The latest edition of Verzuz, the popular livestream platform for musician battles, had a messy rollout on Tuesday. The brand, which was created by artists Swizz Beatz and Timbaland, announced on its official Instagram account Monday that this week’s musician battle would feature performances by Anthony Hamilton and Musiq Soulchild. However, the event, which is usually available to stream for free on Instagram Live, was being pushed behind a paywall. “THIS VERZUZ WILL NOT BE ON IG.
Google is continuing to give its document editing suite a more modern makeover. The latest update to Google Docs makes pageless documents available to all users after the company announced the feature last May. It also adds new features such as AI-generated document summaries, inline Google Maps previews, and the ability to draft emails with other users before transferring them over to Gmail. Most of those features are launching today, while email drafting will roll out in the “coming wee
At the height of the meal-kit era in 2015, Josh Hix, then CEO of Plated, received a phone call from a health plan representative in North Carolina. As he recounts, the rep said that some of the insurer’s clients with diabetes had recently started using Plated and suddenly brought their condition under control. “It was enough people that it got their attention,” Hix says. The two companies started talking about how they could work together, but it became apparent that working
With the launch of MacOS Monterey last fall, Apple introduced a neat feature called Live Text, which lets you highlight and copy text directly from images, both in Safari and in system apps such as Photos and Quick Look. (It also works on iOS.) But what if you want to grab text from images in other apps or web browsers? And what if you don’t use MacOS at all? Luckily there are several other text extraction tools that can help. For Chrome, Firefox, and other Chrome-based browsers, check ou
While video chat is no replacement for in-person interaction, sometimes it’s the best you can do. I’ve never loved chatting through tiny screens, though. It just feels so distant to hunch over a phone or laptop, staring at a considerably shrunken version of whoever I’m talking with. That’s why it’s nice to conduct video calling through your TV instead. When there’s a life-size person on the other end, it helps conversations feel more lifelike. This does
While on a surfing trip, technologist Aza Raskin sent his romantic partner, the singer-songwriter Zia Cora, a surprise gift: a complete music video for her new song “Submarines.” “He left for a surf vacation for a week, and then 48 hours later he sent me this whole music video,” she says. “I don’t think I could think of anything more surreal and poignant and beautiful.”
Raskin does have an extensive design background—he’s a former d
What a difference a year makes (notwithstanding the doldrums of a pandemic). This time last year, metaverse had the lowest possible rating for the number of searches in Google Trends. By November of 2021, it had the highest possible rating. The term has become so prominent that one of the most recognizable brands on the planet—Facebook—changed its name to Meta. While the popularity of associated technologies such as VR have ebbed and flowed for years, there is more to it now. We ar
Psychedelics, long stigmatized as risky recreational drugs, are finally finding a place in polite society. More and more research from prominent institutions such as Johns Hopkins suggests that such drugs, in the right formulations and with supervision, can bring about therapeutic breakthroughs in patients, notably in those that have proven to be resistant to other types of treatment. Venture capital firms have taken notice—pouring money into startups developing psychedelic treatment
Twenty years ago, the U.S. Army tried something that was revolutionary at the time. In the early 2000s, video games were a political hot potato. Some elected officials were pointing to them as corruptive forces on the youth of America and an industry that was in dire need of regulation. Then, a few years later, the Hot Coffee mod for Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas (which let two characters in the game have animated sexual intercourse) found its way out into the wild and all hell truly broke loose
If corporations succeed in building the metaverse—and one organization’s real estate becomes the epicenter of Web 3.0—having LGBTQ people in the creation process could make or break inclusivity efforts in the years to come. The rollout of social media over the past 15 years has shown us queer life online can be both treacherous and essential. GLAAD made waves last year when it released its first Social Media Safety Index and gave every major platform a failing grade. B