Over the past two years I’ve been involved in designing and demonstrating enterprise social across a number of sectors and geographies. In thisFacebookage there’s always excitement around the discussion aspects of the software — chatter among employees drives increased engagement and buyers instantly recognise this. I’ve noticed that the least sexy requirement is often the one at the cornerstone of the business case: the ability to find people within the organisation....

At long last, we now know when Google will reveal the Pixel 6 and Pixel 6 Pro: October 19. The company today sent invites to the press for its upcoming virtual event, which will bestreamedto all at 10 AM Pacific Time. Well, “reveal” is a bit of a stretch. Google itself has already given us asolid lookat the phone’s exterior design and announced its most notable specification: the new in-house Google Tensor processor....

We’ve known that this was coming, but today it hasbeen consummated: Verizon is bringing a ‘FiOS TV-powered entertainment experience’ to Microsoft’s Xbox 360 console. Previous rumors included asimilar deallanding soon with Comcast, which we anticipate being announced shortly. Verizon has prepared an application for the Xbox that will allow its FiOS TV and Internet customers who are also Xbox LIVE Gold subscribers to view its television offerings on Microsoft’s console. The application itself has been designed to function with the Kinect, and will allow for full use sans a controller....

Hot on the heels ofFacebook’s patenton the news feed, Google hasjust landeda monster of a patent covering location-based advertising. The opponents of software patents are going to have a seizure over this. The patent,number 10654265, was filed in September of 2003. This patent was quite forward-looking when it was claimed. What does it cover? Paraphrasing the patent it covers a method for an advertisement to be served based on location, geolocated price information, and mobile ad relevancy....

Ok, there’s a lot of bullshit hackathons that mine people for their IP. There’s also situations where people swap a weekend of sleep deprivation and unpaid labor for little more than swag and some pizza. Then, there’s the issue of hackathons being prohibitive to folks with kids or carer responsibilities… So when I find one I can get behind, I make an effort to find out more. Give me a hackathon thatworks on real-world problems and offers great benefits to participants....