Month: December 2018

    • New York's HQ2 proposal shows the types of data Amazon collected: availability of tech experts, real estate sites, outcomes from educational institutions, more (Karen Weise/New York Times)

    Karen Weise / New York Times: New York’s HQ2 proposal shows the types of data Amazon collected: availability of tech experts, real estate sites, outcomes from educational institutions, more  —  The city and state sent loads of data to Amazon during its search for a new headquarters, offering a peek into the valuable information …

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    • The state of technology in 2018: the enterprise market is thriving, and the consumer market is stagnant, dominated by "innovations" from a few large behemoths (Ben Thompson/Stratechery)

    Ben Thompson / Stratechery: The state of technology in 2018: the enterprise market is thriving, and the consumer market is stagnant, dominated by “innovations” from a few large behemoths  —  This article is a bit of an annual tradition: in mid-December I summarize the state of technology,1 and appropriately enough … The state of technology

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    • How making products easier to use can steer users toward unhealthy behaviors, like viewing overly extreme content that autoplays, or lead to security breaches (Kevin Roose/New York Times)

    Kevin Roose / New York Times: How making products easier to use can steer users toward unhealthy behaviors, like viewing overly extreme content that autoplays, or lead to security breaches  —  Seven years ago, a younger and more carefree Mark Zuckerberg went onstage at Facebook’s annual developer conference and announced … How making products easier

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    • Southeast Asian ride hailing service Grab raises $150M from Yamaha Motor as part of its ongoing Series H round, which is targeted at $3B (Jon Russell/TechCrunch)

    Jon Russell / TechCrunch: Southeast Asian ride hailing service Grab raises $150M from Yamaha Motor as part of its ongoing Series H round, which is targeted at $3B  —  Grab, the Southeast Asia ride-hailing firm that bought out Uber’s local business, has added another investor to its rolling cast of backers … Southeast Asian ride

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    • Apple announces a $1B Austin campus initially for 5,000 workers, new offices in Seattle, San Diego, and Culver City, plus expansion in several other US cities (Ina Fried/Axios)

    Ina Fried / Axios: Apple announces a $1B Austin campus initially for 5,000 workers, new offices in Seattle, San Diego, and Culver City, plus expansion in several other US cities  —  Apple plans to build a new $1 billion campus in Austin, Texas, adding thousands of jobs, while also setting up new large offices in

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    • How recommendation sites like the Strategist and Wirecutter maintain readers' trust while earning revenue through affiliate links (Eliza Brooke/Vox)

    Eliza Brooke / Vox: How recommendation sites like the Strategist and Wirecutter maintain readers’ trust while earning revenue through affiliate links  —  Sites like the Strategist, Wirecutter, and BuzzFeed Reviews want to help you find the best of the best. … Say you want to buy a travel mug. How recommendation sites like the Strategist

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    • Opera launches its cryptocurrency-oriented browser for the decentralized web

    Opera is finally rolling out its blockchain-oriented browser specifically designed for surfing and interacting with the decentralized web (also known as Web 3.0). Today at Hard Fork Decentralized in London, the company announced the browser, which comes with a built-in cryptocurrency wallet, is now available for Android. This makes Opera the first mainstream browser that comes with cryptocurrency

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    • Microsoft launches its Clarity web analytics tool for A/B testing and visualizing user sessions

    To help webmasters understand how visitors interact with their sites, Microsoft has launched its new Clarity analytics tool in beta today. Set to rival the likes of Optimizely, Google Optimize and Visual Web Optimizer, Clarity lets you run A/B tests, and play back visualizations of users’ experiences and behavior patterns on your site. The tool

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    • Accenture Interactive to acquire adtech company Adaptly, which helps marketers buy targeted ads across online platforms including Amazon, Google, and Facebook (Lara O'Reilly/Wall Street Journal)

    Lara O’Reilly / Wall Street Journal: Accenture Interactive to acquire adtech company Adaptly, which helps marketers buy targeted ads across online platforms including Amazon, Google, and Facebook  —  Purchase gives Accenture Interactive access to targeted-ad technology that plugs into platforms including Google, Amazon and Facebook Accenture Interactive to acquire adtech company Adaptly, which helps marketers

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    • Amazon starts selling the 3rd-gen Chromecast as well as the older Chromecast Ultra, nearly a year after it promised to sell the devices again (Corbin Davenport/Android Police)

    Corbin Davenport / Android Police: Amazon starts selling the 3rd-gen Chromecast as well as the older Chromecast Ultra, nearly a year after it promised to sell the devices again  —  Amazon pulled the Chromecast from its online store in 2015, after it instated a new rule that only streaming devices that supported Prime Video could

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