The goal of hot startup Ubiquity6 is to improve interpersonal communication by enabling friends and family to easily share augmented spaces where they can meet, chat, play and have fun creating AR games and experiences claims CEO and co-founder of Ubiquity6 Anjney Midha. Last month they launched their first public Beta of their Display.land app for iOS and Android smartphones. Unlike most AR apps to date Display.land is not a single user, standalone AR experience but rather a portal or browser through which users can connect, share their world and play in AR.

“Multiplayer, cross-platform 3D, AR and VR experiences are among the most successful types of media on the planet today, from Fortnite and Roblox to Pokemon Go and Snapchat Lenses.” explained Anjney Midha, CEO and co-founder of Ubiquity6.

This concept has attracted a lot of interest and to date, Ubiquity6 has raised over $37.5 million in funding from investors including Index Ventures, First Round Capital, Google’s Gradient Ventures and KPCB. All this capital and more than two years of development mean that under the hood Display.land is doing some very clever and interesting things, check out some examples of 3D scans created by the app in the video below.

Multiplayer, cross-platform 3D, AR and VR experiences are among the most successful types of media on the planet today
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Ubiquity6 has raised over $37.5 million in funding from investors including Index Ventures, First Round Capital, Google’s Gradient Ventures and KPCB
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We’ve been dogfooding and iterating on the Studio and engine to create immersive play experiences over the past two years – from our Voxel Sandbox that brought over 150 concurrent players together in one physical space in San Francisco’s SF MoMA, to the thousands of 3D captures and life-scale animated scenes that have been shared by the Display.land community since our public beta launch a month ago.

The Display.land app claims to be “the world’s fastest way to create, edit and share real-world 3D environments and assets using everyday mobile cameras,” so what does this mean exactly? Well, basically you can use the app and your phone camera to scan your real environment, be it your living room, office or favorite cafe then the app sends the data to Ubiquity6’s cloud servers where it is stored and can be shared with your friends via a simple URL.

“By building a way for creators to publish these types of experiences with unprecedented speed and ease, we are offering players a single destination for immersive experiences that brings them back everyday to play with a community of friends they can’t find anywhere else.” said Midha.

You can then use the app to both share the same 3D digital space (created via your phone) and use simple AR creation tools to create persistent, dynamic multiplayer AR experiences and generally have fun playing with each other. With over 92,000 user-created spaces from 142 countries, it’s safe to conclude that this is something people want and enjoy doing so the company have just released the next part of the puzzle.

“The Displayland app is the world’s easiest way for creators to capture and turn real world locations into assets for 3D, AR and VR experiences. The Studio is the world’s easiest way to make multiplayer 3D, AR and VR experiences using those assets that can be played within the Displayland app and any web browser. Together, they form an end-end creation and publishing experience for anyone to blend reality and imagination with the kind of speed, scale and fidelity only currently available to high end gaming, graphics and VFX professionals.” enthused Midha.

Hot on the heels of December’s app release Ubiquity6 has now announced the next step in their journey, Display.land Studio. The Studio is a serious step up from the app, offering a more advanced toolset to help you create and share complex multiplayer 3D, AR, and VR games and experiences.

“Display.land Studio is intended for anyone interested in creating and modding multiplayer 3D, AR and VR games and experiences. It is a cloud editor that offers rich player customization and level layout options that include built-in templates. All in-world textures and assets can be replaced with your own photos, videos and 3D environments and objects captured by your camera.” said Midha.

Display.land Studio is intended for anyone interested in creating and modding multiplayer 3D, AR and VR games and experiences
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For developers, Display.land Studio offers flexible APIs to the underlying 3D engine that powers all Display.land experiences
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The Studio is a visual and code-optional playground for those of us who love to create and bring people together through social play. Experiences created with the studio can be entirely virtual or anchored to any real-world location precisely to a few centimeters.

Logic and gameplay features are easily changeable via lightweight scripting and custom components. Users can also create and publish shared, persistent AR games and experiences using the Studio’s built-in AR Cloud positioning service. It allows anyone to publish cross-platform, multiplayer experiences that can be shared and played instantly on mobile, desktop and head-mounted devices. No prior programming experience is required, but if you know a little bit of web development and javascript, you’re already off to the races.

For developers, Display.land Studio offers flexible APIs to the underlying 3D engine that powers all Display.land experiences, with an engine that ensures you can develop in JavaScript and uses familiar web patterns, libraries, and asset formats, without sacrificing on security or best-in-class performance across all supported platforms: AR, VR, Mobile, and Web.

Where the app gives you the tools to scan a 3D model of your real-life environment and share it the Display.land Studio now gives you the tools to build more advanced, sharable and interactive AR experience and blend them with your 3D location models. The results will also be sharable beyond the app and accessible across platforms including VR, Mobile, and Web.

We’ve also taken care of many of the difficulties in building engaging, cross-platform, real-world experiences. With plug and play multiplayer networking, persistence, cross-platform input handling, integration with our AR Cloud service, and more, our engine has been built to allow you to focus on what makes your experience unique – your creativity.

If the goal behind all this was to create a better, more interactive way for friends and families to keep in touch and communicate more effectively, sharing more of the world around them and playing together then I think you can say Ubiquity6 has succeeded. The app is simple to use for the less tech savy and now the Studio offers more skilled creators a way to build advanced and engaging AR experiences that all users can access. Remember, we are still in the very early stages of immersive tech and are a long way from the day our lives are truly enhanced and augmented but Tech Trends is watching Ubiquity6 with keen interest. If consumer AR is going to really take off enabling people to build their own personalised AR easily and making those experiences sharable across platforms might just prove to be a tipping point.

If you are interested in the tools and features the Display.land Studio offers you can sign up today for early access here.

Tom Atkinson is Reviews & Dep. Editor at Tech Trends. Follow him on Twitter @techtrends_tech

The post Ubiquity6 Set to Release Display.land Studio appeared first on Tech Trends.

Tech Trends has been watching keenly as mobile phone-based AR experiences have boomed as branded advertising tools across multiple markets, changing the way companies and customers communicate around products. We reported back in 2017 on how the drinks industry has embraced mobile AR marketing and since then I doubt there are more than a few smartphone owners out there who have not tried out a branded AR experience or two.

There are two main types of AR experiences, the first is using your phone screen as a window (a la Pokemon Go) through which you can see an augmented world, but it has been the awesomely shareable, selfie-style AR experiences, such as the 2017 Bud Light NFL, that caught the attention of the social media giants Snapchat and Instagram.

Known as Face AR these easy to use experiences let you augment yourself and the world around you and have been hugely successful, driving social media engagement across platforms
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Known as “Face AR” these easy-to-use experiences let you augment yourself and the world around you, and have been hugely successful, driving social media engagement across multiple platforms. If you have ever browsed dating or hookup apps such as Badoo you will see more augmented faces than unaltered ones. I seem to remember cat ears, noses and whiskers dominating people’s attempts to look less boring.

Face Augmented Reality software – known as Face AR – helps people shape the stories they share and add more emotion to digital communication. Communication, after all, is about people understanding each other and creative video tools help us to express our personality. Dmitry Ogievich, CEO of Banuba.

Mobile AR alone generated more than $3bn in revenue during 2018, mainly from in-app purchases, advertising spending and eCommerce, according to the AR and VR consultancy Digi-Capital. AR analyst publication AR Insider predicts the technology’s installed base (e.g. smartphones) will reach 3.4 billion by 2022, with about 1 billion monthly active users, demonstrating its far-reaching potential.

Changing the game in 2019 Instagram and Snapchat have both released their own user-driven Face AR design apps Spark and Lens Studio respectively, enabling users to design, build and share their own personalised Face AR filters. Tech Trends believes this is a turning point in AR adoption and proof the tech has been embraced by the a new generation for whom blending the real and digital worlds is second nature.

Changing the game in 2019 Instagram and Snapchat have both released their own user-driven Face AR design apps Spark and Lens Studio respectively, enabling users to design, build and share their own personalised Face AR filters
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To find out how the market got here and where it might take us Tech Trends picked the brains of Dmitry Ogievich, CEO at Face AR specialist Banuba.

Face Augmented Reality software – known as Face AR – helps people shape the stories they share and add more emotion to digital communication
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What is the state of Face AR now?

Now dedicated Face AR companies like Banuba are developing apps and tools that focus on the front-facing camera on mobile devices. Among other things, the technology can be used to add filters, masks and digital overlays to the human face and its surroundings. It can also identify emotions such as happiness, anger, joy, sadness and surprise in real-time. The technology is being used to animate day-to-day communication and expression with personalised avatars and emojis, using mapped masks and filters. It provides the tools for users to edit, smarten up and express their personalities in selfies and stories, helping communicate the message they really want.

Retail is utilising the technology, enabling consumers to ‘virtually’ try on items of clothing or accessories to see how the product looks - such as glasses, jewellery, hats and make-up
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Inevitably, the technology is incredibly popular with social media users and is used daily by both brands and individuals. Retail is an industry particularly interested in utilising the technology, enabling consumers to ‘virtually’ try on items of clothing or accessories to see how the product looks – such as glasses, jewellery, hats and make-up.

What is the next step in its evolution?

The next stage in Face AR’s evolution will primarily revolve around companies improving the quality, performance and accuracy of their technology. But there is also pressure to provide the next innovative idea. Neural face transformation filters, as seen with FaceApp, appear to be a direction many will be trying to follow. This technology creates an incredibly detailed filter – based on the individual user’s face – that produces a unique image every single time. The possibilities of this are endless and move far beyond what we have seen in recent years, but the technology requires greater processing power than mobiles can produce without significantly impacting battery life. As smartphones continue to increase in power, the opportunities for this technology will likely increase.

Neural face transformation filters, as seen with FaceApp, appear to be a direction many will be trying to follow
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How are social media companies changing the game?

Spark and Lens Studio have opened up Face AR to a whole new audience and development community, putting tools in their hands to become the next influencers in the space. It’s a great opportunity for the influencer community and small businesses looking to innovate, giving them the tools to create what they want and show even more personality. However, it’s important to remember these tools are platform exclusive and are of no use to those wishing to incorporate Face AR into their own apps. What we’re seeing with Spark and Lens Studio is the widespread availability of tools for users to create and adapt their own Face AR and although basic, these tools democratise the development process which opens up the technology further for mass adoption.

Spark and Lens Studio have opened up Face AR to a whole new audience and development community, putting tools in their hands to become the next influencers in the space
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We can expect to see smaller brands and individuals using the tools for business and innovation purposes. Previously we’ve seen campaigns for major companies, like Apple’s recent [AR]T Walk tours, spread across social media platforms – but now we’re likely to see this dilute to smaller-scale projects with more niche and local focus.

We can expect to see smaller brands and individuals using the Face AR tools for business and innovation purposes
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We’ll also see more innovation as individuals are given a blank canvas to get creative. Now the tools are in everyone’s hands, we’re going to see some real creativity, as a larger pool of people are exposed to what’s possible through filters. As well as this, we’ve begun to see developers setting themselves up as businesses on Spark and Lens Studio, working with brands to create bespoke filters.

What is the future of Face AR?

Face AR will continue to innovate and with the onset of more complex filters, will further establish itself as the go-to digital communications tool for individuals and organisations. As brands’ investment in the technology increases, new possibilities will open for a range of industries.

Further global adoption of the technology is inevitable and with the tools to develop filters more widely available, we’ll see further democratisation. Face AR is still in its infancy and we can expect it to continue to rise in popularity and become an even bigger part of how we all communicate and interact.

Further global adoption of Face AR is inevitable and with the tools to develop filters more widely available, we’ll see further democratisation
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Will Face AR will speed up the popular adoption of AR more broadly?

The popularity of Face AR will play a significant role in accelerating the adoption of broader AR technologies. Face AR is already being embraced by the next generation of consumers and it’s becoming part of their normal communications, which is exciting to see. With people acclimatised to using Face AR technology daily, the widespread adoption of AR becomes completely organic.

The reason Face AR has achieved large scale popularity already is it can provide a unique and immersive experience that can’t be matched by more basic digital communication
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However, for broader AR technologies to gain widespread popularity they must first be seen to enhance the user experience, not just complement it. The reason Face AR has achieved large scale popularity already is it can provide a unique and immersive experience that can’t be matched by more basic digital communication. AR must also give the user a compelling reason to use the technology. Possibly the biggest barrier to this is the limited field of view of a smartphone camera, which often removes the user from the experience. But as we see some workable smart eyewear models begin to hit the market, it will be far easier to provide a seamless and immersive AR experience – catalysing the adoption of the technology.

Tom Atkinson is Reviews & Dep. Editor at Tech Trends. Follow him on Twitter @techtrends_tech

The post Facing Reality appeared first on Tech Trends.

When most of us are messing around on our phones we use Apps, little programs that hook us straight into the service, game or social network we want. In fact, most of us won’t use a browser on our mobile phones much these days, but browser tech is getting seriously clever and what are called Web Apps are coming along leaps and bounds with WebVR at the cutting edge.

This excellent mobile browser technology was a blast to use and pretty unobtrusive, only requiring access to my phone’s microphone and geolocation functions to give a really fun interactive experience
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This month Co-op Insurance has launched a really fun interactive Web App called Up & Away that takes users on the hot air balloon trip of a lifetime, around the world like Willy Fog! What is really clever is the experimental browser technology that connects to your phone or tablet’s built-in compass, geolocation and microphone, opening up the world in a completely unique way. This new interactive experience will work on your iOS11+ and Android 7+ device, no App needed here. Just visit the Up & Away site in your browser, Chrome 61+ recommended, and get ready for lift off.

By blowing into the device’s microphone, users can blow the Up & Away hot air balloon up into the sky in a bid to visit different locations around the globe. Keep blowing into your device to see how far you can travel. Apart from huffing and puffing into the phone to power your flight, pointing the device in the direction you want to travel lets you control which continents you visit. The harder a user blows, the further the hot air balloon will travel and – with the aim to get to destinations including New York, Nuuk, Paris and Berlin – users can challenge themselves to get further each time.

Up & Away The world is waiting for you… Blow our hot air balloon through the skies and see where you land

Sat comfortably at home I was nevertheless feeling restless, so took my balloon for a trip. A little countdown allowed me to fill my lungs and my first long blow took me 1,253 miles, all the way to Helsinki!

Co-op Insurance has launched a really fun interactive Web App called Up & Away that takes users on the hot air balloon trip of a lifetime
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A cute little illustration showed the city and a few of its inhabitants while a bite-sized traveller tip warned me that temperatures there could drop to -50C. Too cold for me, so I quickly set off, although I forgot to point my compass south and only made things worse, landing 1,953 miles away in Nuuk – the capital of Greenland.

A cute little illustration showed the city and a few of its inhabitants while a bite-sized traveller tip warned me that temperatures could drop to -50C
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My third attempt to escape the cold landed me in the frigid North Atlantic, so I scrabbled for my rudimentary geography and started thinking more carefully about the direction I wanted to travel in.

Blow number four landed me far to the east in the Brexit-shattered Brussels, but this was not quite warm enough, so travelling due south via Prague my fifth blow got me to the glorious Malaga – where the traveller’s tip informed me I could enjoy 320 days of sun per year. Wooo Hooo!

My third attempt to escape the cold landed me in the frigid North Atlantic
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Basking on the beach for a few minutes made my tummy grumble, so I headed west and after an epic journey arrived in New York City where they serve the finest steaks on the planet. I was home.

This excellent mobile browser technology was a blast to use and pretty unobtrusive, only requiring access to my phone’s microphone and geolocation functions to give a really fun interactive experience. Highly recommended for a bit of armchair travelling at this grim time of the year, at least here in the UK!

Tom Atkinson is a Digital Producer & Photographer at R3Digital and Reviews & Dept. Editor at Tech Trends. Connect on LinkedIn and follow him on Twitter @R3Digital

The post Up Up & Away! appeared first on Tech Trends.

As the world grows crazier by the day, Augmented Reality provides some much-needed comic relief.

AR is the “Rising Star” medium of our age, claims Liat Sade-Sternberg, CEO of fuse.it. And it’s hard to argue with that while watching a demo of a guy dancing gangnam style along with disturbingly agile avatars of Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump. We definitely live in strange times.

Augmented reality is the “Rising Star” medium of our age
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You can argue about whether or not that’s a good thing, but in this age of fake news and memes, the fact that this content doesn’t look too polished takes a back seat to whether you can do something fun and creative with it – and share it with one tap.

You can insert yourself into memes and news clips with media personalities
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And that’s just the sort of use case that Sade-Sternberg is selling. Fuse.it is an AR app that lets you sync up multiple audio sources with video at the same time as interacting with a range of 3D animated characters including Barack Obama, Donald Trump, and Hillary Clinton.

We will we see more apps that mix creative animated environments with the real world
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You can insert yourself into memes and news clips, having “conversations” with media personalities, singing and dancing with your favourite (or least favourite) politician, and basically blend, colour, manipulate and mash up any video source to create viral clips ready to share.

Interact with a range of 3D animated characters including Barack Obama and Donald Trump
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Using the app (which has just been released on iOS) is a matter of selecting a character or video you want to interact with, choose a camera position and begin recording. With a tap you can bring those characters to life, and record yourself interacting with them in your own surroundings, sharing the end results with friends. Fuse.it promises to keep adding the app’s content database to reflect the latest trending pop culture and news stories.

“It allows people to become content creators, with users easily able to make viral videos from fake news clips to memes,” says Sade-Sternberg. “We were looking for a new way to easily integrate people into videos and turn their media consumption from passive to active by letting them embed themselves into their favorite pop culture moments such as news, memes, movies, tv, music videos and more to let them be part of the story.”

She explains the original inspiration for the app came from trying to close the gap between official media and user generated content, providing a one-click solution to let users create blended content instantly. They decided to focus on video because it is as Sade-Sternberg puts, it, “king of content.”

“Online videos will account for more than 80% of all consumer internet traffic by 2020. Every day Over 8 billion videos or 100 millions hours of videos are watched on Facebook, 10 billion videos on SnapChat and 500 million hours of videos are watched on Youtube.”

The Israeli start-up – which was founded in Tel-Aviv but is currently headquartered in LA – also claims to have secured partnerships with several large music labels, but say they cannot yet disclose which.

Users are easily able to make viral videos from fake news clips to memes
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As mentioned above, the quality of the demos is far from polished, but it is enough to have fun with, and to hint at what will become possible in the near future as the technology continues to gain momentum and become more pervasive. And this is certainly what Sade-Sternberg is betting on:

“As we see Augmented Reality become more mainstream, so too will we see more apps that mix creative animated worlds with the real world. AR is already accessible to every person in the world. Google, Apple and Amazon all are investing big time in the technology so I think we’re going to see lots of improvement in this field in the upcoming months. We are in an exciting time, when we will define the behavior of how people will use AR apps.”

Originally published on VRScout

This App Creates Crazy AR Videos with One Tap via @alicebonasio https://t.co/ZjjfLvHTf9 pic.twitter.com/cec6cY4wbm

— VRScout (@VRScout) December 11, 2017

If you would like to find out how to leverage VR/AR/MR in your project or enterprise, Tech Trends offers Virtual Reality Consultancy support

Alice Bonasio is a VR Consultant and Tech Trends’ Editor in Chief. She also regularly writes for Fast Company, Ars Technica, Quartz, Wired and others. Connect with her on LinkedIn and follow @alicebonasio on Twitter.

The post Making Up Fake News with AR appeared first on Tech Trends.

How Uber’s cutthroat ethos proved a liability and is leaving it vulnerable to competitors

One sunny morning outside the Ferry Building in San Francisco, I was about to order an Uber when an over-friendly guy in a black t-shirt with a pink mustache logo approached me. My initial reaction was to tell this weirdo to leave me alone, but then he offered me a $50 Lyft voucher. Having established that this was a legit weirdo, and since I had heard a lot of people mentioning that company in the city, I decided to download it and request a Lyft instead. I haven’t opened my Uber app since.

I had been using Uber a lot lately, with no complaints whatsoever. In Brazil the app worked perfectly and was invariably a third (or less) of the price of a cab. My rides usually arrived within a minute or so of my request, cars were clean and well-maintained and the drivers were always ridiculously nice. I traveled a lot with my elderly grandfather who took a very long time to get in and out of the car, but at no point were we rushed, and most drivers actively offered help, as well as bottled water and candy for good measure. I felt spoiled even in 10-minute rides which cost 7 Reais (less than $2).

With Uber, there is a higher price to pay, but it’s not the user who pays it
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During my trip to San Francisco the following week it was the same drill. Friendly drivers, super-quick service, really cheap fares. It was almost too good to be true.

And that’s the problem. When it comes to Uber, there is a higher price to pay, but it’s not the user who pays it. I chatted to dozens of those friendly drivers and the stories were invariably the same: They loved the flexibility, and didn’t mind paying a cut of their earnings, but they felt that things had definitely got progressively worse since they joined.

I might have tried Lyft because of the $50 voucher, but I stayed because of the balloons. On the app you not only get to rate your driver, but you have the option to give them a tip. Tipping then triggers an animation where pink balloons float around their smiling profile picture, giving you a warm, fuzzy feeling. In Brazil I had tried to tip my Uber drivers (specially the $2 rides) but they adamantly refused. Drivers have to give a quarter of their gross takings to Uber, and bear all the costs such as fuel, wear and tear, insurance, etc. themselves, which made me wonder how on earth it was viable for them to charge me so little. I actually started to feel guilty using the service, like I was taking advantage.

I started to feel guilty using Uber's service, like I was taking advantage
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That was specially true once you started talking to people about their experiences with Uber: “They’re constantly changing the rules,” one driver told me in São Paulo “at first you needed a certain type of vehicle to join, so I invested a lot of money in a new car, but soon after, they lowered the requirements and flooded the city with drivers, so the fares dropped in price dramatically, at the same time as the Uber fees went up.”

San Francisco drivers had similar complaints: “They’re always inventing new ways of squeezing you and increasing the fees, and it is getting to the point where it’s not really worth my time,” said one of my Uber drivers.

I tried Lyft because of the $50 voucher, but I stayed for the balloons
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All that made me receptive to the idea of switching, but the proof, as they say, was in the pudding. If Lyft had been a crap app I would have stuck with Uber (it is so damn convenient!). But as it turns out, it took less than 3 minutes to download Lyft on my phone, setup my profile and payment method, redeem my discount voucher, and request my first ride.

My Lyft drivers were noticeably happy with their lot. Many, in fact, were Uber deserters. One driver told me:

“The last straw was when Uber started inventing all these mandatory courses that you needed to go on, and they charged each driver over a hundred dollars for it, plus you have to do it on your own time. There’s always something else you have to pay them for, you never know where you stand.”

During the next ride, when asked if he had ever tried driving with Uber, my driver said he had been with Lyft from the beginning, and stayed because the terms were fair, and they made him feel appreciated. “When I completed 1000 rides with them, they sent me this,” he said enthusiastically pointing to the 1K Club jacket he was wearing. “I now did over 4000 rides with them.”

There is no doubt that the business model that Uber pioneered is fantastic, and that it’s here to stay. It fulfills a real need for users and provides drivers with a flexible source of income. But Uber’s mistake is in acting like its first-mover advantage is unassailable. There are plenty of competitors like Lyft cropping up all over the place, and the fact that the business model is proven (and there is still enormous scope for growth) means that they’re attracting huge investment.

Like so many other tech companies, Uber’s greatest mistake is acting like its first-mover advantage is unassailable
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As a recent article in the San Francisco Chronicle pointed out, Lyft’s latest $1Billion funding round is fuelling the spending spree that paid for pink-moustache-t-shirt guy to hand me the $50 worth of discounted rides in San Francisco, and is helping them quickly gain market share.

Uber is a very different product from, say, Facebook or LinkedIn, where there is a high cost in terms of time and hassle attached to switching to another platform. All it takes is for an Uber user to download a different app and give it a try. Add that to the fact that they are losing drivers due to their bullish money-grabbing ethos, and you can see how the disruptors might soon become the disrupted.

The disruptors might soon become the disrupted
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Greediness is never an attractive quality, but in this case it might actually be hurting Uber’s business in the long-run, and it’s a reflection of their broader confrontational mindset. Watching the endless battles the company fights with governments, regulators, taxi unions, and their own drivers, that the huge budgets they dedicate to PR, advertising and legal fees would be better spent on giving drivers a fairer deal, or even showing some appreciation with a jacket here and there. I always found that a little kindness goes a long way, and building a community is worth more to a company in the long term than desperately grabbing for every penny RIGHT NOW.

This is specially true when you’re selling an user experience, where price is only part of the equation, and building a rapport with your driver is a real plus. Over the past few weeks I was driven by an Afghani who used to be a translator for US special forces in Kabul, a cool California dude who was “in the Coffee business” and gave us the best insider recommendations of where to go in the city, and another guy who was a part-time archaeologist on his way to a dig in Jerusalem, and who incidentally used to be in what he called “the security business” where he used to break into events such as movie premieres to expose the vulnerabilities of the system. Like with Airbnb, social interaction plays a huge part in the user experience, and your platform is only as valuable as the people it attracts — and retains.

Social interaction plays a huge part in the user experience, and your platform is only as valuable as the people it attracts — and retains
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Maybe I’m in the minority and most people are just happy to get a good deal, but I really don’t think so. After all, we buy fair-trade products, pay extra for cruelty-free labels, and donate to charity. Call me naïve, but I believe that — all other things being equal — most of us would take the option to be a little bit nicer to our fellow humans if given the chance. After all, you’re still getting a great deal, even if it’s slightly less cheap than the bastard option.

Alice Bonasio is a VR Consultant and Tech Trends’ Editor in Chief. She also regularly writes for Fast Company, Ars Technica, Quartz, Wired and others. Connect with her on LinkedIn and follow @alicebonasio and @techtrends_tech on Twitter.

The post Uber v Lyft: How Playing Nice Can Be a Winning Strategy appeared first on Tech Trends.

Now more than ever, we need a dedicated and secure social network for students.

If you want to get Education Technology right, you start by listening to teenagers
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With15-year-old triplets of his own, Tony Feghali, CEO and Co-Founder of Skoolee doesn’t seem to have much choice. However, he also goes out of his way to create informal focus groups and find out what the kids are finding cool these days.

“It’s amazing what insight you can get just by buying a few rounds of frappuccinos. That’s when we knew we were on the right track with Skoolee,” he recalls.

 

At 53, he’s not exactly a ‘digital native’ and he believes that is part of what makes him such a good listener

“I’m pretty much from the punch card machines era, complete with Blinking CRT black/white monitors with beep beep beep…” he laughs. “

 

So I can really appreciate the power that technology has in transforming people’s lives, and having been involved in Education for decades now, I can see how EdTech will help us shift to a different model, one that focuses on coaching rather than teaching, deliverables and goals instead of being restricted by subjects. We need to build our tools and platforms to fit into and to facilitate this new reality for students, educators and institutions.”

As it turned out, those teenagers he spoke to were not using Facebook all that much. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the thought of sharing a social network with their parents didn’t strike them as particularly cool. While praising Instagram’s rich visuals and the immediacy of WhatsApp, they – like a lot of us – struggled to draw the line between personal and public, between their academic life and their social circle.

I can really appreciate the power that technology has in transforming people’s lives
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“Young people understand that what they do online can have long-term implications in the real world, and they felt there was really nowhere for them to showcase the things they were proud of, their academic achievements and interests, and as their thoughts turned towards university, this very clear idea emerged of how useful it would be to have a social platform dedicated solely to building their student profile, in the same way as we build a professional profile on LinkedIn.”

Young people understand that what they do online can have long-term implications in the real world
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Skoolee, which is launching its Beta in February, will be available on web and as a free mobile app combining social network functionalities with productivity tools to help young people get more organised and document their achievements as they evolve.

“We’re helping students build a dynamic ‘brag sheet’, something they can be proud to show their teachers, university admissions officers and even future employers,” says Feghali.

We’re helping students build something they can be proud to show teachers, admissions officers and employers
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The platform will also offer the ability for students to track their progress and compare it with that of their friends, or with others around the world:

“We’re updating the whole PenPal experience. We know that people are inspired by these exchanges, and that the competitive element can also be a great motivator for students to achieve their full potential. All of that is facilitated by the right social environment, and technology can extend it beyond traditional geographical boundaries.”

We’re updating the whole PenPal experience
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A recent report by the Harvard Graduate School of Education entitled Turning the Tide strongly makes the case for students to document their extracurricular involvement, and indeed one of the biggest challenges in the University admission process has been that standardized tests simply don’t provide the full picture when it comes to a student’s potential. It is widely agreed that there is a pressing need to find better ways of evaluating students on criteria that go beyond testing.

“Think about Oxbridge, for example,” Says Feghali. “There is much criticism around accessibility and the fact that pupils from less privileged or minority backgrounds don’t get the necessary training to comfortably navigate the interview process, so they often don’t do themselves justice in talking about their accomplishments – awards, leadership, volunteering, arts, music, sports, etc.

 

“But what if the person in charge of interviewing had access to this amazing evolving portfolio? It would give students a much fairer hearing and help to level out the playing field a little,” Feghali believes.

What if the person in charge of interviewing had access to this amazing evolving portfolio?
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There are also implications that continue beyond education, which is why major technology platforms have been trying to crack this elusive market for a while now. Still, only about 8% of US high school students have a profile on LinkedIn. Feghali is confident he has the answer:

“We’re planning to build cross-platform integration into Skoolee, so that as students move through higher education and join the workforce they can migrate seamlessly to LinkedIn or any other network they wish. Your social profile is a valuable commodity, and you need to invest in it over the long term, share and display it, just like you do with your diplomas.”

Your social profile is a valuable commodity, and you need to invest in it over the long term
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Skoolee is launching in the UK supported by the UK Lebanon Tech Hub, an initiative backed by the UK government and funded by Lebanon’s Central bank designed to provide promising technology startups in the country with a launchpad to accelerate their growth and global expansion.

Alice Bonasio is a VR Consultant and Tech Trends’ Editor in Chief. She also regularly writes for Fast Company, Ars Technica, Quartz, Wired and others. Connect with her on LinkedIn and follow @alicebonasio on Twitter.

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