TikTok Will Teach Small Businesses How to Build a Following
TikTok Will Teach Small Businesses How to Build a Following
TikTok has announced a new training program, called Follow Me, aimed at helping small businesses use the social media platform. The six-week program was created to "empower more small businesses to dive into TikTok," according to a press release Monday.
The platform has become a tool for building community and reaching new audiences for small to medium-size businesses especially. Research from Hello Alice, a resource for small businesses, found that 58% of small businesses owners surveyed felt TikTok has positively impacted their business, while 47% said it helped expand their marketing reach to new geographic markets.
Read more:Ready to Join TikTok in 2022? Here's What You Need to Know
The trainings will be led by small business owners Cassie Sorensen, owner and founder of Tassel Armor, and Jacob Zander, owner and founder of Feel Your Soul, both of whom used the platform to promote their businesses.
The announcement of the program comes amid increased government scrutiny of the platform. Last month, FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr warned that TikTok, owned by a Chinese company, is "a serious national security threat" and he's pushing to get the app removed from Apple and Google app stores.
DJI's Pocket 2 palm-size 4K vlogging cam improves on audio, video for $349
DJI's Pocket 2 palm-size 4K vlogging cam improves on audio, video for $349
Two years ago DJI released the Osmo Pocket, a tiny handheld 4K camera stabilized on a three-axis motorized gimbal. For the follow-up, the Pocket 2, DJI dropped Osmo from the name but bulked up on features and accessories to make it an even better option for creators looking to do more with less.
Like the original, the Pocket 2 records 4K-resolution video up to 60 frames per second (at a 100Mbps bit rate) and full HD at up to 120fps for slow motion. However, it now has a larger 1/1.7-inch image sensor, which normally would mean larger pixels for better image quality. This one, though, is packed with way more pixels: The Pocket 2 can capture 64-megapixel photos or bin pixels together for 16-megapixel shots with less noise and better dynamic range.
The Pocket 2 has four mics to track your subject's voice with the video.
Josh Goldman/CNET
DJI also uses that resolution to give you an 8x digital zoom in its 64-megapixel photo mode; a 4x lossless zoom when shooting 16-megapixel photos or 1080p video; a 3x zoom in 2.7K; and a 2x zoom in 4K. Of course, it's all fully stabilized, too, so you don't have to worry about adding any shake or jitter to your shots when you zoom in.
The Pocket 2 also addresses one of its predecessor's biggest weaknesses: sound quality. The new Matrix Stereo system uses four mics strategically placed so you don't accidentally cover them with your hand or fingers. The camera can process the captured audio for better directional audio for when a subject is behind the camera or in front or both. Plus, it works with DJI's ActiveTrack 3.0 subject tracking to enhance audio based on the direction of the camera. The audio will also zoom with the camera.
The $500 Pocket 2 Creator Combo.
Josh Goldman/CNET
Alone, the Pocket 2 has plenty to offer for $349 (£339, AU$599) when it arrives on Nov. 1. Paired with the camera's Creator Combo accessory bundle, though, it becomes a pretty amazing vlogging machine. For $500, you get the camera and case, a mini control stick, tripod mount, a magnetic wide-angle lens, a wireless mic pack and an attachable windscreen, a micro tripod and the Do-It-All Handle. The combo will be £469 in the UK and AU$799 in Australia.
The Do-It-All Handle is mainly a wireless adapter -- Wi-Fi and Bluetooth -- which makes it possible to connect your phone wirelessly to the camera for use with its Mimo mobile app as well as the Bluetooth mic. The handle also has a speaker and a 3.5mm audio jack.
Without the handle, you can still connect your phone directly to the left side of the camera handle with included USB-C or Lightning adapters just like before. The mobile app lets you do everything from adjusting your camera settings and changing shooting modes to panning and tilting the camera and selecting subjects for tracking. Used with the Do-It-All Handle, the app makes it much easier to set up your shots on your own or have someone control the camera while you're out in front.
The included case can hold the camera as well as the phone adapters, the wide-angle add-on lens and the mini tripod.
Josh Goldman/CNET
The camera has updated shooting modes including a Pro mode for better control over exposure, white balance and ISO. You can also live stream directly to Facebook, YouTube or RTMP and there are new options for AI-powered editing so you can share completed projects straight from your phone with little effort.
DJI also added the ability to turn on the camera and start recording with a single button press as well as drop protection that locks the gimbal in a safe position if it senses a fall.
Mini and Pokemon Debut Pikachu-Themed Aceman Concept at Gamescom 2022
Mini and Pokemon Debut Pikachu-Themed Aceman Concept at Gamescom 2022
Mini and The Pokemon Company have partnered up to bring a Pokemon-themed version of the Mini Aceman concept to the Gamescom 2022 computer and video games showcase in Germany.
The Aceman is an electric concept that previews a future compact crossover that may eventually squeeze into Mini's lineup between the Hardtop and the Countryman, blending the proportions of the two. It features a new "Charismatic Simplicity" design language with cartoony, geometric details that make it sort of look like the automotive equivalent of a Pokemon. This Mini x Pokemon collab takes advantage of the concept car's various display technologies inside and out.
Mini chose to feature Pikachu because it's electric, like the Aceman.
Mini
As part of the collaboration, the Aceman gains a new Pokemon mode that can be activated to bring Pikachu-themed graphics and animations to the concept's large circular central display. Mini chose to highlight Pikachu as the featured Pokemon because it's an electric-type and the Aceman is a fully electric car. (I'd venture that Pikachu being the mostrecognizable pocket monster also played a role.)
The visuals spill off of the main display and onto the textile surface of the dashboard and doors via the concept cabin's "moving image projections." Meanwhile, puddle light projectors shine Mini x Pokemon iconography onto the ground near the car. The concept car's conceptual users will also be able to connect their console to the Mini to play Pokemon games or maybe watch one of the Pokemon movies, drive-in style, making use of the Aceman's front LED projector to cast a big screen on a nearby wall while parked.
Aside from the digital graphics and projections, the Aceman concept displayed at Gamescom 2022 appears unchanged since its debut last month. But the Pokemon partnership is a startling showcase of the flexibility and potential for customization of the Aceman's Android-powered infotainment.
Fossil Gen 6 smartwatch line touts faster charging speeds, and eventually Wear OS 3
Fossil Gen 6 smartwatch line touts faster charging speeds, and eventually Wear OS 3
Fossil on Monday unveiled its new Gen 6 line of smartwatches, which arrive this fall and will receive Google's new Wear OS 3 in an update in 2022. Despite its initial launch on the previous version of Wear OS, Fossil touts the watch's faster Snapdragon Wear 4100 Plus chip from Qualcomm and a claimed charging speed of zero to 80% in 30 minutes.
The watch line is priced between $299 and $319 in the US and is now available for preorder. The line will start at £279 in the UK and AU$499 in Australia.
Compared to Samsung's new Galaxy Watch 4, which does sport Wear OS 3 right now, Fossil's Gen 6 includes more of Google's services, such as Google Assistant, and support for both iOS and Android.
Battery life in particular is a big focus for the watch. In addition to the charging claim, the watch includes a variety of granular battery modes, which last from 24 hours up to multiple days with Extended Battery Mode.
Fossil
The watch comes in 44mm and 42mm case size options, is swim-proof up to 3 ATM (fine for swimming, but likely not for deeper diving), has 8GB of storage and 1GB of RAM. Health sensors in the watch include one for continuously tracking heart rate and a blood oxygen sensor.
Fossil is among several manufacturers that will support Google's new Wear OS 3 smartwatch platform, which was revealed earlier this summer as a collaboration between Google and Samsung. The watch platform is also due to receive features from Fitbit after Google completed its acquisition of the fitness wearable-maker. Fitbit will also make its own Wear OS 3 watch at some point, but it recently revealed the Fitbit Charge 5, a fitness-focused wearable that does not run any version of Wear OS.
There's a better way to digitize handwritten notes, old family recipes or any other hard paper copy you may have lying around. I'm not talking about taking a photo of the note or recipe and attaching it to an email. There's an iPhone feature called Live Text that digitizes notes (and anything else) in a snap.
Live Text is a computer vision-based tool that lets your iPhone copy and paste photos from a text using its camera, among other features. It was announced at Apple's virtual WWDC 2021 and came as one of the features available in Apple's iOS 15.
Copying and pasting text from an image isn't exactly a new feature for smartphones. Android users might already be familiar with this functionality thanks to Google Lens, but for the tens of millions of people who use an iPhone, you need to be using iOS 15 or later to take advantage of it. Live Text is a little different from Google Lens, since you can use it in real time with your camera to select, copy and paste text, as the iPhone is trained to recognize useful information. As I said earlier, it makes for a helpful productivity tool for copying handwritten notes or text from images and then digitizing them.
1. Make sure your iPhone has iOS 15 installed.
2. Point the camera at a subject that has any text you want to copy. You'll know Live Text has kicked in once you see a yellow outline around the text.
3. Tap on the Live Text icon on the bottom right corner of the picture to interact with any text in the frame.
4. Select the text you want to copy by pressing down like you would in Notes or a text message.
5. Hit Copy.
6. Paste this text into another app like Gmail or Notes.
Much like Google Lens, Live Text can also search for text in images stored in the Photos app. For instance, if there's a phone number in an image, you can tap it to dial the number, or if there's a French word, you can translate it to English.
For more iPhone news, check out iPhone 14 rumors, everything coming to iOS 16 we're excited about and this trick to try if your iPhone isn't charging.
Apple's 2022 iPhone SE Has 5G and a New Chip. But We Wanted These Features, Too
Apple's 2022 iPhone SE Has 5G and a New Chip. But We Wanted These Features, Too
Apple's 2022 iPhone SE represents a notable upgrade over its predecessor: It has 5G support, the same processor as the iPhone 13 and longer battery life compared to the 2020 model. But there are still some features we hoped to see that didn't make it into the third-generation iPhone SE.
Apple announced the new iPhone SE during its first product launch event of the year on March 8. It hits stores on March 18 and starts at $429, making it slightly more expensive than the 2020 version.
The iPhone SE hasn't become part of Apple's annual product cycle yet, but the company is closing the gap between release dates. Apple introduced its original iPhone SE in 2016 as a low-cost alternative to its marquee iPhone, but didn't release a new version until 2020. Now, the newest model has arrived just two years after that, in 2022. It's the latest sign that smartphone-makers like Apple are increasingly catering to budget-conscious customers.
While it's a shame the iPhone SE is missing the features below, Apple's new phone does include other upgrades that were on my wishlist like 5G support and longer battery life.
More storage in the base model
The 2022 iPhone SE got its debut at Apple's Peek Performance event.
screenshot/Apple
Apple increased the iPhone 13 lineup's base storage capacity up to 128GB from 64GB. Unfortunately, that approach didn't trickle down to the new iPhone SE, which starts at 64GB of storage. You could argue that the 128GB iPhone SE, which costs $479, is hundreds of dollars cheaper than the base iPhone 13. But Apple is still behind its competitors in this regard: Samsung's $400 Galaxy A42 5G, comes with 128GB of internal storage, as does Google's $449 Pixel 5A with 5G.
A sharper front camera for selfies and FaceTime calls
FaceTime gets a bunch of significant upgrades in iOS 15, such as a Portrait Mode.
Patrick Holland/CNET
Like its predecessor, the new iPhone SE has a 7-megapixel front camera. Apple's new A15 Bionic processor will bring some improvements to the selfie camera, like the addition of Deep Fusion, which processes individual pixels to improve detail and reduce noise. But still, it would have been nice to see a bump in resolution to go along with these improvements.
Read more: Best Apple SE Case for 2022
Samsung's phones that come close to the iPhone SE's price range have Apple beat when it comes to resolution. The $500 Galaxy A52 5G has a 32-megapixel front camera, while the $400 Galaxy A42 5G has a 13-megapixel front camera. Apple introduced several new FaceTime features last year in its iOS 15 update, so it's surprising that the front-facing camera wasn't a bigger area of focus for the new iPhone SE.
Night Mode for taking better photos in the dark
Night Mode on the iPhone 11.
Apple
Given the iPhone SE's cheap price, I wouldn't expect it to have a camera that's on par with the iPhone 13 or even the iPhone 12. But if there's one feature I would have appreciated, it's Night Mode. Across the industry, smartphone cameras have gotten a lot better at taking photos in the dark. I hoped Apple's low-cost iPhone would reflect this progress, too.
It's possible that it would have been too challenging in terms of size and cost to include the iPhone 11's upgraded wide camera sensor in the new SE. (The iPhone 11 family was the first of Apple's phones to get Night Mode.) But Google has found a way to bring Night Sight to its similarly priced Pixel 5A with 5G... and considering the iPhone SE lacks a secondary ultrawide lens, the quality of the standard wide-angle camera is more important than ever.
That said, Apple says the iPhone SE should be able to take better videos in low light thanks to the A15 Bionic's newer image signal processor. And the camera is getting other upgrades, such as the pixel-by-pixel Deep Fusion processing technique.
Overall, the new iPhone SE reiterates the different ways Apple and Samsung view what matters most in a budget smartphone. Samsung's cheaper phones usually have more camera lenses, sharper selfie cameras and larger screens. Instead of those, Apple's iPhone SE gets the latest mobile processor, which should hopefully keep the phone feeling relatively fast for years to come.
Evil Dead: The Game Perfectly Captures the Cult Film's Chaos
Evil Dead: The Game Perfectly Captures the Cult Film's Chaos
The Evil Dead films have a different flavor compared to similarly venerable horror franchises like Halloween or Friday the 13th. What the Evil Dead does differently, and does so well, is blend outlandish slapstick action-comedy with some truly ghoulish monsters and horror violence. It's no surprise that its popularity has endured since its 1981 debut, but it still seems like its potential is largely untapped within the gaming world.
Due May 13, Evil Dead: The Game wants to change that. I recently got to play about an hour of the game with staff at developer Saber Interactive, which also made the World War Z game. Not only is it faithful to the goofy horror of the original films, I was also surprised by how much fun I had getting scared.
Firstly, Evil Dead: The Game is a massive tribute to the beloved horror series. Serving as something of a greatest hits for the original trilogy and the three-season TV series -- all starring cult film actor Bruce Campbell -- the game channels the Deadite slaying and horror comedy into the structure of a multiplayer game. (Deadites are a species of parasitic demons and primary antagonists of the Evil Dead franchise.)
Four players fight to stay alive as the survivors; another player uses a variety of demonic magic to stop them. Structurally it's quite similar to the popular Dead By Daylight -- a great fit for Evil Dead.
Paying homage to the main location of the first two films, series protagonist Ash Williams and other survivors face off against the forces of darkness in a massive forest filled with supernatural horrors. You'll be able to squad up in a team of four as the survivors, each of which play as different classes -- leader, support, warrior and ranged. The playable characters are made up of mostly familiar faces from the original films and the TV series, which includes fan favorites Pablo and Kelly.
Fans of the Ash vs Evil Dead TV series will be able to revisit that incarnation of Ash in this game.
Saber Interactive
But of course, Ash Williams -- portrayed by the returning Bruce Campbell -- makes his comeback. This character is such an icon, and I couldn't resist playing as him, even though the other playable characters are interesting too. In a clever twist, there's not just one version of Ash, but four different incarnations based on his many appearances throughout the series. So if you prefer Ash from Army of Darkness, then you play as that one, with different skills to his counterparts.
In my interview with Saber Interactive Chief Creative Officer Tim Willits, he said the approach to making the crew of survivors was to satisfy long-time fans and give variety for players when they jump into a game.
"The Evil Dead universe is just so great. Bruce Campbell is a legend, and the amount of stories and lore in the universe is so rich," says Willits. "The thing about [Evil Dead: The Game], which is an asymmetrical horror game, is that the hero Ash Williams and the other survivors can kick ass and win."
The big difference between this game and other horror games of its ilk -- like Dead By Daylight or Friday The 13th: The Game -- is that Evil Dead: The Game gives its "survivors" the means to defend themselves against the forces of darkness. When I got to play as the survivors, it felt like I stepped into a genuine action-horror game like The Evil Within or Resident Evil.
Squad up with several returning characters from the Evil Dead series, including some favorites from Army of Darkness and even the original film.
Saber Interactive
By scrounging up supplies, I could pull together a rifle and a chainsaw to take down some roaming Deadites. It was thrilling getting to tear into them with finishing moves from Ash's chainsaw, and taking them down allowed me and my squad to clear the way for our set of objectives. One thing that players on the survivor team have to watch out for, however, is your character's level of Fear, which will make them susceptible to the more vicious attacks and even possession from the big baddie of each game. That's when the game's spookier side begins to show itself.
The roaming Deadites are just one obstacle. The true threat is another player pulling all the strings. Along with playing as survivors, you can also play as the architect of the Deadite invasion. When playing as the demonic force, shown from the first-person perspective like in the films, you can freely move around the map to set traps, power up the roaming Deadites and assume direct control of powerful demons or even the survivors themselves.
Playing as the survivors is enjoyable, but Evil Dead: The Game really shines when you're the one shaking up the game's events. One of my favorite moments came from playing as the antagonist. After laying traps and stalking the survivors from the shadows, I saw that the crew of four were quickly trying to head to a nearby vehicle. I activated a fear-based skill that triggered a jump scare effect that hit the survivors. As they were distracted, I immediately used my demonic powers to possess the car and rammed it into the group as more Deadites surrounded them. It was so satisfying watching the chaos unfold.
The forest is a big place, and your squad will need some wheels to get around.
Saber Interactive
I appreciated that there's a lot of variety and depth for both the good and evil sides of online matches. The survivor mode gameplay feels like a game of co-op survival horror. In contrast, the antagonist gameplay is a more dynamic tower defense-style mode, and that's a really cool combination.
Evil Dead: The Game is very much multiplayer first, but there is also a bonus mission mode for solo players that recreates some scenes from the films, such as the cabin invasion from the original flick. It's a nice addition to the game, and the devs already have plans to add more characters and content with a season pass. While the game so far will mostly encompass the original trilogy and the TV series, the devs of the game did have some appreciation for the 2013 Evil Dead remake.
"There's so many more characters, demons and weapons that we can add to the game, and we've teased some content on the season pass already," Willits says. "But not to give too much away, we do have ways to tweak the game itself in the future, so maybe we'll see some interesting stuff come up ... we know Jane Levy, who played Mia [in the Evil Dead remake] pretty well. That's all I'm going to say."
When playing as the antagonist, you can choose to take on the role of the Necromancer, aka Evil Ash from Army of Darkness.
Saber Interactive
I'll admit, I initially had some apprehension about a new Evil Dead game. While there have been some in the past, particularly on the original PlayStation and PS2, they felt more like exercises in retreading ground from the iconic Evil Dead 2: Dead by Dawn. This new game so far branches out into some ambitious territory, and I was impressed with how it came together to form a multiplayer experience that pays tribute to the goofy nature of Evil Dead, but also offers some genuine scares.
It can be a tough thing to balance, but I felt that Evil Dead: The Game is so far looking to be an interesting take on horror-comedy in a game, which is quite rare. This latest adaptation of the Evil Dead just might be the game that long-time fans have been waiting for.
Evil Dead: The Game will be released on May 13 for PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X and Nintendo Switch.
