The Tech Landscape #97
A 2013 meta-analysis of 4,000 peer-reviewed papers which expressed an opinion on the cause of global warming found that human activity was agreed to be the cause by 97% of them.
After the bumper last newsletter, a bit of a quiet one this week. I think the next few issues will probably be a bit quiet too, as there are only a few weeks to go until the start of developer conference season when the big tech companies make their announcements for the year ahead.
Assistants & Voice
Google Assistant for smart displays now understands French and German, which usually precedes a hardware launch in the countries in question. Lenovo’s smart display looks like it will be first into these markets.
androidpolice.com/2019/04/08/assistant-on-smart-displays-speaks-french-and-german-as-lenovo-launches-its-display-in-france/
Alexa Skills Kit, the software for building Alexa Skills, is now available in Brazil ahead of the launch of Alexa there later in the near future.
developer.amazon.com/blogs/alexa/post/e40296bb-130e-40c9-b2fb-4505094d6bca/alexa-skills-kit-expands-to-brazil-alexa-voice-service-coming-later-this-year
Google announced a number of new features for G Suite, including compatibility with Assistant. This means Assistant can now be used in workplaces. You’ll need to switch accounts between personal and work calendars rather than having them aggregated, unfortunately.
cloud.google.com/blog/products/g-suite/helping-businesses-work-faster-smarter-and-more-collaboratively-in-g-suite
Social
Snapchat is rolling out its fully-rebuilt app for Android. The previous version was slow and buggy, but the rebuild should work much better and help Snapchat reach more users globally.
theverge.com/2019/4/8/18300720/snapchat-android-app-rebuilt-release-speed-bugs-features
The consumer version of Google+ may be dead, but businesses can continue to use it in a new iteration, called Currents.
gsuiteupdates.googleblog.com/2019/04/currents-for-gsuite.html
Facebook announced further efforts to combat disinformation on its platform, including ‘click-gap’ analysis—that is, flagging content which gets much more activity on Facebook than its reputation elsewhere would suggest.
newsroom.fb.com/news/2019/04/remove-reduce-inform-new-steps/
Everything Else
All devices running Android 7.0 and above can now be used as a security key for Google accounts, making it harder for accounts to be hacked.
blog.google/technology/safety-security/your-android-phone-is-a-security-key/
Google announced AI Platform, a suite of Cloud tools for building, training, and running machine learning systems.
techcrunch.com/2019/04/10/google-expands-its-ai-services/
YouTube is investing in interactive story-telling tools (perhaps inspired by Netflix’s Bandersnatch).
bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-04-09/youtube-is-developing-choose-your-own-adventure-programs
Disney unveiled their new video streaming service, Disney+, with content including Marvel, Pixar, Star Wars, and National Geographic. US first, with an ‘aggressive’ international expansion expected to follow.
thewaltdisneycompany.com/disney-spotlights-comprehensive-direct-to-consumer-strategy-at-2019-investor-day/