Bluesky releases dislike button as it reaches 40 million users
Monday, November 3, 2025 by Trey Abbe
The social-media service Bluesky has announced it has surpassed 40 million registered users and is introducing a new “dislike” button in beta, marking a significant step in how it will personalize user experiences and moderate content. According to the company, the new signal is intended to allow users to express what they prefer not to see and help the plat...
SMU researchers show AI creates realistic game characters
Thursday, October 16, 2025 by Richard Harris
When Jake Klinkert was growing up, his father suggested that since he loved video games, he should consider making them. That simple encouragement left a lasting impression. Klinkert embraced the idea and pursued it academically, ultimately earning a Master of Interactive Technology in Digital Game Development from SMU Guildhall. His early passion for interactive media ...
Apple withdraws ICE tracking apps from App Store including ICEBlock
Friday, October 10, 2025 by Trey Abbe
Apple has removed ICEBlock and similar applications from its App Store following a request from the Trump administration. The move marks a rare instance of a U.S. technology firm complying with a federal demand to take down apps, raising new questions about the balance between public safety, free speech, and corporate responsibility.
What the apps did
ICEBlock and...
OpenAI social app Sora rolls out as standalone platform with Sora 2
Friday, October 10, 2025 by Richard Harris
OpenAI has launched a new social platform called Sora, designed around AI-generated short form video. The release coincides with Sora 2, the company’s upgraded video generation model. Together, the app and the model represent a move into the social media space, where OpenAI is positioning its technology against platforms such as TikTok and Instagram Reels.
Intr...
Oracle names co-CEOs in bold leadership change
Tuesday, October 7, 2025 by Trey Abbe
Oracle has appointed insiders Clay Magouyrk and Mike Sicilia as co-chief executive officers, marking the end of Safra Catz’s 11-year tenure as sole CEO. The decision underscores Oracle’s reliance on its cloud business as it competes with Microsoft and Alphabet in a rapidly expanding market. Catz will remain with the company as vice chair of the board.
Dur...
Phishing sites seized by Microsoft in major crackdown
Tuesday, September 23, 2025 by Richard Harris
Microsoft has intensified its efforts to combat cybercrime by targeting Raccoon0365, a subscription-based phishing service that enabled wide-scale credential theft. Working through the U.S. District Court in Manhattan, the company successfully obtained approval to seize nearly 340 internet domains associated with fraudulent login pages.
The campaign represents one of...
Meta smart glasses launch with display to pursue superintelligence
Tuesday, September 23, 2025 by Richard Harris
Meta Platforms has introduced its first consumer-ready smart glasses with an integrated digital display. The launch highlights the company’s effort to merge wearable hardware with artificial intelligence, positioning glasses as a tool for everyday interaction with digital systems while balancing opportunities and challenges.
Features of the new device
The ne...
Push for FTC to Investigate Microsoft
Monday, September 22, 2025 by Austin Harris
U.S. Senator Ron Wyden has formally requested the Federal Trade Commission to examine Microsoft for what he describes as significant cybersecurity shortcomings. The request cites repeated security incidents and raises questions about the company’s role in safeguarding critical infrastructure.
Senator highlights cybersecurity risks
In a letter addressed to FT...
Bitcoin buyers decline signals weakness in crypto-linked stocks
Tuesday, September 16, 2025 by Trey Abbe
A downturn in cryptocurrency prices has been followed by significant declines in the shares of companies that hold bitcoin or promote themselves as digital asset treasuries. Analysts say this trend reflects a broader cooling of investor sentiment that had driven these firms’ stocks to record highs earlier in the year.
One of the most prominent companies tied to...
How AGI tags help developers and players
Wednesday, August 6, 2025 by Richard Harris
The Microsoft Game Dev blog recently highlighted the launch of the Accessible Games Initiative (AGI), a collaborative effort led by the Entertainment Software Association (ESA) and major industry players like Xbox, Electronic Arts, Google, Nintendo of America, and Ubisoft. The AGI introduces a set of standardized “tags” that clearly communicate the accessibi...
Apple browser engine ban persists even under DMA
Monday, July 21, 2025 by Austin Harris
Apple’s rules and technical restrictions are blocking other browser vendors from successfully offering their own engines to users in the EU. At the recent Digital Markets Act (DMA) workshop, Apple claimed it didn’t know why no browser vendor has ported their engine to iOS over the past 15 months. But the reality is Apple knows exactly what the barriers are a...
2025 Artifact Management Report
Thursday, July 10, 2025 by Richard Harris
The 2025 Artifact Management Report arrives at a moment of profound change for software development teams worldwide. As organizations grapple with unprecedented security challenges, rapid AI adoption, and complex software supply chains, this year’s findings expose the critical gaps and evolving expectations surrounding artifact management. With software now the ba...
Developers Alliance announces new board chair
Wednesday, February 12, 2025 by Brittany Hainzinger
The Developers Alliance announced Jake Ward will chair a new board of directors tasked with addressing the mounting public policy challenges facing application developers. Ward co-founded the Alliance in 2012, leaving in 2017 to found developer-focused management platform Data Protocol.
"I’m excited to return to the Developers Alliance at this critical tim...
ChatGPT and generative AI to transform medical companies
Wednesday, May 3, 2023 by Austin Harris
Huma.AI released the findings of a survey that found that Medical Affairs leaders see significant potential for the application of ChatGPT-like technology at Life Science companies within the next two years.
86% of the Medical Affairs leaders when asked whether Generative AI can be applied at Life Science companies answered, "Yes" or "eventually Yes.&q...
Cardano gets largest upgrade in 5 years
Wednesday, October 19, 2022 by Richard Harris
The research and software development company behind Cardano, Input Output Global (IOG), has confirmed that it had last night, along with the Cardano Foundation technical team, successfully applied the much-anticipated ‘Vasil’ upgrade to the Cardano mainnet. The upgrade is set to bring increased network capacity, richer applications, and faster transactions ...
How eSIM iPhone 14 could be a disaster for unprepared carriers
Monday, September 12, 2022 by Richard Harris
The news that Apple has launched an eSIM-only iPhone 14 model in the US is an eSIM turning point in the mobile carrier industry, essentially signaling the start of a new era of digital connectivity competition, says GlobalData.
According to the leading data and analytics company, the consequences are many and varied, as the eSIM-only smartphone model represents myria...
Decentralized wallets suggested after Solana hack
Wednesday, August 17, 2022 by Austin Harris
The recent hack on the Solana cryptocurrency wallet has led to a drain of millions of dollars, which raised concerns about the security of the crypto ecosystem. Against this backdrop, the volume of discussions around 'Solana' among Twitter influencers surged in the first week of August as most of them commended the use of decentralized or open source w...
SDK runtime within the Google Privacy Sandbox
Tuesday, March 22, 2022 by Nathan Darst
Google recently announced its plans to bring its Privacy Sandbox to Android. Largely conceptual at this point, Google has made it clear this will be a multi-year lift (at least 2 years). The lead time is much appreciated; however, it's so distant that we don't have any solidified documentation, betas, or developer previews to act on. So what does that mean? Well...
Bitcoin to hit an all time high
Tuesday, March 9, 2021 by Brittany Hainzinger
The Bitcoin price is likely to hit an all-time high of $60,000 this week as the U.S. House of Representatives is expected to pass Democrats’ $1.9 trillion stimulus bill this week.
The forecast from Nigel Green, the chief executive and founder of deVere Group, comes as the cryptocurrency hit a market capitalization of $1 trillion Tuesday, as prices reached $54,9...
Self-learning technology for conversational AI from Boost ai
Thursday, March 26, 2020 by Brittany Hainzinger
Boost.ai has released a self-learning technology for conversational AI. Developed and offered exclusively by boost.ai, self-learning AI overcomes the ‘cold start’ challenges of building and managing virtual agents with an automated system that intelligently analyzes and recommends both new conversational dialogs, as well as suggestions to improve existi...
Why AR advertising is hard
Friday, June 21, 2019 by Richard Harris
To mark the second day of Cannes Lions Advertising Festival of Creativity 2019, Unity Technologies, the company powering more than 60% of all AR and VR content and serving more than 11B ads each month, has revealed the results of an independent research project on the state of the Augmented Reality (AR) advertising and marketing market in 2019. Unity surveyed approximat...
This machine learning analyzer will review your code for constancy
Monday, February 4, 2019 by Richard Harris
Lack of consistency in the development of source code has made maintaining code over time and making updates more time-consuming and costly. Source{d}, the company enabling machine learning for large-scale code analysis, solves this long-standing problem with Machine Learning assisted code review.
The new source{d} Lookout analyzer, which has learned to model s...
GitHub Actions and other announcements from GitHub Universe
Wednesday, October 17, 2018 by Richard Harris
GitHub, the soon to be acquired by Microsoft company, has always been known for its source code repository capabilities for developers. But why just store the code on a platform when you can run it too?
At its annual developer conference, GitHub Universe, they announced Actions, which is essentially a way to help automate your development workflows. Actions use...
Edge computing has a need for speed
Wednesday, May 30, 2018 by Austin Harris
Edge computing is projected to grow at a cumulative annual growth rate of 46% over the next four years to over $6 billion by 2022.1 With this growth has come a readjustment in planning strategy on the part of CIOs and other IT managers. “For nearly a decade now, large, computer-intensive enterprises have been looking at IT investment in terms of moving virtually all app...
The issues with Blockchain and the enterprise
Thursday, May 3, 2018 by Mike Palencia
At the end of January 2018, the total market cap of the crypto-economy stood at over $500 billion. This phenomenon is occurring at a time when the vast majority of individuals involved in this space are just trading cryptocurrencies and where even that user base is not particularly big.Some people interpret these facts as a sign that this is a bubble waiting to burst. O...
NVIDIA urges congressional committee to embrace AI
Thursday, February 22, 2018 by Richard Harris
Artificial intelligence represents the biggest technological and economic shift in our lifetime, NVIDIA’s Ian Buck told a U.S. Congressional committee recently. In testimony before a hearing of the House of Representatives Subcommittee on Information Technology, Buck, vice president and general manager of our Tesla business, said the federal government should increase r...
Business messaging engagement platform released by 3Cinteractive
Monday, February 12, 2018 by Austin Harris
3Cinteractive (3C) has announced their A2P Rich Communication Services (RCS) messaging engagement platform. This platform is an extension of 3C’s existing mobile engagement platform, enabling brands to orchestrate and deliver A2P messaging created by RCS capabilities.3C’s platform enables users to build comprehensive RCS workflows that leverage new feature-rich function...
How human assisted AI may be the future
Tuesday, December 26, 2017 by Richard Harris
Self-driving (autonomous) cars, robotic hotel concierges, and Amazon’s intelligent delivery drones - it’s hard to minimize the potential impact that artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) promise. Business leaders are all aflutter about AI’s potential for providing game-changing impact to their industries. AI is also gaining attention for the perceived t...
About the explosive growth of mobile video advertising
Tuesday, September 19, 2017 by Richard Harris
Smaato has released its Q2 2017 Global Trends in Mobile Advertising Report. Smaato conducted an in-depth analysis of the 1.5+ trillion ad impressions delivered on its platform in the second quarter of 2017, and found new data to support the massive growth of video advertising globally, and particularly in-app, which is growing faster over mobile web as a share of digita...
Small business and mobile apps insight
Thursday, April 20, 2017 by Richard Harris
Small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) are moving rapidly toward adopting mobile apps in 2017, according to new research from Clutch. They report that 42% of SMBs have built their own mobile app, and the survey indicates that SMBs increasingly view them as a worthwhile tool to improve business operations and return on investment.Two-thirds (67%) of SMBs surveyed said ...
How much is Snapchat really worth
Monday, February 27, 2017 by Austin Harris
Every year Brand Finance values the brands of thousands of the world’s biggest companies. Snapchat’s brand has been found to be worth only US$1.7 billion. This is 8-9% of the suggested US$19.5-22 billion company value range, an unusually low percentage which suggests that the target may be over-ambitious. Brand Finance’s CEO David Haigh comments, “'Brand Finance has val...
The journey from a hairdresser to a Salesforce Administrator
Wednesday, December 21, 2016 by Richard Harris
This week, we spoke with Cheryl Feldman, Assistant Vice President, Salesforce Administration & Strategy Allianz Global Investors, about how she went from hairdresser to Salesforce Administrator, and her advice for others looking to kick-start their technology career. ADM: Prior to working in tech what did you do for a living? What made you want to switch career...
New Mastercard Developers Program Offers a Suite of New Commerce API's
Wednesday, September 28, 2016 by Richard Harris
Mastercard is making it even easier for developers to create next-generation commerce solutions with the launch of Mastercard Developers. This single gateway enables Mastercard partners to access a diverse range of Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) across payments, data and security. The platform also includes a ‘New and Experimental’ API category...
Creator of LureDeals Talks About Capitalizing on Pokemon Go Traffic
Saturday, August 27, 2016 by Scott Poniewaz
Britt White is a former hog wrestling world champion, but most recently gained notoriety for Lure Deals, which provides marketing opportunities for Pokémon GO. He has been a part of the Austin tech community for a few years now and runs TKM Labs, a digital agency and virtual reality firm focused on tackling industry specific issues utilizing VR and AR across areas like ...
Over 20 Percent of People Now Use a Mobile Ad Blocker Says PageFair
Tuesday, May 31, 2016 by Stuart Parkerson
A new PageFair report estimates that as of March 2016, 419 million people, or 22% of the world’s 1.9 billion smartphone users, are blocking ads on the mobile web. The report titled “Adblocking Goes Mobile” by PageFair was produced with app intelligence firm Priori Data. The report also suggest that mobile adblocking grew by 90% globally in 2015 and mobile users are...
