Recent Articles

Hannah Newman:

The researchers examined close to 70,000 cancer cases and found that sitting is associated with a 24% increased risk of colon cancer, a 32% increased risk of endometrial cancer, and a 21% increased risk of lung cancer.

CJ Chilvers:

I’m hoping Apple is smart enough to figure out what the majority of photographers need (which is probably 10% of what Lightroom CAN do), and concentrate on making that feature set fast, lightweight and fun. That may get me to switch from using separate apps for everything.

Here’s the features, off the top of my head, which I use in Lightroom:

• Rating
• Develop Presets
• Noise Reduction
• Exposure adjustment
• Print dialog (for ICC color profiles)
• Export Presets

That’s all I need. If Apple wants me to use Photos.app all I need are VSCO presets (or let me make my own) and excellent noise reduction. Lightroom has the best noise reduction, Aperture’s wasn’t even close. Give me those things and I will be very happy.

Well that is a hell of an IFTTT action.

Jim Dalrymple:

Apple introduced a new Photos app during its Worldwide Developers Conference that will become the new platform for the company. As part of the transition, Apple told me today that they will no longer be developing its professional photography application, Aperture.

End of an era. Thank God.

I loved Aperture when it came out, but Lightroom got better exponentially faster than Aperture — right now Lightroom 5 is absolutely great.

I’m excited to see the new Photos app, but I am tempering that.

Reader Joseph S. pointed me to this video from Amazon as a response to my post about Amazon’s terrible marketing.

This video is much closer to what a good marketing video should be, which makes me wonder why the Fire Phone video is so poor. But now I have two questions about this video:

1. Why in the world is a little kid narrating it? That makes no sense, adults are using the product. Is this to bang me over the head with the idea that “it’s so easy a kid can use it?” Stupid.
2. Why is there even narration? The video would be much better if we just heard the muted sounds of life with a lovely melody accompanying those sounds. Get rid of the narrator.

So close Amazon, so close.

Bryce Covert:

Former NASA scientists found that people who take vacations experience an 82 percent increase in job performance upon their return, with longer vacations making more of an impact than short ones. Putting in too many hours, on the other hand, does the opposite. More than 60 hours a week will create a small productivity flurry at first, but it’ll start to decline again after three or four weeks. Other studies have found the same initial burst followed, but a worse decline.

A couple people have noted that they have noticed a large change, for the better, with my writing and this site. What could it be?

Well, I’ve taken more time off in the past six months than I have in the past three years combined. I can’t say that is the only factor, but it’s pretty compelling.

(I’m also getting a lot more done.)

Ben Thompson:

I question, though, if Now will turn out to be as meaningful to most people as Google thinks it will be. In other words, how many people actually want a personal digital assistant? There is an alternative view of computers in which they are more akin to a tool, something you pick up and use to do a job, and then set down when you are done with it. To be sure, that tool is incredibly powerful and capable of doing a great number of jobs, but it still operates in service of something outside of computers.

That’s such a huge question, because as Thompson notes it is a big departure from what Siri is doing. It’s: I know what you want, versus I can answer that for you.

Or, to pull in Star Trek: The Next Generation, it’s Picard walking up to the Replicator and the computer just spitting our some Earl Grey (even though it is the most predictable thing ever the computer never did this), instead (like with Siri) Picard asked for what he wanted and then got it..

In fact, the entire advanced computing system on TNG centered around the idea that the computer knew everything very quickly, but never offered that information — you had to ask. Google sees that as a fundamental problem that needs solving, and Apple seems to see that as the goal.

I love it when good apps get even better. I can’t wait for the next project I need this on.

Alistair Barr and Rolfe Winkler:

The move, announced Wednesday at the company’s developer conference in San Francisco, is a first step toward turning Gmail into a platform for developers who want to leverage the contents of users’ email for productivity and other applications. A travel app, for example, could scan your email inbox for booking confirmations and automatically compile them into an itinerary. An expense app can dig through your inbox for receipts and automatically file them to your cloud-based account.

This clearly sounds horrible from a privacy standpoint. Who wants developers sleuthing through their emails? I sure as hell don’t.

In an interesting note about the privacy, WSJ notes:

The new Google API may help with this. With IMAP, developers had to access all of a user’s messages to make their applications work, even if the apps only needed one specific type of data. The new API lets developers access only what they need. For example, if their app just sends mail on behalf of a user and does read mail, developers can limit their request to send-only, DeFriez said.
“There are actually less privacy concerns than IMAP,” Mawani said.

I find this statement really odd. The phrasing starts off to make it sound as though you have fine grain controls over what someone can access over the API. I picture something like: “Only emails with Confirmation in the subject line.” That actually would be pretty great.

And then you read the rest of the sentence and it sounds more like the API privacy controls will be more like: “Send only, Scan only, Send & Scan.” Which is really nothing to brag about.

All of that leads me to: how is this less of a concern than IMAP?

Also, why does Google hate IMAP so much? Granted it is not great, but it’s a standard.

ACLU:

The judge ordered the government to create a new process that remedies these shortcomings, calling the current process “wholly ineffective” and a violation of the Fifth Amendment’s guarantee of due process. The ruling also granted a key request in the lawsuit, ordering the government to tell the ACLU’s clients why they are on the No Fly List and give them the opportunity to challenge their inclusion on the list before the judge.

You guys can’t see my face, but it’s what you might call ‘a shit eating grin’.

Well, kind of (that’s not my headline). You see Nest is opening up some access to their devices so that other things can tie into the devices (HomeKit envy much?). As part of that Google is getting access to data so that a user can use voice controls to control the Nest devices.

It’s also opt-in, which is good.

So on the one hand you have Nest claiming that Google won’t get their hands on Nest data, and then you have this. Even if we give Nest & Google the benefit of the doubt, this is a case of incredibly stupid timing.

But then as Rolfe Winkler and Alistair Barr reports, Matt Rogers a Nest co-founder had this to add:

“We’re not telling Google anything that it doesn’t already know,” said Rogers.

Well that’s reassuring.

Rich Mogull:

With every iteration of OS X, iOS, and iCloud, we see Apple add increasing the privacy protections it provides its users. It has consistently enabled customers to protect their personal information from advertisers, governments, third-party developers, and even Apple itself.

Bottom line: Apple knows that it quickly will matter to consumers to have a privacy conscious company.

Dara Lind:

The Supreme Court just ruled unanimously in two decisions that police officers can’t search the cell phone of someone they’ve stopped or arrested unless they have a warrant. That’s true even if the cops suspect that the phone has data that’s relevant to the crime.

You need to know this, because cops will still try to get you to consent — not a lawyer, just saying.

Leo Kelion:

Desert Wolf’s website states that its Skunk octacopter drone is fitted with four high-capacity paintball barrels, each capable of firing up to 20 bullets per second.

In addition to pepper-spray ammunition, the firm says it can also be armed with dye-marker balls and solid plastic balls.

The machine can carry up to 4,000 bullets at a time as well as “blinding lasers” and on-board speakers that can communicate warnings to a crowd.

That’s a real thing, they’ve already sold some, and not to governments.

Frederic Lardinois:

It also launched Drive for Work, a new version of Drive and Google apps for businesses that comes with a number of extra security features. The one feature most users will notice first, however, is that Drive for Work doesn’t have any storage limitations.

There’s a bunch of other, actually, great features too. To bad it is from Google.

Between Drive and the news of Microsoft’s storage limit increases it looks as though Dropbox may not be long for this world. Dropbox is great, but Microsoft and Google are coming close to having better offerings — and Apple may feel the pressure and drop their prices too. If Apple does that, well I would see no reason to use Dropbox.

Fascinating new smart watch from Withings. It looks like a traditional analog watch, but contains all sorts of tech. For $390 it’s not cheap, but it also doesn’t look terrible — so there’s that.

The site is terrible as it hijacks your scrolling, but the highlights are:

• Step tracking (it says distance too, but color me skeptical)
• Swimming tracking (umm, ok?)
• Sleep monitoring (when you fell asleep, how long, etc.)
• Tap the glass twice to view alarms (sounds neat)
• Vibration in the watch (used for alerts and alarms)

I list that out in regurgitative fashion because their website scrolls so terribly I wouldn’t want to subject you to it.

I have a watch with a vibrating alarm, and they don’t work all that well. At least mine isn’t strong enough to wake me.

That said, this is a better train of thought than every other smart watch I have seen.