Ideaforge

Since the inception of professional sports, fans have sought statistics about how their favorite teams and players are performing. Until recently, these stats were generated from basic counting, like batting averages, home runs or touchdowns.

Today, sports leagues are looking to learn more about players and find a competitive edge through more advanced stats. Beyond that, they want to engage fans more with tools like AWS NFL’s Next Gen Stats and MLB’s Statcast, software that uses compelling visuals to illustrate statistics like the probability of receiving a catch in the end zone or a runner’s speed between home and first base.

AWS counts Major League Baseball, the National Football League, the German Bundesliga soccer league, NASCAR, Formula 1 racing and Six Countries Rugby among its customers. How, exactly, are advanced cloud technology and machine learning helping change how we watch live sports?

Building on Moneyball

Source: Tech Crunch

Apple’s updated and more detailed Maps experience has now rolled out across the U.S., the company announced this morning. The redesigned app will include more accurate information overall as well as comprehensive views of roads, buildings, parks, airports, malls and other public places. It will also bring Look Around to more cities and real-time transit to Miami.

The company has now spent years upgrading its Maps experience to better compete with Google Maps, which Apple replaced with its own Maps app in 2012. That launch didn’t go well, to say the least. Apple CEO Tim Cook even had to apologize for how Maps fell short of customers’ expectations and promised Apple would do better going forward.

Over time, Apple has been making good on those promises, by updating Maps with better data and notably, by announcing a ground-up rebuild of the Maps platform back in 2018. Last year, Apple also introduced the new “Look Around” feature in iOS 13 — essentially Apple’s version of Google Street View, but one that uses high-resolution 3D views that offer more detail and smoother transitions. 

iOS 13 also brought more Maps features, like real-time transit schedules, a list-making feature called Collections, Favorites and more.

However, some of these Maps updates have been slow to roll out. Look Around, for example, has only been live in major cities, including New York, the San Francisco Bay Area, LA, Las Vegas, Houston and Oahu. With the nationwide launch, it’s safe to assume you’re about to see it pop up in more major metros, though Apple hasn’t provided names of which ones will get it first. Real-time transit information is offered only in select major cities, including the San Francisco Bay Area, Washington, D.C., New York and LA.

Today, Apple is adding Miami to that list of supported cities offering real-time transit, just in time for Super Bowl weekend.

Over the course of 2019, Apple’s improved, more detailed Maps experience has steadily expanded across the U.S., finally arriving in the North East as of last fall.

Today, the new Maps experience it’s starting to go live across all of the U.S. But that doesn’t necessarily mean you’ll see it right away when you launch the Maps app — the rollout is phased.

“We set out to create the best and most private maps app on the planet that is reflective of how people explore the world today,” said Eddy Cue, Apple’s senior vice president of Internet Software and Services, in a statement about the launch. “It is an effort we are deeply invested in and required that we rebuild the map from the ground up to reimagine how Maps enhances people’s lives — from navigating to work or school or planning an important vacation — all with privacy at its core. The completion of the new map in the United States and delivering new features like Look Around and Collections are important steps in bringing that vision to life. We look forward to bringing this new map to the rest of the world starting with Europe later this year,” he added.

The updated Apple Maps includes Look Around and real-time transit in some markets, Collections, Favorites, a Share ETA feature, flight status information for upcoming travel, indoor maps for malls and airports, Siri natural language guidance and Flyover — a feature offering immersive, 3D views of major metros, as seen from above. The latter is available across more than 350 cities.

Going forward, Apple will use the imagery it collects to deliver Look Around to more U.S. markets and begin to upgrade the Maps platform in Europe.

Maps’ biggest selling point today, however, may not be the sum of its feature sets. Instead, Maps’ standout feature is its focus on privacy.

While Google does use the data collected from Google Maps for many handy features — like reporting on a business’s busiest times, for example — it’s not a private app. In fact, it’s so not private that Google had to add an “incognito mode” as an option for users who didn’t want their Maps app collecting data on them.

Apple, meanwhile, notes that its app requires no-sign in, isn’t connected to your Apple ID and its personalized features are implemented using on-device intelligence, not by sending data to cloud servers. In addition, any data collected when using Maps, like search terms, navigation routing and traffic information, is only associated with random identifiers that continually reset to protect user privacy.

Apple also uses a process called “fuzzing” that converts a precise location where a Maps search originated to a less precise one after 24 hours. And it doesn’t retain a history of what a user has searched for or where they’ve been.

In an era where people assume, usually correctly, that the mere act of launching an app is an agreement to have their data collected, Apple’s increased emphasis on user privacy is welcome and a good reason to try Apple Maps again, if you never came back to it after the shaky launch.

Apple Maps, now used in over 200 countries, is available on iPhone, iPad, Mac, Apple Watch and in cars via CarPlay.

Source: Tech Crunch

Hello and welcome back to our regular morning look at private companies, public markets and the gray space in between.

As One Medical looks to become the first venture-backed company to price its IPO in 2020 this afternoon and Casper aims to price its own shares next Wednesday, the market is gearing up for a pair of tests.

If you listen to the Nasdaq and the NYSE, IPO volume in 2020 will prove vibrant. A surprise, perhaps, in the wake of the WeWork meltdown that many had expected might reduce IPO cadence. One Medical and Casper, though, are charging ahead, meaning that their debuts will help set the tone for the 2020 IPO market.

If they struggle with weak pricing and slow initial trading, their disappointing offerings could slow the IPO market. If they price well and are welcomed by the street, however, the opposite.

Let’s take a look at how many IPOs are coming, what One Medical and Casper are hoping for and what their results might mean for unicorn liquidity. Don’t forget that we’re still living in the midst of a unicorn liquidity crisis — there are hundreds of private companies worth $1 billion or more around the world that need an exist, and the market is creating them faster than it can get them out the door. If IPOs stumble in 2020, lots just won’t make it out before the market turns.

An IPO crowd

Yesterday, CNBC reported notes from Nasdaq CEO Adena Friedman and NYSE President Stacey Cunningham, each speaking about their expected IPO cadence in 2020. Friedman said there are “lot of companies looking to tap the public markets in the first half,” implying a strong flow of potential debuts.

Source: Tech Crunch

Electric scooter startup Spin was long considered to be a bit of an underdog in the micromobility space. Before selling to Ford, Spin had raised just $8 million, while competitors Lime and Bird had raised hundreds of millions. Today, the former underdog is backed by one of the world’s largest transportation companies and has set its sights on becoming an industry leader that sets standards for both vehicles and labor practices.

“We’ve gone from the scrappy upstart, the guy who was least-funded, the guys who kept to their principles and always deployed working with cities, who realized that there would be a chance for a long-term kind of business here,” Spin co-founder Euwyn Poon told TechCrunch. “Now, through the Ford acquisition, we can take an even longer-term view.”

When Ford bought Spin in a deal worth about $100 million in November 2018, Spin employed just 24 people. Now, the company has a few hundred staffers across 70 markets. Spin’s blueprint for growth is what brought Ford to the table, Poon said.

“The acquisition happened at a time when Bird and Lime had probably raised about $700 million each, so they were scaling out,” Poon said. “When Ford was looking to get into this space, instead of doing it themselves or acquiring a larger company, they found us as a great partner because we had these great principles and a big blueprint for scaling out. The capital injection they provided to us has put us in our path so, with the addition of Ford, we’ve been able to tap on their capital resources and have acquired a lot of expertise in the hardware side and a lot of expertise on the regulatory side as well.”

Source: Tech Crunch

Shares of popular American ride-hailing giant Lyft are off 1.5% today in regular trading after The New York Times reported that the company would cut some staff. TechCrunch confirmed with the company that 90 individuals are expected to be impacted by the changes. The company’s shares dipped as far as 3% before recovering.

In a statement, the company said that it has “carefully evaluated the resources we need to achieve our 2020 business goals, and the restructuring of some of our teams reflects that. We are still growing rapidly and plan to hire more than 1,000 new employees this year.”

Lyft has been under pressure along with industry peer Uber to show a path to profitability after a history of cash burn and unprofitability.

During its most recent earnings report, Q3 2019, Lyft said that it expects “to be profitable on an adjusted EBITDA basis in the fourth quarter of 2021,” earlier than previously expected. The company’s shares have traded under its IPO price since its debut; worth $72 per share when it went public, Lyft is worth a little more than $47 per share today.

According to the company, marketing and enterprise sales teams were impacted.

Uber, Lyft’s chief domestic rival, also cut staff in recent months. A host of other so-called “unicorn” companies have also reduced their staffing in recent quarters as investors, both public and private, have changed their mood toward losses — gone are the days when expensive, unprofitable growth was hailed as bold. Today, revenue growth stapled to rapidly shrinking unprofitability or even profits is in vogue.

And Lyft, with promises on the board to reach adjusted profitability inside the next eight quarters, has a clock ticking next to its income statement.

The company has made some progress in reducing its losses. In its most-recent quarter, for example, the company’s adjusted net loss fell from $245.3 million (Q3 2018) to $121.6 million (Q3 2019) as its revenue grew from $585.0 million to $955.6 million over the same period. The company’s losses inclusive of all costs worsened over the year, but its Q3 2019 quarter included a huge share-based compensation expense, and $86.6 million charge. Whether investors view the package of adjusted and GAAP results as improvements is up for debate. But, the company’s operating cash flow did improve over the same period.

The results gisted down to an adjusted EBITDA loss of $128.1 million in the third quarter of 2019, far from zero, but a far slimmer percent-of-revenue result compared to the year-ago quarter (Q3 2018).

Lyft will announce its Q4 2019 results on February 11, in about two weeks. We’ll know more about its profitability quest then.

Source: Tech Crunch

Google’s Nest is testing a new feature that will alert you to potential HVAC issues and even help you book an HVAC professional to fix it, thanks to a partnership with Handy. The company says the HVAC alerts are only available in select cities during the testing period. If you’re in one of the supported markets, the new HVAC alert email will include an additional link to a website where you can make an appointment with a repair professional.

Nest users have already been able to sign up to receive a monthly email, the Nest Home Report, which offers a summary of their home’s energy use, safety events, Nest news and information about other Nest products, among other things.

Users who had signed up for this email will be automatically enrolled to receive the new HVAC alert emails starting today, Google says.

Various events could trigger these HVAC alerts, but largely it’s based on warning signs that your Nest detects — like unusual or unexpected heating and cooling patterns.

For example, if the thermostat finds it’s taking longer to cool your home than usual, that could signal a problem with your AC system. The alerts aren’t meant to replace the need for regular HVAC maintenance or service pro expertise, but instead are meant to serve as a warning about a potential issue.

Nest will also take into account your area’s weather before making a determination about a potential problem, as something like an overnight cold snap could work the thermostat more than usual.

In the HVAC alert email, users will be informed as to what system (heating or cooling) experienced the issue. A link to an optional survey about how you resolved the problem, and what it turned out to be, will also be included. This data may be used to help the system get smarter over time, in terms of diagnosing issues.

Not all Nest alerts will mean there’s a need for a service repair pro to come out, of course. Sometimes the problem is as simple as a household member having left a door open, which allowed hot air in, for example.

However, if you decide a service call is warranted, Nest will also now be able to connect you to a local pro in your area. Of course, you can reach out to your original Nest installer (Settings –> Home info –> Nest Pro Installer), if you choose.

But in the test markets, Nest owners will receive emails that also include a link to a website where you can book a qualified HVAC pro. This is done via Handy, which Nest has partnered with on this new effort. That limits the feature only to select regions that Handy supports.

At launch, the Handy booking option will be made available to Nest users in 20 metro areas, including Atlanta, Boston, Denver, Las Vegas, and San Diego, and others. Over the course of the test, it will expand to more regions. Handy today supports a fairly large number of cities across the U.S., Canada and the U.K.

If you don’t want to receive HVAC alerts, you can opt-out using a link in the email.

While Handy is taking on the service calls from Nest users for the time being, Google could eventually choose to connect Nest users with Google My Business profiles in the future, if it chose, or even turn this into a new advertising destination for qualified HVAC pro’s.

To get started, users will need to first sign up for the Nest Home Report if they haven’t already. They’ll then receive alerts as necessary going forward.

 

Source: Tech Crunch

Mostly when we talk about commercial space, and space startups, the focus is relatively close to home – stretching to orbit, and maybe the Moon. But Seattle-based startup Xplore wants to extend the privatization of space further still, through the development of spacecraft and a platform designed for commercial missions to the Moon, Mars, Venus, extra-orbital asteroids and beyond.

Xplore is building spacecraft capable of carrying small payloads (between roughly 70-150 lbs) to deep space destinations. These could include sensors including optical cameras, tools for measuring temperature and other space weather conditions, hyperspectral imaging tools, or even others, smaller spacecraft on behalf of a range of commercial clients. The company began operations in 2017, co-founded by Lisa Rich and Jeff Rich (who also founded and manage VC firm Hemisphere Ventures) and plans to fly its first spacecraft, destined for the Moon, beginning in 2021.

Nanoracks is a commercial space company with an established history of developing and deploying commercial spacecraft, including small satellites launched from the International Space Station (ISS), with payloads from customers including the European Space Agency, NASA, the German Space Agency and many more. In 2016, Nanoracks opened the first commercial testing platform, installed on the outside of the ISS to allow private companies to run experiments in microgravity and in space-based radiation exposure. More recently, it announced that it would be launching technology to demonstrate in-space structural metal cutting for the first time – tech that could one day open up big opportunities in re-using discarded spacecraft for in-space reuse and manufacturing.

Xplore’s spacecraft can hold multiple payloads, and Nanoracks will be able to use their experience to help prepare and integrate the cargo of Xplore’s clients, making it possible to launch more rapidly and more efficiently with less lead time required.

Xplore also plans to fly Earth orbital missions, focusing on rapid response capabilities and handling everything for customers in terms of mission parameters, spacecraft and operations – everything beyond the payload design, basically. With more launch providers and capacity coming online, there’s definitely a growing need for mission logistics and payload launch services – and extra-orbital destinations make Xplore’s an interesting offering that could pave the way for different kinds of businesses and commercial research.

Source: Tech Crunch

Growing up with blindness or low vision can be difficult for kids, not just because they can’t read the same books or play the same games as their sighted peers; Vision is also a big part of social interaction and conversation. This Microsoft research project uses augmented reality to help kids with vision impairment “see” the people they’re talking with.

The challenge people with vision impairment encounter is, of course, that they can’t see the other people around them. This can prevent them from detecting and using many of the nonverbal cues sighted people use in conversation, especially if those behaviors aren’t learned at an early age.

Project Tokyo is a new effort from Microsoft in which its researchers are looking into how technologies like AI and AR can be useful to all people, including those with disabilities. That’s not always the case, though it must be said that voice-powered virtual assistants are a boon to many who can’t as easily use a touchscreen or mouse and keyboard.

The team, which started as an informal challenge to improve accessibility a few years ago, began by observing people traveling to the Special Olympics, then followed that up with workshops involving the blind and low vision community. Their primary realization was of the subtle context sight gives in nearly all situations.

“We, as humans, have this very, very nuanced and elaborate sense of social understanding of how to interact with people — getting a sense of who is in the room, what are they doing, what is their relationship to me, how do I understand if they are relevant for me or not,” said Microsoft researcher Ed Cutrell. “And for blind people a lot of the cues that we take for granted just go away.”

In children this can be especially pronounced, as having perhaps never learned the relevant cues and behaviors, they can themselves exhibit antisocial tendencies like resting their head on a table while conversing, or not facing a person when speaking to them.

To be clear, these behaviors aren’t “problematic” in themselves, as they are just the person doing what works best for them, but they can inhibit everyday relations with sighted people, and it’s a worthwhile goal to consider how those relations can be made easier and more natural for everyone.

The experimental solution Project Tokyo has been pursuing involves a modified HoloLens — minus the lens, of course. The device is also a highly sophisticated imaging device that can identify objects and people if provided with the right code.

The user wears the device like a high-tech headband, and a custom software stack provides them with a set of contextual cues:

• When a person is detected, say four feet away on the right, the headset will emit a click that sounds like it is coming from that location.
• If the face of the person is known, a second “bump” sound is made and the person’s name announced (again, audible only to the user).
• If the face is not known or can’t be seen well, a “stretching” sound is played that modulates as the user directs their head towards the other person, ending in a click when the face is centered on the camera (which also means the user is facing them directly).
• For those nearby, an LED strip shows a white light in the direction of a person who has been detected, and a green light if they have been identified.

Other tools are being evaluated, but this set is a start, and based on a case study with a game 12-year-old named Theo, they could be extremely helpful.

Microsoft’s post describing the system and the team’s work with Theo and others is worth reading for the details, but essentially Theo began to learn the ins and outs of the system and in turn began to manage social situations using cues mainly used by sighted people. For instance, he learned that he can deliberately direct his attention at someone by turning his head towards them, and developed his own method of scanning the room to keep tabs on those nearby — neither one possible when one’s head is on the table.

That kind of empowerment is a good start, but this is definitely a work in progress. The bulky, expensive hardware isn’t exactly something you’d want to wear all day, and naturally different users will have different needs. What about expressions and gestures? What about signs and menus? Ultimately the future of Project Tokyo will be determined, as before, by the needs of the communities who are seldom consulted when it comes to building AI systems and other modern conveniences.

Source: Tech Crunch

Last year saw global smartphone sales decline for the first time since analysts started tracking such things. In Gartner’s case, that comprises a full 11 years, as figures dropped 2% for 2019. Following on last week’s global device forecast, the firm is drilling down on smartphone figures with some slightly rosier results.

According to the new numbers from the firm, global smartphone rates are expected to reverse course slightly for 2020, with a predicted 3% bump in worldwide sales. It’s a minor success, but after a few years of stagnation and then decline, a small victory is a victory no less.

I won’t dig too far into why numbers have been falling lately (I’d direct you here instead), but 2020 is expected to be the first year the move to 5G will finally see some real, tangible payoff for manufacturers. Apple, of course, is expected to get into the game at the end of the year, with the next iPhone, while a new batch of Qualcomm chips are helping to make cheaper 5G devices a reality.

5G phone sales are expected to have their largest impact in China and the broader Asia/Pacific regions. Those areas are expected to increase at 5.1% and 5.7% in overall sales, year over year, respectively. The Middle East and North Africa region, meanwhile, should get the biggest bump, at 5.9% for the year.

Ultimately, 5G may only be a temporary solution to declining smartphone sales. Without a radical shift in form factor or functionality, it’s hard to imagine smartphone sales seeing a substantial course correction in the coming years.

Source: Tech Crunch