3 exercises to get your fitness app in shape!
This guest post was written by Mary Liz McCurdy, Health & Fitness Lead at Google Play.
It’s an exciting time to be a health and fitness app developer. With people shelling out on fitness more than ever before, we’re seeing record high levels of gym memberships and attendance, the rise of boutique fitness, and an emphasis connected devices.
Paramount to this growth is the integration of smart technology. Whether it be through streaming video, wearables, or mobile apps, technology empowers us with instant access to high quality workouts, sensor biofeedback and endless on-demand inspiration. At Google Play, we’ve seen this growth reflected by the incredible popularity of health & fitness apps. In fact, this is one of Google Play’s fastest revenue growth app categories, boasting the most engaged 30-day active users.
As the resident health & fitness expert on Google Play, I had the opportunity to speak about what’s driving the category’s growth at the recent Wearables Technology Show. Here are the top three recommendations I shared with the audience to help coach developers towards building more valuable app experiences.
Be invisible
We all know how painful manually logging activity and biometrics is — be it calorie tracking, workouts, moods, or hormone cycles. Manual logging is actually the number one reason users drop off.
What you should do: Minimize distraction with automation wherever possible while maximizing value at the appropriate moments. Remember that you are in all likelihood a companion experience to the main event.
Lose It! makes food tracking easier by using your phone’s camera and image recognition technology to identify foods and their nutritional information. Goodbye manual calorie counting!
Strava uses auto pause detection, recognizing when you are resting during exercise so you don’t need to fiddle with your device and can stay safe and in the zone.
Be personal
Investing in robust personalization has been the driving factor in improving app engagement and buyer conversion among many of our top developers.
What you should do: Personalize the experience for each user or distinct user cohorts by leveraging technology like the Awareness API, Fit API, Google Sign In, and Facebook Login to intelligently pull in relevant user data. Think about your first-time users, power users, high value users, etc. and treat them uniquely.
Freeletics personalizes onboarding and the overall app experience based on gender and fitness level leading to a 58% increase in weekly active sessions.
Workout Trainer by Skimble increased user engagement by 30% through personalizing training programs based on user fitness assessments, goals, and workout patterns.
Be assistive
The rise of smartphones, wearables and IoT have left us swimming in data and dashboards and left many consumers wondering, so what?
What you should do: Offer insights and suggestions, not just raw data. Users are not engineers and generally do not want to process complex data or dashboards. In most cases, they want you to tell them what to do in the moment or provide digestible summaries after the fact. Keep it simple.
Glow provides personalized insights that leverage user-inputted data and third party data from Google Fit to help couples achieve their fertility goals.
Beddit gives personalized daily tips to improve your sleep and wellness by analyzing sleep cycles, resting heart rate, respiration, room temperature, and more.
At the end of the day, changing health and fitness habits is hard. Make it easier for your users by seamlessly guiding them on what they personally need to do to achieve their goal. It’s that simple! We encourage you to experiment with these exercises to get your app fit for the millions of Android users looking to live a healthier, happier life.
Find out more information about this and other topics at Android Developer Blog.
Best Car Mounts for Google Pixel
What’s the best car mount for Google Pixel?
The Google Pixel and Pixel XL are gorgeous and you’re going to want to hold onto them all the time, but that’s just plain unsafe when you’re driving, and in most cases, it’s illegal. You need to pick up a great car mount and we have some favorites to share with you!
- Spigen Air Vent Magnetic Car Mount
- Nite Ize Steelie
- Anker CD Slot Magnetic Universal Phone Holder
- Kenu Airframe Plus Portable Car Mount
- Ram mount
Spigen Air Vent Magnetic Car Mount
Spigen makes a lot of really ingeniously designed smartphone accessories, and their Air Vent Magnetic Car Mount is as convenient as it gets. The mount itself quickly and securely clips onto an air vent on the dash.
As the name suggests, this mount secures using magnets. That will require you to attach a metal plate to the back of your phone, or better yet to your Pixel’s case. Once installed, all you have to do is hold your phone close to the mount and it pops right on. With no clips or holsters to deal with, you can easily grab your phone with one hand as you leave the car. You can also take the Spigen clip with you and use it as a portable kickstand which holds your phone at the perfect hands free viewing angle.
But for all the positives, there are some drawbacks to this design. Adhering the metal plate on to back of the phone may potentially interfere with the way you hold the phone, or leave scratches on the metal. If these are important features to you, you may want to look elsewhere, or slap the metal plate on the inside of a thin case so you can quickly pop your phone out.
See at Amazon
Nite Ize Steelie
This is definitely the coolest mount on this list. The Steelie is a two-piece mounting system wherein a circular magnet adheres to the back of your Pixel and a spherical magnetic base adheres to your car’s dashboard or console.
Hop in the car, and your phone mounts in a snap. This is about as minimalist as it gets in terms of car mounts. Making sharp turns and hitting potholes? No worries: The magnet is super strong and the magnetic ball moves with your phone to prevent it from falling off.
If you want a mounting system that nigh unnoticeable, the Nite Ize Steelie is your slick solution.
See at Amazon
Anker CD Slot Magnetic Universal Phone Holder
If your car has a CD changer, but you’ve moved beyond physical media thanks to, say, cramming all your favorite music onto your new Pixel, you can still get use out of that CD slot — with the Anker CD Slot Magnetic Universal Phone Holder.
The CD changer is typically the centerpiece of a car’s console, so using it as a place to mount your phone just makes sense. Anker’s mount uses a rubber-coated clamp provides a firm grip while keeping the CD slot scratch-free. Installing is as easy as inserting the mount into the cd play and flipping the lever on the bottom.
Like the Spigen above, this car mount also uses magnets to securely hold your phone, meaning you’ll need to mount a metal plate to the back of your phone or to a thin case. Similar issues may arise as a result, so keep that in mind.
See at Amazon
Kenu Airframe Plus Portable Car Mount+
Minimalism and simplicity are important features for a lot of people. The Kenu Airframe Plus+ is a simple car mount that’s slim enough to comfortably fit in your pocket, but securely holds your phone by clipping to an air vent.
There’s really not too much to this one — no suction cups, adhesives or adjustable arms — so there’s less places for this mount to break or fail. The clip is able to mount to any vent type, whether they be horizontal, vertical, angled or circular. It’s so portable that you can take it with you and also use it as a kickstand. Simply slip a business card or something of a similar size in the clip on the back and it will stand on its own.
Versatile, simple and portable — what more could you want?
See at Amazon
Ram Mount
The Ram Mount is an adjustable crade-style mount that holds onto your Pixel or Pixel XL with four arms. It adheres to your dashboard or console via a suction cup and adjusts at its ball socket, which allows you to orient your phone any way you want it.
The holder is spring-loaded, so you can just slide your Pixel in and away you go. It’s made of a high-strength composite, aluminum, and stainless steel, so it’s durable and strong, sturdily securing your phone.
See at Amazon
How do you drive with your Pixel?
Did we miss your favorite car mount on our list? Leave us a comment below!
Google Pixel + Pixel XL
- Google Pixel and Pixel XL hands-on preview
- In pictures: Google Pixel and Pixel XL
- Pixel + Pixel XL specs
- Understanding Android 7.1 Nougat
- Verizon is the exclusive U.S. carrier for the Google Pixels
- Join the discussion in the forums!
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Denon Heos gets Alexa integration; bark commands at your speakers or soundbar
Denon has just announced it’s struck up an agreement with Amazon that will see its Alexa voice-enabled assistant integrated to all Heos-enabled products by Q1 2017. It means Heos owners will be able to control their music systems using just their voice, with no need to use the companion app for iOS and Android.
- Denon Heos review: Multiroom made easy
And because it’s Alexa, it will be able to do more than just play music from connected services through the Heos speakers, it will also be able to answer questions, get you the latest news and control smart home products.
Denon’s Heos system currently comprises the Heos 1, Heos 3, Heos 5 and Heos 7 multi-room speakers, a Heos HomeCinema soundbar and subwoofer, Heos Drive amplifier, Heos link and Heos amp. A Heos system can already be controlled via apps for iOS, Android and Amazon Fire devices, but the latest update means you can just use your voice to control all aspects of the system.
Heos is a multi-room audio system designed to rival Sonos and Bluesound and supports high-resolution audio, something Sonos can’t do.
- Denon adds Hi-Res to Heos, confirms wider system expansion
- Multi-room audio: What is it and what are your options?
- Amazon Echo: What can Alexa do and what services are compatible?
Brendon Stead, SVP product development at Denon said: “We see the recent shift towards voice as the preferred interface for searching, retrieving and controlling music as a tremendously compelling arena where we can focus that heritage of technical excellent and innovation to deliver completely new experiecens”.
Steve Rabuchin, VP Amazon Alexa added: “We are excited to collaborate with Denon to bring hands-free voice control to premium audio products early next year. Soon Heos and Amazon Alexa customers will be able to enjoy the convenience of the Alexa voice service plug high-quality home audio – getting us one step closer to our goal of enabling Alexa voice control of every device within customers’ homes”.
The Ecobee3 Lite is a decent smart thermostat that costs less than most
Most thermostat makers now have at least a single entry in the smart-home category, with some already on their second- and even third-gen products. All are vying to provide consumers with smarter, simpler controls for home heating and cooling. The new Ecobee3 Lite isn’t the company’s first such device, but it does mark the brand’s attempt to hit a much lower price point. With a $169 MSRP, it costs $80 less than the original Ecobee3 as well as the Nest, and is $30 less than the Honeywell Lyric. But in order for the company to hit that price and still keep the flagship model relevant, some features had to go.
Hardware
The thermostat is wrapped in a white plastic housing with a prominent semireflective black face. Most of the front side is taken up by a 3.5-inch touchscreen. The display is easy to read from most angles and the information displayed is clear and easy to parse. At rest, the thermostat displays the current indoor temperature and weather, but when you walk up to it, the device recognizes your approach, at which point the screen morphs to also show temperature controls and icons for accessing system settings.
The underside is populated with pins that interface with the Ecobee3 housing mounted on the wall. Depending on the finish and condition of the wall surrounding your existing thermostat, you can opt to install the included plastic base that extends 2 or so inches around the edge of the housing. This helps make the installation look tidier if your wall has holes from a previous thermostat.
Setup
Speaking of the sort, the installation here is fairly straightforward: Either download the Ecobee app on your iOS or Android device for step-by-step instructions or use the how-to guides and videos on the company’s website. In broad strokes, you’ll need to shut down your HVAC system, attach the included base to the wall, level it with the built-in tool, wire in your existing thermostat, and turn the system back on. Then you’re ready to configure it. While that might sound intimidating, Ecobee’s compatibility guides will walk you through most of the important steps and considerations before you start. If you follow along carefully you shouldn’t encounter any surprises, as the process is well-documented — suitable for anyone who already considers themselves somewhat handy. If you’ve ever wired a plug or light switch in your home, the installation here will be a breeze.
The most common issue older systems may present during the install is that some home thermostat wiring might be missing the “C,” or common wire that provides the 24 volts the thermostat system needs to function. Thankfully, you can handle this in a couple ways: Pull a C wire up to your thermostat’s location from the furnace (or hire someone to do it for you) or use Ecobee’s handy Power Extender Kit (PEK), which comes in the box. The PEK’s role is to take power from the C tap inside your furnace and pass it through the existing wiring so you don’t need to add a new wire. The PEK installation should cover most home configurations and only take a few minutes to complete. But keep in mind that you’ll need access to your furnace and its wiring to complete this step.
Once installed and powered on, the thermostat will confirm all the wires you’ve connected and whether or not you are using the PEK, this gives you one last opportunity to check your work before proceeding with the configuration. With that out of the way it’ll ask about your heating and cooling setup, have you name the thermostat and set up WiFi password via your iOS device or with the small on-screen keyboard. Now that it’s connected to your network, the thermostat will generate a registration code, which you can use to add it to your Ecobee account via either the Ecobee app or website. OK, we’re done!
In use
Using the Ecobee3 Lite is as simple as you’d hope. Just slide a finger up and down on the right side of the 320-x-480 display to adjust the temperature of whichever mode you’re in: heat, cool or auto. The device will learn your patterns over time and adapt continuously. All its settings are accessible via icons on the thermostat display, in the app and on the Ecobee site. The thermostat can be paired with the Amazon Echo Dot or used with Apple HomeKit for voice control, too. IFTTT support is also here for even greater levels of customization. Additionally, the device works with Samsung SmartThings and Wink, among others.
The app and web console match the display on the device itself, meaning the experience is essentially the same across platforms. The website offers much quicker access to all the functionality because of the greater screen real estate available, but the same controls are present everywhere. In my very unscientific tests, the furnace’s reaction times to changes made from the web or the phone app were indiscernible to those made locally on the device.
Missing from the Lite is a component that some of the flagship’s more advanced features relied on: remote sensors. The Ecobee3 included one in the box and more could be added to the system if needed. Sadly, the savings in the sticker price for the new version means that Ecobee has completely omitted support for remote sensors. And that’s a shame: These small stick-on devices were useful for a few important things. In particular, they monitored temperatures in other parts of your home, and their motion-sensing allowed the Ecobee3 to be aware of your location in the house if the “Follow Me” feature was enabled. So, instead of heating or cooling based on wherever the Ecobee3 was installed, the motion sensor in the remote device would tell the Ecobee3 that you were near it and then heat or cool to that remote temperature instead.
The loss of these sensors won’t be a deal-breaker for everyone, but in cases where your thermostat is out of the way and you’re not walking past it regularly, it may decide you’re out and put your home into away mode while you’re still there.
The competition
Nest is likely Ecobee3 Lite’s chief rival, but while it costs quite a bit more for what are essentially similar features, it seems to have become a household name in this space, not unlike Kleenex vis-a-vis tissues. In addition to brand awareness, Nest has the upper hand when it comes to build quality. Whereas Ecobee’s products are made from plastic, Nest’s devices are fashioned out of metal and glass for the housing. This isn’t to say the Ecobee3 Lite looks cheap, per se, but to the extent that these devices need to blend in with your home decor, a premium design counts for a lot. Still, the Lite’s lower price, coupled with its good performance, will surely help it win over some shoppers.
Wrap-up
Your home’s layout and size will ultimately guide you to decide which device will serve you best. Larger multifloor homes may be better served with the Ecobee3, while smaller abodes could get by with the Ecobee3 Lite. Either one is simple to use and works as advertised. As with its predecessors, the job of heating and cooling is performed so handily here that we barely need to think about them being there. But unlike its predecessors, the Lite gets smarter with time as it develops a better understanding of how your schedule works. The Ecobee3 Lite offers essentially the same features and functionality as its competitors but for a lot less money, and that makes it worthy of your consideration.
Rockstar is teasing a new ‘Red Dead’ game
The rumors of a new Red Read game appear to be true. Over the weekend, developer Rockstar posted some less than subtle studio logos with the series’ iconic red and black color scheme. Now, we have our first piece of art — seven silhouetted individuals, walking forward with a bright sunset (or sunrise?) in the background. Has the studio been working on a prequel? A sequel? The group could be a reference to the gang John Marston rolled with before the events of Red Dead Redemption. Or maybe the Magnificent Seven, an iconic Western (inspired by Seven Samurai) recently remade with Denzel Washington, Chris Pratt and Vincent D’Onofrio, among others.
There’s little we can say with any degree of certainty. But one thing is clear: Rockstar is building towards an announcement. It won’t be long before we know what the developer has been working on behind closed doors.
pic.twitter.com/iuwxwyL2cX
— Rockstar Games (@RockstarGames) October 17, 2016
Source: Rockstar (Twitter)
Samsung starts building 10-nanometer processors
Chip companies are battling Moore’s Law tooth and nail, but Samsung says it’s the first to start building processors using a 10-nanometer process, ahead of Intel and others. To put that into scale, the transistors will be just 50 times the size of a silicon atom, which is around 0.2 nanometers across. Samsung didn’t say who it’s building the system-on-chip for, but Korea’s Electronic Times says it has an exclusive deal to build Qualcomm’s next-gen Snapdragon 830 processors using 10-nanometer tech.
The company is using its 10-nanometer FinFET process to build a multi-layer 3D transistor structure with an improved design. That’ll yield 27 percent better performance and 40 percent lower power consumption than its 14-nanometer chips, resulting in faster and more battery-friendly devices. With transistors approaching atomic sizes, Samsung needed to do “triple-patterning,” etching the chips three times with electron beams to increase the feature density.
Samsung’s 10-nanometer chip tech will likely power the next-gen Qualcomm Snapdragon 830 and many of Samsung’s own upcoming phones.
Samsung said that first-gen system-on-chips will start to appear in devices early next year, while second-gen tech will come in the second half of 2017. If it does build the Snapdragon 830 as rumored, Samsung tech will find its way into devices by Google, HTC, Sony and others. They’ll also power US versions of Samsung’s own Galaxy S7 successor, and possibly a new Note product. Given the Note 7 disaster, it’s probably not hyperbolic to say those will be Samsung’s most important mobile products ever.
Source: Samsung
Smart ping pong paddles remix music to the speed of play
I love playing table tennis, but my backhand topspin is average at best. I’ll play for an hour and grow tired of chasing wayward balls, knowing that I’ll never have a smash quite like Peco from Ping Pong. Never mind — now I can cut loose with a game of “Ping Pong FM” instead. The modified bats, which have contact microphones inside, log when you’ve hit the ball and remix music accordingly. Exchange slices too slowly and the song will drop to a lower tempo; likewise, driving the ball with some vicious top spin will cause it to speed up. You can try to match the beat or purposefully remix the music in weird and wonderful ways — it’s entirely up to you.
The brilliantly strange project was created by designers Mark Wheeler, Christopher Arzt, Alaa Mendili, Camille Durand, Kevin Bleich, Demetre Arges, Paul Williamson, Graham Bullis, Catherine Schultz, Brandon Hilliard, Les Hilliard and Tyler Coray. You can choose different music depending on your skill level (faster tracks are usually harder to beat-match) and to keep the ping pong party pumping. It’s not a mass market product, but the team says it’s looking for “a partner to help us bring Ping Pong FM to fun events or a more permanent venue.” So if you run a startup and want your office to out-cool the competition — here’s your answer.
Via: designboom, The Verge
Source: Ping Pong FM
UK spies violated privacy laws with bulk data collection
Ever since Edward Snowden’s leaks came to light, UK spy agencies have responded to accusations of surveillance overreach with a common boilerplate statement: that their activities are lawful, necessary and proportionate. However, they can’t always use that justification any more. The Investigatory Powers Tribunal has ruled that key GCHQ, MI5 and MI6 bulk data collection programs violated privacy protections in the European Convention on Human Rights. Both a Bulk Communications Data effort (which covers data such as visited websites, email metadata and GPS locations) and a Bulk Personal Datasets initiative (covering biographical details like your communications and financial activities) didn’t have proper oversight until 2015, when some safeguards came into place. That’s particularly damning when BCD was had been in place since 1998, and BPD since 2006.
There weren’t sufficient codes of practice covering either program, the Tribunal says. Moreover, there isn’t enough evidence to suggest that there was “effective independent oversight.” Commissioners had an inherently limited ability to verify how spies collected, stored and destroyed data, and didn’t conduct detailed audits. Also, the public didn’t know or expect that these surveillance systems were in place — you can’t consent to a program when you don’t realize it exists.
The Tribunal is “satisfied” that the newer protections are following European Convention rights. However, the watchdog group Privacy International (which launched litigation to reveal these flaws) isn’t happy. It believes that authorization and oversight are still “deeply inadequate,” and that the government “barely touched” on its data collection practices even when given a chance. We’d add that the timing of the ruling is ironic, too. The Tribunal is accusing agencies of violating rights just as they’re about to get expanded powers under the Investigatory Powers Bill — while this includes explicit oversight, many are concerned that the UK’s privacy intrusions are only going to worsen.
Via: BBC
Source: IPT, Privacy International (Medium)
VR helped me grasp the life of a transgender wheelchair user
Playing The Circle is quite literally a transformative experience. Designed by Manos Agianniotakis, a student at the National Film and Television School (NFTS) in Buckinghamshire, England, it’s a game that uses the Oculus Rift and Touch controllers to put you in the body of a wheelchair user suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).
In The Circle, you play as a Alex, a transgender woman who is attacked and ends up in a wheelchair. The game picks up Alex’s story around a month after the incident. She’s out of hospital, but traumatized and unable to leave her apartment. Isolated and withdrawn, her relationships with friends and family, many of whom are unaware of the transphobic nature of the attack, are strained. She begins reading her father’s diaries, and becomes obsessed a subject he was fascinated with toward the end of his life: Toynbee Tiles, mysterious plaques that are placed around North America.
Almost all of the game takes place in Alex’s apartment, viewed from a first-person perspective. You’ll spend much of your time at her desk, where you can interact with all the surrounding objects — chief among them a computer. You use this computer to investigate the aforementioned tiles, digging into the conspiracy theories that surround them. But it’s around the fringes of this “central” plot that the real meat of this game lies; where you’ll be able to dig into Alex’s condition, and rebuild relationships with Alex’s loved ones.
What you do with your time inside Alex’s body is up to you. Agianniotakis describes The Circle as “the smallest narrative sandbox.” The game runs the course of a year, during which the narrative unfolds organically. Alex is a fully shaped character, so you can’t exactly dictate what she does, but many interactions are optional. You can’t decide, for example, how exactly to respond to an email from Alex’s mother, but you can choose whether or not to respond to it — or even whether you want to read the email in the first place.
How you choose to spend your time in the game will dictate how well you understand Alex, and her troubles. You can pursue the Toynbee Tile mystery resolutely, ignoring the realities of PTSD and hiding from your family as best you can; you can reach out to your concerned loved ones and try to repair those broken bonds; or anything in between.
As interesting as the narrative sandbox is, it isn’t what made the game special for me. Instead, it’s the way Agianniotakis uses VR’s strengths and weaknesses to help you embody Alex, and understand her frustrations and feelings. One example in the demo I played at the EGX game show was a phone call Alex received.
Or rather, didn’t receive. You play the game seated, and at one point a phone begins to ring. Using 3D audio effects, it’s easy to locate the phone: on the floor, just to your right. Retrieving the handset is impossible, though. It’s carefully positioned to be just out of your grasp, no matter how hard you try to lean and reach, and the call goes to voicemail. Alex’s mother’s voice plays. She’s worried.
Another, more subtle tactic employs one of VR’s long-perceived weaknesses: inducing motion sickness. The game is punctuated by dream sequences, panic attacks and memories, in which Alex moves on a guided path through abstract vignettes related to her trauma. One such scene tackles her ongoing gender dysphoria. Shown from a third-person perspective, it sees Alex walk past silhouettes in a public bathroom — often a fraught place for a trans person to be.
During the sequence, I felt lightheaded, and a little uneasy. It wasn’t just from the challenging narrative, Agianniotakis explained: “I’m using the discomfort that virtual reality can cause with movement to force the player to almost feel a discomfort with their own body,” he said. The scene isn’t noticeably jerky, it’s just… different. And the choice is deliberate. “It doesn’t make you sick, but I want people to have a slight physical side effect when they play through it, without making it extremely uncomfortable of course, to create the notion that you’re almost not part of your own body,” he added.
I’ve felt sick during VR sessions before — especially in the early days of bootstrapped development kits — and this wasn’t that. At no point did I feel compelled to take off the headset, nor did I actually worry about vomiting. Whether it was playing at a different framerate, or something to do with movement speed, it led to a gentle feeling of disquiet that made for a more poignant experience.
Agianniotakis is clearly working hard to build The Circle as a carefully considered, almost educational experience. But he has no first-hand knowledge of being either transgender or a wheelchair user. Instead, he, writer Jess O’Kane and producer Ser En Low have relied on extensive research, both passively through reading studies and other material, and actively by getting feedback from trans people and people living with disability.
“The trans people I’ve been able to speak to are not gamers, and have difficulty giving feedback about it as a game,” Agianniotakis explained, “but they were able to speak to the representation as a whole and explain some of the feelings that come with gender dysphoria.”
Through one of the game’s public showings, he met a small group of trans people from Manchester, England, who are ardent gamers. He hopes to convene with them again to further develop and hone the experience. The response from wheelchair users has also been positive, Agianniotakis said, but one of the strongest reactions actually came from the adolescent sibling of a wheelchair user, who found it enlightening to experience life, however briefly, from something closer to his brother’s perspective.
I usually get inspiration for my projects from real-life, and mental health is an everyday, often misrepresented, reality for way too many people to be ignored.
Manos Agianniotakis
Exploring mental health is not a new topic for Agianniotakis. He previously produced the interactive story An Interview, a reimagining of the play Fake It ‘Til You Make It, which focuses on male clinical depression. “My father suffered from depression and anxiety throughout his life,” he explained. “Investigating certain conditions helped me understand better the world he lived in … Mental health is an everyday, often misrepresented, reality for way too many people to be ignored.” Currently taking priority over game development is Agianniotakis’ MA dissertation at NFTS on the depiction of mental health in video games.
The 15-minute slice of The Circle I played was powerful, and left me wanting more. I felt hints of transference (in this context, the feeling that you are someone else). I’ve experienced transference before through VR, but that was through a psychological experiment that essentially tricked multiple senses in a way that you just can’t do with a regular Oculus Rift or HTC Vive setup. I can see myself, in a quiet room at home, enthralled for the hour or so it’ll take to play through one of its many paths.
That’s why The Circle excites me. Its primary goal is to make you lose yourself; to help you understand what it feels like to be wheelchair bound, to be traumatized or to suffer with gender dysphoria. And even in a busy, noisy demo area, full of shouting gamers and announcements, even with just 15 minutes, I started to understand, and to empathize. There can be no stronger praise.
Agianniotakis hopes The Circle will be ready by fall 2017, but will be demoing the game at various game shows in the meantime. The next public event scheduled is Develop:VR on November 24th in London.
‘Limit Ad Tracking’ Popular in U.S. After iOS 10, Global Awareness ‘Stagnant’
Approximately 18 million iOS users in the United States have turned on Apple’s “Limit Ad Tracking” feature in settings, effectively preventing advertisements within apps from being targeted directly at them and their browsing habits. Based on a recent report from Adjust (via Advertising Age), that’s now 20 percent of total iOS users in the United States who have LAT turned on.
Although it’s been available for users since iOS 6 in 2012, a tweak to the feature in iOS 10 lets users completely avoid what’s referred to as an “Identifier for Advertising,” which pinpoints devices with a unique ID number to serve up targeted advertisements. With LAT turned on, users now become ghosts to IDFA requests from ad networks, making tracking the behavior of an iOS user “significantly more complicated.”
Despite Apple’s bolstering of the feature in iOS 10, Adjust’s report noted that “on a global level, there’s no evidence of an upward trend” of users becoming aware of LAT, which is somewhat hidden in the Privacy sub-menu of Settings.
“If people were more interested in reducing the number of retargeted ads, and if they were aware of the effects of the Limit Ad Tracking settings, we would expect a steadily rising trend throughout the last month as adoption of iOS 10 rises and people become aware of the changes. So far, on a global level, there’s no evidence of an upward trend – the global rates are stagnant, at around 18%.
In spite of global stagnation, Adjust mentioned that in certain places — particularly the United States — LAT is beginning to become more well-known among consumers. Specifically, following the launch of iOS 10 in September, 2 million people activated LAT for the first time in the U.S.
Among other countries, Germany follows the U.S. in total iOS users with LAT activated (19.3 percent), followed by territories including the United Kingdom (16.5 percent), and Canada (14.4 percent). Places like the Netherlands, with 22 percent, beat out the United States. Countries where privacy concerns are raised see a higher percentage of users opting out of targeted advertising, but as Adjust said, “it’s not evenly distributed across countries, and it’s additionally not evenly distributed among target audiences.”
With the growth of public knowledge surrounding such ad-blocking features, co-founder of Adjust Paul Muller noted that, “this is trending in a direction where it’s not just the tech-savvy, ad-allergic crowd any more. Marketers will face a large, distributed and worst of all ‘unknown’ segment of users, especially in places like Germany and the U.S.”
Related Roundup: iOS 10
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