The Tech Landscape #106 📷
When completed in 2019 the 445 metre tall Marina 106 will be Dubai’s second tallest building, after the 828 metre Burj Khalifa. It will only hold that title for a year, however, as by 2020 it will be the fourth tallest—with the Burj Khalifa itself dropping into second behind the 1,345 metre Dubai Creek Tower.
Quite the mixed bag of news this week. This piece stood out to me:
Google Lens can now augment the artworks at San Francisco’s de Young Museum with extra information. Couple of thoughts:
1) It should be straightforward to expand this to other museums and galleries using the content in Google Arts & Culture;
2) opening this feature up to developers could kickstart an era of live visual search.
blog.google/outreach-initiatives/arts-culture/stories-about-art-with-de-young-google-lens/
Assistants & Voice
Amazon has released an updated version of the Echo Kids Edition smart speaker. It’s based on the third generation Echo Dot, and comes in blue or rainbow striped.
theverge.com/2019/6/12/18661751/amazon-new-echo-dot-kids-edition-third-generation-rainbow-price-specs-features
Google Assistant can now be invoked from within Waze (in the US) for common hands-free features such as calls and music, and for reporting incidents.
blog.google/products/assistant/google-assistant-now-available-waze/
Social
Snapchat has launched in-app stores with native checkout for five of its biggest name influencers.
digiday.com/marketing/snapchat-stores-influencers-shop/
Epic Games, owners of ridiculously popular Fortnite, have acquired the social video app Houseparty.
medium.com/@houseparty/houseparty-is-joining-epic-games-8b6344a4d8e2
Games
Tencent’s PUBG Mobile made £115m in revenue last month, making it the highest-grossing mobile game ever, according to analysis in the Financial Times.
theverge.com/2019/6/11/18660985/pubg-mobile-monthly-revenue-players-highest-grossing-mobile-game
Google’s internal incubator, Area 120, has released Game Builder, a tool for building simple 3D games.
blog.google/technology/area-120/create-3d-games-friends-no-experience-required/
Video
Facebook says Watch, its original video content platform, now has 140m daily users, and is increasing its slate of commissioned shows.
variety.com/2019/digital/news/facebook-watch-140-million-daily-users-1203239304/
New short-form, mobile-first video streaming service, Quibi, announced details of its April 2020 launch. The service will cost $5 with ads, $8 without, and content will be made in 7-10 minute chunks.
theverge.com/2019/6/9/18658578/quibi-short-form-streaming-service-pricing-release-date-april-6th-2020
Retail
Amazon has shut down Spark, its Instagram-like feed of shoppable images, after two years.
techcrunch.com/2019/06/14/amazon-spark-the-retailers-two-year-old-instagram-competitor-has-shut-down/
IKEA USA has made its catalog shoppable through Pinterest.
modernretail.co/retailers/ikea-is-transitioning-its-print-catalog-to-pinterest/
Transport
Google Maps appears to be trialling a new feature for passengers in India which will automatically alert you if the car you’re in goes more than 500m off-route.
androidcentral.com/google-testing-new-feature-alert-you-when-your-taxi-goes-route
Citymapper has closed Ride, its fixed-route ride sharing service experiment, and will focus on its inclusive travel pass instead.
medium.com/@Citymapper/ending-ride-to-focus-on-pass-d9ada3021831
Everything Else
Google’s ‘dynamic emails’, which bring rich web app functionality into emails, will launch for Gmail on the Web on 2nd July.
gsuiteupdates.googleblog.com/2019/06/dynamic-email-in-gmail-becoming-GA.html
Google has (apparently) confirmed that leaked pictures of the Pixel 4 are real. The images show the back of the phone with a twin-camera bump.
twitter.com/madebygoogle/status/1138876305158500353
Microsoft has developed a technique of creating maps of indoor locations for AR while still preserving user privacy. This is quite a technical paper, but a very important breakthrough—one of the risks of AR mapping is that it could reveal private spaces to hackers.
microsoft.com/en-us/research/blog/envisioning-privacy-preserving-image-based-localization-for-augmented-reality/
Adobe and UC Berkeley have released research on a new method to detect manipulated images with 99% accuracy. It’s an arms race.
theblog.adobe.com/adobe-research-and-uc-berkeley-detecting-facial-manipulations-in-adobe-photoshop/
The Firefox browser will release a suite of paid add-ons later this year, said to include a VPN and secure storage. The browser as is will remain free.
thenextweb.com/apps/2019/06/10/mozilla-will-reportedly-launch-a-paid-version-of-firefox-this-fall/
Monzo, the UK mobile-only challenger bank, has launched in the US. It doesn’t have a banking license there, so will be more of a prepaid card service like the early UK version.
theverge.com/2019/6/13/18677298/monzo-bank-us-launch-date-availability