# data[].attributes.headline
Tidal is not just another music streaming service

# data[].attributes.subject
Tidal is not just another music streaming service

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Tidal, the streaming service purchased by Jay Z and co-owned by some of the world's biggest musicians is much more than just one more player in the streaming music market. The company has released exclusive and music videos from Rihanna and Beyoncé over the last week, and it appears that's only the beginning. There are two factors that separate Tidal from the fray: the ability for many of the 16 artists who have a stake in the company to pull their music catalogs from competing services at any time, and the possible involvement of Live Nation, a partner of Jay Z's Roc Nation and one of the most powerful companies in music.

Earlier this week, Jay Z pulled his first album, Reasonable Doubt, off Spotify . He was able to do that because he owns the master recordings to all his music, something that most musicians give in part or full to their labels when they sign a record deal. But when Jay Z became the president of Def Jam Recordings in 2004, he negotiated the return of his masters as a part of his agreement to run the label. That means whenever a streaming service or company wants to use any of Jay Z's music for anything, they have to clear it with him, taking the music label completely out of the picture.

Now, most artists don't have the power or the financial ability to get their masters back from their label, but the 16 artists targeted by Jay Z weren't randomly selected. Arcade Fire, Jack White, Beyoncé, Madonna, Rihanna, Kanye West, and Daft Punk have considerable control over their music, which allows them to decide when and where future releases can and will be placed. If Rihanna - who is signed to Jay Z's Roc Nation label - wants to release her album exclusively on Tidal, she can.
If Rihanna wants to release her album exclusively on Tidal, she can
Of course exclusive albums can and will be pirated. What would change the game is those artists pulling their catalogs from Spotify, Rdio, and whatever Apple decides to call the next iteration of Beats Music.The 16 Tidal artists represent every major music genre; pop, rock, country, R&B, hip-hop, and EDM. While not having one artist wouldn't cause most people to switch streaming services - Taylor Swift's catalog isn't on Spotify, but is available on Tidal, for example - a group of the top artists in the music business ditching a service is all but a nail in the coffin. How long would you keep paying for Spotify without Jay Z, Beyoncé, Rihanna, and Kanye West? Or Rdio without Jack White, Arcade Fire, and Daft Punk? Or Beats Music without Madonna, Coldplay, and Usher?

Of course the more people streaming your music, the more money you make. So why would artists want to restrict access to their music to one platform? Leverage. If you listen to musicians tell it, streaming payouts are ridiculously low. Tidal artist Jason Aldean pulled his album Old Boots, New Dirt from Spotify after it set the streaming record with 3 million streams when it debuted last year, stating he wanted "everyone who is involved in making my music to be paid fairly." Aloe Blacc, who co-wrote and sang on Avicii's hit single "Wake Me Up!" wrote in that even though the song was streamed more than 168 million times on Pandora, he was paid less than $4,000.

So where is the discrepancy coming from? Who is getting all the money that supposedly makes streaming a viable option? The music labels. When Spotify or any streaming service pays out royalties for streams, that money heads to whoever owns the masters and publishing rights first - which is the label most of the time - and then the artist.
How long would you keep paying for Spotify without Jay Z, Beyoncé, Kanye West, and Madonna?
The payout rates streaming services offer aren't low (they could be better, but we would've heard more complaints from major labels if they were bad), but that money just doesn't make it to the artist, and that's what the artists that signed up for Tidal are aiming to change. If Tidal can get enough people to switch from its competitors, it could force Spotify and Rdio to consider shutting down their free tiers - which pay a fraction of the amount per spin that paid subscriptions do - and possibly negotiate on behalf of raising the artist's cut of the streaming payouts to regain the music it could lose.

.@rihanna just released the #AmericanOxygen video, exclusively on http://t.co/We5OlPBrLl pic.twitter.com/Z9xZy2sW6l
- TIDAL (@TIDALHiFi) April 6, 2015

While increasing payouts for musicians across the board may be the initial goal, it is not the only one. When Jay Z and Tidal's chief investment officer Vania Schlogel spoke to students at the Clive Davis Institute of Recorded Music last week, Jay Z that Tidal "isn't just about music; it's also about concert ticketing. It's a holistic place where the artists will live." For Tidal to become a platform that can offer its users not just songs and music videos, but potentially early access to concert tickets it will have to work with one company: Live Nation.

Though its name has been nowhere around the proceedings of Tidal, Live Nation could be involved. Jay Z has deep ties within the company (Live Nation signed Jay Z to a $152 million contract and funded Roc Nation back in 2008), and he's not the only one. Nearly every artist that owns equity in Tidal has a working relationship with Live Nation (the exception is Daft Punk, who rarely tour). Madonna signed a 10-year, $120 million contract with the company in 2007; Arcade Fire, Beyoncé, Rihanna, and Usher's last tours were promoted by the company; Nicki Minaj and Jason Aldean's current tours are as well.
Paying for more than one streaming service could be the only way to access all the music that you want
Live Nation is the largest concert promoter in the world and the way most of the artists working with Tidal make their money. While music sales may be in trouble, touring is still a lucrative endeavor, and it's one that Live Nation - which owns or operates 158 venues in six countries, produces over 60 music festivals per year, and owns Ticketmaster - is deeply involved in. If Tidal has any aspirations to offer tickets through its service, Live Nation would have to be involved. We reached out to Live Nation to ask about its involvement with Tidal, but it declined to comment.

It's fascinating to think that the two companies who bring the most revenue directly to musicians - Apple and Live Nation - could find themselves on opposite sides of a battle that's about to take place in the music industry. There is little doubt that Jimmy Iovine is trying to strike the same exclusive deals with artists for its own streaming service, and probably will succeed, given Apple's impressive cash pile and his deep industry connections.

Looking across this changing landscape, the near future of streaming music could be very messy. Users who want to hear every artist on their preferred platform might face a fragmented market, with some exclusives owned by Apple, some by Spotify, and some by Tidal. Vigorous competition between services is usually great for consumers, but in this case, as the struggle between artists, labels, and tech platforms plays out, paying for more than one streaming service could be the only way to access all the music that you want.

Verge Video at CES: Neil Young's hi-res audio player

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Tidal's secret weapon isn't celebrities: It's Live Nation

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Tidal, the streaming service purchased by Jay Z and co-owned by some of the world's biggest musicians is much more than just one more player in the streaming music market. The company has released exclusive and music videos from Rihanna and Beyoncé over the last week, and it appears that's only the beginning.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
TechCrunch - Startup and Technology News

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
TechCrunch - Reporting on the business of technology, startups, venture capital funding, and Silicon Valley

# data[].attributes.headline
YouTube reveals plans for monthly subscription to remove its ads

# data[].attributes.subject
YouTube reveals plans for monthly subscription to remove its ads

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
YouTube is planning to launch a subscription version of its online video service, for which viewers will pay to remove its advertising.

The Google subsidiary announced its plans in an email to channel owners, while also informing them that if they do not sign up to participate, they will have to set all their videos to "private".

The news follows the beta launch of YouTube Music Key, a Spotify-style streaming music service that will eventually sell subscriptions, as well as children's app YouTube Kids.

"We're excited to build on this momentum by taking another big step in favour of choice: offering fans an ad-free version of YouTube for a monthly fee," explained the email to creators.

"By creating a new paid offering, we'll generate a new source of revenue that will supplement your fast-growing advertising revenue."

YouTube has not announced how much a monthly subscription will cost or a specific launch date, although The Verge claims the price is likely to be around $10 a month, while creators have been given a deadline of 15 June to sign up.

Creators clicking through to the new partner terms discovered that YouTube plans to keep 45% of the revenues for itself, while sharing the other 55% out among channel owners according to their share of viewing by subscribers.

Channel owners who do not want to take part will see their video settings changed to "private" according to YouTube. That's the stick backing up the carrot of potentially-higher income from subscribers.

"If you choose not to participate in our new paid offerings, you can change your video settings to private to keep videos hosted on YouTube. Though you can always choose whether to host any or all of your videos on YouTube, we strongly believe that any fan who's willing to pay for a feature like an ads-free experience on YouTube deserves to access the exact same content that exists on the ad-supported site."

YouTube has previously experimented with subscriptions for individual channels, although the feature did not prove popular. In 2014, it also introduced the option for channels to use a tip-jar feature called Fan Funding as a way to top up their income from advertising.

Will people pay a monthly subscription to watch the kind of videos that have always been free on YouTube? It's not the only company testing the theory.

US startup Vessel recently launched a service charging $2.99 a month, with the promise of access to videos at least 72 hours before they go live on YouTube. Meanwhile, crowdfunding firm Patreon has a roster of YouTubers whose fans pay small amounts either every month, or every time they publish a new video.
Topics

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
YouTube reveals plans for monthly subscription to remove its ads

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
YouTube is planning to launch a subscription version of its online video service, for which viewers will pay to remove its advertising. The Google subsidiary announced its plans in an email to channel owners, while also informing them that if they do not sign up to participate, they will have to set all their videos to "private".

# data[].attributes.headline
Amazon moves towards 'internet of things' shopping with Dash

# data[].attributes.subject
Amazon moves towards 'internet of things' shopping with Dash

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Have you ever been stuck on the toilet with no toilet roll? An end to that nightmare might soon be in sight. Amazon's next big thing in the "internet of things" lets you order a new roll at the touch of a button, even as you sit in the smallest room.
Samsung pledges over $100m to make an open Internet of Things finally happen
The Dash Button is a single-use Wi-Fi enabled ordering device, you press it and it orders directly for you. Of course, until Amazon perfect drone delivery, the new toilet roll may not quite arrive in time ... but for plenty of other products will.

The future could see a home filled with buy buttons for branded products and machines that can instantly re-order supplies when the coffee, washing powder or nappies run out.

The Dash Button, about the size of a doorbell button, covered in a brightly coloured brand representing what will be bought if the button is pushed comes without a price indicator - or the physiological barrier that seeing the cost creates.

They tie in with the Amazon's Dash Replenishment Service, a system by which products such as washing machines, printers or water filter jugs can automatically order refills when they run out straight from Amazon - one of the original promises of internet connected fridges.

Such fridges have long been the talisman of the "internet of things" - network connected devices in the home that automate and anticipate things like shopping or turning on and off lights and heating depending on your proximity.

The buttons are one step back from the replenishment service, designed to retrofit existing products that can't be internet connected themselves, and join the Dash barcode scanner wand launched in April 2014. The wand lets you scan a barcode and then purchase directly from Amazon - much like the company's smartphone app allows you to do using your phone's camera

Welcome to the 'internet of things' shopping future

Amazon has partnered with a range of brands including razor firm Gillette, moisturiser Olay, coffee system Tassimo and kitchen towel maker Bounty to brand the buttons.

Each button connects to the internet via home Wi-Fi and can be configured with the Amazon shopping smartphone app to purchase a specific item when pushed. The buttons are stuck on to walls, tables or anywhere with sticky pads, and only order one of item when pressed - so children pressing the button 30 times won't end up ordering 30 packets of Haribo, or 3,000 toilet rolls.

Users can cancel orders within 30 minutes of a button press using the smartphone app and are alerted every time a button is pushed. The service and buttons are only available to Amazon Prime customers in the US, who have to apply for an invitation, but will be sent the buttons for free.

There is no release date for the UK yet, and Amazon does not currently sell groceries on the same scale as it does in the US, so it might be still some way off.
Too little thought is given to the environmental impact of instant gratification | Letters
It is Amazon's attempt to make the shopping process as automated as possible, much like its Prime next-day delivery service, allowing customers to buy new products without thinking about them and, more importantly, without shopping around, thus excluding the competition.

The Dash buttons are available in the US now, while products with the replenishment service built in will be available from a range of manufacturers including Whirlpool, Brita, Quirky and Brother in the US in the autumn.
Topics

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Amazon moves towards 'internet of things' shopping with Dash

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Have you ever been stuck on the toilet with no toilet roll? An end to that nightmare might soon be in sight. Amazon's next big thing in the "internet of things" lets you order a new roll at the touch of a button, even as you sit in the smallest room.

# data[].attributes.headline
Will enhanced experiences put consumer value back into music?

# data[].attributes.subject
Will enhanced experiences put consumer value back into music?

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
With the mountains of media attention dedicated to the story, you couldn't fail to notice that Jay-Z unveiled Tidal last week, his new artist-owned subscription streaming music service.

Debate still rages around the PR launch itself and the company's speculated business model, but what does seem clear is that Tidal aims to give fans a deeper and more complete music experience than simply audio streaming. While we don't yet have specifics, it is thought this will entail a variety of artist-focu sed media content and exclusive access for subscribers - from 'windowed' album launches and video to editorial and live events - on top of the already publicised 'high-fidelity' sound quality.

Jay-Z hinted at what this might look like in a recent Billboard interview, when he spoke of how the service could provide fans with unique artist access beyond the traditional album cycle: "What if it's a video offering tickets to the next concert, or what if it's audio or video of the recording process? It could be anything. It could be them at home listening to songs that inspire them."

Whatever form it ultimately takes, one thing is for certain: free music consumption is now firmly part of worldwide culture, so it will need something extra special to convince music fans to attach a value to what they're accustomed to getting at no cost.

Tidal's promise of an enhanced music media experience does appear to be a trend that many other big industry players also see as the way forward.

Take Apple, for example. As far back as September of last year, Bono flagged that plans were already in place at the tech giant to create a "new way to package and present an album", where fans can "play with the lyrics and get behind the songs when you're sitting on the subway with your iPad". It is now envisaged that Apple's new Beats-integrated subscription-only streaming service will launch this summer, and a broader media experience will form a major part in its proposition.

Rumours that the company's executives are already approaching big name artists to tie them into exclusive deals, along with the high-profile hiring of seasoned big star interviewer Zane Lowe, lends further credence to the belief that elements such as extra video and editorial content will provide fans with a richer experience to help them "get behind the songs". Apple's iTunes Festival could also play an important role in attracting subscribers with exclusive live events opportunities.

Universal Music Group (UMG), the world's largest record label, has already publicly backed Apple's forthcoming service, as well as throwing its weight behind Vessel, YouTube's subscription-based competitor in video that has stated its intention to exclusively 'window' music content.

Spotify, too, is extending its media offering to users by significantly upping its game in video, with its album launch series The Drop just one example.

There is a growing view that, in order to get today's consumers to pay for music, you need to provide an experience that goes beyond audio, and centres around exclusive access to their favourite artists. What's more, there is plenty of empirical market evidence to support this theory.

A recent report by MIDiA Research pointed out that while super fans drive 61 per cent of all music sales revenues, many have been reducing their spending, trading down from multiple albums to 9.99 subscriptions. Yet they still want more from their favourite artists and are willing to pay for the privilege: 45 per cent think music is more than just the song, that it is also the artist's story and 18 per cent would pay for an interactive artist app.

Music artists today are like any other celebrity, and fans want full behind-the-scenes access. Exclusive music video content and interviews can help deliver that experience, as well as live performances and exclusive sessions. Indeed millennials (18-34 year olds), the key demographic when it comes to music content, consume more video than any other demographic, and behind humourous short clips, music videos are most likely to be shared (52 per cent), according to the IAB.

With video on course to represent 79 per cent of global web traffic by 2018, original high quality video must play a central role in the music experience for fans.

Music consumed via any medium or live in person is an experience that stays with fans, and with millennials spending less money on products and more money on experiences, and concertgoers attaching a $2.60 value to an exclusive song download from the show - more than double your average iTunes song download, there is strong evidence that consumers are willing to pay for music content packaged in the right way.

While it's not yet clear how exactly brands will fit into these new business models, it would be presumed a more bespoke approach will need to be taken. Either way, the lessons are the same as for streaming platforms and the wider music industry: creating memorable music moments and media experiences, that offer unique artist access, is a powerful way to engage and drive value from today's young consumers.
Richard Cohen is CEO of music media company LoveLive

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Jay Z's Tidal: Will enhanced experiences put consumer value back into music?

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
With the mountains of media attention dedicated to the story, you couldn't fail to notice that Jay-Z unveiled Tidal last week, his new artist-owned subscription streaming music service. Debate still rages around the PR launch itself and the company's speculated business model, but what does seem clear is that Tidal aims to give fans a deeper and more complete music experience than simply audio streaming.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Advertisers have boosted their digital budgets to reach people online through an increasing array of devices, pushing mobile to account for more than half (56 per cent) of social media spend in 2014 and nearly a quarter (23 per cent) of digital spend, according to the Internet Advertising Bureau's (IAB's) latest Digital Adspend report.

Mobile helped lift social media ad spend up by 65 per cent in the period, according to the report which was conducted by PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC).

The uplift shows that advertisers are starting to see mobile and social as one in the same. Brands have struggled to fit their media strategies around the ubiquity of mobile but the findings suggest a stronger understanding of how the two channels can work in tandem to monetise those behaviours.

So much so that mobile pulled in nearly a quarter (23 per cent) of digital ad spend in 2014, found the study, which propelled digital spend to a record £7.2bn in the period, a £936m increase on the previous year. Brands such as Tesco, Disney, Seat and Lego have upskilled their mobile expertise over the last 12 months, according to a separate IAB study, highlighting the channel's influence beyond retail.

A key driver of the growth is the proliferation of mobile devices flooding the market. Nearly four in ten (37 per cent) British households bought a tablet last year, pushing the number of internet devices they house to 7.4, according to YouGov consumer data accompanying the report. One fifth (19 per cent) of households have two tablets, while 11 per cent own three or more. Advertisers clocked the rise and proceeded to pump £87.4m into tablet advertising last year, an 11 per cent increase on what was spent in 2013.

Despite the surge in tablet ownership, they still trail smartphone and tablets in British homes. Smartphones are the most common internet-enabled device with 1.7 per household, according to YouGov, followed by laptops (1.3) and tablets (1.2).

Tim Elkington, chief strategy officer at IAB UK, said the trend was a "win-win for consumers" because digital advertising "pays for the wide range of free online services they increasingly rely on in their daily lives, but don't necessarily want to pay much for".

Roberto Agosti, mobile manager at Manning Gottlieb OMD, backed the summisation of the research and said it showed a "change in the communication from brands" as consumer behaviours evolve and mobile becomes the dominant player in this cross-screen world".

"The IAB research gives tangible evidence of this phenomenon, highlighting the 63 per cent mobile spend increase across 2014 as well as touching upon the proliferation of tablet devices," said Agosti.

"As our world and devices become more inter-connected, understanding where we are on that journey will be integral in order for brand communications to stay relevant."

With more and more people owning and using a variety of mobile devices, advertisers are under greater pressure to invest in an ever-expanding suite of mobile tools, from programmatic to apps, to dominate the space.

Simon Bailey, chief executive of Telefonica's mobile advertising exchange Axonix, hailed mobile's continued success but said early apprehension to the scale of the mobile challenge and the tools on offer was paving away to reveal a new-found confidence.

"The advent of programmatic advertising is undoubtedly responsible for mobile's growth in these figures. It's brought the ability to buy and sell ads in real-time and target audiences with the right messages at scale," said Bailey.

"What is really exciting is that it's taken a little while to embrace it in mobile, but now it's on the cusp of being wholly adopted. In the next five years, advertising will undoubtedly be led by insights gathered from mobile data. Properly taking advantage of the programmatic opportunity will accelerate both mobile's share of the advertising pie and the UK's overall digital ad spend, which can only be good for the industry and the economy."

Another key proponent of digital ad growth was display, which has been buoyed by video and social media amid the advent of programmatic trading. Display advertising across online and mobile jumped almost twice the rate of the total digital ad spend in 2014 at 26.4 per cent to £2.27bn, revealed the IAB report. Display now boasts 32 per cent of digital ad spend - its largest ever share.

"Display advertising's record share shows marketers are increasingly seeing online as a viable 'brand awareness' ad medium - as with traditional media - not just one for generating an immediate 'direct response', said Elkington. "The internet has been characterised as the latter since the start due to its unrivalled measurability but this shows online advertising has come of age."

Owen Sagness, general manager of Microsoft Advertising and Online UK, said the surge in spend on display advertising signalled the need for more technology to help brands find better ad placements.

"With display advertising now accounting for 32 per cent of digital ad spend, media agencies and publishers must invest in technologies in order to stay ahead of the curve, said Sagness.

"This will enable them to deliver relevant experiences that are in tune with consumers' changing online behaviours.

Elsewhere, content and native advertising spend hit £509m, more than a fifth (22 per cent of digital display advertising. Video lived up to its billing as the in-demand ad format with spend swelling by 46 per cent to £442m in 2014, a drastic jump from the £53m it accrued five years ago. Mobile video advertising alone grew 142 per cent year-on-year to £164m.

Investment in paid for search marketing climbed 8.7 per cent to £3.77bn in the period. Classifieds including recruitment, property and automotive listings jumped 11.6 per cent to £1.05bn, representing 15 per cent of digital ad spend for the year.

Dan Bunyan, senior manager at PwC, which audited the report, said: "Despite digital's continued stellar performance, there remains significant growth opportunities to be exploited on mobile and tablet devices. These are the two areas where ownership and usage is extremely high but where advertising investment is disproportionately low. For instance, over half of web pages are viewed via mobile phones but they account for just 23 per cent of digital spend."

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Mobile accounts for more than half of social media spend, says IAB/PwC report

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Advertisers have boosted their digital budgets to reach people online through an increasing array of devices, pushing mobile to account for more than half (56 per cent) of social media spend in 2014 and nearly a quarter (23 per cent) of digital spend, according to the Internet Advertising Bureau's (IAB's) latest Digital Adspend report.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
OgilvyOne Prague and Geometry Global presents: Run the logo. Use any running app, share your route in the shape of Intersport's logo, and get a discount on running gear https://vimeo.com/122535688

# data[].attributes.headline
Will wearables make the future brighter for us?

# data[].attributes.subject
Will wearables make the future brighter for us?

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
As we marvel at the devices that companies such as Nike, Fitbit, and Jawbone have brought to market and soon Apple, it's no surprise that wearable technology holds huge, exciting possibilities for improving public health. Or does it?

Ogilvy CommonHealth Worldwide recently produced a report that showcases the future of wearable technology and its possibilities for improving public health. The report lends insight into some difficult but important questions currently challenging the health technology industry.

As an industry, the decisions we make now could fundamentally affect the future of public health. We can determine whether the various opportunities that stare us in the face are grabbed with full force, or whether they are limited to a select few health enthusiasts and technophiles; the consumers who are currently embracing these wearable gadgets. Wearable technology could deliver public health support on a previously unimaginable scale. But, in order to create a brighter, healthier future for all, it's imperative that the development is driven by a desire to change people's health behaviour, rather than a desire to amass data (for data's sake).

So why raise these questions now? Firstly, to make a real and positive difference in public health. It's a pivotal time in the evolution of healthcare related apps that means we could see this technology make a real change. Secondly, because we think the time is right. For example, obesity is reaching a tipping point: worldwide obesity has nearly doubled since 1980 and in 2013, 42 million children under the age of five were classified as obese.

One of the key conclusions of the report is that the way people are motivated by wearable technology to improve their health is extremely personal and the way to address this, to truly effect change in public health, is to leverage three forces.
1. Force #1: Engage ecosystems
In the future, ecosystems of different stakeholders and ecosystems of different technologies need to come together to create an engaged network of not just clever technology (such as that we are beginning to see with the internet of things), but one that is connected to the right influencers who can mobilise this across communities.
2. Force #2: Embrace automatic responses
Much of our behaviour is automatically triggered by environmental factors and cues, and we need to embrace the fact that not everything we humans do is a fully-conscious decision. The next generation of activity trackers, and their apps, should not only measure behaviours and automatic bodily responses, but should marry this information with associated contextual and environmental factors to design personalised techniques and nudges that can gently steer us away from the 'bad' and towards the 'good'.
3. Force #3: Let the technology do the learning
We need devices and (increasingly) supporting apps that are able to quickly spot which behaviour change techniques are working well and which aren't, at an individual level, and adapt accordingly. Based on these detailed profiles, the technology will be able to learn which behaviour change techniques are most impactful, not just in the individuals they learn from, but in those who match a similar profile. Everything will be more intelligent from the word go.

A one-size-fits-all, techno-centric strategy is doomed for failure: we must start thinking of wearable technology as an intelligent, self-learning system in order to engage with a wide cross-section of society through increasingly personalised strategies.

By David Davenport-Firth, EVP, Health Behaviour Strategy & Intervention at Ogilvy CommonHealth Worldwide.

GDPR Summit Series is a global series of GDPR events which will help marketers to prepare to meet the requirements of the GDPR ahead of May 2018 and beyond. Further information and conference details are available at http://www.gdprsummit.london/

Please enable JavaScript to view the comments powered by Disqus. comments powered by

© Digital Marketing Magazine 2018 | Privacy Policy | Twitter | YouTube

Amplified Business Content is a limited company registered in England and Wales.
Registered Number: 07953063
Registered Office: 9-11 Castle Street, Cardiff, Wales, CF10 1BS

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Wearable Technology: A Brighter, Healthier Future for All?

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
As we marvel at the devices that companies such as Nike, Fitbit, and Jawbone have brought to market and soon Apple, it's no surprise that wearable technology holds huge, exciting possibilities for improving public health. Or does it? Ogilvy CommonHealth Worldwide recently produced a report that showcases the future of wearable technology and its possibilities for improving public health.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Criteo's Marketing Insights break down the most important topics for retail across every category, diving into industry research & the latest trends.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
We know. We had you at free beer.

It's springtime in the capital, so obviously our thoughts are turning to beer gardens and long, cold pints of beer.

With this in mind, Carlsberg has put up a giant poster - in London's Shoreditch of course - which dispenses ice cold half pints of lager.

There's just one catch: it's only available today (April 8) between 1pm and 7pm.

The billboard sits on the side of the Old Truman Brewery on Brick Lane and, don't worry, plastic pint glasses are provided (no need to fashion receptacles out of handbags and shoes then. Good).
Better hurry as the queue's already building. This guy's all over it. Even dogs are getting involved. How much do you need this right now?
You know what to do. Run.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
We know. We had you at free beer. It's springtime in the capital, so obviously our thoughts are turning to beer gardens and long, cold pints of beer. With this in mind, Carlsberg has put up a giant poster - in London's Shoreditch of course - which dispenses ice cold half pints of lager.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
One day after debuting as a competitor to red-hot streaming app Meerkat, Twitter-owned Periscope has already gotten the attention of brands, which are testing out what they can do with the live-video app. They are carrying on a recent tradition of companies quickly jumping on buzzy social tools.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
4 Ways Brands Are Already Using Twitter's Periscope App

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
One day after debuting as a competitor to red-hot streaming app Meerkat, Twitter-owned Periscope has already gotten the attention of brands, which are testing out what they can do with the live-video app. They are carrying on a recent tradition of companies quickly jumping on buzzy social tools.

# data[].attributes.headline
Silcon Valley (TV) partnering with Twitch

# data[].attributes.subject
Silcon Valley (TV) partnering with Twitch

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Silicon Valley is hoping it can get tech and video game nerds to unite, with a little help from streaming video platform Twitch.

To promote the second season of the HBO comedy series-which will debut on April 12- the stars of Silicon Valley will livestream a Q&A for the Twitch community and debut an exclusive clip from an upcoming episode. (And, of course, they'll be playing video games with Twitch's live programming director and host Jon Carnage during the program.)

To introduce new viewers to the series and jog the memory of fans, the platform will also livestream the show's pilot episode, marking the first time a network has done so on the platform.

"There is an authentic connection between Silicon Valley and the Twitch audience, and this unique event is a great way to build upon that," Sabrina Caluori, HBO vice president, digital and social media, said in a release. "Twitch offers a unique opportunity to provide exclusive content and a highly social experience to this influential community."

The idea of Silicon Valley coming to Twitch isn't that far of a stretch, considering actor Thomas Middleditch (who plays main star Richard Hendricks on the show) already is a streamer on the site. But, more importantly, it shows that Twitch can be used for different marketing techniques besides traditional pre-roll and banner ads. And it highlights its livestreaming capabilities, which have garnered buzz thanks to the releases of Periscope and Meerkat.

More than 1.5 million broadcasters use Twitch to share content, and it gets over 100 million unique viewers a month. The platform recently made headlines when Amazon purchased it for $970 million in late August. The Internet retailer hasn't said much about what it plans to do with its acquisition. However, Twitch has been making moves to expand beyond the video game niche, including moving into music streaming.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Twitch, HBO Partner to Promote 'Silicon Valley'

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Silicon Valley is hoping it can get tech and video game nerds to unite, with a little help from streaming video platform Twitch. To promote the second season of the HBO comedy series-which will debut on April 12- the stars of Silicon Valley will livestream a Q&A for the Twitch community and debut an exclusive clip from an upcoming episode.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Here's a fun way for brands to dole out product samples. As part of its sponsorship of this weekend's NCAA Men's Final Four competition, Coke Zero and Ogilvy & Mather installed a "drinkable billboard" that shoots soda through a massive straw into a public drinking fountain.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Coke Zero Made a Drinkable Billboard That Is Actually Serving Soda to NCAA Fans

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Here's a fun way for brands to dole out product samples. As part of its sponsorship of this weekend's NCAA Men's Final Four competition, Coke Zero and Ogilvy & Mather installed a "drinkable billboard" that shoots soda through a massive straw into a public drinking fountain.

# data[].attributes.headline
Grace Helbig and Michelle Phan get their own TV shows

# data[].attributes.subject
Grace Helbig and Michelle Phan get their own TV shows

# data[].attributes.headline
High street sales suffer sharpest fall in more than three years in March

# data[].attributes.subject
High street sales suffer sharpest fall in more than three years in March

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
High street sales suffered their sharpest monthly fall in more than three years in March.

Like-for-like sales fell by 4pc compared with a year ago - the greatest monthly drop since September 2011 - due to lower footfall levels and a slide in discounting from a year ago.

The results from the BDO High Street Sales Tracker reflect a tough comparison against 2014, which saw the best March performance for four years as much of the country enjoyed unseasonably warm temperatures following a flood-hit February.

The survey also pointed out that this year Easter falls two weeks earlier, and some consumers may be delaying purchases until this week's long Bank Holiday weekend, when they will have more time to shop.

Official figures last week showed that retail sales rose by a sharper than expected 0.7pc in February, suggesting that consumers were "spending the windfall" from lower food and oil prices.

But the BDO report said evidence from the Office for National Statistics data had "largely failed to materialise among many high street retailers", with the exception of big-ticket lifestyle and furniture retailers.

The fashion sector was the poorest performer, with like-for-like sales falling 5.5pc due to low footfall levels on high streets and in retail parks. Fashion retailers were also affected by a drop in widespread discounting, which resulted in a decrease in sales.

The best-performing sector was homeware, which notched up like-for-like sales of 6.4pc, with the report saying this area gained the most from rising consumer confidence resulting from lower fuel and food prices. It added that big-ticket furniture and department stores gained most of all but that spending with DIY retailers remains muted.

Sophie Bevan, head of retail and wholesale at BDO, said: "We know consumers have money to spend, but these figures show they won't commit unless they feel the product and the price is right.

"Stores need to think very carefully about how they approach the next few weeks if they want to catch up during the Easter break, and we may see some retailers using targeted discounting to entice customers through their doors."

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
High street sales suffer sharpest fall in more than three years in March

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
High street sales suffered their sharpest monthly fall in more than three years in March. Like-for-like sales fell by 4pc compared with a year ago - the greatest monthly drop since September 2011 - due to lower footfall levels and a slide in discounting from a year ago.

# data[].attributes.headline
London tech sector attracting greater investment than ever

# data[].attributes.subject
London tech sector attracting greater investment than ever

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
London's technology firms are attracting more venture capital financing than ever before, as investors rush to fund in tomorrow's major global companies.

More than $682m (£462m) venture capital financing was secured by the capital's technology companies during the first three months of the year, more than at any point in the past. The amount is more than was received during the entirety of 2012, and marks a 66pc increase compared to Q1 2014, according to promotional company London & Partners. The previous record was $411.6m in the fourth quarter of 2014.

WorldRemit, a London-based company that enables online money transfers, raised the most funding in the period, securing a $100m round led by Technology Crossover Ventures.

Fashion retailer Farfetch, augmented reality advertising firm Blippar and music technology company Shazam were among the other firms to announce significant funding details.

Ambarish Mitra, chief executive and co-founder of Blippar, said the company was well on its way to a billion dollar valuation thanks to London and the support provided by the Government.

"The city has been a springboard for Blippar to open 10 offices in six countries and grow threefold year-on-year since we started three and a half years back," he said.

"We've recently raised $45m in Series C funding, which will further accelerate our breakthrough in technology and our fast growth. We have enjoyed great support from the British Government throughout our rapid global ascent to date and give credit to them for introducing policies favourable for British tech startups."

The Government runs a Seed Enterprise Investment Scheme (SEIS), which gives an initial 50pc income tax break for investments up to £100,000, capital gains deferral and loss relief. Investing across a range of schemes can mitigate risk.

Eileen Burbidge, London technology ambassador and Partner at start-up investor Passion Capital, said the quarter was "the most exciting yet in London's tech development".

"London is one of the most electrifying tech hubs in the world, with companies and investors all brought here by the city's ideas and entrepreneurial spirit, as well as its talent and access to markets," she said.

The figures indicate that London-based technology start-ups are proving they can access the international capital they need to grow into major global companies, added entrepreneur and investor Sherry Coutu.

"London has shown that it can produce exceptional companies that grow to scale quickly and become significant players on the international stage," she said.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
London's technology sector attracts greater investment than ever before

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
London's technology firms are attracting more venture capital financing than ever before, as investors rush to fund in tomorrow's major global companies. More than $682m (£462m) venture capital financing was secured by the capital's technology companies during the first three months of the year, more than at any point in the past.

# data[].attributes.headline
New kitchen gadget stops food from burning

# data[].attributes.subject
New kitchen gadget stops food from burning

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
If you hate having to hover over the hob to make sure your dinner isn't burning, a new gadget could be the answer to your prayers.

Meld is an automated device which constantly monitors the temperature of what you are cooking, and makes small adjustments to the heat so your food cooks perfectly.

The invention, which is the brainchild of two Seattle-based former Amazon employees, consists of a special knob which replaces one of your existing knobs and a temperature sensor which clips onto your cookware.

If your dinner is at risk of being overcooked, the sensor wirelessly sends the temperature readings from the pan to the Meld Knob, which then automatically turns down the heat of the gas or electric burner.

The gadget is not yet for sale but its inventors are seeking investors via the crowdfunding platform Kickstarter. It has already exceeded its $50,000 target.

"Traditional recipes provide instructions like 'Cook at medium-high heat for 10-15 minutes until golden brown and tender'," founders Jon Jenkins and Darren Vengroff write on the Kickstarter page. "What exactly is medium-high? Should you cook it for 10 or 15 minutes? How brown is golden brown? What is tender? Couple these vague directions with the fact that every cooktop is different and every pot is different and you've got a recipe for disaster.

"We knew we needed a way to consistently determine the exact temperature along with the ability to quickly make adjustments to the burner. We wanted technology to eliminate the guesswork so the cook could focus on the art.

Upgrade: the Meld knob replaces one of your cooktop's existing knobs

"Think of it as upgrading the cookware and range you already own helping you cook perfect meals - just like a professional chef - without the cost or years of training."

The device also comes with an app, which helps track the progress of meals in real-time and can be used to set the knob to a specific temperature or style of cooking, such as simmering.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Clever stove knob knows exactly when your dinner is burning

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
If you hate having to hover over the hob to make sure your dinner isn't burning, a new gadget could be the answer to your prayers. Meld is an automated device which constantly monitors the temperature of what you are cooking, and makes small adjustments to the heat so your food cooks perfectly.

# data[].attributes.headline
Amazon dash sees omni channel marketing and commerce converge

# data[].attributes.subject
Amazon dash sees omni channel marketing and commerce converge

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
The news about Amazon's "Dash" is a bold statement of omni-channel commerce - literally - creating commerce channels out of everyday objects like a magnet you stick on your fridge or washing machine.

You could argue that marketing has been omni-channel for many years, but what has been lacking are direct commerce call-to-actions. This is changing. Facebook has announced "Shop Now" call-to-action buttons for business News Feeds. Twitter has been experimenting with "Buy" buttons since last year. Google and Pinterest are both rumored to be working on Buy call-to-actions for direct purchases, expected to release sometime this year.

With the entry of these large players' new offerings, we are witnessing a convergence of omni-channel marketing and omni-channel commerce. But what does this mean for merchants - other than having exciting opportunities to combine marketing with direct commerce?

Consider a few implications:

1. Measurable benefits for the omni-channel, digital marketer: theoretically higher conversions and measurable, attributable ROI from marketing initiatives.

2. More pressure to breakdown traditional silos between ecommerce, digital marketing, ad/media marketing and social marketing. This is critical because the convergence of marketing and commerce will require collaboration and coordination to capitalize on these new opportunities.

3. A merchant's control of its commerce touch points becomes as distributed as its marketing touch points as several of the ad/media players seem to be setting up their own payment processing and ecommerce experiences instead of redirecting to the merchant's own ecommerce site. This potential proliferation of "microcommerce" experiences poses interesting operational questions - ranging from marketing resource management to fulfillment integration to data ownership and financial settlement. Tech players and merchants alike will need playbooks to effectively operationalize these new channels beyond initial launch.

Side note: Amazon, with Dash and any other future omni-channel commerce offerings, is uniquely well positioned to conquer these challenges, if and when Amazon chooses to open it up to merchants. Amazon's support for third-party merchant order fulfillment has been in place for nearly a decade! I was lucky enough to work on the Beta release in 2006.

4. Let's hope these new offerings include commerce data feeds for merchants and do not require merchants to log into yet another dashboard to review results. Assuming this, an agile data management system will become even more essential for merchants as they tie the ecosystem together on the back end. Integrating data feeds from new commerce channels with their additional transactional and purchaser data cannot be an afterthought if merchants want to quickly optimize results.

Do you agree? What other implications do you see?
Jessica Milan leads the Solution Delivery team at CashStar, a provider of omni-channel prepaid commerce solutions. She has over 10 years of technical consulting, project delivery, and partner enablement experience across digital marketing, ecommerce, and manufacturing/supply chain. Before CashStar, Jessica held management/lead positions at Neolane (now part of Adobe's Marketing Cloud), aPriori Technologies, and Amazon.com.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Amazon Dash: Omni-channel marketing and omni-channel commerce converge

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The news about Amazon's "Dash" is a bold statement of omni-channel commerce - literally - creating commerce channels out of everyday objects like a magnet you stick on your fridge or washing machine. You could argue that marketing has been omni-channel for many years, but what has been lacking are direct commerce call-to-actions.

# data[].attributes.headline
Only wearables can save humanity from their evil smartphones

# data[].attributes.subject
Only wearables can save humanity from their evil smartphones

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
In one of the stranger marketing gambits in the history of marketing gambits, Apple and Google seem to agree on why you need to buy wearables.

Their argument is this: Smartphones are destroying us. Only wearables can save us from the antisocial tyranny inflicted by these unholy gadgets.

It's bizarre, of course, because perhaps no two companies have done more to enable the sales of millions and millions of smartphones than Apple, thanks to the iPhone, and Google, thanks to the Android operating system. Apple and Google saving us from smartphones by selling us wearable computing salvation is a little like your heroin dealer approaching you after an overdose and offering you a deal on some methadone.

And yet, there it is.

I first heard this argument trotted out two years ago when attending TED. Google cofounder Sergey Brin walked out on stage and showed a promotional video for Google Glass. When it ended, he stood hunched over his smartphone for a few seconds, made a bad joke about a Nigerian prince, and then explained how that pose was the real inspiration for Google Glass.

"This position that you just saw me in, looking down at my phone, that's one of the reasons behind this project, Project Glass," he said. "Because we ultimately questioned whether this is the ultimate future of how you want to connect to other people in your life, how you want to connect to information. Should it be by just walking around looking down?"

In effect, Brin said, smartphones are for antisocial losers who want to look like asses all day.

"In addition to potentially socially isolating yourself when you're out and about looking at your phone, it's kind of, is this what you're meant to do with your body? You're standing around there and you're just rubbing this featureless piece of glass," Brin mused.

Worse, these smartphones turn you into addicts.

"The cell phone is - yeah, you have to look down on it and all that, but it's also kind of a nervous habit," Brin said. "Like if I smoked, I'd probably just smoke instead. I would just light up a cigarette. It would look cooler. ... It really opened my eyes to how much of my life I spent just secluding away, be it email or social posts or whatnot, even though it wasn't really - there's nothing really that important or that pressing. And with this, I know I will get certain messages if I really need them, but I don't have to be checking them all the time."

Ring a bell? If you read the r ecent Wired exclusive about the secret history of the Apple Watch, then it might sound like you're in an echo chamber. After first deciding to make a watch, Apple apparently then set out to figure out why you would need one.

The answer, according to Wired: "Your phone is ruining your life. Like the rest of us ... everyone at Apple are subject to the tyranny of the buzz - the constant checking, the long list of nagging notifications.

"We're so connected, kind of ever-presently, with technology now," Kevin Lynch, Apple's vice president of technology, said in the interview. "People are carrying their phones with them and looking at the screen so much."

Lynch added: "People want that level of engagement. But how do we provide it in a way that's a little more human, a little more in the moment when you're with somebody?"

Why, with an Apple Watch, of course!

Whether this argument will work any better for the Apple Watch than it did for Google Glass, well, who knows? The average person probably isn't really tuned into these kind of stories. And Apple isn't likely to start running ads that say, "Hey, the iPhone has made you an asshole, but we've got a new product to save you!"

Still, if the only way to sell wearables is to position them as solutions to the problem you created, and to label your own products as the source of human misery, then it makes me think both companies are straining to justify a new computing form factor that most of the world doesn't need or want.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Apple and Google agree: Only wearables can save humanity from their evil smartphones

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Opinion In one of the stranger marketing gambits in the history of marketing gambits, Apple and Google seem to agree on why you need to buy wearables. Their argument is this: Smartphones are destroying us. Only wearables can save us from the antisocial tyranny inflicted by these unholy gadgets.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
In the new world of on-demand everything, you're either pampered, isolated royalty - or you're a 21st century servant.

Angel the concierge stands behind a lobby desk at a luxe apartment building in downtown San Francisco, and describes the residents of this imperial, 37-story tower. "Ubers, Squares, a few Twitters," she says. "A lot of work-from-homers."

And by late afternoon on a Tuesday, they're striding into the lobby at a just-get-me-home-goddammit clip, some with laptop bags slung over their shoulders, others carrying swank leather satchels. At the same time a second, temporary population streams into the building: the app-based meal delivery people hoisting thermal carrier bags and sacks. Green means Sprig. A huge M means Munchery. Down in the basement, Amazon Prime delivery people check in packages with the porter. The Instacart groceries are plunked straight into a walk-in fridge.

This is a familiar scene. Five months ago I moved into a spartan apartment a few blocks away, where dozens of startups and thousands of tech workers live. Outside my building there's always a phalanx of befuddled delivery guys who seem relieved when you walk out, so they can get in. Inside, the place is stuffed with the goodies they bring: Amazon Prime boxes sitting outside doors, evidence of the tangible, quotidian needs that are being serviced by the web. The humans who live there, though, I mostly never see. And even when I do, there seems to be a tacit agreement among residents to not talk to one another. I floated a few "hi's" in the elevator when I first moved in, but in return I got the monosyllabic, no-eye-contact mumble. It was clear: Lady, this is not that kind of building.

Back in the elevator in the 37-story tower, the messengers do talk, one tells me. They end up asking each other which apps they work for: Postmates. Seamless. EAT24. GrubHub. Safeway.com. A woman hauling two Whole Foods sacks reads the concierge an apartment number off her smartphone, along with the resident's directions: "Please deliver to my door."

"They have a nice kitchen up there," Angel says. The apartments rent for as much as $5,000 a month for a one-bedroom. "But so much, so much food comes in. Between 4 and 8 o'clock, they're on fire."

I start to walk toward home. En route, I pass an EAT24 ad on a bus stop shelter, and a little further down the street, a Dungeons & Dragons-type dude opens the locked lobby door of yet another glass-box residential building for a Sprig deliveryman:

"You're..."

"Jonathan?"

"Sweet," Dungeons & Dragons says, grabbing the bag of food. The door clanks behind him.

And that's when I realized: the on-demand world isn't about sharing at all. It's about being served. This is an economy of shut-ins.

In 1998, Carnegie Mellon researchers warned that the internet could make us into hermits. They released a study monitoring the social behavior of 169 people making their first forays online. The web-surfers started talking less with family and friends, and grew more isolated and depressed. "We were surprised to find that what is a social technology has such anti-social consequences," said one of the researchers at the time. "And these are the same people who, when asked, describe the Internet as a positive thing."

We're now deep into the bombastic buildout of the on-demand economy- with investment in the apps, platforms and services surging exponentially. Right now Americans buy nearly eight percent of all their retail goods online, though that seems a wild underestimate in the most congested, wired, time-strapped urban centers.

Many services promote themselves as life-expanding - there to free up your time so you can spend it connecting with the people you care about, not standing at the post office with strangers. Rinse's ad shows a couple chilling at a park, their laundry being washed by someone, somewhere beyond the picture's frame. But plenty of the delivery companies are brutally honest that, actually, they never want you to leave home at all.

GrubHub's advertising banks on us secretly never wanting to talk to a human again: "Everything great about eating, combined with everything great about not talking to people." DoorDash, another food delivery service, goes for the all-caps, batshit extreme:

"NEVER LEAVE HOME AGAIN."

Katherine van Ekert isn't a shut-in, exactly, but there are only two things she ever has to run errands for any more: trash bags and saline solution. For those, she must leave her San Francisco apartment and walk two blocks to the drug store, "so woe is my life," she tells me. (She realizes her dry humor about #firstworldproblems may not translate, and clarifies later: "Honestly, this is all tongue in cheek. We're not spoiled brats.") Everything else is done by app. Her husband's office contracts with Washio. Groceries come from Instacart. "I live on Amazon," she says, buying everything from curry leaves to a jogging suit for her dog, complete with hoodie.

She's so partial to these services, in fact, that she's running one of her own: A veterinarian by trade, she's a co-founder of VetPronto, which sends an on-call vet to your house. It's one of a half-dozen on-demand services in the current batch at Y Combinator, the startup factory, including a marijuana delivery app called Meadow ("You laugh, but they're going to be rich," she says). She took a look at her current clients - they skew late 20s to late 30s, and work in high-paying jobs: "The kinds of people who use a lot of on demand services and hang out on Yelp a lot ☺"

Basically, people a lot like herself. That's the common wisdom: the apps are created by the urban young for the needs of urban young. The potential of delivery with a swipe of the finger is exciting for van Ekert, who grew up without such services in Sydney and recently arrived in wired San Francisco. "I'm just milking this city for all it's worth," she says. "I was talking to my father on Skype the other day. He asked, 'Don't you miss a casual stroll to the shop?' Everything we do now is time-limited, and you do everything with intention. There's not time to stroll anywhere."

Suddenly, for people like van Ekert, the end of chores is here. After hours, you're free from dirty laundry and dishes. (TaskRabbit's ad rolls by me on a bus: "Buy yourself time - literally.")

So here's the big question. What does she, or you, or any of us do with all this time we're buying? Binge on Netflix shows? Go for a run? Van Ekert's answer: "It's more to dedicate more time to working."

Alfred, maybe, is the inevitable end point of this system. It's an on-demand assistant that coordinates all the other on-demand apps for you, and it's aimed at two groups: people who want the benefits of various apps but don't want to bother setting them all up, and the "air traffic controllers," who already have so many services coming to relieve their burden that coordinating them has become a new burden all of its own.

With Alfred, you no longer have to open the door for the Instacart delivery: A worker comes into your apartment and stocks food in your fridge. You don't hand off your dirty undies to a Washio messenger; Alfred puts the laundered undies in the drawer. This all happens by paying your Alfred $99 a month, plus the goods and services at reduced cost through Alfred's hookups. Alfred won first place in the TechCrunch Disrupt SF conference last year.

Shutting people out is an important part of being a shut-in: When signing up, customers can choose the option of not seeing their Alfred, who will come in when they're at work. Alfred's messaging is aimed at sweeping aside any middle-class shame.

"We're trying to remove the taboo and the guilt that you should have to do it," says Alfred's CEO Marcela Sapone over the phone. "We're empowering you to let others do it for you. You're the manager of your life. It's against the stigma of 'People use this because they're lazy.' Absolutely not. They're using this because they're extremely busy."

She's talking about people like Christina Mallon, whom the Alfred folks put me in contact with. Mallon is a 26-year-old in New York City who works as a branding sales consultant to tech companies, regularly working from 8 a.m. to 9 p.m. Unlike the Silicon Valley tech campuses she works with, Mallon has no worksite cafeteria, so she uses food delivery apps for lunch and dinner. Her old West Village building has limited hot water, she says, so she gets her hair blown out three days a week using Vive, a subscription hairdresser service, for $100 a month.

When Mallon gets back to her apartment at night for about a precious hour of free time before heading to bed (her boyfriend, who works in private equity, doesn't make it home until 1 a.m.) Alfred has handled the rest. Gluten-free groceries from Whole Foods in the cupboards, her laundry hung, her packages picked up, others delivered, her bed made, her kitchen table tidied - and a note asking what she needs for next time.

But the three hours she estimates Alfred saves her each week also buys her time to get out -she no longer has to wait at home on Saturdays waiting for TaskRabbits or FreshDirect groceries to appear.

"My mom and dad worked a lot, so we grew up on fast food and had a cleaner come once every two weeks," Mallon says. "I had to do my bed every morning and everything had to be clean. No allowance. I have a strong work ethic and worked 24-7 in college and went to school at night, so I know how to get things done. You have to outsource things that someone else can do for cheaper. To save an hour a day, I would spend $25."

In one hour of chore time saved, Mallon estimates she can make $1,000 for her company. Tech companies have long realized that if you hook up your employees with everything on site, they'll work longer, more industrious hours. And if apps deliver that same to the home, corporations keep benefiting. Employees can work even more undistracted hours remotely or buy even more on-demand services (like that Netflix binge). The perfect cycle of productivity and consumption is created- and all without ever having to step outside.

In many ways, social class can be defined by the chores you don't do. The rich have personal assistants, butlers, cooks, drivers. The middle class largely do their own errands - with the occasional babysitter, pizza boy, maybe a cleaner. The poor do their own chores, and the chores of other people.

Then came on-demand's disruptive influence. The luxuries usually afforded to one-percenters now stretch to the urban upper-middle class, or so the technology industry cheers. But can you democratize the province of the rich without getting a new class acting, well, entitled? My parents made me put away the dishes not to "outsource" their workload - they could have done it faster. They did it so I wouldn't turn out to be a brat.

Now an entire generation is not just being served: It's having to work out what it means when you buy someone to do it for you.

Katy Rogers is a 29-year-old account director at a social startup, and a regular with laundry and grocery apps. But when the Homejoy app maid shows up at her apartment, she feels uncomfortable. The class implications of someone cleaning her toilet are jarring. "I feel like it's a little bit awkward. I'm thinking, what do these people think of me?" She also wonders about the workers. Rogers wishes the companies were a bit more transparent about the payment structure. ("Some of them say there's no need to tip. I'm like why? How much are they actually going to earn?")

While Dungeon & Dragons grabbed his dinner eagerly, Rogers has found herself tinkering with how exactly to interact with her hired help. By the end of our chat, it seemed as if she had almost talked herself out of the whole enterprise."Maybe that's something I should just do myself."

Who cleaned her house growing up? I ask.

"My mom did everything."

That's the other side of this, the gender one. The errands being served up by the on-demand economy - cooking, cleaning, laundry, groceries, runs to the post office - all were all once, and in many places still are, the jobs of stay-at-home mothers. Even now, when women outnumber men in the formal workplace, they continue to bear the brunt of that invisible domestic work, often for many, many hours a week. So women - those who can afford it, at least - have the most to win from passing that load on to somebody else.

So it's not a surprise that 60 percent of Alfred's clients are female. One mother I know told me she has no time to cook while wrangling two kids under two, so she uses EAT24. Uber is an easy way to get out of the house with an infant, another told me, saying the driver helped her strap the baby seat into the black sedan.

The invisible work handed off by some women simply becomes visible - oftentimes for other, less wealthy women. Despite the name, 75 percent of "Alfreds" are women.

Last year the venture capital firm SherpaVentures - whose offices are just down the street from that apartment building full of Ubers and Squares and Twitters- released a sunny study on the future of our on-demand world. They have a stake in making it go big , of course: they're seed investors in Shyp and Munchery and have $154 million to invest in on-demand businesses. As the desire for more instant, app-based services expands up the economic chain, the report argued, entrepreneurial freelancers - everyone from grocery deliverers to cleaners to accountants to lawyers - will have flexibility to monetize their time when they want to and pursue their passions. Brick-and-mortar stores die out, and so do their low-wage retail jobs, which it suggested would personalize the world, away from the sterile anonymity of big-box stores to a "21st-century village economy," in which we're "united" by cellphones.

So who are we uniting with in this scenario?

Some workers in the on-demand economy are hourly employees with benefits. Many others prefer an army of free-roving freelancers. Uber released a study purporting that the drivers (or "partners") are happy with this: more than 70 percent of its drivers preferred setting their own hours over a traditional job. Other drivers dissent on this point, filing lawsuits.

In the stream of delivery workers coming into the 37-story apartment fortress next to Uber HQ was TaNica, a Sprig contractor. She had been out of the work force for three years when she started with the app. "This is a job I need, but I actually love," she says. She likes driving around - she works every day and tries to get in 50 hours a week, at $16 an hour. Not all the workers were so happy, though. The Google Express contractor in my lobby told me she'd earned a college degree in criminology and hopes to find a job in her field. Another bicycle messenger showed me in his phone's settings how the app could track him at all hours, which he found Orwellian. He talked for a few minutes about how he's just doing this part-time between creative gigs, and hoped to get out soon. Before we finished talking, his app flashed a message: "Let's move!" and he pushed off.

The SherpaVentures report didn't mention shut-ins. It did, however, point out that grocery delivery has taken off massively in hyper-dense developing countries, where huge income disparities allow upper-middle-class citizens to turn the rest of the workforce into their personal delivery network. In Mexico City, the study noted, 20 percent of grocery orders are made remotely.

As income inequality increases, the shut-in model is tailor-made for the new polarized extremes.

After all, either you're behind the door, receiving your dinner in the tower. Or you're like the food delivery guy who, while checking in with the concierge, said, "This is my dream place to live." He's the opposite of a shut-in. He's stuck outside, hustling.
Log in to Medium and "recommend" this story.
Image sources, from top: s-cphoto/Getty; Cultura RM/Getty; Dean Northcott/Getty; Zoonar/Getty; Tetra Images/Getty; Peathegee Inc/Getty.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
In the new world of on-demand everything, you're either pampered, isolated royalty - or you're a 21st century servant. Angel the concierge stands behind a lobby desk at a luxe apartment building in downtown San Francisco, and describes the residents of this imperial, 37-story tower. "Ubers, Squares, a few Twitters," she says.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Jay Z has promised to change the financial model of music streaming with his new service Tidal.

The rapper has vowed to create the first major artist-owned streaming service, announcing Kanye West, Madonna and Rihanna - as well as many other members of pop music's elite - as joint owners of Tidal.

Quoting Frederick Nietzsche, fellow co-owner Alicia Keys said at the Tidal launch last night: "Without music, life would be a mistake."Artists turned their Twitter profiles blue yesterday in support of the subscription service and helped to get the hashtag #TIDALforALL trending, which some fans said appeared more like a campaign for social justice.

Fans have been quick to criticise the host of wealthy artists who have signed up to Tidal seeking to make even more money from the public.

Others among the African American community in the US have criticised the likes of Rihanna, Jay Z, Kanye West and Beyoncé who were mostly silent about issues such as Ferguson, but have chosen to promote Tidal instead.

Many were also disillusioned that a group of such wealthy and influential pop stars including Calvin Harris, Chris Martin, Jack White, Deadmau5 and Nicki Minaj have chosen to promote a music streaming service instead of coming together for a more altruistic cause.

The best in film, music, TV & radio straight to your inbox

The best in film, music, TV & radio straight to your inbox

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
People really don't like Jay Z's 'pretentious' new streaming service Tidal

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Jay Z has promised to change the financial model of music streaming with his new service Tidal. The rapper has vowed to create the first major artist-owned streaming service, announcing Kanye West, Madonna and Rihanna - as well as many other members of pop music's elite - as joint owners of Tidal.

# data[].attributes.headline
Best wearables will be the ones we throw away

# data[].attributes.subject
Best wearables will be the ones we throw away

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
The market for wearable electronics seems to be exploding: forecasters estimate that we will see growth at a compound annual rate of 35% over the next five years with 148 million units shipped by 2019. The data appears impressive until you consider that only two years ago forecasters were predicting shipments of twice that amount-over 300 million by 2018. Why are the numbers declining?

The future of wearables is not about creating the single best product for all eternity.

Amid fizzy expectations for the ill-fated Google Glass and the new Apple Watch, the wearables market continues to be plagued by persistent barriers to adoption. The reason is that developers are spending an inordinate amount of time looking for the silver bullet-the "iPhone" of the wearables market-that will create a long-term relationship with users. In reality, the most successful new wearables are actually the ones that embrace their temporary status. Developers need to change their way of thinking: Rather than invent reasons for users to live with wearables, they need to think of gradually moving people through phases of new learning and behavioral change. For truly innovative wearables, the goal is obsolescence.

Wearing Out Their Welcome
Before wearables even existed as a market category, we have been observing and tracking how people from different parts of the world try and adopt different kinds of wearable technology into their lives. In our studies, we've found that users quickly lose interest in data-how many steps per day or what types of sleep cycles-once they understand the most effective intervention points for behavior change. One of the people we met in Hangzhou, China, for example, stopped using her Nike Fuelband after a few months because it so effectively answered her real question: Which activities during my day burn the most calories?

One of our study respondents based in New York suffered from a vitamin D deficiency. With his Jawbone wearable, he was able to collect vast amounts of sleep data that allowed his doctor to track his condition and make a plan for future treatment. After successfully collaborating with health care providers, however, the patient stopped wearing the Jawbone, and it now sits in a drawer in his bedside table. Instead of designing a more sophisticated version of the Jawbone with ever-more features, designers would do better to note users' genuine motivations when engaging with these devices.

For truly innovative wearables, the goal is obsolescence.

One of our respondents in the same study spent her entire childhood in France. She told us that she didn't understand the American obsession with calorie labels at restaurants and on food packages. She felt she had been raised to develop appropriate "instincts" around how much to eat and when. Americans, in her eyes, were so fixated on getting the numbers right that they lost all connection with their intuition about a balanced meal. Her analysis provides an astute way forward for innovation in wearables: it's less about delivering on measurements and more about providing users with the "training wheels" to access their own instincts.

Loving and Leaving Data
In this study as well as others we've conducted, we've found that the people who successfully reconnected with their intuition did so using not calories counts or footsteps but a wide assortment of more idiosyncratic measurement tools. Whether it was fitting into a favorite "little black dress," drinking a certain amount of green smoothies in the morning, or climbing comfortably up three flights of stairs, individuals have unique ways of assessing their own experiences.

Today's wearables still use the most simplistic metrics like steps and calories, a repertoire that in reality is not very meaningful for most people. But by incorporating more idiosyncratic gauges and enabling wearables to track what users want to track- not the number of steps but maybe the number of times the user takes the stairs instead of the elevator- individuals can begin to embrace wearables' temporary role as "coaches" and "guides." Ultimately, wearables can use these individualized and dynamic metrics as a bridge to help users understand their own definitions of wellbeing.

Many of the most interesting next generation of wearables are already working in this direction, recognizing that most meaningful measurements are not static. The LUMO back device is designed to give feedback on one simple but significant aspect of fitness: good posture. Users wear the LUMO device on a belt that sits on their lower back. When they slouch, LUMO vibrates, reminding them to stand up straight and tall. This type of reminder is less about an abstract data point like fat grams and more about one small but meaningful change in the body. The strength of this kind conditioning is that it taps into peoples' background behavior rather than their rationality. Behavioral conditioning becomes second nature over time. Because LUMO guides its users to recognize their own body in space, it is most successful as a tool when it is rendered obsolete.

When designers in wearables put less focus on creating long-term relationships with users, they can create more meaningful value.

On Best Behavior
What does obsolescence mean for wearables? There are two strategies for approaching this problem. One, the creation of a range of low-cost wearable sensors; users choose from a selection and customize a device depending on what they want to track. The other is the development of a wearable with the capacity to track many changes, but that also allows users to determine exactly what dimension is relevant for them to monitor.

When developers in wearables put less focus on creating long-term relationships with users, they can deliver more meaningful value to users in the moment. Much like small children use a bevy of temporary "training cups" before they ultimate graduate to a "big kid" cup, adults might also have all sorts of disposable wearables that help them reach the next stage of their skill development. The future of wearables is not about creating the single best product for all eternity. The greatest tools will acknowledge our own idiosyncratic metrics and ultimately put us back in touch with our own intuitions. And, just like all those discarded sippy cups, their very success will ultimately render them obsolete.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
The Best Wearables Will Be The Ones You Throw Away

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The market for wearable electronics seems to be exploding: forecasters estimate that we will see growth at a compound annual rate of 35% over the next five years with 148 million units shipped by 2019. The data appears impressive until you consider that only two years ago forecasters were predicting shipments of twice that amount-over 300 million by 2018.

# data[].attributes.headline
Digital could revive the UK's dying political system

# data[].attributes.subject
Digital could revive the UK's dying political system

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
The UK's political system is dying, but digital technology offers an alternative

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Politicians can reverse the public's disenchantment with politics, but only once they fully embrace the digital age

# data[].attributes.headline
Tech thought piece by Havas global head of strategy

# data[].attributes.subject
Tech thought piece by Havas global head of strategy

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
This is because it was advertisement feature content that was published as part of a commercial deal and funded by an advertiser.

It is Guardian News and Media policy to take down paid-for content at the end of these deals.

Click here for more on our commercial content guidelines.

If you want to contact someone about the page, you can email:
paid-content@theguardian.com

To continue reading, please visit the Guardian's home page.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
This page has been removed | The Guardian

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
This is because it was advertisement feature content that was published as part of a commercial deal and funded by an advertiser. It is Guardian News and Media policy to take down paid-for content at the end of these deals. Click here for more on our commercial content guidelines.

# data[].attributes.headline
Alarm clock unveiled targeting individual users

# data[].attributes.subject
Alarm clock unveiled targeting individual users

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
In the ongoing battle against oversleeping, humanity has devised some clever, elaborate, and downright sadistic alarm clocks. We've seen everything from wake-up lights that monitor your sleep cycle and determine the best time to wake you to high-volume klaxons that only shut off when you enter a disarm code. But for all their clever designs, most alarm clocks still suffer from a common drawback: the fact that they're not designed for multiple users.

When one person's alarm goes off, the person sleeping next to them has no choice but to wake up too. Most alarm clocks have no way to selectively wake up one person and leave the other person undisturbed. Until now, that is.

Freshly launched on Kickstarter this week, Wakē is a new breed of alarm that can intelligently target individual users and wake up one sleeper without rousing the other.

Here's how it works. After it's mounted to the wall above the bed, the device uses an infrared temperature sensor and special body-tracking software to discern where each person is lying (without a camera, mind you). When it's time to wake one person up, Wakē silently takes aim, rotates into position, and then directs a tight burst of light and sound at their face.

To keep from rousing the other sleeper, the device uses a set of parametric speakers capable of focusing sound into a narrow beam. Think of it as a spotlight for noise. If Wakē is pointed straight at your head you'll hear it loud and clear, but if you're outside of the beam's small radius, the sound will be extremely faint.

And that's just one of the tricks this thing has up its sleeve. While the device is primarily designed to be used as an alarm clock, Wakē's creators, Lucera Labs, have dreamt up a few other functions that could be added in future firmware updates. With some clever programming, Wake could track your sleep patterns to determine when you're in REM, then hit you with an auditory cue that helps trigger lucid dreaming. How awesome would that be?!

You can currently lock down a Wakē alarm for a pledge of $250 on Kickstarter. If all goes well, Lucera Labs expects to ship the first batch sometime in September.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Wake Alarm Clock Can Target Individual Sleepers | Digital Trends

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
In the ongoing battle against oversleeping, humanity has devised some clever, elaborate, and downright sadistic alarm clocks. We've seen everything from wake-up lights that monitor your sleep cycle and determine the best time to wake you to high-volume klaxons that only shut off when you enter a disarm code.

# data[].attributes.headline
Best tech AFD gags according to Venture Beat

# data[].attributes.subject
Best tech AFD gags according to Venture Beat

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Yes, it's April Fools' Day. And yes, that means that every corporate comedian (not an oxymoron, apparently!) is shoveling out their fake-product-launch-gag things today.

Har-har.

One is tempted to be cynical that in a world of otherwise scarce resources. Corporations now have near-limitless money and time to devote to the conception of fake products and to the creation of heavily-produced videos to execute their gags.

But instead, one shall cast such cynicism aside, and just roll with it. Because one no doubt needs to lighten up and not be such an old crank who is pooping on others' party and yukking their yums, and so forth and so on.

Because even though fake product creation is now a year-round industry, and even though people are pitching joke web services on a daily basis, well, we all still need a good laugh now and then. It's a pretty grim world, after all. And so, we shall submit to the forced frivolity of this day, even as every instinct causes us to emit barely audible groans each time a new prank appears in our newsfeed, and causes our eyes to roll back to such degrees that we were not previously aware were physically possible.

Here then, are the very best of the least-worst gags that we have seen thus far. The associated Google round-up is here, by the way, since the search giant has now decided that April Fools' Day is on March 31 and rolled out its obligatory gags yesterday. Or maybe that was a meta joke on the joke? Okay, our heads are starting to hurt.

Back to the gags.
Moto Selfie Stick
Not bad, actually. Motorola treats the selfie-stick with Jony Ive-like reverance. "It's one of the most practical and useful accessories around. It's like when the sun turns the rain into a rainbow."
Hailo Piggyback Service
"We want people to really question what it means to travel from A to B."
UberLIONS in NYC
From the fake blog post: "Today, we're partnering with Nat Geo Wild, the network from National Geographic, to bring you the wildest campaign yet- UberLIONS -on-demand lion cubs! That's right, with just a tap of a button you could be petting and playing with a real live lion cub."

Side note: There is a serious side to this one. Uber wants you to make a donation to help save real lions:

"In addition to applying the code LIONCUBS, you can also make a direct donation. Text 'Lions' to 50555 to donate $10 toward National Geographic's ground conservation projects."
UberFLY in Bangalore
Guess every Uber city is going to pump one out today. There's UberEllie in South Africa to ride-share elephants. Frankly, not sure we get this one. Probably a Bangalore thing. But, whatever. When you raise $5 billion in funding in one year, nobody is asking too many questions about your budget.
Sphero's new fake Latin American Cartoon series
These guys make these little robotic balls. Honestly, I don't get this. If you do, please explain in the comments below.
CERN confirms existence of The Force
Power nerds make funny: "Researchers at the Large Hadron Collider just recently started testing the accelerator for running at the higher energy of 13 TeV, and already they have found new insights into the fundamental structure of the universe. Though four fundamental forces - the strong force, the weak force, the electromagnetic force, and gravity - have been well documented and confirmed in experiments over the years, CERN announced today the first unequivocal evidence for the Force. 'Very impressive, this result is,' said a diminutive green spokesperson for the laboratory."
Microsoft's MS-DOS for mobile
Might be funnier of Microsoft had more than 1 percent in mobile OS market share, but: "Whether you're going back to BASIC, or simply booting into DOS for the first time, MS-DOS Mobile marks the next step in Microsoft's reinvention of productivity."
Goodreads new dating app: KINDLR
Yo: "Like everything else we do at Goodreads, KINDLR was a passion project from start to finish. Several members of the Goodreads team are single and dating in San Francisco, and they were getting a little too familiar with profile photos of girls in fake mustaches and guys cradling baby tigers or dancing shirtless at Burning Man. 'We realized that we'd need to either change our lifestyles, or change the way that we date,' says Project Manager Andreas Ernst."
Bing offers new palm and mind-reading service
Um...: "If you're using a PC, laptop or tablet, visit the Bing homepage and use Palm Search by placing your hand against the screen and simply think about what you'd like to search for."
Hinge: Playdates for toddlers
Social dating app Hinge already reckons it can take on Tinder, but now it's thrown down the gauntlet by introducing a new unique vertical - playdates for toddlers. If you're aged 2-5, you can now arrange play-dates through mutual friends as of now.
LinkedIn Magic Mirrors
With Magic Mirror, LinkedIn is bringing "professional" photo filters to the mix, as it looks to help "reveal your hidden career dreams." You simply upload a profile picture, click, and you'll be told what your secret career ambitions really are. It considers elements such as location, all the majors you switched in college, career history, games of pretend you played as a kid, and more. It's all very clever stuff.
Hulu Pets
Hulu Pets doesn't involve watching cats and dogs jiggling around with a hoop around their waists, though we wish it did. No, this is a new video-streaming offering from Hulu aimed squarely at all your furry little friends.

It features "premium content and originals," with Hulu guaranteeing that "tails will be wagging in front of the TV screen for weeks and months to come!"

http://www.hulu.com/watch/772214

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
The best of tech's April Fools' gags: Hailo Piggyback, hand-crafted selfie sticks, UberLIONS

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Yes, it's April Fools' Day. And yes, that means that every corporate comedian (not an oxymoron, apparently!) is shoveling out their fake-product-launch-gag things today. Har-har. One is tempted to be cynical that in a world of otherwise scarce resources. Corporations now have near-limitless money and time to devote to the conception of fake products and to the ...

# data[].attributes.headline
Aluminium battery could charge smartphones in 1 minute

# data[].attributes.subject
Aluminium battery could charge smartphones in 1 minute

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Aluminium battery can charge phone in one minute, scientists say

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
US scientists hail breakthrough in technology they say could provide safer, more convenient, greener alternative for laptops and mobiles

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
The digital picture frame is a gadget that hasn't reached its full potential. Most are chintzy devices that can do little more than project endless slideshows and a visual aesthetic that would feel at home in the SkyMall catalog. What's worse, many still require you to hassle with USB cords and SD cards to feed them images. Today a startup called Electric Objects is setting out to change that. It's taken the basic concept of the digital picture frame and reimagined it as something bigger and more ambitious, a smart, internet-connected screen that was built as a platform for showcasing great art.

Electric Objects is the brainchild of Jake Levine, a former Betaworks employee who helped lead the resurrection of Digg. Levine was inspired by thinkers from Xerox Parc, who predicted back in the 1990s that the PC era would be followed by an era of "calm technology" in which computing would happen at the periphery of our awareness. "For the last 40 years computers have been about increasing our productivity or letting us play games," says Levine. "We're building an ambient computer that contributes to your environment even if you don't interact with it."
"An ambient computer that contributes to your environment even if you don't interact with it.
After raising $1.7 million in venture capital to hire an initial team and putting the first hundred or so prototypes into the wild for testing, Electric Objects is launching a Kickstarter today to give anyone the chance to own a device called EO1. For $299, backers get a 23-inch, 1080p display with a white or black frame and a wall mount. The screen has no glass cover, an attempt to keep glare to an absolute minimum. Inside is a dual core processor with 2GB of RAM running a modified version of Android that does little more than launch a bare browser window to render images, animations, and web-based visualizations. Bill Cowles, who manages the hardware for Electric Objects, says the current prototype consumes as much electricity each day as the average light bulb, and that even if you leave a single image on for days, it won't suffer from screen burn. The team is meeting with suppliers and manufacturing partners and will have to make some adjustments on the final parts and specs based on the final number of orders from the Kickstarter project.

The device will have an ambient light sensor, so it will become brighter when exposed to direct sunlight and dim so as not to overwhelm a dark room with its glow. It can be set to turn on and off at a certain time, and it has a few simple social features built in - you could set your screen to follow what's displayed on a friend's, for example. But overall it's not a super smart box, and that is kind of the point. You set the artwork using the company's website or mobile app and then, well, then you don't do anything. The device is something more than a screen but less than a tablet: you can't control it through touch, and while you could change the image as often as you like, the idea is to interject a little permanence into lives filled with far too many Twitter streams and browser tabs. "The user should be able to keep their distance from it," explains Levine. "Interaction turns it back into a computer. Distance helps preserve the kind of relationship we have with physical works of art."

For folks who can't afford the real thing, EO1 is an easy way to get a nice variety of classic and contemporary art on your wall. At launch, a partnership with the New York Public Library will let users subscribe to packages of classical paintings and prints. But where the company really hopes the device will shine is displaying internet art, so it will also feature selections from the Museum of the Moving Image and the Betaworks startups Giphy and Digg that aim to showcase the best in highbrow animated GIFs. "There is a lot of great art being created on the internet and for the internet today, but no way for people to really showcase and savor it," Levine says. "Images are trapped on tiny phones or mixed in with a million tabs on your laptop. This device is purpose-built to make internet art look great."

The team made sure the EO1 runs Javascript well so that artists could create works that aren't just static images or looped animations, but dynamic internet artworks. "There are sensors all over our home and in our devices that are constantly gathering data" said Jacob Bijani, a former Tumblr developer who heads up Electric Objects' software side. "We wanted EO1 to be able to display art that changes in real-time based on that stimulus." Imagine a painting that changes to reflect the upcoming weather, or melts at a certain rate based on the temperature outside. Since the idea is to have pieces remain on-screen for long periods of the time, the team recommends artworks that have subtle changes, like a gently shifting forest or endlessly shimmering sunset.

The company is also trying to create its own community of creators who are making original works created just for Electric Objects, and has hired Zoë Salditch, formerly of the digital arts organization Rhizome, to manage relationships with independent artists and galleries. The EO1 will initially only be available in portrait orientation and a 16:9 aspect ratio, so that anyone creating for it won't have to worry about multiple form factors. Levine and the Electric Object team have a running joke that any decision they make about the shape and size will "act as a creative constraint to further inspire the artists."
"The irony is not lost on me  -  that in 2014 our idea of an exploration is a return to what for centuries has been the norm."
The company says it will have its own app store of sorts, where it will showcase new offerings from artists for users to download. "People can use this for family photos, of course, but based on what we feature, we're going to be pushing to create a community that's more focused on art," says Levine. In the app store vein, the company will also be launching with an open API that it hopes will "inspire developers and artists to show us what they would do with a quiet, peripheral, ambient, always-on, connected screen."

Around 100 beta testers have been using the device, and Levine says many enjoy how little functionality it has compared to their phone or laptop. "The participants in this experiment are a living lab, an exploration into a new form of attention, one that's been neglected by our always-be-updating, permission-to-send-you-notifications connected world," Levine wrote in a blog post. "The irony is not lost on me  -  that in 2014 our idea of an exploration is a return to what for centuries has been the norm: stillness, silence, contemplation."

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Electric Objects wants to hang the best of the internet on your wall

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The digital picture frame is a gadget that hasn't reached its full potential. Most are chintzy devices that can do little more than project endless slideshows and a visual aesthetic that would feel at home in the SkyMall catalog. What's worse, many still require you to hassle with USB cords and SD cards to feed them images.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Google Ventures is leading a $12 million investment in CoreOS, a tiny startup that's changing the way modern web applications are built and maintained.

The startup will also use a recently released Google technology called Kubernetes in one of its own products, which is aimed at helping companies run their data centers more efficiently.

CoreOS makes a super-lightweight version of the free Linux operating system, which reduces the amount of hardware you need to run applications in big data centers. That's made it popular among software developers looking to do more with less.

For a while there, CoreOS was tight with Docker, one of the hottest startups in Silicon Valley, and it's no surprise why - they both had the mission of taking apps and putting them into what we call " containers."

Think of containers as a metaphor. Shipping yards put goods into a bunch of shipping containers all the same shape and size because it makes them easy to stack onto boats.

In the same way, containers let you take an application (an email server, a blogging platform, whatever) and whatever else it needs to run and throw it into a standard virtual "box." You can put this box on your own servers in your own data center, or upload it to Amazon's or Microsoft's or Google's cloud service and it'll run the exact same way, without the extra effort of having to struggle with it to make it work. It's all self-contained. (Hence, "containers.")

CoreOS made a version of Linux that went into these boxes, and Docker made the boxes themselves.

But Docker and CoreOS had a falling out late last year. A container on its own doesn't really do much, it needs to be overseen and managed. Docker wanted to sell this management technology as well.

CoreOS had an issue with what it saw as Docker getting too big for its britches, and made its displeasure clear with the public launch of Rocket, a competitor to Docker. Suddenly, developers had two options for building those self-contained apps-in-boxes.

Meanwhile, Google has quietly been using containers in its own huge data centers for many years now. As Docker made containers popular to the rest of the world, Google released some of its own technology for managing them, dubbed Kubernetes, for free. Kubernetes seen some uptake in both the CoreOS Rocket and Docker communities.

Today, in addition to the funding, CoreOS is announcing a new product called Tectonic, which combines the CoreOS operating system and the Rocket container technology and a management system for those containers based on Google's Kubernetes into one package.

"With Kubernetes, we have a complete platform," says CoreOS CEO Alex Polvi.

It's also the first purely commercial product that CoreOS has: The operating system and Rocket containers are both free; the company sells consulting and support services to make money. This whole Tectonic platform, though, will cost enterprise clients some cash.

Why is Google so interested? Because Kubernetes is supported by Google's own Cloud Platform, where applications can be run at high scales. A customer using Tectonic would likely be attracted to the Google Cloud Platform, since it wouldn't require them to change anything at all to get it running at large scale.

While both the Microsoft Azure and Amazon Web Services clouds do support Kubernetes, reigning cloud champion Amazon Web Services primarily publicizes its own products for managing containers.

This may be too early to say, but the fact that CoreOS is opening some doors for Google Cloud Platform could make CoreOS an attractive acquisition for Google.

Other investors in the round include Kleiner Perkins, Fuel Capital, and Accel Partners.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Google bets big on this little tech startup

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Google Ventures is leading a $12 million investment in CoreOS, a tiny startup that's changing the way modern web applications are built and maintained. The startup will also use a recently released Google technology called Kubernetes in one of its own products, which is aimed at helping companies run their data centers more efficiently.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Consumer confidence levels have steeply inclined for the last three months, with a three-point jump for March, according to the latest consumer index figures from GfK.

GfK's UK Consumer Confidence Index has increased three points this month to 4, making the Index the highest it has been for over a decade.

All five measures used to calculate the Index saw an increase this month. The 'Major Purchase Index', for example, has increased two points to -6, which is eight points higher than March 2014.

Nick Moon, managing director of social research at GfK, says: "At +4, the Index is the highest it has been for almost 13 years, and it has gone up a striking eight points in just three months.

"Reaction to the budget has this far been muted, but if people warm to it over the next few weeks then we may well see a further increase in the Index next month. A consistently rising Index in the run-up to the election is likely to be good news for the government."

The measure for the 'General Economic Situation' of the UK during the last 12 months has also increased four points this month to 1. This is 16 points more than March 2014.

Consumer optimism in the current economic climate is also reflected in a YouGov/Cebr Consumer Confidence Index. YouGov's data shows that 27% of consumers expect their household financial situations to improve over the next 12 months. This is the highest level it has been since March 2010, two month's before that year's general election.

The UK Consumer Confidence Survey from GfK was conducted with 2001 individuals aged 16+ on behalf of the European Commission.

In February, the high morale of the British consumer maintained January's five-month high, according to the latest UK consumer index figures from GfK.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Consumer confidence levels continue to grow through March

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Consumer confidence levels have steeply inclined for the last three months, with a three-point jump for March, according to the latest consumer index figures from GfK. GfK's UK Consumer Confidence Index has increased three points this month to 4, making the Index the highest it has been for over a decade.

# data[].attributes.headline
Startups pitching at TechCrunch meetup revealed

# data[].attributes.subject
Startups pitching at TechCrunch meetup revealed

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
The TechCrunch Meetup in Seoul presented by Campus Seoul is set for April 16 at the aA Design Museum and we're thrilled to announce the startups vying for your attention in the great pitch-off. We found a great group of interesting startups that might just have what it takes to make it, and we look forward to learning more about them next week.

If your startup didn't make the cut, don't worry - we're happy to talk to you about what you're working on at the event itself.

So, without further ado (drumroll please...) here are the pitch-off contestants that were selected from the hundreds that applied:

AKA Intelligence: deep-learning startup that built a Quantum machine learning system

AquaPowerGen: green-tech startup behind a hydrogen-powered engine

BBB: mobile health startup that enables blood tests from smartphones

Casual Steps: e-commerce site allowing Koreans to shop at overseas web stores

Iamcompany: service to help parents manage their children's school information

ROOT ENERGY: service promoting energy saving and green practices

Solidware: machine learning and risk assessment technology

Spacosa Corp: internet-of-things company that tracks the location of family and loved ones

Each startup will have two minutes to pitch their product or service. That will be followed by four minutes of questions from the judging panel, which will consist of TechCrunch editors and local startup figures.

In addition to the obvious prestige of winning, there are prizes on offer for the triumphant pitch-off contestants.

The winner will score space to demo their company in Startup Alley at a future TechCrunch Disrupt conference. Campus Seoul will give them the opportunity to participate in its global Campus Exchange in London.

The second-placed startup will take home two tickets to an upcoming Disrupt conference, while the third place company gets one Disrupt ticket.

We have also lined up a few interesting fireside chats with prominent local tech figures to round out the evening and provide insight to entrepreneurs and fledgling startups.

There are only a handful of tickets for the event left, so if you haven't already reserved your spot, now is the time to apply for tickets here.

That's not quite all. TechCrunch's Mike Butcher, Sam O'Keefe and I will take part in a discussion on creating startup ecosystem that generate global companies at Google Campus Seoul in the afternoon before the meet-up. You can reserve tickets for that event here - more details in Korean.

See you in Seoul!

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Meet The Startups That Will Pitch At The TechCrunch Meetup in Seoul

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The TechCrunch Meetup in Seoul presented by Campus Seoul is set for April 16 at the aA Design Museum and we're thrilled to announce the startups vying for your attention in the great pitch-off. We found a great group of interesting startups that might just have what it takes to make it, and we look...

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Research released today (31 March) showed that Disney, Tesco and Lego scored among the highest out of 250 UK brands for mobile optimisation across their websites and apps.

Brands were given a score based on 10 mobile KPI's. The study measured whether the brand has a mobile friendly site, responsive web design, or whether paid search is optimised, amongst other KPI's.

Along with the three brands, HSBC, Vodafone, Save the Children and EE all reached a score of nine.

Mike Reynold's senior mobile executive for the IAB, says: "In order for a brand to be classed as a 'star performer' they needed to have reached nine or above based on 10 different mobile KPI's.

"We marked the brands against their overall mobile presence, which is a good indicator of how forward thinking across mobile they are," he adds.

In general, brands have improved mobile presence across devices throughout industries. Currently, eight out of 10 of the leading brands have a mobile optimised site, half of which are responsively designed.

Across sectors, 94% of auto brands have a mobile optimised site, as well as 87% of travel brands and 72% of FMCG brands. Finance brands have significantly improved over the past 12 months. Only 58% used a data capture form on mobile in 2014, while this year only one finance brand out of those featured made the same mistake.

Retailers are struggling with apps. While 68% of the top 250 UK advertisers have an app, when looking at the retail sector specifically only 32% had a transactional app, this has only increased by 2% since June 2013.

Despite the surge, some brands still lag behind with no mobile presence. For example, 7% of retail brands, 9% of FMCG brands and 7% of travel brands still have no mobile presence.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Disney, Tesco and Lego are among top performing brands in mobile

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Research released today (31 March) showed that Disney, Tesco and Lego scored among the highest out of 250 UK brands for mobile optimisation across their websites and apps. Brands were given a score based on 10 mobile KPI's. The study measured whether the brand has a mobile friendly site, responsive web design, or whether paid search is optimised, amongst other KPI's.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
The social media platform is confident it can make a difference, with its recent study of 3,000 Twitter users (18-34) finding that one in three respondents (34%) have changed their vote from one party to another based on something they have seen on Twitter.

The study also showed that 45% of Twitter users aged 18-34 have become interested in or joined a political or social cause that they learned about through Twitter, while 47% have reconsidered their views on a specific issue as a result of using Twitter.

With what is expected to be one of the tightest parliamentary races in recent history, Geary believes Twitter will play a pivotal role in deciding our next government.

Is Twitter crucial to the day-to-day activities of politicians in 2015?

Well, 78% of members of parliament are now on the platform so there's massive levels of adoption. We have well over 15 million active users now and we see this as more of a Twitter election than 2010 as the big moments will break on our platform. We know we will see this as we saw it for the Scottish referendum. There were 7 million tweets on its hashtag and we expect more this time around.

How effective can Tweets actually be? And will they translate into votes?

If you look at the Indian elections, there were nearly no active Indian politicians on the platform but Narenda Modi figured out how to engage with voters on Twitter and it helped him get elected. He's now the second most followed politician behind Obama, who himself got elected in 2012 largely thanks to a pioneering social media strategy in the US.

In an era where people feel more disconnected from politicians than ever before, Twitter can be crucial in connecting people.

Politics has been famously dubbed 'Showbiz for ugly people' - how can politicians make their Twitter accounts stand out?

Authenticity matters and you must connect consistently with your constituency. If you read Boris Johnson's tweets he has a distinct voice and does regular Q&As. Stella Creasy also has bags of personality too. People will figure you out if it isn't coming from an authentic place.

How do you see this election playing out?

It's hard to call out but it isn't dissimilar to the Scottish Referendum as the outcome isn't clear and there will be big moments talked about through Twitter, with the televised debates, over the coming weeks. The smaller parties - UKIP, SNP and the Greens - have been really experimental with their tweets and it is interesting to see. Our research shows that individual candidates that get tweeted about more generate more votes, so it's up to the politicians to make every tweet count.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
'Twitter can be crucial to connecting people at this General Election'

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The social media platform is confident it can make a difference, with its recent study of 3,000 Twitter users (18-34) finding that one in three respondents (34%) have changed their vote from one party to another based on something they have seen on Twitter.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
In the 10 week period between 1 January and 10 March there were over 21 million interactions (posts, comments and Likes) across the UK linked to the General Election via Facebook.

Facebook's data showed that health was the most discussed election-related topic in 58% of UK constituencies (377 of the 650) during this period, with the economy and tax the second and third biggest topics of discussion respectively.

With the platform's most talked about topic in 2014 the Scottish Referendum, Elizabeth Linder, Facebook's government and politics specialist for the UK, explains why social media is now a necessity for UK politicians.

How much has Facebook grown since the 2010 General Election?

One is scale of conversation. We had 500 million active users in 2010, today we are looking at 1.39 billion. In the UK that is 35 million people and over 50% of the population. We've got 20 million using the platform every day via their smartphones in the UK too.

Does this growth make Facebook invaluable to the main political parties?

You are in a situation where you have a microcosm of the UK connected to a single platform. At the end of the day not everyone has time to attend a surgery so politicians can speak to their constituents a lot more easily and we've seen a rise in long form content too, with David Cameron posting lengthy opinion posts on policy.

What content in particular have you been impressed by?

I think making content that appeals to smartphone users is key. Labour showed a 6 second video of a graph populating to show NHS waiting times, which did really well on our platform. It was sophisticated as it worked perfectly with autoplay. Nick Clegg has also been great at communicating with other pages, whether that's Mental Health charities or others, and the Conservatives have done a lot to shed light on local issues, with MPS such as Steve Brine recording videos on road improvements.

With such a close vote expected, can Facebook push one of the main two parties over the line?

Definitely. Look, for so long politicians were in awe of the technology and that hindered their ability to speak to the people. I think 2015 is exciting as this is the year the leadership has wrapped their head around that potential and its ability to give politicians an authentic voice. Voters want a regular, honest voice, and MPs can do that on Facebook to great success.

In your role, you cover everything from political parties to local government organisations. What have you learnt in terms of what works?

The category that fascinates me in the UK is the police. Many police forces are using Facebook extraordinarily well and Staffordshire police did a study that showed more people trusted updates on Facebook than updates on radio or tv, and even a phone call. Politicians can learn a lot from that.

Young people want their leaders to have real authentic conversations with them, not to just preach.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Facebook on why this will be the conversational election

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
With the Conservatives spending over £100,000 a month on their Facebook page, the social media platform has become an important battle ground for politcians. Elizabeth Linder, Facebook's government and politics specialist for Europe, Middle East and Africa, tells Marketing Week why politicians can no longer ignore Facebook.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.provider_name
Netimperative - latest digital marketing news

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Over two-thirds of retailers believe their customers receive the best service online (either website, mobile or app) compared to 25% of retailers believing the best customer service comes from in-store, according to new research.

The global research commissioned by Dyn reveals the increasing dominance of online retail, as well as the impact of Internet Performance on sales and customer experience.

As purchases on mobile devices increase, it comes as no surprise that nearly all UK retailers are optimistic about the future of online shopping - 96% expect at least a 25% increase in online sales this year and half expect online sales will increase by 50%.

Whilst online shopping is on the rise, retailers are aware that the online experience needs to continue improving, particularly if they want to take advantage of the amount of online sales increasingly being driven by international shoppers. Key findings from the report reveal that:

* More than 57% of retailers think that one of the biggest things consumers want to see when shopping online is the same quality of experience, yet more than 76% admit that today the experience isn't consistent at all

* Over two-thirds of retailers believe their customers receive the best service online (either website, mobile or app) compared to 25% of retailers believing the best customer service comes from in-store

* Globally nearly 70% of consumers surveyed have bought from retailers located in other countries, offering UK retailers the opportunity to benefit from cross border commerce as the popularity of British brands abroad rises

In addition, mobile is making up a larger portion of total online revenue. A third of UK retailers found that half of their online sales in 2014 came from purchases made on mobile devices.

Therefore, it is no surprise that nearly all UK retailers are optimistic about the future of online shopping. 96% expect at least a 25% increase in online sales this year - and half expect online sales will increase by 50%, showing the growing awareness of ecommerce opportunities.
Global opportunities
UK retailers have found that online sales are largely driven by international shoppers. More than two-thirds of retailers surveyed said that between 25-50% of their sales originate from other countries.

Globally nearly 70% of consumers surveyed[2] have bought from retailers located in other countries, offering UK retailers the opportunity to benefit from cross border commerce as the popularity of British brands abroad rises. 85% also noted if it were faster and easier, they would consider doing it more often. Yet, three-quarters of retailers say that their customers' online shopping experience varies on where they are located.

Paul Heywood, MD EMEA, Dyn said: "Consumers are willing to spend their money with retailers who provide the best online experience. The expectation is regardless of where customers are geographically located. Retailers must continue to work to make their customers' shopping experience faster and easier."
Barriers to online sales growth
Most retailers in the UK are acutely aware of one of the biggest problems stalling, or worse, squashing sales: 90% of those surveyed said their companies lose sales because of poor website performance at least 25% of the time; about half of those said this happens at least 50% of the time. After a slow online experience, 70% of retailers said they think consumers will immediately go to other avenues to complete a purchase-go to a direct competitor, search for another site or go to a physical store.

Poor website performance can also negatively impact a customer's lifetime value with that brand. UK retailers surveyed acknowledge that the speed and quality of website performance affects a consumer's trust in that company. In fact, about half of retailers believe that's the case, in step with the reality that 42% of consumers agree.
Winning the retail race

If retailers want to increase online sales, the online experience needs to improve. More than 57% of retailers think that one of the biggest things consumers want to see when shopping online is the same quality of experience, yet more than 76% admit that today the experience isn't consistent at all.

When asked where consumers expect to see improvements in the online shopping experience, perception and reality are at odds among IT executives and consumers surveyed in the UK. While finding what they are looking for faster is important to more consumers than a personalised experience, more IT executives are putting a greater emphasis on the latter.

On a positive note, IT executives are actively investing in new technologies to improve online and mobile shopping experiences. The top three areas of investment across the board are mobile app development (68%), Web/mobile traffic acceleration (58%) and geolocation capabilities for customers (44%).

Heywood said: "Online and mobile shopping is on-the-rise in the UK, providing online retailers with a tremendous opportunity to grow their revenue and global footprint - if they can meet consumer expectations. The research shows that perception among retailers is, in many cases, aligned with what consumers are expecting and experiencing when shopping online and on mobile devices. Perhaps the biggest challenge: most retailers don't have a clear understanding of exactly what's getting in the way of delivering the fast, easy and secure online and mobile shopping experiences that consumers have come to expect."

For the complete results of the survey visit: dyn.com/2015-global-retail-report

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Most retailers admit online customer service better than in-store | Netimperative - latest digital marketing news

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Over two-thirds of retailers believe their customers receive the best service online (either website, mobile or app) compared to 25% of retailers believing the best customer service comes from in-store, according to new research. The global research commissioned by Dyn reveals the increasing dominance of online retail, as well as the impact of Internet Performance ...

# data[].attributes.headline
Brands failing to provide mobile optimised experience

# data[].attributes.subject
Brands failing to provide mobile optimised experience

# data[].attributes.headline
Travel brands fail to provide engaging digital experiences

# data[].attributes.subject
Travel brands fail to provide engaging digital experiences

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
With the Easter holidays now in full swing many families are jetting off for a well-earned break. But while holidays were once a time to initiate a 'digital detox' and switch off from the outside world, nearly half of travellers now welcome the time and cost savings that technology can provide.

One fifth of travellers now use a mobile or tablet while abroad, with a further 28% quite likely to do so, according to a study of 2,000 UK adults by The Bio Agency.

Almost half (47%) turn to their digital devices for help saving money, which rises to 52% among those aged over 60.

Also important for 30% of respondents is the chance to save time and avoid queuing, while 26% seek to find a more tailored experience by using digital technology. Those aged 18-30 are the most keen to personalise their holiday with a third of travellers in this demographic suggesting that a more bespoke trip would enhance their time away.

A quarter of travellers also use digital technology to access advice and suggestions from people who have been to the same destination previously.

However, while some sectors are already taking advantage of increasingly connected holidaymakers, the study reveals that the travel industry is failing to grasp the opportunity.

Of the brands that consumers list as providing a good digital experience while travelling, just eight of the top 20 are travel companies, none of which feature in the top five.

Thomson (6th), Expedia (8th) and EasyJet (9th) are the only travel brands to appear in the top 10, with Booking.com, Thomas Cook, British Airways and Virgin claiming places 15th-18th and Skyscanner coming in 20th.

"There is a real opportunity for brands to enhance travellers' experience in a really meaningful way, which they are just not doing today," says Peter Veash, CEO of The Bio Agency. "Travel brands are missing a trick because other brands are already coming in and starting to take that space."

It is reviews website TripAdvisor that claims the top spot in consumers' eyes, followed by social media and messenger brands Facebook (2nd), Whatsapp (4th) and Instagram (5th), with Google Maps coming in 3rd.

"Customers want help digitally. They don't always want to have to go and search for things. There is enough sophistication with technology now to make those decisions and enhance the customer experience but travel companies just aren't doing it," he adds.

Although 19% of consumers say they don't plan to use digital technology while they're away, with an additional 13% considering abstinence quite likely, the vast majority (69%) do expect hotels and resorts at their destination to offer free Wi-Fi.

Most consumers (60%) would also like to use technology to help them track the location of their luggage at the airport, and 56% want to be able to check-in online via an app. Over a third (38%) would also be interested in translation apps to help them communicate abroad, all of which are areas travel brands could explore.

Ahead of booking a holiday consumers are already more reliant on digital technology as 68% use it to research a trip and 65% make a booking via a connected device.

Just 7% use a mobile to make the booking, however, with 63% still opting to do so via a desktop computer. Considering mobile now accounts for 50% of all ecommerce traffic, according to a separate study by Shopify last year, the travel sector is again falling behind. Being comfortable with making such a high-value transaction on a mobile is probably a factor, as the price of a holiday is likely to be significantly more than the average purchase from an online retailer.

A fifth (20%) of over-60s still prefer to visit bricks-and-mortar travel agents when parting with cash for a trip and would appreciate more 'human' technology that recognises them and recalls their purchase history. By contrast, just 7% of 18- to 30-year-olds still use travel agents, with 74% instead preferring to go online.

Consumers' reliance on digital technology is only set to increase, both ahead of a holiday and on arrival, but travel brands are not yet there to meet them online. At present it is the digitally-native businesses that are winning consumers' attention abroad, so unless travel companies want to get left behind they need to start creating more engaging digital opportunities.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Travel companies failing to provide digital destinations

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
With the Easter holidays now in full swing many families are jetting off for a well-earned break. But while holidays were once a time to initiate a 'digital detox' and switch off from the outside world, nearly half of travellers now welcome the time and cost savings that technology can provide.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
RED Driving School has today announced plans to offer customers lessons for driverless vehicles, following government investment into driverless technology.

Alongside regular driving lessons, pupils who want to use driverless cars can start taking instruction with us from May 1 2015.

We are the first driving school in the country to offer driverless lessons after it was announced by the government that trials for driverless vehicles would take place in Greenwich, Bristol, Milton Keynes and Coventry.

With plans for further driverless expansion nationwide over the next 12 months, we've made additional training for driverless vehicles mandatory for all instructors.

CEO of RED Driving School Ian McIntosh said: 'The investment by the government shows that driverless technology is an inevitable part of our future. As a leading driving school, we are embracing the technology and want to ensure we are offering all of our customers the choice to have lessons for manual, automatic and driverless vehicles.

'We anticipate huge demand for driverless lessons. For all driverless pupils, we can't emphasise enough the importance of road safety and it's imperative that everyone who operates a driverless vehicle takes specialist driving lessons to ensure they fully understand how to operate the new technology.'

Speaking about the skills required to pass the driverless practical test, McIntosh said: 'The driverless lessons will focus on how to operate the vehicle, new technologies and road safety practice.'

In March, Chancellor George Osborne gave financial backing to driverless technology, pledging to invest £100 million into the industry. The same figure is expected to be matched by businesses, to help fund research and development on the computer and telecoms systems needed to make the cars a reality.

The Chancellor said the money would help the UK's 'brilliant automotive industry... to stay ahead in the race to driverless technology', with Secretary for Business Vince Cable claiming the investment 'will help to ensure we are world-leaders in this field and able to benefit from what is expected to be a £900 billion industry by 2025.'

To book your driverless lessons visit www.reddrivingschool.com or call 0330 332 2680

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
RED Driving School to offer lessons for driverless cars - RED Driving School

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
RED Driving School has today announced plans to offer customers lessons for driverless vehicles, following government investment into driverless technology. Alongside regular driving lessons, pupils who want to use driverless cars can start taking instruction with us from May 1 2015. We are the first driving school in the country to offer driverless lessons after it ...

# data[].attributes.headline
Best and worst tech pranks from April Fool's 2015

# data[].attributes.subject
Best and worst tech pranks from April Fool's 2015

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
The game is accessible on desktop computers and on the Google Maps app and allows users to play the famous game around the world's most recongisable streets or your own neighbourhood.

At some famous locations, such as the area around the Taj Mahal and the Arc de Triomphe,, Google has added a Pacman marker that also launches the game because the areas appear perfectly matched to the original Pacman layout.

In a blog post explaining the game, Michelle Luo, product manager at Google, said: "With local place information and Street View, it's easier than ever before to find where you're going but there's never been anything to let you know where not to go. With this update, we've added imagery of dangerous virtual beings, starting with Pinky, Blinky, Inky and Clyde.

"When navigating fruit-filled streets, determine at a glance which turns to pass to evade ghosts and get where you're going safely. When you're feeling a bit peckish, you can simply gobble up a few pac-dots or a cherry and keep on nommin'."

Play Pac-Man on your own street this April Fools' Day

#ChromeSelfie
Should you boot up Google's web browser Chrome on your mobile today, you might be in for a bit of a shock. Another clever prank is #ChromeSelfie, which allows you to snap an unflattering selfie and share it in reaction to an open tab on Chrome.

com.google
If you've ever wondered what Googling in a parallel universe would look like, wonder no more. Google has launched a backward version of its search portal, . All results are flipped in a mirror image, making for disorientating reading.

Living in a parallel universe: com.google's results page

Smartbox by Inbox
Yet another Google gag, Smartbox by Inbox presents a "better, smarter mailbox that fuses physical mail with everything you love about the electronic kind."

Amazon.com goes retro
In a stroke of genius, Amazon.com has gone retro by reverting its homepage to how it looked circa 1999. The page reverts to the current itteration after around 30 seconds, but it's a pleasant return to times gone by.

Amazon.com circa 1999: a simpler time

Amazon has chosen today to push surreal new product Dash Button, a plastic WiFi-enabled branded controller that allows you to order a new box of washing powder or pack of razors at the push of a button. Amazon have confirmed to us that the Dash Button is indeed a legmitimate product that will be free to Amazon Prime members based in the US and not an April Fools' Day jape, but stranger things have happened.

Amazon Dash Button: not a joke

PlayStation Flow
Taking wearable tech and virtual reality to a whole new level, PlayStation's witty April Fool combines gaming with actual swimming in what it calls "a watershed moment in wearable tech".

"When you get to an underwater section of a game like The Last of Us Remastered you can hit pause, head to your nearest pool, dive in and resume playing through PlayStation Flow," the company said. Four PlayStation flow sensors connected to your biceps and thighs track your swimming movements, and the PlayStation Flow Body Dryer is the perfect way to dry off afterward. Very good.

Domino's Pizza's Domi-No-Driver
Tapping into the current obsession with driverless vehicles, Domino's were swift to send out a press release boasting how their customers would soon have their pizzas delivered by the world's first autonomous delivery vehicle, capable of carrying "400 per cent more pizza thanks to 100 per cent less driver". Sure.

Once a customer has placed an order, their location will be tracked by the Domi-No-Driver for the entirety of its journey via GPS - at home or on the go, the Domino's team said. The on-board P.I. (Pizza Interface) system will then calculate the most efficient route of delivery, while its H.U.N.G.A.R. system (Hunger Detection And Ranging) will detect real time obstacles, ensuring maximum safety for road users.

The "Domi-No-Driver"

Learn dog barking as a language via Groupon
Dedicated dog walker, Hannah Howard, 30, from Bromley, Kent, learnt to speak dog after taking an online e-learning course from Groupon, helping her to 'truly understand' what her dog was saying.

Developed by the Pet Auditory Welfare Service, (PAWS), the course analysed over 2,000 different barks from 150 different breeds of dogs to interpret the length, cadence and pitch of both individual barks and 'phrases' to develop a dialect that humans could recreate in order to communicate with their dogs.

Microsoft's MS-DOS Mobile
Microsoft have teased something many of us would actually want - a version of MS-DOS for mobile. The new OS, designed especially for Lumias, allows you to run a number of already installed applications, while the sleuths amongst you will delight in uncovering a few extra special features - all through the medium of the much-loved C:/ prompt, according to the company.

"MS-DOS Mobile allows us to look proudly back, while at the same time moving us defiantly forwards," said Tom Messett of the Microsoft Lumia marketing team. "It's simple, effective productivity re-imagined through the medium of DOS. "

Lumias running MS-DOS

Office is also getting in on the act, showcasing three new products: PowerPounce, OneNap and Meow.

Download #OfficeforCats today! 3 brand-new products for your furry friends: PowerPounce, OneNap and Meow. pic.twitter.com/WLL5jz0Efr
- Office (@Office) April 1, 2015

Uber for Tinder/Tinder for Uber
In what we sincerely hope is an April Fools, we present to you Uber for Tinder and Tinder for Uber, and what is quite possibly the death of romance. Automatically request an Uber to go and meet up with your new love interest with the former, or "make a Tinder match with an Uber driver and he'll split the fare with you" with the latter. Charming.

Immediately summon an Uber to meet up with your new Tinder match...

...Or split the fare of an Uber with your new love match driver

Contactless gnomes from Barclaycard
Fancy turning anything you own, such as your guitar or favourite gnome, into a contactless payment device by embedding a chip into it? Well you can't, because Barclaycard just made it up.

Pay for goods with a gnome or your guitar? Well you can't.

"Since we made wristbands, gloves and donkey rides contactless last year we've been inundated with requests from customers asking us to make all sorts of things into a way to pay," Katherine Whitton, chief marketing officer at Barclaycard allegedly said. "We want to give consumers the ability to pay in the way they want so, with innovation at the core of our business, we've developed purpose-built kiosks where they can turn anything into a contactless payment device."

Gnome-scanning: not the future

CSS Fragrances from Allies Technology

This one's cleverer than most we received, but still a stretch of the imagination. "Over the years web developers have found new and better ways to serve audio and video content online. Now you can delight your website visitors' olfactory senses as well as their visual and auditory ones," claims Allies Technology.

The 'scents' available to download as CCS files before adding as classes to your site's HTML include petrol, gunpowder, sea air and wet dog, which the company hopes will be eventually inserted into the "AromaBase developed for the now defunct Google Nose." Nice try.

April Fools' Day: Best video pranks of 2015

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
April Fools' Day: the best (and worst) tech pranks of 2015

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The game is accessible on desktop computers and on the Google Maps app and allows users to play the famous game around the world's most recongisable streets or your own neighbourhood.

# data[].attributes.body
From Feb

# data[].attributes.body
From mid-march...

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
This is your chance to join the BBC Earth Capture community and tell your stories on BBC Earth.

We're seeking your stunning photos and inspiring short films of the wonderful world around you. We will then help share your world, with the world, in front of a BBC Earth audience of millions.

Our inaugural challenge is titled: Extraordinary, in honour of the amazing image of the weasel and the woodpecker.

Interpret the challenge how you wish. Show us your skills, experiences, and celebrate life on this planet. It's up to you.

We will share the best contributions on BBC Earth itself, under BBC Earth Capture, and on BBC Earth on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter, where you can share and comment on each other's work, and use the hashtag #EarthCapture.
HOW TO DO IT
You can join by using the entry form above, which will allow you to upload photographs and films taken on any digital camera.

Or you can join by downloading the BBC Earth Capture app for smartphones.

To download the app for Android phones click this link: BBC Earth Capture for Android.

To download the app for Apple phones click this link: BBC Earth Capture for Apple.

IMPORTANT: Please do not endanger yourself or others, take any unnecessary risks or break any laws when creating content you may share with the BBC.
The entry form above is supported by Internet Explorer 10 and above, Chrome, Firefox and Safari. If you experience any technical difficulties using the Earth Capture smartphone app and web entry form, please email Seenit at help@seenit.io

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
This is your chance to join the BBC Earth Capture community and tell your stories on BBC Earth. We're seeking your stunning photos and inspiring short films of the wonderful world around you. We will then help share your world, with the world, in front of a BBC Earth audience of millions.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Hellmann's is launching a campaign in response to a Facebook comment from a fan who described the mayonnaise as "one of the greatest things ever created".

With a global media spend of £15m, the campaign is Hellmann's biggest investment in over decade and marks the start of an ongoing strategy to create a unified global voice for the brand.

Developed by Ogilvy & Mather London, the TV ad shows the Facebook post which sparked the activity before asking if it is really better than the lightbulb, rollercoaster faces or the internet.

It ends on the tagline: "The greatest thing ever created. Apparently."

Responses to social media comments on the brand are set to appear in multiple media across multiple markets, including cinema and online, throughout the remainder of 2015.

Julian Nichols, senior global brand director for the Unilever-owned brand, said: "It's humbling to see the many amazing things that people all over the world say about Hellmann's. Sharing the love people express in a humble and playful way is at the heart of our new global campaign idea and we are excited to watch it develop".

In recent years it has ramped up its focus on social media. The previous brand campaign, 'Life Hacks', took to YouTube and Facebook with a series of videos on what people could make from an empty jar.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Hellmann's responds to Facebook post with £15m campaign

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Hellmann's is launching a campaign in response to a Facebook comment from a fan who described the mayonnaise as "one of the greatest things ever created". With a global media spend of £15m, the campaign is Hellmann's biggest investment in over decade and marks the start of an ongoing strategy to create a unified global voice for the brand.