Strategy in TECH...
American companies are increasingly moving tech jobs to Canada, where easier immigration policies make it much easier to hire foreign tech workers than it is here in the U.S. where the Administration has taken steps to make it more difficult. That mean these companies are expanding their operations in Canada…especially in their tech divisions…turning certain Canadian cities into the next great tech hubs in North America.
Apple, Inc. announced today that it has upgraded its popular AirPods wireless headphones, with a new Generation 2 model featuring technology that offers more talk time, quicker connects, a hands-free ‘Hey Siri’ capability, and a new wireless charging case.
A newly created poll by Axios and The Harris Poll reveals what Americans think of the reputation of the top 100 most visible companies in the U.S. Tech, as you might imagine, was well represented here, and this poll bared a difficult truth for many tech companies…their reputation is crashing.
Thanks to some heads-up reporting by The Verge, we learn that Sonos will announce an upgraded version of their Sonos One speaker system. According to the report, the upgrades are all internal and the new version will, somewhat confusingly, look exactly like the original one.
New data from the U.S. Census Bureau and the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development shows that sales of new single-family homes in December were a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 621,000 or 3.7% above the revised rate in November of 599,000. However, it remained 2.4% below the year-ago rate of sales in December 2017 of 636,000.
At the urging the industry minister of Japan, the country’s Fair Trade Commission will look at a new program announced by Amazon Japan that some suggest may be anti-competitive in nature. Depending on the Commission’s findings, Amazon may be forced to abandon the idea, which is a form of a consumer rebate program.
Imagine this, you leave work early to grab a quick bite of lunch and get home before your sister, niece, and nephew arrive for a family visit. At lunch, you get a notification from your Ring Doorbell app and see that they’ve arrived early. No problem, thanks to Ring, you can let them in and head out to meet them there.
But is it really your family? Or is it a hacker who has figured out how to hack your Ring Doorbell and is now in your home, emptying it of all of its valuables?
The U.S. Commerce Department released new data this week on housing starts for December 2018. Overall residential construction dropped to 1.08 million units on a seasonally adjusted annual rate or 11.2% lower than the November rate of 1.2 million units. This is the lowest rate of residential construction since September 2016.
We learned today that Bowers and Wilkins (B&W) is close to launching a new series of products that appear to be under the “Formation” brand or series name. This news broke when MacRumors, a fan blog for aficionados of Apples McIntosh products, noticed a listing on Apple’s online list of sanctioned HomeKit and AirPlay accessories. They dug deeper…
Eyebrows raised everywhere when privacy-concerned industry watchers discovered that Google had put a microphone in their Nest Secure home alarm system, but failed to disclose that fact. Google says is was simply an “error.” But was it?
