Facebook will bring AR ads to the News Feed fall 2019VentureBeat - Kyle WiggersWould you interact with a digital ad featuring polls, games, augmented reality (AR), or some Frankensteinian combination of the three? Facebook seems to think so. The social network this morning announced
Personality Skillprint studies how you play games to unlock your hidden skillsVentureBeat - Dean TakahashiPlay games, unlock your inner superpowers, and win at life. That’s the idea behind Skillprint, a startup that uses advanced analytics to study how you play games and uses that information to discern your
Japan NTT Docomo moves up Japan-wide 5G to June 2020, offers early accessVentureBeat - Jeremy HorwitzShortly after smaller rival Softbank said it is accelerating its Japanese 5G network deployment by two years, targeting 60% population coverage by 2023, top carrier NTT Docomo confirmed that it’s also
Salesforce parent Automattic raises $300 million from Salesforce at a $3 billion valuationVentureBeat - Paul SawersAutomattic, the company best known for WordPress.com and its contributions to the open source, non-hosted WordPress alternative, has raised $300 million in a series D round of funding from Salesforce’s
Huawei Huawei unveils Mate 30 series with no mention of GoogleVentureBeat - Kyle WiggersIt’s a curious time for Huawei, which only weeks ago announced new earbuds as the U.S. contemplated lifting trade restrictions on the company and its subsidiaries. Escalating tensions with China threaten
United States Wunder Mobility closes $60 million round to expand its urban transport platform in the U.S.VentureBeat - Paul SawersWunder Mobility, which develops a platform that lets companies and municipalities create their own urban mobility services, has raised an additional $30 million from Blumberg Capital and KCK to close its
Amazon Alexa The key to a more human-like Amazon Alexa is unsupervised learningVentureBeat - Kyle WiggersAlexa, Amazon’s intelligent assistant that’s in well over 100 million devices and works with over 60,000 appliances from 7,400 brands, gains new skills from contributions by the thousands of employees
Jurassic World NBCUniversal will shut down its game publishing businessVentureBeat - Dean TakahashiComcast’s NBCUniversal has decided to shut down its game publishing business, a little more than 2.5 years after expanded it. The Hollywood company will stay in games by licensing its entertainment properties
Apple Apple’s communications VP exits without a permanent replacementVentureBeat - Jeremy HorwitzSteve Dowling, Apple’s vice president of communications, said today that he’ll be leaving the company next month. First reported by Recode, Dowling’s departure is the latest in a series of unexpected leadership
Apple Xcode reveals Apple S5 chip is a rebadged S4, iPhone 11s have 4GB RAMVentureBeat - Jeremy HorwitzApple’s new device marketing tends to be aggressive every year in marketing system-on-chip improvements, which made this year’s silence on the Apple Watch Series 5’s S5 processor noteworthy: The company
Technology Google rolls out Family Link per-app time limits and bonus timeVentureBeat - Kyle WiggersGoogle first introduced Family Link, a parental control app for Android devices, in March 2017 ahead of domestic and international rollouts. It announced in May at Google I/O 2019 that it would build Link
Mobile Call of Duty: Mobile launches October 1VentureBeat - Dean TakahashiActivision and Tencent that Call of Duty: Mobile will launch on October 1 on iOS and Android. The mobile version of Call of Duty will debut in all countries where Google Play and the Apple App Store are
Alexa Alexa users can soon donate to U.S. presidential candidatesVentureBeat - Kyle WiggersThe 2020 U.S. presidential election is just over a year away, and ahead of it, Amazon’s rolling out a new feature — Alexa Political Contributions — that’ll enable Alexa customers to support their chosen
Play buttonZynga Zynga and Gram Games launch Merge Magic as latest tile-based mobile gameVentureBeat - Dean TakahashiZynga‘s Gram Games studio is launching a new mobile game, Merge Magic, in its hit series of “Merge” titles. Gram Games has gone a long way with its “merge” mechanic. The Istanbul and London-based game
Privacy Canopy provides a blueprint for privacy-focused content recommendationsVentureBeat - Paul SawersWith the advent of cloud computing, ecommerce, and social media, it’s difficult to keep tabs on who has access to our data, and harder still to know how much care they’re taking with it. Indeed, barely
Play buttonEyeglasses North taps the iPhone’s TrueDepth camera to sell its Focals AR glasses onlineVentureBeat - Paul SawersNorth, a wearables company backed by Amazon and Intel, is making its smart glasses available to buy online for the first time. Formerly known as Thalmic Labs, the Canadian startup pivoted from gesture-
Acronis raises $147 million for tools that back up, protect, and restore dataVentureBeat - Kyle WiggersData recovery juggernaut Acronis today announced that it has nabbed $147 million in an investment round led by Goldman Sachs at a valuation of over $1 billion. The capital infusion brings Singapore- and
Google Google Assistant adds 9 new AI-generated voicesVentureBeat - Kyle WiggersGoogle Assistant can talk and sing like John Legend in the U.S., and it’s conversant in over 30 languages in 80 countries (up from 8 languages and 14 countries in 2017). But in the years since its international
Pocketcasts Pocket Casts goes freemium, but resists paywalled podcastsVentureBeat - Paul SawersPodcasting has emerged as a force to be reckoned with in the digital media realm. The recent annual Infinite Dial report from Edison Research and Triton Digital showed that 51% (144 million) of the U.S.
Google Lens Google’s Key Moments provide shortcuts to video highlightsVentureBeat - Kyle WiggersEver spend entirely too much time trying to find a pivotal scene in a video clip you watched ages ago? We’ve all been there. While transcripts ease the burden somewhat, footage isn’t exactly skimmable
Gaming Newzoo: Global game revenues will hit $68.5 billion in 2019VentureBeat - Mike MinottiMobile games will earn $68.5 billion in 2019, according to a new report from market research firm Newzoo. The 2019 Global Mobile Market Report notes that 48.9% of that revenue will come from games on devices,
Hearthstone How Hearthstone’s team made Tomb of Terrors a fun and distinct solo modeVentureBeat - Mike MinottiHearthstone‘s newest solo adventure, Tomb of Terrors, debuts today. Hearthstone became the king of the digital card game world thanks to its multiplayer offerings, but the free-to-play Blizzard Entertainment
Google Fi Google Fi gets $70 unlimited mobile plan plus free Google One membershipVentureBeat - Paul SawersGoogle has announced a new unlimited Google Fi plan that gives subscribers near-unfettered access to SMS, calls, and data for a set monthly fee. Google Fi Unlimited, as the plan is called, offers completely
Technology SoftBank reportedly accelerates Japan’s 5G network plans by 2 yearsVentureBeat - Jeremy HorwitzWhile carriers in other countries quickly sped up their 5G network rollouts to take advantage of early ratification of the international 5G standard, Japan largely held to its plan for a 2020 initial timed
Google Nest Telstra extends mobile plan to Google Nest devicesVentureBeat - Kyle WiggersIf you’ve been itching to place calls with your Google Nest (formerly Google Home) devices using a mobile plan, now’s your chance. Australian operator Telstra this morning announced that it’s the first
Technology GitLab raises $268 million at a $2.7 billion valuationVentureBeat - Paul SawersDevOps powerhouse GitLab has raised $268 million in a series E round of funding led by Goldman Sachs and Iconiq Capital, with participation from both new and existing investors including Y Combinator Fund,
Pain Kaia raises $8 million to treat chronic pain with AI-guided exerciseVentureBeat - Kyle WiggersChronic pain — pain that lasts at least 12 weeks — affects hundreds of millions of people globally. In 2016, an estimated 20% of U.S. adults (approximately 50 million) reported having long-term pain, 8%
Google Lens Pinterest’s Lens can now recognize 2.5 billion home and fashion objectsVentureBeat - Kyle WiggersIn 2017, Pinterest debuted Lens in beta, an online/offline visual search tool that taps AI to identify objects captured from Pins or by a smartphone and suggest related themes and products. Lens went to
Tinder Tinder wraps first video series in its original content pushVentureBeat - Reuters(Reuters) — Popular dating app Tinder has wrapped filming on its first television series, as owner Match Group seeks to dive deeper into creating original content, people with direct knowledge of the told
