Amazon-owned Audible announced a new service called Channels today, one that differs from its typical audiobook business in offering more bite-size content from original content producers, as well as recordings of news stores from NYT, WSJ, The Washington Post and others. The original programming will be rolling out over time, covering comedy, investigatory journalism (think Serial) and talk shows – which is really Amazon applying the Netflix/Prime Originals model to audio content.

The potential Amazon and Audible sees in Channels is the same potential that many others have been picking up on in podcasts. Podcasts present a way to provide multi-genre, opt-in entertainment to consumers with relatively low cost of entry, and unlike most other types of media, it can be consumed concurrent with other activities.

Founded in California four years ago, Coursera has become one of the world's biggest providers of "massive, open, online courses" - known as Moocs. The online platform has 20 million students following courses from about 145 prestigious universities and institutions around the world.But most of the online courses have been short units that give students a certificate, rather than a full degree or credits towards a degree.

Coursera has announced a partnership with the US State Department to help refugees to access online courses to improve their job chances, such as English language lessons or computer coding.It would remove any costs from studying, such as fees for certificates showing the completion of courses.

EdX is offering a range of online courses from Arizona State University - and if a student passes eight of these, costing $200 (£150) each, it counts as the equivalent of a first year at university.

KPN использует технологию LoRa (Long Range — «дальнего радиуса действия»). Антенны и оборудование для сети уже установили на сотнях вышек мобильной связи в Нидерландах. Сеть будет работать в дополнение к мобильным сетям 2G, 3G и 4G.

миллионы устройств могут быть подключены к сети экономически выгодным способом

KPN уже получила запросы на подключение 1,5 миллионов объектов

Penguin Random House announced Wednesday it will release an abridged young adult version of The Da Vinci Code for teenage audiences.

The plot of the novel will remain largely the same but will be protracted for younger readers.

Waverly Labs says they will soon release the Pilot, a pair of in-ear translators designed to let people who speak different languages understand each other in real-time

The technology makes use of an embedded app that does the translating, which is delivered to the earpiece that is shared by two people. The Pilot is also supposed to come with an additional earpiece for wireless streaming music and an app that allows people toggles between languages.

The company intends to develop support for European and Germanic languages first, but the Slavic Semitic, Hindi, and East Asian languages are not too far behind.

Guests get their own bunk with a TV, towel, outlets, and more for between $40 and $50 a night, depending on the location. They can also share the community fridge, food, bathrooms, toiletries, and work space areas.

Four years after launch, Podshare has hosted over 5,000 guests and has a loyal fan base. The company has a near-perfect five-star review on Yelp, 4.5 stars on TripAdvisor, and 16 members love it so much they had the logo tattooed on their body. Keep reading to see what it's like inside.

A product team at Google is working on a hardware device that would integrate Google's search and voice assistant technology, akin to the Amazon Echo

a portable speaker with voice assistant tech

voice search and intelligent personal assistance will occupy center stage at the company's splash show

the new technology kills off the old jobs and that allows people to go and do something different

We’ve not got to make sure that the new technologies create jobs. Because that’s not what they do. Rather, they free labour to go do something else.

It simply isn’t true that the new technologies create jobs. That’s not what leads to us all still having jobs at least. What does happen is that we all go find other things to do. And it’s a basic tenet of economics that human desires and wants are unlimited while the resources we have to sate them are limited and scarce.

Большинство представителей поколений Y и Z использует онлайн-видео как эффективное средство для снятия стресса или отличное снотворное.

Digital видео служит для большинства 13–24 летних молодых людей не развлечением или средством познания, как предполагают маркетологи, а антидепрессантом и средством побыстрее уснуть. Отличным способом для снятия стресса онлайн-видео назвали 61% представителей молодого поколения. Еще 44% молодых людей воспринимает видео как эффективное снотворное средство.

Defy Media также обнаружили, что подростки не возражают против рекламы. Более того, 63% молодых людей выразили готовность приобрести продукт, рекомендованный звездой на YouTube. А вот доверия к ТВ-звездам меньше – на нее откликнулись бы только 48% представителей поколения Z.

В 2017 году в России появится первая многопользовательская игра с нейроинтерфейсом: гарнитура будет считывать эмоции игрока и транслировать их на игрового персонажа. Разработкой оригинального мультинейроинтерфейса с гарнитурой, способной регистрировать в режиме реального времени целый ряд физиологических показателей

Мы стремимся создать обучающую и развивающую систему, знаменующую привнесение нового механизма контроля игровой среды, поведения объекта и восприятия контента, — рассказал Владимир Статут, генеральный директор «Нейроматикс». — Создаваемая нами система — это мультинейроинтерфейс. На рынке игровых приложений пока нет нейроинтерфейса, который бы полностью соответствовал потребительским пожеланиям к утилитарным свойствам оборудования. В основном все что есть построено на распознавании электроэнцефалограммы, мы же стремимся расширить ворота, регистрируя больше показателей: кожно-гальваническую реакцию, миограмму, кулограмму, пульс, температуру и так далее. По сумме этих данных мы сможем получать нужную информацию о психофизиологическом состоянии пользователя, дифференцировать ее и направлять на систему управления средой, которая, в свою очередь, таким образом будет давать обратную связь и развивать пользователя

Фундаментальная задача в том, чтобы определить минимально необходимый набор физиологических параметров для выделения и классификации функциональных состояний: когда человек испытывает стресс, утомление и т.д.

Финляндия с 2017 года запустит пилотный проект по безусловному основному доходу граждан.

В течение двух лет 10 тыс. трудоспособных финнов будут ежемесячно получать по €550 независимо от их занятости. Эта сумма примерно равна пособию по безработице и включает в себя расходы на еду, личную гигиену, одежду и другие ежедневные расходы.

если эксперимент будет успешным, безусловный доход введут в систему социального обеспечения Финляндии. Согласно проекту, анонсированному в 2015 году, сумма выплат составит €800. Предполагается, что безусловный доход заменит систему социальных пособий.

innovation is coming from private companies. These companies are starting to have better insights about how a city works compared to local governments.

Cities should be collecting all the data these companies are generating — Airbnb, Uber, drone delivery, Google self-driving cars. You can run analytics and look at the efficiency of the city

The startup is building a platform so that all the companies can send their data to this platform using an API approach.

Microsoft’s own virtual assistant Cortana, aim to help pave the way for the future of communication, productivity, and interactions with businesses and brands.

In Skype, the company showed off rich Cortana integration which put the assistant directly into the app where she could help users do things like identify the persons, places and things in your messages, underline them, and then display more info in a card-like interface when clicked.

She is also able to help you perform a variety of tasks, like adding items to your calendar, booking travel or hotel rooms, or even pre-populating conversations to friends with text.

Micromanufacturing is the manufacturing of products in small quantities using small manufacturing facilities

In a perfect positive feedback loop that invariably forms around emerging technologies, SMT machines, reflow ovens and other necessary components of electronic board production will become smaller and cheaper, then cheaper still as they get even smaller.

Digikey is like Amazon and Wikipedia rolled into one

the connection between fan and celebrity is minimal

Bkstg is looking to change all that, not only for fans but for artists.

Bkstg is its own platform, created by Ran Harnevo, that lets artists own the entire experience of connecting with their fans, from posting videos and photos, selling tickets, and selling merchandise.

Experience a world première: On Saturday, 8 October 2016 ETH Zurich is organising the very first Cybathlon! Individuals with physical disabilities will compete side by side in six demanding disciplines, using the latest assistive technologies.

There are races for athletes with powered arm and leg prostheses, for those wearing a robotic exoskeleton and for powered wheelchairs. There’s also a race for cyclists using electrical muscle stimulation and even a brain-computer interface race.

Cybathlon provides a platform for the development of novel assistive technologies that are useful for daily life. Through the organisation of the Cybathlon we want to remove barriers between people with disabilities, the public and technology developers.

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

Banks are quickly approaching their "automation tipping point," and they could soon reduce headcount by as much as 30%.

"Banks' Uber moment will mean a disintermediation of bank branches rather than the banks themselves

it will mean the shift to mobile distribution being the main channel of interaction between customers and the bank

By 2020, the Fourth Industrial Revolution will have brought us advanced robotics and autonomous transport, artificial intelligence and machine learning, advanced materials, biotechnology and genomics. These developments will transform the way we live, and the way we work. Some jobs will disappear, others will grow and jobs that don’t even exist today will become commonplace. What is certain is that the future workforce will need to align its skillset to keep pace.

Creativity will become one of the top three skills workers will need.

negotiation and flexibility are high on the list of skills

Today, Facebook Messenger has 800 million monthly active users – more than 100 times the number of iPhone owners when Apple launched the App Store. Messenger’s current active user base exceeds even the total number of iPhones ever sold. Messaging apps now have more active users than social networks.

If and when Facebook announces a Bot Store, it will mark the “end of the beginning” of a new era: messaging as a platform. Conversational user interfaces are about to change the way billions of users interact with the world around them.

Pavel Durov announced the expansion of the Telegram Bot Store and Ted Livingston staked out Kik’s claim to be the WeChat of the West. By the end of the year, Slack had announced the Slack App Directory, supported by an $80 million fund to fuel the growth of the ecosystem, and Google was rumored to be developing its own chatbots.