As autonomous cars and robots loom over the landscapes of cities and jobs alike, the technologies that empower them are forming sub-industries of their own. One of those is lidar, which has become an indispensable tool to autonomy, spawning dozens of companies and attracting hundreds of millions in venture funding.
But like all industries built on top of fast-moving technologies, lidar and the sensing business is by definition built somewhat upon a foundation of shifting sands. New research appears weekly advancing the art, and no less frequently are new partnerships minted, as car manufacturers like Audi and BMW scramble to keep ahead of their peers in the emerging autonomy economy.
To compete in the lidar industry means not just to create and follow through on difficult research and engineering, but to be prepared to react with agility as the market shifts in response to trends, regulations, and disasters.
I talked with several CEOs and investors in the lidar space to find out how the industry is changing, how they plan to compete, and what the next few years have in store.
Their opinions and predictions sometimes synced up and at other times diverged completely. For some, the future lies manifestly in partnerships they have already established and hope to nurture, while others feel that it’s too early for automakers to commit, and they’re stringing startups along one non-exclusive contract at a time.
All agreed that the technology itself is obviously important, but not so important that investors will wait forever for engineers to get it out of the lab.
And while some felt a sensor company has no business building a full-stack autonomy solution, others suggested that’s the only way to attract customers navigating a strange new market.
It’s a flourishing market but one, they all agreed, that will experience a major consolidation in the next year. In short, it’s a wild west of ideas, plentiful money, and a bright future — for some.
The evolution of lidar
I’ve previously written an introduction to lidar, but in short, lidar units project lasers out into the world and measure how they are reflected, producing a 3D picture of the environment around them.
Negotiations enter so many parts of our lives, yet few people ever take the time to learn how to become a better negotiator.
This is a skill that, if developed, can give you the confidence that you are finally in control, and able to better work toward what you want to accomplish. And this is exactly what this ebook has been written for.
With just a small amount of learning, you could be much better suited to mediate family arguments, negotiate job offers, reduce interest rates, land real estate deals, and improve your relationship with your colleagues.
Learning the art of negotiating will help you advance in your personal and professional life, and this ebook is a great introduction that you can download today, for free.
Whether you’re the parent of a teen or a younger child, you need to complement their book-based education with hands-on projects. These free websites have a collection of DIY crafts and projects for kids of all ages.
DIY home projects with parents are a great way to raise your kid to be a tinkerer. It’s never too early to start them on the path, so read the linked article to know the safest ways and best practices for inquisitive young minds.
1. DIY.org (Web): Projects, Challenges, and a Rewards System
DIY.org, a project by Little Bits, is a wonderful place to get your children started on the DIY journey. It comes with a rewards-based system. The child and parent have to both sign up for an account, so you can track what your kid is doing.
Set up your account and go to Patches. Patches are a bit like scout badges, wherein kids have to pick and finish an activity to earn the Patch. Kids can do that by unlocking different projects. Patches won’t be given out until the child uploads a picture of the finished project.
Patches are divided into skills like art, building, design, engineering, science, etc. Each skill has sub-patches, and each sub-patch has a number of projects or challenges available in it.
Pick a challenge, and you’ll find instructions on how to complete it, usually in the form of a video. Upload a picture or video of the finished task to earn one point. Three points earn you the patch, and six points mean that you’ve mastered the skill.
2. PBS Design Squad (Web): Detailed Guides from the Popular Show
The official website of PBS show Design Squad has a neat collection of DIY projects and ideas for kids in their Build section. Projects have difficulty levels and you can pick them from categories like art, building, machines, musical, party, toys, and vehicles.
Kids can follow the detailed instructional guides that are easy to understand. They can build anything from a confetti launcher for parties to a two-wheeled car toy propelled by a rubber band. These projects require materials that you’ll already have at home or should be easily available in any store.
Each project comes with a fun video demonstrating it, along with detailed step-by-step instructions and pictures that you can read online, or print out as a PDF. There are currently 51 DIY projects to try out. And if your child wants other distractions, check out the Watch, Design, or Games sections for ideas.
The popular 5-Minute Crafts YouTube channel is mainly for adults, but it has several sub-channels including one for children. Here, you’ll find projects and ideas that any kid can do with basic craft materials like glue, scissors, and so on.
The videos are usually large compilations of things you can do around one activity. For example, one video concentrates on DIY hacks and projects for a dollhouse, while another talks about simple and cute craft works to decorate phone cases.
Depending on the age of the child, you might need to help them with some projects. But any kid can do these once given the materials. Make sure you also check the video’s description, which has links to the different demonstrations in the video along with a link to jump to that timestamp.
4. KiwiCo’s DIY Blog (Web): Over 2000 DIY Projects for Kids and Teens
KiwiCo sells a subscription service where children get a monthly box for new hands-on art and science projects. While those boxes cost some money, the KiwiCo blog of DIY Ideas has plenty of free-to-try projects that you can do with your own materials.
The broad categories are arts and crafts, science, and holidays and events. The projects range from ideas that are suitable for children aged from three to 16 years. But there isn’t an easy way to sort them based on age.
But you can simply browse through the projects to find plenty of cool options. The titles and descriptions usually indicate which age-group it would be ideal for. You’ll find everything from creating your own Mobius loop with an easy printout to making art by melting crayons on canvas.
While all of this is free, an annoying pop-up will keep reminding you to sign up for the KiwiCo newsletter before reading the full article. There doesn’t seem to be an easy way to circumvent this, so you’ll have to sign up to see the projects.
5. STEMpedia (Web): Robotics and Science Projects for Teens
Is your child is interested in any of the STEM disciplines? You’ll need DIY projects that are a little more advanced than what other sites offer. STEMpedia has a host of projects for students looking to get hands-on experience with building something geeky and fun.
The projects at STEMpedia often require electronic materials like Arduino boards, LEDs, LEGO robotics kits, and other such items. You can also help out as some projects are a bit more advanced and need an adult hand.
But while they’re more complex, they are still fun and challenging. For example, you can learn how to build your own claw machine, or a simple maze-based video game, or even a phone-controlled 4-wheel robot.
All of these projects require a basic understanding of STEM disciplines, and you’ll probably need a computer handy too. In fact, it might be a good idea to find a local hackerspace because you might need help with some projects.
An all-rounded education is important for any child, and that means along with academic information, they need to also have hands-on practical projects. The above list of websites will ensure your child is eager to roll their sleeves up with art, mechanics, or science.
In fact, we’ve before you move to the websites, we’ve also got a curated list for you. Here are the top 10 geeky science projects you can do at home with your child. It’ll be educational while also leading to some parent-child bonding.
U.S. President Donald Trump has handed Huawei a lifeline after he said that U.S. companies are permitted to sell goods to the embattled Chinese tech firm following more than a month of uncertainty.
It’s been a pretty dismal past month for Huawei since the American government added it and 70 of its affiliates to an “entity list” which forbids U.S. companies from doing business with it. The ramifications of the move were huge across Huawei’s networking and consumer devices businesses. A range of chip companies reportedly forced to sever ties while Google, which provides Android for Huawei devices, also froze its relationship. Speaking this month.
Now, however, the Trump administration has provided a reprieve, at least based on the President’s comments following a meeting with Chinese premier Xi Jinping at the G20 summit this weekend.
“US companies can sell their equipment to Huawei. We’re talking about equipment where there’s no great national security problem with it,” the U.S. President said.
Those comments perhaps contradict some in the US administration who saw the Huawei blacklisting as a way to strangle the company and its global ambitions, which are deemed by some analysts to be a threat to America.
President Trump has appeared to soften his tone on Chinese communications giant Huawei, suggesting that he would allow the company to once again purchase US technology https://t.co/4YNJCyKLTgpic.twitter.com/jr45f40ghP
Despite the good news, any mutual trust has been broken and things are unlikely to be the same again.
America’s almost casual move to blacklist Huawei — the latest in a series of strategies in its ongoing trade battle with China — exemplifies just how dependent the company has become on the U.S. to simply function.
Huawei has taken steps to hedge its reliance on America, including the development of its own operating system to replace Android and its own backup chips, and you can expect that these projects will go into overdrive to ensure that Huawei doesn’t find itself in a similar position again in the future.
Of course, decoupling its supply chain from US partners is no easy task both in terms of software and components. It remains to be seen if Huawei could maintain its current business level — which included 59 million smartphones in the last quarter and total revenue of $107.4 billion in 2018 — with non-US components and software but this episode is a reminder that it must have a solid contingency policy in case it becomes a political chess piece again in the future.
Beyond aiding Huawei, Trump’s move will boost Google and other Huawei partners who invested significant time and resources into developing a relationship with Huawei to boost their own businesses through its business.
Indeed, speaking to press Trump, Trump admitted that US companies sell “a tremendous amount” of products to Huawei. Some “were not exactly happy that they couldn’t sell” to Huawei and it looks like that may have helped tipped this decision. But, then again, never say never — you’d imagine that the Huawei-Trump saga is far from over despite this latest twist.
Google’s vice president of finance, has joined Postmates’ board of directors, the latest sign that the on-demand food delivery startup is prepping to take the company public.
Postmates announced Friday that Kristin Reinke, vice president of Finance at Google, will join the San Francisco startup as an independent director.
Reinke has been with Google since 2005. Prior to Google, Reinke was at Oracle for eight years. Reinke also serves on the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco’s Economic Advisory Council.
Her skill set will come in handy as Postmates creeps towards an IPO.
Earlier this year, the company lined up a $100 million pre-IPO financing that valued the business at $1.85 billion. Postmates is backed by Tiger Global, BlackRock, Spark Capital, Uncork Capital, Founders Fund, Slow Ventures and others. Spark Capital’s Nabeel Hyatt tweeted the news earlier Friday.
“Postmates has established itself as the market leader with a focus on innovation and route efficiency in the fast‐growing on‐demand delivery sector. Given their strong execution, accelerating growth, and financial discipline, they are well positioned for continued market growth across the U.S.,” said Reinke. “I’m thrilled to join the board.”
The startup has been beefing up its executive quiver, most recently hiring Apple veteran and author Ken Kocienda as a principal software engineer at Postmates X, the team building the food delivery company’s semi-autonomous sidewalk rover, Serve.
Kocienda, author of “Creative Selection: Inside Apple’s Design Process During the Golden Age of Steve Jobs,” spent 15 years at Apple focused on human interface design, collaborating with engineers to develop the first iPhone, iPad and Apple Watch.
A malfunction in Facebook’s Software Development Kit that lets apps add Login With Facebook, sharing, and other features is causing apps that integrate it like Timehop to repeatedly crash. TechCrunch received a tip that developers were getting tons of user complaints and crash reports starting around noon pacific today due to a problem with the Facebook for iOS SDK. TechCrunch’s testing verified that products like Timehop, Joytunes’ Simply Piano, Momento GIFs, and more keep breaking when users access Facebook features or in some cases just open the app.
This is a big issue for Facebook because it relies on these apps to drive user lock-in. If people use Facebook to log into or share from other apps, they’re less likely to delete their account. But if the Facebook developer platform screws up like this morning, developers could instead highlight sharing via Twitter or SMS, and divert ad buys to other platforms. Most problematically, the bug could push developers to other login platforms like Google’s or Apple’s new Sign In With Apple.
The bug was initially submitted to Facebook’s developer forums by Ryan Layne. These crashes thwart normal usage of other apps, costing their developers ad views and in-app purchases, or leading their users to uninstall or abandon them. TechCrunch contacted Facebook requesting information on the cause of the bug, a timeline for a fix, and what developers should do in the meantime. The company’s PR team is investigating, a representative tells me.
Hitting the Connect Facebook button on Timehop causes the app to crash. Developers in Facebook’s bug reporting forum pile on saying their apps are breaking
The situation highlights the increasing centralization of the web as more and more companies depend on a small number of mobile, hosting, and social platforms. Earlier this month, a Google Cloud outage knocked down Snapchat and Discord. While these tools make it simpler to start a company or launch an app without having to build everything in-house, they introduce platform risk. Beyond technical outages, there’s also the concern that a platform could use its insights to copy its clients, or block them if they compete with the gatekeeper too vigorously as Facebook has done to chat and social media apps in the past.
A malfunction in Facebook’s Software Development Kit that lets apps add Login With Facebook, sharing, and other features is causing apps that integrate it like Timehop to repeatedly crash. TechCrunch received a tip that developers were getting tons of user complaints and crash reports starting around noon pacific today due to a problem with the Facebook for iOS SDK. TechCrunch’s testing verified that products like TimeHop, Joytunes’ Simply Piano, Momento GIFs, and more keep breaking when users access Facebook features or in some cases just open the app.
This is a big issue for Facebook because it relies on these apps to drive user lock-in. If people use Facebook to log into or share from other apps, they’re less likely to delete their account. But if the Facebook developer platform screws up like this morning, developers could instead highlight sharing via Twitter or SMS, and divert ad buys to other platforms. Most problematically, the bug could push developers to other login platforms like Google’s or Apple’s new Sign In With Apple.
The bug was initially submitted to Facebook’s developer forums by Ryan Layne. These crashes thwart normal usage of other apps, costing their developers ad views and in-app purchases, or leading their users to uninstall or abandon them. TechCrunch contacted Facebook requesting information on the cause of the bug, a timeline for a fix, and what developers should do in the meantime. The company’s PR team is investigating, a representative tells me.
Hitting the Connect Facebook button on Timehop causes the app to crash. Developers in Facebook’s bug reporting forum pile on saying their apps are breaking
The situation highlights the increasing centralization of the web as more and more companies depend on a small number of mobile, hosting, and social platforms. Earlier this month, a Google Cloud outage knocked down Snapchat and Discord. While these tools make it simpler to start a company or launch an app without having to build everything in-house, they introduce platform risk. Beyond technical outages, there’s also the concern that a platform could use its insights to copy its clients, or block them if they compete with the gatekeeper too vigorously as Facebook has done to chat and social media apps in the past.
The game is played by presenting you with a multiple choice question. You then click on your answer from among the Twitter replies presented by the original poster.
For example, you start your day by ordering Queen Bey her breakfast. You’re asked to choose between ordering a five-star breakfast or granola and yogurt. If you choose the former (spoiler alert!), you’re fired. If you click the right answer, you move on to the next task.
Instead, the movie suggestion thread doesn’t go much further than letting your pick between two movie watching scenarios, then directs you into a genre of your choosing…then, it dead ends with a movie suggestion.
Social media teams looking to replicate this formula for their own success will need to do more than create a handful of quick-to-end threads with little payoff. Either invest the serious effort in designing a clever branching narrative or just tweet as usual.
Ishveen is the CEO+Founder of OpenSponsorship.com, a marketplace she founded after her experiences being a successful sports agent, to bring transparency and affordability to the sports marketing industry, namely between brands and athletes.
Influencer Marketing has ballooned into a $25 billion industry, yet many marketing managers are left confused by this, because for them, it’s really not delivering the results to justify the hype.
Here’s the thing. Influencer marketing is not a one-size-fits-all marketing strategy such as Facebook or Adwords advertising. Each company needs to take a closer look at what influencer marketing can achieve, where it falls down, and how you can do a better job with this latest form of marketing that delivers, on average, $6.50 of value for every $1 spent.
The analysis below relies on clients and case studies from our experience at OpenSponsorship.com (my company) which is the largest marketplace connecting brands with over 5500 professional athletes for marketing campaigns.
With over 3500 deals to date across clients as big as Vitamin Shoppe and Anheuser Busch, established players like Jabra and Project Repat, and new startups like Brazyn and Gutzy, we have seen a lot go wrong (who knew you could disable comments on a post!) and a lot go right (an unknown skiier’s $100 Instagram, posted right before the Winter Olympics, going viral after he won the Silver)!!
Thanks to our in-house data experts, integrations with IBMWatson, robust ROI tracking tools and 10 years+ of experience combining the learnings of sports sponsorship with influencer marketing, we have gained extensive insights into campaign strategies.
We will share our learnings about what criteria to consider when choosing the best influencer to work with, figuring out how much to pay the influencer, what rights to ask for in the deal, what terms and conditions are reasonable and how to track ROI for the deal.
At OpenSponsorship, we match brands with athletes for marketing campaigns, with a view to further expand into other areas of media and entertainment such as music artists, comedians, actors. Even within the athlete world, there is the concept of micro-influencers such as yogis, triathletes, marathon runners, all the way to macro-influencers such as NFL Quarterbacks, starting NBA point guards and everything in between.
Our 3 recommendations for picking the right influencers are:
Great times ahead. 
I got fired about 3 in. 