Should CBD be part of your pain-management arsenal? We dig into the scientific research.
Source: CNET
Amazon shares fell by nearly 7%, or $118.38, in after-hours trading on Thursday after the company reported its first earnings miss in two years.
Financial analysts had predicted that the launch of one-day shipping would eat into Amazon’s earnings, but even with the forewarning investors pummeled the stock after the market closed. It didn’t help that the company predicted revenues for the fourth quarter — including the all-important holiday season — also look soft.
The good news for Amazon amidst all the bad news was that revenue was actually up at the company. For the quarter Amazon raked in $70 billion, beating analysts’ expectations of $68.8 billion.
However, the company reported a profit of $2.1 billion, or $4.23 a share versus the $4.62 that analysts had projected. And even though sales were up this year, earnings per share were down from $5.75 in the year-ago period. As MarketWatch noted, it’s the first time earnings at the company have shrunk since 2017.
Another potential warning sign for investors was the revenue from the company’s web services business, which came in at $9 billion. Analysts had predicted roughly $9.2 billion from the business line. If competition starts eating into the services business (which still grew at a healthy 35% over the year-ago period), that could spell problems for the company’s stock — which has used AWS revenues to buoy spending elsewhere.
The company has been spending heavily all year to offer new services. The expansion of its free one-day delivery program has cost Amazon more than $800 million in the second quarter.
Amazon founder and chief executive Jeff Bezos defended the move to one-day shipping in a statement.
“Customers love the transition of Prime from two days to one day — they’ve already ordered billions of items with free one-day delivery this year. It’s a big investment, and it’s the right long-term decision for customers,” Bezos said. “And although it’s counterintuitive, the fastest delivery speeds generate the least carbon emissions because these products ship from fulfillment centers very close to the customer — it simply becomes impractical to use air or long ground routes.â€�
Looking ahead to the holiday season Amazon predicted net sales of between $80 billion and $86.5 billion, with operating income between $1.2 billion and $2.9 billion, versus $3.8 billion from a year-ago period. Analysts were expecting to see revenue numbers more in the $87 billion range.
Source: TechCrunch
The Facebook CEO’s latest trip to Washington, where he was grilled by a skeptical Congress, is captured perfectly in this one photograph.
Source: Wired
Lotame, a company offering data management tools for publishers and marketers, today unveiled a new product called Cartographer — described by CMO Adam Solomon as “our new people-based ID solution.”
In other words, it’s Lotame’s offering to help businesses connect their visitor and customer data across platforms and devices.
We’ve written about plenty of other cross-device targeting technologies — and in fact, Lotame acquired one of them, AdMobius, in 2014. But Solomon said the landscape has become more challenging given privacy regulations and especially updated browsers that place new limits on the types of cookies that can be used to track users.
“There’s been an explosion of first-party cookies,” Solomon said, referring to cookies that are stored on the domain you’re actually visiting (as opposed to third-party cookies, which are increasingly blocked).
He argued that these “short-lived” cookies then create problems for publishers: “If you’re in Safari visiting the same site every day, a new ID could be generated” each day. So Cartographer deals with this by using data science and machine learning to attempt to “cluster” different IDs together that likely belong to the same user.
“Every day when we see an ID, we’ll capture it,” Solomon said. “We’re graphing those cookies together, these dozens or hundreds of cookies that we believe, based on our technology, that these cookies belong to the same individual.”
He also said that connecting IDs in this way is crucial to the whole “Russian nesting doll” of how a publisher or advertiser understands identity on the internet: “Cookies ladder up to devices, devices ladder up to people, people ladder up to households.” So by connecting cookies to people, Lotame can also offer better household-level data.
And far from being an attempt to circumvent privacy restrictions, Solomon argued that Cartographer actually makes it easier for publishers to stay compliant with Europe’s GDPR and California’s CCPA rules, because they can do a better job of storing a customer’s privacy preferences.
Grant Whitmore, chief digital officer at Lotame customer Tribune Publications, made a similar point: “One of the things that I think all publishers are wrestling with right now is really the disconnect that is occurring in the adtech landscape and the legislative landscape and really managing the persistence of that consent.”
Whitmore continued, “One of the unintended consequences of that legislation and some of what is happening in the browser space is that we could be forced into a position where we are having to ask you every single time you visit a site whether it’s okay to sell your data, whether it’s okay to track.”
And he said that’s one of the big reasons Tribune is deploying Cartographer across all its properties, including its nine core newspaper sites. Though he acknowledged that it’s more broadly useful too.
“From the standpoint of our core business, getting a more complete picture of who a user is across these device types … That is of ongoing importance to us,” Whitmore said. “As we fight in this very competitive landscape, our ability to bring our understanding of who a user is, what their interests are … and providing good solutions — whether on the advertising front or whether that’s handling digital subscription offers — is just table stakes at this point.”
Solomon, meanwhile, said that Cartographer’s benefits go beyond “just figuring which IDs cluster together to represent an individual,” because it’s also ensuring that there’s proper ID synchronization with other data and ad-buying platforms.
“We make sure there’s maximum connectivity, maximum dial tone, with all the ecosystem participants,” he said.
Source: TechCrunch
Apple Arcade introduced the idea of all-you-can-eat subscription-based mobile gaming to the mainstream. Google Play Pass soon followed as a way to subscribe to a sizable collection of both apps and games on Android devices. Today, a startup called GameClub is launching in the U.S. to offer an alternative. For $4.99 per month, mobile consumers will be able to access a library that includes some of the best games to have ever hit the App Store.
To be clear, GameClub is not a cloud gaming platform, like Google Stadia. It’s a way to subscribe to actual App Store games, similar to Arcade. In GameClub’s case, however, the focus is not on new releases but on quality games that already have proven track records and high ratings.
In fact, many GameClub games have made Apple’s own editorially selected “Game of the Year” lists in years past. And like the games offered on Apple Arcade, they don’t have ads or any in-app purchases.
At launch, GameClub’s library includes more than 100 titles, with around half that available for play today. More titles will roll out on a weekly basis in the months ahead. Combined, the games have over 100 million collective downloads, the company says.
On GameClub, you’ll find games like: Super Crate Box, Hook Champ, Mage Gauntlet, Space Miner, Forget-Me-Not, MiniSquadron, Plunderland, Pocket RPG, Sword of Fargoal, Incoboto, Tales of the Adventure Company, Hook Worlds, Orc: Vengeance, Mr. Particle-Man, Legendary Wars, Deathbat, The Path to Luma, Grimm, Zombie Match, Faif, iBlast Moki 2, Kano, Baby Lava Bounce, Run Roo Run, Gears and many others.
It’s a selection that extends across gaming categories, like Action, Arcade, Puzzle, Adventure, Platformer, Retro, Role Playing, Simulation, Strategy and more.
To use the service, you first download the main GameClub app, which becomes the hub for your GameClub activities. You then sign up for the $4.99 per month subscription, which includes a 30-day free trial. Within the main app, you can browse the available titles as well as read editorial content like in-depth overviews and histories, get tips and learn about gaming strategies.
The startup was founded last year by game industry vets Dan Sherman and Oliver Pedersen.
Sherman, GameClub CEO, has worked in the gaming industry for around 17 years, including time spent at EA and his own startup, Tilting Point. His experience has involved, predominantly, signing content partnerships with game creators. Pedersen, meanwhile, built backend systems and platforms for games, including at Yahoo Games.
Though GameClub is seemingly arriving after Apple Arcade’s debut, it actually began before that. The startup was founded in 2018, ahead of any Apple Arcade rumors. It went live on iOS outside the U.S. before Arcade launched.
The founders say they were inspired to address the issues caused by the free-to-play model that has infiltrated the gaming industry. In addition, they had witnessed a decline in consumers’ willingness to purchase content upfront, which was impacting the industry.
“I was seeing all these amazing game developers leave mobile because the types of games they make are not the types of games that monetize through in-app purchases and ads,” Sherman tells TechCrunch. “The free-to-play model actually only works for a handful of genres,” he explains. “A lot of companies make a lot of money through a very small number of genres and game experiences — to the exclusion of a lot of other types of genres that GameClub is bringing back — action, adventures, arcade, tower defense — anything that can be completed.”
With free-to-play, games are built around perpetual retention loops. “And the freemium model comes out of the casino industry, not the premium game industry,” Sherman points out.
But because this is how games could make money, it led to homogeneity in the marketplace, he says.
GameClub aims to offer a subscription to the premium games that got left behind.
They are meant to be wholesome and fun, not overly addictive. They’re not designed to manipulate you into spending money. You simply pay your subscription fee every month to access the catalog, then play unencumbered.
Thanks to Apple Arcade and Google Play Pass, consumers are now comfortable with the idea of the subscription model for mobile games. And other services — like Spotify Netflix, and Xbox Game Pass, for example — have pushed the idea of subscription access to content across platforms and genres.
GameClub is different from Arcade, however, because it’s not funding the development of content upfront — at least, not yet. Instead, it’s forging agreements with largely indie developers to release their existing IP as a GameClub exclusive.
This may include bringing an older game into the 64-bit era — something GameClub handles on their behalf.
“Many of [the GameClub titles] have been gone for many years,” says Sherman. “It’s with our team, our technology and our developers that they’ve been brought back. And they’ve been brought back in a way that is 100% using the original code and the exact same design…but making them look and feel new, with higher resolution, Retina Display assets and by optimizing for the latest screen sizes and configurations,” he adds.
The company doesn’t discuss the business model for GameClub, but it’s not the same as Apple Arcade’s pay-upfront model.
What Sherman could say is that the more important the game is to the GameClub service, the more money the creator makes. Additionally, GameClub says it’s transparent with developers about its subscription revenue, so there’s no question about which games are earning or why.
The same can’t be said for Apple Arcade, which is a total black box to the point that consumers don’t know which Arcade games are most popular, developers can’t see how they’re doing compared with others and third-party measurement firms have no data.
Of course, there could be concerns that GameClub exists in a gray area, with regard to App Store policy. Those with longer memories may recall that Apple banned app-stores-within-a-store starting back in 2012. The company had kicked out apps that recommended other apps like AppHero, FreeAppADay, Daily App Dream, AppShopper and more. It also banned the more popular app recommendation service AppGratis the following year.
But Apple’s concern was that these apps were leveraging their power to manipulate App Store charts and rankings, often charging for that service. GameClub, on the other hand, plays fairly. Its service also benefits Apple, by offering subscription access to quality games that couldn’t thrive as free-to-play titles.
Longer-term, GameClub wants to produce its own original content and offer its service across platforms, starting with Google Play, but eventually tackling PC and console gaming.
The startup is headquartered in New York City, with offices in Copenhagen. In addition to the founders, it includes Eli Hodapp, the former editor-in-chief of the popular game news and review site TouchArcade, and COO Britt Myers, the former chief product officer of subscription-based edtech apps platform Homer.
With the close of a seed round last week, GameClub is backed by $4.6 million in funding.
Investors from a round that closed last year include GC VR Gaming Tracker Fund, CRCM Ventures, Watertower Ventures, Ride Ventures, BreakawayGrowth Fund and others. New investors include GFR Fund, Gramercy Fund, Century Gold and others.
GameClub is available on the App Store.
Source: TechCrunch
Enterprise software tool startups are so often birthed to either un-bundle or re-bundle what came before them. In an age where “consumerization of the enterprise” is a trendy phrase for investors, it was natural a startup would come along to bundle its take on some of the trendiest startup tools.
Taskade appears to be the love child of Notion, Slack and Asana. It’s a tool for startup teams to collaborate around projects that can be re-organized based on how the individual user best works through tasks. The startup graduated from YC in the most recent batch and has now locked down $5 million in seed funding from Grishin Robotics and Y Combinator, Taskade CEO John Xie tells TechCrunch.
It’s a platform that tries to meet an awful lot of needs at once. You can take notes, designate tasks, chat with co-workers, set goals and visualize everything you’ve already completed.
The startup certainly seems to take a page or two from Notion, where you can re-visualize databases in tables or Kanban boards with ease. Taskade has built this framework into a more collaborative tool, while trying to place limits on itself so that users aren’t left with an endless amount of customizations, something that can be both a blessing (to the technically minded) and a curse (to those who don’t find exploring a piece of software deeply enjoyable).
Taskade’s platform is organized around tasks arranged inside projects. Rather than being organized around pages, which can contain multiple data sets and perspectives, Taskade’s projects are limited strictly to one database each. It’s certainly a limitation, but one that probably cuts down on confusion and the temptation to stuff pages with as much as you can think of.
“Notion is a beautiful product, I think at some point it just gets extremely hard to manage all the hierarchy with the cross-linking and whatnot,” Xie told TechCrunch. “For us, we just wanted to make it much simpler and more workspace-driven so you are able to collaborate with multiple teams.”
The collaboration is another distinguishing factor of the platform. The team has built a commenting stream that lives inside each project so that a project can have its own ongoing dialog without forcing users into another Slack channel. You also can fire up video chats inside the project pages and chat through the data without opening another app or sending another invite.
The startups that Taskade is taking on feel ubiquitous. Slack went public this summer and is sitting on a $11.4 billion market cap. Asana has raised north of $210 million from investors. Notion, the youngin’ of the group, recently nabbed new funding at an $800 million valuation.
The team at Taskade is still quite small; there are just six employees at the company right now, organized remotely, but the focus is on using this funding to build out the product over time rather than pumping cash into sales and marketing, Xie tells me. The company has largely been building up early customers through word-of-mouth and has taken a particular foothold among creative agency customers.
The product has free and paid tiers, priced at $10 per month per user. Taskade is still flirting with how they want the relationship between their free and paid tiers to look. Xie tells me they’re hoping to transition to a usage-based free model rather than one that leaves certain features pay-walled.
The platform is available on Windows, Mac, Android, iOS and the web.
Source: TechCrunch
Maggie Guterl is the first woman to win the Big’s Backyard Ultra, an endurance running race so twisted and extreme it’s in a class of its own.
Source: Wired
A study shows the risks of making decisions using data that reflects inequities in American society.
Source: Wired
The reigning best hybrid is more affordable with bundle offers on Best Buy and Amazon. Grab these 2-in-1 deals to get the Surface Pro 6 with Type Cover for up to $330 less.
Source: Digital trends
You can spend more on a ThinkPad than you’ll spend on the T490, but don’t be so quick to open your wallet for the X1 Carbon. The T490 is an absolute workhorse.
Source: Digital trends