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The Mental Burden of Voice Interfaces
9to5Toys has a review of the Amazon Fire Cube and this bit stood out to me:
In theory, having complete voice control over your home theater feels like the way of the future. Siri and Apple TV have dabbled lightly in this area when it comes to surfacing content, and eliminating the need to dig
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Sharing Shortcuts with Sharecuts (that makes sense, right?)
Sharecuts is a new site from Guilherme Rambo where people are able to share their custom Shortcuts for the world to use. There are currently only a few shortcuts there, and you currently have to request access to upload your own shortcuts, but it just opened up today and is sure to grow.
Gui was
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Ulysses, the Best Writing App Out There, Turns 15
15 Years Ago, I Went Indie and Didn’t Know It. – Building Ulysses – Medium
Ulysses is turning 15 these days. You read that right: fifteen freaking years. In computer terms that’s an eternity. And for me, now 31 years old, it certainly feels like one. This is my story.
This is a great article
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It’s Not “Netflix for Podcasts,” It’s More Like “This Site Only Works in IE6”
Fast Company has a good summery of some of the changes going on in the world of podcasts recently; specifically, premium podcasts. This whole concept of service-exclusive podcasts makes my blood boil a bit, but I’m trying to understand if that’s because it’s actually a bad thing or if I’m
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Why USB-C Headphones Aren't a Thing
Why USB-C headphones aren’t, and likely never will be, mainstream - The Verge
The most obvious factor working against USB-C headphones is that the two biggest smartphone makers don’t need them. Apple’s iPhones might lack a headphone jack but they also don’t have a USB-C port, while Samsung retains
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Going All Open Source on Android
Corbin Davenport tried to go all in on open source software on his Android phone:
I started this experiment with one question in mind: could you realistically use an Android phone in 2018 with only open-source software? I think for most people, the answer is no. Just about every service or app used by
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We're All Just Making Content for Google
How did Google get so big?—60 Minutes - CBS News
Jeremy Stoppelman: If I were starting out today, I would have no shot of building Yelp. That opportunity has been closed off by Google and their approach.
Steve Kroft: In what way?
Jeremy Stoppelman: Because if you provide great content in one of these categories
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Chapters and the Beautiful Modularity of Podcasts
Ben Brooks had some choice words for chapters in podcasts in his post today about Castro 3.0.
Listeners (and this was literally news to me today) also use chapters to jump about in the podcasts to skip over the boring bits.
Isn’t the entire point of a podcast that the entire podcast is
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I Have One of Those Floaty APKs: My Return to the BYOD Podcast
I love talking to Greg and Nathan on the BYOD Podcast and they were gracious enough to ask me to come on this week to talk about what else: Android.
Matt Birchler joins us to talk about "Micro Podcasts", and dive into Google I/O talking about: How good has Google Assistant became,
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Duplex Shows Google’s “Build it First, then Apply Ethics” Attitude
Duplex shows Google failing at ethical and creative AI design | TechCrunch
Yet despite all the thoughtful ethical guidance and research that’s already been produced, and is out there for the reading, here we are again being shown the same tired tech industry playbook applauding engineering capabilities in a shiny bubble, stripped of human context
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Being Yourself is Differentiating (appearance on the Unco podcast)
I was honored to be invited onto the Unco podcast, Timothy buck’s excellent podcast about everything unusual in technology. We talked about building an audience online, the value these internet side-projects provide, and how the definition of “privacy” has changed over the years and where it’s headed.
It was a pleasure to
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Living that #DongleLife all the Way Back in 1998
From The New York Times' review of the original iMac in 1998: Who Said Computers Have to Be Square?
Apple contends that the 1.44-megabyte, 3.5-inch disk drive is a thing of the past and that putting one in the iMac would have made it last year's machine instead
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Where Your Data Lives
Who Has More of Your Personal Data than Facebook? Try Google
Everyone has different opinions on Google and data, and I’m not going to litigate that here, but this bit about how Google still tracks you even when you elect not to opt into any of their services is depressing.
Google Analytics is far
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A Quick Note on Bitcoin
Bitcoin Is Ridiculous. Blockchain Is Dangerous - Bloomberg
That all of this adds up to money is ridiculous, and we should probably mock it more than we do. Consider Bitcoin a grand middle finger. It’s a prank, almost a parody of the global financial system, that turned into a bubble.
…
Still, I can’t help
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The Real Problem with Apple’s iCloud Storage Options (hint, it’s not price)
The thing about iCloud storage | Beardy Guy Musings
Enough. If I can afford a $400 or $600 or $1,000 iOS device that also requires fees for monthly internet and apps to be useful, I can also afford a monthly .99 or 2.99 a month for added iCloud.
When we buy our wash machines
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For the Umpteenth Time, Google Swears They’ve Fixed Messaging
Exclusive: Chat is Google’s next big fix for Android’s messaging mess - The Verge
The worse news is that carriers aren’t fond of strong encryption and don’t have a great history of pushing back against government demands for information.
”RCS continues to be a carrier-owned service, so legal intercept and other