Tech News Today for May 9, 2017
Tech News Today for Tuesday May 9, 2017
Amazon has unveiled the Echo Show, the rumored Echo with a screen. You can use the $229 for all the things you currently use your Echo for, plus video and audio calling, watching videos from YouTube or Prime, and more. The video calling comes from Alexa Calling, which lets you make calls or send messages, not just for the Echo Show, but for all Echo Devices. When you're on a call, the ring on top of the Echo is green, as opposed to blue when Amazon is actively listening to you, or red when something is wrong. There's also a service called "Drop-In" which is just like it sounds. You can see the video from someone else's home or room, such as checking in on the baby or being a totally creepy person. Doesn't Amazon know that "Drop-Ins" are not cool? The Echo Show releases June 28th and is available to pre-order now. Read more at amazon.com.
Microsoft thinks that having a dedicated smart speaker isn’t necessary when you have PCs everywhere. HomeHub looks to be Microsoft’s challenger to the Amazon Echo and Google Home, but instead of creating a seperate device, Microsoft will turn any Windows 10 PC into its own voice-activated smart home hub. The Verge obtained a series of leaked images of the feature, showing a somewhat simple full screen interface that allows users to control all facets of their smart home, as well as make video and voice calls. Read more at theverge.com.
Snapchat released a few new features ahead of its parent company Snap's first quarterly earnings report this week. The prominence of the feature that put Snapchat on the map - Disappearing images and videos - appears to be disappearing itself. According to the Verge, you will now have unlimited time to view other people's snaps. You can also draw with emoji and erase objects from your snaps. Read more at theverge.com.
A company called Current is aiming to revolutionize how parents handle their children’s allowance by offering a Visa debit card for teens to use out in the real world. Current offers a mobile app for facilitating what chores the kids are responsible for, and thereby how much allowance is earned when the kid completes the task. When money is earned, its placed in the kid’s bank account that’s tied to the debit card. The subscription fee costs between $2-$5 per month. Read more at techcrunch.com.
According to a new report published this week by the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, it's more dangerous for us to fear the robots than to welcome them as our overlords. The report shows that while technology has always eliminated more jobs than it creates, it is elimiating jobs at a slower rate than any time since 1850. Axios spoke to Robert Atkinson, co-author of the report, who was surprised by the findings that societal wealth created by automation has the ability to create more jobs. Yes, different jobs as we've said on this show pretty often, but also more of jobs that we've always had like teachers, firefighters, and police officers. Atkinson also spoke to many artificial intelligence experts who all said that we will never be able to create robots or any machines that are anywhere near as capable as humans, in some areas. Read more at axios.com.
Megan Morrone and Jason Howell are joined today by Kyle Bradshaw from hotfix.net to talk about Google's Fuchsia OS. Tech News Today streams live weekdays at 4PM Pacific, 7PM Eastern at twit.tv/live. You can subscribe to the show or download it on-demand at twit.tv/tnt.