Monthly Tech Bites #10 | Brand purpose, Flutter 3.3 update, q-commerce, $3-million prize for AlphaFold

Hello there!

I bet I'm not the only one whose LinkedIn feed has been dominated by two pieces of news: the acquisition of Figma by Adobe and Yvon Chouinard's donation of Patagonia to fight the climate crisis. Don't get me wrong - I realise the importance of these business changes. However, as a science enthusiast, I feel that the hype around big brands may have caused some other important information to go unnoticed. That is why today I want to devote some space to utterly fascinating yet less known tech and science news and events.

September is the time of "Oscars of Science", such as Kavli and Breakthrough (you can read more about it below). If you are keeping up to date with industry news, you have probably also noticed more and more positive information regarding the AI application in scientific research! In your free time, be sure to read about DeepMind's chatbot combining Google searches with human feedback to give better answers and the ML-based technology which spots deadly land mines.

I encourage you to constantly broaden your horizons with proven scientific sources and expert opinions. Are you looking for inspiration? So let me share my recommendation with you:

Now it’s about time for September Tech Bites. Let’s begin!

How to articulate brand purpose in your mobile app

Everything we do, we believe in challenging the status quo. We believe in thinking differently. The way we challenge the status quo is by making our products beautifully designed, simple to use, and user-friendly. We just happen to make great computers. Wanna buy one?

According to renowned business strategist Simon Sinek, the above quote perfectly explains Apple's enormous success. Unlike its tech predecessors, the Apple message wasn't focused on WHATs and HOWs. It was focused on WHYs and conveying brand purpose in the first place.

In the article posted on the Miquido blog, you will find a comprehensive introduction to the golden circle in communication strategy, learn where to apply brand purpose signals in your product, and discover brilliant examples of mobile apps with a well-defined brand purpose. As bonus material, we revealed the details of creating an application with a strong brand message at its core straight from our portfolio! Be sure to read this inspiring article.

What’s new in Flutter 3.3?

Do you know how many Flutter-based apps are released daily to the Apple and Google Play stores? More than 1,000! We don't want to sound too nostalgic, but being the first company to launch a mobile app with Flutter in Europe, we are proud to see how great cross-platform technology is developing. The more excited we are to hear about the announcement of Flutter 3.3! Just take a look at the list of the most important improvements:

• expanded support for Material 3
• Scribble handwriting support on iPad & trackpad support
• Dart 2.18 with FFI support for libraries and code written in Swift or Objective-C
• improved performance across desktop, web, and mobile.

You can read more in Tim Sneath’s article published on Medium.

Quick commerce: The what, the why and the how

There are plenty of disadvantages of living in a constant rush. Unfortunately, sometimes we have no choice but to choose solutions that allow us to optimise our time as much as possible. The e-commerce industry is also adjusting to new consumer habits. As statistics show, q-commerce (ultra-fast online purchases delivered to customers within minutes) is one of the most promising industry trends that will most probably transform the way we shop online for good.

Source: Statista.com; Revenue of the last-mile food and grocery delivery market worldwide in 2020 and 2025

Quick commerce is a fairly new market, and I think there’s still a long way to its peak. Having observed business trends in the digital industry for years, however, I am sure about one thing: by investing in quick commerce today, you won’t lose the competitive edge tomorrow. If you want to learn more about this promising trend, check out the report prepared by our team.

AlphaFold Developers Win $3-Million Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences

Last week the Breakthrough Foundation announced the winners of the prize for the most outstanding achievements in Mathematics, Fundamental Physics and Life Sciences. Please find the complete list here. Today I would like to tell you more about one of the awarded projects: AlphaFold. This AI-based system developed by DeepMind can accurately predict 3D models of almost every known protein on the planet. By combining physical and biological knowledge about protein structure with a deep learning algorithm, this innovative open-source tool has already contributed to thousands of academic papers, tackling problems ranging from antibiotic resistance to crop resilience. You can read more about this groundbreaking achievement here.

That’s it for today. See you next month!

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