Beyond the sights and spectacle of CES, almost 2.5 million square feet of exhibits, 3,800 exhibiting companies, and 175,000 attendees, are oases of insight and information to be found among more than 300 conference sessions. CES conferences leverage the attendance of senior executives, experts, and policymakers to populate panels that cover the spectrum of product categories, tech trends, and consumer interests represented throughout the show. Eight SuperSessions feature senior leaders grappling with their experiences in emerging sectors, while 44 different tracks explore a wide range of timely topics. Continue reading CES 2017: Conference Sessions Explore Products and Trends

Using Facebook Live for a year-end video chat, Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg and chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg discussed fake news and the company’s identity. Although Zuckerberg has steadfastly held that Facebook is not a media company, he changed the message just a bit: “Facebook is a new kind of platform,” he clarified. “It’s not a traditional technology company, it’s not a traditional media company. You know, we build technology and we feel responsible for how it’s used.” Continue reading Zuckerberg Says Facebook ‘Not a Traditional Media Company’

Twitter is collaborating with the Hollywood Foreign Press to live-stream the Golden Globes’ red carpet pre-show event and source questions from fans’ tweets. “The HFPA Presents: Globes Red Carpet Live” will be live-streamed on Jan. 8 from 6:00 to 8:00 pm ET, and will include exclusive interviews with celebrities and other “celebrity content” from Twitter in addition to the live video feed. The interview hosts, who have not yet been determined, will ask celebrities some questions chosen from among those posted by Twitter users. Continue reading Twitter Scores Another Live Event: Golden Globes Red Carpet

With tighter integration between Twitter and Periscope, updated iOS and Android Twitter apps now feature a “LIVE” button on the screen that activates the camera and starts live video. Since Twitter acquired Periscope early last year, it enabled Periscope broadcasts within the Twitter stream, introduced a way to alert a Twitter user when someone you followed began live streaming, and debuted high-end tools for streaming to Twitter from professional cameras and VR headsets. The company is also introducing a pared down version of its previously shuttered Vine. Continue reading Twitter Debuts Live Video From Mobile Apps, Pares Down Vine

After accepting some responsibility for the fake news plaguing Facebook, chief executive Mark Zuckerberg has begun to institute steps to get rid of the worst offenders. Facebook has identified sites that consistently peddle fake news and will demote their posts from news feeds. Fact-checking will be outsourced to groups affiliated with the Poynter Institute, including ABC News, Associated Press, Snopes, PolitiFact and FactCheck.org. Facebook users will also find it easier to flag stories they believe to be fake. Continue reading Facebook Takes Multiple Steps in Effort to Combat Fake News

Artificial Intelligence is finally here. After nearly 50 years in the doldrums of research, the science of designing “thinking machines” has jumped from academic literature to the lab, and even from the lab to the store. This is largely because its precursor, machine learning, has been enjoying a dramatic revival, thanks in part to the commoditization of sensors and large-scale compute architectures, the explosion of available data (necessary to train advanced machine learning architectures such as recurrent neural networks), and the always burning necessity for tech companies to find something new. We expect AI to have a significant presence at next month’s CES in Las Vegas. Continue reading CES: From Learning to Thinking Machines – the AI Explosion

Facebook rolled out its initial support for 360-degree Live streams, allowing publishers to stream immersive videos directly to News Feed. The first publisher to do so is National Geographic’s Facebook Page, which will show scientists emerging from 80 days of isolation in pods at Utah’s Mars Desert Research Station and feature footage of the ersatz Mars landscape and interviews with the researchers. Later in the month, Facebook Live 360 broadcasts will be an option in Facebook Live’s API. Continue reading Facebook Launches Live 360 Video with National Geographic

Hulu has joined Netflix and Amazon in offering select titles in 4K. Subscribers with a Microsoft Xbox One S or Sony PlayStation 4 Pro console (and a minimum connection speed of 13 megabits per second) can now enjoy James Bond films and original Hulu series in the Ultra HD format. Netflix and Amazon also offer select high dynamic range content. Meanwhile, YouTube — which first introduced 4K support to its video-sharing site in 2010 — is now bringing the same capability to live streaming of 4K and 360 videos. The feature should help the site compete with Facebook and Twitter in the live streaming space. Continue reading Hulu Launches Ultra HD, YouTube Supports 4K Live Streaming

Facebook, which is currently ranked second in Internet advertising, is reaching saturation with its ads, prompting chief financial officer David Wehner to declare that the company’s revenue growth will “meaningfully” slow in 2017. That’s forcing Facebook to experiment with more creative ways to boost ad revenue than simply pushing quantity. To that end, the company is experimenting with targeting customized ads based on the Facebook profiles tied to the IP addresses streaming shows to peoples’ Roku or Apple TV boxes. Continue reading Facing Ad Saturation, Facebook Is Now Forced to Get Creative

Amazon Web Services just unveiled AWS Shield, a service to protect its customers against distributed denial-of-service attacks, which push websites offline by overwhelming them with junk data. Last month, such cyberattacks made numerous popular websites unavailable. Amazon is offering two levels of service, Standard and Advanced, both of which are available now. The Standard option is a default service to AWS customers at no extra charge, and the Advanced service costs $3,000 per month plus data-related charges. Continue reading AWS Shield Aims to Protect Against Denial-of-Service Attacks

CBS recently announced that it signed a deal with the NFL to stream CBS-broadcast football games via the network’s $6-a-month standalone streaming app. “CBS All Access subscribers will be able to stream the game that is being broadcast by their local CBS affiliate, as well as playoff games and several of next year’s Thursday night NFL games,” reports The New York Times. According to CBS, its app currently touts about a million subscribers, which the network predicts will reach 4 million in the next five years. The NFL has been looking for alternatives as it contends with declining ratings for primetime games. The league has already agreed to live stream Thursday Night Football games on Twitter. Continue reading CBS All Access Has Deal to Live-Stream NFL Football Games

Amazon, looking into the possibility of streaming live sports, has been in conversations with the National Basketball Association, Major League Baseball and the National Football League, as well as soccer, lacrosse and surfing leagues, say sources. The company’s idea would be to create a premium sports package that would be made available via its Amazon Prime, with the goal of bringing new members to the $99 per year membership program. Amazon could also market a “skinny bundle” of live sports channels. Continue reading Amazon Reportedly Scouting for Live Sports Rights for Prime

Facebook’s Instagram just debuted two new features for live streaming video and ephemeral messaging, both of which reflect the popularity of such features in Snap’s Snapchat and Twitter’s live-streaming Periscope. By doing so, Instagram has heated up its competition with Snapchat and now competes more directly with Periscope. Instagram, which will roll out the new video features to a small group before a wider launch, also recently introduced Instagram Stories, which apes Snapchat Stories.  Continue reading Instagram Mimics Snapchat and Periscope with New Features

After weeks of accusation that fake news on Facebook, much of it favorable to Donald Trump, impacted the election, Facebook chairman/chief executive Mark Zuckerberg published a post describing ways the social media company might handle the issue. Among the potential steps are third-party verifications, improved automated detection tools and simpler ways for an ordinary user to flag suspicious content. Zuckerberg originally stated that the idea Facebook influenced the election was “a pretty crazy idea.” Continue reading Facebook’s Zuckerberg Lists Options for Managing Fake News

During the U.S. presidential election, the preponderance of fake news on various social media sites got a lot of attention. Now, Google says it is updating its policies to ban fake-news websites from using AdSense, its ad-selling software. The company defined fake news as “pages that misrepresent, misstate, or conceal information about the publisher, the publisher’s content, or the [website’s] primary purpose.” Following in Google’s footsteps, Facebook similarly banned fake news sites from using its advertising network. Continue reading Google, Facebook Ban Fake News From Earning Ad Revenue