News

Amazon Fire Phone

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My considered opinion after Amazon finally unveiled its own smartphone is that I like the name.

Beyond that I do have a curiosity about exactly how easy this phone will make it for people to spend more money at Amazon. I am immune to this, I am above such trivialities as UNCONTROLLABLE BOOK BUYING ON IMPULSE, or at least I will be via this phone because I won’t get it.

I don’t know that I’ll buy the forthcoming iPhone 6 either – though as I’m now out of contract, I’ll certainly look at it – but there’s no way I’m chucking this for an Amazon Shopping Trollery. I mean, Amazon Fire.

But BBC News has done an interesting roundup of reactions across the web from people who know more than I do.

Watch Susan Kare talk about icon design

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Only this weekend, I wrote about the ⌘ symbol and that inevitably led to mentioning Susan Kare. And now she’s here on video, talking about the icons she designed for Apple and many more.

Susan Kare, Iconographer (EG8) from EG Conference on Vimeo.

Full disclosure. I swear I’m alert to Susan Kare in the news because I had a drama character I loved named Susan Hare. Complete coincidence, but.

I have no clue what to say. Star Wars: Scene Maker

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Disney has released a new iPad app that, wait, take this from the mouth of a horse:

MAKE STAR WARS YOUR OWN!

Become the master of your own Star Wars video universe! Create your own scenes, choose your favorite characters, control their actions and dialogue, record your masterpiece, and share your Star Wars story! The Force of your imagination is with you!

FEATURES:

· Create your own Star Wars universe and bring it to life with imaginative play and countless options.

· Select from 3D environments with 3D models of your favorite characters, weapons, and ships.

· Use dialogue straight from the Star Wars films, or record your voice and apply a Darth Vader, Rebel Pilot, or Storm Trooper filter to put your words into any character’s mouth!

· Switch between three cameras, each of which can track or follow the action, to record your scene from multiple angles!

· Chooose a musical score taken from the Star Wars films, write your own iconic Star Wars “Title Crawl” and end credits, and share your finished scene with your friends!

If you get the free app – it’s a big download but it’s free – you’ll hear all of this again but done in the style of a movie trailer. You’ll also get the Star Wars theme, which I do like, I have bought the soundtrack, repeated so often that you won’t like it, you will throw away that soundtrack.

I do just wonder what I would’ve thought of this when I was a kid and Star Wars first came out. I also wonder how much the in-app purchases would’ve cost then. Now they are £1.99 each for Death Star Attack and Cloud City Something or £2.49 for the pair.

Without those, you get the full game/scene experience, just with only a plot from Return of the Jedi. Do you remember when everybody knew that Return of the Jedi was the worst Star Wars film? We were so young.

Get the app here.

A tonne of news from Adobe

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Honestly, I’m not your guy for this: there has been so much news from Adobe about the latest release of their Creative Cloud that I’m still catching up. I read one news story cooing about wild additions to Photoshop – an application I love – or bits I don’t really understand for Illustrator – an application I generally fear to pieces – and that’s not the half of it. Or the quarter.

Go take a quick peek at Adobe’s main site for Photoshop to just see a simple video about one feature. It’s the feature that lets you take a photograph and then later change your mind about the perspective. Just move that building around for me, would you?

The firm has a comprehensive if a bit dull press release here.

And the best summary intro I’ve caught so far is this from Macstories.

Eating the dog food

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So I’m after telling you to work more, that you can work more. That you can create more time to write. I may rarely have been so annoying in my life. But, just because this has been an unusual day, I want to show you that I do this too.

You’re reading the fifth posting today on The Blank Screen and all five were written on buses or while waiting for buses. I can do this in part because I am in Birmingham which has a good transport system. (Didn’t stop me getting lost and late, but.)

And I can do it because I have my iPhone with me.

One of today’s stories, Coffee With(out) Me was borne of my own experience and an idea I had for a particular friend who has that problem. Once I knew I wanted you to have this solution too, it was a matter of writing it up.

I could’ve written in the WordPress iPhone app and without exception every one of the stories ended up there for posting. But I just more enjoy writing in the app Drafts. So I did. Drafts is comfortable and somehow relaxing so I write in that, then maybe tap a button.

If I tap a button, it is to squirt the text to somewhere specific like OmniFocus. But I just as often copy and paste the lot over into WordPress.

Once it gets there, I may edit but I really just set the tags and search keywords for when I might want to find a story again. Otherwise, it’s just copy and paste into WordPress, then, wallop, published.

Once published, the stories here get automatically promoted in various places but if I really like a piece, I’ll go promote it with love too.

That writing step, that publishing and that promotion are the same for every piece. The rest of today’s went through exactly that going from me to you. But they also had steps and apps before then

I read a lot of news on RSS through the app Reeder 2. I search around a lot as I think of areas of interest and that’s all done through Safari. Any time I find or I think of something that might be useful, it goes into Evernote. I have a notebook (actually a shared entire account) that I can email in to. That applies as much to the odd stray thought that I email in via Drafts as it does to whole websites in Safari or forwarding actual emails I receive.

I use Safari again when getting a link to a previous story of mine. I use Apple’s iTunes Link Maker website to get me links for apps that work internationally. One irritation is that Apple only shows you the price of an app before you buy it. If I buy a pile to test before recommending one to you, I can’t see its price. So I use the website Appshopper.com which tracks these things.

And – full, whispered disclosure – I use Amazon Associates for links to books or DVDs. If you buy those or take a look and then buy something else, some pennies come my way. I reckon it’s better that I get them than Amazon does, but.

To get iTunes or Associates links like that, you have to log in to your account on those services and I do that repeatedly via 1Password.

So that’s, what? At today’s prices, I’m using:

Drafts: £2.49, $3.99
Evernote: free to try up to a generous limit
1Password (£12.99, $17.99 universal version)
WordPress for iOS: free
Reeder 2: (£2.99, $4.99)
Safari: free and preinstalled on iOS

As ever with these things, if you were to set out doing it today perhaps you wouldn’t rush to buy three apps and use them alongside three others. Put like that, it does sound like overkill.

But these things grow. And then when you are on buses all day, you’re glad they did. Except for finding all the links, that’s five-biscuit job.

I should also say that my iPhone battery would’ve died from all this I’d it weren’t that I have a gorgeous Mophie Juice Pack recharger plugged into it right now. I bought mine at the Apple Store in Grand Central station but I reckon you can get a cheaper deal here in the UK or there in the States.

Windows sees big 1Password update

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If you think that headline is contorted, it is. It was just about the best I could think of without making ‘1Password’ be the first word. I can’t begin a sentence with a number like that. Usually I will spell out the number or I will recast the whole sentence to avoid it.

There was no spelling out this time: 1Password is the name of the product I’m recommending.

Well, I’ve often – even regularly – recommended 1Password on iOS and Macs. I’ve recommended it on Android at least once. But I confess I haven’t paid any attention to the Windows version. That’s because I just assumed that if it weren’t identical to the Mac one then it was because it had some extra features I’d see on the Mac someday.

But it turns out that Mac came first. Because today, Agile Bits announced 1Password 4 for Windows.

Sorry, Windows users, I just thought you had all this already. But you do now:

After months of beta testing, a small lake’s worth of coffee, and a possibly illegal number of pizzas, 1Password 4 for Windows is here.

This is a huge release for us, as it brings many of our latest features to Windows and a cleaner, more intuitive interface. Windows users can enjoy Favorites, Multiple Vaults, Wi-Fi Sync, and Security Audit, as well as our new, free 1Password Watchtower service that warns you when a Login’s site has been compromised and helps you decide when it’s safe to update your passwords.

All together, this release includes 374 new features, improvements, and fixes spread over 85 betas. You can comb through the full beta release notes, learn more in our documentation, or check out our feature overview down below the gallery.

1Password 4 for Windows is here – David Chartier, Agile Bits blog (17 June 2014)

That gallery and more is in the original piece over on the 1Password makers’ blog.

What would you do if Microsoft paid you to blog?

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I mean, as a freelance writer rather than some Microsoft employee, what would you do if you got the reported/alleged #IEbloggers email?

Or put it this way, put it in a murkier and less immediately risible way: what would I do if Apple rang up offering me cash to keep going on about them?

It wouldn’t happen. You know Apple wouldn’t do that, not with me and not with anyone. If you like the company, you know they have more class than that. If you don’t like them, you know they think they have more class than that.

It also wouldn’t happen because I wouldn’t take the money. I know I wouldn’t take payment for promoting things here because I haven’t: I had a little spate of offers a few months ago and automatically rejected them all. So automatically that I can’t even tell you what they were supposed to be promoting. I think one was a bed. But I’m guessing, I didn’t read all the way through all of them.

But hypothetically, what would I do if Apple paid me money to endorse something – and I already wanted to endorse it? If I really like my iPhone, is there anything wrong in saying so for cash?

Yes.

The dilemma for me would not be over taking cash because I just wouldn’t. The dilemma would be over whether to stop saying I liked something. And I wouldn’t. If I think you’ll like something as much as I do, if I think it will be useful to you, I will and I do say so.

If Apple did this then I would feel that the firm was tarnished. I would wonder why they felt they needed to do it. I think I would even reevaluate what I thought of the product. Hopefully if I liked it before, I’d still like it but I can’t pretend I wouldn’t wonder.

So. This is what I would do. First, reject the money. Second, reevaluate the product. Third, report on how naff Apple has become.

But fourth, I would say if I really did like something.

Just wanted you to know. Listen, I‘ve got this great bed , did I mention that?

How to stop anyone believing you

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Microsoft is reportedly/allegedly paying bloggers to write favourable prices about Internet Explorer. As part of the deal, you also tweet with the hashtag #IEbloggers.

Go take a look: click or tap on that hashtag and you’ll go to a twitter search that returns a lot of tweets. Deliciously, by far the majority are from people mocking Microsoft (and innocently asking if they’ll still get paid).

But every now and again there is a real one. A genuine one. Well, a tweet that isn’t mocking and is promoting Internet Explorer.

Doubtlessly, some of them are true in the sense that the tweet writer really does like IE. But you can’t help it: now you know Microsoft is paying and now you see so many others ridiculing it, everyone who praises IE looks caught.

No one I’m following has done this or I’d be un-following. Wouldn’t you?

Sorry, the first 36.8% of candidates, you’re out

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It’s great that life can be expressed in hard and fast numbers, isn’t it? Whatever would we do if the world were a damn sight more difficult to fathom?

But recently we learnt that the best number of people to have in a meeting is seven. Specifically, that for contestant number 8 and each person thereafter, the group’s effectiveness is reduced by something like 10%. I am as wary of bandying numbers about as you are, so let me just point you at that story: Sorry, Snow White, You’re Out

Now there’s more. Specifically this: don’t hire anybody from the first 36.8% of candidates you interview. Seriously.

America’s National Public Radio (via Lifehacker) describes what’s reportedly known as either the Marriage Problem or the Secretary Problem. It’s a thing. It’s been a thing from sometime in the Stone Age where these two issues were considered to boil down to the same thing: how a man (always a man) should choose the perfect woman (always a girl) for him and nuts to whether she’s got her own sliderule equation about him.

NPR’s story is based on a tale told by author Alex Bellos in The Grapes of Math (UK edition, US edition) – his new and so-gorgeously-titled book that I’m going to buy it right after we’re done.

Alex writes: “Imagine that you are interviewing 20 people to be your secretary [or your spouse or your garage mechanic] with the rule that you must decide at the end of each interview whether or not to give that applicant the job.” If you offer the job to somebody, game’s up. You can’t go on and meet the others. “If you haven’t chosen anyone by the time you see the last candidate, you must offer the job to her,” Alex writes (not assuming that all secretaries are female — he’s just adapting the attitudes of the early ’60s).

So remember: At the end of each interview, you either make an offer or you move on.

If you don’t make an offer, no going back. Once you make an offer, the game stops.

According to Martin Gardner, who in 1960 described the formula (partly worked out earlier by others), the best way to proceed is to interview (or date) the first 36.8 percent of the candidates. Don’t hire (or marry) any of them, but as soon as you meet a candidate who’s better than the best of that first group — that’s the one you choose! Yes, the Very Best Candidate might show up in that first 36.8 percent — in which case you’ll be stuck with second best, but still, if you like favorable odds, this is the best way to go.

How To Marry The Right Girl: A Mathematical Solution – Robert Krulwich, NPR (15 May 2014)

It’s easy to mock the way men think there’s logic to dating, so let’s.

But the 36.8% figure has some solid reasoning and also an interesting mathematical history. So do read NPR’s article for more and then do buy Bellos’s book (UK edition, US edition).

Best news all day – an end to ads bumping you to the App Store

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Previously… we’ve had a recent spate of websites whose ads run some code that registers you’re on a mobile device like, specifically, an iPhone or iPad, and then jumps you to the App Store.

If you haven’t seen this, you’re not following me. You’re on your iOS device, you got a website in Safari and before you’ve begun to read whatever it is you wanted to read, wallop, you’re out of Safari and into the App Store. You are at the same point you would be if you’d found an app and opened its page to have a look. So you’re looking at an app that longs for you to buy it and it is usually a game and it invariably has no chance whatsoever of getting my cash, so help me god.

Back in April, I reported on what was then the only way to stop these. It was what you might call a brute-force solution. There isn’t a switch, isn’t an option, isn’t a UNIX Terminal command you can set, but you can always bitch about it all to whoever runs the website that has these ads.

I bitched.

One website owner explained to me that they loathe these too, that they were being slipped in without the site owner’s knowledge. That’s not just possible, it’s not even just probable, it has an extremely good chance of being true because of the way that ads are served to sites. Some of them are sold as network ads to companies which specialise in filling them. The site owner just knows this block will be filled by a client of that network ad company, they don’t know which until it’s live.

But then when it is live, you can see it and the site owner is bumped to these stupid games in the App Store just like the rest of us. So another site owner came to me to say they’d had it too and they had stopped it by banning those ads.

Sorry that this is a long Previously: you can tell it narked me.

Which is why I am delighted today. Because today we learn that Apple’s iOS 8 has a feature built-in to help us. I don’t know the fancy Cocoa or Objective-C feature name, but it’s effectively BollocksToThoseAdvertisers.exe because iOS 8 itself just stops them.

You can’t do much better than having the very operating system of the phone stick its fingers up at you.

Apple is expected to release iOS 8 this autumn and it will for certain be free, it will for certain run on any iPhone of the last many years and it will surely be taken up by the extremely vast majority of iPhone users immediately. (Because iOS 7, and 6, and 5… all were.) That means the number of people left who can be bumped out from a website to the App Store in this aggravating way won’t be zero, but it’ll be small enough that advertisers will give up on it.

I have nothing against advertising or advertisers, but I call this one a win.