Maria Deutscher
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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. ...
Police can unlock latest iPhones with a cracking device called GrayKey
A new report reveals that law enforcement agencies throughout the United States now have a system that can unlock the latest iPhone models, as well as older devices running the two most recent releases of Apple Inc.’s iOS software. The information came to light through a Motherboard investigation published Thursday. The cracking system in question, ...
Spotify buys music licensing startup Loudr in first acquisition since IPO
In its first acquisition since going public, Spotify Technology SA today announced that it has bought re:discover Inc., a music licensing startup that does business under the name Loudr. The price tag was presumably fairly modest given that Loudr had raised just $600,000 from investors prior to joining Spotify. But despite the likely small size of the ...
Cloudflare moves beyond web services with new Spectrum security service
Cloudflare Inc. is expanding its effort to secure the internet beyond websites and cloud applications. The provider, which helps companies block malicious traffic and make their online content load faster, today unveiled a new service for protecting the internet-connected infrastructure running in the background of the publicly facing web. This includes most everything from internal corporate email servers ...