Microsoft Research developed a voice recognition system as accurate as humans, with an error rate of just 5.9%, according to Microsoft's Chief Speech Scientist Xuedong Huang.
The historic breakthrough comes just one month after the company surpassed IBM Watson's previous record of 6.9%. Microsoft will likely incorporate the improved system into its various products including voice assistant Cortana, Xbox, and other productivity tools. These advancements will also spur competition among tech companies, which will likely boost overall voice recognition capabilities.
Rapid advancements in voice recognition accuracy is going to help the technology emerge as a dominant computing interface. That's because it's much faster and easier to talk to your device than type on it. A recent Stanford University study showed that voice input is three times faster than keyboard input, and with a 20.4% lower error rate.
And in an attempt to move beyond the hype, tech companies including Amazon, Apple, Google, and IBM, are already deploying voice assistance to consumers. Apple, for instance, recently added third-party integration to Siri, which will enable it to communicate with other apps. This means that users can order an Uber through Siri. And Google is slowly rolling out Google Assistant to its users.
But voice assistants need to overcome a number of hurdles before mass adoption occurs:
"As close as humanly possible" is not good enough for voice assistants. Despite the impressive results Microsoft's research yielded, speech recognition needs to reach roughly 99% for voice to become the most efficient form of computing input, according to Kleiner Perkins analyst Mary Meeker. This is likely because expectations for automated services are much less forgiving than human error allows. In fact, when asked what voice assistants could do better, "understand the words I am saying" received 44% of votes,according to MindMeld.
Consumer behavior needs to change. While the use of voice assistants is increasing, many users are still uncomfortable speaking to their assistant. Thirty-four percent of millennial respondents in an exclusive BI Intelligence survey were either unaware of voice assistants, or unwilling to use them freely. And 18% said they would use Amazon's Echo only if they weren't around other people. Millennials surveyed by BI Intelligence skew toward the tech-savvy, which means that the level of discomfort among millennials in the general population is likely higher. For voice to truly replace text or touch as the primary interface, consumers need to be more willing to use the technology in all situations.
Voice assistants need to be more helpful. Opening up third-party apps to voice assistants will be key in providing consumers with a use case more in line with future expectations of a truly helpful assistant. Voice assistants like Siri, Google Assistant, and Echo, are only just beginning to gain access to these apps, allowing users to carry out more actions like ordering a car.
Google's new Pixel phone launched to positive reviews, largely because of the phone's new digital helper called Google Assistant.
As I wrote in my review of the new Google Pixel, it’s relatively easy to make a high-end smartphone these days. The real challenge is lighting it up with unique software that helps you do more.
And the new Google Assistant accomplishes just that.
Right out of the gate, Assistant is noticeably smarter and more capable than Siri, a stark embarrassment for Apple, which had a five-year head start on Google. AI and voice control are considered to be the next big step in how we compute (just look at the early success of the Amazon Echo), and Google has already pulled ahead.
Assistant is so good because it taps into Google’s vast network of products and culls them together into a single, all-knowing app. The more Google services like Calendar, Photos, and Gmail you use, the smarter Assistant gets.
It’s also better at answering questions than the competition, thanks to its ability to tap into Google’s vast Knowledge Graph and deliver the single answer to the question you ask. Google Assistant has so many impressive skills that it’s impossible to list them all now.
I’m still discovering new capabilities after almost two weeks with the Pixel. Here’s how I put it in my review:
I haven't even come close to unlocking everything Assistant can do, but I was routinely surprised whenever I dreamed up something new to ask.
Pull up the photos I took from my latest trip to San Francisco. Done. Give me the fastest route home. Done. Remind me to chat with my boss when I get to work tomorrow. Done. Play that Calvin Harris and Rihanna song. Done.
Then there's the ability to tap into Google's vast knowledge of the web and deliver answers to the questions you ask. What time is the next presidential debate? Did the Jets win? Are there any good ramen restaurants near me, and can I get a reservation?
I could go on and on, but you probably get the idea. Google has tens of billions of answers logged into its system, and it can pull even more from trusted sources like Wikipedia if it's stumped. It's almost always able to get you what you're looking for, though I did experience some rare cases in which it would pull up a standard list of Google search results.
The shame here is that Siri had a five-year head start on Google Assistant, and Apple totally blew it. Siri struggles to answer even the simplest of queries. It wasn’t until two tech columnists recently pointed out those flaws that Siri quickly learned the answers to some of the questions they were griping about. Curious!
The reality is Apple can’t be reactive and improve Siri every time someone blogs about its flaws.
Luckily, the pieces are in place, as Apple has acquired a series of AI and machine learning companies over the last year or so. Most notably, it bought the UK-based startup Vocal IQ, which as I reported earlier this year had technology that allowed users to control a phone or computer completely with voice. That also jibes with Apple’s near-term goal to make Siri fully capable of controlling the iPhone within the next few years, as Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman reported.
But for now, Google Assistant is clearly in the lead, and that lead will only get wider as more people use it and increases its intelligence.
(And it doesn’t make sense for Apple to own it, either.)
AT&T wants to buy Time Warner, and Wall Street, predictably, obliged, sending Time Warner shares up and AT&T stock down. (Bloomberg reports AT&T is offering $110 a share, a 24 percent premium to today’s closing price, pegging the total value at about $86 billion.)
Too bad the deal doesn’t make much sense. (Similarly, it doesn’t make sense for Apple to own Time Warner, either, which we’ll get to further down.)
Here’s why: A company that owns pipes, whether over the air or through the ground, doesn’t actually benefit from owning the content flowing through those pipes.
Time Warner, which owns HBO, CNN, Warner Bros. and a lot of sports rights via Turner, loses its value if it can’t sell its content to every possible distributor, including AT&T’s main rivals, such as Comcast and Verizon.
AT&T knows this (or should), but since the company’s been saddled with a price war (thanks to T-Mobile and Sprint), it’s been looking for new ways to increase growth.
As part of that effort, it completed its $49 billion acquisition of DirecTV last year, a deal that actually makes sense since it allows AT&T to upsell both services to the respective customers, as well as potentially making both stickier.
Even then, fewer people today are buying TV subscriptions from satellite providers (long known as the cheaper option to cable), since they can now get a lot from Netflix and Hulu and Amazon.
One of the ironies of this acquisition (if it goes through) is that Time Warner CEO Jeff Bewkes spent most of the last eight years unwinding what was once the largest media company in the world.
The 64-year-old executive spun off Time Warner Cable in 2009 (yes, it’s a different company) and that same year he also separated AOL. He unloaded mag publisher Time Inc. just two years ago.
Bewkes knew a decade ago that owning Time Warner Cable didn’t help either the pay-TV operation or the content divisions, since as we pointed out earlier, he wants to sell HBO and CNN and Turner to every cable distributor. He also couldn’t sell the channels to Time Warner Cable at a discount since contract clauses (called most-favored nation) prevent programmers from doing so.
But now, somehow, Bewkes is willing to sell AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson on the idea that it’s different this time, and that he’ll be able to sort it all out.
There is the idea that since Time Warner may get deeper into the game of selling directly to consumers (a la HBO Now), selling to other distributors may be less of an issue. But online subscriber numbers are still way too small to make up for what would be lost in selling to cable, satellite and telecom. It’s not there yet, in other words.
The counterexample everyone is going to cite isn’t really a counterexample. Comcast owning NBCUniversal (an investor in Vox Media, which owns Recode), hasn’t really boosted their respective value.
Comcast, the cable company, does well because it operates its business like a cable company, increasing broadband speeds as well as tapping into new business lines like selling services to small- and medium-sized business.
NBCUniversal does well because it operates like a content company, which means making shows and owning sports rights that distributors like AT&T and Verizon and Time Warner Cable and Comcast will want to pay for and that advertisers will want to support.
There’s scant evidence either business has materially improved the other, but since both businesses are run fairly well, both are doing fairly well, and that has added to Comcast’s top line as well as its profits. So there is a nominal benefit, but only a nominal one, meaning it’s about adding up more numbers.
So let’s get back to Apple.
Apple’s hardware (iPhones, iPads, Macs, Apple TVs, even Watches) is so widely propagated, Apple effectively owns a distribution network. So if it were to own HBO and CNN and rights to NBA games, it would have to make them available on Roku devices and Amazon Fire devices and Comcast’s set-top box, or any other device or distributor. So it wouldn’t benefit from owning the content either.
But it would be interesting if it did, since it would finally see firsthand just how expensive and difficult it is to create good content.
When I moved from New York City to San Francisco a year and a half ago, I traded the best pizza on earth for unbelievably good burritos. Eternal spring took the place of the four seasons.
Some things about moving west weren't quite as sweet.
On a recent visit to the Big Apple, I remembered the things I missed most about living there.
The New York Police Department has issued an average of 450 jaywalking summonses a year since 2008, and you know what? Those "criminals" would probably tell you it was worth it.
New Yorkers show little regard for crossing the street at the appointed time or place. San Franciscans, on the other hand, wait on street corners until the light turns. It's the lawful thing to do — but incredibly inconvenient if you're stuck behind a stagnant pack.
2. Bagels.
The bagel, which the New York Times described in 1960 as "an unsweetened doughnut with rigor mortis," has outlasted one ridiculous food phenomenon after the next.
No one does it better than New York. While fans say it's something in the city water, the act of boiling the uncooked dough rings is more likely what makes them so chewy and dense.
When culture site SFist rounded up the best bagels San Francisco had to offer in 2013 (which were mostly baked, not boiled), it titled the article, "Bay Area's 5 Most Adequate Bagels."
3. A better public transit system.
New Yorkers and San Franciscans have at least one thing in common: We both like to complain about public transit — despite living in the top two US cities for commuters.
New York's Metropolitan Transportation Authority still beats San Francisco's Municipal Transportation Agency in my book. In my experience, New York's subway system covers more ground and runs relatively on-time. San Franciscans rely on a network of transport that includes bus, subway (BART), and light-rail. It makes commuting much more complicated.
The City that Never Sleeps also has a subway that runs all night. BART tops out at midnight.
Nikon announced the D500, the company’s latest top-of-the-line APS-C DSLR, at CES back in January. The $2,000 camera finally hit store shelves early this summer, and I spent a few weeks using it as my main walkaround camera. It is an exceptional camera, offering deep manual controls, the ability to shoot up to 10 frames per second, and capture 4K video.
But the most unique feature of the D500 is that it was the first Nikon camera with Snapbridge. Snapbridge is Nikon’s way of using Bluetooth Low Energy to establish an always-on connection between your camera and your phone. It’s an evolution of the idea of a Wi-Fi-connected camera, and it’s fantastic.
In fact, it’s so good that Snapbridge makes every other solution for connecting your...
The Wall Street Journal is asking a "substantial number" of staff to take voluntary buyouts.
Gerry Baker, editor in chief, just sent out a memo to staff, offering enhanced voluntary severance benefit. The terms, detailed in an FAQ, said it is offering 1.5 times regular severance to those who take the buyout. Anyone in The Journal's news department is eligible.
Staff have been invited to send an email to HR by end of day October 31, saying: “I [NAME] elect to be considered for the WSJ News Department voluntary severance benefit.”
Business Insider obtained a copy of the memo. Here it is:
As I told you earlier this week, we have begun an extensive review of operations as part of a broader transformation program. There will be, unfortunately, an impact on news department staff in this process. In order to limit the number of involuntary layoffs, we will be offering all news employees around the world - management and non-management - the option to elect to take an enhanced voluntary severance benefit. The terms are described in the attached FAQ.
We are seeking a substantial number of employees to elect this benefit, but we reserve the right to reject a volunteer based on business considerations. Employees will be required to sign a separation agreement and release of claims in a form provided by the Company in exchange for the accompanying severance benefits.
...
I regret of course the need for such a move and I appreciate deeply the dedication all of you continue to show through challenging times. Thanks to your hard work, the news department continues to produce world-class journalism every day and I'm confident this process is the right one to set us on the right footing for renewed growth in the years ahead.
There is also a revised version of the paper in the works, with The Wall Street Journal planning to combine two sections — "Business & Tech" and "Money & Investing" — in the print product, according to people familiar with the matter.
The company said its purchase of LinkedIn should close in the current quarter.
With its cloud business continuing to grow, Microsoft on Thursday turned in financial results ahead of what many analysts were expecting.
The company reported $4.7 billion in net income, or 60 cents per share, on $20.5 billion in revenue. Excluding certain items, the company said it had earnings of $6 billion, or 76 cents per share, on adjusted revenue of $22.3 billion
Wall Street was expecting around $21.7 billion in adjusted revenue and earnings of 68 cents per share, according to various consensus estimates.
While the cloud and server businesses remained healthy, Windows sales were relatively flat for the quarter, while phone sales continued their decline, with revenue down 72 percent from a year ago.
The company said it expects to close two big deals in the current quarter: Its $26 billion acquisition of LinkedIn and the divestiture of its entry-level mobile phone business.
Shares rose following the earnings report, changing hands recently at $60.39, up $3.14, or more than 5 percent.
Update, 2:06 p.m. PT: Microsoft’s head of investor relations Chris Suh said the results were strong in the server and cloud businesses. Even the Windows PC business came in slightly better than the company had expected, Suh said.
“We’re pretty pleased with the results across the board,” Suh told Recode, noting that the cloud growth didn’t come at the expense of Microsoft’s traditional server software. The combined server and commercial cloud businesses were up 11 percent year-over-year, he said.
“All around I would say there is broad-based strength,” he said.
“I will totally accept the results of this great and historic presidential election…" Trump said at a rally in Ohio on Thursday. Then, of course, a brief dramatic pause.
"If I win," he continued.
His audience cheered.
Trump has attacked tenets of American democracy since at least the second debate, when he promised to hire a special prosecutor to go after Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton if he wins the election. Read more...
Google's pop-up shop opened today in New York City, and it's a swanky space in the heart of SoHo for people to check out the Pixel, Google Home, and Daydream VR for themselves. The shop doesn't actually have any products for sale, though — you'll have to do that online or at Verizon and Best Buy retail stores.
The space showcases different products in different corners, with an IKEA-esque living room and kitchen setup where people can test out Google Home's features in a setting that looks like a home. There's also a Daydream VR area where you can sit on swivel low-poly rock chairs and try on the VR headsets, and a cool lighting installation where you can get your photo taken with a Pixel phone, which is meant to demonstrate the Pixel's...
In 1876, inventor Alexander Graham Bell patented the first phone: a bulky device with a curved mouthpiece and earpiece connected by wires. It looked much different than the iPhones of today.
In celebration of the phone's 140th birthday this year, we're taking a look back at the design evolution of the device.
The Cooper Hewitt museum recently digitized more than 200,000 items in its collections, including one that chronicles obsolete phones located in its storage facility. Check out some of these phones below, starting with a classic rotary from the late 1930s.
In the 1930s, famed industrial designer Henry Dreyfuss created what many consider to be the first modern telephone: the Model 302. Its design signaled a departure from earlier models: the ringer is in the phone (instead of a separate component), the cradle lies horizontally, and you speak and listen to the same piece resting on top.
After the Model 302, AT&T realized it could sell the phone to the masses. The phone's traditionally square base was replaced by a slimmer design with a touchpad, called the Trimline, first produced by the phone company in 1965. Buttons for "*" and "#" were added too.
As the 1960s went on, phones got even smaller. The Grillo Cricket, created by Italian designers Marco Zanuso and Richard Sapper, can fold up, setting it apart from other phones at the time. The clam-shell shape influenced the design of the modern flip phone.
When it was revealed last week that police used a social media monitoring program to track protestors, it inspired outrage, and major tech companies immediately cut off API access for the tool. But at least one of those companies had prior opportunity to know what the tool, Geofeedia, was capable of. According to three former Geofeedia employees who spoke with The Verge, Facebook itself used the tool for corporate security. Facebook, according to two of the sources, even used Geofeedia to catch an intruder in Mark Zuckerberg's office.
Some Halloween costumes never go out of fashion, like a goblin or a ghoul or a zombie with no conscience. Others are only relevant for a single season; burning brightly before flaming out into nothingness. And never has that description been more apposite than with this year's must-have hallowmeme costume: the Galaxy Note 7 recall.
Facebook user and now viral video sharer Chris Kiley has the goods, with a simple costume to delight young and old, and thoroughly traumatize Samsung executives. At first glance it's just six Note 7 boxes strapped to a teal T-shirt, but blow into a tube poking out of the collar and voila: ominous smoke curls out of all the boxes.
Is it done with some sort of movie prop? Maybe the single tube...
Gigabit LTE, a wireless technology that can support theoretical speeds up to 1Gbps, is closer than you might think. Today, Qualcomm, along with Netgear, Ericsson, and Australian carrier Telstra, is announcing the first product to support gigabit LTE, a mobile hotspot. The hotspot makes use of a variety of technologies to hit those high speeds, including carrier aggregation. It runs on Telstra’s existing LTE networks and will be available to before the end of the year.
In addition, Qualcomm is announcing that its next-generation 800 series smartphone processor platform will include the X16 modem that supports gigabit LTE speeds. Qualcomm says that smartphones with the new chip — which doesn’t yet have an official name, but will succeed...
If you’re looking for a good pair of wireless headphones to go with your new headphone-lacking smartphone, you’ll probably want a pair that last a long time between charges, have good sound quality, and offer features like noise cancellation. Plantronics’ new BackBeat Pro 2 headphones provide all of those features, and they do so at a price that’s well below the rest of the field.
The new BackBeat Pro 2 is an update to the original BackBeat Pro. It has all of the same features — 24-hour battery life, active noise cancelation, over-ear design — but comes with a refined, streamlined design. At $199.99, the BackBeat Pro 2 is considerably less expensive than the Beats Studio Wireless or Bose QC35, yet provides a similar level of features....
For $9.99 per month — less than one museum ticket — New York startup Electric Objects wants to beam art from galleries and museums into your living room.
The company announced its newest product, a 23-inch digital canvas called the EO2, on October 18. The device is designed to show static or animated artwork on a 1080p matte screen, which can be controlled from your smartphone or desktop. The screen, which is surrounded by an aluminum frame that's 21.75 inches tall by 12.9 inches wide, retails for $299.
The EO2 connects to your home Wi-Fi network, and comes with a connected app that lets owners choose which images to display. They can upload their own images, or browse an array of offerings and user-submitted art playlists on Electric Objects' platform. From there, they can freely switch between images as desired or put them in a slideshow rotation. Call it a Chromecast for art.
Electric Objects founder Jake Levine tells Business Insider that he hopes the device will make art more accessible to people who either don't go to museums or are sometimes unsatisfied with the experience. While there's value in seeing art in person, there's no comparable digital analogue.
"The connection between artist and viewer has escaped the art world for the last 10 years while every other industry has been transformed by the internet," he says. Electric Objects wants to erase that gap by forging a connection from creators to viewers on its platform.
"We have artists who live in Brooklyn and produce something, and within minutes it's up on the wall on someone's kitchen in London," Levine says.
Electric Objects' newest feature is an optional $9.99-a-month "art discovery service" called Art Club, which the company bills as a thoughtfully curated series that's updated every week. The subscription gives users access to work from museum collections — Electric Objects has partnerships with five museums, including LACMA, the National Gallery of Art, and the Getty — and exclusive original artwork. The company has an ongoing program that commissions artists to create series of five or six works for the platform. In the future, Electric Objects also plans to provide access to live-streamed performance art shows or painting sessions.
This isn't far from Netflix's model — the company also offers subscribers access to a wide array of content for a monthly fee, and pays studios to make original creative works exclusively for the platform.
Levine says his customers have been pleased with how seamlessly the viewing experience translates from gallery to home. One customer told him that she and her husband and kids were taking turns displaying different artworks and reading about them.
"That should be a museum director's dream," Levine says, "to be able to take that experience and educational mission of the organization and take it into the daily lives of their members. And it's thrilling to see that happen."
As a display, the EO2's functionality isn't much different than, say, a large-scale digital picture frame that you can order on Amazon for a similar price. But the relative cheapness of the EO2 for its size beats out the competition. Meural and Blackdove offer similar digital canvases with their own artist networks, but theirs are bigger and pricier — 32 x 21 inches for $595 and 42.4 x 24.6 inches for $999 respectively.
But at $299, Electric Objects could be an easy, affordable way to put a rotating art gallery inside your home.
The Pixel is just the first device out of a slew of new hardware products from Google. In a few weeks, it'll release the Google Home connected speaker, a new router called Google WiFi, and a new version of the Chromecast that works with 4K TVs.
It's still too early to judge whether or not Google's new emphasis on hardware can match the scale of companies like Apple and Samsung. It'll be years before that happens. But the company is off to a good start.
Before Google announced the hardware, some analysts predicted the stock would go all the way to $1,000.
One week after it unveils new hardware, Microsoft will shift focus to software and its Office suite. The company just sent out invites for a media event on November 2nd in Manhattan, where CEO Satya Nadella, Office CVP Kirk Koenigsbauer, and "special guests" plan to reveal how Microsoft will "empower every team to achieve more."
The invite's language seems very business-oriented, so the event will be in all likelihood be concentrated on collaboration and new ways for those in the enterprise to "connect and create together." But it's big enough to prompt an appearance from Microsoft's chief executive, so it'll be interesting to see what Microsoft's next steps will be in its continued rivalry with Google Docs and other productivity...
When I reviewed the mesh WiFi system from startup Eero back in May, I was instantly impressed. Unlike many so-called WiFi range extenders, multiple Eero routers cover my whole home in good, speedy, reliable WiFi.
But now there's a new kid on the block. It's called Orbi, it comes to you from WiFi veteran Netgear. Orbi spreads faster and more consistent WiFi speeds than the Eero throughout my home.
At first glance, it seems like the Orbi is set to dethrone Eero as king of the routers because of its sheer performance, but a few important factors reel the Orbi back into a more humble position.
Netgear's Orbi WiFi mesh router works in much the same way as the Eero.
You connect the main Orbi unit to your modem, then wirelessly connect multiple Orbi satellite units to that main unit that's connected to your modem. It works just like a regular WiFi router and range extenders, which have been around for years.
But unlike a regular WiFi range extender, the Orbi satellites don't cut your speeds in half. On top of that, the transition between Orbi units as you walk around your home is much smoother than it is with a regular WiFi extender. So, for example, your Skype call won't be interrupted as much — if at all — if you move around your home while your device connects to different Orbis.
However, the Orbi differentiates itself from the Eero in one key way: It creates its own dedicated connection between each Orbi unit to transmit internet data.
The Orbi is a "tri-band" router, which means it has three bands. Two of those bands are the usual 2.4GHz and 5GHz bands you connect your devices to.
The third band is a dedicated connection for the Orbi units to transmit internet data streams between each other, which Netgear claims won't clog up the regular 2.4GHz and 5GHz bands you connect to and makes for faster, more reliable speeds.
The third private Orbi band also addresses a potential issue with loss of internet speeds that Eero users might face if they use a lot of units (around five or more). That means your internet speeds won't be as affected if you use a large number of Orbi units.
To test Netgear's claims, I tested the standard Orbi two-pack against the Eero two-pack in exactly the same places around my home.
The Orbi only comes in a single or two-pack option. The two-pack I tested costs $400 and comes with one base unit and one satellite unit.
The Eero two-pack is $350, and also comes with two units.
If you were thinking about buying a new computer soon, wait a few weeks.
Both Apple and Microsoft are just days away from expected announcements for their new computers.
Here's what's coming:
A new all-in-one desktop PC from Microsoft
Microsoft is holding a press event on October 26 in New York where it's expected to announce the long-rumored all-in-one Surface desktop PC it's been developing.
Think of it as Microsoft's answer to the iMac.
So far, few details other than the computer's existence have leaked, so it'll be interesting to see the company's take on a desktop.
Last year, Microsoft surprised everyone with the Surface Book laptop/tablet hybrid. And the Surface tablet has been around for years now. Those devices aren't expected to get any significant updates this year though. October 26 will be all about the new all-in-one Surface.
New MacBooks and iMacs from Apple
Apple is said to be planning new MacBooks and potentially new iMacs for release by the end of October.
The big story will be the new MacBook Pro, which has been rumored for months now. The new MacBook Pro is said to have a brand-new design similar to the svelte Retina MacBook that launched last year.
It will also have a touchscreen at the top of the keyboard instead of the normal row of function keys. That touchscreen will change depending on which app you're using, according to several reports. Finally, the new MacBook Pro will have a fingerprint sensor for unlocking the device, similar to the one on the iPhone, Bloomberg's Mark Gurman reported in August.
There's also a chance the MacBook Air and iMac could get some updates, according to Gurman. However, those updates don't sound like they'll be major design refreshes. The biggest change will be a new USB-C port on the MacBook Air, according to the report.
The Internet of Things (IoT) has been labeled as "the next Industrial Revolution" because of the way it will change the way people live, work, entertain, and travel, as well as how governments and businesses interact with the world.
In fact, the revolution is already starting.
That brand new car that comes preloaded with a bunch of apps? Internet of Things. Those smart home devices that let you control the thermostat and play music with a few words? Internet of Things. That fitness tracker on your wrist that lets you tell your friends and family how your exercise is going? You get the point.
But this is just the beginning.
BI Intelligence, Business Insider's premium research service, has tracked the growth of the IoT for more than two years, specifically how consumers, businesses, and governments are using the IoT ecosystem. John Greenough and Jonathan Camhi of BII have compiled an exhaustive report that breaks down the entire IoT ecosystem and forecast where the burgeoning IoT market is headed. And you can learn more and purchase the report here: The Internet of Things Ecosystem Research Report
During the creation of this report, they created the infographic below to show how the IoT ecosystem functions and to demonstrate how the IoT is poised to explode by 2020.
In total, we project there will be 34 billion devices connected to the internet by 2020, up from 10 billion in 2015. IoT devices will account for 24 billion, while traditional computing devices (e.g. smartphones, tablets, smartwatches, etc.) will comprise 10 billion.
Nearly $6 trillion will be spent on IoT solutions over the next five years.
Businesses will be the top adopter of IoT solutions. They see three ways the IoT can improve their bottom line by 1) lowering operating costs; 2) increasing productivity; and 3) expanding to new markets or developing new product offerings.
Governments are focused on increasing productivity, decreasing costs, and improving their citizens’ quality of life. We believe they will be the second-largest adopters of IoT ecosystems.
Consumers will lag behind businesses and governments in IoT adoption. Still, they will purchase a massive number of devices and invest a significant amount of money in IoT ecosystems.
In full, the report:
Distills the technological complexities of the Internet of Things into a single ecosystem
Explains the benefits and shortcomings of many networks, including mesh (e.g. ZigBee, Z-Wave, etc.), cellular (e.g. 3G/4G, Sigfox, etc.), and internet networks (e.g. Wi-Fi, Ethernet, etc.)
Discusses analytics systems, including edge analytics, cloud analytics, and more
Examines IoT security best practices
Details the four IoT market drivers and four IoT market barriers
Forecasts IoT investment by six layers: connectivity, security, data storage, system integration, device hardware, and application development
Analyzes how the IoT ecosystem is being using in a number of industries
Defines Internet of Things terminology within a glossary
To get your copy of this invaluable guide to the IoT, choose one of these options:
Subscribe to an ALL-ACCESS Membership with BI Intelligence and gain immediate access to this report AND over 100 other expertly researched deep-dive reports, subscriptions to all of our daily newsletters, and much more. >> START A MEMBERSHIP
Purchase the report and download it immediately from our research store. >> BUY THE REPORT
The choice is yours. But however you decide to acquire this report, you’ve given yourself a powerful advantage in your understanding of the IoT.
Over half of US states have enacted laws legalizing some form of marijuana use — either medical or recreational, or both in the cases of Colorado and Washington.
And Americans, as a unified group, favor marijuana legalization.
When asked by Pew Research, "Do you think the use of marijuana should be made legal or not?", a whopping 57% answered yes (while just 37% responded with no).
Even when you break down Americans by age groups, every demographic from Millennials (18- to 35-year-olds) to Baby Boomers (52- to 70-year-olds) supports legalization.
Only one group opposes legalization — the so-called "Silent" generation (71-88-year-olds) oppose legalization 59% against to 33% in favor.
Things break apart when you start looking at people by political affiliation.
Democrats, overwhelmingly, support legalization — 66% of Democratic respondents said they favor legalization, while just 30% oppose.
Notoriously, neither candidate for president favors marijuana legalization.
Clinton favors the re-classification of marijuana, but she's not in favor of outright legalization for medical or recreational use. As Clinton's website states: "She believes we should use alternatives to incarceration for low-level, nonviolent marijuana users, and she will reschedule marijuana from a Schedule I to a Schedule II substance."
Trump has publicly supported medical marijuana throughout his campaign, but his policy on marijuana has shifted from one of pro-legalization to something a bit more cautious. Trump explained his approach to marijuana legalization to ABC News' Martha Raddatz in a November 2015 interview:
"It's something that I've always said maybe it has to be looked at because we do such a poor job of policing. We don't want to build walls. We don't want to do anything. And if you're not going to want to do the policing, you're going to have to start thinking about other alternatives. But it's not something that I would want to do."
Regardless of the political demographics tied to marijuana legalization on a nation-wide scale, individual US states are already making moves toward legalization. A whopping nine states will vote this November on initiatives to legalize some form of marijuana use — five of those states are voting on full-on recreational legalization.
Kobi is a modular robot that’s basically a Roomba for snow and leaves. It’ll mulch grass and leaves, throw snow into a dedicated area, and mow the lawn. You have to define its physical boundaries through its app and where to dump the leaves and snow, but after that, the company says Kobi apparently can figure out its way and remember the route it needs to take. It’s equipped with a GPS and sensors to help avoid obstacles, and you can even put snow tires on it! Kobi starts at $3,999, but we don’t know when preorders will open.
The idea of an autonomous snow blower is amazing. I hate snow, and I hate cold weather, so this is all great for me. Kobi can throw snow up to 40 feet! I just wish Kobi could shovel off my car windows. Autonomous...
Huawei’s R&D arm, Noah’s Ark Laboratory, announced on Tuesday a partnership with the University of California, Berkley’s artificial intelligence (AI) lab focused on researching AI in all its forms.
Initially, the Chinese smartphone company will fund UC Berkley $1 million as it covers areas like deep learning, reinforcement learning, machine learning, natural language processing (NLP), and computer vision. Huawei is likely investigating AI in order to ensure its not left behind by rival smartphone companies like Samsung, Apple, and Google, all of which have begun implementing AI into their devices.
As hardware shipments begin to decelerate, hardware companies are looking at AI as the next growth platform. Consumers will increasingly find the value in AI as the technology becomes more sophisticated. Therefore, it will become imperative for hardware companies to have an offering of some sort, Cyanogen executive chairman Kirt McMaster told Bloomberg. In line with this, the number of investments in AI is growing rapidly, according to data from CB Insights.
AI is already being pushed as the technology that will power the next generation of consumer-facing products, such as chatbots, search, and camera functionality. Here are a few recent examples:
During its hardware event last week, Google spent the vast majority of the conference outlining the many ways its virtual assistant, Google Assistant, is being integrated into its smartphones, messaging app, and connected home device.
Samsung acquired Viv, which it intends to integrate into future models of its smartphones and connected devices to rival other connected virtual assistants, like Siri.
Microsoft is betting that AI will usher in the next stage of consumer interaction, calledconversational commerce. The company is also integrating AI into all of its software offerings, including Office Suite 365, its third-party keyboard SwiftKey, and camera app Pix.
Google is getting ready to make a big change in the way it indexes web pages for search results.
In a few months, the company will implement a previously announced plan to index mobile pages separately from desktop pages, a Google employee said at a conference Thursday, according to Search Engine Land.
Google also plans to keep its mobile website index more up to date than the desktop index, which means mobile users will get the best results faster than desktop users.
It also means websites and online publishers will have to make sure their sites are mobile friendly if they want to be properly indexed by Google.
This is the latest move in Google's efforts to enhance search on mobile. Recently it introduced Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP), which loads news articles found through Google much faster on mobile devices and shares a cut of the advertising with the publisher.
Google didn't say exactly when the new mobile index will come, but it sounds like it'll be here soon.
Facebook officially entered the enterprise market this week with the release of Workplace by Facebook (previously known as Facebook at Work). It goes without saying that Facebook has had tremendous success as a consumer tool, but the enterprise is a different place, with distinct requirements. While it picked up 1,000 beta customers when it was free, it could find that enterprises,… Read More
Microsoft has been teasing Dynamics 365 for a while now, as is its custom. On Tuesday the company announced that Dynamics 365 will be will be available to customers worldwide beginning November 1.
This is the product that goes head-to-head with Salesforce, as well as Oracle and SAP.
Dynamics 365 is cloud software that has combined what's known as CRM or customer relationship management software – used by salespeople to track prospects and customers (a market Salesforce leads) – with ERP or enterprise resource management software. ERP is financial, manufacturing, and supply chain management software, a market where SAP is the biggest player, followed by Oracle.
This new product is one of the main reasons that Microsoft bought LinkedIn for more than $26 billion. Dynamics 365 includes new applications that sift through data stored in Microsoft documents, the CRM/ERP system, and social media like LinkedIn to provide sales leads and business insights for marketing campaigns.
Microsoft had previously said that it plans to start a price war with the main CRM players, particularly Salesforce.
On Tuesday, cloud vice president Takeshi Numoto wrote a blog post that shared a few more details about those pricing plans. He explained that Microsoft's new subscription plans for Dynamics 365 will bundle together many popular options, rather than making a company pay for each one per user, separately.
Numoto writes that this "could save four to five times the cost of traditional CRM providers."
While Salesforce isn't known to be dirt cheap — it can cost up to $300 per person per month — enterprise IT departments tend to negotiate prices, so list prices don't always count for much.
In his blog post, Numoto also couldn't resist another subtle dig at Salesforce and its newly announced, much hyped AI product called Einstein, which has been receiving mixed reviews so far. Salesforce has spent hundreds of millions of dollars to acquire the tech and team that built Einstein over the past few years. Plus, CEO Marc Benioff has been saying that AI is the next big wave in software, and will one day be baked into everything Salesforce does.
Meanwhile, Microsoft, with its massive R&D organization, says its been working on AI for "decades."
Numoto writes (emphasis ours):
"With so much attention on artificial intelligence and the promise it holds, it can be hard to tell what’s real and what’s not. When it comes to business process – and your business – Dynamics 365 delivers the intelligence you need to transform, now, backed by decades of research and investment."
Connected devices may be the biggest security challenge we face over the next several years. Companies are keen to analyze user IoT data to better understand consumer behavior and are sometimes gathering more data than they need for their service. But what are the potential consequences to your customers, and your company, if this personal info is stolen or accidentally released? What happens when a criminal uses this information to stalk someone online?
Gary Davis, Chief Consumer Security Evangelist, Intel
With so many IoT devices, apps, and services coming to market, more and more personal info is being captured, transmitted, and stored, yet much of this data is unnecessary to support the functionality of the device or service. You may think this is not a big deal, but the more personal data you have, the more resources your company will have to devote to protecting it. If there is a breach, the bad guys can extract a large amount of personal information about customers. The potential consequences range from identity theft and fraud of your customers to significant financial damage to your company’s brand.
Once a month I get an email from my thermostat service, telling me how I compared to the previous month, to my neighborhood, and what external factors may have caused my energy use to change. This is valuable info that does not violate my privacy, and if I want to share it there are Facebook and Twitter buttons on the infographic. Even if I choose to share it publicly, there is no info that would give away my location, or when I am away from home.
Compare this to my fitness wearable, which wants to post to Facebook for every workout. While this is probably done for good reasons to help encourage and reinforce my exercise regime, it releases potential info on when I am at the gym and not at home.
When developing a new device or service, make it better by collecting less data. Instead of gathering everything you can possibly think of, determine what minimum data is required to deliver your service. Pay special attention to items that constitute personally identifiable info, and ask why they are needed. These include:
Full name and address
Document numbers, such as social security, passport, or driver’s license
Credit card or bank account info
Date of birth
Biometric data, including photographs of the face
IP address or other session identification details
One of the most common ways of identifying an individual is via a username and password. It’s been around since almost the inception of the digital age and is a constant source of concern as we see an increasing number of high-profile breaches exposing usernames and passwords. An emerging authentication alternative is using multiple factors such as your fingerprint and your device location to create a one-time token to authenticate a specific transaction like a banking or retail purchase online.
For IoT data, tokens improve security
This would be used instead of relying on usernames and passwords. These tokens only exist for the time to complete your specific transaction and are not vulnerable to a brute force attack, and cannot be reused even if they are stolen. Moving to single-use tokens greatly improves the security of your interactions.
Tokens can be validated more easily than a complicated password encryption, reducing login time, and the password is not stored anywhere else and does not travel outside of your most secure systems. In the event of a breach, any stolen tokens are useless for authentication and do not enable the attacker to calculate the next valid token. In the spirit of doing more with less, think about embracing authentication tokens instead of usernames and passwords.
With so many new devices and services coming to market, it is necessary to safeguard your business and your customers. Connected devices should not collect, keep, or transmit more data than they need to operate the service, especially personally identifiable information. There are multiple companies doing this right, which delivers value to me as a consumer while also gathering useful data for their own use, without revealing personal info.
Facebook has come under criticism for censoring a news article on mammograms due to an image of a woman's exposed breast. The company apologized for removing the post and restored it late Tuesday, though the incident adds to an ongoing controversy over a moderation policy that some have described as sexist.
The article, published Tuesday by Les Décodeurs, a data-focused website run by the French newspaper Le Monde, reported on a recent government initiative to overhaul mammogram screening in France. Its lead image showed a woman undergoing a mammogram, with one of her nipples exposed. Facebook removed the article shortly after it was posted to Les Décodeurs' page, apparently because the image of a nipple violated the company's community...
And if doesn’t get smarter soon, what does it mean for Apple?
Welcome to Mossberg, a weekly commentary and reviews column on The Verge and Recode by veteran tech journalist Walt Mossberg, executive editor at The Verge and editor at large of Recode.
I’ve been familiar with Siri longer than most people. Way back in 2009 — two years before Apple incorporated the intelligent digital assistant into the iPhone — I stood onstage with the inventors of the service while they debuted it at a tech conference I co-produced. At the time, it was just a third-party app on the iPhone App Store. Not long thereafter, Apple bought the company, and the assistant reemerged in 2011 with a splashy introduction as a core feature of the iPhone 4s.
In addition to the iPhone, Siri is now on the iPad and was recently added to the Mac. It’s also on Apple TV. Via the phone, it’s the key user interface in Apple’s CarPlay infotainment system for autos, and even the soon-to-be-released wireless AirPod earbuds.
When was the last time Siri delighted you with a satisfying and surprising answer or action?
Siri is also the point of the spear for Apple in the coming tech war — it’s just getting started, to make artificial intelligence a natural, conversational, part of your world at home, on your phone, in your car, everywhere. And Apple had a big head start with Siri.
So why does Siri seem so dumb? Why are its talents so limited? Why does it stumble so often? When was the last time Siri delighted you with a satisfying and surprising answer or action?
For me, at least, and for many people I know, it’s been years. Siri’s huge promise has been shrunk to just making voice calls and sending messages to contacts, and maybe getting the weather, using voice commands. Some users find it a reliable way to set timers, alarms, notes and reminders, or to find restaurants. But many of these tasks could be done with the crude, pre-Siri voice-command features on the iPhone and other phones, albeit in a more clumsy way.
A blown advantage
It seems to me that Apple has wasted its lead with Siri. And now Google, Amazon, Microsoft, Facebook and others are on the march. Apple has made excited announcements each time it added knowledge domains like sports and movies and restaurants to Siri on the iPhone. But it seems like it hasn’t added any major new topic domains in quite a while.
The only new domain listed on Apple’s Siri web page is for controlling home devices compatible with Apple’s HomeKit platform, a use case that’s quite small. You can now use Siri to “turn the lights blue” or “turn on the bathroom heater” — integrations that Amazon’s Echo and Alexa assistant have led the way on. And the always-listening Echo is faster than pressing the iPhone’s home button to call up Siri, and more reliable than the “Hey Siri” command, which can be hit-or-miss.
When’s the presidential debate? Siri had no clue.
If you try and treat Siri like a truly intelligent assistant, aware of the wider world, it often fails, even though Apple presentations and its Siri website suggest otherwise. (And I’m not talking about getting your voice wrong. In my recent experience, Siri has become quite good at transcribing what I’m asking, just not at answering it.)
In recent weeks, on multiple Apple devices, Siri has been unable to tell me the names of the major-party candidates for president and vice president of the United States. Or when they were debating. Or when the Emmy awards show was due to be on. Or the date of the World Series.
When I asked, “What is the weather on Crete?” Siri gave me the weather for Crete, Illinois, a small village which — while I’m sure it’s great — isn’t what most people mean when they ask for the weather on Crete, the famous Greek island.
Google Now, on the same Apple devices, using the same voice input, answered every one of these questions clearly and correctly. And that isn’t even Google’s latest digital helper, the new Google Assistant.
If you try most of these broken examples right now, they’ll work properly, because Apple fixed them after I tweeted screenshots of most of them in exasperation, and asked the company about them.
Apple stressed to me that it’s constantly improving Siri, and also stressed that it focuses its Siri efforts on the kinds of tasks that it says millions of people ask every day: Placing phone calls, sending texts and finding places. It puts much less emphasis on what it calls “long tail” questions, like the ones I’ve cited above, which in some cases, Apple says, number in only the hundreds each day.
But I suspect that people don’t ask those questions because, after trying a time or two and getting no answers or wrong answers, they just give up on Siri. And I can’t see how asking when the 2016 presidential debates are being held is a more “long tail” query than asking when Abraham Lincoln was born. That’s a question Siri not only can answer, but which Apple touts on its website.
Everyday stumbles
Apple also says Siri is focused on enabling you “to work with your device in a hands-free way.” But in my recent tests, it even fails for me, or is inconsistent, too often, when relying on data that’s right on the device or in iCloud.
For instance, when I asked Siri on my Mac how long it would take me to get to work, it said it didn’t have my work address — even though the “me” contact card contains a work address and the same synced contact card on my iPhone allowed Siri to give me an answer.
Similarly, on my iPad, when I asked what my next appointment was, it said “Sorry, Walt, something’s wrong” — repeatedly, with slightly different wording, in multiple places on multiple days. But, using the same Apple calendar and data, Siri answered correctly on the iPhone.
When I asked it for pictures I had taken in York, England, this summer, it mixed them up with pictures I took years ago in Yorktown, Virginia. And yes, it had transcribed the question itself perfectly.
It couldn’t find recent iMessages from my daughter-in-law, saying I had none, on the very day she had sent two. And if you have duplicate information for frequent contacts, Siri isn’t smart enough to know which one you use most often, or used last time, to call or text.
Who is Tim Cook?
It also can’t distinguish between the question of “who is” a person and a request for that person’s contact card. For instance, I have a contact card for Apple CEO Tim Cook. When I ask, “Who is Tim Cook?” Siri shows me the contact card, not his bio. But, on a Samsung Galaxy S7 (Samsung’s non-exploding model) which also has a contact card for Cook, Google Now understands the question perfectly and gives me his Wikipedia entry. If I ask Google Now on the Galaxy to “email Tim Cook,” it does that, too — just like Siri.
Some consolation
Siri isn’t the only element of Apple’s artificial intelligence strategy. Its latest operating systems and core apps do some smart things, like guessing an unknown caller’s name from information in an email. Or automatically marking on a map where you parked your car. Or notifying you via your Apple watch how long your commute is when your phone connects to the Bluetooth in your car at a certain time of day.
Bottom line
Yes, Siri can usually place a call or send a text. It can tell you sports standings, Yelp restaurant reviews and movie times — features Apple added years ago. And it must be said that all of its competitors have their own limitations and also make mistakes.
But in its current incarnation, Siri is too limited and unreliable to be an effective weapon for Apple in the coming AI wars. It seems stagnant. Apple didn’t become great by just following the data on what customers are doing today. It became great by delighting customers with feats they didn’t expect. The AI revolution will demand that.
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Facebook officially entered the enterprise market this week with the release of Workplace by Facebook (previously known as Facebook at Work). It goes without saying that Facebook has had tremendous success as a consumer tool, but the enterprise is a different place, with distinct requirements. While it picked up 1,000 beta customers when it was free, it could find that enterprises,… 
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