Tech News Today for August 30, 2017
Tech News for Wednesday August 30, 2017
Uber’s board of directors voted unanimously for Dara Khosrowshahi, longstanding CEO of Expedia, to be its new CEO last night. The decision came after the board spent a grueling 72 hours interviewing HP CEO Meg Whitman, GE CEO Jeffrey Immelt and Khosrowshahi, and weighing all options. Immelt dropped out of consideration on Sunday. Whitman apparently tried to push for more control, which would effectively limit Travis Kalanick’s involvement and that ultimately sidelined her in favor of Khosrowshahi who was eventually picked unanimously. Kalanick’s statement wishes the new CEO well, saying that casting his vote was “a big moment for me and I couldn't be happier to pass the torch to such an inspiring leader.” Read more at axios.com.
You know that ancient proverb, "Is the Enemy of my Enemy my Friend?" Ironically, Siri's never heard it and she better watch out because after a year of coordination, Microsoft and Amazon have a partnership that will allow Cortana and the Amazon Echo to work together in perfect digital assistant harmony. Or something like that. Later this year, this collaboration will allow you to access Amazon Voice Services via Cortana on Windows 10 PCs. Android and iOS will come in the future. You'll also be able to access Cortana on your Amazon Echo, Echo Dot and Echo Show. So, if you depend on Cortana and you also have an Echo, great news. Read more at microsoft.com.
Like a bottle of wine, Samsung gave the Note 8 a week to open up before announcing a few new wearable devices, if you're into that sort of thing. The Gear Sport is a sportier iteration of the successful Gear S3, with a round 1.2” display Megan, Bixby integration, and a rotating bezel for navigation through the Tizen operating system. As a fitness device, it has an improved continuous heart rate monitoring system, automated activity tracking, water proofing, and 4 gigs of storage capacity for storing music directly to the watch. Read more at theverge.com.
People who ordered Andy Rubin's Essential Phone aren't getting their devices on time, but they did get an email asking them for their driver's license. According to The Verge, people who replied automatically sent their identification to everyone else on a large email list. The Verge claims the replies went back to Essential, not to a scammer and that it was a misconfiguration. The official Twitter Account for Essential says they're "Looking Into it" and others have reported on Reddit that after sending out the email, the began to receive fraudulent charges on their credit cards. Read more at theverge.com.
Megan Morrone and Jason Howell will be talking about what will happen to the 100,000 Whole Foods employees with Dr. Paul Warner, who has a PhD in Clinical and Industrial-Organizational Psychology. 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.