Google gives $2.3M to 18 news organizations in Asia Pacific

Google announced today it is providing $2.3 million in funding to 18 news organizations in the Asia Pacific region, the latest in its ongoing effort to support publishers globally.

News organizations from 11 nations, including Australia, India, Pakistan, Hong Kong, Japan, and Taiwan are receiving the grant as part of Thursday’s announcement, the company said, which began accepting applications for the new innovation challenge fund in the region late last year.

The search giant said more than 250 organizations had applied for the funding. Those that are selected showed “variety and creativity of their ideas” to explore ways to increase reader engagement that would drive greater loyalty and willingness in readers to pay for content.

The $2.3 million innovation challenge fund is not evenly distributed among the 18 hand-picked organizations, a Google spokesperson told TechCrunch. The company additionally also offers mentoring and training sessions to these organizations, the spokesperson added.

Gaon Connection, a news organization based in Lucknow, one of the biggest cities in India, that received the grant focuses on the challenges that people in rural India confront today.

Veteran journalist Neelesh Misra, the founder of Gaon Connection, told TechCrunch in an interview that the capital would help his seven-year-old firm to pivot from a rural media platform to a rural insight firm.

“We have been looking to bring much greater statistical data depth to our work. We feel that if we could back the voice of rural India with surveys and insights, it would amplify their reach. We often hear from people in the village that they don’t have a say,” he said.

“I am a content person, but not familiar with tech. We have done the difficult battle first: We today have community journalists in more than 300 districts in India. And now those journalists will be able to use the platform that we will build because of Google funding to do surveys, record video, audio and text content, and crunch the data. This platform will give people in rural India a say so that policymakers and others in urban India have a better understanding of people in rural regions and their desire,” he said.

The Morning Context, another organization picked from India, covers internet, business, and chaos beats in the world’s second largest internet market. Earlier this month, the Morning Context also closed a seed financing round.

The Current in Pakistan covers “news that is woke and celebrates the fact that hey, you’re not supposed to know everything.” In Korea, the Busan Daily, Maeil Daily and Gangwon Daily that are the recipients of the funding are collaborating on real-time insights to create “customized experiences for their readers,” Google said.

Australian Community Media, another recipient, is developing a new platform for classified ads that will better support local newspapers and small businesses. Japan’s Nippon TV is using AR to bring its news archives to life.

“A strong Asia Pacific news industry has never been more important, and we’re looking forward to seeing the selected applicants put their ideas into action,” said Fazal Ashfaq, News and Publishing Lead for Google in APAC, in a statement.

Thursday’s announcement is part of Google News Initiative’s $300 million that it unveiled in May 2018. The company has so far run five innovation challenges globally: 2 in APAC, one in North America, one in LATAM, and one in Middle East, Africa, and Turkey.

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TikTok to launch parental controls globally, disable direct messaging for users under 16

TikTok is introducing a new set of parental controls to its platform to users worldwide, including in the U.S. The features, collectively referred to as “Family Pairing,” will allow parents to set controls on Screen Time Management, Restricted Mode, and Direct Messages for their teen users. It will also now disable direct messaging for users under the age of 16 in all markets. A similar set of features was launched in the U.K. in February, designed with European laws and regulations in mind.

In that market, the features were called “Family Safety Mode.”

Today, is the official introduction to “Family Pairing,” but TikTok says the worldwide rollout will take place over the “coming weeks.”

To use the new controls, parents of a teenage user age 13 and up will be able to link their account to their child’s, which requires the parent to set up their own TikTok account. This will allow the parent to set controls on how long their child is able to use the TikTok app, turn on or off who the teen can direct message with, and they can opt to turn on TikTok’s “restricted” mode for the child’s account, in order to limit inappropriate content.

The latter is not a well-explained feature. But for an app of TikTok’s scale, it’s likely based in large part on users flagging inappropriate videos they come across. Parents should be aware, then, that this is not equivalent to setting parental controls on a video streaming app, like Netflix, or restricting what a child can download from the App Store on their phone. In other words, some inappropriate content or more adult material could slip through.

Both Screen Time Management and Restricted Mode are existing controls that TikTok users can set for themselves via the app’s Digital Wellbeing section. But with Family Pairing, the parent will be able to set these controls for their child, instead of relying on the teen to do it for themselves.

TikTok also already offered a number of controls on Direct Messaging before today, which allow users to restrict messages to only approved followers, restrict the audience, or disable direct messages altogether. TikTok also blocks images and videos in messages to cut down on other issues, as well.

But with Family Pairing, parents can choose to what extent teens can message privately on the platform, if at all.

And in a move that will likely enrage teens, TikTok has now decided to automatically disable Direct Messages for any registered accounts under the age of 16. (Prepare to see a lot more activity and private conversations taking place in the TikTok comments section!) This change goes live on April 30.

The changes give parents far more control over their child’s use of TikTok compared with any other social media app on the market today, outside of those designed exclusively with families and children in mind. However, the parental controls are only a subset of the controls users can opt to set for themselves. For example, users can choose to make their accounts private, turn off comments, and control who can duet with them, among other things.

But the options may relieve some parents’ stress about how addictive the TikTok app has become. Teen users are spending significant amounts of time on the short video app — so much that TikTok itself even launched its own in-app PSA that encourages users to “take a break” from their phone.

TikTok offers other resources for parents, as well, including educational safety videos and parental guides. 

It’s an interesting decision on TikTok’s part to launch screen time-limiting features and other restrictions amid a global pandemic, when teens are stuck at home with nothing much to do but watch videos, chat and play games. But with families at home together, there may be no better time than now to have a conversation about how much social media is too much.

“More than ever, families are turning to internet platforms like TikTok to stay entertained, informed, and connected. That was, of course, happening before COVID-19, but it has only accelerated since the outbreak began and social distancing brought families closer together,” writes TikTok Director of Trust & Safety, Jeff Collins, in an announcement. “The embrace of platforms like ours is providing families with joint tools to express their creativity, share their stories, and show support for their communities. At the same time, they are often learning to navigate the digital landscape together and focused on ensuring a safe experience,” he said.

The changes follow increased scrutiny by government regulators of TikTok, owned by Beijing-based ByteDance and the 2019 fine of $5.7 million leveraged against Musical.ly (which had been acquired by ByteDance) by the FTC for violation of U.S. children’s privacy law COPPA.

TikTok has responded to these concerns in a variety of ways, including the introduction of the TikTok Content Advisory Council; the release of new Community Guidelines; publication of its first Transparency Report; the hiring of global General Counsel; expansion of its Trust & Safety hubs in the U.S., Ireland, and Singapore; and its launch of a Transparency Center open to outside experts who want to review its moderation practices.

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The digital future is now

Bruce Springsteen once wrote, “We’re living in the future and none of this has happened yet.” It seems that the world is changing before our eyes as COVID-19 has sent us all home and forced us and our institutions to change the way we operate overnight.

As Box CEO Aaron Levie pointed out on Twitter recently, we are seeing a level of digital creativity right now that we have never witnessed before, as people look for ways to stay connected and keep going in the face of a virus that has forced us all to be apart.

“The ingenuity we’re seeing right now is awesome. Airbnb offering virtual experiences. Chefs doing live cooking classes. Passover seders on video conference. Drive-in Easter services and churches shifting to streaming,” Levie tweeted recently.

Think about the changes we have seen since February, February! In the course of a couple of months, we have seen schools shift online for millions of students from K-12 to college and grad school. We have seen professors who didn’t use email suddenly teaching on Zoom.

We have seen companies move from a workflow designed around offices, to ones centered around video conferencing and cloud collaboration tools like Slack, Microsoft Teams and Google Hangouts.

We have seen conferences a year in the planning move from the glitz and glamour of a Las Vegas stage to the houses of executives, and we have seen these companies pivot on the fly in spite of contracts, in spite of months of planning, because they had to do it. They had no choice.

How Adobe shifted a Las Vegas conference to executives’ living rooms in less than 30 days

We have seen families separated for the holidays, for birthdays and funerals, for anniversaries and life’s ups and downs, suddenly coming together in FaceTime and Zoom to support and celebrate and mourn in the only way that the current situation allows — in a digital context.

We have seen all this and more, and what’s amazing is that we have done this rather seamlessly and without years of planning and training. We have simply adapted to our new digital reality because we had to.

We have demonstrated the power of the digital world through SaaS tools and the amazing resilience of cloud infrastructure, but we’ve also see the power of the human spirit. What we are witnessing right now in the world is pretty amazing and we should stop for a moment and just appreciate it. Take a moment and consider that all of this technology has allowed our economy, our education and our emotional selves to keep going in an impossible situation.

The COVID-19 virus has pushed us collectively into a digital future, and it’s happening right now, not some day. Companies and people have gone through a 90-day flash digital transformation. If there is one positive thing we can take away from this crazy situation, it’s that we have embraced this digital world, and we are never turning back.

What to consider when employees need to start working remotely

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Tech for good during COVID-19: Pivots and partnerships to help people deal

Some of us have learned how to be uniquely scrappy during this pandemic. I’m talking socks as masks and chickpea water as a vegetarian egg-white replacement type of scrappy.

And you will learn in this week’s installment of Tech For Good startups are no exception. Companies around the world are pivoting and partnering their way into helping us navigate the  COVID-19 pandemic. Below is a list of some recent partnerships that caught our eyes, as well as other goodness from private companies.

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From greeting cards to virtual therapy

Ali O’Grady founded greeting-card startup Thoughtful Human in 2017. The greeting cards tackle difficult topics, such as cancer, grief and, more recently, quarantine and the pandemic. Thoughtful Human has partnered with BetterHelp Therapy to offer a month of free virtual therapy through phone or text.

Zira wants to help you bounce back if you were laid off

Zira is an automated workforce solution to help with shift schedules and team communication. Now, it launched a free tool called Bounce Back to help those laid off due to COVID-19. The application chiefly teaches users how to navigate unemployment, curated by location. It also creates a community for users to stay in touch with former employers, and has a job marketplace.

Yext goes up State

Yext, a site search tool, has partnered with the US Department of State to create a COVID-19 informational hub to disseminate information about travel alerts. In the last month, Yext has developed sites for the State of New Jersey and the State of Alabama.

An alternative to a good ol’ restaurant menu

My Menu, which traditionally offered a digital tablet menu platform to restaurants, is now giving away its underlying technology to help restaurants become online-friendly overnight. Using My Menu technology, restaurants can create a menu that pops up when customers scan a QR code on their phones. It will help restaurants make their menus more accessible.

Creativity using the cloud

DigitalOcean, a cloud provider, created a hub for developers to share projects aimed at helping people deal with the pandemic. Projects that have sprouted up as a result include an app that lets people anonymously report their health conditions to pulsecheck the spread across the world, and a remote learning group of Kenyan primary school teachers.

Founder therapy for free

Betaworks is launching a free, 6-week, peer-to-peer mentorship program to connect founders and company leaders in mentor-led support groups. The application deadline is April 13, and participants will be chosen on a first-come, first-served basis.

#MaskUp

Janelle M. Jimenez, the founder and CEO of sustainable clothing startup Stellari, is using her startup capital to work with Los Angeles manufacturers to create masks. She has invested $15,000 of seed money into partnerships with factories, and needs $10,000 to produce cloth masks at scale. She plans to donate the masks at cost and support the local garment industry at the same time. The effort has raised nearly $24,000 on Indiegogo.

Coders unite to make websites COVID-19 friendly

Coding Dojo has launched an initiative to connect its alumni group of coders to small businesses that need website development. Coders will take on projects, for no charge, like creating a website for that corner bodega or adding a delivery feature to existing websites.

As the marathon gets canceled, Boston’s new stride

Tom O’Keefe is the founder of StrideForStride, which buys race bibs for low-income runners from around the world, ranging from Guatemala, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Brazil, Chile, Cuba, Jamaica, and the US. Due to COVID-19, they lost a fundraiser at hotels and donations from restaurants and Sam Adams. Stride plans to host running clubs around various businesses and bars in Boston once everything re-opens, and in the meantime has launched a website DownloadBoston.com to highlight local businesses.

Bonus round

A group of New Yorkers has launched a challenge called #InMyScrubs to raise money to send meals from local restaurants to feed health care workers at critical-need hospitals. While this isn’t a tech initiative, it is heartwarming. The idea is to post pictures of yourself on Instagram in home “scrubs” like sweatpants and athleisure as an act of solidarity with those in their hospital scrubs. The challenge has raised nearly $68,000.

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Los Simpson: recrean en cuarentena el emblemático intro de la serie y el resultado es genial

• Los Simpson es la serie animada más exitosa en la historia de la televisión

• El intro de la serie fue recreado por una familia en cuarentena por el coronavirus

• La temporada 29 de Los Simpson fue vista por más de 29 millones de personas

Una serie que es más vieja que las personas de la generación Z, y aunque en los últimos años ha perdido algo de popularidad, Los Simpson no dejan de ser un referente de la cultura pop en la actualidad.

En muchos países vivimos días, semanas e incluso meses de distanciamiento social -voluntario y obligatorio, dependiendo el caso-, por lo que mantener la mente ocupada, activa y sana se vuelve todo un reto.

Las líneas anteriores vienen a colación debida a que la influencia de Los Simpson y la necesidad de estar ocupados en tiempos de aislamientos, se combinaron para motivar a que una familia se diera a la tarea de recrear el intro completo de la serie animada, convirtiéndose en un gran ejemplo de como, la creatividad puede ser un recurso valioso en estos días.

The Simpsons Social Distancing Intro

Esto sucedió en Canadá, donde una familia creó su versión del popular intro de la serie de FOX que ha estado vigente por más de treinta años y que ha generado un profundo engagement con generaciones -ok, las últimas temporadas ya no- en varios países, como México, por ejemplo.

El punto, es que el video compartido en YouTube y Twitter ha ganado relevancia, siendo retomado por varios medios en varias partes del mundo, y lo hace no sólo por la creatividad con la que se realizó, sino porque también tiene como finalidad el promover el mensaje de la sana distancia o distanciamiento social.

The Simpsons Social Distancing Intro fue creado por Joel A. Sutherland y su familia. En Twitter el autor describe que la obra fue realizada casi en la primera toma en cada escena, y fue producto de lo abrumador que es estar en el encierro (más de 23 días en Canadá), incluso reconoció que no tienen los derechos de la música original de la serie, aunque es probable que no moleste a los productores pues la cuenta oficial de Los Simpson dio retweet a su publicación.

Quarantine creativity level https://t.co/1dFFaXzRx7

— TheSimpsons (@TheSimpsons) April 8, 2020

¿Por qué es importante? Además del hecho de que toman como referencia a una de las series de mayor éxito en la historia de televisión, que ha sido influencia en otras caricaturas, en películas y otras series live action, incluso en la política, además de generar una enorme cantidad de merchandising, entre otros factores, el ejercicio se destaca como una actividad motivacional que puede contribuir a elevar el ánimo, sacudir a las personas agobiadas por el aburrimiento y el aislamiento, algo muy necesario y advertido por especialistas en estos días.

Algunos datos sobre Los Simpson

La familia de Springfield ahora es parte del imperio Disney, recordemos que formó parte del acuerdo valuado en 71 mil 300 millones de dólares, con el que la 20th Century Fox o, mejor dicho los contenidos que pertenecen a esta casa productora pasaron a dominio de la casa de Mickey Mouse.

Los Simpson (o The Simpsons), es considerada la serie animada estadounidense más exitosa en los últimos treinta años. Con todo y que han perdido picardía y popularidad en los últimos años, sólo la temporada 29 atrajo un promedio de 4.08 millones de espectadores por episodio y un anuncio de 30 segundos representaba un costo por más de 140 mil dólares, de acuerdo con datos de Nielsen y Kantar Media, respectivamente.

Han retomado a casi cualquier celebridad o figura pública en ese lapso de tiempo -Lady Gaga, The Rolling Stones, Ronaldo, Elton John, Metallica, Woody Allen, Bill Clinton, hasta Barack y Michelle Obama, entre muchos otros-, al igual que a los productos de la industria del entretenimiento más destacados -Pokémon Go, The Big Bang Theory, Alien, por mencionar algunos-, incluso son de tal referencia que IKEA recreó los muebles de la casa Simpson en una edición especial.

A la familia amarilla se le atribuyen muchas predicciones -algunas espeluznantes-, aunque nada que sea realmente creíble, incluso recientemente se especuló que también habrían predicho al coronavirus, sin embargo, también es falso. Lo que no lo es, es que se sumaron a las acciones de distanciamiento social a través de un arte compartido a través de sus redes sociales.

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App development shop V/One is giving away 50,000 free mobile app builds to budding LA mobile businesses

The Los Angeles-based app development shop, V/One, is giving away 50,000 free mobile app builds through the rest of April as the company officially launches its platform for would-be, LA-based mobile app moguls.

Since its soft launch, December 20th of last year, the app development company has built over 100 new applications.

The company’s December launch featured an “app accelerator” and offered a guidebook for people who wanted to develop mobile applications to work with the development shop on early applications.

Under the terms of the development agreement, wannabe app creators get their application for free as long as they sign up for the monthly hosting service. “They can walk away at any time and cancel the hosting if they don’t want the app anymore. Builds of the apps will be delivered around 60 days upon signing up,” said V One founder, Jeremy Redman.

For founder Jeremy Redman, V/One was a business that solved a problem he had faced himself as an entrepreneur just starting out, but lacking the technical experience to build his own applications.

“I had an app idea but no real idea how to executive it. I’m non-technical, meaning I can’t code. I tried finding a technical co-founder but got abandoned when things got tough. Dev shops were too expensive and on the verge of predatory, and cookie cutter builders don’t address the designs I had in mind,” Redman said. “But, I wasn’t going to let someone tell me I couldn’t be a tech entrepreneur.”

Image Credits: Chris Ede / Getty Images

The app development toolkit that V One uses was built entirely in-house to automate the build process on the back end, says Redman.

For small businesses, the plan is to charge $297 per month for app development and customization along with any future builds, hosting, and product support and maintenance. The company’s more robust place is a $997 per month package. Both offer the option to cancel anytime with the ability to own the code for the app.

“So far the only limitations are one’s creativity. Essentially speaking, if you can design it it can be made a functional app in our builder,” Redman wrote in an email. “If I had to put a constraint on it I would say we are not good at AR/VR and machine learning and some obscure features 99% of people don’t need [or] want.”

Redman thinks that roughly 98% of an app can be built using the company’s toolkit and then the final bit of coding and development (specifically for augmented or virtual reality — or other components) can be added in a final customization.

“If customers can describe their idea in one, clear sentence then it can be made in our builder and it can be made quickly,” Redman wrote. “What we don’t do is take pages and pages of details and make an app out of it. They can fill in the details later.”

V One uses a cross-platform framework, serverless technology and modern development practices to generate apps using an easy to use app builder, the company said. Users can think of it like Wix or WordPress for mobile app development.

“Never before has someone been able to build an app from just typing their idea out, let alone for this low a cost,” says Redman.

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