The Daily Dot:
Where Google I/O keynotes of years past have included huge reveals like the Chromebook notebook line and Nexus tablet, this year’s event was different…but that didn’t stop it from being crazy in its own right.
It’s not really the “only thing you need to read” but it might just be one of the most amusing things you read about today’s Google I/O keynote.
Macworld:
Corporations generally limit their altruism to charity, not to core product and business decisions. Apple likely sees a competitive advantage in privacy, especially when its biggest direct competition comes from advertising giant Google and the enterprise-friendly Microsoft. Apple believes consumers not only desire privacy, but will increasingly value privacy as a factor in their buying decisions.
It will be interesting to see if, going forward, average consumers start taking these kinds of issues into consideration when purchasing and using various products and services.
Flickr:
Flickr’s new service for Apple TV brings all your photos to life on the big screen, where you can engage with the Flickr community, explore the world’s most interesting photos, and use our powerful search capabilities to browse billions of photos within the most extraordinary online photo collection.For the first time with Apple TV, sign into Flickr and view all your photos, videos, Favorites, Albums, and Groups. In one click, make any album into a slideshow or screensaver ready to share with friends, or customize in real-time with over fifteen different slideshow and screensaver modes.
I haven’t had a chance to try this out but if it works as advertised, I will use this a lot.
XOJane:
Believe it or not, the customer service representative that you are speaking to wants to help you. Or at the very least, they want to fix your problem and get you off the line. So please. Allow the rep to do their job and actually listen to what they have to say!
It’s sad we live in a world where we need to have these kinds of things explained to people.
As a follow up to their “Need a Canadian Passport to open the beer fridge” stunt comes this one that is just as clever. It plays off the uniquely Canadian inability to remember the words to our national anthem. Still crappy beer though.
Macworld:
The price of buying an iMac just went down. But is a 15 percent lower price worth a 50 percent lower performance rating?The new $1099 iMac was slower across the board, and 54 percent slower overall, than the $1299 21.5-inch system.
This is definitely the iMac for the (very) casual user but I don’t know about “value for the money”. The specs make it seem awfully anemic.
Quartz:
Although the watch—designed in Paris and made in Switzerland—resembles its analog ancestors, it contains all the technology of a fitness tracker. It monitors distance covered (walking, running, or swimming), calories burned, and quantity and quality of sleep, all of which will sync with Withing’s existing Health Mate app. The watch, called Activité, can also tell time. It will automatically adjust to changing time zones, and its battery will last a year.The watch will be available for $390 this autumn, in two unisex color options.
It certainly is a nice looking watch. Not my “personal style” but simple and elegant looking – which I’m not.
WSJ:
Nest Labs is set to share some user information with corporate parent Google for the first time since its February acquisition.Matt Rogers, a co-founder of the smart-thermostat maker, said in an interview that Google will connect some of its apps to Nest, allowing Google to know when Nest users are at home or not.
And so it begins.
AdWeek:
In an odd bit of on-stage irony, Bono gave broad praise to an audience of strangers and reserved his most pointed criticism for the old friend seated nearby: Apple design guru Jony Ive.“One of the reasons it’s such a credit to have Jony Ive on the stage,” Bono told panel moderator and Vice CEO Shane Smith, “is because Apple is so fucking annoyingly quiet about the fact they’ve raised $75 million. Nobody knows!”
Bono went so far as to stand up, pull out an official (Red) iPad cover and remove the device, illustrating to the audience that the only actual nod to the nonprofit was inside the cover and therefore always obscured by the tablet.
“Where’s the (Red) branding?” he asked Ive. “Nobody can see that. This is modesty run amok. This is the Apple way. They’re like a religious cult.”
Great to see Bono calling Apple out on their “understated” approach to this issue. But you’ll see that change within six months.
Angela Ahrendts:
Last month, as you might have heard, I started a new job. At some point in your career, maybe you too have made the life-altering decision to start anew. If so, you know firsthand how exciting, challenging and sometimes disorienting the first 30, 60, 90 days can be. I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately myself.I am by no means an expert at these transitions, but I’ve always tried to be consistent in how I run, exit and begin in a new business. I thought I would share a few professional and personal insights which are helping me adapt to a new sector, culture and country.
Very interesting to see this – an Apple executive blogging could be fascinating, even if always vetted by the PR Machine.
New York Times:
Nest Labs, a maker of digital thermostats, announced Friday evening that it planned to buy another fast-growing producer of home devices, Dropcam, for $555 million in cash.The deal is another sign of the industry optimism that the emerging market for Internet-connected smart devices in the home is poised for rapid growth. The most striking sign of such enthusiasm is Nest itself, which Google bought this year for $3.2 billion.
In a brief interview, Matt Rogers, co-founder of Nest, said, “This is a Nest Labs deal, not a Google deal.”
It will be interesting to see how these two companies/devices will fit together going forward.
Computerworld:
On June 23, we will publish the last print issue of Computerworld.It was 47 years ago, almost to the day, that Computerworld’s very first issue rolled off the presses: June 21, 1967. The newspaper’s first publisher was the late Patrick J. McGovern, who was the founder and chairman of International Data Group (IDG), Computerworld’s parent company.
It’s sad to lose anything that has endured so long. But we are merely taking part in the natural evolution of the media industry, like so many great publications before us. Trains, after all, were once powered by coal and steam; Computerworld is moving from paper to electrons.
I think Macworld magazine is IDG’s last that still appears in print form. Anyone think the print edition of Macworld will be around in five years? I don’t.
The way things are going, every kid is going to go to school wearing bubble wrap and a helmet. Back in the 1970s (and earlier), parents didn’t stress about our health and safety as much as they do today. It’s not that they cared less – they just didn’t worry compulsively about it.Parents of 2014 need to be reminded of how less restricted, less supervised, less obsessively safety-conscious things were… and it was just fine.
Tthese stories are always kind of amusing to those of us old enough to remember these dangers. And to be clear, a lot of the things this article is nostalgic about were actually bad for us.
Grantland:
There are two things that make Diplomacy so unique and challenging. The first is that, unlike in most board games, players don’t take turns moving. Everyone writes down their moves and puts them in a box. The moves are then read aloud, every piece on the board moving simultaneously.The second is that prior to each move the players are given time to negotiate with each other, as a group or privately. The result is something like a cross between Risk, poker, and Survivor.
I played this game in college and loved it. The key is you can’t win the game without cooperating with at least one other player but you also can’t win without screwing over at least one other player. The “when do I screw over my friend?” is the most fraught part of the game.
The very mention of that word—the single-most offensive name one could ever call a Native American—has always made my blood boil.Non-Natives may never quite understand how deep the term “redskins” cuts into ancient wounds that have never quite healed, and maybe it’s not reasonable to expect them to. But every time Dan Snyder refuses to change his NFL team’s name, even with tribes paying for powerful ads in opposition like the one that recently aired during the NBA Finals, Snyder plunges a long, twisted blade into our hearts.
For any numbers of reasons enumerated here and elsewhere, it’s time to change the name of the team.
The Center for Reading Research:
Some words are better known to men than to women and the other way around. But which are they? On the basis of our vocabulary test, we can start to answer this question. These 24 words should suffice to find out whether a person you are interacting with in digital space is male or female.
I knew all twelve of the “men’s words” and all but two of the “women’s words”. If you have the time, be sure to take their vocabulary test, too.
Stanford Magazine:
Lipreading, which makes one sense do the work of another, is a skill daunting to describe. Rachel Kolb, deaf since birth, shares its mysteries.
Interesting article from the point of view of a deaf person. I’m sure I’ve made the same mistake – assuming if a deaf person can read lips, it’s easy for them.
Macworld:
Mix looks to be yet another example of Adobe pushing to expand the technologies it developed for Photoshop into non-desktop areas like the cloud and, by extension, mobile devices like the iPad. I suspect that artists, designers, and hobbyists who like creating compositions or who want an image editor that ties directly into some of Photoshop’s editing tools and Creative Cloud are going to like Mix. A lot.
I like that Mix doesn’t require a paid Creative Cloud subscription (although it does require an Adobe ID). Makes it more likely I’ll try it out.
New York Times:
Amazon on Wednesday introduced its own smartphone — a device optimized to allow customers to consume great amounts of video, books and music, preferably from Amazon.Jeff Bezos, Amazon’s chief executive, announced the new phone, Fire, here in Seattle, the company’s headquarters.
Amazon executives asked themselves, Mr. Bezos said, only one question: “Can we build a better phone for our most engaged customers?”
“Our most engaged customers” seems to be the key here. What do you think? Is there anything compelling in the “AmaFone” for you?
From the 1950s until the 1970s Bell Labs spent over $500 million developing the videophone. But the technology failed to achieve mainstream success. Why?The story of the Bell Labs videophone — from the experiments of the mid-50s, to the expensive and ultimately failed consumer trials of the 1970s.
This always seemed like one of those technologies forever searching for a problem for it to solve – a problem average consumers really didn’t have or want solved. The irony is now most of us carry around this technology in our pockets every day. But how many of us use it on a regular basis?
Ken Segall:
We all know that things are different in the post-Steve Apple.However, there’s something about the current move to build an in-house marketing agency that’s really, really different. Unlike previous changes, this one isn’t driven by Tim Cook.It comes from a new place, deeper inside the company — from those who long played a part in Steve Jobs’ marketing machine.
The industry and the press seem to be surprised by this development. To many others, it’s a wonder it didn’t happen sooner.
Some fascinating insights into what may be going on behind the scenes at Apple Marketing. Whether this works out for Apple in the long run will be very interesting to see.
Employees of Apple’s retail stores in Australia have reached agreement with the company on a four-year contract that covers pay, benefits and working conditions, but retail observers say Apple’s offer was barely over the retail industry’s current averages, and includes just two percent annual raises.When the agreement becomes effective this November 1st, starting pay for full-time Level 1 employees will be $20.95 per hour (all rates in U.S. dollars), and Level 2 will start at $25.26. Casual employees will receive 25 percent more per hour to offset fewer benefits. Level 3 employees are management, and will receive a base annual pay of $72,779.
It’s impossible to compare the new Australia pay rates to other regions or countries.
While that’s true and standards of living are different in different countries and cities, it certainly seems, on the face of it at least, that store employees in Australia can make a decent living.
iMore:
There are a lot of cool features coming to iOS 8 and OS X Yosemite this fall. One of the most hotly anticipated is Handoff, which enables you to pick up where you left off in an email, a document and other work between iOS and OS X devices. Handoff is elegantly choreographed dance between devices, operating systems and protocols. It’s partly dependent on Bluetooth 4.0, the most recent widespread deployment of the popular short-distance wireless communication protocol, which includes Bluetooth Low Energy (BT LE). So, how can you tell if your Mac is properly equipped to take advantage of it?You can check for yourself if you’re not exactly sure which Mac model you have. It’s a little convoluted, so bear with me and follow these instructions to find out.
Sadly, mine isn’t “Handoff-compatible”.
In an unprecedented ruling, a B.C. court has ordered Google Inc. to block a group of websites from its worldwide search engine – a decision raising questions over how far one country’s courts can exert their power over the borderless Internet.
On the surface, it sounds utterly ridiculous but reading the judge’s reasoning, it makes a little bit of sense. It still likely will get overturned on appeal and might even be unenforceable.
TripAdvisor:
For the second year in a row, Vancouver’s Stanley Park was named the World’s Best Park in the TripAdvisor Travelers’ Choice poll. It’s North America’s third-largest park and gets eight million visitors per year.
Similar to Central Park in the sense that it is an oasis (big enough to get lost in) in the middle of a major city, Stanley Park offers much more and in a wider variety than any city park I’ve ever been in.
Brian Krebs, 41, of KrebsOnSecurity.com, sits at his Northern Virginia home office, showing me his daily routine. A shotgun in a case leans against the corner of the room. On his desk sit four busy computer monitors and two laptops. One of the monitors has video feeds from security cameras around his house; the others show a range of underground forums and websites that sell stolen personal information and credit cards.It’s the home of a man who understands that a malicious intruder could come from anywhere.
Except for war zone journalists, Krebs may be the bravest journalist working today.
Ars Technica:
How long, exactly, do SSDs last?It’s a difficult question to answer because estimating an SSD’s life requires taking a whole lot of factors into consideration—type and amount of NAND used in the drive, overall write amplification, read/write cycle, and more. TechReport…has been subjecting six drives to a long-term torture test to actually measure, rather than estimate, the drives’ service life.
The results are impressive: the consumer-grade SSDs tested all made it to at least 700TB of writes before failing.
The long term viability of SSDs has always been a concern so it’s good to see reports like this coming out that may put some of those to rest. The speed improvements of SSDs are definitely worth it.