“IBM quarterly revenue falls 1.3% to $21.77 billion despite growth in cloud-based services” plus 29 more VentureBeat

---

• IBM quarterly revenue falls 1.3% to $21.77 billion despite growth in cloud-based services
• How AI helps marketers invest in the right ads
• Atlassian expects Trello to generate just $4 million in revenue this fiscal year
• Customer support: Unleash your superpowers with AI (VB Live)
• Super Mario Run drops from U.S. top 50 grossing iOS apps (update)
• 3 questions marketers should ask before investing in AI
• Westworld is full of sex and violence, but the show’s Google Home bot won’t talk about it
• Silicon Studio adapts Graphine’s texture software for console, PC, and VR development
• Stripe hires former Obama global entrepreneurship advisor to lead Atlas outreach
• Apple’s AirPods are a no-brainer — if you have the latest iPhone
• Derek Jeter’s Players’ Tribune raises $40 million to beef up video production
• Ubisoft hires an Oscar winner for The Division movie: Traffic’s Stephen Gaghan
• XCOM 2’s Long War 2 fan mod is now available for PC
• Halo Wars 2 shows how The Creative Assembly is adapting its PC chops for consoles
• Two Bit Circus raises $15 million to build next-generation micro-amusement parks
• Fig raises $7.8 million to expand game crowdfunding platform
• Meet the ride-sharing app being used by thousands attending the Women’s March
• Amplero adds machine learning to help pinpoint and leverage influential customers
• AdStage adds support for Salesforce and HubSpot, launches a one-stop data API
• Inside LinkedIn’s desktop redesign rolling out now
• Tapjoy: Mobile games are more engaging and fun than social networks
• Oracle acquires API development startup Apiary
• DigiLens raises $22 million to make ‘eyeglass-thin’ augmented reality displays
• How Creative Assembly tried to make Halo Wars 2 more accessible on Xbox One
• Facebook to build third international data center in Denmark
• Nimble Named #1 CRM by G2 Crowd for Customer Satisfaction in Latest 2017 CRM Rankings for the Fourth Year in a Row
• With Trump and Brexit closing borders, France opens its doors wider to startups and entrepreneurs
• Samsung rolls out Android Nougat 7.0 to Galaxy S7 and S7 Edge, other devices to follow in first half of 2017
• Rocket Internet closes new $1 billion venture fund to back internet startups
• Blitz mode turns Halo Wars 2 into a furious multiplayer fray

IBM quarterly revenue falls 1.3% to $21.77 billion despite growth in cloud-based services Posted: 19 Jan 2017 02:15 PM PST (Reuters) – International Business Machines Corp forecast full-year earnings above Wall Street estimates and reported better-than-expected quarterly revenue, helped by growth in newer areas such as cloud-based services and analytics. IBM’s shares were up 2.9 percent at $171.64 in after-hours trading on Thursday. The Armonk, New York-based company forecast adjusted earnings of at least $13.80 per share for fiscal 2017, beating the average analyst estimate of $13.74, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S. IBM has shown pockets of revenue growth in recent quarters, with newer businesses such as cloud computing and artificial intelligence driving the company’s turnaround efforts. Revenue from “strategic imperatives”, which includes cloud and mobile computing, data analytics, social and security software, rose 11 percent to $9.5 billion in the fourth quarter, from a year earlier. Cloud computing revenue across IBM’s segments rose 33 percent. The business includes services such as SoftLayer, which leases online storage space to companies, as well as the BlueMix cloud platform. Excluding items, IBM earned $5.01 per share, beating analysts’ average estimate of $4.88 per share. IBM’s revenue fell 1.3 percent to $21.77 billion in the quarter ended Dec. 31, but beat analysts’ expectations of $21.64 billion. Net income rose to $4.50 billion, or $4.72 per share, from $4.46 billion, or $4.59 per share. IBM’s shares rose 30.2 percent in the last 12 months, outperforming the 23.2 percent gain in the broader Dow Jones Industrial Average. (Reporting by Narottam Medhora in Bengaluru; Editing by Maju Samuel)

How AI helps marketers invest in the right ads Posted: 19 Jan 2017 02:10 PM PST GUEST: Trust is the foundation of all relationships, particularly in media. If you don’t trust your agency, you shouldn’t be using them — especially related to advertising. There’s a lot of talk in the marketing and media domain at the moment regarding transparency related to media buying. The infamous ANA report on media transparency in the ad industry has done its part in stirring up this debate, which has been brewing under the surface for decades. When I say decades, I really do mean decades. The fundamental business model of media agencies and consequently its issue with transparency has been around since the 1960s. This model has been (and to some degree still is) a brilliant, well-lubed money-making machine that guarantees revenue. The whole idea is that advertisers want to run campaigns to promote and distribute their offers and messages, but lack the knowledge of how to actually purchase the insertions in the different media types. Enter the media agencies that are experts in negotiating, buying, planning, and tracking media across all media channels. This setup was beneficial for the advertisers — they didn’t need to learn all the tricky, messy, and complicated ways of buying media, but could instead focus on the messaging and how much money to spend. A clear case for outsourcing, right? Maybe not, since the media agencies were the ones developing the relationships with the media, and the advertisers were wedged out and didn’t talk to the actual media where their ads ran. That meant that they had no means of knowing the actual media prices for each single insertion. I’m sure you can realize how many possibilities this gives the “man-in-the-middle” for business optimization. This is the core problem with the business: lack of transparency. You as an advertiser drops a bag of money into a bucket and you are later informed that this money has been distributed to run your ads on different media. But you don’t really know how much you paid for what, and worse yet, you have no idea if there was any effect on your business KPIs at all! But transparency is not the problem — it’s a symptom of lack of insights into the effect of advertisement. The age of AI We have entered the age of artificial intelligence (AI). With massive amounts of data, measurements, and algorithms to support its growth, AI is now finally in a stage where it can solve real-world specific problems much better than humans can across many domains. Media buying is no exception. Is media buying really that hard? Yes, it is. Consider the following scenario. You are given $10 million to invest into media. How should you distribute this? You have your options of major channels: TV, radio, cinema, display, out-of-home, social, search, newspaper, magazines, etc. Within these groups, there are specific media choices to make, including network, timing, pressure, format, buy-type, geographical location, and audience target. If we limit the decisions needed to TV alone, then, naively calculated, you will arrive at more than 6,000 possible ways you can allocate your money for a given campaign. The 6,000 comes from approximately 25 networks, 4 day parts, 10 possible weeks, 3 different spot lengths, and 2 different creative executions. Imagine what happens when we throw in the other media channels. There are tools within each specific media channel that handle this today to optimize media metrics like GRP, affinity, or number of impressions. However, it does not solve the advertiser’s transparency problem, since you still don’t know how it will affect your business KPIs. This can be solved by letting AI learn from the past what media combinations affect you and by how much. This AI can then distribute your money towards the most effective combinations every time you run a campaign and consequently directly optimize your business KPIs. Better yet, it will use the new data that the future campaign generates to learn even more than it did before. How AI learns and acts AI learns differently from humans. It represents the world as a set of parameters and interactions between parameters and data. One of these parameters could, for example, represent the media elasticity of a 30-second TV spot on NBC with respect to store transactions. These parameters are then updated every time new data arrives, allowing the AI to learn continuously. There’s an ongoing debate on whether these parameters are stochastic, but the basic principle of AI is still the same. The process for a marketing AI looks like this: The AI is born, given prior knowledge about the world. This knowledge can come from human media planners and/or previous studies. The AI is fed a batch of historic data to update its priors into posterior knowledge. The AI is now ready to use for planning, execution, and retrospective reporting of effectiveness. The AI plans a campaign, which gets booked and executed The AI receives new data each day, updates its posterior knowledge, and reports findings of effectiveness. The AI returns to step 3. The road advertisers need to take The reason for introducing AI into the mix is that it can provide us with an unbiased view on how media is actually affecting our business. It will report what it has learned from data and utilize that knowledge every time there’s a new campaign to plan. This of course is easier said than done. A successful AI needs a continuous feed of data and the ability to communicate its findings with the right “people” (which in some media are actually computers in the form of booking systems). However, the reward for the CMO and the rest of the business is a continuously learning entity that always allocates the money to the right media, providing the most bang for the buck and thus allowing decision makers to make accurate, fast, and optimal decisions with confidence. AI can transform the way media agencies buy digital media for their clients — but only if marketers are willing to make the change.

Atlassian expects Trello to generate just $4 million in revenue this fiscal year Posted: 19 Jan 2017 01:47 PM PST Enterprise software company Atlassian today disclosed new financial figures about Trello, the task management startup that it recently acquired. The company said it expects Trello to bring in $1 million in the third year of Atlassian’s 2017 fiscal year, which will end on March 31, and $4 million in the entire 2017 fiscal year, which will end on June 30. Meanwhile as a whole Atlassian aims to generate $155-$157 million in revenue in the current quarter and $611-$615 million in the fiscal year. The Trello guidance suggests that the value of Trello was not in its revenue — team, product, and user base may well have been higher priorities for Atlassian. As Atlassian president Jay Simons told VentureBeat in an interview earlier this month, “First and foremost, we’re excited about continuing to help the Trello team to build what is still a very young project.” Atlassian paid $425 million for Trello, making it Atlassian’s most expensive acquisition to date. For the 2018 fiscal year Atlassian anticipates that Trello will be dilutive to its IFRS earnings per share (EPS).

Customer support: Unleash your superpowers with AI (VB Live) Posted: 19 Jan 2017 01:31 PM PST VB LIVE: Flawless customer service directly translates to bottom line success. And that means reading customers’ minds by offering real-time, reliable responses wherever they are. Join our live interactive event for a deep dive into how AI can help you accelerate your customer service. Register here for free. Customers are pretty, pretty clear about what keeps them loyal to the brands they love — and it’s not how hot your CMO is. The number one differentiator in the market is always going to be customer service. Fast and faultless, and you’ve got them for life. Slow and sloppy and they’re not only gone, but winning them back is next to impossible. What your customers want — these mobile, always-on, eager-to-buy but quick-to-yell-if-you-screw-up shopping enthusiasts — is immediate responsiveness from brands. You need to deliver super-fast, extra-reliable customer service across channels, and you need to be able to engage with them how and where and when they want to have a little chat with you. Increasingly that’s on mobile messaging platforms, the place where more users are spending most of their time when they’re tapping away on their smartphones. Companies like Facebook, Google, and Microsoft have opened their platforms to developers, enabling companies to leverage chatbots as not only a gateway for brands looking to offer their customers the instant connection they want on a very personal level, but help boost the speed, efficiency, and level of service. This isn’t your mother’s virtual Live Chat assistant, the pop-up scourge of the mid-2000s. If a customer wasn’t immediately put off by the in-your-face demand, they often clicked away in a huff when responses coming back were unhelpful and out of context, regurgitated from a predetermined directory of responses. Frankly, it got a little weird sometimes. But those earlier bot interactions have paved the way to advancements in natural language understanding (NLU), which helps reveal the intent behind questions. Pair this advancement in artificial intelligence, and the new generation of bots has got its thinking cap on. And they’re getting even smarter with deep learning, which analyzes public customer information to customize bots for the ultimate in customer service experiences. Chatbots quickly solve simple, fast-response needs, and kick customers with more complex demands and high-touch needs to the right customer service representatives, with the right information. And it’s cheaper and more efficient than legacy channels like phone and email. Agents can help more customers, faster, and sales grow while customer engagement opportunities expand. You can talk to your customers directly and build personal relationships while meeting increased demands for speed of response and accuracy. And that means taking customer service from a cost center to a value center. To sum up? Artificial intelligence is proving itself to be the next big do-or-die competitive advantage for companies looking to work efficiently, stay lean, and up their game. (That’s you.) Register now for our interactive VB Live event, where Stewart Rogers will take a deep dive into his latest VB Insight report on AI. Don’t miss the scoop on the who, what, why and especially how of integrating AI into your customer service. Don’t miss out! Register here for free. In this VB Live event you’ll learn: How to use AI to accelerate your customer service Why chatbots are the answer to increased customer service The first steps toward implementing an AI solution on the help desk What’s next for innovative social customer service operations in a bot-driven world Speakers: Stewart Rogers, Director of Marketing Technology, VentureBeat Wendy Schuchart, Moderator, VentureBeat

Super Mario Run drops from U.S. top 50 grossing iOS apps (update) Posted: 19 Jan 2017 12:30 PM PST Mario is slowing down to more of a trot. Super Mario Run has dropped out of the top 50 grossing iOS apps in the U.S., according to mobile app store market intelligence group Sensor Tower. The auto-running platformer is ranked at No. 52. Above: Super Mario Run’s ranking in the iTunes’ U.S. top grossing apps list. Image Credit: Sensor Tower Super Mario Run shot to the top of the charts when it came out on December 15 for iOS, reaching 40 million downloads in four days and becoming one of the quickest successes in the $36 billion mobile game industry. However, the app cost $10, which drew criticism from some players used to free games on their smartphones. Super Mario Run does not have in-app purchases, which could be why its revenues are falling off so quickly. Nintendo has no way to monetize the game after people buy it. Mobile is a new market for Nintendo, which started with the social app Miitomo earlier last year. Super Mario Run, however, is its first full-fledged iPhone game, and it has the weight of the popular Mario brand behind it. Super Mario Run could still bring in a significant amount of cash when it finally releases for Android in March. The next Nintendo mobile game, Fire Emblem: Heroes, comes out on February 2 for Android devices with an iOS release following later. Unlike Super Mario Run, it will be a free download with in-app purchases. Correction, 1:22 p.m. Pacific: The original story said it had $40 million downloads, not 40 million downloads. We have corrected the error.

3 questions marketers should ask before investing in AI Posted: 19 Jan 2017 12:10 PM PST GUEST: The advent of artificial intelligence (AI) might have many marketing execs rolling their eyes and saying “Not again!” As they well know, too often, marketing decisions come down to a guessing game. Marketing automation and analytics software can help, but the testing and measuring tools they offer only generate insights after the fact. And then there’s the meta-decision: How do you know which marketing technology will actually deliver actionable results? Artificial intelligence technology can improve your decision-making and budgeting abilities. The question is where to apply AI and how. You don’t want to fall into the same guessing game about which areas of your marketing tech stack would most benefit from the application of AI. That just moves the guesswork from one area to a different, even harder to understand one. Suddenly you’ve got a meta-meta-problem. Given the range of ways AI can help your marketing efforts, the natural question is: How do you make decisions about how to deploy it? Bloomberg Beta’s latest machine intelligence landscape charts hundreds of companies across 8 major categories and dozens of subcategories. The ways you can deploy AI in your marketing organization are numberless. How is a CMO supposed to make an informed decision about a technology sector that is literally founded on high-level mathematics? The key is to have a robust framework for evaluating areas of your business that could be improved by the application of AI technology. Here’s how I suggest evaluating where to apply AI. 1. Which business processes have the most waste? Marketers have been familiar with waste from the days of John Wanamaker in the early 20th century, who joked about how half of the money he spent on advertising was wasted — he just didn’t know which half. Unfortunately, 100 years on, there’s still tremendous waste in the marketing pipeline. Millions of people may visit your website, but only a few thousand will enter their email addresses and become qualified leads. From there, even more will drop off in the progression to becoming true opportunities: getting in your sales pipeline and then becoming a paying customer. Only 0.3 percent of qualified leads wind up becoming customers — a ratio of 250:1. The other 249, in other words, are a waste of your effort. If you can spend less time on leads that are unlikely to convert and focus your efforts on the 0.3 percent most promising, you’ve just eliminated a lot of organizational waste. In general, the higher the percentage of waste there is in a process, the more machines can help. And the further up the funnel you go, generally the more waste there is. So AI can be particularly helpful in focusing top-of-funnel spending, such as banner advertising and email campaigns. Don’t be drawn in by marketing activities that have a low dollar expenditure but reach a lot of people, such as email marketing. There’s a cost to poorly targeted, poorly customized email too, even if you’re only paying pennies per thousand for delivery: It hurts your brand, and, ultimately, the deliverability of that email. Even with messaging, it makes sense to use AI to generate more personalized, more effective content, reducing the waste in your email campaigns. On the other hand, marketing to an existing customer tends to be a low-waste operation. Compared to the universe of all prospects, you have relatively few customers, and you already have a relationship with them. If your product is good and you’re taking care of your customers, you probably need AI less in this area. High-waste areas where AI can deliver a lot of results include display advertising, website traffic, email marketing, and events. 2. What will generate economic surplus? Economic surplus is a simple concept: What investments can you make that will generate more revenue than the cost of the investment? With many marketing decisions, it can be hard to know for sure ahead of time. But AI can assist you here by applying data modeling and predictive analytics at a much larger scale than any human could manage. For example, imagine that you’re trying to get more users to fill out a form on your website in order to increase the conversion of site visitors to qualified leads. The traditional web marketing approach is to A/B test different versions of the form, tweaking buttons, colors, layout, and copy, until you arrive at the optimal version that converts the most site visitors. A machine learning system is not limited to testing the form itself — it can examine every possible path a visitor could take through your website, figuring out which paths lead to the most conversions when that visitor finally does reach the path. In fact, an AI system can figure out the optimal path for every visitor, adjusting elements of the site in real time to increase the chances of a successful conversion. 3. What unique data do you have? Artificial intelligence is not magic, and it doesn’t operate in a vacuum. To be effective, AI systems need data — lots of it. And the more unique your dataset is, the more likely you are to be able to pull interesting and effective insights out of it. Also ask yourself: How good is this data? Is it high-quality, vetted data on customers? Or is the data polluted with lots of noise? Any area of your business where you have a good amount of high-quality data is an area where you should investigate applying AI. If you don’t have a lot of reasonably clean data in a given area (such as event marketing, for instance), it’s probably best to aim your AI efforts elsewhere for now. Taken together, these three questions can help you focus your technology efforts on applying AI where it will make the most difference. AI technologies for marketers are well-suited to creating new economic surplus opportunities and eliminating waste, and they operate best when there is a large quantity of unique data. Focus your energies accordingly.

Westworld is full of sex and violence, but the show’s Google Home bot won’t talk about it Posted: 19 Jan 2017 11:33 AM PST The HBO TV show Westworld has created a Google Assistant action that will talk to you about a trip to Westworld park, a world where AI-powered robots are starting to become self-aware and violent. You speak with the Google Assistant service by saying “OK Google, let me talk to Aeden at Westworld.” Aeden is a chatbot that made its debut last fall on the Discover Westworld website. It acts like your travel agent and answers questions like “What is the maze?” or “Who is the man in black?” Some questions unlock unexpected answers. Ask “Who are you Aeden?” three times and you will hear a long series of numbers and letters followed by “You’re in a prison of your own sins. Hell is empty and devils are here. Arnold will come for you.” You can ask Aeden about Westworld characters. Speak with a host (robot) about an adventure. If you didn’t see the season finale of Westworld, spoiler alert: The robots break into full rebellion, and after the season finale last month, the online version of Aeden also began to act differently, and started dropping Easter eggs for season two. Hell and devils may be on the menu, but Aeden on Google Home will not speak to you about sex, guns, or alcohol, which is strange since Westworld is a TV show full of sex and violence. Tell Aeden on Google Assistant you want to have sex and it will say “While there’s no limits in the park, we have to keep things PG on Google Home. Meet me on discoverwestworld.com for a more mature conversation. We still have plenty to talk about. What piques your interest?” Above: Aeden at Westworld Google Home app screenshot Whether it’s a failure to hear what I said correctly, the fake broken code, or even the misspelling of Aeden on the Google Home app, the brilliant part about speaking with Aeden is that the entire show is about malfunctions or self-awareness in artificial intelligence. So when you speak to the Google Assistant action and things go wrong, it's hard to tell if that's intentional or not. Westworld’s bot, like several other bots launched in recent months, was designed to bring you closer to a brand. The Channel 4 series Humans, about robots slowly becoming self aware, has a Facebook Messenger bot. Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare has a tour guide bot, and the sole purpose of mattress company Casper’s bot InsomnoBot is to send you random late-night text messages about pizza or Seinfeld reruns.

Silicon Studio adapts Graphine’s texture software for console, PC, and VR development Posted: 19 Jan 2017 11:21 AM PST The studio behind the cherished Bravely Default Japanese role-playing games are working with the makers of a high-end texture engine used for PC, console, and VR development. The Belgian graphics middleware company Graphine announced today that it is partnering with Japan-based game engine and middleware company Silicon Studio to bring Graphine’s advanced texture streaming software for PC and console games and virtual reality development, Granite SDK, to the country. Granite SDK boasts that it uses “significantly less video memory” than other systems when using high-resolution textures. Now Silicon Studio and other Japanese developer can use the tech for its projects. “Silicon Studio is highly motivated to bring the best technologies from around the world to the Japanese market and we are proud to be working with a great innovative company like Graphine.” Silicon Studio chief executive officer noted in a press release sent to GamesBeat. “Granite will allow Japanese developers to better create bigger, more complex and realistic game and application worlds, and we look forward to the wonderful creations to come.” Granite SDK has been used by game companies like World of Tanks developer Wargaming and for virtual reality software like Everest VR. The middleware program can integrate into game engines Unreal Engine 4 and Unity 3D as a plugin. Silicon Studio also makes games, notably the Bravely Default RPG series for the 3DS. It has also created mobile games like Grand Sphere and Fantasica. The team is also working on an unknown game for Nintendo’s new system, the Switch. Silicon Studios could use Graphite for the project.

Stripe hires former Obama global entrepreneurship advisor to lead Atlas outreach Posted: 19 Jan 2017 10:41 AM PST Stripe is looking to expand its program dedicated to helping foreign entrepreneurs do business in the U.S. To do so, it has hired Sarah Heck, the former lead advisor to President Obama on global entrepreneurship. She begins her role leading external affairs for its Atlas service in February. A seasoned veteran of governmental affairs, Heck played a part in highlighting entrepreneurship in Cuba during President Obama’s visit last year. It was at this time when Stripe extended Atlas to Cuba, enabling startup founders in the island nation to set up shop in the U.S. Under the program, Stripe would incorporate the non-U.S. company as a business entity in Delaware and provide the entrepreneur with a U.S. bank account and Stripe merchant account, which can be used to accept payments worldwide. Today, Atlas has users in more than 110 countries, and Stripe claims thousands of startups have benefited from this program. It seems that the relationship between Heck and Stripe was a lasting one, and as the sun sets on the Obama administration, it’s time for the president’s team to seek employment elsewhere. Stripe hopes that Heck will be instrumental in vastly expanding Atlas, bringing it to the attention of not only startups, but also non-governmental agencies, who constantly seek to raise funds supporting their efforts overseas. Besides Cuba, she has liaised with the startup community and governments worldwide, which may prove to be invaluable for Stripe. “We created Atlas to provide entrepreneurs everywhere with the basic building blocks to start and scale a global internet business,” remarked Stripe chief business officer Billy Alvarado in a statement. “We’re thrilled to welcome Sarah to the team and marry her deep experience in building global entrepreneurship programs with our continued efforts to help more businesses get started.”

Apple’s AirPods are a no-brainer — if you have the latest iPhone Posted: 19 Jan 2017 10:30 AM PST REVIEW: When Apple introduced the iPhone 7 and 7 Plus in September, it presented consumers with a sort of problem: most headphones and earphones wouldn’t work with these smartphones, because they don’t have a headphone jack. (“Courage”!) But at the same event Apple proposed a solution: new wireless headphones and earphones, including AirPods, a wireless version of the classic white EarPods. In addition to letting you make phone calls and listen to music, AirPods give you a new way to access Apple’s Siri virtual assistant: Just tap one of the earbuds twice. I, for one, look goofy in them. My girlfriend thinks they’re a fashion faux pas. And I suspect that some people do a double-take when they see me wearing them on the streets of San Francisco, thinking, “Wait, something’s off, where are the wires…?” Above: AirPods in case and the box that pops up when the case is nearby to show remaining battery life. Image Credit: Michael O'Donnell/VentureBeat But their wirelessness makes life easier in some ways. When you’re working on your desktop, you can just stand up without worrying about unplugging. When you’re walking, you can go upstairs without worrying about messing up the cable that’s plugged into your phone. And your hands have one less thing in which to get tangled. You can keep listening as you put on a shirt or take it off. Are AirPods perfect? No, no. When I use my AirPods I keep a backup pair of wired EarPods nearby. You know why? AirPods eventually run out of battery life. It’s sort of like my comfy old noise-canceling Bose headphones — except AirPods don’t last as long. Still, it’s a cool product. I love pushing open the charging case with my thumb, and I love the popping sound it makes when I close it. The stubby little case reminds me of the oldest iPhones and iPods — and I mean that in a good way. And gosh, they’re comfortable — I can wear them for more than four hours straight. But your mileage may vary here, just like with other headphones and earphones. No two ears are alike. They’re louder than many headphones I’ve used, and the sound quality is good enough. AirPods typically last five hours, as advertised. But they can survive a lot longer if you don’t mind slipping them into their charging case when the internal batteries run out. (You’ll know when one of them stops working after making a few sad-sounding beeps.) I got up to 20 hours of usage after recharging them again and again using the case. (Apple promises up to 24 hours.) But I do have my gripes with the AirPods. While the pairing experience on the iPhone and the Mac is very good, it’s less reliable and functional, and more like a pair of regular Bluetooth headphones, on Android and Windows. There’s no way to see how much battery life is left on those operating systems, and you don’t have Siri. I’ve run into occasional pairing issues on Android Nougat or Windows 10 — the Bluetooth settings will say the AirPods are connected, but sometimes music won’t play. It can be frustrating. Above: AirPods in air. Image Credit: Michael O'Donnell/VentureBeat When Siri is available, you can tell it to do certain things, which is good, but the delay for pausing or adjusting the volume is too long for me. I’d like to see Apple come up with a new way to do those things, just like on its traditional EarPods and other wired headphones. Also, Siri needs to take a hint from Amazon’s Alexa and start relying less on a paired display in order to provide a truly voice-first experience. And although I like that music stops playing when you pull an AirPod out of your ear, I don’t like that this feature won’t work when the AirPods are paired to an Android device. Clearly iOS — and specifically the iPhone — is the optimal platform for AirPods. At the bottom of the AirPod case is a Lightning port for charging. I wish a USB-C port would be there instead, in line with Apple’s latest MacBooks. Here again you see proof that AirPods are iOS-first. At least they are now. I hope Apple improves the experience on other platforms, but judging by how Apple Music works on other platforms, I don’t think that’s likely. Ultimately, if you think you want a pair of AirPods, you have one decision to make: Are you ready to set aside your wired headphones that work just fine? If you have an iPhone 7, you may well find its missing headphone jack infuriating. If that’s the case, AirPods are worth trying, or even a no-brainer. If you have an older iPhone, AirPods aren’t nearly as necessary, but you may still want them because of the great pairing experience, and Siri. If you have an Android phone with or without a headphone jack, AirPods aren’t the best way to go wireless. At $159, they’re not cheap. Plus they may make you look goofy, no matter what phone you use. Nevertheless, some people will be keen to buy them just because they’re the latest product Apple has come out with since the Watch in 2015. For me personally, until Siri is smarter and the batteries last longer, I can’t help but think of the old saying, “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” I’m sticking with EarPods.

Derek Jeter’s Players’ Tribune raises $40 million to beef up video production Posted: 19 Jan 2017 10:20 AM PST Derek Jeter just hit another home run—in securing startup financing, that is. The former New York Yankees shortstop co-founded The Players' Tribune, a site featuring content created by athletes, in 2014. Now, the company is announcing it has raised $40 million in a new round, bringing its total funding to $58 million. Silicon Valley-based IVP led the round. Previous lead investor NEA also provided additional funding, as did first-time investors like GV, the venture capital arm of Alphabet, and "dozens of athletes," according to the New York-based company. (While they won't disclose those new names, former NBA player Kobe Bryant was an early investor.) "We're basically a pretty small company," Jeter told Fortune earlier this week. "But we've been able to establish our brand and grow, and this gives us a chance to help us scale further." The Players' Tribune began with just a few dozen contributors writing about their experiences in the sports world. But over the last couple of years, it has managed to hit a few impressive metrics. For starters, it now has more than 1,200 athletes generating content for the site, including NASCAR driver Danica Patrick, Carolina Panthers quarterback Cam Newton and the Golden State Warriors' Kevin Durant. What's more, the site's monthly average "content views" has hit 100 million, and users are spending an average of about five minutes on each page. Those numbers aren’t bad for a new content site—or even a well-established one. But along the way, The Players’ Tribune has also gone through some growing pains. In late 2015, the site crashed after investor and basketball star Bryant posted a poem announcing his departure from the game. The good news? It was because of a sudden spike in the website’s traffic. Indeed, the startup’s ability to amass its clicks and engagement levels starts with its ability to attract an all-star roster of athletes, many of whom have used the platform to announce news or write personal essays. (The company says it does not pay any of its athlete contributors, and its president and other co-founder, Jaymee Messler, says the amount of content created by athletes versus The Players' Tribune's own editorial team varies, depending on the individual contributor.) But much of The Players’ Tribune’s success also rests with its ability to sign on brand partners. Most of its revenue comes from native and branded content, with sponsors like New Balance attaching their name to written pieces (and the merchandise featured in them) on the site. Jeter, Messler, and their investors say that video presents the next big opportunity for the company—and to that end, they plan to use some of their new funds to beef up their production capabilities. “They’re not building this business on the backs of banner ads,” says Eric Liaw, a general partner with IVP and new member of the board of The Players’ Tribune. “They are thinking much more broadly than the CPM-based model.” (The “CPM model” charges advertisers per ad viewed.) Jon Sakoda, a general partner with NEA and another member of the company’s board, says that the sports business is ripe for disruption, and that The Players’ Tribune is uniquely positioned to provide an alternative to traditional sports content due to its direct contributions from athletes. That said, Sakoda is well aware that they are still a small player. For all of the disruption it is causing, The Players’ Tribune will likely remain in the shadow of the industry’s 800-pound gorilla for the foreseeable future. “It's going to be a long time before people look at our site and at ESPN and think, ‘Oh, it's the same,'” says Sakoda. This story originally appeared on Fortune.com. Copyright 2017

Ubisoft hires an Oscar winner for The Division movie: Traffic’s Stephen Gaghan Posted: 19 Jan 2017 09:45 AM PST Ubisoft is going to the movies. The French video game publisher announced today that Academy Award winner Stephen Gaghan, director of Traffic, will write and direct the upcoming film version of Ubisoft’s The Division. Ubisoft Motion Pictures will develop the film with Jake Gyllenhaal's and Riva Marker's (Beasts of No Nation) Nine Stories and Jessica Chastain's Freckle Films. The Division is a massively multiplayer online shooter that takes place in a post-pandemic New York City, and the publisher announced in May 2016 that the game had 7.5 million player accounts on PS4, Xbox One, and PC. Gaghan won an Academy Award for writing Traffic and a nomination for his work on Syriana. He was a director and writer for both. His latest directorial effort is Gold, a drama that comes out this month. That film stars Chastain and Gyllenhaal. "We are really excited to bring Stephen's unique vision of the game to film audiences around the globe," said Ubisoft Motion Pictures CEO Gerard Guillemot in a statement. Meanwhile, Ubisoft’s Assassin’s Creed film, released on December 21, has generated an estimated $53 million at the U.S. box office and another $132 million overseas, according to Box Office Mojo. Above: Stephen Gaghan will be director of The Division film. Image Credit: Ubisoft "I'm excited to work with Ubisoft Motion Pictures and collaborate with their team at Massive Entertainment to bring The Division to the big screen, they're great guys, exceptionally creative, and willing to take risks," Gaghan said in a statement. "The game has been an enormous success, in large part due to the visual landscape they created, their vision of a mid-apocalyptic Manhattan. It's immersive, wonderfully strange, and yet familiar, filled with possibilities. It's also remarkable to be able to collaborate with Jessica Chastain and Jake Gyllenhaal early in the process. We all feel the story Ubisoft created is more relevant than ever." The Division video game is from Ubisoft's Massive Entertainment studio and came out early last year. Ubisoft said it sold more copies in its first 24 hours of availability than any previous title in Ubisoft's history, and it and recorded the biggest first week ever for a new video game franchise with more than $330 million in revenues. To date, Ubisoft has said The Division has sold more than 10 million units.

XCOM 2’s Long War 2 fan mod is now available for PC Posted: 19 Jan 2017 09:17 AM PST XCOM fans are going to have a busy day. 2K announced today that the free Long War 2 mod is available for its strategy game XCOM 2 on PC via the Steam Wokshop. It gives player a longer campaign than the original game (about 100 to 120 missions), smarter enemies, and new soldier classes. Although it’s a mod, 2K and XCOM developer Firaxis are promoting it directly and even partnered with Long War 2 developer Pavonis Interactive to help create it. The first Long War was one of the most popular for XCOM: Enemy Unknown, adding new units, weapons, and campaign. Releasing a new one for XCOM 2 gives players free content to explore, keeping them interested (or bringing them back) long after the game’s release last February. Although XCOM 2 is also out on PlayStation 4 and Xbox One, the console versions do not have mod support. Gaming history is filled with other mod success stories. Both Counter-Strike and Team Fortress were once mods for the original Half-Life, with developer Valve hiring their teams to make new, official versions of their games. Valve also hired developers responsible for the Warcraft III mod Defense of the Ancients to create Dota 2, the second biggest multiplayer online battle arena in the world and one of the industry’s most lucrative games. You can learn more about Long War 2 via a series of videos posted on Xcom’s official YouTube channel.

Halo Wars 2 shows how The Creative Assembly is adapting its PC chops for consoles Posted: 19 Jan 2017 08:00 AM PST I’ve had an awful time learning how to play real-time strategy games on consoles. RTS games are so much easier with a mouse and keyboard on the PC. But I gave Microsoft’s Halo Wars 2 on the Xbox One a try, and I’m happy with the results so far. Halo Wars 2 debuts on Xbox One and Windows PC on February 21. I expect the Windows version will be quite popular. But if it’s a hit on the Xbox One as well, then Microsoft will capture some more eyeballs during a slow season for consoles. And that’s important as the war with Sony isn’t going as well as Microsoft would have hoped. (Here’s our other stories on multiplayer, Blitz mode, and our developer interview). The developer’s ambitions Above: Halo Wars 2 Ascension mission teaches you how to play. Image Credit: Microsoft Halo Wars 2 was built over the past couple of years by The Creative Assembly, the Sega-owned RTS studio in the United Kingdom. The Creative Assembly has perfected its Total War strategy game series on the PC, but it had to stretch and reinvent its usual gameplay to make Halo Wars 2 work on a console. “We wanted to bring Halo back into the RTS space, and we wanted to make an RTS for everyone,” said David Nicholson, the executive producer for Halo Wars 2 at Creative Assembly, in an interview with GamesBeat. “We wanted to get Halo fans interested in an RTS, and we wanted to expose RTS fans to the fantastic story behind Halo.” The question, Nicholson said, was how to make the game more accessible but also keep the depth that leads to long gameplay. The original Halo Wars, which came out in 2009, had a good control scheme on a controller. You could press the right bumper to select local units or those that are within your field of view. If you hold the bumper down, you can select all of your units on the map. That was easy enough. But the developers added more shortcuts using the D-pad, which is customizable. You can add units to the D-pad directional controls and easily switch to them. That takes a lot of brain cycles to remember, but it could be worth it for the time it saves in a pitched battle. Getting the controls right for the Xbox One was only part of the battle. The team also worked hard on a story that fit well in the Halo universe. In this case, the crew of the UNSC capital ship Spirit of Fire awake decades after they were declared lost. They are above an ancient Forerunner haven known as the Ark. The captain and his crew have to face off against the Banished, a faction led by a lethal warrior named Atriox. You have to develop your troops and your own leaders to take on Atriox’s forces. The Ascension mission Above: Amassing firepower is essential in Halo Wars 2. Image Credit: Microsoft The story will get you immersed into the single-player campaign. The Ascension mission starts out with a small landing party that has to explore a map and set up a base. You find various sources of energy as well as mysterious battlegrounds. Then you come into contact with the Brutes, and you fight it out. It helps that Halo Wars 2 looks beautiful. The graphics are quite stunning, particularly when there’s a big firefight with lots of units engaged in melee at the same time. “Our camera is probably slightly closer in as well, though, because we want you to feel more involved in the battle,” Nicholson said. “We want you to feel compelled to protect and care for and have some compassion for the units you deploy out there. You're looking after them.” I went into the preview session cold. I jumped into battle knowing just a few of the commands. I learned as I went, and the tutorial points were inserted at the right points, like when I had to use my Spartan to leap up a cliff or steal an enemy tank. The battle chatter and storytelling were nicely paced, and that kept me interested in moving forward. The firepower of the UNSC vehicles and air combat units is pretty awesome. But that’s not the only thing you have at your disposal. I didn’t quite realize it during my play sessions for quite a while, but it really pays to use your leader’s capabilities. You can access it using the left trigger, which brings up a radial menu. Then you can choose the action you want your leader to take. That’s a pretty easy way to do something with big impact in the game. The leader abilities can trigger big events, such as temporarily making your troops invulnerable. During a firefight, that can turn the tide of the battle. That kind of solid game design makes the Halo Wars 2 shine. You can be in a big fight, and it could go either way. Whoever brings the most firepower to the battle will win, but using the leader powers at the right moment could make a big difference. That makes you pay attention to the point of contact. Rather than send your troops into battle and moving on to another task, you’ll want to witness the battle and adjust. Building out my base and creating new units was easy and intuitive. I didn’t really need to consult directions to know what I was building. The tutorial did a good job of telling me things bit by bit so I could learn a lot from the mission. But I did have a little trouble monitoring my resources and figuring out how to get more of them. That takes a little extra study and some time that I didn’t have during my preview. Summing it up Above: Unleashing leader powers is important to change the odds in Halo Wars 2. Image Credit: Microsoft The battles were quite easy, but I could change the settings to higher levels and find a better challenge. The whole point of the mission was to teach me how to fight, and that worked fine. It would be nice to get some real-time advice, like some counseling to tell me what I’m forgetting. But that’s more like having a seasoned veteran at your side telling you what to do. I had a hard time with some tasks, like moving across the map quickly. But as Nicholson explained after my play session, you can use the shortcuts to speed that up. The game has a lot of depth in variety of units, and you have to master the rock-paper-scissors mechanics around them. The tutorial does a good job in Ascension of telling you what units are vulnerable to others. I enjoyed the faster pace of the gameplay compared to older RTS games. The mission was over in about 20 minutes, and the action was satisfying. Going into the demo, I wasn’t sure I’d like to learn a new RTS on consoles. But it was a good experience, and I might be willing to invest more time in it. Here’s some gameplay of our playthrough of the Ascension mission.

Two Bit Circus raises $15 million to build next-generation micro-amusement parks Posted: 19 Jan 2017 07:09 AM PST Experimental entertainment company Two Bit Circus has raised $15 million in a funding round led by Jazz Venture Partners, with participation from existing investors, including Foundry Group, Techstars Ventures, Intel Capital, and a handful of new investors. Founded out of Los Angeles in 2012, Two Bit Circus uses technology to create immersive and interactive spectacles through events. Among its public installations have been virtual reality (VR) content and haptic activations, interactive games for conferences, and the company’s “STEAM Carnival.” Ultimately, Two Bit Circus is setting out to “reinvent the way people play,” according to a company statement. “Out of home entertainment hasn't changed much since laser tag and mini-golf,” explained Brent Bushnell, CEO and cofounder of Two Bit Circus. “The latest tech has just blown the doors open on a whole new world, changed what it means to play, and play together socially. People stress about tech pushing people apart, but we love watching it bring them together." The company raised a $6.5 million Series A round back in 2015, and late last year it launched a Kickstarter crowdfunding campaign for a maker kit to inspire creativity in kids — however, the campaign was closed a month later with less than half of its $73,000 goal reached. Two Bit Circus’ latest fund will be used specifically to build micro-amusement parks comprising more than 30,000 square feet of entertainment, including VR and mixed reality, as well as social games, fire, lasers, robots, and more. The first such entertainment park will open in Los Angeles, with a date yet to be announced. The announcement of these amusement parks marks a notable evolution for Two Bit Circus, given that the parks will be the first permanent locations for the company. “In the past, Two Bit Circus' installations have been temporary and held primarily at large events and conferences,” said Eric Gradman, Two Bit Circus cofounder and self-proclaimed “mad inventor.” “We're thrilled to build our first permanent location in our backyard. Our band of scientists, artists, storytellers, and performers are excited to bring to life a world of year-round fun.” Sign up for Funding Daily: Get the latest news in your inbox every weekday.

Fig raises $7.8 million to expand game crowdfunding platform Posted: 19 Jan 2017 07:00 AM PST Game crowdfunding platform Fig has raised $7.84 million in a funding round led by big name venture capitalists. That shows you have to raise money in order to … raise money. The round, which Spark Capital and Greycroft led (other investors include Resolute Ventures, NextView Ventures, and Draft Ventures), is a validation of the company’s strategy to pioneer a new way of investing in games on a per project basis, turning investors and everyday consumers into game publishers, said Fig CEO Justin Bailey in an interview with GamesBeat. “Video game publishing is ripe for disruption,” Bailey said. “There’s not a lot of new intellectual property. We’re stuck in ‘sequelitis.’ We see crowdfunding as disintermediating publishing and bringing the public into the publishing process.” Above: Justin Bailey, CEO of Fig. Image Credit: Fig The investment will enable Fig to accelerate the number of game projects on its platforms. "Fig is singular in video games in that it is the first to allow fan investors to participate in the upside of a video game's financial performance," said Spark Capital's Nabeel Hyatt, who was also the lead investor of Oculus VR (which Facebook bought for $2 billion), in a statement. "Investors on Fig don't have to wait for a company to be sold before they can reap returns, an occurrence which occurs rarely, and when it does it usually takes 7 to 10 years." Fig lets fans support games through rewards-based campaigns, where you don’t get an ownership stake in exchange for giving money to a game developer. But it also allows fans to invest their own money in a particular game project. “We needed to raise more money to increase our functionality,” Bailey said. Bailey said that Fig’s lawyers had to create a game project security, something that was new to the industry, dubbed Fig Game Shares. Those shares allow players to own a piece of a game project and share in the profits if the project earns any. "Interactive Entertainment is a $100 billion-a-year industry, yet many talented, veteran teams are still constrained by lack of resources." said Jon Goldman, Venture Partner of Greycroft and partner at Skybound, the IP holders of The Walking Dead, in a statement. “Fig provides a new avenue for funding that brings makers and players into an entirely new relationship, which should foster innovation and help this amazing creative industry grow even bigger.” In 2016, Fig hosted four of the year's 10 largest crowdfunded games and others including Psychonauts 2, Wasteland 3, Jay and Silent Bob: Chronic Blunt Punch, Consortium: The Tower, Kingdoms and Castles, Make Sail, and Trackless. In 2016, Fig had a 78 percent campaign success rate that was twice the success rate for all campaigns on a leading crowdfunding platform, and nearly five times the success rate for the video games category. Fig had eight successful campaigns out of 11, in terms of hitting funding targets. It raised $8.9 million for the game companies that launched campaigns, Bailey said. That’s a big chunk of money that isn’t going to companies such as Indiegogo or Kickstarter, which don’t give ownership stakes. “I don’t think reward-based crowdfunding is sustainable,” Bailey said. “That’s more like a donation, or a one-time tapping into the community. That changes when it becomes an investment.” Bailey noted that Electronic Arts published 60 games in 2008, while it published only eight games in 2016. Now about 90 percent of big game publisher titles are established franchises. By contrast, about 90 percent of crowdfunding projects are new IP. And Bailey said that the top 50 crowdfunded games across the industry took in $37 million in funding and generated $400 million in revenue. Bailey said, "Looking forward, we're exploring the possibility of amplifying the impact of fans even further by inviting institutional investors who have already expressed interest in our unique model to provide matching funds across our platform." Fig’s platform was made possible by the Jobs Act, which made it possible for non-accredited investors (who don’t meet big net worth requirements) to invest in crowdfunding projects. The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission also approved Fig Game Shares in September. Developers keep 100 percent of the rewards proceeds, minus credit card fees, and backers get a copy of the game. Fig makes money by taking a small percentage ownership in each project. So Fig makes money only if the games that are crowdfunded on its platform also make money, Bailey said. With Fig Game Shares, non-accredited investors are able to participate. Fig Game Shares pay returns based on the sales revenue of a single game, so investors get paid when a game launches, rather than having to wait for an exit if and when that occurs, which is the case with other crowdfunding platforms supporting investments in game studios. Founded in 2015, Fig has 10 employees. Bailey said the funding environment was a little uncertain, but the round only took about 45 days to complete. It was oversubscribed. Bailey said that the company had to slow down its projects in 2016 as it waited for SEC approval. But now the company hopes to double or triple the number of projects in 2017. By 2018, the goal is to have a crowdfunding happen every week. “We have more interest now,” he said. “We have way more pitches of quality games. And it’s sustainable. We have a positive return for investors already.” Over time, Fig hopes to enable users to be able to greenlight projects. If 10,000 people voted thumbs up or thumbs down on a project, that would likely turn out better than Fig choosing the projects, Bailey said. Above: Fig’s 2016 infographic Image Credit: Fig

Meet the ride-sharing app being used by thousands attending the Women’s March Posted: 19 Jan 2017 06:29 AM PST More than 250,000 people across the country are expected to attend the Women’s March on Washington the day after President-elect Donald Trump’s inauguration. That means hundreds of thousands of people have had to figure out how to get to and from the event. Adam Nestler sees that logistical conundrum as a giant business opportunity: On Saturday, his ride-sharing charter bus company, Skedaddle, will transport 11,000 people to and from Washington, D.C. Skedaddle CEO Nestler says people from states such as New York, Iowa, and Georgia are using his app to book rides to the march. “The alternative for many of the people in these communities is trying to figure out carpools or chartering buses on their own,” he says. Skedaddle is essentially the Uber Pool of buses, shuttles, and other large vehicles. Its goal is to make city-to-city travel easier for users and take advantage of the glut of charter vehicles that sit underused in parking lots most of the time, says Nestler. To book a ride, a user logs into the Skedaddle app and puts in his route (i.e., New York City to D.C.) as well as his desired pickup location and time. As long as nine other people sign up for the same route at least 48 hours ahead of the departure, the ride is booked. The company uses data to match the customer to the nearest bus company, using variables like the size of the route and the proximity to a transportation provider. A professional driver from one of Skedaddle’s 500-plus vetted transportation companies picks up the riders from a single location and gets them to their destination. Though Nestler wouldn’t disclose the total number of users, he says Skedaddle transports roughly 50,000 people each month. The company also has $3 million in venture capital. Above: Skedaddle cofounders (from left to right): Brad Werntz, Adam Nestler, Lou Harwood, and Craig Nestler. Image Credit: Skedaddle When Nestler and his three cofounders found out that hundreds of thousands of people will all be traveling to the same destination for one event, they jumped on the opportunity. The team got in touch with transportation coordinators for the Women’s March across America. Connecticut’s transportation coordinator Sarah Raskin was one of those people. Raskin, a professor at Trinity College, was in the process of calling various charter bus companies when Skedaddle and rival bus-sharing company, Rally, reached out to her. She chose to work exclusively with Skedaddle because of its “superior customer service,” saying that she receives numerous emails per day from Nestler answering questions and giving updates on the setup of the routes. “We are all volunteers who have full-time jobs,” Raskin says. “To even imagine us having to find 80 charter buses, I’m not sure we could’ve done it at our scale in Connecticut. If it had been up to us, we would’ve had half the number of buses.” This weekend boost is great news for Skedaddle, making the average fare shoot up from $40 to $100. It’s important, however, to note that the 19-person team reached out to state march organizers, who created the routes, rather than relying on its own customer base to create routes themselves. It’s not a surprising move as the startup aggressively seeks to acquire more and more users. Skedaddle has partnered with organizations, music festivals, and ski resorts to fuel its growth. Though it’s unclear whether the company is profitable, Nestler has big hopes for his young venture. For one, he wants to get Skedaddle as close to on-demand as possible by reducing the time needed to book a ride from 48 hours to 24. He has also thought about maximizing the use of space on the buses. “We have this ability to move people in vehicles that have a lot of space,” he says. “If we can move people on-demand, we can build a network to aggregate demand of goods that need to move from city to city, too.” This story originally appeared on Fortune.com. Copyright 2017

Amplero adds machine learning to help pinpoint and leverage influential customers Posted: 19 Jan 2017 06:00 AM PST AI and machine learning (ML) are set to pervade the marketing technology universe throughout 2017. With billions of marketing touchpoints to learn from, marketing technology is a natural home for ML capabilities. And today, Amplero has announced its Influencer Optimization capability, powered by machine learning and offered as part of its Intelligence Platform. The new addition makes it possible to discover not only your most influential customers, but also understand the actions they are taking and how to optimize your connections with these valuable advocates. So how does it work, and why is machine learning particularly suited to this optimization and identification process? “When we engage with a new B2C enterprise, the first thing that we do is leverage all of the rich contextual data (persona data, marketing data, point-of-sale data, product/app usage data, etc.) to build a historical, longitudinal view of each customer,” Matt Fleckenstein, chief product officer at Amplero, told me. “In doing so, you get a deep view into changes to a user's state, such as how a given user's product/app usage patterns are changing and evolving over time.” That level of data and detail is fuel to machine learning’s fire. “Because customers' worlds are increasingly connected, there are natural social networks that develop based upon who they play online games with, the people they call or text, or those whom they collaborate with to create or edit a document,” Fleckenstein said. “We can now leverage the power of machine learning to identify and influence these relationships to move beyond 1:1 marketing.” The company has backed up claims about how well its new capability works by teaming up with researchers from the Columbia Business School and HEC Paris. After studying data from nearly 6,000 mobile customers, it found that the ripple effect of personalized marketing campaigns on non-targeted consumers within the targeted consumer's network caused a 28 percent lift. Of course, as with all of these technologies, it is easy to cross the line from personalized to “creepy” once you start detailing and leveraging behavioral data. Amplero is clear about its objectives in this area of marketing. “At the end of the day, the enterprises using Amplero are doing nothing more than encouraging, and in many cases incentivizing, their most socially connected customers to do things like ‘refer a friend,'” Fleckenstein said. “Referral programs have been around for decades.” While traditional influencer marketing techniques tend to focus on celebrities and “internet famous” individuals, Amplero’s approach and machine learning capability help to identify those regular consumers who also happen to be influential to the brand using the solution. Is this a better, more natural approach than employing the services of those types of influencers? Fleckenstein thinks a combination of both methods works well. “We certainly don't see it as an either/or type of decision,” Fleckenstein said. “There are many brands out there who have benefitted from having well-known influencers and celebrities endorse their brand. As we enter 2017, we see a strong continuation of the trend to re-allocate non-addressable marketing spend (television, print, OOH, etc.) to addressable marketing (email, search, call center, etc.). If this trend continues, I think we'll see more and more dollars shifting from celebrity influencer strategies to social influencer ones.” Amplero’s new machine learning-driven Influencer Optimization capability is available to Amplero Intelligence Platform customers from today.

AdStage adds support for Salesforce and HubSpot, launches a one-stop data API Posted: 19 Jan 2017 06:00 AM PST AdStage has today revealed the next phase of its effort to be the platform that addresses any marketer’s needs. The social advertising management service has expanded beyond social media networks and traditional search engine advertising services to now include integrations with enterprise customer relationship management (CRM) tools. It has also launched what it calls a universal data API that gives businesses a single feed for all data from its sources. Four months ago, the company raised $2 million in new funding. It was said at the time that the funds would go toward a product suite that would facilitate analysis of pay-per-click performance across channels, automate daily campaign tasks, and integrations into existing tools. The beginnings of that effort are here with the next-generation platform. AdStage describes it as the "Paid Marketing Cloud," similar to what IBM, Adobe, Oracle, and Salesforce have done with general marketing. Above: The future of AdStage Image Credit: AdStage While AdStage already lets small to medium-sized businesses advertise on Google AdWords, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Snapchat, Pinterest, DoubleClick, and Bing, the platform is now tied in with Salesforce and HubSpot. This will allow marketers to do more with their data, instead of having it remain in a silo in AdStage’s database. After all, in order to have an effective campaign, marketers need to examine the whole set of data, not just a partial list. And by integrating with CRM systems, businesses can figure out the lifetime value of new and existing customers and make better decisions. As part of this effort to collect data, AdStage has also launched its first API, which has a direct tie-in with all of the major search engines and social networks, allowing marketers to extract data from them and bring it directly into the AdStage platform. Previously, all of the work had to be done individually and manually. Above: AdStage’s universal API Image Credit: AdStage "The applications of the Universal Data API are expansive, and, while we're ecstatic that we can empower users to ship or ingest deep cross-channel ad data into other tools, services, and systems, we're even more excited to see how the API is used to go beyond those core applications," said company chief executive Sahil Jain in a statement. "For example, in one weekend, an engineer at AdStage built an Amazon Alexa Skill, Slackbot, and Google Docs App that read out ad campaign performance and reports. With the rise of data accessibility, AI systems, and integrations, this flexible API can serve endless current and future marketer needs."

Inside LinkedIn’s desktop redesign rolling out now Posted: 19 Jan 2017 06:00 AM PST More than a year ago, LinkedIn decided to give its professional social network a refresh, updating its image in order to adapt to the changing way people connect with one another, do business, and improve themselves. LinkedIn started with an updated mobile app before turning to the web with a revised Groups offering. Today the company is rolling out its most cohesive effort yet, with a redesign of the core flagship desktop app. Some enhancements LinkedIn’s 467 million members will see include a more personalized News Feed, in which algorithms and human editors collaborate to find what’s relevant. The company said that more signals and controls have been added to show "quality content" from more than 500 influencers, millions of professionals, and publishers. There’s now in-line real-time messaging, similar to what you’d find on Facebook. This is designed to encourage the type of conversation we’ve become accustomed to in the age of mobile and instant messaging and moves the platform away from email-like communication. LinkedIn has previously established conversation as a "pillar" of its service, and this is another step in ensuring people can network with each other more efficiently. Above: In-line messaging as shown in LinkedIn’s redesigned desktop app (2017). Image Credit: LinkedIn Search has been streamlined, so there’s one place to find people, jobs, companies, groups, and schools. No longer will members have to select specific fields, as LinkedIn is now better at figuring out what you want to find. Eventually, the social network will index individual posts published on the platform. Finally, the navigation has been modified to feature LinkedIn’s key value propositions, namely messaging, jobs, notifications, your profile, your network, and search. There’s also a button that will direct you to additional offerings, such as LinkedIn Learnings, Slideshare, Groups, Lookup, and ProFinder. Teased in September, the desktop redesign is aimed at providing what LinkedIn hopes will be a "world class, elegant, sophisticated user experience." While the update is predominantly aesthetic, this new version has better organization, providing meaning and usefulness around the conversations and content that take place on the social network, while eliminating needless clutter. It’s essentially now on par with the mobile app and shares the same API technologies so it’s easy to update while maintaining a consistent experience across devices. Above: Member profiles shown in LinkedIn’s desktop app redesign (2017). Image Credit: LinkedIn "This makes [LinkedIn] simpler to understand and helps [members] understand what they should be doing with it," said Chris Pruett, the company’s senior director of engineering, in an interview with VentureBeat. "We knew that we would do the same [redesign] with the desktop and architected the mobile backend with the mindset of treating the desktop as a platform. All are talking to the same APIs as the mobile app, which allows LinkedIn to innovate more quickly." He says the new site is built like a single-page application, which makes it act like an app in a browser and grants it the ability to have seamless animations and in-line messaging capability. One downside that Pruett noted was the sluggish initial load time, which he said would improve. He claimed that in early testing, the average member experience was at least 25 percent faster and that LinkedIn has seen lower bounce rates, but he declined to cite specifics. "Page load hasn’t turned members off," Pruett claimed. Amy Parnell, LinkedIn’s senior director of design, described the redesign as a home renovation project. Ultimately, the company narrowed it down to "six rooms." She cites an example in which all notifications are now placed in one page so members can quickly identify work anniversaries, new jobs, birthdays, and other updates. Parnell also explained that the idea was to reduce the possibility of information overload, something that may have been an issue with previous iterations of LinkedIn. Above: An old version of LinkedIn’s News Feed prior to the rollout of the 2017 redesign. Image Credit: LinkedIn Open-source software plays a big part in this redesign. Pruett stated that the company built the new site using ember technologies, which LinkedIn has been an active contributor to. Though this is the first time ember has been used on the desktop, LinkedIn Learning also uses it. In order to ensure it worked — based on the needs of members — LinkedIn worked with the open-source community to rewrite a rendering engine and create a new one that allows specific code modules to be loaded when needed, based on the single-page application process the company is using. Although membership has increased each quarter, one statistic that still remains low is monthly active users, which currently stands around 22 percent. This weighs heavily on LinkedIn and both Pruett and Parnell acknowledged the challenge. "We’ve spent a lot of time with the redesign thinking about how to get people re-engaged," Parnell said. "A lot of what we do is figuring out who we could bring value to and who has forgotten about LinkedIn…A lot has to do with onboarding and educating them on the changes. A lot of the principles around the design will go a long way to help re-engage members." Above: Searching on LinkedIn has been improved in the 2017 desktop app redesign. Image Credit: LinkedIn "It starts with what is LinkedIn for? What do you go to the flagship for and what not for? What are our key value propositions? What belongs and what doesn’t? How do we connect people to opportunity, help them be productive and successful?" Pruett asked. "You saw it first with mobile and now the desktop. We’re giving the flagship app more of an identity. If you tried to put LinkedIn Learning too much into the flagship, it would get cluttered because flagship isn’t an app around learning. How do we give people confidence that they’re using LinkedIn correctly?" Right now, LinkedIn has hit a problem typically seen in tech companies when they hit a particular growth point. The company is unbundling itself, opting to refocus on two main areas for the main desktop app: conversations and content. If you want to find presentations, that’s where SlideShare comes in; LinkedIn Learning for professional development; Groups for organized membership; Lookup for employee directories; and more. For many, the redesign may feel like just a new coat of paint. But what must be understood is that LinkedIn seeks to start a new chapter of its mission around the economic graph so members can actually see what benefits they’ll get out of the service. The problem is that the former iteration was so cluttered that it was incredibly difficult to figure out what to do. After seeing the potential of its redesigned mobile app and Groups section, LinkedIn decided to do a complete overhaul, providing a unified experience that really hasn’t been seen in some time. Parnell said she’s proud of the redesign, adding that it’s an incredible achievement to have a "significant redesign for a huge consumer base." This update is also largely aimed at the younger demographics, such as students and those just entering the workforce — the largest growing segment on LinkedIn. "We designed LinkedIn in a way where they belonged here," Parnell said. As part of this process, the team of two to three designers worked together to create concepts before they were tested in labs and evaluated by members of the target demographic. Then after more iterations and another round of focus groups, the company was ready to roll the redesign out more broadly. The new simplified LinkedIn design is rolling out worldwide starting today. Once you’ve received access to it, there is no way to opt out and return to the old experience.

Tapjoy: Mobile games are more engaging and fun than social networks Posted: 19 Jan 2017 06:00 AM PST Consumers feel happier and more engaged when they are playing mobile games than when they are using social networks, according to a research report from mobile monetization firm Tapjoy. Tapjoy conducted the report to find out what motivates mobile gamers, which are a highly desirable consumer audience for brand advertisers. One finding from "The Changing Face of Mobile Gamers: What Brands Need to Know," is that consumers are twice as likely to say they feel relaxed when playing mobile games than they are when using social apps. They also say they feel more focused (35 percent vs 11 percent), happier (34 percent vs 21 percent), and more engaged (35 percent vs 20 percent) on gaming apps than social networking apps. Conversely, consumers are 2.4 times more likely to feel bored on social apps than gaming apps, and 60 percent more likely to feel stressed. Above: Tapjoy’s survey of mobile gamers shows how they feel while playing. Image Credit: Tapjoy "When designing their digital advertising strategies, it's critical that brands take into consideration the activities that consumers are engaged in at the time and how they make them feel," said Shannon Jessup, chief revenue officer of Tapjoy, in a statement. "There are nearly 2 billion mobile gamers in the world, and the unique state of mind consumers have when playing games on their smartphones or tablets represents an incredible opportunity for brands to truly connect with consumers." Another finding: More than two-thirds of consumers who play games do not identify themselves as a gamer. Even among those who said that they play mobile games six times per week or more, less than one in three identify as a gamer. Women represent the majority of mobile gamers, making up 63 percent of the total player base. Consumers 55 and over are the largest age group, representing 23 percent of the respondents, with consumers ages 25 to 34 representing 21 percent and those 35 to 44 representing 19 percent. Consumers with a household income of $100,000 or more make up 17 percent of mobile gamers, with another 37 percent earning between $50,000 and $99,000. 70 percent of mobile gamers say they play while sitting in front of the television, and they are more than twice as likely to play while relaxing at home than while at work or during their commute. They are also more than twice as likely to play at night right before they go to bed than when they first wake up in the morning. Above: Tapjoy’s survey shows when people play mobile games. Image Credit: Tapjoy Puzzle games are most popular category, played by 59 percent of respondents. Strategy (38 percent), trivia (33 percent) and casino/card (27 percent) games were next on the list, respectively. Among the least popular games are player-vs-player (15 percent), Sports (11 percent), and Shooting (8 percent). The report is based on a third-quarter survey of 5,623 unique smartphone and tablet owners. Consumers had to be 18 and above to take part. The survey was run through mobile gaming apps on iOS and Android, so by default all respondents played mobile games on at least one occasion. Tapjoy reaches about 520 million monthly active users.

Oracle acquires API development startup Apiary Posted: 19 Jan 2017 05:06 AM PST Oracle has announced plans to acquire Apiary, a startup that helps developers design and create documentation for application programming interfaces (APIs). Terms of the deal were not disclosed. Founded out of San Francisco in 2011, Apiary had raised more than $8 million in equity funding, including a $6.8 million tranche back in August 2015. The company offers a suite of tools for companies to build web APIs at speed, while allowing them to test and monitor those APIs. APIs have emerged as big business, as they enable companies and developers to unlock additional revenue streams beyond their own closed silos. In August last year, Google dropped $625 million to buy API management provider Apigee, a company that offers software for predictive analytics and management of APIs. As for what Oracle has in store for Apiary, well, the company is keeping some of its cards close to its chest, saying that it’s “currently reviewing” the Apiary product roadmap and will be “providing guidance to customers” in the future, according to a statement. However, Oracle has given some indication of how it plans to leverage Apiary as part of its own product range. The database software tech titan already allows companies to monetize and analyze their APIs, and with Apiary serving up the front-end for designing, creating, and managing their APIs, Oracle hopes to deliver “the most complete API creation and management platform in the cloud,” according to a FAQ posted by the company. “Oracle's API Integration Cloud enables companies to secure, consume, monetize, and analyze APIs," said Amit Zavery, senior vice president for integration cloud at Oracle, in a press release. "With Apiary, Oracle will also provide customers advanced capabilities to design and govern API's, allowing companies to manage the entire API lifecycle and deliver integrated applications." Crucially, Apiary isn’t being shuttered, and its products will continue to be offered to other companies. Oracle says: Oracle is committed to protecting and enhancing customer investments in Apiary solutions. After the close of the transaction, Oracle plans to continue investing in Apiary and Oracle's API Integration Cloud. We expect this will include more functionality and capabilities at a quicker pace. In addition, Apiary customers will benefit from better integration and alignment with Oracle's other product offerings. As noted by Oracle, the transaction isn’t yet complete, and there’s no indication as to when this may happen — Apiary is a privately owned company, so one would assume that concluding the deal would be fairly straightforward.

DigiLens raises $22 million to make ‘eyeglass-thin’ augmented reality displays Posted: 19 Jan 2017 05:00 AM PST Display technology maker DigiLens has raised $22 million to create better augmented reality and virtual reality products in which digital information lies on top of transparent glass. The Sunnyvale, Calif.-based company makes diffractive optical waveguide technology and nanomaterials  for AR and VR, which could be a $108 billion market by 2021, according to tech advisor Digi-Capital. DigiLens’ technology can enable “eyeglass-thin” AR heads-up displays for motorcycle helmets, car windshields, VR headsets, aerospace applications such as fighter jets, and AR smartglasses, said Jonathan Waldern, CEO of DigiLens, in an interview with VentureBeat. Above: DigiLens makes heads-up display technology for cars, such as a new BMW model. Image Credit: DigiLens “We enable a massive reduction in size and form factor,” Waldern said. “This funding allows us to expand our scope to focus on the next areas. Today’s science fiction is tomorrow’s science fact.” Strategic investors include Sony, Foxconn, Continental, and Panasonic, along with venture investors Alsop Louie Partners, Bold Capital, Nautilus Venture Partners, and Dolby Family Ventures. The company plans to use these strategic relationships to bring to market several augmented reality displays and sensors for enterprise, consumer, and transportation applications. "Data on glass is a term I coined to encompass the utility of mixed reality," said Gilman Louie, founder and managing director of Alsop Louie Partners and lead investor, in a statement. "We are betting on a variety of AR applications from stock picking and telepresence to autonomous driving and gaming, all benefiting from DigiLens optics and AR-HUD breakthrough.” Above: A heads-up display in a car can make you a more alert driver. Image Credit: DigiLens The company is eight years old, and it spent about six of those years developing its fundamental technology, Waldern said. It targeted the aerospace and military markets first, and it has generated revenues from its heads-up displays (HUDs) for that market. The big aerospace firm Rockwell Collins is using the DigiLens technology in various projects. “We bootstrapped ourselves on the military and aerospace business,” Waldern said. DigiLens is also going into production on automotive HUDs that it showed with BMW last year. "We believe Augmented reality HUDs will not only enhance driver safety but also accelerate automated driving acceptance by enhancing the drivers' confidence in what the car actually sees and knows" said Helmut Matschi, executive board member and head of the interior division at Continental. "The large AR-HUD display will help keep drivers safe by putting critical travel information at eye level and allow them to see what the robot car sees." Above: DigiLens can enhance a driving experience with a heads-up display. Image Credit: DigiLens Waldern said the “key enabler for AR is the optics.” Sony plans to use the DigiLens waveguide optics in an upcoming version of its AR smartglasses. That will help Sony develop lenses with a wider field of view and full-color capability compared to other smartglasses available today, said Hiroshi Mukawa, general manager of the AR eyeglass program at Sony, in a statement. AR is hard to do because the devices push the laws of physics, said G. Chen, chief technology officer at Foxconn, a major contract manufacturer. “We think diffractive optics holds the key to AR, but writing millions of tiny optic structures is best done photographically, using nano self-assembly, not expensive precision etching like HoloLens,” Chen said. “We need to break the manufacturing price barrier. With their Waveguide Diffractive Optics, [DigiLens seems] to have overcome most nagging technical problems and we see a very bright future for them." Panasonic is interested in applying DigiLens’ technology in future car designs. "We have supported DigiLens for several years and continue to believe their technology will address the complex challenge of delivering advanced diffractive optics for automotive and consumer HUDs," said Hakan Kostepen, executive director at the Panasonic Silicon Valley car research center. Waldern contends that the display performance of etched structures, called surface relief gratings (SRG's), as used by Microsoft HoloLens, Vuzix (licensed from Nokia Technologies), and Magic Leap (acquired from Molecular Imprints), are all limited to narrow field of view (FOV), due to the inherent physics of SRG grating interaction. Above: DigiLens enables augmented reality overlays. Image Credit: DigiLens These other technologies work for small screen display, but have no place in immersive AR or VR "mixed realities," Waldern said. By contrast, DigiLens makes precision diffractive optics by photographically recording (not etching) the nanostructures. The company’s Switchable Bragg Gratings (SBG's) allow much wider FOV with higher efficiency, in addition to offering a "printable" manufacturing benefit. To date, DigiLens has raised $35 million. It employs 42 people.

How Creative Assembly tried to make Halo Wars 2 more accessible on Xbox One Posted: 19 Jan 2017 04:00 AM PST Microsoft has a lot riding on Halo Wars 2, a real-time strategy exclusive that debuts on the Xbox One and Windows on February 21. The game has been in the works for a couple of years at the Creative Assembly, the United Kingdom studio behind the Total War series. Creative Assembly’s job is to break the curse of real-time strategy games on consoles. It turns out that it’s far easier to play such games with a keyboard and mouse, rather than a game controller. To make the game more accessible on consoles, the developer simplified the gameplay and focused on big moments when you can bring in the special abilities of your Spartans and other forces to turn the tide of battle. I played a single player mission of Halo Wars 2, and then I played a few rounds of 2 vs 2 multiplayer and Blitz mode. Then I spoke with David Nicholson, executive producer for the game at Creative Assembly. Here’s an edited transcript of our interview. (And here’s our stories on Halo Wars 2 multiplayer and Blitz mode). Above: David Nicholson, executive producer at Creative Assembly, talks about Halo Wars 2. Image Credit: Dean Takahashi GB: How long have you been working on Halo Wars 2? David Nicholson: I think we started late in 2014. We wanted to bring Halo back into the RTS space, and we wanted to make an RTS for everyone. We wanted to get Halo fans interested in an RTS, and we wanted to expose RTS fans to the fantastic story behind Halo. GB: It seems like a difficult job, trying to do this on a console. How did you think around that? Nicholson: We had a very strong original title to start from. Ensemble did a great job with the original Halo Wars. We broke that down and built on what was successful about it. Then we added a great range of things. The difficulty, the challenge comes from trying to build the RTS for everyone. There are people who love RTS and don't play everything else. We're trying to understand what they're looking for and how we can satisfy those guys. But there are also people who've bounced off RTS in the past, who have not found it appealing. How can we make it more readily accessible, more understandable, but also get them exposure to the depth of an RTS that keeps you playing it? GB: There's always the crowd that enjoys the genre on PC, but has a hard time on consoles. Nicholson: There have been some valiant, but maybe less successful attempts at doing RTS on a console. But the original Halo Wars is arguably the very best implementation of RTS controls on a console. We think it's boiling down the things people want to do – what do you do with your units, how do you control them – and getting that as intuitive and accessible as possible with a limited number of button combinations. We've done that with things like control loops. The original title had all units and local units, which we've maintained. But we've added the ability to have control loops on the console through using the D-pad. You can have up to four control loops at a time and easily switch to them, easily add or take units out of those control loops. That's one thing we're pushing forward. Above: Halo Wars 2 single-player mission Ascension teaches you how to move through a map. Image Credit: Microsoft GB: Does the tutorial take people through how to get used to that? Nicholson: Right. We have a stand-alone tutorial. The pure purpose of that is as a training ground, teaching you how to do a variety of things like base-building, leader powers, unit selection, attacks, and counters. But also, if you decide you don't want to play the tutorial, the early stages of the campaign are also onboarding mechanics and features and approaches for you. GB: Are you reducing the number of units on the screen, relative to most RTS games? Nicholson: I think we have a pretty high pop cap. We have a good number of units on screen at any time. Our camera is probably slightly closer in as well, though, because we want you to feel more involved in the battle. We want you to feel compelled to protect and care for and have some compassion for the units you deploy out there. You're looking after them. Bringing the camera in lets you focus and get more connected to those units. Doing that with a smaller number of units is part of the approach. GB: What's a quick way to go between locations on the map? Nicholson: Again, it's on the D-pad. It's not necessarily a move between different groups, though. In the controller options, you can set up what you want the D-pad's default actions to be. It can either be map movement, and then control loops are a combination of the right trigger and the D-pad, or you can switch that around. Then control loops are the default, and squeezing the trigger combined with the D-pad will cycle through your bases, cycle through your armies, or jump you back to the last alert. GB: That's one thing I hadn't mastered yet. Moving from one part of the mini-map to another was pretty slow. Nicholson: Yeah. If you squeeze the left bumper, then you can accelerate across the map. The more you play, the more you use these functions, the more you ingrain that memory so that you're more used to it. Above: Halo Wars 2 has furious action. Image Credit: Microsoft GB: Playing without trying to memorize these things—what level of functionality can you get without mastering these kinds of controls? Nicholson: We've certainly seen people playing Blitz with zero instruction. We didn't have tutorials for Blitz for a long time during development. Throwing people in to play it, they soon got up to speed with how it worked. As you progress into the slightly more complex modes with multiple different options in them, then players tend to discover. That's one of the things we tried to do with the controls. Where do you fingers fall? What are you going to try when you want to do something? "I've not read a manual, but I'm going to try this." GB: When I figured out the leader trigger, what to do there, that made the battles a lot more fun. Nicholson: Right. The leader powers are a big thing, when you can bring them out on the field. GB: Was that always there, or did that come into the design at a later point in the process? Nicholson: As part of the open beta we had in June, there was a lot of player feedback that was very positive and constructive about certain things. One thing we changed was the understanding of the leader powers. We had a slightly different implementation of leader powers previously, which would have been more familiar if you'd played an MMO or an RPG. It was more like a talent tree, similar to what you'd see in something like World of Warcraft. But we found that wasn't as readily understandable to players. We moved that into the radial menu where it is now, which is more familiar. It's a very similar interface, similar user experience to other parts of the game. We've found that people pick up on that much more quickly. It's more intuitive to say, "Okay, I want this, and I want to double down on that." We thought the earlier way was intuitive, but that's only because it's intuitive if you've played a certain set of other games that do things the same way. GB: Are you able to have this point of contact, use the leader, and somehow feed more troops into the battle at the same time? Or do you have to break off from the leader to go back to the base and start building more? Nicholson: In Domination, Strongholds, and Deathmatch you're always building more units back at the base, but you can move the rally point if you want to. We see the more advanced players constantly moving the rally point. They'll set a rally point, set some build orders, get the guys moving, and then move them somewhere else. There are some good tactics to employ if you're familiar with exactly where the rally point needs to be. You can start pumping out units, and then you know they'll go over and attack straightaway rather than sitting at the base waiting for you to tell them what to do. 1 2 View All Continue Reading ...

Facebook to build third international data center in Denmark Posted: 19 Jan 2017 03:53 AM PST (Reuters) – Facebook will build a new data centre in the Danish city of Odense, the California-based tech company said at a press conference with local authorities, only the third such facility outside of the United States. “The Odense data centre will be one of the most advanced, energy-efficient data centres in the world,” Facebook’s director of data centre operations, Niall McEntegart said on Thursday. Facebook already has a data centre in Lulea, Sweden and another in Clonee in Ireland. The new facility will be built on the outskirts of Denmark’s third largest city, best known as the birthplace of fairy tale writer Hans Christian Andersen. It will be powered exclusively by renewable energy, McEntegart said, adding that the cold climate could help to cool servers instead of relying on air conditioners. McEntegart told local newspaper Fyens.dk that the centre would cost more than $100 million but would not be more specific. It would provide 150 jobs when operational, he said. Facebook bought a 0.5 square kilometre plot of land on the outskirts of Odense in October last year, but had not disclosed the purpose of the site. Danish Energy Minister Lars Lilleholt said Facebook’s decision was a recognition of Denmark’s strengths. “We have one of the world’s greatest energy systems with large quantities of green energy, high security of supply, good fibre connections and competitive power prices,’ Lilleholt said in a statement. Apple also invested in a data centre in northern Denmark in 2015. The Facebook centre, expected to be operational in 2020, will consist of two large data buildings, a building for administration and logistics as well as several other technical facilities, according to Fyens.dk. (Editing by Susan Fenton/Keith Weir)

Nimble Named #1 CRM by G2 Crowd for Customer Satisfaction in Latest 2017 CRM Rankings for the Fourth Year in a Row Posted: 19 Jan 2017 03:35 AM PST PRESS RELEASE: Nimble Starts 2017 With Key Wins in CRM and Sales Intelligence G2 Crowd Report SANTA MONICA, Calif.–(BUSINESS WIRE)–January 19, 2017– Nimble, the pioneer of Social Sales and Marketing CRM, has been named #1 in CRM Customer Satisfaction and High Performer by G2 Crowd in its Winter 2017 CRM Rankings. Smarter Sales Insights and Social Intelligence for your Sales Team Nimble pioneered Smarter Social Sales and Marketing CRM and has since experienced tremendous growth of over 100,000 users registering for the platform and over 10,000 paying customers worldwide. “We are grateful for the thousands of Nimble customers who have adopted our product and help us tell our story about how CRM should work for you, everywhere you work,” said Nimble CEO, Jon Ferrara. “The G2 Crowd ratings validate the power, simplicity and value Nimble provides its customers.” Nimble #1 Rankings Based On Over 4,500 Business Users Reviews The G2 Grid℠ report on CRM software is an in-depth report of 148 CRM vendors based on user reviews from over 4,594 business professionals. Nimble was named #1 in Customer Satisfaction and #1 in Social Network Integration ahead of all other CRM vendors including Salesforce, Zoho, and Hubspot CRM. This marks the fourth year in a row that Nimble has led in CRM Customer Satisfaction. Nimble Also Named Best in CRM Value, Ease of Setup and Use Nimble was named a High Performer by receiving a high Customer Satisfaction score and having a large Market Presence. Nimble earned #1 in overall Customer Satisfaction because it was rated well above the competition for Quality of Support, Ease of Use, Meeting Company Requirements, Ease of Administration, Ease of Doing Business With Nimble, and Ease of Setup. Nimble Leads the Way as Customer Engagement and Sales Goes Social Nimble also led the rankings for Social Collaboration features and Social Network Integration capabilities, a category users were least-satisfied with for other CRMs. Nimble has prided itself on being a market pioneer of Social Sales with its numerous social network and data integrations, resulting in Nimble consistently achieving top ranking and recognition. Nimble’s integrations with public social networks allows users to obtain critical contact details to inform their sales outreach and customer follow-ups. Nimble Named Best CRM Four Years in a Row by G2 Crowd These awards follow recent accolades for Nimble, including: King of CRM by GetApp, #1 in CRM Value, #1 CRM in Customer Satisfaction and CRM Market Leader 3 years in a row by G2 Crowd. Nimble was also recognized previously as #1 Sales Intelligence in Customer Satisfaction and overall High Performer. Nimble was named #1 CRM in numerous other reviews over the past six months including; #1 CRM for Small Business by TechnologyAdvice, Highest Rated Software by Small, Mid-Size and Enterprise Business Users, Highest Rated CRM, Highest Rated Sales Intelligence, Best Software 2014 and Highest Rated Ease-of-Setup. Nimble was also recognized previously as #1 Sales Intelligence in Customer Satisfaction and overall High Performer. Resources Read more details on the Nimble Blog What’s New in Nimble Nimble Demo Video G2 Crowd Nimble Report ABOUT NIMBLE – Nimble is the pioneer of social sales and marketing CRM for individuals and teams to intelligently nurture relationships across email and social networks such as Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn. Nimble combines the strengths of traditional CRM, classic contact management, social media, sales intelligence and marketing automation into a powerful social selling solution. Nimble was founded by Jon Ferrara, the co-founder of GoldMine, a pioneer of SFA, CRM, Relationship Management and Marketing Automation. For more information, visit www.nimble.com. Nimble can be found on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Instagram. Located in Santa Monica, CA Nimble is in the heart of the Southern California Silicon Beach tech community. Nimble Voted Most Loved Santa Monica Tech Startup of 2016. ABOUT G2 CROWD – G2 Crowd, the world’s leading business software review platform, leverages more than 80,000 user reviews to drive better purchasing decisions. Technology buyers, investors, and analysts use the site to compare and select the best software based on peer reviews and synthesized social data. For more information, go to G2Crowd.com. View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20170119005405/en/ Nimble, Inc. Michaela Prouzova, 310-438-5362 michaela@nimble.com

With Trump and Brexit closing borders, France opens its doors wider to startups and entrepreneurs Posted: 19 Jan 2017 03:19 AM PST Across a series of events this week, the French Tech ecosystem sought to deliver a clear message that France is eager to serve as a global home for entrepreneurs from around the world, even as other countries put up new barriers. “France is an open, a deeply open country, and believes that the world can bring a lot to it, and that France can also contribute to the future of the world,” said President François Hollande at a startup event in Paris. “We believe that exchanges of goods, but above all of people and capital that can be invested effectively, are the keys to controlled globalization.” The talk in much of Paris this week, among both elected officials and entrepreneurs, was of the looming inauguration of Donald Trump in the United States and of Brexit in the United Kingdom. Hollande criticized Trump for his remarks about the weakness of Europe and his belief that more countries will leave the European Union. On Tuesday, U.K. Prime Minister Theresa May re-confirmed her country’s intention to leave the EU and its single market. The latter’s remarks continued to cause nervousness among London’s robust tech community. Paris is one of several tech hubs, including Dublin and Berlin, that have been making overtures to London-based entrepreneurs who might be worried about losing access to Europe’s single market, even if the number of members drops from 28 to 27. Indeed, Hollande sought to use that as a selling point for France’s tech economy. “It is a chance to be in the Europe of 27 if the British confirm that it is their intention to leave the European Union,” Hollande said a day before May’s remarks. “It is important to have a large market of 27 and where precisely, in the case of the digital economy, we will be able to invest massively. This is what can convince British people to move to France…We are going to do more to convince them.” Hollande was speaking Monday at a Demo Day for the French Tech Ticket program that was launched in 2015 to encourage startups from around the world to move to France, where they would receive visas and seed money to develop their projects. Out of 1,500 applications, 50 entrepreneurs were selected. Following presentations from 20 startups at the event, Hollande was introduced to the program’s second class, which grew to 200 entrepreneurs this year and received applications from 90 countries. Seeking to expand its global ambitions, the government announced the launch of the French Tech Visa, a program designed to streamline the applications of entrepreneurs, engineers, investors, and developers who want to relocate to France. The visa comes with the right to work for four years in France. Digital Minister Axelle Lemaire, speaking at the Demo Day, also took a swipe at incoming president Trump’s comment about being “tired of winning,” noting that Trump already seemed quite tired. She also emphasized that Paris wants to be a haven for international entrepreneurs. “European entrepreneurs living in the United Kingdom, they are extraordinarily worried,” she said. “In this context, it’s important to emphasize that Paris is welcoming and open to entrepreneurs, and is conscious of the need to involve others in the ecosystem.” Above: Digital Minister Axelle Lemaire (left) speaks with President François Hollande (center) and Finance Minister Michael Sapin at the French Tech Ticket Demo Day. Image Credit: French government The next day, Lemaire met with her German counterpart, Matthias Machnig, to discuss plans for a joint French-German $1 billion late-stage growth fund. While venture capital across Europe has been on the rise, raising larger, late-stage funding can still be a challenge for many startups here. The two countries are hoping that international cooperation will help bridge that gap. Avec mon collègue allemand Mathias Machnig pour avancer vite/concrètement sur la création d'un fonds de croissance franco-allemand #europe pic.twitter.com/jFuOWaoghw — Axelle Lemaire (@axellelemaire) January 17, 2017 At the moment of their meeting, far across the city, French journalists were gathered at Station F, where Facebook’s Sheryl Sandberg was announcing that her company would open an incubator for data-driven startups. The $265 million startup campus that is set to open in April and has already attracted a wide range of venture capital firms, hacker spaces, and incubators. The campus is located inside the historic Halle Freyssinet train station, which is nearing the end of a two-year renovation that has been funded almost exclusively by Xavier Niel, a French telecom entrepreneur. Niel has said part of his motivation for opening Station F was to create a kind of global symbol for the rising French Tech scene, a message that Sandberg seemed to echo. "Paris has always been a place where people come together to break new ground," Sandberg said. "Now Paris has a thriving tech scene. Entrepreneurs are the engine of economic growth all over the world. At Facebook, there's nothing we care about more than supporting them." These big events eclipsed a number of other interesting developments. For instance, Serena Capital, a Paris-based venture capital firm, announced the closing of an $85 million fund focused on artificial intelligence, Europe’s first. That was a prelude to a larger announcement the French government is making on Friday about a strategic initiative to boost the country’s AI ecosystem. France already has a large concentration of AI and machine learning researchers and startups, but, as with other aspects, it’s hoping to do more to gain international recognition of that potential. All this effort to draw in outsiders reflects a cultural and political shift for France. Whether these initiatives succeed could go a long way to determining whether the French Tech community can secure its place as a global startup movement that truly transforms the country’s economy. “When you look at the top ecosystems, the percent of international people and talent is really what contributes to the innovation that comes out of there,” said Roxanne Varza, director of Station F and a Silicon Valley native, while on stage at the Demo Day. “That’s one thing that’s been lacking in this ecosystem. And it’s terrific to have a program like this that is finally addressing that. I think this is hugely important.”

Samsung rolls out Android Nougat 7.0 to Galaxy S7 and S7 Edge, other devices to follow in first half of 2017 Posted: 19 Jan 2017 02:27 AM PST Samsung has begun rolling out Android Nougat 7.0 to Galaxy S7 and S7 Edge devices, more than two months after having first made the update available to those on the Samsung Galaxy beta program. In its announcement, the Korean tech titan revealed that the official rollout kicked off on January 17, though it didn’t state what markets this applies to. However, based on the beta program that kicked off in November, it’s likely it applies to the U.S., U.K., and South Korea, at the very least. The Android 7.0 update comes with a handful of customizations, including quick panel notifications, an always-on display (AOD), and performance mode that promises to extend battery life and enhance speed. Above: 1. Notifications. 2. AOD. 3. Performance Mode Android Nougat 7.0 was first launched in beta back in March 2016 and was officially released in August on Google’s Nexus-branded handsets. Android Nougat 7.1 was later introduced alongside Google’s newest Pixel-branded flagship phones. Samsung has traditionally been slow to pick up on the latest version of Android, so the fact that it kicked off its beta program so soon after its official launch was encouraging. Now, it’s ready for prime time. So what about other Galaxy-branded handsets? According to Samsung, owners of Galaxy S6, S6 Edge (Plus), Galaxy Note5, Galaxy Tab A, Galaxy Tab S2, Galaxy A3, and Galaxy A8 devices will receive some Nougat love in the first half of 2017. The less said about the Galaxy Note7, the better.

Rocket Internet closes new $1 billion venture fund to back internet startups Posted: 19 Jan 2017 01:25 AM PST Rocket Internet Capital Partners Fund, the venture arm of the German internet giant, announced today that it has raised $1 billion to invest across all stages of startups. In a press release, the firm claimed this was “Europe’s largest early stage and growth capital fund focused on the Internet sector.” The money will be used to invest in a wide range of internet startups, including Rocket Internet’s own. “RICP having reached the hard cap of USD 1.0 billion shows the strong interest of leading investors, who share the enthusiasm for the attractive investment opportunity RICP presents,” said Oliver Samwer, Rocket Internet’s CEO, in a statement. There have been rumblings about the overall health of the Rocket Internet parent company, and whether its strategy of pursuing “proven” internet business models (what critics call “copying”) has been losing steam. But with the new fund, Rocket was still able to attract outside investors to contribute 86 percent of the money, with the rest coming from Rocket. Sign up for Funding Daily: Get the latest news in your inbox every weekday.

Blitz mode turns Halo Wars 2 into a furious multiplayer fray Posted: 19 Jan 2017 01:00 AM PST Blitz mode is a new single and multiplayer battle mode in Halo Wars 2 that changes the way you play the real-time strategy game. Halo Wars 2 arrives on Windows and Xbox One on February 21, and I had a chance to play Blitz on the Proving Grounds map at a preview event. The Blitz mode introduces frenetic action to the RTS that you normally don’t find in this kind of game. Most RTS titles start slow. You have to build a base, then build an army, and finally go out and destroy your enemy. With Blitz, you are thrown into battle. In single player Firefight battles, you have to defend three control points against the enemy. But you only have a few units, so you can’t spread your forces out. (Here’s our story on Halo Wars 2 multiplayer). The enemy attackers arrive in waves. You have to figure out where they are going, move your units, and set up killing zones to stop the attacks. Over time, the enemies come from multiple directions. The only way you can stay alive is to call in reinforcements at the right time. That’s where the card mechanic comes in. You use the cards to call in more forces and keep the enemy at bay. Above: Halo Wars 2 Blitz mode has a card mechanic. Image Credit: Microsoft You have to be aware of the arrival of energy canisters, which appear on the battlefield every 90 seconds. If you grab the canisters, you get more energy. Your energy also steadily rises during the match. When you get enough energy, you can then use your cards. At any given time, you have four cards available. You can spend a smaller amount on ground troops, or you can wait until you accumulate more for vehicles or air units. The card deck adds some split-second urgency to the battle, as you have to pick your units and deploy them in the right place in order to reinforce your forces, which are sure to be overwhelmed at some point as the waves of attackers grow progressively stronger. Defending all three control points at once on the Proving Grounds map proves difficult. If you deploy the right cards at the right time, you can turn the tide. You get a break in between waves of attackers in single player, so you can use that time to use your cards. But you can play the cards at any time during the battle as your energy levels rise. Blitz is always touch-and-go, with small numbers of units fighting each other. That means that reinforcements or leader abilities can turn the tide of battle in your direction. Units can be spawned on your own control points or when they are within line-of-sight of your own units. That means you can bring them directly into the fray. In multiplayer, you can take on a player one-versus-one or engage in two-versus-two. I fought a two-versus-two match. Even with two players, you still can only really guard two out of the three control points. So multiplayer takes a lot of cooperation, and it’s best if you can talk to your partner. Here’s my first crack at the single player version of Blitz. And here’s a 2 vs 2 multiplayer battle on Blitz.

You are subscribed to email updates from VentureBeat. To stop receiving these emails, you may unsubscribe now.	Email delivery powered by Google
Google Inc., 1600 Amphitheatre Parkway, Mountain View, CA 94043, United States

loading...

Lexo edhe: