Davemichels

Google Assistant has had a good few months: Google’s smart assistant is now compatible with more than 5,000 devices, up from the 1,500 it worked with back in January.

According to Google, it’s a list made up of a huge variety of products, including “cameras, dishwashers, doorbells, dryers, lights, plugs, thermostats, security systems, switches, vacuums, washers, fans, locks, sensors, heaters, AC units, air purifiers, refrigerators, and ovens.” It’s a big jump — at least, numerically speaking — and if nothing else, it’s a sign that the full court press that Google started at the beginning of the year with its massive Google Assistant-themed booth at CES is starting to show some results.

Compare that number to Apple’s Homekit, which has...

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Facebook certainly deserves ample criticism for its lax privacy standards and its decision to threaten news outlets that exposed them. That said, we've noted a few times now that the uneven press fixation on Facebook obscures the fact that numerous industries routinely engage in much worse behavior. That's particularly true of broadband providers (and especially wireless carriers), who routinely treat consumer privacy as a distant afterthought, with only a fraction of the total volume of media hyperventilation we saw during the Facebook kerfuffle.

Facebook's casual treatment of your data isn't some errant tech industry exception, it's the norm, making #quitFacebook an arguably pointless gesture if you still own a stock mobile phone. In the telecom industry, a disdain for consumer privacy is a cornerstone of their entire business model(s). Companies like AT&T and Verizon aren't just bone grafted to our government's domestic surveillance apparatus, they collect and sell everything from browsing to location data to absolutely anyone and everyone--with little to no real oversight, and opt out tools that may or may not actually work.

Verizon has been particularly busy on the anti-privacy front. You'll recall that the company was fined by the FCC for modifying wireless user data packets to track users around the internet without telling them. The company was engaging in this behavior for two years before security researchers even discovered it, and it took another six months of media criticism for Verizon to offer a simple opt out. Despite the wrist slap, a more powerful variant of this technology is still very much in play at Oath (AOL & Yahoo), Verizon's effort to compete with Google and Facebook in the media advertising wars.

Not long after that, Verizon played a starring role in gutting modest FCC privacy rules protecting consumers (spurred in part by Verizon's tracking tech). Those rules, which Verizon lobbyists dismantled last year, simply required that ISPs be transparent with what data they're collecting and who they're selling it to. When California tried to mirror the FCC's discarded privacy policies, Verizon, Facebook and Comcast lied to lawmakers, falsely claiming that modest privacy protections would harm children, increase internet popups, and embolden extremism. None of it was true.

More recently, Verizon has been facing numerous lawsuits over Yahoo hacks that exposed the data of roughly three billion consumers. And while this was before Verizon's ownership (Verizon wasn't informed of the hacks during negotiations, netting it a $350 billion discount), the company has since been actively trying to prevent customers from suing Oath (Yahoo) or Verizon over future breaches by using fine print to mandate binding arbitration:

"The new Oath terms of service "contain a binding arbitration agreement and class action and jury trial waiver clauses..., which are applicable to all US users," the terms say.

Congress has considered legislation to ban many mandatory arbitration clauses, but it hasn't followed through yet and the practice remains legal.

The AOL terms already contained a binding arbitration clause and class-action waiver before Verizon bought that company. But the Yahoo terms didn't previously contain such clauses."

Thanks to AT&T's Supreme Court victory in 2011 using contract fine print to erode consumer legal rights is now something we view as the norm. And while everybody can agree that the class action system has numerous problems, the system of binding arbitration is a terrible solution. Under binding arbitration, the arbiter rules for the company they work for the vast majority of the time, leaving consumers shit out of luck. While class actions often only net lawyers a nice new boat, they at least occasionally result in substantive change. Arbitration, in turn, is often more like consumer theater than justice.

The reality is that informed and empowered consumers are more likely to opt out of efforts to monetize their online behavior. And however breathlessly companies like Verizon and Facebook pretend to be dedicated to consumer privacy or policy solutions, they're going to fight tooth and nail against any policies -- even reasonable ones -- that could potentially hamstring that revenue. But however bad Facebook is and has been on privacy, Verizon routinely offers a master class when it comes to undermining efforts at anything even vaguely resembling a solution.

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After the far-reaching scandal over mishandled Facebook user data, Cambridge Analytica is shutting down.

The news was reported earlier by The Wall Street Journal. The company soon said in a press release that the affiliated United Kingdom-based company SCL Elections has filed for insolvency, and that bankruptcy proceedings will begin soon for Cambridge Analytica as well. The data analytics company’s United Kingdom-based parent organization, SCL Group, will also be shuttered, according to the Journal.

Cambridge Analytica, which gained fame by working on data analytics for the Trump presidential campaign, was engulfed by controversy after reports that it obtained data on millions...

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Cisco just announced an agreement to acquire Accompany, which uses artificial intelligence to build databases of people and relationships at companies.

Founder and CEO Amy Chang has compared the product to a digital chief of staff or personal assistant, giving executives the context they need before conversations and meetings. Cisco plans to incorporate Accompany technology into its collaboration products, for example by introducing company and individual profiles into Webex meetings.

Cisco says it will pay $270 million in cash and stock in the deal.

The company probably didn’t have to search too hard to find Accompany, since Chang (who previously served as the head of product for Google’s ad measurement and reporting) has been on Cisco’s board of directors since October 2016. As part of the transaction, she’s resigning from the board, effective immediately.

In addition, Chang will be taking over the company’s Collaboration Technology Group. Rowan Trollope, who currently leads the collaboration group, is departing to become CEO at cloud software company Five9.

“Amy has proven to be an effective and innovative leader through her years as an entrepreneur, an engineer, and CEO, and I couldn’t be more pleased to have her and the Accompany team join Cisco,” said Cisco chairman and CEO Chuck Robbins in the announcement. “Together, we have a tremendous opportunity to further enhance AI and machine learning capabilities in our collaboration portfolio and continue to create amazing collaboration experiences for customers.”

According to Crunchbase, Accompany has raised around $40 million in funding from investors including CRV, Cowboy Ventures, Iconiq Capital and Ignition Partners.

Cisco also announced today that it’s selling off some of its NDS video assets.

• London Block Exchange on Wednesday announced it would support two more cryptocurrencies: bitcoin cash and ethereum classic.
• Bitcoin cash rose 8% on the news, while ethereum classic was up just under 1%.
• Follow the price of bitcoin cash in real-time here.

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Bitcoin cash was up more than 7%, outpacing other major cryptocurrencies, Wednesday morning after London Block Exchange said it would support trading of the fourth-largest cryptocurrency.

"As we open our doors to UK crypto enthusiasts, we’re listening and acting on what the community wants - and that’s an array of good quality coin options to trade; all backed by a reliable, comprehensive and user-friendly service that they can trust," Benjamin Dives, CEO of the exchange, said in a press release.

The exchange also said it would support Ethereum classic, currently the 15th largest cryptocurrency, which split from the flagship ethereum in July 2015. The cryptocurrency was up 0.8% Wednesday morning.

Bitcoin and ethereum, the two largest coins, were up just over 1% at the time of writing, while Ripple's XRP was up 2%.

There is an upcoming "hard-fork" planned for bitcoin cash on May 15. The software upgrade will result in bitcoin ABC, an acronym for Adjustable Blocksize Cap, and will increase the size of one block on bitcoin cash's blockchain to 32MB, a fourfold increase from the original 8MB and well above bitcoin’s 1MB block size. It’s set to roll out on May 15, the developers have said.

The fork will also remove the Segwit protocol, short for segregated witness, the process by which the number of transactions in a block can be increased by moving certain signature data from transactions to the end of the block.

Since its inception in August 2017, bitcoin cash has been accused of misleading investors by piggy-backing off the bitcoin name. While the new cryptocurrency includes the history of the original bitcoin's transactions up until the split, the two currencies are unrelated except for their shared history and name. Theoretically, anyone can create a fork from the original bitcoin source code.

Vocal bitcoin cash supporter Roger Ver, who owns bitcoin.com via an LLC registered at a Marriott resort on St. Kitts and refers to the original bitcoin as "bitcoin core," has appeared on numerous internet talk shows, including the conspiracy-theory site InfoWars, to promote bitcoin cash.

SEE ALSO: Sign up to get the most important updates on all things crypto delivered straight to your inbox.

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NOW WATCH: Wall Street's biggest bull explains why trade war fears are way overblown

WhatsApp is getting several new changes including stickers and business-focused app features, its parent company Facebook announced today during the annual F8 developer conference. The messaging platform will also be adding group video calls in the coming months, WhatsApp director Mubarik Imam announced.

Imam didn’t have many details to give about how group video calls will work just yet, but from the example video, we can see that calls will allow four people to simultaneously participate. She revealed that WhatsApp now has over 450 million daily users, and over 2 billion minutes of video and audio calls are made through WhatsApp each day.

WhatsApp is getting stickers, following in the footsteps of other messaging apps...

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The team behind secure messaging app Signal says Amazon has threatened to kick the app off its CloudFront web service unless Signal drops the anti-censorship practice known as domain-fronting. Google recently banned the practice, which lets developers disguise web traffic to look like it’s coming from a different source, allowing apps like Signal to evade country-level bans. As a result, Signal moved from Google to the Amazon-owned Souq content delivery network. But Amazon implemented its own ban on Friday. In an email that Moxie Marlinspike — founder of Signal developer Open Whisper Systems — posted today, Amazon orders the organization to immediately stop using domain-fronting or find another web services provider.

Amazon has said that...

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Facebook is giving Messenger a major design overhaul, promising a much simpler and cleaner user experience after years of jamming the chat app full of superfluous features like games.

“When you’re messaging, you really want a simple and fast experience,” Mark Zuckerberg said during the company’s F8 keynote. “We’re taking this moment to completely redesign Messenger to focus on these ideas.” Zuckerberg again reiterated the “clean” and “fast” nature of the revamped Messenger app before moving on in the keynote.

The bottom navigation has been simplified to three central tabs that focus on communication. Icons for the camera and video chat remain present at the upper right of the app, but everything looks much more streamlined. It looks...

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One of the big issues T-Mobile will have to fight back against if it wants to successfully merge with Sprint is market consolidation. If the two companies merge, the US will go from four major wireless service providers to three, therefore reducing competition. Given how aggressive (and successful) T-Mobile has been over the last several years — ever since its proposed merger with AT&T failed — you can see why this might be an issue.

But if you ask T-Mobile, that isn’t what’s happening at all. In its merger announcement, T-Mobile directly addresses the competition issue by arguing that, in fact, there are currently “at least seven or eight big competitors” in its industry. Sorry, what?

Conventional wisdom, as well as facts and history,...

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The co-Founder of Nuo, Varun Deshpande announced on twitter that they are opening a bank in Singapore. This is not just a normal bank but a virtual bank for cryptocurrencies. He also stated that they will open an ATM for virtual digital money as well. They are also introducing a new technology- Advanced Robotic Account […]

• Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos says he believes the term "work-life balance" is a "debilitating phrase."
• Bezos revealed that one of the top pieces of advice he offers new Amazon employees is that they shouldn't view the two as a strict trade-off.
• Instead, Bezos thinks of his personal and professional pursuits as a "circle" rather than a balancing act.

Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos isn't a fan of the phrase "work-life balance."

At an April 2018 awards event hosted by Axel Springer and Business Insider US editor in chief Alyson Shontell, Bezos revealed the counterintuitive advice he offers new Amazon employees.

Bezos believes that his new hires should stop attempting to achieve "balance" within their professional and personal lives, since that implies a strict trade-off between the two. Instead, Bezos envisions a more holistic relationship between work and life outside the office.

Historically, the world's richest man has a nontraditional approach to work: He makes time for breakfast every morning with his family, doesn't set his alarm before going to bed, schedules surprisingly few meetings, and still sets aside a few minutes every day to wash his own dishes.

This counterintuitive approach to maintaining a healthy symmetry within his professional and personal pursuits is one of the chief pieces of advice Bezos offers his staff.

"This work-life harmony thing is what I try to teach young employees and actually senior executives at Amazon too. But especially the people coming in," he said. "I get asked about work-life balance all the time. And my view is, that's a debilitating phrase because it implies there's a strict trade-off."

Instead of viewing work and life as a balancing act, Bezos said that it's more productive to view them as two integrated parts.

"It actually is a circle. It's not a balance," Bezos said.

Bezos said that the relationship between his work life and personal life is reciprocal, and that he doesn't compartmentalize them into two competing time constraints.

"If I am happy at home, I come into the office with tremendous energy," said Bezos. "And if I am happy at work, I come home with tremendous energy. You never want to be that guy — and we all have a coworker who's that person — who, as soon as they come into a meeting, they drain all the energy out of the room ... You want to come into the office and give everyone a kick in their step."

You can read — and watch — the full interview with Bezos right here.

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NOW WATCH: I'm a diehard iPhone user who switched to Android for a week — here's what I loved and hated about the Google Pixel 3 XL

T-Mobile has rolled out improved LTE coverage to hundreds of locations across the US over the past two weeks, the company’s chief technology officer Neville Ray tweeted. The new low-band and mid-band sites include high-traffic cities like Chicago, Boston, San Francisco, New York, Dallas, and Washington, DC.

As noted by TmoNews and Android Police, the rollout includes low-band 600MHz and 700MHz and mid-band PCS and AWS coverage. Ray also said that more work on 600MHz coverage for spotty areas would be “coming.” This rollout essentially means T-Mobile is shoring up its low-to-middle band areas to get better overall signals in those places, with the focus on getting existing speeds to be more reliable.

T-Mobile has previously indicated that...

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Microsoft is starting to preview the features and changes to Office 2019 today. The software maker is making its first Office 2019 preview available to business customers, with features that are typically found in Microsoft’s Office 365 subscription. Office 2019 will include the usual Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Outlook client apps, alongside server versions of Exchange, SharePoint, and Skype for Business.

Microsoft is targeting this Windows version of Office 2019 towards businesses that aren’t running Office 365, and the productivity suite will only run on Windows 10. A separate Office 2019 for Mac version will also be available for macOS. “Updates include new and improved inking features across the apps, like the roaming pencil case,...

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Nat Levy / GeekWire:
DocuSign closes up 37% on its first day of trading after raising $629M in its IPO  —  A little more than a year ago, Dan Springer was a stay-at-home dad.  Today he is the CEO of a freshly minted public company now valued at close to $6 billion.  —  Springer joined the digital signature company DocuSign …

Corporate mergers and acquisitions in the US are rebounding this year. 

Thanks to tax cuts, companies have access to more cash they can spend on deals.  According to Morgan Stanley, M&A offer intensity, the number of offers relative to the number of stocks, increased to 3.2% in the first quarter from 2.5% in the fourth.

Among S&P 500 sectors, tech saw the second-largest increase.

Morgan Stanley identified 10 tech companies that are the most likely to receive tender offers over the next year. On average, 7% of all the companies published in prior lists received offers in the following 12 months. 

"Our model, ALERT (Acquisition Likelihood Estimate Ranking Tool), combines stock characteristics, cohort membership, and data regarding offers to forecast probabilities that stocks receive tender offers in the coming 12 months," said Brian Hayes, the global head of quantitative research, in a note on Tuesday.

"On the one hand, stock-specific information, such as yield, leverage and valuation, impacts stocks' offer likelihoods; on the other hand, recent activity levels in the cohorts to which a stock belongs (e.g., sector and size) tend to continue for some time, and this affects subsequent offer intensities for remaining stocks in those cohorts."

Betting on possible takeover targets has been a successful strategy for investors this year. A Goldman Sachs-curated index of stocks with at least a 15% chance of being acquired in the next 12 months has beaten the benchmark S&P 500 by 4 percentage points since the start of the year.

Here's Morgan Stanley's list of the top takeover targets in tech:

SEE ALSO: Morgan Stanley identified 12 trades to protect you from a stock market meltdown

Arris International

Ticker: ARRS

Year-to-date Trading: $9.21 billion

US Market Cap: $4.9 billion

Closing price as of 4/20: $27.54

Nuance Communications

Ticker: NUAN

Year-to-date Trading: $11.61 billion

US Market Cap: $4.62 billion

Closing price as of 4/20: $15.01

Hubspot

Ticker: HUBS

Year-to-date Trading: $9.63 billion

US Market Cap: $4.06 billion

Closing price as of 4/20: $113.6

See the rest of the story at Business Insider

The watchwords at Opus Research in anticipation of upcoming privacy regulations is “Precision Without Surveillance”. We counsel customer care professionals and digital marketers to prepare for the era of “explicit consent” and the “opt-in” economy. Companies are going to have to justify their collection of personal information by providing something of value in return. It should start with effortless digital experiences, accurate answers and truly Intelligent Assistance.

A partnership between communications giant Avaya and the self-described “AI-Pairing” specialist Afiniti is custom made to attack the challenges of “Precision Without Surveillance” by using pattern matching to fulfill on the promise of intelligent routing. In its nine-year existence, Afiniti has amassed over 90 patents to “examine data and commercially available information tied to customer identity to determine patterns of successful behavioral interactions.” Thanks to judicious application of these data to match inbound contacts with the most suitable agent Afiniti now claims over 150 deployments in major enterprises, involving than 600,000 agents and 700 million customers.

Through Avaya’s Technology Alliance program, Afiniti’s technology has already been put into practice at Avaya clients T-Mobile and Caesar’s World. The 3rd quarter (2018) will mark general availability of a “native” integration of Afiniti Enterprise Behavioral Pairing technology into the Avaya Aura® Contact Center Elite, Avaya Proactive Outreach Manager and Avaya Oceana customer interaction management platforms. This offering will help Avaya deliver on the long-standing promise “intelligent routing.” For a couple decades now existing approaches simply amounted to delivery of incoming calls to the “best agent,” which was often just the “next available agent”. At Caesar’s World and T-Mobile, Afiniti has shown that artificial intelligence can be applied in real time to match an incoming contact with the most appropriate agent or resource.

While Avaya claims that it is a “first-of-its-kind” offering, it is really an example of Intelligent Assistance resources being applied where they have had proven success. This type of triage (identifying the priority of a call) and arbitration (making decisions about how best to handle it) is especially well suited for omnichannel contact centers. Avaya’s chief rival, Genesys, already offers “predictive matching” as an important part of its Predictive Routing offering. It is part of the framework called KATE which enables Genesys to offer “blended AI,” which amounts to the notion of applying machine learning and predictive analytics to the tasks of anticipating the purpose of a call, the status of a caller and the best available resource to resolve a problem.

 

The post The Avaya/Afiniti Partnership Applies Artificial Intelligence to Precision Routing appeared first on .

Google filed a public comment today criticizing the Environmental Protection Agency’s proposal to roll back the Clean Power Plan, an Obama-era policy that aims to cut power plant pollution. With its comment, Google joins Apple in arguing that keeping the policy is a good deal for the US.

Google’s comment, which it shared with The Verge, lays out what it called “a strong economic case for the Clean Power Plan.” It says that the plan would encourage utilities and companies like Google to keep investing in renewable energy — which Google says is getting cheaper, is desired by both consumers and investors, and is a good source of jobs.

Google also believes that curbing global warming “is an urgent global priority that requires robust...

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Google has finally admitted that a proper suite of office productivity apps needs to include Tasks. Alongside the launch of the new Gmail, the company is announcing integration with Google Tasks. In Gmail, you’ll be able to drag emails over to the Tasks section of the web app to create a new to-do item based on that email.

But, blessedly, Google is finally releasing separate Google Tasks apps for both iPhone and Android. Before now, using Google Tasks has involved a confusing mess of inputs and outputs: a melange of Google Keep, Google Assistant, and Google Calendar all either accepted or showed you tasks, but getting a simple, single list of them was nigh-impossible.

As you can see in the screenshot above, Google Tasks on Android looks...

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• Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella went to Hyderabad Public School, Begumpet. So did the CEOs of Adobe and Mastercard.
• It's a private school in southern India that was founded to teach the sons of aristocrats.
• Nadella has said that his experience playing cricket there strongly influenced his professional career.

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If you're looking to raise one of the most powerful business leaders in the world, you might want to send your kid to Hyderabad Public School, Begumpet, in India.

In an interview with Stephen Dubner on an episode of the "Freakonomics" podcast, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella mentioned that not only did he attend the high school, but so did Shantanu Narayen, the CEO of Adobe, and Ajay Banga, the CEO of Mastercard.

Hyderabad Public School is what Americans would consider a private school — though in India, like England, such schools are called public schools.

According to Hyderabad Public School's website, it was established in 1923 as a school for the sons of aristocrats, modeled after Eton College in London. Last year, it was ranked one of the top 10 schools in India.

The school is in Hyderabad, the southern Indian city that has become a tech hub. Since 1990, Hyderabad has been home to the headquarters of Microsoft India.

"Attending the HPS was the best break I had in my life," Nadella said when he visited the school last year, according to The Hindu.

Nadella played cricket at the school, and he has spoken before about how the sport influenced his career. In a recent interview at Wharton Business School, Nadella said he learned from his high-school cricket coach how to walk the line "between having confidence in your own capability yet having the ability to learn."

Nadella also met his wife, Anupama Nadella, at Hyderabad Public School.

The school's core values, according to its website, include "strong self-esteem" and "tolerance and respect for others." The school motto? "Be vigilant."

The website says: "These words exhort young students to be mentally alert, physically ready to take up the challenges that life has to offer."

SEE ALSO: This college student’s viral LinkedIn post got her a Microsoft internship — and congratulations from the CEO of Microsoft

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NOW WATCH: Inside the best high school in America, which costs $53,000 a year

We're currently facing the worst bleaching of coral reefs ever known in history, but what would happen if all the coral reefs died off? We've already lost 50% of the world's coral, and we're at risk of losing even more. If the world lost all its coral reefs, the results would be dire. Following is a transcript of the video.

What would happen if all the coral reefs died off?

Coral reefs are filled with colorful ocean life. But they're in danger of dying off.

The planet has already lost 50% of its coral in the last 30 years. If the rest go, the consequences would be dire.

Sea life has the most to lose. Coral reefs cover less than 1% of the ocean floor. But, they provide an essential ecosystem for a quarter of all marine life.

One of these creatures — a type of sea slug — is actually an important ingredient in certain cancer-fighting compounds.

In fact, some estimates predict we are 300 to 400 times more likely to find new drugs from coral reef ecosystems than land-based ones. But that’s only if they survive the next century.

In addition to breakthrough medicines, over half a billion people depend on these reefs for food and work.

Almost 1/5th of the world's protein comes from seafood, with people eating on average almost 50 lbs per year.

The US fishing industry supports 1.5 million jobs alone, nearly a quarter of what the US meat and poultry industry employs.

Without reefs, billions of sea life species would suffer, millions of people would lose their most significant food source, and economies would take a major hit.

But it’s not just about the jobs.

Coral reefs attract tourists to more than 100 countries and territories worldwide. These tourists spend billions of dollars diving into the underwater landscapes.

Without these attractions, economists estimate that coastal-tourism would drop more than 9%, which is equivalent to about $36 billion.

These reefs also provide protection to the tourist-reliant coastlines. They act as natural barriers, canceling out 97% of a wave’s strength and protecting more than 200 million people. Building seawalls for the same protection costs $2.5 million per mile.

But today humans are putting these all at risk. Rising ocean temps and pollution stress the coral, which can kill entire coral ecosystems within just a few months.

Half of the US Caribbean coral died in one massive bleaching event back in 2005.

If we do nothing to cool the oceans, the planet’s remaining coral could all be wiped out.

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A pair of Florida police detectives attempted to use a dead suspect’s finger to unlock his phone after he was killed by police officers last month, reports the Tampa Bay Times (via Gizmodo).

Linus F. Phillip was killed at the end of March by officers Matthew Steiner and Prentice Ables after they pulled him over due to his car’s tinted windows, according to the Tampa Bay Times. He was killed when the two officers tried to arrest him after smelling marijuana in the car, and he attempted to drive away while one officer was caught halfway out of the vehicle. The officer fired his gun at the Phillip, who crashed and was later pronounced dead.

Shortly after Phillip’s death, Lagos detectives went to the Sylvan Abbey Funeral Home in...

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The US Department of Justice has reportedly opened an antitrust investigation to determine whether AT&T, Verizon, and mobile industry group GSM Association (GSMA) colluded to prevent consumers from easily switching carriers with devices that support eSIM, according to The New York Times. All four major carriers received requests for information about the investigation, according to CNBC.

The Times reports that the DOJ "demanded" details from the three over potential steps taken to impede the adoption of eSIM, which lets wireless customers switch carriers without requiring a physical SIM card to be inserted. AT&T and Verizon are accused of working with GSMA to develop standards that would allow them to keep devices locked to their...

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• Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos explained during an on-stage interview on Friday the strange meetings Amazon holds.
• Every meeting requires a well-crafted six-page memo which the whole room sits and reads at the start of the meeting.
• Bezos banned PowerPoint years ago and explained why the memo-driven meeting is far superior.

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If you go to work as an executive at Amazon, no matter what your expertise, you will be required to become a good writer, and a good reader, in order to lead the meetings necessary to do your job.

And Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos fully admits that this will likely be 'weird,' he explained during an on-stage interview at the George Bush Presidential Center on Friday.

"No PowerPoints are used inside Amazon," he said. "When we hire a new executive from outside [we warn], this is the weirdest meeting culture you ever encounter."

He explained, "For every meeting, someone from the meeting has prepared a six-page, narratively structured memo that has real sentences and topic sentences and verbs. It's not just bullet points. It's supposed to create the context for the discussion we're about to have."

Everyone then sits and reads the memo silently, which often takes a good half-hour. And then they discuss the memo. 

These meetings are "so much better than the typical PowerPoint presentation for so many reasons," he said. He didn't go into the reasons why on stage, but he had discussed his views on memo-driven meetings in his recently published annual letter to shareholders. (And he has, in years past, explained his ban on PowerPoint.)

In the letter, he explained that writing a brilliant, long memo requires the writer to understand the subject well. It also requires the writer to "improve results through the simple act of teaching scope." By that he means doing a great job requires effort, not speed. "A great memo probably should take a week or more" to write, he said in the letter.

On stage on Friday, Bezos explained that since it takes so much time to create a great memo, he uses a foolproof method to ensure everyone reads it.

"We read [the memos] in the room. Just like high school kids, executives will bluff their way through the meeting as if they've read the memo. So you have to carve out time so everyone has actually read the memo — they are not just pretending," he said.

Ultimately  "a brilliant and thoughtful" memo  will "set up the meeting for high-quality discussion," he explained.

There might be another reason for this "weird" meeting culture. Bezos is a book lover who started Amazon as an online book store. Reading is in the company's DNA. 

SEE ALSO: At Amazon, Jeff Bezos has strict instructions for crafting the perfect memo — and he said it should take days to write

SEE ALSO: These ex-Facebook and Google engineers are helping companies kick abusive people off popular internet sites

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NOW WATCH: What living on Earth would be like without the moon

• Google is leading a group that's supporting a new universal standard for text messaging.
• The current standard, SMS, is limited in many ways; Apple's iMessage solved those limitations, and now Google is playing catch-up with Android.
• The new standard is named RCS, or rich communication services. It will be deployed in Google's own Messages app on Android, the default Android text-messaging app.
• Other major Android phone makers like Samsung, Huawei, and HTC are signed on as well.

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Google is making a major change to the way Android handles text messages, and it's a direct attempt to stay competitive with Apple's iMessage dominance.

Google's Messages app — the standard text-messaging app on Android — will become "Chat," according to The Verge. With that change comes the ability to send prettier photos, longer messages, and lots of other "rich" interactivity.

As it is now, Android uses standard SMS text messaging, which is limited to a certain number of characters, and multimedia (photos, video) is highly compressed (it looks bad).

With Google Chat, Android text messaging will become much more like Apple's beloved iMessage.

All these new features in Android text messaging are due to the adoption of RCS, or rich communications services, a new standard for text messaging. In short, the RCS standard operates on data networks (like Apple's iMessage) instead of phone networks (like traditional SMS text messaging).

Moreover, Google has a bunch of big phone makers signed on to RCS — from Samsung to LG to Huawei and HTC.

If someone on a Pixel sends a message to a Samsung Galaxy S9, for instance, they can share "RCS" messages — theoretically, anyway, as Samsung is one of the companies that's signed on. And if you try sending a message and the other person's phone doesn't support RCS? They'll receive it as a standard SMS message (similarly to iMessages showing up for Android users as SMS messages).

For now, Apple isn't signed on to support RCS messaging: No, the iPhone will not support these messages. At least not for now.

The changes to Android text messaging are coming in the next year, according to The Verge.

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NOW WATCH: These 3D printed homes can be constructed for $4,000 — and they might change the approach to underdeveloped housing

Internet communications company Vonage announced this week its own intelligent assistant, Vee. Still in beta, the virtual customer assistant enables users to manage Vonage Business Cloud account services with simple, natural language text commands.

Embedded within the Voice Business Cloud mobile app, Vee offers an impressive set of tools and functionality including natural language commands to provide assistance and troubleshoot issues in real time. Options include setting up and managing Desk Phones, adding features to Vonage services, providing guidance and instructions, and understanding context to offer a variety of relevant options to meet a customer’s needs.

“With Vee, we are enhancing the customer journey to empower businesses to more easily take charge of the vast capabilities their Vonage service provides and to easily access customer support when they have questions or need guidance in managing their accounts,” said Ron Mayaan, vice president of prroduct management with Vonage, as part of the announcement.

Best known for providing business and residential telecommunication services in early dot-com days, Vonage greatly enhanced its cloud communication services by acquiring Nexmo back in 2016 for $230 million. The combined communications and API platform allows business to integrate various communication technologies into their own applications and competes directly with Twilio. Vee will help augment Vonage Business Cloud and API platform capabilities to help customers get the most out of their services.

Opus Research has long covered how investments in voice- and text-based chatbots are fueling the growth for enterprise intelligent assistants. The launch of Vonage’s Vee underscores how the market for Intelligent Assistant platforms and services are moving past proof-of-concepts and controlled implementations to deliver real-world capabilities with enterprise, natural language solutions to provide correct answers consistently and at large scale.

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Zayo Group CEO Dan Caruso and his wife, Cindy Caruso, have pledged $2 million to the University of Colorado, half of which will fund construction of a physical connection between the business and engineering buildings.

The university has yet to finalize plans for the multimillion-dollar project, but early concept designs show a 67,260-square-foot addition and remodel between the buildings of the Leeds School of Business and the College of Engineering and Applied Science.

The space, as currently designed, will feature an innovation and entrepreneurship hub; classrooms, offices and event and study spaces; an auditorium; and an outdoor commons. It will also provide views of the Flatirons and have a space called the “Caruso Connection” in honor of the donation.

In early 2017, the project was anticipated to add 30,000 square feet to the Koelbel Building and cost $22 million, but it has expanded significantly since to include the multi-level connection between the Koelbel Building and the Engineering Center. The project and cost estimates have not been finalized, but the scope and design will be complete before the project goes to the Board of Regents for approval later this year, CU spokeswoman Julie Poppen said. Pending regent approval, construction will begin in the spring of 2019 and finish by the end of 2020.

“We’ve been very active in support of CU for a number of years,” said Dan Caruso, adding that he and Cindy Caruso decided to make the $2 million donation after seeing more university efforts in recent years to encourage innovation, entrepreneurship and collaboration among different sections of campus and the community. In the past, he said, efforts had been fragmented.

“The reason we believe it is important is that entrepreneurship and innovation are bringing so much positive change to the world at large,” he said.

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• IBM beat analysts on revenue and EPS for the first quarter, but it wasn't enough to keep Wall Street happy.
• IBM shares declined 7.5% on Wednesday, one day after IBM reported its Q1 earnings.
• Analysts believe Wall Street was looking for bigger wins on key categories like artificial intelligence and cloud storage.
• But analysts think IBM's 'disappointing' decline in storage hardware may confirm investor's fears that IBM's growth isn't sustainable. 

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IBM stock continued falling Wednesday after the $134 billion company failed to convince Wall Street that it has figured its way out of a years-long slump. 

Shares traded around $149 at the close of markets on Wednesday, down 7.5% from Tuesday's closing price. 

The sell-off comes during a rather good quarter for the company. IBM beat Wall Street's expectations on both quarterly revenue and earnings per share in the first quarter. The company also showed revenue growth for the second consecutive quarter after nearly six years of decline.

But analysts believe investors are growing impatient with the slow pace of change at IBM, a more than 100-year-old computing company. 

"In a nutshell, patience is wearing thin on the Street around the IBM turnaround story, which continues to be elusive with this quarter/guidance adding more uncertainty," wrote Daniel Ives, head of technology research at GBH. 

One of the biggest issues, according to analysts, was IBM's small growth in what's known as "strategic imperatives," which includes the company's newer offerings in artificial intelligence, cloud storage and cybersecurity. 

Strategic imperatives were up 15% year over year, and accounted for 47% of the company's revenue for the quarter. But analysts said this wasn't enough to"neutralize" the losses IBM sees in declining categories, such as its mainframe hardware business.  

"The bulls were hoping for a clean modest beat on this key growth segment which represents the underpinnings of the IBM turnaround story in 2018 and beyond," Ives wrote.

Investors saw important growth but aren't sure if it will last 

Despite gains in its strategic imperatives, analysts say investors are skeptical that IBM's quarterly growth is indicative of its longterm success. 

"We believe investors remain skeptical of the company’s ability to deliver growth in 2018 and need to see further evidence of stabilizing organic revenue trends," Goldman Sachs analyst James Schneider said in a note Wednesday. 

In the case of storage, IBM's own numbers didn't help prove its case. The company missed its own expectations in storage hardware, which was down after four consecutive quarters of growth. 

In the earnings call Tuesday, IBM chief financial officer Jim Kavanaugh described this shortfall as a disappointment to the company, and attributed the miss to "an increasingly competitive environment and continued pricing pressures" as well as "some sales execution challenges which impacted performance."  

IBM's "systems" segment, which includes its storage hardware, was up 8%, but it is not enough to satiate investors.

And while Wall Street is somewhat sour on IBM, not everyone sees the first quarter as a bad one. Industry analyst Patrick Moorhead thinks the company is on track, and expects to see storage return to growth.

"With AWS and Microsoft Azure showing deep double if not triple-digit growth, investors are looking for those kinds of numbers, not IBM's 15% growth," Moorhead said. "It's a bit unfair given IBM just started growing revenue after many years of no growth."

SEE ALSO: Meet the Salesforce power players who are helping Marc Benioff take his $87 billion empire to the next level

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