The Tech Landscape #185 🦧
Pages with no Likes, audio social, and Amazon maps: this is issue 185 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.
Happy New Year to all readers who use the Gregorian calendar! This is the first newsletter of 2021—I took a few weeks off, which one person complained about, but he’s a person who’s bought me a few coffees so as my patron I accept his complaint.
It’s obviously been an eventful start to the year, what with an attempted insurrection causing the ruination of the USA’s global reputation. Donald Trump has been banned from… well, everywhere, and Parler, the social network for alt-right knobheads, has been kicked from the App Store and Play Store, and had its hosting pulled by Amazon. On one hand I think there needs to be a bigger conversation about the responsibilities of private companies in political discourse, but on the other it’s like: boo hoo. You know?
Lots of people tried to say that this insurrection was down to Facebook/‘Big Tech’/social media, which I think is simplistic to the point of being facile. It ignores the funding of alt-right organisations by people like the Koch brothers since Obama was elected, the increasing amplification of far-right messaging by networks like Fox News, and broad socio-economic and political changes happening everywhere. Sorry to get so heavy at the start of 2021, but simplistic solutions mask complex problems. I recommend this article by Edward Ongweso Jr, ‘Technology’ Can’t Explain Trump Supporters Storming the Capitol.
Anyway… on with the news!
Everything
Social Facebook is rolling out a new design for Pages. The design is simpler, introduces a News Feed, and removes Likes, among other changes.
about.fb.com/news/2021/01/introducing-the-new-page-experience/
Social Twitter bought Breaker, a popular podcasting app. It will shutter the product and use the team to build Spaces, its voice-based feature which is currently in limited testing. Audio social seems to be something Twitter is investing heavily in.
blog.breaker.audio/the-breaker-team-is-joining-twitter-f8c1721d66c6
Maps Amazon is launching Location Services for adding maps and tracking to apps. It’s a rival to Google’s Maps Platform, and based on data from OpenStreetMap.
aws.amazon.com/blogs/aws/amazon-location-add-maps-and-location-awareness-to-your-applications/
XR Microsoft is shutting down Minecraft Earth. The Pokémon GO-alike AR location game never left closed beta, but restricted movement in lockdowns has killed any chance of it growing an audience this year.
minecraft.net/article/minecraft-earth-coming-end
Gaming Niantic bought gaming community service Mayhem. This is another talent acquisition; the team will build new community experiences for Niantic’s new and existing AR location games.
nianticlabs.com/blog/mayhemgg
Gaming The North Face and Gucci have teamed up to offer a collection of avatar fashion in Pokémon GO. The items will be available from select Pokéstops for a limited time.
hypebeast.com/2021/1/the-north-face-gucci-avatar-items-pokemon-go-release-pin-experience-launch-info
Assistants & Voice Lenovo is introducing Alexa-powered Show Mode to some of its PCs. When enabled, the PCs can act like an Echo Show smart display, with the standard Show UI and ‘Alexa’ wake word detection.
techhive.com/article/3602751/your-lenovo-laptop-will-soon-double-as-an-amazon-echo-show.html
Smart Home Smart devices will be easier to discover and set up with new features for Google’s Home app. Devices can register their Actions to show up in the Home app for one-touch setup, or link directly to the Home app from the device maker’s own app.
developers.googleblog.com/2021/01/announcing-new-smart-home-app-discovery-features.html
Smart Home Amazon redesigned the UI of Fire TV. Changes include more personalised recommendations and improved Alexa navigation.
developer.amazon.com/blogs/appstore/post/adf77ff9-4460-44da-8f83-bf910976cd65/all-new-fire-tv-experience-improved-content-discovery-and-better-personalized-recommendations
Messaging Telegram announced plans to monetise the app. All existing features will remain free, but new revenue includes business tools, advertising in public channels with its own ad platform, and possibly micropayments for things like premium stickers.
t.me/s/durov/142
Machine Learning OpenAI released a neural network trained to create images from text captions. The system, called DALL-E, works with illustration and clip art to generate new illustrations from descriptions; it looks impressive under the closed conditions used in the showcase.
openai.com/blog/dall-e/
Audio Amazon Music will buy podcast content studio Wondery. Amazon says Wondery content won’t be exclusive to its own services, so it’ll be interesting to see what it gets out of the reported £220m acquisition.
aboutamazon.com/news/company-news/wondery-to-join-amazon-music
Events Hopin, a virtual events company, bought StreamYard, a video streaming platform. What with everything moving online in the last year, Hopin has received a huge amount of funding and is becoming a major name in the online events space.
hopin.com/blog/welcome-streamyard
Regulation The US has banned transactions with eight Chinese platforms. Alipay, WeChat Pay, and QQ Wallet are all affected as the trade war intensifies.
reuters.com/article/us-usa-china-tech-exclusive-idUSKBN29A2PA
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