Several Silicon Valley technologists and tech companies will invest at least $1 billion in OpenAI, a nonprofit research center in San Francisco with a long-term goal of creating open-source “artificial general intelligence,” a machine capable of performing any task that a human can. Among the investors are Elon Musk, Peter Thiel and Reid Hoffman. One chief focus of the group’s members is to ensure that the resultant technologies augment rather than replace humans, and are used for good. Continue reading Silicon Valley Titans Invest $1 Billion to Establish AI Non-Profit

Artificial intelligence is moving into the mainstream and the San Francisco-based Sentient is one example of how it’s working. The company most recently built a visual search service for an online footwear company, Shoes.com, and also worked with Saint Michael’s Hospital at the University of Toronto on tracking patient care. Rather than rely on history for recommendations, the technology looks at more than a hundred factors to make judgments. Microsoft is also building AI into its products, including its Azure cloud platform. Continue reading Companies Develop New Applications for Artificial Intelligence

WalmartLabs has upped its credibility as a technology provider and taken a swipe at Amazon by opening its OneOps cloud platform to all comers. The OneOps source code will be uploaded to code repository GitHub by the end of the year. By doing so, Walmart hopes to increase competition with Amazon Web Services and offer developers an option to AWS’ dominance. Walmart touts OneOps advantages as “cloud portability, continuous lifecycle management, faster innovation, and great abstraction of cloud environments.” Continue reading WalmartLabs Offers Its Open Source Cloud Platform to Public

Amazon is throwing its hat into the IoT ring with a new service for developers through its Amazon Web Services division. The beta service, named AWS IoT, was introduced during the company’s annual AWS conference in Las Vegas. It is designed for developers looking to link Internet-connected devices — from smoke alarms and other household appliances to smartwatches and fitness trackers — with other hardware devices and applications housed on remote servers. The idea is that devices would communicate with each other and take commands from computers. Continue reading The Internet of Things May Be the Next Frontier for Amazon

It’s official. In the largest technology takeover in history, PC tech giant Dell will purchase cloud computing company EMC for $67 billion. Michael Dell is funding the deal with MSD Partners, Silver Lake and Temasek Holdings. He will become chairman and CEO of the combined company, which will be privately held. Joe Tucci is expected to step down as chief exec of EMC once the transaction closes between May and October of 2016. EMC presently owns 81 percent of virtualization software and services company VMware. Dell plans to pay $24.05 per share in cash, plus tracking stock in VMware. Continue reading Dell to Acquire EMC, Keep VMware as Publicly-Traded Company

Amazon is readying a new service, code-named Space Needle, designed to help businesses better analyze their growing collections of data. The service — which will compete with IBM, Microsoft, SAP, Tibco and others in the lucrative business intelligence space — could help the Amazon Web Services cloud-computing division secure more customers by housing more of their data. Amazon is in a strong position for an add-on service; clients such as Airbnb, Netflix, Nike and Pfizer already store their proprietary data on AWS. Continue reading New Analytics Service from Amazon to Make Better Use of Data

Amazon made a bold move yesterday by announcing that it plans to stop selling Google Chromecast and Apple TV streaming devices by the end of October. While the online retailer sells the competing Fire TV, it is expected to continue offering Roku and other streaming devices. According to Amazon, the move is designed to prevent “customer confusion” since the Google and Apple products do not stream Amazon’s video content, offered through its Prime membership. “It’s important that the streaming media players we sell interact well with Prime Video,” said a company spokesperson. Continue reading Amazon Pulls Rival Streaming Devices to Prevent “Confusion”

At the International Broadcasting Convention (IBC) in Amsterdam, high dynamic range was a focus of conversation: how to define it, standardize it and distribute it. Broadcasters and purveyors of cameras, post production gear and theatrical exhibition all showed off their own versions of HDR. The key to success, say experts, however, is to come up with a single standard, a feat that both the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers (SMPTE) and the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) are busily working on. Continue reading Industry Places Spotlight on High Dynamic Range at IBC 2015

Google is now offering Preemptible Virtual Machines (or VMs), a new class of computing resources that can be rented for a steep discount and shut down at any time. The only caveat is that customers must be willing to yield the computing resource on short notice. The solution is ideal for universities and companies that can’t or don’t want to buy their own expensive supercomputers. By offering this service, Google is entering an area dominated, up until now at least, by Amazon Web Services’ short-term use program, Spot Instances. Continue reading Google Enters Budding On-Demand Supercomputing Business

Amazon announced that it has agreed to purchase Elemental Technologies in an all-cash deal valued at about $500 million, marking Amazon’s biggest deal since last year’s $1 billion acquisition of videogame streaming site Twitch. Elemental helps media companies encode and transcode video content for viewing on the Web and via mobile devices. Amazon plans to add Elemental to its Amazon Web Services cloud computing division, one of the company’s faster-growing units. Amazon reportedly beat out both Ericsson AB and Cisco Systems to acquire Elemental. Continue reading Amazon Plans to Acquire Portland-Based Video Formatting Firm

Google has unveiled its new Chrome operating system designed for business customers, which includes changes aimed at allowing companies to operate many of their legacy software applications. Dell has announced new Chromebooks and management software designed to work with the new operating system. After years of pushing cloud-based systems for improved security and management, Google has learned that many companies require custom upgrades or rely on virtualized systems to address the multitude of applications that cannot easily move to the cloud. Continue reading Google Launches New Chrome OS for its Business Customers

Netflix will be the first large company to move its information technology to a public cloud, more specifically, Amazon Web Services, reporting its plans to shutter its last data center by the end of the summer. After a major hardware failure in 2008, Netflix started moving its operations to AWS in 2009, first shifting its jobs page and, later, its video player, iPhone-related technology, discovery and search, and accounts pages. As a streaming competitor with Amazon, however, Netflix runs its own content delivery network. Continue reading Netflix Moves Operations to Cloud, Closes Last Data Center

Google simultaneously launched the Cloud Native Computing Foundation, with other technology companies, and its first version of Kubernetes, a method of dynamically scheduling a massive amount of application containers on a large scale. Together, the Foundation and Google’s Kubernetes would service large-scale enterprises, putting the Silicon Valley company and its foundation partners in direct competition with Amazon Web Services and Facebook. Last year, AWS released its own container management services. Continue reading Google Debuts Cloud Foundation and New Container Standard

It is a Windows-centric world, but not at Facebook where the company has many more Mac laptops than those running Windows. With a lack of Mac OS X-based security network appliances, Facebook began, 18 months ago, to write its own security software. The result, Osquery, enables its security team to monitor, in real-time, the current state of those laptops’ operating systems. Facebook also made the tools freely available as an open source project, bringing outside security expertise to bear. Continue reading Facebook Writes and Open Sources Mac OS Security Software

Civis Analytics, founded by Dan Wagner, the former chief analytics officer for President Obama’s 2012 campaign, has rolled out a set of big data tools through Amazon Web Services. The year-old Chicago-based firm says it can eliminate much of the time and cost associated with marketing campaigns, in particular using cloud computing but without the need for customization. The service will start at about $5,000 a month, which Wagner claims will be “80 percent cheaper in most cases” than competing services. Continue reading Amazon Unveils Data Science Used By 2012 Obama Campaign