July 2023 – Tech News

Meta is rebooting Horizon Worlds as the VR platform struggles to grow

In an effort to make Horizon Worlds more compelling, Meta now has an in-house studio dubbed Ouro Interactive that’s focused on making first-party virtual reality games, Meta’s Vice President of Metaverse Vishal Shah said in an interview published Friday with the Lowpass technology newsletter. The studio’s first VR game, a shooter called Super Rumble, debuted Friday and reportedly contains better graphics and fidelity than other VR games built on top of Horizon Worlds. The video game will also be one of the first VR video games Meta plans to test when it eventually debuts a mobile version of Horizon Worlds, Shah said. “This is definitely more than just a new world,” Shah said, referring to it as “the next generation of Horizon Worlds.”
https://cnb.cx/3KhByam

Mark Zuckerberg: Threads users down by more than a half

The Twitter rival rocketed to more than 100 million users within five days of its launch earlier this month. But Mr Zuckerberg has acknowledged those numbers have now tumbled. "If you have more than 100 million people sign up, ideally it would be awesome if all of them or even half of them stuck around. We're not there yet," he said.
https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-66336058

Mobile website builder Universe launches AI-powered designer

Universe’s new tool is similar to one launched by Wix earlier this month, which is called the AI Site Generator. The tool allows users to describe their intent and generate a website complete with a homepage, inner pages and text and images — as well as business-specific sections for events, bookings and more. One of the main ideas behind both companies’ products is to help small and medium-sized businesses launch and maintain websites to drive sales, which can be a challenging process. For context, a 2022 survey by Top Design Firms, a directory for finding creative agencies, found that nearly 27% of small businesses still don’t have a website and that low traffic, followed by adding “advanced” functionalities and cost, are the top challenges they face with their website.
https://techcrunch.com/2023/07/27/mobile-website-builder-universe-launches-ai-powered-designer/

Twitter is being rebranded as X

X.com now redirects to Twitter.com, following a tweet from Twitter owner Elon Musk today, and an “interim X logo” will replace the Twitter bird logo later today. Leading up to the change, Musk spent a lot of time tweeting about it.
https://www.theverge.com/2023/7/23/23804629/twitters-rebrand-to-x-may-actually-be-happening-soon

IMAX Still Runs on PalmPilot Operating System

Oppenheimer may be one of the biggest box office events of the year and the IMAX version appears massively popular, with some theaters already sold out for the next few weeks. The IMAX version may also be on the biggest physical film reels ever produced. According to Cinemark, the 70mm print of the film is 11 miles long and 600 pounds. To get this movie ready for theaters, IMAX used technology that’s run by an iPad emulating a 20 year old piece of hardware—a PalmPilot.
https://www.vice.com/en/article/88x5gb/imax-still-runs-on-palmpilot-operating-system