SoundHound’s Hound app, which is designed to rival digital assistants like Siri, Cortana and Google Now, will be available to third-party developers for the first time. The company best known for its music recognition app released the Houndify platform so that developers can add the Hound digital assistant to their own products. According to the company, Hound can answer complex queries with data from partners like Expedia, AccuWeather, Sportradar and Xignite. Continue reading SoundHound Offers Digital Assistant Platform to Developers

Apple has put its plans to offer a live Internet-based television service — a package of 14 or more channels for $30 to $40 a month — on hold, say sources. Media companies balked at the prices Apple wants to pay, in order to keep its own subscription price low. Executives from Starz and other outlets have already stated they expect Apple and Amazon to pay more, not less, than existing distributors for media. Instead, Apple has pivoted to opening up its App Store so media companies to sell directly to customers. Continue reading Apple Shelves Live TV Service, Opens App Store to Developers

Apple just made its programming language Swift open source, housing it on the new website swift.org to offer a range of tools to help developers turn raw code into applications. Apple designed Swift as an easier programming language for developing software for Apple devices, but the apps can now be formatted to run on other operating systems. The move is part of Apple’s strategy, in light of sagging consumer sales, to target enterprise users; among the companies now using Swift are IBM, Twitter, Yahoo and LinkedIn. Continue reading Apple’s Swift Now Open Source to Aid Enterprise Developers

Following announcements that Google is releasing its TensorFlow machine learning platform so developers can create their own artificial intelligence programs, and Nvidia has made a significant update to its Jetson TX1 supercomputer-on-a-chip, Microsoft is the latest with major AI news. The company has updated its Project Oxford suite of AI tools with powerful new features and programs designed to identify human emotions and voices, for example, that could make their way into the apps we use on a daily basis. Continue reading Microsoft Project Oxford Updates Could Bring AI to More Apps

Popcorn Time, a free software BitTorrent client with integrated media player, has shut down, seemingly due to tampering with its DNS server. Could this be the end for the company that was shut down once due to MPAA complaints about piracy? That’s not clear, but just before its site went down, Popcorn Time creators announced the launch of Butter, a new version of the Popcorn Time service, but without any direct links to piracy. Butter lets the user create a streaming service — and leaves the piracy up to the individual user. Continue reading Popcorn Time Goes Dark, Just After Launching Butter Project

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

Magic Leap, the Florida-based company that raised $542 million from Google, Qualcomm and others last year, demonstrated how it plans to marry the real world with virtual, computer-generated content. Magic Leap demonstrated its technology at The Wall Street Journal’s WSJDLive conference in Laguna Beach, California with a concept video that shows the user interacting with a tiny robot gimbal hiding and ducking behind the legs of a real table. The user also brought up a virtual solar system in the real office environment. Continue reading Magic Leap Demonstrates Its Augmented Reality Technology

During Oculus Connect in Hollywood yesterday, Facebook’s virtual reality developer conference, Samsung SVP Peter Koo announced that the new Gear VR headset co-developed by Oculus and Samsung will ship in November, in time for Black Friday, for $99. Consumers can expect a lighter, more comfortable Samsung Gear VR that is compatible with smartphones including the Galaxy Note 5, Galaxy S6 Edge+, Galaxy S6 and Galaxy S6 Edge. The previous $200 version for developers was only compatible with the Note 4 and Galaxy S6. Continue reading Consumer Edition of Samsung Gear VR to Arrive Black Friday

Sci-fi fans and others have tried before to recreate the Enterprise-D starship from “Star Trek: The Next Generation” in virtual reality. Although some of these VR experiences have been impressive, another one has just arrived on the scene that stands far above the rest, say some VR enthusiasts. The Enterprise Construction Project is spearheaded by a 3D artist identified only as Jason, whose obsession is to create a VR version of the entirety of the USS Enterprise NCC-1701-D and all its 42 decks. Continue reading Fan-Built Virtual Reality Starship Has Trekkies Wanting More

When Andreessen Horowitz established Bitcoin startup 21 Inc., the goal was to turning Bitcoin into an Internet protocol or common language between connected devices, enabling machine-to-machine payments. The company just unveiled its first product and first step on the path to that end. The 21 Bitcoin Computer, which will go on sale Monday for $400 and ship in November, is aimed at developers, not consumers, and offers the Bitcoin protocol as a feature of its Linux-based operating system. Continue reading 21 Bitcoin Computer Enables Machine-to-Machine Payments

For the first time, Apple’s iOS mobile operating system was targeted with a large-scale malware attack, infecting several popular Chinese apps and exposing vulnerability in Apple’s mobile platform. The origin of the hack was an unauthorized version of Apple’s developer tool kit, hosted on the Baidu Pan cloud, which was touted as taking much less time to download than the official toolkit, Xcode. An unknown number of apps were infected, but one Chinese security company, Qihoo 360 Technology, estimates 344. Continue reading Malware Attacks Apple iOS App Store, Infects Over 300 Apps

Analysts seem to agree that the most promising aspect of the recently unveiled fourth-generation Apple TV is its App Store. A wave of compelling apps could easily generate more interest in the device. Plex, for example, which works with Chromecast and Fire TV as a tool for organizing personal media libraries, and has long been sought after by Apple TV users, is planning an app for the new Apple TV. Plex co-founder Scott Olechowski has confirmed plans for a new app as the team awaits the tvOS developer beta. Meanwhile, a tvOS version of the cross-platform VLC media player is also being planned. Continue reading Plex and VLC Streaming Media Apps Are Coming to Apple TV

Inside sources report that Apple is on the verge of releasing its 4th generation Apple TV in October for a price likely to be under $200. The new Apple TV will feature an A8 chip in a dual-core configuration for an updated interface and improved navigation. More importantly, it will include a native software developer kit, ensuring that a wide variety of apps will continue to be developed and released. Also featured are a new motion sensitive remote control, Siri support and an as-of-yet unknown quantity of TV content. Continue reading Apple TV 4 to Debut in October, Could Be a Game Changer

The new crowdfunding platform Fig just launched with a new way to finance computer games. Its debut is a campaign to raise $125,000 for “Outer Wilds,” an unfinished game already honored with the 2015 Independent Games Festival Awards’ Grand Prize. Fig, which plans to debut one major studio title and one independent release each month, differs from a more general crowdfunding platform like Kickstarter in two ways: it is meticulously curated and offers rewards and equity to investors. Continue reading Fig: New Game Crowdfunding Site Offers Equity to Investors

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