(Reuters) — General Motors Co laid out its vision for self-driving vehicles on Thursday, telling investors it planned a commercial launch of fleets of fully autonomous robo-taxis in multiple dense urban environments in 2019, in a challenge to rivals such as Alphabet Inc’s Waymo. … | Continue reading
Though most game jams have developers creating projects on a single theme, Games on Demand takes a different approach. Founder Lana Chircop and six other organizers are fielding requests from children with cancer or disabilities and giving them to developers to make those games a … | Continue reading
GUEST: Job seekers sometimes ask how IBM defines “data scientist.” It’s an important question since more and more would-be data scientists are fighting for attention in an increasingly lucrative labor market. The first step is to distinguish between what we see as true data scien … | Continue reading
Next year is going to be big for Chrome, if you believe everything Google has announced so far: going to war against low-quality ads, autoplaying content with sound, and unwanted redirects. The company today added a smaller, but still significant, initiative to its to-do list: re … | Continue reading
You could make a Netflix Original series, or you could make a video game — or if you’re newly minted studio Wonderstorm, you make both. It’s founders are Riot Games vets, and they’re partnering up with MWM (previously Madison Wells Media) to create an original animated Netflix se … | Continue reading
GUEST: Amazon’s voice-driven virtual assistant, Alexa, is pretty smart right out of the box. She can make Amazon orders for you, read you today’s news, and find out whether a certain restaurant is still open, among other things. If you’ve purchased an Amazon Echo device, you’re p … | Continue reading
Amazon Web Services has been at the forefront of a new cloud application development model since it launched its Lambda service in 2014. That service offers developers a “serverless” environment where they can write code that runs in response to outside events. Today, it got more … | Continue reading
Full-motion video (FMV) once seemed like the peak of gaming technology in the early CD-rom days on systems like Sega CD. What could be more realistic than actual video of real actors? Sadly, compression and poor acting made most of these games more campy than good. But the genre … | Continue reading
GUEST: Six years and 59 days ago, I moved from San Francisco to Detroit. My friends thought I was crazy moving from one of the fastest-growing American cities to one of the most downtrodden. But I saw an opportunity: the potential for Detroit, an iconic American city, to reinvent … | Continue reading
Amazon Web Services launched a new service today that’s designed to provide developers with a full development environment running in its cloud. Called AWS Cloud9, it’s designed to give developers a collaborative workspace for writing code and running terminal commands necessary … | Continue reading
The digital game store GOG announced today that Jazz Jackrabbit and Jazz Jackrabbit 2 are now available. They cost $10 each, but they are one sale now for $9. Jazz Jackrabbit came out for MS-DOS in 1994. It helped launched Cliff Bleszinski and Epic Games (then Epic MegaGames), an … | Continue reading
Amazon is bringing its AI assistant to the workplace with a new service called Alexa for Business. The news was announced today by Amazon CTO Werner Vogels onstage during the keynote address at the AWS re:Invent being held this week in Las Vegas. Alexa for Business will be able t … | Continue reading
Google launched Poly in early November as a way for developers to find 3D assets for their virtual reality and augmented reality projects. Today, it’s releasing the Poly API to streamline the process of including those assets. Poly has a library of creative commons 3D objects and … | Continue reading
In Q1 2017, Xiaomi took the wearables crown from Fitbit. The Chinese powerhouse has managed to hold on in Q2 and now Q3, where Fitbit has regained ground and tied it. (Until this year, Fitbit was indisputably first every single quarter.) Mobile companies shipped a total of 26.3 m … | Continue reading
SPONSORED: Presented by Intel The people who work at the San Francisco-based Funomena are more than just employees: They’re Funomenauts. According to cofounder Robin Hunicke, a Funomenaut is an explorer, someone who wants to push the boundaries of video games. In addition to havi … | Continue reading
We knew it was coming, but Microsoft has finally launched its Edge browser for Android and iOS devices. The company introduced preview versions of the app last month, but now the app is available for everyone in certain markets. The iOS incarnation is available in the App Store t … | Continue reading
PRESS RELEASE: Farmers Business NetworkSM, the independent farmer-to-farmer network, announced a $110 million Series D funding round, led by funds and accounts advised by T. Rowe Price Associates, Inc. and Temasek. Previous investors Acre Venture... | Continue reading
Farmers Business Network, a software platform that helps farmers across the country pool data, announced today that it has raised a $110 million Series D round. The round was led most notably by Temasek, Singapore’s state investment firm. Other participants included Kleiner Perki … | Continue reading
EXCLUSIVE: ESP Gaming is a new production company for esports and competitive gaming events. Spun off from the team that produces the Poker Central events, ESP Gaming will work with big companies such as Amazon to stage broadcast-quality esports events. ESP’s team has more than 2 … | Continue reading
Apple has teamed up with Stanford Medicine for a new study that uses data garnered from a new Apple Watch app to determine whether a user is experiencing abnormal heart rhythms. Available for iPhone and Apple Watch users in the U.S. the Apple Heart Study app uses the heart-rate s … | Continue reading
Zagster, an operator of old-style docked bike services, is unveiling Pace, a new brand for a modern bike-sharing service that offers what it calls a smarter way to share bikes. Rivals such as LimeBike, Spin, and Cycle Hop have moved into the U.S. market more quickly, but Zagster … | Continue reading
Dublin is about to become the latest European city to join the startup campus craze. Today, the city announced a proposal to create The Harbour Innovation Campus. The proposed campus was described as a “state-of-the-art shared innovation space for local and international companie … | Continue reading
PRESS RELEASE: Sommetrics, a company providing products and services to improve sleep quality, today announced the addition of Raymond Huggenberger to its board of directors and Randall Whitfield to its advisory board. Earlier this month, the... | Continue reading
REVIEW: I’ve been hopeful for the Switch‘s prospects as a new home for Japanese role-playing games. I love the genre, and the Switch’s capabilities as both a home console and a portable make it the ideal platform for these games. Playing on a TV gives you a proper display for epi … | Continue reading
Google has taken another small step forward in its mission to connect the “next billion” users with the launch a new app designed to optimize your mobile data usage. Datally for Android has been in testing for several months in the Philippines, and now it’s ready for prime time g … | Continue reading
Uptake, a predictive analytics software provider based in Chicago, announced today that it has raised a $117 million Series D round. The round was led by Baillie Gifford, a U.K.-based venture capital firm, with participation from Revolution Growth, a venture capital led by AOL co … | Continue reading
Finnish game developer Koukoi Games and FoxNext Games are launching the mobile game Ferdinand: Unstoppabull as part of a larger transmedia campaign by Twentieth Century Fox to launch an animated film about Ferdinand the Bull. FoxNext Games is on a roll in mobile since it decided … | Continue reading
Silicon Valley gets a deservedly bad rap for its attitudes toward women in tech and for their lack of representation among startups and venture capital firms. It turns out, Europe’s startup aren’t much better. Even more problematic, it seems, is that European entrepreneurs think … | Continue reading
Gamers play Tetris billions of times online every year, and over 500 million Tetris mobile games have been downloaded to date. But now you don’t even have to download it at all now that Tetris is an instant game on Facebook Messenger. The iconic block-matching game goes live toda … | Continue reading
(Reuters) — Bitcoin zoomed past $11,000 to hit a record high for the sixth day in a row on Wednesday after gaining more than $1,000 in just 12 hours, stoking concerns that a rapidly swelling bubble could be set to burst in spectacular fashion. After soaring more than 1,000 percen … | Continue reading
There are two bills racing through Congress that would undermine your right to free expression online and threaten the online communities that we all rely on. The Stop Enabling Sex Traffickers Act (SESTA, S. 1693) and the Allow States and Victims to Fight Online Sex Trafficking A … | Continue reading
Developers and businesses making skills for Amazon’s Alexa will soon be able to accept Amazon Pay and make purchases directly within voice apps from the Alexa Skills Store. The news was announced today during the Alexa State of the Union at AWS re:Invent in Las Vegas. Other Alexa … | Continue reading
A sweeping new report about European startups from venture firm Atomico paints a picture of a cross-border ecosystem that is brimming with confidence and having a transformative effect on the continent’s workforce. “The State of European Tech 2017,” the third annual data set Atom … | Continue reading
Getting into PC gaming is often tough because whenever you ask for buying advice, everyone yells at you to build your own. Yes, you’ll save money by doing so, and it’s important to understand how to upgrade your rig later to get the most out of it, but hey — buy a PC if that’s [… … | Continue reading
Alexa Fund, Amazon’s venture capital fund for investment in companies that adopt the intelligent assistant into their products, is getting an additional $100 million to support international expansion. Amazon launched the Alexa Fund in June 2015 with an initial investment of up t … | Continue reading
GUEST: Anyone who has thought about scaling a business or building a network is familiar with a dynamic referred to as the “network effect.” The more buyers and sellers who use a marketplace like eBay, for example, the more useful it becomes. Well, the data network effect is a dy … | Continue reading
GUEST: Last week, the EUVR, the nonprofit organization dedicated to maturing the VR industry in Europe, officially backed the Gaze-At-Ratio (GAR) as the standardized ad tracking metric for the European VR community. The GAR algorithm determines the value of a user’s gaze to a dig … | Continue reading
GUEST: Innovation always shapes society, and few innovations will have as dramatic an effect on our lives as autonomous vehicles (AVs). As an early investor in Lyft, my team at Mayfield has a deep interest in how innovation affects transportation, but we also take a people-first … | Continue reading
Amazon Web Services continued to expand its capabilities for powering internet of things applications today with a suite of new services on its cloud platform. Customers should be able to send machine learning models down to edge devices, secure those devices, manage them, and an … | Continue reading
GUEST: Tech giants such as Google and Baidu spent from $20 billion to $30 billion on AI last year, according to the recent McKinsey Global Institute Study. Out of this wealth, 90 percent fueled R&D and deployment, and 10 percent went toward AI acquisitions. Research plays a cruci … | Continue reading
ClanPlay has added community features that support two of the world’s most popular games, Supercell’s Clash of Clans and Clash Royale. The Tel Aviv, Israel-based startup has created community and social features to connect users of the games, said Leonard Frankel, CEO of ClanPlay … | Continue reading
HTC is announcing today that it’s investing in 26 new startups in the augmented reality and virtual reality space through its Vive X global accelerator program. The new batch of startups brings the total number of investments to 80 since July 2016. This clearly makes it the world … | Continue reading
Amazon Web Services today unveiled DeepLens, a wireless video camera made fo the quick deployment of deep learning. The camera will cost $249 and is scheduled to ship for customers in the United States in April 2018. DeepLens comes pre-loaded with AWS Greengrass for local computa … | Continue reading
Amazon Web Services launched a slew of machine learning-based services today that are aimed at making it easier for customers to embed intelligent capabilities in their applications. One new service offers video analysis, while a trio of language understanding APIs offer automati … | Continue reading
At Microsoft’s annual shareholders meeting today, CEO Satya Nadella announced that Windows 10 is now on over 600 million monthly active devices. It took the company’s latest and greatest operating system about 27 months to hit that milestone, as first reported by GeekWire. Window … | Continue reading
Your PlayStation Plus subscription may invite death into your home, but that’s a good thing! Here are the games that PS Plus subscribers will get at no additional charge and can keep as long as they maintain an active subscription to Sony Interactive Entertainment’s premium onlin … | Continue reading
Companies looking to build and deploy machine learning models in the cloud have a new service from Amazon Web Services to help them. Called SageMaker, it’s designed to make it easier for everyday developers and scientists to build their own custom machine learning systems. While … | Continue reading
Udacity today announced that Nvidia will help shape the second term of its robotics software engineer nanodegree program. The effort is led by Nvidia’s Deep Learning Institute, which helps developers, researchers, and others with the tools and training necessary to carry out deep … | Continue reading