Technology Archives - Page 11 of 74

YouTube Donation Cards for Nonprofits

We recently began rolling out donation cards to US creators, which let your subscribers and viewers donate directly from your videos. Just add a donation card, pick a nonprofit, and start doing good. You can choose any United States, IRS-validated 501(c)3 public nonprofit organization and they receive 100% of the money donated. We’re excited to take this first step and look forward to expanding into other countries so creators across the world can power nonprofits they care about.

Source: YouTube Creator Blog: Transform a view into a donation

I could see this being a nice secondary stream of donations for nonprofits and churches in 2016…

Peak iPhone

Too Many iPhones

From earlier today before Apple’s Q1 Earnings call:

“When CEO Tim Cook reports Tuesday on Apple’s sales for the last three months of 2015, investors will be watching closely for any hints about how Apple’s signature smartphone is faring in the current quarter. Sales usually fall somewhat after the holiday shopping season. But analysts say it appears Apple has cut production orders from key suppliers in recent weeks, suggesting it’s lowered its own forecasts.”

Source: Is Apple Reaching Peak iPhone? | CBS

And from just now after the earnings call regarding the upcoming Q2 2016:

… The company expects to report between $50 and $53 billion in revenue. That would put it below the $58 billion it reported in Q2 2015 and would mark the first year over year decline in revenue for the company in years.The slight decrease can likely be attributed to falling iPhone sales, which have been predicted for some time now. In Q1, Apple reported sales of 74.7 million iPhones, which is just barely better than the 74.5 million it did in the same quarter last year. Apple did not say how many it expects to sell in Q2, but analysts have predicted declines as high as 25 percent.

Source: Have we reached peak iPhone? It’s complicated | The Verge

Apple sold an average of 34,000 phones per hour for 13 consecutive weeks. That’s incredible, but unsustainable, growth. If anything, Wall Street loves growth. With China’s economy on a rapid downturn and the U.S. economy weak due to a number of variables that could lead us into a potentially havoc Spring, Summer, and Fall, Apple is wisely hedging its bets on production. That’s especially wise since carrier subsidies for new devices are now non-existent in the U.S. and each new iteration of the iPhone undergoes a “meh, it’s not that different from my old one” period with potential upgrading users.

If nothing else, we’ve learned today that the media loves using the term “Peak iPhone” (give the term a google if you’d like to see).

Apple’s iOS Home Screen Problem

I flip back-and-forth between iOS and Android, mostly iPhone 6s Plus and a Nexus device, all the time and enjoy both operating systems (though I do enjoy Android more to be honest… much to the chagrin of my family and friends who all use iMessage on iOS and therefore I’m a “green bubble” when on my Nexus device).

However, I’m always curious as to why iOS users who transition or experiment with Android feel the compulsion to stack their home screens full of app icons.

Not that it’s a cumbersome way to navigate your mobile device (I think it is), but it’s a curious hold-over from the vision Steve Jobs and his devs had for the original iPhone in ’07. I’d wager that even he would think it’s time to move past that convention in 2016 (something which you can easily do on Android, but not so much on the aging iOS interface). Maybe Apple in the Cook Era is too deep in the institutional molasses.

Whenever someone wants to play with one of my Android devices who has previously been an iPhone and iPad only user for the last several years, they almost always respond positively and immediately to the widgets on my home screen.

“I like widgets a lot, and wish iOS had something similar.”

Source: A Week With Android — Medium

I do wonder how the masses will respond when / if Apple ever adopts widgets… the “rows and rows of apps” conventions has been successfully turned into a standard way of interacting with mobile devices here in the US.

However, that’s not the case in the Asian markets where Apple really wants to expand in the coming years as it has reached a relative saturation point in North America with devices. Apple is slowly sneaking widgets in via the Notifications shade, but I’m not sure how many users actually know / use / understand that interface.

Of course, I was totally wrong in 2007 about widgets and the iPhone, so what do I know?

Maybe the fear of being a “green bubble” will be enough to keep users on iOS, at least here in the US.

And don’t get me started on how / why the iPad Pro still uses the same “rows of app icons” convention…

Throughout his career, Bowie pushed the boundaries of music from all angles: His public persona constantly evolved as he shifted genres like a time traveler’s temporal jumps. He also wasn’t afraid to grasp at the future of business: He launched an ISP called BowieNet in 1998, saying at the time, “If I was 19 again, I’d bypass music and go right to the internet.”

Source: David Bowie predicted the Apple Music future in 2003 | Cult of Mac

The Human Hope, the Cloud, and why 70% of internet traffic flows through Northern Virginia

Short but fascinating-to-ponder pilgrim’s progress piece…

And maybe my desire to submerge myself in that sediment, to weave The Cloud into the timelines of railroad robber-barons and military R&D, emerges from the same anxiety that makes me go try to find these buildings in the first place: that maybe we have mistaken The Cloud’s fiction of infinite storage capacity for history itself. It is a misunderstanding that hinges on a weird, sad, very human hope that history might actually end, or at least reach some kind of perfect equipoise in which nothing terrible could ever happen again. As though if we could only collate and collect and process and store enough data points, the world’s infinite vaporware of real-time data dashboards would align into some kind of ultimate sand mandala of total world knowledge, a proprietary data nirvana without terror or heartbreak or bankruptcy or death, heretofore only gestured towards in terrifying wall-to-wall Accenture and IBM advertisements at airports.

Source: Up to 70 Percent of Global Internet Traffic Goes Through Northern Virginia – Nextgov.com

The New York Public Library Uploads 200,000 Images for Public Use

What the web was made for… much more beneficial to humanity than social media silos or native content ads:

The New York Public Library just uploaded nearly 200,000 images you can use for free | The Verge: “The New York Public Library just released a treasure trove of digitized public domain images, featuring epic poetry from the 11th century to photographs of used car lots in Columbus, Ohio from the 1930s. Over 180,000 manuscripts, maps, photographs, sheet music, lithographs, postcards, and other images were released online Wednesday in incredibly high resolution, and are available to download using the library’s user-friendly visualization tool. It’s a nostalgist’s dream come true.”

2015 and the Return to Long Form

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It annoys me beyond belief when people tell me our podcasts “should be 20 or so minutes” on Thinking.FM…

All-day podcasts and brick-sized books. Or, why 2015 was the year the long form fought back | Books | The Guardian: “There is something almost inexpressibly appealing about this, in an era when almost all other content – articles, podcasts, videos, TV shows – arrives doing jazz hands, anxiously soliciting the reader’s or listener’s or viewer’s attention by means of outrageous headlines or self-conscious gimmicks, in a determined effort to make things seem more interesting than, on inspection, they turn out to be.”

We (I think unfortunately) gave in to the loud minority on Thinking Religion, but I still very much personally enjoy the flexibility and personality of long form podcasts. And books. And blog posts. And thoughts.

Despite our newfound digital souls, we’re rekindling the notion that not everything can or should be “bite sized” to satiate our digital materialism.

Parents Want to Know: Why Doesn’t iPad Have Multi-User Accounts Yet?

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It absolutely baffles me that there is no “Parent Mode” on iPads for adding multiple logins. Amazon does it insanely well with its FreeTime offering (my kids love it) on both Kindle DX tablets as well as “regular” Kindles. Android does it well and allows for parents to easily set up multi-user accounts on one device. Even Chromebooks do it well with managed user accounts (which is what we use for the kids’ laptops in our house).

I’m guessing the “buy an iPad for your kid if you don’t want them messing with your enterprise business files!” mentality of Apple has served them well.

Once Apple does enable multi-user or managed user accounts, people will laud Apple with a technological breakthrough despite the intentional foot dragging to cause more iPad sales.

iOS 9 iPad multi-user feature coming alongside split-screen apps | BGR: “However, the feature won’t launch with iOS 9.0 this fall, but sometime after that. Apparently, multi-user support is still in development, and might not be unveiled at WWDC next week.”

Nope, not yet.

A Second Life? Virtual Reality’s Coming Impact on Marketing

Emotion + Experience = Marketing

I do wonder about the scale of virtual reality. With Google investing in Cardboard, and Facebook spearheading Occulus Rift development, there is certainly a case to be made for mainstream adoption.

Of course, there was once such hype around Second Life as well.

Interesting read from Mike Elgan…

How Virtual Reality Is Redefining Marketing: “Advertiser-supported virtual reality and mixed reality content will have experiential marketing content instead of ads. These can not only be convincing and immersive, but potentially social and participatory. Best of all, they can go viral and spread across the world in minutes. And that’s why virtual reality and mixed reality will totally transform marketing. It combines the emotional impact of experiential marketing with the viral scalability of Web campaigns. “

Your Email Privacy (Thanks, Government)

Scary, true, and worth your attention if you value your privacy…

Mozilla will let go of Thunderbird | Boing Boing: “There are many good reasons to use standalone email clients, but for Americans one of the most compelling is the absurdly outdated Electronic Communications Privacy Act of 1986, which treats any file left on a server for more than six months as ‘abandoned’ and accessible to law enforcement without a warrant (no, really!). That includes all your Gmail previous to June 2015. Really. All of the efforts to reform ECPA have died on the vine, because law enforcement loves this creaking piece of legislation.”

Vote out your representative if they don’t “understand technology.” That’s not an excuse anymore.

Google’s quantum computing announcement on December 8

It’s not exactly clear what this announcement will be (besides important for the future of computing), but Jurvetson says to “stay tuned” for more information coming on December 8th. This is the first we’ve heard of a December 8th date for a Google announcement, and considering its purported potential to be a turning point in computing, this could perhaps mean an actual event is in the cards.

Source: Google reportedly planning a ‘watershed’ quantum computing announcement for December 8

If Google has cracked quantum decoherence, we’re in for a very fascinating course of events in the next few decades.

It’s about the ads

“The goal of Facebook Instant Articles is to keep you on Facebook. No need to explore the larger Web when it’s all right there in Facebook, especially when it loads so much faster in the Facebook app than it does in a browser.

Google seems to have recognized what a threat Facebook Instant Articles could be to Google’s ability to serve ads. This is why Google’s project is called Accelerated Mobile Pages. Sorry, desktop users, Google already knows how to get ads to you.”

Source: How Google’s AMP project speeds up the Web—by sandblasting HTML | Ars Technica

“Speeding up the web” is a wonderful sentiment, but Google, Apple, and Facebook are well aware of the impending transition to a post-mobile computing interface that will transform how we see and interact with advertising.

Google AMP, Facebook Instant News, and Apple News are stop gaps to make a few more dollars on a rapidly transitioning medium (web advertising) as it exists in its current state.

NYT VR

Saving this for when we look back in 10 years on the first mainstream uses of VR in much the same way we fondly look back at web pages from the 90’s today…

“Today, The New York Times takes a step into virtual reality. NYT VR is a mobile app that can be used — along with your headphones and optionally a cardboard viewing device — to simulate richly immersive scenes from across the globe.”

Source: NYT VR: How to Experience a New Form of Storytelling From The Times – The New York Times

Amazon’s Retail Store, Uber Surge Pricing, and The Ever Changing Price of Things

“It’s all about the data. Under the hood, the Amazon store has a few unusual features. Every book has a shelf tag that includes a capsule review from the website, a star rating, and a barcode. There are no prices listed. To get the price, you scan the code with the camera of your smartphone and the Amazon app. If you don’t have a smartphone or the app installed, an associate can do it for you. This brings up the product page for the item you’re looking at, with full reviews, specs and pricing.”

Source: Amazon’s Retail Store Has Nothing To Do With Selling Books – Forbes

Price is the main motivating factor in most purchasing decisions under $50, so it’s interesting to see that Amazon is trading off that variable with the need to scan a code with its app on your smartphone in order to give you the information.

There’s a very good reason Amazon wants to do that, of course… if you have the app installed on your smartphone and use it in their store, they are able to (in relative real time) offer up a more customized, or personal, shopping experience to you based on what Amazon knows about you. If you’re online in 2015, that’s probably a good deal, especially for Prime members with Echo’s and a long purchase history like me and my family.

Variant pricing will initially surprise consumers. “What do you mean he gets to buy that Star Wars book for $2 less than I do?” will be a common refrain. Amazon knows my wife and I have a little boy due to arrive any moment now (or they should based on our recent purchases), and they know I’m a Star Wars fan based on my Amazon Prime Movies streaming, and purchase of toys and collectibles for our kids (*cough* … ) or the frequent amount of times our 5 year old asks Alexa to play the Imperial March from the soundtrack.

So, psychologically there’s a great deal more involved with a purchasing decision than price point.

As we move towards a cash-free and digital transaction based economy (thanks, Apple and Android Pay!) and continue to contribute both our data and our purchasing habits to recommendation engines, it will be more economically efficient to move towards a market where goods and services are based on context and situational awareness (Uber’s Surge Pricing, for example).

“Showcase Stores” such as Best Buy get this. Even the weekly grocery store discount ads in the newspaper circular (for us old folks) will follow this lead and require an app or an interface not based on universal pricing in order for the “cost” of something to be displayed. Our nearly automated financial markets full of nano-second timed transactions carried out by bots are already there.

Time for advertising and marketing to catch up.

It’s going to be a fun decade ahead.

“Hey Alexa, play my Beatles mix. And order more newborn diapers.”

Goodbye, Oyster.

“Looking forward, we feel this is best seized by taking on new opportunities to fully realize our vision for ebooks. With that, we will be taking steps to sunset the existing Oyster service over the next several months. If you are an Oyster reader you will receive an email personally regarding your account.”

Source: oysterbooks

Hmm… never a good post to make on a Friday night before Halloween… I wonder if it was poor uptake, Amazon Kindle Unlimited, or just market economics of the ebook subscription model?

This is the perfect opening to a scifi novel…

“With the help of James Jubilee, a former American arms control officer and now a senior science and technology coordinator for health issues in Kazakhstan, Dr. LaPorte tracked down Mr. Dey through the State Department, and his images and documentation quickly convinced them of the earthworks’ authenticity and importance.”

Source: NASA Adds to Evidence of Mysterious Ancient Earthworks

Get to writing, someone. I want to read this book and how humanity is shaken to its roots by startling revelations about our species’ history…

“Turn off that phone and do some real work.”

“In our constantly developing world, we have to learn to adapt to change. The fact that we are so dependent on the internet is scary. But the fact that you, as an adult, are struggling to keep up with us and the internet, does not give you the right to say that the way we are learning and growing up and socialising is wrong and we need to go back to how you used to write letters to your friends or call them using the home telephone. Neither way of living and socialising is better, just very different, which I think is the main cause of the older generation not tolerating the use of our phones.”

Source: Dear old people: why should I turn off my phone?

Anecdotally, I’ve always found that it’s the people / teachers / ministers etc who complain the most about “young kids always being on their phones” that leave their phones’ ringers on (at full volume) and have no problem answering a call (after a few rings, of course) and having a very loud conversation despite the context or their situation.

Google Bringing Podcasting to Android and Play Music

“But Google isn’t just trying to create more Serial fanatics on Android. No, it wants to reach people that have never listened to podcasts. And it wants to broaden its media offerings in the fight with Apple, the frequent go-to platform for media producers.”

Source: Google Brings Podcasting to Play Music Streaming Service, Android | Re/code

I’m excited to see podcasting continue to expand into the “mainstream” of public consumption. Hopefully, NPR doesn’t suck all the air out of the room.

If you’re a business, group, church, school etc… you need to be podcasting. Get in touch if you need help (we’ve set up and continue to manage many podcasts for clients).

And support indie podcasters for a healthy podcasting ecosystem… like the fine folks at Thinking.FM.