Rolandt

Congratulations on launching your blog during IndieWebCamp Amsterdam! Looking forward to following along with your blogging adventure. Feel free to ask when you need info or a bit of help.

I’ll go grab a coffee now

(now I hope this will end up as webmention in your blog… it did!)

You know the kind of work I mean. It demands skills you don’t have. It’s slow. It’s disagreeable. And you spend half your time taking breaks, complaining, and avoiding it, because it’s just soul-sucking labor. That work is more valuable than you realize. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi writes about flow, the state you attain as you work … Continued

The post In praise of hard, tedious work appeared first on without bullshit.

You know the drill: We tell you how many hours we spent testing how many models, and then we say, “Here’s what you should buy.” Sometimes, our recommendation is heavily caveated (air fryers, anyone?), but we can usually still find something for you if you’re set on buying a given type of product. When it comes to electric scooters, however, we can’t make that kind of recommendation.

You may have to click on the above image for the full effect, but I just wanted to take a moment to recognize that I’m officially off the 8 AM to 10 PM (Eastern US Time) support schedule. I still cover 6-7 hours of support from 1 AM to 8 AM, when things are much slower, but being freed up after that is pretty huge. It’s been over 6 years in the making, but the prospect of liberating myself from a 12-14 hour work day sometime soon is the stuff dreams are made of. I’ll talk more about where Reclaim is going and what got us here, but on this Monday I am just going to enjoy a bit of the afternoon sans support tickets.

Amazon and Google buried the hatchet earlier this year. Until recently Amazon Prime was blocked on Chromecast while YouTube app was not available on FireTV. Furthermore, Amazon also barred Google from selling Chromecasts on its ecommerce platform. As agreed earlier this year, YouTube TV is now available on Amazon Fire TV devices. Continue reading →

No, they are not. They are also on to you. They know what “gaslighting” means.

The headline comes from a Canadian Press story that was published by the National Observer – and others.

“The strikes themselves are not offering any answers. The strikes are not addressing the question of how we reduce carbon demand.”

Actually if Hal Kvisle was paying attention and not indulging in the usual shenanigans, he would be surprised by how well informed some of these young people are. For the last thirty years or so the fossil fuel industry has been spinning the story that not only was there reasonable doubt about climate change and its cause (when there was none) but also that it was essential to expand production in order to meet both rising demand and build the hardware for the eventual transition. This lost us a great opportunity to get ahead of the game. In the same period not only were greenhouse gas emissions expanding exponentially, but the earth’s ability to absorb that carbon was being exhausted. Some oil companies not only knew that to be true but also started down the path of getting ahead of the competition. BP even tried to convince its customers that the letters now stood for “Beyond Petroleum”. Not that that lasted long.

We have always known that we were being profligate and wasteful with energy, and there were already moves under way to cut that waste – especially in the public sector. BC faced a bit of a challenge since nearly all of our electricity came from existing hydro – which meant its cost to consumers was low, and the ghg emissions had already largely occurred during the construction phase. But even so, people knew about air pollution, and wanted something done about that including closing the last gas fired power station. We also knew that building complete communities in a compact urban region with increased transportation choice was key to better air quality and overall well being – we called it “liveability” back then.

In BC the revenues from oil and gas extraction fell precipitously even as production accelerated. The BC Liberals poured money into the sector by cutting taxes and royalties. In Canada, the extraction of the tar sands was only feasible because it was supported by federal and provincial subsidies, again started by the Liberal government. There is also a direct line between politicians supporting oil and gas and contributions from fossil fuel corporations to party funds for elections and propaganda. The lying from the corporations was long, loud and shameless. As was the greed of the elected officials who still promote them.

We know for a certainty that cutting government subsidies to fossil fuels will bring about significant change in short order. It is simply false to claim that there is need for a longer term transition since so many examples of successful transition are already evident. Solar panels and wind turbines are already more financially viable than fossil power for electricity generation. China is producing far more electric cars and buses than North America – and also building high speed electric railways and urban rapid transit systems. We could have been doing the same over the same period: it was not as if the technologies were not well understood and readily available. Instead we built even more freeways, and bought much bigger cars – and trucks – for personal transportation building our way to ever more automobile reliance, personal indebtedness and ill health as a consequence. There is nothing new about this understanding. What is new is that the children are now pointing out – loudly and with increasing credibility – how irresponsible politicians and corporate management have been, and how change must now happen faster, sooner and with much less attention paid to the personal fortune building of both.

But, really—who’s being naïve in this conversation?

See more – and much better – photos

Wham! A car crash can happen in an instant. And as frightening as that may be, it can be just as distressing to be blamed for a crash that’s not your fault. That’s why a dash cam can be a critical aid if the unexpected happens. After researching more than 250 models and testing about 40, we’ve found that the best overall dash cam is the Nextbase 522GW. It delivers the sharpest video we’ve seen, is the easiest to use, and has handy features that you don’t get with most other dash cams.

The September 2019 Monthly Meeting of the Mozilla Philippines (MozillaPH) Localization (L10n) Team happened 2130H tonight (MNL time) via the MozillaPH Slack. A total of six (06) Pinoy Mozillians were present during the online meeting presided by Mozilla Reps Mentor & Tech Speaker Robert “Bob” Reyes. Here’s a recap of the online meeting: Attendees Robert “Bob” Reyes (meeting presider)Ronx RonquilloFrederick VillalunaKevin KapchanPaul Harriet AsiñeroKirk Jann Garcia L10n Updates Some awesome news: we have confirmation that Tagalog Firefox will be shipping… Read the rest

More than one client has been surprised to learn the $250k a year they pay for a community platform doesn’t cover the implementation (which typically costs from $50k to $500k).

A community platform is essentially an empty house with great potential. The foundations are in place but everything else costs extra.

The fee you pay for the platform dictates the size of the house, the number and type of rooms, and other basics, but it’s the implementation partners who act as the decorators, plumbers, and electricians etc….(note: some platforms offer implementation as a service too).

You should spend as much time deciding the implementation partner as you do on your platform. If you get this part wrong, it’s hard for the community to be a success.

Having done this many times with clients, there are a few things to work out.

Before you approach an implementation partner (7Summits, Grazitti, Paladin, Oktana, SocialEdge etc…), you need to figure out:

• Strategy. Going to a platform vendor or implementation partner without a strategy is like going to a car salesman and asking what car to buy. You’re likely to buy whatever they want to sell rather than what you need for your budget. Get your strategy in place first.

• Specificity. Some are better at helping you figure out what you need (e.g. 7Summits) whereas others are better at taking precise plans and making them happen (e.g. Grazitti). The latter is cheaper, but if you forget to put something in you need later (i.e @mentions) your community will suffer. It’s also not a good idea to go cheap if you’re not quite sure how every single detail and function work. If you haven’t done this before, going cheap is especially risky.

• Staffing. This is a major project which requires project management. If you don’t have someone who can spend up to 50% of their time managing the project, you’re going to need the implementation partner to provide project management. Good project management is critical. It’s what stops your community being delayed for weeks while you wait for your in-house developers to collaborate with external developers and respond to emails/tickets (among many other things).

• Level of integration. Will the community look the same as your support center? What are the SSO and authentication requirements? How many distinct audiences will there be? Will each distinct audience require a separate or integrated community? Do you have clear branding guidelines to work from?
• Do you have in-house skills to maintain the code once the project is complete? If you do, you need to be sure the code is well documented so you can improve and build upon it later. If you don’t, you’re going to need a budget each year for further developments.
• How will they work with your team? Are they friendly and open to feedback or do they get defensive and irritable? Do you and your team personally click with them? Are they in the right time zone to collaborate throughout the day with your team? Do they understand how to work with a business like yours and the stakeholders/level of collaboration it requires?

• Speed. Some are busier than others. If you have a tight schedule, you need to book your implementation partner’s time as early as possible. Few partners have so much slack they can take up a major project next week.

This isn’t an exhaustive list, but be aware that working with an implementation partner is a skill and requires a huge amount of work with plenty of things to figure out first.

I can name dozens of projects which have gone off the rails because a community professional either selected the wrong partner or didn’t know how to work with their partner.

Ich habe das Video erst im zweiten Anlauf geschaut. Mir ging das ein bisschen zu forsch zu, wie Youtuber das so machen. Aber dann bin ich doch hängen geblieben und habe eine Menge Sachen gesehen, die mir zunächst nicht aufgefallen sind. Man muss es auch tatsächlich vorgemacht bekommen, als Text ist das zu abstrakt.

Was ich sofort mitnehme: Man kann den Cursor mittlerweile sehr einfach und präzise verschieben. Nicht über das virtuelle Trackpad, das immer für einige Überraschung sorgte, wenn man das gezeigt hat. Sondern direkt im Eingabefeld. Einfach nehmen und woanders hinziehen.

Eng damit verknüpft sind auch die neuen Gesten zum Markieren, Kopieren und Einfügen. Statt die Markierung nur zu ziehen, beginnt man mit einem Doppeltapp. Die Kopier- und Einfügegeste wird mit drei Fingern ausgeführt, als ob man das markierte mit den Fingern aufnimmt und woanders wieder ablegt. Mit drei Fingern nach links streichen macht die Änderung rückgängig, drei Finger nach rechts wiederholt sie.

Und das über ich heute mal. Einfacher auf dem iPad als auf dem iPhone.

Sir Francis @Dred_Tory
I'm truly stunned by the ineptitude of the CPC campaign. JT is the most vulnerable PM since Mulroney. More vulnerab… twitter.com/i/web/status/1…

Pixelmator Photo for the iPad has been released with a trio of new features that greatly increase the power of the app. With the update, you can now now edit images in your iCloud Photo Library non-destructively without creating duplicates. There are also new batch-processing workflows and better options for exporting images. It’s an interesting mix of updates that I expect will appeal to a wide audience even though there remain iPadOS features I’d like to see adopted in the future.

When Pixelmator Photo launched, it was one of the first and best implementations of Files’ Document Browser in a photo editor. It’s a fantastic feature that I called out in my review because I love being able to edit photos stored in Keep It, Working Copy, Western Digital’s My Cloud app connected to my My Passport Wireless SSD, and other file providers. However, the trouble was and remains that iCloud Photo Library is not a file provider, which meant that to edit photos in the original version of Pixelmator Photo, images had to be imported first, creating duplicates.

That’s changed with the latest update to Pixelmator Photo, which adds a direct view of the images in your iCloud Photo Library. Now, you can switch between your iCloud Photo Library and file providers with a single tap. At the top of Pixelmator Photo’s image picker UI, there’s a button that either says ‘Show Photos’ or ‘Show Files,’ depending on which you’re currently viewing. Tap the button and the UI switches to the other view. It’s a simple modal switch necessitated by the fact that iCloud Photo Library isn’t a file provider, but handled in about as simple a way as possible and with the benefit that there’s no longer a need to import iCloud Photo Library images into the app.

As with past versions, edits made to images in the Photos and Files views are non-destructive. Adjustments you make are saved as a separate file alongside the images themselves, so you can make more changes later or revert to the original version. However, if you’d prefer, you can turn on destructive editing from Pixelmator Photo’s entry in the Settings app, which eliminates the associated file of edits and saves some storage space.

The second big change to Pixelmator Photo is a robust batch processing system. Tap the Select button in the top-right corner of the image picker view to choose multiple images to edit together. After selecting the photos you want to edit, tap the ‘Batch’ button that appears, which opens a tiled interface reminiscent of the Home app’s UI.

Pixelmator includes four sets of pre-built batch processing workflows: ML (machine learning), Presets, Rotate, and Export, plus a fifth set for organizing your custom workflows. The ML set shows off different aspects of Pixelmator Photo’s machine learning-enhanced editing tools, Presets applies different filters to photos, Rotate handles image rotation and straightening, and Export takes care of converting images to various file types, scaling, and image quality adjustments.

My favorite part of the built-in workflows is that they can be edited, which gives users a head start on creating their own workflows. There’s a Reset button that allows you to start over with the original workflow at any time if you don’t like the changes you’ve made. Alternatively, you can start entirely from scratch with a custom workflow, adding machine learning tweaks and filters, rotation and straightening, cropping to different aspect ratio presets, and exporting to a bunch of file types at differing qualities and scales.

When you apply a workflow to a group of images, Pixelmator Photo displays the status of each as they’re processed. If the Export toggle is turned off in your workflow, the edits are saved to Photos or Files. If the Export toggle is on though, Pixelmator Photo displays the share sheet at the end of the process so you can send the images to another app.

I expect to use Pixelmator Photo’s batch processing a lot for quickly touching up a group of photos and sending them to friends and family and doing things like resizing MacStories Weekly images to a specific pixel width to meet the size limits imposed by MailChimp. The new workflows are perfect for those sorts of broad edits that are applicable to several images. If you want to make more refined edits, Pixelmator Photo’s other editing tools are available to apply to individual images.

The latest update to Pixelmator Photo hasn’t changed the editing tools available to users, so I won’t cover them again here. For a complete rundown of what you can do with Pixelmator Photo’s editing tools, check out my review of version 1.0.

One thing I wish Pixelmator Photo’s batch processing had is Shortcuts integration. I’d love to see an ‘Add to Siri’ button alongside the workflow settings, so I could combine its workflows with those of other photo editors and utilities. I’d also like to see Split View and multiwindow support added. Pixelmator Photo is best used full-screen on the iPad, but the ability to use it next to other apps or compare two images side-by-side would be a big advantage.

The third feature of the Pixelmator Photo update is new export options. Before, you could only select file type and quality options when exporting an image. Now, you can also scale images to a couple of different presets or a custom pixel width and height. It’s a smaller change compared to the others, but nonetheless important if you ever need to scale an image for posting it on the web, for example.

---

Direct access to my iCloud Photo Library for editing without creating duplicates, batch processing, and more export options are all excellent additions to Pixelmator Photo. Together, they make this the most significant update to the app since its launch and the app an excellent choice as the primary photo editor for more users than ever before. I’d still like to see greater adoption of iPadOS features like multiple windows, Split View, and Shortcuts actions, but what the app lacks in these areas, it largely makes up for with a robust set of self-contained tools and workflows, which is why it remains one of my favorite photo editors that I keep close by on my Home screen.

Pixelmator Photo is available on the App Store for $4.99.

---

Support MacStories Directly

Club MacStories offers exclusive access to extra MacStories content, delivered every week; it’s also a way to support us directly.

Club MacStories will help you discover the best apps for your devices and get the most out of your iPhone, iPad, and Mac. Plus, it’s made in Italy.

Join Now

Alex Kaplan, Fiorella Garcia, IBM Blockchain Blog, Sept 30, 2019

I think we've learned to take IBM's pronouncements with a grain of salt. Still, the gist of this short post is similar to other pronouncements that have been made regarding blockchain and education, "proposing a world in which learners and educators work collaboratively instead of through a traditionally isolated approach." The key appears to lie in credentials and identities. "Students are becoming lifelong learners and turning to stackable credentials, the concept of building towards a degree through the accumulation of varying certifications and short-term courses. This, however, has given a rise to challenges in the tracking of disparate methods of acquiring skills. Blockchain provides a logical solution," say the authors. But I disagree. Because GIGO.

Web: [Direct Link] [This Post]

A few weeks ago, I came across a post on Reddit claiming that Apple had restored the ability to launch specific sections of the Settings app via Shortcuts in iOS and iPadOS 13.1. I was inspired by that discovery to finish working on a project I had long been putting off: documenting all the URLs supported by the Settings app in iOS and iPadOS.

After some a lot of trial and error, I’ve collected 120+ URLs that can open individual pages and sub-sections of the Settings app. In this post, I’m going to share the complete list of URLs that are supported as of iOS and iPadOS 13.1 (specifically, iOS 13.1.2), as well as a custom shortcut to launch them.

The ability to open specific sections of the Settings app isn’t new in iOS 13.1: for several years now, Apple has offered a prefs:root URL scheme designed to launch the Settings app at a specific path. For instance, prefs:root=Bluetooth can open Settings’ Bluetooth page, while prefs:root=ControlCenter&path=CUSTOMIZE_CONTROLS can navigate directly into Settings ⇾ Control Center ⇾ Customize Controls. You get the idea.

Historically, Settings URLs have been affected by two main problems: Apple’s tendency to either break them in new versions of iOS or reject apps that implemented them citing usage of private APIs, and the inconsistent text format used in the URLs themselves. The prefs:root URL scheme goes back several years in iOS’ history, and we’ve seen apps (such as the popular Launcher) implement support for them by letting users open the Settings app at a specific path. A quick Google search demonstrates how, over the years, others have tried to put together a list of all (or, at the very least, the most popular) URLs supported by Settings.

Following two big launches on MacStories last month, I needed to work on something different and fun¹, so I decided to spend a few days documenting all the Settings URLs – for main pages and sub-sections – that I could reliably open in iOS and iPadOS 13.1.

I used pre-existing work as the foundation for my research: I went through old lists of prefs:root URLs (primarily these two) and re-tested each URL for iOS and iPadOS 13.1; some of them were still working, others required an update. Then, I turned my attention to finding the URLs for new Settings pages Apple added over the past couple of years and – the most time-consuming task of all – I tested every single sub-page too.

There is no automated method for discovering Settings URLs or scraping the Settings app: I had to guess each one by starting with the title of each page (in English), trying different encoding and capitalization formats, and attempting to launch it via Shortcuts. It took a while, but it was exactly the kind of boring, repetitive task I needed to take my mind off the iOS 13 review.

Below, you’ll find a list of the 120+ Settings URLs I was able to test in iOS and iPadOS 13.1, grouped by section and listed in the same order they appear in the Settings app.

Some notes on these URLs:

• They can be launched using the ‘Open URLs’ action of the Shortcuts app as of iOS and iPadOS 13.1.2. Apple may kill this functionality again in the future; hopefully, they won’t.
• You may be able to launch these URLs without the Shortcuts app, but I haven’t tested it.
• The URLs are written in English, but they should work for every language you can assign your iOS or iPadOS device. I’ve tested them both in Spanish and Italian and they continued to work.
• I may have missed a few URLs supported by Settings. If you know of any other URLs that are working in iOS or iPadOS 13.1, feel free to get in touch (either via email or Twitter) and I’ll add them to the list below.

In addition to the complete list available below, I’ve also put together a shortcut to launch any of these Settings URLs by picking from a list in the Shortcuts app. The shortcut, called ‘Open Settings’, contains the full list of 120+ Settings URLs and can be used both in the Shortcuts app and widget.

I’ve created a shortcut with every URL for reference purposes but, honestly, the best way to launch these URLs is with dedicated shortcuts. Grab the Settings URL you want, create a new shortcut with two actions (‘URL’ and ‘Open URLs’), paste the URL, and you’ll have a custom one-tap launcher to open any section of Settings from anywhere.

My favorite way to launch specific pages of Settings is via our own MacStories Shortcuts Icons, which I’ve assigned to different shortcuts on my Home screen. In the screenshot below, you can see a few examples of my Settings launchers for Control Center, Camera settings, and Software Update based on MacStories Shortcuts Icons (including one that will be part of the next free update to the pack).

My Home screen is still in flux (mostly because Silvia made too many icons to choose from, which is a good problem to have), but I like where this is going:

You can buy MacStories Shortcuts Icons using the button above, or read more details here.

It is my goal to keep this list of Settings URLs up to date over time, and I hope that Apple won’t remove the ability to launch prefs:root URLs via the Shortcuts app in future iOS or iPadOS updates.

You can find the full list below.

---

Updates

October 1, 2019

• Added URLs for Cellular ⇾ Cellular Data Options and Accessibility ⇾ Display & Text Size (thanks, Konstantin)
• Fixed Phone URL
• Removed unsupported Podcasts URL
• As reported by Reddit user ‘PuyoPuyoPrisoner’, it is possible to jump directly to a third-party app’s Settings page by using its Bundle ID. Instructions are available in this Reddit comment. For example, you could access the Adobe Lightroom page in Settings via prefs:root=com.adobe.lrmobilephone (thanks, samesimilar)
• Added URL for Passwords & Accounts page (thanks, Darius)

October 5, 2019

• Added URLs for Passwords & Accounts ⇾ Fetch New Data and Passwords & Accounts ⇾ Add Account (thanks, Jeremy).

---

Settings URLs

iCloud

• iCloud: prefs:root=CASTLE
• iCloud Backup: prefs:root=CASTLE&path=BACKUP

Wireless Radios

• Wi-Fi: prefs:root=WIFI
• Bluetooth: prefs:root=Bluetooth
• Cellular: prefs:root=MOBILE_DATA_SETTINGS_ID

Personal Hotspot

• Personal Hotspot: prefs:root=INTERNET_TETHERING
• Personal Hotspot ⇾ Family Sharing: prefs:root=INTERNET_TETHERING&path=Family%20Sharing
• Personal Hotspot ⇾ Wi-Fi Password: prefs:root=INTERNET_TETHERING&path=Wi-Fi%20Password

VPN

• VPN: prefs:root=General&path=VPN

Notifications

• Notifications: prefs:root=NOTIFICATIONS_ID
• Notifications ⇾ Siri Suggestions: prefs:root=NOTIFICATIONS_ID&path=Siri%20Suggestions

Sounds

• Sounds: prefs:root=Sounds
• Ringtone: prefs:root=Sounds&path=Ringtone

Do Not Disturb

• Do Not Disturb: prefs:root=DO_NOT_DISTURB
• Do Not Disturb ⇾ Allow Calls From: prefs:root=DO_NOT_DISTURB&path=Allow%20Calls%20From

Screen Time

• Screen Time: prefs:root=SCREEN_TIME
• Screen Time ⇾ Downtime: prefs:root=SCREEN_TIME&path=DOWNTIME
• Screen Time ⇾ App Limits: prefs:root=SCREEN_TIME&path=APP_LIMITS
• Screen Time ⇾ Always Allowed: prefs:root=SCREEN_TIME&path=ALWAYS_ALLOWED

General

• General: prefs:root=General
• General ⇾ About: prefs:root=General&path=About
• General ⇾ Software Update: prefs:root=General&path=SOFTWARE_UPDATE_LINK
• General ⇾ CarPlay: prefs:root=General&path=CARPLAY
• General ⇾ Background App Refresh: prefs:root=General&path=AUTO_CONTENT_DOWNLOAD
• General ⇾ Multitasking (iPad-only): prefs:root=General&path=MULTITASKING
• General ⇾ Date & Time: prefs:root=General&path=DATE_AND_TIME
• General ⇾ Keyboard: prefs:root=General&path=Keyboard
• General ⇾ Keyboard ⇾ Keyboards: prefs:root=General&path=Keyboard/KEYBOARDS
• General ⇾ Language & Region: prefs:root=General&path=INTERNATIONAL
• General ⇾ Dictionary: prefs:root=General&path=DICTIONARY
• General ⇾ Profiles: prefs:root=General&path=ManagedConfigurationList
• General ⇾ Reset: prefs:root=General&path=Reset

Control Center

• Control Center: prefs:root=ControlCenter
• Control Center ⇾ Customize Controls: prefs:root=ControlCenter&path=CUSTOMIZE_CONTROLS

Display

• Display: prefs:root=DISPLAY
• Display ⇾ Auto Lock: prefs:root=DISPLAY&path=AUTOLOCK
• Display ⇾ Text Size: prefs:root=DISPLAY&path=TEXT_SIZE

Accessibility

• Accessibility: prefs:root=ACCESSIBILITY

Wallpaper

• Wallpaper: prefs:root=Wallpaper

Siri

• Siri: prefs:root=SIRI

Apple Pencil

• Apple Pencil (iPad-only): prefs:root=Pencil

Face ID

• Face ID: prefs:root=PASSCODE

Emergency SOS

• Emergency SOS: prefs:root=EMERGENCY_SOS

Battery

• Battery: prefs:root=BATTERY_USAGE
• Battery ⇾ Battery Health (iPhone-only): prefs:root=BATTERY_USAGE&path=BATTERY_HEALTH

Privacy

• Privacy: prefs:root=Privacy
• Privacy ⇾ Location Services: prefs:root=Privacy&path=LOCATION
• Privacy ⇾ Contacts: prefs:root=Privacy&path=CONTACTS
• Privacy ⇾ Calendars: prefs:root=Privacy&path=CALENDARS
• Privacy ⇾ Reminders: prefs:root=Privacy&path=REMINDERS
• Privacy ⇾ Photos: prefs:root=Privacy&path=PHOTOS
• Privacy ⇾ Microphone: prefs:root=Privacy&path=MICROPHONE
• Privacy ⇾ Speech Recognition: prefs:root=Privacy&path=SPEECH_RECOGNITION
• Privacy ⇾ Camera: prefs:root=Privacy&path=CAMERA
• Privacy ⇾ Motion: prefs:root=Privacy&path=MOTION\

App Store

• App Store: prefs:root=STORE
• App Store ⇾ App Downloads: prefs:root=STORE&path=App%20Downloads
• App Store ⇾ Video Autoplay: prefs:root=STORE&path=Video%20Autoplay

Wallet

• Wallet: prefs:root=PASSBOOK

Passwords & Accounts

• Passwords & Accounts: prefs:root=ACCOUNTS_AND_PASSWORDS
• Passwords & Accounts ⇾ Fetch New Data: prefs:root=ACCOUNTS_AND_PASSWORDS&path=FETCH_NEW_DATA
• Passwords & Accounts ⇾ Add Account: prefs:root=ACCOUNTS_AND_PASSWORDS&path=ADD_ACCOUNT

Mail

• Mail: prefs:root=MAIL
• Mail ⇾ Preview: prefs:root=MAIL&path=Preview
• Mail ⇾ Swipe Options: prefs:root=MAIL&path=Swipe%20Options
• Mail ⇾ Notifications: prefs:root=MAIL&path=NOTIFICATIONS
• Mail ⇾ Blocked: prefs:root=MAIL&path=Blocked
• Mail ⇾ Muted Thread Action: prefs:root=MAIL&path=Muted%20Thread%20Action
• Mail ⇾ Blocked Sender Options: prefs:root=MAIL&path=Blocked%20Sender%20Options
• Mail ⇾ Mark Addresses: prefs:root=MAIL&path=Mark%20Addresses
• Mail ⇾ Increase Quote Level: prefs:root=MAIL&path=Increase%20Quote%20Level
• Mail ⇾ Include Attachments with Replies: prefs:root=MAIL&path=Include%20Attachments%20with%20Replies
• Mail ⇾ Signature: prefs:root=MAIL&path=Signature
• Mail ⇾ Default Account: prefs:root=MAIL&path=Default%20Account

Contacts

• Contacts: prefs:root=CONTACTS

Calendar

• Calendar: prefs:root=CALENDAR
• Calendar ⇾ Alternate Calendars: prefs:root=CALENDAR&path=Alternate%20Calendars
• Calendar ⇾ Sync: prefs:root=CALENDAR&path=Sync
• Calendar ⇾ Default Alert Times: prefs:root=CALENDAR&path=Default%20Alert%20Times
• Calendar ⇾ Default Calendar: prefs:root=CALENDAR&path=Default%20Calendar

Notes

• Notes: prefs:root=NOTES
• Notes ⇾ Default Account: prefs:root=NOTES&path=Default%20Account
• Notes ⇾ Password: prefs:root=NOTES&path=Password
• Notes ⇾ Sort Notes By: prefs:root=NOTES&path=Sort%20Notes%20By
• Notes ⇾ New Notes Start With: prefs:root=NOTES&path=New%20Notes%20Start%20With
• Notes ⇾ Sort Checked Items: prefs:root=NOTES&path=Sort%20Checked%20Items
• Notes ⇾ Lines & Grids: prefs:root=NOTES&path=Lines%20%26%20Grids
• Notes ⇾ Access Notes from Lock Screen: prefs:root=NOTES&path=Access%20Notes%20from%20Lock%20Screen

Reminders

• Reminders: prefs:root=REMINDERS
• Reminders ⇾ Default List: prefs:root=REMINDERS&path=DEFAULT_LIST

Voice Memos

• Voice Memos: prefs:root=VOICE_MEMOS

Phone

• Phone: prefs:root=Phone

Messages

• Messages: prefs:root=MESSAGES

FaceTime

• FaceTime: prefs:root=FACETIME

Maps

• Maps: prefs:root=MAPS
• Maps ⇾ Driving & Navigation: prefs:root=MAPS&path=Driving%20%26%20Navigation
• Maps ⇾ Transit: prefs:root=MAPS&path=Transit

Compass

• Compass: prefs:root=COMPASS

Measure

• Measure: prefs:root=MEASURE

Safari

• Safari: prefs:root=SAFARI
• Safari ⇾ Content Blockers: prefs:root=SAFARI&path=Content%20Blockers
• Safari ⇾ Downloads: prefs:root=SAFARI&path=DOWNLOADS
• Safari ⇾ Close Tabs: prefs:root=SAFARI&path=Close%20Tabs
• Safari ⇾ Page Zoom: prefs:root=SAFARI&path=Page%20Zoom
• Safari ⇾ Request Desktop Website: prefs:root=SAFARI&path=Request%20Desktop%20Website
• Safari ⇾ Reader: prefs:root=SAFARI&path=Reader
• Safari ⇾ Camera: prefs:root=SAFARI&path=Camera
• Safari ⇾ Microphone: prefs:root=SAFARI&path=Microphone
• Safari ⇾ Location: prefs:root=SAFARI&path=Location

News

• News: prefs:root=NEWS

Health

• Health: prefs:root=HEALTH

Shortcuts

• Shortcuts: prefs:root=SHORTCUTS

Music

• Music: prefs:root=MUSIC
• Music ⇾ Cellular Data: prefs:root=MUSIC&path=com.apple.Music:CellularData
• Music ⇾ Optimize Storage: prefs:root=MUSIC&path=com.apple.Music:OptimizeStorage
• Music ⇾ EQ: prefs:root=MUSIC&path=com.apple.Music:EQ
• Music ⇾ Volume Limit: prefs:root=MUSIC&path=com.apple.Music:VolumeLimit

Photos

• Photos: prefs:root=Photos

Camera

• Camera: prefs:root=CAMERA
• Camera ⇾ Record Video: prefs:root=CAMERA&path=Record%20Video
• Camera ⇾ Record Slo-mo: prefs:root=CAMERA&path=Record%20Slo-mo

Books

• Books: prefs:root=IBOOKS

Game Center

• Game Center: prefs:root=GAMECENTER

---

Support MacStories Directly

Club MacStories offers exclusive access to extra MacStories content, delivered every week; it’s also a way to support us directly.

Club MacStories will help you discover the best apps for your devices and get the most out of your iPhone, iPad, and Mac. Plus, it’s made in Italy.

Join Now

This is a test to see if I have succeeded in adjusting the order of an item’s content in the RSS feed to [my response] [ the stuff i’m responding to]. I do this already in my postings, but not in the feeds. That makes other people’s words pop up in my feed items first, and thus in e.g. my Micro.blog which reposts my feed.

Replied to Jij en het Web kunnen meer dan je denkt

Je hebt je eigen website, voor je eenmanszaak bijvoorbeeld. Of je maakt wel eens een website voor jezelf, een bekende of je sportvereniging. Omdat je aandacht wilt voor wat je bezighoudt, of omdat je bezoekers naar je site wilt brengen, publiceer je daarnaast ook op Twitt...

The fact that Amazon held its annual hardware event the same day as the keynote for Facebook’s Oculus Connect conference is almost certainly a coincidence. It was, though, a happy one, at least as far as Stratechery is concerned: these two events, wildly disparate in terms of presentation and content, have more in common than it might seem.

Revisiting the Smartphone Wars

In 2013, when Stratechery started, the widely held belief was that the iPhone, innovative though it may have been, was in serious trouble in the face of Android’s increasing marketshare. Henry Blodget wrote a useful articulation of the bear case on Business Insider:

If smartphones and tablets were not a platform — if the only thing that mattered to the value of the product and a customer’s purchase decision was the gadget itself — then Apple’s loss of market share would not make a difference. Apple zealots would be correct when they smugly assert that what matters is Apple’s “profit share” not “market share.”

But smartphones and tablets are a platform. Third-party companies are building apps and services to run on smartphone and tablet platforms. These apps and services, in turn, are making the platforms more valuable. Consumers are standardizing their lives around the apps and services that run on smartphone and tablet platforms. Because of these “network effects,” in platform markets, dominant market share is huge competitive advantage. In platform markets, as the often-hated but always insanely powerful Microsoft demonstrated for decades in the PC market, the vast majority of the power and profits eventually accrue to the market-share leader.

In this view there is still a premium market, but only within the dominant ecosystem. This, Blodget argued, was Apple’s problem: soon the company would have no market, because Android would have the ecosystem, and by extension all of Apple’s premium customers.

Of course this turned out to be mistaken, for reasons I laid out in What Clayton Christensen Got Wrong.

• First, integration provided user experience benefits that premium customers valued
• Second, those premium users were more likely to pay for apps, which increased the attraction of iOS to developers
• Third, the absolute size of the smartphone market was so big that both iOS and Android were large enough to be attractive to developers

Note, though, that just because Blodget and company were wrong about the iPhone’s prospects does not mean they were wrong conceptually: ecosystems do matter. However, instead of one ecosystem devouring the entire premium versus ubiquity landscape, Apple and Google split it up rather neatly:

Amazon and Facebook were two of the more prominent companies that found out this reality the hard way.

Mobile Successes and Failures

Apple and Google may be the first companies people think of when you ask who won mobile, but Amazon and Facebook were not far behind.

Amazon spent the smartphone era not only building out Amazon.com, but also Amazon Web Services (AWS). AWS was just as much a critical platform for the smartphone revolution as were iOS and Android: many apps ran on the phone with data or compute on Amazon’s cloud; mobile also created a vacuum in the enterprise for SaaS companies eager to take advantage of Microsoft’s desire to prop up its own mobile platforms instead of supporting iOS and Android, and those SaaS companies were built on AWS.

Smartphones, meanwhile, saved Facebook from itself: instead of a futile attempt to be a platform within the browser, mobile made Facebook just an app, and it was the best possible thing that could have happened to the company. Facebook was freed to focus solely on content its users wanted and advertising to go along with it, generating billions of dollars and a deep moat in targeting advertising along the way.

What is not clear is if Amazon’s and Facebook’s management teams agree. After all, both launched smartphones of their own, and both failed spectacularly.

Facebook’s attempt was rather half-assed (to use the technical term). Instead of writing their own operating system, Facebook Home was a launcher that sat on top of Android; instead of designing their own hardware, the Facebook One was built by HTC. Both decisions ended up being good ones because they made failure less expensive.

Amazon, meanwhile, went all out to build the Fire Phone: a new operating system (based on Android, but incompatible with it), new hardware, including a complicated camera system that included four front-facing cameras, and a sky-high price to match. It fared about as well as the Facebook One, which is to say not well at all.

That, though, is what made last week’s events so interesting: it is these two failures that seemed to play a bigger role in what was announced than did the successes.

Amazon and Facebook’s Announcements

Start with Amazon: the company announced a full fifteen hardware products. In order: Echo Dot with Clock, a new Echo, Echo Studio (an Echo with a high-end speaker system), Echo Show 8 (a third-size of the Echo with a screen), Echo Glow (a lamp), new Eero routers, Echo Flex (a microphone only Echo that hangs off an outlet), Ring Retrofit Alarm Kit (that lets you leverage your preinstalled alarm), Ring Stick Up Cam (a smaller Ring camera), Ring Indoor Cam (an even smaller Ring camera), Amazon Smart Oven (an oven that integrates with Alexa), Fetch (a pet tracker), Echo Buds (wireless headphones with Alexa), Echo Frames (eyeglasses with Alexa), and Echo Loop (a ring with Alexa). Whew!

This is an approach that is the exact opposite of the Fire Phone: instead of pouring all of its resources into one high-priced device, Amazon is making just about every device it can think of, and seeing if they sell. Moreover, they are doing so at prices that significantly undercut the competition: the Echo Studio is $150 cheaper than a HomePod, the Echo Show 8 is $60 cheaper than the Google Nest Hub, and the new Eero is $150 cheaper than the product Eero sold as an independent company. Amazon is clearly pushing for ubiquity; a whale strategy this is not.

Facebook, meanwhile, effectively consolidated its Oculus product line from three to one: the mid-tier Oculus Quest, a standalone virtual reality (VR) unit, gained the capability to connect to a gaming PC in order to play high-end Oculus Rift games; Oculus Go apps, meanwhile, gained the capability to run on the relatively higher-specced Oculus Quest. It is not clear why either the Go or Rift should be a target for developers or customers going forward.

The broader goal, though, remains the same: Facebook is determined to own a platform; the lesson the company seems to have drawn from its smartphone experience is the importance of doing it all.

Beachheads and Obstacles

What Amazon and Facebook do have in common — and perhaps this is why both seem to look back at their very successful smartphone eras with regret — is that Apple and Google are their biggest obstacles to success, and it’s because of their smartphone platforms.

Amazon to its great credit — and perhaps because the company did not have a smartphone to rely on — found a beachhead in the home, the one place where your phone may not be with you. Now it is trying to not only saturate the home but also extend beyond it, both through on-body accessories and also an expanding number of deals with automakers.

Facebook, meanwhile, is searching for a beachhead of its own in virtual reality. That, the company believes, will give it the track to augmented reality, and by extension, usefulness in the real world.

Amazon’s challenge is Google: Android phones are already everywhere, and Google is catching up in the home more quickly and more effectively than Amazon is pushing outside of it. Google also has a much stronger position when it comes to the sort of Internet services that provide the rough grist of intelligence of virtual assistants: emails, calendars, and maps.

Facebook, meanwhile, is ultimately challenging Apple: augmented reality is going to start at the high end with an integrated solution, and Apple has considerably more experience building physical products for the real world, and a major lead in chip design and miniaturization, not to mention consumer trust. Moreover, while there is obviously technical overlap when it comes to creating virtual reality and augmented reality headsets, the product experience is fundamentally distinct.

Lessons Learned

I’ve been pretty skeptical about Facebook and Oculus all along, both at the time of purchase and last year. I’d like to say I’ve changed my mind, but frankly, last week’s keynote made me question whether Facebook learned any lessons from mobile at all. Zuckerberg said in the keynote opening:

We experience the world through this feeling of presence and the interactions that we get with other people, which is why Facebook’s technology vision has always been about putting people at the center of your computing experience. We’ve mostly done that so far through building apps. I don’t think it’s an accident that a lot of the top-used and biggest apps that are out there are social experiences that put people at the center of the experience, because that’s how we process things.

But there is only so much you can do with apps, without also shaping and improving the underlying platform. I find it shocking that we’re here in 2019 and our phones and our computers are still organized around apps and tasks and not people that we are actually present with. I feel like we can help all of us together deliver a unique contribution to this field by helping to ensure that the next platform changes this.

Zuckerberg is, in effect, saying that he finds it shocking that Facebook Home didn’t succeed. I think the reasons were pretty clear, and a lack of distribution or high-end hardware was not the primary problem. The fact of the matter is that while social connection on our phones is important — perhaps the most important — it is not the only job we ask phones to do. That is why Facebook is an app and not a platform, and that’s ok! Apps, particularly those of Facebook’s scale and advertising prowess, are fantastic businesses. And apps shouldn’t be platforms.

Amazon, on the other hand, seems to have learned the right lessons from its mobile failures; what is notable about the company’s approach to Alexa is that it leverages and learns from the mobile era. Alexa benefits from Amazon’s investments in data centers and networking, interacts with both iOS and Android to the greatest extent possible, and is roughly inline with Amazon’s overall business — making buying things that much more convenient. Alexa is an operating system for the home, and perhaps beyond.

This isn’t a guarantee of success, of course. Google is a formidable competitor, with multiple advantages. It is particularly hard to see Alexa gaining traction outside the home. The only reason Amazon has a chance is because building on strengths is always better than doing something completely new and different from what has made you successful in the past.

The latest urbanist commentary from ‘City Beautiful.’

Answer: Mostly, with one rather substantial qualification.  (And the pronunciation.)

 

I just want to encourage those who have not tried Infoqube to take a deep dive. I would really be astonished if there is anything like it, anything nearly so rich in different ways to gather and organize info. You can employ any number of different models depending on what you are trying to do. You have the tagging model, the outlining model, the grid model, etc. etc.

Sometimes I have thought that Pierre was taking a wrong turn by focusing on certain features. For example, by working so much on the editing capabilities of the "Document Pane", or the new tagging system. I've wanted him to focus more on grids and fields instead. For example, I'm just not a great believer in putting my notes into document pane html documents, because in that pane, you don't have the slice and dice capabilities of the grid and outliner. BUT I'm learning to like it - there is a nice Home Page feature where links to all my grids appears in an HTML documents and I use it all the time. I just need to use my imagination more to discover what I how I can use the document pane.

But I've been using the hierarchical tagging system lately, and my eyes are being opened. It is particularly good for the "initial" categorization of data. And the thing is, the one model for organizing data can be used to facilitate the application of another model to the same data, in a synergistic fashion. For example, once you have categorized your items with hierarchical tags, that categorization will facilitate the application of the grid / table / rows / columns model. You can find the items that have been assigned a certain tag, and then make them the children of a certain parent item (outline model), or assign a certain field and value combination (database / table / spreadsheet / grid model).

It really is a great playground just waiting for you to use your imagination.

With all respect to the folks to who are devoted to Ecco Pro, or are looking for its true successor, Infoqube is like the Starship Enterprise compared to the Horse and Buggy. HAHA!

The U.S. House Judiciary Committee is looking into Google’s plan to make the internet more secure because it could lend the company a competitive advantage.

The Mountain View, California-based search giant plans to adopt the DNS over HTTPS (DoH) protocol in its popular Chrome browser. For those unfamiliar with the protocol, it promises to increase privacy and security by routing DNS traffic over secure HTTPS connections.

Domain name systems (DNS) acts as a sort of phone book for the internet. When users type in a website name — such as www.mobilesyrup.com — a DNS service takes that and translates it into an internet protocol (IP) address, which is used by computers.

Typically, cable companies and internet service providers (ISPs) offer DNS services to users. In doing so, companies are also able to collect valuable data about users’ online behaviour.

While Google’s move toward DoH would help prevent hackers from spoofing or snooping on which websites users visit, it’d also prevent companies that don’t support DoH from accessing that data. It could also disrupt U.S. government agencies’ ability to spy on internet traffic.

According to a Wall Street Journal report, the House Judiciary Committee sent a letter to Google asking for information about its “decision regarding whether to adopt or promote the adoption” of DoH. Investigators also inquired if Google would use data it collects or processes through the new protocol for commercial purposes. Finally, a person familiar with the matter told the WSJ that the Justice Department has received complaints regarding the protocol change.

DoH could let Google become the dominant DNS provider

Part of the concern is that Google operates its own DNS service, Google Public DNS. With Google’s choice to switch Chrome towards DoH, the fear is that it would send the majority of internet traffic through Google Public DNS. Considering the majority of browser and mobile traffic — thanks to Android — uses Chrome in some way, it’s a reasonable concern.

“Google has no plans to centralize or change people’s DNS providers to Google by default. Any claim that we are trying to become the centralized encrypted DNS provider is inaccurate,” Google told the WSJ in an email statement.

Google plans to begin testing DoH with about one percent of Chrome users beginning next month.

Mozilla, which makes the Firefox browser, it also working to encrypt DNS data. It plans to have a small-scale rollout of DoH, which is expected to begin in the coming weeks. Mozilla intends to move most Firefox users in the U.S. over to DoH by the end of the year, even if that means switching their DNS provider. However, it doesn’t plan to move corporate users automatically.

It’s a more aggressive approach than what Google is taking, but cable companies fear the search giant could choose to rollout DoH similarly to Mozilla.

Mozilla actually came to Google’s defence. Its senior director of trust and safety, Marshall Erwin, told the WSJ that the antitrust concerns raised about Google are “fundamentally misleading.”

Source: Wall Street Journal

The post U.S. looks into Google plan to switch Chrome users to secure DNS protocol appeared first on MobileSyrup.

Notable leaker Evan Blass (@evleaks) has dropped a ton of pictures and information regarding Microsoft’s upcoming Surface hardware event.

It looks like at Microsoft’s event on October 2nd we’re going to see two new Surface Laptops, the Surface Pro 7, a slimmer ARM-powered tablet and finally, Blass hints at a foldable Surface device running a new version of Windows 10 optimized for dual-screen and folding devices.

Surface Pro 7

To start, the new Surface Pro 7 appears to have finally be upgraded to USB-C and features at least one of the ports. The right side also includes a standard USB-A port and an SD Card slot (this could also be a Surface charger port).  On the back, we can see a camera, and on top, there’s a volume rocker and a power button.

Beyond this, there’s the usual surface stand that we’ve for the last few years. There’s also a Surface Connector so the keyboard can be easily attached to the bottom of the device.

As expected, there’s probably a plethora of other internal enhancements too.

The Surface Laptops (13 and 15-inch models)

There appear to be a few new Surface Laptops this time around including a new 15-inch model that looks to dial in on the creative market typically dominated by larger MacBook Pros.

Another new feature Microsoft seems to be adding, or taking away depending on how you look at it, is an all-metal design. Previously the tech giant used an all-metal design with the Surface Book and a durable fabric called Alcantara for its Surface Laptops.

That said, in a separate Twitter post, Blass also shared renders of a blue and a grey Surface Laptops that still feature the fabric. Microsoft is likely going to use the metal design on the possibly higher-end 15-inch model and the average consumer-focused 13-inch option will still come with Alcantara.

The leaks also show off one edge of the computer, and it looks like it has either a Micro SD or an SD Card reader on its side. This could also be its Surface charging port.

The biggest news with this leak is the two sizes. The main question is if there will be another Surface Book, or will the 15-inch Surface Laptop become Microsoft’s top-of-the-line laptop?

Blass has shown off the computer in a slew of new colours. There are rose gold, silver and dark grey options without Alcantara fabric and blue and light grey versions with the fabric material.

New ARM-based Surface tablet

This is the only 100 percent new product that Blass shared renders of, and it reminds me of the Pixel Slate two-in-one device. It looks thinner than a regular Surface tablet and features rounded edges instead of the usual angular design.

There are two USB-C ports on one side and either a proprietary charging port or an SD Card slot on the other.

There’s also a hinged stand much like the Surface Pro range. The renders show this device sitting on a keyboard attachment which has a trackpad, so it seems like this tablet will run a regular version of Windows.

Further, there’s also a stylus featured in some of the images.

Overall, it’s unclear what kind of software this device will run and if it’s meant to be a new product category for Microsoft, or if it’s going to replace the underpowered Surface Go.

Dual-Screen Surface

Blass has yet to share any images of this long rumoured futuristic PC, but he did hint Microsoft is going to show it off at its October 2nd event.

He also says that it’s running a new version of the company’s operating system called Windows 10X which has been purpose-built for dual-screen and foldable display devices. Blass didn’t share much more about this OS version except that it runs apps within containers.

Source: @evleaks), (1)

The post Almost everything from Microsoft’s Surface event has leaked appeared first on MobileSyrup.

A new Lightning to USB cable that leaves devices susceptible to hacking is about to hit the market.

Developed by security researcher Mike “MG” Grover, the “O.MG” cable has been specially designed to look like an authentic product that was manufactured by Apple. While it can charge and transfer data as expected, the cable will also create a wireless hotspot that lets hackers remotely take control of a computer.

MG told Motherboard he produced the cable to promote the fact that seemingly harmless accessories can actually render a computer vulnerable to hackers.

As it stands, MG is planning to distribute the cable through online hacking and cybersecurity tool site Hak5. MG says he intends for the cable to be used by security researchers. However, there doesn’t appear to be anything stopping others from buying the cable as well.

For its part, Apple told Motherboard that it “recommends using only accessories that Apple has certified and that come with the MFi badge.” This badge can be found on the item’s packaging and proves that a product has been certified by Apple.

Source: Motherboard

The post This Lightning cable looks Apple-made, but can actually hack computers appeared first on MobileSyrup.

Pedro Marques @MetroManTO
@gruber I get your desire for checkout counters but I think that’s because we’re not comfortable with self checkout… twitter.com/i/web/status/1…

Fifteen years ago today Elmine Wijnia published a paper “Understanding Weblogs: a Communicative Perspective” (PDF) for the BlogTalk conference based on her master thesis. In it she discusses weblogs as a communications medium and compares their role and potential a.o. with Habermas’ philosophical work on communications (Habermas’ work on this predates the web). I have a ‘on this day in….’ widget in my sidebar, and it showed me I had blogged about it back then.

From my posting then, I feel much is still the same, and much is still as key as then in bringing online expression and interaction forward.

In my view Elmine’s work does something very important, which is to firmly place weblogs in communications, and not put the fact that it’s technology-based first.

Having just organised an IndieWebCamp where technology is very much front and center, while I find we struggle to get broader involvement, this is a very pertinent reminder.

It describes what we actually do, in stead of which tools we use to do it.

This is a core element in my thinking about technology in general, unchanged in all these years. It is about what people do and can do. The agency that technology provides.

She positioned weblogs as a new medium because it combines three information patterns in itself, that previously stood on their own (e.g. in separate digital tools): consultation, registration, and conversation.

In part it feels like silo’s such as FB and Twitter break that combination of multiple patterns again, after weblogs joined them, and from which these silos themselves in turn emerged. The ‘back to the blog‘ urge I’ve felt and lived here in the past two years, is an expression of seeking the richness that the combination provides. My involvement in IndieWeb which tries to strengthen the ties between those patterns by adding new functionality to our blogging tools is also explained by it.

Because it allows better communication. Which is what matters. As Kicks Condor phrased it when he reflected on my information strategies

It is very focused on just being a human who is attempting to communicate with other humans—that’s it really.

Elmine and Habermas still point us in that direction. We can do better in this, and we should do better in this.

This is the fourth in a five part series about Precalculus Task-Specific Programming. I presented two prototypes in Parts 1 and 2, and discussed what I’m exploring about programming in Part 3.

I’ve shown my prototypes to several teachers — some computer science (e.g., I presented the first prototype at the Work In Progress Workshop at ICER in Toronto) and a half-dozen math teachers. The computer science teachers have been pretty excited, and I have had several requests for the system to try out with various student groups.

Why am I looking at precalculus?  Because it’s what leads to success in college calculus. I’m influenced by Sadler and Sonnert’s work showing that high school calculus isn’t the critical thing to support success in undergraduate calculus (see article here). It’s precalculus. Undergraduate calculus is a gatekeeper. Students don’t get STEM undergraduate degrees because they can’t get through calculus. So if we want more students to succeed in STEM undergraduate, we want high school precalculus to get better, in terms of more inclusive success.

Precalculus is a pretty abstract set of topics (see an example list here).  For the most part, it’s foreword looking: “You’ll need this when you get to Calculus.”  My idea is to teach precalculus with concrete contexts made possible by computing, like image filters. I want more students to find precalculus more engaging and more personally meaningful, leading to more learning.

So, might my prototypes help students learn precalculus?

Math teachers have generally been, “Meh.”

I’ve had four teachers tell me that it’s “interesting*.” One math teacher was blunt and honest — neither of these tools solve a problem that students have. Basic matrix notation and element-by-element matrix operations are the easiest parts of matrices. Precalculus students can already (typically) figure out how to plot a given wave equation.

What’s hard? Students struggle with forms of matrix multiplication and determinants. They struggle with what each of the terms in the wave function do, and what influences periodicity. Seeing the graphed points is good, but having the values display in symbolic form like (3*pi)/2 would be more powerful for making a connection to a unit circle. I’m learning these in a participatory design context, so I actually pushed more on what would be useful and what I need to do better — I have a much longer list of things to do better than just these points.

The math teachers have generally liked that I am paying attention to disciplinary literacy. I’m using their notations to communicate in the ways that things are represented in their math textbooks. I am trying to communicate in the way that they want to communicate.

Here’s the big insight that I learned from the mathematics teachers with whom I’ve spoken: Teachers aren’t going to devote class time or their prep time to something that doesn’t solve their problems. Some teachers are willing to put time into additional, enrichment activities — if the teacher needs more of those. As one teacher told me, “Most math classes are less about more exploration, and more about less failure.” The point of precalculus is to prepare students to pass calculus.  If you want more diverse students to get into STEM careers, more diverse students have to get through calculus. Precalculus is important for that. The goal is less failure, more success, and more student understanding of mathematics.

This insight helps me understand why some computational tools just don’t get a foothold in schools. At the risk of critiquing a sacred cow, this helps to explain why Logo didn’t scale. Seymour Papert and crew developed turtle geometry, which Andrea diSessa and Hal Abelson showed was really deep. But did Logo actually solve a problem that students and teachers had? Turtle graphics is beautiful, and being body syntonic is great, but that’s not the students’ problem with math. Most of their real problems with mathematics had to do with the cartesian coordinate system, not with being able to play being a turtle. Every kid can walk a square and a triangle. Did students learn general problem-solving skills? Not really. So, why should teachers devote time to something that didn’t reduce student failure in mathematics?

It would be hard to be disciplinary literate when Logo and turtle geometry was invented. Logo was originally developed on teletype machines. (See Cynthia Solomon’s great keynote about this story.) The turtle was originally a robot. Even when they moved Logo to the Apple II, they could not match the representations in the kid’s textbooks, the representations that the teachers were most comfortable with. So instead, we asked student to think in terms of fd 200 rt 90 instead of (x,y). Basic usability principles tell us to use what the user is familiar with. Logo didn’t. It demanded more of the students and teachers, and maybe it was worthwhile in long run — but that tradeoff wasn’t obvious to the teachers.

I have a new goal:

I want to provide a programming experience that can be used in five minutes which can be integrated into a precalculus class to improve on student learning.

I want to use programming to solve a learning problem in another domain. Programming won’t enter the classroom if it doesn’t solve a teacher’s problem, which is what they perceive as the student’s problem. Improving student learning is my users’ (teachers’) goals. Good UI design is about helping the user achieve their goals.

I’ve started on designs for two more precalc prototypes based on the participatory design sessions I’ve had, and I’m working on improving the wave texture generator to better address real learning problems. The work I’m doing with social science educators is completely driven by teachers and student learning challenges. That’s one of the reasons why I don’t have working prototypes there yet — it’s harder to address real problems.  My precalc prototypes were based on my read of literature on precalculus. That’s never going to be as informed as the teacher-in-the-classroom.

Now, there’s another way in which we might argue that these prototypes help with education — maybe they help with learning something about computer science? Here’s a slide from my SIGCSE 2019 keynote, referencing the learning trajectories work by Katie Rich, Carla Strickland, T. Andrew Binkowski, Cheryl Moran, and Diana Franklin (see this blog post).

You’re not going to learn anything about #1 from my prototypes — you can’t write imprecise or incomplete code in these task-specific programming environments. You can learn about #2 — different sets of transformation can produce the same outcomes. You definitely learn about #3 — programs are made by assembling instructions from a (very) limited set. If I were to go on and look at the Rich et al. debugging learning trajectories (see paper here), there’s a lot of that in my prototypes, e.g., “Outcome can be used to decide whether or not there are errors.”

So here’s the big research question: Could students learn something about the nature of programming and programs from using task-specific programming? I predict yes. Will it be transferable? To text or blocks language? Maybe…

Here’s the bigger research question that these prototypes have me thinking about. For the moment, imagine that we had tools like these which could be used reasonably in less than five minutes of tool-specific learning, and could be dropped into classes as part of a one hour activity. Imagine we could have one or two per class (e.g., algebra, geometry, trigonometry, biology, chemistry, and physics), throughout middle and high school. Now: Does it transfer? If you saw a dozen little languages before your first traditional, general-purpose programming language, would you have a deeper sense of what programs did (e.g., would you know that there is no Pea-esque “super-bug” homunculus)? Would you have a new sense for what the activity of programming is about, including debugging?

I don’t know, but I think it’s worth exploring task-specific programming more to see if it works.

Request to the reader: I plan to continue working on precalculus task-specific programming (as well as in social studies).  If you know a precalculus teacher or mathematics education researcher who would be interested in collaborating with me (e.g., to be a design informant, to try out any of these tools, to collaborate on design or assessment or evaluation), please let me know. It’s been hard to find math ed people who are willing to work with me on something this weird. Thanks!

---

* In the South, if you hear “Bless your heart!” you should know that you’re likely being insulted.  It sort of means, “You are so incompetent that you’re pitiful.”  I’ve learned the equivalent from teachers now.  It’s “That would make a nice enhancement activity” or “We might use that after testing.”  In other words, “I’d never use this. It doesn’t solve any of my problems.”

 

We're sitting at 59 for Oct 7th / 8th!! 16 spots for our FREE East Coast #webcomponents camp named https://t.co/nirKaRM3rs at Duke University Thanks to @DukeLearning @redhat @ReclaimHosting & @getWaxam for sponsoring our days!
Sign up now to win this & other jerseys! #webdev pic.twitter.com/mgAMbQBVW6

— hax-camp (@haxcamp) September 27, 2019

It is long overdue, but the bava has been busy. I have been wanting to write about HAX the Web and Bryan Ollendyke’s larger-than-life approach to the future of the web since I first met him in January at the University API (uAPI) conference sponsored by BYU. I was blown away by both Bryan and Michael Potter‘s sessions at uAPI. Penn State University has had a long tradition of innovation in edtech, and Bryan and Michael (and I’m sure many more from their group I have not yet met) did that tradition proud. I sat in on a fascinating session by Michael Potter wherein he showcased A-frame, a web framework for creating VR experiences with HTML. We played along with him by using A-fame in Glitch to create 3-D objects on the web in HTML code, simply wild. 

In another session Michale and Bryan co-presented on the Beaker Browser, which is a peer-to-peer browser that re-defines how the browser experience works, here is a bit from their About page:

The Web enabled communication, collaboration, and creativity at a scale once unimaginable, but it’s devolved into a landscape of isolated platforms that discourage customization and interoperability. The Web’s value flows from the people who use it, yet our online experiences are dictated by corporations whose incentives rarely align with our own.

We believe the Web can (and must) be a people-first platform, where everybody is invited to create, personalize, and share.

That’s why we’re using peer-to-peer technology to improve how we create, share, and connect on the Web.

I’s an experimental approach, and by no means widely adopted, but these two sessions confirmed this group is thinking far and wide about the possibilities of the web, and the promise of trying to keep some of its core components free and open, which brings me to work Bryan has done which firs got my attention (and everyone else’s on Twitter :)): HAX the web, or he headless authoring tool he has been developing that is powered by web components. Let me try and break this down a bit, and then Bryan can come and correct any mistakes I make here given the bava is still an open web enterprise, and 100% Gutenberg free  

So, if I understand the road to HAX the Web right, it started at PSU as part of a LMS-killing project known as the ELMS Learning Network, a project Bryan’s group has been developing in-house for many years on top of Drupal as a means to explore alternatives  to the campus LMS. The project is on-going, but when PSU went to Canvas (like virtually every other school on the planet) ELMS was a bit forlorn, but from the ashes of the new boss LMS (same as the old boss LMS) came HAX, or the authoring tool within ELMS that was abstracted out of that system and brilliantly re-framed as a headless authoring tool that can be essentially be used to author in any system: Drupal, WordPress, Sakai, etc. The vision of removing the authoring experience from any one system is what “headless” refers to, and it begins to smack of the distributed, decentralized promise of the Next Generation Digital learning Environment, which is something Bryan has already written about at length. I just love the way this group’s work with ELMS gave birth to HAX which in turn resonates with the promise of a broader series of system integrations that liberates the use from any one tool for creating, sharing, and archiving their work. It’s a testament to why you want R&D shops in higher ed that are allowed to explore, create, “fail,” refactor, and create again.

Following in @bitworking's footsteps, I'm starting to get the hang of web components. Like Joe I'm finding little need for Shadow DOM or HTML Templates. So far it's all about Custom Elements, which I'm liking more and more as I begin applying them. https://t.co/oqUql3UI6M

— Jon Udell (@judell) August 9, 2019

I love this story, and secret sauce behind the HAX the Web editor are web components, and Bryan and his group have written a ton of them fo this editor. Now wha are web components, you ask? Well, let’s go to the source:

Web components are a set of web platform APIs that allow you to create new custom, reusable, encapsulated HTML tags to use in web pages and web apps. Custom components and widgets build on the Web Component standards, will work across modern browsers, and can be used with any JavaScript library or framework that works with HTML.

Web components are based on existing web standards. Features to support web components are currently being added to the HTML and DOM specs, letting web developers easily extend HTML with new elements with encapsulated styling and custom behavior.

So, Bryan’s talk at uAPI was the first time I ever got an overview of web components, and I can’t claim to be overly knowledgeable on this front. But from what I understand (and why they’re increasingly attractive to folks like Jon Udell—who is a great barometer for such technologies) is that these components allow you to build custom elements on top of HTML making them to not only web standards compatible and browser-friendly, but also extend the possibilities of working within HTML. Web Components were championed by Google, but then he HAX team took over I am completely open to better definitions in the comments.

So, HAX has been steadily gaining recognition over the last few years in no small part because of Bryan’s tireless presentations, Tweet storms, and developing HAX like a madman. Tim worked with Bryan to get a HAX CMS up and running fo Reclaim Hosting, so we do have a one-click installer for  a quick application Bryan put together for the uAPI which is basically the HAX editor with a simple CMS wrapper to publish content.  The possibilities for OER, personal web publishing, app integration, and more are exciting, and that’s why Reclaim Hosting is honored to sponsor the HAX Camp that will be happening at Duke University next week (October 7th and 8th). Tim will be there, and from the looks of Twitter so will almost 60 other folks who are interested in hacking on HAX. That’s a huge turn-out, and major kudos to Bryan and the whole HAX team that have so brilliantly demonstrated that edtech innovation can still be born out of the university, it just takes time, a solid group, endless work, and some love and recognition from institution where its happening. Not an easy formula at any institution, but lightening in a bottle when it all comes together. 

This is a good observation. In my mind Flickr for instance isn’t about sharing per se, but I see it as an off-site archive next to my photo archive on my laptop and a NAS at home. That it allows for easy re-use of those images in my own site is an added bonus. Will need to write a bit about my own thoughts from this session too.

Liked IndieWeb: it’s about first ownership by Elmine (InFullFlow.net)

A photo (or video for that matter) is a special kind of data. Its file size creates limitations to its distribution, but no matter where it’s uploaded, it is always owned by its creator first. Status updates on any platform are owned by the company first and can only be copied to the creator. That is why I think it’s important to use IndieWeb: if you publish updates on your own site and then POSSE them to the big silos (where your friends still hang out), you own your updates first, just like you own your photos.

It’s rather cool to see Neil adopting parts of my information strategies. Looking forward to reading more about how it plays out for him. There were several interested during last weekend’s IndieWebCamp too. Having more perspectives on this approach may help to formulate a more generic description of this process.

Liked a post by Neil Mather

Started with a really simple version of Ton’s infostrat and liking it already....The best part is avoiding anything that has an endless stream of fairly random (but tantalisingly, possibly interesting) stuff..... I’m feeling more intentional, less flighty of attention.

If re-elected, Justin Trudeau will tax multinational tech giants that are operating in Canada in an effort to bring in more than $2.5 billion CAD over four years.

The party revealed its entire platform on Sunday, which includes a three percent tax on the revenue generated by tech giants in Canada for the sales of online advertising or any profits generated through Canadian user data.

“Today’s economy is more digital and international than ever before — so our tax system must keep up,” the document read. “We will work with international partners to ensure that global technology giants pay corporate taxes in the country where they generate their revenue.”

This, however, is just a temporary measure, which will be reworked after the international community reaches an agreement in terms of how governments tax internet companies.

To break this down, if a company has at least $1 billion in global revenues per year and $40 million in Canadian revenue, then it will be taxed.

That means companies like Google and Facebook — which have amassed 70 percent of Canadian advertising revenue in 2015 — would get taxed.

The Toronto Star reported that while this tax would bring in a large sum of money, at least $540 million next year, Canada’s Parliamentary Budget Officer said there was uncertainty with the projection indicating that these companies could take action in order to try and avoid paying taxes.

The discussion around regulating tech giants has been happening for some time now.

Incumbent Innovation, Science and Economic Development Minister Navdeep Bains had announced the Digital Charter, a 10 point principled plan that would guide policymakers on future legislation of digital platforms. The Digital Charter, however, did not have any concrete forms of regulation.

Conservative Party and NDP members have both suggested better rules should be enacted. The three parties have also had parliamentarians from other countries to host the International Grand Committee on disinformation to better understand how to regulate digital platforms.

Source: Liberal Party of Canada Via: The Toronto Star

The post Election 2019: Liberals will tax tech giants generating Canadian revenue if re-elected appeared first on MobileSyrup.

Fabrizio Bulleri, Reclaim The Net, Sept 30, 2019

Apple has quietly managed to disable uBlock Origin and numerous other extensions while consolidating all Safari add-ons in its App Store. What this means is that Safari users no longer have an effective way to block web advertising. It was part of an overall plan to eliminate user-designed Javascript extensions in Safari. Google has indicated a desire to do the same with Chrome with depreciations to the  webRequest API. The move also reflects a debate on which style of adblock lists to use, with the newer version now used by Safari (and presumably in the works for Chrome) blocking at the domain level only, rendering ineffective against (for example) Facebook advertisements. More on Reddit.

Web: [Direct Link] [This Post]

In 2008, the World Wildlife Fund ran a campaign that used pixelation to represent the number of animals left for endangered species. One pixel represents an animal, so an image appears more pixelated when there are fewer animals left. Imgur user JJSmooth44 recently used more recent numbers to show the images for 22 species (sourced from the Animal Planet endangered species list).

The above is the image bengal tiger with 2,500 pixels. In contrast, the black rhino has 5,000 pixels:

Or, here’s the black footed ferret with 300:

See all of them here.

Tags: animals, endangered, pixels