Five Moments - Traveling the World with Google Street View, Recreate Your Favorite Bar at Home, Smart TVs Are Watching You, Visual Search Engine, & More
Issue #10
Happy Sunday!
The last few newsletters have been pretty big downers (restaurants are dying and racist musicians going to #1). I wanted to give everyone a happy Sunday and share a few more positive and fun stories this week! No promises that we won’t be back to the doom and gloom next week, as we just don’t know what it holds.
If you have been enjoying Five Moments, please help me out and share this with someone who may enjoy it!
I Miss My Bar Moment
I Miss My Bar allows you to recreate the sounds of your favorite bar without the risk of that little Covid thing ☣️. This project was kickstarted by Maverick, a cocktail bar in Monterey, Mexico. Along with allowing you to set the volume of the bar backs and idle conversations, they have a killer playlist updated each week.
A project called I Miss My Bar, via belong.io, comes the closest to making me feel like I’m at my local watering hole — loud voices, street sounds, and all. The only element missing is the trademark bar scent of booze mixed with cleaning products. You know the smell.
If you don’t care to recreate the sounds of a bar, skip it all and just go here for the excellent playlist. The website is very simple and well designed - it has been very enjoyable ambient noise this week.
People Really Miss Going Places Moment
If you could not tell that people really miss going places and traveling - look no further than The Pandemic-Induced Popularity of Google Street View. Sophie Haigney at The New Yorker describes the pandemic-popularity of websites that allow you to travel the world, from the safety of your home, via Google Street View.
Random Street View, along with similar sites like MapCrunch, makes serendipitous travel through this simulated world possible. These projects have recently gone through a pandemic-induced phase of popularity, as people stuck in their homes post pictures of their pseudo-destinations to social media with a sense of longing or irony.
Visual Search Engine Moment
Same.energy is a visual search engine that, “you can use it to find beautiful art, photography, decoration ideas, or anything else”. This website is a great rabbit hole you can fall down for a bit of time and absorb some beautiful images along the way. It provides a fun way to shift your perspective on the things and patterns around you each day.
“Toronto-based developer Jacob Jackson just launched a simple visual search engine that’s particularly adept at gathering results with similar patterns, compositions, and textures. Aptly named Same Energy, the tool is still in beta and minimal by design, with a focus on the image rather than keywords. Results are grouped together by category, which generates a more comprehensive set of findings than similar searches. “We believe it should integrate a rich visual understanding, capturing the artistic style and overall mood of an image, not just the objects in it,”
Your Smart TVs Are Watching You Moment
Whether you are a cord-cutter or you’ve stuck to good-ol’ cable, most people have some form of an online connection in their TV to access Netflix or some other online streaming service. It is estimated that 80% of households have at least one connected TV device. Here is your public service announcement that these devices are collecting, tracking, and selling a LOT of your personal data.
Roku is the nosey, gossipy neighbor of connected devices. They track just about everything! And then they share that data with way too many people. According to Roku’s privacy policy, they share your personal data with advertisers to show you targeted ads and create profiles about you over time and across different services and devices. Roku also gives advertisers detailed data about your interactions with advertisements, your demographic data, and audience segment. Roku shares viewing data with measurement providers who may target you with ads. Roku may share your personal information with third parties for their own marketing purposes. One of the researchers working on this guide said, “It had such a scary privacy policy, I didn’t even connect it to my TV.” Another researcher referred to Roku as a “privacy nightmare.”
Our information is shared on all sorts of platforms and services these days, but it is always worth taking a moment to reconsider whether the services you are receiving are worth the cost of a loss of privacy.
What can you do? Consumer Reports has a very handy and user friendly guide for how to turn off the smart TV snooping features.
Extra Credit: Roku Beats Q4 Earnings Estimates With Record Revenue | Variety
Music Moment
Diet Lite - Queen
Diet Lite’s release of their single, Queen, injected this week with a dose of fun in the run up to their third record’s debut next week. This Wisconsin-based band’s music can be found on all streaming services.
Cutting Room Floor
Stories that are great to read but did not make it into the newsletter
He Found His Rare Mercedes at an Abandoned Farmhouse | WSJ If you cannot access the link, please reply to email.
The Pilot’s Journey | Hodinkee Take a five minute visit to the sky and enjoy a beautiful crafted video.
Should music streaming be socialized? | Real Life Mag
What was your favorite Moment this week?
Click the link to let me know which story was your favorite!
🍺 I Miss My Bar
🏝 Google Street View
📸 Visual Search
🕵️ Smart TV Privacy
🎵 Music
You can find us over on twitter @fivemoments_co / @kyleillini or instagram @fivemoments_co
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Next Distribution 2/28/2021