There are a ton of tools out there that help you keep eye contact when talking with people online – some (Plexicam, CenterCam) place the camera in front of your screen.
Others use AI to edit the video stream to make it look as if you’re looking at the camera (it’s creepy AF when done poorly).
EyeQ is taking a different approach, and we took a closer look at CES 2024 in Las Vegas.
The lack of personal connection and the inability to maintain eye contact during video calls are major contributing factors to this issue.
“Our primary focus is on the online healthcare and consultancy markets, where making authentic eye contact is crucial.
Google is removing 17 “underutilized” features in Google Assistant to focus on “quality and reliability,” the company announced on Thursday.
The news comes as Google is laying off hundreds of employees in its Google Assistant, hardware and other divisions.
Setting or using media alarms, music alarms, or radio alarms on Google Assistant enabled devices.
You can use Google Assistant to search for recipes across the web and YouTube.
Using App Launcher in Google Assistant driving mode on Google Maps to read and send messages, make calls, and control media.
ByteDance is shutting down its music streaming service Resso in India at the end of this month as the company shifts its focus to expand TikTok Music globally.
The streaming service is still active for those who have the app, but it’s not possible to purchase a new subscription.
The company confirmed the development and said that it doesn’t plan to launch TikTok Music in India.
However, ByteDance launched TikTok Music in both those markets last July.
In May 2023, ByteDance made Resso a subscription-only service to offer “a better user experience for music fans, while increasing opportunities for rightsholders and artists.”Until now, ByteDance has launched TikTok Music in Australia, Singapore, and Mexico apart from Indonesia and Brazil.
T9 — the old text input from our trusty Nokia phones from the 1990s — is one of those throwbacks.
Direction 9 is a startup that is eager to introduce it to your television, so you can use the directional pad on your remote to enter text.
They showed it off at CES, and… I’d be extremely surprised if it ever makes much headway.
You have to focus up and down, and you can’t do blind typing,” explains Leon Chang, founder at Direction 9.
It seems unlikely that they’d be willing to add 20-50% to its cost just to add a new text input as a feature.
Nwm (short for New Wave Maker and pronounced “noom,” a representative told me) makes headphones that use a similar technique to noise canceling, but kind of turned inside-out.
Instead of canceling out noise coming into your ear, the headphones cancel any noise they make that isn’t going towards you.
That’s usually not a problem with earbuds or closed-back headphones, which physically contain the sound they produce.
But nwm’s whole thing is that their headphones are more like a pair of small speakers right by your ears.
The chair is pretty normal looking for a gamer-type one, and you wouldn’t know it had speakers hidden in it.
The Amazon-owned livestreaming platform will cut 35% of its staff, or roughly 500 employees, Bloomberg reports, and will announce the reduction as early as this week.
Shortly after Twitch co-founder and longtime CEO Emmett Shear handed the reigns to its now-CEO Dan Clancy, the company laid off 400 employees.
Twitch faces steep operating costs to support livestream content at such a large scale.
In a 2022 blog post, Clancy stated that each high-volume streamer on Twitch costs the company about $1,000 per month, citing Amazon Web Service’s interactive video rates.
“Delivering high definition, low latency, always available live video to nearly every corner of the world is expensive,” Clancy wrote.
Apple Music Classical to launch in China, Japan, Taiwan and more on Jan 24Starting on January 24, Apple Music Classical will be available in China, Japan, South Korea, Hong Kong, Taiwan and Macau.
Apple’s classical music app launched in most countries in March 2023, except for select markets like the above six countries.
Additionally, Apple Music Classical was originally only an iOS-only app but arrived on Android devices this past summer.
Apple Music Classical gives Apple Music subscribers free access to over five million tracks, more than 700 curated playlists, exclusive albums, high-quality audio and more.
A standard Apple Music subscription costs $10.99 per month in the U.S., whereas a student plan costs $5.99 per month, and the Family tier is priced at $16.99 per month.
But the company will be the first to support Matter Casting, the video- and audio-beaming feature of the Matter smart home standard, on its smart displays and smart TVs, Amazon announced this morning at CES 2024.
Once Matter casting comes to Amazon’s Prime Video app for Android and iOS, users will be able to cast content to supported Amazon devices — starting with the Echo Show 15 — by tapping the new dedicated Matter Casting button.
Beyond the Echo Show 15, Amazon says that Matter Casting support will arrive on Fire TVs including smart TVs from Panasonic with Fire TV built in, and — on the app side — Plex, Pluto TV, Sling TV, Starz and ZDF later this year.
Tellingly, Google announced this week that its casting tech, Chromecast, will be built into all of LG’s new TVs — but gave no mention of Matter Casting.
The Matter Casting spec — which was developed with major input from Amazon — can accomplish more than casting, in theory.
In an announcement today, X shared its roadmap for the year ahead, which will include AI-powered experiences and the launch of peer-to-peer payments, among other initiatives.
In Musk’s vision, X users will be able to send money to others on the platform and extract those funds to authenticated bank accounts.
In the X blog post published today, the company claims it will launch peer-to-peer payments this year, to unlock “more user utility and new opportunities for commerce,” suggesting a tie-in with other X products, like creator revenue sharing and online shopping.
The latter has been a particular source of concern for X advertisers, who have found that despite X’s measures, their ads were placed next to toxic content or hate speech, leading many to withdraw.
80,000+ creators have also received payouts via X’s revenue-sharing program in under a year’s time, but X did not provide a figure.
Called Verify, Fox and Polygon are pitching the protocol as a means for outlets to protect their IP while letting consumers verify the authenticity of content.
“The Verify protocol establishes the origin and history of original journalism by cryptographically signing individual pieces of content on the blockchain,” Melody Hildebrandt, Fox’s CTO, told TechCrunch in an email interview.
In August, Fox launched a beta version of Verify, co-developed with Polygon, to coincide with the GOP primary debate on Fox News.
But Fox has released its own tool that can be used to verify uploaded images or articles (via a URL) that match assets registered with the Verify protocol.
Using Verify, publishers can enforce controls to ensure that they’re properly compensated depending on how a vendor decides to implement their content.
