Rolandt

Late last year, Amazon announced some new ‘gadgets’ that work with Alexa, called Echo Buttons. Basically these are wireless ‘game show’ style buzzers. They connect to your Alexa device via bluetooth and are simply plastic buttons with RGB LEDs inside that can change colour depending on the game being played or action taken.

Sold in packs of two, I bought two sets to allow up to four players to play various games with Alexa. Each set comes in a nondescript black box, complete with a set of four AAA batteries for the buttons (two per button) and a quick set up guide.

The battery door requires a screwdriver to open which is a minor pain but understandable since these will be handheld by the players.

You pair them with your Echo device either by asking Alexa to setup your Echo Buttons or via the Alexa mobile app. I had read of some pairing problems and it was suggested that you label each button as you pair them to make it easier to troubleshoot a bluetooth issue. I used a label maker to make a sticker that has the last three letters of its unique number that shows up in the pairing menu in the app.

Pairing was easy. I did the first one via Alexa – she tells you to simply press and hold a button until it goes orange and once it’s paired with her, it will turn blue. I did the rest via the Alexa app in the Settings submenu for my Echo which now contained a Gadgets option.

That’s it for setting them up. They will eventually time out and turn off.

The Games
As I write this, there are currently 14 different games (aka skills) available for the buttons. At a recent game night, we tried a handful of them.

First up was Trivial Pursuit Tap. It works just like the board game where you get presented with questions from random categories in an effort to clear six in order to win (or fill in the pie piece in the physical game). It worked pretty much as expected with everyone getting to buzz in if they knew the answer but we found Alexa’s responses and general chatter to be a bit repetitive and even slowed down the game play unnecessarily. We still ended up playing two full games.

Next up was Party Foul which turned out to be the most fun. The premise with this game is that someone is in the hot seat (and their button lights up) and is presented with a question/scenario that they can choose a yes or no response (yellow or red button press). Everyone hides their buttons (which is actually hard to do since they can be bright and tend to reflect in windows as we found out)….and chooses the response they think the hot seat person has chosen. The questions (and responses) were fun and the game play was quick and allowed time to discuss the round with all players before moving on to the next question. It seemed to be the perfect mix of Alexa interaction, party game and even catchy music while we all made our selections.

The rest of the games were underwhelming. They either were some form of specific trivia game (any kind of sports for example) or some variation on the button sequence memory game. I’d love to see more trivia game options with a tighter gameplay like Party Foul had.

Overall I was happy with the Echo Buttons….Party Foul and Trivial Pursuit made for a fun evening of gaming with friends without the need for a board or game pieces to track. Alexa was pretty decent at hearing everyone across the room with only a few repeats needed which were mostly a timing issue with her not ready for a response yet. Hopefully these ‘experimental’ buttons gain in popularity with game developers and the catalog expands.

Unfortunately, as of this writing the Echo Buttons are only shipped and sold in the US. At $20 for a two pack (US$), they seem like a reasonable addition to any Alexa enabled home.

The post First Look: Amazon Echo Buttons appeared first on johnbiehler.com.

sillygwailo shared this story from Jak's View of Vancouver v.3.

There are a group of people (Abundant Housing, et al) who camp out on Twitter and other social media outlets demanding more and more density as the solution to Vancouver’s housing crisis. I absolutely agree we need to densify. But I have noticed two things about these twitterers:

• their only solution is to build new buildings;
• affordability is of no account;

They are wrong on both counts.

It is clear from Stats Can’s numbers and all the analysis people like Andy Yan have conducted that supply is not the issue here. Even Gregor Robertson in a deathbed conversion has agreed that supply is not the primary problem and our General Manager of Planning says we have spent a decade building the wrong things.  With 25,000+ empty housing units in the City, and tens of thousands of more units in the pipeline, any attempt to blame lack of supply is simply ludicrous.

I will make one exception to that statement:  housing for very low- or no-income  people has been sorely lacking for a decade, probably because it makes so little profit for the developers.  The City and Province are slowly beginning, albeit with some problems, to deal with that with their modular housing schemes. We need to do a lot more, but at least a start has been made.

The crisis is primarily for the middling sort, the regular working Janes and Joes of Vancouver; the folks who are hard-working productive employees but only make at or below the median wage in Vancouver (which is a notoriously low paid City).  These build-build-build types don’t seem to give a damn about these people. They are quite happy to build condos and townhouses and even apartment blocks that the majority of people cannot afford.

The only people who benefit from such buildings are the developers themselves, speculators, and those who already have houses to sell to finance the purchase.

We need to look at ways that can provide decent housing for the median folks, and we need to do it fast or they will simply move out of the city and take their vitality and talents with them. We can do this by encouraging owners of single detached houses to provide at least two and hopefully three households on each lot. This encouragement could come by relaxing the extraordinarily onerous, expensive, and time-consuming regulations the City imposes today on both in-house suites and laneway houses. We need to legalize all the “illegal” suites and encourage their refurbishment and expansion.

Such increases could easily double the density in Grandview, for example (as opposed to the 30% increase envisioned in the Community Plan). And this will be many times less expensive than new building as land costs will be irrelevant.

Finally, while this crisis lasts, it is incumbent on the City to ensure that City-owned land is sold/used only for genuinely affordable housing and not sold or handed over to developers for unaffordable condo towers and the like.

Density is a good thing, but only if regular local people can afford to buy what is built.

“It’s not that there’s anything particularly healthy about cyberspace in itself, but the way in which cyberspace breaks down barriers. Cyberspace makes person-to-person interaction much more likely in an already fragmented society. The thing that people need desperately is random encounter. That’s what community has.”

This is  topic for the discussion forum on the Engagement in a Time of Polarization MOOC (#engagemooc) just now.

Here are a few random,  and maybe not so random thoughts from me.

Random 1

This happened a few years ago now, but it always makes me smile thinking about it. I live Glasgow, a city with a reptutation for friendliness, it can all be a bit random but chances are if you are on a bus, or really anywhere, someone will start chatting to you.  Random people just wanting to pass the time of day – usually.  As I get older, I find myself doing the same, become the random, taking to people as we share an experience – generally queuing/ waiting for something.

I was once trying on shoes in a well know high street shop. As I was taking them off to put back on my own shoes, a couple of what I colloquially call “wee ladies”, shouted, in a very nice way, “ hey, hen, gonae put they shoes back on, you like about the same size as our niece and we thing we’re gonnae get them for her”.  So I spent the next few minutes modelling the shoes. I laughed, they laughed, they bought the shoes, I didn’t.  We all left the shop happy.  A random, instant connection, that may have made their decisions and shopping  that day easier, and gave me a laugh, that “only in Glasgow” way.

Random 2

Two days ago I accepted a random ( despite claims of him being specially selected by the system) challenge in Words with Friends, the on-line scrabble game. I’m a bit wary of doing this as, well you know – random! Anyway, said random sent me a message saying hello after his first move, I said hello back, then he sent me another one, and of course because I forgot my user name is connected with with my facebook account, he used my name.  Slightly discomforting. He then asked “where in the world are you.”  Innocent enough in f2f situation, online, random, slightly more creepy. Yesterday morning, another message “ how are you my dear, this fine morning.  I hope you slept well.”  I resigned from the game.

Random Reflection

I my non working life, I am far more comfortable with randomness in f2f situations. Reflecting  on my mostly online work connections, community, engagement as part of #engagemooc, I am, once again being reminded that the serendipity I enjoy in online communities, is largely down not so random networks.

Randomly spotting a relevant, funny, inspiring tweet in my stream, is far more mediated that I probably appreciated. My network bubble is comfortable and generally  bounces me to other soft spaces. I am lucky, I have not been trolled, and I do not seek out more dangerous participation through networks. I censor my online behaviour because of the consequences, and experiences of others. Should I challenge myself more, accept more randomness? I wonder . . .

Positive randomness is great, negative not so much and not so appealing. Yet my natural inclination with random online encounters is couched in fear.  Fear  the unknown, random online person, fear the random anonymous person even more. I actually thought about using a different personna for this course to try and challenge myself, to see how easy it would be to network, to make and sustain connections. To see how others would react to my randomness.  However time, and probably  more accurately laziness, and the realisation that I would probably give the game away at some point ensured that it didn’t happen.

I’m now thinking about connections between randomness and open education. I believe that I am a pretty open person, an open educator with an open mind.  Maybe that has provided another bias in terms of my perception of my own randomness. I can be an open educator, which may have elements of randomness – joining a twitter scavenger hunt last Friday morning with a class in Cairo.  Again, my network connections took me there.

I am not a random educator. My engagement and (continued) participation in related online spaces isn’t random; it is planned; it is self censored.  In context, I probably explore more seemingly random places, have more seemingly random encounters than some of my colleagues. Compared to others I probably don’t do anything random online, have any random online connections. I’ve never been to the dark web . . .

Anyway lots to think about.

One of my least favorite electrical engineering courses in college was on signals and communications. I remember there being a lot of Fourier Transforms. I also remember falling asleep a lot, because it was a two-hour lecture with the lights turned off. Maybe if the demos were more visual like this, I would’ve stayed awake. (Probably not.)

Tags: Fourier Transform

Reading David Pogue's test of four speakers, I wasn't surprised by the results:

- Amazon Echo Plus ($150)
- Apple HomePod ($350)
- Google Home Max ($400)
- Sonos One ($200)

He did something the other reviewers did not. Instead of taking the "trust me, I'm an expert" road, he let other people express their preferences in a blind test. The unsurprising result was that Apple HomePod did not win in a landslide. It was far too easy for Apple PR to influence the opinion with controlled test scenarios or biased testers.

When setting up the blind test behind a curtain, David may have created a handicap for the HomePod. Its room correction depends on feedback the speaker receices from the room. When you tune a Sonos One, you do this from the point of view (or rather hearing) of the listener. That process can correct for major flaws like putting a speaker behind a sofa, in a room corner, or inside a cabinet. HomePod corrects the sound from what it hears at its own location. It does not have a microphone where the listener is and certainly not on the other side of a curtain.

Another observation is that those who preferred the Google Home Max where those closer to it, vice versa for the Sonos One. If you would have used the Home Max budget and bought two Sonos One, they might have won hands down.

The important discussion we are having here is that sound does indeed matter. Apple is bringing quality back into the discussion. And that's a good thing.

In zwei Wochen ist die Handy-Weltmeisterschaft MWC in Barcelona. Und ich bin irgendwie jetzt schon gelangweilt. Wir kommen bei den Smartphones langsam in die selbe Situation wie bei den Fernsehern. Nur mit unfassbarem Aufwand kann man aus der Hardware noch ein bisschen was rauskitzeln. Und um seine Flagschiffe zu diferenzieren, bauen die Hersteller immer Lösungen mehr für Probleme, die niemand hat. Hat irgendjemand Bixby gebraucht? Oder von mir aus Allo/Duo?

Alle Handys in diesem Bild machen ihre Arbeit gut. Was wir gebrauchen können, ist mehr Robustheit, bessere Laufzeiten und erschwingliche Preise. Interessanterweise macht Nokia gerade alles richtig. Pure Android, kein Firlefanz, aktuelle Software, gute Preise. Und der Markt belohnt das. Sie haben mehr verkauft als Google im ganzen Jahr. Allerdings weniger als Apple in einer Woche.

Das nächste Ding ist bei mir am Handgelenk. Die Apple Watch kann lange nicht alles, was geht. Binnen zwei oder drei Jahren wird sie sehr gut auf meine Gesundheit aufpassen können. Heute ersetzt sie mir schon oft das Handy.

Last week, I shared my frustration with using social media websites like Facebook or Twitter as my primary platform for sharing photos and status updates. As an advocate of the open web, this has bothered me for some time so I made a commitment to prioritize publishing photos, updates and more to my own site.

I'm excited to share my plan for how I'd like to accomplish this, but before I do, I'd like to share two additional challenges I face on my blog. These struggles factor into some of the changes I'm considering implementing, so I feel compelled to share them with you.

First, I've struggled to cover a wide variety of topics lately. I've been primarily writing about Drupal, Acquia and the Open Web. However, I'm also interested in sharing insights on startups, investing, travel, photography and life outside of work. I often feel inspired to write about these topics, but over the years I've grown reluctant to expand outside of professional interests. My blog is primarily read by technology professionals — from Drupal users and developers, to industry analysts and technology leaders — and in my mind, they do not read my blog to learn about a wider range of topics. I'm conflicted because I would like my l blog to reflect both my personal and professional interests.

Secondly, I've been hesitant to share short updates, such as a two sentence announcement about a new Drupal feature or an Acquia milestone. I used to publish these kinds of short updates quite frequently. It's not that I don't want to share them anymore, it's that I struggle to post them. Every time I publish a new post, it goes out to more than 5,000 people that subscribe to my blog by email. I've been reluctant to share short status updates because I don't want to flood people's inbox.

Throughout the years, I worked around these two struggles by relying on social media; while I used my blog for in-depth blog posts specific to my professional life, I used social media for short updates, sharing photos and starting conversation about wider variety of topics.

But I never loved this division.

I've always written for myself, first. Writing pushes me to think, and it is the process I rely on to flesh out ideas. This blog is my space to think out loud, and to start conversations with people considering the same problems, opportunities or ideas. In the early days of my blog, I never considered restricting my blog to certain topics or making it fit specific editorial standards.

Om Malik published a blog last week that echoes my frustration. For Malik, blogs are thought spaces: a place for writers to share original opinions that reflect "how they view the world and how they are thinking". As my blog has grown, it has evolved, and along the way it has become less of a public thought space.

My commitment to implementing a POSSE approach on my site has brought these struggles to the forefront. I'm glad it did because it requires me to rethink my approach and to return to my blogging roots. After some consideration, here is what I want to do:

1. Take back control of more of my data; I want to share more of my photos and social media data on my own site.
2. Find a way to combine longer in-depth blog posts and shorter status updates.
3. Enable readers and subscribers to filter content based on their own interests so that I can cover a larger variety of topics.

In my next blog post, I plan to outline more details of how I'd like to approach this. Stay tuned!

Pondering Sheila’s thoughts on Why I Don’t Code?, and mulling over some materials we’re prepping as revisions to the database course…

I see the update as an opportunity to try to develop the ed tech a bit, make it a bit more interactive, make it a bit “responsive” to students so they can try stuff out and get meaningful responses back that helps them check what they’ve been doing has worked. (I’ve called such approaches “self-marking” before, eg in the context of robotics, where it’s obvious if your robot has met the behavioural goal specified in some activity (eg go forwards and backwards the same distance five times, or traverse a square).)

Some the best activities in this regard, to my mind at least, can be defined as challenges, with a “low floor, high ceiling” as I always remember Mike Reddy saying in the context of educational robotics outreach. Eg how perfect a square, or how quickly can your robot traverse it. And can it reverse it?

Most kids/students can get the robot to do something, but how well can they get it to do something in particular, and how efficiently? There are other metrics too – how elegant does the code look, or how spaghetti like?!

So prepping materials, I keep getting sidetracked by things we can do to try to support the teaching. One bit I’m doing is getting students to link database tables together, so it seems sensible to try to find, or come up with, a tool that lets students make changes to the database and then look at the result in some meaningful way to check their actions have led to the desired outcome.

There are bits and bobs of things I can reuse, but they require:

1) gluing stuff together to make the student use / workflow appropriate. That takes a bit of code (eg to make some IPython magic that provides a oneliner capable of graphically depicting some updated configuration or other );
2) tweaking things that don’t work quite how want them, either in terms of presentation / styling, or functionality – which means being able to read other people’s code and change the bits we want to change;
3) keeping track of work – and thinking – in progress, logging issues, sketching out possible fixes, trying to explore the design space, and use space, including looking for alternative – possibly better – ways of achieving the same thing; which means trying to get other people’s code to work, which in turn means coming up with and trying out small examples, often based on reading documentation, looking for examples on Stack Overflow, or picking through tests to find out how to call what function with what sorts of parameter values.

Code stuff; very practical programmingy code-y stuff. That’s partly how I see code being used – on a daily basis – by educators working in a institution like the OU that claims to pride itself on digital innovation: educators coming up with small bits of code to implement micro digital innovations that directly support/benefit the teaching/learning materials and enhance them, technologically… Code as part of everyday practice for online digital educators. (Remember: “everyone should code”…)

It’s also stuff that tests my own knowledge of how things are supposed to work in principle – as well as practice. This plays out through trying to make sure that the tech remains relevant to the educational goal, and ideally helps reinforce it, as well as providing a means for helping the students act even more effectively as independent learners working at a distance…

And to my mind, it’s also part of our remit, if we’re supposed to be trying to make the most use of the whole digital thing… And if we can’t do this in a computing department, then where can – or should – we do it?

PS I should probably have said something about this being relevant to, or an example of, technology enhanced learning, but I think that phrase has been lost to folk who want to collect every bit of data they can from students? Ostensibly, this is for “learning analytics”, which is to say looking at ways of “optimising” students, rather than optimising our learning materials (by doing the basic stuff like looking at web stats as I’ve said repeatedly). I suspect there’s also an element of plan B – if we have a shed load of data, we can sell it to some one as part of every other fire sale.

Apple’s HomePod is the best-sounding wireless smart speaker available, and you can control it by voice using Apple’s virtual assistant, Siri. But the HomePod is worth considering only if you’re an iPhone owner and a subscriber to Apple Music (or are willing to be)—don’t buy it if you want to keep streaming Spotify. It does a lot of things right, but because it also has a long list of flaws, we don’t believe it’s the best smart speaker for most people.

NPR all tech considered: Super Sensitive Sensor Sees What You Can’t.

“A team of engineers at Dartmouth College has invented a semiconductor chip that could someday give the camera in your phone the kind of vision even a superhero would envy. […] Fossum calls his new technology QIS, for Quanta Image Sensor. Instead of pixels, QIS chips have what Fossum and his colleagues call “jots.” Each jot can detect a single particle of light, called a photon.”

Via former City of Vancouver Councillor  and founder of Business in Vancouver magazine Peter Ladner is this CTV news article that researched an important question~what is the true cost of vehicle driving in a Canadian province?  The study undertaken by Trajectoire Quebec ” determined that even non-drivers spend an average of $1000 each year in costs related to the province’s roads.”

What was interesting is that while government spending on highways and roads has been increasing, it does not mean that the infrastructure is getting better or more multi-modal. The study found that public spending for roads from the Federal, Provincial and municipal governments had increased by 70 per cent in twenty years. In the Province of Quebec, that means that 43 billion dollars is paid each year for roads. Imagine~that amount is more than monetary inflation, and is much larger than any population increase in the province. The study found that the average family of four
“contributes about $7,000 per year to government services related to automotive transport – everything from road repairs, to health care costs and policing – even if they don’t own a car.” 

And if you own a car, you are spending $13,000 more, meaning that Quebec households are spending over 20 per cent of their disposable income on transportation. That’s higher than the percentage spent on food or on education. Drivers are actually paying for using cars and car networks, and the study shows that public transit is less subsidized than private vehicles.

The report concludes that Quebec needs a sustainable mobility policy and that user-fees are needed to equitably pay for infrastructure used by private cars. Suburban developments also mean more sprawl and more reliance on the car, and the link needs to be made with politicians for “collective transportation” to move people. As the head of the Trajectoire Quebec organization noted  Copenhagen Denmark had a referendum successfully pass  to implement toll roads. “People having seen the way it was before, and the way it was after, and after there was a lot less congestion, so the people voted in favor of tolls.” 

I had thought that I had written something here about the redevelopment of the Arbutus Mall which is just next door to where I live. I am actually quite surprised that I haven’t been able to find anything. It is mostly on flickr. So to give you a very quick background, when Arbutus Village was first built it was a real exercise in being a complete community. There were apartments and townhouses, a park and a shopping centre which included some local services, like dentists and insurance offices, as well as a recreation centre. The Mall had a large Safeway as its anchor tenant as well as a liquor store, bank, dollar store and so on, with a significant about of surface parking between the buildings and Arbutus Street.

A couple of years ago, a new development was approved to excavate the parking lot and build more apartments over the commercial and retail at the ground floor, with parking underground.  I was quite pleased to see that start construction as the huge high level flood lights for the parking had been shining into our apartment windows all night long.  The light pollution meant we could never see any stars. It also interfered with my sleep. Of course it was a blow to see all the small businesses disappear. Safeway kept the pharmacy open – a requirement of their license, with a small convenience store providing essentials. The Liquor Store also stayed open to protect its grandfathered rights which might otherwise be lost due to the proximity of the Prince of Wales High School. The post office tried to stay open but couldn’t, due to lack of foot traffic. And we lost our recreation centre to commercial operations of a dance school and a swimming school. At least the indoor pool now saw much more use than formerly.

The scale of the proposed development was roughly equivalent to the buildings around it. There are three condo buildings of six storeys – known around here as “high rise”. What the developer was going to build was not too different – and there would be more townhouses and a wider social mix as the city was insisting on more rental units. Once development got underway on the first two buildings, the developer (Larco) applied for greater density on the part of the site closer to our building and the park. This evening we went to an Open House. The information on the many boards around the room is available on the city web page . There are a lot of documents there too.

The City Vancouver has received a rezoning application for 2133 Nanton Avenue (the Arbutus Centre) to amend the existing CD-1 (642) (Comprehensive Development) District. The proposal would increase the residential floor area, including an increase in the number of market and social housing units. The specific amendments include:

• An increase in the maximum allowable floor space for all uses from 67,065 sq. m (721,881 sq. ft) to 77,611 sq. m (835,400 sq. ft.). The additional floor space is to be accommodated on Blocks C and D (the western portion of the site).
• An increase to the maximum building height on Block C from 57 m (187 ft.) to 60 m (197 ft.) and the maximum building height on Block D from 57 m (187 ft.) to 72 m (236 ft.).

The rezoning application proposes no change to the amount of office and commercial space, and includes an expanded Neighbourhood House.

The images below are taken from the Applicant Boards pdf file available on the City web page.

The scale drawings give a much better idea of how much bigger the new proposal is compared to the pictures. In fact I think the Block C illustrations are almost comically misleading. The size of the block in the new proposal seems to be comparable to the original at first glance until you realise that the scale is quite different. Not only are there more storeys above ground, the below ground is also greatly enlarged, although the consultant told me that the parking ratio is only one space per unit. Two spaces for car share are included – which might at long last see some Modo cars parked here, something I have been lobbying for, though I think two is unlikely to be adequate. I also suggested that dedicated parking for evo and car2go be included. The Arbutus Club across the street already provides a lot of demand for both.

Given that the site is adjacent to the #16 trolleybus we might, I hope, see more service on that given the number of other four storey additions to commercial areas in Kerrisdale and the proposed major transit interchange at Broadway and Arbutus once the stubway opens. I suspect that the ratio of one parking space per unit will also generate considerable on street parking demand as the retailers will want to reserve much of their underground for customers.

I know that the major concern I have heard from my neighbours is the scale and height of the buildings. We are also aware of other developments that are going to be proposed on Eddington at Valley (Amica – currently a two storey residential care facility, with the adjacent townhouse development) and at McBain and Valley/King Edward (currently town houses and three storey condo apartment block). We do not know how high these will be yet, but the fear is that Larco’s proposal will set a precedent for much taller buildings.

In the applicant’s rendering shown below the building I live in is at the bottom right hand corner. The Amica building slated for redevelopment is behind it – about half way up the right hand side of the image. At this time we have no idea how high that will be.

The Arbutus Ridge Community Association is certainly not happy.

Though this feature has been available for a number of months in the U.S., the ability for Alexa to identify individual voices has now made its way to Canada.

The feature, called ‘Your Voice,’ can be set up by saying the following phrase to Amazon’s voice-activated assistant, “Alexa, who am I?”

Amazon says the configuration process takes approximately five minutes and requires an Alexa-compatible device and registered Alexa account.

The process of setting up Your Voice can also be done in-app, with customers navigating to ‘Menu,’ ‘Settings’ and then ‘Your Voice,’ which is inside ‘Accounts.’

Your Voice allows user-specific features across calling, messaging, calendar, music, shopping and Alexa’s Flash Briefing. Amazon says support for more voice-specific features are set to rollout in the future.

Amazon finally brought specific Echo devices — the Echo Dot, 2nd Gen Echo and Echo Plus — to Canada back in December.

The post Amazon’s Alexa can now detect the voice of individual users in Canada appeared first on MobileSyrup.

Netflix has announced that it has signed American Horror Story and Glee producer Ryan Murphy to a multi-year deal to exclusively produce TV series and films for the streaming giant.

According to The New York Times, the agreement covers a five-year period and is worth as much as $300 million USD, which would be one of the largest deals ever made for a television producer. The deal will take effect on July 1st, 2018 when Murphy’s contract with Fox expires.

In addition to his work on Glee and American Horror Story, Murphy is also known for producing series like Nip/Tuck, American Crime Story and Feud.  

Murphy is also already working on two shows for Netflix, Ratched and The Politician. 

“Ryan Murphy’s series have influenced the global cultural zeitgeist, reinvented genres and changed the course of television history. His unfaltering dedication to excellence and to give voice to the underrepresented, to showcase a unique perspective or just to shock the hell out of us, permeates his genre-shattering work,” said Ted Sarandos, chief content officer at Netflix, in a press statement. “His celebrated body of work and his contributions to our industry speak for themselves, and we look forward to supporting Ryan in bringing his broad and diverse stories to the world.”

“The history of this moment is not lost on me. I am a gay kid from Indiana who moved to Hollywood in 1989 with $55 dollars in savings in my pocket, so the fact that my dreams have crystallized and come true in such a major way is emotional and overwhelming to me,” said Murphy in a press statement. “I am awash in genuine appreciation for Ted Sarandos, Reed Hastings and Cindy Holland at Netflix for believing in me and the future of my company which will continue to champion women, minorities and LGBTQ heroes and heroines.”

Image credit: Wikimedia Commons

Source: Netflix

The post Netflix signs ‘American Horror Story’ producer Ryan Murphy to multi-year deal appeared first on MobileSyrup.

Here I am, out at a cafe, with nearly $4000 worth of the latest Apple hardware around me, and none of four fucking devices plug directly into each other. Even when they do, I can’t help but feel worse off using Apple’s own accessories and hardware today when than I did four years ago.

What is going on with Apple’s accessory ecosystem these days?

The 2016 MacBook Pro

At a certain point, I had lost more screws in my old MacBook Pro than I had remaining. So when Apple dropped the long-awaited MacBook Pro updates in 2016, I figured I should probably bite the bullet:

I generally like my MacBook Pro. It could just be that my older one was falling apart, but the performance and form factor with their latest generation is pretty great, and it’s held up pretty well over the last few years, aside from a key that’s falling apart from all the the commands I must be giving it:

A lot of ink has been spilled regarding Apple’s rumored refocus on software quality, and thoughts on their hardware comes down to either “the Touch Bar is clearly dooming the entire company!”, or “AirPods are the greatest piece of engineering of all time!!!!1”. I’m more interested in talking about specifically their accessories: cables, chargers, and connectors. And all of this starts with the MacBook Pro’s choice to head to USB-C.

USB-C

I really dig USB-C. I was fine being an early adopter where none of my shit worked and I had to carry an endless supply of dongles and adapters for awhile, because I’m into the long-term idea of getting the entire industry on one very capable standard.

The world of USB-C is still pretty wild; I’d guess maybe half of the adapters I order from Amazon straight-up don’t work because it’s a money grab for cheap-o Chinese manufacturers, who in turn don’t confirm to the spec correctly. I expect that from that shady underworld, but not from Apple.

And Apple’s capable of good stuff, of course. Nathan K, the intrepid Google engineer who has gained notoriety for reviewing USB-C cables accessories for quality, says that Apple’s USB-C charge cable is the best he’s ever seen. But from an end user perspective, the high-level approach of what Apple’s doing here is maddening.

The MacBook Pro drops all ports in favor of USB-C; great, I can get behind that. But it’s like they got into the Red Zone and decided to punt at the six yard line instead of taking the easy three points.

People oft-repeat the charge that Apple has released an iPhone that you can’t plug into its own laptops out-of-the-box, but it’s even worse than that. Here’s what I carry around:

• MacBook Pro, which charges via USB-C
• iPhone X, which charges via Qi and Lightning
• Apple Watch Series 2, which charges via proprietary inductive charging
• AirPods, which charge via Lightning

Wireless charging is probably the way forward, although 1) it’s slow, and 2) “fast” charging is only available through some Qi chargers that have been blessed by Apple. Apple Watch Series 3 will have some Qi charging, but apparently that also depends on the charger.

All of this will be fixed for me whenever Apple manages to release AirPower, a long-delayed, possibly really expensive, multi-device charger that will charge all my things at once, provided I drop the money on AirPower, new AirPods, a new Apple Watch, and decide to bring the whole charging setup with me to a cafe. Then I’ll be set to slowly charge all my devices at once.

They didn’t even name the damn thing Apple Juice, either.

Skipping on both convenience and standards

Giving up some convenience for a standardized port makes sense. I really miss MagSafe, but was willing to move to USB-C Power Delivery for the speed and consistency in standard. But I’m not sure the trade off was worth it in practice.

I’ve been using Apple’s new charger for a year and a half now, and it’s generally worse than what we’ve had for the last decade. No MagSafe means that it frequently slides out of my MacBook Pro if I made a small adjustment. What’s worse, that can happen while it’s still physically in the port. The number of times I’ve gotten up to head out for work or a conference, only to realize I have a half-drained battery because the cabling had slid out just a little bit is just way too high.

What’s worse, I’m so damn angry at the cable itself. I like that it’s USB-C on both ends, so I can pop it out and use it to charge other devices (but not transfer data, because Apple’s charging cable doesn’t support that mode of Type-C at all, which is probably going to confuse so many people in the future). But the cable is much thicker than previous Apple laptop chargers, which makes it harder to wrap around something. And most egregious of all, there’s no pop-up cable wrapping helpers on the brick itself.

This means it’s become tricky to toss my charger into my bag without it becoming a goddamn mess, both when I put it in there, and especially when I pull it out. I know there was a concern with old power chargers of frayed cabling from people wrapping it too tightly around the cable wrappers, but those people are stupid anyway and probably put their fingers inside power sockets too.

The cable itself is so thick that it ends up tightly twisting in on itself pretty frequently, which likely isn’t great for the longevity of the cable anyways. At this point I’ve found it’s just best to shove the whole thing into my bag and hope for the best.

Gimme some more

The other thing that really kills me is alright, Apple’s way forward is to buy all of their accessories, got it. But their own coverage of their own ecosystem is terrible:

• There’s no USB-C Apple Watch charger. If you want to charge your Watch off of your laptop using Apple’s blessed accessories, you’ll need to get a long Apple Watch cable, and then plug it into their $20 USB-C to USB-A adapter.
• There’s no short Apple cables. The shortest Apple Watch cable is a foot long, and the shortest Lightning cable is a foot and a half. There’s no real option for something tiny you can just toss into a bag and forget about (and in the case of Apple Watch, you can’t buy this from a third-party either, since Apple refuses to certify non-propriety cables, which also means there are zero options if you want a USB-C Apple Watch charger).
• Apple hasn’t really updated their wall chargers in quite some time, either. In the iPhone X box — The Most Advanced Phone For The Next Decade — you get a piddly 5W charger. Would love to see the base model bumped up, but also some more engineering work done on their size and form of their chargers. There’s plenty of small tweaks that could be done to improve what we’ve been stuck with for over a decade.
• Lightning is my favorite port of all time. It feels so damn great. But Apple has to let the past die. Kill it, if you have to. The entire planet is going to be moving to USB-C, and the sooner you get on board with that now, the sooner you’ll look less like an idiot when you inevitably do anyway. I know; I’m going to miss that click too. But the port’s dead, Jim.

All of this would be fixed if Apple fully embraced standards, but what Apple is doing is even worse than that: they force USB-C on their laptops, but they ignore components like an Apple Watch USB-C adapter at the same time they prevent third parties from building their own solutions.

So I still continue to bring my box of cables and chargers and adapters and shit every time I travel.

Living in Apple’s Future

Part of this is sour grapes for being an early adopter, I know. I’m sure there’ll be hot takes about yet another Apple sucker getting their just rewards. I’m mostly just bummed that I’ve been buying into Apple’s future, but Apple themselves haven’t bought into their fucking future. It’s not even a matter of supporting two ecosystems while USB-C battles plays themselves out; it’s that Apple has just thrown their hands up and completely ignored these problems.

Which, to be fair, isn’t necessarily such a bad thing necessarily, but it’s a little hard to spend hours of keynotes patting themselves on the back for making such INNOVATIVE, ADVANCED PLATFORMS THAT WILL LAST FOR THE NEXT DECADE at the same time they ignore all this.

It seems like they’re asleep at the wheel, or, more likely, there’s no one team in charge of accessories and the ecosystem anymore at Apple. Like a committee came up with some broad thoughts for the next five years and expected teams to adapt to that whenever they’d like to. Which also again, isn’t necessarily out of the ordinary for most companies… but it doesn’t scream “Apple”.

It’s not new revolutionary iPhone technology we’re talking about there, either; it’s relatively cheap cables that have to conform to a standard. Wireless will probably be a thing at some point in time, but that’s a lot further way than a couple of USB-C ports today.

Anyway, none of this would have happened if Steve would have been there. Is that how I’m supposed to close this? Think that’s in the Apple gripes template somewhere.

Third World have always had had a different sound, leaning quite a bit on sweet harmonies and instrumental flavors. It’s reggae all right, but impure like most great music, and sounds as tasty as anything you can imagine. Jah Glory is such a sweet welcoming thing, a soaring song of worship. (You don’t have to believe in Jah.)

I saw Third World once in Toronto, I think part of the big Caribana festival, in a soccer stadium. The concert promoter had really screwed the pooch; the stage was one side of the field and when we filed in we found ourselves bottled up in the stands on the other side of the field, with the grass fenced off and a handful of cops lined up between the stands and the field. The band looked tiny, over there across the turf.

I can’t remember the sequence exactly; there was a certain amount of yelling, then a certain amount of looking at each other, then everyone got up and walked down the steps, across the track, pulled down the flimsy temporary fencing, and sat down in front of the band. Hmmm, maybe that’s the thing about Third World; it’s reggae you can sit down to. Anyhow, the cops shrugged ostentatiously and looked at the sky, what were they gonna do?

Jah Glory is on 96° In The Shade; the title track is probably their biggest hit too, but today’s song is the opener, and there’s just this great feeling when you cue up the album and those harmonies fill the room.

This is part of the Song of the Day series (background).

Links

Spotify playlist. This tune on Amazon, Spotify, iTunes. Here’s recent (2015) live video.

Dr. Michael Spehr in der FAZ vom 13.2.2018. Seite 33

Ich schrieb letztes Jahr, was mich davon überzeugte, dass ich zum Arzt muss. Und dann haben binnen zwei Stunden drei Ärzte die richtige Entscheidung getroffen: mein Freund und Hausarzt Dr. Rainer Müller, der Internist Dr. Andreas Niedenthal und der Chirurg Dr. Norbert Runge. Nicht vergessen sollte man meine phantastischen Pfleger.

From the Richmond News bike rider Geordie McGillivray asks:

” I wish I could pay ICBC to insure my bike to ride on public roads. Every time someone says “If cyclists wants to be allowed to ride on the roads and have the same privileges as cars, they should have to have insurance” I tell them they are absolutely right. What? A cyclist saying yes, he should have to insure his bike? But I’m being serious. Please, let me pay to insure my bike, but with one condition: It must give me the same insurance benefits as a motorist.”

“Currently, if I’m riding my bike on the road and hit a large pothole, lose control of the bike and crash injuring myself and damaging my bike, I am responsible for 100 per cent of the costs. Up to $3000 for a new bike and then paying for all rehabilitation costs. A motorcyclist who hits that pothole, crashes and gets injured will pay a $300 deductible and every other cost is paid for by ICBC. Win: Insured Motorist.

Currently, if my bike is locked up but stolen then I’m responsible for the entire cost of replacing my bike for $3000. If a motorcycle or scooter is stolen while insured then ICBC pays for the entire cost of a replacement. Win: Insured Motorist.

Currently, if I’m negligent and I crash into a car on the road, break my wheel and bars and damage the car, not only am I responsible for all the costs to repair my bike, let’s say $1000 in this case, but I then have to work with ICBC as well as police if they were called, and settle the repair costs to the vehicle. $2500 out of my pocket instead of a $300 deductible. Lose: Uninsured Cyclist.

Currently, if another cyclist runs into me, damaging my bike – but then that person rides away from the scene, I’m responsible for the full costs of the repair or replacement of my bike. Up to $3000. If a cyclist hits a car, damages it and then rides away then the motorist only has to pay a $300 deductible. Win: Insured Motorist.

How could I not want insurance like motorists have? Cyclists would then be saving thousands of dollars and passing it on to ICBC just like motorists do. ICBC would be paying out millions more every year in bike replacement and repair costs. I’d be so happy because just like motorists, I would rarely be out-of-pocket whether an accident is my fault or not. Then, we could cue all the complaints from people now saying cyclists should not be allowed to have insurance on their bikes. I’m sure of it.”

Photos: Richmond News

Montreal-based Frank And Oak has raised $20 million CAD as it looks to grow its business both in-store and online.

The funding was led by the Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec, and includes other institutional and private investors, including Goodwater Capital and Investissement Québec. The company wants to use the funding to accelerate development of its online experiences, and support its growth both in North America and across the world. Frank And Oak is hoping to improve its product offerings and invest in its supply chain, and provide a more unified experience between online and brick-and-mortar customers.

The company said it wants to implement artificial intelligence in its Style Plan program, a subscription-based service that allows users to purchase items tailored to them based on past purchases.

Frank + Oak also plans to expand its product offering, create new styles, and invest in its supply chain.

“Frank And Oak is extremely proud to have obtained the support of exceptional investors in this round of financing led by the Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec,” said Ethan Song, co-founder and CEO of Frank And Oak. “Our alliance with this strong institution and our other key partners demonstrates the level of confidence in our business. We are dedicated to the idea of investing in a technology that is redefining retail and transforming the shopping habits of tomorrow’s consumers.”

The company also announced new additions to its executive team. Éric Simon, who was most recently vice president of finance at Fibrenoire, has joined Frank And Oak with 20 years of corporate finance experience behind him.

Frédéric Boivin, the company’s new VP of merchandising, has acted as VP at retail brands like Dynamite, Laura, and Penningtons, while new national sales manager Brad Evans has experience as a district manager at companies like Reitmans Canada, Danier Leather, and Aeropostale. Joanne Nemeroff, who has been president of Limited Brands Canada and La Senza, now serves on the board of directors of Frank And Oak.

“While the digital transformation is now a rite of passage for retail businesses, Frank + Oak is one of the visionary companies that was a precursor of online commerce in Quebec,” said Christian Dubé, executive VP of the Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec. “We are pleased to invest in the business as it continues to innovate with technology.”

This story was originally published on BetaKit.

The post Montreal-based Frank and Oak raises $20 million to invest in AI shopping features appeared first on MobileSyrup.

In celebration of the ongoing 2018 Pyeongchang Winter Olympics in South Korea, Google has brought new AR Stickers to the Pixel and Pixel 2.

These new Olympic sports-themed stickers are the latest to hit Google’s flagship smartphone, following the launch of Stranger Things and Star Wars: The Last Jedi packs that dropped last December. The Blocks AR pack has also been updated, adding new balloon types and a microphone sticker.

The new Winter Sports pack adds an ice skater, downhill skier, two hockey players, a snow-covered tree, snowman and most importantly, a polar bear wearing clothes.

Each sticker features its own animation, too. For example, the hockey player stickers put down their sticks and stereotypically engage in a hockey fight.

In order to get your hands on this update, all you need to do is boot up your camera on the Pixel or Pixel 2 and head over to the app’s menu. Next, tap AR Stickers and then scroll past existing packs in order to make it to the Winter Sports or Blocks AR icon.

AR Stickers are exclusively available to Pixel phones running Android 8.1 Oreo. That said, augmented reality objects are available on other Android devices following a recent update to Google’s Motion Stills app. While Motion Stills isn’t as feature-packed as the Pixel’s AR functionality, it still features a number of augmented reality stickers.

The post Google brings 2018 Winter Olympic AR stickers to Pixel devices appeared first on MobileSyrup.

The Samsung Galaxy S9 and S9+ will feature 3D emoji and stereo speakers, according to Korean publication ETNews. The publication claims that Samsung’s 3D emoji are more advanced than the iPhone X’s animoji.

The 3D emoji are poised to be very similar to the Animoji, in terms of a 3D character that tracks facial movements and mimics them. Additionally, the report claims the 3D emoji include animal characters that friends can share with one another. The 3D emoji will use 3D facial recognition software as well as iris recognition technology.

Prolific leaker Evan Blass has also confirmed the existence of the 3D emoji. 

The Galaxy S9 and S9 Plus are able to do this with the Exynos 9810 chip or the Qualcomm Snapdragon 845 processor that the device will feature, depending on the region where it’s purchased.

In addition, rumours point to the Galaxy S9 and S9+ using stereo speakers. ETNews says Samsung will place the speakers on the top and bottom of the phone. A previous leak of an alleged Samsung Galaxy S9 box also points to the handset having stereo speakers tuned to AKG. AKG is an acoustics company owned by Samsung.

Other rumours point to Samsung moving the Galaxy S9 fingerprint sensor below the handset’s camera setup, as well as the smartphone using a 5.8-inch Quad HD+ AMOLED display.

Samsung will unveil the Galaxy S9 and S9 + on February 25th at its Unpacked event.

Lastly, ETNews points to the Galaxy S9 costing 925,000 won ($1073 CAD), while the S9 Plus will cost 1 million won ($1163 CAD), at least in South Korea.

Source: ETNews 

The post Samsung Galaxy S9 and S9+ rumoured to feature 3D emoji and stereo speakers appeared first on MobileSyrup.

Google has shipped 3.9 million units of its Pixel devices as of 2017, according to IDC’s Francisco Jeronimo.

Google released its first Pixel smartphone in October 2016.

#GooglePixel shipments continue to grow, but they still represent a tiny portion of the smartphone market pic.twitter.com/W6FVZlYOlC

— Francisco Jeronimo (@fjeronimo) February 12, 2018

This number includes the Pixel smartphones and the Pixel 2 released near the end of 2017.

Jeronimo points out how it’s a “remarkable achievement to double sales,” especially during a time when consumers mostly already have smartphones. Apple shipped nearly 14 million units in the company’s first year, but that was ten years ago when there were fewer smartphones on the market.

Jeronimo also says 3.9 million units is only a tiny portion of the 1.5 billion market size.

Both the Pixel and Pixel 2 had some high praises, however both have also dealt with a lot of scrutiny. The Pixel had Bluetooth connection issues, while the Google Pixel 2 had many issues, largely due to its display.

Google might have more success with the Pixel 3 as the company recently acquired a part of HTC’s phone making business to help with the company’s phone hardware.

Source: Francisco Jeronimo 

The post Google reportedly shipped 3.9 million Pixel and Pixel 2 devices in 2017 appeared first on MobileSyrup.

As far as I can tell, there are two sets of ambitious predictions about GDPR.

One is the VRM vision. Doc Searls writes, on ProjectVRM:

I am sure Google, Facebook and lesser purveyors of advertising online will find less icky ways to stay in business; but it is becoming clear that next May 25, when the GDPR goes into full effect, will be an extinction-level event for tracking-based advertising (aka adtech) as a business model.

Big impact? Not so fast. There's also a "business as usual" story, and that one, you'll find at Digital Advertising Consent.

Our complex ecosystem of companies must cooperate more closely than ever before to meet the transparency and consent requirements of European data protection law.

According to the adtech firms, well, maybe there will be more Bürokratie, more pointless dialogs that users have to click through, and one more line item, "GDPR compliance", to come out of the publisher's share, of course, but the second vision of GDPR is essentially just adtech/adfraud as usual. Upgrade to the new version of OpenRTB, and move along, nothing to see here.

Personally, I'm not buying either one of these GDPR visions. Because, just for fun and also because reasons, I run my own mail server.

And every little decision I have to make about how to configure the damn thing is based on playing a game with email spammers. Regulation is a part of my complete breakfast, but it's not the whole story.

The government doesn't give you freedom from spam. You have to take it for yourself, one filtering rule at a time. Or, do what most people do, and find a company that does it for you, but it has to be a company that you trust with your information.

A mail sender's decision to comply, or not comply, with some regulation is a bit of information. That feeds into the software that makes the final decision: inbox, spam folder, or reject. When a spam message complies with the regulations of some country, my mail server doesn't say, "Oh, wow, compliant! I can skip all the other checks and send this one straight to the inbox!" It uses the regulation compliance along with other information to make that decision.

So whatever extra consent forms that surveillance marketers are required to send by GDPR? They're not the final decision on What The User Must See. They're just data, coming over the network.

Some of that data will be interpreted to mean that this request is an obvious mismatch with how the user chooses to share their info. The user might not even see those consent forms, or the browser might pop up a notification:

4 requests to do creepy shit, that's obviously against your preferences, already denied. Isn't this the best browser ever?

(No, I don't write copy for browser notifications. But you get the idea.)

Browsers that implement tracking protection might end up with a feature where they detect requests for permission to do things that the user has already said no to—by turning on tracking protection in the first place—and auto-deny them.

Legit email senders had to learn "deliverability," the art and science of making legit mail look legit so that it can get past email spam filters. Legit advertisers will have to learn that users aren't identical and spherical, users choose tools to implement their data sharing preferences, and that regulatory compliance is only part of the job.

Bonus links

Should web browsers adopt Google’s new selective ad blocking tech?

EVERYONE ELSE IS DOING IT

Content recommendation services Outbrain and Taboola are no longer a guaranteed source of revenue for digital publishers