Today’s Google event was a non-stop two hour deluge of Assistant news. Yet one small, overlooked announcement may have been the biggest bit boost to the company’s burgeoning AI ecosystem so far. The simple decision to include a Home Mini in early Pixel 2 shipments could prove a more successful method for spreading the Assistant gospel than anything Google has done to this point.… Read More
When there’s a problem in the brain, it pays to be precise — every millimeter counts with something like a tumor or blocked artery. But it can be extremely difficult to understand the exact shape and size of these things, which makes them difficult to diagnose and treat, as well. But 3D printing a replica of the growth or damage may make doctors better able to do so. Read More
Google used its annual hardware event to announce the Pixelbook. This is essentially the third iteration of the company’s Chromebook Pixel laptop, though with the Pixelbook, the company is taking a new approach. I’m not just talking about the fact that this is a very thin 2-in-1. What’s different this time is that the company actually believes it can make a laptop for the masses. Read More
Last year, Google showed off WaveNet, a new way of generating speech that didn’t rely on a bulky library of word bits or cheap shortcuts that result in stilted speech. WaveNet used machine learning to build a voice sample by sample, and the results were, as I put it then, “eerily convincing.” Previously bound to the lab, the tech has now been deployed in the latest version… Read More
Today, Google showed off its answer to Amazon’s Echo Dot. It’s called the Google Home Mini. It’s $49, comes in three colors and is actually a pretty snappy little device that’s worth taking a look at. We had some time to get up close and personal with the device; here are some of our first impressions. Read More
Google’s Pixel Buds are a $159 pair of wireless earbuds that bring Assistant and real-time translation features right into your ears. They’re not quite like the AirPods and they’re not quite like anything else out there, but you’re not going to get the most out of them unless you have a new Pixel 2. I had a chance to try them out and here are some first impressions. Read More
Twitter’s making a big push into live video, with deals for pro sports, talk shows, network TV premieres and more. But what does a real newscast look like if you rethink it for Twitter? BuzzFeed’s AM to DM offers a possible answer — and it’s a fun one. Read More
Context is everything when dealing with dialog systems. We humans take for granted how complex even our simplest conversations are. That’s part of the reason why dialog systems can’t live up to their human counterparts. But with an interactive learning approach and some open source love, Berlin-based Rasa is hoping to help enterprises solve their conversational AI problems. The… Read More
Larry Ellison was at it again yesterday, making friends, influencing people and pissing off rivals. It was AWS in the keynote earlier in the week. Yesterday, it was Splunk, a seemingly innocuous logging software company, which somehow fell into Ellison’s marketing cross-hairs. The company took serious exception. Splunk is best known for logging all events related to IT. Ellison announced… Read More
Google has new AR stickers coming to its Pixel devices, with rollout set to begin later this year. They use Google’s ARCore, which is designed as an easy way for Android developers to bring augmented reality experiences to device users. The AR stickers are built right into the camera app on the Pixel (when they make their way out via software update) and they can be selected like any… Read More
In the first Crunchbase Women in Venture report (April 2016), our goal was to establish a well-defined baseline against which to measure future progress of women in the venture business. As 2017 draws to a close, Crunchbase re-applied the methodology from the 2016 report to see what progress, if any, might be measurable. Here are the somewhat encouraging results from that analysis. Read More
Google’s new Pixel 2 XL phone is a major upgrade in a number of ways. It’s a super sleek device, with a stunning front face design and a remarkably bright and vibrant display that renders colors in a trulls stunning way. The phone feels light and yet durable, and has a camera that even in very limited testing, feels like it’ll easily be a category leader. The Pixel 2… Read More
Google sold the idea of paradigm shifts hard on-stage at today’s big event in San Francisco — that, after all, is kind of the company’s M.O. This time out, CEO Sundar Pichai hit the stage to discuss a coming transition in hardware, away from the specs race, to something less immediately apparently, but no less important: machine learning and AI. The Pixel 2 is a pretty… Read More
Google held a press conference today in San Francisco, where the company announced everything from new phones to crazy machine learning-powered wearable cameras. It was a flurry of news. Don’t have time to catch up with all of it? We get it — that’s why we condensed it all down into one quick slideshow just focusing on the highlights. Tap that right arrow to advance to the… Read More
It’s no secret that developers are the key to Foursquare’s continued success, and as part of supporting that mission the company just launched a revamped developer site, its first major refresh since 2009. The new site clarifies what the difference is between the developer offerings. The Places API is the free offering that most developers will use that serves up information on… Read More
Earlier this week, a small startup called Init.ai announced that it soon would be discontinuing its service — a smart assistant for customer representatives to parse and get better insights from their interactions with users, as well as automate some of the interactions — because the team was (according to a notice on the site) “joining a project that touches the lives of… Read More
Today, Google showcased a new version of its Google Daydream headset. It’s a little better in a lot of ways but it’s also $99, $20 more than the previous version. It looks largely the same, but it’s gaining the same color palette as the Google Home Mini: gray, charcoal and coral. A lot of things have been tweaked for a better experience and to capitalize on the bigger… Read More
Well, that was quick! The iPhone 8 Plus had a short reign at camera testing outfit DxOMark as “the best smartphone camera we’ve ever tested” — the Galaxy Note 8 tied it after only a few weeks. And now Google’s Pixel 2 has bested them both. Read More
One of the surprises we got today from Google’s hardware event were a pair of bluetooth headphones called Pixel Buds. They’re wired behind the neck but they’re every bit a competitor to Apple’s AirPods. They’re $159, they’re available in November and they’ll let you understand 40 different languages. Seriously. The onstage demo that blew… Read More
In an update on the progress of its investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. election, the Senate Intelligence Committee weighed in on recent revelations that have implicated major tech companies. The committee plans to hear open public testimony from Facebook, Twitter and Google on November 1 pertaining to their role in selling political ads to Russian government entities. Read More
