Almost every word in the name of TAG Heuer’s new watch – the Carrera Calibre Heuer 02T Tourbillon Nanograph – is important. Carrera connects it to TAG’s long history of chronographs while Calibre suggests a handmade watch made with some technical prowess. Tourbillon means you can expect this thing to cost more than a car (about $25,000 when it goes on sale) and Nanograph suggests that this thing is doing something quite unique. And it is.
TAG Heuer loves experimenting with new materials and the Nanograph features a new hairspring design that is unique to TAG. The hairspring, which is made of carbon-composite, is lightweight and unaffected by gravity or shock. It also offers “perfect concentric oscillations” and is completely antimagnetic. Couple that with the rotating tourbillon and the suggestion is that this watch will remain accurate under all sorts of pressure.
Further, rest of the movement includes carbon fiber and aluminum which reduces the effects of temperature and looks pretty darn cool. It doesn’t do much – it basically shows elapsed time – but it does it in a decidedly sexy way.
“This new interpretation of the TAG Heuer Carrera with its advanced in-house technology underscores our legacy in achieving watchmaking excellence and proves that we remain true to our values of performance, disruption and avant-garde,” said TAG CEO Stéphane Bianchi.
It is quite fascinating to note the range materials that went into this little mechanical marvel are surprisingly new. Not many manufacturers are using carbon fiber in this way and the fact that it’s going into a chronograph mechanical watch for less than $100,000 is surprising. Now you just have to convince yourself to spend $25,000 on a watch.
Pandora today announced the launch of its own, in-app voice assistant which you can call up at any time by saying “Hey Pandora,” followed by a request to play the music or podcasts you want to hear. The feature will allow you to not only control music playback with commands to play a specific artist, album, radio or playlist, but will also be capable of delivering results customized to you when responding to vague commands or those related to activity or mood. For example, you’ll get personalized results for requests like “play something new,” “play more like this,” “play music for relaxing,” “play workout music,””play something I like,” and others.
The company reports strong adoption of its service on voice-activated speakers, like Amazon Echo devices, where now millions of listeners launch Pandora music by speaking – a trend which inspired the move to launch in-app voice control.
“Voice is just an expected new way that you engage with any app,” notes Pandora Chief Product Officer Chris Phillips. “On the mobile app, we’re doing more than just your typical request against the catalog… asking: ‘hey, Pandora,’ to search and play or pause or skip,” he says. “What we’re doing that we think is pretty special is we’re taking that voice utterance of what someone asks for, and we’re applying our personalized recommendations to the response,” Phillips explains.
That means when you ask Pandora to play you something new, the app will return a selection that won’t resemble everyone else’s music, but will rather be informed by your own listening habits and personal tastes.
The way that result is returned may also vary – for some, it could be a playlist, for others an album, and for others, it could be just a new song, a personalized soundtrack, or a radio station.
“Play something new” isn’t the only command that will yield a personalized response, Pandora says. It will also return personalized results for commands related to your mood or activity – like workout music, something to relax to, music for cooking, and more.
For podcasts, it can dig up episodes with a specific guest, play shows by title, or even deliver show recommendations, among other things.
Voice commands can be used in lieu of pressing buttons, too, in order to do things like add songs to a playlist or giving a song you like a thumbs up, for instance.
The new feature, called “Voice Mode,” taps into Pandora’s machine learning and data science capabilities, which is an active battleground between music services.
Spotify, for example, is well known for its deep personalized with its Discover Weekly and other custom playlists, like its Daily Mixes. But its own “voice mode” option is only available for its Premium users, according to a FAQ on the company’s website.
Pandora, meanwhile, is planning to roll out Voice Mode to all users – both free and paid.
For free users, the feature will work in conjunction with an existing ad product that allows users to opt in to watch a video in order to gain temporary access to Pandora’s on-demand service.
While this option is not live at launch, the plan is to allow any user to use the “Hey Pandora” command, then redirect free users with a request to play music on demand to instead play the opt-in ad first.
Pandora Voice Mode will launch today, January 15 to a percentage of the iOS and Android user base – around a million listeners. The company will track the speed, accuracy and performance of its results before rolling it out more broadly over the next couple of months.
Users with a Google Home device can also cast from their Pandora app to their smart speaker, and a similar feature will arrive on Alexa devices soon, the company believes.
Pandora works with Siri Shortcuts, too. That means you can now use voice to launch the app itself, then play a personalized selection of music without having to touch your phone at all.
Voice Mode will be available in the Pandora app via the search bar next to the magnifying glass.
Qualcomm has had a patent lawsuit against Apple dismissed by a court in Mannheim, Germany, as groundless (via Reuters).
The chipmaker had argued Intel-powered iPhones infringed a transistor switch patent it holds. But in an initial verbal decision the court disagreed. Qualcomm has said it will appeal.
In a statement, Don Rosenberg, Qualcomm’s executive VP and general counsel, said: “Apple has a history of infringing our patents. While we disagree with the Mannheim court’s decision and will appeal, we will continue to enforce our [intellectual property] rights against Apple worldwide.”
We’ve reached out to Apple for comment.
The pair have been embroiled in an increasingly bitter and global legal battle in recent years, as Apple has shifted away from using Qualcomm chips in its devices.
Two years ago the FTC also filed charges against the chipmaker accusing it of anticompetitive tactics in an attempt to maintain a monopoly (Apple is officially cited in the complaint). That trial began early this month.
While the latest court decision in Mannheim has gone in Apple’s favor, a separate ruling in Germany late last year went Qualcomm’s way. And earlier this month Apple was forced to withdraw the iPhone 7 and 8 from its retail stores in Germany, after Qualcomm posted €1.34BN in security bonds to enforce the December court decision — which related to a power management patent.
Although the affected iPhone models remain on sale in Germany via resellers. Apple is also appealing.
Qualcomm also recently secured a preliminary injunction banning the import and sales of some older iPhone models in China. Again, Apple is appealing.
Facebook plans to make a significant investment in local news over the next three years, with $300 million going to a variety of initiatives and organizations.
The company has had a rocky relationship with news publishers recently. While it’s funded programming from partners like CNN and Fox News, it’s also played a role in some of the industry’s most dispiriting trends, like the so-called “pivot to video” — and several of the digital publishers that bet big on the platform have been struggling (to say the least).
So initiatives like this one (and a similar investment that Google announced last year) can seem like attempts to ameliorate the damage that the big digital platforms have already done to the news ecosystem. Or perhaps they’re simply protecting an important content source at a time when the local news business is under tremendous pressure.
Regardless of motivation, if it helps, it helps.
As for why Facebook is focusing on local news specifically, Vice President of Global News Partnerships Campbell Brown said in a blog post that after examining “what kind of news people want to see on Facebook” and talking to industry partners, “We heard one consistent answer: people want more local news, and local newsrooms are looking for more support.”
Brown said the investments will go into two broad areas — supporting journalists and newsrooms in the newsgathering process, and helping them build sustainable business models. More specifically, the company says it will invest:
$5 million in the Pulitzer Center (with a $5 million matching gift from Emily Rauh Pulitzer) to launch “Bringing Stories Home,” an initiative offering reporting grants to cover topics that affect local communities.
$2 million in Report for America, an initiative to place 1,000 journalists in local newsrooms across America over the next five years.
$1 million for the Knight-Lenfest Local News Transformation Fund, which is trying to create a hub for evaluating and improving how technology is used in U.S. newsrooms.
a $1 million investment in the Local Media Association and the Local Media Consortium, to helping their 2,000-plus member newsrooms develop branded content revenue streams (both on and off Facebook).
a $1 million commitment to the American Journalism Project, which is using “venture philanthropy” to support local news organizations.
$6 million for the Community News Project, which is partnering with U.K. publishers to recruit trainee “community journalists” and place them in local newsrooms over a two-year period.
More than $20 million to expand Facebook’s Accelerator program to help local publishers with their membership and subscription models.
“We are grateful for Facebook’s commitment to helping us meet the challenges of today’s journalism, especially in smaller cities where the survival of news outlets depends on new models of reporting and community engagement,” said Pulitzer Center founder and executive director Jon Sawyer in a statement. “We also applaud Facebook’s commitment to the editorial independence that is absolutely essential to our success.”
ByteDance, the world’s most-valued startup, just launched a new social media product under its Douyin brand in what many people see as a serious attempt to challenge WeChat.
Tencent has long dominated China’s social networking space with WeChat and QQ. WeChat claims to have one billion monthly active users worldwide, most of whom are in China. Its older sibling QQ managed to survive the country’s transition from PC to mobile and still have a good chunk of 800 million MAUs at last count.
Over the years Tencent has drawn contenders from all fronts. Ecommerce behemoth Alibaba was one, whose app “Laiwang” to take on WeChat later pivoted to a Slack-like product for enterprise communication.
Now ByteDance is in the spotlight with its new brainchild, Duoshan. The app comes as a mix of TikTok, which is called Douyin in China, and Snap, to bet on a 5G-powered future in which new generations prefer using ephemeral videos to communicate.
Unlike TikTok, which incentivizes users to follow celebrities and strangers, Duoshan is built for private messaging. It offers a dazzling selection of special effects and filters as most other short-video apps do these days. The twist is that videos disappear after 72 hours to provide stress-free, off-the-cuff sharing, a need that WeChat also noticed and prompted the giant to come up with its own Snap-like Stories feature recently.
Screenshots of Duoshan. Image: ByteDance
“We are seeing more and more Douyin users share their videos through other social media platforms and channels,” Douyin’s president Zhang Nan said in a statement. “With the launch of Duoshan, we are creating our first video-based social messaging app to allow users to share their creativity and interact directly with their family and friends.”
You may not know ByteDance, but its suite of media apps are turning heads all over the world thanks to millions of dollars spent on advertising. TikTok, which swallowed up Musical.ly last year, claims to have more than 250 million daily active users with MAUs reaching 500 million. That solid user base will surely help Duoshan during its initial user acquisition as the app allows easy login for existing Douyin users.
While TikTok is not a direct threat to WeChat — for it’s built for media consumption and WeChat is more of a tool for communication and a platform to run daily errands — Tencent did respond with a dozen of video apps over the past year to play catch-up. Now, Duoshan appears to be going after WeChat’s core — instant messaging.
“We hope WeChat doesn’t see [Duoshan] as a competitor. What they do in essence is to build an ‘infrastructure’. We, on the other hand, is only going after people who are closest to you,” Chen Lin, the newly appointed chief operating officer of ByteDance’s news app Jinri Toutiao said at a press event today.
Two other high-profile entrepreneurs are joining ByteDance to roll out their own social apps today. Smartisan, who backed a WeChat rival that turned out to be a blip, is announcing the product tonight in China. The other challenger is Wang Xin, a pioneer in China’s online video-streaming space who was sentenced to jail in 2016 after being charged with providing easy access to pornography. His take on social media — Matong — is already live and is greeted with such warm reception that its server went down.
Duoshan has got many people excited. Some of the top trending words on Weibo, China’s closest answer to Twitter, today are linked to ByteDance’s move, such as “social”, “waging a war” and “Zhang Yiming,” who founded ByteDance in 2012.
Since launch, Google Chrome has tried to protect users from the worst elements of the web. This is why you no longer see pop-ups, and are warned when you navigate to a site containing malware. And now Google Chrome will filter out the worst online advertising.
Essentially, as part of the Coalition for Better Ads, Google applies a set of standards, and filters out ads that don’t abide by the rules. If a website is found to be employing bad ads, Google will block all ads on that site until it cleans up its act.
Expanding Chrome’s Ad-Blocking
Chrome already filters ads in North America and Europe, but on the Chromium Blog, Google announced it’s expanding its Better Ads Standards worldwide. So, beginning on July 9, Chrome will punish sites serving bad ads to users, regardless of location.
"If you operate a website that shows ads, you should consider reviewing your site status in the Ad Experience Report" https://t.co/YjrGMPzLcB
All being well, users won’t notice anything different. When you navigate to a site Google will check to see if it’s abiding by the rules. If not, you’ll see a message saying all ads are blocked on the domain. It’s then up to you if you want to allow ads on the site.
If you own a website in a country outside North America and Europe, Google recommends you run the Ad Experience Tool. This will test the ads displayed on your site, and if issues are discovered, give you the opportunity to resolve them.
Google Wants to Improve Online Ads
To be clear, this isn’t an ad blocker designed to block all ads from the internet. Instead, it’s Google trying to improve the quality of ads. By making online advertising more tolerable, Google wants to ensure ads remain a part of the web for decades to come.
A new study is making waves in the worlds of tech and psychology by questioning the basis of thousands of paper and analyses with conflicting conclusions on the effect of screen time on well-being. The researchers claim is that the science doesn’t agree because it’s bad science. So is screen time good or bad? It’s not that simple.
The conclusions only make the mildest of claims about screen time, essentially that as defined it has about as much effect on well-being as potato consumption. Instinctively we may feel that not to be true; technology surely has a greater effect than that — but if it does, we haven’t found a way to judge it accurately.
The paper, by Oxford scientists Amy Orben and Andrew Przybylski, amounts to a sort of king-sized meta-analysis of studies that come to some conclusion about the relationship between technology and well-being among young people.
Their concern was that the large datasets and statistical methods employed by researchers looking into the question — for example, thousands and thousands of survey responses interacting with weeks of tracking data for each respondent — allowed for anomalies or false positives to be claimed as significant conclusions. It’s not that people are doing this on purpose necessarily, only that it’s a natural result of the approach many are taking.
“Unfortunately,” write the researchers in the paper, “the large number of participants in these designs means that small effects are easily publishable and, if positive, garner outsized press and policy attention.” (We’re a part of that equation, of course, but speaking for myself at least I try to include a grain of salt with such studies, indeed with this one as well.)
In order to show this, the researchers essentially redid the statistical analysis for several of these large datasets (Orben explains the process here), but instead of only choosing one result to present, they collected all the plausible ones they could find.
For example, imagine a study where the app use of a group of kids was tracked, and they were surveyed regularly on a variety of measures. The resulting (fictitious, I hasten to add) paper might say it found kids who use Instagram for more than two hours a day are three times as likely to suffer depressive episodes or suicidal ideations. What the paper doesn’t say, and which this new analysis could show, is that the bottom quartile is far more likely to suffer from ADHD, or the top five percent reported feeling they had a strong support network.
In the new study, any and all statistically significant results like those I just made up are detected and compared with one another. Maybe a study came out six months later that found the exact opposite in terms of ADHD but also didn’t state it as a conclusion.
This figure from the paper shows a few example behaviors that have more or less of an effect on well-being.
Ultimately what the Oxford study found was that there is no consistent good or bad effect, and although a very slight negative effect was noted, it was small enough that factors like having a single parent or needing to wear glasses were far more important.
Yet, and this is important to understand, the study does not conclude that technology has no negative or positive effect; such a broad conclusion would be untenable on its face. The data it rounds up are (as some experts point out with no ill will towards the paper) simply inadequate to the task and technology use is too variable to reduce to single factor. Its conclusion is that studies so far have in fact been inconclusive and we need to go back to the drawing board.
“The nuanced picture provided by these results is in line with previous psychological and epidemiological research suggesting that the associations between digital screen-time and child outcomes are not as simple as many might think,” the researchers write.
Could, for example, social media use affect self-worth, either positively or negatively? Could be! But the ways that scientists have gone about trying to find out have, it seems, been inadequate.
In the future, the authors suggest, researchers should not only design their experiments more carefully, but be more transparent about their analysis. By committing to document all significant links in the dataset they create, whether they fit the narrative or hypothesis or go against it, researchers show that they have not rigged the study from the start. Designing and iterating with this responsibility in mind will produce better studies and perhaps even some real conclusions.
What should parents, teachers, siblings, and others take away from this? Not anything about screen time or whether tech is good or bad, certainly. Rather let it be another instance of the frequently learned lesson that science is a work in progress and must be considered very critically before application.
Your kid is an individual and things like social media and technology affect them differently from other kids; it may very well be that your informed opinion of their character and habits, tempered with that of a teacher or psychologist, is far more accurate than the “latest study.”
Starting in the next few days, the Google Assistant on Android and iOS will be able to check you in to your flights. For now, you’ll only be able to use this feature for domestic flights on United Airlines, though, but the promise is to expand this to other airlines over time. To give this a try, you just say “Hey Google, check in to my flight” and off you go, ready to enjoy your stroopwafel once you step on board.
The Assistant will walk you through the check-in process, so it’s not all 100 percent automatic, but it still looks like a good user experience overall. If you’re all about being in control, changing your seats and checking the status of your upgrades, though, chances are you’ll still want to stick with the airline’s own app.In addition to now being able to check you in to your flights, the Assistant can now also book hotels for you. To do this, Google has partnered with Choice Hotels, AccorHotels, InterContinental Hotels Group, Priceline, Mirai and Travelclick. To do that, you already need to know where you want to stay and which hotel you want to book, so I’m never quite sure how useful a feature like this really is in day-to-day life. If you’re regularly staying at the same hotel on every trip, though, and maybe don’t care to shop around, then I guess this could save you a few clicks.
This year’s CES 2019 team at MakeUseOf ran eight members strong, and it was the perfect size to cover all the nooks and crannies of the event within the four days it ran. For half of us, CES 2019 was the very first CES we’ve ever experienced, while the rest of us have had a taste and already knew what to expect.
We thought it’d be interesting to hear what our team thought of CES 2019 and what we took away from it as the booths wound down and came to a close.
James Frew, Staff Writer
CES’s reputation as the world’s largest tech conference is well-established, so as I gathered my belongings for the trip to Las Vegas, I was prepared for an overwhelming experience. The airport was crammed with CES badge pickup booths, so I grabbed my badge and ventured on. This was one of the first times I’d met many of the MakeUseOf team, so even that in itself was worth the trip. I spent most of the conference at the Las Vegas Convention Center, right across the street from our Airbnb. A casual stroll and I was surrounded by some of the newest products from many of the world’s largest technology companies.
I always try to keep a sense of wonder about how far the consumer tech industry has come in the past few decades, but at CES it was easy to feel jaded about the marginal improvements, excessive cost, and marketing gimmicks. That said, looking past the noise, I did find some products that made me genuinely excited. While many of my colleagues had to venture to the other CES venues, I was able to spend most of my time in the largest and experienced some of the best CES had to offer.
Dan Price, Senior Writer
Throngs of people, endless noise, bright lights, and a desire to keep going back for more. Not the casinos of Las Vegas, but the CES technology show which has been in town all week.
CES isn’t for the faint hearted. The traffic is terrible, the lines for public transport stretch as far as the eye can see, and you need elbows made of steel if you want to force your way to the front of the most popular booths.
But in typical Las Vegas style, it also has a strange attraction. Just ask the people who queued for more than two hours to play Google’s gumball machine. The dream? To win a Pixel 3. The reality? Most people walked away with a hat.
Covering the show from a media standpoint also brought its own challenges. The free lunches were surprisingly good. The number of plug sockets and ethernet points, less so.
And what about the tech itself? At one end of the scale, it’s awe-inspiring. Beautiful new laptops, cutting-edge haptics technology, and the latest developments in VR all caught the eye. At the other end, companies selling “unique” iPhone cases in bulk don’t exactly inspire excitement.
So as the world’s tech community spends the next two weeks recovering from “CES-itis” (yes, we all got sick), many people will be left wondering why they even bothered, vowing never to return. But come January 2020, will we all be back? You bet.
Ben Stegner, Deputy Editor
CES 2019 was the first time I’ve experienced a show like this. I expected cutting-edge technology you can’t find anywhere else. In reality, a fair bit of the products on display were copycats of items we’ve seen before, or cheap junk that you’d walk past at your local mall. But there’s something about being here that’s really special.
Cruising the confusing show floor and navigating the app’s map to find the booths you’ve bookmarked, then interviewing the rep and furiously taking notes, is quite a process. But flashing your media badge to waltz into the lounge and get your posts written is a cool feeling. The free lunch helps, too.
As expected, there is some mind-blowing tech to see here. It’s so far off and too expensive to even think about using it in the near future, but cool to see the latest innovations. My favorite products of this show were standard products redone with a focus on making them easy for non-techy people. For instance, we saw a portable hotspot that had great app and simple setup process, as well as new routers with a great app for managing your network.
I’m honored to have been at CES. Finally meeting people who I’ve worked with for nearly five years but never met in person is exciting, and we’ve had such a great time together. My expectations were pretty much met, and I’m glad I came.
Dave LeClair, Hardware News Editor
Last year I wrote a whole article about how underwhelmed I was by everything I saw at the Consumer Electronics Show. In spite of that, I actually came away from this year’s show with a fairly positive outlook on where the technology world is going.
Sure, a lot of what’s out there isn’t coming anytime soon, but this year we saw some pretty impressive advancements in the VR space that are actually available now. We saw drones that work underwater, haptic feedback that’s actually being used in real-world applications, and plenty more. Plus, we’re seeing the early stages of 8K, which could be a game-changer for the home entertainment world.
So while I wasn’t necessarily blown away by much at CES, I can definitely say that I wasn’t underwhelmed either. I’m even more excited to see what 2019 holds. Plus, I got to spend some quality time with my fellow MakeUseOf writers, and that blows away anything on the show floor.
Joel Lee, Editor in Chief
If CES 2019 has confirmed anything for me, it’s to never judge a book (or booth) by its cover. Walking through the show floors each day, it’s amazing how often we were drawn to flashy and impressive booths only to be disappointed by what we found there. In fact, my favorite finds were at some of the most regular-looking booths.
Take underwater drones, for example. One company—the one with a bright and inviting booth—wooed us with their yet-unreleased drone that could dive to a depth up to 40 meters with a slated release price of $2,500. A few steps over, in the most depressing booth I saw at this year’s CES, another company showed off their already-available drone that dove down to 100 meters and had a price tag of $1,500.
This is the kind of thing that happened all throughout the event, with some of our most favorite finds—such as the Jabra Elite 85h wireless noise-canceling headphones—tucked away in the lesser-walked halls of CES.
What a fantastic time we had. So much walking, so much ooh-ing and ah-ing, so many moments of intrigue and novelty. But it was a good wake-up call for me: stop going with the flow and learn to take a step back, to look beyond the surface of what’s presented. Be willing to give the benefit of the doubt, because you never know what you’ll find if you just give that booth a chance.
And it should go without saying, but we have the best team in the world. I thoroughly enjoyed every single day spent with my colleagues, who quickly became my friends.
Tina Sieber, Chief of Operations
2019 was my second CES and my sixth technology trade show overall (3 x IFA and 1 x CeBit). At IFA, the European CES, once the media days are over, the show is open to the public. You’ll see families with kids and groups of teenagers roaming the show floors. Not so at CES.
CES is hardcore business, kids are banned, and the audience is overwhelmingly male. This was a bit of a culture shock for me in 2018. In 2019, however, I noticed a small shift, with more women among the audience. And according to official numbers, four out of nine keynote speakers were women, compared to zero in 2017 and 2018. Progress.
Having family in Vegas (of all places), I’ve come here every few years since I was a kid and it feels like a different city every time. With CES in town, Vegas is even more overwhelming than on a “normal” day. The traffic is insane, the exhibition is packed, and unless you know what you want to see, the amount of mesmerizing tech might leave you paralyzed.
It’s also impossible to see all of CES, even if you’re well organized. While most new products I saw only received incremental improvements, I’m in awe at how close technology has come to the SciFi dreams of my childhood. Drones and robots, man! I’m also most easily impressed by simple products, which is why my favorite item at CES 2019 was a laptop stand.
Thanks to the size of the venues, we easily hit our 10 thousand steps a day and by the end of day 3, my body invoiced me. Like many others who spent a week with poor sleep and rubbing elbows with more than 180 thousand people, I caught a cold. It cost me a night of playing board games with my colleagues.
Unfortunately, multiple Google accounts come with a problem: multiple sign-ins on the desktop and mobile devices. Which one is the default account? And if it’s not the one you want, how can you change the default Google sign-in to the one you want?
Believe it or not, Google has a simple solution.
How to Set Your Default Google Account
Multiple sign-ins used to be a mess, but now it’s more seamless than ever before. This feature allows you to view the content of your other accounts while logged into one. But you can’t use some of the Google tools from two accounts at one time (e.g. Google Drive) unless you choose one.
Google defaults to the first account you logged in with. This is the rule you will see in action every time. The Google menu at the top-right also suggests the default account when you use multiple sign-ins.
This is what Google says:
“In many cases, your default account is the one you signed in with first. On mobile devices, your default account can vary depending on your device’s operating system and the apps you use.”
So, the solution to set a default account:
Go to any Google site sign-in page in a non-incognito window.
Log out of all your Google accounts. Select your profile picture on the top-right and then click Sign out from the menu.
Go to gmail.com and sign in with the account you want to set as the default account. Remember, the first account you log in to becomes the default always. Test this by signing into any other Google service (like Google Drive) and see for yourself.
After you have signed in to your default account, you can sign in to any other Google account and switch between them.
Again, select your profile image from the top-right. On the menu, choose Add account. Use your credentials to sign in to the account you want to use.
This isn’t a bother for someone who uses a single Google account. But it can be important for those of us who have multiple Gmail accounts separated as work and personal. Remembering the right account can save you time and energy.
Here are a few common scenarios:
One of your accounts might have a different language setting than the others.
You might be using Google Apps on a work account and regular Gmail for personal stuff.
Some of your accounts may have two-factor authentication set up.
You might have different privacy rules for each account.
Do note that Google settings aren’t shared between multiple accounts. Though, there can be a few exceptions like Web & App Activity and Ads Personalization settings.
Extra Tips to Manage Multiple Accounts
Thanks to the easy switch feature, multiple Gmail (or any other Google app) account management is less of a hassle. But a few annoyances do pop up. Maybe, you have tried to open a shared link and Google tells you don’t have permission with the default account.
Here are a few more tips to make managing multiple Google accounts easier and save you a few clicking trips.
Use a distinct profile image with each Google account.
Want temporary access to a Google account other than your default? Use a browser’s Incognito mode to sign-in.
For easy switching, log into your Google accounts in your preferred order when you sit down to work. Then close the tabs for the accounts you don’t need. You can switch anytime without signing in till you log out.
Set up sharing privileges for files and folders you use often between two accounts. You don’t need to keep two accounts open with “edit permissions on a shared file or folder.
Google Backup & Sync allows you to log in with three accounts only. Chose the preferred account and change the Google Drive folder’s location for each so that they do not conflict.
Use different Chrome profiles for different Google accounts. For instance, you might like to operate personal and work accounts with a different set of extensions.
Use a Chrome extension like SessionBox to log into websites with different Google sign-ins.
Toggling Through Multiple Sign-Ins
Staring the day with the default account and then signing into others is a good “Google habit”. Easy account switching also makes it less bothersome. But if you operate with several accounts every day then using different Chrome profiles is the way to go.
On mobiles, your user activity and app preferences are saved in the default account you signed into the device with. So, the right default account is a thought to consider. You can start with a default Google sign-in and then add other accounts.
Flowcharts aren’t just for engineers, programmers, and managers. Everyone can benefit from learning how to make flowcharts, most notably as a way to streamline your work and life, and even to break free from bad habits.
The only problem is, what’s the best flowchart software?
Plenty of top-notch flowcharting apps exist, but they can be pricey. Microsoft Visio, the most popular option, is $300 (standalone) or $13 per month (on top of an Office 365 subscription). ConceptDraw Pro is $200. Edraw Max is $180. MyDraw is $70.
Is it really necessary to spend that much on a flowchart program?
Dia is a free and full-featured flowchart app. It’s also entirely open source under the GPLv2 license, which is great if you believe in the open source philosophy. It’s powerful, extensible, and easy to use.
yEd Graph Editor is an excellent, up-to-date tool for flowcharts, diagrams, trees, network graphs, and more. You can download the app as a JAR file (which requires Java on your system) or an EXE (which includes a Java installer). It’s powerful and versatile, but the trade-off is an ugly, Swing-based interface.
Key features and highlights:
Very little effort for professional-quality charts.
Auto-arrange flowchart elements from messy to clean.
Organic and orthogonal edge routing for connections.
Several export options, including PNG, JPG, SVG, and PDF.
ThinkComposer is a tool for professionals. In addition to flowcharts, it can handle business models, class diagrams, genealogy trees, timelines, use case diagrams, and more. It’s a bit overkill for one or two charts every so often, but a smart choice if you deal with flowcharts on a daily or weekly basis.
Key features and highlights:
Create custom, reusable nodes and connections.
Deep, multi-level diagrams for full visual expression of ideas.
Compositions can combine many different charts and graphs.
Generate PDF, XPS, or HTML reports based on your data.
Pencil Project is an old app that fell out of favor due to a long development hiatus, but things picked back up in 2015 and version 3.0.0 was released in 2017. Everything is now modern and up-to-date, making it an excellent choice for anyone who needs fast, simple diagramming with a minimal learning curve.
Key features and highlights:
Tons of built-in shapes for all types of charts and interfaces.
Create your own shapes or install collections made by others.
Several export options, including PNG, SVG, PDF, and HTML.
Import art from OpenClipart.org for use in charts and diagrams.
LibreOffice is arguably the best free alternative to Microsoft Office for word processing, spreadsheets, presentations, and even visual diagrams. With LibreOffice Draw, you can easily add shapes, symbols, lines, connections, text, images, and more. It isn’t perfect, but it’s certainly flexible.
Key features and highlights:
Custom page sizes, great for all kinds of chart types.
Page map makes it easy to work on multiple charts.
Advanced object manipulations, including 3D controller.
Can open (but not save to) Microsoft Visio format.
Diagram Designer is somewhat primitive, and that’s partly because it hasn’t been updated since 2015. But don’t let that turn you away! It runs fine on my Windows 10 setup, and it’s more than effective for creating flowcharts that look nice. Could it be better? Of course. But for personal use, it’s great.
Key features and highlights:
Easy-to-use drag-and-drop interface.
No unnecessary features that steepen the learning curve.
Import and export PNG, JPG, BMP, GIF, ICO, and more.
PlantUML is unlike all the other apps in this list. Instead of a graphical interface, you create your diagrams using PlantUML’s scripting language. This is an excellent tool for programmers who don’t like mouse-based drag-and-drop. PlantUML requires Java on your system.
Key features and highlights:
Define objects and relationships using PlantUML’s scripting language.
Supports many diagram types: sequence, usecase, class, Gantt, etc.
While desktop apps are ideal for creating flowcharts on a PC, they aren’t travel-friendly. If portability is a key concern, you might fare better with one of these mobile flowchart apps which are designed for diagramming on-the-go.
Would you rather use a web-based flowchart maker? We highly recommend LucidChart, which is best in its class. Or you can try out one of these free online flowchart makers.
Reddit is the giant filter for every other thing that exists within the World Wide Web. You can lose the best productive hours of your life buried in the threads of conversations about every subject you have ever been interested in, no matter how obscure.
But hidden in those threads are some golden tips on productivity, time management, and just getting things done. Specific subreddits have dedicated themselves to finding and disseminating information on leading more productive lives.
Here are some of the best advice curated from these subreddits:
Do you dread Mondays? A simple reset routine on Sunday can take not more than an hour but save you a lot more in the week ahead.
The Redditor called jdarbuckle suggests you include a “reset day” in your week. It is more than a rest day. This is the day on which you take stock of what you have accomplished so far with a complete mind-body-life review. And, take care of the small tasks as preparation for the week ahead
Examples: Finish the extra laundry. Go grocery shopping and prepare meal plans for the week ahead. Declutter your personal space.
Monday can arrive in a flash. The reset day exercises can help you not only unplug but also focus on the important priority in the week ahead.
The redditor also links to the original site where you can go and download the printable Weekly Reset Worksheet.
You may be a writer, a programmer, or a gas station attendant. Every job needs you to communicate with other people who are working alongside you.
If you enter a conversation with a colleague thinking from the beginning that you are right, or that the other person has nothing to teach you, the ensuing conversation will benefit no one. It will be just noise.
As an alternative, a Redditor named Ctotheg talks about the Japanese listening technique of Aizuchi.
The technique requires the one who is listening to interject at frequent intervals with phrases like “Yes”, “I see”, and “I understand”. The point is to be an active listener rather than a passive one, letting the other person know you are paying attention to the conversation.
This subreddit is a place for a group of people who admit to being procrastinators. One of the simplest hacks to make progress towards your goals is to decide on “No More Zero Days”.
Non-Zero Day itself is a philosophy which emphasizes the need to take a meaningful step towards your goals every single day, no matter how small. This means you no longer get days with zero new accomplishments. So popular is the concept of the Non-Zero Days that it has a dedicated app which works on this principle.
You can use this group to improve your skills in any area of interest. The members motivate each other to take up new passions in pursuit of a more fulfilling life. In one of the most popular threads, members discuss ways to avoid procrastinating and how anyone can boost workday efficiency. Some of the advice shared includes:
Schedule your day for maximum productivity and remind yourself to stick to that schedule whenever you feel the urge to procrastinate.
Stop believing the myth perpetuated by pop culture that truly intelligent people (which most people on the internet think they are) do not need to put any effort into their work and instead are just naturally good at everything.
Create incentives to reward yourself for a productive day.
Power through the first few days of not liking doing hard work until it becomes a habit.
Ask yourself the hard questions, like why you don’t want to do the work? If you simply hate the work itself, switching roles or the career could be a better option.
As the name suggests, this is the subreddit you need to visit when your energy flags. This particular post talks about the importance of creating a morning routine that pumps you up for the rest of the day. Several tips are shared in the thread for creating a productive morning routine, some of which are:
Cleaning your room and putting your personal items in order, in readiness for the rest of the day.
Meditating, or starting some other form of exercise.
Making a plan for all the things that need to be accomplished for the day.
Spending 10 minutes online reading inspirational articles or watching a motivational video on social media.
This subreddit excels in providing new ways of looking at efficiency and productivity. The redditor draws attention to the fact that although librarians are often the butt of jokes in pop culture, they are expert researchers who can help you find information more efficiently if you only ask. That can be an incredible time saver compared to a Google Search.
One hugely overlooked group are Medical Librarians. A medical librarian (many hospitals have them) can help you or your family research medical terms or diagnoses that you don’t understand.
Don’t be afraid to ask for help. The same principle applies to IT technicians or similar support staff. These workers are specifically trained to troubleshoot problems and make your work easier. You only need to give them some respect and communicate the problem you are facing.
As the group description says, this is a place for self-improvement, goodness, and togetherness. This post talks about the ugly side of unproductivity. When your reason for not getting work done isn’t laziness, but real problems in your personal life.
We all have days when we feel we are not good enough. Not strong enough. Not clever enough. Unable to face the challenges the world throws at us. We feel stuck physically, mentally and emotionally.
It is important during these times to fight and overcome negative feelings. As the original poster points out:
YOU decide how YOU perceive and journey through reality. Don’t ever forget that. Don’t feel bad for yourself. Cry a little or a lot, close your eyes, and tell yourself what you want to be, NOT what you aren’t.
Keep fighting to make it out of the morass of doubt and negativity. This phase will eventually pass, and leave you a stronger, wiser, and ultimately a more productive person.
Reset Your Thoughts for Productivity
The struggle to live a productive life is a constant one. These subreddits are a great place to visit from time to time when we need direction. Here we can find people who also face the same struggle as we do, and we can help each other become better.
Reddit does not need to be the giant distraction that people often accuse it of being. You can spend time foraging for the best tips and combine it with the right mental models to get your work done.
If you follow any YouTubers, comic book artists, game streamers, or other online personalities, you’ve probably heard them mention Patreon. This membership service has become a common way for content creators to get paid for their work, but what is Patreon and how does it work?
In this article we’ll take a look at Patreon from a supporter’s perspective. We’ll examine what the service is for, what it offers you, and how to start supporting creators.
What Is Patreon?
Patreon is an online service that allows anyone to financially support their favorite content creators. This allows creators to connect with their fans and earn income from their work.
As you may know, ads and other online revenue formats are often unreliable and insufficient for making a living. Thus, Patreon provides creators with a more steady source of income.
In return for their support, those who give money (called “patrons”) receive exclusive rewards. It’s a bit similar to crowdfunding services like Kickstarter, except with Patreon, the support is ongoing instead of all at once.
Patreon takes 5 percent commission and transaction fees average 5 percent, meaning creators get to keep 90 percent of the revenue. In this article we focus on Patreon from a consumer’s perspective. However, we also have a guide to launching a successful Patreon page if you’re looking to start one yourself.
How Does Patreon Work?
Simply put, Patreon takes monthly small donations from supporters and gives that money to creators. This allows categories of people that can traditionally have difficulty monetizing their work, such as artists, to earn cash for their efforts.
But no matter the type of work they do, this is a great benefit to creators, as it allows them to create on their own terms. Because of YouTube’s monetization changes, for instance, YouTube can demonetize videos at any time. But with Patreon, creators can still count on the income from their patrons.
Plus, this lets consumers connect more closely with their favorite online personalities. A big component of Patreon is the rewards system. Creators can set up multiple tiers of benefits based on how much support you give them.
For example, a YouTuber might provide early access to new videos, or a podcaster could offer behind-the-scenes clips. It’s a little way to say thanks for your support and give you more insight into their creative process.
In addition to standard rewards, many Patreon creators have goals featured on their page. They’ll often offer something special when they reach a certain threshold, or just let you know what that money is going towards.
How to Start Using Patreon
Patreon isn’t complicated for consumers. You’ll first need to create a Patreon account and link a payment method. Once you’ve done this, you’re all set to start pledging support.
Chances are that if you’re reading this, you already follow some creators who are on Patreon. They’ll almost certainly have links to their Patreon page on their website, YouTube video descriptions, social media pages, or similar. You can follow those links to view their Patreon pages.
If you’re not sure whether your favorite creators use Patreon, you can use the search function on the website. Or try the social connect page, where you can find creators you already follow on Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube.
On a creator’s homepage, you’ll see some information about what they do and why they use Patreon. The left side shows how many patrons that creator has and how much money they earn per month (if they’ve made this information public). Below this, you’ll see current and past goals they’re working towards.
Pledging Support
Check the right side for the tiers you can select from. Often, these start at just $1 and include access to update posts from the creator. The exact number of tiers and amount of money for each is up to the creator.
Certain creators might offer some crazy rewards if you pledge a lot of money. Most of the time, each tier includes all the rewards from those above it.
Some common rewards include:
Access to a patron-only Discord server, Facebook group, or similar.
Early access to videos/podcasts/drawings/etc.
A shoutout at the end of their next video.
A video chat with the creator.
Discounts on merchandise.
The exact rewards depend on the creator and what they make, so you can decide what tier is best for you.
Note that most Patreon creators receive payment monthly, but they can also opt for a per-item system. If their work requires a great deal of effort which makes monthly pledges unreasonable, their tiers might instead be for every new video, drawing, etc.
Once you’ve decided, click the Become a Patron button. Then simply walk through the steps to confirm your tier and become a Patron. You’ll gain immediate access to patron-only posts and should receive the unique rewards from that creator shortly.
Patreon Membership and Payments
At the start of every month, Patreon will charge your payment method for all your pledges. You can support as many creators as you like without worrying about any taxes or fees.
It’s easy to interact with other patrons via the Community tab on any creator’s page, or by leaving a comment on posts they add. Keep an eye on the Messages icon in the top-right, as you may receive messages from those you support. You can also send messages to them.
How to Edit or Cancel Patreon Pledges
Your Patreon pledges are month-to-month, so there’s no major commitment. If you decide you want to cancel a Patreon pledge, sign in and click your profile icon in the top-right corner. Then click Your Memberships. Alternatively, visit your Patreon memberships page directly.
Here, you’ll see all the creators you currently support under Active Memberships. You can review your rewards as well. Click Edit to adjust your pledge. This lets you increase or decrease it, then click Update to save the changes.
To cancel instead, click Edit or cancel payment. You can choose a different tier if you like, or check Cancel your Payment to stop supporting that person. Patreon will ask you to give a reason for this, which can help the creator going forward.
Those you support rely on your generosity, so consider dropping to a lower tier instead of canceling completely. It’s better to pledge a small amount every month that they can count on than a huge sum you can’t afford for long.
How to Delete Your Patreon Account
Have you decided you don’t want to use Patreon any more? You can delete your entire account to cease all activity from it. Obviously, this will prevent you from supporting creators in the future, so make sure you really want to do this.
To delete your Patreon account, visit your account page by clicking your profile picture in the top-right corner of Patreon and choosing Your Profile. Then click the Edit Profile button on the left side under your profile picture and swap to the Account tab on the left sidebar.
At the bottom of this page, click the Disable My Account button and confirm the operation.
Are You Ready to Pledge Your Patreon Support?
Patreon is a great place to show your support for your favorite online creators. It’s awesome to know that you’re supporting your favorite artists, gives you a way to connect with them, and frees them up to express their full creativity.
Even if it’s just a dollar or two per month, your support means a lot to those who create. It can keep them going through the toughest times, and the exclusive content lets you see what’s new before anyone else. If you can afford it, why not give it a try?
Brud, the company behind the virtual celebrity Lil Miquela, is now worth at least $125 million thanks to a new round of financing the company is currently closing. Meanwhile, new venture-backed companies like the superstealthy Shadows, SuperPlastic and Toonstar are all developing virtual characters that will launch via social media channels like Snap and Instagram, or on their own platforms.
It’s all an effort to test whether audiences are ready to embrace even more virtual avatars — including ones that don’t try to straddle the uncanny valley quite as blatantly as Miquela and her crew.
The investors backing these companies say it’s the rise of a new kind of studio system — one that’s independent of the personalities and scandals that have defined a generation of Vine, YouTube and Instagram stars — and it’s attracting serious venture dollars.
“The way I look at it… a lot of it is going to be like any kind of content studio,” says Peter Rojas, a partner at the New York investment firm Betaworks Ventures. “In 2019 and 2020 we’re going to see a lot of these… we’re going to see a lot of people putting out a lot of stuff.”
Los Angeles-based Brud is by far the most established of this new breed in the U.S. (at least in terms of the amount of money it has raised). Last year the company scored at least $6 million from investors, including Sequoia Capital, BoxGroup and other, undisclosed, investors.
And the company has done it again, and is in the process of closing on somewhere between $20 million and $30 million at a pre-money valuation of at least $125 million led by Spark Capital, according to people with knowledge of the round. Miquela “herself” teased that “she” had something to “share” with her roughly 1.5 million followers. Brud declined to comment.
If Miquela is arguably the most successful U.S. version of this new breed of entertainer, the collective behind the account is far from the only one.
Experiments in avastardom have been percolating in popular culture since at least the rise of the Gorillaz — the Damon Albarn assembled musical supergroup that released their first EP “Tomorrow Comes Today” in late 2000. Or, depending on your definition, perhaps as early as Space Ghost Coast to Coast, the mid-1990s Cartoon Network series featuring an animated superhero interviewing real celebrities.
And that success spawned imitators like Hatsune Miku, who’ve capture the imagination and hearts of audiences globally. In November, a Japanese fan named Akihiko Kondo spent $18,000 to wed the avatar. And he’s not alone. Gatebox, the company that manufactures hardware to display holograms of various anime characters in homes, has issued at least 3,700 marriage licenses to fans like Kondo.
At Betaworks, the firm is exploring the popularity of these virtual characters — and the role that artificial intelligence and new content creation technologies will play in reshaping entertainment and social media platforms. The company’s Synthetic Camp, which launches in mid-February, is around what Rojas calls “synthetic reality,” including the rise of avatar-driven media like Miquela.
“We’re looking more broadly at the issues around manipulated or faked content and how do you address that,” says Rojas. “Algorithmically generated content and how things like generative adversarial networks are being used to create and synthesize new photo and video content.”
For Rojas, the development of powerful new tools that enable the creation of new characters in minutes that, in the past, would have taken humans hundreds of thousands of hours, can unlock all sorts of possibilities for entertainment.
“The celebrity part comes into play where we’re now at a point where you can create these photorealistic avatars and put them into videos and have them wearing clothes without having to spend millions of dollars on CGI,” he says.
Betaworks is betting on the content studio aspect through companies like SuperPlastic, a new startup launched by Paul Budnitz, the founder of the alternative social network ello and Budnitz Bicycles. Budnitz is perhaps best known for Kidrobot, a manufacturer of branded collectibles and toys for adults and kids everywhere. But the company also believes there are opportunities in backing the content creation toolkits that can power this new kind of media star, like its investment in the media creation tool, Facemoji.
“There’s no reason why you won’t see it across the board. Our appetite for fresh content and this stuff is kind of limitless,” says Rojas. “And I don’t see it as zero sum. YouTube didn’t kill television, it just became Netflix… Things can move in two different directions at the same time. More high brow and more complex and higher level and also more democratized and lowbrow and dumb. There’ll be avatar tools and apps and games and then we’ll see stuff that’s top of the pyramid stuff like Lil Miquela and Shudu.”
At Toonstar, co-founders John Attanasio and Luisa Huang went from developing a platform to developing a studio. The two met at the Digital Media Group within Warner Brothers and were tasked with trying to experiment with technologies at the intersection of media generation and distribution.
“Daily, snackable and interactive are the three things that you need to be successful in the world,” says Attanasio. “We saw the impact that the rise of mobile was having on linear. We sat through a lot of meetings where you looked at audience trends and you saw that going in the wrong direction in the wrong color.”
So the two founders began contemplating what a new, low-cost, high-touch media network might look like. “We looked at mobile and we saw the massive animation gap. Animation takes a long time and it’s expensive, the average season can cost $3 million to $5 million and bringing a new series to life can take three to four years.”
For Attanasio and Huang, those timelines were too slow to take advantage of the mobile content revolution. So the two built a platform that initially focused on letting user-generated content flourish — a kind of YouTube for animated, avatar-driven storytelling that could be distributed on any social media platform or on Toonstar’s own site and app.
Since that launch, the company has refined its business model to become more of a traditional animation studio. “We do daily pop culture cartoons… and partner with creators and influencers,” says Attanasio. “Our whole thing is driven by proprietary tech that allows us to do things really fast and at low cost… 50 times faster and 90 percent cheaper than typical animation.”
Attanasio also realized the importance of creative talent. “We had no shortage of content, but it was shitty content,” Attanasio says. “That’s when you realize… what we’re doing… there’s three ingredients… One is tech, one is process and the third is creative… if you have tech and process and you take away creative what you have is an ocean of shit.”
Now, they’re also experimenting with creating their own animated influencer. Leveraging the popularity of the Musical.ly app (now rebranded under its new owner, TikTok), Toonstar launched Poppy.tv.
“We launched a channel called Poppy.tv. It was a blue chicken [and] she became musically famous,” Attanasio said. “Within three months Poppy had 300,000 followers and had an avid fan base for Poppy and her cast of characters.”
The content was episodic and ranged from 15 seconds to 30 seconds — and it was based on cartoon music videos. “That validated the thesis of can you create a cartoon influencer and can you have a broad audience be super engaged?… and the answer was ‘Yes,'” said Attanasio.
Then, taking a page from the early Cartoon Network playbook, Attanasio and Huang made the show interactive in a callback to the “Space Ghost” phenomenon. “We started doing cartoon live streams and the founders of Musical.ly asked us to do a weekly show that they would feature,” Attanasio says. “It was Poppy the Blue Chicken and we would broadcast for an hour every week. Famous musers on Musical.ly come in with a FaceTime… And there were games and all of it was live, in real time.”
It’s hard to overstate the importance of working with virtual characters, according to Attanasio. “We understand how much money you can make from the IP. When we’re working with creators or influencers they understand that you have this shelf life as an influencer, but as IP, that can go on in perpetuity. There is something to be said about building a character. We’re all children of Saturday morning cartoons.”
And Toonstar is building an audience. Its show, the Danogs, has 4.5 million weekly viewers, and the company recently launched Black Santa — a show developed in partnership with the former NBA All-Star and tech investor Baron Davis. The NBA star and studio analyst also committed capital to Toonstar’s recent seed funding, a round led by Founders Fund partner Cyan Banister. In all, Toonstar said it has about 45 million weekly viewers for all of its shows.
Those kinds of numbers are music to the ears, of Dylan Flinn, a former agent at the Los Angeles powerhouse Creative Artists Agency, who left to start his own company.
Flinn has partnered with the producers of BoJack Horseman on a new venture called Shadows, which has already launched two virtual avatars into the wild.
Flinn got exposure to the virtual media world while at Rothenberg Ventures, the now defunct fund that invested in virtual reality and augmented reality. “I still had that lens of looking at innovation and virtual worlds and I’ve always been fascinated by what social media is doing.”
For Flinn, the virtual element of what’s being created is vitally important to the success of these ventures. “We’re not trying to create humans,” he says. “We look up to the Mickey Mouses and Looney Tunes and the Bugs Bunnies of the world. When I look at these 3D, [computer generated] human-based characters, it’s so close to the uncanny valley. We want to develop characters and we want to tell fictional stories rooted in reality.”
Like Attanasio at Toonstar, Flinn sees the speed at which digital content can be created and brought to market as a critical component of its success. “When I was at CAA you see how much money is wasted on development every year. This was an approach which was like, ‘What if you can develop in public and the best content can win?'” Flinn says.
Shadows already has two virtual avatars out in the wild, but he declined to identify which ones they were. Ultimately, he said, the goal is to have 20 characters a year, because once a couple of characters come to market and get traction with an audience, new characters can be introduced to old ones and the universe becomes a discovery engine of its own. That’s a strategy that Miquela and her crew are also employing, with varying degrees of success.
Ultimately, these types of entertainments aren’t going to go away — at least according to the investors and entrepreneurs who are creating the companies that are building them.
“People are totally fine with things that are artificial,” says Rojas. “People totally connect with Mario from Super Mario Bros. We always tell stories and have characters in whatever medium are available to us [like] Instagram and Snapchat and YouTube and Twitter. Thirty to 40 years ago it was television and radio and movies. People are going to express themselves and avatars end up being a form expression.”
Google Assistant is following Amazon Alexa into vehicles. One of the first products to offer the capability is from Anker — just like as one of the first in-vehicle Alexa products.
Called the Roav Bolt, the device plugs into a 12-volt power port and lets the driver access Google Assistant through the “OK Google” command. Once connected to the in-vehicle system through Bluetooth or a 3.5mm cable, the product will let drivers play audio, enable navigation, read text, make calls and more.
The Roav Bolt also has two USB ports for recharging devices.
I tried the Roav Viva a year ago and found the system clunky to configure and a pain to use. Also, at the time, Alexa lacked features that made it compelling to use in a vehicle and the third-party device lacked some functionality, like support for Spotify. This time around with Google Assistant, it’s likely the Roav Bolt offers enough features to make it more worthwhile for more people. This seems like an easy way to get the power of Google into a car.
The Roav Bolt will be available for purchase in February for $49.99.
