Sci-Verse - tech, Gadgets review, Startups and Programming Hub

Google’s research team releases two new experimental photo apps for iOS

Tuesday, December 12, 2017 Unknown 0 Comments Category : apps , IOS , social

Inspired by the success of Motion Stills, Google is releasing more photography apps built on experimental technology. Today, Google is launching two new “appsperimentals” for iOS that take advantage of recent phone and computer vision advancements.

“Photography appsperiments” are “usable and useful mobile photography experiences built on experimental technology.” Motion Stills, which launched first on iOS, created cinemagraphs from short video using experimental stabilization and rendering technologies

The two new apps use such technologies like object recognition, person segmentation, stylization algorithms, and e 6fficient image encoding/decoding.

Google is researching this technology given the rise of next-generation phone cameras that will be able to blend hardware and computer vision algorithms. Specifically, the company is exploring “radically new creative mobile photo and video applications” as cameras will soon be able to understand the “semantic content” of a photo.

Selfissimo! (iOS, Android) is an automated selfie photographer that snaps a stylish black and white photo each time you pose. Tap the screen to start a photo shoot. The app encourages you to pose and captures a photo whenever you stop moving. Tap the screen to end the session and review the resulting contact sheet, saving individual images or the entire shoot.
Scrubbies (iOS) lets you easily manipulate the speed and direction of video playback to produce delightful video loops that highlight actions, capture funny faces, and replay moments. Shoot a video in the app and then remix it by scratching it like a DJ. Scrubbing with one finger plays the video. Scrubbing with two fingers captures the playback so you can save or share it.

A third app called Storyboard is only available for Android and it lets users turn videos into a single-page comic layout. Processed completely on-device, the app automatically selects interesting video frames, lays them out, and applies one of six visual styles.

You're being programmed by Facebook says Ex- executive

Tuesday, December 12, 2017 Unknown 0 Comments Category : social , Social news

Snap and Spotify also expressed interest to Apple - Shazam Deal

Monday, December 11, 2017 Unknown 0 Comments Category : enterprise

Here is the statement that Apple provided us.

“We are thrilled that Shazam and its talented team will be joining Apple. Since the launch of the App Store, Shazam has consistently ranked as one of the most popular apps for iOS. Today, it’s used by hundreds of millions of people around the world, across multiple platforms. Apple Music and Shazam are a natural fit, sharing a passion for music discovery and delivering great music experiences to our users. We have exciting plans in store, and we look forward to combining with Shazam upon approval of today’s agreement.”

Apple did not disclose the price but we have several sources that have confirmed to us that the deal is in the region of $400 million.

Sources also tell us that Apple’s deal had been in the works for about five months and came after Shazam had been in talks with others, including Snapchat and Spotify.

Apple generally does not spell out the details of how it plans to use acquisitions, but there are a number of areas where Shazam’s current business overlaps with that of Apple’s, making for an interesting range of possibilities for where and how the two will work together.

Shazam’s core business is in music recognition: people use its app to capture a clip of music that is playing, and then it matches that against its large database to tell you what you are listening to, a business that has brought the company over 1 billion downloads of its app to date.

Over the years Shazam has augmented this with a number of other services: it sends users through to other sites to download and listen to the music at their leisure; it provides more information to users about the music and the artists behind it; it keeps charts of popular music based on the clips that it hears and that people want to identify. It’s also branched out into more marketing services based on visual recognition — essentially augmented reality plays where users can capture snaps of images that lead them to more content from a brand or another organization.

Through all of this, Shazam has developed some interesting partnerships, specifically with Apple and Spotify (who together get around 1 million referrals each month via Shazam), and Snapchat, which currently has an integration with Shazam where Snapchat users can “recognize music, engage with Shazam content, and send their music and artist discoveries as Snaps to their friends.” It is no surprise that these are also the three names that we heard were all approached and discussed an acquisition of the startup.

Shazam provided us with the below statement.

“We are excited to announce that Shazam has entered into an agreement to become part of Apple. Shazam is one of the highest rated apps in the world and loved by hundreds of millions of users and we can’t imagine a better home for Shazam to enable us to continue innovating and delivering magic for our users.”

Notably, Shazam had a post-money valuation in its last round of over $1 billion — a far cry from the roughly $400 million that is being paid by Apple. The reason for this, one source says, is that for all of Shazam’s popularity and move into revenue-generating areas like marketing, the company never really found a solid business model for the long-term future.

“Shazam should have moved into streaming music years ago,” the source said, “which is one reason why the Apple deal makes so much sense.” Spotify, as a point of comparison, has healthy recurring revenues from subscriptions and Apple Music has both subscriptions and downloads — not to mention the wider use of Apple Music and the ecosystem pull it gives Apple for its wider hardware business. That hints at some interesting integrations coming up.

Some backstory about how the deal got done between the two:

Apple and Shazam have had a friendly relationship for years, but the catalyst was that pending bid from Snap. As Recode first reported, the Snapchat parent had entertained buying the company.

It turns out that the conversations with Snap began about six months ago, after advisor Goldman Sachs drummed up interest. Snap was open to acquisition talks because its integration with Shazam’s music recognition technology had been going well.

But Snap has had a volatile time on the stock market since it went public in March, and so Shazam was getting mixed messages about how much the social media platform would be willing to pay.

Shazam’s conversations with Apple began the following month, and they became exclusive about two months ago. From what we understand, the Spotify talks were earlier and couldn’t progress because of the price, and likely also the fact that Spotify, which is gearing up for a public listing, has a lot on its plate right now.

Eddy Cue, Apple’s senior vice president of Internet Software and Services, saw an opportunity for Shazam to help build out its music business. Since the days of the iPod, music has long been a priority for the company. Lately, it’s been focused on enhancing its Spotify competitor, Apple Music.

Cue believes that Shazam could help improve its offering and liked that the app had moved beyond music discovery, building out artist pages and other music-related content.

Shazam already integrates with Apple Music, referring many of its 100 million users to play songs on its platform. It also lets users buy the music directly via iTunes.

Neither Apple nor Shazam have returned our earlier requests for comment.

Apple Shazam: Why Apple is buying the music app?

Monday, December 11, 2017 Unknown 0 Comments Category : apps , enterprise , Media

Scan your eyes over Apple's just-published list of the year's most popular iPhone apps, and there's one notable omission: Shazam.

In fact, it's been a while since the song-identifying software squeezed its way into the iOS App Store's top 10.

So, why has Apple confirmed it is "combining" its business with that of the smaller London company?

It has not revealed the price it is paying, but the sum is rumoured to be as much as $400m (£300m), which would make it one of Apple's most expensive takeovers to date.

The US technology giant also hasn't disclosed its motivations beyond saying that it has "exciting plans in store".

But there are several reasons the deal may have appealed.

Music discovery

Apple's smart assistant, Siri, already taps into Shazam, allowing users to verbally ask: "What song is playing?" and has done so for more than three years.

But with growing competition between Apple Music and Spotify - which also ties into Shazam - Apple may have felt the need to secure the service rather than risk its Swedish rival or some other company buying it first.

Apple has said that Shazam is a "natural fit" for its streaming music platform.

Some, however, believe that the real value of the acquisition isn't Shazam's technology - which Apple could presumably have developed a version of itself for a smaller sum - but rather the data Shazam has gathered for more than a decade about its millions of users.

"Spotify has made the discovery of new music front and centre of what makes it a compelling proposition," said Mark Mulligan, from the consultancy Midia Research.

"Apple just doesn't have the same amount of data about listening tastes as Spotify, meaning it can't drive recommendations with as high a degree of accuracy and precision.

"Shazam essentially gives it a shortcut to having a massive database."

Music forms a major pillar of Apple's business - not just its song subscription service, but also its:

Beats headphones division
Beats 1 radio station
iTunes store
Carpool Karaoke TV show (with other music-themed programming reportedly on the way)

So, locking in one of the key song-discovery services and potentially deepening the way Shazam ties into Apple's wider ecosystem has a certain logic.

Always-listening

Apple will be mindful that first Google Now and subsequently Google Assistant have used in-house technology to let Android users identify songs.

That helped the search giant add a clever feature to its recently released Pixel 2 phone: the handset proactively shows the name of songs it hears on its home screen without waiting to be asked.

Moreover, it does this without requiring an active internet connection thanks to it periodically updating an on-device database of tens of thousands of tracks, and carrying out the whole song-matching process on the phone.

To let Siri replicate the trick or add innovations of its own, Apple might have felt it needed to bring Shazam in-house.

Apple has long portrayed itself as a company that goes the extra mile to protect its users' privacy, so it would presumably reject the idea of allowing a third-party to run an always-listening service on its devices.

Homepod help

Apple's Homepod smart speaker - a rival to the Amazon Echo and Google Home - has had its release date delayed despite the hardware being unveiled back in June.

That points to the problem being with its software.

Perhaps some of Shazam's audio-recognition technology might provide a quick fix, or at the very least Apple might believe it could add extra capabilities in the future.

Augmented reality advertising

While Shazam is best known for its song-matching capabilities, the app has also been adding augmented reality features.

The technology superimposes graphics over real-world views captured by a smartphone's camera and is something Apple's chief executive, Tim Cook, is particularly keen on.

He has repeatedly called AR more "profound" than virtual reality, which limits users to computer-generated views.

Shazam has focused on offering its AR capabilities to brands.

Fanta has used it as a way to let users bring posters for its soft drinks to life, while if users held their phone over a bottle of Bombay Sapphire gin they could see images of its ingredients grow out of its sides before prompting them to explore cocktail recipes.

Another British start-up, Blippar, has already demonstrated that merging real-world object recognition and AR has uses beyond advertising - it offers a way to show information about people seen standing nearby.

Perhaps, Apple is keen to build on Shazam's efforts to develop killer features of its own for the launch of its much-rumoured AR glasses.