Need to Know
15 : 10 : 18

New York – Village Marketing has opened a penthouse apartment to optimise influencers’ Instagram feeds.

The space, Village Studio, is located in New York’s SoHo and can be hired by influencers free of charge. The penthouse apartment was created purely as a studio for photo shoots or branded installations, and comes fully furnished, complete with a roof terrace. Its interiors mimic the aesthetics often seen on Pinterest and Instagram – including a colour palette of Millennial pink, white and gold.

According to Village Marketing, the agency behind the project, the biggest challenge influencers face is finding diverse backdrops to keep their content fresh. With many influencers struggling to make a profit from their online personas, the Village Studio offers a cost-effective way to optimise their feeds.

In response to the recent rise of Instagrammable museums and experiences, our foresight editor Daniela Walker questioned whether the quest for Insta-optimisation is nearing its conclusion.

Russia – Design studio Aotta has created sound-proofing panels made from hemp husks, a biodegradable resource that is typically left to waste.

When used in an interior space, Aotta says the material can absorb sound reflections and regulate humidity and temperature. The panels are designed to be installed in geometric shapes on internal walls, creating a decorative pattern with an unusual tactility.

The panels are part of Aotta’s research into eco-friendly materials for homes and furnishings. While hemp seeds are produced in large volumes for hemp oil and other edible products, the outer husks are typically thrown away. Putting them to use, Aotta reports that the panels are fully biodegradable and anti-fungal.

To discover more about the future of organic materials, download our Material Far Futures report, which is free for LS:N Global members.

Global – The mega-system wants to take on the PS4 and Xbox One, but isn’t releasing a physical games console.

Google announced in a blog post that it is developing the Project Stream platform, which will enable consumers to stream blockbuster video games in high definition using just their Chrome browser. Until now, streaming games online has posed a number of challenges, with Google noting that graphically rich games require ‘latency measured in milliseconds, with no graphic degradation’.

To demonstrate Project Stream’s capabilities, Google has worked with Ubisoft to trial the soon-to-be-released game Assassin’s Creed Odyssey on the platform, offering a select number of spaces for gamers to play.

As eSports gain prominence, technology providers are introducing devices and platforms that rival the quality of premium consoles. This summer, Apple flaunted the gaming power of its new iPhone X.

According to Sandvine’s Global Internet Phenomena report, which delves into our digital habits, video now accounts for more than 58% of global downstream traffic on the internet. Although Netflix alone now comprises 15% of all internet downstream traffic, video piracy is on the rise.

The report states that the use of BitTorrent, the peer-to-peer file sharing site renowned for the distribution of copyrighted television and film content, is experiencing a surge in traffic once again, following a decline that began in 2015.

Cam Cullen, vice-president of solutions marketing at Sandvine, believes this is due to an increase in Netflix and alternative streaming sites, which LS:N Global has been tracking, restricting content behind subscriber walls. ‘More sources than ever are producing exclusive content available on a single streaming or broadcast service,’ says Cullen. ‘To get access to all of these services, it gets very expensive for a consumer, so they subscribe to one or two and pirate the rest.’