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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.

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5,213	2,018	"Samsung is reportedly developing a second Bixby smart speaker \| VentureBeat"	"https://venturebeat.com/ai/samsung-is-reportedly-developing-a-second-bixby-smart-speaker"	"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 is reportedly developing a second Bixby smart speaker Share on Facebook Share on X Share on LinkedIn Samsung Galaxy Home 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. Google Home has the Google Home Mini. Amazon’s Echo has the Echo Dot. And when Samsung’s Bixby-driven smart speaker — the Galaxy Home — debuts sometime in 2019, it might have its own entry-level counterpart. That’s according to SamMobile , which in a report today claimed that Samsung will release at least one other speaker next year in addition to the Galaxy Home. It will reportedly bear the model number “SM-V310” — not too far off from the Galaxy Home’s SM-V510 — and come in black. Where features are concerned, Samsung’s second smart speaker will presumably be on par with its big brother. And it’s almost a guarantee that it’ll run Bixby 2.0, the next-gen version of Bixby that Samsung previewed at Mobile World Congress 2018 in March. Bixby 2.0 boasts better natural language processing and faster response times than its predecessor, along with built-in noise reduction tech. It’s also more conversational — if you ask it about upcoming concerts around New Year’s, for example, it’ll remember the date range when looking for tickets in the future. And it can make recommendations based on your previous searches. 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 a press event in August, Samsung revealed that the Galaxy Home has functionality now considered standard issue for smart speakers, such as the ability to play music and control smart home devices without the need to lift a finger. It boasts AKG-tuned omnidirectional speakers and a subwoofer for deep bass, plus an array of eight microphones for far-field voice recognition. Smart speaker demand Market momentum for smart speakers shows no sign of slowing — quite the opposite, in fact. A report published by research firm Canalys indicates that worldwide smart speaker shipments grew 137 percent year over year in the third quarter of 2018 to reach 19.7 million units, up from 8.3 million in Q3 2017. The number of voice-enabled speakers in use could come close to 100 million by the end of this year (up from 50 million at the end of 2017), some suggest, and early momentum more or less aligns with that prediction. NPR and Edison Research estimated in July 2018 that 18 percent of American adults — around 43 million people — owned a smart speaker. ( Consumer Intelligence Research Partners and Voicebot put the number at 50 million and 47.3 million, respectively.) According to a survey commissioned by Adobe , almost half of all consumers in the United States will own a smart speaker by the end of the year. And a Global Market Insights report forecasts that the global smart speaker market could be worth as much as $30 billion by 2024. 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. "
5,214	2,018	"Researchers claim AI system can distinguish between dyslexic and skilled readers \| VentureBeat"	"https://venturebeat.com/ai/researchers-claim-ai-system-can-distinguish-between-dyslexic-and-skilled-readers"	"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 Researchers claim AI system can distinguish between dyslexic and skilled readers 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. Dyslexia — a language-based learning disability that includes poor word reading, word decoding, oral reading fluency, and spelling — is fairly common. Some surveys estimate that one in 10 people, or about 40 million people in the U.S. and 700 million children and adults worldwide, have dyslexia. And according to the Dyslexia Center of Utah , 70 to 80 percent of people with poor reading skills are likely dyslexic. It’s hardly a death sentence, but if left untreated, dyslexia can severely impede tasks like organization, planning and prioritizing, and timekeeping. And unfortunately, there’s no single test to diagnose it. Artificial intelligence (AI) might someday lend a helping hand. Researchers at the Israel Institute of Technology’s Laboratory of Clinical Neurophysiology and the University of Haifa’s Department of Computer Science claim to have developed an AI model that can automatically — without human intervention and with state-of-the-art precision — identify dyslexic readers. They describe their work in a preprint paper (“ Features and Machine Learning for Correlating and Classifying between Brain Areas and Dyslexia “) published on Arxiv.org this week. VB Event The AI Impact Tour Connect with the enterprise AI community at VentureBeat’s AI Impact Tour coming to a city near you! “We develop a method that is based on processing gathered … signals,” they wrote, “and the use of machine learning technique for multivariate analysis … that we apply in order to analyze the differences between dyslexic and skilled readers.” As the researchers explain, previous studies of dyslexia have indicated that key neuropsychological factors, such as timing and the level of activation between the visual and auditory brain systems, affect word decoding accuracy. (Chief among those systems are the posterior lobes, which are responsible for perception; the frontal lobe, which is concerned with behavior, learning, personality, and voluntary movement; Wernicke’s area, the left-side region of the brain that’s responsible for speech comprehension; and Broca’s area, which is linked to speech production.) One theory — the asynchrony theory — suggests that a gap in processing speed between brain areas during the word decoding process might prevent the synchronization of information, resulting in inaccurate processing. To collect data for their proposed AI-driven dyslexia classification system, the team recruited 32 native Hebrew-speaking kids in grades 6-7 from two schools. Seventeen members of the group had a previous diagnosis of dyslexia. Over the course of 24 trials, they were asked to perform a lexical decision task (LDT), during which they had to judge whether 192 letter strings on a screen were meaningful or meaningless. As the subjects submitted their answers, electrodes placed on their scalps continuously recorded electroencephalographs (EEG) — i.e., measurements of electrical activity in the brain — and eye movements. After a preprocessing step that removed blinking, loosed electrodes, and other artifacts in the data, the researchers calculated a signal — an event-related potential, or ERP — by averaging the remaining trials. In the course of extracting features (i.e., properties) from the ERPs, they divided them into several segments. The researchers’ algorithm of choice was ReliefF — a model that “assigns relevance to features based on their ability to disambiguate similar samples,” they explain. Novelly, its architecture enabled them to identify regions of interest in the brain that had a disproportionate influence on classification. After feeding ReliefF their dataset — which comprised, in the end, 27 handpicked features from each of the 64 electrodes — they evaluated the results. Trained on the best 60 features, the machine learning model managed to discriminate non-dyslexic test subjects from dyslexic subjects close to 80 percent of the time. And trained on only 10 features, it classified dyslexics about 70 percent of the time. Intriguingly, the paper’s authors found that a particular portion of the brain — the left anterior — was of higher importance in overall classification. From this, they theorize that most of the differences between the dyslexic and “regular” readers are located in the left hemisphere. “[T]he main results that were established in this paper are … using machine learning tools, a small number of features suggested by signal analysis techniques are sufficient to accurately classify dyslexic/skilled readers from EEG data summed up to an ERP signal … [O]ur methodology allowed us to go back and find the most important brain areas for the task, [and the] results in fact do correspond with current theories regarding the role of the left hemisphere ” they wrote. “Most of the information needed for the discrimination is … concentrated in parts of the signal that is traditionally considered as noise by traditional analysis techniques … [but we found that it] actually contains valuable info. 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. "
5,215	2,017	"Placer.ai analyzed New Year's Eve 2017 foot traffic to find the most popular destinations \| VentureBeat"	"https://venturebeat.com/ai/placer-ai-analyzed-new-years-eve-2017-foot-traffic-to-find-the-most-popular-dining-and-nightlife-destinations"	"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 Placer.ai analyzed New Year’s Eve 2017 foot traffic to find the most popular destinations 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. It’s New Year’s Eve, and if you live in the States, there’s a good chance you’ll spend the final minutes before midnight watching a 12-ton bright, glowing geodesic dome descend from a 141-foot flagpole in Times Square. New Yorkers have been ringing in the New Year with fireworks and a giant crystal ball since 1907, when Adolph Ochs, owner of the New York Times , commissioned Artkraft Strauss to design a display to commemorate the newspaper’s gleaming new headquarters. In the intervening years, the Big Apple has become one of the world’s most popular destinations for consuming copious amounts of bubbly, attempting a few verses of “Auld Lang Syne,” and swimming through a flood of balloons and confetti. More than a million people are expected to descend on the city this week to participate in the festivities, up from the 500,000 folks who flew in back in 1998. Contrary to popular belief, however, they won’t be entirely sequestered in Times Square. Placer.ai , a Los Altos and Tel Aviv startup that uses smartphone tracking data to help businesses make decisions, crunched the numbers from last year’s New Year’s Eve celebrations to uncover the holiday’s most popular hangouts. To make things easier, Placer’s data scientists focused on five city districts: Times Square, Chelsea, the Lower East Side, Gramercy, and Flatiron. Above: Placer.ai’s analysis of New Year’s Eve 2017 foot traffic in Times Square. The first trend the scientists discovered? The tourist-to-local ratio wasn’t as disproportionate as might be expected. Out-of-towners outnumbered New York City residents almost 2:1 in Times Square, but roughly 25 percent of New Year’s Eve partygoers lived in the city. Both groups arrived hours early; Placer says that last year Times Square reached peak capacity by 9 p.m. ET, with most people having come by 6 p.m. 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: Times Square foot traffic on New Year’s Eve 2017, according to Placer.ai Times Square wasn’t the only place hopping come sundown December 31, 2017. Chelsea was the top spot for clubs and bars, and a “big favorite” among locals, according to Placer — perhaps because of the Phish concert at Madison Square Garden. (Phish is scheduled to make an appearance this year, too.) About 41 percent of visits were to nightlife spots, while 30 percent were to restaurants. Above: Pedestrian traffic in Chelsea during New Year’s Eve 2017. What about the most popular place to dine year-end 2017? That’d be Gramercy and Flatiron. Placer reports that most native New Yorkers preferred Gramercy — 44 percent of visits in the area were to celebrated restaurants like Eleven Madison Park, Cosme, and Gramercy Tavern. Above: Gramercy and Flatiron were where a majority of New Years Eve 2017 partiers ate out. But when it came to nightlife traffic, the Lower East Side was the place to be. Residents were the most likely to ring in 2018 locally, according to Placer, and 64 percent of neighborhood visits were to nightlife spots. Above: The Lower East Side was the place to be for nightlife during New Year’s Eve 2017, according to Placer.ai. “Now,” Placer wrote in a blog post, “we can finally end the debate about which neighborhoods are best for your particular brand of celebration.” 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. "
5,216	2,018	"AI Weekly: 2018 in machine learning \| VentureBeat"	"https://venturebeat.com/ai/ai-weekly-2018-in-machine-learning"	"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: 2018 in machine learning 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. Artificial intelligence is without question one of the most captivating and influential corners of the technology world today, but it’s also one of the noisiest. To wrap our heads around the complicated mashup of subjects that coalesce to make coverage of the AI beat possible, we write the AI Weekly. This is our sandbox of sorts, a place to let the most important topics that emerge in AI circles ruminate, stretch out, and find clarity. Naturally, a fair number of conceptual insights have emerged throughout the year. So instead of diving deep into the news of the day, this week we’re looking back at some favorites from 2018 — topics with lasting impact and importance. VB Event The AI Impact Tour Connect with the enterprise AI community at VentureBeat’s AI Impact Tour coming to a city near you! On the AI assistant front, we saw Alexa and Cortana begin to work together. Cortana is available on hundreds of millions of devices, and Echo is still the most popular smart speaker. Google has the Android operating system, though, an advantage that allows for a smart speaker and smartphone combination unlike any of its competitors. That advantage is not insurmountable, however, because although Google took steps to improve its Assistant on Android smartphones, as ambient computing becomes more popular and people increasingly blurt out questions that come to mind, Alexa is beginning to eat into Google’s search dominance. We documented how this fall Google, Facebook, and Amazon simultaneously fought major scandals while at the same time entering full pitch mode for smart displays, and we looked at the need for trust in AI assistant adoption. We also took time to recognize the good that people are trying to accomplish with intelligent machines, like the multiple systems zeroing in on cardiovascular disease, the biggest killer in the world. We also took a moment to note that President Trump should have listened to Defense Secretary Jim Mattis, who has since resigned in protest , and formulated a national AI strategy like other nations, such as China, have done. Also in Washington, we took a close look at how U.S. senators, many of them Democratic presidential candidates, have raised a lot of questions about facial recognition software, which could become a 2020 presidential campaign issue. One of my favorites from Kyle Wiggers is about the danger that too much focus on apocalyptic AGI scenarios of the future will distract from pressing problems we face now. He also shared a collection of insights from NeurIPS (formerly NIPS) and covered the conflicts between business and government concerning autonomous driving regulation. My favorite from former AI staff writer Blair Hanley Frank analyzed the way tech companies market AI solutions and proclaimed that Sensei, Watson, and Einstein must die. I know I said I wouldn’t offer any conceptual scoops this week, but one insight does arise from this array of highlights. In a recent conversation, I heard someone argue that AI is basically the same as previous tech paradigm shifts, like mobile and social, which have gone from being nascent interests to permeating our daily lives. But artificial intelligence differs from such previous leaps in that it may end up infiltrating society on a level previously unimagined, extending from business to government to education and national defense. That means it’s going to require understanding from and possible action by lawmakers, business leaders, military leaders, civil leaders, and the citizenry of democratic societies. That’s probably why the AI Index 2018 report found a sharp rise in the number of mentions of AI by members of the U.S. Congress and British members of Parliament this year. Enjoy 2019, and if there’s anything in particular you think we should be writing about in the newsletter or our coverage, feel free to email Kyle Wiggers at [email protected] or me at [email protected]. Thanks for reading, Khari Johnson AI Staff Writer P.S. Please enjoy this video from Nvidia of fabricated AI faces generated from the faces of real people. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kSLJriaOum From VB Samsung’s C-Lab takes the wraps off 8 new products, including an AI-driven desk lamp Samsung gave a preview of its C-Lab incubator’s eight latest graduates, including an AI-enabled desk lamp and an ASMR sound recording app. Amazon: Purchases through Alexa this holiday season tripled year-over-year TVs, set-top boxes, tablets, and speakers with Amazon’s Alexa built in made for popular gifts this season, according to the retailer. 10 things to try with your new Echo smart speaker TVs, set-top boxes, tablets, and speakers with Amazon’s Alexa built in made for popular gifts this season, according to the retailer. 10 things to do with your new Google Home smart speaker This is a guide to the basics: 10 top features and ways to start talking with Google Assistant and put your Google Home smart speaker to work. 3 tech companies whose terrible 2018 you missed: Snap, Yelp, and IBM Three companies may not have made huge headlines in 2018 but are still facing big questions heading into 2019: Yelp, Snap, and IBM. 13 European companies acquired by U.S. tech giants in 2018 A look back at some of the European companies bought up by U.S. tech firms in 2018, including Shazam, iZettle, and Blue Vision Labs. Beyond VB New AI computer vision system mimics how humans visualize and identify objects Donald Knuth, master of algorithms, reflects on 50 years of his opus-in-progress, “The Art of Computer Programming.” (via Science Daily) The welfare state is committing suicide by artificial intelligence Denmark is using algorithms to deliver benefits to citizens—and undermining its own democracy in the process. (via Foreign Policy) Every tree in the city, mapped Researchers at Descartes Labs are using artificial intelligence to make a better map of the urban tree canopy. (via CityLab) Robotic creepy-crawlies climb walls Two teams of researchers exploit electrostatic forces to send mini-bots up vertical surfaces. Andrew Masterson reports. (via Cosmos) 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. "
5,217	2,018	"A researcher trained AI to generate Africa masks \| VentureBeat"	"https://venturebeat.com/ai/a-researcher-trained-ai-to-generate-africa-masks"	"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 A researcher trained AI to generate Africa masks 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. Artificial intelligence (AI) can generate eerily realistic faces , but what about tribal artwork? That’s the question Victor Dibia, a human-computer interaction researcher and Carnegie Mellon graduate, sought to answer with an AI system trained on a dataset of African masks. As Dibia explains in a blog post , the work was inspired by a trip to the 2018 Deep Learning Indaba, an annual machine learning conference held at Stellenbosch University, South Africa, in September. Attendees were provided access to second-generation Tensor Processing Units (TPUs) — Google-designed chips purpose-built for fast training or inference of AI models — which Dibia used for training. He tapped Google’s TensorFlow machine learning framework to get a generative adversarial network (GAN) — a two-part neural network consisting of generators that produce samples and discriminators that attempt to distinguish between the generated samples and real-world samples — up and running on the TPUs. Specifically, he selected a deep convolutional GAN , or DCGAN. GANs have a knack for image generation and processing. Data scientists at Alphabet subsidiary DeepMind, for example, recently tasked a GAN with generating convincing photos of burgers, dogs, and butterflies, and researchers at the University of Edinburgh’s Institute for Perception and Institute for Astronomy used GANs to create images of artificial galaxies complete with star clusters, nebulae, and other interstellar features. 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 masks produced by a DCGAN trained on the curated dataset. And it’s not the first time they and other AI architectures have been used to create artwork. They’ve composed memorable (if not entirely coherent) holiday tunes and written lyrics ; produced humanlike paintings ; and come up with names for fireworks , to name a few examples. To “teach” the DCGAN how to create new mask designs, Dibia sourced a manually curated set of images — 9,300 in all — depicting African masks. Prior to training, he resized and cropped each image before converting them to TFRecords, a format for storing sequences of binary records. Two versions of the DCGAN model were trained to produce 64-by-64-pixel and 128-by-128-pixel images, respectively. In subsequent experiments, the model tasked with generating 64-by-64-pixel pics provided “better diversity” compared to the second system, while the 128-by-128-pixel images had superior quality. But the latter suffered a mode collapse — a failure case where the GAN’s generator began to produce samples with extremely low variety. (Dibia chalked it up to the dataset “being insufficient to train such a large model.”) The more successful of the two AI models managed to come up with novel masks with sideways orientations, hair or “hair-like projections,” or oblong features. “The goal is not to generate a perfectly realistic mask … but more towards observing any creative or artistic elements encoded in the resulting GAN,” Dibia wrote. “In this case, while some of the generated images are not complete masks, they excel at capturing the texture or feel of African art,” Dibia wrote. “For example, I showed a colleague and they mentioned the generated images had a ‘tribal feel to it.'” He leaves to future work extending the Africa Masks dataset, experiments with conditioned GANs, and other machine learning architectures for realistic and higher-resolution image generation. 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. "
5,218	2,018	"A look back at some of AI's biggest video game wins in 2018 \| VentureBeat"	"https://venturebeat.com/ai/a-look-back-at-some-of-ais-biggest-video-game-wins-in-2018"	"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 Feature A look back at some of AI’s biggest video game wins in 2018 Share on Facebook Share on X Share on LinkedIn OpenAI's Dota 2 battle arena. 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. For decades, games have served as benchmarks for artificial intelligence (AI). In 1996, IBM famously set loose Deep Blue on chess, and it became the first program to defeat a reigning world champion (Garry Kasparov) under regular time controls. But things really kicked into gear in 2013 — the year Google subsidiary DeepMind demonstrated an AI system that could play Pong, Breakout, Space Invaders, Seaquest, Beamrider, Enduro, and Q*bert at superhuman levels. In March 2016, DeepMind’s AlphaGo won a three-game match of Go against Lee Sedol, one of the highest-ranked players in the world. And only a year later, an improved version of the system ( AlphaZero ) handily defeated champions at chess, a Japanese variant of chess called shogi , and Go. The advancements aren’t merely advancing game design, according to folks like DeepMind cofounder Demis Hassabis. Rather, they’re informing the development of systems that might one day diagnose illnesses, predict complicated protein structures , and segment CT scans. “AlphaZero is a stepping stone for us all the way to general AI,” Hassabis told VentureBeat in a recent interview. “The reason we test ourselves and all these games is … that [they’re] a very convenient proving ground for us to develop our algorithms. … Ultimately, [we’re developing algorithms that can be] translate[ed] into the real world to work on really challenging problems … and help experts in those areas.” With that in mind, and with 2019 fast approaching, we’ve taken a look back at some of 2018’s AI in games highlights. Here they are for your reading pleasure, in no particular order. 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! Montezuma’s Revenge Above: Map of level one in Montezuma’s Revenge. In Montezuma’s Revenge , a 1984 platformer from publisher Parker Brothers for the Atari 2600, Apple II, Commodore 64, and a host of other platforms, players assume the role of intrepid explorer Panama Joe as he spelunks across Aztec emperor Montezuma II’s labyrinthine temple. The stages, of which there are 99 across three levels, are filled with obstacles like laser gates, conveyor belts, ropes, ladders, disappearing floors, and fire pits — not to mention skulls, snakes, spiders, torches, and swords. The goal is to reach the Treasure Chamber and rack up points along the way by finding jewels, killing enemies, and revealing keys that open doors to hidden stages. Montezuma’s Revenge has a reputation for being difficult (the first level alone consists of 24 rooms), but AI systems have long had a particularly tough go of it. DeepMind’s groundbreaking Deep-Q learning network in 2015 — one which surpassed human experts on Breakout, Enduro, and Pong — scored a 0 percent of the average human score of 4,700 in Montezuma’s Revenge. Researchers peg the blame on the game’s “sparse rewards.” Completing a stage requires learning complex tasks with infrequent feedback. As a result, even the best-trained AI agents tend to maximize rewards in the short term rather than work toward a big-picture goal — for example, hitting an enemy repeatedly instead of climbing a rope close to the exit. But some AI systems this year managed to avoid that trap. DeepMind In a paper published on the preprint server Arxiv.org in May (“ Playing hard exploration games by watching YouTube “), DeepMind described a machine learning model that could, in effect, learn to master Montezuma’s Revenge from YouTube videos. After “watching” clips of expert players and by using a method that embedded game state observations into a common embedding space, it completed the first level with a score of 41,000. In a second paper published online the same month (“ Observe and Look Further: Achieving Consistent Performance on Atari “), DeepMind scientists proposed improvements to the aforementioned Deep-Q model that increased its stability and capability. Most importantly, they enabled the algorithm to account for reward signals of “varying densities and scales,” extending its agents’ effective planning horizon. Additionally, they used human demonstrations to augment agents’ exploration process. In the end, it achieved a score of 38,000 on the game’s first level. OpenAI Above: An agent controlling the player character. In June, OpenAI — a nonprofit, San Francisco-based AI research company backed by Elon Musk, Reid Hoffman, and Peter Thiel — shared in a blog post a method for training a Montezuma’s Revenge-beating AI system. Novelly, it tapped human demonstrations to “restart” agents: AI player characters began near the end of the game and moved backward through human players’ trajectories on every restart. This exposed them to parts of the game which humans had already cleared, and helped them to achieve a score of 74,500. In August, building on its previous work, OpenAI described in a paper (“ Large-Scale Study of Curiosity-Driven Learning “) a model that could best most human players. The top-performing version found 22 of the 24 rooms in the first level, and occasionally discovered all 24. What set it apart was a reinforcement learning technique called Random Network Distillation (RND), which used a bonus reward that incentivized agents to explore areas of the game map they normally wouldn’t have. RND also addressed another common issue in reinforcement learning schemes — the so-called noisy TV problem — in which an AI agent becomes stuck looking for patterns in random data. “Curiosity drives the agent to discover new rooms and find ways of increasing the in-game score, and this extrinsic reward drives it to revisit those rooms later in the training,” OpenAI explained in a blog post. “Curiosity gives us an easier way to teach agents to interact with any environment, rather than via an extensively engineered task-specific reward function that we hope corresponds to solving a task.” On average, OpenAI’s agents scored 10,000 over nine runs with a best mean return of 14,500. A longer-running test yielded a run that hit 17,500. Uber OpenAI and DeepMind aren’t the only ones that managed to craft skilled Montezuma’s Revenge-playing AI this year. In a paper and accompanying blog post published in late November, researchers at San Francisco ride-sharing company Uber unveiled Go-Explore, a family of so-called quality diversity AI models capable of posting scores of over 2,000,000 and average scores over 400,000. In testing, the models were able to “reliably” solve the entire game up to level 159 and reach an average of 37 rooms. To reach those sky-high numbers, the researchers implemented an innovative training method consisting of two parts: exploration and robustification. In the exploration phase, Go-Explore built an archive of different game states — cells — and the various trajectories, or scores, that lead to them. It chose a cell, returned to that cell, explored the cell, and, for all cells it visited, swapped in a given new trajectory if it was better (i.e., the score was higher). This “exploration” stage conferred several advantages. Thanks to the aforementioned archive, Go-Explore was able to remember and return to “promising” areas for exploration. By first returning to cells (by loading the game state) before exploring from them, it avoided over-exploring easily reached places. And because Go-Explore was able to visit all reachable states, it was less susceptible to deceptive reward functions. The robustification step, meanwhile, acted as a shield against noise. If Go-Explore’s solutions were not robust to noise, it robustified them into a deep neural network with an imitation learning algorithm. “Go-Explore’s max score is substantially higher than the human world record of 1,219,200, achieving even the strictest definition of ‘superhuman performance,'” the team said. “This shatters the state of the art on Montezuma’s Revenge both for traditional RL algorithms and imitation learning algorithms that were given the solution in the form of a human demonstration.” 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. All rights reserved. "
5,219	2,019	"GM targets U.S. self-driving car launch for 2019 \| VentureBeat"	"https://venturebeat.com/transportation/gm-targets-u-s-self-driving-car-launch-for-2019"	"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 GM targets U.S. self-driving car launch for 2019 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. ( Reuters ) — General Motors laid out its vision for self-driving vehicles on Thursday, telling investors it planned a commercial launch of fleets of fully autonomous robo-taxis in multiple dense urban environments in 2019, in a challenge to rivals such as Alphabet Inc’s Waymo. Underscoring the potential opportunity ahead, GM President Dan Ammann told investors the lifetime revenue generation of one of its self-driving cars could eventually be in the “several hundred thousands of dollars.” That compares with the $30,000 on average that GM collects today for one of its vehicles, mostly derived from the initial sale. The No. 1 U.S. automaker – which views electric and autonomous vehicles as the keystones of future transport – has been focused on rolling out self-driving cars since its estimated $1 billion acquisition of startup Cruise Automation in early 2016 that provided a toehold in the nascent industry. Automakers and rivals such as Waymo and Uber Technologies Inc have poured billions into the competitive industry, with each player hoping to gain first-mover advantage. Robo-taxi services are seen as the main use for most self-driving vehicles, including GM’s Chevrolet Bolt. VB Event The AI Impact Tour Connect with the enterprise AI community at VentureBeat’s AI Impact Tour coming to a city near you! “If we continue on our current rate of change we will be ready to deploy this technology, in large scale, in the most complex environments, in 2019,” Ammann said on a conference call. Safety, Ammann said, will ultimately be the deciding factor on when to take the driver out of the car. GM has enjoyed a recent surge in its share price, as investors bet on its plans for self-driving and electric cars, although the company’s profit is driven entirely by demand for trucks and SUVs in North America, and its growing sales in China. GM shares were down 1.7 percent at $43.05 on Thursday afternoon. Until now, GM has said autonomous vehicles were a big part of its future but did not give many details. Now, it has outlined more broadly its strategy, in which self-driving Bolts could be manufactured at scale at GM’s existing plants, driving down costs, and rapidly deployed in major metropolitan markets through a ride service to disrupt incumbents. “We are the only company that has this under one roof,” Chief Executive Mary Barra said on the same call, distinguishing GM from its technology rivals in the autonomous sector. GM said last month it sees deployment of autonomous vehicles in “quarters, not years,” and this week it finally provided a peek at its prototype self-driving vehicles. Self-driving cars and shared mobility will be accretive to GM’s core business, Barra said, with the biggest opportunities initially to come from the U.S. East and West coasts. Chief Financial Officer Chuck Stevens said a robo-taxi service could be “potentially bigger than our current core business, with better margins.” “We have a path to take 40 percent of the cost out of ride services,” Stevens said on the same call. Lowering the cost to below $1 per mile by 2025 from about $2.50 today could result in margins of 20 to 30 percent, he said. Using a vehicle for a robo-taxi service – rather than GM’s current business model of building cars for individual customers – could increase revenue generation exponentially because the vehicle could be continuously used by multiple users over its lifespan. Underscoring the competitive landscape, Uber said last week it planned to buy up to 24,000 self-driving cars from Volvo, owned by China’s Geely Automobile Holdings Ltd, in a nonexclusive deal from 2019 to 2021. No financial details were disclosed. As one example of bringing down the cost of autonomous vehicles, GM said it expects to lower the cost of long-range Lidar sensors – a key element in self-driving technology – to $300 from $20,000, without providing a time frame. In October, GM bought Lidar company Strobe Inc, saying its technology could lower the cost of the sensor by 99 percent. GM said it was too early to discuss possible branding of its self-driving cars, or whether the Cruise or Bolt name would be used. GM also operates an app-based car-sharing business called Maven, which some have speculated could be the new brand name. On Tuesday, GM’s Cruise Automation gave reporters their first look at the autonomous Bolts that have been testing in San Francisco, Phoenix and Detroit. The cars conservatively navigated busy urban streets but encountered hiccups when it came to double-parked cars and traffic cones. Earlier this month, GM announced plans to sell 1 million electric vehicles a year by 2026. The cars would be built on a platform that could accommodate multiple sizes and segments, lowering the cost of building them. Waymo is often seen as the frontrunner in the emerging autonomous sector, although its business model is different than GM’s as it does not build cars itself. Earlier this month, Waymo announced a planned self-driving robo-taxi service in suburban Phoenix, to carry its first passengers in the next few months. It has not given a time frame for a wider roll-out. 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. "
5,220	2,017	"U.S. House internet censorship bill is just like the Senate bill, except worse \| VentureBeat"	"https://venturebeat.com/security/u-s-house-internet-censorship-bill-is-just-like-the-senate-bill-except-worse"	"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 U.S. House internet censorship bill is just like the Senate bill, except worse 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. There are two bills racing through Congress that would undermine your right to free expression online and threaten the online communities that we all rely on. The Stop Enabling Sex Traffickers Act (SESTA, S. 1693 ) and the Allow States and Victims to Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act (FOSTA, H.R. 1865 ) might sound noble, but they would do nothing to fight sex traffickers. What they would do is force online web platforms to police their users’ activity much more stringently than ever before, silencing a lot of innocent voices in the process. We’ve already written extensively about SESTA and the dangers it would pose to online communities, but as the House of Representatives considers moving on FOSTA , it’s time to reiterate that all of the major flaws in SESTA are in FOSTA too. Section 230 Protects Online Communities. Don’t Weaken It. Like SESTA, FOSTA would erode a law referred to as Section 230. Passed in 1996, Section 230 says that online platforms can’t be held liable for their users’ speech, except in certain circumstances. Without Section 230, it would be extremely risky to host other people’s speech online: one lawsuit could destroy your company. Most social media sites wouldn’t exist, or they’d look very different from the ones we enjoy today. Section 230 strikes an important balance for when and how online platforms can be held liable for their users’ speech. Contrary to SESTA’s supporters’ claims, Section 230 does nothing to protect platforms that are directly involved with breaking federal criminal law. If an Internet company is directly contributing to unlawful activity, the Department of Justice can and should prosecute it. VB Event The AI Impact Tour Connect with the enterprise AI community at VentureBeat’s AI Impact Tour coming to a city near you! Under FOSTA, a site would be on the hook if a court simply found that someone had used it for sex trafficking purposes. The law would force platforms to become much more restrictive in their moderation policies, which is likely to disproportionately silence marginalized groups. FOSTA carves an even bigger hole out of Section 230 than SESTA does. It defines the state law exemption to Section 230 more broadly, applying it to “any State criminal statute” related to sex trafficking. State sex trafficking laws are notoriously inconsistent: in Alaska and Massachusetts , for example, statutes define trafficking so broadly that they don’t require any indication that someone was forced or coerced into sex work. FOSTA could open the door to litigation far beyond the sex trafficking activities it’s intended to target. Broad Criminal Law Would Hurt Legitimate Communities Like SESTA, FOSTA expands federal sex trafficking law to sweep in third parties that unknowingly facilitate sex trafficking (like web platforms), but FOSTA defines those third parties even more broadly than SESTA does, criminalizing conduct by “any person or entity and by any means that furthers or in anyway aids or abets” sex trafficking. It even goes a step further by explicitly making it a crime to be a provider of an Internet service that was used for sex trafficking purposes, provided that you acted in “reckless disregard” of the possibility that your service could be used for trafficking (we’ve written already about the dangers of applying the “reckless disregard” standard to online intermediaries ). Remember, Congress already made it it a federal crime to “advertise” sex trafficking online, via the SAVE Act of 2015. No new law is necessary to prosecute platforms that knowingly facilitate sex trafficking ads. If the Department of Justice has failed to prosecute platforms that violate the SAVE Act, then lawmakers should demand an explanation. In the meantime, Congress shouldn’t pass laws threatening every other online community. Bottom Line: These Bills Go After the Wrong Targets We’ve talked a lot about the damage that SESTA and FOSTA would do to speech and communities online. Just as important is what they would not do: fight sex trafficking. SESTA and FOSTA are perfect examples of Congress choosing an easy target rather than the right target. It’s easy to prosecute Internet companies, but Congress must do the serious work of understanding trafficking—its causes, its perpetrators, and the online tools law enforcement can use to fight it—and find better solutions to find and punish traffickers. Since SESTA and FOSTA were first introduced, many experts in sex trafficking have stepped forward to explain that these bills are the wrong solution —that they would put victims of sex trafficking in much worse predicaments, moving them from the safety of the Internet to a dangerous street—where they are much less likely to get help. This story originally appeared on the EFF’s blog. 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. "
5,221	2,017	"Video: Funomena's quest to create magic \| VentureBeat"	"https://venturebeat.com/pc-gaming/video-exclusive-funomenas-quest-to-create-magic"	"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 Video: Funomena’s quest to create magic Share on Facebook Share on X Share on LinkedIn Luna 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. Presented by Intel The people who work at the San Francisco-based Funomena are more than just employees: They’re Funomenauts. According to cofounder Robin Hunicke, a Funomenaut is an explorer, someone who wants to push the boundaries of video games. In addition to having a lot of perseverance and creativity, they have to be willing to solve problems in an open and trusting environment. These are some of the qualities Hunicke cultivated within the company, which has led to fascinating games like Wattam, Woorld, and its first major release, Luna. A few weeks ago, Hunicke gave us a tour of their old studio (they recently moved to a bigger space in the city) while talking about Funomena’s unique culture and how that affects the games they make. Luna in particular represents a significant milestone for the indie developer, as Hunicke and others have been working on the game in some capacity for the last five years. 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! Watch our video below to find out more about what makes Funomena tick. 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]. 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. "
5,222	2,017	"Games on Demand game jam takes requests from ill children \| VentureBeat"	"https://venturebeat.com/pc-gaming/games-on-demand-game-jam-takes-request-from-ill-children"	"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 Games on Demand game jam takes requests from ill children 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. Though most game jams have developers creating projects on a single theme, Games on Demand takes a different approach. Founder Lana Chircop and six other organizers are fielding requests from children with cancer or disabilities and giving them to developers to make those games a reality. It will run from December 1 to December 3, and folks who would like to participate can sign up on Itch.io. Chircop is a game developer and user experience designer who’s participated in such jams in the past. She’s developed web-based dress-up games at Cosmic Girl Games , as well as the colorful mobile role-playing game Bioscape. The inspiration for Games on Demand came from a visit to a skatepark, where she saw a local group teaching sick kids how to skateboard. “When we were at the skatepark, they said that a lot of the kids couldn’t participate because they weren’t in a physical condition to do so,” said Chircop in a phone call with GamesBeat. “But video games don’t require a lot of physical exertion. It aligns really well with this kind of thing.” Though gaming-related charities like Extra Life and Child’s Play exist, there haven’t been any game jams for the express purpose of creating projects for kids. Most people’s efforts are around raising money, such as the 24-hour Extra Life live streams, or getting children access to games. 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! Games on Demand is primarily working with two organizations, Ontario Parents Advocating for Children with Cancer (OPACC) and the Holland Bloorview Kids Rehabilitation Hospital. OPACC frequently hosts events, such as the skatepark get-together, for children with cancer. Events where kids can be kids Susan Kuczynski is an OPACC parent liaison. She says that it’s vital to have events where the kids can simply be themselves. Activities like playing video games or a sport like basketball can be empowering and give them a much-needed creative outlet. “We tend to put [the kids] a little bit in a bubble and say, you can’t do anything. That’s not actually true. They can do lots of things,” said Kuczynski. She added, “They’re just ready to play and ready to be kids and ready to do all the things kids want to do. Creativity, when it comes to playing a game on their console or just playing with their imaginations at various other things, I think it’s really important to encourage that and let them get at it. Their job is to be a kid.” As a parent liaison, Kuczynski provides resources to help the families of children who are undergoing cancer treatment. Her own daughter is a survivor, so she can speak as a voice of experience. Part of helping parents navigate the overwhelming experience is to provide social opportunities along with little tips that can make the process more bearable. “There are tons of resources even within the hospitals that families don’t know about,” said Kuczynski. “For instance, they can get laundry done. And staff may or may not know about those kinds of resources, but their primary concern is administering health care for your child. We’re there to help them find their way in those regards. We’re there to give them that hot cup of coffee or tea and an ear, and not being in crisis, so to speak, at the same time.” OPACC has been promoting Games on Demand on its email lists and on social media. Kuczynski says it’s a promising event especially for older children, 10 years and up. While younger children can find escape in playing with toys and developing friendships with strangers, adolescents are more reserved. “They rely more on the technology than the younger kids do,” said Kuczynski. “I think it’s something that really captures their fancy, too. They’ve probably been playing video games, or having technology in their lives, from the time they’re born. Having that opportunity to provide input on what it’s going to look like is—I think it’s a great way for them to have an outlet.” Video games as rehabilitation Above: PEARL’s ScreenPlay seeks to make waiting rooms more pleasant. Games on Demand has received a few requests from the kids involved with OPACC. It’s also getting some ideas from the children in rehabilitation at Bloorview Hospital. Chircop says it’s also working with the Possibility Engineering and Research Lab (PEARL), the in-house research department at Bloorview that specializes in creating games for children with disabilities. With PEARL’s help, developers participating in the game jam can make their projects more accessible. “[PEARL is] really excited about the idea, and they’re going to be providing us with some templates that we’ll be making available, where people can actually make games for kids who have physical disabilities,” said Chircop. “This can help them move in the right way, or use them in different ways, that kind of thing.” Dr. Elaine Biddiss, a scientist and the director of PEARL, says that they’ve experimented with a number of things and have developed a number of games. One of their major projects, ScreenPlay, turns waiting rooms into an interactive experience. Children can play with it using pressure-sensitive floor tiles. The idea is to help kids cope with the anxiety and fear that is associated with waiting for their medical appointments. It’s also an alternative to conventional toys, like wooden blocks or puzzles, that can be an infection risk. “Games On Demand, in their game jam, is likely going to design some more experiences to add to the [ScreenPlay] system,” said Biddiss. “Possibly things that might engage older youth that share the space with younger kids. We’re really excited about what they might come up with. That’s one possible project for the game jam.” PEARL will be available to offer advice for developers participating in Games on Demand. Software engineer and lab manager Ajmal Khan says they also have a set of design guidelines for ScreenPlay that they’ll offer to the developers in case they decide to go that route. The lab began in 2011 or 2012. It’s created games that use the Microsoft Kinect and Nintendo Wii, along with mixed-reality projects that combine virtual objects with real-world environments. PEARL’s in-house game developer Alexander Hodge is currently developing a music game with jazz artist Chris Donnelly, which will combine some educational aspects with mechanics that will help kids develop fine motor skills. “The games that use musical instruments are just another component of the mixed reality system we’ve developed,” said Hodge. “That’s how you play those games, through playing with these common toy musical instruments. By manipulating the instruments, they’re working on their fine motor skills development, but we’re also able to leverage [Donnelly]’s expertise as a music educator to design the interactions in those games and promote early childhood musical education.” PEARL often collaborates with local universities with game design programs to create interesting projects that capture the kids’ attention. “What we’ve found in the past is if you take a bunch of clinicians and a bunch of well-meaning engineers and you ask them to create games for therapy, they tend to be really bad games,” said Biddiss with a laugh. “By including the people who really know what they’re doing in terms of game development, we’re able to provide much better gaming experiences for kids. We think they deserve the best of everything, not just a boring computer activity that is trying to dress up a therapy task that isn’t really much fun.” How Games on Demand works The game jam will begin at 10 p.m. Pacific on November 30 and end at 4 p.m. Pacific on December 3. Along with Chircop, the other organizers are Ian Todd, Courtney Brennan, Monica Meikles, Flannery Jefferson, Leanne Ferguson and Terry Kerr. Developers can opt to participate online, or if they’re local to Toronto, a limited amount of workspace is available at the office of BiblioCommons , one of Games on Demand’s sponsors. Chircop says that developers don’t have to adhere to many rules. The only two requests, aside from what the kids want, is that the game must be free and that it has to be playable on PC or Mac so that families won’t have trouble with software compatibility. The way Games on Demand has been fielding requests is by asking parents to fill out a simple form with their kids. “We tried to set expectations, so they understand these are just going to be simple games, not a big triple-A game or anything like that, just something simple,” said Chircop. “For example, it has things like, what would you like your character to be named? What would your character look like? Would you like to submit a picture or drawing? One request is a girl would like to have her bunny in the game. She sent a picture of a bunny with a name. It’s really adorable.” 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. "
5,223	2,017	"China sending its 'Jade Rabbit' rover to the moon this weekend \| VentureBeat"	"https://venturebeat.com/offbeat/china-sending-its-jade-rabbit-rover-to-the-moon-this-weekend"	"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 sending its ‘Jade Rabbit’ rover to the moon this weekend 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. China is set to become the third Earth nation to successfully land an object on the surface of the Moon later this weekend. The country’s space program is planning to launch its new “Jade Rabbit&#822#8221; (aka Yutu) rover on Sunday via its its Chang’e-3 lunar probe. If successful, this will be the first mission to the Moon’s surface since the Russians did it 37 years ago. The six-wheeled rover will explore the moon’s Sea of Rainbows, when it lands on the surface — two weeks after its launch in mid December. Afterwards the rover will continue exploring the moon’s surface for resources. The Chinese agency also plans to set up an astronomical telescope and test connectivity between the earth and the moon, according to Chinese news site China.org.cn. Meanwhile, Europe’s ESA said it plans to help track China’s probe and its Rabbit rover from the time it launches until the rover reaches the Moon’s surface. It will do this by using two antennas to find the the rover’s location with “extreme accuracy.” Via The Verge 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. All rights reserved. "
5,224	2,017	"Zagster enters the bike-sharing fray with Pace \| VentureBeat"	"https://venturebeat.com/mobile/zagster-enters-the-bike-sharing-fray-with-pace"	"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 Zagster enters the bike-sharing fray with Pace Share on Facebook Share on X Share on LinkedIn Zagster believes its Pace bikes have an advantage because they can be locked to something. 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. Zagster , an operator of old-style docked bike services, is unveiling Pace , a new brand for a modern bike-sharing service that offers what it calls a smarter way to share bikes. Rivals such as LimeBike, Spin, and Cycle Hop have moved into the U.S. market more quickly, but Zagster hopes to offer the benefits of “dockless” bike sharing while adding a simple innovation: You have to lock the bike to something. Like other bike-sharing services, you can use your mobile phone to sign up for the service and then use it to unlock a bike. You can ride the bike around for a fee and then leave it wherever you want, rather than having to return it to a dock, as many earlier sharing services required. But while this is convenient for the rider, it has resulted in a lot of bike litter, with bikes left scattered in places where they don’t belong. This problem is not unique to Zagster, of course. My kid saw a LimeBike in a lake in Seattle, thanks to some pranksters. Zagster’s Pace service, however, has a two-point security system that requires bikes to be locked to fixed objects, not just themselves. This mitigates theft and abuse and makes sure the discarded bikes don’t block public paths or roads. You can also return the bike to a dock, as Zagster has operated big networks of docked bikes in the past and places bike racks in key areas to maximize ridership. Pace will debut in Tallahassee, Florida; Albuquerque, New Mexico; Rochester, New York; Knoxville, Tennessee; and Huntsville, Alabama. Each launch will happen before April 1, 2018. With Pace, you download a free app on the App Store or Google Play. You tap the app to unlock a bike, and rides cost $1 per half hour. “With Pace, Zagster is ushering in a new era of mobility for American cities and universities, furthering its mission to make the bike the most loved form of transportation,” said Timothy Ericson, founder and CEO of Zagster, in a statement. “As we bring Pace to new cities like Tallahassee and our existing customers like Albuquerque, Rochester, and Huntsville — dramatically increasing the size of each of their fleets in the process — we will become the largest dockless bike share provider in North America, with hundreds of thousands of shared bikes.” Above: Zagster uses docks if you want them. Zagster beta-tested Pace’s model and features from July through October in Rochester, New York, with good results. When compared to station-based bike shares in similar cities, the Pace model achieved an 800 percent increase in ridership in the first 90 days of service. “With the arrival of Pace, the success we’ve seen by offering our citizens a flexible, modern bike-share service can be brought to other cities across the country,” said Rochester mayor Lovely Warren, in a statement. “In its first season of operations in Rochester, Zagster has become a vital and integral component of our city’s existing transportation network and shown its willingness to be a true community partner. Thanks to the Zagster’s efforts, we have been able to demonstrate how a dynamic bike-share system can play an important role in our efforts to create more jobs, safer and more vibrant neighborhoods, and better educational opportunities for our citizens.” Cambridge, Massachusetts-based Zagster was founded in 2007 and operates more than 200 bike-sharing services across 35 states. Zagster CEO Tim Ericson said in an email that the original Zagster was designed for more controlled environments, like small cities, corporate campuses, and real estate properties. These programs were smaller and based on docks, where companies paid for the bikes on a subscription basis. Pace is designed for sharing bikes across universities or whole cities, where the bikes can be parked at dock stations but are not necessarily tied to them. In an email, Ericson said: Most of the players in the dockless space are clones of one another with incredibly minor differentiators, and they’re taking a narrow, shortsighted approach. Pace sees the bike share industry really differently. We take a holistic approach, and offer a dockless model that’s better in three big ways. First, we don’t dump bikes and walk away. We partner with cities to intelligently design bike shares to fit the specific needs and environment of each community where we work, and to fully integrate bike sharing into the community at large. Second, we have a proven model that’s better for cities. Unlike competitors, we fundamentally believe that bikes should lock to things. Our bikes feature a two-point security system to ensure bikes lock to fixed objects — not just to themselves — to mitigate theft and abuse and preserve public right of way. Third, Pace offers the reliability of dedicated bike share hubs, plus the freedom of point-to-point travel, and ‘hold’ capabilities for mid-rental stops. Essentially, Pace has all of the benefits of dockless with none of the drawbacks, offering a solution that will work long term. What’s really exciting is that we’re essentially a sleeping giant. Zagster anticipated the trends now playing out in the industry, and quietly equipped all of our bikes with dockless functionality we were prepared to turn on should our customers want that capability. So, if we were to flip the Pace switch for our 98 existing city and college bike shares, we would immediately boast the largest dockless bike share network in North America. 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. "
5,225	2,017	"Qualcomm files new patent infringement complaints against Apple \| VentureBeat"	"https://venturebeat.com/mobile/qualcomm-files-new-patent-infringement-complaints-against-apple"	"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 Qualcomm files new patent infringement complaints against Apple Share on Facebook Share on X Share on LinkedIn Qualcomm 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 ) — Qualcomm Inc said on Thursday it filed three new patent infringement complaints against Apple Inc (AAPL.O), saying there were 16 more of its patents that Apple was using in its iPhones. The new complaints represent the latest development in a long-standing dispute and follows Apple’s countersuit on Wednesday against Qualcomm, which alleged that Qualcomm’s Snapdragon mobile phone chips infringed on Apple patents. Apple declined to comment on the new cases, referring to its earlier claims in its Wednesday filing that the company has developed its own technology and patents to power its iPhones. Qualcomm in July accused Apple of infringing several patents related to helping mobile phones get better battery life. That case accompanied a complaint with the U.S. International Trade Commission seeking to ban the import of Apple iPhones that use competing Intel Corp chips because of the alleged patent violations. The three cases filed Thursday were all filed in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of California in San Diego. One of the cases is a companion civil lawsuit to a new complaint also filed Thursday with the ITC that seeks the same remedy of banning iPhones with Intel chips. The other two cases are civil patent infringement lawsuits. The dispute between Apple and Qualcomm over patents is part of a wide-ranging legal war between the two companies. In January, Apple sued Qualcomm for nearly $1 billion in patent royalty rebates that Qualcomm allegedly withheld from Apple. In a related suit, Qualcomm sued the contract manufacturers that make Apple’s phones, but Apple joined in to defend them. Qualcomm in November sued Apple over an alleged breach of a software agreement between the two companies. Apple emailed Qualcomm to request “highly confidential” information about how its chips work on an unidentified wireless carrier’s network, Qualcomm alleged, but Apple had copied an Intel engineer in the email for information. Separately, Qualcomm is facing a lawsuit from the U.S. Federal Trade Commission over many of the same pricing practices Apple names in its complaints. 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. "
5,226	2,017	"Microsoft Edge for Android and iOS launches out of preview \| VentureBeat"	"https://venturebeat.com/mobile/microsoft-edge-browser-arrives-on-android-and-ios-for-everyone-in-select-markets"	"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 Edge for Android and iOS launches out of preview 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. We knew it was coming, but Microsoft has finally launched its Edge browser for Android and iOS devices. The company introduced preview versions of the app last month, but now the app is available for everyone in certain markets. The iOS incarnation is available in the App Store today in the U.S., U.K., France, and China, while the Android incarnation is launching in those markets in addition to Australia, Canada, and India. “We look forward to bringing MS Edge for iOS and Android to additional markets and languages over time,” noted Windows and Devices corporate VP Joe Belfiore, in a blog post. Above: MS Edge The Edge browser is basically Microsoft’s replacement for its previous Internet Explorer browser, and it represents the company’s attempt at reinventing its browser for the modern age with a focus on “lightweight” and cross-platform functionality, including password support. The browser is available for Windows 10, Windows 10 Mobile, Xbox One, and now Android and iOS too. “We have a long list of new features to build and improvements to make,” added Belfiore. 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. "
5,227	2,017	"IDC: Wearables grew 7.3% in Q3 2017, Xiaomi and Fitbit tied for first ahead of Apple \| VentureBeat"	"https://venturebeat.com/mobile/idc-wearables-grew-7-3-in-q3-2017-xiaomi-and-fitbit-tied-for-first-ahead-of-apple"	"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: Wearables grew 7.3% in Q3 2017, Xiaomi and Fitbit tied for first ahead of Apple Share on Facebook Share on X Share on LinkedIn A wearable fitness band made by Xiaomi 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 Q1 2017, Xiaomi took the wearables crown from Fitbit. The Chinese powerhouse has managed to hold on in Q2 and now Q3, where Fitbit has regained ground and tied it. (Until this year, Fitbit was indisputably first every single quarter.) Mobile companies shipped a total of 26.3 million wearables worldwide in Q3 2017. That number is up 7.3 percent from the 24.5 million units shipped in Q3 2016. The latest figures come from IDC, which found that all five of the top companies managed to ship at least a million units. Samsung, which dropped out of the top five in Q2, is still missing from the list: As you can see above, Xiaomi slipped 1.5 percentage points (from 15.2 percent to 13.7 percent), thanks to shipping 100,000 fewer units. IDC noted that the company still has a diversification like no other — it launched its own line of smart footwear, for example. But the majority of Xiaomi’s shipments remain within its home country of China. Fitbit’s market share, meanwhile, dropped 8.2 percentage points (from 21.9 percent to 13.7 percent) as the company shipped 1.8 million fewer devices. The company is in a period of transition with the debut of its first smartwatch. Still, this is the company’s fourth consecutive quarter of year-over-year decline. Apple gained 3.0 points, thanks to shipping an additional 900,000 units. The Apple Watch Series 1 and Series 2 are now mature products, and the Series 3 helped it maintain momentum. It would appear consumers are at least mildly interested in a cellular-connected version that offers a smartphone-free experience. Huawei gained 3.5 points to 6.0 percent, while Garmin slipped 0.5 points to 4.9 percent. Both are a far cry from the double-digit percentage shares of their competitors. “The differing trajectories for both smart and basic wearables underscore the ongoing evolution for the wearables market,” IDC research manager Ramon Llamas said in a statement. “Basic wearables — with devices coming from Fitbit, Xiaomi, and Huawei — helped establish the wearables market. But as tastes and demands have changed towards multi-purpose devices — like smartwatches from Apple, Fossil, and Samsung — vendors find themselves at a crossroads to adjust accordingly to capture growth opportunity and mindshare.” Overall, the wearables market remains very small. Vendors are still testing the waters by pushing a wide variety of offerings, from fashion accessories to smartphone replacements. The huge amount of data collected behind the scenes is what gives the category immense potential, but is also why consumers remain cautious. 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. "
5,228	2,017	"Google's new Datally app helps you track and conserve your mobile data \| VentureBeat"	"https://venturebeat.com/mobile/googles-new-datally-app-helps-you-track-and-conserve-your-mobile-data"	"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’s new Datally app helps you track and conserve your mobile data 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. Google has taken another small step forward in its mission to connect the “next billion” users with a new app designed to optimize your mobile data usage. Datally for Android has been in testing for several months in the Philippines, and now it’s ready for prime time globally. How it works To activate Datally, you will have to give the app access to many facets of your device, including giving it the ability to “make and manage calls,” “send and view SMS messages,” and view the device’s location. But then again, any app that wants to monitor background processes on your smartphone will need fairly comprehensive access to the device. Datally offers a Data Saver feature that allows you to block data from certain apps or to block all background data usage, which would effectively mean only the app that’s currently active on your screen is consuming mobile data. The app also tracks real-time usage of each app that’s currently in use, something Google likens to a “speedometer” for your data. It also shows you which apps are consuming the most data. Additionally, Datally can surface nearby public Wi-Fi hotspots to help save data on your mobile plan — you may also be prompted to rate the quality of a network so Google can learn whether it’s any good. Above: Datally: Activate Moreover, Datally serves up a bunch of stats showing how you use your mobile data on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis, while a graph also breaks things down on an hour-by-hour basis. This overview may help you determine that one specific app is responsible for the majority of your mobile data usage, and you can change your behavior accordingly — rather than downloading your work PDFs on the train to the office, for example, you can wait until you’re on a speedy Wi-Fi network instead. Above: Datally: Manage data New features coming up, according to Google, include the ability to check your balance and receive a reminder when your monthly billing cycle is about to expire, and Datally will also be able to serve up notifications warning you when you’re using too much data. It is worth noting here that quite a few existing apps — and Android itself — already offer many of these features. But some users may be happier giving device access to Google, which already knows a lot about us, than to a random third-party company. Plus, Datally does actually offer a pretty slick interface. Next billion Google has made no secret of its plans to target the “next billion” internet users — it wants to encourage more people to invest in smartphones and, subsequently, use Google services. In emerging markets such as India, Google has been rolling out Wi-Fi services to hundreds of train stations , a program that recently expanded into other parts of Asia. Back in April, the company rolled out a new “offline first” YouTube app specifically for India, and it’s also wooing locals with a new peer-to-peer payments app. But people in emerging markets aren’t that only ones who want to conserve data, which is why Datally is being made available everywhere. And in addition to worrying about mobile data consumption, smartphone users are concerned about physical storage on their device, which is an issue specifically for those with lower-end devices with limited built-in capacity and why Google launched a dedicated file-management app a few weeks back. Datally is available globally now for any phone running Android 5.0 (Lollipop) and above — which is roughly 80 percent of all Android phones currently in use. 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. "
5,229	2,017	"Apple and Stanford University study uses new Apple Watch app to detect abnormal heart rhythms \| VentureBeat"	"https://venturebeat.com/mobile/apple-and-stanford-university-study-uses-new-apple-watch-app-to-detect-abnormal-heart-rhythms"	"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 and Stanford University study uses new Apple Watch app to detect abnormal heart rhythms Share on Facebook Share on X Share on LinkedIn Apple Heart Study app 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. Apple has teamed up with Stanford Medicine for a study that uses a new Apple Watch app to help determine whether a user is experiencing abnormal heart rhythms. Available for iPhone and Apple Watch users in the U.S., the Apple Heart Study app uses the heart-rate sensor on the underside of the Apple Watch to gather data. The study represents a “first-of-its-kind” research project to establish the potential use of wearables such as Apple Watch to detect atrial fibrillation (AFib) — a condition associated with an increased risk of strokes and heart failure. Needless to say, early diagnosis and treatment of irregular hearth rhythms can help prevent more serious complications. As part of the study, participants — that is, anyone who installs the app and is aged 22 years and over — who may have an irregular heart rhythm will receive a notification on their watch and their iPhone, and will be invited to attend a free medical consultation and be fitted with an electrogram (ECG) patch for continued monitoring. Above: Apple Heart Study app To be clear, this is less about diagnosing than it is about providing ongoing screening — the Apple Watch is not yet a regulated medical device. The in-built sensor uses LED lights and “light-sensitive photodiodes” to detect the amount of blood flowing through the wearer’s wrist, gathering signals from four separate points. The watch then uses algorithms to isolate heart rhythms from other “noise.” “Through the Apple Heart Study, Stanford Medicine faculty will explore how technology like Apple Watch’s heart rate sensor can help usher in a new era of proactive health care central to our Precision Health approach,” noted Lloyd Minor, dean of Stanford University School of Medicine, in a press release. Healthy living Apple has long touted the Apple Watch as much more than a simple wearable for tracking your steps or receiving notifications from your phone. Back in 2014, the company launched the HealthKit platform and Health app with a view toward collecting health metrics such as blood pressure, heart rate, and stats on diet and exercise. A year later, Apple announced ResearchKit for medical researchers , which — in conjunction with the Apple Watch , particularly — opens up new avenues for carrying out health studies at scale. “Every week, we receive incredible customer letters about how Apple Watch has affected their lives, including learning that they have AFib,” said Apple COO Jeff Williams. “These stories inspire us, and we’re determined to do more to help people understand their health. Working alongside the medical community, not only can we inform people of certain health conditions, we also hope to advance discoveries in heart science.” 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. All rights reserved. "
5,230	2,017	"Xenoblade Chronicles 2 review -- proof JRPGs belong on Switch \| VentureBeat"	"https://venturebeat.com/games/xenoblade-chronicles-2-review-proof-jrpgs-belong-on-switch"	"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 Xenoblade Chronicles 2 review — proof JRPGs belong on Switch Share on Facebook Share on X Share on LinkedIn Put on your mean faces! 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. I’ve been hopeful for the Nintendo Switch ‘s prospects as a new home for Japanese role-playing games. I love the genre, and the Switch’s capabilities as both a home console and a portable make it the ideal platform for these games. Playing on a TV gives you a proper display for epic stories and large worlds, but you can grind through enemies while using the system as a handheld. But the Switch has not had many JRPGs. Xenoblade Chronicles 2, which comes out on December 1, is the console’s first big test for this kind of game. And thanks to its fun combat, interesting setting, and deep progression systems, I’m convinced that the Switch has a great JRPG future ahead of it. Above: Oooooo. What you’ll like A neat world Xenoblade Chronicles 2 takes place in a world covered in fog, with people living on top of giant titans. It’s a similar setup as the original Xenoblade Chronicles, but this place is actually distinct and features new characters. You don’t need to have played any other game to understand what’s going on, which is a relief for someone like me (I only got about halfway through the original, so I’m happy this isn’t a direct sequel). 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 world is Miyazaki-esque, with plenty of airships and large, magnificent creatures strolling through open plains. Like other JRPGs, it mixes elements of steampunk with traditional fantasy fare like magic. But having major locations set on the backs of giant creatures makes things more interesting. Xenoblade is its most magnificent when you’re strolling open areas where parts of the titan, like its head, are moving in the distance. Beautiful music helps sell the wonder of the world. Above: Using Arts is a dance. Engaging combat Combat happens in real time, but this isn’t an action-RPG like Kingdom Hearts or Diablo. Characters automatically attack enemies, but they also have special moves (Arts) on cooldown. These have special properties, like healing allies or dealing extra damage based on your positioning (some moves hurt enemies more if you attack from the back). Your timing is also important. If you use an Art right when your character performs an automatic attack, you’ll receive bonuses. Notably, special moves will recharge faster. Computer-controlled allies will aid you in battle, but you also have help from Blades. These are the personified versions of your weapons. You can switch between Blades during a fight, which gives you access to different Arts and fighting styles. Some will focus more on healing, some will tank damage, and others have more attack power. They also have different elemental affinities, like fire or wind, that can give them advantages against certain enemies. Battles become an intricate dance of timing Arts and picking the proper Blade. Above: JRPG nerds like me love menus that look like webs. Deep progression Each Blade also has its own progression tree. They can unlock new abilities if you achieve certain requirements, like landing a certain number of critical hits. More of these become unlockable as you use a Blade more often. You also earn points that help you empower your arts. Strengthening your character goes much further. You can equip items on your party members and Blades to make them stronger or help protect you better. Buying and crafting this equipment can require scavenging materials or hunting monsters. It’s the kind of RPG that you don’t just run through with little thought of your characters’ growth. Above: The cutscenes are well animated, but smaller moments are more awkward. What you won’t like Presentation sloppiness Xenoblade Chronicles 2’s world is often beautiful, but its characters are a bit sloppy. They all have a slight cel-shaded look, but the hard lines are blurry and often highlight strange places (like a random out of place line on a nose). Animations often don’t look right, sometimes not exaggerated enough to convey the emotion of the moment. Characters also fall into familiar tropes. This stands out with Rex, the young, well-meaning, and good-nautured (aka kind of boring) hero. The voice work is hit or miss. The English cast mostly does a good job. But similar to the animation, performances often don’t match what’s going on in the scene. Some voices are over-the-top and cartoon-like, some are unique with non-traditional accents, and others are what you’d expect from a generic anime. Either of these styles would have worked fine, but it’s jarring to hear them all in the same game. And the words coming out often don’t match the movement of lips. It’s not the most technically impressive JRPG. Some of the larger cities and open vistas look good, but the denser areas clearly put a strain on the Switch’s hardware with lower framerates. Annoying voices Characters like to talk during battles. A lot. And they say the same things over, and over, and over again. It gets grating fast. Above: Heya, big guy. Conclusion It’s not a technical masterpiece, but Xenoblade Chronicles 2 is a deep and fulfilling JRPG. It’s a great game to show just how well this genre works with Nintendo’s newest system. If you like JRPGs with neat worlds and lot of systems that reward combat and planning, you’ll be able to spend a lot of hours in Xenoblade Chronicles 2. Score: 82/100 Xenoblade Chronicles 2 comes out for the Switch on December 1. Nintendo gave us a code for 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. 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. "
5,231	2,017	"The Infectious Madness of Doctor Dekker's FMV mystery will creep to Switch, PS4, and Xbox One \| VentureBeat"	"https://venturebeat.com/games/the-infectious-madness-of-doctor-dekkers-fmv-mystery-will-creep-to-switch-ps4-and-xbox-one"	"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 The Infectious Madness of Doctor Dekker’s FMV mystery will creep to Switch, PS4, and Xbox One Share on Facebook Share on X Share on LinkedIn The Infectious Madness of Doctor Dekker. 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. Full-motion video (FMV) once seemed like the peak of gaming technology in the early CD-rom days on systems like Sega CD. What could be more realistic than actual video of real actors? Sadly, compression and poor acting made most of these games more campy than good. But the genre isn’t completely dead. The Infectious Madness of Doctor Dekker is a new FMV game that is coming out this spring. You play as a psychiatrist trying to solve a Lovecraftian murder. The game randomly generates the guilty person, so you can play it more than once. It launched in May for PC, but coming to consoles can open it up to larger audience. Doctor Dekker could find eager players on the Switch. Nintendo’s new portable/home console hybrid has become a hot destination for digital and indie games. Developers have noted that their games, like Thimbleweed Park and Wonder Boy: The Dragon’s Trap , have sold best on Switch. The PC version was all text-based, but the console releases will suggest questions that you can ask. Systems that support keyboards, like the PS4, can still use the text-based system. 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. "
5,232	2,017	"The IndieBeat: Obelus's bleak future riffs off the familiar present \| VentureBeat"	"https://venturebeat.com/games/the-indiebeat-obeluss-bleak-future-riffs-off-the-familiar-present"	"Game Development View All Programming OS and Hosting Platforms Metaverse View All Virtual Environments and Technologies VR Headsets and Gadgets Virtual Reality Games Gaming Hardware View All Chipsets & Processing Units Headsets & Controllers Gaming PCs and Displays Consoles Gaming Business View All Game Publishing Game Monetization Mergers and Acquisitions Games Releases and Special Events Gaming Workplace Latest Games & Reviews View All PC/Console Games Mobile Games Gaming Events Game Culture The IndieBeat: Obelus’s bleak future riffs off the familiar present 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. A game about an intergalactic insurance salesman could only go in a few different ways. One is the Douglas Adams route with wackiness in outer space and planetoid construction sites. The other is Springloaded Software ‘s Obelus , which is a somewhat grim though cheekily surreal look at what humanity’s future might have in store. It’s a science-fiction tale that tackles our relationship with artificial intelligence, complacency versus happiness, and the meaning of it all. It’s currently raising funds on the crowdfunding platform Fig , and it’s in the last week of its campaign. Based in Singapore, Springloaded is a team of four plus founder James Barnard. He was a lead designer at LucasArts before he struck out and founded Springloaded in 2012. “When I left LucasArts I was like, ‘I’ll make games on my own!'” said Barnard in a phone call with GamesBeat. “So I picked up coding and I made like five tiny games on my own. I did everything on those. And then we got a publishing deal and I carried on programming. These days I write a lot of code, most of the code in our games, and I do all the music and work on the design stuff. This game is particularly mine as far as design goes because I’m so passionate about it.” Originally named “Goliath,” Obelus is on its surface about a man who travels the galaxy in a mech suit, meets people from all over, and sells insurance. It explores ideas that Barnard started thinking about while making mobile games. Springloaded has developed several, such as The Last Vikings, and a large part of succeeding in the mobile market is data collection. But data collection isn’t always something that people reject; in fact, some embrace 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! “Those things will be accepted by people because they’re things we think would make our lives better,” said Barnard. “And then in the end they wouldn’t make our lives better because we wouldn’t know what we felt anymore. The world around us would be manipulated to make us feel a certain way. We wouldn’t necessarily feel that thing. I think that’s actually not that far away in our future, and that’s really scary.” Here is an edited transcript of our interview. James Barnard: I was talking to someone about the game. They read a synopsis I wrote, and they said, “Where’s the joy?” [ Laughs ] Well, it’s kind of ironic that you’re in this ridiculous situation. It’s kind of funny if you’re willing to open yourself up to that. The game just gets more depressing as you go through it, I guess? GamesBeat: I guess there’s nothing fun about insurance. Barnard: Yeah. Well, the conversations you have with the people you meet are kind of ridiculous. You meet people who are tinfoil-hat-wearing, “I’m scared of everyone spying on me, I’m scared of the world manipulating me, I’m scared of people trying to sell me things,” everything. But it’s just—in the game, those people turn out to not be crazy. They’re telling the truth about everything. In much the same way, people taping over their laptop cameras—we feel like we’re super paranoid, but there may be a valid reason to do it. GamesBeat: Is that the inspiration for the game? I know in the campaign page it says that you tackle AI and big data. Is it all these modern paranoias that we experience? Barnard: Kind of. It actually comes from making mobile games. Mobile games are all about analytics that track our users. We put all these little data points in and collect everything. Then, as designers, we’re supposed to look at those data points and decide how to change our game to keep players addicted for longer and all that stuff. Obviously I started thinking about how—this was about five years ago, I guess, when I started doing it. I thought, well, if you write an algorithm that has an objective of making more money, and it tracks all these things and balances a game individually for people without even understanding what it’s balancing, you could potentially make a game that makes people spend more money. A lot of stuff is just about patterns. By following humans’ patterns we can ultimately understand everything about them without really knowing anything about them. Interestingly—I think if I know the things that make you feel motivated, like people put on the Rocky soundtrack when they’re going to exercise or whatever it is—if you find enough of those things about individuals, rather than people as a global mass, I think you can make people feel excited about going to work, make people feel lots of love for their partner, or whatever it is. Those things will be accepted by people because they’re things we think would make our lives better. And then in the end they wouldn’t make our lives better because we wouldn’t know what we felt anymore. The world around us would be manipulated to make us feel a certain way. We wouldn’t necessarily feel that thing. I think that’s actually not that far away in our future, and that’s really scary. So even though the game is set far in the future, I think it’s already really happening all around us. Maybe I sound like a crazy tinfoil hat person, but—it bothers me and I wanted to make a game that could communicate those ideas to people. What’s funny is I started thinking about the game three or four years ago. I started making something. When I told people about this theory, they’re like, no, it’s nonsense. Now I tell people about it and they’re more like, yeah, yeah, I can see that. My one worry is that by the time I finish the game everyone will be so deep into it, it won’t even be an interesting subject anymore. Across the world, oh yeah, that’s how the world works. GamesBeat: It becomes a slice-of-life story. Barnard: Yeah! Yesterday there was an ad company that fired a load of people and stripped down because they said the ad business has changed so much that people are now using programmatic advertising to target users, instead of, I’ll just advertise my game, or advertise my Coke can. They’re using AI to deliver adverts, and it’s to such an extent that we’re seeing people in traditional advertising businesses firing everyone. It’s really scary, because it means that the people with the most money, who have the most data, are able to basically rule the world by—say there are people in my game that are really good spenders or something, that allow me to make my indie free-to-play game into a business by using all this programmatic advertising and stuff that people spend a lot of money on. Eventually they’ll be able to mine all the people out of my game by figuring out what they respond to. It doesn’t seem that insidious as a thing. But when you start to think about the greater implications of it—they can track who you are as a consumer across the internet. If you turn on a mobile game or you’re reading a website, maybe they’ll end up—they’re talking about targeting adverts for the same product to different people. That’s already starting to happen, and it’s exactly the thing the game tries to highlight. What are you if you’re just being sold things or being told to do things in a way that makes you do them? Is it actually you anymore making decisions? A lot of people don’t necessarily feel this way. They think it’s okay. Well, they’re just giving me a thing I like more quickly. I don’t have to spend so long choosing. But I don’t really agree with that. I think it’s a bit crap. [laughs] If I can make people, when they’re playing the game, think about these concepts in the same way I do, regardless of if it’s true or not, who cares? If they can at least see my point of view when they’re playing the game, that would be really cool. I want this feeling of helplessness against the AI to come across in the game. GamesBeat: As the insurance salesman, then, are you trying to tailor your pitch to these characters that you encounter? How does that work? Are you trying to be like the programmatic ads and get people to buy insurance? Barnard: At the beginning of the game you’re quite happy. You’re just there living your perfectly ideal, content life, and the computer tells you things and you do them and you believe everything it says. These people that you’re selling insurance to, because they’re so terrified of computers and AI and stuff, they have defensive mechanisms, so your AI can’t talk to you. Different types of different people, but basically you’ll end up alone and away from the AI when you go and talk to them. So you’re trying to apply the things that the AI has told you, before going in, and you’re trying to use these soulless sales pitches, just like the ones we get on phones today, and then these guys will be like, screw you man, you’re brainwashed by the AI. They sow these seeds of doubt and question in your mind. And then they’ll say things like, just wait, he’ll say this to you. And then you’ll go back and he’ll say that to you. So the player is supposed to start trying to fight back against the AI. And you’ll be completely—I’m not sure whether or not the game is going to be entirely possible to play without ever fighting back, just playing through in ignorant happy bliss. But obviously curious players will start pushing at the edges of the thing. GamesBeat: Why did you change the name? What does “Obelus” mean in the context of this world? Barnard: I thought Goliath was a really good name, because I wanted people to think that Goliath was either the mech or some massive opponent you would come up against. I wanted it to be deliberately vague. In my mind Goliath was actually the insurmountable power of AI, you know? But it’s trademarked for use in video games by some company, so we had to change it. Obelus —I’m happy with the term “obelus.” I don’t think it sounds as strong as Goliath, because people don’t know how to pronounce it. They don’t remember the word because it’s weird. The meaning is really cool in the context of the game, but nobody knows it. Obelus is actually a division symbol. That’s called an “obelus.” The line with the two dots above and below? Obviously I’m talking about a division in lots of things, but primarily our free will. It’s being divided away from us, leaving us. The division of us and our free will. The choices we make are not going to be our own. The other thing obelus was used for in the past, the origination of the symbol, is that if people were reading a book or a manuscript or something and they didn’t believe what was written in the book – there was a chapter or a paragraph they thought was questionable – they would mark it with an obelus. The whole game is about that, about the computer talking to you and you questioning whether what the computer is saying is true or not. Or if it’s just there to make you do what it wants. That’s the strongest meaning of the word as it relates to the game. GamesBeat: Would you say that Obelus is ultimately an optimistic game? Or is it sort of a Nostradamus warning about what will happen if, 200 years from now, we just roll over and give in to our fate? What’s your emotional temperature here? Barnard: Well, to me it’s a very bleak game, because it’s how I feel. I genuinely think that in the future, the way we behave and think will be different. It’s already different to how it was 10 years ago. It’s influenced by our computers around us, our phones, things like that. But I think in much the same way—if you were someone who lived 100 years ago and you went out every day and did exercise and spent lots of time outdoors and you looked at us today, in boxes, not outside, sitting on our asses all day, typing on machines, you’d think the world had been destroyed and the future was the worst thing ever. And so those people that wrote—that predicted that in 1975, when they started seeing computers turning up, yeah, they were right, but are we unhappy? No, we’re quite happy. We’re okay. We don’t seem particularly bothered. I’m sure in the future, when people look back on a time like now, they’ll think, “Wow, people used to get moody and stuff?” I don’t know if it’ll be quite that extreme, but it’s potentially a very extreme version of what could happen in the future. GamesBeat: What’s it been like being in Singapore? We don’t hear of many big games coming out of there. What’s the community like? Is it difficult to find support locally? Where do you go to interface with other developers and talk about ideas or complain about the system or whatever else you need to do? Barnard: Well, you can’t complain about the system. It’s Singapore. The government will throw you out. [ Laughs ] When I started, there were obviously other indie studios and stuff, but I just—I woke up in my bedroom and started coding and that was it. It was very isolated. On the plus side of Singapore, as I started doing more stuff, I realized that–it’s a tiny, tiny country, and there’s—if you compare it to somewhere like San Francisco, there are so many developers in San Francisco and here it’s not like that. There’s not that many of us. But we still have Google and Apple and Amazon and Microsoft, all these big companies are here and they have big offices. Singapore is a big hub for southeast Asia. It’s a great way to meet the platform holders and stuff. It feels like a very open door in that way, which is great. That’s hard to get in other parts of the world, I think. The development scene here is growing. I’d say there are about 30 or 40 studios now. It’s still really in its infancy. I think that trying to get people to open up and go and meet each other and hang out is still challenging. We have the [International Game Developers Association]. They do events two or three times a year. The thing that’s really cool here is there’s a lot of people who are passionate about games. The school system has lots of courses about video games. There’s a lot of really interesting stuff. Every day I seem to meet somebody that I’ve not met before who’s now making games, which is terrifying in the global scheme of how many people are making games, but it’s cool on a local scene level. There are lots of exciting things going on. We haven’t had any breakout successes. But it’s getting better. This year Cat Quest just came out, if you know that game. GamesBeat: Do you have more people in China and Japan playing your games than, say, Western audiences? Barnard: We’re still mostly big in Europe and America. I think my sense of humor is just too weird for other countries. [ Laughs ] It’s definitely great for us to get access to understanding of other markets. That’s really cool. Here, free-to-play in mobile—mobile-wise, a lot of people play mobile games from all over the world. A lot of people here can read Japanese and speak Japanese to a degree, even though they’re Chinese or Singaporean. They’ll happily play Japanese games. I have people in my company who play Japanese games. They understand them fully and they’re really into them. I do feel like I have the full breadth of different game-playing demographics all around me. We’ve started trying to push in Japan and that’s going okay, but in China we’ve had no success, because Chinese people apparently don’t like pixel art? I don’t know if this is true. I just don’t know. But this is what every publisher tells me. They say, “We like your game, and if you redraw all the art in a different style it would be okay.” Apparently, because China’s access to technology is very different from people in the West, they didn’t grow up with pixel art. They didn’t play 8-bit games, and therefore pixel art is not something that has any—it doesn’t resonate with them as something that is retro and all that kinds of stuff. It doesn’t give them any memories or feelings of warmth—nostalgia, that’s the word I’m looking for. They just think it’s bad graphics. I don’t know. I find it hard to believe, because it’s not, it’s really cool. Japan is a challenge because Japan is a very individual market. We go to the Tokyo Game Show and things like that. I’ve been to a few conferences out there. GamesBeat: I wanted to touch quickly on Fig. It’s interesting that you’re raising on Fig as opposed to Kickstarter or Indiegogo. Can you tell me about that decision? Barnard: We tried a Kickstarter ages ago. I didn’t really put very much effort into it, and it totally didn’t work. I thought—basically I was making a game that I thought would be a guaranteed success. I’m asking for so little money. It’s going to work. I didn’t know anything about crowdfunding and I failed hugely. What Fig offered when I spoke to them was one-on-one support. They’re going to work with us to make sure the campaign’s correct. They’re going to promote it and make sure that, basically, we got all the knowledge they’ve earned through doing lots of campaigns themselves. It’s been like that. It’s been really good. We’ve had quite a lot of conference calls where we go through the assets I put on the store. The trailer that’s on there now is the second trailer I’ve made. The first trailer was generally regarded as suck-tacular. The tough thing about crowdfunding is the amount of effort you have to put in. Preparing the campaign, obviously you do a lot of work. You have to build a big chunk of the game. Looking at other people’s crowdfunding campaigns, the ones that we were kind of inspired by, things like Narita Boy and Hyper Light Drifter—it looks like they’ve finished the game! When you watch the trailer you’re like, “Wow, that’s the whole game.” If I were to do it again, if Fig doesn’t go through, I think we’d just carry on developing the game in down time, messing around, and we’d do a campaign when we were in more of a situation where the game was closer to being its final vision. But at that point, you don’t know if you need the funding. It’s a bit strange. I’m really excited, though. I hope I can get to make this thing and freak people out. Make them throw their computers in the toilet, through their phones out the window, things like that. Obviously, I don’t really want that. I’m trying to come up with some inspirational quote for you to close your thing with, but that’s not it, really. IndieBeat is GamesBeat reporter Stephanie Chan’s new weekly column on in-progress indie projects. If you’d like to pitch a project or just say hi, you can reach her at [email protected]. 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. Games Beat 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. "
5,233	2,017	"Google launches Poly API for AR/VR assets in Unity and Unreal \| VentureBeat"	"https://venturebeat.com/games/google-launches-poly-api-for-ar-vr-assets-in-unity-and-unreal"	"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 launches Poly API for AR/VR assets in Unity and Unreal 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. Google launched Poly in early November as a way for developers to find 3D assets for their virtual reality and augmented reality projects. Today, it’s releasing the Poly API to streamline the process of including those assets. Poly has a library of creative commons 3D objects and scenes, and folks can also upload assets they’ve made using Google’s VR creation tools Blocks and Tilt Brush. You could also feasibly upload models you’ve created with a tool outside the Google ecosystem, such as Oculus’s Medium , since the Poly library accepts standard object and material file types. Once a developer has found an asset they’d like to use, the new Poly Toolkit enables them to quickly import it into Unity and Unreal Engine projects. Google has created sample projects for ARCore and ARKit as examples to get developers started. Users can search through the Poly library using filters such as keywords and date updated, as well as by model complexity. It’s not the only resource for VR and AR assets. For instance, the Unity Asset Store has a number of 3D models as well as scripts for things like camera movement. Some marketplaces, such as CGTrader , also sell 3D models. However, everything in the Poly library is free. 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. "
5,234	2,017	"Capcom is celebrating Mega Man's 30th anniversary with some kind of live stream \| VentureBeat"	"https://venturebeat.com/games/capcom-is-celebrating-mega-mans-30th-anniversary-with-some-kind-of-live-stream"	"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 Capcom is celebrating Mega Man’s 30th anniversary with some kind of live stream Share on Facebook Share on X Share on LinkedIn My money's on Mega Man. 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. Capcom is going to host a livestream celebrating Mega Man’s 30th anniversary on December 4. You’ll be able to watch it on Twitch at 11 a.m. Pacific. Capcom announced the stream by sending out cards to some outlets, including Siliconera. The card includes the note, “You won’t want to miss it.” Mega Man was once one of Capcom’s most important franchises, but the series has laid mostly dormant since 2010’s Mega Man 10. Outside of collections and bad mobile games , the franchise has hosted more cancellations (including Mega Man Universe and Mega Man Legends 3 ) than new releases in recent memory. Yet Mega Man remains an iconic character. The series has inspired merchandise , rock bands , and comics. A new cartoon based on Mega Man is also coming out next year. Combine all that with the retro revolution , and it seems like Mega Man is ready for a comeback. The first Mega Man came out for the Nintendo Entertainment System in 1987. The 2D sidescroller combined platforming with shooting action. It inspired sequels and spinoff series, including the edgier Mega Man X, the 3D role-playing games Mega Man Legends, and card-based Mega Man Battle Network. It used to feel like you couldn’t turn a corner without seeing a new Mega Man game. But that ended around 2010. That’s when Keiji Inafune, who was something of a shepard for the franchise, left Capcom. The studio then cancelled all current Mega Man projects, as if in retaliation. 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! Capcom has been easing back into the series. The last couple of years saw the releases of Mega Man Legacy Collection and Mega Man Legacy Collection 2, which together brought the original Mega Man series, 1 through 10, to PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC. Mega Man showed up as a playable character in Nintendo’s Super Smash Bros. for 3DS and Wii U, and X appeared in this year’s Marvel vs. Capcom: Infinite along with other characters from that series. Mega Man has also been a part of Nintendo’s new classic consoles. Mega Man 2 is included with the NES Classic Edition , while the SNES Classic Edition has Mega Man X. Hopefully, Capcom is about to treat Mega Man more like Street Fighter , another classic series that it still supports with modern games. 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. "
5,235	2,017	"KSV acquires the Samsung Galaxy League of Legends esports team \| VentureBeat"	"https://venturebeat.com/esports/ksv-acquires-the-samsung-galaxy-league-of-legends-esports-team"	"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 KSV acquires the Samsung Galaxy League of Legends esports team Share on Facebook Share on X Share on LinkedIn The Samsung Galaxy team won the recent League of Legends World Championship Finals in Beijing. 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. KSV, the esports team company started by Kabam cofounder Kevin Chou, is announcing today it has acquired Samsung Galaxy, an esports team that recently won the big League of Legends world championship title. The addition of the South Korean team gives KSV control of four major esports teams across games such as League of Legends, Overwatch, Heroes of the Storm, and PlayerUnknown’s Battleground. The common thread is that all of the teams are based in South Korea, where esports is a kind of religion. KSV believes that its focus on the Korean teams will help it become a contender in the global esports market, since the Koreans are so competitive in esports, which is expected to become a $1.5 billion to $2.5 billion market by 2020 , according to market researcher Newzoo. Chou, CEO of KSV in San Francisco, said in an interview with GamesBeat that his team started contemplating how to get a League of Legends team as soon as they formed their new esports startup, KSV. Above: The League of Legends World Championship in Beijing. Chou and Kent Wakeford spent years building Kabam into a mobile gaming giant and selling it (in parts) for more than $800 million to Netmarble and Fox. Then, under KSV, they bought the right to a franchise of Blizzard Entertainment’s Overwatch League in South Korea, a hotbed for esports. The price was an estimated $20 million. 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 Overwatch purchase was the beginning, but even at that point, we knew we should figure out how to get into League of Legends,” Chou said. “If we could get both, we knew that would be what is necessary to field a true esports team to compete on a global level.” Samsung was the sole sponsor of the Samsung Galaxy team, which won the League of Legends World Championship in Beijing three weeks ago. Riot Games’ League of Legends is a multiplayer online battle arena game that is one of the most popular online games in the world. The Beijing finals drew more than 40,000 fans to the physical Olympic stadium, and it was watched by 60 million unique viewers online. Samsung Galaxy swept the back to back world champions SK telecom T1 in a 3-0 Finals series to win the finals and take home nearly $1.5 million in prize money. “I’m excited about competing in League of Legends World Championships with KSV,” said Kang “Ambition” Chan-yong, the team captain of Samsung Galaxy, in a statement. “For me, it has been a long road with League of Legends, with some tough challenges along the way. The coaching staff and teammates have always had my back, and we will work our way up to victory once again with KSV.” Above: The winning Samsung Galaxy team at the League of Legends World Championships. In addition, KSV announced the opening of a Shanghai office to support the extensive fan base of all of KSV’s teams throughout China. Wakeford said that the company has also opened a new office in Shanghai, China, to develop a business for its esports teams there. Weiwei Geng has been appointed the general manager for China for KSV. Wakeford said that office will help the company develop a more global business. Of Samsung Galaxy, Chou said, “We spent a lot of time understanding the market. They have been dominant for a long time.” At first, Chou thought it would be a longshot to get the team away from South Korean conglomerate Samsung. But his team talked to the advertising agency involved and they started discussions. So far, all of the teams will be based in Seoul, but they’ll move to Los Angeles to get ready for the first season starting in December and January for the various games. KSV will be renamed later as a consumer-facing brand, Chou said. “Esports is the wild wild west when it comes to financial management and valuation,” Chou said. “Our business case is unique. We are not trying to be a me-too company. The Korean teams are strong, but they haven’t tried to do media or sponsorship on a global level. Samsung was the only sponsor for the Galaxy team.” Chou said his company is in discussions with more sponsors. 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. "
5,236	2,017	"ESP Gaming launches as premier production company for esports \| VentureBeat"	"https://venturebeat.com/esports/esp-gaming-launches-as-premier-production-company-for-esports"	"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 ESP Gaming launches as premier production company for esports Share on Facebook Share on X Share on LinkedIn ESP Gaming produces high-end esports events. 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. ESP Gaming is a new production company for esports and competitive gaming events. Spun off from the team that produces the Poker Central events, ESP Gaming will work with big companies such as Amazon to stage broadcast-quality esports events. ESP’s team has more than 20 years of live event sports production experience, including productions of events like the X-Games, Olympics, NFL and World Series of Poker. ESP Gaming wants to become an industry leading source of premium experiences and content for game developers, esports teams and gaming communities. ESP Gaming will be a sister company to Poker Central, which partners with broadcast TV giants ESPN, NBC, and CBS. “We developed our expertise at Poker Central producing World Series of Poker events for ESPN,” said Jeff Liboon, president of ESP Gaming, in an interview with GamesBeat. “We formed ESp out of that group to stage world-class esports tournaments.” Las Vegas-based ESP Gaming has already handled major events with partners CJ Network/Com2Us and Amazon Appstore. It staged Com2Us’ Summoners War World Arena Championship: World Finals last week at the Microsoft Theater in Los Angeles. It is also holding the Champions of Fire tournament taking place from December 2 to December 3 Time Inc. Studios in New York. 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: Jeff Liboon, president of ESP Gaming. The focus in the events is on making the esports athletes more interesting to follow by telling stories about them with video interviews, Liboon said. “We produce quality and premium content,” he said. In 2018, ESP Gaming will produce events with top gaming developers on PC, console and mobile. ESP Gaming started doing smaller white-label events for others in 2016. Liboon brings years of prior work experience from Amazon Appstore, Popcap Games, and DoubleDown Casino/IGT Interactive. He is joined by other noteworthy industry leaders, including chief digital officer Jr. McCabe, formerly of Time Inc.; vice president of operations David Lee, formerly of ESL; and vice president of production Mori Eskandani, who is also executive producer of programs such as Poker After Dark, the World Series of Poker and ESPN Billiards. In addition to its production capabilities, ESP Gaming is also offering ESP Labs as an investment arm for securing esports investments in games, platforms and products. This service gives partners access to ESP Gaming’s production services, distribution resources and gaming partnerships to help expedite growth. ESP Gaming has 10 employees now and it could have 25 or 30 by the end of the year, Liboon said. “There is a lot of hype around the esports industry,” he said. “The media coverage. Attention. At its core, competition in games is a big driver of engagement. We have found new ways to get people engaged and make it friendly for larger audiences.” To do esports broadcasts right, you have to curate the material for the right audience. If it is a general TV viewership, you have to make the programs shorter and more focused on storytelling. If you are livestreaming, then the programming should be done in a different way, Liboon said. In 2018, the company will focus on producing events for others. Over time, it will create its own original esports content, such as documentaries or video shorts. 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. "
5,237	2,017	"Uptake raises $117 million to spot inefficiencies in industrial machinery \| VentureBeat"	"https://venturebeat.com/entrepreneur/uptake-raises-117-million-to-spot-inefficiencies-in-industrial-machinery"	"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 Uptake raises $117 million to spot inefficiencies in industrial machinery 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. Uptake , a predictive analytics software provider based in Chicago, announced today that it has raised a $117 million Series D round. The round was led by Baillie Gifford, a U.K.-based venture capital firm, with participation from Revolution Growth, which is led by AOL cofounder Steve Case. Cofounded in 2014 by Groupon cofounder Brad Keywell, Uptake reportedly reached a valuation of $2 billion earlier this year. The company’s software helps its enterprise customers collect and analyze sensor data on industrial machinery and equipment in a variety of industries, including agriculture, aviation, and energy. Uptake’s pitch is that its software can then help customers figure out how to run their machines more efficiently. In a case study listed on Uptake’s website, the company claims that it helped a subsidiary of Berkshire Hathaway Energy save $250,000 in one week after it “detected a wind turbine equipment problem and recommended action in the first week of deployment.” Other customers include Caterpillar, an Illinois-based manufacturer of farm equipment, and Panduit, a manufacturer of communications, IT, and other physical infrastructure equipment. Uptake is tight-lipped about its operations — declining to share the average contract size for an Uptake customer — but it has been on a fundraising tear, having raised $90 million in a series C round earlier this year. News about the company’s series D round comes just a few weeks after an announcement that Caterpillar, an early investor in Uptake, is pulling its stake in the company , though it plans to remain a customer. “We both agreed it was important for Uptake to be independent of any equipment manufacturer, so as a result we bought back the Uptake shares that were held by Caterpillar. They continue to be an important customer and utilize our products on a global basis,” Keywell, who is Uptake’s CEO, said in a statement emailed to VentureBeat. According to the press release, the new round of financing will “enable Uptake to accelerate its global expansion in key industries.” 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. "
5,238	2,017	"How Detroit's automotive roots made it a hub for transportation startups \| VentureBeat"	"https://venturebeat.com/entrepreneur/how-detroits-automotive-roots-made-it-a-hub-for-transportation-startups"	"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 How Detroit’s automotive roots made it a hub for transportation startups Share on Facebook Share on X Share on LinkedIn Detroit, Michigan 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. Six years and 59 days ago, I moved from San Francisco to Detroit. My friends thought I was crazy moving from one of the fastest-growing American cities to one of the most downtrodden. But I saw an opportunity: the potential for Detroit, an iconic American city, to reinvent itself and become a leader once again. At the time I didn’t know what it was. But today it’s clear. In Detroit, we’re seeing a shift from manufacturing vehicles to creating software and services. This is the future of automotive mobility: freely moving people and goods from point A to point B. It’s the automotive industry adding a layer of software and services to enable new ways to get around, like a car that drives itself or transportation on demand. The Motor City is becoming the Mobility City. How the momentum started Detroit and the automotive industry had two massive crises that forced a hard reset for both. First, Detroit became the largest U.S. municipality to ever file for bankruptcy in July 2013. Then, the automotive industry experienced a global industry crisis from 2008 to 2010. Both the city and the automotive industry had to go through a hard reset that was like ripping off a Band-Aid. It was painful, but then the healing process could begin. First, there had to be a restart of Detroit’s entrepreneurial and business resurgence. Dan Gilbert kickstarted this reset by signaling a “buying opportunity in Detroit,” moving Quicken Loans to downtown Detroit in May 2010. Second, the automotive industry sought to change the city’s image with Chrysler’s February 2011 Super Bowl commercial “Imported from Detroit.” Together, these things started to renew interest in the Motor City. The right foundational strengths Setting aside the city’s automotive history, Detroit and the surrounding region throughout Michigan are home to other ingredients that have supported this rise in building the future of mobility. Talent and industry expertise. Over 90,000 engineers are employed in Michigan across 375 automotive R&D centers, 60 of North America’s top 100 automotive suppliers, and 12 assembly plants. Additionally, Michigan is home to 15 universities and colleges with nationally ranked undergraduate engineering programs. Regional advantages. Detroit is still in the Eastern Time Zone, but it is far enough west to offer reduced travel time to a majority of the United States. Detroit Metro Airport is one of the largest airline hubs in the country, offering 1,100 flights to 4 continents daily. The Ambassador Bridge, connecting Detroit to Canada, is the busiest international border crossing in North America in trade volume. Also, compared to the coasts, Detroit benefits from much less congestion and lower total costs for operating and growing businesses. Investments from early entrants When you combine the ingredients above — talent, industry expertise, and regional advantages — the foundation is there for Detroit to position itself as a leader in the future of automotive mobility. But it still took the efforts of a few early entrants to set the stage for Detroit’s resurgence. Density in downtown Detroit. Fueled by Dan Gilbert’s Bedrock and the Ilitch Family’s “District Detroit,” massive amounts of construction are transforming Detroit. As a result, suburban-based automotive companies like Lear Corporation and Adient are opening offices in downtown Detroit, near GM’s world headquarters. They are joining other high-tech companies that have moved to Detroit including Quicken Loans, Google, Microsoft, Amazon, and Twitter. Joining the commercial boom is the residential boom in downtown Detroit. Young professionals are flocking to Detroit to experience the rebirth of the city and escape the exorbitant costs of the coasts. This demand is driving a boom in residential construction. Curbed Detroit mapped out 41 new residential developments that will bring thousands of new apartments and condos to Detroit in the next few years. Government support. There have been $13.9 billion in automotive-related investments in Michigan since 2012. In 2016, Governor Rick Snyder passed a bill clearing the way for automotive companies and tech companies like Uber and Lyft to start testing self-driving vehicles on public roads. Michigan also ranks first in the nation for connected and autonomous vehicle projects, as well as in mobility-related patents. Growing entrepreneurial and VC community around mobility. Fontinalis Partners , a firm started by Bill Ford, was the first VC fund in the world to invest in the future of mobility. Techstars Mobility , of which I am the managing director, was the first startup accelerator in North America to invest in seed-stage mobility startups. Both are headquartered in downtown Detroit. Thirty minutes away you can find RPM Ventures and eLab Ventures and, a little farther, Grand Ventures , all investing in mobility startups as well. Across Michigan, there are 22 venture capital firms and 8 angel groups investing in mobility startups. There are 141 venture-backed startups, a 48 percent increase in the past 5 years. I wrote more about why I love the Detroit startup scene in this post. Some of these startups include Lunar Wireless, May Mobility, Spatial, SPLT, and Ushr. Collaboration among startups, industry, government, and academia The most significant driver catapulting Detroit forward, however, is collaboration and the spontaneous collision of ideas and connections across the region. Techstars Mobility has invested in and brought 33 startups from around the world to Detroit since June 2015. The program has facilitated over 7,000 relationships between mobility startups, Fortune 500 corporations, universities, and government officials leading change in the future of transportation. In 2015, University of Michigan launched Mcity , the first purpose-built proving ground for testing connected and automated vehicles and technologies in simulated urban and suburban driving environments. Funding partners include BMW, Bosch, Delphi, Ford, GM, Honda, Intel, Toyota, and many others. There’s also the American Center for Mobility , the only facility like it in the world: It’s on a mission to accelerate development of voluntary standards for connected and automated vehicles through a collaboration of industry and government. This nonprofit is a joint initiative with the State of Michigan, in partnership with the Michigan Department of Transportation, the Michigan Economic Development Corporation, the University of Michigan, and other organizations. In October, MICHauto, The Detroit Regional Chamber, Michigan Economic Development Corp., and WeWork announced the launch of the PlanetM Landing Zone , which will serve as an environment for connected and automated transportation startups to connect with Detroit’s automotive and economic development network. Anchoring the region is the North American International Auto Show, annually held in Detroit in early January for the past 30 years. In 2017, the show launched Automobil-D , an expo featuring 180 brands, ranging from automakers to suppliers to tech startups, as well as universities and government organizations. Startups were a key component of the largest mobility startup expo in North America at an auto show. Detroit’s changing image One of the more significant challenges Detroit faced was how the world perceived it. Six years ago that image was anything but positive. But today, that has changed. The New York Times named Detroit one of the top 52 places in the world to go in 2017. Lonely Planet named Detroit the No. 2 place in the world to visit in 2018. Silicon Valley may still be first in the nation in terms of the total number of tech startups. But my friends who thought I was crazy for leaving San Francisco for Detroit are now amazed at my foresight. I tell them that it wasn’t foresight but belief — a belief that Detroit had the right ingredients to reinvent itself. Ted Serbinski is the managing director of Techstars Mobility. 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. "
5,239	2,017	"How a startup and funding boom is having a seismic impact on Europe's economy \| VentureBeat"	"https://venturebeat.com/entrepreneur/how-are-startup-and-funding-boom-is-having-a-seismic-impact-on-europes-economy"	"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 How a startup and funding boom is having a seismic impact on Europe’s economy 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. A sweeping new report about European startups from venture firm Atomico paints a picture of a cross-border ecosystem that is brimming with confidence and having a transformative effect on the continent’s workforce. “ The State of European Tech 2017 ,” the third annual data set Atomico has compiled, was released today at the Slush tech conference in Helsinki, Finland. While the 143-page report covers a wide range of topics, it reaffirms the feeling among many on the right side of the Atlantic that years of a startup groundswell is now creating a robust tech economy that has a distinctly European flavor. “We think the European tech ecosystem is the healthiest it’s ever been,” said the report’s author, Tom Wehmeier, a partner and head of research at Atomico. “We think the solid foundation we’ve seen being built over many years is allowing Europe to march to its own drum.” The evidence of this momentum includes $19 billion invested into European startups in 2017, already surpassing the $14.4 billion recorded in 2016. And the continent is on pace to see more than 50 startups raise rounds bigger than $50 million, up from 43 in 2015. Wehmeier points to several factors that he believes demonstrate that Europe is not simply trying to mimic Silicon Valley, but creating something distinct. The first is the distribution and diversity of the landscape. While the U.K. is still the continent’s unquestioned leader in terms of startups and fundraising, startup hubs are emerging across Europe, from the Nordics to Spain to Eastern Europe. Two of the largest funding rounds this year were raised by companies in the Netherlands (Picnic, $110 million) and Spain (Cabify, $100 million). This creates more variety, more chances for cross-pollination of ideas and cultures, and a wider pool for talent, he said. The second characteristic is the growth of so-called “deep tech.” Atomico identified $3.5 billion of investments into deep tech companies in Europe, up 40 percent from 2016. Even better is that many of them are raising large, late-stage investments that will help them remain independent, Wehmeier said. Third, European startups are much more open to working with established corporate players. Atomico tracked 637 investments into startups in 2017 that included at least one corporate investor, up 600 percent from 2012. The firm estimates that 20 percent of Europe’s venture investments come from corporations. Finally, the continent’s leaders are embracing government policy and regulation as a competitive advantage. With groundbreaking advances in technologies like autonomous driving, artificial intelligence, and blockchain, governments are putting in place regulatory reforms to make their countries more attractive to potential startups by signaling their support as well as putting in a clear set of rules on how to operate, Wehmeier said. These factors have combined to drive a surge in Europe’s tech workforce, which is growing three times faster than all other sectors of the continent’s labor market. For all this success, plenty of challenges remain, Wehmeier said. While investment capital has grown, it still remains far behind the levels seen in Silicon Valley. The Atomico survey also revealed growing anxiety in the U.K. over the potential impact of Brexit. And finally, there are still some countries, such as Italy, that have not fully embraced an innovation economy. “It’s a challenge to encourage those places so they can get to those next levels,” he said. “But I think that’s not a question of if that will happen, but when.” 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. "
5,240	2,017	"Farmers Business Network raises $110 million to bring price transparency to agriculture \| VentureBeat"	"https://venturebeat.com/entrepreneur/farmers-business-network-raises-110-million-to-bring-price-transparency-to-agriculture"	"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 Farmers Business Network raises $110 million to bring price transparency to agriculture Share on Facebook Share on X Share on LinkedIn A Farmers Business Network customer using the company's platform 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. Farmers Business Network , maker of a software platform that helps farmers across the country pool data, announced today that it has raised a $110 million Series D round. The round was led most notably by Temasek, Singapore’s state investment firm. Other participants included returning investors Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and GV (formerly Google Ventures). The series D round brings the total amount raised by Farmers Business Network to more than $194 million. The company was launched in 2014, and its leadership team is well-connected within Silicon Valley. Cofounder and CEO Amol Deshpande was formerly a partner at KPCB, and cofounder and VP of product Charles Baron previously led investment initiatives in alternative energy at Google. That background has enabled Farmers Business Network to secure a large amount of venture capital in a field that’s traditionally been overlooked by VC firms. According to AgFunder , an online investment platform for ag tech startups, venture capitalists invested $3.2 billion in agtech startups during all of 2016. A membership to Farmers Business Network costs farmers $600 a year. Customers then get access to three different types of services: an analytics platform, where farmers can submit information on things like seed performance and fertilizer cost; an ecommerce platform, where farmers can buy chemicals, seeds, and fertilizers; and a crop marketing platform that allows farmers to manage bids from potential buyers. Essentially, what Farmers Business Network is doing is collecting crowdsourced information for farmers in one place. But Baron explained that up until now, doing so had been difficult, due to consolidation in the seed and agrichemical industry. Baron’s brother-in-law is a farmer, while Deshpande worked on agtech investments for KPCB. Baron says that the idea for Farmers Business Network came to them while they were meeting with various farmers across the country, including three farmers in Illinois who essentially compared price points with one another, though without the help of a platform like Farmers Business Network. According to Baron, Monsanto and Dupont “control over 70 percent of the corn and soybean seed market.” That alone limits the variety of seeds farmers have access to. Additionally, Baron says that many farm retailers — who sell seeds, fertilizers, and chemicals that often come from one of these big players — don’t post their prices online. That means farmers often have to go into the store in order to find out what the retail price is. This leaves room for price discrepancies, as retailers may try to sell a farmer on a bundled package, or offer ad hoc discounts. “We’ve found farmers paying sometimes as much as two or three times [more] for the same product,” Baron told VentureBeat. Baron says that it has nearly 5,000 member farms, which account for more than 16 million acres of farmland between them. The company has more than 200 employees, mostly split between its San Carlos office and its national operations center in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. Rob Leclerc, cofounder and CEO of AgFunder, told VentureBeat in a phone interview that, as of now, Farmers Business Network remains relatively unchallenged. “If you talk to VPs and heads of business development [of incumbent companies], Farmers Business Network is on their radar,” Leclerc said. ” I don’t think they really have a solution today… in many cases for different groups to compete with Farmers Business Network they’re going to have to somehow cannibalize what they’re doing — that’s going to be challenging for these players to figure out.” 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. "
5,241	2,017	"European startups face an epic gender balance fail that rivals Silicon Valley \| VentureBeat"	"https://venturebeat.com/entrepreneur/european-startups-face-an-epic-gender-balance-fail-that-rivals-silicon-valley"	"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 European startups face an epic gender balance fail that rivals Silicon Valley Share on Facebook Share on X Share on LinkedIn CEO and founder of Jobbatical Karoli Hindriks stands in the company's Tallinn, Estonia headquarters. 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. Silicon Valley gets a deservedly bad rap for its attitudes toward women in tech and for their lack of representation among startups and venture capital firms. It turns out, Europe’s startup aren’t much better. Even more problematic, it seems, is that European entrepreneurs think they’re doing a great job with gender balance, which means they are oblivious to reality. That is one of the conclusions from the sweeping “ State of European Tech 2017 ” report released today by Atomico at the Slush tech conference in Helsinki, Finland. Recognizing and addressing this profound gender balance is one of the key challenges Europe’s tech ecosystem must overcome if it’s going to continue its momentum, according to the report’s author, Tom Wehmeier, a partner and head of research at Atomico. “It’s clear that for tech in Europe, like everywhere, there is a serious imbalance between men and women,” he said. Atomico’s data shows that women only account for 9 percent of top executive slots at European startups. In Europe’s venture capital industry, women only hold 13 percent of decision-making positions. Oddly, European entrepreneurs, both men and women, seem to think things are great. According to an Atomico survey, 60 percent of women and 52 percent of men agreed that “gender diversity is positively reflected in employee composition” at their companies. That’s a very different dynamic than in the U.S., where surveys tend to show that more than 80 percent of men think they’re crushing it when it comes to gender balance, but only around 20 percent of women would agree. As Wehmeier notes, this is really a global problem. A Crunchbase report from earlier this year found that only 17 percent of startups around the world have a female founder. And another Crunchbase report from October indicated that for the top 100 venture firms, only 8 percent of the partners are women. 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. "
5,242	2,017	"Bitcoin tops $11,000, but fades after sharp rally \| VentureBeat"	"https://venturebeat.com/commerce/bitcoin-tops-11000-but-fades-after-sharp-rally"	"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 Bitcoin tops $11,000, but fades after sharp rally Share on Facebook Share on X Share on LinkedIn Bitcoin is a volatile cryptocurrency. Brian Fargo will create his own, dubbed Iron. 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. ( Reuters ) — Bitcoin zoomed past $11,000 to hit a record high for the sixth day in a row on Wednesday after gaining more than $1,000 in just 12 hours, stoking concerns that a rapidly swelling bubble could be set to burst in spectacular fashion. After soaring more than 1,000 percent since the start of the year, bitcoin rose as much as 15 percent on Wednesday, but by mid-afternoon in New York, the virtual currency was trading at $9,500, down 3.7 percent on the day on Luxembourg-based Bitstamp BTC=BTSP, one of the largest and most liquid cryptocurrency exchanges. “As many seasoned traders know all too well, anything that rockets higher, tends to fall down faster when the time comes, and the time will come,” James Hughes, chief market analyst at FX broker AxiTrader, said. Bitcoin topped $10,000 for the first time in early Asia trading, before surging above $11,000 less than 12 hours later to reach $11,395. Bitcoin’s rapid ascent has led to countless warnings that it has reached bubble territory. But the warnings have had little effect, with dozens of new crypto-hedge funds entering the market and retail investors piling in. (For a graphic on Bitcoin price rockets, click reut.rs/2zPekGm) London-based Blockchain.info, one of the biggest global bitcoin wallet-providers, told Reuters on Wednesday that it had added a record number of new users on Tuesday, with more than 100,000 customers signing up, taking the total number to more than 19 million. The evidence suggests that few of the users are buying bitcoin to use it as a means of exchange, but are speculating to increase their capital. “What’s happening right now has nothing to do with bitcoin’s functionality as a currency – this is pure mania that’s taken hold,” said Garrick Hileman, a research fellow at the University of Cambridge’s Judge Business School. Hileman, who last week gave a lecture to the Bank of England on the risks of bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, also flagged the risk of the whole market collapsing entirely. “There’s always the possibility that some fundamental cryptographic flaw that we can’t solve craters the whole space, or that regulators unite and decide this represents systemic risk and actually could trigger the next financial crisis,” he said. “Exit Ramps” Created in 2008, bitcoin uses encryption and a blockchain database that enables the fast and anonymous transfer of funds outside of a conventional centralised payment system. It has far outstripped gains seen in any traditional asset classes or currencies this year. Its rise accelerated in recent months as exchanges such as the CME Group Inc and the Chicago Board Options Exchange announced plans to offer futures contracts for the cryptocurrency. On Wednesday, a source with knowledge of the matter said Nasdaq Inc plans to launch a futures contract based on bitcoin in 2018. Sceptics say it is a classic speculative bubble with no relation to real financial market activity or the economy – most famously JPMorgan boss Jamie Dimon, who labelled it a “fraud”. But even Dimon and others who say bitcoin represents a bubble – now the consensus view among mainstream investors – do not deny its price rise could still have further to go. “It’s got all the shapings of your tulip bubble chart (but) that tells you nothing about where that price line could go depending on the number of people who wish to own it,” Standard Life’s head of investment strategy, Andrew Milligan, said on Wednesday. “Who is to say it doesn’t reach $100,000?” In some emerging markets, bitcoin had hit well over $10,000 previously. In South Korean exchanges, too, bitcoin was already close to $11,000 or higher early this week. On Zimbabwe’s local exchange golix.com bitcoin touched a new high of $18,500 on Wednesday before retreating to $18,000. 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. "
5,243	2,017	"Sommetrics Adds Prominent Healthcare Leaders to Board of Directors and Advisory Board \| VentureBeat"	"https://venturebeat.com/business/sommetrics-adds-prominent-healthcare-leaders-to-board-of-directors-and-advisory-board"	"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 Sommetrics Adds Prominent Healthcare Leaders to Board of Directors and Advisory Board Share on Facebook Share on X Share on LinkedIn SAN DIEGO–(BUSINESS WIRE)–November 30, 2017– Sommetrics , a company providing products and services to improve sleep quality, today announced the addition of Raymond Huggenberger to its board of directors and Randall Whitfield to its advisory board. Earlier this month, the company announced its partnership with AvantSleep in Canada to distribute aerSleep TM , Sommetrics’ sleep apnea therapy system. Sommetrics also recently engaged Key West Investments to help raise additional capital to support the development and commercialization of products and services to treat disorders of the upper airway, such as obstructive sleep apnea and snoring. “Ray and Randy are icons in our field of respiratory care,” said Richard Rose, M.D., Sommetrics’ CEO and board chair. “They bring decades of global experience in successfully launching products embodying new technologies like our aerFree TM and aerSleep TM devices. They also have important insights into marketing strategies that are disruptive and can lead to rapid product uptake in the marketplace. We are very pleased they have decided to join Sommetrics.” With more than 20 years of operational experience in the healthcare industry, Huggenberger is the former CEO of Inogen (NASDAQ: INGN), a medical technology company that develops, manufactures and markets oxygen concentrators. Prior to joining Inogen, he held executive leadership roles with leading companies including Sunrise Medical and the healthcare division of TA Triumph Adler. At Sunrise Medical, Huggenberger held several positions spanning more than a decade, including president and chief operating officer from 2002 to 2004. “With its disruptive technology and passionate team, Sommetrics is poised to dramatically and positively change the way sleep apnea and sedation-related apnea are treated,” said Huggenberger. “I’m looking forward to being a part of this journey and contributing to the company’s commercialization.” Whitfield joins Sommetrics’ advisory board with nearly four decades of business experience and more than 15 years in the respiratory industry. He led various business groups at Philips Healthcare including hospital respiratory care, emergency care and resuscitation, anesthesia care, and therapeutic temperature management. Whitfield was also the president of the critical care business unit at Respironics, as well as the president of Puritan Bennett. “This is an exceptionally exciting time in Sommetrics’ growth. The healthcare industry is in need of a substantial shift in sleep apnea therapy, and I believe Sommetrics’ technology will precisely address this need,” said Whitfield. “I’m pleased to join Sommetrics’ world renowned group of experts.” Earlier this year, Sommetrics’ aerSleep TM received Health Canada approval – allowing it to be marketed in Canada. The company also recently announced a distribution agreement with Smiths Medical for aerFree TM , Sommetrics’ acute care device that aids in keeping a patient’s upper airway open during mild to moderate sedation. About Sommetrics Sommetrics is a privately funded company located in San Diego. It is primarily focused on improving sleep quality by providing products and services that deal with disorders of the upper airway such as obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) and snoring. In addition, the company has developed products that address sedation-related compromise of the upper airway during medical procedures. For more information, visit www.sommetrics.com and follow the company on Twitter , Facebook and LinkedIn. 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. All rights reserved. "
5,244	2,017	"Farmer's Business Network, Inc. Announces $110 Million Series D Funding \| VentureBeat"	"https://venturebeat.com/business/farmers-business-network-inc-announces-110-million-series-d-funding"	"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 Farmer’s Business Network, Inc. Announces $110 Million Series D Funding Share on Facebook Share on X Share on LinkedIn SAN CARLOS, Calif.–(BUSINESS WIRE)–November 30, 2017– Farmers Business Network SM , the independent farmer-to-farmer network, announced a $110 million Series D funding round, led by funds and accounts advised by T. Rowe Price Associates, Inc. and Temasek. Previous investors Acre Venture Partners, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, GV (formerly Google Ventures) and DBL Partners also participated in this round. The latest investment will be used to expand the company’s offerings, including its digital crop marketing, FBN Direct ™ , and farm analytics services, as well as expand internationally to Canada. With the backing of premier investors and nearly 5,000 member farms, the FBN SM Network is poised to help farmers in all regions and crops fundamentally revamp how they do business and maximize their earnings. “ Farmers Business Network fiercely advocates for farmers – democratizing information, providing market transparency, and leveling the playing field through networking,” said Charles Baron, Co-Founder and VP of Product. “We’re bringing growers the transformative power of a digital farm economy. By connecting farmers digitally, farmers are empowered through network-enabled agronomic insights, transparent online input purchasing, and a global crop marketing network to drive profitability even in the toughest markets.” “The pressure this year is greater than ever to save money. Between the input savings and what I’m realizing on the crop marketing premiums, my FBN membership could be worth $90 per acre,” said Pat Duncanson, a farmer from Minnesota. “I’ve committed almost half my acres this year to the crop marketing program and I’m wondering if that’s not enough. It gives me transparency around the prices I’m paying, and has given the grower more power in the market to get premiums. With the seed intelligence I get through FBN Seed Finder, I am unequivocally able to find and buy seeds with confidence.” This investment comes on the heels of rapid growth of the FBN Network in just two and half years since its commercial launch. The FBN Network now serves over 16 million acres of farmland (a land area larger than West Virginia) throughout 42 states and Canada. “Having the buy-in and long-term support of world-class, independent investors is fundamental to our mission of serving family farms. This funding brings massive firepower to the FBN Network. We now have over 200 employees and soon will bring hundreds more high-tech jobs to rural America,” said Amol Deshpande, CEO and Co-Founder. Creating an Independent Farm Economy to Put Farmers First SM The idea for the FBN Network originated from farmers who wanted to create an independent, farmer-driven information and commerce network. In the past, important information such as fair market input prices, real-world seed performance, or optimal grain delivery points were hidden from farmers or difficult to determine. The FBN Network makes all this information transparent in a no frills way – driven by real-time statistics from its millions of acres of member farms. With the price transparency and online purchasing through FBN Direct, farms have commonly saved tens of thousands on inputs, even as much as $120,000 in a single year. Yearly FBN membership costs only $600 with no punishing acreage fees, making it easily affordable for farms of all sizes. This latest round brings the company’s total equity funding to nearly $200 million. The company’s investors have been inspired by the potential to create a better farm and food economy for farmers and consumers through digital technology. For more information, visit farmersbusinessnetwork.com. About Farmer’s Business Network, Inc. Farmer’s Business Network, Inc. is an independent farmer-to-farmer network, built by and for Farmers, representing Farmers First SM. FBN members receive comprehensive farm benchmarking, real world seed performance, input optimization and pricing analytics based on over 115 million acre events of real-world precision agronomic data. The FBN Direct e-commerce platform provides national, transparent pricing on ag chemicals, fertilizers, seeds, technology and services. FBN Crop Marketing TM provides farms premium contracts, production contracts, risk management, and price intelligence powered by a global buyer network. The FBN Network has grown to over 16 million acres of member farms in the US and Canada. Blending the best of Midwestern agricultural roots and Silicon Valley technology, the company has offices in San Carlos, California, and a National Operations Center in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, and employees spanning 25 states and Canadian provinces. The FBN Network’s mission of creating a better farm economy has earned the support of world-class technology investors GV (formerly Google Ventures), DBL Partners, Kleiner Perkins Caufield Byers LLP, Bow Capital, Acre Venture Partners, Temasek, and T. Rowe Price. To learn more, visit: www.farmersbusinessnetwork.com. About T. Rowe Price Founded in 1937, Baltimore-based T. Rowe Price Group, Inc., is a global investment management organization with $971 billion in assets under management as of October 31, 2017. The organization provides a broad array of mutual funds, subadvisory services, and separate account management for individual and institutional investors, retirement plans, and financial intermediaries. The company also offers sophisticated investment planning and guidance tools. T. Rowe Price’s disciplined, risk-aware investment approach focuses on diversification, style consistency, and fundamental research. For more information, visit troweprice.com or the company’s Twitter , YouTube , LinkedIn , and Facebook sites. About Temasek: Incorporated in 1974, Temasek is an investment company headquartered in Singapore. Supported by 10 offices internationally, Temasek owns a S$275 billion (US$197b) portfolio as at 31 March 2017, mainly in Singapore and the rest of Asia. Our portfolio covers a broad spectrum of industries: financial services; telecommunications, media & technology; transportation & industrials; consumer & real estate; life sciences & agribusiness; as well as energy & resources. Our investment activities are guided by four investment themes and the long term trends they represent: Transforming Economies; Growing Middle Income Populations; Deepening Comparative Advantages; and Emerging Champions. For more information on Temasek, please visit www.temasek.com.sg 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. All rights reserved. "
5,245	2,017	"Dublin spending $24 million to transform a ferry building into a startup campus \| VentureBeat"	"https://venturebeat.com/business/dublin-spending-24-million-to-transform-a-ferry-building-into-a-startup-campus"	"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 Dublin spending $24 million to transform a ferry building into a startup campus Share on Facebook Share on X Share on LinkedIn Rendering inside of Dublin's proposed Harbour Innovation Campus. Dublin is about to become the latest European city to join the startup campus craze. Today, the city announced a proposal to create The Harbour Innovation Campus. The proposed campus was described as a “state-of-the-art shared innovation space for local and international companies” that will have 75,000 square feet and room for 1,000 members across its former arrivals hall, departure lounge, baggage hall, and ticket office buildings. Externally, the historic building will remain unchanged, but internally the building will be repurposed to serve the needs of a world-class innovation campus while offering stunning sea views from almost every desk. The former ferry building is situated on Dublin Bay, about 20 minutes from the city center. The proposal is being spearheaded by local businessman Phillip Gannon. “Dublin yearns for it’s own coastal innovation hub, and this is it,” Gannon said in a statement. “Inside the Harbour Innovation Campus, founders, innovators, and entrepreneurs will find several VC funds, a wide range of trained mentors, and numerous business advisors all focused on helping occupants to grow their businesses.” Gannon noted that Brexit “continues to create uncertainty for U.K. and European relations” and said he hopes the new campus can leverage that situation to attract more startups to Ireland. The new campus will include a maker space for “creative prototype design in wood, metal, plastic, and electronics.” It will also offer space for larger corporations that want to rub shoulders with startups. Building a startup campus is a thing now in Europe, with Paris, London, Berlin, Lisbon, Helsinki and Venice all making their claim. Though quite large, the new Dublin startup campus would be about a fifth the size of Paris’ Station F, the mega startup campus that opened last summer. 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. All rights reserved. "
5,246	2,018	"Chrome for Windows will start blocking third-party software injections in 2018 \| VentureBeat"	"https://venturebeat.com/business/chrome-for-windows-will-start-blocking-third-party-software-injections-in-2018"	"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 Chrome for Windows will start blocking third-party software injections in 2018 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. Next year is going to be big for Chrome, if you believe everything Google has announced so far: going to war against low-quality ads , autoplaying content with sound , and unwanted redirects. The company today added a smaller, but still significant, initiative to its to-do list: reducing Chrome crashes caused by third-party software on Windows. Google notes that roughly two-thirds of Windows Chrome users “have other applications on their machines that interact with Chrome, such as accessibility or antivirus software.” Before Chrome got extensions, third-party software needed to inject code in Chrome to function properly. Because Chrome users with software that injects code are 15 percent more likely to experience crashes, Google is now planning to block third-party code injection on Windows starting next year. Blocking code injection will take place in three phases — here is Google’s timeline for this Chrome for Windows project: VB Event The AI Impact Tour Connect with the enterprise AI community at VentureBeat’s AI Impact Tour coming to a city near you! April 2018: Chrome 66 will begin showing affected users a warning after a crash, alerting them that other software is injecting code into Chrome and guiding them to update or remove that software (pictured above). July 2018: Chrome 68 will begin blocking third-party software from injecting code into Chrome processes on Windows. If this blocking prevents Chrome from starting, the browser will restart and allow the injection, but also show a warning that guides the user to remove the software. January 2019: Chrome 72 will remove this accommodation and block code injections full stop. There are, however, some exceptions for the last point — not all third-party solutions will be blocked. Google promises that Microsoft-signed code, accessibility software, and IME software will not be affected. If you develop Windows software that works with Chrome, Google is encouraging you to switch Chrome channels and test your code. The company specifically mentioned the Beta channel , but it’s likely these changes will first show up in the Dev or Canary channels even sooner. 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. "
5,247	2,017	"AWS relaunches Cloud9 collaborative development environment, a year after acquisition \| VentureBeat"	"https://venturebeat.com/business/aws-relaunches-cloud9-collaborative-development-environment-a-year-after-acquisition"	"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 AWS relaunches Cloud9 collaborative development environment, a year after acquisition Share on Facebook Share on X Share on LinkedIn Amazon CTO Werner Vogels speaks at AWS re:Invent in Las Vegas on November 30, 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. Amazon Web Services launched a new service today that’s designed to provide developers with a full development environment running in its cloud. Called AWS Cloud9 , it’s designed to give developers a collaborative workspace for writing code and running the terminal commands necessary to create and deploy software. Using AWS Cloud9, developers will be able to provide read-only or read and write access to their workspace for other collaborators, who will then be able to concurrently edit code and chat about changes they’re making. The software integrates with AWS Lambda, the cloud provider’s service for running short, event-driven code functions, as well. Above: A screenshot shows the AWS Cloud9 editor. Live collaboration is important for the practice of pair programming, when two people work together to write code and smash bugs. But more than that, it’s also useful for providing assistance with tricky bugs, or just give one engineer a window into the work someone else is doing in real time. Because Cloud9 is running on AWS, people don’t have to sit next to one another in order to see what’s going on. Live collaboration has become a key feature for developer tool companies over the past several months. Microsoft announced live collaboration for its Visual Studio development environment a few weeks ago, while GitHub recently announced a new feature for its Atom text editor that provides co-editing capabilities. 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 service is based on the cloud provider’s acquisition of Cloud9 last year. Workspaces that users have created through Cloud9’s website will continue to run, according to an AWS blog post. People who want to move to AWS Cloud9 from the previous environment will be able to do so using migration tools that the company plans to provide later. Cloud9 comes preloaded with users’ AWS credentials, so that they can right away start running terminal commands that perform actions on the company’s cloud platform. It’s integrated with AWS Lambda to provide debugging of cloud functions, so that users will be able to see how their code will run before deploying it in production. What’s more, AWS Cloud9 will be able to pull in any Lambda function users can access through the cloud platform for coding and debugging, even if they didn’t initially write it using Cloud9. The news comes as part of AWS re:Invent, the cloud provider’s major customer conference in Las Vegas. Earlier today, the company announced Alexa for Business , a series of integrations that are designed to bring Amazon’s virtual assistant to the office. 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. "
5,248	2,017	"AWS Lambda gets Go support and a tool for sharing serverless apps \| VentureBeat"	"https://venturebeat.com/business/aws-lambda-gets-go-support-and-a-tool-for-sharing-serverless-apps"	"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 AWS Lambda gets Go support and a tool for sharing serverless apps Share on Facebook Share on X Share on LinkedIn Amazon CTO Werner Vogels speaks at AWS re:Invent in Las Vegas on November 30, 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. Amazon Web Services has been at the forefront of a new cloud application development model since it launched its Lambda service in 2014. That service offers developers a “serverless” environment where they can write code that runs in response to outside events. Today, it got more powerful with a series of updates announced at the cloud provider’s customer conference in Las Vegas. Lambda gained support for the Go programming language that originated at Google, and will go on to support .NET Core 2.0, an open source version of Microsoft’s popular programming language. Functions can now use up to 3GB of RAM to run, and AWS also provided developers with additional controls for how many of their functions can run concurrently. On top of that, the company announced a new Serverless Application Repository, which is a service that lets customers share and import collections of functions that perform particular tasks. Once users find an application that they want to deploy, it’s possible to bring them into a business’ AWS account with a few clicks. This moves should help drive more people to AWS’ serverless platform — and attract new developers to Lambda, thanks to its support for additional languages. AWS is locked in tight competition in the cloud space, and this new programming model, which promises to let developers be more efficient, could help drive a ton more cloud use. 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 Serverless Application Repository in particular could help businesses get started with the new programming model by providing them with pre-built apps that already solve problems they want to tackle. Making it possible for developers to focus on code while handling the underlying infrastructure has been a key theme of this year’s AWS re:Invent conference. Yesterday, the cloud provider announced a new serverless version of its Aurora database service , along with a Fargate feature for its container orchestration capabilities that lets developers deploy containerized applications while having the platform manage the machines running them. 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. "
5,249	2,017	"5 industries primed to leap forward into AR \| VentureBeat"	"https://venturebeat.com/business/5-industries-primed-to-leap-forward-into-ar"	"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 5 industries primed to leap forward into AR Share on Facebook Share on X Share on LinkedIn DigiLens enables augmented reality overlays. 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. With a powerful new camera and advanced sensor technology, the latest round of iPhone products has unlocked new possibilities in the realm of augmented reality (AR). Now more than ever, today’s developers are fully equipped to craft next-level experiences that blur the lines between the consumer’s screen and the physical world around them. For brands, these developments present a massive opportunity to engage customers in a way that sets themselves apart from the competition. At a time when businesses are struggling to gain organic attention on mobile devices, marketers in a wide array of verticals can enhance their customer’s real-life surroundings by using sponsored 3D item or a unique multimedia overlay. With the right AR experience, the end user will be able to see something they’ve never seen before, simply by dragging a 3D item into their camera view or waving their phone’s viewfinder across a physical space. Here are some ideas on how five industries can adopt AR right now. Live events In September, Apple demonstrated how Major League Baseball is using AR to enhance the live experience inside the stadium. When users hold the viewfinder over the field of play, those fans can now see real-time information and stats for the game they’re watching. While this is certainly an exciting use, it’s only scratching the surface of what’s possible for AR in live events. 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! Live events are a natural use case for AR, as they present an environment where people will already be using their cameras to snap photos and videos. At a concert, AR has the potential to amplify a musician’s stage presence with 3D props or an animated digital overlay. When done right, AR can teleport audience members into a new, immersive experience that is complementary to the performance they’re attending. In addition to providing value to the consumer, live-event AR experiences can give the sports league or concert promoter new opportunities to sell brand sponsorships. Fashion/beauty As anyone who’s ever ventured through a department store knows, trying on a bunch of clothes can be an exhausting, time-consuming process. But rather than spending an entire day going in and out of fitting rooms, an effective AR app would allow consumers to “try on” a new outfit — without having to pull clothes off the rack. This creates a shopping experience that is more fun and more efficient for the customer. In a similar vein, Topology Eyewear is a new AR app that uses face-scanning technology to help you design customized glasses, requiring that customers simply take a video selfie of their face with their iPhone. AR can be especially useful when it comes to other accessories such as earrings, which people don’t always have the chance to try on in-store — and cosmetics. Imagine AR letting a shopper know what a shade of lipstick, makeup or eyeshadow will look like when applied to her face, instead of forcing her to guess based on what the products look like when smeared on her wrists. AR also allows people to try more cosmetics products in one sitting, as they’ll no longer need to wash everything off when they want to test a new shade. Transportation AR allows public and private transportation companies to make commuting a little more predictable and a whole lot easier. By creating AR-powered bus stops, these organizations could allow riders to see a live map showing exactly where their bus is and how long it will take to reach them — just by holding their phone up near the stop. This will give people the information they need to quickly decide whether they should continue waiting or start looking for an alternate route to get to their destination. Augmented reality can also be tremendously helpful for vehicle drivers. The key lies in using data to create a more transparent, more convenient experience for the customer. When done correctly, a transportation AR experience also creates a valuable sponsorship placement for consumer brands. Travel/hospitality When walking through an unfamiliar city, tourists are unlikely to know much about their surroundings. Maybe the dive bar they’re about to pass is hosting an up-and-coming indie band later in the evening, or maybe the hotel one block over has an incredible restaurant inside. Either way, this lack of knowledge creates a missed opportunity, both for the traveler and the business they never get to patronize. But with AR, cities and businesses can build apps that make it easier for people to explore. For instance, placing the camera viewfinder over a Las Vegas hotel could show people the restaurants, shops and shows inside it. With an especially sophisticated app, people could even buy tickets to a concert or book time at a spa directly from the AR experience. For tourist destinations of all kinds, AR is a great way to turn ambient foot traffic into incremental sales. Quick-service restaurants Given fast food’s popularity among children, quick-service restaurants can use AR to turn the in-restaurant experience into an interactive wonder world. By moving their phone’s viewfinder across various parts of the restaurant, kids could see all kinds of fun, playful activities. For instance, a child might find Wendy’s mascot crouching behind a table or running around the play area. By tapping on these mascots, kids could initiate educational games or interactive videos. Really, there’s no limit to the number of fun, creative ways QSR brands can use AR to engage with children while they’re eating or waiting to order. AR presents a number of avenues for companies to engage their target customers. For now, it’s up to marketers to be proactive in their pursuit of AR innovation. The only way to develop an experience that truly resonates is to be willing to try new things and refine best practices as you go. 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. "
5,250	2,017	"What IBM looks for in a data scientist \| VentureBeat"	"https://venturebeat.com/ai/what-ibm-looks-for-in-a-data-scientist"	"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 What IBM looks for in a data scientist 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. Job seekers sometimes ask how IBM defines “data scientist.” It’s an important question since more and more would-be data scientists are fighting for attention in an increasingly lucrative labor market. The first step is to distinguish between what we see as true data scientists and other professionals working in adjacent roles (for instance, data engineers, business analysts, and AI application developers). To make that distinction, let’s first define what we mean by data science. At its core, data science is applying the scientific method to solve business problems. You can further expand on the definition by understanding that we solve those business problems using artificial intelligence to create predictions and prescriptions and to optimize processes. 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 definition demonstrates that to achieve the true potential of data science, we need data scientists with very particular experiences and skills — specifically, we need people with the experiences and skills required to run and complete data science projects: 1. Training as a scientist, with an MS or PhD 2. Expertise in machine learning and statistics, with an emphasis on decision optimization 3. Expertise in R, Python, or Scala 4. Ability to transform and manage large data sets 5. Proven ability to apply the skills above to real-world business problems 6. Ability to evaluate model performance and tune it accordingly Let’s look at those qualifications in the context of our definition of data science. 1. Training as a scientist, with a Masters of Science or Doctorate This is less about the degree itself and more about what you learn when you get an advanced degree. In short, you learn the scientific method, which starts with the ability to take a complex yet abstract problem and break it down into a set of testable hypotheses. This continues with how well you design experiments to test your hypotheses, and how you analyze the results to see whether the hypotheses are confirmed or contradicted. A determined person can learn these skills outside of academia or via the right mix of online training and practice — so there’s some flexibility around having the actual degree — but direct experience applying the scientific method is a must. Another advantage of an advanced degree is the rigor of the peer review process and publishing requirements that the degree programs impart. To get published, candidates have to present their work in a way that allows others to review and reproduce it. You must also provide evidence that the results are valid and the methods are sound. Doing so requires a deep understanding of the difference between probabilistic and deterministic factors as well as the value and curse of the correlation. It’s possible to get an abstract sense of those values, but there’s no substitute for the negative and positive reinforcement from mentors or the rejection or acceptance of journals and reviews. 2. Expertise in machine learning and statistics, with an emphasis on decision optimization Applying the scientific method to business problems lets us make better decisions by predicting what will happen next. Those predictions are the product of artificial intelligence and more specifically machine learning. For a true data scientist, the core technical skillsets of machine learning and statistics are simply non-negotiable. In addition, decision optimization (aka operations research) is a fast-growing aspect of data science. Indeed, the goal of data science is to help make better decisions by probabilistically estimating what’s likely to occur in the future. Carefully applying decision optimization lets data scientists prescribe or determine the next best action for the best business outcome. 3. Expertise in R, Python, or Scala Being a data scientist doesn’t require you to be as good at programming as professional developers, but the ability to create and run code that supports the data science process is mandatory — and that includes the ability to use statistical and machine learning packages in one of the popular data science languages. Python, R, and Scala are the fastest-growing languages for data science, along with Julia, another upcoming language in the space, though Julia isn’t yet fully mature. Like Python, R, and Scala, the core of Julia is open source. But it’s important to note that the reason to use these languages isn’t that they’re free, but for the innovation and the freedom to take them where you want to go. 4. Ability to transform and manage large data sets The fourth skill is sometimes called big data. Here, the ability to use distributed data processing frameworks like Apache Spark is key. The true data scientist will know how to pull data sets together from multiple sources and multiple data types with the help of his or her data science team. The data itself might be a combination of structured, semi-structured, and unstructured data living on multiple clouds. The data management process consists of finding and collecting the data, exploring the data, transforming the data, identifying features (data elements important in the prediction), engineering the features, and making the data accessible to the model for training. A priority for any data scientist will be streamlining this process, which can easily eat up 80 percent of their time. 5. Proven ability to apply the skills above to real-world business problems Fifth on the list is a soft skill set. It’s the ability to communicate with non-data scientists in order to make sure that data science teams have the data resources they need and that they’re applying data science to the right business problems. Mastering this skill also means ensuring that the results of data science projects — for instance, predictions about the probable evolution of the business — are fully understood and actionable by business people. This requires good storytelling skills, and in particular, the ability to map mathematical concepts to common sense. 6. Ability to evaluate model performance and tune it accordingly To some, this sixth skillset is an aspect of the second skillset: expertise in machine learning in general. We wanted to call it out separately because, all too often, it’s what distinguishes a good data scientist from a dangerous one. Data scientists who lack this skill can easily believe that they’ve created and deployed effective models when in fact their models are badly over-fit to the available training data. Be a true data scientist If you want to be a true data scientist — as opposed to an aspiring data scientist or a data scientist in title only — we encourage you to master each of these six competencies. A data scientist is fundamentally different from a business analyst or data analyst, who often serve as product owners on data science teams, with the important role of providing subject matter expertise to the data scientists themselves. That’s not to say business analysts, data analysts, and others can’t transition to become true data scientists — but understand that it takes time, commitment, mentoring, and applying yourself again and again to real and difficult problems. Seth Dobrin is vice president and chief data officer at IBM Analytics. Jean-François Puget is an IBM distinguished engineer in machine learning and optimization. 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. "
5,251	2,017	"Amazon launches Alexa for Business platform, bringing voice services to the office \| VentureBeat"	"https://venturebeat.com/ai/amazon-launches-alexa-for-business-platform-bringing-voice-services-to-the-office"	"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 launches Alexa for Business platform, bringing voice services to the office Share on Facebook Share on X Share on LinkedIn Amazon CTO Werner Vogels unveils Alexa for Business onstage at AWS re:Invent held Nov. 30, 2017 in Las Vegas. 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. Amazon is bringing its AI assistant to the workplace with a new service called Alexa for Business. The news was announced today by Amazon CTO Werner Vogels onstage during the keynote address at the AWS re:Invent conference being held this week in Las Vegas. Alexa for Business will be able to place meeting calls with Cisco, Polycom, Zoom, and other communication companies that can respond when you say “Alexa, join my meeting.” The platform will also include Salesforce to answer questions about business performance, Concur to share business travel itinerary information, RingCentral for voicemail readings, SAP SuccessFactors for HR, and other third-party voice services for the enterprise. A series of features added to Alexa this year make the AI assistant better equipped to enter the workplace, including the ability to make phone and video calls, plus the incorporation of calendars from Office 365 and Google’s G Suite. The expansion is also likely to put to use AI services announced Wednesday like AWS Transcribe, AWS Comprehend, and Rekognition Video. VB Event The AI Impact Tour Connect with the enterprise AI community at VentureBeat’s AI Impact Tour coming to a city near you! Workplace administrators will be able to configure what happens each time an employee says “Alexa, start the meeting” and which specific skills are enabled in meeting rooms. Businesses are also invited to make their own private Alexa skills. Unlike groups of Alexa-enabled devices at home, Alexa for Business customers will be able to control 25 devices at once, according to an AWS blog post , with things like skills groups and room profiles. Developers can make Alexa for Business skills for control smart devices, flash briefings, and internal company use with the Alexa Skills Kit. Amazon joins a series of productivity and enterprise companies with plans to enter the battle to become the AI assistant for the workplace. Cortana VP Andrew Shuman told VentureBeat Microsoft is working on enterprise skills and LinkedIn integrations, while Cisco wants to make Cisco Spark Assistant the AI assistant for meetings by leveraging its hundreds of thousands of endpoints already in meeting rooms around the world. Amazon doesn’t have the existing history or footprint of other companies like Cisco in meeting rooms, but the coworking chain WeWork plans to place an Echo device in each of its meeting rooms. It will be interesting to see if Amazon and Microsoft’s partnership to grant access to each other’s assistants will extend to the workplace. Conversations about the partnership this summer centered around the idea that AI assistants will become known as especially good at certain tasks. This is not Alexa’s first venture into the workplace. Existing skills like VoiceMyBot connect with HipChat and a smart light bulb to tell sales teams when they’re meeting or missing goals, while skills made by companies like Teem have used Alexa for scheduling office meeting since earlier this year. Still others have been able to use Alexa Voice Services to place the AI assistant inside hardware in the workplace. The home has been Alexa’s central focus since the first black Echo speakers began to sell more than two years ago. A new generation of Echo speakers , for example, were debuted in a home setting this fall at Amazon headquarters. Amazon’s interest in the enterprise comes as Alexa begins to expand beyond the U.S. to places like India, Japan, and Australia, Canada, and New Zealand in the months ahead. Beyond the home, Amazon has also expressed interest in expansion to areas like hotels and retail locations, Alexa Fund director Paul Bernard told VentureBeat in an email interview earlier this week. Amazon plans to pour another $100 million into its venture capital arm for investment in startups using Alexa into their products. Making AI assistants available everywhere you are — from the workplace to your home to your car — is part of ongoing competition between tech giants to showcase and sell their AI services, and to facilitate commerce like shopping or in-skill payments. 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. "
5,252	2,017	"Amazon Alexa skills to accept payments \| VentureBeat"	"https://venturebeat.com/ai/amazon-alexa-skills-to-accept-payments"	"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 Alexa skills to accept payments Share on Facebook Share on X Share on LinkedIn Amazon Echo 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. Developers and businesses making skills for Amazon’s Alexa will soon be able to accept Amazon Pay for purchases directly within voice apps from the Alexa Skills Store. The news was announced today during the Alexa State of the Union at AWS re:Invent in Las Vegas. Among other Alexa news shared today are plans to bring Alexa to Australia and New Zealand in early 2018 and to add $100 million to the Alexa Fund for international investment. Initial skills categories to accept Amazon Pay include donations, restaurants, and event ticketing. Skills with plans to adopt one-time payments for premium content include Teen Jeopardy!, Sports Jeopardy!, Match Game, Heads Up, and History’s Ultimate History Quiz. A developer preview was made available today, while other tools to enable transactions will be made more widely available early next year. Double Jeopardy! was one of the first skills to accept paid subscriptions. Millions have been doled out thus far to developers in the U.S., U.K., and Germany, and today the program was extended to developers in Australia, Japan, India, and Canada. Other changes on the way in early 2018 include a public beta for the recently announced Gadgets API so developers can start making games that interact with the Echo Buttons for multi-person gameplay that go on sale next month. VB Event The AI Impact Tour Connect with the enterprise AI community at VentureBeat’s AI Impact Tour coming to a city near you! Alexa skills developers accepting payments will likely take advantage of the ability to understand unique voices, a feature that started bringing personalization to Alexa users this fall and extended the service to developers Tuesday. Native payments for Alexa skills follows a series of recent efforts by Amazon to compensate makers of those skills. Starting last spring, Amazon began to pay developers based on the level of engagement a skill is able to produce. Skills like flash briefings and streaming audio are still able to run advertisements, but ads are otherwise forbidden for Alexa developers. 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. "