This Week in Apps: Apple scolds adtech, Facebook hit with antitrust suits, Twitter buys Squad
Welcome back to This Week in Apps, the weekly TechCrunch series that recaps the latest in mobile OS news, mobile applications and the overall app economy.
The app industry is as hot as ever, with a record 204 billion downloads and $120 billion in global consumer spend in 2019. Not including third-party Chinese app stores, iOS and Android users downloaded 130 billion apps in 2020. Consumer spend also hit a record $112 billion across iOS and Android alone. In 2019, people spent three hours and 40 minutes per day using apps, rivaling TV. Due to COVID-19, time spent in apps jumped 25% year-over-year on Android.
Historian W. Patrick McCray s new book explores the collaboration of art and technology in the 1960s
A detail of Cosmos, which is stored at the Oxford Brookes Library. Photo: The Malina Family.
By Jim Logan
SANTA BARBARA, CA
.- When we see aliens riding flying lizards in the movie Avatar, were watching the marriage of art and technology. Such digital wizardry is so common these days we take it for granted.
W. Patrick McCray would like to remind you that just a few decades earlier, artists and engineers began to step outside their separate spheres to collaborate in ways that would set the stage for the creative alchemy that now touches most every facet of our lives.
NASA to send art in deep space in an attempt to inform aliens about human life
myersalex216 / Pixabay
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Space agencies like NASA are on the search for life that may exist outside our own planet. A new project by the US-based agency looks to make contact with extraterrestrial life in the universe through sending artwork.
NASA has teamed up with artist Julia Christensen to prepare a probe that will make a reconnaissance fly-by around Alpha Centauri. The probe will be carrying artwork made by Christensen, called the Tree of Life, and it will be beamed to any alien life found in Proxima b. Christensen will be partnering with NASA scientist Professor Anthony Freeman in the project organized by the Art + Technology Lab of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.
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Looking to get the heck out of the house? As COVID-19 case counts hit new highs, Californians are hearing an important call to stay home, but for those seeking a masked mental-health respite from home isolation, these drive-in performances, drive-through light displays and outdoor art exhibits might help the new year arrive a little faster.
“Lit: A Drive-thru Hanukkah Experience”
Synchronized light displays and projection installations are set to a soundtrack. Includes a screening of the animated short film “The Broken Candle.” Stephen Wise Temple, 15500 Stephen S. Wise Drive, L.A. 5 to 9:20 p.m. nightly through Dec. 17. $75 per vehicle. lithanukkah.com