Technology

The Google -incubated Go language is one of the fastest growing programming languages today, with about one million active developers using it worldwide. But the company believes it can still accelerate its growth, especially when it comes to its role in writing cloud applications. And to do this, the company today announced Go Cloud, a new open-source library and set of tools that makes it easier to build cloud apps with Go .

While Go is highly popular among developers, Google argues that the language was missing a standard library for interfacing with cloud services. Today, developers often have to essentially write their own libraries to use the features of each cloud, but organizations today want to be able to easily move their workloads between clouds.

What Go Cloud then gives these developers is a set of open generic cloud APIs for accessing blog storage, MySQL databases and runtime configuration, as well as an HTTP server with built-in logging, tracing and health checking. Right now, the focus is on AWS and Google Cloud Platform. Over time, Google plans to add more features to Go Cloud and support for more cloud providers (and those cloud providers can, of course, build their own support, too).

This, Google argues, allows developer teams to build applications that can easily run on any supported cloud without having to re-architect large parts of their applications.

As Google VP of developer relations Adam Seligman told me, the company hopes this move will kick off an explosion of libraries around Go — and, of course, that it will accelerate Gogrowth as a language for the cloud.

For being in charge of what is probably the biggest game in the world right now and all the responsibilities that come with that, Epic is proving itself quite capable of changing things up on the fly.

Case in point: Last week, a video went viral showing one player making a valiant effort to save another player — a competitor, no less! — who had found themselves in a more or less inescapable section of the map… only to have things go wonderfully, hilariously wrong at the last second. Today, a tombstone marking the mishap appeared in-game.

Herethe video of the original rescue mission, as streamed by would-be hero Muselk (wait for the end):

The whole thing is like an unintentional lesson in comedic timing.

Today, this tombstone showed up in the same location for anyone who dare wander down there themselves:

(Photo via redditor StoreBrandEnigma)

For those unfamiliar with the gamemechanics: Fortnite lets you build structures to defend your position or reach new heights… assuming you&ve scrounged up enough materials (wood, brick or metal.) Muselk had enough materials to reach the stranded player… only to hit the build limit (the outer-most regions of the map where building is disabled) with the rescue target just out of reach. Thatwhere things go extra wrong.

Itjust a cute little nod, sure — but it shows just how damned agile Epic has gotten at making changes to this game. They add a new gun and it seems to be throwing off the gamebalance Itgone. Glitches discovered in a new map element They&re patched. A video blows up demonstrating a hilarious outcome all set in motion by seemingly inconsequential design decisions Bam, itmemorialized in-game within days.

The best part: If you go down there to check out the tombstone… you might not make it out alive yourself.

PicsArt, the company behind the photo-editing app of the same name, has hired Tammy Nam as its first chief operating officer.

Nam was most recently the CEO of Viki, the Rakuten-acquired video streaming service, and before that served as a marketing executive at Viki, Scribd and Slide.

PicsArt said Nam will report to founder and CEO Hovhannes Avoyan, and that she will oversee all aspects of the business except for product and engineering.

&PicsArt has grown organically so far, but our next big opportunity is in directing this growth through the right market development, community engagement and revenue channels,& Avoyan said in the announcement. &In addition to her proven operational experience in both consumer advertising and subscription-based businesses, Tammy adds deep bench strength in market, brand and community development — areas that will be critical for us moving forward.&

The company announced last year that itreaching 100 million monthly active users.Nam told me she was particularly impressed that it achieved that growth without significant marketing spend.

&I understand what it takes to grow quickly, but also thoughtfully,& she said. &Because of my background, the CEO and the board felt like I would be a great match to [help PicsArt] reach the next 200 million, the next 500 million users.&

Asked what thoughtful growth looks like for PicsArt, Nam said it means not just growing at any cost, but also considering things like revenue and the different communities using the app. She said shetrying to examine the companystructure to ensure it can &maximize efficiencies towards these big goals.&

&It will continue to grow organically, but the branding, the user development will definitely evolve,& she added. &Therea sea of companies that play in our space … How do you stand out And how do you stay relevant&

Nam also said that she&ll be looking at PicsArtopportunities for international growth.Not that the company has been neglecting the world beyond the United States — China is its fastest-growing market and already one of its top countries for revenue. (The company says it recently became profitable following the launch of its PicsArt Gold subscription.)

Nam suggested that PicsArt can move into new markets without competing with the dominant social media platforms, because it&agnostic& in terms of where users publish their edited photos.

&Itcompletely lowered the barrier,& she said. &It used to be you had to know Photoshop. Now itso easy to create professional-looking photos, images and soon animations, videos, etc. Everyone is a creator.&