Adidas Wilson's Blog, page 155
May 5, 2017
‘Saber trees’ light up Gardens by the Bay on Star Wars Day Read
Star Wars fans were treated to a spectacular light show at the start of a three-day celebration marking Star Wars Day on Thursday (May 4) – the date being a play on the phrase “May the Force be with you” made popular by Star Wars character Obi-Wan Kenobi.
As part of the inaugural Star Wars Day: May the 4th Be with You Festival, the Supertrees at Gardens by the Bay were transformed into “SaberTrees”, illuminated to look like giant lightsabers, the weapon of choice of the Jedi and Sith warriors, casting light beams up to 200m high.
There was also a 15-minute light performance called Garden Rhapsody: Star Wars Edition, set against the Star Wars soundtrack.
The SaberTrees will light up from 8pm to midnight, and the light show will run at 7.45pm, 8.45pm and 9.45pm, every night until the festival ends on Saturday. It will also continue to run twice a night at 7.45pm and 8.45pm until Jun 2.
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A replica of the iconic All-Terrain Scout Transport, which was first introduced in Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back, is on display for the duration of the festival, and well-loved characters Chewbacca and Kylo Ren will make appearances.
Other attractions include a Star Wars-themed “silent disco” on Friday and Saturday, from 9pm to 11pm, and a screening of Star Wars: The Force Awakens on Saturday at 9pm.
The festival kicks off a three-year collaboration between the Singapore Tourism Board (STB) and Walt Disney Company Southeast Asia for Singapore to host entertainment activities themed around Disney’s biggest brands.
Read more at http://www.channelnewsasia.com/news/singapore/saber-trees-light-up-gardens-by-the-bay-on-star-wars-day-8819328
Soon you’ll be able to chat with your search results with Microsoft’s Bing bots
Microsoft is planning to allow developers to add bots to the company’s Bing search results. The software giant has been testing this functionality for at least a month, and previous reports revealed the testing was mainly limited to Seattle. Sources familiar with Microsoft’s plans tell The Verge the company is ready to expand this further at its Build developer event next week.
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Microsoft published its Build schedule this week, and one particular session reveals “you can add your custom bots to Bing.” The existing bot test on Bing.com can be found by searching for a restaurant like Monsoon in Seattle. A new option lets you chat with the restaurant through a Skype bot, and you can ask questions like opening hours or parking information.
Microsoft originally launched its bots platform at Build last year, and custom bots on Bing.com will be a new way to extend these further outside of Skype and Microsoft’s own bots platform. We’re expecting to hear a lot more about Bing’s bots at Build next week.
Source:
https://www.theverge.com/2017/5/4/15545096/microsoft-bing-bots-build-2017
Mark Zuckerberg-backed edutech startup is now a Harvard case study
After successfully raising USD 30 million funding from Brussels-based family office Verlinvest, a case study by education technology BYJU’s will now be taught at Harvard Business School.
According to reports, the startup founder, Byju Raveendran’s learning app will be available for teaching purposes within and outside Harvard.
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has also invested in Byju through his philanthropic organisation, the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative.
More about the case study:
As published in media reports, this study is authored by John Jong-Hyun Kim, a Senior Lecturer at Harvard Business School, and Rachna Tahilyani, Associate Director, Harvard Business School India Research Center
Moreover, the study discusses how the app has used technology as an enabler and the unique combination of content, media and technology
The case study focuses on imparting the expansion of the app, its impact on students and how this K-12 app can be used globally
Here’s what Harvard’s website says:
As mentioned on Harvard’s website, the paper explores BYJU’s growth in India and the challenges to its expansion into the US and other English speaking markets.
While speaking about the app, Mark Zuckerberg said:
“I’m optimistic about personalised learning and the difference it can make for students everywhere.”
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“That’s why it’s a major focus of our education efforts, and why we’re looking forward to working with companies like BYJU’s to get these tools into the hands of more students and teachers around the world,” Zuckerberg said on his Facebook page last year.
A brief about Byju’s:
Meanwhile, as per an Economic Times report, BYJU’s has 8 million downloads and 4,00,000 annual paid subscribers. The app caters to classes four-12 (K-12) and competitive exams like JEE, NEET, CAT, IAS, GRE and GMAT.
Source:
Mica May takes May Designs to the clothing world for Fashion X Austin
Mica May became the queen of notebook design by accident. In 2009, the graphic designer started innocently putting clients’ logos on 5-by-8-inch notebooks. Then living in Houston, she spent one day going to 10 different woman-owned businesses and showing the owners mock-ups of notebooks personalized for them. Would they buy them? She sold 1,000.
The Texas A&M graduate who grew up in Dallas quickly expanded to noncorporate clients. Women who didn’t have a company logo started asking for personalized notebooks of their own. She created a website with different patterns they could choose and different fonts they could use to personalize the notebooks. Suddenly, people with unusual names had something they could hold with their name on it.
And then came “Good Morning America.” On Dec. 1, 2011, May’s notebooks were shown on the air. She got 33,000 orders. That was the day she got to quit working for other clients and work permanently for herself. It was great timing, too. She had given herself until the end of 2011 to make a go of the notebook business or to drop what was started as a fun side gig. She knew with two toddlers she had to make a choice between the notebooks and the graphic design business. She could no longer do both.
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Slowly May Designs started growing. She hired an assistant and then more employees. She moved the business out of her home and into the garage apartment, and then, when Code Compliance came knocking, to its own studio.
By 2014, the business was growing and it was time to make the move to Austin, which she and her husband, Jonathan, had always wanted to do. They moved with their three children, now 3, 6 and 8, and the company grew up.
She found Austin’s like-minded creative class and made connection after connection. Soon notebooks turned into calendars and leather notebook covers. The world of on-demand printing meant that she could take one pattern and put it on many different things, and clients could customize those items as well.
This year, May Designs is really growing up: It’s making its first foray into a nonstationery product. May has turned on-demand printing into clothing. Mica May, 36, will be showing a capsule collection at Fashion X Austin on May 18.
“We’re excited to expand, to bring fashion on-demand as a model,” she says.
Her first clothing designs are created on neoprene fabric, which means they can be rolled up into a ball and not wrinkle. She’s offering a short skirt, a longer A-line skirt, a shift dress and a longer summer dress with adjustable spaghetti straps. Each piece will be $65 to $95 and available at maydesigns.com.
The skirts and dresses come in XXS to XXXL. “We hope it fits any size of body,” she says.
And thinking of moms like herself, “everything we have has pockets, which I absolutely love,” she says. “Pockets are crucial.”
May Designs now has more than 500 patterns but will probably start with about 200 when the line launches after the Fashion X Austin show.
You can go casual for summer with a T-shirt on top of a skirt and flip-flops or dress up a dress with the right heels and jewelry. You also can layer the dresses and skirts with leggings and boots, jackets and sweaters for winter.
Her favorite is the Peonies Sky print in the A-line skirt. It’s like the grown-up version of the twirly skirts her daughters love.
“This is the beauty of on-demand printing,” May says. “We literally launched (Peonies Sky) on a notebook pattern. Then we loved it so much, people were responding well, we actually ordered some wallpaper, put it up as kind of our statement wall in our office. And this is one of our capsule collection pieces,” she says holding up the matching A-line skirt. “We’re able to take all of our patterns that start out on a notebook and transfer them to all the future things.”
Her office on Kerbey Lane in Central Austin is filled with samples of purses and pillows and more stationery products, but first things first: Fashion X Austin and the launch of the clothing line.
Source:
http://www.mystatesman.com/lifestyles/home–garden/mica-may-
The Real Problem With the Health Care Bill
With the American Health Care Act headed to the Senate — and possibly President Trump’s desk — it’s important to step back from the debate over the bill’s details and recognize two essential truths about American health care.
First, health care in the United States costs much more than in other developed countries, and on average the outcomes are worse. Second, any plan that focuses primarily on reducing the cost of insurance will inevitably lead to less access to care. Indeed, whatever Republicans say about high-risk pools and other ways their plan covers vulnerable people, the fact is that millions will lose coverage.
Health care in the United States is more expensive because, unlike the systems in other countries, ours rests on the idea that profits and quality health care go hand in hand. As a result, government programs working with our existing structure of for-profit insurance companies can expand and improve coverage (like the Affordable Care Act) or offer lower insurance premiums (like the new Republican plan). But they can’t do both.
Supporters of the A.C.A., also known as Obamacare, talked a good game about “bending the cost curve,” but that was never a primary concern. The goal, largely achieved, was to expand access and to mandate coverage for essential health benefits and pre-existing conditions.
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In contrast, the thrust of the Republican bill is to lower the cost of insurance by removing the guarantees of the A.C.A. States would be able to exempt any of the essential health benefits from insurance mandates, and they would also be allowed to exclude patients with pre-existing conditions. Millions are likely to lose their health insurance, but the young and generally healthy would pay much lower premiums.
In short, the two plans are not different takes on the same problem. They are different takes on different problems.
And the two problems are not equal concerns. Yes, the price of insurance is an issue — though a properly designed plan will at least move most of those costs off individuals and small businesses and onto the government’s shoulders.
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Apple Named World’s Largest Wearables Vendor With an Estimated 3.5M Apple Watch Shipments
Apple became the world’s largest wearables vendor in the first quarter of 2017 with an estimated 3.5 million Apple Watch shipments, according to new research data shared this afternoon by Strategy Analytics.
Apple Watch shipments overtook Fitbit shipments during Q1 2017, allowing Apple to capture 15.9 percent global marketshare to become the top wearables vendor. Fitbit shipped an estimated 2.9 million wearable devices during the quarter, while Apple’s closest competitor, Xiaomi, shipped an estimated 3.4 million wearable devices.
Apple’s estimated 3.5 million shipments are up from an estimated 2.2 million Apple Watch shipments in the year-ago quarter. As Apple Watch shipments have grown, Fitbit shipments have dropped sharply from an estimated 4.5 million units in Q1 2016.
Xiaomi is still close to Apple at 15.5 percent global marketshare, but has seen its shipment numbers slip while Apple’s have grown.
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In the year-ago quarter, Xiaomi’s marketshare was at 20.9 percent, while Apple’s was at 12.1 percent. Fitbit, meanwhile, has dropped from 24.7 percent in Q1 2016 to 13.2 percent in Q1 2017.
Cliff Raskind, Director at Strategy Analytics, said, “Fitbit shipped 2.9 million wearables worldwide in Q1 2017, falling a huge 36 percent annually from 4.5 million in Q1 2016. Fitbit has lost its wearables leadership to Apple, due to slowing demand for its fitnessbands and a late entry to the emerging smartwatch market. Fitbit’s shipments, revenue, pricing and profit are all shrinking at the moment and the company has a major fight on its hands to recover this year.”
Apple does not share official Apple Watch sales numbers, instead lumping the device into its “Other Products” category that also includes the Apple TV, Beats products, iPod, and Apple-branded and third-party accessories, so Apple Watch sales numbers shared by various analytics firms are all estimates.
Revenue from “Other Products” was $2.87 billion during the second quarter of 2017 according to Apple’s recently released earnings report, up from $2.19 in the year-ago quarter. According to Apple CEO Tim Cook, Apple Watch sales have nearly doubled year-over-year.
Source:
https://www.macrumors.com/2017/05/04/apple-worlds-largest-wearables-vendor/
Amazon modifies its Kindle ebook contracts following EU investigation
Amazon has accepted new contract terms with book publishers in the European Union after Commissioner Margrethe Vestager led an investigation into Amazon’s practices. After today’s decision, Amazon will no longer force publishers to provide the best price on the company’s Kindle store.
The investigation started a couple of years ago as publishers started to worry that Amazon’s contracts would hurt everyone’s bottom line. With that clause, publishers wouldn’t be able to sell their own books on other platforms at a cheaper price.
This used to increase Amazon’s competitive advantage and tended to create a race to the bottom. Now, publishers have a bit more power against Amazon. And other distribution platforms like Apple’s iBooks Store can compete more easily.
Publishers can renegotiate their contracts starting today, and especially the pricing part. Amazon can no longer demand the best price in new contracts starting today.
Amazon is accepting those demands so that it doesn’t have to pay any fine following the investigation. At the same time, the ebook market has more or less stagnated for the last few years. It is no longer the hot new thing that it used to be five years ago. People like buying actual books after all.
So it seems like it’s not worth fighting this fight for Amazon. The company is probably more worried about a potential investigation into its tax practices.
Like many companies, Amazon has been optimizing its tax rate by paying royalties to a subsidiary that pays very little taxes. By settling the ebook case with the European Commission, Amazon shows that it is willing to negotiate with the European Union.
Source:
Amazon modifies its Kindle ebook contracts following EU investigation
‘Game of Thrones’ Forever: HBO Developing 4 Different Spinoffs
If anyone was wondering why George R.R. Martin hasn’t finished that next “Game of Thrones” book yet, he’s probably been a little busy.
HBO announced on Wednesday that four — count ’em, four — series relating to the dragon-and-magic filled fantasy land are potentially on the way. No word yet on whether they’ll be spin-offs, prequels, sequels or just shows set within the same world of “Game of Thrones.”
“We’ve closed deals for four very talented writers to each explore different time periods of George R. R. Martin’s vast and rich universe,” HBO said in a statement. “There is no set timetable for these projects. We’ll take as much or as little time as the writers need and, as with all our development, we will evaluate what we have when the scripts are in.”
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But the co-creators of the current show, which launches a seventh season July 16, will still concentrate on that project rather than jumping ship to the new offerings.
“(Creators) Dan Weiss and David Benioff continue to work on finishing up the seventh season and are already in the midst of writing and preparing for the eighth and final season,” HBO’s statement went on to say. “We have kept them up to date on our plans and they will be attached, along with George R. R. Martin, as executive producers on all projects. We will support them as they take a much deserved break from writing about Westeros once the final season is complete.”
The four writers are Max Borenstein (“Kong: Skull Island”), Jane Goldman (“X-Men: Days of Future Past”), Brian Helgeland (“Legend”, “A Knight’s Tale”) and Carly Wray (“The Leftovers”). Martin himself, the author who started the whole tangled tussle for the Iron Throne with his books, is listed along with Goldman and Wray as a writer on their series.
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Source:
https://www.cnet.com/news/game-of-thrones-four-new-spinoff-shows-hbo-george-rr-martin/
May 4, 2017
WhatsApp’s Status feature now has more daily users than Snapchat
Less than three months after its introduction, WhatsApp’s generic take on Snapchat stories now has 175 million users, Facebook said today. That’s a healthy number of users for the communication app, which has more than 1 billion users around the world. And it suggests Facebook’s strategy of cloning Snapchat across its entire suite of products is having its desired effect — halting Snapchat’s growth around the world, while also opening up valuable new surfaces for advertising.
The popularity of WhatsApp Status has been hard to gauge for US-based journalists, since the app is much more popular overseas. Given that relatively few international users had been exposed to the stories format before, it seemed reasonable that it could prove popular in WhatsApp. Facebook’s announcement today during an earnings call confirms that, for now at least, it appears to be working.
Snapchat faces a strong challenge from Facebook, and currently has 161 million daily users, the company said in February. The good news for Snapchat is they don’t appear to be going anywhere — more than half of users don’t visit Facebook daily, and nearly half don’t visit Instagram daily, according to App Annie research shared with Bloomberg.
Also, WhatsApp was down today.
Source:
https://www.theverge.com/2017/5/3/15537000/whatsapp-stories-status-users-175-million
Facebook’s Express Wi-Fi launches commercially in India
Express Wi-Fi is one of Facebook’s many connectivity initiatives under its internet.org umbrella. Unlike more futuristic projects like the Aquila drone, though, the emphasis here is on existing Wi-Fi technologies and allowing local entrepreneurs to resell internet access.
In India, Facebook is currently working with a number of local ISPs and 500 local entrepreneurs, but that number is about to grow quite a bit.
As the company announced today, it’s now launching the service commercially in India and has partnered with the Indian telecom firm Bharti Airtel, which plans to bring an additional 20,000 hotspots online, starting in the next few months. The other ISPs involved in the project so far are AirJaldi in Uttarakhand, LMES in Rajasthan, Tikona in Gujarat and soon with Shaildhar in Meghalaya.
The company previously launched the service commercially in Kenya and it’s also trialing it in Tanzania, Nigeria and Indonesia.
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As James Beldock, Facebook’s product manager for Express Wi-Fi, told me, the idea behind this project was always to create an entrepreneurial grassroots base for the service. That means Airtel and its other ISP partners will continue this work with local entrepreneurs who want to resell internet access to their communities. “Our strategy has always been that these programs work if they are financially sustainable for the partners we work with,” Beldock told me, and added that while Facebook provides the software, it’s the ISPs and their partners that decide what to charge, for example. “Facebook’s strategy is to enable partners to make connectivity at scale sustainable, not to dictate pricing.”
Wi-Fi, of course, is a far easier onramp to the internet than most other means of getting online, Beldock stressed. After all, you don’t need a SIM card or data plan to go online. It also offers a low-cost way of getting online (with daily, weekly or monthly data packs) and the partnership with local entrepreneurs could help the local economy.
As Beldock noted, the challenge of expanding the service to other countries isn’t so much technical as it is about understanding the local markets and needs. Chances are, though, that we’ll soon see more commercial launches in the other countries where Facebook is already testing the service.
Source:
Facebook’s Express Wi-Fi launches commercially in India
