When Instagram launched its big update adding video, it was a giant call to action: Dedicated users had to go to the App Store and update the app manually to participate in the fun. When automatic app updates arrive with iOS 7, new functionality will simply appear in your most used apps--an awesome addition for app developers. But what other hidden gems are coming with iOS 7?

Messages

The messages app now displays time stamps next to each message, sent and received. You may not notice the new addition as the times are hidden off screen until you push (and hold) the messages to the left. The functionally may be long over due, but having specific times next to each message is something many were desperately waiting for.

Contacts

You will soon be able to link contacts, merging info from more than one entry into a single contact.

Clock

Set it and forget it. Now when you set a timer, the remaining time appears on the lock screen under the clock. If you were burdened by constantly unlocking the device just to see the remaining time, fret no more.

Camera

There are a lot of improvements to the camera app in the new OS, like filters and swiping between modes, but the one of most pleasing new features is how the camera 'snaps' a picture. Instead of freeze-framing the screen with a fake shutter and then adding the photo to your camera roll with the genie effect, the camera now just does a very quick flash. Surprisingly, this little gem will likely lead to users taking a lot more photos as there's a perceived speed increase and ease of use.

Maps

Just like the stand alone GPS devices, Apple’s built in Maps app can now detect when you’re driving at night and automatically switch from bright colors to dimmer ones.

Gift Card Scanning

Apple added the ability for iTunes on the desktop to scan their gift cards with your computer’s camera, bypassing having to enter the long code. iOS 7 adds this feature to iTunes as well letting your phone’s camera detect and scan the code automatically.

Gestures

The latest version of Facebook's app employs a swipe to the right to return to the previous screen instead of having to use the back button. In iOS 7 this same functionality comes to OS level apps as you drill into menus. It is a deliberate swipe from the far left side of the screen towards to the right to get it to work properly and as not to accidentally activate it. This type of gesture, not having to reach with one hand, also lends itself to the rumors of a large iPhone coming soon.

PDFs

You will be able to view PDF annotations as well as make them on your mobile device.

Slide To Unlock

Even though the lock screen indicates that you need to ‘slide to unlock’ where the text is, you can slide right anywhere on the front screen to unlock your phone. If you have notifications, sliding on top of those will still take you directly to the relevant app, even though there is little indication at first glance.

These little tweaks and changes probably won't sway your overall perception of iOS 7's new bold look, but they should ease the transition. Isn’t it always the little things that end up making the biggest difference?

[Image: Flickr user Fdecomite]

Many of us probably take for granted that we can pick up an iPhone, iPad, or MacBook and begin using it right away. But for millions of people around the globe computers and other technology have always presented use limitations due to personal handicaps such as those with vision and hearing issues, or physical and learning disabilities. As computers and, indeed, now smartphones, move from luxuries to necessities, those that have conditions that don’t allow them to operate the devices as easily as others can find themselves at a disadvantage.

Thankfully Apple, the number one consumer technology company in the world, has a deep history of providing cutting-edge assistive technology features built into its hardware and software.

But assistive technology is a lot easier to enable once and forget about on personal devices like laptops and smartphones, which typically only have one user. After all, a person who is hard of sight can simply set an iPhone (or have someone set it for them) to the desired accessibility settings once and get on with using it. But communal devices like televisions often have multiple users, and each one might have a different assistive technology need, which means accessibility settings may have to be changed multiple times a day depending on who is using the television--and that may be hard for a user to do depending on their situation.

That’s where Apple’s patent for a “magic wand” remote control come in. From the patent filing:

In response to detecting a thumbprint or fingerprint, wand or the electronic device may compare the detected print with a library of known prints to authenticate or log-in the user associated with the print.

In response to identifying the user, the electronic device may load content specific to the identified user (e.g., a user profile, or access to the user’s recordings), or provide the user with access to restricted content (e.g., content restricted by parental control options).

As I’ve written about in the past, one of the biggest problems with smart TVs is that many “smart” televisions on the market still cling to an outdate, 20th century method of input: the 60+ button remote controls. The remote control for television is an area ripe for innovation--and needs to be revolutionized if any TV can truly be called “smart.” The immediate advantages of a “magic wand” remote described in the patent are myriad, some obvious. As Christian Zibreg writes for iDownloadBlog:

If Apple could authenticate users who simply hold a magic wand or an iPhone 5S (rumored to integrate a fingerprint sensor underneath the Home button) in their hand, the solution could make parental and media permission controls effortless and secure while allowing for multi-user scenarios.

But what perhaps is not so obvious a use of this “magic wand” remote is that it would make accessibility on communal television so much easier for those that need it.

Such a device would be able to instantly recognize the accessibility settings any user needed simply by touch. A person hard of sight could pick up the remote and immediately see the text size and contrast increased in their on-screen channel guide. A person hard of hearing could pick up the remote and see subtitles immediately activated. Even a person with motor control difficulties, such as those who have lost dexterity in their fingers, could pick up the remote and the smart TV would know to increase the size of gesture zones when the wand is waved. In this situation, a user could swing the remote left or right to move forward or backwards through the channels. The wide swing zones automatically activated based on this user’s need would free them from having to make specific, narrow-area presses or taps a traditional remote control, or even a touch screen remote (like an iPhone), requires.

Of course, the “magic wand” patent is just that--a patent. It doesn’t mean it will ever be an actual product. But if it comes to fruition, it would be a kick in the pants the traditional remote control needs and--more importantly--allow for much easier accessibility option activations that communal devices like televisions desperately require.

[Developers interested in making their apps accessible for all should check out Apple’s Accessibility in iOS guidelines.]

Previous Updates

The TV Channel Guide Is Broken. Can Netflix Max Fix It?

July 8, 2013

As a child of the early '80s, it wasn’t too hard navigating what to watch on TV. We had five channels and you turned the dial to switch between them. By the end of the '80s we had cable, with a whopping 30 channels and you keyed in digits on the cable box’s numeric keypad to flip through channels to see what was on. By the mid-'90s the first on-screen channel guides appeared. This was handy because it let me see what was playing on my 90+ channels; all the programs were displayed on a linear grid. The early 2000’s brought TiVo and the first guides you could enter search queries into. Amazing. And since then, well, things haven’t changed much.

And for smart TV’s that’s going to be a huge problem.

Because in 10 to 15 years live TV and scheduled programming will exist for two things only: news and sports. Everything else will be on-demand. The new episode of the latest hit sitcom will no longer “air” every Thursday at 8 p.m. Instead it will be made available at a certain time and viewers can then choose whenever to watch it.

Not only will this on-demand programing for new episodes mean a traditional linear program guide is no longer needed, but when you combine all the on-demand currently running TV seasons (that is, “new releases”) with all the other on-demand content smart TVs will offer (100 years' worth of movies and TV shows) trying to navigate what’s available to watch via a traditional programming guide, or even more modern UI like you find on the Apple TV or Roku, could quickly get pointless. There’s just too much content to browse. You could flip through an alphabetized list of television shows or images of movie posters for weeks and not even skim 1% of all the content that will be available.

So how will content be found and searched on future smart TVs? It has to be in a better way than is done now because, just as search is the most important function for user interaction on the web, discovery will become the most critical aspect of user interaction on a smart TV.

That’s where I think Netflix has an interesting thing going for it with Netflix Max. Currently only on the PS3, but rolling out to other Netflix platforms soon, Netflix Max is a new interactive discovery tool in the guise of mini-games viewers play that helps them find what to watch next based on their answers to the game and also their Netflix analytics history, such as past viewing habits and ratings given to content watched. As Yahoo’s Jason Gilbert explains:

When you click in to play Max, you’ll be served a random game which will terminate in a recommendation from Netflix’s famous learning software. At the E3 Gaming conference in Los Angeles earlier this month, I got a chance to play around with Max for about 30 minutes, sampling three of the initial games that will ship with Max. There was Mood Ring, asks you which celebrity, or genre, or oddly specific Netflix category you prefer, generally offering you two disparate choices to find out what you are in the mood for; the Rating Game, which lets you rate a number of movies between one and five stars, and then spits out a title it thinks you will like based on those ratings; and an option that was like the "I'm Feeling Lucky" button in Google, which auto-plays a title based on your rating and viewing history.

For my taste, Netflix Max is a little annoying. I like the discovery aspect, but the games and Max’s voice are a bit too cutesie-wootsie. However, Netflix is to be commended because it shows that the company knows discovery will be the future of smart TVs and that they are aware that current programming guides--and even their own tiled UIs--are coming to the end of their useful shelf lives. Are mini-games the future of content discovery on smart TVs? Probably not. But creative and easy ways to put new content in front of users definitely are.

How Smart Remotes Could Keep TVs Dumb

June 24, 2013

Ask people what device they use most often with their TV, and the answer will likely be “my remote control.” Indeed, remotes have been synonymous with home televisions since the 1980s. However, they also seem to be the one device that could be holding back engineers tasked with creating the television of the 21st century from finding the best ways to interact with TVs of the future.

Engineers and design experts working on creating the first true smart TV need to get the notion of the remote control out of their mind. The remote control is a multi-buttoned monster of a relic that has had its day. It’s clunky, confusing, and 90% of the buttons on it are never pressed.

The remote control was good for its time, but trying to build a “remote control of the future” based on conceptions of a 30-year-old device won’t lead anywhere. Think of it this way: In late 2006 when the rumors were pretty strong that Apple was set to unveil an iPhone, many people thought the device might resemble an iPod but also have the functionality built into the scroll wheel to make phone calls. Pundits shouted that the rotary would once again rise up and take back the crown from the T9 pad. Other people imagined an advance Palm Pilot type of device with a stylus.

But neither of those things happened. What happened was Apple started from scratch--as if they had never seen a phone before--and invented their own. And it ended up changing the computing world.

That’s what the handheld device (indeed, if there even is one) is going to have to be like in order to call a smart TV “smart.”

Writing for 9to5Mac, Dan DeSilva recently praised Logitech for its newest Harmony Ultimate Hub “appcessory” that turns any smartphone into an ultimate remote:

“For years, harmony has been one of the most respected brands in remote technology. It seems like the Ultimate Hub is a move in the right direction making this technology affordable for everyone. The Ultimate Hub will be available in the U.S. and Europe in August 2013.”

While he’s right that Logitech makes nice products and that it’s always a good thing when technology becomes cheaper because it speeds adoption, let’s stop praising companies for merely adapting old technology to fit slightly new standards, because a total rethinking is needed for the way a user will interact with a smart TV--and it’s not the remote in any traditional sense.

So what’s the answer? Voice seems obvious. But as Tom Morgan writes for ExpertReviews:

“In theory, voice and motion control are ideal ways to interact with technology, but not in their current forms. Currently, voice-controlled TVs have a pre-programmed list of commands that must be uttered exactly in order to register a match. If the company hasn’t programmed an alternative phrasing, you’re limited to a single statement to perform simple actions that takes a mere button press on a traditional remote control. The limited degree of recognition accuracy also means that unless you speak with a BBC-trained English accent, there’s a good chance your command won’t get recognized even if you get the wording correct.”

Could voice control be the “remote” of the 21st century? Sure. But as Morgan points out, the tech isn’t there . . . yet (but if I had to place my bets, Google will get there before Apple).

So what about gestures? My problem with gestures is that you run into the gorilla-arm syndrome. “Gorilla-arm syndrome” describes why touch screens don’t work well on vertical interfaces (like an iMac). Though the tech might be there, human anatomy still overpowers technological innovation. The fact is, we get tired holding our arms out in front of us (especially while sitting) and waving them around. It’s why we use our iPads in our laps and our iPhones held in our hands and don’t hang them on a wall like a painting.

But let’s say we could get around gorilla-arm syndrome. Current gesture tech still has many flaws to overcome. As David Katzmaier writes in his review of Samsung’s Smart Interaction control box for televisions:

“The problem was, despite excellent lighting, my attempts to activate gesture control were often ignored and I ended up waving foolishly at the TV. When it did work, navigation was inexact and frustrating--think of a coarse version of a Wii-mote--and after a minute or so of it, my arm became tired. I guess that means gesture control is a good workout.

My fist-to-click didn't register as often as it should have and I ended up flapping my hand open and closed repeatedly in an attempt to "click" an item on the screen. At this point, I seriously considered using my fist to do something else to the TV screen.”

So, what’s the answer to the best way to interface with the smart TV of the future? I don’t know, which is why I’m tracking this story. If you’ve seen or are working on something that might revolutionize the way we interact with our TVs in the future, please tweet me @michaelgrothaus. Because the world’s first true smart TV could have all the content deals it wants and have the slickest UI ever designed, but if it doesn’t have a novel, intuitive, and easy way to navigate it, it could very well be more of a pain to use than today’s TVs with their average of 60-plus buttons per remote.

Apple TV Gets Smarter (By Borrowing Popular iOS Apps)

June 20, 2013

Apple doesn’t like rushing products out the door before they’re ready. However, that doesn’t mean the company is resting on its laurels. Indeed, today the company quietly rolled out the Apple TV 5.3 software update that brings more features to Apple’s set top box.

Significantly, today’s update shows that Apple thinks the road to a true smart television might be paved with features borrowed from iOS--most notably, some of its most popular apps. Now when Apple TV owners turn on their TV, they’ll be presented with new “channels” that are essentially ports of the iOS apps WatchESPN and HBO GO. Depending on what country the user is in, they may also see new channels from Sky News, Crunchyroll, and Qello.

Is third-party content important on a smart television? Of course. But not just any third-party content. To suck users into a world where smart TVs dominate, you need to lay a trail of bread crumbs made of the best content out there, something Apple’s Eddy Cue seems to recognize; he said this in a press release announcing the new channels:

“HBO GO and WatchESPN are some of the most popular iOS apps and are sure to be huge hits on Apple TV. We continue to offer Apple TV users great new programming options, combined with access to all of the incredible content they can purchase from the iTunes Store.”

However, the thing about these new Apple TV channels is that all but one (Sky News) requires an additional subscription to access (or you must already be a paying subscriber to that channel through your home cable plan). For people who want to truly cut the cord, it doesn’t seem to make much financial sense to get rid of the $50 a month traditional cable plan that offers hundreds of (okay, mostly unwatched) channels if every à la carte channel on a smart TV is going to cost between $4.99 and $11.99 a month.

But as Wilson Rothman writes for NBC News, that doesn’t matter--for now:

“Regardless of the limitations, the news is welcome, not just to "Game of Thrones" fans eager to relive the crushing emotional blows of the Red Wedding, but to anybody wondering about the future of Apple TV. The more content deals Apple can ink up, the better the prospects for that elusive "iTV." If Apple can't do it up big--and that means getting contracts from most or all of Hollywood's biggest content stores--it will fall short. HBO is certainly a must-have these days, at least for premium-content bragging rights.”

Still, the day a truly smart TV takes living rooms by storm, I don’t see it being one where I need to spend $60 a month to get access to 10 or fewer channels. Content is king, but for the most part, we live in a 99-cent economy as our app and song downloads clearly show, which means that, for now, the Apple TV needs to improve its learning curve before it can be called “smart.”

Why We’re Tracking The Evolution of The Smart TV

My ideal version of a perfect “smart TV” is this beautiful millimeter-thin pane of crystal clear glass that is invisible until it’s turned on. And once it is, it has access to every film, television show, and sporting event ever recorded--all through the cloud. It’s got apps and content galore. Further, its a two-way communication screen that allows me to talk to any of my friends and colleagues, no matter what device they are behind at the time. This perfect smart TV lets me navigate it by voice and hand gestures in the air. It’s my home assistant that can access any of my computer files--from emails to pictures to video games--from any device I own. And because this perfect smart TV contains every kind of media I could ever want access to, it has only a single cable that plugs it into an outlet. No other ports are on it because they’re no longer needed. External Blu-ray players, video game counsels, and DVRs are so early-21st-century.

But all this is just a fantasy in my head, of course. A true “smart television” doesn’t exist yet--no matter what the marketing material for existing offerings may say. Apple’s kinda sorta doing it with its Apple TV; Google did their version with the Nexus Q, which quickly went nowhere; and companies like Roku, Microsoft, and Sony think they’re on their way, too.

But no one’s there yet, because no firm definition exists of what makes a smart TV, well, “smart.” Is my vision of the ideal TV “smart?” Perhaps. Then again, I’m sure I’m leaving a lot out. And that’s what this tracker is for. Here, we’ll look at the latest advances in television OS’s, cloud services, and UI’s suited to the living room.

Don’t be mistaken: Smart TVs are coming. It’s just that we may have to go through many equivalents of the Palm Pilot until we reach something as refined as the iPhone 5.

If you’re interested in the evolution of the smart TV, be sure to follow this tracker. Here, we’ll explore the latest hardware and software advances that will one day get the television of the 21st century right. And if you’re a developer involved in trying to get us there, get in touch with the author @michaelgrothaus to let him know what you’re up to.

[Image: Flickr user Andy Price]

As a medical student with a background in neuroscience, I’m constantly searching for brain hacks that will help me learn and retain information more efficiently. These range from well-established techniques such as spaced repetition to, well, less evidence-based schemes, such as strapping an EEG to my forehead and “listening” to 6-hours worth of pathology lectures…while sleeping. (I didn’t need the red lines representing beta wave activity--that is, wakefulness--to figure out that instead of gaining knowledge I was simply losing sleep.)

However, last year I stumbled upon a largely unknown--yet research-supported--memory hack that actually worked. And it involved an unusual suspect: Lance Armstrong.

It’s not what you think: He didn’t give me a performance-enhancing drug for med school. Nor, for that matter, have I ever met the guy. What I have done is rely on his account of his battle with cancer to recall high-yield information about chemotherapy.

Before I delve deeper, let’s step back and discuss an interesting cognitive experiment known as the Baker-baker paradox, which revealed the impact of associations on memory. In brief, researchers randomized people into two groups and showed both a picture of a man.

Individuals in group one were told that the person’s last name was “Baker,” whereas those in group two were told that the person was a baker. When these people were shown the image and prompted to recall the word later, those in the latter category (occupation) were significantly more likely to remember it than those in the former (name). Same image, same word, and a randomized group of people--so why the difference?

The answer: Associations are powerful memory hooks. When you are told someone is a baker you may begin thinking about the bakery nearby and your favorite baked goods, which then provides more mental links back to the original image-word memory. It’s like trying to catch a whale (I’m told): The bigger the schema of associations, the bigger the net.

So what does this have to do with Lance Armstrong and med school? Medical students have to learn the indications, mechanisms, and side effects of hundreds of drugs; one of which is the widely used anti-cancer drug bleomycin--a drug which has the particularly nasty side effect of scarring lung tissue, a condition known as pulmonary fibrosis. When a patient is prescribed the drug, their lung function should be monitored; failing to do so may lead to irreparable harm to the patient, and an easy lawsuit against the doctor.

Of course, no doctor can possibly memorize all the side effects to all drugs. (Sure, we now have technologies to look these up in real-time, but as I wrote recently in The Health Care Blog, it’s important to have a strong working knowledge base given that we have a decreasing amount of time to spend with each patient.) While I have forgotten and will need to relearn dozens of other drug-side effect combinations, I have forever internalized bleomycin because I applied the associative memory principle demonstrated in Baker-baker. Enter Lance.

In 1996 Lance Armstrong was diagnosed with stage three testicular cancer, and given less than a 40 percent chance of survival. Despite this, he actually declined the front-line therapy involving bleomycin because (as an increasingly prominent professional cyclist) he did not want scarred lungs.

While he would unfortunately go on to destroy his cycling career anyway, the bold decision he made--and the rationale behind it--has inspired millions and helped medical students like me anchor important medical information in our brains. Now, whenever I think about bleomycin my mind immediately jumps to Lance Armstrong not wanting to jeopardize his athletic career, and thus the side effect of pulmonary fibrosis. I can bet that if I ever prescribe the drug to a patient I’ll be sure to closely monitor their lung function.

I’ve found story-based memory hooks to work so well in my medical career that I actually started a side project called Osmosis--as in “learning by osmosis.” It’s a web-based platform that, among other things, automatically recommends associations based on what you’re learning. The stronger the association the better, which is why accounts from celebrities like Lance work so well. These associations may also come from art, music, politics, and scientific literature, among other areas.

We’re focusing on medicine because it’s our area of domain expertise and nowhere are the stakes higher in terms of being able to learn and retain information. And if it works for medical students who are drinking from the proverbial fire hose, it will likely work for others who also want to break out of the inefficient learn-forget cycles that we’ve become unnecessarily accustomed to.

You can sign up for our private beta at Osmosis.org--let us know if it helps you, too. And if you have memory hacks of your own which we might be able to build in, tweet @ShivGaglani and let me know.

Shiv Gaglani is co-founder of the medical education technology company, Osmosis. An editor of Medgadget, he is currently an MD/MBA candidate at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine and Harvard Business School.

[Image: Flickr user K Sandberg]

Peter Sunde, who cofounded controversial torrent directory site ThePirateBay, has a new app that may bother governments just as much, if not more than his earlier efforts: It's a secure messaging app that should prove impossible to snoop on.

Heml.is, meaning "secret" in Swedish, will use a form of encryption that means that messages sent through the service are secure and un-readable at every single point of the message's journey--except where they need to be read: At the writer's end and the reader's end. The company isn't saying how the system works yet, but notes that it's utilizing "existing, proven technology" like XMPP and PGP. E2E encryption works by encrypting the message at the very moment it's created, along with information about its intended recipient. This means the data can stream through open channels, such as cell phone data networks, without fear of being intercepted--only the recipient has the key to unlock the data, and the key will be securely held on their device.

Savvy to the fact that complex secure systems can sometimes bring about their own downfall, the team is ensuring that the apps will be simple and easy to use.

End-to-end encryption is also how Apple's iMessage is encoded, and Apple mentioned this in a press release designed to allay worries about the PRISM surveillance program. But Apple's required by law to provide access to the decryption keys when asked by the authorities--and this is a loophole. The Heml.is team promises that their encryption is going to be even more clever, and no one--not even the Heml.is system operators--can access the content flowing through its network. This is an obvious move to sidestep legal demands for access. It's worth noting that the service's URL ends in ".is" which is the TLD for Iceland, a country that's taken a staunchly independent attitude about digital security and which even deported FBI agents who flew in unannounced on the trail of WikiLeaks information.

To construct the app the team is raising $100,000 from potential users, and plans for the app to be free--though you may need to pay to unlock extra services like sharing images. In a move that demonstrates how alternative Heml.is really is, the team's allowing anonymous crowd donations of Bitcoins as part of its funding process.

Sticking a banner ad or a display ad into your website or your app is now boilerplate procedure for raising money from the general public. It's easy, and quick--so easy that many an Android developer makes their app available for free on the grounds that they'll make a small return on the embedded ad system. But here's the thing: A recent survey examining the statistics of ad interactions suggests that the average consumer is more likely to live in a household with an annual income of over $2 million than they are likely to click on a banner ad.

HubSpot's recent survey revealed that the average click-through rate of display ads is just 0.1%. In raw numbers, the company estimates that you're "more likely to complete Navy SEAL training than click on a banner ad" or "more likely to survive a plane crash" than do so. This week's highly survivable plane crash tragedy in San Francisco may shine a different light on that comparison, but think about the issue from a personal viewpoint: How many plane crashes have you survived?

Website AdPushUp.com added some more comparisons to drive home how unlikely clicking an ad can be: You're more likely to be accepted into both Harvard and Stanford than click a banner ad. It's also more likely that two brown-eyed parents will have a baby with blue eyes than it is likely you will click on an ad.

The practical interpretation of this is that if you're thinking of slapping an ad into your website or app to raise cash, then don't just take the simple route. Stats show that the larger rectangle ad formats (over 336 by 280 pixels) have a higher click rate of 0.33% versus the normal 0.1%. Rich media in ads has also been shown to improve engagement, which is the thinking behind Apple's iAds.

But since as a developer you're more in control of where third-party ads sit rather than exactly what content they serve up, the lessons may be to choose sizing and positioning wisely. Don't inundate the user with banner ads either--ad fatigue means users may dislike seeing multiple ads instead of one or two meaningful ones.

Think differently about your other monetizing plans too: A "pay to remove ads" option isn't necessarily going to entice a customer to do so if they're already adept at ignoring adverts in the first place. And take advice from Instagram's Kevin Systrom who decided that during monetization plans for his app "The last thing we want is to plop in banner ads."

[Image: Flickr user Kamal Hamid]

What Running Has Taught Me About Entrepreneurship

Adii Pienaar found parallels between exercise and enterprise. Here's a gameplan to help you achieve your personal best.

IFTTT: A Different Kind Of iOS Automation

Federico Viticci and IFTTT separated ages ago. Can they rekindle the magic?

Chromebooks Exploding!

As laptop sales plummet, Google's hardware has the $300 and under PC market on the defensive. Chance Miller with the intel.

The New York Times Is Building A New TimesMachine

The next generation online archive features increased functionality changing the way we view the past. But it's the technology behind it that's really in flux.

Wired’s Profile Leads With Wardrobe

Cade Metz led with three paragraphs on fashion in his recent piece on Google engineer Melody Meckfessel. How progressive!

Keep Reading To See Curated Long Reads From Previous Days' News.

July 10, 2013

Apple’s Plans For IGZO Display Integration

Apple has plans for IGZO displays in iPads and iPhones, we know. But are there plans for MacBooks?! Lighten up.

What Samsung’s New U.S. Headquarters Says

The new LEED Gold-rated building in San Jose speaks volumes about the tech giant. Alexis Madrigal translates.

Build Brand Awareness First - Distribution Second

Many startups establish presence before demand. Marc Barros thinks that's back asswards.

Gaining Mobile Traction Is Harder Than Ever

The mobile marketing landscape has changed. Andrew Chen tracks the industry's evolution.

Post-Reader RSS Subscriber Counts

AOL Reader, Digg Reader, and The Old Reader don't publish subscription stats. Marco Arment wants to change that. Nothing personal . . .

A Refresher Course In Empathy

Customer support systems often lose sight of what's important. Emily Wilder wants things back on track. Where there's a skill, there's a way.

Dropbox Blows It Up

Dropbox already connects you to your stuff. What if they connected your stuff to your stuff? You're gonna need a storage unit.

July 9, 2013

Turn Anything Into a Drone

Sure, your bike has wheels . . . but can it fly? 3-D drone home.

Effecting Change From The Outside

Marco Arment believes Apple hears users' complaints and uses them to effect change. The creator of Instapaper encourages everyone to use their words.

The Dangers Of Beating Your Kickstarter Goal

Tim Schafer and Ron Gilbert are almost a year late with their much-anticipated new adventure game. They ran into a notoriously BIG problem . . .

This Is Not a Test

America's Emergency Broadcast Systems are vulnerable to attack. Steve Wilkos is Nostradamus.

Former Windows Chief Explains Why It's So Hard To Go Cross-Platform

As platforms develop, bridging the gaps between them becomes increasingly difficult. Steven Sinofsky articulates the communication breakdown.

The Computers That Run The Stock Market

If you play the market, Citadel has likely handled your money. Meet the machines behind the Machine.

July 8, 2013

Modeling How Programmers Read Code

Michael Hansen shot video demonstrating how varying levels of programming skill affect a coder's pattern recognition while reading script. This just in: Practice makes perfect.

Technology Workers Are Really Young

PayScale took it upon itself to determine the median age of workers in technology. The results, next time on, "The Young and the Breastless."

Everything Gmail Knows About You And Your Friends

Researchers at MIT are mapping people's social lives by way of their email accounts. Stick your nodes in other people's business.

NSA Collaborated With Israel To Write Stuxnet Virus

Edward Snowden says that intelligence agencies dig deeper than we know . . . and they're working together. What else can he see with "Five Eyes?"

Facebook Begins Graph Search Rollout

Facebook announced the much-anticipated search function will launch this week with improvements upon beta. What all can we expect from the new tool?

iOS 7's Design Bold, Flawed

Christa Mrgan illustrates Apple's new 2.5-D design approach. Might wanna grab your glasses.

What Kind Of Crazy Scheme Is Motorola Hatching?

Google and Motorola are working on "the first smartphone that you can design yourself," but what does that mean? Smartphone buffet. Get stuff[ed].

UI Principles For Great Interaction Design

Interaction Design is a relatively new field and not everyone knows it well. Christian Vasile touches on the basics and lays down a working foundation for rest of us.

Designing App Store “Screenshots”

Travis Jeffery has some advice for iOS developers: Stop taking screenshots, start making them.

Apple, Google And The Failure Of Android's Open

Think Open Source is winning? Daniel Eran Dilger will be the judge of that. Case closed.

July 2, 2013

Build It, But They Won’t Come

Too often developers value product over marketing, decreasing their chances of success. Andrew Dumont looks to level the playing field.

“Pick The Brains" Of Busy People

People with packed schedules aren't easy to pin down, especially for advice. Wade Foster plays to their egos.

iOS 7 GUI PSD

Ready to familiarize yourself with iOS 7's graphical user interface? So is Mark Petherbridge and he's got the Photoshop document to prove it.

Google Glass Updated

Google announced major software updates coming for its wearable device. OK Glass, whaddya got?

Forthcoming “Cheap” iPhone Potentially Hideous

Leaks suggest the newer, less expensive iPhone is manufactured in Candyland. Christopher Mims takes a lick.

How Facebook Threatens HP, Cisco With “Vanity Free” Servers

Facebook's DIY lab poses real questions regarding the viability of open source hardware. Efficiency is the name of the game . . . and what savings!

July 1, 2013

How Apple’s iLife, iWork, iBooks Could Look

iOS 7 will change just about everything. Michael Steeber takes a crack at apps' new aesthetic.

HP Smartphone In The Works

Two years after shutting down its mobile division, Hewlett-Packard is back in the game. Just don't ask for a timetable. Better late than never . . .

Most Willing To Exchange Private Social Data For Better Online Experience

More than half the social media users in the UK say they are willing to share private information for a more personalized web experience. England as an open book? Hey, a deal's a deal.

Anatomy Of A Tweet

140 characters are worth a thousand words. Shea Bennett explores the makeup of the world's favorite micro-blogger.

Startup Investing Trends

The small business landscape has changed drastically in the last 25 years. So will investors make more money moving forward or less? Paul Graham says more. Lots more.

Data Journalism Is Improving — Fast

The Data Journalism awards showed that the genre is gaining traction. Frederic Filloux shares three personal insights into the ever-changing DJ landscape.

Google 'Working On Videogame Console'

Wearable tech may not be the only advent in the search giant's future. Google's got game.

Wibbitz Could Wipe Out Publishers’ Video Businesses

Paul Armstrong details the newest player in news. Small markets just got a whole lot bigger.

June 27, 2013

An Open Letter To Apple Re: Motion Sickness

Craig Grannell is sick to his stomach at the thought of more full-screen transitions. But he can't be the only one. Anyone have a barf bag?

Women in Tech

Women and minorities are underrepresented in tech. But there are two crowdfunding projects trying to change all that. Cast your vote.

Pre-9/11 NSA Thinking

Fifteen years ago, the NSA assured the American people that our security and privacy were their top priority. Bruce Schneier takes a look at what changed.

WikiLeaks Volunteer Paid FBI Informant

Sigurdur “Siggi” Thordarson hid inside WikiLeaks as an FBI informant for three months and $5000. Secrets, secrets are no fun . . . and they don't pay for shit either.

PayPal/SETI To Create Interplanetary Payment System

Astronauts have long felt the need for intergalactic auto-autopayment options, but soon they might pay bills from space. Quick, phone home.

June 26, 2013

Make Better Business Phone Calls

Mark Suster knows how to build business relationships, and not with emails. The entrepreneur-turned-venture capitalist lists seven ways to improve your asking strategies. It's face time.

Premium Pricing, Exclusivity & A Higher Demand

Adii Pienaar employs cognitive dissonance in defense of PublicBeta's premium pricing structure. Either it makes you money or saves you money, but no matter what, it costs you money. You decide.

Can Apple Read Your iMessages?

Apple claims it doesn't share your information with the government. Cryptographer Matthew Green reveals two truths about iMessage's user security that might surprise you. Say metadata decryption 10 times fast.

eBay Builds New Engine, New Identity

In 2008, eBay found itself lost within the next generation of search engines. Marcus Wohlsen explains how chief technology officer Mark Carges took action, forsook auction.

Inside YouTube's Master Plan To Kill Lag Dead

YouTube recognizes the importance of progress bars, so they're reinventing the wheel. Instant gratification, here we come! It's the best thing since . . . how does that one go again?

Genes And Memes

Cadell Last draws on the parallels between genetic and memetic evolution. Is Richard Dawkins the missing link?

Why You Can't Find A Technical Cofounder

Guest writer Elizabeth Yin lists the things developers look for most in a technical cofounder, and a number of ways to gain traction. Remember the three things that matter least in tech startups: Location, location, location.

June 20, 2013

Something Old, Something New

Digg is slated to replace Google Reader by July 1. And while that may not be nearly enough time for some, Andrew McLaughlin keeps his promises . . . with gusto.

Check Out Tim Bucher's Secret Startup

The ex-lead engineer at Apple is pillaging tech giants for employees at Black Pearl Systems. Meet the internet's newest band of pirates. Argh!

"Steve Jobs Once Wanted To Hire Me"

Richard Sapper remembers his career in design, condemns commercialism, and reveals he once forsook geek Jesus. #OMGY?!

Does NDA Still Make Sense?

The first rule of nondisclosure is: Shut Your F#@%ing Mouth. But seriously, speak up.

Traveling, Writing, And Programming (2011)

Alex Maccaw spent almost an entire year abroad, killing it. Get ready . . . Jetset . . . Go!

Wrong Need Not Apply

R. E. Warner dislikes critiques . . . reading them, anyway. The coder-poet turns two wrongs righteous.

Schneier On Security

Scott Adams thinks we'll someday identify sociopaths by way of their Facebook usage patterns; Bruce Schneier thinks he's nuts.

Want To Work At Twitter?

Buster Benson's been with Twitter almost a year now. This is what it sounds like when ducks tweet.

June 19, 2013

Want To Try iOS 7 Without Bricking Your Phone?

There's a hassle-free introduction to iOS 7 available online. And while it may not be the smoothest transition, it gets the job done. Recumbo shows us what's what.

Moving The Web Forward Together

The open web is expanding evermore toward new frontiers. Chris Webb explains the necessity of new features, innovation, and trail blazing.

Asynchronous UIs--The Future Of Web User Interfaces

Alex Maccaw debunks request-response and outlines his vision for the future of user interface. Death to the spinning lollipop of death!

“Human Supremacists”

"The Superior Human?" questions whether or not human beings are superior to all other life forms. Humans: A) Rule; B) Are a disease; C) Abhor a Vacuum; D) Ain't so great after all. Cadell Last examines all of the above.

Wrong

Jony Ive's iOS 7 icon grid has supplied new inroads for design-related hater traffic. Neven Mrgan breaks down the gridlock.

On Discipline

Michael Heilemann declares iOS 7 the Alpha and Omega of modern operating systems. He's also pretty happy it's in beta . . .

Startup Beats Rivals, Builds "DVR For Everything"

Nate Weiner pasted Pocket together from scraps, but he attracted some vocal detractors. Stop copying!

Cat-Like Robot Runs Like The Wind

École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) developed the world's fastest quadruped robot and hopes the Cheetah-cub stimulates search-and-rescue-related progress in robotics. Now if they'd only get to work on a bionic St. Bernard and some digital brandy . . .

June 18, 2013

Developer Finds Video Evidence In Instagram Code

Tom Waddington did some digging and found a mute button programmed into the popular photo sharing app. But don't get your hopes up, Facebook is likely to stay mum at Thursday's event.

Popular Ad Blocker Helps Ad Industry

Ghostery shares data with the same industry its users avoid at all cost. Scott Meyer explains how he keeps his consumers close, and his customers closer.

If You Could Eat Only One Thing …

Elizabeth Preston breaks down the latest food fad. Hint: It ain't people.

Humans Immortal In 20 Years, Says Google Engineer

Ray Kurzweil believes medical advances in the last 1000 years suggest that humans may outpace organic decay. Someone alert the Social Security Administration . . . whenever.

Get Rid of the App Store’s “Top” Lists

Marco Arment thinks "Top" lists suppress app store progress, and he's got a solution: Grease creative palms, not squeaky wheels.

The NSA story isn’t “journalistic malfeasance”

Mathew Ingram breaks down both sides of the most recent ethics debate in journalism. Conclusion: We're all dirty.

June 17, 2013

Why Is Exercise Such a Chore?

Daniel Lieberman tells Anil Ananthaswamy how the human body evolved for long-distance running. This guy's got his head on straight.

Sexism Still A Problem At E3

The Penny Arcade Expo banned booth babes, but E3 is still behind the curve. Gamer Anonymous highlights the first step to recovery.

President Orders Spectrum Open For Wireless Broadband

Obama promises more Internet for the people. But how will the G-Men free up the bandwidth?

Anthony Goubard Built Joeffice In 30 Days

The Netherlands-based developer explains how Java is a part of a complete office suite . . . you know, when it's done.

Real Answers or Fake Questions From Xbox One Document?

Owen Good analyzes some frequently spread rumors about Microsoft's new Xbox One. Something doesn't add up . . .

Designer David Wright Has Just One Favor To Ask

NPR's latest hotshot developer is leaving news for Twitter. Wright tells Nieman Journalism Lab why design is the most prominent challenge to modern journalism. The solution is simple.

Reporting Or Illegal Hacking?

The Computer Fraud and Abuse Act makes life a living hell for whistle-blowers and highlights some glaring holes in the justice system. Just whom are we locking up?

June 14, 2013

The Most Effective Price Discovery Question for Your Startup

How much should your product cost? Ask your customers. Tomasz Tunguz outlines the importance of comparative pricing questions. He's always right.

Why The Hell Am I Building A Product With A Tiny Market?

Developing a product for a smaller market minimizes risk, but at what cost? Serge Toarca lists the pros and cons of niche programming.

8 Months In Microsoft, I Learned These

School and the real world just ain't the same. The recently matriculated Ahmet Alp Balkan tells it like it is.

The Code You Don't Write

Measure yourself by the work you don't do. Tim Evans-Ariyeh works smart, not hard.

iOS Assembly Tutorial

Matt Galloway breaks down what holds machine code together and teaches us to speak this intuitive language.

iOS 7 Icon Grid

John Marstall outlines Apple's new icon design grid. But don't think for one second he likes it.

Apple Uploads Its "Mission Statement" Videos To YouTube

Apple released a slew of new videos revealing to the world what they're all about. 9to5Mac takes a look at the new direction.

How Three Guys Rebuilt The Foundation Of Facebook

Facebook rode hip-hop to the tip-top. Cade Metz explains how the world's most prominent social network continues growing and preserves "The Hacker Way."

Consumer Vs. Enterprise Startups

Bijan Sabet outlines the difference in funding two types of startups and reveals his love affair with the consumer world. Maybe we're not just dreamers after all . . .

How To Build A Solid Product Roadmap

Outlining a plan doesn't mean it will execute properly, but it sure helps. Kenton Kivestu nails down the framework necessary in any product development process.

Getting Swoll

Travis Herrick works out, and he knows why: Nothing worth building comes easy, not even bodies.

Google Accused Of Hypocrisy Over Google Glass

Google Glass might be the most invasive piece of consumer technology ever, and Google knows it. Time to look in the mirror . . .

Stop Worrying About The Death Of Showrooming

Physical stores may be going the way of the dinosaur, but showrooming is by no means extinct. Casey Johnston shines some light on a new online model. Might wanna try on some sunglasses...

First look at Apple’s U.S.-manufactured Mac Pro

Apple unveiled the new Mac pro at the 2013 WWDC yesterday. Here's a first look at the cylindrical powerhouse.

Will Apple Allow Third-Party Software Keyboards In iOS 7?

Rumor has it developers will be able to program their own keyboards in the new iOS. Can it be true?

Apple’s New Promises To News Orgs

Apple announced a number of new products yesterday at the WWDC, not the least of which is iOS7. Joshua Benton breaks down the tech giant's big day.

Soon You’ll Be Able To Read iBooks On Your Mac

iBooks are now compatible with Apple's new Mavericks OS. Read up. Take notes.

Google Reader's dead and gone, but Google Glass is on the case. Applied Analog is interfacing your face.

Instafeed Lets You Curate Instagram Like RSS Feeds

The new app supplements Instagram, curating your feed by topic. But are they really in sync?

WikiLeaks Is More Important Than You Think

The NSA is gleaning information off of some of the biggest players on the web. Matthew Ingram explains why having an independent leaks repository is invaluable.

Robots Will Leave Us All Jobless

Technological progress increases productivity across the board. But are those same advances costing people their jobs? Illah Nourbakhsh discusses the inconvenient truth surrounding the rise of machines.

Cops can't figure out the latest technology in car theft, and neither can automakers. Can signal repeaters used in conjunction with keys in close proximity be the answer? Repeat . . . Police stumped.

Your Information Is Fair Game For Everyone

The U.S. government monitors our every digital move. The NSA compiles vast databases of emails, calls, and browsing history. So why does China get all the credit?

The iOS and Android Two-Horse Race: A Deeper Look into Market Share

Apple and Google have long vied for control of the mobile marketshare. Mary Ellen Gordon breaks down the race and explains the difference between devie- and app-share. Win, place, and show us the analytics.

How Facebook’s Entity Graph Evolved Into Graph Search

Harrison Weber explains how Facebook uses structured data to target users with ads so that they can target their exes. Stalkers . . .

You Won’t Finish This Article

People just don't read like they used to. Farhad Manjoo breaks down the analytics of the ever-shortening Internet attention span. Wait . . . what?

Why Google Reader Really Got the Axe

Google sentenced its RSS reader to death. Christina Boddington outlines the deliberations, the verdict, and this particular trial's outcome.

The Secret Worlds Inside Our Computers

Ever wonder what's going on inside your computer? Photographer Mark Crummett employs his world lass diorama skills to open up a whole new world in his new show "Ghosts in the Machine."

Robotic Street Sign "Points" In The Right Direction

Brooklyn's Breakfast invented an interactive street sign. Drawing from a user interface, social media, and even RSS feeds, Points can show you the way to your heart's desire. Now, where the hell is Wall-Drug?

Your Ego, Your Product, And The Process

Too often, our process gets mucked up on account of feelings. Cap Watkins explains how letting go and opening up during the earlier stages of design can alleviate creative pains.

The Dawn Of Voice-To-Text

Carpal tunnel got you down? As the sun sets on hand-coding, Tomasz Tunguz explains the not-so-subtle nuances of dictation, and gives his wrists a well-deserved break.

11 Years Of WWDC Banners

The world's most popular developers' conference sold out in two hours this year. Here's a look at the banners from years past. Nostalgia!

Express.js And Node.js As A Prototyping Medium

Express.js and Node.js can intimidate first-timers. Fret not. Chris Webb shares a list of helpful hints to get you started and guide you along.

In-Store iPhone Screen Replacement And The Machine Making It Possible

Apple has announced a new service replacing damaged iPhone screens in-house for $149. The price is right, but what does it mean for AppleCare?

The Future of Shopping

Google takes aim at Amazon's Prime subscription with Shopping Express. From cosmetics to toys, they deliver anything within a few hours of your order. No toilet paper? Keep your seat. They'll be right over.

The Next Big Thing In Gesture Control

Thalmic Labs raised $14.5 million for its MYO Armband. With over 30,000 pre-orders already, the Canadian startup is poised to usher in a new era of touchless computing.

Who Is The Tesla Motors Of The Media Industry?

Some suggest that media is going the way of the American automobile. Matthew Ingram explains who's on cruise control, and who's bucking the motor trend.

Finding Good Ideas Through The "McDonald's Theory"

Creative block? Try Jason Jones's own intellectual Drano: Terrible Suggestions.

Why Are Developers Such Cheap Bastards?

Developers notoriously reject paying for necessary technology. In fact, many of them waste weeks writing their own, bug-riddled programs. But they will pay for services, like the cloud. What's the deal?

The Banality Of "Don't Be Evil"

Beneath Google's do-gooder facade lies something more akin to a Heart of Darkness. The tech giant got into bed with Washington, and now they're working together to implement the West's next-generation, imperialist status quo. But don't look, they're watching.

The Straight Dope On United States vs. Apple

The publishing houses have all reached settlements, but Apple's still on the hook. Here's a look at the core issues driving the government's case.

Everything You Know About Kickstarter Is Wrong

The crowd-funding site has never really been about technology, but new requirements make it even harder to raise money for gadgets. Artists aside, it's time to look elsewhere for cash.

A Real Plan To Fix Windows 8

Microsoft's "integrated" operating system never worked well for tablets or PCs. How InfoWorld aims to dissolve this unholy union and salvage what should be a healthy, digital relationship.

Why The Hell Does Clear For iOS Use iCloud Sync?

Milen explains why Clear and iCloud make natural bedfellows, and how they fell in with each other in the first place.

Here's What's Missing From iOS Now

FanGirls compiled a miscellaneous iOS wish list for all the good girls (and boys) to see. From Wi-Fi and Bluetooth to file systems and bugs, here are eight reasonable expectations for the future of iOS.

Startups, Growth, and the Rule of 72

David Lee uses Paul Graham's essay "Startup=Growth" as a jumping off point to explain the metrics of growth. And don't worry if you've lost your mathematical touch, he has too.

“Starbucks Of Weed,” Brought To You By An Ex-Microsoft Executive

Andy Cush explains how Diego Pellicer plans to become America's first real marijuana chain. They're looking for $10 million in investments to expand into three new states. They must be high . . .

SUPER-CHEAP 3D-PRINTER COULD SHIP THIS YEAR

Pirate 3D is bringing the revolution to your doorstep, and for a heck of a lot cheaper than their competitors. Their goal? Get these things out to kids and see what prints.

A Story About The Early Days Of Medium

How do you create Medium and change publishing forever? By first gaining audience with the man behind Twitter, duh. And a couple other Obvious ones . . .

Why Google Is Saying Adios To Some Of Its Most Ardent App Developers

Google is laying off its App developers in Argentina on account of a logistical banking nightmare. Really, it's just paperwork. In a related story, interest in Google's Internship remains underwhelming.

This Guy Screencaps Videos Of Malware At Work

Daniel White infects old hardware with contemporary viruses for educational purposes. But don't Worry, he's not contagious.

The Rise Of Amateurs Capturing Events

You've met Big Brother, now meet "Little Brother." How the same technological developments advancing institutional surveillance are ushering in a new era of civilian watchdogs.

Three Mistakes Web Designers Make Over And Over Again

Doomed to repeat ourselves? Not so fast. Nathan Kontny shares a short list of some things he thinks to avoid.

Not So Anonymous: Bitcoin Exchange Mt. Gox Tightens Identity Requirement

Can we see some identification? Mt. Gox announces new verification procedures in response to a recent money laundering investigation into one of its competitors. And they've got their own legal problems, too .

The Wall Street Journal Plans A Social Network

The Wall Street Journal is working to connect everyone invested in the Dow Jones on a more private, financial network with chat. Suddenly, Bloomberg's got some competition.

Tumblr Adds Sponsored Posts, And The Grumbles Begin

Users are responding poorly to Yahoo adding advertising to Tumblr. Can sponsored stories save the day?

Sci-Fi Short Story, Written As A Twitter Bug Report

Anonymous man's @timebot tweets from the future, past, and present at once. But what can we learn given Twitter's rate limits. The end is nigh.

Thoughts On Source Code Typography

Developers read code more than anyone. David Bryant Copeland argues aesthetic in addition to content, and the importance of typography and readability of source code.

Marco Arment Sells "The Magazine" To Its Editor

Glenn Fleishman to helm progressive Instapaper as early as Saturday. It's business as usual, but with podcasts.

Mary Meeker’s Internet Trends Report Is 117 Slides Long

The Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers partner will release her findings at the upcoming D11 conference. But you get a sneak peak...

Apple’s Block And Tackle Marketing Strategy

Tim Cook explained yesterday why there are a million different iPods, only one iPhone, and the importance of consumers' desires and needs. But will things be different after the WWDC?

Why Almost Everyone Gets It Wrong About BYOD

To Brian Katz, BYOD is "about ownership--nothing more and nothing less." Why allowing people use of their own devices increases the likelihood that they will use the device productively.

Remote Cameras Are Being Used To Enforce Hospital Hand-Washing

Ever wonder if your doctors' hands were clean? So did North Shore University Hospital. New technology sends live video of hospital employees' hand-washing habits . . . to India.

8 Ways To Target Readership For Your Blog

Blog functionality has increased considerably in the last 10 years, but has that overcomplicated things? Here's a list from Matt Gemmell (aka the Irate Scotsman) of ways to simplify. Your readers will thank you for it.

Pricing Your App In Three Tiers: The Challenges Of Channel Conflict

Cost- and value-based pricing may at first appear in contrast to each other, but they exist for different kinds of consumers. Tomasz Tunguz explains some solutions to justify your pricing model and maximize your profits.

How Google Is Building Internet In The Sky

Google is already using blimp and satellite technology to bring the Internet to the farthest reaches of the planet. What they really want is television's white space, but they've got a fight on their hands.

You Wrote Something Great. Now Where To Post?

The writer's landscape has changed. But with so many new options comes confusion. How do authors with something to say decide where, and to whom, they say it?

Yahoo’s Reinvention: Not Your Grandfather's Search Engine

CEO of Yahoo Marissa Mayer is bucking the minimalist trends she once championed at Google. Why the Internet portal may be making a comeback.

What Works On Twitter: How To Grow Your Following

Researchers at Georgia Tech University are working to shed light on one of the Internet's unsolved mysteries. Here are 14 statistically significant methods with which you can increase your presence on Twitter.

Financial Times Invents A Twitter Clone For News

With the launch of fastFT, Financial Times hopes to keep its readers closer than ever by providing a 100-250-word service for news. 8 journalists are now tasked with breaking the most important financial stories from all over the world.

[Image: Flickr user Tanakawho]

What do you do after you have resigned from the ground-breaking company you founded? If you are Martin Stiksel and Felix Miller, the founders of Last.fm, you decide to do it all over again on an even larger scale. Today the duo is launching Lumi, a web discovery tool to find news, entertainment, and eventually products. “We felt we had only scratched the surface of what we can do with this concept, “ laughs Miller. ”So here we are, back again!”

The Internet was a very different place when Miller and Stiksel launched Last.fm in 2002. Google was only four years old. Facebook, YouTube, and even Myspace did not yet exist. Amazon had only recently started recommending “books you might like.”

Stiksel was a DJ in his native Austria and he and Miller originally teamed up in London to create an online record label for unsigned bands. Then they spotted an article in the Guardian about Richard Jones's Audioscrobbler--a plug-in for your media player which created a music profile by tracking what you listened to. It could also suggest music you didn't know based on what music lovers with similar profiles also liked. Miller and Stiksel tracked down Jones and hired him before he left university. Last.fm racked up 30 million users before being sold to CBS for $280 million in 2007. Its founders resigned from the company in 2009.

The idea for Lumi was already being tossed around in the Last.fm years. “We thought that the technologies that we were using at Last.fm could be adaptable on a much wider scale,” says Stiksel. “This idea kept on nagging us, so two years ago we formed a new team and started working on Lumi. It dawned on us that browsing history contains a lot of information about what you are interested in and could be a really good basis to do recommendations on.”

Lumi is a browser extension for Chrome, Firefox, and Safari. It uses your browsing history to build up a profile of your interests. "You don't have to subscribe to any feeds, you don't have to tick any boxes. It's instantly personalized, useful, and dynamic," says Stiksel. “There are two things we can derive from your browsing history: a very accurate picture of what you are interested in but also the currently trending pages.” Topics are defined using some basic keyword analysis. Combining the topic and trending information, Lumi presents you a feed of relevant stories, or at least that’s the theory. 10,000 alpha users have been road-testing it for some time and now the tool will be open to the public for the first time.

For me Lumi identified some predictable topics like data journalism but also chefs (which was a surprise to me) and the Met Ball. I do have a weakness for photos of the lavish or laughable dresses the stars wore at the latest awards ceremony, but not just at the Met Ball. When it came to recommending content, the suggestions were heavy on tech news and light on frocks, which is unsurprising given its early adopter and I would guess, mainly male, user base.

Since Lumi finds popular links in its topic areas based on the activity of its users, it is dependent on their tastes to provide recommendations. Repeat usage, rather than dwell time, is the main metric. “We want to get them out of our site as quickly as possible," Stiksel explains. "Lumi is a great jump-off point.”

The business model is undefined as yet, but Stiksel is adamant that it won’t be built on user data. ”We’re not interested in the user providing the data as a commercial asset. We only want them to do this to improve their user experience. We want to monetize the user experience rather than the data itself.”

Lumi is certainly not the only company tackling the web discovery problem. Finnish startup Futureful makes an iPhone/iPad app which also automatically selects topics, but it allows you to combine them to find content. Like Lumi, it tracks your interactions with the content taking note of what topics you combine, what topics you disregard, what links you follow, and whether you read an article to the end.

Futureful founder Jarno M. Koponen explains: “Based on your interactions we create your constantly evolving Futureful profile, i.e., what unique connections you create between topics as well as what pages you seem to enjoy. For everyone, the existence and strength of the connections varies. Different people have different strengths between the connection of ‘Apple’ and ‘iOS’/’Apple’ and ‘health food.’” Futureful also tries to keep you out of the filter bubble by specifically suggesting some topics that you and similar users don't share.

Miller sees news as merely a starting point for Lumi. “Everything has a web page. Every movie has an IMDB page, every song has a Last.fm or SoundCloud page but also every hotel has a website, every recipe has a website. Everything is sold online or promoted online or explained online. We start with the newsfeed but this goes way beyond news. It's much wider.”

The advances in 3-D printing have focused on miniaturization for the commercial sector and synthesizing cheaper, stronger plastic polymers--but what about innovating methods to print metal? Researchers at North Carolina State University have developed techniques to drop liquid metal into a stack--not ooze it into a larger puddle--at room temperature, allowing the formation of free-standing structures. More than a hobbyist’s dream, printable metal could be the answer to microproduction’s doubts about 3-D-printed plastic’s strength.

It’s difficult to create structures out of liquids, because liquids want to bead up. But we’ve found that a liquid metal alloy of gallium and indium reacts to the oxygen in the air at room temperature to form a 'skin' that allows the liquid metal structures to retain their shapes,” says Dr. Michael Dickey, an assistant professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering at NC State and coauthor of a paper describing the work.

Of course, the researchers didn’t stop there: The alloy can be inserted into a polymer mold (itself made by a 3-D printer), after which the polymer dissolves to leave the molded metal, and the alloy can be stretched into long liquid metal wires able to sit perpendicular to the substrate. This is only the latest from North Carolina State University; back in January, they released a video on self-healing electrical wires, and in December, one on ultra-stretchable wires.

So what’s the big deal? The ability to print this alloy, potentially from the same machine as a traditional plastic-spinning 3-D printer, would exponentially increase your ability to make components at home. At the extreme end of this technology synthesis is the potential to create a factory that repairs and expands itself. Dani Eder’s Seed Factory is a conceptual nexus of production, an independent factory line that could bring Skynet-style auto-replication to reality:

As the factory grows and has more equipment, it can automate more of the steps from raw materials to finished product and make a higher percentage of its own parts. The disruptive change is from linear production--where a factory produces a given product at a given rate, to exponentially expanding production, including making more Seed Factories. Some people worry that robots and automation are going to take their jobs. I say let them. If you own the automation, you have nothing to worry about. Self-expanding factories that grow from a relatively small and inexpensive starter kit can make that possible.

The main component that’s missing, Eder concedes, is the need for components that can’t be otherwise created on-site, such as metal and computer chips. With the ability to print particular metal components, the Seed Factory will be able to not only create parts made of conglomerate materials but also maximize the factory’s small-scale potential: on-site printing facilitates the Seed Factory’s mission to constantly innovate new designs superior to components that have been mass-produced to keep costs down. On-site fabrication also eliminates the wait for parts and the expenditure of energy needed to transport them from factory to front door (increasingly across oceans and continents).

In short, 3-D-printed metal will exponentially increase the application of location production. We’ll figure out all that Singularity stuff later.

[Image: Flickr user Woodleywonderworks]

With companies from Apple to Spotify jostling for control of the online music marketplace, there'd seem to be little room for the site most known for being crushed by Facebook. But MySpace may have a new trick up its sleeve. The revamped network, which launched publicly last month, includes a section devoted to music discovery, featuring not just news and reviews but also striking photography and even live-streamed performances.

To head its editorial operations, MySpace tapped Joseph Patel, previously a producer at Vice, as its vice president of content and creative. He has brought in a staff of longtime editors, including Benjamin Meadows-Ingram, formerly of Billboard, and Monica Herrera, previously at RollingStone. We spoke with Patel about how the company's editorial approach gives it a competitive edge.

How does MySpace's editorial content fit in with the service's streaming and discovery functions?

Basically, that's the same thing I asked when I got approached to head up content: How do you see this fitting in with the platform? What the draw was for me--they wanted to do something that not anyone else in the space was doing--creating original content, covering interesting things: projects, releases, people. We hope it's a draw for people we cover to stay on the platform. No one really has been doing that.

In MySpace's first iteration, when it was really successful, there was an element of discovery to the platform. If I was friends with Daft Punk, and they were friends with Justice, I was able to check them out, and suddenly I'm a fan of Justice. By doing original content, we can put people up on things.

What's MySpace's editorial approach? What sorts of things are you looking to cover?

The sort of North Star that we're pointing to internally is that we're a platform for creatives. We've started with music content first, but we're slowly going to be expanding to photography, design, filmmaking, fashion, style. When I was a teenager, I was obsessed with music, and that's really how I got into the creative world. I learned about photography by looking at the album covers of my favorite bands. I learned about filmmaking from music videos done by those bands.

We're trying to mimic that with the content we create. There's a lot more than just the music. There's the person who directed the video, the person who created the packaging, who styled the artist, who created the set design at a festival. We want to look at all of those creative pursuits.

Tumblr and Facebook have both experimented with editorial content but ultimately abandoned those efforts. How is MySpace's approach different?

I think both experimented, but that's just it--they experimented. I don't think they went all in, like you have to do to get some traction on an idea of that magnitude. Again, I think the motivation for what we're doing is ultimately to be a place for creatives. If we have content that other creatives want to engage with, content that creatives actually use to discover new ideas, concepts, collaborators, then I think we will be achieving our goal.

How does MySpace's editorial content fit into the company's business model?

One of the things we do is branded content. Audiences are willing to engage with branded content, one, if it's good, and two, if it's honest and you're not trying to put one over on them. We're creating interesting content that we'd want to do anyway. With Bud Light, we did branded content as part of their Music First 50/50/1 program. Chevy sponsored some of our South by Southwest content over three nights. They helped us present what we wanted to present. That's the philosophy we're taking with it.

Do you see MySpace's editorial content as primarily an entry point for people to explore more of the platform, or is it content that lives independent of the platform?

I ultimately see it playing two roles. I want it to be on MySpace to draw people in, but I also want as many eyeballs looking at it as possible. I want stuff passed around, linked back to. We want to be recognized as a brand, as a music source, whether that happens on the platform or off. It's a challenge with the current perception of the brand. Joe Budden posted a link to a story we'd done comparing Kanye to Drake. And people said, MySpace? He said: Yeah, MySpace. So what? It's good. That was great to see. We're gradually changing the perception.

How do you balance promoting MySpace's own catalog with exposing visitors to artists who may not be on the platform?

We're not just writing about music, and certainly not just the music you'd buy on MySpace. We could never be a true platform for discovery that way. When I pitched Tim and Chris [Vanderhook, the co-owners] on my vision, they were describing what streaming music they have in the catalog. I said that doesn't get you to the place where people trust you as the place to come to learn about new things. Even if things aren't on MySpace, we can link to other sources, just like any other site would. That ultimately serves our mission better, rather than just internal marketing from our catalog.

Has MySpace's editorial approach influenced other aspects of the site? How do you see the overall platform evolving as MySpace broadens its editorial scope?

I think the editorial team is influencing the site, and vice versa. For example, during our beta phase, we needed to redesign the Discover section to serve the needs of the content we are producing. That redesign looked so good, we're beginning to implement it elsewhere on the site. Likewise, the site introduced new functionality through our mobile app, a GIF creator. So now, one of the things we're going to be doing is aggregating GIFs commissioned from name photographers or filmmakers and presenting that as editorial.

Might MySpace at some point partner with other companies and organizations that also aim to attract creatives?

That's part of our content strategy. We just started doing some collaborations with Afropunk. I've followed what Matthew [Morgan] and James [Spooner] from Afropunk have been doing for a long time, so I'm a big supporter. When I got here, I said, "We should work on something together." We streamed an exclusive live performance: Danny Brown performed at Afropunk, and we shot it and put it on MySpace. We also ran a video interview with the artist Le1f.

We have ideas in development with Milk Studios, The Fader, and Karmaloop. Federal Prism, a label by Dave Sitek of TV on the Radio--there are certain things he wants to do, and we're putting them exclusively on MySpace. The more consistent and interesting the content is, the better it is for us. It doesn't have to be exclusive with us, but partners like that are good for us.

I own a health tech startup and currently I have two sets of engineering teams. One set consists of my hardware engineers: the guys hacking together the prototype that will eventually go to manufacturing. The other set of engineers are my software guys--the ones who are obviously coding the companion app. I’ve never coded in my life, but I’ve already learned a lot from my software engineers, which I am very grateful for. We have a lot of back and forth about what is best for the app and what is best for the user, but when it came to deciding whether to build a separate iPhone and iPad app or a universal one, the answer for me was nonnegotiable: You build a universal one.

For me “universal” is the only answer because I am looking at it from a user’s perspective. As a user, I hate seeing two sets of apps saying “Skype” sitting next to each other in my iTunes app library. I like reducing things as much as I can, and for me one app build that works on all my devices is ideal.

Another reason that made “universal” the right one for my app is because the app will be free. It is there to support the hardware only. There is no financial incentive for me have a separate iPhone and iPad app. I want the people who purchase my hardware to only have to download one app. This makes things simpler for them and enhances their user experience.

However, as a developer, there are plenty of reasons why a universal app might not be best. Below I’ve collected some interesting arguments from developers both in support of and against universal apps. Here’s a sampling of opinions on whether or not to “universal” your app based on a particular vantage point: coding work, App Store ranking, and financial gain.

Universal iOS Apps From A Coding Perspective

The great thing about universal apps is that it saves on a lot of coding. But that’s not always a good thing as author and developer Erica Sadun writes for TUAW:

From a design and coding point of view, it's obvious that Universal Apps quickly become Frankencode. Separate projects (or, more realistically, separate targets with some shared code base and some platform-specific class files) greatly increase code readability and maintainability, even when the two projects share a great majority of features.

Consider the most Model-View-Controllerized app you can imagine. Even an app that offers glorious orthogonality between its visual design and its underlying code logic will suffer from universalization. It's just natural fallout from the conditional coding needed to deal with reality; the iPhone-based interaction modes that used to require multiple screens can now join together into simplified iPad interfaces.

Do Universal iOS Apps Do Better In Reviews and Rankings?

Good reviews and App Store rankings can make or break an app. Here’s the advantage and disadvantage a universal app brings to rankings and reviews:

Here's Pierre of L'Escapadou talking about how universal apps can make reading (and acting on) your app’s feedback challenging:

App Store reviews and ratings are not separated. On the App Store, you can't--and neither can potential buyers--distinguish between ratings and reviews for the iPhone or the iPad version. This is especially a problem if your app is very good on iPad but not so good on iPhone, or vice-versa. Again, you cannot use these reviews to make informed decisions for your future products. We found this impossibility to interpret accurately the reviews and ratings a major issue.

As for App Store rankings, here’s Oliver from CocoaNetics on how having a universal app is helpful to climb high in the charts:

There were 27 universal apps in the free overall U.S. top 100 and 33 in the iPad chart. Of these, I could find 16 universal apps that were ranking similarly high in both charts. Eleven universal iPhone apps did not show in the top 100 iPad chart. Fourteen universal iPad apps did not show in the top 100 iPhone/iPod chart. Possibly they were only slightly outside the top 100--I did not check.

The percentage of successful universal apps is an order of magnitude higher than dedicated versions. Among the top 100 (again only quickly looking visually), I could only find four apps that both had separate versions.

I invite your scrutiny of this casual analysis of mine, however I think that this graphic can only lead to this answer to Daniel’s question: Make your free app universal, if you are NOT Rovio. I think this analysis debunks the myth that making a free app universal is bad for it’s ranking.

Do Combo iPhone/iPad Apps Make More Money?

The financial advantage to having two separate apps is obvious. More products to sell equals more money. But even if you only want to deal with a universal build, what good is selling one universal app for a higher price if you can offer an iPhone-only app for a lower price to a user who only wants it on one device?

Here’s Mick, the developer of Things explaining to a user why he chose not to offer a universal app from a financial perspective:

I'm not sure what country you're in, but let's assume the U.s., where, on iOS, Things costs $10 for iPhone + $20 for iPad = $30 for Things on iOS. The cost of our software is something we have carefully considered, and we believe that our iOS offerings are worth $30.

• We could offer just a universal app for $30, but this would mean that someone who only wanted the iPhone app would be spending an extra $20 for no reason.
• We could offer three different ways to buy it: iPhone $10, iPad $20, Universal $30--but then there would be, for example, users who bought the iPhone app before getting an iPad and wanted to 'upgrade' to the Universal app. However, Apple currently provides no upgrade mechanism on its stores, which makes this an inconvenient and confusing solution. We'd rather just keep it simple.

I suppose that you are not suggesting you want the convenience of a single universal iOS app, but rather that you don't think our software is worth $30, an opinion you're quite entitled to hold. But for the time being, this is how we will continue to charge for and distribute our software--as individually sold apps at a combined $30.

The above quotes are just some opinions--each valid in their own way. And for each one, I could find a just as valid counterpoint. As a user, I would love to see all apps universal, however, as a developer, deciding to go universal isn’t always an easy choice. Though I agree with many of the selections above, those developers are only right in the context of what is best for their app and business. Your app’s situation is unique and thus your reasons to go universal or not could be very different than the next developer.

I don’t think the “Should I go universal or not” question will ever be settled, and even three years after the debut of the iPad, the conversation surrounding the question is only getting started. I’m extremely interested in views from all sides, so please leave your thoughts in the comments below or tweet them to both me and Fast.Co Labs at @michaelgrothaus and @FastCoLabs.

Previous Updates

Siri, Why Don’t You Have An API?

July 8, 2013

A funny thing happened in Japan last week: The most advanced robot ever made was bashed by the press after a presentation to reporters because this walking, automated wonder couldn’t recognize voice queries--something most modern-day smartphones can do. As Fred Attewill writing for Metro explains:

Asimo is programmed to answer questions when visitors raise their hands in the air but as guests held smartphones aloft to take a picture of the robot he became flummoxed and, instead of posing, repeatedly asked: ‘Who wants to ask Asimo a question?’ The glitch is an embarrassment for Honda. Asimo has no voice recognition software and can only respond to pre-set questions selected from a touch-panel device. That’s led critics to call the robot an ‘expensive, out-of-date toy’.

I point this event out because you know voice recognition has become ingrained in users’ minds as something that is expected in any piece of modern tech when the technology press start bashing the most advanced robot on the planet for not having it.

Which brings me to this point: In spite of the 1,500 new developer APIs in iOS 7, it’s odd that Apple didn’t choose to offer the one API every developer has been asking for since seeing the iPhone 4S: Siri.

To be sure, iOS’s digital assistant is something that's always been a bit underwhelming. It’s useful for some limited queries (“Where’s the closest gas station?” “Remind me to leave for the train at 1:30 p.m.”), but in the end it falls flat, especially compared to Google Now’s Voice Search. And that’s exactly why Apple should have opened up a Siri API. When the first iPhone came out it had Maps, which were useful, but the true benefit of mobile maps didn’t become apparent until Apple unleashed the Maps API to developers in iOS 2.0. After all, it’s independent developers that often find the best uses for iOS features (via APIs)--and then Apple usually ends up integrating the best of those uses into the next version of iOS itself.

Until Apple releases a Siri API, the voice assistant will continue to just be another “meh” feature. Nice, but not critical--and nowhere as good as the biggest competitor’s. I’m not the first to suggest that, for Siri to become useful, Apple needs to give devs a whack at it. As Christina Bonnington wrote for Wired:

The first step [to a robust Siri] must be a public Siri API. Building out a robust API for third-party developers could do for Siri what the App Store did for iOS: make it a rousing success. Developers are eager to hook into Siri to increase engagement and make interactions more natural and fluid.

But the Siri API didn’t happen with iOS 7, so developers are left waiting (at least) another year for their next chance. Of course, developers aren't totally limited by Apple's lack of access. As Brian Roemmele on this Quora thread points out, there are a few quasi-Siri APIs now:

The Siri Text Message API

This API takes advantage of the iOS Phonebook and Text messaging to weld together a rather useful and elegant way to present data to a web based API that has access to either a Short Code Text messaging platform or a front end system that can receive Text Messages and parse the text string.

From the programmers perspective Siri would be delivering a text message that would be acted on based on the application keywords. The results can be any number of possibilities spanning from a resulting text message back as an answer all the way up to a much more complex series of results.

The Siri Calendar API

Siri can use CalDAV to communicate calendar events. Siri can also read back CalDAV events back, even if they have been modified. Thus we have a two-way communication Quasi API for transferring data in and out of Siri. It is not perfect. But with a little work the user can access data that is not native to Siri's current API relationships. And it works.

But until the real Siri API comes out, perhaps Siri and Asimo should drown their sorrows together over humanity's disappointment in them.

Mac Apps Get Subscription Billing--But At What Cost?

July 3, 2013

With all the focus of WWDC on iOS 7’s redesign, OS X 10.9 didn’t get a lot of showtime. While some of the more significant features got a quick preview, one feature developers have been asking for wasn’t even mentioned: in-app subscriptions for OS X apps.

But that’s exactly what’s coming to the Mac App Store when OS X 10.9 ships this fall. As with iOS before it, now developers will be able to sell auto-renewing and non-renewing subscriptions in-app. As Juli Clover writes for MacRumors:

With the release of Mavericks, Mac developers will be able to provide services on an ongoing monthly basis with charges routed through the App Store's in-app purchase system. As with the iOS App Store, developers will be able to offer both ongoing subscriptions and subscriptions that expire after a set time, automatically charging a user's iTunes account.

For a developer this is very welcome news. In-app subscriptions in OS X apps will likely increase subscription sales to existing apps and services, like Dropbox (if it ever comes to the Mac App Store) or Evernote. Until now, companies like Evernote, who offer their OS X app in the Mac App Store, needed to direct those users to an external webpage to get their billing details and sign up for a subscription. Extra, tedious steps like this are always an impediment to users signing up. But now with OS X 10.9, users will be able to simply click a button in the app and enter their iTunes password to buy a subscription.

However, the ability for any app developer to easily enable app subscriptions could turn off a lot of users, especially if developers don’t use subscriptions to offer extra options (like extended cloud storage) and instead make their apps only available via a subscription basis. Adobe and Microsoft have both gotten a lot of pushback from users by introducing subscription-only models of their flagship software, but because of Office’s and Photoshop’s importance in business, the two companies can get away with it.

But I don’t think many users would tolerate smaller apps going to a subscription-only model. I’m a big fan of Pixelmator, VoodooPad, and OmmWriter, but I want to own those app outright. I don’t want to have to pay $9.99 a year for their use. (I should note that I’m just using those apps as examples. None of those developers have told me they are thinking of charging annual subscriptions for use.)

In spite of this possibility, I think in-app subscriptions for OS X apps are a good thing. Developers work hard at making some very good, very indispensable apps. The more money they can make (through reasonable subscription offerings), the better. But to me the best thing about in-app subscriptions in OS X 10.9 aren’t the subscriptions themselves--it’s what they signal the future of apps in the Mac App Store could be like.

If Apple is open to in-app subscriptions, there’s a good chance they are considering paid upgrades in the Mac App Store. This is something both developers and users have been clamoring for. As Taylor Marks (under the forum name of “ArtOfWarfare”), creator of Battery Status, explains on a MacRumors forum, even with subscriptions in OS X 10.9, developers are currently stuck between a rock and a hard place when it comes to revenue via the Mac App Store:

If I want to majorly improve an app right now, my options for funding that are:

1. Don't. Everyone gets a free update and I go broke.
2. Sell it as an entirely separate app. Many consumers won't discover it ever.
3. Charge subscription fees. Annoying to users who feel they're paying repeatedly for something I did once.

But if Apple is open to in-app subscriptions, then we may, sooner rather than later, see the ability for developers to offer paid upgrades in the Mac App Store. And if this happens, everyone wins. Users get the option to pay less for a newer version of the app (provided they have the previous version) and developers have a monetary incentive to continue to improve their apps and sell them via the Mac App Store.

Will that happen? Only Apple knows. But the signs seem to be pointing in the right direction.

iBeacons Allow iOS 7 Devs To Harness The Internet Of Things

July 2, 2013

When a friend asked me to clarify what Apple’s coolest new API, called iBeacons, was, I explained it like this: If you’re sailing a ship in the dark and want to know where the coastline is, you look out for a bright thing that’s called a lighthouse. This lighthouse, or beacon, gives you spatial information that you can act on--in this case, that information allows you to not crash your ship into the shore.

Apple’s iBeacon API works much the same way as the light from the lighthouse. It allows iOS devices to pick up micro-location Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) profiles (the “light”) from miniature Bluetooth transceivers (the “lighthouse”). These micro-location BLE profiles carry in them spatial, and other, data that will allow your iPhone to do so much more than it can today.

iBeacons works by talking to Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) devices, also known as Bluetooth 4.0 and Bluetooth “SMART,” that are able to transmit data within a 150-foot proximity. If an iPhone falls within these geofenced BLE proximities, iBeacons automatically picks up data from those beacons and turns it into actionable user commands.

“But in what context are iBeacons useful?” you might ask. “After all, there are a dozen ways to beam information to an iPhone.”

True, but never in a way like iBeacons before. As Daniel Eran Dilger writes for AppleInsider, iBeacons will make indoor navigation easier due to the accessibility of cheap beacon transmitters from companies like Adomoly:

iOS 7's iBeacons can be used by app developers to do things like build an interactive tour of a museum, where the user's attention is directed to specific exhibits as they walk freely within the building. In more general terms, the feature can also be used enable indoor navigation similar to GPS in settings such as an airport or underground subway station where GPS signals aren't available, or specifically to enhance navigational accessibility for the blind or users with other impairments.

But what’s even more interesting about iBeacons is that they are not just looking for signals from BLE transmitters. It turns out iBeacons turns your iOS device into a transmitter as well so it can send automatic commands to other BLE tech. What’s amazing about this is that it means iBeacons opens the door (excuse the pun) to turning your iOS device into a key for any physical door (be it a car door or the door to your home) that is equipped with a BLE transmitter. Imagine arriving home and walking up to your house and having the door unlock automatically--no fumbling with the keys in your pocket. iBeacons does that.

Matter of fact, given the proper BLE hardware and a companion app, iBeacons allows for your iPhone to act like a key, or an “on” and “off” switch, for any device you can think of: doors, lights, alarms. With iBeacons, a thermostat company could make a BLE thermostat that talks to an app on your iPhone. In the app you could set it so that once you are out of range of your house when you leave for work in the morning, the air conditioning is automatically turned off to save on your energy bills. When you return home, the aircon automatically turns back on. No more setting the thermostat by time or manually turning it on and off. With iBeacons it could know if you’re home or not and set itself accordingly.

The iBeacons API in iOS 7 will allow your iPhone to become the control center for that mythical “Internet of things” we all want to see, which means your iPhone will become more invaluable than ever. It will be your car keys, your secure ID badge, your house keys, your on and off switch for alarms, and lights, and thermostat. And perhaps most tellingly, it shows just how much Apple wants to make the iPhone the one tool you need with you at all times.

Game Time For Apple: New Hardware API Lets Devs Get Serious

June 24, 2013

A common thing I hear from serious gamers is that on no ecosystem Apple offers--neither iOS nor OS X--is gaming taken seriously by the Cupertino company. And until now, they may have been right. While there are some impressive games on iOS, they’re only impressive for a smartphone. When you compare them to a PC or console game, they lose their luster. The same goes for OS X, which still only gets the most popular PC games years after they have come out.

Part of this can be blamed on game developers. It cost millions of dollars to bring a game to a new platform, so those systems with smaller marketshare (like computers running OS X) aren’t going to get a lot of love. But who can really blame them? Game development is a business and if you can’t get a good return on your investment, there’s no point in wasting your time or money.

But another reason gaming, particularly on iOS, has been labeled nothing but “casual”--something people do to waste time in a doctor’s office or on the commute home -- is because a smartphone like the iPhone doesn’t provide the right tactile experience for complex games.

To see what I mean by this, imagine playing Red Dead Redemption on an iPhone or iPad. A game like that has such complicated controls, they only work well with physical controllers. And it’s because those controllers exist in three dimensions we don’t need to look at the controls to make a character walk forward or duck. We can feel it with our fingertips, which means we can concentrate on what is going on onscreen and not having to constantly look under our thumbs to make sure our fingers are actually touching the d-pad.

But the days of fingertips slipping from a touchscreen d-pad are about to end thanks to the new Game Controller framework Apple has just released in the iOS 7 beta (it’s also available for OS X 10.9). The framework sets the stage for third-party game controller support that has Apple’s blessing to talk to iOS. The official support from Apple means that games are about to get much more advanced on iOS because it frees users from the flat touch screen and gives them tactile controls like never before on an iPhone.

How big of a deal is this for gaming on iOS? Pretty big, according to Gerald Lynch of Tech Digest:

“On the surface it doesn't sound like a major deal--we've already had iOS gamepads from the likes of iCade and Ion. However, without any standardized API blueprint to work against, games developers had to put the effort in to optimizing their titles for each manufacturer's unique hardware control system. For many games devs, it just wasn't worth the extra hassle to add support for a controller that only a few thousand people (at best) may own, especially when the iPhone and iPad's touch controls worked out fine. But with the introduction of a standardized API, whatever Apple-certified game pad you buy going forward from the release of iOS 7 will adhere to a unified design, a single system that any game dev can easily add support for.”

However, developers hoping to enhance their games with third-party controller support need to keep some things in mind. Even though Apple is now being more proactive in its approach to gaming, it’s still Apple after all, and it does impose some limitations on how the controllers can interface with iOS games. Here’s the one caveat from the iOS Developer Library notes devs should be aware of:

“Controllers Must Be Optional: If you write a game that supports controllers, there must also be a way to play the game without a controller. On an iOS device, that means taking advantage of the touch screen and the integrated sensors in the device. On OS X, this usually means an interface based on the keyboard and mouse. Either way, controllers must enhance game play--they must not be required.”

What this clause is really saying is iOS may be more open to gaming, but it’s still Apple’s ecosystem and not the developer’s. Apple doesn’t want the iPhone becoming a glorified gaming system--like an Xbox mini--because the device is so much more than that. And most important, it doesn’t want to piss off its users by making them think they aren’t getting all they can out of the iPhone without buying additional hardware.

And to me, that’s a smart move. If I see a game in the App Store, I want to be able to download it and use it as I can any non-gaming app--right on my iPhone, using only my iPhone and fingers to interact with it. For game developers, however, that does mean extra work. Because if you can develop a kick-ass game for iOS that users a controller, you also need to find out a way to make it work sans game pad.

Why We’re Tracking The Future of iOS and OS X

Apple owned the most popular platforms for software development in the 1980s with Mac OS and again in the late naughties with iOS. Now the company is set to go through another significant development boom with iOS 7 and OS X 10.9 and beyond. Where will these development changes take us? Some think they’ll lead to the unification of Mac OS and iOS. Some think they’ll lead to a third or even fourth development ecosystem--one aimed at wearable tech and one aimed at smart televisions. Only time will tell where software development in Apple’s ecosystem leads, but right now, there’s plenty of interesting new stuff going on in the existing ecosystems to keep developers busy.

If you’re interested in the future of development on Apple’s ecosystems, be sure to follow this tracker. Here we’ll explore the latest frameworks, tips, and advances in iOS and OS X. And if you’re a developer doing something innovative on either platform, get in touch with the author @michaelgrothaus to let him know what you’re up to.

[Image: Flickr user Nick Harris]

Have you ever asked, "How do I get people other than my Mom to visit my site?" I have. I've asked it a lot.

Most books on marketing all say the same thing: get out and network, go do speeches, go to events, etc.

Well, I've done networking events. I remember one with a neat speed-dating-like portion where we switched seats every three minutes. I got to meet a lot of people. I got a lot of business cards. Unfortunately, that's a useless stack of paper when we're all looking for new customers, but no one's interested in becoming a customer.

I've also given talks at business conferences. I was given a chance once to talk about prediction markets at a conference in Miami. I thought it would be a great marketing opportunity for my first Y Combinator-backed company Inkling), and I'd enjoy the sun.

I think it turned out pretty well, which I can state with some confidence having won awards for public speaking in high school, participated in Toastmasters, and trained as an actor. I'm comfortable on stage, I was incredibly well-prepared, and I even did a magic trick.

What did I get for all the preparation? Nothing. Zero leads. No calls, no emails, no interest of any kind.

Since then, I've spent quite a deal of time changing my approach to marketing and promoting myself. And it's working, at least so far. My current project, Draft, is a web-based tool to help people write better. When Draft was in beta, I had 1500 testers, and many more than that signed up to try it out. I've now launched Draft, and interest continues to grow.

Here are some things I've learned that help attract, and keep, attention.

If You Can't Out-spend, Out-teach

I recommend reading Kathy Sierra's entire blog. In particular, this is one of her best: You can out-spend or out-teach your competition. This is where I learned a little marketing slight-of-hand.

Let's say you're selling a camera. If you have a lot of money, you can use it to buy attention. But if you begin in a spot like me, without enough money to even pay yourself, you're better off spending your resources teaching people.

Teach people to be better photographers. Once you've helped someone take better pictures, you'll have a true follower and lifetime fan. Oh, and you also happen to sell cameras?

At these business conferences, I wasn't being a very good teacher. I gave people definitions, data, and confidence intervals, but nothing I said was immediately useful. When I was done, no one was a better manager, entrepreneur, or employee than when I had begun.

Now when I speak or write, I try to teach things that are immediately useful. Today. I write blog posts trying to teach people how to do what I've learned: how I improve my websites, how I write, how I create, and how I attract followers. And I'm constantly open-sourcing projects, which doesn't just apply to software.

Someone once told me they'd Carbon Copy memos around at work (pre-email). These memos would be things like letters from a business partner to a client. And they'd CC new employees, so they'd get a chance to see what this communication was like.

There's so much you can learn from just seeing how someone emails another person. Open source your emails. Your excel spreadsheets. Your power point presentations. Do you have an effective resume or cover letter? Open source it.

Become A Better Teacher, By Becoming A Better Storyteller

Remember the specific numbers of John McCain's 2008 tax plan? Probably not. But you probably remember Joe the Plumber and how McCain's plans were supposed to help people like Joe. People remember stories, and politicians know this. That's why their stump speeches are full of them.

Another failure of mine in past presentations was not being a very interesting storyteller.

Since then, I've paid more attention to what good storytellers do. I've gobbled up things like Wired for Story, Pixar's rules of storytelling, and Kurt Vonnegut's 8 Basics of Creative Writing.

One commonality in most good stories is trouble: Some struggle our hero needs to overcome. It catches and keeps our attention. It gives us someone to root for.

In the speeches and writing you see from me today, you'll often be introduced to something I had to struggle to get through, and what I learned along the way. In that journey are important lessons that might also resonate with my audience. So now, instead of zero interest in what I'm doing, it's not unusual for a piece of my writing to be shared on a place like Twitter a few hundred times, or have 15,000 people show up to read a blog post.

As you write, give speeches, or even write marketing copy on your website, give the content some plot. Trace a story of struggle you or your customers have gone through, and what you've learned to avoid it in the future.

We all love stories. Learn how to tell them.

Help Someone You Look Up To, Your Hero

Find the most talented person in the room, and if it’s not you, go stand next to him. Hang out with him. Try to be helpful. -Harold Ramis on how to be successful

Harold played Dr. Egon Spengler in Ghostbusters, which he co-wrote with Dan Aykroyd. In that quote, he's talking about helping Bill Murray and the success that brought Harold.

When I was struggling with what to do after my second Y Combinator backed company wasn't working out, I decided to take a break from running my own software company and join the tech team at the Obama re-election campaign. Not because of the politics, but because the team was ridiculously talented.

I tried to help them as best I could through some long hours and less than ideal conditions. These are actual photos of the men's restroom:

[Photos by Ryan Kolak and Jason Kunesh]

Now that the campaign is over, I find those talented folks have still "got my back." Harper Reed, the campaign's CTO, has given me tons of great feedback. Brilliant developers like Chris Gansen and Jesse Kriss inspired open-source projects I've spun out that many others are using. But what's even more incredible is that they've been the first ones to spread my new work. They tell their friends about my writing, or convince them to use Draft.

So, skip the networking events. Instead, find people who make you feel inferior. Commit some real time to helping them. You're going to find that there’s truth to the idea that "what goes around, comes around."

Today, I'd like to help Christopher Flint, a talented friend of mine leading a new company, Infiniteach. They're making iPad apps to help students with autism. Christopher recently hired an intern with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) whose main goal in life is to be a book author. They're about to start using Draft and my professional editing service to help him with his writing. I'd love to be even more helpful here. One idea that's begun to brew is a service to help people with disabilities like ASD who want to write better match up with people who'd like to donate 15 minutes of their time each week reviewing writing.

Tim Ferriss, too. The guy is ridiculously talented at writing, teaching, and giving back to the world through his relationship with DonorsChoose. I'd like to find a way to help him. I'm not even in the same room as him. But I'm knocking.

Just Remember This One Thing

If you take away one thing from this post, it should be this: be generous with what you know.

Go teach people. Start a blog. Write one post a week teaching people what you've learned along the way of your struggle. Help them leave with something they can use to get better today. Use a good story to get your point across.

Invest in helping other people, and you'll find you have a lot more people paying attention.

P.S. I'd love to meet you on Twitter.

[Image: Flickr user Floeschie]

If the country’s premier conference won’t let you in the door, what’s a social media-savvy generation of young Swedes to do? Wear their voice on their sleeve--with a sleek LED-powered dress streaming tweets from youth all over the country.

Since 1968, Almedalen Week has been a political summit on the island of Gotland, but what was once a forum filled with economic seminars has become a conference for the political, lobbyist, and celebrity elite, with over 17,000 people taking part in 1,800 events last year. As with most gatherings of the privileged, the group most excluded--and most eager for a voice--are the youth.

Crossing Boarders, an organization dedicated to helping create “an equal and inclusive society,” partnered with creative agency Deportivo and a mobile provider to send a message through Almedalen Week’s closed doors. The resulting “Twitter Dress” streamed comments on gender equality, affordable housing for youth, and lowering the legal voting age, Deportivo’s Stephen Range told the Daily Dot.

Before the summit, Crossing Boarders sent 30 “ambassadors” out in the dress to raise awareness; during the summit, ambassadors roamed around with messages streaming over the dress from both tweets carrying the hashtag #Twitterklänning (“Twitter Dress”) and texts to a toll-free number. #Twitterklänning team reporters received a pledge from Minister of Equality Maria Arnholm for mandatory education on gender equality, and ambassadors stood in the background streaming tweets and texts during interviews with EU Minister Birgitta Ohlsson and Minister for International Development Cooperation Gunilla Carlsson, among others.

The project gained steam at the tail end of the conference. Crossing Boarders’s Ida Östensson, one of the #Twitterklänning project’s heads, wore the dress during interviews with Good Morning Almedalen and Aftonbladet web TV.

The biggest problem with calendars is that you have to fill them in. What if there were a calendar that helped figure out what you were going to be doing?

That's the idea behind UpTo, which released a major upgrade today.

Digital and networked communication has altered so many other parts of our lives that it's kind of shocking how much calendars have remained the same. Nearly every calendar app looks the same and works in a similar way, with a few wrinkles like different interfaces. Even Apple's new calendar app, freshly made-over for the upcoming release of snazzy iOS 7, is essentially a digital clone of the old paper calendars or diaries that used to sit on your desk--with a few smarts like detecting calendar entries automatically inside emails.

The whole idea of UpTo isn't its traditional calendar, with rows for week dates and icons to alert you to upcoming events (though of course it does have this function built in), but instead it's all about the social layer. You can chat with your friends through the app about date-related events, and you can follow public "streams" of event information so you don't miss out on games your favorite teams are playing or shows at your city's theater.

The calendar needs a fundamental transformation the way that Waze has transformed maps.

But given that the calendar paradigm is so rigidly defined, dominated by preinstalled apps on smartphones, and undeniably fusty, how exactly do you go about developing an exciting app in this space that'll stand out from its peers? CEO and cofounder Greg Schwartz spoke to Fast Company to explain: "What we did is, instead of taking what others have recently done in this space and look at the calendar and adding incremental updates with the same premise that it's a list of meetings and appointments, we took a step backward. The calendar needs a fundamental transformation the way that Waze has transformed maps by adding a network approach or Instagram has transformed the camera."

Schwartz was frank about the trick: "To be honest, I think if we'd started by trying to reinvent the calendar, we'd never have got to where we are today. We started with a totally different premise. We wanted to create a better way for people to see what's coming up. The calendar part was very secondary . . . We spent a lot of time working on the calendar sync, making sure the regular calendar integration came into UpTo, but we weren't focused on it." Instead his team "focused on everything else. We looked at it from a more social perspective, from a network perspective." Feedback from the users during a protracted beta test phase led the company to reexamine how they were streaming lots of data to each user in an uncurated way . . . and thus Schwartz notes that "we took a social platform, actually a social network, and then transitioned it into a calendar. versus lateral, incremental improvements seen in other apps that start with a calendar and add in new features."

The resulting app seems to solve many of the hands-on management problems of keeping your smartphone calendar relevant and up-to-date in a couple of simple moves.

There's a dramatic developer lesson here: If you're keen to reinvent a tired old app paradigm, try thinking in a completely different direction at first, then listen to feedback as you bend your route back toward the app's core function.

The Beatles have a way of keeping Doug Eck up at night. Specifically, the research scientist at Google grapples with one of the core problems of automated music discovery: With a band whose catalog is as evolutionary and nuanced as The Beatles's, how can computers truly understand the artist and recommend relevant music to fans? After all, not everybody who loves A Hard Day's Night necessarily has a soft spot for the weirdest moments on The White Album. For humans, detecting the difference is easy. For machines, it's not so simple.

Solving problems like these resolves only part of a larger, more complex equation at play when Google attempts to help its users discover music. The company's ability to do so is now more important than ever, having recently launched a Spotify-style music subscription service with Pandora-esque Internet radio layered on top. The awkwardly named Google Play Music All Access has only been live for eight weeks and naturally has some catching up to do with digital music incumbents. Music discovery is a crucial piece of that puzzle and one that's notoriously challenging to lock into place.

In taking its own stab at music recommendation, Google blends technical solutions like machine listening and collaborative filtering with good, old-fashioned human intuition. Employing both engineers and music editors, the service continually tries to understand what people are listening to, why they enjoy it, and what they might want to hear next.

How Google Music Intelligence Works

Eck's team is focused on the technical side of this equation, relying on a dual-sided machine learning methodology. One component of that is collaborative filtering of the variety employed by Netflix and Amazon to recommend horror flicks and toasters. The other involves machine listening. That is, computers "listen" to the audio and try to pick out specific qualities and details within each song.

Since All Access is an on-demand music subscription service, users can listen to it all day without ever encountering the fruits of Google's music discovery engine. But once they venture into the "Explore" tab, tap "Instant Mix," or start an artist or song-based radio station, the secret sauce kicks in. By that point, the system understands at least something about the person's taste in music. That's because the minute they start using All Access, their activity becomes part of the algorithm that helps Google understand who they are and what music they enjoy.

"We use a kind of neural network backend to do this," says Eck. "You're sort of living numerically in the same space as tracks, artists, and albums. Albums know that they're made up of tracks and artists are made up of albums and tracks. The more we understand you, the more we're able to pick up these subtle distinctions about, for example, what kind of Beatles tracks you like."

Collaborative filtering works wonders for the Amazons of the world. But since this type of If-you-like-that-you'll-also-like-this logic works better for kitchen appliances than it does for art, the system needs a way to learn more about the music itself. To teach it, Eck's team leverages Google's robust infrastructure and machine-listening technology to pick apart the granular qualities of each song.

"By and large, audio-based models are very good at timbre," says Eck. "So they're very good at recognizing instruments, very good at recognizing things like distorted guitars, very good at recognizing things like whether it's a male or female vocalist."

These are precisely the kinds of details that Pandora relies on human, professionally trained musicians to figure out. The Internet radio pioneer has long employed musicologists to listen to songs and help build out a multipoint, descriptive data set designed to place each track into a broader context and appropriately relate it to other music. For Pandora, the results have been extremely valuable, but mapping out this musical intelligence manually doesn't scale infinitely. Thankfully, machine listening has come a long way in recent years. Much like Google indexes the Web, the company is able to index a massive database of audio, mapping the musical qualities found within. Since it's automated, this part of Google's music recommendation technology can be scaled to a much larger set of data.

"If the four of us decided we were going to record a jazz quartet right here and now and we uploaded it to Play Music, our system will be aware that were talking about that," explains Eck. "By pulling these audio features out of every track that we work with, it gives us a kind of musical vocabulary that we can work with for doing recommendation even if it’s a very long tail."

Indeed, when it comes to music, the tail has never been longer. The world's selection of recorded music was never finite, but today creating and distributing new songs is virtually devoid of friction and financial cost. However much human intelligence as Pandora feeds into its algorithm, its Music Genome Project will never be able to keep up and understand everything. That's where machine learning gets a leg up.

The Limits Of Machine Listening

Still, there's a reason Pandora has more than 70 million active listeners and continues to increase its share of overall radio listening time. Its music discovery engine is very good. It might not know about my friend's band on a small Georgia-based record label, but the underlying map of data that Pandora uses to create stations is still incredibly detailed. When I start a radio station based on Squarepusher, an acclaimed but not particularly popular electronic music artist, the songs it plays are spun for very specific reasons. It plays a track by Aphex Twin because it features "similar electronica roots, funk influences, headnodic beats, the use of chordal patterning, and acoustic drum samples." Then, when I skip to the next song, it informs me that, "We're playing this track because it features rock influences, meter complexity, unsyncopated ensemble rhythms, triple meter style, and use of modal harmonies."

Pandora knows this much about these tracks thanks to those aforementioned music experts who sat down and taught it. Automated machine listening, by comparison, can't get quite as specific. At least, not yet.

"It’s very hard and we haven’t solved the problem with a capital S," says Eck, whose has an academic background in automated music analysis. "Nor has anybody else."

Computers might be able to pick out details about timbre, instruments used, rhythm, and other on-the-surface sonic qualities, but they can only dig so deep.

"You can learn a lot from one second of audio. Certainly you can tell if there’s a female voice there or if there’s distorted guitar there. What about when we stretch out and we look what our musical phrase is. What’s happening melodically? Where’s this song going? As we move out and have longer time scale stretches that we’re trying to outline, it becomes very hard to use machines alone to get the answer."

Thanks Algorithms, But The Humans Can Take It From Here.

That's where the good, old-fashioned human beings come in. To help flesh out the music discovery and radio experiences in All Access, Google employs music editors who have an intuition that computers have yet to successfully mimic. Heading up this editor-powered side of the equation is Tim Quirk, a veteran of the online music industry who worked at the now-defunct Listen.com before Napster was a household name.

"Algorithms can tell you what are the most popular tracks in any genre, but an algorithm might not know that "You Don't Miss Your Water" was sort of the first classic, Southern soul ballad in that particular time signature and that it became the template for a decade's worth of people doing the same thing," says Quirk. "That’s sort of arcane human knowledge."

Google's blend of human and machine intelligence is markedly different from Pandora's. Rather than hand-feeding tons of advanced musical knowledge directly into its algorithms, Google mostly keeps the human-curated stuff in its own distinct areas, allowing the computers to do the heavy lifting elsewhere. Quirk and his team of music editors are the ones who define the most important artists, songs and albums in a given genre (of which there are hundreds in Google Play Music).

"We have a lot of experts in every genre whose responsibility is to say 'Okay. If you want to understand the history of the genre and how its sound evolved, these are the 10 to 25 or 50 tracks," Quirk explains. "You have to listen to them in order to understand that particular genre and the albums that really define that genre. Then Doug's team can take those singles and say "Okay, if these 25 artists and songs define classic soul, then I now know more about classic soul than I knew before and I can go do amazing things with that.'"

Quirk's team also creates curated playlists and make specific, hand-picked music recommendations. To the extent that these manually curated parts of the service influence its users' listening behavior, the human intelligence does find its way back into the algorithms. It just loops back around and takes a longer road to get there.

Google's employees aren't the only people feeding intelligence into this semiautomated music machine. Google is also constantly learning from its users. Like Pandora and its many copycats, Google Play Music's Radio feature has thumbs up and thumbs down buttons, which help inform the way the radio stations work over time. In fact, those buttons are found next to every on-demand track on the service, whether it's coming from a personalized radio station or not. The more I tap those buttons, the more Google knows what I'm truly into. The hope is, of course, that millions of people will flock to this service and feed it ever greater troves of data - through plays, thumbs-upping and uploading their own collections to the service (a feature that truly sets it apart from the incumbents).

Pandora versus Google’s Internet Radio

The radio part of Google Play All Access is pretty good, as Internet radio services go. At times, the inherent limitations of collaborative filtering are on full display. As an example, I made a station based on "Mayonaise" by The Smashing Pumpkins. It's a slow-paced shoegaze-y song with heavy fuzz on the guitars. It sounds more like something off of an album by My Bloody Valentine than any of the '90s grunge rock acts with whom the Smashing Pumpkins shared the airwaves in the mid-90s. Yet, the Mayonaise radio station presents a predictable list of popular radio bands from the 90s, including Nirvana, Foo Fighters, Alice in Chains and Rage Against the Machine. The list makes sense to some extent: These are indeed related artists, but some of the songs feel truly mismatched. Mayonaise sounds nothing like "Down Rodeo" by Rage Against the Machine, an angry, more hyped-up rap-rock track with an entirely different vibe. I don't mind the song, but it wasn't what I had in mind when I was listening to "Mayonaise" and decided "I want to hear more music like this." I would have been better off digging into my own catalog and making a playlist.

To test things further, I went through and made radio stations off of different tracks by The Smashing Pumpkins. Some loud and aggressive. Some slow and spaced out. They all yielded songs from the same list of about a 15 alternative rock bands from the '90s.

To be fair, Pandora serves up similarly predictable results for its own "Mayonaise"-based station. It feels like it has less to do with the sonic qualities of each song than with what others who listen to The Smashing Pumpkins also listen to. They were a huge radio band from the '90s. People who listen to their stuff also listen to lots of other popular alternative rock bands from the same era. Virtually all of those people are familiar with Nirvana and Rage Against the Machine. A much smaller number know who My Bloody Valentine is, even if the band was a big influence on The Smashing Pumpkins. Large-scale collaborative filtering has a way of missing fine details like that.

Google is aware of the "related artists" problem. Like The Beatles issue, it's something they think hard about.

"There’s lots of different signals that my team can feed back into Doug’s team," says Quirk, referring to his small army of music editors. "At the artist level, that has to do with saying “Okay, this is the artist, this is who influenced them. This is who they influence and this is who their contemporaries are.” And knowing in which context you want to favor one or another pieces of that metadata. Not all similar artists are created alike."

In general, Pandora still seems to do a better job of creating song-based radio stations than Google. There's something to be said for hiring living, breathing experts to sit down and describe music in a way that teaches machines how to better DJ for us. At the same time, by letting the machines do the listening, Google has the potential to solve the scalability problem. And by letting people curate a few parts of its music experience, Google can indirectly infuse the code-driven part with human smarts over time, especially as more people use the service.

Some day, computers will be better able to understand not just that I like The Beatles, but why I like The Beatles. They'll know that John is my favorite, which songs on Revolver I skip, and that of all the heavily Beatles-influenced bands in the world, I love Tame Impala, but loathe Oasis. The machines will get smarter, much like a toddler does: by watching and listening. As users spend time with the product and tap buttons, the nuanced details will become more obvious.

Meanwhile, the ability of computers to actually hear what's contained within each song can only improve over time, just as voice recognition continues to do. The promise of Google Play Music is the same thing that made Google successful to begin with: its ability to use massive data to understand who we are and what we want. If anybody can crack the notoriously hard nut of music discovery in a hugely scalable fashion, it's them. Just don't expect them to do it with machines alone.

Astounded by the quality and sophistication of the entries, our judges took until the very last moment to narrow down the field. In the end, there were many apps that qualified. The best of the bunch had mass appeal, minimal design, true on-the-go utility, and a native fit with the Target brand. The finalists below will each be assigned a Target Mentor for the next phase of the contest: submitting a prototype by May 30 to contend for the $75,000 grand prize.

We’ll let the entrants describe the apps in their own words. Click to see their proposals in situ at our Github repository, where you can see all their entry materials. In no particular order, here they are:

TargetCares by Siyuan Tu, Sangmi Park, Haihong Wang, Shelley Leung, and Yuan Gu

Target does a lot of philanthropy work, but according to these entrants, customers lack a way to contribute, and their mobile device is the natural place to bridge the gap between shoppers and social initiatives. The judges agreed, picking this app to move on to the finalist round. You can read our full app breakdown here.

Matisse by Jed Wood, Antonio Garcia, and Maris Grossman

This project starts with a little-known data point: Students who study art are four times as likely to be recognized for academic achievement, according to the Education Fund. Yet when schools cut budgets, art and music programs are always the first to see the chopping block. With little recourse beyond petitioning local government, there is little an individual family can do to help sustain art education in their community--a solvable problem, considering that the major source of overhead for art programs is supplies, which could conceivably be sourced via donations, if channels existed. You can read our full app breakdown here.

Divvy by Team Pilot

Divvy went on to win the $75,000 grand prize--read about it here. Why would Target shoppers want Divvy? This social shopping list is attacking a nuanced problem: How to make group shopping with an app easier than without one. Real-life obstacles to group shopping--such as splitting the bill, getting a copy of the receipt, transaction history, earning rewards points, and so on--those are the territory of this beautifully designed app. Furthermore, it solves what we will call the "Mint problem," which refers to the necessity to manually track items you buy inside personal finance apps like Mint, which only receive basic information about your purchase (outlet and price) from the credit card processor, making categorizing purchases an exercise in data entry. You can read our full app breakdown here.

TargetShare by Jinal Dalal, Ashutosh Pardeshi, and Vallabhi Parikh

There were several submissions that solved problems related to shopping lists, but TargetShare took a unique tack by focusing on the problems that concerned food shopping--namely, that food shopping requires too much friction to digitize the process easily. First, you have to decide what you'll make, itemize the recipes for that day or week, produce a shopping list, and then (presumably) enter it into some kind of app. TargetShare removes all these steps, adding zero overhead to the food-shopping process and saving a bunch of data entry in the process. You can read our full app breakdown here.

A/B by David Lu

The problem that this app, A/B, solves is a subtle one: How do you quickly get friends' opinions on your purchases, and aggregate their feedback in some way that helps you make an informed buying decision? And more important, how do you delimit your friends' feedback to only the items you're considering? Collecting opinions from friends is one of the most valuable ways to make informed decisions, but limiting the scope of the conversation can be difficult. Let's say you email a friend asking them for an opinion on a new bike; you're likely to get a reply that contains not just an opinion on the bike ("that bike is great, but...") but also a bunch of other second guesses and suggestions--have you seen the new public transit line that just opened? Have you considered a cruiser? Do you really need that many speeds? How about a fixed gear? The conversation needs limits. You can read our full app breakdown here.

Target Adventure by Florence Ng, Sheena Yang, and Jesse Pinuelas

There is scarcely a more common problem for parents than keeping their kids entertained while they go about their daily lives. Namely, in public places, where boredom sets in and tantrums can soon follow. There's rarely anything intrinsically fun about shopping when you're single-digit age, and most of the fun stuff in the store itself, you don't own and therefore are not really allowed to touch. As a result, shopping with a kid can prove to be taxing or torture. You can read our full app breakdown here.

Lookbook by CitizenMade

How do you easily curate products in a flexible, dynamic way across multiple use cases? That's the problem Lookbook seeks to solve. Sometimes a shopping list is too rigid; people collect lists of products for all kinds of reasons. Whether it's for a wish list, a color palette, gift ideas, design inspiration, or any other impulse, Target shoppers don't have an easy way of making loose collections of items which they can share and save easily in sets. You can read our full app breakdown here.

How Divvy Came To Be The Winning App

This seven-person team is an amalgam of developers and designers led by Chris Reardon, a user-experience expert with 15 years’ experience and the team’s strategist. Reardon imagined the initial concept for Divvy, but the core concept was developed fully through group ideation.

The team came together from disparate parts of one advertising agency. Chris Reardon, Erick Kopicki, and James Skidmore work at TBWA-Chiat here in New York. Juuso Myllyrinne, Charlton Roberts, and Chris Kief work at Pilot, a New York-based product development outfit owned by TBWA but operated separately. Steve White works for the TBWA-owned firm Integer in Colorado.

This wasn’t a preexisting team, although each of the members has worked with one another on projects piecemeal. It was Chris Reardon who pulled Team Pilot together specifically for this project. (They borrowed the name "Team Pilot" from the Pilot shop where Myllyrinne, Roberts, and Kopicki ply their day jobs.)

Make no mistake: This is a team with specialized individual skill sets and a deep knowledge of their fields; not only that, but our interviews revealed a real creative cohesiveness that comes across saliently in the designs for the app itself.

A Final Note Of Thanks To Our Entrants

When we embarked on the Target and Co.Labs retail accelerator, we had no idea what to expect. We had put out a challenge to our newly minted readership, our site only weeks old, asking them to meet or exceed the abilities of a major corporation with renowned design cred and an obviously capable team of iOS and Web developers. What we saw in the 76 completed entries was a remarkable diversity of strategic thinking, impeccable design, programmatic cleverness, and, above all, originality. We continue to be humbled by our readers, and we thank you for sharing your ideas, sweat, pixels, and code with us.--The Editors

The notion of cloud storage of your documents may unsettle you nowadays, when considered in the light of the PRISM Internet surveillance scandal. That makes the new Kickstarter project from The CGC Team particularly smart: Plug is a storage system that uses old hard drives or thumbdrives in your home to create a cloud accessible drive...that's so secure only you should be able to access your files. That may be a big middle finger thrust up at the Feds.

The company's being a bit gentle about promoting this aspect of its new product, but halfway down the Kickstarter page is a section about the device's security, promising "Your storage is fast and private – again." With Plug we learn there's "no dark side of the moon," and a smart Pink Floyd-inspired anti-PRISM graphic leaves nothing to the imagination.

Plug stores your files at Home. So you can be sure you own your storage. Nobody in the world can access your data, but you.

The encryption is going to be "far more difficult to hack than your computer" the site promises, and to keep the security relevant as the technology advances the Plug will be frequently updated with security patches to keep it "unaccessible from badly intentioned governments and individuals."

That's quite a promise for a $60 gizmo. And of course there's much more to the Plug than that. The team behind it seems to have really thought about what the public needs from a cloud-accessible drive. Essentially it's a NAS solution with a pretty flexible front end that means users can get their data from home PCs, their laptops when working remotely and their smartphone when they're on the move. You can even add up to eight drives to a single Plug via a USB hub and it'll automatically adjust to cope with the new capacity. There's some smart privacy controls, so you can decide what files are accessible remotely, and for double redundancy if you buy two Plugs and connect them in different locations you can make them replicate all your data.

But it's the zero-config private, encrypted VPN at the heart of Plug that may be its cleverest trick. Leveraging an RSA-2048/SHA-1 keyed asymmetric encryption system it adds an extra layer of safety to your files--it's crackable, like nearly every code, but only if you apply some quite considerable effort.

What files of yours are worth this extra layer of protection?

Unlike the Vietnam days, veterans today search for information (or vent their troubles) about suicide on Google and Facebook. A new project, newly launched by DARPA and Dartmouth University, is trying something new: Data-mining social networks to spot patterns indicating suicidal behavior.

Called The Durkheim Project, named for the Victorian-era psychologist, it is asking veterans to offer their Twitter and Facebook authorization keys for an ambitious effort to match social media behavior with indications of suicidal thought. Veterans' online behavior is then fed into a real-time analytics dashboard which predicts suicide risks and psychological episodes.

However, there's a caveat: The Durkheim Project, which launched on July 1, is only a study into the effectiveness of predictive analytics for mental health. Veterans who participate will only be monitored, and have to receive any needed mental health assistance through the VA and other sources.

Who's Behind The Durkheim Project?

The Durkheim Project is led by New Hampshire-based Patterns and Predictions, a Dartmouth University spin-off with close ties to academics there. Patterns and Predictions received funding from DARPA, and the analytics platform is based on products from big data firms Attivio and Cloudera. Additional assistance was granted by Facebook and the Veterans Education & Research Association of Northern New England. Patterns and Predictions' main product, Centiment, is a predictive analytics tool that uses linguistic and sentiment analysis for the financial industry.

For Facebook, the project marks one of the first times that they've let non-profits and the medical community conduct extensive data mining of the service for predictive analytics purposes. As the project's literature puts it, they want to “provide real-time monitoring of text content and behavioral patterns statistically correlated with tendencies for harmful behaviors--such as suicide.”

What Are Researchers Looking For?

Sid Probstein, Attivio's CTO, told Co.Labs that Patterns and Predictions, the Geisel School of Medicine, and the VA conducted a double-blind study that found linguistic clues associated with suicidal behavior. These keywords, word patterns, and other information were fed into Patterns and Predictions’ predictive analytics (powered by the Attivio AIE search engine and Cloudera’s Hadoop data fabric); once these patterns were baked into the program, the machine learning extrapolated useful patterns and clues.

The VA, Dartmouth, and other medical organizations hope to use these to help veterans in the future.

The information used by the Durkheim researchers generated multiple linguistics-driven prediction models that estimate the risk of suicide with 65% accuracy on small dataset. According to Probstein, one of the project goals is to substantially increase that accuracy rate in future studies,

Patterns and Predictions head Chris Poulin added that the dataset used for the machine learning process “uses a training set of certain linguistic clues and keyword features known to be related to people who needed help. These words, and or synonyms of these words, are also expected in the social/mobile data."

How Veterans Use It

Participating veterans install a unique Facebook app and a mobile app for either Android or iOS, which also allows them to tweak sharing settings. All posts and status updates by the user are automatically data-mined, regardless of privacy settings; however, individual users can choose what additional Facebook activity to share with the Durkheim Project. Informed consent forms are required for Facebook, Twitter, and Google+ monitoring. For Twitter posts, all text the user posts in tweets is data-mined.

How Researchers Predict Suicidal Behavior

All information collected from the study is stored at Dartmouth's Geisel School of Medicine. According to Probstein, the information lies behind a medical firewall stored according to Human Subject Study/HIPAA privacy rules.

A dashboard used by researchers at Geisel shows profiles of individual study participants, along with information about the doctor treating them, clinical notes, and an overall risk rating generated by the Patterns and Predictions platform. Risk ratings update every 60 seconds, and are generated based on keywords specific to each study participant's profile. Trends in the individual study participant's mental health--a “mental health ticker” based on social media use--is then created. Clinicians are also given access to all of the source content used for each profile. Each study participant's Facebook and Twitter posts are archived, and are accessible to the researchers to correlate to specific blips in the mental health ticker.

Probstein said that the dataset used for the machine learning “uses a training set of certain clues and features that are known to be data related to people who needed help and weren't able to get it.”

Why Is DARPA Doing This?

In the long run, social media monitoring could sharply reduce the obscenely high veteran suicide rate. A toxic mix of PTSD caused by military service, the VA's documented difficulty providing basic mental health treatment, poor job opportunities at home, and a lack of understanding from the outside world all mean that veterans kill themselves at rates far exceeding the rest of America. DARPA's goal to think outside the box applies to veteran health care also; using social media to deliver targeted services to the veterans who need them most could be a boon for the perennially cash-strapped VA.

The Durkheim Project is part of DARPA's Detection and Computational Analysis of Psychological Signals (DCAPS) project. DCAPS is a larger effort designed to harness predictive analytics for veteran mental health--and not just from social media. According to DARPA's Russell Shilling's program introduction, DCAPS is also developing algorithms that can data mine voice communications, daily eating and sleeping patterns, in-person social interactions, facial expressions, and emotional states for signs of suicidal thought. While participants in Durkheim won't receive mental health assistance directly from the project, their contributions will go a long way toward treating suicidal veterans in the future.

The project launched on July 1; the number of veterans participating is not currently known but the finished number is expected to hover around 100,000.

Clip-on fitness trackers and bracelets are already becoming the norm among the tech savvy, and soon eyewear like Google Glass will come to consumers, followed by (and perhaps swallowed by) the first true smartwatches--led by Apple, or course--and then consumable nano-devices to inspect your insides. Always-on “quantified self” devices can teach us a lot the world around us, and the world inside us. And when it comes to sex, the world inside someone else.

Gregory Ferenstein over at TechCrunch has written an interesting piece about how current technology--his BodyMedia armband--can actually alert his significant others to whether he is cheating on them or not. He discovered that his various sporting activities, including cycling, weight lifting, yoga, and more, actually produce different line graphs depending on the exercise. That is, each type of physical exertion has a unique signature (a series of spikes on the graph)--including sex.

See, Ferenstein wears his BodyMedia armband 24 hours a day, and when he gave his BodyMedia armband data to a friend, his friend--to Ferenstein’s surprise--was able to tell when he had sex. As Ferenstein writes:

Indeed, I inadvertently discovered that people knew whether I was engaging in sexual congress after I gave my health tracker data to a friend and he wryly quibbed about my night time activities [...] Were I married, my wife might like to know why I burned 100 calories between 1:07 to 2:00 am, without taking a single step, and fell asleep right afterwards. Many married couples hold joint online accounts for Facebook and email, and even more share their passwords. Anyone looking at my exercise readout that night would instantly know that I was getting a sweaty workout.

Skeptical readers may claim that not all infidelity happens at night, and that clever philanderers could simply claim that they were hitting the gym, when they were actually knee-deep in sin hotel. But, as we’ve seen above, sex looks quite different than weight-lifting. In fact, the profile of sex looks distinct from any exercise I’ve recorded myself doing, including weight lifting, sprinting, yoga, martial arts (capoeira), TRX, spin class (stationary cycling), grocery shopping, and cleaning the house.

Now, as Ferenstein notes, not all people wear their health trackers 24 hours a day--and it’s easy to remove them whenever you want. But it is an interesting (and slightly frightening) discovery that given access to your fitness data, a third party can glean information about your sex life from a health tracker meant to track your fitness.

That got me thinking: Sharing is a major component of these devices. Many fitness trackers suggest their users do so as to keep themselves motivated. Published on the web or even left lying on the screen of an iPad, records of all your body movements and outputs could expose a cheating spouse, or even let parents know when their teenagers begin having sex. One might argue that tech used in this way is a cheater’s comeuppance or a useful tool for parenting, but I would argue that in either case it is a gross invasion of privacy.

But more than just telling if someone is having sex, Ferenstein also noted that he could tell from his data from another piece of fitness tech he owns (a Basis watch) if the person he was having sex with was faking orgasm. This is due to the monitoring of perspiration output and heart rate--things that spike during a real orgasm, but not during a fake one (in this case, Ferenstein’s partner would need to be wearing the watch).

From a data science perspective, this is fascinating (How many women are faking it?), but from a perspective that I hold--that everyone is entitled to their most intimate privacies--this is frightening. If a man found out his wife is faking it, it could lead to hurt feelings, guilt, confusion, and more. I doubt a woman would appreciate it from her side either.

And keep in mind: This sexual information can currently be gleaned from what will look like archaic tech in a few year’s time. Once wearable tech moves on to true smartwatches with more advanced biosensors, and then to stick-on patches that we apply to our skin and fabrics that we can wear as shirts (or even underwear), it is very possible that our most intimate sexual moments will become social. Is this a good thing?

No. This is the only time I can honestly say I don’t think tech will help enhance our sex lives. There’s too much room for invasion of privacy; it’s too likely that people will get hurt. Imagine a young gay teenager using a fitness tracker. His parent’s who don’t know he’s gay knows he’s hanging out with a male friend. They see his fitness data spike, yet it registers he isn’t taking any physical steps, which suggests he’s lying in bed. His tech could inadvertently out him before he is comfortable with it.

But just because our sex lives might become more accessible to third parties in the future isn’t a case against wearable computing. There will be a lot of good that comes from it (healthier lives; better monitoring of medical conditions; easier ways to find lost children). But when the Age of Wearable Computing does hit us, it will become more important than ever for users to be vigilant over their privacy settings or else we risk our sex becoming social.

The Forerunners Of Future Sexbots, Now

June 19,2013

To get to the stage where people can interact with human-like robotic companions, whatever their function, will require overcoming three main challenges: building an AI that is intelligent enough to not only speak like a human, but to process a human’s complex speech patterns to understand emotional context; building synthetic organs that look and feel indistinguishable from a human’s; and building an underlying mechanical skeleton structure that allows the robot to move like a human.

That last challenge is already well on its way to being overcome thanks to a group of researchers at the University of Tokyo who have built a robot called Kenshiro. The amazing thing about Kenshiro is that its movements don’t rely on cogs or pistons, but on a pulley-like system that mimics how actual muscles in the human body works (human muscles only pull, they don’t push). Kenshiro has over 160 “muscles.” That’s a far cry from the 640+ in a human body, but just take a look at what researchers in 2013 can do with just 160:

But what happens once you get the mechanics down? A robot, even one that moves and looks like us, won’t feel real until it can give the illusion of understand our own -- and expressing its own -- emotional complexities. The most advanced “AI” most of us have access to nowadays comes in the form of iOS’s Siri -- and we all know how well that works. But even if true AI takes decades longer to achieve than human-like movement, that doesn’t mean we won’t have lifelike robots before then, as Japanese roboticist Hiroshi Ishiguro successfully showed off this week.

In a show in New York, Ishiguro took the stage next to a lifelike robot version of himself -- called a “Geminoid.” The robot moved and spoke like the real Ishiguro, but that’s because it was "tele-operated" by a colleague offstage. The robot had to be remote controlled, of course, because of one big drawback -- there’s currently no AI that could make it act and work like a human. However, this “drawback” also lends itself to demonstrating another benefit of pre-AI robots: if a human can control lifelike robots then we can push these surrogates out into the world to handle jobs that are too dangerous for flesh and blood.

However, given all the robotics advances in just the last year alone, we still are a ways off from having robotic companions. As David J. Hill writes for SingularityHub:

In the years to come, news of robotics development will only increase as we watch researchers put humans together much like Doctor Manhattan. Whether individual bones and muscles will work best or some other design will prove superior will only be resolved once each design can be tested. In the end, the greatest challenge may not be creating individual robotics systems or artificial intelligence, but packing all of these components into a single robot.

It is possible one day, however, to think that a much older version of yourself will be explaining to your live-in robot that their lineage started way back in the day with the creation of Kenshiro and the Ishiguro Geminoid.

Why We’re Tracking The Ever-Closer World of Sexual Computing

Sex is kind of a big deal for us humans. It drives a lot of what we do, and influences a large part of our world outside of the bedroom. It’s why some men seek high-paying, high-status jobs. It’s why some religions feel they need to issue moral laws. And whether we admit it or not, it can be a big part of our recipe for self-worth.

Sex has been synced with technology for hundreds, if not thousands, of years. If you’ve ever been in the Sex Machine Museum in Prague, you’ll know what I’m talking about. The museum holds some interesting mechanical (some even steam-powered) pieces of kit that were designed to enhance a user’s sexual experiences. When the technology of moving pictures were invented, pornos were some of the first things shot. Matter of fact, the porn industry arose hand-in-hand with the tech industry. Porn companies were some of the first to adopt the new technologies of VHS, DVD, and streaming video. And how long did it take porn companies to jump on Google Glass? About two minutes.

But sex and tech increasingly aren’t only linked by new mediums to show skin flicks. Outside of the medical industry, the most common places you’ll find research into synthetic skins are at sex toy companies. And while many extrapolate their fear of today’s drones and see them morphing into Terminator-like killing robots in the not-too-distant future, if history has shown us anything, we’re much more likely to see fully functioning sexbots first. Sound crazy? It’s not. After all, a robot getting pounded in the bedroom needs to absorb a lot less stress than one getting pounded in the battlefield.

And mark my words: one day we will be fucking robots.

I'm not trying to get a cheap laugh. It will happen. I know this because some very bright engineers across the globe are already working on technologies that will enable future sexbots to exist: synthetic skins with breathable pores that are capable of sweating; artificial intelligence that understands emotional context; human-accurate voice synthesis and facial recognition. And those are the hard parts. Believe it or not, building a robot that can mimic human movements isn’t that far off.

Before anyone jumps the gun and says that sexbots will lead to the moral decay of humanity and kill all human interaction, let’s not forget that sex with robots isn't necessarily just for kinky cyber fun. It could have mental and social health benefits--like by allowing disabled people to have physical relationships or by eliminating the risk of sexually transmitted diseases from popular sex tourism areas across the globe, such as Las Vegas or Thailand.

If you’re interested in the ever-closer world of sexual computing, be sure to follow this tracker. Here we’ll explore the latest hardware and software advances that will one day change sex forever. Whether that’s a good or a bad thing, we’ll discover as we go. And if you’re in the business of merging sex and tech, get in touch with the author @michaelgrothaus to let him know what you’re up to.

The Winklevoss twins recently applied to the SEC to create a $20 million Exchange-traded Fund (ETF) backed by Bitcoin. Like their more famous project, ConnectU, this ETF might seem democratic (little “d”) in its mission. But peer-to-peer theorist Michel Bauwens, who runs the P2P Foundation, says its underlying economic design alludes to an entirely different political viewpoint. He talked to Co.Labs about value-sensitive design, how entrepreneurs are the new proletarians and the revolution will not be linear.

Can you give me some examples of the values underlying tech projects?

If you look at Facebook you have a front end which is peer-to-peer. It allows any individual to connect with any other individual. It plays a role in many communities, including radical communities who use Facebook to organize themselves, but if you look at the “backend” you see a totally different picture. Your data is sold to advertisers. You see Facebook connecting your data with data they buy or find somewhere else. You have no control over the monetization of your activities. You have no control over the design. The backend is hierarchical, centralized, and I would even say manipulative. This is because Facebook needs to generate profits and your attention is the commodity. This is what I mean by value-sensitive design. The way you design software or a social network or a social system reflects your underlying values and material interests.

Bitcoin is marketed as the P2P currency because it can be created by a cryptographic algorithm by any computer. It's independent of the State and independent of the corporation. That's the theory. This is only relatively true. There was a study by Shamir which showed that a small number of people owned the majority of Bitcoins. In the last two years a large percentage of the transactions were shown to be fake transactions. People were circulating money to give the impression of transactions but sending it to their own accounts. (97% of all Bitcoin owners participated in less than 10 transactions, while 75 owners are affiliated with at least 5,000 transactions).

Bitcoin is designed as a commodity currency. It's designed to rise in value, which appeals to self-interest. These are all choices. You could design a currency which is not a commodity currency. It has political philosophy and economic theory behind it.

When I speak about peer-to-peer, I mean human-to-human. There's an egalitarian ethos underneath. But if you say that computers are peers then someone who has 10,000 computers is 10,000 the peer of someone who has one computer. What about the Indian farmer who has no access to computers at all?

What’s the difference between use and exchange value and why does it matter?

Use value and exchange value are used to indicate the difference between something you make because it's useful and something you make because it's going to produce money for you, money that you can exchange for something else. Before the 18th century the economy was largely determined by use value. Farmers would make food for themselves and they had to give some of it to the feudal lords. People who had power had more use value but money was not the central governing logic.

Today we make something because it's going to realize a profit or exchange value. Whether the thing you make is really useful or not is a secondary issue.

In peer production--what happens in free software or open hardware or open design--people contribute for the use value. Around those common pools of open software, knowledge, and design you will have a vibrant economy, but the driving force of that economy is use value and not the exchange value even though it operates largely as a new kind of capitalist economy.

If you design as a community--you make an open source car, or an open source sailing boat, or an open source house--if you make it to put it in a common pool you are going to make the best possible design, the most sustainable design that you can. The open hardware economy and the open design economy is still a very marginal phenomenon in comparison to the open software economy, but if we succeed in pushing through this transformation so design is made in a community but the stuff would still be made by companies, then the companies would be making sustainable products.

So is the profit motivation the problem?

You have to make a difference between profit maximizing and profit making. In the current system the primary motivation is to maximize profit for the shareholders. It's also a legal requirement. As a company you cannot consciously subvert that because then the shareholders would go to court. Milton Friedman famously said that it was unethical for companies to do anything else but profit maximization. Profit making is different. If you look at social entrepreneurship or fair trade, they are allowed to make profits but they subsume their profit making to a higher social goal. We are not saying that you can't make profits. The idea is that the profit serves something else.

P2P is a philosophy of social design. The mainstream philosophy is that if we all think about our own self-interest then the common good will follow. It's the theory of the invisible hand. P2P is a visible hand but it’s not the hand of the State. It's the hand of communities themselves who design social systems which internalize these new value requirements.

You have said that “entrepreneurs are the new proletarians.” Why?

Today being an entrepreneur is not very different from being a worker 30 years ago. An enormous amount of people have to become entrepreneurs, and are becoming entrepreneurs, and they need investment. The power is really in the hands of capital. Yes, the entrepreneur is a hero but faced with Venture Capital you are really in a subordinate position. You have to sign contracts which give Venture Capital the right to close you down, you're forbidden to work in same sector if that happens, and you have a gag order so you can't even talk about it. It's not enough to do something good if your governance and ownership structure allows you to distort it. Avis bought Zipcar, which is the poster child of car sharing, and then you see the announcement of Avis when they bought it which talks about hourly rentals. So what you see here a clash of mentality. They don't see the collaboration, but only the fact that you can rent a car by the hour. I don't know if they realize how essential the collaboration, the community is to the new models. It's better to look for solutions where the governance and the ownership are more in harmony with the community and the collaboration even if you grow slower in the long term.

You have this enormous clash of the desires and ideals of young people and economic realities. People want autonomy. If they don't want to work for a big company and be dependent, the only way they can see is to become an entrepreneur. It's like there's no other solution. Why not create your own ethical companies where the value system of open source is actually integrated in the legal structure of your company? Maybe you earn less money in the beginning but you create a lifestyle where you are in control and you can live your own values.

Can you give an example of an alternative?

Foradoeixo. Seven years ago a cultural center in the northeast of Brazil, which is very poor, decided to help musicians by mutualizing studios and festivals. Seven years later they have sold 8 million tickets. They support 30,000 musicians that have a credit card with four different alternative currencies. This keeps the reciprocity going. They have 200 fixed collectives and 150 nomadic collectives who organize festivals so a few thousand people can make a living from that. They have 14 communes where they teach four different things: how the bank works, how the open university works, how the open media works, since they do citizen journalism in the favelas, and then they have a degrowth party.They want to have a rich cultural lifestyle with a light touch on the earth. You learn these four things and then you can go and create your own collective. They don't have a hierarchy. They have a protocol like Anonymous or Occupy. As long as you follow the rules you can use the brand.

The revolution will not be linear. I don't see that tomorrow social entrepreneurs can outcompete the global system. You are creating an alternative economy in the margins. It has all the elements of a solution for the global system within it, but it will only break through if there is a sustained crisis of the mainstream system. If the old logic just doesn't work any more because oil is too expensive, then suddenly a model like Wikispeed (an ultra-efficient collaboratively designed car) will look a lot more attractive.

[Image: Flickr user Filter Forge]

With the rise of a new currency comes the temptation to speculate with it, and Bitcoin is no differnet. The e-currency’s underworldly appeal, owing to its heavy encryption, has made it ideal for eschewing national gambling restrictions--but it also leaves Bitcoin gamblers with zero legal recourse if they fall prey to a scam. A new betting site hopes to change that.

It’s called Predictious, and it has made Bitcoin its currency standard in an attempt to recover some of the popularity of Chicago-based Intrade, another “predictions market” betting website which went under last December after a lawsuit from the Chicago Futures Trade Commission. Predictious allows gamblers to bet on real-life events: Everything from Chris Froome winning the 2013 Tour De France to Mila Kunis winning FHM’s Sexiest Woman of the Year in 2014. Bitcoin allows anyone in the world to trade, and as Predictious is based in Ireland--where such betting is legal--the burden of proof to link gamblers with Predictious’ bets lies in overcoming Bitcoin’s significant encryption.

Predictious may be the newest site to bet on real-world events, but it’s not the only horse in the race. As the Verge notes, sites like Bitbet host similar bets to Predictious, but they’re almost all related to Bitcoin’s value variation. The rest of the online Bitcoin gambling world is a Wild West of casino-style gambling sites with skeuomorphed green tables and Bicycle playing cards, many of which looking straight out of early-2000s Yahoo Games. There’s even a Massively Multiplayer Online Game in the works to merge Bitcoin-powered minigames of luck or skill with Second Life-style avatar interaction.

But as Forbes’ Jon Matonis notes, the biggest online gambling names haven’t jumped on the Bitcoin bandwagon for the traditional reasons monoliths don’t move quickly: They’re wary of increased scrutiny from gaming regulators and their users haven’t expressed enough interest. That leaves the field to the risk-takers--but while Bitcoin thrives under the lack of limitations that Matonis outlines (acceptance in countries that Visa/Paypal haven’t reached, no confiscation by third parties, elimination of chargebacks/fraudulent transfer charges due to Bitcoin’s finality, relative immediacy of payment settlement), that leaves little recourse for gamblers skiffed by fraudulent sites. The Bitcoin community has fought back with directories outlining the comparative risk of known gambling sites, such as Bet With Bitcoin and the BitCoinTalk forum.

Those lists include sites for poker, blackjack, slots, dice, roulette, and sports betting--casino standbys--but Predictious is catering to the popular crowd with predictions on events as simple as “What Will Be Q3 2013’s Top Grossing Film” (Pacific Rim? Monsters University? Smurfs 2?) and “Who Will Die At The End Of Breaking Bad” (Walt? Jesse? Neither?). Bitcoin’s days submerged only in the smoky digital halls of poker and sports bets are numbered.

[Image: Flickr user jDevaun]