Welcome to Sheppard Mullin’s Weekly Web Wrap-Up, a quick list of the past week’s top news in the social media, gaming, and virtual goods and currencies industries curated by Social Media & Games Team. Here are some of the stories that we’ve been reading:
The annual gaming extravaganza— which boasted over 2,000 products, 130 announcements and 50,000 attendees—has come to an end. Here’s a breakdown of some of the biggest moments and surprises from E3, and a two-minute preview of some of the hottest new games.
Technophiles and gearheads, eat your heart out. The newly announced, fully autonomous Rolls comes with some incredible technology, including personal assistant Eleanor, autonomous driving, and more.
With no new products on the horizon, you might think Apple’s annual developers’ conference underwhelmed. But Apple rolled out some major announcements that, among other things, taught us some important things about Apple, the community, and how consumers will eventually use their Apple devices.
Improving Public Transit One 3D-Printed Autonomous Bus at a Time
Meet Olli: Local Motors has unveiled its crowd-sourced, partially-recyclable, autonomous electric shuttle vehicle in D.C. this summer. Olli utilizes IBM’s Watson cognitive learning software to take input from any language, translate it, take users to their destinations, and even learn user’s habits.
Hearing Things: MIT’s AI Learns and Reproduces Sound Effects
MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) has created a machine-learning system capable of matching sound effects to video clips. The computer-vision algorithm “watches” videos of various objects being whacked by drumsticks—tracking the object’s physical appearance, the drumstick’s movement, and the resulting sounds to learn connections between physical objects and the sounds they make when struck. What does this mean for the future? Beyond generating fun sound effects, the technology could help robots identify an object’s materials and physical properties by analyzing the sounds it makes.
45 Million Potentially Impacted by VerticalScope Hack
Time to change that password again. Joining 2016’s long line of data breaches, the latest mega hack is a breach of VerticalScope, which is responsible for more than 1,000 popular websites and forums. The data taken apparently includes email addresses, encrypted passwords, usernames, and IP addresses. The danger in such a data breach lies in consumer password reuse across platforms and websites.