Uber is opening up in an area where it might make sense competitively for it to stay more closed off: The ride-hailing company’s new Movement website will offer up access to its data around traffic flow in scores where it operates, intended for use by city planners and researchers looking into ways to improve urban mobility.
The basic idea is that Uber has a lot of insight into how traffic works within a city, and it can anonymize this data so that it isn’t tied to specific individuals in most cases. So where that’s possible, Uber is going to begin sharing said data, first to specific organizations who apply for early access, and then eventually to the general public.
Uber says it was looking at all the data it gathered and began to realize that it could be used for public benefit, and assembled a product team to make this happen. The result of this effort was Movement, which aims to address problems city officials and urban planners encounter when they’re forced to make key, transformational infrastructure decisions without access to all of, or the proper information about actual conditions and causes.
Essentially, according to Uber, it’s hoping to make it easier for those with influence over a city’s transportation picture to make the right decision, and to be able to explain why, where and when the changes are happening with accurate data backing them up. It also wants to do this in a way that makes it easy for organizations to work with, so it’s releasing the data organized around traffic analysis zones within cities, which are agreed-upon geographic demarcations that help with existing urban planning and traffic management.
Users of the website can adjust things like time of day, day of week and zones to call up Uber’s data for that specific point or range, and can download the data, both with existing time series charts and in raw format for inputting into their own models. Uber says it’s looking at also releasing access to the data as an API, but is “trying to figure out how to do it in a performant way” at this stage.
Of course, Uber releasing this kind of data publicly is going to raise some eyebrows from privacy advocates, but the company stresses that it’s ensuring user privacy by only offering up data where it can be successfully aggregated and anonymized. For parts of a city where it determines there isn’t enough data to properly protect driver and passenger identities, it simply won’t return results for queries, Uber says.
Another question is why Uber would bother at all, given that its ability to accurately map traffic demand is part of the reason its able to do demand prediction well at all, which is a core competitive advantage for it in the ride-sharing business. Uber says it wants to do some good in the cities where it operates, for one, but it also stands to benefit from infrastructure improvements in cities.
“We don’t plan infrastructure, we don’t plan cities, we’re never going to do that,” explained Uber Product Manager Jordan Gilbertson in a briefing. Not controlling those aspects of Uber’s business means that it must do whatever possible to influence their improvement indirectly, which Movement can certainly help to do. More efficient transportation in a city in general means more efficient Uber service delivery, happier customers and better usage rates.
This could also help engender closer relationships between Uber and the municipal governments in cities where it operates, which will be helpful as its business matures. But primarily it looks like big picture thinking about how to control the variables in its model that currently exist outside its control – and that’s potentially going to be good for everyone on the road in urban centets.

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This year’s CES displayed a pretty broad mix in terms of production areas, with plenty of representation for categories ranging from wearables, to health, to VR and beyond – but the clear winners were two companies, and both succeeded primarily through partnerships than by direct demonstration of their own consumer products.
Of the two, Nvidia had a much more direct presence; the GPU-maker’s CEO Jen-Tsun Huang had the opening keynote, and packed a lot of news into the three-part presentation. Nvidia also had its own showfloor presences, including a self-driving car demonstration featuring BB8, its own test car, and an Audi Q7 equipped with the same software and hardware that could also drive itself, with no human behind the wheel.
Nvidia’s core business has become the core business of virtually every other tech company of size and significance ; AI is one of, if not the primary area of interest and investment at Google, Facebook, Apple and others, and Nvidia’s GPUs make it possible to create the neural nets and server systems that back machine learning, image recognition and other technologies under the broad AI umbrella.
Meanwhile, Nvidia’s consumer business is also making some big leaps. The new Shield TV looks great, for instance, with Google Assistant features coming later this year that could help it reach its goal of becoming the only living room entertainment and smart home device you ever need.
Likewise Nvidia’s streaming service, which also takes advantage of its dramatic progress in GPU tech to provide better-than-console quality game streaming remotely to devices like underpowered PCs and Macs that would not normally be able to offer high-level gaming experiences. Both this and the Shield line-of-business are still modest by comparison to Nvidia’s ability to benefit from the general trend towards AI everywhere, and autonomous vehicles, but it’s a tidy hedge with a good amount of potential to have in the pocket. Plus, Nvidia is a power player in VR, another trend at CES that, while it’s still more of a slow burn, had plenty of floor space and attention.
Retail giant Amazon was also just about EVERYWHERE at CES without having much in the way of official presence. The company’s Alexa virtual assistant basically turned up wherever it made the slightest amount of sense – and even in some places it definitely didn’t.
Alexa’s presence was mostly welcome, however. A fridge is a perfect place for the virtual assistant, for instance, since it’s already basically a calendar, shopping and to-do list, just without the magnets. And Ford’s in-car Alexa integration with SYNC 3 is a genius move , and one that could help the automaker get an early lead when it comes to anticipating the next wave of in-car experiences, which are very likely to focus on virtual, voice-powered assistants.
These are just two of the myriad place Alexa popped up at CES, and even when companies weren’t touting new integrations with Amazon’s assistant software, they were reminding media and attendees of previous skill introductions, including Hyundai with its Blue Link software, and BMW with its Connected set of Alexa capabilities.
Amazon moved very early to make sure Alexa was open and available to all hardware and software makers who wanted to join in, and it helped make that an appealing proposition with a basic feature set and Echo hardware that endeared the assistant to users right from the start. CES just showed the beginning of the maturation of those efforts, and 2017 will likely see a lot more progress in that regard.
Amazon and Nvidia won CES this year not because they’re building any particular consumer gadget that’s blowing all the others away, but because they’ve become key operators in a number of areas at once that have captured the attention of the public and the companies whose products serve that public. It’s rare to encounter a CES where individual players can have this kind of far-reaching impact, but in 2017 lightning struck twice with these two tech titans.

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The devastating news of a mass-shooting at Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood Airport on Friday has shaken the world, the incident involved gunman Esteban Santiago opening fire indiscriminately, which led to the death of five and injuring of eight.
In the midst of the news, one man has stepped forward claiming he was saved from being struck by a bullet, thanks to his laptop. At the time of the shooting, Steve Frappier was in the baggage claim area of the airport when gunshots were heard. Frappier immediately dropped his bodyweight which shifted his laptop into such a position that, when Santiago shot in his direction, it acted as a shield.
Speaking on Anderson Cooper’s 360° news broadcast after the incident , Frappier reported:
Mr Frappier was unaware that his MacBook had saved him, from a potentially fatal injury, until after the event.
A video stream of Steve Frappier’s original phone call with Anderson Cooper can be located on the CNN website.
Source: CNN via Sunday Express | Image of Frappier’s laptop via College Candy

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After two years of investigation, Canada’s competition watchdog has decided to close its probe on Apple last Friday. According to the Competition Bureau statement :
The probe was opened in December 2014 to investigate allegations that Apple had enforced anti-competitive clauses on the contracts closed with local carriers. Those clauses would have determined that competitor’s devices should be sold at higher prices than they would otherwise be sold.
Potentially, such anti-competitive actions by Apple could have been initiated in order to favor the introduction of Apple’s iPhone in the Canada market back in 2008. At the time, the Canadian telecommunications company Rogers arranged a temporary exclusivity deal with Apple to sell the iPhone. However, Canada’s Competition Bureau stopped short of specifying specific dates as to when it believed that any alleged anti-competitive conduct took place.
Source: Reuters via Phys.org

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At CES, if you head over to the South Hall of the Las Vegas Convention Center, head all the way to the back, and navigate your way through a labyrinth of passages, you’ll find where the Naughty America booth has been erected, which the company is using to demo its virtual reality porn.
The booth is hidden for a reason; Naughty America is actually the first adult film company to be allowed at CES in 16 years. I got to sit down and talk with CIO Ian Paul about why that is, and he said that the reason that the company was allowed in wasn’t because it makes porn, but because of how its been one of the pioneers of VR content.
I also asked the big question that’s on everyone’s mind, which is when we’ll get porn on the HoloLens. Sadly, the answer was that it’s not coming very soon. The truth is that the technology just isn’t there yet, but once it is, you can bet that Naughty America will be right on top of it.
The company does have some cool augmented reality stuff planned, which has to do with haptic feedback. You can check out the full interview below:
Warning: some of the language in this video is NSFW.
Neowin is at CES to bring you all the coverage from the show floor, click here for other articles.

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