Author: Geek Planet

TikTok is beginning to resonate with food and beverage brands as a platform through which to capture shoppers’ attention, sell through TikTok Shop and even develop new products. Amanda Parker, head of food for TikTok Shop, told Modern Retail at the Groceryshop conference in Las Vegas that while the platform initially had success with smaller entrepreneurs, major CPG players like Mars and Coca-Cola have joined TikTok Shop as an additional channel of commerce. There, food and beverage brands can introduce new flavors or new products, do R&D, or offer limited-time-only flavors — things that they may have historically done through a grocery…

Social media is a never-ending conveyor belt of content. Keeping up on trends, posting regularly, and offering insightful comments can lead to higher engagement but also serious burnout. I should know—I started my first Twitter account (now called X) way back in 2008. Amassing around 18,000 followers on X was the easy part. Keeping the flow of content was much harder, especially during a long period of time when I wrote two books. I’ve struggled to create engaging content because it’s not my day job. I’ve been a journalist since 2001 and watched as the platforms germinated and grew. These…

Samsung has unveiled a special Galaxy Z Flip7 for Milano Cortina 2026 that most people will never see on a store shelf. It will be provided only to athletes competing at the Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games, with Samsung distributing the phones to nearly 3,800 Olympians and Paralympians from about 90 countries. The phone is being treated like part of the Games kit, built to help athletes get through Village life and share the moments that matter. Distribution starts January 30 at Olympic Villages across six cities. Samsung’s Open Station will also offer in-person help for activation, data transfers, and…

Nike’s turn away from its performance-led marketing strategy looks like it’s getting the 61-year-old company back on track.The brand’s latest quarterly earnings report showed a mixed financial picture; revenues increased 1% year on year to $11.7 billion, but profits were down 31%, squeezed by President Donald Trump’s tariff regime. Perhaps it’s the stretch before settling into the starting blocks of a race. “This is just the beginning of their turnaround journey, and many headwinds are still facing the company,” said Brad Jashinsky, director analyst at Gartner. Still, despite challenges in the crucial Chinese market, market analysts consider the business to…

Last Saturday, I began laying out a plot for a time-travel story that hangs together and began describing the mechanics of the machine. I chose to treat the time machine as a hard magic system while keeping time itself as a soft magic system. The story premise is that a man is using the machine to explore the past. Sitting inside it, he is surrounded by a small force field, so he can observe the past (soft magic) without the risk of altering anything (hard magic, which imposes rules). Thus he cannot trigger the disastrous butterfly effect. Developing a story…

Google may be quietly rethinking how Android looks, and an early glimpse of Android 17 suggests visual changes that feel very familiar. New evidence has surfaced showing blur effects in Android 17’s system interface, hinting at a design direction that echoes Apple’s Liquid Glass style. Blur and transparency are not entirely new concepts for Android. What makes this Android 17 sighting notable is how deliberate and system-level the effects appear to be. A closer look at Android 17’s new blur effects According to the Android Authority, these visuals are tied to new UI flags. The effects are not flashy, but…

Google just upgraded Gemini Deep Research, its most advanced AI research agent, and this time the upgrade is not limited to Google’s own products. Google says its AI capabilities can soon appear inside the everyday apps you already use. With the launch of the new Interactions API, Deep Research is no longer a Google-exclusive feature. It can now be built directly into third-party apps, opening the door for a wave of tools on your phone to quietly gain far more powerful AI. Gemini Deep Research is built for long, complex tasks that many chatbots tend to struggle with. Instead of…

The picture of TikTok’s future in the U.S. is starting to come into focus. With a U.S. ownership deal looming, influencers and content creators fear the algorithm, TikTok’s so-called secret sauce, will become a political battleground. More details of the proposed deal were announced last week. U.S. based companies, like Oracle, venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, private equity investment group Silver Lake and Fox Corp, the parent company of Fox News, would be given majority ownership over the app.  In other words, privately held U.S. entities would control the algorithm and data under a regulatory framework. Official policy changes haven’t kicked…

Ironically, commerce and marketing experts are less interested in what Instant Checkout means for OpenAI’s ad roadmap, and more interested in what it signals about agentic commerce, product discovery and zero-click search, six marketers told Digiday. Consider it a sign of the times: product discovery is moving from traditional search engines and marketplaces and toward AI-powered conversations. AI chat bots are expected to become the next brand awareness battleground. “It’s like Google and SEO all over again. How do you basically trick the system to make sure [your brand] shows up,” said Martin Kristiseter, CEO of Digital Remedy, a performance…

Microsoft is working on a useful upgrade for Phone Link that fixes one of the most annoying parts of streaming Android apps on Windows 11. A new expanded view option lets you stretch Android apps beyond the cramped, phone-sized window that users have been stuck with for years. It is rolling out in the latest Phone Link update (version 1.25112.33.0) and is meant to make apps look more natural on larger monitors. What expanded view actually does Phone Link has always streamed Android apps in a narrow portrait layout that mimics your phone, no matter how big your PC display…