2016-03-15



Here is the latest in Future Tech from Forbes Magazine.

Google’s A.I. Program AlphaGo Claims Second Victory Against ‘Go’ Champion

AlphaGo just needs to win its third match on Saturday to claim overall victory in the human vs. A.I. tournament

Do These 2 Co-founders Hold The Secrets To Startup Success?

In the startup world they call it the “secret sauce”; those unknown elements that help make a collaboration between 2 or more founders greater than the sum of its parts.

Would A ‘Brexit’ Spell Disaster For London’s Tech Innovators?

Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II has apparently passed comment on a British exit (‘Brexit’) from the European Union (EU). So too has Bank of England Governor Mark Carney, who yesterday was interpreted as indicating his support for staying in or ‘Bremaining’. But what potential consequences loom for London’s IT sector and innovators from a Brexit?

Google Makes A.I. History By Beating World ‘Go’ Champion

Its AlphaGo computer just beat Lee Sedol at the ultra-complex game, a landmark as important as Deep Blue?s win over chess champion Gary Kasparov in 1997.

Microsoft Is Testing Azure IoT Platform From The Stratosphere

Microsoft is attempting to pull off a rare feat that may be hard for its competitors to emulate. The team at Microsoft Research is deploying a balloon in the stratosphere loaded with sensors and cameras, which is connected to the Azure IoT platform. The balloon will send real-time telemetry along with live flight video.

Alexa Is Helping Amazon Win The Smart Home Game

The smart home market is extremely crowded and fragmented. Tech-savvy consumers who are the early adopters of home automation products are struggling with the incompatibility of devices. This segment is predominantly controlled by Apple through HomeKit, Google through Nest, and Amazon through Echo. Surprisingly, it’s Amazon that’s gaining the mindshare and market share.

Intuit Announces Sale Of QuickBase Low-Code Platform

Low-code platforms like QuickBase empower a wide range of people with little to no programming skills – known as ‘citizen developers’ – to build enterprise-class applications that run on mobile, desktop, or web. Such applications can meet the needs of the business quickly and efficiently, and can be an important part of how transformed IT organizations empower self-service capabilities as part of broader enterprise digital transformation initiatives.

Stunning Photos Of Google’s Massive Data Centers

Messaging App Fleep Wants To Make You Love Email Again, Then Help You Switch To Something Better

I recently caught up with Henn Ruukel, founder of Fleep, a messaging service that combines team chat and email into one simple to use platform. This week the team announced that company email can now be sent and received within their platform. Is this the end of email as we know it?

Meet Tina, The Clever Chat Bot Charming 2.6 Million People In Iran

Anna Farzaneh has plenty of friends to socialize with when she’s not working as an interior designer in Tehran, Iran. But about once or twice a week, on evenings when something heavier is on her mind and she can’t thinking of the right friend to call, she’ll turn to Tina.

The Experiment Is Over: Google Opens Its Project Fi Wireless Service To All

It drops the invite-only requirement and throws in a Nexus 5X for $200 in the hopes of bringing on a wave of new customers.

The Magic of Universal Orlando: Revealing the Technology Behind the Rides

I just saw a man run through a wall. He simply disappeared as he met the bricks. And I’m not sure how he did it.

MapR: Converged Data, What It Means And How It Works

The days of the plain old database are gone, it seems. Today we see IT vendors offering ‘data platforms’ as a whole. These compound multi-modal technologies can feature everything from a relational database management system (RDBMS) to a wider software base for converging data tasks in one place.

What Is The Best Platform For Building A Budget Gaming PC?

What Is The Best Platform For Building A Budget Gaming PC? This question was originally answered on Quora by Jae Alexis Lee.

Machines Will Never Replace Men (Danger: Slippery Slope Ahead)

A couple of recent news stories and the responses they have generated got me thinking once again about the slippery slope fallacy, whereby an event is presented as the catalyst for a chain of other events, even though there is no evidence to support the thesis.

Fitbit Blaze Reviews Are In: Is The Stock Crash Justified?

We were all expecting Fitbit to reveal a new flagship at CES back in January but, instead, the fitness tracking giant took the covers off of the Fitbit Blaze – a “smart fitness watch” that sits between the Charge HR and the Surge in the San Francisco company’s ever expanding product range.

Watch Google’s AI Try To Beat World’s Best Go Player

An artificial intelligence system from Google’s DeepMind unit on Tuesday will try to beat the very top player in the ancient Chinese board game Go.

Why Your Digital Strategy Needs A Little Charisma, Uniqueness, Nerve and Talent

The streets of West Hollywood will be quieter than normal tonight as Season 8 of Ru Paul’s Drag Race premieres on Logo TV at 9/8C.  If you aren’t yet initiated, Ru Paul’s Drag Race is a competition where multiple drag queens face off against one another with a dizzying array of challenges each week for a title and some hefty prizes to boot.   Beyond the TV show is a vibrant ecosystem that not only supports the show but keeps it bubbling along when the show is being shot.

BMW Reveals First Of Four Concept Cars To Show The Future Driving

A dashboard that changes shape, seats that swivel, and switching between self and autonomous driving modes. What will BMW’s future vehicles look like?

Strategy In Junior Auto Racing Series Gets Serious

On Sunday, the 2016 season of America’s IndyCar Series will get under-way in St Petersburg Florida but, for once, the most revolutionary technical development will make its début lower down the race card.

Machine Learning Needs A Human-In-The-Loop

Artificial Intelligence (AI) has a problem — it’s artificial. To be fair, AI and its sister disciplines of machine learning, cognitive computing, sentiment analysis and neural networking have a problem — they’re artificially created through the power of software developers’ algorithms. Computers are great at analysing tough tactical situations, but are still not as good as humans at understanding long term strategy. The planet is still safe, for now.

Google Could Easily Decide The Next U.S. President

Since 2013, Robert Epstein and colleagues have conducted a number of experiments in the US and India to determine whether search results can impact people’s political opinions.

Jailed Facebook Exec Says There’s ‘No Data’ To Give Brazilian Authorities

Diego Dzodan says he was ‘treated with respect’ during his 24 hours behind bars, but it would have been impossible to hand over encrypted WhatsApp messages to officials.

Four Reasons Today’s Disruptive Innovations Are Better And Cheaper, And What To Do About It

Technology that drives better and cheaper innovation isn’t just a random event. Four converging economic trends are driving the phenomenon, certain to disrupt industries far from computers and consumer electronics with Big Bangs yet to come.

Six Lessons Learned From Kronos’ Cloud Computing Strategy

90% of new Kronos software purchases are cloud-based today, and there are 17,000 active customers on Kronos Cloud. Kronos’ latest release is written in HTML5 in response to customers’ requests for greater user interface flexibility and a more intuitive user experience. Providing customers the freedom to define their cadence of cloud adoption from licensed on-premise software and not forcing migration with pricing or contracts is key. Enabling a direct line of communication from Customer Advisory Councils and go-live reports to the CEO brings urgency to achieving customer satisfaction and taking action on new product and service ideas.

Facebook Messenger Adds Music Sharing With Spotify Integration

In another step towards turning Messenger into a platform for sharing everything, Facebook has integrated its first music sharing service into the chat app.

This $100 Security System Could Protect Your Home From Burglars

With a sub-$100 home security product, Korner used to have to convince consumers is really worked. Now they can just show people their product in action on the 5 o’clock news.

IoT Will Drive PaaS Adoption, Just Not The Way You’d Expect

Platform as a Service (PaaS) adoption has been slow to gain broad acceptance in enterprises. We’ve seen some large enterprises embrace PaaS within in a specific product line or vertical within a company, but it is rare that we see PaaS as an architecture standard adopted across an entire company.

Using Google’s Deep Learning AI To Geolocate Global News Imagery

What it looks like to feed 19.6 million global news images into Google?s deep learning algorithms to estimate their location and put them all on a map

Space Voyage with DiCaprio, Everest with Cousteau: Tycoon Vasily Klyukin is a Real Life Walter Mitty

Flying into space with Oscar winning actor Leonardo DiCaprio, trekking Mt. Everest with Philippe Cousteau by helicopter, taking selfies with wild elephants, this is the daily life for famed Russian businessman, philanthropist and designer Vasily Klyukin.

Bugatti Chiron Survives To Generate Superlatives After VW “Dieselgate” Threat

The Bugatti Chiron is the fastest road car in the world with a top speed of about 260 mph. It is the most expensive one too, priced at $2.6 million before taxes. It is the world’s first production sports to produce 1,500 hp, and its 8.0 liter 16-cylinder engine will blast the car from rest to 60 mph in just over two seconds.

IMAX And NASA Partner On Epic ‘A Beautiful Planet’ Documentary

Very few humans have ever had the privilege of experiencing life in outer space or witnessing the breathtaking view of Earth from outside of our atmosphere firsthand. The closest most of us will get is by watching ‘A Beautiful Planet’—a new IMAX feature created in cooperation with NASA.

The Best Of The Geneva Motor Show

Sexiest, Most Expensive And Fastest Cars At The Geneva Auto Show

The Bugatti Chiron, at $2.6 million before tax and 260 mph, is the fastest and most expensive supercar at the Geneva Car Show. Is the Aston Martin DB11 the sexiest?

How Do You Sell Lots Of Smart Home Gear? Scare Off A Burglar, Natch

With a sub-$100 home security product, Korner used to have to convince consumers is really worked. Now they can just show people their product in action on the 5 o’clock news.

10 Cars With The Worst Resale Values

New ‘Smart’ Tires Coming For Self-Driving Cars

Designed specifically for the coming generation of autonomous driving cars, Goodyear unveiled two concepts that are miles ahead of today’s tires in terms of technology and safety, one with a shape resembling a children’s kickball that will allow a car to move in all directions.

How APIs Drive New Digital Business

Aren’t we tired of talking about this so-called drive towards ‘digital disruption’ yet? It appears not, but there might still a few fresh themes and avenues to explore. Let’s remember, 100 years ago (during the second industrial revolution), firms still had a Chief Electricity Officer (CEO) to handle this new thing called electricity. If we accept that we’ve just been through the third industrial revolution (the PC era) and the disruption that mobile-first has brought to technology, the fourth industrial revolution (the digital global business era) has yet to be fully played out. This month’s ‘I ♥ APIs’ event in the city of London threw up some new angles and notions in relation to the way software APIs connect to new value chains being created in the new digital economy.

WhatsApp Challenges Slack And E-Mail With New File-Sharing Feature

A new update has made it possible for users to share encrypted documents in a chat.

Innovation At Experian: Build, Don’t Just Buy

When Experian’s Eric Haller put his 5-slide proposal for an innovation lab in front of his boss’s boss back in 2010, the exec stopped him at the second slide and said, “I’ve wanted to do this for years, so I’ll give you the money if you can find the people.” “I can’t remember what was on that first slide,” admits Haller, who now runs Experian’s DataLabs in San Diego, London, and San Paolo. “It probably talked about product cycles, and the competencies we needed to build it out.” Haller’s experience managing products, strategic partnerships, and M&A for the credit bureau had made him think about the time it took to find the right acquisitions, the risk inherent in those relationships, and the overall inefficiencies inherent in the “buy” approach to innovation. “Even though M&A will always be an important and fundamental part of our strategy, high risk, growth R&D opportunities were not always organically funded within the company,” he said. With that in mind, that boss’s boss (Kerry Williams, now global chief operating officer and Haller’s boss) convened the presidents of Experian’s four business units over dinner, let Haller get through all of his slides, and then hit them up for the funding. Each committed to three years, with the requirement of a monthly status meeting. Literally the next day, Haller started working his network to recruit what he calls “navy seals of data science…the kinds of folks you find in startups,” and had his core team of 8 staff in place three weeks later. Each got an assessment of Experian’s businesses and strategic goals, and was given a week to come up with questions for meetings with the units less than a week later. “We skipped the overviews, and fast-forwarded to Q&A and conversation,” said Haller. “It let us compile a list of opportunities for our existing data, which we distilled into a dozen or so initiatives that could get to market the fastest, and have the highest likelihood of success.”

Top 10 Autonomous Car Facts: When Will Self-Driving Cars Arrive, What’s Holding Them Up?

At the 2016 Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in January Audipresented its new E-tron Quattro concept car. As a 100-percent electric vehicle with a 310-mile range between charges, not to mention the latest in autonomous driving technology, the E-tron Quattro is a fairly accurate representation of how Audi’s first fully-autonomous car will look — and drive. But even more interesting than the concept car was the background information provided by Audi’s team of engineers responsible for this advanced vehicle.

Indispensible & Obvious Technology Trends – #4 in the Nasty 6-Pack for Digital Entrepreneurs

This is part 4 of a 6-part series where I discuss a set of start/build/exit best practices for digital entrepreneurs.

Microsoft Locks Down Another Popular Smartphone Star

If you’re keeping track of Microsoft’s recent acquisitions, you can ink in the purchase of SwiftKey. Microsoft confirmed today that it has completed the acquisition of SwiftKey including the popular SwiftKey keyboard for Android and iOS, SwiftKey’s predictive technology, and SwiftKey’s ongoing research into artificial intelligence.

Is this One-of-a-Kind Coupe the Most Eco-Friendly Car in the World?

Developed by UK-based creative firm Riversimple, “Rasa” is even greener than your typical hydrogen-powered auto.

Are Political Speeches Written By Computer Programs? Could You Tell If They Were?

Can you tell the difference between a political speech written by a computer and one written by a speechwriter? Listen to both and consider why some might find the program troubling.

Women In Technology: The Challenge And The Responsibility

Is it almost reverse logic in some ways to call out ‘women in technology’ as an issue that needs addressing? Surely it should just be people in technology, some of whom are women, right? The truth is that yes, in some ways it becomes a negative — but there is an imbalance in the industry and so its even worse if we don’t do it.

An Immigrant Entrepreneur With A Gift For Data Finds A Little-Noticed Niche: Tiny Grocers

There are a couple of moments Mohamed Aly particularly remembers when he thinks about the long journey to bring his dream of starting a company to reality.

Google Research Team Makes Unexpected Find Regarding Solid State Flash Storage

In a technical session at the USENIX Conference on File and Storage Technologies, Raghav Lagisetty and Arif Merchant of Google Inc., and Bianca Schroeder of the University of Toronto, with help from the Platforms Storage Team at Google, presented some surprising data about the reliability of flash storage in big-iron, data-center production environments.

Honda Bets That Cars Are The Next Mobile Payment Platform

The future of mobile commerce could be in the car. Honda teamed with Visa to demonstrate at the 2016 Mobile World Congress that apps embedded in its infotainments system could soon be used to pay for items without leaving the comfort of their car.

Investor’s Guide To IOT Part 4 – Adding Value In The Fog

This is the fourth and final installment of a 4-part series titled “Investor’s Guide to the IoT (Internet of Things)”. The four articles focus on the following topics:

Mobile Operators Can’t Roll Out Digital Services Fast Enough And Entrepreneurs Can Capitalise

Mobile operators are unable to roll out digital services fast enough to meet growing demand and this spells opportunity for smaller, more agile content providers as well as more modern services like Facebook and Netflix, says a new survey commissioned by telecom and IT solutions provider Tecnotree and carried out by analysts at mobilesquared, who provide data and intelligence on the mobile industry.

Why The Tech Industry Loves ‘Automation’

Not all software needs to be newly reinvented today. We can automate and reuse certain elements of functionality such as a word processor’s spellchecker intelligence. The same kind of thing might happen for a clock, a calculator, a currency converter or some other ‘element’ of software that has the potential to be used elsewhere. Automation intelligence in virtualized abstraction layers across software-defined cloud computing services is the new shape of IT.

Can This Guy Fix The 200-Million Unconnected Car Problem?

Parallel parking on the mean, crowded streets of San Francisco is a grueling rite of passage most newcomers can’t avoid. They soon learn that their 18-foot vehicles don’t fit neatly into 14-ft. parking spaces, but that doesn’t stop many SUV owners from trying, repeatedly bumping whatever cars parked unfortunately in front and behind them in the process. As a witness to such offenses, Chris Carson searched for a DropCam-like solution that would alert him if his street-parked Porsche was ever victim of similar assaults. When he didn’t find one, he did the typical Silicon Valley thing: he made one. In the process, he possibly solved one of the biggest transportation hurdles looming on the horizon: connecting all those unconnected cars on the road.

Antoine Blondeau – The CEO Of The AI Company With The Highest Valuation In The World

Sentient Technologies has patented evolutionary and perceptual capabilities that provide customers with highly sophisticated solutions, powered by the largest compute grid dedicated to distributed artificial intelligence. The company also has a war chest of $143 million in venture investment, the most of any artificial intelligence company. Antoine Blondeau founded Sentient Technologies nearly nine years ago, though it was in stealth mode for the majority of that period.

Infosys Innovation Is A Grassroots Movement

“We started hoping to mine our 8,000+ current client projects for innovation,” said Ravi Kumar S., EVP & Chief Delivery Officer for Infosys, a leading tech consulting and IT services firm. “After looking at 4 or 5, we got excited because we’d found numerous ways to improve client outcomes,” he continued. “Also, we realized it would take a decade to review the rest of them.” Instead, the company decided to unleash a grassroots effort to encourage, tee-up, and vet the best innovative ideas emerging at the points where its people interacted with their clients. The program, launched last April, was appropriately titled Zero Distance. “Most ideation frameworks are anti-innovation,” Kumar explained. “So our initial phase was to provoke ideation and participation with a call to action, informed with just enough design principles to guide the process without dictating it.” To prompt that internal peer momentum, it identified 300 or so influencers across the company who’d serve as initial evangelists for the first 5 weeks after the program was launched last April. The team, dubbed them “The Jedi,” helped encourage incremental, adjacent and cross-functional ideas that could be subsequently celebrated. “Once we had that momentum, we added a social tech platform for posting and sharing the templates, which pushed the conversation further along,” Kumar said.

WhatsApp Is Ending Support For BlackBerry

In a major blow to BlackBerry’s turnaround efforts in mobile, the world’s biggest messaging service won’t work on its phones by the end of 2016.

NASA Venus Landsail Rover Could Launch In 2023

NASA continues working towards a Venus landsail surface rover that could see launch as early as 2023 and mark the first time in a generation that any probe has landed on the planet’s hot, rocky surface. After a five month journey from Earth, the lander-rover — about the size of a windsurfing board — would begin a nominal 50-day surface mission.

Investor’s Guide to IOT Part 3 – IOT Platforms And Services

This is the third installment of a 4-part series titled “Investor’s Guide to the IoT (Internet of Things)”. The four articles will focus on the following topics:

Gartner’s Top 10 Internet Of Things Technologies For 2017 & 2018

Gartner predicts that low-power short-range networks will dominate wireless IoT connectivity through 2025, far outnumbering connections using wide-area IoT networks. For enterprises to adopt and gain the full value of these technologies, significantly higher investments in training are needed. Gartner’s Top 10 IoT technologies provide a glimpse into what their clients are most interested in today.

Investor’s Guide to IOT Part 2 – Understanding The IOT Vendor Landscape

This is the second installment of a 4-part series titled “Investor’s Guide to the IoT (Internet of Things)”. The four articles will focus on the following topics: Part 1 – Understanding the IoT Ecosystem

Astronomers Create Largest-Ever Catalog Of Cosmic Voids

Astronomers have released the largest and most extensive catalog of cosmic voids ever generated — extending out some 8 billion light years in an area covering a quarter of the sky, mostly observable from the Northern hemisphere.

ZOTAC Expands Its Enthusiast Product Offerings With Ultra-Fast PCIe NVMe SONIX SSD

Non-Volatile Memory Express, or NVMe, is an interface specification specifically designed for attaching solid state storage media – like NAND flash – to computers via PCI Express. Part of the reason NVMe came to be is because solid state drives quickly began to bump into limitations of the legacy, and ubiquitous SATA interface.  In real world situations, for example, the SATA interface tops out at roughly 550MB/s, which many entry level solid state drives can now achieve with sequential reads. NVMe is not bound by that limitation, and the spec incorporates many other things, like a higher max queue depth, to squeeze much more performance form solid state storage media.

MINIX Bolsters Its Media-Focused Small Form Factor PC Line-Up With Silent, Intel-Powered NGC-1

Small form factor computers have been steadily increasing in popularity for the last few years. Whether we’re talking about ultra-tiny, specialized systems like the diminutive undefinedIntel Compute Stick or sleek, two-in-one systems with clean lines and touch-screens, the power efficiency and relatively miniscule footprint of today’s processors have enabled a wide array of attractive small form factor systems that have resonated with consumers.

Prynt: Transforming an iPhone Into a Polaroid

Two months ago, I previewed in this column several new future-like, functional iPhone cases that were soon coming to market. One of them, the Prynt Case, has hit virtual store shelves. Essentially, it’s a one-inch thick sleeve that your iPhone slides into (note: There is also a version for Samsung phones) and turns your iPhone into a Polaroid camera. The sleeve houses photo paper and acts as a printer.

Sexperts Agree: Mix High Tech And Low Key For A Blissful 2016

Four top sexperts weigh in on 2016’s hottest toys and trends, some long-term favorites, and how to get comfortable enough to lay back and enjoy.

FashHacking Their Way To The Top: The Well Heeled Londoners Behind The Fash-Tech Movement

Anyone who has seen the YouTube video of Bill Gates and senior Microsoft executives celebrating the launch of Windows 95 by dancing on-stage would be hard pressed to make a case for the tech industry being sexy.

SpaceX Falcon Rocket Successfully Launches

SpaceX Postpones Falcon 9 Launch Again

SpaceX has called off its second attempt in as many days to launch the SES-9 satellite into orbit, citing “technical difficulties”.

Incredible Photos Of Pluto From New Horizons

Pluto’s North Pole Is Covered In Frozen Canyons

NASA’s New Horizons has found frozen canyons at Pluto’s North Pole that seem to indicate an ancient period of tectonic activity on the planet.

A New Big Data Predictive Analytics Solution For Ocean Carriers

In logistics, we have not seen all that many examples of Big Data analytics. That is beginning to change.

Microsoft Acquires Cross-Platform Xamarin To Drive ‘Universal Windows’ Dream

Microsoft has signed an agreement to acquire Xamarin, a cross-platform mobile software development specialist. The move is essentially a case of Microsoft trying to help its developer community to build apps that could prove poplar on every device and platform.

This Company Wants To Change How We Use Eye Tracking Technology

At the world’s largest mobile event, Mobile World Congress, Feb 22 to 25, 2016 in Barcelona, there’s always a bombardment new features from device makers. This year is no different where the highlights included Huawei’s new MateBook, Samsung Galaxy’s S7 and the new devices running Microsoft’s Windows.

Xiaomi Boldly Undercuts Samsung And Apple With $300 Mi5

In trying to regain marketshare from Apple, Xiaomi has gone back to doing what it does best: making high-end phones for a very low price.

Next-Gen ATLAS Robot Won’t Be Pushed Around By Humans

The next-generation ATLAS robot is here and it’s quieter, smarter and much, much steadier on its feet.

63% Of Companies Operating In The Cloud Can Develop An App In 3 Months Or Less

79% of IT teams are currently developing apps for customers, partners and employees. 68% of CIOs predict they will spend more on mobile applications, cloud migration and security in the next two years. 56% of IT leaders are experiencing a skills gap in data engineering. IT leaders list cloud migration as a top priority in 2016.

Huge Meteor Explodes Over Earth – But No-one Notices

The largest meteor impact on Earth since Chelyabinsk is chewing up headlines today, although it happened weeks ago and no-one noticed.

Digital Disconnect Between User Experience And Business Results: Report

While digital leaders still struggle to put the pieces together, at least there’s a broad understanding of the need for real-time, end-to-end visibility into the customer experience. Furthermore, there is no shortage of performance management tools on the market. Given the extraordinarily competitive nature of the digital landscape today, it’s only a matter of time until enterprises finally get their digital acts together.

Get Ready For The Chat Bot Revolution: They’re Simple, Cheap And About To Be Everywhere

When we’ve got our noses poked into smartphones for hours each day, it’s hard to believe that apps are starting to hit the end of the road. Yet studies consistently show that smartphone users have condensed their daily screentime time into just a handful of favourite apps, often a browser, a couple of chat and social apps and maybe a game or two.

ARM Holdings Releases A Very Tiny Core For IoT And Wearables

Devices are getting smarter and connected – this is a common industry saying and the basis for excitement about IoT. Much of these connected devices run on processors designed by ARM Holdings, PLC  of Cambridge, UK. The company estimates that over 60 billion (with a “b”) chips have shipped with its cores inside. It’s fair to say ARM is the preeminent supplier of processor chip-level intellectual property (IP) to IoT, a market that Intel trying to grow as PC sales decline. Still, the need to connect more devices and make more devices intelligent keeps moving forward.

Mark Zuckerberg And Virtual Reality Outshine Samsung’s Galaxy S7

Samsung is making a bold bet on virtual reality as smartphone growth continues to slow.

Ripple: A New Buzz Electrifying Coffee

Coffee fanatics, it’s time to get even more excited. A new product is transforming your favorite drink into a much more personal experience. Literally. It all started when two friends — both industrial designers — were sitting in an Israeli coffee shop. They were staring into the cups of their lattes and noticed the white froth.

Kanye West Might Be The Future Of Tech

Kanye West’s Donda might be poised to change the future of tech, entertainment and well, pretty much everything.

Google Cloud Vision Helps Computers To ‘See’ Pictures

The Google Cloud Vision venture is developing. The project is designed to help computers ‘see’ images and understand what they depict and represent. Heavily aligned towards the needs of software application developers looking to incorporate image recognition and understanding into their apps, this is essentially part of emerging machine-learning technologies currently in their ascendancy.

Is Drone Racing The New Superbowl For Brands?

There are a few ways to pique my interest in this cynical and ‘seen-it-all’ world we live in.  One of these ways is to receive more than 30 million hits on your first two events doing something.  The videos in question were an introductory video for drone racing and limited footage from two races.  If you aren’t sure what drone racing is imagine an empty stadium, shopping mall or large space with a series of rings in it that flying drones are piloted through at staggering speed.  There are crashes, collisions and some serious adrenalin involved.  Drone racing now has a league, imaginatively titled ‘Drone Racing League’ or DRL – and has more than $8m in investor funding from some impressive names including RSE Ventures, CAA Ventures, Hearst Ventures, Strauss Zelnick (CEO of Take-Two Interactive Software), Allen Debevoise (founder of Machinima), Grant Gittlin (CXO of Medialink), Lerer Hippeau Ventures, Lux Capital, Courtside Ventures, and Gary Vaynerchuk with Vayner/RSE.

Quest Diagnostics’ Board-Level CIO Drives Data-Driven Services

Quest Diagnostics is a $7.5 billion provider of diagnostic testing information services. It collects vast amounts of data: twenty billion test results, one hundred fifty million medical test requisitions in 2014, and testing services that touch about one third of the adults in the US. It is up to Lidia Fonseca, Quest Diagnostics’ CIO to organize, tag, and structure the data so that the company can turn information into insights and insights into actions. By effectively categorizing and partitioning the data, the big data conundrum has turned into a massive opportunity for the company, and it has also made that data much more secure.

Thinking Big In Barcelona; The Corsican Founder About To Take App Builder Good Barber Open Source

Why build an app from scratch and spend a fortune on designers, coders and consultants if your core business is not UX / UI design? Much better to build from an out of the box template using a range of pre-coded add-ons and features. This, plus an emphasis on beautiful and unique designs, is the philosophy that underpins entrepreneur Domininque Siacci’s startup Good Barber – which provides easy to assemble app building software for iPhone, iPad and Android.

2016 Honda Civic Coupe: Another Winner In Honda’s Parade Of New Product

Honda is in the midst of an aggressive product launch, with five all-new models and two substantially revised vehicles hitting showrooms in less than 2 years. Many of these vehicles are also top sellers in their respective categories, suggesting the automaker’s efforts are working to grow Honda’s visibility and reach in today’s highly-competitive new-car market. And while Honda’s overall sales were up modestly (2.6 percent) in 2015, at Kelley Blue Book we tracked the brand’s transaction price growth at 2.7 percent. That’s higher than Chevrolet, Kia, Subaru or Toyota (and essentially tied with Mazda’s 2.8 percent price growth), suggesting the appeal of these new products is creating strong demand.

15 Top Paying IT Certifications In 2016: AWS Certified Solutions Architect Leads At $125K

Each of the five Amazon Web Services (AWS) certifications brings in an average salary of more than $100,000. There are more than 685,000 Project Management Professionals (PMPs) worldwide, and their average annual salary is $116,094. Four of the 15 are Cisco certifications, solidifying the value of these certifications in enterprise IT.

Three Factors For ‘Bimodal’ IT: Automation, Automation And Automation

The problem with the information technology industry is that we are fond of doing the same thing that we used to do, but giving an action a new name and telling everyone that a so-called paradigm shift has happened. Take DevOps, take big data analytics or even take cloud computing… we’ve kind of been here before with a lot of these concepts, processes and methodologies. So could ‘bimodal IT’ be genuinely new… and what makes it happen?

Meet The Entrepreneurs Aiming To Make Virtual Shopping The New (Augmented) Reality

Two business partners and entrepreneurs who have been friends for more than 25 years have developed an award-winning product that is beginning to make waves as the missing link that could finally solve the problem of how to unite “clicks” and “bricks”.

Volvo Plans To Be First Automaker To Go Fully ‘Keyless’

The Chinese-owned company aims to eschew physical keys and/or a remote key fob altogether, perhaps as early as 2017. In their place the company plans to offer new-vehicle owners access to their autos via a smartphone app and Bluetooth wireless technology.

Facebook Treads A Thin Line Between Ads And Spam On Messenger

More than 20 businesses are now figuring out how to talk to you on Messenger. When Facebook lets them start a chat in just few months, it risks putting some users off.

The Internet Of Things Goes Open Source With Linux Foundation’s Zephyr Project

By providing a secure and open source OS, the Zephyr Project could remove the constraints that hold back IoT from becoming mainstream.

New Breed Of Startups Aims To Transform Security

The security industry has started to go through a transformation. The transformation is part evolution and part maturity. Exploits and attack techniques advance rapidly and a quick look at the headlines on any given week demonstrates that traditional network and endpoint security solutions are proving inadequate. The companies that form the new breed of security are bringing unique and innovative approaches to the problem rather than just tweaking the same old broken security model.

Will Force Over Mass Change The Modus Operandi For Investing In UK Startups?

Last week I caught up with Martijn de Wever, CEO of Force Over Mass Capital and CMO Theo Osborne to talk about their new joint venture investment project which officially launches today. FOM represents a step change in how investors can help fund early stage technology companies – it gives angel investors access to a curated portfolio of 30 startups every year without taking away their right to manage and add to their investments over time. Investors enjoy this flexibility because of an open-ended investment solution which is clearly differentiated from traditional Venture Capital fund models, the duo told me.

Can Artificial Intelligence Answer Our Email?

Many of us harbor a love hate relationship with email. We hate its Sisyphean tedium, but we love to stay on top of our world and our work objectives. Ultimately, many of us end up becoming a slave to our own inboxes. The question now then is… given the increasing sophistication seen in machine learning and Artificial Intelligence (AI), could intelligent automation answer our emails for us?

This Startup Is Building A Brain For Fleets Of Driverless Vehicles

City authorities could more than halve traffic on the roads if they controlled a driverless flotilla of cabs and busses.

How to Pitch, Value & Fund Your Digital Baby – Part 3 of a 6-Part Series for Digital Entrepreneurs

This is part 3 of a 6-part series where I present a set of contrarian start/build/exit best practices for digital entrepreneurs.

Sharebot Leverages Blockchain Technology For Competitive ‘Social’ Marketing

The launch of website Sharebits.io and its new ‘tip-bot’ facilities, which is another way to share and exchange value through cryptocurrency tokens, is being touted as facilitating and aiding businesses and entrepreneurs to reach the notoriously ‘hard-to-attract’ millennial demographic. And, the sales spiel behind this initiative leveraging blockchain technology pitches “a fun, flexible and accessible approach” to marketing.

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