How Social Platforms Are Using Video to Capture Audience Attention
Facebook, Snapchat and Twitter are embarking on a massive land grab for video content, hoping to drive increased usage and capture a greater portion of digital video ad revenues with familiar ad formats such as pre-roll and mid-roll.
Source: How Social Platforms Are Using Video to Capture Audience Attention – eMarketer
12 Essential Apps for DIY Musicians and Bands
If you’re an indie musician, you probably need a bit of help. Apps like OffTop, Gigtown, Mixed in Key, and more are here to help you in your music career.
How Google Maps knows when there’s traffic
Google Maps is a very useful tool for navigating your way through traffic and quickly getting you to your destination. But how it works may creep you out.
Source: How Google Maps knows when there’s traffic – Business Insider
How streaming is taking esports to the big leagues
Streaming and esports have been intertwined through their history. As the esports industry evolves to more resemble traditional sports, companies are starting to invest in exclusive streaming partnerships.
Source: How streaming is taking esports to the big leagues | VentureBeat | Esports | by Damian Alonzo
Apple could guide you around your city using augmented reality
ARKit + CoreLocation, part 2 pic.twitter.com/AyQiFyzlj3
— Andrew Hart (@AndrewProjDent) July 21, 2017
ARKit is one of the biggest changes in iOS 11. Under the hood, Apple is about to transform the iPhone into a very capable augmented reality device.
Source: Apple could guide you around your city using augmented reality | TechCrunch
See also: Want To Learn A New Language? With This AR App, Just Point And Tap
Glitch: The Sleeper Coding Community Used By Facebook And Slack
“There used to be an immediacy to the web,” says Anil Dash. “It was something you made.”
Source: Glitch: The Sleeper Coding Community Used By Facebook And Slack
College Grads Have Nothing to Hide from Employers on Social Media
Students of higher ed aren’t worried about living their lives online—some even think social media might benefit their employment prospects.
Source: College Grads Have Nothing to Hide from Employers on Social Media – eMarketer
Google Is Basically Making Lego Kits For VR
Google wants to get more people building in VR–and to do so, it’s turning to a tried-and-true approach from the real world.
Tech’s Damaging Myth of the Loner Genius Nerd
In truth, interpersonal skills like collaboration, communication and empathy are vital to career success in technology.
Source: Tech’s Damaging Myth of the Loner Genius Nerd – The New York Times
Amazon’s Alexa vs. Google’s Assistant: Same Questions, Different Answers
You can, on a whim, ask them almost any question and they will try to answer it. I have both devices on my desk, and almost immediately I noticed something very puzzling: They often give different answers to the same questions. Not opinion questions, you understand, but factual questions, the kinds of things you would expect them to be in full agreement on, such as the number of seconds in a year.
How can this be? Assuming they correctly understand the words in the question, how can they give different answers to the same straightforward questions? Upon inspection, it turns out there are ten reasons, each of which reveals an inherent limitation of artificial intelligence as we currently know it.
Source: Gigaom | Amazon’s Alexa vs. Google’s Assistant: Same Questions, Different Answers
7 Sound Experiments That Hint At The Future of Interfaces
Hear that? It’s avant-garde UI.
Source: 7 Sound Experiments That Hint At The Future of Interfaces
Can Real Life Compete With an Instagram Playground?
This professionalized tier of Instagram has created its own industry complete with with models, beauty experts, designers, trendsetters, interior designers, and “it” humans that all traffic in similar aesthetics. And as the masses have become more discerning about their photos and where to take them, a specific “Instagram look” has developed. Critics have expressed concern over society’s navel-gazing, and the utter sameness that results in fashion, architecture, or art when it’s designed to be captured on someone’s Instagram feed. Social media “absolutely perpetuates one aesthetic,” a longtime makeup artist told The New York Times last year in an article titled “‘Instagram Face’: Is It the End of Good Makeup?” “It’s like looking at a bunch of clones. They’re Botoxed, filled and surgeried to look like Kim.”
Source: Can Real Life Compete With an Instagram Playground? – The Ringer
One chart shows the highest paid eSports players in the world
eSports players can make tens of thousands of dollars in prize money every year. This chart shows the top earning gamers in the world.
Source: One chart shows the highest paid eSports players in the world – Business Insider
Here’s Why Influencers Are Making Bank
A study finds that influencers are driving engagement on Instagram at levels brands are unable to generate themselves.
We’re in the early stages of a visual revolution in journalism
That video that is currently soaring across social media — maybe it’s a text-heavy explainer with dynamic motion graphics, or a video-driven news story with sharply concise captions — is less an evolution of video itself and more of an evolution of the hundreds and thousands of pieces of text-based journalism that are produced and consumed digitally. Audiences that spent time consuming only the first couple of paragraphs of a news story are now watching 45 seconds of a video that conveys the same information. And, yes, sometimes with words on the screen. I believe this will become more sophisticated and more prevalent, and before you tell me that it’s intellectually inferior, just believe me — it’s not in its final form. It’s on us to innovate so that it has the power and impact we want it to.
Source: We’re in the early stages of a visual revolution in journalism – Recode
Have Smartphones Destroyed a Generation?
More comfortable online than out partying, post-Millennials are safer, physically, than adolescents have ever been. But they’re on the brink of a mental-health crisis.
Source: Have Smartphones Destroyed a Generation? – The Atlantic
See also: The The iPhone turns 10 – and it’s isolated us, not united us
Celebrities Tweet Like Bots
Celebrity Twitter accounts look a lot like Twitter bots: they tweet regularly, follow relatively few people, and upload a lot of content.
Source: Celebrities Tweet Like Bots – Scientific American
See also: The Implications of Twitterbot Generated Data Trafffic on Networked Systems
Virtualitics: VR/AR Analytics Platform using AI & Machine Learning
Virtualitics is a transformative start-up company that merges artificial intelligence (AI), big data and virtual reality (VR), and augmented reality (AR) to gain insights from big and complex data sets. Furthermore, Virtualitics leverages AI and easy-to-use machine learning tools so even non-expert users can uncover multidimensional relationships present in complex data sets with the click of a button.
If SoundCloud Disappears, What Happens to Its Music Culture?
The platform offered a public space with monetization as an afterthought. Now it could simply be deleted.
Source: If SoundCloud Disappears, What Happens to Its Music Culture? – The New York Times
What Disney Villains Tell Us About Color Psychology
What makes Disney villains so evil and Disney heroes so good? This infographic shows that color selection might have something to do with it.
Source: What Disney Villains Tell Us About Color Psychology [Infographic] – Venngage
Where Creativity Is Headed Next
Researchers showed off new tools to augment human creativity at Siggraph, the year’s biggest computer graphics conference.
Source: 5 Mind-Bending Experiments That Show Where Creativity Is Headed Next
What Does ‘Late Capitalism’ Really Mean? –
The cynical #latecapitalism meme going around social media calls out the inequities and absurdities of the modern economy. Google search interest in the phrase has more than doubled in the past year.
Source: What Does ‘Late Capitalism’ Really Mean? – The Atlantic – The Atlantic
Why all new music sounds the same
THE CLICK – THE DRUMMERS from Greg Ellis on Vimeo.
“People are consuming the musical equivalent of McDonalds: processed, mass produced, and flavorless.”
The Revolution in Advertising: From Don Draper to Big Data
Advertising in the digital age bears little resemblance to the Mad Men depiction—the Don Drapers of advertising have been replaced by big data and the people who work with it. Professor John Deighton, the author of the case “WPP: From Mad Men to Math Men (and Women),” and Sir Martin Sorrell, founder and group chief executive of WPP and the protagonist in the case, discuss how WPP has been successful in the new advertising world order, where algorithms and robots rule
Can Snapchat Survive?
Although Snapchat is one of the most innovative social media platforms out there, it is certainly not the most profitable. The brand lost $1 billion alone last quarter, forcing marketers to question Snapchat’s future as an essential medium for advertising.
Source: The Cases for and Against Snapchat’s Survival – Social Media Explorer
The “Phigital” Generation
A major generational clash is underway, says a foremost expert, and it’s affecting all industries, including education. The clash is coming from so-called Gen Z, the first generation to be considered fully “phigital” — unwilling or unable to draw a distinction between the physical world and its digital equivalent.
Source: The Rising “Phigital” Student Is More Wired In | edCircuit
The iPhone turns 10 – and it’s isolated us, not united us
How has the first generation of kids to grow up with the iPhone been affected?
Source: The iPhone turns 10 – and it’s isolated us, not united us
See also: Have Smartphones Destroyed a Generation?
How The Dream Of Social VR Can Become A Reality
Virtual reality is still searching for the killer app. Social VR can fill that void.
Source: How The Dream Of Social VR Can Become A Reality – ARC
The Peak TV Bubble Hasn’t Burst, But It’s Leaking
As Netflix, Amazon and Hulu continue to dominate, the quantity of new scripted content from the second tier of cable networks is likely to decline.
Source: Tim Goodman: The Peak TV Bubble Hasn’t Burst, But It’s Leaking | Hollywood Reporter
Millennials, Gen Xers outvoted Boomers and older generations in 2016 election
Millennials and Generation Xers cast 69.6 million votes in the 2016 general election, a slight majority of the 137.5 million total votes cast.
Source: Millennials, Gen Xers outvoted Boomers and older generations in 2016 election | Pew Research Center
Is Amazon getting too big?
A 28-year-old law student takes on the “Everything Store” by questioning whether antitrust law is ready to deal with a winner-take-all economy
Source: Is Amazon getting too big? – The Washington Post
See also The Yale Law Journal article: Amazon’s Antitrust Paradox
How do we know the millennial generation exists? Look at the data
It’s become fashionable to suggest that generational designations are arbitrary or a ‘myth.’ But social scientists can pinpoint generational and cultural changes with a surprising degree of accuracy.
Source: How do we know the millennial generation exists? Look at the data
How High-Frequency Trading Is Conquering Emerging Markets
It’s sweeping the world, but can emerging markets handle the risk of a flash-crash?
Source: How High-Frequency Trading Is Conquering Emerging Markets | Fast Forward | OZY
See also: Why Marx is Essential
How the Tech Revolution Is Bringing Flip-Flops and Beanbags to Wall Street
Finance giants love to announce that they’re actually now tech companies. But can Wall Street really change?
Source: How the Tech Revolution Is Bringing Flip-Flops and Beanbags to Wall Street | Fast Forward | OZY
A musician’s take on the analog-digital divide
The Audiophiliac reviews Damon Krukowski’s new book “The New Analog: Listening and Reconnecting in a Digital World.”
Source: A musician’s take on the analog-digital divide – CNET
Our Minds Have Been Hijacked by Our Phones
The founder of a nonprofit aimed at stopping tech companies from “hijacking our minds” says internet users must reclaim their humanity.
Source: Our Minds Have Been Hijacked by Our Phones. Tristan Harris Wants to Rescue Them | WIRED
How CGI & AI will empower ‘fake news’
An image from a video suggesting that Julian Assange is dead and has been replaced by a CGI model.
Most people trust what they watch — but that won’t always be the case. Tech is being developed that will make it easy to create fake video footage of public figures or audio of their voice. The developments aren’t perfect yet, but they threaten to turbocharge “fake news” and boost hoaxes online. In years to come, people will need to be far more skeptical about the media they see.
Source: How CGI, AI will empower ‘fake news,’ make it harder to tell if videos are real – Business Insider
Google, Samsung boost in-app revenue to match Apple
Apple may be losing its grip as the most valuable app platform
Source: Google, Samsung boost in-app revenue to match Apple – Business Insider
Why Marx is Essential
What is extraordinary about Das Kapital is that it offers a still-unrivalled picture of the dynamism of capitalism and its transformation of societies on a global scale. It firmly embedded concepts such as commodity and capital in the lexicon. And it highlights some of the vulnerabilities of capitalism, including its unsettling disruption of states and political systems. The election of Donald Trump, the vote for Brexit and the rise of populism in Europe and elsewhere can all be understood as indirect effects of shifts in the global division of labour — the relocation of key aspects of modern production away from Europe and the United States. That has been brought about by changes in what Marx identified as the capitalist enterprise’s incessant drive to expansion.
Source: In retrospect: Das Kapital : Nature : Nature Research
The Three Eras Of Paid Streaming
Streaming has driven such a revenue renaissance within the major record labels that the financial markets are now falling over themselves to work out where they can invest in the market . . . .
Source: The Three Eras Of Paid Streaming | Music Industry Blog