It was the week that the Chicago Cubs won the World Series (and I had the honor of seeing the team parade the trophy through the streets of Chicago), Facebook and GoPro released their quarterly earnings and Samsung find themselves with some more consumer problems.
- FaceBook stocks plunges even though they exceeded all expectations
There seems to be no logic to the stock market at times. It was Amazon’s last week, now this week it was the turn of FacePaint. Even with announcing it had blew past last quarters earning numbers by 56%, the investors heard something that made them extremely nervous – they had run out of room to deliver ads – sending the stock down from 130 to 120.
Though, from the users perspective this could be great news – what you are looking at now, the ads can’t get any worse. Every cloud eh?
- Samsung recalls 2.8 million washing machines as bits start to fly off
Just as it is sweeping up the literal ashes of its fire starter Note 7, another safety scandal has beset the South Korean company – its washing machines may have a tendency to have bits come flying off. Machines from 2011 and 2016 are being recalled as the number of people to report injury from laundry mounts.
This couldn’t have come at a worse time. Quality Assurance seems to be a byword at Samsung. My concern is that Samsung are also one of the worlds largest ship makers!
- NASA completes its Hubble successor, the James Webb telescope
Can you believe the Hubble telescope is 26 years old? So it comes as no surprise that NASA has been spending time (and $8.7B) on creating an update to it, called the James Webb telescope. This 18 carat gold plated beauty is extremely powerful and makes the current Hubble look like a 1st generation Kodak compared to today’s high end smartphone cameras.
Though don’t expect to be seeing water on far off planets just yet, they are just going into testing and if all goes well, it will be launched in 2018.
- Oracle will close the NetSuite deal this coming Monday
It has taken a while to get this one over the line, but Oracle’s big push into the accountancy SaaS world will be complete this Monday, when it completes the $9.3B purchase of NetSuite.
It hit a speed bump when it first made the offer back in July when a prominent NetSuite investor thought the share price was under valued. This is a big piece on the corporate chess board that Oracle has bought.
- Trendy camera company, GoPro, has a bad week, shares drop 20%
In another quarterly earnings report, GoPro had a rough week with its investors, as it announced that it is not as bullish on the number of units it expects to sell. GoPro point towards production problems that are not allowing them to make the volume they want to.
Investors are not buying that reason though. It would appear there is only so many sports/active people that want to strap a square camera onto their body. This is a big upset in the industry of wearables, especially as FitBit faced the same problem a couple of weeks ago.
- NetFlix will introduce offline viewing; but not for American’s
NetFlix have been talking around the much wanted feature of being able to offline content for viewing in poor-networked areas, on the road and up in the air. However, before you go running to purchase extra large SSD cards to start downloading, it won’t be for those of us in North America.
Netflix wants to keep the feature back for those counties that have severe connectivity issues. Bugger. Oh well – The Crown will just have to wait until I am grounded.
- We finally see Amazon’s Alexa in the flesh; Billy the Fish
Is the genius in the physical pairing of the classic Billy Bass talking fish with a Raspberry PI and Amazon’s Alexa? Or is the genius simply coming up with the idea in the first place?
If anyone ever doubted the power of the API, then doubt no more. You will never look at Alexa in the same light again after watching this video of Billy answering Alexa queries.
- The future has arrived; bicycle tires that never go flat
There are certain problems you would have thought that should have been solved by now. The light bulb we never have to change or bicycle tires that never go flat. Oh wait a minute, scratch that last one, this week we can put a check box against that.
Nexo Tires have innovated a tire that has the feel of rubber with air, without the air. Therefore it will take thorns, nails and anything else you want to throw at it. As someone that just last week purchased two new sets of tubes for his mountain bike this couldn’t have been more timely.
… and this weeks soundtrack was courtesy of Twenty One Pilots and one of their earlier albums, Vessel, that features the excellent House of Gold track.
alan williamson 