Microsoft to bring Xbox mobile store, challenging Google & Apple
In what may be the biggest news this week, the foremost multinational tech corporation, Microsoft, has decided to face up to its competitors, Google and Apple, by building an Xbox mobile store that competes with Play Store and App Store.
News broke out recently that the UK’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA), was looking into Microsoft’s acquisition of Activision Blizzard.
It was at this point that they discovered Microsoft’s plans to create an Xbox-branded mobile game store.
It appears like Microsoft is trying to break into the mobile game industry, as it represents a much larger portion of the overall gaming market at 51 percent — we genuinely cannot fault them.
However, how does this play out for Google, Apple and other rivals?
Apple, in particular, has existing restrictions on third-party app stores on iOS, which makes it impossible to see Microsoft stores on iPhones. However, this does not stop Microsoft from planning an Xbox mobile app store.
It only means that both Google and Apple will have to up their game in order not to lose customers to Microsoft’s new initiative.
For instance, Microsoft intends to take advantage of the fact that Apple does not provide its own payment methods for handling in-game transactions by building a framework for that.
GitHub users want to sue Microsoft for training an AI tool with their code
Microsoft makes the news again this week, but this time, they are not challenging rival companies. Rather, they are being challenged, possibly to the point of a lawsuit!
According to information available to us, GitHub users claim that the company’s tool, Copilot, which is an extension for Microsoft’s Visual Studio coding environment that uses prediction algorithms to auto-complete lines of code, was trained using billions of lines of open-source code hosted on sites like GitHub.
The people are obviously not happy with this.
GitHub confirmed on a website launched to spearhead an investigation that there is a potential class-action lawsuit against them.
Matthew Butterick, a programmer and lawyer from the company, writes that he has assembled a team of class-action litigators to lead a suit opposing the tool called GitHub Copilot.
The next weeks will unravel what this truly entails, and we will of course, bring all the juice your way.
Adobe’s Blink AI Tool makes video editing look like word processing
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Away from Microsoft and its shenanigans, Adobe is introducing a number of new AI-related tools, and the Blink tool is one we are enthusiastic about.
The software giant this week began testing a video-editing technology that lets you search for words, objects and people in a video. The AI analysis essentially gives a word-processing interface to video editing.
Adobe showed off Project Blink this week during its “sneaks” session at its annual Max conference for photographers, video editors, illustrators and other creative types.
Blink is a cloud-based service, so you need to upload videos to try it out.
Adobe will bring new AI-based technology to its Creative Cloud
Another AI-based technology that Adobe is introducing is for its Creative Cloud.
Again this week, the software giant announced that a creator-centric artificial intelligence (AI)-based technology – Generative Artificial Intelligence (Generative AI) – is coming for its Adobe Creative Tools.
At its annual Adobe MAX 2022 creativity conference, the company said the new technology would allow creators to give their ideas to AI, and the machine will generate certain images.
If the creators don’t like these images, they can rewrite them and get something closer to what they want.
“We are investing our research and product design talents to develop a creative-centric approach to integrating generative AI into Adobe’s creative tools,” the company emphasizes.
Snowplow extends relationship with AWS by making products available on AWS Marketplace
When it comes to data creation and behavioral data, Snowplow is an industry leader. This week, it announced that its relationship with AWS will be extended, as customers will now be able to find and purchase the Snowplow Behavioral Data Platform (BDP) in AWS Marketplace.
The AWS Marketplace is a curated digital catalog of software, data, and services that run on AWS. Snowplow BDP is a first-party, privacy-compliant data creation platform that sits within an organization’s cloud infrastructure.
Snowplow and AWS have been collaborating for over a decade to offer customers a way to operationalize their data in the cloud, and this is only an extension of their relationship.
Google rolls out widgets for iOS Lock Screen
This week, tech giant Google announced that it has completed the iOS 16 lock screen widgets rollout with Maps and Search update.
Google recently rolled out previously announced iOS 16 widgets for iPhone users. The tech giant announced new widgets for the iOS 16 lock screens in September.
The company had also announced to update six lock screen widgets on the iOS 16 launch day, out of which four widgets were updated recently.
The new widgets come for the tech giant’s core products, such as Google, Google Chrome, Google Search, Google News, Google Drive, etc.
This feature is only available for iPhones on iOS 14 and later, and iPadOS 14 and later. For iPads, the Google app widget is only available in landscape mode.
The Google app widget on the Lock Screen can be used to search the web or your phone. You can also use it to access recently searched items, and view your activity history.
The widget also lets you see the current weather conditions in your location.
Oracle adds Fusion Cloud features targeted at healthcare firms
At its CloudWorld conference this week, Oracle announced that it is increasing its focus on healthcare industry customers by adding healthcare-oriented features for its Fusion Enterprise Planning Management (EPM), Supply Chain and Manufacturing (SCM) and Human Capital Management (HCM) suites.
The healthcare sector has become a major target for Oracle, as signaled by its $28 billion acquisition of healthcare systems maker Cerner, which closed in June.
Oracle said that the healthcare additions to the EPM suite are generally available now; some of the new HCM features are available now, and a schedule for rollout of all the new capabilities will be issued soon; and the SCM updates will be generally available soon.
The new features in the EPM suite are designed to help healthcare firms with financial consolidation and close, revenue management, and cost and profitability management.
The HCMs additions include tools for managing physician and nurse licensing, along with skills and training requirements.
The new SCM features are designed to help healthcare firms manage their supply chains more effectively, including capabilities for managing inventory levels and supplier contracts.
Zendesk launches new easy-to-set-up machine-learning solutions
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Lastly on our top stories this week, Zendesk announced Intelligent Triage and Smart Assist, as its new AI solutions that’s empowering businesses to triage customer support requests automatically, and gaining fuller access to valuable data at scale.
What this implies is that by democratizing access to these solutions, companies can see value in minutes by understanding intent and sentiment through account-specific, data-driven models that are customized for individual use cases and drive faster resolutions.
According to Zendesk, this unique approach to applying machine learning creates more personalized and informed interactions to better serve customers.
This is a significant development considering that most businesses today still rely on humans to read and interpret customer support requests, which can be both time-consuming and costly.
That will be all for this week. Join us next week!