Digital Discourse Database

Number of Posts: 31
Posts 11 - 20

Five of the best brain-training apps

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Newspaper | The Guardian
Date | 23.3.2016
Language | English
Country | UK
Topic Tags | (mental) health, smartphone
Summary | Brain-training apps are very popular. Here is a list of the best apps: Peak, Elevate, Luminosity, Fit brains trainer, and Cognito.
Image Description | Digital image of a brain, and five screeshots of the five apps.
Image Tags | smartphone

Islamic State releases children's mobile app 'to teach Arabic'

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Newspaper | The Guardian
Date | 11.5.2016
Language | English
Country | UK
Topic Tags | childhood, smartphone
Summary | The Islamic State released a new app for children where they can learn Arabic. They can learn words such as ‘tank’, ‘gun’ and ‘rocket’.
Image Description | Photograph of a hand holding a smartphone.
Image Tags | hand(s), smartphone

Google launches new Assistant and puts it at heart of Home

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Newspaper | The Guardian
Date | 4.10.2016
Language | English
Country | UK
Topic Tags | artificial intelligence, Google
Summary | Google just launched a personal assistant; its new characteristic is its conversational interface. You can ask it a question at home and it will respond to you. You can also use it on your smartphone. Instead of typing a question, you can now directly ask something. Besides Google, Apple also has its personal assistant Siri, and Amazon has Alexa. Google Home can turn on the lights, play music, and answer your questions.
Image Description | Photographs of Google's assistant, Google Home speakers, and three smartphones displaying chat conversations
Image Tags | Google, smartphone, speaker, text

'Bring your own device': weighing up the business benefits

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Newspaper | The Guardian
Date | 23.1.2017
Language | English
Country | UK
Topic Tags | smartphone
Summary | Some businesses let their employees bring their own devices (e.g. laptop) at work. This is called BYOD (Bring your own device). This way, companies can save money, and it's also more convenient for employees to carry one device instead of two. In order to avoid any problems, companies that work with BYOD need to come up with good employee agreements, and use cloud-based services. The article also lists several examples of BYOD companies and explains the (dis)advantages of the method.
Image Description | Portraits of four men, and photograph of people's hands using a tablet, a smartphone, and a laptop.
Image Tags | computer/laptop, hand(s), male(s), smartphone, tablet

Now anyone can build their own version of Microsoft's racist, sexist chatbot Tay

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Newspaper | The Guardian
Date | 31.3.2016
Language | English
Country | UK
Topic Tags | artificial intelligence, social media
Summary | Microsoft now lets people build their own chatbots. Bots are the new app, and developers will soon be able to create bots that respond to chat messages. Big tech companies are now trying to build their own bots (e.g. Facebook, Google, Amazon, Slack, Microsoft).
Image Description | Digital image of a smartphone screen displaying a female face (Tay).
Image Tags | female(s), smartphone

Facebook’s 'spammy' chatbots must improve - and fast

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Newspaper | The Guardian
Date | 14.4.2016
Language | English
Country | UK
Topic Tags | artificial intelligence, Facebook, marketing
Summary | Facebook's chatbots must improve; people have been complaining about bots' nonsensical answers and spams. Chatbots are not new, but thanks to Facebook, brands and publishers can reach users more easily.
Image Description | Photograph of a hand holding a smartphone displaying the Messenger Platform beta, screenshots of three conversations with bots
Image Tags | hand(s), smartphone, text, Twitter

Are teenagers having less sex – and is social media the reason why?

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Newspaper | The Guardian
Date | 10.3.2016
Language | English
Country | UK
Topic Tags | addiction, research/study, social media, youth
Summary | Teenagers are having less sex; is it because of new media? One theory says that it might be because young people spend more time in their bedroom in front of their screen and less time socializing and getting drunk with friends. The drop in teenage pregnancies is also accompanied by a drop in teenage drinking levels. A US report claims that teenagers spend 9 hours each day on social media, and kids between 8 and 12 spend 6 hours online each day. Japan has one of the lowest birth rates in the world, and they even coined the word 'sekkusu shinai shokogun' which means “celibacy syndrome”.
Image Description | Photographs of a boy looking at a tablet, girl wearing sunglasses (we can see the Facebook logo in the reflection), two girls sitting back to back using their smartphone, classroom with students and teacher
Image Tags | Facebook, female(s), headphones, male(s), smartphone, tablet

Please, Facebook, don't make me speak to your awful chatbots

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Newspaper | The Guardian
Date | 29.4.2016
Language | English
Country | UK
Topic Tags | artificial intelligence, Facebook, threat
Summary | Chatbots are the future! Soon, you'll be able to do everything thanks to chatbots (e.g. order a pizza, schedule a meeting). With Facebook, the idea is to introduce third-party bots into Messenger. Existing chatbots are not perfect yet; they are still slow and don't always understand everything. Facebook's goal is to create something flawless, a platform for your phone where you'll be able to book a table, pay a bill, order a cab, check the weather, and manage your relationships.
Image Description | Photograph of Mark Zuckerberg speaking in front of a giant screen displaying the Messenger platform, photograph of engineer Charles Lawson lighting a robot's cigarette, screenshot of a tweet, photograph of a smartphone screen displaying WeChat.
Image Tags | male(s), smartphone, text, Twitter

The rise and rise of international diplomacy by WhatsApp

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Newspaper | The Guardian
Date | 4.11.2016
Language | English
Country | UK
Topic Tags | politics, privacy, texting, WhatsApp
Summary | WhatsApp diplomacy is a thing: when leaders gather to talk in the same room, they can exchange emojis and other documents to other people without the whole room knowing. WhatsApp is more secure than other government information systems and has been used at the UN and EU headquarters.
Image Description | Photograph of a group of diplomats looking at their phone, screenshot of a WhatsApp chat, photograph of a man holding a phone and a woman standing next to him (both are looking at the phone)
Image Tags | female(s), male(s), smartphone, text, WhatsApp

No, wealth isn't created at the top. It is merely devoured there

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Newspaper | The Guardian
Date | 30.5.2017
Language | English
Country | UK
Topic Tags | politics, social media, threat
Summary | The new rising technology firms like Facebook, Airbnb, and Uber are the new class of rentiers. The do not create anything new, they claim control over goods and services and cash in on transactions made on the platform they provide. That is all they do: provide a platform. It is only profitable because people willingly share content and offer their services on these sites. But these firms also have not invented the technology (internet, computer devices, etc.): that technology was developed with the tax payer's money. So technically they are just selling and reselling already existing goods - like a rentier.
Image Description | Getty image of a protester, an iPhone, the Facebook campus, a bunch of bank signs, and a Mexcan capitalist.
Image Tags | female(s), male(s), smartphone, text

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