Canon Business Services ANZ has earned all six Microsoft Solutions Partner designations, placing it among Australia`s top 1% of Microsoft partners with enhanced tech expertise. Read...

SAP unveils advanced AI tools and partnerships, including a smarter copilot and AI agents, aiming to boost productivity and AI accessibility for businesses. Read...

Nintex launches Solution Studio, a portal enabling businesses to build custom AI-powered automation solutions to streamline operations and boost efficiency. Read...

Hitachi uses Red Hat OpenShift AI to boost its AI capabilities, powering over 250 projects and improving operations across its global business. Read...

Chairman Jeff Morrison said, “The business has performed well in the second half of the year, despite difficult market conditions. The Board is pleased by the progress made towards our sustainability goals Read...

Cohesity expands its partnership with Google Cloud to boost cyber resilience and data insight capabilities, reducing business risk and downtime costs. Read...

Chorus unveils a 1Gbps symmetrical fibre plan for NZ businesses, enhancing speeds and restoration times to boost digital productivity. Read...

Firefighters Jennie Logan and Martyn Sadler, along with father Dave Chester, died in the fire. Read...

Otter is an AI-powered transcription service and app, and I use it every time I interview someone. Even in a group setting, it’s the perfect tool for a journalist: it records and transcribes what people are saying, identifies the speaker, and allows me to click on the transcribed text and hear the recorded audio, just to check up on it. Otter even offers AI services, so I can see an AI-generated summary of the conversation and what needs to happen next. Yesterday, my wife complained that the secretary of a non-profit she volunteers at had quit, forcing her to record the minutes of a meeting. My next step? Demonstrating Otter. So, why should you use Otter? Otter lets you focus on the meeting instead of taking notes if you get called in for a quick standup or one-on-one with your boss. Otter generates those automatically! I find it extremely useful for personal meetings, too: making sense of a doctor’s visit, for example, or with a school counselor. It even remembers speaker voices from conversation to conversation, so you can “tag” someone. If they’re part of a future conversation, you’ll know. Anything that could benefit from additional organization—planning a wedding, talking over college finances—is great for Otter. Tap the button, start the transcription recording, and go. Otter provides both a transcript and an AI summary panel, which is what you’re seeing here.Mark Hachman / Foundry I’d actually encourage you not to pay for Otter right away. It has a rather generous free plan—300 minutes per month, 30 minutes per conversation—which you can try out on those quick morning meetings. Otherwise, Otter’s business plan starts at $8.33 per month for 1,200 minutes. Otter runs on a phone as well as on the web, so it’s there where you want to work. Otter is a useful tool, but you’ll want to use it overtly, with the permission of those you’re recording. That’s not only polite but also ensures that you’re not breaking any laws. Most of America allows for “one-party consent” to record a conversation when there is an expectation of privacy—if you know you’re recording, it’s totally legal. Some states—California, Illinois, Massachusetts, and others—require all parties in the conversation to know about and be aware of the recording. The reason I continue to use Otter? Other services simply don’t deliver the functionality and convenience it does. I simply can’t give it up. Read...

The Asus ProArt P16 is not a gaming laptop. It is for serious media professionals who need tons of power and a great screen in a semi-portable package. But glancing down the spec sheet, you could be forgiven for thinking, “Man, I bet that thing runs DOOM like nobody’s business.” It all starts with an AMD Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 processor, a 12-core laptop chip that’s proven its worth for the better part of a year. Here Asus makes AMD hitch its wagon to Nvidia power for graphics, an RTX 5070 laptop GPU on the two configurations Asus has announced. You can get either 32GB or 64GB of DDR5 RAM and 2TB of PCIe 4.0 storage as well. That hardware won’t beat the best gaming laptops on the market…but it won’t get embarrassed by them, either. Now add in a 4K, OLED, 16:10, 16-inch display, with up to 500 nits of brightness and 100 percent DCI-P3 coverage. If you don’t know what some of those mean, just listen really hard, and you can hear pro video editors gasping. Sure, that touchscreen is “just” 60Hz, but it’s pretty freakin’ phenomenal for anyone who needs to do media work on the go. Asus Speaking of which: Double USB-C ports, ONE ON EACH SIDE OH YES THANK YOU, and one of which gets USB 4.0 certification for up to 40Gbps throughput. Full-sized HDMI 2.1. Full-sized SD card reader, rated for SD Express 7.0. That’s a lot of connection options for a pro, especially considering that the sleek black aluminum laptop is just .68 inches thick (17.27mm) at its bulkiest. Sadly, Asus couldn’t quite squeeze in Ethernet — you’ll need a USB-C adapter, or just lean on the Wi-Fi 7 chip for big downloads and uploads. Other highlights include an integrated scroll wheel on the touchpad (a staple of the ProArt series), 200 watts of power delivery with the dedicated charger (yes, you can use USB-C as well), and a 90 watt-hour battery (and you’ll need it). And the thing that really makes it pop for me is that sleek, all-black body, though it’s not exactly featherweight at 4.08 pounds (1.85kg). Unlike, say, a MacBook Pro or a Razer Blade, the understated corner logo really appeals with its black-on-black look. This is a laptop that wants to do work, even if it catches admiring glances at the same time. Asus Here’s the part you’re probably bracing for: the price. Asus’ promo materials say that the base model (32GB of RAM) will cost $2500 when it hits the US in June, the upgraded model (64GB of RAM, identical in all other respects) will be $2900 in July. You can get a lot of laptop for nearly three grand, though to be fair, this is only $100 more than the 2024 ProArt P16 model with almost the same specs and an RTX 4070. Read...