Hashtag Trending – Tech influences at the 2018 Winter Olympics, iPhone struggles and other holiday findings, Firefox tackles privacy

The 2018 Pyeongchang Winter Olympics open on Friday and technology will be front and center, the many tech giants have released their quarterly earnings from the holidays, and the next update to Firefox puts a big emphasis on privacy.

Hashtag Trending on Amazon Alexa Subscribe to Hashtag Trending on Google Play Subscribe to Hashtag Trending on Apple iTunes

The 2018 Pyeongchang Winter Olympic is the most technology heavy Olympic games yet. Intel is producing what it calls the ‘largest virtual reality’ event ever with its official broadcast partners by pledging more than 50 hours of live VR programming for events like downhill skiing, figure skating, and hockey. Plus, Olympic official timekeeper Omega is debuting new tech to enhance viewers understanding with update stats, and various Olympic teams will be debuting technology infused equipment and techniques. For more, be sure to listen to our Tech in Sports podcast that you can find anywhere you are listening to Hashtag Trending.

The end of last week saw the many tech giants reveal their most recent quarterly earnings reports that covered the holiday season. Highlights include Apple reporting positive iPhone X sales despite reports that the company cut its production in half. Amazon reported a net income of nearly 2 billion dollars for the quarter, with CEO Jeff Bezos touting the success of Prime membership, Alexa devices, and its cloud services business, Amazon Web Services. Lastly, the cloud trend continued, with Microsoft reporting that its Azure cloud business grew 98 per cent last quarter.

And then some news from Reddit – Mozilla’s next update to its Firefox browser, dubbed Firefox 59, continues to build on already impressive renewed Firefox with a big focus on privacy. The new update will reduce how much information websites pass onwards about visitors when Firefox users are using its private browsing mode. By removing path information from referrer values sent to third parties from a website, Firefox 59 prevents any additional data leaking out to other sites.

That’s what’s trending today. Hashtag Trending is produced by IT World Canada. Today’s episode is brought to you by SAS, the world leader in advanced analytics and the Official Analytics Partner of the Canadian Olympic Team.

Would you recommend this article?

Share

Thanks for taking the time to let us know what you think of this article!
We'd love to hear your opinion about this or any other story you read in our publication.


Jim Love, Chief Content Officer, IT World Canada

Featured Download

Alex Radu
Alex Radu
is a Video Producer for IT World Canada. When not writing or making videos about the tech industry, you can find him reading, watching TV/movies, or watching the Lakers rebuild with one eye open.

Featured Articles

Cybersecurity in 2024: Priorities and challenges for Canadian organizations 

By Derek Manky As predictions for 2024 point to the continued expansion...

Survey shows generative AI is a top priority for Canadian corporate leaders.

Leaders are devoting significant budget to generative AI for 2024 Canadian corporate...

Related Tech News

Tech Jobs

Our experienced team of journalists and bloggers bring you engaging in-depth interviews, videos and content targeted to IT professionals and line-of-business executives.

Tech Companies Hiring Right Now