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Last week, at Microsoft Build we got a far better sense for Cortana, Microsoft's next generation phone A.I. system. She is expected to be a generation more advanced than Siri and Google Now - both of which have been in the market for some time and have improved since launch. Currently, Siri is generally better at tasks and may have an edge with car integration while Google Now is better for web searches (as you might imagine) but Cortana is expected to be smarter than both - which should start a war between these vendors for who has the smartest artificial intelligence. Let's talk about what happens when your smartphone actually gets smart.
Look at the buzz around Box's IPO filing and you'd think the company was going down the drain.
The big headlines have revolved around Box's net losses and the fact that wunderkind CEO Aaron Levie sold off a majority of his equity to keep the company afloat. So far, the picture painted is one of a company filing out of desperation, but there's something missing - the basic fact that Box is running away with the race and is in pole position to dominate the nascent cloud storage and content collaboration market.
It is always intriguing to look at data, and for those readers in the U.S. in particular, you might wish to download the latest study from NTCA - The Rural Broadband Association, by economist Rick Schadelbauer in the paper titled Conquering the Challenges of Broadband Adoption. In the report, which provides details on how the U.S. stacks up in terms of broadband adoption to other countries and documents the difference in rates between rural and urban America (a major part of the so-called digital divide), Schadelbauer highlights that three in 10 U.S. adults do not use the Internet at home - and getting them online will be considerably more challenging than connecting the first seven.
Three individuals have been indicted for their alleged roles in an approximately $32 million fraud against the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Lifeline telephone service program designed to provide discounted telephone services to low-income customers.
One idea gaining volume these days is having the U.S. government adopt HD voice as a standard for IP communication. Given the poor track record of government standard-setting promoting anything, I'm not a big fan.
Hopefully every day all of us find out something new that is really interesting. Today should be such a day for most of us, as it was for me, when I was made aware of two new things. First was the fact that on April 2, all of the 24 GLONASS satellites-which comprise Russia's equivalent of the GPS system-actually failed simultaneously and were inoperable for roughly 13 hours, and that this did not make the TV news rounds or appear on virtually any of the tech press circuits. The second thing I learned-and this is how I was informed about the first-is that there is an Australian company, Locata, which has a terrestrial solution to deal with such potentialities and can provide GPS for those hard to reach places.
Consumer viewing of TV programming and movies anytime and anywhere is growing, along with the demand for more devices and more online content. Meanwhile, consumers' willingness to pay for better access to that content is reshaping the media and entertainment landscape and driving media companies like Disney to invest in innovation and technology transformation.
It's been just over a year and a half since Microsoft called in Nancy Tellem, formerly of CBS Corp., to build what amounted to a complete television operation from the ground up. In that time, Tellem has been busy and now six new shows are set to be released from the company. Featuring names like Sarah Silverman, Seth Green, and the World Cup, Microsoft's status as a full-service entertainment powerhouse is about to get its first big test.
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