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says the move by Instagram is part of an ongoing initiative to add more e-commerce features to the platform, as well as more ways to display and interact with products

"Mobile commerce is definitely a space we are looking at closely.

Instagram has become increasingly more interested in advertising and has deployed a variety of new products and ad formats for advertisers.

Smart billboards will identify car models and target ads to drivers

Some day in the not-too-distant future ads you see on billboards will be there simply because of the make, model, and year of the vehicle you’re driving. Smart data storage company Cloudian and Japanese advertising company Dentsu are launching just such a program in Japan this fall, as reported by CNN Money.

Cloudian and Dentsu tested smart billboard vehicle recognition earlier this year with impressive results. Combining big data and deep learning, the test identified vehicles in traffic correctly 94 percent of the time.

Forget keywords — this new system lets you search with rudimentary sketches

They’ve taught a deep learning neural network — an incredibly powerful tool that mimics the way that the human brain works — to recognize hand-drawn sketches and use them to search for real-life products.

The network was “trained” to match sketches to photos based on a data set consisting of around 30,000 sketch-photo comparisons.

Citizens of Kuwait must now register their DNA with the government or face hefty fines

In a bold and controversial move, Kuwait has just passed a new law that makes it mandatory to register your DNA with the government. Starting soon, the 1.3 million citizens and 2.9 million foreign residents of Kuwait will have to enter their individual DNA profiles into a government database.

Since the program is being mandated, the government of Kuwait will spend the equivalent of about $400 million to subsidize the DNA testing and management. Refusal to comply or DNA tampering could result in fines as high as $33,000, and even time in prison.

users of the messaging app WeChat can order food, call a taxi, check their bank balance and even shop flash sales of limited-edition goods. And for the user, the experience is just like texting a friend.

As America switches from an industrial economy to a digital one, its bluest collar workers are facing the toughest challenge of their lives. Can miners really learn how to code?

Say what you will about the long-term environmental effects (Justice, for one, is very pro-coal) but the impact on the area’s one-source economy has been brutal.

The Rusty Justice seminar concludes for today. The coders swivel back to their computers, and Michael announces weekend plans to no one in particular: “Looks like I better learn C#.”

Brands like Disney have worked with tech firms like Disney-backed Imperson to create chat bots on Facebook's Messenger service so people can have conversations with computerized versions of characters like ABC's "The Muppets" star Miss Piggy without needing to staff an actual human on the other side of the conversation.

it creates a new kind of engagement, which is around messaging person-to-person like most messaging platforms but also person-to-business or person-to-brand or person-to-publisher

It expands the platform beyond just personal communication

DEAR CONGRESS: THE DIGITAL MILLENNIUM COPYRIGHT ACT (DMCA) IS BROKEN AND NO LONGER WORKS FOR CREATORS

One of the biggest problems confronting songwriters and recording artists today is the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. This law was written and passed in an era that is technologically out-of-date compared to the era in which we live. It has allowed major tech companies to grow and generate huge profits by creating ease of use for consumers to carry almost every recorded song in history in their pocket via a smartphone, while songwriters’ and artists’ earnings continue to diminish. Music consumption has skyrocketed, but the monies earned by individual writers and artists for that consumption has plummeted.

The DMCA simply doesn’t work.

they were able to show that automated facial expression recognition could be nearly as accurate as human recognition in analyzing a wider range of student movements and gestures.

emotionally-aware software isn’t without ethical and privacy questions, but it opens the door to technology that’s even more engaging and that fits more seamlessly into our lives.

Those

Even if I turned away and turned back, Tobii instantly picked up my gaze

Forget waving at the screen, I want my computer to look into my eyes and know what I want to do.

I was looking on screen

There’s dissonance between the cultural and psychological associations I have about technology and the associations I have about reading. The popular mythology tells me that words are good while tech is scary.

Bottom line: the eReader makes my son read more. And my son is not unique. According to PlayScience and Digital Book World study, the Kids eBook market “has basically tripled from 2011 to 2012, that is 500% growth.”  What’s more, “A staggering number of kids  (85%) e-read at least once a week.”

“Which do you like better,” I sent him a message with gChat, “eBooks or paper books?” “ebook” “Why?” “Its a elictrak devise” I forgive the bad spelling. But I should probably correct him. Or, even better, respond with sentences that use the words and model correct spellings. “What have you been reading?” “All the Horrid Henrys” “Cool. Are they good books?” “Ya.”

As personal digital assistant apps such as Google Now become widespread, so does the idea of algorithms that can not only meet but anticipate our needs

eBay lets you shop at only one store at a time and promises delivery “in about an hour,” while Google lets you shop at multiple stores and pick your own delivery time window.

customers won’t be ordering stuff from eBay anymore. Instead, they’ll let their phones do it.

Though characters like Woody and Buzz Lightyear are wonderfully realistic and lovable, the relationship that kids have with them is largely one-sided. Kids can hear these characters talk—not only through movies, but games, toys, and other movie merchandise—but they can’t engage them.

It was this idea that inspired Jacob to team up with his former Pixar colleague, Martin Reddy, and launch a new company, ToyTalk. The San Francisco-based outfit develops mobile games that let kids have conversations with animated characters—dialogues that can last for hours

Known as PullString, it’s equal parts speech recognition engine and script writing tool, and it’s quite a departure from other speech rec tools developed by the likes of Microsoft, Google, and Apple. It’s tailored specifically to kids, whose sentence structure, pitch, and vocal tone have posed challenges for traditional tools.

Screen Addiction Is Taking a Toll on Children

“The average 8- to 10-year-old spends nearly eight hours a day with a variety of different media, and older children and teenagers spend more than 11 hours per day.”

Before age 2, children should not be exposed to any electronic media, the pediatrics academy maintains, because “a child’s brain develops rapidly during these first years, and young children learn best by interacting with people, not screens.”