Open Source Joins Efforts to Create Gene Therapies for Rare Diseases
The father of a boy born with a rare disease created the RareCamp project and the OpenTreatments Foundation to enable patients to create gene therapies for rare genetic diseases; then work with their doctors and nonprofits to develop drugs.
Investors have $20 billion to acquire businesses. Is yours one of them?
Our Technology M&A: 2021 Outlook gives owners, founders and entrepreneurs insight into why e-commerce is dominating technology acquisitions, what this means for multiples, when investors are looking to allocate capital and more.
Digital Payments Lead March Toward a Cashless Society
From coin shortages and curbside operations to contactless transactions, how consumers pay for their purchases has been completely transformed during the pandemic. Marketers expect that transformation to continue and expand. It is not just family staples that are seeing a jump in consumer digital payment options. The retail and gaming sectors are also leading the digital charge.
Cybercops Scrub Botnet Software From Millions of Computers
The notorious Emotet botnet software began uninstalling itself from some one million computers Sunday. The uninstall command was part of an update sent to the infected computers by law enforcement servers in the Netherlands after Emotet's infrastructure was compromised in January during a multinational operation mounted by eight nations.
How to Avoid the Cost of Churn With Better Customer Experiences
Customer churn is costing mid-market companies an average of $5.5 million per year. Retailers need to avoid the expensive mistakes that result in such disastrous churn. This presents a clamorous alarm to marketers. One solution to this costly predicament is to get sales teams to work effectively, and consistently, in CRM platforms.
Need More From Your Digital Ad Spend? Adopt Contextual Alignment
Many digital marketers spend too much on targeting an already loyal customer base rather than tapping into new streams. Dr. Jorge Barraza, professor of applied psychology at the University of Southern California, has a plan to help advertisers reach consumers that would not normally buy their products, by using the principle of contextual alignment.
CPG Brands Doubling Down on Direct-to-Consumer E-Commerce
An increasing number of consumer-packaged goods companies are shifting to the direct-to-consumer e-commerce model, thus bypassing retailers as middlemen. This raises questions of how manufacturers can meet customers' needs without jeopardizing relationships with their retail distribution partners. The E-Commerce Times spoke with several DTC experts to help shed some light on these issues.
DuckDuckGo has announced an add-on to the Chrome browser that blocks Google's new scheme to provide marketers with information for targeting advertising at Internet users. The scheme called FLoC -- Federated Learning of Cohorts -- is being tested ...
With an increasing amount of workers turning to part-time, freelance, and contract work for a variety of reasons, a growing number of businesses are now based on the gig economy model. The E-Commerce Times spoke with several experts familiar with ...
The creation of the Rust Foundation marks a noteworthy instance in which proprietary software companies took the initiative to found and steward a nonprofit project. It’s not groundbreaking, but it doesn’t happen every day.
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Contact Center AI Explained by Pop Culture | eBook
What if learning Contact Center AI were as engaging as “Blade Runner”? If understanding how it works could be less painless than how it's portrayed in “2001: A Space Odyssey”?
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You don't have to wait for Saturday Night Live to hear from Elon Musk. Tesla's earnings call gave the exec another platform, and he talked about everything from Autopilot to solar roof battery bundles. If you're waiting for the redesigned Model S or Model X, first deliveries of the new sedans with funky steering wheel and shifter setup should start soon.
As for cars already on the road, Musk's strongest words focused on the recent Houston-area Tesla crash that killed two people. "It was really just extremely deceptive media practices, where it was claimed to be autopilot, completely false. Those journalists should be ashamed of themselves."
Tesla VP Lars Moravy went into more detail by saying that the steering wheel deformed, a sign that someone was in the driver's seat when the accident occurred. According to the execs, adaptive cruise control accelerated the vehicle to 30MPH before the crash and slowed and came to a stop after the driver's seat was unbuckled. While they said evidence from the car's SD card hasn't been recovered yet, it gives some indication of why Musk is so adamant that Autopilot driving assistance wasn't enabled.
So, the Surface Laptop 4. It looks the same as the Surface Laptop 3, which was just a slightly bigger Surface Laptop 2, a computer that wasn't all that different than the original Surface Laptop. Get the picture? But! It's noticeably faster and has longer battery life than the previous model, and it still has one of the best keyboards on the market. You've also got the choice between Intel and AMD processors on both the 13-inch and 15-inch models.
Take all of that together with a genuinely sturdy and premium-feeling case, and you've got an ultraportable that Senior Editor Devindra Hardawar could easily recommend to anyone. And even the base $1,000 model is well equipped, with a Ryzen 5 chip and 8GB of RAM. Continue reading.
Glasses with speakers built into their arms are becoming a thing. Bose and Amazon released eyewear–headphone hybrids in the last few years — both named Frames. Now Razer is joining in with the Anzu smart glasses, which have a few unique features. Since it's a brand known for its gaming products, it's not surprising that Razer has a Game Mode for low-latency sound. It also has blue-light filtering lenses by default and costs $50 less than its rivals. Unfortunately, they're a little too uncomfortable. Continue reading.
Over a week ago, NASA awarded Elon Musk's SpaceX a $2.9 billion contract to build a lunar lander for its upcoming Artemis Moon project. In deciding on SpaceX, NASA passed over defense contractor Dynetics and Blue Origin. The latter is now challenging the decision. In a protest filed with the federal Government Accountability Office, Jeff's Bezos' rocket company claims NASA improperly awarded the contract to its rival. Continue reading.
You can also unlock your iPhone while wearing an Apple Watch.
iOS 14.5 (and iPad OS 14.5) is a significant upgrade that introduces a previously delayed system that requires permission for advertiser device IDs. Apple says this will improve your privacy by limiting tracking, but Facebook has already complained that it will hurt ad revenue.
Other new features are less contentious. The new iOS update lets you unlock your Face ID-equipped iPhone with your Apple Watch (that needs to be running watchOS 7.4) while wearing a face mask, so you won't have to enter your passcode even if you're covered up. It also comes with a redesigned Podcasts app with the option of paid subscriptions. Continue reading.
Zoom has launched Immersive View, a new type of virtual background that assembles video participants together in one scene. It could offer a less distracting setup compared to the traditional gallery view, by replacing the grid format for a shared background that places participants next to each other. There's some flexibility here, too. Hosts can automatically or manually place users into a virtual background of their choosing, and even move people around and resize them. In the case of a webinar, attendees can view the hosts and participants in the scene. Continue reading.
Your tiny laptop webcam has probably gotten more use than you ever thought it would, with never-ending Zoom meetings, family video calls and the rest. However, your computer's webcam isn't going to be the best.
In addition to leveling up your appearance in could-have-been-an-email work calls, external webcams are essential if you do any live streaming on Twitch or another platform. But there are an awful lot of options. We've tested several webcams, and we've got some recommendations. Continue reading.
Perhaps those rumors of a MacBook Pro with added ports were wrong.
If the redesigned iMac is an indication of where Apple is going, Engadget's Nathan Ingraham thinks the rumors of future MacBooks getting some of their ports back may be incorrect. The new base iMac has a measly two USB 4 / Thunderbolt ports. Two! The more expensive iMac configurations throw in a couple of USB-C ports, for a total of four. In comparison, the old 21.5-inch iMac had four USB-A ports, two USB-C / Thunderbolt connections and an SD card reader and Ethernet jack. Apple's stinginess on its laptops is bad enough, but it makes zero sense on the iMac, where space — while still limited — is less at a premium.Continue reading.
The Hut Group: Top Five Tips for Manual Review Teams
As online spending surged due to global lockdowns and continues to rise amidst the COVID-19 pandemic, it's clear that the way we shop online is forever changed. It is for this reason eCommerce businesses will need to stay one step ahead, as fraud techniques constantly evolve and detection becomes even more challenging.
Download Ekata's new eBookTop Five Tips for Manual Review Teams to get tips and best practices for clearing good orders faster from Ekata and The Hut Group (THG), a global, direct-to-consumer e-commerce solution and end-to-end technology platform for beauty, nutrition, and technology brands.
The relevance of the Oscars is increasingly questionable in a year where major cinematic releases have been minimal — but don't tell Netflix. The streaming service had its best night ever at the Academy Awards, taking seven Oscars out of 31 nominations, including two wins for Ma Rainey's Black Bottom and two for Mank. Best Picture, however, went to Disney's Nomadland.
It didn't entirely go in Netflix's favor, though, despite the company giving a lot of effort (and money) to fielding its shows and movies at the biggest awards in recent years. It expected to win the Best Actor Oscar for the late Chadwick Boseman's performance in Ma Rainey's Black Bottom, but the surprise winner was Anthony Hopkins in Sony's The Father.
Next year's Oscars, with a return (to some degree) to theaters, could still be more of the same. Netflix won't want to give up the success it found this year.
The Boring Company's new project in Las Vegas was divisive pretty much from the outset. Digging mile-long tunnels for cars to shuttle people back and forth seemed like an expensive, wasteful project when there are so many simpler options. But just because it looks silly, doesn't mean it is. Senior Editor Daniel Cooper explains. Continue reading.
Amazon is running a sale that drops the price of the fourth-generation Echo Dot smart speaker to $30 (down from $50) for the basic model and $40 (down from $60) for its clock-equipped upgrade. This is very nearly a record low price for both and makes them easy picks if you want an entry-level smart speaker. Continue reading.
SpaceX's Crew Dragon successfully docked with the International Space Station early Saturday morning, making it the firm's first reused crew capsule to reach the orbiting platform and the first crewed mission with a reused Falcon 9 rocket. SpaceX already has crewed ISS missions lined up through 2023, including an all-private flight (AX-1) currently scheduled for January 2022. With cheaper launch costs, thanks to the reusable parts, the Crew-2 docking is a big step toward more frequent private spaceflights. Continue reading.
An experimental Google Assistant feature codenamed Guacamole will give you the power to issue voice commands without having to preface it with "Hey, Google." That is if the tech giant decides to release it. According to 9to5Google, only employees testing the feature should have access to it at the moment, and even the FAQ linked in the option leads to an internal page.
Tapping Guacamole in Settings will lead you to a Voice Shortcuts page, which says if you switch it on, you'll be able to "skip saying 'Hey, Google' for help with quick task." For now, however, you can't toggle it on, even if you see the feature on your device. Continue reading.
