Instagram Makes It Easier To Share From Boomerang

Right before the holidays, Instagram snuck in an update for its most second-most popular spun-out app, Boomerang. The app currently sits in the top 250 on the App Store’s free apps.

The changes, although subtle, will probably make its users super happy. The premise of the app is to make little clipped-together videos, similar to an animated GIF or an Apple Live Photo. It feeds into Instagram, obviously, and the team made the process “smoother and faster” for both iOS and Android versions.

Here’s the update:

We’ve improved the Boomerang app to make it even easier to create and share Boomerang videos, now available in the App Store and Google Play Store.

Videos are no longer automatically saved to your phone’s camera roll, so you can take videos and choose to save your best ones. Sharing to Instagram is also smoother and faster.

For iPhone and iPad, Boomerang now works with your device’s flash so you can make videos in the dark. You can also control the length of your video for up to 20 frames. On iPhone or iPad, tap and hold the capture button, then let go at the perfect moment.

Automatically saving videos is a pain in the ass, as you can quickly run out of storage on your device, so having the option is nice. It also makes you spend a bit more time getting it just right when given the decision.

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Yarn’s App Lets You Share Short Clips From Movies, TV Shows And Music Videos

GIF-sharing is so 2015. Or at least, a startup called Yarn hopes that will be the case. The team’s recently launched mobile app offers a different way to have fun while messaging your friends, by offering a way for you to search for and discover short clips from movies, TV and music videos that you can then pop into your conversation. Today, Yarn only supports Facebook Messenger, but it plans to roll out clip-sharing to other platforms in the future, we’re told.

Still, even as a Messenger add-on, Yarn can be quite fun. And even if you aren’t a regular user of Facebook’s instant messaging app, the Yarn website itself has a big collection of clips available. You can browse popular clips, or you can search for a word, quote or lyric you want to share.

If you’re the kind of person who’s always responding with movie quotes and catch phrases for quips, you’ll likely enjoy using Yarn.

On each clip’s web page (via the desktop site), there are options to send the clip in Messenger, Like it on Facebook, tweet it, Pin it, and post to Google+. And, of course, you could also grab the clip’s URL if you wanted to share the video elsewhere, like in an email or text message.

Meanwhile, in the Yarn for Messenger mobile app, you’re able to both browse and search for clips, then tap a button to send the clip to Facebook Messenger. A separate section offers a way to search for clips using emojis, which is a clever way to help people transition away from using their favorite tiny emoticons in favor of short videos.

For example, instead of sending the emoji of the smiley face with a halo, you could send a clip from Beyoncé’s “Halo,” where she sings “I got my angel now.” Get it?

We did come across some clips that cut off too soon, but overall the app is fairly polished for an out-of-the-gate effort.

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How BB-8 Works

By now, there’s a pretty good chance that you’ve seen the new Star Wars movie — and for those who haven’t, don’t worry: no spoilers here. At long last, we’ve got a much-needed dose of Starfighters, Rebel Alliances, Lasers, and droids. BB-8, the adorable successor to R2-D2, has captured hearts and minds. As lovable as it is, and even with as much life as its creators managed to instill into it, in the end… it’s a super sophisticated prop. And now you’re wondering: how the heck does this thing work?

While JJ and Co. have kept the specifics of BB-8’s innards mostly under wraps, we can suss out the basics. Behind that trilling orange and white sphere, BB-8 is likely a set of wheels (propelling the sphere by spinning against its inner-wall) and a magnetic mast (to hold on to and control BB-8’s head). The sort of “wobbly” way BB-8 moves? It’s all inherent to the design — what might be considered a flaw if used anywhere else, here it helps to give BB-8 much of its character.

That explanation will leave a lot of you wanting for more. Want a more detailed breakdown than that? Read on, folks.

A lot of the analysis you see on the internet today has people treating BB-8 as two discrete operations, one each for the head and ball. However, one of the many patents filed by Disney and partner Sphero paints a different picture. This patent, for a “Magnetically coupled accessory for a self-propelled device,” explains how to get BB-8 to work without a separately controlled head. Combine this with Sphero’s Chief Scientist Adam Wilson telling Polygon.comthat the head isn’t articulated independently, and you can start to paint a picture of what the internals look like.

The strongest justification for this kind of system is in watching BB-8 try to lean over. It doesn’t seem to be able to maintain a constant head angle while static. This strongly implies that the head isn’t articulated independently, and is consistent with the patent.

Let’s get things rolling

The head complicates things, so let’s just think about the body for now. An image from one of the patents is an extremely helpful illustration. To make things simple, let’s think about this problem in two dimensions, looking only at forward and backward motion. The same principles apply to keep this stable; all that’s happening when BB-8 turns is the internal assembly yawing to point in a different direction.

In a nutshell, what we’ve got is a sphere with wheeled mechanism inside it. The wheels are forced down against the wall of BB-8 in some way (either spring or gravity, it doesn’t matter a huge deal). Rotating the wheels shifts the center of the system’s mass, the bulk of which is in the wheel assembly, off of the vertical line that includes the center of the ball and the contact point with the ground. Leaning generates a moment. Do this right, and the ball moves in the direction that the wheels were shifted to. If we were to picture a mast mounted perpendicularly on top of the wheel base, the ball would move in a direction opposite to the mast.

IMAGE: UNITED STATES PATENT APPLICATION

In broad strokes, this is similar to what it’s like to get a Zorb ball moving. Being the heaviest thing in the Zorb, moving forward changes your position relative to the ball’s center of mass. This, in the end, leads to rotation and forward motion. (We’re not going to go over the dynamics of this problem, but reach out if you really want to know).

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What Will The Internet Of Things Be When It Grows Up?

An old proverb advises, “Keep a thing seven years, and you’ll find a use for it.” Well, it’s been about seven years since there were officially more “things” connected to the Internet than people. It looks like they’re keepers, and we’ve found countless uses for them.

Now that the Internet of Things (IoT) seems to be firmly embedded in our lives, 2016 may be that transformational year when it segues from the “gee whiz” arena into practical, everyday application — along with all that entails in regard to development, policy and standards.

Here are some predictions for the IoT as it matures in 2016…

Development

The same material science that is improving the range of the electric car will increase the duration of battery life for connected devices. This is a pretty important development, and will herald a larger number of wireless IP-based devices. And with this increase in numbers, more “thing” makers will start to offer direct-access APIs to their devices on local networks for other trusted IP-based devices (as opposed to offering exclusive access only through the cloud).

I am also anticipating the emergence of more natural interactions between people and “things” in the coming year — making devices more usable via voice control and semantic modeling and social interplay. This will create “thing” interactions that present less friction between people and technology, which is a prerequisite on the march toward IoT ubiquity.

On the visual human/thing-interaction front, we can also expect hologram technology to accelerate in 2016. A selection of APIs, SDKs and new gear will emerge next year and really kick off widespread development of hologram-based “cards” and similar applications.

The IoT is not a revolution in technology, but rather an evolution.

One sticky development that may arise next year concerns the IoT and microdrones, as I think smaller form-factor personal drones will start to appear in 2016 (and like smartphones, they’ll be equipped with high-quality cameras and streaming capabilities). With these new IoT devices, people will begin to record, contextualize, share and store the “droneable” moments of their lives.

Other people’s privacy will be of significant concern, but will not stop the spread. Video will be captured and analyzed to create actionable data that’s cross-referenced with simultaneous or near-simultaneous contextual events (by time, location, subject participation, perspective, device density, etc.).

Determining who controls all that data and what is done with it will lead us down some interesting paths; debates about our current selfie-mania and mass over-sharing on social media will pale by comparison. Which leads us to…

Policy

Privacy issues will come to the fore as big players around the world increase their supply of IoT data-collecting devices and services. Legal jurisdictions will start to impose more rules that are more favorable to the preservation of consumer privacy by restricting where and how data can be extracted, moved, analyzed and traded. I also wouldn’t be surprised to see a few class actions or criminal litigation actions stemming from these issues.

Sadly, I think privacy and security failures by several large IoT providers in the new year will be a catalyst for this increased awareness. IoT devices, networks and infrastructure are already targets for nefarious threat actors, but I think the coming year will be marked by at least a few dramatic IoT hacks.

As the IoT evolves in industries such as transportation and healthcare, for example, policies around privacy and security will become a much more pressing concern. 2016 may be the year in which widespread foundational legal and administrative protocols are laid for the IoT. As part of that process…

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Apple’s “Start Something New” Campaign Kicks Off With Online Gallery, In-Store Artist Workshops

Apple wants to show consumers how its devices – including Macs, as well as mobile devices like iPhones and iPads – can be used to create art. Specifically, its latest pushback at the dated concept that mobile devices aren’t tools for creation, the company is planning to host a series of workshops in Apple stores that will teach people how to shoot professional-quality images with their iPhones, how to sketch and draw using iPad and Apple Pencil, and more.

The effort is part of Apple’s revamped “Start Something New” campaign, which is now running in the U.S., Australia, Belgium, Canada, France, Germany, India, Italy, Japan, Netherlands, New Zealand, Philippines, South Korea, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, U.K., Vietnam and other countries around the world.

As a part of this effort, Apple has also published an online gallery featuring various artworks created using Apple products like the iPhone 6s, Apple Pencil, iMac, MacBook Pro, iPad Pro, iPad Air 2 and even Apple Watch; hardware and accessories like Pencil by FiftyThree, MeFOTO Sidekick360, and olloclip Active Lens; along with apps, like Adobe After Effects, Adobe Photoshop Express, Darkroom, Union, NightCap Pro, Filmic Pro, Final Cut Pro, and Procreate.

On each artist’s page, there are details about their process, the tools they use (including hardware and software), and various photos of the artist at work.

The site, reports CNET, is meant to inspire other artists as to what sort of creations can be made using Apple devices.

Meanwhile, Apple’s in-store workshops will be aimed at those with varying levels of expertise, from amateurs to pros looking to further improve their existing skill set.

“We’ll help you try out various accessories and techniques — like long exposure for light trails, using Time-lapse to show progression, or getting up close with nature using a macro lens,” Apple told CNET in a statement. “Then, we’ll explore artistic ways to adjust and edit your photos, so you can create a work of art, find your style, or just improve your skills.”

This isn’t the first time that Apple has run a campaign like this, however, as the blog MacRumors points out. For example, the company ran nearly the same program last year, first beginning in Japan, then expanding to the U.S. and elsewhere.

At that time, Apple also hosted an online gallery featuring works of art including photography, painting and sketches, while also highlighting the artists themselves and their stories.

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OTOY Looks To Give Developers The Tools To Build Lifelike Real-Time 3D Environments

Around ten years ago, Jules Urbach was sitting at the table at his mom’s house, coding away, when there was a knock at the door. His mom answered, but the visitor was for him. Directors J.J. Abrams and David Fincher had some questions about a rendering technology Urbach was working on, which had the potential to make movie scenes look much more realistic with shorter load times.

Abrams and Fincher were being prescient. What Urbach was building would go on to be used in films like The Avengers and commercials for Transformers. It also made him enough money so that he could move out of his mom’s place.

Urbach started a company called OTOY, short for Online Toys, in 2009. OTOY specializes in rendering complex 3D environments using cloud-based servers, making it making it easier — and faster — to build scenes for video games and movies. And now, OTOY now also integrates with Unity and Unreal Engine — two of the biggest tools used by game developers in the world.

These kinds of integrations all help companies offload the complex technological aspects of things like rendering games, making it easier to focus on the gameplay and art assets instead. Octane 3, the company’s tool, can export those Unreal Engine and Unity applications directly to the cloud, and they can be easily shared on the web. And those apps can be streamed to virtual reality devices like the Gear VR.

Normally all of this takes a tremendous amount of time to render properly, but Urbach’s goal was to cut that down to a few seconds. He did that by finding a way to transfer the rendering technology to GPUs, increasing the speed at which it worked — and slicing the time required to render those scenes to a fraction of what it used to be. And to do all this, OTOY has raised more than $50 million in financing over the course of its lifetime.

“It’s like Photoshop, everyone understands how light in the real world works,” Urbach said. “You don’t need to do tricks or be a visual effects studio to master and get it look real, it looks real — it’s all physics. My goal was to get the tech on the rendering side to be done and ready to where we could take on projects like [Transformers] and do it at a fraction of the cost, because [Octane 3] can render it like a video game.”

Here’s an example of how the technology works: imagine taking a mesh of a forest where a video game character is walking around. To render all the lighting properly — and make the forest look lifelike, especially as a character walks around — normally takes a tremendous amount of time and computing, and is incredibly difficult to do in real time. But the goal of Octane is to essentially make it possible to look at it from all angles and have the lighting, shading and visuals of it looking correctly and lifelike in real-time.

Urbach says by switching those processes over to a GPU speeds up the rendering time by anywhere from 10 times to 40 times faster. All this helps scenes and environments essentially render in real time, rather than having to record those scenes frame-by-frame. The advantage of all of this is that it can be rendered on remote servers like Amazon’s AWS, which allows game developers or artists to scale up and down what they need. (The company has a few demos running on its site.)

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Google Launches Equity-Free Accelerator Program For Mobile Startups In Brazil, India And Indonesia

Google is launching a new accelerator program today. The Launchpad Accelerator will provide mobile startups in India, Brazil and Indonesia with mentorship, training, support, and up to $50,000 in equity-free funding.

As Roy Glasberg, Google’s Global lead for its Launchpad programs, told me, the accelerator was born out of Google’s existing Launchpad program for startups and its global series of events that launched about two-and-a-half years ago.

As Google looked at how it could have more impact on the startup ecosystem, the team realized that there were essentially two ways to scale its efforts. On the one hand, this meant expanding its online presence with better training tools and efforts like Google’sUdacity nanodegrees, as well launching projects like the Launchpad Days and Summits the company has now held in more than 30 countries. On the other hand, though, Google also wanted to be able to offer high-impact mentoring relationships to some startups and that’s where this new accelerator program comes in.

Glasberg told me that the company is specifically looking for startups that can have a high impact on their local markets. “The end goal of this program is to identify game changers in the market and be the game changer for them,” he said. The company decided on an equity-free approach because it doesn’t want to tarnish this work with thoughts about ROI and equity.

So what’s the program going to look? Google will fly startups to Mountain View for a two-week bootcamp first. There, they will meet with mentors from both inside and outside Google. Glasberg described this as a “pressure environment” where the team will help these startups to plan for their next five and a half months in the program (which happens in their home countries). During this time, the startups will work through a number of individualized tasks to help them sharpen their marketing and go-to-market strategies, user experience design and other aspects of their services. About half of the mentors are Google employees and the other half are professionals from the wider startup community.

Once they get back home, they will get space to work and access to both Google’s local and international network of mentors, as well as credits to use Google’s developer platforms.

The first class of twenty startups will arrive in Mountain View in mid-January and includes startups like Brazil’s ProDeaf, which translates spoken language into sign language using 3D avatars, and Indonesia’s fintech startup Jojonomic.

Google plans to bring about 50 new startups into the accelerator program every year, but Glasberg also tells me that the company hopes to work with another 200 or so in a more hands-off program that doesn’t involve the boot camp in Mountain View. Indeed, he stressed that Google really wants to keep this program as flexible as possible. Maybe a startup needs more than six months to make a difference, for example, and in that case, Google may work with the team a bit longer. Or instead of cloud credits, the team may need AdWords credits to market it project. Or a team from then hands-off group shows a lot of promise and Google decides to move it to the full accelerator program.

Besides making a difference for these individual startups, Google also hopes to make an impact on the wider startup ecosystem in these countries by building an alumni network. “We want to give all startups the best resources they can get,” Glasberg said. “No matter where they are.”

Google expects to expand this program to additional countries in the long run. If you are in India, Brazil and Indonesia, though, you can now apply to become part of the second class, which will begin in mid-2016.

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Indian Regulator Temporarily Suspends Facebook’s Free Basics

Free Basics, a service by Facebook initiative Internet.org, is having a rough week in India. First, an email campaign by the social media network was criticized for being heavy-handed and misleading. Now Reliance Communications, one of Facebook’s partners, has agreed to temporarily halt Free Basics on its network after receiving a request from the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI).

The Times of India first reported the news, which Reliance Communications confirmed in a statement. “As directed by TRAI, the commercial launch of Freebasics has been kept in abeyance, till they consider all details and convey a specific approval,” a Reliance representative said in an email.

This is a big deal because the TRAI is set to hold a hearing on net neutrality next month before issuing a final decision that may force Free Basics to undergo major revisions to continue operating in India.

A Facebook spokesperson said “We are committed to Free Basics and to working with Reliance and the relevant authorities to help people in India get connected.” TechCrunch has contacted the TRAI for comment.

Information about Free Basics is still available on Reliance’s site.  The company, India’s fourth-largest telecom operator with about 110 million users as of June, made Free Basics available to all its subscribers last month.

India is just one of 36 countries where Free Basics has launched, but it is an important proving ground for Facebook as its second-largest market after the U.S., with 130 million users.

The idea behind Free Basics, an initiative of Facebook’s Internet.org, sounds altruistic. The program offers users on its telecom partners in emerging economies access to services without charging data fees. These include news sites, weather reports, and health information, but also Facebook products like the social network and Facebook Messenger. Critics argue, however, that Free Basics violates the tenets of net neutrality by working with Internet service providers to direct traffic to a handful of sites and services.

Garnering support from TRAI was at the crux of controversial Facebook’s “Save Free Basics” campaign last week. Users were presented with an email form as soon as they logged into the service, asking them to send a pre-written message of support for Free Basics to TRAI. The campaign was only meant to be displayed to Indian users, but the company sent notifications to some people in the U.S. on Monday in what it says was an error.

Facebook has not given up trying to increase enthusiasm for Free Basics in India before the TRAI hearing. The company has also started taking the unusual step of purchasing billboards and television and newspaper advertisements in favor of the program.

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