The social media app Bluesky just reached the top of the free download charts for Apple's app store in the United States, making it--for the moment, at least--more popular than Meta's Threads and OpenAI's ChatGPT. The decentralized social media platform has received a fresh influx of users over the last week as more X users sour on Elon Musk's political ambitions and abandon his social media platform for an alternative. Over a million new users have joined Bluesky since the 2024 US presidential election on November 5, which was shaped by Musk's influence. First launched in 2019 as a project within Twitter, Bluesky gained independence from the company before Musk's acquisition and its subsequent name change. Bluesky also captured the attention of some ex-tweeters back in 2023, when new users were only able to sign up through an invite system.

Computer Vision involves getting the computer to detect or'sense' a movement, a gain, a loss or a void. A textbook definition of computer vision describes it as the ability "to make useful decisions about real physical objects and scenes based on sensed images". Machine Learning, on the other hand, consists of getting the computer to'recognize' a pattern so it can understand what is going on. Next, the pattern is matched to a pre-existing library or knowledgebase. It is at this point that machine learning takes the lead.

Nest is officially in the home security business. At a press conference in San Francisco today, the company introduced a slew of devices: A video doorbell, an updated outdoor camera and a security system that includes a keypad base, a motion sensor and a keychain fob. And for a company that's already so synonymous with the connected home, having it all integrated into one system makes a lot of sense. In a demo room immediately after the event, Nest showed off how all of it could work together. It had the Nest Cam IQ outdoor camera set up in an outdoor porch setting, the Hello video doorbell connected near the door and the Nest Detect motion sensors strategically attached to doors and windows.

The Skylanders games, which let you guide quirky characters through colorful levels to antagonize a cackling villain, probably aren't for you, or at least not you playing solo. Just not the someones I suspect are reading these words. Bear that in mind as I'm relaying my impressions of Skylanders Imaginators, this fall's entry in Activision and Toys for Bob's wireless figurine mega-franchise, out October 16 for current and last-gen consoles. Put another way, toy-to-life games investigated by fortysomethings benefit from playing with kids. I've thus been working through Imaginators with my 4-year-old son, who's over the moon because, well, video games.

Have you ever wanted to know the sentiment of people on Twitter around a particular subject? Did you ever wonder what tweeps think about the latest breaking news? In this tutorial series, learn how to build an app to get data from Twitter and then use the data for cognitive insights by using IBM Watson services such as Tone Analyzer, Visual Recognition, and Alchemy. Upon completion of the series, you will know how to deploy Watson starter packs on IBM Bluemix and will be able to extend the starter packs to fit your specific business needs. This tutorial uses tweets as the data source.