New technologies have constantly changed the way we’ve worked. And continued investments have come as corporate demand for worker productivity drives tech spending. We should expect augmented reality and virtual reality to eventually attract increased spending in the enterprise as they combine with new mobile network advancements to make an emerging trend called “productive… Read More
Say what you will about Salesforce, the company is always looking ahead. This afternoon, it announced Salesforce Einstein, its artificial intelligence (AI) initiative. The timing, which comes just ahead of rival Oracle’s Open World keynote address, is probably not a coincidence. Regardless, the larger AI theme is something Salesforce has been working on across various pieces of its… Read More
Oracle is kicking off a big customer confab in San Francisco this week, and to mark the event, it’s announced an acquisition. Oracle is buying Palerra, a cloud security startup co-founded by Oracle alums Rohit Gupta (its CEO) and Ganesh Kirti (CTO). Terms of the deal were not disclosed but we will try to find out. Palerra was founded in 2013 (originally called Apprity) and raised… Read More
Crisis has a history of dictating government technology disruption. But innovators don’t wait for crises. They imagine a different path, whether it’s a new approach to solving an old problem or a moonshot. They observe the world, realize potential, and fund and build engines of change. Forward-thinking, optimistic entrepreneurs and investors are starting to do this with… Read More
The Adblock Plus crowdsourced hacker militia can’t keep up with Facebook’s disciplined army of engineers. When Facebook first announced it would circumvent ad blocking software, Adblock Plus (ABP) built a workaround in two days, boasting that “We promised that the open source community would have a solution very soon…This time that community seems to have gotten… Read More
Lyft’s response may not be autonomous cars in active duty, but it is a lengthy, detailed treatise on how Lyft sees the future of transportation over the next ten years, as penned by Lyft co-founder and President John Zimmer. The Medium post from the Lyft exec articulates a vision of the future that would see most of the rides on Lyft’s network of cars handled autonomously by 2021.… Read More
Apple just released not one, not two but three new ads for its new devices — the iPhone 7 and the Apple Watch Series 2. They all tout new features, such as water resistance, low light camera performance and new fitness features. Let’s start with my favorite one. In “Midnight”, a young man goes for a night ride on his skateboard. He rides in the suburbs, sees a deer (!) at… Read More
On August 24th, a warm summer night, all of Europe was shaken when an earthquake measuring 6.2 on the moment magnitude scale, hit central Italy.
“The town [Amatrice] doesn’t exist anymore…..it’s all gone,” said Sergio Pirozzi, mayor of the small town of Amatrice during an interview immediately after the tragedy. More than 290 people died, and dozens more are still… Read More
Over the past few years, the Internet of Things (IoT) has been the white-hot center of a flurry of activity. The IoT may well be The Next Big Thing, but maybe the attention around sensors is misplaced… What if we didn’t even need embedded sensors to allow things to gather data about their surrounding environment? What if material could be a sensor in and of itself? Read More
Brazil showed off its cultural brilliance, spirit and national pride during the recent Olympic Games in Rio. Despite a prolonged macroeconomic crisis, the world’s ninth largest economy is showing positive signs that it may roar back as an investment magnet and innovation powerhouse — especially driven by fast-growing tech sectors that have continued to deliver growth rates. Read More
I walked into a store and bought two today (there were plenty more around) so chances are you won’t have to resort to overpaying on eBay for a pre-order slot. After only a few hours playing with the Go, I already feel like it has a good chance of pulling me back into the game, at least for a little while, and the entire experience of using it is pretty painless. The Go Plus was easy to… Read More
Elon Musk just teased that one of SpaceX’s more future-focused projects might be more ambitious than previously thought. On Twitter, the SpaceX CEO revealed that the company’s Mars Colonial Transporter (MCT) will need a new name, since in fact, it “can go well beyond Mars.” Turns out MCT can go well beyond Mars, so will need a new name… — Elon Musk… Read More
The Gillmor Gang — John Borthwick, Frank Radice, Keith Teare, Kevin Marks, and Steve Gillmor. Recorded live Friday, September 16, 2016. It’s multiple streaming networks and the Third UI as the Gang meanders from iOS 10 to Twitter’s Apple TV global network debut. Debate prep for the deep learners. @stevegillmor, @Borthwick, @kevinmarks, @kteare, @fradice Produced and directed by… Read More
Are tech IPOs coming back? That is an ever-present question in Silicon Valley during any lull in the flow of shining private companies that get anointed as public companies. And we certainly have been in a long lull. This year, just one venture-backed tech company, Twilio, has made it public, compared to an average of 37 per year between 2001 and 2015. But the comeback question isn’t… Read More
20th Century Fox is looking to get an injunction against Netflix to prevent it from luring away employees under contract, according to a new lawsuit filed with an LA court. Recent Netflix hires Tara Flynn and Marcos Waltenberg were apparently the proverbial straws that broke the camel’s back, as both ex-Fox employees had contracts signed that tied the to the studio through at least… Read More
Microsoft is going to close Skype’s London office, in a move that could impact the jobs of the nearly 400 people employed there. The company told the Financial Times that is will “unify some engineering positions,” but that it “will be entering into a consultation process to help those affected by the redundancies.” The London office is a key part of… Read More
Like most small products with a cult following, SCiO has its fans and detractors. Those detractors took to the Internet recently to complain that the handheld molecular scanner, which raised $2.5 million in 2014, still hasn’t shipped. The result? Negative press and plenty of Tweets. I asked SCiO’s creator, Dror Sharon, what was going on with the device and when it would ship and,… Read More
There’s no denying that app fatigue is posing a challenge not just for new app discovery, but for new behavior discovery. So why don’t the most popular apps just enable the latest, greatest use cases and create an “open loop,” networking their existing apps? This article examines how the big players are campaigning to be the all-in-one app — and who stands a chance… Read More
As robotics begins to leave controlled environments and navigate the real world alongside humans, the question remains: How will this affect the way we interact, work and talk to not only robots, but one another? Read More
What do you call an innovative person who builds a product out of nothing and launches something that will change people’s lives? Everywhere besides Cuba, you’d call this person an entrepreneur. You’d never expect in the land of communism, censorship and classic cars that you’d find a hotbed of entrepreneurship. Technically, it doesn’t exist. But in my eyes… Read More
