Apple welcomed the press into its brand-new Steve Jobs Theater today to show off its latest slate of products. Many waited with bated breath for the new gizmos the company would announce. All morning, before the keynote began, the company’s stock remained pretty stagnant. Then, once it started, the price began to rise.
As Tim Cook announced a new Apple Watch and Apple Store design, it rose steadily. Then, at around 1:55 p.m. EST, Apple stock peaked at $163.54. Coincidentally, this is also right when Apple announced its much anticipated new iPhone products: iPhone 8 and iPhone X. Since then, the price has fallen, eventually falling below its opening price of $161.50.
The price is very likely to bounce back, of course, and shares are still up from last week when they bottomed out at $159.63. But if we take this immediate Wall Street reaction as any indication, not everyone is excited for the new iPhone models.
One day last year, about 30 fifth graders at Seldens Landing Elementary School in Virginia were issued tablets and asked to answer questions about cyber-bullying. They started with the statement: “Sticks and stones may break your bones, but words will never hurt you.” Next, the kids had to take a poll: Is that really true or false?
As students punched in their answers, the tablets relayed the results in near real-time, anonymously, to their teacher. There to assist was Alex Springer-Post, who runs the school’s “discovery lab”–basically, she’s the in-house tech expert for digitally-enhanced lessons–who was shocked by the results: Turns out, 65% of kids thought marked ‘True.’ The saying might work for playground comebacks, but they’re not true at all, especially in the age of cyber-bullying, where the taunting can go wide and feel unrelenting.
“They can respond and they’re letting us know without having to come and say it.” [Image: courtesy Nearpod]Next, the tablet offered examples of cyber-bullying on common apps that the kids might use like Messenger or SnapChat. Through the devices, Springer-Post surveyed who had seen that sort of abuse before and if they’d been individually exposed to it.
For Springer-Post, the lesson was so powerful because it allowed those being bullied to understand that they weren’t alone, and those being bullies learn about the pain inflicted by their actions. “They can respond and they’re letting us know without having to come and say it,” she says. Students who might otherwise be afraid to speak out publicly had alerted teachers to a serious problem and helped them start to solve it.
That lesson is part of the “digital citizenship” curriculum created by Nearpod, a digital learning company with interactive lesson plans that is challenging traditional textbook companies for a share the estimated $10 billion educational material market. In some versions, which vary by grade level, there’s inventive ways to teach kids how to defuse bullying, like a cartoon-panel screen with boxes for them to draw or write something a cyber-bully might say or do, followed by how they might response to it, and then what a “positive outcome” might look like.
earpod says it has been been adopted by one-in-10 classrooms around the country, reaching roughly 5 to 6 million kids in both public and private schools. [Image: courtesy Nearpod]Nearpod, which launched in 2012, has created software-based, device-specific lesson plans with features that include built-in collaborative spaces for students to sharing ideas (versus the time-waster of going around the room in a circle), and various polls and quizzes for teachers (with different privacy settings) to quickly grasp class opinions or the overall understanding of what’s being taught. Some lessons are augmented with videos, VR-experiences, or the expectation of doing more research on the fly because the device is connected to the web.
So far, Nearpod says it has been been adopted by one-in-10 classrooms around the country, reaching roughly 5 to 6 million kids in both public and private schools. Part of the reason, according to founder CEO and cofounder Guido Kovalskys, is that the company has embraced the idea that school tech has reached it’s tipping point: About 50% of all school kids are estimated to have access to portable devices like laptops or tablets during school time, either through bring-your-own-device policies or school sharing and loan out programs, which pass out gear at the start of class and then collect it.
The popularity of devices in general have left many teachers worried about both keeping kids on task and ensuring their behavior online isn’t hurting each other. That’s where classes like Digital Citizenship come in. The company developed it in partnership with Common Sense Media, a nonprofit that advocates for the safe uses of technology around children.
Kovalskys says the digital teaching revolution came with a catch: “Wait a minute, all of these kids are having new technology 24/7 in their hands and teachers don’t really know that that implies in terms of cyber-bullying and building your online identity,” he says. So in addition to their traditional offerings in math, science, and writing, “we’re trying to solve that gap.”
Nearpod’s digital citizenship programming rolled out in 2015 and includes program for all grade levels from elementary through high school. It includes topics like internet safety, self-image and identity, relationships and communication, privacy and security, and digital footprint and reputation. While the cyber-bullying component of this course work was always important, Kovalskys notes that it’s become “a lot more relevant” as connectivity continues to increase and America appears more virtually connected yet ideologically divided. (In some places, school bullying increased when Trump was elected.)
“The business model is a classic [software as a service], platform but it’s very unique to the industry that we are able to build this from the bottom up, meaning from the teachers up, in an industry that traditionally behaves kind of top down.” [Image: courtesy Nearpod]The citizenship program is currently Nearpod’s best-selling class across all grade levels. At least 228,000 teachers downloaded it with over 10,000 hours of lesson time spent last year. Kovalskys realizes that Nearpod platforms is well-suited for such “human-centered, socially, emotionally learning” opportunities. The company recently launched an iCivics curriculum, along with rather heavy critical thinking exercises like “What Do Car Accidents And Cancer Have In Common.”
The company is actually ahead of the curve in another way. Washington state recently passed a law mandating the incorporation of digital citizenship classes in its classrooms, which may boost demand. In March, the company reportedly raised $21 million in a series B round, bringing it’s total funding to roughly $30 million, and counts Salesforce’s Marc Benioff as an angel investor.
Since its inception, the company has tried to generate grassroots support among teachers by offering free versions of classes, which teachers may use before upgrading to a subscription-based premium content model, which also allows more than the standard 30-kid limit per session and has additional storage for teachers. The company says it services over a million teachers but is coy about how exactly how many buy up.
“The business model is a classic [software as a service], platform but it’s very unique to the industry that we are able to build this from the bottom up, meaning from the teachers up, in an industry that traditionally behaves kind of top down,” he says. Nearpod isn’t profitable yet. Kovalskys says revenues have risen 465% over the last three years, with most of that plowed back into growing the company.
At Seldens Landing, even the kindergartners are taking digital citizenship now, although Springer-Post tries not to act like that’s unusual. “I call it a fancy pencil,” she says about the tablets the kids work on. “I don’t want the kids to see it as anything special. It’s just how we’re learning, how we’re engaging.”
Today at an industry event, JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon didn’t mince words when it came to bitcoin. “It’s a fraud,” he said, adding that it “won’t end well,” reports Bloomberg.
Dimon said that he would fire any of his traders if they began trading bitcoin. “For two reasons,” he said, “It’s against our rules, and they’re stupid.”
It should be noted that Dimon has long been bearish on bitcoin, likely because JPMorgan, for years, has attempted to build digital currencies that would rival it. In 2013, the bank filed a patent for an electronic currency that bore a striking resemblance to bitcoin.
Dimon, however, isn’t the only figure warning about the bitcoin bubble; U.K. financial watchdog the Financial Conduct Authority issued a striking warning today to those investing in cryptocurrencies. It warned that doing so is extremely risky and investors should be prepared to lose all of the money they invested.
The market has reacted. Shortly after Dimon’s comments were made public, bitcoin prices dropped. The price peaked today at $4,368.22, and is currently at $4,101.49.
Bitcoin’s price today, screenshot via Coindsek
Bitcoin has been steadily rising over the last year. Although with Dimon not a fan, who’s to say what longevity the cryptocurrency will have.
Edward Snowden and hardware hacker Andrew “bunnie” Huang have built a prototype iPhone add-on called the Introspection Engine that will detect if the devices are secretly transmitting.
The tool is meant to help users like journalists and human rights activists—especially those in repressive regimes that have smartphone-hacking capabilities—verify that when their phones are in airplane mode, they’re truly not sending or receiving signals. Developed as open source hardware, the overlay sits in an iPhone’s battery case and displays when the phone is using its Wi-Fi, cellphone, Bluetooth, or GPS radio systems.
[Photo: bunnie Huang, Edward Snowden]“Today, journalists, activists, and rights workers occupy a position of vulnerability,” Huang and Snowden write. They cite the case of reporter Marie Colvin, who, according to a lawsuit against the Syrian government filed in 2016, was deliberately targeted and killed by Syrian government artillery fire in 2012. Her location was discovered in part through the use of intercept devices that monitored satellite-dish and cellphone communications.
“A great portion of this vulnerability originates from the opacity of modern devices,” they write. “There are simply no tools available through which one can determine what is happening beneath the glass and icons, preventing the development of a natural understanding of dangerous device states.”
Top Secret slides extracted from the Snowden Archive illustrating one intelligence agency’s perspective on metadata and location services offered by a major US brand. [Image: Huang and Snowden]Their next step is to develop what they call a “Silent Phone”—a modified iPhone with its broadcasting systems disabled, something that they say is relatively easy to do with a few tweaks to the iPhone’s hardware. The devices would still be able to communicate through wired Ethernet connections, potentially sent through routers connected to the anonymizing Tor network, letting users safely connect their phones when needed without worrying about broadcast-based spying.
“Given the relative simplicity, robustness, and elegance of the Silent Phone solution, we intend to pivot our efforts from validating the Introspection Engine to creating a set of Silent Phones and associated wired connectivity accessories for field use by journalists,” they write.
One question: How might Apple might respond if the mods go into widespread use?While the company has generally defended users’ rights to secure communications, it’s never been a big fan of hackers tweaking its hardware. The authors say hardware differences make similar tweaks to some popular Android phones difficult, and it’s not inconceivable Apple could make its future phones—including versions of the phones it announced today—similarly hard to hack.
Chicago-based artists Petra Bachmaier and Sean Gallero have turned a Chicago courtyard into a haunting reenactment of a glacier’s death rattle.
Back in 2005, Douglas MacAyeal, a professor of geophysical science at the University of Chicago, recorded the unsettling sounds of a giant iceberg calving from the Ross Ice Shelf. According to Hyperallergic, Bachmaier and Gallero, who work under the name Luftwerk, took those recordings, put them on a seven-minute loop, and transformed them into a powerful, immersive sound installation, called “White Wanderer.” Inspired by the imminent breakup of the Larsen C ice shelf, which eventually produced an iceberg the size of Delaware, the artists raised money for the project on Kickstarter, and worked in partnership with the Natural Resources Defense Council and the University of Chicago to bring the project and their climate change soundtrack to life.
Now the immersive artwork has turned the courtyard of a rather anonymous office building into a powerful message about global warming and the world’s changing topography. If you’re in Chicago, check it out at Two North Riverside Plaza, and see the companion exhibition on view at the Navy Pier as part of Expo Chicago between September 13 and 17.
Mayor Ed Murray of Seattle is resigning after a fifth person, a cousin, stepped forward to accuse him of sexual abuse. He has continually denied previous allegations, and dismissed calls to resign, but this summer he said he would not seek a second term in the city’s upcoming mayoral elections. This afternoon, he wrote:
“I am announcing my resignation as mayor, effective at 5 p.m. tomorrow.
“While the allegations against me are not true, it is important that my personal issues do not affect the ability of our City government to conduct the public’s business.
“I’m proud of all that I have accomplished over my 19 years in the Legislature, where I was able to pass what were at the time the largest transportation packages in state history, a landmark gay civil rights bill and a historic marriage equality bill.
“And I am proud of what we have accomplished together at the City during my time as mayor, passing a nation-leading $15 minimum wage, and major progressive housing affordability and police accountability legislation, as well as negotiating an agreement to build a world-class arena that I believe in time will bring the NHL and NBA to Seattle.
“But it has also become clear to me that in light of the latest news reports it is best for the city if I step aside.
“To the people of this special city and to my dedicated staff, I am sorry for this painful situation.
“In the interest of an orderly transition of power, Council President Bruce Harrell will become Mayor upon my resignation, and will decide within the following five days whether he will fill out the remainder of my term. During this time Director of Operations Fred Podesta has been tasked with leading the transition.”
The Seattle Times reported Tuesday that Joseph Dyer, 54, said that Murray had repeatedly molested him when he was a teenager. He says Murray—who lived with Dyer’s family in New York after his mother passed away—forced him into sex while they shared a bedroom in Dyer’s childhood home. Murray has called the accusations part of a right-wing political mission to destroy him and repeatedly refused calls to resign; the latest accusation, Murray told the Times, is false and likely due to a family rift.
In a signed declaration Dyer has provided to a Seattle lawyer, he said he decided to come forward after seeing a press conference in which Murray denied previous accusations. His statement says:
“I am offering this declaration to rebut Murray’s claims that he never molested a child and/or the allegations against him were concocted as some sort of right-wing conspiracy. I do not know any of the other victims mentioned in this statement, and I am not part of any conspiracy. In fact, I am related to Murray.
The declaration also calls on Seattle’s elected officials to “do what is right and remove Murray from office.”
If you’ve ever gone furniture shopping on spec, you’ve probably seen something you liked, but weren’t sure how it would actually look in your home. Ikea says those days should be behind us.
Today, the Swedish home-furnishings giant unveiled its new augmented-reality app, a tool built for Apple’s iOS 11 using ARKit that lets you see exactly what one of those unpronounceable chairs, bookcases, or tables will look like in your own place.
That’s why, of course, the app is called Ikea Place. Featuring more than 2,000 Ikea products at launch, the app focuses initially on large items, such as tables, armchairs, and sofas. And, best of all, there’s no assembly required.
The tech powerhouse unveiled new products and software at its fall 2017 event–the first to take place in the newly completed Steve Jobs Theater. Certain advancements made to the iPhone and Apple Watch show where the company is really focusing its attention going forward.
Maybe it’s the anxiety in the air in the age of Trump tweets and Equifax hacks, but a lot of people seem to be freaked out by Apple’s FaceID. The new feature, which uses facial recognition to unlock your pricey new iPhone X, promises to keep what Phil Schiller calls your “face data” safe and secure and mostly on your device.
Apple introduces FaceID. Screenshot: Maja Saphir
But from the looks of my Twitter feed, many are having a hard time seeing past the dystopian implications—to say nothing of the dystopian imagery—of FaceID.
Queasy hot takes like this are to be expected. The 2013 launch of the TouchID fingerprint sensor elicited more than a few page-view grabs imagining severed fingers, 3D printed hacks, and other worst-case scenarios. But FaceID does have a bit more of a sci-fi feel to it and comes at time of higher anxiety among many Americans, as Violet Blue points out.
Just seems like FaceID is exquisitely tone-deaf to a populace facing law enforcement database lists, roundups, and unwanted phone searches.
Some of the most commonly-tweeted concerns have to do with how the feature might be abused by thieves, curious snoopers, and law enforcement. Can somebody take your iPhone X, point it at your face and start perusing your private data—the way that some police body cameras are already able to do—with help from the FBI’s giant secretive face database? What’s stopping the police from doing this and searching your phone without a warrant?
It’s impossible to say two months before the phone even ships, as the ACLU conceded to Quartz. But a year or two from now–perhaps when we’ve moved onto the next frontier in biometric authentication–we’ll know whether these concerns are just knee-jerk hot takes or prescient warnings we should have heeded.
#FaceID Good: Design looks surprisingly robust, already has a panic disable. Bad: Normalizes facial scanning, a tech certain to be abused.
In the conversation around America’s disorganized healthcare system, high costs come up as the most obvious barrier to treatment and services. But for many people, even if they can arrange affordable care, actually making it to an appointment poses yet another difficulty. They may not own a car or another mode of transit; public transportation in their area may be unreliable or nonexistent. Each year, around 3.6 million people miss an appointment because they simply can’t make it to the doctor’s office.
As in many situations where transportation is an issue, on-demand services like Uber have a way of edging in as the obvious solution. Robin Heffernan, a former venture capitalist and entrepreneur in the healthcare space, saw an opportunity to link ride-share services with healthcare providers, and founded Circulation in 2016 as a partnership between Uber and a handful of Boston-based medical practices to provide free rides to non-emergency medical appointments. After a successful pilot launch in Boston late last year, the company has since raised nearly $10 million and expanded to around 1,000 healthcare facilities around the country. Compared to the industry-wide no-show rate of around 25%, those facilities that use Circulation have brought that number down to 8%.
Prior to launching Circulation, Heffernan spent some time as a consultant for the Commonwealth Care Alliance of Massachusetts, a healthcare plan whose approximately 20,000 members all qualify for both Medicare and Medicaid, meaning, as Heffernan tells Fast Company, they were very sick; many were nursing-home certifiable. CCA’s focuses on keeping patients out of facilities and in their homes, “but the only way for them to do that is to facilitate a ton of logistics–to ensure patients make it to and from appointments, to deliver their prescriptions, you name it,” Heffernan says. To do so, CCA contracted with car service brokers, who did not operate on demand, so deliveries and pickups had to be scheduled several days in advance, and last-minute changes were impossible.
“Particularly in the drug rehabilitation and behavioral health space, people have to go in for appointments several times a week–with methadone, it’s sometimes twice a day.” [Screenshot: Circulation]As Uber and other ride-share services became more ubiquitous, Heffernan began to eye the on-demand model as an alternative to the brokers utilized by CCA. “We built Circulation on the premise that we can build an exchange platform that will handle all transportation needs across healthcare,” Heffernan says. While Circulation will eventually expand into prescription delivery and provider home visits, for the time being, it’s focusing on bringing patients to their appointments.
Circulation is launching a consumer-facing app later this year, in which patients will be able to coordinate their own transit to health facilities. Now, it’s focused on the provider side; healthcare facilities that use Circulation book patient pickups on a dashboard integrated with Uber and other ride options, like hospital-operated vans, at the same time a patient calls to make an appointment and indicates that they need help with transportation.
Because plans like Medicaid cover transportation to an appointment, patients can avail themselves of Circulation at no additional cost. The Circulation dashboard, Heffernan says, is able to aggregate information about patients’ insurance coverage to determine if their healthcare will cover the rides, and if that’s not the case, the facilities themselves will pay for the transportation. “So far, we’ve not had one patient who has had to pay for a ride using Circulation,” Heffernan says.
Circulation initially partnered with Uber “to gain access to a nationwide fleet,” Heffernan says, and Uber remains Circulation’s sole ride-share partner, though it’s now also integrated with local non-emergency ambulance providers and medical facility vehicles. While the Uber partnership is undeniably beneficial from the hospital and patient perspective for the ease of booking transport, it does also shine a light on the extent to which private companies are becoming entangled with public services. Uber has taken control of the ride-sharing market by capitalizing off gaps in public transit infrastructure; it now seems to be doing the same with healthcare. Of course, the ideal solution to increase funding for public health facilities so that they could provide adequate transit independent of private companies, but with the federal government incapable of cobbling together anything that resembles a comprehensive national healthcare system, adding on transportation resources within that system feels unlikely.
Over the past year, Circulation has spread to the typical healthcare facilities–large hospitals, private clinics. But Heffernan has also noticed an uptick in interest from homeless shelters, and clinics focused on behavioral health and addiction treatment. “Particularly in the drug rehabilitation and behavioral health space, people have to go in for appointments several times a week–with methadone, it’s sometimes twice a day,” Heffernan says.
Independently arranging transit for all of those appointments is exhausting for patients, she adds, and when people are trying to recover from addiction, the privacy of a personal car is far preferable to public transportation, where patients often feel stigmatized or exposed. “If you can get a car to just show up in front of their house, take them to their appointment, and bring them home, that really can be the difference between them accessing treatment or not, and potentially relapsing,” Heffernan says.
At the Samuel U. Rodgers Health Center, a federally qualified treatment facility in Kansas City, Missouri, the impact of Circulation, particularly on addiction and behavioral health patients, has been pronounced. Samuel U. Rodgers serves around 25,000 patients a year, which levels out to around 70,000 total visits, all of which are reimbursed by the federal Bureau of Primary Health Care and Medicare and Medicaid. Around 6.7% of visits to the health center are for behavioral health needs, controller Chris Walker tells Fast Company. But since launching the Circulation integration four months ago, he’s noticed that 18% of the ridership is coming to the clinic for addiction treatment and behavioral healthcare. The free transportation, and the ease of scheduling and actually getting to same-day appointments, Walker says, is driving down missed appointment numbers, and encouraging patients in need of ongoing treatment to make and keep their follow-ups.
As Circulation continues to scale up, Heffernan says the company’s focus is partnering with more facilities and looking into partnering with mobile diagnostic and prescription providers to bring tests and medications to patients in their homes, instead of requiring that they come into a facility. And for Walker, the response to Circulation has been positive enough in Kansas City that he’d like to “get a little more muscle behind this” and advocate that more insurance companies and managed care plans incorporate on-demand transportation into their patient coverage.
Unless you listened carefully, you may not have picked up on the underlying theme at Apple’s big event yesterday, a motif that, it turns out, extends throughout all of Apple’s events: These products are the best things we’ve ever made ever, and also they’re better than pretty much every other thing of their kind. Here are some of the superlatives that caught my ear the most:
The Most
The Steve Jobs Theater is “the most state-of-the-art, purpose-built theater ever,” said Tim Cook, CEO of Apple, “built for events just like this one.”
The rest of the soon-to-open new spaceship-like headquarters possesses “one of the world’s largest onsite solar installations” (in addition to the world’s best door handles).
The Apple Watch, he said is “the number one watch in the world,” with “an industry leading customer satisfaction rating of 97 percent.” It’s heart rate sensor is, said Jeff Williams, Apple’s chief operating officer, “the most used heart rate monitor in the world.”
The new Apple Watch, Series 3, boasts GymKit, is “an industry first” and “the most advanced technologies ever in a watch.” Perhaps not surprisingly, “the biggest challenge of all was adding cellular.”
The Apple TV 4K isn’t just an upgrade to the company’s set-top box: It is, Cook said,
“the next major inflection point” in the history of TV, the “next evolution of the TV experience.”
It has “the highest picture quality ever,”Eddy Cue, Apple’s senior vice president of Internet Software and Services, said simply. The Apple TV app now offers the “biggest releases in the best quality” at the same price as before. For sports fans, the new TV app is—of course—”a game-changer.”
For The First Time
The first iPhone, said Tim Cook, “forever changed how we interact with technology by introducing multi-touch. For the first time you were actually touching the software instead of buttons.”
We took the viewing experience “to places literally never seen before, with technologies like the Retina Display.
The iPhone camera became “the most popular way to capture images in our lives.”
The new iPhone 8 has
“the most durable ever [glass] in a smartphone,” said Phil Schiller, the senior vice president of worldwide marketing.
a processor that represents “a breakthrough performance in a mobile device.” It’s “the most powerful and smartest chip ever in a smartphone.”
“For the first time, to help reduce noise, it has hardware-enabled multi-band noise reduction,” said Phil Schiller. And it has the “highest quality video capture ever in a smartphone.”
It’s also “the first iPhone created for augmented reality and the first smartphone designed for it too.” It delivers “the best experience for motion tracking.”
Now you can augment the reality you see on your iPhone screen—like, for instance, by adding things to the sky above you. “This isn’t some generic sky. This is the sky around you.” The audience roared with applause.
And then there was one more thing.
Most Beautiful
The surface of the iPhone X is made of “surgical grade stainless steel,” Eddy Cue said, and “there’s never been anything like it.”
The screen has the “highest resolution in pixel density ever in an iPhone” on the “firstOLED display great enough to be in an iPhone,” with an “incredible a million-to-one contrast ratio” and “the best color accuracy.”
Swiping up to get to the home screenis, he promised, “an entirely new experience that’s more fluid and more intuitive.” It may be unusual to have no buttons on the front of the phone, but “there’s never been a better way” to get to your home screen, promised Cue. “Nothing has ever been simpler and natural and effortless.”
Craig Federighi. Image: Apple / Maja Saphir
FaceID is built on “some of the most advanced technology we’ve ever created.” The new sensor on the phone’s face relies on the A11 bionic chip to do the facial analysis. “It’s Apple’s first-ever neural engine,” thanks to the “incredible collaboration between hardware and software that’s only possible at Apple.”
As for security, of course, despite the one-in-a-million chance that someone else could use FaceID to get into your phone, remember: “there’s no perfect system, not even biometric ones,” said Craig Federighi, Apple’s senior vice president of software engineering.
Returning to the stage, Tim Cook alluded to what is perhaps the company’s most valuable asset: its ever-ballooning software ecosystem. Thanks to the new AR-enabled iPhone cameras, he said, iOS was already “the world’s largest platform for augmented reality.”
For good measure, he reminded the audience that the phone itself carried “more powerful technologies than we’ve ever put in an iPhone before.” He did not use any superlatives to refer to the new phone’s $999 starting price, which certainly deserves them.
But he did urge everyone to go touch it and other things in the “hands-on area” in the theater’s lobby. It was, of course, “the most beautiful hands-on area by far.”
When Apple holds a big event to announce new products–as it did yesterday for the iPhone X, iPhone 8, Apple Watch Series 3, and Apple TV 4K–the company tends to avoid negativity. Any downsides or trade-offs in Apple’s latest products only start trickling out after the event is over, when product pages go live and the press starts asking questions.
Here’s some of the fine print that’s emerged so far:
If you want cellular connectivity in the new Apple Watch Series 3, you’ll need a data plan to go with it. AT&T, Verizon, and T-Mobile all plan to charge $10 per month on top of existing wireless service, which seems a bit steep for something you might only use during workouts. (Sprint hasn’t announced its pricing yet.)
Even with wireless service, the Apple Watch Series 3 still needs an iPhone 6 or later to get set up, so your dream of being phone-free isn’t a reality just yet.
For the new Apple TV 4K, Apple scored a major deal with Hollywood studios to sell 4K HDR movies at the same price as HD, around $20 per month. Owners of HD movies will also get free upgrades to 4K HDR if available. But there is one exception: Disney hasn’t signed on to offer 4K HDR movies through iTunes yet.
AppleCare+ is getting more expensive, not just for Apple’s pricier new iPhones, but the entire line. Coverage for the new iPhone X will cost $199, while AppleCare+ for other iPhones will cost $149. That’s up from $129 previously.
Apple didn’t announce any iPad news during its press event, but it did quietly raise prices on 10.5-inch and 12.9-inch iPad Pro models with at least 256 GB of storage. They’re now $50 more expensive, likely because of rising flash storage costs.
Although wireless charging is a key feature on both the iPhone 8 and the iPhone X, Apple isn’t including a charging mat in the box. Instead, you’ll have to buy a third-party mat from vendors like Mophie and Belkin, or wait until next year when Apple starts selling its own AirPower mat.
As a career coach, my inbox is often flooded with messages from people I’m connected with on LinkedIn who are reaching out about something or another. Now, I don’t mean to be judgmental, but I often find myself sighing with annoyance when I open them up–so much so that I was motivated to write this article.
You see, the thing is, I’m open to making new connections and willing to talk to anyone, so the fact that I often put off responding to messages means people are missing the mark. And that stinks because it takes effort to both find people to connect with in the first place and then cultivate a networking relationship from there.
I want to be excited when I read your message and I know you want that, too (or at least I hope you do!). Often times, it only takes a few tweaks to your words or tone to make that possible.
Below are messages inspired by real ones I’ve received along with my thoughts on why they’re not the best approach.
Quick note though: Unless you have LinkedIn Premium, you’ll need to connect before you send a message. But that doesn’t mean you can just send the generic invite. Instead, send a customized one with with these short templates so they’ll accept your request and you’ll be able to actually send over a note.
1. The Empty Query
Emily,
How can we help each other out in this industry? Let me know.
Sincerely, George
Initial Reaction
It’s nice that you want to find a way to help one another out, but this message doesn’t give me anything to work with. Perhaps there’s something in my background that led you to reach out in this manner?
Revised
Hi Emily,
I came across your profile recently, and noticed your background in recruiting and coaching. I also noticed we have the same alumni (Go SunDevils!). I’m in the Los Angeles area as well and looking to expand my network within hospitality companies. I’d love to get a conversation going and see if there’s any way we can ever help one another out.
Sincerely, George
Why This Is Better
Anyone can spot a generic, non-customized message from three Wi-Fi zones away, and if you care about standing out, you’ll be careful not to be labeled as generic, right? The updated version attempts to start building a rapport. By including a customized, targeted line, I can tell George has looked into my background and is excited about finding a way to potentially work together. And that makes me much more inclined to respond to this.
I hope you don’t mind my reaching out. I’m connecting with fellow coaches in the same area and thought I’d say hi. How’s everything?
Susie
Initial Reaction
How’s everything? Hm, that’s a rather large question for someone I don’t know in real life. In fact, I’m not sure I’d even know where to begin in responding to this person.
The Revised Message
Hi Emily,
I hope you don’t mind my reaching out. I noticed you’re a career coach in Los Angeles and read your article titled, “How to Win A Salary Negotiation” and learned something new from it–even though I’ve been a career coach for 10 years. Good stuff!
I’m always expanding my circle and would love to connect with you to see if there’s a way we can help each other grow. Please let me know if you’re open to learning more about one another–from coach to fellow coach.
Best,
Susie
Why This Is Better
Being clear up front is just good business. It sets clear intentions and demonstrates professionalism. Many people have experienced accepting a meeting only to find it turn into a sales pitch. If you’re clear about the reason why you’re reaching out, you’re going to build a higher level of trust out the gate and find people who are attracted to your proposal. This is what building a network is all about.
I am looking for an engineering role in Orlando, FL. Please make introductions to your network if you know of any companies I can be a fit.
Thanks, Matt
Initial Reaction
Hi Matt. My current profile has been updated to indicate that I’m no longer a recruiter (not to mention I definitely don’t specialize in the Florida market as I’m in Los Angeles). If you’re going to spend the time, energy, and effort in sending messages and attempting to foster relationships, it’s far more more effective if you target the correct audience.
The Revised Message
Hi Emily,
I noticed you used to be a recruiter in the R&D sector. I’m not sure if you have any connections that might benefit from my background, but I’ve spent the past five years at Pepsi as a process engineer.
One of my greatest accomplishments is saving $100MM by setting up a new work flow that eliminated three large steps (and several days of production!). If you think of anyone in consumer goods that can benefit from this background, I’d be grateful for any introductions. Thank you very much!
All the Best, Matt
Why This Is Better
If you’re actively seeking a new position and are wanting to connect, it makes a huge difference if you can share in a couple of sentences what you’re looking for and a glimpse of what you bring to the table. Even though I’m no longer entrenched in the recruiting world, I’m still well-connected.
If Matt had demonstrated clear professionalism in a straightforward introduction, and made note of target roles he’s seeking, I’d for sure be inclined to point him to resources or ask him for his resume to pass along.
The thing to remember is that if you’re asking one of your LinkedIn contacts for something, you need to make it as easy as possible for that person to follow up.
It may be difficult to see it, but every piece of correspondance counts—from the way you first connect to how you stay connected. Don’t randomly reach out to 20 of your LI connections for the sake of hoping something falls into place in your job search. By building off of the revised templates above, you’ll be able to initiate conversations that result in meaningful networking relationships.
This article originally appeared on The Daily Muse and is reprinted with permission.
Kids these days apparently want to read books that reflect their lives. So following that whole supply-and-demand thing we all learned in Economics 101, Kirkus is giving the people what they want. They’ve just launched Kirkus Collections, which brings together Young Adult and children’s lit titles from all walks of life, making it easier for kids, teachers, and librarians to find diverse, inclusive, and downright good books.
Kirkus Collections are broken down into categories like disability, LGBTQ, multiracial, latinx, religion, and more. These aren’t pedantic tomes or Serious Literature. They just good, fun books like Saints and Misfits by S.K. Ali, which looks at a young girl grappling with boy trouble—and an assault—in the Muslim community. There’s In the Footsteps of Crazy Horse by Joseph Marshall III, where a fair-haired kid lays claim to his Lakota heritage by going in search of another Lakota with fair hair and skin: Crazy Horse; and Rani Patel In Full Effect by Sonia Patel, which follows a Gujarati teen who feels isolated on the Hawaiian island of Molokai in 1991.
It’s not just educational reads: For instance, Valynn E. Maetani’s Ink and Ashes is a thriller that follows Japanese-American Claire, who realizes her family is in danger because of her father’s yakuza past; and the picture book Lucia the Luchadora by Cynthia Leonor Garza shows that girls can be mask-wearing Mexican wrestling superstars, too.
It’s all typical American kid stuff, now handily brought together into one great big melting pot of books that looks a lot like the great big melting pot of America.
Uber who? Black Girls Code made headlines a few months ago by boldly turning down a $125,000 donation from Uber, because they thought it was a PR stunt meant to distract people from Uber’s dismal track record on diversity issues. While it may have been a publicity move, it was still a lot of money for a bootstrapping nonprofit to turn down. Now, the organization can live by their moral code and teach girls to code, too. General Motors has stepped up with a $225,000 donation for the group, according to Blavity. They will also partner with General Motors to launch a branch in Detroit and hopefully inspire a few young girls to follow in GM CEO Mary Barra’s footsteps or, perhaps, start their own Uber rival.
A football player in Massachusetts, a country boy from small-town Mississippi, a ballet dancer, an Olympian, a blind marathoner, a father of a nine-year-old, a 99-year-old world traveler all read their letters to Tim Cook, thanking him for the benefits of the watch that has helped them get in shape, monitor medical conditions, and help save their lives. It’s touching stuff, featured in a beautifully shot (albeit long) commercial. But it’s not an Apple ad.
I mean, it is an Apple ad–the newest spot for the Apple Watch, which was unveiled during the most recent Apple Event that launched the new iPhone, Watch features, and more. But the latest spot doesn’t feel very much like an Apple ad. It feels more like a really good insurance company ad.
Not long ago, I asked a handful of advertising execs for a Fast Company magazine piece to share their candid thoughts on what some of the world’s biggest brands were up to. One named Apple as a pick for Most Overrated Brands, saying, “I’m a true Apple fan, but I feel like the brand is still running on a lot of juice they had based on the things Steve Jobs created. He created something that knew what it stood for and who its enemy was. As a brand, I don’t feel that from Apple anymore. They’ve lost their spirit and that sense of who they’re for and against. To me, the advertising is getting soft. It feels like a typical big company. But there are a lot of great and talented people there. The reason I say they’re overrated is partly because of the incredibly high standard they set for themselves for so long.”
But this new commercial, as nice as it is, plays like a straight-up video testimonial, with no Apple-esque quirk to the format. Or at least not enough. In fact, it almost feels like two ads in one, with the unfortunate effect of each one diluting the other. There is a fitness spot–the blind marathoner, the push-ups at night lady, the Olympian, the skinny dude who wakes up at 5:30 a.m. And there is a medical spot–the football player, car accident guy, the nine-year-old diabetic. Both hinge on real-life stories of determination, inspiration, and ultimately, the product’s utility. But maybe if the company had hit one of those notes harder, focused on one rather than both, it would be a more impactful, more uniquely Apple-ish ad.
That CCO’s line, “It feels like a typical big company” came straight to mind when I watched the ad. Those words—plus the parents in that funny old Samsung pisstake, whom I’m betting LOVE the new spot.
Is it unrealistic to expect a rebellious spirit from a company flirting with a $1 trillion market cap? Perhaps. But it’s worth noting when a big part of that company’s value–its brand image and personality–is shifting from that of a rebellious, creative risk-taker to a benevolent tech overlord in our daily lives. Both can make great ads, they just, uh, think differently about them.
This morning, we published a profile of a startup that created glorified vending machines that can be placed inside apartment buildings, dorms, and gyms. The concept itself is fairly benign. The problem was that the founders decided to call it Bodega and use a cat–a nod to the bodega cat–as a logo. To many readers, this immediately seemed like two Silicon Valley dudes had just appropriated a term beloved to many immigrants, while simultaneously creating a business designed to obliterate these neighborhood corner shops.
The ensuing Twitter rage was voluminous and palpable. “Bodega” has been trending on Twitter all day, mostly thanks to people vociferously defending bodegas.
Long live the bodega. We ain't lettin y'all go nowhere.
There was much thoughtful commentary about why the startup’s name is so offensive. And then, some have done some in-depth analysis about Bodega’s business strategy. This entire chain, from Eater writer Helen Rosner, is worth a read.
What's Bodega's plan for warehousing? How are they going to communicate replenishment orders to their workers? How do the workers travel?
If the feds want to keep searching people’s digital devices at airports and border crossings, they’d better start getting warrants, the American Civil Liberties Union and Electronic Frontier Foundation say.
The civil liberties groups sued the Department of Homeland Security Wednesday in Boston federal court on behalf of 10 U.S. citizens and a green card holder who’d had their devices searched while entering the United States. Those searches are unconstitutional without a warrant based on probable cause, they argue.
“People now store their whole lives, including extremely sensitive personal and business matters, on their phones, tablets, and laptops, and it’s reasonable for them to carry these with them when they travel,” EFF staff attorney Sophia Cope said in a statement. “It’s high time that the courts require the government to stop treating the border as a place where they can end-run the Constitution.”
The number of such searches has dramatically increased in recent years: Customs and Border Protection conducted nearly 15,000 such searches in the first half of fiscal 2017, compared to 19,033 in all of 2016 and just 8,503 in 2015, the groups say.
I wrote more about the issue and what travelers can do to keep their data private here.
When Hurricane Irma blew out a transformer on his block in Orlando on the night of September 10, Andy Green–like most of the people on his street, and millions of people throughout Florida–lost power from the grid. But Green, who installed Tesla’s Powerwall home battery storage in early August, kept his lights on.
“We didn’t have full power–we couldn’t have the whole house running–but we cut it down to the bare minimum, like air conditioning, refrigeration, internet, that sort of thing,” says Green. Though power is still out in parts of Orlando, electricity on his block came back from the grid 21 hours later. While it was off, Green’s Powerwall, connected to the solar panels on his roof, kept going. When the clouds parted the next day, the battery started recharging.
Typically, rooftop solar panels send power directly back into the grid. Power customers usually get a discount on their electric bill, but in a disaster, the fact that solar panels keep generating power isn’t useful. The rise of new home battery storage products like the Powerwall is changing that.
[Image: Tesla]The battery can be set up to use excess electricity generated during the day at night, or configured as a backup. Before the storm, Green set the system to fully charge. As soon as the power went out, the battery kicked in. Green’s house is large, at roughly 5,500 square feet, and the number of solar panels installed on his roof isn’t designed to power all of it. But with rationed electricity use and enough sunshine to recharge the system during the day, he believes that he would have continued to have basic power even if a repair hadn’t happened quickly. (The battery can also be used to charge Tesla cars, and if roads are passable in a storm, could be a renewable source of fuel if gas runs out; before the storm, Tesla also pushed out a temporary software update to give drivers in the evacuation area extra capacity to store power in their cars, which otherwise is turned off to increase battery life).
Of course, if a storm is strong enough to tear solar panels off a roof and the battery can’t recharge, this type of system wouldn’t work for long. It’s also expensive: A single Powerwall unit, which can store 14 kilowatt-hours of energy, costs $5,500 plus supporting hardware and installation that can cost up to $2,000. A similar battery from Mercedes-Benz ranges from $5,000 to $13,000 for a 20 kilowatt-hour system including installation. In the U.K., where Ikea now sells both solar panels and batteries, its batteries are also nearly $4,000 at current exchange rates. Beyond cost, if someone rents an apartment or house and can’t install solar panels, it’s not an option.
But the cost is likely to drop, and battery storage and solar power could also be used in community solar projects, where customers don’t have solar panels at their own homes, but invest in or buy power from a nearby microgrid. In Orlando, customers can buy solar energy from a 12-megawatt solar farm built on top of a landfill; while the power is currently sent back to the grid, in the future, it’s possible that it and other community solar farms could use batteries to provide local backup power from multiple locations in emergencies.
[Image: Tesla]“A distributed energy resource–in other words, one that’s in multiple locations on the grid as opposed to just a centralized location–is obviously much more resilient because you don’t have a single point of failure,” says Christopher Burgess, director of projects for the Islands Energy Program at the nonprofit Rocky Mountains Institute, which is working to bring renewable energy to hurricane-prone islands in the Caribbean that currently rely primarily on expensive and polluting diesel generators. In Antigua, which managed to escape severe damage during Irma (unlike nearby Barbuda), the government has been installing microgrids throughout the island for critical infrastructure like hospitals and storm shelters. Those microgrids run partially on solar and battery power.
After Hurricane Sandy, a microgrid at Princeton University–in that case, running on both gas and solar power–kept the power on at the school and turned it into a hub for emergency service workers. After Hurricane Harvey, natural gas-powered microgrids kept some supermarkets running. The falling cost of both solar and batteries is making it more likely that future microgrids will be fully renewably powered.
More people will also likely invest in battery storage for solar panels at home. “At this stage, it’s a luxury,” says Green. “Hopefully, as the price comes down on these things they’ll be a little bit more mainstream . . . if you can shell out the cash for them and have them in your house, they’re absolutely a boon to have. We were able to take warm showers and cook food . . . for a relatively long duration.”
Everyone knows it can be hard to make friends as an adult, and reportedly it can be even harder in Japan, the land of hikikomori–where an estimated 1 million young adults stay holed up in their houses. That’s where the Tipsys app comes in, for women at least.
Tipsys is meant to help lonely women connect with other lonely women. This isn’t like a female-only version of Grindr, though, but a social network engineered to help women find real-life friendships. Asking for a date will get your account deleted, according to SoraNews 24. Simply fill out a profile on Tipsys, include your hobbies, convenient times, and neighborhoods for meet-ups, and add your budget for outings and preferred drink. Tipsys takes it from there, helping connect like-minded folk and hopefully bridging the gap between online social networking and real-world friendship. It’s only available in Tokyo and central Japan right now, but hopefully it will spread to [cue the Beatles] all the lonely people around the world soon.
