Some people leave lights, music or the TV on when they’re away from home in an attempt to ward off burglars, but a new Alexa skill called “Away Mode” has a different idea. Instead of lights and noises, you can keep your home safe from unwanted visitors by playing lengthy audio tracks that sound like real – and completely ridiculous – conversations.
When you launch Away Mode, Alexa will play one of seven audio tracks penned by comedy writers from SNL, It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, and UCB.
These include gems like “Couple Has Breakup While Also Trying to Watch TV,” “Two Average Guys Brainstorm What’s Unique About Themselves So They Can Start a Podcast About It,” “Emergency PTA Meeting To Discuss Memes, Fidget Spinners, and Other Teen Fads,” and more.
There are conversations from a book club where no one discusses the book, a mom walking her daughter through IKEA assembly over the phone, a stay-at-home mom losing her s***, and argument over a board game.
For example, the mom can be heard yelling things like: “For the love of god! Cadence! No. No! Okay, it looks like someone should put their listening ears on! Momma’s gonna count to three!”
A would-be podcaster pitches his friend: “Okay. You know how much I love ketchup, right?”
The board game players argue: “Hand me the rulebook! The other rulebook! That’s the rules reference…. No, it’s in the learn-to-play guide. That’s the quick reference!”
The mom gives IKEA instructions: “You put the cylinders into the holes. No, wait. Yeah. You put the cylinders into the holes. You see ’em? Good. Well, wait, hold on a sec. I think I missed a step. Now it’s saying you put that piece on what looks like a fully built dresser. When did that happen?”
After enabling the skill on your Alexa device, you can cycle through the various conversations by saying “Next.”
The idea for this wacky skill comes from the folks at homeowners’ insurance startup Hippo Insurance, who are using it as a means to get a little free advertising. (Score!)
Explains the company, you can turn the volume up and leave your apartment, knowing that any potential burglar will be scared off by “thinking that someone is still at home who is absolutely insufferable.”
The tracks themselves are around an hour or so long, so Away Mode makes more sense for those times you’re out running errands, but can’t take the place of things like timers that turn off and on lights while away on vacation, for example.
We tried the skill ourselves, and it worked as advertised – though we didn’t listen to the full tracks. (We should also note that one Amazon Skill Store review talks about the skill not responding to voice prompts, but the skill doesn’t ask you to choose a number, as the reviewer says – they must have found it while still in testing.)
We asked the company for a few more details about Away Mode, including the comedy writers’ names and how that came about, but they haven’t yet sent any answers. Hopefully that’s because they’re focused on their actual business, and not their marketing stunt.
As employers duke it out over hiring the best possible candidates, especially ones coming out of school, they are starting to get a little bit more creative with their incentive packages — and that includes offering an option for paying down student debt.
Goodly is a new startup that’s looking to help those employers offer that as a benefit. Smaller companies without the resources to create complicated incentive packages especially need tools that help shortcut the process of offering those benefits. It’s following a similar playbook of companies looking to make it easier to get the tools they need in place and focus more on the set of products that are going to make it an actually differentiated company. Goodly is launching out of Y Combinator’s summer class this year.
“We found it to be a really great tool for recruiting and retaining,” co-founder Gregory Poulin said. “When people hear student loan benefits, they instantly think it’s very expensive. You can offer student loan benefits starting $25 to $50 per employee per month, up to $200. Our system is completely flexible. You can offer any company size for any budget. You can offer meaningful benefit for less than the cost of a cup of coffee a day. For the average borrower, when they have an employer contributing an extra $100 per months, it could help your average employee get out of debt almost a decade faster.”
There are more common benefits like stock packages, 401(k) matches, insurance, better time off policies, or others along those lines. But as student debt increasingly becomes a factor in a candidate’s decision on where they work, it’s another way that companies — ones without larger compensation packages or very aggressive recruiting operations like, say, Google or Facebook — can still get the attention and interest of good candidates coming out of school. Like other companies (like Human Interest for 401(k)s, for example), the goal is to make it easy to get started and maintain the whole process.
Employees connect their student loans to Goodly, which takes a few minutes to verify them before setting up the contribution plan. Goodly integrates with payroll operations and gives companies and employees a pretty flexible way to set their spending schedule. Then, it goes from there, without the employees having to manage it on a per-period basis. While it might have the robust tax incentives in place like a retirement plan, it’s still a way to help companies offer some way of showing employees that they’re invested in their employees’ future success, which is another way that those companies might be able to retain that talent. Goodly then brings back detailed reports on the company’s implementation to help it better understand whether the policies are working for their employees.
It’s certainly an area that’s attracted interest — and funding — from a number of startups like Tuition.io which look to help employers get a little more creative about their benefits. Much like contributions to retirement plans, it’s another way to offer employees a way to invest in their future by reducing the financial stress they have through some of their biggest financial decisions like where to go for college. Poulin also said it’s a way to help discover a more diverse talent pool as it surfaces up underrepresented parts of the population that are acutely dealing with student debt as a factor in their decision-making.
“I tried walking around in a Homer mask, but the latex is hard to breathe in. My head gets so sweaty and my glasses fog up. It’s not worth it for me,” Matt Groening laughs. “But what a way to go, suffocating on a Homer Simpson mask.”
The cartoonist bemoans his inability to go incognito on a recent trip to San Diego Comic-Con. It would be a poetic death, perhaps, asphyxiating beneath the likeness of his most iconic creation. But he doesn’t want to make the headline writers’ jobs too easy when he finally casts off this mortal coil.
“Years ago, there was an airline that did a promotion, where they painted The Simpsons on the side,” Groening adds. “We all drove out to give it a send off, and the entire crew got on the plane in Burbank and road it around in a circle and it came down. One other writer and I refused to get on the plane, because we didn’t want the jokes that would invariably come if the plane were to crash. That’s not how we wanted to be remembered.”
Groening in 2000. (Photo by Colin Davey/Getty Images)
The Simpsons will forever loom large over Groening’s existence. Spawning 30 seasons of a nearly universally beloved television program will do that to a legacy. And most recently, the show and its creator have been grappling with the topic of embattled character Apu — which he’s addressed with mixed results and was intent on not discussing on our call.
In recent weeks, the artist has been single-mindedly focused on Disenchantment, with one final promotional push before the series makes its mid-August Netflix debut.
The show has some seemingly impossible expectations to live up to as Groening’s third animated series. Its predecessor, Futurama, while failing the nearly impossible task of maintaining the ubiquity and longevity of The Simpsons, has become a beloved franchise in its own right, living on beyond its two-network running through constant syndication and an endless stream of memes.
In many ways, the series is Groening’s most ambitious to date, trading in the streets of Springfield and pneumatic tubes of New York for a fantasy world somewhere between Westeros and Middle Earth. It’s a genre he says he’s been looking to tackle for decades, but had never found the right outlet. And while the new series exists in a world familiar to fantasy fans, it rarely butts up against direct parody of beloved properties.
“I’ve been thinking about fantasy for a long time,” Groening says. “Some of my favorite forms of entertainment are fantasy, starting with Fractured Fairy Tales on the old Rocky and Bullwinkle show, to Monty Python and the Holy Grail to the original Wizard of Oz film and novels by Terry Pratchett and Gene Wolfe.”
Disenchantment is a tricky cocktail to get just right — a fairly tale adventure mixture, spiked with solid punch lines. “I try to incorporate all of that as inspiration and then try not to do straight parody,” says Groening. “The problem with comedy is that just getting the genre is very easy and only goes a little ways. So, what we do is try to get people on board with the fantasy characters and make them as emotional real as possible.”
An embarrassment of talent should help. The series is helmed by Groening and former Simpsons show runner, Josh Weinstein. Broad City star Abbi Jackson takes the lead as Bean, a drinking/gambling/cursing princess with a fittingly rebellious streak. Comedians Eric Andre and Nat Faxon fill out the primary leads as a “personal demon” named Luci and elf with the decided uninspired name, Elfo, respectively.
The rest of the cast is rounded out by a stack of British comedians from series like The Mighty Boosh and The Toast of London, along with mainstay voice actors from his previous series. Groening and Weinstein also poached liberally from the shows to stock the writers’ room.
“We have a writing staff that’s a combination of old guys from Futurama and The Simpsons and some younger writers who definitely have a different point of view,” says Groening. “They just don’t understand the appeal of old character actors from the 1930s and ’40s.”
All of that is rounded out by music from Devo mastermind Mark Mothersbaugh, whom Groening refers to fondly as “a Balkan-ska-klezmer combination that you’ve never heard before in a fantasy show.”
The real secret sauce, however, may be Netflix itself. Along with Amazon and Hulu, the platform has transformed the way television content is consumed, freeing Groening and the rest of the crew from television sitcom constrains that shaped his two previous series.
As Springfield Confidential, the new book from longtime Simpsons show runner Mike Reiss reveals, Groening has been interested in long-term character pay-off for some time. It was Groening who pushed for a series ending in which Marge is revealed to be a rabbit — an homage to Groening’s longtime weekly strip, Life in Hell.
Oh, and then there’s his big plans to reveal that Krusty the Clown was actually Homer disguised as a way to connect to his son. That was ultimately a too-complicated subplot for the writers to tackle during the show’s early seasons.
“You take advantage of whatever the boundaries are and try to push them,” says Groening. “It’s one thing when it’s a 22-minute network sitcom that has commercial breaks every seven minutes. That makes you write in a certain way. If you’re on Netflix and have 10 episodes to tell your story, it changes everything. You can tell longer, bigger arcs, you don’t have to reset at the end of every episode. There’s a literal cliffhanger at the end of episode one.”
Disenchantment may never hit the full epic fantasy sweeps of Lord of the Rings or Game of Thrones, but it’s clear from the outset that the story has broader ambitions than most can achieve in a traditional half-hour comedy format. Without showing his hand, Groening lets on that “the very first thing you see is a giant clue that’s staring you in the face that reveals something about what you’re watching.”
It’s not a particularly useful hint, so far as those things go, but the artist is clearly happy to prime the pump for enthusiastic fans to comb over the content of the first 10 episodes through repeat binges. If its predecessors are any indication, that sort of rapid fandom ought not be too difficult to stoke.
“We threw in a lot of secrets and clues and puzzles for the kind of obsessive fan I’ve come to know, specifically from Futurama and, of course, The Simpsons,” says Groening. “You try to reward those people for paying attention. That’s where the original idea for the freeze-frame jokes from The Simpsons came from. If you didn’t see it, it doesn’t matter, but if you’re the kind of person who would freeze the frame and actually read the joke, you’ll get something out of it. We’ve done that with Disenchantment. We think it works as a sleepy time, fun, epic fantasy you can watch as you drift off at night. Or, if you’re the kind of person who obsesses, there’s something for you there, too.”
More immediate gratification for Simpsons and Futurama fans can be found in Groening’s unmistakable character design. It’s a bit jarring at first, seeing those icons filtered through a medieval fantasy landscape, but ultimately the aesthetic provides a grounding for first-time viewers. It’s warm and comfortable, like an old coat, and likely to help fans stay invested as the story unfolds gradually over the course of these first 10 episodes.
The style has been Groening’s calling card since well before The Simpsons — prior even to Life in Hell, which finally drew to a close in 2012 after a 32-year run.
“What always amazed me is that this very simple style could be very expressive,” Groening explains. “With just a few curving lines and changing them slightly, you could come up with every expression that you wanted. I can’t do it, but I work with animators and designers who can take that style and make them attractive.”
That Elfo looks like a green Bart Simpson in a Smurf hat is the result of something more primordial in the cartoonist’s line work.
“I developed that style of the large bulgy eyes and ridiculous over-bite when I was 12 years old,” explains Groening. “Actually, Elfo is based on the very first character in that style that I drew. He was named Melvin. I used to draw a lot of comics with that guy, and basically gave him an elf hat and pointy ears.”
“Bart and Elfo came from Melvin — Elfo didn’t come from Bart,” Groening adds with a laugh. “That’s a very important clarification.”
Portal founder Jonathan Swerdlin is just the latest media pundit to point to advertising as the root cause of the industry’s problems. But he’s not content to diagnose the illness — he thinks he’s created a cure.
“Digital media has become toxic, in part, because of advertising,” Swerdlin said. “The unmet and unarticulated need is a peer-to-peer economy where you’re rewarded for creating value, rather than a quantity model” where a publisher or creator’s main economic incentive is to attract as many eyeballs as possible.
Naturally, that’s what Swerdlin is trying to offer in Portal. When you open the app, you follow creators and topics that interest you, then get presented with a feed of videos. During or after the video, you can tip the creator in Portal coins — the current price is 1 cent per coin, and individual payments can be anything from 10 to 10,000 coins.
This changes the equation for creators. If you’re monetizing a video with ads, 1,000 views would represent a negligible amount of ad revenue — but if 1,000 people like the video and are willing to pay a dollar, then then you’re starting to talk about real money.
Conversely, there’s no financial incentive to post a video on Portal that gets a million views if everyone’s going to think it’s a complete waste of their time.
Swerdlin said removing advertising changes the incentives for Portal too, because the startup doesn’t benefit from promoting content just because it’ll get clicks.
In fact, he said Portal will pretty allow users to post anything, as long as it doesn’t violate community standards around things like pornography and hate speech. And it presents a purely reverse chronological feed of content based on what you follow — the question of surfacing interesting content in the feed will probably get more complicated as more users join the platform, but Swerdlin argued, “We don’t need algorithms to solve feed problems.”
“We’re not going to bury things that are not advertiser-friendly,” he added. “It’s a very different game. Portal is very much about people having a place to freely express themselves and not worry about being buried by an algorithm.”
Swerdlin acknowledged that these aren’t entirely new ideas or strategies — micropayments have been touted as a solution to media monetization for years, and he pointed to services like Netflix and Medium as offering models that help creators “break free of advertising.”
At the same time, Swerdlin said Portal’s approach to payments is truly offers “no friction” — it’s uses your App Store payment info, so you don’t even need to enter your credit information. He also said that by creating an app for content (rather than just a micropayment platform that plugs into existing websites), Portal can truly solving the problem by offering a media environment that’s “safe, it’s a healthy media diet, as opposed ot the juunk food.”
Currently, Portal’s content is limited to videos, but those videos cover a range of topics and genres like advice (personal- and business-related), comedy, music and personal vlogging. Over time, Swerdlin wants to expand to other content formats.
You also need an invite code to access the app, but if you want to try it out, feel free to use mine: “anthonyha”. (Don’t blame me; I didn’t choose it.)
Go to Google Maps and zoom out. Halfway out, the map’s perspective changes from a traditional flat map view to an interactive globe. Zoom all the way out and the Earth is presented as a globe with landmasses of the appropriate size. Greenland is no longer the size of Africa and all is right with the world.
On flat maps, it’s impossible to represent land mass size on a relative scale. Objects in the north and south become distorted as the the flat map compensates for the flattening of the globe. This is most evident in the commonly used Mercator projections that properly represents the size of land around the equator but super-sizes land in the Arctic and Antarctic.
Now, when Google Maps is used on Desktop, users will see the appropriate size of land masses. The update is great but I have yet to find the giant ice wall that’s preventing all of life from sliding off the side of the flat earth and onto the back of the giant turtle we’re riding through the vast emptiness of space.
With 3D Globe Mode on Google Maps desktop, Greenland's projection is no longer the size of Africa.
Epic Games continues to spread the love… to consumers, at least.
Following the launches of Fortnite Battle Royale on iOS earlier this year and Fortnite for the Nintendo Switch earlier this summer, Epic Games is now confirming that the Android version of the game will be available exclusively through the Fortnite website.
Users can visit Fortnite.com and download the Fortnite Launcher, which will then allow them to load Fortnite Battle Royale onto their devices.
When asked why Epic would choose to distribute the game via their own website instead the more official channel of the Google Play Store, Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney told TechCrunch in an email:
On open platforms like PC, Mac, and Android, Epic’s goal is to bring its games directly to customers. We believe gamers will benefit from competition among software sources on Android. Competition among services gives consumers lots of great choices and enables the best to succeed based on merit.
Of course, Sweeney didn’t mention the 30 percent fee that goes to Google each time a user makes an in-app purchase, but it’s hard to imagine that that’s not a factor in the decision.
In-game purchases are a huge source of revenue for Epic. After all, Fortnite Battle Royale is still a free download across all platforms. That said, Epic Games has already made more than $1 billion on the game through in-game purchases alone. For context on that 30 percent fee, Epic Games is making approximately $2 million per day as of July, according to Sensor Tower.
Using a virtual currency called V-Bucks, players can buy skins, pick axes, gliders and emotes, none of which offer a competitive advantage. Epic declined to clarify if mobile users have the same purchasing behavior as PC and console players. But if they do on Android, Epic will make 100 percent of the revenue.
Epic Games also declined to give an exact date for the launch, still simply saying that the game will launch this “summer.”
That said, you can expect to see the same game, and the same cross-play compatibility, on the Android version of Fortnite Battle Royale when it launches.
One potential drawback to the launch will be security. As Android Police points out, loads of people will enable unknown sources in settings, forgetting to turn it off after, which could end up being a problem down the line.
We’ll be sure to let you know more specific information around the launch date and supported devices as soon as we hear more from Epic Games.
Stack Overflow and other various sites and tools have made it easy to Google search for solutions — or code snippets — to the easier parts of putting together an app or program for developers, but Aidan Cunniffe wants to take that one automated step further.
That’s the premise behind Optic, which gives developers a way to grab very common coding use cases that they can drop right into their code. It works by finding the sort of routine additions developers might need, like how to create a form that will add a user to a database, as well as all the ancillary parts that come with that like tests. Optic works within a developer’s IDE, so they don’t have to look externally for the code they need, which is compiled together from online sources. Right now it works for JavaScript, with Python next on the docket. Optic is coming out of Y Combinator’s summer 2018 class.
“The biggest problems are when people have a bunch of systems that have to talk together,” Cunniffe siad. “Optic’s really good at syncing that code. If you change something on the backend, it’ll update the front end. That’s a big problem that anyone who develops anything complex. We generate a lot of unit tests for people, speed up the development of new features, and larger companies are using us as an advanced linter to ensure developers write code that conforms to their standards.”
Optic works as a little Clippy-like object within an IDE, where developers can search for things to add to a slice of code. The processing is all done locally, and the project itself is open source with a free version (in addition to a paid version for larger teams). While there are a number of other code-generating tools, Cunniffe says Optic competes primarily with those kinds of Google searches for Stack Overflow results, and one of the primary reasons it’s better is that any changes on any part of the code will propagate through existing code throughout a system.
“Code generators had been around for a long time,” Cunniffe said. “There’s a ton of tradeoffs to tools that existed, people wanted stuff that was useful but didn’t change their workflow. They could also only be used once, so there’s not as much utility, and there wasn’t work to maintain the code. [Code search engines] are really useful, but the biggest drawback they have is it’s not your code. What sets us apart is it’ll help you generate those snippets but it’ll do that in a smart way. All the args and parameters are variables in your own code.”
Back in May, reports surfaced that New York Stock Exchange owner Intercontinental Exchange (ICE) was developing a Bitcoin trading platform. This morning, it officially announced the creation of Bakkt, a new company that will help trade and convert the best known cryptocurrency to fiat money — government-backed legal tender.
As one might expect from a new company with close ties to the NYSE, Bakkt has enlisted some big names already, including backing from Microsoft, Starbucks and BCG. Microsoft, for its part, will provide cloud infrastructure for the service. Even more compelling, however, is the involvement of Starbucks.
After all, the coffee giant has played an outsized role in helping mainstream mobile payments among the U.S. population, it has worked with Square (which accepts Bitcoin) and it just announced a deal with Alibaba in China for coffee deliveries. The chain isn’t always the first to adopt payment solutions, but its involvement goes a long ways toward legitimizing technologies among the public. If played right, this could be the push Bitcoin as a payment systm for mainstream consumers here in the States.
In a statement, Starbucks referred to itself as “the flagship retailer” involved in the project, hinting at the very real potential that the company is setting itself up to accept Bitcoin converted through the Bakkt system.
“As the flagship retailer, Starbucks will play a pivotal role in developing practical, trusted and regulated applications for consumers to convert their digital assets into US dollars for use at Starbucks,” said Starbucks Payments VP Maria Smith said in the statement.“As a leader in Mobile Pay to our more than 15 million Starbucks Rewards members, Starbucks is committed to innovation for expanding payment options for our customers.”
Bakkt’s implications go well beyond mobile payments, of course. As Fortune notes, the system could help attract investors who have been put off by Bitcoin’s extremely volatile nature. Among other things, it could help make the currency a safer choice for 401(k)s, IRAs and other retirement plans. That, in turn, could help propel Bitcoin toward wider Wall Street trading.
Walmart is testing a new robotics system that picks customers’ grocery orders. The retailer this morning announced it has partnered with Alert Innovation to deploy Alphabot, a system designed for Walmart, in its Salem, New Hampshire superstore. The automated technology will be installed in a 20,000-square foot extension connected to the store, which will also serve as the dedicated grocery pick-up point with drive-thru lanes for customers.
The idea being tested here is to find out how much a robotics system like this can speed up the fulfillment of customers’ online grocery orders.
Alphabot helps with this by automatically bringing items from storage to Walmart’s store staff, who then assemble customers’ orders. The system is capable of picking the “vast majority” of grocery items, the retailer says, including dry goods, refrigerated and frozen items. That means Walmart’s personal shoppers won’t have to walk the aisles to fulfill grocery orders, except for handpicking produce and other fresh items.
Walmart’s online grocery pick-up program is popular with consumers who don’t have time to shop, but don’t want to pay the higher prices associated with grocery delivery services like Shipt and Instacart. It also gives Walmart a way to compete as it tries to figure out its grocery delivery strategy, in the face of the Amazon/Whole Foods threat.
The company’s earlier delivery partnerships with Uber and Lyft have been terminated, and now Walmart works with an assortment of partners, including Postmates, Deliv and Doordash. The retailer earlier this year claimed it would provide delivery services in 100 markets by year-end.
But the number of stores offering grocery pickup services is much larger – 1,200 as of March up from 600 two years ago, with plans to expand to 1,000 more throughout 2018. There are 1,800 stores offering grocery pickup at present.
Making the grocery picking process more efficient means customers could place orders online which would then be ready by the time they arrived, in some cases.
Walmart says Alphabot will go online by the end of 2018. However, shoppers at the Salem store will be able to order groceries online for pick-up beginning October 1. The store will also this year begin offering grocery delivery, but no date was given.
Alphabot is considered a pilot program, as Walmart is making no promises of a wider rollout at this time. Instead, it’s hoping to learn more about how the technology can aid this part of its business.
Airstream has made travel trailers for generations, and the company is ramping up plans to bring connected technology to the product line. Airstream recently announced several new products that will bring new features expected by today’s consumers including less expensive and more capable trailers.
The iconic silver bullet trailers are a mainstay on America’s highways and byways. Trailers made today have the same classic lines as those made for past generations. For the most part, that’s not going to change. While Airstream has new two new trailers that slightly depart from the shiny aluminum exterior, they’re still Airstream trailers. And for the classic models, which can command prices over $150,000, Airstream is now equipping them with smart control technology that will let owners control various functions through a smartphone app.
Featured on initially the 2019 Classic models, Airstream’s Smart Technology puts a bevy of controls in a smartphone app. It lets owners control the majority of the trailers systems and monitor different levels from an app. Check the propane, water and battery levels from the app or control the awning from afar. The app even lets owners locate the trailer through GPS, in case, you know, you lose your $100,000 trailer among an RV lot of other $100,000 trailers.
“Airstream owners have long been bringing digital technology and the Internet of Things (IoT) into their trailers, often in very creative ways,” said Airstream Vice President of Product Development and Engineering McKay Featherstone, in a released statement. “So, it’s no surprise they embrace the idea of a smart trailer, a recreational vehicle that allows them to adventure with all the digital comforts and connectivity of home.”
Airstream also has two new travel trailers that bring the Airstream product line to lower price points. But without the silver bullet design.
An updated and more capable version of the smallest Airstream was just announced. Called the Basecamp X (pictured above), it’s designed to go places most Airstream trailers would scoff at. It’s more rugged and, frankly, cheaper than most Airstream models.
“Airstream is targeting outdoor enthusiasts with the Basecamp X,” Justin Humphrey, Airstream COO told TechCrunch. “They aren’t always younger, but they certainly index much higher in terms of outdoor activities they participate in a given year versus our more traditional buyers.”
He explained that Airstream built this model, not for a target age group but rather the outdoor enthusiast of any age. The Basecamp X’s features back up that claim, too.
The Basecamp X is a smaller trailer, with room for two to sleep comfortably. It has a 3-inch lift kit for added ground clearance and Goodyear Wrangler tires along with side skirts and wheel flares to help prevent damage. A large back door makes it easy to store kayaks or bikes inside the trailer. The smaller size allows mid-size SUVs or large crossovers to tow the trailer without much effort. The Basecamp X comes pre-wired for solar power, and there are a handful of USB charging ports and lockable gadget compartments. Prices start at $36,000, so while this might be the smallest Airstream, it still commands an Airstream price.
Announced earlier this year, Nest by Airstream is the most substantial departure from the classic Airstream. It’s built from fiberglass and for a good reason. Airstream did not start the development of the Nest. The company bought Nest Caravan in 2016, apparently in a bid to bring to the market a new, lower cost product line from Airstream.
Airstream says the Nest has a lot of the same character found in the Classic trailers but at a lower cost. It sleeps up to two people and has a floor plan similar to Airstream’s base Sport model. But it’s lighter and is loaded with more modern conveniences.
It’s clear Airstream is attempting to reinvent itself while staying true to what made the company an icon. It’s a fine line many companies often walk. Stay in the past too long, and upstarts surpass the incumbent. Change too quickly and alienate current buyers. As long as Airstream keeps the innovations inside the silver bullet, the company should be just fine.
