Tag Archives: bots

PTJ 187 News: Standards & Practices

April 20, 2016 J.D. Biersdorfer Leave a comment

Facebook mess with the News Feed? Really!?! But seriously, according to Mashable and a few other sites, images of a new tabbed news feed screen for mobile devices have been spotted on Twitter. Facebook did confirm that it is indeed testing the new design, but did not say if or when it would actually launch.

YouTube is stepping up its virtual-reality game with a couple of new features. As announced on the company blog, YouTube is introducing 360-degree live streaming on the site, which adds on to last year’s support for uploaded 360-videos. YouTube also launched spatial audio for on-demand videos. If you want to hear what all that means, check out the company’s special spatial audio playlist for Android devices.

We’re just about a month away from Google’s annual I/O developer’s conference, and now Apple has finally gotten around to announcing when its own World Wide Developer’s Conference. The first word on the dates for some people, however, did not come from an email announcement, but from the Apple’s Siri virtual assistant, as the 9to5Mac site reported. A press release on Apple’s website confirms it all Apple fans are already murmuring about the show, wondering if OS X will be renamed macOS to fall better in line with iOS, tvOS and watchOS.

Apple didn’t wait for its next big media event to make new hardware announcements, though. This Tuesday, it quietly updated its 12-inch Macbook laptop model with better hardware on the inside. The laptop is available in a few different processor and storage configurations and comes in four colors now: Gold, Silver, Space Gray and Rose Gold. And in other news, Apple has hired a former vice president of vehicle engineering from Tesla. The company also killed off QuickTime for Windows and the Department of Homeland Security has advised PC users to uninstall it RIGHT AWAY.

In legal news, it appears that Google’s massive book-scanning project that triggered a copyright lawsuit buy an author’s group is in the clear. The Supreme Court declined to hear a challenge from the Authors Guild over the legality of the Google Books project, so last year’s lower court ruling from the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in New York stands.

Also in Google news, the company’s Android Security 2015 Annual Report was released this week. The company touts its monthly security updates, better screening for potentially harmful apps in the Google Play store and greater adoption of its app verification service as factors in making Android devices safer than before, but it notes that there are still a steady number of malware, ransomware and other nasty apps lurking out there.

Speaking of software and malicious intentions, researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the machine-learning startup company PatternEx have come up with a new system predicts 85 percent of cyber attacks.

Amazon is taking a shot at Netflix’s monthly streaming fees by making its own Amazon Prime service available as, you guessed it, a monthly subscription instead of an annual fee. And speaking of Netflix, that company is raising its monthly fees by 25 percent for longtime streaming customers next month.

Yahoo’s deadline for financial suitors to present themselves has come and gone and Verizon has emerged as the only major player to maintain interest in the sagging company.

Microsoft introduced Skype video bots a few weeks ago for developers and consumers to interact with and announced this week that the bots are now available for Mac and web users. Some of the stock bots available include Murphy, a bot to find and create images for when questions can’t be answered by words alone and Summarize, a bot designed to give an overview of a web page if you don’t have time to read the whole thing.

As expected, the Name That Research Ship contest over in the United Kingdom has ended and Boaty McBoatface won in a tidal wave. However, UK Science Minister and total buzzkill Jo Johnson told BBC Radio 5 Live this week that “there is a process now for us to review all of the public’s choices. Many of them were imaginative; some were more suitable than others.” Even if the RSS Boaty McBoatface never sails the seas as a government science ship, the contest did inspire an Australian racehorse owner in Sydney to name one of his geldings Horsey McHorseface and an English rail worker temporarily named the Portsmouth to Waterloo line Trainy McTrainface.

Didnt expect my train to have a name today 😂 @SW_Trains #trains pic.twitter.com/Zc9Lvrf3ye

— Matthew Fifield (@funfield5) March 22, 2016

And finally, if you love NASA and you live vintage graphic design and branding standards, you can now buy a copy of the space agency’s official graphics manual first published in 1976. The book is 220 pages with 129 image plates and comes individually packages in a static-shielding pouch. This is actually a reissue of the original book, of which only 40 copies were originally printed. The new version is a Kickstarter project that can now be ordered only for $79 a copy.

If you’re on a bit of a tight budget, however, you can download a free PDF copy of the original manual from NASA’s website and print it yourself because hey, it’s a taxpayer-funded government agency. And after just staggering through another tax season, we’ll take all the perks we can get.

Episode Links

PTJ 186 News: Twist of F8

April 13, 2016 J.D. Biersdorfer Leave a comment

Microsoft, now Facebook, then Google and Apple: The developer conference season is in full swing. Facebook’s F8 Developer Conference took place in San Francisco this week, complete with live streaming sessions and announcements about 360 degree video — as well as bots, news distribution and marketing tools for its Messenger app.

Lots of Facebook/Messenger-related news was announced as well: The Dropbox blog said this week that you can share files stored on Dropbox directly through and without leaving the Facebook Messenger; Ticketmaster says it will soon start selling tickets to concerts and other events directly on Facebook; and Fandango sent out an email blast about a new ticketing and movie-discovery bot for Facebook Messenger.

Speaking of that popular movie site, Fandango completes its acquisition of the Flixster site this month, alerting users that the deal was done with an update to the privacy policy. Fandango agreed to buy Flixster, which comes with the Rotten Tomatoes review aggregation site, last February from Warner Brothers.

Less than a week after Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos announced it on Twitter, images purporting to be of the new Kindle Oasis e-reader popped up briefly on the Tmall.com website.

The Yik Yak social site, popular on college campuses for its easy anonymous posting ability, is said to be having some financial problems due to a slide in popularity, and this has generated an interesting post on the Medium site. It’s a good read about what makes one app succeed and another app flop.

Microsoft seems to be makingWindows Blue Screen of Death errors easier to deal with, at least if a recent Windows Insider build of Windows 10 is any indication. Beta testers there have noticed the appearance of handy, scannable QR code on the Blue Screen of Death messages that when zapped by a smartphone QR app, takes you to a Microsoft help page to begin your troubleshooting journey.

The 9to5Mac site got a peek at a note from an investment firm that predicts Apple Watch shipments will drop by 25% in a year-on-year comparison with 2015. Time to developer that killer app now…

If you like making graffiti or ever had fantasies of being a football TV analyst where you get to draw on the video playback, Periscope has something for you. A new beta version of the live-streaming app owned by Twitter includes a tool that lets you draw on your video feeds.

After a series of unfortunate events including an exploding rocket on a resupply mission, SpaceX is back on track with both its cargo deliveries to the International Space Station — and its ability to reuse its rocket boosters. While the payload took off for the sky, the Falcon 9‘s rocket booster made a successful vertical landing on an ocean platform without falling over.

Its Dragon cargo capsule docked with the station on April 10^th and brought with it 7.000 pounds of supplies for the astronauts stationed up there — including lettuce seeds, mice and an inflatable room called the Bigelow Expandable Activity Module, or BEAM, for short.

Ransomware — malware that encrypts all the data on your computer until you pay up —has been making a comeback this year thanks to social engineering and the usual tricks, but the white hats are fighting back with a a decryption tool that can unlock files held hostage by the Petya ransomware. The decryption tool is a bit technical and probably not for the novice, but it’s a good punch in the fight against crime.

The State of New York is getting serious about distracted driving. A bill in the New York State Senate would require drivers involved in collisions to submit their phones at the crash site for analysis to see if they were texting while driving.

Also in New York, the U.S. Attorney’s office notified a federal judge in Brooklyn that the government plans to move forward with its request to make Apple help them unlock an iPhone related to a dealer in a local drug case. Encryption Wars, Round II.

Google is beta-testing its Voice Access accessibility feature that lets users open apps and navigate screens without using their hands. The beta test is full, but stay tuned.

And finally, while Google Glass may have bombed as a consumer product, the Internet-empowered eyeglasses have found fans with neuroatypical kids. Stanford University’s Autism Glass Project is using the Google specs as a learning aid for autistic teenagers trying to learn social interactions, emotions, recognize facial expressions or even make eye contact. Stanford researchers have created special software to use with the glasses and early results have shown improvement in social acuity for some participants. Perhaps Google Glass has found its mission at last.

Episode Links

PTJ 157 News: Come September

September 3, 2015 J.D. Biersdorfer Leave a comment

Yes, the Big Apple Fall Media Event was confirmed for September 9^th, and we’re all expecting the fancy 4^th generation Apple TV, the iPhone 6s, iOS 9 — and who knows, maybe even the iPad Maxi. Hardware aside, Hollywood trade mag Variety is reporting this week that Apple is looking into doing its own original programming, just like Amazon and Netflix. Apple, of course, is Not Commenting. The company did comment on — and even put out a press release — about another meeting it had this week, this one with networking giant Cisco to optimize networks for iOS users.

If you’ve jailbroken your iPhone and are running Cydia, listen up: Researchers have discovered malware called KeyRaider that has snagged more 225,000 Apple ID user names and passwords. The malware is getting out there though a third-party repository.

And if you’re got an iPhone but want to skip the Apple Watch in favor of a Android Wear device, you can now pair an Android-powered smartwatch or fitness tracker with an iPhone 5 later, thanks to the Android Wear app for iOS that arrived this week. Also in the department of smartwatches, Samsung announced its latest models, the Gear G2 and the Gear G2 Classic, at a Berlin trade show this week.

Those with Amazon Fire Tablets HD and HDX can now stream video content from the Dish Network’s Sling TV service. A free trial period is available for new customers and Sling TV is already available on the Roku, Amazon Fire TV and Nexus Player set-top boxes, the Xbox One, IOS and Android tablets and computers running Windows and Mac OS X. Also in Amazon Land, Prime Instant Video users with Android and iOS devices can now download selected titles for offline viewing. Very handy for planes, trains and automobiles — or anyplace without Wi-Fi.

PayPal is making it easier for friends who lend and borrow money to get squared away. With its new PayPal.Me service, the peer-to-peer payments platform lets users set up their own personalized URL that can be shared with others to request money.

Nintendo also has new stuff on the way for gamers on the go. The company is releasing smaller version of the Nintendo 3DS handheld console for those with more petite paws to play with.

Google’s tussle with the European Union continues, and could expand now to a number of civil lawsuits over antitrust allegations. The E.U. has had an investigation into Google for the past four years, trying to discern if the company was favoring its own services in search results. If Google is found guilty there, the ruling can be used as evidence in civil cases from other companies. A Google lawyer
posted a statement online last week that argues against the European Commission’s Statement of Objections with the headline “Improving quality isn’t anti-competitive.” In other Google news, the company changed its logo this week.

Facebook, which probably already knows a lot about you anyway, is getting into the virtual personal assistant game. Last week, the company announced its new M software, which hopes to muscle into Cortana and Siri’s territory. Facebook’s Instagram also got an update this week to add threaded messages and the ability to send photos from your feed as a direct message.

Speaking of virtual personalities, the hacked and sacked Ashley Madison trysting website has been accused of creating fake female profiles and powering them by chatbots to up boost the impression than that the site had more female users than it actually did. According the Guardian of London, a former employee sued the site in 2013 saying in a complaint that the site had required the creation of so many fake profiles, she had sustained repetitive stress injuries. Spokespeople for Ashley Madison have said that despite the epic data security fail and public resignation of its CEO, “hundreds of thousands” of new users signed up for the site, including 87, 596 (allegedly real) women and everything.

And finally, up in space, NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft isn’t basking around doing nothing after its slam-dunk flyby of Pluto in July. NASA scientists are directing the probe toward a 30-mile wide object in the Kuiper Belt called 2014 MU69. While NASA doesn’t quite have everything in place yet for this bonus trip, it does have to do a little prep work ahead of time. New Horizons needs to fire up its steering engines in October to get situated for the flyby, which would actually take place in January of 2019. Start planning your 2014 MU69 flyby parties now!

The independent audio magazine devoted to mashing up pop culture, technology and more. J.D. Biersdorfer and Pedro Rafael Rosado are your hosts. It's an Internet Radio revolution!