Why supermarket chiller aisles may soon not be so chilly on November 19, 2017Have you ever gone food shopping on a lovely hot day only to be turned into an icicle walking past the supermarket’s open chiller cabinets? Suddenly that shorts and T-shirt combo doesn’t seem like such a smart idea as you dive in to grab your organic yoghurts. Well all that chilly discomfort could soon be […]
Why this Chinese New Year will be a digital money fest on January 29, 2017Over this weekend’s Chinese New Year celebrations, millions of people will give each other cash-filled red envelopes, called hongbao in Mandarin. But this year, a record number of these red envelopes will be digital and sent online over social messaging services such as Tencent’s WeChat, usually via smartphone. The numbers are breathtaking. Over the six-day […]
Should game firms welcome or fear Chinese conquest? on November 6, 2016The Chinese are coming and they’re hungry for games companies. They need new content to feed their 560 million avid gamers, who contribute to the biggest gaming market in the world – worth an estimated $24.4bn (£19.8bn) in 2016, according to Newzoo. And this market is growing at around 15% a year. Chinese firms have […]
Would you bully a driverless car or show it respect? on October 24, 2016Say you’re driving down a two-way street and there’s a lorry unloading a delivery in the opposite lane. The oncoming traffic needs to pull out into your lane to overtake. What do you do? Many of us just drive on as we have right of way. But eventually one of us feels charitable and slows […]
How happy chatbots could become our new best friends on June 6, 2016How do we stop intelligent machines from taking over the world and enslaving us all? Give them emotions. That’s the radical suggestion of Patrick Levy Rosenthal, founder and chief executive of Emoshape, a tech firm that has developed a computer chip that can synthesise 12 human emotions. “It’s logical to conclude that autonomous machines made […]