Even if they're already winning the OS wars, Google is trying its hardest to prove that it can be as artistic and design-savvy as Apple. Google's latest creative concoction is an online installation called "The Cube." It's tied in to Google Play, and is likely an attempt to convince people that Google's digital marketplace is just as hip as the App Store.
The Cube is an interactive music video for Australian EDM duo The Presets, who let Google use their song "No Fun" as part of another strange addition to their list of cube-based Google interactives.
"The Cube has different videos on each side, and as you move around, the videos stay in sync with each other," Google Creative Lab Director Tom Uglow said in a behind-the-scenes video. "It's basically like watching a film from six different sides at once."
As you navigate around The Cube, you see different videos and visualizations that play samples from the complete song. But one panel stands out from the others — a creepy video of a woman taking a bath, listening to "No Fun" on her headphones until something off-camera startles her. By the end of the video, she's gotten up to investigate, gone down an eerie hallway, which turns to black as the song finishes.
Many digital interactive art projects have an element of the paranoid, but the most interesting thing about The Cube isn't the creeping feeling of voyerism or surveillance, but of missing out — that even as you peek in on one side of the story, there's something lurking on the other side, whether you're watching or not.
This isn't the first of Google's attention-grabbing artist collaborations. They've worked with Arcade Fire twice already, going right for the throat of the MacBook-toting, latte-chugging iPhone crowd. So who are they after with this one, glowstick-twirling Australian ravers?
Regardless, it's a cool project. 10 points for Google.
Ms. Luff, back at the scene of the crime. That's her husband chillin' out back there. (Screengrab: YouTube)
An elderly woman's exploding laptop made for the worst kind of Fourth of July fireworks this week (#sorrynotsorry).
Philadelphia resident Loretta Luff, 72, was innocently playing Spider Solitaire and chilling with her two toy poodles when her six-year-old Dell Inspiron laptop exploded in her face, Philly.com reports.
The explosion send hot battery acid and computer parts flying across the living room. Some of the debris hit Ms. Luff herself, causing her tank top to catch fire. She reportedly ripped off the shirt when she realized it was aflame. The carpet also caught fire, though Ms. Luff extinguished it with the poodles' water bowl — a surprisingly well-thought-out move for someone who'd literally just been on fire.
Ms. Luff was taken to the hospital and treated for first- and second-degree burns on her face, arms, chest and foot, which was injured when she stepped directly onto one of the computer's white-hot batteries. Shudder. Doctors also "pulled 'stuff' from her nostrils," according to Philly.com's report. She was released from the hospital later that night. It should also be noted that the two toy poodles are doing just fine.
The local fire chief said it was too early to determine what caused the explosion, though he noted there had been a power outage in Ms. Luff's neighborhood earlier that day, and that the laptop had been getting power from an extension cord.
A new startup called My Coin Solution launched to help make accepting Bitcoin effortless for online vendors.
"There’s web developers for the web, and we’re sort of the bitcoins developers for bitcoins,” Co-founder of My Coin Solution, Adam Kitain, told Betabeat, adding that they're "trying to make Bitcoin available to people who aren't tech or Bitcoin savvy."
Bitcoin companies like BitPay and Coinbase deal with the buying, selling and exchange of bitcoin themselves, but that doesn't help retailers who don't know how Bitcoin works in the first place. My Coin Solution actually works with companies to teach them what they need to know and completely handles the implementation of the systems needed to start taking Bitcoin.
“Accepting bitcoins isn't difficult per se, but there's definitely nuances, tricks and technical hurdles that companies have to jump,” Mr Kitain said.
Although Bitcoin has experienced a huge boom in interest over the last few months, interested companies are still confused about what exactly bitcoin is and how it works. That knowledge gap is the biggest obstacle for businesses who could benefit from Bitcoin, Mr. Kitain said.
Bitcoin can be beneficial to businesses for a number of reasons. Firstly, receiving payment through Bitcoin can save companies a ton on transaction fees. Credit card companies and other ecommerce mediums like PayPal collect around three percent, but Bitcoin transaction fees are free for the first year and only one percent thereafter.
Additionally, vendors aren't susceptible to lose money to fraudulent chargebacks when the payment is made with Bitcoin. Merchants can still refund Bitcoin payments on their own, however.
There’s also the phenomenon known as the Bitcoin bump: when business start accepting Bitcoin, it makes them look cutting edge, and the cryptocurrency fanatics show up for the sole reason of spending their bitcoins.
"The community is growing quickly, and it's full of people who have them and want to spend them," Mr. Kitain added.
Consumers who use Bitcoin find the payment method easy, versatile and, most importantly, safe.
"You have to give so much info up for a merchant to charge your credit card, and as we know, it may not be safe. It can be stolen," said Mr. Kitain while reminiscing on the recent Target scandal along with other major breaches.
My Coin Solution has already helped a handful of businesses join the Bitcoin world, and with the movement just beginning to take off, it's likely more and more businesses and consumers will want to join very soon as well.
This is probably a post prom party. (Photo via Wikipedia)
If you're wondering which teens are most likely to be crushing thirties of Natty Ice and working on their keg stands by age 16, there's new #tech for that.
Neuroscientists "taught" a computer to look at factors commonly associated with teen binge drinking and predict future drinking habits of 14-year-olds, The Verge reported.
In the study, published today in Nature, the researchers linked binge drinking habits of 16-year-olds to various data surrounding their personality, life history and other traits that was collected when they were 14.
The computer found more than 40 variables that influence future alcohol abuse in teens, and when applied to a new group of 14-year-olds, the computer predicted binge drinkers with 70 percent accuracy.
"We learned that predicting teenage binge drinking is possible," Robert Whelan, the study's lead author, told The Verge.
He believes picking out these trends and providing early intervention for those at risk could prevent destructive alcohol abuse among teenagers.
Delivered yesterday on a trip to New Delhi, the COO's apology marked the first public statement by a Facebook executive in response to the study, which sought to determine whether data scientists could manipulate the emotions of 700,000 of the social media site's users (answer: not really).
“This was part of ongoing research companies do to test different products, and that was what it was; it was poorly communicated,” Ms. Sandberg reportedly said. “And for that communication we apologize. We never meant to upset you.”
Ms. Sandberg doesn't sound particularly sorry that the study happened — only that it wasn't "communicated better." Womp womp. Next time, hopefully we'll know when Facebook's forcing us to look at more happy or depressing news feed posts than normal.
Boatbound marketing director Craig Battin enjoyed himself on the bow during last week's press tour. (Photo via Boatbound)
Now that rental platforms exist for cars, helicopters and private jets, it's only fitting that a tech startup would come along and disrupt the high seas.
The nationwide watercraft rental startup Boatbound has done just that. It's basically like a boat club without the annual membership fee and monthly dues. Users only pay when they want to rent a boat, and they can use Boatbound to find a boat anywhere in the US.
Image may be NSFW. Clik here to view.
Our captains for the day, Ellen and Robert Scarano. (Photo by Molly Mulshine)
It's basically like Airbnb for boats, Katherine Menard of Boatbound told Betabeat. We were lucky enough to test the service last Friday, when we enjoyed a boat ride from Chelsea Piers to the Statue of Liberty and back again with the Boatbound crew, a few other journalists, and a delightful boat-owner and his wife.
Boat owners can vet renters to decide whether they're comfortable entrusting their boat with them, Ms. Menard said. Most states don't require boaters to have licenses, so boat owners will examine renters' experience to decide whether they're comfortable handing over the wheel. Many owners will gladly volunteer to pilot the boat while the renters just enjoy themselves. People with sailboats are especially eager to do this, Ms. Menard said.
Boat owners determine how much to charge renters for their boat. Renters pay a five percent service fee to Boatbound on top of the price, and boat owners pay 35 percent to Boatbound. Prices vary, but Boatbound has recommendations for fair pricing.
Boatbound has officially launched in the Bay Area and New York City, but the service is available throughout the US, wherever people are willing to provide their boats. The NYC offerings range from less than $450 per day for fishing boats to $7,000 for a 97-foot luxury yacht. Split the cost with a few of your friends and bring your own Coronas; it beats laying out on your dingy rooftop for the fifth Saturday in a row.
Nothing in this room is for sale. (Photo via Bonobos)
Bonobos closed their Series D funding this morning at $55 million, bringing their total VC investments over $127 million. This time around, the injection will be used for building out the online retailer's physical locations.
To the Cult of Disruption, opening physical stores may sound like innovation suicide, but the thing is, Bonobos stores don't actually sell anything. Instead, Bonobos' physical locations, which they call Guideshops, are just places where you can actually try clothes on, get a custom fit, and get a little TLC from an actual employee. Once customers know the fit, they're directed back online with a better sense of what they want.
“We’ve learned that brick and mortar isn’t going away, but it is evolving into something more exciting,” Bonobos CEO and Founder Andy Dunn said in a release.
Traditional brick and mortar stores require a lot of storage space and inventory, but Bonobos Guideshops get to stay pretty small, maxing out their size at around 1,500 square feet. Also, the "omni-channel" business model also gets people confident enough in the merchandise to shell out more on their orders — in store transactions for Bonobos are double the average online order.
All things considered, it's no wonder Nordstrom keeps giving Bonobos more and more cash to build out storefronts. After all, why pass up on a model that's still standing the test of time?
Sony has recruited the UK's ovine population to assist with its latest marketing initiative.
The tech giant has reportedly outfitted five Yorkshire sheep with HD wearable action cameras — or "sheepcams" — so they can film the hordes of cyclists as they pedal through Harrogate during the Tour de France's first leg on Saturday.
The cameras will be controlled remotely by Ian Hammond, the delightful-looking farmer who owns the camera-wearing sheep.
"Locally we are really looking forward to the Tour de France coming through Yorkshire," the Daily Mail quotes Mr. Hammond as saying, "the dales certainly are a good test for cyclists and I’m looking forward to seeing how my flock perform as Sony’s first ever sheep cam."
Sony's cameras are affixed to the sheep via awkward-looking harnesses. They reportedly have an image stabilization feature, just in case the sheep get a little overactive.
Tour de France cyclists will begin their journey this weekend, starting in England and proceeding to France, where they'll round off the race at Paris's Champs-Élysées.
If Sony could consider creating some baguette-cams, that'd be magnifique.
Pull out the Independence Day gear. (Wikimedia Commons)
In honor of Independence Day, ride share app Gett is hosting a patriotic fashion face-off.
Joining the competition is simple; all you have to do is don your best Americana get-up, and post the photos to social media with special hashtags.
"All you need to do is upload photos of yourself wearing your most stylish red, white or blue outfits," the promotional email from Gett said. "Share it via Instagram, Twitter or Facebook and tag it with one of the following, #GettRed,#GettWhite or #GettBlue."
Three winners, one from each category, will receive $100 credits for Gett rides. The winners will also each get a beach bag filled with "summer swag."
We know he probably doesn't have social media, so we'd personally like to nominate this guy for a prize.
WunWun, a Postmates-like delivery app for "your every need," will be delivering ice luges to the Hamptons for the holiday weekend, so you can celebrate our great nation's independence with alcohol poisoning.
If it's not crystal clear in the above image, an ice luge is a sculpture that has a carved-out trench: pour alcohol in at the top, position your mouth — or cup, if you're a square — at the bottom and look like a college freshman at his first fraternity rush event in the process.
The luges are available for $125, which a WunWun representative told Betabeat is a very competitive price point in the ice luge market. You have to order by 5 p.m. and they expect demand to be "very high," so plan ahead.
And if you're just thinking of going to that coworker's Park Slope BBQ or the rooftop party your roomate's job is throwing? Sorry, no ice luge for you: this weekend, drinking from sculptures is the exclusive purview of those who can afford to go out east for the weekend.
Image may be NSFW. Clik here to view.Though we often criticize sites like Huffington Post and Buzzfeed for their do-anything-for-clicks mentality, deep down we know it’s not really their fault. It’s the advertisers who also make this trade lucrative. The way publishers see it, they are just fulfilling a need.
I’ve been there myself. I know that pageviews are a terrible metric for measuring “quality”—I’ve compared it to the military measuring success by bodycount. But what else is there?
The CPM model, where advertisers pay for impressions by the thousand, has long been the dominant business model of online content. Publishers and readers have criticized this system—it’s easy to game, it’s simplistic, it might not even work. For all the rhetoric, deep down most of us admit that the reason this exists is because there really isn’t a scalable alternative and besides, the money is so good.
But now that publishers have abused this model to such a degree, it seems that the consensus on this is changing. They’re looking for a new way.
The Financial Times recently announced that they were testing a new way to sell ads to their advertisers, one based on how much time a user spends on a piece of their content. Jon Slade, the commercial director of digital advertising at the Financial Times, said in a recent interview that the hypothesis is the longer you show the reader an ad, the more it will resonate, and presumably, the more a publisher can charge the advertiser. Upworthy announced something similar in February, saying they had developed their own proprietary metric for selling ads, with what they are calling “attention minutes.”
The founder of Upworthy, Eli Pariser, explained how attention minutes work: “This method doesn’t store raw information—it follows a stream of events and every few seconds asks, ‘Is this person still paying attention?’ If they are, that sends a signal to a data warehouse that says, ‘Chalk up a few more attention seconds for this post.’”
They aren’t the only ones. YouTube now measures “Time Watched” and Medium is moving to what they call Total Time Reading. Chartbeat, which worked with the Financial Times to develop their new ad model, is now selling a data product for content producers called “engaged time.”
It’s a noble goal right? Instead of trying to trick people into clicks, now publishers are thinking about how to create great content that makes people stick. Or are they?
Upworthy’s recent traffic decline, which started earlier this year, could be seen as the impetus for this sea change. Although Mr. Pariser has denied it, it appeared Upworthy’s traffic took a dive when Facebook changed its news feed algorithm earlier this year. In an interview with Recode in May, Mr. Pariser oddly blamed the loss of traffic on a round of new hires, saying, “We’ve spent the last two months aggressively growing our editorial staff—we’ll be announcing more about that soon, but it’s meant that internal resources were devoted to hiring and training, rather than curating. That’s a trade we’re happy to make as an investment in our long-term future.”
Could this be a case of Upworthy finding a scapegoat? How better to make money in the attention economy than coming up with a vague mish mash of signals and calling it “attention minutes”?
Because let’s be honest, this can still be gamed too. As I wrote in my book Trust Me, I’m Lying, what gets measured gets managed. And for the past 10+ years, blogs have used the most straightforward and cost-effective metrics—clicks and page views—squeezing all they couldfrom them until they lost their effectiveness. Why would this new metric be any different?
Jonah Peretti of Buzzfeed recently explained how these time-based metrics are just as easy to manipulate, with reality TV being a salient example. As he put it in his recent interview with Felix Salmon:
The reason that reality TV works well for time is that the classic reality TV formula, in the beginning, was the tribal council and somebody getting eliminated. So you could have 50 percent of the show being boring filler and you’re kind of wanting to change the channel but you’re like, ‘Oh, but I wonder if my favorite person’s going to get eliminated.’ So you have to watch to the end to see the elimination. In a way, that was a way of gaming time.
This comparison brings to mind Neil Postman’s great book of media criticism, Amusing Ourselves To Death, in that publishers are aligning themselves with the metrics that television is measured by—keeping you on your couch.
There is a history of web publishers moving the goal posts to charge advertisers extra, regardless of the consequences for their audience. Last year, the rage was for “sponsored posts,” which despite having very little ROI or data behind them, are incredibly expensive. That’s what I think this move is. An attempt to create a new form of advertising that costs a lot but is difficult to evaluate.
And I’ll tell you that as an ad buyer (I buy about $5M in online ads every year), I like CPM for one simple reason: it’s simple to convert into sales. I want to know that customers clicked and then bought my stuff, end of story. This new system doesn’t make my life any easier, and as the real customer for these websites, I have real trouble believing it’s going to take hold.
Instead of creating new ghosts to chase, publishers should look to make real, tangible improvements to their flawed ad models. Like I argued in my recent piece about the New York Times’ Innovation Report, the solutions to an entrenched industry’s business problems are often hidden in plain sight, a problem of chasing what’s new and sexy, instead of questioning old, outdated assumptions.
For this, publishers should look to Yahoo! (of all companies), who recently instituted their new Yahoo Prime View ads. They’re trying to solve a problem I’ve chronicled before that has tarnished the entire online ad industry—the fact that only a little more than half of display ads ever appear in front of a human being. This is the ultimate deception and deceit behind the CPM model. It’s not even real.
But Yahoo Prime View ads are based on vCPM, which are visible impressions, meaning Yahoo’s goal is that 100% of their ads will be seen by real humans, which would be a dramatic improvement to the online content game. This is what publishers should be emulating, not creating whole new paradigms by which to measure our attention. One brings us closer to reality, the other deludes us into thinking we’ve found a solution.
Ryan Holiday is the editor at large of Betabeat and the author of the recent book The Obstacle is the Way.
BMW has started custom-designing and 3D printing thumb carapaces to protect workers from the strain of their labor. To develop the super-thumbs, the team at the BMW manufacturing plant in Munich teamed up with the Technical University of Munich's Ergonomics Department to use 3D printing — which BMW calls the "talk of the town" — to solve the problem of thumb strain.
But why do factory workers need badass super-thumbs? To press a rubber plug into a hole.
Next up: replace the entire arm with a giant metal claw. (Photo via BMW)
"These [plugs] have to be pressed in with the thumb and close, among other things, the drain holes for the paint coat," BMW said in a release. "Even for people with strong hand muscles, this movement requires a certain effort."
The cyborg power-thumb is custom-made for each worker by scanning their finger, and doesn't behave any differently than a normal thumb — "like a second skin," BMW says. That is, until you hold it in the thumbs-up position, which causes the thermoplastics polyurethane to lock into place, granting a worker's thumb extreme tensile strength.
BMW calls the technological enhancement of humans "Industry 4.0," though what Industry 3.0 (or even 2.0) is remains a bit of a mystery. Even if BMW could potentially become more efficient manufacturers if they just gave the gig to plug-pushing robots, we give them props for using technology to bring people up to task, instead of replacing them with a thumbless robot army.
Image may be NSFW. Clik here to view.This is a guest post from Gary Sharma (aka “The Guy with the Red Tie”), founder and CEO of GarysGuide and proud owner of a whole bunch of black suits, white shirts and, at last count, over 40 red ties. You can reach him at gary [at] garysguide.com.
2nd Annual 2014 GREAT Tech Awards (by UKTI & British Consulate General). Awesome competition encouraging tech companies to select UK for international growth. Judges incl. David Karp (Tumblr), Pete Cashmore (Mashable) & Lily Cole (Supermodel & Impossible.com). 6 categories (Finance, Education, Lifestyle, Media, Health, Internet of Things). Past winners incl. Codecademy & Blippar. Prizes incl. Round-trip to London, 5 nights @ Corinthia Hotel, meeting @ 10 Downing St, ticket to Innovate Conf & mentoring by Rohan Silva (former No.10 Advisor) & Sir John Sorrell (Chair, London Design Festival). Awards Gala Oct 09. Apply by Aug. 1. Hurry, yo! ;)
And now lets see whats going down in the Alley this week...
Maker Camp 2014
FREE summer camp for building, tinkering & exploring!
Monday (Jul 07), 11 a.m. @ Venues all across town
Collab/Space New York
With Kimberly Lau (The Atlantic Digital) & Kareem Amin (News Corp). Demos by Google Course Builder, NY Times Streamtools, Quartz Chartbuilder, WSJ Modern CMS, NY Daily News Innovation Lab, Vox Media Cardstacks, Facebook Newswire.
Tuesday (Jul 08), 9 a.m. @ Ford Foundation, 320 E 43rd St
#GivingTuesday Crowdfunding Breakfast
With Gwen Nguyen (Cause Director @ Indiegogo) & #GivingTuesday team.
Tuesday (Jul 08), 10 a.m. @ 92nd Street Y, 1395 Lexington Ave
Fireside chat with Jeff Raider
With Jeff Raider (Founder/CEO, Harry's and Co-founder, Warby Parker)
Tuesday (Jul 08), 6 p.m. @ Beespace, 242 W 30th St, Ste 806
Intro to Machine Learning
With Ilan Man (Analytics Manager @ Squarespace)
Tuesday (Jul 08), 7 p.m. @ Squarespace, 28 Mercer St
Smart Girls Conference 2014
With Lauren Bush Lauren (Founder, FEED Projects), Jill Abramson (former Exec Editor, NY Times), Brenda Berkman (1st Woman Firefighter @ NYFD), Naomi Hirabayashi (CMO, DoSomething) & others.
Wednesday (Jul 09), 8 a.m. @ Fordham University, 155 W 60th St
DevCon5 HTML5 & Mobile App Developer Conference
Learn HTML5 & other dev tools to create dynamic user experiences across multiple platforms. Networking, meals, keynotes & 25+ sessions. Use "GG" for 20% off!
Wednesday (Jul 09), 9 a.m. @ Kimmel Center @ NYU, 60 Washington Square S
Amazon AWS Summit
Hear from AWS execs, technical sessions, training bootcamps & more. Featured speaker is Werner Vogels (CTO, Amazon).
Thursday (Jul 10), 9:30 a.m. @ Javits Convention Center, 655 W 34th St
Women 2.0 NYC
With Anda Gansca (Co-Founder, Knotch), Kegan Schouwenburg (Co-Founder, SOLS Systems) & Shaherose Charania (Founder, Women 2.0).
Thursday (Jul 10), 6:30 p.m. @ Impact Hub NYC, 394 Broadway
Amusemi Startup Drinks
With Rob Matzkin (CEO, Booze Carriage), Seth Berger (CTO, Wellthie), Alanna Gregory (CEO, VIVE) & others.
Thursday (Jul 10), 6:30 p.m. @ Venue (East Village), To Be Decided
Through the Fire - Storytelling with Local Food Entrepreneurs
With Benzi Ronen (Founder, Farmigo), Erin Fairbanks (Heritage Radio), Josh Hix (Founder, Plated), Brian Leventhal (Founder, Brooklyn Winery) & Alison Cayne (Founder, Haven's Kitchen).
Thursday (Jul 10), 6:30 p.m. @ Gowanus Industrial Arts Complex, 53 9th St, 55-C, Brooklyn
Raincheck Party!
#NYCtechTAKEOVER returns ;)
Thursday (Jul 10), 7 p.m. @ To Be Decided
IDEO NY Hacks - Waste
IDEO collaborating w/ BigApps to tackle one of NYC’s biggest problems - waste.
Friday (Jul 11), 5:30 p.m. @ IDEO, 408 Broadway
Humans, get ready to meet your new coworkers. (Getty)
Three years after announcing its intentions to staff its factories with robots, Foxconn, the Taiwanese company that manufactures Apple products, might finally be putting its plans into action.
The Foxconn robots — or Foxbots, as the company's calling them — are now in the final stages of testing, and will be used to assemble iPhone products, Foxconn executive Terry Gou reportedly said at a recent shareholder meeting. That means the Foxbots' assignments will probably include the iPhone 6, rumored to be coming out this fall.
Foxconn's first robot deployment will feature 10,000 Foxbots, each costing $20,000 to $25,000, GSMDome reports.
But this isn't necessarily the end of human manufacturing jobs as we know it. Foxconn has also hired 100,000 real, live people to work on the iPhone 6's production, Business Insider reports.
Uber is cutting 20 percent off all UberX rides for a limited time, which by Forbes' estimate means that Uber is losing money on these rides. It's scorched earth tactics: starving out the competition by taking a major loss.
By Uber's measure, the fare cuts should be just enough to bring most rides from being a few dollars more than the price of a cab to just barely less.
Uber's blog has a series of colorful graphics that show how the new fares are barely low enough to make Uber cheaper than yellow cabs. (Image via Uber)
But what that does that mean for Uber drivers, who likely didn't have a vote in the price cut decision?
"What we’ve seen in cities across the county is that lower fares mean greater demand, lower pickup times and more trips per hour — increasing earning potential and creating better economics for drivers," Uber said in their blog post this morning.
Another way of putting it is: we don't know if they'll be paid less, but they definitely get to work more, which should pay off "in the long run," as Uber puts it. That's easy to say for a company that keeps collecting checks while its drivers have to hustle harder to make the same money.
But hey, whatever it takes to convert new customers, right?
We don't care if you're a professional puppy walker or the Kardashians' private pilates instructor; there's no way your job, however amazing it may be, beats the one for which Netflix is currently hiring.
The online streaming giant is on the hunt for someone in the UK or Ireland to join their team of professional taggers, Time reports. In laymen's terms, taggers are responsible for sitting at home and binge-watching a butt load of Netflix, and then categorizing the stuff they watch with specific tags. Those tags, coupled with Netflix's super secret algorithms, help Netflix give its users more specific recommendations.
"Taggers are the bright sparks who help us make your Netflix personal," a YouTube video announcing the job hunt says. "Their analytical minds pick up on the most subtle details. That's why your Netflix profile doesn't look like your gran's, unless, of course, you two have similar tastes. Sounds like a great job, doesn't it?" Yes, Netflix. Yes it does.
"Successful applicants will be responsible for watching and analyzing films and TV programmes that will be streaming on Netflix in the future. The tagger will deconstruct the films and programmes and describe them using objective tags.
"This 'tagging process' is the first stage of the Netflix recommendation system and works in concert with advanced algorithms that generate highly personalized suggestions for every one of Netflix’s nearly 50 million members, offering them an individualized set of titles matching their tastes.
"Other responsibilities may also include acting as a UK/IE cultural consultant, highlighting UK/IE cultural specificities and taste preferences.
"The role will offer flexible hours working from home and would suit those with a passion for films and TV programmes, as evidenced by a degree in film or film history and/or experience directing, screening writing or filmmaking. Applicants with analysis experience (e.g. as a critic or work in development) would also be well suited."
The core skills they're looking for include "movie and TV content expert" and "tenacious about follow-through and follow-up on a project." Anyone who's ever binge-watched an entire series in a matter of days should meet those standards, no prob.
They're also looking for someone with "1-2 years website/media/new media company experience," which sounds vague enough that anyone who's regularly used the Internet in the past year should probably qualify.
Netflix also released this YouTube video to solicit applicants:
The Fourth of July weekend might be over, but there's still reason to celebrate: the makers of the Autoblow 2 today started shipping out their highly-anticipated electronic oral sex simulator.
In case you missed it, the Autoblow 2 is an electronic blow job machine that received funding through a wildly successful Indiegogo campaign. Users plug the cylindrical device into the wall, and insert their penises into the sleeve. Beaded rings then slide up and down the sleeve, delivering — or so the company claims — the same sensations as a regular human blow job.
The Autoblow 2 was accepting pre-orders up until July 1st, when the product officially went live.
"Pre-sale was great," Autoblow 2 creator Brian Sloan told Betabeat. "Guys continued ordering, with some days even in the hundreds of orders per day."
The Autoblow 2's site was getting so much traffic, Mr. Sloan said they even experienced a crash.
"It crashed because there were too many people on the site simultaneously," he explained. "We needed to do some programming and [upgrading] on Amazon — we had some spikes of 40,000 unique visitors daily."
Orders placed during the pre-sale period start shipping out today, and orders placed through Indiegogo will start shipping out tomorrow. Mr. Sloan expects it'll take about a week to get all the preliminary orders shipped out.
"There was an unexpected amount of technical work to do to collect sleeve sizes and make sure people's addresses were correct, then import that to our system, and export it to our warehouse's system," he said.
If you're contemplating placing an order but need some extra encouragement, you can check out the Autoblow 2's latest infomercial:
Mr. Sloan estimated that Betabeat's Autoblow 2 would arrive by Wednesday, so we'll keep you posted on how that plays out.
Betabeat's fav option, if you were wondering. (Screengrab via GlamSquad)
When it comes to home beauty apps, the race is officially on.
Just a few hours ago, we published our review of TheStylisted, which sends stylists straight to your home, anywhere in Chicago or New York City, to deliver blow-out, updo, dry hairstyling or makeup services.
And now, effective this afternoon, the beloved on-demand blow-dry/updo appGLAMSQUAD has announced that they, too, are offering makeup services. Guess they weren't too excited about the competition's June 22 app launch.
Although they sound similar, there are some important differences between the two apps. GLAMSQUAD limits your makeup choices to a range of seven looks, but their makeup artists are likely as willing as their hairstylists to cater the look to fit what you want. GLAMSQUAD's services will only set you back $75 — but they only operate in some parts of Manhattan and Brooklyn.
On the other hand, you can request whatever look you want from TheStylisted — some artists even do costume makeup — and you get to pick a stylist based on photos and reviews of the startup's experienced makeup artists. Makeup artists on TheStylisted get to name their own prices — and most of them are well above $75 — but they serve all five boroughs indiscriminately.
It's tough to tell who will prevail as far as NYC beauty apps go. TheStylisted is pricier, but allows customers to choose their own stylists and their own looks. GLAMSQUAD's prices can't be beat, and we've yet to hear of a bad experience with their stylists — if you can get them to come to your neighborhood, which many outer-borough-dwellers can't.
For now, both apps will likely coexist peacefully — but if TheStylisted offers discount services or GLAMSQUAD ventures farther into the depths of Brooklyn and Queens, things in the beauty app world might get ugly.
When was the last time anyone asked you this question in real life? (Screengrab via Lauren McCarthy
A couple weeks ago Facebook came clean: it wasn't just your ex and the photos of him and his new girlfriend that were playing with your emotions. It was an inside job. Facebook's data scientists — or perhaps we should call them omnipotent puppeteers — had manipulated users' feeds without their consent.
Now, after public outcry and a lackluster apology from Sheryl Sandberg, Brooklyn artist and programmer Lauren McCarthy is helping us reclaim our feelings. Her latest experiment is called the Facebook Mood Manipulator, a Google Chrome extension that allows users to adjust the content of their news feeds according to how they want to feel.
After users decide how positive, emotional, aggressive and open they would like to feel, the browser add-on uses the same language-analyzing technology Facebook used in its own experiment, except for good rather than evil.
It's basically a mix between a mood ring and a choose-your-own adventure novel.
Ms. McCarthy, whose other work follows a common thread of testing and exploring people's relationship to technology, demonstrated the extension's effectiveness on her own feed. Sliding the positive, emotional and open scale all the way to the right helped get a cute baby picture top billing on her feed while a combination of emotional, not-at-all positive, and a bit aggressive and open made her privy to an article about gun violence.
Finally, an efficient way to fuel your self-loathing. Or your penchant for photos of baby animals. After all, it's up to you.
This is the Spark Core, the unassuming little object that turns your anything into a Smart Anything. (Image via Spark)
Most early attempts at Internet of Things (IoT) devices, like smart cutting boards and rudimentary wearables, haven't proven their worth enough to become as important to us as our phones and laptops. But as of this morning, IoT startup Spark has raised $4.9 million to bring us smart objects that might actually be useful.
Until now, Spark has focused on selling home kits that let you take everyday objects like lightbulbs and cutting boards and hook them up with sensors and wifi. The new cash will help Spark move on from selling one-off DIY kits to providing thousands of cores for companies that want to use Spark to power IoT products.
"The problem is how to actually bring it to market," Spark CEO and founder Zach Supalla told Betabeat. "What are the technical challenges you face going from one of something to hundreds of thousands of them?"
The Spark Core — the chip at the heart of their connected devices — already serves as a brain for sprinkler systems, planters and dog bowls. But the problem with many early attempts at smart home appliances is that they're premature, rushed attempts by companies jumping on the IoT bandwagon. Spark wants to develop their cloud software to make IoT objects useful enough to actually use.
Mr. Supalla points to GE's Brillion Oven as an example. It's a smart oven that you can turn on and begin preheating right from your phone, which is convenient, except for the fact that you can't use it outside your personal network. If you can only preheat an oven from your couch, you're probably just going to get up and do it yourself every time.
This is the same problem we see with wearables like Fitbit, which people tend to abandon after the novelty wears off. In order to transcend the cool factor and become something useful, you can't just have, for example, lightbulbs that turn on and off using a button on a phone.
"What connected lights should do is know where you are in the house, and also fade on slowly with the sunset," Mr. Supalla said. "In order to do that, you need a system that doesn’t just respond to your phone. It has to know a few things."
This is the phone app that lets you start speaking to your coffee table. (Image via Spark)
This is the next step for Spark: developing cloud software that connects IoT objects to central applications, like a swarm of worker bees controlled by a single hive mind.
"So you'd have a single cloud application with tens of thousands of connected lightbulbs — the central brain of connected products," Mr. Supalla said. "You'd have one application running them all."
“Security is paramount, Mr. Supalla said. “Everything in our system is encrypted.”
When it comes to security, Mr. Supalla says that the cloud is both the boogyman and the blessing. Spark Cores have so little on-board memory that it’d be difficult to install malware on individual devices like lightbulbs. When things are centralized in the cloud, you can update software, treat problems and keep a close eye on the system.
So once the software is safe and ready to use, what does Spark hope other companies will do with the Spark Core?
"One thing that keeps coming up in conversation on our team is that all over my house, there should be buttons to reorder things when they run out," Mr. Supalla said. "My medicine cabinet should have a button for when I reorder deodorant and my coffeemaker should have a button for when I'm out of coffee."
After all, once you're in the warm embrace of the machines, and your home is as smart as can be, why leave?
