016. Additionally, the share of first financings taken by the five cities that traditionally have the most VC-backed startups — San Francisco, New York, San Jose, Los Angeles, and Boston — has held steady at 54 percent over the past three years. This leads to concern that the Rise of the Rest trend isn’t as robust as some might think.
Hathaway doesn’t look at it this way — rather, he thinks that the research offers two takeaways. First, he believes aspiring tech hubs shouldn’t panic over year-to-year fluctuations in startup activity. He thinks a more appropriate timeline for judging startup communities is over 10 or more years. For one thing, most metros still had more startups receive first financings between 2016-2017 than they did between 2009-2010.
“These things take time, and it’s probably too soon to say whether you’re the next Boulder,” Hathaway told VentureBeat.
Second, he said that the startup and VC community still doesn’t know what a “healthy” concentration of startups in these so-called Rise of the Rest cities will look like. Hathaway points to Detroit, whose number of first financings dropped from 41 in 2013 to 18 in 2016. He says one way to look at this dip is that the number of first financings in 2013 was actually an unusually high number, and startup activity in the city has simply returned to more sustainable numbers.
But a few metro areas bucked national trends with a slight increase in the number of startups receiving their first round of VC fundings over the past three years. These include Boulder, Denver, Durham-Chapel Hill, Columbus, and Indianapolis, and their steady growth could be a sign of positive things to come for other cities across the country.
VentureBeat's mission is to be a digital town square for technical decision-makers to gain knowledge about transformative enterprise technology and transact.
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"Cred app lets you 'micro-invest' in cryptocurrencies | VentureBeat"
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"https://venturebeat.com/commerce/cred-app-lets-you-micro-invest-in-cryptocurrencies"
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"Artificial Intelligence View All AI, ML and Deep Learning Auto ML Data Labelling Synthetic Data Conversational AI NLP Text-to-Speech Security View All Data Security and Privacy Network Security and Privacy Software Security Computer Hardware Security Cloud and Data Storage Security Data Infrastructure View All Data Science Data Management Data Storage and Cloud Big Data and Analytics Data Networks Automation View All Industrial Automation Business Process Automation Development Automation Robotic Process Automation Test Automation Enterprise Analytics View All Business Intelligence Disaster Recovery Business Continuity Statistical Analysis Predictive Analysis More Data Decision Makers Virtual Communication Team Collaboration UCaaS Virtual Reality Collaboration Virtual Employee Experience Programming & Development Product Development Application Development Test Management Development Languages Cred app lets you ‘micro-invest’ in cryptocurrencies Share on Facebook Share on X Share on LinkedIn Cred lets you micro-invest in cryptocurrencies from an app.
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Cred is launching a mobile app that allows people to invest small amounts of money in cryptocurrencies. The iOS and Android app is aimed at solving problems around access and transparency associated with buying cryptocurrencies.
Santa Monica, California-based Cred said it has created a “micro-investing” platform to ease access to cryptocurrencies, which have become a hot (and sometimes cold) commodity as people seek to replace cash in the digital era.
With the Cred app, investors can round up the amount they spend on everyday purchases to the nearest $1, $2 or $5 and invest the extra money in cryptocurrency. For example, if an investor who rounds up to the nearest $1 spends $3.55 on an iced coffee, the Cred platform will automatically invest 45 cents in cryptocurrency.
Cred founder Brendon McQueen believes that consumers often feel intimidated when looking to invest in cryptocurrency, due to a lack of education about the industry, confusing product offerings, and reluctance to trust crypto offerings.
The company believes it is uniquely positioned to address these issues by offering an easy-to-use platform that allows users to invest in cryptocurrency, track their progress, learn about each coin prior to investing, and receive daily market recaps and news updates. For its initial rollout, Cred is launching in California, Missouri, Massachusetts, and Montana, with more states being introduced in the coming months.
About 69 percent of people in the U.S. expect the price of Bitcoin to rise in the next five years, but only 5 percent own Bitcoin, according to a Global Blockchain Business Council survey of 5,000 respondents. The high prices of cryptocurrencies, complicated platforms, and lack of education can make the space intimidating for first-time investors.
After signing up and following familiar KYC protocol (know your customer, an anti-money-laundering protocol), Cred presents investors with a variety of cryptocurrency options, such as Bitcoin, Ethereum, XRP, Litecoin, Komodo, and ZenCash — as well as tokens, including Worldwide Asset eXchange’s WAX and Neblio’s NEBL.
Above: Cred makes crypto investing simple.
In the app, each coin offering includes a graph that can be expanded to show the coin’s price over the last 24 hours, a month, and all time. Users can then press a “Learn” button, which describes each token’s purpose, as well as its history and relevance in the industry. Investors can then select the type of currency they are interested in and choose the amount of money they want to round up from a purchase.
Investors can also set up recurring investments, including on a weekly or monthly basis. Transactions are capped at $2,000 per month to start, which helps add peace of mind for first-time investors averse to spending large sums. Lastly, investors can make a one-time transaction.
“I’m thrilled to finally offer a non-intimidating space for consumers to get involved in cryptocurrency,” said McQueen, who serves as Cred’s CEO, in a statement. “There’s an obvious gap in the market: People aren’t investing in cryptocurrency because they think it’s too complicated and complex. Cred creates a tangible space for people to take advantage of cryptocurrency at any level of experience without having to be an expert. Our platform is clear, quick, and educational — helping us reach our mission of democratizing cryptocurrency and bringing it to the masses.” Cred is currently partnering with 13 cryptocurrency platforms and coins — including Bitcoin, Ethereum, Ripple, Bitcoin Cash, EOS, Litecoin, Stellar, Monero, Dash, Komodo, Wax, Neblio, and ZenCash — and the company continues to seek out interesting coins and projects to add to its platform.
“We are super excited to be partnering with Cred, as they offer a unique micro-savings and micro-investment platform that will help onboard a whole new segment of cryptocurrency users,” said Steve Lee, chief marketing officer at Komodo, in a statement. “Komodo has long been committed to the global adoption of blockchain technologies and enabling real world usage. Through our partnership, Komodo and Cred will be able to lower the barrier-to-entry into cryptocurrency for the mass market and offer a fiat gateway for KMD in the U.S.” Cred was founded in April 2018 and has 10 employees. The company has raised $1 million to date. McQueen previously founded and led Tuition.io, a market leader in student loan employee benefits.
VentureBeat's mission is to be a digital town square for technical decision-makers to gain knowledge about transformative enterprise technology and transact.
Discover our Briefings.
The AI Impact Tour Join us for an evening full of networking and insights at VentureBeat's AI Impact Tour, coming to San Francisco, New York, and Los Angeles! VentureBeat Homepage Follow us on Facebook Follow us on X Follow us on LinkedIn Follow us on RSS Press Releases Contact Us Advertise Share a News Tip Contribute to DataDecisionMakers Careers Privacy Policy Terms of Service Do Not Sell My Personal Information © 2023 VentureBeat.
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4,976 | 2,018 |
"Zillow can now field applicants and collect rent | VentureBeat"
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"https://venturebeat.com/business/zillow-can-now-field-applicants-and-collect-rent"
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"Artificial Intelligence View All AI, ML and Deep Learning Auto ML Data Labelling Synthetic Data Conversational AI NLP Text-to-Speech Security View All Data Security and Privacy Network Security and Privacy Software Security Computer Hardware Security Cloud and Data Storage Security Data Infrastructure View All Data Science Data Management Data Storage and Cloud Big Data and Analytics Data Networks Automation View All Industrial Automation Business Process Automation Development Automation Robotic Process Automation Test Automation Enterprise Analytics View All Business Intelligence Disaster Recovery Business Continuity Statistical Analysis Predictive Analysis More Data Decision Makers Virtual Communication Team Collaboration UCaaS Virtual Reality Collaboration Virtual Employee Experience Programming & Development Product Development Application Development Test Management Development Languages Zillow can now field applicants and collect rent Share on Facebook Share on X Share on LinkedIn Stan Humphries, Zillow's chief analytics officer, speaks at VB Summit 2017 in Berkeley, California on October 24, 2017.
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Zillow Group , the company behind Zillow, Trulia, and StreetEasy, wants to ease the burden of hunting for properties and paying rent on time.
It announced a new service today that allows landlords to accept applications and rent payments through Zillow’s existing Zillow Rental Manager.
Would-be renters pay $29 for a home or apartment application with credit, eviction history, and background checks powered by Experian and Checkr. Once they’ve secured the place, they have the option of setting up automatic rent payments using whichever method they please, including debit and check.
The new service is free for landlords, with the exception of a small processing fee on credit and debit card transactions (ACH is free).
“Renters tell us they want the entire rental process to happen online, from search to application to payment,” Zillow president Jeremy Wacksman said in a statement. “However, most landlords don’t have the resources to offer these services. We’re excited to provide the technology to help renters and landlords have a better experience.” VB Event The AI Impact Tour Connect with the enterprise AI community at VentureBeat’s AI Impact Tour coming to a city near you! Seattle-based Zillow has spent much of its 14-year history as a marketplace company focused on real estate advertising and data, but it’s recently pivoted toward investing and analytics in an effort to head off competitors such as Opendoor and Offerpad. In May 2017, Zillow launched Instant Offers, a feature that connects homeowners to offers from investors and comparative market analysis from local real estate agents. In April of that year, the company announced it would begin buying and selling homes.
Today, Zillow’s bread and butter is sales leads, which it passes to agents who work for brokers — like Coldwell Banker or Re/Max — to provide marketing, insurance, and sales support in exchange for a cut of their commission. Agents spend up to $60,000 a year buying leads from Zillow.
More than 3 out of 4 home shoppers start their search with Zillow, the company said, and 35 million renters visit Zillow and its affiliate websites and apps each month.
VentureBeat's mission is to be a digital town square for technical decision-makers to gain knowledge about transformative enterprise technology and transact.
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The AI Impact Tour Join us for an evening full of networking and insights at VentureBeat's AI Impact Tour, coming to San Francisco, New York, and Los Angeles! VentureBeat Homepage Follow us on Facebook Follow us on X Follow us on LinkedIn Follow us on RSS Press Releases Contact Us Advertise Share a News Tip Contribute to DataDecisionMakers Careers Privacy Policy Terms of Service Do Not Sell My Personal Information © 2023 VentureBeat.
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"Thermedical Announces FDA Investigational Device Exemption Approval to Begin US Clinical Study of Durablate Catheter for Treatment of Ventricular Tachycardia | VentureBeat"
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"https://venturebeat.com/business/thermedical-announces-fda-investigational-device-exemption-approval-to-begin-us-clinical-study-of-durablate-catheter-for-treatment-of-ventricular-tachycardia"
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"Artificial Intelligence View All AI, ML and Deep Learning Auto ML Data Labelling Synthetic Data Conversational AI NLP Text-to-Speech Security View All Data Security and Privacy Network Security and Privacy Software Security Computer Hardware Security Cloud and Data Storage Security Data Infrastructure View All Data Science Data Management Data Storage and Cloud Big Data and Analytics Data Networks Automation View All Industrial Automation Business Process Automation Development Automation Robotic Process Automation Test Automation Enterprise Analytics View All Business Intelligence Disaster Recovery Business Continuity Statistical Analysis Predictive Analysis More Data Decision Makers Virtual Communication Team Collaboration UCaaS Virtual Reality Collaboration Virtual Employee Experience Programming & Development Product Development Application Development Test Management Development Languages Press Release Thermedical Announces FDA Investigational Device Exemption Approval to Begin US Clinical Study of Durablate Catheter for Treatment of Ventricular Tachycardia Share on Facebook Share on X Share on LinkedIn WALTHAM, Mass.–(BUSINESS WIRE)–July 31, 2018– Thermedical ® announced today that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has approved its Investigational Device Exemption (IDE) application for the Early Feasibility Study (EFS) of the groundbreaking Durablate™ ablation catheter. The single-arm, observational study is designed to evaluate the safety and effectiveness of the Durablate catheter to treat ventricular tachycardia (VT), a leading cause of Sudden Cardiac Death in the U.S.
The target population consists of patients who have already been treated with medicine, have an Implantable Cardioverter Defibrillator (ICD), and who have had a conventional ablation procedure to treat VT, yet all their treatments have failed. The study is scheduled to begin in 2018 at Mayo Clinic under the direction of Douglas L. Packer, M.D., Professor of Medicine, and at Loyola University of Chicago Stritch School of Medicine, under the direction of David Wilber, M.D., Medical Director of Clinical Electrophysiology.
“Receiving IDE approval to begin clinical testing of our innovative ablation therapy in patients is an important next step to advance treatment to reduce or potentially eliminate VT episodes,” said Michael Curley, Ph.D., FHRS, co-founder and chief executive officer of Thermedical. “A successful therapy would significantly improve the quality-of-life for the more than one million people who develop, or are at high risk for developing VT annually.
“Ablation therapy for the treatment of VT today is problematic, resulting in extremely long procedures and a low success rate,” continued Dr. Curley. “There is significant need for an effective ablation therapy that can serve as an adjunct to, or as a possible replacement for ICDs. We believe our solution may be a low-cost alternative for treating VT, and it might save the US healthcare system significant costs associated with VT treatment today.” Implantable Cardioverter Defibrillators are the current standard-of-care treatment for patients suffering from VT; however, this approach does not stop the progression of the disease or provide a cure. In addition, ICDs can be costly and painful, and may substantially reduce a patient’s quality of life. VT patients who have ICDs and recurrent VT may be treated today with conventional RF ablation, which is a lengthy procedure that has a success rate of approximately 50 percent 1.
Thermedical’s patented ablation technology uses heat to kill the damaged heart muscle cells that are causing VT. The heat is delivered by the Durablate catheter, which simultaneously injects a precise flow of hot saline together with controlled RF energy into the heart tissue. This combination is an advanced form of biological heat transport that is 20 times more effective than conventional RF ablation methods. Compared to conventional VT ablation catheters, Durablate can more accurately control the ablation size, and it can treat tissue that is deeper in the heart wall, which is where life-threatening arrhythmias (abnormal, rapid heart rhythm) that cause VT are often located.
About Thermedical Thermedical is a privately held company founded by Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Hyperthermia Center alumni, Michael G. Curley, Ph.D.
and Patrick S. Hamilton, Ph.D.
, based in Waltham, Mass. Under a Massachusetts Life Sciences Center Small Business Matching Grant (SBMG) Award, multiple NIH* Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Grants, and Series A venture funding; the company has developed thermal-ablation systems to treat VT. The FDA-approved EFS will be the first human use of the Durablate Catheter Ablation System in the United States. Human studies began earlier in Canada and continue at three leading Canadian centers. For more information, visit: www.thermedical.com.
1 http://www.onlinejacc.org/content/accj/67/6/684.full.pdf * Research reported in this publication was supported by the National Heart, Lung, And Blood Institute of the National Institutes of Health under Award Number R44HL132746. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the National Institutes of Health.
View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20180731005123/en/ for Thermedical Amy Cook, 925-200-2125 [email protected] VentureBeat's mission is to be a digital town square for technical decision-makers to gain knowledge about transformative enterprise technology and transact.
Discover our Briefings.
VentureBeat Homepage Follow us on Facebook Follow us on X Follow us on LinkedIn Follow us on RSS Press Releases Contact Us Advertise Share a News Tip Contribute to DataDecisionMakers Careers Privacy Policy Terms of Service Do Not Sell My Personal Information © 2023 VentureBeat.
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"Sverica Announces Synoptek Has Acquired Indusa, Expands Business Systems Consulting and Worldwide Service Delivery Capability | VentureBeat"
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"https://venturebeat.com/business/sverica-announces-synoptek-has-acquired-indusa-expands-business-systems-consulting-and-worldwide-service-delivery-capability"
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"Artificial Intelligence View All AI, ML and Deep Learning Auto ML Data Labelling Synthetic Data Conversational AI NLP Text-to-Speech Security View All Data Security and Privacy Network Security and Privacy Software Security Computer Hardware Security Cloud and Data Storage Security Data Infrastructure View All Data Science Data Management Data Storage and Cloud Big Data and Analytics Data Networks Automation View All Industrial Automation Business Process Automation Development Automation Robotic Process Automation Test Automation Enterprise Analytics View All Business Intelligence Disaster Recovery Business Continuity Statistical Analysis Predictive Analysis More Data Decision Makers Virtual Communication Team Collaboration UCaaS Virtual Reality Collaboration Virtual Employee Experience Programming & Development Product Development Application Development Test Management Development Languages Press Release Sverica Announces Synoptek Has Acquired Indusa, Expands Business Systems Consulting and Worldwide Service Delivery Capability Share on Facebook Share on X Share on LinkedIn SAN FRANCISCO–(BUSINESS WIRE)–July 31, 2018– Sverica Capital Management LP (“Sverica”), a private equity investment firm, announced today that its portfolio company, Synoptek , has completed its acquisition of Indusa , a global technology company focused on end-to-end enterprise software solutions and services. The acquisition helps further position Synoptek as one of the leading digital transformation and IT management providers and bolsters its capabilities across a variety of key Microsoft technologies.
“This acquisition means we have all of the delivery capabilities to plan, build, and manage complete integrated solutions in the cloud coupled with an emphasis on compliance and security,” said Tim Britt, CEO of Synoptek. “With our breadth and depth of expertise, we can deliver a complete digital transformation, helping organizations leverage an integrated technology platform that will simplify their IT, accelerate change more cost effectively, and enable them to achieve business results faster.” “The acquisition of Indusa aligns directly with our strategy of moving up the technology stack to the application level, deepens our expertise in a variety of high growth service areas, and expands our global delivery capacity,” added Frank Young, Managing Partner at Sverica.
Along with their current managed support services, Synoptek will be able to further offer predictive analytics, business intelligence, and process innovation solutions. Additional capabilities will include: Business consulting and business systems implementation Predictive analytics and enhanced internet-of-things delivery capabilities Business systems planning and implementation expertise across CRM, analytics, eCommerce, ERP, as well as productivity and collaboration solutions Additional cloud migration and support capabilities Highly skilled personnel across: Microsoft Dynamics (365, AX, CRM), Power BI for Office 365, Azure Data Factory, Azure SQL Data Warehouse, Azure Analysis Service, Tableau, and Magento Expansive expertise across broad platforms within Microsoft and Amazon Web Services About Sverica Capital Management Sverica is a leading lower-middle-market-focused private equity firm that has raised over $700 million of investment capital across four funds. The firm acquires and actively builds companies that are, or could become, leaders in their industries. Since 2001, Sverica has maintained a “high touch” operating philosophy of taking an active role in portfolio companies. Sverica devotes significant internal resources to help its management teams develop and execute growth strategies. For more information, please visit www.sverica.com.
About Synoptek Synoptek provides information technology management services, consulting and IT leadership to organizations worldwide. The firm manages and operates IT infrastructure with 24/7 operations, automated toolsets, and highly skilled technologists. Synoptek’s trusted team of IT professionals provides superior end user and device management support to improve business performance and success. Synoptek offers a complete suite of managed IT services at the service levels necessary for customers to excel as high performing organizations. For more information, please visit https://synoptek.com/.
View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20180731005324/en/ Sverica Capital Management LP Nathalie Allen, 415-249-4906 [email protected] VentureBeat's mission is to be a digital town square for technical decision-makers to gain knowledge about transformative enterprise technology and transact.
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"RadianceTx Raises $1 Million First Tranche to Develop Novel Glaucoma Therapy | VentureBeat"
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"https://venturebeat.com/business/radiancetx-raises-1-million-first-tranche-to-develop-novel-glaucoma-therapy"
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"Artificial Intelligence View All AI, ML and Deep Learning Auto ML Data Labelling Synthetic Data Conversational AI NLP Text-to-Speech Security View All Data Security and Privacy Network Security and Privacy Software Security Computer Hardware Security Cloud and Data Storage Security Data Infrastructure View All Data Science Data Management Data Storage and Cloud Big Data and Analytics Data Networks Automation View All Industrial Automation Business Process Automation Development Automation Robotic Process Automation Test Automation Enterprise Analytics View All Business Intelligence Disaster Recovery Business Continuity Statistical Analysis Predictive Analysis More Data Decision Makers Virtual Communication Team Collaboration UCaaS Virtual Reality Collaboration Virtual Employee Experience Programming & Development Product Development Application Development Test Management Development Languages Press Release RadianceTx Raises $1 Million First Tranche to Develop Novel Glaucoma Therapy Share on Facebook Share on X Share on LinkedIn RadianceTx Beta Ophthalmic System Unlocks the Clinical Potential of Glaucoma Surgical Interventions TUCSON, Ariz. & LONDON–(BUSINESS WIRE)–July 31, 2018– RadianceTx™, a leader in ophthalmic therapeutic innovation, today announced a $1 million first tranche closing of a targeted $7 million round of financing. The investment will be used to fund development of the Company’s Beta Ophthalmic System for delivery of beta irradiation therapy to improve glaucoma surgery outcomes. Validated in three clinical studies conducted by preeminent ophthalmic research teams, beta therapy has been shown to improve glaucoma surgery outcomes. A recent study reported odds ratios that beta irradiation therapy patients were five and a half times more likely to experience lower intraocular pressure at the end of one year than patients treated with the current standard of care.
Glaucoma is the leading cause of irreversible blindness. The most successful way to prevent vision loss from glaucoma is to lower intraocular pressure with drainage surgery; this surgery shunts fluid out of the eye through a channel created during a trabeculectomy procedure or by a flow-controlled drainage device placed during Minimally Invasive Glaucoma Surgery (MIGS). Despite compelling therapeutic advantages over nonsurgical treatments, drainage surgery and devices are clinically limited by postoperative scarring. RadianceTx’s Beta Ophthalmic System is designed to apply beta therapy to the surgical site to down-regulate fibroblasts that cause scar tissue, keeping the channel open and maintaining reduced intraocular pressure.
Sir Peng Khaw, Consultant Ophthalmic Surgeon and Professor of Glaucoma Studies and Wound Healing, and member of the Board of Directors at RadianceTx said: “For glaucoma surgery to be maximally successful, anti-scarring therapies must be effective, consistent in dosage as well as fast and very easy to administer. In combination with new glaucoma drainage devices, RadianceTx Beta Ophthalmic System could revolutionize the treatment of glaucoma.” A device solution, RadianceTx Beta Ophthalmic System is designed to topically apply beta therapy to trabeculectomy or MIGS drainage device implantation sites. Currently, scarring prevention involves the complex and time-consuming intra-operative application of antimetabolites (chemotherapy drugs) yet still results in a failure rate approaching 50 percent at three years. Ian Murdoch and colleagues have carried out three randomized controlled trials involving 728 patients which have demonstrated beta therapy’s clinical effectiveness in drainage surgery. The new RadianceTx Beta Ophthalmic System is designed to optimize surgical workflow efficiency by requiring only 25 seconds for beta therapy application, minimizing stray dosing to non-target tissues, and eliminating medical staff exposure to hazardous chemotherapy drugs.
“I am pleased to announce this initial funding for RadianceTx, which allows us to begin commercial development,” said Harry George, President and Chief Financial Officer of RadianceTx. “The RadianceTx team possesses a track record of achieving regulatory market clearances for other medical and ophthalmic devices and is poised to advance the standard of care for glaucoma surgery with the RadianceTx Beta Ophthalmic System.” The glaucoma device market is growing rapidly. In the United States alone there were 70,000 trabeculectomies in 2017. In the UK, trabeculectomies peaked at greater than 20,000. The Minimally Invasive Glaucoma Surgery (MIGS) device market is expected to grow at a compound annual growth rate of nearly 44 percent to $1.36 billion by 2022.
About RadianceTx RadianceTx is a trademark of Radiance Therapeutics, Inc., a Delaware corporation. Radiance Therapeutics, Inc., a leader in ophthalmic therapeutic innovation, is commercializing a clinically demonstrated novel anti-metabolite therapy for glaucoma drainage surgery. For more information, visit: www.radiancetherapeutics.com.
Caution: Investigational Device.
View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20180730005829/en/ Radiance Therapeutics, Inc.
Corporate Inquiries: Laurence Marsteller MD, CEO [email protected] or Media Inquiries: Thea Lavin [email protected] VentureBeat's mission is to be a digital town square for technical decision-makers to gain knowledge about transformative enterprise technology and transact.
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"Microsoft releases new Windows 10 preview with Your Phone app | VentureBeat"
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"https://venturebeat.com/business/microsoft-releases-new-windows-10-preview-with-your-phone-app"
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"Artificial Intelligence View All AI, ML and Deep Learning Auto ML Data Labelling Synthetic Data Conversational AI NLP Text-to-Speech Security View All Data Security and Privacy Network Security and Privacy Software Security Computer Hardware Security Cloud and Data Storage Security Data Infrastructure View All Data Science Data Management Data Storage and Cloud Big Data and Analytics Data Networks Automation View All Industrial Automation Business Process Automation Development Automation Robotic Process Automation Test Automation Enterprise Analytics View All Business Intelligence Disaster Recovery Business Continuity Statistical Analysis Predictive Analysis More Data Decision Makers Virtual Communication Team Collaboration UCaaS Virtual Reality Collaboration Virtual Employee Experience Programming & Development Product Development Application Development Test Management Development Languages Microsoft releases new Windows 10 preview with Your Phone app Share on Facebook Share on X Share on LinkedIn Windows 10 Are you looking to showcase your brand in front of the brightest minds of the gaming industry? Consider getting a custom GamesBeat sponsorship.
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Microsoft today released a new preview for PCs with Your Phone app and improvements to Narrator. This build is from the RS5 branch, which represents the Windows 10 update the company plans to release later this year. The company is also releasing builds from the 19H1 branch, which, as its name indicates, will arrive in the first half of next year.
Windows 10 is being developed as a service , meaning it receives new features on a regular basis. Microsoft has released five major updates so far: November Update , Anniversary Update , Creators Update , Fall Creators Update , and April 2018 Update.
The biggest addition in this build is the new Your Phone app , first announced at Microsoft’s Build 2018 developer conference in May. As its name implies, Your Phone’s main purpose is to let you access your phone’s content — like text messages, photos, and notifications — right on your Windows 10 PC.
Event GamesBeat at the Game Awards We invite you to join us in LA for GamesBeat at the Game Awards event this December 7. Reserve your spot now as space is limited! Your Phone is only going to work with Android devices at first. You’ll be able to snap a picture on your Android phone and see it on your PC — no manual emailing, sending, messaging, uploading, or download required. Your Phone automatically syncs your Android’s most recent photos and lets you drag and drop the ones you need.
In the coming weeks, Windows Insider and Android users will see a desktop pin that takes them directly to the Your Phone app. After you download the app to your mobile phone and follow the setup prompts (Android 7.0 and above required, China is excluded), you will get quicker access to your phone’s content.
Windows Insider and iPhone users will be able to use Your Phone to send webpages instantly to their PCs and pick up where they left off. Using Edge, users will be able to continue reading, watching, or browsing on a bigger screen.
Separately, Microsoft has also made improvements to Narrator, including to reliability (when changing Narrator’s view), Scan Mode (reading, navigating, and selecting text), QuickStart (relaunching and focusing), and Braille (commanding when using the Narrator key). The “Move to beginning of text” keystroke has changed to Narrator + B (was Narrator + Control + B) and the “Move to end of text” keystroke has changed to Narrator + E (was Narrator + Control + E).
This desktop build also includes the following general bug fixes and improvements: Fixed the issue resulting in the Clock & Calendar flyout sometimes not appearing until you clicked Start or the Action Center. This same issue impacted both notifications and the taskbar jump lists appearing. Thank you to all the Windows Insiders who gave feedback on this issue.
Fixed an issue resulting minimized apps having squished thumbnails in Task View.
Fixed an issue where when open Task View would crash if you pressed Alt+F4 and Timeline was enabled.
Fixed an issue where Timeline’s scrollbar didn’t work with touch.
Fixed an issue where the top border of UWP apps would still be accent colored even if having an accent colored border was disabled in Settings.
Fixed an issue resulting in the tops of apps in tablet mode being clipped (i.e. missing pixels).
Fixed an issue where the taskbar would stay on top of full-screened apps if you had previously hovered over any grouped taskbar icon to bring up the extended list of previews, but then clicked elsewhere to dismiss it.
Apps resize better now after monitor DPI changes.
Fixed an issue where Find on Page in Microsoft Edge would stop working for open PDFs once the PDF had been refreshed.
Fixed an issue where Ctrl-based keyboard shortcuts (like Ctrl+C, Ctrl+A) didn’t work in editable fields for PDFs opened in Microsoft Edge.
Fixed an issue where the icons in the Microsoft Edge extension pane were drawing unexpectedly close to the toggles.
Fixed an issue where the enabled/disabled state of Fast Startup would be reset to default after upgrading. After upgrading off of this build your preferred state will persist.
Fixed an issue where the Windows Security icon in the taskbar notification area (systray) would become a little bit blurrier every time there was a resolution change.
Fixed an issue where the USERNAME environment variable was returning SYSTEM when queried from an un-elevated Command Prompt in recent builds.
Fixed the issue where if the Narrator key is set to just Insert, sending a Narrator command from a braille display should now function as designed regardless if the Caps Lock key is a part of the Narrator key mapping.
Fixed the issue in Narrator’s automatic dialog reading where the title of the dialog is being spoken more than once.
Fixed the issue where Narrator won’t read combo boxes until Alt + down arrow is pressed.
Today’s update bumps the Windows 10 build number for the RS5 branch from 17723 (made available to testers on July 25) to build 17728.
This build has 13 known issues: You may see some unexpectedly light colors in these surfaces when in dark mode and/or dark on dark text.
There is an issue impacting WDAG, Remote Desktop and Hyper-V. Remote Desktop Client (mstsc.exe) users will see a misleading error dialog complaining about low virtual memory when a connection is being established. As a workaround, they can ignore that error dialog by just leaving it there. If they dismiss the error dialog, the connection will be severed. And users won’t be able to use enhanced session in Virtual Machine Connection (vmconnect.exe). As a workaround, they can stick with the non-enhanced session.
When you upgrade to this build you’ll find that the taskbar flyouts (network, volume, etc) no longer have an acrylic background.
When you use the Ease of Access Make Text bigger setting, you might see text clipping issues, or find that text is not increasing in size everywhere.
When you set up Microsoft Edge as your kiosk app and configure the start/new tab page URL from assigned access Settings, Microsoft Edge may not get launched with the configured URL. The fix for this issue should be included in the next flight.
You may see the notification count icon overlapping with the extension icon in the Microsoft Edge toolbar when an extension has unread notifications.
On Windows 10 in S Mode, launching Office from the Store may fail to launch with an error about a .dll not being designed to run on Windows. The error message is that a .dll “is either not designed to run on Windows or it contains an error. Try installing the program again…” Some people have been able to work around this by uninstalling and reinstalling Office from the Store.
When using Narrator Scan mode you may experience multiple stops for a single control. An example of this is if you have an image that is also a link.
When using Narrator Scan mode Shift + Selection commands in Edge, the text does not get selected properly.
A potential increase in Start reliability and performance issues.
After setting up a Windows Mixed Reality headset for the first time on this build with motion controllers, the controllers may need to be re-paired a second time before appearing in the headset.
When using a Windows Mixed Reality immersive app, saying “Flashlight on,” may fail to activate the flashlight feature even though the status appears as active on the Start menu.
If you install any of the recent builds from the Fast ring and switch to the Slow ring – optional content such as enabling developer mode will fail. You will have to remain in the Fast ring to add/install/enable optional content. This is because optional content will only install on builds approved for specific rings.
As always, don’t install this on your production machine.
GamesBeat's creed when covering the game industry is "where passion meets business." What does this mean? We want to tell you how the news matters to you -- not just as a decision-maker at a game studio, but also as a fan of games. Whether you read our articles, listen to our podcasts, or watch our videos, GamesBeat will help you learn about the industry and enjoy engaging with it.
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"In Silicon Valley, 59% of tech workers can't afford homes | VentureBeat"
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"https://venturebeat.com/business/in-silicon-valley-59-of-tech-workers-cant-afford-homes"
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"Artificial Intelligence View All AI, ML and Deep Learning Auto ML Data Labelling Synthetic Data Conversational AI NLP Text-to-Speech Security View All Data Security and Privacy Network Security and Privacy Software Security Computer Hardware Security Cloud and Data Storage Security Data Infrastructure View All Data Science Data Management Data Storage and Cloud Big Data and Analytics Data Networks Automation View All Industrial Automation Business Process Automation Development Automation Robotic Process Automation Test Automation Enterprise Analytics View All Business Intelligence Disaster Recovery Business Continuity Statistical Analysis Predictive Analysis More Data Decision Makers Virtual Communication Team Collaboration UCaaS Virtual Reality Collaboration Virtual Employee Experience Programming & Development Product Development Application Development Test Management Development Languages In Silicon Valley, 59% of tech workers can’t afford homes Share on Facebook Share on X Share on LinkedIn Team Blind found 59 percent of tech workers can't afford homes.
In Silicon Valley, home prices are out of control and are unaffordable even for tech workers, according to a survey by Team Blind , which operates an anonymous online community for workplaces. The survey found that 59 percent of tech workers — including many at 13 major tech companies — said they cannot afford to buy a house in the San Francisco Bay Area.
Everybody knows that Silicon Valley is an expensive place to live, but the survey shows that even those who logically ought to be able to afford a home cannot do so. The California Association of Realtors reported a house in San Francisco now runs over $1.5 million on average and that only 12 percent of San Francisco households were able to afford a median-priced single family home at the end of 2017.
In nearby San Mateo County, 14 percent of households could afford similarly priced homes in the area. That number was 15 percent in Santa Clara County, home of Silicon Valley. For context, the realtor group said that the statewide affordability rating was 29 percent for single family homes and 56 percent nationwide in the fourth quarter of 2017.
Above: Map of Silicon Valley Even with an above average compensation that can total over $300,000 annually, tech workers said it’s difficult to own a home in the Bay Area. According to a Bay Area council survey, 46 percent of residents plan to leave the area soon. Team Blind ran a survey from July 24 to July 28 and gathered more than 2,326 responses.
Last week, Team Blind said that 61 percent of tech workers want more money because they believe they’re underpaid. Yet the trend on Wall Street and in tech companies is to announce big stock buybacks, which may be starving the economy , according to a recent story in the Atlantic.
Over 50 percent of surveyed employees at all 13 companies say they can’t afford to buy a house. Cisco has the highest percentage (72.07 percent) of employees who say they can’t buy a house, followed by eBay (70.63 percent).
Even the majority of surveyed Facebook and Google employees are struggling to own a home, but the two companies rank lowest in terms of workers who say they can’t afford to buy a house.
“It’s not a surprise then that residents are moving away to more affordable cities,” Team Blind said. “People have been leaving the area in record numbers since early this year, causing a shortage of U-Haul trucks. With an increase in demand and shortage in supply, prices for moving vehicles soared up to $2,000.
Living in the Bay Area is costly, but apparently so is leaving it.” VentureBeat's mission is to be a digital town square for technical decision-makers to gain knowledge about transformative enterprise technology and transact.
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The AI Impact Tour Join us for an evening full of networking and insights at VentureBeat's AI Impact Tour, coming to San Francisco, New York, and Los Angeles! VentureBeat Homepage Follow us on Facebook Follow us on X Follow us on LinkedIn Follow us on RSS Press Releases Contact Us Advertise Share a News Tip Contribute to DataDecisionMakers Careers Privacy Policy Terms of Service Do Not Sell My Personal Information © 2023 VentureBeat.
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"Goldman Sachs Honors Volley.com CTO Carson Kahn for Entrepreneurship | VentureBeat"
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"https://venturebeat.com/business/goldman-sachs-honors-volley-com-cto-carson-kahn-for-entrepreneurship"
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"Artificial Intelligence View All AI, ML and Deep Learning Auto ML Data Labelling Synthetic Data Conversational AI NLP Text-to-Speech Security View All Data Security and Privacy Network Security and Privacy Software Security Computer Hardware Security Cloud and Data Storage Security Data Infrastructure View All Data Science Data Management Data Storage and Cloud Big Data and Analytics Data Networks Automation View All Industrial Automation Business Process Automation Development Automation Robotic Process Automation Test Automation Enterprise Analytics View All Business Intelligence Disaster Recovery Business Continuity Statistical Analysis Predictive Analysis More Data Decision Makers Virtual Communication Team Collaboration UCaaS Virtual Reality Collaboration Virtual Employee Experience Programming & Development Product Development Application Development Test Management Development Languages Press Release Goldman Sachs Honors Volley.com CTO Carson Kahn for Entrepreneurship Share on Facebook Share on X Share on LinkedIn Carson Kahn Among Goldman Sachs’ 100 Most Intriguing Entrepreneurs of 2018 NEW YORK–(BUSINESS WIRE)–July 31, 2018– Goldman Sachs (NYSE: GS) will recognize Carson S. Kahn, founder and CTO of artificial intelligence firm Volley ( volley.com ), as one of its 100 Most Intriguing Entrepreneurs of 2018 at the bank’s prestigious Builders + Innovators Summit in San Francisco.
Goldman Sachs will celebrate Kahn among entrepreneurs from multiple industries to be honored at the three-day Summit. Previous honorees include Barbara Bush II (Global Health Corps), John Foley (Peleton), Daniel Saks (AppDirect), Jyoti Bansal (AppDynamics), Kunal Sarkar (Lumosity), D. Scott Phoenix (Vicarious), and Leah Busque (TaskRabbit).
Kahn is the CTO and cofounder of Volley ( volley.com ), a Silicon Valley AI company backed by strategic investor JPMorgan Chase (NYSE: JPM), Zuckerberg Ventures, and high-profile current and former executives from Goldman Sachs (NYSE: GS), Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL), Facebook (NASDAQ: FB), and Udemy. Kahn is also an invited member of the Forbes Technology Council and IEEE Society for Computational Intelligence.
With Kahn’s leadership, Volley’s “knowledge engine” has gained rapid traction in Fortune 500 financial services to computationally synthesize the world’s enterprise knowledge. A recognized innovator and entrepreneur in artificial intelligence and education technology, Kahn’s work is covered in the Harvard Business Review, Wall Street Journal, TechCrunch, Reuters, Dow Jones, PatternML, and elsewhere. His advisory on questions in machine learning and cybersecurity has been solicited by members of the Congressional Caucus on Artificial Intelligence, the White House National Economic Council, and state governments.
“We are pleased to recognize Carson as one of the most intriguing entrepreneurs of 2018. This will be the seventh year that we’ve hosted the Builders + Innovators Summit, where emerging business leaders gather to discuss their common interests in building prosperous organizations,” said Goldman Sachs, noting that both incoming Chief Executive Officer David M. Solomon and outgoing Chief Executive Officer Lloyd Blankfein will host.
“His leadership in both Volley’s fast-growing business and innovative product makes Carson highly deserving of this award,” said Don Duet, former Global Head of Technology at Goldman Sachs, now also a Senior Advisor to Volley. “This is clearly just the beginning for Volley’s exceptional cofounders and team in helping the world learn faster and more dynamically with artificial intelligence.” “I’m truly humbled. Volley is on track for an year of amazing growth, and we owe this success to my cofounder Zaid, our VP of Engineering Patrick, and our incredible AI team,” said Carson Kahn, CTO and cofounder of Volley ( volley.com ). “Volley is creatively combining unique natural language understanding technologies with a fundamentally new approach to the design of learning products. Only a team of this caliber could accomplish something that important and ambitious.” “Carson’s visionary but practical application of the latest natural language research is unique in my experience,” said Dr. Paul Walker, PhD, former Global Co-Head of Technology at Goldman Sachs, also a Senior Advisor to Volley. “Carson and his team are applying one of the hardest areas of AI to some of the most important problems in enterprise learning and knowledge management. It remains an exceptional pleasure to advise Carson and his cofounder Zaid as they build and innovate the human learning system we deserve in today’s era of machine learning.” “Even as every employee now needs to be a knowledge worker, our world is facing a ‘knowledge explosion’ like never before,” said Zaid Rahman, CEO of Volley and a recipient of Peter Thiel’s prestigious Thiel Fellowship. “Volley’s mission to synthesize the world’s knowledge with artificial intelligence will ultimately help anyone learn anything. We’re grateful to Goldman Sachs for recognizing my cofounder Carson and Volley with this honor.” For more than 145 years, Goldman Sachs has been advising and financing entrepreneurs as they launch and grow their businesses. In addition to honoring 100 entrepreneurs, the October 17 Summit consists of general sessions and clinics led by Goldman Sachs experts, seasoned entrepreneurs, academics and business leaders as well as resident scholars.
ABOUT GOLDMAN SACHS – Founded in 1869, The Goldman Sachs Group, Inc. is a leading global investment banking, securities and investment management firm that provides a wide range of financial services to a substantial and diversified client base that includes corporations, financial institutions, governments and individuals. The firm is headquartered in New York and maintains offices in all major financial centers around the world.
ABOUT VOLLEY – Backed by such investors as JPMorgan Chase, Zuckerberg Ventures, and executives from Apple, Dropbox, and Goldman Sachs, Volley ( volley.com ) is a Silicon Valley AI startup on a mission to synthesize the world’s knowledge. Built by a world-class team of machine learning and natural language processing innovators formerly of Google, the U.S. intelligence community, Carnegie Mellon, and top Wall Street tech divisions, Volley’s knowledge engine cuts the cost of generating, organizing, and delivering key knowledge by up to 50% – a giant leap in the automation and personalization of enterprise learning and knowledge management. With customers throughout Fortune 100 financial services, Volley has been identified as a top AI innovator and is a seminal partner of the UC Santa Cruz Center for Excellence in Data Science Research. Volley’s core team is headquartered in San Francisco, with a satellite in Austin. Watch Volley’s 2-minute teaser at volley.com/video , or learn more at www.volley.com.
View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20180731005203/en/ Goldman Sachs Christina Eldred, 212-902-7868 [email protected] or Volley.com Public Relations Lauren White, 888-946-1776 [email protected] VentureBeat's mission is to be a digital town square for technical decision-makers to gain knowledge about transformative enterprise technology and transact.
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"Apple reports record $53.3 billion revenue in Q3 2018, led by iPhone | VentureBeat"
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"https://venturebeat.com/business/apple-reports-record-53-3-billion-revenue-in-q3-2018-led-by-iphone"
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"Artificial Intelligence View All AI, ML and Deep Learning Auto ML Data Labelling Synthetic Data Conversational AI NLP Text-to-Speech Security View All Data Security and Privacy Network Security and Privacy Software Security Computer Hardware Security Cloud and Data Storage Security Data Infrastructure View All Data Science Data Management Data Storage and Cloud Big Data and Analytics Data Networks Automation View All Industrial Automation Business Process Automation Development Automation Robotic Process Automation Test Automation Enterprise Analytics View All Business Intelligence Disaster Recovery Business Continuity Statistical Analysis Predictive Analysis More Data Decision Makers Virtual Communication Team Collaboration UCaaS Virtual Reality Collaboration Virtual Employee Experience Programming & Development Product Development Application Development Test Management Development Languages Apple reports record $53.3 billion revenue in Q3 2018, led by iPhone Share on Facebook Share on X Share on LinkedIn Apple's iPhone lineup has become the most important element in its quarterly earnings, and iPhone X sales are considered a bellwether.
Apple today announced its financial results for the third quarter of 2018, reporting quarterly revenue of $53.3 billion on sales of 41.3 million iPhones, 11.553 million iPads, 3.72 million Macs, and $9.548 billion in services. The company had offered a revenue guidance range between $51.5 billion and $53.5 billion for the quarter, up from the third quarter of 2017’s revenue of $45.4 billion.
Analysts on Wall Street expected Apple to achieve 15 percent revenue growth and 31 percent growth in earnings per share over 2017’s third quarter. Apple actually achieved 17 percent revenue and 40 percent EPS growth year-over-year.
“We’re thrilled to report Apple’s best June quarter ever, and our fourth consecutive quarter of double-digit revenue growth,” said Apple CEO Tim Cook. “Our Q3 results were driven by continued strong sales of iPhone, Services and Wearables, and we are very excited about the products and services in our pipeline.” The iPhone continues to account for a majority of Apple’s revenues, as that single product family brought in $29.906 billion of the $53.3 billion in revenues. Revenue from the iPhone family was notably up sharply — 20 percent — over the year-ago quarter.
While unit sales were up a meager one percent year-over-year across iPhones and iPads, they were down 13 percent for the Mac: One year ago, Apple sold 41.026 million iPhones, 11.424 million iPads, and 4.292 million Macs in the quarter. However, revenue from services jumped by 31 percent year-over-year from $7.266 billion in 2017, and “other products” revenue was up 37 percent — from $2.735 billion in 2017 to $3.74 billion in 2018.
Apple’s board of directors declared a cash dividend of $0.73 per share of common stock, payable August 16 to shareholders of record as of the close of business August 13.
For the fourth quarter of 2018, Apple is offering a revenue guidance range between $60 billion and $62 billion, with gross margin between 38 percent and 38.5 percent. That compares with Q4 2017’s projected range of $49 billion to $52 billion target range, which it surpassed last year with an actual revenue of $52.6 billion.
The company will be holding a financial results conference call with analysts shortly. We will be covering it live.
VentureBeat's mission is to be a digital town square for technical decision-makers to gain knowledge about transformative enterprise technology and transact.
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VentureBeat Homepage Follow us on Facebook Follow us on X Follow us on LinkedIn Follow us on RSS Press Releases Contact Us Advertise Share a News Tip Contribute to DataDecisionMakers Careers Privacy Policy Terms of Service Do Not Sell My Personal Information © 2023 VentureBeat.
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"Waymo partners with Valley Metro for last-mile rides to public transportation | VentureBeat"
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"https://venturebeat.com/ai/waymo-partners-with-valley-metro-for-last-mile-rides-to-public-transportation"
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"Artificial Intelligence View All AI, ML and Deep Learning Auto ML Data Labelling Synthetic Data Conversational AI NLP Text-to-Speech Security View All Data Security and Privacy Network Security and Privacy Software Security Computer Hardware Security Cloud and Data Storage Security Data Infrastructure View All Data Science Data Management Data Storage and Cloud Big Data and Analytics Data Networks Automation View All Industrial Automation Business Process Automation Development Automation Robotic Process Automation Test Automation Enterprise Analytics View All Business Intelligence Disaster Recovery Business Continuity Statistical Analysis Predictive Analysis More Data Decision Makers Virtual Communication Team Collaboration UCaaS Virtual Reality Collaboration Virtual Employee Experience Programming & Development Product Development Application Development Test Management Development Languages Waymo partners with Valley Metro for last-mile rides to public transportation Share on Facebook Share on X Share on LinkedIn Are you looking to showcase your brand in front of the brightest minds of the gaming industry? Consider getting a custom GamesBeat sponsorship.
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Self-driving cars aren’t just great for delivery, highway driving, and long-haul trucking. As researchers at MIT posited in 2011, they have the potential to fill gaps in local transportation — the so-called “last mile” between destinations and public infrastructure like buses, trains, and light rail.
It’s an area of study Google spinoff Waymo intends to explore. It today announced in a Medium post that it’s partnering with the Valley Metro, the Phoenix area’s regional public transportation authority, to “[develop] mobility solutions” that leverage autonomous cars to bridge the gap between public transit and the people who use it.
Waymo hasn’t announced how it’ll eventually charge for the service, but it might be comparable in price to a ride in an Uber or Lyft. Bloomberg reports that the Waymo app currently being tested by members of the company’s Early Rider program began showing hypothetical prices recently, and that one rider’s 11.3-mile trip had an estimated cost of $19.15.
A Waymo spokesperson told Bloomberg that the prices “[do] not reflect the various pricing models under consideration,” and that they’re only meant to “solicit feedback.” In any case, there aren’t currently plans to charge Valley Metro riders.
VB Event The AI Impact Tour Connect with the enterprise AI community at VentureBeat’s AI Impact Tour coming to a city near you! The first phase of Waymo and the transportation authority’s partnership, which is expected to launch in August, will see customers offered rides to nearby public transportation options in Waymo’s self-driving Chrysler Pacifica minivans, which they’ll be able to hail using the company’s app.
Later this year, the program will expand to Valley Metro RideChoice travelers, whom Waymo notes are “traditionally underserved” by public transit. (RideChoice offers discounted taxi rates to seniors and people with disabilities.) During this second phase of the pilot program, the partners will embark on joint research to evaluate the service’s impact and its long-term potential.
If all goes according to plan, Waymo will extend self-driving transportation to more Valley Metro customers in the future.
“This will form the basis of joint research to evaluate the adoption of Waymo technology, its impact, and its long-term potential to enable greater access to public transit,” Google wrote. “Working together, we want to explore how self-driving vehicles could fill transportation and mobility gaps for riders across the Greater Phoenix area.” Waymo has made quite a bit of headway in recent months. In March, it launched a logistics test that put self-driving trucks on roads in Atlanta, and in May began discussions with Fiat Chrysler around licensing its autonomous Pacificas for commercialization. And just this month, it revealed new Jaguar Land Rover vehicles that’ll join its fleet later this year.
Last week, Waymo CEO John Krafcik announced that its self-driving cars have driven 8 million miles on public roads and 5 billion miles in simulation. The company has 600 Pacifica minivans deployed on public roads, some of which are being used by the over 400 residents participating in the Early Rider program, and plans to add as many as 82,000 additional vehicles — 62,000 minivans and 20,000 Jaguar I-Paces — in the coming months.
VentureBeat's mission is to be a digital town square for technical decision-makers to gain knowledge about transformative enterprise technology and transact.
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The AI Impact Tour Join us for an evening full of networking and insights at VentureBeat's AI Impact Tour, coming to San Francisco, New York, and Los Angeles! VentureBeat Homepage Follow us on Facebook Follow us on X Follow us on LinkedIn Follow us on RSS Press Releases Contact Us Advertise Share a News Tip Contribute to DataDecisionMakers Careers Privacy Policy Terms of Service Do Not Sell My Personal Information © 2023 VentureBeat.
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"Skyline raises $18 million for AI-powered real estate predictions | VentureBeat"
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"https://venturebeat.com/ai/skyline-raises-18-million-for-ai-powered-real-estate-predictions"
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"Artificial Intelligence View All AI, ML and Deep Learning Auto ML Data Labelling Synthetic Data Conversational AI NLP Text-to-Speech Security View All Data Security and Privacy Network Security and Privacy Software Security Computer Hardware Security Cloud and Data Storage Security Data Infrastructure View All Data Science Data Management Data Storage and Cloud Big Data and Analytics Data Networks Automation View All Industrial Automation Business Process Automation Development Automation Robotic Process Automation Test Automation Enterprise Analytics View All Business Intelligence Disaster Recovery Business Continuity Statistical Analysis Predictive Analysis More Data Decision Makers Virtual Communication Team Collaboration UCaaS Virtual Reality Collaboration Virtual Employee Experience Programming & Development Product Development Application Development Test Management Development Languages Skyline raises $18 million for AI-powered real estate predictions Share on Facebook Share on X Share on LinkedIn The Seattle skyline.
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Real estate is a tough market to crack, but Tel Aviv, Israel-based Skyline AI thinks it’s up to the task.
The startup today announced an $18 million funding round led by Sequoia Capital and TLV Partners, with participation from JLL Spark and others. (JLL’s investment comes from its Spark Global Venture Fund, which was established to deploy $100 million into companies leveraging technology to improve real estate development, management, leasing, and investing.) “Over the last few years, we’ve seen AI disrupt a number of traditional industries, and the real estate market should be no different,” Sequoia Capital partner Haim Sadger said in a statement. “The power of Skyline AI technology to understand vast amounts of data that affect real estate transactions will unlock billions of dollars in untapped value.” The company’s innovative machine learning-powered platform taps a proprietary dataset of more than 130 sources, some going as far back as the last 50 years. Algorithms analyze over 10,000 attributes on each data asset, compiling them into a database architecture known as a data lake and cross-validating each one individually to ensure their accuracy.
VB Event The AI Impact Tour Connect with the enterprise AI community at VentureBeat’s AI Impact Tour coming to a city near you! The platform can make predictions within “seconds,” said Skyline cofounder and CEO Guy Zipori, who claims it’s the most comprehensive system of its kind in the industry. He’s not afraid to put his money where his mouth is — earlier this year, Skyline acquired two residential complexes in Philadelphia for $26 million, after its platform determined the properties were being mismanaged.
“Commercial real estate is coming out of the dark ages when it comes to technology,” Zipori said. “We developed a platform that injects advanced AI directly into the core of the acquisition and ownership process, leveraging the largest dataset in the industry to predict the performance of any asset in the U.S. We provide our partners and investors with cutting-edge asset analysis in the shortest amount of time, adding value to any commercial real estate investment, on or off the market.” Zipori said Skyline will use the capital to grow its platform integration with “additional asset classes” and to facilitate further cooperation with leading commercial real estate investment firms in the U.S.
In the not-too-distant future, Skyline AI hopes to expand beyond real estate.
In July, it announced a data-sharing partnership with Greystone Labs, a commercial real estate, investment, and advisory company. Under terms of the arrangement, Skyline AI added “key industry insights” from Greystone to its growing collection of data sources, and Greystone received access to Skyline’s predictive technology, which it said will allow it to underwrite loans 10 times faster and “with greater accuracy” than the competition.
Skyline was founded in 2017 and has offices in New York, in addition to Tel Aviv. In March, the company raised $3 million from Sequoia, and it’s brought in $21 million from NYCA Partners, Arbor Ventures, and iAngels, to date.
Of course, Skyline isn’t the only one applying AI to the lucrative real estate market, which is forecast to hit $4.26 trillion by 2025.
Jointer.io , which emerged from stealth earlier this year, uses AI and blockchain technology to power its primary securities market for commercial properties.
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"Dremio raises $30 million from Cisco Investments and others to streamline data management | VentureBeat"
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"https://venturebeat.com/ai/dremio-raises-30-million-from-cisco-investments-to-streamline-data-management"
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"Artificial Intelligence View All AI, ML and Deep Learning Auto ML Data Labelling Synthetic Data Conversational AI NLP Text-to-Speech Security View All Data Security and Privacy Network Security and Privacy Software Security Computer Hardware Security Cloud and Data Storage Security Data Infrastructure View All Data Science Data Management Data Storage and Cloud Big Data and Analytics Data Networks Automation View All Industrial Automation Business Process Automation Development Automation Robotic Process Automation Test Automation Enterprise Analytics View All Business Intelligence Disaster Recovery Business Continuity Statistical Analysis Predictive Analysis More Data Decision Makers Virtual Communication Team Collaboration UCaaS Virtual Reality Collaboration Virtual Employee Experience Programming & Development Product Development Application Development Test Management Development Languages Exclusive Dremio raises $30 million from Cisco Investments and others to streamline data management Share on Facebook Share on X Share on LinkedIn Demio logo.
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Managing and processing data is hard work, especially for businesses with unwieldy databases. San Francisco-based startup Dremio offers tools that help streamline and curate that data, and its efforts haven’t gone unnoticed.
The self-described “data-as-a-service” company today announced an investment from Cisco Investments, bringing its latest round of funding to $30 million and the total amount raised to $45 million. This follows on the heels of two previous funding rounds — one in January led by Norwest Venture Partners, Lightspeed Venture Partners, and Redpoint Partners, and another in late 2015.
“When we make any investment, we gain insight into new markets and offer our customers visibility into best-in-class innovation,” Rob Salvagno, a spokesperson for Cisco Investments, said in an emailed statement. “Dremio’s initial traction has been very promising … [and it] also is applicable to Cisco’s own internal movement towards digital transformation.” Dremio’s full-stack virtualization toolkit connects, analyzes, and processes data in part with so-called Data Reflections, which accelerate database queries without replicating data. Its platform bridges the gaps between relational databases, Hadoop, NoSQL, ElasticSearch, and other data stores, connecting to business intelligence software as if it were a primary data source and querying it via SQL.
VB Event The AI Impact Tour Connect with the enterprise AI community at VentureBeat’s AI Impact Tour coming to a city near you! Crucially, it maintains a catalog of data sources, physical and virtual datasets, and datasets’ lineage, making it easy to search and find datasets and see how data are being transformed. Tomer Shiran, cofounder and CEO of Dremio, described it as “Google Docs for datasets.” Above: A few of the data sources Dremio’s platform supports.
“We make data accessible to employees,” Shiran told VentureBeat in a phone interview. “It’s available to anyone who has permission to access it.” To that end, Dremio contributes to projects like Parquet, Calcite, and Gandiva, an Apache-licensed open source execution kernel for evaluating and compiling expressions on Apache Arrow. And it offers Dremio 2.0, a suite of analytics and data processing tools optimized for enterprise.
Dremio 2.0 consists of the aforementioned Data Reflections technology, which automatically detects schemas, supports cloud data lakes in Amazon S3 and other cloud storage providers, and leverages Apache Arrow to speed up performance by a factor of a thousand. But it also builds in features like automatic failover, which automatically selects new nodes in the event of node and instance cluster failures, and dynamic granular access, which provides programmatic security controls through integration with Kerberos, LDAP, and other centralized providers.
Artificial intelligence is a core pillar of Dremio’s product lineup, Shiran said. The Dremio Learning Engine — which launched alongside Dremio 2.0 earlier this year — uses machine learning to recommend complementary datasets to users, adapt data catalogs automatically in response to changes in schema change and query execution, and intelligently cache and index metadata.
“We see [AI] as an opportunity to make companies’ experience with data as streamlined as it is in our personal lives,” Shiran said.
Dremio’s platform, which runs in the cloud via Kubernetes or in a Hadoop cluster, is available in an open source Community edition as well as a commercial Enterprise edition. (Subscription pricing scales based on the number of nodes to which Dremio is deployed — it can support more than 1,000.) The company, which has more than 70 employees, boasts customers in over 80 countries, including large enterprises like Daimler, Fred Hutch, Idio, Intel, OVH, Royal Caribbean, TransUnion, and UBS.
VentureBeat's mission is to be a digital town square for technical decision-makers to gain knowledge about transformative enterprise technology and transact.
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The AI Impact Tour Join us for an evening full of networking and insights at VentureBeat's AI Impact Tour, coming to San Francisco, New York, and Los Angeles! VentureBeat Homepage Follow us on Facebook Follow us on X Follow us on LinkedIn Follow us on RSS Press Releases Contact Us Advertise Share a News Tip Contribute to DataDecisionMakers Careers Privacy Policy Terms of Service Do Not Sell My Personal Information © 2023 VentureBeat.
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"DefinedCrowd raises $11.8 million to create bespoke datasets for AI model training | VentureBeat"
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"https://venturebeat.com/ai/definedcrowd-raises-11-8-million-to-create-bespoke-datasets-for-ai-model-training"
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"Artificial Intelligence View All AI, ML and Deep Learning Auto ML Data Labelling Synthetic Data Conversational AI NLP Text-to-Speech Security View All Data Security and Privacy Network Security and Privacy Software Security Computer Hardware Security Cloud and Data Storage Security Data Infrastructure View All Data Science Data Management Data Storage and Cloud Big Data and Analytics Data Networks Automation View All Industrial Automation Business Process Automation Development Automation Robotic Process Automation Test Automation Enterprise Analytics View All Business Intelligence Disaster Recovery Business Continuity Statistical Analysis Predictive Analysis More Data Decision Makers Virtual Communication Team Collaboration UCaaS Virtual Reality Collaboration Virtual Employee Experience Programming & Development Product Development Application Development Test Management Development Languages DefinedCrowd raises $11.8 million to create bespoke datasets for AI model training Share on Facebook Share on X Share on LinkedIn DefinedCrowd's service dashboard.
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Gathering data on which to train machine learning models is no walk in the park. Well-trained algorithms require well-labeled, high-quality sources, which is why collating a dataset can take nearly as long as — and oftentimes longer than — developing the models that will eventually ingest it.
That’s a problem DefinedCrowd aims to solve. The three-year-old Seattle-based startup, which describes itself as a “smart” data curation platform, offers a bespoke model-training service to clients in customer service, automotive, retail, health care, and other enterprise sectors. Today it announced that it’s raised $11.8 million in a funding round led by Evolution Equity Partners, Mastercard, Kibo Ventures, and Energias de Portugal (EDP), and secured additional capital from current investors Sony, Portugal Ventures, Amazon, and Busy Angels.
“Data needs to be of high quality — it can hurt the brand if it isn’t,” Daniela Braga, CEO of DefinedCrowd, told VentureBeat in a phone interview. “Simply put, we make easy the process of collecting and annotating high-quality training data for model training.” Braga, who holds a Ph.D. in speech technology, is intimately aware of data collection’s Sisyphean nature. Prior to founding DefinedCrowd, she oversaw a $14 million effort to improve Cortana, Microsoft’s AI-powered voice assistant, which she described as an uphill battle. Roughly 18 months of every product development cycle was spent procuring data to refresh the underlying models, she said.
VB Event The AI Impact Tour Connect with the enterprise AI community at VentureBeat’s AI Impact Tour coming to a city near you! Above: A sampling of the tools on offer within DefinedCrowd’s suite.
“We were never at the place we needed to be in-house, which is when I realized there was a gap for enterprise corporations,” she said. “They needed a partner who could [generate] large amounts of data at scale with high quality.” Braga found a silver bullet in crowdsourcing. DefinedCrowd’s novel approach employs a community ( Neevo ) of more than 45,000 human contributors who complete jobs involving labeling, typing, and speaking words and phrases. They upload more than 500,000 units of data per day to the datasets that populate DefinedCrowd’s natural language processing, voice recognition, and computer vision tools.
Through APIs and a web interface, said tools afford DefinedCrowd’s customers the freedom to filter demographics with a fine-tooth comb — they can specify the age, location, and gender of contributing members, and even their proficiency in a given language. The platform supports a whopping 46 languages, or about 90 percent of the world’s most widely spoken languages, with up to 98 percent accuracy.
But its real value proposition is its flexibility, Braga said. Customers can use DefinedCrowd’s platform not only to train machine learning models from scratch, but to augment existing models with datasets tailored to their specific needs. Those with simpler requirements, meanwhile, can take advantage of specialized workflows, templates, and off-the-shelf solutions.
Picture this: A news curation skill on Amazon’s Alexa platform has a large contingent of international users, and so its developers need to train a voice recognition model that’s equally accurate across markets. With DefinedCrowd’s tools, they could generate multiple datasets to improve the algorithm’s performance.
DefinedCrowd, which has grown by a factor of six year-over-year, counts Fortune 500 companies including BMW, Mastercard, Nuance, and Yahoo Japan among its lengthy list of clients. Its staff of more than 40 people is spread among offices in Portugal, Seattle, and Japan, and it hopes to hire an additional 40 by the end of this year.
The company will use the funding to expand its product offerings, grow its developer and sales team, and increase its global footprint.
VentureBeat's mission is to be a digital town square for technical decision-makers to gain knowledge about transformative enterprise technology and transact.
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The AI Impact Tour Join us for an evening full of networking and insights at VentureBeat's AI Impact Tour, coming to San Francisco, New York, and Los Angeles! VentureBeat Homepage Follow us on Facebook Follow us on X Follow us on LinkedIn Follow us on RSS Press Releases Contact Us Advertise Share a News Tip Contribute to DataDecisionMakers Careers Privacy Policy Terms of Service Do Not Sell My Personal Information © 2023 VentureBeat.
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"WhatsApp groups can now be restricted so only admins can send messages | VentureBeat"
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"https://venturebeat.com/social/whatsapp-groups-can-now-be-restricted-so-only-admins-can-send-messages"
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"Artificial Intelligence View All AI, ML and Deep Learning Auto ML Data Labelling Synthetic Data Conversational AI NLP Text-to-Speech Security View All Data Security and Privacy Network Security and Privacy Software Security Computer Hardware Security Cloud and Data Storage Security Data Infrastructure View All Data Science Data Management Data Storage and Cloud Big Data and Analytics Data Networks Automation View All Industrial Automation Business Process Automation Development Automation Robotic Process Automation Test Automation Enterprise Analytics View All Business Intelligence Disaster Recovery Business Continuity Statistical Analysis Predictive Analysis More Data Decision Makers Virtual Communication Team Collaboration UCaaS Virtual Reality Collaboration Virtual Employee Experience Programming & Development Product Development Application Development Test Management Development Languages WhatsApp groups can now be restricted so only admins can send messages Share on Facebook Share on X Share on LinkedIn Are you ready to bring more awareness to your brand? Consider becoming a sponsor for The AI Impact Tour. Learn more about the opportunities here.
WhatsApp today announced a new control for group administrators to limit activity so that they are the only member of the group who can send messages. WhatsApp groups can include up to 256 participants.
The approach could greatly alter what it’s like to be a part of a WhatsApp group, changing them from a place for conversation to a place for receiving announcements from, say, a school group, political organization, or professional group.
The new feature is the most recent way Facebook-owned WhatsApp has given administrators more control over groups.
Last month, WhatsApp launched a series of new features , including group descriptions that can be set by admins only and which detail the purpose, guidelines, or topics of discussion for a group, and a new policy that group creators can no longer be kicked out of a group they started.
The launch of new features came days after the company told the New York Times it planned to give group administrators more control.
Facebook has been criticized for allowing its end-to-end encryption chat app to be used as a means to spread fake news and to incite animosity toward racial or ethnic groups as a result of fake information, particularly during elections in India last month.
About 250 million of WhatsApp’s 1.5 billion monthly active users live in India.
Criticism continued earlier this week when two men in the Indian state of Madhya Pradesh were attacked by a mob following the circulation of a message in WhatsApp groups that 500 people dressed as beggars were assaulting people to harvest their organs. After joining WhatsApp groups, police found the messages were being spread by three men, who were later arrested, Reuters reported.
VentureBeat's mission is to be a digital town square for technical decision-makers to gain knowledge about transformative enterprise technology and transact.
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VentureBeat Homepage Follow us on Facebook Follow us on X Follow us on LinkedIn Follow us on RSS Press Releases Contact Us Advertise Share a News Tip Contribute to DataDecisionMakers Careers Privacy Policy Terms of Service Do Not Sell My Personal Information © 2023 VentureBeat.
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"How Facebook and Twitter's new ad transparency tools fall short | VentureBeat"
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"https://venturebeat.com/social/how-facebook-and-twitters-new-ad-transparency-tools-fall-short"
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"Artificial Intelligence View All AI, ML and Deep Learning Auto ML Data Labelling Synthetic Data Conversational AI NLP Text-to-Speech Security View All Data Security and Privacy Network Security and Privacy Software Security Computer Hardware Security Cloud and Data Storage Security Data Infrastructure View All Data Science Data Management Data Storage and Cloud Big Data and Analytics Data Networks Automation View All Industrial Automation Business Process Automation Development Automation Robotic Process Automation Test Automation Enterprise Analytics View All Business Intelligence Disaster Recovery Business Continuity Statistical Analysis Predictive Analysis More Data Decision Makers Virtual Communication Team Collaboration UCaaS Virtual Reality Collaboration Virtual Employee Experience Programming & Development Product Development Application Development Test Management Development Languages Analysis How Facebook and Twitter’s new ad transparency tools fall short Share on Facebook Share on X Share on LinkedIn Are you looking to showcase your brand in front of the brightest minds of the gaming industry? Consider getting a custom GamesBeat sponsorship.
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Users can now see more information than ever before about how advertisers are using some of the largest social media platforms, thanks to ad transparency tools released earlier this week by Facebook and Twitter.
But just because users have more information doesn’t mean it’s easy for them to parse.
As a refresher, the release of these new ad transparency tools follows criticism aimed at Facebook and Twitter over the past year and a half that they didn’t do enough to stop Russia-linked organizations from attempting to sway U.S. voters through deceptive advertising during the 2016 U.S. presidential election.
Exactly how many users these foreign players were able to influence on the platforms is unclear, as Russian-linked troll organizations like the Internet Research Agency (IRA) had been operating for years. Facebook estimated that accounts associated with the organization paid for 3,000 Facebook ads that reached about 10 million people in the U.S.
before and after the election. Twitter estimated that over 2,700 accounts associated with the IRA posted around 131,000 tweets between September and November 2016.
Congress eventually called executives from Facebook, Twitter, and Google to testify , during which process two big issues with the platforms’ advertising practices became evident — one, with so many advertisers on their respective platforms, it was difficult for some of these platforms to tell who these advertisers were and where they were coming from. Second, these companies hadn’t previously thought all that much about how to prevent foreign interference in elections on their platforms.
VB Event The AI Impact Tour Connect with the enterprise AI community at VentureBeat’s AI Impact Tour coming to a city near you! To that end, VentureBeat decided to compare the two ad transparency tools based on what information they make available to the public, how easy they are to search, and what information they provide on the most contentious ads — political ads.
Non-political ads Both users and non-users can access the new ad transparency tools on Facebook and Twitter.
The new feature Facebook released this week is called “info and ads” and is basically just an additional tab that will be available on every Page’s Facebook account. The “info” section will show you when a Page was created, as well as whether the Page ever changed its name. Facebook has said that it is looking to add more information to this section in the coming weeks.
“Ads” takes a user to all of the ads that an account is currently running across Facebook, Instagram, and Messenger. You can also search the ads a Page is running by country, if applicable. For a large company, the differences in ads run between countries is going to be pretty innocuous — In the U.K., for example, the company is promoting its work with students in the London College of Fashion, while ads in the U.S. advertise how the nonprofit Operation Smile uses Microsoft’s cloud technology.
Twitter calls its newly released tool an “Ad Transparency Center,” and it is available to view at ads.twitter.com/transparency.
Here you can search for the handle of the account you want to see promoted tweets for. The tool will then pull up all of the tweets that particular account has promoted within the last seven days. Twitter will simply show you the promoted tweet, as well as how many likes and retweets it got.
While these tools are fairly easy to use, both have serious limitations. Facebook’s new tool only displays the ads a Page is currently running, while Twitter only makes promoted tweets from the last seven days available to view. This limited snapshot makes it difficult to try to ascertain whether an account has a previous history of deceptive advertising.
On a conference call with reporters yesterday , Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg said that the company will consider making an archive of past ads from Pages available to view in the future, but added that “this is a pretty big project.” A Twitter spokesperson told VentureBeat yesterday that the company will also “see if we need to adapt [the length of time] in the future” but didn’t commit to any particular changes.
Political ads Facebook’s political ads and “issue” ads [those that deal with one of 20 issues deemed by Facebook to be politically contentious] have been viewable for the past month in a searchable database, separate from the “info and ads” tab. The address for this database is facebook.com/politicalcontentads.
Here, you can search for political ads by one of any number of topics — candidate name, political party, or issue. A search for ads promoting Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) turned up 600 results. Facebook’s archives contain both active and inactive ads run on or after May 7, the day Facebook first started archiving political ads. You can see who paid for an ad, as well as how many impressions it got, how much the group paid for the ad, and a percentage breakdown of the gender, age, and location (on a state-by-state basis) of people who have viewed the ad.
What’s most striking about Facebook’s political ad database is how noisy it is — it shows just how easy it is to deploy a large number of ads on the platform. Ads with identical text and images can appear upwards of 10 times in the same search, presumably because each ad is targeted to a different demographic of users.
It’s also worth noting that if you search by candidate name in the political content database, it turns up all ads mentioning that candidate — not just those run by the candidate themselves. In the above example, a search for “Kirsten Gillibrand” turns up ads from her official Facebook page, from a news organization that is interviewing her at an event in the coming weeks, and from a candidate for California political office that is touting Gillibrand’s endorsement.
So if someone wanted to do a 10-second search to see all the ads their governor is running, it might be easier to go to that governor’s official Facebook page and click “info and ads.” There they will be shown only the ads that page is running. However, the “info and ads” tab only shows active ads — while the political ad database shows both inactive and active ads. Creating more targeted search options is an area for Facebook to improve upon as it continues to build its political ad database.
Political ads on Twitter are housed in the same searchable database as all other types of ads, so you have to again search for political ads by account handle. For political tweets, Twitter shows the number of impressions the tweet garnered, information about the targeted audience, who paid for the ad, and how much they paid. Here’s an example of how the information for a promoted tweet from Gillibrand is displayed: Unlike non-political ads, Twitter will keep an archive of U.S. political ads for an indefinite period of time. It’s worth noting that, for now, Twitter is only labeling ads dealing with federal elections. However, the company has committed to rolling out its own issue ads policy that will likely be similar to Facebook’s.
Usefulness For both Facebook and Twitter, the biggest missed opportunity right now seems to be the disconnect between the information available in their database and that showing up on accounts and Pages running ads. The “info and ads” section on a Facebook page only shows active ads, while the political and issue ads database shows both active and inactive ads. Facebook should find a way to display the inactive ads on politicians’ Pages, at the very least, since the company has already flagged these ads, and they’re just in a separate database.
Additionally, neither Facebook nor Twitter seem to be interested in giving users a seamless way to navigate to their respective ad databases from their feeds. Twitter, for example, could add a button next to a promoted tweet, encouraging users to “see more Promoted Tweets from this account,” in order to alert more users to the existence of the database. Facebook and Twitter might be skittish about doing so — after all, the point of targeted advertising is to allow only a very specific group of people to see your ad.
These databases will be popular among journalists, who have the time and patience to comb through a large number of ads. But I don’t see the average user spending a lot of time in them — either because they don’t know the database exists or because they’ll lose patience once they see how many ads a single search can dig up.
So what are these ad transparency initiatives useful for? For starters, they ensure that the next time Twitter and Facebook are called before Congress, they can provide more accurate statistics about advertiser activity. The benefit (and drawback) for advertisers is that they can now easily view their competitors’ ads.
For the average user, I think the databases help demonstrate the sheer amount of advertising activity taking place on these platforms. But that’s about it — really, these new tools are just a place for Facebook and Twitter to dump a bunch of information that will keep them within Congress’ good graces.
As Mark Zuckerberg’s testimony in front of Congress demonstrated — there’s a lot the general public still doesn’t know about how ads on social media platforms operate, from whether Facebook or Twitter sell your data to advertisers to whether they are able to target ads to you by listening in on your microphone. And these tools likely won’t shed any light on those issues. Rather than bury political ads away in a separate database, I think actually encouraging users to visit them will help them understand advertising practices on these platforms better — and help them understand that no, Facebook isn’t serving you ads by eavesdropping on your conversations.
VentureBeat's mission is to be a digital town square for technical decision-makers to gain knowledge about transformative enterprise technology and transact.
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The AI Impact Tour Join us for an evening full of networking and insights at VentureBeat's AI Impact Tour, coming to San Francisco, New York, and Los Angeles! VentureBeat Homepage Follow us on Facebook Follow us on X Follow us on LinkedIn Follow us on RSS Press Releases Contact Us Advertise Share a News Tip Contribute to DataDecisionMakers Careers Privacy Policy Terms of Service Do Not Sell My Personal Information © 2023 VentureBeat.
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"PlayStation Network, Xbox Live, and more down due to Comcast outage | VentureBeat"
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"https://venturebeat.com/pc-gaming/psn-comcast-twitter-down-june-29"
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"Artificial Intelligence View All AI, ML and Deep Learning Auto ML Data Labelling Synthetic Data Conversational AI NLP Text-to-Speech Security View All Data Security and Privacy Network Security and Privacy Software Security Computer Hardware Security Cloud and Data Storage Security Data Infrastructure View All Data Science Data Management Data Storage and Cloud Big Data and Analytics Data Networks Automation View All Industrial Automation Business Process Automation Development Automation Robotic Process Automation Test Automation Enterprise Analytics View All Business Intelligence Disaster Recovery Business Continuity Statistical Analysis Predictive Analysis More Data Decision Makers Virtual Communication Team Collaboration UCaaS Virtual Reality Collaboration Virtual Employee Experience Programming & Development Product Development Application Development Test Management Development Languages PlayStation Network, Xbox Live, and more down due to Comcast outage Share on Facebook Share on X Share on LinkedIn Are you looking to showcase your brand in front of the brightest minds of the gaming industry? Consider getting a custom GamesBeat sponsorship.
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PlayStation 4 and Xbox One owners are complaining about connectivity issues on social media today, but the problem seems to stem from a Comcast outage that is affecting multiple services along the East coast. Down Detector, which tracks connection problems through crowdsourced reports, had thousands of people claiming that their Comcast service is down since 9:30 a.m. Pacific time.
This outage is causing intermittent problems for people using Comcast’s Xfinity ISP. This is manifesting as problems booting into PlayStation Network or Twitter even if some other websites and services continue to function.
If you are on Xbox Live and having troubles with the party system, that is probably due to the Comcast outage. Same if you’re on PlayStation Network and you’re seeing a “network temporarily unavailable” message when they try to log on or boot up certain games. This is why Sony has not updated its status site, and its customer-service account on social media are telling people to check with their ISPs.
Microsoft, meanwhile, has updated its status page to confirm problems with “joining other Xbox Live members in online games,” but that is similar to the problems on PlayStation Network. It’s likely that the kind of secure connection that matchmaking requires on both systems isn’t working through Comcast’s network at the moment.
Event GamesBeat at the Game Awards We invite you to join us in LA for GamesBeat at the Game Awards event this December 7. Reserve your spot now as space is limited! As for Comcast, it says it is fixing the problem.
We're working to restore service! To stay up to date, see: https://t.co/1dRERF0BDj.
-Sami — Comcast (@comcast) June 29, 2018 We’ll update this story as Comcast comes back online or if the outage continues or worsens throughout the day.
GamesBeat's creed when covering the game industry is "where passion meets business." What does this mean? We want to tell you how the news matters to you -- not just as a decision-maker at a game studio, but also as a fan of games. Whether you read our articles, listen to our podcasts, or watch our videos, GamesBeat will help you learn about the industry and enjoy engaging with it.
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VentureBeat Homepage Follow us on Facebook Follow us on X Follow us on LinkedIn Follow us on RSS Press Releases Contact Us Advertise Share a News Tip Contribute to DataDecisionMakers Careers Privacy Policy Terms of Service Do Not Sell My Personal Information © 2023 VentureBeat.
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"May 2018’s top 10 Minecraft Marketplace creations: that city livin' | VentureBeat"
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"https://venturebeat.com/pc-gaming/may-2018s-top-10-minecraft-marketplace-creations"
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"Artificial Intelligence View All AI, ML and Deep Learning Auto ML Data Labelling Synthetic Data Conversational AI NLP Text-to-Speech Security View All Data Security and Privacy Network Security and Privacy Software Security Computer Hardware Security Cloud and Data Storage Security Data Infrastructure View All Data Science Data Management Data Storage and Cloud Big Data and Analytics Data Networks Automation View All Industrial Automation Business Process Automation Development Automation Robotic Process Automation Test Automation Enterprise Analytics View All Business Intelligence Disaster Recovery Business Continuity Statistical Analysis Predictive Analysis More Data Decision Makers Virtual Communication Team Collaboration UCaaS Virtual Reality Collaboration Virtual Employee Experience Programming & Development Product Development Application Development Test Management Development Languages May 2018’s top 10 Minecraft Marketplace creations: that city livin’ Share on Facebook Share on X Share on LinkedIn Time for some super racing.
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A report claims that Microsoft is going to implement a new feature into Xbox One called Xbox Community Content that will bring mods and other creations into games at a system-wide level. Sound familiar? Well, it should. That’s similar to the Minecraft Marketplace, which had 295,850 downloads from players acquiring new content in May. And, as always , that content was a mix of worlds, skin packs, and more from the Minecraft Team and its third-party community partners.
But now that the Minecraft Marketplace has proven this can work, Microsoft seems to think it can bring it to other games on its platform. That’s something we’ve seen with Steam Workshop, but it could have an even bigger effect on consoles where modding a game outside of official channels is too difficult for most people.
I’ll be watching to see what Microsoft does with its Community Content platform. For now, it says it has nothing to announce on the subject. But we can still see what’s doing well on the Minecraft Marketplace.
Let’s do the charts.
Event GamesBeat at the Game Awards We invite you to join us in LA for GamesBeat at the Game Awards event this December 7. Reserve your spot now as space is limited! Here are the top-10 most downloaded pieces of content from the Minecraft Marketplace in May 2018: Here’s the top 10 downloads in list form: City Life Monsters of the Deep Prison Escape BrightStart Daycare Wildlife: Savanna Dinosaur Island Abstraction: Cubes The Bastion Summer Mini Games Festival Relics of the Sky And here’s the top-grossing list for May 2018: And the list: City Life Monsters of the Deep Relics of the Sky Wildlife: Savanna Dinosaur Island Super Racers! HeroFair Prison Escape BrightStart Daycare Primaveral Tropics Next month, we’ll get the results from Minecraft Marketplace in June when the platform finally hit Nintendo’s Switch. It should be interesting to see if that causes an increase in downloads as a new platform gets access to community creations.
GamesBeat's creed when covering the game industry is "where passion meets business." What does this mean? We want to tell you how the news matters to you -- not just as a decision-maker at a game studio, but also as a fan of games. Whether you read our articles, listen to our podcasts, or watch our videos, GamesBeat will help you learn about the industry and enjoy engaging with it.
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"IP owners are too careful, and it's stifling creativity in games | VentureBeat"
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"https://venturebeat.com/pc-gaming/ip-owners-are-too-careful-and-its-stifling-creativity-in-games"
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"Artificial Intelligence View All AI, ML and Deep Learning Auto ML Data Labelling Synthetic Data Conversational AI NLP Text-to-Speech Security View All Data Security and Privacy Network Security and Privacy Software Security Computer Hardware Security Cloud and Data Storage Security Data Infrastructure View All Data Science Data Management Data Storage and Cloud Big Data and Analytics Data Networks Automation View All Industrial Automation Business Process Automation Development Automation Robotic Process Automation Test Automation Enterprise Analytics View All Business Intelligence Disaster Recovery Business Continuity Statistical Analysis Predictive Analysis More Data Decision Makers Virtual Communication Team Collaboration UCaaS Virtual Reality Collaboration Virtual Employee Experience Programming & Development Product Development Application Development Test Management Development Languages Guest IP owners are too careful, and it’s stifling creativity in games Share on Facebook Share on X Share on LinkedIn Markus Kruber from Vermintide 2 Are you looking to showcase your brand in front of the brightest minds of the gaming industry? Consider getting a custom GamesBeat sponsorship.
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Popular books, hit films and TV series, characters from graphic novels, and even toys can all be translated into the digital space, allowing fans to immerse themselves in their favorite fictional worlds — and adding new income streams and brand extensions for the intellectual property (IP) holder. This increases the possibility of bringing in whole new audiences, or just maintaining engagement with their existing ones.
If you own this kind of IP, then allowing someone to create a game based around it can certainly deliver financial results — at least in the short-term. This can be true from the biggest blockbuster to the smallest mobile game.
At first glance, licensing your brand’s IP rights to digital games companies seems like a no-brainer. But it’s not always in the best interests of the long-term longevity and financial health of your IP, and it certainly doesn’t tend to deliver the most creative results or even, arguably, the best gameplay, meaning it’s an approach which can backfire if you let down your loyal audience. Nothing is worse than a fan who falls out of love with your characters and the universe they inhabit.
So as a brand owner, you need put care into who you work with and how you manage any relationship. Money must never be the overriding objective. The relationship with the audience is what’s paramount. As a brand owner, you should juggle delivering a healthy return with maintaining that strong bond between a property and its fans.
Event GamesBeat at the Game Awards We invite you to join us in LA for GamesBeat at the Game Awards event this December 7. Reserve your spot now as space is limited! The danger of care One particular danger is that major brand IP owners are restricting innovation in computer and mobile games based on their properties either by being overly cautious or by chasing profits above all else. Many IP owners have a habit of working with the biggest computer games publishers, who have a track record of delivering mass selling titles, and who also have the cash to pay major up-front licensing fees.
This is understandable. After all, creating a triple-A game (in theory, the level that should bring the most success) – takes at least an estimated $100 million investment in development costs and marketing.
Big game publishers can afford to pay big licensing fees; but their very size, and the size of the sums they have to invest, can make them cautious, which in turn puts a damper on creativity. Behemoth games companies aren’t motivated to risk anything or innovate, because of the large financial commitments they have to make. This creates massive pressure to deliver revenues with minimal additional investment.
The safest route to do that, when licensing existing IP, is to leverage existing game engines and assets to launch games and begin generating cash as soon as possible. It becomes a self-perpetuating cycle. Unfortunately, risk-averse behaviour from both IP owners and big game publishers means boring games, which leads to long-term damage.
Unleashing creativity Ideally, as an IP owner, you should be looking to work with games developers and publishers to create authentic and enjoyable digital versions of your characters and worlds. Fans should see computer, console, and mobile games as enhancing what exists in other media, not damaging it.
One way to do this is by ensuring that games that are launched are as creative as possible, in terms of visuals and gameplay (obviously, remaining true to the original IP, of course).
IP owners should try to find a way to work with smaller, more agile, and more creative games producers. They might get less money in the short term, but in the long term, they are more likely to end up with a fan-pleasing hit on their hands that truly complements their IP. If they get the fans, then the revenue stream should last for much longer.
Above: A simple loot crate reward.
Experience suggests that if you license your IP to a single “major player” games developer, you run the risk of being almost completely cut out of the development process. It can boil down to a conference call a month, if you’re lucky! That can lead to some very disappointing games hitting the market and potentially damaging IP brand values. ( Just ask Disney.
) Working with one or more smaller developers will certainly involve more management time and resources on the part of the IP owner – but that’s not necessarily a bad thing. Working with smaller developers, for example, can mean IP owners taking on more of the responsibility (and arguably the risk) for marketing and distribution, which a big publisher would usually handle. That risk has to be balanced against the potential gains in terms of creative freedom and even IP protection.
Who’s doing it right? One example of how an IP owner can work with a range of publishers, rather than putting all its eggs into one basket, is UK company Games Workshop, now best known for its Warhammer fantasy and science fiction universes and related figures and tabletop games. It has been licensing its creative IP for decades, with mixed success; in the last few years, however, it seems to have hit on a winning formula.
Swedish developer Fatshark has just released Vermintide 2 , based on the latest version of the Warhammer Fantasy RPG and table-top wargames universe (the Age of Sigmar) to great success. It’s the sequel to the 2015 licensed game, Warhammer: End Times – Vermintide, which itself sold more than 500,000 units.
What’s interesting here is that Games Workshop maintained extremely close links with the development team throughout – to the extent that new concepts from the computer game have now been integrated into the original tabletop version.
But Games Workshop has also been working with other developers and publishers. These include Bigben and NeocoreGames, for a space role-playing game, Warhammer 40,000: Inquisitor – Martyr , and Sega and Creative Assembly, for Total War: Warhammer.
A portfolio of different titles from different developers illustrates how Games Workshop is actively looking to work with a number of companies to exploit its IP in the gaming space.
Another example would be Marvel, with its hugely valuable portfolio of comic book characters, films and related licensed products. They have worked with many different developers/publishers over the last decade. Looking at the latest figures for top grossing IOS games ranked by daily revenue , the best-performing game app in April 2018 was Marvel: Contest of Champions, a free to play game built by Kabam under license from Marvel and first launched back in Dec 2014.
Kabam is a smaller studio which built on the success of its previous hit game, “Injustice: Gods Among Us” , and also took learnings from its other games, improving the economy design and multiplayer, and ensuring that events were strongly tied to its core. So it learnt from previous games, but changed some fundamentals in the game design like what happens in the meta outside of the battles. The meta for all games is what drives long term retention and strong monetization. This paid off for Kabam. They focused on creating a pure Gacha system (gacha games give out randomized rewards in exchange for some form of in-game currency). As a result, Kabam and Marvel have a top performing game.
We at IRM decided to work with best-of-breed developers on different game genres with Who Wants To Be A Millionaire.
We opted to take a risk with the developers and preferred for them to focus their resource on innovative and bespoke game design for our brand and our audience, rather than sizable upfront fee commitments. We replicated this strategy when working with the Agatha Christie estate; selecting smaller development studios with passion for the brand and a focus on creating unique experiences for different audiences. This is is why many of our branded games have won awards voted by the players themselves.
IP owners don’t have to avoid risk all the time – and nor should major publishers. Yes, IP owners must protect their property; but launching mediocre products alienates fans who may never return.
Megan Goodwin is joint Managing Director of IRM. A content innovator and digital media entrepreneur, she brings more than 15 years’ experience in television, publishing and digital media specialising in the creation of great digital products and pioneering new business models.
GamesBeat's creed when covering the game industry is "where passion meets business." What does this mean? We want to tell you how the news matters to you -- not just as a decision-maker at a game studio, but also as a fan of games. Whether you read our articles, listen to our podcasts, or watch our videos, GamesBeat will help you learn about the industry and enjoy engaging with it.
Discover our Briefings.
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"GamesBeat Decides 86: Hammond is very good | VentureBeat"
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"https://venturebeat.com/pc-gaming/gamesbeat-decides-86-hammond-is-very-good"
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"Artificial Intelligence View All AI, ML and Deep Learning Auto ML Data Labelling Synthetic Data Conversational AI NLP Text-to-Speech Security View All Data Security and Privacy Network Security and Privacy Software Security Computer Hardware Security Cloud and Data Storage Security Data Infrastructure View All Data Science Data Management Data Storage and Cloud Big Data and Analytics Data Networks Automation View All Industrial Automation Business Process Automation Development Automation Robotic Process Automation Test Automation Enterprise Analytics View All Business Intelligence Disaster Recovery Business Continuity Statistical Analysis Predictive Analysis More Data Decision Makers Virtual Communication Team Collaboration UCaaS Virtual Reality Collaboration Virtual Employee Experience Programming & Development Product Development Application Development Test Management Development Languages GamesBeat Decides 86: Hammond is very good Share on Facebook Share on X Share on LinkedIn Are you looking to showcase your brand in front of the brightest minds of the gaming industry? Consider getting a custom GamesBeat sponsorship.
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On this week’s GamesBeat Decides podcast , hosts Jeffrey Grubb and Mike Minotti talk about Summer Games Done Quick, Mario Tennis Aces online, and more.
We also had some news with Microsoft’s Xbox Community Content platform and more.
Listen, won’t you? Here’s what we talked about: Event GamesBeat at the Game Awards We invite you to join us in LA for GamesBeat at the Game Awards event this December 7. Reserve your spot now as space is limited! Wolfenstein 2 Battlefield V Overwatch with Hammond Mario Tennis Aces SGDQ Xbox One gets Steam Workshop-like platform Amy Hennis left EA Bluehole dropped Fortnite lawsuit Hollow Knight on Switch is selling very well Google is planning a game platform Mario Kart 8 gets Toy-Con support PUBG Mobile’s progression pass leads to 365% boost Pokemon Go is back Subscribe on Apple Podcasts , Google Play Music , Stitcher , or RSS Listen on Cast Watch live on Facebook , Twitch , or YouTube Follow us: GamesBeat on Twitter , GamesBeat Decides on Twitter Until next time! GamesBeat's creed when covering the game industry is "where passion meets business." What does this mean? We want to tell you how the news matters to you -- not just as a decision-maker at a game studio, but also as a fan of games. Whether you read our articles, listen to our podcasts, or watch our videos, GamesBeat will help you learn about the industry and enjoy engaging with it.
Discover our Briefings.
Join the GamesBeat community! Enjoy access to special events, private newsletters and more.
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"Crash Bandicoot N. Sane Trilogy is still weird on anything except PlayStation | VentureBeat"
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"https://venturebeat.com/pc-gaming/crash-bandicoot-n-sane-trilogy-is-still-weird-on-anything-except-playstation"
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"Artificial Intelligence View All AI, ML and Deep Learning Auto ML Data Labelling Synthetic Data Conversational AI NLP Text-to-Speech Security View All Data Security and Privacy Network Security and Privacy Software Security Computer Hardware Security Cloud and Data Storage Security Data Infrastructure View All Data Science Data Management Data Storage and Cloud Big Data and Analytics Data Networks Automation View All Industrial Automation Business Process Automation Development Automation Robotic Process Automation Test Automation Enterprise Analytics View All Business Intelligence Disaster Recovery Business Continuity Statistical Analysis Predictive Analysis More Data Decision Makers Virtual Communication Team Collaboration UCaaS Virtual Reality Collaboration Virtual Employee Experience Programming & Development Product Development Application Development Test Management Development Languages Crash Bandicoot N. Sane Trilogy is still weird on anything except PlayStation Share on Facebook Share on X Share on LinkedIn Gotta make those jumps.
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I’m old enough to remember the PlayStation ads where a man in a Crash Bandicoot suit showed up to yell at Nintendo’s headquarters.
For someone who grew up alongside the console wars, those commercials had the effect of showing everyone how serious Sony was about taking on its console rival. Two decades later, Sony has dropped the mascot, which publisher Activision owns, and the jorts-wearing rodent’s first three adventures have made their way to Nintendo’s Switch and even the PC, which is somehow more odd.
Crash Bandicoot N. Sane Trilogy launched on the PlayStation 4 a year ago, but it hit the other consoles and PC today. I’ve spent some time with it, and it’s the same great update of those classic platformers that was one of last year’s fastest selling games.
But yeah … it’s weird.
Event GamesBeat at the Game Awards We invite you to join us in LA for GamesBeat at the Game Awards event this December 7. Reserve your spot now as space is limited! I sided with Nintendo early in the 32-/64-bit era. That meant getting a PlayStation and Crash was out of the question because I had to min/max my birthdays and Christmases to get the most games for the Nintendo systems before I got too old to expect a lot of presents. As a result of this and the fear of missing out, I had to convince myself that I didn’t want to play Crash Bandicoot.
I’m less of a fanboy now (and more of a disgusting PC elitist), so the platform I’m playing a game on shouldn’t matter. It does, though. I can feel it while guiding Crash through Naughty Dog’s primitive 3D corridors. This was a PlayStation game and having it on Switch is wrong. I know that’s all in my head, but I’m not alone. GamesBeat reviews editor Mike Minotti has said the same thing, and I think one of the reasons the N. Sane Trilogy sold so well is because of its association with Sony’s gaming brand.
But even if it’s wrong, it’s the kind of wrong that makes gaming so much more dynamic and exciting today than when I was in junior high.These days, Microsoft can publish Minecraft on PlayStation and Switch, Nintendo and Microsoft can team up to highlight their cooperation in cross-platform multiplayer games, and Fortnite can enable people on PC, phones, and consoles to all play together at the same time. So yeah, I’ll accept Crash on other platforms … although, I may break down if we ever get to a point where Mario is on PlayStation.
GamesBeat's creed when covering the game industry is "where passion meets business." What does this mean? We want to tell you how the news matters to you -- not just as a decision-maker at a game studio, but also as a fan of games. Whether you read our articles, listen to our podcasts, or watch our videos, GamesBeat will help you learn about the industry and enjoy engaging with it.
Discover our Briefings.
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"Battlefield V feels so good, but I'm playing it wrong | VentureBeat"
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"https://venturebeat.com/pc-gaming/battlefield-v-feels-so-good-but-im-playing-it-wrong"
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"Artificial Intelligence View All AI, ML and Deep Learning Auto ML Data Labelling Synthetic Data Conversational AI NLP Text-to-Speech Security View All Data Security and Privacy Network Security and Privacy Software Security Computer Hardware Security Cloud and Data Storage Security Data Infrastructure View All Data Science Data Management Data Storage and Cloud Big Data and Analytics Data Networks Automation View All Industrial Automation Business Process Automation Development Automation Robotic Process Automation Test Automation Enterprise Analytics View All Business Intelligence Disaster Recovery Business Continuity Statistical Analysis Predictive Analysis More Data Decision Makers Virtual Communication Team Collaboration UCaaS Virtual Reality Collaboration Virtual Employee Experience Programming & Development Product Development Application Development Test Management Development Languages Battlefield V feels so good, but I’m playing it wrong Share on Facebook Share on X Share on LinkedIn Battlefield V is hot.
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The Battlefield V closed alpha test went live yesterday, and this is giving a number of fans their first chance to try the World War II shooter. This has moved the conversation away from crying about women and character customization to the mechanics of the shooting, the movement, and the various systems. And the consensus from those fans is the same one I came away from E3 with: Battlefield V has some of the best gunplay and character physics in the history of the series.
Developer DICE is continuing to make improvements to the shooter because it seems slightly faster in this alpha. So running around, jumping over obstacles, and firing weapons all feel wonderful in Battlefield V. I especially like how easy it is to understand why your shots are missing. Bullets are bright and easily visible as they leave your weapon, which helped me see that I was firing over enemy heads when I aimed at them from the high ground. When I started aiming closer to center mass, I started getting a lot more kills from that position.
But even as Battlefield V feels great and keeps me wanting to come back for more, I’m still missing key aspects of how to survive and thrive under the new attrition system. In this game, DICE has made it so that you can spawn with fewer rounds of ammo and other supplies as you get deeper into matches. The studio did this to encourage squads to stick together … but I’m not doing that.
Event GamesBeat at the Game Awards We invite you to join us in LA for GamesBeat at the Game Awards event this December 7. Reserve your spot now as space is limited! I’m playing Battlefield V wrong.
I’m still having a good time and getting a handful of kills, but I’m not sure if that is contributing to success for my squad or my team. And once I get separate from my squad, if they are in an area where I can’t spawn on them because they’re in the middle of a fight, it doesn’t seem worth it to try to get to them. Either they will die or I will die before I get to their location.
Playing with your squad seems like the easiest and most obvious way to have plenty of ammo. Even if no one is playing support, you can pick ammunition off of downed enemies — and that’s easier to do when you have backup and cover.
But I think you can do more to ensure you have more ammo. Maybe your rear bases have supply stations, and I think you can build new supply stations on other points. But I haven’t really noticed those spots yet. It hasn’t occurred to me during gameplay that I’m starting with fewer rounds until I am suddenly out of ammunition way faster than I expected. So I’m not even looking at the world from the perspective of trying to keep my character stocked — I have to change how I approach it, and that’s going to take time.
I’m sure if I play enough I’ll get the hang of some of these aspects eventually, but I’m concerned the squad mechanic might never come together. Even with Battlefield V amplifying all of the benefits of playing alongside your temporary buddies, everyone on the squad will still end up doing their own lonewolf thing.
I plan to play some more today, and I’m going to dedicate myself to understanding the attrition system and trying to stay close to my squad. Let’s hope DICE can make this work.
GamesBeat's creed when covering the game industry is "where passion meets business." What does this mean? We want to tell you how the news matters to you -- not just as a decision-maker at a game studio, but also as a fan of games. Whether you read our articles, listen to our podcasts, or watch our videos, GamesBeat will help you learn about the industry and enjoy engaging with it.
Discover our Briefings.
Join the GamesBeat community! Enjoy access to special events, private newsletters and more.
VentureBeat Homepage Follow us on Facebook Follow us on X Follow us on LinkedIn Follow us on RSS Press Releases Contact Us Advertise Share a News Tip Contribute to DataDecisionMakers Careers Privacy Policy Terms of Service Do Not Sell My Personal Information © 2023 VentureBeat.
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"China's Xiaomi raises $4.72 billion after pricing Hong Kong IPO at bottom of range | VentureBeat"
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"https://venturebeat.com/mobile/chinas-xiaomi-raises-4-72-billion-after-pricing-hong-kong-ipo-at-bottom-of-range"
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"Artificial Intelligence View All AI, ML and Deep Learning Auto ML Data Labelling Synthetic Data Conversational AI NLP Text-to-Speech Security View All Data Security and Privacy Network Security and Privacy Software Security Computer Hardware Security Cloud and Data Storage Security Data Infrastructure View All Data Science Data Management Data Storage and Cloud Big Data and Analytics Data Networks Automation View All Industrial Automation Business Process Automation Development Automation Robotic Process Automation Test Automation Enterprise Analytics View All Business Intelligence Disaster Recovery Business Continuity Statistical Analysis Predictive Analysis More Data Decision Makers Virtual Communication Team Collaboration UCaaS Virtual Reality Collaboration Virtual Employee Experience Programming & Development Product Development Application Development Test Management Development Languages China’s Xiaomi raises $4.72 billion after pricing Hong Kong IPO at bottom of range Share on Facebook Share on X Share on LinkedIn Xiaomi logo on stage at the 2017 Consumer Electronics Show.
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( Reuters/IFR ) — China’s Xiaomi priced its Hong Kong initial public offering (IPO) at the bottom of an indicative range, raising $4.72 billion in the world’s biggest tech float in four years, people close to the transaction said on Friday.
That values the firm at about $54 billion, almost half the valuation industry insiders touted at the beginning of the year.
The pricing comes at a delicate time for Hong Kong’s stock market, with the benchmark Hang Seng index falling 6.5 percent this month and 4.8 percent this year as investors fret over escalating trade tension between the United States and China.
As such, Xiaomi’s share sale is widely seen as a test of market sentiment for what is expected to be a packed second-half of the year for Hong Kong IPOs, with offerings including online food delivery-to-ticketing services platform Meituan Dianping.
China Tower, the world’s largest mobile mast operator, has won approval for a Hong Kong IPO that could raise up to $10 billion. However, its listing timing will depend somewhat on how well Xiaomi’s deal is received, sources have told Reuters.
“Xiaomi’s pricing won’t be good news for market sentiment,” said Hong Hao, chief strategist at BOCOM International. “But other IPO candidates will still flock to the market to list before market conditions become more challenging.” Xiaomi is selling about 2.18 billion shares at HK$17 each ($2.17), the bottom of a price range of HK$17 to HK$22, two of the people said. That makes the IPO the largest in the technology sector since Alibaba Group Holding Ltd (BABA.N) raised $25 billion in New York in 2014.
Xiaomi declined to comment. The people declined to be identified as the information was not public.
The HK$17 price represents a multiple of 39.6 times 2018 earnings and 22.7 times Xiaomi’s 2019 earnings forecast by its underwriting syndicate. At present, rival Apple Inc (AAPL.O) is trading at 17 times trailing earnings and 14 times forward earnings, showed Thomson Reuters data.
“I’m not surprised at all by its pricing at the bottom,” said Hong. “It claims to be a hardware plus internet services company, but the majority of its revenues come from the smartphone business. It’s still way more expensive than Apple on a price-earnings basis.” Xiaomi’s price values the firm at $53.9 billion before the exercise of a “greenshoe” or over-allotment option, whereby additional shares are sold depending on demand.
The valuation is far below the $100 billion touted by sources earlier this year as well as the more recent $70 billion-plus target that some analysts and investors saw as aggressive. Xiaomi was valued at $46 billion in its last fundraising in 2014.
Xiaomi’s IPO adds to the $6 billion of new listings so far in 2018 in Hong Kong and is set to be the first under the city’s new exchange rules permitting dual-class shares common in the tech industry in an attempt to attract tech floats.
It was initially expected to raise up to $10 billion, split between Hong Kong and mainland China, but last week shelved the mainland offering until after listing in Hong Kong. Cornerstone investors included U.S. chipmaker Qualcomm and telecom service provider China Mobile.
Set up in 2010, Xiaomi doubled its smartphone shipments in 2017 to become the world’s fourth-largest maker, according to Counterpoint Research, defying a global slowdown in handset sales. It also makes internet-connected home appliances and gadgets, including scooters, air purifiers and rice cookers.
Beijing-based, Cayman-domiciled Xiaomi is due to start trading in Hong Kong on July 9.
( Reporting by Fiona Lau of IFR and Julie Zhu; Editing by Christopher Cushing ) VentureBeat's mission is to be a digital town square for technical decision-makers to gain knowledge about transformative enterprise technology and transact.
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"Apple will reboot Maps using its own data, starting in iOS 12 | VentureBeat"
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"Artificial Intelligence View All AI, ML and Deep Learning Auto ML Data Labelling Synthetic Data Conversational AI NLP Text-to-Speech Security View All Data Security and Privacy Network Security and Privacy Software Security Computer Hardware Security Cloud and Data Storage Security Data Infrastructure View All Data Science Data Management Data Storage and Cloud Big Data and Analytics Data Networks Automation View All Industrial Automation Business Process Automation Development Automation Robotic Process Automation Test Automation Enterprise Analytics View All Business Intelligence Disaster Recovery Business Continuity Statistical Analysis Predictive Analysis More Data Decision Makers Virtual Communication Team Collaboration UCaaS Virtual Reality Collaboration Virtual Employee Experience Programming & Development Product Development Application Development Test Management Development Languages Apple will reboot Maps using its own data, starting in iOS 12 Share on Facebook Share on X Share on LinkedIn Apple's updated Maps data is shown in demo form on a cellular iPad.
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Apple has quietly been working to rebuild its Maps application with self-gathered data, and will begin to roll out changes starting with the next beta of iOS 12, TechCrunch reports today. The process will apparently proceed slowly, starting only with data for San Francisco and the Bay Area, expanding to the rest of Northern California by fall 2018. It’s expected to continue across the United States for a full year, section by section.
Arriving as a replacement for iOS’ integrated Google Maps app, Apple’s Maps had a famously turbulent launch six years ago, complete with conspicuously missing and inaccurate third-party POI data, limited and poor directions, and other issues. Responding to complaints, Apple continued to refine the app annually, cleaning up its database and improving the UI. But the latest round of changes will go deeper.
According to today’s report, Apple’s new maps have been in the works for four years. They’re based upon data the company has gathered using both sensor-equipped vehicles and iPhones, and promise to provide markedly enhanced levels of detail. They will apparently acknowledge roadway and construction changes while offering more visibility concerning details like ground coverage, sporting areas, swimming pools, and walkways.
After remaining quiet on the topic, Apple acknowledged today that its sensor-laden Apple Maps vans have been gathering data for the project for years. They have been using a combination of eight high-resolution cameras, four lidar arrays, GPS, and a physical measurement tool to gather imagery and positional data.
VB Event The AI Impact Tour Connect with the enterprise AI community at VentureBeat’s AI Impact Tour coming to a city near you! What’s particularly new is the mention that “hundreds of millions of iPhones” will be gathering traffic information. Apple says that its approach has placed a premium on user privacy and that it’s effectively anonymizing data by not gathering start and endpoint data for individual users — just segments of what’s in the middle, so that a specific person’s overall trip and destinations can’t be viewed. Data will only be gathered when the Maps app is already in use, so the impact on battery life will be “near zero.” By using that data, however, Apple will be able to gather real-time information on road conditions, road systems, new construction, and changes in pedestrian walkways. And the Maps team will now be able to make adjustments to roads and road conditions in near-real time, said Apple senior VP Eddy Cue, who is now in charge of the feature. He told TechCrunch: For example, a road network is something that takes a much longer time to change currently. In the new map infrastructure, we can change that relatively quickly. If a new road opens up, immediately we can see that and make that change very, very quickly around it. It’s much, much more rapid to do changes in the new map environment.
Other improvements are coming as well, including a redesigned search feature, which currently routinely suggests irrelevant results that may not even be on your current continent. The report also says that Apple will be enhancing pedestrian guidance and navigation generally, as well as including parking areas and building details appropriate to your destination.
What’s unclear is the deadline for global completion, if there is any. While the United States will be updated over the next year, Apple apparently has not committed to launch dates for the map enhancements outside of its own home country, though it’s fair to assume that Maps’ international updates will overlap at least somewhat with the domestic ones.
VentureBeat's mission is to be a digital town square for technical decision-makers to gain knowledge about transformative enterprise technology and transact.
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The AI Impact Tour Join us for an evening full of networking and insights at VentureBeat's AI Impact Tour, coming to San Francisco, New York, and Los Angeles! VentureBeat Homepage Follow us on Facebook Follow us on X Follow us on LinkedIn Follow us on RSS Press Releases Contact Us Advertise Share a News Tip Contribute to DataDecisionMakers Careers Privacy Policy Terms of Service Do Not Sell My Personal Information © 2023 VentureBeat.
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"Lessons from VidCon: How brands, startups, and marketers can reach Gen Z | VentureBeat"
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"https://venturebeat.com/media/lessons-from-vidcon-how-brands-startups-and-marketers-can-reach-gen-z"
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"Artificial Intelligence View All AI, ML and Deep Learning Auto ML Data Labelling Synthetic Data Conversational AI NLP Text-to-Speech Security View All Data Security and Privacy Network Security and Privacy Software Security Computer Hardware Security Cloud and Data Storage Security Data Infrastructure View All Data Science Data Management Data Storage and Cloud Big Data and Analytics Data Networks Automation View All Industrial Automation Business Process Automation Development Automation Robotic Process Automation Test Automation Enterprise Analytics View All Business Intelligence Disaster Recovery Business Continuity Statistical Analysis Predictive Analysis More Data Decision Makers Virtual Communication Team Collaboration UCaaS Virtual Reality Collaboration Virtual Employee Experience Programming & Development Product Development Application Development Test Management Development Languages Guest Lessons from VidCon: How brands, startups, and marketers can reach Gen Z Share on Facebook Share on X Share on LinkedIn Are you ready to bring more awareness to your brand? Consider becoming a sponsor for The AI Impact Tour. Learn more about the opportunities here.
Last week, we attended our first VidCon , a convention for creators and fans of online video. The conference, founded in 2010, now hosts 25,000+ attendees yearly in Anaheim and is considered one of the premiere destinations for brands to reach the Gen Z demographic.
In our three days at VidCon, we spent time with dozens of brands in the convention’s giant Expo Hall and listened to hundreds of social influencers and industry experts share their insights and stories. We learned a lot about what Gen Z’ers care about and how to engage this demographic, which now makes up the largest percentage of the U.S. population. Here are our top five takeaways: 1. Be authentic Brands are tempted to script influencer posts, but creators don’t want to feel like they’re shilling a product.
Benny Fine (Fine Brothers Entertainment, 17 million subscribers) includes a clause in contracts that allows him to ignore 50 percent of edits that brands propose. Creators are more positive on longer-term partnerships that integrate the brand naturally, like a video series or a channel takeover. If fans feel a like brand is enabling content the creator otherwise couldn’t make, they’re more likely to have a positive association.
Kurt Schneider (10 million subscribers) said he only works on brand campaigns that feel consistent with “what fans expect” from him, and where he can make the brand the “hero” of the video in an authentic way. He cited his Candyman video with M&Ms as a successful example — it looked like something he might normally make, got a great reception from his audience, and the like/dislike ratio was in line with his non-sponsored content.
On the topic of authenticity, producers of YouTube Red series Escape the Night said they’ve found success in treating influencers like stars, not actors. Fans want to see influencers appearing as themselves, not as another character.
Escape the Night is what showrunner Adam Lawson calls a “surreality” show. Influencers are placed in a historical setting and have to complete challenges to make it back to the present. While the show has a group of background actors with scripted lines, the influencers were completely unscripted and were asked to just respond naturally to the action around them.
2. Highlight social impact Gen Z cares about doing good in the world and wants to see brands supporting initiatives around empowerment, diversity, and inclusion. Think about how your company can connect with and support creators who speak up about issues like body image, gender identity, and cyberbullying. A great example of this type of creator is Kati Morton , a licensed therapist who makes videos to spread awareness about and destigmatize mental health. She was featured in YouTube’s VidCon keynote about the power of the platform.
3. Move beyond pre-roll ads It’s no surprise that teens hate pre-roll ads. Ads are also an inconsistent revenue stream for creators, as they have to rely on the platform’s algorithm and CPMs are low. Smart creators diversify their revenue through subscriptions for premium content, brand partnerships, and merch/live shows. In a panel on monetization, Hannah Hart (2.5 million subscribers), Burnie Burns (9.5 million subscribers via Rooster Teeth ), and Philip DeFranco (6.2 million subscribers) all emphasized that they’ve focused on non-ad revenue . Rooster Teeth has 300k+ paying subscribers for its SVOD service , while merch and live shows have been crucial for Hannah and Phillip.
YouTube’s product announcements at VidCon focused on making it easier for creators to monetize beyond ads, including channel subscriptions and merch shelves that live directly below videos. The company also released early stats on some of its other monetization initiatives — 50 percent of channels using FameBit doubled their revenue in the first three months of 2018, and 65 percent of channels using SuperChat have more than doubled their livestream income.
4. Focus on DIY & Instagrammable In terms of brand interactions, Gen Z’ers primarily care about two things — interactive or “do-it-yourself” experiences, and Instagram-worthy visuals. Most of the VidCon brand exhibits were glorified photobooths, and many had signs encouraging visitors to post on Instagram with a specific hashtag. The same goes for digital brand content — anything that kids or teens can replicate at home, whether it’s in gaming, cooking, or building things, is likely to do better than content that is just consumed passively.
5. Engagement > views To generate real value from campaigns, many brands have set the following priorities for influencers they partner with: (1) engagement (likes, comments); (2) views; (3) subscribers. As purchase behavior continues to shift towards mobile and social platforms, influencers have a huge ability to drive sales, but it’s key that viewers actually watch and engage with the content and use it to make purchasing decisions.
The increasing focus on engagement over reach was echoed by brands and publishers, whose KPIs for content have shifted away from pure views. Jay Holzer, Head of Linear Programming at Tastemade, mentioned that his team primarily focuses on watch time over number of views. They want to ensure they are building a real connection with viewers who will return to their page. Similarly, NBC worked with 40 music YouTubers for a The Voice campaign , and while they tracked views, they specifically focused on boosting search traffic for The Voice , which was up 170 percent over the course of the campaign.
As digital creators gain fame but struggle to monetize the way that traditional celebrities can, we predict huge opportunities for brands to engage younger audiences in a creative way at fairly low cost. We’re excited to see how brands and creators innovate here. And we anticipate some truly revolutionary results for brands who embrace this new wave of partnerships.
Justine Moore and Olivia Moore are investors at VC firm CRV.
VentureBeat's mission is to be a digital town square for technical decision-makers to gain knowledge about transformative enterprise technology and transact.
Discover our Briefings.
VentureBeat Homepage Follow us on Facebook Follow us on X Follow us on LinkedIn Follow us on RSS Press Releases Contact Us Advertise Share a News Tip Contribute to DataDecisionMakers Careers Privacy Policy Terms of Service Do Not Sell My Personal Information © 2023 VentureBeat.
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"The holy grail of the perfect customer experience | VentureBeat"
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"https://venturebeat.com/marketing/the-holy-grail-of-the-perfect-customer-experience"
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"Artificial Intelligence View All AI, ML and Deep Learning Auto ML Data Labelling Synthetic Data Conversational AI NLP Text-to-Speech Security View All Data Security and Privacy Network Security and Privacy Software Security Computer Hardware Security Cloud and Data Storage Security Data Infrastructure View All Data Science Data Management Data Storage and Cloud Big Data and Analytics Data Networks Automation View All Industrial Automation Business Process Automation Development Automation Robotic Process Automation Test Automation Enterprise Analytics View All Business Intelligence Disaster Recovery Business Continuity Statistical Analysis Predictive Analysis More Data Decision Makers Virtual Communication Team Collaboration UCaaS Virtual Reality Collaboration Virtual Employee Experience Programming & Development Product Development Application Development Test Management Development Languages Sponsored The holy grail of the perfect customer experience Share on Facebook Share on X Share on LinkedIn Presented by Freshworks If you’ve been in business for any respectable amount of time, you know something really, really well: Your customers don’t care how your business operation is structured, or how complicated it is for you to deliver great support. They just crave an experience that gets their job done quick and fast. And they want it now.
No exceptions.
Most organizations take that to mean that a great customer experience is never possible. That ‘good enough’ is enough.
But is it? We all know support requests or sales calls that have gone horribly wrong, causing the business to lose thousands of dollars, in seconds.
Put simply, we want to solve that problem — the holy grail of the perfect customer experience. Not one unhappy customer, not one lost sales lead, not one chat experience that goes nowhere.
And how do we solve it? With context.
A customer can approach or be approached through multiple channels but to ensure great customer engagement, the conversation needs context.
Great conversations + great data = great experience We have been thinking about how to get that context precisely when it is needed. Great conversations alone are not powerful enough. It needs to have substance; it needs to solve a customer problem. Only when the conversation meets information, can that substance be provided.
Here’s an example: When a customer approaches support with a query, a conversation begins, and the support agent is having a conversation, wanting to answer the customer. But since she has no idea about the plan the customer is on, or the name of the salesperson associated with the account, she can’t answer the question well. She might have to ask the customer these questions. That’s not a great experience. The customer might be miffed, and rightly so.
“Don’t you know who handles which account in your own company?” , is a question that might be put to the agent.
But if the agent had all this information on hand, she might have been able to address the customer’s query better. What was only a great conversation would be enhanced by the data at hand. And what an experience that would be! No customer would ever leave! Hurdles on the grail quest Except that, as everyone knows, this is difficult to do.
Conversations can be spread across multiple channels like email, calls, chats, social interactions or even a helpdesk ticket. For that perfect customer experience, all these conversations need to be unified, no matter the tool used for what channel.
Only when your tools are tightly integrated and have the ability to help you with contextual information from data, can you get further ahead on that grail quest for great customer experience.
However, businesses have to juggle between different software to deliver this cohesive experience. Any of the products themselves, on their own, are brilliant; they come with great features and do the job, but they falter when it comes to communicating with each other. It is this lack of communication that hurts the experience for customers and prospects alike.
Crossing the final chasm Companies around the globe have increasingly become aware of this. And in a large organization with many customer touchpoints, an immense amount of coordination is required to streamline and deliver the precise experience the customer needs.
So how do you fix this? Imagine a support platform that is able to pull out your customer information from the CRM platform — it not only gives you the opportunity to serve the customer better but also creates the space to cross/up sell.
Think of a marketing function where the power of retargeting is unparalleled to such an extent, that you know which pages the customer’s been on and how many times. This information is available with your sales agent with just a few clicks.
Imagine if your software empowers you with such deep context every single time.
This isn’t important only for the business. It’s also more efficient, saves time, and saves loads of effort.
This is what we think is the holy grail of the perfect customer experience, and parts of it are here already.
With Freshworks 360 , we are close to realizing this vision. Freshworks 360 will provide businesses with an easy-to-use toolset to complete the customer engagement experience. The products within Freshworks 360 include Freshdesk, Freshsales, Freshmarketer, Freshcaller (call center software), and Freshchat (customer messaging software), providing an easy way for businesses to access their customer’s context.
So does that mean that customers should move to software that functions as a complete customer engagement platform and make sure that no one customer or prospect goes away without that perfect experience? We sure think so.
And we are not talking about just the big enterprises. Even smaller companies need to have access to great tools to manage their operations as they grow. Having a software onboard, that already talks to each other can be a great advantage to organizations as they grow and scale.
This is our vision: The complete customer engagement platform of the future, where no customer has a less than perfect experience.
We are betting on it.
Arvind Parthiban is Director of Marketing at Freshworks. Previously, he was the CEO of Zarget. He’s an ITIL expert and always passionate about football, beer and movies.
LinkedIn | Twitter Sponsored posts are content produced by a company that is either paying for the post or has a business relationship with VentureBeat, and they’re always clearly marked. Content produced by our editorial team is never influenced by advertisers or sponsors in any way. For more information, contact [email protected].
The AI Impact Tour Join us for an evening full of networking and insights at VentureBeat's AI Impact Tour, coming to San Francisco, New York, and Los Angeles! VentureBeat Homepage Follow us on Facebook Follow us on X Follow us on LinkedIn Follow us on RSS Press Releases Contact Us Advertise Share a News Tip Contribute to DataDecisionMakers Careers Privacy Policy Terms of Service Do Not Sell My Personal Information © 2023 VentureBeat.
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"VR hit Beat Saber is getting a multiplayer update | VentureBeat"
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"https://venturebeat.com/games/vr-hit-beat-saber-is-getting-a-multiplayer-update"
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"Artificial Intelligence View All AI, ML and Deep Learning Auto ML Data Labelling Synthetic Data Conversational AI NLP Text-to-Speech Security View All Data Security and Privacy Network Security and Privacy Software Security Computer Hardware Security Cloud and Data Storage Security Data Infrastructure View All Data Science Data Management Data Storage and Cloud Big Data and Analytics Data Networks Automation View All Industrial Automation Business Process Automation Development Automation Robotic Process Automation Test Automation Enterprise Analytics View All Business Intelligence Disaster Recovery Business Continuity Statistical Analysis Predictive Analysis More Data Decision Makers Virtual Communication Team Collaboration UCaaS Virtual Reality Collaboration Virtual Employee Experience Programming & Development Product Development Application Development Test Management Development Languages VR hit Beat Saber is getting a multiplayer update Share on Facebook Share on X Share on LinkedIn Beat Saber on PSVR.
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Music-based rhythm games are great. Some of my favorite gaming memories involve being huddled around plastic guitars and drum sets in Rock Band or pounding on a DDR dance pad with friends. What those games have in common that’s missing from Beat Saber though, is multiplayer. Hopefully that won’t be the case for much longer.
According to a tweet today from the official Beat Saber account , the developers are working with a dedicated member of the community to add actual multiplayer support to the game. Currently there is a Party Mode which simply supports passing the headset and controllers around, but that’s not “real” multiplayer.
As for what form the support will take, we don’t really have any idea. Perhaps it will be a competitive mode in which two people play the same song at the same time and try to get a higher score, or perhaps it will be more collaborative where you trade off playing parts of the same beat map.
Event GamesBeat at the Game Awards We invite you to join us in LA for GamesBeat at the Game Awards event this December 7. Reserve your spot now as space is limited! Between the core game’s excellent pacing and the seemingly endless stream of user-generated content, it’s already taking the VR world by storm. It’s also just a ton of fun to livestream.
This story originally appeared on Uploadvr.com.
Copyright 2018 GamesBeat's creed when covering the game industry is "where passion meets business." What does this mean? We want to tell you how the news matters to you -- not just as a decision-maker at a game studio, but also as a fan of games. Whether you read our articles, listen to our podcasts, or watch our videos, GamesBeat will help you learn about the industry and enjoy engaging with it.
Discover our Briefings.
Join the GamesBeat community! Enjoy access to special events, private newsletters and more.
VentureBeat Homepage Follow us on Facebook Follow us on X Follow us on LinkedIn Follow us on RSS Press Releases Contact Us Advertise Share a News Tip Contribute to DataDecisionMakers Careers Privacy Policy Terms of Service Do Not Sell My Personal Information © 2023 VentureBeat.
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"Virtual Fighting Championship is a first-person VR Street Fighter | VentureBeat"
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"https://venturebeat.com/games/virtual-fighting-championship-is-a-first-person-vr-street-fighter"
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"Artificial Intelligence View All AI, ML and Deep Learning Auto ML Data Labelling Synthetic Data Conversational AI NLP Text-to-Speech Security View All Data Security and Privacy Network Security and Privacy Software Security Computer Hardware Security Cloud and Data Storage Security Data Infrastructure View All Data Science Data Management Data Storage and Cloud Big Data and Analytics Data Networks Automation View All Industrial Automation Business Process Automation Development Automation Robotic Process Automation Test Automation Enterprise Analytics View All Business Intelligence Disaster Recovery Business Continuity Statistical Analysis Predictive Analysis More Data Decision Makers Virtual Communication Team Collaboration UCaaS Virtual Reality Collaboration Virtual Employee Experience Programming & Development Product Development Application Development Test Management Development Languages Virtual Fighting Championship is a first-person VR Street Fighter Share on Facebook Share on X Share on LinkedIn Are you looking to showcase your brand in front of the brightest minds of the gaming industry? Consider getting a custom GamesBeat sponsorship.
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Competitive gamers have dreamed about a compelling first-person fighting game ever since Capcom redefined side-scrolling fighting with Street Fighter II. Now Australian indie developer L&L Studio says it will launch a promising contender called Virtual Fighting Championship (VFC) through Steam Early Access on July 13 — the first step in creating an esport-worthy first-person VR fighting game.
After two years of development, VFC looks like it’s off to a great start, placing HTC Vive and Oculus Rift headset users inside their choice of several fighters’ bodies. Looking through your character’s eyes, you see your hands as they’re gripping two controllers, using real arm and body motions to attack, block, dodge, and perform Street Fighter-style special moves. Unlike most fighters, VFC will actually give players a workout, and the game will track calories burned during each match.
VFC will also support full-body motion capture so leg motions and attacks can be used by combatants — a feature that may benefit players with real-world martial arts skills. But even with standard motion controllers, the virtual character’s moves can reflect the player’s real world gestures. A demo video shows characters doing Fortnite-style dances and warmup stretches based on player actions when they’re not fighting.
Event GamesBeat at the Game Awards We invite you to join us in LA for GamesBeat at the Game Awards event this December 7. Reserve your spot now as space is limited! L&L requires VFC players to have an open six-by-six-foot play area and 360-degree tracking support. At launch, training, single-player campaign, and local multiplayer modes will keep players busy, but L&L’s goal is to turn VFC into a competitive VR esport, including online matchmaking and ranking.
Less than ideally, VFC is debuting with only a few playable characters and backgrounds. Balanced fighter Karl has a fire fist power, while Poison is a gas-wielding weirdo with healing powers, and “graceful trap master” Fala has electric discs and laser beam powers. Three initial stages include a futuristic beach, an urban arena, and a set of platforms hovering in the sky.
In the absence of a full VR one-on-one fighting game from the usual suspects — Bandai Namco, Capcom, Sega, or SNK, to name a few — L&L has a solid chance of building Virtual Fighting Championship into a legit VR esports contender through the Early Access feedback and development process. We’ll be watching for new character reveals and other major developments after the title hits Steam next month.
GamesBeat's creed when covering the game industry is "where passion meets business." What does this mean? We want to tell you how the news matters to you -- not just as a decision-maker at a game studio, but also as a fan of games. Whether you read our articles, listen to our podcasts, or watch our videos, GamesBeat will help you learn about the industry and enjoy engaging with it.
Discover our Briefings.
Join the GamesBeat community! Enjoy access to special events, private newsletters and more.
VentureBeat Homepage Follow us on Facebook Follow us on X Follow us on LinkedIn Follow us on RSS Press Releases Contact Us Advertise Share a News Tip Contribute to DataDecisionMakers Careers Privacy Policy Terms of Service Do Not Sell My Personal Information © 2023 VentureBeat.
All rights reserved.
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"Oculus details its Varifocal half-dome VR prototype | VentureBeat"
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"https://venturebeat.com/games/oculus-details-its-varifocal-half-dome-vr-prototype"
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"Artificial Intelligence View All AI, ML and Deep Learning Auto ML Data Labelling Synthetic Data Conversational AI NLP Text-to-Speech Security View All Data Security and Privacy Network Security and Privacy Software Security Computer Hardware Security Cloud and Data Storage Security Data Infrastructure View All Data Science Data Management Data Storage and Cloud Big Data and Analytics Data Networks Automation View All Industrial Automation Business Process Automation Development Automation Robotic Process Automation Test Automation Enterprise Analytics View All Business Intelligence Disaster Recovery Business Continuity Statistical Analysis Predictive Analysis More Data Decision Makers Virtual Communication Team Collaboration UCaaS Virtual Reality Collaboration Virtual Employee Experience Programming & Development Product Development Application Development Test Management Development Languages Oculus details its Varifocal half-dome VR prototype Share on Facebook Share on X Share on LinkedIn Varifocal moving screens inside of Half-Dome.
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Last month, we reported on a talk by Douglas Lanman of Oculus Research (now Facebook’s Reality Labs) from the 2018 SID Display Week event. The fascinating 40-minute session showcased some of the team’s latest work in VR hardware. Now you can watch that talk for yourself.
Below is a direct feed video of Lanman’s talk, released this week. Over the course of the session, he talks about Oculus’ work with Varifocal Displays and eye-tracking to create even more immersive VR experiences than what can be seen now with the Oculus Rift. Around midway through, Lanman starts sharing videos of prototypes created over the past few years in the Research Labs.
It makes for a pretty fascinating watch and, eventually, leads to the Half-Dome prototype that Facebook first teased at its F8 conference last month. This new device has a massive 140 degree field of view with varifocal optics and more. We don’t know when/if we’ll see the Half-Dome released as a true successor to the Oculus Rift but hopefully we’ll have more to talk about at this year’s Oculus Connect developer conference. That takes place this September.
Event GamesBeat at the Game Awards We invite you to join us in LA for GamesBeat at the Game Awards event this December 7. Reserve your spot now as space is limited! This story originally appeared on Uploadvr.com.
Copyright 2018 GamesBeat's creed when covering the game industry is "where passion meets business." What does this mean? We want to tell you how the news matters to you -- not just as a decision-maker at a game studio, but also as a fan of games. Whether you read our articles, listen to our podcasts, or watch our videos, GamesBeat will help you learn about the industry and enjoy engaging with it.
Discover our Briefings.
The AI Impact Tour Join us for an evening full of networking and insights at VentureBeat's AI Impact Tour, coming to San Francisco, New York, and Los Angeles! VentureBeat Homepage Follow us on Facebook Follow us on X Follow us on LinkedIn Follow us on RSS Press Releases Contact Us Advertise Share a News Tip Contribute to DataDecisionMakers Careers Privacy Policy Terms of Service Do Not Sell My Personal Information © 2023 VentureBeat.
All rights reserved.
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"Listen to Waluigi's Super Smash Bros. Ultimate lament and bring a tissue | VentureBeat"
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"https://venturebeat.com/games/listen-to-waluigis-super-smash-bros-ultimate-lament-and-bring-a-tissue"
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"Artificial Intelligence View All AI, ML and Deep Learning Auto ML Data Labelling Synthetic Data Conversational AI NLP Text-to-Speech Security View All Data Security and Privacy Network Security and Privacy Software Security Computer Hardware Security Cloud and Data Storage Security Data Infrastructure View All Data Science Data Management Data Storage and Cloud Big Data and Analytics Data Networks Automation View All Industrial Automation Business Process Automation Development Automation Robotic Process Automation Test Automation Enterprise Analytics View All Business Intelligence Disaster Recovery Business Continuity Statistical Analysis Predictive Analysis More Data Decision Makers Virtual Communication Team Collaboration UCaaS Virtual Reality Collaboration Virtual Employee Experience Programming & Development Product Development Application Development Test Management Development Languages Listen to Waluigi’s Super Smash Bros. Ultimate lament and bring a tissue Share on Facebook Share on X Share on LinkedIn Are you looking to showcase your brand in front of the brightest minds of the gaming industry? Consider getting a custom GamesBeat sponsorship.
Learn more.
Waluigi is not playable in Super Smash Bros. Ultimate.
Instead, he is once again an Assist Trophy, the Smash Bros. equivalent of a cameo appearance. It caused the Washington Post to say that “Waluigi was robbed and humiliated by Nintendo,” which I’m sure caught the attention of the Pulitzer Prize committee.
Fans of Luigi’s lanky nemesis are upset, but what about the man himself? Well, you can listen to his lament above.
The song comes from Matthew Taranto, whose webcomic Brawl in the Family did a lot to help popularize the character. He’s created other Waluigi song parodies before, including the new holiday classic Carol of the Waa.
We may not be able to destroy Mario, Mega Man, and Link as Waluigi in Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, but maybe this song can help us come to terms with out grief.
Event GamesBeat at the Game Awards We invite you to join us in LA for GamesBeat at the Game Awards event this December 7. Reserve your spot now as space is limited! Waa.
GamesBeat's creed when covering the game industry is "where passion meets business." What does this mean? We want to tell you how the news matters to you -- not just as a decision-maker at a game studio, but also as a fan of games. Whether you read our articles, listen to our podcasts, or watch our videos, GamesBeat will help you learn about the industry and enjoy engaging with it.
Discover our Briefings.
Join the GamesBeat community! Enjoy access to special events, private newsletters and more.
VentureBeat Homepage Follow us on Facebook Follow us on X Follow us on LinkedIn Follow us on RSS Press Releases Contact Us Advertise Share a News Tip Contribute to DataDecisionMakers Careers Privacy Policy Terms of Service Do Not Sell My Personal Information © 2023 VentureBeat.
All rights reserved.
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"Elijah Wood: Transference’s Hollywood collaboration comes from a ‘genuine place’ | VentureBeat"
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"https://venturebeat.com/games/elijah-wood-transferences-hollywood-collaboration-comes-from-a-genuine-place"
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"Artificial Intelligence View All AI, ML and Deep Learning Auto ML Data Labelling Synthetic Data Conversational AI NLP Text-to-Speech Security View All Data Security and Privacy Network Security and Privacy Software Security Computer Hardware Security Cloud and Data Storage Security Data Infrastructure View All Data Science Data Management Data Storage and Cloud Big Data and Analytics Data Networks Automation View All Industrial Automation Business Process Automation Development Automation Robotic Process Automation Test Automation Enterprise Analytics View All Business Intelligence Disaster Recovery Business Continuity Statistical Analysis Predictive Analysis More Data Decision Makers Virtual Communication Team Collaboration UCaaS Virtual Reality Collaboration Virtual Employee Experience Programming & Development Product Development Application Development Test Management Development Languages Elijah Wood: Transference’s Hollywood collaboration comes from a ‘genuine place’ Share on Facebook Share on X Share on LinkedIn In Transference, actor Macon Blair plays scientist Raymond Hayes.
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For some, the phrase “Hollywood and video games” doesn’t have positive connotations due to a history of bad licensed products, canceled projects , and terrible film adaptations. But Ubisoft hopes it can avoid that curse with the virtual reality game Transference.
Coming to PlayStation VR, Oculus Rift, and HTC Vive this fall (with a non-VR version also coming to PC and consoles), Transference is a first-person psychological horror game where you explore the corrupted memories of a strange family. In the story, scientist Raymond Hayes uploaded his mind — as well as those of his wife and son — to a computer simulation as part of an experiment. But something isn’t right with this digital world, and you must solve a series of puzzles in order to escape.
Transference is a joint effort from Ubisoft Montreal’s FunHouse team and film company SpectreVision.
The Lord of the Rings actor Elijah Wood cofounded SpectreVision in 2010 with the goal of producing horror movies like Cooties and A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night.
Both companies revealed Transference at last year’s Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3), and they talked about it again on Ubisoft’s stage at E3 2018 , where game director Benoit Richer said it combined “the storytelling techniques of film with the interactivity of video games.” Transference incorporates live-action footage within its claustrophobic levels (GamesBeat lead writer Dean Takahashi played a demo and found it “both interesting and creepy” ). But the mashing of the movie and gaming worlds is happening behind the scenes, too. While Ubisoft is no stranger to working with Hollywood , the project is SpectreVision’s first foray into games, with Wood and his team being heavily involved with its development.
Event GamesBeat at the Game Awards We invite you to join us in LA for GamesBeat at the Game Awards event this December 7. Reserve your spot now as space is limited! GamesBeat spoke with Richer and Wood shortly after the Ubisoft press briefing to find out what it’s like for the two different companies to collaborate. The following is an edited transcript of our interview.
GamesBeat: How did Ubisoft and SpectreVision end up partnering together? Elijah Wood: We have a mutual friend that works in games that knew the folks at Ubisoft and knew that we were interested in VR initially, as a means of telling sort of a genre horror narrative. It’s obviously an immersive medium, so it can elicit emotional responses and we’re interested in that for storytelling. We met up with Ubisoft and expressed those ideas and they brought us out to Montreal and we had brainstorming sessions and pitches. We had game ideas, we had experiential ideas, and we all recognized that there was something there, that there could be a really fun, creative collaboration. And that’s sort of the genesis of where Transference came from.
GamesBeat: Did you intentionally set out to make a horror game? Wood: It was always going to be … horror maybe not. But it was always going to feel like it was born out of genre, be it psychological or a thriller or just something that would elicit certain kinds of emotional responses that we were really interested in.
Above: Maybe don’t walk down the dark corridor where a creepy kid is waiting for you.
GamesBeat: Is that something Ubisoft wanted to do as well? Benoit Richer: Yeah. It’s mostly about the suspense and trying something new. This is why this [FunHouse] team was formed, to try to be innovative in that field, and try — what would it be like to have [SpectreVision’s] film expertise mixed with our game expertise and make a game with that? What will end up from that collaboration? We’re learning every day. They give creative guidance. For example, I want this game to be about fear and empathy. How can we create a game with that? … And also the concept of uploading minds and corruption. It’s so inspiring to create games. So there definitely was an interest to try to do something innovative and new with [the project].
GamesBeat: What’s the collaboration process like between your teams? Are you always traveling? Wood: There have been a few trips back and forth actually. The Ubisoft team has come here [to Los Angeles]. We’ve gone there [to Montreal].
Richer: For a major milestone, we did some workshopping together. We have a weekly Skype call where all the directors from Montreal and the guys from SpectreVision meet, and on top of that we’re texting each other constantly. Like, ‘Hey, I just saw this. It’s amazing! What about this idea?’ And how can we make the game better every time? Because we’re all creative folks and even though we have our field of expertise, we try to converge and try to create magic out of the escalation that we have between each other.
GamesBeat: Movie companies have tried partnering with game studios before, but the results have been mixed. It usually ends up with a terrible game.
Wood: [ Laughs ] It has a bit of a checkered past.
GamesBeat: So it’s interesting to see such constant communication between your two studios.
Wood: Not to speak on the past in regards to why those partnerships didn’t work, but this was a genuine collaboration at every level: constantly communicating, always with the same goals in mind, and trying to push each other. We were really challenged by them and hopefully they were challenged by us, and I think somewhere in the middle we were able to find what we wanted to find. … You can create great things if both entities, both groups of people, are trying to do that thing from a genuine place.
Richer: Exactly, everyone is open.
Wood: That’s the thing. We love games and we all love movies. I think that we were all just inspired by the ideas that we all had collectively in wanting to make those the best that we possibly could.
Richer: The bottom value of either a film or a game — there’s some stuff that we need to make sure that we respect. How do we guide the player from A to B without giving objectives? Under the sense like, ‘Hey, if we want to create anticipation and build-up in film, we’re doing this.’ But it was never like, ‘No, we’re doing a game and it’s like this and give me a script.’ Or the inverse: ‘Here’s the script, make a game.’ So it was a true collaboration right from the start, and like he was saying, everyone was open and genuine about trying to find new ways to merge our expertise.
Wood: Yeah. And it was never cynical or passive on anyone’s part. It was never, ‘Hey we’ve got this, can you take it and make a game with it?’ It was like, ‘Can we be involved at every level? We want to hear — we want to talk to your sound designer. Actually, we’ve got a composer we really love and I’ve loved for them to merge because we think our composer can add to the sound design of the film.’ We wanted to see artwork: ‘This is what we think that the house could look like. What do you think?’ It was [like that] every step of the way. And we wouldn’t have had it any other way because why else would you be involved in a collaboration like this? Above: Game director Benoit Richer and Elijah Wood at E3 2018.
We love games too much, and I think we just respect that world and respect the creation of something. And I think that was really why we wanted to be a part of it so intensely.
GamesBeat: It’s not like each side had specific responsibilities. You’re always talking about major decisions like casting roles, graphics, and things like that? Wood: Yeah. There’s certainly — the writing of the game was sort of handled primarily by our side. But there’s writing on [Ubisoft’s] side, too. It really is a cross-pollination.
GamesBeat: Is it a different kind of personal challenge as well? I know you’ve done voice acting before with Double Fine in Broken Age. And so in doing something like this, I imagine it just opens up a whole new world.
Wood: It does, yeah. I’ve never been a part of the creation of a video game before, so it was super exciting. A total learning experience. I certainly understood prior what goes into making a game. I’ve been around the game industry for a long time — my brother is a producer — but to actually be a part of that creative process, it was just super gratifying. It’s what I love about making films, too. I love getting together with a group of people around a piece of creation that you’re all really excited about.
That’s what a movie is, too. There’s a piece of material that someone’s written that’s really exciting, and there’s a director’s vision and it’s a group of people getting around that director’s vision. This is not dissimilar in the sense that there was a nugget of an idea and we’re like, ‘Wow, that’s really inspiring. Let’s try and push each other to make this really, really interesting.’ GamesBeat's creed when covering the game industry is "where passion meets business." What does this mean? We want to tell you how the news matters to you -- not just as a decision-maker at a game studio, but also as a fan of games. Whether you read our articles, listen to our podcasts, or watch our videos, GamesBeat will help you learn about the industry and enjoy engaging with it.
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"Riot Games revamps its European League of Legends esports ecosystem | VentureBeat"
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"https://venturebeat.com/esports/riot-games-revamps-its-european-league-of-legends-esports-ecosystem"
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"Artificial Intelligence View All AI, ML and Deep Learning Auto ML Data Labelling Synthetic Data Conversational AI NLP Text-to-Speech Security View All Data Security and Privacy Network Security and Privacy Software Security Computer Hardware Security Cloud and Data Storage Security Data Infrastructure View All Data Science Data Management Data Storage and Cloud Big Data and Analytics Data Networks Automation View All Industrial Automation Business Process Automation Development Automation Robotic Process Automation Test Automation Enterprise Analytics View All Business Intelligence Disaster Recovery Business Continuity Statistical Analysis Predictive Analysis More Data Decision Makers Virtual Communication Team Collaboration UCaaS Virtual Reality Collaboration Virtual Employee Experience Programming & Development Product Development Application Development Test Management Development Languages Riot Games revamps its European League of Legends esports ecosystem Share on Facebook Share on X Share on LinkedIn Riot's European competition for League of Legends.
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Riot Games faces a lot more competition than it once did on the esports front, with new games such as Fortnite and PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds grabbing the attention of gamers. But the Los Angeles-based company believes that esports is still in its early stages, and it is moving forward in its quest to make League of Legends into a permanent esport.
The company has been operating the European League of Legends Championship Series (LCS) since 2013, and it has been investing more in the infrastructure of the league in recent months. That’s not easy, since Europe has a number of countries and languages to support and its audience is more easily splintered compared to other territories. It is also in the process of creating permanent teams in Europe, as it has done in the U.S.
I spoke with Marc Schnell, director of EU league management for Riot Games’ League of Legends operation in Europe. He said the company is ramping up both its staff and broadcast capabilities in Berlin, and it has aligned all of the incentives for its LCS teams so they are consistent with Riot Games’ own incentives for the long term.
“We’re restructuring the league, moving over to a long-term partnership model and away from the current promotion and relegation system,” Schnell said. “You might know that the North American LCS last year made a similar move.” Event GamesBeat at the Game Awards We invite you to join us in LA for GamesBeat at the Game Awards event this December 7. Reserve your spot now as space is limited! Here’s an edited transcript of our interview.
Above: Marc Schnell runs Europe for Riot Games’ League of Legends esports league.
GamesBeat: Can you bring me up to speed on the background here? I understand you’re trying to do some things to improve the league overall. How long has this been going on? Marc Schnell: We’ve been doing the European League of Legends championship series, the LCS, since 2013. We made the move to Berlin from Cologne back in 2014, and ever since we’ve been operating from here.
One big thing on the horizon would be that we’re restructuring the league, moving over to a long-term partnership model and away from the current promotion and relegation system. You might know that the North American LCS last year made a similar move. The application process is running right now. The other big thing is, we’re making improvements generally. We’ve seen over the last year how we can improve the viewing experience and do more on the tech side. We’re also improving our physical space here in Berlin.
GamesBeat: The goal seems to be to make League of Legends into a lasting sport.
Schnell: That’s right. We’re committed to League of Legends esports, just as much as we’re committed to the game itself. We’d like to do this forever, ideally. We consider esports to be a core part of the League of Legends player experience. We want to double down on this in Europe.
Previously, in these past years, we were in catch-up mode. We’ve built up the team here now, staffed up in all areas. We went from a lot of temporary solutions for tech and physical space to committing to permanent installations. We’ve built a massive control room at the beginning of this year, the mothership for production, where the directors and producers sit amid all the tech and monitors. It’s been a big change for us on the production side. Having that permanently set up gives us a lot more opportunities and cool things we can do with the broadcast.
For example, we now have a bunch of roving cams that we can remotely control. We don’t need as manymanual operators. It gives the producers a lot more central control, while retaining that variety of camera shots. They can just control them via joystick. That’s just one thing.
We’ve also made significant improvements to what we call the world feed. The LCS is broadcast in many languages – I think we’re up to nine now. Previously, local broadcasters would just get our feed with the commentators removed and then they’d cast over that. Now we’ve switched to a more sophisticated solution where the local casters get their individual world feed. They have more creative freedom to design their own broadcast. They don’t necessarily have to do all the same things we do on the main feed. We want to go big on making those localized version of the LCS just as good as the English version. We’ve put much more investment behind them.
Beyond that, the Berlin studio has grown considerably over the past year. We’ve made significant quality of life improvements, ranging from having a nice cafeteria and backstage area for the pros and teams, a great entrance area with a cool Baron statue and a lot of League swag, League designs all over the place, to just making this a great place to work for all of our staff. It used to be a little bare-bones. Now it’s a much better place to work at for the staff and the teams.
GamesBeat: How many people work in that facility? Schnell: The Riot office here has around 50 full-time employees. On show dates, though, we go up over 100 staff, if you include all the additional people we need for shows. The capacity of the venue as far as fans is about 180.
GamesBeat: Does it look more like a production studio, then? Something you’d see for a TV game show? Schnell: Yes, very similar I’d say. There’s a big stage at the front, and then there are bleachers and seating for up to 180 people.
Above: Riot Games is investing heavily in broadcasts of its LCS tournament in Europe.
GamesBeat: How about for the league structure? What is changing? Are you mirroring what’s happening in North America, to give teams permanent berths? Schnell: There’s definitely some similarity, but there are also differences. Currently we have 10 teams in the league, and they qualify to participate in the league through a secondary league below that. That’s the old system. We’re moving away from that to an entirely different model where we’re partnering with 10 teams. Those teams will be long-term partners with the league. The concept is that the league and the teams become business partners to build and improve on this product together. We’re collectively investing in the success of the product and sharing in the success of the product.
That basic principle is the same as the changes we’re seen in the North American LCS. The key difference is that the European market is split up in many more different ways compared to North America. We have many different countries with different languages and cultures. Our product, as I mentioned before, is broadcast in many different languages.
We’re trying to build something that’s interesting and entertaining for all of Europe, not just an English-speaking audience. When we select our 10 partners at the end of the process that’s ongoing right now, we’d ideally like to have a nice spread of times with different national affiliations, to ensure that we’re reaching an audience everywhere in Europe and have something that’s relatable, something that people can identify with no matter where they are in Europe.
Another core element of the European market is we have an extensive regional league system. Below the LCS, the top league, we have 13 national leagues, if you will, or regional leagues. We have a Spanish league, a U.K. league, a Benelux league, a Polish league. All of these leagues are thriving lower-tier leagues. On the one hand that’s a great player development platform. You often see players compete in those leagues and then get picked up by LCS teams. It’s a great place to nurture and find talent.
It’s also a great way to locally connect with fans. Not everyone always has the time or opportunity to come to Berlin to see the LCS, but with this extensive regional league system, we have a league that everyone in Europe can identify with, that’s dedicated to where they’re from. The best of these regional leagues also compete against each other in a tournament called the European Masters, which is the culmination of these semi-professional leagues.
Next year we’re basically going to have two ecosystems. On the one hand, there’s the EU LCS, the top tier of competition in Europe. It’s the place where, as a player, you want to end up if you want to advance your career. It’s an opportunity to test yourself against the best in Europe and have the opportunity to represent Europe at the world championships. At the same time, we have this extensive regional league ecosystem that can be a stepping stone toward a pro career. You can represent your country against the rest of Europe.
The regional league system we just revamped in 2018. In the summer, just a week ago, we announced that we’ve added another three regions to complete the whole map. We now have every region and country in Europe covered. 24 teams total will go to the European Masters, the best out of the 13 regions. It’s similar to the Champions League in soccer, where every country gets a certain number of slots depending on the size and maturity of their league. If you count all of the teams competing in all the regional leagues, I don’t even know. More than 100, at least.
GamesBeat: So the main difference is you’ve had to modify the structure to account for so many regions and languages? Schnell: Yes, that’s the main difference with North America. Other than that, if you look at it from the outside, the EU LCS looks similar. We’ve also adopted the same league format. We’re playing a double round robin, best of one, leading into the playoffs.
Above: Riot Games League of Legends esports athletes.
GamesBeat: Is there some balancing going on in terms of who’s the most competitive relative to the need to represent every region? Schnell: Right. When we make our selections for our partners, obviously we’ll look at a whole list of things. What can they contribute to the league? Do they bring some special experience or expertise that would level up everyone, including the other teams? What brands are they going to use? What story are they telling? Do they have competitive experience in esports? Another key factor will be, do they have national affiliation? Do they resonate with a particular group in Europe? We’ll look for a lineup of 10 that we feel synergizes the best and lets us capture the biggest portion of the audience that we’d like to entertain.
GamesBeat: I saw some stories in the past where some teams have complained that it’s hard to earn money in the old structure. Is that also one of your goals here, to make it more sustainable for the individual teams to invest in League of Legends? Schnell: Definitely. On both the league and the team side—we’ve done League of Legends esports for a decade, but we need to make sure that teams can run their businesses sustainably. It’s true that in the previous system, where the league simply paid each team participating in the LCS a fixed amount, that amount was not influenced by how much the league made, by viewership, or anything like that. It was just a fixed amount that was agreed upon. The rest of the business was left up to the teams themselves.
That system wasn’t great, because it didn’t provide anyone an incentive to work together. Everyone was trying to make ends meet on their own. We believe that with this new structure we’re introducing, where everyone is naturally incentivized to create revenue and put it in this big pool that we’re all sharing—if I see another team making a great deal and doing well, I’m happy because I know that they’ll be sharing that revenue into the pool. Similarly, if the league is doing great deals, the teams will all be happy because everyone shares.
The core strength of this system is that it allows us to partner up collectively, do business together, and win together. Previously we didn’t have that natural incentive.
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"The future of 'entrepreneurship'? Working for Amazon and Uber | VentureBeat"
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"https://venturebeat.com/entrepreneur/the-future-of-entrepreneurship-working-for-amazon-and-uber"
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"Artificial Intelligence View All AI, ML and Deep Learning Auto ML Data Labelling Synthetic Data Conversational AI NLP Text-to-Speech Security View All Data Security and Privacy Network Security and Privacy Software Security Computer Hardware Security Cloud and Data Storage Security Data Infrastructure View All Data Science Data Management Data Storage and Cloud Big Data and Analytics Data Networks Automation View All Industrial Automation Business Process Automation Development Automation Robotic Process Automation Test Automation Enterprise Analytics View All Business Intelligence Disaster Recovery Business Continuity Statistical Analysis Predictive Analysis More Data Decision Makers Virtual Communication Team Collaboration UCaaS Virtual Reality Collaboration Virtual Employee Experience Programming & Development Product Development Application Development Test Management Development Languages Analysis The future of ‘entrepreneurship’? Working for Amazon and Uber Share on Facebook Share on X Share on LinkedIn An Amazon-branded van Are you looking to showcase your brand in front of the brightest minds of the gaming industry? Consider getting a custom GamesBeat sponsorship.
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Amazon this week announced the next chapter in its bid to rule the commercial world. The company is looking to create a network of independent delivery fleets , and it wants “hundreds of entrepreneurs” to “start businesses” in support of this.
This represents a major move in the logistics realm, one that will see Amazon go up against long-established players — such as Fedex and UPS — and which has been rumored for a while.
But the language Amazon is using to attract prospective business owners is also notable. The company’s pitch appeals to America’s entrepreneurial spirit while obfuscating the reality of what signing up to the program really means.
Entrepreneurs? Above: An Amazon Prime van during a press conference announcing Amazon.com’s new program to help entrepreneurs build businesses delivering Amazon packages It’s difficult to overstate Amazon’s commercial clout. The Seattle-based company claimed around 44 percent of online sales in the U.S. alone last year, according to reports. And with its Whole Foods acquisition, Amazon is making inroads into the brick-and-mortar world.
In fact, it has done a stellar job of creating a gargantuan ecosystem of products and platforms to hook users and keep them coming back. And this growing demand is precisely why the company now wants to build out its own logistics network for “last mile” deliveries.
Amazon is underplaying its logistics expansion and largely positioning this as a complementary program intended to round out existing delivery services and help it keep up with demand. But then it has to do that because it still needs its logistics partners — for the time being, at least.
“We have great partners in our traditional carriers, and it’s exciting to continue to see the logistics industry grow,” explained Dave Clark, Amazon’s senior vice president of worldwide operations. “Customer demand is higher than ever, and we have a need to build more capacity.” Amazon is no stranger to running logistics services. It has been operating its Flex peer-to-peer (P2P) delivery program for a while, effectively letting anyone who owns a car become a courier for a day, a week, or forever — a little like Uber.
As with many other gig-economy platforms, reports suggest that Flex is not all fun — in fact, it’s a lot of effort for not a huge return.
Plus, it offers no perks, benefits, or job security. The rates of pay and working landscape vary depending on factors such as where you are based, but the core selling point is consistent: “Be your own boss” is Amazon’s persistent marketing mantra.
And this is a thread we see permeating the gig economy. Big companies need workers — but they want to avoid the commitment of maintaining a traditional workforce, such as offering salaries, medical insurance, paid time off, and so on. One key to sustaining this charade lies in calling their typically low-paid workers “entrepreneurs.” Uber has referred to its drivers as entrepreneurs for years, despite reports that they earn very little after expenses. Alongside other carefully constructed terminology, such as “partner drivers,” casting freelance gigs as “entrepreneurship” is part of Uber’s plan to make its workforce feel empowered. But it doesn’t paint the whole picture — a New York Times report last year referenced an internal Uber slide deck on driver income levels that revealed the company considered its main rivals for attracting new drivers to be McDonald’s and Lyft.
Under the guidance of new CEO Dara Khosrowshahi, Uber is taking steps to improve a reputation that has been tarnished by a series of scandals and feuding at the highest levels. In Europe, where workers tend to expect benefits and job protections, Uber is now offering drivers free insurance for illness, jury service pay, paid maternity/paternity leave, and more. This positions Uber more as an employer, despite a great deal of legal wrangling over the term , and is surely a tacit acknowledgment that drivers have been struggling to make ends meet.
A Brown University case study from a few years ago delved into the “entrepreneurial aspects” of Uber’s driver model. Patrick McQuown, an adjunct lecturer at Brown’s School of Engineering, actually spent the summer driving for the company, logging 400 hours and 8,000 miles in the process. His conclusion? The Uber driver model is not particularly entrepreneurial, and top-rated drivers receive no meaningful recognition for their efforts.
“Entrepreneurship means that you create a product or service that’s unique in the marketplace, and you’re rewarded with more profit,” McQuown said. “You simply can’t do that as an Uber driver. There’s no real chance to differentiate yourself financially from other Uber drivers.” Amazon logistics It’s against this backdrop that Amazon is now going the extra mile with its latest logistics endeavor. Following Flex’s lackluster reception, the company is doing things properly this time around, complete with Amazon-branded vans and uniforms.
Amazon is also laying on the entrepreneurial schtick. It refers to its service as a “new offering that helps entrepreneurs build their own companies” and promises to take “an active role in helping interested entrepreneurs” get the ball rolling.
By definition, an entrepreneur is someone who takes on the financial risks of setting up a new business in the hope of profiting down the line, so Amazon is technically correct. The company anticipates that each partner will likely need a starting budget of at least $10,000, and it claims they could earn from $75,000 to $300,000 in profit each year if they build a fleet of 20 to 40 delivery vehicles. The business owners essentially lease the vehicles from Amazon, and they are responsible for hiring their own team of drivers.
“As we evaluated how to support our growth, we went back to our roots to share the opportunity with small and medium-sized businesses,” Clark added. “We are going to empower new, small businesses to form in order to take advantage of the growing opportunity in ecommerce package delivery.” Additionally, Amazon promises a bunch of other perks, including training, support, and discounts and deals on things like fuel and insurance. This is all really starting to sound a little like an in-house Amazon logistics unit, except each fleet that signs up is an independent entity, which means Amazon doesn’t have to worry about salaries and other employee benefits.
Digging into the details reveals some interesting nuggets. “Amazon Delivery Service Partners,” as Amazon also refers to them, can absolutely make deliveries for other companies — after all, they are not Amazon employees. But the major caveat here is that they can’t use an Amazon van to make those deliveries. So when you launch your own business with Amazon, you are effectively working for Amazon and Amazon only.
That is all fine and dandy, but it arguably does a disservice to the term “entrepreneur.” As a small business owner under Amazon’s auspices, you don’t have to generate new business or drum up sales. You just have to come up with the initial cash to gain access to Amazon’s gargantuan inventory of orders, and you’re onto a winner. Potentially, at least.
In many ways, it’s like opening a franchise — creativity, hard work, and risk-taking is certainly required, but ultimately you’re tethered to other people’s policies. You have some control, sure, but you don’t set your own rules, and there isn’t much scope for personal innovation.
The thing is, Amazon already does enable entrepreneurs to set up shop and start their own businesses. Anyone can sell through the Amazon marketplace, and though Amazon carefully controls proceedings , merchants are able to leverage the platform’s vast global reach without making any significant investment in Amazon itself, beyond paying its platform fees. And these sellers aren’t restricted to Amazon — they can invest in a small warehouse or workshop and sell goods to anyone they want through any platform.
Though this technically applies to Amazon’s new logistics program — someone can buy a secondary non-Amazon van to make deliveries for other companies — it’s not likely to be a typical scenario. Running an Amazon delivery franchise will be a full-time gig in itself.
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"Tech IPOs remain 'white-hot' in Q2 thanks to Spotify, DocuSign, Pivotal Software | VentureBeat"
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"https://venturebeat.com/entrepreneur/tech-ipos-remain-white-hot-in-q2-thanks-to-spotify-docusign-pivotal-software"
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"Artificial Intelligence View All AI, ML and Deep Learning Auto ML Data Labelling Synthetic Data Conversational AI NLP Text-to-Speech Security View All Data Security and Privacy Network Security and Privacy Software Security Computer Hardware Security Cloud and Data Storage Security Data Infrastructure View All Data Science Data Management Data Storage and Cloud Big Data and Analytics Data Networks Automation View All Industrial Automation Business Process Automation Development Automation Robotic Process Automation Test Automation Enterprise Analytics View All Business Intelligence Disaster Recovery Business Continuity Statistical Analysis Predictive Analysis More Data Decision Makers Virtual Communication Team Collaboration UCaaS Virtual Reality Collaboration Virtual Employee Experience Programming & Development Product Development Application Development Test Management Development Languages Tech IPOs remain ‘white-hot’ in Q2 thanks to Spotify, DocuSign, Pivotal Software Share on Facebook Share on X Share on LinkedIn Spotify on the NYSE Are you ready to bring more awareness to your brand? Consider becoming a sponsor for The AI Impact Tour. Learn more about the opportunities here.
After years in the doldrums, initial public offerings from tech startups seem to be on a roll, offering hope that at least some of the industry’s overpriced unicorns might be able to exit at something close to their private valuations.
According to the latest quarterly review of the IPO market from Renaissance Capital, there were 18 tech IPOs in the three months ending in June, up 50 percent from the same period one year ago. Those 18 IPOs raised a collective $4.6 billion, a 200 percent increase from Q2 2017.
Even better: They performed well after their debut. According to Renaissance, tech IPOs averaged a 61 percent return after their debut, a rate that helped lift the gain for all IPOs in the quarter to 29 percent.
“The white-hot tech sector drove up the overall average,” the report says. “IPOs rarely priced below the range, though a number of them postponed.” There was also some good news for beleaguered venture capitalists: The number of venture-backed IPOs tripled from the first quarter and doubled from the same period a year ago.
The top performers included DocuSign, which has seen its stock climb 82.9 percent, and Pivotal Software, up 71.1 percent since its IPO.
With a large number of tech IPOs in the pipeline, the results of the first six months of 2018 has Renaissance predicting continued momentum for the second half of the year.
“As we predicted last quarter, tech companies can finally get their hoped-for valuations in public markets,” the report says. “That could cause a herd of unicorn IPOs in the back half of the year.” VentureBeat's mission is to be a digital town square for technical decision-makers to gain knowledge about transformative enterprise technology and transact.
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The AI Impact Tour Join us for an evening full of networking and insights at VentureBeat's AI Impact Tour, coming to San Francisco, New York, and Los Angeles! VentureBeat Homepage Follow us on Facebook Follow us on X Follow us on LinkedIn Follow us on RSS Press Releases Contact Us Advertise Share a News Tip Contribute to DataDecisionMakers Careers Privacy Policy Terms of Service Do Not Sell My Personal Information © 2023 VentureBeat.
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"Israel's coming crypto laws could set example for the rest of the world | VentureBeat"
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"https://venturebeat.com/commerce/israels-coming-crypto-laws-could-set-example-for-the-rest-of-the-world"
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"Artificial Intelligence View All AI, ML and Deep Learning Auto ML Data Labelling Synthetic Data Conversational AI NLP Text-to-Speech Security View All Data Security and Privacy Network Security and Privacy Software Security Computer Hardware Security Cloud and Data Storage Security Data Infrastructure View All Data Science Data Management Data Storage and Cloud Big Data and Analytics Data Networks Automation View All Industrial Automation Business Process Automation Development Automation Robotic Process Automation Test Automation Enterprise Analytics View All Business Intelligence Disaster Recovery Business Continuity Statistical Analysis Predictive Analysis More Data Decision Makers Virtual Communication Team Collaboration UCaaS Virtual Reality Collaboration Virtual Employee Experience Programming & Development Product Development Application Development Test Management Development Languages Guest Israel’s coming crypto laws could set example for the rest of the world Share on Facebook Share on X Share on LinkedIn TEL AVIV, ISRAEL - 2018 FEBRUARY 7 : The bitcoin office exchange in the center of the city of Tel Aviv.
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Estimates indicate that in 2017 Israel-linked ICOs raised almost $500 million, a remarkable slice of the total ICO pie that year. Israel’s regulators have also been alive to the changing financial landscape. This year has seen a flurry of output from various Israeli authorities seeking to make sense of the new global cryptographic reality.
In January the Israel Tax Authority issued a circular on the taxation of digital tokens; in March the Israel Securities Authority released its highly detailed “Interim Report on the Regulation of Decentralized Cryptocurrencies” (with a follow-up report due out around October); and in October legislation will come into force, defining virtual currencies as “financial assets” and mandating licensing for related services.
In July 2016, the Israeli Knesset passed into law, the Supervision of Financial Services (Regulated Financial Services) Law 2016. Under the law, a financial regulator was appointed with extensive authority for regulating non-institutional currency services and credit markets, which until then had been only loosely supervised. The law was intended to ensure that the providers of such services would be licensed, supervised, have adequate financial stability, and adhere to rules and regulations designed to protect consumers and eliminate criminal activities.
The provisions of the law have come into force gradually, and in October 2018, the regulator will commence enforcement of the provisions of the law regulating businesses engaging in the custody, conversion, transmission, and management of financial assets (including virtual currencies) for third parties. This law is paving the way for some major steps in Israel towards the comprehensive regulation of virtual currencies such as Bitcoin and Ethereum; steps that are likely to be studied by and, if successful, copied by other jurisdictions.
However, the kicker is to be found in a discussion paper issued by the regulator at the end of May, which goes further than most if not all other jurisdictions when it comes to regulation of cryptocurrency services. The paper, which may result in primary legislation before the end of 2018, takes a truly pioneering approach to the regulation of crypto-related financial services. The paper addresses the identification, reporting, and documentation duties of regulated financial service providers and is probably the first time any national (or state) regulator has attempted a comprehensive approach to the problem of identifying the holders of virtual currency.
One of the best-known features of most virtual currencies is the anonymity of the holders. While, in the case of most currencies, the ledger is open, and anyone (at least in theory) can review all transactions conducted in that currency and trace the “registered identity” of each unit, the fact is that this “registered identity” is just the owner’s public key, and the ledger discloses no personally identifiable information. It is this anonymity (or pseudo-anonymity) that concerns law enforcement agencies because of its capacity to be used in money laundering, the financing of terrorism, and other unlawful activities.
With the discussion paper, Israel’s regulator has proposed that each licensed cryptographic financial services provider must identify not only its clients and document all standard information – name, identity number, address, etc. — but also some unique identifiers that have not been collected or documented so far, namely, the addresses (public key) of the virtual wallets involved in the transactions and the IP address used by the customer.
Additional special reporting will be required for crypto-specific transactions the regulator identifies as suspicious, such as the use of anonymous virtual currencies (such as Monero, Zcash, Zcoin, and Verge); trade through “mixer” platforms (which enable individuals to replace their coins with other random coins that are then sent to the new target wallet, thereby making the source of the transaction untraceable); use of anonymous IP addresses (such as those produced by TOR browser); transfers from dark market platforms; use of IP addresses that are inconsistent with the geographic region; etc.
These regulations are unprecedented both in scope and technical detail. If they are enacted, Israel will have taken the regulation of virtual currency a big step forward. But even if legislation is delayed, we believe the ideas and concepts presented in the discussion paper, trailblaze a course that other regulators are likely to follow.
Will this legislation solve the problems associated with virtual currencies? We think it is likely to reduce them dramatically. Service providers complying with the regulation are likely to be recognized as legitimate businesses rather than as pariahs by the institutional banking sector. To the extent that banks are convinced the regulations will provide adequate protection from money-laundering and other criminal activities, significant barriers will be removed for the virtual currency sector. This, together with the consumer protections the law introduces, are likely to result in the sector becoming more mainstream, thereby giving a major boost to a burgeoning sector of the financial services industry. This may not be exactly what Satoshi Nakamoto was aiming for in his decentralized anonymous, trustless and harmonic-chaotic utopia, but sometimes regulators have a part to play too if the public is to be adequately protected and if business is to prosper.
Roy Keidar is Special Counsel, and Adrian Daniels and Yuval Shalheveth are Partners at law firm Yigal Arnon.
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"Bethereum is using blockchain technology to bring fairness to social betting | VentureBeat"
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"https://venturebeat.com/commerce/bethereum-is-using-blockchain-technology-to-bring-fairness-to-social-betting"
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"Artificial Intelligence View All AI, ML and Deep Learning Auto ML Data Labelling Synthetic Data Conversational AI NLP Text-to-Speech Security View All Data Security and Privacy Network Security and Privacy Software Security Computer Hardware Security Cloud and Data Storage Security Data Infrastructure View All Data Science Data Management Data Storage and Cloud Big Data and Analytics Data Networks Automation View All Industrial Automation Business Process Automation Development Automation Robotic Process Automation Test Automation Enterprise Analytics View All Business Intelligence Disaster Recovery Business Continuity Statistical Analysis Predictive Analysis More Data Decision Makers Virtual Communication Team Collaboration UCaaS Virtual Reality Collaboration Virtual Employee Experience Programming & Development Product Development Application Development Test Management Development Languages Bethereum is using blockchain technology to bring fairness to social betting Share on Facebook Share on X Share on LinkedIn Are a betting person? Are you looking to showcase your brand in front of the brightest minds of the gaming industry? Consider getting a custom GamesBeat sponsorship.
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On May 14, 2018, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that betting was legal across the U.S., overturning the Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act from 1992.
Following the federal green light, Delaware was the first to roll out single games sport betting on June 6, with other states expected to promptly follow suit.
But while the Supreme Court addresses the needs and rights of the states, what about the needs and rights of the players? A company that is bringing blockchain technology to the area of social betting, Bethereum is using distributed ledger technology to offer players full transparency and, it hopes, fairness. Today, Bethereum has opened its public token sale.
The online platform combines blockchain technology with gamification elements to create a betting experience that the company claims its users can wholeheartedly trust. As Bethereum puts it, “in traditional betting, the house always wins, but with Bethereum, the house cannot win because it no longer exists.” “Conventional betting is plagued by a number of key challenges,” Bethereum CEO Giacomo Tognoni told me. “There is a general lack of transparency and trust, high fees, low returns, and low social involvement. Regular winners are often banned, restricted, or overcharged. Conventional payment methods are outdated and expensive to run. We can provide full transparency of security by using a decentralized solution, automatically regulated by smart contracts.” These smart contracts record the conditions of every bet. The platform then keeps funds in escrow, validates the bet outcome via interaction with oracles, and then automatically pays out any winnings. Smart Contracts are unchangeable once deployed and occur without human intervention, eliminating the risk of manipulation. Bet results are fed to the Smart Contract using an oracle (a trusted data feed) that gets its data from multiple data sources and runs a consensus algorithm to verify the validity of the source data.
“From a user experience standpoint, online betting is also looking more like a science than a fun activity,” Tognoni said. “This is why we are making every feature as intuitive as possible. As an illustration, we recently launched a simplified World Cup betting contest , and it is gaining major traction with players.” Bethereum recently ran a successful presale, in which it raised over $4 million. In addition, Bethereum gained a top finalist spot in ICO Race , a competition in which over 150 projects vied for some of the largest prizes ever awarded in a blockchain pitching event.
Combining smart contracts with a distributed ledger makes a lot of sense for the betting industry, but Bethereum also includes gamification.
“We’re also adding powerful gamification elements, something the industry truly misses,” Tognoni said. “For instance, we are integrating social chat, achievements and badges, leaderboards, competitions, and alliances. Making the experience more like a game and less like a transaction is crucial for player retention and engagement. Gamification and social events are also what allowed us to build such an amazing community in a fully organic way.” Of course, the idea of the “house” not existing is somewhat metaphorical. Bethereum still needs to make money like any other startup.
“In our solution, players’ funds stay with players, and just move from group to group,” Tognoni said. “However, we do take a 3.75 percent fee on the winnings as compensation for facilitating the betting service, and to support platform and application development.” Bethereum isn’t just a B2C solution. It is also available to partners.
“We also have a B2B offering, white-labeling our technology to selected operators and conventional betting agencies, with a revenue share from third-party developers,” Tognoni said.
What’s next for Bethereum? “We’re now busy completing our token sale, which has just opened and ends at the latest by July 31, 2018,” Tognoni said. “The focus will then shift to continuing development of the platform, our protocol, and our social betting application. This will be done hand in hand with the community, as we want to make sure we keep them informed and deliver a solution they truly appreciate. At the same time, we’ve started to engage with potential partnership candidates and initiated the process to acquire the necessary betting licenses.” VentureBeat's mission is to be a digital town square for technical decision-makers to gain knowledge about transformative enterprise technology and transact.
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"Small tech companies will be the next victims of brick-and-mortar's collapse | VentureBeat"
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"https://venturebeat.com/business/small-tech-companies-will-be-the-next-victims-of-brick-and-mortars-collapse"
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"Artificial Intelligence View All AI, ML and Deep Learning Auto ML Data Labelling Synthetic Data Conversational AI NLP Text-to-Speech Security View All Data Security and Privacy Network Security and Privacy Software Security Computer Hardware Security Cloud and Data Storage Security Data Infrastructure View All Data Science Data Management Data Storage and Cloud Big Data and Analytics Data Networks Automation View All Industrial Automation Business Process Automation Development Automation Robotic Process Automation Test Automation Enterprise Analytics View All Business Intelligence Disaster Recovery Business Continuity Statistical Analysis Predictive Analysis More Data Decision Makers Virtual Communication Team Collaboration UCaaS Virtual Reality Collaboration Virtual Employee Experience Programming & Development Product Development Application Development Test Management Development Languages Opinion Small tech companies will be the next victims of brick-and-mortar’s collapse Share on Facebook Share on X Share on LinkedIn If brick-and-mortar retail collapses, Apple will probably be safe -- but smaller tech companies won't be.
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I’ve never used a OnePlus phone, but I’ve seen reviews, photos, and plenty of positive testimonials over the years. OnePlus customers are said to be happy and loyal — but by tech industry standards, there apparently aren’t very many of them. Two weeks ago, OnePlus said its latest phone sold a million units worldwide in 22 days and that it was the fastest-selling phone in the company’s history. That sounds great, but it takes less than two days for Apple to sell a million iPhones.
A very low-tech reason for OnePlus’ modest sales was buried in an otherwise high-tech story earlier this week. Without a presence in retail stores, OnePlus has had problems getting new customers to test out its phones in person. To address this issue, OnePlus is now building relationships with European and U.S. carriers, whose brick-and-mortar stores typically represent a substantial portion of phone manufacturers’ sales.
I need to underscore the point above. A relatively small tech company, OnePlus, has spent years making products people like — while getting plenty of international media coverage — but its overall sales numbers aren’t huge. And the solution is increasing consumers’ opportunities for hands-on time at brick-and-mortar retailers.
You probably don’t need to be reminded that major brick-and-mortar retailers are currently in the midst of an ongoing collapse, or that relatively few people appear to be concerned about it. Thanks to the convenience of Amazon and other online retailers, our national response to failing malls and the collapse of historic chains such as Toys R Us, Sears, and Macy’s has been pretty close to “Buh-bye, you won’t be missed.” Event GamesBeat at the Game Awards We invite you to join us in LA for GamesBeat at the Game Awards event this December 7. Reserve your spot now as space is limited! Above: Samsung let Mobile World Congress users “handle” the Galaxy S9 in augmented reality before it was officially released.
But signs increasingly suggest that they (or at least some of what they offer) will be missed once they’re gone. There is no adequate substitute for being able to physically handle a new phone before making a purchase — though Samsung is working to change that with augmented reality.
In some cases, the presence of an informed salesperson can actually make the difference between going home with the perfect outfit, food, or computer and getting stuck with an item that doesn’t serve your needs.
In an interview at Cannes last week, Apple retail chief Angela Ahrendts said she believes McKinsey consulting forecasts that 75 percent of business will actually be conducted in physical stores five years from now, even though 75 percent of people will shop online. Some people view this as a given, but I’d suggest otherwise: At the rate things are currently going — with rising minimum wages, interest rates, and prices — some small retailers, and even some big ones, won’t necessarily be able to afford to operate physical stores five years from now.
The closure of these retailers will disproportionately hurt small tech companies. It’s one thing to be Apple, which could still outsell OnePlus even if Best Buy, Costco, Target, and Walmart all went out of business, thanks to its 500+ retail locations and carrier stores. Apple is selling premium products, has flexibility in pricing, and can roll with pretty much any change in the broader retail environment. If more sales shift online, it’s covered. Ditto if local sales increase; it can just hire people away from failing competitors.
Without some sort of local brick-and-mortar safety net, however, smaller tech companies are going to be in trouble. They’ll be entirely dependent on online sales, a market that’s only becoming more crowded and competitive every day. For software companies and service providers, YouTube videos or in-home trials may compel purchases. But when it comes to buying hardware — as with clothes, foods, and other things that are really best experienced in person — making a smart choice online is not that easy.
Above: A virtual experience can’t substitute for the ability to try on clothing in person – can it? Although I’m a technology journalist, I live near Buffalo, New York, where three separate malls are in the process of failing. When I was younger, I might have viewed their troubles as a victory for the internet, a platform I’ve championed my entire adult life. Age and experience instead make me wonder what will fill the enormous holes these retail spaces are about to leave in our towns and local job markets.
I don’t claim to have the answer, but unless something changes, I’m pretty sure that virtual stores are not going to be enough to fill those gaps. And without real stores, fewer people will have the retail jobs or money to purchase the next round of innovations. It’s a dangerous cycle — and one that needs to be repaired before it’s too late.
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5,011 | 2,018 |
"ProBeat: Windows 10 dropping Sets (again) is for the best | VentureBeat"
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"https://venturebeat.com/business/probeat-windows-10-dropping-sets-again-is-for-the-best"
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"Artificial Intelligence View All AI, ML and Deep Learning Auto ML Data Labelling Synthetic Data Conversational AI NLP Text-to-Speech Security View All Data Security and Privacy Network Security and Privacy Software Security Computer Hardware Security Cloud and Data Storage Security Data Infrastructure View All Data Science Data Management Data Storage and Cloud Big Data and Analytics Data Networks Automation View All Industrial Automation Business Process Automation Development Automation Robotic Process Automation Test Automation Enterprise Analytics View All Business Intelligence Disaster Recovery Business Continuity Statistical Analysis Predictive Analysis More Data Decision Makers Virtual Communication Team Collaboration UCaaS Virtual Reality Collaboration Virtual Employee Experience Programming & Development Product Development Application Development Test Management Development Languages Opinion ProBeat: Windows 10 dropping Sets (again) is for the best Share on Facebook Share on X Share on LinkedIn Are you looking to showcase your brand in front of the brightest minds of the gaming industry? Consider getting a custom GamesBeat sponsorship.
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Microsoft has lately been releasing Windows 10 builds on a weekly cadence. Because of a bug last week, however, this week’s build brought more than the average number of improvements (and bugs). And yet, the highlight of this build was not what was added, but what was removed: Sets.
Sets, which isn’t necessarily the feature’s final name, lets you use tabs to run multiple apps in a single window. The idea is that you should be able to open new tabs in a given window for whatever you’re working on: relevant webpages, research documents, necessary files, and so on. Sets completely flips the idea of “windows” in Windows on its head, as one app’s window can be used to open other apps in tabs. Just like a web browser lets you open tabs for different websites , not just pages from the same site, Sets lets you open tabs for different apps , not just instances of the same app.
Sets was first shown off in November 2017 and quickly made its way to Windows Insiders the following month. The feature was, however, pulled from Windows 10 builds in January 2018 and didn’t make the cut for the Windows 10 April 2018 Update (RS4 branch). It returned to the RS5 branch in March 2018 , which represents the Windows 10 update that will ship later this year, only to be removed this week.
Event GamesBeat at the Game Awards We invite you to join us in LA for GamesBeat at the Game Awards event this December 7. Reserve your spot now as space is limited! Here is what Microsoft said in this week’s build about the matter: Thank you for your continued support of testing Sets. We continue to receive valuable feedback from you as we develop this feature helping to ensure we deliver the best possible experience once it’s ready for release. Starting with this build, we’re taking Sets offline to continue making it great. Based on your feedback, some of the things we’re focusing on include improvements to the visual design and continuing to better integrate Office and Microsoft Edge into Sets to enhance workflow. If you have been testing Sets, you will no longer see it as of today’s build, however, Sets will return in a future WIP flight. Thanks again for your feedback.
I asked Microsoft whether this means Sets won’t make it into the next Windows 10 update. A spokesperson was not willing to comment, but did point me to the first blog post announcing Sets, and highlighted the section that notes features likes Sets “will be broadly available when they are ready, not necessarily tied to the next major update.” Microsoft had never said Sets would ship with RS4 (nor RS5 for that matter), but Windows Insiders were nonetheless hopeful. We can’t therefore call this a “delay” — there was never a date tied to the arrival of Sets.
I think the main reason I’m so excited about Sets is because it’s such a fundamental change. I will, however, be the first to admit that the feature is still far from ready.
Sets works across several applications, from basics like Notepad and the Command Prompt to more complex ones like File Explorer and the various Office apps. But those are first-party apps, and Microsoft needs to make sure the feature doesn’t break myriad third-party Windows software — nowadays that means supporting both Win32 and UWP versions. It also means smoothly handling games that can be played in windowed mode, media that plays in the background, and all the other wonderful things that Windows lets you do.
This is a feature that Microsoft has to get right. It isn’t something you can release, only to fix as you go. It’s a critical part of how the operating system functions.
In fact, if Sets does make its way into Windows 10 one day, it will mean that you could keep your workflow within a single window.
The very nature of windows in Windows would be transformed.
At that point, the operating system would be more aptly called Window, Sets, or even Tabs. Microsoft isn’t going to rename its flagship product, of course, but it does underscore how central this feature is.
Take your time, Microsoft.
ProBeat is a column in which Emil rants about whatever crosses him that week.
GamesBeat's creed when covering the game industry is "where passion meets business." What does this mean? We want to tell you how the news matters to you -- not just as a decision-maker at a game studio, but also as a fan of games. Whether you read our articles, listen to our podcasts, or watch our videos, GamesBeat will help you learn about the industry and enjoy engaging with it.
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"Ontology and Partners Participate in MainNet Pre-Launch Event in San Francisco | VentureBeat"
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"https://venturebeat.com/business/ontology-and-partners-participate-in-mainnet-pre-launch-event-in-san-francisco"
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"Artificial Intelligence View All AI, ML and Deep Learning Auto ML Data Labelling Synthetic Data Conversational AI NLP Text-to-Speech Security View All Data Security and Privacy Network Security and Privacy Software Security Computer Hardware Security Cloud and Data Storage Security Data Infrastructure View All Data Science Data Management Data Storage and Cloud Big Data and Analytics Data Networks Automation View All Industrial Automation Business Process Automation Development Automation Robotic Process Automation Test Automation Enterprise Analytics View All Business Intelligence Disaster Recovery Business Continuity Statistical Analysis Predictive Analysis More Data Decision Makers Virtual Communication Team Collaboration UCaaS Virtual Reality Collaboration Virtual Employee Experience Programming & Development Product Development Application Development Test Management Development Languages Press Release Ontology and Partners Participate in MainNet Pre-Launch Event in San Francisco Share on Facebook Share on X Share on LinkedIn SAN FRANCISCO–(BUSINESS WIRE)–June 30, 2018– Ontology, a new high-performance public multi-chain project and a distributed trust collaboration platform, held a pre-launch of its MainNet on June 26th. It was announced that Ontology 1.0 will be officially released on June 30th.
At the launch, Ontology’s Founder Jun Li gave a detailed introduction to the product structure, technical features, and governance models of the Ontology MainNet (Ontology 1.0) to one hundred blockchain industry elites from China and the USA. Ontology 1.0 provides new high-performance public blockchains that include a series of complete distributed ledgers and smart contract systems, and at the same time supports public chain customization and chain network collaboration, while continuously providing common modules in various distributed applications.
Public chain basic services, a high-performance customisable blockchain framework, and protocol groups are the three key components of Ontology’s infrastructure. Ontology 1.0 includes a decentralised identity authentication protocol, distributed data management protocol, and credit score protocol. At the application level, the integrated client product (ONTO), trust search engine, and distributed data exchange framework will provide strong technical support.
Ontology partners attended to discuss blockchain technology solutions in real business scenarios. Partners who attended included: Contentos, who are committed to creating the world’s most extensive digital content public chain to reshape the content ecosystem; DAD (Decentralised Advertising), a blockchain digital advertisement platform; COT (Chains of Things), a smart hardware infrastructure solution platform; and CarBlock, the world’s first decentralised car market based on vehicle data.
View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20180629005841/en/ Ontology Qing Mu [email protected] VentureBeat's mission is to be a digital town square for technical decision-makers to gain knowledge about transformative enterprise technology and transact.
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Subsets and Splits
Wired Articles Filtered
Retrieves up to 100 entries from the train dataset where the URL contains 'wired' but the text does not contain 'Menu', providing basic filtering of the data.