Eric David
Latest from Eric David
Google’s Uptime app lets you watch YouTube with friends
Area 120, Google Inc.’s in-house startup incubator, has launched a new app called Uptime that allows users to watch and react to YouTube videos together, making the popular video streaming site a more social experience. Currently available for iOS only, Uptime is equal parts chatroom, social network and video player, with a cartoony interface that ...
Even with AI, people are still the driving force of innovation
The dream of artificial intelligence has been alive for about as long as we have had computers, if not longer, and thanks to recent advancements in hardware and machine learning, that dream is now more real than ever. And it has potential not only as a business tool but as something that can benefit the entire human ...
Chowbotics raises $5M to expand its robot chef business
Chowbotics, a robotics startup that specializes in automated food preparation, announced today that it has raised $5 million in Series A funding from Techstars Ventures, Foundry Group, Galvanize Ventures and the Geekdom Fund. The company, which is changing its name from Casabots, was founded in 2014 by inventor Deepak Sekar. It wants to make robots that can quickly ...
Facebook launches 360 video and photo app for Samsung Gear VR
Facebook Inc. today announced the launch of Facebook 360, an immersive photo and video app for the Samsung Gear VR, a mobile virtual reality headset that is powered by technology from the Facebook-owned Oculus VR Inc. According to Facebook, users of the social network have already uploaded more than 25 million 360-degree photos and over ...
Google acquires Kaggle, a data science competition platform
Updated Google Inc. today revealed that it’s acquiring Kaggle Inc., a data science community that hosts machine learning competitions and offers collaboration tools for data scientists. Founded in 2011 in San Francisco, Kaggle calls itself “a platform for data science competitions,” but the service has ambitions beyond competitions alone. The company is also working to ...
Doppler Labs accuses Bose of copying its augmented hearing tech
Doppler Labs Inc., maker of the Here One smart earbuds, has filed a lawsuit against Bose Corp. claiming that the audio electronics company’s Hearphones copy the design and features of Doppler’s own products. Founded in 2013, Doppler specializes in smart earbuds that allow wearers to listen to music or take calls while still hearing important sounds ...
AI makes Google Translate better at Hindi, Russian and Vietnamese
Google Inc. announced in November that it would be using an artificial intelligence technique called neural machine translation to completely change the way Google Translate understands languages, with the ultimate goal of creating a universal language translator. Today the company came a little closer to that vision by rolling its system out to three more languages: Hindi, Russian and ...
Shazam hopes to make augmented reality an advertising venue
For years, many have hoped augmented reality would give us the flashy science fiction future we have always wanted. But for now, it seems that we will have to settle for advertising mini-games. Today, song lookup app Shazam became the latest platform to introduce AR advertising features, which will allow users to view ads and play branded mini-games ...
Snap’s shares soar in IPO, but analysts are more skeptical than investors
Today marks the first day of stock trading for Snap Inc., and the Snapchat app maker came out swinging with a more than 40 percent boost over its initial public offering price. Despite Snap’s early success, however, analysts are still skeptical about the company’s long-term value and worry that we could have another Twitter, instead of a ...
Facebook turns to AI to offer support to suicidal users
There is no shortage of studies linking social media use with depression, but Facebook Inc. believes that social media can also be used to promote mental health. Today the company announced a few new features aimed at tackling suicide on the social network. “Facebook is in a unique position — through friendships on the site — to help connect a ...
