Rolandt

I believe in collaboration. So let's put our heads together. I have created a Google form where you can help me gather data about Android security patch levels. The patch levels have a date attached to them. You find it in Settings/About. Also add the brand and model of your device and the Android version. If you know on which day the patch was available, also fill out the last data, which is not mandatory.

Here is the form >

More than 150 results are here >

Green means you have the latest full security patch 5-Jul-2016. Black means you have the smaller, easier patch 1-Jul-2016. Red means: good luck.

“Hey, it’s an ice cream man – who’s a lady!”  I was the lady…

It was the first year that Good Humor hired women as ice cream truck drivers. It was the summer after my freshman year at college, when I applied for a job as a driver. I fibbed and said that I could drive a standard transmission so I would get the job.  I got the job and as I bucked out of the Good Humor lot on my first day, I learned how.

I have always been the “token” female in my professional circles throughout my life.  To be honest, I never set out to be a front-runner for my gender or to prove a point. I simply followed my interests and and didn’t let the naysayers stop me from what I wanted to do. I just went for it.

In my profession of still photography there are definitely more women in the business now, than when I started.  At times it has been challenging and no doubt many opportunities were lost simply because of my gender.  But I was tenacious and I was passionate about photography and the access my cameras would give me to the lifestyle I wanted. I wanted to explore the world and experience places and events and share them with others. I’ve spent a lifetime doing just that.

I’m amazed at what technology has enabled me to do in my life and in my profession. I have been able to utilize the tools of today and the plentiful electronic distribution portals to bring awareness to various issues or cultures through my still images and motion. Currently, I’m working alongside my partner, Tom Kelly on a project entitled Like a Woman. It’s a series of short films and environmental still portraits of women who are working in male dominated professions – a subject I can certainly relate to.  We’ve just finished our

 latest film about Taylor Laverty, a female pilot for the Goodyear blimp, the Spirit of America. She is one of only three female blimp pilots in the world. Taylor amazes me with her skills and professionalism and I am grateful to see the strides going forward in gender equality. 

Change happens slowly,  until it eventually becomes the norm.  By creating these short films I hope to nudge change along a little quicker and  inspire other women to reach for opportunities that are out there and used to be off bounds – not that long ago. I am always looking for interesting stories about women who are paving the way in fields where few women have gone before.  Please contact me.

As we delve deeper into election season, politicians will spit out more and more statistics to lend some factitude to their talking points. Some are real, and others will be less real. David Spiegelhalter for the Guardian provides a nine-point guide on how to sift out the latter.

On estimates and margin of error:

Next time you hear a politician boasting that unemployment has dropped by 30,000 over the previous quarter, just remember that this is an estimate based on a survey. And that estimate has a margin of error of +/- 80,000, meaning that unemployment may well have gone down, but it may have gone up – the best we can say is that it hasn’t changed very much, but that hardly makes a speech. And to be fair, the politician probably has no idea that this is an estimate and not a head count.

Ah, that makes me feel so warm and fuzzy inside.

Tags: cherrypicking, fiction

Verizon has announced plans to acquire Yahoo for $4.83 billion, confirming rumours that have been swirling for a number of weeks now.

According to a press release sent to MobileSyrup, the U.S. telecom giant says Yahoo will be integrated into AOL’s operations, which Verizon acquired last year for $4.4 billion.

“We have enormous respect for what Yahoo has accomplished: this transaction is about unleashing Yahoo’s full potential, building upon our collective synergies, and strengthening and accelerating that growth,” said AOL CEO Tim Armstrong in the company’s press release about the acquisition.

In a letter addressed to Yahoo employees and posted on Tumblr, Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer says she plans to stay with the company, though it’s unclear in what capacity.

“Yahoo is a company that has changed the world, and will continue to do so through this combination with Verizon and AOL,” said Mayer.

“The sale of our operating business, which effectively separates our Asian asset equity stakes, is an important step in our plan to unlock shareholder value for Yahoo. This transaction also sets up a great opportunity for Yahoo to build further distribution and accelerate our work in mobile, video, native advertising and social.”

The terms of the deal indicate Verizon will acquire Yahoo’s brands and email services, which approximately 225 million users around the world use. The telecom will also gain Yahoo’s BrightRoll programmatic ad platform, as well as other web advertising service. The deal, however, does not include Yahoo’s stakes in Alibaba or Yahoo Japan. These divisions of the company will reportedly remain under Yahoo’s banner and will change their name once the core company’s deal with Verizon closes.

Twitter is continuing its foray into livestreaming by announcing a new partnership with both Major League Baseball and the National Hockey League.

The social media platform now has an agreement with all four major professional sports leagues, having previously announced plans to stream live NFL and NBA games, as well the most recent Wimbledon tennis tournament.

“Twitter is the fastest way to see what’s unfolding in MLB and the NHL,” said Anthony Noto, Twitter’s CFO. “We know fans will embrace what this wide-ranging partnership brings — expanded and reliable access to live baseball and hockey and the introduction of Twitter’s first daily live highlight show delivered intuitively to a platform where they’re actively engaged with the games.”

As often is the case, however, Canada is somewhat excluded from the festivities because of licensing agreements currently in place with Rogers. NHL games will not be streamed in Canada and MLB games will exclude any Blue Jays games, but will include select baseball games featuring other teams. Twitter says it’s still working on an exact streaming schedule and will start this fall.

“It’s a perfect companion to an already great sports experience on Twitter. We know that fans love to follow their favourite team, favourite players, and the conversation happens on Twitter and now this will add to the experience,” said Christopher Doyle, head of partnerships at Twitter Canada, in an interview with MobileSyrup.

Twitter will live stream out-of-market games once per week for free to those who are logged into the social media platform as well as those that are not.

Since before your sun burned hot in space and before your race was born, Safari on iOS has required a user gesture to play media in a <video> or <audio> element. When Safari first supported <video> in iPhoneOS 3, media data loaded only when the user interacted with the page. But with the goal of returning more control over media playback to web developers, we relaxed this restriction in iOS 8: Safari began honoring the preload="metadata" attribute, allowing <video> and <audio> elements to load enough media data to determine that media’s size, duration, and available tracks. For Safari in iOS 10, we are further relaxing this user gesture requirement for silent <video> elements.

Motivation

It turns out that people these days really like GIFs. But the GIF format turns out to be a very expensive way to encode animated images when compared to a modern video codec like H.264. We’ve found that GIFs can be up to twelve times as expensive in bandwidth and twice as expensive in energy use. It’s so expensive that many of the largest GIF providers have been moving away from GIFs and toward the <video> element. Since most of these GIFs started out their lives as video clips, were converted into animated GIFs, and were again converted back to video clips, you might say that the circle is complete.

But while this move does spare websites’ bandwidth costs as well as saving users’ batteries, it comes at a usability cost. On iOS 9, <video>s will only begin playing as a result of a user gesture. So pages which replace an <img> with a <video> will require a user gesture before displaying their animated content, and, on iPhone, the <video> will enter fullscreen when starting playback.

Similarly, web developers are doing some seriously amazing stuff by integrating <video> elements into the presentation of their pages. And these pages either don’t work at all on iOS due to the user gesture requirement, or the <video> elements completely obscure the page’s presentation by playing an animated background image in fullscreen.

WebKit’s New policies for video

Starting in iOS 10, WebKit relaxes its inline and autoplay policies to make these presentations possible, but still keeps in mind sites’ bandwidth and users’ batteries.

By default, WebKit will have the following policies:

• <video autoplay> elements will now honor the autoplay attribute, for elements which meet the following conditions:
  • <video> elements will be allowed to autoplay without a user gesture if their source media contains no audio tracks.
  • <video muted> elements will also be allowed to autoplay without a user gesture.
  • If a <video> element gains an audio track or becomes un-muted without a user gesture, playback will pause.
  • <video autoplay> elements will only begin playing when visible on-screen such as when they are scrolled into the viewport, made visible through CSS, and inserted into the DOM.
  • <video autoplay> elements will pause if they become non-visible, such as by being scrolled out of the viewport.
• <video> elements will now honor the play() method, for elements which meet the following conditions:
  • <video> elements will be allowed to play() without a user gesture if their source media contains no audio tracks, or if their muted property is set to true.
  • If a <video> element gains an audio track or becomes un-muted without a user gesture, playback will pause.
  • <video> elements will be allowed to play() when not visible on-screen or when out of the viewport.
  • video.play() will return a Promise, which will be rejected if any of these conditions are not met.
• On iPhone, <video playsinline> elements will now be allowed to play inline, and will not automatically enter fullscreen mode when playback begins.
  <video> elements without playsinline attributes will continue to require fullscreen mode for playback on iPhone.
  When exiting fullscreen with a pinch gesture, <video> elements without playsinline will continue to play inline.

For clients of the WebKit framework on iOS, these policies can still be controlled through API, and clients who are using existing API to control these policies will see no change. For more fine-grained control over autoplay policies, see the new WKWebViewConfiguration property mediaTypesRequiringUserActionForPlayback. Safari on iOS 10 will use WebKit’s default policies.

Examples

So how would the humble web developer take advantage of these new policies? Suppose one had a blog post or article with many GIFs which one would prefer to serve as <video> elements instead. Here’s an example of a simple GIF replacement:

<video autoplay loop muted playsinline>
  <source src="image.mp4">
  <source src="image.webm" onerror="fallback(parentNode)">
  <img src="image.gif">
</video>

function fallback(video)
{
  var img = video.querySelector('img');
  if (img)
    video.parentNode.replaceChild(img, video);
}

On iOS 10, this provides the same user experience as using a GIF directly with graceful fallback to that GIF if none of the <video>‘s sources are supported. In fact, this code was used to show you that awesome GIF.

If your page design requires different behavior if inline playback is allowed vs. when fullscreen playback is required, use the -webkit-video-playable-inline media query to differentiate the two:

<div id="either-gif-or-video">
  <video src="image.mp4" autoplay loop muted playsinline></video>
  <img src="image.gif">
</div>

#either-gif-or-video video { display: none; }
@media (-webkit-video-playable-inline) {
    #either-gif-or-video img { display: none; }
    #either-gif-or-video video { display: initial; }
}

These new policies mean that more advanced uses of the <video> element are now possible, such as painting a playing <video> to a <canvas> without taking that <video> into fullscreen mode.

  var video;
  var canvas;

  function startPlayback()
  {
    if (!video) {
      video = document.createElement('video');
      video.src = 'image.mp4';
      video.loop = true;
      video.addEventListener('playing', paintVideo);
    }
    video.play();
  }

  function paintVideo()
  {
    if (!canvas) {
      canvas = document.createElement('canvas');
      canvas.width = video.videoWidth;
      canvas.height = video.videoHeight;
      document.body.appendChild(canvas);
    }
    canvas.getContext('2d').drawImage(video, 0, 0, canvas.width, canvas.height);
    if (!video.paused)
      requestAnimationFrame(paintVideo);
  }

<button onclick="startPlayback()">Start Playback</button> 

The same technique can be used to render into a WebGL context. Note in this example that a user gesture–the click event–is required, as the <video> element is not in the DOM, and thus is not visible. The same would be true for a <video style="display:none"> or <video style="visibility:hidden">.

We believe that these new policies really make video a much more useful tool for designing modern, compelling websites without taxing users bandwidth or batteries. For more information, contact me at @jernoble, Jonathan Davis, Apple’s Web Technologies Evangelist, at @jonathandavis, or the WebKit team at @WebKit.

I once had a cool, but ethically questionable business idea. I asked my boss if I should go ahead with it. “Ask yourself this,” he suggested. “How would you feel if everyone, including your mom, knew what you were doing? Then decide.” I decided not go ahead. That’s the same question the Democratic National Committee staff … Continue reading Private email is an oxymoron: lessons from the DNC scandal →

The post Private email is an oxymoron: lessons from the DNC scandal appeared first on without bullshit.

Anu Partanen is a Finnish journalist now living and working in the United States.

In her new book “The Nordic Theory of Everything. In Search of a Better Life” she compares how Nordic/Finnish and American societies address key issues such as healthcare, education, parental leaves, unemployment.

This books hits close to home. I’m a naturalized Finnish citizen, and spent most of my adult life in Finland and Norway before relocating with family to California.

tl;dr; The book is a nuanced, well-argumented critical analysis of the strengths and weaknesses of American and Nordic societies. It debunks the myths that affordable universal healthcare, free quality education, improvement of women’s participation in economic life by providing affordable daycare and paid parental leaves can only be achieved in “nanny states” that discourage individuality.

As Anu writes:

The Nordic countries demonstrate that building strong public services can create economic growth, and that pooling the risks everyone faces in life – sickness, unemployment, old age, the need to be educated to secure a decent living – into one system funded by everyone is more efficient, and more effective, than each person saving individually to ensure security and survive misfortune, especially in today’s age of global economic uncertainty and competition.

The book opens with a statement I’m sure many expatriates from the Nordics can relate to.

To leave Finland or any Nordic country behind and settle in America at the beginning of twenty-frst century was to experience an extraordinary – and extraordinary harsh – form of travel back in time.

Even though the book might come across as a particularly harsh criticism of the Unites States to an American reader, one should remember that it is written from a perspective of a Nordic author. And part of the Nordic culture is being direct and pragmatic.

If you had to boil down the difference between the United States and the Nordic countries to a single phrase, one way to say it might be: The United States has an unfair tax system and big government, while the Nordic countries have a fair tax and smart government. Another way to describe the difference is that the United States is stuck in the past and the Nordic countries are already living in the future.

In a true Nordic tradition, comments on the article about the book in Finnish daily Helsingin Sanomat have been pretty negative. I think it comes from the fact that Anu writes about in her book:

But the reality is that many Finns really have no idea how good they do have it, because they’ve never been on their own as a citizen of a place like the United States.  

There are many things that Finns and citizens of other Nordic countries can and should be proud of – universal health care system, pre-natal care now with world-famous baby-boxes, one of the best in the world school education system.

As Anu writes:

Success in creating an excellent public health-care system is on par with any other great national achievement…

But mind you, it’s not all moonlight and roses in the Nordics and not all horrible in the United States. The book gives a fair comparison of two systems, a food for thought and an inspiration for change.

As Anu concludes and I can very much relate to that:

Having lived in the United States for a while now, I can see more clearly many of America’s strengths, as well as some of the Nordic region’s faults. The Nordic tendency to downplay the unique talents of each person as well as his or her unique pursuit of happiness and success can be petty and disheartening.

Overall, this is a great research and journalistic work, with great attention to detail, drawing attention to many controversial (especially as the United States approach elections), yet important topics.

There were a few statements in the book that I felt were not absolutely clear, so I took liberty to go ahead and clarify some of those here.

Nordic parental leaves are a function of a simple, straightforward, uniform national policy, and pay is furnished through taxes managed by each country’s social security system.

At least in Finland, while parental leaves are a part of the national policy,   unions have negotiated deals for most professions, where employers are responsible for paying salary for as much as 3 months of parental leave.

Employer’s costs are 12,000 – 20,000€ per newborn, while average national salary is 2800€. For early-stage and small businesses this can be a substantial cost. Some reports tell that this results in employers hiring young women only on temporary contracts.

Having heard so much about “employer-sponsored health plans”, somehow I’d assumed that they would be cheap, or even practically free,  for employees – wasn’t that why it was called a “benefit”? […] Later I would research the average cost of employer-sponsored plans in the united States. […] If you looked only at amount the employee had to pay, from his or her own salary, the average annual share was $1,071 for single coverage…

The cost to employee is actually consistent with that in Finland – average US salary is $52,000, so employee contribution to health insurance are 2.05%, while in Finland in 2015 sairausvakuutusmaksu (health insurance payment) was 2.06%.

In 2013 the normal delivery of a baby in the United States cost on average $10,000 – four times as much as in Spain.

I cannot tell much about Spain, but the price is consistent with that in Finland – if you don’t have Finnish state health insurance (residence-based), the bill is going to be about €10,000.

Finland’s corporate tax rate is in fact relatively low – 20 percent in 2015 compared with the American rate of 39 percent – and after a company pays its taxes in Finland, it’s done. It doesn’t have to offer its employees health insurance or pension benefits, which both burden American companies with significant costs on top of their taxes.

This is not exactly the case though. While statutory US corporate tax is one of the highest in the world, the effective tax rate paid by US corporations is much lower due to a number of tax deductions and loopholes. E.g. profitable U.S. corporations paid, on average, an effective federal income tax rate of 14 percent over the period from 2008 to 2012.

Also in Finland companies have to pay health insurance (2.12%), unemployment insurance (1%) and pension contributions (24.6%) for all their employees. It’s a lot easier to pay these though. Figuring out pension plans in US requires a lot of work and nobody guarantees you a good result. Here’s a brilliant example – John Oliver shares how he tried to get 401K for his company.

The book is available on Amazon.

The post “The Nordic Theory of Everything: In Search of a Better Life” by Anu Partanen appeared first on Ivan Kuznetsov.

With the Republican National Convention still freshly branded into our brains and the Democratic National Convention beginning to stagger into the media cycle, now is a good time to learn a few things about spectacles. If nominating conventions are anything, they are spectacles. For this we should turn to no one less than Guy Debord and his classic text The Society of the Spectacle.

Debord uses “spectacle” to describe “a social relationship between people that is mediated by images.“ It is important to remember that spectacle can mean a visually rich event or something that you wear over your eyes to change your vision. The society of the spectacle shifts between both: media-saturated events support the creation of lenses with which to see the world. The propaganda of political rallies is not washed away by the balloon drop: it sticks with you long afterward. Throughout The Society of the Spectacle Debord makes reference to real and natural worlds but do not mistake such a distinction for a (digital) dualist conception of the world. Rather, Debord observes:

The spectacle cannot be set in abstract opposition to concrete social activity, for the dichotomy between reality and image will survive on either side of any such distinction. Thus the spectacle, though it turns reality on its head, is itself a product of real activity.

The spectacle is capitalist means of production feeling itself. It is always ready to replace meaningful experiences that we make for each other, with meticulously crafted moments that feel and look bigger and better than what we might have made for ourselves. Like the sweetness of candy compared to a beet from a garden. Debord suggests that a prerequisite for these moments is the destruction of more “real” experiences:

In its most advanced sectors, a highly concentrated capitalism has begun selling “fully equipped” blocks of time, each of which is a complete commodity combining a variety of other commodities. This is the logic behind the appearance, within an expanding economy of “services” and leisure activities, of the “all­inclusive” purchase of spectacular forms of housing, of collective pseudo­travel, of participation in cultural consumption and even of sociability itself, in the form of “exciting conversations,” “meetings with celebrities” and suchlike. Spectacular commodities of this type could obviously not exist were it not for the increasing impoverishment of the realities they parody. And, not surprisingly, they are also paradigmatic of modern sales techniques in that they may be bought on credit.

This is how we might make sense of the fact that conventions often give plumb speaking slots to celebrities and other folks that hold no office in the party or the government. Celebrities can stand in for a friend or a mentor. They are emotional surrogates as much as anything else.

Conventions also appear to be celebrating something when in fact few people know or care about what is going on, let alone are excited about their outcome. Debord’s “pseudo-festival” might help us understand what is going on here. Like the “real” experience, the conventions make up for the lack of actual celebration-worthy events through sheer force of visibility and manufactured excitement:

Our epoch, which presents its time to itself as essentially made up of many frequently recurring festivities, is actually an epoch without festival. Those moments when, under the reign of cyclical time, the community would participate in a luxurious expenditure of life, are strictly unavailable to a society where neither community nor luxury exists. Mass pseudo­festivals, with their travesty of dialogue and their parody of the gift, may incite people to excessive spending, but they produce only a disillusion ­­ which is invariably in turn offset by further false promises. The self­approbation of the time of modern survival can only be reinforced, in the spectacle, by reduction in its use value. The reality of time has been replaced by its publicity.

This last sentence sounds strange but the idea is simple: rather than celebrate the passage of historical time—acknowledging that life itself is defined as a span of time, that all things emerge as a product of time’s passing, and that by the very nature of things the biggest endeavors must be social because they take longer than a single human life—the spectacle requires time be both infinite and dividable into standard segments. The convention schedule, the time slot, and the commercial break are all predicated on the assumption that certain moments must be well seen and others are far less important. Time is divided so that it might be sold and the selling price is pegged to its ability to be seen, its publicity.

As we watch this convention and re-watch the last one (either uncut and pure, or reformulated as more obvious farce) let’s know spectacle when we see it, but also leave room for moments of honest candor. The spectacle is a useful theoretical lens, but it is also important to take it off once in a while. Debord leaves little room for moments where commodified time might be turned back on itself and appropriated for parody or narratives resistant to hegemonic discourse. (Debord sees the spectacle as, itself, a parody of more authentic ways of living.) The conventions are spectacle from gavel to gavel, but humanity always has a way of shining through.

David is on Twitter

Image credit: PBS Newshour

All photography courtesy of Cat Rabbit

For her upcoming solo show Kept in Mind, Melbourne-based textiles artist Cat Rabbit is creating soft felt sculptures of kitsch childhood objects like boiled eggs, backpacks and Baby-Sitters Club books.

“Lately I have also been obsessed with making felt foods and small details, things that might be otherwise overlooked,” she tells The Creators Project. “There is a strong sense of nostalgia that runs through everything I make, bringing back ideas of childhood and comfort.”

She says the show will explore these ideas, particularly “how we remember certain things—whether they be precious or incidental.”

Kept in Mind will also feature anthropomorphic soft sculptures of animals—cats will feature prominently—that are so eerily detailed, they look like they might come to life at any moment. 

The 33-year-old has long fascinated by strange, humanlike felt animal sculptures wearing dapper clothes. “I like to imagine worlds where lots of different animals co-exist in happy harmony, and amazing outfits, like in Richard Scarry’s Busytown,” she continues.

“It’s lucky that people like my work enough to buy it, otherwise I might be classified as one of those hoarder types, surrounded by odd characters of my own creation.”

Cat Rabbit creates her soft sculptures using needle felting and embroidery techniques. “Lately I have been trying out hand quilting too, which I have really enjoyed,” she says.

“I really appreciate seeing work that has many many minute details, and that’s something I always like to keep in mind when creating mine.”

Cat Rabbit's new solo show Kept in Mind opens on July 29 at Tinning Street Gallery. You can find out more about her here and follow her on Instagram.

This article originally appeared on The Creators Project Australia/NZ. 

Related:

Underwater Ecosystems Come to Life in Crocheted Coral Reefs

Everything in This Sex Shop is Made of Felt

Melbourne's Jessilla Rogers on Her Endearingly Imperfect Ceramics

Took some Mobi bikes out on Sunday, and wandered around downtown, Olympic Village and elsewhere.  I like the simplicity – get a bike, ride somewhere, drop the bike.  Done. Get another when you’re ready, ride, drop, repeat.  Slick and simple.

I was looking for people riding Mobis, and found them easily.  Mobi is already a part of the mix of people on bikes, even at such early days for the system.

Perhaps I should call this effort (after Pokémon Go) Mobimon Go. Seeking out exotic creatures in the wild.

A few observations:

Mobi bikes attract people.  I spent as much time talking Mobi as I did riding Mobi.

The system seems solid.  The communications gizmos just do their job, and getting a Mobi is easy and quick. Don’t be misled by those who mistake the one-time, first-time, never-to-be-repeated registration procedure with the rest-of-your-life procedure.  The first time is sort of like getting a new debit card, and going through the registration procedure with the banker at the bank. After that, getting a Mobi is about as easy as paying for a loaf of bread at the grocery store.

The bike is heavy and clunky. It needs to be, given the circumstances of its life. But it rides smoothly, it’s very stable, and the seven-speed shifter works fine.

Werbeblocker auf mobilen Geräten sind jetzt ebenso weit verbreitet wie auf Desktop-Computern. Mobilfunkbetreiber wie Three haben Werbeblocker sogar in ihre britischen und italienischen Netzwerke implementiert. Die natürliche Reaktion der Marken und Entwickler auf dieses Verbraucherverhalten ist blanke Panik.

Man kann aber diesen hohen Nutzungsgrad an Werbeblockern auch als Zeichen für einen Reifungsprozess der mobilen Werbung sehen. Laut einem Bericht von Comscore hat einer von vier Internet-Nutzern in Deutschland Werbeblocker installiert, insbesondere in der Altersgruppe der 18- bis 24-jährigen.

Darüber hinaus berichtet Pagefair, dass Werbeblocker auf mobilen Endgeräten weiter zunehmen werden. Marken sollten diese potenzielle Krise als eine kreative Möglichkeit sehen und die Eigendynamik der Werbeblocker nutzen, um natürliche Berührungspunkte zu schaffen, die kreativer, ansprechender und zeitgemäßer sind.

Bruchteil einer Sekunde entscheidet

Obwohl Kunden ihre Smartphones fast immer bei sich haben, bleibt Marketern dennoch nur der Bruchteil einer Sekunde, um Kunden auf sinnvolle Weise anzusprechen und ihre Aufmerksamkeit zu erwecken. Marken müssen das unmittelbare Verhalten verstehen damit ihre Botschaften präemptiv und nützlich sind und nicht etwa störend. Leichter gesagt als getan. Wie lässt sich das erreichen? Durch die Erfassung und Reaktion auf „Tiny Data“.

„Tiny data“ sind Verhaltenssignale in Echtzeit die von Smartphones kommen und von verschiedenen Werbeplattformen gesammelt und analysiert werden. Diese Daten werden direkt von der Plattform durch einen automatisierten Prozess verwaltet. Sie zeigen, wie Nutzer mit alltäglichen Apps interagieren: Dabei sind das Wo, Wann, Warum und Wie oft Juwelen der Einsicht für Marken. Sie können „Tiny Data“ zu ihrem Vorteil nutzen und so auf die individuelle Nutzung mobiler Apps reagieren.

Auf dieser Grundlage können fundierte und personalisierte Entscheidungen darüber getroffen werden, welche Botschaft gesendet werden soll. Der Trend ’Weg von demografischen Daten’, auf die sich viele deutsche Werbetreibende verlassen und die die aktuelle Geisteshaltung und Absicht des Nutzers nicht berücksichtigen, prägt eine neue Ära der In-App Werbung. „Tiny Data“ ist die Zukunft der modernen mobilen Werbung. Sie durchdringt den Lärm an Inhalten und Botschaften und schafft mehr Wert für Nutzer.

Nehmen Sie zum Beispiel den Weg ins Fitnessstudio. Während der verschiedenen Phasen des Ablaufes kann eine Person verschiedene Apps verwenden. Die Person protokolliert vielleicht ihre Trainingsfortschritte mit einer App und verwendet Google Maps vor der Fahrt, um sich über die aktuelle Verkehrslage zu informieren. Der aktuelle Trainingserfolg wird dann mit einem Facebook-Post gefeiert: „Heute 10 km auf dem Laufband zurückgelegt! Extra-Training vor dem Wohltätigkeitslauf am Wochenende!“ Auf dem Weg nach Hause sendet die Person dann noch eine WhatsApp-Nachricht an einen Freund und fragt nach einem gesunden Rezept. Jeder dieser Momente ist eine günstige und relevante Gelegenheit für Marken.

Kontext bestimmt Werbeinhalt

Ganz offensichtlich macht es in diesem Fall keinen Sinn, der Person eine Gaming-App anzupreisen. Die winzigen Datensignale hingegen lassen darauf schließen, dass der Fitnessstudio-Besucher in diesem Moment offen für Angebote von Trainings-Apps, Sportmarken und Marken für gesunde Lebensmittel ist. Das bringt mit höherer Wahrscheinlichkeit eine positive Markenbindung und Kapitalerträge hervor als penetrante Handlungsaufforderungen, die nichts mit den unmittelbaren Zielen einer Person in diesem Moment zu tun haben.

Das Geheimnis für Herausgeber und Werber, die erfolgreich ihre Verbraucher-Apps global vermarkten und skalieren wollen, liegt in der Nutzung winziger Datensignale. Aus diesen lassen sich Erlebnisse kreieren, die auf das natürliche Verhalten des Verbrauchers reagieren und die eigentliche Beschäftigung nicht unterbrechen.

Mithilfe von „Tiny Data“ komplettieren Werber reibungslos das Nutzererlebnis, indem sie den Wünschen und Bedürfnissen der Verbraucher voraus greifen. Der wirksame Einsatz von „Tiny Data“ ist der Schlüssel dafür, dass mobile Werbung das Hindernis der Werbeblocker überwindet. Das ist keine Modeerscheinung. Es ist die Zukunft der mobilen Werbung und deutsche Marken müssen sicherstellen, dass sie dafür bereit sind.

Über die Autorin: Cristina Constandache ist VP of Business Partnership Europa und America bei Cheetah Ad Platform und verfügt über mehr als zehn Jahre Erfahrung in Global Media Sales. Vorher war Frau Constandache verantwortlich für das Commercial Team bei Mobpartner, bis die Firma in 2015 von Cheetah Mobile erworben wurde. Frau Constandache ist ein Mitglied der Organisationen ‚Women In Tech’ und ‚Women In Wireless’ und als Expertin der mobilen Industrie teilt sie ihre Fachkenntnisse mit Marken und Marketers.

Sichere Dir jetzt alle Executive Mobile Trendreports. Einfach unseren Newsletter abonnieren.

According to a report from the Wall Street Journal, Apple has selected esteemed, semi-retired senior executive Bob Mansfield to oversee the development of “Project Titan,” the autonomous electric car project Elon Musk calls an “open secret.”

WSJ notes that “earlier this month, employees at Apple noticed in the company directory that all the senior managers on the car project were now reporting to Mr. Mansfield.”

Mansfield, who first joined Apple in 1999, is highly-respected within the company for having led the hardware development of products including the MacBook Air, iMac and iPad. More recently, he played a role in the production of the Apple Watch.

Mansfield officially left the executive team in 2013, but has since remained to work on special projects and advise. 

Still from The Airport, 2016, John Akomfrah. Copyright Smoking Dogs Films; Courtesy Lisson Gallery.

You are presented with two paths to take when you walk into artist John Akomfrah’s solo exhibition US debut at Lisson Gallery. Through the left passage, you’ll find diptych video installation Auto Da Fé, a solemn exploration of eight major human migrations that have taken place across the world since the 1654 fleeing of Sephardic Jews from Brazil to Barbados. The right entrance brings you to The Airport, a triptych video installation that deals with feelings of longing and nostalgia within a Grecian landscape, perhaps the epitome of a country that longs for its better days in the past. Whichever path you take, you encounter a near feature-length experience.

The Airport Installation View, 2016, John Akomfrah. Copyright Smoking Dogs Films; Courtesy Lisson Gallery. Photography Jack Hems

Despite the different themes at hand, both video pieces have an inherent stillness in them; the characters and landscapes barely move, often with an air of heavy contemplation. Most movement in the scenes comes from the exceptional camera work, the rapidity of scene cutting, and the various synchronized monitors, which combined with the inactivity of the individual scenes, leads to a feeling of a “moving-picture” as opposed to a more traditional notion of film. These are living, breathing still lifes punctuated with Akomfrah’s carefully orchestrated narratives, conveyed without any character uttering a single word.

Auto Da Fé Installation View, 2016, John Akomfrah. Copyright Smoking Dogs Films; Courtesy Lisson Gallery. Photography Jack Hems

Auto Da Fé was filmed solely in Barbados, but shot in such a way that the ambiguity of location is emphasized, resulting in a catch-all landscape for the stories of migration. The film shows many individuals in moments of hypnotic introspection. Sometimes they stare out into the ocean on a long pier or stand within the ruins of an enormous pool. Frequently, the fourth wall is broken as a person stares intently at the viewer for an extended period of time. Without a word spoken, you can feel the tense disconnect of the individuals and their surroundings, a ruptured link of the ancestral homelands they were forced to flee.

Still from Auto Da Fé, John Akomfrah. Copyright Smoking Dogs Films; Courtesy Lisson Gallery.

Akomfrah explains that the people in the film are descendants of the depicted migrations: “I am committed to the idea of an ‘aesthetics of location.’ For me, that means working as much as possible with as many ‘local’ themes and materials, and this is as much about resources as it is about people.”

Still from Auto Da Fé, 2016, John Akomfrah. Copyright Smoking Dogs Films; Courtesy Lisson Gallery.

There is also an intensely somber quality to The Airport. The film centers on an older man traversing a series of abandoned landscapes and buildings, upon which he encounters literal visages of his past, seeing a younger version of himself in the ruins, often punctuated by a sepia filter. Other figures like a dislocated astronaut and an abrasive gorilla frequently appear, the former often following and observing the older man as he is visiting his own past. There is an ambiguity in who the astronaut is, but perhaps it functions as a post-mortem look into the old man’s own life, whose detachment from reality is represented by the astronaut suit, a symbol of exploring a world that is not your own.

The Airport Installation View, 2016, John Akomfrah. Copyright Smoking Dogs Films; Courtesy Lisson Gallery. Photography Jack Hems

Although nostalgia and longing are certainly common feelings of the human experience, the focus on Greece in this film is somewhat unusual for an English artist of Ghanaian descent. “The Airport is in many ways an homage to one of my idols, the late Greek maestro Theo Angelopoulos. His work was often described as complex, sweeping, and hypnotic, but what drew me to it most were his dazzling and magical investigations of modern Greek history,” Akomfrah tells The Creators Project. “At the time of his death, Angelopoulos was working on a film that reportedly addressed the crisis of modern Greece titled The Other Sea, and in some small was my hope in was to complete this unfinished project for him.”

Portrait of John Akomfrah. Photo by Jack Hems © Smoking Dogs Films; Courtesy of Lisson Gallery.

John Akomfrah’s Auto Da Fé and The Airport are on view at New York’s Lisson Gallery until August 12.

Related:

This Water-Based Video Installation Is Not a Piece of Art—It’s a Medium

Experience Morocco Through the Eyes of an Anthropomorphic Fly

A Sci-Fi Fantasy Envisions an Afro-Surrealist Future

 

A photo posted by Olimpia Zagnoli (@olimpiazagnoli) on Jun 5, 2016 at 9:51am PDT

With T. Rex and Thin Lizzy among her favorite artists, Italian illustrator Olimpia Zagnoli's feel like a relic of the 70s with a sleek, modern update. Present are the vibrant blocks of colors of the psychedelic and disco aesthetics, but she brings post-iPhone minimalism to her silhouetted depictions of the every day. She often works on commission for The New York Times, The Guardian, or Vanity Fair, and many of her drawings are aimed at the human condition dissected in those publications. When she's not illustrating for major media outlets, Zagnoli has been trying her hand at music videos, including a colorful, Pop art romp for Green Like July's "Moving To The City." 

Her personal sketches are taking on a Cubist flatness that packs volumes about the multi-dimensionality of her subjects, and she's also dipped her toes into abstract oil painting by incorporating different materials like silver foil. All of these works pair nicely with upbeat songs like "Bang a Gong (Get It On)" or "The Boys Are Back in Town," which you can bounce to as you peruse her catalog in the Instagrams below.
 

 

"The Best Sex of My Life" today on the @guardian

A photo posted by Olimpia Zagnoli (@olimpiazagnoli) on Jul 23, 2016 at 6:30am PDT

 

Contemporary Literary Salon for @larepubblica

A photo posted by Olimpia Zagnoli (@olimpiazagnoli) on Jul 17, 2016 at 3:41am PDT

 

"How To Fix Feminism" Today's Sunday Review cover for The New York Times.

A photo posted by Olimpia Zagnoli (@olimpiazagnoli) on Jun 12, 2016 at 5:52am PDT

 

"Reading Proust on My Cellphone" by Sarah Boxer for @theatlantic

A photo posted by Olimpia Zagnoli (@olimpiazagnoli) on May 17, 2016 at 9:22am PDT

 

Modern Gioconda for @larepubblica

A photo posted by Olimpia Zagnoli (@olimpiazagnoli) on May 8, 2016 at 4:46am PDT

 

"I can't find my car keys!" #AdventuresinTailleur

A photo posted by Olimpia Zagnoli (@olimpiazagnoli) on May 7, 2016 at 6:57am PDT

 

Giovanna at Il Pellicano

A photo posted by Olimpia Zagnoli (@olimpiazagnoli) on Jul 14, 2016 at 12:41pm PDT

 

Sarah and the cat.

A photo posted by Olimpia Zagnoli (@olimpiazagnoli) on Jul 18, 2016 at 2:49am PDT

 

New Morning. Oil, silver foil, black paper and sun reflection.

A photo posted by Olimpia Zagnoli (@olimpiazagnoli) on Apr 28, 2016 at 2:23am PDT

 

Morning any town you name. Oil, silver foil and sun reflection.

A photo posted by Olimpia Zagnoli (@olimpiazagnoli) on Apr 27, 2016 at 4:17am PDT

 

Santa Anastasia is part of "W. Women in Italian Design" exhibition at @latriennale design museum in Milan. #womeninitaliandesign #xxitriennale

A photo posted by Olimpia Zagnoli (@olimpiazagnoli) on Apr 11, 2016 at 2:30am PDT

 

Last day of #salonedelmobile2016 Grateful for all the friends, drinks and steps taken this week and for the inspiring things i've seen around my beautiful city. #mdw2016

A photo posted by Olimpia Zagnoli (@olimpiazagnoli) on Apr 17, 2016 at 2:11pm PDT

Keep up with Olimpia Zagnoli's work on her Instagram feed. Follow The Creators Project on Instagram to find your next favorite artist.

Related:

An Anonymous Artist's Erotic Utopia | Monday Insta Illustrator

Korean Artist Makes Visual Puns from Pop Culture

Escapist Drawings of Technicolor Weirdos | Monday Insta Illustrator

Sunny Freeman, Toronto Star, Jul 27, 2016

Why shouldn't 7-year-olds learn to code? "They learn the basics by dragging and dropping simple instruction boxes into blocks of code that tell a computer what to do. And the toys they work with show them an immediate, tangible result from their commands. "

Scott Matteson, Tech Republic, Jul 27, 2016

The story is in the headline rather than the content, but there's an important undercurrent. "Reactor Core, which currently has about 210 students on multiple campuses and online, offers 12-week programs in software engineering and mobile app development." So far so good. But they are one of several organizations asked to cease and desist. "The primary concern so far has been that bootcamps have not been sufficiently transparent about student outcomes."

All images courtesy of the artists

On August 6th in Prospect Park, 6,000 people will experience a tour of the Orion Nebula through a live virtual reality performance with the Hubble Telescope. At this unique VR experience, The Hubble Cantata, viewers will turn their attention to the skies while simultaneously participating in a communal event. It's a monumental occasion for audiences to be part of a community as well as the cosmos in a literally entirely new way. 

The Hubble Cantata, which has been an extremely collaborative project between artists and designers, will premiere as a part of the BRIC Celebrate Brooklyn! New York City festival. To raise money for the Prospect Park event, and for a future tour of the production, the creators have started a Kickstarter page. So far, they’ve raised over $7,000 and have assured The Creators Project that the event will happen regardless of whether they meet their fundraising goal of $35,000.

To experience The Hubble Cantata, viewers must download an app, which is expected to be released this week on the performance’s Kickstarter. Once audiences arrive at Prospect Park, they will be given free cardboard headsets to use with the app. No headphones are necessary as live musicians, including a Norwegian string section and the Brooklyn Youth Chorus, will provide a live soundtrack. The Hubble Cantata is being designed at New Inc by composer Paola Prestini, librettist Royce Vavrek, filmmaker Eliza McNitt, and Hubble expert astrophysicist Mario Livio. The creators have also partnered with various audio and visual design experts to make distant space come alive. 

To learn more about The Hubble Cantata, check out its Kickstarter and website.

Related:

Blast Off Into A Glorious Star Cluster To Celebrate Hubble’s 25th Anniversary

100 Million Stars Shine in Hubble Telescope’s Largest Image Ever

Celestial Photographs Celebrate Hubble Telescope’s’ 25th Anniversary

Images courtesy the artist

Sourcing live footage from web-connected cameras all over the world, a mysterious art collective has created a neverending film about everyday life. The collective calls themselves Null, and the film, titled you-are-watching.me is like a more abstruse version of The Truman Show that follows many random people instead of one person selected from birth.

you-are-watching.me is powered by an algorithm that cuts through live feeds with cinematic rhythm, and the soundtrack is made from correlating sounds found throughout the internet. The combination means that no two viewings will be the same. "It is a dramatized narrative construction patched from real life," Null explains. The time I spent on their site, I watched one man narrate a series of traffic footage, heard a woman hum along to opera, accompanied an unseen viewer watching a telenovela, and sat through a bizzare real estate advertisement. Stripped of context, viewers are forced to build their own narratives about the lives they are watching. It scratches the same itch as people-watching on the train, We Live in Public, or William Betts' CCTV films.

While feeding your inner voyeur, Null also admonishes how little attention is paid to personal cybersecurity: "Us as a film, as characters, without our knowledge, without our apparent consent. This is how we live now, we allow access to our lives in exchange for a 'social life,' 'convenience,' 'security.'" Check the password on your webcam, or you might wind up as an unintentional star of you-are-watching.me.

Watch you-are-watching.me here. See more of Null's work on their website.

Related:

William Betts Creates Art From CCTV Footage

Generative Portraits Made from Your Voice and Webcam Photos

How To Make Glitch Selfies With Your Webcam

“If you had a full Nexus Sailfish ROM dump, what would you do with it / look for?,” mused serial leakster and Venture Beat writer Evan Blass in a recent tweet.

Turns out the answer to that question was to dump said ROM on Twitter in its entirety, allowing Blass’ eager but confused followers to look through the contents of the file.

Titled “Google Nexus Sailfish / HTC S1 build.prop file,” the chunk of code includes two interesting tidbits regarding the smaller of the two forthcoming Nexus devices rumoured to be in production by HTC.

The first, and most definitive, piece of information is that the device will have a display density of 420, indicating it will ship with a Full HD 1080p display rather than the QHD display that its larger counterpart, Marlin, is expected to carry.

The other fact gleaned from the dump is the device’s chipset model number: MSM8996. This number corresponds to Qualcomm’s current Snapdragon 820 processor. However, it could also correspond to the chip maker’s new 821 model, as multiple SoCs from the company have shared model numbers in the past.

The device’s other rumoured include 4GB of RAM, 32GB of storage, a 12-megapixel rear camera and a 8-megapixel front camera.

Google is expected to announce its new lineup of Nexus devices this fall.

Related reading: Here’s our best look at rumoured HTC Nexus devices ‘Sailfish’ and ‘Marlin’ yet

Mapping tools such as OpenStreetMap and Mapbox were made for developers to create better apps. However, we at GrafoMap found a way to re-purpose these tools to create better map posters. Now you don’t have to be from one of the big cities to find a familiar map poster because on GrafoMap.com you can create your own map poster of ANY place in the world!

With our design tool you can search any place, zoom in or out, and pick your favorite color theme. There is also an option to add a personal message that can make your poster even more special.

Visit GrafoMap and play around! It’s a great tool for making meaningful home decor and gifts.

Big thanks to GrafoMap for sponsoring the feed this week.

One of the best things about shopping in Chinatown during the summertime is the variety of fresh, local, and affordable produce available for purchase, – you’d be surprised by what you can find! This week, we were excited to find freshly picked, homegrown pole beans at Carley Quality Meats, sourced from hua folks aka “華人” (pronounced as waa jan in Cantonese and huá rén in Mandarin) who were growing from their very own backyard here in Vancouver. Turns out, Carley Quality Meats has been selling home grown produce for quite some time. For example, they sourced fresh choi grown by one of their employee’s sister last year. Now that’s an example of a local economy!

As one of the employees explained, homegrown pole beans aka “家鄉心豆仔” (pronounced as gaa hoeng sum dau zai in Cantonese and jiā xiāng xīn dòu zǎi in Mandarin) is quite popular amongst the local shoppers. Long, crisp and fresh, it’s easy to see why this veg is a crowd favourite. It even brought back childhood memories for Angela, our summer staff, of the 豆 (aka beans) that her mom used to grow in their backyard.

How to select and prepare

When selecting your veg, look for firm, bright green 豆 with a smooth exterior. When fresh, it should look well hydrated. To prepare your 豆, remove the tips from both ends and break into smaller pieces (a good size reference is the length of your palm). An easy (and fun!) way to prepare the 豆 is by snapping it with your hands; the beans make such a satisfying sound when you do so. Don’t believe us? Hear for yourself:

Cook the 豆 according to your personal preference; crisp, tender, or anything in between! A simple, yet classic way to enjoy these beans is by stir-frying it with garlic and oyster sauce. With that being said, they also hold up well when blanched, pickled or roasted.

Excited to try these homegrown goodies? Come on down to Chinatown, as they may go quickly! To learn more about other local choi in Chinatown, click here.

The post Choi Identification: Local Pole Beans (家鄉心豆仔) appeared first on Hua Foundation.

If it hasn’t already achieved the milestone, Apple is expected to sell its one billionth iPhone sometime this week, according to market analysts interviewed by CNBC.

The company, which is set to announce its third quarter earnings on Tuesday, will likely announce at least another 40-million iPhones sold during the three month period ending in June. Taking in to account that clip, Apple will have sold approximately 987-million iPhones as of its most recent fiscal quarter. With about 13-million iPhones sold per month, the company is on pace to sold it one-billionth iPhone.

The milestone comes as both iPhone and smartphone sales slow down. At its most recent Q2 earnings call, Apple announced it had sold 51.2-million iPhones during the three month period that ended on March 26th, a 16 percent decline from the 61 million iPhones it sold during the same period in 2015. With Apple expected to wait until 2017, the iPhone’s 10th year anniversary, to release a significant upgrade to the iPhone 6 lineup, the company’s device sales are expected to continue to decline for the foreseeable future.

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