Apple’s gotten into the game of teaching kids how to program. Last week at WWDC, the company announced Swift Playgrounds, along with the intention to teach programming classes at its Apple retail stores for free. And I’m here to tell you this is a terrible approach, a bad idea, and generally little more than a … continue reading
Microsoft is introducing a new service that combines its Azure Rights Management (Azure RMS) and technology from its acquisition of Secure Islands. The Microsoft Azure Information Protection service is designed to give enterprises a new solution to protect employee identity, and to secure and manage devices, apps, and data. “Organizations must protect their data at … continue reading
Apple has indicated for some time that it was building more cohesion across its devices and platforms. At Worldwide Developers Conference this week, announcements to this effect were made, chief among them universal copy and paste between devices. Underneath these changes is a much more fundamental one that underpins all of Apple’s hardware. The Apple … continue reading
Mac OS X is now simply macOS. The 27th annual World Wide Developer Conference kicked off this morning in San Francisco, and along with the new branding for the operating system, Apple also unveiled new features for macOS and iOS, including the Universal Clipboard, desktop sharing across devices, and enhancements to Siri. macOS and iOS … continue reading
As a way to compete with the other voice assistants, sources say that Apple will allow software developers to connect their apps to Siri for the first time, according to a report with Fortune. Another report with The Information tech news website said that Apple might even create a device that is similar to the … continue reading
Google is extending its Classroom API to help developers integrate their applications with classroom solutions. The company introduced new coursework endpoints that will give developers access to assignments, grades and workflows. “Learning tools can focus on creating great content and, in turn, use Classroom to manage the workflow for assignments created with this content,” wrote … continue reading
Young learners can now design and program creative interfaces with a new generation of graphical programming blocks, named Scratch Blocks. Google announced a collaboration with the MIT Media Lab’s Scratch Team, and released today an open-source developer preview of Scratch Blocks, which builds on the company’s Blockly technology. Scratch Blocks focuses on creating new software … continue reading
FileMaker has announced the newest release of its custom app platform, FileMaker 15, which has new features in automation, mobility, performance and security. The new features for mobility include Touch ID support, which allows developers to access their custom apps with their finger, including with 3D Touch support. There are automation and integration features that … continue reading
OpenAI Gym, a toolkit for developing and comparing reinforcement learning (RL) algorithms, is now in beta. It consists of a suite of environments that can be used for comparing and reproducing results, as well as creating situations that an AI can learn from. Last year, Tesla CEO Elon Musk teamed up with Y Combinator president … continue reading
The 300-pound humanoid robot that NASA wants to use for space exploration has arrived at MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) this week. Researchers at CSAIL, led by CSAIL principal investigator Russ Tedrake will program their new “Valkyrie” robot to autonomously perform challenging tasks that would allow it to replace or help astronauts … continue reading
This week, Apple released a report that showed that its first decline in revenue in 13 years. Sources said part of the decline is because of fewer new products, iPhone sales slowing down, and the company’s lack of “cannibalism.” According to the company’s report, Apple’s quarterly revenue is US$50.6 billion and its quarterly net income … continue reading