Year: 2018

Google Photos already makes it easy for users to correct their photos with built-in editing tools and clever, A.I.-powered features for automatically creating collages, animations, movies, stylized photos, and more. Now the company is making it even easier to fix photos with a new version of the Google Photos app that will suggest quick fixes and other tweaks – like rotations, brightness corrections, or adding pops of color, for example – right below the photo you’re viewing.

The changes, which are being introduced on stage at the Google I/O developer conference today, are yet another example of this year’s theme of bringing A.I. technology closer to the end user.

In Google Photos’ case, that means no longer just hiding the A.I. away within the “Assistant” tab, but putting it directly in the main interface.

The company says that the idea to add the fix suggestions to the photos themselves came about because they realized this is where the app sees the most activity.

“One of the insights we’ve had as Google Photos has grown significantly over the years is that people spend a lot of time looking at photos inside of Google Photos,” explained Google Photos Product Lead, Dave Lieb, in an earlier interview with TechCrunch about the update. “They do it to the tune of about 5 billion photo views per day,” he added.

That got the team thinking that they should focus on solving some of the problems people see when they’re looking at their photos.

Google Photos will begin to do just that with the changes that begin rolling out this week.

For example, if you come to a photo that’s too dark, there will be a little button you can tap underneath the photo to fix the brightness. If the photo is on its side, you can press a button to rotate it. These are things you could have done before, of course, by accessing the editing tools manually. But the updated app will now just make it a one-tap fix.

Also new are tools inspired by Google’s Photoscan technology that will fix photos of documents and paperwork, by zooming in, cropping and rectifying the photo.

One tool will analyze who’s in the photo and prompt you to share it with them, similar to the previously launched sharing suggestions feature. Another prompts you to archive photos of old receipts. And one, called “Color Pop,” will identify when it could pop out whoever’s in the foreground by turning the background to black and white.

In addition to the new tools arriving thi week, Google is also prepping a “Colorize” tool that will turn black-and-white photos into colorized images. This tool, too, was inspired by Photoscan, as Google found people were scanning in old family photos, including the black-and-white ones.

“Our team thought, what if we applied computer vision and A.I. to black-and-white photos? Could we re-create a color version of those photos?” said Lieb. They wanted to see if technology could be trained to re-colorize images so you could really see what it was like back then, or at least a close approximation. That’s how Colorize will work, when it’s ready.

A neural network will try to infer the colors that likely work best in the photo – like turning the grass green, for example. Getting other things right – like skin tone, perhaps – could be more tricky; so the team isn’t launching the feature until it’s “really right,” they said.

The new Google Photos features were announced along with news of a developer preview version of the Google Photos Library API, that allows third-party developers to take advantage of Google Photos’ storage, infrastructure and machine intelligence. More on that is here.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk managed to freak out investors last Thursday by acting dismissively toward analysts during an earnings call, calling a question about the company’s capital requirements “boring” and “bone-headed” and “not cool,” a strange performance that seemed to lead to a side in the shares’ performance afterward.

More bravura was on display the following day, with Musk warning the growing number of short sellers who are betting against the automaker. Specifically, he tweeted that a “short burn of the century” is “coming soon.” He also retweeted a Barron’s article that highlighted that there’s now more demand for short positions than supply. (Barron’s compared the conundrum to the same one facing Tesla’s customers.) 

Perhaps to make certain that Tesla bears feel some pain, Musk himself shelled out roughly $10 million to acquire more Tesla stock yesterday, a purchase that pushes his stake in the company to nearly 20 percent, according to Bloomberg’s analysis.

Whether or not directly correlated, Tesla’s shares rose 3 percent yesterday, boosting Tesla’s market cap to $51.4 million. It has slipped again slightly, as of this writing, to $49.7 billion.

Tesla’s shares seem to recover almost no matter what Musk does or says, but it’s worth asking why Musk still talks with analysts at all. As writer and venture capitalist M.G. Siegler noted during our “Equity” podcast last week, many CEOs of Musk’s stature deputize other executives within their companies to talk with analysts, including Amazon’s Jeff Bezos and, when he was leading Apple, the company’s famous cofounder, Steve Jobs.

While Musk continues to give Tesla analysts what they want — Musk’s own time and perspective — his apparent eagerness to be a combative with them creates a “weird dichotomy between those two things,” Siegler noted.

In 2016, Walmart announced that it would begin testing grocery delivery in conjunction with Uber and Lyft.

Today, however, Reuters reports that those partnerships have come to an end, which was confirmed by Walmart and Uber.

TechCrunch first reported in 2015 about Uber’s plans to launch a merchant delivery system, wherein goods from retailers would be delivered (via the trunk) and Uber users would be transported to their destination simultaneously.

The deal with Walmart, alongside rival services like Lyft and Deliv, marked massive progress for this merchant delivery system. But things haven’t panned out long term.

“It is incredibly hard to deliver people and packages together,” said one of Reuters’ sources with a delivery company that works with Walmart and has direct knowledge of the matter. “They are two completely different business models.”

Walmart has a number of other channels through which it can offer delivery.

It has partnered with Postmates and DoorDash, but has excluded Instacart from its delivery partners list. According to Re/Code, Instacart was excluded from the partnership opportunity because Instacart wanted Walmart to list its retail items within the Instacart app, whereas Walmart wanted to use Instacart as a delivery partner while exclusively selling items on its own digital property.

This obviously comes at a time where the grocery delivery game is heating up. Amazon’s acquisition of Whole Foods has put pressure on incumbent grocery retailers to step up their digital presence and delivery capabilities.

Target acquired Alabama-based Shipt for $550 million in December of 2017. Meanwhile, Instacart has raised another $150 million this year, and recently announced a partnership with Walmart-owned Sam’s Club.

We’ve reached out to Uber and will update if/when we hear back.

In the fractured, spammy world that is consumer PC software downloads, Microsoft is looking to make their Microsoft Store a more central hub but they need the help (and enthusiasm) of developers. In a major showing of good will, Microsoft is changing up their revenue sharing structure to give developers a bigger cut.

Developers of consumer apps (not including games) for PC, Windows Mixed Reality, Windows Phone or Surface Hub will now receive 85 percent of revenue from downloads — as opposed to 70 percent — when the app is tracked down through the Microsoft Store.

What’s more interesting is that Microsoft is bumping this figure up to 95 percent when the app is deep-linked externally from somewhere like the app developer’s site.

While Apple and Google both structure their revenue sharing models based on how long a user is engaging with an app, even after 12 months of usage, the 85/15 model that both of these platforms operate at only matches Microsoft’s new standard model, but Microsoft’s 95/5 split is far and away the best deal among major app stores.

These same revenue splits will attach to any subscriptions that users get from the app in the future. This new revenue share structure will go into effect later this year.

The New York Stock Exchange is working on its own bitcoin trading platform. According to a new report from The New York Times, the NYSE’s parent company is developing an online exchange geared toward large institutional investors — the kind of financial heavyweights that the cryptocurrency community is waiting for with bated breath.

Details of the plan are not yet locked in and the whole undertaking could still “fall apart,” according to the report. The initiative is being spearheaded by Intercontinental Exchange, the NYSE’s parent company.

Unlike the two bitcoin futures markets that opened late last year, “the new operation at ICE would provide more direct access to Bitcoin by putting the actual tokens in the customer’s account at the end of the trade.” Still, that process would be executed through swaps that ultimately deliver bitcoin to a client’s account.

As the report explains:

The swap contract is more complicated than an immediate trade of dollars for Bitcoin, even if the end result is still ownership of a certain amount of Bitcoin. But a swap contract allows the trading to come under the regulation of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission and to operate clearly under existing laws — something today’s Bitcoin exchanges have struggled to do.

These kind of swap contracts are currently offered by cryptocurrency startup LedgerX, which might appeal more to cryptocurrency investors looking to eschew institutional banking’s entrenched players.

While the NYSE project is still under wraps, it follows news from earlier this month that Goldman Sachs would open its own bitcoin trading operation, though one that will deal in contracts linked to rises and falls in the price of bitcoin rather than bitcoin itself, for the time being.

While Goldman Sachs already clears trades for clients participating in Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME) and the Chicago Board Options Exchange (CBOE) bitcoin futures markets, the bank will soon offer its clients non-deliverable forward contracts for bitcoin. For Goldman Sachs, the choice came as a response to overwhelming interest on behalf of its clients.

After a crash from December’s dizzying highs, bitcoin’s price has struggled upward toward the critical psychological milestone of $10,000 in recent weeks, sitting at $9,145 at the time of writing. Many longtime bitcoin investors and traders believe that a clearer regulatory path paired with institutional involvement — however convoluted — could make all the difference in 2018.

Shopify announced a new app today to help its ecommerce customers communicate directly with their customers in a unified messaging tool.

As the company describes it on the Product Hunt page where it made the announcement, “Shopify Ping is a free mobile workspace for Shopify merchants that brings together customer conversations, marketing workflows, and more in a single iOS app.”

That means it is opening up a free integrated messaging platform for Shopify users to communicate directly with customers and (maybe) give them what they want when they want it, which is of course the goal of online retailers.

The beauty of this approach is that it brings together all the communications from many of the major messaging platforms including messages from Facebook Messenger, Rep.ai and Chatkit out of the box with more coming down the road as the product develops further beyond the early release announced today.

It also includes Kit –yes, it’s called Kit — to deliver Facebook and Instagram ads, email campaigns and retargeting campaigns all based on that information you’re gathering from all of those messages. This about making it easier for retailers to pinpoint their ads and communications with customers based on what they are hearing directly from them in the messaging channels.

Ray Wang, who is founder and principal analyst at Constellation Research, says this is a positive step by Shopify. “Ping is a smart move. The goal is to move the purchase behavior to where the customer is. Chat and marketing convergence is happening in commerce,” Wang told TechCrunch.

As Product Hunt’s Ryan Hoover pointed out on Twitter when announcing the tool, this is a direct shot at Intercom, which has done well in a similar space. It’s worth noting that this tool is geared to Shopify users, and not necessarily more broadly focused as Intercom is. Shopify is a significant platform, that pulled in over $580 million in revenue last year.

The good news is they are offering the tool for free, but the bad news is that it won’t be available until later this summer, and if you’re an Android user, you are out of luck, at least for now.

Instagram is unveiling new features for businesses that want to use their profiles to message with customers and even facilitate transactions.

Even if you’re not a business on Instagram, you might still notice the addition of action buttons, which will allow you to make a reservation, buy a ticket, start an order or make a booking using third party services, all from an Instagram business profile.

The initial integrations include (deep breath) Acuity, Atom Tickets, Booksy, ChowNow, Eatstreet, Eventbrite, Fandango, GrubHub, MyTime, OpenTable, Reserve, Restorando, Resy, SevenRooms, StyleSeat, Tock and Yelp Reservations, with plans to add Appointy, Genbook, LaFourchette, Mindbody, Schedulicity, SetMore, Shedul and Vagaro soon.

It looks like the buttons essentially open up a browser window or widget for users to perform their chosen actions, so it’s not quite native functionality in the Instagram app. Still, it means that these interactions are now just a tap away. And an Instagram spokesperson told us that in the case of Atom Tickets, the actions do take advantage of Instagram’s native payments.

The company says that more than 200 million daily users visit an Instagram business profile every day, while more than 150 million have an Instagram Direct conversation with a business in a month.

“As more people continue to interact with businesses on Instagram and take action when inspiration strikes, we’re making it easier to turn that discovery into action,” Instagram said in a blog post announcing the new feature.

In addition, the company is rethinking how businesses handle their Instagram Direct messages. Customer messages now show up in the main inbox, rather the pending folder, with the ability to star conversations that the business wants to come back to. Instagram also says it will start testing quick replies, so that a business can just select prewritten responses to standard questions, rather than typing the same answer over and over again.

Happy I/O day! The big show hasn’t actually kicked off, but the Google news continues to trickle in. If you’re among those using Gmail on iOS, check the App Store right now for an update that brings a couple of key new features to the app.

The more interesting of the two is the addition of Google Pay, which makes it possible to “pay anyone with an email address,” according to the developer notes. You can access that by ticking the attachment button and scrolling all the way down.

From there, you’ll find options to send or request money via Pay. Of course, this all gives Google a nice little leg up on Apple’s own Pay app, which isn’t baked into Gmail.

The other big update here is Snooze. Once inside an email, click the top bar to find the option in a list of functions. From there, you can choose from a number of presets, including “Later Today,” “Tomorrow,” “Later This Week,” “This Weekend” and “Next Week.”

You can also choose a custom date and time or the far more romantic “Someday,” as you float down the river on your homemade raft, wondering where it all went so terrible wrong.

Panera today is jumping fully on the on-demand food delivery bandwagon. The restaurant chain this morning announced the nationwide launch of its delivery service, which will reach 897 cities and 43 states across the U.S.

The service continues to be powered by the delivery startup Bringg, the delivery logistics platform that raised an additional $12 million in funding earlier this year. Bringg offers companies, including restaurants, the tools to run their own, branded delivery platform.

However, while Bringg is helping Panera with the logistics of deliveries, the restaurant says it aims to employ its own drivers. By year-end 2017, it had hired over 10,000 drivers, and to date delivery has helped create more than 13,000 jobs, the company said.

Panera’s delivery service will operate during lunch and dinner service (11 AM to 8 PM), and can be accessed both online from the Panera website and from the mobile app. The service will run 7 days a week, only require a $5 minimum order, and will charge $3 per delivery as a fee.

Delivery has been in development and a staged rollout since 2016.

Panera says it’s helping to increase digital sales, which are now 30% of total sales.

However, the company did admit to a data security issue recently, with the reveal that under 10,000 consumer records were inappropriately accessed. The company claims it found nothing to indicate that full credit or debit numbers, passwords or PINs were exposed. Still, the news may give some customers pause before ordering Panera.

“Panera delivery isn’t a pilot program. It’s not in just a few test markets. We now offer delivery across the country,” said Blaine Hurst, Panera CEO, in a statement. “Delivery is fueling our next phase of growth, and the success we have seen so far is exciting. The combination of providing clean food options via an entirely digital experience is giving us a real advantage, and the momentum is just beginning.”

Increasingly we are going to be having bots conducting business on a company’s behalf. As that happens, it is going to require a trust mechanism to ensure that bot-to-bot communication is legitimate. BotChain, a new startup out of Boston wants to be the blockchain for registering bots.

The new blockchain, which is built on Ethereum, is designed to register and identify bots and provide a way for companies to collaborate between bots with auditing capabilities built in. BotChain has the potential to become a standard way of sharing data between bots in a trusted way.

The idea is to have an official and sanctioned place for companies to register their bots securely. As the organization describes it, “BotChain offers bot developers, enterprises, software companies, and system integrators the critical systems, standards, and means to validate, certify, and manage the millions of bots and billions of transactions powered by AI.

Photo: allanswart

The company was created by the team at Talla, a bot startup in Cambridge, but the goal is to open this up to much larger community of partners and expand. In fact, early partners include Gupshup, a platform for developers and Howdy.ai, B2B enterprise bot developers along with Polly, CareerLark, Disco (formerly Growbot), Zoom.ai, and Botkeeper.

BotChain is the brainchild of Rob May, who is CEO at Talla. He was formerly co-founder and CEO at Backupify, which was sold to Datto in 2014. He recognized that as bot usage increases, there needed to be a system in place to help companies using bots to exchange information, and eventually even digital currencies to complete transactions in a fully digital context.

May believes that blockchain is the best solution to build this trust mechanism because of the ledger’s nature as an immutable and irrefutable record. If the entities on the blockchain agree to work with one another, and the other members allow it, there should be an element of confidence inherent in that.

He points to other advantages such as being decentralized so that no single company can control the data on the blockchain, and of course nobody can erase a record once it’s been written to the chain. It also provides a way for bots to identify one another in an official way and for participating companies to track transactions between bots.

Talla opened this up to a community of users because it wants BotChain to be a standard way for bots to exchange information. Whether that happens or not remains to be seen, but these types of projects could be important building blocks as companies look for ways to conduct business confidently, even when there are no humans involved.

BotChain has raised $5 million USD in a private token sale to institutional investors such as Galaxy Digital, Pillar, Glasswing and Avalon, according to the company.

In addition, they will be conducting another token pre-sale starting this Friday to raise additional funds from community stakeholders. “This token sale is a way to give [our community] access. Purchasing these tokens allows users to start registering their assets and create chains of immutable records of what their machines have done,” May explained. He said the company expects to raise $20 million this year from stakeholder token sales.

You can learn more about Botchain from this video: