This week, Cortana enters the home, Pokémon GO reenters Milwaukee parks and YouTube exits online editing.
Scott is a developer who has worked on projects of varying sizes, including all of the PLUGHITZ Corporation properties. He is also known in the gaming world for his time supporting the rhythm game community, through DDRLover and hosting tournaments throughout the Tampa Bay Area. Currently, when he is not working on software projects or hosting F5 Live: Refreshing Technology, Scott can often be found returning to his high school days working with the Foundation for Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology (FIRST), mentoring teams and helping with ROBOTICON Tampa Bay. He has also helped found a student software learning group, the ASCII Warriors, currently housed at AMRoC Fab Lab.
Avram's been in love with PCs since he played original Castle Wolfenstein on an Apple II+. Before joining Tom's Hardware, for 10 years, he served as Online Editorial Director for sister sites Tom's Guide and Laptop Mag, where he programmed the CMS and many of the benchmarks. When he's not editing, writing or stumbling around trade show halls, you'll find him building Arduino robots with his son and watching every single superhero show on the CW.
Microsoft has made no secret of the fact that they want Cortana, their voice-powered, Halo-inspired personal assistant to be everywhere. She premiered of Windows Phone several years ago, made her way to the desktop with Windows 10 and has expanded from there. Harman Kardon is building a speaker named Invoke, while HP is also building a Cortana-powered speaker.
Since Niantic released Pokémon GO last year, it has caused a lot of people and organizations to consider how it impacts them and their resources. Wireless networks have seen increased data consumption, which has resulted in increased bandwidth in heavy usage areas. Some churches have seen increased property usage, which has given them opportunity to reach out to new people. Some restaurants and business have seen increases in attention, to which they have reached out looking for new customers.
Last week was Amazon Prime Day, and the company was very happy with the results. One of the issues that we pointed out was that some products were more expensive during their Prime Day deal than they had been the day or two previous. We pointed to one product in particular, which was $20 more than it has been in recent days.
When it comes to the internet, features for big services com and go. During Marissa Mayer's time at the helm of Yahoo, new purchases were made and closed existing products. It is just part of doing business - deciding what is being used and what is worth shuttering.