Monday: July 20, 2009
IBM Supercomputer to be a contestant on Jeopardy.Watson considers massive volumes and varieties of natural language, then quickly analyzes and scores supporting or refuting evidence—in a matter of seconds. Jeopardy is the perfect forum in which to display Watson's advances in artificial intelligence, according to IBM.
Wednesday: January 2, 2013
Avis acquires Zipcar for a mere $500 million.Avis says it expects to generate $50 to $70 million in ‘annual synergies’ as a result of the deal. FYI: The company booked $7.3 billion in revenue for the full year 2012, and employs roughly 29,000 employees today. The transaction is expected to close in the spring of 2013.
Tuesday: December 18, 2012
TIME pulls the curtain back on short list for 2012 Person of the Year.All eight candidates appeared on TIME’s online reader poll, but none took first place. TIME’s online voters have already revealed their choice for this year’s top newsmaker: Kim Jong Un. More than 5.6 million people voted for the supreme leader of North Korea, although his results and those of other high scorers got a boost from members of Internet forums like 4Chan.
Friday: December 14, 2012
University of Chicago receives mystery package addressed to one Henry (Indiana) Jones Jr.An interesting read if only for the care and detail that went into the package itself. The package was received by the admissions department and reportedly almost thrown out until a student worker made the discovery. Could this be some new viral marketing in the making or a student with a really unique application package? Who knows - but either way, this is pretty neat.
Tuesday: December 11, 2012
Yahoo pulls the curtain back on a brand new version of their mail client.Definetly looking forward to giving this a whirl as I'm starting to grow weary of the GMail interface these days. Microsoft Outlook, which I use for work, is moderately simple yet has power features for people (such as myself) who are little overboard in terms of organization. I'd also like to point that GMail's labels versus folders paradigm does absolutely nothing for me. GMail looks like a stream of people shouting at me.
Monday: November 14, 2011
Wired would like you to know Amazon's Jeff Bezos owns more of the web than you think.An interesting read for those of you who want to have a little more insight as to just what Amazon does these days on the Interwebs besides selling everything under the sun. There's an interesting chart about half-way down he page that discusses how some important companies rely on Amazon's web services to power their products. If AWS shut off today, well - it's best not to think about it.
Wednesday: August 3, 2011
Push Pop Press is the latest acquisition in Facebook's growing design talent roster.Mike Matas, one of the co-founders of Push Pop Press, is one of the designers behind some of the most familiar iPhone and iPad user interfaces that you've come to know and love. This kind of talent acquisition doesn't come along simply to tweak the look of an iPhone app. They must be working on something big. On a sadder note, Push Pop Press has announced that they have abandoned their planned publishing platform. However, their one offering is still available in the App Store - search for Al Gore's 'Our World'.
Monday: July 25, 2011
Have a peek at some screenshots of the upcoming Facebook app for iPad.TechCrunch, as well as many others, found out that Facebook was hiding a secret app (not really secret, universal apps contain both sets of code for iPhone and iPad bundled together - although jailbreaking is required to figure that one out) in their latest iPhone app update. That 'secret' turned out to be the official Facebook app for iPhone. TechCrunch has a whole slew of screenshots that you can take a look at as to properly get yourself prepared the social media onslaught.
Monday: July 18, 2011
An awkward meeting between Twitter founder Biz Stone and Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook.The Next Web posts an interesting article regarding a meeting between the two heads of the socially charged companies that happened some time around November 2008. It is rumored that this is about the time that Facebook was thinking of acquiring Twitter for sum of about $500 million. I smell a Social Network sequel or at the very least an Odd Couple-esque sitcom.
A day in the life of Disney / Pixar's John Lasseter.The folks over at The Disney Blog link to an interesting documentary (source link goes directly to said documentary over on YouTube) about John Lasseter, chief creative officer for Disney / Pixar. If you happen to be a fan of anything Pixar or what goes into making a Pixar movie this little movie will be right up your alley. Great quote 24 seconds in: 'art challenges technology, technology inspires the art.'
Friday: July 15, 2011
Mashable reports that Coca-Cola will be giving away free Spotify subscriptions.The company announced the program Friday morning via @DocPemberton, one of its Twitter accounts. The brand also directed fans on its Facebook Page to the feed, which is named after Coca-Cola’s inventor. The Twitter feed directs followers to this Spotify invite page. Coke announced on Thursday that it was a partner in Spotify’s U.S. launch.