Category: Technology

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The YoloBox Pro is a one-stop shop for your live video productions

Somehow, we all became livestreamers during the pandemic, even if it just meant rearranging our office shelves for a better Zoom background. But the pandemic was also a boon for those catering to clients with slightly more advanced needs, such as those who needed dedicated hardware, be that fancy streaming lights, capture cards or entire live production setups. Atem, Elgato and company probably never saw as many searchers on their websites as during the middle of 2020. Another player in this field is YoloLiv, which offers both hardware and software tools for creating livestreaming productions. The company recently launched a number of interesting software updates and sent us its YoloBox Pro to give it a try.

Image Credits: YoloLiv

What makes the YoloLiv boxes stand out is that they are standalone devices that you can use to run a live production with multiple cameras, all without needing a dedicated desktop or laptop to stream.

You can basically think of the YoloBoxes as very thick Android tablets (and they do, in fact, run Android). The Pro version is the flagship model, with an 8-inch screen, three HDMI inputs for bringing in camera feeds, a USB port for connecting a webcam and an SD card reader for bringing in pre-recorded video and saving your recording. There’s also a line in port for bringing in audio and a USB-A port that lets you use the device as a webcam and connect it to a computer and an HDMI out port for a dedicated monitor. To connect the Box to the internet, there’s an Ethernet port for wired connections and Wi-Fi, and there’s even support for LTE connections.

The system runs on a Qualcomm 660 chip and dedicated media encoders, and in my testing, all of that works just as advertised, with up to 60 frames per second.

Image Credits: YoloLiv

The company also offers the 7-inch YoloBox with two HDMI inputs and one USB port for a webcam, but without the ability to use the entire unit as a webcam. The newest member of the family is the 5.5-inch YoloBox Mini, with just one HDMI port and one USB port for adding a webcam. That makes the potential use cases for this a bit limited, but unlike the standard non-Pro YoloBox, you can use it as a webcam.  Most likely, that’s because both the Pro and Mini use Qualcomm’s 660, while the YoloBox uses the less powerful 625 chipset.

The company is also about to release a new box — the Instream — for streamers on Instagram and TikTok, with a focus on vertical video.

As somebody who typically uses OBS or Restream Studio for producing livestreams, moving to the YoloBox took a bit of getting used to. But I can definitely see the appeal of the YoloBox. Setup takes a few minutes. Connecting cameras is a plug-and-play affair — and once you’ve entered your YouTube, Facebook or Twitch credentials, you’re good to go. If you want to get fancy, you can build your own picture-in-picture, side-by-side and split views and easily switch back and forth between them during your show.

Image Credits: YoloLiv

One thing that impressed me is that with every software release during my testing phase, the company launched useful new features. Most recently — and most importantly for somebody who livestreams interviews or podcast recordings — you can now invite people to your shows.

However, if you use the device as a webcam, one thing you have to keep in mind is that there is a slight delay in processing all of the video feeds. We’re talking about maybe half a second, but that’s enough to make conversations harder, and if you don’t feed your audio through the YoloBox but through your computer, it’ll be out of sync. This isn’t the most likely use case for these devices, but it’s worth keeping in mind.

Where the device shines is when you use it to produce a live event. Setting up different views is easy and you simply switch using the touch screen. You can set up lower thirds or any other text on the screen and case it in and out as needed, assign names to presenters, etc. There’s a scoreboard, too, for when you’re streaming your school’s football games. Of course, there are also built-in countdown timers and virtually every other feature you would expect. Writing your lower thirds on the touch screen gets a bit old after a while and I’d like to see more features that would make it easier to recycle them from stream to stream, but that’s a minor issue.

A few days ago, YoloLiv launched version 2.0 of the software package for the Pro, which adds a couple of features that I missed while using the device. The most important of those, at least for me, was the ability to copy, reorder and prioritize overlays, and for those who use it to stream sports (or e-sports), there’s now support for instant replays.

Unsurprisingly, all of this takes a fair bit of energy. The YoloBox Pro is powered by a 10,000 mAh battery, which the company says should last about three hours. I got closer to a bit over two hours in my tests, but I was also trying lots of features at the same time. For some features, including adding guests, YoloLiv recommends that you don’t use an external webcam but only the HDMI inputs, and in my experience, that’s correct. The webcam seems to need quite a bit more compute power, and some of these new features do push the device to its limits.

Still, I’ve been impressed by how the company is obviously listening to user feedback and improves the device with every update.

There is clearly a space for a device like this. At almost $1,300, you’re either a very dedicated amateur or maybe a nonprofit that doesn’t need a larger setup, but if you’re good with the number of inputs, I can’t really think of another easily portable solution like this (unless you want to bring a laptop and switcher and a lot more gear). I’m sure professionals will always prefer the hardware controls of an ATEM Mini Pro from Blackmagic (or its larger brethren). But as an all-in-one device, the YoloBox Pro doesn’t really have a lot of competition right now.

The YoloBox Pro is a one-stop shop for your live video productions by Frederic Lardinois originally published on TechCrunch

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Varjo, an early mover in building XR headsets and software for enterprises, taps $40M

Applications in the metaverse often feel like more of a marketing gimmick than something that a critical mass of consumers would use, let alone pay for. But turn to the enterprise, and there appears to be a very lucrative opportunity that’s well into finding traction. Today, one of the early movers in building solutions for that market is announcing a round of funding to double down on the opportunity.

Varjo, which builds hardware and integrated software for “professional grade” virtual and augmented reality for industrial and other enterprise applications, has raised $40 million, a Series D that it will be using both to continue R&D for its headsets, as well as to delve further into software applications and tools for the Varjo Reality Cloud, its own streaming platform that it launched earlier this year.

The company is headquartered in Helsinki, Finland — founded and run by longtime veterans from Nokia cast asunder when that company, once a leading smartphone and mobile maker, went into a tailspin last decade — and its backers in this round include a number of big investors out of the region.

They include EQT Ventures, Atomico, strategic backer Volvo Car Tech Fund, Lifeline Ventures, and Tesi, the Finnish government VC and PE fund; with new backers Mirabaud and Foxconn also participating. Varjo describes the latter two as strategic: it’s not clear how the Swiss finance and banking giant is working with Varjo, but Foxconn is being tapped to help manufacture its devices, CEO Timo Toikkanen said in an interview.

Varjo is not disclosing valuation, but data from PitchBook estimates that its last round in 2020 valued it at $146 million and Toikkanen (who used to lead all of Nokia mobile phones business before and after it was acquired by Microsoft) noted that the new valuation is “very positive.”

In a hardware landscape that is dominated by big tech companies — particularly in VR hardware — Varjo is notable for being an independent player, and not one that’s prone to gobbling lots of cash to stay that way: it’s only raised around $150 million since being founded in 2016. Toikkanen declined to say whether Varjo has been approached by others for acquisition, but given that Nokia background, I’d hazard to say that he and others on the team understand first-hand the value of remaining a smaller company when it comes to innovation.

“We are very fond of what we do at this size,” he said. “There are great benefits to independence. We are fast moving and we have the ability to respond to customer needs.”

Perhaps the independence has also lent the company a greater degree of focus. A number of players in the area of XR have been focusing on headsets and applications for consumers, and some would argue that the quality of those efforts has been variable: Meta was roundly ridiculed when Mark Zuckerberg provided a preview its Horizon Worlds expansion; but others are making efforts to improve the experience.

And there are also a number of companies that have also put their money on the B2B opportunity (they include Meta building enterprise applications, HP, and ByteDance-owned Pico), although even in that area, some like Spatial have pivoted away to other aspects of the “metaverse.”

Within that spectrum, Varjo is among those that took a position early on that the first adopters (and perhaps the main ones?) of XR products would be enterprise customers, and it has stuck to it.

”Consumer and corporation expectations towards metaverse are globally high. To meet these expectations, both technology that is easy to use and accurate as well as high-quality software and content are needed. Varjo’s tech – namely, the new XR streaming platform ’Varjo Reality Cloud’ in combination with the company’s XR-3, VR-3 and Aero products – enables professional, fully virtual work in various sectors, anytime and anywhere,” said Keith Bonnici, investment director at Tesi, in a statement. “This then promotes global remote work, boosting efficiency and decreasing CO2 emissions from work travel.”

In terms of its products, Varjo’s focus is on producing premium, business-critical services and devices (read: expensive, but for a customer that is less sensitive on pricing), and to take an approach that virtual and augmented reality would go hand-in-hand as mixed reality. Toikkanen believes that prescience has been integral to its success.

“We have never been a ‘hype’ company,” he said in his understated, Finnish clip. “We have been very consistent in saying that the entry point from the beginning is mixed reality. Eventually everything has worked out to be built that way. We also said that the ultimate incarnation would need to be as good as real life. Pixelated holographic would never be good enough.”

The company currently makes three different headsets — the XR-3, the VR-3 and the Aero, ranging in prices respectively from about $6,500 to $1,500 with additional costs for software subscriptions to use with them (which appear to start at around $1,500 annually), as well as a separate development environments for its Reality Cloud and another next-generation product it calls Teleport that is still in alpha.

Its focus these days is on applications in areas like design and manufacturing, engineering, education, and healthcare, and in addition to Volvo, its customers include Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Aston Martin, Kia — in all, about 25% of the Fortune 100, the company said — as well as “various departments across the United States and European Governments.”

With found Urho Konttori, another Nokia alum, on board as Varjo’s CTO, the startup also owns seven patent families related to XR.

“Varjo is very intellectual property-protection oriented,” Toikkanen said, noting that the company has been approached by other tech companies to license that IP, but that it has yet to develop that business. “Today the focus is on building it into our own products and services. That is the way you can can get access.”

 

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LG Electronics launches NFT platform that lets users buy and sell digital artwork

LG Electronics said today it has released its non-fungible token (NFT) platform LG Art Lab, which lets users discover, buy, sell and trade NFTs on LG’s smart TVs.

The announcement comes roughly eight months after LG Electronics said at its press conference that it plans to incorporate NFT features into its smart TV. The platform is now available in the U.S. only to those with LG TV running webOS 5.0 or later and is accessible directly from the home screen.

LG Electronics partnered with the Hedera network to offer an app that enables users to purchase NFTs via Wallypto, LG’s crypto wallet for smartphones.

“Wallypto, built on Hedera, has been developing since September 2021,” Chris Jo, senior vice president, head of platform business at LG Electronics home entertainment company, told TechCrunch. “Its beta version of the wallet launched this week in August.”

The partnership between Hedera and LG Electronics was initiated in 2020 when LG joined the Hedera governing council that includes Google, IBM, Deutsche Telekom and the Indian Institute of Technology, and more.

“While many people have heard of NFTs and would like to participate in the growing ecosystem, it can be overly complex and difficult to get started,” Jo said. “LG Art Lab is designed to allow millions of users in the U.S. to easily access and display NFTs, without having to interact with code or directly with a blockchain themselves.”

The NFT platform provides a Drops feature that profiles artists and shows their new artwork previews. Its real-time Live Drops feature gives notifications to help users acquire a dropped NFT to ensure they do not miss an opportunity.

LG Art Lab

Image Credits: LG Electronics/ Courtesy of Barry X Ball Studio, Inc.

Jo also said that Hedera allows users to transact for less than $0.0001 cent per transaction (with no high gas fee or hidden costs), meaning that there are no hidden costs associated with the NFT platform.

“The Hedera Network consumes vastly less energy than any other public ledger, making it the ideal choice for sustainable initiatives and meaning that it can meet the ESG of modern businesses and investors,” Jo explained. Users can buy, sell and display NFTs on the Hedera network without worrying about the high energy consumption associated with other public networks, he said, adding that Hedera guarantees a low, predictable fee for users, unlike many other decentralized networks.

South Korea’s IT and entertainment companies are jumping into the non-fungible token (NFT) industry. In January, LG’s rival Samsung unveiled its new smart TV-based NFT marketplace plan. Samsung said it will add NFT features on Samsung TVs like MICRO LED and Neo QLED.

Samsung’s 2022 Smart TVs to support cloud gaming, video chat and even NFTs

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This Week in Apps: Twitter’s edit button, BeReal clones, Trump’s Truth Social gets blocked

Welcome back to This Week in Apps, the weekly TechCrunch series that recaps the latest in mobile OS news, mobile applications and the overall app economy.

Global app spending reached $65 billion in the first half of 2022, up only slightly from the $64.4 billion during the same period in 2021, as hypergrowth fueled by the pandemic has decreased. But overall, the app economy is continuing to grow, having produced a record number of downloads and consumer spending across both the iOS and Google Play stores combined in 2021, according to the latest year-end reports. Global spending across iOS and Google Play last year was $133 billion, and consumers downloaded 143.6 billion apps.

This Week in Apps offers a way to keep up with this fast-moving industry in one place with the latest from the world of apps, including news, updates, startup fundings, mergers and acquisitions, and much more.

Do you want This Week in Apps in your inbox every Saturday? Sign up here: techcrunch.com/newsletters

Top Stories

Twitter gets editable… do we still care?

After years of user demand for an edit button, Twitter’s news this week that such a feature was now entering testing felt a little anticlimactic.

Twitter broke its own embargo over the impending launch. There weren’t any interviews. Instead, Twitter just casually noted the edit feature was being tested internally, it said in a tweet published ahead of its blog post announcement. Here’s a feature you wanted. I guess we’ll ship it. 

And though the feature will roll out to users later this month, it won’t be broadly available. Instead, users can pay for a Twitter Blue subscription to access the edit feature, Twitter said. But only “some” Twitter Blue subscribers will even see the option, as it will still be in a test mode at first. Then there’s the fact that Twitter Blue subscribers have already been somewhat placated by the “Undo Tweet” feature — an option that lets you quickly unsend a tweet when you spot a typo. (It’s actually a delay to post, which makes the “unsending” possible.) This reduces the need for an edit button in many cases, as it turns out.

A true edit feature, meanwhile, introduces a layer of complexity on top of the increasingly cluttered social app. Although Twitter says the feature will have an edit log to minimize abuse, there’s concern that people will re-write tweets knowing that many won’t ever look at the past versions.

If anything, the demand for an edit button had become more a meme than a true user request. It was just sort of unfathomable to some Twitter users that a basic feature like this was not being built. But over the years, people have learned to work around the lack of editing. We’d delete and retweet things. We’d reply with a correction, cursing the lack of an edit button as we did. And then we moved on. Now Twitter wants everyone to pay for this long-requested functionality? Ouch.

Here come the BeReal clones

snapchat's dual camera feature uses both front and back cameras

Image Credits: Snapchat

Remember when every social app was copying Snapchat’s Stories — Instagram successfully so? More recently, that sort of copy-and-paste development cycle has been focused on shoehorning a TikTok-like vertical video feed into every other social app, including Instagram and Facebook (Reels), YouTube (Shorts), Snapchat (Spotlight) and others — even Twitter gave it a shot for a time.

But now, the top social apps have set their sights on BeReal, the scrappy social app for unfiltered sharing that’s been sitting just a bit too long at the top of the App Store to keep calling it a “trend.” That has the major social platforms worried about the impact the newcomer is having on their respective user bases. In particular, BeReal seems to be succeeding in appealing to a younger, Gen Z audience in search of a more authentic social networking experience. It allows them to connect with their friends without all the embellishments that, for years, have been the hallmarks of social apps — filters, AR and advanced editing tools resulting in a curated, idealized feed. Instead, BeReal users are in search of imperfection — yet another nail in the coffin for the old “Instagram aesthetic” that’s since been replaced by intentionally poorly shot photos and lo-fi selfies.

Last week, we saw Instagram building out a new feature that’s clearly designed to be a BeReal clone, as it would send Instagram users a notification after which they’d have two minutes to capture and share an “IG Candid” photo to their Story. This is essentially the same mechanic BeReal uses today. Before that, it built a Dual camera feature that lets users shoot from both cameras at once. But that one missed the key component to BeReal’s draw: connecting with friends.

Now Snapchat is jumping on the BeReal bandwagon, with the launch of its own Dual Camera feature. Similar to BeReal, the new mode also lets users capture photos and videos from both their front and back cameras at the same time. But in its case, the app allows users to customize where and how their selfie photo appears — either picture-in-picture, in a horizontal or vertical side-by-side layout or in a unique “image cutout” mode. This latter option cuts out your selfie from the background, then overlays it on top of the footage from the back camera. This differentiates Snap’s feature from BeReal as it could inspire a different type of image-sharing experience to emerge.

It’s also the latest example of how advances in machine learning technologies have been allowing technology companies to do more with users’ photos. Apple, for instance, is introducing an image cutout feature in iOS 16 that lets you cut and paste the subject of a photo into other apps — like texting a picture of your dog’s image cutout in iMessage. This technology is also powering other areas involving photos across iOS — like the “copy subject” feature in mobile Safari or “remove background” in Files, for example.

Elsewhere, Pinterest’s buzzy new app Shuffles is also using image cutouts to allow users to grab images from their Pins for use in collages.

But whether or not an image cutout feature will prove a draw for Snapchat users is still unknown. After all, the dual camera photo-taking tech itself is not driving demand for BeReal — it’s the social connections it enables.

California advances an age-appropriate design code bill for apps

Lawmakers in California have passed a bill, the California Age-Appropriate Design Code Act, that would require apps and websites to increase protections for children, in the absence of any sort of federal standards. The legislation supports the implementation of a range of design changes and features across sites and apps. For instance, companies would have to turn on the highest privacy settings for minors by default — something apps like Instagram have begun doing for minor users (at least new ones), in anticipation of such legislation.

It would also restrict companies from collecting users’ precise locations — a privacy protection that, coincidentally, just went viral on TikTok, as users warned each other how to disable precise location for Instagram’s app in their phone’s Settings. This prompted Instagram head Adam Mosseri to refute the claims users were making, noting that the app was not actually tracking users or sharing their location with others.

Additionally, the bill calls for protections around data collection, prohibiting companies from collecting any data beyond what’s absolutely necessary or using the data collection in a way that would negatively impact the physical or mental health of minors. Apps and sites would also have to have the strongest privacy protections in place, disabling features that personalize the experience based on prior behavior or browsing history, which could affect numerous apps using recommendation algorithms, like TikTok. And it could restrict apps in other ways, like limiting messaging with strangers, and disallowing techniques designed to addict kids into spending hours with the service, among other things.

While such guidelines sound good on paper, the broad and vague language used in the bill could create complications in implementing some of the changes, critics have argued. In addition, privacy advocates pointed out that this could increase the use of age-verification tech, which often requires users to submit personal data in order to use a service.

If signed into law by Governor Gavin Newsom, the bill could become law by 2024.

Weekly News

Platforms: Apple

  • Ahead of next week’s event, Apple released iOS 16, beta 8 to developers with additional bug fixes and performance improvements.
  • It also rolled out Xcode Cloud subscriptions to developers using Xcode 13.4.1 or later and are members of the Apple Developer Program. The subscription offers 25 compute hours per month for free (until the end of 2023 when it will become $15/mo). Pricing kicks in starting at $49.99/mo for 100 hours and goes up to 1,000 compute hours at $400/mo. Account holders can start, upgrade or downgrade a subscription at any time, Apple says.
  • An app developer’s lawsuit over App Store rejections, scams and fraud has ended in a settlement agreement after court filings show a request to dismiss the suit earlier this summer. The plaintiff, app developer and former Pinterest engineer Kosta Eleftheriou, made a name for himself in recent months calling out some of the worst App Store scams. This later culminated in a lawsuit of his own against Apple, filed in California’s Superior Court in Santa Clara County in March 2021, where he alleged his own app had been unfairly rejected from the App Store and then later targeted by scammers, leading to lost revenues. Terms of the settlement were not disclosed.

Apple settles lawsuit with developer over App Store rejections and scams

Platforms: Google

  • Google blocked Trump’s social media app, Truth Social, from launching on the Play Store over its content moderation issues. Specifically, Google found the app contained physical threats and incitements to violence, which are banned by its policy. But the app remains live on iOS despite hosting some of the same dangerous content in violation of Apple’s rules. Meanwhile, Google has now reinstated the Parler app to the Play Store after initially removing it over similar content moderation issues following the January 6 Capitol attack.

Google blocks Truth Social from the Play Store — Will Apple be next?

  • Google rolled out third-party in-app billing in the Play Store to additional markets, including India, Australia, Indonesia, Japan and the European Economic Area, making the option available to end users. Interested non-gaming developers can apply for the program and, if they qualify, will be able to use third-party payment systems in their apps. The company announced the program earlier this year. It notes that “reasonable service fees” will still apply to those who make the switch, but didn’t disclose the percentages involved.

E-commerce

Meta and Jio launch grocery shopping on WhatsApp in India

Image Credits: WhatsApp

  • Meta partnered with India’s Reliance Retail and Jio Platforms to bring grocery shopping to WhatsApp. The launch will allow customers in India to browse JioMart’s grocery catalog on WhatsApp, then add items to a cart and make the payments via local payments rail UPI without leaving the messaging app.
  • Block’s Cash App will now allow users to make payments on e-commerce sites outside the Square network, including with new partners American Eagle, Aerie, Tommy Hilfiger, Finish Line and JD Sports. Other merchants will join in the following months, like Romwe, Savage x Fenty, SHEIN, thredUP and Wish.

Social

Meta Instagram NFT

Image Credits: Meta

  • Facebook and Instagram now let users post NFTs to their profiles by connecting their wallets, like Rainbow, MetaMask, Trust Wallet, Coinbase Wallet and Dapper Wallet. NFTs minted on the Ethereum, Polygon and Flow blockchains are supported.
  • Facebook said it’s shutting down its Nextdoor clone called Neighborhoods next month after realizing that Facebook Groups was actually just fine for this purpose. It also recently shut down live shopping and its standalone gaming app.
  • Instagram began testing new features that will help users better control what they see on the app. This includes the option to mark multiple posts on the Explore page as “Not Interested,” and another option that will let you tell Instagram you want to stop seeing posts with content you’re no longer interested in.
  • Twitter launched its “close friends” feature, Twitter Circle, to global users. The feature allows users to add up to 150 people to their Twitter Circle in order to make some tweets available only to those they know and trust instead of to the wider public.

Twitter Circle on mobile

Image Credits: Twitter

  • Twitter was reportedly working on an OnlyFans competitor, The Verge reported, but ended those efforts due to issues with CSAM on the platform.
  • TikTok laid off employees from its U.S. ad department, amid a restructuring, The Information reported. The head of the ad sales team, former Meta executive Blake Chandlee, had forewarned about layoffs earlier this month.
  • Snap also confirmed it would lay off around 20% of its 6,400-plus staff, after The Verge reported on its plans. The company also said it would cancel its original shows and in-app games, and would shut down its Zenly and Voisey apps. The Zenly shutdown is most surprising, given the app is still fairly popular with 35 million MAUs.

Zenly is still hugely popular, so why’s Snap shutting it down?

  • Last summer’s hit social app Poparazzi’s parent company, TTYL, is prepping a new social app that adds the ability for users to post not only photos but also videos, and answers to questions and prompts to their friends’ profiles. The app, called Made With Friends, is due out in October.

Image Credits: Made With Friends

Messaging

  • Google brought back the Duo icon with an update to its Google Meet Android app after recently consolidating the Meet and Duo apps, making “Meet” the surviving brand. The company said this would help people who were searching for “Duo” to find and launch the newly merged application.
  • An Indian court ordered Telegram to disclose details of channels violating copyright in a lawsuit filed by a teacher. The teacher shared a list of channels circulating her lectures and books on competitive exams, which were being sold on these channels at discounted prices, she said.
  • Researchers at the University of Washington made an underwater communication app, AquaApp, that uses sonic signals to pass messages. The system uses the phone’s speaker to create high-frequency audio signals to communicate.

Streaming & Entertainment

  • Alongside its announcement of NBC’s Dateline as its latest podcast subscription, Apple shared that the number of Apple Podcast subscribers had grown by 300%+ since June 2021 and 25%+ of the top 100 shows in its Top Shows chart now offer a subscription.
  • Sony Music sued Triller over copyright infringement after missing payments, its lawsuit alleges.
  • Netflix snatched up two Snap executives to lead its new ad-supported business: Chief Business Officer Jeremi Gorman and VP of Sales for the Americas Peter Naylor, according to The Verge.

Dating

  • Video dating app Filter Off described to TechCrunch how it used GPT-3 to create a number of chatbots combined with a script to create human-like faces to trick scammers into interacting with fake dating app profiles. These profiles weren’t seen by normal app users, only by those the algorithm identified as scammers. This ended up with scammers trying to scam each other or scam other bots. Read the full story here.

This dating app fought scammers with bots… hilarity ensued

Gaming

  • Facebook is shutting down its standalone Facebook Gaming app on iOS and Android on October 28, 2022 and will transfer games, content and groups over to the main Facebook app. The move comes as the company prioritizes its investments around discovery and recommendations in the main Facebook feed, leading to other closures like live shopping and its specialized neighborhood groups product.
  • Epic Games defeated another copyright infringement lawsuit over its Fortnite dances. This one had claimed Fortnite ripped off a choreographer’s routine for the “It’s Complicated” emote in the game. A judge ruled the two dances didn’t share enough creative elements for the emote to be considered infringement.
  • Meta renamed its Oculus Mobile app to “Meta Quest” as its continues it transition away from the Oculus branding to take on the Meta name.

Health & Fitness

  • Streaming music service Deezer entered the wellness market with the launch of an app called Zen featuring guided yoga, meditation and other inspiration that can be recommended based on mood or goals. The app will roll out more broadly in 2023, offering the company the opportunity to cross-sell content, it said.

Utilities

  • Keyboard tech licensing startup Fleksy expanded its SDK to indie devs and app makers who want to add more text input features — like text input autocorrection, prediction and swipe — to their apps.
  • Truecaller released an update to its iOS app featuring better spam detection, faster performance, quick onboarding and a smaller app size. The new app also addresses user concerns over call detection and spam identification that had previously worked better on Android.

Travel & Transportation

  • Uber updated its app with new safety features, including a new way to text 911 and others in partnership with ADT. Now, tapping the shield-shaped icon will bring up four options: contact 911, contact an ADT safety agent, share trip status or report a safety issue to the company.

Government & Policy

  • The U.S. Department of Justice is in the early stages of drafting an antitrust lawsuit against Apple, according to sources cited by Politico. While the report suggested a potential suit could arrive by the end of the year, it also stressed that a final decision about if or when to sue Apple had not yet been made.
  • The U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) filed a lawsuit against data broker Kochava Inc. for selling geolocation data from “hundreds of millions of mobile devices,” it says, which could be used to trace the movements of individuals, including those to and from sensitive locations.

‘Dateline NBC’ Apple Podcasts subscription channel gives true crime fans ad-free episodes

Security & Privacy

  • Microsoft revealed how a high-severity vulnerability impacted TikTok users on Android. Though now patched, the vulnerability could have allowed attackers to take over user accounts that clicked on a malicious link.

Funding and M&A

🤝 Sony acquired mobile game developer Savage Game Studios for an undisclosed sum. The company will join Sony’s newly created and independently operating PlayStation Studios Mobile Division, which will focus on creating games based on new and existing PlayStation IP.

💰 OneSignal, a startup that helps businesses automate SMS, email and in-app campaigns, raised $50 million in Series C funding, led by BAM Elevate. The company has raised $80 million to date and counts around 6,000 paying customers.

💰 Investing app Landa, which lets users make fractional investments in rental properties, emerged from stealth with an $8 million seed and $25 million Series A, co-led by NFX, 83North and Viola. To date, users have invested in around 400 properties in the app across NYC and Atlanta. It’s soon launching in Charlotte, Birmingham, Tampa, Orlando and Jacksonville, Florida.

💰 PsycApps, a gamified mental health app for teens and adults, raised $1.7 in seed funding from U.S.-based Morningside Ventures. The startup has been through clinical trials, allowing it to secure contracts with schools in the U.K., including Regional College and Paragon Skills.

🤝 Reddit acquired audience contextualization company Spiketrap to boost its ads business for an undisclosed sum. Reddit says Spiketrap’s AI-powered contextual analysis and tools will help Reddit to improve in areas like ad quality scoring and will boost prediction models for powering auto-bidding.

🤝 Grocery delivery app Instacart is acquiring Eversight, an AI-powered pricing and promotions platform for Consumer Packaged Goods (CPG) brands and retailers, for an undisclosed sum.

💰 Triller reportedly raised $200 million in debt and equity per a report by The Wrap, and is targeting a $3 billion valuation in its expected IPO this year.

Downloads

Robin Games’ PLAYHOUSE

Image Credits: Robin Games

Women-led mobile gaming startup Robin Games raised funding around the idea of carving out a new niche in the market of “lifestyle gaming” by creating a fantasy gaming experience that’s more sophisticated and stylish — something more in line with the sort of content you’d typically find in a lifestyle magazine or Instagram influencer’s profile. This week, the startup released its first title to tackle this concept with the launch of a mobile game, PLAYHOUSE, which combines both gameplay and shopping in one experience.

Available on iOS and Android, PLAYHOUSE is a DIY design game that allows players to drag-and-drop furniture and décor into spaces to create original looks for rooms using elements like wall art, sofas, chairs, tables, plants and more. Unlike some competing design games, the pieces can be moved, rotated, resized or layered to create a unique look. But what makes this experience even more interesting is that users can shop the items in the game by clicking through to the retailer’s website. At launch, it’s partnering with over 100 brands like Arhaus, Article, 1stDibs, Chairish, One Kings Lane, ABC Carpet & Home, Jenni Kayne, Society6, Bloomscape, Room & Board and Lulu & Georgia, and others.

The app monetizes as a free-to-play title with in-app purchases, however, not affiliate commissions. (Read the full review on TechCrunch.)

Duolingo’s new Math app (waitlist)

Language learning app maker Duolingo has launched its latest creation, Duolingo Math, announced during its Duocon conference — after first being teased at the event the year prior. Similar to how Duolingo turns language learning into mini-games, the new app will teach third-grade math to users in a snack-sized experience aimed at making learning fun and accessible. The company says the new app will initially be available to iPhone and iPad users who sign up for the waitlist.

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Apple may have given us a hint at its AR/VR headset’s name

Apple’s highly anticipated mixed reality headset may now have a name, according to a Bloomberg report earlier this week. The outlet spotted trademarks in the U.S. and global markets related to the device that were filed by Apple-affiliated firms. Names like “Reality One,” “Reality Pro” and “Reality Processor” were filed by a supposed shell corporation — Immersive Health Solutions LLC — with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. The filings asked for the rights related to the use of health assessment and monitoring using VR/AR, designs and development in computer hardware, providing access to databases, educational provisions, photographic and optical instruments and more.

Immersive Health Solutions was incorporated in February 2022 and was registered by the Corporation Trust Co., another shell company, it’s assumed, based on ties to a lawyer with ties to Apple and the company’s past filing processes. The initial report also noted the new trademarks were filed under the Immersive Health Solutions’ name in Canada, New Zealand, EU, U.K., Australia, Saudi Arabia, Costa Rica and Uruguay.

Apple had previously used a shell company to file its source code referencing realityOS (which is believed to be the name of its AR/VR operating system) in late 2021, according to the site.

Filing trademarks under a different company name is not uncommon for Apple. Given its notorious secrecy around unreleased hardware projects, such filings are one key way to glean some info.

Apple did not respond to our request for comment.

The headset is believed to be the same size as Meta’s Oculus Quest and focused on high-tech and high-performance. Additionally, it’s said to include an even more power-hungry processor than the M1 found on the MacBook Air and 13-inch MacBook Pro. VR is the headset’s primary focus, but it will also offer some AR functionality, per Bloomberg’s initial look at the product.

Can Apple keep the AR industry alive?

The new product will find Apple competing directly against Meta’s Quest Pro (rumored for a release next month), and Playstation VR.

According to the filing, Apple’s headset could offer both gaming and Facetime functionality, along with health and educational features. While Meta’s devices have been used for some medical training, they weren’t designed with such use cases in mind.

Apple is holding a big event at its Cupertino HQ next week, with the iPhone 14 and Apple Watch Series 8 serving as headliners. A sneak peek of the new headset could also be on the agenda, as the company looks to entice developers to create content for the new category. Executives are believed to have already shown off a version of the product to shareholders.

read more about Apple's fall event, September 7, 2022

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Dear Sophie: What are the quickest visa options for bringing in international talent?

Sophie Alcorn Contributor
Sophie Alcorn is the founder of Alcorn Immigration Law in Silicon Valley and 2019 Global Law Experts Awards’ “Law Firm of the Year in California for Entrepreneur Immigration Services.” She connects people with the businesses and opportunities that expand their lives.
More posts by this contributor

Here’s another edition of “Dear Sophie,” the advice column that answers immigration-related questions about working at technology companies.

“Your questions are vital to the spread of knowledge that allows people all over the world to rise above borders and pursue their dreams,” says Sophie Alcorn, a Silicon Valley immigration attorney. “Whether you’re in people ops, a founder or seeking a job in Silicon Valley, I would love to answer your questions in my next column.”

TechCrunch+ members receive access to weekly “Dear Sophie” columns; use promo code ALCORN to purchase a one- or two-year subscription for 50% off.

Dear Sophie,

Our startup is recruiting engineers. Most of our team works remotely, but some of our potential recruits would want to work in the office. They are international students graduating in December, as well as some individuals who have worked with us remotely as contractors. What are the quickest visa options we should consider? Can their supervisor work remotely? Anything else we should keep in mind?

— Rigorous Recruiter

Dear Rigorous,

It’s so interesting to hear that your prospective recruits want to work in an office. As you might have guessed, students and recent grads want to meet people and form relationships that come with working in an office with team members. Sounds like that’s true of the international talent you’re looking to recruit as well.

Let’s start with your second question. Supervisors are not universally required to work in person with visa holders. However, supervisors can help guide and support new hires, and impart your company’s culture, which is very important for employee connection, happiness and retention. The exact relationship and amount of oversight depends on the specific immigration category you’re considering.

Now let’s look at visa options for the international students.

Hiring F-1 students is a quick option!

After at least one full year of academic coursework, international students on an F-1 visa are eligible for Optional Practical Training (OPT). This allows them to get work authorization that enables them to work full-time for one year.

A composite image of immigration law attorney Sophie Alcorn in front of a background with a TechCrunch logo.

Image Credits: Joanna Buniak / Sophie Alcorn (opens in a new window)

Under OPT, students have two options:

  1. After completing a full year of coursework, they can work part-time (20 hours per week or less) while continuing with their coursework, which is called pre-completion OPT. Students who work under pre-completion OPT for one year can work full time for another six months.
  2. After graduation, students can choose post-completion OPT, where they work full-time (40 hours per week) for one year. Most F-1 students chose this option.

If you extend an offer for post-completion OPT to somebody who has completed some amount of pre-completion OPT, talk to them and the Designated School Official (DSO) at their school about how much of the full 12 months they have remaining.

So you’d like to hire an F-1 student

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Crafting an XaaS customer success strategy that drives growth

Rachel Parrinello Contributor
Rachel Parrinello is a principal in The Alexander Group’s San Francisco office and is a leader in sales compensation, media sales and technology practices.
John Stamos Contributor
John Stamos, a principal in The Alexander Group’s Chicago office, has extensive experience leading large-scale sales transformation engagements, enterprise program build-outs and global compensation redesign efforts.

Any job search platform these days will show there are thousands of customer success (CS) positions waiting to be filled. According to research by Gainsight, a customer success software platform, “companies that invest 10% or more of their revenue into the CS function have the highest net recurring revenue (NRR).”

This supports the argument that there is a need for not only having CS jobs, but deploying more of them. Simply put, these jobs serve a critical role in tech companies today.

Like most functions, CS continues to evolve, and is not a “one-size-fits-all” model. Deploying the right archetype requires careful consideration to ensure CS teams are focused on the right activities, offer a seamless experience across the customer engagement model, and bring value to the end users. Successful companies realize the CS is not just a job or even an organization; it is an organizational mindset that includes actions, investments and coordination across multiple departments, including product development, management, marketing, sales, and technical and customer support.

The customer success job archetypes

In an XaaS model, net recurring revenue (NRR) is a key metric for success. It measures the overall impact your existing customers have on revenue generation — more simply, it measures expansion net of churn.

NRR is dependent on retaining and expanding your footprint. If a customer does not adopt and realize value from your solution, they will not renew or expand their contract. This was why technology companies created customer success to drive adoption, usage and value realization about 20 years ago. Since then, many companies have implemented one or more types of customer success roles.

Companies should not design their customer success roles in a vacuum.

Initially most customer success roles were oriented around adoption or service, and were fulfilled by talent from the services organization. However, the adoption sales motion naturally results in retaining customers and expanding sales. Today, many companies are designing more commercially oriented customer success roles that focus on renewals and upselling, and a few even focus on expansion.

Companies mostly deploy two or more customer success archetypes. They usually vary by customer segment, business versus technical focus, and sales motion focus: adopt, renew, upsell and cross-sell.

While these jobs may vary from company to company, three primary customer success role archetypes exist:

Adopt CSM

This role predominantly focuses on adoption. It usually also provides insights to help the core seller or renewal role drive expansion or maintain renewals.

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Jack Dorsey says his biggest regret is that Twitter was a company at all

Jack Dorsey might be out of the picture at Twitter these days, but he’s still waxing philosophical about the company. In a reply to a tweet asking about his biggest regrets (paired with, sigh, anecdotal claims about political bias on the platform) the company’s co-founder and former CEO offered the grand observation that he wishes the company had never existed at all.

“The biggest issue and my biggest regret is that it became a company,” Dorsey tweeted.

If you’ve not heard Dorsey on one before, the idea that Twitter should never have been a company might sound strange. But he doesn’t really mean that the project should have never existed, more that if he could rewrite history he would have (supposedly) steered Twitter toward being a protocol, not a company. “[I] don’t believe any individual or institutions should own social media, or more generally media companies,” Dorsey tweeted back in April. “It should be an open and verifiable protocol. Everything is a step toward that.”

Of course, Dorsey made absolute bank when Twitter went public in 2013, but tech billionaires always do seem to have these hypothetical regrets, don’t they? (To Dorsey’s credit, at least he’s doing something worthwhile with a big chunk of that cash.)

Twitter’s decentralized future

Replying to a more reasonable follow-up question from Jane Manchun Wong, Dorsey reiterated that he wishes Twitter had become an open protocol, not a company. The company has certainly struggled to please investors, chart a growth course and even offer a definition of what exactly its mission is over the years, in spite of becoming a real-time utility for disseminating information that many people, world leaders among them, deem essential.

Is it Monday morning quarterbacking if you’re criticizing your own decisions, years after making a fortune from those same decisions? Whatever it is probably isn’t very productive, but nonetheless Twitter’s beardy esoteric guru continues to tweet through it, even as everybody else left at Twitter navigates the company’s most tumultuous phase yet.

Dorsey’s dream isn’t dead though, it’s just more likely to be realized through a project parallel to Twitter proper. Even with the little blue bird stuck on Elon Musk’s self-driving rollercoaster, Twitter’s open-source spinoff Bluesky is still working toward the dream of decentralization, and its plans for a totally open social networking protocol appear to remain intact amidst the chaos.

In spite of his lofty ideals, Dorsey threw his weight behind Musk’s acquisition bid earlier this year. But if @jack values transparency and an open environment for the social platform he co-created above all, a tech executive infamous for making misleading claims, concealing company data and flinging NDAs around is a strange person to buddy up with, to say the least. Of course, Dorsey stands to make many hundreds of millions from the deal if it closes, though all of that is very much up in the air as Musk and Twitter head to court in October.

Twitter and Elon Musk trial confirmed for October 17

Jack Dorsey set to pocket $978M if Elon Musk’s Twitter acquisition closes

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6 industry conversations that don’t scream ‘OMG there’s a tech downturn’

Journalists care a lot about tension, drama, and signal. Often times that looks like good news, like when small scrappy startups get starter capital to take on the public giant, or well-capitalized late-stage giant, or that moment when you realize healthcare’s disruption is just at its infancy. As of recently, though, we’ve seen startups face a massive correction across all stages, from double rounds of layoffs to valuation cuts to complete shutdowns. It’s been a lot of doom and gloom, but that isn’t where the story stops.

On Equity, a podcast that I co-host alongside Alex Wilhelm and Mary Ann Azevedo, we spend lots of time talking through both the highs and the lows. Today, I want to highlight six conversations that talk about tense, dramatic and noise-cancelling issues – but have nothing to do with tech’s downturn (or tech layoffs). Enjoy!

  1. Building the future of robotics

    This episode between Alex and TC’s Brian Heater is about all things robots. Recorded right before our ever successful TC Sessions: Robotics event, the pod gets into the eight million problems that robots want to solve, LIDAR and the boundaries of hardware technology, and what Heater thinks is the only successful household robot out there.

  2. Why build a tech mafia when you can just build each other?

    Before we recorded this as a podcast, I asked this question in the form of a tongue headline: “YC makes a Product Hunt, Product Hunt makes an a16z, a16z makes a YC.” As you can tell by that headline and this episode title, we’re talking about how tech is full of copycats and what that means for the bar of innovation. This is one of those episodes that makes me love how full circle this industry is – and scratch my head on how a rising tide can both confuse and complement the founder fundraising journey.

  3. Stripe is playing checkers with Plaid

    Must we explain more? In this memorable Equity Friday, the whole crew is on to talk about a host of news – but mostly, the fact that Stripe and Plaid went from friends to competitors in one swift product move. Well, more like multiple swift moves and maybe even some subtweets. This is the perfect show for anyone interested in fintech, competition and the art of patterns.

  4. Demo days definitely amplify a brand, but not the one you’d think

    Must we explain more? In this memorable Equity Friday, the whole crew is on to talk about a host of news – but mostly, the fact that Stripe and Plaid went from friends to competitors in one swift product move. Well, more like multiple swift moves and maybe even some subtweets. This is the perfect show for anyone interested in fintech, competition and the art of patterns.

  5. F*ck creator funds, we need a creator index fund

    Must we explain more? In this memorable Equity Friday, the whole crew is on to talk about a host of news – but mostly, the fact that Stripe and Plaid went from friends to competitors in one swift product move. Well, more like multiple swift moves and maybe even some subtweets. This is the perfect show for anyone interested in fintech, competition and the art of patterns.

  6. You can’t buy a community, so make it worth it

    Must we explain more? In this memorable Equity Friday, the whole crew is on to talk about a host of news – but mostly, the fact that Stripe and Plaid went from friends to competitors in one swift product move. Well, more like multiple swift moves and maybe even some subtweets. This is the perfect show for anyone interested in fintech, competition and the art of patterns.

Equity drops every Monday at 7 a.m. PDT and Wednesday and Friday at 6 a.m. PDT, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts.

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Thirdweb raises $24M at a $160M valuation from Haun Ventures, Shopify and Coinbase for its Web3 development kit

There’s been a lot of hype about “Web3”, but the reality is that it’s still a largely nascent and fragmented concept, and that has led to Web3 startups building platforms to engage with it more easily getting a lot of attention. In the latest development, a startup called thirdweb — which has created a development toolkit to make it easier to build and launch Web3 products such as blockchain games, NFTs, DAOs, marketplaces and more — has raised $24 million, a Series A that values the London startup at $160 million.

Thirdweb plans to use the funding to continue enhancing its developer toolkit — which currently covers some 10 features spanning areas like smart contracts, decentralised logins, publishing tools and more — to expand support for a wider array of blockchains; to bring on more users; and to grow its team, both via hiring and potentially acquisitions — all in aid of getting Web3 to become more mainstream.

Thirdweb has been live for just nine months, but it’s been on a roll: CEO Steven Bartlett told TechCrunch that to date some 80,000 developers — which range from independent creators through to organizations like Afterpay and New York Fashion Week — have built a range of NFT items, DAOs, games and other applications using its framework, And as of this week, some 150,000 smart contracts have been deployed across six blockchains. (And in case you’re wondering, he said Polygon is currently the most popular: “Cheaper fees is the straightforward answer,” he said.)

Projects are collectively generating $1.5 million in revenue weekly, although thirdweb is not getting a cut of that. There are no charges or commissions on thirdweb at the moment, the one exception being some of thirdweb’s enterprise customers paying a fee as part of their procurement policies, Bartlett said.

The funding being announced today also speaks to some momentum. The round is being led by Haun Ventures (the firm founded by well-connected ex-a16z partner Katie Haun), with strategic participation also from Coinbase Ventures and Shopify.

Coinbase had already been working with thirdbase — for example the latter is providing a development platform for creators to build NFTs for Coinbase NFT — and this will tie the two closer together. Shopify, meanwhile, is “seeing us as an investment but also a partner,” Bartlett said. He added that there is an integration in the works in which thirdweb’s toolkit will be made available to Shopify customers that want to introduce web3 products to complement, or within, their Shopify-powered storefronts.

These three join an already-long list of investors who backed thirdweb in its $5 million seed round. (That list included Mark Cuban, Gary Vaynerchuk, and more.)

The gap in the market that thirdweb is addressing is one that Bartlett said he discovered with his co-founder Furqan Rydhan when they were working on building a blockchain application themselves.

“We saw what hard work it was to build the application from the ground up,” Bartlett said. He compares the dearth of tools available to speed up blockchain work to the earlier days of the web we know today, when people also had to code websites, and all of the features within them, from scratch, versus modern times where one can, say, integrate a payments flow by way of a few lines of code and an API that connects to tech built and operated by someone else.

The opportunity was clear: build the same kind of tools for Web3. “We realized we could release as a product what we’d built to work on our own app,” Bartlett said. “We wanted to provide blockchain developers with the same kind of easy-to-use infrastructure, and tools, that they have in Web2.”

The co-founders’ past experiences likely also played a role here. Bartlett likes to tackle opportunities when they’re only starting to emerge: was an early adopter and proponent of social media and specifically brands leveraging it to grow, long before brands came to recognize social media strategy as a must-have. Rydhan, meanwhile, has a lot of experience around API-based tools for developers. Among his many past roles, he was the founding CTO of Applovin, a major player in apps monetization.

Part of Web3 still being a nascent, idealised concept is that the actual world of Web3 as it’s unfolding is still full of a lot of bumps and bruises. Right now, it doesn’t feel like a day goes by that you don’t hear about how yet another blockchain project has been hacked, or how prices are tanking in the once much-hyped world of NFTs; and that’s before you even start to consider that the flip side often just feels like a lot of empty and very self-interested speculation.

Thirdweb is part of that ecosystem, even if it’s not a direct operator of any blockchain exchange or smart contract, but Bartlett claims that they unexpectedly found that it hasn’t seen a drop in its business by association.

“The surprising thing is that the builders have continued building,” he said. “Our weekly growth activity hasn’t slowed down and has continued to increase. Our hypothesis has been that although there are fluctuations people who are building projects in the long term will continue regardless of the crypto or macro outlook.”

That’s one of the things that’s also been compelling to investors, too, he added. “Our data showed that we had bucked the trend.”

“Our mission is to accelerate the next generation of the internet and we believe thirdweb will play a critical role in realizing that,” said Katie Haun, founder and CEO of Haun Ventures, in a statement. “As complexity to develop in web3 continues to increase, the experienced team at thirdweb led by Furqan and Steven have built an elegant solution that allows developers to build fast while avoiding costly mistakes. I’m pleased to see proven founders of this caliber dedicating their next chapter to crypto and look forward to supporting their efforts.”

Longer term, I wonder if thirdweb will continue to pour resources into building all of its own tools, or whether it will open up, marketplace style, to bring in third-party developers including those that will emerge as specialists in specific categories. For now, Bartlett said that plan is to continue pursuing a full-stack approach on its own steam — aided potentially by acquiring teams and tech — not least because it’s still an early mover and has the opportunity to do so. It’s also why it’s opting not to introduce fees: do as much as you can to pick up critical mass as early as you can.

“We believe this particular play is winner takes all,” he said. “Our objective is to acquire as much of the base as we can. in future we will take a small fee for enterprise level clients, or a small fee for certain toolsets.”