The Tech Landscape #144 😷
This is issue 144 of The Tech Landscape, a weekly collection of news about consumer digital technology. Stories are selected by me, Peter Gasston, with a little insight and opinion where appropriate.
Mahjong is a Chinese game played with 144 tiles. The original name, 麻雀, means ‘sparrow’ and is said to be because the sound of the tiles being shuffled sounds like the chattering of sparrows.
XR
Facebook is starting a closed alpha trial of its immersive social space, Horizon. Invites have been sent to select users, who must sign an NDA to join the trial.
uploadvr.com/facebook-horizon-closed-alpha/
Snapchat added a simple but useful web-based Lens Builder to its ad platform. It makes it incredibly easy for anyone to build a Lens or Filter which doesn’t need any custom interaction, drastically lowering the barrier to building effects.
venturebeat.com/2020/03/12/snapchat-launches-lens-web-builder-to-simplify-ar-ad-creation/
Facebook is closing down MSQRD, the face-filter app it acquired in 2016 to combat Snapchat. Much of MSQRD’s technology was used to bootstrap Facebook’s Spark AR platform.
facebook.com/msqrdapp/posts/1123517511326086
Camera
Google Maps can highlight popular dishes from a photo of a menu, taking a feature introduced in Lens last year. It’s a smart combination of text recognition and user-submitted data.
9to5google.com/2020/03/08/google-maps-lens-menu/
Adobe announced Photoshop Camera, a mobile camera with revolutionary new features such as filters. To be fair, this uses some smart machine learning to ‘understand’ the image and automatically apply effects.
theblog.adobe.com/introducing-adobe-photoshop-camera/
Healthcare
Google is adding knowledge panel results from the NHS for searches about health conditions. It’s a useful tool against disinformation in the COVID-19 era.
blog.google/products/search/helpful-health-info-nhs/
The NHS is also fighting COVID-19 disinformation (and misinformation) with actions including taking down a fake hospital account on Twitter, getting their accounts ‘blue tick’ authenticated, and calling out false treatments suggested by homeopaths.
england.nhs.uk/2020/03/nhs-takes-action-against-coronavirus-fake-news-online/
Retail
An Amazon Go cashier-less store will open in London later this year, according to reports. The store, said to be opening in Notting Hill, would be the first outside of the US.
retailgazette.co.uk/blog/2019/02/amazon-secures-london-retail-space-cashierless-stores/
Amazon also launched its cashier-less technology as a service to other retailers under the brand Just Walk Out. The service, used in Amazon’s Go and Go Grocery stores, uses computer vision to track customers and the items they add to their baskets.
justwalkout.com/
IKEA launched a store on Alibaba’s Tmall in China. IKEA has previously put its catalogue onto Pinterest, but this is the first time it’s sold its products directly on a third-party platform.
alizila.com/ikea-opens-virtual-store-on-tmall/
Assistants & Voice
Amazon has added Alexa to its shopping app in India, the first country outside the US to receive the feature. India is a huge market for voice search, and Google Assistant has a big lead with availability in many different languages and dialects, whereas Alexa is still only in English.
techcrunch.com/2020/03/12/amazon-rolls-out-alexa-powered-voice-shopping-experience-in-india/
Alexa can send commute info, traffic conditions, or directions to your phone. The feature was announced in their latest monthly roundup. This is part of Amazon’s effort to get more of a foothold in cars.
amazon.com/b/ref=s9_acss_bw_cg_aeggs_2a1_cta_w?node=21100773011
Android Auto will be available on Harley-Davidson Touring motorcycles later this year. This is a new vector in the competition to win in the transport assistant space.
h-dmediakit.com/us/news-articles/harley-davidson-to-support-android-auto%E2%84%A2-for-equipped-touring-motorcycle-models.html
Everything Else
Facebook is testing cross-posting Stories from Facebook to Instagram (you can already cross-post in the opposite direction). It’s a signal of the increasing integration of the platforms.
9to5mac.com/2020/03/09/facebook-stories-instagram/
Adidas, Google, and EA Sports teamed up for GMR, a new smart insole which tracks real-life football activity and uses it to unlock rewards in FIFA Mobile. Adidas made the insole with a plug-in tracker from Google’s Jacquard project.
inputmag.com/style/adidas-and-googles-smart-insole-translates-real-life-soccer-action-into-virtual-fifa-mobile-rewards
Fewer than 1% of phones sold in the US in 2019 were 5G-capable. This is understandable, as many 5G phones weren’t released until the end of the year, and the US is such an iPhone-heavy market that the needle’s unlikely to shift until the first 5G iPhones are available.
npd.com/wps/portal/npd/us/news/press-releases/2020/5g-smartphone-sales-are-on-the-rise-in-the-us-but-accounted-for-less-than-1-percent-of-devices-in-2019/
KaiOS, the operating system for extremely cheap phones in developing markets, is partnering with Firefox. The KaiOS software is based on the old (and now abandoned) FirefoxOS project, and is at least four years out of date—missing out on a lot of speed, security, and feature improvements since then. So this is good news for lots of users in Africa and Asia.
kaiostech.com/press/kaios-technologies-and-mozilla-partner-to-enable-a-healthy-mobile-internet-for-everyone/