The Tech Landscape #111
A cricket score of 111 is known as ‘a Nelson’ after Admiral Horatio Nelson who was said to have had one eye, one arm, and one leg. In fact, Nelson never lost a leg.
A short-ish email again, after another quiet-ish week of news.
Assistants & Voice
Developers can now start to build Alexa Skills in Hindi. Alexa has been available in India since 2017, but exclusively in English. Hindi is spoken (as a first or second language) by 53% of the population of India, as opposed to the 12% who speak English.
developer.amazon.com/blogs/alexa/post/8840aefa-3f43-4049-9974-6e39360d11b4/alexa-skills-kit-expands-to-include-hindi
Amazon says Alexa devices were among the top sellers in its latest Prime Day event. The Echo Dot and Alexa-enabled Fire TV sticks were best sellers worldwide, and it was the “biggest event ever” for Echo devices with screens.
press.aboutamazon.com/news-releases/news-release-details/alexa-how-was-prime-day-prime-day-2019-surpassed-black-friday
The next update to Windows 10 will allow third-party assistant activation from the lock screen, turning PCs into smart displays.
theverge.com/2019/7/15/20695086/microsoft-windows-10-amazon-alexa-digital-assistants-lock-screen-features
Audio
Apple is rumoured to be investing in a slate of original podcast content, in the face of increasing competition from Spotify and other services.
bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-07-16/apple-plans-to-bankroll-original-podcasts-to-fend-off-rivals
Amazon-owned Audible announced a new feature that uses natural language understanding to automatically transcribe audio books and show the text on screen. Publishers aren’t very happy, saying Audible don’t have the rights to the text.
eu.usatoday.com/story/tech/talkingtech/2019/07/15/audible-let-you-read-audiobook-youre-listening/1503387001/
Everything Else
The EU has opened an antitrust investigation into Amazon, in regards to the way it uses data about third-party sales to increase its own offering. How does this differ from, say, Tesco making its own-brand baked beans based on sales data about Heinz beans?
theverge.com/2019/7/17/20696214/amazon-european-union-antitrust-investigation-third-party-seller-marketplace
Google Maps now shows real-time availability of bikes in bikesharing docks. The feature was trialled in New York, and is now rolling out to 24 cities including London.
blog.google/products/maps/real-time-bikeshare-information-google-map/
NVIDIA announced two new breakthroughs in AR glasses technology: mixing prescription lenses with AR projection, and foveated rendering (showing a virtual scene in high resolution only where the user is looking, and low resolution in the periphery).
next.reality.news/news/nvidia-uncovers-breakthroughs-with-dynamic-focus-prescription-lenses-for-augmented-reality-displays-0201326/
‘Robot lawyer’ app DoNotPay has a new service which creates virtual credit cards for signing up to trial services; the card protects users’ identities and auto-cancels subscriptions at the end of a trial period.
wired.com/story/free-trial-card/
Netflix lost 130,000 subscribers in the US in the last financial quarter, the first loss in eight years. Globally, it increased its user base by half of what was expected. Netflix blamed price increases and a lack of new original content earlier in the year.
theverge.com/2019/7/17/20694711/netflix-friends-the-office-earnings-q2-2019-subscribers-disney-hbo-apple-amazon-stock-drop
WeChat’s latest update brings improvements to the ‘floating windows’ which let you multitask within the app—moving it more towards a complete app-as-operating system.
blog.wechat.com/2019/07/17/wechat-7-0-5-for-ios-and-android/
Android’s ‘fast pair’ technology, which makes it easier to pair wireless headphones with Bluetooth, is getting some new features including better battery reporting, and ‘find my device’. I strongly suspect Google will release a new version of its Pixel Buds later this year.
android-developers.googleblog.com/2019/07/whats-new-with-fast-pair.html