Facebook wants to be like Snapchat

Facebook is looking to make posts disappear, Google wants to make traffic reports more accurate, and more patents from Big Tech.

Facebook wants to be like Snapchat

Facebook has ephemeral posts on its mind.

Image: Protocol

Welcome to another week of Big Tech patents. Google wants to make traffic reports more accurate, Amazon wants to make voice assistants more intelligent, Microsoft wants to make scheduling meetings more convenient, and a ton more.

As always, remember that the big tech companies file all kinds of crazy patents for things, and though most never amount to anything, some end up defining the future

Alphabet

More-accurate traffic reports

Traffic in the Bay Area was mostly nonexistent throughout the pandemic, as most of Silicon Valley stayed home. But now that offices are opening back up, people are starting to hit the road, and it's only a matter of time before traffic jams will make driving anywhere a nightmare again.

One way to beat traffic, or at least know what's coming, is by using the traffic overlay in Google Maps. It uses the speed of cars on the road to determine whether traffic is heavy or light. But sometimes that can be misleading, because the map doesn't usually take into account different lanes, like high-occupancy lanes, so the traffic doesn't fully represent what's going on. This patent aims to make traffic predictions more accurate, using various methods: One could be measuring traffic at different points on the road; another method might be integrating traffic speeds both in regular lanes as well as express lanes. By incorporating all of the available data and not just the average speed of all the cars, the traffic information will be that much more useful — and maybe getting to work on time won't be an impossible feat.

Improved contactless payments

Contactless POS terminals use NFC technology to accept payments. That's where you wave your phone near the screen and you complete the transaction without having to touch anything. But those terminals don't take into account anything extra, such as loyalty cards or special offers.

This patent imagines upgrading the POS so it can include not just payment information, but additional information regarding the transaction. For example, a customer taps the POS once to pay and then again for it to retrieve any loyalty points, without having to touch the POS at any point. That's great news for people (like me) who never want to touch anything again that hasn't been doused in some sort of bleach solution.

Using visual cues with an automated assistant

Speaking of contactless, one of the best and easiest ways to be hands-free is with a voice assistant, which usually just needs a wake word and a command to then perform said command. But what if your voice assistant could respond to hand gestures, too? This patent lays out a way for the voice assistant to not only respond to new hand gestures, such as a thumbs-up that acts as an "affirmative" response, but also how it can avoid false responses, say, from a nearby TV where a character also happens to give a thumbs-up. That way you can feel confident about waving around at your Google Hub without worrying that some background character is saying "yes" to the $300 worth of pizza you just tried to order.

Amazon

A more intelligent voice assistant

As I've written here many times, I love how voice assistants make my life easier; I have one in every room of the house. Granted, I usually use them to turn off lights, turn on sound machines, play music, or tell me what the weather is. This patent is looking to make voice assistants even more useful by triggering different notifications for various events. You could tell it something that doesn't have an end date, such as, "Tell me when I receive an email from David," in which case the assistant will notify you when David sends you that email, whenever it may be. Or you could ask it to tell you when the 49ers game starts, and it will alert you at the specific time and date. I'm all for never having to think for myself again, and it looks like we're one step closer to getting there.

Apple

Teleportation! (In VR)

Apple working on a VR headset has ruled the rumorverse for a long time — maybe even as long as the rumored Apple Car. But this patent might bring the company one step closer to making the rumor reality. Well, virtual reality, in this case.

Moving from location to location in virtual reality isn't always easy. You usually have to X out of the app, which disrupts the feeling of being inside the action. But this patent imagines a way of making it more seamless. Rather than signing out of the app or game, the different location can be overlaid onto the spot you're currently at. For example, if you're in a house, a little screen will pop up showing you what's outside of the house, and you can then choose to go there. Or if you want to go to a completely different location, using the same overlay, you could choose to get out of the house entirely. If only this existed in the real world.

Facebook

Ephemeral Facebook posts? Sign me up!

A big complaint about the internet — and social media specifically — is that things you post can come back to haunt you. Unless you specifically delete them after a set amount of time. But what if the network could automatically delete it for you after a certain threshold? That's what this patent explores: A way for the platform to delete your post, much like Snapchat. That way you don't have to worry about that 3 a.m. drunk post too much — as long as you remember to set it to disappear.

Microsoft

Intelligent meetings

Offices are great: You have a place to go to work, sometimes you get lunch and you get to collaborate with colleagues in person. But now as offices are (slowly) opening back up, it's imperative to remember some of the downsides of an office — namely, fighting over conference room space.

This patent aims to make that a little easier by assigning conference rooms that are the appropriate size. If your meeting has only four people in it, there's no need for a 10-person conference room. The system would assign appropriately, and even take into consideration the event that someone drops out of the meeting.

And to make scheduling meetings even more helpful, this patent imagines a way to look at everyone's calendar events and parse out the most relevant information. Using a proximity score, the system would schedule or reschedule meetings, based on everyone's availability.

Fintech

Judge Zia Faruqui is trying to teach you crypto, one ‘SNL’ reference at a time

His decisions on major cryptocurrency cases have quoted "The Big Lebowski," "SNL," and "Dr. Strangelove." That’s because he wants you — yes, you — to read them.

The ways Zia Faruqui (right) has weighed on cases that have come before him can give lawyers clues as to what legal frameworks will pass muster.

Photo: Carolyn Van Houten/The Washington Post via Getty Images

“Cryptocurrency and related software analytics tools are ‘The wave of the future, Dude. One hundred percent electronic.’”

That’s not a quote from "The Big Lebowski" — at least, not directly. It’s a quote from a Washington, D.C., district court memorandum opinion on the role cryptocurrency analytics tools can play in government investigations. The author is Magistrate Judge Zia Faruqui.

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Veronica Irwin

Veronica Irwin (@vronirwin) is a San Francisco-based reporter at Protocol covering fintech. Previously she was at the San Francisco Examiner, covering tech from a hyper-local angle. Before that, her byline was featured in SF Weekly, The Nation, Techworker, Ms. Magazine and The Frisc.

The financial technology transformation is driving competition, creating consumer choice, and shaping the future of finance. Hear from seven fintech leaders who are reshaping the future of finance, and join the inaugural Financial Technology Association Fintech Summit to learn more.

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FTA
The Financial Technology Association (FTA) represents industry leaders shaping the future of finance. We champion the power of technology-centered financial services and advocate for the modernization of financial regulation to support inclusion and responsible innovation.
Enterprise

AWS CEO: The cloud isn’t just about technology

As AWS preps for its annual re:Invent conference, Adam Selipsky talks product strategy, support for hybrid environments, and the value of the cloud in uncertain economic times.

Photo: Noah Berger/Getty Images for Amazon Web Services

AWS is gearing up for re:Invent, its annual cloud computing conference where announcements this year are expected to focus on its end-to-end data strategy and delivering new industry-specific services.

It will be the second re:Invent with CEO Adam Selipsky as leader of the industry’s largest cloud provider after his return last year to AWS from data visualization company Tableau Software.

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Donna Goodison

Donna Goodison (@dgoodison) is Protocol's senior reporter focusing on enterprise infrastructure technology, from the 'Big 3' cloud computing providers to data centers. She previously covered the public cloud at CRN after 15 years as a business reporter for the Boston Herald. Based in Massachusetts, she also has worked as a Boston Globe freelancer, business reporter at the Boston Business Journal and real estate reporter at Banker & Tradesman after toiling at weekly newspapers.

Image: Protocol

We launched Protocol in February 2020 to cover the evolving power center of tech. It is with deep sadness that just under three years later, we are winding down the publication.

As of today, we will not publish any more stories. All of our newsletters, apart from our flagship, Source Code, will no longer be sent. Source Code will be published and sent for the next few weeks, but it will also close down in December.

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Bennett Richardson

Bennett Richardson ( @bennettrich) is the president of Protocol. Prior to joining Protocol in 2019, Bennett was executive director of global strategic partnerships at POLITICO, where he led strategic growth efforts including POLITICO's European expansion in Brussels and POLITICO's creative agency POLITICO Focus during his six years with the company. Prior to POLITICO, Bennett was co-founder and CMO of Hinge, the mobile dating company recently acquired by Match Group. Bennett began his career in digital and social brand marketing working with major brands across tech, energy, and health care at leading marketing and communications agencies including Edelman and GMMB. Bennett is originally from Portland, Maine, and received his bachelor's degree from Colgate University.

Enterprise

Why large enterprises struggle to find suitable platforms for MLops

As companies expand their use of AI beyond running just a few machine learning models, and as larger enterprises go from deploying hundreds of models to thousands and even millions of models, ML practitioners say that they have yet to find what they need from prepackaged MLops systems.

As companies expand their use of AI beyond running just a few machine learning models, ML practitioners say that they have yet to find what they need from prepackaged MLops systems.

Photo: artpartner-images via Getty Images

On any given day, Lily AI runs hundreds of machine learning models using computer vision and natural language processing that are customized for its retail and ecommerce clients to make website product recommendations, forecast demand, and plan merchandising. But this spring when the company was in the market for a machine learning operations platform to manage its expanding model roster, it wasn’t easy to find a suitable off-the-shelf system that could handle such a large number of models in deployment while also meeting other criteria.

Some MLops platforms are not well-suited for maintaining even more than 10 machine learning models when it comes to keeping track of data, navigating their user interfaces, or reporting capabilities, Matthew Nokleby, machine learning manager for Lily AI’s product intelligence team, told Protocol earlier this year. “The duct tape starts to show,” he said.

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Kate Kaye

Kate Kaye is an award-winning multimedia reporter digging deep and telling print, digital and audio stories. She covers AI and data for Protocol. Her reporting on AI and tech ethics issues has been published in OneZero, Fast Company, MIT Technology Review, CityLab, Ad Age and Digiday and heard on NPR. Kate is the creator of RedTailMedia.org and is the author of "Campaign '08: A Turning Point for Digital Media," a book about how the 2008 presidential campaigns used digital media and data.

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