Maria Deutscher
Latest from Maria Deutscher
Amazon rolls out Alexa Blueprints to let users personalize their smart speakers
Amazon.com Inc. is looking to widen its lead in the smart-speaker market with a new service that will let consumers personalize the capabilities of their Alexa devices. The move comes as companies such as Google LLC and Apple Inc. continue to try to chip away at Alexa’s lead with a variety of their own devices. ...
Qualcomm to lay off a reported 1,500 workers in $1B cost-cutting push
Qualcomm Inc. has launched a significant round of layoffs in a bid to fulfill a January pledge to reduce its annual expenses by $1 billion. The company confirmed the move late Wednesday, without sharing any specific figures, after Bloomberg reported that the workforce reduction will affect about 1,500 employees in California. According to the sources ...
IBM brings two key open-source developer tools together in its latest cloud service
IBM Corp. today unveiled an experimental new service that brings together two of the most important open-source technologies in the world of cloud application development. The Cloud Foundry Enterprise Environment is based on the platform-as-a-service project of the same name. Cloud Foundry, which powers applications at companies such as Ford Motor Co., has long been available ...
Snap rolls out new augmented reality advertising tool for brands
Snap Inc. today started rolling out a new tool that will enable brands to harness its app’s augmented reality capabilities to target their audiences more directly. The offering, Shoppable AR, is built on Snapchat’s popular Lens feature. The capability lets users overlay augmented reality filters on their faces to generate elaborate, custom-fit visual effects. Companies can ...
With new cybersecurity accord, tech industry vows not to support government hacking
A group of 34 technology companies today announced that its members have signed a “watershed” agreement meant to serve as a shared commitment to combating cyberattacks, particularly the state-sponsored kind. The newly unveiled Cybersecurity Tech Accord is backed by Microsoft Corp., Facebook Inc., Dell Technologies Inc. and a long list of other prominent industry players. ...
Adobe picks up voice app startup Sayspring
Adobe Systems Inc. has acquired a New York startup focused on voice-activated software in a sign that it’s looking to ride the rise of smart assistants such as Amazon.com Inc.’s Alexa. The company announced the purchase of Sayspring Inc., the startup in question, on Monday afternoon. The transaction closed on the same day, while the ...
Dropbox brings its Showcase presentation tool to the enterprise
Just two weeks after its last major platform update, Dropbox Inc. today is releasing another set of new features for customers. The enhancements are rolling out for Showcase, a presentation tool that the cloud storage giant introduced six months ago to let users share content in a more visually appealing format. The update comes on the occasion of Dropbox ...
Kolide nabs $8M for its cloud-based device transparency platform
In 2014, Facebook Inc. open-sourced a homegrown tool called Osquery that was created to help its engineers better monitor internal infrastructure. Kolide Inc., a startup that counts the project’s two main developers as co-founders, now wants to commercialize the technology. Kolide announced today that its effort has attracted a $8 million investment led by Matrix Partners. ...
Cisco debuts new security capabilities to take on ransomware and fileless attacks
Many of the hacking attempts launched against enterprises go after the target firm’s employees, whose login credentials often represent the most straightforward means of accessing key systems. Cisco Systems Inc. wants to mitigate the threat. At the RSA Conference today in San Francisco, the networking giant introduced an enhanced version of its cloud-managed Advanced Malware Protection ...
Google develops an AI that can mimic the brain’s ‘cocktail party effect’
Researchers at Google LLC have developed a new approach to applying artificial intelligence that could help enhance many of the search giant’s services, from YouTube to Hangouts. The breakthrough, which hit the news cycle today following the company’s publication of the details on Wednesday, has to do with a phenomenon known as the cocktail party effect. ...
