Blair Hanley Frank
U.S. Correspondent
Blair Hanley Frank is primarily focused on the public cloud, productivity and operating systems businesses for the IDG News Service, and is based in San Francisco.
Here's how Google is preparing Android for the AI-laden future
The future of Android will be a lot smarter, thanks to new programming tools that Google unveiled on Wednesday. The company announced TensorFlow Lite, a version of its machine learning framework that’s designed to run on smartphones...
Google adds smart reply to Gmail for iOS, Android
Google is making it easier for people to dash off a quick email reply from Gmail on their smartphones. The Smart Reply feature, which offers a handful of contextually-aware, computer-generated responses, is coming to Google’s flagship...
Google's new TPUs are here to accelerate AI training
Google has made another leap forward in the realm of machine learning hardware. The tech giant has begun deploying the second version of its Tensor Processing Unit, a specialized chip meant to accelerate machine learning applications,...
Microsoft, Amazon go after enterprises with new SAP cloud offerings
There are some fresh public cloud offerings on the horizon for SAP database customers, thanks to Microsoft Azure and Amazon Web Services. Both companies have announced new infrastructure services for the HANA database software aimed...
Microsoft's new tools help devs manage cloud deployments on the go
Microsoft is making it easier for developers to manage their cloud deployments on the go, using a new mobile app and browser-based command line.
Microsoft takes its databases worldwide with Cosmos DB
Developers will have an easier time scaling their applications to meet global needs with a database product Microsoft updated on Wednesday. Called Cosmos DB, the service lets developers store data that can be replicated across any of...
Microsoft brings customization to its pre-built AI services
Microsoft is doubling down on its cloud AI services for business customers with a fleet of new offerings aimed at helping businesses deal with video and supporting customers with unique problems not solved by Microsoft’s off-the-shelf...
Oracle's next big business is selling your info
There’s a decent chance you’re part of Oracle’s next big business. Not selling products to you, but selling you as a product. That’s the idea behind the Oracle Data Cloud, a massive pool of information about consumers and companies.
Now Slack search can look for knowledgeable users and channels
How do you find someone in an organization who can answer a burning question? That’s what Slack is trying to answer with an update to its search feature that was released for larger teams on Wednesday.
Facebook's text understanding AI is coming to a phone near you
Developers have a new tool to help mobile apps understand text, thanks to a Facebook open source project update on Tuesday. The social networking company’s AI research group released a new version of FastText, a programming library...
Google Cloud growth is outpacing the company's ad business
Google is still an advertising company, but the tech titan’s cloud business is growing faster than its advertising revenue. That’s one of the key take-aways from the company’s first quarter earnings report released Thursday.
