Regardless of whether the policy remains in place today, one of Google’s most famous management philosophies has been the “20% rule”. Legend goes that especially in Google’s earlier days, employees were encouraged to spend 20% of their time working on new initiatives that could potentially benefit Google outside of their regular workflows, teams, and projects. This meant there was time to e...

H&R Block will roll out technology that incorporates IBM Watson at approximately 10,000 branch offices across the US.You might already be feeling the looming dread of tax time, but this year, the task could be a little less daunting thanks to Watson, IBM's versatile artificial intelligence system. IBM is teaming up with tax firm H&R Block to set the system loose on the colossal amount o...

Domino’s is about to put its ordering bot, Dom, to a big test. Just ahead of Super Bowl weekend, the pizza chain is rolling out the ability to order off its full menu via Facebook Messenger – even if you haven’t already set up a pre-configured “pizza profile.” The update means it will be easier for more casual Domino’s customers to give the bot a try, as an alternative to ordering via the...

That’s because 2016 was also the year that smartphone adoption surpassed 80% of all mobile phone owners. This milestone was reached in July, and that rate has since inched up to 81% in December. While this statistic tells us what we already knew – that smartphones are everywhere – it gives us some perspective as to how prevalent these devices have become since they first began to gain adopti...

ClearMotion, a company that’s building an alternative chassis for vehicle makers that replaces traditional physical shock absorbers with digital, software-driven adaptive actuators, has readied $100 million in a Series C roundled by a group of clients advised by J.P. Morgan’s asset management wing and with participation from NEA, Qualcomm Ventures and more.The company claims to have created t...

Philippe Starck has threatened to take action against a fellow French designer he accuses of spreading "false information" by passing off a 20-year-old concept for a smartphone as a new project.The French designer sent out a statement denying he was involved in the project after seeing it published on design websites including Dezeen.The phone, called Alo, was presented by Jerome Olivet and bil...

Google is now the world's most valuable brand, according to a new study, snagging the No.1 spot from Apple which has been the incumbent since 2011.[click to enlarge]The annual ranking from Brand Finance says Google's monetary value increased to $109.5 billion last year, representing a 24% increase overall. By contrast, Apple's monetary value fell from $145.9 billion in the previous year to $107...

Bad news for models: Amazon just received approval for a patent for a robotic model that can automatically adjust its proportions to best fit the clothes it is modeling. Bad news for photographers: It takes selfies.The patent, approved Tuesday, was filed by Harry James Lewis Eakins, the lead software designer at Amazon’s device design center, Lab126, in December 2013.The selfie-taking robot mo...

Last year was a record breaker for games, with Digi-Capital’s Games Report 2017 recording $30.3 billion games deals in 2016. The $28.4 billion of games mergers and acquisitions (M&A) was 77% higher than 2014’s previous record, and $1.9 billion games investment was the second highest ever. After a games deals ice age in 2015, what put a rocket up deal makers last year?Bigger and slowerLet...