Dan Jones

If you have been one of the many Android or iPhone users out there who has been hoping Google would launch a dedicated to-do app, the wait is finally over.

Today, along with rolling out a major redesign for Gmail, Google launched a brand new Tasks app. The design is meant to be super simple and straightforward with a lot of white space and straightforward lists presented as clearly as possible. It doesn’t appear to be as full-featured as some of the other to-do and task management apps out there, but that might actually be the point.

There are quite a few features baked in. Tasks, as you would expect, will sync across devices for easy access from wherever you are. You can view, add, edit, delete, and otherwise manage tasks on the fly, and the changes will be present on every other device you’re checking your to-do list on. You can create new tasks from your Gmail and Google Calendar, too. The new Gmail redesign features a sidebar, where you can quickly drag an email into Tasks to set up a new reminder.

The Tasks app also supports sub-tasks, setting due dates (but not specific times, it seems), and the ability to organize tasks by date or manually with a drag-and-drop design. The new app also supports notifications, so when something becomes due Tasks will let you know.

The new app is available beginning today for both Android and iOS users. You can find links to the Play Store and App Store below.

Are you going to try Google’s new Tasks app?

Sources: Google Tasks (Play Store), (iOS App Store)

http://buttersafe.com/2018/04/26/ready-for-takeoff/

Earlier this month, Google gave Gmail Early Adopter program users a glimpse of a major change coming down the pipe, which was subsequently confirmed by leaked images of a new user interface and features just a day later.

Now Google has begun the rollout for Gmail’s major redesign. Not only is the UI getting a boost, making it easier to use and navigate, but Google is also bringing in new features for good measure. In many cases, Google is simply bringing in mobile features to the web app, but that’s not a bad thing.

There are several new features for Gmail on the web, including the ability to quickly access attachments in emails without having to scroll through a long, threaded conversation. You can simply hover over an email in your inbox and options will pop up, including the ability to RSVP to a meeting, snooze an email for a later date and time, or archive the message altogether.

The new “nudge” feature is a subtle way for Gmail to remind you of an email you might have forgotten to reply to. These will be reminders that will appear to some email messages, suggesting that you might want to reply because you received the email a certain amount of days before. Gmail might ask if you want to follow up in these cases.

There is a new side panel in the Gmail redesign as well which gives faster access to other G Suite apps, including Calendar, Keep, and the brand new Tasks app. You can simply drag an email over to the appropriate G Suite app and it will take action as necessary.

Google is also bringing Smart Reply to Gmail on the web, a feature that’s been available for mobile users for a bit of time already. This will let users simply choose a pre-determined response, something like “Let’s do it!” when asked by a contact to do lunch on a certain day. It’s a nice and quick way to fire off an email.

Meanwhile, on mobile, Gmail is getting high-priority notifications. This is meant to cut down on the notifications you get on a daily basis, with Gmail aiming to simply let you know about the most important emails in your inbox. Gmail will also start suggesting when to unsubscribe from a mailing list that you don’t interact with.

There are plenty of other new features being added to the mix, especially with business in mind. You can check them out right here.

Gmail users on the web can check out the majority of the new features beginning today. Some of the announcements won’t be available for a couple of weeks at least, though. If you want to try the new Gmail on the web right now, you can click the Settings (the cog icon on the top right of the screen) icon and select the “Try the new Gmail”. If you want to go back, just head into Settings again and select the “Go back to classic Gmail”.

What do you think of the redesign?

Nestled amongst hundreds of stunning shots of the aurora borealis taken by Finnish photographer Jani Ylinampa is a series of four photos of Kotisaari, showing the island from a drone’s point of view for each of the four seasons (clockwise from upper left): spring, summer, autumn, and winter.

But seriously, go check out Ylinampa’s Instagram account…it’s packed with aurora borealis photos. What a magical place to live, where the sky lights up like that all the time.

I enjoyed reading Lolade Fadulu’s interview with Philip Glass about the composer’s early life and how he made a living in NYC before being able to fully support himself with his music (which didn’t happen until he was in his early 40s). As a boy, his mother made sure he got a musical education and his job at his father’s record store exposed him to the idea that people paid money for art:

To this day, among my earliest memories was someone would give my father $5 and he’d hand them a record. So the exchange of money for art, I thought that was normal. I thought that’s what everybody did. I never thought there was anything wrong about making money.

As an adult, Glass worked odd jobs (plumber, mover, cab driver) to have the independence to work on his music:

I had an ensemble at the time. I would go out and play for three weeks. We would come back from the tour, and we usually had lost money so I had to make money immediately. I put an ad in the paper. My cousin and I ran the company, and I moved furniture for about three or four or five weeks. Then I went on tour again. Again, we lost money.

That went on for years. I thought it was going to go on for the rest of my life, actually. It never occurred to me that I would be able to make a living, really, from writing music. That happened kind of by accident.

I was interested in jobs that were part-time, where I had a lot of independence, where I could work when I wanted to. I wasn’t interested in working in an office where everything would be very regimented.

As his musical career took off, Glass continued to take his other work seriously. From a 2001 profile of Glass in The Guardian:

Throughout this period, Glass supported himself as a New York cabbie and as a plumber, occupations that often led to unusual encounters. “I had gone to install a dishwasher in a loft in SoHo,” he says. “While working, I suddenly heard a noise and looked up to find Robert Hughes, the art critic of Time magazine, staring at me in disbelief. ‘But you’re Philip Glass! What are you doing here?’ It was obvious that I was installing his dishwasher and I told him I would soon be finished. ‘But you are an artist,’ he protested. I explained that I was an artist but that I was sometimes a plumber as well and that he should go away and let me finish.”

But after Einstein on the Beach dazzled critics at the Metropolitan Opera, Glass’s days in the driver’s seat of a cab were limited:

The day after the performance, Glass was back driving his taxi: “I vividly remember the moment, shortly after the Met adventure,” he says, “when a well-dressed woman got into my cab. After noting the name of the driver, she leaned forward and said: ‘Young man, do you realise you have the same name as a very famous composer’.”

Glass is my favorite composer, but as much as I love his music, I might appreciate the way he has approached his work and career almost as much.

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For the past few years, because of my interest in The Great Span of human history, I’ve been tracking the last remaining people who were alive in the 1800s and the 19th century. As of 2015, only two women born in the 1800s and two others born in 1900 (the last year of the 19th century) were still alive. In the next two years, three of those women passed away, including Jamaican Violet Brown, the last living subject of Queen Victoria, who reigned over the British Empire starting in 1837.

Yesterday Nabi Tajima, the last known survivor of the 19th century, died in Japan at age 117.

Tajima was born in a village on Kikaijima on August 4, 1900. She had 9 children and more than 160 descendants, including great-great-great-grandchildren, according to the Gerontology Research Group (GRG), which verified her date of birth.

At the time of her death, Tajima was 117 years and 280 days old, making her the third oldest person in recorded human history. She said that her secret to longevity was eating delicious things and sleeping well, but she also enjoyed hand-dancing to the sound of the shamisen.

Tajima was born at a time when Emperor Meiji ruled Japan as the nation rose from an isolationist feudal state to become a world power. William McKinley served as president of the United States and Victoria was the Queen of the United Kingdom. The world’s population was just 1.6 billion.

Tajima was already 45 years old when World War II ended…amazing. According to the Gerontology Research Group’s World Supercentenarian Rankings List, the oldest living person is Chiyo Miyako of Japan, who will hopefully turn 117 in a week and a half.

Watson is IBM’s AI platform. This afternoon I tried out IBM Watson’s Personality Insights Demo. The service “derives insights about personality characteristics from social media, enterprise data, or other digital communications”. Watson looked at my Twitter account and painted a personality portrait of me:

You are shrewd, inner-directed and can be perceived as indirect.

You are authority-challenging: you prefer to challenge authority and traditional values to help bring about positive changes. You are solemn: you are generally serious and do not joke much. And you are philosophical: you are open to and intrigued by new ideas and love to explore them.

Experiences that give a sense of discovery hold some appeal to you.

You are relatively unconcerned with both tradition and taking pleasure in life. You care more about making your own path than following what others have done. And you prefer activities with a purpose greater than just personal enjoyment.

Initial observations:

- Watson doesn’t use Oxford commas?

- Shrewd? I’m not sure I’ve ever been described using that word before. Inner-directed though…that’s pretty much right.

- Perceived as indirect? No idea where this comes from. Maybe I’ve learned to be more diplomatic & guarded in what I say and how I say it, but mostly I struggle with being too direct.

- “You are generally serious and do not joke much”… I think I’m both generally serious and joke a lot.

- “You prefer activities with a purpose greater than just personal enjoyment”… I don’t understand what this means. Does this mean volunteering? Or that I prefer more intellectual activities than mindless entertainment? (And that last statement isn’t even true.)

Watson also guessed that I “like musical movies” (in general, no), “have experience playing music” (definite no), and am unlikely to “prefer style when buying clothes” (siiiick burn but not exactly wrong). You can try it yourself here. (via @buzz)

Update: Ariel Isaac fed Watson the text for Trump’s 2018 State of the Union address and well, it didn’t do so well:

Trump is empathetic, self-controlled, and makes decisions with little regard for how he show off his talents? My dear Watson, are you feeling ok? But I’m pretty sure he doesn’t like rap music…

http://buttersafe.com/2018/04/19/noisy-neighbors/

Google may be working on an “AltOS” feature that would allow its high-end Pixelbook to run both Windows and Chrome OS. Redditors perusing the latest Chrome OS build found early references to “AltOS”, as well as an operating system selection screen and a reference to booting Windows on a Pixelbook. While this is only the smallest snippet of information to work off of, it indicates that Google is dabbling with the idea of allowing multiple operating systems for Pixelbook users.

Though revered as an incredible piece of hardware, the Pixelbook faces a stiff challenge in that it only runs Chrome OS. While the cloud-based OS has come a long way, it lacks the ability to run traditional desktop applications and potential customers are often worried that it won’t be able to accomplish all their needs. And with a price of $999, it’s too expensive to pose a challenge to its Chromebook brethren (not that it’s intended to).

Google I/O 2018 kicks off on May 8 and if the company is serious about AltOS, we may get more details on the project. Keep it locked on Android and Me for more rumors and reports regarding Chrome OS!