Friday, September 30, 2016

Google consolidates its Cloud. It's The Daily Crunch.

THE DAILY CRUNCH
FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 30 2016 By Darrell Etherington

The Daily Crunch 09/30/16

The future is cloudy for Google (good) and virtual reality (less good). All that and more in The Daily Crunch for September 30, 2016. And if you're looking for a way to lose weight, Andreessen suggests dropping the Twitter 50.

1. Google's forecast is Cloud

Google has unified its cloud-based products under a new Google Cloud brand, and also running Google Apps for Work (which now live within Google Cloud) as G Suite. It took me about 5 hours or so yesterday to figure out that G Suite is a play on C Suite, but the Cloud product re-org, under Diane Greene, is a super smart move and one that should help Google better position its combined offerings.

2. State of VR

What is going on with VR? It's not an easy question to answer, and you'll hear that it's either the best, blue sky opportunity out there or the worst, stupidest misplacement of resources ever, depending on who you ask. Lucas takes a nice look at the state of the industry as a whole, and comes out with a more balanced perspective then you'll likely see most places. Meanwhile, John's swimming in gravy with the HTC Vive.

3. You probably won't be able to afford the first self-driving cars

Surprising no one, it looks like the first self-driving cars will be reserved for the kinds of people who would otherwise just hire chauffeurs anyway. Volvo's CEO shed some more light on the company's plan to launch a self-driving car by 2021, and basically he told people to expect it to be a luxury option on high-end vehicles.

Still, at the other end there's Uber and Ford looking to make it a reality for fleet-based on-demand driving services, so both ends of the market in the U.S. might get access at the same time.

4. Andreessen feels the Twitter relief

Twitter is a wonderful thing for me, as a journalist, to have access to – but it's also a heavy burden, and likely more so for people who are tied into it but not reliant on it for their job. Marc Andreessen may represent an edge case, since he's a very wealthy VC, but when I hear the guy say that he feels "50 pounds lighter" without Twitter (he went off the service for a break just recently), I can't help but think that I recognize those feels.

5. WhatsApp getting more scrutiny over inevitable FB data sharing

Europeans are not going along quietly with WhatsApp's plans to start sharing data with parent company Facebook. Germany's Hamburg digital privacy agency has ordered FB to stop harvesting WhatsApp user data, for instance, and the sentiment is basically mirrored across European countries. Facebook's approach to data privacy is essentially anathema to the general European perspective on the topic, so this isn't surprising. If FB encounters a permanent reversal here, I bet Jan Koum will privately let out a celebratory 'whoop' wherever he is.

6. HTC goes global with its VR app store

VR apps, there are some? Yes, and Viveport is HTC's destination for them. The storefront is opening globally finally after a slow preview rollout, and that can only be good news in terms of showing people what more they might be able to do with Vive and VR. I'm still highly skeptical about the chances of this taking off, but Daydream and lower-cost VR built right into upcoming Android phones might stand a better chance of precipitating an app boom for VR.

7. Battlefield now has a scholarship fund

Startup Battlefield now has a scholarship component, which doesn't actually mean you have to be in school. Instead, the new grants are available to participants in TechCrunch's Battlefield competition who can demonstrate financial need. It actually quietly debuted at this past Disrupt SF, and five companies qualified and are in the process of receiving funds as a result.

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Thursday, September 29, 2016

Microsoft and Nvidia reimagine themselves with AI. It's The Daily Crunch.

THE DAILY CRUNCH
THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 29 2016 By Darrell Etherington

The Daily Crunch 09/29/16

Is Microsoft's next life the artificial kind, and is Nvidia looking to cash in on the same kind of transformation? All that and more in The Daily Crunch for September 29, 2016. And if you're currently betting big on being a VR production house, I wish you the best.

1. Microsoft's AI ambitions

The way Microsoft is going, it could be primarily an AI company in the next few years. The company's Ignition conference in Atlanta saw Satya Nadella talking up Redmond's AI work, and now it has a dedicated AI business group led by Microsoft Research EVP Harry Shum. Meanwhile, it's also signed up to a cooperative AI effort alongside Facebook, Amazon, Google, and IBM, which should help float all AI boats. Clippy's sentient awakening is just around the corner.

2. Nvidia's really doubling down on car smarts

Nvidia has had a steady string of announcements regarding autonomous car technology, and it made a few more at the inaugural GPU Tech Conference in Europe. First, it showed off its own test car, which used deep learning and observation of human drivers exclusively to learn how to drive itself. This is different from a typical algorithmic rules based or hybrid approach that combines those with deep learning, and it's impressive to see it work so well. Nvidia also previewed its next-gen in-car SoC, which is a supercomputer with minimal power draw in a tiny package.

3. Your Apple Watch, subsidized

Getting the Apple Watch on more wrists is resulting in interesting commercial arrangements with Apple, including one with Aetna. The U.S. healthcare provider is launching iOS-specific health applications, and investing in Apple Watch by buying one for all of its 50,000 employees. That's a big get for Apple, and for the furniture of the Watch in health and wellness, which seems to be where Cupertino is focusing its attention with the wearable.

4. Bank with buddies

Why bank alone when you can bank with a friend? Simple's new joint accounts don't require spousal qualifications to share an account, and instead are designed to work for basically anyone who wants to pool their resources towards a common cause, like paying the rent, for instance. The simple sharing looks good, provided you have the correct social dynamics in place to make this work – but that's on you, humans.

5. EV week at Paris Motor Show

It's time for everyone to reveal their answer to Tesla, and Paris Motor Week is it for at least Volkswagen and Mercedes-Benz. Both companies revealed their EV concepts, which should at least resemble upcoming production vehicles destined for the 2020-ish time frame.

Both the Volkswagen ID and the Mercedes-Benz Generation EQ share some similarities, including design that leans heavily on autonomy features, and maximum efficiency through choice of materials and restraint in terms of the size and number of cabin features. Both companies also seem to be preparing for the possibility that car ownership looks very different in a few years' time.

6. Running a VR production studio looks expensive

Any kind of film production gets pricey, quick, but VR seems especially so. Here's a look inside one of the leading VR content studios, Here Be Dragons, which so far might be creating content for a very limited audience, based on what we can tell about VR consumer market size.

7. Robo-investing is great, but what about ethics?

That's what Grow wants to address with their new socially responsible automated investment app. It's a good twist on a model that's proven very successful thus far, and an option that's likely to strike a chord with millennials when they're looking for places to put their money that aren't just about maximizing return.

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