Facebook’s new video app is now available on Samsung Smart TVs – which makes Samsung the first platform to feature the social network’s latest application. Facebook had announced earlier this month that it was soon releasing a video app aimed at connected TVs and other media players, like Apple TV and Amazon Fire TV, but didn’t unveil a specific launch date for any… Read More
When you think of the biggest cloud players in the world, one company you might not consider is Alibaba, the Chinese e-commerce giant that held a record $25 billion U.S. IPO in 2014. Alibaba entered the cloud computing business in 2009, just three years after Amazon launched its cloud division, AWS — and Alibaba’s cloud computing efforts are among the ambitious projects that… Read More
Every year, Google mixes up its presence at MWC a bit. After a few years of handing out smoothies and Android pins inside one of the halls here in Barcelona, Google made the move outside in recent years. That works great when it’s warm, but on a chilly day, it doesn’t exactly make for a pleasant experience. Here is what Google had to offer this year. Read More
Uber-owned Otto’s co-founder Anthony Levandowski must be mightily relieved after an onstage Q&A here at the Mobile World Congress tradeshow passed by with zero awkward moments. For example, there was no mention of the fact his former employer is suing his current employer over allegations of IP theft… Read More
Conversational AI is pushing deeper into enterprise with Workfit, a new startup promising to make conference call follow-ups and mid-meeting CRM updates as easy as playing a song or checking the weather on Google Home or Amazon Echo. Battery Ventures, Greycroft Partners, Salesforce Ventures and a number of angels joined together to finance a $5.5 million seed investment in the… Read More
You know what people like? Lights. Brightly colored, flashing lights. Lights for notifications and lights for fun. Lights for all occasion. So, so many shiny lights. Lights like the lights on the back of Alcatel’s A5 LED, a fun feature on what is an otherwise middling handset. In a mobile show that saw the debut of BlackBerry’s KeyOne, the A5 has the fairly indistinct distinction… Read More
This is the race car of the future. It’s an autonomous vehicle, built to be raced by just computers and was designed specifically with that in mind. Rather than retrofitting an existing race car chassis for use with driverless systems, the company gave its designers and engineers a blank slate and told them to build the ultimate autonomous vehicle.
This is what they came up… Read More
Some concept cars aren’t really cars and stop at the concept part. But Peugeot’s new Instinct concept car has a couple of interesting ideas. In particular, the interior will change depending on the driving mode (active driving or self-driving). Peugeot unveiled the car at MWC today in Barcelona. I generally hate concept cars are they are mostly unimplementable designs that… Read More
“Everybody and their mother is out to create their own specialized voice-activated devices,” IBM fellow and CTO for its Watson project Rob High told me during an interview at MWC. IBM, of course, doesn’t offer a direct competitor to Siri, Google Assistant or Alexa, but the company hopes that developers will choose Watson, in all its various guises, to power their AI apps,… Read More
Oppo’s big Mobile World Congress announcement wasn’t an actual phone. Sure it arrived in a prototype roughly the size and shape of a phone, but it wasn’t really. It was proof of concept, the company showing off the imagine technology it’s spent the last year working on.
That’s not to say it wasn’t impressive. The company has apparently cracked the code on… Read More
Google and Comcast announced a new deal this morning that will see the YouTube application installed on Comcast’s Xfinity X1 set-top boxes nationwide later this year. The integration will allow X1 users to launch the app by saying “YouTube” into the X1 voice remote, as well as browse featured content on YouTube, search the entire library, including by voice, and sign into… Read More
With a new $50 million investment from private equity giant KKR, IT service management company Cherwell Software becomes the latest business in the firm’s growing tech portfolio. The investment, from KKR’s $711 million Next Generation Technology Fund, is the firm’s fifth deal since closing the fund last December. Cherwell Software, a Colorado Springs-based company, makes… Read More
Mobile World Congress kicked off over the weekend with press conferences from Samsung, Sony, LG and Motorola. But all anyone seems to care about is a 17-year-old device. A reboot. A candy bar feature phone whose main selling point is its ability to play Snake, eclipsing BlackBerry’s own nostalgia-themed KeyOne smartphone. That feels like as bold an indictment of the mobile industry… Read More
Amazon-owned video game streaming site Twitch announced this morning that it will now sell games directly on its platform – a not entirely surprising expansion for the service where developers are already taking advantage of the site’s social community to get the word out about their games, and engage fans. Games will go on sale this spring, says Twitch, but did not give an… Read More
The world of mobile development is a hairy one. You can code things yourself and hurt your brain on React Native or you can use a drag-and-drop editor and get locked into one platform forever. But now app development house Kinetise is offering the best of both worlds. Kinetise, who I’ve talked about for years as an interesting alternative to coding your own Android and iOS apps, came… Read More
Low-Earth orbit is a prime candidate for explosive commercial growth, but it’s also a space where the risk of actual explosions resulting from debris impact is a legitimate concern for businesses focused on the opportunity. That’s the problem LeoLabs aims to address, a startup spun out of SRI International to detect, map and help avoid collisions with debris and objects floating… Read More
Developing a software that tracks user behavior across apps and websites, and generates targeted marketing emails for those users has garnered the San Diego-based technology company Cordial $6 million in new funding. The San Diego-based company is founded by a team of longtime email marketing professionals and was backed by Upfront Ventures in this Series A round. The company is also a… Read More
While Google is using MWC to show off some of its advances in native apps on mobile devices — specifically in chat apps — the world’s biggest chat app company is doing something completely different. Today, Facebook announced that it is building a 770-kilometer (500-mile) fiber backhaul network in Uganda, in partnership with India’s Airtel and wholesale provider BCS… Read More
Samsung is set to announce the Galaxy S8 smartphone in late March, but the two videos and a couple of images embedded here appear to show working units. The videos show the phone’s refined design. The curved screen of the S7 remains as does the 3.5mm headphone port. The phone looks very similar to its predecessor though it’s missing the physical and capacitive buttons found on… Read More
