Samsung's Next Galaxy Phone Could Have Siri-Like Smarts

By David Jones
Nov 9, 2016 11:30 AM PT

Samsung Electronics this week revealed plans to unveil its flagship Galaxy S8 mobile phone with a new digital assistant powered by AI. The assistant will be based on technology gained with Samsung's recent acquisition of Viv Labs.

The plans call for Samsung to incorporate the AI into its family of electronics and appliances, ranging from mobile devices to wearable technology and home devices.
Rhee Injong, CTO of Samsung's mobile communications business, was one of several executives who briefed Reuters on the plans.
Samsung may delay the introduction of the new phone past the Mobile World Congress in February, pushing the launch to as late as April, according to The Wall Street Journal. The company may add a button on the side of the S8 to launch the AI capabilities, similar to the buttons for launching Siri on Apple devices.
"Samsung is excited to begin integrating initial AI capabilities into its future products and we look forward to sharing further details at a later date," a spokesperson said in a statement provided to TechNewsWorld by company rep Ashley Wimberly.

Smart Enough?

In the aftermath of the Galaxy Note7 debacle, there is skepticism that Samsung's revelations concerning plans for a digital assistant amount to much more than face-saving hype.
"Personally, I'm a little wary about Samsung's ability to compete in this space," said Jitesh Ubrani, a senior research analyst at IDC.
"Without search and large amounts of user data, it will be quite difficult for Samsung to differentiate their AI from others," he told TechNewsWorld.
Amazon, Google, Microsoft and others have years of consumer data to build on artificial intelligence platforms that rely on learned user preferences to work in an optimal way, Ubrani noted. Their existing AI technologies include Amazon's Alexa, Google's Assistant and Microsoft's Cortana.
The proof will be in the pudding as to whether Samsung truly can assemble a new AI digital assistant that can compete, said industry analyst Jeff Kagan.
"There are many different versions of AI," he told TechNewsWorld. "Some are really advanced and interesting and real. Others are just there to let a company use the term to gain media attention.
"The real question is which is Samsung's AI?" Kagan asked.
Although Viv Labs is a startup, it is not a babe in the woods when it comes to AI systems. Its founders are Siri developer Dag Kittlaus, Adam Cheyer and Chris Brigham. The open AI technology they developed for Viv Labs is designed to allow third-party developers to integrate digital assistants using natural language into their apps.
Viv Labs will coordinate closely with Samsung but continue to operate essentially as an independent company.

Major Flameout

The plans come at a critical time for Samsung, which is working to extract itself from one of the biggest debacles in the history of mobile electronics. The company had to recall millions of Samsung Galaxy Note7 smartphones due to safety issues. Many phones overheated and some caught fire in dozens of incidents around the world.
The devices were banned from commercial flights amid reports of some spontaneously catching fire on board aircraft. Samsung last week announced that it had collected 85 percent of the recalled devices and said it would be issuing a software upgrade that would limit the power from the unreturned phones' batteries to 60 percent.
Working with the U.S. Product Safety Commission, Samsung launched a recall of the defective phones, found a different supplier of lithium-ion batteries, and offered replacements.
However, some of the replacement devices were vulnerable to the same type of random overheating that had occurred in the original phones. Samsung issued a recall of all Note7s, including the replacement phones, and warned its customers to stop using them immediately.
While the recall of Galaxy Note7 phones was ongoing, the company found it necessary to recall another product: top-loading Samsung washing machines sold between 2011 and 2016.
The CPSC last week ordered the recall of 34 different models of Samsung washers -- a total of 2.8 million machines -- warning that the top of the machines might unexpectedly detach from the chassis, posing a potential risk to users.
There have been 733 reported episodes of strong vibrations or detachment of the tops of the machines and nine reported injuries, including a broken jaw and an injured shoulder.
The recalls were particularly damaging to Samsung, which had enjoyed a reputation of making high-quality products and being responsive to customers.
Samsung's brand reputation has been hurt by the recalls, but consumers will regain trust in the company over the long term, suggested Tuong Nguyen, principal research analyst at Gartner.
"I feel there is a little bit of weariness," he told TechNewsWorld, "but I think it's a short-term impact." 

---

David Jones is a freelance writer based in Essex County, New Jersey. He has written for Reuters, Bloomberg,Crain's New York Business and The New York Times.

Unity and SteamVR Unite for Native Vive Support

http://www.technewsworld.com/story/Unity-and-SteamVR-Unite-for-Native-Vive-Support-83116.html

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By Quinten Plummer 

Feb 16, 2016 10:21 AM PT

Unity Technologies last week announced that the Unity Platform has been retooled to offer native support for SteamVR, the software foundation for Rift rival HTC Vive.

The move will save effort and resources, whether developers build made-for-VR titles or merely build virtual reality support into traditional games.

In addition, Valve, the company behind Steam and SteamVR, introduced an advanced rendering plug-in developed for Unity.

Because Valve has been a major player in the game industry, it was clear that supporting SteamVR would be a part of Unity's strategy, Unity spokesperson Marcos Sanchez said.

"From the macro level, bringing developers access to all the major platforms and operating systems -- Oculus, Google, Sony, Microsoft with HoloLens, and now Valve -- we open the potential for success by broadening the audiences they can reach," he told TechNewsWorld. "We want to solve the hard problems for devs so they can focus on creating amazing games and experiences."

AR and VR in Focus

Unity Technologies has been baking general VR and augmented reality support into the platform, according to Sanchez. A big portion of its 400-plus engineers have been focusing exclusively on developing AR and VR content.

"Unity is recruiting some of the most talented folks from the most specialized, high-end game companies in the world to make Unity better," he said.

"Palmer Luckey of Oculus recently noted, at the Vision AR/VR Summit, that over 90 percent of the content created for Samsung's GearVR was made with Unity, which is a staggering amount," Sanchez added.

Battle Lines

The gold rush isn't quite on, as established players in the video game industry have, so far, dispatched prospectors into VR territory. However, game makers have been stepping up their efforts to explore VR, as there's a growing consensus in the industry that VR is for real this time.

It's a huge risk to appropriate too much of a company's resources for a nascent, untested sector of the market, but the game industry started to rally around VR, and alliances will start to emerge as a result, according to Joost van Dreunen, CEO of SuperData Research.

"Everybody knows that they can't all have a successful platform of their own and that the market will, at least to the extent that history is a reliable guidepost here, eventually settle on two or three devices," he told TechNewsWorld.

To mitigate the risk of betting on VR, companies understand how important it is to integrate their technologies with other groups and to "play nice early on," noted van Dreunen.

"Especially considering the active indie development community around Steam, it makes a lot of sense for Unity and Valve to team up. In the early stages of a new platform, offering an innovative, killer application is key to stimulate consumer adoption," he said.

For Unity's part, it's hedging its VR bets on "one of the most powerful game delivery systems," said Rob Enderle, principal analyst at the Enderle Group.

"Unity's support of SteamVR assures they will remain a popular and powerful developer platform if and when VR becomes as popular as it is expected to become," he told TechNewsWorld.

Take My Wallet Now

The budding VR industry that has taken form over the last few years may invoke memories of the early days of the video game industry.

Google's Cardboard kit and Samsung's purpose-built Gear VR adapter offer low-end VR solutions, relying on consumer handsets to serve as the displays for their headsets. The experiences on Cardboard and Gear VR can be compared to the Nintendo Entertainment System, the Super Nintendo Entertainment System and the Genesis era.

Meanwhile, Facebook's Oculus VR, HTC's Vive and Sony's PlayStationVR headsets are reminiscent of the era of Nintendo 64, PlayStation One and Xbox One.

There has been a decade and a half between the Super Nintendo and the HTC Vive and more 30 years between the first game console and the Xbox One.

VR development has been moving at light-speed compared to the industry's past progress, but VR takes a step back in graphical fidelity, as it takes more power to process two scenes, one for each eye, at 90 frames per second.

It may take some time for full-on VR to emerge, according to SuperData Research's van Dreunen.

"After watching the keynote at Vision Summit, I agree with Unity's CEO, John Riccitiello, that the first few years we will see a slower pace in overall market growth as the industry gets itself organized," he said.

The sticker shock of the US$599 Oculus Rift helped put expectations into perspective. That price point has attracted tech-savvy early adopters but has turned off mainstream gamers who expected the headset would cost around $300 based on early reports.

"Once that establishes itself," said van Dreunen, "VR will become more generally available and accepted, at which point the market will accelerate its growth in terms of revenues." 

Mattel's 3D Printer Will Let Kids Do More Than Play With Toys

http://www.technewsworld.com/story/Mattels-3D-Printer-Will-Let-Kids-Do-More-Than-Play-With-Toys-83115.html

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Mattel last week announced that it is giving its ThingMaker a high-tech makeover by equipping it with 3D capabilities.

Using the original 1960s iteration, children could create small toys, such as dragons and flowers, by pouring liquid plastic into molds, which were heated and cooled.

The updated ThingMaker was designed in partnership with Autodesk, which created the 3D app that works in tandem with the printer. The app and printer will let children design, create and print their own toys.

"We initially announced our collaboration with Mattel back in April 2015 to provide an experience for kids and families where they could combine physical toys with a digital making adventure," said Jennifer Gentrup, spokesperson for Autodesk consumer and 3D printing.

"So, Autodesk helped develop the ThingMaker design app for Mattel, and the app was launched with Mattel's printer," she told TechNewsWorld.

The printers, slated to hit shelves in the fall, can be preordered from Amazon. The price is expected to be US$299.99, Mattel said.

How It Works

The app will provide kids with a couple of ways to make their own 3D-printed objects. For example, they can choose one of the templates included in the app, or they can come up with something unique, using hundreds of parts available.

The parts, or 3D files, then are sent to the printer where they are printed in batches and ultimately assembled using ball and socket joints, Mattel said.

The 3D ecosystem for kids is a response to a quickly growing 3D printer market. Companies like Barnes & Noble are selling relatively inexpensive models, priced at about $350 to $400, in stores and online.

What Can Parents and Kids Expect?

How do the toys to measure up in comparison with other 3D printers?

Most desktop models, like the kind available in stores today, are inferior to their industrial or business-oriented counterparts.

The most common type of desktop printer is a fused deposition modeling printer, or FDM, according to Max Mittler, an executive assistant at Solid Prototype.

"There are so many different types of printers out there, but if you print using a desktop printer, then you're going to get FDM printing," he told TechNewsWorld.

"For those types of printers, you're going to see the little build lines. It won't be smooth. That's because of the method the 3D printer uses. Ours uses a liquid resin, which lays down full layers at a time which creates solid models. FDM printers, on the other hand, will create a 2D with a support built inside," Mittler said.

In addition to the lack of smoothness, desktop models won't be able to produce the level of detail more sophisticated printers can.

"The biggest difference is going to be in what we call 'resolution.' We use PolyJet printers (stereolithography, or SLA), so it looks just like an injection-molded part. It's got a smooth finish," Mittler added.

It makes sense that Mattel would create a 3D printer for kids, he noted.

"This is definitely a natural progression for 3D printing," Mittler said. "It's become more and more popular. Most of our customers already have their own 3D printers at home." 

AT&T Jumps Into the 5G Race

http://www.technewsworld.com/story/ATT-Jumps-Into-the-5G-Race-83114.html

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AT&T on Friday announced plans to start testing 5G technology, with a possible limited commercial rollout before the end of 2016. 5G offers the promise of besting the speeds of today's fastest wireless networks by a factor of 10 to 100, through the use of millimeter waves, network function virtualization, and software-defined networking.

Through a collaboration with Ericsson and Intel, AT&T will be ramping up its efforts to bring 5G to market starting in the second quarter of this year. The planned tests follow extensive research, patent filings, and the development of software-defined networking, which allows AT&T to update systems without touching the hardware -- a faster, more efficient method of introducing new versions of programs and technology, the company said.

Bumps in the 5G Road

The race to 5G isn't without its challenges, however. It's no small feat to create a working fixed broadband network that delivers at least a gigabit of speed to consumer and business customers.

"Some of the things AT&T will be testing for are power and performance in rain or other disruptive weather conditions, like cold," said Fletcher Cook, AVP of global media communications at AT&T.

"If it goes well in the summer, you could start seeing point-to-point limited commercial availability for limited fixed broadband soon after," he told TechNewsWorld.

However, "that isn't for the wireless phone, wide-area network type 5G," Cook pointed out. "That's much longer term, because we have the standards that need to be sorted."

AT&T is working diligently with IEEE to establish uniform standards, he said. "The standards piece is the biggest hurdle. Identifying how networks between carriers will work and how those standards are set are two things we've got to figure out."

Driving Forces

Advances in new technologies, coupled with the rise in using smartphones for bandwidth-gobbling video consumption, are propelling AT&T and other companies to get 5G networks up and running.

"The combination of connected cars, the Internet of things, speed, and new technology like virtual reality is driving this," Cook said.

Marketing agencies also are jumping on the new tech bandwagon.

"Ever since CES, especially, the stage has been set for 2016 to be the year virtual reality becomes a household name," Cook noted. "It's become a checkbox for marketers and creative directors to have in their marketing strategies. For example, there are a lot of Fortune 500 brands that are making content for YouTube360, Facebook360 and Little Star; this is a new way to get their message out."

The trick will be finding enough bandwidth to seamlessly deliver all that content. As more and more people are investing in affordable means of watching VR content -- like Google Cardboard which requires only a viewer (priced as low as US$6.99) and a smartphone -- the demand for faster speeds and more bandwidth is growing exponentially.

"Streaming a lot of virtual reality content requires a lot of bandwidth," observed Austin Mace, CEO of Subvrsive.

"The introduction of a 5G network would definitely accelerate the mass adoption of virtual reality because it gets content to people faster," he told TechNewsWorld. "One of the biggest bottlenecks we face in live-streaming VR content is data speeds, so I can see this really alleviating that." 

India Trades Free Basics for Internet Freedom

http://www.technewsworld.com/story/India-Trades-Free-Basics-for-Internet-Freedom-83092.html

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By Richard Adhikari
Feb 9, 2016 2:38 PM PT

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India's Telecom Regulatory Authority on Monday ruled in favor of Net neutrality, effectively banning Facebook's Free Basics Internet access app.

"This is a very important decision for the future of the Internet in India," said Barbara van Schewick, director of Stanford Law School's Center for Internet and Society, whose paper the TRA cited in its ruling.
The TRA decided "ISPs should not pick winners and losers online," she told the E-Commerce Times. "The Internet is a level playing field where users, not ISPs, decide what they want to do online."
"Our goal with Free Basics is to bring more people online with an open, nonexclusive and free platform," said Facebook spokesperson Derick Mains.
His comments echoed CEO Mark Zuckerberg's reaction.
"While disappointed with the outcome, we will continue our efforts to eliminate barriers and give the unconnected an easier path to the Internet and the opportunities it brings," Mains told the E-Commerce Times.

The TRA's Ruling

Differential tariffs may make overall Internet access more affordable, expanding and accelerating Internet access, but they also classify subscribers based on the content they want to access, according to the TRA.
Such classification "may potentially go against the principle of non-discriminatory tariff" and disadvantage small content providers, the ruling states. Further, telecom service providers, or TSPs, may promote their own websites, apps or services platforms by offering lower rates to access them.
Unlike traditional markets where producers and consumers are distinct, Internet users are also content producers, the TRA said.
Also, every service provider is dependent on other networks, and no one TSP controls the entire Internet infrastructure, so allowing a provider that "is at one edge of the Internet to charge differentially for data that it does not alone process, could compromise the entire architecture of the Internet itself" and could alter the openness of the Internet, the ruling says.
"In India, given that a majority of the population are yet to be connected to the Internet, allowing service providers to define the nature of access would be (the) equivalent of letting TSPs shape the users' Internet experience," it continues, and this "can prove to be risky."
Letting TSPs charge differential rates on a case-by-case basis -- an option van Schewick's paper addresses -- "creates substantial social costs," notes the ruling.
Therefore, offering or charging discriminatory tariffs for data services based on content -- directly or indirectly, through refunds or other means -- is prohibited, the TRA ruled. However, it's OK to provide limited free data that lets users access the entire Internet.
"If ISPs really want to get more people online, they can, for example, offer 500 MB of bandwidth to everyone at 2G speeds, but what people do with that bandwidth is their choice," van Schewick said.

Arguments for Free Basics

More than 80 percent of Indians polled supported Free Basics, according to a Facebook-commissioned survey conducted last year.
However, only about 3,100 adults across the country, all of whom reportedly were Internet users, responded to the survey.
Only about 19 percent of Indians -- more than 243 million people -- have access to the Internet, according to Internet Live Stats.
"Statistical validity can only be assumed for truly random surveys," said Mike Jude, a program manager at Stratecast/Frost & Sullivan. "It starts from a constrained population that's defined by Internet use."
Still, "you should only regulate something once you have it," he told the E-Commerce Times. "Regulating preemptively only ensures that the thing being regulated never happens. People vote with their feet when they have to pay."
On the other hand, zero rating is "a dangerous approach," noted Jeremy Malcolm, senior global policy analyst at the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
It often "reduces competition, diverts users toward already-dominant Internet services, and creates the potential for censorship, and privacy and security problems," he told the E-Commerce Times. "We hope it will encourage Facebook and its partners to examine other ways to bring the Internet to India's poor." 

Smart Email and the Path to Digital Immortality

http://www.technewsworld.com/story/Smart-Email-and-the-Path-to-Digital-Immortality-83079.html

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By Rob Enderle
Feb 8, 2016 5:00 AM PT

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I attended IBM Connect last week, where I checked out one of the most interesting products you've likely never heard of -- a new email offering called "IBM Verse." While there was a lot of discussion about how it better integrated social networking, what really intrigued me was the idea of putting cognitive computing inside an email client.

"Cognitive computing" is the new way of saying "artificial intelligence," because, you know, the industry likes to change terms every once in a while just to mess with our heads. Regardless of what it's called, thinking email could be incredibly powerful.
I'll close with my product of the week, which has to be IBM Verse, the fascinating email product that focuses on the user. If I don't tell you about it, you'll likely never hear of it.

Email That Thinks

A lot of what we do with email is repetitive. That's why executives in the past rarely handled their own correspondence; their secretaries would do it for them. Secretaries, apprentices or assistants set up meetings, offered birthday wishes, responded to inquiries -- even sent direct messages. They often still do, which makes those roles especially powerful.
The fact is, if you get an email from a politician, chances are pretty good that it wasn't written by that politician. It might not have been written by a human at all -- but rather by some machine regurgitating the same text over and over again, mostly to annoy us.
If you could make an email system smart, it could do not only what secretaries used to do, but also a whole lot more -- and likely better. You see, a human assistant typically would not be privy to all of your email or other expressions of your thoughts. An assistant might not know all of your friends or family, and certainly wouldn't be well versed in your private and personal life.
An email system generally will handle most all of your daily correspondence, though, and if it were a smart email system tied into social networking, then over time, it likely would come to know you better than you know yourself.
As it gained insight, it not only could prioritize messages and automatically handle tasks like setting and changing appointments, but also could begin to respond for you, if you let it. You could opt to increase its responsibilities with your oversight.
Such a system could remove email as a chore for most of us, eliminate virtually all repetitive emails, and even allow us to be more accurate when dictating responses to email over our phones while driving. We could just give a command to write a response with key elements and let the system do the rest.

Valuable Advice

One of the big advantages of an intelligent email system would be dynamic advice. The system would be reading an email as it was created. If you're like most of us, from time to time, you have written an email you later regretted sending. Through routine monitoring, a smart system could make suggestions on how to alter tone and reword a message to better accomplish your goal, or just notify you that what you're writing could be deadly to, pick one, your career, marriage, relationship, safety or freedom.
I imagine that type of feature would be pretty useful on Twitter. In any case, it not only could act in your stead, but also could help you communicate more effectively and either keep you out of trouble or perhaps intercede after the fact.
Take this hypothetical alert, for example: "Email was not sent. It was determined that the racially and sexually insensitive material you were about to send to everyone in the company would result in a catastrophic response you may have not considered. Oh, and you forgot to capitalize Assh*le." Could be incredibly valuable by itself.

Digital Immortality

Let's push the envelope a bit. There are a number of projects designed to create an immortal digital concept of a person -- a digital avatar, if you like. At the core of these projects is some process to capture what makes every person unique. The easiest way to do that would be to mine a person's email for insights into personality, speech patterns, history and knowledge.
By increasingly being able to emulate someone, a smart email system eventually could create a decent digital clone that initially could interact over email, and perhaps with a good sound sample from the individual and the right speech integration, also do a pretty decent job of vocal emulation.
Imagine being able to send an email to a company founder who has died, asking for advice on a question of strategy or direction. Granted, the system might stay a bit stuck in time, given that it wouldn't be able to create the source's response on issues that were unknown during the individual's lifetime, but enhancements over time likely could emulate those responses as well, creating a thinking, learning, growing version of the departed executive.
Let's take Steve Jobs, for instance. I'll bet Apple's executive staff would like to have a chat with him from time to time, and if the Steve Jobs avatar were made visible, it likely could not only launch new products, but also interact with an audience.
Much of the email correspondence that would make such a thing possible still exists, and there is a chance that a digital version of Steve could be created from those records at some future point.

Wrapping Up: Email Smarter Than You Are

It does strike me that with smart TVs, smart cars, smartphones, and now smart email, there could come a time when we may not be smart enough ourselves, and we'll need a significant upgrade.
Until then, things like smart email could serve as the bridge that frees up our time and keeps us from doing certain incredibly stupid things, like writing an email while angry.
Still, I can' t help but wonder how long it will be before one of those smart things decides we're too stupid to interface with it.

Like a lot of you, I live in email. However, we really haven't seen much of an improvement in email since Outlook was launched in the 1990s. Granted, that's in large part our fault, as we really don't like change much. Still, it is well past time that someone came up with a very different idea.
What IBM Verse does is funnel your email accounts and social network feeds into one client. It then learns to organize your communications based on priority. No more last in first out -- you see your important stuff up front and can blow off your unimportant stuff more easily.

IBM Verse

IBM is adding cognitive capability to the product, but it is far less capable than the imaginings I indulged in above. Right now, it can provide assistance with the tone and structure of an email you're drafting, but as Watson becomes more capable, I expect that enhanced capabilities are in its future.
You have to see this product to appreciate it, though, as it would change your email experience substantially, and it could make you far more efficient and effective in handling written communications.
Ironically -- at least for me, given that one of the projects I worked on while at IBM was voice mail integration with email -- it doesn't have that feature. Still, in most other ways it is a huge step forward in how email is handled. Because IBM Verse rethinks email, and I live in email, it is my product of the week. 

A Look Inside How ESPN Gets Ready For Super Bowl 50

http://techcrunch.com/2016/02/06/a-look-inside-how-espn-gets-ready-for-super-bowl-50/

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ESPN Live Behind The Scenes Tour

Before it’s made apparent by my remarks, I don’t know jack shit about football. I can watch a game with a Bud Light in hand and unassumingly make my way through a plate of snacks and know when the right time to yell at the ref or give a high five is, but eh it’s not my thing.

What I was really interested in when I rolled into ESPN’s Marina Green mobile studio in San Francisco was what actually went into putting on a production like this that would undoubtedly be the go-to analysis for millions of fans. I wondered what went into choosing the location and, in a city like San Francisco, what sort of community interactions took place to get the studio invasion okayed. I also was curious how many people it really took to get the production up-and-running.

When I grabbed my security credentials and walked into the open-air studio on the edge of the San Francisco bay, it was clear that this was a huuuge production.

Famed football players moseyed through the sets as dozens of fans outside of the barrier gaped at athletes I didn’t recognize. Someone jovially shouted “Hey, who is that guy?” as the all-to-knowing crowd guffawed because this celebrity was really THAT famous. Meanwhile I stood there, phone in hand sending snapchats of the stars (?) to my football-loving buddies who replied with jealous hatred.

Beyond the select few “talent” and their interview subjects who were present, there were dozens and dozens and dozens of production crew members. Most of these people were buzzing from set to set while others took their union-required breaks to check out some of the takes being prepped for the more theatrical commercial bumpers.

The exciting thing about the pop-up studio is that at any given moment there was something going on that was streaming live to living rooms across the country and everyone there had a piece in how that process took place. Equipment was being misplaced, takes were stretching on for hours and someone’s whereabouts was always being inquired about. But the crazy thing is that even with the uncertainties caused by covering this massive event on foreign turf, the staff rolled through beaming its coverage and made it apparent what a well-oiled machine this production was.