Technology news

One of the brains behind Apple’s iconic digital assistant Siri, Dag Kittlaus, took to the stage today at TechCrunch Disrupt NYC to show off his new project, Viv — an AI assistant that aims to be “the intelligent interface for everything.” The 20-minute demo wowed the audience with a real-time demonstration of some really impressive capabilities. What started with simple questions about the weather turned into some truly complex inquiries like: “Will it be warm

A 2015 report suggested nearly a quarter million iPhones had been hacked by one (or more) of 92 different identified varieties of malware. A  new app, ‘System and Security Info,’ wants to let you know if you’re one of them. The problematic part isn’t often the hack itself, it’s that most have no clue they’re infected. Modern malware runs as a background process and leaves few clues to its existence. If iPhone owners knew they were running malware, i

Swift 3.0 is coming, and the first developer previews will be out later this week. In a blog post, the Swift team notes it will create the first developer preview of Swift 3.0 on May 12, and release it 4-6 weeks later. The release cycle for developer previews will be “irregular,” but the Swift team is trying to stick to a 4-6 week cadence. The Swift GitHub repo will also have three main branches: main, Swift 3.0 preview and Swift 3.0. All development will happen in the Master branch

Motorola appears to be taking a page out of LG’s book this year. The most recent batch of leaks suggest the 2016 Moto X will feature an all metal design with a collection of detachable accessory modules. Just like last year, there will be a high-end model, and a lower-spec’d cheaper device. According to a report by VentureBeat’s Evan Blass – better known as @evleaks – both devices device appears to be slim metal slabs, with pronounced camera modules and&n

The era of the personal car is in decline. In cities around the world, young people are opting for bikes and ridesharing services over owning an automobile. And with the swelling wave of the self-driving car very much on the horizon, it’s really only a matter of time before there isn’t a single whip left to ghost-ride. Traditional car manufacturers are taking note. Last week, there were three big stories about old guard car companies getting in bed with tech. Google and Fiat Chrysle

While it’s perfectly easy to share your favorite Spotify or SoundCloud tracks and playlists, finding an easy way to play back music from a variety of different sources in a collaborative way with friends is a trickier prospect. Flo Music launches officially today – after a ‘soft launch’ and further refinement – to fix this exact problem. As well as letting you pull tracks into a shared playlist with up to 10 people from streaming services, you can also include

Periscope is officially launching its beta save function as a stable feature, introducing search functionality and rolling out a new feature that will let you trade off between your phone and a DJI Drone during a live-stream. In the Periscope app, you’ll soon see a new feature that lets you search for livestreams and saved broadcasts. You can type something like ‘TNW’ and find any broadcast with that term in the title or topic description. There will also be hash-tagged topics

Happy Europe Day, the commemoration of Schuman’s 1950 speech declaring the creation of the European Coal and Steel Community, which we all know and love as the European Union. Well, maybe not all of us love it… yes, we’re looking at you, UK.  But it’s a day to celebrate peace and unity in Europe, to teach people about the EU, and for potential members to speak out in support of European integration. What better way to learn about Europe than to highl

Spotify is making a big push into video by producing its first ever lineup of original shows. While the company recently started showcasing video from around the Web, this will be first time the company produces original media. There will be 12 shows to start, but don’t expect full-fledged Netfix-style content. Instead, Spotify seems to be taking an approach closer to original content on YouTube Red, with the longest episodes running at around 15 minutes. Fittingly enough, the content cen

A vibrating phone is distracting. It interrupts meals, meetings and even meditation – if you’re into that sort of thing. However, with the Ditto Bluetooth Alerting Device, you can retake control over your communications, silencing the non-essentials and choosing which notifications you want to be made aware of. At just $33 from TNW Deals, this pebble-sized solution delivers uninterrupted peace-of-mind. The minimalist wearable Ditto device clips onto clothing, connects via Bluetooth

Commuters in New York will now have an alternate option to crowding in trains during rush hour: Uber announced a $5 flat rate for its uberPool ride-sharing option on weekday morning and evenings in Manhattan. The deal is available only between 7 to 10 AM and 5 to 8 PM Monday to Friday below 110th street, and will never incur surge charges. That’s a great deal if you live on opposite ends of the peninsula, though for morning commuters, you’ll have to pick an intersection closest to y

British Airways is one of the brands set to benefit from a new deal between the International Airlines Group and internet service provider Gogo from next year. Under terms of the deal, the company’s long-haul flights – as well as some operated by Iberia and Aer Lingus – will start being upgraded to faster ‘2Ku’ technology, which can provide speeds of up to 70Mbps. “2Ku is delivering a ground-like performance to aircraft flying around the world today

While Apple takes their sweet time expanding the iPhone’s storage capacity, many of us are fighting the “Not Enough Storage Space” notification as we use our iOS devices for an assortment of media and data activity each day. The Cloud helps, but it’s certainly no substitute for the security and convenience of physical media storage. Now you can expand the capacity of your iOS gadgets and easily transport data between your devices. With the newest version of the best-sell

African tech – and the continent’s growing middle class – is increasingly attracting interest from overseas, with serious activity on the continent this month from Asia. Alibaba is expanding its UC Browser, the leading browser in China, to Kenya, with the company noting it had seen the potential growth in Kenya with the rise of smartphone shipments in the country. Meanwhile, Hong Kong-based digital lifestyle devices brand Zuri is to roll out its brand of smartphones in th

Woo, the platform that lets you find the right job without giving up personal information, is rolling out a matching algorithm to put you into a job faster. Using your skill-set and stated desires for your next job, Woo says it’s data-driven matching has led to an 80 percent relevancy in matching candidates to jobs so far. Woo claims similar methods by other companies often result is single-digit success rates. “Companies today are spending an inordinate amount of time chasing candi

Opera has announced the launch of a new standalone VPN app for iPhone and iPad that promises to unlock geo-location restrictions and block ads. The launch follows the introduction of the VPN service baked into its desktop browser last month, but brings it to a far larger potential audience; Opera only holds around two percent of the total desktop browser market. The company says that more virtual locations will be added soon (it currently offers just five) and that it contains a built-in a

Google’s well-known for tweaking and testing every aspect of its products, and as Search underpins a huge part of the company’s performance, eking out every single benefit can translate into a huge win for the company. Now, it’s testing a different color font on its Search results page for titles – potentially paving the way to move from its particular shade of blue to black…. Who cares, right? A whole bunch of people. Not only are people incredibly forthrigh

Wercker is introducing Workflows, a streamlined way to manage custom Docker container pipelines for distributed apps and microservices. Workflows can be used with AWS, CoreOS, Deis, Kubernetes and DC/OS. Once a user defines a hook, the pipeline is executed in a Docker container. Those hooks can either be another pipeline (how meta!) or Git sources. Pipelines can be set-up using a registry in Wercker, or manually created. Once created, pipelines can be run parallel or sequentially. The reach of

It’s Monday and you’re keen to jump feet-first into a new week, but before you get properly started, there’s a whole load of news you need to check out from over the weekend. You wouldn’t want to sound stupid at the (virtual) watercooler in Slack would you? Exactly. So, all you need to do is make yourself a coffee, silence your phone and peruse the best tech articles from across the last few days on TNW and beyond. News from The Next Web HBO execs are frantical