Apps

Google is finally making Chrome tablet-friendly • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on October 19, 2022Posted in Android, Apps, Chrome, Google, tabletNo Comments

After ignoring the app experience on Android tablets for years, Google appears increasingly focused on turning things around. Earlier this year, the search giant introduced Android 12L, which brought an improved interface and multitasking experience to tablets and foldable. At the developer conference Google IO in May, it promised to finetune over 20 of its own apps for the tablet experience. Now the search giant is beginning to deliver on that pledge, starting with the browser Chrome. Google has rolled out an update to Chrome for Android tablets that introduces new features such as a side-by-side view for improved tab navigation and the ability to drag and drop information out of Chrome. The side-by-side view will help users navigate between tabs by swiping across the address bar (as shown in the gif below). This is helpful when you can’t really read tab names in settings such as split-screen. Image Credits: Google The drag-and-drop functionality allows users to move around links, images and text from Chrome to apps such as Gmail, Keep and Photos. Watch it in action in the gif below. Google introduced a similar drag-and-drop support for apps such as Drive, Docs, Sheets, Slide and Keep on Android tablets in July. Image Credits: Google What’s more, the refined Chrome for Android tablets adds a grid layout for tabs to make it easier for users to switch between them — instead of having to traverse through the horizontal line of tabs. The revamp also allows users to see large-sized previews of currently open tabs when they swipe up from the bottom of the screen. This feature is already available on Chrome’s smartphone app through the tab switcher. Image Credits: Google The company said its tab groups feature — first introduced for Chrome for desktop in 2020 — is also “coming soon” to Chrome for tablets. “No matter if you prefer using a mouse, a stylus, or your finger, the Chrome on Android experience should be as intuitive and familiar on tablets as on your computer or phone. We’re constantly exploring new ways to make it easier and more enjoyable to use Chrome on your Android tablet — whether it’s easier navigation with the visual tab grid, switching to desktop mode, or finding the tab quickly,” said Lola Adams, Product Manager, Chrome, in a statement. Google is slowly improving the Android tablet experience through app refreshes and software updates as it prepares to launch its own Pixel tablet next year.

Redditors have created millions of crypto wallets to buy NFT avatars • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on October 19, 2022Posted in Apps, Reddit, Social, TechCrunch Disrupt 2022No Comments

In July, Reddit jumped on the NFT train, launching an NFT-based marketplace that allows users to purchase blockchain-based profile pictures for a fixed rate. Given the general sentiment around NFTs today, you might assume — like me — that the experiment ended poorly. But the opposite’s the case apparently. Today during a panel at ZebethMedia Disrupt, Reddit chief product officer Pali Bhat revealed that over three million Redditors have used Reddit’s Vault blockchain wallet to create over three million crypto wallets to date. Most of those — 2.5 million — were created to purchase NFT avatars that can be used as profile pics on the platform, he said. It’s difficult to put the figures into context, given that not all NFT marketplaces willingly share those sorts of metrics. But Dune Analytics estimated in a recent report that one of the leading platforms, OpenSea, was hosting over one million active wallets as of January. Meanwhile, crypto wallet MetaMask was serving over 30 million users as of March. Reddit partnered with roughly 30 artists to release around 40,000 NFT avatar designs a few months ago, which could be purchased via the Reddit mobile app at prices ranging from $9.99 to $99.99. (They’re all sold out at the moment.) Users who purchased one of the limited-edition pics got licensing rights to use it on and off of Reddit as an avatar, and could mix and match their avatar’s look using a built-in avatar builder tool. Reddit partnered with Polygon, an Ethereum-compatible blockchain, to mint the avatars. (In blockchain jargon, “minting” refers to publishing a unique NFT so that it can be bought or sold.) Vault is used to store and manage NFTs through the Reddit app. Reddit’s latest foray into the NFT space comes after the social network began allowing users to set any NFT as their profile picture, following on the heels of Twitter. At the time, NFT avatars were exclusively available to members of the r/CollectibleAvatars subreddit, which was invite-only. Beyond NFTs, Reddit has branched in a number of different directions in recent months in search of new lines of revenue. The company has toyed with the idea of introducing TikTok-like video editing tools and made several targeted acquisitions, buying content moderation startup Oterlu, natural language processing company MeaningCloud, machine learning platform Spell and contextualization company Spiketrap. Reddit also revamped its developer portal to give third-party apps and bots a boost, and it upgraded its live audio product, Reddit Talk, with new discovery features.

Vitag launches NFC-powered ‘sticky notes’ for visual instructions • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on October 18, 2022Posted in Apps, Battlefield 200, Disrupt, Hardware, NFC, Startups, TechCrunch Disrupt 2022, VitagNo Comments

While QR codes emerged as something of a technology poster-child during the pandemic, garnering a new lease of life in everything from restaurant menus to contactless payments, there remains a certain inelegance to the matrix barcode system. Usability remains a sticking point, both in terms of the effort it takes to create content and align it with a QR code, and also from the end-user’s standpoint who has to open their camera app to scan the QR code — something that might not even work in low-light situations. Throw into the mix aesthetics (who’s ever seen an attractive QR code?), and there’s a strong case to be made for an alternative that brings the QR code spirt to a more user friendly format. This is a problem that Vitag is setting out to address, with an NFC product designed for video instructions. Or, “video sticky notes,” as the company calls them. Founded in Dallas in March this year, Vitag is officially announcing its private beta today at TC Disrupt, where the company was selected as one of ZebethMedia’s Battlefield 200 startup cohorts. We caught up with cofounders Sean Jackson (CEO) and CTO Daniel Reiling to get a sneak peek into what exactly it’s looking to achieve. Vitag cofounders: Daniel Reiling (CTO) and Sean Jackson (CEO) Image Credits: ZebethMedia Videos on tap Vitag’s product consists of two core “things”: a mobile app for people to record instructional videos or upload existing material from their device, and a physical NFC-enabled tag that they can program the video to. All the end-user then has to do is tap their phone on the tag, and the video pops up on their screen, demonstrating to an AirBnb guest how to use the A/C system or where the recycling goes. Vitag in action Image Credits: Vitag Of course, it’s easy enough to achieve all this through QR codes — there are many online services for generating QR codes which someone can then tether to a YouTube video that they created. What Vitag does, though, is provide the tools for creating the video, managing tags, and hosting the actual video itself — it has built its own hosting service on top of Google Cloud, with the content viewable only to those with access to a unique URL, which is activated when users tap their phone to a tag. “We created our own service where you can capture a video on your phone, it goes to our servers, and it’s hosted there,” Reiling said. It may seem more intuitive to have just used an existing white-label video hosting service from a company like Vimeo, but the founders explained its reasoning for building its own hosting service: it’s about scalability, controllability, and customizability. While Vimeo might be great for a company to host its own videos, when it comes to potentially hundreds or thousands of Vitag’s own customers who need their own individual accounts for creating and storing hundreds or thousands of videos, this requires full control of the experience from creation through to hosting. The entire back-end and front-end packaged in a single platform. “Our goal is to remove complexity from the process of sharing instructions,” Jackson said. “We believe people are tired of cobbling together different technologies to complete a task — from QR code generators, to different hosting platforms, to desktop publishing tools, to printers, to adhesives — and everything else required.” However, it’s not purely about video. A customer can configure their tag so that it links to a static text page, a photo, URL, or whatever they want. The company offers $2 pre-printed tags specific to a certain type of business, for example restaurants or retail, while creators can also order personalized tags with their own individual text and a choice of different backgrounds. It’s also worth noting that companies can elect to have QR codes printed on the NFC tags for those who prefer to use QR codes, Vitag: Customization interface Image Credits: ZebethMedia Furthermore, Vitag also supports NFC tags from third-party providers, with an in-app function for users to format the tags to work with Vitag. The company said that it’s also planning additional tools in the future, including a desktop app with additional features for small businesses and enterprise customers. NFC surge NFC, or near-field communication as it’s more formally known, is hardly a new technology, but it has taken its time to properly hit the mainstream consciousness, where it still pretty much resides in the payments domain. But its recent growth has been aided somewhat by recent adoption from big tech companies such as Apple, which started to fully embrace NFC with iOS 13 back in 2019 — instead of only allowing iPhone apps to read NFC tags, Apple started to allow apps to write directly to blank tags, and interact through native protocols. The company also recently launched a new “tap to pay” feature that allows iPhones to accept contactless payments over NFC. Elsewhere, NFC is also being used as a replacement for business cards, allowing people to exchange information just by tapping phones. So while QR codes have seen a major resurgence in recent years and are unlikely to being going away any time soon, NFC is on something of an upwards trajectory too, which is where Vitag wants to make its mark. “We believe that consumers are becoming more comfortable with ‘tap to’ events, with payments being the most used today,” Jackson said. “And as more people become exposed to digital business cards the market adoption of ‘tap to’ will only increase.” For now, Vitag is looking to serve the short-term rental property market in the U.S., which Jackson identified as a particularly powerful use-case for video instructions. But plans are afoot to target all manner of verticals, from restaurants and retail stores to gyms. “As we shared our vision of what this technology could do, we found use-case after use-case from almost everyone we encountered,” Jackson explained. “People that stayed in rentals wanted to use them

Calm launches clinical mental health offering, Calm Health • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on October 18, 2022Posted in Apps, Biotech & Health, calm, Calm Health, clinical health, HealthTech, mental healthNo Comments

Calm, the subscription-based mindfulness app, today announced its first foray into a clinical mental health offering: Calm Health. Offered through payers, providers and self-insured employers, Calm Health includes condition-specific programs designed to “bridge the gap between mental and physical healthcare,” according to the company. Calm Health both replaces Calm’s previous employer offering, Calm for Business, and builds off of Calm’s acquisition of tech startup Ripple Health Group in early February. Using Ripple’s technology, Calm Health connects users with different healthcare options, starting with support for patients suffering from anxiety or depression or using programs in-between therapy sessions. Calm plans to eventually add mental health programs for people with physical conditions like hypertension, obesity, heart disease and cancer. “Mental health has risen to the forefront of our nation’s health concerns,” Calm CEO David Ko said in a statement. “From the tolls of the pandemic to financial uncertainty and workplace anxieties, people have turned to Calm over the past ten years to manage their mental health. As we move into healthcare, our goal is to reach even more people with clinical mental health tools and destigmatize the importance of regular mental healthcare.” The rollout of Calm Health comes after a bit of a rough patch for Calm, which laid off 20% of its staff in August as usage fell from a pandemic peak. Prior to the layoffs, Ripple CEO David Ko became Calm’s chief executive, signaling the company’s ambitions to move into new market opportunities. As of December 2020, Calm was valued at $2 billion and had raised $218 million from investors including Insight Venture Partners, Ashton Kutcher’s Sound Ventures and Creative Artists Agency. It competes against rivals including Headspace Health, the result of a 2021 merger between mental health company Ginger and mindfulness-focused Headspace. Headspace Health recently acquired Shine and Sayana as the macroeconomic climate spurred consolidation in the health tech space.

Apple will release iPadOS 16 and macOS Ventura on October 24 • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on October 18, 2022Posted in Apple, Apps, Hardware, ipados 16, macos venturaNo Comments

Apple is releasing iPadOS 16 and macOS Ventura on October 24, the company confirmed on Tuesday amidst a slew of other announcements. iPadOS 16 includes Stage Manager, which offers easier multitasking and switching between apps. The feature was previously only compatible with the M1-powered iPad Air and the 11-inch and 12.9-inch iPad Pro models released last year, but will also be coming to third and fourth-generation iPad Pro models. Stage Manager automatically organizes apps and windows, allowing users to drag and drop windows from the side or open apps from the Dock to create groups of apps. The window of the app users are working on is displayed in the center, and other open apps and windows are arranged on the left-hand side in order of recency. The feature also works with macOS Ventura to create a kind of sidebar where the rest of your open apps sit. The windows are organized by stacks, and your messy desktop files disappear into the ether. When windows are minimized, move over to that left side bar, rather than the tool bar. macOS Ventura also comes with a feature called Continuity Camera, which allows your to use your iPhone as a webcam when you download Ventura on your macOS and iOS 16 on a compatible device. Apple also announced today that its new M2 iPad Pro will launch on October 26. The iPas Pro is getting a spec refresh revolving around an upgrade for the M1 to an M2 chip. The new chip includes eight CPU cores, with a performance bump of around 15%. The GPU is 10 cores, with a stated 35% performance boost, according to Apple. The company also announced a new new version of its entry-level iPad that Apple simply calls “the iPad.” It’s a dramatic refresh as Apple is swapping the familiar design with rounded edges and a home button. Instead, the iPad now looks more like the iPad Air and iPad Pro. The device starts at $449, which is more expensive than the previous version, which was priced at $329. In addition, Apple announced the newest Apple TV 4K today, which features a lower price and more storage. The new Apple TV 4K will be available to purchase on November 4 and will come with an updated Siri remote with a USB-C port for charging. Apple also notes that the A15 Bionic chip delivers up to 50% more CPU performance. The new Apple TV 4K also has HDR10+ and Dolby Vision support for better video quality.

Adobe makes selecting and deleting objects and people in Photoshop and Lightroom a lot easier • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on October 18, 2022Posted in Adobe, AI, Apps, lightroom, photoshopNo Comments

Photoshop and Lightroom are incredibly powerful tools for manipulating images, but since the beginning of time, the most frustrating part of working with these tools has been selecting specific objects to cut them out of an image, move them elsewhere, etc. Over the years, the object selection tools got a lot better, but for complex objects — and especially for masking people — your results still depend on how much patience you have. At its MAX conference, Adobe today announced a number of updates across its photo-centric tools that make all of this a lot easier, thanks to the power of its AI platform. In an earlier update in 2020, Adobe already launched an Object Selection tool that could recognize some types of objects. Now, this tool is getting a lot smarter and can recognize complex objects like the sky, buildings, plants, mountains, sidewalks etc. But maybe more importantly, the system has also gotten a lot more precise and can now preserve the details of a person’s hair, for example, in its masks. That’s a massive time saver. Image Credits: Adobe For those times when you just want to delete an object and then fill in the empty space, using Photoshop’s Content-Aware Fill, the company now introduced a shortcut. Shift+Delete and the object is gone and (hopefully) patched over in with an AI-created filler. On the iPad, mobile users can now remove an image’s background with a single tap and they also get one-tap Content-Aware fill (this is slightly different from the one-click delete and fill feature mentioned above, but achieves a very similar same outcome. iPad users can now use the improved Select Subject AI model as well to more easily select people, animals and objects. Image Credits: Adobe A lot of this AI-powered masking capability is also coming to Lightroom. There’s now a ‘Select People’ feature, for example, that can detect and generate masks for individuals and groups in any images — and you can select specific body parts, too Unsurprisingly, the same Select Objects technology from Photoshop is also coming to Lightroom, as is the one-click select background feature from the iPad version of Photoshop. There’s also now a content-aware remove feature in Lightroom. All of this is powered by Adobe’s Sensei AI platform, which has been a central focus of the company’s efforts in recent years. But what’s maybe even more important is that these efforts have allowed Adobe to turn these features into modules that it can now bring to its entire portfolio and adapt them to specific devices and their use case. On the iPad, for example, the background selection feature is all about deleting that background while in Lightroom it is only about selecting it, but in the end, it’s the same AI model that powers both. Image Credits: Adobe This is, of course, only a small selection of all of the new features coming to Photoshop and Lightroom. There are also features like support for HDR displays in Camera Raw, improved neural filters, a new photo restoration filter, improvements to Photoshop’s tools for requesting review feedback and plenty more.

Revyze is building the TikTok of educational videos • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on October 18, 2022Posted in Apps, edtech, Education, France Newsletter, Revyze, StartupsNo Comments

Meet Revyze, a French startup that is developing a mobile app for iOS and Android at the intersection of education and social. In many ways, Revyze looks just like TikTok. But it is focused specifically on educational content for teenagers. “We talked with kids attending 30 or 35 different high schools,” co-founder Florent Sciberras told me. “We asked them: ‘What do you think about school and what’s the best way to learn?’ And they told us that nobody had ever asked them those questions.” In hindsight, the answer was quite simple and obvious. They said that they would rather learn from their friends than their teachers. “They said ‘because they talk like us and they are like us,’” Sciberras said. And that’s probably the reason why educational videos are so popular on YouTube and TikTok — the hashtag #LearnOnTikTok is massively popular for instance. But there is an issue with mainstream social platforms. They aren’t designed specifically for education. If you watch an interesting video on TikTok, the social app might recommend something completely different when you skip to the next video. You end up jumping from math to dancing cat to physics to magic tricks… Revyze aims to be the TikTok of education — a commmunity-powered app with a sharp focus on high school education. Essentially, Revyze wants to unbundle education videos from TikTok — a very large social platform — so that they get the attention they deserve. At first, the Revyze team focused on France’s baccalauréat, the exam that you have to pass at the end of high school. They built a quick version of the app, put together a Discord community to spread the word and shared a few videos on TikTok and Instagram. In just a few weeks, Revyze managed to attract 35,000 downloads. They reached the #2 spot in the top free apps of the App Store — right behind Doctolib. Image Credits: Revyze This summer, Revyze raised a $2 million pre-seed round (€2 million) from more than a hundred business angels, such as Nate Blecharczyk, Jean-Charles Samuelian, Charles Gorintin, Mathilde Collin, Lenny Rachitzky, Thomas France, Julia Bijaoui, Roxanne Varza, Arion (Jacques Attali’s fund), Olivier Dacourt, Varsha Rao and others. firstminute Capital, Kima Ventures, AirAngels, Nomad Capital and Ligature VC also invested. Now, the company wants to turn this small experiment into a massive social/education app. “Our goal is to reach 500,000 users by the end of the year and to expand to the U.S. within 6 to 12 months,” co-founder Guillaume Perrot told me. Building the community behind the app So what does Revyze feel like? When you open the app, you get a TikTok-like feed of videos. These videos fill the entire screen and you can skip to the next video with a simple swiping gesture. There’s a three-minute limit on video length. On the second tab, you can explore the video library more granularly. You can select a topic, such as math or literature, and even select a chapter in the syllabus. Revyze started with French high school students in their final year and is progressively expanding to other grades. And because we are talking about educational content, Revyze is paying close attention to the videos that are uploaded to the app. When a user submits a video, it isn’t instantly live on the platform. “Videos are validated by us and by the community,” Perrot said. “We want to make sure that it’s high-quality content, that it’s accurate and that it isn’t off-topic. Eventually, there will be a peer moderation system and after that we will add a bit of machine learning.” What do you get when you post on Revyze? A warm fuzzy feeling. In more technical term, you amass reward points just like on Stack Overflow. These reward points are called EDU. You get 20 points when you post a video, and you get one point when someone thanks you for the video. Some teens post videos because explaining a concept is the best way to know for sure that they understand it perfectly well. Others want to climb the leaderboard. In the long-term, if web3 is more than just a fad, Revyze could also turn EDU into a currency to reward the community for their contributions. But that’s not the next item on the roadmap. Up next, Revyze is going to expand to more countries and more educational systems. There are also a ton of opportunities when it comes to personalizing the app for each user. Revyze plans to algorithmically sort videos so that they are relevant to your level and your way of learning — an algorithm with a focus on learning outcomes instead of watch time. This way, users should waste less time skipping videos to they find relevant content. “We aren’t a social network,” Sciberras said. “Our goal is that you should spend as little time as possible in the app to learn as much as possible.” Image Credits: Revyze

YouTube ends the test asking users to get a premium subscription to watch 4K videos • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on October 18, 2022Posted in 4k, Apps, Google, subscriptions, YouTubeNo Comments

Earlier this month, YouTube ran an experiment where it asked some free users to upgrade to a premium account to watch videos in 4K resolution. The company has now ended this test — probably because of uproar from users. In a tweet, YouTube confirmed the end of the experiment and said, “viewers should now be able to access 4K quality resolutions without Premium membership.” So all users can now watch videos at the highest resolution without paying for a subscription. we’ve fully turned off this experiment. viewers should now be able to access 4K quality resolutions without Premium membership. we’re here if you have other q’s — TeamYouTube (@TeamYouTube) October 17, 2022 YouTube ran the test to understand to gauge users’ reactions when a particular feature was pushed behind the premium tier. In a now-deleted tweet, the company told a user who got a pop-up asking them to upgrade that the user was “a part of our experiment to know better the feature preferences of Premium & non-Premium viewers.” Google charges $9.99 per month for YouTube Music and $11.99 per month for YouTube premium in the U.S. — these prices vary across the world. The company claims to have more than 50 million paid subscribers across both offerings globally. The Premium subscription offers features like ad-free viewing, video downloads for offline consumption, and background play. YouTube tries many ways to convert free users into paid users. Earlier this year, it ran an experiment showing users up to 11 unskippable ads before the start of a long video to let them have an uninterrupted experience. This test was short-lived and the company ended it within days. Last week, YouTube introduced a new feature called handles — which is similar to what other social networks like Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook offer — that allows creators to direct viewers to their channel easily.

With over 43M K-12 users, Adobe Express for Education gets new AI and safe search tools • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on October 17, 2022Posted in Adobe, Adobe Express, Apps, EducationNo Comments

Adobe Express, the company’s template-centric tool for helping anyone quickly create logos, banners, flyers, ads and more, has always long offered a free version for schools. As the company announced today — one day before its annual MAX conference — Adobe Express for Education now has over 43 million K-12 users globally. With over 43M K-12 users, Adobe Express for Education gets new AI and safe search tools In case you’re confused about the naming here, it’s worth remembering that Adobe Express was originally called Creative Cloud Express, which itself was a rebranded and updated edition of Adobe Spark. Image Credits: Adobe As part of today’s announcement, the company is also launching a number of new features for Adobe Express for Education. It now features the company’s context-aware AI-powered templates that make it easier for non-designers to create more professional-looking content. The feature evaluates your pre-made content (text, images, etc.) and then recommends relevant templates. There is now also a new font recommendation tool that uses the overall context of a project to recommend appropriate fonts from the company’s Adobe Font service. Maybe most importantly, though, the company also today introduced safe image and video searches and customized K-12 and higher education resource pages. Yet while all of this AI magic is surely cool, I can’t help but wonder if it doesn’t stifle students’ imaginations a bit. It’s surely useful for teachers, but I don’t think anybody’s expectation of a third-grader should be to be able to produce an AI-enhanced flyer for her science fair project. It’s been a long time since I stood before a classroom, though, so maybe that’s changed. “I taught my fifth graders how to use Adobe Express, and they created culminating projects about how to carefully evaluate information found on the web,” said Linda Dickinson, Media and Educational Technology Instructor, Abbotts Hill Elementary School. “They loved sharing what they learned using Express! It allowed them to showcase their creativity and share what they felt was most important, authentically.”