Adobe acquires collaborative design platform Figma for $20 billion

Adobe just made a big move into team-based creative work. The company is acquiring the online collaborative design platform Figma for roughly $20 billion in cash and shares. That’s the largest buyout of a private software company to date, according to Bloomberg‘s Katie Roof. Adobe hopes the deal will “accelerate” web creativity and put more of the Creative Cloud suite’s technology on the internet. You can expect to see Adobe’s visual editing features find their way into Figma’s platform.

The two firms expect the purchase to close sometime in 2023 if it receives approval from regulators and shareholders. Figma co-founder and chief Dylan Field will continue to lead his company if and when the takeover finalizes, but will report to Adobe’s digital media lead David Wadhwani.

Don’t worry that Adobe will completely revamp Figma, at least not at first. Field stressed in a blog post that Adobe was “deeply committed” to keeping Figma an autonomous company. There’s “no plan” at the moment to change Figma’s pricing, and it will remain free for education users. While the executive hoped to draw on Adobe’s know-how for upgrades, he also expected to keep running Figma as he did before.

While the acquisition is huge, it’s not surprising given Adobe’s past moves. It bought the video collaboration platform Frame.io in 2021, and has been making moves into web-based tools with offerings like Creative Cloud Express. Figma is a logical (if major) extension of that strategy — it could help make online teamwork a staple of the creative process in companies that regularly use software like Photoshop and Premiere.

Snapchat for Web is now available for everyone

Snapchat’s messaging and video chat features first made their way to browsers back in July, but only in select markets and for Snapchat+ subscribers. Now, Snapchat for Web is finally available for all the messaging app’s users worldwide. It could be the better choice for users who have a lot of typing to do and messages to send, since they’ll be looking at a bigger screen and have access to a real keyboard. 

The web interface is pretty basic, but it can also be used to send photos and to make audio and video calls. A company spokesperson previously told us that video calling has become more popular among its users recently. Giving users access to the feature on the web could lead to longer video calls. The spokesperson also told us that Snap could bring more of its core features to the web interface if there’s enough demand for them. 

In addition, Snap has launched lock screen widgets for the iPhone now that iOS 16 has come out. The widgets allow users to create shortcuts for the conversations they want — perhaps for people they frequently talk to — so they can fire up chats from their screen in one tap. 

Speaking of shortcuts, the Snapchat app will feature new shortcuts at the top of its chat page. They’ll make it easy for users to get to unread Snaps, chats from friend and replies to stories. They will also show reminders for birthdays or for conversations that users haven’t replied to yet. Finally, Snap has introduced Question Stickers that users can post to their stories and Snaps. The company said these features will roll out to users soon if they haven’t yet.

Bose QuietComfort Earbuds II review: Blocking out the world

Bose is no stranger to true wireless earbuds. The company’s first model debuted in 2017 and it has refined its take on the product segment multiple times in the years since. Bose made a big leap in 2020 with the QuietComfort Earbuds, bringing its activ…

Walmart will let you use your own photos for a virtual clothing fit check

When Walmart launched its virtual fitting room back in March, it gave you 50 models with various body types and heights to choose from. It was up to you to find the model you resemble the most, so you can see what a piece of garment would look like on you. Now, the retailer is leveling up the experience by letting you virtually try clothes on your own photos. 

In the company’s announcement, Apparel and Private Brands EVP Denise Incandela said its virtual fitting room can show how clothes fit in a realistic way. It doesn’t simply overlay images on your photos — when you choose an item to fit, you’ll see the parts where shadows would fall and you’ll see how the fabric would drape on your body. Theoretically, that means different sizes of the same item would look differently on your photo in the same way they’d fall differently on your body if you were trying them in real life. That’s made possible with the use of algorithms and machine learning models originally used to develop accurate topographic images.

The new virtual try-on experience is available for 270,000 items across brands on Walmart’s website, including Levi’s and Hanes, and will continue to grow. You can’t use previous photos with the feature, though: The first time you choose “yourself” as a model when you tap the “Try It On” button, you’ll be prompted to take a photo of yourself wearing something form-fitting and to input your height. 

The upgraded experience is now available on Walmart’s iOS app, and iOS users be able to use the photos they take on mobile when they fire up the experience on desktop or the web “shortly.” The feature will roll out to Android users in the coming weeks, as well.

Ethereum completes the ‘merge’ that will make its crypto transactions greener

Ethereum has completed its much-anticipated “Merge” to a far more energy efficient method of minting new tokens, the cryptocurrency’s co-founder Vitalik Buterin tweeted. Ether will no longer be minted by “proof-of-work” that uses powerful computers to solve cryptographic tasks. Instead, they’ll be created using “proof-of-stake” methods that require users called validators to stake tokens for the chance to approve transactions and earn a small reward. 

Until today, mining Ethereum has required powerful banks of computers to solve difficult math problems. That not only consumed huge amounts of energy, but made Ethereum difficult to scale and costly for small transactions. It also concentrated power into the hands of a few, something that’s anathema to the decentralization ethos of crypto. 

With the new system, the more a validators stakes, the larger the chance of winning a reward. But everyone gets at least something, as all staked ether earns interest (around 5.2 percent), making it more like buying a bond or putting it in a bank (apart from the wild market volatility, of course). The minimum stake amount required to be a validator is 32 ether (around $50,000 right now), though individuals can do pooled staking with trusted third-party validators to meet that level. 

The Merge got its name because the Ethereum blockchain has combined with a parallel network that’s now been running for almost two years in a proof-of-stake test, but it’s just one step in the transformation. “We still have to scale, we have to fix privacy. To me the Merge symbolizes the difference between an early stage Ethereum and the Ethereum we’ve always wanted,” said Buterin during a livestreamed Merge party. 

Ether started the day going up, but has since dropped a few percent from yesterday. It remains to be seen if the the Merge will live up to its promise of transforming crypto, as there are still a lot of questions around regulation, Ethereum forks and more. There’s also the risk of scams (as usual in crypto), with the risk of transactions from the old chain being copied to the new one, among others.