Techcrunch blog!: Daily Crunch - Salesforce brings voice to the workplace

Tuesday, November 19, 2019 • By Anthony Ha

Happy Tuesday

Salesforce’s Einstein voice assistant evolves, Juno shuts down in New York City and Spotify launches personalized podcast playlists. Here’s your Daily Crunch for November 19, 2019.

Salesforce wants to bring voice to the workplace

Salesforce is expanding its AI voice assistant Einstein with a tool that allows anybody to quickly build basic Einstein skills that pull up data from Salesforce.

To highlight what businesses might do with Einstein, Salesforce showed off an Einstein- and Alexa-enabled speaker that actually looks like a cartoon version of the famous physicist. Sadly, it isn’t planning to make these devices available to the public.

Salesforce wants to bring voice to the workplace image

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Juno shuts down its operations in NYC as owner Gett signs strategic partnership with Lyft

The company blamed the shutdown on the "enactment of misguided regulations in New York City earlier this year." Moving forward, Gett will be focused on the corporate transportation business.

Spotify turns its personalization technology to podcasts with launch of Your Daily Podcasts

The playlist will only appear when you've listened to at least four podcasts in the past 90 days, Spotify says. It will be available in the "Your Top Podcasts" shelf in the Home tab or in the "Made for You" hub in the app.

Sweden drops rape investigation into WikiLeaks founder, Julian Assange

A prosecutor said that Assange’s accuser provided “a credible and reliable version of events,” but also said that “the evidential situation has been weakened to such an extent that there is no longer any reason to continue the investigation.”

BlueVine raises $102.5M more for banking services that target small businesses

BlueVine's financing products include lines of credit and term loans (both up to $250,000), as well as "factoring," where customers can arrange for BlueVine to pay up front for invoices.

Amazon makes its music streaming service free with ads

The company previously offered free, ad-supported streaming only to customers who owned an Amazon Echo device. Now it's rolling out free streaming to anyone using the Amazon Music app on iOS, Android and Fire TV, as well as Amazon Music on the web in the U.S., U.K. and Germany.

The coming fight over who controls digital health data

Startups and large technology companies are already jockeying for position over how to leverage data access and take advantage of new sensor technologies that provide unprecedented windows into patient health. (Extra Crunch membership required.)