The Format #007

Another fortnight of tech news, and wow, the world never fails to disappoint. With Elon and Zuck confirmed to be fighting in the Colosseum (dressed as gladiators?), the ability to create streams of selfie video content with just a 30 second clip using HeyGen and the possibility that Apple will buy Disney, things really feel like they’re moving too quickly.

Thankfully it’s the weekend soon, so none of that matters till monday… 🌞

Zoom knots itself in a legal tangle over use of customer data for training AI models

Are Zoom creating ZoomGPT to emulate how you look, speak and act in meetings and steal all your jobs? Probably not.

But this week’s news surrounding Zoom’s use of customer data is well… concerning to say the least. Although it’s still pretty murky as to how and why Zoom is using this data, and whether they’ve breached any data laws, it’s not a good look for the company. Here at OPENFORMAT we’ve been using Gather for our meetings, it does the same job, plus we have go-karts… 😍

MetaGPT Lets You Create Your Own Virtual Software Company

$2 to create a software company! Okay, it’s probably not quite time to trade your actual job for a MetaStartUp, but the timeline until we have fully autonomous organisations is looking shorter and shorter. This concept will force companies to completely change their business model strategy and design of competitive moats. If people don’t plan for this incoming change, we might be about to see a whole wave of rising star companies that very quickly shrink into nothing shells… 👀

"While the idea of a trillion-dollar public Solo Corporation seems crazy from where we sit today, it’s inevitable." -Not Boring by Packy McCormick

Amazon Dishing Out Free NFTs To Over 200 Million Prime Subscribers

Amazon are famous for 2 things: gaming and NFT’s. Well not yet, but maybe some day soon they will be. Currently Prime subscribers have access to Prime Gaming, with the most notable game currently being Blankos Block Party, and they can get free in-game NFT’s. Right now that doesn’t mean too much, but there are heavy rumours that this could be a ‘test-run’ before linking NFT’s to their many, many real-world assets.

Understanding the Challenges of Building on the Blockchain

Andy and Sarah got together and wrote a post deep-diving into the current major challenges when trying to build cool stuff on the blockchain, many of the things we are battling with on a daily basis. But fear not… they also cover the short and long-term solutions and some of paradigm shifts the blockchain introduces.

Rediscovering Narratability

As above, so below. This post explores the effect of the macro on the micro and how large forces in the world relate to smaller actions. Say for example you’re feeling depressed, how do you know whether it’s in response to the constant doom-news around AI, a recent tension between you and your mate or just plain old dehydration?

As much as this doesn’t directly link to technology, it felt very relevant to us. With the world becoming increasingly complex and with so many large forces at play, discerning the real narratives feels harder and harder. It’s something we have played around with quite a lot when deciding how and why OPENFORMAT exists in the world.

This definitely feels like a sunday afternoon read to reframe how you think about, well, everything…

OPENFORMAT NEWS:

The Get Shit Done Team 🌞

Things are really starting to speed up at OPENFORMAT, we sent a full update out last week (see above) but the TL;DR is:

New Team Members:
Dan is now full-time and working on building community and partnerships, Eugene (and his dog) have joined the dev-team. Very exciting news.

New Tech:
- Our SDK is live and allows developers to create complex applications and ecosystems.
- Our ‘game DAO creator’ is live and in Closed Beta, let us know if you want access.
- Our Faucet is working and provides free matic, it’ll be available as a Discord bot to add to your server very soon!
+ much more on the way

Partners & Investment
Our pitch deck is all set and almost ready to send out to interested parties + we’re partnering with a small group of companies.
Please get in touch if you’re interested about either.

Have an amazing weekend and see you in a few weeks! 👋

Prompt (for Midjourney): “Creating a virtual software company for $2 using AI --quality 2 --s 750”