GAMETECH: Frontback to bow out of selfie world

IT TOOK her three minutes to snap. 

The girl had only just been seated when the phone came out and she took a selfie. The restaurant was a nice place, after all. Then, five minutes later, out came the phone again. (The bread looked great, to be fair). And then again. (The wine looked top notch). By the time the meal was finished, her boyfriend looked ready to snap too. If a picture is worth a thousand words, then people have been writing some pretty terrible biographies lately. ‘My Glass of Wine’ is a story we’ve all seen before, regardless of the fruity twist. But selfies are going nowhere — in some ways, they have become the cornerstone of modern social media. That reality makes the collapse of Frontback all the more intriguing. Frontback was a brilliant idea: An app designed to take pictures with both the front and back cameras of your phone simultaneously. In other words, it captured both the moment you were snapping and your reaction, at the same time, then posted the picture to its social media feed. The selfie and the subject merged. Cute puppy, meet cooing eyes. Glass of wine, meet licking lips.

Frontback attracted over 2m users since its launch in 2013. It also attracted over $3m in funding. There were rumours of an acquisition by Twitter and even the prime minister of Belgium was known to use the service. However, proving that not all good ideas are profitable ideas, the founder Fredd della Faille has announced that Frontback will shut down on August 15. “While we’ve seen exciting results with some communities, for most of the new members it takes too much time and effort to understand why Frontback is different,” della Faille posted in a blog. “[This resulted] in an infrequent use of our product. After discussions with our team and investors, we realised that we couldn’t reach the critical numbers that would make Frontback a sustainable social network.” In other words, people couldn’t be bothered. There’s something comforting in that. Maybe plain old selfies aren’t so bad after all.

STARING CONTEST

If Microsoft has its way, then your face will be put to a different use on their next range of Lumia phones. According to leaks procured by fansite Windows Central, the Lumia 950 and 950XL will both ship with iris-scanning to protect your phone. In other words, the phones will scan your eye in order to unlock. As if we didn’t stare at our phones enough already.

Amusingly, this will surely lead to staring contests with the phone from time to time, as the software refuses to recognise the person in front of them. Has Microsoft ever seen Irish eyes on a Sunday morning? A frosted glass is less bleary. There was another, more practical feature rumoured for the larger 950Xl phone. It will supposedly ship with Surface Pen support, which is a nice addition for fans of that writing and illustration technology.

The downside to these new features, of course, is that the phones also come with another new feature — Windows 10. This new iteration of Windows might be fantastic, but it will take more than iris recognition and Surface Pens to sway people from Android and iOS. Quick, Microsoft, buy Frontback! Oh.

CHINA GAME FOR CONSOLES

Finally, in huge news for Sony, Nintendo, and Microsoft, China has finally lifted its ban on gaming consoles. The ban stretched back over 15 years and prohibited the manufacturing and sale of consoles in the region. This is good news for us, because new markets mean new life for the industry, in turn meaning consoles stand a better chance of surviving the mobile onslaught.

China originally banned consoles due to fears about the impact of 3D worlds on the mindset of their citizens. But we all know 3D worlds have zero impact on perception of reality, or I wouldn’t be writing this article on a magical cloud surrounded by flying hippos.

Last year, China took a step towards this decision by easing the ban in an 11-mile radius in Shanghai. “We recognise that China is a promising market,” a Sony spokesperson told the BBC at the time, drooling dollar signs. “We will continuously study the possibility, but there is no concrete plan at this stage.”