Articles by Richard Adhikari

Burger King on Wednesday in essence hijacked the voice-activated Google Home speakers in some consumers' homes In a 15-second television ad, the camera zooms in on a young man wearing the company uniform who says, "OK Google, what is the Whopper burger?"...

Samsung on Wednesday said that Bixby Voice will not be operational when its Galaxy S8 and S8+ smartphones hit the market Some Bixby features -- Vision, Home and Reminder -- will be active when the phones become available on April 21, Samsung said, but the Bixby Voice capability won't show up until later this spring....

United Airlines' self-made firestorm spread on Tuesday, as a video showing a passenger being forcibly dragged off a plane continued to make the rounds on social media. The passenger had refused to comply after being told he'd been bumped off the Sunday flight The incident sparked international outrage, including calls for a boycott of the airline a...

Google on Friday announced the extension of the Fact Check feature it introduced last fall in partnership with Jigsaw. Publishers now can display a Fact Check tag in news stories everywhere that Google News is available The company also has introduced the Fact Check feature globally in Google Search, in all of the languages it supports....

SugarCRM on Thursday announced Sugar Mobile 5.0, the latest version of its app for iOS and Android. Sugar Mobile 5.0 includes a host of new features:...

Zunum Aero, a startup backed by Boeing and JetBlue, on Wednesday announced that it was developing regional hybrid-electric aircraft with backing from Boeing's HorizonX innovation cell and JetBlue Technology Ventures The planes, which will have 10 to 50 seats, are scheduled for launch in the early 2020s....

Most people think they know what the term "artificial intelligence" means, based on the results of a survey Pegasystems released Tuesday. However, their responses suggested that they probably don't fully understand how it's being used today, including in the customer service realm Researchers polled 6,000 adult consumers in the United States, the ...

Salesforce this week announced Financial Services Cloud Einstein, an artificial intelligence-based CRM tool for financial advisors. Financial Services Cloud Einstein gives users a holistic view of each client's household and wealth ecosystem and lets them leverage Salesforce's AI technology to seek out new business opportunities....

Negative interactions on the Web -- trolling, cyberbullying, harassment and just plain nastiness -- have become commonplace, and this situation is likely to remain unchanged or worsen over the next decade, suggests a report the Pew Research Center released Wednesday Pew and Elon University last summer polled more than 1,500 technology experts, acad...

The United States House of Representatives on Tuesday approved the Congressional Review Act, undoing privacy restrictions imposed on Internet service providers during the Obama administration. The Senate passed the CRA last week in a 50-48 vote along party lines....

Amazon Web Services on Tuesday announced Amazon Connect, a self-service contact center solution based on the same cloud technology used by Amazon customer service associates worldwide. It offers phone numbers throughout the United States and 18 countries in Europe, with more coming soon....

Privacy advocates and consumer groups are fighting back against the U.S. Senate's Thursday vote to undo privacy restrictions on Internet service providers In a 50-48 party line vote, the Senate approved the Congressional Review Act, S.J. Res. 34. If the House of Representatives gives it the green light, it then will go to the president to be signed...

Medium, the online publishing platform launched by Twitter cofounder Evan Williams, has announced a US$5 monthly subscription membership upgrade that promises a better reading experience and better content Medium on Thursday opened the subscription offer to a limited number of people who meet certain criteria, according to Williams, who is Medium's...

LinkedIn on Tuesday launched an enterprise edition of its Sales Navigator product, with strengthened links to CRM LinkedIn Enterprise Edition lets users send 50 emails on LinkedIn a month, adds Single Sign-On and other management features, and introduces TeamLink Extend, a tool that pools the networks of all the Sales Navigator users in an enterpri...

LinkedIn on Wednesday began rolling out Trending Storylines, a feature that offers curated feeds of the most interesting developing stories in a member's industry Storylines are personalized for members through a combination of algorithms and the choices of LinkedIn's editorial team....

ProsperWorks, which provides CRM for Google's G Suite business tools, last week announced the addition of in-app cloud communications functionality The new features are available through a custom integration with RingCentral, which provides enterprise cloud communications and collaboration solutions....

McDonald's on Wednesday began testing new mobile ordering and payment functionality at 29 of its restaurants in Monterey and Salinas, California It will expand the pilot to another 51 restaurants in Spokane, Washington, on March 20....

Hundreds, if not thousands, of Twitter users, many of them high-profile, were hacked Tuesday by someone who appeared to support Turkey in its diplomatic row with the Netherlands Their accounts displayed a Swastika -- reversed to face to the right -- as well as the Turkish flag and hashtags to the Nazialmanya and Nazihollanda accounts, which display...

OpenMethods, which offers an omnichannel optimization platform that lets companies integrate their telephony platforms into Oracle CRM, on Tuesday announced integration with Next Caller's Advanced Caller ID database The integration will let contact centers on the Oracle Service Cloud use real-time contextual data for more than 500 million landline,...

WhatsApp has been conducting tests of a business chat system with a number of companies that are part of the Y Combinator startup incubator, Reuters reported last week The application programming interface, or API, gives companies a direct line of communication with WhatsApp users....