One of the most appealing aspects of Horizon Worlds—the Meta Quest 2 virtual reality app that launched to the broader public in December and now attracts more than 300,000 users monthly—is the opportunity to create and launch “worlds” within its ecosystem. Equipped with a suite of building, scripting, and customization tools (all free and, literally, at your fingertips), users can construct and deploy multiplayer games, immersive virtual experiences, and collaborative
What will Apple’s highly anticipated mixed reality glasses be capable of? As I’ve written before, Apple is likely hiding clues about the design and functionality of the glasses in plain sight. It’s putting features in existing products that will only reveal their true usefulness in a mixed reality (XR) context. Memoji–the animated emoji you can personalize to reflect your look, moves, and emotions–may be an example of this. You can already speak through your Me
Shortly after wrapping their 2018 choose-your-own-adventure film Black Mirror: Bandersnatch, show creator Charlie Brooker and executive producer Annabel Jones were fed up with interactive content. “[They said,] ‘We never wanna do this again,'” recalls Andy Weil, Netflix’s vice president of comedy and interactive lead. “‘It’s too hard. You get lost in it at certain points.'” But two Primetime Emmy Awards and a windfall of audience
Trust is key to any effective technology implementation. If people don’t trust it, they’re not going to use it. This challenge comes up again and again, especially with AI. While we have mountains of data to train systems on, creating a system that users trust demands thoughtful use of data to ensure meaningful results, and therefore, trustworthy AI. An example of how this shows up in the real world is the case of seatbelts. Seatbelts are safer for men than women. Why? Data bias. W
I’m entering year two of my second startup, this time as CEO, and I’ve been thinking a lot about best practices for starting and building a company. I spent nearly a decade working at Google and more than three years at Alphabet’s X, the moonshot factory. There I cofounded X’s first cybersecurity startup, Chronicle, before venturing out and founding Stairwell. Along the way, I learned some important management lessons and philosophies that continue to help me. 1
It would be easy to write off Sony’s unveiling of the PlayStation VR2 headset and controllers on Tuesday as just the latest move in a marketing campaign, meant to slowly build interest in the PS5 peripheral. And in many ways, that’s just what it is. But it’s also a sign that the battle for virtual reality (VR) supremacy is about to heat up once again—and the fate of the metaverse could be at stake. VR’s not entirely essential to the metaverse, of course. You ca
Coda is hoping to lure in more Microsoft Word and Google Docs users with a major revamp of its document editor. With Coda, users can create free-flowing pages full of tables, planning boards, and other interactive elements, but that complexity has sometimes hindered the core editing experience. The overhaul lets users more easily select text from across an entire document, drag elements around the page or into a dual-column view, and edit the same part of a document that a team member is already
While other software companies are trying to offer the One True App for project management, Monday.com is moving in the opposite direction. Monday has just launched a new form-building app called Workforms and a collaborative whiteboard app called Canvas. While they each can integrate with Monday’s flagship project management software, they’re both standalone products with their own pricing, development teams, and roadmaps. The approach stands in contrast to rivals such as Air
Matthew Ervin delivers meals several days a week for DoorDash in Seattle. A few months ago, he had just picked up an order at Buffalo Wild Wings, when the dispatch system went down. With information about his destination no longer visible, Ervin couldn’t take the delivery to his customer. Nor could he take any other orders until the system came back online—three hours later. Ervin says he’s often unable to start or complete a delivery because the company’s dispatch sy
Financial advisors advocate for a diverse portfolio, but few could have foreseen the level of variety that many people would embark on in 2021. Investment in NFTs and cryptocurrencies soared nearly as fast as the price of those digital assets. Now, however, some of those newbie investors are in for a reckoning. It’s tax time—and the Internal Revenue Service is taking a special interest in non-fungible tokens (along with people who bet on Bitcoin). That means collectors could be in