Today’s Tech Sightings: How Bill and Melinda Gates Want to Transform Teaching Bill and Melinda Gates are putting up a series of blog posts this week to look at ways technology can transform education. In one post, Bill Gates points to a school system in California, which now uses computers to analyze how kids perform […]
Education Tech; Alphabet; Western Tech Firms in China
Hawking’s Voice; Google in Africa; Bitcoin Split?
Today’s Tech Sightings: Stephen Hawking’s Voice Now Available as Open Source Software Intel is making astrophysicist Stephen Hawking’s distinctive voice available to the public for free. The technology developed for Hawking, who suffers from amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, is called the Assistive Context-Aware Toolkit (ACAT). Intel will now make the source code open for people to […]
Sundar Pichai; Alphabet; IoT Security; Microsoft’s Funny AI
Today’s Tech Sightings: Who Is Sundar Pichai, Google’s New CEO? Out of the blue, Google announced Monday that it is restructuring. The Google you know will now be a subsidiary lead by a new CEO – Sundar Pichai. The new parent company is called Alphabet. Pichai has been with Google for the past 11 years. […]
Facebook; Google Translate; Wearable Tech; Windows 10; e-Sports
Today’s Tech Sightings: Half of the World’s Population Is on Facebook Facebook’s daily active users now average 968 million, an increase of 17 percent over last year. According to Facebook, up to 1.49 billion users – half of the world’s online population of three billion – accessed the social network by the end of the […]
Google Takes on Sri Lanka; Home Robots; Windows 10; Hammertoss
Today’s Tech Sightings: Google’s Internet Balloons Will Provide Connectivity to All of Sri Lanka Google’s Project Loon and the government of Sri Lanka have just signed an agreement to provide connectivity to the entire country. The island’s IT Minister, Mangala Samaraweera, said the project — using helium balloons to provide Internet access — will connect […]
Three-D Printing; App Fraud; Asia Eyes US Gaming Market
Today’s Tech Sightings: India Needs China’s 3-D Printing Construction Technology Now Building a house in India takes about six months, on average. But recently, a Chinese company put together a 3-D-printed house in a matter of three hours. Writer Abhimanyu Ghoshal argues that India could use this technology to pare down the time it needs […]
Mozilla Blocks Flash; Nadella’s Microsoft; Google’s Photo Mishaps
Today’s Tech Sightings: Mozilla Blocks Flash Player on Firefox Mozilla has blocked all versions of Adobe Flash Player in its Firefox browser due to its vulnerability to attack. Last week’s breach of the Italian company Hacking Team was made possible by a Flash Player bug that hackers exploited. While Adobe issued a patch, there appear […]
China’s Privacy Law; Gender on Facebook, Google; Mobile Addiction
Today’s Tech Sightings: China’s Draft Cybersecurity Law Could Boost Censorship A draft cybersecurity law just published by China’s parliament boosts privacy protection from hackers and information peddlers, but strengthens government powers to obtain records and block information that might be deemed illegal under Chinese law. The move could have significant implications for Internet service providers […]
Generation Mobile; IoT, Wearable Tech Promise; Yahoo Search
Today’s Tech Sightings: Emerging ‘Gen M’ Workforce Requires a Rethink of IT Strategy A new, independent study from MobileIron that polled more than 3,500 professionals about work and personal life has uncovered an emerging demographic called “Generation Mobile” or “Gen M” that likely will require a review of traditional IT strategies. This demographic is described […]
Future Toilets; Creepy Facebook Algorithm; Privacy; Free Windows 10?
Today’s Tech Sightings: Gates-Funded Toilet of the Future Is Built So Anyone Can Repair It Funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Caltech’s Group’s “toilet of the future” uses solar power to turn human waste into clear, sterilized water. After testing it in India, the group decided to tackle maintenance issues, should the toilet […]