Author: Geek Planet

Sports rights-holders have proven increasingly adept at attracting tastemakers and trendsetters to the viewing gallery. That gravitational pull has proven instrumental in bringing broadcaster money and commercial sponsorship cash to tournaments and competitions, with their increasingly rare access to mass, highly engaged and often affluent audiences taking on an outsized importance for consumer brands. Over the last decade, Australian Open CEO Craig Tiley has worked hard to take the first tennis grand slam event of the year from another stop on the tennis circuit to a “bucket list event,” by taking control of both media production and the cultural circus…

Snap is sweetening the deal for advertisers willing to buy space inside users’ chat feeds. It’s been nearly a year since the company rolled out the new ad placement – pitched by CEO Evan Spiegel as a way to make “the core functionality of Snapchat accessible to advertisers”. Since then, Snap has been working to make that promise stick, and is now offering incentives in an effort to drive adoption for the placement.   “I think Evan [Spiegel] realized that that’s [the chat tab] where the majority of the users spend most of their time,” said Shamsul Chowdhury, global evp paid social…

Intel’s next-gen integrated graphics, the Arc B370, just popped up in a new benchmark leak – and frankly, the numbers are shocking for a chip that lives directly on the CPU. Spotted inside an engineering sample of the Core Ultra 5 338H (part of the upcoming Panther Lake family), the chip was tested on FurMark’s 1440p OpenGL workload, hitting a score of 2,383 points. To put that in perspective, this integrated chip is 33% faster than Intel’s actual desktop graphics card, the Arc A380, and 70% faster than the current Lunar Lake chips. Even more impressive? It did this while…

After years of retooling their businesses for search engines, brand and retail leaders say they’re getting ready for a new frontier: GEO. The term, which means generative engine optimization, refers to optimizing web content to show up in results from AI-driven search platforms, like ChatGPT or Google Gemini. It’s a new way for brands to stand out and reach customers, especially considering that nearly 60% of U.S. consumers have used a generative AI tool for help with online shopping, per an August 2025 survey from Omnisend. If a customer asks an AI engine about buying lip gloss or a T-shirt, the relevant brands…

I’ve been covering developments related to the ongoing memory crisis for months now, but this update is unlike anything I’ve ever seen before. Apparently, the Galaxy S26 Ultra, the best in Samsung’s upcoming lineup, could cost less than the Galaxy S25 Ultra. The claim comes from tipster Roland Quandt (via a post on BlueSky Social). He claims that the entry- and mid-level variants of the Galaxy S26 Ultra, with 256GB and 512GB storage, respectively, could be €100 cheaper at launch. Galaxy S26 Ultra pricing could drop for lower storage tiers If that happens, the Galaxy S26 Ultra (256GB) variant could…

American Airlines might be swapping its Wi-Fi provider for something a little more galactic. The airline has confirmed it’s been talking to Amazon Leo (formerly Project Kuiper) about powering its in-flight internet. This could be a massive win for Jeff Bezos’ satellite venture, putting it head-to-head with Elon Musk’s Starlink in a battle for dominance at 38,000 feet. What Happened: Amazon Leo Emerges as a Contender for AA’s Fleetwide Wi-Fi Upgrade CEO Robert Isom admitted the airline is evaluating Amazon Leo to bring faster, low-latency broadband to its fleet of over 1,000 planes. Securing American Airlines would be a huge…

There is no doubt that 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) is a science fiction classic. Stanley Kubrick’s realistic depiction of space travel changed the nature of the sci-fi genre. But I must confess that when watching the film, I felt like I was missing something. I understand that the visual effects were astounding for their time. But I couldn’t decide if the film was trying to say something particular or if its entire purpose was to show its visual effects. Did the story simply exist to justify the presentation? That’s hard to believe, given how much time is spent on…

Google is in the process of contracting with Smartly to test the ad tech company’s creative automation platform, according to people familiar with the matter, with the initiative expected to include a series of proof-of-concept pilots beginning in the fourth quarter.Digiday understands the tests will explore how Smartly’s tools can help Google scale creative asset generation using AI, an increasingly common request from marketers, particularly around campaigns for its hardware, such as the Pixel and Chromebook ranges.  Separate sources, all of whom requested anonymity due to the nascent nature of the operations, said Google views the collaboration as a way to…

WhatsApp is finally handing users the keys to a digital fortress. On January 27, 2026, the company announced a massive update that goes well beyond the usual bug fixes and sticker packs. They are calling it “Strict Account Settings,” but honestly, it feels more like a “Lockdown Mode” for your personal life. It is a new, optional security layer designed to make your account incredibly difficult for hackers, scammers, and creeps to penetrate. We all know the internet has become a slightly terrifying place lately. Between sophisticated phishing attacks and the constant barrage of spam calls, relying on standard privacy…

Tiiny AI has unveiled what Guinness World Records has verified as the world’s smallest personal AI supercomputer. It is called the Tiiny AI Pocket Lab, and despite being about the size of a power bank, it promises performance levels that normally require very expensive hardware. Other small supercomputers such as NVIDIA’s Project Digits, priced around $3,000, and the DGX Spark, which comes for $4,000, sit at price points that put them out of reach for most everyday users. Tiiny AI argues that today’s real AI bottleneck is not computing power but our reliance on the cloud. GTM director Samar Bhoj…