The Tech Landscape #192 đŻââď¸
Twitterâs ambitions, Snapchatâs advantage, and Spotifyâs ads: this is issue 192 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.
Pinch! Punch! Itâs the first of the month!
This week two stories were published on what went wrong at Stadia, Googleâs effort to break into gaming: How Google’s Grand Plan to Make Its Own Games Fell Apart, and Googleâs Stadia Problem? A Video Game Unit Thatâs Not Googley Enough.
I know it seems obvious in hindsight, but launching the service without games that showed the platform-specific benefits put it squarely up against consoles, and consoles have larger libraries and platform exclusive titles. Also, anyone whoâs a console gamer probably already has a console.
Without a studio dedicated to games that can only exist on a cloud platform, I can’t see a future for Stadia as a consumer brand. And it’s a shame, because there’s a lot of promise in cloud gaming.
(Sorry if you follow me on Twitter and have noticed these are recycled tweets; Iâm working on a big, ambitious new slide deck for a presentation this week and I havenât had time to write something unique. If Iâm allowed, Iâll share the presentation next week.)
Anyway, on with the newsletter.
Top Stories
Twitter showed off some major new features itâs planning to launch, including a paid creator subscription service called Super Follow. Itâs also planning Communities, for groups with shared interests, and safety features to automatically block or mute abusive Tweets. Twitter has been under fire for not updating its core product quickly enough, so has been keen to show how it sees the future of the platform.
techcrunch.com/2021/02/25/twitters-super-follow-creator-subscription-takes-shots-at-substack-and-patreon/
Social
The latest version of Snapchatâs Lens Studio brings multi-body tracking, full-body segmentation, and improved hand tracking. Itâs a major upgrade to camera-based AR, very likely using technology from Snapâs recent acquisition of Ariel AI. Snapchatâs phone AR technology is miles ahead of anyone elseâs.
lensstudio.snapchat.com/news/creativity-powered-by-lens-studio-3-4/
XR
Spotify announced Audience Network, a new advertising marketplace which works across all of its music and podcasts. The announcement was made at its Stream On event along with new features for audio creators, including video podcasts and paid-for bonus content, and an expansion into over 80 new markets.
newsroom.spotify.com/2021-02-22/todays-spotify-stream-on-announcements/
Advertising
XR Hardware
Sony announced a new VR system will come to the PS5. Details are scant, although it will be a single-cable tether with improved display, input, and tracking, and a new controller. It wonât launch in 2021, however.
blog.playstation.com/2021/02/23/introducing-the-next-generation-of-vr-on-playstation/
The latest software update for the Oculus Quest 2 lets you add your sofa as a VR boundary. By marking your sofa in the environment map the system can detect when you sit down and automatically switch into âcouch modeâ for reduced movement.
uploadvr.com/oculus-quest-couch-guardian/
Users of the Oculus Quest 2 can now activate voice commands by saying âHey Facebookâ. Voice commands were previously triggered by a button press, so this is an improved hands-free experienceâand will be opt-in only. Handily, this will also help Facebook hone the service before launching its future AR glasses.
oculus.com/blog/say-hey-facebook-to-stay-hands-free-with-oculus-quest-2/
Qualcomm released a reference design for a pair of AR glasses, the XR1 Smart Viewer. (A reference design is essentially a white-labelled technical blueprint that hardware manufacturers can use to build their own version.) The XR1 Smart Viewer tethers to a smartphone or computer, and has cameras for environment mapping and hand tracking built in. Lenovoâs ThinkReality A3 glasses will be the first device based on the reference to hit the market later this year.
theverge.com/2021/2/23/22296100/qualcomm-xr1-smart-viewer-ar-glasses-announce-lenovo-thinkreality-a3
Everything Else
Google released a bundle of new features for Android phones. It includes scheduled sending for Messages, better access to Assistant even when the phone is locked, and an improved TalkBack screen reader for vision-impaired users.
blog.google/products/android/new-features-spring-2021/
Operating Systems
Android made its Sleep API, which tracks how much a person sleeps each day, generally available to developers. The API uses devices sensors to estimate when its owner is sleeping; many different apps use their own estimation system, so this harmonises all of those to save some battery life.
android-developers.googleblog.com/2021/02/low-power-sleep-tracking-on-android.html
Operating Systems
Amazon is extending the trial of its Luna cloud gaming service to all FireTV customers. Itâs a much more cautious rollout than Googleâs Stadia, which reportedly missed its subscription targets by âtens of thousandsâ.
amazonluna.blog/play-amazon-luna-on-fire-tv-e00e1e44810b
Gaming
Google is adding HTML5 games to some of its products in developing markets. The games are by GameSnacks, which came through Googleâs Area 120 incubator, and will be available through the Chrome New Tab page in India, Indonesia, Kenya, and Nigeria, as well as the Discover feed and Google Pay in India.
blog.google/technology/area-120/gamesnacks-html5-games-google-products/
Gaming
Genealogy website MyHeritage announced Deep Nostalgia, a neural net which adds video animation to static photos. The idea is that it brings photos of your ancestors âto lifeâ; some people find it creepy, but I think itâs fascinating.
blog.myheritage.com/2021/02/new-animate-the-faces-in-your-family-photos/
Machine Learning
Appleâs Indoor Mapping Data Format (IMDF) has been adopted as a community standard. Itâs used for mapping and navigating in indoor spaces, useful for maps and augmented reality wayfinding.
appleinsider.com/articles/21/02/24/apples-indoor-mapping-format-adopted-as-community-standard
Maps
Facebook reached an agreement with the Australian government on its media code, and re-enabled news sharing in the country. The deal sees Facebook exempt from the terms of the code as long as it makes deals with publishers directlyâmore or less the same deal Google took. The code is now in effect, but wonât apply to its intended targets as long as they keep paying up.
about.fb.com/news/2021/02/changes-to-sharing-and-viewing-news-on-facebook-in-australia/
Content
Messaging app Telegram added an auto-delete timer for messages, homescreen widgets, and QR codes for invites. The app is adding features at a rapid clip after picking up some new users from WhatsApp.
telegram.org/blog/autodelete-inv2
Messaging
Facebookâs latest experimental apps is BARS, for writing and recording raps. The app, from the New Product Experimentation team, provides professionally-created beats, and a space to write lyrics with suggested rhymes. Itâs available on iOS in the US.
npe.fb.com/2021/02/26/introducing-bars-a-new-beta-test-empowering-rappers-to-create-and-share/
Audio
Google released Lyra, a new audio codec for better compression of low quality speech data. It should improve the transmission of speech under poor network conditions.
ai.googleblog.com/2021/02/lyra-new-very-low-bitrate-codec-for.html
Audio
The Firefox browser added Total Cookie Protection for improving user privacy. It fully prevents cross-site trackingâgood for preventing abuse, but bad for responsible cross-site tracking.
blog.mozilla.org/blog/2021/02/23/latest-firefox-release-includes-multiple-picture-in-picture-and-total-cookie-protection/
Privacy
YouTube announced Supervised Accounts, where parents of children below the age of consent can moderate access to the service. It lets parents set access levels to content, as well as restricting ads and disabling in-app purchases.
blog.youtube/news-and-events/supervised-experiences-for-families-on-youtube
Privacy
Facebook is adding new features to combat child exploitation on its platform. These include dialogs and alerts which notify users who share images that are against guidelines (or the law) with explanations of the potential consequences and links to further information.
about.fb.com/news/2021/02/preventing-child-exploitation-on-our-apps/
Safety
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