The 15 pieces include multiple Burberry logo t-shirts, a Minecraft logo jacquard scarf, a black cotton gabardine car coat, a Burberry logo baseball cap, a square cotton scarf, a hoodie, a bucket hat, jogging pants, and sweatshirts. The final item in the collection (and perhaps its most notable) is a version of Burberry’s classic Waterloo trench coat featuring a pixelated white Burberry x Minecraft logo on the back.

The collection’s laid-back loungewear vibe merges the distinctive styles of the two brands, with comfort being the main priority. Price tags are in the usual Burberry territory of $250 to $2,990. The Burberry x Minecraft collection can be purchased online and in select stores in New York, Shenzhen, London, Tokyo, Seoul, Taiwan, and Bangkok.

Each real, physical garment has a digital counterpart in the game. Avatars wearing the collection get the chance to complete a series of challenges within four realms, like navigating a maze covered in Burberry’s signature pattern. The game itself is downloadable for free as an add-on adventure for the Minecraft game.

The official Minecraft website explains that “The new, free DLC, Burberry: Freedom to Go Beyond, reflects Burberry and Minecraft’s appreciation of the wonder of nature. As the player, you venture into an alternate reality version of London taken over by a malevolent entity called the Nexus. Once a place blooming with foliage and gentle animals, this land has been drained of color and life. Its inhabitants have been scattered to the four realms of air, water, fire, and earth, and your quest is to restore the spirit of the wild by traveling to each realm, reviving its Nature Guardian, and freeing the animals trapped there.”

“On your adventure, you’ll encounter creative references to the Burberry brand’s universe – including an Equestrian Knight character, Thomas Burberry Monogram maze, and a range of members from the Burberry animal kingdom, each bestowed with mystical powers.”

The pairing of Burberry and Minecraft may seem a little strange, but we can probably expect a lot more mixing of traditionally fusty fashion brands and digital technologies in the near future. Balenciaga already designed skins for the game Fortnite, and Gucci recently released the Gucci: Good Game collection celebrating the world of gaming through rainbow-hued iridescent apparel and accessories.

Burberry’s Director for Channel Innovation Phillip Hennche says he knows the collaboration is a bit unexpected. But Burberry sees digital crossover as the way of the future and wanted to work with one of the largest, most beloved games, hence the Minecraft choice.

“Gaming is a super important channel for us in terms of how we engage our customer,” Hennche told Vogue Business. “We know that it’s a very important passion point for our target markets and consumers. We know that they are there, they are present, and they’re very active in that community.”

The post Burberry Debuts Digital Clothing Collection for Minecraft first appeared on Dornob.

Bose Frames Tenor ($249)

Take out the earbuds with these combination speaker and sunglasses. Packaged in a sleek, black frame with polarized lenses, the Tenor’s state-of-the-art Bose Bluetooth speaker allows wearers to enjoy the natural sounds of their environment while discreetly listening to music in crystal clear quality.

Loftie Smart Alarm Clock ($149)

More than just an alarm clock, this smart device is also a white noise machine and includes a Bluetooth speaker that can play guided meditations, soothing evening playlists, and sound baths. It’s everything that special someone in your life needs to get the perfect night’s sleep.

Moleskine Smart Writing System ($279)

Digital technology makes note-taking and journaling so easy to store, but studies show that writing by hand increases brain activity over typing on a tablet or smartphone. The perfect compromise? The Moleskine Smart Writing System, comprised of a smart Ncoded paper and Smart Pen that instantly uploads digital copies of all your hand-written notes.

eTape16 Digital Electronic Tape Measure ($39.99)

For all your handy friends, this electronic tape provides a digital readout for all measurements and can even remember them, eliminating the need for a pen and paper to write it all down.

Anker Nebula Solar Portable Mini Projector ($399.99)

This compact mini projector lets your friends take their TV and movie-watching fun on the road. The1080p projector has a battery that can last for three hours on a single charge. It also doubles as a Bluetooth speaker to provide a full wireless entertainment experience in one machine.

Ekster Parliament Leather Smart Wallet ($69)

If your loved one isn’t ready to go all in on digital finance yet, this smart wallet provides identity theft protection with its RFID coating. With just the push of a button, their desired card is pushed up for easy access at the checkout line. The stylish wallet can also be connected and tracked via smartphone, Amazon Alexa, or Google Assistant so it never stays lost for long. It can hold up to seven cards and is handily powered by sunlight.

MUSE 2: The Brain Sensing Headband ($249.99)

Help your loved ones achieve greater focus and clarity this year with a Muse 2 Brain Sensing Headband. It monitors your brain activity, heart rate, breathing, and body movement in real time. When it’s connected to the accompanying smartphone app, the Muse 2 provides over 500 guided meditations for improved emotional and mental health.

Hydrate Spark 3 ($69.99)

Help your family stay properly hydrated with this smart, BPA-free plastic water bottle. The bottom glows when its times to take a sip again. Users can connect the Hidrate Spark to their phones to track how much water they drink each day and to track it if ever goes missing.

Solawave Advanced Skincare Wand ($149)

Give the gift of beauty with this skin care wand that uses red light therapy and microcurrent waves to roll back the clock on fine lines, dark circles, and acne scars.

Birdfy Smart Bird Feeder ($249.99)

For your aviary-loving friends, this bird feeder cam can identify over 6,000 types of winged creatures. With 1080p resolution, a macro lens, and built-in zoom, your loved one will be capture unmatched views of all their favorite birds. It also has a voice feature to keep any annoying squirrels from stealing the food.

When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn commissions at no cost to you.

The post Top 10 Tech Gifts to Get Your Loved Ones This Holiday Season first appeared on Dornob.

He created 10,000 original pieces the size of a standard sheet of paper, each with an NFT twin. Each piece was truly unique, as no painting had a single repeated color in its dots. Every artwork was also signed by Hirst, numbered, stamped, watermarked, given a microdot, and included a hologram of the artist’s portrait on the back. Further utilizing modern-day technology for his first NFT project, Hirst fed his favorite song lyrics into an AI-enabled computer program to generate titles for all 10,000 pieces. Standout titles include “Totally gonna sell you,” “Laugh in our faces,” and “None of this mattered.”

The purchasing period began in July 2021. Buyers could opt for the physical or the digital copy of the piece, and the one they didn’t choose would be destroyed. They had a full year (until July 2022) to decide.

Interest in Hirst’s collection boomed for the first month, with 2,036 purchases and over $47 million in sales. However, over the course of the remaining 11 months, the collection’s gimmicky nature lost its shock value, causing floor prices and trading volumes to steadily decline. By the spring of 2022, “crypto winter” hit and sent the NFT market into a nosedive.

In the end, buyers were fairly evenly split. “The final numbers are: 5,149 physicals and 4,851 NFTs (meaning I will have to burn 4,851 corresponding physical Tenders),” Hirst wrote on Twitter, beneath a photo of himself despondently laying prostrate over boxes of his artwork.

That same day, Hirst also tweeted: “I have no idea what the future holds, whether the NFTs or physicals are going to be more valuable or less. But that is art! The fun, part of the journey, and maybe the point of the whole project. Even after one year, I feel the journey is just beginning.”

Partnering with HENI, Hirst put the pieces on display at London’s Newport Street Gallery from September 9th to October 31st. Everyday for an hour, the physical counterparts of purchased NFTs would be thrown into a fireplace for visitors to watch. The remainder were all burned simultaneously at the close of the show.

Public reception for the show was mixed. Artist Roy Tyson, known as Roy’s People, snatched up the tangible piece #4,967 entitled “What Am I To Know,” opting instead to destroy the NFT version. He says: “I’m a big fan of Hirst and I love the way he pushes the boundaries and doesn’t answer to anyone, doesn’t really sort of stick to any old-fashioned rules of the art world.”

On the other hand, detractors see “The Currency” as a shameless commercial ploy. Art critic Florence Hallett wrote in Britain’s i paper that the collection is “rather like a small child dangling teddy over the lavatory in a bid for the upper hand — only with considerably less sincerity and stupendous amounts of money.”

In his early days, Hirst himself said “I can’t wait to get into a position to make really bad art and get away with it. At the moment if I did certain things people would look at it, consider it ,and then say ‘f off’. But after a while you can get away with things.”

Known not only for his spots, but his art of taxidermized dead animals, Hirst is considered the richest living British artist today. More of his work can be viewed on his Instagram account.

The post Artist Damien Hirst Burns Physical Copies of His NFTs first appeared on Dornob.

In her new book The Sounds of Life: How Digital Technology is Bringing Us Closer to the Worlds of Animals and Plants, University of British Columbia professor Karen Bakker outlines some of the most ground-breaking experiments in animal and plant communication.

“Digital technologies, so often associated with our alienation from nature, are offering us an opportunity to listen to nonhumans in powerful ways, reviving our connection to the natural world,” writes Bakker, a director at the UBC Institute for Resources, Environment, and Sustainability.

She points out that digital listening posts are now being used to continuously record the sounds of ecosystems around the planet, from rainforests to the bottom of the ocean. Developments in miniaturization have even enabled scientists to place microphones on tiny animals like honeybees.

“Combined, these digital devices function like a planetary-scale hearing aid: enabling humans to observe and study nature’s sounds beyond the limits of our sensory capabilities,” Bakker writes. The next step for many scientists is harnessing the power of artificial intelligence to sift through these sounds and enable robots to “speak animal languages and essentially breach the barrier of interspecies communication.”

She cites a team of researchers in Germany that have taught tiny robots how to do the honeybee waggle dance. Using these dancing machines, the scientists were able to command the honeybees to stop moving, and to communicate where to fly to collect a specific nectar. The researchers plan to experiment with implanting robots into the hives so that the honeybees accept them as members of their community.

Bakker also writes about bioacoustics scientist Katie Payne and her discoveries regarding elephant communication. Payne was the first to find that elephants make infrasound signals, sounds below the human hearing range. The vibrations of these signals allow elephants to send messages across long distances through soil and stones. Scientists have since found that elephants have different signals for “honeybee” and “human,” as well as distinguishable signals for “threatening human” versus “nonthreatening human.” If the power of AI could be harnessed to send messages to elephant herds, we might be able to help protect their dwindling populations without removing them from their natural habitats.

Coral reefs also get attention in Bakker’s book. “A healthy coral reef sounds a little bit like an underwater symphony,” she explains. “There are cracks and burbles and hisses and clicks from the reef and its inhabitants and even whales dozens of miles away. If you could hear in the ultrasonic, you might hear the coral itself.” With the use of AI, scientists might eventually be able to get coral to repopulate certain areas by broadcasting “healthy coral reef” sounds to coral larvae.

While the idea of someday having “a zoological version of Google Translate” sounds overwhelmingly positive, there is the fear is that unscrupulous humans might use the technology to control animal populations for their own gain. Bakker warns that the possibility of exploiting animals “raises a lot of alarm bells” and that our “newfound powers” should never be used “to assert our domination over animals and plants.”

The post New AI Tech Allows Humans to Talk to Animals first appeared on Dornob.

The name 2526 refers to the number of hours Gao invested in the creation of the two polymorphic robotic garments, from her earliest sketches to the final stitch. Inspired by NFTs, digital fashion, and virtual clothing, the garments are real, worn by actual models, and crafted from materials like glass, silicone, organdy fabric, and electronic devices. They truly take futuristic fashion to a whole new level, resembling alien creatures or some strange extension of the human body that hasn’t been invented yet.

“If the role of the fashion designer is to imbue a form and a function to materials intended to dress the body, we can wonder about the question of the immaterial garment and the virtual body, devoid of substance, and their level of reality, when the digital has become a real ‘second nature,’” says Gao. “As our jaunts into the metaverse become more recent and less surprising, digital fashion inevitably unfolds into an infinity of possibilities and uncertainties.”

In 2019, Gao debuted a previous robotic garment collection called “Flowing Water, Standing Time.” These translucent and transparent garments are also capable of chromatic movement, recognizing the colors in their immediate surroundings, and responding in liquid, chameleon-like ways. Color sensors, light sensors, and tiny cameras linked to a raspberry Pi computer analyze the wearer’s environment and translate that information to the garment via a series of actuators and magnets, causing the fabric to ripple.

In this way, the wearer almost becomes secondary to the garment itself, which has gained a sense of autonomy. The wearer can’t control what their own clothes are doing at any given time.

“This project was inspired by neurologist Oliver Sacks’ novel The Man who Mistook his Wife for a Hat, in which he relates the story of Jimmie G, a 49-year-old former sailor convinced of being aged 19 since having left the Navy,” says Gao. “Shocked by his own reflection when Sacks hands him a mirror, Jimmie reverts to his 19-year-old self as soon as his gaze leaves the reflective surface. Having lost any sense of temporal continuity, Jimmie lives as a prisoner to this single, perpetual moment, oscillating between a presence to the world and a presence to self.”

“Much like Jimmie G, the garments evolve between two states and display perpetual metamorphosis as they react to the chromatic spectrum. This traveling between opposite states — from immobility to movement — does not operate as a dichotomy. Upon the field time, which injects energy into the very core of inertia, fluctuates the intensity animating each garment in its unique way. These two states are mere dropping-off points among an infinite array of possibilities.”

The post Ying Gao Brings Digital Fashion to Life with Undulating Robotic Garments first appeared on Dornob.

When machines can produce stunning masterpieces that mimic a human’s signature style, that artist’s work can suddenly seem less valuable. But a recent project by Manas Bhatia shows us one way in which artificial intelligence could enhance our creativity instead of replacing it. Envisioning what organic architecture of the future could look like, “Symbiotic Architecture” breaks through our understanding of what’s actually possible and asks us to think about our built environment a little differently.

Bhatia, an architectural designer based in India, uses the AI art generator Midjourney as a tool to overcome his own conscious and subconscious assumptions. He’s particularly interested in finding sustainable solutions that are able to withstand climate change by acting more like natural structures than artificial environments. For Symbiotic Architecture, he asked the program to combine an apartment building with Hyperion, a towering 380-foot redwood in California that’s considered the world’s tallest-known living tree. He entered combinations of words like “giant,” “hollowed,” “tree,” “stairs,” and “facade,” continuing to alter the prompts until he got the results he wanted.

The final digital works of art produced by the program are nothing less than stunning, even if they seem completely impossible in the real world. Massive coastal redwoods the size of Hyperion and even larger are pierced with glass-clad dwelling units stacked on top of each other. Little sprouts of leaves pop up here and there between windows and balconies. The images give us an idea of what the world might look like if human dwellings were more like those of ants and other creatures that build their homes from the world around them. The idea is that the structures we live in breathe and potentially even grow as a part of nature instead of attempting to be separate from it.

Would we really want to insert architecture into existing groves of sensitive, slow-growing, and endangered redwoods? Definitely not, but that’s not really the point. Just because our existing construction methods, materials, and technologies aren’t capable of producing safe and durable buildings that look like this doesn’t mean we can’t develop new ones that can. Working backwards from fantastical ideas could produce amazing innovations that allow us to burst out of our minimalist architectural stagnancy. For instance, it’s not that hard to imagine something like a naturally reproducing fungus-based material growing to a desired shape and size around a framework of modular living pods with an appearance resembling these giant inhabitable trees.

“The project began as an AI-based investigation into the interactions we have all had with nature, such as appreciating a tree’s shade on a hot day, reading a newspaper in a courtyard under a tree, or simply hanging out in a park to take in the changing hues of the leaves,” Bhatia explains. “Building on these observations came the idea of a ‘utopian future’ in which buildings are not machines made of steel or concrete…Instead, the structure is alive and has the ability to grow and breathe.”

The post Symbiotic Architecture: Artificial Intelligence Envisions Living Housing Built into Redwood Trees first appeared on Dornob.

Now, Masquespacio is stepping even further into the future with their newest offering in Barcelona: a Mango Teen store that’s an iconoclastic invention steeped in both the physical and digital worlds. Brimming with bright, vivid hues and expressive angles, the store echoes the color palettes commonly favored by the firm in past projects. However, in a dramatic departure from the norm, here they’ve decided to take their vision to the next level, creating a real-life/metaverse mashup where multipurpose features reign supreme.

Designed as a way to connect teens with a new “spatial identity,” the firm wanted to create an immersive store that reflected the world many young people find themselves spending increasingly more time in. As Masquespacio’s Ana Hernandez said in a recent statement, being a teen is “…a time when you start to dream big, without taking in mind the limits. [But] above in your dreams, strange things are happening that are out of the box…things that are not real.”

It is this dreamlike aura that defines the new Mango Teen store. Like a trippy multi-layered onion, its real-life layers are peeled back to reveal doorways into the metaverse a la Alice in Wonderland, beginning with the brightly-colored entrance arch, where shoppers make their backlit way into the store, and ending with a dreamy, distorted dressing room experience whose reflective surfaces and Art Deco flair creatively combine the store’s hybrid ethos. According to Masquespacio, these dressing rooms were one of the shop’s most requested features.

The store’s real-world features ground the colorful space in reality while also serving as immersive multipurpose stations. A hotel reception desk doubles as a checkout counter, a swimming pool doubles as an exhibition space, and a washing machine acts as a recycling spot where customers can donate old clothes. The distinctive decor is also meant to mimic the store’s digital/analog combo, with matte surfaces and brightly-lit reflective paneling in beautifully deliberate fashion. Elsewhere, the blending of straight and curving organic lines is a nod to Mango Teen’s inclusive message, meant to evoke an atmosphere of gender neutrality.

Masquespacio has raised the bar even higher on their colorfully creative vision with their new Mango Teen store in Barcelona. Here, reality itself is distorted and reimagined to reflect the ever-growing digital world waiting just behind the (dressing room) curtains.

The post Worlds Collide at Masquespacio’s New Mango Teen Store first appeared on Dornob.

“What if Starbucks could create a new, global digital community — a community defined by collaboration, experiences, and shared ownership — all centered around coffee to start, and then perhaps expanded into the many areas Starbucks has played in over the years as a coffeehouse: art, music, books, and beyond?” the company writes on its blog.

“Emerging technologies associated with what is commonly called ‘Web3’ now enable this aspiration in a way that extends who Starbucks has always been at our core. Web3 refers to many things in the blockchain space, but the particular technology that has captured our imagination is NFTs (non-fungible tokens).”

The post expresses the company’s fascination with the way NFTs allow people to own a programmable, “brandable” digital asset that doubles as an access pass. That could lead to a new way to foster loyalty among customers through unique experiences, community building, and storytelling. Starbucks plans to create a series of branded NFT collections with various themes to encourage buy-in among its 27 million active Rewards members in the U.S.

What could customers expect to see once the new Starbucks “digital third place” is ready for primetime later this year? The answer is a little unclear, and it appears that Starbucks isn’t quite sure either. Addressing employees in an Open Forum, Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz cited the company’s “treasure trove of assets” ranging from “collectibles to the entire heritage of the company,” whatever that means.

Starbucks’ entry into the NFT market comes alongside news that sales for NFTs have plummeted 92 percent since September 2021, with some news outlets going so far as to call it a “collapse.” Active wallets used to store NFTs also dropped by 88 percent, and online interest in the technology fell by 89 percent since peaking in January 2022. The meaning and value of NFTs has always been a little nebulous, of course. The tokens are speculative assets that often point to a piece of digital art, a photo, or other media and act as a digital receipt for the purchase.

As huge companies like Starbucks attempt to use NFTs to boost their profit margins, the cultural value of NFTs could shift. What might have felt like something new and exciting as recently as last year could quickly become stale as it’s commercialized on a mass scale.

Do Starbucks customers really care about gaining digital assets alongside their daily frappuccino and using them to access a digital loyalty club? That remains to be seen, but the company points to its historic role as an accessible initiator to new technologies like mobile payments, mobile ordering, and access to Wi-Fi as proof that it could help make buying NFTs as mundane as tapping your debit card to pay at the drive-thru window.

The post Starbucks to Launch its Own NFTs as Part of New Digital Loyalty Program first appeared on Dornob.

The Impossible Tiara was one of the nine-piece Collezione Genesi (Genesis Collection), designed personally by founders Domenico Dolce and Stefano Gabbana as a part-NFT, part-physical anthology to supplement fashion lovers’ metaverse wardrobes.

“The Impossible Tiara stems from the idea that the only limitation in digital design is one’s imagination. This was hugely inspiring to the designers, who set out to create a tiara that could only ever exist in their imaginations,” according to the UNXD listing, the digital luxury marketplace that helped conceive the collection idea and auction off all the pieces. “What makes this historic piece ‘impossible’ is that it is simply not possible to find the featured gems anywhere on earth.”

The ornate headwear features a central 16-karat digital red beryl of rectangular cushion shape, with two 9.2-carat lateral red beryls. The entire crown incorporates 60 red beryls, 713 Paraiba neon turquoise tourmalines, and 50 “extraterrestrial” diamonds, as well as 24-karat white and yellow gold in the base.

The buyer of this pretty virtual diadem gained a 4K-rendered animation and stills, the original hand-drawn sketch, and a custom recreation in one open metaverse of their choice. Also included were exclusive perks like one-year access to Dolce & Gabbana Alta Moda and other fashion couture events, as well as a private tour of the D&G Milan atelier.

The highest bid was for 99.9 Ethereum (ETH), a cryptocurrency, that translated into over $309,000 US dollars. Secretive purchaser Pranksy (a riff on the name of anonymous artist Banksy) wrote in an email after winning the Impossible Tiara and other items, “I was really excited about D & G entering the NFT space, especially as my wife, Magpie, and her close friend, one of my company directors, Josephine Dwyer-Mann, have a real passion for haute couture. NFTs in fashion have huge potential, especially when linked — as D & G has — to the physical.”

Pranksy also bought three other pieces from the Genesis Collection: a virtual-only Golden Impossible jacket for 99.99 ETH, and the silver and gold versions of The Dress from a Dream, which were rendered in both digital and physical form, for 188.1 ETH and 225.5 ETH, respectively.

Another buyer, “Seedphrase” (aka Australian investor Danny Maegaard), snagged the collection’s digital and physical Lion Crown for 292.82 ETH, writing in an email that “being the first NFT collection by any major fashion house, [this purchase] made a lot of sense from an investment perspective, as I anticipate these pieces to appreciate in value.”

The Genesis items also included a physical and digital iteration of a Glass Suit and two other virtual jackets. The piece that earned the most at auction, however, was the digital and physical Doge Crown, which went for 423.5 ETH, or $1.25 million, to Red DAO, a decentralized autonomous organization whose goal is to invest in digital fashion.

The collection commanded such high prices because of “of provenance; rarity — there were only nine, sold at once; craftsmanship; and utility — people can use them in the metaverse and have physical experiences, too,” explains Sashi Menon, Dubai-based publisher of Vogue Arabia and founder and CEO of UNXD. “The sale resets the market.”

The post Dolce & Gabbana’s Metaverse Tiara Sells for Over $300,000 first appeared on Dornob.

“Arizona is at the leading edge of states making mobile IDs available to the public, and we are pleased to work with Apple and give Arizonans the choice, convenience, and security of adding their driver’s license to their Apple Wallet,” says Eric Jorgensen, director of the Arizona Department of Transportation Motor Vehicle Division. “Beyond being innovative and exciting, a digital version of a driver’s license offers increased security and privacy for our residents, making it something everyone should consider.”

“We’re thrilled to bring the first driver’s license and state ID in Wallet to Arizona today, and provide Arizonans with an easy, secure, and private way to present their ID when traveling, through just a tap of their iPhone or Apple Watch,” adds Jennifer Bailey, Apple’s Vice President of Apple Pay and Apple Wallet in a statement. “We look forward to working with many more states and the TSA to bring IDs in Wallet to users across the US.”

To utilize this secure and time-saving feature, Apple users simply open the Wallet on their iPhone and tap the + button at the top of the screen. Then they select “Driver’s License or State ID” and follow the easy on-screen instructions. This involves uploading the front and back of the driver’s license or state ID card, which is then sent securely to the state. The user will also be prompted to take a selfie so the state can verify that the person adding the card is the same one on the ID. One extra step for fraud prevention requires users to make a series of facial and head movements for authentication. It is the responsibility of the authorizing state to verify and approve all digital IDs in Wallet.

Going digital with Apple Wallet provides greater privacy and protection, as it uses biometric verification using Face ID or Touch ID, ensuring that only the person who added the card to the device can view or present it. When going through airport security, these users can digitally send their ID information through encrypted communication to the identity reader, without having to unlock or even show their device.

The Travel Security Administration applauds the beginning of the digital ID shift. “This new and innovative mobile driver’s license and state ID initiative with Apple and states around the country will enable a more seamless airport security screening experience for travelers,” says David Pekoske, TSA Administrator. “This initiative marks a major milestone by TSA to provide an additional level of convenience for the traveler by enabling more opportunities for touchless TSA airport security screening.”

As announced last September, other states in the first roll-out phase will be Connecticut, Georgia, Iowa, Kentucky, Maryland, Oklahoma, and Utah. Colorado, Hawaii, Mississippi, Ohio, and the territory of Puerto Rico are also set to approve this feature in the near future, as well.

The driver’s license and state ID in Wallet feature is currently available for iPhone 8 models or later running iOS 15.4, and Apple Watch Series 4 or later running watchOS 8.4 or newer. Not all airports allow digital IDs at their TSA checkpoints. Apple advises travelers to confirm program availability before flying.

The post Arizona Becomes First State to Adopt Digital Driver’s Licenses Through Apple Wallet first appeared on Dornob.

The company announced in a March 16th press release that it would be launching and testing two new features to “enable members who share outside their household to do so easily and securely,” with the sly caveat that they will “also [be] paying a bit more.”

The first new password-sharing constraint is the “Add an Extra Member” feature that allows standard and premium plan members to add sub accounts for up to two people they don’t live with, giving each their own profile, login, and password for a discounted price.

The second is the ability to transfer a profile to a new account for those who currently have a profile on a paying member’s account. This would allow users to maintain their viewing history, list of shows, and personalized recommendations when they migrate to their own or another Extra Member sub account.

Here’s how these features might play out. Using things like IP addresses and device IDs to determine when one account is being used in multiple locations, the company would send a verification code to the plan subscriber to confirm that the secondary device is authorized. While this will be little more than an annoyance for close friends and family, it may curb password sharing among those who are using passwords without express consent from the paying customer (think ex-boyfriends, past co-workers, and former roommates). The verification code would encourage them to get their own account (or find a new friend to give them password information). Adult children or other family members may also feel inclined to at least activate a sub account to avoid having to bother the subscriber with verification notices.

Officially, password sharing between separate households has always been against Netflix’s policy. The company pointed diplomatically to that fact in the press release.

“We’ve always made it easy for people who live together to share their Netflix account, with features like separate profiles and multiple streams in our Standard and Premium plans,” wrote Chengyi Long, Product Innovation Director for Netflix. “While these have been hugely popular, they have also created some confusion about when and how Netflix can be shared. As a result, accounts are being shared between households – impacting our ability to invest in great new TV and films for our members.”

Still, the company is catching some flack for creating some of that confusion itself back in 2017, when it tweeted “Love is sharing a password.”

The beta features are only being rolled out in Chile, Costa Rica, and Peru for now. Depending on how effective they are at getting people to sign up for their own accounts, Netflix may or may not extend them to the rest of their subscriber base. “We’ll be working to understand the utility of these two features for members in these three countries before making changes anywhere else in the world,” Long said in the press release.

At this point the password-sharing deterrents remain in the realm of “suggestions” rather than a full crackdown, but if these measures don’t start boosting account creation for the company as hoped, more draconian tactics could be on the way.

The post Is This the End of Netflix Password Sharing? first appeared on Dornob.

On March 9th, President Joe Biden signed an executive order “outlining the first ever, whole-of-government approach to addressing the risks and harnessing the potential benefits of digital assets and their underlying technology,” according to a White House press release.

The order called on policy makers to focus on seven main aspects of cryptocurrency:

1. Consumer and Business Protection

With a long list of large-scale scandals associated with cryptocurrency over the past decade, the government will evaluate potential regulatory measures. “Under the executive order, Treasury will partner with interagency colleagues to produce a report on the future of money and payment systems,” Janet Yellen’s Treasury department said in a press release that has since been taken down. The statement added that “this work will complement ongoing efforts by Treasury,” including their current work on “stablecoins,” or cryptocurrencies whose tokens are supposedly tied to the value of existing physical assets.

2. Financial Stability

The order requests that policy makers find systemic financial risks and to “develop appropriate policy recommendations to address any regulatory gaps.”

3. Illicit Activity

Earlier this year, U.S. Justice Department officials seized over $3.6 billion worth of bitcoin stolen during the 2016 hack of the crypto exchange Bitfinex. In order to tame the Wild West of money, the government will look for more ways to crack down on illegal crypto activity.

4. U.S. Competitiveness

Now that China has officially banned cryptocurrencies, “the United States must maintain technological leadership in this rapidly growing space, supporting innovation while mitigating the risks for consumers, businesses, the broader financial system, and the climate,” the White House press release said.

The Blockchain Association, an organization that represents multiple well-known crypto companies, agreed with the need to stay competitive. “By working alongside the crypto ecosystem and having an open and productive dialogue with industry, the Biden Administration has the opportunity to ensure America remains the global leader for technological innovation for years to come.”

5. Financial Inclusion

Biden’s order also declares that “safe access [to cryptocurrency] is especially important for communities that have long had insufficient access to financial services,” and asks policy makers to find ways to make it more equitable.

6. Responsible Innovation

President Biden urged government leaders to identify ways any negative climate impacts of cryptocurrency could be reduced during the mining of the digital coins by large computer networks.

7. Explore a U.S. Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC)

China is already working towards an official digital currency, which would allow all transactions to be handled on smartphones and laptops. The order gives the go-ahead to lawmakers to explore the viability of a digital dollar.

Biden’s executive order has had positive responses from many in the crypto sphere. The Blockchain Association says they’re “eager to collaborate” with the government efforts on oversight. They welcomed the executive order as an acknowledgement of cryptocurrency’s validity, calling it “further proof that the crypto ecosystem is now a vital and inseparable part of the national economy.”

And Jeremy Allaire, co-founder and CEO of Circle (the digital currency company of the second-largest stablecoin globally), wrote on Twitter that the order represents a “watershed moment for crypto, digital assets, and Web 3, akin to the 1996/1997 whole of government wakeup to the commercial internet.”

The broader market seemed to feel the same, as Bitcoin jumped up nine percent in the hours after the executive order was signed.

The post 7 Takeaways from President Biden’s Executive Order on Cryptocurrency first appeared on Dornob.

Additionally, with the rise of the “virtual” workspace, NFTs, and other means of expanding the digital world in business, it comes as no surprise that the first office in the metaverse would be the wave of the future. And the future is now.

A first in the architectural sphere, Bjarke Ingels Group (BIG) has taken the leap into virtual stardom with their completion of the first office in the metaverse. Dubbed “Viceverse,” the office will serve as the new, entirely virtual HQ for Vice Media Group (VMG). Located in Decentraland’s vast, open world digital platform, VMG’s new space is the first of its kind, and an apropos addition to other virtual initiatives led by VMG’s innovation division Virtue Futures, itself an important part of the agency’s creative arm, Virtue Worldwide (known for their launch of Coca-Cola’s first NFT last year).

With so many heavy hitters involved in the project, it’s no surprise that this group of creators used their forward-thinking initiatives to imagine a workplace entirely in the metaverse – an “innovation lab” where teams can collaborate, experiment, and develop projects like new NFTs, DAOs, and the “future of the Internet.”

Recognizing that “the creative opportunities within the metaverse are hugely exciting,” Virtue Futures’ Global Executive Creative Director Morten Grubek recently expressed the agency’s desire to add their own company to the list of others they have helped navigate the metaverse, a vision “that has taken on a new reality” with the addition of BIG spearheading the architectural side of the project.

As you’d expect from the daring Danish designers, Viceverse is just as stylish as the architect’s brick and mortar buildings – a sleek and swirly composition that fits in beautifully with its pixellated surroundings. And much like an office here in the non-virtual world, Viceverse will offer employees the chance to collaborate with each other and with clients, developing new projects, experimenting with upcoming technologies, and presenting ideas through in-world communications and presentations.

As Nancy Duboc, CEO of Vice Media Group, recently stated, “Vice has always been about being inside culture…This is a new frontier filled with potential and once again, we’re proud to be pushing the boundaries.”

The post Denmark’s Bjarke Ingels Group Designs the First Office in the Metaverse first appeared on Dornob.

“We will chase Frida’s world, always in motion,” “Frida: Immersive Dream” animator Massimiliano Siccardi said in a statement. “We will discover her tenderness and hostilities by taking in her observations and fantasies. Our hope is that viewers will let themselves be penetrated by Frida’s stories, and in so doing, live vicariously through her.”

Taking up some 500,000 cubic feet of projections and employing 1.2 million frames of video, the Frida art experience showcases some of the painter’s most famous works, cloning them around all four walls of exhibition space. Also added in are real-life photos of the Mexican surrealist and her influences, like her husband Diego Rivera. Some of the most recognizable pieces highlighted in the visual feast include The Two Fridas (1939), The Wounded Deer (1946), and Self-Portrait on the Borderline Between Mexico and the United States (1932).

As images and colors splash across the walls (all chosen and animated by Siccardi), sitting or standing observers can turn in any direction for a good view of Kahlo’s bold works brought to life against an audio backdrop of musical scores composed by Luca Longobardi.

“Frida Kahlo’s work is uniquely suited to be explored in an immersive environment, and her life story is equally fascinating,” said Svetlana Dvoretsky, co-producer at Lighthouse Immersive, the studio behind the Van Gogh and Kahlo experiences. “Kahlo lived her life as one giant journey of exploration, and her art mirrored that journey. Our goal is to give our viewers more than an examination of her work; we also hope they will leave with a richer understanding of the smart, complex woman who created these timeless masterpieces.”

Born in Mexico in 1907, Kahlo began painting after a terrible bus accident at the age of 18 left her bedridden for many months and with life-long chronic pain. She is best known for her self-portraits (of her 143 paintings, 55 are of herself) strikingly characterized by her signature unibrow. Her other works are dominated by elements from nature and Mexican artifacts. Her style has been termed “magical realism,” with many paintings mixing realistic parts of her outer life with illusory components suggestive of her inner feelings and turmoil. She died at the young age of 47, but her artwork has only become more resonant and popular since her passing. In fact, Kahlo’s Diego and I (1949) sold in November 2021 for $34.9 million, the highest amount ever paid for a Latin American artwork at auction.

The new “Frida: Immersive Dream” exhibit is a response to the success of the original Van Gogh immersive exhibit that “demonstrated that audiences are excited to experience art in a new way,” said Lighthouse Immersive co-producer Corey Ross. “Our Italian creative team are experts at digitally exploring masterworks in such a way that viewers are not merely passive observers. They obtain an even richer understanding of the artist by seeing the work as its creator might have.”

The immersive Frida Kahlo experience is available in Boston, Chicago, Dallas, Denver, Houston, Los Angeles, Pittsburgh, San Francisco, and Toronto with dates starting in February and running through June 2022. Tickets are available for $40 on the exhibition website.

The post Frida Kahlo’s Artwork Gets an Immersive Reimagining first appeared on Dornob.

OurSong is marketed as a “social commerce platform” allowing users to create NFTs they call “Vibes.” The company says they want to change the way musicians and artists release their music and get exposure, using the Vibes like trading cards that grant access to exclusive perks like unreleased music and private chatrooms. The idea is to cultivate a new kind of digital fandom that takes advantage of the popularity of NFTs and encourages fans to actually pay for music and other content.

Instead of buying Vibes with standard cryptocurrency like Bitcoin or Ethereum, users will purchase OurSongDollars (OSD) using their credit card, debit card, wire payment, or USD Coin, a digital stablecoin pegged to the United States Dollar. That means users don’t have to have a cryptocurrency wallet to start buying and trading NFTs, a choice that indicates OurSong is hoping to make its product feel a little more accessible to newbies.

“We made creating and buying NFTs super easy,” says OurSong. “Everyone can now turn stories, music, photography, and any kind of art into NFT trading cards called Vibes. Do it any time, anywhere! NFTs are way more than GIFs you buy and keep in a crypto-wallet. Vibes allow you to unlock exclusive updates and access private chat communities where you can meet like-minded others. Celebrate things that make you unique. Discover and follow different types of creators. Collect and build a Vibe collection worth showing off. Earn credibility as a tastemaker and not a clout chaser.”

That’s literally all the website currently explains about OurSong, Vibes, and any other aspects of the platform. To people who aren’t already hyper-connected to all things blockchain, NFTs can still seem pretty murky, no matter how much we read about them. So it wouldn’t hurt for a new platform that wants to attract the public at large, like OurSong, to spell things out a little more clearly. Perhaps you have to download the app for that.

There are a couple other things the site doesn’t mention. One is how OurSong plans to deal with people uploading content that doesn’t belong to them, which would defeat the whole purpose of the platform. Another is the right-click-save problem that allows anyone to parade images all over the internet that someone else bought for hundreds of thousands of dollars. While the buyer might have exclusive rights to the original, others can copy the digital file all they want, and the artist often still retains copyright and reproduction rights.

Some people see NFTs as the future of serious art collecting, while others find them more akin to Pokémon cards. In a few short years, we’ll likely find out whether this whole thing is a passing trend or the beginning of a whole new digital world we can’t quite wrap our heads around yet.

The post John Legend Launches “OurSong,” a New Platform for Musical NFTs first appeared on Dornob.

To solve these problems, tech companies like Virtuix and Kat have introduced first-stage omnidirectional treadmills, while companies like Cybershoes have created wheeled footwear that can approximate the movement of running while swinging the legs in a seated position. These are all on the right track generally, but none have actually been able to mimic the real-life motions of walking while in a game. Enter the Ekto One VR boots.

While still in the prototype phase, the Ekto One are individual shoes with motorized wheels that can track the users’ movements and propel them backwards each time they take a step forward. Each boot is essentially a mini treadmill, but because they attach to the feet, the user can theoretically move in any direction while still remaining in the designated play space.

This feat is achieved by attaching a pair of Vive visual trackers to each shoe to monitor the user’s position in real-time. While it may look strange to an outside observer, the wearers feel enveloped in their game or training without any accompanying nausea.

Some reviewers who have tried out the beta shoes report that there are certainly a lot of kinks to work out. For starters, they take a full five minutes to attach. Users keep on their normal footwear and slip them into the adjustable Ekto Ones, cinching them down for a snug fit. Then extra ankle sensors are attached and properly positioned.

Reviewers also complain about the weight and clunkiness of the boots. Because of their bulk, just walking around in them for 20 minutes can be a workout, especially as the user has to be careful not to let the shoes bump into each other to avoid falling.

On the other hand, users did like that that the shoes’ soles are divided into two moveable parts, providing more flexibility in walking than just a solid piece of plastic.

Currently, the company is selling the Ekto One shoes for between $15,000 and $20,000, a less-than consumer-friendly price tag. The VR footwear is being marketed to businesses right now in hopes of securing enough funding to further develop and scale the product to make it more affordable for the masses.

The Ekto Ones go way beyond gaming, too. Businesses can utilize the boots for industrial training purposes for things like VR simulations of complex and hazardous environments. Theme parks and museums can also purchase them to provide commercial VR experiences for their visitors.

With more funding from corporations and venture capitalists, the shoes should eventually become lighter and nimble enough to simulate natural movement. While the Ekto One VR boots may not be the complete answer to turning our world into Ready Player One just yet, they’re certainly a step in the right direction.

The post VR Boots Give Users a More Immersive Metaverse Experience first appeared on Dornob.