Apple’s dangerous path

Hello friends, and welcome back to Week in Review. Last week, we dove into the truly bizarre machinations of the NFT market. This week, we’re talking about something that’s a little bit more impactful on the current state of the web — Apple’s NeuralHash kerfuffle. If you’re reading this on the TechCrunch site, you can […]

TikTok owner ByteDance buys a top virtual reality hardware startup

TikTok parent company ByteDance seem to be looking to one-up Facebook anywhere it can. After taking over the mantle of most-downloaded social media app in the world with TikTok, ByteDance is coming for Facebook’s moonshot, buying up its own virtual reality headset maker called Pico. The deal first reported on by Bloomberg last week was […]

Korean 3D spatial data tool startup Urbanbase closes $11.1M Series B+ round

Urbanbase, a Seoul-based company that develops a 3D spatial data platform for interior planning and design, announced today it has raised $11.1 million (13 billion won) in a Series B+ round as it scales up. This round of funding was led by Hanwha Hotel & Resort, which is a subsidiary of South Korean conglomerate Hanwha […]

AI voice, synthetic speech company LOVO gets $4.5M pre-series A funding

“Voice skins” have become a very popular feature for AI-based voice assistants, to help personalize some of the more anodyne aspects of helpful, yet also kind of bland and robotic, speaking voices you get on services like Alexa. Now a startup that is building voice skins for different companies to use across their services, and […]

Messenger celebrates its 10th anniversary with new features and a plan to become the ‘connective tissue’ for real-time experiences

To celebrate its ten year anniversary, Messenger today announced a handful of new features: poll games, word effects, contact sharing, and birthday gifting via Facebook Pay. But beyond the fun features, Facebook has been testing a way to add voice and video calls back into the Facebook app, rather than on Messenger. “We are testing […]

米企業内で進むVR研修は、人種差別を是正しインクルーシヴな職場環境を構築できるか

パンデミックやオリンピックによって改めて浮き彫りになった根深い人種差別や偏見。ジョージ・フロイド事件とBLM運動、それにアジア系へのヘイトクライムが起こった米国では、従来の「ダイバーシティ」や「インクルージョン」をお題目とした社内研修から一歩進め、ヴァーチャルリアリティ（VR）を利用して人種間の理解を育もうとしている。しかし、インクルーシヴな職場環境の構築には、それだけでは不充分かもしれない。
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フェイスブックが掲げた「メタヴァース企業」という目標と、その本質との埋めがたいギャップ

フェイスブックが仮想空間に注力する「メタヴァース企業」になる準備を進める方針を、このほどCEOのマーク・ザッカーバーグが明らかにした。この構想からは、いまや“バズワード”と化したメタヴァースを同社が収益化しようと考えていることや、そのアイデアが退屈で本質との間に大きなギャップがある点である。
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