Amazon Echo review: Or how I started talking to a little black cylinder every day October 25, 2016 How often do you trust Siri to do much besides setting a timer when you’re cooking pasta, or telling you whether or not it’s going to rain? Since they crept into our pockets, virtual assistants haven’t progressed much past the point of pseudo-capable helpers, who are unreliable in most roles beyond fancy egg-timers and meteorologists [...]
Britain’s tech sector is a world leader – and its future is brighter than ever October 25, 2016 Technology has transformed our lives, communities, cultural experiences and our economy. But the UK isn’t just a consumer of innovative technology, we’re a creator too. British industry has quickly become a key player in the tech world and this was plain to see during my visit to the technology cluster, Tech City, in East London. [...]
Occulus Rift, but for energy: how virtual reality could shake up utility firm performance October 25, 2016 Humans have a hard time with processing numbers. The fact is that our brains are much better at processing images and colours. Give a human a relatively simple math problem like dividing two large numbers by one another and it can take them several minutes to work out the answer. By contrast, humans are great at understanding [...]
Howard Webb: Technology undoubtedly helps referees, but video replays won’t be a panacea for football October 25, 2016 A whistle, a red and yellow card and the strength of your personality – those were the tools of the trade when I began a 25-year refereeing career in 1989. In the late 90s we were given these chunky radios that sat in the middle of our backs with a big earpiece looped over your [...]
Twitter is lining up hundreds of job cuts in an attempt to streamline operations October 25, 2016 Twitter is preparing to unveil hundreds of jobs cuts prior to its third quarter earnings announcement on Thursday. Up to 300 positions, or eight per cent of the work force, could be culled as the social media giant tries to stem losses that are currently running at $400m (£329m) per year. Read more: Salesforce shares jump [...]
Virtual reality startup in talks for fresh funds October 24, 2016 A London-based virtual reality startup is in talks for fresh funding that could value it at over £400m. Improbable – which last year picked up $20m (£13.4m) from Silicon Valley investor Andreessen Horowitz – is locked in talks with potential backers on both sides of the Atlantic, according to Sky News. Its last funding round reportedly [...]
What to expect from Apple’s fourth quarter earnings October 24, 2016 Apple will announce its earnings for the fourth quarter tomorrow, ahead of a new MacBook launch later in the week. Connor Campbell, financial analyst at SpreadEx, said the earnings report "is likely to reflect the first annual iPhone sales decline in the company's history". Read more: Shares in this Apple supplier just fell off a [...]
Here are some of the NHS treatments you could get prescribed that don’t help October 24, 2016 Doctors have drawn up a list of treatments they say bring little or no benefit to the patient and should no longer be used. The Academy of Medical Royal Colleges – which represents all 21 medical royal colleges in the UK – says doctors are giving patients too many tests and drugs that they don’t need. [...]
Sterling malaise leads to Microsoft increasing enterprise prices October 24, 2016 The pound’s plunge means that software giant Microsoft will increase prices of enterprise software and cloud services from next year. Although consumers pricing will not be adjusted by Microsoft, the company revealed on one its own blog posts that from 1 January it will raise prices by 13 per cent to enterprises. Read more: Microsoft [...]
The broken windows of programmatic advertising October 24, 2016 If programmatic advertising were a place, it would be a divided town. Alongside the glitz of the industry is a dark web of villainy, where gangs roam through the buy and sell side, smuggling harmful software into ads and damaging perceptions of digital advertising. But it’s not a town, and there’s no police to shut the [...]