Ideaforge

Mark Zuckerberg won’t be spending 2020 focused on wearing ties, learning Mandarin, or just fixing Facebook. “Rather than having year-to-year challenges, I’ve tried to think about what I hope the world and my life will look in 2030” he wrote today on Facebook. As you might have guessed, though, Zuckerberg’s vision for an improved planet involves a lot more of Facebook’s family of apps.

His biggest proclamations in today’s notes include that:

• VR – Better virtual reality technology could address the housing crisis by letting people work from anywhere — Facebook is building Oculus
• AR – Phones will remain the primary computing platform for most of the decade by augmented reality could get devices out from between us so we can be present together — Facebook is building AR glasses
• Privacy – The internet has created a global community where people find it hard to establish themselves as unique, so smaller online groups could make people feel special again – Facebook is building more private groups and messaging options
• Regulation – That the big questions facing technology are too thorny for private companies to address by themselves, and governments must step in around elections, content moderation, data portability, and privacy — Facebook is trying to self-regulate on these and everywhere else to deter overly onerous lawmaking

These are all reasonable predictions and suggestions. However, Zuckerberg’s post does little to address how the broadening of Facebook’s services in the 2010s also contributed to a lot of the problems he presents.

• Gentrification – Facebook’s shuttled employees have driven up rents in cities around the world, especially the Bay Area
• Isolation – Constant passive feed scrolling on Facebook and Instagram has created a way to seem like you’re being social without having true back-and-forther interaction with friends
• Envy – Facebook’s algorithms can make anyone without a glamorous, Instagram-worthy life look less important, while hackers can steal accounts and its moderation systems can accidentally suspend profiles with little recourse for most users
• Negligence – The growth-first mentality led Facebook’s policies and safety to lag behind its impact, creating the kind of democracy, content, anti-competition, and privacy questions its now asking the government to answer for it

Noticibly absent from Zuckerberg’s post are some of Facebook’s more controversial products and initiatives. He writes about “decentralizing opportunity” by giving small businesses commerce tools, but never mentions cryptocurrency, blockchain, or Libra. He also largely leaves out Portal, Facebook’s smart screen that could help distant families stay closer, but that some see as a surveillance and data collection tool.

I’m glad Zuckerberg is taking his role as a public figure and the steward of one of humanity’s fundamental utilities more seriously. His willingness to even think about some of these long-term issues instead of just quarterly-profits is important. Optimism is necessary to create what doesn’t exist.

Still, if Zuckerberg wants 2030 to look better for the world, and for the world to look more kindly on Facebook, he may need to hire more skeptics and cynics that see a dystopic future instead. Their foresight on where societal problems could arise from Facebook’s products could help temper Zuckerberg’s team of idealists to create a company that balances the potential of the future with the risks to the present.

Source: Tech Crunch

OrCam is expanding its product lineup with new devices that tackle new use cases. OrCam’s best-known device is the OrCam MyEye 2 — a tiny device for people with visual impairment that you clip on your glasses to help you navigate the world around you.

At CES, OrCam announced that the MyEye 2 is getting new features. In addition to being able to point at text and signs to read text aloud, recognize faces and identify objects and money notes, you’ll be able to let the device guide you.

For instance, you can say “what’s in front of me?” and the device could tell you that there’s a door. You can then ask to be guided to that door. The MyEye 2 is also getting better at natural language processing for interactive reading sessions.

When it comes to new devices, OrCam is expanding to hearing impairment with the OrCam Hear. It can be particularly useful in loud rooms. The device helps you identify and isolate a speaker’s voice so you can follow a conversation even in a public space. You pair it with your existing Bluetooth hearing aids.

Finally, OrCam is introducing the OrCam Read, a handheld AI reader. This time, you don’t clip a camera to your glasses, you take the device in your hand and point it at text. The company says it could be particularly useful for people who have reading difficulties due to dyslexia.

Source: Tech Crunch

Paytm today announced two new features for businesses as the financial services firm looks to expand its reach in the nation that has quickly become one of the world’s most crowded and competitive payments markets.

The Noida-headquartered firm, which raised $1 billion in late November, said its app for businesses now features an “all-in-one” QR code system to accept payments from multiple platforms, including mobile wallets (that act as an intermediary between a user and their bank but provide convenience) and those that are powered by UPI, a payments infrastructure built by a coalition of banks that has been widely adopted by the industry players.

Merchants had expressed an interest in having one QR code that could understand any payments app, said Vijay Shekhar Sharma, the founder and chief executive of Paytm’s parent firm One97 Communications. In addition to supporting mobile wallet apps, and UPI-powered payment apps, Paytm’s new QR codes also support payments through popular Rupay cards.

Merchants can also stick these QR codes on devices such as battery packs and chargers to enable quick transaction from users, Sharma explained at a press conference today.

Bookkeeping for merchants and small businesses

The nation’s highest-valued startup (at around $16 billion) also announced a bookkeeping feature for businesses to help them maintain their daily records. The feature is already rolling out to merchants, Sharma told TechCrunch.

Dubbed Paytm Business Khata, the feature will help merchants manage payments, record transactions and secure loans and insurance. The service will also enable them to set a reminder for credit transactions, receive an audio alert for new transactions, and send links to their customers to easily pay their dues, said Sharma.

Hundreds of millions of Indians, many in small towns and villages, came online for the first time in the last decade thanks to the proliferation of cheap Android smartphones and the availability of some of the world’s cheapest mobile data plans.

In recent years, millions of merchants and small businesses have also started to accept digital payments and listed them on the web for the first time. But most of them are still offline. Scores of startups and heavily backed firms such as Google, Walmart and Amazon are chasing this untapped market.

Google, which has amassed more than 67 million users on its payments app in India, last year announced a range of offerings to allow businesses to easily start accepting payments online. In the past, the company also launched tools to help mom and pop stores build presence on the web.

A number of startups today, including Bangalore-based Instamojo, Khatabook (which raised $25 million in October last year and counts GGV Capital, Sequoia Capital India and Tencent among its investors) and Lightspeed-backed OkCredit, which raised $67 million in August last year, offer bookkeeping features and allow their consumers to enable easier payment options.

Paytm’s Sharma claimed that his business app has already amassed more than 10 million merchant users, a number he expects to more than double by next year.

The announcements today illustrate how aggressively Paytm, which once led the mobile payments market in India, is expanding its service.

Some critics have cautioned that the firm, which counts SoftBank, Alibaba and T. Rowe Price among its key investors and has raised over $3.3 billion to date, is quickly losing its market share and chasing opportunities that could significantly increase its expenses and losses. According to several industry estimates, Google Pay and Walmart’s PhonePe now lead the mobile payments market in India.

Paytm lost more than half a billion dollars in the financial year that ended in March 2019. The trouble for the company is that there is currently little money to be made in the payments market because of some of the local guidelines set by the government.

“The current Paytm’s potential is a pale shadow of its former self. And to stay relevant, the company is entering new businesses (and failing spectacularly in some) at a pace that shows both a lack of clarity and urgency. Paytm is stuck between a glorious past that was built on the back of digital payments and a future that doesn’t look anything like Jack Ma’s Alibaba, one of Paytm’s largest investors and Sharma’s inspiration,” wrote Ashish Mishra, a long-time journalist, in a scathing post (paywalled).

Sharma said today that the company plans to offer services such as stock brokerage and insurance brokerage in the coming months.

At stake is India’s payments market that is estimated to be worth $1 trillion in the next four years, up from about $200 billion currently, according to Credit Suisse. And that market is only going to get more crowded when WhatsApp, which has amassed over 400 million users in India, rolls out its payments service to all its users in the country in the coming months.

Source: Tech Crunch

Anki’s true legacy in robotics will only be sufficiently determined over the course of a few years. But while the startup’s vision for Cozmo ultimately failed, I suspect we’ll see its take on the category of home robotics leaving a lasting legacy.

The Keyi Tech representative I spoke to at CES was quick to deflect a comparison to the company, mostly on the basis that its own modular robots are designed for STEM learning, rather than Cozmo’s friendly home companion vibe.

But the animation-inspired characterization is clear front and center with Clicbot. In fact, Keyi says it even followed in Anki’s footsteps by hiring a Kickstarter animator to create the single, cycloptic eye in the middle of its cylindrical head. And, indeed, it goes a way toward giving the product a warm, lifelike appearance.

Demos were limited at the show, though a row of Clicbots were lined up, performing a choreographed dance to Redbone’s “Come and Get Your Love.” It’s a jam, for sure. Not sure if it’s licensed or not, but it’s all over the promo videos the company issued ahead of CES. Another quick demo found Clicbot responding affectionately when a Keyi rep rubbed the side of its face.

Again, there are big differences between the devices, their claims and what sector of the market they intend to fill. The product is modular and designed to be built according to a connected app. Once built, it can do things like serve coffee, but nowhere does it claim to be the kind of autonomous robotic pet Anki was shooting for.

The ‘bot kits will start at around $300, and should be available through Amazon soon.

Source: Tech Crunch