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Amazon's Echo Show displays your smart camera's live video feed
Amazon's Echo Show is getting another new trick, err, skill. Now the gizmo will link with the cameras on your home network and display their respective feeds when you say something like, "Alexa, show the front door." A press release notes that this will work with cameras from Amcrest, Arlo, August, EZViz, IC Realtime, Ring, Nest and Vivint. And if you don't have a Show, saying the command phrase will soon give you an audio feed on your Dot or Echo. Better yet, Amazon has released the camera control API into the wild so developers can start cracking on even more implementations for it.
SmartCar connects Facebook's chatbot to your Tesla
We've seen AI-powered chatbots for almost everything, and now a company called Smartcar has developed one specifically for Tesla electric vehicles. Owners can access any number of features via Tesla's mobile app, and by logging in via TeslaBot, they can pop open Facebook Messenger to ask questions or send commands. That's a pretty low bar for use, particularly compared to the Tesla app Smartcar's founder developed for Google Glass. Of course, most of us don't have a Tesla yet (at least until the Model 3 comes out), but we could see more tech like this quickly, as Smartcar is already working with Hyundai on its Ioniq platform.
Facebook fights bogus live streams with stricter rules
Ever run into a Facebook Live stream that's little more than an attention grabber for something that could have been done with an ordinary post? Facebook has -- and it's fed up. The social network has updated its developer policies to explicitly forbid live videos that are "only images" (including animated images) or polls linked to largely inanimate material. In essence, it wants truly live video, whether it's professional news or an impromptu feed from your friend's party.
Twitter opens up Periscope broadcasts to take on Facebook Live
Twitter made it clear that Periscope was more than just a live selfie platform when it added support for professional cameras and GoPros last year. Now, the social network is ready to extend that same platform beyond its own native apps. In a post on the company blog today, Twitter engineer John Boiles announced the official release of the Periscope Producer API, which will allow external devices and third-party apps to launch broadcasts and publish them directly to Twitter.
Get ready to see more Twitter live streams
Twitter seriously wants to give Facebook a run for its money in its bid to transform into one of the largest online destination for live videos. According to The Information, the social network plans to announce next week that it's opening up its live streaming API to media firms. It will also reveal partnerships "with firms that provide back-end services for live-video streaming." While sports and news organizations can already host live streams on the microblogging platform, it typically requires extensive planning and partnership with Twitter. The open API will allow them to go live on the website whenever they want without having to use Periscope.
Google can use machine learning to identify objects in videos
You've been able to use a reverse Google search to hunt down similar photos on the internet for years thanks to image recognition and processing tools, but only for static pictures. Today, at Google Cloud Next '17, the search giant unveiled a new API that uses machine learning to search within videos for nouns and verbs occurring therein. Finally, you'd be able to hunt down that one movie about the guy who does the thing.
Typos are kryptonite to Alphabet's anti-trolling API
"Don't read the comments" is a cardinal rule of the internet. They're often hotbeds of toxicity and abuse, and rarely does a person come away from them feeling enlightened. Jigsaw, a subsidiary of Alphabet, is working to combat this problem through a project called Perspective, an API that uses machine learning to spot harassment online. But, researchers have discovered that it's easy to game the system.
Twitter just sold its developer platform to Google
Fabric, Twitter's developer platform, now belongs to Google. The move was announced on Fabric's blog Wednesday morning and confirmed in a Twitter thread by Sr. Director of Product, Jeff Seibert.
Consumer apps that rely on Google Hangouts won't work after April 25th
When Google launched Allo and Duo last year, it recast hangouts as a cross-platform chat app for enterprise customers. Now it's making changes to help ensure that fate. A quiet update to the Google Hangouts FAQ reveals that the sun will set on the platform's API in late April. Effectively, this means any consumer app that integrates with Google Hangouts will be dead in a matter of months.
Wanna develop an app for your sex toy?
Everything's a platform these days: Facebook, Twitter, Uber and others want developers to build software on top of their systems. But that rarely happens for sex-toy manufacturers, who often lack the knowledge, desire and customer base to bother. OhMiBod is looking to change that by offering coders the opportunity to build their own applications for its BlueMotion vibrators.
Twitter says no to law enforcement protest policing tool
Twitter has cut off access for a tool that law enforcement was using to monitor the social network for protest-specific keywords. Those included "Mikebrown," "Blacklivesmatter" and "imunarmed" according to documents obtained by The Daily Dot. Media Sonar has been selling social media surveillance software to police departments for thousands of dollars. Twitter, for its part, cut off the firm's API keys in October and has vowed to terminate Media Sonar's attempts at making more.
Twitter cracks down on developers making surveillance tools
If it wasn't already clear that Twitter wants to keep police and spies out of your tweets, it is now. Twitter is warning developers that it won't let them use public programming kits or Gnip data for surveillance reasons, whether the clients are law enforcement or anyone else. Just because many tweets are public doesn't mean it's acceptable to harvest them, Twitter says. To that end, it's promising "expanded" efforts to crack down on developers who use the data for surveillance reasons. Get caught and you'll either have limited access or lose it entirely.
Code.gov is the US government's open-source software hub
Back in August, the Obama Administration announced a new policy that requires 20 percent of the federal government's software projects be open source. To make all of that material easily accessible, there's now a place for you to view all of the code. Code.gov is the web-based hub for the initiative and it features around 50 projects from 10 different agencies. Those projects include the White House Facebook chat bot, Data.gov and the "We the People" petitions API.
Facebook opens up Messenger to ad bots
Right now, Facebook lets Messenger bots from brands like Expedia and HP help you make a purchase, but they can't try to sell you a new product. However, a policy change means those automated assistants will soon be able to send subscription messages, ads and promotions for services like makeup consultations. If you're worried about spam, Facebook emphasized that the user is in control. "All conversations between businesses and people must be initiated by the person receiving the messages, who can then mute or block the business at any time," wrote Product Manager Seth Rosenberg.
'Open banking' data will help Brits compare and switch accounts
Just as Ofcom is making it easy to switch broadband and mobile providers to inspire us to hunt for the best deals, the UK's Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) wants us to be similarly proactive about our bank accounts. Having completed a lengthy probe into retail banking, the CMA believes the secret to a more competitive industry lies in our data, and the sharing of it.
Apple's iOS 10 will transcribe voicemails and show calls made in apps
Not many of us send voice messages anymore, and most folks sure hate checking them. Apple is trying to adapt to that with voicemail transcription, a beta feature on iOS 10 revealed at its WWDC keynote today. Instead of listening to Aunt Edna drone on for 10 minutes, you can get the gist by scanning a transcript of her message in text form. Alternatively, you can still listen to the message visual voicemail-style, call her back or delete the message.
Uber's delivery service just went mainstream
You probably know Uber as a company that takes you places. Soon, you may know it as the company that brings you pizza. And groceries. And laundry. And... well, everything. Today, Uber took its on-demand delivery service out of beta, opening the UberRush courier program to any company that wants it. The downside? The delivery program's service area is still limited to just three cities: San Francisco, Chicago and New York.
Android apps will know when you need them and open automatically
That slab of plastic and glass in your pocket might be called a smartphone, but Google is hoping to make the applications running on it smarter yet. The folks in Mountain View hope to achieve that by giving them access to contextual data like time of day, where you are, what you're doing, the weather and if you have headphones plugged in. Oh, and if there are any Physical Web devices (beacons) near by. A post on the Google Developers blog says that combining the aforementioned data would allow an app to, say, suggest a playlist when you plug in headphones and go for a run.
New updates aim to make Android Pay a universal payment system
There's more to today's Android Pay news than just a long-awaited UK launch. Google doesn't want people to just think of Android Pay as a way to pay for things in stores with phones, so today it pulled back the curtain on new and updated APIs to let developers -- and merchants -- use Android Pay in more places and in different ways.
NVIDIA says it can make VR worlds sound and feel real
Tonight at NVIDIA's event in Texas, the company showed off some new tools that should help developers make VR experiences even more realistic. CEO Jen-Hsun Huang said its VR Works suite of APIs is getting a "major" upgrade, with the ability to connect haptic controllers to its PhysX physics engine for more realistic feedback, and the "world's first real time physically modeled acoustic simulator." As he described it, the audio engine works on top of the optics API to help it match what you can see. Sight, sound, physics and touch are all enhanced with its new Pascal-based GPUs, and NVIDIA says game developers are already working on implementing the new effects.
