Amazon’s $180 Echo and the new Google Home (due out later this year) promise voice-activated assistants that order groceries, check calendars and perform sundry tasks of your everyday life. Now, with a little initiative and some online instructions, you can build the devices yourself for a fraction of the cost. And that’s just fine with the tech giants.
Apps or the web? For Google, at least, the answer is now clear: It’s both.
As usual, Google used the keynote at its I/O developer conference to unleash a barrage of product news. Here’s a summary of everything it announced.
Auctions are coming to rental markets. That’s good news for landlords, but bad news for apartment hunters in America’s most expensive cities.
Fast internet is a basic need for Netflix viewers, but for rural residents, it’s a real lifeline. In fact, that’s the name of the federal program designed to provide affordable communications to low-income households. That program has a lot of work to do.
Startup founders are steadily losing interest in advertising. An analysis by Silicon Valley startup accelerator Y Combinator found that number of applicants mentioning advertising as a source of revenue has fallen by more than half since peaking in 2009. By contrast, founders are gravitating to paid subscription models, often called Software-as-a-Service, to fund their startup dreams.
Y Combinator, Silicon Valley’s most storied startup accelerator, receives thousands of applications every year. It recently analyzed all the words of hopeful founders since 2005 to see how well they predicted the next hot investment opportunities, and which sectors may be facing the abyss.
On Sunday, May 8, Germany hit a new high in renewable energy generation. Thanks to a sunny and windy day, at one point around 1pm the country’s solar, wind, hydro and biomass plants were supplying about 55 GW of the 63 GW being consumed, or 87%.
Samsung, Google, and Sony are filing a flurry of patents to claim your eyeballs. The race is on to stake out the prime real estate on your face and prevent competitors from getting there first. Since 2001, the three companies have filed almost 50 US patent applications related to smart contacts, ocular implants, and eye-computing devices—most of them in the last four years. Google leads the pack with 35 patents, followed by Sony (12) and Samsung (6).
Silicon Valley is famously allergic to meetings. Few things say bloated legacy business like the endless, pointless meetings that startups love to mock.
Tesla’s cars receive endless praise for their elegance and performance. The trick for the company will be to actually deliver thousands of cars on time with world-class manufacturing standards.
Worries that young university scholars are not getting enough rest are probably unwarranted. Students at most schools get the same amount of shut-eye on average—7 hours and 3 minutes— which is within the range recommended by experts. But students at top-ranked schools showed an intriguing pattern: They tend to fall asleep late, after 1 AM, compared to their counterparts further down the rankings.
Food from a pod may sound like something from an unwanted future. But a growing number of companies are selling expensive machines that prepare simple foods at home using proprietary containers, like Keurig does for coffee. The most visible example is Juicero, the much-maligned startup that raised more than $100 million to sell a $700 juicer for vegetables sent to your home.
Google guesses it will be 30 years or more before truly autonomous vehicles can drive everywhere on public roads under any conditions. Shortening that timeline means improving the technology, or simplifying the environment.
No more searching; just ask questions.
Unicorns, once a rare sighting for investors, have frolicked across Silicon Valley of late. Now the market seems to be yanking on the reins.
Many of America’s cities are flourishing. But a closer look reveals a migration is underway.
The National Security Agency (NSA) is watching the electronic communications of hundreds of millions people, allegedly to find foreign threats. But before Congress reauthorizes laws allowing this, it has a question: How many Americans are caught up in the government’s digital dragnets?
People work best in teams. Companies mostly hire individuals. That mismatch drove the payments startup Stripe, which is struggling to fill almost 100 open positions, to start hiring the same way it works: in teams.
The problem with doctors is you only see them after you’re sick. Prevention is preferable.
Every home could be a mobile home one day.
General Electric this month started testing the largest jet engine ever built, at its wooded test site near Peebles, Ohio. The new engine, the GE9X, is more efficient, more powerful, and more heat resistant than its predecessors. It’s also made with 3D-printed parts.
Microsoft is finding its home in the cloud, but not quite fast enough for investors.
The solar power industry is about to get a big boost in San Francisco. On April 19, the city’s Board of Supervisors voted unanimously to become the first major US metropolitan area requiring that new buildings install solar photovoltaic (PV) panels on their roofs.
