Welcome back. A mini meditiation app demonstrates the potential for new kinds of experiences on Snapchat. Would-be prilgrims are getting ways to visit Mecca from afar. And shoppers are being offered premium products at cost—if they pay a membership fee.

The meditation and mindfulness app Headspace has introduced a younger-skewed version of itself to Snapchat, a platform better known for augmented-reality games, face-altering lenses and quick-hit content.

Headspace Mini, as it’s called, offers six meditation exercises that users can try alone or with friends as well as virtual stickers they can use to discuss feelings.

It’s also part of a new offering called Snap Minis, which lets developers create mini-apps within Snapchat. Snap Minis could broaden the brands and experiences on Snapchat, Ann-Marie Alcántara writes for the Experience Report.

The annual hajj that brings more than 2 million pilgrims to Mecca in Saudi Arabia has been drastically scaled back this year due to the coronavirus pandemic, but virtual software developers are hoping to let Muslims experience what it’s like to worship at the city’s holy sites from far away.

Even without the pandemic, a vast number of Muslims can’t journey to Mecca for financial or medical reasons. Virtual hajj technology would let them see inside the city for the first time, Katie Deighton writes. 

Companies offering digital takes on pilgrimage include iUmrah.World, which allows Muslims to live-stream a hired proxy’s pilgrimage, and Muslim 3D, a videogame designed to prepare prilgrims for hajj before they travel.

But there are limits to virtual translations.

“It’s a bit like a VR swimming experience,” said Jonathan A.J. Wilson, a professor of brand strategy and culture who traveled to Mecca in 2009. “It could never match really swimming in the sea.”

Italic, an online seller of premium products from clothes to cookware, is remaking itself as a members-only business, pitching consumers on the chance to buy high-end goods at reduced prices for a fee of $100 a year.

It’s the second time the company is trying a membership model, following a short-lived attempt when it launched in 2018. This time Italic says a wider selection makes the deal more worthwhile.

But the new membership comes as Covid-19 is making business conditions unpredictable at best.

“People have subscription fatigue,” founder and Chief Executive Jeremy Cai tells Ann-Marie Alcántara, “and to ask them to subscribe to one more thing and for all intents and purposes they are not things you would not purchase in a pandemic—it’s a tall ask for a lot of people.”

New York City’s transit authority added a social-distancing feature to its app that tells people how many riders are on board approaching buses. [NYDN]

Facebook and Instagram will examine how Black, Hispanic and other minority users in the U.S. are affected by the company’s algorithms, and how that compares with white users. [WSJ]

Microsoft is teasing a new user interface for Office. [XDA Developers] 

Danny Meyer’s restaurants ended their no-tipping policy as they reopen for outdoor dining. [NYT] 

A new MLB app feature lets fans send cheers and boos to the empty stadiums where teams will play. But the boos won’t actually reach players’ ears. [ESPN]