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Technology
Now Alexavoice apps don&t have to sound like Alexa. Amazon today is offering a way for developers to give their voice apps a unique character with the launch of eight free voices to use in skills, courtesy of the Amazon Polly service. The voices are only available in U.S. English, and include a mix of both male and female, according to Amazon Pollywebsite.
Amazon Polly was firstintroducedat Amazonre:Invent developer event in November 2016, and has been steadily ramping up its capabilities in the time since. Thetext-to-speechservice today is capable of things likewhispering, speech marks, using a timbre effect, and dynamic range compression & all which make the voices sound more natural.
While the speech engine today supports a couple dozen languages, only the U.S. English voices are being offered to Alexa developers at this time.
But their addition could make some of Alexaskills more engaging & especially those involving different characters, like an adventure story or game, for example.
Developers today may already be using multiple voices in their skills, but the process of doing so is more cumbersome and rigid, as with mp3 file uploads.
To use an Amazon Polly voice instead, developers would use Structured Speech Markup Language (SSML) and then specify which voice they want with the &voice name& tag. This makes it easier to adjust what is said, as developers could just change the text instead of having to re-record an mp3.
Amazon has been working to make Polly more accessible to a wider audience, recently by offering a WordPress plugin that could turn your posts into podcasts.
The new Alexa skills integration, meanwhile, gives Polly another avenue of reaching consumers. Italso another means of competing with Alexarival, Google Assistant. At Googledeveloper conference last week, the company announced six new voices generated by Wavent, including one from singer John Legend. These will roll out later this year, and presumably, could make their way to the Assistant developer ecosystem as well.
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Read more: Alexa developers get 8 free voices to use in skills, courtesy of Amazon Polly
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Cryptocurrency startup Circle has raised a $110 million funding round, which values the company near $3 billion. Cryptocurrency mining company Bitmain is leading the round.
Existing investors IDG Capital, Breyer Capital, General Catalyst, Accel, Digital Currency Group and Pantera are investing more money. Blockchain Capital and Tusk Ventures are investing in Circle for the first time. Goldman Sachs also invested in the company in a previous round.
Ithard to describe Circle in a few words because the company has been active on all fronts. For a really long time, the company pitched itself as a social payment company, a Venmo and Square Cash competitor. But Circle is more focused than ever on cryptocurrencies.
The company has been operating one of the largest over-the-counter trading desks for big cryptocurrency investors and exchanges. Circle Trade manages more than $2 billion a month in transactions and is able to fulfill large orders and provide liquidity.
More recently, the company launched Circle Invest, a really simple mobile app for the U.S. market. It lets you buy and sell Bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash, Ethereum, Ethereum Classic, Litecoin, Zcash and Monero in just a few taps. Ita good way to get started with cryptocurrencies without learning about exchanges and order types. It could become a good Coinbase competitor for small cryptocurrency investors.
And Circle also acquired Poloniex, one of the largest cryptocurrency exchanges in the U.S.
But the most interesting projects right now are probably CENTRE and a new tokenized USD coin. There are so many different cryptocurrencies, fiat currencies, exchanges and wallets that it has become hard to make everything work together. Cryptocurrencies still suffer from price volatility, so bitcoin can&t be the common denominator.
Thatwhy Circle is creating a token that is pegged to the U.S. dollar. The USD Coin is based on an open source framework developed by CENTRE and everything should be audited regularly.
CENTRE is a Circle initiative to create a common framework to connect all electronic wallets. This protocol could let you send money to an Alipay user with your Square Cash balance.
Itclear that Circle wants to build the infrastructure of the cryptocurrency industry. The company will need to convince multiple industry players to work with Circle, but it could help the cryptocurrency ecosystem as a whole.
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Read more: Circle raises $110 million (or 13,300 BTC)
Write comment (96 Comments)This post was done in partnership with Wirecutter. When readers choose to buy Wirecutterindependently chosen editorial picks, it may earn affiliate commissions that support its work.
From vlogging to graphic design to music production, accessories and must-have equipment should come with features and capabilities that enhance your projects. Here are a few of our favorite picks fit for upping your side gig skills.
Podcasting: Yeti USB Microphone
The Yeti by Blue, our top pick for USB microphones, sits above the competition because it offers the best overall audio, build and included features. Ita good option for podcasters because its balance of bass and frequency peaks help to make a wide range of voices sound clear and captivating. It has a dial that can be set to four different pickup patterns, which comes in handy when conducting interviews with multiple people. Whether used for live or pre-recorded voice work, its zero-latency and mic-gain control features allow you to do most anything you want — and well.
Of all the microphones we tested, the Blue Yeti makes it easiest to sound good on a podcast, live stream, video call, or most any other kind of recording. (Photo: Nick Guy)
Vlogging: Sony RX Mark IV Camera and GorillaPod 1K Kit Tripod
High-quality video is no longer something thatonly necessary for filmmaking. In our guide for the best vlogging camera and gear, we recommend the Sony RX Mark IV as an also great pick—and the best vlogging camera—for its small size, image stabilization and its ability to record in slow motion. YouTubers and social media video fanatics can easily create top-notch video content recorded at 4K resolution.
Use Wi-Fi and your smartphone as a remote to capture the best selfies with the cameraflip-up screen and facial recognition feature. Coupled with the flexible GorillaPod 1K Kit Tripod, the camera can be positioned to snap difficult shots.
The Sony RX Mark IVsmall size, image stabilization and ability to record in slow motion make it our best pick for a vlogging camera. Photo: Michael Hession
Video and Photo Editing: Dell XPS 15 Laptop
The ports and connections on the Dell XPS 15 Laptop accommodate all types of gear used for capturing and transferring video. In addition to having a huge 4K display, it has a powerful processor and graphics card. This means you&ll spend less time waiting around as large files load and render faster.
One reason that itour top pick for video and photo editing laptops is because its keyboard is comfortable enough to use during long editing sessions. The XPStrackpad is responsive and its touchscreen is intuitive—two features which contribute to the ease of making precise edits.
The Dell4K display and powerful processor and graphics card make this laptop well-suited toward video editing.
Building - Prototyping: CanaKit Raspberry Pi 3 Complete Starter Kit
Ita lot easier to create hardware prototypes when you have a legitimate starting base. The Raspberry Pi 3, a mini Linux computer, can operate as a starting point and brain of a variety of gadgets. We recommend the CanaKit Raspberry Pi 3 Complete Starter Kit to get going on building anything from a gaming console to a smart-home speaker. The included Raspberry Pi 3 Model B computer has software and general input/output pins for running added lights, sensors, or switches. The kit is also packed with everything you need to begin a project including cables, a power supply, a microSD card, and a case for convenience.
The Raspberry Pi 3 Model B. (Photo: Andrew Cunningham)
Music Production: Arturia MiniLab MkII MIDI Keyboard Controller
Listening to music is a favorite pastime for many, creating it is possibly a curiosity for more. You don&t have to break the bank when buying gear that&ll help you take a stab at music production. The Arturia MiniLab MkII is our top pick for MIDI keyboard controllers for beginners and itperfect for making electronic music or playing it live. Its compact design is a plus and its pads offer the responsiveness you need, especially when paired with its included software. The MiniLab Mkll comes preconfigured but itfunctions can be customized through a separate app.
This set-up for beginners is perfect for making electronic music or playing it live. Photo: Michael Hession
Digital Art: Wacom Intuos Draw
There are endless graphic design software options and ithelpful to have a tool that seamlessly pairs with them. The Wacom Intuos Draw, our top pick for drawing tablets for beginners, comes with its own software (Art Rage Lite), and itcompatible with Windows, macOS and top-rated art programs. Artists who are just starting out will find the tabletgrid pattern useful.
It connects to other devices via USB and also comes with a comfortable, customizable pen that can be used for drawing and painting. We like the tabletpressure sensitivity and the precision of its pen which will allow for easier detailing and add to the overall quality of your creations.
The Wacom Intuos Draw is the top pick for drawing tablets for beginners. Photo: Michael Hession
This guide may have been updated by Wirecutter.
Note from Wirecutter: When readers choose to buy our independently chosen editorial picks, we may earn affiliate commissions that support our work.
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Write comment (96 Comments)Facebookfuture rests on convincing the developing world to adopt Stories. But just because the slideshow format will soon surpass feed sharing doesn&t mean people use them the same way everywhere. So late last year, Facebook sent a team to India to learn what features they&d need to embrace Stories across a variety of local languages on phones without much storage.
Today, Facebook will start rolling out three big Stories features in India, which will come to the rest of the world shortly after. First,to lure posts from users who don&t want to type or have a non-native language keyboard, as well as micropodcasters, Facebook Stories will allow audio posts combining a voice message with a colored background or photo.
Facebook Stories will get an Archive similar to Instagram Stories that automatically saves your clips privately after they expire so you can go back to check them out or re-share the content to the News Feed. And finally, Facebook will let Stories users privately Save their clips from the Facebook Camera directly to the social network instead of their phone in case they don&t have enough space.
Facebook Stories Archive
&We know that the performance and reliability of viewing and postingStoriesis extremely important to people around the world, especially those with slower connections& Facebookdirector of Stories Connor Hayes tells me. &We are always working on ways to improve the experience of viewingStorieson all types of connections, and have been investing here — especially on our FB Lite app.&
Facebook has a big opportunity to capitalize on Snapchatfailure to focus on the international market. Plagued by Android engineering problems and initial reluctance to court users beyond U.S. teens, Snapchat left the door open for FacebookStories products to win the globe. Now Snapchat has sunk to its slowest growth rate ever, hitting 191 million daily users despite shrinking in March. Meanwhile, WhatsApp Status, its clone of Snapchat Stories has 450 million daily users, while Instagram Stories has over 300 million.
As for Facebook Stories, it was initially seen as a bit of a ghost town but more and more of my friends are posting there, in part thanks to the ability to syndicate you Instagram Stories there. Facebook Stories has never announced a user count, and Hayes says &We don&t have anything to share yet, but performance of FacebookStoriesis encouraging, and we&ve learned a lot about how we can make the experience even better.& Facebook is hell-bent on making Stories work on its own app after launching the in mid-2017, and seems to believe users who find them needless or redundant will come around eventually.
My concern about the global rise of Stories is that instead of only recording the biggest highlights of our lives to capture with our phones, we&re increasingly interrupting all our activities and exiting the present to thrust our phone in the air.
Thatone thing Facebook hopes to fix here, Facebookdirector of Stories Connor Hayes tells me. &Saving photos and videos can be used to save what you might want to post later & So you don&t have to edit or post them while you&re out with your friends, and instead enjoy the moment at the concert and share them later.& You&re still injecting technology into your experience, though, so I hope we can all learn to record as subtly as possible without disturbing the memory for those around us.
Facebook CameraSave feature
The new Save to Facebook Camera feature creates a private tab in the Stories creation interface where you can access and post the imagery you&ve stored, and you&ll also find a Saved tab in your profilePhotos section. Unlike Facebookdiscontinued Photo Sync feature, here you&ll choose to save imagery one at a time. It will be a big help to users lacking free space on their phone, as Facebook says many people around the world have to delete a photo just to save a new one.
Facebook wants to encourage people to invest more time decorating Stories, and learned that some people want to re-live or re-share their clips that expire after 24 hours. Thatwhy its built the Archive, a hedge against the potentially short-sighted trend of ephemerality.
On the teamjourney to India, they heard that photos and videos aren&t always the easiest way to share. If you&re camera-shy, have a low-quality camera, or don&t have cool scenes to capture, audio posts could get you sharing more. In fact, Facebook started testing voice clips as feed status updates in March. &With this weekupdate, you will have options to add a voice message to a colorful background or a photo from your camera gallery or saved gallery. You can also add stickers, text, or doodles& says Hayes. With 22 official languages in India and over 100 spoken, recording voice can often be easier than typing.
Facebook Audio Stories
Some users will still hate Stories, which are getting more and more prominence atop Facebookfeed. But Facebook can&t afford to retreat here. Stories are social media bedrock — the most full-screen and immersive content medium we can record and consume with just our phones. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg himself said that Facebook must make sure that &ads are as good in Stories as they are in feeds. If we don&t do this well, then as more sharing shifts to Stories, that could hurt our business.& That means Facebook Stories needs Indiahundreds of millions of users.
There will always be room for text, yet if people want to achieve an emotional impact, they&ll eventually wade into Storytelling. But social networks must remember low-bandwidth users, or we&ll only get windows into the developed world.
For more on Facebook Stories, check out our recent coverage:
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Write comment (98 Comments)Todaythe big day for the Senatebig push to undo the FCC&Restoring Internet Freedom& order nullifying 2015net neutrality rules. A vote is scheduled for this afternoon on whether to repeal that order, though as of this writing the coalition is still one vote shy of making it happen.
The vote is an application of the Congressional Review Act, which as you might guess from the name allows Congress to review and if necessary undo recent regulations enacted by federal agencies. Itbeen seldom used for decades but the current administration has been very free with it as a method of squelching rules passed in the twilight of the Obama era. Today Senate Democrats strike back with the same weapon.
A simple majority is required, but right now only a single Republican Senator, MaineSusan Collins, has courageously stepped across the aisle to join the Democrat-led effort. One more would pass the bill, though it would still have to get through the House and the presidentdesk, making its prognosis poor.
That matters little, though: until today, many senators will have been able to largely stay silent on the issue, and a vote to support this highly unpopular rule may come back to bite them come midterms. Net neutrality may very well be an issue constituencies care about, or at least thatwhat Democratic challengers are hoping for.
On the other hand, a Democratic-led CRA is a direct, partisan attack on the administration, which has supported this FCCactions, and would cause return to Obama-era rules, which few Republicans would relish.
Will any Republican senators see the writing on the wall and flip Or will they stick to the party and leave it to be decided by a tie-breaker vote almost certain to go in their favor Tune in to the Senate webcast to find out; the vote should happen around 3PM Eastern, but as always in government timing is only approximate.
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Read more: Senate votes today on rollback of net neutrality rollback
Write comment (99 Comments)As we increasingly hear about automation, artificial intelligence and robots taking away industrial jobs, Parsable, a San Francisco-based startup sees a different reality, one with millions of workers who for the most part have been left behind when it comes to bringing digital transformation to their jobs.
Parsable has developed a Connected Worker platform to help bring high tech solutions to deskless industrial workers who have been working mostly with paper-based processes. Today, it announced a $40 million Series C cash injection to keep building on that idea.
The round was led by Future Fund with help from B37 and existing investors Lightspeed Venture Partners, Airbus Ventures and Aramco Ventures. Todayinvestment brings the total to nearly $70 million.
The Parsable solution works on almost any smartphone or tablet and is designed to enter information while walking around in environments where a desktop PC or laptop simply wouldn&t be practical. That means being able to tap, swipe and select easily in a mobile context.
Photo: Parsable
The challenge the company faced was the perception these workers didn&t deal well with technology. Parsable CEO Lawrence Whittle says the company, which launched in 2013, took its time building its first product because it wanted to give industrial workers something they actually needed, not what engineers thought they needed. This meant a long period of primary research.
The company learned, it had to be dead simple to allow the industry vets who had been on the job for 25 or more years to feel comfortable using it out of the box, while also appealing to younger more tech-savvy workers. The goal was making it feel as familiar as Facebook or texting, common applications even older workers were used to using.
He likens this to the idea of putting a sensor on a machine, but instead they are putting that instrumentation into the hands of the human worker. &We are effectively putting a sensor on humans to give them connectivity and data to execute work in the same way as machines,& he says.
The company has also made the decision to make the platform flexible to add new technology over time. As an example they support smart glasses, which Whittle says accounts for about 10 percent of its business today. But the founders recognized that reality could change and they wanted to make the platform open enough to take on new technologies as they become available.
Today the company has 30 enterprise customers with 30,000 registered users on the platform. Customers include Ecolab, Schlumberger, Silgan and Shell. They have around 80 employees, but expect to hit 100 by the end of Q3 this year, Whittle says.
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Read more: Parsable secures $40M investment to bring digital to industrial workers
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