Today, it’s almost impossible to open your phone without scrolling across a mention of the ever-looming metaverse. This convergence of digital worlds—a new realm that grants infinite access to every XR experience imaginable—feels suddenly closer than we ever thought possible. That’s because, in the past, we tried to build these worlds with a heavy focus on AR and VR technology, but we were missing the underlying digital economies that would help make users stick. To s
If you’re a fan of getting stuff done with keyboard shortcuts, check out Omni, a new Chrome and Firefox extension for quickly navigating by keyboard. (The Chrome version also works with other Chromium-based browsers, such as Microsoft Edge and Brave.) Once installed, press Ctrl+Shift+K (or Cmd+Shift+K on a Mac) to bring up Omni’s action bar, then start typing to search through all your open browser tabs. Selecting a tab from the list will take you straight to it.
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Can you believe Makayla was dropped from Bama Rush? Do you think Couch Guy was cheating? Did you see Gabby Petito’s last post before she went missing? If you don’t spend much time online, you may not recognize these names. But on TikTok, their stories became sensationalized, memeified, hashtagged and rehashed. The most recent is “#WestElmCaleb.” Women took to TikTok to share their experiences of being peppered with affection, strung along and ultimately ghosted by a N
It’s been a dramatic and trying week for the crypto faithful. During the past week, Bitcoin abruptly fell to half of its November value. The cryptocurrency, which had cost more than $67,000 per coin in November, dove from $42,369 on January 18 down to $33,113 on January 24. Etherium hit $3,263 on the 21st, then dropped to $2,159 on the 24th. The crypto sell-off may have been triggered by rumors that the U.S. government will soon regulate digital currency. The market may also have been rea
The strategy-based word game Wordle hit the internet like a bomb cyclone storm this winter. Nobody was safe. Either you’ve since become hooked enough to find ways to slake your word-thirst in between games, or you’re part of the inevitable backlash. Anyone in that first camp, though, will probably appreciate the Redditor who recently hacked their way into finding the 10 most-used letters in the game. Wordle is, for the somehow-still-uninitiated, a solo Hangman where the word is alw
It’s not normal for your mail to arrive with the envelopes already open. Nor is it reasonable to expect that Amazon or FedEx box to land on your doorstep unsealed and agape. So why don’t Americans feel any different about the 5.5 billion unencrypted SMS text messages they send every single day? This analogy is the central point of the messaging platform WhatsApp’s first-ever U.S. brand campaign.
WhatsApp has about 2 billion daily users across 180 countries, and they send mo
I first noticed them about two weeks ago: the squares. Grids of black, orange, and green square emoji flooding my Twitter feed. The people posting them seemed to be happy about them. It turned out they came from a game: Wordle, a daily word-guessing game by artist/programmer Josh Wardle. It’s simple enough: there’s a new word each day, and you have six chances to guess it. Get it right, and you get a cute little emoji grid to show off how you did. With the rise of Wordle
Entrepreneurship is in a new moment, with a new set of circumstances and pressures, and a new collective cadre of players. Success in venture capital going forward will become less about chasing momentum and more about embracing collaboration. This is no small mindset shift. It’s an evolutionary imperative. The successful founders of tomorrow simply won’t look like the ones who came before them, and they certainly won’t look like today’s venture capitalists. Surviving
With the announcement of its $69 billion deal to buy gaming giant Activision Blizzard, Microsoft suddenly has a lot to say about the metaverse. And investors seem to be taking it seriously. “This acquisition will accelerate the growth in Microsoft’s gaming business across mobile, PC, console, and cloud and will provide building blocks for the metaverse,” the company said in the deal announcement on January 18. At least in the near term, the Activision buy is mostly abou
It seems like every other week lately, we see some new app or other that promises to revolutionize the way we organize our lives. And I’m as guilty as anyone when it comes to salivating over high-potential (alleged) organizational miracles. The problem, though, is that adopting most of these apps is an organizational obligation in and of itself. You have to import your info, learn a whole new system, and devote tons of time to perfecting your fancy new framework—setting up the