Proximity

The freezers at your local pharmacy are watching you

Feb 6, 2019 | ,

A startup named Cooler Screens is piloting a new door for commercial freezers and refrigerators that’s equipped with a camera, motion sensors, and eye tracking in six Walgreens pharmacies around the country, including the one off of Union Square. The doors can discern your gender, your general age range, what products you’re looking at, how long you’re standing there, and even what your emotional response is to a particular product.

Source: The freezers at your local pharmacy are watching you

It Looks Like SoundCloud Is Getting Healthier 

Feb 3, 2019 |

Artists and bands everywhere have been worried for a while about whether SoundCloud would change drastically in order to survive, thanks to the ever growing losses that the company was experiencing. The platform is the main window to the outside world for many indie act’s music, and for many the thought of finding a new service is daunting. It looks like you can put that worry on hold though, as the company has reported an increase of revenue by 80%, and while it’s still not profitable, the losses are dropping.

Source: It Looks Like SoundCloud Is Getting Healthier – Music 3.0 Music Industry Blog

Apple, the iPhone, and the Innovator’s Dilemma

Feb 2, 2019 | ,

IF YOU RE-READ the first few chapters of The Innovator’s Dilemma and you insert “Apple” every time Clayton Christensen mentions “a company,” a certain picture emerges: Apple is a company on the verge of being disrupted, and the next great idea in tech and consumer electronics will not materialize from within the walls of its Cupertino spaceship.

Source: Apple, the iPhone, and the Innovator’s Dilemma | WIRED

Marshmello Just Live Streamed on Fortnite…So Just What is a Concert? 

Feb 2, 2019 | , ,

On Saturday I watched my 12 year old son scoff down his meal so that he could rush upstairs to get logged on with his friends in time for a Marshmello live streamed event on Fortnite. As you can see from the video this was Marshmello appearing as a Fortnite character, on stage with his music playing. Meanwhile Fortnite players moved around the ‘concert venue’ showing off their dance moves – all of which of course had been purchased in app with Fortnite VBucks. In-game live experiences like this are nothing new, but it may just be that we are beginning to get to a tipping point in shared gaming experiences for Gen Z that will shape their entertainment expectations for years to come. Tweens and teens are already spending more time socializing via social media than real world contact, connected gaming is adding to that mix.

Source: Marshmello Just Live Streamed on Fortnite…So Just What is a Concert? | MIDiA Research

The Super Bowl dominates TV — and it will crush it in VR, too

Feb 2, 2019 | ,

VR has had early success in the world of live events, with platforms like NBA + Intel True VR and NextVR. These technologies allow viewers to get a 360-degree VR view courtside or from midfield and provide a way for fans to virtually attend an event, even if they can’t can’t travel to see their favorite team or aren’t able to pay full price for a ticket. But the challenges with video resolution on today’s VR devices and high-bandwidth requirements for rich 360-degree content make this a nonstarter for broad consumption. Tech and sports enthusiasts might suffer through these limitations to watch a regular season game in a new way, but the Super Bowl is something different altogether.

Source: The Super Bowl dominates TV — and it will crush it in VR, too

Nintendo lists top 10 best-selling games for Nintendo Switch 

Feb 2, 2019 |

  • Nintendo’s Switch is outrageously popular, and Nintendo’s games on the Switch are selling like gangbusters.
  • Several games have already sold over 10 million copies, including December’s “Super Smash Bros. Ultimate.”
  • In a surprise twist, neither a “Super Mario” nor a “Legend of Zelda” game is the best-selling game on the Switch.

Source: Nintendo lists top 10 best-selling games for Nintendo Switch – Business Insider

Facebook is a persuasion platform that’s changing the advertising rulebook

Feb 1, 2019 | ,

The way people interact with Facebook is changing how they can be persuaded to think about or do a particular thing.

With tons of information presented at the same time, your brain is forced to decide quickly what’s relevant or interesting. Facebook and other social media services take advantage of this – pushing you to slip easily from thought to behavior. It emphasizes your impulses and decreases the opportunities for you to think more thoroughly about your perceptions, attitudes and decisions.

Source: Facebook is a persuasion platform that’s changing the advertising rulebook

Facebook Is Combining Aspects of Its Messaging Properties: What It Means for Advertisers and Users 

Feb 1, 2019 |

The recent news that Facebook is in early stages of combining the messaging features of several of its properties, as reported by The New York Times last week, raises many questions about how advertisers and users will be affected. In this eMarketer Analyst Insight, Debra Aho Williamson and Jasmine Enberg explain what it could mean for these two groups.

Source: Facebook Is Combining Aspects of Its Messaging Properties: What It Means for Advertisers and Users – eMarketer Trends, Forecasts & Statistics

Why Netflix changed the intro to its original programming

Feb 1, 2019 |

These little audio visual preambles offer the on-screen equivalent to liminal space.  In architecture theory, a liminal space is essentially a transition between one space and another. When you walk into a movie theater, you don’t actually walk directly from the parking lot, through a door, and into a room with seats and screens. First, you walk through the concourse, maybe buying some popcorn–which boosts the theater’s bottom line, okay. But the concourse also gives your mind a cleansing area, to shake off the stress of the day and prepare you to sit for two hours in a dark room. This is exactly the experience Netflix wants to create, just without the building or the popcorn.

Source: Why Netflix changed the intro to its original programming

The BuzzFeed Layoffs as Democratic Emergency 

Jan 30, 2019 | ,

Digital media has always been a turbulent business, but last week’s layoffs suggest a reason for panic. The cause of each company’s troubles may be distinct, but collectively the blood bath points to the same underlying market pathology: the inability of the digital advertising business to make much meaningful room for anyone but monopolistic tech giants.

Source: Opinion | The BuzzFeed Layoffs as Democratic Emergency – The New York Times

Games Can Breed Uncivil Behavior. They Can Also Teach Digital Citizenship. 

Jan 30, 2019 |

While social games foster collaboration and competition, they have also been home to hostile communities, where harassment and uncivil behavior can run rampant and make headlines. Some online multiplayer games have become so ridden with profanity that many players disable chat functions. 

Yet games are an enduring medium; more than 90 percent of teens play video games, according to a 2018 Pew survey. And some educators and researchers are optimistic that, with the right guidance and oversight, kids can pick up healthy habits even as they engross themselves in yet another Fortnite battle royale.

Source: Games Can Breed Uncivil Behavior. They Can Also Teach Digital Citizenship. | EdSurge News

Tim Cook Says Apple Plans to Participate in the ‘Breakdown of the Cable Bundle’ With AirPlay 2, Original Content and More 

Jan 29, 2019 | ,

Apple CEO Tim Cook today commented on the opportunities Apple sees in the video market, though he declined to provide details on the company’s specific plans. 

Cook said that Apple sees “huge changes” taking place in customer behavior, which the company expects to “accelerate as the year goes by.” Specifically, Cook said that Apple is expecting an acceleration of the breakdown of the cable bundle. “I think it’ll likely take place at a much faster pace this year,” he said. 

Source: Tim Cook Says Apple Plans to Participate in the ‘Breakdown of the Cable Bundle’ With AirPlay 2, Original Content and More – MacRumors

Facebook pays teens to install VPN that spies on them 

Jan 29, 2019 | ,

Desperate for data on its competitors, Facebook has been secretly paying people to install a “Facebook Research” VPN that lets the company suck in all of a user’s phone and web activity, similar to Facebook’s Onavo Protect app that Apple banned in June and that was removed in August. Facebook sidesteps the App Store and rewards teenagers and adults to download the Research app and give it root access in what may be a violation of Apple policy so the social network can decrypt and analyze their phone activity, a TechCrunch investigation confirms. Facebook admitted to TechCrunch it was running the Research program to gather data on usage habits.

Source: Facebook pays teens to install VPN that spies on them | TechCrunch

Love in the Age of Data 

Jan 27, 2019 | , ,

Ours is the data-driven age. Arguments and claims made in the media and in the academy are backed up with harvested “empirical” information drawn from data collection technologies that make dystopian cybernetic dreams seem like relics from the ancient past. Data sets control what we see on our internet searches, social media feeds, and television screens, yet that process of selection remains deliberately obscured. Data as a methodology percolates through every area of the university, and new appointments (even in the so-called “arts”) reward scholars who apply data analytics software to understand everything from gender to poetry. Mobile apps manage everything from eating habits to menstrual cycles using data-formatted algorithms, while “smart condoms” collect sexual movements into large aggregated sets which set a new blueprint for the sexual future.

Source: Love in the Age of Data – Los Angeles Review of Books

The Tech Revolt 

Jan 27, 2019 |

They Slacked. They messaged on Signal. They circulated pledges on Google Docs. They talked on the phone. They spoke quietly to one another in the cafeteria and spoke up at company-wide meetings. Whether it was protesting projects with ICE and the Chinese government or walking out to demand better treatment of women, political activism has entered tech with a force that the industry has never experienced. 

Source: The Tech Revolt — The California Sunday Magazine

How Brands Turned Trolling Into a Marketing Strategy

Jan 27, 2019 | , ,

We were once responsible for describing our own tastes, which meant we sometimes lied about them. At the very least, we had strategically selective memories.

But streaming services have put an end to that. Each year-end now brings massive number dumps from the likes of Spotify and Netflix, as if to remind us exactly how much personal information they can hoover up through users’ relationship to entertainment. Perversely enough — and to a strange acclaim in the world of creative marketing — these two digital giants have used their extensive findings to roast their outlying customers.

Source: How Brands Turned Trolling Into a Marketing Strategy

Apple’s Precarious and Pivotal 2019 

Jan 27, 2019 | ,

The iPhone has simply been too good of a business. And it’s hard to see what tops it. Certainly in the near term. If Services is to carry Apple in the future, it will likely be only after years of relatively stagnant iPhone revenue growth mixed with a rising overall market. In other words, time and the broader world will have to catch up. And then Apple can have their “Microsoft Moment” — a services-based resurrection of growth.

Source: Apple’s Precarious and Pivotal 2019 – 500ish Words

‘Ellie’ Was a Rising Star in the Gaming World. Or Was She? 

Jan 26, 2019 | , ,

The strange saga of a fake female gamer and her encounter with the misogynistic world of e-sports. Women who compete professionally in e-sports face heckling from teammates and fans, and are sometimes accused of serving as fronts for male players. At the same time, team owners with an eye toward reaching a potentially gigantic untapped market of young female viewers remain eager to diversify their rosters to provide an entry point for girls who might never have thought of video

Source: Opinion | ‘Ellie’ Was a Rising Star in the Gaming World. Or Was She? – The New York Times

Mark Zuckerberg, Let Me Be Your Ghost Writer 

Jan 25, 2019 | ,

MARK WROTE: “Facebook turns 15 next month. When I started Facebook, I wasn’t trying to build a global company. I realized you could find almost anything on the internet — music, books, information — except the thing that matters most: people. So I built a service people could use to connect and learn about each other. Over the years, billions have found this useful, and we’ve built more services that people around the world love and use every day. Recently I’ve heard many questions about our business model, so I want to explain the principles of how we operate.”

KARA TRANSLATES: We old now. We big now. It came from my one really good idea: AOL sucked and I could do better and I did. Now the noise has reached me up on Billionaire Mountain, so I am going to have to pretend that I care.

Source: Opinion | Mark Zuckerberg, Let Me Be Your Ghost Writer – The New York Times