How Frank Underwood helped Monument Valley find a new audience

When the third season of House of Cards debuted on February 27th last year, it included a curious cameo: in one episode, newly-inaugurated president Frank Underwood was relaxing with an iPad, playing the gorgeous game Monument Valley. Two days later, the game had its second biggest money-making day to date, raking in close to $70,000 over the span of 24 hours, thanks to being featured in the show.
Underwood turned out to be a great pitch man, one of several reasons why Monument Valley was actually more successful in its second year of existence, compared to the first. According to developer Ustwo, the game has been downloaded more than 26 million times to date, and more than 23 million of those downloads came in the second year after it released. "We’ve actually had to spend a lot of time maintaining the game," says Dan Gray, head of studio at Ustwo Games, "and finding new opportunities for people to find out about it."

For the second year in a row, Ustwo has released a detailed infographic that showcases how well the game performed on various platforms. While year one showed that it was still possible for a premium game to make money on mobile, year two shows just how huge of an audience you can reach by offering your game for free — the biggest reason behindMonument Valley’s enduring success wasn’t a fictional US president, it was the lack of a price tag.

Nearly a year and a half after the initial release of Monument Valley, Ustwo partnered with Apple to offer the game — which usually costs $3.99 — for free for one week. Gray says that he expected, at best, to reach around a million new users via the promotion, but instead the game was downloaded more than 8 million times over the course of the week, greatly exceeding his expectations.

2015 also saw the launch of the game in China, as Ustwo partnered with publisher iDreamsky to adapt the game for that market. Again, this move saw the studio grappling with the concept of free. "The only way it was going to work, was if we made a free version of Monument Valley," Gray says. The problem was figuring out how to make the game work with that price point. Gray didn’t want to have ads in the game, or items that could be sold as in-app purchases, because he felt these would detract from the experience. "You want to escape for 20 minutes at a time and not be bombarded with an advert for a game," he says. The game ultimately utilized a structure that let players play the first few chapters for free, before paying to unlock additional parts of the game.Monument Valley has since been downloaded more than 11 million times in China."WE WANT TO CREATE GAMES THAT CAN IMPACT EVERYBODY."

In fact, the vast majority of the game’s downloads have been free. Though it has reached 26.1 million users (not counting those who pirated the game), 21 million of those acquired the game without paying a cent. It might seem like a curious strategy for a premium game, where the upfront price accounts for the majority of the revenue. But Monument Valleyalso features a sizable expansion, called "Forgotten Shores," which can be purchased for an additional $1.99. "The hope was that a lot of people would download it for free," says Gray, "and then want to engage with it further and add the expansion on." One of the biggest complaints about Monument Valley has been its short length — you can complete the entire base experience in around an hour if you rush — but this in turn has made the expansion very popular. Gray says that around 35–40 percent of Monument players have purchased "Forgotten Shores."

That said, despite this success releasing the game for free, Gray says that the studio has no plans to make the shift to a free-to-play mentality, even if it would almost certainly be more profitable. "One of the things that we strive for, is we say that we want to create games that can impact everybody," he says. "I guess the key difference there is that lots of companies say ‘We want to make titles for everybody.’ But the key thing I say is ‘impact.’ There are a lot of free experiences that revolve around being a time sink, something mildly interesting to do whilst you’re waiting for the next train. We want to do the same thing, but be able to leave somebody with a lasting impression."

"If volume, and giving the average person those experiences is our goal, why don’t we go free all the time? The problem with that is that it really narrows the way in which you can design games. Games then suddenly become much more about the length of the experience, than the quality or the impact of the experience. It’s a really hard thing to balance."

Since the release of Monument Valley, a lot has happened at Ustwo. Last year the game studio released its first virtual reality game, Land’s End, on the Gear VR, and recently Ustwo Games separated from its digital design parent company (also called Ustwo). "We’ve gone from being a project team in a big company to being an independent entity," says Gray. The team has also grown; eight people developed Monument Valley, before eventually expanding to 15. The goal is to be able to work on two games simultaneously, without getting too big.

Even if it won’t be free, the studio’s next project, a currently unannounced game, will benefit from some of the other lessons learned from Monument Valley. While Ustwo has previously focused on creating games that are ideally suited for a particular platform — whether it’s mobile or VR — Gray is hoping to go in a different direction this time, in order to reach a wider audience. The plan is for a global release simultaneously on multiple platforms, including consoles and PC. But as for complaints that the studio’s games are too short, Gray isn’t too bothered about that.

"If the worst thing that people can say about your game is that they didn’t have enough of it, and it wasn’t long enough, then surely that’s the feeling you want to leave people with," he says. "You want to leave people wanting more, instead of being tired of the game that you’ve made."

on Saturday, May 21, 2016

Apple just revealed the future of its retail stores

In downtown San Francisco, situated across the street from the city's iconic Union Square Park, Apple's newest vision for retail is close to being realized. The new store, which opens this Saturday, includes 42-foot sliding glass doors that double as two-story windows, a 6K video screen on the second floor, and living trees lining its new customer support section. It also sports a backyard "forum" that will be open 24 hours a day, featuring a 50-foot green wall, free Wi-Fi, and 47-year-old restored fountain from San Francisco sculptor Ruth Asawa.

The numerous figures are meant to impress. They illustrate both the scale of the store and the absurd lengths Apple is willing to go to design real-world retail destinations that inspire awe. As the new West Coast flagship store, this location, designed in partnership with UK firm Fosters and Partners, certainly checks those boxes. Speaking today at a press preview of the location, Apple's retail VP Angela Ahrendts says the new outlet sets the standard for the future of Apple retail. The company wants its stores to be integrated into the community, as a kind of town square for anyone and everyone. "The over-arching vision of the future of Apple retail ... is what do we want Apple's role in the community to be," Ahrendts says. "The store becomes one with the community."

Apple stores may not generate anywhere near the revenue of the company's online counterpart. Yet for the last 15 years, they have acted as Apple's real-world footprint, a way to set apart how it communicates with customers and leaves its mark on cities around the world. From New York's 5th Avenue glass cube to the iconic Norman Foster-designed Istanbul Apple Store, the company uses these retail outlets to become part of the urban landscape and show off its dedication to forward-thinking design. They're Apple's way of moving from smartphones and laptop screens to the physical spaces we spend time in. "We think of this as our largest product," Ahrendts says.

"WE THINK OF THIS AS OUR LARGEST PRODUCT."

To further emphasize this point, Apple has introduced a suite of changes, all of which will be coming to future flagship stores, to how it organizes its retail setup. The Genius Bar, where can make an appointment to get hands-on customer service, is now the Genius Grove, accented by literal trees and open spaces. The company is also introducing what it calls "windows." Located in "the avenue," these are displays designed to change with the seasons and cycle through interactive themes, like iPhone photography, Apple Music, and iOS apps. Apple is hiring what it's calling creative pros to stand at these stations and offer advice and tips depending on the theme.

And then there's the windows. The entire, 42-foot street-facing wall is comprised mostly of glass, separated only by tall silver beams. At the press of a button, the doors can separate and turn the Apple Store into an open-faced mall of sorts. In the minds of Apple's designers — including Jony Ive, who was deeply involved in the store's construction — the removal of the glass makes the store an extension of the city itself.

"We have a deep commitment to the cities we work in, and are aware of the importance that architecture plays in the community," Ive, Apple’s chief design officer, said in a statement. "It all starts with the storefront — taking transparency to a whole new level — where the building blends the inside and the outside, breaking down barriers and making it more egalitarian and accessible." The outdoors plaza, which Apple says it's gifting to the city of San Francisco, is a new fixture the company says will be coming to other flagship stores around the world. Apple plans to hold a regular weekend series featuring local artists who will perform and then give talks about their craft.

There's no doubt this location, and the others that adopt its new features, will shift how customers think of Apple retail. Whether the company can become an artistic centerpiece for communities will still depend on how sincere it is about bringing in local talent and using its space for more than just marketing. But as it has in the past, Apple appears intent on making sure its stores are destinations distinct from the act of buying a new iPhone. "This is more than just a store," Ahrendts says. "We want people to say, 'Hey, meet me at Apple.'"

on Thursday, May 19, 2016

The Sex Factor is a porn reality show straight out of the early 2000s

Years ago, I was approached to help develop a reality show about the adult industry, one envisioned as a sort of America's Next Top Model for porn. Whenever I'd mention the project to a friend, their eyes would light up at the possibility: even though no one had ever done a show like this before, the concept intuitively made sense.

The porn industry is notoriously opaque for those not working in it, and the notion of a show that sheds light on the smut business' internal workings has inherent appeal. How are porn performers picked? What makes one more successful than the rest? And how, exactly, do they prepare for all those scenes? In the same way that America's Next Top Model demystified modeling, this show would demystify porn, offering a behind-the-scenes look at popular industry — and a built-in excuse for the kind of titillation most premium cable shows bend over backwards to justify.

For better or for worse, the show I was tapped for never came to fruition. But it's not a shock to see that, elsewhere in the world, another aspiring producer had a similar idea, one that — after years of development and delay — has resulted in The Sex Factor, an XHamster-backed web series where 16 would-be porn performers compete to prove their XXX prowess and potentially win $1 million.

The Sex Factor, which debuts today, is the brainchild of Silicon Valley veteran Buddy Ruben. It initially made the media rounds when it was announced that "Duke porn star" Belle Knox had signed on to host; but it took two more years, a new host, and the backing of XHamster for the series to actually debut. Ruben hasn't commented publicly on the delay, but there are some obvious reasons why this project would be a challenge to put together. TV is expensive and complicated to produce, even when you're not offering up $1 million in cash; and despite the common wisdom that "sex sells," most networks (and therefore production companies) shy away from anything that treats sex as more than just the punchline to a crass joke. Though Ruben's said on the record that he's had no trouble finding distributors, the partnership with XHamster — and decision to release the show online, for free — suggests otherwise.

But of course, all of that would be irrelevant if The Sex Factor managed to live up to the tremendous amount of hype it's produced — and most importantly, if it was entertaining. So was it worth the wait? Well, judging by the first episode... not really.'THE SEX FACTOR' IS A STRANGE BEAST

Just a few minutes into the first episode, it becomes clear that The Sex Factor is a strange beast. It's obvious that a good amount of money was put into the project — most notably that million-dollar prize — yet at the same time it feels cheaply produced and poorly edited, with clunky, distracting background music; stilted performances from the hosts; and awkward shots and edits. (During the first episode's elimination ceremony, the show cuts to an aerial shot of the eliminated contestant as he reacts to the group's decision; to the left of his head is a very visible boom mic.)

The knee-jerk response here is obviously to say, "Well, what do you expect? It's porn!" ButThe Sex Factor doesn't want to be just porn: its own press release makes the grandiose claim that "it's a mainstream pop-culture brand" and "premium reality entertainment watched together by couples, college kids, and good friends in a familiar social setting." One would think that a show with such lofty aspirations would invest in a more-talented production team, but it seems The Sex Factor's producers assumed that the promise of sex alone would be enough to get them by.

But, alas, it isn't. Though it's billed as a porn reality show, The Sex Factor doesn't quite live up to either end of the bargain. There's not enough character development for it to feel like a full-fledged reality show — we're barely introduced to the contestants before we see them going to town on one another; in fact, we see clips of them in flagrante delicto before we even learn their names. It's obviously a challenge to introduce 16 different characters — in addition to five different judges — in the span of a single, 30-minute episode, but the fact that the show barely tries speaks volumes.

And that lack of character development also hurts the show on the porn side of the equation. A standard porn scene is usually about 20 to 40 minutes long. Episode one ofThe Sex Factor is 30 minutes total, and that includes introductions, commentary, confessional interviews, and a trip to the clinic in addition to the bits of sex. As a result, the hardcore action is incredibly brief, which might be okay if we actually felt invested in the characters. But in this case, watching characters we barely know make out, fake orgasms, and give each other head fails to arouse — or even interest.

But far and away the biggest issue is the way the show handles its first problem contestant. Midway through the first episode, we're informed that David Caspian's been taking the libertine nature of the show a bit too far, jerking off in front of housemates and making a number of the show's female contestants uncomfortable. It's played for laughs, which is already strange; more troubling is the fact that, when Caspian is ultimately voted off, the judges all exclaim their disbelief — with Keiran Lee even going so far as offering to book him a scene as a consolation prize.

It's possible, of course, that most of the judges were unaware of Caspian's creepy behavior when the scene was shot, but the show's lax attitude toward his complete disrespect for his housemates' boundaries is rather appalling. In a post-James Deen porn world, giving a pass to performers who cross the line feels deeply tone deaf — that sort of "boys will be boys" attitude feels out of place in an industry that's vowed to take performer conduct seriously.

A TONE-DEAFNESS TO THE CONTEMPORARY CONCERNS OF THE INDUSTRY

The Sex Factor doesn't feel innovative: if anything, it feels stuck in the early aughts — both in terms of what porn and reality shows it's channeling. In addition to the played-out Big Brother vibe, the cast is mostly white, the male performers more gawky and awkward than suave studs intended to attract the female gaze, and — at least in the first episode — the sexual dynamics aren't exactly equal (it's telling that there's a blowjob contest, but no test of anyone's cunnlingual skills). Even the much ballyhooed million-dollar prize feels more like embarrassing ostentation than a sign of success. In today's adult industry, performers are far more likely to make comfortable, five-figure salaries than anything approaching seven figures; the grandiose cash promised by The Sex Factor is a not-so-humble brag that belies the cash-strapped reality of the adult industry.

But while it's tempting to point and laugh as the pornographers churn out an ill-advised, subpar project, it's a mistake to see the failures of The Sex Factor as singular to the adult industry. Pornography isn't the only industry that's been deeply disrupted by the internet, and it's hardly the only industry hoping to reclaim past revenues by doing the same thing as always, just with a tiny, half-assed twist. But in our increasingly competitive media landscape, where more and more properties are battling for smaller amounts of revenue, "that thing you used to like, but slightly different" just isn't enough to retain viewer interest or secure viewers' dollars. The Sex Factor didn't learn that lesson — but hopefully some of their competitors will.

on

The TSA will ruin your summer vacation and no one can agree on a fix

Security lines at airports around the US are growing longer and longer. And that’s infuriating airlines, airports, passengers, and our elected officials alike. The long lines at the TSA-staffed security checkpoints are delaying fights and causing people to miss their planes. But ironically, passengers and airlines — the two groups most affected — are the ones who can do the least about it.

"Logistically, we don't have the opportunity to hold flights for hours," Ross Feinstein, a spokesperson for American Airlines, said in an interview with The Verge. Passengers "get to the gate too late and they can't get rebooked for days or a week. That's our concern, the impact it's having on our customers." Naturally, frustrated customers take their anger out on airline employees or, increasingly, airline Twitter accounts. "We see it every day on social media. They're very upset, and our employees are very concerned."

But the airlines can't fix the problem. Security lines are handled by the TSA and individual airports. The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which is in charge of JFK, LaGuardia, and Newark airports — three of the busiest in the country — recently sent a letter to the TSA urging it to fix the problems and threatening to use private security contractors to handle security screening.

Hiring private security isn't some crazy idea. Though most airport security checkpoints are manned by TSA agents, there are a handful of airports enrolled in the Screening Partnership Program (SPP), a TSA effort that allows private security contractors to screen passengers under federal supervision. It's a program championed by Congressman John Mica (R-FL), a longtime TSA foe. There are nearly two dozen airports enrolled in SPP, including SFO in San Francisco, and Mica says it's the way of the future.

"The TSA is destined to fail in its current structure," Mica told The Verge. "It's a huge bureaucracy." The TSA is currently funded for 45,000 screeners, up from 16,000 when the Administration was formed in 2002. "We have 13,000 more administrative personnel, of which 4,000 are located within a few miles of the US Capital making an average of $104,000 per year. Incompetence highly paid, screeners not well paid."

Mica says that TSA is staffed with government bureaucrats who have no incentive to execute well and are focused on "hassling innocent passengers." He says the agency knows how many passengers will be passing through an airport checkpoint weeks in advance and that it still fails to "staff to traffic" — scheduling enough screeners to properly handle the number of passengers.


His solution is to have TSA set protocols, requirements, and guidelines, and have private contractors handle the day-to-day passenger screenings. Both the Department of Defense and the Department of Energy use private security contractors at military bases and nuclear installations. If it's good enough for nuclear plants, Mica asks, why isn't it good enough for our airports?

Unsurprisingly, not everyone in Congress agrees. One of them is Rep. Donald M. Payne, Jr. (D-NJ), who is on the House Homeland Security Subcommittee on Transportation Security and whose district includes Newark airport. "I think TSA is more than capable, if it has the manpower to do the job," Payne told The Verge. "TSA, when given the manpower and proper utilization, has done an outstanding job and there has not been another attack on an American airport since TSA has been on the job."

And that's true. But luck may be playing a role. A leaked report showed that TSA failed to detect weapons and explosives 95 percent of the time in an internal Homeland Security test. A Homeland Security Inspector General's report called an $878 million screening program, meant to detect suspicious behaviors at checkpoints, "expensive and ineffective." That program reportedly failed to detect a single terrorist.

MORALE IS A BIG PROBLEM AT THE TSA

It's not easy to be on the front lines for the TSA agents either. "Morale is a big problem with the TSA. It's a thankless job," says Payne. "All you're dealing with are people who arrive at the airport late, that want to move through the line expeditiously, and weren't necessarily there when they should have been. But now they want the whole process to be expedited for their benefit. Sometimes it just doesn't work that way."

TSA, for its part, puts most of the blame on the increased number of passengers and on the fact that travelers use more carry-ons because of airline baggage fees. The airlines disagree. "There has not been a huge surge," says Feinstein. "There are more people traveling, yes, but it's around a 4 percent increase [over last year]. I don't think anyone saw two-and-a-half hour wait times last summer. It's not proportional. It doesn't equate to a 500 percent increase in wait times."

"Encouraging passengers to check more bags will not help and would actually exacerbate current checked baggage screening issues that are resulting in passengers missing their connections and having their bags delayed," said Melanie Hinton, a spokesperson for Airlines for America, an industry trade group. "Even at Midway [Airport in Chicago], served predominantly by an airline that doesn’t charge bag fees, wait times are in excess of 90 minutes, further demonstrating that this problem is not a result of bag fees," she said. (Southwest Airlines, the largest carrier at Midway, doesn’t charge fees for checked baggage.)

Some airlines are trying to ease the dire situation by deploying their own forces. American Airlines, for example, has assigned employees to help manage non-screening functions at security checkpoints in an attempt to free up more TSA employees for screening. They're handling things like telling flyers to remove their shoes or throw out water bottles, as well as moving plastic trays from one end of the security line to the other. But that's only a short-term solution, and something of a last-ditch attempt at that.

"The entire industry is frustrated," says Feinstein. "We have issues at DFW, LAX, Denver, Newark. It's not isolated to a hub, it's across the board."

The situation isn’t likely to improve any time soon. Peak travel season begins around Memorial Day and really gets going in mid-June. "This isn't even peak summer and we can't rebook passengers on these flights," Feinstein says. What we're seeing with the long lines "really does concern us."

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Why Google's Allo messaging app is a big step backwards

A year ago, when Google began to unwind Google+, it felt like a positive sign for the company’s underperforming social efforts. After sinking years into building a product overstuffed with photos, communication tools, link-sharing, and discussions, Googlebegan to shrink them into more manageable tools. The results were largely positive. Google Photos has become a monster with 200 million monthly users, the company said during its I/O keynote. And communities evolved into a more modern take on message boards, emerging last week as a new mobile app called Spaces.

But when it comes to the killer app of the mobile era — messaging — Google’s efforts aren’t shrinking at all. Instead they’re multiplying into a dizzying array of disconnected services. Three years after trying to unify its messaging efforts under the Hangouts brand, Google has decided once again to let experimentation reign. And it could mean that Allo, Google’s new messaging app with an integrated virtual assistant, never gets the support it needs to take off.
Google’s history with messaging goes back more than a decade. The company has offered all sorts of communication products, from Google Talk to Buzz to Hangouts. Some have been more successful than others, but none have reached the scale of the game’s biggest players. In the past, Google blamed this failure in part on the large number of disconnected messaging products it had created. "I think we’ve done an incredibly poor job of servicing our users here," Nikhyl Singhal, then the director of real-time communications for Google, told The Verge in 2013 when introducing Hangouts.

"WE'VE DONE AN INCREDIBLY POOR JOB OF SERVICING OUR USERS."

There’s power in focus. Facebook Messenger surged to 900 million monthly users after being spunoff into a dedicated app. WhatsApp, which is now owned by Facebook but still operates mostly independently, has more than 1 billion monthly users. Yes, Facebook has a social expertise that Google lacks. But it also told a coherent story from the start. Want to message someone who uses Facebook? Use Facebook Messenger. Everything that’s come since started with that one simple idea.

Meanwhile, Google’s confused approach to messaging has left it lagging behind at the same time messaging has become the hottest development platform in tech. Startups and large companies alike are racing to build commerce, customer support, and other services into messaging apps. In March, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said the shift from apps to bot-powered messaging apps would be as "profound" as the shift from desktop PCs to mobile phones.



Given the environment, it’s little wonder Google would attempt a new, bot-powered take on messaging. Allo’s sales pitch leads with artificial intelligence. By typing "@google," you can access a wide range of services, from basic web queries to making restaurant reservations. Think Facebook Messenger, if its M assistant were globally available and integrated into your other chats. Allo’s artificial intelligence manifests in another way: as suggested "smart replies" to messages from your friends. A friend suggests you eat Italian food; a smart reply suggests "yummy!" Smart replies work with photos, too — and I can’t wait to see the suggested reply the first time somebody sexts me in Allo.

There are other doodads scattered around the user interface: a drawing tool, a la Snapchat; some stickers; and a way to change the size of a text message by dragging your finger up and down. It’s all fine, as far as it goes, but the features add up to little more than window dressing on an app that feels more like a strategic imperative than anybody’s passion product.

Hangouts was a strategic imperative, too. Designed as a fix for Google’s increasingly fragmented communication efforts, Hangouts launched at I/O 2013 as Google’s one true platform for communicating on Gmail, Android, iOS, and Chrome. But it was either unwilling or unable to draw on its native social network, Gmail, to grow, and it was slow to add features.

Hangouts has struggled with the perception that it is slow, clunky, and unreliable — even among Googlers, for whom it is among the least popular internal products that employees are required to use. While Hangouts languished, Google allowed new messaging functions to creep into other apps. You can now send messages in YouTube, for example, or in its invite-only Who’s Down app, among other places.

All of which make it hard to see how Allo (or Duo, its FaceTime clone sister app) will break out of the pack. Hangouts will remain in active development, Google tells me. And messaging features will presumably continue to proliferate in Google’s products, if for no other reason than all software expands until it includes messaging. On one hand, Allo is a significant new twist on messaging from one of the world’s most dominant companies; on the other, it mostly feels like a hedge against the success of similar products. If Google later decides to retreat, it’s left itself plenty of options.

And that’s a shame, because Google really can shake up a space when it wants to. When it created Gmail, it gave users exponentially more free storage than had ever been offered. When it created Google Voice, it offered a powerful second phone number and automatic voicemail transcriptions. And with Photos last year, it combined unlimited high-resolution storage with wildly powerful search.

Given the size of the opportunity around a global-scale communication app, Allo was ripe for a similarly attention-getting feature set. Had it integrated with the native SMS app on Android, or allowed you to send messages from the desktop, it could have debuted as a powerful competitor to Apple’s iMessage. Instead we’re getting a relatively standard messaging app augmented by bots, which have taken on a distinct flavor-of-the-month feel since Facebook introduced them to a chorus of shrugs at F8.

Three years ago, Google set out to fix its chaotic messaging strategy with a single app. This summer, getting the full Google messaging experience will mean downloading as many as four apps: Hangouts, Allo, Duo, and Google Messenger, for sending SMS messages on Android. Maybe inside Google that feels like the future. From the outside, it doesn’t look much like progress.

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Robin Wright used Claire Underwood's popularity to fight for equal pay

As part of a conversation with the president of the Rockefeller Foundation in New York yesterday afternoon, House of Cards star Robin Wright acknowledged that she'd used her character's popularity as leverage when negotiating for equal pay for future episodes of the show. Wright plays Claire Underwood, the calculating lobbyist who becomes First Lady and then the vice-presidential nominee over the show's first four seasons; Kevin Spacey plays Frank, her equally nefarious husband.

"I was like, 'I want to be paid the same as Kevin,'" said Wright. "I was looking at the statistics and Claire Underwood's character was more popular than [Frank's] for a period of time. So I capitalized on it. I was like, 'You better pay me or I'm going to go public,' and they did." In addition to her performance as Claire Underwood, Wright co-produces and directs occasional episodes of House of Cards. And while she became one of the industry's best-compensated actresses during the show's run, her salary lagged behind Spacey's as recently as last year.


MORE AND MORE ACTRESSES ARE SPEAKING OUT ABOUT THE WAGE GAP

Wright's comments align her with a growing group of actresses who have used public platforms to shine a light on Hollywood's wage gap. When Patricia Arquette won the Oscar for Best Supporting Actress for Boyhood last year, she used her speech to call for wage equality, a message met with vigorous cheering from the likes of Meryl Streep. Later in the year, Jennifer Lawrence wrote an op-ed for Lena Dunham's newsletter Lenny titled, "Why Do I Make Less Than My Male Co-Stars?" And earlier this year, The X-Files star Gillian Anderson confirmed that she was initially offered half the salary of co-star David Duchovny to appear in the recent X-Files miniseries. Hollywood executives may be holding secret meetings to address the problem, but actresses around the world are taking it into their own hands by speaking out about the issues they face. Let's hope some of their male counterparts join them in condemning wage inequality sooner rather than later.

on Wednesday, May 18, 2016

Google Home: a speaker to finally take on the Amazon Echo

For the past year and a half, the tech world has been recovering from Amazon's surprise announcement of the Echo. Now, Google is finally doing what everybody wanted it to do: release a competitor. It's called Google Home, and it's coming out later this year for an unspecified price. You can sign up to be notified for updates at the Home website.

Mario Queiroz is the executive behind the project. His title, VP of product management, is the sort you hear a lot. But you know him better as the man who has launched the only truly successful living room product Google has ever launched: Chromecast.


You can think of Home as his next act. It's essentially what you'd expect if you were looking for Google to create an Echo competitor. It's a small speaker you plug into the wall with always-listening, far-field microphones that can hear you from across the room. It'll answer your questions, play your music, and control some of your home automation gadgets. To hear Queiroz tell it, the Home will be better at most of those things than the Echo.



Physically, the Home is a small, approachable little cylinder with an angled top. The speaker bows out a little, and overall it's quite cute. Like Google's OnHub router (which, really, probably should have also had Google Home's capabilities if Google were smarter), it has a modular case that you can customize with different base shells to match your decor. It will also have some LED lights that dance around a bit to let you know it's working.

It's not portable, but the benefit of always being plugged in is that Google can make a more powerful speaker. Quieroz says that it "really fills the room" and that it will have "strong bass and clear highs." That's important, because one of the main use cases Google is foreseeing here is listening to music. The Echo isn't great at that.

Another thing the Echo isn't great at: having more than one. But Google Home is designed with multiple rooms and speakers in mind from the start. And because it's using the basic Cast standard, you can talk to any speaker and tell it to play music on other speakers, just like you can with Google Cast Audio. It will work with Google Play Music, of course, but it should also be able to handle any other service that supports Google Cast, like Spotify.


MULTIPLE ROOMS, BUT NOT MULTIPLE ACCOUNTS

Compatibility with Cast gives it another smart ability: it can talk to the Chromecast you have plugged into your TV, playing YouTube clips and anything else you can think to ask for.

Unfortunately, the Home won't support multiple Google accounts at launch, but the company says that will come in time.

The Home obviously lets you ask Google questions. Queiroz says that Google put a lot of time into thinking about how Google Home should respond to your queries. Its responses will be optimized for audio, giving just enough information without droning on too long.

There is one area where Home might not be as capable as the Echo, however, and that's when it comes to extensibility and compatibility with other devices and services. Google has chosen not to open up a developer API for its assistant or for this device just yet. Instead, Google wants to take some time to build out the ways that its assistant can act as the interpreter between your natural way of speaking and the way that bots need to be spoken to.

Quieroz admits that the Echo's wide array of skills is neat but says "then you start getting deeper and it doesn't work very well, then you're sort of disappointed. And I think that happens with Alexa sometimes."

IT WON'T DO AS MUCH AS ALEXA, BY DESIGN

Instead, Google Home is going to work with a smaller set of home automation devices — Google wouldn't say which, but it will include at least some thermostats and lights. And it will be able to do all the stuff that Google's voice assistant can currently do (plus perhaps a bit more, we'll know when we get a chance to really try it). Fortunately for Google, that's quite a lot — thanks in no small part to the Knowledge Graph. It's a kind of super database that understands thousands of "entities" and their relation to one another. So if you ask for a basketball player's jersey number, Google can just give you the answer and then stand at the ready for more related questions without needing you to walk it through the current context.

Not having all the Echo's third-party abilities might put some off from Google Home, but Quieroz says he isn't worried — in fact he seems eager for the head-to-head competition. "We're competing feature for feature in most of the areas. And in the areas that really matter to the consumer, we're going to do a better job."

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