By John Glenday Amazon is quietly working behind the scenes to build in ability to distinguish between different accents for its Alexa voice assistant, potentially enabling it to differentiate between different voices. Reports in Time suggest that the new feature is being referenced internally as ‘Voice ID’ and is being designed to allow certain commands to be restricted to particular people such as only allowing the primary account holder to make purchases. Such an ability would also negate instances of wayward systems inappropriately acting upon commands picked up erroneously from nearby television sets, something which has become a recurring Read full story › Source: The Drum...
Read MoreBy Rebecca Stewart YouTube has said that the amount of video people watch within its walls has passed 1 billion hours a day, marking a 10-fold increase since 2012. The Google-owned platform revealed the news in a blog post, with analysts saying the figure threatens to eclipse US TV viewership. Nielsen data suggest Americans watch on average around 1.25 billion hours of live and recorded TV a day, a statistic which has been steadily dropping in recent years. “A few years back, we made a big decision at YouTube. While everyone seemed focused on how many views a video got, we thought Read full story › Source: The Drum...
Read MoreBy Natalie Mortimer HECHO EN 72, the maker lab and production studio located inside 72andSunny, has teamed up with celebrated designer David Carson in its first creative partnership. Known for his editorial design for lifestyle and music magazines such as Surfer and Beach Culture, along with brands including Nike, Pepsi and Microsoft, Carson will work on creative projects for clients of 72andSunny and HECHO EN 72. During his creative residency, he will also serve as a mentor to the current employees in 72andSunny Los Angeles and HECHO EN 72. “David’s work is nothing short of iconic,” said Charles Wolford, interim managing director of HECHO Read full story › Source: The Drum...
Read MoreBy John Glenday Mozilla, producer of the open source Firefox web browser, has announced its acquisition of Pocket; a scrapbook-style platform allowing internet users to save articles and videos for later browsing – for an undisclosed sum. The takeover brings Pocket full circle having begun life nine years ago as a Firefox extension. It now becomes a fully-fledged member of the Mozilla family, operating as an independent subsidiary. As Mozilla’s first acquisition, Pocket will give the service a toehold on the fast-growing mobile market where Firefox has been historically weak – as evidenced by its ill-fated attempts to develop Read full story › Source: The Drum...
Read MoreBy Rebecca Stewart It’s been one year since Facebook redesigned its hallmark like button and added a suite of emoji reactions, and now the company is changing how the feature impacts users’ news feeds. For the past 12 months Facebookers have been able to react to updates, articles, photos, videos and branded content using icons which represent a range of emotions from ‘love’ to ‘haha’ and ‘anger’, but the social network is now rejigging the way it weighs reactions to surface content. “Over the past year we’ve found that if people leave a reaction on a post, it is an even stronger Read full story › Source: The Drum...
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