GUEST: Alexa and her corresponding Amazon devices are best known for streamlining tasks in our personal lives. Things such as checking news briefings or weather forecasts and adding items to a to-do list are made easier by this handy digital assistant. Although her most common ap … | Continue reading
GUEST: It feels like a page out of a science-fiction book: self-driving cars shuttling people around with little or no input from passengers. And yet, here we are. Self-driving technology is already a reality, and it’s improving every day thanks to machine learning and owner inpu … | Continue reading
(Reuters) — U.S. computer maker Dell Technologies is exploring a range of options that could see the world’s largest privately held technology company grow further through acquisitions or go public, people familiar with the matter said on Thursday. Dell’s board of directors will … | Continue reading
I’ve started to ignore the indie platformer space recently. I dug into Super Meat Boy way back in 2010 on Xbox 360, but nothing has pushed the genre forward in the same way since. Sure, Cuphead got everyone’s attention, but that is more of a run-and-gun shooter like Gunstar Heroe … | Continue reading
Tencent Holdings is investing an undisclosed amount of money in Skydance Media, a Hollywood entertainment studio that makes everything from Terminator movies to the Archangel virtual reality game. Skydance Media was started in 2010 by David Ellison, the son of Oracle founder Larr … | Continue reading
GUEST: Artificial intelligence achieved prominence in 2017 as companies looked to automate how they derive value from data. Following years focused on collecting data, where Hadoop and big data management dominated the conversation, organizations are now turning their attention t … | Continue reading
GUEST: Entrepreneurship plays a critical role in establishing or revitalizing any economy. Look no further than Michigan to know that this is true. Thanks to a strong pipeline of talented workers from private and public universities that are supported by entrepreneurship organiza … | Continue reading
PRESS RELEASE: After approximately three months in the market, Silversmith Capital Partners ("Silversmith") announced today the first and final closing of its second fund, Silversmith Capital Partners II, L.P. ("Fund II") at its target and hard cap... | Continue reading
At an event in Beijing today, Qualcomm announced partnerships with six Chinese manufacturers to accelerate availability of 5G devices in China. Preliminary Qualcomm agreements with four of the companies have an estimated value of at least $2 billion over three years, beginning wi … | Continue reading
Ludia is moving into the interactive story market today with the launch of What’s Your Story?, a mobile game where fans can craft their own fiction based on popular Hollywood franchises. In the interactive story genre popularized by other mobile apps like Choices and Episode, fan … | Continue reading
If you want to get an idea of just how quickly sentiment has shifted against U.S. tech giants, than just listen to NYU professor Scott Galloway. The marketing professor is a self-professed fan of companies like Facebook, Apple, Google, and Amazon. He’s made a bundle from owning t … | Continue reading
GUEST: The last few months have been exciting for those interested in the advancement of virtual reality technology. Two leading headsets (the Oculus Rift and HTC Vive) saw permanent price cuts, following reported sales jumps from the Rift’s temporary price cut this summer. Now, … | Continue reading
(Reuters) — Alphabet Inc launched a new business unit on Wednesday that will sell cyber security software to Fortune 500 companies, the latest move by the parent of Google to become a big player in corporate computing. The new unit, dubbed Chronicle, is betting on the premise tha … | Continue reading
While much of Silicon Valley is keeping its eyes on a Mark Zuckerberg run for president, other Silicon Valley luminaries are exploring ways to get more involved in politics. This week, former Google and Uber executive Brian McClendon was the latest to throw his hat into the polit … | Continue reading
Earlier this morning, from out of nowhere, BioWare executive producer Mark Darrah took to social media to claim that he is overseeing work on the next Dragon Age while simultaneously working on the studio’s upcoming online persistent shooter, Anthem. Darrah said that BioWare has … | Continue reading
European venture capital (VC) firm DN Capital announced that it has closed its fourth fund at €200 million ($247 million) as it looks to invest in seed-stage and series A-level startups in Europe and the U.S. Founded in 2000, DN Capital is headquartered in London, though it claim … | Continue reading
Plexchat has launched its Path2Pro esports league for Supercell’s popular Clash Royale mobile game. The effort is part of an attempt to establish mobile games as a thriving part of the esports business, which Newzoo predicts will hit $2.5 billion by 2020. It’s also a recognition … | Continue reading
Turner Sports has partnered with Twitch as the official third-party platform for its Eleague esports events. Starting with the Eleague Major: Boston, a Counter-Strike: Global Offensive tournament that runs until January 28, Twitch will exclusively livestream all esports events as … | Continue reading
Facing impending threats from 5G wireless carriers, cable operator Charter Communications has announced fixed 5G wireless tests in six cities, and plans to expand broadband service in rural communities. At the same time, the company hinted that it will seek “regulatory parity” to … | Continue reading
VB LIVE: Brands have access to terabytes more customer data than they did just a few years ago, but most organizations are using only 10 percent of what they collect. When you AI in the driver’s seat, you enable high-touch, multichannel engagement. Join Forrester analyst Rusty Wa … | Continue reading
PRESS RELEASE: Spry, the first mobile public relations (PR) network, brings the sharing economy to the public relations industry with a new on-demand platform. The technology start-up delivers communications services from top PR and journalism talent.... | Continue reading
Ubisoft is launching a chat bot named Sam to keep you engaged with games connected to your Ubisoft Club account. Sam works with voice commands or text chat messages on your phone, and it provides answers to your everyday gaming questions. In response to your queries, the iOS and … | Continue reading
For the third year running, Google will be hosting its I/O developer conference at its Shoreline Amphitheatre in Mountain View (after moving it from San Francisco in 2016). The location, along with the dates May 8 to May 10, were revealed as part of a series of puzzles on the I/O … | Continue reading
EXCLUSIVE: Showpad, which helps sales and marketing teams work together more intelligently, announced today that it has raised an additional $25 million in funding from existing investor Insight Venture Partners. This is an extension of the startup’s Series C round of $50 million … | Continue reading
Interior design startup Havenly has raised $12.5 million in a series B round of funding led by Foundry Group, with participation from Industry Ventures, Chicago Ventures, and Kickstart Fund. Founded out of Denver in 2014, Havenly’s online platform connects homeowners with vetted … | Continue reading
Nexar, a dashcam recording app that uses artificial intelligence (AI) to analyze road conditions and warn of hazardous events, has raised $30 million in a series B round of funding led by Ibex Investors, with participation from Alibaba Innovation Ventures, Mosaic Ventures, Nation … | Continue reading
Commercial drone company PrecisionHawk has raised $75 million in a round of funding led by Third Point Ventures, with participation from a number of other investors including Intel Capital, Comcast Ventures, Verizon Ventures, NTT Docomo Ventures, Senator Ventures, Yamaha Motor, C … | Continue reading
Over the past few years, the Femtech sector has given rise to all sorts of female-related products. From ovulation-tracking bracelets to period-tracking apps, artificial intelligence (AI) is helping women to better track and predict their menstrual cycles. But when that time of t … | Continue reading
Nazara Technologies has acquired a 55 percent stake in Indian startup Nodwin Gaming, which is trying to pioneer esports in India. Mumbai-based Nazara wants to enable a full esports ecosystem in India, with both competitive online and offline play, localized leagues, local games, … | Continue reading
A new startup called Doxel launched today, promising that its robots and artificial intelligence have the key to solving late and overbudget construction projects. The company uses robots to autonomously capture 3D scans of construction sites, and feeds that data into a deep neur … | Continue reading
GUEST: Recently I was in Anaheim giving a talk called “Industry Lifecycles.” It was intended to be a brief summary of the blog post of the same title, with a dash of material from my recent post on game economics. Now, that latter post resonated quite a lot. There was lengthy dis … | Continue reading
GUEST: It’s a given that artificial intelligence will change many things in our world in 2018. But with new developments arising at a rapid pace, how can business leaders keep up with the latest AI to improve their performance? Perhaps the best place for executives to start is ga … | Continue reading
The celebrity endorsement is an age-old marketing trick, and it’s one that game developers still use even in an era of social-media influencers. Developer Outpost Games just worked with beloved West Coast rapper Snoop Dogg on a Twitch stream where the dogg father played the game … | Continue reading
Verizon’s CES announcement of a small-scale U.S. 5G rollout in 2018 may have been met with a mix of uncertainty and disbelief, but CEO Lowell McAdam was unambiguous in a conference call today: 5G is indeed coming this year, critics be damned. Dismissing rivals who portrayed Veriz … | Continue reading
Google announced today that universities and other large educational institutions will have a new version of its G Suite productivity service tailored just for them. Called G Suite Enterprise for Education, the service will first be a roughly straight port of the tech giant’s off … | Continue reading
After a five-week beta period, Apple today released iOS 11.2.5, macOS 10.13.3, tvOS 11.2.5, and watchOS 4.2.2 to the general public. Each of the new operating system releases includes bug fixes and stability improvements, following Apple’s rush to address Spectre and Meltdown pro … | Continue reading
For the past couple of years, virtual reality training startup Strivr has been working with the U.S. Ski & Snowboard Association (USSA) team to train athletes for the PyeongChang Winter Olympics. The startup worked with the Park City, Utah-based governing board for USSA to use VR … | Continue reading
Masha Drokova has had a busy year, tapping into her PR network and sourcing limited partners (LPs) to back her first venture capital firm. Today, the 28-year-old angel investor announced the launch of Day One Ventures, an early-stage VC firm that funds startups and spearheads the … | Continue reading
As the debate over sales of Apple’s iPhone X continues to brew, a research firm released data today that’s sure to provoke another round of thumbsucking. According to Canalys, Apple shipped 29 million iPhone Xs in Q4 2017 (a quarter that Apple would refer to as Q1 2018), a figure … | Continue reading
(Reuters) — Tesla said on Tuesday Chief Executive Elon Musk will receive no guaranteed compensation of any kind, and that he will be paid only if the company and all of its shareholders do extraordinarily well. The compensation will be based on a combination of market capitalizat … | Continue reading
PRESS RELEASE: Bright Pattern today announced the appointment of Michael McCloskey as CEO. McCloskey has been serving on the Board of Directors at Bright Pattern, and is a highly experienced technology executive with a proven track record of building... | Continue reading
Phil Harrison, a veteran of Sony and Microsoft’s game console businesses, tweeted today that he had taken a job at Google. That’s a big development in the game business, and it raises the question about why Google would hire Harrison as the vice president and general manager of a … | Continue reading
Darkest Dungeon is all about dreary, maddening catacombs and stressful encounters with death-worshiping cultists. But I have to say that I’m finding it quite nice to spend time with on my Nintendo Switch. Red Hook Studios released Darkest Dungeon last week on Nintendo’s hybrid ho … | Continue reading
Picaresque Studio’s Nantucket is the latest video game to draw inspiration from literary classics — this time from the vengeful nautical adventures of Herman Melville’s novel Moby-Dick. It’s a strategy game with turn-based combat, as well as simulation elements where you’ll have … | Continue reading
I love running custom games of PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds. Even when I die during one of these matches, the fun isn’t over, because I can go into a spectator mode and watch the rest of the fight as a free-floating camera. The best part about this is that I can use the in-game … | Continue reading
Google started rolling out Android 8.1 Oreo in December 2017. One feature, however, was only turned on today: Wi-Fi connection speeds under the names of public networks. Mobile devices already show Wi-Fi signal strength via an icon with four or five bars. The more bars, or the fu … | Continue reading
VB EVENT: Chris Heivly, the entrepreneur-in-residence at international startup accelerator Techstars, is one of the speakers at VentureBeat’s inaugural Blueprint conference, happening on March 5-7 in Reno, Nevada. At Blueprint, speakers including Heivly will discuss how tech comp … | Continue reading
What do you do if you’re a cash-strapped Uber driver looking to make a few extra bucks without putting in extra hours? Why, you sell goods to passengers, of course. And that is exactly what New York-based Cargo is setting out to enable with its in-car commerce platform for the ri … | Continue reading