For a while, the dominant model for consumer AI has been an all-you-can-eat buffet. Pay monthly, use as much as you like, and the provider would absorb whatever it cost to serve you. That worked tolerably well when most people were using AI the way they’d use a search engine, with a question here, a bit of help drafting something… Read more →
This was the week of Google I/O; Part rock concert (the arena part, not the music part), and part tech conference. I settled into a chair, together a group of the Basingstoke Tech Scene folks, and listened. By now it’s apparent that the major story of the event was Google Duplex, Google’s conversational AI addition to Google Assistant. It was… Read more →
I read the wired article on the Speedfactory at Adidas, via Katheryn Corrick. It is the best articulation of a trend that has been coming for a while: businesses outsourced manufacturing when there is no competitive advantage in it. When I worked at Cisco, in the days of its peak growth and value, it was really a software business, and… Read more →
This was triggered by one of those “Top ten concerts” memes that went around Facebook, where you post your 9 favourite concerts and a 10th that is “a lie” – i.e. one you haven’t been to. There was a similar idea with a twist asking people: “What’s something you’ve done that you’re reasonably confident you’re the only person on my… Read more →
Each year I take pause to look back on the year ponder what might have been the most significant new technology to emerge. This year at Google I/O we were introduced to Project Soli. Touch has significantly changed the way that we interact with software and the web (as a side note, this year I had the pleasure of meeting James… Read more →
This weekend I headed out into the Kent countryside, together with my eldest son, with a boot piled full of tech gadgets, a couple of tents, sleeping bags, a groundsheet and some blankets (it is summer in England after all). I wasn’t at all sure what to expect, but I knew there would be some familiar faces there, and lots to learn –… Read more →