GAMING

On Your Digital Marks, Get Set...

Holding a race in real life:
Have to wear uniforms
Dangerous
Subject to the whims of Mother Earth
Capped attendance

Streaming a virtual race: 
Drivers can wear PJs
Encourages digital risk-taking
You are the weathermaster
Anyone can tune in

Due to the coronavirus pandemic, two storied racing outfits are embracing the virtual format. No word yet on whether their drivers wore PJs. 

Formula One 

F1 drivers competed in the first ever Virtual Grand Prix yesterday set in Bahrain, sparing many tires from a speedy demise. Drivers played a half-length circuit on the official F1 2019 PC video game, and Formula One broadcast it through official streaming channels and its website. The league will continue with virtual competitions every race weekend through May. The winners: 

F1

The race peaked at 350,000+ viewers across Twitch, YouTube, and Facebook streams (not including some Sky Sports viewers). 

If you ain't virtual, you're last

Ricky Bobby didn't want to lose the season to French F1 driver Jean Girard; and Nascar doesn't want the mainly European F1 being the only virtual racing league. 

Yesterday, Fox Sports aired its eNascar virtual alternative to the Homestead-Miami Speedway Cup Series race. Dale Earnhardt Jr. and Kurt and Kyle Busch were among the 35 racers who completed 100 1.5 mile laps, strapped into a fairly elaborate gaming rig. There were many crashes but no one was hurt. One driver ran into the wall when his computer tried to push a Windows update mid-race. 

Sports around the world are disrupted

F1 and Nascar moved quickly to transition their seasons to the virtual realm. These races will be harder to monetize, since they remove live event and TV revenues from the equation. 

What I'm wondering: Would U.S. fans go for baseball, basketball, or football pros playing the video game equivalent of their professional sport? Respond and let me know. 

Bottom line: As the quarantine drags on, sports leagues are looking for alternative means of holding competitions and engaging fans. This may soon apply to the Olympics, which could get delayed to 2021. 

+ While we're here: In October, I interviewed Mercedes F1 team boss Toto Wolff about the role of emerging tech in F1.

MOBILE APPS

We Can't Share

The sharing economy is a casualty of the social distancing era. 

Micromobility: E-scooter company Bird has paused operations in more than 20 European markets and San Francisco. Lime has suspended service in 21 U.S. states and 20 international markets. Layoffs are coming at Lime, Bloomberg reports. 

• The industry, which has struggled with unit economics, had been inching toward profitability. 
• In Paris, Lime’s biggest market, rides dropped 98% annually on March 14. 
• Exception to the rule: In NYC, shared bike usage has spiked as commuters seek alternatives to the subway. The city has opened up more bike lanes. 

Mobility as a service: Uber and Lyft have banned pooled rides in the U.S. and Canada. With California and NYC residents hunkering down, these companies are taking hits across key markets. 

• Uber’s doing 60%–70% fewer trips in cities like Seattle, SF, LA, and NYC, said CEO Dara Khosrowshahi. 

Booking a room from your phone: Airbnb is losing hundreds of millions and reportedly considering raising more money in the private markets. It's allowing refunds for reservations through at least April 14. 

Bottom line: These online-offline companies changed the world with software. But since they're still tied to physical activities that put people in close proximity with one another, they're suffering during this pandemic.

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AR

Snap From the Desktop

Snap Camera, which brings the signature AR lenses of Snapchat to the desktop, launched back in October 2018. But you probably haven't heard of it...until now. 

In these boom times of desktop videochatting, Snap Camera has reemerged. The app has seen a 10x spike in downloads since the start of March, Bloomberg reports. 

How Snap Camera works: On the Camera app you can sample thousands of lenses, from a toilet paper hat to the infamous dog filter. You can use these lenses while streaming on Twitch, cheers-ing during virtual happy hour, or Zooming with your boss (don’t try this at home).  

• Most lenses are the crowdsourced work of developers and artists. You too can make one. 

The bigger augmented picture 

Snap has staked its future on AR, iterating quickly and shipping products on its own schedule. Its Spectacles hardware and the Snap Camera may not have been fully ready for prime time when they launched, but it seems the camera is finally getting the love Snap was hoping for.

BITS & BYTES

Stat: Call of Duty: Warzone gained 30 million players, including this newsletter writer, in under two weeks. Still, free-to-play battle royale is Fortnite's game to lose.

Quote: "During this extraordinary time, it is clear that software, as the most malleable tool ever created, has a huge role to play across every industry and around the world"—Microsoft CEO and LinkedInfluencer Satya Nadella. 

Read: Jeff Bezos also published an open letter to employees. The Amazon chief addressed the extraordinary circumstances, Amazon's prioritization of essential supplies, its ambitious plans to staff up, and worker safety concerns. Bezos said Amazon has placed purchase orders for millions of face masks, "but very few of those orders have been filled." 

WHAT ELSE IS BREWING

• Cisco committed $225 million to battle coronavirus. 
• Taiwan is rolling out an “electronic fence” that uses mobile location tracking to enforce quarantines. Other countries are using different measures to do this too. 
• Rivian, the buzziest EV startup since Tesla, shut down U.S. factories. Rivian will pay salaried and hourly workers for the duration of the shutdown. 
• Apple is now imitating Microsoft in tablet design, The Verge argues. Oh, how the tablet tables have turned. 
• Google won't hold its I/O developer conference "in any capacity this year." 
• Strategy Analytics predicts that global phone shipments will drop 10% this year. COVID-19 has wiped out any shot of 5G significantly boosting 2020 sales. 

WHAT'S VIRTUALLY BREWING THIS WEEK

Monday: MIT’s EmTech Digital (virtual); National Puppy Day

Tuesday: Nvidia GTC GPU conference (virtual)

Wednesday: World AI Summit Americas (virtual); Red Cross Giving Day; Document Freedom Day 

Thursday: Happy Birthday Larry Page; United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket launch

THE TECHLARATION

If you've got time on your hands and want to shore up your skills portfolio, check out Quartz's handy list of 450 free online Ivy League courses. And here's 1,400 free ones on Coursera.

There are ample programming, AI, and data science classes to choose from. Being the renaissance autodidact that I am, this weekend I completed all 450 Ivy League courses.