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Technology
As Slack tries to graduate beyond a Silicon Valley darling tothe go-to communications platform within a company, ithad to find ways to increasingly pitch itself as an intelligent Swiss Army knife for companies — and not just a simple chat app — and it is trying to continue that today once again with a new feature called Actions.
Companies can now bake in a user experience of their own directly into the Slack application that isn&t yet another chatbot thattied into their services. Developers can essentially create a customized prompt for any kind of action, like submitting a support ticket, within the Slack core chat experience through a drop-down window called an Action. While Slackbots may have been an early incarnation of this, Slackplatform has grown to include more than 200,000 developers, and therestill constant need for robust tools internally. This offers partners and developers a little more flexibility when it comes to figuring out what experience makes the most sense for people that sit in Slack all day, but have to keep porting information to and from their own tools.
&Theresuch a demand for specialized software, and for great tools that are easy to use and interoperable with all applications you use,& Slack chief product officer April Underwood said. &We think this is good, and we think more tools means customers have more choice. Ultimately theremore competition in the marketplace, that means the best tools, the ones that truly help companies do their best work, rise to the top. But your work experience becomes increasingly siloed.Slack needs to be highly configurable, but in doing so we believe Slack is the collaboration hub that brings all this together.&
Each company that wants to build in an integration — like Asana for task management or Zendesk for ticket management — works to create a new flow within the core Slack experience, which includes a new dropdown inside a message and a prompt to bake something into the chat flow. Once that happens, all that information is then ported over to the integration and created in the same way an employee would create it within that environment. If someone creates a Zendesk ticket through an action in Slack, Zendesk automatically generates the ticket on their side.
Slack has sprawled out over time, and especially as companies using it get larger and larger, the company has to figure out a way to show that it can remain a dead-simple app without turning into a bloated window filled with thousands of instant messages. Actions is one potential approach to that, where users can know from the get-go where to coordinate certain activities like equipment procurement or managing some customer information — and not have to go anywhere else.
The other advantage here is that it makes the destination for completing a task not necessarily a &what,& but also a &who.& Slack is leaning on its machine learning tool to make it easier and easier to find the right people with the right answers, whether those questions are already answered somewhere or they know who can get you the information right away. Actions is another extension here, as well, as users can get accustomed to going to certain coworkers with the intent of completing tasks — such as their IT head in their office that they walk by every morning on the way to grabbing coffee.
The company says italso working on what itcalling the Block Kit, which integrates those tasks and other elements directly into the Slack chat flow in a way that looks a little more user friendly from a kind of visual sense. The idea here is, again, to create an intuitive flow for people that goes beyond just a simple chat app, but also offers some additional way of interactivity that turns Slack into a more sensible feed rather than just a window with people talking to each other. Actions are available fromJira, Bitbucket, Asana, Zendesk, HubSpot, and several others.
Actions is a tool that Slack is unveiling at its own developer conference, Spec, this morning. That in of itself is yet another example of Slack looking to graduate beyond just a simpler information feed that works well with smaller companies. Developers are often the ones that figure out the best niche use cases for any platform, as it means Slack can focus on trying to figure out how all these integrations fit into its design ethos. The company has to figure out how to convince larger companies that they need a tool like this and it won&t get out of hand, and also ensure that smaller companies don&t graduate into something a little more flexible that can serve those niche cases as they get larger.
To be sure, Slack is growing. The company said it hit 8 million daily active users with 3 million paid users earlier this month. Thathelped it quickly jump to a $5.1 billion valuation (as of its most recent funding round), and the company has been carefully rolling out tools that might make communication within larger companies a little easier — including the long-awaited launch of threads a little more than a year ago.
But Slack also faces increasing competition as time goes on, not only from the traditional companies looking to build more robust but simpler tools, but also from companies that have spent a lot of time working on collaboration tools and are now exploring communication. Atlassianopened up its communications platform Stride todevelopers in February this year. Microsoft, toocontinues to update its Teams product. Slack was able to expose pent-up demand for this kind of an approach, but it also has to defend that approach — and making it a little more flexible without feature-creeping is going to be its biggest challenge going forward.
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Po.et is an open source, not-for-profit publishing network built on the blockchain with the broad ambition of changing how we distribute, license and monetize content on the internet. Today, it announced it was opening the Po.et Development Labs, a place for developers to experiment with new ideas on the po.et platform.
It also announced the first company to launch an app out of the lab called Inkrypt. Itan application designed to provide a way to publish content in a distributed fashion, meaning the article doesn&t live on any particular server. That makes it nearly impossible for sensors to block it.
&The first project to build on Po.et is Inkrypt, a global decentralized system providing a censorship-resistant solution for journalism hosting and delivery that will render journalism content permanent and immutable,& Po.et CEO Jarrod Dicker wrote in a blog post announcing the launch of Po.et Development Labs.
Dicker, who formerly ran the innovation team at the Washington Post, says the company wants developers to see po.et in a similar manner to Ethereum, a place where they can build applications making use of the underlying blockchain technology.
&Think of what Ethereum did for the spawn of new applications on the blockchain. We want to do the same for media applications on the blockchain by allowing them to leverage the protocol to build and push the media industry in the right direction,& Dicker told TechCrunch.
Po.et Development Labs offers a mechanism for developers to work with the po.et blockchain protocol. &With Po.et Development Labs, we&re introducing an innovation marketplace for all creators to build products on the blockchain. Companies can leverage Po.et and build vertically to introduce new innovations or solve problems in the space on top of that foundation,& Dicker explained.
Dicker says Inkrypt is just a starting point. &Inkrypt is an example and many more will come, especially as we invest and push more features that others can leverage and build [upon].&
Dicker points out that po.et is not just a platform for developers though. Italso for media companies to define how they want to share and license their content, giving them a platform outside of advertising to monetize it. &Where it gets real interesting is that media companies can start taking advantage of it as well,& he said.
If you think about Creative Commons licensing, it provides a way for publishers to decide how they want to share their content, but it doesn&t give the content producers any way to enforce that license beyond the good will of users. Po.et takes that licensing concept one step further, giving content owners a marketplace to sell their content on the blockchain, creating an enforceable and immutable way to license the content.
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Real Vision is entering the crowded business and financial new space with a bang. The company, which recently raised a $10 million Series B after a $5 million A round, is working on a number of new initiatives including distribution on Apple TV, a content distribution partnership with Thomson Reuters and an upcoming documentary on PBS.
The documentary, &A World on the Brink,& will focus on threats to the global economy. The team is aiming at viewers ages 36-45 instead of the older Boomers who prefer cable financial news far.
&Unlike most video-based media businesses where short-form video is deemed to have the highest user engagement, Real Vision have found that almost 70% of their customers who start a half, or an hour-long, video will watch all of it. This engagement in long-form content is breaking boundaries within the industry,& said co-founder and CEO Raoul Pal. &Sensationalism and clickbait is at an all-time high. Traditional financial news has continued to degenerate into attention-seeking sound bites that are at best of little value and at worst, downright dangerous.&
Pal worked at Goldman Sachs before moving into media.
&I lamented on the state of financial media & how it had let the ordinary person down repeatedly in 2000 and 2008 and was busy treating finance as entertainment and not taking into account that this was peoplelife savings they were dealing with. I also noted how far financial programming had become versus the fast-changing world of on line video. Viewing habits and content types were changing but the financial TV incumbents hadn&t changed,& he said &I decided that it was time for someone to disrupt the way in which television worked & particularly with regard to financial and business information.&
The team will use the cash to create programming aimed at &those who want to create new business opportunities and startups, manage new enterprises and leverage new technology.& The videos can run as long as 90 minutes but usually hit the five to thirty-minute mark. They are also distributing their content to Thomson Reuters . It uses a subscription-based model and costs $180 annually.
The team met at a bar in Jesus Pobre, Spain. Pal and his co-founder Damian Horner found each other during their travels and had drinks at a place called Rositawhere Horner, a former ad exec, learned of Palexperience in finance and they both mapped out a new type of online news channel with some real energy. Thus was born a model that mixes on-demand with high-impact news, something that few cable stations can manage.
&Almost all traditional media outlets rely on an ever-dwindling advertising revenue model. Real Vision is subscription-based and built that way from the ground up,& said Pal. &Most media business are still trying to figure out a subscription model to diversify away from advertising. In a highly competitive digital world, the pressure ‘to get clicks& has a massive impact on the tone, direction and quality of the editorial content itself. Real Visionsubscriber model means there is no need to sensationalize, no dumbing down of ideas, no incessant ‘breaking news& headlines, no clickbait soundbites and no cutting things short for commercial breaks.&
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Write comment (94 Comments)In the trailer for Solo, Chewbacca dangles for dear life from a high speed train barreling through a snowy landscape. &Chewie!& the young Han shouts, as the Wookieehead comes within spitting distance of a rocky mountainside, moments before everything goes black.
For those with even a passing familiarity with the Star Wars universe, itabout as low stakes as cliffhangers get. Chewbacca will be fine. Hemade it to 190, and by all accounts, he survives well into the sequel trilogy, several cinematic decades later. Ita bit silly, as far as these things go, but it also just might be the perfect setup for the film.
Solo is, by its very nature, low stakes. The fate of the galaxy is never at play, nor are the destinies of any of its familiar faces. In many ways, ita slight film, so far as the grandiosity of epic space operas are concerned, and for the most part, its filmmakers seem perfectly content to operate within those parameters.
Fans of the franchise were understandably skeptical in the lead up to release. It never bodes particularly well when a filmdirectors are fired so late in the game. And while we may never get a straight answer as to why Chris Miller and Phil Lord were unceremoniously dumped by Disney toward the end of filming, rest assured that the unamicable parting of ways between the two sides is never peeks through the filmshiny veneer.
If you should ever find yourself in charge of a major film studio, looking to deliver the latest entry in the worldpremier film franchise on time and in one piece, you can do a heck of a lot worse than Ron Howard. The man behind Apollo 13 and those Dan Brown movies is Hollywoodleading auteur when it comes to delivering a film right down the middle of the road.
However you might have ultimately felt about The Last Jedi, the movie was downright giddy in its attempts to subvert the series& tropes. Solo, on the other hand, revels in them — at least as much as a film can that isn&t directly tied to the Skywalker saga and the never-ending tug of war between Jedi and Sith.
Like The Phantom Menace before it, the anthology entry is downright obsessed with tracing the origins of every available nook and cranny of the original trilogy. But where the prequels had a much larger mythology to explore, Hanstory is decidedly more narrow. As such, the film is content to offer the origins of elements you almost certainly never wondered about.
Why, for example, does Solo call Chewbacca &Chewie& Or how about the fact that Lando pronounces &Han& differently that practically everyone else in the series All of these questions, and more, are answered. If Solo winked at the camera any more, it would be flying with its eyes closed.
But Howard and a capable cast weave those elements into a largely enjoyable experience. In an era of blockbusters with ensemble casts 100 actors deep, Solo feels lean. Itone part western and one part heist film, never requiring you to think too hard, instead just letting the film wash over you. In those moments when planned courses of action do get complex, however, never fear — therebound to be someone on screen explaining their plan.
Alden Ehrenreich is capable in the unenviable role of filling Harrison Fordmassive shoes. Like the film itself, the actor plays it down the middle. Hecharming, but not overly so, and while Solo falls into some of the Episode I traps of excessive exposition, his Han is almost instantly more fleshed out than the young Anakin. From the opening scenes, which play like a cross between Oliver Twist and Blade Runner, itclear that Han Solo came into this world fully formed.
Donald Glover, for his part, clearly revels in the role of Lando Calrissian — a character like Solo himself, that is seemingly inextricable from its originating actor. But therea overwhelming joy in watching him inhabit the role it seems hebeen waiting his entire life to play — a force of chaotic-good cloaked in a velvet cape and goatee.
Phoebe Waller-BridgeL3-37, however, is undoubtedly the filmbreakout character. The bipedal droid presents a moral center of a kind in a film without otherwise populated by ethically ambiguous characters. A strong-willed crusader for robotic rights, L3-37 is easily the filmmost entertaining addition to the canon, as well as a sly thumb in the eye of fanboys who have turned their backs on a more inclusive Star Wars universe.
Droid aside, however, those concerned that the most recent films has strayed too far from the films of their youth will find plenty to like in Solo. Ita perfectly middle of the road adventure thatunlikely to end up at either the top or bottom of anyonelist of Star Wars films.
To paraphrase Han, &I&ve got a perfectly okay feeling about this.&
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Write comment (95 Comments)Dropbox announced several enhancements today designed to beef up its mobile offering and help employees on the go keep up with changes to files stored in Dropbox .
In a typical team scenario, a Dropbox user shared a file with a team member for review or approval. If they wanted to check the progress of this process, the only way to do it up until now was to send an email or text message explicitly asking if the person looked at it yet — not a terribly efficient workflow.
Dropbox recognized this and has built in a fix in the latest mobile release. Now users can can simply see who has looked at or taken action on a file directly from the mobile application without having to leave the application.
In addition, those being asked to review files can see those notifications right at the top of the Home screen in the mobile app, making the whole feedback cycle much more organized.
Photo: Dropbox
Joey Loi, product manager at Dropbox says this is a much more streamlined way to understand activity inside of Dropbox. &With this feature, we think about the closing loop on collaboration. At its heart, collaboration is feedback flows. When I change something on a file, there are a few steps before [my co-worker] knows I&ve changed it,& Loi explained. With this feature that feedback loop can close much faster.
The company also changed the way it organizes and displays files putting the files that you opened most recently at the top of the Home screen, which is somewhat like Recents in Google Drive. It also provides a way to favorite a file and puts those files that are most important at the top of the list, making it easier to find the files that are likely most important to you more quickly when you access the mobile app.
Finally you can now drag and drop a file from an email into a Dropbox folder in a mobile context.
While none of these individual updates are earth shattering changes by any means, they do make it easier for users to access, share and work with files in Dropbox on a mobile device. &All the features are to help teams collaborate and be efficient on mobile,& Loi said.
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Write comment (93 Comments)Circle Invest is one of the easiest products when you want to get started with cryptocurrencies. When Circle first launched the app, I compared it to Coinbase. And Circle is making it even easier to get started as you can just &buy the market& now.
Circle Invest started with just a handful of cryptocurrencies — Bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash, Ethereum, Ethereum Classic and Litecoin. But now, the company has added Monero and Zcash. If you don&t know anything about cryptocurrencies, ithard to know where you should put your money.
Thatwhy Circle has created a button that lets you buy all coins available on Circle Invest, weighted depending on their respective market capitalization. The total market cap of Bitcoin is much higher than the total market cap of Zcash, so you&ll end up with more Bitcoin than Zcash.
Circle Invest is available on the App Store and Play Store in the U.S. except in except in MN, HI and WY. The company plans to launch in Europe at some point.
The app only supports market orders. ACH transfers are free and you can buy instantly for transfers below $10,000 before the money arrives on Circlebank account.
Circle says you can expect a bit of spread between the buy and sell price, just like on other exchanges. But the company doesn&t add any fee on top of that.
Correction: Circle Invest is now available to users who live in NY.
Disclosure: I own small amounts of various cryptocurrencies.
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