Gartner Hype Cycle: The 2019 Gartner Hype Cycle came out this week! It highlights the emerging technologies with significant impact on business, society and people over the next five to 10 years. This year’s emerging technologies fall into 5 major trends: sensing and mobility, augmented human, postclassical compute and comms, digital ecosystems, and advanced AI and analytics. AR Clouds is one of the ones to watch most closely. See the report, chart and breakdown here.
Facebook Testing Removal of Likes: Following its Instagram Pilot of the same nature, Facebook is reportedly planning to test hiding the Like counter on News Feed posts to protect users from envy and dissuade them from self-censorship. Look for lots of testing on this, and if it impacts Facebook use, discontinuation of the test.
Hands Free Hand Checkout? Amazon is testing scanners that identify an individual human hand as a way to ring up a store purchase, with the goal of rolling them out at its Whole Foods supermarket chain in the coming months. Unlike fingerprint scanners, this technology won’t require users to physically touch their hands to the scanning surface and instead will use computer vision and depth geometry to process and identify the shape and size of each hand they scan before charging a credit card on file.
Facebook Will No Longer Scan Users Faces (By Default): Facebook is making facial recognition in photos opt-in by default, starting this week. If you have Face Recognition turned on, Facebook will notify you if someone uploads a photo of you, even if you aren’t tagged. You can then tag yourself, stay untagged, or report it. The new Face Recognition setting expands upon what Tag Suggestions offered, but it also states more explicitly that facial recognition is being performed on photos uploaded to Facebook.
Influencer Ads Create Insane Emotional Intensity: New research analyzed reactions to influencer ads from UK social media users ages 18-65 and looked at subjects’ “emotional intensity” (emotions being felt) and “memory encoding” (committing something to long-term memory). The research showed that influencer ads generated 277% greater emotional intensity and 87% higher memory encoding in participants. There’s some awesome data on “influencer-primed linear TV ads” here too. Check it out.
Deepfake App in the App Store! This week marked the launch of ZAO, a Chinese app that makes it possible for anyone with a smartphone to make completely realistic Deepfake clips – like putting your face on Leonardo DiCaprio in movie clips. The app UX and instructions are in Mandarin, so it’s a little tough to use for English-only users. However, this marks the first plug-and-play consumer-facing app that makes it easy to immediately created realistic yet fake videos. Look for countless more fakes from now-on.
Podcast of the Week: In the first episode “Geekout with Matt Navara” he has a great interview with Sara Haider, Twitter’s Director of Product Management, chatting through verification, edit button, new features, and more. Listen here.
Why is Joe Rogan So Popular? The Atlantic asks the question we were all thinking. Key quote: “… Rogan’s courting of a middle-bro audience that the cultural elite hold in particular contempt — guys who get barbed-wire tattoos and fill their fridge with Monster energy drinks and preordered their tickets to see Hobbs & Shaw. Joe loves these guys, and his affection has none of the condescension and ironic distance many people fall back on in order to get comfortable with them. He shares their passions and enthusiasms at a moment when the public dialogue has branded them childish or problematic or a slippery slope to Trumpism.”
Apple Event Rumors: It’s back to school time and that means it’s time for Apple to debut a new iPhone, self-charging airpods and augmented reality glasses. Maybe?! Here’s a list of the Top 16 rumors, ranked. Set your browsers for September 10.
Dave Don’t Snore: This guy didn’t believe he didn’t snore, so his wife recorded it and put it on Spotify. “Dave Don’t Snore” got up to 100,000 monthly listeners. Listen here…Zzzzzzzz
GREG SWAN 
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