All eyes were on Elon Musk today as he gave a keynote speech at the International Astronautical Conference in Mexico. Musk said he was going to detail SpaceX’s plans to colonize Mars and make humans an interplanetary species, and he delivered – at least, in part, since we still have a number of big questions that need answering. Read More
Translating from one language to another is hard, and creating a system that does it automatically is a major challenge, partly because there are just so many words, phrases and rules to deal with. Fortunately, neural networks eat big, complicated data sets for breakfast. Google has been working on a machine learning translation technique for years, and today is its official debut. Read More
For iOS or Mac users interested in VR, there isn’t a lot you can do right now without migrating to the dark sides of Android or Windows. Occipital is aiming to get people on the iOS platform access to some more cool VR opportunities. Today, the company opened up a $500 development kit today that brings room-scale motion tracking to iOS (as well as Android) smartphones, Upload reports.… Read More
While the gears of research are turning fast developing new methods of machine intelligence, another, perhaps more impactful, trend is brewing in the field. Open source frameworks like Apache Spark are hitting their stride at the ideal time to put data analytics in the hands of the business development analyst without forgetting about the needs of the data scientist. IBM’s new… Read More
Honeywell’s been doing its thing for well over a century now, with its thermostatic roots stretching back even further to the 19th century days of coal heating. The company’s connected thermostat history, meanwhile dates roughly back to 2013, with the simply named WiFi Smart Thermostat, released following a bit of a patent dustup with Nest. Announced today, Honeywell’s… Read More
Airbnb may not be ready to unveil its new travel services app, Airbnb Trips, just yet, but in the meantime the company is giving its flagship application a big makeover. The upcoming version of the main Airbnb app will introduce a number of new features for hosts, including things like message templates for quicker replies and a calendar that lets them easily see who’s staying when,… Read More
Solar company Cogenra is suing Elon Musk’s SolarCity over the use of shingling technology the company alleges SolarCity took from Cogenra and used to create a world-record breaking solar panel.
Cogenra says it shared its “most precious and confidential trade secrets, manufacturing processes, and other intellectual property with Silevo and SolarCity” between 2010 and… Read More
Classpass, the subscription service for fitness classes, became a household name because of one simple innovation. The business model. Combining the breadth of a marketplace with a subscription pricing structure sparked a handful of similar startup launches (like Vive, which does the same thing with hair blowouts). But more importantly, it was the turning point for the company, putting it… Read More
The startup world moves at breakneck speed — what’s hot one minute is old news the next, and it can feel like the rules of the game change every day. For successful startups, rapid growth often attracts the attention of incubators and accelerators. However, there are other options. Namely, partnering with tech “titans” — bigger tech companies that used to be… Read More
Facebook is ready to make work as addictive as socializing. The company plans to launch its enterprise communication and collaboration network Facebook At Work in the next few weeks on a per seat pricing model, The Information (paywall) first reported and a source close to Facebook confirmed to TechCrunch. Facebook believes it can keep individual employees engaged with the product, so… Read More
SpaceX has released a new video showing a CG concept of its Interplanetary Transport System, the rocket and spacecraft combo it plans to use to colonize Mars. The video depicts a reusable rocket that can get the interplanetary spacecraft beyond Earth’s orbit, and a craft that uses solar sails to coast on its way to a Mars entry.
The booster returns to Earth after separating from the… Read More
Facebook has been ordered to stop harvesting the data of WhatsApp users in Germany. The move follows the latter’s shock announcement last month that it would start sharing user data from its messaging platform with parent company, Facebook, including users’ phone numbers and last seen time in the app. Read More
Nissan’s ProPILOT tech might mostly be used to help provide its cars with autonomous driving features, but a new project puts it into a chair. Yes, a chair. The chair propels itself, detecting the chair ahead of it and keeping a fixed distance between itself and its neighbor, as it moves along a predefined path. It’s less flexible than the chairs in Wall-E (kudos to Megan for… Read More
Udacity – the online school started by Google X founder and self-driving car pioneer Sebastian Thrun— is offering a new “nanodegree” online to prepare students for jobs in the still emerging industry of virtual reality.
Udacity promises to give online learners with no prior programming experience the skills to create mobile phone and desktop-based virtual reality… Read More
In the world of HR and payment software, things are heating up this fall. In the one corner: Zenefits, the high-flying software company that admitted to having an array of compliance issues and that asked its cofounder to resign as CEO earlier this year. The company has been heavily promoting an all-new, fully complaint, next-generation version of its offerings that it plans to unveil on… Read More
Twitter today is the latest tech company to join the push to get more Americans registered to vote. The company is rolling out a new feature that will allow you to direct message the company’s @Gov Twitter account in order to receive voter registration assistance over private messaging. What’s clever about Twitter’s implementation is that it’s personalized to you, based… Read More
Amazon’s delivery prowess is impressive; just today, it announced free Prime same-day delivery for my home city of Toronto, and the speed and consistency with which they hit their deadlines is astounding. For Amazon’s next act, it might one-up itself by arranging to leave your packages inside your door, or in your garage, when you aren’t home to receive them yourself. The… Read More
DJI’s little drone wasn’t its only big news from today’s Mavic Pro unveil event in New York City. The company also devoted a few moments of stage time to its new simply titled video wearable, Goggles. The on-the-nose name offers up the basics of what you need to know about the new product, an all-white headset reminiscent of a VR peripheral designed to offer up… Read More
Slack — the popular enterprise chat app that now has 3 million users, 930,000 of them paying — is adding in another key integration as it continues to get more embedded with its customers. Today the company is turning on what it describes as a “deep product partnership” with Salesforce — an integration that will make it much easier for businesses to share… Read More
“I’m sitting in New York City,” Adam Lisberg tweeted last week, as GoPro CEO Nick Woodman, dropped to his knees, unzipped a backpack and unveiled the company’s long-awaited Karma drone at an event on the other side of the country. “I’m watching a competitor unveil a new product. I ain’t worried about a thing.”
Days later, DJI’s head U.S. Read More
