Alise Branch

YouTube also plays host to niches that get far less attention. Dr. Sophie Bishop, Teaching Fellow in Digital Economy and Society at King’s College London, has studied the beauty vlogging community. For beauty vloggers, she explains, features like being able to sell or link to specific products would benefit creators, but so far Google hasn’t provided them. “What Instagram has provided that YouTube hasn’t is this shoppable experience… in a way that’s reasonably attractive and complies with different kinds of regulation...

And its users are suffering for it Is YouTube a music service or a movie rental store? A space for news outlets or beauty vloggers? Is it for video essays or game streamers? For years, Google has wanted the answer to be a simple, “Yes, all of the above.” Today’s shutdown of the YouTube Gaming hub shows the actual answer is a lot fuzzier than that. YouTube occupies a unique position somewhere between a TV-like service — where it gets its name — and a social network. Its core function of hosting and sharing videos is useful to a wide variety of communities with wildly different needs...

Compare this to other electronics categories and the lack of product diversity is stark. If you were to buy a new laptop today, a salesperson might ask you what you want to use it for. Do you want something you can use to draw? Maybe you’ll be interested in something like the Surface Book 2 with a touchscreen, stylus, and detachable keyboard. Want to do some gaming? How about this beastly Alienware laptop? Need to do video editing or graphic design work on the go? A Macbook Pro with its crisp Retina display and customizable touch bar might be up your alley...

The iPhone 11 and Galaxy Note 10 follow an established playbook, leaving consumers with few truly unique options This week, Apple announced its latest iPhones, including the photography-oriented iPhone 11 Pro. It has all the bells and whistles that a semi-professional could want from their phone. For dedicated mobile photographers, it might be an exciting release. But at a time when hardware innovation has slowed down, they’re the only niche Apple seems to pander to. In recent years, the design...

On Monday, Instagram announced it would give creators the ability to schedule posts up to six months in advance. The new feature enables creators to decide when, exactly, images will publish to their feed, as well as IGTV videos. There’s just one catch: In order to get access to the scheduling features, you’ll need to already have a Facebook Page for your business. In other words, it’s aimed more at brands, artists, and celebrities with significant followings — a move that suggests that the social network, like the Facebook of years past, will emphasize commerce over individual users...

Google Stadia and other platforms need all the help they can get Streaming platforms like Google Stadia may be the future of the video game industry, but here in the present, it’s unclear if sluggish home internet speeds are up to the task. Bethesda, the publisher behind games like Fallout and Doom, hopes to fix that with its new Orion service. It promises to do what broadband providers can’t, or won’t: make it easier to serve homes that don’t have great internet connections. Orion is geared toward...

Experts agree that it’s not perfect, but it’s almost certainly better than what you’re using Apple wants to own the only account you use to sign in to services across the internet. On Monday, the company unveiled Sign In with Apple, a log-in service similar to those offered by Google and Facebook. Unlike those two, Apple says it will protect your privacy by creating new, anonymized email addresses for each service access via Sign In. That’s all well and good, but there’s a bigger concern to be addressed:...

New gesture- and voice-based controls promise the dawn of “ambient computing” In the most recent Avengers movie, Tony Stark unlocks the secret to time travel the same way he invents all of his cool toys: by talking to his computer and waving his hands around in the air. If Google has its way, that’s how you’ll use its upcoming Pixel 4 phone. Minus the time travel bit. The device will include a radar chip that lets you control your phone with hand gestures — no touching required. The feature, which...

Mall kiosks gather email addresses and phone numbers, and it’s not all about your security Phone charging lockers — the kind you’ll find in malls, airports, and stores like Banana Republic — solve a simple problem. They let you charge your phone without tying you to a wall socket, so you can run your errands without the persistent concern that you’ll run out of juice. They’re almost always free, but there’s a catch: These kiosks take your picture and require you to turn over personal information like your email address or phone number...

It’s a step in the right direction, but the company still has a ton of control over your iPhone Last week, Apple made a stunning change to its repair policy. After years of tightly controlling who can fix its devices, independent repair shops will now be able to buy parts and get repair guides directly from Apple without paying the tech giant. But while the move sounds like a change of heart, it may be just the smokescreen Apple needs to avoid Right to Repair laws that could cost it a lot more in the long run...

The social media platform’s planned experiment with cryptocurrency needs to work as well as regular currency It’s a question you might start hearing more: “Cash, credit, or crypto?” A recent spate of retail businesses like AT&T and Whole Foods have started accepting payment in Bitcoin. Meanwhile, Facebook announced its new cryptocurrency platform Libra, with the goal of making one global digital currency that everyone can use to make payments and store money. Yet they all struggle to answer a basic...

A viral ‘boomer’ group floods news feeds while moderators struggle to keep up "If it’s lit AF, drop a yeet here fam,” reads the first post on my Facebook news feed. It’s been taken over by a pair of dueling groups dedicated to mocking the yawning generation gap between baby boomers and millennials. This is one glimpse at the future Facebook wants: A social experience built not around the largely public news feed, but around people organizing in semiprivate groups. The idea is to give users more...