• Wunderman Thompson: The Future 100 2.0.20 Report
• Adobe 2020 Digital Economy Index
• This breakdown of retail sales data shows why Amazon is leading the stock market
• Twitter Will Allow Employees To Work At Home Forever
• Amazon built a roving robot covered in UV light bulbs that could kill the coronavirus in warehouses and Whole Foods stores
• The twist on the four-day workweek could get people back to work without causing new outbreaks
• The future of fine dining? An exclusive biodome for you and your date
• As a result of these demographic factors, the average human will experience a temperature increase of 7.5C when global temperatures reach 3C, which is forecast towards the end of this century.
• 3D Printing Has Entered The Nuclear Realm
•  How Covid-19 Is Changing the Language in Emails (WSJ: paywall)
• Bill Gates: Scanning for answers to a pandemic
• Facebook to buy Giphy for $400 million
• U.S. moves to cut Huawei off from global chip suppliers
• Sony Says It Created World’s First Image Sensor With Built-in AI
• VR misses its pandemic moment
• Apple buys virtual reality company NextVR
• Apple’s computerized glasses won’t be ready until 2022 ‘at the earliest,’ top analyst says
• The pandemic is killing the attraction of megacities (FT: Paywall)
• China Tries to Revive Economy With $205 Billion of Projects in 2020: Report
• Monzo faces near 40% valuation drop in latest fundraising (FT: Paywall)
• Digital Driver’s License: a step on the road map to online identity
• Quizlet valued at $1 billion as it raises millions during a global pandemic

• New Google Lens features to help you be more productive at home
• How Lyft intends to navigate and survive COVID-19
• Your iPhone will soon be able to tell 911 about your medical conditions and allergies
• Remote work is a huge opportunity for high-impact climate policy
• Intel Is Acting Like Only the Paranoid Survive. The CEO Wants It to Stay That Way…Bob Swan sees a future company of more empowered managers: ‘If you know the right thing to do, just go do it… For instance, as the pandemic spread, many customers ordered more chips for PCs that were in high demand as employees shifted to working from home. Cloud-computing giants, including Amazon.com Inc. and Microsoft Corp., also wanted more chips to cater to growing demand in the work-from-home economy…”(Paywall)
• Zoom acquires Keybase to get end-to-end encryption expertise
• Dropbox has 14.6 million paid subscribers
• Walmart is piloting a pricier 2-hour Express grocery delivery service
• Ocado said that retail sales were up by 40 per cent in the second quarter (paywall)
• GitHub Codespaces lets you code in your browser without any setup

COVID-19

• “…The changes in our traffic light system to assist pedestrians and avoid build-ups of pedestrians at crossings actually preclude a return to previous high levels of private car use…”
• Property Investors See Fiber-Optic Cables as ‘Railroads of the Future’ (paywall)
• NHS reveals source code behind the contact-tracing app
• Roaming ‘robodog’ politely tells Singapore park-goers to keep apart
• Facebook to allow employees to work remotely until year-end
• Google will let most employees work remotely until the end of 2020
• Microsoft updates WFH policy, lets employees work remotely through October
• Zoom Bachelorette, Minimum Viable Shows, and the nature of celebrity in quarantine

Wow! Noise is a secret killer of performance. A 10db noise increase (from a dishwasher to a vacuum) drops productivity by 5% – but most people don't notice since it impacts cognition, not effort. Also, note that noise is greater in poorer neighborhoods… https://t.co/RaIAsSudyY pic.twitter.com/ROejxzbJcP

— Ethan Mollick (@emollick) May 6, 2020

• All the things COVID-19 will change forever, according to 30 top experts / Fast Company
• DW Interview: Yuval Noah Harari on COVID-19: ‘The biggest danger is not the virus itself‘
• Tübisad E-ticaret 2019 Raporu [ PDF ] (in Turkish)
• WEF Strategic Intelligence
• Amazon Q1 beats on net sales of $75.5B but posts net income of $2.5B
• Apple will make it easier to unlock your iPhone while wearing a face mask
• Google Meet one-ups Zoom with free 60-minute meetings for consumers
• U.S. Economy Shrinks at 4.8% Pace, Signaling Start of Recession
• Bond: Our New World
•  NASA Picks Three Contractors, Including SpaceX and Blue Origin, to Lead Lunar Lander Teams (paywall)
• Apple’s Q2 2020 revenue hits $58.3 billion despite retail shutdown
• Apple Delays Mass Production of 2020 Flagship iPhones (paywall)
• Shopify Now Has an End-to-End Platform For Merchants, Logistics, and Consumers
• U.S. Space Force’s First Offensive Weapon Is a Satellite Jammer
• Verizon says network usage is up 1,200% during coronavirus
• Bill Gates: What you need to know about the COVID-19 vaccine
• Oliver Wymann: Responding to COVID-19

• “…SARS-CoV-2 has a mutation rate of less than 25 mutations per year, compared with influenza’s mutation rate of almost 50 mutations per year, according to an analysis by computational biologists of the Nextstrain consortium…” (WSJ)
• EU data portal launches to support COVID-19 research
• Apple Mobility Trends Reports
• Google Mobility Reports
• “…In general, emerging use-cases for 5G can be classed into two groups: those requiring a low latency round-trip time between device and application service (e.g. cloud gaming, server-side video rendering and deep learning) and those characterized by localized/site-bound application deployment (e.g. Industry 4.0, controller software for machines, sensors and actuators in factories)…”
• It’s time to build by Marc Andreessen
• 15.77 million paid net additions. That brings Netflix’s total paid subscriber count to 182.86 million
• AWS and Facebook launch an open-source model server for PyTorch
• How Covid-19 is making millions of Americans Healthier
• Air quality is way better in nine major cities after coronavirus confinement
• What future do airlines have? Three experts discuss
• Five EU countries call for 100% renewable energy by 2050
• Peloton May Feel the Recessionary Burn (WSJ)
• Bill Gates: The first modern pandemic & the scientific advances we need to stop COVID-19.
• Germany’s COVID-19 contacts tracing app to link to labs for test result notification
• First version of Apple and Google’s contact tracing API should be available to developers next week
• AWS launches Amazon AppFlow, its new SaaS integration service
• “...Airbnb’s home page is suddenly very focused on three things — online experiences, monthly stays and what you’re calling “frontline,” which is an area for hosts to offer housing to healthcare staff and first responders…“
• Telegram hits 400M monthly active users
• “…Amazon’s private-label business encompasses more than 45 brands with some 243,000 products, from AmazonBasics batteries to Stone & Beam furniture… …39% of U.S. online shopping occurs on Amazon, according to research firm eMarketer……The majority of Amazon’s sales—58%—come through third-party sellers, primarily small and medium-size firms that list their items for sale on Amazon’s Marketplace platform.”WSJ (Paywall)
• The World Bank predicts global remittances will fall by 20% this year
• Google’s Flutter: 2 million developers
• Boston Dynamics open-sources health care robotics toolkit for telemedicine, vitals inspection, and disinfection

• How COVID-19 Has Impacted Media Consumption, by Generation
• A global view of how consumer behavior is changing amid COVID-19
• Luke Wroblewski: Covid-19 Global Impact Charts
• The Coronavirus Economic Reopening Will Be Fragile, Partial and Slow (paywall)
• 100 Things a UX/UI Designer Should Know
• Verizon is buying B2B videoconferencing firm BlueJeans
• Amazon Retools With Unusual Goal: Get Shoppers to Buy Less Amid Coronavirus Pandemic (paywall)
• Instacart is expanding Costco pharmacy deliveries nationwide
• How Artificial Intelligence Will Shape Design by 2050
• Google Meet video calls are getting a Zoom-like layout
• For the Foreseeable Future, U.K. Parliament May Meet in Cyberspace
• 70 coronavirus vaccines in development, 3 candidates already undergoing human trials: WHO
• Coronavirus: Raspberry Pi-powered ventilator to be tested in Colombia
• The Supermarket After the Pandemic
• Assessing Coronavirus’s Impact on Your Business Model
• Goldman predicts 36% drop in iPhone shipment
• New Jersey needs volunteers who know COBOL, a 60-year-old programming language
• Stores try to stay relevant while their doors are closed
• COVID-19 Pivot examples
• Trendwatching: COVID Innovations
• Leaked pics reveal Google smart debit card to rival Apple’s
• Smart lifts, lonely workers, no towers or tourists: architecture after coronavirus

• How coronavirus is shifting consumer behaviour and attitudes in China
• FT: Yuval Noah Harari: the world after coronavirus
• Pinterest makes it much easier to buy what you see
• Walmart Grocery app sees record downloads amid COVID-19, surpasses Amazon by 20%
• Pepper, a platform for restaurants and suppliers, pivots to deliver food to consumers
• Disney+ has more than 50M subscribers
• Airbnb rolls out new features aimed at its next big bet: longer-term stays
• Google expands AI calling service Duplex to Australia, Canada, and the UK
• Apple, Google team up on coronavirus contact tracing
• Microsoft says video calls in Teams grew 1,000% in March
• People Are Open-Sourcing Their Patents and Research to Fight Coronavirus
• White House advisor Dr Fauci says handshaking needs to stop even when pandemic ends—other experts agree
• iOS 14: Apple developing ‘Clips’ feature for using apps without requiring full downloads
• The Humble Phone Call Has Made a Comeback…”…Verizon said it was now handling an average of 800 million wireless calls a day during the week, more than double the number made on Mother’s Day…”
• All Microsoft events will be digital-only until July 2021
• “…And in the long run, the firms that survive will have to master a new environment as the crisis and the response to it accelerate three trends:
  • an energising adoption of new technologies
  • an inevitable retreat from freewheeling global supply chains
  • a worrying rise in well-connected oligopolies…” (paywall)

• Google Maps Community Mobility Reports (Thanks to Önder)
• Spotify and Warner Music Group have renewed their global licensing partnership
• Mobile app spending to double by 2024, despite economic impacts of COVID-19
• Our Post-Covid World
• WSJ: Instagram Encroaches on Amazon With New Shopping Feature (paywall)
• How Many Jobs Can be Done at Home?
• Apple’s iOS 14 may turn iCloud Keychain into a true 1Password and LastPass competitor
• Ford, GE plan to produce 50,000 ventilators in 100 days
• 775 per cent increase in usage of Microsoft Azure cloud services
• Modern meteorology was born 60 years ago today
• SoftBank is letting internet satellite company OneWeb file for bankruptcy
• Scott Kelly on isolation
• The US Army’s Virus Research Lab Gears Up to Fight Covid-19
• Coronavirus Ended the Screen-Time Debate. Screens Won
• Apple buys weather app Dark Sky
• Ikea acquires AI imaging startup Geomagical Labs to supercharge room visualisations
• Apple accidentally confirms the existence of an unreleased product, AirTags
• Peloton launches an Android TV app
• In a depressing turn of events, one group of hosts still receiving bookings through Airbnb are those offering properties close to hospitals. FT (paywall)
• “...An epidemic poses special challenges to face-to-face retail…In normal times, “60 cents of every food dollar spent in New York City is spent in restaurants,” he says. “Let me say that again: 60% of the food eaten in New York is made by restaurants…There will be the next generation of packaging…” WSJ (paywall)

• Citymapper Mobility Index
• WhatsApp has seen a 40% increase in usage due to COVID-19 pandemic
• Jupe is a new startup aiming to address hospital room shortfalls with modular, mobile space
• Airbnb to provide free or subsidized housing for 100,000 COVID-19 healthcare workers
• Coronavirus home test delivery gives Amazon key move towards UK healthcare dominance
• Sony Spins Off Camera Business Into Separate Company
• Apple releases final iOS 13.4, iPadOS 13.4, macOS 10.15.4, tvOS 13.4, and watchOS 6.2
• Amazon’s Prime Video Cinema hub to corral new theatre releases
• Coronavirus Will Change the World Permanently. Here’s How.
• London Business School: The economics of a pandemic: the case of Covid-19 [PDF]
• WSJ: Online Grocers Are Getting a Preview of Their Future (paywall)
• FT/LEX: Apple: 5G-shock (paywall)
• How 3M Plans to Make More Than a Billion Masks By End of Year…The company has in two months doubled global production of N95 masks to about 100 million a month, and it’s planning to invest in new equipment to push annual mask production to 2 billion within 12 months.
• Duke University uses vaporized hydrogen peroxide to clean N95 face masks for reuse
• How the Pandemic Will End…“…We realized that her child might be one of the first of a new cohort who are born into a society profoundly altered by COVID-19. We decided to call them Generation C…”
• WSJ: A Real Digital Infrastructure at Last (Eric Schmidt) (paywall)
• WSJ: Europe Tracks Residents’ Phones for Coronavirus Research (paywall)

Parenting in 2019: stop staring at that screen. Parenting in 2020: have you done your online math, science, art, reading, writing, and music classes? Ok, now go FaceTime with your friends.

— Luke Wroblewski (@lukew) March 26, 2020

• McKinsey: COVID-19: Implications for business
• How execs at Twitter, Slack and Box decided to send everyone home
• Amazon to Hire 100,000 Warehouse and Delivery Workers Amid Coronavirus Shutdowns
• Nokia adds 5G to worldwide IoT network, lets carriers test new sensors
• “Microsoft Corp’s Teams chat and conferencing app gained more than 12 million daily users in one week, a 37.5% jump as more people worked from home during the coronavirus outbreak, the company said on Thursday…Teams had 44 million users as of March 18, Microsoft said, more than double the 20 million daily active users that the software maker reported in November. Teams users grew from 32 million to 44 million in the period between March 11 and March 18 alone, as many more U.S. companies asked employees to work from home, Microsoft said.”
• Netflix urged to slow streaming to prevent breaking the internet
• Ford releases a data set to accelerate autonomous car development
• iPadOS 13.4 lets iPads use trackpads
• Here’s everything new in Android 11 Developer Preview 2
• Can Astronauts Use GPS to Navigate on the Moon? NASA Scientists Say Yes
• PlayStation 5 will feature a 10.2-teraflop GPU and a speedy custom SSD
• E-commerce sales surpassed 10% of total (US) retail sales in 2019 for the first time
• WSJ: Square Gets Green Light to Open a Bank (paywall)
• Closer than ever: It is 100 seconds to midnight
• Italian hospital saves Covid-19 patients lives by 3D printing valves for reanimation devices

• Pandemic Erodes Gig Economy Work
• Coronavirus will change the grocery industry forever…”A third of consumers said Sunday that they had purchased groceries for online pick up or delivery in the past seven days, according to a survey by analysts at Gordon Haskett Research Advisors. Around 41% said they were buying groceries online for the first time.”

China's #WechatPay generates 1 billion+ payment transactions per day. That's more than Visa and Mastercard combined 🤔

— Matthew Brennan (@mbrennanchina) March 19, 2020

Verizon says that video gaming traffic was up 75% week over week across its network. General traffic was up 20% WoW. Video streaming up 12% WoW. Social media usage was flat. The increase is primarily due to lockdowns and self isolation keeping people at home due to COVID-19 pic.twitter.com/Bbb1ehmPhY

— Daniel Ahmad (@ZhugeEX) March 18, 2020

fascinated by Pre-Covidian Era & Covidian Era views of the World. pic.twitter.com/u7HoG368we

— Luke Wroblewski (@lukew) March 18, 2020