GeekWire

Apple doubled down on artificial intelligence and boosted its presence in Seattle with the acquisition of Xnor.ai, an Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence spinout with roots at the University of Washington, as first reported by GeekWire this week.

It was a win for those institutions, and investors including Seattle's Madrona Venture Group, but it's also an example of an ambitious startup selling to a tech giant before it has the chance to become one itself. So how should we look at deals like this?

Plus, Microsoft's ambitious plan to go "carbon negative" puts the tech company at the forefront of corporate efforts to address the global environmental crisis. We explore what it means for the company, for its rivalry with Amazon, and for the planet.

And in our final segment, it's the GeekWire Trivia Challenge, with a chance to win a pair of tickets to the upcoming GeekWire Awards. What do Jonas Salk, who discovered and developed the polio vaccine, and John Ehrlichman, the Nixon aide and Watergate figure, have in common as it relates to Seattle startups? Listen to the third segment and send your answer to [email protected] for a chance to win.

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CES is becoming less of a place where companies unveil game-changing products, and more where they show attention-grabbing ideas.

That's one of the takeaways from GeekWire's CES 2020 coverage team, managing editor Taylor Soper and photographer/videographer Kevin Lisota, who just returned from several days at the big technology show in Las Vegas. On this episode of the GeekWire Podcast, they recap some of the strangest things they saw at CES, but also some of the most interesting and impactful products and trends. Plus, celebrity sightings, cutting-edge food and robot companions.

Amazon and Ring

• Amazon signals big ambitions for automobiles with expanded presence at CES
• Amazon devices chief on Sonos accusations: ‘We have tried to be a great partner to them’
• ‘Alexa, pay for gas’: Amazon unveils voice control feature to buy fuel at Mobil and Exxon stations
• Ring CEO Jamie Siminoff on ‘productizing’ privacy and staying the course amid controversy
• Here are all of Google’s voice assistant announcements from CES as it battles Amazon
• Inside Amazon’s CES media event: Shaq shows up, touts Ring, makes drinks with celeb chef Guy Fieri

Demos and experiences

• Delta Air Lines debuts crazy ‘parallel reality’ airport experience based on Seattle startup’s technology
• Hands-on demo with Charmin’s new toilet paper robot and fart smell sensor at CES
• CES: Smart toothbrushes go from concept to reality as industry giants embrace more tech
• Video: Pizza-making robot arrives at CES to feed hungry attendees, thanks to Seattle startup
• We tried Impossible Foods’ new pork, the latest fake meat from the Bill Gates-backed company

Tech trends

• Privacy is front and center at CES as execs from Apple, Facebook, others debate key tech issues
• CES: These are the consumer tech trends to watch for 2020 and beyond, according to show organizers

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More than half of the U.S. population over age 12 has now listened to a podcast, according to Edison Research. The medium has fundamentally altered the landscape for audio content, liberating and empowering both listeners and creators. And big acquisitions such as Spotify’s purchase of Gimlet Media signal that the business of podcasting is coming of age, too.

But there remains an economic gulf that some entrepreneurs and investors see as an opportunity. Ad spending on podcasting is around $500 million, by some estimates, but that compares to $17 billion or more for radio.

So where is podcasting heading next? How will speech recognition, smart speakers and other innovations change the landscape for podcasts? Should you start your own show? Could you make any money if you did?

On this episode of the GeekWire Podcast, we’re going meta. It’s a podcast about podcasting: a discussion with podcast producers, media vets and startup entrepreneurs, recorded on stage at the GeekWire Summit this fall.

• Phyllis Fletcher, the senior editor for podcasts at American Public Media, who has worked on shows including APM’s hit business podcast, Spectacular Failures. You may recognize her voice from her previous work as a reporter and editor at KUOW Radio in Seattle. (You can check out all of her tweets from the GeekWire Summit here.)
• Steve Henn, who leads content strategy for audio news at Google. He’s a journalist turned tech entrepreneur who left a career in radio to co-found a digital media startup that was acquired by Google in 2017. You may recognize his voice from his work in public radio as a correspondent on such shows as Marketplace, Planet Money and NPR.
• David Payne, the president of Rainstream Media and the co-creator, author and executive producer of its flagship show, “Somebody Somewhere,” a true crime podcast. A lawyer and former federal prosecutor, his career in media has included roles as Chief Digital Officer for Gannett/USA Today, and senior vice president and GM of CNN Digital.
• Amira Valliani is the CEO and co-founder of Glow, a Seattle startup and Pioneer Square Labs spinout that is building a subscription, monetization and distribution platform for podcasts. She served as a communications adviser in the Obama White House and as a speechwriter for then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. She got started in podcasting with her own local politics show in Cambridge, Mass.

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From Amazon to Zillow, big successes to surprising failures, it was an extraordinary year for technology and innovation emerging from and impacting Seattle and the Pacific Northwest. That's the consensus from GeekWire co-founders John Cook and Todd Bishop, who independently compiled their own lists of the biggest stories of the year, then compared notes in this year-end GeekWire Podcast discussion.

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John and Todd make it through the rain and into the studio to discuss some of the  biggest stories of the week: Car2go's exit from North America, which will leave Seattle without a free-floating car-sharing service for the first time in many years; and the sudden downfall of Vicis, the high-tech football helmet maker backed by some of the NFL's biggest names. Plus the answer to last week's Name that Tech Tune challenge.

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The hacking of multiple Ring cameras this week brought the sometimes abstract world of tech security and privacy into stark relief, as hackers watched and harassed families and children in their homes, demonstrating the frightening real-world consequences of weak password security. 

On this episode of the GeekWire Podcast, we explain what happened in the incidents, discuss practical tips for making devices more secure, and explore the big picture implications of these technologies for the industry and society.

While biometric identification, facial recognition and artificial intelligence represent a potential replacement for passwords, they also come with potential trade-offs of their own, as demonstrated by new guidelines issued by the Port of Seattle for the use of such technologies.

In other news, we explore Seattle's attempt to put rules and safety guidelines around the coming wave of scooter sharing programs in the city.

And in our final segment, it’s a new installment of our Name that Tech Tune challenge, with a chance to win a GeekWire shirt.

• Tech industry’s password problems come home to roost with Ring security camera hacks
• Hackers infiltrate Ring cameras in Florida and Tennessee and harass children
• Tech experts agree it’s time to regulate artificial intelligence — if only it were that simple
• Seattle port officials approve face recognition guardrails as feds waffle on the controversial tech
• New documents reveal details of Seattle scooter-share pilot, including ban on sidewalk riding

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The leaders of Amazon's cloud division made a few things clear this week at the Amazon Web Services re:Invent conference in Las Vegas:

• AWS has broad ambitions in the $3.7 trillion enterprise tech market, looking for growth well beyond the current cloud sector. The company is urging more companies to move their computing to the cloud, at the same time it's developing hybrid technologies to run cloud technologies on premises.
• Amazon believes Microsoft is working against the interests of its customers by implementing new licensing restrictions on Microsoft operating systems and databases, limiting the ways its software can be used on AWS and other cloud platforms.
• AWS doesn't believe it's possible that it could have lost the Pentagon's $10 billion cloud computing contract to Microsoft purely on the merits of their  respective technologies. This is why Amazon is formally challenging the bidding process.

It all adds up to escalating competition between the Seattle-area tech giants, not just between AWS and Microsoft Azure in the cloud but also between AWS and Microsoft in the larger enterprise technology market, which is the bread and butter of Microsoft's business.

Also on the show, we discuss what 60 Minutes missed in its report on tech and Seattle's homelessness crisis; explain why the first official Craigslist app is a mixed blessing, and reveal the answer to our Name that Tech Tune challenge.

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This week on the GeekWire Podcast, we go behind-the-scenes of some of the biggest and most interesting stories we covered this week:

• Seattle City Council member Kshama Sawant, who overcame Amazon's opposition to win another term, tells us what she plans to do now.
• An innovation in solar energy, backed by Bill Gates, promises to dramatically reduce global carbon emissions.
• Amazon’s new smart shelf will reorder office supplies automatically when they're running low. We ask, is this a good thing?
• We check in on some of the newest tech office spaces in the Seattle region, including Zipwhip, Google, Facebook, Expedia, F5 and others, and learn what they say about how we're all working now.
• And in the final segment, it’s the return of our Name that Tech Tune contest, with your chance to win a GeekWire t-shirt.

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This week on the GeekWire Podcast: Amazon is formally protesting a decision by the U.S. Department of Defense to award its $10 billion JEDI cloud computing contract to Microsoft, suggesting that the Pentagon succumbed  to political pressure from President Donald Trump. 

Plus, Microsoft takes its Dreamers immigration lawsuit to the U.S. Supreme Court, what it's like to have Cortana read your email out loud, and we get our first taste of the apple of the future, the Cosmic Crisp, before this new Washington state innovation hits store shelves next month. 

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LAS VEGAS -- Nearly 20,000 people are here this week to learn about the latest from Seattle-based Tableau Software, whose technologies turn large amounts of data into visualizations, or vizzes, interactive graphics and charts for interpreting and telling the underlying stories.

They also heard from Tableau's new parent company, Salesforce, whose co-CEO Marc Benioff joined Tableau CEO Adam Selipsky on stage for the keynote address as a last-minute addition a little more than a week after European regulators cleared the companies to integrate the $15.7 billion acquisition.

On this special episode of the GeekWire Podcast, recorded on location at the Tableau Conference, we’ll share highlights from our discussion with Selipsky about what’s next for the Seattle company following its $15.7 billion acquisition by Salesforce, the future of data and artificial intelligence, the rise of employee activism at Tableau and other companies, and what Marc Benioff emails him about. 

Editor’s Note: Tableau hosted GeekWire for a recording of the GeekWire Podcast on the show floor of the Tableau Conference as part of a sponsorship agreement. GeekWire retained editorial control of the podcast and covered its own expenses related to the podcast and coverage from the event.

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