Today’s topics include the release of Microsoft’s machine-learning beta, JPMorgan Chase will launch its own mobile payment service, Oracle puts software in its SPARC M7 chip to improve security, and IBM buys The Weather Company’s digital assets.
Developers looking to build intelligent apps that understand natural language no longer have to wait for an invitation to participate in Microsoft’s Project Oxford private beta.
Project Oxford is Microsoft’s collection of machine-learning application programming interfaces and services. During this year’s Build developer conference, the technology helped the company score a rare viral hit with its age-guessing site, How-Old.net.
Within hours of being launched, the site garnered hundreds of thousands of image submissions as users tested the site’s attempts to determine age and gender of the photo’s subjects.
JPMorgan Chase is jumping into the expanding mobile payments marketplace with a planned Chase Pay service, which is scheduled to launch in mid-2016. It will compete with established services from Apple, Google and Samsung.
According to the banking company, the Chase Pay service will allow customers to pay for goods and services in-store through mobile apps or for online purchases at retailers including Walmart, Target, Best Buy and Shell. The service will be available to some 94 million Chase credit, debit and prepaid card account holders.
Over the past five years, Oracle has steadily upgraded the SPARC chip architecture and the servers that run on it.
At the company’s OpenWorld 2015 user conference this week, Oracle officials unveiled the latest processor, the SPARC M7, and a family of systems powered by the chip. However, the M7 is the first chip completely designed by Oracle.
The new processor includes software features integrated onto the silicon that are designed to bring improved data security and database performance.
IBM announced that it has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire The Weather Company’s business-to-business mobile and cloud-based Web properties, including WSI, Weather.com, Weather Underground and The Weather Company brand. The news of the acquisition played heavily at the IBM Insight 2015 conference in Las Vegas.
IBM made a series of announcements with The Weather Company, including building a set of new IBM Cloud Insight Services and hosting a two-hour segment of the Weather Underground TV show onsite at the Insight conference. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.