Ignoring calls that it’s creepy, Facebook is forging onward with its Portal smart display. Today Facebook quietly launched iOS and Android Portal apps that let owners show off photos on the screen without sharing them to the social network, and video call their home while they’re out. The app isn’t likely to move the needle for Portal whose potential users fall into two camps: those so alarmed by Facebook’s privacy practices that they couldn’t imagine putting its camera and microphone in their home, and those ambivalent or ignorant regarding the privacy backlash who see it as an Amazon Echo with a nice screen and easy way to video call family. Critics were mostly surprised by the device’s quality but too freaked out to recommend it. Those willing to buy it have given it a 4- to 4.4-star average rating on Amazon, praising its AI camera that keeps people in frame of a video chat while they move though jeering some setup difficulties. “The app gives you convenient control of Portal, allowing you to send photos directly to your Portal’s Superframe, call your Portal, add accounts in your home, and manage your favorites” a Facebook spokesperson tells me. “Additional features will be added soon.” Facebook announced at f8 a month ago that the Portal app was coming and eventually so would encrypted WhatsApp video calls. It also extended sales to Europe and Canada, though the new app is currently only available in the US according to Sensor Tower which tipped us off to the launch. The $199 10-inch Portal and $349 15.6-inch Portal+ launched in October, soured by a swirl of Facebook privacy scandals. Last week, the company tried to score some points with the public by funding an art project displayed at the SF Museum Of Modern Art. But the “immersive” exhibit was just some Portals stuck to some funky painted wooden backdrops, and it all felt smarmy and forced. Portal’s app lets you video call your Portal so you can say hi to family while you’re out. That’s great for traveling parents or seeing who is around the house in the post-land line age. The app also allows you to add and remove accounts on Portal and manage who’s in your speed dial Favorites, which you could already do from the device. There’s still no Amazon Prime Video or Smart home controls as were promised at F8. The option to send photos directly from your camera roll to Portal’s Superframe fixes the worst feature of the digital photo frame. Previously you’d have to select just from photo/video albums you’d shared to Facebook. That meant you were only showing off sacchrine photos you were willing to post online, and if you selected Your Photos or Photos Of You, you might end up displaying shots that were embarrassing or that don’t make sense outside of the News Feed. My workaround was to create a Facebook album of photos for Portal set to be visible only to me, but that was a hassle. Now you can manually grab pics and videos from your phone and send them to Portal without the worry they’ll show up on your profile. Portal also now can show off your Instagram photos, as was announced at F8. Still missing is Google Assistant support, which Facebook told me it was working to integrate last year. Facebook’s steady improvements to Portal might not have shook its paranoia-inducing reputation amongst tech news readers and privacy enthusiasts, but they’ve kept it perhaps the best big screen and camera-equipped smart speaker. But in the seven months since launch, Google has copied Portal’s auto-framing camera for video chat in its new Nest Hub Max while Amazon is making a slew of home appliances smart. Portal will need more marquee innovations and some brand rehabilitation if it’s going to stay competitive. from RSSMix.com Mix ID 8176981 https://techcrunch.com/2019/05/28/facebook-portal-call-yourself/ http://www.gadgetscompared.com https://ikonografico.tumblr.com/post/185220198061 via http://www.gadgetscompared.com
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9to5Mac’s Guilherme Rambo managed to obtain screenshots of iOS 13. While it still looks like iOS, there’s a twist — there will be a system-wide dark mode to make your apps look better at night. Apple is expected to announce the new version of iOS at its WWDC keynote on Monday. With iOS 13, users can enable dark mode in the Settings app or with a toggle in Control Center — you may have to add the Control Center button in the Settings app first. And here’s what it’ll look like according to 9to5Mac’s screenshots: As you can see, the home screen doesn’t change much, except the dock at the bottom. But the Music app looks completely different with white text on top of a black background. The tab bar at the bottom also switches from transparent white to transparent black. Apple still uses red for buttons and links, which makes the app slightly less readable. Enabling dark mode also affects user interface elements at the operating system level. When you take a screenshot and tap on the screenshot thumbnail, top and bottom menus are dark, for instance. Developers should be able to support dark mode in third-party apps as well. In other news, Rambo also shared a screenshot of the new version of the Reminders app. It now features four different menus — today, scheduled, all and flagged. The user interface has been refreshed as well. Finally, 9to5Mac also confirms a previous scoop with the icon of a new app called “Find My.” Apple plans to merge Find My Friends and Find My iPhone into a single app on both the iPhone and iPad. Rumor has it that there will be more fundamental changes with iOS 13. Apple plans to let you open multiple windows of the same app. This way, users will be able to work on multiple documents or see multiple conversations at the same time. This will be a key new feature for iPad users in particular. You can also expect smaller updates to Safari, Mail, font management, the volume indicator, the keyboard, etc. from RSSMix.com Mix ID 8176981 https://techcrunch.com/2019/05/28/leaked-screenshots-confirm-dark-mode-is-coming-to-ios-13/ http://www.gadgetscompared.com https://ikonografico.tumblr.com/post/185207658951 via http://www.gadgetscompared.com At the end of 2018, Google said mobile-first indexing — that is, using a website’s mobile version to index its pages — was being used for more than half the web pages in Google search results. Today, Google announced that mobile-first indexing will now be the default for all new web domains as of July 1, 2019. That means that when a new website is registered it will be crawled by Google’s smartphone Googlebot, and its mobile-friendly content will be used to index its pages, as well as to understand the site’s structured data and to show snippets from the site in Google’s search results, when relevant. The mobile-first indexing initiative has come a long way since Google first announced its plans back in 2016. In December 2017, Google began to roll out mobile-first indexing to a small handful of sites, but didn’t specify which ones were in this early test group. Last March, mobile-indexing began to roll out on a broader scale. By year-end, half the pages on the web were indexed by Google’s smartphone Googlebot. Google explained the change to how sites are indexed is aimed at helping the company’s “primarily mobile” users to better search the web. Since 2015, the majority of Google users start their searches from mobile devices. It only makes sense, then, that the mobile versions of the website — and not the desktop pages — would be used to deliver the search results. Mobile-first indexing isn’t the only way that Google has begun catering to the larger mobile majority. Several years ago, it also began to boost the rank of mobile-friendly webpages in search. Last year, it added a signal that uses page speed to help determine a page’s mobile search ranking. Starting in July 2018, slow-loading content became downranked. While many sites today now show the same content to users across desktop and mobile, those that have not yet achieved this parity have a variety of resources to help them get started. Site owners can check for mobile-first indexing of their website by using the URL Inspection Tool in the search console to see when the site was last crawled and indexed. Google also offers a host of documentation on how to make websites work for mobile-first indexing, and suggests that websites support responsive web design — not separate mobile URLs. “We’re happy to see how the web has evolved from being focused on desktop, to becoming mobile-friendly, and now to being mostly crawlable and indexable with mobile user-agents,” said Google, in its announcement today. from RSSMix.com Mix ID 8176981 https://techcrunch.com/2019/05/28/google-makes-mobile-first-indexing-the-default-for-all-new-domains/ http://www.gadgetscompared.com https://ikonografico.tumblr.com/post/185207658706 via http://www.gadgetscompared.com Writing app Ulysses has been updated with a few nifty feature additions. On the iPad, you can now split the editor into two side-by-side editors — this feature alone opens up a lot of possibilities. Ulysses also now supports the option to publish your writing directly to a Ghost blog. Ulysses is currently available on macOS, the iPad and the iPhone. It’s a Markdown editor with a library of texts that automatically stays in sync across your devices. You can export one or multiple texts in many different formats, including Markdown, HTML, rich text, PDF, ePub, DOCX and a blog. In addition to Medium and WordPress, Ulysses now supports blogs built using Ghost, an open source CMS platform. If your website is built on Ghost, this should be a nice addition. But I’m more excited about the ability to open two editors at the same time on the iPad. While the iPad is a great device if you’re looking for a focused writing environment, iOS still thinks “one app = one document”. Sure, you can open two Safari tabs side by side, but most apps only let you open one document at a time. Ulysses now lets you open two documents at once. You can drag a document from the sidebar and drop it on the right side of the screen to split the screen into two panels. This way, if you’re translating a document, if you need to look at some references, you can scroll through a second document while you write in the main document. But Ulysses doesn’t stop there. You can also open a second editor from the editor settings to look at different parts of the same document. And if you long press on the export button, you can also open a live preview of the document you’re currently working on. For instance, you can see what your text will look like before you publish on your blog — headers, images, links and footnotes included. If you edit your text, Ulysses automatically refreshes the preview after a second. Opening and closing documents is a fluid experience and this split view feature is well implemented. There have been rumors that Apple has been working on improvements at the iOS level to let you open multiple documents using the same app. Today’s Ulysses update is a good example of such a feature and how it would make the iPad even better. from RSSMix.com Mix ID 8176981 https://techcrunch.com/2019/05/27/ulysses-adds-split-view-on-the-ipad-and-support-for-ghost-blogs/ http://www.gadgetscompared.com https://ikonografico.tumblr.com/post/185181004216 via http://www.gadgetscompared.com Samsung is taking its time bringing the Galaxy Fold back to market. And frankly, that’s probably for the best. The Note debacle from a few years back was an important lesson about what happens when you rush a product back to market. That one resulted in a second recall — PR nightmae upon PR nightmare. With a release date still very much in limbo, Best Buy has sent notes to those who pre-ordered the Fold. Spotted by The Verge, the letter has since been posted to Best Buy’s support forum. It cites “a plethora of unforeseen hiccups,” (fair enought) adding, “Because we put our customers first and want to ensure they are taken care of in the best possible manner, Best Buy has decided to cancel all current pre-orders for the Samsung Galaxy Fold. The letter goes on to assure customers that the big box retailer is “working closely with Samsung” to help deliver the product to customers. At the moment, however, their guess on the timeframe is as good as ours. Recent reports have suggested that an announcement was imminent, with the company having solved design flaws that had reviewers peeling off screens and getting debris jammed in the holes of the folding mechanism. More recent reports gave the product a June 13 release date, but that too appears to have been scrubbed for the time being. from RSSMix.com Mix ID 8176981 https://techcrunch.com/2019/05/24/best-buy-cancels-samsung-galaxy-fold-preorders/ http://www.gadgetscompared.com https://ikonografico.tumblr.com/post/185110182346 via http://www.gadgetscompared.com A year ago Instagram made a bold bet with the launch of IGTV: That it could invent and popularize a new medium of long-form vertical videos. Landscape uploads weren’t allowed. Co-founder Kevin Systrom told me in August that “What I’m most proud of is that Instagram took a stand and tried a brand new thing that is frankly hard to pull off. Full-screen vertical video that’s mobile only. That doesn’t exist anywhere else.” Now a dedicated hub for multi-minute portrait-mode video won’t exist anywhere at all. Following lackluster buy-in from creators loathe to shoot in a proprietary format that’s tough to reuse, IGTV is retreating from its vertical-only policy. Starting today, users can upload traditional horizontal landscape videos too, and they’ll be shown full-screen when users turn their phones sideways while watching IGTV’s standalone app or its hub within the main Instagram app. That should hopefully put an end to crude ports of landscape videos shown tiny with giant letterboxes slapped on to soak up the vertical screen. Instagram spins it saying, “Ultimately, our vision is to make IGTV a destination for great content no matter how it’s shot so creators can express themselves how they want … . In many ways, opening IGTV to more than just vertical videos is similar to when we opened Instagram to more than just square photos in 2015. It enabled creativity to flourish and engagement to rise – and we believe the same will happen again with IGTV.” Last year I suggested IGTV might have to embrace landscape after a soggy start. “Loosening up to accept landscape videos too might nullify a differentiator, but also pipe in a flood of content it could then algorithmically curate to bootstrap IGTV’s library. Reducing the friction by allowing people to easily port content to or from elsewhere might make it feel like less of a gamble for creators deciding where to put their production resources,” I wrote. The coming influx of repurposed YouTube videos could drive more creators and their fans to IGTV. To date there have been no break-out stars, must-see shows or cultural zeitgeist moments on IGTV. Instagram refused to provide a list of the most viewed long-form clips. Sensor Tower estimates just 4.2 million installs to date for IGTV’s standalone app, amounting to less than half a percent of Instagram’s billion-plus users downloading the app. It saw 3.8 times more downloads per day in its first three months on the market than than last month. The iOS app sank to No. 191 on the US – Photo & Video app charts, according to App Annie, and didn’t make the overall chart. Instagram has tried several changes to reinvigorate IGTV already. It started allowing creators to share IGTV previews to the main Instagram feed that’s capped at 60 seconds. Users can tap through those to watch full clips of up to 60 minutes on IGTV, which has helped to boost view counts for video makers like BabyAriel. And earlier this week we reported that IGTV had been quietly redesigned to ditch its category tabs for a central feed of videos that relies more on algorithmic recommendations like TikTok and a two-wide vertical grid of previews to browse like Snapchat Discover. But Instagram has still refused to add what creators have been asking for since day one: monetization. Without ways to earn a cut of ad revenue, accept tips, sign up users to a monthly patronage subscription or sell merchandise, it’s been tough to justify shooting a whole premium video in vertical. Producing in landscape would make creators money on YouTube and possibly elsewhere. Now at least creators can shoot once and distribute to IGTV and other apps, which could fill out the feature with content before it figures out monetization. For viewers and the creators they love, IGTV’s newfound flexibility is a positive. But I can’t help but think this is Instagram’s first truly massive misstep. Nine months after safely copying Snapchat Stories in 2016, Instagram was happy to tout it had 200 million daily users. The company still hasn’t released a single usage stat about IGTV usage. Perhaps after seemingly defeating Snap, Instagram thought it was invincible and could dictate how and what video artists create. But the Facebook pet proved fallible after all. The launch and subsequent rethinking should serve as a lesson. Even the biggest platforms can’t demand people produce elaborate proprietary content for nothing in return but “exposure.” from RSSMix.com Mix ID 8176981 https://techcrunch.com/2019/05/23/igtv-landscape/ http://www.gadgetscompared.com https://ikonografico.tumblr.com/post/185092038686 via http://www.gadgetscompared.com Next week, New York City’s Metro Transit Authority will be adding contactless payment support for Google Pay. In the meantime, Google’s getting ready by bringing a key new commuting feature to Android. Starting today, NYC straphangers can use Google Assistant to find out the ETA of the next train. Saying, “Hey Google, when is the next 4 train arriving?” or “Hey Google, when is the next train?” Will pop up its estimated arrival in each direction, along with walking directions to the closet station. Something I could have used this morning, after narrowly missing the R train. If you’re located in the New York City area, odds are you’ve already seen the contactless payments pop up in a handful of locations along the 4,5,6 line. Next week, those commuting between Grand Central in Manhattan and Atlantic Avenue-Barclays Center in Brooklyn will be able to swipe their phone as part of a public pilot. For now, at least, it seems the future is limited to single ride payment (versus daily/weekly/monthly cards), as the MTA works on hammering out the finer details. Stations that accept Google Pay will be added to Maps in coming weeks. Android users will also be able to add in a credit or debit card via the app. That feature is also arriving for riders in Melbourne and London. from RSSMix.com Mix ID 8176981 https://techcrunch.com/2019/05/23/google-assistant-gets-nyc-subway-arrival-times-ahead-of-mta-google-pay-support/ http://www.gadgetscompared.com https://ikonografico.tumblr.com/post/185087405311 via http://www.gadgetscompared.com Researchers have found two apps masquerading as cryptocurrency apps on Android’s app store, Google Play. One of them was largely a dud. The second was designed to steal cryptocurrency, the researchers said. Security firm ESET said one of the two fake Android apps impersonated Trezor, a hardware cryptocurrency wallet. The good news is that app couldn’t be used to steal cryptocurrency stored by Trezor. But the researchers found the app was connected to a second Android app which could have been used to scam funds out of unsuspecting victims. Lukas Stefanko, a security researcher at ESET — who has a long history of finding dodgy Android apps — said the fake Trezor app “appeared trustworthy at first glance” but was using a fake developer name to impersonate the company. The fake app was designed to trick users into turning over a victim’s login credentials. Uploaded to Google Play on May 1, the app quickly ranked as the second-most popular search result when searching for “Trezor” behind the legitimate app, said Stefanko. Users on Reddit also found the fake app and reported it as recently as two weeks ago. According to Stefanko, the server where user credentials were sent was linked to a website linked to another fake wallet, purportedly to store cryptocurrency, and also listed on Google Play since February 25. “The app claims it lets its users create wallets for various cryptocurrencies,” said Stefanko. “However, its actual purpose is to trick users into transferring cryptocurrency into the attackers’ wallets – a classic case of what we’ve named wallet address scams in our previous research into cryptocurrency-targeting malware.” Both apps were collectively downloaded more than a thousand times. After ESET contacted Google, the apps were pulled offline the next day. Read more:
from RSSMix.com Mix ID 8176981 https://techcrunch.com/2019/05/23/cryptocurrency-stealing-android-app/ http://www.gadgetscompared.com https://ikonografico.tumblr.com/post/185087397186 via http://www.gadgetscompared.com The only way to beat laziness is with guilt, and so that’s what Future sells. It assigns you an actual human trainer who builds personalized workout plans and message you throughout the day to make sure you’re doing them. It even gives you an Apple Watch to track your activity and ensure you’re not lying. Future actually got me to the gym where my coach kicked my ass remotely with a 30 minute lifting routine I’d never have stuck to by myself. The catch? It’s probably the most expensive app you’ve ever seen, charging $150 per month. Future officially launches today, touting some stunning stats from its beta tests. 95% of users stuck with it for 3 months, and 85% kept training for 6 months. Luckily it comes with a 1-month money-back guarantee that CEO Rishi Mandal says has only been redeemed once. The remarkable retention and Future’s potential to become a gateway for your fitness and nutrition spending have roped in some big name investors. Today it’s announcing an $8.5 million Series A led by Kleiner Perkins, building on its $3 million seed. Other backers include Instagram co-founder Mike Krieger, Khosla Ventures, Founders Fund, and Caffeinated Capital. Athletes are betting on Future’s promise of democratizing the personal training they get, including Golden State Warrior Sean Livingston, and NFL stars Ndamukong Suh and Kelvin Beachum. “Future manages to be both deeply personalized (and personable!) while being super convenient” says Krieger of one of his first investments since leaving Instagram. Future’s Mandal built his old startup Sosh while sitting next to Krieger at incubator Dogpatch Labs while Instagram was getting its start. “The always available nature of it means travel or a shifting schedule is no longer an excuse to not work out.” How Future Works (Out)Throughout the onboarding, Future flexes the money you spend to give what feels like a luxury app experience. Upon signup, you’ll answer some questions about your goals like slimming down or beefing up, and pick from a few expert trainers who specialize in your needs. You’ll do a 15-minute video chat with your trainer to get friendly, describe your schedule, and hammer out details of your workout plan. After you get your welcome kit with some swag and an Apple Watch, your trainer delivers your week’s worth of personalized daily routines that come with video instructions for each exercise. The Future app provides audio cues (and optional music) to guide you through the workout while your trainer chimes in with personalized pointers and motivation via pre-recorded voice clips. But what’s unique about Future is that your trainer proactively checks in with you throughout your day to make sure you’re actually going to the gym or doing those pushups. Since you don’t switch between trainers with each workout like some apps, and since they have your activity and heart rate data from the Apple Watch, they can spot patterns of procrastination or flaking out. And you’re prompted to give feedback after each sweat session that the trainer uses to tweak your plan. That personalization and prodding go a long way to making sure Future always fits your day and actually stays part of it. For example, I wanted to burn a few pounds without burning too much time by adding a gym day or two plus some warmup strength training before my home Peloton rides. My trainer Renee, a former University Of Wisconsin Director of Sports Performance for basketball, designed a 30-minute weight lifting circuit and some 10-minute bodyweight exercise plans for me. When I messaged her that I was doing an a more intense spin class today, she remixed my warmup exercises to avoid legs so I wouldn’t be tired during my ride. So far she’s always responded within a few minutes, and been cheerful yet forceful “I know your days are slammed, just wanted to check in and see if you were able to get to that spin class?” she messaged me at 6:30pm. That’s something even most in-person trainers don’t do. I found most of the workout instructions to be easy to understand, and the audio cues make it easy to do routines without constantly staring at your phone. But the one thing you really lose with a text message trainer instead of an in-person coach is warnings when you’re doing something wrong. Bad posture or jerky motions could get you injured. It’s all a lot smoother if you know your way around a gym. Future could do more to gauge your familiarity with proper form for riskier exercises, and then either teach you or steer you away from them. I hope I’m so sore today because I’m getting built, not getting hurt. Your Pocket Motivational SpeakerFuture was inspired by some scary facts. “70% of Americans are obsess and overweigh” Mandal tells me. “We spend $3.5 trillion per year on healthcare, yet we have pretty mediocre outcomes.” Mandal had gone through Stanford, worked at NASA, and been at Slide when it was acquired by Google. After selling his local experience app Sosh to Postmates, he became an entrepreneur-in-residence at Khosla Ventures which does many medtech investments. There Mandal realized health is largely determined by how you eat, sleep, deal with stress, take your medicine, and exercise. Thanks to smart watches, that last one had become the easiest to measure while remaining the toughest to do right on your own. Mandal set out to learn what the fittest people, professional athletes, do for exercise. They all told them they relied on personal trainers to make all the workout plans and force them to do them. Home gyms or apps full of pre-made exercises weren’t enough. They needed someone to keep them accountable. The trouble is that’s pretty expensive one-on-one. So Mandal teamed up with Justin Santamaria, a 10-year Apple veteran from the first iOS team who’d been working on iMessage and FaceTime. Together they designed Future in 2017 to make personal trainers cheap enough to be more accessible while retaining the personal connection that keeps trainees on track. If you won’t shell out $150 per month to be nagged, there are plenty of apps like Sweat that let you choose between guided workouts. Hell, if you’ve got that much will power you could get any gym membership or just go running. But the closest thing to Future called Fit.net folded. AI trainers like Freeletics can’t make you feel guilty or inspired the same way. Lose It and MyFitnessPal can get fellow trainees to badger you, but Mandal found people don’t obey peers like a respected trainer. The constant communication and sense of trust users develop with their coaches could give Future potential beyond subscription fitness. The app becomes a hub for your healthy behavior. Future already offers an in-app Shop where it recommends workout clothes, headphones, and water bottles. It’s easy to imagine it partnering with fitness equipment makers, health food lines, or other brands to score a cut of referred sales. Still, the biggest hurdle is convincing people to pay over 10X their Netflix fee for a personal trainer they don’t see in person. Compared to the $1 apps we’re used to, Future can induce sticker shock. But compared to unused gym memberships, pricey private coaching, and potential health problems, Future could look affordable if well-to-do professionals squint right. And if it works. Humans are sluggish. Most heathy habits lapse. But Future is building the closest thing to “press button, pay money, get fitter” — which in the end looks like getting someone to enthusiastically shame us from afar. from RSSMix.com Mix ID 8176981 https://techcrunch.com/2019/05/23/future-personal-trainer/ http://www.gadgetscompared.com https://ikonografico.tumblr.com/post/185083524511 via http://www.gadgetscompared.com Bars lose 20 percent of their alcohol to overpours and “free” drinks for friends. That amounts to $50 billion per year in booze that mysteriously disappears, making life tough for every pub and restaurant. Nectar wants to solve that mystery with its ultrasound depth sensing bottle caps that measure how much liquid is left in a bottle by measuring how long it takes a sonar pulse to bounce back. And now it’s bringing real-time pour tracking to beer with its gyroscopic taps. The result is that bar managers can find out who’s pouring too much or giving away drink, which promotions are working, when to reorder bottles without keeping too much stock on hand, and avoid wasting hours weighing or eyeballing the liquor level of their inventory. Nectar’s solution to alcohol shrinkage has now attracted a $10 million Series A led by DragonCapital.vc and joined by former Campari chairman Gerry Ruvo who will join the board. “Not a lot of technology has come to the bottle” Nectar CEO Aayush Phumbhra says of ill-equipped bars and restaurants. “Liquor is their highest margin and highest cost item. If you don’t manage it efficiently, you go out of business.” Other solutions can look ugly to customers, forcibly restrict bartenders, or take time and money to install and maintain. In contrast, Phunumbhra tells me “I care about solving deep problems by building a solution that doesn’t change behavior.” Investors were eager to back the CEO, since he previously co-founded text book rental giant Chegg — another startup disrupting an aged market with tech. “I come from a pretty entrepreneurial family. No one in my family has ever worked for anyone else before” Phunumbhra says with a laugh. He saw an opportunity in the stunning revelation that the half-trillion dollar on-premises alcohol business was plagued by missing booze and inconsistent ways to track it. Typically at the end of a week or month, a bar manager will have staff painstakingly look at each bottle, try to guess what percent remains, and mark it on a clipboard to be loaded into a spreadsheet later. While a little quicker, that’s very subjective and in-accurate More advanced systems see every bottled weighed to see exactly how much is left. If they’re lucky, the scale connects to a computer, but they still have to punch in what brand of booze they’re sizing up. But the process can take many hours, which amounts to costly labor and infrequent data. None of these methods eliminate the manual measurement process or give real-time pour info. So with $6 million in funding, Nectar launched in 2017 with its sonar bottle caps that look and operate like old-school pourers. When bars order them, they come pre-synced and labeled for certain bottle shapes like Petron or Jack Daniels. Their Bluetooth batteries last a year and connect wirelessly to a base hub in the bar. With each pour, the sonar pulse determines how much is in the bottle and subtracts it from the previous measurement to record how much was doled out. And the startup’s new gyroscopic beer system is calibrated to deduce pour volume from the angle and time the tap is depressed without the need for a sensor to be installed (and repaired) inside the beer hose. Bar managers can keep any eye on everything throughout the night with desktop, iOS, and Android apps. They could instantly tell if a martini special is working based on how much gin across brands is being poured, ask bartenders to slow their pours if they’re creeping upwards in volume, or give the green light to strong pours on weeknights to reward regular customers. “Some bars encourage overpours to get people to keep coming back” says local San Francisco celebrity bartender Broke-Ass Stuart, who tells me pre-measured pourers can save owners money but cost servers tips. Nectar now sells self-serve subscriptions to its hardware and software, with a 20 cap package costing $99 per month billed annually with free yearly replacements. It’s also got a free 2 tap trial package, or a $399 per month enterprise subscription for 100 taps. Nectar is designed to complement bar point of sale systems. And if a bar just wants the software, Nectar just launched its PrecisionAudit app where staff tap the current liquid level on a photo of each different bottle for more accurate eyeballing. It’s giving a discount rate of $29.99 per month on the first 1000 orders. After 2 million pours measured, the business is growing 200 percent quarter-over-quarter as bowling alley chains and stadiums sign up for pilots. The potential to change the booze business seduced investors like Tinder co-founders Sean Rad and Justin Mateen, Palantir co-founder Joe Lonsdale, and the founding family of the Modelo beer company. Next, Nectar is trying to invent a system for wine. That’s trickier since its taps would need to be able to suck the air out of the bottles each night. The big challenge will be convincing bars to change after tracking inventory the same way for decades. No one wants to deal with technical difficulties in a jam-packed bar. That’s partly why Nectar’s subscription doesn’t force owners to buy its hardware up front. fIf Nectar can nail not only the tech but the bartender experience, it could pave a smoother path to hospitality entrepreneurship. Alcohol shrinkage is one factor leading to the rapid demise of many bars and restaurants. Plus, it could liberate bartenders from measuring bottles into the wee hours. Phunumbhra “They’re coming in on weekends and working late. We want them to spend that time with their families and on customer service.” from RSSMix.com Mix ID 8176981 https://techcrunch.com/2019/05/22/nectar-bar-inventory/ http://www.gadgetscompared.com https://ikonografico.tumblr.com/post/185071163016 via http://www.gadgetscompared.com |
AuthorMy name is Alan and I love to read ebooks. Archives
November 2020
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