Technology - Google News

8 Companies' Privacy Policy Emails, Graded
Apple's AirPlay 2 with multiroom audio streaming and stereo HomePod pairing is here
'Fortnite' Is Many Things, But It Isn't A 'PUBG' Clone

8 Companies' Privacy Policy Emails, Graded

Posted: 29 May 2018 06:01 AM PDT

Email Screenshot

A privacy update from Ticketmaster includes an embedded video.

In case you didn’t check your email last week, the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) went into effect on May 25^th. It’s a big and important privacy regulation change that left countless companies scrambling to explain it to their customers.

If you did check your email, you saw one Privacy Policy update after another fill your Inbox. Most of them had pretty standard subject lines, like “Updates to Our Privacy Policy” or “We’ve Updated Our Privacy Policies” – not exactly begging the recipient to open them.

But some companies were more creative, indicating that the Marketing department had as much to say about privacy requirements as the Legal department. For example, this email subject line from social intelligence company Union Metrics definitely stood out:

"Another privacy email? Yes, but please read this one too."

Every communication with a customer is an opportunity to create a positive customer experience. With a little effort, it is even possible to turn legal disclosures into an experience. Here are four companies that did a great job communicating this important – and complicated – policy change to customers, plus four companies that simply (e-)mailed it in.

THE WINNERS

Ticketmaster (Grade: A+): The events ticketing company managed to turn a privacy policy update into a marketing campaign, complete with a tagline that served as its email subject line: “Privacy. It’s personal.” The email begins with a short video that mixes imagery of big stadium concerts, a soccer game and fine arts with smartphone images of users scrolling through the Ticketmaster app. The video pays off the tagline at the end by noting that “just like your taste in entertainment, your privacy is personal to you.”

The email itself starts off with friendly language that doesn’t sound like a team of lawyers wrote it: “At Ticketmaster, our fans are at the heart of everything we do. Therefore, it’s hugely important to us that you are in control of the personal information you share when buying tickets with us.” It then lays out three elements of the new Privacy Pages: that it’s clear and honest, that it puts the customer in control, and that it encourages customers to ask questions and learn more. Importantly, it contains just two links: a large call-to-action button to view the Privacy Policy, and a link to contact the Privacy team.

Buffer (Grade: A): The social media publishing app sent an email from a real person – “Joel from Buffer” – and even included his picture in the signature. While the subject line, “Privacy update: How we are meeting GDPR requirements,” doesn’t exactly scream excitement, the body of the email is informative, personal, and to the point. It uses clear language to describe Buffer’s commitment to privacy: “We are fully aligned with the spirit of the GDPR for a safe and secure Internet. We aspire to embrace privacy by design…”

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Apple's AirPlay 2 with multiroom audio streaming and stereo HomePod pairing is here

Posted: 29 May 2018 07:41 AM PDT

iOS 11.4 is available today, and it comes with two notable new features: Messages in the Cloud and AirPlay 2. We'll dive into the messaging update in another post, but AirPlay 2 is a big deal: it adds multi-room support so multiple AirPlay 2 devices from a wide variety of manufacturers can all play the same music around your house, and it allows two HomePods to play as a stereo pair. All together, AirPlay 2 brings Apple's wireless audio system to parity with competitors like Google Cast and Amazon Alexa after years of stasis. Seriously: this is the biggest update to the audio side of AirPlay since it was first announced as "AirTunes" in 2004.

But AirPlay 2 is here now, and Apple tells me the two biggest specific changes are a bigger buffer so network hiccups don't interrupt your music, and tighter clock sync between devices to enable multiroom support. (You've been able to stream to multiple AirPlay devices from a Mac for years now, but AirPlay 2 brings multiroom streaming to iOS devices and the HomePod.) AirPlay 2 also addresses some longstanding annoyances with streaming music from iOS: you can now take a phone call, play videos, and play games without interrupting the music. And moving music around the house via Siri on the HomePod is fairly simple: you just say "Siri, move the music to the living room" or whichever room you prefer and it'll stream to that room.

There's a bunch of third parties lining up to support AirPlay 2 — Bang & Olufsen, Bluesound, Bose, Bowers & Wilkins, Denon, Libratone, Marantz, Marshall, Naim, Pioneer and Sonos — but there's a pretty significant catch, as far as I can tell. Other music streaming systems like Google Cast and Spotify Connect treat smart speakers like the little internet-connected computers they are: when you pick a song to play, all you're really doing is sending a command to the speaker, which then connects to your music service and streams the song directly from the internet.

That's not how AirPlay 2 works — it's still very dependent on your phone. When you stream to a third-party speaker, your iPhone sits in the middle, pulling the music down from the internet and then re-streaming it to the speaker. Current AirPlay users will be familiar with the limitations this imposes: if your phone dies or blips on the network or you just leave the house, the music stops.

The only exception is the HomePod, which can connect to Apple Music and stream to other AirPlay 2 speakers independently of your phone. Apple told me AirPlay 2 was only designed to let the HomePod stream directly like this, which makes sense, as the HomePod is an A8-powered iOS device in its own right. But it's not clear why you'd need the power of an A8 to stream music — it's not like any competing streaming music devices require such potent chips to work. It's puzzling, but it tracks with Apple's general default of putting the phone at the center of everything. We'll also have to see how AirPlay 2's multiroom streaming works with Sonos, which has been promising support — I suspect there's going to be some weirdness here.

Stereo pairing for the HomePod is relatively simple: if you select the same room name as another HomePod during setup, it'll ask you if you want to pair the speakers. Each HomePod will continue using its individual microphones to tune itself to the room, but you might recall that there's a special mic hidden inside the HomePod chassis that measures bass response; those mics will sync in a stereo pair so both speakers apply the same low end filter. Neat.

The HomePod is also getting calendar support for Siri, so you can ask when and where your meetings are, and add events to your calendar. It'll work with any calendar you add to your iOS calendar app as part of the HomePod's personal request feature; like other personal information it's not available if your phone isn't on the same network. It would be better if the HomePod could recognize individual voices and only allow your voice to access that sort of information, but honestly we're still waiting on multiple timer support here, so don't hold your breath.

Lastly, I asked if there were any updates that might make the HomePod work better as an Apple TV speaker, and the answer was nothing right now.

AirPlay 2 requires iOS 11.4 on all your devices to work. iPhone owners can update now, while HomePod owners can start the update from the Home app or just wait for it to automatically roll out over the next few days.

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'Fortnite' Is Many Things, But It Isn't A 'PUBG' Clone

Posted: 29 May 2018 06:31 AM PDT

Fortnite/PUBG

News is circulating this morning that PUBG Corp. is moving ahead with its lawsuit against Epic Games, claiming the developer is infringing on its property for Fortnite’s Battle Royale mode. “This is a measure to protect our copyrights,” a PUBG rep told Bloomberg.

What copyrights those are remains to be seen. According to the BBC, in addition to the overall “Battle Royale” concept of players dropping down onto an island to be the last one standing, PUBG also says that Fortnite copied its weapon designs and user interface.

The added wrinkle in all this is that PUBG is built on the Unreal engine that it licenses…from Epic, the very publisher it’s accusing of all this. The general idea is: PUBG became popular on Epic’s engine, Epic quickly used the engine to pivot its own game, Fortnite, a building defense title, into also having a Battle Royale mode that closely resembled PUBG’s own. And now they’ve made hundreds of millions of dollars as a result, Fortnite now turning into the most popular game on the planet in the past few months.

Whether Epic moved quickly to capitalize on PUBG’s success is not really up for debate. Clearly, they did. But accusing them of IP theft is another level entirely, and many in the public view this lawsuit as PUBG being jealous of Fortnite’s explosive success as its own popularity has started to wane.

While I won’t comment on that, what bothers me is that I’m not sure I understand PUBG’s actual case here.

It does not seem likely you can copyright an entire game mode like Battle Royale. That sounds like trying to copyright Domination or Capture the Flag. Or larger scale, like trying to own the concept of a MOBA or MMO. How many aspects would need to be changed before it’s different enough to qualify as unique? Is any last man standing mode IP theft? Is it the large map and playercount? The shrinking "danger zone"? Is it just dropping out of a plane? What exactly is PUBG claiming is “theirs” here? And how can they prove it’s theirs and theirs alone? Fortnite seems like it’s in a better spot than other BR games to claim it’s unique, namely the fact that it’s focused on a building mechanic that is nowhere to be found in PUBG.

And for weapon designs and UI? Again, what is PUBG claiming here? Like most shooters, the vast majority of Fortnite’s weapon designs (and PUBG’s) are based on real life guns, the FAMAS, the M4, and so on. The most iconic Fortnite weapon, its various collection of pickaxes, is not a core part of PUBG. And what UI elements can be claimed as unique to PUBG? The..minimap? The…compass? Things that have been in hundreds of games to this point? Hotkeys for weapons? A counter that shows how many players are left? I just don’t understand what PUBG is saying it owns here, but they may have to spell it out in court before we know for sure.

The fact is, the video game industry is iterative. Once upon a time, every first person shooter was a “DOOM clone.” And it seems to me that say, League of Legends was far closer to a clone of DOTA than Fortnite is to PUBG, as the two not only have distinct gameplay with Fortnite’s focus on building, but the two could also not look more visually distinct, despite running on the same engine.

PlayerUnknown's Battleground

I’m not going to accuse PUBG of sour grapes here because they genuinely might believe they’ve been wronged in some way. I don’t understand their actual argument that Epic has done something truly immoral/illegal in creating Fortnite: BR, but I suppose that’s the case they have to prove.

I won’t say that PUBG has no shot at taking on Epic because the law is murky and it’s hard to know how this will play out, depending on who’s rendering judgement. But from the outside looking in, if PUBG has a case against Fortnite, Borderlands should be suing Destiny, Tomb Raider should be suing Uncharted, Battlefield should be suing Call of Duty, DOTA should be suing League, Everquest should be suing WoW, and so on and so forth. And no one benefits from that.

We’ll have to see how this evolves over time, but for now, it remains one of the strangest cases in the industry, and could have some potentially enormous implications, depending on how it shakes out.

Update: I asked Epic about the lawsuit and they simply said "We don't comment on ongoing litigation."

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