What's going on in our industry? Today, we'll discuss the top stories on our feeds, and dive into all things tech, website design and marketing.
1. Crazy CAPTCHAs
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How many times have you had to identify traffic lights within an image to prove that you are, indeed, human? We've all been there. This month, WIRED magazine published an article outlining the increasing difficulty of these pesky tests.
So, what is a CAPTCHA? A CAPTCHA is a type of challenge-response test used in computing to determine whether the user is actually human. The difficulty of these tests came to light when someone from WIRED was asked to look at nine dog pictures and identify which ones were smiling as part of the test...and they were stumped.
Funnily enough, no ONE is sure whether dogs can actually smile, meaning that the CAPTCHA was near-impossible to solve! This poses a big question as to whether CAPTCHA tests have gone too far in their difficulty, especially since some people give up due to the crazy questions.
2. Automatic Images Using the Dall-E 2
Have you ever struggled to find the image you're looking for? Don't worry, this won't be a problem for much longer...
The new, extraordinary technology, Dall-E, has now become available via a web application, allowing the user to enter a text description in exchange for a generated image. In fact, it was even used for the front cover of the Cosmopolitan magazine! This is the text that was inputted into the AI generator:
'A wide angle shot from below of a female astronaut with an athletic feminine body walking with swagger towards camera on marks in an infinite universe, synthwave digital art'
The result? The world's first artificially intelligent magazine cover. Take a look for yourself! If you're interested in using the Dall-E 2 technology, you can sign up to the waitlist here.
3. The World's Most Visited Shopping Websites by Uswitch
A new study from broadband supplier, Uswitch, has revealed the world's most popular news and shopping websites. The top domain monthly visits are as follows...
- Amazon (US) - 38 billion
- eBay (US) - 761.1 million
- Amazon (Japan) - 589 million
- Rakuten (Japan) - 542.1 million
Etsy, founded in 2005, has also managed to get into a top 20 spot, next to ecommerce giants such as Amazon, eBay, Walmart and Ali Express!
Looking ahead...
So, these are our top stories for August. But what does the next month have in store for us? Come back next month for September's news - who knows what will have changed by then!
