Oct
25

Donald Trump berates Apple CEO Tim Cook for removing the iPhone home button (AAPL)

President Donald Trump on Friday criticized Apple CEO Tim Cook for removing the iPhone home button, which was removed in new models starting in 2017.He tweeted: "To Tim: The Button on the IPhone was FAR better than the Swipe!"Yes, you read that right.It's not clear why Trump is bringing this up now.

President Donald Trump has launched a fresh feud against Apple CEO Tim Cook over an unusual topic: iPhone design.

On Friday afternoon, the US president fired off a tweet that slammed the technology executive over Apple's decision in 2017 to ditch the physical home button on the front of new models of the iPhone.

Trump wrote: "To Tim: The Button on the IPhone was FAR better than the Swipe!" 

—Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 25, 2019

Since the first model in 2007, iPhones made use of a physical home button that took users back to the home screen. But a decade after the original phone came out, the 2017 edition of the iPhone, the iPhone X, became the first version to eschew the button in favor of swipe controls that require users to slide their fingers across the screen in various gestures.

It's not clear what prompted Trump to call out Apple's 58-year-old chief executive about the change now, more than two years after it was first implemented, and a White House spokesperson did not immediately respond to Business Insider's request for comment. But the reality TV star turned politician has been vocal about smartphone design in the past.

Throughout 2013 and 2014, Trump tweeted numerous times about his belief that Apple should introduce an iPhone with a larger screen — something the company ultimately did, starting with the iPhone 6 Plus.

—Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 19, 2013
—Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 19, 2013
—Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 24, 2014

An Apple spokesperson did not immediately respond to Business Insider's request for comment.

Original author: Rob Price

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Feb
06

Deepnote raises $3.8M to build a better data science platform

You can easily change the AutoFill settings on your iPad by going into the Settings app on your iPad.When enabled, this feature is used to store your login information saved from websites, and automatically fill in your username and password.Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

If you find yourself often forgetting passwords for online shopping accounts, membership logins, and more, the AutoFill feature on your iPad is great.

AutoFill allows users to save passwords and personal information entered on Safari, and uses that data to automatically fill in forms — and even access that data across all your devices using iCloud. 

The AutoFill feature is easy to enable in your iPad's Settings app, where you can also review, edit, and delete passwords you no longer need.

Additionally, you can disable the feature with a simple switch if you no longer wish to use it. You can also do this from your iPhone or from your Mac computer.

Here's how to do it on your iPad.

Check out the products mentioned in this article:

iPad (From $329.99 at Best Buy)

How to change the AutoFill settings on your iPad

1. Open the Settings app on your iPad.

2. Scroll down and tap "Passwords & Accounts" in the fifth section of options. This will bring you to your password details.

3. If the AutoFill feature is turned on, you will see a green switch labeled "AutoFill Passwords." To turn this off, tap or slide the switch to turn it white.

Open the "Passwords & Accounts" tab in your iPad Settings. Marissa Perino/Business Insider

4. Tap "Website & App Passwords" at the top of the list to view what's already saved. The gray number on the right-hand side shows how many entries have already been saved using AutoFill.

5. Based on your security settings, you may be prompted to enter your passcode or Face/Touch ID. Enter your passcode or biometrics if asked, which will bring you to a list of all of your AutoFill passwords.

6. To delete an entry, first swipe left until a red "Delete" option appears.

7. Tap "Delete" to confirm.

Swipe left to delete an AutoFill entry. Marissa Perino/Business Insider

8. You can also tap on any password to view its individual details.

9. Tap "Change Password on Website" to bring you to its webpage on Safari.

10. You can also tap "Edit" in the upper-left hand corner to remove the websites associated with the username and password. What this means is that the password will still be saved, but your iPhone won't associate it with any website. Tap the red minus symbol to the left of a website name to erase it. Most passwords are only linked to one website, but some — like university logins — may connect to multiple, similar pages.

The details page for a saved password will show you what sites it's associated with. Marissa Perino/Business Insider

11. Tap "Done" in the upper-left hand corner when you're finished.

Original author: Marissa Perino

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Dec
02

Thought Leaders in Internet of Things: Flavio Gomes, CEO of LogiSense (Part 2) - Sramana Mitra

GM's 49,000 UAW-represented workers have ratified a new four-year contract.The vote ends the longest strike against a major US automaker in 50 years.The workforce secured low-cost healthcare, wager increases, a signing bonus, increased profit-sharing, and a quicker path to full-time status for temporary workers.GM also confirmed that it would build an electric pickup truck at a Detroit plant that had been "unallocated," and that it plans to build a new battery factory near an idled plant in Ohio.Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

Late Friday, General Motors and the United Auto Workers announced that GM's 49,000 workers at 55 facilities in the US had ratified a new, four-year labor contract.

The agreement comes after the longest strike against the automaker in decades. GM's workforce walked off the job on September 16. The duration of the strike, the largest against the company since the 1970s, could have cost GM billions in lost revenue.

"We delivered a contract that recognizes our employees for the important contributions they make to the overall success of the company, with a strong wage and benefit package and additional investment and job growth in our U.S. operations," GM CEO Mary Barra said a statement.

GM CEO Mary Barra. Bill Pugliano / Stringer

"GM is proud to provide good-paying jobs to tens of thousands of employees in America and to grow our substantial investment in the USAs one team, we can move forward and stay focused on our priorities of safety and building high-quality cars, trucks and crossovers for our customers."

In its the UAW's own statement, Vice President Terry Dittes said, "General Motors members have spoken."

"We are all so incredibly proud of UAW-GM members who captured the hearts and minds of a nation. Their sacrifice and courageous stand addressed the two-tier wages structure and permanent temporary worker classification that has plagued working-class Americans."

The UAW announced on Friday that the strike was officially over and that the workforce should return to the job according to GM's directions.

United Auto Workers (UAW) union President Gary Jones addresses UAW delegates at the 'Special Convention on Collective Bargaining' in Detroit. Reuters

GM summarized the new contract. It includes:

3% wage increases or 4% lump-sum payments in each of the four years of the
contract.Retention of ... health care coverage, preserving the current 3% cost to
employees.An $11,000 contract signing bonus for regular employees, and $4,500 for
temporary employees.Enhanced employee profit-sharing, including no cap on our employees' ability to
share in the company's profits.A clear path for temporary employees to transition to permanent employment after
three years of service, beginning in January 2020 for eligible employees with
accrued time.

GM also summarized  "planned investments of $7.7 billion," including bringing a electric pickup to the previously "unallocated" Detroit-Hamtramck plant, $4 billion of investment in existing manufacturing, and the development of a new battery factory near an idled Lordstown, Ohio, plant that is being sold to an electric truck company Lordstown Motors.

The strike involved several testy exchanges between the GM and the UAW. 

Some UAW leaders, including President Gary Jones, are under federal investigation on allegations of corruption. This made the strike a risky move, but the union made the leap, anyway. 

After Friday's news about the GM contract, the UAW announced it had selected Ford as the next US automaker for contract negotiations. The union engages in "pattern bargaining," so its contract with GM should form a template for discussions with Ford.

Original author: Matthew DeBord

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Oct
25

'What is the Clips app on an iPhone?': How to use your iPhone's free video-editing app, and make custom videos for social media

The Clips app on your iPhone is a powerful video-editing app that you can use to easily combine videos, photos, titles, and music into videos to share on social media. You can take photos and record videos in Clips, with special editing modes and tools available. You can also add Live Titles, in which the app inserts your narration in the video as on-screen text, alongside other add-ons like emoji, stickers, and music. Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

Clips is a deceptively rich and complex video-editing app for iOS. 

Clips lets you combine video clips and still images along with filters, title cards, graphics, and audio. While it's designed to let you quickly assemble videos for social media, the app lets you make surprisingly complex video productions. 

Here's how to use it. 

Check out the products mentioned in this article:

iPhone 11 (From $699.99 at Best Buy)

How to use the Clips app on your iPhone

To use Clips, you combine videos, photos, titles, and other elements into "projects." To see and edit your existing projects, tap the folder at the top left of the screen. Here you can create a new project or select an existing one for editing. 

Tap the folder at the top of the screen to open an existing project or start a new one. Dave Johnson/Business Insider

When you start a new project, you can create video from scratch or import a clip from your phone's library. Here are your main options:

Scenes is a selfie mode in which you're recorded on a sort of green screen, where you can choose from a variety of dynamic backgrounds.Camera lets you record new video or take photos.Library lets you insert clips from your phone's photo library.Posters are editable title cards. Choose a style, and you can tap the card to change the text. 
The main interface for Clips is where you can record new videos and take photos to include in your project. Dave Johnson/Business Insider

How to record photos and videos in Clips 

The biggest learning curve in Clips is learning how to add photos and videos to your project, because it works differently than most other video apps. 

To record, you can't simply tap the record button — you need to tap and hold it. You'll record video as long as you hold the button. To lock the recording on so you can take your finger away, swipe the record button upwards once recording has begun.

Ordinarily, you simply hold the record button down to record, but you can swipe it up to lock it in recording mode. Dave Johnson/Business Insider

You can use your fingers to zoom and pan around the scene as you're recording, adding a "Ken Burns Effect" to your video in real time as you record. 

To add a photo to your project, you need to "record" it. This seems counter-intuitive, but is easy to learn:

1. Tap the shutter release button (located directly above the record button) to take a photo, or add one from your library. You'll see the photo on the screen, but it won't be added to the project timeline yet.

2. Tap and hold the video record button to "record" the photo. You can pan and zoom at the same time, to highlight specific parts of the photo. 

3. When you're done, release the record button, and the clip of the photo will be added to the project. 

How to use advanced features in Clips

There are many other features in Clips. Live titles, for example, turn narration you can dictate (while recording a video or photo) into text that appears on the screen.

You can apply live titles — in a wide variety of styles — to any video, photo, or title card. Dave Johnson/Business Insider

You can also apply video styles to your clips, and add text labels, stickers, and emoji as well. And you can tap the music icon in the top-right of the screen to add a soundtrack to your creation.

Original author: Dave Johnson

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Dec
02

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Shuly Galili of UpWest Labs (Part 2) - Sramana Mitra

SoftBank's decision this week to double down on its investment in WeWork is a risky strategy.The move raises an obvious question — why didn't SoftBank just walk away, letting WeWork go bust or putting the onus on JPMorgan, which was putting together a rival rescue plan, to bail it out?SoftBank in a statement said the move was motivated by the promise it still sees in WeWork's business.If so, it had good reason to try to step in as soon as possible and try to take control of the turnaround process, business experts said.Read all of Business Insider's WeWork coverage here.

With WeWork weeks away from running out of cash, SoftBank this week stepped in to bail it out to the tune of $10 billion.

It's a risky strategy. SoftBank had already invested more than $9 billion into the company, both directly and via its massive Vision Fund. It may well have to invest still more, given how quickly WeWork has been burning cash. And SoftBank may have to wait years for WeWork to turn things around.

Even if it does, the best case scenario for the Japanese conglomerate may well be that WeWork ends up being a slightly more hip and valued version of IWG, the coworking pioneer that has a market capitalization of $3.5 billion.

All of which begs the question: Why did SoftBank step in? Why didn't it just let WeWork go bankrupt — or leave a rescue up to JPMorgan or someone else?

A big part of the answer, business experts say, is that SoftBank likely felt compelled to rescue WeWork to shore up its $100 billion Vision Fund, where a total failure of the coworking company would hurt both its returns and its stature in the investing community. 

But another part of it is that SoftBank likely believes there is still value in WeWork — and that it can still see some kind of return on its investment. The best way for SoftBank to do that was to take control of the company — and the sooner it did that before WeWork fell into bankruptcy, the better.

SoftBank's thinking was likely along the lines of "'If we want to protect our investment ... we need to put this to bed; we need to take dramatic action,'" David Hsu, a professor of management at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School, said. "'Every single day that goes by in which we don't have a deal, in which there's uncertainty, everyone loses — all the internal shareholders lose.'"

Softbank is still a 'firm believer' in WeWork

A SoftBank representative did not respond to a call seeking comment. But in a statement SoftBank issued on Tuesday announcing the bailout deal, it emphasized WeWork's promise as a business.

"SoftBank is a firm believer that the world is undergoing a massive transformation in the way people work. WeWork is at the forefront of this revolution," the conglomerate said in the statement. "Since the vision remains unchanged, SoftBank has decided to double down on the company."

WeWork has been reeling since it officially filed in August for an initial public offering. After the deal faced stiff resistance from potential investors over the company's massive losses and questionable governance, WeWork first slashed its targeted valuation and eventually pulled the offering.

The failed IPO was more than just a public-relations disaster, though. WeWork was counting on raising at least $9 billion in the process through a combination of selling shares in the offering and raising debt in a deal that was contingent on a successful IPO. Instead, it got nothing.

That left it with enough money in the bank to cover its massive and mounting losses only until next month, according to multiple reports. Money was so tight that WeWork is said to have delayed a mass layoff because it didn't have enough money to pay affected workers.

With WeWork teetering, SoftBank could, in theory, have sat on its hands. JPMorgan was putting together a rival bailout plan that would have provided WeWork with $5 billion in debt financing, according to Bloomberg. If that proposal hadn't come together, SoftBank could have played a waiting game with WeWork and its controlling shareholder, cofounder Adam Neumann, to see which blinked first.

Presumably, the closer WeWork came to running out of cash, the less it would have been worth — and the less SoftBank would have had to pay out. And if WeWork had gone into bankruptcy, SoftBank could have bought it back at a fraction of what it ended up paying.

SoftBank couldn't afford to play hardball with WeWork

The problem with such an approach is that playing hardball with WeWork could well have sunk the company, and with it, any hopes that SoftBank would see any kind of return on its investment, business experts said.

Jamie Dimon, the CEO of JPMorgan, which struggled to put together its own rescue plan for WeWork. Brian Snyder/Reuters "If SoftBank believes that there is value in WeWork, and they want to the save company, avoiding the bankruptcy seems to potentially make sense," Filippo Mezzanotti, a professor at Northwestern University's Kellogg School of Management, said.

It's not irrational to think that WeWork still has value, business experts said. The company has a prominent brand and existing leases. There's clearly demand for the service it offers — short-term leases for entrepreneurs, startups, and small teams, they said.

"I got to believe there's enough assets there that it is salvageable," Dan Malven, a managing director at 4490 Ventures, said, adding, "There is a need for their product."

But rescuing WeWork was likely going to become increasingly difficult the closer it got to running out of cash, business experts said.

One of the big dangers was that the uncertainty surrounding its business would prompt its best employees to leave, they said. The company has already seen the departure of numerous executives in the wake of Neumann's resignation as CEO and is planning to cut thousands of jobs. It ran the risk that crucial employees would precede or follow them.

"When a company goes into bankruptcy, talent will walk out the door," Rob Siegel, a lecturer in management at Stanford Graduate School of Business, said.

Bankruptcy could have spurred customers to leave

Another worry is that the company's customers could ditch it for offices operated by other coworking companies. Many of WeWork's clients are on short-term contracts that they can cancel with as little notice as one calendar month.

As part of the bailout plan, WeWork cofounder Adam Neumann will be able to sell nearly $1 billion worth of shares to SoftBank. Jackal Pan/Visual China Group via Getty Images

With all the bad news surrounding WeWork, those clients had reason to worry that they could be left in the lurch if the company went under, or that the service it provided would get markedly worse. Some might also have started to worry that WeWork's troubles might harm their own reputations.

Malven, for instance, said he would advise his own portfolio companies to avoid WeWork spaces for precisely those reasons.

"That entire business could be gone in six months," he said.

Indeed, SoftBank was running the risk of inflicting permanent damage to WeWork's own reputation. That could be fatal to the company because the company doesn't have much in the way of other real assets.

"At the end of the day, lots of the value in WeWork is its brand, which probably would be hurt going through bankruptcy," Mezzanotti said.

And SoftBank had other pressures on it. It's in the middle of trying to raise a second $100 billion Vision Fund. The more that WeWork's value declined, the bigger loss SoftBank and its first Vision Fund were going to have to recognize on their investments in the company. Writing WeWork off completely could have torpedoed SoftBank's hopes of closing the second fund, the experts said.

"I'm not sure how WeWork going into bankruptcy helps SoftBank in the long run," Siegel said.

For SoftBank, JPMorgan's plan wasn't a great option

To be sure, there was another option — letting JPMorgan bail out WeWork. But that deal appears to have been half-baked. JPMorgan had commitments from only outside investors for $1 billion of its $5 billion debt financing, according to Reuters.

It also reportedly would have been costly for WeWork in terms of the interest rate the coworking giant would have had to pay, a factor that could have dampened WeWork's prospects. The deal also would have done nothing about Neumann's residual control over the company and didn't offer a payout to shareholders who wanted to get out, Reuters said.

SoftBank was so unenthused by JPMorgan's plan, according to Reuters, that it refused to acquiesce to one component of it — that it go forward with a $1.5 billion investment in WeWork that it had previously committed to.

The Japanese giant likely pushed its own bailout plan because it wanted to get control of the situation and a company on which it had so much riding, business experts said.

"SoftBank had to make this move," Hsu said. "Either they're going to be passive and watch their $10.5 billion invested trickle away in a way that they don't have an active way to turn around the ship, or they have to do something like this."

Got a tip about SoftBank or WeWork? Contact this reporter via email at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it., message him on Twitter @troywolv, or send him a secure message through Signal at 415.515.5594. You can also contact Business Insider securely via SecureDrop.

Original author: Troy Wolverton

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Oct
25

How to share a photo album on your iPhone using iCloud, and let any of your friends view and add photos to it

With every iteration of the iPhone, Apple continues to step up its camera game.

So naturally, we want to see and share the amazing iPhone shots we take of each other as soon as possible — long gone are the days of waiting for friends to upload an album to Facebook.

Apple has made sharing photo albums with other iPhone users simple. In fact, you'll only need to use your iPhone's Photos app, as long as you've enabled permission.

Here's how to get started through iCloud.

Check out the products mentioned in this article:

iPhone 11 (From $699.99 at Best Buy)

How to turn on Shared Albums on your iPhone with iCloud

1. Open the Settings app. 

2. Tap your name at the top, above "Apple ID, iCloud, iTunes & App Store."

3. Tap "iCloud" at the top of the page that opens.

4. You'll see a list of apps that use iCloud. Tap Photos, at the top.

5. Use the slider to enable "Shared Albums" if you haven't already.

Other iCloud photo services include iCloud Photos, which makes backups of your photo library. Emma Witman/Business Insider

How to create a Shared Album

1. Open the Photos app.

2. Tap the blue plus sign in the top-left corner.

All your Shared Albums will stay grouped together, apart from other Albums. Emma Witman/Business Insider

3. Tap "New Shared Album."

4. Name the album, and tap "Next."

5. Invite the people you want to share the album with. They will have to be iPhone, iPad, or Mac users.

6. Tap "Create."

You don't have to think of a definitive list of people to share with right away, or even anyone at all to start. You'll still be able to invite people to the Shared Album after it's been created. Emma Witman/Business Insider

How to add photos to a Shared Album

Now that you have created a shared album, adding pictures is like adding photos to any other iPhone album. You can select photos from "All Photos," or select them from other albums, like "Screenshots" or "Favorites." 

The more the merrier in a shared album, as it allows everyone to add their best pictures. Emma Witman/Business Insider

The big difference: Anyone that you've invited to the album can add photos as well, creating a unique photo portal for easy sharing between friends and family. 

Original author: Emma Witman

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Nov
01

GamesBeat Summit Next’s agenda is full of ways to level up gaming

Google Cloud and the cybersecurity company Capsule8 published a new report on cybersecurity and development practices of over 31,000 professionals.Within Google Cloud and the tech industry, more developer teams are "shifting left," which means they're incorporating security checks earlier in the process, and fixing issues as they write the code.Not only does it make for more secure software, the research says — it also frees up the developer's time, because they don't have to go through at the end and patch up security flaws and vulnerabilities. Dr. Nicole Forsgren, who works in research and strategy at Google Cloud, also says that burnout plays a surprisingly large role in cybersecurity: A burnt-out security team makes more mistakes and misses more issues, so it's important to address.Click here for more BI Prime stories.

Before, security was the last thing on app developers' minds. 

But increasingly, developers are "shifting left," says Dr. Nicole Forsgren, who works in research and strategy at Google Cloud — meaning that developers are thinking about securing their apps much earlier in the process. In other words, developers are starting to test for security requirements and scan for vulnerabilities as they create, not after.

The term, she says, comes from thinking about the process of software development as a straight line, starting from the left and moving to the right. Traditionally, security starts further down the line, towards the right side. But it's "shifting left," in her terminology, to be closer to the start. 

That philosophy is increasingly on display not only at Google Cloud itself, Forsgren said, but increasingly in the industry at large, as well.

To prove it, Forsgren points to a report that Google Cloud first published in August, in collaboration with the cybersecurity company Capsule8, with data from over 31,000 professionals worldwide about their security and development practices. 

Six years of research

Forsgren says this report was the culmination of six years of research, starting when she was the founder and CEO of a firm called DevOps Research and Assessment (DORA). Google originally partnered with DORA to better understand the field of DevOps, a philosophy of combining development and operations to deliver more software faster. Google Cloud acquired DORA in December, bringing some of the top DevOps experts under its umbrella.

Her research shows that rather than having separate security and developer teams, security needs to be better incorporated into the development process, Forsgren says. "Shifting left" includes creating security-based tests and inviting information security professionals to demonstrations of their software early on.

"I'm really excited to see how many more organizations, not enough but many of them are starting to integrate security better into the process," Forsgren told Business Insider. "Security is super important. We just don't have enough security professionals. If we can embrace what's happening there, there's fantastic potential."

The benefit of shifting left is that developers don't have to spend as much time having to fix security bugs once all the code is already close to finished – because they already addressed them earlier. It means being able to get back to coding new features and products, rather than fixing flaws and vulnerability. 

"This whole shifting left is really about reducing costs," Maya Kaczorowski, product manager at Google, told Business Insider. "If I can fix something before it ends up in production, it saves me time if it were to breach. It saves me time figuring out where I was affected. There's a very clear business case to why I want to do this earlier."

Thinking with a 'security mindset'

What employees can do to improve the development process at their company is to help teach the rest of their organization to think with a "security mindset," says Kelly Shortridge, vice president of product strategy at Capsule8.

"We should bake security into everything the organization does," Shortridge told Business Insider. "If we keep treating security as this arcane mystical art, we shouldn't be surprised when an organization doesn't embed security into these processes."

For example, she says, companies should think from the attacker's point of view when securing their software. Most likely, she says, attackers will try to find the easiest and cheapest way to engineer an attack, such as phishing — where an attacker pretends to be a bank, IT manager, or other trusted figure in order to get password and personal info.

Shortridge predicts that in the future, the industry will see a "dismantling of the traditional security team." She says that rather than having separate security teams that reach out to engineering teams, these teams will join together.

"One problem security has a lot of the time is there's this notion you're going to meet a perfect state of pure security and sit on a mountain and gaze on it from above and everything will be alright, but that's just a fantasy," Shortridge said.

Preventing burnout

Improving cybersecurity also has a cultural aspect, Forsgren says. Within Google Cloud, it's working on improving productivity by improving work-life balance and preventing burnout. 

Her research also shows that burnout plays a surprisingly large role in cybersecurity: A burnt-out developer, or security specialist, makes more mistakes that can lead to more problems down the line. Therefore, her study recommends that security organizations make sure its members practice self-care and otherwise do what they can to take some of the burden of guarding often-critical software off their backs.

"What it really means is finding this great workflow," Forsgren said. "I'm sure we've seen this. We can get complex tasks done. The opposite is we seem to be busy all day long and you get nothing done."

This includes making security tools easier to use and making information about security more accessible so that employees can be more productive, Shortridge says. 

One example she's seen is having bots set up on the Slack chat app, which employees can use to ask about security policies, meaning the security team can spend less time answering the same questions over and over. 

She also says employees can burn out from tasks like managing security configurations and maintaining documentation. 

"Overall it's a lot of headaches and that contributes to burnout," Shortridge said. "Anything that can help analysts feel more productive, having to fight fewer fires, feeling less like they have the whole weight of the world on their shoulders can help alleviate burnout, which could be a fantastic thing for the industry."

Original author: Rosalie Chan

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Oct
25

How to see old notifications on your iPhone in the Notification Center, and clear all your notifications at once

If you've been away from your iPhone screen and are eager to catch up with what's new, the Notification Center is a great place to start. 

Apple makes it a particularly easy menu to access, whether your phone is locked or unlocked. And it's the best way to view notifications that you may have initially missed.

Here's how to see and manage your old notifications.

Check out the products mentioned in this article:

iPhone 11 (From $699.99 at Best Buy)

How to see old notifications on your iPhone 

1. Pick up your iPhone to wake it up, or tap the screen (or press home screen button on the bottom for pre-iPhone X models).

2. From the lock screen, swipe up from the middle to see your notifications. 

You can view your notifications on your lock screen. Emma Witman/Business Insider

If your iPhone is already unlocked, you can swipe down from the top to see your old notifications. 

How to clear old notifications on your iPhone

1. Next to the words Notification Center is an X in a grey circle. Tap and hold it. 

Hold the grey X next to "Notification Center." Emma Witman/Business Insider

2. "Clear All Notifications" will appear. Tap it to clear all your notifications. 

You can also double-tap the X to clear your Notification Center. Emma Witman/Business Insider

3. If you want to clear individual notifications, you can swipe left over a notification or a group of notifications for the same app. You'll see options to "Manage," "View," or "Clear" the notification. Tap "Clear."

Swipe left on a notification to view, manage, or clear it. Emma Witman/Business Insider

You can manage your notifications from both a locked and unlocked screen.

Original author: Emma Witman

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Oct
25

Austin Ventures' $900 million VC fund was supposed to make the city the next startup hub. But it wasn't until the fund folded that Austin's tech scene flourished.

Austin Ventures had become too big to fail, but it was failing, nonetheless.

The Texas capital's eponymous venture fund was largely regarded as the city's premier venture firm — the equivalent of Silicon Valley's renowned Sequoia Capital — during its heights in the 1980s and '90s. But eventually, the investment firm began to outgrow its hometown reputation, and Austin's promising startup scene was stunted.

"The reason there was no community in 1996, and the reason there was no community in 2010, is because of Austin Ventures," the angel investor and Osano founder Arlo Gilbert told Business Insider.

Austin Ventures, commonly referred to as AV by the city's investor community, was the only game in town, several investors told Business Insider. The problem was, it wanted to keep it that way. The investment firm largely focused on venture investing, but it kept raising larger funds that weren't suited for the city's smaller startups. At one point, the firm had upward of $900 million in assets under management, one investor estimated, and was forced to focus on investing in later-stage companies to get the kinds of returns a fund of that size needed. 

Today, Austin Ventures, the venture-capital investor, is no more. The partners scattered, and the firm has switched to the private-equity business. But Austin's startup scene is stronger than ever.

The lessons of Austin Ventures' rise and fall provide a framework that other cities with tech ambitions would be wise to pay heed to. It's a story of how a local powerhouse, with deep pockets and industry ties, can provide a vital foundation for building a startup scene. But eventually, that powerhouse — whether a venture-capital firm or a company — becomes a constraint that must be disrupted or replaced for a healthy and innovative startup economy to flourish.

"AV was, you know, described as the 800-pound gorilla. It's good when you're the 800-pound gorilla, if you're the 800-pound gorilla, right? Like there's a good life," the former Austin Ventures general partner Tom Ball told Business Insider.

A big fish in a small pond

Both Gilbert and Ball credit Austin Ventures with kick-starting Austin's reputation as a tech hub, but its cache with Silicon Valley investors hampered the region's explosive growth, they said. As the major venture-capital firm in town, Austin Ventures referred many of its portfolio companies to Silicon Valley investors for later-stage funding rounds. Without AV on its balance sheet, any Austin-based startup faced an uphill battle once they made the trek out to court Menlo Park's biggest checkwriters.

"They were hunting in their own pond, and if you went to California to raise money and Austin Ventures had not invested in you, you may as well just go out of business now," Gilbert said. "The signaling was just like, 'Oh, well if your main backyard VC, who I would want to take a board seat, isn't investing, I'm not in.'"

According to Gilbert, that cut off many local startups at the knees. A pass from Austin Ventures was the kiss of death, and it's impossible to estimate the number of companies that never came to be because of that, he said. The ecosystem favored the AV network, and legacy tech companies prevailed while startups struggled to gain traction.

"I think we felt like we were very competitive," Ball said. "But the competition actually makes you better and stronger. And frankly, as a former entrepreneur, competition is better for the entrepreneurial side of the table."

A dose of healthy competition 

By 2015, Austin Ventures had almost entirely made the transition to private equity, all but ditching its venture-capital practice. Ball left the firm that year to start his fund, Next Coast Ventures, which is reportedly raising its second fund. Another former Austin Ventures partner, Bill Wood, was one of the first to spin out into his own firm, Silverton Partners, in 2003, when he realized AV was leaning heavily on later-stage investments.

"We've been in the Austin early-stage ecosystem the longest and got to see a lot of the evolution of how everything has changed," Silverton partner Kip McClanahan told Business Insider. "There've been a couple of additional early-stage firms that have come into town, and we can put more capital work in Austin."

Several investors told Business Insider that the end of Austin Ventures' reign has, not coincidentally, occurred in tandem with a revival in its startup scene. Every investor that spoke with Business Insider emphasized the strength of Austin's venture community, especially as it compares with Silicon Valley's competitive and tight-lipped ecosystem. 

"In Austin, the ecosystem for startups is so rich that we really don't — it's not a competitive environment," McClanahan said. "That's worth saying because I think if you look at the West Coast, it's a highly competitive environment." 

Austin now boasts more than 13 hometown venture-capital firms and hundreds of startups, developing everything from robotics to artisanal vodka. According to Pitchbook, Texas-based startups raised more than $3 billion in venture capital in 2018, the most recent year for which there was comprehensive data and a record for the state. The previous record was in 2013, when startups raised $2.83 billion, according to Pitchbook.

As that environment matures, McClanahan said, more investors will have to invest in its startups in the later stages, where there aren't dedicated firms. And Gilbert said that's a good thing because he hopes this generation of funds learned from the last doomed experiment.

"That splintering was terrible in some ways because you no longer have a billion dollars here waiting for the next unicorn," Gilbert said. "Now you got all these VCs that are friends, they know each other, and suddenly they're competing. In the last year, they've all gone to their second funds. Their second funds are bigger, bolder. They've had success; they've proven themselves. Austin's gotten on the map."

Original author: Megan Hernbroth

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Jul
20

Final Fantasy XIV details plan to handle the surge of new players

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said he didn't fully understand the divide between news and opinion sections at media outlets until he visited the headquarters of News Corp. and Fox in 2017.The news-opinion divide is standard practice at most outlets, which prohibit collaboration between staff that report the news and staff that produce opinion content.Facebook is one of the largest media companies on the planet.Zuckerberg made the statement during a live-streamed conversation with News Corp. CEO Robert Thompson about Facebook's new "News Tab" feature, which began rolling out to users Friday.Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

The divide between news and opinion sections is the golden rule at most media outlets, but many people don't know about or understand the distinction. As it turns out, the CEO of one of the world's largest media companies learned about it shortly after Donald Trump was elected.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said Friday that he didn't fully understand the news-opinion divide until early 2017, when he toured the headquarters of Fox parent company News Corp. Zuckerberg made the comment during a live interview with News Corp. CEO Robert Thompson.

"Something you were saying that really stuck with me is internally at your organizations there's such a stark distinction between news and opinion," Zuckerberg said. "As a consumer of the stuff, sometimes the stuff blends together and even despite how rigorous your organization and others are at making sure those are kept separate … it's not always clear to the public."

Before seeing how News Corp. and Fox operated, Zuckerberg said, the distinction between news and opinion was often unclear to him "as someone who watches a lot of TV." Thompson interjected by joking, "I think you should read more newspapers."

It's true that news outlets have struggled to educate consumers about their own editorial standards — roughly a third of Americans have difficulty distinguishing between news and opinion content, according to a study by the American Press Institute.

"Most readers do not [understand the distinction]," Philadelphia Inquirer Editorial Page Editor Harold Jackson  told CJR. "Most readers believe there is collusion between the editorial writers and the news writers and editors, that one reflects the other."

Zuckerberg seemingly brought up the news-opinion divide to make a broader point about how the general public doesn't understand rigorous policies maintained within organizations. Facebook has struggled with similar lack of public understanding, he said.

"The work around AI and algorithms is probably one of the least understood parts of what we do," Zuckerberg said. "I'll routinely see people say of course these sites are optimizing for content for whatever's going to make people spend the most time on these services. That's actually not true. … we actually optimize the systems for facilitating as many meaningful interactions as possible."

Zuckerberg was speaking with Thompson to publicize the rollout of Facebook's News Tab, a new feature launched Friday. Facebook is reportedly paying some publishers as much as $3 million a year to list news articles in the tab.

A Facebook spokesperson was not immediately available for comment.

Original author: Aaron Holmes

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Oct
25

How to redeem a gift card code on your PS4 so that you can buy games for free in the PlayStation Store

The PlayStation Store allows you to purchase gift cards, but because it's an entirely online store, you have to activate the cards with a code first.

This can easily be done from your PlayStation 4 if it has a connection to the internet.

Check out the products mentioned in this article:

PlayStation 4 (From $299.99 at Best Buy)

How to redeem a gift card code on your PS4

1. Log into your account on your PS4 and access the PlayStation Store. This should be a registered account with internet access.

The PlayStation store is accessible from the main menu. Ross James/Business Insider

2. From the PlayStation 4's Store menu, scroll down to the second-to-last option, "Redeem Codes," and select it.

It takes a bit of scrolling, so you might not see the "Redeem Codes" option at first. Ross James/Business Insider

3. Your voucher should have come with a 12-digit code that you can now enter into this box. If the code was bought as a digital purchase, like through Amazon, you might only have the code in an email. An example code will look something like: "94GP-QTNL-KKNN."

As the box notes, this isn't the same as a discount code, which should be used at point of purchase for the specific item it's discounting. Ross James/Business Insider

Once the code has been confirmed and checked, the value assigned to the code will be added as credit to your PlayStation Store wallet, ready to be spent.

Original author: Ross James

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Oct
25

Meet Bespoke Financial, a lender for cannabis companies backed by Snoop Dogg’s Casa Verde Capital

Bespoke Financial wants to provide cannabis businesses with the same kind of financial services that other businesses get, but that dispensaries and growers can’t yet access.

The regulations around cannabis operations are so stringent at the local level — and so nebulous at the federal level — that national banks won’t give businesses in the cannabis industry the same basic services (like short-term loans).

That’s why one former Goldman Sachs banker has partnered with two entrepreneurs from the traditional agriculture industry to create Bespoke Financial. And it’s why the company has raised $7 million in financing led by Casa Verde Capital — the investment firm launched by legendary cannabis aficionado, Calvin Broadus (AKA Snoop Dogg).

In some ways, George Mancheril is the new face of the cannabis business. The former banker hails from Goldman Sachs and Guggenheim Partners and worked on the desks that dealt with alternative lending.

A transplant to Los Angeles roughly six years ago, Mancheril says he saw the migration of legally sanctioned cannabis begin for recreational use and knew there would be opportunities for new lending businesses.

“Cannabis will become a broad, mature industry just like any other, and if that is going to happen, there needs to be a debt structure that can support that,” Mancheril says.

The biggest impediment to the industry’s growth is the one that Bespoke Financial wants to tackle first — and that’s access to debt.

To build the company’s first product, Mancheril looked to his co-founder’s Pablo Borquez-Schwarzbeck and Benjamin Dusastre. Borquez-Schwarzbeck and Dusastre previously launched ProducePay, a fintech platform focused on produce farmers that has financed roughly $2 billion in perishable commodities throughout 13 countries. It’s backed by around $200 million in venture capital and debt financing.  

What Mancheril and his co-founders have done is take ProducePay’s underwriting model and apply it to the cannabis industry. The financial instrument that they’re starting with is known “in the business” as factoring.

It’s basically advancing money to businesses for a contract that’s signed in exchange for a cut of the money once a company gets paid for the goods or services they’ve rendered.

“While the US legal cannabis market is forecasted to grow over 20% annually, reaching $23B by 2022, the industry’s true growth potential is limited by long cash flow cycles throughout the supply chain and a lack of scalable and efficient capital sources,” says Bespoke Financial co-founder and chief executive, George Mancheril, in a statement. “Our approach will dramatically improve cash flow cycles across the supply chain and provide scalable working capital to fuel our clients’ growth.”

The $7 million infusion from investors, including Casa Verde, Greenhouse Capital Partners and Outbound Ventures, will be used to build out the company’s business and establish its first credit lines with customers. Mancheril says it already has around $3 million worth of loans revolving through its business. Right now, the company is focused on California, but says it could expand to other regions that are embracing legalization. 

“In general, in the cannabis industry overall, it’s difficult to access any part of the financial system,” says Karan Wadhera, a managing director at Casa Verde. “Now that we’re moving into a place where equity financing is getting expensive, a company like Bespoke plays an important and valuable role in the ecosystem to help young brands and mature brands get access to working capital when they need it the most.”

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May
11

The Uber strike should worry investors and the company because it points to a fundamental problem with its business model (LYFT)

Gary is implementing AI concepts from his Aerospace industry background onto use cases in retail and insurance. Sramana Mitra: Let’s start by introducing you and Daisy Intelligence.  Gary...

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Original author: Sramana Mitra

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Oct
25

Best of Bootstrapping: Bootstrapping a Two-Sided Marketplace to $10M - Sramana Mitra

CEO Sal Akbani has bootstrapped Gateway Classic Cars to over $10 million in revenue. This is a great story of how a two-sided marketplace was masterfully seeded and scaled in a niche market. Sramana...

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Original author: Sramana Mitra

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Oct
25

Growth is out, profitability is in

Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast, where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.

This week Kate and Alex held the reins as a duo (check out our chat with Greylock’s Sarah Guo from last week here) to dig into an enormous raft of news. And don’t worry, it’s not all late-stage happenings. We’re discussing early-stage news every week because that’s what the listeners want!

Up top we dug into Kate’s excellent work covering the Superhuman founder’s new micro fund, or at least his attempt at raising such a fund. Our main question is how can he be a good VC and a good executive at the same time? Folks don’t tend to do both at the same time because they’re each more than full-time jobs. Having two such gigs sounds hard.

But hey, it’s not just athletes and musicians who can bring outsized interest to deals. In-demand founders can have a similar effect. We’ll be keeping a close eye on the upcoming fun. Moving on. 

Next, we turned to the other end of the venture landscape, looking at Founders Fund’s new capital vehicles. With a combined $2.7 billion in eventual capital, FF is hoping to build a financial redoubt from which they can rain capital down on late-stage targets, wherever they may be.

Is it a bit late in the cycle to cut late-stage checks to companies that might otherwise go public? That’s the gamble so far, as we can see it, but perhaps with WeWork’s IPO dreams turned to nightmares, there’s demand among a group of companies for another 12 months in the private markets. And that means more money is required.

On the theme of more money, Lime is raising some more and we were treated to new financial results from The Information’s great work getting the figures. Our discussion asked the question of how far the company’s unit economics could improve. Kate said that Lime is investing a lot now in developing better hardware so their scooters can last more than five minutes on the roads before breaking down. She thinks things will start looking up when it’s deploying only new, fancy, good scooters. Alex is bearish.

Before we could turn back to the early-stage market and wrap up, we had to cover the latest from WeWork. SoftBank did, in the end, come and save the day (at least for now) for the company, meaning that WeWork lives on, though layoffs are expected sooner rather than later. Who knows what the future holds…

And finally, Vendr, a company that is profitable, raised a $2 million round. This is interesting because, again, it’s profitable! And the startup willingly shared some financial data with us — a rarity. Read more about the recent Y Combinator graduate here.

Equity drops every Friday at 6:00 am PT, so subscribe to us on Apple PodcastsOvercastSpotify and all the casts.

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Oct
25

Investors Expect More From Microsoft’s Cloud - Sramana Mitra

According to Canalys, the worldwide spending on cloud infrastructure services grew 38% over the year in the second quarter of the year to $26.3 billion. Amazon remains the leader in the market with a...

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Original author: MitraSramana

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Oct
25

Innovation Women

I’m at the Authors and Innovations Business Ideas Festival in Boston put on by Larry Gennari. It’s a neat collection of people who are interested in entrepreneurship, innovation, and books, three topics that I love so I’m having a lot of fun.

I ran into Bobbie Carlton, who I met a number of years ago around Startup America stuff and then again at an event at 1871 in Chicago when I released my book Startup Communities.

Bobbie is running an organization called Innovation Women which is an online speaker’s bureau for entrepreneurial and technical women. In addition to being an entrepreneur herself, she’s helping women get more visibility as entrepreneurs through her business.

There’s something that gives me great joy about the random connections with people over a long period of time. While I haven’t worked closely with Bobbie, running into her for a third time in around a decade at different in contexts that are interesting to me, causes me to want to put some effort into finding ways to work together.

I’m personally done with being on ManPanels so if you are a conference organizer looking to get more women involved as speakers at your conference, take a look at the speakers at Innovation Women.

Original author: Brad Feld

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Nov
01

Loud man yells until Bugsnax studio adds trophies to its DLC

HowNow, the workforce learning platform, has raised $3 million (£2.4 million) in a “pre-series A” funding round. The round is led by Mark Pearson’s Fuel Ventures and brings the total raised by the startup to $4.5 million.

Other investors include Andy Murray OBE; Michael Whitfield and Chris Bruce (founders of Thomsons Online Benefits); Bernie Sinniah (former managing director at Citi Bank); and Alwin Magimay (a former partner at McKinsey).

Designed for organisations that want to support teams with self-directed learning and the development of “business-critical” skills, HowNow is described as an integrated learning platform that autonomously curates learning resources, “business intelligence” and market insights that live in various internal and external sources.

The idea is to bring together these different learning resources — ranging from “nuggets” of knowledge shared by existing employees to internal data to external content libraries, blogs and podcasts — and match these to different job descriptions and employee skill-sets.

This is powered by a browser extension and integrations with Slack, Salesforce, HubSpot and more than 300 other apps. Machine-learning is also employed to push the right content to the right employee.

“Employers can also use HowNow to identify skills gaps within the company based on job market data, via HowNow’s real-time analytics and built-in certification,” adds the company. To achieve this, the platform claims to monitor more than 20,000 job specifications to understand the in-demand skills and requirements companies are searching for.

“Based on self-review, peer-review and real-time job market data we build the user’s skill profile as they onboard the platform,” explains HowNow co-founder and CEO Nelson Sivalingam. “Once in HowNow, they see learning recommendations based on assigned learning pathways, their role, skill requirements and internal benchmarks. This content is brought together from a variety of their internal sources (G Drive, Sharepoint, CRM, etc.), external sources (content libraries, blogs, podcasts, etc.) and the autonomously organised knowledge shared by their peers directly on HowNow.”

Employees can then access these learning resources directly within the applications they already work with and receive contextually relevant suggestions powered by HowNow’s “AI.” “For example, they can be in Slack and search all of their learning resources directly from their using the HowNow Slack app,” says Sivalingam. “They can also convert a message from a colleague into a nugget that will get stored and autonomously organised in HowNow.”

Similarly, Sivalingam says that, via HowNow, client-facing teams are able to access up-to-date product knowledge, business intelligence and market insights directly within their inbox, CRM and help desk, which enables them to reduce customer response times.

“Fast-growing companies like GymShark are able to capture the knowledge in the heads of their internal subject matter experts by giving them a quick and easy way to share knowledge, build a glue between scattered content, avoid repeat questions and get everyone on the same page,” he adds.

To that end, I’m told that more than 500,000 users currently use HowNow within over 125 businesses. These range from SMEs to larger organisations, across 14 different countries. A classic SaaS play, the startup generates revenue through a licence fee per user.

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Jul
20

Jensen Huang: Racism is one flywheel we must stop

StepLadder, another London-based startup aiming to help so-called “generation rent” get onto the housing ladder, has raised £1.5 million in seed funding.

Backing the round is Spanish banking giant BBVA and fintech VC Anthemis via the London-based venture studio on which the pair have partnered. Early investor Seedcamp also followed on, in addition to unnamed angel investors.

StepLadder says it will use the new capital and support provided by BBVA/Anthemis to further develop its “collaborative finance platform.” The startup is also eyeing international expansion.

Founded in 2015 by Matthew Addison and joined by Lucy Mullins and Mihir Bhushan, StepLadder’s collaborative deposit saving platform is designed to motivate renters to save for a deposit so they can purchase their first home.

Using a financial model known as a “Rotating Credit and Savings Association” (ROSCA), StepLadder puts its members into “Circles,” whereby each individual member contributes an identical amount on a monthly basis — ranging from £25 to £1,000. A random draw then takes place each month and the winner is provided with that month’s full pot to use toward their deposit.

“For most first-time buyers, it’s really difficult to get on the property ladder,” says Addison. “Home ownership rates amongst 25 to 34-years-olds have collapsed… [with around] 250,000 fewer first-time buyers every year, for over a decade, in the U.K. alone. Raising the deposit is the biggest hurdle. At StepLadder we’re using something called a ROSCA, a form of collaborative finance where people work together in groups to help our members raise their property deposits, on average, 45% faster.”

As an example, StepLadder might match you to a £500 a month Circle for 20 months to raise £10,000. This would see it find 19 other members to be in the same Circle. “Each month the £10,000 is randomly allocated and you could be drawn at any point in that 20 months,” explains StepLadder’s Lucy Mullins. “You have to keep making your £500 a month payment for the full 20 months, so at the end everybody has paid in £10,000 and everybody has received £10,000.”

To help protect the platform from being abused, Mullins says that while a member is still part of a Circle, the startup will only release the pot to their solicitor for use as a property deposit. “So, if somebody stops paying after they have been drawn then we wouldn’t release their payout until they had made catch-up payments.”

StepLadder also supports members along the house-buying journey. The app lets members engage with a community of like-minded people and access group-buying discounts on services such as mortgages, solicitor fess and surveyors. The latter forms part of the company’s revenue stream.

“We introduce our members (at their request) to high-quality service providers, such as mortgage brokers, lending banks, surveyors and insurance providers,” says Addison. “In return, these partners pay us fees or commissions. We offer discounts on these transaction services via the combined buying power of our members in their Circles.”

In addition, there is a small monthly fee (between 2-5%) to be part of a Circle, which Mullins says covers the cost of delivering the service.

This includes holding money securely in a client money account, a payment waiver if a member were to become sick or unemployed after buying a property with their StepLadder deposit, credit bureau costs and the cost of a Circle host to support members on the journey.

“We do not aim to profit from the monthly administration fees we charge members and would usually be able to save our members much more in discounts than they pay in fees,” says Mullins.

Meanwhile, StepLadder has plans to expand the use cases for Circles and evolve the platform to also cover general savings goals and targeted “big ticket items.”

Explains Addison: “In Brazil, ROSCAs are used by nine million consumers for everything from dishwashers to cars to homes. We have already begun to demonstrate this potential with both our First Step offering (smaller circles from £25 a month) and proposed partnered launches.”

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Oct
24

Lotame unveils Cartographer, its new approach to tracking user identity

Lotame, a company offering data management tools for publishers and marketers, today unveiled a new product called Cartographer — described by CMO Adam Solomon as “our new people-based ID solution.”

In other words, it’s Lotame’s offering to help businesses connect their visitor and customer data across platforms and devices.

We’ve written about plenty of other cross-device targeting technologies — and in fact, Lotame acquired one of them, AdMobius, in 2014. But Solomon said the landscape has become more challenging given privacy regulations and especially updated browsers that place new limits on the types of cookies that can be used to track users.

“There’s been an explosion of first-party cookies,” Solomon said, referring to cookies that are stored on the domain you’re actually visiting (as opposed to third-party cookies, which are increasingly blocked).

He argued that these “short-lived” cookies then create problems for publishers: “If you’re in Safari visiting the same site every day, a new ID could be generated” each day. So Cartographer deals with this by using data science and machine learning to attempt to “cluster” different IDs together that likely belong to the same user.

“Every day when we see an ID, we’ll capture it,” Solomon said. “We’re graphing those cookies together, these dozens or hundreds of cookies that we believe, based on our technology, that these cookies belong to the same individual.”

He also said that connecting IDs in this way is crucial to the whole “Russian nesting doll” of how a publisher or advertiser understands identity on the internet: “Cookies ladder up to devices, devices ladder up to people, people ladder up to households.” So by connecting cookies to people, Lotame can also offer better household-level data.

And far from being an attempt to circumvent privacy restrictions, Solomon argued that Cartographer actually makes it easier for publishers to stay compliant with Europe’s GDPR and California’s CCPA rules, because they can do a better job of storing a customer’s privacy preferences.

Grant Whitmore, chief digital officer at Lotame customer Tribune Publications, made a similar point: “One of the things that I think all publishers are wrestling with right now is really the disconnect that is occurring in the adtech landscape and the legislative landscape and really managing the persistence of that consent.”

Whitmore continued, “One of the unintended consequences of that legislation and some of what is happening in the browser space is that we could be forced into a position where we are having to ask you every single time you visit a site whether it’s okay to sell your data, whether it’s okay to track.”

And he said that’s one of the big reasons Tribune is deploying Cartographer across all its properties, including its nine core newspaper sites. Though he acknowledged that it’s more broadly useful too.

“From the standpoint of our core business, getting a more complete picture of who a user is across these device types … That is of ongoing importance to us,” Whitmore said. “As we fight in this very competitive landscape, our ability to bring our understanding of who a user is, what their interests are … and providing good solutions — whether on the advertising front or whether that’s handling digital subscription offers — is just table stakes at this point.”

Solomon, meanwhile, said that Cartographer’s benefits go beyond “just figuring which IDs cluster together to represent an individual,” because it’s also ensuring that there’s proper ID synchronization with other data and ad-buying platforms.

“We make sure there’s maximum connectivity, maximum dial tone, with all the ecosystem participants,” he said.

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