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Communication and Technology news
Amazon now lets you talk to Alexa without saying ‘Hey Alexa’ EVERY. SINGLE. TIME.
2018-03-09

Amazon is today giving Alexa perhaps its most useful update since its inception: You can now speak to the assistant without saying “Hey Alexa” for every single command. The feature, called Follow-Up Mode, simply allows Alexa to listen for another command for five seconds after your last request. That should make...

Lenovo just laid off a chunk of its Motorola smartphone team
2018-03-09

The team behind Lenovo’s most interesting phones is getting downsized. On Friday, Lenovo confirmed layoffs for the Motorola group in Chicago, where the company designs its modular Moto Z smartphones. In a statement to 9to5Google, Lenovo denied that it was axing 50% of the workforce, as the site had suggested,...

Big tech takes on its next big challenge—saving animals
2018-03-09

Twenty-one tech companies are banding together to save animals. Google, Facebook, Microsoft, and Instagram are founding members of the first-ever Global Coalition to End Wildlife Trafficking Online. Other internet giants taking part in the important work are Alibaba, Baidu, Baixing, eBay, Etsy, Huaxia...

Google brings Mario Kart to Maps to celebrate MAR10
2018-03-09

Google is showing its nerdy side tomorrow by bringing Nintendo’s mustachioed star to Maps in a new Mario Kart Easter Egg. He and his signature Kart take the place of the in-map arrow showing the user’s location. Mario, a serious contender for the world’s most famous fictional character, will be available...

Waymo is testing self-driving trucks in Atlanta
2018-03-09

Waymo announced Friday morning that it’s beginning a self-driving truck pilot in Atlanta, Georgia. The company says it’s spent the past year testing its trucks in California and Arizona. Mostly known for its self-driving cars, Waymo has integrated its technology into Peterbilt Class 8 trucks, which...

Google Assistant At SXSW: More Spectacle And A Few New Features
2018-03-09

Google is making it easier to talk to its AI helper–and boosting the variety of audio it can play, from info-by-subscription to crackling fireplace noises. Once again, Google would like to divert some attention away from Amazon’s Alexa.Read Full Story

Mario just drove his kart right into Google Maps
2018-03-09

In case you weren’t aware, tomorrow, March 10, is also known as MAR10 Day, a holiday marked each year by Nintendo to honor its most famous character. And this year, Google is getting in on the celebration by enhancing Google Maps with Mario for a week. You’ll need to install the newest version of the...

Train as a full stack web developer, and learn at your own price
2018-03-09

Companies are hiring workers with full stack credentials at an astronomical rate. So join the ranks of those talented, immensely hirable workers with this Full Stack Web Development training...and pay any price you want for it.

Should you buy a Juicero in 2018? (I’m serious)
2018-03-09

Remember Juicero? The utterly-ridiculous Silicon Valley juicing machine that cost $600, and turned pouches of medical-looking gunk into foul-tasting vegetable juice? And do you remember when Bloomberg realized that this overpriced machine was no more effective than actually squeezing out the pouches by hand? Good...

Twitter might verify everybody to stop bots and fake news
2018-03-09

The social media network is thinking of expanding verification to all its users in an attempt to make fake accounts and bot-run accounts more obvious, reports Business Insider. It’s unknown what form Twitter’s mass verification system would take, but on a Periscope live stream Twitter’s CEO Jack...

LinkedIn is cracking down on hate speech and abuse
2018-03-09

You’d think a social network for professionals would be a professional place, yet LinkedIn can be no different from Facebook or Twitter at times when some bad actors choose to abuse and insult other LinkedIn users. With that in mind, LinkedIn appears to be cracking down on abuse and hate speech on its platform....

How Instagram Paved The Way For A New Generation Of Home Brands
2018-03-09

We now buy sheets the way we buy clothes, so our bedrooms are always Instagrammable. That’s created a new market for brands like Brooklinen and Parachute. When Instagram first exploded into our lives in 2010, it was quickly co-opted by the fashion set. Style-focused millennial bloggers like Aimee Song, Julia...

EasyEmail uses AI to autosuggest sentences as you write replies in Gmail
2018-03-09

Google already lets you reply to emails quickly in Gmail and Inbox by selecting from a bunch of suggested responses in their mobile apps (Inbox’s feature works on desktops too) – but if you’re looking for something a little more substantial, EasyEmail might be worth a look. The free service requires you to...

Google Chrome makes it easy to switch to a password manager of your choice
2018-03-09

Google Chrome does an okayish job of saving your logins on various sites, but dedicated password management apps are way better. If you’ve been meaning to switch, you’ll be glad to know that a recent update to the browser now lets you export your passwords so you can import them into a different app easily....

Twitter is working to expand its verification to everyone
2018-03-09

Now you can feel special too: Twitter is looking to open up its verification process to regular folk. CEO Jack Dorsey revealed in a Periscope stream on Thursday that the company is working to expand its blue verification checkmark to all users. SEE ALSO: Twitter’s murky verification process is helping...

Online election ad rules may only come after U.S. midterms
2018-03-09

While members of Congress and transparency advocates have urged the Federal Election Commission to institute disclosure rules for online election ads, the FEC’s chairwoman said Thursday that any new rules might not be ready until after this year’s midterm elections, The Washington Post reports. The...

Twitter CEO wants to open up verification to everyone
2018-03-09

In a Periscope livestream today, Twitter CEO revealed the platform intends to open up the verification process to all accounts. The intention is to open verification to everyone. And to do it in a way that’s scalable, where [Twitter] is not in the way and people can verify more facts about themselves and we don’t...

Even violent games teach positive lessons, President Trump
2018-03-08

President Donald Trump is today bringing together the higher-ups of a few video game companies with anti-video game activists to have a confab about violence in games. Specifically, he’s invited Strauss Zelnick, CEO of Rockstar, Robert Altman, CEO of Zenimax, and Mike Gallagher of the Entertainment Software...

Here’s how Amazon could shake up the Google-Facebook ad duopoly
2018-03-08

One of the reasons digital media is such a hard business right now is because two companies–Google and Facebook–control over 60% of the advertising spend. But it’s anyone’s guess how long their dominance will last. As Facebook sees users spending less time on the platform–and...

Chances are, you’re spending 24% less time on Facebook
2018-03-08

It was less than a month ago that I wrote about a trend that should be very worrying for Facebook. Namely, that users were spending less time on the platform. According to Nielsen numbers through November of last year, interpreted by Pivotal, the social network lost about 4% in aggregated time spent. Now new numbers...

This song addresses what it's like to grow up surrounded by social media
2018-03-08

Rising star Hailey Knox is serving some serious truth with 'Don't Got One' - her song that directly confronts what it is like to grow up in the age of social mediaDespite the 19-year-old artist emerging with the help of platforms like YouTube and YouNow, she isn't afraid to speak about the not-so-glossy side of...

Twitter users are twice as likely to retweet fake news stories than authentic ones
2018-03-08

President Obama was not injured in a White House explosion in April 2013. The explosion never happened. But according to users on Twitter, it did.  A fake news tweet had been sent out from a hijacked Associated Press account. The news spread rapidly, so much so, that the Dow Jones Industrial Average plummeted...

Google Maps now lets businesses mark themselves as ‘Women-Led’
2018-03-08

In commemoration of this year’s International Women’s Day, Google is updating its My Business dashboard to allow business owners to list themselves as “Women-Led.” Attributes are the descriptive features that pop up on a business’s card when you search for it in Maps. They include things such as “Free...

Why do you have credit card debt? If you can’t remember, you’re not alone
2018-03-08

“Don’t borrow what you can’t repay.” It’s one of the most cited principles of personal finance, but what if you borrowed it so long ago, you forgot why you needed it in the first place? While there is probably no single answer to that question–at least not one that will fit...

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