It’s been a busy week in emerging tech, with a lot of big news. Here’s a quick recap of what you might have missed.
Apple debuts ARKit
This past week, Apple introduced ARKit, a new framework that allows you to easily create unparalleled augmented reality experiences for iPhone and iPad.
Some believe this (along with Google’s release of its similar ARCore) is going to bring massive adoption to mobile AR while others don’t; including Ori Inbar, fellow Tribe member & Founder of Ogmento (which became FlyBy Media), which was acquired by Apple in 2012 and became the foundation for ARKit.
Instead, he argues, [massive adoption] will happen with The AR Cloud (the real-time 3D map of the world) — when AR experiences persist in the real world across space, time, and devices. Ori believes this won’t happen until the iPhone has a “…back facing depth camera that will put in the hands of tens of millions a camera that senses the shapes of your surroundings and can create a rich accurate 3D map of the world to be shared by users and for users.”
AR researchers and industry insiders believe the AR Cloud will be the single most important software infrastructure in computing, far more valuable than Facebook’s Social graph or Google’s page rank index.
IKEA has already released an AR app that lets customers see furniture as it would appear in their home.
Bankers hating on cryptos? No way.
Jamie Dimon, CEO of JP Morgan says “Bitcoin is a fraud, and will eventually blow up.” This, despite JPMorgan starting a trial project using blockchain.
Other reasons why his comments are perplexing. Especially weird considering just yesterday JP Morgan bought 19,102 bitcoin shares in the Swedish Nasdaq traded bitcoin ETN, translating to around 95 bitcoins, worth some half a million dollars.
Tesla takes some blame
First, on AI: Seven Deadly Sins of Predicting the Future of AI
And after investigating the first documented crash involving the use of driver assist autopilot technology, the National Transportation Safety Board concluded Tesla bears some of the blame. This could have some interesting implications in the insurance space, especially as these “Auto-Pilot” modes become more ubiquitous.
Adobe wants to bring digital marketing to your smart car using analytics on the data captured from web-enabled autos.
You’ve been Equif***ed
Finally, Equifax, a consumer credit reporting company which collects and aggregates information on over 800 million individual consumers and more than 88 million businesses worldwide, was hacked, exposing 143 million Americans and their social security numbers. Hackers had access from mid-May through July. Equifax had known about the hack since late-July and took over a month to tell everyone.
The author is Program Associate at The Junction, which was established in 2011 as Israel’s first commercial accelerator. The Junction is owned and operated by F2 Capital, a seed-stage VC fund backing Israeli frontier technology companies at the cross-section of Big Data, AI and Connectivity. Partnered with multinationals such as SAP, HP, and Munich Re, F2 Capital is aligned with the emerging realities of startup financing to support exceptional founders before traditional VCs are ready to invest.
