Catching up… is Facebook about to get into music streaming? “The social network has been making a concerted effort to push video content, recently citing billions of video views, and now a report from music industry site Music Ally suggest it is seeking deals with labels, first for a music video streaming service and later a straight audio service too.”
More Google: one of its self-driving cars was in its first injury accident. It was rear-ended. “The three Google employees on board complained of minor whiplash, were checked out at a hospital and cleared to go back to work following the July 1 collision, Google said. The driver of the other car also complained of neck and back pain.”
Google is indexing a LOT more tweets, but it’s still nowhere near the number being produced. “From February to June, Stone Temple found a 466% increase in Tweets indexed within the first seven days. In February, just 0.6% of Tweets were indexed and last month that number shot to 3.4%. While these increases are promising, there is still more than 96% of Tweets that aren’t indexed.”
Is Facebook going to get into music videos? This is a straight shot at YouTube. “YouTube pays the labels for showing getting to show their music videos, which often run after pre-roll ads. Still, some record executives think YouTube should pay them more because not only is it getting to earn money from showing the videos, it’s a free music streaming option that might convince some listeners they don’t need to pay for services like Spotify or Apple Music. So to seduce the labels, The New York Times says Facebook is offering better payouts in exchange for music videos.”
Interim CEO of Reddit, Ellen Pao, has resigned. “Pao, 45, announced her decision to step down in a post published to Reddit on Friday afternoon. She blamed her departure on a disagreement with the site’s board of directors, not the mounting criticism she’d faced from users and moderators…. But the ouster was seen as a swift and sweeping victory for the close-knit community of Redditors, who quickly took to the online community to express their glee at forcing such a big decision at the San Francisco company.” So here’s the question: is there ever going to be a CEO that those Redditors can agree on? One who will both be able to run Reddit as a sustainable business and align with those editors’ philosophy? My guess would be no.
Is Twitter going to end the tradition of the “spin room”? “…with new capabilities to upload video directly to Twitter and the live-stream app Periscope, the candidates can post their own post-debate analysis instantly. That means that instead of flooding the debate press room with paper statements about the opponents’ flubs or speaking into a bouquet of microphones in the corner of the debate hall, the candidate can just promote their views in a tweet targeted to the audience that is most closely watching the debate.”
The LA Times has hired a reporter to cover Black Twitter – that is to say, the culture of people of color and how that culture uses Twitter. “Dexter Thomas joins us today to cover Black Twitter (which really is so much more complicated than that). He will work closely with the newsroom and #EmergingUS to find communities online (Black Medium to Latino Tumblr to Line in Japan) and both create stories with and pull stories from those worlds. Dexter is from San Bernardino and is a doctoral candidate in East Asian studies at Cornell University. He has taught media studies and Japanese and is writing a book about Japanese hip-hop.” I’m going to use this story as a promotion excuse: if you have any interest in animation or voice acting at all, please do yourself a favor and follow @kharypayton on Twitter. He is a wonderful actor and doesn’t […]
I have kind of nerd crush on Deep Dreaming, Google’s neural AI that generates psychedelic images. I find the images and videos mostly fascinating, occasionally disturbing. There’s just something about them that’s so otherworldly and yet, so… familiar. Right? (Or does nobody else feel that way and I have just admitted to being a huge weirdo?) Anyway, many efforts are underway to gather these images up and share them.
Less trippy, but potentially more useful: Google’s Deep Learning Machine is learning to synthesize images. ” Give Google’s DeepStereo algorithm two images of a scene and it will synthesize a third image from a different point of view.”
It looks like the next iteration of Google Glass will be focused on the enterprise. “We told you yesterday about a new device that passed through the FCC—codenamed GG1—and many have speculated that it’s the next generation of the Google Glass hardware. While it’s often suggested that the device is soon going to get some iterative Explorer Edition overhaul and see its first official consumer launch, it’s much more probable that Google is first going to push this hardware toward the one place it has seen success: the enterprise market.” Google Glass for vertical markets is what I’ve been saying the whole time. Personally I would love to get my mittens on one of these for some of the work I do in the warehouse.
The Wall Street Journal has an early review of Google’s Project Fi. They seem pretty meh about it. “Dead simple to set up and use, its rates start at $30 a month. It could save you some money if you accept some big limitations. It only works with one phone, for starters. The Nexus 6, built by Motorola in collaboration with Google, is a speedy smartphone with a gorgeous display and the best, most unaltered version of Android you can find. But it has a middling camera and its 6-inch display makes it massive to hold. If Project Fi’s SIM cards worked in phones from Samsung, HTC—dare I say, Apple?—it’d be easier to recommend.”
People are having way too fun with Google AI picture editor / psychedelic generator / neural network head trip Deep Dream. Someone took a film clip from Fear and Loathing in Los Vegas and Deep Dream’d it. Honestly, this kind of freaked me out. When the guy is walking toward the camera and he’s talking and just for a second there’s an eyeball in his mouth… (shudder)
This is interesting. Google is getting into ride-sharing, via Waze. “Google-owned online mapping company Waze is launching a carpooling pilot program in Israel where commuters pay fellow drivers a small fee for a ride to and from work.”
How-To Geek did a review of Google Cardboard. Not really interested in vertigo and nausea.
Hey hey hey! Gigablast has hooked up with the Internet Archive (PRESS RELEASE). “Shortly after releasing its web search engine as open source and available for free download, Gigablast, Inc. has inked a deal with the Internet Archive. Gigablast has agreed to provide search for the archive’s 400+ billion web documents. After conducting tests, the Internet Archive found that its users prefer the quality of Gigablast’s search results over the leading open source search engine solutions.”
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