 |
|
|
|||||
The dating app Bumble is adding a few new safety features, including an ID verification tool. This lets users submit a government-issued ID to the system. Once confirmed, profiles will get a nice and shiny verification badge to let potential connections know everything is on the up and up. Bumble users can now filter profiles based on who is ID verified. Theres even a request tool to ask a match to complete the process. ID verification is now available in the US, UK, Australia, Canada and several other countries, with more to come in the near future. The platform has also introduced something called Share Date. This safety feature lets users share details of a date with a trusted contact. The date details include who theyre meeting with, when it starts and where the meeting is set to take place. If plans change, the information can easily be updated via the app. Match has something similar, which is called Date Check-In. Tinder even has its own version of this tool. Theres a final safety update, as Bumble has updated the Review Before You Send tool. This alerts members when a message may be inappropriate. It started as a pilot program that was rolled out as part of the Compliments feature, but has now been extended to all chats. Bumble Finally, todays update brings something called Discover. This is a personalized experience and a fresh way to find common ground on Bumble. To that end, it displays the most compatible people based on similar interests and dating intentions. The list is refreshed daily. Bumble says that the Discover page will continue to improve and provide more accurate connections as users update preferred interest badges and complete profiles.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/apps/bumble-adds-id-verification-and-other-safety-features-170228333.html?src=rss
Category:
Marketing and Advertising
Now that Apples recent slew of hardware releases are behind us, we got some news on the software side last week. First, the company publicly announced that it was delaying the smarter, more personal version of Siri thatll be powered by Apple Intelligence. Then, rumors sprang up again that Apple was giving an extensive visual update to its software platforms, including iOS 19 and macOS 16 which are expected to be revealed at WWDC in June. The sources for this redesign rumor are solid. Jon Prosser dropped a video on his YouTube channel Front Page Tech back in January where he said that he had seen a redesigned Camera app for the next version of iOS that had a number of interface changes that made it feel more like a visionOS app. His thinking is that Apple wouldnt redesign a core app like Camera without bringing changes to some of the rest of the OS, as well. Mark Gurman at Bloomberg followed up on that, reporting that iOS 19, iPadOS 19 and macOS 16 will fundamentally change the look of the operating systems and make Apples various software platforms more consistent. He also specifically mentioned visionOS, which runs Apples wildly expensive ($3,500) Vision Pro headset, as an inspiration for the new design. This rumor could definitely have legs. Even though visionOS doesnt feel radically different to Apples other software, it does make sense that the company would unify visual themes across all its platforms and devices as it usually does. But at a time when the company is struggling mightily with its Apple Intelligence rollout and delaying a new Siri (which feels to me like the most significant update the company could deliver), slapping a new coat of paint on iOS and macOS feels like a distraction at best and misguided priorities at worst. The delay to a more intelligent Siri is a major blow to Apples AI ambitions. Since it was first introduced at WWDC 2024, its been the single thing that might make me upgrade my phone to one that works with Apple Intelligence. The promise is an assistant that has a better understanding of the apps on your phone and can use them more extensively on your behalf; it can do things like automatically adding addresses to a contact card. Another example Apple showed was asking Siri to find an image of your drivers license, take the ID number on it and put it into a form youre filling out. Itll also have more awareness of whats on your screen and better natural language understanding. That, of course, is all just a promise right now. Apple commentator John Gruber, who typically takes a fairly positive view of the company, absolutely ripped the company a new one over the Siri delay. He says that at WWDC 2024, he and other members of the press saw controlled demos of Apple Intelligence features, but no proof of a smarter Siri thus far, all weve seen are product videos showing what it could do. In retrospect, Gruber says that a smarter Siri is nothing more than vaporware. They were features Apple said existed, which they claimed would be shipping in the next year, and which they portrayed, to great effect, in the signature Siri, when is my moms flight landing? segment of the WWDC keynote itself, he says. Apple was either unwilling or unable to demonstrate those features in action back in June, even with Apple product marketing reps performing the demos from a prepared script using prepared devices. Apple's presentation of Siri at WWDC 2024 can be seen above. Its a bad look for Apple, and was made worse when Bloomberg published a piece showing the turmoil inside the Siri team following the delay announcement. The publication reported that Apple senior director Robby Walker held an all-hands meeting for the Siri team saying the delays have been ugly and embarrassing, and that the decision to promote these features to the public before they were ready compounded the issues. To be fair, Apple has shipped a few Siri improvements since the fall (most significantly the addition of ChatGPT), but theyre not things that have radically changed the voice assistants most glaring weaknesses. Additionally, Gurmans sources claim that we wont see these features until sometime in 2026 at the earliest, long after iOS 19 would be released. With all that in mind, these redesign rumors feel like a fresh coat of paint to distract people from the structural issues with Apple Intelligence as a whole and the delays on a massively important feature. The timing also feels strange. While Apple hasnt embarked on a full-scale redesign of iOS since it released iOS 7 way back in 2013, the company has made small but significant changes and refinements nearly every year since that have added up to software thats far more customizable and refined than it was more than a decade ago. Since iOS 14 in 2020, Apple added home and lock screen widgets, major customization features for lock screen visuals, and the wild notion of not having all your apps aligned to an inflexible grid. Apple also added the ability to color-tint the icons to match your background image (or just make them any color you want, dark or light). These all add up to an iOS that is a lot more visually customizable than ever before. Android has had these features for years, so Im not praising Apple for being some paragon of user freedom. But its clear from these changes that Apple is finally interested in giving users more control over how their phones look. With all this as well as many smaller visual tweaks the company has made over the years, its fair to say that iOS 18s design language has evolved far beyond what we saw with iOS 7s complete and abrupt makeover. As for macOS, Apple has given it several notable visual updates over the last decade or so. In 2014, OS X Yosemite largely brought over the flatter design from iOS 7 that removed skeuomorphic elements that had littered iOS and the Mac for years. Apple continued to tweak it over the following years before giving it another big visual overhaul in 2020 with macOS Big Sur. That was the first OS that supported Appls M-series Macs and as such the company dropped the OS X branding and moved to macOS alongside the new design. While I was initially skeptical of a major macOS visual refresh, I am a little surprised to remember that its been almost five years since Big Sur launched maybe were right on schedule for a visual refresh. And in recent years, Apple has wanted to keep its platforms as aligned as possible, both from a feature perspective as well as how they look. Its not hard to imagine designers wanting to unify things across platforms again. Given that the user interface is literally how we interact with all these devices, a design refresh can certainly keep things feeling new, even if the functionality hasnt changed much. And without a smarter Siri to look forward to at WWDC this year, a fresh coat of paint might be Apples best option to make its next software updates feel new. That said, I dont mean to suggest that the people working on the visual design of Apples software platforms could or should abandon their work and rush a better Siri out the door the skill sets and priorities of those two teams are surely completely different. But at the very least, Apples going to have to more forcefully address the elephant in the room that is Siri than it has before it can try selling us on a new design.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/ai/apple-should-focus-on-fixing-siri-not-redesigning-ios-again-164446205.html?src=rss
Category:
Marketing and Advertising
Alphabet is letting its laser-based internet company Taara fly and be free, according to reporting by Financial Times. Googles parent company is spinning off the service from X, its moonshot incubator system (not to be confused with X the social network.) Taara uses light beams to provide high-bandwidth internet and phone services to hard-to-reach areas of the world. This places it in direct competition with Elon Musks Starlink network of satellites. Taara now has two dozen staff members and is hiring aggressively. It has secured backing from Series X Capital. Alphabet will retain a minority stake, but it remains tight-lipped regarding seed funding details or potential financial targets. Theyre going to be able to get connected quickly to market capital, bring in strategic investors and generally be able to scale faster this way, said Eric Teller, Xs Captain of Moonshots. Taara already operates in 12 countries throughout the world and has provided supplemental service during events like Coachella. The tech works by firing beams of light to and from various terminals. Alphabet says the system can transmit data at 20 gigabits per second over an area of around 12 miles. The company also says that these systems are relatively easy to build and maintain, especially when compared to satellites in space. It has its origins in an Alphabet-created concept called Loon. This was a modified version of the same idea that shot beams of light to and from groups of balloons floating on the edge of space. There are strict governmental and regulatory hurdles to flying thousands of balloons near space, however, so it wound down in 2021. Loons loss was Taaras gain, as the newer entity uses the same lasers. Mahesh Krishnaswamy, Taaras general manager and a lead engineer, says that the next step is to develop a silicon photonic chip that will eliminate the need for many of the mirrors and lenses currently positioned on system terminals. The newly-minted startup has a long way to go to catch up to Starlink, which has over four million subscribers worldwide. Taara doesnt even sell subscriptions directly to consumers. Instead, it partners with existing telecommunication companies like T-Mobile to extend their networks to remote locations.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/mobile/alphabets-starlink-competitor-taara-is-spinning-off-into-an-independent-company-154653176.html?src=rss
Category:
Marketing and Advertising
All news |
||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||