- The future of TV is arriving faster than anyone predicted: Late last week, Comcast announced a new program that allows makers of smart TVs and other Internet-based video services to have full access to your cable programming without the need for a set-top box. Instead, the content will flow directly to the third-party device as an app, including all the channels and program guide. The Xfinity TV Partner Program will initially be offered on new smart TVs from Samsung, as well as Roku streaming boxes. But the program, built on open Internet-based standards including HTML5, is now open to other device manufacturers to adopt. As video services move from hardware to software, the future of the traditional set-top box looks increasingly grim. With this announcement, Comcast customers may soon eliminate the need for an extra device, potentially saving hundreds of dollars in fees. Many in the industry have long predicted eventual death for the box, driven in part by a rapid migration by pay TV providers (including fiber and satellite-based companies) to Internet standards for both video content and services, and by the enthusiastic response of consumers to a growing number of Internet-based alternatives. These include Roku, as well as Amazon, Apple, Google, Netflix, Hulu, YouTube, SlingTV, Sony, HBO and many others. Consumers, especially younger ones, are interested in defining their own video experience, mixing traditional and self-produced content and enjoying it not just on televisions but on every connected device, including tablets, smartphones and other mobile gadgets. At this year’s Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, it was clear that list would soon grow to include other non-traditional viewing platforms, such as cars, refrigerators and game consoles. Comcast’s announcement suggests that future may already be here.
- Facebook developing camera app similar to Snapchat: WSJ: Facebook is developing a stand-alone camera app, similar to disappearing photo app Snapchat, to increase user engagement, the Wall Street Journal reported, citing people familiar with the matter.The app, being developed by Facebook's "friend-sharing" team in London, is in its early stages and may never come to fruition, according to the report. The company is also planning a feature that allows a user to record video through the app to begin live streaming, the newspaper reported.
- The Gannett-Tribune offer: No one knows what a newspaper is worth anymore: Three years ago, Jeff Bezos paid $250 million for the Washington Post from the Graham family. Last year, Japanese publisher Nikkei paid $1.3 billion to take the Financial Times off the hands of the education conglomerate Pearson. Today’s $815 million bid to buy Tribune Publishing, from USA Today owner and newspaper chain Gannett, basically falls in the middle of those two recent deals. And it suggests that as print revenue continues to decline, there’s no such thing as a market price for newspapers anymore. Gannett is offering $12.25 a share (5.6 times Ebitda*), or a 63 percent premium on the current value of its stock, to buy the struggling newspaper publisher, which owns eleven dailies, including the Chicago Tribune and crown jewel Los Angeles Times. In 2013, Bezos paid what analyst Ken Doctor called a “friendship premium” of 17 times Ebitda; when Nikkei bought the FT, the going rate for European newspapers was 12 times Ebitda. Nikkei paid 35 times Ebitda. This isn’t a friendly offer, meaning Tribune might not play ball, but investors sure seem to dig it. Tribune Publishing’s stock opened the day by rocketing up more than 50 percent. Wall Street probably likes it because of Tribune’s dwindling print business, which justifies the lower Ebitda on the Gannett offer.
- Google Glass-based startup raises $17 million in funding: Augmedix Inc, a startup that uses Alphabet Inc's Google Glass to provide documentation services to doctors and other healthcare workers, said on Monday it had closed a $17 million funding round led by investment firm Redmile Group. Augmedix's employees transcribe doctors' notes and update patients' electronic medical record through Google Glass. The San Francisco company, which has raised $40 million so far, also said it had received investments from five U.S. healthcare networks, including Sutter Health and Dignity Health, which together have more than 100,000 healthcare workers. Augmedix, with 400 employees, said it serves doctors in nearly all 50 U.S. states. Funds raised will be used to build up the service to serve more health systems and private clinics, the company said. Augmedix is one of 10 partners authorized by Alphabet to deliver enterprise services through Google Glass.
- Amazon overtakes Flipkart as most visited Indian e-com site: comScore: E-commerce giant Amazon Inc said on Monday it has become the most visited e-commerce site in India beating local rival Flipkart in the month of October citing comScore data. It said Amazon.in clocked 30 million unique visitors during the month ahead of Flipkart.com, Jabong.com and Snapdeal.com
- E-Commerce Retailers in India Battle Devil They Spawned: Deep Discounts: Discounts and cashback offers helped India’s top e-commerce companies from Flipkart to Snapdeal sell a record $11 billion of goods this year online. As the freebies start to hurt, they are questioning a strategy they now find too hard to dump. While scrapping rebates may bring the focus back to profitability from valuations, it may be easier said than done for an industry built on a foundation of cut-price sales. The real dilemma faced by Narayanan and his peers is: Who will blink first?
- China's Baidu says to develop self-driving buses within three years: China's top online search firm Baidu Inc said it aims to put self-driving buses on the road in three years and mass produce them within five years, after it set up a business unit to oversee all its efforts related to automobiles. The unit will also include its initiative in partnership with BMW AG to develop an autonomous passenger vehicle, which may also be put into mass production within five years, a spokesman told Reuters on Monday. Self-driving cars have emerged as a new battlefront for tech majors globally. Alibaba Group Holding says it will launch its first car in a partnership with China's SAIC Motor Corp, while U.S. tech heavyweights Google and Apple are also developing autonomous cars.
- Creator of Mathematica, Stephen Wolfram Launches Free Version of Wolfram Language: For nearly three decades, Stephen Wolfram has built software technology that has attracted an avid following among mathematicians and scientists. His Mathematica program for symbolic mathematical computation and its programming language, Wolfram Language, are favorites of the intelligentsia of the quant world in universities and corporations. Wolfram Alpha, his question-answer technology, is available on its own website and serves up many of the answers for Apple’s voice-controlled digital assistant, Siri. His approach to this artificial-intelligence challenge was both innovative and idiosyncratic, and characteristic of Mr. Wolfram, who earned his Ph.D. in particle physics from the California Institute of Technology when he was 20 and soon after received a MacArthur “genius” award. Wolfram Alpha, he explains, is a “knowledge-based system,” which computes answers from its storehouse of knowledge rather than today’s prevailing technique of determining statistical probabilities from poring through vast amounts of data. His Wolfram Language is similarly a tool for what he calls “knowledge-based programming.” And Mr. Wolfram wants to make his technology and his software philosophy available to far more people, including newcomers to computing, like students and children. So he has decided to make a version of the Wolfram Language and development tools available as a free cloud service. To help, he also has published a book, “An Elementary Introduction to the Wolfram Language,” which is free to read online. Wolfram Language is already one of the programming languages distributed with the Raspberry Pi, a credit card-size computer that can be plugged into a computer monitor or television and uses a standard keyboard and mouse. The most popular model is $35. The Raspberry Pi Foundation is a British charity founded in 2009 to further basic education in computing to young people of all income levels. Its nonprofit company, Raspberry Pi Trading, sells the inexpensive, general-purpose computers.
- Have iPhone Sales Finally Peaked? Analysts Predict a Slump Ahead: Is Apple’s iPhone finally reaching its peak? In the past few weeks, a slew of analysts have predicted that sales of Apple’s best-selling product may slump in 2016, based in part on supply chain issues and partly on weaker demand, especially from saturated developed markets. Apple’s growth is increasingly dependent on demand for iPhones, while iPad tablet sales decline and adoption of the Apple Watch remains modest. Morgan Stanley lowered its forecast for iPhone unit sales and now estimates a drop of 6 percent in fiscal 2016, according to a Dec. 13 note. The decline is due to higher prices in international markets, excluding China, and maturing smartphone penetration in developed countries. China is the only market with year-over-year iPhone demand growth in the December quarter, according to the report.
- Why Glass Is Critical to the Future of Tech: One material has emerged that is probably second only to the processor when it comes to the importance of delivering a great user experience in all types of devices, especially mobile ones. That material is the glass screens on billions of feature and smartphones in the market today. Putting glass screens on a table top and turning it into a huge interactive screen could change the way many people interact with their digital content. Making glass walls that can show off all types of video and content, and applications that can be touched to activate them, is exciting. Imagine a glass screen on your refrigerator, or a glass mirror in the bathroom that delivers a touch-based gateway to all of your digital “stuff,” and you begin to see the role glass will play in a much broader way in the near future.
