Read original story on: Gigaom
Ford unveiled the newest update of its AppLink system, and one key highlight is its capability to support third-party navigation apps, including Google Maps, Waze, or even Apple Maps, if that’s what you prefer. As most automakers tend to limit in-car navigation to their own embedded OEM nav systems, Ford’s move here will not only save its customers a few bucks on subscription fees, it also points to a more platform-neutral future for connected cars.
Read original story on: Finextra
San Francisco just became the first US city to attempt bringing mobile payment into its public transportation system. The city’s Municipal Transportation Agency (SFMTA) is teaming up with vendor GlobeSherpa’s mobile ticketing platform for a pilot program, set to launch this summer, which will produce a mobile app that reportedly allows users to store a debit or credit card or use PayPal to purchase tickets. If this is successful, we humbly suggest the MTA here at NYC to get on it ASAP.
Read original story on: WSJ
Researchers at the University of Michigan are developing a smartphone app that records and analyzes patients’ vocal patterns during telephone calls to predict if someone is on the verge of depression or mania. In other words, soon your phone will be able to tell if you’re depressed or not. Big data has been applied to fitness and health tracking for several years now, so it was only a matter of time before it moved into mental health measurement as well.
Read original story on: The Hollywood Reporter
CNN announced today that it has inked a deal with the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) to integrate drones into its newsgathering and reporting. This marks the first major domestic news agency to officially deploy drones for journalistic use.
Read original story on: NPR
At last night’s 72nd Golden Globe Awards, Amazon Prime claimed their first-ever victories at any major award show, as their new original series Transparent collected awards for Best TV Comedy Series, as well as Best Actor in a Comedy for its lead Jeffery Tambor.
Such big wins for Amazon mark the first time a streaming service other than Netflix (which also scored a big win with Kevin Spacey winning Best Actor in a Drama for House of Cards) has beaten traditional TV players, signaling the continuing diversification of the OTT TV market. At the end of the day, consumer don’t really care which distribution channel they are using, as long as they are enjoying the quality content.
Read original story on: ArsTechnica
The smart thermostat Nest just got even smarter: Nest owners can now use Google’s eponymous app on iOS or Android to easily control their home’s temperature, similar to how they used Nest’s own app. They can also use Google’s voice commands to change or set their temperature before even getting home. More impressively, Google Now will offer up suggestions for temperature settings based on user location and time of the day.
Read original story on: VentureBeat
This holiday season, Banana Republic is in a giving mood, partnering up with not one, not two, but four local services. The national retailer is providing its customers with free credits for services on Shyp, Deliv, Curb, and TaskRabbit. The best part? No purchase is required to receive these perks; you just need to walk into a Banana Republic store.
With such generous offers, the company aims to make the holiday shopping a little easier for its customers, while giving the local services a boost. And when shopping is made easier, shoppers naturally tend to shop more. It is a win-win-win solution for all parties involved, and that’s why more retailers, especially the brick-and-mortar ones, should get closer to on-demand local services.
Read original story on: The Next Web
In light of the national debate of net neutrality, BitTorrent has launched a revolutionary browser that aims to keep the Internet open and neutral while ensuring privacy for all users. The browser, dubbed “Project Maelstrom”, uses its peer-to-peer distribution technology to make the Internet more open by giving control back to users, as it requires the crowd to work together to host content so no central servers are necessary. The project is still its early days of alpha test, but we are very interested to see where it is going.
Read original story on: Gizmodo
Oculus has announced its acquisition of Nimble VR, a two-year-old startup that began with gloves, evolved to Kinect, and finally developed its own mounted 3D camera to track hand motions in real time. This acquisition points to Oculus’ ambition in creating a gesture-motion game controller for its headset, which would open up great possibilities for a deeper, VR-powered immersive engagement.
Read original story on: BusinessInsider
For the first time ever, Facebook Page owners uploaded more videos directly to Facebook than they did via sharing from YouTube, according to new data from Socialbakers. Part of that is due to that fact that videos on Facebook automatically play as a user scrolls through the news feed, and Facebook’s algorithm allegedly ranks posts with natively hosted videos higher in news feed.
Meanwhile, YouTube still has much higher volume, and has recently started rewarding bonuses to its video creators for temporary platform exclusivity. So the fight over the leading position of online video distribution is likely to continue.
