The tenth edition! That was quick… Up first this week we have The Coalition for App Fairness, biomedical tattoos, and Google’s new Chromecast and Google TV software.
The Coalition for App Fairness
Fortnite maker Epic Games, Spotify, and Tinder owner Match Group have formed an Alliance, The Coalition for App Fairness, to pressure Apple and Google to alter their app store rules. The group was registered after Epic sued Apple and Google for the removal of Fortnite from their respective App stores.
The group’s mission is to lower the 30% app tax that App stores levy on developers, as well as to provide an environment where consumers have more choice in where they download their apps from.
The Wall Street Journal reports that the coalition has been set up as a social welfare organisation in the USA, which usually lobbies for public support, rather than formal political lobbying.
Biomedical Dynamic Tattoos
Emergent Nanomaterials, a research lab based in Boulder, Colorado, announced this week that they are looking in to how tattoos can be used to detect when the skin is at risk of excessive UV radiation. They have developed an invisible tattoo ink that turns blue when exposed to UV light, to alert the wearer as to when they need to top up on their sun screen!
The Chief at Emergent Nanomaterials, Carson J. Bruns, explained that “The tattoo ink contains a UV-activated dye inside of a plastic nanocapsule less than a micron in diameter – or thousandth of a millimeter – about the same size as an ordinary tattoo pigment.” He also served as the first human test subject for this experiment, good on you Mr. Bruns!
Chromecast X Google TV
Google have announced a new Chromecast Dongle alongside Google TV software. The Chromecast now includes a physical remote control, as opposed to the previous iterations which you would cast to. It also has a fully fleshed out menu system similar to Amazon’s Fire TV stick, allowing the user to browse suggestions.
The service is powered by Android TV, but has a Google TV layer programmed on top which the user navigates through. The Verge reports that “Google TV is all about aggregation. It brings together content from all the streaming services you’re subscribed to and lists them all side by side in Netflix-like rows of recommendations.” Users can also download their favourite streaming app and browse individually.
Check out other articles in the Can Factory blog.
