Why everything is a subscription

Sphero’s founders just wanted to make robots. In 2010, Adam Wilson and Ian Bernstein asked investors for money to build a business around their clever phone-controlled robotic ball. But in some cases, investors wanted to know what more the business could offer: after they sold one robot to a customer, what came next?

The answer was one that many hardware companies have turned to: a recurring revenue model that allows them to rely on customers paying every month or year. To find that model, Sphero experimented with turning the robot into a gaming device, but later, it decided to go all in on its developer tools and make the robots into coding toys that would appeal to schools. At that point, the team pivoted to education as a main focus,...

from The Verge - All Posts http://bit.ly/2GUSdjJ

Comments

Pandora Stories lets artists add commentary to their own playlists

Pandora launched Stories today, a tool that lets artists and creators add voice commentary to their own playlists. The Stories feature merges podcasts with music playlists, and is meant for artists to add context to an album, or for podcasters to experiment with new storytelling formats. The feature is part of Pandora AMP, the streaming service’s free Artist Marketing Platform that helps creators promote their work. To kick off the launch, Pandora’s prepared some Stories by artists like John Legend and Daddy Yankee, who tell listeners their personal stories interspersed between their own songs. There’s also a Stories playlist called Love Songs That Aren’t Really Love Songs , which includes commentary on individual songs like a podcast... Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/2Xz1oNc

Android Addition Opens FIDO Password Killer to Billions

The FIDO Alliance hammered another nail into the passwords coffin with the announcement that devices running Android 7.0 or higher will be compatible with FIDO2. Certification of Android 7.0+ means devices running those versions of Google's mobile operating system will support FIDO2 out of the box or through a software update. FIDO2, introduced last year, provides a FIDO Web authentication standard that combines the World Wide Web Consortium's Web Authentication specification with FIDO's Client-to-Authenticator protocol. from TechNewsWorld https://ift.tt/2GQVG4f

Nintendo Switch Online reaches more than 100 retro games

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Nintendo has hit a milestone with the ever-growing library of retro games included in its Nintendo Switch Online service. The next batch will take the number of available games past 100, with five new titles resulting in a total of 104. In keeping with recent form , the latest additions are, well, not necessarily blockbuster releases. Here’s the list: Caveman Ninja: Joe & Mac , a prehistoric action game released in arcades and ported to the SNES by Data East in 1991 Magical Drop 2 , a 1996 Data East puzzle game for the SNES that was originally on the Neo Geo but never previously got a Western release Super Baseball Simulator 1.000 , a SNES baseball game released by Culture Brain in 1991 Spanky’s Quest , a 1991 SNES action game by Natsume... Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/3eXBE7D

Latest Technology

Search This Blog