“Growing up on the plantation there in Mississippi, I would work Monday through Saturday noon,” he said. “I’d go to town on Saturday afternoons, sit on the street corner, and I’d sing and play.
“I’d have me a hat or box or something in front of me. People that would request a gospel song would always be very polite to me, and they’d say: ‘Son, you’re mighty good. Keep it up. You’re going to be great one day.’ But they never put anything in the hat.
“But people that would ask me to sing a blues song would always tip me and maybe give me a beer. They always would do something of that kind. Sometimes I’d make 50 or 60 dollars one Saturday afternoon. Now you know why I’m a blues singer.”
It was while playing in one of the clubs that a fight broke out over a woman, causing a fire. After rushing out of the wooden building, he realised that he had left his guitar behind.
He risked his life by going back in to rescue his instrument. He named it after the woman whose charms had been behind the trouble: Lucille.
Hosted by longtime Objective-C hacker, Pixarian, and CAM board member (in order of seniority: 26 yrs, 22 yrs, 13 yrs) Dr. Michael B. Johnson, this lively evening will feature a number of special guests from back in the day, including former solidThinking developer and current VP of Tools at Pixar Guido Quaroni, ur-NeXTSTEP developer Andy Stone, and several others too shy to let us give out their names (some of whom might work at a local fruit company).
I went to this event last year, and will try again this year.
“What is this a picture of?” Humans can usually answer such questions instantly, but in the past it’s always seemed out of reach for computers to do this. For nearly 40 years I’ve been sure computers would eventually get there—but I’ve wondered when. I’ve built systems that give computers all sorts of intelligence, much of it far beyond the human level. And for a long time we’ve been integrating all that intelligence into the Wolfram Language.
Now I’m excited to be able to say that we’ve reached a milestone: there’s finally a function called ImageIdentify built into the Wolfram Language that lets you ask, “What is this a picture of?”—and get an answer.
And today we’re launching the Wolfram Language Image Identification Project on the web to let anyone easily take any picture (drag it from a web page, snap it on your phone, or load it from a file) and see what ImageIdentify thinks it is.
Here’s a link to the ImageIdentify page. Drop some pictures on it, help it learn.
I dropped an image of Jim onto the page and it said Jim was a person (and not a bearded wonder, which is what I expected). I dropped an image of an Apple Watch and ImageIdentify called it an analog watch.
The Apple Watch contains security measures to prevent thieves from accessing your data, but it doesn’t include the necessary features to dissuade thieves from trying to steal your device to begin with.
The problem stems from the lack of an Activation Lock-like feature on Watch OS 1.0.
Unlike the iPhone, if someone steals your Apple Watch, they can easily reset the device (bypass the passcode), and pair it with a new iPhone logged in to a different iCloud account. In other words, it’s totally feasible to steal an Apple Watch and set it up on a different device as if you just purchased it from an Apple Store.
Caveat emptor. Know, going into this transaction, that there is no Find My Apple Watch and there is no Erase My Apple Watch. The good news is that your data is protected. It either lives on your iPhone and won’t disappear if someone takes your watch, or it is protected by a passcode lock, should you choose to enable one:
The positive spin that we can put on this is that the Apple Watch does protect your data. If you have a passcode lock on the device, which we wholeheartedly recommend, at least it will prevent the thief from accessing your personal data on the device.
It will be interesting to see if Apple ultimately adds in an Activation Lock feature for future versions of Apple Watch. I suspect this will become more likely if we start seeing a wave of Apple Watch thefts.
Apple’s upcoming Beats-based streaming music service will likely be named “Apple Music” and will have deep social networking integration for artists, according to industry sources briefed on the plans for the new service.
Taking a page out of the discontinued iTunes Ping feature from earlier this decade, the service will allow artists to have their own pages within the streaming music service that they can use to post track samples, photos, videos, and concert updates.
I liked the idea of Ping. Where it fell down was in implementation. Adding social to an app is tricky. Like the ability to design a beautifully crafted device, creating a social network requires insight and experience, as well as an intuitive sense of what and how much people want to see and share. In that regard, Ping was a swing and a miss.
Reading the 9to5mac piece, I get the sense that Apple is building a promotional vehicle for artists, more than a social network for the rest of us. Is this the right approach? Looks like we’ll find out in a bit less than a month.
Can your Apple Watch help prevent a heart attack? Surprisingly, the short answer is, it seems likely that the Apple Watch may help predict a coming heart attack so that preventative measures can be taken.
Christina Farr, writing for KQED Science:
We could send an alert to someone who is soon to have a stroke or heart attack if we do enough measurements of an ECG and we gather other data points about that person.
At my company, AliveCor, we are working to deskill the process of determining characteristics of Arrhythmia’s [an irregular heart beat]. On our app today, we have an FDA-approved algorithm that can detect the presence of Atrial fibrillation [an irregular, often rapid heart rate that can cause poor blood flow]. We are also logging the context around it: How is it linked to coffee consumption or stress?
In the next few years, I believe that the industry will be able to spot the characteristics of someone who’s likely to have a heart attack in the next three days.
The whole article is fascinating. Between the heartbeat sensor on the Apple Watch and the crowd-sourcing brought to the table by ResearchKit, Apple has pushed the practical side of medicine forward in a truly significant way.
When I first heard about the Blade, I was skeptical. It uses adhesive to attach to the underside of your MacBook, MacBook Pro, or iPad. That glued-on unit features a swing out arm that you can attach to most security cables.
The fact that is glues in place really gave me pause. The thought of permanently attaching something to my computer scares me a bit. And how good can an adhesive solution be?
If you have the need for a cable lock, take a look at the two videos on this page. The first shows someone trying to pull The Blade off a frame to which it was glued. Though I’m not sure this guy put in a 100% effort on trying to pry the lock loose, I think he might hurt himself if he tried any harder.
The second video is a review that shows how the product works. It really does look like a good solution.
I’m not a big fan of computer cable locks. A determined thief with a pair of loppers can cut through pretty much any cable, lock or no lock. That said, a cable lock does offer a certain level of security, especially if your back will only be turned for a short amount of time.
All that said, I am a fan of clever design, and I do think The Blade fits that description.
Stephen Orth lays out his Apple Watch experience, comparing it to his Pebble experience, and offering his take on the Apple Watch interface and its current level of waterproofing.
The Cupertino idiot tax operation has typically used its WWDC keynotes to show off iOS updates to iOS and OS X software developers before releasing the final version for public consumption later in the summer.
Facebook’s long-rumored plan to directly host articles from news organizations will start on Wednesday, concluding months of delicate negotiations between the Internet giant and publishers that covet its huge audience but fear its growing power.Nine media companies, including NBC News and The New York Times, have agreed to the deal, despite concerns that their participation could eventually undermine their own businesses.
In effect, Facebook is using its massive user base as clout to stand between users and the news. Rather than click on a news story link to leave Facebook’s warm embrace, you’ll see the story, in its entirety, in your Facebook feed. This cuts off the ability of the news gatherers to control their distribution and their destiny. I once interviewed a freelance editor who’d lost a major contract after their traffic tanked—apparently an algorithm tweak had buried their partner site under paid placements from اون لاين كازينو networks.
This also gives Facebook tremendous power over what news is fit for their users. How could this be good for the news business?
Apple Watch content backs up automatically to your companion iPhone, so you can restore your Apple Watch from a backup. When you back up your iPhone to iCloud or iTunes, your iPhone backup will also include your Apple Watch data.
The ruling came a week after what would have been the May 4 start of a criminal trial in Manhattan federal court of Ceglia, a 41-year-old wood pellet salesman from Wellsville, New York.
Instead, Ceglia removed his electronic ankle bracelet in early March and disappeared, along with his wife, two children and a dog. His whereabouts remain unknown.
Paul Ceglia forged documents and claimed Mark Zuckerberg owed him half of Facebook. Ceglia is now a fugitive and Facebook is suing the lawyers. I think it’s great.
Serenity Caldwell, writing for iMore, talks about taking her Apple Watch into an extremely active lifestyle. And it doesn’t get much more active (and fraught with more Apple Watch peril) than roller derby.
From Money’s recap of the Apple Pay CurrentC battle:
Now, seven months after Apple Pay debuted, the retailers are still struggling to hold the line. MCX member BestBuy recently announced it would start accepting Apple Pay, and Dekkers Davidson, the group’s chief executive, resigned one day later “to pursue other opportunities.” But the internal strife distracts from MCX’s biggest failure: The collective has thus far proved unable to get its app into the marketplace. CurrentC remains months away from reaching most consumers. A limited test in a “mid-sized market” is planned for sometime this summer, with a wider launch scheduled for later in the year.
A remarkable lack of execution.
Experts say retailers face two major obstacles in their efforts to create their own alternative payments solution. First, it may simply be too difficult to corral enough competing merchants into a coherent, cooperative group—especially when one of those merchants, Walmart, poses an existential threat to the others.
And my favorite line from the whole piece:
Apple Pay has the edge in the one feature that matters most: it actually exists.
Verizon snaps up that elusive dial-up expertise. Snarkiness aside, this is about automated advertising technology:
The acquisition would give Verizon, which has set its sights on entering the crowded online video marketplace, access to advanced technology AOL has developed for selling ads and delivering high-quality Web video.
And:
The U.S. wireless business has matured in recent years, leaving carriers like Verizon, AT&T Inc. and Sprint Corp. increasingly fighting to steal market share from one another. Offering digital video over wireless connections represents a growth avenue in coming years for Verizon, which last year brought in $127 billion in revenue and profit of $12 billion.
Verizon has said it plans to launch a video service focused on mobile devices this summer. The company has offered few details, but last month Chief Financial Officer Fran Shammo said the service will offer a mix of paid, free and ad-supported content and won’t try to replicate traditional TV.
And:
Under the leadership of Tim Armstrong, a former Google Inc. executive who took over as chief executive of AOL in 2009, the company has invested heavily in ad technology—including an automated, or “programmatic” platform that allows marketers to bid for inventory electronically. In 2013 AOL purchased Adap.tv, an “exchange” that connects buyers and sellers of online video advertising.
AOL also built a stable of content including online news sites such as Huffington Post, TechCrunch and Engadget. And it has even produced original Web series. It recently launched “Connected,” a documentary-style series in which the subjects film themselves.
AOL has made some shrewd investments, made themselves relevant again.
This past week I’ve been slowly plotting a series of tests to batter the Apple Watch and see exactly how well it’d hold up to a variety of aquatic adventures. No doubt I’ve been showering with it twice-daily since it arrived…but that’s kinda lame in the grand scheme of waterproof tests. So while a few people have casually doggy-paddled around their backyard pool with the watch, I wanted to kick it up a notch…or, rather, a lot of notches.
Interesting that Apple seems to have seriously under promised on the waterproofing of the Apple Watch.
Apple today announced an expansion of its renewable energy and environmental protection initiatives in China, including a new multi-year project with World Wildlife Fund to significantly increase responsibly managed forests across China. The new forestland program aims to protect as much as 1 million acres of responsibly managed working forests which provide fiber for pulp, paper and wood products.
Apple is doing so much more than just releasing products.
With regard to Apple’s Cook, he said: “He’s interested in Apple’s intervention in the car, that’s his role.” Marchionne was not more specific about Apple.
Apple is one of the few companies with the money and resources to come up with something interesting in the automobile space.
