Secret’s out again
Secret, an iOS and Android app that allowed users to share content anonymously on the web within a friends’ circle, is back. It was started by David Byttow in 2014, and shut down in 2015 following internal differences in the company. And it’s now a web publishing platform, a la Medium, as on Thursday. It’s called Bold , an IO. If you hopped over to the platform, you might find that it is strikingly similar to Medium. In fact, it has an ever starker interface, with just a plain white screen. Bold.io is paired with the Slack cloud and while it is essentially an intra-organisation collaboration “platform for writing long-form content at work”, including “engineering tutorials, product specs, memos, onboarding docs, etc.,” its content can be made publicly visible too. The whole point seems to be to make content on social media more “authentic” through anonymity. Will people really be more honest when their name isn’t attached to their views?
Super Mario Jump
Super Mario is a simple enough game. Make the animated truck driver run and jump to collect coins and win. Well, easy enough if you have a joystick. But now that most gamers are on smartphone, game designer Shigeru Miyamoto has decided running and jumping is too much effort. So, to widen the game’s audience and make Super Mario popular with the help of Apple iPhone, the latest version of the vintage videogame will has automated Mario’s forward motion, requiring the gamer to simply make him jump with touch-taps. Plus, it’s only $9.99, and free to download if you aren’t interested in the higher levels.
Pebbles to make to fit bit by bit
Launched in 2012, Pebble was among the first manufacturers of wearable tech. Its smartwatch was compatible with iOS and Android both. On Wednesday, it shut shop and let its assets and staff be taken over by Fitbit, a health and fitness wearable, for around $40 million. According to a press release, the acquisition is aimed to help Fitbit add “deep industry expertise… [and] accelerate the development of customised solutions… [including] new products, features and functionality”. Pebble’s main USP will be its smartwatch software platform, amid Fitbit’s declining earnings thanks to “production issues” and “weakening demand for wearables". Even Apple Watch is suffering an over-70% year-on-year fall in shipments. Medtronic, an Irish medical device company, recently partnered up with the San-Fransisco-based company to provide a boost to the industry.
