Maria Deutscher
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Google teams up with iRobot to give smart home devices spatial awareness
Google LLC has a new plan to make smart home devices more useful that involves using data from vacuums. The search giant today announced that it’s teaming up iRobot Corp., the company behind the hugely popular Roomba family of autonomous vacuum cleaners, in a partnership aimed at harnessing its devices to improve Google Assistant. Specifically, ...
Starship launches ‘world’s first’ commercial delivery service powered by robots
Robotics startup Starship Technologies Inc. has launched what it describes as the world’s first commercial pilot of an autonomous parcel delivery service. The service, dubbed Packages, became available today in the southern English town of Milton Keynes and will roll out to San Francisco by year’s end. Deliveries will be carried out by a fleet ...
Uber rolls out monthly subscription service in bid to boost growth, counter Lyft
In a bid to win over more users, Uber Technologies Inc. has started rolling out a subscription plan that offers significant fare discounts for a monthly fee. The service, dubbed Ride Pass, became available today in Los Angeles, Austin, Orlando, Denver and Miami. The launch comes two weeks after Lyft Inc. rolled out a subscription offering of ...
Apple debuts redesigned, faster iPad Pro, new MacBook Air and Mac Mini
The tablet market is shrinking, but Apple Inc. is faring quite well, shipping more than 400 million iPads to date including 44.2 million in the past year alone — more than the number of laptops sold by any other manufacturer during that period. Apple Chief Executive Tim Cook made sure to drive home the tablet ...
Adding to mounting global pressure on tech giants, UK to levy ‘digital services tax’
The U.K. government today announced plans to levy a “digital services tax” on major tech firms that could add up to hundreds of millions of dollars per year. The proposed scheme, which is set to take effect in April 2020, would require companies such as Alphabet Inc. and Facebook Inc. to pay a 2 percent tax ...
Following HipChat sale, Atlassian offloads its Jitsi video conferencing platform
After selling its HipChat and Stride team collaboration services to Slack Technologies Inc. in June, Atlassian Corp. PLC is taking another big step back from the video communications market. The company today announced that it has sold its Jitsi video conferencing platform to 8×8 Inc., a major provider of online meeting services for the enterprise. The ...
Sales AI provider Conversica lands $31M in new funding
Conversica Inc., a Foster City, California-based artificial intelligence provider focused on making sales teams more productive, today announced that it has raised $31 million in new funding. Conversica offers an AI platform that enables companies to build conversational agents for automating interactions with prospects. These agents can engage users via email and texts, with support for ...
Microsoft completes $7.5B acquisition of code hosting platform GitHub
As of today, GitHub is officially a Microsoft Corp. business. GitHub Chief Executive Officer Nat Friedman (pictured, second from the left) shared the news in a blog post, exactly one week after the European Union approved the $7.5 billion transaction. Friedman took the opportunity to reiterate the commitments that Microsoft made in June when it ...
Report: Samsung planning 5G-capable Galaxy S10, new foldable handset
New details have emerged about Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd.’s next flagship smartphone and the foldable handset that the company recently confirmed it’s developing. Citing anonymous sources, Bloomberg reported today that the upcoming Galaxy S10 will support 5G networking technology, which promises to enable connections 10 to 100 times faster than today’s carrier infrastructure. Leading telecom companies ...
UK fines Facebook for Cambridge Analytica breach as EU lawmakers demand audit
The U.K’s privacy watchdog today hit Facebook Inc. with a 500,000-pound fine over its handling of the Cambridge Analytica scandal, upholding a July decision that the social network unsuccessfully tried to contest. The sum, which amounts to $664,000, won’t make much of a dent in the company’s bottom line. Analysts polled by Zacks Investment Research project that Facebook ...
