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Tapbots, the company behind Tweetbot, has released a major update for the iPhone and iPad. Tweetbot 6 is now available in the App store. While there aren’t a lot of visual changes, there are a couple of important things happening under the hood.
First, Tweetbot 6 is using Twitter’s API v2. An API is an interface that lets two applications or services interact with each other. In today’s case, Tweetbot uses Twitter’s API to interact with the service.
And third-party developers can only do what Twitter lets them do. For many years, Twitter’s API has been somewhat limited, especially if you’ve been trying to build a full-fledged Twitter client. But API v2 surfaces some missing features.
For instance, Tweetbot 6 can now display polls. Before that, polls simply didn’t appear in the timeline. Similarly, Tweetbot 6 displays preview cards, which let you preview linked content without having to click on them. Some features are still missing, such as stories.
There are some minor changes with Tweetbot 6, such as new interface themes, a new feature that lets you select Chrome or Firefox as browser options for links and some tweaks in the app design.
The business model is changing as well. Instead of paying to download the app, you can now download a free app with many restrictions — for instance, you can’t tweet. When you’re ready, you can subscribe to unlock all features for $0.99 per month or $5.99 per year.
This change should ensure the future of the app. Tapbots says Tweetbot 6 is currently in early access. The company plans to add more features down the road.
And if you’re using Tweetbot 5 right now, the app is still working fine. You can re-download the app from the ‘Purchased’ section in the App Store.
Source: https://techcrunch.com/2021/01/26/tweetbot-6-released-with-new-subscription-pricing/
Sony is making a play for the top end of the professional digital camera world, where videographers and sports photographers demand immaculate image quality at high resolutions in short order. The new Alpha 1 beats pretty much everything on the market on paper, but it’ll set you back a cool $6,500.
This is, of course, well above the price range for ordinary consumers and even spendy enthusiasts and “prosumers.” It’s a professional tool, and in this range Canon has historically been the go-to with its 1D series, and more recently its R5, a full-frame mirrorless that leapfrogged the competition to great acclaim last year. But Sony clearly means to leapfrog the R5 in turn.
The Canon R5 ticked all the right boxes: full frame sensor, 45 megapixels at 20 frames per second, an excellent EVF, in-body image stabilization, and 8K video. Sony ticks them all too… but harder.
Image Credits: Sony
The Alpha 1 will send down its 50 megapixel stills at 30 frames per second and with no viewfinder blackout (plus the backside-illuminated sensor will be more sensitive); its EVF has nearly twice the pixels and can refresh twice as fast, 240 fps; its 8K video is born at a higher resolution (the Sony uses the full 8.6K and downrezzes); it’ll shoot for half an hour without overheating (an R5 quirk); and so on and so forth.
Sony seems to have deliberately outdone Canon’s flagship in every way possible, though with no consideration for cost: the R5 goes for about $3800, while the A1 is $6500.
Yet photographers are no strangers to spending that kind of cash on a tool of the trade (a lens can run you as much or more). Anyone who shoots sports or nature knows that 30 fps instead of 20 fps may mean the difference between getting a cover shot and nothing at all. Visual effects artists who work closely with footage peep pixels all day will be able to tell an R5 8K from an A1 8K. Will it matter? Maybe, maybe not. Would you take the risk or pay extra to eliminate it?
Image Credits: Sony
If it’s merely a question of money to get the best instead of almost the best, there are a lot of people out there who will write that check without a second thought. Of course, the R5 was released half a year ago and its successor (the “Mark II”) may change that calculus again.
To be clear, the R5 and A1 are both far more camera than most people will ever need. They’re the bleeding edge of the industry — an industry that has been shrinking steadily for years. Battling fiercely now over professionals may have long-lasting effects as bit players get edged out, unable to compete. It’s an investment in the markets that they think will last despite the constant creeping encroachment of smartphones.
More importantly for the rest of us, competition like this in the camera industry is good because it produces advances that trickle down to the models we can actually afford. Not that anyone really needs 8K, but that improved sensor readout and EVF sure would be nice to have.
You can read more about the Alpha 1’s specs here.
Source: https://techcrunch.com/2021/01/26/sonys-tempts-professionals-with-the-top-shelf-top-tier-alpha-1/
Extra Crunch Live 2.0 launches next week! Among several improvements, we’re thrilled to ramp up the Pitch Deck Teardown.
In short, folks can submit their pitch decks to get feedback from investors and founders alike.
The importance of the pitch deck can’t be underestimated. It is often the first point of contact between a company and venture investors, but how investors consume a pitch deck (and what they really think) is also a bit of a black box.
Are they speed-flipping through the slides or taking their time? Do they prefer more information on the team or context on the industry? More numbers or more words? How many slides is the right number of slides?
There are too many questions to count, and often very few answers. But we’re popping the lid off of that black box with the Pitch Deck Teardown. We’ve done Pitch Deck Teardowns at events like Disrupt and Early Stage 2020, and this year we’re cranking it up a notch.
Anyone can submit their pitch deck and hear what our guests, tech leaders across the industry, think of them. (Important note: Extra Crunch members will be prioritized on the list of decks we choose to show during the episode.)
We recently shared what you can expect from Extra Crunch Live in 2021. Here’s a refresher:
- Series A – Learn how others have fundraised! We’ll have a segment dedicated to hearing from founder/investor duos who walk us through the Series A pitch deck that led to investment.
- Pitch Deck Teardowns – Folks will have the opportunity to submit their pitch deck and get feedback from our guests, which will include VCs and founders (You can submit their pitch decks right here!).
- Live Pitch-offs – Audience members can raise their hand to practice their elevator pitch in front of the audience and get real-time feedback from VCs.
- Networking!! – The Extra Crunch membership is a community. ECL will be an opportunity to meet your fellow audience members, even in a virtual environment. Who knows? Maybe you’ll meet your next co-founder or investor!
- Consistency – ECL will always be at 12pm PT/3pm ET on Wednesdays. When it comes to your calendar, set it and forget it.
We’ll announce all the speakers joining us in February tomorrow! Stay tuned!
Twitter today is rolling out a new product track on its API platform, as part of its ongoing efforts to rebuild the Twitter API from the ground up. The track, which aims to serve the needs of the academic research community’s efforts, offers broader access to the Twitter archive and fewer restrictions on tweet retrievals, so researchers can access the entire history of the public conversation on Twitter’s platform.
In addition to gaining access to all the Twitter API v2 endpoints released to date and elevated access, researchers will gain access to more precise filtering capabilities.
Specifically, they’ll be able to access the full-archive search endpoint, which offers access to everything being said on Twitter. They can narrow searches for these historical tweets using start time and end time parameters.
Image Credits: Twitter
Researchers will also gain a significantly higher monthly cap on the number of tweets they can pull using the Twitter API v2. While on the Basic level of API access, this cap is set to 500,000, the Basic level of access on the Academic Research track is an initial monthly cap of up to 10 million tweets. This applies to the Recent Search, Filtered Stream, Full-archive search, and user tweet and mentions timelines endpoints, Twitter says.
The Academic Research track will gain access to certain operators that aren’t otherwise available, too, with the goal of helping them pull more precise user data. Today, these include: $ (aka cashtag), bio, bio_name, bio_location, place, place_country, point_radius, bounding_box, -is:nullcast, has:cashtags, and has:geo.
Researchers can also add 1,000 concurrent rules when using the filter stream endpoint, instead of the limit of 25 available in the Standard track. Queries in the recent recent search endpoint can be 1024 characters long, compared with 512 characters in the Standard track.
Because of the elevated levels of access, those who want to gain access to the Academic Research product track have to first submit an application.
All applicants have to either be a master’s student, doctoral candidate, post-doc, faculty, or research-focused employee at an academic institution or university. They will also need to have a clearly defined research objective, and must be able to detail their specific plans for how they intend to use, analyze, and share Twitter data from their research.
Plus, the data used from the Academic Research product track can’t be used for any commercial purposes, Twitter notes.
Image Credits: Twitter
Academic researchers have been taking advantage of the Twitter API since its first introduction in 2006 and have used the data to study a variety of topics, Twitter says, like state-backed efforts to disrupt the public conversation, floods and climate change, attitudes and perceptions about COVID-19, and efforts to promote healthy conversation online.
However, the earlier version of the Twitter API didn’t make it easy for researchers to gain access to Twitter data — something the company wanted to correct with API v2.
Twitter to date has catered to the research community in other ways, with additions like a website dedicated to academic research, updates to its developer policy to make it easier to reproduce and validate others’ research, and even special endpoints, like the COVID-19 stream endpoint released in April 2020. But it hasn’t fully thought through, until the API v2, how it could build tools that would actually aid researchers in doing their work, instead of the researchers having to figure out ways to work around Twitter’s limitations.
The Academic Research product track was tested in private beta starting in Oct. 2020, and now this is being opened more broadly, where it will be made freely available.
Twitter says it’s planning to add higher levels of access across all its product tracks in the future, including this one, in time. The later levels will help researchers who need even more data than what’s being offered with today’s launch. Twitter also noted it’s looking into adding flexible access as well, which would help account for times when developers were consuming more or less data throughout the year.
Source: https://techcrunch.com/2021/01/26/twitters-new-api-platform-now-opened-to-academic-researchers/
In 2019, female-led companies received less than 5 percent of the global venture capital. Bringing it to Africa, only 10 percent of the West African startups that cumulatively raised $1 million had at least one female co-founder in the past decade.
There are many stats to back up the underrepresentation of women in starting a company, raising money and general involvement in technology where the global tech workforce comprises 28.8% women.
In a male-dominated space, programs geared toward supporting female entrepreneurs have emerged to close the gap on all fronts. However, for those centered around female founders, most are quick to offer mentorship and training but tend to ignore the importance of raising money.
FirstCheck Africa, a female-focused angel fund that launched yesterday, is hoping to address this challenge. According to its website, “fixing capital access for female tech entrepreneurs in Africa needs an intentional, female-led approach.”
FirstCheck Africa was founded by Eloho Omame and Odunayo Eweniyi. Omame is the MD of Endeavor Nigeria, a program for high-impact entrepreneurs, and Eweniyi is the co-founder and COO of Piggyvest, a Nigerian fintech startup.
Omame’s experience working with founders and managing a VC firm (Amari Ventures) and Odunayo’s as a founder will prove vital to what FirstCheck Africa hopes to achieve: Making it easy for African women to raise capital and invest in tech.
The fund will provide between $15,000 to $25,000 in six women this year in exchange for modest equity. FirstCheck Africa plans to see each woman or female-led team through the ideation stage to a significant pre-seed round within 12 months.
“We know we can generate solid long-term returns by investing in women, so we’ll write female founders’ first checks and be their earliest believers. We’re not afraid to invest ridiculously early in great women,” an excerpt in the statement read.
The fund also specifies that it is open to investing in mixed co-founder teams, with at least one woman. But the caveat is “only where it’s clear that the woman is a true partner and decision-maker, with a significant, equitable split of the founder equity.”
Already, FirstCheck has received over 600 applications from African female-led startups, Omame told TechCrunch. But she iterates that while only six will be selected, FirstCheck is in no hurry to announce the deals when asked how soon the firm expects to write its first check.
“We’ve been transparent with our investment goal as we’re backing up to six women-led, technology-driven businesses this year,” she said. “Outside that, there’s little interest from Odun or me to rush to announce deals. The work we’re doing is important and necessary, but it will take time.”
When you think about it, backing six startups in its first year is an impressive goal. For context, Microtraction, an already established early-stage VC firm, invested in seven startups last year. To achieve that, FirstCheck will need to garner support from local and international investors that are intentional about closing the gender funding gap on the continent. Without providing specifics around how much the fund is looking to raise, Omame says this is already happening.
That said, FirstCheck will be building a female-led investor community for women interested in backing startups by writing smaller checks. The notion behind this is to create opportunities for women around the continent to invest at more comfortable levels. And for African female entrepreneurs who need pre-seed and seed funding, the launch of FirstCheck is a plus to their selection pool.
The firm now joins Rising Tide Africa and SA-based Dazzle Angels among others as one of the few angel funds targeted to African female-led startups.
