Facebook is quietly testing its own group video chat app

Facebook has been working on cloning Snapchat’s features for awhile now, but that’s not the only service the social media giant is looking to duplicate. The Verge reports that Facebook recently showed a Houseparty-style live group video chat app, called Bonfire, to its employees.

Houseparty is incredibly popular with teenagers, and Facebook wanted to find out why. Earlier this year, Facebook sent out a survey asking teens for their thoughts on why they enjoy using group video chat apps such as Houseparty and Fam. At the time, Facebook declined to comment to Recode about why they were interested in this information, but now it seems clear.

This isn’t the first time that Facebook has tried to clone an app from the company Life on Air. The popular Facebook Live feature contributed to the decline of Life on Air’s previous app, Meerkat. Houseparty was built after founder Ben Rubin noted that regardless of platform, most users only broadcasted a few times using live streaming video. While Houseparty is also focused on live video, it notifies teens when their friends are using the app, allowing them to easily enter and exit online video “parties.”

Facebook has been targeting younger users for a long time; it’s basically copied everything that Snapchat does into its main Facebook app. Only time will tell whether Bonfire will attract more younger users to the social network.

Source: The Verge, Recode

Niantic CEO Discusses For-Profit Cheating and Production Delays in Pokémon Go’s First Year

One year ago this week, Pokémon Go began appearing on the App Store in the United States and around the world. Following the announcement of various in-game and real life events celebrating the anniversary, Niantic CEO John Hanke recently sat down with The Verge to talk about the game’s first year, including for-profit cheaters, a six-month development delay due to the huge success of the game, and more.

Concerning the current state of certain fan-requested updates (player-versus-player battles and Pokémon trading), Hanke said that those features have been delayed because of Pokémon Go’s unpredictably huge launch. In total, Niantic lost as much as six months on its production schedule due to the team needing to shift to “rebuilding and rewiring infrastructure” to keep the game running, taking precedence over substantial new updates.

Pokémon Go when it launched July 2016

We lost probably six months on our schedule because of the success of the game. Really all the way through November and December, from launch onward we were rebuilding and rewiring infrastructure just to keep the game running at the scale that we were running at.

We were fortunate to have a massive launch, a massive success, and many, many more users than we had planned for. But we had to redirect a substantial portion of the engineering team to [work on] infrastructure versus new features. That switched off things like extending gyms, it pushed out things we still want to have, like player-versus-player and trading. I’d say we’re about six months behind where we thought we would be.

Hanke admitted that if the team had known it would face such huge delays on its schedule, “maybe we wouldn’t have talked so much about” PvP and trading updates so early on. The CEO went on to explain that Niantic’s communication with fans has “become much more open over time,” following an initial lack of consensus with the developer’s partners (The Pokémon Company and Nintendo) over how to handle vocal communities on Reddit, Twitter, and other social media sites.

In terms of cheating, Hanke talked about how there are now “actual commercial entities” that advertise ways to level up players’ profiles and advance in the game, which received enough interest and revenue from Pokémon Go players to become “real businesses.” Hanke said that Niantic faced similar experiences, albeit on a smaller scale, with its previous game Ingress.

To keep the game fair for everyone, there are now dedicated resources inside Niantic cracking down on these cheating businesses.

Because of the scale [of Pokémon Go], there are actual commercial entities that sprung up that were offering services to level up your account or do various other things, and were real businesses. Therefore they’re able to invest significant resources in these things. We didn’t really anticipate that scale of commercial-funded cheating, which is a challenge to keep the game fair for everyone.

We dedicate resources to it for sure. There are people working on that that could be working on features, but they’re not. It’s a fraction of the team. It’s not as if half of the team is working on that. It’s significantly less than that. But there is a chunk of resources that we devote to that.

Hanke still doesn’t make it clear when exactly PvP and Pokémon trading will be making it to Pokémon Go. Recently, Niantic updated the game with a revamped Gym system and announced co-op raid battles, while Hanke talked about his excitement for Apple’s ARKit developer platform and what it will do for Pokémon Go, stating, “I don’t think anyone should bet against Apple.”

Check out The Verge’s full interview with John Hanke here.

Tag: Pokémon GO
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Apple Pay Expanding to Additional Banks in France, Italy, and Spain

Apple has updated its regional websites to indicate that Apple Pay is expanding to additional banks in France, Italy, and Spain.

In France, Apple Pay will be available later this year at Crédit Mutuel de Bretagne, Crédit Mutuel du Sud-Ouest, and Crédit Mutuel Massif Central, which are the three regional federations of Crédit Mutuel Arkéa. Apple Pay is also coming to Crédit Mutuel Arkéa’s online banking subsidiary Fortuneo, and Max.

In Italy, Apple Pay is now available at Banca Mediolanum for Mediolanum Card debit cards, which are based on Mastercard’s Maestro network.

In Spain, Apple Pay is now supported by Boon, a mobile wallet solution based on a prepaid account with a digital Mastercard. Boon users top-up their accounts with a debit or credit card, or via wire transfer. Boon also supports Apple Pay in the United Kingdom, France, Switzerland, Ireland, and Italy.

In Spain, Apple Pay will also be available through mobile-only bank N26 later this year. The service has a partnership with Mastercard.

Apple maintains a list of Apple Pay participating banks in Europe, although it has yet to be updated to reflect today’s additions.

Related Roundup: Apple Pay
Tags: Italy, Spain, France, boon
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Fender Play doesn’t judge — it just teaches you guitar

If you ask Ethan Kaplan, chief product officer of digital at Fender, about the death of the electric guitar, he gets a bit incredulous. And it’s easy to understand why. As he’s quick to point out, “for some reason, there’s still a guitar on every stage.” But while he’s adamant his company and the industry is perfectly healthy, it’s clear some of the cultural cachet of the guitar has dried up. Fender is hoping to turn the tides.

The latest effort is Fender Play, a digital lesson platform designed to keep younger would-be guitarists coming back day after day, year after year. The company’s research suggests it’s not hard to attract new players, but it’s extremely difficult to keep them tied to the instrument for the rest of their lives. In fact, Kaplan says 95 percent of players give up in the first year. Most don’t even make it past the first three months. Play has been designed, then, not only to be simple, but to cater do an increasingly diverse playerbase, delivering relatively quick gratification.

Unlike other music instructional standbys like Mel Bay, Play doesn’t spend a ton of time early on teaching theory or how to read notation. Instead, once you’ve got the bare essentials down (how to tune your guitar, identify and strum the strings, etc.), it immediately starts teaching you a song. And we’re not talking about “Row, Row, Row Your Boat.” Play focuses on hits from the likes of Bon Iver, the Rolling Stones, Brad Paisley, Sean Mendes, the National and — yes — even Disney. Fender pairs lessons on technique and theory with each track, but the explicit goal is to learn the song of your choice, not to master the pentatonic scale.

Instead of funneling every student down the same path, Fender tries to personalize the experience as best as it can. When you first fire it up, you’re asked to choose a path — rock, pop, country, blues or folk. (Don’t worry—you can pursue multiple paths or change paths at any time.) You’re also asked if you’re playing acoustic or electric, and based on these choices you’ll get different instructional videos, different song choices and learn different techniques. If you’re learning country on an acoustic, you might get early lessons on finger-picking. If you go with rock, you’ll focus on power chords and learn a Foo Fighters song.

This flexible approach is core to Play’s mission. Kaplan says it’s not Fender’s place to judge anyone’s musical taste, and goes out of his way to make it clear that the company doesn’t believe everyone has “to be a rock-guitar god. “It doesn’t matter if you’re playing it with a pick, a bow, an Ebow, a hammer. … We don’t just represent virtuosity,” he says.

It’s refreshing to see a guitar company not just acknowledge, but embrace the idea that the goal for every player isn’t Yngwie Malmsteen or Steven Vai. Plenty of people are perfectly happy to strum the chords to “Let It Go” or bang out a couple of Taylor Swift tunes.

Fender has also focused a lot of energy on really nailing the production value, and it shows. It’s not the first company to invest in high-quality guitar-lesson videos, but it’s clear this isn’t some half-assed entry into the arena. Audio quality is top-notch, and there are clear 4K closeups on the instructors’ picking and fretting hands at the appropriate moments. Even tiny details like the set lighting are consistent across all the clips. That being said, at the end of the day, these are still just instructional videos. And, while they’re well-produced, they don’t deliver anything truly revolutionary.

Fender’s research says the 5 percent of people who start playing guitar stick with it for their entire lives. The ambitious goal of Play is to double that number. The company has a clear and admirable set of principles and theories in place. The song-oriented curriculum that respects restrained strumming as much as it does blistering solos is a welcome change of pace. But right now, Play is also very limited. It’s launching with a decent selection of songs, but lessons are focused entirely on the most novice of students. And while Fender has floated the idea of adding more interactive elements, like pop-out chord charts and tablature, right now it’s mostly just a collection of instructional videos.

If you want to test out Fender Play for yourself, it’s available starting today on desktop and iOS for $20 a month, though Fender is offering a free month of access in hopes of luring you into its six-string clutches.

Insurance group: Tesla’s Model S is safe, but not super safe

Tesla has always made a big deal about how safe its electric cars are, and frequently boast about how they have the highest ratings at the NHTSA. But the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, a vehicle testing outfit run by the insurance industry, threw some shade on the company in its latest report. The body says that Tesla’s Model S falls just short of winning its top safety award, which was scooped by the Mercedes-Benz E Class, Lincoln Continental and the Toyota Avalon.

The sticking point with the Model S, and other vehicles like the Chevy Impala and Ford Taurus, is down to a specific examination the IIHS runs. Back in 2012, the body began running the Small Overlap Frontal Test, which crashes into 25 percent of the body at 40 miles per hour. The examination is the equivalent of some yahoo crossing the median strip on a highway and smashing into your front fender. It’s the sort of crash that puts far more stress on your car’s structure, and also causes plenty of serious injuries.

The agency takes great pains to stress that the Model S is by no means an unsafe car, earning second, rather than first, place in the test. The reason for the demerit is twofold: the safety belt was too loose, and the crunch encroached on the cabin too much in one of the tests. The IIHS also noted that the Model S’ headlights aren’t the best, but that it also has yet to test the higher-performance versions of that same car. So, in summary, the IIHS says that the Model S is pretty damn safe, but there are circumstances where it may not be the safest.

Of course, Tesla has a — somewhat justified — persecution complex when it comes to negative stories from the automotive industry. As a new entrant with a status-quo defying power train, it serves as a threat to the century-old establishment. It took the BBC’s Top Gear to court for saying its cars frequently ran out of charge, although it lost that defamation suit. Two years later, and the company had a public fight with The New York Times, repudiating a negative review by publishing the test vehicle’s telematics.

Tesla has already responded to the claim, pointing out that the Model S still has an unimpeachable record at the NHTSA. Elon Musk’s team also makes a snide reference to industry groups having their own “methods and motivations that suit their own subjective purposes.” It’s worth saying, too, that this isn’t the first non-Governmental body to demerit Tesla on safety — Consumer Reports did similar back in April. It looks like Tesla may have to set up a new safety commission, as well as ones to tackle its other internal problems.

Via: CNBC

Source: IIHS

Brexit is even making ‘League of Legends’ champions pricier

As if the prices of tech hardware shooting up as a result of last summer’s Brexit vote wasn’t disappointing enough, now it’s making the cost of entirely virtual items more taxing on the wallet. League of Legends developer Riot Games has announced that from July 26th, it’s adjusting the UK prices of Riot Points (RP) — which players use to unlock champions and buy skins/other in-game swag — to compensate for the decline in the value of the pound.

It’s a familiar story: Currency fluctuations following the UK’s vote to leave the European Union has meant that Riot is effectively earning less money from RP than it was before. The situation is a tad more frustrating than normal considering there’s no physical product (with significant overheads) being manufactured and distributed, but RP is Riot’s primary revenue stream from an otherwise free-to-play game, and business is business.

Instead of changing the price of the various bundles, the same amount of money will instead get you roughly 20 percent less RP from July 26th — £5 will be good for 790 RP instead of 975, for example. Riot is also doing away with the (reportedly) rarely purchased £2.50 tier and introducing a new £15 bundle to stagger the rungs a little tighter.

Browsing the comments on the announcement post, it seems players are just as frustrated with the new scaling of the RP tiers as they are with the effective price increase. There are plenty of skins available for 975 RP, you see, which currently costs £5. When the revised pricing kicks in, players will have to buy 1650 RP for £10 to get enough points for the same skin, and have plenty of potentially unwanted RP left over. The fact there’s no £2.50 tier to top up the coffers when you need only a few more points for that sweet in-game item only compounds the problem.

Via: Kotaku

Source: Riot Games

Google’s ‘Voyager’ bear cam showcase is the best reality TV

Google will expose a lot more folks to Alaska’s famous Katmai National Park “bear cams” thanks to an arrangent with the nature organization Explore.org. Google Earth has created a Story on its new Voyager platform that describes the region and lets you watch all five views. Those include the underwater “snorkel” and waterfall cams that show the talented bears plucking salmon out of Brooks River or catching them in mid-jump.

The bear cams went viral a few years ago because of the real life stories playing out, including one around a cub that died of an illness and a large male that killed a rival to get his food cache. The latter story first horrified many users, but eventually “they were using words like ‘power’ and ‘strength’ and ‘survival’ and ‘tenacity,’ ” Roy Wood, the man behind the cameras for Katmai National Park, told The Awl in 2014.

The cams are still available on Explore.org, but the Voyager story will help expose them to a lot more viewers and provide some valuable context. That includes map flyovers showing the precise camera locations and blurbs describing the spots and explaining which bear activities go on there.

At the moment, bears are coming out of a long hibernation, so you can easily spot them hunting salmon. I tuned in to the Brooks Falls camera and sure enough, there was what appears to be a pregnant female that caught and devoured two salmon in a row, and another in a calm pool under a rock ledge, waiting to pounce.

“Google and Explore.org share the values of showcasing nature’s treasures in its ‘purest’ form possible,” said Explore.org founder Charles Annenberg on Medium. ” ‘Replacing fear with trust’ has also been a cornerstone value of Explore.org because it is the only way humanity will stop making the mistakes of its past.”

If you tune in long enough, you might catch something even more interesting, like bear sex, fights, or animal kills. Explore.org also offers views of wild belugas, polar bears, bald eagles, elephants hippos and more.

Source: Google

France plans to ban fossil-fuel-powered cars by 2040

France’s ecology minister has laid out an ambitious plan that would see the nation effectively ban the sale of fossil-fuel-powered vehicles by 2040. Nicolas Hulot, as quoted by the Financial Times, claims that France is announcing the “end of the sale of gasoline and diesel cars” by the deadline. As Le Figaro adds, it’s not clear how the country will enforce the transition, but Hulot says that the “conditions are there.”

France doesn’t have a bottomless sovereign wealth fund like Norway, for example, that it can use to finance a transition to cleaner energy. But, what France does have in its favor is a sizable stake in both PSA, the owner of Peugeot and Citroen, and Renault. As a consequence, it can exert plenty of pressure on some of the world’s largest auto manufacturers to help accelerate the process.

In addition, Hulot is planning some sort of financial incentive as a lever to push buyers toward hybrid or electric vehicles. That could take the form of an extra pollution tax on older vehicles, or a tax break (or other subsidy) to encourage the purchase of newer, cleaner cars. Although the details are still hazy,

France will also establish itself at the forefront of the fight against climate change by instituting a carbon tax, which would be upward of 100 euros per tonne of carbon. In addition, the country will stop issuing new licenses for oil exploration and make a bigger push for renewable energy. Right now, all of this is just a plan, but given that France’s current government was given a huge mandate by voters, it’s hard to see where any opposition would come from.

It’s not the first piece of good news this week for folks who don’t want the Earth to boil away in the next few years. Volvo has pledged to stop producing vehicles with entirely gasoline or diesel-powered motors by 2019. Instead, each new car, from that point, will be hybrid or entirely electric and, in addition, Volkswagen believes that it can sell three million EVs by 2025.

Source: Le Figaro, Financial Times

PSA: AirPods In Stock on AT&T’s Website With Free 3-5 Day Shipping

AirPods continue to have a 6-week shipping estimate when purchased through Apple’s online store, but AT&T’s website currently has the wireless earphones in stock with free delivery in 3-5 business days.

AT&T sells AirPods for $159, the same price as Apple charges, but the carrier only ships to addresses within the United States, excluding P.O. boxes.

AirPods occasionally appear in stock through Apple resellers like AT&T, but typically not for very long due to a combination of limited supplies and strong demand. For that reason, prospective buyers should order as quickly as possible.

AirPods, driven by Apple’s custom W1 chip for one-tap setup, instantly connect to a nearby iPhone, Apple Watch, iPad, or Mac when taken out of their charging case. The cord-free earphones use optical sensors and a motion accelerometer to detect when they are in your ears and automatically turn on.

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Double tapping an AirPod invokes Siri by default, which can be used to adjust the volume, change the song, make a call, or get directions.

AirPods deliver up to five hours of listening time on one charge, and a 15-minute fast charge provides up to three hours of listening time. The charging case holds multiple additional charges for more than 24 hours of listening time.

Tags: AT&T, AirPods
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Apple Planning to Launch Three New OLED iPhones in 2018

Earlier this year, a supply chain report said that Apple plans to make all of its iPhones with an OLED screen by 2019. Apple was believed to be preparing to adopt OLED panels for 60 million units of the “iPhone 8” in 2017, and then the company would double the adoption of OLED panels in 2018 before wholly transitioning to OLED-only iPhones in 2019.

In a report by Nikkei today, that timeline has been bumped up slightly based on two industry sources, who said that Apple is planning to use OLED displays “in all new iPhone models launched from the second half of 2018.”

iPhone 8 rendering via Benjamin Geskin
Not only that, but one source said that Apple is “tentatively” looking to debut three iPhone models next year, and all would use an OLED display. That would be in contrast to the trio of iPhones coming in 2017, two of which are expected to still use LCD screens and one of which will be the first iPhone to transition to OLED, the so-called iPhone 8.

Apple is planning to use advanced organic light-emitting diode displays in all new iPhone models launched from the second half of 2018, according to two industry sources.

One said that Apple is tentatively looking at releasing three new models next year. Apple did not respond to an email seeking comments.

Rumors about the “iPhone 9” started in May of this year, when a report predicted Apple would debut the 2018 iPhone in two OLED screen sizes: 5.28-inch and 6.46-inch. The supply chain is also believed to be starting to eye production of the iPhone 9, with LG Innotek planning to begin production of flexible printed circuit boards in 2018 in hopes of becoming a main FPCB manufacturer of Apple’s 2018 iPhone.

In today’s report, Apple is said to have already begun designing the new iPhones coming in 2018, “but its plans are subject to change,” as usual depending on various market factors and component quality discovered through the production process.

The sources also cited concern over Apple’s shifting to OLED-only models as soon as 2018, considering that only one company — Samsung — is a reliable source of manufacturing for the technology. Apple is already said to be looking into diversifying its OLED display orders, however, including potentially investing in a major LG Display OLED plant with production estimated to begin in early 2019.

Samsung will be the sole supplier of OLED displays for the premium iPhone 8 in 2017, but Nikkei’s sources didn’t know how much that might change in 2018. With suppliers like LG Display still not predicted to gear up on OLED production until 2019, Samsung is likely to remain at least a major OLED source for Apple in 2018.

Samsung Display declined to comment. It is unclear whether Samsung will remain the exclusive OLED supplier in 2018 even though other rivals are still struggling to churn out OLED panels for smartphones. Apple usually prefers more than one supplier for a single component. The two companies are also locked in fierce competition in the global smartphone market.

Suppliers JDI and Sharp will continue to supply LCD screens for iPhones like this year’s “iPhone 7s” and “iPhone 7s Plus,” which are expected to be sold well into 2019, “although demand could fall with the arrival of OLED iPhones.” One Sharp executive speaking to Nikkei contrasted the site’s first two sources, saying it’s “not likely” that Apple will switch to OLED screens for every new iPhone launching next year.

A 5.8-inch OLED display has long been a rumor for the 2017 iPhone 8, and it’s also expected to be a screen with an edge-to-edge design thanks to drastically reduced bezels. Recently, analyst Ming-Chi Kuo predicted Apple will omit Touch ID from the iPhone 8, and then a report by Bloomberg said Apple is working on an “improved” facial recognition system to replace Touch ID in the tenth-anniversary iPhone.

Tag: iPhone 9
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