|
|
|
Rob Pardo, the chief creative officer at Activision Blizzard subsidiary Blizzard Entertainment, is leaving the company after 17 years. Pardo was the lead designer on Blizzard’s World of Warcraft, the subscription-based online multiplayer game that has been running since 2004. He’s keeping mum about his next project, but, in a post on the company’s Battle.net forums, promised to share more details “when it's ready.”
Re/code
Sure, T-Mobile is the smallest of the four major U.S. wireless carriers, and yes, it was the last to roll out both a high-speed 4G LTE data network and the Apple iPhone. And, just this week, it got whacked by the federal government for allegedly allowing, and profiting from, fraudulent charges on its customers’ bills. (The company says the charges are “unfounded and without merit.”)
But the underdog certainly has spunk. It has ditched subsidies and offered free data for streaming music, among other things. It calls itself the “un-carrier.”
T-Mobile’s latest gambit: A free week-long “test drive” of an iPhone 5s running on its LTE network, which it claims is the fastest in the U.S. The idea is to convince people that the network is speedy and has strong coverage. The company is calling the program a “7 night stand,” and is running full-page newspaper ads that say: “Like 7 minutes in heaven. But for 7 sweet days.”
The carrier loans you the iPhone, which comes in special, T-Mobile speed-test packaging, instead of the usual box. It must be returned in good condition after a week. You order it online, and return it to a T-Mobile store. If it’s damaged, you will pay $100. If you don’t return it, you pay $700 plus taxes. Details are here.
I decided to take T-Mobile up on the offer, and toted the T-Mobile loaner along with my personal iPhone 5s, which runs on Verizon’s LTE network, the first to be widely deployed in the U.S., and quite widespread. This was a test-drive, not a scientific test. I didn’t compare other phone models or other carriers. And I only tried the T-Mobile phone in two cities that were already on my schedule: My home base of Washington, D.C., and San Francisco.
I performed lots of functions on both iPhones, ranging from making voice calls to steaming video and music, surfing the Web, and texting and emailing. The T-Mobile variant did as well as the Verizon one on all these things.
But the acid test, for me, was to run the widely used speed-test app, Ookla’s Speedtest, on both phones in each location. I did 10 tests on each phone in the same place, at the same time. I focused on downstream speeds. Then I averaged them.
For the East Coast match, I was in my suburban D.C. home, whose address is rated by T-Mobile as having “very strong” LTE coverage, and which is also covered by Verizon’s LTE network.
For the West Coast face-off, I was at a major hotel right off San Francisco’s Market Street, a short walk from the city’s major financial and retail districts. T-Mobile says coverage there is “Excellent.” Verizon says the hotel is in an area fully covered by its LTE network.
The result: T-Mobile beat Verizon overall, in each location. T-Mobile averaged just over 10 megabits per second downstream, versus 6.8 Mbps for Verizon. In D.C., T-Mobile averaged 11.4 Mbps down, much faster than Verizon’s 7.6 Mbps. In San Francisco, T-Mobile averaged 8.7 Mbps down, versus just about 6 Mbps for Verizon.
These results are nothing to write home about, since LTE data speeds can often top 20 Mbps, and frequently measure in the teens.
Still, this was a reversal from another, more comprehensive, test I ran last year, in which Verizon topped T-Mobile (AT&T won that one, and Sprint was dead last.)
There are some caveats. Speeds on any network can vary by time of day, and even by slight changes in location. So your results may vary, even in the two cities where I tested. Also, Verizon’s network carries much more data traffic than T-Mobile’s, which can result in lower speeds
T-Mobile’s performance was much more uneven than Verizon’s. My T-Mobile results included multiple results under 1 Mbps, and multiple ones over 20 Mbps. The Verizon results clustered much more closely to the average, and were never slower than 2.5 Mbps.
Finally, Verizon beat T-Mobile on upload speeds, averaging about 5.1 Mbps versus 4.2 Mbps for T-Mobile.
Still, at least in my case, T-Mobile’s test-drive gamble worked for the carrier. I’m not switching, since I am grandfathered into a very favorable Verizon plan; I give great weight to the consistency of Verizon speeds, and have a Verizon family plan. But you might, if you’re not as satisfied with your current carrier.
Shutterstock / Gbreezy
We’re confident this should finally put the matter to rest.
At Re/code, #tbt isn’t just Throwback Thursday — it’s Throwback-Tech Day, an opportunity to showcase some of the best old-school gadgets our readers share with us.
We started Throwback Tech during the Code Conference in May, when I asked a bunch of conference-goers to share their favorite first gadgets (and even convinced a couple of people to mimic the AOL dial-up sound — thanks Matt Mullenweg!) I had so much fun with it that we thought, why not do it on a more regular basis?
Check out this week’s below, submitted through Twitter:
https://twitter.com/TreyMojo/status/484711524930703361
https://twitter.com/mikefoley/status/484710635549122560
https://twitter.com/emilyhornSF/status/484705725369704449
https://twitter.com/seanmills/status/484472257012432899
https://twitter.com/ifostore/status/484466592806215681
https://twitter.com/woodlandalyssa/status/484464766354591745
https://twitter.com/lhhalstead/status/484389653093830656
https://twitter.com/froesei/status/484384396368027648
@LaurenGoode Hi Lauren :-) http://t.co/ZZ9bXSgIpd—
Karen Novak (@karenjnovak) July 02, 2014
@LaurenGoode @Recode There is no better throwback gadget then the Startac phone http://t.co/1b0CiADIxU—
Kieran John Hawe (@khawe) July 02, 2014
David Holt/Flickr
Depending on your point of view, Uber, the mobile taxi-booking app, is either a triumph for consumer choice or a failure of regulators to protect the livelihood of the traditional taxi driver.
Last Wednesday, in fact, thousands of taxi drivers in London and other big cities across Europe protested against the failure of regulators to protect them from what they perceive as the unfair or unlawful competition presented by Uber-operated cabs. Downloads of the Uber app jumped 850 percent in London in a span of just 36 hours last week, and rose to second place from number 26 on Apple’s iTunes U.K. store throughout the protests, making it clear that consumers are voting with their smartphones for choice, convenience, and possibly lower fares.
What is also clear is that the disruption of another industry by new digital technologies is well under way, and not everyone is as thrilled as consumers that innovation is turning many traditional industries inside out. This is not to say that the consumer view should always trump the concerns of, in this case, regulated taxi drivers. It is just that disruptive service providers, by their very nature, innovate at a speed that makes it harder than ever for regulators to balance the needs of value-seeking and innovation-hungry consumers with the needs of the very industries they regulate.
Uber is just one such example, but as digital technology removes barriers in the way of companies seeking to enter new industries, the existing model of industry-based regulation is being challenged, and the machinery of regulation must adapt.
New, convenient and often cheaper market entrants are encouraging consumers to abandon traditional service providers. Hotel chains and car-rental companies, for example, face a huge challenge with the explosion of sole trading — or “sharing” — enabled by websites and apps such as Airbnb. With more than 600,000 small and medium enterprises on its books, Airbnb makes enough on its bookings to generate an enterprise valuation greater than that of Hyatt Hotels and Wyndham Worldwide. It is now in advanced talks to raise capital that would value Airbnb at around $10 billion.
But Airbnb is not immune from the scrutiny of regulators, and the company has just agreed to provide some of its customer data to the New York attorney general, who is concerned that some of its members may be violating state housing laws.
Digital disruption isn't just a consumer story. It is also reshaping how businesses buy goods and services from other businesses. For example, Alibaba, an Internet e-commerce marketplace in China, analyzed the data it had on its small-business customers and vendors, rated their creditworthiness, and targeted them with offers of commercial loans. As of July 2013, it claimed to have extended more than $16 billion to more than 300,000 small businesses. Stretching the brand, it is set to launch its first online marketplace in the U.S., and also launched a money-market fund that grew into China’s largest within seven months, and acquired an asset-management firm to manage the money.
An Accenture survey of 500 business leaders from 10 economies found that 80 percent planned to pursue growth opportunities outside of their own industry — in collaboration with other industries, the public sector, or the nonprofit sector. As a result, the approach to regulation that has been built around traditional models of industry — from telecoms and taxis to banks and hotels — needs to be adapted to address these emerging “digitally contestable markets.”
First, there is a need for a shift in mindset from the regulation of industries to the regulation of “customer markets.” This means regulators need to fully understand how the relevant market they’ve traditionally addressed has changed, and to survey the industrial landscape through the lens of the customer experience. Consumers’ use of mobile wallets or PayPal, both online and in-store, for example, means they must think of the wider marketplaces for paying and saving, rather than focusing on formal financial services. Instead of health care, think staying healthy; instead of education, learning. Shifting the focus in this way will help regulators understand the broader array of players now helping customers to fulfill their life goals.
Collaboration will be extremely important, both with the wider business community and with other regulatory bodies. As the boundaries of customer markets shift, regulators will need to monitor developments together, figuring out as they go where responsibilities should most appropriately sit.
For regulators, change is really nothing new. Business innovation invariably challenges the ability of government agencies to keep up. What is new is the speed at which the business landscape is changing — rocket-fueled by digital technology.
As regulators attempt to keep pace with these digitally contestable markets, they will be seeking to not constrain the benefits of innovation or protect existing practice providers from disruption. What may appear today to be a phenomenon led by technology upstarts will become embedded across old and new companies in multiple sectors as they learn to embrace new digital business models at an increasingly rapid rate.
Matthew Robinson is the managing director of policy research at the Accenture Institute for High Performance, Accenture’s macroeconomic, geopolitical and business think tank. He focuses on innovation in markets, industries and corporate & public policy. Tim Cooper is a senior research fellow at the Accenture Institute for High Performance. His research focuses on the intersection of business and public policy, innovation in public service delivery and cross-sector collaboration. Both are based in London.
yanugkelid/Shutterstock
Internet experts are more worried about the commercialization of the Internet than they are about surveillance or errant nation-states blocking services, a recent Pew report shows.
“Nothing surprises me anymore,” said Elon University professor Janna Anderson, who led the survey of 1,400 experts. “But what rings as the biggest warning in the survey is this concern over commercialization.”
Called “Digital Life 2025,” part of the North Carolina university’s “Imagine the Internet” series, the survey included, for the first time in 10 years, a question about the anxieties and concerns experts have about the Internet’s future.
Many participants wrote about nation-states like Iran blocking Twitter or revelations that the NSA has access to Google’s data. But the biggest concern was over commercialization and the relatively unchecked power held by Internet corporations. In light of revelations that Facebook engineers intentionally manipulated some users’ experiences to affect their moods (and found that it worked), the Internet giants themselves are coming under greater scrutiny.
Anderson uses the email inbox as an example of this shift.
“When commercialization started, maybe you wound up having marketers filling your inbox. Now there’s more noise than signal in your personal email — some criminal, some pranksters, everyone searching for the buck,” Anderson said. “Monetization is seen by some as the goose killing the golden egg, as the threat to the Net.”
Many of the most concerned participants in the survey were longtime Internet execs like Glenn Edens, the director of research in networking, security and distributed systems at PARC. An influential pre-Internet tech company, PARC was founded when utopian ideals about personal computing prevailed in the yet-to-be-named Silicon Valley.
“Network operators’ desire to monetize their assets to the detriment of progress represents the biggest potential problem,” Edens wrote. “Enabling content creators to easily and directly reach audiences, better search tools, better promotion mechanisms and curation tools — continuing to dismantle the ‘middle men’ is key.”
Anderson, who has been leading these opinion surveys for 10 years, used to only ask positive questions about the potential for the Internet’s future. This is the first year she asked participants about their concerns. The negative question was the seventh in a broader survey, and she said that the responses to it were powerful.
“We always asked people one open-ended question about hopes and fears, and they’d have mostly hopes,” she said. “Now we’re realizing there’s more recognition of the cons.”
But why is monetization so bad?
“You can’t blame the CEO or the VP of marketing for finding ways to use the Internet to benefit their corporations, but it’s the drive by everyone to do that that is raising concerns,” Anderson said. “But then again, who’s to say who gets to earn a buck on the Internet and who doesn’t?”
From the survey, the four main concerns that experts expressed for the Internet’s future:
Amy Schatz
Federal regulators have received more than 625,000 comments about a controversial proposal to allow broadband providers to offer fast-lane service on the Internet. None, so far, has been from Google.
The search giant and other large tech companies, including Facebook, Amazon, Twitter and eBay, may support net neutrality rules, but they don't appear to be spending much time or money in Washington fighting for them.
That's a sharp contrast from four years ago, when those companies, particularly Google, fought a high-profile lobbying war with telecommunications and cable companies over net neutrality, which is the idea that Internet traffic should be treated equally and not blocked or slowed.
The FCC isn't expected to make a final decision on rules until the end of the year, so there's still plenty of time for big tech companies to engage. An initial deadline for commenting on the rules ends in less than two weeks. But their seeming reluctance to get too heavily involved may be a boon for broadband providers like Verizon and Comcast*, which invest heavily in lobbyists and interest groups to help get their way in D.C.
The tech companies signed onto a letter protesting Wheeler's fast-lane net neutrality proposal, but appear to have done relatively little since then.
Heavily-regulated Internet providers, by contrast, have been busy commissioning economic studies, reviving "grassroots" advocacy groups, hosting numerous panels around D.C. and generally building a defense against efforts by net neutrality advocates to push the FCC to impose more regulations on Internet lines.
"My worry about net neutrality is: What are you trying to fix? What are you trying to solve?" AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson said earlier this month during a Washington Economic Club luncheon, conveniently held at a hotel next door to the Federal Communications Commission. "I think we ought to be very cautious about tinkering with this thing."
Stephenson's counterpart at Verizon, CEO Lowell McAdam, travelled to Washington on June 3 to ask Wheeler to avoid re-regulating lines under Title 2 of the Communications Act, which was written with old phone networks in mind. Cisco CEO John Chambers had a similar message for Wheeler during a June 18 meeting in Wheeler's eighth floor office.
By contrast, when Wheeler set up meetings with a few dozen tech leaders in San Francisco last week for the sole purpose of talking net neutrality, Dropbox CEO Drew Houston declined the request, because he was "simply not available that day." A handful of other invited startup executives also missed the meetings, including Sherpa Ventures' Shervin Pishevar and former Facebook executive Chris Kelly, citing schedule conflicts.
"This is an incredibly important moment for startups and mid-size tech companies because this is primarily their battle. Frankly, they're the ones who will get screwed if they don't have net neutrality," said Julie Samuels, executive director at Engine Advocacy, a San Francisco-based advocacy group. "The larger tech companies who are traditionally involved in public policy issues are going to be helpful, but this isn't their fight. They can afford bad net neutrality."
Last week, a small group of protestors calling themselves "Occupy Google" unfurled some tents and posters and plopped down on the sidewalk outside Google's headquarters to protest the company's relative silence on net neutrality.
"Though Google and other major companies such as Netflix, Amazon and Microsoft have come out in support of preserving a free and open web, we believe much more can be done," the group wrote in a manifesto on its website. "Google, with its immense power, has a social responsibility to uphold the values of the Internet."
Occupy Google
Google spent $15.8 million last year lobbying lawmakers, making it the twelfth biggest spender in D.C., according to the Center for Responsive Politics. It was the only Internet company to crack the top 20 in spending, spending slightly less than AT&T and slightly more than Boeing. The company's D.C. staff recently moved into a new office space, just a few blocks from the Capitol, more than twice as large as its old location.
Google's reluctance to take center stage in the current fight over rules for Internet lines is a stark change from four years ago, when the company was central to cutting a deal which provided a template for the agency's net neutrality rules (which were rejected by a federal appeals court in January).
After weeks of closed-door negotiations with other industry players and senior FCC officials, Google and Verizon presented a net neutrality proposal similar to what Wheeler recently proposed. It mostly exempted wireless networks from net neutrality rules and would have allowed broadband providers to experiment with offering fast-lane service to content companies.
Public interest groups weren't amused and Google lobbyists were accused of selling out the industry and consumers. One group launched a "Google, don't be evil" petition aimed to the company's co-founders which drew more than 335,000 signatures. Google denied the charges, but the company stepped back from its advocacy efforts.
The Google-funded Open Internet Coalition, the tech industry-sponsored advocacy group that pushed for net neutrality four years ago, is defunct. Its website is gone and its Twitter account dormant. Google hasn't mentioned the words "net neutrality" in a company blog post in four years.
When the head of Google Fiber, Milo Medin, recently visited the FCC, the company only would say that he "discussed Google's continued support for a competitive environment that promotes innovation by broadband and video providers."
Google Fiber represents one reason why the company may not want to get as involved in the net neutrality debate this time around. If the FCC were to re-regulate Internet lines, Google could find its new fiber network saddled with rules designed for copper wire networks. Those rules include possible rate regulations of lines and requirements that the company offer wholesale access to its network to competitors.
A Google spokeswoman declined to comment on the company's net neutrality advocacy efforts.
Although Google's lobbyists may not be publicly pushing the FCC or Congress on new net neutrality rules, the company does help fund several of the public interest groups which have been pressing for more stringent net neutrality rules, including Public Knowledge and the New America Foundation.
A group of smaller startups, activists and venture capitalists, including Union Square's Fred Wilson and Brad Burnham, have been trying to counteract Google and other tech firms that spend heavily on Washington lobbying with letters, personal appeals and Internet-based activism.
Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian collected more than $20,000 from supporters to place pro-net neutrality ads on D.C. buses in May. File-sharing service BitTorrent’s satirical website, Join the Fastlane, depicts a grim future in which consumers pay hundreds of dollars for fast-lane service.
Non-profit software company Mozilla offered its own net neutrality proposal, which the FCC has asked people to comment on, and company officials recently met with senior FCC aides to discuss the plan.
Startups and investors have also been doing more traditional FCC lobbying, meeting with Wheeler and his aides to press their case for more regulation of Internet lines.
"We think the Chairman should not focus on what's easiest to do in Washington, D.C."
During a June 24 meeting with the FCC's general counsel and chief technology officer, Union Square's Burnham and Wilson suggested the FCC re-regulate Internet lines to provide more certainty for consumers and the markets. "We explained that the investment and entrepreneur community needs far more certainty than that offered by the FCC's proposed rule," the investors said during their meeting.
Netflix has also been complaining loudly in meetings with the FCC (and in public) about a separate, if related, issue about how broadband providers negotiate deals with middle-mile Internet companies and content providers like Netflix, which have created their own content delivery networks.
And at a gathering in San Francisco last week in online payment company Stripe's offices, a group of fifteen startup executives raised concerns with Wheeler about his fast-lane plan during a 90-minute meeting.
Wheeler told the group that "though he believes paid prioritization arrangements are harmful, he also believes that it is politically more difficult to make rules that deem paid prioritization and other forms of discrimination unreasonable, per se," said Automattic general counsel Paul Sieminski, in a recap of the meeting.
"We think the Chairman should not focus on what's easiest to do in Washington, D.C. Rather, the FCC Chairman should begin with the correct policy, which is keeping access to the Internet open and neutral as it has been historically," Sieminski wrote.
Meanwhile, comments from irate consumers continue to jam the FCC's comment system. Thousands of comments continue to filed each week. More than 1,500 were filed on Tuesday, according to the FCC's electronic system. The deadline for making initial comments is July 15.
Arguably, the most effective advocate for net neutrality rules so far hasn't even a lobbyist. Comedian and HBO talk show host John Oliver jolted the FCC with a blistering 13-minute explainer last month on Wheeler's proposal which has been seen more than 4.3 million times.
Last Week Tonight With John Oliver
Thousands of comments poured into the agency after Oliver's video hit YouTube, startling agency officials who aren’t used to receiving so much public feedback. Wheeler took offense at being compared to a dingo, several people inside the agency said, although he later joked about it publicly.
Oliver said the decision to appoint Wheeler, a former top cable lobbyist, as FCC Chairman, was "the equivalent of needing a babysitter and hiring a dingo."
*Comcast's NBCUniversal is an investor in Revere Digital, Re/code's parent company.
For the past week, I’ve been running around town and sitting in meetings, constantly looking at my watch. It’s not because I was perpetually late or calculating the minutes till the end of a PowerPoint presentation (okay, maybe that was part of it). It’s because I was receiving all sorts of notifications on my wrist.
New email — buzz. New Twitter conversation — buzz. Congrats, you’ve reached your daily step-count goal — buzz. All of these alerts were delivered to me via the new LG G Watch.
Available for preorder now from the Google Play Store for $229, and shipping on July 7, the G Watch is one of the first smartwatches to feature Google’s new platform for wearable devices, called Android Wear. It’s part of Google’s broader effort to expand Android beyond phones and tablets, and it aims to deliver more relevant and timely information than what’s being provided by the current array of smartwatches available.
I’d say that the Android Wear is a step in the right direction for smartwatches, but there’s nothing about it that makes it a must-have yet. It might be tempting for gadget enthusiasts, but even for them, the G Watch wouldn’t be my first pick. The Samsung Gear Live, which also runs Android Wear and ships on July 7, offers a sharper screen and a heart-rate sensor, and costs $30 less. Meanwhile, the upcoming Moto 360 has a much more stylish design.
But whether you’re an early adopter or just someone curious about smartwatches, my advice would be to wait. There are more devices on the way, including Apple’s much-anticipated smartwatch, and Android Wear is still very much in its early days, as evidenced by some of the limitations I experienced during my review week.
As part of the requirements set by Google and Android Wear, the G Watch is only compatible with smartphones running Android 4.3 or higher. I tested it with the Nexus 5, and after downloading the Android Wear app, I was able to connect the two devices via Bluetooth with no problem.
I wasn’t particularly fond of the G Watch’s design. I thought the rectangular body and black silicone watchband were plain and too sporty looking. But style is such a subjective thing (case in point, a colleague of mine really liked the look of it), so ultimately it will be up to you decide whether the G Watch is to your taste.
You can swap out the straps with any standard 22mm watchband, so there is an opportunity to jazz things up. LG also offers the G Watch in a white-gold model, and you can change the watch face by doing a long press on the screen and selecting from one of 24 different designs.
The watch was generally comfortable to wear, and it’s dust- and water-resistant. I took it into the shower, and it’s still working just fine. But the G Watch is quite large, and on occasion it would get caught on things like my purse straps.
The body of the watch measures 1.5 inches wide by 1.75 inches tall. LG said that it researched different sizes and found that this was the best size for both men and women. I generally like large watch faces, but this was a bit too much. I asked a couple of my girlfriends to try it on to make sure it wasn’t just me, and they also agreed that it was too big.
To a certain extent, I understand why it has to be that big. If you were to go too small, it would be difficult to read the contents of the screen, and as it is, you already have to scroll a bunch to read text on the 1.65-inch touchscreen.
The 280- x 280-pixel display is clear and bright, and it’s always on, meaning that you can still see the time even when the backlight isn’t completely on. The bad news is that the screen is difficult to read in bright sunlight. If I was walking on the street and received an alert, I would have to duck into the shadows or a building to see what was on the display.
With the Android Wear software, the G Watch can show you the weather, keep track of how many steps you taken, and alert you to different phone notifications. The G Watch vibrated on my wrist every time I received a new message, Facebook comment, Twitter reply, and more. All of this information is displayed on tiny cards, which you can then swipe to the left to take more action, or swipe to the right to dismiss.
You can also interact with the G Watch using voice commands, which is a feature built into Android Wear. Just say “Okay, Google,” and then rattle off a message, create reminders, and more.
While all of this worked just fine on the G Watch, it’s obvious that Android Wear needs a lot more work. Right now, there’s no way to reply to any notifications that come from a non-Google app or service, such as Facebook. Also, with Twitter notifications, I would get buzzed if my friends were talking about a particular topic, like the World Cup. The problem is that I don’t consider that particularly important, and would prefer not to see it on my smartwatch. Currently, there’s no way to customize this — it’s all or nothing.
With voice commands, I didn’t like that once you dictated a message, the G Watch immediately sent it, without giving you an opportunity to check for mistakes. As a stickler for correct spelling and punctuation, this gave me a lot of anxiety.
Where I do see Android Wear being valuable and more intelligent is in its ability to present you with information based on time, location and your interests, thanks to Google Now. That’s Google’s personal digital assistant that, with your permission, scans through your emails, calendar and Web searches to present you with more relevant information.
So, for example, the G Watch automatically alerted me to when I should leave for a meeting in downtown San Francisco, based on current traffic conditions. Or, if you often taken public transportation, the watch can display nearby stations, complete with timetables. Seeing information like this at a glance — stuff that I don’t necessarily think about but find very useful — is where I think wearables can provide a great value.
Performance-wise, the G Watch worked well, with little lag. But battery life could use improvement. On most days, I had to charge the watch every night. I already have enough devices that I need to plug in each day, so it would be nice not to worry about another one.
The LG G Watch and Android Wear provide a promising glimpse at what’s to come in smartwatches. But with more models and software improvements on the horizon, you’d be wise to wait and see before strapping one of these early devices on your wrist.
That’s the actual headline for this piece by Benjamin Morris for FiveThirtyEight. I saw it yesterday on Twitter, and skipped it, because of the hyperbolic absurdity. Lionel Messi is not impossible; he exists. I’d have clicked if the headline had even been something like “Lionel Messi Is Seemingly Impossible”.
I read it today, though, after Kottke linked it. Kottke I trust. But if he hadn’t linked it, I wouldn’t have read it, because when I saw it yesterday, I figured it was a bullshit article because of its headline. And I’m glad I read it, because it’s a fascinating and extraordinarily well-researched piece on the man who is very clearly the best soccer player in the world today.
There’s a boy-who-cried-wolf aspect to the modern art of click-bait headline writing. There are certain patterns that emerge, which I’m sure are statistically shown to work. For example, listicles typically no longer use round numbers like 5, 10, 15, 20 — instead, you see things like “17 Gay Celebs Who Pretend to Be Straight on TV” and “17 Facts That Will Forever Change the Way You Look at These Famous People”. (I didn’t make those up, I saw both of those today in the scammy Taboola links beneath an article on TPM.) I’m sure these tricks work, that there’s all sorts of analytics data that shows it — but no trick works forever. People inevitably catch on.
I typically don’t pay much attention to patent applications, and my advice has long been that we should not assume that everything Apple tries to patent will eventually come to market as shipping features. Apple, like most major tech companies, patents anything patentable. Apple decidedly does not ship everything shippable.
But this one is worthy of an exception. Location-based security for iOS has long been a hobby horse of mine. This patent describes a system that sounds exactly like what I’ve longed for: the ability to have my iOS devices turn on without a passcode while inside my home, but require a passcode or TouchID anywhere else.
Update: “Personal Unlocking”, a new feature coming in Android L, enables this same sort of thing.
Nielsen’s music report on the first half of 2014 shows digital music consumption rapidly shifting from downloads to streaming. On-demand streaming was up 42% over the first half of 2013, racking up 70 billion play in the first half of 2014. Meanwhile, digital track sales fell 13% to 593.6 million and album sales fell 11.6% to 53.8 million. The report makes Apple’s acquisition of… Read More
Ready to head on down to (virtual) South Park, and have yourself a (virtual) time? Looking to brush up their virtual reality skills, a team of designers has recreated everyone’s favorite quiet little mountain town for exploration with the Oculus Rift. Read More 
Tandem, a Silicon Valley-based accelerator for mobile startups, is unveiling its latest group of companies. The firm says this is its “largest startup class ever” — though that’s not quite as dramatic a change as you might think. In the past, Tandem has accepted three startups in each class. This time, there are a grand total of four. Read More 
