Mobile Technology Science / News

GUEST: Representatives from Facebook, Twitter, and Google are set to face hostile questions from Congress about how Russia used their platforms to influence U.S. politics. The problem of unfriendly foreign powers spreading propaganda is not new. It has happened for centuries. What is new, however, is the reach of the Internet and modern social networks and the speed with which […]

The Tower at Tortenna’s story unfolds as you explore a quiet, mysterious city that’s seemingly abandoned by its inhabitants. Tower Team International developed it during the annual three-day DreamHack game jam, and it was picked as the winner out of 171 games. It’s now available for PC and Mac on the indie game store Itch.io […]

Blizzard Entertainment’s Overwatch League has announced 12 teams for its inaugural season, and over the last month or so, it’s unveiled each squad’s banner colors, logos, and names. Today, Optic Gaming announced that its team is the Houston Outlaws. The Outlaws’ logo features revolvers that suggest the classic Texan longhorn skull, along with the trademark bright […]

Sony Interactive Entertainment showed off a brutal scene from The Last of Us: Part II at Paris Games Week on Monday, and the cruelty in that clip generated a loud response from fans and others who were watching the publisher’s live show. On this week’s GamesBeat Decides podcast, hosts Jeffrey Grubb and Mike Minotti discuss […]

Gram​ ​Games​ has had more than 25 million downloads of its Merge puzzle franchise for mobile devices. And today, the company is launching the fourth game in the series, Merge Farm. The iOS title follows the success of predecessors Merge Town, Merge Dragons, and Merged. The series uses a mechanic of merging two puzzle pieces together […]

GUEST: The market for AI-driven personal assistants and bots will almost double in 2018, reaching more than $12 billion by 2020 with 1.6 billion active users, according to Statista. Today, pretty much every tech giant is making digital agents for their customers. Amazon’s Alexa is getting new looks and perks, Microsoft’s Cortana has just inhabited a brand […]

Electronic Arts continues to reap benefits from its position as the leader in sports games, as both Madden NFL and FIFA Soccer produced solid results on multiple platforms in the most recent quarter. EA said that more than 50 percent of Madden NFL 18 players engaged in the “Longshot” story mode — the first such narrative […]

GUEST: We may not notice it, but both artificial intelligence and the Internet of Things are driving massive innovation in consumer and business environments. The smartphones in our pockets, for instance, are equipped with some 9 to 13 sensors and have been running machine learning and deep learning via on-device firmware and in the cloud for […]

The battle royal military shooter PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds isn’t finished yet, but developer Bluehole Studio says it is on pace to complete it by “late December.” This would take the last-player-standing multiplayer hit to its full 1.0 release state — although Early Access hasn’t prevented it from reaching the most-streamed game on Twitch last quarter. Bluehole […]

One of PC gaming’s biggest hits is finally making the leap to consoles when PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds (read my early access review) goes live on Xbox One on December 12 for $30. The unfinished battle royal shooter will launch as part of the Xbox Games Preview program, which is similar to the Early Access portal that PUBG […]

Steve Case and the team at Rise of the Rest are raising $100 million for a new seed fund, a Securities and Exchange Commission filing from Friday shows. According to the Form D filing, the fund has yet to bring in outside investors and the minimum investment is $250,000. Revolution CEO Steve Case is listed as the fund’s general […]

Reaction Commerce, an open source ecommerce platform aimed at online retailers, has raised $8.5 million in a series A round of funding led by Google’s venture capital arm, GV, with participation from CrossCut Ventures, Double M Partners, Joanne Wilson, and Female Founders Fund. Founded out of Santa Monica initially as Ongo Works back in 2013, Reaction […]

Square Enix announced today that its role-playing game World of Final Fantasy is coming to PC via the Steam digital store on November 21. World of Final Fantasy launched last October for PlayStation 4 and Vita. Coming out on PC can expose the game to a new audience that doesn’t have access to those systems. […]

PRESS RELEASE: Crimson Ventures today announced that its joint venture partnership with Sabot Ventures has closed on its first property acquisition. The partnership launched a new investment company named Cabin Creek Properties, which was created to...

San Francisco startup Rylo is launching a 360-degree video camera today that emphasizes smooth videos that are easy to share. Created by a team of former Instagram and Apple engineers, Rylo has stabilization software and a smartphone app that helps eliminate some of the pains of traditional shooting, editing, and sharing of videos, said Rylo CEO […]

Nintendo’s big move into mobile games is paying off. Super Mario Run has hit 200 million downloads, according to a presentation by Nintendo president Tatsumi Kimishima. And the Super Mario Odyssey game for the Nintendo Switch has sold more than 2 million units in its first three days. Smartphone revenue was $157 million, up 426 […]

The Patent Office doesn’t always do the best job. That’s how Personal Audio managed to get a patent on podcasting, even though other people were podcasting years before Personal Audio first applied for a patent. As we’ve detailed on many occasions, patents are often granted on things that are known and obvious, giving rights to […]

(Reuters) — Facebook Inc said on Monday that Russia-based operatives published about 80,000 posts on the social network over a two-year period in an effort to sway U.S. politics and that about 126 million Americans may have seen the posts during that time. Facebook’s latest data on the Russia-linked posts – possibly reaching around half […]

Amazon’s Alexa is getting the ability to respond to custom phrases, schedule actions by smart home appliances, and give you a rundown of the weather, traffic, or news. Routines first began to roll out to Echo device users a few days ago, an Amazon spokesperson told VentureBeat. Customizable voice commands and routines can be made […]

Intel plans to showcase 5G wireless networking technologies at the 2018 Winter Olympics in PeyeongChang, South Korea, in February. The network will demonstrate wireless data transfer speeds of gigabits per second, based on the pending 5G wireless standard. That means that fans attending the Winter Olympics will be able to post all of the selfies […]

The Chinese government wants to see fewer violent games, and it is using the popular last-person standing shooter PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds as an example that is “too bloody” and counter to “traditional socialist core values” and “Chinese cultural and ethical norms.” The government made those statements in a note posted online today from the China Audio-Video […]

GUEST: The ubiquity of smartphones and 4G networks in the last decade have changed our society and economy in dramatic ways. The most visible way in which society has transformed is that it’s become commonplace to see people staring at tiny 2D screens in their hands while tapping, pinching, and swiping on mobile content. The rise […]

GUEST: In the technology adoption lifecycle, law firms can be laggards. From email and websites to cloud computing and video conference calls, the new technologies that other businesses generally accept quickly were slow to find traction at law firms. However, with clients demanding more efficiency and millennials taking more leadership roles in law firms and in-house […]

(Reuters) — Several analysts downplayed concerns about Apple Inc’s iPhone X production issues and were bullish on demand and sales, pushing the company’s shares to a record on Monday. The Cupertino-based company does not provide pre-order figures on iPhones, leaving investors and analysts in the dark in trying to track output through research with its […]

CCP Games is ending the development of its VR projects, closing its Atlanta studio, and selling its Newcastle team that worked on virtual reality games. CCP was one of the first companies to embrace VR, and it launched the space-sim shooter Eve: Valkyrie alongside Oculus’s Rift headset in 2016. Like other multiplayer VR games, Valkyrie […]

GUEST: While the repercussions of a fully AI-driven world remain a mystery, it is gradually becoming evident that AI could soon be providing us with more accurate solutions for health issues that earlier went undetected. Though the digital transition in health care remains slow and cautious, in the past five years more than 90 percent of hospitals have transferred […]

Psyonix’s megahit Rocket League will debut on the Nintendo Switch just in time for the holidays. It will be available on November 14 for $20. The Switch version of the soccer-with-cars arena battler will roll out with exclusive vehicles based on iconic Nintendo characters Mario and Luigi as well as Metroid‘s Samus. It will also get […]

Sony revealed during its Paris Games Week event that Guacamelee 2 is coming to the PlayStation 4 “soon-ish.” The first Guacamelee came out in 2013. It was a PlayStation 3 and Vita exclusive, but it eventually came out for other platforms like Xbox 360, Wii U, and PC. It also released on PlayStation 4 and […]

HMD Global, the business vehicle set up to create and market Nokia-branded mobile devices, has appointed a new permanent CEO three months after Arto Nummela vacated the role. Nummela previously headed up Microsoft’s mobile devices business in Greater Asia, the Middle East, and Africa after the company bought out Nokia’s mobile phone business. But with Microsoft effectively […]

EXCLUSIVE: A ban on initial coin offerings (ICOs) in China and South Korea has caused a ripple effect — including a token listing exodus to Japan — and we’re seeing continued evidence that Chinese investors are looking elsewhere. Today, Trade.io — the blockchain peer-to-peer trading platform — has announced that Chien Lee, Chinese-American billionaire and majority shareholder of French […]

Sega revealed today as part of its yearly financial report that the Sonic the Hedgehog series has lifetime game sales of approximately 360 million. This includes physical and digital. When Sega shared this number last year, the franchise’s sales were at approximately 350 million. Sonic Mania, the retro 2D platformer, came out for the PlayStation […]

SPONSORED: Presented by Intel When Andy Schatz decided to become an indie developer, he didn’t want to think about what would happen if he failed. “I never really thought about that. I probably avoided the idea of thinking about the binary concept of being able to live my dream or not being able to live my […]

Nintendo is revving up sales of its Switch hybrid portable-home game console, as it reported a 175 percent increase in sales for the six months ended September 30, compared to the same period a year earlier. The Kyoto, Japan-based company reported net sales of 374.0 billion yen, or $3.29 billion, for the six-month period, compared […]

GUEST: The coming advent of super-intelligent AI has some of the greatest minds of our time crying apocalypse. Stephen Hawking co-authored an article on the topic which darkly quipped that “success in creating AI would be the biggest event in human history—unfortunately, it might also be the last.” Bill Gates has likewise voiced concern. Elon Musk […]

Acer might have just launched its very own VR headset, but the company is continuing to invest in the StarVR device, too. Last year, Acer revealed that it had partnered with StarVR creator Starbreeze to help design, manufacture and sell the device. Now Acer has revealed that it’s added $5 million to a joint investment […]

GUEST: The healthcare industry is abuzz over consumer engagement and empowerment, spurred by a strong belief that when patients become more engaged in their own care, better outcomes and reduced costs will result. Nevertheless, from the perspective of many patients, navigating the healthcare ecosystem is anything but easy. Consider the familiar use case of booking a […]

GUEST: You can find fast-growing software companies in almost any vertical, but there are certain characteristics they all share. To find out which of these features are most key, my investment firm combed through our 2017 SaaS Benchmarks data, which covers 300 SaaS companies ranging from pre-revenue to more than $20 million in ARR. Here’s what […]

Super Lucky’s Tale is a platform game that debuts on November 7, the same day that Microsoft is launching its Xbox One X game console. It’s no coincidence, as Microsoft is reaching out to a broader audience of gamers with the Xbox One X, and the platforming title from Playful fits the bill. Game studio […]

GUEST: This year may have seen an increase in IPOs from 2016 (123 so far in 2017 vs. 105 all of last year), but the number of companies going public today is well below the average of 222 IPOs per year we saw in the U.S. between 2013 and 2015. Will 2018 be just another “slow […]

Tiny Bubbles has scored well in three separate indie mobile game contests. I’ve had the honor of judging the game from Pine Street Codeworks in those contests, and each time, the physics-based simulation of bubbles in liquid has come out a winner. It has fluid, natural gameplay where you try to match four bubbles of […]

FEATURE: It was with some confusion that I walked into a bustling lumberyard on the London outskirts of Wimbledon yesterday afternoon. Syren developer Hammerhead had promised something amazing to show me, but as I walked past lorries shifting materials and workers digging into fry-ups, I’d begun to wonder exactly what could be so spectacular. Then, like […]

Freedom of speech “presupposes that right conclusions are more likely to be gathered out of a multitude of tongues, than through any kind of authoritative selection. To many this is, and always will be, folly; but we have staked upon it our all.”– United States v. Associated Press, 52 F. Supp. 362, 372 (S.D.N.Y. 1943) […]

Earlier this year Oculus announced support for Chromecast around the same time Google’s Daydream revealed it too would be adding the feature. In case you are unfamiliar, Chromecast is a feature from Google included in many recent televisions that makes it easy to broadcast to the TV from phones, apps and computers. If your TV doesn’t have […]

GUEST: Artificial intelligence is changing almost every aspect of modern life, and the television advertising industry is no exception. Thanks to more advanced methods of data collection, AI allows advertisers to tailor their content more effectively to relevant demographics through what’s called “programmatic TV advertising.” This advertising channel is set to be largely impacted by AI […]

The PC game streaming service Utomik is making a push to add new titles on their launch day. Its first release day game was Neckbolt’s Yono and the Celestial Elephants, which came out on the Nintendo Switch, Steam, and Utomik at the same time earlier this month on October 12. Utomik a subscription service that […]

GUEST: Bots are breaking into the most human industry on earth: healthcare. Just look at Microsoft — it recently launched a new division to address the healthcare-AI intersection. That’s not to say AI will be replacing doctors anytime soon, but the integration of AI into regular healthcare tasks is upon us. From surgical assistance to patient education to imaging analysis, robots are already […]

Google and The Pirate Bay have had an interesting relationship over the years, to say the least. This week, users pointed out that The Pirate Bay can appear significantly lower down in search results (and definitely not on the first page), depending on which country you are searching in. We reached out to Google, which […]

If the Xbox One X turns out to be a popular holiday purchase this fall, you might credit a lady bug. The console costs $499, and it delivers 4K HDR visuals for games such as the racing title Forza Motorsport 7. Microsoft’s team created an interactive demo with a set of lady bugs that show […]

(Reuters) — Apple Inc quashed concerns of muted demand for its iPhone X on Friday, saying preorders for the 10th anniversary phone were “off the charts”. The company’s shares, which have fallen steadily since it announced in early September it would launch two iPhones within two months, rose nearly 3 percent in response. Pre-orders for […]

If you’ve worked in games and technology long enough, you have your Super Fans, the people who you can turn to when you’re designing a product that is targeted at a certain group of enthusiasts. They are the high value, early customers. And sadly, with the state of the Internet, you may also have your […]

It’s increasingly looking like mysterious augmented reality technology Magic Leap could finally be unveiled in the coming months. A recent Bloomberg report stated that the company was looking to raise an extra $500 million in investment as well as ship out early units within the next few months, potentially costing between $1,500 and $2,000. Last week the first […]

Hacktag is an asymmetrical co-op game about infiltration and industrial sabotage in an alternate universe where all the people are animals. Both online and local multiplayer are available, and the levels are procedurally generated. It’s the debut of French indie studio Piece of Cake Studios, and it entered early access on PC in June earlier […]

Stephen Toulouse, a popular member of the gaming community, passed away on Thursday. He was fondly remembered as “Stepto” and sometimes as “Banhammer” for his tenure as the Xbox Live policy executive, when he sought to make the online community more civil. Toulouse’s brother, Jeff Toulouse, tweeted about his passing yesterday. It is with heavy […]

GUEST: The release of Apple’s ARKit and Google’s ARCore has sparked a burst of creative energy and a wave of demos from developers all over the world. And there is a growing possibility that a paradigm shift in computing could be just around the corner when AR takes over mobile as the dominant consumer platform. As […]

In video games, you kill Nazis. That’s what we do. Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus (read my review) doesn’t try to disrupt or examine this. The latest shooter from developer Machine Games treats Nazis like zombies, aliens, or robots — or the same way games have always treated Nazis. But Machine Games uses our history with Nazis […]

GUEST: Smart home and AI devices aren’t just convenient — they can also make your home a safer place. And thanks to the proliferating internet of things (IoT), good security practices are becoming less of a chore. It’s a little like the iPhone’s touch ID fingerprint reader, or now face ID — it’s more secure than a […]

I like collecting Amiibo more than actually using them. Unlike Skylanders, Nintendo’s toys-to-life line isn’t built around a specific series. The figures work differently with a bunch of games. Sometimes, tapping an Amiibo to your controller will unlock in-game items. This is the case for The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. Certain Amiibo can […]

Tatarus is a first-person sci-fi survival game with an unlikely hero: Cooper, a part-time cook on a mining ship in space. It’s from the Istanbul-based indie studio Abyss Gameworks, and it will be out on November 21 for PC. Something has gone awry aboard the Tartarus, and you and systems engineer Andrews are the only ones […]

Facebook announced new advertising transparency policies today that affect all ads on the network. In addition to letting all Facebook, Instagram, and Messenger users view any ad on a devoted page regardless of whether they’re in a targeted audience, the new policies also specifically target political ads. Facebook hopes to curb election interference like the […]

GUEST: You’ve probably read that artificial intelligence is transforming medicine. While the field has yet to reach its full potential, researchers are exploring ways that machine learning, a subset of AI, can dramatically improve patient outcomes. Machine learning is ultimately about understanding large amounts of data, making it an important tool for handling the flood of […]

EXCLUSIVE: REDMOND, Washington — Microsoft’s Inclusive Technologies Lab is full of insightful ideas about how to enable as many people as possible to enjoy video games. One of them is a game controller that is really, really heavy. It is meant to give game designers an idea of what it’s like for a person without strong […]

In the early 1900s, downtown Durham’s Parrish Street was a thriving entrepreneurial hub for African American-owned businesses and financial services — so much so that it earned the name “Black Wall Street.” Today, with the help of players in the Triangle area’s startup community, that legacy has come back to life. Raleigh and Durham have been […]

We hear a lot these days about how AI is changing the marketing technology landscape, helping us sell products and services in the 21st century. But during my two-week journey through Israel’s startup scene, it was a medtech company that struck a nerve with me — a deep learning imaging analytics startup called Zebra Medical Vision. Using […]

SPONSORED: Presented by Intel When Kenny Sun’s latest solo project, Yankai’s Peak, came out earlier this year, he never would have anticipated that the game would be selected to win the Best Sound award from the Intel Level Up Developer Contest for its crunchy sound effects and atmospheric music. The announcement completely caught Sun off guard, […]

Psyonix’s car-soccer game Rocket League is already a megahit with 36 million registered players across its digital and retail versions, but now the studio is working with Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment to bring its retail version to even more people around the world. WB and Psyonix have not said which regions will get this new […]

So it begins. The clock struck midnight on the West Coast of the United States, and the preorder frenzy for the iPhone X began. And this round of preorders offered some interesting twists. It appears from Apple’s website that when customers in the U.S. purchase one of the phones, they are required to select a […]

(Reuters) — Silicon Valley business software startup Zenefits and its cofounder Parker Conrad have been fined nearly $1 million by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission as part of a settlement over charges that they misled investors. Zenefits will pay a $450,000 penalty and Conrad, who resigned as the company’s chief executive in early 2016, […]

In the face of a massive refugee crisis across Europe, one of the most heartening developments has been the emergence of Techfugees. The nonprofit pulls together entrepreneurs and refugees to develop products and services that help migrants who have fled their homelands. After two years of catalyzing the tech community’s response to the refugee crisis, […]

Our destiny is here, PC gamers. It’s time to go see our ol’ pal Xur. Yesterday, Activision launched Destiny 2 on PC. The series skipped the platform its first time around, and this time, it’s part of an experiment from the publisher of Call of Duty and other big hits. Destiny 2, you see, isn’t on […]

This is a special moment because it is time for a bonus episode of the GamesBeat Decides podcast and it is also, officially Mario time. In this show, hosts Jeffrey Grubb and Mike Minotti discuss Super Mario Odyssey. Mike has put in a lot of time with it, and he gave it a 100 out […]

Lots of folks enjoy a glass of good wine, but Terroir offers another way to appreciate the fruits of labor. It’s a simulation game where you can run your own vineyard. It’s developer General Interactive Co.’s debut, and it’s out now for PC and Mac. Terroir features charmingly minimalistic graphics and an easygoing soundtrack that […]

This week the VB team went all out: We spent two days with some of the brightest minds in AI. Companies like Google, Pinterest, Lyft, LinkedIn, Amazon, and Walmart joined us alongside startups like Amplero, Datorama, Persado, and Clari. What was most surprising was not the efficiency gains or improvements in ROI or CTR, though […]

The Seoul Dynasty is one of the 12 Overwatch League squads, KSV Esports International announced today, giving us a better picture of what Blizzard Entertainment’s pro scene will look like for its online team shooter. KSV bought one of the franchises for an estimated $20 million as part of a bet that esports will become as lucrative […]

GUEST: Artificial intelligence has become the buzzword du jour.  At Google’s I/O 2017, the company announced its slogan change from “Mobile First” to “AI First,” fueling the frenzy. VCs, startups, and established companies alike are all getting into the gold rush of AI. But what is AI, anyway? First, what AI is not: AI is not one […]

Microsoft’s Netflix-for-gaming program Game Pass had a strong fiscal Q1 2018 along with the company’s other Xbox services. Revenue from gaming software and services saw a jump year-over-year for Microsoft during the three-month period that ended September 30. These sales helped overcome a slump in the number of Xbox One systems Microsoft sold during that […]

This week, Travis and Stewart interview the amazing Shaul Olmert, who has grown Playbuzz from scratch to an audience of over 80 million. He tells us what it takes to not only make that possible, but maintain the community he helped build. In the news, we talk about Samsung’s developer conference and the new products […]

Super Evil Megacorp announced today that its mobile game Vainglory will now feature 5-versus-5 multiplayer battles. That makes it into a true multiplayer online battle arena (MOBA). The company has opened signups for the new “no compromises” gaming mode. For a long time, Vainglory fans were limited to the 3-vs.-3 multiplayer was the best mode […]

Intel beat its earnings expectations for the third quarter, but not because of growth in its core PC microprocessor business. Rather, the world’s biggest chip maker saw strong growth in chips for programmable devices, non-volatile memory, the Internet of Things, and data centers. And it is boosting its predictions for revenue in the fourth quarter. Analysts […]

Back in July, eBay announced new computer vision search tools that help you find items using photos. Today, the ecommerce giant revealed that it’s making those features publicly available for the first time. By way of a quick recap, computer vision allows machines to process and analyze imagery on a pixel-by-pixel basis, rather than leaning on human-led […]

The best that can be said about Twitter’s third quarter earnings is that it appears things are getting less bad for the struggling social media platform. The company is even optimistic that things may actually start to get better at some point in the not-too-distant future. But that doesn’t mean Twitter doesn’t have a few […]

Chrome OS has come a long way from its start as an operating system that could only run Google’s browser and a set of applications built to run inside a limited environment. The Pixelbook is the company’s latest push to make the OS attractive to a wider audience by housing it inside a sharp-looking high-powered […]

Resolution Games is announcing its next virtual reality game is Narrows, a pirate release for the Google Daydream mobile VR headset. Narrows is the Stockholm, Sweden-based company’s fourth game, after Bait! (fishing in VR), Solitaire Jester, and the minigame collection Wonderglade. And it shows the small studio is still all-in on VR and willing to […]

REVIEW: I’d been texting back and forth with my wife for a couple of days when she suddenly goes quiet. Then, I got a call: a voice recording that told me that she’s been taken into custody, she doesn’t know what will happen to her, and she doesn’t know when she’ll see me again — if […]

Microsoft’s Mixer is now available in 21 languages, as the company looks to grow the appeal of its game-focused video-streaming service to users globally. Support for more languages has been the platform’s number one most requested feature, according to Mixer’s community PM Josh Stein. “Our goal at Mixer has always been to connect broadcasters and […]

(Reuters) — Three women engineers have sued Uber for discrimination based of their gender and race, the latest blow to the ride-services company that is straining to overcome a year of controversies over its workplace culture. The lawsuit, filed Tuesday at the Superior Court in San Francisco, follows a widely read blog post in February […]

Firefly Games is unveiling DreamWorks Universe of Legends, which brings a number of entertainment franchises into a single mobile game. Now you can play with DreamWorks characters from Shrek, Kung Fu Panda, Madagascar, and more. Los Angeles-based Firefly Games and entertainment company Riva Group have created an action role-playing game with more than 40 heroes and […]

GUEST: Monetization in VR is a tricky subject. There are only suggestions, or experiments, on what could serve, but it’s a tough proposition while the industry continues to wade through its hype cycle and content creators remain to be reluctant to commit to creating a steady pipeline of immersive experiences to attract mainstream adoption. And can […]

Amazon Web Services is the first cloud to launch new compute instances that allow developers to build applications that tap into Nvidia’s new generation of Volta GPUs. These GPUs are designed to provide high-performance acceleration for applications like AI computation. Companies are increasingly turning to machine learning to help propel their businesses, but building new models often […]

Bringing together two of its major offerings for the first time, Amazon has announced that all Prime members with an Alexa-enabled device now get up to six additional questions when they play Jeopardy on weekdays. Everyone can play Jeopardy and get six new questions a day for free, but Double Jeopardy is only free to […]

Though the October 19 application deadline may have passed, the conversation around Amazon HQ2 is far from over. As my VentureBeat colleague Chris O’Brien reported yesterday, 238 cities submitted bids — meaning that we have to wait for Amazon to narrow down a list of 238 contenders to one. As the deadline inched closer, the publicity stunts […]

Baidu today announced more details about its open-source Apollo autonomous driving platform, steps toward a stated goal of placing fully autonomous vehicles on roads and highways by 2020. Apollo launched in April and now counts more than 70 partner organizations from the AI, car manufacturing, and autonomous vehicles sectors as Nvidia, Ford, Microsoft, and a […]

Wizards of the Coast’s Digital Games Studio is about to cast a “let’s prepare to launch a game” spell — and it’s going to need your help to test it out. The studio announced today that it’s ready to start stress-testing and launching a closed beta for Magic: The Gathering — Arena, its upcoming digital […]

GUEST: We live in exciting times of unprecedented progress. Automation has a significant role in propelling human advancement, and digital transformation is the new status quo. RPA, AI, and cognitive machine learning technologies are in the hands of business leaders as they command a new digital workforce. But as we cut costs and focus on error-free […]

Microsoft today released a new Windows 10 preview for PCs with additional settings and improvements to the Microsoft Yahei font. This build is part of the RS4 branch. Windows 10 is a service, meaning it was built in a very different way from its predecessors so it can be regularly updated with not just fixes, […]

Seagate has doubled the capacity of its latest hard drive and is announcing a 4 terabyte drive for the Sony PlayStation 4. The Seagate Game Drive can store more than 100 games. Available today, it sells at retail for $130. The external storage device has about eight times the 500GB drive that comes with a […]

Google today launched Android Studio 3.0, the latest version of its integrated development environment (IDE), with new features like app profiling tools to quickly diagnose performance issues, support for the Kotlin programming language, and new wizards for accelerating development using the latest Android Oreo APIs. The company today also started rolling out the first developer […]

GUEST: You may separate your recyclables, take quick showers, and avoid using harsh chemicals, but we all know our individual efforts to save the environment go in vain if others aren’t following suit. Large-scale efforts like Harvard’s crop pollinating robobees and the promise of a driverless future give us hope for widespread adoption of green technologies, but […]

Microsoft is no longer making the Kinect, as reported by Co.Design. The motion-sensing and voice-recognizing device for Xbox One and Windows will disappear from store shelves once the current stock runs out. Microsoft once touted Kinect as an essential component of the Xbox One. Now, as the company prepares to launch the Xbox One X, […]

Hopper, a startup that has built its business by telling consumers the best time to purchase a flight, is expanding its predictive technology to cover hotels. By way of a quick recap, Hopper was founded out of Cambridge, Massachusetts in 2010, and the company has gone on to raise $83 million in funding, including a $61 […]

Google and Cisco today announced a partnership to provide their shared customers with a consistent environment for running applications in a hybrid cloud configuration. Their resulting offering will include support for applying the same networking and security policies across on-premises and cloud environments, for example, so that customers will be able to create a largely […]

PRESS RELEASE: RiverVest Venture Partners announced today that Ronald T. Borchardt, Ph.D. and Jared Rutter, Ph.D. have joined the life science venture capital firm's Scientific Advisory Board. Comprised of leaders in medical research, RiverVest's ...

More than three years after the start of Jibo’s crowdfunding campaign, the social robot that raised more than $3.5 million on Indiegogo is coming to market within the next several weeks. Today, the company published a press release stating that Jibo is now available for public preorder at $899, with a ship date of November 7. “Today’s […]

(Reuters) — Amazon launched a cash payment service in Mexico on Tuesday, aiming to expand its customer base in a country where shoppers are wary of credit card fraud and often earn their living in paper currency. The strategy could also help it to win market share from rival Wal-Mart de Mexico, known as Walmex, […]

LinkedIn is working to train all of its engineers on the basics of implementing artificial intelligence as part of the company’s drive to make its professional social network smarter. “The demand for AI across the company has increased enormously,” Deepak Agarwal, head of artificial intelligence at LinkedIn, said during an onstage interview at VB Summit […]

(Reuters) — Twitter Inc said on Tuesday it would add labels to election-related advertisements and say who is behind each of them, after a threat of regulation from the United States over the lack of disclosure for political spending on social media. Twitter, acting a month after Facebook Inc launched a similar overhaul of political […]

During a Nintendo Direct presentation today, the Japanese gaming giant showed off the upcoming Animal Crossing game for iOS and Android. The free-to-play app is coming out in late November. The Animal Crossing series has sold over 30 million games since it debuted in 2001. Pocket Camp has players making a camp site for themselves […]

Freight trains are a slow-moving business, in more ways than one. Their average speed is well under 30 mph on U.S. rails, according to the Department of Transportation. But that’s not all — and the speed of innovation is also quite slow, said Wesley Mukai, the CTO of GE Transportation. A locomotive is a 30-year […]

I Expect You to Die has already trapped players in a submarine, forced them to drive a car off a plane, and tasked them with neutralizing a supervirus as part of its virtual reality escape-room action. Today, developer Schell Games released the new First Class level. It’s a free download as long as players own […]

Datorama revealed today that its customers have deployed more than 100,000 bots to analyze information about their marketing outcomes, as part of the AI Innovation Showcase at VB Summit 2017. When people think about marketing, they think of Don Draper on TV,” said Nate Sandford, a solution architect and evangelist for Datorama. But today, marketing […]

Subsurface Circular is a short, text-based adventure from Bithell Games, an indie studio that Mike Bithell (Thomas Was Alone, Volume) founded. Though most of the gameplay is through dialogue, it features slick visuals of mechanical denizens in a futuristic city as you play a robot detective investigating crimes in a subway system. It debuted on […]

Advanced Micro Devices reported a net profit in the third quarter, thanks to the strength of its Ryzen and Epyc series processors that launched earlier this year. But the company’s shares fell 11 percent in after-hours trading as the Sunnyvale, California-based chip design company warned that it would have lower revenues in the fourth quarter. […]

Machine learning and deep learning AI have gone from the niche realm of PhDs to tools that will be used throughout all types of companies. That equates to a big skills gap, says Gil Arditi, product lead for Lyft’s Machine Learning Platform. “From very early on, Lyft was a data-driven company and a machine learning […]

REVIEW: High Hell plunges you into a delirium of bullets, bold colors, and basket-case missions. You’ll sabotage blimps, rescue chimps, and slay a dog pimp. It’s a fast-paced shooter catering to speed runs (one of the achievements calls for finishing it in 20 minutes) as you infiltrate Satan’s corporate headquarters for some heist-y industrial sabotage. It’s […]

GUEST: Artificial intelligence and cognitive technologies are used in many industries to tackle tasks traditionally performed by people. These technologies change the economics of performing specific tasks and potentially change the speed and quality of those actions. These benefits do come with some trade-offs, but when used properly, the implementation of these technologies can drastically change […]

PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds announced on Twitter today that its Xbox One revision will have a physical release. PUBG is in Early Access on PC, but the Xbox One version is supposed to release by the end of the year. Player Unknown’s Battlegrounds Xbox One version will have a physical release! #PUBG #PlayerUnknownsBattlegrounds pic.twitter.com/cWtTsMoAJP — Player Unknowns […]

Everysight announced today its Raptor augmented reality smartglasses will go on sale for $650 and up. The glasses are aimed at cyclists, triathletes, and other tech-savvy early adopters. The Haifa, Israel-based company said the glasses can provide riders with real-time information about how fast they are going and what they need to do to keep […]

PRESS RELEASE: CyberMiles, a new blockchain network designed and optimized for commercial applications, has concluded the private stage investment opportunity leading up to its initial coin offering, slated to begin Nov. 21. Empowering the decentralization...

Delphi Automotive, one of the world’s largest automotive parts manufacturers, has announced plans to acquire fledgling autonomous car startup NuTonomy in a deal pegged at $450 million. Founded out of Cambridge, Massachusetts in 2013, NuTonomy spun out from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) to focus on self-driving vehicles and mobile robots. The company has […]

Vimeo revealed plans to acquire live video platform Livestream last month and finalized the deal on October 18. Now the duo have unveiled the first of their collaborations. By way of a quick recap, Vimeo is similar to YouTube in that anyone can use the platform to upload and share videos with the world. But the New […]

A startup emerging out of stealth today wants to help companies understand the world’s text data using AI. The company is called Primer, and it uses machine learning techniques to help parse and collate a large number of documents in several languages for further investigation. Here’s how it works: users feed Primer’s software with a […]

The robots are coming for your jobs, experts say. But no matter if you’re a Luddite or an engineer at Microsoft, as the AI age threatens the livelihood of many, services like Indeed that help people find work may be the kind of AI everyone can agree on. Indeed VP Raj Mukherjee said one big improvement […]

(Reuters) — Facebook Inc said on Monday it was testing the idea of dividing its News Feed in two, separating commercial posts from personal news in a move that could lead some businesses to increase advertising. The Facebook News Feed, the centerpiece of the world’s largest social network service, is a streaming series of posts […]

When Cisco started working on a unified analytics platform, the company was more concerned with finding the right people to do the work than with the data they were using, Cisco’s vice president of strategy, Rajat Mishra, said at the VB Summit in Berkeley, California today. “I wish I could tell you we had a […]

Walmart.com is bigger than you might think. The site has 60 million items for sale, Walmart CTO Jeremy King said at the VB Summit in Berkeley, California today. That’s up from 700,000 items when he joined Walmart in 2011, and it doesn’t include Jet.com, the e-commerce site Walmart acquired last year. Online sales have also […]