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“Panic Bot summons help in a workplace emergency” plus 29 more VentureBeat

“Panic Bot summons help in a workplace emergency” plus 29 more VentureBeat


Panic Bot summons help in a workplace emergency

Posted: 21 Feb 2018 12:42 PM PST


In the future, when a construction worker or hotel maid says “Help!” or “Emergency!” on a radio or chat group, it may automatically summon help from colleagues or send an alert to appropriate company personnel.

That’s the idea behind Panic Bot, the product of Orion Labs, a company created by two former first responders. The platform combines team communication with bots for automated workflows and access to backend systems like Oracle, SAP, Shopify, and PagerDuty.

Panic Bot was made especially for first responders, miners, hotel maids, and others whose work environment sometimes calls for them to be independent or isolated from coworkers.

“I think the most exciting part of what’s happening right now really is that this technology is starting to benefit industries, verticals, and people doing real work in the world in a way that doesn’t happen if you’re supposed to be sitting at home all day behind a $3,000 MacBook,” founder Jesse Robbins told VentureBeat in a phone interview. “These are for people working real jobs in the field and doing hard stuff and needing to be connected, so I’m pretty pumped because I really believe in startups as a means of changing people’s lives, hopefully for the better.”

The implementation of services like Panic Bot will become more common, Robbins believes, as more governments make such services a legal requirement. In recent weeks, lawmakers in Seattle and Sacramento have required hotels to give their maids a panic button or means of communication to keep them safe.

Orion bots aren’t just made for emergencies. Different wake words can be programmed to trigger different workflows and automated activity. Panic Bot made its debut last month along with a bot for retailers to check their inventory.

“You might say ‘Cleanup, aisle two’ or ‘Tell my buddies I’m stuck in a meeting I don’t want to be in’ or pretty much whatever you want to do,” Robbins said.

Robbins concedes that in some moments, its emergency bot may not be able to send someone to the rescue.

“In the worst case scenario, where there’s simply no cell phone network, period, then there’s no network to connect to. And in those situations, those services won’t work until it can see a network again,” he said.

Last month, Orion Labs launched App Talk, an iOS app for teams and bots to work together via voice and text communications.

Above: Orion Labs App Talk for iOS

Bots for emergency dispatch systems may become part of Orion’s future roadmap, and once 5G becomes available, Orion wants to use it to directly connect teams, Robbins said.

Organizations that need to assure their employees have 100 percent access to emergency workflow bots may soon be able to add bots to communication over traditional walkie talkies. To create bots able to recognize wake words to automate workflows in the less-than-ideal conditions first responders have to operate in with walkie talkies, Orion Labs is exploring partnerships to improve voice recognition.

“We’ve had it in testing for two years; it’s not publicly released, yet it’s a thing we’re evaluating. The challenge is the audio quality from any one of these radios is so low that voice recognition is not very accurate, and it’s really hard to get it there,” Robbins said.

Beyond a single chat app and its Onyx walkie talkie-like wearable, Orion Labs is trying to string together a collection of ways people can communicate with their team and bots. In September 2017, Orion Labs announced the closure of a $18.25 million funding round and released bots that perform real-time translation of Spanish and Chinese.

Orion Labs is one in a clutch of companies, including Zoom.ai, Talla, and Volara, that offer automated workflows for the workplace.

The RetroBeat: Nintendo’s legendary Star Fox turns 25, but does it have a future?

Posted: 21 Feb 2018 12:10 PM PST


Star Fox came out for the Super Nintendo on February 21, 1993. Yup, the anthropomorphic animal space shooter turns 25 years old today.

I remember getting Star Fox as an Easter present shortly after its release. I was only 6 at the time, but I knew the game was a big deal. Star Fox was one of the first games I ever played with 3D graphics. This was an especially impressive feat on the Super Nintendo, a system that was already a couple of years old at the time. But Star Fox wasn’t just a technical marvel. The on-rails shooting was fun, but Nintendo pumped the rather simple shooter full of personality.

My favorite part of Star Fox is the the very beginning. The warning sirens blaring, the Star Fox crew introducing themselves (and their adorable, nonsensical voice lines) as they report in, and then the transition into the first level.

Star Fox is fun, but it succeeded first as a technical showpiece and as a way for Nintendo to get its bearings on 3D gaming. This tradition continued with Star Fox 64, one of the Nintendo 64’s best-looking games. It’s pretty much a remake — just four years later — of the original, but Star Fox 64 was able to show just how far 3D gaming had come in such a short time.

After that, the series’ reputation becomes a bit more muddied. Nintendo stopped using it as a franchise to show off technological advancements. Heck, Nintendo itself would stop trying to beat its competitors with sheer hardware power, instead focusing on features and gimmicks like motion controls for the Wii.

The GameCube had Star Fox Adventures, a Zelda-like action role-playing game from Rare that was never supposed to be a Star Fox game, and Star Fox: Assault, which featured awkward, on-foot third-person shooter segments. Nintendo was desperately trying to find a way to keep Star Fox fresh without doing another Star Fox 64-style retread, but nothing stuck.

Star Fox Command for the DS introduced turn-based strategy aspects. It was a better fit than, you know, dinosaurs, but it still felt like an unnecessary addition. Star Fox skipped the Wii entirely.

Above: Star Fox Zero.

Image Credit: Nintendo

Star Fox Zero was one of Nintendo’s last major games for the Wii U, a console that failed to ever garner much excitement or sails. Zero had a similar structure to the original Star Fox and Star Fox 64, but once again tried to do something new by mandating motion controls. Although I enjoyed it, many fans rejected Star Fox Zero and felt that the motion controls were unwieldy.

Oddly, the most successful new Star Fox game since Star Fox 64 came out for the Super Nintendo last year … kind of. Star Fox 2 was supposed to launched for the Super Nintendo toward the end of its life, but Nintendo cancelled the project when it was practically done in order to focus on Star Fox 64. But when the SNES Classic Edition hit the shelves last year, Nintendo included Star Fox 2 as bonus.

Having a long-lost game plucked out of the past and made officially available is one heck of a bonus, but Star Fox 2 is also a fun game. It plays similarly to the original, but its structure is less linear. And it’s easier to forgive its aged graphics when you accept them as a novelty on a retro gaming console.

Above: Star Fox 2 is a cool bonus.

Image Credit: Nintendo

Of course, the original Star Fox is also on the SNES Classic Edition. It’s strange playing it all these years later. Although the graphics are outdated, there’s still a novelty to the simple geometric shapes that make up the ships, enemies, and worlds. And it’s still satisfying to do barrel rolls and shoot down bosses.

I’m not sure what kind of a future Star Fox has. At some point, I expect Nintendo to look at the series again when it needs a new title for the Switch. But Nintendo has tried for years to find a way to evolve the series with little success. The Switch’s limited hardware means that Nintendo can’t go back to using Star Fox as a technical showpiece. I’m not sure how you make Star Fox exciting again.

But whatever the series’ future becomes, the original Star Fox deserves that special place in our hearts that it barrel rolled into 25 years ago.

The RetroBeat is a weekly column that looks at gaming's past, diving into classics, new retro titles, or looking at how old favorites — and their design techniques — inspire today's market and experiences. If you have any retro-themed projects or scoops you'd like to send my way, please contact me.

PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds gets new crates and ping-based matchmaking

Posted: 21 Feb 2018 11:21 AM PST


While PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds developer PUBG Corp. continues its ongoing fight against cheaters, it is still sneaking out some updates to its battle royal shooter. The studio is introducing a pair of new loot boxes filled with fresh cosmetic items, and it is testing a method of matchmaking that should improve the experience for people with fast pings.

The loot boxes are called Fever and Militia crates. They feature 1970s- and 1980s-era fashions including a leathery frontiersman outfit that will look at home in the desert Miramar map. In a blog post today, PUBG Corp. is referring to these as its spring crates, and the apparel reflects that as well. The Fever crate requires a key, an item you have to purchase with real money, to unlock (or you can sell it on the Steam Marketplace). The Militia crate is completely free to open. As with all previous crates, you can purchase them with the in-game Battle Points currency.

But blocking cheaters and adding crates aren’t the only things PUBG Corp. is working on. The studio posted a separate blog post earlier this week detailing its plans for ping-based matchmaking. The studio was previously considering matchmaking that would have a maximum allowable ping, but it think it is on to something better.

“PUBG is now introducing an experimental method that we hope will get even better results than the one we were considering before,” reads the developer blog. “Unlike the method considered earlier, we are going to divide the matching pool depending on ping. This means that the users with lower pings will be prioritized during matchmaking. The team is expecting to improve the overall play experience by splitting the matching pool rather than restricting connection depending on ping.”

PUBG Corp. is planning to test this matchmaking starting this week in certain regions, and then it will expand that depending on how those early trials go.

Apple applies to expand Apple TV trademark to video games in over 60 countries

Posted: 21 Feb 2018 11:05 AM PST


Although Apple’s video gaming track record has largely rewarded enthusiasm with disappointment, a new Apple TV trademark application discovered by Patently Apple indicates that the company is still interested in video games. Filed last week, the application expands the use of the Apple TV name for video gaming purposes — nothing else.

The application is noteworthy because Apple’s original 2007 trademark for the first Apple TV covered computer hardware and set top boxes focused on photos, music, and videos, excluding games entirely, and no change was made when it debuted the fourth-generation Apple TV with app and game support in September 2015. Last year’s Apple TV 4K trademarks were similar, only briefly mentioning “computer games” amongst many other functions of the wireless black box. By comparison, Apple’s new filing is devoted to Apple TV video game console and video game controller uses, which is unusual given that interest in Apple TV gaming is at a nadir.

Expensive by trademark standards but a drop in the bucket for Apple, Apple’s $16,000 international filing covers over 60 different countries across Africa, Asia, Europe, North America, and South America. Also interesting: The gaming-specific trademark filing appears to have been in the works for some time. Apple quietly filed a preliminary application last August in Jamaica, a country with a trademark office that cannot be searched online. Due to international reciprocity treaties, filing first in Jamaica enables Apple to plant its trademark flag early and privately, then expand the filing internationally whenever it’s comfortable going public.

This isn’t the first time Apple has publicly pushed the Apple TV for gaming purposes. The aforementioned fourth-generation Apple TV added the ability to play games, leading experienced gamers (including us) to hope that Apple would grow past its questionable gaming legacy. Unfortunately, Apple angered game developers by requiring them to support the new Apple TV’s limited Siri Remote as a controller, rather than letting games solely use dedicated gaming controllers. Developers soon stopped launching games solely for the Apple TV and retreated from initially higher Apple TV game price points, as well.

However, gaming has been wildly successful for certain developers on iOS devices: Games are amongst the most popular downloads in the App Store, which has generated $70 billion for developers since 2008. While game developers rarely if ever launch AAA console titles on iOS, games such as Minecraft and “freemium” titles with in-app purchases have been popular on iPads, iPhones, and iPod touches. Still, relatively few developers have brought their iOS hits to the Apple TV, as sales of the device have fallen below expectations.

Apple has recently embraced the potential of augmented reality gaming on iOS devices with the release of ARKit software development tools, going so far as to publicly refute claims of modest and slowing developer interest in AR. In light of Google’s apparent recent interest in developing a gaming platform, it’s possible that Apple’s competitive instincts may be kicking back in — though possibly too late to make a difference this time.

Memora Health uses texting to keep patients on top of their own care

Posted: 21 Feb 2018 10:42 AM PST


Memora Health wants to automate patient discharges and follow-ups through its SMS-based virtual assistant so as to relieve care teams of certain administrative hassles. The Mountain View, California-based startup launched out of stealth today and will be graduating from Y Combinator's (YC) Winter 2018 batch this March.

"A lot of patients who are elderly are texting their families," said Memora Health cofounder and CEO Manav Sevak, in an email to VentureBeat. "We found that using SMS could get them the right post-care information without having to go to the hospital each time."

Sevak argues that patients have often been readmitted to the hospital because they didn't know how to manage their condition at home. He and his cofounders, Nisarg Patel and Kunaal Naik, created Felix, software that caters to these patients' needs and answers questions like “I ran out of strips for my glucose meter, where can I buy some?” or “Can you give me a prescription refill?”

Felix also sends patients reminders about picking up a prescription, taking medication on time, and keeping their weight and blood sugar level in check.

Above: Example of an SMS chat with Felix

Image Credit: Memora Health

Although Felix sounds an awful lot like a chatbot, Sevak says they are not characterizing it as such.

"Our software is more aligned as an efficiency/optimization software given how comprehensive it is in automating and improving follow-ups," he said.

The three cofounders have varied backgrounds that include biochemistry, computer science, and dentistry.

Memora Health says it currently has more than 1,500 patients using its follow-up service. Conditions vary from chronic diseases like congestive heart failure and autoimmune diseases to post-surgery care.

The startup says it is working with three hospitals and 10 private practises, which pay Memora Health a fee and per-patient cost for the service. When patients leave the hospital or care center, they are onboarded to the Memora Health platform. The service is free to patients.

To personalize the follow-up with relevant questions, Sevak says his team has accesses to the patient's electronic medical records (EMR). The system can then emulate the hospital's existing follow-up workflow through a HIPAA-compliant SMS service.

To date, Memora Health has raised a total of $155,000 from YC, Rough Draft Ventures, and Contrary Capital, and has also received a series of grants.

Founded in June 2016, the startup currently has six employees.

Ubisoft researcher takes a bird’s-eye view of tech, games, and entertainment

Posted: 21 Feb 2018 10:00 AM PST


Lidwine Sauer is paid to be one of Ubisoft’s big thinkers. She’s the director of insights and trends for Ubisoft’s Strategic Innovation Lab, a technology research division that absorbs all of the innovations happening in the world of technology that might some day be relevant to the French game publisher’s main business of making video games.

Sauer is delivering a keynote talk today at the Dice Summit, the elite game event in Las Vegas this week. She summarized her speech for me in an interview and I asked her questions about it, as her theme is similar to our GamesBeat Summit 2018 event, which is about The Future of Games.

“Our mission is to help Ubisoft teams anticipate the future,” Sauer said. “What are the factors that will influence games and entertainment?”

Above: Lidwine Sauer is Director of Insights and Trends for Ubisoft’s Strategic Innovation Lab.

Image Credit: Ubisoft/Dice

The first thing she said is that we live in a time of exponential change. It’s a golden era for artificial intelligence, with advances in neural networks driving changes in supercomputing AI, natural language voice products like Alexa, and self-driving cars. Those innovations are happening at the same time that digital currency is being overhauled through blockchain and cryptocurrencies.

“We have a technology revolution under way,” she said. “It will change the way we work, live, and entertain ourselves. To be prepared, you have to understand. Innovations and breakthroughs are happening in different fields at the same time, with no historical precedent. One field can have a ripple effect and transform other fields.”

Above: Lidwine Sauer at the Dice Summit.

Image Credit: Dean Takahashi

Moore’s Law, or the prediction that the number of transistors on a chip would double every couple of years, has led to a huge decline in the cost of computing, so that genomics once required $4 billion to sequence the first genome, and now it can be done for as little as $1,000.

Technological change is accelerating. It took 75 years for the telephone to reach 50 million users. For radio, it was 38 years. TV was 13. The Internet was four. Twitter took nine months. And it took 19 days for Pokemon Go, Sauer said. The reason, she said, is that innovations are happening on top of each other and combining.

Sauer noted that computer scientists once had a terrible time getting machines to solve vision problems like recognizing a cat. Now that is easily done with computer vision algorithms, even if the cat is visible is hidden in a landscape and a computer has not been explicitly programmed to do so. Now you can create AI that can learn how to recognize things based on data, which is plentiful thanks to the Internet.

Above: Ubisoft’s games like Beyond Good & Evil 2 try to foresee the future.

Image Credit: Ubisoft

“One innovation can have a consequence in another field, and you have to be prepared for unexpected consequences,” Sauer said. “We take a bird’s-eye view and try to get an eagle eye on the gaming industry.”

“We try to understand tech shifts,” she said. “In another industry there is another business model that is developing and it can be translated into the entertainment industry. We look at emerging consumer entertainment and how society as a whole is evolving.”

Sauer’s team tries to expand a game development team’s horizon.

“What used to be science fiction is reality now,” she said.

She noted a BBC reporter tested how good AI and surveillance systems had become in China, where 170 million surveillance cameras are in place. He hid in a city of 4 million people and challenged the Chinese police to find him. It took the police seven minutes to find him.

Above: Bridge Crew works better as a multiplayer game.

Image Credit: Ubisoft

She also noted how much progress has been made with voice controls. Ubisoft paid attention, and it added voice commands (via IBM Watson) to the virtual reality game Star Trek Bridge Crew.

“Consumers have embraced the voice interface,” Lauer said. “It’s not weird to talk to a machine anymore. At Ubisoft, we have followed the progress of the voice interface. We are looking at new kinds of entertainment experiences.”

And Ubisoft has created a chat bot to work with gamers and their queries about games such as Rainbow Six Siege.

Ubisoft create a prototyping space in Montreal, dubbed La Forge, where university researchers collaborate with production teams. They will work on things ranging from neural networks to augmented reality and blockchain.

“AR will bring the digital world we create into the physical, and Pokemon Go was just the first of these,” Sauer said. “Blockchain verifies what you have. A Picasso can be verified as 100 percent yours. And a digital collectible is harder to steal from you.”

Above: CryptoKitties is a hot blockchain game.

Image Credit: CryptoKitties

She noted the game CryptoKitties became a widely noticed example of a cat-trading game based on the Ethereum cryptocurrency. The objective is to breed super rare kittens that you can keep or sell. Some kitties have reached prices in the thousands of dollars.

Sauer expects to see more convergence of games and technologies such as social networks, esports, livestreaming and more. In France, Ubisoft has partnered with Station F, a huge startup program, to collaborate with startups. Sauer foresees more blending of the digital and physical play of things like Nintendo Labo and Skylanders. Ubisoft has a team working on Starlink, which is a game with toys that you attach to a game controller.

Above: Lidwine Sauer of Ubisoft believes consumers will be creators of entertainment.

Image Credit: Ubisoft

With the advent of user-generated content, Sauer said, “Entertainment is not just something you consume. It is something you create.”

She added, “The future is here and it is unfolding at the edges of our industry. Thinking about the future is not something that is just us, as researchers. It’s like a puzzle. If you focus too much on your industry, you will miss important opportunities.”

Overwatch League will reward Twitch viewers with tokens for in-game skins

Posted: 21 Feb 2018 10:00 AM PST


Twitch announced today that a new program will give Overwatch League viewers tokens that they can use to buy team-based character skins inside Blizzard Entertainment’s popular shooter.

Overwatch League is Blizzard’s giant esports initiative, pitting city-based teams from around the world in regular competition at its new complex in Los Angeles. It also offers salaries to its competitors. The opening day of Overwatch League drew 425,000 concurrent Twitch viewers. Promotions like this will encourage Overwatch players to watch even more of the league, and it could also bring back viewers who watched Overwatch League during its debut but have since lapsed.

If you connect your Battle.net account to Twitch, MLG.com, or OverwatchLeague.com, you can earn one League Token after watching teams compete on each map. At the end of the final map of competition, a random, unspecified number of viewers will receive 100 tokens. You need 100 League Tokens to unlock an Overwatch League skin inside the game.

Twitch is also going to offer Overwatch skins to users who use the site’s Cheering with Bits system, a currency that you can buy with real money and then spend as a tip during streams. You can earn timed-exclusive hero skins this way, and you can also unlock emotes and other team-branded items.

Twitch also announced that it is working on a VIP Overwatch League ticket that will unlock more in-game items, behind-the-scenes videos, and more.

Blade’s Shadow cloud gaming PC starts shipping in California

Posted: 21 Feb 2018 09:00 AM PST


Blade is launching a cloud-gaming service dubbed Shadow in California today. The service enables any mobile device or computer, including a small hardware device dubbed the Shadow, to log into the service and get access to high-performance PC games via the cloud.

The cloud service gives you the ability to play high-end games and run Windows applications on any device that you own, whether it’s an old desktop, a business laptop, or a Mac. Normally, you might have to buy a $2,000 gaming computer to play high-end games.

“We’re giving you the equivalent to a $2,000 gaming PC for a subscription fee of $35 a month (for an annual plan),” said Asher Kagan, CEO of Blade, in an interview with GamesBeat. “Your performance would be equivalent to a PC with two Nvidia GeForce GTX 1080 graphics cards.”

Above: Asher Kagan (right) is CEO of Blade, maker of Shadow.

Image Credit: Dean Takahashi

Shadow is a new breed of cloud gaming, competing with rivals such as GeForce Now and LiquidSky. The performance is a lot better than older technologies offered some years back by OnLive, Kagan said.

The world is on its way to getting rid of ownership of stuff, with services like Uber making it unnecessary to own cars and We Work making offices unneeded. Blade is applying that idea to the ownership of gaming computers. You don’t really need to own one, if any computer will be able to play the best PC games at the best resolutions and highest speeds, Kagan said.

“We thought we should think about the PC,” Kagan said. “Why are we running in a hamster wheel? We’re always buying new gaming computers to run high-performance games. If we can take powerful games and stream them to a device, it will be so much better.”

Above: Shadow lets you play high-end games on any device.

Image Credit: Blade

Blade’s Shadow isn’t much of a computer itself. It has plugs so you can add a mouse, keyboard, and monitor. The small box has an AMD accelerated processing unit (APU) that connects to any monitor and can do real-time decoding in 1080p at 144 Hz or 4K at 60 Hz.

But Blade argues that it frees you from the physical constraints of PC hardware, letting you access a powerful, secure, top-of-the-line computer anytime, anywhere, on any device. It shifts the powerful computing tasks into the cloud so your hardware no longer needs to do heavy lifting. It has partnerships with Microsoft, Intel, Nvidia, AMD, and Equinix. The latter is an internet backbone company that has put the servers in place to handle high-interaction traffic for Shadow service in California.

“Your computer no longer becomes outdated,” Kagan said. “Shadow is the only computer you will ever need.”

Blade has been selling the Shadow service in France, where it has 15,000 users. It works with virtually no latency (interaction delays) for an Internet connection that is faster than 15 megabits per second. At speeds above 15 megabits a second, Shadow can operate with just 10 milliseconds latency. Most games work fine with latency of 100 milliseconds, so Shadow has plenty of headroom.

If you sign up for a year, it will cost $35 a month. If you sign up for three months, it costs $40 a month. And if you sign up only on a monthly basis, it costs $50. You can get access to Windows 10 and play the games that you purchase yourself.

Above: You can play PC games on mobile devices with the Shadow cloud gaming service.

Image Credit: Blade

I saw a demo of it working on relatively weak Wi-Fi service. But it worked fine, showing games such as Tomb Raider working on devices such as a Mac, a Windows laptop, and Android smartphone.

“At first, gamers were skeptical as they had tried OnLive or GeForce Now,” Kagan said. “We did the right partnerships to get the full capability, and now we can offer better service.”

Blade was founded in 2015 in France. It raised $3.7 million (3 million euros) in a seed round, and then it raised another $8.6 million.

“We felt that the PC was a frozen market, with the same technology that we’ve been using for 35 years,” Kagan said. “We decided to focus on the gamer market first, but if it works for gamers, it can work for everyone else too.”

Google launches Cloud IoT Core service out of beta

Posted: 21 Feb 2018 09:00 AM PST


Google Cloud today launched its service for managing connected electronic devices out of beta. Cloud IoT Core offers a system for managing the connection of internet of things (IoT) devices, like sensors, with Google's cloud, as well as a pipeline for getting data to and from those devices.

The new offering is fully managed, so customers don't need to worry about provisioning the service or scaling up the underlying infrastructure to deal with demand. Google announced the service at its I/O conference last year and launched it in public beta in September 2017.

The internet of things is a perfect battleground for Google Cloud and competitors such as Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure. Enterprises building new applications for their IoT deployments will have an easier time using cloud services, even if they have legacy apps running in private datacenters. Once a company starts using one cloud provider to manage their fleet of IoT devices, there's a case for them to keep using that provider with future deployments. What's more, IoT devices generate tons of data that companies can then store with or route through a cloud provider.

Google faces tough competition in the space, however. Amazon and Microsoft have spent the past several years building out their own IoT product portfolios, and they enjoy a product development and market share lead over Google Cloud.

Cloud IoT Core customers can also now configure their devices to post information in multiple streams through Google's Cloud Pub/Sub service, which routes data to and from different applications and services in the company's cloud. That much-requested update means that customers can direct different types of data from a single sensor into different Pub/Sub topics, making it easier to route that information to relevant endpoints.

Customers are billed based on how many megabytes of data get transferred to and from devices connected to Cloud IoT Core every month, with discounted rates kicking in as they consume more.

Newzoo: Esports could hit 380 million fans and $906 million in revenues in 2018

Posted: 21 Feb 2018 08:00 AM PST


Global esports revenues will grow 38 percent to $906 million in 2018 and further grow to $1.65 billion by 2021, according to a new annual report on esports by market researcher Newzoo. North America will account for 38 percent of the 2018 revenue, or $345 million, while China will be 18 percent, or $164 million.

Esports will continue to be smaller in revenues than traditional sports, but it is rapidly gaining in terms of numbers of spectators. Once those spectators start spending like traditional sports fans, then advertisers will shift more money to esports and the industry will continue to gain momentum. And that’s why we’re seeing so many new investments in esports startups.

Newzoo said brands will be responsible for $694 million of the revenues in the esports industry, or 77 percent of the total market in 2018. This will grow to $1.4 billion by 2021, representing 84 percent of total esports revenues in that year.

The number of esports enthusiast fans will grow 15.2 percent from 143 million in 2017 to 165 million in 2018, while the number of occasional viewers will grow from 192 million in 2017 to 215 million in 2018. By 2021, the esports enthusiasts will reach 250 million and the occasional viewers will reach 307 million. That represents growth from a total of 335 million in 2017 to 557 million in 2021.

And Newzoo said the global average annual revenue per esports enthusiast will be $5.49 this year, up percent from $4.58 in 2017.

“As a consumer phenomenon, esports continues to grow its huge base of passionate fans across the globe,” said Peter Warman, CEO of Newzoo, in an email. “As a business, esports is now entering a new and critical phase towards maturity. Big investments have been made, new league structures have been launched, sponsorship budgets have moved from experimental to continuous, and international media rights trade is starting to heat up. At the same time, player salaries have soared and the esports ecosystem and viewership hours still very much rely on a select number of globally operating teams and game franchises. Profitability and return on investment is, for many organizations at the heart of the esports economy, a challenge.”

In 2017, there were 588 major esports events that generated an estimated $59 million in ticket revenues, up from $32 million in 2016. The total prize money of all esports events held in 2017 reached $112 million, breaking the $100 million mark for the first year.

The League of Legends World Championship was the most watched event on Twitch in 2017 with 49.5 million hours. It also generated $5.5
million in ticket revenues.

Above: Sponsorship is the biggest source of revenue for esports in 2018.

Image Credit: Newzoo

“An industry survey performed by Newzoo late last year found that the majority of respondents from teams expect esports to take another five to 10 years to mature fully as a business,” Warman said. “The same research showed that brands and agencies expect the ecosystem to be fully professionalized in three to five years. This illustrates the current status of the market: great expectations from outside and more conservative views from people within. This year will be pivotal in determining the pace at which esports becomes the global multi-billion-dollar business we all envisage. This year, we anticipate global esports sponsorship and advertising revenues to surpass half a billion dollars. Considering the media exposure esports has created, this is still a relatively small amount.”

Newzoo started surveying the esports market with data on six countries in 2009, and it now covers 28 countries and more than 60,000 consumers to generate its annual report. Newzoo defines industry revenues as the amount the industry generates through the sale
of sponsorship, media rights, advertising, publisher fees, tickets, and merchandising. The revenue numbers exclude prize pools and player salaries, which are both considered costs of doing business. Newzoo also doesn’t count revenues from online gambling and betting related to esports (via companies such as Bwin or Unikrn). And it doesn’t count investments in esports startups.

Above: Newzoo expects the total esports audience to grow to 557 million in 2021.

Image Credit: Newzoo

Sponsorship is the highest grossing esports revenue stream worldwide, contributing $359.4 million in 2018 compared to $234.6 million in 2017. Growing with a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) from 2016 to 2021 of 49.8 percent, media rights is the fastest-growing revenue stream. By 2021, media rights revenues will more than double compared to 2018, making it the second-largest generator of esports revenues globally, Newzoo said.

Game publisher fees will remain the slowest-growing revenue generator for esports toward 2021, with a CAGR (2016-2021) of 3.5 percent. The segment will see some increase in 2018, up $11.5 million compared to 2017, but is expected to drop entering 2020 and 2021, making it the smallest revenue stream.

The number of people who are aware of esports worldwide will reach 1.6 billion in 2018, up from 1.3 billion in 2017. China will contribute most to global esports awareness, with 468.3 million people. The increasing exposure of esports as a mainstream entertainment industry is driving the growth in awareness in most regions.

Newzoo identified 10 areas as important for the development of esports. The first area is franchising, such as the creation of the leagues for League of Legends and Overwatch. Another area is the importance of winning the hearts of local fans through regional team competitions. Newzoo also sees important scouting opportunities with the development of collegiate esports. It also views the creation of profitable teams as a necessary part of industry maturity.

The market researcher also wants to see mobile esports develop a real identity, and it foresees game-changing technology for esports in the form of blockchain and cryptocurrency. Esports also has a chance to expand viewership through new formats and franchises, such as new takes on competition such as battle royale, popularized by PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds.

And Newzoo expects power to shift within the esports economy among teams, organizers, and publishers. It expects media and telecom companies to move in through acquisitions, and it expects associations and governments to eventually play a role in governance.

CardLife’s liberating world is a game inside a cardboard creation tool

Posted: 21 Feb 2018 07:50 AM PST


Presented by Intel 


With Robocraft, its game of battling robots, Freejam made its love for user-generated content known. With its latest game, the studio is going back to the ultimate source of user-generated content: the humble sheet of cardboard. Not so humble now, however, when it's used to craft an entire multiplayer survival game filled with mechs, dragons, and magic.

It started as a little prototype with a simple goal conceived by Freejam's CEO Mark Simmons: explore your creativity with cardboard. He and game director Rich Tyrer had chatted about it, thrown around more ideas, and they eventually tossed their creation out into the wild. "We had a basic cardboard world with a cardboard cabin and tools," recalls Tyrer. "We released it online just to see what would happen. The point was to see what people could do with their creativity with this cardboard and these two tools, a saw and a hacksaw."

Even with just a couple of tools, there were a lot of things that could be done with the cardboard — especially since the scale could be manipulated — and its potential was enough for a Freejam team to be set up a month later to properly develop it. "We went from there and molded it into this game. We started thinking about what genre would be good for the aesthetic, how could we let people make what they want? In our minds, the cardboard aesthetic was like being a child and building a castle out of a cardboard box. You fill the blanks. That's what it came down to."

The open-world multiplayer game itself, however, is not the end-point of the CardLife concept. "The CardLife game is more of an example of what you can do in cardboard. We want to use that to create this cardboard platform where people can create things and do lots of modding. That's why it’s UGC focused and really customizable."

The only rule of CardLife

Freejam's goal is to create a platform where people can create whatever they want, both within the CardLife game and by creating mods simply by using Notepad and Paint, as long as those things are cardboard. Tyrer uses the example of Gears of War. If a player wants to totally recreate Epic's shooter, they should just use Unreal. If they want to make it out of cardboard though, then they can absolutely do that. That's the only creative limitation Tyrer wants to impose.

He stresses that, in terms of accessibility, he wants it to be easy enough for kids to use. "The 3D modeling for kids moniker is more about the barrier to entry and how difficult it is for someone to make a mod. We want it to be low, whether they want to make a driving version, a fighting game, or they just want to add more creatures." Everything in the game is essentially just a collection of 2D shapes that can be found as PNG files in the game folder. Making a new character model is as simple as drawing different shapes in Paint and putting them together.

CardLife's customization isn't limited to modding, however, and whenever players craft an item, a vehicle, or even a dragon, they're able to completely transform their cardboard creation. The system is named for and inspired by connecting the dots. It's a way for kids to create art by filling in the blanks, and that's very much the feel that CardLife is trying to capture by letting you alter the cardboard silhouette of a helicopter or a monster. It's what's ultimately happening when the world gets changed by players terraforming areas, too.

The less noticeable mechanisms and hidden pieces of card take care of themselves. "If you wanted to put big spikes on the back, you can drastically change this central piece of card on the back and make it their own," explains Tyrer. "But a small disc underneath the seat that nobody really sees, there's no point in someone drawing that. It just inherits the scale of all the other pieces that you've drawn. And you can see in the 3D preview how your pieces of card have had an effect."

Parts can be mirrored and duplicated as well, excising some of the busywork. If you're making a new character and give them a leg, you don't then have to make the second leg; the game will create a new leg for you. This, Tyrer hopes, will free people up to just focus on making cool things and exploring their creativity. He doesn't want the art and the gameplay to get in each other's way, so no matter how ridiculous your creation looks, it's still perfectly viable in combat.

Beautiful but deadly

"We learned in Robocraft that art bots, as in bots that are aesthetically pleasing, generally don't perform well compared to very Robocraft-y bots, which is usually a block with loads of guns on top, because of the way the damage model works. So it's quite hard, for example, so make something that looks like SpongeBob SquarePants be an effective robot. With CardLife, we wanted to make sure that people would always be able to creatively express themselves without having to worry about the gameplay implications."

PvE servers will be added in an update, but combat and PvP will remain an important part of CardLife. Tyrer envisions big player sieges, with large fortresses made out of cardboard being assaulted by Di Vinci-style helicopters, wizards, and soldiers carrying future-tech. Craftable items are split into technological eras, all the way up to the realms of science-fiction, but there's magic too, and craftable spells.

Tyrer sees cardboard as liberating, freeing him from genre and setting conventions. "If you're making an AAA sci-fi game, you can't put dragons in it. The parameters of what you can add to the game are set by the pre-existing notions of what sci-fi is. And you can see that in Robocraft. But with cardboard… if I'm a child playing with a cardboard box, nobody is going to pop up and tell me I can't have a dragon fight a mech. I can. That's the beauty of it."

Rather than standing around waiting for tech to get researched, discovering new recipes comes down to simply exploring and digging into the game. Sometimes literally. "It's more like real life," explains Tyrer. "As you find new materials and put them into your crafting forge, it will give you different options to make things. As you dig deeper into the ground and find rare ores, those ores will be associated with different recipes, and those recipes will then allow you to make stronger items."

To infinity

Unlike its fellow creative sandbox Minecraft, CardLife's world is not procedural. It is finite and designed in a specific way. If you're standing beneath a huge mountain in one server and go to another, you'll be able to find that very same mountain. It might look different, however, as these worlds are still dynamic and customizable. But they can also be replenished.

"If you want to keep a finite world running for an infinite amount of time, it needs to be replenished," says Tyrer. "Structures of lapsed players will decay, natural disasters will refill caves or reform mountains, and that's our way of making the world feel infinite. We can have a world that's shifting and changing but also one that people can get to know and love."

What's there right now, however, is just an early access placeholder. CardLife's moving along swiftly, though. A large update is due around the beginning of March, potentially earlier, that will introduce armor and weapon stats, building permissions so that you can choose who can hang out in or edit your structure, and item durability. And then another update is due out two months after that.

The studio isn't ready to announce a release date yet, and it's still busy watching its early access test bed and planning new features. More biomes are on the cards, as well as oceans that can be explored. "No avenue is closed," says Tyrer. And that includes platforms, so a console release isn't out of the question. There's even the cardboard connection between this and the Switch via Nintendo's Labo construction kit, though Tyrer only laughs at the suggestion they'd be a good fit. It's not a 'no'.

"We just want to take all the cool things you can think of, put it in a pot, and mix it around."

CardLife is available at Freejam now and is coming to Steam soon.


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CobraXtremeHD Corp. Announces Launch of Official Website to Sport Camera Market

Posted: 21 Feb 2018 07:25 AM PST


CARY, N.C.–(BUSINESS WIRE)–February 21, 2018–

Force Protection Video Equipment (OTC: FPVD), which sells HD body camera systems and accessories for law enforcement, announced today the launch of the CobraXtremeHD.com website.

CobraXtremeHD sells HD video sports cameras and accessories which are similar to those sold by GoPro®. We also sell video ski goggles and sunglass cameras. CobraXtremeHD also carries a full line of aftermarket accessories for extreme sports cameras such as GoPro® and Garmin®. CobraXtremeHD cameras are designed for use in extreme sports such as water skiing, snow skiing, snowboarding, motorcycles, sky diving, and surfing to mention a few.

The company’s president, Paul Feldman, was previously associated with a company which sold similar products and had revenues of approximately $450,000 per year. Mr. Feldman commented on the formation of CobraXtremeHD as follows: “We decided that it was time to expand our product list and with my previous experience in this field, plus all my years as CEO of Law Enforcement Associates, I believe that FPVD will be able to expand into more diverse and lucrative markets. Many of CobraXtremeHD products also are crossover for law enforcement.”

CobraXtremeHD cameras are rugged HD designs which incorporate Ambarella (NASDAQ: AMBA) made chips that allow cameras and other devices to record high definition video. It is the chip supplier of the popular GoPro® (NASDAQ: GPRO) sports cameras.

CobraXtremeHD is a wholly owned subsidiary of Force Protection Video Corp.

If you would like more information about this topic, please contact CobraXtremeHD video at 214-471-9911 or email at INFO@cobraxtremeHD.com.

CobraXtremeHD
Joe Kosoglow, 214-471-9911
INFO@cobraxtremeHD.com

Apple leaks new iPads in regulatory filing, suggesting imminent release

Posted: 21 Feb 2018 06:43 AM PST


Apple has requested and received permission from the Eurasian Economic Commission (EEC) to market previously unknown iPad models, reports Consomac (via AppleInsider). This is a regulatory step that typically signals a release of new hardware within one to two weeks. Dated February 19, the EEC’s list mentions A1893 and A1954 models of Apple tablet computers running iOS 11, models that do not correspond to existing iPads.

Rumors of new iPad models are fairly continuous, as Apple has been known to release updated tablets anywhere from March through September. The September 2015-vintage iPad mini 4 is the company’s oldest model, but the $329 9.7-inch iPad released in March 2017 seems most likely to receive an update. Questionable rumors late last year suggested that Apple was considering a $259 version of the 9.7-inch model to maintain iPad sales in the face of declining demand.

The EEC filing provides no further detail on the A1893 and A1954 models, but it should be noted that Apple typically releases two versions of each iPad: one with cellular capabilities, the other without cellular, and each with its own model number. Consequently, there’s a decreased likelihood of those model numbers representing both an iPad and an iPad mini, or two different models of iPad Pro. As Consomac notes, the filing also contains additional tablet models preceded by CC, and iPhone models starting with AA, which do not conform to standard Apple model naming conventions.

Apple updated the 12.9-inch iPad Pro and replaced the 9.7-inch iPad Pro with a 10.5-inch model last June. The company generally does not replace devices until at least a year after initial introduction. References to an unreleased “Modern iPad” in beta versions of iOS 11.3 are thought to reference a fully redesigned iPad Pro model with Face ID, akin to the iPhone X.

Intello Announces $1.3M Seed Round and Launches Self-Serve Platform to Optimize SaaS Spend, Usage and Compliance

Posted: 21 Feb 2018 06:25 AM PST


NEW YORK–(BUSINESS WIRE)–February 21, 2018–

Intello, the intelligent SaaS (software-as-a-service) optimization provider, today announced a $1.3M funding round and public launch of their platform. The round was led by Emerge with participation from BoxGroup, Blacktop, Kaedan, and Tectonic. Additional investors in the round include InVision founder Clark Valberg, The Muse founder Kathryn Minshew, and Sense360 founder Eli Portnoy. The company will use the funding to accelerate product development and rapidly grow their engineering team in New York.

Intello’s end-to-end SaaS optimization platform unlocks full visibility into an organization’s SaaS spend, usage and compliance. The platform leverages direct integrations with Quickbooks, Netsuite and Salesforce and a proprietary browser extension, to create one system of record to manage SaaS applications.

“The explosion of SaaS has led to significant issues for finance and IT teams tasked with keeping up and managing the ever-growing subscriptions, licenses, renewals and security of software applications,” said Barak Kaufman, Intello’s Co-Founder & CEO. “We’ve built an automated platform to manage the purchasing and compliance lifecycle of SaaS applications.”

Intello has seen increased demand from companies needing to comply with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) in Europe. GDPR, which takes effect on May 25th, enforces strict regulation for data collection and processing. Companies need a complete understanding of 3rd party software in-use and where their customer’s data is being stored. Intello’s platform automates the initial auditing process and then monitors for real-time usage of SaaS applications, including Shadow IT.

“Intello has already won the trust of world class companies,” said Dovi Ollech, Founder and Managing Partner of Emerge. “We’re thrilled to be working with the Intello team to build the next-gen platform for SaaS optimization.”

About Intello

Intello is a leading SaaS discovery, management and optimization provider. By integrating with existing cloud software and leveraging a proprietary browser extension, Intello provides companies with real-time visibility into their SaaS data. Save money on unused subscriptions and automate software vendor compliance with intelligent SaaS optimization. For more information, visit www.intello.io or follow us on Twitter @intello_io

About Emerge

Emerge is a Tel Aviv based venture capital firm investing primarily in early stage startups that operate in diverse verticals and powered by deep technology. The fund’s investors and advisors are founders of leading global technology companies, creating a strong and unique network. For more information, visit www.emerge.co.il

Intello
Barak Kaufman, 646-402-6943
barak@intello.io

Shapeways hires new CEO to shape the future of 3D printing

Posted: 21 Feb 2018 06:01 AM PST


3D printing service Shapeways has named Gregory Kress as CEO as the company tries to figure out its future. Kress replaces Tom Finn, who served as interim CEO since August 2017, when cofounder and former CEO Peter Weijmarshausen stepped down after a decade on the job.

Since its founding in 2007, New York-based Shapeways has focused on enabling creators to be successful with their 3D-printed products through the development of sophisticated back-end production, distribution, and supply chain fulfillment. This breadth of the network enables Shapeways’ customers to 3D print in over 60 different materials and finishes.

Having accumulated millions of data points from current customers, Shapeways also tries to identify ways in which it can better support creators through the production process: from the conception of an idea, to the designing and packaging, to the first sale and beyond.

With Kress’ hiring, Shapeways plans to implement services that will address both creative and business pain points for creators. It will laterally expand its end-to-end services for current and new Shapeways users to design, make, and, interest permitting, sell their products. Shapeways will also expand vertically, providing production services beyond 3D printing.

Above: Gregory Kress is the new CEO of Shapeways.

Image Credit: Shapeways

3D printers have stalled on their journey into every American’s home. But Shapeways is approaching its 10 millionth product printed, has more than a million community members, and receives 140,000 new design uploads each month.

“I've joined Shapeways to help accelerate the growth of the business. Shapeways has always been focused on helping creators bring their ideas to life and I'll be building upon that solid foundation and scale the tools, features, and products that we offer to our creators,” said Kress, in an email. “We want to support our creators through their entire experience– from bringing their ideas to life through fully integrated manufacturing solutions, to even helping them monetize their designs and create a business if they'd like.”

Kress has 15 years of relevant experience. He most recently served as president and COO of Open Education, where he was responsible for turning strategy into operational and financial success as the business expanded to more than 400,000 students in 25 countries being supported by over 1,200 employees. Prior to Open Education, he spent 11 years in leadership positions across GE.

“We know people have ideas or want products that can be made and sold thanks to advanced design, production, and fulfillment technology — but most of them don’t know where to begin. Without proper support or infrastructure, the entire process seems inaccessible, complicated, intimidating, and expensive,” said Albert Wenger, managing partner at Union Square Ventures, in a statement. “Greg is experienced at growing platform businesses and we’re thrilled that he’ll be applying that deep knowledge and energy to empower creators to realize those design dreams.”

Kress said that Shapeways is expanding its reach to new materials.

“Good momentum starts with the expansion of consumer demand for unique finished goods,” Kress said. “That coupled with significant innovations in 3D printing technologies allows Shapeways to offer some of the most advanced manufacturing capabilities to anyone around the world.”

3D printing went through its own bubble and now that has deflated somewhat.

“Consumers initially had direct experience with 3D printing technology that was still in its infancy. This resulted in a disconnect between their expectations and what was accessible,” Kress said. “Since the initial hype, 3D printing technologies have advanced exponentially and consumers have a better understanding of what applications should use 3D printing. Business to business, or enterprise applications have made significant progress pushing 3D printing technology forward and Shapeways provides unprecedented consumer access to those high-end industrial technologies.”

Shapeways has raised $75 million from investors including Union Square Ventures, Index Ventures, Lux Capital, Andreessen Horowitz, Inkef Capital, Hewlett Packard Pathfinder, and Presidio Ventures. The company has 250 employees, and 10 employees are involved in 3D printing every product.

As for the future of 3D printing, Kress said, “We will continue to see huge advancements in 3D printing technology that allow Shapeways to provide more finished goods (as opposed to creators needing to post-process each print). We also anticipate huge developments in printing capabilities for full color plastic and metals, and Shapeways will continue giving consumers access to the highest-quality technologies.”

Influential uses Watson AI to help brands find influencers

Posted: 21 Feb 2018 06:00 AM PST


Influential has launched its Social Intelligence platform to find influencers for brands with the help of IBM Watson’s artificial intelligence.

The idea is to make influencers more predictable for brands who want to hook up with the hottest social media attractions. Influential wants to make influencer marketing reach scale on the level that brand marketers need to get measurable results.

Los Angeles-based Influential uses three different application programming interfaces for Watson to predict whether Fortune 1000 brands will succeed with particular influencer-based marketing campaigns.

Influential’s Social Intelligence technology, based on Watson, examines factor such as psychographic and contextual relevancy for brands to identify their audience, profile, and personality based on social media analysis. Influential hopes its tech can be used by brands and influencers to form entire market strategies. That’s not an easy thing to do, since an influencer can be a loose cannon when it comes to talking about a brand to an audience of followers.

“We are an AI influencer technology, matching brands with influencers through transparent data and machine learning,” said Influential CEO Ryan Detert, in an interview with VentureBeat. “We do branded content on these platforms. Instead of just media delivery of an influencer, it is based on all the things happening around a brand.”

Above: Influential uses three IBM Watson technologies to evaluate influencers for brands.

Image Credit: Influential

Through augmented intelligence and machine learning, Influential matches brands with influencers, based on the likelihood of having successful campaigns on social. Influential will pull in the last 22,000 words produced by an influencer and then analyze them based on 47 traits.

“We are able to match them, and tell brands here are the 100 influencers that speak about you the way you want to be seen,” Detert said.

And it will note which influencers to stay away from, based on negative comments or support for a competitor. The reports can run as much as 100 pages.

I had Influential do an analysis of me, based on my social media opinions. You can see the conclusions in the top image. It found I was conservative, which was a surprise to me, and that I have an affinity with Jack in the Box, which was also a surprise to me.

Detert said, “We are living in a time with the largest crowdsourcing of human opinion in history with social media. If you look at a brand and see who follows them, you can see what the followers’ affinities are and their interests. You can answer questions. Which celebrity should I partner with? Which media is best for the brand?”

Above: Dean Takahashi’s social audience.

Image Credit: Influential

Influential also recently partnered with OMD, an Omnicom media agency. Through the partnership, the team created the OMD I-Score, an AI machine learning-powered variable scoring system that aims to become the new standard of matching brands and talent in the social media influencer age, using a number of factors to determine authenticity.

Influential allows brands and agencies to make a digital media buy on social and figure out analytics on brand relevancy, micro segmentation, and social share of voice. Influential conducts all campaigns through a brand-safe gateway and provides recaps via third-party analytics partners.

Above: Brand affinity for Dean Takahashi

Image Credit: Influential

Influential works with Fortune 500 brands like Coca-Cola Company, Nestle, Fox TV, General Mills, and Sony Pictures. Detert was an influencer himself, with 30 million followers on Twitter and Instagram.

"Hyundai partnered with Influential to leverage the power of AI and IBM Watson to define our target audience for the all-new Kona based on predictive behavioral data, instead of 'claimed responses' from common syndicated studies,” said Dean Evans, chief marketing officer at Hyundai Motor America, in a statement. “These insights helped us better understand the Kona audience and direct the launch strategy, including identification of the most relevant social media influencers."

Influential has raised $14.5 million and it has 70 employees. It was founded in 2014.

With $10 million in funding, 2 ex-Googlers launch Mabl to bring machine learning to software testing

Posted: 21 Feb 2018 06:00 AM PST


What do you do when your first startup is acquired by Google shortly after launch? Hang around at Google for a few years and then launch your next venture, of course.

That’s exactly what Stackdriver founders Dan Belcher and Izzy Azeri did after they sold their cloud systems monitoring business to Google back in May, 2014. The internet giant didn’t waste time in leveraging its purchase, and it went on to launch the newly branded Google Stackdriver in early 2016. This incarnation served as a monitoring and diagnostics tool for applications stored on the Google Cloud Platform and, interestingly, Amazon Web Services (AWS).

In January 2017, Belcher and Azeri left their product management roles at Google to form Mabl, a SaaS-based automated software testing tool that uses machine learning to find bugs, JavaScript errors, broken links, latency, visual regressions, and more. The Boston-based startup raised $10 million shortly after it was founded last year, in a series A round from Charles River Ventures and Amplify Partners, though Mabl only announced this funding today.

After a short limited alpha period, the company is also officially launching its Mabl QA automation product today for free as part of a public beta program. Existing clients include fitness-tracking app Runkeeper, which is now owned by Asics, and Codeship, which was acquired by CloudBees a few weeks back.

In a nutshell, Mabl is all about creating and maintaining automated tests and then analyzing the results, and promises to help developers’ quality assurance (QA) processes keep pace with the actual software development part of building a web app or website.

Indeed, QA is key to shipping functional and flaw-free products, but it can often slow shipping down because it requires continuously testing your code. Users install a Chrome extension to “train” Mabl, and Mabl creates machine learning models that predict how the app should perform, and the more tests it carries out on a particular app, the more it learns. For example, it may observe that a web page is loading more slowly than it had previously, which makes it easier to detect the flaw and determine what changes have led to this latency increase.

“We have interviewed hundreds of software teams, and their message is loud and clear: QA is struggling to keep pace with DevOps,” said Azeri. “This area hasn't received the level of investment and innovation that we have seen in other aspects of modern development, and teams are forced to choose between quality and speed.”

There is no shortage of automated software testing tools out there, including Selenium, which Mabl said is the QA tool used most commonly used by its current alpha-stage clients. But by bringing machine learning into the mix and offering scriptless testing through the browser, the company hopes to not only expedite the testing process, but to simplify it. It can also integrate into developers’ existing workflow, as it supports Atlassian, Jira, Slack, Webhooks, Atlassian, Jira, Jenkins, and more.

“Mabl is really about making QA automation as simple as possible,” added Belcher. “You can create tests in minutes, and we handle the burden of running and maintaining them and analyzing the results.”

Mabl is available in public beta for free from today.

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Amazon launches second Alexa Accelerator for voice-driven startups

Posted: 21 Feb 2018 06:00 AM PST

This is a picture of the top of an Amazon Echo

Amazon today announced the launch of its second Alexa Accelerator. The 13-week program for creators of voice experiences is held primarily in Seattle and is managed by TechStars. For the first time, three startups from TechStars’ London offices will be allowed to participate.

Each of the up to 13 early-stage startups and companies chosen to participate in the program will receive an undisclosed investment from the Alexa Fund, an Amazon spokesperson told VentureBeat.

The accelerator is paid for by the Alexa Fund and is aimed at boosting the ecosystem for Amazon’s voice assistant. With an emphasis on international expansion, a second Alexa Fund for investment of up to $100 million in startups and initiatives in the voice computing space was announced last November. At that time, an Amazon spokesperson declined to state whether a second accelerator would take place.

The second class of the Alexa Accelerator is looking for ideas that can harness initiatives Amazon is currently growing in areas ranging from transportation to health and entertainment, the company said in a blog post today.

“We are excited to uncover Alexa innovation in categories such as smart home, entertainment, finance, enterprise, communications, automobile and transportation, health and wellness, connected learning, connected devices, hardware components, and other enabling technologies,” the Amazon developer blog post said.

The Alexa Accelerator team led by TechStar’s Aviel Ginzburg will hold promotional events in 10 cities around the world, including San Francisco, New York, London, Paris, Berlin, and Tel Aviv.

Applications are due April 8, and the program will be held from July to September, culminating in a Demo Day in October.

The inaugural Alexa Accelerator was attended by nine startups and developed such products as the Play Impossible game ball and the When in Rome board game with Alexa.

Earlier this month Pulse Labs, another recent standout from the inaugural Alexa Fund class, closed a $2.5 million funding round with participation from Amazon's Alexa Fund, TechStars Ventures, and Bezos Expedition, an investment arm of Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos.

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Apple in talks to buy cobalt for batteries directly from miners

Posted: 21 Feb 2018 05:58 AM PST


(Reuters) — Apple Inc is in talks to buy long-term supplies of cobalt for iPhone batteries directly from miners, Bloomberg reported on Wednesday, citing sources.

The iPhone maker is seeking contracts to buy several thousand metric tons of cobalt for five years or longer, Bloomberg reported, citing an anonymous source.

Cobalt prices have skyrocketed of late due to an expected growth in demand for electric vehicles powered by lithium-ion batteries.

Apple may end up deciding not to go ahead with a deal, the report said, citing another source.

Apple was not immediately available for comment outside regular business hours.

(Reporting by Mekhla Raina in Bengaluru; editing by Sunil Nair)

Facebook Messenger now lets you turn one-to-one calls into group chats

Posted: 21 Feb 2018 05:35 AM PST


Facebook has announced a notable update to the group audio- and video-chat feature within Messenger.

Previously, to initiate a video or audio call with more than one person you’d have to start the call with the desired number of participants included from the get-go. With today’s update, however, you can add a new friend while an existing call is already taking place.

Let’s say you’re chatting with your buddy in a one-to-one video conversation and you want to bring more friends into the chat. Rather than having to hang up and start a new call, you can now add them to the existing call by tapping the screen and hitting the “add person” button.

Above: Facebook Group Video Calls: Now easier

Facebook first introduced group audio calls to Messenger back in April 2016, and followed that up with group video calls later that year. Group calls have emerged as a key component of messaging apps as companies vie for stickiness by offering every possible feature you could ever need. Curiously, Apple doesn’t yet offer group calls through its FaceTime app, though this will reportedly be remedied in iOS 12.

Ultimately, Facebook wants as little friction as possible as it works to keep people within its gargantuan communications silo. By letting you seamlessly switch from one-to-one conversations to group chats, it’s leaving you one less reason to jump ship.

This update is rolling out globally to Messenger on both Android and iOS from today.

Jeff Bezos’ 10,000 Year Clock offers a dash of tech optimism

Posted: 21 Feb 2018 05:30 AM PST


Almost two decades in the making, the Long Now Foundation’s 10,000 Year Clock is finally being built deep inside a giant hole in the Middle of Nowhere, Texas.

The nonprofit has received $42 million in funding from Amazon founder Jeff Bezos. But the idea for the clock was actually hatched by computing pioneer Danny Hillis.

Way back in the mid-90s, Hillis suggested the clock as a way to inspire people to take a long-term view of technology and life on the planet.

During my time in Silicon Valley, I had the chance to interview Alexander Rose, executive director of the Long Now Foundation, about the gestation of the project. The foundation grew around Hillis’ idea, but it has since expanded its mission into other areas while continuing to oversee development of the clock.

In a 1999 interview, Rose told me:

“The idea is we’re building a clock to keep track of time on a much slower scale … It’s really being supported by the high-tech community. They realize the dangers of living too fast.”

After almost two decades of preparation that included boring an enormous hole into the ground, installation of the clock has finally kicked off:

For Rose, the clock is a symbolic bet that humanity will endure and thrive. In a moment of deep cynicism, especially about the role of technology in our lives, we could all use the dash of optimism that comes with such an audacious project.

Vectra raises $36 million for its AI cybersecurity technology

Posted: 21 Feb 2018 05:00 AM PST


Vectra, a company that helps enterprises detect cyberattacks by applying machine learning to their network traffic, announced today that it has raised $36 million in series D funding to fuel international expansion.

The startup's software uses machine learning to detect anomalies in a customer's network traffic metadata and other sources and provide security analysts with warnings if something seems amiss. Ultimately, the company aims to automate the detection of all cyberattacks targeting its customers so that they can defend themselves from adversaries targeting private datacenters and public cloud environments.

Enterprises are looking for all the help they can get when it comes to defending themselves from security threats, especially in an era filled with blockbuster hacks like those that struck Equifax, Sony, Home Depot, and other major companies. Vectra uses supervised machine learning to train its software on detecting known threats, as well as unsupervised machine learning to detect attacks that haven't been extensively seen before.

Vectra currently has more than 400 enterprise customers, including big names like Riverbed and Tribune Media Group. Company cofounder and CEO Hitesh Sheth said in an interview with VentureBeat that 60 percent of Vectra’s customers choose to share their anonymized metadata with the company so that it can build up better profiles of security threats and protect its entire customer base.

Sheth said that Vectra's software is the first source of truth for analyst teams that use it. All of the data stored in the system can then be exported into security information event management tools like Splunk and ArcSight for later forensic analysis.

"But if they are looking for a real-time answer on what's going on, the first curated piece of intelligence will come from us," Sheth said. "Because all the front-end work is automated, all the prioritization is automated, so separating signal from noise is something that we are very good at."

Atlantic Bridge, a growth equity fund that helps companies scale their businesses internationally, led the round, which included participation from two other new investors: Nissho Electronics Corporation and the Ireland Strategic Investment Fund. Existing Vectra investors, including Khosla Ventures and Accel Partners, also contributed to the round.

Including this round, Vectra raised $123 million in funding to date. AI-powered security is a growing market and has drawn significant interest from investors. Rival Darktrace announced last year that it had raised a $75 million series D, with a post-money valuation of $825 million. (Vectra declined to disclose its valuation.)

Vectra will use the added cash to fuel its international expansion and hire additional AI experts. Right now, the company has 140 employees, with 10 percent of its workforce providing particular AI expertise. Its customer base is roughly 60 percent in the U.S., with the rest coming in from overseas.

Over the next two years, Sheth plans to add "a couple hundred" new hires, focused on research, development, and international growth.

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Moovit raises $50 million for its public mobility platform in round led by Intel Capital

Posted: 21 Feb 2018 04:30 AM PST


Moovit announced today that it has raised $50 million in venture capital as the company seeks to leverage its crowdsourced transportation data into a service for local governments.

The company intends to use the money to expand its global sales team as well as for additional product development. The round was led by Intel Capital, and Moovit noted that Amnon Shashua, a senior vice president of Intel and the CEO of Mobileye, will join Moovit’s board of directors as an observer.

Mobileye is a computer vision and machine learning company that was acquired last year by Intel to boost its offering for autonomous vehicles. Like Moovit, Mobileye is based in Israel.

“We are especially thrilled about our plans to collaborate with Mobileye,” said Moovit cofounder and CEO Nir Erez, in a statement. “It’s a synergistic relationship at an exciting time to be shaping the future of urban mobility.”

READ MORE: Moovit wants to use its crowdsourced mapping data to transform public transportation

Since launching more than five years ago, Moovit has raised $133 million. The latest round also included money from previous Moovit investors, including Sequoia, BMW iVentures, NGP, Ashton Kutcher’s Sound Ventures, Gemini, Vaizra,  Vintage, and BRM.

Moovit initially launched as a mapping tool for public transportation. The company used crowdsourced data from millions of users to map routes for buses and metros around the world. While some cities now make information about their public transportation systems available via open data platforms, many more do not. To overcome that hurdle, its community of users, known as “Mooviters,” help plot things like bus and metro stop locations and routes.

More recently, it has sought to leverage that data by opening up its information to urban planners via a service called Smart Transit Suite.

Local governments can license the data back from Moovit, and the system includes tools that help policymakers better understand how to manage their transit systems, plan construction projects, and analyze more precisely how people and vehicles are flowing around their city. In turn, cities can make this data available to their citizens and local companies in various forms.

Moovit is betting that transportation in general is on the cusp of a massive revolution, pushed by a combination of new modes of transport as well as by things like ridesharing. Cities need to optimize the systems they have in place while also figuring out how to evolve those systems over time to embrace new options.

Anyone can download the Moovit app for free, and it currently has information for 2,000 cities in 80 countries.

Gabi raises another $9.5 million to disrupt consumer insurance markets

Posted: 21 Feb 2018 04:30 AM PST


Gabi has raised $9.5 million in a first institutional round of funding to make sure you get the best rates when it comes to car, homeowner’s, or renter’s insurance.

The San Francisco company automates insurance shopping and provides more visibility into insurance rates, allowing people to compare all the major insurance companies’ rates and instantly get a quote. And it does so without forcing you to go to multiple web sites and fill out a bunch of forms.

“We estimate roughly $50 billion are overpaid by insurance customers in the U.S. every year, and we’d like to put some of that money back into our customers’ pockets,” said Gabi CEO Hanno Fichtner, in a statement. “Instead of relying on insurance agents who may be biased or conduct incomplete research, Gabi’s technology automatically scours the 25 largest insurance companies in the US, including Allstate, Travelers, and Safeco, for the best rates and most relevant offerings.”

Canvas Ventures led the funding, with participation from Correlation Ventures, Northwestern Mutual Future Ventures, and Securian Ventures, as well as prior investors A.Capital Ventures and Project A. To date, the company has raised $12 million.

Gabi is based in San Francisco, with an engineering team in Lodz, Poland. The company plans to use the money to expand nationally.

Above: Gabi cofounders (left to right): Krzysztof Kujawa, Hanno Fichtner, and Vincenz Klemm.

Image Credit: Gabi

The company removes bias from quotes by deriving them using technology rather than insurance agents focused on commissions, Fichtner said. Gabi hopes to save customers about $460 a year, said Gabi chief product officer Krzysztof Kujawa. I used it on my own family’s insurance, and Gabi estimated I could save $828 a year.

Gabi’s technology reviews and compares people’s current insurance rates to major insurers’ rates, then finds the right coverage at the best rate possible. At sign-up, customers link their car and home insurance accounts or send their policies to Gabi. Gabi then analyzes their current coverage and compares the rate with those of major insurance companies to find a better price for the same coverage. By scanning existing insurance documents to create an insurance profile for each customer, Gabi saves the customer the tedious step of entering all the information by hand.

The Gabi algorithm has already found savings of more than $460 per year on average for more than 60 percent of its customers. After the initial comparison at signup, Gabi keeps checking for better offers and functions as a digital insurance folder. If the customer moves or buys a new car, Gabi adjusts.

Over time, the company will review auto, home, renter’s, umbrella, and life insurance. The focus for now is in the U.S. The team has 20 employees, and it was founded in 2016 by Fichtner, Kujawa, Vincenz Klemm, and Pawel Olszewski. The company started offering car and home insurance in California in 2017.

The company isn’t doing health insurance now, as it is often provided by employers and it is hard to switch policies. According to Princeton Survey Research Associates International, 62 percent of insurance customers believe insurance shopping is too time consuming. The study also found one in three drivers (36 percent) never shops around for auto insurance quotes.

Above: Gabi compares insurance rates via its app.

Image Credit: Gabi

That, according to Gabi, is unfortunate because shopping around often reaps savings of hundreds of dollars a year per customer. Now the company offers insurance in Ohio, Texas, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Arizona. Gabi currently offers insurance for auto, home, renter’s, umbrella, and life.

Unlike insurance brokers, Gabi offers customers a service agent to speak with if desired, or they can interact only with the app. If customers choose to switch insurers, they are not required to repeatedly fill out long insurance forms, and they are not spammed with unwanted calls or emails.

“We think the market for Gabi’s unique insurance-shopping technology is sizable,” said Rebecca Lynn, general partner at Canvas Ventures, in a statement. “We also think the technology can be tailored over time for a range of insurance products.”

Lynn will join Gabi’s board of directors. The company said the fastest-growing demographic for its service is the 35-55 age group. In addition to working with long-established insurance companies, Gabi recently formed a partnership with Clearcover, a new “online-first” auto insurance company that is backed by American Family Insurance.

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The rise of contingent workers: Hiring the best talent or courting risk?

Posted: 21 Feb 2018 04:10 AM PST


Presented by Trinet


It would be an understatement to say the preferences of the nation's workforce have evolved over the last decade. Our technology-driven, digitally connected and increasingly mobile society has spurned an increasing interest in more flexible and remote working arrangements. For many, the concept of working full-time for one organization is not an attractive option. This has led to a significant rise in the number of contract or contingent workers, especially in professional markets such as accounting, marketing, IT and research.

The increase in contingent workers has coincided with the ongoing escalation in costs associated with running a business and hiring employees. These costs can include payroll, healthcare, retirement benefits, and insurance. They can be particularly prohibitive for start-up ventures and small-to-midsize businesses. When a young company can't accurately forecast cash flow one year out, hiring contingent workers can be a prudent decision. The benefits of the so-called gig economy run both ways: young companies can reduce costs and mitigate some start-up risks, while those seeking temporary work have more options than ever.

Yet, the rising role of contingent workers in our economy has not been without controversy. While many contingent workers covet the flexibility their roles provide, they likely are not provided many of the benefits that employers provide to their employees, such as health insurance or access to retirement solutions. This is a hot area with lawmakers, labor associations, and unions, among others, voicing their views on what might be done to provide more rights to independent contractors. In some cases, this has led to an increase in litigation, whereby contingent workers have argued that the work that they do, and the manner in which they do it, means that they are actually full-time employees misclassified as an independent contractor.

Not every contingent worker is the same and deciding to engage an independent contractor is not just about cost savings. Rather, many such workers bring significant talents to the fold and the market can be competitive.

But building a workplace of choice for temporary staffers is a sensitive arena. Going too far in integrating contingent workers can result in a potential finding that the worker was in fact an employee. The impact of such a finding is generally large, resulting in unanticipated costs associated with a claim for items like unpaid sick leave or equal access to benefits such as healthcare. Balancing the need for independent contractors to feel valued and a part of the team against the rules around the classification of workers is paramount to ensuring success.

In laying the groundwork to hire contract workers, here are some basic rules to follow:

  1. Identify what the contractor will be doing and work with your HR or legal advisors to be sure you've classified the role correctly. Keep a detailed record of the questions and answers that go into your analysis.
  2. Ensure that the contingent worker agrees with the scope of the role into which you intend to hire them, and any parameters that you put around that work. Keep a detailed record of their review and agreement.
  3. Create the right structure to comply with the advice you've received.

Each of these steps, in concert with oversight from your human resources, legal, and accounting advisors, can help to shield your organization from the prospect of legal claims, including misclassification.

You can also foster a more productive environment between your employees and temporary workers by acknowledging the value and ideas your contract workers deliver, as well as by interacting with them in a respectful and personal manner. Everyone deserves to feel welcome and appreciated in a working environment. If you follow the right compliance steps, there's no reason you can't promote this kind of atmosphere for temporary staff.

These are just a few of the steps you can take to ensure a successful engagement with temporary workers. Through our representation of over 14,000 small-to-midsized companies nationally, we can confirm that they are an increasingly important component of our nation's workforce. The benefits of contingent working arrangements can flow to both employers and contractors alike. Maximizing these relationships, within the appropriate compliance framework, can benefit all parties involved.

Jimmy Franzone is Vice President Corporate Development at TriNet.


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Qualcomm’s new Snapdragon 845 heralds powerful standalone VR/AR headsets with eye and body tracking

Posted: 21 Feb 2018 04:00 AM PST


Qualcomm has revealed its Snapdragon 845 Xtended Reality (XR) platform for both mobile virtual reality and augmented reality mobile headsets. The new platform will be the brains of standalone mobile VR headsets, which don’t have to be connected to a PC to operate. Qualcomm’s VR/AR platform will be targeted at partner projects such as the Facebook Oculus Go headset and the HTC Vive Focus (which is selling in China).

The new Snapdragon 845 chip is a mobile processor that succeeds last year’s 835 processor, which is available in more than 20 XR devices to date. XR refers to extended reality, which includes AR, VR, and mixed reality technologies. Qualcomm is showing off the 845 platform at Mobile World Congress, held next week in Barcelona, Spain.

The 845 platform will bring some much-needed improvements to mobile VR. The Snapdragon 845 central processing unit (CPU) will be coupled with the Adreno 630, a graphic processing subsystem that will enable bigger and better virtual worlds on mobile. The platform will also include sensors and cameras inside the head-mounted display that enable six degrees of freedom (6DoF) movement controls. And it enables simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM) to detect objects in the real world and either avoid them or integrate them into the virtual environment.The SLAM will be wireless, without the external sensors needed for PC-based VR today, and it enables “room-scale VR.”

Above: Top view of Qualcomm’s 845-based VR reference headset.

Image Credit: Qualcomm

“We are very excited about VR and AR, and the maturity in the market,” said Hugo Swart, head of XR at Qualcomm, in an interview with GamesBeat. “The 845 chip for AR and VR is the next step. We are working with major partners, and we will have complete reference designs for standalone VR and smartphone VR.”

A reference design is a prototype that includes the chips and everything else needed to build a complete VR or AR system. Brands and system companies such as Oculus and HTC can take those reference designs and build their own products around them.

The system will deliver up to 4 million pixels per eye, and the 845 chip offers 30 percent faster graphics performance and 30 percent better power efficiency than the previous generation of chips. The display throughput will be twice as fast, and Qualcomm can now support 2K resolution per eye.

The Adreno subsystem will enable foveated rendering, which is a technique designed to save on power and rendering without compromising what the user sees. In foveated rendering, the headset detects where your eyes are looking. It keeps those parts of the picture sharp and clear, while the rest of the imagery outside of your field of view is blurry. It concentrates the rendering power on the graphics technology where it is most useful and doesn’t waste performance on what your eyes don’t see. That results in big power savings.

Above: Side view of Qualcomm VR headset reference design.

Image Credit: Qualcomm

The 845 platform also includes a digital signal processor for measuring, filtering, or compressing analog signals. That helps with tasks such as hand tracking. The system includes two cameras that face the eyes to track eye movement and two cameras on the outside of the headset that track your hands and your body movement.

Swart said that the key pillars of the system include chips that get better year over year; software such as foveated rendering and tracking software for the sensors and hand controls; system partnerships with big companies like Google, Facebook, and HTC; and an accelerator program that enables startups to provide both content and other elements in the ecosystem.

“The reference design is a key component that takes our latest chips and enables software features,” Swart said. “One of our key goals with VR is to enable good VR for the masses. We know we can’t do that with a $2,000 (PC-focused) setup.”

He added, “We want you to have the same level of freedom that you see in a PC system, with no cables.”

France’s Prophesee raises $19 million for its machine vision technology

Posted: 21 Feb 2018 03:39 AM PST


Paris-based Prophesee announced today that it has raised $19 million in the initial phase of what it expects to be a much larger series B.

The company, which recently changed its name from Chronocam, said the round was led by an “unnamed investor from the electronics industry.” Investors also included Intel Capital, 360 Capital Partners, Supernova Invest, iBionext, Renault Group, and Robert Bosch Venture Capital.

Founded four years ago, the company has developed machine vision technology that can process up to 100,000 frames per second and that has applications for emerging industries such as robotics and autonomous vehicles. The technology is designed to mimic the functions of the human eye.

Prophesee has now raised about $40 million and said it will use the new round to accelerate development and commercial deployment of its technology.

“Our event-based approach to vision sensing and processing has resonated well with our customers in the automotive, industrial, and IoT sectors, and the technology continues to achieve impressive results in benchmarking and prototyping exercises. This latest round of financing will help us move rapidly from technology development to market deployment," said cofounder and CEO Luca Verre in a statement. “Having the backing of our original investors, plus a world leader in electronics and consumer devices, further strengthens our strategy and will help Prophesee win the many market opportunities we are seeing.”

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Bright Pattern Announces Record 2017 Financial Performance, Expects Accelerated Growth in 2018

Posted: 21 Feb 2018 02:25 AM PST


Bright Pattern, a global provider of cloud communications platforms and contact center solutions, delivers record year 2017 results

SAN BRUNO, Calif.–(BUSINESS WIRE)–February 21, 2018–

Bright Pattern today announced record results and milestones for fiscal year 2017, including record bookings, revenue, and customer wins,” said Michael McCloskey, CEO of Bright Pattern. “Our customer base, driven by strong customer adoption, increased by 64%, revenue grew by 97%, and bookings grew by more than 160, thus demonstrating the strength of our solutions.”

In addition to Bright Pattern’s strong financial performance, it was a year of many milestones and accomplishments, including the following:

  • Selected as Leader in omnichannel, ranking #1 in the contact center category by Gartner’s online review site, GetApp
  • Deployed in data centers in Japan, Australia, and Singapore to support customers in production in the Asia-Pacific region
  • Named market challenger by Ovum
  • Announced support for Oracle Service Cloud and availability in the Oracle Cloud Marketplace
  • Opened new offices in Japan and Australia
  • Unveiled omnichannel communications support for ServiceNow

McCloskey continued, “Bright Pattern, after an outstanding year, is now preparing for our next phase of growth. This growth will be fueled by the release of our most advanced software scheduled for early this year.”

Konstantin Kishinsky, Founder and CTO of Bright Pattern, said, “Our Spring 2018 release will change the cloud communications and contact center landscape. Our powerful cloud platform is completely native and allows us to add new features and modules at a pace never before seen in the market. Our new user interface greatly improves the agent experience while allowing customers to engage with any channel in a single conversation.”

About Bright Pattern

Bright Pattern’s cloud contact center software simplifies omnichannel customer service for customers, agents, and contact center managers. Bright Pattern’s Cloud Contact Center solutions are used globally in over 26 countries and 12 languages by companies of all sizes.

Bright Pattern
Shelby Faris, 720-209-2818
Marketing Manager
shelby.faris@brightpattern.com

What would Mulder do? Writing an X-Files game in the age of fake news

Posted: 20 Feb 2018 11:11 PM PST


The X-Files: Deep State is a mobile game that blends casual mechanics with a thorough and engaging narrative in the style of the show. The players are invited to take on the role of a rookie FBI agent who, through a series of unfortunate events, crosses paths with a global conspiracy involving shadow governments, fringe science and, possibly, nefarious aliens.

At the beginning of The X-Files: Deep State development, we faced the question of what, exactly, do we want this game to be. We knew that, storywise, we wanted it to represent the best of what the show itself had to offer, but what was it exactly that entranced us in the source material?

This question, in one way or form, faces every developer working on an adaptation of a known material. Sadly, too many devs blindly follow the successful formulas of the source without examining why exactly have they worked. More often than not, these things we perceive as cornerstones turn out to be derivative from a hidden core of ideas, and that core — the true source of success — hides beneath the surface. As times change, the derivatives may have to change as well, but a good core is timeless. A good adaptation, then, has a clear vision of its core and is able to separate, and if need be change, the derivatives.

What is in the core of The X-Files?

After some debates, we came to the conclusion that what makes The X-Files so engaging is its visionary work with societal fears. It takes our innate insecurities as a people and places us in a world where they are all real. What’s really thrilling about that world, though, is that it’s only slightly hyperbolized. The things it describes might not be true, but they’re not as far from being true as we would want to believe.

The trick, then, was to understand how the things we fear had changed in the twenty plus years since the show premiered. Strangely, the shifts appeared to be simultaneously tectonic and insignificant, as though the giant pendulum of history had swung both ways.

Politics

The core story of The X-Files always revolved around the distrust we harbor against our governments. We entrust the government with unimaginable power in good faith that this power will be used under the strict rule of law. But what if it isn’t? How do we know that this faith is not betrayed, and what do we do if it is?

The relationship between society and government, at least from our perspective, changed drastically since 1993, when the show premiered. Back then the government often was presented onscreen as a sinister, all-powerful force. It was dangerous, competent, and not entirely trustworthy. In 2001, there was a public rush of patriotism and support for the government, as anyone can see if they look up President George W. Bush’s approval ratings during that period. In the aftermath, though, more and more people began to ask themselves if this trust was, perhaps, misplaced.

Above: The X-Files: Deep State

In the new era of the Patriot Act and Guantanamo Bay, where the government was entrusted with potentially terrifying means of breaking the same laws meant to keep it in check, a lot of people started to feel nostalgic for the good old days. Soon after, the perception shifted once again, and the government ceased to be portrayed as sinister and started to often be portrayed as dangerously idiotic. To tell it simply, in the past twenty years we went from looking on the government through the prism of The X-Files, to The West Wing, to Veep.

However, at the beginning of our production in early 2016, with presidential elections looming over the horizon and bitter political campaigns clashing on screen, the perception shifted once again. The election where one candidate was actively being investigated by the FBI and the other’s platform seemed to be built entirely on xenophobia and fearmongering showed us that the fundamental conflict of The X-Files was as topical as ever.

The X-Files’ paranoid view of the world, disturbingly, came back in force.

Technology

But its particulars have changed. The things we perceived as taken from the pages of science fiction dystopias back in the ’90s not only became technologically possible, but actually true, as shown by the recent illegal wiretapping scandals. The phrase “they’re watching you” was suddenly not funny anymore. Turns out, in the world of modern technology it is our right to privacy that was the fiction. In 1993, the idea of a device that can listen in on your conversations, monitor your behavior and know your whereabouts at all times seemed far-fetched, today we stand in lines to get the latest model. Our shops are being run by robots, our political views are formed by machine algorithms, and as if it wasn’t scary enough, the system is wide open to manipulation.

The truth is, indeed, out there — more than ever — but it’s obscured by a world wide web filled with lies, bubbles of skewed perception and outright intentional sabotage. So, for us, the most interesting themes to explore were the technological advancement and the use of technology to manipulate and form public opinion, and also the relationship between power, legality, and truth. What would Mulder’s role be in today’s world? Would he be imprisoned like Chelsea Manning, exiled to Russia like Edward Snowden? We built our theories and started working to realize them, writing both overarching “conspiracy” chapters and traditional “monster of the week” stories for the game.

As time went by, though, we were surprised to see that many of the things we were planning to address have begun to come true. The government’s current campaign to discredit the free press, the open hostility between the president and the FBI, the many reports of government officials having clandestine meetings with representatives of foreign powers and private interest alike all sound like something that would end up on Mulder’s desk, but are, in fact, a real thing.

Relevance

So what were we to do? We could base our stories on the more outlandish theories and urban legends to preserve the possible-but-not-actually-true formula of The X-Files, or continue with the old themes, even though they were not, per se, imaginary anymore. The thrill of the show was fun to experience because the things it showed were scary but not true. What happens if they’re scary and true? Would a story like that still be fun, or would it be too somber to enjoy?

The craziness went further once we announced the title of the game, “Deep State”. It was suggested by The X-Files creator Chris Carter, and we happily embraced it, being that shadow governments and conspiracies were always a cornerstone of the show’s story. However, shortly after President Trump was elected into office, we were a bit shocked to see that we, as representative of a Fox-owned brand, were ourselves being accused of being a part of a conspiracy. Some people accused us of trying, through subliminal messaging, to legitimize Mr. Trump’s claims that secret powers inside the government work to undermine his authority — as if The X-Files haven’t dealt with secret powers inside the government for more than two decades before he announced his candidacy.

The other unexpected development happened after the Russian hacking scandal. For us, as people raised in the post-Soviet states, it was especially interesting. Once again, the pendulum had swung both ways: we grew up during the time when screens were filled with villains of Russian descent, who then disappeared to make way for Middle Eastern antagonists, who then were replaced almost entirely by domestic enemies. For a time, the US reached the point where the most real threat to its statehood, at least in the public’s eye, was the US itself. And now, slowly, foreign threats make their way back to the screen.

At the time, we were working both on a story involving cyberterrorism and on a story involving the president being replaced by an alien clone doppelganger.  Suddenly at least one of these stories went from being outlandish to being anchored in reality, leaving us in an awkward position of not knowing what to do with it.

Maybe it would have been better to write a story about an eccentric billionaire sending sports cars to space, spontaneously inventing compact flamethrowers and planning to colonize Mars. That’s crazy enough to never happen in reality, for sure…right?

Above: The characters of The X-Files: Deep State

Conclusion

Back at the roots of the development process, we became aware of the challenges facing anyone tasked with adapting a known material. We needed not only to stay faithful to the source, but also to examine how the changes in the world we live in affected its core premise. As time went by, the urgent need to evolve became even more apparent. The world not only changed, it kept changing in front of our eyes at a rapid pace, forcing us to scramble to try and catch up.

All in all, right now the world seems to be in dire need of The X-Files type of stories, which are capable of examining the problems we face in an enjoyable narrative far removed from the divisive nature of modern day politics by a well-maintained wall of fantastical whimsy, even if this wall sadly looks thinner with each day.

Barisbi Alborov is a game writer at Creative Mobile, an Estonia-based video game development company currently working with FoxNext Games on The X-Files: Deep State.

AT&T picks Atlanta, Dallas, and Waco as first 5G cities, Austin for 5G test lab

Posted: 20 Feb 2018 08:59 PM PST


Expanding on its earlier plan to launch mobile 5G service in a dozen U.S. cities by the end of 2018, AT&T has named Atlanta, Dallas, and Waco as its first three picks for 5G internet access. Customers in parts of the Georgia and Texas cities “will be the very first to access this next generation of wireless services,” said AT&T senior VP Igal Elbaz. “Our 5G firsts will put our customers in the middle of it all.”

AT&T also announced that it is opening a new 5G lab in another Texas city, Austin, “to help us meet this aggressive timeline for mobile 5G deployment.” The lab will include an outdoor 5G radio environment for testing purposes, letting engineers run stress tests on 5G network equipment and devices before rolling them out to consumers.

Although much of the world is waiting until 2019 to aggressively deploy 5G hardware — and wondering how complete the 5G standard will be — AT&T promises that “2018 will be the year” customers can experience “standards-based, mobile 5G” on its network. The company says that it will begin with devices operating on ultra high-frequency millimeter wave (mmWave) spectrum, then expand to additional spectrum bands. Like other carriers on the road to 5G, AT&T says that it is currently deploying new LTE-compatible equipment that can easily be migrated to 5G as soon as faster service is needed.

Last month, AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson explained that its initial 5G devices will be “pucks” — mobile hotspots — rather than smartphones, which will be at best hard to find this year. The latest press release suggests that plan hasn’t changed.

“We are working with our vendors on an aggressive schedule to help ensure customers can enjoy 5G when we launch the network this year,” AT&T said today. “We will add more 5G capable mobile devices and smartphones in early 2019 and beyond.”

While today’s news is an exciting and concrete step forward for 5G in the United States, it’s worth underscoring that AT&T’s language hedges a little, saying that its mobile 5G service will be available in “parts of Dallas, Atlanta and Waco” rather than blanketing each city immediately. The nation’s second-largest carrier says that it will “announce additional cities in the coming months.”

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