COLUMBUS, Ohio – July 19, 2017 – DeviceBits, a leading artificial intelligence (AI) software company that offers predictive, self-learning platforms that help companies adopt self-service customer support materials, announced today its Academy offering will host digital self-support materials for customers of Nex-Tech Wireless. Nex-Tech Wireless focuses on providing its customers cutting-edge technology including 4G LTE data and mobile services, as well as the latest wireless equipment and competitive wireless plans that provide nationwide coverage. As part of the agreement, Nex-Tech Wireless has selected DeviceBits to deploy the Nex-Tech Wireless Academy and Support Predict Platform for self-service digital customer support materials. It will offer customers a destination that will include an enhanced self-service digital experience on their website and mobile devices. This experience will support the top-selling device models offered by Nex-Tech Wireless and guide customers with FAQ's, guides, tutorials and videos that are intelligently linked to predict user journeys which will provide a positive customer experience.

Softbank may be best known as one of Japan's top phone carriers, but their recent behind-the-scenes investments make it clear they want something more. Bloomberg Technology reports that the Japanese company has invested in iRobot, the manufacturer of the robot vacuum Roomba, with a stake of less than 5 percent. This isn't the first robotics company that Softbank has put some money into. Just last month, the phone carrier purchased Boston Dynamics from Google, along with all of its robots. Softbank also has found success with its companion robot, Pepper.

Qualcomm's decided to open up its year-old AI, by making its Neural Processing Engine (NPE) available to all. The Snapdragon NPE first landed last year, with the company pitching capabilities including "scene detection, text recognition, object tracking and avoidance, gesturing, face recognition, and natural language processing". Announcing the open release, the chip-slinger cites Facebook as a user, with the Social Network working to use the NPE in its camera app "to accelerate Caffe2-powered [augmented reality] features." TensorFlow is also name-checked in the announcement, and since the SDK's page also mentions convolutional neural network support, Vulture South reckons Cuda ConvaNet (part of last year's announcement) is also in there somewhere. As well as runtimes and libraries, the SDK provides APIs, sample code, debugging/benchmarking tools, documentation, and offline model conversion tools.

Mobile chip maker Qualcomm wants to enable deep learning-based software development on all kinds of devices, which is why it created the Neural Processing Engine (NPE) for its Snapdragon-series mobile processors. The NPE software development kit is now available to all via the Qualcomm Developer Network, which marks the first public release of the SDK, and opens up a lot of potential for AI computing on a range of devices, including mobile phones, in-car platforms and more. The purpose of the framework is to make possible UX implementations like style transfers and filters (basically what Snapchat and Facebook do with their mobile app cameras) with more accurate applications on user photos, as well as other functions better handled by deep learning algorithms, like scene detection, facial recognition, object tracking and avoidance, as well as natural language processing. Basically anything you'd normally route to powerful cloud servers for advanced process, but done locally on device instead. Facebook is actually one of the developers that gained early access to the NPE and the social giant is already seeing five-fold improvements in performance for its AR features on images and live video, when using Qualcomm's Adreno GPUs on Snapdragon SoCs.

System makers Fujitsu and Huawei Technologies reportedly are both planning to develop processors optimized for artificial intelligence workloads, moves that will put them into competition with the likes of Intel, Google, Nvidia and Advanced Micro Devices. Tech vendors are pushing hard to bring artificial intelligence (AI) and deep learning capabilities into their portfolios to meet the growing demand generated by a broad range of workloads, from data analytics to self-driving vehicles. Microsoft, Google, IBM and others are creating AI business units and building out products and services that can leverage the technologies. Chip makers also are making the move. Intel last week unveiled its latest generation Xeon server chips that, among other improvements, deliver 2.2 times the performance for deep learning training and inference tasks than their predecessors.

Texting and chatting have become so ingrained in our daily lives that, these days, most people get genuinely upset when they receive phone calls. The convenience of mobile communication has made us greedy about our time, and spending minutes on the phone for something that can be accomplished via text has become just downright offensive. For that reason, marketers are now turning to messaging platforms to improve communication channels for sales and customer service conversations. In fact, a report by Twilio found that 9 out of 10 consumers want to use messaging to communicate with brands. "[The] report highlights a growing divide between consumers and brands," said Manav Khurana, VP of Product Marketing at Twilio.

Identifying and pinpointing potential network failures and performance issues has long been a matter of educated guesswork, but an emerging generation of predictive analytics tools promises to bring greater accuracy to network reliably forecasts, allowing staff to address and remedy specific issues even before they can even begin affecting network operations. Predictive analytics is a game-changer, giving CIOs the ability to literally look into the future. "There is a growing need for networks to adapt to dynamic application demands as well as address dynamically to special events, seasonality and so on," says Diomedes Kastanis, head of technology and innovation for Ericsson. "Although we have a lot of automation systems and rules to manage and operate networks, it still it not enough to cope with the intense changing environment and proactively adapt to changing demands." Predictive analytics incorporating processes such as machine learning (ML) and artificial intelligence (AI) are relatively new concepts to many CIOs.

"Those who rule chips will rule the entire world. Those who rule data will rule the entire world. That's what people of the future will say." The words of Softbank's founder and CEO Masayoshi Son, who was bigging up his company at a presentation in Tokyo and laying down some future plans that artificial intelligence (AI) and data are very much at the heart of the company. According to the Associated Press (AP), who sat in on the event, Son, like quite a few other people, says "AI combined with data gathered by billions of sensors will bring on an'information revolution', that will benefit people more than the 19th century Industrial Revolution".

Fictitious robots of the 20th century had super powers and were depicted in fantastical morality tales, in battles of right and wrong. Their 21st-century real-world counterparts have a more prosaic but ultimately more ground-breaking power: They're enabled by artificial intelligence (AI) to solve everyday challenges for people, businesses and society. The potential opportunities created from integrating intelligence into industrial and service robots are leading businesses to take notice. Recently, a leading global telecommunications company asked us to develop a strategy for activating services that would enable service robots to productively interact in both the business-to-business and business-to-consumer realms. Service robots pose unique needs, as they are functionally designed to perform a task for or with humans.

Samsung Electronics America has finally confirmed speculations that the Galaxy S8 and Galaxy S8 will have another color option. The release date of the Coral Blue versions of the two flagship smartphones has also been revealed. On Wednesday, Samsung Electronics America announced via Samsung Newsroom the addition of the Coral Blue option into the mix of color variants of the Galaxy S8 and Galaxy S8 handsets. Interested consumers will get the chance to own any of the two starting this Friday, July 21. Samsung has tapped Best Buy to sell the blue colored Android flagship phones.