Interesting

23 articles in this category

Apple Special Event. September 10, 2019. apple event
Apple hosted it's special event on September 10th at the Steve Jobs theater at Apple Park in Cupertino, California. As expected it announced some new products, but as so often lately the presentation was dull and not very innovative.
The iPhone 11 and it's iPhone 11 pro version quickly became a meme with the 3 lenses that I have to say I think look ugly. We had the same hardware improvements as always, but nothing really worth upgrading for. Especially if you prefer a system camera anyway.
The new iPad is nice of course, but the big reason why it is interesting is because of the iPadOS coming at the end of September. Apple watch series 5 got it's always on functionality and we saw some new designs, but other than that it was not really anything I was excited about.
With Apple Arcade and AppleTv+ we see Apple moving towards the game and movie industry. This could be nice, but the question is how they will fight giants like Steam and Netflix for example. For me I don't care about Apple Arcade as I don't play much these days. AppleTv+ I will get for sure, if nothing else to test out and see how it stacks against other newcomers like Disney+.
Overall this special event was flat and boring. No new innovations and just the same old same of upgraded hardware. For me, even though I am a huge Apple fan, there is absolutely nothing in this event that i want to get my hands on. AppleTv+ would be the exception, but then again it is a service and not a device. this has been the case for quite a while now to be honest.
While I did get myself an iPad Pro and the new apple pencil, the only things I look forward to lately are the software upgrades. I feel that you can really tell how Apple is slowing down it's innovation pace and I hope that will change soon. Here is the keynote in case you missed it.
 

Written by: Jimi Wikman
Category: Interesting
September 11, 2019
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477 views
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Diablo 4 announced diablo 4
Diablo 4 has finally been announced at Blizzcon 2019. Not only have we been waiting for this for so long, it also looks amazing. By the look of things it is everything we wanted Diablo 3 to be, and then some. This is indeed a great announcement, even if we have to wait a while for the game.
 
 
Three classes is presented at this time: The Barbarian, the Sorceress and the Druid. We will probably see a ranged class as well and perhaps the Necromancer as well. This would tie well in with the homage to the Diablo 2 legacy this iteration of Diablo seem to do a lot.
Game play is fluid and looks amazing from the live streams and the demo. Character customization is returning to the Diablo 2 style with a mix of talent tree's similar to Path of Exiles (but much more manageable). Rune words are back and a wide range of items where they add a new level called Mythical on top of legendaries.
The world is huge and based on an open world with random generated dungeons in the hundreds. Massive world events are mixed with social spaces for trading and even the long awaited PVP zones.
It is indeed good news, but unfortunately it looks like it will be a few years at least before we can get our hands on it. I am fine with that and I look forward to follow the development to see how this very promising Diablo 4 will turn out.
It is more than 20 years since I started my Diablo journey and I am happy to add some extra years to that based on what I have seen so far.
Feel free to join me in the Diablo 4 club.
 

Written by: Jimi Wikman
Category: Interesting
November 3, 2019
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571 views
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Email Startup Front Raises $59 Million by fellow software founders front
Popular email startup Front has just finished a a new funding round to bring in more capital. Instead of choosing the traditional way however Front’s CEO Mathilde Collin decided to take a rather unusual route: a large-sized, later-stage investment group led predominantly by fellow software founders.
While this type of funding is not unheard of, it is unusual. For the email startup Front this seem to have been a successful round and they managed to raise $59 million to fund their future plans.

The majority of the money in this funding round comes from a small group of already-successful tech executives: Atlassian cofounder Mike Cannon-Brookes and president Jay Simons, Okta cofounder Frederic Kerrest, Qualtrics cofounders Ryan Smith and Jared Smith, and Zoom founder Eric Yuan.
This funding will now allow Front to move forward with their roadmap, which I must say look quite impressive.
I have used Front myself and quite liked it. It is however a product that really shines when used by teams rather than as an individual. With an affordable pricing starting at just $9/user this is a great choice for small to medium businesses with customer service and group collaboration in mind.
2020 will be an exciting year for email startup Front and i look forward to see their innovation as they move forward.

Written by: Jimi Wikman
Category: Interesting
January 22, 2020
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595 views
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Episerver acquire Optimizely - claim to have industry’s most advanced DE platform acquisition
Episerver invest for the future as they complete their Acquisition of my favorite A/B testing tool Optimizely. With this acquisition Episerver strengthen their platform offer, and they now claim that they have the industry's most advanced Digital Experience Platform.
Episerver have long been one of the big names in content management and digital experience and Optimizely have been fighting for the title of the king of A/B testing  against VWO for many years. This combination of forces makes sense as it will add value to both companies as they combine their customer bases.
Will this take Episerver closer to Adobe who sit comfortably at the top of the digital experience market, if for nothing else than revenue alone. I doubt it very much, but it should bring them closer if nothing else. Hopefully though we will see more people start experimenting as Optimizely becomes more accessible and integrated.
 
Transaction Details
Episerver is a privately held portfolio company of Insight Partners, purchased in 2018 at $1.16B. Insight Partners acted as the strategic advisor and sponsor for Episerver’s acquisition of Optimizely, as well as the company’s 2019 acquisitions of B2B commerce leader Insite Software and analytics and personalization provider Idio. Now with Optimizely, Insight Partners further advances Episerver’s market-leading product. In the same manner, Goldman Sachs & Co. LLC served as exclusive financial advisor to Optimizely.

Written by: Jimi Wikman
Category: Interesting
October 25, 2020
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597 views
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France is trying to get Google to pay for links to their news articles link license
France is trying to use an already confusing and illogical Directive on Copyright in the Digital Single Market to force Google to pay for links to news articles for french news papers. As expected Google has responded that they will simply remove the news snippets in question to avoid any license fee's. That did not sit well with France who are now trying to sue Google.
To me it is amazing how these things keep popping up from countries like France, Germany and Spain. Anyone who understand Internet and how search engines work would see that asking a service provider to pay for providing service is backwards. For some reason this does not seem to resonate with certain people when dealing with copyright and especially media.
As France now have taken the Directive to become law in France they somehow had the hubris to think that Google, or any search engine for that matter, would actually pay for doing the french news the favor of highlighting their content and drive traffic to them. Naturally Google followed this new law by simply removing the content that require legal fees. For some reason this apparently was surprising to the French, even if the Germans have already tried this and failed miserably.
So what are they arguing about really? Well, it is the so called "rich links", or rich snippets where you will see a small image, the title of the article and a short text. In a blog post from Google they have responded with how they will handle this according to the new law in France.

This has made the French cultural minister Franck Riester angry. For some reason he actually thought that Google would actually start paying for helping the media companies to get quality traffic to their sites. It is illogical in so many ways that I do not think he really understand what Google do or how Copyright works.
If you hold copyright over something you should of course have the control of how others use your creative work, or even if they are allowed to. There is nothing strange about that. It is also in everyone's right to not use or reference that same creative work if I do not want to. That is how Copyright works.
Google is a service provider who collect information about websites and create a database over those sites to make them searchable. This is a free service that anyone can use and as you know Google is not the only search engine you can use. Google make money by allowing advertisement on the search result pages.
So what France now have done is that have made it illegal so show image and text previews in the rich snippets presented in search results. This is done by invoking the right to control Copyrighted material, which is well within their right. What they do not understand is that Google have the right to choose not to infringe on that same copyright by changing what they display in the results.
For some reason France want to force Google to infringe on Copyrighted material so they can be fined for doing so. That is illogical as you are basically forcing criminal behavior by legislation. That is an act that by itself should be illegal if forced, but it seems that Franck Riester do not understand that very simple concept.
We will see how this farce plays out in it's absurdity and I predict that the french media will suffer the same way as their German counterparts did previously. They had to make good with Google and give them permission to present the links without paying, which made that lawsuit pretty useless. I think the french will have the same experience and it's strange that they do not understand this from previous experiments like this.
What do you think?

Written by: Jimi Wikman
Category: Interesting
October 25, 2019
0 comments
433 views
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