The Tech Landscape #127 💪
The film 127 Hours is based on Aron Ralston’s memoir, Beyond a Rock and a Hard Place, about his rescue from Blue John Canyon. In the six years before the book was released, Utah officials hadn’t rescued any hikers from around Blue John except Ralston himself; in the six years following, they had to rescue more than two dozen.
This week instead of an intro I want to highly recommend the BBC podcast, The Missing Cryptoqueen.
Assistants & Voice
It’s the fifth anniversary of the launch of the Amazon Echo. About a third of US households own a smart speaker, and about a quarter in the UK. From no market to a huge market in just five years is impressive.
developer.amazon.com/blogs/alexa/post/9dfb9061-ae92-4262-9213-7e1cbdf4f4e0/alexa-at-five-looking-back-looking-forward
Google’s Nest Hub and Hub Max devices can now sense where people are in a room using ultrasound. The feature can be used to, for example, increase font sizes when a user is further away. All the sensing is done on-device and Google says no data is ever sent to its servers.
engadget.com/2019/11/06/google-nest-hub-max-ultrasound-sensing-now-available/
XR
Microsoft’s HoloLens 2 AR headset went on sale, although it’s still being pitched as a business tool rather than a consumer product.
theverge.com/2019/11/7/20946589/microsoft-hololens-2-mixed-reality-headset-preorder-shipping-price-upgrade
Pokémon Go will soon get a feature called Buddy Adventure, that allows players to hunt the monsters (or whatever they are) together. I include this because it’s an example of shared AR which is going to be a huge deal next year, mark my words.
theverge.com/2019/11/6/20950615/niantic-pokemon-go-live-multiplayer-ar-augmented-reality-buddy-adventure
Google has open-sourced the software behind the Cardboard VR project. Hopefully it will find a dedicated community of enthusiasts to keep it going.
developers.googleblog.com/2019/11/open-sourcing-google-cardboard.html
Messaging
Small businesses can put their product range on WhatsApp with the new Catalogs feature. No purchasing yet, but that’s just a matter of time.
newsroom.fb.com/news/2019/11/introducing-catalogs-for-small-businesses/
Microsoft released Power Virtual Agents, a no-code bot builder heavily focused on customer service (as the whole industry seems to be settling on).
techcrunch.com/2019/11/04/microsoft-launches-power-virtual-agents-its-no-code-bot-builder/
Apps
Adobe announced several apps and features at its annual Max creativity conference, including a new Photoshop Camera app for mobile, the Aero augmented reality designer, and Photoshop for iPad.
theverge.com/2019/11/4/20942026/microsoft-cortana-male-voice-outlook-ios-android-integration-launch-features
Microsoft announced several apps and features at its annual Ignite productivity conference, including a combined Office mobile app, searchable and browsable intranets with Bing and Edge, the Fluid framework for document collaboration, Cortana (with masculine voice option) in Outlook, and much more stuff that I don’t really care about.
microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/blog/2019/11/04/from-new-microsoft-teams-experiences-to-the-all-new-project-cortex-heres-whats-coming-soon-to-microsoft-365/
Facebook unveiled a new company brand to unite all their services: the word ‘Facebook’. It will be used to indicate ownership, e.g. WhatsApp by Facebook, or Facebook by Facebook. It’s extremely bland and nondescript, which is probably exactly what they need right now.
newsroom.fb.com/news/2019/11/introducing-our-new-company-brand/
Google launched its Play Points reward system in the US. Previously available in Japan and Korea, it lets users earn points for downloading, buying, and interacting on the Play Store. The points can be redeemed for other Play Store items or donated to charities.
blog.google/products/google-play/google-play-points-rewards-program-all-ways-you-play/
Social
TikTok released its first tool for developers, Share to TikTok. The software kit can be integrated into video-editing apps which can then share their ouput directly into TikTok. Adobe’s Premiere Rush is the first big name to implement it.
newsroom.tiktok.com/en-us/launching-share-to-tiktok-with-adobe-premiere-rush-and-more-partners
Twitter is releasing a new feature that will let people follow topics rather than individual accounts. This is one of the biggest changes to the platform since it began.
theverge.com/2019/11/6/20948547/twitter-topics-launch-sports-gaming-entertainment-test
Everything Else
YouTube announced Super Stickers, a new way for creators to make money. Fans can buy packs of stickers to send to creators in chats, and creators will earn a cut of revenue.
youtube-creators.googleblog.com/2019/11/introducing-super-stickers.html
Fossil released a new hybrid smartwatch. This is interesting largely because it apparently runs Fossil’s self-developed OS; given that Fossil are the only major company making Wear OS watches, it suddenly makes more sense that Google are buying Fitbit.
androidpolice.com/2019/11/06/fossil-reveals-hybrid-hr-smartwatch-with-two-week-battery-life-for-195/
Life will be a little easier for visitors to China after Alipay and WeChat announced new payment services for tourists. Chinese digital wallets were previously unavailable to anyone without a Chinese bank account, and are so prevalent that visitors often found themselves unable to make purchases.
abacusnews.com/china-tech-city/wechat-pay-joins-alipay-allowing-international-credit-cards/article/3036650
Google released an updated version of Teachable Machine, its no-code tool that makes it easy to understand the basics of machine learning.
blog.google/technology/ai/teachable-machine/
Adobe, Twitter, and the New York Times founded the Content Authenticity Initiative, to develop an industry standard for content attribution—i.e. crediting who originally took a photograph. Lots of people are working on this problem, it’s a tough one.
news.adobe.com/press-release/corporate/adobe-new-york-times-company-and-twitter-announce-content-authenticity
Burberry has released its first global online game, B Bounce. It’s… not great… but it’s interesting to see them aiming at a younger audience; the company has previously experimented with mobile gaming in China previously.
burberryplc.com/en/news/news/corporate/2019/race-to-the-moon-with-burberry-s-first-online-game-b-bounce.html