Houseparty's video chat may have been a popular choice in the early days of the pandemic, but that hasn't won it much favor with its owner Epic Games. Houseparty is shutting down its app sometime in October. Fortnite's Houseparty integration will vanish around the same time, the developers said. The app has already disappeared from stores.
The team explained the move as a matter of focus. Houseparty is crafting "meaningful and authentic" new socialization features that would be useful at a metaverse level across Epic Games titles, according to the creators. The company didn't provide any clues as to what would come next.
It's a slightly odd decision. Epic bought Houseparty in 2019, and the app bloomed in 2020 as the COVID-19 pandemic forced many people to socialize online. There were over 17 million downloads in March 2020 alone, Sensor Tower said. The Fortnite tie-in also gave the younger crowd a way to hang out in a favorite game. While the pandemic is (hopefully) winding down, Epic is effectively cutting off Houseparty near its peak.
That shift toward the metaverse may be difficult to ignore, however. Epic has increasingly turned Fortnite into a social space between pop star concerts, virtual museums and non-competitive modes like Party Royale. The more work Epic can devote to that space, the greater its chances of attracting (and keeping) users who aren't always ready fight intense last-one-standing battles.
Microsoft had a lot of news to share about remote work today, including a bunch of upcoming updates for Teams centered around hybrid meetings. But perhaps most pertinent to the company's employees was an announcement that it's delaying their return to the office yet again. Microsoft is putting the plans on hold indefinitely due to the COVID-19 delta variant.
Most recently, the aim was to fully reopen the headquarters in Redmond, Washington and several other US offices no earlier than October 4th. "Given the uncertainty of COVID-19, we’ve decided against attempting to forecast a new date for a full reopening of our US work sites in favor of opening US work sites as soon as we’re able to do so safely based on public health guidance." Jared Spataro, Microsoft's corporate vice president for modern work, wrote in a blog post.
Once Microsoft has a date in mind for reopening, it will tell workers about a 30-day transition period so they can make preparations. That window, according to Spataro, will let Microsoft "continue to be agile and flexible as we look to the data and make choices to protect employee health, safety and well-being." As The New York Times notes, Microsoft will require employees, vendors and guests to have proof of vaccination before being allowed to enter its offices.
"It’s a stark reminder that this is the new normal," Spataro wrote. "Our ability to come together will ebb and flow."
With that in mind, it seems Microsoft employees will be taking advantage of the hybrid meeting features that are coming to Teams. They include support for intelligent cameras; more immersive PowerPoint presentations with live video in slides; a way to tell co-workers if you plan to attend meetings in person or remotely when you RSVP; and Apple CarPlay support for audio-only meetings.
Other major tech companies have delayed returns to the office. Amazon previously planned to bring corporate employees back to its offices this week. In August, it pushed back those plans once again, this time until January.
As promised, Sony is ready to offer a peek at the PS5's future. The company is livestreaming PlayStation Showcase 2021 at 4PM Eastern, and you can watch the whole event below. It won't be a short presentation — Sony said the Showcase will clock in at about 40 minutes, with an after-show providing updates from featured studios.
The stream will officially focus on upcoming PS5 games (including for the holidays) from both PlayStation Studios as well as third-party developers. However, we also wouldn't be surprised if Sony devotes some time to system updates for the console. The company has teased a number of significant OS improvements as part of the beta program, including the option to add SSD storage. This is Sony's big chance to set its agenda for the next year, and it might not limit that agenda to the console's game lineup.
The world's largest direct-air carbon capture plant is up and running, although you might want to keep your expectations in check. Bloombergreports Climeworks has started operations for Orca, a plant in Iceland that grabs CO2 from the air, storing it underground and using a Carbfix solution to mix the chemical with water and (in two years) trap it in stone. The facility will capture 4,000 tons of CO2 per year, and it's 'permanently' removed from the environment, not recycled.
A carbon offset isn't a trivial purchase. It currently costs $600 per ton for bulk requests, and as high as $1,200 for eco-friendly individuals. Climeworks hopes to shrink the cost to $300 or less per ton by 2030 as it ramps up its overall capacity.
While Orca represents an important milestone for actively reducing humanity's carbon footprint, it's not much to brag about at this stage — if anything, it reveals just how far the technology has to go. That 4,000 tons of capture is equal to just 250 US residents, half the total capture output in the world, and nowhere near matching Climeworks' initial plan to capture 300 million tons (1 percent of the world's emissions) by 2025. The company now expects to reach 500,000 tons per year by 2030.
There are still reasons to be optimistic. Demand is very high, according to Climeworks, to the point where the company plans to expand Orca tenfold in the next three years. Lower carbon reduction prices could also accelerate adoption by tempting companies that would otherwise pay penalties when they can't meet emissions targets. This won't be a true substitute for reducing CO2 output, but it could help mitigate the impact in the short term.
General Motors can’t seem to catch a break. One week after the automaker announced it was suspending production at all but four of its North American manufacturing facilities, it said it plans to extend the shutdown of its Orion assembly plant by two weeks. The facility is where the company makes its Chevy Bolt electric vehicles. It was one of the assembly plants GM shut down last week — though it did so because of the recent Bolt recall, not the chip shortage that affected its other factories.
Per Reuters, GM expects the shutdown to continue until at least September 24th. The company blamed battery pack shortages for the extended halt to production. GM added it won’t resume Bolt manufacturing or sales until it’s sure it has addressed the fire concerns that forced it to recall the vehicle in the first place.
It’s the latest setback in a series of setbacks for GM when it comes to the Bolt. The automaker initially recalled more than 68,000 cars last November after five reports of battery fires between 2017 and 2019. After two Bolt EVs included in the company’s 2020 recall caught fire recently, GM issued a second recall. It then widened that action to include more than 140,000 vehicles globally. It’s estimated the entire saga will cost the company more than $1.8 billion.
Spotify has long had plenty of tricks up its sleeve when it comes to providing recommendations, and its latest one is about making your playlists even more banging. The Enhance feature offers personalized suggestions of tracks to add to your playlists.
Premium users in some markets will soon see an Enhance button at the top of each playlist. If you turn on the feature, Spotify will add suggested songs to the list, one after every two tracks and up to 30 in total. If you like the recommendation, just tap the plus button to keep it on your playlist permanently. The feature is designed to add suggestions that match songs you already have on the playlist.
Spotify is rolling out Enhance on iOS and Android in 40 countries over the coming month, including the US, UK, Canada, Mexico, Australia, New Zealand, Brazil and much of Europe. It plans to expand the feature, which will evolve over time, to other countries later.
The company has added other playlist features in recent months, including Blend, a playlist that brings together songs from your listening history and a friend's. Also relatively new is the curated Notable Releases playlist, which includes new tracks from prominent producers and songwriters.
Google has announced a new water stewardship target that will see the company commit to replenishing on average 120 percent of the water it consumes at its data centers and offices by 2030. To that end, the search giant says it will use freshwater alternatives to cool its server farms. In places like Douglas County, Georgia, the company already uses reclaimed wastewater to keep its servers running. Moving forward, it will work to double down on that practice by finding more opportunities to use wastewater and seawater.
At its offices, meanwhile, the company plans to use more on-site water sources, such as collected stormwater, for things like landscape irrigation and toilet flushing that don't require potable water. Google points to its Bay Area campuses and a landscaping project where it worked with local ecologists as an example of an initiative where it's already thinking about its water use.
"Our water stewardship journey will involve continuously enhancing our water use and consumption," said Google sustainability officer Kate Brandt in a blog post.
In its efforts to replenish more water than it consumes, the company says it will also invest in community projects working to address local water and watershed challenges in places where the company has data centers and offices. As an example of the work Google plans to do here, the company points to a partnership it already has in place with the Colorado River Indian Tribes to reduce the amount of water removed from Lake Mead. The reservoir, the largest in the US, faces a pressing water shortage due to a combination of overuse and extended drought.
Lastly, the company plans to continue working with communities, policymakers and planners to help them with tools and technologies they need to measure and predict water availability and needs. Here, the company references work it did with the United Nations Environment Programme to create the Freshwater Ecosystems Explorer. It's a tool that tracks national and local surface water changes over time.
Today's commitment comes after Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai announced the company would attempt to run all of its data centers and offices entirely on carbon-free energy by 2030. Pichai described the effort as a "moonshot," noting it would be tricky in some instances to achieve due to the remote location of some of Google's facilities.
The COVID-19 pandemic caused a huge shift toward remote working, though many people are still eager to return to the office. As such, the future of work may be a hybrid environment. To help account for that, Microsoft Teams is getting a bunch of features to bolster hybrid meetings.
Among these is the Cameo feature for presentations in PowerPoint Live. You'll be able to add your Teams camera feed to your deck, and you can choose how and where you want to appear in slides. Microsoft plans to roll out this tool early next year.
Microsoft
Also arriving in early 2022 is an AI-powered feature called speaker coach, which listens to your speech and offers tips on your pace and when to check in with the attendees, as well as offering a reminder when you interrupt someone.
Microsoft will add an automatic lighting correction tool in the coming months. In the same timeframe, it will update companion mode in Teams mobile. The latter will let in-person attendees have easy access to features such as chat and live reactions, as well as controls for the meeting and connected devices, such as cameras.
Speaking of which, Microsoft Teams will soon support intelligent cameras from the likes of Jabra, Neat, Poly, and Yealink. AI-powered active speaker tracking will use visual cues as well as audio to help determine who is speaking and focus on them. Multiple video streams will place meeting participants who are in the same physical space into their own video pane. The people recognition tool, meanwhile, can identify meeting participants and display their profile name below their video pane.
Manufacturers will have access to those features in the coming months. Microsoft expects the tools to roll out as updates over the next year. They could play a key role in putting all hybrid meeting participants on a level playing field, whether they're at home or in a conference room.
Elsewhere, an Outlook RSVP feature that'll arrive in early 2022 will let you flag whether you're attending a meeting in person or remotely to help organizers prepare (Google Calendar added a similar feature in July). You'll be able to mark when and where you're working in your working hours too. You may also be able to reserve shared workspaces through Outlook or Teams.
Meanwhile, Apple CarPlay will get audio-only support for Teams starting later this month. So, if you get stuck in traffic when a meeting starts, you can still join in via Siri.
Amazon is acting on its promise to improve its treatment of employees, but not necessarily in the way you'd expect. The online shopping giant has pledged to pay full college tuition for its operations (effectively, warehouse) workers in the US beginning in January. The company didn't reveal the full criteria required, but some staff are eligible if they've been with Amazon for just three months.
The firm will also cover high school diplomas, GEDs and English as a Second Language certifications. And no, workers won't have to wait until they've finished a semester to get compensation. Amazon said it would pay tuition and other fees in advance, and would offer annual funds as long as people remain employees.
Staff will also have access to a trio of new "tuition-free" skill programs that will help train for positions in Amazon Web Services, IT support (such as Amazon Robotics) and user experience design. Not surprisingly, Amazon is using pay as an incentive — those on the IT track can make another $10,000 per year, the company claimed.
The incentives for Amazon are clear. This will help it not only recruit more workers for its office roles, but attract and retain workers who were either wary of working for Amazon or want assurances of upward career mobility once their schooling is done. Amazon might lose some of those tuition recipients to other companies, but that could be a small price to pay if it leads to more internal candidates and a more stable workforce.
This won't satisfy many of Amazon's critics. Politicians and labor rights activists have blasted Amazon over tough workplace quotas, constant employee monitoring and higher injury rates at automated facilities, among other issues. There are also allegations Amazon has interfered with unionization votes that could improve conditions and pay. Free education while you work is only useful so long as you're happy with the work itself, and this plan won't change much.
There's also the question of Amazon's outsized influence. The company said it was the "largest job creator" in the US, with 400,000 people having joined since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. Paid tuition could give Amazon influence much like that of the military, where people sometimes sign up to defray education costs. As welcome as many might find the gesture, it could give Amazon more clout in society than regulators might like.
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The Procreate app for iPad is not just the killer mobile app for artists—it’s genuinely one of the best painting programs ever released.
So What Is the Procreate App?
In this A to Z of Procreate, I’m going to answer that question with 26 mini Procreate tutorials, as well as Procreate tips and tricks that will demonstrate why it’s so popular among digital artists today.
It’s not immediately obvious how to change opacity in Procreate, but it’s easy once you know how. There are two ways to get there.
The first is to open the Layers panel and tap on the blending mode indicator. Once you do that, a space will open up showing an opacity slider at the top:
Alternatively, you can two-finger tap on the layer and an opacity indicator will appear along the top of the canvas. Slide your finger to the left on the canvas to decrease opacity and to the right to increase it:
D is for Drag & Drop to Fill
If you’d like to know how to fill in Procreate, it’s super easy. All you have to do is drag your active color from your palette and drop it into the area you want to fill:
If there’s a little jaggedness around the edges, hold for a moment before dropping the color and drag to the left or right to control how the edge of the fill is placed:
Then open up the Files app and Procreate side by side, and just drag and drop the fonts onto the canvas to have them automatically imported:
Add text to your design by tapping the wrench icon, and under Add, choose Add text:
Select the text, and then open the Edit Style panel by tapping either the font name or weight:
Here you can choose from among your Procreate fonts, set a weight, control the sizing, spacing, and opacity, and set the alignment:
G is for Grouping Layers
Layers in Procreate can be grouped by swiping right on each layer you want to add to a group, and then tapping the Group button at the top right:
Groups allow you to move and resize multiple layers at once, as well as moving multiple layers up and down in the layer stack at once.
H is for Harmonies
Selecting colors that harmonize is easy through the Color panel.
Open the Color panel and switch to Harmony at the bottom. You’ll see multiple reticles, the largest of which is your currently active color. The other reticles are colors that harmonize with the active color. Click a different reticle to set that color as the active one.
Switch between five different color harmonies by clicking the current harmony name. Move the active reticle, and all the other reticles will move to maintain the selected color harmony.
I is for Instant Palette
You can instantly create a Procreate color palette from any photograph.
Open the Color panel and switch to Palettes at the bottom. Click the “+” button at the top right and choose New from photos:
Select a photo, and Procreate will automatically extract colors from it and add them to a palette:
J is for Just Tap
All you need to do to undo changes in Procreate is tap anywhere on the canvas with two fingers.
Conversely, you can redo steps by tapping with three fingers.
And a four-finger tap will hide the interface or show it again.
K is for Photoshop Killer?
Procreate can be purchased for an astoundingly low, one-time, flat USD $9.99. That’s the price of a single month of Photoshop.
This massive difference in price leaves a lot of people wondering about Procreate vs. Photoshop. Could you use Procreate as a Photoshop replacement?
It depends on what you use Photoshop for, but in many cases, yes, you could use Procreate as a replacement.
If you are primarily a digital painter, you could most definitely switch to Procreate. Likewise, if you need software for frame-by-frame animation, photo manipulation or photo-bashing, hand lettering, or even pixel art, there’s a very good chance Procreate will be able to adequately replace Photoshop for you.
If you are working with line art and don’t want to accidentally make changes to it while coloring, you can take advantage of the Reference function.
Tap the layer with line art on it, and then activate the Reference property.
Now, if you drag and drop colors onto other layers, the fill will stay inside the line art, as though everything was on a single layer:
M is for Masking and Clipping
To create a mask for any layer, just tap that layer and then choose Mask from the popup menu:
A mask layer will then be added above. Paint in black on the mask to hide parts of the active layer, in white to show it, and in gray for transparency:
To use a clipping mask, add a layer above the layer with the shape you want to use for clipping. You can paint on the new layer before or after activating clipping. When you’re ready, tap the layer you want to act as the clipping shape and choose Clipping Mask:
Anything you paint on the clipped layer will only show if it’s within the bounds of the clipping shape:
To help with your Procreate drawing or line art, brushes have a line smoothing setting called StreamLine. The more you increase the setting, the smoother your lines will be:
Access the StreamLine setting by selecting a brush from the Paint menu, and then tapping it a second time to open up its settings. The StreamLine setting is located under the Stroke path tab:
O is for Open the Quick Menu
Procreate has a six-item radial menu called the Quick Menu. To activate it, tap the wrench icon, go to Prefs, and choose Gesture controls:
Go into the QuickMenu tab, and then choose the gesture you want to use to open the QuickMenu:
Once you open the QuickMenu, you can customize any of its items by long-pressing them and then choosing a different action:
P is for Paint With Filters
Rather than filters being applied to whole layers, you also have the option to paint the areas in which you’d like a filter to take effect.
Tap the wand icon, choose an adjustment filter, and then tap the pencil option:
Start painting on a layer, and the filter will affect only the areas you paint, with the intensity determined by the pen pressure:
Procreate doesn’t have dedicated shape drawing tools, but what it does have is Quick Shapes.
Draw out any shape, as roughly as you like, and hold the pencil in place at the end of the last line:
The lines will automatically snap into perfect straight lines, or curves if you drew an ellipse. From here, you can move the position of your pencil to change the rotation and size of the shape. Before you lift the pencil, if you place a finger onto the canvas as well, the proportions and angles of the shape will be adjusted and can form perfect squares and circles.
R is for Reference Box
You can easily keep your reference images on hand while working by tapping the wrench icon, choosing Canvas, and then toggling on the Reference option:
A box will appear, into which you can import any image:
S is for Snapping
When making transformations, activate snapping to get some very useful assistance for moving, scaling, and rotating.
Turn on Magnetics to activate blue guidelines that behave like railroad tracks, giving you some stickiness when you move along those lines and helping you with repositioning:
Turn on Snapping to snap to the edges and center points of other layers, and of the canvas, as well as snapping for rotation increments:
T is for Two Brushes
You can mix any two brushes into a single “dual“ brush.
Select your first brush, and then swipe right to select another brush from the same set. Tap the Combine button at the top of the panel:
You’ll then be able to paint with both brushes at the same time:
U is for Unstacking and Stacking
“Stacks” in Procreate are a way of organizing your documents into categories within the Gallery.
To create a stack, long-press a document to select it. Optionally, tap other documents to add them to your selection. Then drop the documents onto another document to create a stack. Tap the stack name if you’d like to rename it.
To unstack documents, first go into a stack by tapping it, and then long-press a document to select it. Again, you can optionally tap other documents to select them too. Then drag the selection up to the top left and hold it over the stack name. After a moment, you’ll be taken out of the stack and into the gallery, where you can release the selection to drop them back into the top level.
V is for Video Time Lapse
Procreate can capture a time-lapse video of your works, with no noticeable impact on the performance of the software.
To activate video recording, tap the wrench icon, go to Video, and toggle Time-lapse Recording on:
When you’re done with your piece, go back to the same place in the menu and tap Time-lapse Replay to watch your time-lapse video back. Or tap Export Time-lapse video to generate a video file.
W is for Warp and Distort
Procreate has powerful warping and distorting functionality that lets you remold the shape of any layer. To access both functions, tap on the arrow icon to open the Transform Toolbar:
Distort is the third tab on the toolbar and is great for doing things like modifying the apparent perspective of a shape, while maintaining the appearance of flatness:
Warp is the fourth tab and is excellent for more detailed manipulation that changes the curvature of the shape:
Get your lines perfectly aligned into the X and Y axes by using the 2D grid drawing guide.
Tap the wrench icon, go to Canvas, toggle on Drawing Guide, and then tap Edit Drawing Guide:
From here, under 2D Grid, set the grid size you want, activate Assisted Drawing, and then tap Done:
Now, all the lines you draw will be locked into precise alignment:
You can also use the same technique to assist you with drawing isometric lines, perspective lines, and in symmetry:
Z is for Zoom and Rotate
You can zoom and rotate your entire image by tapping the wrench icon, going to the Canvas section, and choosing using the Crop and Resize function:
To zoom in on the image, drag the light gray handles of the canvas inward, and drag it around to reposition it. And to rotate the image, tap Settings, and then in the dropdown panel that appears, drag the Rotation slider left or right:
Wrapping Up
So that’s the A to Z of Procreate: 26 of the coolest features, tips and tricks to help you take full advantage of the software.
And to help you along with Procreate even more, get yourself stocked up with a great big stack of brushes, fonts and other assets to use with it over at Envato Elements.
