Google has updated how it is combatting piracy across its suite of digital products. In its report “How Google Fights Piracy,” the company revealed that it has spent more than $100 million on YouTube’s Content ID since its inception, representing a big bump up from $60 million two years ago. That number includes computing resources and staffing. The report further details that it has paid out more than $3 billion to rightsholders, compared to “over $2 billion” in 2016 and $1 billion in 2014. Continue reading Google Ups Investment in YouTube’s Anti-Piracy Content ID

Los Angeles-based immersive media startup Within plans to release Wonderscope, an augmented reality app for children, later this month. With Wonderscope, mobile AR superimposes characters, scenes and stories onto an iPad camera view of a real-world environment. Within chief executive Chris Milk noted that, with Wonderscope and a smartphone, anyone can have “this new magical ability.” “It’s like a lens for invisible magical things that you couldn’t see with your naked eye,” he added. Continue reading Startup Within to Release Augmented Reality App for Children

When Amazon’s Alexa asks for the name of an actor, athlete, author or another noun in response to a question, there’s a method to the madness: it’s trying to fill a “slot type,” which defines how data is recognized. A skill or third party app with a slot type for actors would likely query filmographies listing names of actors. These slots are intended to save time, says Amazon, as well as provide a more consistent experience. Amazon is adding four new slot types: Creative Work, Food, Sport and Video Game. Continue reading In Speedier Rollout, Amazon Adds Four New Alexa Slot Types

Samsung chose its San Francisco developer conference to unveil the anticipated prototype of its foldable two-screen smartphone. The Infinity Flex Display touts a 7.3-inch screen that can be folded to easily fit in a user’s pocket. The device also includes what the company calls a “multi active window” feature that enables running up to three apps simultaneously. Google will support the phones with its Android operating system and is working with Samsung on next year’s planned launch. Meanwhile, foldable tech is becoming an emerging trend, with products in various stages from Huawei, Lenovo, Royole, Xiaomi and LG, some of which we may see at CES in January. Continue reading Samsung Prototype Debut May Help Kickstart Foldable Trend

Intel and China’s Tencent have partnered to create two AI-powered products. Announced at Tencent’s Global Partner conference, the two companies revealed DeepGaze, which uses artificial intelligence to track customers in brick-and-mortar stores, and YouBox, also designed for use in retail settings, an on-premises server that uses AI to input real-time feeds from up to 16 cameras. Both products were developed in Tencent’s YouTu Lab for computer vision research, and sport Intel’s Movidius Myriad chips. Continue reading Intel, Tencent Partner on New AI Products to Advance Retail

In light of how bad actors use online platforms to sow dissension and disinformation, many beleaguered tech behemoths have added another tool in its arsenal to fight this problem: so-called counterspeech initiatives. The term is based on Supreme Court Louis Brandeis’ statement that the best remedy for bad speech isn’t silence but more speech. YouTube — in addition to Redirect Method, which sends users searching for terrorism-related keywords to videos offering an alternative view — has its Creators for Change program. Continue reading YouTube Grows Investment in Creators for Change Program

Electronic Arts unveiled Project Atlas, its “cloud-native gaming” technology, via a Medium blog post by chief technology officer Ken Moss. Although he did not say when it would be fully deployed and functional, Moss described Project Atlas as designed to “harness the massive power of cloud computing and artificial intelligence and putting it into the hands of game makers in a powerful, easy to use, one-stop experience.” The game engine combines rendering, game logic, physics, animation, audio, and more. Continue reading EA Announces New AI-Powered, Cloud-Native Gaming Tech

Despite delays in launching its next-gen processors, Intel posted a robust 19 percent growth in revenue, with profits soaring 42 percent. The red-hot market for PCs pressured Intel’s factories, but its focus on servers and high-end PCs boosted its positive numbers. The company’s revenue in Q3 was $19.16 billion — more than the $18.1 billion predicted by analysts, and up from $16.2 billion a year earlier. Intel partnered with Streamlabs to offer stream-capable hardware and software to third-party device manufacturers. Continue reading Intel Benefits from Hot PC Market, Partners with Streamlabs

Uninstalling an app is no longer a sufficient method to remove it from your digital life. App developers and the companies that serve them have figured out how to identify users that have uninstalled an app and then bombard them with ads to try to get them back. Among the companies that currently offer uninstall trackers (as part of an overall toolkit for developers) are Adjust, AppsFlyer, MoEngage, Localytics and CleverTap. T-Mobile US, Spotify Technology, Yelp and Bloomberg are among the users of such tools, although the trackers are not always used to send ads.

Continue reading Developers Are Able to Track Users Who Uninstall Their Apps

According to Amazon, Alexa can perform 50,000+ skills, from turning on lights to playing music. The tech giant is now focused on improving Alexa’s skills to compete with Google for voice assistant dominance. Last month, Amazon empowered Alexa developers, by allowing them to charge users for purchases within skills, with the ultimate goal of making Alexa a more comprehensive, powerful platform. Former Alexa head of product Ahmed Bouzid noted that the path is “exactly what we saw with the App Store for the iPhone.” Continue reading Amazon Unlocks Revenue Potential for Alexa Skill Developers

Although its first experiences with HTML5 were just short of disastrous, Facebook is now using it again to expand Instant Games to developing countries via Facebook Lite and to interest communities via Facebook Groups. Because smartphone processing power and mobile browser app technology have improved, HTML5 is now able to support more complicated games, and Instant Games can launch in a mobile browser or directly into Groups. Currently, 90 million people take part in 270,000 Facebook Groups about gaming each month. Continue reading Facebook Gives HTML5 Another Shot for its Instant Games

Professional sports are often the first to embrace new technology because their fans demand the best experiences available. That’s why the professional sports arena is now integrating immersive technologies including augmented reality, virtual reality and the Internet of Things. The Sacramento Kings use Reddit, Facebook Live, video streaming, virtual reality and bitcoin to immerse their fans in an interactive world. Meanwhile, Los Angeles Clippers chief executive Steve Ballmer is launching CourtVision to offer more interactivity for fans. Continue reading Pro Sports Teams Offer Immersive, Interactive Experiences

In an effort to become more of a personal shopping assistant, Pinterest has introduced product recommendations with its new Product Pin system based on an individual’s tastes. It has also launched a shopping shortcut in the main home feed that provides easy access to a shopping-specific feed and list of shoppable Product Pins by holding down a Home or Style pin to access a shopping tag icon. Pinterest previously rolled out Buyable Pins for direct purchases through the platform in addition to other recommendation features such as Shop the Look and Lens that use machine learning and visual search. Continue reading Pinterest Introduces New Features to Make Shopping Easier

Semiconductor manufacturer ARM, a division of Japan’s SoftBank, and Silicon Valley tech giant Intel have put aside a longstanding rivalry in order to forge a strategic partnership that will adopt common standards developed by Intel for the Internet of Things. The lack of such standards to manage the security of IoT devices, networks and data has been a stumbling block to the growth of the sector. Gartner analyst Bill Ray explains that NXP Semiconductors, Renesas Electronics and Microchip Technology’s Atmel rely on ARM designs, while Intel’s processors dominate today’s cloud data center market. Continue reading ARM and Intel Team on Common Standards for IoT Devices

Facebook downgraded the number of users hacked two weeks ago to 30 million, revealing that the personal information stolen was more substantial for 14 million of the those hacked, including gender, religion, telephone number, email addresses and computing devices used to connect to Facebook. Hackers also captured the last 15 people or things the user had searched for on Facebook and the last 10 physical locations he had checked into. Another 15 million profiles were scraped for names and contact information. Continue reading Facebook Offers More Hack Details, Exposes Web Scraping