Universal Pictures has optioned the rights to make a movie based on Gears of War. Rod Fergusson, head of Gears of War developer The Coalition, announced during a game livestream that Universal Pictures has optioned motion picture rights to Microsoft Studios’ Gears of War game ser … | Continue reading
GUEST: Much of the immediate reaction to the Made by Google event yesterday is focused on the host of new hardware: the premium Pixel phone, the affordable Chromecast Ultra, the colorful Google Home, the soft Daydream View VR headset, the sleek Google Wi-Fi router. That’s as it s … | Continue reading
Theranos is closing its labs and wellness centers, CEO Elizabeth Holmes announced today in blog post. And this isn’t a temporary closure: the “approximately” 340 employees running them are out of a job. Read More | Continue reading
On stage at TechCrunch Disrupt last month, Udacity founder Sebastian Thrun announced that the online education company would be building its own autonomous car as part of its self-driving car nanodegree program. To get there, Udacity has created a series of challenges to leverage … | Continue reading
The Pixel phones boast impressive cameras and software, but one of the biggest drawbacks is that they are not water-resistant. But that’s about to change. | Continue reading
Theranos will fire 340 employees — about 40 percent of its workforce — in California, Arizona and Texas, as well as shuttering all its clinical labs and Theranos Wellness centers, the company said in a statement today. The troubled start-up appears to be moving back to doing more … | Continue reading
Sony is about to jump in with the third major high-end VR headset, and its device is both better and worse than the other virtual reality hardware devices. PlayStation VR will debut October 13 for $500, and the new device will have to carve out its own space in the gaming market … | Continue reading
We're streaming live on Mobcrush right now. There's a couple different ways you can watch the stream, and they all work equally well and it's really just a matter of personal preference as to which method you prefer. The easiest way to watch is just watching the embedded player r … | Continue reading
ANALYSIS: Apple’s long-promised and long-awaited search ads are finally here — or almost here. And they’re going to be tremendously important for app publishers and marketers, since 65-80 percent of all app installs happen after a search on either the App Store or Google Play. Bu … | Continue reading
VB LIVE: How do you deliver hyper-relevant, cross-channel customer experiences that boost loyalty, increase average order value, reduce churn, and turn browsers into buyers fast? Programmatic CRM can make it all happen. This VB Live event shows you how to get the right message to … | Continue reading
Embattled medical testing company Theranos today said that it’s closing down clinical labs and Theranos Wellness Centers and thus cutting 340 employees in Arizona, California, and Pennsylvania. It had 790 employees in August, meaning the layoffs affect 43 percent of the company’s … | Continue reading
Tivoli Audio is mainly known for its Bluetooth and FM radios featuring an old-school aesthetic, but it’s now shifting direction to take the fight to straight to Sonos. The company today unveiled its new ‘ART’ line of audio products, which stands for the very cheesy ‘Audio Reimagi … | Continue reading
Samsung today confirmed it has agreed to terms with Viv, an AI assistant co-founded by Siri’s creators. The San Jose-based company is reportedly a more powerful and feature-rich version of Siri and it made waves at this year’s TechCrunch Disrupt in New York. While technologically … | Continue reading
The internet has come a long way since the first domain name was registered in 1985. Even longer when you consider it was only 1994 when a WIRED writer contacted McDonald’s to see if they were interested in registering mcdonalds.com, and, well, got nowhere. Indeed, the state of t … | Continue reading
It takes most of its cues from action movies, so it's only fitting that Gears of War is being turned into a film. Universal Pictures is working on a movie adaptation of the video game series, Gears of War 4 developer The Coalition announced during a live stream today, just before … | Continue reading
Device maker Samsung today said that it has acquired Viv, a startup that was building a virtual assistant based on artificial intelligence. Terms of the deal weren’t disclosed. The move is clearly targeted at improving Samsung’s existing products, presumably most prominently smar … | Continue reading
The 2016 presidential transitions teams have the opportunity to build upon the innovation agenda of previous administrations to advance a culture of innovation that is supported and enabled by cutting-edge tech throughout government. Read More | Continue reading
Rather than create its own personal assistant for Galaxy smartphones, Samsung is just buying one. The company has announced it's acquiring Viv Labs, a startup formed by the creators of Apple's Siri personal assistant, for an undisclosed amount of money. The deal is being reported … | Continue reading
By now it should come as no surprise that Julian Assange isn’t a fan of Hillary Clinton. It doesn’t seem that he likes Google much, either. Assange, the notorious founder of Wikileaks, detailed plans to unleash a fresh batch of leaked documents each week until the November 7 pre … | Continue reading
Attendees at this weekend’s Hackers Congress Paralelni Polis were able to buy Red Bull from a vending machine using bitcoin. The three-day hacking congress sponsored by the Institute of Cryptoanarchy was held in Holešovice, near Prague. The vending machine at the hackers congress … | Continue reading
GUEST: Last month millions watched as Twitter made its biggest move into live events yet: livestreaming the NFL’s week two and week three Thursday night football games in HD, right from its own platform. Amid swirling rumors of a potential acquisition, many treated these first tw … | Continue reading
Samsung has agreed to acquire Viv, an AI and assistant system co-founded by Dag Kittlaus, Adam Cheyer and Chris Brigham — who created Siri, which was acquired by Apple in 2010. The three left Apple in the years after the acquisition and founded Viv in 2012. Pricing information wa … | Continue reading
Our blog articles feature the latest ideas and thinking from our Action and Research Centre and Fellowship staff and guest bloggers. You are welcome to contribute and comment. | Continue reading
In the waning days of September, just before the five-year anniversary of the death of Apple co-founder Steve Jobs, a man in France walked into an Apple Store and began methodically smashing iPhones with a metal ball. The casual destruction of the pricey devices — displayed as ar … | Continue reading
Federal regulators are moving quickly to investigate the replacement Samsung Galaxy Note 7 that caught fire on a Southwest Airlines flight today, with the US Consumer Product Safety Commission "moving expeditiously" to find out what happened.“CPSC is moving expeditiously to inves … | Continue reading
eBay — the soup to nuts marketplace for new and used goods — has made another acquisition to build out its search and discovery technology for customers to find what they need among the 1 billion or so items that are listed on the site. The company today announced that it has acq … | Continue reading
From the beginning, Sony has said that the PlayStation VR headset is $400. That was never really accurate because you also need to own a PlayStation Camera to get that version of the device to work with games. And it turns out that this virtual reality system can’t do much at all … | Continue reading
IBM has invested $200 million USD in the Watson Internet of Things (IoT) global headquarters in Munich, Germany, including new IoT capabilities related to blockchain. IBM will support Watson IoT Technologies efforts to deliver insights from billions of sensors in cars, drones, ma … | Continue reading
The NBA recently held an invite-only event in Midtown Manhattan: Its first hackathon. Their goal: establishing a new way of looking at game stats, both internally for team. But that goal entails far more than just a new software hack. Read More | Continue reading
Mark Zuckerberg might be ready to take the Oculus Rift and virtual reality to new applications beyond video games. This afternoon, Facebook's CEO posted a photo of himself wearing the Rift (and Oculus Touch controller). "Getting ready to demo something new we've been building in … | Continue reading
Pokémon GO fever may be receding in the U.S., but in Norway it’s still raging. The country’s prime minister, Erna Solberg, was caught red-handed playing the game in parliament. Read More | Continue reading
GUEST: Gandalf: A palantir is a dangerous tool, Saruman. Saruman: Why? Why should we fear to use it? Gandalf: They are not all accounted for, the lost Seeing-stones. We do not know who else may be watching. Source: Lord of the Rings Valued at as much as $20 billion and inhabiting … | Continue reading
Billionaire Bill Gross says that many investors are shying away from central banks and putting their money in bitcoin as a way to keep safe. | Continue reading
Identifier: ISFP-2016-AG-MCPillar: Other organised crimeOpening Date: Deadline: Thu, 12 Jan 2017 17:00:00 (Brussels local time) | Continue reading
HBO’s Westworld has a real chance to become the next Game of Thrones. It’s got high production values, a rich, twisty plot, and plenty of human depravity going for it. Of course, it’s just getting started, so it still needs to prove it can build and retain its audience. So to mak … | Continue reading
After Facebook launched its new Marketplace feature — read: Craigslist competitor — on Monday, people quickly noticed that the service wasn't exactly being put to its intended use. Rather than used furniture, bikes, and appliances being put up for sale, people posted offers purpo … | Continue reading
eBay announced that it has signed an agreement to acquire Corrigon in a move to bring more image recognition into its online marketplace. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed but it’ll be the third such deal eBay has made for its structured data effort. “As we continue … | Continue reading
Norwegian politicians might need to enact legislation surrounding Pokémon Go during meetings of parliament. Trine Skei Grande, the leader of Norway’s Liberal party, got caught playing the game back in August. Yesterday, it was the Prime Minister herself, Erna Solberg. After heari … | Continue reading
Not everyone is comfortable speaking on camera. Some people freeze up and look stilted. Others are too terrified to even give it a shot. But there’s no need to panic. Over the years I’ve seen it all and I’m used to helping get the best possible moment from nervous talent. Here ar … | Continue reading
SpaceX CEO Elon Musk is aiming to start a Martian colony within the next decade, but another rival CEO says his company will actually be the one to put humans on the Red Planet first. Boeing CEO Dennis Muilenburg recently answered questions at the "Whats Next" tech conference in … | Continue reading
You probably know all about Amazon's Dash buttons, the little physical buttons that you can press to re-order more of a specific item. They're the lazy man's ultimate shopping device. Because who can be bothered spending more than the time it takes to press a button on buying toi … | Continue reading
GUEST: As the world of applications marches steadily away from visual interfaces to chat interfaces, it would seem that we need an entirely new set of axioms in designing this next generation of interfaces. After all, what is the conversational equivalent of a shiny red button be … | Continue reading
At its Dreamforce conference conference in San Francisco today, customer relationship management software company Salesforce announced the launch of LiveMessage, a feature of the existing Service Cloud product that will let customer support representatives communicate with custom … | Continue reading
At Google’s hardware event this week, the new version of the Android operating system, Android 7.1 (Nougat 7.1), was barely mentioned. As it turns out, there was a reason for that: some of the new Pixel smartphones‘ best features won’t be arriving in the new OS. This includes fea … | Continue reading
Ubisoft doesn’t want to split all of its revenues with retailers. The French publisher announced today that it has relaunched the Uplay Store. This makeover gives the site a new design, but it also provides a new home for exclusive collector’s editions of Ubisoft games. For examp … | Continue reading
Say you’d like to make a few extra bucks by driving for ride hailing services Lyft and Uber or on-demand delivery services like Postmates, but your old car won’t pass muster with these companies. Or maybe you don’t want to put the miles on your personal car. Or maybe you don’t ev … | Continue reading
French artisan spirit Sauvelle is hosting a pop-up dedicated to pairing limited edition trainers with tipples. | Continue reading
Just in time for New York Comic Con, Madefire is announcing that it has raised $6.5 million in Series B funding. Madefire co-founder and CEO Ben Wolstenholme said the funding — which was led by Santa Monica-based Plus Capital — will help his company build more connections with th … | Continue reading