App Masters of Augusta ⛳🏆

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👀 TLDR:

In this week’s What’s Appening, we hail one of the best sports apps we’ve ever seen. The Masters golf tournament was played this past weekend, but those of us in tech circles were blown away by the brilliant features and design of the tournament’s official app. Even if you don’t know your Jon Rahms 🏆 from your John Dalys🏌️‍♂️, we’d encourage you to check this out as an example of how to get UX and design right. They’ve even thrown in some cool AI features to make it a truly masterful app. In other news this week, we are looking at new features for YouTube Premium users, wondering what it tells us about two-tier social media experiences. There’s also news of an embarrassing bug for Twitter Circle users. Our Stat of the Week covers AI job replacements. And What’s dAppening looks at the possibility of the Ethereum Phone, with a new ‘ethOS’ mobile operating system going live this week. Finally, don’t forget to check out our ChatGPT+Slack collaboration video.

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Takes 🎬️

⛳🏆 Apps – Masters Golf App Hailed As Huge Triumph (Once Again)

“The best thing since Netflix”, according to a Netflix exec. “The greatest app ever made”, says @Mstate2004 on Twitter. Those are just some of the many, many great testimonials about the official Masters golf app over these last few days. But why all the fuss? A myriad of reasons. First of all, the app is incredible from a UX standpoint. It’s super easy to use and offers users free live streaming – with faster updates than the CBS network broadcast. It has numerous player-tracking options, the ability to watch from several different angles, generative AI for commentary and analytics, customizable push notifications, adapts to your location, cool graphics, and a whole lot more. The AI comes not from OpenAI but from the old hands at IMB, who have been mucking about with AI and machine learning since the ChatGPT team was in diapers. But here’s the rub: The app is free for everyone, and you aren’t even bombarded with ads. Moreover, you don’t even need to register or log in to access it. It gets weirder still when you factor in that the shelf life of the app is only really four days – it was top of the App Store in sports apps this week, but you can be sure it won’t be anywhere near the top ten again until next spring. But it begs the question, why do this all for free and seemingly little direct financial gain, especially when we know other sports apps charge a bucketload for this type of content? The simple answer is because they can. Augusta National owns the app, and it owns the land and the streaming rights. The club isn’t beholden to the whims of broadcasters like Major League sports or other golf associations are. As such, they can stick cameras on every crevice of the stunning Augusta Course and get their partners at IMB to have a little tinker with AI capability. Even if you think the Masters is just some rich men hitting a ball around a field with some sticks, you should check out this app. You’ll learn a little about golf, but you’ll arguably learn more about UX and UI, product design, marketing, accessibility, use cases for AI, and generally what it takes to make one of the best sports apps ever created. #AceApp Read more here.

📺🤑 YouTube – A Bunch of New Features Launch for Premium Subscribers

If we could point to one unifying theme of social media & streaming platforms over the last couple of years, it’s the drive to make the platforms two-tier, offering perks to those who pay and throwing ads at those of us who don’t. But there is a kind of acceptance that the underlying product is the same – you know, Stranger Things is still Stranger Things regardless of your Netflix subscription. That fact was on our minds as we learned that YouTube was launching a host of new features for Premium subscribers, including, interestingly, higher-quality video than non-paying viewers. The enhanced bitrate version of 1080p will provide Premium subscribers with crisper and richer streams. Is this a big deal? Not in and of itself. But you’d argue that it is following the Twitter model of making the experience worse – beyond adverts – for non-payers. There are other new features, too, including the ability for Premium iOS users to watch videos with friends using FaceTime via SharePlay. But the change in the actual quality of the video was the one that caught our attention. A small nudge towards offering fundamentally different products to different subscriber levels, but it tells us a lot about the future of social media. #YourTubeTheirTube Read more here.

🐤🔏 Twitter – Circle Feature Is Not As Private As Users Thought

Twitter Circle is a neat feature that allows users to have a private conversation between selected members. You can tweet with a few hand-picked friends without anyone else seeing it. Simple, right? Not so fast. It turns out that Circle is not private for many users, and the tweets are showing up on the much-maligned “For You” timeline. A security specialist Ian Coldwater demonstrated the bug on his timeline, adding to many more reports that the private tweets were in public view. Sure, this is a small bug, and you’d assume Twitter will have it fixed soon. But it’s part of a long list of stuff that’s been broken on Elon Musk’s ‘new and improved’ Twitter. He may bang on about freedom of speech, media conspiracies, and whatever else, but if the underlying product is faulty, particularly simple stuff like this, then you should be worried. #CircleOfMistrust Read more here.

🧐 Stat of the Week: 300M Jobs

🧑‍🏭🤖 AI – Goldman Sachs Claims Bots Could Replace 300 Million Workers

It’s a debate we are likely to keep having in the coming years, but now Goldman Sachs has put a figure on it, claiming that AI will replace around 300 million full-time jobs in the coming years. That’s the headline and the figure that a lot of media reports have concentrated on. But GS also pointed out that AI could lead to the creation of many NEW job roles, as well as create record levels of business productivity. We won’t labor the point, except to reiterate what we have been saying this past few months – AI won’t take your job or usurp your business, but someone using AI might. Embrace it, master it, and put it to work for you. #AIJobs Read more here.

🕸️ What’s dAppening?

📱🕸️ Ethereum – Web3 Phone Moves a Step Closer with Launch of ethOS 2.1

Not so long ago, we reported on the (still) impending launch of the Solana Saga web3 smartphone. It’ll be an interesting piece of hardware, no doubt, but nothing compared to the game-changing concept of an Ethereum phone. We aren’t quite there yet, but Ethereum developers have taken us a step closer with the latest upgrade of the Ethereum mobile operating system, ethOS. The new version, ethOS 2.1, has just gone live, and it is the most comprehensive yet. It is fully integrated with the Ethereum blockchain, has a secure crypto wallet, a built-in app for minting NFTs, private web3 messaging, and integrates natively with the Ethereum Name Service (ENS). It’s also open-source, so you can check it out on GitHub here. You can, if you’re brave enough, install the OS on a handful of unlocked OEM Google Pixel devices (Pixel 3, 3XL, or 5a). But the key is what comes next – hardware. Repurposing old Pixel phones for web3 might sound like a lot of fun, but we are more interested in the team’s plans to build the Ethereum Phone, which has been branded as the “ΞPhone”. It might be a few years off yet, but if – and when – it comes, it might be the most important hardware launch of the decade. #ETHPhoneHome Read more here.

Meanwhile at 3Advance…

ChatGPT has become our most powerful tool of choice recently. We’ve started integrating ChatGPT API into client apps to help improve user experience, and we’ve been building out Slack integrations for proof of concepts and for productivity hacks. Last week we went live with our Collaborative ChatGPT, we’ve aptly named SlackGPT. Now, instead of using the OpenAI website, we’re using a shared channel with a chat bot that brings ChatGPT closer to us, so we can actually interact with ChatGPT together, collaboratively. Check it out today

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