Episode 156 – AI for All

For what may be the final Games At Work recording of 2016, Michael and Michael get ready to welcome our new robotic overlords in all the ways they may arrive. First off, the co-hosts marvel at how Google Translate has made dramatic improvements through the rewrite completed in a mere nine months, turbocharging the understanding of language, and making the automatic translation of text and full sites even more powerful. Michael R has even set up our own website to use the service to translate Games At Work into a language of your choosing. Unfortunately, Klingon and Pirate are not … Continue reading

Episode 155 – Holiday Potluck

Gearing up for the festive season, Michael and Michael serve up a veritable smorgasbord of holiday potluck delights. Starting with well, um, leftovers from last week, Fitbit has indeed acquired the technology, software assets and intellectual property of Pebble and many of the people from Pebble will be joining Fitbit to continue their work on wearable technology. This brings up an interesting point on the nature of cloud services and the integration with physical devices — that one without the other does not work, as products and services are becoming more and more intertwined. Moving on to appetizers, Cortana now … Continue reading

Episode 154 – Heroic Wearable Brain Robots

Michael and Michael share their insight on games for good, specifically on games that have an additional benefit to the fun of playing them.  Sea Hero Quest is a game sponsored by Deutsche Telekom together with University College London, University of East Anglia and Alzheimer’s Research to help with early diagnosis of dementia.  Michael and Michael discuss the possibilities of a software layer which could be placed on top of (or alongside) other games that could capture similar data points for researchers. The pair then turn to wearables, and the interesting way that mobile and Internet of Things devices can … Continue reading