Category: Features

When broadband monopolies pushed out scrappy local ISPs, we all suffered

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Over time, computers have become easier to use and the internet easier to access. It used to be that people needed special training to be able to use software on a machine. Now, small children can do it. Instead of a long, noisy process of connecting through dial-up, our devices can connect to the internet (and each other) instantly, without human intervention or even awareness. Mostly this is a good thing. More intuitive design means getting more people online and bringing more access to powerful tools for self-expression and community. It would be excruciating to try and use sophisticated online tools and platforms using old-school modems and routers. One advantage, though, of older technologies is that they forced us to think about what’s under the hood of the devices we use every day. The clicking, whirring, and beeping of old-school dial-up made it obvious that digital connections don’t just magically appear—they have to be built and maintained. Read More …

AI trained on fake faces could help fix a big annoyance with mask wearing

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Last March, when we all started wearing masks, phone makers suddenly had a big problem. The facial recognition systems used to authenticate users on their phones no longer worked. The AI models that powered them couldn’t recognize users’ faces because they’d been trained using images of only unmasked faces. The unique identifiers they’d been trained to look for were suddenly hidden. Phone makers needed to expand their training data to include a wide assortment of images of masked faces, and quickly. But scraping such images from the web comes with privacy issues, and capturing and labeling high numbers of images is cost- and labor-intensive. Enter Synthesis AI , which has made a business of producing synthetic images of nonexistent people to train AI models. The San Francisco-based startup needed only a couple of weeks to develop a large set of masked faces, with variations in the type and position of the mask on the face. It then delivered them to its phone-maker clients—which the company says include three of the five largest handset makers in the world—via an application programming interface (API). With the new images, the AI models could be trained to rely more on facial features outside the borders of the mask when recognizing users’ faces. [Image: courtesy of Synthesis AI] Phone makers aren’t the only ones facing training data challenges. Developing computer-vision AI models requires a large number of images with attached labels that describe what the image is so that the machine can learn what it is looking at. But sourcing or building huge sets of these labeled images in an ethical way is difficult. For example, controversial startup Clearview AI, which works with law enforcement around the country , claims to have scraped billions of images from social networking sites without consent Read More …

PearPop wants to boost your social following by connecting you to TikTok stars for collabs

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In the social media ecosystem, there are influencers seeking new revenue streams and aspiring influencers looking to grow their followers. PearPop wants to be the bridge that connects the two. PearPop, which launched last October, is a platform where users pay TikTok influencers to collaborate on content. The influencers set their price for a duet, stitch, or sound (prices range anywhere from $15 to $3,333 per post), and users have the option to pay outright or bid a higher amount if there’s strong demand. In turn, that access to top influencers could boost a growing account. It’s an idea that’s catching on with investors and creators. PearPop recently announced raising $16 million in a Series A led by Alexis Ohanian’s Seven Seven Six, with angel investors including Gary Vaynerchuk, Sean “Diddy” Combs, Mark Cuban, Snoop Dogg, and YouTube star Jimmy Donaldson, aka MrBeast. PearPop currently has more than 10,000 creators on the platform (including such celebrities as Heidi Klum, Snoop Dogg, Shaquille O’Neal, and Kerry Washington) and has facilitated more than 1,000 transactions. (The company takes a 25% cut.) These early collabs have yielded some success stories. Model Leah Svoboda went from 20,000 to 141,000 followers after a PearPop duet with Anna Shumate (10.2 million followers). After musician Tobias Dray collaborated with Katelyn Elizabeth  (1.6 million followers) for $25 using one of his tracks as a sound on TikTok, that song got a bump from being used 30 times to 671. “I always thought there should be a way to pay someone to collaborate with you directly,” says Cole Mason, founder and CEO of PearPop. “It blew my mind that there wasn’t a way to do that.” Making a market Cole Mason [Photo: courtesy of PearPop] It’s easy to compare PearPop to the celebrity shout-out platform Cameo , but PearPop is establishing a distinct lane by creating a two-sided exchange with creators: High-level influencers earn revenue and budding influencers gain social capital Read More …

Amazon’s new Echo Buds take on AirPods Pro at less than half the price

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Amazon isn’t reinventing the wireless earbud with its latest Echo Buds, but it is undercutting some rivals on price while tacking on more features. The new Echo Buds officially cost $100 with a USB-C charging case or $120 with a case that supports wireless charging, and Amazon’s discounting both by $20 at launch. Compared to the first-gen Echo Buds, which sold for $130, the new buds are 20% smaller, have better sound quality, and include vents to make them a bit comfier. Amazon has also improved the buds’ active noise cancellation, claiming that it eliminates twice as much outside sound, and there’s a new option to get them in white instead of black. [Photo: courtesy of Amazon] On the software side, Amazon has added a “Find My Earbuds” feature, which you can activate via the Alexa app or an Echo speaker, along with a “VIP Filter” that only plays notification alerts for your favorite contacts. (The latter feature debuted on Amazon’s Echo Frames smart glasses.) None of which adds up to anything revolutionary in the field of wireless earbuds, but if Alexa is your preferred voice assistant, maybe those incremental changes are enough. Read More …

Plex wants to go mainstream by fixing streaming TV’s biggest annoyance

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Slowly and steadily, Plex is working to place itself at the center of the streaming wars. The 13-year-old company may still be best-known for its media server software, beloved by people who want to maintain their own entertainment collections on their own hard drives. Lately, however, it’s been chasing a broader mission to bring all the world’s media into one app. Instead of making you bounce between a dozen or more different apps to find what you want, Plex thinks it can make sense of the mess through a combination of subscriptions, rentals, free videos, and deep links into other apps—all delivered through a single menu. Read More …