Amazon’s voice-operated command center Echo produces something close to modern-day magic within our homes: Get the latest news, order a pizza, turn off the lights or find out who killed Bruce Wayne’s parents in fewer than 1,200 milliseconds. The Echo has received more than 33,000 Amazon reviews at a nearly five-star rating since launching in late 2014 and […]
Most people are terrible at shooting video. Any longer than 15-seconds and it will probably be boring. That’s why Instagram capped videos at a quarter-minute when it launched the feature in 2013. Yet today it extended the length to 60 seconds for user-shot or uploaded videos. That’s why I have a hunch that Facebook and […]
Google Fiber may be the holy grail of Internet service for many, but many people still rely on landlines for everyday communication purposes or emergency use. In order to allow its subscribers to sever connections with the old local ISPs and telecoms completely, Google will soon offer home phone service for Fiber subscribers. For $10 […]
With Strata + Hadoop World kicking off, it’s always fascinating to step back and look at the contents of the sessions as a way of understanding what’s happening in the world of big data. For those of you who have attended this conference for the more than five years that the event’s been kicking, you’ve […]
Twitter this morning announced an effort to make its service more accessible to those who are visually impaired. Specifically, the company is now allowing users to add descriptions to images known as “alternative text,” or “alt text.” This lets people who are taking advantage of assistive technology, including screen readers and braille displays, the chance to hear […]
Samsung Pay is now available in China, about six weeks after competitor Apple Pay launched there. According to the China Internet Network Information Center, 358 million people use their mobile phones to purchase and pay for goods and services. Unsurprisingly, Apple and Samsung consider China a top priority for their mobile payment services, but they […]
Snapchat 2.0 Is Not A Disappearing Teen Fad Ignore Snapchat at your own peril. It’s a lot more than sexts and ephemeral photos. Today’s Chat 2.0 update makes Snapchat a competitor to your phone itself. What started as an app for horny high school kids has blossomed into the most vibrant communication platform on the […]
Long ago, when capturing video of the game you were playing was something only pros and highly motivated gamers (the term had not its current currency and was, at the time, pejorative or at least belittling) attempted to do, and with as little glory as attended such vocations and avocations at the time, there was […]
Typically, mobile apps are stand-alone experiences that play nicely with the operating system but aren’t fully integrated in it. Cyanogen — the company best known for its Android-based Cyanogen OS — is launching MOD today, a new developer platform that will give app developers the ability to integrate their apps more directly into the operating […]
CNET Estimates suggest that there are a lot of crusty old beige-box PCs out there, with some 600 million of them over five years old. Philip Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president of worldwide marketing, said that this was “sad,” and that he’d like to see them taken out of service and replaced with shiny new […]