Author: Richard

AI and the Future of Business Machine learning, task automation and robotics are already widely used in business. These and other AI technologies are about to multiply, and we look at how organizations can best take advantage of them. Read More A who’s who list of Silicon Valley investors have created a non-profit artificial intelligence company called OpenAI that aims to “benefit humanity as a whole.” OpenAI gets off the ground with $1 billion from Reid Hoffman, Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, Amazon Web Services, Infosys and YC Research. The general theme is that a non-profit research organization will be able…

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Next month, Microsoft will officially stop delivering updates for all but the latest Internet Explorer version on each Windows version it supports. Although the company provided almost two years’ warning, the population still using older versions of Internet Explorer appears to be uncomfortably high. How many people are using Microsoft browsers (Internet Explorer and Microsoft Edge) on desktop PCs, laptops, and Windows-powered hybrids? And what percentage of those customers are going to stop getting security updates after January? Getting answers to those questions turned out to be harder than I thought. In fact, the three most commonly cited sources of…

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Ratan Tata, Chairman of Tata Trusts and Salman Khan founder of Khan Academy, all smiles after the media briefing in Mumbai. Khan academy, a non profit organisation that provides free online tutorials worldwide will start Hindi portal in India with aid of Tata Trusts. Photo: Prashant Nakwe. TOPICS Maharashtra Mumbai This multi-million dollar partnership will look at hiring Indian teachers and teach in Indian languages through videos that are mapped to the Indian education system, especially NCERT textbooks. One of the world’s largest open-access online educators, Khan Academy, announced a five-year, not-for-profit partnership with the Ratan Tata-led Tata Trusts to…

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Enterprise software’s pecking order may be shifting, but one of the big takeaways is that the more the industry changes the more the pain points stay the same. In ZDNet’s special report on the enterprise app landscape there are multiple lessons, but the following five based on Tech Pro Research are worth noting. No. 1: The idea that technology executives are losing control of enterprise software spending may be overrated. Based on chatter from the last 18 months you’d think the chief marketing officer drove technology spending. Tech Pro Research data indicates that IT, along with the CEO, drives enterprise…

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Despite what you may have heard to the contrary, software is still patent eligible in the United States. It is not as easy to get a software patent as it once was, and it is quite unfortunate that we even use the term “software patent” to refer to an invention that can be implemented using a computer. Indeed, according to Martin Goetz, the first person ever to be granted a software patent, software is a means to an end and whether the innovation is implemented using a computer has nothing to do with whether a patent should, or should not, be issued for…

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One of the things that makes protecting computer related inventions tricky is that first you have to define the invention, and defining the invention is not something that is altogether easy when the invention is a computer process or relates to software. Sure, it is easy enough to define a list of desired functionality, and if you have some computer programming skills it is easy enough (after investing the requisite time) to write the code that will enable the functionality, but that which can be protected via patent lies somewhere between the desired functionality and the code, making the defining…

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Typically, most computer innovations relate at least in some way to software, which is at the very core of the challenge facing patent attorneys and innovators today. It is the software that directs the computer, or more generally a machine, to do unique and often wonderful things. Indeed, it is the software that provides the innovative spark, not the machine on which the software operates. Still, for reasons that are hard to understand and even harder to explain the courts, specifically the United States Supreme Court and the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, continue to exalt…

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Talkdesk co-founder Cristina Fonseca spoke at Disrupt London on Tuesday. In an interview with TechCrunch’s Matt Lynley, Fonseca explained how the San Francisco-based company that started in Portugal has helped businesses improve their customer service experience. Founded in 2011, in an effort to win a Macbook Air contest, Talkdesk has quickly scaled its call center business. Its software is used by companies like Dropbox, and enables companies to get a quick overview of a customer’s profile and previous interactions as soon as they accept an incoming call. With Talkdesk, “you can see everything about a customer when that customer is calling,”…

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The new Apple TV is more than just a ‘hobby’, it’s now a fully-fledged television system complete with apps, and even more importantly, games. Now the Apple TV is available online and in store, you’re be able to play games using the Siri Remote or an MFi (Made For iOS) controller. All this is set to turn the Apple TV into one of the best video games consoles on the market. While it’s tempting to think of the Apple TV as a games machine for casual and non-traditional gamers – the sort of device that Nintendo specialises in – the…

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Will Tenchu ever get a decent modern game?The morning Inbox is still split over the Final Fantasy VII remake news, as one reader names the scariest moment in Super Mario Bros. 3. To join in with the discussions yourself email [email protected] PLEASE NOTE: We’re currently starting to put together our usual coverage for over the Christmas and New Year break, including a review of the year and preview of 2016. But we’ll also need lots of Reader’s Features to go up during the same period, so if you’ve thought of writing one but not quite got round to it now…

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