Rolandt

2018 bike resolutions 

by dandyhorse staff

We don't really do resolutions, but the city needs more bike lanes and the world needs more people who ride bikes for transportation in cities... so here's some dandy ideas for bike "resolutions" for 2018 for your consideration. We've also got some top notch suggestions for the City of Toronto on how they can speed up the bike plan implementation.

Warning: This is not going to be one of those new year's list that says you gotta eat healthy (because you already do that) but for sure I've resolved to do more non-bike exercise like yoga. Stretching is important.

We are definitely going to ride somewhere we've never ridden before - and you should too!

It could even be some place outside of Canada. Whether it be CitiBike in NYC or a country road between vineyards in France... there are lots of great places to bike in the world. It will give you a greater appreciation for your own city's bike lanes. Of course, there's lots of fun to be had simply by exploring your own neighbourhood or trail network by bike.

Speaking of the French,why don't you definitely try to watch at least two stages of the Tour de France this year. I know, I know, sports can be such a bore, but the commentators really steal the show sometimes (especially if you can get a bit of Phil Liggett who will say things like “...their eyeballs are really rattling in their sockets now!” It's the world's biggest sporting event and the biggest bicycle stage race. The combination of stunning aerial and vistas views are incredible....so it's fun to watch, even if you aren't into the race itself (which is very entertaining.) It's also one of the only remaining sports that truly values sportsmanship. In Canada we have the Grand Prix Cycliste in Quebec at the end of the summer if you want to see some of the top cyclists competing live it's just a short VIA train trip away.

And if the TdF inspires you, why not go on your own longest ride ever.  If you aren't sure where to go or how to get there, you could join a bike club. There are lots now since so many people love cycling.

Another thing to add to your 2018 to do list: a bike mechanics or bike building course, usually available at the local community bike shop.

Of course, at dandyhorse we suggest you also support your local bike advocacy groups and push local governments for more investment in bike infrastructure AKA more bike lanes please!

In Toronto, bike lanes that are needed for 2018 include:

• Danforth (Natch! Everyone wants this!)
• Bloor expansion west from Shaw
• Oh and we must keep an eye on what is happening with the West Toronto Railpath extension south.

Obviously, more can be done in 2018 than those bike lanes listed above. There are bike lanes that the City promises to install at some point over 10 years in their new(ish) bike plan. Here’s what the City has planned for 2018 so far. (Note, this list is subject to change.)

But we thought it would be best to talk to those in the know around town and ask what bike lane projects they think should be prioritized for 2018.

Active Transportation champion Michael Black suggests that the City connecting Bloor at avenue to the Queens Park bidirectional.

Marvin Macaraig, Scarborough Cycles Bike Hub Coordinator says, "the possibilities are endless" but his top wishes for this year include:

• We need to start talking about Kingston Rd. and Danforth Ave.
• Midland Ave. cycling infrastructure is sorely needed, as there are limited north-south options in Scarborough.
• Gatineau Hydro Corridor Trail improvements would be nice. Better way finding on the trail is needed, similar to what was recently implemented on the lower Don River Trail.
• A lot of east-end riders who come through our hubs bemoan that the separation (bollards) on the Bloor Viaduct is seasonal. It really should be permanent.

And from the fine folks at the Toronto Centre for Active Transportation (TCAT) – Nancy Smith Lea, Yvonne Verlinden, and Trudy Ledsham to be precise – we have these biketastic wishes for 2018:

• Bloor Street between Sherbourne and Avenue Rd. Right now the bike lane goes from Broadview to Sherbourne and then you take your life in your hands to get across to where they restart.
• Danforth would be a game changer--but only if it joins the rest of the Bloor lanes.
• Elizabeth St. south of Gerrard (…such a small yet annoying gap).
• Bay Street (it's interesting that you can't get to City Hall by bike. You can get to within 140m of it (on Richmond) or 180m (on Bay), and then you're left to fend for yourself for the final stretch. Bay is on the 10-year Network Plan, but we’re not sure when it's supposed to happen.
• Eglinton east of Victoria Park. They're in the process of doing a secondary plan right now for that area (Golden Mile), with the Crosstown going in. It's going to completely change, from being parking lots to being condo towers, and so far the plan includes bike lanes.
• There’s a small bit of trail that is working its way through the approval process that would connect the Gatineau Corridor with the Don Valley Trail - that would be an impressive link to see completed this year.
• Overlea Blvd. from Don Mills to Millwood to O'Connor

The TCAT folks added this:

“The 10-year cycling plan would add 525 km of biking facilities, and was originally estimated to cost $153.5 million.

The province just gave the city $25.6 million for 2018 which is 17% of their total 10-year budget. So 17% of those 525 km is 89 km, which could be added to the 1/10th of the bike plan that was to built in 2018, originally. This would give a total of 141.75 km to be built in 2018. (I know we're dreaming, but the province's money is new money.)”

“It would also be fantastic to see one of the suburban community council areas targeted in a meaningful way. (Scarborough anyone?) Over 70% of the city's population lives in the three suburban community council areas so why not have 70% of the new km in the community council areas? So, 99 km for the suburban community council areas and 42 km in the core in 2018.”

Other ideas the TCAT team suggests for targeting would be around the suburban universities:

[Bike infrastructure should be added to] UTSC around the Pan Am Centre and the HP Health Sciences campus. Joining this area to Lawrence Galloway with lanes along Morningside, Lawrence and Ellesmere would provide access from high needs neighbourhoods to cultural resources. Additionally, it would serve the many students who live in that area and who are currently unable to get to basic services using active transport. It would be great to see a similar project around York too.

RECAP:

• Ride new places
• Take time to stretch (or do yoga or whatever non-bike exercise, like walking even, that floats your boat)
• Watch a race (like the TdF or the Grand Prix Cycliste in Quebec)
• Take a basic bike mechanics course

AND MOST OF ALL:

• Support bike lanes in your city/neighbourhood! Write to your councillor and post your experiences online to show the powers that be you are biking it and liking it!

Related on dandyhorsemagazine.com

Meet the new plan, same as the old plan?

City of Toronto 2018 bike plan installations list (subject to change)

Taking a look at the pace of bike plan implementation in Toronto

Apple has registered an additional two dozen vehicles with California’s Department of Motor Vehicles, indicating that the company’s driverless car ambitions are expanding significantly.

The tech giant first registered three Lexus Rx450h SUVs with a permit to test autonomous vehicles back in April 0f 2017. Now, according to the California DMV’s report, which was first reported by Bloomberg, Apple has acquired 24 Lexus SUVs it plans to use for its autonomous driving project. The tech giant specifically purchased two in July, seven in October, two in November, six in December and Seven in January, as reported by Bloomberg.

Apple has remained quiet about the tech giant’s self-driving vehicle ambitions and little is known about the initiative beyond its impressive sounding codename, Project Titan. Reports emerged last year that Apple scuttled the concept of building a car from scratch and instead shifted to autonomous software for existing vehicle manufacturers.

Going to need more than 140 characters to go over ’s Project Titan. I call it “The Thing” pic.twitter.com/sLDJd7iYSa

— MacCallister Higgins (@macjshiggins) October 17, 2017

Tim Cook has also confirmed in past interviews that Apple is working on “autonomous vehicle systems,” rather than a complete ‘Apple Car’ of some sort.

It’s unclear when Apple will actually speak publicly about its autonomous car project, but given how far off driverless vehicles are at this point, it will likely be years until we know what’s really going on in the tech giant’s secret labs.

I for one look forward to living in iRobot.

Image credit: Twitter (MacCallister Higgins)

Source: Bloomberg 

The post Apple adds 24 Lexus SUVs to growing self-driving vehicle fleet appeared first on MobileSyrup.

Erin Winick, Technology Review, Jan 28, 2018

When you are preparing students for jobs of the future, what are you preparing them for? It's unlikely you know. "No one agrees. Predictions range from optimistic to devastating, differing by tens of millions of jobs even when comparing similar time frames."

Audrey Watters, Hack Education, Jan 28, 2018

My history intersects with that of Plato, but this intersection is short. Plato was, indeed, a computer0aided instruction (CAI) system, even as late as the 1990s when I looked at it. That made it innovative (though by 1990, not that innovative). But what it wasn't, in any way sense or form was open. A school like ours would invest either in Plato or in the internet; there wasn't a middle ground. Which means, I think, we need to ask where Plato fits in the history of instructional technology. Any number of people were creating mainframe 'teaching machines'. To my mind, the really important  instructional technology advances were communications technologies such as Usenet and email, and sharing technologies such as FTP, Gopher, and the web. I tried to convince the Plato representatives to release an internet version of the software. But there was no future in that, I was told.

Christian Smith, https://www.chronicle.com//img/photos/biz/photo_85241_landscape_650x433.jpg, Jan 28, 2018

Perhaps unaware of Harry G. Frankfurt's publication employing the same rhetorical device, Christian Smith launches into a tirade lashing the contemporary university for everything from "universities hijacked by the relentless pursuit of money and prestige" to "third-tier universities offering mediocre graduate programs to train second-rate Ph.D. students for jobs that do not exist." Ah, but I love a good rant, and this is a good rant. I think that there's a point to many of his critiques, but I think my response to them on many would be the opposite of his. Also, a note on the artwork: the excrement of note is a flat, round pie-shaped deposit, not the organized pile depicted in the article, as any student in the field would know.

Light rail — Coming to Surrey

Corrigan-mageddon joins so many prophesies of doom, at least for now.

Under it’s new leader, Burnaby Mayor Derek Corrigan, the Mayor’s Council has unanimously supported the Phase 2 Plan of the 10-Year Vision.  This is the next major step for Broadway subway, Surrey light rail and Pattullo bridge replacement.

THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED that the Mayors Council supports the implementation of the Phase Two Plan in early-2018 as planned, including construction of the Surrey-Newton-Guildford LRT, Millennium Line Broadway Extension, the SkyTrain Upgrade Strategy and the replacement of the Pattullo Bridge, along with increases to bus and HandyDART service and funding for walking, cycling and Major Road Network infrastructure across the region;

FURTHER BE IT RESOLVED that Mayors’ Council calls on the Province of B.C. to confirm as soon as possible its partnership in delivering the Phase Two Plan as scheduled, including a provincial contribution of a 40% share of capital costs of all projects in the Vision, working with TransLink to support and extend planned increases to HandyDART service and a commitment to work with the Mayors’ Council to close the $60-$80 million annual regional funding gap fairly and affordably to residents;

In a press release, Apple today announced iOS 11.3, the third major update to iOS 11 set to be released in beta for developers later today, and launching to the general public this Spring. iOS 11.3 will improve upon iOS 11 and features that debuted alongside the iPhone X with new Animoji, a major upgrade to ARKit, the ability to store health records in the Health app, plus other improvements for built-in system apps.

Animoji

One of the marquee additions to iOS 11 for iPhone X, Animoji are Apple's take on animated emoji that leverage the device's TrueDepth camera system to recognize up to 50 different facial muscle movements and animate characters in real-time. So far, iPhone X users have been able to choose from 12 different Animoji; that number will go up to 16 with iOS 11.3, which will add a dragon, bear, skull, and lion to the roster of Animoji available in the Messages app.

Interestingly, Apple's press release specifically points out Animoji karaoke videos as one of the innovative ways people have been using the iPhone X to express themselves outside of typical iMessage conversations. Animoji karaoke are, however, difficult to put together because Apple's default Animoji iMessage app doesn't support recording videos longer than 10 seconds. As a result, iPhone X owners interested in sharing Animoji karaoke videos have resorted to recording the screen of the Animoji picker in the Messages app, then editing the video and accompanying song in a separate video editing app.

It's unclear if Apple's specific mention of Animoji karaoke suggests the company is exploring ways to extend the limit of Animoji recording sessions, or if they're perhaps even considering an Animoji karaoke feature for their Clips video app, but it'd be nice to see new options added to the default Animoji experience.

Messages

While today's announcement doesn't include any updates on Messages in iCloud (a feature originally announced alongside iOS 11 and later postponed to a future iOS 11 update), iOS 11.3 will see the public launch of another previously announced Messages feature – Business Chat.

Originally showed off at WWDC 2017, Business Chat is a way for businesses to communicate with their customers directly over iMessage. Apple's goal with Business Chat is to elevate the customer service experience to take advantage of the best native features of iOS, such as iMessage's inherent privacy and security, iMessage apps, Apple Pay, and integration with Maps, Safari, and Spotlight.

Business Chat lives inside the Messages app as a series of custom-themed iMessage threads with different businesses. In Apple's screenshot of Business Chat with Lowe's, for instance, the iMessage title bar is blue and features Lowe's logo instead of a profile picture. Last year, Apple said that only customers can start a Business Chat session (businesses can't spam you by starting Business Chat conversations whenever they want) and they can do so from Maps, Siri, Spotlight search results, or even the Safari address bar by tapping an iMessage button next to a business' name. Business Chat supports both online-only businesses as well as nearby ones, and Apple wants to make it easy to start a conversation with a business – whether it's a support question, tracking an order, or a general inquiry – without having to hunt down contact information. Business Chat conversations can also be started by scanning QR codes with the iPhone's camera (a new feature in iOS 11).

Users retain full control over Business Chat: they can stop alerts from specific conversations, delete them when they're no longer useful, and pay for products inline within an iMessage conversation using their Apple Pay wallet. By default, Business Chat protects user information by only sharing anonymized user IDs with businesses, which, however, can detect the user's language and region to route them to the appropriate team or support agent.

It'll be interesting to see how businesses will take advantage of their own iMessage apps as well as custom UIs and menus. In addition to having the customer interact with a custom iMessage bubble compatible with a business' iMessage app (like, say, picking a seat from an airline's own iMessage app), businesses can share attachments, present a list picker with multiple options, and bring up a date picker, which could be useful to reserve an appointment at a store. It's possible that Apple itself may start using Business Chat as a new communication channel for Apple retail stores and the Apple online store.

Business Chat will launch as a public beta with iOS 11.3. According to Apple, select businesses such as Hilton, Discover, and Wells Fargo will support iMessage Business Chat at launch.

ARKit

iOS 11.3 will bring the first major update to ARKit, the augmented reality framework Apple introduced with iOS 11 last year. Dubbed ARKit 1.5, the new version will address one of the most common criticisms by developers who adopted ARKit in their apps: in addition to horizontal surfaces (like tables and chairs), ARKit on iOS 11.3 will support vertical surfaces like walls and doors, and it'll be able to map irregularly shaped ones such as circular tables too. In talking to developers of ARKit software last year, lack of support for recognizing walls and placing objects on them was one of the most frequent complaints, so it's good to see Apple getting rid of that limitation during the iOS 11 release cycle.

Furthermore, Apple says that ARKit will use new computer vision techniques to "find and recognize the position" of 2D images such as signs, posters, and artwork. These images can then be integrated into AR experiences to create even more immersive scenes that blend AR graphics with real-world movements and imagery. Apple's provided example is filling a museum with interactive exhibits or "bringing a movie poster to life", so it'll be fascinating to see what developers will create through built-in recognition of 2D images via the iPhone's camera in ARKit mode. Speaking of which, Apple also confirmed that ARKit's camera will offer 50% greater resolution and auto-focus in iOS 11.3, which should result in a sharper, more detailed perspective.

Batteries and Performance

As previously announced by Apple and later hinted by Tim Cook, iOS 11.3 adds new features to show battery health, with contextual recommendations if it needs to be serviced. The new screen will be available under Settings ⇾ Battery for the iPhone 6 and later.

In addition, the power management feature that "dynamically manages maximum performance to prevent unexpected shutdowns", otherwise known as throttling, will become an option that can be turned off in Settings ⇾ Battery as well, available on the iPhone 6, iPhone 6 Plus, iPhone SE, iPhone 6s, iPhone 6s Plus, iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus.

According to Apple, both the battery health and performance throttling setting will not be available in today's first beta of iOS 11.3, but will instead be coming in a later beta release.

Health Records

Also announced today with a dedicated press release, Health Records is a new section of the Health app that connects hospitals and clinics with iPhone users so they can see their medical data from multiple providers in a unified interface.

Essentially, patients from participating institutions will have their information organized into a single view and receive notifications for lab results, conditions, medications, allergies, and more. All these data points are encrypted, protected with a passcode, and beautifully integrated with the design of the Health app in iOS 11.

From Apple's press release:

“Our goal is to help consumers live a better day. We’ve worked closely with the health community to create an experience everyone has wanted for years — to view medical records easily and securely right on your iPhone,” said Jeff Williams, Apple’s COO. “By empowering customers to see their overall health, we hope to help consumers better understand their health and help them lead healthier lives.”

“Streamlining information sharing between patients and their caregivers can go a long way towards making the patient experience a positive one,” said Stephanie Reel, Chief Information Officer at Johns Hopkins Medicine. “This is why we are excited about working with Apple to make accessing secure medical records from an iPhone as simple for a patient as checking email.”

As part of the iOS 11.3 beta, Health Records will be available to the patients of the following medical institutions:

• Johns Hopkins Medicine - Baltimore, Maryland
• Cedars-Sinai - Los Angeles, California
• Penn Medicine - Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
• Geisinger Health System - Danville, Pennsylvania
• UC San Diego Health - San Diego, California
• UNC Health Care - Chapel Hill, North Carolina
• Rush University Medical Center - Chicago, Illinois
• Dignity Health - Arizona, California and Nevada
• Ochsner Health System - Jefferson Parish, Louisiana 
• MedStar Health -  Washington, D.C., Maryland and Virginia
• OhioHealth - Columbus, Ohio
• Cerner Healthe Clinic - Kansas City, Missouri

According to Apple, more medical facilities will connect to Health Records "in the coming months", offering patients access to the new feature on their iPhones. Apple will provide more details for health institutions on this webpage.

And More...

There are other new features coming to iOS 11.3, and possibly even more that will be discovered by users in the upcoming beta. Here's a list of what Apple announced this morning:

Music videos in Apple Music. Apple appears to be taking a shot at YouTube with the addition of music videos to Apple Music. While certain video clips were available in Apple Music before, Apple now says that users "can stream all the music videos they want without being interrupted by ads"; these include "the hottest new videos" in addition to classics and videos from their favorite artists back-to-back. The new initiative will also offer new music video playlists in Apple Music, and it'll be interesting to see how this increased amount of video content will be integrated with Apple Music's interface and personalized recommendations.

Apple News updates. iOS 11.3 builds upon the video features introduced in September with a new Video group in the For You section that aggregates the "most important" videos of the day (these were previously tucked away in the News Editors' Picks channel), plus improved Top Stories.

HomeKit software authentication. Also announced with iOS 11, it appears that software authentication for home automation devices by third-party manufacturers will actually become available with iOS 11.3. As I detailed in my review of iOS 11, this feature has the potential to considerably expand the breadth and depth of the HomeKit ecosystem by adding HomeKit support to existing devices that don't integrate with Apple's APIs yet.

Support for AML. Advanced Mobile Location is a caller location technique that automatically sends a user's current location when making a call to emergency services. AML is currently deployed in the UK, Estonia, Lithuania, Belgium, Iceland, Finland, Ireland, New Zealand and Austria.

It's now become an annual tradition that the third major update to iOS, usually previewed at the beginning of the year and launched in the Spring, contains a bevy of new features and substantial improvements to the overall experience. We'll be taking a deeper look at all the changes in iOS 11.3 for its final public release; personally, as someone who reviewed iOS 11 in depth, I'm curious to see how features announced today will impact my daily iPhone X usage, but also if the iPad – arguably, the focus of iOS 11 in September – will get any attention with iOS 11.3.

A first developer beta of iOS 11.3 will be released today, with a public beta to follow. You can find all previous (and future) iOS 11 coverage here.

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When this morning's news regarding iOS 11.3 made no mention of Messages in iCloud, many feared the feature was delayed indefinitely. But with the release of the first developer beta, it's now been confirmed that Messages in iCloud is available in 11.3. Guilherme Rambo reports for 9to5Mac:

With the release of iOS 11.3 beta 1 and corresponding developer release notes, Apple announced that iOS 11.3 includes the Messages in iCloud feature. Messages will prompt users to turn on Messages in iCloud on first launch after upgrading to beta 1. Users with two-factor authentication and iCloud Backups enabled will get Messages in iCloud enabled automatically.

It's not certain that Messages in iCloud will make its way into the public release of iOS 11.3, but its presence in the first beta is a positive sign at least.

First announced at WWDC last June as an iOS 11 feature, Messages in iCloud is just what it sounds like: all your Messages across all your devices are stored in iCloud and kept in sync. The feature was present throughout the iOS 11 beta cycle last summer, but was removed before iOS 11's public release. I never had any issues with it during the beta season, but clearly some users did, causing Apple to delay the feature until its reappearance now.

→ Source: 9to5mac.com

Apple hasn’t announced a date by which it will end 32-bit app support on macOS, but the beta release of macOS 10.13.4 includes notifications signaling to users that the transition to 64-bit apps has begun. Today, Apple told Jim Dalrymple of The Loop that it will begin alerting customers if they are using 32-bit apps. Dalrymple says:

At this point, the alert is more of a gentle reminder to users that their apps are out of date. You will receive an alert once per 32-bit app, so it won’t be an annoyance, but certainly something you should pay attention too.

Apple first signaled that support for 32-bit apps would be ending at WWDC last summer.

As Steve Troughton-Smith pointed out on Twitter today, the signs point to a swift deprecation of 32-bit apps:

Among the evidence he cites is a switch included in the Xcode 9.3 beta that lets developers turn off 32-bit support in macOS 10.13.4 when testing their apps, speculating that:

If Troughton-Smith is correct that macOS 10.14 may have no 32-bit app support other than via a virtual machine, the transition would be notable for its speed. On iOS, Apple spent three years suggesting in a series of escalating steps that developers transition to 64-bit apps.

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Picture credit: Pivotal Labs office, Sydney.

A few days ago, someone on Twitter asked me this question “What skills do you wish you had as a beginner software developer?” When I saw the tweet notification, it got me thinking. I asked myself, “Celestine, given where you’re now and what you know today, what one skill do you wish you had learned as a beginner software developer?” For the first 10 minutes, I had different things run through my mind — learn CSS better, understand the inner workings of Javascript, focus on learning how to write vanilla Javascript before jumping to a tool like jQuery (make no mistake, jQuery is one solid tool that has saved me and millions of developers around the world unnecessary headache), get a better grip of CS fundamentals.

But the more I spent time pondering over this question, the more I realized that, while all the interesting things I listed above made a lot of sense, none of these things really mattered or still matters in the grand scheme of things. The one skill that I think will make all the difference for any beginner developer is learning how to deal and relate to other humans.

Often times, the mistake we make as developers is thinking we need to learn one more technology or get to the proverbial 10x. But the truth is, soft skills trump’s every other thing. No matter how smart you’re as an engineer, if you have poor people skills, you wouldn’t get too far. This is especially important if you are working in a team and even more important if you’re leading that team. Some of the most amazing teams aren’t teams led by the smartest (tech smart) people. They are teams with leaders that are in sync with their human side.

Your team members will move mountains for you and the team if you lead with empathy. I have seen this happen more than once. People will readily help if they know you’re just a decent human. This is why I think a regular one-on-one between team leads and team members is super important. It’s not just okay to assume you’re doing things right, ask people during one-on-one how you can better serve them and make their work a lot more enjoyable.

We need to flip the concept of daily stand-ups and sprint retrospective. We need to hold another one(we will make up a name for it) and just let people talk, not technical stuff, but just about anything bothering them.

A team is strong and healthy when they have team members and team leads with good people skills

I once led a team where a certain team member wasn’t delivering. I knew he could do a lot more, but for some reason, his head wasn’t just in the game. I pulled him aside and asked what the problem was, it turns out, in addition to work, he was dealing with a sick mum. Not just that, his mum’s hospital bill was also his responsibility. And this was getting to him. I mean, you can’t imagine a person in this state to bring their A-game to the table. It is not just possible.

A team is strong and healthy when they have team members and team leads with good people skills. Bad attitudes are cancerous. They spread very quickly. If you lead a team, be nice to your teammates. Life goes beyond shipping and hitting business goals. Just be a decent HUMAN; that person people want to work with and bounce ideas off.

mkalus shared this story from Price Tags.

Vancouver’s Mobi (by Shaw Go) has some interesting times ahead. Next-gen dockless  systems are edging nearer.  Costs march downwards as competition rears its head.

First is Ubike Technologies Inc (U-bicycle), who’ve put 160 bikes into Victoria, and opened an office in 2017 in Vancouver.  Promo clip HERE.

While it’s one thing to be the first to put bike-share into a city, it’s a new world when the second comes along.

It becomes harder for each to compete, due to revenue split. But the business should eventually drain to the low-cost entrant, as long as other things like coverage and ease-of-use are the same. In this case, U-bicycle charges $1 for 30 minutes, drawn from cash deposited in the rider’s account. Mobi has a much broader and more complex charge scheme based on daily, quarterly or yearly membership fees.  But you’d be hard-pressed to ride enough to get your per-ride Mobi costs down to $1 for 30 minutes.

For the rider, it becomes a choice:  both systems, or one.  A membership fee at one or a deposit at the other. One app or two. For the city, it is more complex.  Several hundred docks, or several thousand bikes at racks and lamp-posts within the coverage area. Stranding a supported system vs. no-cost entrant.  And who knows what lurks behind the scenes in the agreements and understandings with Shaw around their sponsorship.

The concept of integrating Mobi and U-bicycle looks like a non-starter.  Starting with the apps, then cost structure, money-handling, telecommunications, back-end logistics, customer service, fines and pick-up fees, revenue-splitting, cost allocation.  [Shudder: Two bosses].

Second is Dropbike, recently approved by city Council in Kelowna for up to 1,200 bikes in an 18-month no-cost pilot starting April, 2018. Interesting difference to U-bicycle is the Dropbike concept of “parking havens”, where riders are encouraged to leave their bikes when the ride is over. Cost is really low, at $1 per hour, with extra cost if you don’t drop the bike at a haven. Otherwise the two systems are similar, and so are the bikes. Dropbike won’t supply helmets.

Kelowna’s regional programs manager Jerry Dombowsky shows off one of the Dropbike cycles that will be used in the city’s new bike-share program while addressing council Monday.—Image: Alistair Waters/Capital News

Apple's Ricky Mondello has a great thread on some of the improvements for users and web developers coming to the next version of Safari, which is available in today's betas of iOS 11.3 and macOS 10.13.4.

Among the highlights: animated GIFs can be replaced with silent videos; Intelligent Tracking Prevention is getting even smarter; Safari Reader has an improved parser and support for link blogs; Password AutoFill for Apps, which debuted with iOS 11, now works in web views inside apps. If you're on the iOS 11.3 beta, you can try the improved Reader on this very post. As for GIFs, here at MacStories we already replaced them with silent .mp4 files loaded via native auto-play (see one in action here), but we're considering adding support for video content in <img> tags as well. I'm also glad to see Apple expanding support for modern web app technologies including Service Workers and Web App Manifest.

You can find the full documentation for Safari 11.1 on Apple's website here.

→ Source: twitter.com

I published the first draft of Evergreen’s Coding Guidelines yesterday.

I posted this because I’d like to have people help me with the app — but I’m not ready yet. Or, rather, a few people who I know are starting to help, and I want to keep it small for now since I’ve never done this before.

If you’re interested in helping, I hope you’ll forgive me as I take it slow and learn how to manage an open source app with many contributors.

* * *

This isn’t the only app I want to do: there are several others. Ideally I’ll get to the point where I’m managing several open source apps — assuming people are interested in helping, which is a big assumption — and it’s all going great. But it will take time to get there.

(All my ideas are Mac and iOS apps that have something to do with the open web. I’ve always been happiest when working at that intersection.)

Anyway… it seemed like a good idea to write up coding guidelines early, so I did.

PS When I was faced with that blank document window, I started by typing the words “No subclasses,” because sheesh I really, really hate subclasses. The rest tumbled out.

Why is the middle ground between strategy and tactics so difficult to travel? Over the next month I will be writing about and around that question.

Trying to understand my successes and mistakes in this middle ground is the through line for much of my life. While I’ve chipped away at it, I haven’t done a sustained push to make sense of the journey or its trajectory. That kind of push needs some help, hence this exploratory visible effort.

What is this middle ground? In college I was part of a theater group that wrote a Broadway scale musical from scratch and staged it in the Spring. I was the production stage manager, which meant that I coordinated all rehearsals for the director and worked with the set designers, lighting designers, technical director, and musical director to make sure all of the pieces came together for opening night. I was also a student studying mathematics and taking a course about the math underneath managing complex projects.

Perfect opportunity.

I could take what I was learning in class, apply it directly to my extracurricular life, do less work, and get myself an easy A. You can guess where this ends. I squeaked out a C by admitting that I couldn’t figure out how to apply the technology to the creative chaos of producing an original show. And the curtain went up on opening night with the collective efforts of all of the cast and crew.

That was an early step on an exploration of how you mix people, processes, and technology to go from a germ of an idea to opening night. Opening night might involve actual curtains; it might also involve launching a new information system or an entirely new organization. What holds my attention is that middle space between the idea and its realization.

What I’ve learned is that there is a middle in this middle.

We know a lot about big ideas; we call it strategy in business and organizational settings.

We know a lot about the details of user interfaces, and writing code, and designing procedures, and arranging finances, and all of the tactics that go into a working organization.

In the middle, it gets fuzzy. As we move along that path from grand idea to final result, there is always an area of mysterious transition where we turn from grand thoughts to dirty work. We all know this. Some of us learn how to get across that transition; others seem trapped on one side or the other. Is there a way to eliminate or reduce the mystery and magic in the middle? This promises to be a messy but fruitful exploration. Stay tuned.

The post Exploring the messy middle appeared first on McGee's Musings.

“confusion is nothing new” :-) january 24, 2018 bicycling to work #changeyourliferideabike 24january2018-bicycling-to-work-1080p-180124_075847 - Change your life ride a bike

Photo by Stephy Miehle on Unsplash location 3900 N Sheridan Rd, Chicago, United States

I had not heard of Unsplash until I read this post on Medium which recommends giving away your photos for free. According to the author, he not only gets lots of thanks but also “substantial monetary gifts from people showing their appreciation for letting them use my work.”

What I do is license my photos on flickr using a Creative Commons license. And apparently I should use a newer version, but I will get around to that discussion later.

Right now I have recently been introduced to Pixsy which is also free which can track just where on the web my flickr photos are being used. A significant number are indeed following the terms and conditions set out in the license. None so far has either thanked me or showed their appreciation in more tangible form.

A couple of commercial users have actually made payments for specific uses of my pictures. But they did that some time ago, asked nicely before they used the picture and then some time elapsed before payment arrived. None of this has anything to do with Pixsy. And by “a couple” I mean exactly that. Two in twelve years.

Pixsy does also offer to help with resolutions. I have had a few hosting sites write to me and tell me that the commercial uses of my pictures that Pixsy found have been removed. Some other sites have simply vanished altogether. But there are a number of ongoing cases – and more that will not be resolved. Here are some of the replies I have had.

Case Update: Not Accepted – Unsupported Country

Dear Stephen,

Thank you for your submission to Pixsy’s Case Resolution Services.

Our Case Management Team identified that the infringing site, in this case, is located outside of our current coverage area.

…[details of my picture and its use here]

As a reminder, pages located in Russia, Africa, Southeast Asia and other select countries are not suitable for Pixsy’s Resolution Services, as we do not anticipate expanding to these jurisdictions soon.

So much for that then.

I have also had a number of responses from site owners like this one

Thank you for your email; however the URL in question [URL appears here] , is not on the [specified] network.

So that goes back to Pixsy and gets a response like this

I’m sorry your Takedown Notice wasn’t initially successful. This can happen when image users move server infrastructure. In this case it looks like they were previously part of the [named] network but are now part of [another named network].
Please try forwarding the original email to [abuse (at) new network]

Some others are still in process and they did tell me how they are doing overall

As 2017 came to a close, we celebrated a number of milestones – including passing 20,000 user signups! We are so thrilled to be helping creators from 72 countries find and fight image theft. Since our launch in 2015, your reactions, support, and trust hascontinued to energize and reinforce our mission to support your creativity and protect your copyright.

Together the Pixsy community has achieved some impressive numbers: (… and counting)

• 21,951 users from 72 countries

• 25,342,934 images uploaded and #ProtectedbyPixsy

• 162,924,315 matches found

• 35,881 cases submitted to Pixsy for resolution

• 26 partner law firms

• 1 dedicated Pixsy team

• 1 united mission to Find & Fight Image Theft

So that seems like a good reason to hope that we get a bit of result now and then – although the number of successfully completed cases (i.e. where the miscreants actually paid up or took down the image) is missing from the stats.

POSTSCRIPT
I did write to one of the offending commercial sites using the contact form on their web page. Within 24 hours I got this reply

“Thank you for bringing this to our attention, the image has been removed. ”

Which isn’t monetary reward but does acknowledge responsibility.

But what I want to know is if there is such a good source of free pictures as Unsplash why do people keep taking stuff which ought to be paid for?

Because I also got

Our Case Management Team identified the site you submitted as a spam or scraper site.

[image and URL details here]

“Scraper” sites aggregate pictures, articles and other copyrighted material from all over the web. Many of these sites do not host the images themselves–they hotlink from third parties– and are often operated by persons or entities outside Pixsy’s current coverage area. For these reasons, they are extremely difficult to track down and hold accountable.

Given the circumstances, the likelihood of obtaining a license fee payment in this situation is very low and we are unable to accept your case.

So when I started writing this I thought that it would help me straighten out my thinking and get me to a decision. You know, like the experience I often have of “I didn’t know what I thought about that until I heard what I was saying.” But I haven’t so I am hoping to see something useful in the comments.

By the way, I also wrote about this on my other blog but I really did not like the way Google’s Blogger handles my pictures – you just get the link not the image

Refinery29's Madeline Buxton has spent one hour testing a HomePod ahead of preorders going live tomorrow, and, like others noted at WWDC '17, she came away impressed with the small footprint of the device and its audio quality compared to other smart speakers.

This bit from her story is interesting:

Secondly, although everyone in your apartment will be able to use the speaker, only the person who sets up HomePod on their iCloud account will be able to send texts, set up reminders, and get calendar notifications via voice commands. Google Home and Amazon Echo, meanwhile, can recognize different voices and provide personalized content accordingly. (If you do set up personal notifications on HomePod, these will only be available when you are on the network, so you don't need to worry about your texts being read aloud at home when you are at work. If you don't want them read aloud when you're home, you can go into your HomeKit settings and turn off the notifications.)

To my knowledge, this is the first time we hear that HomePod does indeed support calendar notifications (which aren't mentioned on Apple's HomePod webpage). As Benjamin Mayo notes, details on how personalized calendar alerts would work are still unclear.

Update: Refinery29 has updated their story to clarify that HomePod will not support calendar notifications.

In addition, I assume that the ability to detect when the HomePod's owner is at home is powered by the new user presence feature added to HomeKit in iOS 11. Even without a HomePod, iOS 11 lets you set up HomeKit automations with conditions that determine whether you or someone else is at home. The HomePod, as a HomeKit hub, will likely take advantage of the same API, which, in my experience with HomeKit automation in our apartment, has worked well since my girlfriend and I updated to iOS 11 on all our devices in September.

→ Source: refinery29.com

Michael Dowden, Martine Dowden, Michael McGinnis, O'Reilly, Jan 28, 2018

This is a glimpse at the underpinnings of the modern web. OAuth allows you to use your login from one website on another website. When you see those boxes saying 'log in with Google' or 'log in with Facebook' you're seeing OAuth. Firebase is a no-SQL database application. It allows for free-form data storage. The article is "a start-to-finish example with Angular and Typescript." Angulay is a Javascript framework that manages web applications. Typescript is a type of Javascript that compiles to Javacript (confusing? Javascript has an awkward and wordy syntax, so Typescript makes it a lot easier to create Javascript code). What makes all this work in 15 minutes is that " Firebase is a Google product, you already have a developer account by virtue of signing up for Firebase. Therefore, Firebase requires no manual creation of API keys for OAuth."

Joe Arets, Bob Danna, Charles Jennings, Laci Loew, Chief Learning Officer, Jan 28, 2018

This is a pretty interesting article and is worth reading in its own right. But I want to digress in this post with a comment that is really only periphrial to the article. The author writes, "evidence suggests that teams containing or connected to experts always outperform even the best and brightest of individual experts, particularly when enabled with software or technology." Yes. I have no reason to doubt this. The team outperforns the individual. If they're doing the same thing. My experience with teams is that they want to do the wrong thing very well. I find myself working alone a lot because the team wants to work with much more traditional (even 'folk') versions of knowledge and learning, notions that have to my mind long since been discredited. This to my mind is why diversity and autonomy are so vital to networks.

mkalus shared this story from Ulysses Blog.

Apple’s Files app, released with iOS 11, allows you to access and manage your files from different sources in one place. Dealing with files and documents is now easier and much more transparent than before. You can open text documents for editing in Ulysses and import Word documents into Ulysses. You can of course also export your texts from Ulysses, and store them in a folder of your choice. Here is all you need to know.

Preparations

Before you start, you may want to add your preferred sources to Files. Open Files on your iPhone or iPad, go to Locations, and tap Edit top right. To make your storage providers of choice accessible via Files, turn on the respective toggles.

Editing in Place vs. Importing Into Your Ulysses Library

Ulysses distinguishes between different file types, and the way Ulysses is going to handle a file depends on its format.

So, if the file in question is a text or Markdown file, Ulysses will per default open it in a dedicated library section called “External Files” in Ulysses. In that case, Ulysses acts like a standard text editor: changes are saved back to the original file.

Because of Ulysses being a plain text editor at its core, you can’t use Ulysses to edit DOCX, HTML or RTF files directly. So, files of these types will be imported as new sheets into your Ulysses library. The original document will remain untouched

Open/Import via the Files App

Now there are two ways for you to get your documents into Ulysses: Either via the Files app, or from within Ulysses.

In the Files app, perform a long tap on any file. From the popup menu, select Share, and then “Copy to Ulysses” or “Open in Ulysses”, respectively.

The Files app is eager to learn, that is, next time with the same file type in the same folder, you’ll only need a single tap to perform the same action.

Open via Ulysses

You can also start from within Ulysses.

For being able to open text and Markdown files from within Ulysses, the “External Files” section of your library must be enabled. If isn’t yet, open the library settings, tap “Library” and turn on the respective toggle. Go back and tap Done to return to the library.

Now, you can open the “External Files” section in Ulysses. The cloud-on-file icon bottom right will let you browse your folders – tap any plain text or Markdown file to add it to the section, and tap again to start editing.

Import via Ulysses

From within Ulysses, import can be performed easily for any of the above mentioned file types. Just swipe left on the group you want to import to, tap the ... icon and choose “Import…”. You can then browse your folders and select a document or text file.

Hint: ZIP files will work as well; they can contain multiple files and/or subfolders.

iPad Only: Import via Drag & Drop

Things are even easier when working on iPad, with Ulysses and the Files app in Split View.

To set up a Split View on your iPad, simply open one app, e.g. Ulysses. Now swipe up on the screen to open the Dock. Then, drag the icon of the other app you want to open — Files, in our case — to the right or left screen margin. Adjust the app separator if necessary.

Now you can access your Ulysses library side by side with your Files folders. Simply drag & drop text documents to any Ulysses group in order to import them. Regardless of their original format, they will be copied as sheets to your library.

Export and Store Ulysses Texts

Exporting and storing your Ulysses writings is also easy thanks to Files. Just follow these steps:

1. In any Ulysses sheet, tap Export top right, just as usual.
2. Select an exporter, PDF as an example, and specify the export settings if necessary.
3. Tap the … icon and select Upload.
4. Now you can choose a location to save the resulting file to.

And that’s it for the moment! If you want to learn more about managing your documents on iOS with the Files app, please refer to this support article by Apple.

Rogers has posted strong results in its final fiscal quarter of 2017, following what has been a high-performing year for the company.

For the three-month period ended December 31st, 2017, total revenue increased by 3 percent to $3.632 billion CAD. This is the second quarter in a row in which the company’s total revenue has increased by 3 percent year over year. This number spans all of Rogers’ businesses, including wireless, cable, business solutions and media.

Rogers attributes its strong quarter to wireless service revenue growth of 7 percent and 9 percent adjusted operating profit (AOP). Postpaid net additions for the quarter came in at 72,000, with a churn rate of 1.48 percent, up from 1.35 percent during the same period last year.

In the earnings call, Rogers blamed the higher rate of churn on a technical issue with its rate plan changing system.

“We believe the impact for that five-day period was about 35,000 deactivations,” said president and CEO Joe Natale, adding that without the issue, Rogers estimates churn would’ve been 1.33 percent.

In terms of the full year, wireless service revenue growth is up 7 percent overall, while AOP growth stands at 8 percent, which is the highest those numbers have been since 2009. As for specific postpaid additions, the carrier added net 354,000 subscribers in fiscal 2017, with a low churn rate of 1.20 percent — once again, the best results it has posted in these categories since 2010. In total, the company ended fiscal 2017 with 10,442,000 wireless subscribers.

Rogers says its achieved these results on the back of “subscriber growth and a greater number of subscribers on higher-rate plans from our various brands, including Rogers Share Everything plans.” Specifically, the growth in the fourth quarter shows the results of the wildly successful $60/10GB promo plan period the carrier sparked in December, which followed the launch of Freedom’s Big Gig plans.

Breaking out wireless financials, Rogers posted $2.189 billion in revenue this quarter, up from $2,058 billion during the same period last year. Average revenue per user (ARPU) is now at $63.46, up by $2.74 year over year.

Rogers says it expects “steady growth in revenue” in 2018.

“We delivered excellent results in 2017, with the best financial and subscriber performance in many years,” said Natale in a statement accompanying the report.

“We also reported strong financial results in the fourth quarter, including growth in revenue, adjusted operating profit and margins. Our 2018 guidance reflects accelerated growth in profit and free cash flow along with well-timed, strategic investments in our networks. We enter 2018 bullish about the growth in our core business and with a clear plan focused on enhancing our customers’ experience and capturing cost efficiencies to drive sustainable growth.”

Source: Rogers

The post Rogers posts highest yearly wireless revenue growth since 2009 in Q4 2017 earnings report appeared first on MobileSyrup.

Canadian national telecom Rogers is reportedly testing its Ignite TV IPTV platform among employees.

Rogers CEO Joe Natale revealed this information during an investor call for the company’s fourth quarter 2018 earnings results.

According to Natale, the platform is currently being tested by 500 employees, and Rogers is adding 120 to 150 beta testers each week.

“This is a premium product and therefore it must have premium experience,” said Natale, during the January 25th, 2018 investors call.

The company has yet to formally announce a public launch date, but Natale said he expects a full commercial launch later this year.

Before then, the company will allow customers to trial the service as well.

Rogers’ IPTV service is based on U.S. telecom Comcast’s X1 technology.

The Canadian telecom had its own proprietary IPTV platform that was eventually shelved in late 2016.

Rogers first announced that its X1-powered IPTV platform would launch in Q1 2018. However, during the company’s Q3 2017 earnings call, Natale walked back these statements, explaining that the service would “soft launch” in Q1 2018 instead.

Additional reporting on this story was contributed by Rose Behar.

The post Rogers’ Ignite TV IPTV platform is now in ‘full employee trial’ appeared first on MobileSyrup.

Rogers released its fourth quarter earnings for 2017 today, showing a strong fourth quarter performance due in part to the success of its $60/10GB promotional plan.

Rogers set of a promotional pricing battle in December 2017 with its competitors after launching a plan with 10GB of data for $60 in Western Canada and eventually bringing it to Ontario, its largest provincial market.

In its fourth quarter earnings call, Rogers CEO and president Joe Natale stated the company decided to launch the promotion when it did to “pull forward” the usual promotional volume during that time of year.

“The debate we had was, we can pull it forward or wait for someone else to pull it forward,” he said.

When directly questioned on whether it was in response to Freedom Mobile’s Big Gig plans, launched in October, and thus a sign of fear on the company’s part, Natale responded that the promotion had “nothing to do with any of our competitors.”

He added that Rogers has been competing with Freedom for 10 years and has seen “these types of rate plans” in the market before.

“There is zero concern from the board, from management whatsoever,” Natale stated.

While the promotions did prompt growth in the fourth quarter, there was also a downside related to systems failure.

On its call, Rogers noted that during the peak promotional period it experienced technical issues with its price plan change system, increasing the rate at which subscribers left the company during the quarter (known as the churn rate).

The churn rate for the fourth quarter stood at 1.48 percent, up from 1.35 percent during the same period last year.

“We believe the impact for that five-day period was about 35,000 deactivations,” said Natale, stating Rogers believes it added 15 basis points to the churn rate, which would have been 1.33 percent without the issue.

In response to what Rogers learned from the promotion, Natale said it confirmed what they knew about Canadian data appetites. He also promised investors that the momentum would carry forward.

During the call, Natale did not address recent CBC reports that Rogers has a high pressure sales environment. MobileSyrup did, however, obtain a memo to all employees from Natale in which he states: “There is no room in our organization for unethical or unfair practices – this applies to everyone at all levels.”

For the three-month period ended December 31st, 2017, total revenue increased by 3 percent year-over-year to $3.632 billion CAD, of which its wireless business contributed $2.189 billion.

In total, the company ended fiscal 2017 with 10,442,000 wireless subscribers.

The post Rogers CEO says board has ‘zero concern’ about Freedom Mobile appeared first on MobileSyrup.

After 8 amazing years investing with my brilliant colleagues, the fun, funny and genius investors at Founder Collective, and after Jyri’s two years working with the great, brilliant, soulful and amazing team at True Ventures, we — Jyri Engeström and Caterina Fake– are busting loose, breaking out, getting down and starting up our very own fund, yes indeed, it’s Yes VC.

We’re doing Pre-Seed, as it’s called these days, and Seed investing — investing in great, visionary, early stage companies. We’ll be raising up to $50 million. We’ve got some amazing LPs already and are seeking a few more. We’ll invest in about 20–30 companies over the next several years. We’ll roll in our investments in Orchid, Spell and Gaze. And we’ll be continuing to look for world-changing companies like the ones we’ve invested in in the past, like Etsy, Kickstarter, Stack Overflow, and Cloudera. We’ve made over 40 investments as angel investors and with our respective firms, but it’s just a start. The opportunities we’ve missed because of not being able to put in bigger checks, and follow on, were giving us a feeling of No.

Years ago, I gave an interview on Inc. magazine about the struggles of getting my first company off the ground, as an unknown and fledgling entrepreneur, and the amazing breakthrough we had, getting into PC Forum, and getting Esther Dyson on board as an investor. At the end of that interview I had said something that later became one of those Pinterest graphics:

“When the world says No No No No No, and you hear a Yes, go towards that Yes as hard as you can.”

I have swum in The Sea of No, which is an inevitable part of the entrepreneurial journey. Sometimes the No means “you’re on the wrong track”. Sometimes the No means: “no one wants this product or service”. Sometimes the No means: “pick something else to work on”. And sometimes the No means, “you’re just not cut out for this”. If you’re a startup that’s only heard Yes, who’s never been rejected, who raised money with no effort, who slid easily into the warm waters of infinite funding, free lunch, foosball and no discipline, you either got it just right–which almost never happens!–or it’s a cause for concern. But when The Beach of Yes appears on the horizon of The Sea of No, where you, the spent swimmer, has been struggling to stay afloat, you might just be–finally, finally, finally–on The True Path.

So. We’re excited about this. Major changes are afoot in the workings of the internet and in society and culture at large. Suppressed voices are finally being heard. We are looking at the end of cars. And though we once believed the internet was about the equitable distribution of power, we have lived through a massive consolidation of power. If people like you don’t get involved in disrupting the new power and building the future, rapacious trolls, megacorps and mercenaries will have their way with all of us.

Is the internet once again reinventing itself as a free and open place where users own their words, and voices and identities? Will we be able to live free of businesses that lure us in to harvest and sell our data? Is it safe to wade back into the water? Is now the time to enter the fray? We think so, yes.

All the things we love–humanity, community, possibility, opportunity–are once again ascendant. Let’s make the future, let’s do great things.

Yes? Yes.

I blog here every weekday. I could lie to myself and say I do it for you, my readers. I don’t. Sorry, but I do it for me. Since I became a freelancer, there is no one to tell me which jobs to concentrate on, which deadlines to meet, which directions to head. Sure, there … Continued

The post Is it selfish or smart to do something creative every day? appeared first on without bullshit.