MacPaw has released a brand new iPhone app that takes the ideas from Gemini 2, the company’s duplicate file finder on the Mac, and applies them to your iOS photo library. Gemini Photos uses an algorithm to analyze your photos that suggests the ones you should consider deleting. With photo files getting bigger with each improvement of the iPhone’s camera and features like Live Photos and burst mode, a utility like Gemini Photos can save significant amounts of space on your iPhone.
There are a lot of iOS apps that offer varying versions and methods for doing this with varying levels of success and utility. While I like Gemini Photos’ methodology, because I keep my photo library pretty minimal on my iPhone, it’s not a “necessary” app for me. And, with a subscription pricing model or a flat rate of $15, the price point may be steep for a casual user. That being said, if you’re running out of space on your iPhone, give the three-day free trial a shot to see if the app can save you some space.
1Password is one of the macOS apps I rely on most. I’ve been a 1Password Families subscriber since day one, and I am not sure I’d enjoy using a computer, tablet, or smartphone without it. Between passwords, credit card information, and more, it has become an essential element of my day-to-day workflows.
In addition to checking for hacked websites and finding weak and reused passwords, 1Password 7.0 expands the abilities of Watchtower to keep you even safer. It can now be checked against haveibeenpwned.com and tell you if your information has been compromised in a data breach (and all this is done without your passwords leaving your device).
I’ve used 1Password for years and love it. My wife is the typical non-techy who didn’t like trying to come up with a new password for every web site so she used the same one everywhere – Sydney1234. I showed her the error of her ways by “hacking” her favourite shopping site and now she loves using 1Password.
Along with sending out press invites today, Apple confirmed they will be livestreaming the 2018 WWDC Keynote for those of us unable to be there in person.
The app SlowQuitApps does exactly as its name implies. Now, instead of just tapping Command+Q to kill a program, you have to hold Command+Q for a second. A little circular countdown pops up on your screen, closing your app once it completes. That’s it.
This used to be a much more devastating issue but now it’s just an annoyance. Still, nice little utility to have (yes – I know you can just remap Command+Q).
Data excite advertisers. Prowling his London office in jeans, Keith Weed, who oversees marketing and communications for Unilever, one of the world’s largest advertisers, described how mobile phones have elevated data as a marketing tool. “When I started in marketing, we were using secondhand data which was three months old,” he said. “Now with the good old mobile, I have individualized data on people. You don’t need to know their names . . . You know their telephone number. You know where they live, because it’s the same location as their PC.”
Weed knows what times of the day you usually browse, watch videos, answer e-mail, travel to the office—and what travel routes you take. “From your mobile, I know whether you stay in four-star or two-star hotels, whether you go to train stations or airports. I use these insights along with what you’re browsing on your PC. I know whether you’re interested in horses or holidays in the Caribbean.”
By using programmatic computers to buy ads targeting these individuals, he says, Unilever can “create a hundred thousand permutations of the same ad,” as they recently did with a thirty-second TV ad for Axe toiletries aimed at young men in Brazil. The more Keith Weed knows about a consumer, the better he can aim to target a sale.
It feels as if we are at a real inflection point. We can go down the path of allowing marketers unfettered access to all the data they can possible vacuum up about us, giving up privacy in favor of “better” advertisements, or we can try, using any number of personal, governmental and software/hardware-based solutions as we can develop, to lock them out of our lives.
The party is being held at The Ritz, San Jose’s top nightclub, which is just one block from WWDC, on Monday, June 4, 2018, from 8:00 pm to 12:00 am.
You must bring your RSVP to the venue in order to get entry into the party. You also must be 21 because we will be serving free beer and wine throughout the night. Other alcoholic beverages will be available to purchase at the venue.
Please arrive early. Having an RSVP does not guarantee entry into the event.
This is a video of Prince doing a benefit at a Minneapolis club, performing a version of Purple Rain that would go on, after editing, to become the album version of the song.
As you watch the video, check the comments/subtitles to watch for where the album version edits occur. Fascinating to watch this source material of such an important (to me at least) work.
Check this link and this link for some more detail on that 1983 benefit.
Thoughtful post from Jason Snell for Tom’s Guide, with some interesting suggestions for iOS 12.
One section focuses on Notification Center:
Notification Center on iOS is kind of a mess. It’s time for an overhaul. App notifications should be grouped together, with more opportunities to act on notifications directly from the notifications list. Clearing all notifications should be an obvious feature, and one that’s available even on devices without 3D Touch.
I’d add this: Consider requiring a longer tap to jump from a notification to the app tied to that notification.
Why? I frequently find myself going to tap on something toward the top of the screen and, just as I’m about to make contact, a notification appears and I end up tapping the notification instead, launching myself out of my app. If a bit of a long press was required to respond to a notification, my simple tap would be ignored by the notification and I could dismiss it and return to my tap-happiness.
First things first, not sure “so buggy” is the right note here. Might be that, or might be more a combination of “so important” and taking advantage of a feature or bit of code that has been put out to pasture or has been replaced.
That said, this post from Worth Doing Badly is an interesting read, developer or not. The list of apps is long and familiar and, if you are a dev, there’s some depths to plumb.
Getty has seen searched for disability-related images spike in the past year–“wheelchair access” searches were up 371% from 2016 to 2017, and autism-related searches climbed 434%–and the issue of representation became impossible to ignore.
That also became clear to Oath, the parent company of Yahoo and Tumblr, as they were working to set up a website highlighting their work around accessibility in tech and having difficulty finding representative images. So the company, with consult from the National Disability Leadership Alliance, tapped Getty to help change the current representation paradigm from the inside out. Launched May 17, The Disability Collection, a new subcategory of Getty images, will feature people with disabilities in everyday settings.
And:
If more images of people with disabilities in the workplace, attending sporting events, and taking on leadership positions begin to flood the media, perhaps it will help barriers to participation in these fields come down.
Exceptionally well said. One nit, though. As stated by Steven Aquino in this tweet:
The use of “able-bodied” to describe non-disabled people in this story isn’t great.
How about changing that, Fast Company? And if you need some help with wording, I’m sure Steven would be more than happy to help sort that out.
After releasing two Animoji-themed music spots just in time for the Grammy Awards earlier this year followed by another for the UK BRIT music awards in February, Apple has extended the series by featuring South Korean group HYUKOH‘s new single “Citizen Kane,” which was released yesterday on Apple Music ahead of an EP release on May 31st.
Nice find. I love this ad. Love the music, love the dazzling neon-infused graphics. Enjoy.
Big wave of posts over the last day or so, all of them quoting this post, which says, in part:
With Apple’s annual Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) inching closer, Siri has revealed plans for Apple to give the assistant a “brand new voice”, most likely as part of its iOS 12 release.
As discovered by Nathan Simpson when users ask “Hey Siri. Tell me about WWDC”, Siri responds with “La la la, Siri is getting a brand new voice!”.
As discovered by The Apple Post on Monday, when users ask “Hey Siri. Tell me about WWDC” the assistant responds with a couple of different answers, however, the most interesting is when the reply implies of a new “meshey & matte” home for Siri.
First things first, these Siri responses are from the leadup to WWDC 2017, when the HomePod was first announced. Seems like Apple neglected to tweak Siri for this year’s WWDC, leaving those old responses in place, waiting to be rediscovered.
I gave Siri the exact same query, “Tell me about WWDC” and invariably got some form of “You can get all the details on Apple’s web site” with a button to take me there. So this seems fixed now.
It’s easy to take potshots at Asbestos, a proud Canadian town with a terrible, sad history. I’m very impressed that Tom Scott treated it with dignity and respect.
It is the central question in quantum mechanics, and no one knows the answer: What really happens in a superposition—the peculiar circumstance in which particles seem to be in two or more places or states at once? Now, in a forthcoming paper a team of researchers in Israel and Japan has proposed an experiment that could finally let us say something for sure about the nature of this puzzling phenomenon.
Their experiment, which the researchers say could be carried out within a few months, should enable scientists to sneak a glance at where an object—in this case a particle of light, called a photon—actually resides when it is placed in a superposition. And the researchers predict the answer will be even stranger and more shocking than “two places at once.”
I love reading about these kinds of experiments even if I only understand about every third word.
I have no idea who Simon Smith is but this has got to be the funniest thing I’ve read on Twitter in a very long time. Definitely NSFW. Thanks to Diane Patterson for the link.
Are you looking for a better way to manage the relationships you build with customers? What about organizing your workload better? Is closing more deals vital to your business? If any of these sounds like you, then you seriously need to give Daylite a try.
Daylite is the app built for small businesses that want to grow on the Mac, iPhone & iPad. More than just a CRM, Daylite integrates with Apple Mail on the Mac, helps you track all your leads, and share your projects and customers all in one place. Even more, it scales with you as you grow.
Never let anything slip through the cracks again no matter how much you have on your plate. Daylite also allows you to create powerful integrations with your favorite apps through Zapier so you can save time and get more done.
Need a better way to stay on top of your customer relationships, accomplish more, and close more deals?
A 2018 NYCxDESIGN Awards Finalist, the Modern Record Player is sure to remind design-versed minds of Dieter Rams’ iconic Braun SK55, especially in its all-white iteration. Sharing a vented speaker front design with controls filtered of excess ornamentation, Symbol Audio’s modern day version houses a custom-built class AB amplifier powering custom-engineered speakers and crossovers, each developed in partnership with Morel, a company with a storied history of its own. The turntable itself offers an acrylic platter floating upon a three-phase isolation system engineered to prevent unwanted vibration.
I looked at this for a few minutes before deciding if I liked it or not. I do.
There’s now a new way to customize your drive on Google Maps for iOS. Depending on your mood, you can swap out the classic blue navigation arrow for a new icon—a stylish sedan, a timeless pickup truck, or a speedy SUV.
Okay, this isn’t the most productive feature in the world, but it’s cool.
Former President Barack Obama formally announced on Monday a multiyear production deal with Netflix in which he and the former first lady, Michelle Obama, will produce television shows and films for the streaming service.
And
Instead, a release from Netflix said the Obamas will produce “scripted series, unscripted series, docu-series, documentaries and features” that highlight issues and themes the president pursued during his eight years in office.
It will be interesting to see how these shows evolve. I imagine they will be a very popular part of the Netflix catalog.
The information in the exposed database included the email addresses of parents who used TeenSafe, the Apple ID email addresses of their children, and children’s device name and unique identifier. Plaintext passwords for the children’s Apple ID were also among the data set, despite claims on the company’s website that it uses encryption to protect customer data.
It’s incredible to me that companies allow this kind of stuff to happen. It’s inexcusable.
its quite hard to believe that you are this young and this good at making reviews for WSJ(btw i dont think this is an accurate information i just found this funny ?@JoannaSternpic.twitter.com/wBc6ybcWsb
First things first, Joanna Stern is one of the founders of The Verge and now writes a widely read tech column for the Wall Street Journal.
Here’s Joanna’s delighted response:
That’s it, I finally love Siri. Apple finally did it.
Here’s a link to Joanna’s Wikipedia page. This turns out to be important since this is the page Siri quotes in the response to the question, “How old is Joanna Stern?”, as shown in the embedded tweet.
I went to the Wikipedia page and did not find any reference to a birthdate. Birthdates are common for most biographical Wikipedia pages. So how did Siri come up with an age as a response to this request?
And to make matters even more confusing, when I posed the same question to Siri, I get the same link, but this response:
Joanna Stern is 32
Siri also helpfully provides a date of birth of December 5, 1985.
According to Joanna’s response on Twitter, both of these are wrong.
This anecdote made me think about the source of Siri’s information and how vulnerable Siri, Alexa, Cortana and Google-person are to misinformation. I’m also interested in how Siri came up with that birthdate, given the link was to a page with no embedded birthdate field.
Jim Black, former technology evangelist at Apple, tells the story of legendary game developer John Carmack (Doom, Quake, lots more) coming to Apple to meet with Steve Jobs:
> I never knew whether it was by design or not, but on that day John wore a T-shirt that featured a smiley face with a bullet hole in the forehead from which trickled a few drops of blood. After an hour of waiting for Steve in IL1, he marched into the room, and immediately mistook me for John Carmack, extending his hand to shake mine (we had never met). I locked eyes with Steve Jobs and looked down significantly at the Apple badge on my belt. Without missing a beat, Steve shifted his extended hand to John’s. >
> I never knew whether it was by design or not, but on that day John wore a T-shirt that featured a smiley face with a bullet hole in the forehead from which trickled a few drops of blood. After an hour of waiting for Steve in IL1, he marched into the room, and immediately mistook me for John Carmack, extending his hand to shake mine (we had never met). I locked eyes with Steve Jobs and looked down significantly at the Apple badge on my belt. Without missing a beat, Steve shifted his extended hand to John’s. >
>Adding unique pieces like a Custom Face T-Shirt to your wardrobe can take that personal expression even further. Imagine stepping into a meeting or gathering, wearing something distinct that catches everyone’s eye, just as John’s T-shirt did. Whether you opt for a subtle design or a bolder statement, these custom tees give you the chance to stand out, make others smile, and share a piece of yourself with the world—sometimes before you even say a word. > > That’s when Steve noticed the T-shirt and the meeting, as soon as it had begun, took a turn for the worse.
I decided I would target the CEO of Reddit with Facebook ads.
But how? I didn’t have a big budget so I needed to be clever.
It turns out the Reddit CEO had a public Facebook profile, so I could go there to see details about him. Where he lived. What he was interested in. I took that info to the Facebook platform to help narrow down the campaign. But I didn’t want everyone to click on it, just one person. So I custom tailored the ad to directly target the one person I wanted to read it.
I applaud Chris’ initiative here. Incredibly clever to figure out how to get in front of a difficult to reach person via a highly personalized Facebook ad. His strategy worked. Read the post for the details.
As to how much Chris spent:
The ad reached 197 people. 4 People clicked on it. One of them was the CEO of Reddit. I spent a total of $10.62.
Steve Huffman, CEO of Reddit, saw my ad, clicked on it, read (probably skimmed) my article, and liked it well enough to send a note to Reddit HR to contact me about a position.
Mission accomplished.
Clever as this is, I can’t help but see a stalker/creepy side to this story as well. The thought that someone could use information easily available on the internet to build a low cost ad that is almost guaranteed to reach the targeted individual seems custom made for a stalker. Or for someone trying to win an election.
When Google Photos was announced in 2015, I downloaded it. I had no intention of giving every photo I’ve ever taken to Google—which categorizes them, runs them through image recognition and facial recognition algorithms, makes weird algorithmic slideshows out of them, and adds them to its massive photo database—but I wanted to try it out in any case. I quickly realized it was not for me, but I did not delete the app.
And:
I texted him asking to see a picture. He responded with a video that he uploaded to Google Photos. Because I had Google Photos installed on my phone, it tried to open in the app. You cannot use Google Photos on iOS—even to view photos that have been shared with you—without granting the app access to all the photos on your phone. Because I was drunk, and because I wanted to see the puppy, I changed my app permissions. I watched the video (very cute, embedded below), the band started, I put the phone in my pocket.
You know what happened next. All his photos went up to Google’s servers, and went through the AI analysis that all photos go through.
Two sides to this. First, obviously, Jason made a mistake giving Google Photos permission to access his photos. Google Photos asked, as it should.
That said, this is the text of the alert Google Photos put up:
Google Photos needs access to your photo library to show photos in the app
Reading Jason’s piece, I don’t get any sense that Google Photos notified him that they were going to start uploading his photos to the Google servers, to start AI-analyzing them.
Should Apple require a finer grain notification when something like this happens? Or, at the very least, should Google recognize that this is a major change in the equation, let the user know that permission to show you a photo from another user gives them permission to suck up and analyze all your photos.
In an open letter to Apple that published this morning, a group identifying themselves as The Developers Union wrote that “it’s been difficult for developers to earn a living by writing software” built on Apple’s existing values. The group then asked Apple to allow free trials for apps, which would give customers “the chance to experience our work for themselves, before they have to commit to making a purchase.”
Free app trials have been a sticking point over the past several years for some iOS app developers, who believe that mobile apps–especially premium ones that cost more than a few bucks and aren’t games–should mimic the experience that people have had for years with desktop apps. It’s a particularly thorny issue for app makers who don’t make subscription apps, but who still want to give potential customers a free trial of their apps.
“Fed up” may be a misleading characterization of one of this loosely formed union’s “demands” but I agree the issue of free trials is a sticking point. I try out (and therefore buy) much less software from the iOS App Store than I ever did with the old shareware model specifically because I can’t “try before I buy” iOS apps.
Thanks to Bare Bones Software for sponsoring The Loop this week. BBEdit is one of my most used apps over the last 25 years of my career. It was installed first on any new computer I had over the years because it was so crucial to all the work I did.
Back in the 90s, we built our Web sites from scratch, so we used BBEdit to hand-code everything we needed to get the site up-and-running. We didn’t have a CMS at the time, so BBEdit became the default app for actually posting stories as well. It was an all-purpose tool that became indispensable for us.
We didn’t just use BBEdit for building and maintaining the Website, we also used it as our default word processing tool. Every word written for the stories we posted was done in BBEdit.
Now, as BBEdit celebrates its 25th anniversary, I can still say I am a proud user. Congrats to the crew at Bare Bones Software and thanks for making such a great product.
Focus on one of these two, either “brainstorm” or “green needle”. Only think of one, then click play on the video embedded in the tweet below:
if you think of the word “brainstorm” you hear the word brainstorm. if you think of the words “green needle” you hear green needle. pic.twitter.com/kNBfIINpgL
Lucky guess, right? Now switch words, really focus on just one word at a time.
No matter the order, I hear the word I was thinking every freaking time. Crazy. Is this brainwashing? Or just cool brain science? This is damn close to magic, as far as I am concerned.
California’s wiretapping law is a “two-party consent” law. California makes it a crime to record or eavesdrop on any confidential communication, including a private conversation or telephone call, without the consent of all parties to the conversation.
It’s possible the demo was genuine and the Duplex team didn’t think this through. Seems to me more likely that this was staged, showing off technology that certainly exists, at least in pieces. And if it was staged, that call seems likely to have been recorded with the restaurant’s permission.
Also worth reading is the Twitter thread that shows John Gruber reaching out to followers to help figure out which restaurant was the one in question. Here’s the start of the thread. I found the whole thing fascinating.
This story was at the top of hacker news this morning. It’s a fascinating read, even if you know nothing about programming. And it’s a riveting true story. I’m convinced this would make a fantastic movie.
I didn’t quote any of it because it’d be hard to do so without including spoilers. But read it to the end. Fantastic.
