philip lelyveld The world of entertainment technology

I Gave My Mom a Crypto Wallet: A Simple Guide to NFTs, Blockchain and More

PhilNote: this is an excellent primer of the concepts involved in creating an NFT.

I realized the best way to understand this—and to explain it—was to roll up my sleeves and make an NFT. In other words, I turned my son’s pretty fungible construction-paper-and-googly-eyes unicorn into a nonfungible token of my esteem for my mom. 

Step 1: Get to know the blockchain.

Step 2: Put your thing on the blockchain.

Step 3: Get crypto and a wallet for it.

Step 4: Pay the gas fee.

Step 5: Ponder the meaning of ownership.

See the full story here: https://www.wsj.com/articles/i-gave-my-mom-a-crypto-wallet-a-simple-guide-to-nfts-blockchain-and-more-11639404001

Yesterday Once More

Reducing culture and consumers to data will continue to produce the same representations of nostalgia for backward-looking algorithms to recommend. Those who worship the power of digital technology may believe that we are on track to a utopia where people can escape from the future we’ve made. But if we let algorithms predict the future for us all, we will find there is nowhere to go but back. 

See the full story here: https://reallifemag.com/yesterday-once-more/?fbclid=IwAR3Nub-puqTCH3BGskul6L-Fzakzy21Kbx1Bg5KZ8a6rRI2DWj7hG423xnM

The article was posted by Monika Bielskyte

Bring the Disrupters

Marshall’s 2021 SCALE event brought together the biggest names in blockchain, cryptocurrency, NFTs and other instruments of financial disruption.

At the Nov. 3, 2021 SCALE conference, titled “Building the Blockchain Future,” and held virtually, Borquez brought in and interviewed a literal who’s-who in that space. 

Cathie Wood from Ark Investments. Anatoly Yakovenko of Solana. Richard Rosenblatt of Autograph. Tom Brady (yes that Tom Brady) made an appearance. 

“It was one of the biggest blockchain events in Southern California,” said Borquez, who is a faculty member at the Lloyd Greif Center for Entrepreneurial Studies. “Having one of these speakers would make a solid event. We had eight.”

...Borquez intends to help position USC as a thought leader in Blockchain, cryptocurrency and financial disruption. ...

“This year a record 20 percent of my class had a blockchain element written into their business plans,” he said. ...

See the full story here: https://www.marshall.usc.edu/news/bring-disrupters

Ten tech predictions for 2022: what’s next for Twitter, Uber and NFTs

PhilNote; these are pretty interesting

Twitter might actually get its act together

NFTs will remain hyped to oblivion, some people will lose their shirts

Jack Dorsey will start a blockchain company. Peter Thiel might invest

DAOs will be the new Spacs

Ports are the new ports

See the full story here: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2021/dec/12/10-tech-predictions-for-2022-twitter-uber-nfts-virtual-reality

Using Snapchat’s new glasses showed me where AR goes beyond phones

For companies like Snapchat parent Snap, the approach has been to continue developing phone AR ahead of physical glasses. That's still Snap's approach, even with AR glasses already in the hands of developers. Snap is working on more ways to scan the real world and overlay it with AR in its app-like Lenses on the Snapchat app, and moving some of those tools over to developers for its still-not-ready-for consumers AR glasses.

...But Snap's approach also has an interesting wrinkle: creating unique face filters and AR effects to be used in other apps. Your avatar -- or your cat face -- could travel cross-app, in a sense. 

See the full story here: https://www.cnet.com/tech/computing/using-snapchats-new-glasses-showed-me-where-ar-goes-beyond-phones/

As Facebook plans the metaverse, it struggles to combat harassment in VR

... The Iowa resident said he tried to tell the female player how to mute or ghost others but she couldn't hear him among all the screaming users crowding around her and making sexual comments. 

"That's the part that got to me. Just seeing other people have such an awful time," Young said. "I dropped off the game pretty hard after that experience. It just wasn't fun anymore." 

As for Smith, she thinks Echo VR should have a strike system, a way to identify players by pointing at them, or features to make the avatars look different so everyone doesn't look like the same robot.  

"Companies need to step up and come up with new ways to moderate and help us," she said, "because we're the ones getting harassed."

See the full story here: https://www.cnet.com/features/as-facebook-plans-the-metaverse-it-struggles-to-combat-harassment-in-vr/

Millennials Are Largely OK With the Superhero Genre’s Diversity Efforts. Gen Zers Demand More

See the full story here: https://morningconsult.com/2021/12/10/marvel-characters-diversity/?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email_newsletter&utm_campaign=feature_story&utm_content=meyers_entertainment_chart_121021&mkt_tok=ODUwLVRBQS01MTEAAAGBQ4evoZ4hhULjb_lGQQeYDe-Vl82qWaIydxxUluUfEjAGVkH5xhW539kHYeP_8NvhbBAbCKhPmJDyEe68RZgDw9_8Xnc2J6ulhRxZlqLxpZE7

CNET names the best tech products of 2021

Best phones, smartwatches, earbuds

Computers, laptops and more

• Dell XPS 13 OLED
• Apple MacBook Pro 16-inch 
• Acer Chromebook Spin 713
• Dell Inspiron 16 Plus
• HP Pavilion Aero 13
• Razer Blade 14
• Dell 4K UltraSharp Webcam
• Razer Viper 8K mouse 
• Nintendo Switch OLED
• Apple iPad (9th gen)
• Kindle Paperwhite 2021

Home entertainment gear

See the full story here: https://www.cnet.com/tech/best-tech-products-of-2021/

Startups Want Consumers to Be Paid for Their Personal Data

... Now real estate billionaire Frank McCourt has committed $250 million to fund Project Liberty, which he hopes will restyle the web as a platform owned by the public. Of that amount, McCourt — former owner of the L.A. Dodgers — earmarked $25 million to create a decentralized social networking protocol that aims to reinvent the model for consumer data governance online. ...

However, WSJ suggests the path to such a result is “unclear.” This is due less to technological impediments than consumers’ own social behaviors. “Social-media companies optimize their networks to keep users there. Would a decentralized social network be as sticky? Plus, blockchain technology tends to make the web run more slowly and expensively,” WSJ reports. Woodham told WSJ that the pitch isn’t as much about earning potential as avoiding exploitation. ...

Tapestri in November debuted an app that pays consumers up to $15 per month cash in exchange for their anonymized location history, which is then resold to brands. Black consumers who download their datadata from Amazon, Google Maps, Netflix, Uber and YouTube can then be paid for it by Streamlytics, whose Clture app makes it available to brands after anonymizing.

See the full story here: https://www.etcentric.org/startups-want-consumers-to-be-paid-for-their-personal-data/

And the original source is here: https://www.wsj.com/articles/personal-data-is-worth-billions-these-startups-want-you-to-get-a-cut-11638633640

Deus Ex Anima: This AR Startup Aims to Launch NFTs Into Space

Anima, an augmented reality startup, wants to build a bridge between the physical world and the metaverse. And it thinks a global treasure hunt for NFTs, floating in virtual space, is the way to do it.

Last week, Anima launched PHASE MN:01 Mirror, a collection of 8,888 unique augmented reality NFTs created with street artist Demsky. Unlike most headline-grabbing NFTs of late, which are only visible as image files, Mirror AR NFTs will interact with the real world through smartphone camera filters, a la Pokémon Go or the real-world Bitcoin-hunting game created by the same developer. ...

What makes these digital artworks unique is how they will change upon interaction with the physical world. New owners of Mirror NFTs—built on Ethereum using Palm—will be dropped coordinates to 10 still-secret locations around the globe; traveling to these locations and placing their NFTs in these landscapes will permanently alter these NFTs visually, audibly, and in their composition on the blockchain. Each Mirror NFT can be altered up to eight times and, if resold, will retain these changes.  ...

See the full story here: https://decrypt.co/87790/deus-ex-anima-ar-startup-aims-launch-nfts-space