Apple's latest Animoji ad emulates Childish Gambino's "Redbone"

Check out this clever Animojification of Childish Gambino (AKA Donald Glover)  Grammy Award Winning song for "Best Traditional R&B Performance," "Redbone" shows how adept Apple's iPhone X feature is at capturing nuances and moods of a performance.  There's certainly some video editing and special effects taking place in this ad but the heavy lifting is done by the iPhone's TrueDepth camera. Pretty impressive ad.

WhatsApp is now available on Apple CarPlay

Apple CarPlay users who are also WhatsApp users can now consider using the popular messagin app in hands free mode while in a car.  WhatsApp users who have updated the app to the latest version on iOS will see the app's icon appear on their CarPlay console.

You can’t browse a list of conversations, but you can tap on the icon to start sending a new message using dictation. Notifications from WhatsApp also appear in the CarPlay UI and users can tap to listen and respond. This makes it safer for passengers sitting in front, or parked drivers, to engage in WhatsApp conversations. Using any sort of messaging app is still a cause of distracted driving and should be avaoided.

Source: 9to5mac

Airbnb to expand the experience element of Trips to 200 U.S. cities

Seems like Airbnb’s expansion beyond providing alternative short-term rentals is paying off. Airbnb launched Trips a little over a year ago with the objective of offering unique experiences while their travelers are visiting certain areas. The company is investing US$5 million to expand this part of the business for 200 cities in the US. There are currently 4,000 experiences being offered globally with 1,000 of them being offered in the US. Airbnb describes Trips as helping “small business owners, new entrepreneurs, and community non-profits to create immersive experiences for travelers.”

It seems growing beyond offering rentals has helped the company. According to Airbnb, global weekly guest bookings have risen by more than 2,000 percent year-on-year, while the number of experiences offered has increased by 500 percent.

Source: Digital Trends

Google Clips sold out a few hours after going up on the Google Store

Google Clips is the company’s experimental product that merges artificial intelligence with photo- and video-taking in what PocketNow describes as a “set-it-and-forget-it interface.” It can be set to Smart Capture and have the tiny camera decide what photos to take in the span of around three hours. The first batch of these small cameras went up for sale over the weekend on the Google Store and was sold out in a couple of hours. According to Android Police, the delivery date for the units they got were around March 1 or 2. Individual customers who got their hands on the camera were getting timeframes between February 25 and 28.