The Tech Landscape #169 đ
Planet-Scale AR, Alexa for Residential, and TikTok Stitch: this is issue 169 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.
No Top Stories this weekâit wasnât really that sort of week. Instead, hereâs everything, loosely ordered by interestingness and/or relevance (in my judgement, as always).
Everything
Niantic announced the Planet-Scale AR Alliance, a group of partners (largely telecoms providers) working together to promote AR services over 5G. It aims to start by producing 5G AR showcases, but longer term will be a useful tool for Nianticâs gestating Real World Platform. As ambitious naming goes, âthe Planet-Scale Allianceâ is pretty good.
nianticlabs.com/en/blog/niantic-planet-scale-ar-alliance-5g/
Alexa For Residential is Amazonâs new service for property managers to set up and manage Alexa-powered smart home services through their buildings. Residents would control their homes using Alexa from the day they move in, with no extra equipment requiredâand, of course, thereâd be little need to try out a rival service, like Google Assistant.
blog.aboutamazon.com/devices/a-new-easy-way-for-properties-to-add-alexa-to-residential-buildings
TikTok announced Stitch, a feature which lets users include clips of up to 5 seconds from other usersâ videos in their own videos, making it easier to remix and respond to popular memes. That sound you hear is the furious clacking of the keyboards of Instagram developers replicating the code to include in Reels.
newsroom.tiktok.com/en-us/new-on-tiktok-introducing-stitch
Facebook warned that if a mooted ânews taxâ comes into effect in Australia it would fully stop news articles being shared by people or publishers on its platform. The strongly-worded statement says the ânew regulation⌠misunderstands the dynamics of the internetâ and I have to say I agree with this; social networks send traffic to news websites, and donât take any content other than a title and intro.
about.fb.com/news/2020/08/changes-to-facebooks-services-in-australia/
Twitchâs Prime Video Watch Party feature, which allow Prime-subscribing users to watch shows together with added social features, is now available worldwide. Watch parties, and social viewing generally, seem to have been quietly popular during lockdown.
engadget.com/twitch-watch-parties-prime-video-worldwide-launch-131525054.html
Apple and Google jointly announced Exposure Notifications Express, an update to their smartphone test & trace system which will make it easier for health organisations to use the system without building an app. It reduces the burden on orgs and users, and is fully interoperable across states and countries. Available now in iOS 13.7, coming to Android phones through a Play Services update later this month.
theverge.com/2020/9/1/21410281/apple-google-coronavirus-exposure-notification-contact-tracing-app-system
Messenger will limit forwarding messages to five people or groups, in a bid to slow the spread of misinformation and disinformation. The same restriction was introduced on WhatsApp five months ago to combat COVID-related false claims, so Iâm not sure why itâs taken so long to follow suit on Messenger.
about.fb.com/news/2020/09/introducing-a-forwarding-limit-on-messenger/
Google announced new conversational features for its enterprise services, including Custom Voice synthetic voice models, an updated version of Dialogflow for training virtual agents, and real-time automated support for workers on calls. Chat services are clearly better for customer support than more generalised âbotâ use cases.
cloud.google.com/blog/products/ai-machine-learning/conversational-ai-drives-better-customer-experiences
Amazon made live music streams from Twitch available in the Amazon Music app, broadening reach for artists and offering monetisation options that will go some way to make up lost revenue, hopefully.
techcrunch.com/2020/09/01/amazon-brings-twitchs-livestreams-to-its-amazon-music-app/
Google is experimenting with payments for parking through Google Maps, using Google Pay in partnership with parking app, Passport. Maps will proactively suggest when youâre approaching a supported parking area, or you can open an interface through the web. Itâs currently only supported in Austin, Texas, which seems to be the test city for every car-based innovation.
9to5google.com/2020/09/02/google-maps-pay-parking/
Google is expanding its automated, personalised playlist of short audio news stories, called Your News Update, from Assistant to Podcasts. It also added a new local news playlist, available only through Assistant for now (and both only available in US English).
blog.google/products/assistant/your-news-update-google-podcasts/
Mastercard announced two new physical retail services: Shop Anywhere, a checkout-free service like Amazon Go which uses computer vision to track usersâ purchases and pay automatically; and AI Powered Drive Through, which uses number plate recognition, voice ordering, and personalisation to speed up drive-through and drive-in services.
investor.mastercard.com/investor-news/investor-news-details/2020/Mastercard-Launches-Frictionless-Retail-Technology-Solutions-to-Enable-Touchless-Economy/default.aspx
TikTok announced a partnership with Teespring to allow creators to sell merch directly. Similar deals are already in place with YouTube and Twitch, so its an important move to keep popular creators on the platform.
theverge.com/2020/8/31/21408539/tiktok-teespring-merchandise-apparel-commerce-monetization
India banned a further 118 apps made or owned by Chinese companies, including Alipay, Baidu, and the popular game PUBG Mobile. A previous ban in June prohibited TikTok among 50 apps. Itâs motivated by border tensions between the two countries.
theverge.com/2020/9/2/21418120/pubg-mobile-india-ban-118-apps-china-alipay-baidu
Stat of the Week
Facebook Watch has 1.25 billion unique viewers each month, according to its own data.
about.fb.com/news/2020/09/the-evolution-of-facebook-watch/
There are 169 active volcanoes in the United States. 100 of them are in Alaska.