Tri-folds are having a moment. Thereâs that impressive Huawei device, my favorite 3-in-1 Apple charger, and now this: the Zip tri-fold projector from a company called Aurzen. Itâs the most gadgety gadget Iâve tested in a long time.
The Zipâs heft, texture, and hinge stiffness evokes quality at first touch and itâs impressively bright for a compact battery-powered projector that initially costs $249.
Using it is also a joy. It connects quickly to iPhones over AirPlay and to Android devices over Miracast, Smart View, or similar using Wi-Fi Direct â no hotspot required. It then automatically focuses and aligns the image on any available flat surface including walls, t-shirts, and pillows. It works in both landscape and portrait modes and pairs with Bluetooth headsets for private audio or Bluetooth speakers for a shared experience. The built-in rechargeable battery lasts about 80 minutes in my real-world testing, but you can always plug it into a powerbank or wall jack to extend that.
Using it sucks, however, if youâre trying to stream from services like Netflix and Disney Plus or trying to watch Spotify music videos. Thatâs because all those companies protect their …
OpenAI is finally making its video generation model, Sora, available to users in the European Union, the U.K., Switzerland, Norway, Liechtenstein and Iceland. The company said on Friday that ChatGPT Plus and Pro subscribers in these regions will be able to create videos using the model. The AI startup first unveiled Sora in February 2024, […]
For creators, YouTube is still the top platform for making money.
No surprise there. It’s had a head start, fine-tuning its monetization model while others scramble to keep up. And with U.S. creators expected to rake in over $15 billion from social media alone this year, according to eMarketer, the stakes have never been higher. For platforms, courting creators isn’t just a strategy, its table stakes. And more often than not, the winning move comes down to cold, hard cash.
“If you asked 10 creators what platform they prefer for monetizing outside of brand partnerships, you’d probably get at least nine (if not all) saying YouTube,” said Keith Bendes, chief strategy officer at Linqia. “Interestingly though, if you asked 10 brands which platform they prefer for creator partnerships, you’d probably get nine (or all of them) saying Instagram or TikTok.”
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It’s been a little over two weeks since The Trade Desk issued its first-ever earnings miss, during which time its stock price dropped by almost 40%. However, at its flagship NYC partner event on Thursday, executives there outlined their priorities for the year ahead.
Joined on stage by the likes of The New York Times, NBC Universal, Paramount, and Warner Bros.Discovery (among others), the narrative heralded “the rise of the premium internet,” indicating its priorities on Madison Avenue for the year ahead.
In opening remarks, its commercial chief Tim Sims outlined The Trade Desk’s outlook on a new industry paradigm, one that’s free from Google’s influence. This paradigm includes the importance of authenticated audiences and a more efficient supply chain.
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The creator economy is taking a closer look at creator affiliate programs, giving them more scrutiny than before. The move follows creator pushback against Honey, a PayPal-owned browser extension, after reports broke late last year that the company was allegedly skimming creators’ affiliate revenue.
Honey, which finds coupon codes for online shopping, was exposed by YouTuber MegaLag for allegedly hijacking affiliate links from creators and using its own (even in cases where it wasn’t a better deal). This has since resulted in class action lawsuits from several creators including YouTubers Legal Eagle and GamersNexus, against the browser extension, claiming that Honey is taking affiliate revenue that belonged to creators.
It’s not just Honey. Other companies including Microsoft and Capital One are facing similar claims regarding their browser extensions through Microsoft Shopping and Capital One Shopping. Now creator and legal experts expect to see greater scrutiny to these affiliate partnerships and changes to influencer contracts and agreements to include more protections to mitigate risk — on both the brand and creator sides. While some creator agreements already include morals clauses or similar terms for exit deals if a brand engages in disreputable conduct, there’s more interest from creators today for those terms. PayPal, Microsoft and Capital One did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
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Walmart’s ad business grew 27% year over year in 2024, according to the company’s recent earnings report, netting the retail giant $4.4 billion in global ad revenue for the year. That growth has come as Walmart has continued to evolve its ad offerings. This week, for example, the company announced a new Application Programming Interface (API) for Walmart Connect that allows ad tech platforms to create and manage tools for display campaigns — a move that buyers see as Walmart setting the stage to transition from managed service to self-service.
As Walmart’s retail media network matures, buyers see it as the leader of the pack among the bevy of retail media networks — aside from Amazon of course. Walmart is checking a lot of the boxes when it comes to what buyers want from retail media networks now, including adding more capabilities and tools, more measurement tracking and off-site ad units. Whenever Walmart adds streaming and CTV capabilities — something buyers expect it will do given its acquisition of smart TV maker Vizio — that will only help the retailer continue its current growth trajectory, according to four ad buyers Digiday spoke with for this piece.
“Walmart has been the one to watch,” said Amie Owen, chief commerce officer at IPG Mediabrands.
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The squeeze on agency holding companies keeps getting tighter. WPP’s year-end revenue slump, paired with lackluster outlook for 2025, is just the latest twist in an ongoing identity crisis for legacy ad giants. In fact, things have gotten so dire that holdco CEOs have mastered a specialized dialect, one designed to downplay their troubles while keeping investors from panicking.
Here’s a guide to what they say versus what they really (might) mean.
What they say: “We are in a period of transformation.” What they mean: “We have no idea how to fix this, but we’ll throw around words like ‘AI’ and ‘efficiency’ until the next earnings call.”
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A week-long rout in Bitcoin worsened Friday, with the digital asset hitting an over 3-month low, reversing gains that followed the election of the U.S. President Donald Trump.
Almost two weeks after The New York Times reported that Airbnb co-founder Joe Gebbia had joined Elon Musk’s “Department of Government Efficiency,” Gebbia clarified his role on Thursday, announcing on X that as a starting point, he’ll be leveraging his design expertise as part of an effort to overhaul the government’s notoriously slow, paper-heavy retirement […]
Welcome to Neural. AI moves fast. We help you keep up. OpenAI has officially unveiled GPT-4.5, the latest version of the fastest ChatGPT model. While GPT-4.5 excels in a number of areas including accuracy and emotional intelligence, OpenAI emphasizes that GPT-4.5 is not its most advanced model for now.
At I/O 2024 last May, Demis Hassabis reiterated that DeepMind’s goal is “building AGI: Artificial general intelligence, a system that has human-level cognitive capabilities.” This week, Google co-founder Sergey Brin said that “the final race to A.G.I. is afoot.”
The iPhone 17 Pro concept image above seems more and more likely to be exactly what Apple will reveal this fall. Sonny Dickson has shared additional images from CAD files claiming to show the iPhone 17, iPhone 17 Air, iPhone 17 Pro, and iPhone 17 Pro Max design and dimensions.
There's a scene in the filmInterstellar where Matthew McConaughey's character flies his spaceplane up to meet a mothership spinning out of control. The protagonist rises to the challenge with a polished piece of piloting and successfully links up with his objective.
Real life, of course, isn't quite this dramatic. Slow down that spin to a tranquil tumble, and replace McConaughey's hand on the joystick with the autonomous wits of a computer, and you'll arrive at an approximation of what a Japanese company Astroscale has accomplished within the last year.
Still, it's an impressive feat of engineering and orbital dynamics. Astroscale's ADRAS-J mission became the first spacecraft (at least in the unclassified world) to approach a piece of space junk in low-Earth orbit. This particular object, a derelict upper stage from a Japanese H-IIA rocket, has been in orbit since 2009. It's one of about 2,000 spent rocket bodies circling the Earth and one of more than 45,000 objects in orbit tracked by US Space Command.
The EV4 sedan was first announced as a concept in 2023, but it’s now a real car. It comes in two versions. One has a funky rear that stretches out to look like a traditional 4-door car. The other, a “five-door” hot-hatch-looking version will primarily be for the European market, according to Kia. These aren’t going to be Kia’s most-performant EVs though, as they will be single-motor front-wheel drive vehicles with just 150kW of power and a 0-62 mph acceleration time as quick as 7.4 seconds.
The EV4 will also run on a lesser 400-volt version of the company’s E-GMP platform instead of the faster-charging 800-volt versions used in the EV6, Hyundai Ioniq 5, and others. Kia says the system can still charge 10 to 80 percent in as little as 31 minutes.
The vehicles could shine in battery range. Kia says they’ll get up to 630km (about 391 miles) on a single charge with the larger 81.4 kWh battery option, and 430km (about 267 miles) on the smaller 58.3 kWh battery. However, those estimates are based on Europe’s more generous WLTP standards.
The EV4 still offers some of Kia’s cooler EV tech. It has a 30-inch widescreen display (really three side-by-side instrument cluster and infotainment screens) that run Kia’s latest “connected car Navigation Cockpit (ccNC) software. You get entertainment options like YouTube, Netflix, games, and more that will be available from an app store.. You can also get an AI voice assistant, Apple Watch digital key access, V2L for powering household devices, and a “Smart Cruise Control 2” advanced driver-assistance system with lane keeping.
Kia’s concept EV2, which had purportedly been spotted in camouflage last year, is supposed to be even cheaper than the EV4. The company says the mini-SUV will be its “smallest EV yet” and will have options to reconfigure seating to maximize front row space for lounging or for rear cargo. It will also have perks like removable portable speakers for tailgating.
The EV4 sedan will initially be built in Korea and will first launch there in the middle of March. The EV4 hatchback will be produced in Slovakia and will launch in Europe in the second half of 2024. The North American version of the sedan will be produced “later in the year.” The EV2, meanwhile, is coming in 2026 for Europe and other regions, although its US availability is yet to be confirmed.
Kia President Ho Sung Song announced at the event that EV4 pricing will start at 37,000 euros (about $38,500), Electrek reports. The initial run will include 160,000 units, of which 80,000 are destined to ship to North America.
With the EV4, US car buyers might soon have another affordable mass-market electric car option against the Tesla Model 3. The EV4 could fill some vacancies, too, as automakers like Volkswagen, which is no longer bringing the ID.7 stateside, re-tune their EV strategies amidst the Trump administration’s interests to eliminate electric vehicle incentives.
