Lego Makes AR instantly Accessible

After a demo at WWDC earlier this year, LEGO launched the LEGO AR Playgrounds app for iPhone and iPad.

The app uses ARKit to put digital LEGO characters into real-world environments and to interact with physical LEGO sets. It is a great way to introduce AR. A kid playing with the LEGO app can select various physical characters such as Ninjago Dragon Hunters and then interact with pre-selected sets in augmented reality. The two sets currently available that work well with AR include the LEGO Ninjago Dieselnaut (70654) and the Lego Ninjago Dragon's Pit (70655).

ARKit enables multiple users so two people can play using the same playground. Two players can team up to battle against Dragon Hunters and figure out their attacks and how to win.

"Children today are mastering the art of finding new moments and forms of play and LEGO Playgrounds will provide a 'live' opportunity to test and learn directly with them. It's truly a unique way to engage with them in a fun and experimental way and bring them close to our innovation process. Having this direct-link to users creates a win for everybody – sharing the latest play experiences is great fun for children and highly useful for our LEGO design and development teams who can take their feedback and use it to make launch experiences even better and more engaging."

Augmented reality demo from Lego, Tech Crunch interview with Lego’s director of innovation, Martin Sanders about how they're building AR into the company strategy.

You can play up to five levels without a physical set. You will just nee a flat surface to play on. The app is free to use and free of ads, marketing messages and in-app purchases. To use the AR features, you will need at least an iPhone 6s with the latest iOS version. More information is available at Lego.

Apple Holds Talks with iHeartMedia for Possible Acquisition

The Financial Times reported earlier this month that Apple held talks with iHeartMedia, an American radio company, about investing in the radio company this year. iHeart Media has faced looming financial troubles and filed for bankruptcy, but nonetheless has remained the largest, most popular radio station owner in the country with over 850 FM and AM radio stations.

While no deal has yet been formally announced, it appears that Apple may be considering different options such as buying a stake in the radio company and signing a marketing partnership to leverage iHeartMedia’s experience in traditional radio to help promote Apple Music and Beats to their established audience of 120 Million registered users. iHeartMedia has also actively embraced apps, with both Apple and Android versions available for smartphones, tablets, desktop computers, laptops, automotive displays and even Apple TV.

Earlier this year, Apple acquired music recognition app Shazam for $400 million, to improve Apple Music’s recommendations and a few other smaller purchases by acquiring radio app Swell for $30 million and Semetric, a data analytics company that runs the Musicmetric tool for an undisclosed amount. Musicmetric was launched in 2008 to track data on sales, BitTorrent downloads and social networking statistics for their artists.

iHeartMedia went private via an $18 billion leveraged buyout before the financial crisis of 2008 at a time when millions of Americans still listened to old fashioned, land-based radio. While iHeartMedia made $3.6 billion in revenue last year, and stated that it reached over 270 million people a month on the radio and 100 million users via its streaming radio and music service, it still struggled with debt for a long time. The company paid $1.4 billion in interest last year. iHeartMedia also has had other interested investors such as John Malone’s Liberty Media that pulled their investment offers of over $1 billion after the company failed to meet their expectations.

As radio listeners increasingly turn to online options, iHeart Media could bridge the gap for Apple in reaching these audiences. This in turn could help Apple convert these audiences to Apple Music users. Apple Music’s user base has also grown each year, up to 56 million subscribers in November, a six million increase in subscribers just from May. Apple Music is now the largest music streaming service in use in the United States, surpassing Spotify. Spotify however has the largest number of subscribers worldwide at over 87 million subscribers worldwide for its service, and 191 million monthly active users as of November 2018.

Mikaela Shiffrin Wins in All 6 Alpine Disciplines

Proving her dominance in alpine sports, Mikaela Shiffrin has become the first athlete - male or woman - to win in all six alpine disciplines.

Image via FIS Alpine — Image via **FIS Alpine**

This past Sunday Dec 2, defending overall champion Mikaela Shiffrin (USA) became the first athlete to win in all six individual disciplines on the Audi FIS Alpine Ski World Cup circuit when she won her super-G at Lake Louise (CAN). She has described the run better than she hoped for. Shiffrin won first place in downhill at the same resort last year. Now the athlete has become the first athlete - male or female - to win all six individual World Cup races for the women’s slalom, parallel, giant slalom, super-G, downhill and alpine combined. This is a tremendous accomplishment, especially given that the young athlete is only 23 years old and has many years and seasons ahead!

Other high performing athletes include Ragnhild Mowinckel (NOR) who came in second and won Olympic Silver medals earlier this year at Pyeong Chang and Viktoria Rebensburg (GER) came in third.

Mikhaela Shiffrin is one of the most dedicated athletes in alpine sports, putting in a daily 2-hour workout. Whether your goal is to compete in your first or hundredth event, having a personal schedule that helps you become your best is important.

Previously, we featured lessons in leadership and doing your best from Olympic athletes such as Chloe Kim, Shaun White, Lindsey Vonn, Mikaela Shiffrin and Jaimie Anderson.

Our Elf Ski App

At Elf, we have been working on our own ski app that will be available for download for the next ski season Nov 2019 - April 2020. We are very excited about it as it harnesses our love of design, skiing and snowboarding and apps! Our ski app employs the latest features available in the Apple Watch for tracking ski and snowboard activity. The Elf ski app will be available for the iPhone and Apple Watch. We will have more information to share in the next year.