- A beginner’s guide to finally buying a virtual reality headset: if you are interested in being an early adopter, here's a quick guide of the basics, plus a little input from my experiences with these products. Sony Playstation VR (PS VR) Buy if: You have a PlayStation already, or are looking to make a slightly smaller investment. Oculus Rift: After a long wait, Oculus opened preorders for the Rift headset, the first of which are expected to arrive at the end of March. The Rift is due to hit store shelves in April. Buy if: You want a stellar experience over everything else. Oculus was the first really big name to come out of the VR space and has probably done the most to minimize motion sickness. Samsung Gear VR: Powered by Oculus's technology and Samsung's smartphones, the Gear VR was first released in 2015 and is getting a renewed PR push with the new Galaxy S7 and S7 Edge smartphones. Buy if: You're really watching your budget and are happy with some smaller-scale experiences. HTC Vive: The product of a partnership between Taiwanese tech giant HTC and the video game company Valve, the HTC Vive is due to ship its first orders in April. Buy if: You really want an early version of a Star Trek-style Holodeck and have the room to make one.
- Uber seeking to buy self-driving cars: source: Ride-hailing service Uber has sounded out car companies about placing a large order for self-driving cars, an auto industry source said on Friday. "They wanted autonomous cars," the source, who declined to be named, said. "It seemed like they were shopping around." Loss-making Uber would make drastic savings on its biggest cost -- drivers -- if it were able to incorporate self-driving cars into its fleet. Earlier on Friday, Germany's Manager Magazin reported that Uber had placed an order for at least 100,000 Mercedes S-Class cars, citing sources at both companies. The top-flight limousine, around 100,000 of which Mercedes-Benz sold last year, does not yet have fully autonomous driving functionality. Auto industry executives are wary of doing deals with newcomers from the technology and software business who threaten to upend established business models based on manufacturing and selling cars. "We don't want to end up like Nokia's handset business, which was once hugely profitable...then disappeared," a second auto industry source said about doing a deal with Uber. A key hurdle to driverless cars has been the question of liability in the event of an accident. Most countries are signatories to the 1968 United Nations Convention on Road Traffic which stipulates that a person, rather than a computer, must be in control of a vehicle. In February this year, U.S. vehicle safety regulators softened the rules to allow driverless cars, by saying an artificial intelligence system piloting a self-driving Google car could be considered the driver under federal law, a major step toward ultimately winning approval for autonomous vehicles on the roads.
- How real businesses are using machine learning: There is no question that machine learning is at the top of the hype curve. And, of course, the backlash is already in full force: I’ve heard that old joke “Machine learning is like teenage sex; everyone is talking about it, no one is actually doing it” about 20 times in the past week alone.But from where I sit, running a company that enables a huge number of real-world machine-learning projects, it’s clear that machine learning is already forcing massive changes in the way companies operate. So where is it happening? Here are a few behind-the-scenes applications that make life better every day. Making user-generated content valuable: The average piece of user-generated content (UGC) is awful. It’s actually way worse than you think. It can be rife with misspellings, vulgarity or flat-out wrong information. But by identifying the best and worst UGC, machine-learning models can filter out the bad and bubble up the good without needing a real person to tag each piece of content. Pinterest uses machine learning to show you more interesting content. Yelp uses machine learning to sort through user-uploaded photos. NextDoor uses machine learning to sort through content on their message boards. Disqus uses machine learning to weed out spammy comments. Finding products faster: Successful e-commerce startups from Lyst to Trunk Archive employ machine learning to show high-quality content to their users. Other startups, like Rich Relevance and Edgecase, employ machine-learning strategies to give their commerce customers the benefits of machine learning when their users are browsing for products. Engaging with customers: You may have noticed “contact us” forms getting leaner in recent years. That’s another place where machine learning has helped streamline business processes. Instead of having users self-select an issue and fill out endless form fields, machine learning can look at the substance of a request and route it to the right place. Understanding customer behavior: Machine learning also excels at sentiment analysis. And while public opinion can sometimes seem squishy to non-marketing folks, it actually drives a lot of big decisions. For example, say a movie studio puts out a trailer for a summer blockbuster. They can monitor social chatter to see what’s resonating with their target audience, then tweak their ads immediately to surface what people are actually responding to - that puts people in theaters.
- Why unicorns falter: In early February 2016, a study of financing deals reported by The Wall Street Journal found that investors are increasingly protecting themselves from IPOs that don’t perform as expected. This fallout is a continuation of the demise of the so-called “unicorn,” a tech startup with a pre-IPO valuation of over one billion dollars. As these companies secure late-stage funding before their public market exit, smart private investors are setting terms that ensure they don’t lose a dime if the IPO falls short of expectations. This comes at a great cost to the startup if the exit doesn’t deliver, as was the case for many of the IPOs of 2015. The unicorn investment cycle has been consuming the growth ramp of an IPO-bound company. Unlike previous eras when a public exit occurred earlier in the company’s growth, leaving the best days ahead of the company, the fastest growth for an IPO-bound startup now happens in the last funding rounds before an IPO. This leaves a 20-30 percent growth rate post-IPO, which is pretty good for a company at $100-$200 million/year revenue, but bad for anyone looking for greater than 2X ROI from an IPO investment. Addressing these issues requires a little course correction as companies work toward an IPO. To ensure ample room for future growth, a startup should be careful not to push its market cap too high by taking more funding rounds than needed during the growth-stage period before IPO. This can be a challenge because funding often generates media interest and credibility, which are certainly not things a young company wants to leave on the table. However, leaving a portion of its growth for the IPO will ensure that the company has enough runway to continue to grow and deliver for its public market investors, just as the company has done for its VCs. Otherwise, you create yet another unicorn where the late-stage investors garner all the potential gains, and even force guarantees on returns. This is bad for new investors in the open market, and worse for the employees of the company who only receive poor post-lockup stock performance as compensation for years of hard work and sacrifices.
- Facebook's Zuckerberg meets propaganda czar in China charm drive: Facebook's co-founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg met China's propaganda tsar Liu Yunshan in Beijing on Saturday as part of a charm offensive in one of the few markets where the social network cannot be accessed. The rare meeting, reported by China's state news agency Xinhua, suggests warming relations between Facebook and the Chinese government, even as Beijing steps up censorship of and control over the Internet. Liu, who sits on the Communist Party's Politburo Standing Committee which is the apex of power in China, praised Facebook's technology and management methods, Xinhua said. Zuckerberg was in Beijing for the China Development Forum, a government-sponsored conference bringing together top business executives and the country's ruling elite. China "hopes (Facebook) can strengthen exchanges, share experiences and improve mutual understanding with China's Internet companies", Xinhua quoted Liu as telling Zuckerberg. On Friday, Zuckerberg posted an image of himself running through smog in Beijing's Tiananmen Square, past the portrait of the late Chairman Mao Zedong hanging over the Forbidden City. The 31-year-old has achieved celebrity status in China, one of the few markets where Facebook and other foreign Internet platforms, including Alphabet Inc's Google services and Twitter Inc, are not available due to tight government controls. He has long sought to improve his company's relationship with the Chinese authorities, and now sits on the advisory board of the School of Economics and Management at China's elite Tsinghua University.
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