Stealthy mixed reality startup Magic Leap has been having a bit of a tough time on the publicity front of late. Its head of PR departed last month , following a report by The Information suggesting it had inflated claims about its tech, and that a commercial product remained far further out than its marketing messages had suggested. And that despite investors ploughing some $1.4BN into the three year old, still productless startup.
All of which perhaps explains why CEO Rony Abovitz felt the need to leapt into 2017 by penning a blog post aimed at putting some positive puff back into Magic Leap’s image.
The problem is, you can’t fight cynicism with hot air. And Abovitz’s post has Zeppelin’s worth of the stuff.
First a few sample reviews from some nameless grumpy mouse tech bloggers : “this is the dumbest thing I have ever read”… “it sounds like an ‘essay on creativity’ assignment written by an 8th grader”… “wow”.
And now a few sample lines from Abovitz’s post itself:
You get the idea. (You can read the blog in full here .)
The whale-sized problem in the room here is that penning some trippy PR is not going to go very far towards correcting a growing suspicion that all might not quite be as it seems at this highly financed, heavily hyped mixed reality startup.
And as my colleague Lucas Matney wrote last month: “It’s clear that the time has arrived for a shift in the way the company communicates its ambitions.
“While the process of miniaturization has advanced more slowly than the company may have expected, where the clearest failures have lied is in the cult of mystery and high expectations that Magic Leap CEO Rony Abovitz seems to have chased in order to inflate his company and his own premature illusions of grandeur, all of this before the company has anything to back that visionary status up with.”
Yet instead of a shift in PR strategy, Magic Leap’s New Year’s Resolution appears to be to lay on the mystique even more thickly — rainbow powered unicorns and all…
So what, if anything, can we takeaway from Abovitz’s post? And I don’t mean idle considerations about what all those dreamers might be smoking inside their “really big space”. What concrete things can we learn?
In truth not very much — but here’s what, to my eye, looks like a few creeping realities intruding on this fantastical dreamscape.
1 – Magic Leap does not have a coherent product roadmap or unified vision for the company yet
“I see our journey at Magic Leap extending out over many decades, over many products and technologies.”
2 – Magic Leap has not yet identified a clear use-case for its technology
“Creative and practical.”
3 – Its first product still does not have a release date (despite talk of it debuting “hopefully soon-ish” way back in July )
“Our first product is coming.”
4 – Their first product might not be quite so reality-bending as people have been led to believe
“Our first system will be the first step towards a really cool dream… We are not going for perfect, but for a feeling , a flow , a moment to high-five our inner child.”
5 – The first product might launch this year. But — equally — it might not
“2017 will be a big year for Magic Leap… We are not about building cool prototypes. We are scaling up so we can manufacture hundreds of thousands of systems, and then millions. That requires a level of perfection, testing, and attention to detail by determined professionals.”
6 – Magic Leap does have a smallish prototype. But it might not be up to “rainbow unicorn levels” of reality mixing (hence, no doubt, the delays)
“We have made something that is small, mobile, powerful, and we think pretty cool.”
Abovitz does also tell us about a personal concern of his — relating to the rise of AI and how information systems might edit out the intangible things that are really important in life.
On this he writes:
This is a rather interesting thought. It’s just a shame it’s drowned out by all those banal rainbow powered unicorns.

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Freshdesk announced today that it has acquired Banglaore-based startup Pipemonk for an undisclosed amount. Pipemonk helps companies move data between cloud platforms, which should come in handy for Freshdesk and its partners.
Pipemonk, which was born as ZapStitch, had raised just over $2 million since it launched in 2014, with its primary funding round coming in May, 2015 , when it landed $2 million in seed funding led by Helion Venture Partners.
Pipemonk offers customers the ability to move data easily between cloud applications such as CRM, eCommerce, marketing and help desk services. The latter is particularly important to Freshdesk, whose primary products include customer service and help desk offerings.
The company has simplified data integration, a process that has traditionally been fraught with complexity, says Satya Padmanabham, co-founder of Pipemonk. “With the Pipemonk platform, we made it possible for even non-engineers to configure and run an integration in a matter of minutes,” he explained in a statement.
One of the primary differences between cloud services and the on-prem software that came before it, is that they have been designed for the most part with open APIs that allow various services — even those that compete with one another — to work together. The strategy is no longer to keep you locked inside a proprietary stack. Instead, cloud services recognize that you will need to work with other services, and they accommodate that because customers demand it.
Pipemonk gives Freshdesk more than simply a generic way to automate the flow of data between services. It will have practical application in-house, helping pull together the half dozen services, Freshdesk has acquired in a mini shopping binge over the last 16 months.
All 13 Pipemonk employees will be joining Freshdesk, essentially giving it an in-house data integration team. “Having your apps talk to each other and enabling seamless flow of data plays an important role in any business today, and we at Freshdesk are focused on making that workflow process simple for our customers,” Freshdesk CEO and founder Girish Mathrubootham, said in a statement.
Freshdesk launched in 2010 as a cloud customer service platform. Since, it has expanded its products to include IT help desk, CRM, live chat, in-app chat and social testimonial tools. The company has raised almost $150 million.

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Disappearing messages don’t impress security professionals, given how flimsy a privacy protection they offer, but despite an inherently fickle form the feature keeps recurring on comms platforms.
The latest to add what it calls an “ unsend ” feature is mobile messaging platform Telegram — which is now letting users retrieve (i.e. delete) messages within two days of sending them, once they update to v3.16 of its app.
Secure messaging app Signal also recently added an ephemeral messaging feature, back in October — albeit for ‘tidiness’, not privacy.
Telegram’s unsend feature works within one-to-one and group messaging scenarios, and has to be enacted within the 48 hour window. It says the idea is to serve users with ‘morning after messaging regret’ by letting them scrub stuff they wish they’d never said.
Of course it pays to point out this is at best privacy theatre, given that messages can be read and screengrabbed long before being ‘retrieved’. So basically don’t trust your secrets or your stupidity to an ‘unsend’.
It also adds another layer of complexity to Telegram’s messaging structure. The app already silos end-to-end encrypted messaging into a ‘secret chats’ feature, which has to be initiated by the user vs the default message type (which is not end-to-end encrypted). And Telegram has taken a lot of flak for not enabling e2e encryption across the board as other messaging apps have.
Its use of proprietary encryption also turns noses in the security community vs other messaging apps, such as Wire and WhatsApp , which use or build on the independently audited Signal Protocol (also used in the Signal messaging app).
Safe to say, there are a growing number of messaging options for mobile users to play around with. And a growing number of considerations to factor in if you’re seeking a secure messaging app. But while unsending messages might be a fun way to troll your friends for kicks, it’s no substitute for a proper wrapper of robust and respected end-to-end encryption.

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Mark Zuckerberg is not limited to just two years working in the government while still controlling Facebook, as has been widely misreported. A closer examination of SEC documents reveals Zuck only needs to still own enough Facebook stock or have the board’s approval to be allowed to serve in government indefinitely.
Combined with Zuckerberg’s announcement yesterday that his 2017 personal challenge is to meet and listen to people in all 50 states , this fact lends weight to the idea that Zuckerberg may be serious about diving into politics.
Without the limit, Zuckerberg has the opportunity to be appointed or elected to a more significant office and have as much time as he wants to make an impact, rather than just dipping in potentially as a cabinet member whose terms typically last less than two years.
Of course, getting elected would require the faith of the people which has been shaken by the fake news scandal. Some would surely view a role in government as a selfish push for power despite Zuckerberg’s massive philanthropy initiatives. Certain government offices might have historically required him to give up control of Facebook, but Donald Trump is currently redefining how much ownership of business one can have as President
The confusion arose from Bloomberg’s interpretation of unsealed court filings regarding correspondence between Zuckerberg and Facebook board member Marc Andreessen. They secretly texted about how to convince other board members to approve the creation of Class C non-voting shares that would allow Zuckerberg to retain voting control of Facebook as he donates the majority of his wealth to his and his wife’s philanthropic vehicle, the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative.
As part of the negotiation, Zuckerberg agreed to several ways for Facebook to “mitigate succession risk” — essentially avoid Zuckerberg and his estate retaining total control thanks to his 10-votes-per-share Class B stock in case he dies, becomes disabled, is fired, or voluntarily resigns and leaves the company. In these cases, his stock converts into single-vote Class A shares so that Facebook could attract a higher quality replacement CEO since an absent Zuckerberg wouldn’t still control the company.
But Zuckerberg fought for a big exception to the resignation “sunset trigger”: he may voluntarily resign or take a leave of absence while still maintaining voting control of Facebook if he’s going to work in government. The only limits on this are that he must either:
Or
A Facebook spokesperson verified this interpretation. You can read the whole passage of legalese describing this here.
With this cleared up, Zuckerberg’s potential to make changes through government service, not just software, comes into focus. He’s talked at length abut how he sees Facebook as a town square that offers a platform for diverse voices while retaining civility.
From one perspective, that actually makes Facebook quite like a government already. And now Zuckerberg is planning nation-wide empathy tour stops to hear from the people directly. He wrote yesterday “My work is about connecting the world and giving everyone a voice. I want to personally hear more of those voices this year.” The challenge doesn’t sound far from a campaign tour of shaking hands and kissing babies. And a domestic tour fits nicely after he spent the past few years traveling the world and meeting heads of state from India, Brazil, Japan, and other countries.
Many have speculated that Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg might eventually go into government. Now it’s clear that Zuckerberg’s ambitions to reshape the world through politics are even grander than would fit in a two-year term. He’s already the defacto president of a tumultous but thriving 1.8 billion-citizen online nation. Could he successfully lend a hand with a 320 million-citizen physical one?

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CES is off and running, but nothing truly begins until Samsung gets on stage for its annual show-opening press conference.
The Korean tech giant has historically put on quite a show at CES — I’m still trying to scrub Michael Bay’s on-stage meltdown from my memory.
However, Samsung has had an explosive year, to say the least. How will they respond to exploding Galaxy Note 7s and the year ahead? What new magic appliances will they unveil? Will next year’s fridge be smarter than I am?
We’re about to find out, starting at 2pm PST.
We’ll update you from the press conference line and as we filter into the show. Stay tuned!

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When we first heard about LG’s Hub robot, it sure sounded a lot like a cross between an Amazon Echo and a Roomba. Turns out the company has gone for a much more friendly robot approach to the tech. The Hub is a peanut shaped bot designed to hang out on a desktop or table, with a display that doubles as its face.
The company isn’t talking much about the Hub’s functionality, beyond some basic smart home features, like the ability to play music. All in all, it sounds like a more humanized version of Amazon (and, for that matter, LG’s) speaker hubs.
The robot will also have a smaller counterpart (the Mini) and a much larger one – the simply named Airport guide, which will be rolled out (quite literally) at Incheon Airport in South Korea later this year, offering travelers gate information and departure times – essentially service as a friendly version of your standard airport kiosk, only with a face.
webOS has lived a strange life over the past several years. In LG’s hands, however, it’s probably not surprising that the one-time Palm operating system was destined to wind up on the front of a refrigerator. What’s more interesting here, is the fact that LG has rolled it’s on-going partnership with Amazon to bring the Alexa voice assistant directly to the InstaView Door-in-Door refrigerator.
The companies are promising the “full Alexa experience,” making the fridge the latest of a growing number of devices vying to become the hub of users’ growing smart home ecosystem. That means you’ll be able to do the standard music playing, along with some smart home control.
Amazon functionality also means that users will be able to order food directly from the front of the device with their device, one-upping the Amazon Dash functionality the company has rolled out past appliances, so you really don’t have an excuse to ever leave your fridge’s immediate vicinity.

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