| From: Paul H. Christiansen | 11/8/2016 11:10:36 AM | | | | | | 6 Virtual Reality Content Companies to Watch
We previously talked about 6 hot virtual reality (VR) startups, and what became apparent is that VR is going nowhere fast without virtual reality content. With Microsoft the latest company to invest its billions in virtual reality with its $300 headsets launching from HP, Dell, Lenovo, Asus, and Ace launch in spring 2017, next year is shaping up to be big for VR. Microsoft, which already provides an Xbox One controller and Windows 10 support for Oculus Rift, officially joins the ranks of Sony, Facebook, HTC, Samsung and Google. The biggest need for emerging virtual reality headsets across high-end PCs, console and mobile devices is quality content. While video games remain a key focus to lure consumers into VR, 360-degree video and computer animated VR content are on the rise. The following is a rundown of some of the leading companies creating non-gaming virtual reality content.
http://www.nanalyze.com/2016/11/virtual-reality-vr-content/
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| From: Paul H. Christiansen | 11/11/2016 11:59:59 PM | | | | | | UPS pact gives companies access to large-scale 3D printing and virtual warehousing
UPS, along with partners SAP and Fast Radius, a Georgia-based manufacturer, have launched an effort to bring 3D printing full steam into the world of scaled industrial production.
It could be a game changer in the fast-growing 3D printing industry.
"Much like eCommerce digitized and transformed retail, 3D Printing will have a similar impact on manufacturing," UPS Vice President, Strategy Alan Amling told Business Insider.
"The 3D printing industry is expected to grow from $5 billion in 2015 to $21 billion in 2021," Amling added, citing a study from Wohlers Assoc. "Estimates vary widely, but all expect exponential growth. If 3D Printing captures just 5% of manufacturing it creates a $640 billion plus global market opportunity."
businessinsider.com
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| From: Paul H. Christiansen | 11/12/2016 12:14:53 AM | | | | | | Nvidia Soars 23%: Imagine Every Query on the Internet a GPU Query, Says CEO Huang
In a phone call last night following the report and the conference call, CEO Jen-Hsun Huangtold me that the “big idea” of it all “is that here’s a graphics chip company that started in PC graphics and transformed itself into a GPU computing company, and its platform has ignited this wave of A.I.”
“We are a computing company that’s able to innovate all the way through system software and libraries through to applications like self-driving cars, at the center of one of the most important revolutions the computer industry has seen,” he said.
I asked Huang about a comment from Joe Moore of Morgan Stanley, who asked him on the call how many GPU chips could possibly be sold for “inference,” by which he meant the part of A.I. that answers queries spontaneously, rather than the slower part of A.I., “training,” that prepares the skills of computers over time. It was a clear attempt by Moore to gauge whether Nvidia’s chips will see higher volumes of unit shipments as real-time use starts to match off-line or non-real-time use.
Huang avoided committing himself, instead answering indirectly that many of the 5,000 to 10,000 “nodes” of cloud computing will increasingly use a GPU to answer queries on the Internet.
blogs.barrons.com
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| From: Paul H. Christiansen | 11/15/2016 12:08:44 PM | | | | | | An Artificial Intelligence Definition for Beginners
All-natural and organic are familiar terms to consumers, and anything artificial has become anathema to many. Unless we’re talking artificial intelligence – or AI – then investors should be hungry to learn as much as possible about a technology that is becoming as ubiquitous as organic tofu.
The vast majority of nearly 2,000 experts polled by the Pew Research Center in 2014 said they anticipate robotics and artificial intelligence will permeate wide segments of daily life by 2025. A 2015 study covering 17 countries found that artificial intelligence and related technologies added an estimated 0.4 percentage point on average to those countries’ annual GDP growth between 1993 and 2007, accounting for just over one-tenth of those countries’ overall GDP growth during that time.
Understanding the world of AI only begins with a simple artificial intelligence definition. There’s a whole universe of terminology we need to explore in order to understand the domain before we can invest in it.
http://www.nanalyze.com/2016/11/artificial-intelligence-definition/
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| From: Paul H. Christiansen | 11/16/2016 3:08:56 PM | | | | | | Snapchat Releases First Hardware Product, Spectacles
In an unmarked building on a quiet side street just off the beach in Venice, California, 26-year-old Snapchat CEO Evan Spiegel stands in a small conference room. He’s draped a towel over a mysterious object sitting on a table. He is eager to the point of jitters.
“You wanna see it?” he asks, grinning widely. There’s drama in this reveal: I’m about to join an exceedingly small circle of people whom Spiegel has shown the object to. As he lifts the towel, he breaks into a delighted laugh. “Boom!”
What initially appears to be a normal pair of sunglasses turns out to be Spectacles, the first hardware product from Snap Inc., as the firm has been newly christened (Spiegel is refreshing the company name because its offerings now go beyond the Snapchat app). When you slip Spectacles on and tap a button near the hinge, it records up to 10 seconds of video from your first-person vantage. Each new tap records another clip.
Why use a pair of video sunglasses—available this fall, by the way, one-size-fits-all in black, teal or coral—instead of holding up your smartphone like everyone else? Because, Spiegel says, the images that result are fundamentally different. Spectacles’ camera uses a 115-degree-angle lens, wider than a typical smartphone’s and much closer to the eyes’ natural field of view. The video it records is circular, more like human vision. (Spiegel argues that rectangles are an unnecessary vestige of printing photos on sheets of paper.) As you record, your hands are free to pet dogs, hug babies or flail around at a concert. You can reach your arms out to people you’re filming, instead of holding your phone up, as Spiegel describes it, “like a wall in front of your face.”
wsj.com
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| From: Paul H. Christiansen | 11/19/2016 12:56:52 PM | | | | | | What’s Special about Snap’s Spectacles
Snap’s video-recording sunglasses are out in the wild, and websites are chiming in with reviews. Quirky as always, Snap isn’t selling the spectacles through retail stores or online. The company is relying instead on dropping vending machines full of the toy in random locations like Big Sur, California, and Tulsa, Oklahoma.
I got my hands on a pair and have some thoughts about the usual stuff—charging, usability and design—that I will get to below. But my bigger takeaway is that, just as the smartphone reinvented photo sharing, glasses are going to reinvent mobile video. And if they do, they will have a longer lifespan than wearable devices of generations past.
The Takeaway
As simple as they are in terms of wearable devices, Snap’s new sunglasses could lead to a breakthrough in mobile video sharing that could benefit Snap’s business in interesting ways.
A subscription might be required to read the entire article.
https://www.theinformation.com/whats-special-about-snaps-spectacles
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| From: Paul H. Christiansen | 11/21/2016 9:49:21 AM | | | | | | Microsoft Spends Big to Build a Computer Out of Science Fiction
Microsoft is putting its considerable financial and engineering muscle into the experimental field of quantum computing as it works to build a machine that could tackle problems beyond the reach of today’s digital computers.
There is a growing optimism in the tech world that quantum computers, superpowerful devices that were once the stuff of science fiction, are possible — and may even be practical. If these machines work, they will have an impact on work in areas such as drug design and artificial intelligence, as well as offer a better understanding of the foundations of modern physics.
nytimes.com
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| From: Paul H. Christiansen | 11/21/2016 9:52:03 AM | | | | | | Snap’s Spectacles Are the Beginning of a Camera-First Future
THE STORY OF Spectacles, the new camera-filled sunglasses from Snap, goes back further than you think. It begins probably well before you were using Snapchat, even before Google launched Glass and ignited the face-camera firestorm Snap would learn so much from. It starts with a company called Vergence Labs, and a product called Epiphany Eyewear.
Vergence was founded in 2011 by two Stanford students, John Rodriguez and Erick Miller. They called Epiphany Eyewear “social video glasses.” They were a set of simple Wayfarer-style glasses with a camera in the stem, that would record video you could send to your computer or phone. In their application video to Stanford’s exclusive StartX startup incubator, Miller hides the product in plain sight, wearing them like normal glasses. Then he whips them off, and says these are the company’s first product. A pair of glasses that lets you “share with people, and get to experience what they’ve experienced from their perspective.”
wired.com
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| From: Paul H. Christiansen | 11/21/2016 1:17:06 PM | | | | | | $25B? Why Snap’s Expected IPO Valuation Is Fair
Snap Inc. has reportedly filed confidentially for an IPO that could value the company north of $22B. For context, the company was last valued at $18B in the private markets, which put it just behind three other US-based unicorns: Uber ($68B), Airbnb ($29B), and Palantir Technologies ($20B), and just ahead of WeWork ($16.9B).
Snap’s public debut would be the first unicorn IPO since the September 2016 IPO of Nutanix, which went public at a valuation of $2.2B.
Is Snap’s expected IPO value irrational? We used CB Insights’s Enhanced Valuation capability to track Snap’s value rise against other high-flying unicorns, and benchmark the expected IPO valuation against comparable social media companies (on price-per-user and price-to-sales bases). We find that Snap isn’t too richly valued compared to its peers, especially considering its demographics, growth prospects/momentum, and revenue efforts.
cbinsights.com
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