Davemichels

Each and every year we see more and more laptops at the Consumer Electronics Show. We’ve seen insanely small and light ones, giant gaming machines, ones that flip and spin, and then just regular plain old laptops. At this year’s show the laptops haven’t been as insane, but a few of them might give us some hints at what’s to come for the rest of the year.

Two of the more interesting new laptops this year are HP’s Spectre x360 15 and Dell’s XPS 15 2-in-1. Both of these new models include Intel’s new AMD-powered chips, that combine Intel’s latest core processors with Radeon RX Vega M graphics from AMD and should improve the graphical power of these types of laptops. It’s not going to turn these laptops into gaming ones immediately, but it’s...

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 A few months ago Slack launched a beta feature called Shared Channels, which let two organizations share a common channel. So for example a startup could have a channel that it shared with its PR firm or lawyers. But sometimes discussions between two companies are too sensitive for the entire company to see, so today slack is rolling out Private Shared Channels. Also still in beta, the… Read More

• A false alarm was broadcast to Hawaii on Saturday warning of an inbound missile. 
• In the days following the alert, people discovered that a photo taken in Hawaii's Emergency Management Agency for a newspaper article in July includes a sticky note with a password on it.
• Hawaii says the false alarm was because an employee "pushed the wrong button," not because it was hacked, but the photo sparked criticsm from the security industry about the general level of security at the agency. 

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Over the weekend, people who lived in Hawaii were awakened by a terrifying false missile alert. It turned out that it was a "mistake," according to Hawaii's Emergency Management Agency, which said that the emergency system had not been hacked. Instead, the agency said a worker had clicked the wrong item in a drop-down menu. 

"It was a mistake made during a standard procedure at the change over of a shift, and an employee pushed the wrong button," Hawaii Gov. David Ige said.

But a photo from July recently resurfaced on Twitter raises questions about the agency's cybersecurity practices. In it, Hawaii EMA's current operations officer poses in front of a battery of screens.

Attached to one of the screens is a password written on a post-it note. 

Computer, enhance: 

Hawaii's EMA didn't immediately respond to a request for more information.

While these computers are likely different from the system that sent the false missile alert, the photo does raise questions about the general approach to security at the agency that may have led to the scary situation on Saturday. (On the other screen, a post-it note reminds the user to "SIGN OUT.")

Writing down passwords isn't a strict security no-no, with some security experts suggesting that keeping a hard copy of a password in your wallet is a defensible decision if you can keep the piece of paper secure. Obviously, a post-it note on a monitor is not secure, especially if it's protecting computer systems dedicated to keeping people safe.

The discovery of the photo has already drawn some ridicule from the operational-security industry.

Here's what the Hawaii EMA system that sent the false alert on Saturday looks like:

SEE ALSO: The Hawaii worker who 'pressed the wrong button' has been reassigned

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NOW WATCH: The best phones of 2017 that you can buy right now

• It's become ever more expensive for venture capitalists to invest in California-based startups.
• So VC are increasingly investing in startups based in states other than California.
• Colorado, Pennsylvania, and Florida all have emerging startup scenes and could benefit from the trend.

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When searching for startups to invest in, venture capitalists are increasingly casting their eyes outside of California — a trend that could benefit some states that were previously far from tech's center.

The number of funding deals outside of Silicon Valley's home state has been on the rise for years, noted PitchBook in its 2018 VC Outlook. That number is likely to increase in 2018, spreading the wealth to more areas of the country.

"With it becoming more expensive than ever to finance startups in the region, 2017 saw a growing proportion of deals and capital flow to developing VC hubs in mid-America," wrote analyst Joelle Sostheim in the report, PitchBook released last week. She continued: "Geographically diverse investments tend to be less expensive for VCs while still offering competitive performance."

Among the states or areas that stand to benefit from more investments are those with established or developing tech scenes, including New York; Massachusetts; Washington, D.C.; Texas; and Illinois, according to the report. Other states that could see an investment boom are those with emerging startup sectors, including Colorado, Pennsylvania, and Florida. Those latter states could be boosted by their educational systems, their expertise in particular tech sectors, and their "growing track record" of startup successes, PitchBook reported.

As the number of investments in other states has grown, the number of California deals has shrunk by 16% in the last two years, according to the report.

But it's not guaranteed the trend will continue. Other states' startup scenes are less well developed than that in the Golden State, and that may limit how much money venture capitalists may be willing to put into them.

"Time is money, and many VCs may see sourcing investments from external hubs as not worth the cost," Sostheim said in the report. "It takes time for ecosystems to develop, and some may be too undercapitalized or underresourced to offer a substantial enough pipeline for investors to commit."

SEE ALSO: Silicon Valley feels incredibly boring right now — here's what's really going on

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• This year's CES was full of products powered by Amazon's Alexa voice assistant.
• Apple, which usually influences the rest of the tech industry, has fallen far behind in the voice-based computing, and there's no sign it can catch up with Amazon or Google.
• Apple's HomePod speaker won't stand a chance against Amazon's rival Echo line or the other Alexa-powered devices when it belatedly launches later this year.

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One of the favorite go-to talking points among Apple fans every year is how the company always seems to "win" the annual Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas without ever showing up. 

For years, the event seemed to be merely a venue for the rest of the industry to show how it was catching up to what Apple had just done or trying to keep pace with what it was expected to soon do. The most famous example was in 2007, when Apple announced the original iPhone in the middle of that year's show, sucking out all the excitement out of Vegas. But Apple showed over and over again that it could set the agenda for the biggest consumer electronics conference in the world from afar.

Those days may be over. At this year's CES, Amazon displaced Apple as the most influential company at the show with the smallest presence there.

More importantly, this past week's event made clear that Amazon is dominating one of the most important trends in tech — voice-based computing. Not only has Apple fallen behind in that area, it's too late for the iPhone maker to catch up.

Alexa everywhere

At this year's CES, companies announced a slew of devices powered by Alexa, Amazon's voice assistant. There were Alexa-powered smart glasses, Alexa controls in Toyota cars, smart home gadgets that respond to Alexa commands, new Windows PCs with Alexa preinstalled, and so much more. It was nearly impossible to walk through the show floor for more than a few minutes without stumbling onto yet another Alexa-powered gizmo.

All those gadgets and announcements demonstrated how big a role voice is going to play in how we interact with technology — and just how dominant Alexa's position is. By contrast, Siri, Apple's Alexa rival, wasn't even in the conversation.

Alexa's dominance has taken years to build. Amazon's Echo smart speakers, which pioneered a new tech product and introduced Alexa to the world, gave the smart assistant a foothold inside consumers' living rooms. More recently, Amazon introduced cheaper Echo models, most notably the $50 Dot, that helped bring Alexa to the masses and allowed many to put it in multiple rooms. 

The combination of a pioneering product and inexpensive prices has allowed Amazon to sell millions of smart speakers and capture two-thirds of the market, even amid growing competition from Google.

Amazon's massive market share has attracted increasing numbers of developers. Thanks to the growing number of skills, or apps, they've produced for Alexa, Amazon's assistant is constantly getting better and learning to do more things. That in turn has made Alexa attractive to device manufacturers looking to add a voice assistant to their devices, something Amazon is more than happy to help them do.

Apple's HomePod will have none of the Echo's advantages

When Apple's HomePod, powered by its Siri voice assistant, hits the market later this year, it will have none of those advantages. Apple has only opened up Siri to developers in a very limited way and it's not available for use on non-Apple devices at all. And not only will HomePod hit store shelves years after the first Echo, it will sell for a steep $349. At that price, you could buy eight Echo Dots!

Yes, it's true that Apple puts a premium price on everything. And yes, the HomePod's high price is linked to the really great sound it offers. If you only want to listen to Apple Music or control the limited number of smart-home products that work with Apple's HomeKit technology, then the HomePod will be fine. 

But because of its price, you're not going to put a HomePod in every room of your house like you could with Echo Dot. Even then, I think it will have limited appeal, because you just won't be able to do as much with it as you can with an Echo smart speaker. For example, you won't get a HomePod to play songs from Spotify or Pandora just by issuing a voice command, because Apple hasn't opened Siri up to those services. 

Indeed, you shouldn't expect a slew of apps for the HomePod. I don't see how Apple's going to attract developers if it doesn't give them more leeway to tap into Siri, and if the company doesn't broaden the range of devices that can use its intelligent assistant.

Apple's strategy of keeping its technology relatively closed — its software generally only runs on its own devices and the company exercises a good deal of control over how developers' apps can work on its gadgets — worked fine for the iPhone and the Mac. But in order to be successful, voice-based computing systems need to be ubiquitous and in order to do that, they need to be open. 

Alexa is poised to dominate voice-based computing in large part because of Amazon's willingness to partner with a wide variety of gadget and software companies. That's never been more apparent than in the numerous Alexa-powered gadgets on display at CES. 

Apple missed a big opportunity

That Apple has fallen so far behind Amazon in voice-based computing is ironic, because the iPhone maker itself helped pioneer and popularize the technology with Siri. Apple has been shipping Siri on devices since the iPhone 4S, which launched in 2011. The technology is now on hundreds of millions devices, and comes preinstalled on every iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch, Apple TV, and Mac the company sells.

Thanks to that, Apple had all the pieces in place to turn Siri into the dominant voice-based computing technology. But the company was slow to develop Siri and failed to realize the voice assistant's true potential. While Siri runs on lots of Apple devices, those gadgets weren't designed around voice-based interactions. Siri is just an alternate way of interacting with them, not their primary interface.

By contrast, by focusing on voice interactions and making voice central to its devices, Amazon has turned Alexa into a really powerful and compelling technology.

Apple won't just be late, it's missed the boat entirely

Apple fans like to point out that the company has a history of entering nascent markets late but succeeding anyway by developing products that far exceed their rivals and set consumer expectations. The iPod, the iPhone, the iPad, and the Apple Watch are among the most notable examples.

But it's too late in the game for Apple to reprise this history with the HomePod. Amazon's too far ahead and the HomePod and Siri are going to be too limited for Apple to knock Jeff Bezos' company off its perch.

I'm not the only one who sees this. When I asked one executive in the smart home space at CES if he thought Apple had a chance to bounce back and compete with Amazon and Google in voice computing, he chuckled dismissively.

To be sure, just because Apple's whiffed on voice computing doesn't mean it's doomed. It's not in danger of losing its lead in consumer tech. Actually, its iPhone business is still humming along nicely, and the company will likely report its best quarter ever later this month.

But thanks to Amazon's focus on Alexa and its own missteps with Siri, Apple's going to miss out on one of tech's biggest new trends. As CES showed, when it comes to voice-based computing, it's Amazon, not Apple, that's setting the standard.

SEE ALSO: Why you should buy the iPhone X over the iPhone 8

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NOW WATCH: Why your iPhone's battery life gets shorter over time

This year's International Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas showcased some of the most interesting technology trends expected in 2018. From wall-sized televisions to standalone VR headsets, CES 2018 showed how tech companies are pushing the limits of what is possible. 

Though there weren't many interesting updates from the audio sector, several brands showed off several new wireless headphones and earbuds offerings that consumers will appreciate in 2018. Aside from the many interesting designs we saw, there were also plenty of new wireless offerings with more futuristic features, like faster quick charging and data transfer, and the ability to connect multiple devices to a single audio source.

Check out some of the new wireless-audio products showcased at CES 2018: 

SEE ALSO: The Lenovo Mirage Solo is a smartphone in VR headset form — what to know about Google's first standalone virtual reality device

JVC's sports earbuds can adjust to the shape of your ear

JVC's HA-ET90BT wireless sports earbuds are water resistant and come with a charging case, which provides two full charges of power. The headphones offer three hours of battery life from a single charge. They will be available in March for $149.95.

JVC also announced the JVC XX HA-ET103BT headphones, which feature deep-bass playback and noise-canceling abilities. It also unveiled the HA-S20BT Flats Wireless headphones, which feature a stylish design and pastel color options. 

 

 

Audio Technica's wireless headphones target a wide range of consumers

Audio-Technica's wireless headphone lineup addresses the needs for several different users, including those that desire the cleanest music experience possible, water-resistant sports headphones, a pair focusing on noise cancellation, and a pair for the budget-conscious. 

 

 

 

 

House of Marley's Uprise wireless headphones make use of simple recyclables

House of Marley is known for having an eco-friendly spin on its products. Its latest Uprise wireless headphones are water-resistant and made of recycled silicone and wood. They will be available to consumers in June for $99.99.

 

 

See the rest of the story at Business Insider

• An estimated 1.5 million Puerto Ricans remain without power more than three months after Hurricane Maria lashed the US territory.
• Early this month, the island's energy commission unveiled a handful of proposed regulations that could revamp the island's power grid.
• Those proposals emphasize the importance of clean, renewable power from wind and solar — something experts say the rest of the US should embrace, too.

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The lights are still out in more than half of Puerto Rico.

After Hurricane Maria struck the US territory on September 20, a crippling blackout descended over its 3.4 million residents, cutting communication between loved ones, spoiling food and life-saving medications, and nixing access to banks and clean water.

The death toll, initially estimated at 64, is now thought to be at least 1,000, according to a recent New York Times analysis.

More than three months after the storm, 1.5 million Puerto Ricans remain without power, and hundreds of thousands have no clean water.

It's the result of an abused electric grid left to rot — and what's happening in Puerto Rico could happen in many other parts of America. 

Many mainland states depend on a dilapidated and crumbling network of coal-fired power plants and natural-gas pipelines for electricity, as does Puerto Rico. Many parts of the system are just one big natural disaster — superstorm, flood, wildfire, earthquake — away from being decimated.

"Generally speaking, the US gets about a D+ for things like this," Vivek Shandas, an urban-planning professor at Portland State University, told Business Insider after the fall's triple threat of hurricanes lashed Puerto Rico and mainland US. "Much of our infrastructure was built in the late 1800s and it's beginning to fall apart."

Yet some experts say the storms have offered up a silver-lining for Puerto Rico: the chance to rebuild better, stronger, and cleaner.

Early this month, the Puerto Rico Energy Commission unveiled a handful of proposed regulations designed to help nail down what the future of power will look like on the island.

The biggest takeaway after more than 50 companies and organizations weighed in was that microgrids — mini power networks like wind farms or solar arrays that can often function without direct links to the main grid — will play an important role in the territory's energy future.

Experts say the rest of the US should follow suit.

'This is a time where we could help Puerto Rico take a major level jump'

As in much of the mainland US, the power grid in Puerto Rico is more of a patchwork than a unified network. Most of the island’s large power plants lie on its southern coast, but most of its people live in the north, beyond mountainous terrain that makes distributing power difficult. Power plants owned by Puerto Rico’s bankrupt government-owned power authority, Prepa, are four decades old on average.

The week after Hurricane Maria slammed Puerto Rico and unleashed the single largest blackout in US history, Blake Richetta, the senior vice president of a renewable-energy company called Sonnen, boarded a plane bound for the island. Sonnen makes solar batteries designed to supply homes with an independent source of energy, similar to the Powerwall systems built by Tesla.

“We got started as soon as we could,” Richetta told Business Insider. “We knew there was going to be a disastrous situation, and we prepared for the worst.”

To Richetta, providing support was a necessity. But the situation also gave Sonnen the chance to showcase the potential of renewable energy systems as a way to provide immediate power to people in need.

“This is a time where we could help Puerto Rico take a major level jump,” Richetta said. “It’s a humanitarian crisis, but it’s also a huge opportunity for growth.”

Sonnen's batteries capture and store the power made by solar panels when the sun is shining so that it can be used later when it’s cloudy or dark. 

Richetta and a handful of Sonnen staff set up half a dozen solar microgrids in communal areas in some of Puerto Rico’s hardest-hit neighborhoods, in partnership with a company called Pura Energia.

In Humacao, a blacked-out province where people were using bacteria-infested streams for washing and laundry, Sonnen and Pura Energia helped set up washing machines powered by the sun. In another part of the island, the companies used the microgrids to set up cellphone-charging stations so that people could attempt to reach out to loved ones on other parts of the island or in the mainland US.

A movement towards a cleaner, cheaper, and more balanced grid

Microgrid systems are already helping provide some coverage to various parts of the mainland US — but most of these projects are still in the early stages.

In Southern California, a company called Advanced Microgrid Solutions is spearheading a project that involves replacing the energy that was once provided by a large (now decommissioned) nuclear power plant with a series of solar arrays and batteries that AMS can turn on and off based on when the prices for conventional energy are low and when there’s the most demand.

“We take hundreds of buildings — picture entire city blocks — and each building has a battery. We get the information from each battery, each building, and operate the whole fleet of buildings like one virtual power plant,” Manal Yamout, a vice president at Advanced Microgrid Solutions, told Business Insider.

The AMS system is still connected to the wider grid, and it isn't designed to provide stand-alone power. But it could.

Islanded microgrids — systems that can run independently of the wider grid — can power entire communities.

Ta’u Island in American Samoa is one example of this. There, Elon Musk's energy company, Tesla, has built a network of 5,328 solar panels and 60 Powerpack batteries that supply the entire island with clean energy. On the Hawaiian island of Kauai, a Tesla solar farm accounts for a fifth of the island's peak energy demand.

The way Yamout sees it, it's less about various individual projects and more about a bigger movement towards a cleaner, cheaper, and more balanced grid. In the event of a natural disaster or emergency, these systems are much more resilient, and perhaps even critical. But if deployed across the entire US, they would also help reduce greenhouse gas emissions, clean up our air, promote energy independence, and make energy distribution more cost-effective and convenient.

"It’s not just about batteries. This is going to take the form of things consumers are adopting anyway — things like the smart thermostats, electric vehicles. It's going to transform the way the grid operates," Yamout said.

SEE ALSO: Here's how technology is shaping the future of education

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Visa has announced that starting in April, it will get rid of the requirement for signatures on credit card purchases in North America. Now that Visa is on board, all four of the major credit card companies are removing signature requirements. (American Express, Discover, and Mastercard already announced that they’re doing away with signatures as well.)

Like the other companies, Visa claims that the improved security brought about by the recent addition of EMV chips, along with other security improvements, make it so signatures are no longer required.

According to Visa’s post announcing the change, the company is only doing away with signatures for merchants who have switched over to chip readers or completely contactless payments;...

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• The electronics company Panasonic is building "smart city" infrastructure in a remote area near the Denver airport.
• The project, called CityNow, is laying the groundwork for high-tech highways and autonomous vehicles in the city, according to the mayor's office.

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Panasonic may be best known for consumer electronics, but it has started moving into high-tech urban design in recent years.

The company is now building "smart city" infrastructure near Denver, Colorado, with the goal of turning the area into a "smart city" by 2026. The initiative is part of a larger Panasonic program Panasonic called CityNow. Although the definition of a "smart city" varies depending on who you ask, the term typically describes a metro area that prioritizes the use of technology in its infrastructure.

On a 400-acre swath of empty land near the Denver Airport, the company has installed free WiFi, LED street lights, pollution sensors, a solar-powered microgrid, and security cameras. 

With the help of the new microgrid (which partially relies on solar power), the district can be powered for 72 hours in the event of an outage, Jarrett Wendt, EVP of Panasonic Enterprise Solutions, told PC Mag. 

Panasonic is preparing the area for autonomous vehicles, too. In spring 2018, a self-driving shuttle will connect a light rail station to bus routes throughout the Denver area.

In late 2017, the company and city partnered with the US Department of Transportation on a $72 million autonomous vehicle project, also part of CityNow. In coming years, on a 15-mile stretch of a highway, Denver and Panasonic hope to deploy a high-tech system called Road X that would "talk" to self-driving cars. For instance, it would provide navigation recommendations (based on real-time traffic patterns) and create "virtual guardrails" that would alert drivers when they veer out of their lanes.

Emily Silverman, a program manager for the City of Denver, told Business Insider that her team believes the technology will improve residents' lives. For example, since city officials will be able to remotely control the LED streetlights, they hope to increase public safety while minimizing light pollution and energy usage.

"The city’s population growing by 15,000 residents annually. While this is great for economic development, it also means that Denver faces challenges like traffic congestion, air quality issues, and affordable housing shortages," Silverman said. "We needed to think about how we plan to address these challenges while maintaining Denver's character."

Panasonic plans to share all the data it collects with the city via an open API. If successful in the Denver area, the company may launch CityNow in other American cities.

This is Panasonic's first rollout of CityNow in the US, but in 2015, the company completed work on the Fujisawa Sustainable Smart Town, 30 miles west of Tokyo. According to Wired, Panasonic hooked up 1,000 new residences to a solar-powered smart grid, which monitors energy usage in real time. To accommodate electricity demands, the company also built a solar farm south of the city and 440 yards of solar cells along a highway.

Cities across the US are embarking on similar projects, in which officials and private companies tap all kinds of data — from pollution levels to commute patterns — to improve the functionality of the urban landscape. In 2014, New York Coty partnered with Sidewalk Labs (the urban innovation unit of Google parent company Alphabet) to replace phone booths with public Wifi kiosks in Manhattan. Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania launched a fleet of Uber autonomous vehicles in 2016.

At a press conference at CES 2017, Denver Mayor Michael Hancock said the changes are laying the foundation for a smart city there.

"We’re going to continue to evolve. Those opportunities are going to continue to evolve," he said. "And we look forward to our solar panels, our solar grid. That’s awesome stuff, but it’s just the beginning."

SEE ALSO: Google's parent company is spending $50 million to build a high-tech neighborhood in Toronto

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NOW WATCH: The 9 best memes of 2017

Microsoft is testing a new feature for Skype: end-to-end encrypted chat conversations, secured using the industry standard Signal Protocol by Open Whisper Systems.

The company announced the experimental feature named “Private Conversations” in a blog post today. It’ll be available to anyone running the beta Skype Insider build (version 8.13.76.8) on Windows, Mac, Linux, Android, or iOS, although users will only be able to start private chats with other individuals with the same Insider build. The encryption will cover chat, files, and audio messages, but not audio or video calls.

Skype does already offer some degree of encryption that protects the communication channel itself. But end-to-end encryption is more secure. It means the...

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Vuzix, a Rochester, New York-based display provider, has been trying to resurrect the promise of Google Glass for years now, but this year’s iteration finally feels ready. The company’s new product, called the Vuzix Blade, was unveiled at CES this week in Las Vegas. It’s a pair of augmented reality smart glasses that float a screen in the upper right corner of your vision. But unlike previous iterations, in which the technology protruded in ugly and apparent fashion, the Blade is the first device Vuzix has developed that contains nearly every aspect of the display and its power source within the eyewear frames.

The company has partnered with Amazon to bring Alexa integration to the device, making the Blade the first pair of AR glasses...

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• Famed hedge funder turned cryptocurrency enthusiast Mike Novogratz announced Tuesday that he is launching a cryptocurrency bank. 
• Bloomberg News reported Novogratz plans to take the entity public on a Canadian venture exchange. 
• In December, Novogratz tabled plans for a cryptocurrency-focused hedge fund.

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Less than a month after tabling a plan to start a cryptocurrency hedge fund, famed trader Mike Novogratz announced he has a cryptocurrency bank in the works. 

In a statement out Tuesday, Novogratz said he is looking to raise $200 million for Galaxy Digital LP, a "best-in-class, full service, institutional quality merchant banking business" for the crypto market. Novogratz also plans to list the company on TSX Venture Exchange, a Canada-based exchange for small cap companies. 

A person familiar with the initiative told Bloomberg News that Novogratz "had been laying the groundwork for Galaxy for months."

The new bank will be born out of Canadian-based First Coin Capital, which Novogratz plans to buy and then merge with Bradmer Pharmaceuticals. Its main businesses will include trading, advisory services, asset management, and private equity-like investing. 

"Bradmer, to be renamed Galaxy Digital Holdings, will own an interest in the merchant bank and be listed on the TSX exchange," Bloomberg's Erik Schatzker reported. "The person familiar with his plans said Novogratz envisions Galaxy as the Goldman Sachs of crypto."

That person said Novogratz plans to put his massive $400 million crypto fortune into the bank.

Novogratz has been an outspoken advocate for blockchain technology and cryptocurrencies. The former Fortress trader pumped the brakes on a plan for a $500 million cryptocurrency hedge fund in December. 

“We didn’t like market conditions and we wanted to re-evaluate what we’re doing,” Novogratz said of his decision to table the fund on December 22. 

At the time bitcoin was trading slightly above $12,000, down a whopping $7,000 from its all-time high set on December 17. 

In a tweet about the plummeting bitcoin price, Novogratz said: "My hunch is we consolidate between 10-16k for a while. Extreme would be 8k." The bitcoin bull market isn't over, "just pausing," he added.

In November,  Novogratz said bitcoin could go as high as $40,000 within a couple of months.

Read the full report on Bloomberg>>

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If Google’s gigantic “Hey Google” CES 2018 booth hasn’t convinced you that it is deadly serious about stopping Alexa’s path toward owning the smart speaker space, how about this: today it’s announcing that the following companies are making speakers that include the Assistant: Altec Lansing, Anker Innovations, Bang & Olufsen, Braven, iHome, JBL, Jensen, LG, Lenovo, Klipsch, Knit Audio, Memorex, RIVA Audio, SōLIS, and Sony.

Four of those names in particular are more interesting — JBL, Lenovo, LG, and Sony — because they’re producing Google Assistant speakers with something new: a screen. Google says these speakers will be available in the summer.

Google isn’t talking much about the full technical details of what that screen can do, but...

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Here are CPaaS trends you should be expecting this year.

There’s no doubt about it. CPaaS is growing and it is doing so rapidly. It is a multi billion dollars industry, and while still small, there’s no sign of its growth stopping anytime soon. You’ll see the numbers $4 billion and $8 billion a year appearing in different reports and estimates that are flying around when talking about the near future of the CPaaS market size and growth potential. I have no clue if the numbers are correct – I’ve never been one to play with estimates.

What I do know, is that we’ve got multiple CPaaS vendors now with ARR (Annual Run Rate) higher than $100 million. Most of it may still come from good old SMS and phone calls, but I think this will change along with how consumers communicate.

This change will make CPaaS a lot more interesting and diversified than the boring race to the bottom that seems to be prevalent in some of the players’ offering and messaging in this market. The problem with CPaaS today is twofold:

1. SMS and voice are somewhat commoditized. There is a finite way in which you can send and receive SMS and phone calls over phone numbers, and we’ve exhausted them and how to express them in a simple API for developers to use years ago. Since then, the game we played was one of scalability, stability and price points
2. Developers are resistant to paying for IP based communications services at the moment. They somehow believe that these are a lot easier to develop. While that is correct for the “hello world” implementation, once you need to provide long term maintenance and scalability capabilities this can grow into a huge headache – especially when you couple this with some of the trends in communication that are being introduced

Which brings me to what you can expect in 2018. Here are 7 CPaaS trends that will grow and become important this year – and more importantly – what they mean.

#1 – Serverless

Serverless is also known as Functions.

You might know about serverless from AWS Lambda, Azure Functions, Google’s Cloud Functions and Apache’s OpenWhisk. The list here isn’t random – it goes to show that all big cloud platforms are now offering serverless capabilities.

This still isn’t prevalent in CPaaS, where for the most part, developers are expected to develop, maintain and operate their own servers that communicate with the CPaaS vendor’s infrastructure. But we do see signs of serverless making its way here.

I’ve covered that last year, when I took a deeper look into the Twilio Functions offering and what that means to the CPaaS market.

At the time, Twilio stated that Functions is already Twilio’s fastest growing product ever. Here’s where they explain what it does:

Twilio being the market leader in CPaaS, and Functions being a fast growing product of theirs means that other CPaaS vendors will follow. Simply because demand here is obvious.

#2 – Omnichannel

When SMS just isn’t enough.

Not sure when you last used SMS for personal reasons – I know that I rarely end up inside that app on my smartphone. The way things are going, SMS can be considered the spam channel of 2018. Or maybe the channel used by businesses who’ve been told that this is the best way to reach customers and interrupt them.

While I definitely see value in SMS, I also think that businesses should strive to communicate with their customers on other channels – channels their users are now focusing on with their social life. In Israel that would be Whatsapp. In the US probably a mixture of Facebook and iMessage will work better. Telegram would be the choice for Russia.

Whatever that channel is, to support it, someone needs to integrate with it. And then decide which channel to use for which customer and for what interaction. For CPaaS, that’s what Omnichannel is about. Enabling developers, and by extension businesses to communicate with their customers on the customer’s preferred channel.

2018 is going to be the year Omnichannel becomes a serious requirement.

Why?

Because now we can actually use it.

Apple’s own Business Chat service is planned to make its public debut this year.

Facebook has its own APIs already, and Whatsapp announced business accounts (=APIs).

That alone covers a large majority of customer bases.

Throw in SMS, mix and choose the ones you want. And voila! Omnichannel.

For businesses, relying on CPaaS for Omnichannel makes sense, as the hassle of adding all of these channels and maintaining them is expensive. Omichannel CPaaS APIs will abstract that away.

For CPaaS vendors, this is a way to differentiate and make switching between vendors harder.

A win-win.

The ones offering that already? Nexmo with their Chat App and Twilio through their Engagement Cloud.

#3 – Visual / IDE

From code, to REST, to point-and-click.

We used to use DOS as an “operating system”. I worked at a small computer shop as a kid when I grew up. For a couple of years, my role was to go to people’s homes and explain to them how to use the new computer they just purchased. How to put the DOS disk inside the floppy drive, list the files in a floppy, run games and other applications.

Then came Windows (along with Mac and OS/2 and others) and we all just moved to using a visual operating system and a mouse.

As a kid, I programmed using Logo and Basic. Then Turbo Pascal – in a decent IDE for the first time. In the university, I got acquainted to Tcl/Tk. And then UI development seemed fun. Even it if was by writing code by hand. Then one day, vtcl came to life – a visual editor. Things got easier.

Developing communications is taking the same path now.

It started by needing to build your own stuff from scratch, then with open source frameworks and later CPaaS and REST (or god forbid SOAP) APIs.

In 2017, Twilio Studio was announced – a visual IDE to use on top of the Twilio functionality. In that corner, you can also count Amazon Connect, though not CPaaS but still in the domain of communications – it has a visual IDE of its own.

In a recent VoxImplant event I was invited to speak at in Russia, VoxImplant introduced a new service in beta called Smartcalls – a visual IDE on top of their CPaaS offering. Albeit… in Russian.

The concept of using visual tools requiring less coding can greatly increase productivity and the target audience of these tools. They are no longer restricted to developers “who code”. Hell – I can use these tools. I played with Twilio Studio a bit – it was fun and intuitive. It guides the way you think about what needs to be done. About the flow of the service.

I really can’t see how other CPaaS vendors are going to ignore this trend and not work on their own visual offerings during 2018.

#4 – Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence

It is time to be smart about communications

When I worked at Amdocs some years ago, we’ve looked into the area of Big Data Analytics. It was all about how you take the boatloads of information telecommunication companies have and do something with it. You start by analyzing and visualizing it, moving towards the domain of actionable.

It frustrated the hell out of me to understand how little communication vendors are doing with their data compared to enterprises in other markets. Or at least that was my impression looking from inside a vendor.

Fast forward to today, and what you find with CPaaS vendors is that they are offering a well oiled machine that provides generic communications. You can do whatever you want with it, and the smart ones are adding analytics on top for their own needs.

But want about the CPaaS vendors themselves? Shouldn’t they be doing something about analytics? Or its better branded colleague known as machine learning?

Gustavo Garcia wrote a good article about it – improving real time communications with machine learning. This is where most CPaaS vendors are probably looking today, optimizing their network to offer a better service.

But it is just scratching the surface.

The obvious is adding things around NLP – speech to text, text to speech, translation. All those are being done by integrating with third parties today, and many of the CPaaS vendors offer these out of the box.

To move the needle and differentiate, more needs to be done:

1. The internal structure of the CPaaS vendors should take into account the need for researching data. Data scientists and machine learning people have to be part of the development and product teams for this to ever happen
2. CPaaS vendors need to start thinking on what they can offer by analyzing their own data (and their customer’s communications) beyond just optimizing it

If you are a CPaaS vendor and you don’t have at least a data scientist, a machine learning developer and a product manager savvy in this domain yet, then start recruiting.

#5 – AR/VR

Time to connect ARKit and ARCode to communications.

Augmented reality and virtual reality have been around for the better part of the last decade or two. But somehow, they are only now becoming interesting.

I guess the popularity of AR has grown a lot, and where it fits directly in smartphones today (and not the bulky 3D headsets) is with things like Pokemon Go and camera filters (started by popularized snapchat and found everywhere today).

With the introduction of Apple ARKit and Google ARCore, this is only going to get more commonplace. And what we see now is CPaaS vendors finding their way around this technology.

The most interesting one yet is Twilio’s work with ARKit, which they showcased at last year’s Kranky Geek event:

With all the focus put in this domain, I am sure we’ll see more CPaaS vendors looking into it.

#6 – Bots

Omnichannel + Machine Learning + Automation = Bots

Chat bots is all the rage. Search the internet and you’ll be thinking that humans no longer talk to customers anymore. It is all taken care of by bots.

I’ve added a chat widget to certain pages on my website. And every once in awhile I get a question there asking if that’s a human they’re interacting with.

Bots require integration and APIs. They are also about communications. Which is probably why CPaaS vendors are taking a step towards this direction as well. The ones adding Omnichannel offerings across multiple channels are in effect enabling bots to be created there across channels.

That’s a first step though, as the next would be to cater this market better by enabling conversational interfaces and easing the part of packaging the bots for the various channels.

Expect to see a few announcements around bots to be made by CPaaS vendors this year. A lot of it will revolve around Amazon Alexa and Google Home

#7 – GDPR

The governance headache we’ve all been waiting for.

GDPR stands for General Data Protection Regulation. It is a new set of EU rules that have been put in place to protect the data related to EU citizens that is collected and stored.

While it is easy to assume that CPaaS vendors store no data – they “live” in the real time, that isn’t accurate.

Stored meta data and logs may fall into the GDPR black hole, and definitely recording services. With the introduction of Omnichannel and Bots comes chat history storage.

Twilio jumped on this bandwagon last year with a GDPR program. Other vendors such as MessageBird indicated future support of GDPR. All global CPaaS vendors will need to support GDPR, and since these regulations come to force this year, 2018 will be the year GDPR gets more attention and focus by CPaaS vendors.

2018 – The Year CPaaS Vendors Differentiated

In the past few years, we’ve seen CPaaS vendors struggling in two directions:

1. Increasing their customer base, mainly around SMS and voice offerings – which is where most of the revenue is these days
2. Growing from a telecom focused player to a global player

That second point is important. Up until recently, CPaaS equated to running one or two data centers (or the equivalent of running from a small number of cloud based data centers), connecting developers via REST APIs to the telecom backend. With the introduction of IP based communications (and WebRTC), the was a growing need for client side SDKs along with more points of presence closer to the end user.

We seem to be past that hurdle for most CPaaS vendors. Most of them have grown their footprint to include a global infrastructure.

The next frontier is going to happen elsewhere:

1. Serverless – in making the services easier for developers to adopt by reducing the requirement for customers to deploy their own machines
2. Omnichannel – extending the reach beyond the telecom channels of SMS and voice into social networks
3. Visual / IDE – grow the service beyond developers, making it easier to use and faster to deploy with
4. Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence – add intelligence and analytics based services
5. AR/VR – capture the new world of augmented and virtual reality and enhance it with communications
6. Bots – align with the A2P model of businesses communicating with customers through automation
7. GDPR – provide support for the new EU initiative, adding governance and regulation as another added value of choosing CPaaS instead of in-house development

CPaaS will move in rapid pace in the next few years. Vendors who won’t invest and grow their offerings and business will not stay with us for long.

The post 7 CPaaS Trends to Follow in 2018 appeared first on BlogGeek.me.

• Hearst says it is seeing quick user adoption of content created for voice-enabled devices like Amazon's Echo.
• The magazine giant is already making money from its beauty-focused "My Beauty Chat" and is planning to develop voice content across its suite of publications.
• Voice tech and Amazon are surely key topics of interests for marketers and media executives attending CES this week.

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If 2018 is the year of voice, Hearst wants to be on the tip of everybody's tongue.

After experimenting with voice content on both Amazon's Alexa platform and Google Home, the magazine stalwart is planning to significantly ramp up voice output this year across its various titles – particularly on Amazon.

To date, Hearst has rolled out voice content (Amazon calls these offerings 'skills') such as daily horoscope readings from Elle magazine as well as regular quotes of inspiration from Oprah magazine, voiced by none other than Winfrey herself.

And in November, Hearst unveiled My Beauty Chat, a new Alexa skill that consists of a twice-a-day mini podcast. My Beauty Chat is essentially a born-on-Alexa brand featuring editors from multiple Hearst titles, including Good Housekeeping, Cosmopolitan, Oprah and Elle, talking beauty for five to ten minutes a session.

Consumers are gravitating to My Beauty Chat and other skills so quickly, that Hearst plans on making Alexa a priority across the company, according to Chris Papaleo, executive director, emerging tech at Hearst. The hope is to build out a set of skills ahead of other media companies, said Papaleo, while also nabbing key voice real estate and creating hard-to-break consumer habits.

"This is quickly becoming meaningful," said Papaleo. "Yet the main challenge for media companies on these devices is content discovery. The ones we see that happening with are those designed to be daily habits. And they answer organic questions."

Hence, it's made more sense to build a generic voice publication that can serve as an answer to anybody asking Alexa about beauty tips rather that pushing a particular magazine brand. "The roads to content are still getting paved on voice interfaces," he said.

Hearst sees big value in being early on voice. And it's already making money with Amazon

Papaleo’s innovation team has the advantage of operating independently from any single Hearst publication. So he gets to experiment with emerging platforms like virtual reality and connected devices first, without having the pressure to attract big audiences or make money right away.

But based on the company’s experience on Amazon’s Alexa, not to mention the way that consumers have taken to voice devices, it’s time to double down.

For instance, the Elle Horoscope skill generated 4 million ‘utterances’ overall in 2017 (any time someone says something tied to a skill, that’s an utterance, according to Amazon). Activity ramped up over the last two months of the year, suggesting that interactions will reach double the digit million-level shortly.

Plus, while Amazon doesn't sell paid voice ads for Alexa – and the company says it has no plans to - Hearst has already landed L'Oreal as a sponsor for My Beauty Chat. That's something Papaleo sees as easily repeatable with other skills.

"We see enough positive here, that we think the rest of the company needs to get up skilled," he said. "So it's a 2018 priority for Hearst to use Alexa to acquire customers, retain users, making money on it."

To be sure, Hearst isn't just building on Amazon. Elle's horoscopes are also available on Google voice devices, as is service content from Esquire. But Amazon is further ahead than Google on helping publishers make money, he said.

Hearst believes it's out in front of other media companies when it comes to voice. But it's not alone. The New York Times, Comedy Central's "The Daily Show" and People magazine have all launched Alexa skills.

The voice device category is already becoming mainstream

And given the fact that voice devices have sold faster than many anticipated, many media companies are likely to accelerate their voice plans. Papaleo cited research that by 2020 there will likely be 130 million voice devices on the market. Indeed, Amazon said the Echo was its top selling item during the just-completed holiday season.

"We're seeing people buy them for multiple rooms in the house, so we're building already things for the kitchen, the living room and even the bathroom," he said. "It's already a mainstream thing."

Given that reality, figuring out how voice fits into broader marketing is surely to be a key discussion point at the Consumer Electronics Show, which kicks off this week in Las Vegas.

Doug Rozen, chief digital and innovation officer at the media buying firm OMD, said that heading into CES this year, two topics were of top of mind for nearly all big marketers in attendance: voice, and Amazon.

"We are already seeing that voice is becoming the best way for people to interact with their mobile devices. If last year was about experimenting in voice, this is the year we're talking about developing a real voice strategy," he said. "And they're all looking now at Amazon not just as a commerce company but as a media company."

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Samsung is unveiling Flip today at the Consumer Electronics Show, a 55-inch digital whiteboard that can be flipped between portrait and horizontal orientations. It’s designed for meeting rooms, and comes with a height-adjustable stand that can be wheeled around offices freely. Samsung isn’t revealing exactly what operating system or software is powering the Flip, but it looks like the company will support note taking, photos, and other collaborative scenarios on its 4K display.

Samsung’s Flip also includes wireless connectivity, USB, PC, and mobile ports so you can connect pretty much any device to the display. You can even share the contents of the screen itself to other PCs, smartphones, and tablets. Up to four people can also draw on...

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The time before the big companies hold their grand CES events is a chance to check out the products from smaller outfits, and today I got to grips with one such project in the form of the Orosound Tilde. This is a noise-cancelling headset designed primarily for office use, and its distinctive feature is a focus cone of 60 degrees in front of the user where sound is allowed through. That way, goes the premise, you can filter out all the surrounding noise you don’t care for while holding a fruitful conversation with the coworker in front of you.

The Tilde has been in development for two years and was successfully funded on Kickstarter in late 2016. Orosound was initially confident enough to promise backers their Tilde earphones would be in...

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There are plenty of automatic cat feeders out there, but Catspad is the first connected food and water dispenser for cats and small dogs. Not only can it automatically deliver both to your pet, it can differentiate between pets to dispense different amounts to each.

The Catspad works with an app and an identifier for your pet, which can either be a microchip (if your pet has one), or a Catspad collar tag. When the pet then approaches the Catspad unit, it recognizes the individual animal, dispensing the amount of dry food designated for them and temporarily activating the fountain (the fountain can also be set to run continuously).

Any number of things can be automated and detected by connecting to Wi-Fi via the Catspad app. Food can be...

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Nielsen Media Research released its annual Music Year-End Report for 2017. It found that audiences are increasingly turning to on-demand streaming to get their music, while sales in physical media is declining. But some formats are experiencing a boost: sales of cassette tapes have increased, hitting their best year since 2012.

Cassette Tapes are in the midst of a revival: Nielsen reported last year that sales rose 74 percent to 129,000 units sold. That uptick was led by albums such as the Guardians of the Galaxy soundtrack, which featured the classic cassette tape prominently in the 2014 film. This year, those numbers rose further: Nielsen says that retailers sold 174,000 units, up 35 percent from last year’s numbers.

Nostalgia seems...

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• Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said he will research cryptocurrency in 2018.
• The goal is part of his yearly personal challenge, which is mainly focused on fixing Facebook's problems.
• The head of Facebook Messenger is joining the board of cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase.

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Facebook CEO and founder Mark Zuckerberg said that one aspect of his yearly personal challenge will be to study cryptocurrency and to explore how it can be used within Facebook.

Zuckerberg published a Facebook post on Thursday in which he outlined his personal goal for 2018. The main goal is, essentially, to fix the problems within Facebook that have caused controversy. "We won't prevent all mistakes or abuse, but we currently make too many errors enforcing our policies and preventing misuse of our tools," Zuckerberg wrote. "If we're successful this year then we'll end 2018 on a much better trajectory."

But further on in his post, Zuckerberg outlined two areas of technology that he wanted to research in 2018: Encryption and cryptocurrencies. He said that both technologies lead to decentralised power, which Zuckerberg saw as a positive move.

Zuckerberg wasn't explicit in his post about what Facebook is going to do with cryptocurrencies. He didn't say it's going to add bitcoin as a payment option, for example. But it shows that one of the world's most powerful companies is looking closely at the technology.

Here's the portion of Zuckerberg's post about cryptocurrencies:

"But today, many people have lost faith in that promise. With the rise of a small number of big tech companies — and governments using technology to watch their citizens — many people now believe technology only centralizes power rather than decentralizes it.

There are important counter-trends to this --like encryption and cryptocurrency -- that take power from centralized systems and put it back into people's hands. But they come with the risk of being harder to control. I'm interested to go deeper and study the positive and negative aspects of these technologies, and how best to use them in our services."

Zuckerberg isn't the only Facebook executive with an interest in cryptocurrency. In December, it was announced that Facebook Messenger boss David Marcus would join the board of cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase. Marcus was formerly the president of PayPal before joining Facebook in 2014.

In a blog post published at the time, Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong said that Marcus' "experience will add breadth and depth to the Coinbase board and will help the leadership team as the company focuses on becoming the most popular and safest place to buy and sell digital currencies."

Marcus said in the post that "I've been involved with, and fascinated by cryptocurrencies since 2012, and I've witnessed how Coinbase has started democratizing access to this new asset class. I'm convinced that what the company is working on has the potential to materially change the lives of people around the world, and I'm looking forward to working with Coinbase and its leadership team to help make this vision a reality."

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Kohler is adding more voice-based and touchless interactions into the bathroom and kitchen with a new smart product line called Kohler Konnect. Under its new lineup, everything from the faucet to the toilet to the bathtub can be controlled via voice commands, using a smart mirror as the main control center.

The Verdera mirror, like a lot of smart products you’ll see at CES, has Amazon’s Alexa built in so you can ask it to read the news, adjust mirror lighting, or control other paired gadgets in the house. It has a built-in dual microphone and sealed casing to protect the tech from being damaged by water splashes or condensation. The Verdera can also detect motion to illuminate a soft nightlight when it notices the user walking up to the...

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• JetBlue is giving all of its crew members a $1,000 bonus by the end of February.
• The airline's decision follows similar moves by Southwest and American Airlines, which announced $1,000 bonuses for employees on Tuesday.
• Many companies have attributed the bonuses to the GOP tax bill that was recently signed into law by President Donald Trump.

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JetBlue will give all of its crew members a $1,000 bonus by the end of February, CNBC reports. The bonus applies to crew members working for JetBlue as of December 31, 2017.

The airline's decision follows similar moves by Southwest and American Airlines, which announced $1,000 bonuses for their employees on Tuesday. While JetBlue has not announced the reason for its bonuses, Southwest and American indicated that the GOP tax plan President Donald Trump signed into law in December motivated their decisions.

The tax plan cuts the corporate tax rate from 35% to 21%, among other measures affecting individuals and businesses. Companies in other industries, like AT&T and Bank of America, also announced employee bonuses after the tax plan passed both houses of Congress.

JetBlue has run a number of promotions over the past few months, including one with Amazon that went awry. The promotion involves a board game that included a free flight, but customers complained that the board games sold out before they had a chance to buy them.

SEE ALSO: I flew JetBlue for the first time and finally understand why it's one of the best airlines in the world

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• Death threats reportedly prompted Ajit Pai, the chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, to cancel his planned appearance at CES, the giant tech industry trade show that gets underway next week.
  
• Pai abruptly withdrew from the conference on Wednesday.
• The FCC has been the target of much anger from the tech industry over its unpopular decision to end its net neutrality regulations.
• This isn't the first time FCC officials have received threats related to the move.

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Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai abruptly cancelled his appearance at next week's CES trade show due to death threats, Recode reports, citing two unnamed sources at the agency.

The sources didn't make public details about the threats, but they told Recode that "federal law enforcement had intervened in the matter."

The FCC declined to comment.

Pai suddenly cancelled his appearance at the major tech industry conference CES on Wednesday. Neither he, the FCC, nor the Consumer Technology Association, which organizes the trade show, offered an explanation for his withdrawal. That led to much speculation he was attempting to avoid a hostile reception.

Pai earned the ire of many folks in the tech industry when he pushed through an unpopular repeal of the FCC's net neutrality rules last month. Those regulations generally barred internet service providers from blocking, slowing, or providing preferential access to particular online sites, services, and apps.

The current or incoming chairman of the FCC has attended every CES since at least 2009, and Pai has attended the last five shows. At this year's event, he was scheduled to be interviewed by CTA President Gary Shapiro about topics including the nation's broadband policy, connectivity, and spectrum issues. Additionally, he almost certainly would have faced questions about the decision to repeal the net neutrality rules.

This isn't the first time FCC officials have received threats related to the move. During the meeting in which the commission voted to repeal the net neutrality rules, shortly before the vote took place, the agency received a bomb threat. The agency's meeting room was briefly evacuated and searched. When no bomb was found the meeting continued, and the commissioners went ahead with their planned vote on the repeal.

SEE ALSO: Bill Gates: Trust me, the world is really getting better, not worse

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While the emergence of the cloud has changed how companies spend on IT, enterprise IT infrastructure spending will continue to rise through 2022.

Microsoft is issuing a rare out-of-band security update to supported versions of Windows today. The software update is part of a number of fixes that will protect against a newly-discovered processor bug in Intel, AMD, and ARM chipsets. Sources familiar with Microsoft’s plans tell The Verge that the company will issue a Windows update that will be automatically applied to Windows 10 machines at 5PM ET / 2PM PT today.

The update will also be available for older and supported versions of Windows today, but systems running operating systems like Windows 7 or Windows 8 won’t automatically be updated through Windows Update until next Tuesday. Windows 10 will be automatically updated today.

While Microsoft is...

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• Overstock.com was one of the first retailers to pivot to cryptocurrency — accepting bitcoin for purchases and investing in blockchain trading platforms. 
• Shares were up 265% last year, and could rise another 30%, D.A. Davidson predicts. 

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A slew of companies, from iced tea bottlers to casino game makers, have boosted their stock price by pivoting to blockchain in recent weeks.

But Overstock.com, which was one of the first to accept bitcoin as payment as well as issue blockchain-based stock, is still the clear leader, analyst Tom Forte at equity research firm D.A. Davidson said in a note to clients Wednesday.

"Our research increased our conviction that, today and likely in the near-term, Overstock stands head and shoulders above the others, when it comes to having developed a portfolio of companies with significant efforts to exploit blockchain technology," analyst Tom Forte said.

Overstock.com had an impressive 2017. Its stock has risen 265% in the last 12 months, and Davidson thinks it could go as high as $85 — 30% above the stock’s $65 opening price Wednesday.

The company also has a wholly-owned blockchain subsidiary, known as Medici Ventures, which includes a blockchain trading platform called TZero. Overstock took a $3.3 million hit from the rollout in 2017, Bloomberg reported, but the blockchain efforts — regardless of financial performance — helped offset any declines in share price from disappointing earnings.

Jonathan Johnson, president of Medici Ventures, told Business Insider last July it’s "crazy that so many retailers don't accept bitcoin." As of August 2017, Overstock was processing about $50,000 per week of purchases using bitcoin. Of the leading 500 internet retailers, just three accept bitcoin.

"The disparity between virtually no merchant acceptance and bitcoin’s rapid appreciation is striking," Morgan Stanley said in a note last year.

SEE ALSO: 7 companies whose stocks surged — then slumped — after jumping on the crypto bandwagon

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Retail isn't dying — it's changing.

Which is why 2017 shouldn't only be remembered as the year that the retail apocalypse descended on America. Though some retailers have been struggling to keep themselves afloat, others have been finding new and exciting ways to keep their customer loyal. 

Take a look at some of the biggest innovations in retail below:

SEE ALSO: 25 companies that are revolutionizing retail

Adidas made customizable sneakers possible.

Adidas partnered up with the startup Carbon to create 3D-printed sneakers. By using a photosensitive resin that hardens as light hits it, they have been able to create a sole in 20 minutes. These soles can then be easily tweaked.

Walmart rolled out a way to receive packages when you're not home.

Partnering with the smart-lock startup August Home, it enabled customers to order groceries and have them delivered and unpacked in their home while they're not there. Customers get a notification when the driver rings the doorbell, and home-security cameras allow them to watch the entire process if they wish.

Amazon later announced a similar program, called Amazon Key.

Sephora created a way for customers to try on makeup without hassle.

Sephora launched a new feature called Virtual Artist on its app. It uses artificial intelligence to allow customers to virtually apply makeup, learn new makeup techniques, and see how various looks would appear on their face. 

Customers can then purchase these products on the app.

See the rest of the story at Business Insider

Roomba, the robotic vacuum, is gaining an indoor Wi-Fi mapping feature in its iRobot app later this month. The Wi-Fi Coverage map feature means Wi-Fi-enabled Roombas will be able to produce a map of indoor signals, which show weaker areas and signal dead zones. Some Roomba models can be controlled remotely using Wi-Fi, so the feature is handy in terms of understanding where the robot might be out of range for remote control.

iRobot says when users start a cleaning job, the Roomba will collect Wi-Fi signal information as it goes and produce a map. Users will be able to swap between the signal map and the app’s Clean Map feature, which displays where the robot has already cleaned. The Wi-Fi map should be useful for people to figure out if...

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Microsoft stopped manufacturing Kinects back in October, but the company’s once vaunted camera sensor has suffered one final death today, as Microsoft confirms to Polygon that it’s discontinued production on the Kinect Adapter, making it practically impossible for new Xbox One S and One X owners who don’t already own an adapter to with their consoles. (The adapter is also used for making use of the the Kinect with a Windows 10 PC.)

Microsoft originally offered the dongle to Xbox One S owners for free as a way to allow them to continue using the Kinect with the newer version of the console, before later charging $39.99 for the adapter after that promotion ended. In a statement to Polygon, a Microsoft spokesperson commented that, “After...

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