Important Innovations

  Purchase Would Make Walmart An Online Advertising Leader Source:  Walmart $35b to $45 Billion Purchase Walmart could turn into an online advertising behemoth if its plans with Microsoft  to acquire the US assets of China-owned social media/video app company TikTok go through successfully.  Walmart is the world's largest retailer.  The acquisition of TikTok would make it highly competitive with Amazon, Facebook and Google for young customers on social media.  It would also greatly expand Walmart's advertising business and also its business with 3rd party marketplaces.   Ticking Toward a Deadline President Trump has put the sale of TikTok's US assets into play.  He deems TikTok a potential national security risk because of the vast amount of personal data it acquires on users in the US, which the government of China could demand.  Trump has ordered China based parent company ByteDance to sell TikTok US assets by September 15 or the company will be banned from doing business

Big Partnership: Microsoft & US Dept. of Energy Source:  DARPA  AI Targets Include Extreme Weather, Natural Disaster Predictions  Microsoft and the US Department of Energy (DOE) are spearheading a   new partnership to create artificial intelligence (AI) tools capable of  predicting natural disasters like the global extreme weather events and historic California wildfires that we are experiencing from Climate Change.  The AI partnership includes the Pentagon's Joint AI Center, the Pacific Northwest National Lab along with Microsoft and the US Department of Energy.  The AI partnership was just announced. Climate Change and Extreme Weather One of the most exciting potential applications of AI is to forecast and predict Climate Change and extreme weather conditions, like the historic flooding in China, the record breaking back to back hurricanes hitting Louisiana and the blistering heat much of the world endured in the summer of 2020. Global weather services have satellites, comput

  Microsoft's Highly Advanced Flight Simulator Source:  Microsoft's Flight Simulator Innovative Videogame Microsoft has just released the latest edition of its videogame Flight Simulator.  It allow the players to take control of a virtual airplane cockpit and fly the plane to anyplace in the world.  The digital images of the Earth are incredibly real.  The graphics are driven by a new graphics engine that was inspired by a Hololens augmented reality project at Microsoft. Lots of  Advanced Technology The game was first released in 1982.  It's older than Word, Office and Windows.  The new technology embedded in the latest edition includes artificial intelligence, Azure Cloud services and Bing maps in 3D of the entire world.  Flight Simulator can be accessed in the X-Box Game Pass Bundle.  This fall, virtual reality support will be available.  Flight Simulator requires a powerful PC to play.  But given all the technology encased in the videogame, Microsoft may have very big pl

  Surface Duo Source:  Microsoft  Microsoft's Return to Mobile Phones After a four year hiatus, Microsoft is returning to the mobile phone business.  It just unveiled and began taking orders for its new Surface Duo. Microsoft calls the phone revolutionary.  It spent five years creating it.  The company claims it enables increased mobile productivity via the dual screens. They add it contains the best of Microsoft 365, every app from Google Play store and a system that seamlessly works together. Android Operating System The dual screen phone runs on Google's Android operating system.  The user can use two different apps on each screen simultaneously. The screens are connected by a 360 degree hinge that allows for both horizontal and vertical use. Phone Price Wars The Microsoft Surface Duo is sleek, thin and pricey - $1,399.  It's ringing into a tough, bumpy COVID threatened economy and is up against very tough competition.  Both Google and Apple are rolling out new smart pho