Technology news in brief

IBM opens Watson to consumer testing

NEW YORK -- IBM is putting its Watson natural-language technology to the test with consumers on a wide scale for the first time.

On the website of financial-services firm USAA, military customers will be able to use IBM's tool to ask questions and seek advice on transitioning back to civilian life. Famous for being a Jeopardy! game-show champion, Watson analyzes information and can answer questions in conversational English.

The USAA deal gives IBM its biggest test yet of whether consumers will embrace Watson, a technology that's become a bigger focus of the company's investments and marketing. IBM sees data analytics tools such as Watson as a source of growth to counter declining demand for hardware that has led to nine straight quarters of falling sales.

"Traditional methods of providing advice and information aren't scaling," John Gordon, vice president of IBM's Watson Group, said in an interview. "This is a fundamentally different approach."

While Watson has previously been available to consumers in some limited tests, such as a mobile application for home cooks, this is the first service to be widely available, Gordon said.

IBM and USAA, based in San Antonio, worked for about nine months to develop the tool to answer questions specific to customers leaving the military, such as whether to seek out veteran's benefits or how to buy a home, said Eric Engquist, assistant vice president of military transitions at USAA. More than 150,000 military members transfer to civilian life each year, Engquist said.

-- Bloomberg News

Users rank Facebook low on satisfaction

Pinterest users have a high rate of customer satisfaction, according to a new survey by an independent research group. Facebook and LinkedIn users? Not so much.

Ads and privacy are big concerns cited by Internet users who ranked Facebook and LinkedIn lowest among social media sites, according to the American Customer Satisfaction Index, an economic research program affiliated with the University of Michigan.

The rankings are based on a survey of 6,200 Internet users conducted in May -- which, the survey group notes, was before Facebook ran into fresh criticism for a study in which it tested users' emotional reactions to change in their news feeds.

Social media companies received somewhat higher marks than they did last year, as a group, but they still rank low for customer satisfaction when compared with other industries, according to the researchers, who said only airlines, cable TV companies and Internet service providers ranked lower in 2014.

The American Customer Satisfaction Index reports that Google's search engine far outranks its competitors -- including Bing, Yahoo and AOL -- in the category of Internet portals and search engines. The index said users like Google's format for presenting search results, on both desktop and mobile computer screens.

-- San Jose Mercury News

China declares Qualcomm has monopoly

BEIJING -- Chinese regulators have concluded Qualcomm Inc., one of the biggest makers of chips used in mobile devices, has a monopoly, a government newspaper reported Friday.

Regulators have completed an investigation of Qualcomm, the China Daily newspaper said, citing Xu Kunlin, director of the anti-monopoly bureau of the National Development and Reform Commission, China's economic planning agency.

Xu said Qualcomm "has a monopoly," the newspaper said. It gave no indication what possible penalties or orders to change its business practices the San Diego-based company might face.

Chinese regulators said earlier that they were investigating whether Qualcomm abused its dominant market position by charging excessive fees for technology.

Qualcomm did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

China is the world's biggest manufacturer of mobile phones and other wireless devices. The communist government has complained about the high cost of licenses for foreign technology. It has tried to reduce dependence on foreign know-how by investing billions of dollars to develop its own phone, encryption and other technology.

China is stepping up scrutiny of foreign companies and has cited its 2008 anti-monopoly law in ordering changes to acquisitions or business practices.

-- The Associated Press

Lyft ride-share app starts run in NYC

ALBANY, N.Y. -- The on-demand ride-sharing app Lyft started limited service in New York City on Friday after reaching agreement with officials to resolve regulatory issues that prompted a lawsuit by the state.

New York's attorney general and Department of Financial Services said Lyft agreed to operate "in full compliance" with existing laws and regulations, and that it will start the new service with commercial drivers only.

"After making positive progress with local and state leaders, Lyft will launch in all five boroughs of New York City," company spokesman Katie Dally said Friday. "We've finalized an agreement to offer immediate access to our friendly, affordable rides through a TLC-licensed model."

Dally said Lyft would expand the limited service in the coming weeks.

The New York City Taxi & Limousine Commission had posted a notice two weeks ago, in advance of the company's initial planned startup in Brooklyn and Queens, that its so-called ride-share service at that time had not complied with the commission's safety requirements and other licensing criteria to verify qualifications of its drivers and vehicles.

San Francisco-based Lyft's plan to take its pink-mustachioed car service to the New York City market was then halted after the state officials sued. They claimed the company operates as a traditional for-hire livery service using mobile technology that is subject to regulations, not a peer-to-peer transportation platform as claimed.

-- The Associated Press

Business on 07/28/2014

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