Google launches the final beta of Android 11

With the launch of Android 11 getting closer, Google today launched the third and final beta of its mobile operating system ahead of its general availability. Google had previously delayed the beta program by about a month because of the coronavirus pandemic.

Image Credits: Google

Since Android 11 had already reached platform stability with Beta 2, most of the changes here are fixes and optimizations. As a Google spokesperson noted, “this beta is focused on helping developers put the finishing touches on their apps as they prepare for Android 11, including the official API 30 SDK and build tools for Android Studio.”

The one exception is some updates to the Exposure Notification System contact-tracing API, which users can now use without turning on device location settings. Exposure Notification is an exception here, as all other Android apps need to have location settings on (and user permission to access it) to perform the kind of Bluetooth scanning Google is using for this API.

Otherwise, there are no surprises here, given that this has already been a pretty lengthy preview cycle. Mostly, Google really wants developers to make sure their apps are ready for the new version, which includes quite a few changes.

If you are brave enough, you can get the latest beta over the air as part of the Android Beta program. It’s available for Pixel 2, 3, 3a, 4 and (soon) 4a users.

Google’s budget Pixel 4a addresses its premium predecessor’s biggest problem

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A look inside Gmail’s product development process

Google has long been known as the leader in email, but it hasn’t always been that way.

In 1997, AOL was the world’s largest email provider with around ten million subscribers, but other providers were making headway. Hotmail, now part of Microsoft Outlook, launched in 1996, Yahoo Mail launched in 1997 and Gmail followed in 2004, becoming the most popular email provider in the world, with more than 1.5 billion active users as of October 2019.

Despite Google’s stronghold on the email market, other competitors have emerged over the years. Most recently, we’ve seen paid email products like Superhuman and Hey emerge. In light of new competitors to the space, as well as Google’s latest version of Gmail that more deeply integrates with Meet, Chat and Rooms, we asked Gmail Design Lead Jeroen Jillissen about what makes good email, how he and the team think about product design and more.

Here’s a lightly edited Q&A we had with Jillissen over Gmail.

Google has been at email since at least 2004. What does good email look like these days?

Generally speaking, a good email experience is not that different today than it was in 2004. It should be straightforward to use and should support the basic tasks like reading, writing, replying to and triaging emails. That said, nowadays there is a lot more email, in terms of volume, than there was in 2004, so we find that Gmail has many more opportunities to assist users in ways it didn’t before. For example, tabbed inboxes, which sorts your email into helpful categories like Primary, Social, Promotions, etc. in a simple, organized way so you can focus on what’s important to you. Also, we’ve introduced assistive features like Smart Compose and Smart Reply and nudges, plus robust security and spam protection to keep users safe. And lastly, we’ve made deeper integrations a priority: both across G Suite apps like Calendar, Keep, Tasks and most recently Chat and Meet, as well as with third-party services via the G Suite Marketplace.

How has Google’s hypothesis about email evolved over the years?

We see email as a very strong communication channel and the primary means of digital communication for many of our users and customers for many years to come. Most people still start their workday in email, which is still used for important use cases, such as more formal or external communications (i.e., with clients/customers), for record-keeping or easy access/reference, and for communications that need a little more thoughtfulness or consideration.

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LivingPackets hopes to nurture a circular economy with its smart parcels

More than ever before, people are getting life’s essentials delivered — good news for Amazon, but bad news for the environment, which must bear the consequences of the resulting waste. LivingPackets is a Berlin-based startup that aims to replace the familiar cardboard box with a smarter alternative that’s smarter, more secure, and possibly the building block of a new circular economy.

The primary product created by LivingPackets is called The Box, and it’s just that: a box. But not just any box. This one is reusable, durable, digitally locked and monitored, with a smartphone’s worth of sensors and gadgets that make it trackable and versatile, and an E-Ink screen so its destination or contents can be updated at will. A prototype shown at CES and a few other locations attracted some interest but the company is now well into producing the V2 of The Box, improved in many ways and ready to be deployed at the scale of hundreds of thousands.

Sure, it costs a lot more than a cardboard box. But once a LivingPackets Box has been used a couple hundred times for returns and local distribution purposes, it breaks even with its paper-based predecessor. Cardboard is cheap to make new, but it doesn’t last long — and that’s not its only problem.

The Box, pictured here with standard cardboard boxes on a conveyor belt, is meant to be compatible with lots of existing intrastructure.

“If you think about it, online transactions are still risky,” said co-founder Sebastian Rumberg. “The physical transaction and financial transaction don’t happen in parallel: You pay up front, and the seller sends something into the void. You may not receive it, or maybe you do and you say you didn’t, so the company has to claim it with insurers.”

“The logistics system is over capacity; There’s frustration with DHL and other carriers,” he said. “People in ecommerce and logistics know what they’re missing, what their problems are. Demand has grown, but there’s no innovation.”

And indeed, it does seem strange that although delivery has become much more important to practically everyone over the last decade and especially in recent months, it’s pretty much done the same way it’s been done for a century — except you might get an email when the package arrives. LivingPackets aims to upend this by completely reinventing the package, leaving things like theft, damage, and missed connections in the past.

Apps let users track the location and status of their box.

“You’re in full control of everything involved,” he explained. “You know where the parcel is, what’s happening to it. You can look inside. You can say, I’m not at the location for delivery right now, I’m at my office, and just update the address. You don’t need filling material, you don’t need a paper label. You can tell when the seal is broken, when the item is removed.”

It all sounds great, but cardboard is simple and, while limited, proven. Why should anyone switch over to such a fancy device? The business model has to account for this, so it does — and then some.

To begin with, LivingPackets doesn’t actually sell The Box. It provides it to customers and charges per use — “packaging as a service,” as they call it. This prevents the possibility of a business balking at the upfront cost of a few thousand of these.

As a service, it simplifies a lot of existing pain points for merchants, consumers, and logistics companies.

For merchants, among other things, tracking and insurance are much simpler. As co-founder Alexander Cotte explained, and as surely many reading this have experienced, it’s practically impossible to know what happened to a missing package, even if it’s something large or expensive. With better tracking, lossage can be mitigated to start, and the question of who’s responsible, where it was taken, and so on can be determined in a straightforward way.

For packaging and delivery companies, the standard form factor with adjustable interior makes these boxes easy to pack and difficult to meddle with or damage — tests with European online retail showed that handling time and costs can be reduced by more than half. LivingPackets also pays for pickup, so delivery companies can recoup costs without changing routes. And generally speaking more data, more traceability, is a good thing.

For consumers, the most obvious improvement is returns; no need to print a label or for the company to pre-package one, just notify them and the return address appears on the box automatically. In addition there are opportunities once an essentially pre-paid box is in a consumer’s house: for instance, selling or donating an old phone or laptop. LivingPackets will be operating partnerships whereby you can just toss your old gear in the box and it will make its way to the right locations. Or a consumer can hang onto the box until the item they’re selling on eBay is bought and send it that way. Or a neighbor can — and yes, they’re working on the public health side of that, with antibiotic coatings and other protections against spreading COVID-19.

The Box locks securely but also folds down for storage when empty.

The idea underpinning all this, and which was wrapped up in this company from the start, is that of creating a real circular economy, building decentralized value and reducing waste. Even The Box itself is made of materials that can be reused, should it be damaged, in the creation of its replacement. In addition to the market efficiencies added by turning parcels into traveling IoT devices, reusing the boxes could reduce waste and carbon emissions — once you get past the first hundred uses or so, The Box pays for itself in more ways than one. Early pilots with carriers and retailers in France and Germany have borne this out.

That philosophy is embodied in LivingPackets’ unusual form of funding itself: a combination of bootstrapping and crowdsourced equity.

Cotte and his father founded investment firm the Cotte Group, which provided a good starting point for said bootstrapping, but he noted that every employee is taking a less than competitive wage with the hope that the company’s profit-sharing plan will pan out. Even so, with 95 employees, that amounts to several million a year even by the most conservative estimate — this is no small operation.

CEO Alex Cotte sits with V2 of The Box.

Part of keeping the lights on, then, is the ongoing crowdfunding campaign, which has pulled in somewhere north of €6 million, from individuals contributing as little as €50 or as much as €20,000. This, Cotte said, is largely to finance the cost of production, while he and the founding team essentially funded the R&D period. Half of future profits are earmarked for paying back these contributors multiple times their investment — not exactly the sort of business model you see in Silicon Valley. But that’s kind of the point, they explained.

“Obviously all the people working for us believe deeply in what we’re doing,” Cotte said. “They’re willing to take a step back now to create value together and not just take value out of an existing system. And you need to share the value you create with the people who helped you create it.”

It’s hard to imagine a future where these newfangled boxes replace even a noticeable proportion of the truly astronomical numbers of cardboard boxes being used every day. But even so, getting them into a few key distribution channels could prove they work as intended — and improvements to the well-oiled machines (and deeply rutted paths) of logistics can spread like wildfire once the innumerable companies the industry touches see there’s a better way.

The aims and means of LivingPackets may be rather utopian, but that could be the moonshot thinking that’s necessary to dislodge the logistics business from its current, decidedly last-century methods.

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Facebook extends coronavirus work from home policy until July 2021

Facebook has joined Google in saying it will allow employees to work from home until the middle of next year as a result of the coronavirus pandemic.

“Based on guidance from health and government experts, as well as decisions drawn from our internal discussions about these matters, we are allowing employees to continue voluntarily working from home until July 2021,” a spokeswoman told the Reuters news agency.

Facebook also said it will provide employees with an additional $1,000 to spend on “home office needs”.

Late last month Google also extended its coronavirus remote work provision, saying staff would be able to continue working from home until the end of June 2021.

Both tech giants have major office presences in a number of cities around the world. And despite the pandemic forcing them into offering more flexible working arrangement than they usually do the pair have continued to build out their physical office footprints, signalling a commitment to operating their own workplaces. (Perhaps unsurprisingly, given how much money they’ve ploughed in over the years to turn offices into perk-filled playgrounds designed to keep staff on site for longer — with benefits such as free snacks and meals, nap pods, video games arcade rooms and even health centers.)

Earlier this month, Facebook secured the main office lease on an iconic building in New York, for example — adding 730,000 square feet to its existing 2.2 million square feet of office space. While Google has continued to push ahead with a flagship development in the UK capital’s King’s Cross area, with work resuming last month on the site for its planned London ‘landscraper’ HQ.

In late July, Apple said staff won’t return to offices until at least early 2021 — cautioning that any return to physical offices would depend on whether an effective vaccine and/or successful therapeutics are available. So the iPhone maker looks prepared for a home-working coronavirus long haul.

As questions swirl over the future of the physical office now that human contact is itself a public health risk, the deepest pocketed tech giants are paradoxically showing they’re not willing to abandon the traditional workplace altogether and go all in on modern technologies which allow office work to be done remotely.

Twitter is an exception. During the first wave of the pandemic the social network firmly and fully embraced remote work, telling staff back in May that they can work from home forever if they wish.

Whether remote work played any role in the company’s recent account breach is one open question. It has said phone spear phishing was used to trick staff to gain network access credentials.

Certainly, security concerns have been generally raised about the risk of more staff working remotely during the pandemic — where they may be outside a corporate firewall and more vulnerable to attackers.

A Facebook spokeswoman did not respond when we asked whether the company will offer its own staff the option to work remotely permanently. But the company does not appear prepared to go so far — not least judging by signing new leases on massive office spaces.

Facebook has been retooling its approach to physical offices in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, announcing in May it would be setting up new company hubs in Denver, Dallas and Atlanta.

It also said it would focus on finding new hires in areas near its existing offices — including in cities such as San Diego, Portland, Philadelphia and Pittsburgh.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said then that over the course of the next decade half of the company could be working fully remotely. Though he said certain kinds of roles would not be eligible for all-remote work — such as those doing work in divisions like hardware development, data centers, recruiting, policy and partnerships.

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How Lifetime Access to Rosetta Stone Is Cheaper Than You Think

Social distancing means we’re all spending more time in the house than ever… But once you’ve played every board game you own, replayed the entire Halo series on Xbox, and turned your backyard into botanical gardens, what else are supposed to do with your time?

Perhaps this is the moment to spread your wings and learn something new? If you’re itching for some projects to get stuck into, check out our social distancing subscription bundle.

What’s Included?

We’ve teamed up with our partners to offer MUO readers a mega saving on three premium apps:

• Rosetta Stone
• KeepSolid VPN Unlimited
• 12min Premium Micro Book Library

Combined, the apps are worth nearly $850. As a MakeUseOf reader, you can pick up the entire bundle for just $199—a 76 percent discount on the regular price.

Why Use Rosetta Stone?

Rosetta Stone is one of the most comprehensive language-learning suites in the world. It caters for all levels and comes with a variety of learning aids. The program’s aim is to make you absorb your target language in the same way that you do when you’re a child.

In total, 24 languages are offered on the platform, including Spanish, French, German, Italian, Mandarin, and Russian.

This deal gives you lifetime access to all 24 languages on both desktop and mobile.

You’ll also be able to practice your pronunciation with Rosetta Stone’s TruAccent speech recognition technology and, when you feel comfortable enough, use the advanced speech engine to compare your accent with native speakers.

KeepSolid VPN Unlimited

The lockdown has meant we’ve all been binge-watching TV and movies more than ever. That’s where the next tool in the bundle—KeepSolid VPN Unlimited—is useful.

As any regular MakeUseOf reader knows, using a VPN lets you bypass geoblocking that streaming services put in place. It means you can access the Netflix catalog from another country, stream live TV from BBC iPlayer if you’re based outside the UK, and even sign up for paid subscriptions with video-on-demand providers from elsewhere in the world.

Of course, a VPN is also an essential security tool. You can protect yourself on public Wi-Fi, prevent your ISP and local government from seeing your web traffic, and encrypt all your internet data.

KeepSolid VPN Unlimited has servers in more than 80 countries and supports the major VPN protocols such as IKEv2, OpenVPN, and L2TP/IPSec.

Once again, this deal will bag you a lifetime subscription.

12min Premium Micro Book Library

The final lifetime subscription in our social distancing bundle is 12min Premium Micro Book Library.

One of the curious truths about 2020’s lockdown is that while we might all be spending more time in our homes, many of us also have less free time than ever. Anyone with kids knows what we’re talking about.

If you’re a book lover who’s not had time to read any new material in 2020, 12min Premium Micro Book Library might offer a solution. The app’s specialty is providing digestible overviews of long books. In theory, each overview only takes 12 minutes to read. Audio and text versions are available.

In total, more than 380 overviews are on the platform, with 30+ new titles added every month.

Make Social Distancing Fun!

More knowledge, more entertainment, more security. The perfect lockdown combination. If you’d like to get lifetime access to these three premium apps, make sure you grab the bundle while it’s still available—the deal expires on August 15th, 2020.

Read the full article: How Lifetime Access to Rosetta Stone Is Cheaper Than You Think

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Google Discontinues Pixel 4 and Pixel 4 XL Flagships

Hot on the heels of announcing the Pixel 4a and teasing the release of the Pixel 5, Google has already discontinued the production of its Pixel 4 and 4 XL flagship phones. Both the Pixel 4 and Pixel 4 XL are fantastic phones, so we’re sad to see them go.

Can You Still Buy The Pixel 4 and 4 XL?

A Google spokesperson talked to The Verge and said, “Google Store has sold through its inventory and completed sales of Pixel 4 [and] 4 XL.”

If you’re thinking about getting a Pixel 4, you can still find them at some retailers until they sell out. The phones will still be available for a limited time, according to a Google spokesperson. “For people who are still interested in buying Pixel 4 [and] 4 XL, the product is available from some partners while supplies last,” the representative said.

Amazon, Best Buy, and B&H all have the Pixel 4 in stock, so you shouldn’t have too much trouble finding a device for the time being. If you act fast, you’ll be able to choose between the Pixel 4 and Pixel 4 XL, depending on your needs. However, we expect both devices to be out of stock soon.

If you were hoping to jump on a Pixel 4 at a discounted price, prepare to be disappointed. All of the retailers we checked still had the Pixel 4 listed at its $799 starting price. With a seemingly limited supply out there, we expect most retailers to sell through their stock without discounts.

Should You Buy a Pixel 4?

The Pixel 4 is a tremendous phone that’s definitely still worth picking up. Until we know what the Pixel 5 offers, it’s hard to say whether you should wait or not. In the end, it’ll come down to how soon you need a new flagship phone in your life.

If you purchase a Pixel 4, you’ll be able to play some of the best Xbox games on it soon.

Read the full article: Google Discontinues Pixel 4 and Pixel 4 XL Flagships

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Facebook extends coronavirus work from home policy until July 2021

Facebook has joined Google in saying it will allow employees to work from home until the middle of next year as a result of the coronavirus pandemic.

“Based on guidance from health and government experts, as well as decisions drawn from our internal discussions about these matters, we are allowing employees to continue voluntarily working from home until July 2021,” a spokeswoman told the Reuters news agency.

Facebook also said it will provide employees with an additional $1,000 to spend on “home office needs”.

Late last month Google also extended its coronavirus remote work provision, saying staff would be able to continue working from home until the end of June 2021.

Both tech giants have major office presences in a number of cities around the world. And despite the pandemic forcing them into offering more flexible working arrangement than they usually do the pair have continued to build out their physical office footprints, signalling a commitment to operating their own workplaces. (Perhaps unsurprisingly, given how much money they’ve ploughed in over the years to turn offices into perk-filled playgrounds designed to keep staff on site for longer — with benefits such as free snacks and meals, nap pods, video games arcade rooms and even health centers.)

Earlier this month, Facebook secured the main office lease on an iconic building in New York, for example — adding 730,000 square feet to its existing 2.2 million square feet of office space. While Google has continued to push ahead with a flagship development in the UK capital’s King’s Cross area, with work resuming last month on the site for its planned London ‘landscraper’ HQ.

In late July, Apple said staff won’t return to offices until at least early 2021 — cautioning that any return to physical offices would depend on whether an effective vaccine and/or successful therapeutics are available. So the iPhone maker looks prepared for a home-working coronavirus long haul.

As questions swirl over the future of the physical office now that human contact is itself a public health risk, the deepest pocketed tech giants are paradoxically showing they’re not willing to abandon the traditional workplace altogether and go all in on modern technologies which allow office work to be done remotely.

Twitter is an exception. During the first wave of the pandemic the social network firmly and fully embraced remote work, telling staff back in May that they can work from home forever if they wish.

Whether remote work played any role in the company’s recent account breach is one open question. It has said phone spear phishing was used to trick staff to gain network access credentials.

Certainly, security concerns have been generally raised about the risk of more staff working remotely during the pandemic — where they may be outside a corporate firewall and more vulnerable to attackers.

A Facebook spokeswoman did not respond when we asked whether the company will offer its own staff the option to work remotely permanently. But the company does not appear prepared to go so far — not least judging by signing new leases on massive office spaces.

Facebook has been retooling its approach to physical offices in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, announcing in May it would be setting up new company hubs in Denver, Dallas and Atlanta.

It also said it would focus on finding new hires in areas near its existing offices — including in cities such as San Diego, Portland, Philadelphia and Pittsburgh.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said then that over the course of the next decade half of the company could be working fully remotely. Though he said certain kinds of roles would not be eligible for all-remote work — such as those doing work in divisions like hardware development, data centers, recruiting, policy and partnerships.

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How To Turn On Or Off The New Start Menu In Windows 10 Version 2004

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Earlier this year, Microsoft had revealed a new Start menu for Windows 10. The new Start menu feature is currently being tested in Windows Insider builds and will be generally available with the upcoming version 2009 coming in October 2020. Microsoft likes to call the new design as theme-aware tiles. The new Start offers translucent […]

The post How To Turn On Or Off The New Start Menu In Windows 10 Version 2004 appeared first on Into Windows. Content from IntoWindows website.

Buying a Virtual Phone System: Everything You Need to Know

Every business in the world is looking to optimize its business dealings. It doesn’t matter which industry you belong to; a business relies on effective communication to be efficient. Running a business in today’s world isn’t like it used to be in the past. Where in the past, you could get away with a lot […]

The post Buying a Virtual Phone System: Everything You Need to Know appeared first on ALL TECH BUZZ.

Google signs up six more partners for its digital banking platform coming to Google Pay

Google is expanding its plans to offer digital banking services in the U.S. The company announced today it’s partnering with half a dozen more banks to offer digital checking and savings accounts to Google Pay users in the U.S., starting sometime next year. The new partners include Bank Mobile, BBVA USA, BMO Harris, Coastal Community Bank, First Independence Bank and SEFCU. They join Google’s existing partners Citi and SFCU, announced earlier, for a total of now eight banks lined up for the project.

News of Google’s big move into banking and personal finance through an effort known internally as “Project Cache” was first reported by The Wall Street Journal in November. Much like the mobile banking services offered today by a number of startups, Google will provide the consumer-facing front-end to the digital banking services it makes available, while the accounts themselves will be held by the FDIC-backed partner institutions.

However, unlike with mobile banking startups, which tend to note their banking partners only in the fine print, Google is giving the banks a co-branded experience. In addition, Google explains that by working with a range of partners from large, global banks down to smaller credit unions with deep community ties, it will be able to do a better job building products that meet its customers’ diverse set of needs.

“We had confirmed earlier that we are exploring how we can partner with banks and credit unions in the U.S. to offer digital bank accounts through Google Pay, helping their customers benefit from useful insights and budgeting tools, while keeping their money in an FDIC or NCUA-insured account,” a Google spokesperson says. “We are excited that six new banks have signed up to offer digital checking and savings.”

The company says it plans to add even more U.S. financial institutions over time.

Google today operates its digital payments service Google Pay and complementary Google Wallet product to serve its customers’ financial needs. But today, more consumers — and particularly younger people — are moving away from brick-and-mortar banking institutions to instead manage their money online. Apple already tapped into consumer demand for digital banking with the launch of its co-branded Apple Card credit card with Goldman Sachs. But it has not yet offered a full banking service, only Apple Cash — a service where you store your “cashback” credits from Apple Card use, payments from friends or the cash you transfer in from a connected bank.

Google’s plans are more extensive. Though it won’t host the bank accounts, it will be able to draw on data to offer customers financial insights and other budgeting tools. For the partners, the service gives them a way to market their brand to consumers in an increasingly mobile-first, online-only market.

“Being able to support our customers’ financial lives in more places where they’re spending their digital time is important to helping them be successful,” said Brett Pitts, chief digital officer for BMO Financial Group, in a statement about BMO’s partnership with Google. “Collaborating to launch this new BMO digital product accelerates our ability to deliver financial advice to our customers and is an innovative step in the evolution of how we serve them.”

For BBVA, the collaboration is another step forward for its BBVA Open Platform, which allows the bank to acquire customers by embedding its financial products within other apps and services.

“BBVA has focused for decades on how it could use digital to advance the financial industry, and in so doing, create more and better opportunities for customers to manage their financial health,” said BBVA USA President and CEO Javier Rodriguez Soler. “Collaborations with companies like Google represent the future of banking,” he added.

The accounts are expected to launch in 2021, several banks said in their announcements. Google has not provided a more specific time frame for the launch.

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The 7 Best Annotation Tools for Google Chrome

Capturing and annotating webpages, images, or portions of articles can be useful for work, school, or even personal research. With tools that allow you to mark up items quickly and easily, Chrome offers a nice selection of extensions.

1. Awesome Screenshot

Awesome Screenshot is a great tool for capturing and annotating an entire webpage, selected text, an image, or just the visible part of the page. Once you have captured your desired items, a new tab will pop open allowing you to add annotations.

Mark up features include cropping, using a pen, adding a shape, drawing an arrow, inserting text, and highlighting. Once you are finished, you can quickly save, copy, or print your items as either a PNG or JPG image.

Awesome Screenshot also offers a Chrome app for those who prefer an app on their launcher.

2. Nimbus

Similar to Awesome Screenshot is Nimbus which also allows you to select the browser window, a fragment of the page, a chosen area, or the entire webpage. Then, just click the Edit button to open the annotation options in a new tab.

You can then draw shapes and arrows, add text and notes, blur and shadow, and even add numbering. Nimbus offers several options for saving your PNG image including sending it to Google, Slack, or Nimbus, saving it, or printing it.

Another nice feature is that you can add your own comment plus include environmental information like the URL, user agent, and platform with a simple checkbox.

Nimbus also has a Chrome app in addition to the extension.

3. One Click Full Page Screenshot

Another terrific Chrome extension for capturing and annotating is One Click Full Page Screenshot. Click the extension’s button your toolbar, wait briefly as the entire screen is captured, and then head to the new tab containing the screenshot ready for your annotations.

The intuitive toolbar along with the bottom lets you crop, flip, or rotate the screenshot. You also have tools to draw, add a shape or icon, insert text, use a mask, or apply a filter. With each annotation tool comes a small popup from the bottom letting you select the options for that particular tool.

When you finish, just hit the Download button to save your marked-up screenshot. As a bonus, you can upload your own image or file and annotate it with One Click Full Page Screenshot too.

4. qSnap

While qSnap does not offer as many capturing options as Awesome Screenshot or Nimbus, it does offer the same annotation options as the others. What makes qSnap different is that when you pop open the screenshot for annotating, you can see a list of all captures at the bottom and switch between them quickly. If you are marking up and saving multiple screenshots, this is a handy feature.

After you have completed editing, you can save or share individual screens or all of them at one time. The qSnap extension also lets you choose between PNG or JPG for your default image type and adjust the image for low, medium, or high quality.

5. Diigo Web Collector

Diigo Web Collector is a nice tool for capturing and annotating pages, images, and portions of articles. The first set of tools available allows you to take a screenshot of the page, save it for later, bookmark it, or share it quickly.

The second set of tools lets you mark up the page before even saving it. You can apply highlights, add a note, and see a list of those annotations without ever leaving the webpage.

Signing up for a free account gives you access to your library of saved items where you can edit your annotations, add more notes, and apply bulk edits. You can also share items, obtain a shareable link, create groups, search, and sort easily.

Diigo is also available for Android and iOS mobile devices. Plus, you can take a look at these ways to annotate screenshots on your Android device.

6. Hypothesis: Web & PDF Annotation

For easy page notes and annotations, check out Hypothesis: Web & PDF Annotation. After creating a free account, you can access the sidebar by clicking the button in your toolbar. You can then select and highlight text or add a note to the chosen text.

Sharing annotations and notes is simple with the shareable link you are provided along with options to pop it right onto Facebook, Twitter, Google Plus, or send it via email. All markups are done directly on the page, so you never have to leave the site.

Then, you can view annotations and notes which are neatly displayed in the sidebar. Hypothesis also offers features for searching, sorting, and creating private groups for sharing.

7. Annotate: Web Annotations With Screen Sharing

With all the markup tools you need, Annotate: Web Annotations with Screen Sharing is one final extension to check out. You can start simply by right-clicking text on a page to highlight it. Or click the button in the toolbar to open a panel with all the annotation tools.

Use a pen to draw, a marker for a thicker line, and an eraser if you need to make a change. You can also add text and use the text highlighter. The panel also includes a tool to hide your markups so you can see the original page if needed.

When you finish, use the capture tool to take a screenshot with your annotations. Then, head to your library of content on the Annotate.net website to obtain your item (free registration required). For an additional option, take a look at the screen sharing and recording options from Annotate.

Handy Chrome Extensions for Annotations

Some people prefer to save a webpage and open a separate application to complete their annotations. But with these convenient Chrome extensions for annotations, you simply don’t have to.

For other helpful tools, check out these fantastic Chrome extensions to make your tasks easier.

Read the full article: The 7 Best Annotation Tools for Google Chrome

Microsoft Ignite Returns as Two Online Events

The current COVID-19 pandemic has led to a lot of events being canceled. However, some of them have adapted and returned in a digital format. Those of you who wanted to go to this year’s Microsoft Ignite, for example, will be pleased to know that Microsoft has confirmed an online version of the event.

The Return of Microsoft Ignite

Microsoft Ignite is a developer-based conference which pairs professionals with those working within Microsoft.

Typically, this is a week-long event with interpersonal connections, but due to the pandemic, the event had to be cancelled. However, at the time of cancelation, Microsoft stated that it wanted to move the event online. And that has now happened.

Microsoft Ignite is twice as nice this year! We’ve transformed our week-long, in-person event into two free, 48-hour digital events. Interested in signing up? Here’s what you need to know. #MSIgnite https://t.co/axMJNZjoVI

— Chris Capossela (@chriscapossela) August 6, 2020

As announced on the Microsoft Blog, Ignite has finally returned. The company has split the event into two; one event will take place on September 22, 2020, and the second will arrive “early next year.” Microsoft has also confirmed that the second half will not replace Microsoft Build in 2021.

If you want to join in with Microsoft Ignite this year, registration opens on September 3. The event is free, and you gain access to the whole 48 hours that the event runs for.

Unfortunately, because of the pandemic, the Microsoft Ignite Tours won’t visit different cities in different countries. Instead, professionals from all around the world will meet up virtually during the online Microsoft Ignite events to impart their knowledge and expertise to attendees.

The Future for Technology Events?

Microsoft Ignite is not the first time that an event has been moved online. We’ve seen other big events, from E3 to Microsoft Build, shift to an online-only model due to the ongoing coronavirus crisis. And this creates an interesting technological challenge for the hosts.

These events are usually fantastic opportunities for industry professionals to network, but how is this possible when everyone’s stuck at home?

However, Microsoft has stated that the online event “includes the opportunity for local community meetups, [and] will have language localization.” As such, it will be interesting to see how Microsoft handles the challenge of bringing the entire world together under one digital roof.

A New Life for Microsoft Ignite

With the pandemic causing so many cancellations around the world, some have adapted to the new normal. If you want to sign up for Microsoft Ignite, be sure to book a free spot on September 3.

In the meantime, be sure to check out these free development tools from Microsoft.

Read the full article: Microsoft Ignite Returns as Two Online Events

Microsoft’s Your Phone App Can Now Run Android Apps on Your PC

Microsoft is designing the Your Phone app to be the best Android management app for Windows 10. And if you’re a Windows 10 Insider with an Android phone, you’ll be pleased to hear that Microsoft is updating the app to let you control Android apps on your PC.

What Does the Your Phone Update Add?

In the Windows Blog post covering the news, Microsoft explains what’s coming down the Insiders pipeline. The new update will show you all of the apps installed on your Android phone. When you click on an app, it boots up in a separate window within Windows 10.

Get ready to enjoy the best of multiple phone apps – social feeds, friends, even food delivery – right on your Windows 10 laptop. Coming soon! ??? #SamsungEvent pic.twitter.com/mP5OpKoieH

— Windows (@Windows) August 5, 2020

If you take a shine to a specific app, you can favorite it for quicker access. You can also put it in your Start menu, or pin it to your taskbar. The app list also shows the notification count, so you can keep up with all your WhatsApp messages as they arrive.

Who Can Use the Your Phone App Update?

Unfortunately, the Your Phone app update comes with some restrictions. Firstly, you need a compatible Samsung Galaxy phone to use the update. You can check if your Galaxy is compatible by visiting the supported devices for Your Phone page and clicking “What devices support Link to Windows?”

Secondly, you need a Windows 10 PC on the Dev, Beta, or Release Preview Channel. If you do, you just need to wait for the Your Phone update to reach your computer.

Unfortunately, even if you meet all of the requirements, the update is still under construction and has some nasty bugs. For instance, all app audio will play from your phone instead of your computer’s speakers. Also, if you launch an app that blocks screen sharing, it will show a black screen on your PC. Still, these bugs will surely be squashed over time.

The Next Step for Microsoft’s Your Phone App

Microsoft wants to build the Your Phone app so that you can fully use your Android device from the comfort of your PC. With the new Windows Insider update, you can now launch Android apps on your PC using your Samsung Galaxy device.

If this is the first time you’ve heard of this app, we have previously covered it in our guide explaining how to transfer photos and send texts from Android to PC.

Read the full article: Microsoft’s Your Phone App Can Now Run Android Apps on Your PC

Google to roll out its digital learning platform to 23 million students and teachers in India’s Maharashtra state

Google has partnered with one of the largest states in India to provide its digital classroom services to tens of millions of students and teachers, the search giant said today, as it makes a further education push in the world’s second largest internet market.

The company, which recently announced plans to invest $10 billion in India, said it had partnered with the government of the western state of Maharashtra that will see 23 million students and teachers access Google’s education offering at no charge.

Thursday’s announcement follows a recent survey by the Maharashtra government in which it had sought teachers’ interest in digital classroom alternatives. More than 150,000 teachers signed up for the program in less than 48 hours, Google said.

Maharashtra is the worst hit Indian state by COVID-19, with more than 460,000 confirmed cases. The state, like others in India, complied with New Delhi’s lockdown order in late March that prompted schools and other public places to close across the nation.

“All of us had questions regarding the future of education. We have come a step closer to answering these questions due to the pandemic,” said Uddhav Thackeray, chief minister of Maharashtra, in a statement.

Varsha Gaikwad, the education minister of Maharashtra, said the partnership with Google will help her department roll out tech solutions to students in about 190,000 schools.

“Our goal is to make Maharashtra the most progressive state in education by making effective use of online resources, platforms, bandwidth and technology, using the power of the internet to reach out to the masses and bridge the gap in education,” she said.

The pandemic, which has brought several sectors to their knees in the country, has accelerated the growth of startups that operate digital learning platforms in the country. Byju’s, Facebook-backed Unacademy, Vedantu and Toppr among other startups have amassed tens of millions of new students since March this year.

Google is providing students and teachers with a range of services, including G Suite for Education, Google Forms for conducting quizzes and tests, access to Google Meet video conferencing services and Google Classroom, which enables educators to create, review and organize assignments, as well as communicate directly with students.

The company said it has also made Teach from Anywhere, a hub for educators, in Marathi, a very popular language in the state of Maharashtra.

“Our teachers and schools have the huge responsibility in shaping the future of our new generation, and we continue to be honored to play a role in offering digital tools that can enable more teachers to help even more students stay firmly on their journey of learning, during these times and beyond,” wrote Sanjay Gupta, country head and vice president of Google India, in a blog post.

The company has rushed to work with educators in India in recent months. Last month, Google announced that it had partnered with the Central Board of Secondary Education, a government body that oversees education in private and public schools in India, to provide its education offerings to more than 1 million teachers across 22,000 schools in India.

It also unveiled a grant of $1 million to Kaivalya Education Foundation (KEF), a foundation in India that works with partners to provide underprivileged children with education opportunities from Google.org, Google’s philanthropic arm.

Google’s global rival, Facebook, also partnered with CBSE last month to launch a certified curriculum on digital safety and online well-being, and augmented reality for students and educators in the country.

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Grab launches new consumer financial services, including micro-investments and loans

Grab announced today that its financial unit, which previously focused mainly on services for entrepreneurs and small businesses, is launching a slew of consumer products, including micro-investments, loans, health insurance and a pay-later program.

Based in Singapore, Grab began in 2012 as a ride-hailing company before expanding into on-demand deliveries and other services. In January 2019, it formed a joint venture with ZhongAn Insurance to build a digital insurance marketplace. Since then, its financial services portfolio has grown through a series of partnerships and the acquisition of Bento, which allowed it to offer investment and wealth management services as well.

In February, Grab announced that it had raised up to $856 million to speed up development of its payments and financial services.

Grab raises up to $856M to boost payments business as rumors swirl of a merger with rival Gojek

Yesterday, Bloomberg reported that Grab raised $200 million from South Korean private equity firm Stic, bringing its total funding so far to more than $10 billion at a valuation of about $14.3 billion. A Grab spokesperson declined TechCrunch’s request for comment on that raise.

Tapping into a growing market

During a call with reporters today, when asked if Grab has a timeline for reaching profitability, Reuben Lai, senior managing director at Grab Financial Group, said there isn’t one yet, but “research has shown that there is a real demand for the products we are launching today. What we really want to do is focus on consumers and make sure we deliver products they use. We think profitability and sustainability will follow.”

Grab Financial Group’s new products include AutoInvest, a platform that allows consumers to invest small sums of money through Grab’s app; consumer loans; a buy now, pay later program; and expanded insurance offerings, including hospital insurance that will first launch in Indonesia.

While Grab’s new consumer products were in the works before the COVID-19 pandemic, Lai said the crisis has accelerated demand for services like online shopping, digital payments and insurance.

Grab’s consumer products will compete with services like StashAway, an online investment platform based in Singapore, but Lai said Grab Financial Group’s competitive edge is that there are already millions of Grab users in Southeast Asia. This gives it a built-in consumer base and also data to continually refresh the scoring models it uses to determine creditworthiness.

According to a 2019 report by e-Conomy Asia, a research program run by Google and Temasek, about 70% of people in Southeast Asia are “underbanked,” meaning that they lack access to credit cards or long-term savings products. Even in Singapore, one of Asia’s financial centers, about 40% of consumers qualify as underbanked. Bain and e-Conomy estimate that the digital financial services in Southeast Asia can generate $60 billion in revenue by 2025, making it a lucrative market for Grab.

Micro-investing and insurance

Most of the unit’s insurance was previously focused on Grab’s ecosystem, including drivers and merchants on its platform. But new products, like hospital coverage that will launch in Indonesia first to supplement the country’s national healthcare system, are targeted at consumers.

Chandrima Das, who founded Bento in 2016 and is now head of GrabInvest, said Grab’s new micro-investment solution will be accessible through Grab’s digital wallet. It allows users to invest as little as SGD $1 at a time into liquid fixed-income funds managed by Fullerton Fund Management and UOB Asset Management, with the potential to earn returns of about 1.8%. It will launch first in Singapore at the beginning of September.

While Grab Financial Group already offers working capital loans to drivers and financing for merchants on its platform, its new consumer credit products include PayLater, which allows users to pay for Grab services at the end of each month, and will first be available in Singapore and Malaysia.

The company is also offering consumer loans from third-party licensed banks and financial institutions with an application process that Ankur Mehrotra, Grab Financial Group’s head of lending, says is so simple “you can do it while sitting on your couch watching Netflix.”

Mehrotra said benefits of the program for merchants include increased gross merchandise value, larger basket sizes and lower cart abandonment rates.

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FCC invites public comment on Trump’s attempt to nerf Section 230

FCC Chairman Ajit Pai has decided to ask the public for its thoughts on an attempt initiated in Trump in May to water down certain protections that arguably led to the creation of the modern internet economy. The nakedly retaliatory order seems to be, legally speaking, laughable, and could be resolved without public input — but the FCC wants your opinion, so you may as well give it to them.

You can submit your comment here at the FCC’s long-suffering electronic comment filing system, but before you do so, perhaps acquaint yourself with a few facts.

Section 230 essentially prevents companies like Facebook and Google from being liable for content they merely host, as long as they work to take down illegal content quickly. Some feel these protections has given the companies the opportunity to manipulate speech on their platforms — Trump felt targeted by a fact-check warning placed by Twitter on his unsupported claims of fraud in mail-in warning.

To understand the order itself and see commentary from the companies that would be affected, as well as Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR), who co-authored the law in the first place, read our story from the day Trump signed the order. (Wyden called it “plainly illegal.”)

For a bipartisan legislative approach that actually addresses shortcomings in Section 230, check out the PACT Act announced in June. (Sen. Brian Schatz (D-HI) says they’re approaching the law “with a scalpel rather than a jackhammer.”)

FCC Commissioner disparages Trump’s social media order: ‘The decision is ours alone’

More relevant to the FCC’s proceedings, however, are the comments of sitting commissioner Brendan Starks, who questioned the order’s legality and ethics, likening it to a personal vendetta intended to intimidate certain companies. As he explained:

The broader debate about Section 230 long predates President Trump’s conflict with Twitter in particular, and there are so many smart people who believe the law here should be updated. But ultimately that debate belongs to Congress. That the president may find it more expedient to influence a five-member commission than a 538-member Congress is not a sufficient reason, much less a good one, to circumvent the constitutional function of our democratically elected representatives.

Incidentally, Starks may be who Pai is referring to in a memo announcing the commentary period. “I strongly disagree with those who demand that we ignore the law and deny the public and all stakeholders the opportunity to weigh in on this important issue. We should welcome vigorous debate—not foreclose it,” Pai wrote.

This may be a reference to Commissioner Starks’s suggestion that the FCC address the order quickly and authoritatively: “If, as I suspect it ultimately will, the petition fails at a legal question of authority, I think we should say it loud and clear, and close the book on this unfortunate detour,” he said. After all, public opinion doesn’t count for much if the order has no legal effect to begin with and the FCC doesn’t even have to consider how it might revisit Section 230.

Whatever the case, the proposal is ready for you to comment on it. To do so, visit this page and click, in the box on the left, “+New Filing” or “+Express” — the first is if you would like to submit a document or evidence in support of your opinion, and the second is if you just want to explain your position in plain text. Remember, this information will be filed publicly, so anything you put in those fields — name, address and everything — will be visible online.

To be clear, you’re commenting on the  NTIA proposal that the FCC draw up new rules regarding Section 230, which the executive order compelled that organization to send, not the executive order itself.

As with the net neutrality debacle, the FCC does not have to take your opinion into account, or reality for that matter. The comment period lasts 45 days, after which the item will likely go to internal deliberations at the Commission.

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What Is Puppy Linux? Everything You Need to Know

You probably know that Linux can run on most devices. You may even know that it can perform most tasks—for example, supercomputers, web servers, and even low spec systems.

One Linux distribution that is particularly adept at running on computers with minimal system specification and resources is Puppy Linux.

What Is Puppy Linux?

Originally released in 2003, Puppy Linux is a family of Linux operating systems that are fast, versatile, and compact.

The installation footprint of Puppy Linux is under 300MB, yet it comes ready with all the common daily apps you need. This makes it ready to use out of the box, which means it is suitable for everyone, whatever their age.

Further, there’s a nice macOS-style default dock to ensure simplicity on the desktop. And if you don’t like the way Puppy Linux looks, it’s customizable, with a selection of themes and desktop wallpapers.

Puppy Linux has been around for so long that it boasts considerable variety. Along with the various official versions, there are hundreds of “puplets”, custom Puppy Linux creations focused on specific requirements.

The small download size of Puppy Linux means that you can install it on an old-fashioned CD-ROM, a USB flash drive, an SD card, or any bootable storage media you can find. You can install Puppy Linux on a PC, in a virtual machine, or even a bootable USB device.

What Puppy Linux Isn’t

Now you know what Puppy Linux is. But what isn’t it?

Well, Puppy Linux isn’t like most other Linux distros. For a start off, it isn’t a single distribution. Rather, it is a collection of distributions with a shared philosophy.

These distributions are intended to “provide consistent behaviors and features” so it shouldn’t really matter which “flavor” you choose. Puppy Linux is divided in to three general groups:

• Official Puppy Linux distributions are for general purpose and maintained by the Puppy Linux team using a system build called Woof-CE
• “Woof-built” distributions built with Woof-CE are also available, mostly designed with specific needs in mind.
• Puplets, meanwhile, are the third type of Puppy Linux distribution, usually maintained by the Puppy Linux community. Among these are non-English puplets and special purpose puplets.

While Puppy Linux isn’t based on a specific distro, you’ll find versions built on Raspbian Buster (for the Raspberry Pi) and Ubuntu. There’s even a Slackware version.

Key Puppy Linux Features

As a lightweight Linux distribution, Puppy Linux isn’t going to give you anything fancy. While the desktop is pleasing to look at, the default view can be tweaked with a new theme or background if necessary.

In fact, one of the first things you’ll see when you boot Puppy Linux is the option to start customizing it.

Meanwhile, you can easily install additional applications. The Puppy Linux package manager delivers pretty much all the Linux software you can imagine, although many common dependencies are absent. As such, some apps and utilities may take some time to install.

What will you need to install? Well, here’s what you won’t need:

• Abiword
• HexChat
• PeasyPDF
• GIMP
• Inkscape
• Firewall
• DeaDBeeF
• Transmission
• Claws Mail
• Firefox (as the Light browser)

Further, Puppy Linux features a host of utilities covering everything from launchers to networking tools and media players.

Which Puppy Linux Should You Use?

With so many versions of Puppy Linux available, you might be wondering which is the best version to use.

Well, it really depends on what device you’re planning to use.

• If you have a modern 64-bit PC, use the Ubuntu Bionic 64-based BionicPup64. This is compatible with Ubuntu repositories.
• Want the benefit of an LTS (long term support) distro? Ubuntu Xenial’s XenialPup is available in 32 bit and 64-bit versions.
• For older systems, Ubuntu Tahr has 32- and 64- bit builds of TahrPup.
• Use a Raspberry Pi? Raspup is the obvious choice, and lighter than Raspbian Lite.
• For a barebones Linux experience, the Slackware-based SlackoPuppy has 32- and 64-bit builds.

As Puppy Linux is so compact, it won’t take you long to download and try them all out. Just download Puppy Linux to begin.

How to Install Puppy Linux

Installing is simple. Just copy the downloaded ISO to a bootable device, load it into your computer, restart, and wait for live boot menu.

The small size lets Puppy Linux boot on any CD or USB stick and run with a weak CPU and low amount of memory. If there’s no hard drive, Puppy Linux can run from any bootable USB device.

Ready to install? Fortunately, this is one of the easiest Linux installations you’ll come across. Select Applications > Setup > Puppy Installer then follow the instructions. These are a little different to what you would normally see installing an operating system.

You’ll be prompted to manually create a partition, using the preinstalled GParted partition manager. Take a moment to right-click the new partition and select the root flag to save time later. With the installation target device selected, confirm all options then choose the Frugal installation.

This has several benefits, e.g., saving your personal settings in a dedicated save file, improving dual booting, etc. It’s preferable to the Full installation, which should be saved for limited systems with slow CPUs.

The Frugal installation means that you need to save your session when shutting down Puppy Linux. However, the operating system is so lightweight that this is an acceptable concession. When you do this, click Save, select a name, choose encryption, then save to your preferred location. Also, if you’ve decided to rely purely on the live environment, any changes you’ve made can be saved in the same way.

Installation is completed once you install Grub4dos to create a boot menu. This is required whether you have other operating systems installed or not.

It’s simple, and ensures your settings are retained following a system upgrade.

Can You Use Puppy Linux on a High Spec PC?

If you have a low-spec computer, it makes sense to run something with lower resource requirements. But what if you have a top-end, high specification computer?

Well, you should be looking at an operating system that runs as fast as the system will allow. From a performance point of view, this could mean everything is slick, efficient, and fast. Critical updates will be installed as necessary, reducing exposure to security issues; some of these can cause performance slowdowns. Similarly, be sure to use the built-in firewall.

While some Linux distros preinstall elaborate themes available with the slickest desktop environments, Puppy Linux doesn’t. While you have the option to make your installation look amazing, if performance is your preference, this low-resource distro is a great option.

Looking for a Lightweight Linux Distro? Try Puppy Linux

The rest is up to you. You can do whatever you wish with Puppy Linux from here on out. Many people choose Puppy Linux over traditional distributions because it works, runs fast, and has great graphics for a lightweight distribution. Therefore, you get more work done quickly and have the distro stay out of your way so that it doesn’t bog you down.

Short of space but want to install Linux? Puppy Linux is only one of several lightweight Linux distros you should consider.

Read the full article: What Is Puppy Linux? Everything You Need to Know

Daily Crunch: Twitter and Facebook take action against Trump

Facebook and Twitter are taking a stronger stand against pandemic misinformation, we preview the latest version of macOS and a mental health startup raises $50 million. Here’s your Daily Crunch for August 6, 2020.

The big story: Twitter, Facebook take action against Trump misinformation

Facebook and Twitter both took action against a post from President Donald Trump and his campaign featuring a clip from a Fox News interview in which he misleadingly described children as “almost immune” to COVID-19. Facebook took down the offending post, while Twitter went further and locked the Trump campaign out of its account (separate from Trump’s personal account).

“The @TeamTrump Tweet you referenced is in violation of the Twitter Rules on COVID-19 misinformation,” Twitter’s Aly Pavela said in a statement. “The account owner will be required to remove the Tweet before they can Tweet again.”

Meanwhile, Twitter also announced today that it will be labeling accounts tied to state-controlled media organizations and government officials (but not heads of state).

The tech giants

macOS 11.0 Big Sur preview — Big Sur is the operating system’s first primary number upgrade in 20 years, and Brian Heater says it represents a big step forward in macOS’ evolution.

Apple 27-inch iMac review — This will be one of the last Macs to include Intel silicon.

Uber picks up Autocab to push into places its own app doesn’t go — Uber plans to use Autocab’s technology to link users with local providers when they open the app in locations where Uber doesn’t offer rides.

Startups, funding and venture capital

On-demand mental health service provider Ginger raises $50 million — Through Ginger’s services, patients have access to a care coordinator who serves as the first point of entry into a company’s mental health plans.

Mode raises $33 million to supercharge its analytics platform for data scientists — Mode has also been introducing tools for less technical users to structure queries that data scientists can subsequently execute more quickly and with more complete responses.

Crossbeam announces $25 million Series B to keep growing partnerships platform — Crossbeam is a Philadelphia startup that automates partnership data integration.

Advice and analysis from Extra Crunch

Can learning pods scale, or are they widening edtech’s digital divide? — In recent weeks, the concept has taken off all across the country.

Eight trends accelerating the age of commercial-ready quantum computing — Venrock’s Ethan Batraski writes that in the last 12 months, there have been meaningful breakthroughs in quantum computing from academia, venture-backed companies and industry.

5 VCs on the future of Michigan’s startup ecosystem — According to the Michigan Venture Capital Association (MVCA), there are 144 venture-backed startup companies in Michigan, up 12% over the last five years.

(Reminder: Extra Crunch is our subscription membership program, which aims to democratize information about startups. You can sign up here.)

Everything else

More Chinese phone makers could lose US apps under Trump’s Clean Network — The Trump administration’s five-pronged Clean Network initiative aims to strip away Chinese phone makers’ ability to pre-install and download U.S. apps.

UK reported to be ditching coronavirus contact tracing in favor of ‘risk rating’ app — Reports suggest a launch of the much-delayed software will happen this month, but also that the app will no longer be able to automatically carry out contact tracing.

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 3pm Pacific, you can subscribe here.

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MediaPipe Iris: Real-time Iris Tracking & Depth Estimation

Posted by Andrey Vakunov and Dmitry Lagun, Research Engineers, Google Research

A wide range of real-world applications, including computational photography (e.g., portrait mode and glint reflections) and augmented reality effects (e.g., virtual avatars) rely on estimating eye position by tracking the iris. Once accurate iris tracking is available, we show that it is possible to determine the metric distance from the camera to the user — without the use of a dedicated depth sensor. This, in-turn, can improve a variety of use cases, ranging from computational photography, over virtual try-on of properly sized glasses and hats to usability enhancements that adopt the font size depending on the viewer’s distance.

Iris tracking is a challenging task to solve on mobile devices, due to limited computing resources, variable light conditions and the presence of occlusions, such as hair or people squinting. Often, sophisticated specialized hardware is employed, limiting the range of devices on which the solution could be applied.

FaceMesh can be adopted to drive virtual avatars (middle). By additionally employing iris tracking (right), the avatar’s liveliness is significantly enhanced.

An example of eye re-coloring enabled by MediaPipe Iris.

Today, we announce the release of MediaPipe Iris, a new machine learning model for accurate iris estimation. Building on our work on MediaPipe Face Mesh, this model is able to track landmarks involving the iris, pupil and the eye contours using a single RGB camera, in real-time, without the need for specialized hardware. Through use of iris landmarks, the model is also able to determine the metric distance between the subject and the camera with relative error less than 10% without the use of depth sensor. Note that iris tracking does not infer the location at which people are looking, nor does it provide any form of identity recognition. Thanks to the fact that this system is implemented in MediaPipe — an open source cross-platform framework for researchers and developers to build world-class ML solutions and applications — it can run on most modern mobile phones, desktops, laptops and even on the web.

Usability prototype for far-sighted individuals: observed font size remains constant independent of the device distance from the user.

An ML Pipeline for Iris Tracking
The first step in the pipeline leverages our previous work on 3D Face Meshes, which uses high-fidelity facial landmarks to generate a mesh of the approximate face geometry. From this mesh, we isolate the eye region in the original image for use in the iris tracking model. The problem is then divided into two parts: eye contour estimation and iris location. We designed a multi-task model consisting of a unified encoder with a separate component for each task, which allowed us to use task-specific training data.

Examples of iris (blue) and eyelid (red) tracking.

To train the model from the cropped eye region, we manually annotated ~50k images, representing a variety of illumination conditions and head poses from geographically diverse regions, as shown below.

Eye region annotated with eyelid (red) and iris (blue) contours.

Cropped eye regions form the input to the model, which predicts landmarks via separate components.

Depth-from-Iris: Depth Estimation from a Single Image
Our iris-tracking model is able to determine the metric distance of a subject to the camera with less than 10% error, without requiring any specialized hardware. This is done by relying on the fact that the horizontal iris diameter of the human eye remains roughly constant at 11.7±0.5 mm across a wide population [1, 2, 3, 4], along with some simple geometric arguments. For illustration, consider a pinhole camera model projecting onto a sensor of square pixels. The distance to a subject can be estimated from facial landmarks by using the focal length of the camera, which can be obtained using camera capture APIs or directly from the EXIF metadata of a captured image, along with other camera intrinsic parameters. Given the focal length, the distance from the subject to the camera is directly proportional to the physical size of the subject’s eye, as visualized below.

The distance of the subject (d) can be computed from the focal length (f) and the size of the iris using similar triangles.

Left: MediaPipe Iris predicting metric distance in cm on a Pixel 2 from iris tracking alone, without the use of a depth sensor. Right: Ground-truth depth.

In order to quantify the accuracy of the method, we compared it to the depth sensor on an iPhone 11 by collecting front-facing, synchronized video and depth images on over 200 participants. We experimentally verified the error of the iPhone 11 depth sensor to be < 2% for distances up to 2 meters, using a laser ranging device. Our evaluation shows that our approach for depth estimation using iris size has a mean relative error of 4.3% and standard deviation of 2.4%. We tested our approach on participants with and without eyeglasses (not accounting for contact lenses on participants) and found that eyeglasses increase the mean relative error slightly to 4.8% (standard deviation 3.1%). We did not test this approach on participants with any eye diseases (like arcus senilis or pannus). Considering MediaPipe Iris requires no specialized hardware, these results suggest it may be possible to obtain metric depth from a single image on devices with a wide range of cost-points.

Histogram of estimation errors (left) and comparison of actual to estimated distance by iris (right).

Release of MediaPipe Iris
We are releasing the iris and depth estimation models as a cross-platform MediaPipe pipeline that can run on desktop, mobile and the web. As described in our recent Google Developer Blog post on MediaPipe on the web, we leverage WebAssembly and XNNPACK to run our Iris ML pipeline locally in the browser, without any data being sent to the cloud.

Using MediaPipe’s WASM stack, you can run the models locally in your browser! Left: Iris tracking. Right: Depth from Iris computed just from a photo with EXIF data. Iris tracking can be tried out here and iris depth measurements here.

Future Directions
We plan to extend our MediaPipe Iris model with even more stable tracking for lower error and deploy it for accessibility use cases. We strongly believe in sharing code that enables reproducible research, rapid experimentation, and development of new ideas in different areas. In our documentation and the accompanying Model Card, we detail the intended uses, limitations and model fairness to ensure that use of these models aligns with Google’s AI Principles. Note, that any form of surveillance or identification is explicitly out of scope and not enabled by this technology. We hope that providing this iris perception functionality to the wider research and development community will result in an emergence of creative use cases, stimulating responsible new applications and new research avenues.

For more ML solutions from MediaPipe, please see our solutions page and Google Developer blog for the latest updates.

Acknowledgements
We would like to thank Artsiom Ablavatski, Andrei Tkachenka, Buck Bourdon, Ivan Grishchenko and Gregory Karpiak for support in model evaluation and data collection; Yury Kartynnik, Valentin Bazarevsky, Artsiom Ablavatski for developing the mesh technology; Aliaksandr Shyrokau and the annotation team for their diligence to data preparation; Vidhya Navalpakkam, Tomer, Tomer Shekel, Kai Kohlhoff for their domain expertise, Fan Zhang, Esha Uboweja, Tyler Mullen, Michael Hays and Chuo-Ling Chang for help to integrate the model to MediaPipe; Matthias Grundmann, Florian Schroff and Ming Guang Yong for continuous help for building this technology.