After the discrimination, the creepy advertising practices, the data breaches, the political mess, and the sense that the world’s biggest social network just isn’t much fun to use any more... maybe you’re finally considering leaving Facebook. But what are you going to replace it with? And will your friends come with…
No one wants to post silly, racy, or vulnerable Stories if they’re worried their boss, parents, and distant acquaintances are watching. So to get people sharing more, and more authentically, Instagram will let you share to fewer people. Today after 17 months of testing, Instagram is globally launching Close Friends on iOS and Android over the next two days. It lets you build a single private list of your best buddies on Instagram through suggestions or search, and then share Stories just to them. They’ll see a green circle around your profile pic in the existing Story tray to let them know this is Close Friends-only content, but no one gets notified if they’re added or removed from your list that only you can view.
“As you add more and more people [on any social network], you start not to know them. That’s obviously going to change the things that you’re sharing and it makes it even harder to form every deep connections with your closest friends because you’re basically curating for the largest possible distribution,” said Instagram director of product Robby Stein, who announced the news onstage at TechCrunch Disrupt Berlin. “To really be yourself and connect and be connected to your best friends, you need your own place.”
I spent the last few days demoing Close Friends and it’s remarkably smooth, intuitive, and useful. Suddenly there was a place to post what I might otherwise consider too random or embarrassing to share. Teens already invented the idea of “Finstagrams,” or fake Instagram accounts, to share feed posts to just their favorite people without the pressure to look cool. Now Instagram is formalizing that idea into “Finstastories” through Close Friends.
The feature is a wise way to counteract the natural social graph creep that occurs as people accept social networking requests out of a sense of obligatory courtesy from people they aren’t close to, which then causes them to only share blander content. Helping people express their wild side as must-see content for their Close Friends could drive up time spent on the app. But there’s also the risk that the launch creates private echo sphere havens for offensive content beyond the eyes of those who’d rightfully report it.
“No one has ever mastered a close friends graph and made it easy for people to understand” Stein notes. The path to variable sharing privacy winds through a cemetery. Facebook’s “Lists” product struggled to find traction for a decade before being half-shut down. Google+’s big selling point was “Circles” for sharing to different groups of people. But with both, user found it too boring and confusing to make a bunch of different lists they could share to or view feeds from. Snapchat launched its own Groups feature two months ago, but it’s easy to forget who’s in which list and they’re designed around group chat. Most users just end up trying their best to reject, unfollow, or mute people they didn’t want to see or share with.
Now after almost 15 years of Facebook, 12 years of Twitter, 8 years of Instagram, and 7 years of Snapchat, that strategy has failed for many, leading to noisy feeds and a fear of sharing to too many. “People get friend requests and they feel pressure to accept” Stein explains. “The curve is actually that your sharing goes up and as you add more people initially, as more people can respond to you. But then there’s a point where it reduces sharing over time.”
So Instagram chose to build Close Friends as just a single list in hopes that you won’t lose track of who’s part of it. As the feature rolls out today, there’ll be an explainer Story from Instagram about it in your tray, you’ll get walked through when you hit the Close Friends button on the Story composer, and there’ll be a call out on your profile to configure Close Friends in the settings menu. You’ll be able to search for your close friends or quickly add them from a list of suggestions based on who you interact with most. You can add or remove as many people as you want without them knowing, they just will or won’t see your green circled Close Friends story. “We’re protecting you and your right to share or not share to certain people. It gives you air cover” Stein tells me
From then on, you can use the Close Friends shortcut in the Stories composer to share it with just those people, who’ll see a green “Close Friends” label on the story to let them know they’re special. Instagram will use the signal of who you add to help rank and order your Stories tray, but it won’t automatically pop Close Friends Stories to the front. When asked if Facebook would use that data for personalization too, Stein told me “We’re the same company” but said using it to improve Facebook is “not something that we’re actively working on.”
There’s no screenshot alerts, similar to the rest of Instagram Stories, but you won’t be able to DM anyone someone else’s Close Friends Story. That’s it. “We haven’t invented any new design affordances or things you need to know” Stein beams.
Instagram’s Robby Stein (left) tells TechCrunch’s Josh Constine about Close Friends at Disrupt Berlin
The one concern here is that Close Friends could create little bunkers in which people can share objectionable content without consequence. It’d be sad to see it harbor racism, sexism, or other stuff that doesn’t belong anywhere on Instagram. Stein says that because you’re talking with friends instead of strangers on a Reddit, “it self regulates what it’s used for. We haven’t seen a lot of that usage in the testing that we’ve done. It’s still a broadcast channel and it doesn’t generate this group discussion. It doesn’t spiral.”
Overall, I think Close Friends will be a hit. When it started testing a prototype called Favorites in June 2017 it worked with feed posts too, but Instagram decided the off the cuff posts wouldn’t fit right next to your more widely broadcasted highlights. But confined to Stories, it feels like a natural and much-needed extension of what Instagram was always supposed to be but that’s gotten lost in our swelling social networks: giving the people you love a window into your life.
A few years back, Occipital released a sensor that turned your iPad into a portable 3D scanner. Called the Occipital Structure, it packed lasers and cameras into a snap-on package that let the iPad be used for anything from accurately measuring a room’s dimensions to building 3D models for building prosthetic limbs. The catch? For the most part, it only worked with iOS.
Today Occipital is announcing a more flexible (and powerful) alternative: Structure Core. With built-in motion sensors and compatibility with Windows, Linux, Android, or macOS, it’s meant for projects where cramming in an iPad just doesn’t make sense. Think robots, or mixed reality headsets.
By blasting out an array of laser dots and using the Core’s onboard cameras to map them, Structure’s SDK is able to map its environment and determine its position within it. You could, for example, use the depth sensors to have your robot build a map of a room, then use the SDK’s built-in route tool to get it from point A to point B on command (without bashing into everything along the way.)
Beyond no longer being tied to iOS, Structure Core also beefs things up under the hood. Whereas the original Structure sensor uses USB 2.0/Lightning, Structure Core taps USB 3.0 — which, the company tells me, means the SDK can pull considerably more sensor data, faster. They’ve switched from a rolling shutter to global shutter (meaning every pixel on the sensor is exposed at the same time, helping to stop tearing/distortion on fast moving objects), and the field of view has been greatly improved.
Occipital isn’t the first to dabble in this space, of course. DIY’ers have been repurposing Microsoft’s Kinect hardware (RIP) to give their robots basic vision abilities for years; meanwhile, Intel has an arm it calls RealSense focusing on drop-in vision boards. But with companies like Misty Robotics turning to Occipital to give its robots sight, it made sense to take the iPad out of the equation and offer something that could stand on its own.
Structure Core will come in two forms: enclosed, or bare. The first wraps the chipset/sensors/etc in aluminum in a way thats ready to be strapped right into a project; the second sheds the enclosure and gives you on-board mounting points for when you’re looking for something more custom.
Pricing is a bit peculiar for a piece of hardware — the sooner you need it, the more it’ll cost. A limited run of early units will ship in the next few weeks for $600 each; the next batch goes out in January, for $499. By March, they expect the price to officially settle at $399 each. The company also tells me that they’re open to volume pricing if a team needs a bunch of units, though those prices aren’t available yet.
Media center app Plex today announced a partnership with streaming music service TIDAL, offering discounted access to TIDAL’s 60 million tracks and 244,000+ music videos for Plex Pass subscribers. The Plex Pass is the media center app’s own subscription program, which adds support for watching and recording from live TV as well as other premium features and advanced controls.
Now, Plex Pass holders will be able to add TIDAL into the mix for $8.99 per month, instead of its usual $9.99 per month price. It’s not a steep discount, but one that could prove compelling for serious Plex users who have already centralized their access to entertainment within the Plex app.
Over the past year or so, Plex has doubled down on its mission to become a one-stop show for all your media, having added support for podcasts, streaming TV (by way of a digital antenna) and a DVR, personalized news, and, most recently, web shows. This is in addition to the software’s ability to organize your home media collections of movies, TV shows, personal video, music, and photos.
The company’s goal is to capitalize on its expansive entertainment library in order to offer better recommendations across media types. That is – it could suggest podcasts or web shows based on the TV or music you enjoy, for example.
Plex customers who add TIDAL will have access to the streamer’s entire music catalog, along with artist recommendations for those who aren’t already in your media library, as well as a feature that will display the missing albums from artists in your library. The service also offers artist radio, discovery radio for finding new tunes from those not in your library, new release recommendations, music videos, and more.
Universal search and playlists features will combine results from Plex’s library and TIDAL, allowing you to locate tracks from your local library alongside TIDAL tracks, and add both to the same playlist.
“An incredible music and media experience is something that matters to both TIDAL and Plex users, and the addition of TIDAL’s music streaming service within Plex makes it the only solution that organizes and curates all major media types in one place,” said Keith Valory, CEO of Plex, in a statement. “It’s another step closer to making all the media that matters to you accessible from one app, on any device, anytime.”
TIDAL will also point its subscribers to Plex as a part of the deal, giving them access to Plex’s music features and mobile app, or, in the case of Tidal HiFi subscribers ($19.99/mo), they get a Plex Pass for free.
Once signed up for TIDAL, Plex users can quickly merge their subscription to Plex from here.
The TIDAL subscription is available on Plex mobile and web* to start, with expansion to other TV platforms expected to follow.
Versions required: Plex Media Server 1.14.0.5470; iOS 5.7.2; Android 7.8.0; Web 3.77.2
Bad news for those of you with small hands or small pockets (or both): It looks like phones are staying big for the foreseeable future. But owning a handset with a big screen doesn’t mean you can’t operate it with just one hand if you need to—these are the software tricks and apps you need to familiarize yourself with.
Augmented reality has been a buzzword for years, but for the most part, it has remained a novelty. WiARframe, which is competing in our Startup Battlefield competition today at Disrupt Berlin, believes that we are still very early on in the AR game and that part of what is holding the market back is that the tools need to become easier to use and that designers need to find better ways to find inspiration for their AR experiences.
WiARframe tackles these issues by providing budding AR designers with an easy-to-use web-based interface for building AR experiences and a community feature that allows them to share these experiences with anybody who downloads the company’s iOS and Android apps.
The actual scene editor, the company’s founder Jeremiah Alexander told me, is modeled after other 3D modeling tools. In it, you can lay out the scene, but then also make it interactive. Typically, developers would do this in a complex and multi-faceted tool like Unity, but Alexander argues that the barrier of entry there is still too high for many non-developers, while wiARframe removes a lot of that complexity by offering a specialized tool that’s only for building AR experiences.”Unity is not for designers,” he told me.
In addition to being able to import 3D models, the tool also allows designers to add menus to a scene that can be used for settings or other in-app experiences.
As Alexander stressed, though, the community aspect of the service may be just as important. The idea here is to allow other designers to take existing scenes and remix them. That’s not unlike what Microsoft is doing with Paint 3D and Remix 3D, though Alexander likened it more to GitHub.
GitHub is also the inspiration for what will likely become wiARframe’s business model in the long run. Like on GitHub, wiARframe users will be able to use the service for free, but their creations will be public. To make them private, users will have to pay. In the long run, the company may also offer an enterprise plan with additional features.
While wiARframe started out with Alexander as a solo founder, the company now has three full-time employees. The team went through the Comcast NBCUniversal Techstars program earlier this year, and Alexander has an extensive background in designing games and other digital products. Indeed, early on in his career, he built tools for developers at Atari.
Alexander compared the state of AR to the early days of the web, where you had to be pretty technical to get started. The idea behind wiARframe is to democratize the ability to create AR content. What remains to be seen is whether that consumer demand for AR will ever crystallize. If it does, tools like wiARframe will surely make it easier for anybody to jump in and build new experiences.
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Personalized ads—they aren’t just on your screens anymore. For the past few years, advertisers have been experimenting with ways to apply all that data they have about you to billboards and other IRL advertisements. Think about how creepy it is when Facebook knows too much about you. Now imagine how it would feel if a…
After three years, Google’s finally decided to expand Project Fi to more handsets beyond the few phones that have supported it, such as Google’s Pixel and Nexus series, as well as a handful of LG and Moto phones. Crucially, the service is now (mostly) compatible with iPhones, and to celebrate the change, Google is…
Hand-held gimbals have largely been the realm of pro videographers. But DJI is looking to change things up with an ultra-portable take on its popular Osmo line. The Osmo Pocket is a four-inch-tall version of the drone maker’s camera stabilizer that can either be plugged into an iPhone or utilized as a standalone.
At $349 it’s not exactly cheap — in fact, it’s about twice what the Osmo Mobile 2 is currently going for on Amazon. That’s due in part to the inclusion of a one-inch touchscreen that lets you shoot and preview videos without an external camera. Of course, it can also be used in tandem with an iPhone or Android device via a Lighting or USB-C dongle.
I suspect that pricing is going to inhibit the product’s ability to reach a more mainstream audience — especially with all of the things users can currently accomplish with just an iPhone. But the Pocket incorporates DJI’s impressive technologies and shot modes to accomplish some pretty cool videos.
The device can actively recognize and track an image with a few taps. There are also FaceTrack, time-lapse, FPV, selfie and panorama features built in. For quick, production-quality shots, there are a number of different shot modes, similar to the ones found on the company’s Mavic drones. Story Mode features 10 templates, and Pro Mode gives the shooter a wide range of controls over the final shot.
The gimbal does three-axis stabilization to keep shots steady, while the camera can shoot 12-megapixel images and 4K video up to 60fps.
I had the opportunity to play around with the device a bit this week, ahead of today’s announcement, and found it to be fairly intuitive. We’ll get more time with the gimbal in the near future, and hopefully get some more insight into precisely what justifies the $350 price tag. For now, it seems prohibitively expensive for a product that’s clearly trying to sneak out just in time for the holidays.
It’s a hefty price tag for a product that will admittedly make for some very cool Instagram stories — but I’m more than happy to be proven wrong here. The company is going to offer up a bunch of different accessories to make the Osmo a bit more diverse, including a waterproof case and action camera-style mount, so it can double as something akin to a GoPro. There’s a wireless charging case, as well, which extends the battery by around two hours.
The Osmo Pocket is available through DJI for pre-order today and starts shipping December 15.
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Google is making a major move to expand the availability of its Fi wireless service.
It’s been a few years since Google launched Project Fi with the promise of doing things a bit differently than the large carriers. Because it could switch between the cell networks of multiple providers to give you the best signal, the service only ever officially supported a select number of handsets. You could always trick it by activating the service on a supported phone and then moving your SIM card to another (including an iPhone), but that was never supported.
That’s changing today, though. The company is opening up Fi — and renaming it to Google Fi — and officially expanding device support to most popular Android phones, as well as iPhones. Supported Android phones include devices from Samsung, LG, Motorola and OnePlus. iPhone support is currently in beta, and there are a few extra steps to set it up, but the Fi iOS app should now be available in the App Store.
One thing you might not get with many of the now-supported phones is the full Fi experience, with network switching and access to Google’s enhanced network features, including Google’s VPN network. For that, you’ll still need a Pixel phone, the Moto G6 or any other device that you can buy directly in the Fi store.
Fi on all phones comes with the usual features, like bill protection, free high-speed international roaming and support for group plans.
To sweeten the deal, Google is also launching a somewhat extraordinary promotion today: If you open a new Fi account — or if are an existing user — you can buy any phone in the Fi shop today and get your money back in the form of a travel gift card that you can use for a flight with Delta or Southwest, or lodging with Airbnb and Hotels.com. There’s some fine print, of course (you need to keep your account active for a few months, etc.), but if you were looking at getting Fi anyway, like to travel and want to get a Pixel 3 XL, that’s not a bad deal at all.
The fine print is below:
Travel on Fi with Any Device Purchase Promotion Terms (Google Fi)
Limited time, 24-hour offer applies to any qualifying device purchased from fi.google.com from 11/28/18 12:00 AM PT through 11/28/18 11:59 PM PT, or while supplies last. When you purchase a qualifying device on fi.google.com, you can redeem a travel gift card in the amount you paid for the device, excluding taxes (details below).
To qualify for this promotion, a device must be activated within 15 days of device shipment and remain active for 60 consecutive days within 75 days of device shipment. The device must be activated within the same plan that was used to purchase the device. Activation must be for full service (i.e., activation does not apply to a data-only SIM).
This offer is available for new Google Fi customers as of 11/28/18 12:00 AM PT and existing, active Google Fi customers. If the customer is new to Google Fi, the customer must transfer (port-in) their current personal number over to Google Fi during sign up. The number being transferred must be currently active and have been active with the previous carrier and the customer since 8/28/18 12:00 AM PT.
After the terms have been satisfied, the customer will receive an email from Google Fi (around 75 – 90 days after device activation) with instructions on how to obtain a gift card from Tango subject to Tango’s terms and conditions. The user can redeem gift card amounts with select travel partners: Airbnb, Delta Airlines, Hotels.com, and Southwest Airlines. Gift cards may also be subject to the terms of the travel partners.
If Fi service is paused for more than 7 days or cancelled within 120 days of activation, the value of the gift card will be charged to your Google Payments account to match the purchased price of the device. Limit one per person. This offer is only available for U.S. residents ages 18 and older, and requires Google Payments and Google Fi accounts. Unless otherwise stated, this offer cannot be combined with other offers. Offer and gift card redemption are not transferable, and are not valid for cash or cash equivalent. Void where prohibited.
