Rolandt

Google notifies approximately 4,000 of its users each month of state-sponsored cyber attacks, according to Diane Greene, the company’s senior vice president.

Greene, who is also a member of Alphabet’s board of directors, revealed the information during the Fortune magazine conference in Aspen, Colorado. The executive did not reveal what portion of those users live in Canada and the U.S.

Partway through last year, Facebook began warning its users of state sponsored attacks, though unlike Google, the social media giant has yet to reveal how many warnings it issues in a given month.

John Gruber:

I’ve been advocating for Nintendo to fully commit to making games for mobile since 2013 (parts one and two). I just re-read both pieces and they both hold up really well. I hate to say it (OK, I love to say it), but it looks like I was right.

That kind of remains to be seen.

Pokémon GO isn’t really a Nintendo game.[^and] It’s not even made by Game Freak, the people who usually do Pokémon games.[^gamefreak] It’s made by Niantic, and it’s closely based on their previous game, Ingress.

In fact, it’s possible that Apple makes more money on Pokémon GO than Nintendo does.[^apple]

[^apple]: Most cross-platform mobile games make the majority of their sales on iOS. Apple makes 30%. Nintendo owns 33% of The Pokémon Company. Do the math.
This probably explains why Apple bloggers are so happy about mobile games from Nintendo: they benefit Apple way more than they do Nintendo.

[^and]: Aaaand… a week later, looks like investors have now caught on.

The real Nintendo mobile games - Fire Emblem and Animal Crossing - should come out later this year.

[^gamefreak]: Game Freak, Nintendo, and Creatures jointly own The Pokémon Company, who actually owns the Pokémon IP.

But there are three other points to be made here.

Nintendo is profitable without mobile games

Much of the argument for Nintendo to create mobile games was based on the idea that Nintendo could not survive just selling its own consoles. I think it’s fair to say that the last few years have shown this to be false. Even with the Wii U being an abysmal failure, Nintendo is consistently profitable.[^although]

[^although]: They did post a net loss for the current quarter after I published this post (possibly due to a lack of relevant game releases this quarter, since most game development seems to be focused on the planned NX console), but at the same time, Nintendo forecast yearly operating profit to climb 37 percent compared to last year.

Mobile might not be a clear win for Nintendo

Pokémon GO is doing very well right now, apparently making $1.6 million a day. But this shows the problem with the App Store: Pokémon GO is a lottery win. It’s the game everybody[^europe] is playing right now.

[^europe]: Yeah, even though it’s not officially released over here yet, people are playing it.

There’s a good chance that Animal Crossing will do similarly well. But will other Nintendo franchises? Will Fire Emblem?

And I think it’s worth comparing Pokémon GO’s success to Nintendo’s current console games. As of right now, the Wii U game Splatoon has sold 4.5 million copies. Nintendo usually doesn’t discount games much, so it’s still listed at 50$ on Amazon. Let’s say the average selling price of a copy was 50$. That’s 225 million in sales, a large part of which is pure profit for Nintendo - if it’s sold in Nintendo’s own online store, it’s 100% profit.

For Pokémon GO to achieve the same kinds of numbers, it will have to continue doing this well for quite a while, particularly given that Nintendo will see very little of the money Pokémon GO is currently raking in.

That’s not to say that Pokémon GO can’t achieve those numbers - but how many of Nintendo’s other games will be lottery wins the size of Pokémon GO? Granted, not every Nintendo game is as successful as Splatoon, either, but the fact that Nintendo made this much money on a game released for a console that is universally (and rightly) seen as a complete failure is telling.

Nintendo on mobile is not a clear win for us

One final point: it feels a little bit disheartening to see the adulation Nintendo is currently getting for moving towards the same kind of manipulative, free-to-play, IAP-monetized games we get from tons of other rather questionable mobile gaming companies. It really took a very short amount of time for us to accept these games as the new normal.

Sure, Pokémon GO is not the worst offender.[^congrats] But if we eventually end up with a Nintendo that’s producing the same kinds of games that everybody else is doing on mobile platforms, what have we really gained? Is there a reason to celebrate Nintendo games on iOS at all?[^stock]

[^congrats]: «Congratulations! You’re not the worst!»

[^stock]: Well, I guess there is if you own Apple stock.

If Pokémon GO is the Nintendo of the future, why do we need Nintendo at all?

When people originally started talking about Nintendo games on iOS, it was because many were hoping that Nintendo would change the economics of mobile game development for the better. Surely, if only Nintendo released a Mario game for the iPhone, people would see that it was possible to make money on iOS with real games that didn’t rely on gambling mechanics to get whales to spend disproportionate amounts of money?[^not]

[^not]: By the way, I’m not saying that non-manipulative games that make money on mobile don’t exist, just that, looking at the top selling apps, they’re the rare exception.

It’s still possible that Nintendo will do exactly that when they release games like Fire Emblem.

But Pokémon GO is not that game.

If you require a short url to link to this article, please use http://ignco.de/753

But wait, there's more!

Want to read more like this? Buy my book's second edition! Designed for Use: Create Usable Interfaces for Applications and the Web is now available DRM-free directly from The Pragmatic Programmers. Or you can get it on Amazon, where it's also available in Chinese and Japanese.

Thomas H. Davenport, Harvard Business Review, Jul 15, 2016

I've tried to say this before but it's tough to make the case stick when you're talking to AI researchers. Will artificial intelligence (AI) companies make any money? asks Thomas H. Davenport. He answers, " it’ s going to be difficult to make a good living just by selling cognitive software... in general, this type of software will mostly be abundant and free. If your company knows what it does, how to use it, and how to integrate it into your business, you’ re golden. If you’ re planning to sell it, not so much."

Louis Volante, CEA Education Canada, Jul 15, 2016

Amid all the calls in Canada for a "national education policy" about this or that it is rare to see celebrated our provincial divisions. But that is the case in the last paragraph of this article: "our provincial autonomy is an important characteristic in helping our vast nation successfully address external international pressures in a manner that is respectful of and consistent with our regional culture, history, and geography." This is a contrast, say, with the "soft law" tactics of the European Union "that seeks to undermine traditional constitutional doctrines and values that support a limited view of Social Europe." This discussion is found in the context of a wider look at international organizations such as the World Bank, OECD, UNESCO and the EU, on global education development and policy. I would probably have wanted to look at other international organizations such as global foundations (Shuttleworth, Hewlett) and multinational corporations (especially Microsoft, Google, Apple and Pearson).

Dianne Gereluk, Eugene G. Kowch, Merlin B. Thompson, CEA Education Canada, Jul 15, 2016

Normally we think of a charter school as a privately owned and run institution doing whatever it likes and competing with the regular system for better students and instructional resources. This article paints a somewhat different picture of the Alberta Public Charter School system. Located in western Canada, this system creates the dimension of choice often sought by parents within the bounds of the public education system. While schools set their own area of focus and govern their own teaching process, they are still held accountable, and are still a part of, public education in Canada. This has created stresses, because charter school teachers are only associate members of the provincial teachers' association, and space and resource limitations have created resource constraints. Readers from outside Canada might find this model an interesting comparison with, say, the charter school model employed in the United States.

Road trips are fun, but it can be hard to enjoy yourself when you end up in a place during its hottest or coldest day of the year. Wouldn’t it be nice to travel across the country and have nice weather every single day? This road trip is for you.

Using data from the National Center for Environmental Information and Environment Canada, climatologist Brian Brettschneider mapped a 13,000-plus mile road trip and scheduled so that the high temperature every day is 70 degrees Fahrenheit. The trip starts in Texas, meanders northeast, makes its way all the way up to Alaska, and then back down. It would take a little over five months.

Just imagine all the points in Pokémon Go you could rack up.

Tags: road trip, weather

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The iPhone 6 is so good; it does not need replacing. 

• The summer season of speculation, rumour and leaks of what will and will not be in the iPhone to be launched this September is already in full swing.
• With loss of the headphone jack having been already put to bed (see here), attention has turned to the screen but I suspect that Apple is unlikely to be able to do what I think it will take to launch another major replacement cycle.
• Top of the list of screen upgrades is a move away from regular LCD to Active Matrix Organic Light Emitting Diode (AMOLED) which would have an impact on the brightness, clarity and contrast of the images shown on the screen.
• Unfortunately, even Samsung’s best marketing videos on how AMOLED improves the viewing experience fail to make me want to rush out and spend another $700 on a new iPhone.
• I think that a large part of the problem is that the iPhone 6 is still almost as good today as it was nearly 2 years ago.
• This means that the user needs to see something that either appeals to his fashion consciousness or meaningfully improves his Digital Life and I can’t see an upgrade to AMOLED providing either.
• Consequently, I think that the upgrade in the brightness and clarity of what is already a perfectly adequate display is not sufficient to encourage users to replace what is already good enough.
• However, if Apple were to do away with the side bezels all together and have a wrap-around screen that might just create enough excitement to trigger a cycle.
• A wrap-around screen would not necessarily improve the function of the device but it would meaningfully differentiate it from its predecessors making the current generation look old and tired.
• As many handset companies have found to their great profit, pointless gimmicks can sell vast volumes of mobile devices and I can’t see why Apple would be any different.
• Unfortunately, I suspect that this year’s model is very unlikely to have this sort physical upgrade leaving the iPhone 7 or iPhone 6s II looking much like those that have gone before it.
• As a result, there is very unlikely to be an upgrade cycle of anything like the size of what we saw in 2014 and 2015.
• Therefore, I do not see Apple showing a sudden growth spurt which will disappoint those looking for a catalyst for the shares.
• Despite this, I think there is value to be had in Apple.
• It is a cash machine that is second to none, with an incredible global brand but it trades like a broken steel company.
• Hence for those that have faith that Apple’s margins are unlikely to be challenged any time soon, this makes a great long term investment.
• In the immediate term, I think Baidu, Samsung and Microsoft have more upside in terms of share price.

One week ago, moments after her boyfriend Philando Castile was shot by a police officer during a routine traffic stop, Diamond Reynolds flipped on Facebook’s live streaming feature. The resultant video, with Reynolds documenting what had happened, as well as her interaction with the police officer, immediately started to spread like wildfire.

And then it was gone.

Approximately an hour later, the video was back, this time with a “Warning — Graphic Video” label attached:

When asked why the video had temporarily disappeared, Facebook simply said “It was down to a technical glitch.” The company had no further comment on the matter.

Facebook Versus Journalism

One needn’t travel far on the Internet to find a think piece bemoaning how Facebook has destroyed journalism, with a whiff of nostalgia for a time when The New York Times decided what news was fit to print and Walter Cronkite declared nightly “That’s the way it is.” It’s a viewpoint that is problematic in two regards.

First, the destruction of journalism is about the destruction of journalism’s business model, which was predicated on scarcity. In the case of newspapers, printing presses, delivery trucks, and a healthy subscriber base made them the lowest common denominator when it came to advertising, right down to four line classified ads that represented some of the most expensive copy on a per-letter basis in the world.

TV news, meanwhile, in large part existed to fulfill broadcaster obligations under the Fairness Doctrine, which required licensors of publicly-owned radio frequencies to devote airtime to matters of public interest, and to air opposing views of those matters. The Fairness Doctrine was revoked in 1987, for reasons that were the canary in the coal mine for news’ business model. The New York Times reported at the time:

In explaining the conclusion that its fairness rules were “no longer necessary to achieve diversity of viewpoint,” Ms. Killory, the commission’s counsel, noted the major growth of broadcast outlets in recent years.

There are now more than 1,300 television stations and more than 10,000 radio stations in the United States — in contrast to 1,700 daily newspapers — and 95 percent of viewers receive five or more television signals. Radio listeners in the biggest 25 markets receive an average of 59 radio stations.

Two decades later the average American home received 189 TV channels, and thanks to the Internet, an effectively infinite number of news websites. Scarcity was gone, and the publishing bubble is popping as a result. That Facebook has been the most effective service in collecting and funneling attention to the abundance of news on the Internet is a separate story.

More importantly, the nostalgia for a world of journalistic gatekeepers is nostalgia for a world where the death of Philando Castile would be little more than a one paragraph snippet in the Minneapolis Star Tribune that would have sounded a lot like the initial police report that dryly noted “shots were fired”, and that would have been that.

Crucially, though, it’s not that, thanks to Facebook. On the conservative site Daily Caller Matt Lewis wrote:

In the era of Facebook Live and smart phones, it’s hard to come to any conclusion other than the fact that police brutality toward African-Americans is a pervasive problem that has been going on for generations. Seriously, absent video proof, how many innocent African-Americans have been beaten or killed over the last hundred years by the police—with little or no media coverage or scrutiny?

Those old business models were great for journalists; they weren’t so great for those not deemed worth covering. Those nostalgic for the “good old days” are likely wishing for far more problems than they realize.

Launching Facebook Live

On April 6, the day that Facebook Live launched for everyone, BuzzFeed ran a feature that included an interview with Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg:

“Because it’s live, there is no way it can be curated,” [Zuckerberg] said. “And because of that it frees people up to be themselves. It’s live; it can’t possibly be perfectly planned out ahead of time. Somewhat counterintuitively, it’s a great medium for sharing raw and visceral content.”

A week later, during the opening keynote of Facebook’s F8 developer conference, Zuckerberg enthused:

Just the other week I saw a live video of a woman and her kids skiing down a hill. It was just mesmerizing! I watched it for a few minutes because I was like ‘I just want to make sure these kids get down this hill.’ There’s usually people who are playing music or dancing in there, but every once in a while there’s something that is really important and special happening. Like a couple of days ago a woman named Lena commented on one of my posts to tell me that when her mother was sick in the hospital she streamed her wedding on live so her mother and her friends across the country could not only see it but could be there with them. Now that’s pretty meaningful.

Raw, visceral, meaningful. That’s a pretty good way of describing Reynolds’ video. Newsworthy is another, and that’s where things get a whole lot more complicated for Facebook.

Facebook the Journalism Company

I noted above that Facebook is not necessarily to blame for the destruction of journalism’s business model, but with live video the social network has moved from feasting on what remains of publishing to becoming a journalistic company in their own right: Facebook’s 1.6 billion users have been deputized to not only chronicle their ski trips and weddings but also killings by police and, a day later, the killings of police.

In retrospect, given this reality, what is so striking about the aforementioned BuzzFeed feature and all of Facebook’s public comments about live video is how little thought seems to have been given to this use case. There is talk about recruiting engineers (150 in a week), all of the features that had to be built, the huge technical problems involved, and of course the potential payoff for Facebook:

Live solves a lot of problems for Facebook. It gives people an easy way to create video content that doesn’t require scripting or much production. Which in turn creates more content for Facebook. Live also helps the company tap into real-time events, an area where it’s struggled compared to Twitter…

One recent trend in social media has been a move away from highly produced content, particularly video…This is precisely what Snapchat is so good at, and why it has become such a threat to Facebook. And it’s clearly something that’s been on Zuckerberg’s mind as well.

“People look at live video and they think this is a lot of pressure because it’s live; it takes a lot of courage to go live and put yourself out there. But what we’re finding is the opposite,” Zuckerberg said in a phone interview the day before the Live relaunch. “A lot of the biggest innovations have been things that take some of the pressure out of posting a photo or video.”

I wrote after this year’s F8 about how Facebook from the very beginning had always been about projecting your best self online; given that, I wondered if the focus on Live Video might ultimately prove to be a distraction from what Facebook was good at (owning identity online). This last week is validating that concern in a far more profound way than I appreciated.

The risk is this: Facebook’s control over what the vast majority of people see online — news included — is overwhelming. Before the advent of Live Video, though, Facebook could more easily claim to be a neutral provider, simply serving up 3rd-party stories via an allegedly objective algorithm that was ultimately directed by the user itself, and using that user direction to build the best identity repository in the world to sell ads against. And while the reality of Facebook’s News Feed is in fact not objective at all — algorithms are designed by people — actually creating the news will, I suspect, change the conversation about Facebook’s journalistic role in a way that the company may not like.

Facebook and the Fairness Doctrine

Back in 1949, when the Fairness Doctrine was established, the FCC wrote in a report entitled In the Matter of Editorializing by Broadcast Licensees:

We do not believe, however, that the licensee’s obligations to serve the public interest can be met merely through the adoption of a general policy of not refusing to broadcast opposing views where a demand is made of the station for broadcast time. If, as we believe to be the case, the public interest is best served in a democracy through the ability of the people to hear expositions of the various positions taken by responsible groups and individuals on particular topics and to choose between them, it is evident that broadcast licensees have an affirmative duty generally to encourage and implement the broadcast of all sides of controversial public issues over their facilities, over and beyond their obligation to make available on demand opportunities for the expression of opposing views. It is clear that any approximation of fairness in the presentation of any controversy will be difficult if not impossible of achievement unless the licensee plays a conscious and positive role in bringing about balanced presentation of the opposing viewpoints.

Facebook is not a broadcaster: they don’t depend on a government-granted monopoly over radio frequencies that comes with strings attached. And frankly, even were I inclined to agree that the end of the Fairness Doctrine contributed in some way to the United States’ increased polarization, the clear free speech issues inherent in its application, combined with the explosion in media outlets, lead me to believe the FCC was right to revoke it.

That said, Facebook’s influence over what most people see quite clearly rivals that of television broadcasters circa 1949, and the vast majority of jurisdictions in which Facebook operates have much less absolute free speech laws than the United States. The more that Facebook is perceived as a media entity, not simply a neutral platform, the more likely it is that the company will face calls for regulation of the News Feed in particular, in language that will likely sound a lot like the Fairness Doctrine.

Facebook and Transparency

Two weeks ago Facebook took an important step in dealing with the increased scrutiny it will inevitably face, posting a document detailing “News Feed Values”. For the first time Facebook offered a hint of transparency about how its algorithm works, making clear that “friends and family come first”, but also that “your feed should inform” and “your feed should entertain.”

To be sure the document does nothing to address the question of providing both sides of an issue; quite the opposite, in fact. The document states:

We are not in the business of picking which issues the world should read about. We are in the business of connecting people and ideas — and matching people with the stories they find most meaningful. Our integrity depends on being inclusive of all perspectives and view points, and using ranking to connect people with the stories and sources they find the most meaningful and engaging.

We don’t favor specific kinds of sources — or ideas. Our aim is to deliver the types of stories we’ve gotten feedback that an individual person most wants to see. We do this not only because we believe it’s the right thing but also because it’s good for our business. When people see content they are interested in, they are more likely to spend time on News Feed and enjoy their experience.

You may think this is problematic for society (as I do), but at least Facebook is being honest about it; transparency is the company’s best tool to remain free of regulation.

It’s also why the “technical glitch” was so disappointing. The reasons why Reynolds’ video was taken down are probably innocuous — I suspect the video was flagged for graphic content by a Facebook user and removed by a contracted content reviewer (like these in the Philippines), and then restored by someone at Facebook headquarters — and the company is probably both embarrassed that it happened and shy about revealing the degree to which it farms out content review. The most powerful journalistic entity in the world, though, doesn’t get the luxury of sweeping such significant editorial decisions under the rug: that rug will be pulled back at some point, and it would be far better for society and for Facebook were they to do so themselves.

One thing is for sure: this won’t be the last time something truly raw, visceral, and meaningful happens on Facebook Live. Zuckerberg has gotten his wish, even if the implications will ultimately be more than he bargained for: all of the eyes on those live videos will only increase the number of eyes on Facebook itself. It’s a classic case of unintended consequences: Facebook’s attempt to capture Snapchat’s private gestalt has only solidified its position as a public platform with the added component of a newsmaker in its own right, and while that carries clear benefits for society, society will expect more transparency from Facebook, willingly delivered or not.

Product managers are used to wearing many hats; it’s a fundamental component of the job. When something needs to get done and there’s no clear owner, it frequently ends up in your lap. Over time, the random assortment of ownerless items can take over your work life, leaving you less time to focus on strategic product management tasks as you run down your checklist of daily, weekly or monthly...

Source

Tencent-backed Future Mobility Co. has officially joined the club of Chinese auto concepts with a production deadline of 2020.

The auto startup, which is also counts Foxconn and Chinese car dealer Harmony New Energy as investors, plans to sell highly automated, electric cars globally within the next four-and-a-half  years, the Wall Street Journal reported on Tuesday.

As a country of early adopters with an appetite for luxury vehicles, China has produced a number of electric, autonomous and connected car concepts, all hoping to reach production at an accelerated rate.

Baidu, China’s largest search engine, has committed to a 2018 release date for their autonomous concept, with a 2020 deadline for production and distribution. Likewise, LeEco, in partnership with Faraday Future, has set a similar 2020 deadline for their electric vehicle, claiming to have shortened the development stage by two years.

Future Mobility Co., which is just four months old, will close a funding round “soon,” according to CEO Carsten Breitfeld. He told the Wall Street Journal that the company is seeking to compete with major luxury car dealers Audi, Mercedes and BMW, which make up the lion’s share of China’s luxury vehicle market.

Mr. Breitfeld formerly worked on the development team for BMW’s i8 plug-in sports car.

Future Mobility Co. isn’t Tencent’s only bet in the autos industry. The social and gaming giant also invested in NextEV Inc., which has also attracted funding from Sequoia Capital and Joy Capital.

Firstly, let’s set the mood. I need you to watch this video.

Go on. Stop what you’re doing and press play. I can wait…

Dang Dog Blog – Timeline | Facebook

Little Top Gun and The Force Awakens Mash up. https://youtu.be/k56JAcurEQY

Done? How good was that, right? RIGHT?! Mmmhmm, I knew you’d like it.

Now, onto ALPHA…

I’ll set the scene.

Imagine it’s the mid-eighties. Your name is Dr Myles Dyson and you’ve just invented the neural-net processor. You see your invention as a massive success, a gift to humanity, a major stepping stone across the treacherous waters toward world peace.

… and then Sarah Connor shoots you.

Wait.

That’s Cyberdyne. This is Psibernetix. My bad. I’ll start again.

University of Cincinnati doctoral graduate Nick Ernest may not have built the neural-net processor (thankfully), but he’s definitely created something on that level. Ernest and his team at Psibernetix have created ALPHA, an AI set to be the ultimate wingman of the sky(net)… which runs on a Raspberry Pi.

Exciting, yes? Let me explain…

ALPHA is an artificial intelligence with the capability to out-manoeuvre even the most seasoned fighter pilot pro, and to prove this, ALPHA was introduced to retired U.S. Air Force pilot Col. Gene Lee in a head-to-head dogfight simulation.

When pitted against Col. Gene Lee, who now works as an instructor and Air Battle Manager for the U.S. Air Force, ALPHA repeatedly shot down the pro, never allowing Lee to get a single shot in.

“I was surprised at how aware and reactive it was. It seemed to be aware of my intentions, and reacting instantly to my changes in flight and missile deployment. It knew how to defeat the shot I was taking. It moved instantly between defensive and offensive actions as needed.”

Before ALPHA, pilots training with simulated missions against AIs would often be able to ‘trick’ the system, understanding the limitations of the technology involved to win over their virtual opponents. However, with ALPHA this was simply not the case, instead leaving Lee exhausted and thoroughly defeated by the simulations.

“I go home feeling washed out. I’m tired, drained, and mentally exhausted. This may be artificial intelligence, but it represents a real challenge.”

Prior to their work alongside Col. Gene Lee, ALPHA was set up against the current AI resources used for training manned and unmanned teams as part of the Air Force research programme. Much like its sessions with Lee, ALPHA outperformed the existing programmes, repeatedly beating the AIs in various situations.

Nick Ernest, David Carroll, and Gene Lee vs. ALPHA

In the long term, ALPHA looks set to continue to advance in the field with additional development options, such as aerodynamic and sensor models, in the works. The aim is for ALPHA to work as an AI wingman for existing pilots. With current pilots hitting speeds of 1,500 miles per hour at altitudes thousands of feet in the air, ALPHA can provide response times that beat their human counterparts by miles; this would allow for Unmanned Combat Aerial Vehicles (UCAVs) to defend pilots against hostile attack in the skies, while learning from enemy action.

This ability to run ALPHA on such a low-budget PC makes the possibility of using the AI in the field all that more achievable. As confirmed by Ernest himself (we emailed him to check), the AI and its algorithms can react to the simulated flight’s events, and eventually real-life situations, with ease, using the processing power of a $35 computer. 

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is incredible.

This blog post was bought to you by the 1980s*. You’re most welcome.

*Yes, we know Terminator 2 was released in 1991. Give us some slack.

The post ALPHA vs. The Pro – Judgement Day appeared first on Raspberry Pi.

Microsoft recently announced a new program designed to increase the Surface’s presence in the workplace that it’s calling “Surface as a Service.”

Businesses will have the opportunity to lease devices, as well as subscriptions to Office 365 and Windows 10, giving customers access to the latest hardware as well as faster device refresh cycles.

Microsoft has been widely looking to bring the Surface into enterprise, an effort that’s been clearly proven through its several past initiatives such as last year’s partnership with Dell and HP.

Two more partnerships were announced Tuesday with IBM and Booz Allen Hamilton, further bolstering the growing market of Surface resellers.

The launch of this program follows the recent reveal of the Surface Membership program, which allows users to purchase Surface products by making low monthly payments.

Corporate vice president Yusuf Mehdi elaborated on the program in a post on Microsoft’s official company blog.

“Today we are expanding the Surface Enterprise Initiative with a set of new partnerships and programs that will empower our customers of all sizes – from SMBs to multi-national enterprises – to transform the way their people and the organizations work.”

He went on to say that Cloud Solution Providers will offer Surface through a managed service, though few details were provided on how the subscription model would operate.

Microsoft reports that the Surface is becoming more and more profitable for the company, having increased from $1 billion in revenue per year to $1 billion in quarterly revenue.

Furthermore, Microsoft also announced the expansion of its Surface National Multi Purchasing Program with CDW, Insight, SHI and Zones. This makes it easier for companies to put Surface devices on their company-wide purchasing lists with the resellers, according to TechCrunch.

While the program will be launching with ALSO, a European Cloud Service Provider, Microsoft says a global launch will follow shortly.

Related reading: Microsoft Canada launches one-day sale on Lumias, PCs, Xbox Ones, and more

iPad Pro 9.7", Apple Pencil, Microsoft Wedge Keyboard,
Universal Cable, Microsoft Powerbank
Apple Watch with Sport Band
iPhone 6S Plus, Olloclip Active Lens

Not in the photo: 5 port USB charger, power lead, BlackBerry Priv (shot this photo), two Lightning cables, one Watch cable, one USB cable.

The keyboard has a foldable protector that doubles as a stand. What you see here is about two pounds. Trying to stay below 10 pounds, including the (messenger) bag. Two nights in hotel, one night on the plane.

With every heavy travel season comes another round of calls to privatize or kill the Transportation Security Agency. Hatred for the hapless agency seems to have reached an all-time-high this summer. It’s not just the record-long wait times. In April, the New York Times reported that the TSA routinely retaliates against employees who point out security lapses to their superiors. In May, the agency fired its head of security operations, American Airlines publicly shamed the TSA for causing thousands of passengers to miss their flights, and a Florida congressman published a guidebook, TSA for Dummies, to document the agency’s “meltdowns” for the uninitiated.

But while government audits and reports continue to paint the agency as an unequivocal failure, those numbers are irrelevant to the metrics that govern the agency’s online reputation. With over 400,000 followers, the TSA’s Instagram account wages a curious, uphill public relations campaign — one that bears an inverse relationship to the agency’s unpopularity offline. Last year Rolling Stone ranked the winsome, faux-naive “@TSA” the fourth best account to follow.

On the agency’s official Instagram, objects that slow down security lines transform into hilarious artifacts, and the nameless canine agents you’re forbidden to touch in real life appear as cuddly characters. Whereas interactions with the TSA were once limited to sterile airport settings, we can now continuously interface with the agency’s casual personality on our phones anytime, anywhere. All we have to do is scroll through the feed’s amateur photography of confiscated carry-on items, sorted by the self-congratulatory hashtag #TSAGoodCatch.

The majority of those “good catches” are of guns. Some are pictured in isolation against wood and laminate surfaces, like family heirlooms for sale on eBay. Occasionally, a large Photoshopped array of hundreds of confiscated firearms will be uploaded, in an apparent attempt to convey the extent of the firearm-smuggling problem and the determination with which travelers stick to their guns.

As a respite from the gun show, adorable snapshots of the agency’s dogs punctuate the feed at regular intervals, introducing us to the security state’s mascots. These canine interludes, hashtagged #WorkingDogs and #DogsofInstagram, show such “good boys” and “good girls” as Botka, Doc, Guiness, Fable, Spike, Mojo, Yoshi, Tarzan, Toro, True, Woody, Missy, Oonda (named after a 9/11 victim), Folti (retired after 10 years of service), Screech, Simba, and “don’t let his name fool you” Baby. I could go on. Some lucky pups are even Photoshopped onto trading cards, like all-star athletes.

Aside from guns and dogs, the feed largely consists of bizarre and dangerous items, including images of every sort of knife imaginable: swords and throwing stars, switchblades and pocket knives, a three-piece set of neon green “faux blood adorned” machetes. There are cherry-red hacksaws, cherry-red brass knuckles with pop-out blades, and rainbow-tinted daggers, carved sharply on both ends. For the cosplay fan, Batman-shaped throwing blades and razor-blade stars (tagged #Krull in a shout-out to the 1980s sci-fi film) abound.

Concealed blades are discovered in black combs, in pink combs, in pens, in the plush of neck pillows, on thighs, under bras, wedged into a homemade enchilada. There are many cane swords — so many that the agency recommends you pull the handle of your cane to see if you may have purchased one by accident. Multipurpose tools have been slipped under the soles of shoes, stuffed in bottles of pills, slotted into a hard drive, and buried within a metal pan of what appears to be a half-eaten casserole. The casserole traveler’s intentions were “delicious, not malicious,” @TSA confirmed.

Also on display are ingenious or idiotic stashes of drugs. In the accompanying captions, the agency comes across like a Cool Dad, explaining that the TSA would never explicitly look for drugs but is, unfortunately, required to report them when discovered. Which they are — in the battery compartments of computer mice, in false-bottomed shaving cream or beverage cans, in tubs of peanut butter, and so on.

Of course, not everything the TSA confiscates gets posted. The agency spares us visual documentation of the millions of bottles of water and other larger-than-three-ounce vessels of liquid it captures. Scrolling through the hundreds of squares, a subtle but forceful hierarchy begins to emerge. The more singular the catch, the more popular it becomes. A stun gun disguised as rhinestone-spangled lipstick case, for instance, garners more likes than a can of bear mace. The most ingenious of these #catches weave surprise, stealth, and traveler stupidity into a single object: consider the eight-inch double-edged knife “artfully concealed” in an Eiffel Tower replica statue; the seven small snakes wrapped in nylon stockings, dangling under a traveler’s pants; or, my favorite, the five dead endangered sea horses floating in an oversize bottle of VSOP. The alcohol-doused animals represent a two-in-one prohibition, as does the bag of cocaine hidden in a water bottle with more than three ounces of liquid, and the grenade-shaped weed grinder. “Anything resembling a grenade is prohibited in both carry-on and checked baggage,” noted @TSA. “Especially if it’s a grenade shaped grinder with marijuana inside.”

Despite the occasional oddities, flipping through @TSA can quickly become a familiar ritual: gun, gun, throwing star. The unceasing repetition of forms on the feed offers a sense of security, however false. The recurrence of threats averted makes it seem as though they can be known, even anticipated. But this soothing logic easily gives way to its opposite: that the threats on view are not contained but endlessly regenerative and, therefore, unstoppable. “Is there an Instagram account,” one user asked, “where people post what they got through security with because you didn’t catch it?”

This question hints at the larger ambiguity underlying the account. Does @TSA display dangers contained or dangers to come? It’s an unanswerable question by design. For homeland security to justify its function, every threat must be at once under control and uncontrollable.

The #TSAGoodCatch hashtag uncritically celebrates the agency’s acumen, but it reads less like a humblebrag and more like a desperate plea against dire odds. It’s impossible to understand TSA’s social media personality apart from the agency’s material reputation for inefficiency and waste. The winking friendliness and whimsy of @TSA seems tailored to help us forget how unpopular the agency has been since the beginning. The month after the attacks of 9/11, the U.S. Senate cast a rare unanimous vote in favor of the federal government taking over airport security from private contractors — a decision that nearly everybody has been unhappy with ever since.

Among the TSA’s fiercest critics is Bruce Schneier, a computer-security expert who seems to take an almost perverse satisfaction in the agency’s flaws, just as Sherlock Holmes relished the mishaps of London police. In 2003, Schneier coined the term “security theater” to describe the TSA’s knack for providing a psychological veneer of safety in lieu of instituting tested security measures. By offering procedures to make travelers feel secure, he argues, the agency creates “audience-participation dramas” for “movie-plot threats.” “Focusing on specific threats like shoe bombs or snow-globe bombs simply induces the bad guys to do something else,” he explained to Vanity Fair in 2011. “You end up spending a lot on the screening and you haven’t reduced the total threat.”

What little data that has been released on the TSA’s activities over the past decade confirms Schneier’s analysis. A 2010 Government Accountability Office report found that the TSA’s $200 million investment in a secret program to detect terrorist behavior through facial tics and other “tells” failed to detect any terrorists, including at least a dozen individuals later involved in terrorism cases. This was unrelated to the discovery, in 2015, that 73 of the agency’s own workers were on the U.S. government’s no-fly list.

Each year brings new failures. A 2011 congressional report found that the agency had permitted 25,000 security breaches in the past decade. In 2012, a TSA official admitted that no arrests could be attributed to the implementation of whole-body scanners. Three years later, the quarter-billion-dollar body-scanning equipment was unveiled as an essentially decorative set piece: A security audit revealed that the scanners failed to discover weapons and explosives 95 percent of the time. This led the Washington Post to wonder why the agency celebrated 2014 as “a great year” on its blog, where it boasted of an average seizure rate of six firearms a day. “Americans aren’t sure if that’s a measure of success or a colossal failure,” Senator Ben Sasse, a Republican from Nebraska, noted.

In the midst of this perpetual public relations disaster, @TSA was established, on June 30, 2013, by “Blogger Bob” Burns. Though it would eventually find its charismatic voice, the Instagram account’s first post reveals a less than confident grasp of the medium: “#Fireworks don’t fly. (On planes) #july4 #travel #instatsa #firstpost #aviation http://1.usa.gov/16xLT7a.”

Other early posts wielded hashtags as gnomic apothegms. One early, pound-heavy posting read: “tsa#StunGun #disguised as a pack of #cigarettes discovered at #Cleveland — #cle #stun #stunguns #tazer #tazers #shock #shocking #travel #aviation #tsa #instatsa #tsablogteam #tsagram #instagood #instacool #webstagram #instagramhub #photo #gov20 #gov #all_shots.” None of these hashtags would catch on.

The house style that eventually prevailed on @TSA — equal parts playful, pithy, and paternalistic — makes amends for the agency’s paranoid mindset. Its winking cleverness distracts us from the agency’s uncool job of enforcing uncool rules: “This brush dagger was discovered in a carry-on bag at the #SanFrancisco International Airport. Familiarizing yourself with the prohibited items list prior to flying can prevent hairy situations.” Cue the laugh track, and the likes.

The TSA is hardly alone among giant, faceless organizations in its adoption of a knowing, teen-like tone. Writing in the New Inquiry, Kate Losse dissects the rise of the “insouciant, lowercase voice” of corporate social media accounts. Losse observes that “a traditional corporate entity, which has historically had no direct ‘voice,’ suddenly distilling itself into an eccentric, devil-may-care character is instantly affecting, precisely because of how uncanny, even creepy, it is.” The absurdist attempts at intimacy are at once disarming and meta.

The TSA’s account similarly ingratiates with knowing irony. The joke, for once, is not on the hapless agency, but on the clueless passengers who try to bring stupid stuff onto planes. The switch is deliberate. As Blogger Bob revealed to Wired in 2014, “You change it from people complaining about TSA to people saying, ‘Wow look what TSA found, I can’t believe someone would try to come through with this.’ ”

In many respects, the ironized propaganda works: @TSA humanizes the tedious work the agents perform. As I meticulously logged the account’s activity, I started to understand how tiring — and difficult — the actual work of managing security checkpoints could be. At the same time, I started to wonder what an “unofficial” account of the agency’s activities would look like.

I didn’t have to look very far. This summer, the industry lobbying group Airlines for America launched a social media campaign to harness the season’s widespread frustration at the agency’s epic wait times. Encouraging flyers to tweet and Instagram photos of long security lines, the #iHateTheWait campaign counteracts @TSA’s rosy pictures, unleashing a raw, populist portrait from the other side of the scanners. @TSA has yet to embrace this hashtag.

TSA agents weren’t the first photographers to embark on a massive catalog of objects confiscated by airport security. A few years before the agency’s photographic forays, artist Taryn Simon spent five days at New York City’s John F. Kennedy Airport, photographing the objects passing through both Customs and Border Protections and the U.S. Postal Service International Mail Facility. The 1,075 photographs in her Contraband series, indexed and alphabetized according to the descriptions provided by agents, suggest an alternate archive to the @TSA’s — not least because her content is explicitly international in its provenance. The objects Simon’s camera most frequently captures are not handguns but pills, fruit, handbags, and other counterfeit luxury items. Both threats and desires are on view.

Simon photographs these confiscated items against what curator Hans-Ulrich Obrist describes as “an unchanging gray backdrop, the color of administration and neutrality.” Where the TSA’s ephemeral scroll renders its items disposable, the static portraits presented in Contraband appear monumental, like a still life or a mug shot. Art critics like Obrist praised Contraband for capturing the banal, impersonal uniformity of a bureaucratic aesthetic, but the TSA’s aesthetic, as expressed through social media, has proved anything but administrative. The TSA’s Instagram feed favors eclecticism over discipline: Various filters, formats, qualities, and image sizes proliferate. When the agency makes its crude collages, cramming as many gun photos as possible into the frame of a single post, the effect is more horror vacui than rule of thirds.

Unlike the gray austerity of Contraband, the vibes are chummy, goofy. Adding a social media twist to the “Wanted” poster, the TSA account makes the act of self-surveillance seem fun, friendly, folksy. The point isn’t simply to learn the rules, it’s to heart them. The agency may be despised in real life, but its activities are liked thousands of times a day online.

Most thing-based Instagram accounts — for food, yoga, beaches — entice us to vicariously consume lifestyles and fantasies, but @TSA’s viral exhibitionism has the opposite function: to steel ourselves against making the same mistakes as those whose possessions are on view. @TSA instructs through these object lessons.

In the 19th century, criminal-identification photographs were “designed quite literally to facilitate the arrest of their referent,” writes critic Allan Sekula. The invention of the modern criminal constructed at the same time the figure of the law-abiding citizen, who distinguished themselves from photographs of deviancy.

While retrospective #TSAGoodCatch images don’t aid agents with the identification of suspects or objects, they do help the average traveler learn to be a better, safer citizen. @TSA is not aspirational but proscriptive. Just like the #WorkingDogs of the #TSAInstagram, we can become good boys and good girls, too, if only we catch ourselves before they catch us.

In our latest Dev Diary, we showed off the latest Eve REPL. Well, not too long after, Mark R. Hacker managed to get Eve and the REPL running on his PocketCHIP.

@nextthingco #PocketCHIP @ibdknox @with_eve
Eve running on my PocketChip. :-) pic.twitter.com/snLogzeRbS

— Mark Robert Hacker (@MarkRHacker1) July 7, 2016

Check it out!

(image courtesy Mark R. Hacker)

I wasn’t very familiar with this device before now, but apparently it’s an ultra-low-cost computer akin to the Raspberry Pi. The CHIP sports a 1GHz SOC, and 512 MB of RAM, so it’s not exactly an anemic machine. Still, it’s the weakest machine to ever run Eve, and to my knowledge, this represents the first time that Eve has been compiled to ARM. Mark reports that since the CHIP runs Debian, all he had to do was follow the standard build instructions to compile natively to ARM on the device. However, he noted that starting Eve actually took 10 minutes, so you need some patience. Despite this, Mark reports that the REPL runs fine in the Iceweasel browser.

(image courtesy Mark R. Hacker)

Mark is currently working on getting the newest version of Eve working on his PocketCHIP, so we’ll check back with him later for an update on his progress.

At Broadway and Cambie Canada Line Station:  “Walking Figures”, Magdalena Abakanowicz.  They are a nice contrast in feeling to the A-Maze-ing Laughter Figures at Davie and Denman.

Learn more HERE.

A one-party democracy — that is, a two-party system where only one party is interested in governing and the other is in constant blocking mode, which has characterized America in recent years — is much worse. It can’t do anything big, hard or important.

We can survive a few years of such deadlock in Washington, but we sure can’t take another four or eight years without real decay setting in, and that explains what I’m rooting for in this fall’s elections: I hope Hillary Clinton wins all 50 states and the Democrats take the presidency, the House, the Senate and, effectively, the Supreme Court.

That is the best thing that could happen to America, at least for the next two years — that Donald Trump is not just defeated, but is crushed at the polls.

mapsontheweb:

Fertility rate in Europe, 2014.

Keep reading

http://pic.twitter.com/Ntsv2PmXLq

— Ted Bauer (@tedbauer2003) July 12, 2016

Smart contracts are pretty difficult to get right.

contract TokenWithInvariants {
  mapping(address => uint) public balanceOf;
  uint public totalSupply;

  modifier checkInvariants {
    _
    if (this.balance < totalSupply) throw;
  }

  function deposit(uint amount) checkInvariants {
    balanceOf[msg.sender] += amount;
    totalSupply += amount;
  }

  function transfer(address to, uint value) checkInvariants {
    if (balanceOf[msg.sender] >= value) {
      balanceOf[to] += value;
      balanceOf[msg.sender] -= value;
    }
  }

  function withdraw() checkInvariants {
    uint balance = balanceOf[msg.sender];
    if (msg.sender.call.value(balance)()) {
      totalSupply -= balance;
      balanceOf[msg.sender] = 0;
    }
  }
}

if (this.balance != totalSupply) throw;

if (this.balance < totalSupply) throw;

There is a lot of superstition behind community growth.

This superstition often leads to the doomed big bang approach or the equally unsuccessfully big promotional push (competitions, challenges, giveaways) to save struggling communities.

If you understand the science behind community growth, you will know why both efforts are always doomed to fail.

Better yet, you will know how to check your community is growing at the right speed and increase your growth rate.

By the end of this post, you should be able to change your approach to increase the speed of growth (and dazzle your boss with your scientific expertise).

How Fast Should Your Community Be Growing Right Now?

If you’ve created a highly transmissive community concept, have a focused target audience with dense connections with other members, and you’re keeping your members active when they join, the graph showing your number of active members should look like this.

Health Community Growth

This chart essentially shows that you begin with a small handful of members, see a sudden rise in active members as word spreads, before plateauing in the maturity phase.

This is the ultimate healthy growth chart for any online community.

You want your growth rate to as closely resemble the chart above as possible (we’ll explain why soon). Unfortunately, most communities don’t resemble this at all. Most communities resemble one of the four graphs below:

Check your active membership levels are healthy

The first check to see if your growth rate is healthy is to export the number of daily active members (or returning visitors if you need a proxy) and create a graph (used curve lines / trendlines) to see what your growth looks like.

This also gives you a very good indication of future growth potential as well. If things used to grow quickly and are now levelling off, it’s fair to say you’ve reaching peak potential.

Of course, if you revamp your focus (say, begin targeting SEO professionals and expand to inbound marketing professionals) your graph might more resemble an horizontal S shape below.

And this is the secret to communities that escape beyond their initial confines. They don’t perform some remarkable marketing tactic, they expand their focus to accommodate more members (while cleverly not losing their existing members).

Here’s a simple task. Export the number of active members since the community launched and create a chart showing this level of community growth.

If you can’t access this data, then use returning visitors from Google Analytics.

To make sense of this you might need to add a trendline as shown below.

Data from a former client above follows (despite a recent spike, we improved their platform), the path of healthy community growth (almost) perfectly.

The community grew to a level where the number of monthly active member is beginning to plateau. This is as big as the community is likely to get without a big change in focus.

And this is the part that might save your job one day. If you’re managing a mature online community (let’s say one that’s been around for 5+ years) and the number of active members is holding steady, don’t ever agree to increase this figure. Increasing the number of active members in a mature community can be a difficult (possibly impossible) task.

To understand why, we need to understand the bell curve and the rate of growth.

The Bell Curve, The Rate Of Growth, And The Spread of Diseases

The rate of growth is how many members you attract compared with the previous month.
If you attracted 200 members this month compared with 150 last month, your rate of growth is 50.

If next month you attract 230 new members your rate of growth has dropped to 30 (even though your absolute growth has increased).

Most communities have a zero rate of growth.

This means they’re still attracting new members but it’s almost exactly the same number of new members each month. It might be 30 this month, 30 the month before, and 30 the month before that. For mature communities, this is fine. For everyone else, this isn’t so good. This number should be steadily rising.

The ideal community resembles a bell curve below.

The rate of growth should (in perfect conditions) follow the bell curve above. It begins at 0, rises slowly at first until it hits the critical mass point. Then it rises rapidly until peak growth has been achieved before falling back down to 0.

Here’s the important thing to remember here.

The long-term rate of growth for all communities will always return to 0 on a long-enough time scale.

This doesn’t mean they stop growing, but they stop growing at any increased speed.

You see this bell curve in many places. Google Trends isn’t the best proxy, but you can see similar curves in many popular communities:

Product Hunt, for example, has probably just passed the peak of its bell curve. .
It’s probably still growing, but not as fast as it used to.

Mumsnet too is probably on the other side of the bell curve for now.

Facebook also fits the mold particularly well.Reddit, perhaps surprisingly, probably hasn’t yet (I suspect we’ll see a sudden flashover point soon).

Sometimes these are less easy to predict. Instagram might be near it’s peak while Snapchat is about to be close to the flashover point.

(note, if you’re reading this post months/years later after publication, these graphs might look very different. Let me know how our predictions did).

The Basic Reproduction Number And The Bell Curve

Your bell curve will follow your basic reproduction number.

The basic reproduction number is a term network scientists have borrowed from epidemiologists (people that measure the spread of diseases). It simply means the number of additional cases (infections) each individual case generates.

The higher the number, the faster the spread of the disease. Your rate of growth is dictated by your basic reproduction number.

In our context, this means the number of active members each additional active member generates.

How might an active member bring in a newcomer? There are four main channels:

1) Members might create content that is found via search engines and brings in more traffic whom become members.

2) Members might share content on social channels and bring in others.

3) Members might mention the community to their friends offline.

4) Members might write about the community on their own sites which have significant traffic (this also increases search rankings).

(p.s. The more you can encourage members to do the following, the faster you grow).

Your basic reproduction number is influenced by:

1) Contacts. This is the number of contacts made between your regular members and the susceptible population (the no. people interested in this topic).

The easiest way to calculate this is to track mentions of your community URL and estimate the reach of those mentions (twitter is easy, web traffic/Facebook is more difficult). There will be a big overlap here (many susceptible members follow the same people on Twitter, for example). Some tools let you estimate this overlap (hootsuite, brandwatch insights), others might not.

2) Probability of transmission. This is the likelihood of each contact ‘transmitting’ the community to someone else (i.e. someone joining the community as a result of that contact). Highly transmissive communities have a powerful, relevant, community concept and excellent UX / calls to action that invite a newcomer to join and participate.

You can measure this by dividing the number of new registrations each month by the number of external mentions of your community. If your combined reach of mentions is 200,000 people and you have 100 new members, your transmission rate in each contact is 0.05% (this is the most simplistic method, it overlooks the overlap mentioned above).

3) Duration of active membership*. This is the length of time someone remains active in the community compared with that time period. The longer someone remains actively sharing community content, the higher your reproductive number. If you’re churning through members, your reproductive rate is lower. This is calculated by average length of actively talking about the community for that same time period (for example, 30 days would be 1. 15 days would be 0.5).

Your basic reproductive number is the contacts * probability of infection * duration of infection.

If each additional member doesn’t bring in at least 1 new member (directly or indirectly) your community will enter a death spiral.

This is the really critical lesson here.

If your basic reproduction number is below 1 (i.e. if you’re not getting at least 1 additional new member for each member you bring in, no marketing tactic on earth can save you). All that time and money you spend promoting the community is inevitably wasted.

Explaining The Bell Curve

This also explains why growth begins slowly, suddenly rises, and then falls almost as fast (the bell curve).

In the beginning, you have a small number of ‘infected’ members and a large number of ‘susceptible’ members. The probability of being ‘infected’ with the community concept is small but rises exponentially with each additional member that joins.

If you meet two infected people, for example, you have twice the probability of contracting their disease. This will grow slowly at first before reaching a sudden flashover point (or tipping point) where the probability is rising so quickly due to infinitely more people becoming infected. The probability of transmission isn’t change, just the number of infected members.

This rises until you reach the peak growth, after which your rate of growth declines because you begin to run out of susceptible people to ‘infect’. Everyone already likely to join the community already has.

So why doesn’t the number of new registrations eventually fall to zero?

Because there are always new people becoming interested in the topic. In mature communities your long-term rate of growth will closely mirror the number of newcomers becoming interested in the topic for the first time. If this number rises, the community rate of growth might rise again for a period. If it falls, your growth rate falls too.

This is also why new communities should focus on people with plenty of experience in the topic while mature communities need to better cater to newcomers.

The Bell Curve And The Online Community Lifecycle

We use the bell curve of new registrations in our online community lifecycle too.

Again you see how the number of new members rises as you progress through the lifecycle before eventually falling to a more sustainable rate based upon newcomers to the topic.

What Actions Do I Need To Take To Improve My Rate Of Growth?

Everything we’ve covered before gives us some scientifically valid ways of growing our online communities.

1) Measure your current number of new members (or clicks on your registration page). Is this speeding up, slowing down, or holding steady? Compare it to the charts above to see if they are healthy.

2) Increase the number of contacts between members and interested non-members. You can increase this by making it easier to share content (prompting people, including sharing options, providing invites members can use, integrating their social accounts etc…). You can also increase motivation to share (involving members in the creation of content, improving the quality of content, creating really useful material to share that helps newcomers, doing remarkable things). You might create a social norm that it’s expected to talk about the community.

3) Increase the size of the susceptible audience. If you’ve hit maturity, most members are in competitor communities, or you’ve already churned through most people, you need to expand the audience you’re targeting. You can change the topic focus to attract newcomers, focus on newcomers to the topic or deliberately make the jump across a barrier to a new group (e.g. different languages/locations).

4) Create a more transmissive concept. By far the most powerful way to increase growth is to make your community more transmissive. Some communities explode to life because the concept (the very idea) of the community is so relevant and exciting. Change the name, unique focus, type and purpose of the community. This is the most cost-effective improvement you can ever make.

5) Keep regular members active for longer. If you can increase the retention rate of your members (you measure this right?), you can increase the amount of time someone in your community might transmit the community to others. This is going to mean increasing their sense of competence, relatedness, and autonomy within the community.

You’re probably thinking “but I’ve already tried to do that and it isn’t working!”

Believe me, if this isn’t working then neither will any typical marketing tactic.

Marketing tactics accelerate the speed at which a community with a >1 reproductive number spread, but won’t save one with a reproductive number

You get a short spike in activity followed by a longer decline.

Speaking from personal experience, the best way to improve your community is to improve the concept. Everything else tends to stem from how transmissive the concept of the community is. Sadly this is also the thing we most quickly overlook.

Summary

Don’t compare the growth of your community against another, especially a mature community. A mature community with thousands of members, millions of inbound links, a hard-earned high search ranking/reputation will attract more members than your fledgling effort.

What’s more important than absolute growth is the rate of growth. Is this rising or falling? Does this match where you are on the lifecycle. Don’t ever try to promote a community until you’ve managed to get a reproductive rate >1 . Throwing more members at a failing community simply delays the inevitably agony.

Measure and track your growth rate against the examples above. Slowly increase the growth rate by making it easier to share community activity, expanding the susceptible audience of the community, creating a more transmissive concept, and keeping your regular members active for longer.

This sounds more complicated than it is. The key message is to forget promoting your way out of your problems. Instead go deeper and increase your reproduction number. Everything else improves from there.

*technically this is the length of time a member stays actively promoting the community, but this is almost impossible to track

Get ready for this big update with an all-new, slick, modern user interface.

Version 2 sports the world class, professional photo editing that you users of Camera+ for iPhone have been enjoying via The Lab. But the iPad version takes photo editing to a new level by supporting selective brushing of the various edits and filters. And those of you who own an Apple Pencil will appreciate it even more because we’ve also added Pencil support, enabling you to get very fine, precise control over brushing with it.

Here’s the extensive list of powerful tools available to you in The Lab:

• Clarity Pro
• Rotate & Flip
• Straighten
• Tint
• Duotone
• Soft Focus
• Film Grain
• Sharpen
• Blur
• Saturation
• Temperature
• Exposure
• Brightness
• Contrast
• Highlight Detail
• Shadow Detail
• Vignette

Camera+ for iPad now also fully supports iPad multitasking.

Version 2 of Camera+ for iPad is a free upgrade to existing users. New users can start enjoying it for just $4.99. Grab it in the App Store.

I narrated the audiobook for Writing Without Bullshit this week, spending about 12 hours in the studio. It was a vivid reminder of how absurd some prose sounds when read out loud — which is a good test for whether your writing is bullshit. A good nonfiction audiobook sounds natural, as if someone is explaining something or … Continue reading Not sure if it’s bullshit? Try reading it out loud. →

The post Not sure if it’s bullshit? Try reading it out loud. appeared first on without bullshit.

If you want to record video with your own voice-over, the sound is never good enough. I had some decent results with the Lumias but never with iPhone or a serious camera. They all assume that the sound in front of the camera is what you want to record. If you stand behind it, you are noise.

I tried to figure out how to use one of my Plantronics headsets, but apparently you cannot route this microphone into the camera app. Then I tried the Klipsch headset, a few of my UrbanEars, but none of them was good enough.

As it turns out, the solution is just too simple: the Apple earbuds that came with your iPhone are brilliant. Just plug them in and start recording. In case you did not know that, the plus button doubles as a camera button. There is your remote.

Transport for London (TfL) has struck a deal with Cubic Transportation Systems (CTS) to sell TfL’s advanced payment technology. This software integrates many forms of contactless payment into TfL’s Oyster ticketing systems.  Vancouver and London use CTS’ technology as the basis for their Compass and Oyster card systems.

More HERE.

One less card to carry

TfL’s software integrates bank cards, mobile phones and other contactless technologies into the Oyster payment system.

TfL and CTS have a long-running partnership, having worked together to introduce the Oyster card system in 2003 as well as working together with the UK card industry to make TfL the first public transport provider in the world to accept contactless payment cards. The contactless payment system was first launched on London’s buses in December 2012 and expanded to cover Tube and rail services in London in September 2014.

Since then, more than 500 million journeys have been made by more than 12 million unique credit and debit cards from 90 different countries, as well as using contactless-enabled mobile devices. Around one in 10 contactless transactions in the UK are made on TfL’s network, making it one of the largest contactless merchants worldwide.