Twitter tries to make audio tweets a thing, the U.K. backtracks on its contact-tracing app and Apple’s App Store revenue share is at the center of a new controversy.
Twitter is rolling out audio tweets, which do exactly what you’d expect — allow users to share thoughts in audio form. The feature will only be available to some iOS users for now, though the company says all iOS users should have access “in the coming weeks.” (No word on an Android or web rollout yet.)
This feature potentially allows for much longer thoughts than a 280-character tweet. Individual audio clips will be limited to 140 seconds, but if you exceed the limit, a new tweet will be threaded beneath the original.
The U.K.’s move to abandon the centralized approach and adopt a decentralized model is hardly surprising, but the time it’s taken the government to arrive at the obvious conclusion does raise some major questions over its competence at handling technology projects.
Apple this week is getting publicly dragged for digging in its heels over its right to take a cut of subscription-based transactions that flow through its App Store. This is not a new complaint, but one that came to a head this week over Apple’s decision to reject app updates from Basecamp’s newly launched subscription-based email app called Hey.
Payfone has built a platform to identify and verify people using data (but not personal data) gleaned from your mobile phone. CEO Rodger Desai said the plan for the funding is to build more machine learning into the company’s algorithms, expand to 35 more geographies and to make strategic acquisitions to expand its technology stack.
We had an extensive conversation with Vohra as part of Extra Crunch Live, also covering why the email app still has more than 275,000 people on its wait list. (Extra Crunch membership required.)
Founded in 2017 by ex-Googlers, the AI vending machine startup formerly known as Bodega first raised blood pressures — people hated how it was referenced and poorly “disrupted” mom-and-pop shops in one fell swoop — and then raised a lot of money. But ultimately, it was no match for COVID-19 and how it reshaped our lifestyles.
With TechCrunch Disrupt going virtual, this is your chance to get featured in front of our largest audience ever. The post says you’ve only got 72 hours left, but the clock has been ticking since then — the deadline is 11:59pm Pacific tomorrow, June 19. So get on it!
The Daily Crunch is TechCrunch’s roundup of our biggest and most important stories. If you’d like to get this delivered to your inbox every day at around 9am Pacific, you can subscribe here.
How racial bias works -- and how to disrupt it | Jennifer L. Eberhardt
Our brains create categories to make sense of the world, recognize patterns and make quick decisions. But this ability to categorize also exacts a heavy toll in the form of unconscious bias. In this powerful talk, psychologist Jennifer L. Eberhardt explores how our biases unfairly target Black people at all levels of society -- from schools and social media to policing and criminal justice -- and discusses how creating points of friction can help us actively interrupt and address this troubling problem.
The U.S. Supreme Court ruled today that President Donald Trump’s administration unlawfully ended the federal policy providing temporary legal status for immigrants who came to the country as children.
The decision, issued Thursday, called the termination of the Obama-era policy known as the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals “arbitrary and capricious.” As a result of its ruling, nearly 640,000 people living in the United States are now temporarily protected from deportation.
While a blow to the Trump Administration, the ruling is sure to be hailed nearly unanimously by the tech industry and its leaders, who had come out strongly in favor of the policy in the days leading up to its termination by the current President and his advisors.
At the beginning of 2018, many of tech’s most prominent executives, including the CEOs of Apple, Facebook, Amazon and Google, joined more than 100 American business leaders in signing an open letter asking Congress to take action on the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program before it expired in March.
Tim Cook, Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos and Sundar Pichai who made a full throated defense of the policy and pleaded with Congress to pass legislation ensuring that Dreamers, or undocumented immigrants who arrived in the United States as children and were granted approval by the program, can continue to live and work in the country without risk of deportation.
At the time, those executives said the decision to end the program could potentially cost the U.S. economy as much as $215 billion.
In a 2017 tweet, Tim Cook noted that Apple employed roughly 250 of the company’s employees were “Dreamers”.
250 of my Apple coworkers are #Dreamers. I stand with them. They deserve our respect as equals and a solution rooted in American values.
The list of tech executives who came out to support the DACA initiative is long. It included: IBM CEO Ginni Rometty; Brad Smith, the president and chief legal officer of Microsoft; Hewlett-Packard Enterprise CEO Meg Whitman; and CEOs or other leading executives of AT&T, Dropbox, Upwork, Cisco Systems, Salesforce.com, LinkedIn, Intel, Warby Parker, Uber, Airbnb, Slack, Box, Twitter, PayPal, Code.org, Lyft, Etsy, AdRoll, eBay, StitchCrew, SurveyMonkey, DoorDash, Verizon (the parent company of Verizon Media Group, which owns TechCrunch).
At the heart of the court’s ruling is the majority view that Department of Homeland Security officials didn’t provide a strong enough reason to terminate the program in September 2017. Now, the issue of immigration status gets punted back to the White House and Congress to address.
As the Boston Globe noted in a recent article, the majority decision written by Chief Justice John Roberts did not determine whether the Obama-era policy or its revocation were correct, just that the DHS didn’t make a strong enough case to end the policy.
“We address only whether the agency complied with the procedural requirement that it provide a reasoned explanation for its action,” Roberts wrote.
While the ruling from the Supreme Court is some good news for the population of “dreamers,” the question of their citizenship status in the country is far from settled. And the U.S. government’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic has basically consisted of freezing as much of the nation’s immigration apparatus as possible.
An Executive Order in late April froze the green card process for would-be immigrants, and the administration was rumored to be considering a ban on temporary workers under H1-B visas as well.
The President has, indeed, ramped up the crackdown with strict border control policies and other measures to curb both legal and illegal immigration.
More than 800,000 people joined the workforce as a result of the 2012 program crafted by the Obama administration. DACA allows anyone under 30 to apply for protection from deportation or legal action on their immigration cases if they were younger than 16 when they were brought to the US, had not committed a crime, and were either working or in school.
In response to the Supreme Court decision, the President tweeted “Do you get the impression that the Supreme Court doesn’t like me?”
Do you get the impression that the Supreme Court doesn’t like me?
YouTube today announced a new direct response ad format that will make YouTube video ads more “shoppable” by adding browsable product images underneath the ad to drive traffic directly to brands’ product pages. The introduction of the format comes at a time when advertisers are trying to find new ways to capture consumers’ growing interest in e-commerce shopping, amid a pandemic that’s kept people from shopping brick-and-mortar physical stores for fear of infection.
YouTube, in particular, believes its platform can serve this shift in interest, given that today 70% of people claim they’ve bought a brand’s product because they saw it in a YouTube video.
To use the new shoppable format, brands will first need to sync their Google Merchant Center feed with their video ads. They can then visually expand an ad’s “call to action” button with the best-selling products it wants to feature in the ad in order to generate traffic that sends viewers directly to the product listing on the brand’s own website.
One early tester of the new format was Aerie, which wanted to advertise on YouTube to both boost consumers’ love for its brand and its apparel sales for its Spring 2020 campaign. The company ran targeted ads on YouTube and saw a 25% higher return on ad spend than the prior year as well as 9 time more conversions than with their traditional ad mix, YouTube says.
Related to this news, YouTube also announced “Video action campaigns” — a way to bring YouTube video ads that drive these sorts of calls-to-action to YouTube’s home feed, watch pages, and Google’s video partners, from within one campaign. The company says it will also include any future inventory that becomes available, like the What to Watch Next feed.
An early tester for this ad product was the startup Mos, which aims to help students find college scholarships. Over the past few months, Mos saw 30% more purchases for its service at the third of the cost, compared to its previous YouTube benchmarks, said YouTube.
Brands can also use the lead generation forms along with their video ad campaigns to capture more leads while also running their ads, as Jeep did with its Korea branch leading to a 13x increase in completed leads at an 84% lower cost per lead.
YouTube isn’t the only tech giant that’s focused more heavily serving the needs of brands — and particularly ecommerce brands — in recent months. Facebook and Instagram rolled out Shops in May, to turn business profiles into online storefronts where consumers can buy directly from brands without leaving Facebook’s or Instagram’s app. Snapchat also this month expanded its dynamic ads for e-commerce retailers worldwide, allowing brands to easily run automated product ads on Snapchat’s app by way of templates connected to product catalogs.
But YouTube’s ads are perhaps more similar to those shoppable video ads now appearing on streaming services like Hulu and NBCU’s Peacock where viewers can transact using their remote control. In YouTube’s case, however, viewers are just clicking and tapping their way through to the advertiser’s site.
Like many, YouTube believes businesses will continue to need solutions like these to find leads, boost their web traffic and drive more online sales, even when coronavirus-driven government restrictions lift and physical stores re-open.
Typically, announcements like this would have been made at YouTube’s NewFronts presentation, but as that event is now online-only due to the pandemic, YouTube has rolled out the news early.
A new project called Keen is launching today from Google’s in-house incubator for new ideas, Area 120, to help users track their interests. The app is like a modern rethinking of the Google Alerts service, which allows users to monitor the web for specific content. Except instead of sending emails about new Google Search results, Keen leverages a combination of machine learning techniques and human collaboration to help users curate content around a topic.
Each individual area of interest is called a “keen” — a word often used to reference someone with an intellectual quickness.
The idea for the project came about after co-founder C.J. Adams realized he was spending too much time on his phone mindlessly browsing feeds and images to fill his downtime. He realized that time could be better spent learning more about a topic he was interested in — perhaps something he always wanted to research more or a skill he wanted to learn.
To explore this idea, he and four colleagues at Google worked in collaboration with the company’s People and AI Research (PAIR) team, which focuses on human-centered machine learning, to create what has now become Keen.
To use Keen, which is available both on the web and on Android, you first sign in with your Google account and enter in a topic you want to research. This could be something like learning to bake bread, birdwatching, or learning about typography, suggests Adams in an announcement about the new project.
Keen may suggest additional topics related to your interest. For example, type in “dog training” and Keen could suggest “dog training classes,” “dog training books,” “dog training tricks,” “dog training videos,” and so on. Click on the suggestions you want to track and your Keen is created.
When you return to the Keen, you’ll find a pinboard of images linking to web content that matches your interests. In the dog training example, Keen found articles and YouTube videos, blog posts featuring curated lists of resources, an Amazon link to dog training treats, and more.
For every collection, the service uses Google Search and machine learning to help discover more content related to the given interest. The more you add to a keen and organize it, the better these recommendations become.
It’s like an automated version of Pinterest, in fact.
Once a “keen” is created, can then optionally add to the collection, remove items you don’t want, and share the keen with others to allow them to also add content. The resulting collection can be either public or private. Keen can also email you alerts when new content is available.
Google, to some extent, already uses similar techniques to power its news feed in the Google app. The feed, in that case, uses a combination of items from your Google Search history and topics you explicitly follow to find news and information it can deliver to you directly on the Google app’s home screen. Keen, however, isn’t tapping into your search history. It’s only pulling content based on interests you directly input.
And unlike the news feed, a Keen isn’t necessarily focused only on recent items. Any sort of informative, helpful information about the topic can be returned. This can include relevant websites, events, videos, and even products.
But as a Google project — and one that asks you to authenticate with your Google login — the data it collects is shared with Google. Keen, like anything else at Google, is governed by the company’s privacy policy.
Though Keen today is a small project inside a big company, it represents another step towards the continued personalization of the web. Tech companies long since realized that connecting users with more of the content that interests them increases their engagement, session length, retention, and their positive sentiment for the service in question.
But personalization, unchecked, limits users’ exposure to new information or dissenting opinions. It narrows a person’s worldview. It creates filter bubbles and echo chambers. Algorithmic-based recommendations can send users searching for fringe content further down dangerous rabbit holes, even radicalizing them over time. And in extreme cases, radicalized individuals become terrorists.
Keen would be a better idea if it was pairing machine-learning with topical experts. But it doesn’t add a layer of human expertise on top of its tech, beyond those friends and family you specifically invite to collaborate, if you even choose to. That leaves the system wanting for better human editorial curation, and perhaps the need for a narrower focus to start.
The new science of personalized vaccines | Ofer Levy
At the intersection of precision medicine and vaccinology lies a revolutionary scientific pursuit: personalized vaccines. Infectious disease specialist Ofer Levy introduces this promising medical approach, in which tailored immunizations could counteract the mutations that make diseases so dangerous, and shares how we're now venturing into a new era of sustaining and supporting human life.
The UK has given up building a centralized coronavirus contacts tracing app and will instead switch to a decentralized app architecture, the BBC has reported. This suggests its any future app will be capable of plugging into the joint ‘exposure notification’ API which has been developed in recent weeks by Apple and Google.
The UK’s decision to abandon a bespoke app architecture comes more than a month after ministers had been reported to be eyeing such a switch. They went on to award a contract to an IT supplier develop a decentralized tracing app in parallel as a backup — but continued to test the centralized app, called NHS COVID-19.
A number of European countries have now successfully launched contracts tracing apps with a decentralized app architecture that’s able to plug into the ‘Gapple’ API — including Denmark, Germany, Italy, Latvia and Switzerland. Several more such apps remain in testing. While EU Member States just agreed on a technical framework to enable cross-border interoperability of apps based on the same architecture.
Germany — which launched its decentralized ‘Corona Warning App’ this week — announced the software had been downloaded 6.5M times in the first 24 hours. The country had initially favored a centralized approach but switched to a decentralized model back in April once the technical and privacy challenges became clear.
The UK’s NHS COVID-19 app, meanwhile, has not progressed past field tests, after facing a plethora of technical barriers and privacy challenges — as a direct consequence of the government’s decision to opt for a proprietary system which uploads proximity data to a central server, rather than processing exposure notifications locally on device.
Apple and Google’s API, which is being used by all Europe’s decentralized apps, does not support centralized app architectures — meaning the UK app faced challenges related to accessing Bluetooth in the background.
The centralized choice also raised big questions around cross-border interoperability, as we’ve explained before. So the UK’s move to abandon the approach and adopt a decentralized model is hardly surprising — although the time it’s taken the government to arrive at the obvious conclusion does raise some major questions over its competence at handling technology projects.
Michael Veale, a lecturer in digital rights and regulation at UCL — who has been involved in the development of the DP3T decentralized contacts tracing standard, which influenced Apple and Google’s choice of API — welcomed the UK’s decision to ditch a centralized app architecture but questioned why the government has wasted so much time.
“This is a welcome, if a heavily and unnecessarily delayed, move by NHSX,” Veale told TechCrunch. “The Google-Apple system in a way is home-grown: Originating with research at a large consortium of universities led by Switzerland and including UCL in the UK. NHSX has no end of options and no reasonable excuse to not get the app out quickly now. Germany and Switzerland both have high quality open source code that can be easily adapted. The NHS England app will now be compatible with Northern Ireland, the Republic of Ireland, and also the many destinations for holidaymakers in and out of the UK.”
Perhaps unsurprisingly, ministers are now heavily de-emphasizing the importance of having an app in the fight against the coronavirus at all. The Department for Health and Social Care’s, Lord Bethell, told the Science and Technology Committee yesterday the app will not now be ready until the winter. “We’re seeking to get something going for the winter, but it isn’t a priority for us,” he said.
Yet the centralized version of the NHS COVID-19 app has been in testing in a limited geographical pilot on the Isle of Wight since early May — and up until the middle of last month health minister, Matt Hancock, had said it would be rolled out nationally in mid May.
Of course that timeframe came and went without launch. And now the launch is being booted right into the back end of the year. Compare and contrast that with government messaging at its daily coronavirus briefings back in May — when Hancock made “download the app” one of the key slogans.
NHSX relayed our request for comment on the switch to a decentralized system and the new timeframe for an app launch to the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) — but the department had not responded to us at the time of publication.
Earlier this week the BBC reported that a former Apple executive, Simon Thompson, was taking charge of the delayed app project — while the two lead managers, the NHSX’s Matthew Gould and Geraint Lewis — were reported to be stepping back.
Government briefings to the press today have included suggestions that app testers on the Isle of Wight told it they were not comfortable receiving COVID-19 notifications via text message — and that the human touch of a phone call is preferred.
However none of the European countries that have already deployed contacts tracing apps has promoted the software as a one-stop panacea for tackling COVID-19. Rather tracing apps are intended to supplement manual contacts tracing methods — the latter involving the use of trained humans making phone calls to people who have been diagnosed with COVID-19 to ask who they might have been in contact with over the infectious period.
Even with major resource put into manual contacts tracing, apps — which use Bluetooth signals to estimate proximity between smartphone users in order to calculate virus expose risk — could still play an important role by, for example, being able to trace strangers who are sat near an infected person on public transport.
Update: The DHSC has now issued a statement addressing reports of the switch of app architecture for the NHS COVID-19 app — in which it confirms, in between reams of blame-shifting spin, that it’s testing a new app that is able to plug into the Apple and Google API — and which it says it may go on to launch nationally, but without providing any timeframe.
It also claims it’s working with Apple and Google to try to enhance how their technology estimates the distance between smartphone users.
“Through the systematic testing, a number of technical challenges were identified — including the reliability of detecting contacts on specific operating systems — which cannot be resolved in isolation with the app in its current form,” DHSC writes of the centralized NHS COVID-19 app.
“While it does not yet present a viable solution, at this stage an app based on the Google / Apple API appears most likely to address some of the specific limitations identified through our field testing. However, there is still more work to do on the Google / Apple solution which does not currently estimate distance in the way required.”
“Based on this, the focus of work will shift from the current app design and to work instead with Google and Apple to understand how using their solution can meet the specific needs of the public,” it adds.
We’ve reached out to Apple and Google for comment. Apple declined to comment.
Flipboard is giving news publishers and other curators on the platform a new way to highlight content through a format called Storyboards.
Until now, Flipboard has largely focused on its Smart Magazines, which are ongoing collections that mix human and algorithmic curation, allowing readers to dive deeply into and keep up-to-date on a given topic.
Storyboards, on the other hand, are more of a one-time collection of articles, videos, podcasts, tweets and other media. Content-wise, they may not be that different from an “everything you need to know about X” roundup article, but they give publishers an easy and visually stylish way to put those roundups together.
Publishers have already been beta testing it already. For example, TheGrio created a Storyboard collecting the latest coverage of George Floyd’s death and the resulting protests, while National Geographic curated a package of new and old stories commemorating the 40th anniversary of the eruption of Mt. St Helens. And TechCrunch tried it out by doing daily roundups of coverage coming out of last year’s Disrupt conference in San Francisco.
Image Credits: Flipboard
Flipboard CEO Mike McCue told me that this is something curators have been asking for, as a way to “structure their curation better and be able to do better storytelling.”
He also said that Storyboards could be a great way to highlight different products and make money with affiliate links, especially since “curated commerce is something that will probably play more and more of a significant role in our revenue.”
Vice President of Engineering Troy Brant gave me a quick tour of the product, showing me how a curator can create different sections in a Storyboard, tweak the look of those sections and populate them with different kinds of content.
These new Storyboards can be discovered in Flipboard based on the topics that the curator tags them with. They’re also shareable and embeddable via Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook and email.
Image Credits: Flipboard
Brant noted that Storyboards are “complementary” with Flipboard magazines, since magazines can include Storyboards and Storyboards can include magazines. He also said the company is developing “more product capabilities” to highlight the best curation, whether that takes the form of a Storyboard or magazine: “That’s actually a work in progress at the moment.”
And Storyboards come with detailed analytics about how many people are viewing them, liking them, commenting on them, flipping them and more.
All of this is part of a new tool in Flipboard called Curator Pro, which is now available to all verified users in English-speaking countries, with plans for a more global roll out soon. Brant added that Storyboards are just the “first step” for Curator Pro, with more magazine curation tools and analytics on the way as well.
As an increasing number of daily and essential services move to digital platforms — a trend that’s had a massive fillip in the last few months — having efficient but effective ways to verify that people are who they say they are online is becoming ever more important. Now, a startup called Payfone, which has built a B2B2C platform to identify and verify people using data (but no personal data) gleaned from your mobile phone, has raised $100 million to expand its business. Specifically, Rodger Desai, the co-founder and CEO, said in an interview that plan will be to build in more machine learning into its algorithms, expand to 35 more geographies, and to make strategic acquisitions to expand its technology stack.
The funding is being led by Apax Digital, with participation from an interesting list of new and existing backers. They include Sandbox Insurtech Ventures, a division of Sandbox Industries, which connects corporate investment funds with strategic startups in their space); Ralph de la Vega, the former Vice Chairman of AT&T; MassMutual Ventures; Synchrony; Blue Venture Fund (another Sandbox outfit); Wellington Management LLP; and the former CEO of LexisNexis, Andrew Prozes.
Several of these investors have a close link to the startup’s business: Payfone counts carriers, healthcare and insurance companies, and banks among its customers, who use Payfone technology in their backends to help verify users making transactions and logging in to their systems.
Payfone tells me it has now raised $175 million to date, and while it’s not disclosing its valuation with this round, according to PitchBook, in April 2019 when it raised previously it was valued at $270 million. Desai added that Payfone is already profitable and business has been strong lately.
“In 2019 we processed 20 billion authentications, mostly for banks but also healthcare companies and others, and more generally, we’ve been growing 70% year-over-year,” he said. The aim is to boost that up to 100 billion authentications in the coming years, he said.
Payfone was founded in 2008 amongst a throng of mobile payment startups (hence its name) that emerged to help connect consumers, mobile content businesses and mobile carriers with simpler ways to pay using a phone, with a particular emphasis on using carrier billing infrastructure as a way of letting users pay without inputting or using cards (especially interesting in regions where credit and debit card penetration and usage are lower).
That has been an interesting if slowly growing business so around 2015 Payfone starting to move towards using its tech and infrastructure to delve into the adjacent and related space of applying its algorithms, which use authentication data from mobile phones and networks, to help carriers, banks, and many other kinds of businesses verify users on their networks.
(Indeed, the connection between the technology used for mobile payments that bypasses credit/debit cards and the technology that might be used for ID verification is one that others are pursuing, too: Carrier billing startup Boku — which yesterday acquired one of its competitors, Fortumo, in a $41 million deal as part of a wider consolidation play — also acquired one of Payfone’s competitors, Danal, 18 months ago to add user authentication into its own range of services.)
The market for authentication and verification services was estimated to be worth some $6 billion in 2019 and is projected to grow to $12.8 billion by 2024, according to research published by MarketsandMarkets. But within that there seems to be an almost infinite amount of variations, approaches, and companies offering services to carry out the work. That includes authentication apps, password managers, special hardware that generates codes, new innovations in biometrics using fingerprints and eye scans, and more.
While some of these require active participation from consumers (say by punching in passwords or authentication codes or using fingerprints), there’s also a push to develop more seamless and user-friendly, and essentially invisible, approaches, and that’s where Payfone sits.
As Desai describes it, Payfone’s behind-the-scenes solution is used either as a complement to other authentication techniques and on its own, depending on the implementation. In short, it’s based around creating “signal scores” and tokens, and is built on the concept of “data privacy and zero data knowledge architecture.” That is to say, the company’s techniques do not store any personal data and do not need personal data to provide verification information.
As he describes it, while many people might only be in their 20s when getting their first bank account (one of the common use cases for Payfone is in helping authenticate users who are signing up for accounts via mobile), they will have likely already owned a phone, likely with the same phone number, for a decade before that.
“A phone is with you and in your use for daily activities, so from that we can opine information,” he said, which the company in turn uses to create a “trust score” to identify that you are who you say you are. This involves using, for example, a bank’s data and what Desai calls “telecoms signals” against that to create anonymous tokens to determine that the person who is trying to access, say, a bank account is the same person identified with the phone being used. This, he said, has been built to be “spoof proof” so that even if someone hijacks a SIM it can’t be used to work around the technology.
While this is all proprietary to Payfone today, Desai said the company has been in conversation with other companies in the ecosystem with the aim of establishing a consortium that could compete with the likes of credit bureaus in providing data on users in a secure way.
“The trust score is based on our own proprietary signals but we envision making it more like a clearing house,” he said.
The fact that Payfone essentially works in the background has been just as much of a help as a hindrance for some observers. For example, there have been questions raised previously about how data is sourced and used by Payfone and others like it for identification purposes. Specifically, it seems that those looking closer at the data that these companies amass have taken issue not necessarily with Payfone and others like it, but with the businesses using the verification platforms, and whether they have been transparent enough about what is going on.
Payfone does provide an explanation of how it works with secure APIs to carry out its services (and that its customers are not consumers but the companies engaging Payfone’s services to work with consumer customers), and offers a route to opt out of of its services for those that seek to go that extra mile to do so, but my guess that this might not be the end of that story if people continue to learn more about personal data, and how and where it gets used online.
In the meantime, or perhaps alongside however that plays out, there will continue to be interesting opportunities for approaches to verify users on digital platforms that respect their personal data and general right to control how any identifying detail — personal or not — gets used. Payfone’s traction so far in that area has helped it stand out to investors.
“Identity is the key enabling technology for the next generation of digital businesses,” said Daniel O’Keefe, managing partner of Apax Digital, in a statement. “Payfone’s Trust Score is core to the real-time decisioning that enterprises need in order to drive revenue while thwarting fraud and protecting privacy.” O’Keefe and his colleague, Zach Fuchs, a principal at Apax Digital, are both joining the board.
“Payfone’s technology enables frictionless customer experience, while curbing the mounting operating expense caused by manual review,” said Fuchs.
Flipboard is giving news publishers and other curators on the platform a new way to highlight content through a format called Storyboards.
Until now, Flipboard has largely focused on its Smart Magazines, which are ongoing collections that mix human and algorithmic curation, allowing readers to dive deeply into and keep up-to-date on a given topic.
Storyboards, on the other hand, are more of a one-time collection of articles, videos, podcasts, tweets and other media. Content-wise, they may not be that different from an “everything you need to know about X” roundup article, but they give publishers an easy and visually stylish way to put those roundups together.
Publishers have already been beta testing it already. For example, TheGrio created a Storyboard collecting the latest coverage of George Floyd’s death and the resulting protests, while National Geographic curated a package of new and old stories commemorating the 40th anniversary of the eruption of Mt. St Helens. And TechCrunch tried it out by doing daily roundups of coverage coming out of last year’s Disrupt conference in San Francisco.
Image Credits: Flipboard
Flipboard CEO Mike McCue told me that this is something curators have been asking for, as a way to “structure their curation better and be able to do better storytelling.”
He also said that Storyboards could be a great way to highlight different products and make money with affiliate links, especially since “curated commerce is something that will probably play more and more of a significant role in our revenue.”
Vice President of Engineering Troy Brant gave me a quick tour of the product, showing me how a curator can create different sections in a Storyboard, tweak the look of those sections and populate them with different kinds of content.
These new Storyboards can be discovered in Flipboard based on the topics that the curator tags them with. They’re also shareable and embeddable via Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook and email.
Image Credits: Flipboard
Brant noted that Storyboards are “complementary” with Flipboard magazines, since magazines can include Storyboards and Storyboards can include magazines. He also said the company is developing “more product capabilities” to highlight the best curation, whether that takes the form of a Storyboard or magazine: “That’s actually a work in progress at the moment.”
And Storyboards come with detailed analytics about how many people are viewing them, liking them, commenting on them, flipping them and more.
All of this is part of a new tool in Flipboard called Curator Pro, which is now available to all verified users in English-speaking countries, with plans for a more global roll out soon. Brant added that Storyboards are just the “first step” for Curator Pro, with more magazine curation tools and analytics on the way as well.
The UK has given up building a centralized coronavirus contacts tracing app and will instead switch to a decentralized app architecture, the BBC has reported. This means its future app will be capable of plugging into the joint ‘exposure notification’ API which has been developed in recent weeks by Apple and Google.
The UK’s decision to abandon a bespoke app architecture comes more than a month after ministers had been reported to be eyeing such a switch. They went on to award a contract to an IT supplier develop a decentralized tracing app in parallel as a backup but continued to test the centralized app, called NHS COVID-19.
A number of European countries have now successfully launched contracts tracing apps with a decentralized app architecture that’s able to plug into the ‘Gapple’ API — including Denmark, Germany, Italy, Latvia and Switzerland. Several more such apps remain in testing. While EU Member States just agreed on a technical framework to enable cross-border interoperability of apps based on the same architecture.
Germany — which launched its ‘Corona Warning App’ this week — announced the software had been downloaded 6.5M times in the first 24 hours.
The UK’s NHS COVID-19 app, meanwhile, has faced a plethora of technical barriers and privacy challenges as a direct consequence of the government’s decision to opt for a proprietary system which uploads proximity data to a central server, rather than processing exposure notifications locally on device.
Apple and Google’s API, which is being used by all Europe’s decentralized apps, does not support centralized app architectures — meaning the UK app faced challenges related to accessing Bluetooth in the background.
The centralized choice also raised big questions around cross-border interoperability, as we’ve explained before. So the UK’s move to abandon the approach and adopt a decentralized model is hardly surprising — although the time it’s taken the government to arrive at the obvious conclusion does raise some major questions over its competence at handling technology projects.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, ministers are now heavily de-emphasizing the importance of having an app in the fight against the coronavirus at all. The Department for Health and Social Care’s, Lord Bethell, told the Science and Technology Committee yesterday the app will not now be ready until the winter. “We’re seeking to get something going for the winter, but it isn’t a priority for us,” he said.
Yet the centralized version of the NHS COVID-19 app has been in testing in a limited geographical pilot on the Isle of Wight since early May — and up until the middle of last month health minister, Matt Hancock, had said it would be rolled out nationally in mid May.
Of course that timeframe came and went without launch. And now the launch is being booted right into the back end of the year. Compare and contrast that with government messaging at its daily coronavirus briefings back in May — when Hancock made “download the app” one of the key slogans.
Michael Veale, a lecturer in digital rights and regulation at UCL — who has been involved in the development of the DP3T decentralized contacts tracing standard, which influenced Apple and Google’s choice of API — welcomed the UK’s decision to ditch a centralized app architecture but questioned why the government has wasted so much time.
“This is a welcome, if a heavily and unnecessarily delayed, move by NHSX,” Veale told TechCrunch. “The Google-Apple system in a way is home-grown: Originating with research at a large consortium of universities led by Switzerland and including UCL in the UK. NHSX has no end of options and no reasonable excuse to not get the app out quickly now. Germany and Switzerland both have high quality open source code that can be easily adapted. The NHS England app will now be compatible with Northern Ireland, the Republic of Ireland, and also the many destinations for holidaymakers in and out of the UK.”
NHSX relayed our request for comment on the switch to a decentralized system and the new timeframe for an app launch to the Department of Health and Social Care — but the department had not responded to us at the time of publication.
Earlier this week the BBC reported that a former Apple executive, Simon Thompson, was taking charge of the delayed app project — while the two lead managers, the NHSX’s Matthew Gould and Geraint Lewis — were reported to be stepping back.
Government briefings to the press today have included suggestions that app testers on the Isle of Wight told it they were not comfortable receiving COVID-19 notifications via text message — and that the human touch of a phone call is preferred.
However none of the European countries that have already deployed contacts tracing apps has promoted the software as a one-stop panacea for tackling COVID-19. Rather tracing apps are intended to supplement manual contacts tracing methods — the latter involving the use of trained humans making phone calls to people who have been diagnosed with COVID-19 to ask who they might have been in contact with over the infectious period.
Even with major resource put into manual contacts tracing, apps — which use Bluetooth signals to estimate proximity between smartphone users in order to calculate virus expose risk — could still play an important role by, for example, being able to trace strangers who are sat near an infected person on public transport.
Meet Vivid, a new challenger bank launching in Germany that promises low fees and an integrated cashback program. The two co-founders Alexander Emeshev and Artem Yamanov previously worked as executives for Russian bank Tinkoff Bank.
Vivid doesn’t try to reinvent the wheels and is building its product on top of well-established players. It relies on solarisBank for the banking infrastructure, a German company with a banking license that provides banking services as APIs to other fintech companies. As for debit cards, Vivid is working with Visa.
If you live in Germany and want to sign up to Vivid, you can expect a lot of features that you can find in other challenger banks, such as N26, but with a few additional features. Vivid users get a current account and a debit card. They can then manage their money from the mobile app.
The physical Vivid card doesn’t feature any identifiable details — there’s no card number, expiry date and CVV. Just like Apple’s credit card in the U.S., you have to check the mobile app to see those details. Every time you make a purchase, you receive a notification. You can lock and unlock your card from the app. The card works in Google Pay but not yet in Apple Pay.
In order to make money management easier, Vivid lets you create pockets. Those are sub-accounts presented in a grid view, like on Lydia or N26 Spaces. You can move money between pockets by swiping your finger from one pocket to another. Each pocket has its own IBAN.
You can associate your card with any pocket. Soon, you’ll also be able to share a pocket with another Vivid user. Like on Revolut, you can exchange money to another currency. The company adds a small markup fee but doesn’t share more details.
As for the cashback feature, the startup focuses on a handful of partnerships. You can earn 5% on purchases at REWE, Lieferando, BoFrost, Eismann, HelloFresh and Too Good To Go, and 10% on online subscriptions, such as Netflix, Prime Video, Disney+ and Nintendo Switch Online. While it’s generous, you’re limited to €20 maximum in cashback per month.
Vivid has two plans — a free plan and a Vivid Prime subscription for €9.90 per month. Prime users receive a metal card, more cashback on every day purchases and higher withdrawal limits.
The company plans to launch stock and ETF trading in the coming months. Vivid also plans to expand into other European countries this year.
Vivid is entering a crowded market but already offers a solid product if everything works as expected. It’s going to be interesting to see how the product evolves and if they can attract a large user base.
Email is one of those things that no one likes but that we’re all forced to use. Superhuman, founded by Rahul Vohra, aims to help everyone get to inbox zero.
Launched in 2017, Superhuman charges $30 per month and is still in invite-only mode with more than 275,000 people on the waitlist. That’s by design, Vohra told us earlier this week on Extra Crunch Live.
“I think a lot of folks misunderstand the nature of our waitlist,” he said. “They assume it’s some kind of FOMO generating technique or some kind of false scarcity. Nothing could be further from the truth. The real reason we have the waitlist is that I want everyone who uses Superhuman to be deliriously happy with their experience.”
Today, the app is only available for desktop and iOS. Superhuman started with iOS because many premium users have iPhones, Vohra said. Still, many users have Android, so Superhuman’s waitlist consists of many Android users.
“And we don’t think that if we onboard them they’d have the best experience with Superhuman because email really is an ecosystem product,” he said. “You do it just as much on the go as you do from your laptop. And there’s a lot of reasons like that. And so if you’re a person who identifies that as a must-have, well, we’ll take in the survey, we’ll learn about you so we know when to reach out to you. And then when we have those things built or integrated, we’ll reach out.”
We also chatted about his obsession with email, determining pricing for a premium product, the impact of COVID-19, diversity in tech in light of the police killing of George Floyd and so much more.
Throughout the conversation, Vohra also offered up some good practical advice for founders. Here are some highlights from the conversation.
On competition from Hey, the latest buzzy email app
Yeah, I’m not at all worried. I used to get worried about this. You know, 10 years ago, even as recently as five years ago, I would get worried about competitors. But I think Paul Graham has really, really great advice on this. I think he says pretty much verbatim: Startups don’t kill other startups. Competition generally doesn’t kill the startup. Other things do, like running out of money being the biggest one, or lack of momentum or lack of motivation or co-founder feuds, these are all really dangerous things.
Competition from other startups generally isn’t the thing that gets you and you know, props to the Basecamp team and everything they’ve done with Hey. It’s really impressive. I think it’s for an entirely different demographic than Superhuman is for.
Superhuman is for the person for whom essentially email as work and work as email. Our users kind of almost personally identify with their email inbox, and they’re coming from Gmail, or G Suite. And typically it’s overflowing so they often receive hundreds if not thousands of emails a day, and they send off 100 emails a day. Superhuman is for high volume email for whom email really matters. Power users, essentially, though power users isn’t quite the right articulation. What I actually say is prosumers because there’s a lot of people who come to us at Superhuman and they’re not yet power users of email, but they know they need to be.
And that’s what I would call a prosumer — someone who really wants to be brilliant at doing email. Now Hey doesn’t seem to be designed for that target market. It doesn’t seem to be designed for high volume emailers or prosumers or power users.
Self-help books are a dime a dozen, but not all of them are worth your time. We’ve scoured the shelves to find the most popular, highly rated, and frequently recommended self-improvement books available right now.
Whether you’re looking to improve your social skills, find purpose in your life, or balance your checkbook, you can learn how to do it all with the advice in the books below.
You’re unlikely to find a list of the best self-help books without this one on it somewhere. Dale Carnegie penned it way back in 1936, but it’s as valuable today as it ever was. By reading How to Win Friends and Influence People you can learn useful strategies to become more likable in all aspects of your life.
Don’t worry, it’s not about creating a fake persona. It’s actually about learning how to listen to other people, how to understand their wants and needs, and how to make them feel appreciated. Needless to say, if you internalize these lessons, you’ll find that friends, jobs, and sales are far easier to come by.
Despite its title, Think and Grow Rich is not solely about making a pile of money big enough to make Scrooge McDuck jealous. Although a portion of the book is certainly dedicated to monetary wealth, author Napoleon Hill wants you to grow rich in ideas, too.
This is another self-improvement book from the 1930s, but its also just as relevant now as it was back then. The author spent 20 years studying the most successful people of his time—including Henry Ford and Alexander Graham Bell—in research for this book.
You can use his findings to achieve what you want most in life, whether that’s a bank balance or a state of mind.
During the Second World War, Viktor Frankl spent three years as a prisoner in four different Nazi concentration camps, including Auschwitz. Having survived the Holocaust, Frankl wrote about what he learned from the experiences in Man’s Search for Meaning.
Needless to say, this book paints a harrowing picture of what life was like in these torturous camps. But as a psychiatrist and neurologist, Frankl uses the opportunity to show how important it is to find meaning and a sense of purpose for your life.
He demonstrates their importance for resilience with examples of how his fellow prisoners coped through the most difficult years of their lives.
Norman Vincent Peale wrote this book in 1952, and it’s still one of the best self-help books around. The core message is simple: if you think in a positive way, you’ll start to see positive results. That’s because you’re more likely to try harder, to stretch further, and to dream bigger.
Of course, it isn’t easy to achieve a permanently optimistic attitude, but The Power of Positive Thinking endeavors to show you all the ways it can be worthwhile to do so. Thinking about what you want is a powerful motivator to get you moving toward it.
If you’re struggling to change your mindset, sit down in front of some motivational YouTube videos. Many of these are tailor-made to inspire you into action whenever you need a boost.
You’ve probably heard of this book. Released in 1989, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People is one of the most popular personal-development books around. Stephen Covey studied the past 200 years’ worth of self-help books and discovered that many of them focused on external “Personality Ethics” rather than internal “Character Ethics.”
The problem is that good Character Ethics lead to good Personality Ethics, not the other way around. This book shows you the habits you need to internalize to become effective and successful in the most genuine way possible. It isn’t easy, but Covey includes practice exercises to make those changes happen.
Tony Robbins is a hugely popular self-help guru with a number of books on the topic. This might be his best. Awaken the Giant Within explores fundamental lessons of self-mastery. You will feel encouraged to discover your true purpose and take control of your life.
Robbins puts a lot of weight on consistent actions, saying that it’s what you do every day that counts, not what you do every now and then. By following the advice in his book, you can awaken the giant within you and create positive change in your life—no matter what change you want that to be.
While many of the self-development books on this list focus on creating a better future for yourself, The Power of Now encourages you to return your focus to the present. That’s where you’ll always find yourself, after all.
Eckhart Tolle believes that spending too much time living in either the past or the future leads to regret, anxiety, and other negative emotions. By learning to embrace the now, you can lessen this suffering, increase your emotional intelligence, and develop stronger compassion for the people around you. The Power of Now shows you how to do that.
With his 1997 book, Don Miguel Ruiz asks you to make four agreements with yourself. By sticking to these agreements, Ruiz suggests you can start living as your authentic self, alleviate suffering, and lead a more fulfilling existence.
The first agreement is to be impeccable with your word; make it mean something. The second is to avoid taking things personally, accepting that what people say is often more telling of their own character than yours. With the third agreement, Ruiz asks you to avoid assumptions. And the fourth accepts that you can’t be perfect, but encourages you to always do your best.
Rich Dad Poor Dad is one of the best self-help books available if you’re hoping to improve your financial situation. Robert Kiyosaki’s book demonstrates financial principles by contrasting two characters: Rich Dad and Poor Dad. In essence, he teaches you how to gather assets while eliminating liabilities.
By following Rich Dad’s examples, you can learn the best practices to improve your own finances. Don’t let its simple language fool you. This is an excellent self-help book for people who aren’t the best with money. The author has an estimated net worth of over $80 million after all, so there must be some truth to his words.
The Best Self-Help Books as Audiobooks
All the best self-help books are available as audiobooks as well. That means you can keep working on yourself even when you’re not able to sit down and read. Make sure you don’t let yourself get too distracted though, it’s important to internalize the lessons in these books for them to make an impact on your life.
If audiobooks sound more like your thing—perhaps you like to listen to them at the gym or on a long drive—take a look at our suggestions of the best self-improvement audiobooks. There are some truly excellent audiobooks on the list that we didn’t have space to mention here.
The world of sim racing wheels can seem daunting and expensive. Many sim racers who stream online appear to have incredible sim racing setups. Many do, and these can easily cost thousands of dollars.
But if you want to get started in sim racing, or even just improve your enjoyment of regular racing games, there are several beginner’s sim racing wheels you can try out.
So, here are the best beginner’s sim racing wheels for PS4 and Xbox One. These sim wheels are compatible with your PC, too.
How to Choose a Sim Racing Wheel?
The biggest question is budget. How much do you want to spend on a sim racing wheel? Although sim racing wheels start at a very low price, you definitely get what you pay for. There are a few considerations, such as the sim racing wheel turn radius, force feedback, pedal and shifter combinations, integrated buttons and gear shifters, and so on.
The entry-level sim racing wheels have a small turn radius, which affects your in-game driving precision. Similarly, a wheel lacking force feedback makes steering accurately that bit more difficult. It’ll be better than the jerky movements you get from a gamepad (in most cases), but still not completely accurate.
In that, you don’t want to break your budget. But ensuring your sim racing wheel does tick those boxes will provide much greater enjoyment. You should also note that you don’t have to buy the latest and greatest sim racing wheel to have an incredible experience. Some of the best beginner’s sim racing wheels hit the market years back but are still excellent options.
Now, onto the best sim racing wheels for beginners for the PS4, Xbox One, and PC.
Platforms: PS4, PS3, PC | Turn Radius: Up to 900° | Force Feedback: Yes | Clutch Pedal: Yes
The Logitech G29 is one of the most popular sim racing wheels, period. Many sim racing pros point to the Logitech G29 as their ideal beginner’s racing wheel, with many using it as the start point for their online racing career.
The Logitech G29 is popular for a few reasons. First, it has an excellent build quality that combines a leather steering wheel with anodized aluminum gear shifters and an overall solid base for a sim racing wheel. Buttons are plentiful, customizable, and easy to press.
Then there are the steel pedals, complete with a manual clutch, allowing you extra control and immersion in your sim racing world. There’s also the option of expanding your sim racing setup with a G29 stick shifter.
Another major plus for the Logitech G29 is its force feedback and drive, which uses a dual-motor system (known as helical gears) to provide a much smoother driving simulation than most other sim racing wheels in this price bracket. Oh, and the 24-way directional dial is a super handy car and race management feature, too.
Overall, the Logitech G29 remains one of the best beginner’s sim racing wheels available, providing some serious racing bang for your buck.
Platforms: Xbox, PC | Turn Radius: Up to 900° | Force Feedback: Yes | Clutch Pedal: Yes
The Logitech G290 is the Xbox version of the Logitech G29 racing wheel. So, that means they’re the same, right? Not quite. There are some differences between the PlayStation and the Xbox versions, which make the G290 slightly inferior to the G29.
For instance, the Logitech G290 doesn’t have as many buttons as the G29. It isn’t a massive loss, but those buttons do make for considerably easier in-car management during a race. Similarly, the G290 doesn’t have an RPM light like the G29. Again, it isn’t a huge loss, but the visual cue to change gear is handy at times.
That aside, the G290 uses the same helical gear force feedback system, comes with the same sturdy steel pedals, and uses the same aluminum gear shifters. Visually, the Logitech G290 is sleek and looks smart, giving a strong luxury sim racing cockpit vibe (it looks better than the G29, in my opinion).
You can expand your driving experience with the Logitech Driving Force Shifter, which works with both the G29 and the G290. The integrated gear shifters are perfect for sim racing beginners, but if you do want to expand your setup, this is the official shifter option.
Platforms: PS4, PS3, PC | Turn Radius: Up to 1080° | Force Feedback: Yes | Clutch Pedal: No
The Thrustmaster T150 is an excellent entry-level sim racing wheel for the PS4, PS4, and PC. It comes with dual-pedals, adjustable force feedback, and a customizable turn radius up to 1080 degrees.
The sim wheel uses a combination of gears and belt-pulleys to provide force feedback, which can feel a little janky at times. However, as you can adjust this system, you can find a suitable level of feedback that enables smooth gameplay.
As a beginner’s sim racing wheel for the PS4, the build materials do feel somewhat cheap in places. Still, with the adjustable pedals, integrated PS4/PS3 buttons, and decent mount system, the Thrustmaster T150 is a great starting point for sim racing wheels.
Platforms: Xbox, PC | Turn Radius: Up to 900° | Force Feedback: Yes | Clutch Pedal: No
The Thrustmaster TMX is the Xbox equivalent of the Thrustmaster T150. You’ve probably noticed by now that each manufacturer launches hardware for each console—but one console usually ends up with slightly better hardware. In this case, the Thrustmaster T150 is a slightly better proposition as a beginner’s racing wheel.
However, the Thrustmaster TMX is a great option for Xbox users regardless. The major difference lies with the turn radius. The Thrustmaster TMX has a maximum turn radius of 900 degrees but otherwise uses the exact same internal hardware as the T150. Of course, the button configuration for the Thrustmaster TMX matches the Xbox, too.
Platforms: Xbox One | Turn Radius: 270° | Force Feedback: No | Clutch Pedal: No
If you’ve never used any sim racing wheel, the HORI Overdrive makes an interesting entry-level option. So, why is it interesting?
Well, for starters, the HORI Overdrive’s pedals are very soft, lacking serious resistance to help you gauge your acceleration and braking. You definitely have more precision than with a gamepad, though, so that’s a positive.
The wheel lacks force feedback, although there is a bungee cord resistance system and a rumble which provides some feedback when turning through corners or changing driving surface. Also, the Overdrive only turns through 270 degrees. However, you can mitigate the latter using in-game sensitivity settings, adjusting the wheel turning rate and the steering dead zone until you find a happy medium.
The HORI Overdrive reviews are full of positive experiences, with many users believing the HORI Overdrive is a great choice for the price, and the perfect option to try out a wheel controller without breaking the bank.
Platforms: PS3, PS4, PC | Turn Radius: 270° | Force Feedback: No | Clutch Pedal: No
Where the HORI Overdrive is for Xbox One users, the HORI Apex is for PS3, PS4, and PC users. Like the Overdrive for the Xbox One, the HORI Apex is an officially licensed sim racing wheel for the PlayStation.
This lets you know that it’ll work with PlayStation sim racing games (and heaps on the PC, too). The HORI Apex’s specs are the same as the Overdrive, albeit with PlayStation buttons rather than Xbox.
Second-Hand Beginners Sim Racing Wheel
If you don’t want a massive outlay when purchasing your first sim racing wheel, you can try the second-hand sim racing wheel market. There are always sim racing wheels for beginners available on eBay, Craigslist, Facebook Marketplace, Carousell, and the numerous other online selling sites.
Some sim racers believe beginners should buy higher-end second-hand hardware rather than lower-spec new hardware. The reasoning is that although the second-hand sim racing wheel is already used, the wider range of functionality and potential for a better experience is a better introduction to sim racing wheels for beginners.
What Is the Best Sim Racing Wheel for Beginners?
Your budget for an entry-level sim racing wheel dictates your options. If you can spring for a beginner racing wheel with more features, a larger turn radius, and so on, you should because it will absolutely impact your experience positively. But if not, don’t worry!
You can have an incredible time using almost any sim racing wheel, be that for beginners or not. I used an Xbox 360 gamepad in sim racing games for years before upgrading to a very basic sim racing wheel and had a fantastic time.
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