May 2020 - Page 2 of 2 -

Tinder’s online dating usage is up

Match’s Tinder sees increase in online dating

Led by the company’s Tinder division, Match is seeing an uptick of 17% from last year. The increase is fueled by women under 30 who have increased messaging traffic on the platform. Dallas Morning News

dis-rup-shun: Being alone at home provides a great deal more time to explore interests, including finding someone to see once you can see people. Pre-Coronavirus statistics showed that the online generation was not dating or having sex as much as older generations — satisfying their interests with other online adventures. Statistics in one to three years will reveal if the current generation of young and single people are in general, more satisfied with dating online than in person.

Smartwatch shipments up 20% in Q1

Consumers wanted more smartwatches in the first quarter, and Apple’s share is 55%, followed by Samsung at 15% and Garmin in third place. The increase is thought to be driven by people wanting to monitor their health during the lockdown. TechCrunch

dis-rup-shun: Fitness is one preoccupation of people with time on their hands, and walkers are jamming the streets all over the world. Given the lockdown did not impact most consumers until late in Q1, the sales statistics cause one to contemplate if buying a smartwatch was a pent up demand that was satisfied as people increased fitness activities in lieu of social activities in the second half of March.

Mobile handset manufacturing resumes in India

The world’s second largest smartphone market, India, will allow handset manufacturers to gradually resume manufacturing this month. China’s Xiaomi is India’s largest phone supplier. The supply chain had completely shut down, leading to zero phone production last month. TechCrunch

dis-rup-shun: The global supply chain for smartphones has sputtered, stopped, and now has resumed in China and India. Will consumers, later this year, be faced with shortages as a result of certain components not meeting demand, or will the current trend to hold on to handsets longer lead to a more permanent, general slowdown in smartphone consumption — a factor critical to the health of the tech sector?

Robot deployed in Singapore parks to encourage social distancing

Spot, the cheetah-looking robot designed by Boston Dynamics, is roaming Singapore’s principal park this weekend to remind visitors to keep their distance from their neighbors, playing pre-recorded messages. TechCrunch

dis-rup-shun: A pandemic is a perfect time to test robots and drones, as the public’s acceptance of both is much higher than normal. Safe delivery of products is a logical application. But what about replacing much of urban police forces with robots with cameras that roam public areas to enforce ordinances? Will consumers, who can’t be identified with anything other than facial recognition, heed the commands of a machine? We are about to find out as robots are increasingly deployed in public places. Expect the presence of a machine with cameras to lower the crime rate in certain public areas.

Consumer Electronics, IOT, Smart Home

Peloton revenues surge 66%

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Peloton revenues up 66% as online fitness booms

The online biking and fitness company has expanded from spin classes to treadmill classes to bootcamp, crossfit, running and many other fitness activities. Last month it hosted a class with 23,000 participants. CNBC

dis-rup-shun: If you haven’t tried this COVID winner, you will find that the quality of the workouts is as good as any expensive exercise studio in town, save for the camaraderie. Peloton’s short-term success will put a long-term dent in fitness clubs. Fitness clubs will need to emphasize and promote personal training, as classes at home are as good as at the club.

Microsoft unveils more Surface options including earbuds

Microsoft continues to refine its Surface line, with additional units and accessories, including a docking station, upgraded headphones and new earbuds. Microsoft’s high quality hardware line gets stronger in the midst of slumping PC sales. Wired

dis-rup-shun: While the economy is in shambles, higher-end technology companies are seeing strong demand for quality products among those that are spending an extraordinary amount of time on screens at home. Microsoft continues to compete well with its biggest customers, such as Dell, Lenovo, HP, Acer and others. The big PC makers will need to continue to find ways to expand into consumer electronics — something they have failed to do many times, as the PC business continues to mature and as Microsoft and Apple continue to carve out strong shares.

Best online games to play with friends during lockdown

CNET reviews the top online games to keep us entertained during lock down. Some favorites include Jackbox Games — easy online games, the Escape Game — the best virtual escape room, Tabletopia — the best online board games, Houseparty — best mobile games, and Animal Crossing: New Horizons for a hang-out activity.

dis-rup-shun: Two ironic truths of the lockdown are that, one, technology is bringing us community, and two, our sense of community has strengthened. These are generalizations, but it is safe to say that our pre-COVID fears that out culture was unraveling in part due to people’s immersions into their small screen has reversed. Screens are now the conduit for maintaining and even deepening our communities, and casual gaming together is a new way to have fun together.

Smart home platform Wink abruptly shifts to subscription model

Wink, the smart home hub with much promise, purchased by will.i.am in 2017, has stated that due to economic conditions, the company will now charge a monthly fee of $4.99 to subscribers who wish for their hub to continue operating.

dis-rup-shun: The smart home business is a tough one — requiring players to have deep pockets in order to make complicated business models pay off over time. The upside to the category has always been the ability to charge a monthly fee in exchange for a valued service, as just selling hardware works only for a few very efficient companies. will.i.am will be better served at less complicated ventures.

Consumer Electronics, IOT, Smart Home

Telehealth surges paving the way for change

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Telehealth surges – possibly reshaping care delivery

Just how much has COVID boosted the telemedicine industry? The incumbent players in the space include Teladoc, MDLIVE and American Well, as well as international companies including Britain’s Babylon, Sweden’s Kry and France’s Doctolib. Babylon signed on 140,000 new users in the UK since the onset of COVID. Companies have been providing telehealth for more than half a dozen years, but the healthcare industry has been slow to embrace remote care. CNBC

dis-rup-shun: Healthcare providers in the U.S. have been on a building tear, throwing neighborhood clinics into many neighborhoods, creating, in many places, a glut of walk-in clinics. For this reason, along with resistance to change, telecare has not been attractive to providers. Consumers, however, have experience the convenience of remote care, and will likely, for many years, hold on to a fear of being in places with sick people. Expect care providers to embrace telehealth and blend remote services into traditional offerings.

Britian’s NHS creates its own national contact tracking app, shunning Google and Apple collaboration

Britain’s National Health Service has developed a Bluetooth-based contact tracking app which stores contact data between all users of the app in a database. If individuals choose to self-identify as infected, the app can notify all of those people who were in contact with the infected person. The NHS app stores data on a central server, whereas the Google Apple contact tracking app stores info on smartphones in a decentralized architecture. CNBC

dis-rup-shun: So, to whom do you wish to provide your location data: Big Tech, federal government, or no one? In the spirit of helping our communities track and address pandemics, do we offer data and participate, or, as CNBC states, is mission creep too tempting by any party? Big Tech already has the majority of our personal data if we own a smartphone, so perhaps trusting BigTech to use the data not only for profit but also for good is enough. Separation of tech and state will have to remain strong for all but those who wish to entrust all personal info to their governments.

Tom Cruise and Elon Musk collaborate on movie filmed in space

Cruise and Musk are apparently partnering on a project to film a movie, or some of a movie, aboard one of Musk’s SpaceX crafts. No details were offered on schedule, plot or names. CNET

dis-rup-shun: Musk has often been guilty of blurring the lines between space business and show business, and Cruise has often been guilty of considering himself out of this world, so the collaboration may be a match made in heaven. Before launching Hollywood into outer space, SpaceX must successfully send a NASA astronaut to the International Space Station on May 27th. If that goes well, perhaps movie talk is in order.

A rare event — Apple products on sale

A number of hot products from Apple, including the generation 5 watch, iPad, iPod and AirPods are among the items being cleared from Best Buy stock — an event that rarely occurs. Wired

dis-rup-shun: Strange times make for strange sales, and Best Buy, despite having a steady online business, is suffering mightily, like most all other retailers, from stores shuttered for nearly two months. Expect quite a few surprising sales as companies across the globe from Neiman Marcus to Best Buy fight for survival and liquidate inventory.

Consumer Electronics, IOT, Smart Home

Covid Coach is the mental health app to keep you coping

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Covid Coach mental health app helps people cope

Covid Coach offers people in isolation a number of tools to deal with anxiety, loneliness and depression, by offering tips on applying for unemployment, meditation guidance, and a way to measure stress and anxiety in an effort to manage it. Wired

dis-rup-shun: The app, from the National Center for PTSD is yet another way to engage technology for health. As mental health treatments are rarely discussed, providing a confidential, easy to access tool for everyone, the National Center for PTSD is proving the value of public health programs.

NVidia scientist creates $400 ventilator

The innovators at Nvidia, the chip company that has powered game consoles, auto dashboards, and millions of PC graphics processors has developed a simple, power efficient ventilator using a small number of components. It’s $400 price tag stands in contrast to the $20,000 charged by traditional ventilator manufacturers. The system is now being submitted to the FDA for emergency certification. TechCrunch

dis-rup-shun: Competition is good, and the pandemic is tearing down many walls that were erected by companies that don’t want competition. One barrier that justifies the inflated price for medical equipment is FDA certification. With an emergency certification process in place, the FDA will be hard-pressed, after the end of the pandemic, to prove why nimble companies cannot compete, in perpetuity, with the healthcare equipment incumbents.

Use your phone as video camera for video calls

It’s easy to join video calls with your phone, but if you need to share your desktop and your office computer does not have a working camera, several apps enable your phone to serve as video camera for your desktop video calls. For Android to PC, there’s DroidCam. For iPhone to PC, there is iVCam, and for Android to Mac, try EpocCam. Wired

dis-rup-shun: In the age of work from home, image matters, and having a crisp, steady image and great audio are the new “dress for success.” If your built-in camera is crummy and you have an older smartphone that is not in use, this may be the answer.

Airbus app helps airlines find parking places for aircraft

The airline industry is operating at 5% of last year’s numbers. More than 16,000 aircraft are parked. Finding enough space at airports around the globe to stack giant planes is an unprecedented logistics challenge. Airbus has developed an app that helps airlines find new places to park jets. Watch the video here CNBC.

dis-rup-shun: The drop in demand for aircraft will take months to years to ripple through the economy, forcing aircraft manufacturers to turn to new revenue sources, like on-the-ground maintenance. Maintaining jets in remote locations that are not in service will be a big business for the next year. Now is a time to see how innovative Boeing and Airbus can be at not building new planes.

Consumer Electronics, IOT, Smart Home

A smart vaping device?

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Smart vaping — tracking (bad) habits

IO(S)T — the Internet of smoking things is here. The PuffPacket, developed with the help of researchers at Cornell, connects your vaping device to your smartphone via Bluetooth, at which point vapers can view their vaping activity on an app, and can opt to send it to the cloud where various other parties may use the data for various purposes. TechCrunch

dis-rup-shun: What is the value of your vaping data? To vaping device and cartridge manufacturers, knowing when and how you use their products will help them improve both their products and their advertising. For you, knowing when you most enjoy the experience will help you purchase the right supplies for the right times, or will help you know when you need substitute products if you desire to quit. For regulators, the data will help them understand trends and policies needed to protect minors.

Coronavirus damage report: advertising

This week, a number of advertising-fueled businesses reported earnings. The good news is that a slow March did not hurt the top line drastically. The bad news is that the damage will come in the second quarter. Some executives expect the pullback in advertising to come in waves over the coming quarter, but expect sector performance to vary. CNBC

dis-rup-shun: Two factors are working for the advertising industry’s favor: one is a very strong January and February, which kept the quarter somewhat healthy, and the diversification of Big Tech companies that are not only major advertising engines, but also purveyors of entertainment, logistics and video conferencing — all of which thrived in usage during shelter in place.

Studio quality microphone to enhance video calling and video making

The Rode GO lavalier microphone is the $199 device that is next in the transformation of your home into a top notch conference center or video production studio. During the time of quarantine, many have purchased new monitors, special behind computer lighting and created special backgrounds. Adding a wireless mic brings high quality audio to the home studio/office.TechCrunch

dis-rup-shun: Remember the book Wikinomics? The book, published in 2006, stated that the new Internet economy was all about decentralizing (formerly) specialized functions, such as journalism and yes, movie making. Pro-grade tools available for a few hundred dollars or less will continue to blur the lines between amateur and professional content and provide massive amounts of long-tail content for the world to enjoy.

Amazon smart oven: IOT gone awry

Wired’s Joe Ray chronicles the frustration of trying to find conveniences provided by a smart oven. Amazon’s offering, leaning heavily on Alexa, the smartphone app, and cross-selling packaged food from Amazon, proves complicated and, ultimately, not helpful. Wired

dis-rup-shun: In defense of Amazon (not that they need defending), much of the problem is that the microwave was intended to make something complicated (cooking) very simple. The truth is, using IOT technology to make something that is already simple more simple results in complications. It is safe to say that very few people actually cook in their microwave — it is for quick heating or thawing — and therefore trying to turn the device into something more is a task in itself. IOT is valuable to consumers when it solves a problem. When IOT goes looking for a problem, it usually fails.