Whether you are at home or away, video-camera-equipped doorbells can alert you when visitors arrive or packages are delivered, and can even record suspicious activity around your door and entryway. We spent 20 hours testing the three most popular models to find the best one for most users. Our top pick is the SkyBell HD, a doorbell camera that offers high-quality video, an easy-to use app, and a good response time between event (detecting motion or a press of the doorbell button) and notification. And SkyBell doesn’t charge you for cloud storage of your videos.

Amazon’s new basic Kindle has a few improved features, such as Bluetooth and additional RAM. But no backlit screen means the Paperwhite remains our pick. [Best Ebook Reader]

After researching more than two dozen models, interviewing experts, and having an electrical engineer test our top candidates, we found that the CyberPower CP685AVR is the best uninterruptible power supply (UPS) for people who want to keep a home network running during a blackout of an hour or less. It’s easy to set up, it has some of the most positive user reviews in its class, and it’s the most affordable unit we found. We also like the APC BE650G1 Back-UPS, if it’s available for less. But if you need to power more than a modem and a Wi-Fi router—say, to keep a desktop computer running long enough for you to shut it down safely—or if you need to stay online longer, the APC BR1000G Back-UPS Pro is a better choice, with more than twice the power for less than twice the price.

Earlier this month,  owners of late-model Lexus vehicles found their navigation systems flailing. Lexus eventually apologized, but its statement is a classic example of how to use the passive voice to evade blame — or even a clear explanation. According to Forbes, an unknown number of 2014-2016 Lexus vehicles experienced the glitch, which caused the center … Continue reading Why did Lexus nav systems crash? Passive voice hides the answer. →

The post Why did Lexus nav systems crash? Passive voice hides the answer. appeared first on without bullshit.

Ribs — stylized remnants of a shipwreck.  Sunset Beach. With photog and fun-loving kids.

John Gruber asks the right question about Apple’s plans to drop the analog headphone jack for the new iPhone:

John Gruber, Headphone Jacks Are the New Floppy Drives

Should the analog headphone jack remain on our devices forever? If you think so, you can stop reading. If not, when? Maybe now is the wrong time, and Apple is making a mistake. I don’t know. None of us outside the company seem to know, because all that has leaked is that the new iPhone won’t have the port, with no explanation why. But I say at some point it will go away, and now seems like it might be the right time. Also, historically, Apple has proven to be very good at timing the removal of established legacy ports.

We’ve lost floppy drives, CD-ROM drives, different electrical adapters… it’s a constant swirling mess. But Apple has been, as Gruber says, good at timing these transitions. 

Maybe they will release some really great new headphones? And Apple is mostly focused on compatibility across its own devices, so we should expect analog headphone jacks to disappear from iPads and Macbooks. Note that Apple Watch has no analog headphone port.

Eduardo Porter tries to get to the heart of the Brexit controversy, but there is no center: it’s all edges. But some things an economist can point at: the euro crisis and poor growth.

Eduardo Porter, After Brexit Vote, a Choice for Europe: Move Forward, or Fall Back

What could the E.U. have done better? Things would be a lot easier if most of Europe were growing at more than a snail’s pace. The inability of countries in the euro area — which does not include Britain — to stop the slow-motion implosion of Greece and other deeply indebted countries gives integration a bad name. The two are related.

Germany’s resistance to share in the costs of a collective solution to seriously write down the debts that Greece and other Southern European nations will never be able to pay off — insisting instead that the indebted countries and their beleaguered citizens bear nearly all the cost — has prolonged and deepened Europe’s stagnation. 

“Britons contemplate the crisis of the euro as a little bit of proof that they were right not to join,” said Giancarlo Corsetti, a professor of macroeconomics at the University of Cambridge.

What might we see if the dream of greater integration is sidelined? 

The free movement of people inside the E.U. might be the first to go into reverse. “Restricting the free movement of labor is not a taboo,” Mr. Kirkegaard told me. “Another way freedom of movement will be restricted is you will see more and more restrictions placed on the ability of citizens from other E.U. countries to claim welfare benefits.”

Maybe the European Union’s future is more “à la carte” — a set of coalitions of the willing, as it were. Rather than insisting on all or nothing, said Richard Haass, president of the Council of Foreign Relations in New York, it might be better to consider “a Europe that is not one size fits all, where the balance between national governments and Brussels is more flexible.”

Many of us are now in the ideas business and, of course, those ideas have to come from somewhere. Sometimes they’re iterative and result from the day-to-day work we’re already doing. Sometimes they spin off from specific client projects. But what about those transformative, tangential ideas which seem to come out of nowhere and surprise us with their potency and unexpected ability to solve difficult digital experience challenges?  This episode is all about those random insights, where they come from, how valuable they can be and how you can invest in nurturing them.

On this edition

• Marek Pawlowski, co-host & founder of MEX (@marekpawlowski)
• Alex Guest, co-host & CEO of Zingy.life (@alexguest)
• Sarah Daniels, co-founder of No. 8 Thorpe Road, (@redcatsarah)

Links

• Hot Source Norwich
• Marek’s write-up of Patrizia Bertini’s Lego Serious Play session for Hot Source, hosted at Foolproof
• Patrizia Bertini’s interview about Lego Serious Play and embodied cognition in episode 1 of MEX Design Talk
• No. 8 Thorpe Road in Norwich
• Sarah Daniels on Twitter
• SyncDevelopHER, the coding group for women hosted at No. 8 Thorpe Road
• Marek and Alex’s previous work on the intersection of creativity and consumption
• Keith Jarret’s Koln jazz concert, played on a broken piano, mentioned by Alex
• Tim Harford’s TED Talk, mentioned by Alex
• Steve Jobs: “If I’d never have dropped out I would never have dropped in…” quote about sneaking into calligraphy courses, which later gave him the inspiration for the Mac’s early typography prowess
• Steve Jobs’ commencement speech
• Patrizia Bertini’s Lego Serious Play talk at MEX/15
• Hot Source June 2016 session on drawing skills with Chris Spalton and Catherine Hill
• Henri Rousseau’s 1891 ‘Surprised!’ (otherwise known as the tiger) at The National Gallery, mentioned by Alex
• 18th century gold snuff boxes conference at The Fitzwilliam Museum, mentioned by Marek.  Original notes scribbled on a Samsung Galaxy Note during the event.
• Fast Company article on Angela Ahrendts’ (ex-Burberry) new retail strategy for Apple
• The Wellcome Collection, mentioned by Marek
• The frieze on the wall of The Reading Room at the Wellcome Collection

Researching intersection of digital consumption & creativity @ExploreWellcome with @AlexGuest led to ‘discoveries’ pic.twitter.com/q8oghXJ45l

— Marek Pawlowski (@marekpawlowski) June 25, 2015

• Microsoft’s LinkedIn acquisition, mentioned by Alex
• Microsoft’s HoloLens, mentioned by Alex
• HTC Vive, mentioned by Marek
• Greg Taylor on augmented, virtual and mixed reality in episode 12 of MEX Design Talk
• Tigerspike Next, the agency lab, mentioned by Alex
• The role of constraints in encouraging creativity, mentioned by Marek
• Prototyping with enamel, mentioned by Marek
• MEX User Stories series, mentioned by Marek
• Oblique strategies: discover the recipes you are using and abandon them

About MEX Design Talk & how to get in touch

The podcast for the MEX community, interviewing UX pioneers, exploring emerging technologies, user behaviour and how to design better digital experiences.

• Archive of previous MEX Design Talk episodes
• Subscribe for future editions by searching ‘MEX Design Talk’ in your favourite podcast player. We’re also on iTunes and SoundCloud.  For the old school, here’s our RSS feed
• If you enjoy MEX Design Talk, please help others discover the podcast by giving us a 5 star rating and a review on iTunes
• Get in touch with feedback and questions @mexfeed on Twitter or email designtalk@mobileuserexperience.com.
• MEX events
• MEX journal

Thanks

• Jukedeck, for the artificial intelligence engine which provided the music

The “The”

Patrick Hebron, O'Reilly, Jun 25, 2016

Long post that introduces machine learning for designers. It requires a (free) O'Reilly login (sorry). People already expert in machine learning won't find anything new but I think it's worth the effort if you don't have background in the field.

"Conventional programming languages can be thought of as systems that are always correct about mundane things like concrete mathematical operations. Machine learning algorithms, on the other hand, can be thought of as systems that are often correct about more complicated things like identifying human faces in an image." There's a good set of recognition examples that illustrate this. It looks at biological models and deep learning, then discusses processing different types of inputs. Some of the tasks described include creating dialogue, feature discovery, designing, feedback loops, and more. It also looks at open source machine learning toolkits (TensorFlow, Torch, Caffe, cuDNN, Theano, Scikit-learn, Shogun, Spark MLlib, and Deeplearning4j) and machine Learning as a Service (MLaaS) platforms such as IBM Watson, Amazon Machine Learning, Google Prediction API, Microsoft Azure, BigML, and ClarifAI.

Joanne Jacobs, Jun 25, 2016

Mitch Daniels  says "that outside of the extremes it’ s the luck you make not the luck of the world that determines your fate." So summarized Andrew Rotham. Or as Joanne Jacobs says, "except for 'tragically bad luck,' it rarely 'decides a life’ s outcome.'" I think that on that basis we would have to define "tragically bad luck" as "not being born rich." Jacobs also quotes Barack Obama,  speaking at Harvard: "Yes, you’ ve worked hard, but you’ ve also been lucky. That’ s a pet peeve of mine: People who have been successful and don’ t realize they’ ve been lucky." I think Obama's take is more correct. As Rotham says, “ Daniels’ argument  confuses what’ s possible with what’ s probable." Jacobs concludes, "for many born in poverty,  economic mobility is a longshot." I have no illusion that education by itself will change this. For those not born rich, education is a necessary, but not sufficient, condition for prosperity.

Mount Pleasant area — near Main & Kingsway

237 East 4th Avenue

With half a billion users doing work in Dropbox, we’ve learned a lot about how complicated it can be to get things done. You’ve told us you need to work from everywhere, collaborate with lots of people, and use a bunch of specialized tools to bring your ideas to life. We want to make that easier—whether you work on your own, with a small team, or as part of a big company. That’s why we’re introducing new productivity tools to simplify, unify, and secure your work.

Simplifying workflows

Ideas can pop up anywhere, any time, and you need to hold on to the great ones. You shouldn’t have to worry about losing ideas on sticky notes, or spending time finding the right app to save them. We’re making it simpler than ever to capture your ideas in Dropbox:

• Scan documents in Dropbox: With document scanning, you can now use the Dropbox mobile app to capture and organize scans from whiteboards, receipts, and sketches, so your ideas are right at your fingertips. Dropbox Business users can even search inside the scans.
• Create Microsoft Office docs on mobile: If your idea is better suited to an Office doc than a napkin, you can click the new plus button to create Microsoft Word, PowerPoint, and Excel files instantly from your mobile device. They’ll be saved to your Dropbox automatically. “The new plus button in the Dropbox iOS app adds a convenient way to create and save Office documents on the go, helping people work better together, wherever they are,” said Rob Howard, Director of Office Marketing at Microsoft.
• Manage photos from your computer: For Dropbox Basic users who are using their phones to capture memories alongside ideas, we’re also changing the way camera uploads works. You’ll need to connect a computer to your Dropbox account so you can better access, organize, or remove your photos and avoid running out of space.

 Creating a unified workspace

To turn ideas into reality, teams need to collaborate at lightning speed. But work is everywhere—it’s in the cloud, on our desktop, in email, and spread across devices. So we’re unifying the people, files, and apps that need to work together within Dropbox:

• Share files and folders from the desktop: We’re cutting steps from sharing and saving you time with our desktop sharing experience. Now when you right-click on a file or folder in your Mac Finder or Windows Explorer, you can share right from the desktop, without redirecting to the web, or copying a link to email.
• Add comments to a specific part of a file: It can be hard to make sense of all the feedback you get within emails, chat, and text. So we’re introducing a feature that’s usually only found in design software: adding comments to a specific part of a file. Give precise feedback by highlighting a piece of text or an image anywhere within a file preview.

Keeping your data safe

Teams of all sizes need to keep files—and the ideas inside them—safe. They want to focus on making progress, instead of worrying about accidental edits or unwanted collaborators. These updates give them that peace of mind:

• Preview earlier versions: Version history is an easy way to recover old files if accidents happen, or if you just want to revisit an idea. Now you can also preview prior file versions before you restore them, so you know you’ve got the right version.
• Share with more control: Sometimes you just need to work with a select group of collaborators. Our simple, yet powerful new sharing features give you more control. Now you can share a single file with specific people, who will need to log in to see it. And with view-only access for shared folders, now available for all users, you can also let people follow along.

Get started

This is an exciting first step in making productivity simple, and there’s lots more to come. Learn more about how you can use today’s new features and improvements to get more done, here:

For many years people with visual impairments and the legally blind have paid a steep price to access the Web on Windows-based computers. The market-leading software for screen readers costs well over $1,000. The high price is a considerable obstacle to keeping the Web open and accessible to all. The NVDA Project has developed an open source screen reader that is free to download and to use, and which works well with Firefox. NVDA aligns with one of the Mozilla Manifesto’s principles: “The Internet is a global public resource that must remain open and accessible.”

That’s why, at Mozilla, we have elected to give the project $15,000 in the inaugural round of our Mozilla Open Source Support (MOSS) “Mission Partners” awards. The award will help NVDA stay compatible with the Firefox browser and support a long-term relationship between our two organizations. NVDA is just one of eight grantees in a wide range of key disciplines and technology areas that we have chosen to support as part of the MOSS Mission Partners track. This track financially supports open source software projects doing work that meaningfully advances Mozilla’s mission and priorities.

Giving Money for Open Source Accessibility, Privacy, Security and More

Aside from accessibility, security and privacy are common themes in this set of awards. We are supporting several secure communications tools, a web server which only works in secure mode, and a distributed, client-side, privacy-respecting search engine. The set is rounded out with awards to support the growing Rust ecosystem and promote open source options for the building of compelling games on the Web. (Yes, games. We consider games to be a key art-form in this modern era, which is why we are investing in the future of Web games with WebAssembly and Open Web Games.)

MOSS is a continuing program. The Mission Partners track has a budget for 2016 of around US$1.25 million. The first set of awards listed below total US$385,000 and we look forward to supporting more projects in the coming months. Applications remain open both for Mission Partners and for the Foundational Technology track (for projects creating software that Mozilla already uses or deploys) on an ongoing basis.

We are greatly helped in evaluating applications and making awards by the MOSS Committee. Many thanks again to them.

And The Winners Are….

The first eight awardees are:

Tor: $152,500. Tor is a system for using a distributed network to communicate anonymously and without being tracked. This award will be used to significantly enhance the Tor network’s metrics infrastructure so that the performance and stability of the network can be monitored and improvements made as appropriate.

Tails: $77,000. Tails is a secure-by-default live operating system that aims at preserving the user’s privacy and anonymity. This award will be used to implement reproducible builds, making it possible for third parties to independently verify that a Tails ISO image was built from the corresponding Tails source code.

Caddy: $50,000. Caddy is an HTTP/2 web server that uses HTTPS automatically and by default via Let’s Encrypt. This award will be used to add a REST API, web UI, and new documentation, all of which make it easier to deploy more services with TLS.

Mio: $30,000. Mio is an asynchronous I/O library written in Rust. This award will be used to make ergonomic improvements to the API and thereby make it easier to build high performance applications with Mio in Rust.

DNSSEC/DANE Chain Stapling: $25,000. This project is standardizing and implementing a new TLS extension for transport of a serialized DNSSEC record set, to reduce the latency associated with DANE and DNSSEC validation. This award will be used to complete the standard in the IETF and build both a client-side and a server-side implementation.

Godot Engine: $20,000. Godot is a high-performance multi-platform game engine which can deploy to HTML5. This award will be used to add support for Web Sockets, WebAssembly and WebGL 2.0.

PeARS: $15,500. PeARS (Peer-to-peer Agent for Reciprocated Search) is a lightweight, distributed web search engine which runs in an individual’s browser and indexes the pages they visit in a privacy-respecting way. This award will permit face-to-face collaboration among the remote team and bring the software to beta status.

NVDA: $15,000. NonVisual Desktop Access (NVDA) is a free, open source screen reader for Microsoft Windows. This award will be used to make sure NVDA and Firefox continue to work well together as Firefox moves to a multi-process architecture.

This is only the beginning. Stay tuned for more award announcements as we allocate funds. Open Source is a movement that is only growing, both in numbers and in importance. Operating in the open makes for better security, better accessibility, better policy, better code and, ultimately, a better world. So if you know any projects whose work furthers the Mozilla Mission, send them our way and encourage them to apply.

Alongside some welcome improvements to their desktop client, Dropbox announced today they're adding a document scanning feature to their iOS app:

With document scanning, you can now use the Dropbox mobile app to capture and organize scans from whiteboards, receipts, and sketches, so your ideas are right at your fingertips. Dropbox Business users can even search inside the scans.

The feature is detailed here, and it looks like it's been integrated with the '+' button to behave as any other file you'd manually import into Dropbox.

I don't think of Dropbox as an app on my phone – it's my online filesystem, which is why right now I'm struggling to imagine using it to scan documents. Essentially, I keep Dropbox on my iOS devices for two reasons: to share files with others and to grant other apps access to Dropbox. I don't spend a lot of time in the Dropbox app itself.

However, it appears that Dropbox has done a nice job in streamlining the functionality as much as possible, and I like how they're moving more and more features to Business-only users, so I'm going to give this a try.

→ Source: blogs.dropbox.com

Marine Gateway up close: First Impressions

Text and images by Mike Klassen

Marine Gateway is the very model of the highly-touted TOD (transit-oriented development) and one which the City of Vancouver and development community have a stake in its success.

In preparation for a recent Heritage Vancouver talk about shaping our neighbourhoods, I decided to make a quick morning stop at Marine Gateway. To be fair, the place was extremely quiet as some businesses such as the Cineplex had not opened yet.

I arrived via the underground parking lot elevator which exits on to Marine Drive. A quick left turn out of the elevator took me past a large air duct toward the central square shopping area. Right there I was walloped by the smell of rotting garbage being blown up from the basement. I surmised that perhaps a garbage bin had been parked too close to the intake in the garage – something I hope that is easily rectifiable as it makes for an unpleasant sensory impression.

The “square” as I will call it features a long plaza that opens north to the busy Marine Drive intersection and looks toward newer towers — many of which are rental.

The surface of the square features many nice touches, such as cast metal grates with words stencilled into them. The covered walkway on the east side of the square is made of wooden planks, which remind me a bit of walking in Steveston’s old cannery district with its restaurants and ice cream joints. It’s a nice touch and it will be interesting to see how this surface is maintained over the long term.

The use of transparent glass awnings provide both weather protection for much of the space, but also allow a clear view up toward the surrounding buildings. People in offices to the east and residences to the west both would have a clear view of the square below too, making the area more inviting and safe.

There are many unoccupied retail spaces in the development, but one presumes that it will be a matter of time before they are filled. Just like with Olympic Village, it took a few brave business proprietors to be the first ones in, with the rest of the spaces eventually being leased.

There are a few “anchor tenants” already in place. The T&T Supermarket is geared toward Vancouver’s Chinese community (a prominent part of south Vancouver’s population). The Cineplex theatre will make MG a destination for movie-goers who love the big-screen surround-sound experience. There’s a English pub-style eatery (with an intriguing outdoor patio that hangs over the bus loop). There are two banks, a dentist’s office, a government liquor store, and a Winner’s clothing store. The latter is very much geared to low-to-middle income shoppers, many of whom live in nearby homes and apartments.

From a distance Marine Gateway has a cool aquamarine hue from the glass and metal finish of the building exteriors. Up close in the square there is an attempt to make it seem more warm, with some wood finishes and orange-coloured glass along the west balcony.

The plaza features raised garden beds with water percolating in them. Each bed has a cast metal plaque with the name of a tributary of the Fraser River, and a sort of homage to BC’s salmon run is embedded beside each. Not sure how much shoppers will engage on these details, but they are distinctive at least.

Marine Gateway certainly garnered its share of controversy for the urban design, the location on the edge of our industrial land base, and its displacement of existing low rental housing. It is definitely a “work in progress” but one that makes a respectable first impression. Though I did not try that hard I was surprised that I did not intuitively know how to get to the Canada Line station from the square. Perhaps I just missed the signage.

In the long run I think the city and the developers must give some consideration to how to bridge the intersection at Marine and Cambie, which is always massively busy and not at all pedestrian or bike friendly. It will make the difference in the success of the development as a whole.

We recently released Audio Hijack 3.3, and it includes several great new features. In addition to incorporating new functionality, a great deal of effort has gone into making Audio Hijack 3 easier to use than ever before, and we’ve been pleased to hear from many users who are thrilled with how approachable it is. Still, there are more than a few secrets and tips you might not know about, so give this post a quick read to learn something new about Audio Hijack.

Tip #1: Quickly Get a New Blank Session

To immediately get a new blank Session to work with, hold option as you click the “New Session” button. You can also press option-command-N on your keyboard. You’ll bypass the Template Chooser and get an blank Session to configure.

Tip #2: Schedule Your Recordings

From the Schedule tab of the Home window, you can configure a Session to automatically run at a specific time. Add the direct URL for a radio stream to the “Open URL” field of an Application Source block and you can even do timed recording of audio, much like a DVR.

Tip #3: Don’t Forget to Mute Those Timers!

If you schedule a recording for the middle of the night, you probably won’t want it to make noise while it’s recording. Remove the Output block from your audio chain, and audio will be recorded without being heard.

Delete the Output block to mute the timer.

As well, be sure to turn on the “Quit Sources” checkbox in the Schedule tab. That way, when the timer is finished (and Audio Hijack stops capturing audio), the audio-producing source application will be shut down.

Tip #4: A Musical Alarm Clock

The Schedule tab can be used for more than timed recordings. It can also help you use your computer as a musical alarm clock. Start by putting a radio stream in the “Open URL” field of an Application Source block, and hook it up to an Output Device block set to your speakers. Then, set a timer for when you want to wake up, right in the Schedule tab. At the appointed time, Audio Hijack will pop open and your audio will play.

Tip #5: Share Your Sessions

It’s possible to create complex and powerful Sessions in Audio Hijack to do just about anything you might need. It’s also possible to share those Sessions, by exporting them to distribute to others for use in their own copies of Audio Hijack. When you’re in the Session you wish to share, just select “Export…” from the Session menu, and save. You can then email your Session to a friend, or even post it on your website.

An exported Session in the Finder

Tip #6: Share Your Sessions Faster

If you want to quickly export one or many sessions, as explained in Tip #5 above, do it from the Home window. Click to the Sessions tab, then select one or more Sessions you want to export by clicking (and shift-clicking). Once you’ve got the desired Sessions selected, just drag them to your Desktop, and they’ll be exported instantly.

Tip #7: Tear Off Your Popovers

Nearly all blocks in Audio Hijack feature a popover which provides access to the block’s settings. When you click on a block, its popover appears. When you click away, that popover disappears. What if you want those controls to remain available? Just click the popover and drag it away from the block to tear it off. Now, the settings will stay open for easy access.

Tearing off a popover

Tip #8: Pin Popovers To Make Them Float

If you need to work in other applications while you record, but still want access to some of Audio Hijack’s controls, you can! First, tear off the popover for the relevant blocks (see Tip #7, above). Then, click the Pin button. When its pinned, the popover will float above all other windows on your system, and it’ll be accessible from within any application.

A pinned popover

See the “Popover Features” page of the Audio Hijack manual for more details on popovers.

Tip #9: Use Arrows on Effects Sliders

If you want to make a minute adjustment to a slider, you can do so with your keyboard. First, click the slider you wish to adjust, and you’ll see the slider’s knob highlight blue. Now, use the left/right or up/down keys on your keyboard, and the slider will move in its smallest interval. Need a bigger jump? Hold shift and hit left/right or up/down to move in larger jumps.

Tip #10: Use the Number Keys Too

You can also use the number keys on your keyboard to move an effects slider to an exact location. Click a slider’s knob to highlight it, then type a number and hit Return. The slider will be moved to the exact location you specify.

Tip #11: Block Presets!

Block presets let you save your settings for a particular block type, then use those settings again in other instances of the same block, in any Session. Block presets are a major feature of Audio Hijack, and one we hope many users take advantage of. However, they’re a bit hidden, so they’re worth noting here.

A simple example can be seen with the 10 Band Equalizer block. Create a custom EQ setting, then choose “Save as Preset…” from the Presets menu at the bottom of the popover. Give your preset a name, and you’re set. The preset will now appear in the “User Presets” section, in all 10 Band Equalizer blocks throughout Audio Hijack.

Equalizer Presets

The power of presets is extended to all blocks that feature popovers, from the Application Source block to the Recorder block and more. Save your detailed configurations once, then access them in any Session with just a few clicks. They’re a tremendous time-saver!

Recorder Presets

Tip #12: Turn Blocks Off

When you no longer need a block in your Session, you can highlight it, then choose Delete from the Edit menu to remove it. However, you may want a block in your Session to be active only some of the time. In that case, you can turn the block off temporarily. To do this, click the On/Off switch in the block’s popover. The switch will turn off, and you’ll see the block dim. You can also right-click a block and choose “Turn Off This Block” to toggle it off.

A disabled Equalizer block

While a block is off, audio will pass it without being affected, but it will be available for use instantly by simply turning it back on.

Tip #13: Monitor Without Recording

The old Audio Hijack Pro 2 had two distinct stages of audio capture: Hijacking and Recording. We simplified this in Audio Hijack 3, and now Sessions are either running or not. While this has proven much clearer overall, a few long-time Audio Hijack users have had difficulty determining how to monitor audio without recording it in Audio Hijack 3. Fear not!

If you just want to adjust audio with effects, just make a Session that doesn’t include any Recorder blocks (or delete any Recorder blocks currently in your Session). The Sweeten template provides an example of this. If you do plan to record audio, but wish to monitor audio first, just turn your Recorder block off as described in Tip #12. When the Recorder block is off, audio will flow through the session, but no recording will be made. When the audio sounds just right, turn the Recorder block back on to begin recording.

A disabled Recorder block

Tip #14: Control Your Recorder Blocks

Look inside the Control menu to see several ways you can control any and all Recorder blocks in a Session. The “Turn All Recordings Off/On” toggle is helpful for monitoring audio, as discussed in Tip #13. You can use “Pause All Recordings” to temporarily suspend recording, so no additional audio will be saved until you resume. Finally, if you select “Split All Recordings”, the Recorder blocks will stop recording to the current files, and begin recording to new files.

Audio Hijack’s Control menu

Tip #15: Record to Multiple Formats at Once

Thanks to the new audio grid, you can now record to multiple formats in sync. For instance, you can save audio to both compressed and lossless formats together, with just a single click. When you run your session, all Recorder blocks will activate at the same time.

Multiple recorders at once

Tip #16: Add Features with Audio Unit Effects

Audio Hijack comes with over a dozen of our own custom audio effects, but it also supports modern (64-bit Cocoa) Audio Unit plugins. We automatically load the Audio Units built-in to Mac OS X by Apple, but there’s a wealth of third-party Audio Units out there too.

The Graphic EQ built in to Mac OS X

If you’re looking to add audio effects or meters, just place your new Audio Units in one of the standard locations on your system (/Library/Audio/Plug-Ins/Components or ~/Library/Audio/Plug-Ins/Components), and they’ll appear in Audio Hijack’s Library.

Tip #17: Generic UI for AU Effects

Speaking of third-party Audio Units, some of them sure have some…interesting interfaces, don’t they? If you’d rather these effects showed a simpler look, right-click on the block’s face and select “Use Generic Audio Unit Interface” from the pop-up menu. Now the effect’s controls will appear with a generic look, which may be easier to use.

A generic interface

Interestingly, this feature was originally added to make more audio effects accessible to users with vision impairments. We’ve since found that many users prefer the generic UIs to the custom ones.

Tip #18: Use the Time Shift Effect for Transcribing Audio

The Time Shift Effect was added in Audio Hijack 3, but we really refined it in Audio Hijack 3.2. It’s found a devoted following of folks transcribing audio to text, and we worked to make that even easier. Time Shift now features a powerful popover that enables you to jump forward or back in 3, 10, or 30 second increments. You can tear off and pin that popover (as described in Tips #7 and #8) for easy access from anywhere.

The Time Shift block

As well, Time Shift’s controls are now accessible via global keyboard shortcuts. Open up Audio Hijack’s preferences to set hotkeys for Time Shift’s controls. Now your hands won’t even have to leave the keyboard when transcribing audio to text.

Time Shift’s global shortcuts

Tip #19: Make Your Own Keyboard Shortcuts

Audio Hijack offers built-in keyboard shortcuts for some of the most frequent actions, like starting a Session. However, you can also add your own keyboard shortcut for any menu item! This feature is actually built in to Mac OS X itself, and it’s incredibly handy. Just open System Preferences (under the Apple menu), then click Keyboard, and go to the Shortcuts tab. From the “App Shortcuts” section, you can add a shortcut for any menu option you like.

For more details on using this powerful OS feature, see this link.

That’s It!

I hope you found something useful to enhance your use of Audio Hijack! If you’ve got your own great tip to share, let us know via email, or with a comment below.

If you’re looking for additional tips, Kirk McElhearn’s Take Control of Audio Hijack eBook is worth your while. It’s just been updated for Audio Hijack version 3.3, and it contains a wealth of information to help you make the most of our software. Just click for more information on Take Control of Audio Hijack.

Finally, if you’re new to Audio Hijack, you can get $5 off your purchase through the end of June. Just head over to our store and enter coupon code TIPSFIVE before July 1st to save!

Donald Clark, Donald Clark Plan B, Jun 25, 2016

These are all ways blockchain could be used in education (though a lot of detail would have to be added) but I'm not sure I agree with the context. Introducing the piece Donald Clark says he created a Napster like system for learning resources in 2001 but "the public sector organisations just didn’ t like innovation and stuck to their institutional silos." He predicts a similar reaction to blockchain. "The biggest obstacle to its use is cultural. Education is a slow learner and very slow adopter. Despite the obvious advantages, it will be slow to adapt this technology." Why would he expect these new systems to work within traditional institutions? I did the same sort of thing in 2001, but by not waiting for institutional approval helped create the first MOOC. It is only after an idea is demonstrated that it will change culture and be adopted by institutions. The same is true for business and enterprise software. It has nothing to do with education or the public sector, and everything to do with large organizations and culture in general. Image: Cable Green.

Christine Porath, Harvard Business Review, Jun 25, 2016

Here are the recommendations (all quoted):

• Identify areas for growth and actively pursue development in those areas.
• Sleep, exercise, good nutrition, and stress-management help ward off the noxious effects of disrespect.
• Generate more meaning at work by shaping your activities around your motives, strengths and passions.
• Seek positive relationships. Positive relationships in and out of work help you thrive.
• Thriving in non-work activities doubles an individual’ s emotional reserves.

Sounds like a plan. Something everybody could use to more or less a degree.

Near Kingsgate Mall — 317 E Broadway in Mount Pleasant

In 2008, when Brian Day started taking photos, he said many people “referred to Detroit as a horrible wasteland: a place to be feared and, if at all possible, avoided.” This attitude masked the city in a heavy shadow that photographers — Brian included — inadvertently accentuated.

“Abandonment was dramatic,” he said. “I simply started to develop my own individual interests and I realized how much I enjoyed searching for balance in the narrative. There are still a lot of people struggling. But, there are definitely signs of a resurgence since 2012, and new reasons to feel positively.”

Early photography inspirations Ansel Adams, Robert Frank, and Henri Cartier-Bresson pushed Brian to strive for meticulously high-quality composition with his photographs. Hillman Curtis, an American media designer Brian drew inspiration from, advocated for self-imposed limitations to boost creativity. As such, the majority of his photography is in black and white.

“I needed to stick to some sort of visual constraint in order to better focus my creativity on form and content without color,” he said. “That worked for several years, but as I’ve grown, I’ve learned that sometimes I’m interested in things because of the presence of color, and that’s perfectly fine.”

Brian doesn’t want Detroit painted only with dark and hopeless images, but he knows things aren’t all sunshine either. “I also like to think there are recurring themes of optimism and resilience in my work. Because the images are in black and white and often revolve around Detroit, there is the potential for a gloomy vibe, but I don’t intend to start any pity parties or be exploitative of my hometown.”

Depicting things as they really are, nuanced and aged, is integral to his work. He doesn’t stage most of his shots. Instead he spends his time walking around the city, finding big or small moments that speak to him.

“I think of myself as a candid photographer,” he said.

To illustrate the old and new of Detroit, Brian’s series “The Time Traveler” consists of silhouetted self portraits in old or new parts of the city, places he remembered differently as a kid. Intentionally, the photos become more minimal “since we naturally know much more about the past than we know about the future,” and often depict him carrying a briefcase or other work-relevant items.

“The story of Detroit is probably still a bit askew,” Brian explained of the overly positive or overly negative portrayals through photography and pop culture. “It’s neither as bad nor as good as the media might have you believe. There are still a lot of people struggling, but there are definitely signs of a resurgence, and new reasons to feel positively. That’s the optimism that I’m finding myself drawn to, and I hope it continues.”

Explore Brian’s Flickr photostream for more of his work and connect with him there. You can also find more of his photography on his website or on Facebook.

After a slew of leaks leading up to a launch in virtual reality, the OnePlus 3 is finally available in Canada. Is it everything OnePlus and co-founder Carl Pei promised? Well, you know what they say about third attempts.

Third time’s the charm

At first glance, the OnePlus 3 (OP3) appears unremarkable. Viewing it from the front, it’s easy to mistake the OnePlus 3 for an iPhone or alternatively, thanks to the shape of its front-facing fingerprint scanner, a Samsung smartphone. Were it not for the OnePlus logo etched onto its back, the OnePlus 3 could also pass for a HTC One M9 when viewed from behind.

All of that’s not to say the OnePlus 3 is an unattractive phone, merely that it doesn’t do anything daring in terms of its design language. That said, it is in the details that the OnePlus 3 distinguishes itself in terms of hardware, and as we’ll see later, software as well.

Unoriginal industrial design not withstanding, the OnePlus 3 is well-built device. Its smooth, all-metal unibody case feels comfortable to hold, and the etched OnePlus logo I mentioned earlier adds a delightful tactile surprise when you run a finger along its back surface.

Likewise, while some may bemoan the noticeable camera bump on the OnePlus 3’s back, I think it’s a design necessity that adds much needed visual interest to what is an otherwise monotone exterior.

Moreover, despite measuring in at 7.4mm at its thickest point, 0.3mm thicker than the iPhone 6s, the OnePlus 3 feels hefty. Its metal buttons likewise are great. They have just the right amount of give-and-take, and there’s a satisfying click when you press on them.

Overall, build quality is on-par with the current crop of best-in-class flagship smartphones like the iPhone 6s, Samsung Galaxy S7 and HTC 10, and this is a phone that is costs a fraction of the price of those devices.

I should also mention the slip-on cases OnePlus has released alongside its newest phone. In the time I’ve had the device I’ve mostly kept my OnePlus 3 in one, which says more about the quality of the cases than the phone itself; they’re great, especially for the price.

Without adding noticeably to the thickness of the OnePlus 3, they change up the feel of the device and provide it with an extra bit of protection. I’m particularly fond of the sandstone one — it adds a nice tactile feel to the back of an otherwise smooth phone. If you plan to purchase the OnePlus 3 and one of the available slip cases appeals to you, then make sure to grab it.

High-end hardware

OnePlus came onto the smartphone scene in 2013 promising a top-of-the-line flagship smartphone at a reasonable price. While the company has mostly delivered on that promise over the past two years, in terms of internals the OnePlus 3 is a clear step above its predecessors.

It starts with the OP3’s combination of Snapdragon 820 processor and whopping 6GB of RAM. While I’ve read articles that claim the smartphone has issues properly managing its RAM, in my admittedly still too short time with the smartphone, the OnePlus 3 was incredibly responsive.

Launching new apps and switching between already running ones, I was consistently surprised by how fast the OnePlus 3 kept things humming along. It will be interesting to revisit this smartphone in six months time to see how it performs then, but in the meantime, it is one of the most responsive phones I’ve had the pleasure of using. Performance was similarly stellar when it came to the OP3’s fingerprint sensor.

Moreover, with 64GB of internal storage on the one and only model available to Canadians, there’s ample space here for all of one’s apps, music and photos, even without a microSD card. Good thing too because there’s no option here to add additional storage via a microSD card; the OnePlus 3’s SIM tray is designed to hold two nano SIM cards instead.

However, with a more than reasonable amount of internal storage, and online cloud options like Dropbox and Google Photos available to anyone who buys this phone, I don’t think most people who end up owning this phone will miss the fact they can’t add even more space to it. What’s more, while a dual SIM support is a feature that’s less useful in Canada than in other countries, with the addition of a Roam Mobility SIM or temporary T-Mobile SIM, the OnePlus 3 can be a great a roaming device for trips to the U.S. and the rest of the world.

Where the OnePlus 3 does make a compromise is in display choice. For its 2016 flagship, OnePlus decided against including a QHD display, instead opting for a more standard 1080p display. I think most people won’t mind OnePlus’ decision here. I certainly haven’t in my time with the device. Virtual reality aside, a full HD screen is perfectly suited for the majority of smartphone use cases. Moreover, it’s fair to say a QHD display would have negatively impacted battery life performance.

Resolution aside, the screen OnePlus sourced for the OP3 is excellent. While colours were too saturated for my liking, text and icons were sharp thanks to a 401 ppi pixel density. The display can also get exceptionally bright when turned to its highest brightness setting, making the display legible even when outside.

Another compromise comes in the form of a slightly smaller battery than its predecessor, 3,000mAh compared to 3,300mAh, but with Android Marshmallow’s battery life enhancements in tow, the difference is a wash. On most days I was routinely able to get a full day of moderate use out of the battery, and if I forgot to charge the phone at night, the OnePlus 3 usually had enough to get through the morning.

With the included charger, which makes use of the company’s own Dash Charge quick charging technology, the OnePlus 3 can also top itself up quickly. According to OnePlus, Dash Charge will replenish the OnePlus 3’s battery to 60 percent in just 30 minutes. In practice, I found the technology wasn’t quite that efficient, but it was still fast.

Last but not least, the OnePlus 3, unlike its predecessor, features a NFC chip (huzzah, I know). So while Android Pay may never come to Canada, you’ll at least be able to use the phone to complete mobile payments as long as your bank’s Android app supports the functionality.

Lacklustre camera performance

When it comes to specifications, the OP3’s photographic kit has the makings of an excellent mobile shooter. Now equipped with an industry standard Sony sensor , the OP3’s back-facing camera also includes optical image stabilization (OIS) and PDAF autofocus. It’s a capable camera that can focus in quickly on subjects, and there’s very little delay when launching the camera app and snapping a photo.

Like the OP2, the OP3 also includes both a manual capture mode and RAW image support, as well as a fast HDR mode that produces excellent results.

Still, even with what should be a smartphone great camera, I was a bit disappointed by the photos I took with the OnePlus 3. I suspect a lot of that has to do with just how great the competition has been in 2016.

Whether it has been HTC, Samsung, Apple or even Google via Huawei, the past year-and-a-half has produced a variety of great mobile shooters. In light of cameras on smartphones like the HTC 10 and Samsung Galaxy S7, the OnePlus 3 produces serviceable photos. It doesn’t excel in any one area like those two devices. For instance, low light performance is one particular area it falls behind when compared to both the S7 and HTC 10.

Uncluttered software

Camera aside, the OnePlus 3 is a compelling hardware package, but this is 2016 and excellent hardware can only differentiate a phone so much.

Thankfully, the OnePlus 3 comes with an excellent software compliment.

Included with every OP3 is the latest version of OxygenOS. Essentially a very lightly skinned version of stock Android, OxygenOS is an absolute pleasure to use. It’s full of small but smart enhancements that hone 6.0.1’s already excellent existing set of features and functionality to a fine edge. Notable additions include a night mode, an inverse colour mode and a feature called the Shelf, which is a page to the left of the home screen that shows the current temperature, a list of recently used apps and a space for writing down memos and reminders.

The greatest strength of OnePlus’ software is the degree to which it lets the user customize their overall experience. For instance, when you first take the OnePlus 3 out of its box, its fingerprint sensor is set to double as the OS’s home button, while a pair of capacitive touch buttons act as its back and recent buttons. If you don’t like this setup, you don’t have to use it. During my time of using the device, instead of getting used to the capacitive touch buttons, I opted to use the standard set software buttons found on stock Android. Former Samsung users can even reverse the placement of the back and recent buttons to match their old phone.

It is these type of customization options that typify the experience of using Oxygen OS. Using the three position alert slider located on the side of the phone, a feature every future Android phone should adopt, users can set exactly what classifies as a priority alert. Similarly, the user can also set what colour is displayed by the notification LED when an alert comes in. There’s even the option to turn on or off the ambient display.

Likewise excellent is the OnePlus launcher. Normally one of the first things I do when I get a new Android smartphone is download and install Nova Launcher. I didn’t have to do that with the OnePlus; its launcher has a lot of the functionality found in other custom launchers, including the option to install custom icon packs, adjust the size of said icons and alter the appearance of the Google Search bar.

With all that said, the best part of the entire OnePlus 3 software experience is that you don’t have to use any of these features. Users that don’t find the Shelf useful can turn it off, and for those who find the colour LED and ambient display distracting, they too can be turned off. When it comes to software, the OnePlus 3 is what you make of it.

Top $500 smartphone in Canada

We’re at the end of this review and I haven’t even touched upon the biggest difference between the OnePlus 3 and its predecessors. Buying a OnePlus device in the past meant contending with the company’s often infuriating invite system. That’s no longer the case. Starting with the OnePlus 3 and extending to all of the company’s future devices, consumers, both in Canada and wherever else OnePlus ships its products to, can buy the OnePlus 3 without an invite. It’s a significant change that addresses the OnePlus 2’s biggest shortcoming — lack of availability.

When it comes to the device itself, the OnePlus 3 is not the no compromise affair OnePlus has built its entire brand around. However, it’s still an excellent phone, especially at the less than $600 it comes out after tax. There are better phones out there, to be sure, but for most part they’re only marginally better in a few select areas and they cost a lot more money.

This is the easiest OnePlus device to recommended. If you’re in the market for a new smartphone, then give it consideration.

Pete McMartin profiles the housing dilemma of Matthew Bond, a councillor in the District of North Vancouver (and graduate of the SFU Next Generation Transportation certificate).

From The Sun:

To him, housing affordability is more than just a generational issue. It’s also one of densification. He estimates that 60 to 65 per cent of the district is still comprised of single-family homes, a preponderance that has created housing stock most people can no longer afford. Blue-collar and middle-class families have been priced out, and with them the service people that make a city go.

If you’ve ever given any thought to becoming an Android developer, now is the time to chase that dream.

Over the course of the next week, Google is offering free access to a comprehensive Android development course offered through Udacity. Available in video format and taught by Google employees, the included lessons cover a variety of topics related to the company’s mobile OS, including multiscreen app development, user experience design and monetization through ads. There’s even a full lesson devoted to Material Design, and what it means in the context of a smartphone app.

By the end of the course, Google promises students will have a full portfolio of apps to show off. Best of all, the company says previous programming experience is not required.

“Android apps are everywhere, and learning to build them can be a fantastic career move. No programming experience? No problem!” says the company. “The skills you learn in this beginning Nanodegree program will accelerate your journey to becoming a working Android Developer.”

Students can pay for additional services like career counselling and coaching. Head over to the Udacity website to find out more about the program.

James Bullard of the St Louis Fed has embraced the postnormal economics of our time:

FOUR times a year the meeting of the Federal Open Market Committee, the Federal Reserve board that sets monetary policy, concludes with a special flourish: a press conference, and the publication of the members’ economic projections. The latter includes a “dot plot” which shows how members think rates will unfold over the next few years. When the new dots were released at the end of the June meeting, on the 15th, it quickly became clear that one was not like the others. FOMC members overwhelmingly see the Fed’s main interest rate rising to between 1% and 2% in 2017, then on to between 2% and 3% in 2018: all of them, that is, except one. That oddball member projected the interest rate would stay right about where it is now over the next two years. When the projections dropped, Fed watchers immediately speculated about just which member had turned super-dovish (or super pessimistic).

Two days later, all was revealed. The anomalous dots belonged to James Bullard, the president of the Federal Reserve Bank of St Louis, and traditionally a bit of a hawk. But Mr Bullard’s dots represent something more interesting than a simple shift in the outlook for the economy. As he made clear in two statements published on June 17th, his whole way of thinking about monetary policy in the economy has changed.

Mr Bullard begins by noting that the Fed seems to have more or less succeeded in achieving its mandates. The unemployment rate, at 4.7%, is about as low as it ever gets. Meanwhile, inflation is close to returning to the Fed’s 2% target. Growth is plodding along in steady fashion. And yet this is all occurring against a policy backdrop that remains wildly out of the ordinary, at least by pre-crisis standards. The Fed’s main interest rate is barely above zero (and has plumbed such depths for the last eight years). The Fed’s balance sheet remains at the enormous size to which it grew during multiple quantitative-easing operations. And the Fed is promising to raise rates only very, very gradually. Monetary policy, as the central bank constantly insists, is highly accommodative. And yet the economy is behaving like it is coasting along the gentlest of downward slopes.

One could interpret this puzzling outcome in a few ways. Mr Bullard sees it as evidence that the economy does not converge toward some steady state, “normal” condition, in which interest rates sit at a comfortable 4% or so. The idea that eventually the natural processes of the economy will support “lift off” and “normalisation” is wrong, he thinks.

Instead, there are many stable regimes in which an economy can land, he reckons, and which can be stable until some shock comes along to push it out. Right now, the American economy is in a low growth, low inflation, low interest-rate regime. It has been stuck there for years, even as the Fed’s published projections suggest that a rise back to “normal” rates is just over the horizon. Mr Bullard is effectively saying: let’s dispense with that fantasy.

Dispensing with the fantasy of normality: embrace the postnormal.

The first, described as the St Louis Fed’s new characterisation of the economy, is here. In it, Mr Bullard says that there can be multiple productivity regimes—low and high, for instance, corresponding to slower or faster trend growth—but that the Fed has no way to predict when a move from one to another will occur (and should not try to in making its projections). There can also be multiple real interest rate regimes, based on things like the supply and demand for capital and the liquidity premium on safe assets. The interest-rate regime also seems to be persistent, with switches that can’t easily be predicted. For the economy to look wildly different from its current state, one of those two factors, productivity and real interest rates, would need to flip to some new regime. But they probably won’t, Mr Bullard says, and so the economy probably won’t look wildly different.

Sounds like a strange attractor in complexity theory, something many financial analysts have zero grounding in. I’ll be digging into his report for more meat.

Safari Technology Preview Release 7 is now available for download. If you already have Safari Technology Preview installed, you can update from the Mac App Store’s Updates tab. Release 7 of Safari Technology Preview covers WebKit revisions 201541–202085.

JavaScript

• Implemented options argument to addEventListener (r201735, r201757)
• Updated JSON.stringify to correctly transform numeric array indices (r201674)
• Improved the performance of Encode operations (r201756)
• Addressed issues with Date setters for years outside of 1900-2100 (r201586)
• Fixed an issue where reusing a function name as a parameter name threw a syntax error (r201892)
• Added the error argument for window.onerror event handlers (r202023)
• Improved performance for accessing dictionary properties (r201562)
• Updated Proxy.ownKeys to match recent changes to the spec (r201672)
• Prevented RegExp unicode parsing from reading an extra character before failing (r201714)
• Updated SVGs to report their memory cost to the JavaScript garbage collector (r201561)
• Improved the sampling profiler to protect itself against certain forms of sampling bias that arise due to the sampling interval being in sync with some other system process (r202021)
• Fixed global lexical environment variables scope for functions created using the Function constructor (r201628)
• Fixed parsing super when the default parameter is an arrow function (r202074)
• Added support for trailing commas in function parameters and arguments (r201725)

CSS

• Added the unprefixed version of the pseudo element ::placeholder (r202066)
• Fixed a crash when computing the style of a grid with only absolute-positioned children (r201919)
• Fixed computing a grid container’s height by accounting for the horizontal scrollbar (r201709)
• Fixed placing positioned items on the implicit grid (r201545)
• Fixed rendering for the text-decoration-style values: dashed and dotted (r201777)
• Fixed support for using border-radius and backdrop-filter properties together (r201785)
• Fixed clipping for border-radius with different width and height (r201868)
• Fixed CSS reflections for elements with WebGL (r201639)
• Fixed CSS reflections for elements with a backdrop-filter property (r201648)
• Improved the Document’s font selection lifetime in preparation for the CSS Font Loading API (r201799)
• Improved memory management for CSS value parsing (r201608)
• Improved font face rule handling for style change calculations (r201971, r202085)
• Fixed multiple selector rule behavior for keyframe animations (r201818)
• Fixed applying CSS variables correctly for writing-mode properties (r201875)
• Added experimental support for spring() based CSS animations (r201759)
• Changed the initial value of background-color to transparent per specs (r201666)

Web APIs

• Changed CanvasRenderingContext2D.createPattern() and CanvasRenderingContext2D.putImageData() to throw the correct exception type and align with the specification (r201664)
• Fixed a number of issues with Web Workers (r201876, r201970, r201918, r201926, r201791, r201898, r201925, r201808)

Web Inspector

• Added ⌘T keyboard shortcut to open the New Tab tab (r201692, r201762)
• Added the ability to show and hide columns in data grid tables (r202009, r202081)
• Fixed an error when trying to delete nodes with children (r201843)
• Added a Top Functions view for Call Trees in the JavaScript & Events timeline (r202010, r202055)
• Added gaps to the overview and category graphs in the Memory timeline where discontinuities exist in the recording (r201686)
• Improved the performance of DOM tree views (r201840, r201833)
• Fixed filtering to apply to new records added to the data grid (r202011)
• Improved snapshot comparisons to always compare the later snapshot to the earlier snapshot no matter what order they were selected (r201949)
• Improved performance when processing many DOM.attributeModified messages (r201778)
• Fixed the 60fps guideline for the Rendering Frames timeline when switching timeline modes (r201937)
• Included the exception stack when showing internal errors in Web Inspector (r202025)
• Added ⌘P keyboard shortcut for quick open (r201891)
• Removed Text → Content subsection from the Visual Styles Sidebar when not necessary (r202073)
• Show <template> content that should not be hidden as Shadow Content (r201965)
• Fixed elements in the Elements tab losing focus when selected by the up or down key (r201890)
• Enabled combining diacritic marks in input fields in Web Inspector (r201592)

Media

• Prevented double-painting the outline of a replaced video element (r201752)
• Properly prevented video.play() for video.src="file" with audio user gesture restrictions in place (r201841)
• Prevented showing the caption menu if the video has no selectable text or audio tracks (r201883)
• Improved performance of HTMLMediaElement.prototype.canPlayType that was accounting for 250–750ms first loading theverge.com (r201831)
• Fixed inline media controls to show PiP and fullscreen buttons (r202075)

Rendering

• Fixed a repaint issue with vertical text in an out-of-flow container (r201635)
• Show text in a placeholder font while downloading the specified font (r201676)
• Fixed rendering an SVG in the correct vertical position when no vertical padding is applied, and in the correct horizontal position when no horizontal padding is applied (r201604)
• Fixed blending of inline SVG elements with transparency layers (r202022)
• Fixed display of hairline borders on 3x displays (r201907)
• Prevented flickering and rendering artifacts when resizing the web view (r202037)
• Fixed logic to trigger new layout after changing canvas height immediately after page load (r201889)

Bug Fixes

• Fixed an issue where Find on Page would show too many matches (r201701)
• Exposed static text if form label text only contains static text (r202063)
• Added Origin header for CORS requests on preloaded cross-origin resources (r201930)
• Added support for the upgrade-insecure-requests (UIR) directive of Content Security Policy (r201679, r201753)
• Added proper element focus and caret destination for keyboard users activating a fragment URL (r201832)
• Increased disk cache capacity when there is lots of free space (r201857)
• Prevented hangs during synchronous XHR requests if a network session doesn’t exist (r201593)
• Fixed the response for a POST request on a blob resource to return a “network error” instead of HTTP 500 response (r201557)
• Restricted HTTP/0.9 responses to default ports and cancelled HTTP/0.9 resource loads if the document was loaded with another HTTP protocol (r201895)
• Fixed parsing URLs containing tabs or newlines (r201740)
• Fixed cookie validation in private browsing (r201967)
• Provided memory cache support for the Vary header (r201800, r201805)

So it turns out we did a lot in March. I’m breaking the March Dev Diary into two parts. This part will focus on the UI, while Part 2 will focus on the platform work we did.

In February we released WikiEve to friends and family, hoping to get some good feedback on our new direction. Our ideas about the UI had evolved significantly since the release of V0, so we were excited to hear what people had to say.

Formulas

In March, we spent a lot of time looking at ways to improve the NL interface, due to feedback we received on WikiEve. We started by considering a controlled natural language interface, which would drastically simplify the NL problem while still being readable. However, we soon arrived at something that felt more akin to Excel formulas.

A user of the NL interface might have asked this as “What is the average number of moons per planet?”. The formula version is a little awkward to read, but an English reader without any coding experience could figure out what this sentence means.

One issue with this introduces a scoping problem. The NL interface was designed to figure out the extent of functions like average and count. Is this average(count(moons)) per plant or average(count(moons per planet))? This version makes that explicit

Another thing the NL interface did was find relations between words that were not directly related. In a previous post we looked at the example sum salary per department. Here, salary and department are only related through the employees. This version makes that explicit

Even a version closer to Excel is still not that bad. Excel has proven that people are capable of writing formulas in this style, so with the right tools and guidance, they should be able to write something like this:

We even started experimenting with how a user might write multi-step queries. In Excel, you would reference the result of another cell, using a cell address like A3. Here, you can reference different steps of a calculation. This helps guide the user to break down complicated queries into smaller steps. If you read the queries from top to bottom, it’s pretty clear what’s going on here. The grammar is not true English, but it’s close enough to feel familiar.

In the end, we didn’t implement any of these formula concepts in a working system. After about a week of riffing on this concept, we arrived at a different take that was much more promising.

GridEve + WikiEve = WikiGrid

In developing Eve, we often tend to circle around ideas. This is the case again, as we decided to revisit GridEve (for background on GridEve, see the this Dev Diary). One key property we want Eve to have is the ability to be instantly useful. Even if you have no idea how to use Excel, you can at least type things into cells and use the grid to organize ideas. I’ve started many useful spreadsheets this way. Most versions of Eve so far have required some upfront work before the system became a useful tool e.g. requiring the user to import data or define a schema. GridEve was one of the first versions that had the property of being immediately useful, so we wanted to explore that more. Also, our work on the formula language lead us to an interesting way to formulate queries using a grid. Let’s take a look at GridEve 2.0: WikiGrid.

Interface

The UI is a combination of GridEve and WikiEve. The user is initially presented with a grid of cells. Each cell is square and fixed, in contrast to Excel, where they can be resized. Cells in WikiGrid can contain anything, such as text, tables, formulas, or even cards from WikiEve

Even though the grid is fixed, you can select multiple cells and turn them into a “macro cell”, which offers some interesting interactions. Here, a user is navigating using a keyboard.

And here, a user is selecting various cells. When any occupied cells (the large white ones) fall in the selection window, only those are selected. When only empty cells are in the selection window, they are selected.

Finally, we see how sub-grids can be embedded in a cell. It’s grids all the way down. The ghosting cursor was an experiment to see if hiding gridlines made it look cleaner.

That’s it for the UI. In Part 2 we’ll take a look at how the platform changed in March.

From the CBC via Dianna Waggoner: