This week on Between the Bytes we’ve got news from Apple, Nintendo, and Google so stay tuned.
Welcome to Between the Bytes where we’re not as smart as your average nerd. I’m Gary Arnold and I’m Arash Bakhshandehpour.
Apple has acquired everyone’s favorite music recognition software Shazam. It was founded back in 1999 well ahead of its time when it comes to its tech and it was purchased for 400 million dollars. People are assuming that Apple is going to be integrating it into their smart home technology. It
Our next bit of news comes from Google. Google has released three new apps as part of their new appsperiments as they’re calling it. They’re gonna be releasing more apps in the coming months and years that are experimentations using new types of technology available. These new apps are photo-based apps that let you take photos in different settings and in different ways and then tweak them so there are different algorithms that are used to make your photos look more like a comic strip or to tweak your video if you go back and forth. One app is available just on Android and one just on iOS and another one that’s unavailable for both the apps. The apps are called Storyboard Selfissimo and Scrubbies so be sure to check those out.
Nintendo has now sold over 10 million Switches. That’s right, the console was released back in the spring and has now outsold the Wii U. It still has a long ways to go to reach total sales of the Wii which was about a hundred million consoles sold. The switches are fun though, it’s an Executech favorite.
Another important update is this week the FCC will be voting on the net neutrality regulations. This has been a really big deal and it’s been very controversial. I’m sure you’ve seen in the news several times we just wanted to bring it up to remind you that net neutrality, in general, is a good thing for companies and for individuals. People are going out and participating and letting their Congressmen and others know how they feel about it. We encourage you to do the same, whichever side of the topic you fall on but we do feel that net neutrality is a good thing, so keep updated on it. Thursday is when the vote will go through, it’s expected that net neutrality will be struck down but there is still hope, so get out there and make your voice heard.
Lastly, the heavy and very anticipated Star Wars: The Last Jedi is coming out this Friday, December 15th. To you, Star Wars fans, get out there and go see it. This is the 8th installation into the chapters and honestly, we’re only discussing this bullet because Gary put it here. Star Wars is an inspiration and tech news for all of us and stay tuned you might get a spoiler-free review on next week’s episode.
This week in Tech History our first item is on December 12th in 1980, Apple had its IPO. The stocks went live at $22 a share and there were over 4.6 million shares sold valuing the company at 1.7 billion dollars. They’ve come a long way and Apple is now valued at over 883 billion dollars so an overnight success. On December 11th of 2008, Google released a very well known and very often used internet platform, Google Chrome. The Internet has never been the same since. Thank you to Internet Explorer for being our vehicle to go download google chrome.
That’ll do it for this week’s Between the Bytes. Remember to go like and subscribe to our YouTube channel and share these videos on any social media platform you see. We’ll see you next week and Happy Holidays- May the force be with you.
