China’s quantum network could soon span two continents, thanks to a satellite launched earlier today. Launched at 1:40pm ET, the Quantum Science Satellite is designed to distribute quantum-encrypted keys between relay stations in China and Europe. When working as planned, the result could enable unprecedented levels of security between parties on different continents.
The satellite works by the principles of quantum cryptography, similar to existing fiber-based quantum key distribution networks in Europe, China, and the US. By monitoring noise on the network, the system allows distant parties to obtain identical random strings of data without being intercepted by outside parties, providing the raw material for future encrypted...
The inverted pendulum is a pretty classic dynamics problem and reaction wheels are cool. That’s why we like [Mike Rouleau]’s self-balancing stick.
The video, viewable after the break, was fairly sparse on details, but he furnished some in the comments. The little black box on the top is a GY-521 Gyroscope module. It sends its data to an Arduino attached to the black cord which trails off the screen. The Arduino does its mathemagic and then uses a motor controller to drive the reaction wheels at the correct speeds.
[Mike] mentions that he didn’t do anything too fancy with the dynamic model of the demonstration. He even hand-tuned the PID values rather than resorting to fancier training methods. The Arduino simply runs a bit of code, and, optionally, streams some data back to the computer for visualization.
The stick can stay up until the power goes out, and is a pretty cool demonstration. As some mentioned in the comments; this would make a fetching desk ornament.
By teaming up with the new hot app Pokémon Go, McDonald's Japan has managed to secure its first profit in two years, thanks to an increase in sales immediately following the launch of the game in the country.
This post is just to share some code that I wrote quite a while ago for fun.
At Microsoft’s UK campus there are some corridors that have gates which allow people to freely walk in one direction but which only allow people with the right ID cards to go in the other.
This set me wondering whether it might be possible to develop code with the Kinect for Windows V2 which monitored people walking towards the camera and;
Took skeletal measurements as they approached the camera to build up average ‘limb lengths’ based on some set of limbs and measurement counts that can be configured.
Grabbed a head and shoulders photo of each person based on knowledge of where their head and shoulders are within the camera’s view.
Stored both of (1) and (2) in the cloud using some configurable table and blob storage.
Scanned previously stored measurements in the cloud to determine whether a person of very similar ‘shape and size’ has been previously seen based on some configurable tolerance value.
Ultimately, opened the door based on recognising the user’s skeleton.
Now, in truth, I’ve never really got this to work I’m not sure whether the idea of a ‘skeletal fingerprint’ is a flawed idea in the first place but I got way too many false positives to consider asking Microsoft to use my new system for their security but I had some fun in putting it together.
However, this was prior to the arrival of Microsoft’s Cognitive Services and I may revisit the code in coming weeks/months to see if I can make a better attempt at it in the light of those new services coming along as perhaps I can combine my not so successful idea of ‘skeletal fingerprint’ with an additional call to Cognitive Services to do facial identification and produce a better result than I previously did.
...
What’s with the Weird Code Structure?
The structure of this code is a bit unusual in that I wanted to be able to build out both a WPF application and a Windows application from the same code. The Windows application is a Windows 8.1 app rather than a UWP app because there isn’t a Kinect for Windows V2 SDK for UWP and so this code targets Windows 8.1 but will, naturally, run on Windows 10.
The Kinect for Windows V2 SDK is structured such that, with one or two conditional compilation statements around namespaces, it’s possible to write the same code for WinRT and WPF and so that’s what I set out to do although it does mean that I haven’t (e.g.) used something like Win2D for some drawing because Win2D only exists in WinRT, not in WPF.
...
How Is It Configured?
There are elements of configuration needed here whether running the WinRT app or the WPF app. The default configuration lives in 2 files;
...
What Does Running the App Do?
I can run either the WPF application or the WinRT application and (as long as I’ve got my Kinect for Windows V2 camera plugged in) I’ll get a video (or IR) display like the one below.
...
...
Wrapping Up
I’ve had this code for a long time but have never written it up so I found a few spare cycles today to do that.
It was built 100% ‘just for fun’ but I thought I’d share in case anyone else was interested or wanted to take pieces of it and improve it
What I’d perhaps like to do next is to extend this by adding in some use of facial identification via Cognitive Services to see if I could build a system that worked a little better by using a combination of skeletal measurements with facial identity such that both mechanisms were used to determine identify. ...
What do you get when you stack 6 SORTERA boxes? A nice way to sort your clothes before washing them. But what makes my version even better, is that I added a piece of paper on top of each lid. On that I printed a picture of the correct washing machine settings. I edited the picture a little so only the correct setting is shown. This way I also had some space to add what goes inside the box and which detergent to use.
I simply took a picture of the different settings with my phone, edited it in Pixelmator and added two text boxes with all necessary information. I guess you could also do this on your Mac with the photos app & pages more comfortably. I used a 16:5 picture ratio, which fits the lid well.
After printing the six labels, I put them on the boxes using double sided tape. Why, you ask? Our cleaning lady once washed all together … wool jackets with underwear and the dog’s towels. My wife wasn’t too happy, but she has no time to do it herself either. With this solution we can sort the clothes and our cleaning lady can do the rest. Problem fixed!
Jibo, a cutesy social robot pitched to crowdfunders in mid 2014 as ‘the world’s first social robot’ but since delayed and yet to arrive in the market some nine months after its original due date, is now only going to ship to backers in the U.S. and Canada. Read More
A tous les adeptes de donjons & dragons, vous ne devez pas manquer de jeter un œil à au travail de ce fan. Il a déjà réalisé plusieurs mètres carrés de décors tirés des mythes de la licence et ne compte pas s’arrêter là. C’est à un certain Ryan Devoto que l’on doit ce plaisir pour […]
Videoconferencing is frustrating, joyless, and tedious, but Google has somehow come up with a way to make it even worse: drones. As first spotted by Quartz, the search giant was this week awarded a patent for a "mobile telepresence" system using video cameras and screens fixed to quadcopters. The patent suggests the drones could be used for normal telepresence (letting someone remotely explore a second location), or to dial in to videoconferences, letting the user "interact and engage with the participants" — by flying around.
France has given the green light to autonomous car vendors that want to test cars on public roads, part of Francois Hollande’s government “New Industrial France” plan to rejuvenate industry in the country.
The exact rules were not drawn up in the plan, but we assume manufacturers will be asked to register with the French government before testing an autonomous car on public roads.
The new plan should give others, including non-French manufacturers, the opportunity to test cars on French roads. That might be necessary for firms like Audi, BMW, and Mercedes-Benz, which sell a lot of cars in France and see lots of German drivers crossing the border on holiday.
France sees this tech saving lives
The French government views autonomous cars as a way to reduce accidents on the road, which have been increasing in the past few years. It made note that intoxicated, tired, and angry drivers would no longer be a problem behind the wheel.
Manufacturers have called for more legislation to legalize autonomous car tests in the country, as a way to learn the intricacies of different country’s traffic systems.
Some manufacturers have started looking into virtual simulations, thnk Neo learning kung-fu in the Matrix, as a way to prepare its fleet for operations in a country. The simulations are not as meticulous as actual tests, but may be required if other countries do not allow public trials.
France’s announcement comes a few months after Britain led the European charge for legalization of autonomous cars. Germany announced its own legislation in the spring.
La boutique en ligne MyBookmarks, imagine des marque-pages créatifs. Pour surfer sur la vague du succès de Pokémon Go, la créatrice à confectionné des marque-pages représentant les Pokémons les plus iconiques en modelant uniquement le bas de leur corps. On peut ainsi reconnaître Carapuce, Salamèche, Miaouss ou encore Pikachu.
Video has generally been available — and is often shared — on Pinterest, but it hasn’t quite received the same treatment that the company’s traditional content has seen.
Over the next few months, however, that will be changing. Pinterest is starting to test ways to get video running directly on its services, including building a native video player. And beyond that… Read More
Le photographe californien Pete Ulatan nous offre une série de photographies alternant entre nature et ville. Ces clichés n’impressionnent pas seulement par leur cadre puisque les côtés ont été retouchés afin de donner une impression de pliage. Les différentes villes et paysages paraissent ainsi au bord du précipice, dans un rendu aussi surréaliste que vertigineux.
Amazon’s plucky little voice assistant already has a fairly broad skill set – but gaming has never really been Alexa’s strong suit. Granted, the AI is no Xbox, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t some potential for a little gaming fun. A few developers have already created titles for the platform, adventure games that are a bit of a throwback to the text-based… Read More
Si les hologrammes sont, technologiquement parlant, complexes à mettre en œuvre, le concept, lui, est simple à appréhender. De fait, on peut trouver des « hologrammes » un peu partout, y compris sur une simple feuille de papier. Grâce à la startup Lumii, vous pouvez désormais en imprimer avec une simple imprimante à jet d’encre ! La […]
Researchers at the University of Tokyo have created a circular VR rig which tricks users' brains into thinking they're walking in a straight line. Check out this video to find out exactly how it works.
Noise-canceling headphones are one of the greatest technological wonders of the modern world, letting you shut out all of the annoying people, background noise, blaring sirens, and annoying people.
Amazon's AWS continues to innovate and dominate the cloud services market. It's grown so much that it's become a key component of Amazon's Wall Street mechanics, essentially a sector from which to materialize profit from its low-margin e-commerce roots:
The company reeled in $1.8 billion during the past three months from AWS ... up from the $1 billion it made in the year-ago quarter — that’s an 81 percent spike year-over-year. - GeekWire
Furthermore, AWS powers such wide swaths of the Internet that we're increasingly dependent on its stability. Last September, problems with the service caused simultaneous outages in Netflix, Tinder, IMDB, AirBnB, and Amazon's own streaming video and book websites.
In the past, I've been an enthusiastic user of AWS, but my concerns about complexity, cost and more recently ethical issues with the company have led me to explore other cloud alternatives. While it offers an increasingly sophisticated array of services for many kinds of development requirements, it's not always the simplest, fastest, or most affordable option. For example, I've found that it's faster and more economical to host my WordPress sites on Digital Ocean than on AWS; last year I wrote on Envato Tuts+ about using the Digital Ocean API to launch and manage instances.
In addition to some first-tier competitors such as Microsoft and Google, there's an increasingly growing list of cloud providers offering much or parts of AWS's most useful services in ways that can benefit small developers with ease of use and affordability.
In this tutorial, I'll outline some of the full-service competitors to AWS, some that are less established, and a handful of alternatives to individual cloud services useful to developers. I've written about a small number of these at Envato Tuts+ already, and I'll detail those as we go.
Please note, this is a huge topic. I'm aiming today to provide a high-level outline to give you basic insights into alternatives. I won't have time today to fully assess and compare each option in detail. Wherever possible, I'll try to connect you to helpful resources for your own deeper analysis.
If you'd like to see more detailed analysis of full-stack providers or specific services, let us know in the comments below. You can also reach me on Twitter @reifman directly.
The Major Competitors
The AWS cloud offering continues to expand at a rapid rate, as reflected in its immense Management Console:
Amazon offers a variety of services that you certainly can't find all together from a single vendor, nor can you even easily find some from individual vendors. But there'sful an ever growing array of alternatives.
In 2015, Gartner researched the Magic Quadrant for Cloud Infrastructure as a Service, Worldwide. It showcased the leaders (Amazon, Microsoft and Google) and a handful of up and coming provider networks, both Fortune 500 companies such as IBM and larger startups such as Rackspace and Joyent:
Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud Compute are the two biggest competitors to AWS attempting to offer a growing stack of service offerings.
Google Cloud Compute
There's no simple visual way to see the scope of Google's offerings, but they have steadily grown to offer a moderate subset of AWS. Here's how they place their features into a discoverable hierarchy:
Computation
Compute Engine: Run large-scale workloads on virtual machines hosted on Google's infrastructure.
Preemptible VMs: Preemptible VMs are a low-cost choice for distributed and fault-tolerant workloads.
App Engine: A platform for building scalable web apps and mobile back ends.
Container Engine: Run Docker containers on Google's infrastructure, powered by Kubernetes.
Storage
Cloud Storage: Powerful, simple and cost effective object storage service with global edge-caching.
Nearline: A highly available, affordable solution for backup, archiving, and disaster recovery.
Cloud SQL: Store and manage data using a fully-managed, relational MySQL database.
Datastore: A managed, NoSQL, schemaless database for storing non-relational data.
Bigtable: Cloud Bigtable is a fast, fully managed, massively scalable NoSQL database service.
Networking
Cloud Networking: Connect your network to Google directly, via your carrier or using a secure VPN. Use reliable, resilient and low-latency DNS. Load balance traffic between Compute Engine instances using either HTTP or Network (TCP/UDP).
Big Data
BigQuery: Analyze Big Data in the cloud. Run fast, SQL-like queries against petabytes of data in seconds.
Dataflow: Dataflow is a real-time data processing service for batch and stream data processing.
Dataproc: Google Cloud Dataproc is a managed Spark and Hadoop service that is fast, easy to use, and low cost.
Datalab: An easy to use interactive tool for large-scale data exploration, analysis and visualization.
Pub/Sub: Connect your services with reliable, many-to-many, asynchronous messaging hosted on Google's infrastructure.
Services
Translate API: Create multilingual apps and translate text into other languages programmatically.
Prediction API: Use Google's machine learning algorithms to analyze data and predict future outcomes using a familiar RESTful interface.
Cloud Endpoints: Create RESTful services from your code and make them accessible to iOS, Android, and JavaScript clients using App Engine.
Cloud Monitoring: Gain insight into the performance and availability of your cloud-powered applications.
Cloud Deployment Manager: Developers can easily design, share, deploy and manage complex Google Cloud Platform solutions using simple, declarative templates.
Container Registry: Fast, private Docker image storage on Google Cloud Platform.
Cloud Logging: Manage all your log data for Compute Engine and App Engine to investigate and debug system issues, gain operational and business insights, and meet security and compliance needs.
As you can see, there's a lot available. Here's the Cloud Platform Console:
Azure is Microsoft's most important growing product; it will help the company transform as Windows and Office application growth slow.
Here's a nice visual summary of Azure's features compared to Google and AWS above:
Azure is eager to get you on board. You start with $200 in credit, and keep going with free options. There's a pricing calculator which you can compare to the AWS calculator:
There are three well-known cloud providers that make a good effort at offering a variety of the services that AWS does.
Rackspace
Rackspace formally launched back in 1998 and has grown steadily to provide compelling cloud services. I'm a big fan of its Mailgun as well as its DNS offering, both of which I'll describe further below.
Here's how Rackspace categorizes its offerings:
You can visit the Rackspace Demonstration Site to see a bit of the control panel in action—but not much before you have to register.
One thing that's unique is that it offers its services both on its own hardware or powered by Azure or AWS (kind of a pseudo-alternative to AWS):
Full disclosure: I've done consulting work for RackSpace in the past. Generally, I've found the services of theirs that I've used to be quite good.
Joyent
I first used Joyent back in 2007 when they offered free hosting for the emerging Facebook application platform. It's grown a lot since then to offer a variety of cloud services that you can run on your hardware or theirs.
They offer a unique container focus perfect for launching and managing Docker containers.
IBM Cloud Computing
IBM's SoftLayer cloud offering isn't easy to find through the marketing presentation on their website, but it seems to have a positive, growing reputation. It also includes $500 of trial funds to get started:
Many of the Rest
As I researched this topic, I found a variety of other services that seemed to have some basic merit and usage that you may wish to explore:
OVH: The most common cloud services on a dedicated infrastructure.
Atlantic.net: Cloud VPS hosting, like Digital Ocean which I'll describe more below.
CloudSigma: More of an enhanced VPS host with some unique customization options.
Hewlett Packard's Helion Eucalyptus: "an open solution for building private clouds that are compatible with Amazon Web Services (AWS). Discover the benefits of moving public cloud workloads and data to your own private cloud."
I've noticed that the bigger companies like HP and IBM have the most unwieldy product names, making it easy to get lost in the clouds.
If you'd like to build and manage your own (or launch a competitor to AWS), there are two that I found:
1. Apache CloudStack
Apache CloudStack is "open source software designed to deploy and manage large networks of virtual machines, as a highly available, highly scalable Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) cloud computing platform...a turnkey solution that includes the entire 'stack' of features most organizations want with an IaaS cloud: compute orchestration, Network-as-a-Service, user and account management, a full and open native API, resource accounting, and a first-class User Interface (UI)."
2. OpenStack
OpenStack "controls large pools of compute, storage, and networking resources throughout a datacenter, managed through a dashboard or via the OpenStack API. OpenStack works with popular enterprise and open source technologies making it ideal for heterogeneous infrastructure."
Service Specific Alternatives
Many Envato Tuts+ developers need cloud-based services for a vertical need but not a full stack. I've often found it easier to apply third-party solutions for specific needs and have moved away from Amazon for reasons I mentioned above.
Let's begin to explore some of the more common cloud verticals.
Virtual Servers
Obviously, there are endless numbers of hosting companies offering virtual hosting. The two that I've heard the best things about, besides some of the above, are Digital Ocean and Linode.
I haven't used Linode in a while, but it worked well when I did, and it has a solid reputation.
DNS Services
While many of us use our domain registrar's free DNS services, they are not always the fastest or most reliable. If you need a higher service level, SolveDNS publishes a monthly speed comparison of the major providers:
Verizon is impressively fast:
But they are a bit obtuse about pricing—I presume the technician meant monthly, which is pricey:
"We don't really disclose prices because it varies from case to case but roughly it will cost you $50 for the first 50 zones and $35 per additional 50 zones." - Verizon Route Chat Support
Rackspace offers free, sophisticated DNS hosting for free as long as you have an account:
A lot of people begin using AWS with its CloudFront and S3 storage and global content delivery. But there are a lot of options emerging in this field as well.
CloudFlare launched itself focusing on DDoS protection, which can be vital for many sites, and integrates this closely with its CDN services:
After I wrote about KeyCDN for Envato Tuts+, I decided to become a user and have been quite satisfied. It's simpler and more economical than AWS.
I've also written about Incapsula, another powerful security service which provides broad spectrum optimization, including CDN:
Data Storage and Backup
There are a wide variety of Data Storage and Backup services available.
Google Cloud Storage is a solid and effective alternative to AWS's various services. Two others I do not have experience which may be worth checking out include Iron Mountain and Mozy.
You may also want to investigate my series here on CloudBerry, which offers data storage exploration tools for AWS S3, Azure, and Google:
Email Broadcasting
When I used Amazon's Simple Email Service (SES), I found it difficult to configure, monitor and maintain. Ultimately, I found Rackspace's Mailgun to be much simpler and more reliable. This is often the case when you switch away from AWS's breadth of features which get limited usability attention and native language customer support and to startups that are focused and attentive. Amazon has too large a focus on development and not enough on product design and product management—you can see this in weaknesses across AWS's user experience.
There's also SendGrid, and while I'm not a fan of MailChimp due to their overzealous, unfair customer service (they shut down email lists of mine where we'd hand-collected emails in person during an initiative campaign), they offer Mandrill.
Yes, during that campaign, we married a corporation to a woman in Seattle to honor the absurdity of corporate personhood and its harmful effects on the United States (I thought you might need a humor break after all this cloud study):
Management Tools and Monitoring
Envato Tuts+ has a number of tutorials about New Relic, which is a highly reliable solution to website monitoring. It offers more focused, detailed features than AWS. Check out a couple of mine from Envato Tuts+:
I've also written about Stackify, which takes a direct path for development monitoring specializing in errors and logs:
Game Support
One area where AWS distinguishes itself is in its gaming features. One startup I've seen that's making a compelling alternative offering for game developers is PlayFab, who recently raised $7.4 million in venture capital funding:
PlayFab provides a sophisticated array of cloud-powered gaming infrastructure and APIs to speed game development. For more detail, download PlayFab's Technical White Paper (pdf).
Full disclosure: I'm an acquaintance of its CEO James Gwertzman, and we worked together at Microsoft.
Enterprise Applications
Certainly one of the greatest transitions of the past decade is the switch from desktop applications such as Office to cloud-based word processors, spreadsheets, etc.
I hope this tutorial has helped you get an overview of the landscape of options out there for you and your business (small and large)—they are immense. Obviously, I couldn't go into detail of the pros and cons of all the alternatives, but if you'd like to see us explore some of these more deeply, please add this to the comments below.
Ultimately, please let us know your experience with AWS and the alternatives that you've experimented with. You can also reach me directly on Twitter @reifman. And, be sure to browse my Envato Tuts+ instructor page to see some of my other tutorials.
A Jedi-style HoloLens hackathon proof of concept would let smart home owners control their connected gadgets through augmented reality, using simple gestures and glances. Check out the awesome video demo here.
A new startup called Scale, officially launching today, wants to make it easier for businesses to outsource their core processes and tasks that require people, not algorithms, to handle. This could include anything from appointment scheduling to more complicated matters like content moderation, transcriptions, and more. Today, many companies handle outsourcing themselves by hiring and… Read More
Jiobit is building a revolutionary chip that, using machine learning and contextual clues, could drastically improve the battery life of wearables. It's working on smartwatches for kids., but it has bigger plans for the future.
Google has fallen behind in the cloud computing market, outpaced by rivals like Microsoft and Amazon. However, the company hopes it can win new customers by offering not only computing power on tap, but also artificial intelligence. Earlier this year, Google announced its intention to offer cloud-based machine learning tools to customers, and from this week onwards, two of those APIS are going to be available to all in an open beta.
The first of these is a text analysis tool, which can be used to automatically extract key bits of information from written documents, or perform "sentiment analysis" to judge the mood and intent of the author. "For example," says Google, "digital marketers can analyze online product reviews or service...
La folie et le style Pokémon GO n’a pas fini de se décliner un peu partout. Dans l’Alabama, le Birmingham Zoo vient d’installer des pancartes sur les enclos de ses animaux qui reprennent le style des fameuses fiches Pokémon GO. Une adaptation express aux préoccupations du moment.
Cola, a messaging app that integrates apps into chats, is opening up its developer kit today to enable anyone to build new apps.
The updated version available today comes with 12 “bubbles” that are essentially applications that run inside the messaging app. Users can share weather and flight information, gifs, and more without creating accounts with individual tools. The… Read More
Fouiller un texte numérique est aujourd’hui aussi simple qu’un banal Ctrl-F. Les mots-clé remontent alors quasiment instantanément. Malheureusement, dans un livre, un manuel ou n’importe quel document imprimé. L’application mobile Ctrl-F sur Android permet justement de faire comme une recherche numérique. Diablement pratique ! En photographiant le passage qui vous intéresse dans un texte imprimé […]
Since its launch in 2008, Stack Overflow has become the go-to community for discussing programming-related questions. Now the service is launching a new product that aims to harness its community to build a repository of peer-reviewed technical documentation. Stack Overflow Documentation wants to be a complement and maybe even a replacement for existing instruction manuals and… Read More
Fresh off its $16 million funding round from earlier this spring, popular airfare prediction app Hopper is moving beyond simply helping travelers figure out when to fly in order to snag the best deal. With the launch of Hopper 3.0, out this morning, the app will now also make personalized recommendations regarding how to adjust your trip plans to save more money, as well as point users to… Read More
It’s a cloud. It’s pendant light. It is Nimbus Luminous!
I made this after my wife stared enviously at the cloud light in a dessert restaurant. =)
It is an easy, fun sized, and affordable project for a playroom.
Let’s get started!
Items:
Solleftea lantern x1
Hemma lamp x1
Old unused teddies x 2
Glue gun
Ledare LED 1000 lm x1 (white)
Osram LED 350lm x1 (warm)
1. Open and expand the Solleftea lantern (Ikea common sense) and set up the pendant light + LEDS.
Link both socket as above in a L-shape configuration. I used the socket mount as a holder for the extra long wires.
2. Dissection. Imagine yourself as Hannibal Lecter + Frankenstein.
Remove all the teddies’ innards and use it to create life.
3. Glue teddy’s innards to the lantern. Haphazardly as possible to give the cloud its unique identity.
Glue the cotton to the lantern using a glue gun. Be creative.
4. Now stuff the heart of the light into the innards-laden-lantern!
Après avoir fondé Cozy Cloud, Frank Rousseau n'en est plus directeur technique. Il a été révoqué en assemblée générale hier, suite à des divergences sur la stratégie. Contacté, il affirme vouloir attaquer l'entreprise, estimant la décision abusive.
25W, la puissance d’une ampoule standard, et pourtant elle parvient facilement à illuminer un salon. Imaginez alors une puissance équivalente à 100W ? Poussons le vice à 10 000W ? Toujours pas impressionnés ? Eh bien misons plus gros et faisons tapis avec une ampoule de 20 000W. Photonicinduction a testé cette ampoule 20kW, le résultat […]
Jibo, a cutesy social robot pitched to crowdfunders in mid 2014 as ‘the world’s first social robot’ but since delayed and yet to arrive in the market some nine months after its original due date, is now only going to ship to backers in the U.S. and Canada. Read More
Video has generally been available — and is often shared — on Pinterest, but it hasn’t quite received the same treatment that the company’s traditional content has seen.
Over the next few months, however, that will be changing. Pinterest is starting to test ways to get video running directly on its services, including building a native video player. And beyond that… Read More
Amazon’s plucky little voice assistant already has a fairly broad skill set – but gaming has never really been Alexa’s strong suit. Granted, the AI is no Xbox, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t some potential for a little gaming fun. A few developers have already created titles for the platform, adventure games that are a bit of a throwback to the text-based… Read More
A new startup called Scale, officially launching today, wants to make it easier for businesses to outsource their core processes and tasks that require people, not algorithms, to handle. This could include anything from appointment scheduling to more complicated matters like content moderation, transcriptions, and more. Today, many companies handle outsourcing themselves by hiring and… Read More
Cola, a messaging app that integrates apps into chats, is opening up its developer kit today to enable anyone to build new apps.
The updated version available today comes with 12 “bubbles” that are essentially applications that run inside the messaging app. Users can share weather and flight information, gifs, and more without creating accounts with individual tools. The… Read More
Since its launch in 2008, Stack Overflow has become the go-to community for discussing programming-related questions. Now the service is launching a new product that aims to harness its community to build a repository of peer-reviewed technical documentation. Stack Overflow Documentation wants to be a complement and maybe even a replacement for existing instruction manuals and… Read More
Fresh off its $16 million funding round from earlier this spring, popular airfare prediction app Hopper is moving beyond simply helping travelers figure out when to fly in order to snag the best deal. With the launch of Hopper 3.0, out this morning, the app will now also make personalized recommendations regarding how to adjust your trip plans to save more money, as well as point users to… Read More
