You Won’t Believe Upworthy’s Plan For Sponsored Content (Actually, You Probably Will)

Upworthy, the content-sharing startup whose penchant for hyperbolic headlines has generated its own parody websites, is laying out its plans for a new ad program called Upworthy Collaborations.

When the company raised an $8 million Series A last fall, executives said they wanted to make money through sponsored content. However, they revealed more details about those plans (and who’s actually doing the sponsoring) in a blog post today.

The Upworthy Collaborations program will have three main parts, the company said — brands can promote their own posts, sponsor curated topics, and receive consultation on how to make their content better (or at least better-suited for Upworthy). The first advertiser announced in this program is Unilever, which is working with Upworthy to promote its sustainability initiative Project Sunlight.

Upworthy says that it will maintain editorial independence, that it won’t work with every advertiser (the blog post calls out companies engaged in “greenwashing”, i.e., “covering up bad behavior with superficial work to improve their image”), and that there will be “no expandable banner ads, homepage takeovers, or garish advertorial content on the site.”

The post concludes:

We know there are serious concerns any time a media company decides to work with advertisers. The most important thing for us is to find a way to grow with integrity while retaining your trust. That’s why it’s so important to us to be straight up with you — our community — and let you know what we’re doing and why we’re doing it. We’ll keep tweaking this model as we learn and get feedback from you, but we both believe we’ve found the right path to start on today — one that advances our mission and will hopefully help Upworthy to remain strong, independent, and sustainable for years and decades to come.

In a related announcement, the company released some data about sharing on the site. Citing data from Newswhip, Upworthy says its average post drives 75,000 Facebook Likes, “some 12x more than BuzzFeed.”

Researchers Are Improving Machine Learning By Making Computers Teach Each Other Pac-Man

I wish this weren’t April 1, because then you’d all appreciate how cool this is, but as far as I can tell, this release posted a few days ago is completely true. In short, researchers at Washington State University are experimenting with machine learning by teaching computers how to teach each other. The plan is to have one computer show another computer how to play Pac-Man in a way that does not involve simply moving the programming from one machine to the other.

“We designed algorithms for advice giving, and we are trying to figure out when our advice makes the biggest difference,” said AI professor Matthew E. Taylor. The teaching computer “shows” the other computer how to play “well” i.e. not get eaten by ghosts and how to grab the most points. The student-teacher pairs also taught each other how to play StarCraft and, at points, the student ended up being better than the teacher.

From the release:

April Fools’ 2014: The Round-Up Of The Best

It’s that time of year again, friends. The day when “up” becomes “down”, lies become truth, dogs become people, and when the Internet becomes a liiiittle bit unbearable for a day or so.

It’s April Fools’ Day! Yay.

As is something of a tradition around these parts, we’re keeping a big running list of the best (/worst?) of today’s gags from around the vast Internets. Check back throughout the day for the new stuff, as it comes in.

Google:

Always cutting edge, Google actually decided to get the ball rolling with their April Fools’ day stuff yesterday. (Screw it! Lets start April Fools’ day in February. You know what I like to say? ABF. Always be foolin’.)

Pokémon Challenge:

Yesterday morning, The Google Maps’ team tugged at the heart strings of every geek around the world by debuting a video teaser for a video game they’ll never actually release: a live-action, augmented reality Pokemon game.

Softening the blow just a little, the Maps team did sneak an actual Pokemon collection mini-game into their app — it’s just not quite as ridiculous as the one in the video.

Magic Hand:

Brought to you buy Google Japan, it’s Magic Hand! Why use your own hand to type, when you can use your hand to make a robot hand type?

Nest For Flights

Rich Branson introduces personal climate control for every passenger on his planes, brought to you by Nest.

The real prank is really the reminder that this doesn’t exist, and instead we get that weird little grey nipple thing that blows out tepid air that always seems to smell like fart.

Gmail Shelfie:

“Shelfie” is short for “Shareable Selfie”. By replacing your Gmail background with a big ol’ picture of your face, Gmail is making sure you never have to stray far from your inbox to get your daily dose of self indulgence.

Auto-Awesome Photobombs:

Google+’ Auto-Awesome feature does a lot of awesome stuff. It’ll automatically make GIFs out of series of photos, so you don’t have to! It’ll make snazzy little video compilations of your day, so you don’t have to!

And now it’ll randomly insert David Hasselhoff into your vacation photos, so you don’t have to.

Swiftkey For Traditional, Physical Keyboards:

Sega:

You could wear an Oculus Rift. Or you could strap two Sega Genesis to your face. Your call, really.

Roku Watch:

Google gets a wearable! Apple gets a wearable! Why shouldn’t Roku get a wearable? Complete with HDTV antenna and a handy-dandy remote, for when your wrist is just too far away.

ThinkGeek:

Every year, ThinkGeek launches a series of fake products that they don’t actually intend to sell. Every year, at least one of the products gets so much attention that ThinkGeek decides to turn it into a real thing. Is it sort of like free market testing for ThinkGeek? Sure! But that’s okay, because the stuff they come up with is generally brilliant.

Here’s what they came up with this year (from left to right, above):

• The Flux Capacitor Car Charger: A tiny, cigarette-port-powered recreation of the heart of Doc Brown’s DeLorean.


• The USS Enterprise Throwing Disc


• The Laser-Guided Tactical Necktie. It’s got buckles!


• The Unicorn Drinking Horn: ThinkGeek sells canned “Unicorn Meat”; why waste the horn?


• Darkmage LED Spellcasting staff: “Our Darkmage LED Spellcasting Staff makes a statement. And that statement is You Shall NOT…. violate copyright on this product page.”


• The Pabst Stein: For when you want the experience of Oktoberfest, but without actually drinking good beer


• Rosetta Stone: Klingon Edition: Never mix up “qoSlIj DatIvjaj” and “Heghlu’meH QaQ jajvam” again!


• The Nerf Nuke: It’s only an advantage until everyone has a Nerf Nuke. Then it’s just terrifying.


• The Mr. Beard Beard Machine: The convenience of one of those single-serve coffee capsule machines, but for your luscious face locks.

Any votes on which, if any, might become real? I’d pick the Flux Capacitor car charger. I know a dozen people who would buy that in a heart beat. I might be one of them.

Samsung and HTC

Both Samsung and HTC came up with the same idea: a smart glove (powerglove!) for your phone. Aaakwaaaaard.

Nokia:

Nokia throws it back to the year 2000, bringing back the classic (and mostly indestructible) Nokia 3310, with a few small changes: it runs Windows Phone. Oh, and it has a 41 megapixel camera.

CERN Goes Comic Sans:

Some of the world’s smartest people decide to use the world’s dumbest font:

Sphero’s Selfie-Bot:

Bonus points for looking like Bowser’s flying machine from the final boss battle of Super Mario World.

iFixit:

iFixit, who sells kits to repair gadgets and regularly knocks Apple for making it too damned hard for users to repair their own stuff, faux-announces that they’ve been acquired by Apple. They immediately start pitching AppleCare+ as “the only tool you need” and decide that Apple’s stuff isn’t that hard to repair after all.

We’ll update this list as the day goes on, so check back! Let us know down in the comments if we missed any great ones.

BBM Gets Stickers, Larger File Attachments And Group Photo Sharing

BlackBerry’s dedicated messaging app is growing at a decent clip, and now has a larger active audience than Tango did when it raised its recent $280 million funding round, with 85 million users engaging with the platform on at least a monthly basis. It’s not resting on its laurels, however; the network introduced new features via an update today, including bringing stickers to the general BBM user population (it had been available in the dev channel) as well as expanding the file size limit for transfers and making it possible to share photos with a group chat.

Max file size for attachments is now 16 MB on all BBM platforms, and the group chat thing brings BBM to the technologically advanced age of MMS. The sticker packs work with the new BBM Shop, which is one of the ways BlackBerry is monetizing BBM. Packs are either free or $1.99 to start, but this could change as BlackBerry and its partners play with pricing models.

The update should be percolating out to users on BlackBerry 10, Android and iOS so everyone can join in on the fun. The fun of sending virtual stickers to each other in lieu of authentic human interaction.

Krablr Raises $5 Million With Sequoia Partners, Scranton Angels

Krablr, a real-time crab pricing engine for amateur fishermen, has raised $5 million with Sequoia Partners with Strumpo Kildare and Scranton Angels as secondary investors. The company, founded in 2013 by Stanford Alums Wilson Poney and Paul Paulson Black III, had a seed round of $3 million supplied by Michael Arlington’s CrUnd and Wobbly-Door Ventures in Palo Alto.

“The company is doing some amazing stuff in the fisheries space,” said Arlington in an email. Black agreed.

“We’re here to disrupt the way crab pricing is done on the shorelines of America,” he said. “My father was an amateur crabber and for decades he couldn’t get a straight answer: how much is this crab worth? Where can I sell it? If this crab were veal, how much would it cost? Nobody could answer that.”

To price the crab, you place it on your smartphone and the built-in magnetometer and biometric sensors weigh and categorize the animal. Then, when you approach the crab purchase point (the pair intend to make kiosks for crabbers to drop off their catch and are working with Highway 1, a hardware accelerator, to build the machines), your phone sends an inaudible signal – a Krinkle – to the kiosk to transfer the data and receive payment.

Poney plans to turn crabbing into the next bitcoin.

“Just like Bitcoin, Krablr is amazing,” he said.

Why did CrUnd invest? Arlington’s love of crabbing is well known and he lives on Puget Sound where he and his dogs crab almost daily. “It seemed like a perfect fit,” said Arlington.

Perhaps it is. Perhaps it is just that.

Krablr is is in private beta and will launch in three years.

Toshiba’s Imaginary Wearable Computing Gloves Win April Fools’ Day

If there was some over-arching, governing body that handed out awards to April Fools’ Day prankers, I should hope that Toshiba would get one.

The company today announced the Digit, sloughing off what is usually a pretty boring, business-y style to introduce something truly hilarious to the gadget world.

The Digit is a set of wearable computing gloves.

It has a “two-hand gestural user interface,” as well as a 32-megapixel camera, a 4K Ultra HD video camera, and a 4K Virtual Retina display. To use the screen, you literally cover your face with the gloves like the monkey who saw no evil. To use the phone, you hold your hand up to your face like a child pretending to be on the telephone. To listen to music, just stick your thumbs in your ears.

It’s adorable.

It also comes with 64GB of SSD storage (don’t even ask), and 1 TB of cloud storage, so your stuff is always in the palm of your hand. (See? I can joke, too.)

But the best part of the Digit is the social media integration. When you hold hands with another Digit user, it auto-changes your relationship status to be connected to them.

You can check out the video below to see the full use-cases of this imaginary gadget, and be sure to note the mime.

Well played, Toshiba.

Apple Explores Bayonet Mounts For Swappable iPhone Camera Lenses

Apple has been granted a patent by the USPTO (spotted by AppleInsider) for interchangeable lenses for a mobile device, meaning it’s possible future iPhones will have the built-in ability to swap out one lens, say a macro for close-ups, for another, like a wide-angle for sweeping landscapes. The patent first turned up as an application a few weeks ago, but Apple has already been granted rights to the IP.

That could mean nothing, as Apple frequently patents tech it doesn’t necessarily use right away in products. But it could also mean a lot; recent supposed leaked photos from inside Foxconn show an iPhone with a raised camera protruding slightly from the back of the device, and the drawings from the patent also show such a design. Of course, the provenance of those images is still sketchy at best, and there are other reasons for a raised camera (devices thickness) so it’s far too early to read anything into that.

Apple building an interchangeable lens system native to iPhone would be in keeping with its dedication to having the best camera available in mobile devices. Systems already exist from third-parties, but most of these are clip-ons, and the bayonet system borrowed from DSLRs and mirrorless cameras would make for more convenience, more security and better image quality using the lenses you can swap in and out, all of which Apple cites as benefits in the patent itself.

As a huge fan of interchangeable lens cameras, I’m excited by the idea of seeing these built into mobile devices. So long as they can build it in such a way that it doesn’t impeded the design or function of the device without a lens attached, it would be a great way to amp up the photographic chops of our portable gadgets while keeping kit loads a lot lighter. If I could just carry a telephoto zoom and a small macro as well as my smartphone, instead of a massive bag with DSLR gear that weighs about 50 lbs, I’d consider that very much worth my while.