Tech News Today for August 23, 2017
Tech News for Wednesday August 23, 2017
Samsung announced the new Galaxy Note 8 today — a 6.3 inch screen smartphone with an infinity display reminiscent of those Instagram photos you've seen of infinity pools in people's backyards or on their fancy vacations. And since the phone starts at over $900 dollars a pop, the people who swim in those infinity pools are likely to be the only people buying the Note 8. The phablet comes in Midnight Black, Deepsea Blue, Maple Gold, and Orchid Grey. Otherwise known as Black, Blue, Gold, and some sort of purply color. Read more at samsung.com.
Apple has been reportedly hard at work on a product it dubbed internally as disruptive to the automotive industry, Project Titan. Sources to the New York Times say Apple has moved from developing a self driving car, to creating the software that drives cars, to be integrated into vehicles developed by third parties. Part of its testing process involves an effort called PAIL, Palo Alto to Infinite Loop, that will use the technology in test vehicles to drive Apple employees to and from the Apple campus. Read more at nytimes.com.
Google Home has partnered with Walmart to compete against Amazon in the race to buy stuff with your voice. Starting in September, hundreds of thousands of Walmart products will be available to purchase using your Google Home device. Its not the first retailer to join forces with Google. Costco, Walgreens and PetSmart products are already available on the Google Home. You can order items one at a time or fill your digital shopping cart while you're washing dishes, showering or doing whatever else. You can also link your Walmart account to your Google account to receive personalized recommendations. Next year you'll also be able to place orders for in-store pickup. Read more at blog.walmart.com.
DJI announced that it is issuing a firmware update for its new series of Spark drones to address a small number of incidents where the drone suddenly turned off and fell from the sky. The power supply and battery management system appeared to be the reason for the small number of hardware faults. DJI set a deadline of September 1 for the mandatory update to be completed on the drones, after which time unpatched drones will simply not operate until they are updated. Read more at theverge.com.
Megan Morrone and Jason Howell are joined today by Vidya Narayanan of UrbanAMA, which aims to connect people and bridge ideological gaps. Tech News Today streams live weekdays at 4PM Pacific, 7PM Eastern at twit.tv/live. You can subscribe to the show and watch it on-demand at twit.tv/tnt.