apps
NBC stupidly shutting down Breaking News app, service
NBC stupidly shutting down Breaking News app, service
The decision, as it often does in the media business, came down to revenue. "Unfortunately, despite its consumer appeal, Breaking News has not been able to generate enough revenue to sustain itself," Ascheim said in the letter supplied by NBC News. "We have therefore made the hard decision to close its operations so that we can re-invest that funding into NBC News’ core digital products to help us achieve our ambitious goals for those businesses."
This is short-sighted. Web-based news isn’t generating revenue? No shit. Breaking News has been a standard-bearer of confirm-before-publishing and still manages to be ahead of every other news outlet’s attempt at a breaking news product.
I’d spend $2.99/month on this thing to keep it alive. Let’s say 1/4 of its Twitter followers would do the same. That’s $84.6 million in revenue right there.
Would that be sustainable?
Thoughts on ad blockers
Microsoft has acquired Wunderlist
Microsoft has acquired Wunderlist
Amir Mizroch of The Wall Street Journal reports that Microsoft bought Wunderlist’s parent company 6Wunderkinder for between $100 and $200 million. Microsoft is on a roll, having recently acquired Sunrise calendar and purchased email app Acompli and rebranded it as Outlook for mobile. All three apps are well-regarded, particularly Outlook which was lauded by Vlad Savov at The Verge for its email, contacts, calendar and documents integration. [^1]
Wunderlist is my task manager of choice, so I’ll be keeping an eye on this story. If you haven’t tried it yet I highly recommend having a look.
[1]: Lawyers, however, should think twice before using Outlook for work because it runs everything through Microsoft’s servers to provide its more powerful features. Read more about the concerns at WindowsITPro.
Moves, contradicting previous statement, may share user data with Facebook under new privacy policy
When Facebook acquired fitness tracking app Moves, the two said user data would not be commingled. But Moves’ new privacy policy reverses course.
First, when fitness tracking app Moves was acquired by Facebook in April, it said:
For those of you that use the Moves app – the Moves experience will continue to operate as a standalone app, and there are no plans to change that or commingle data with Facebook.
CNET reported almost identical language from Facebook:
A spokesperson for Facebook confirmed the plans to keep the Moves app standalone and not commingle its data
Today, in an updated privacy policy, Moves said:
We may share information, including personally identifying information, with our Affiliates (companies that are part of our corporate groups of companies, including but not limited to Facebook) to help provide, understand, and improve our Services.
I suppose the updated policy doesn’t technically contradict the statements by Moves and Facebook because it’s feasible there were no plans at that time to commingle data with Facebook. But my initial reaction was incredulity.
After all, the Wall Street Journal reported Moves had been downloaded 4 million times. Surely Mark Zuckerberg acquired Moves primarily for its ever-growing trove of user activity data. Why else?
But none of the coverage questioned the initial statements, and I figured the companies wouldn’t say it so plainly if it wasn’t true. So I decided to wait and see.
Well, I’ve waited and seen. The lesson here is that it is wiser to pay attention only to what a company does, not what it says. If it looks like a data grab and smells like a data grab, it’s probably a data grab. Even if, especially if, someone tells you it isn’t a data grab.
Facebook deals in data, whether its hundreds of millions of users know it or care about it or not. And Moves would be stupid not to take the money and, more importantly, the resources Facebook can bring to bear on improving the app. So a data grab isn’t a surprise. Perhaps the “no commingling” language was an elegant public relations play meant to minimize privacy concerns in the press. That would seem to have worked: as of this article’s publication I couldn’t find a single story on the change.
Zuckerberg’s recently stated intent to grow via the acquisition and development of discreet apps and services raises another interesting issue. To quit Facebook, it may not be enough anymore to, well, quit Facebook. If I closed my Facebook account today, the company could still gather data about me for as long as I use Moves. Facebook has a growing list of acquisitions under its belt, so that concern is likely to increase with time.
This example of corporate self-contradiction is a good reminder: Always assume your data is a valuable and transferable commodity in the eyes and on the servers of the apps and services you use. Some people are deterred by that fact, while others are not. There is no right or wrong answer, just a continuum of personal comfort and preference.
While I wish the companies had been more forthright from the beginning, I won’t stop using Moves. I have personally always been relatively open in sharing data in exchange for convenience and utility. But that doesn’t mean I’m not alarmed by the increasing difficulty of using the internet and related apps and services for those who disagree with my position on openness.
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p>Share your perspective via email at joe@joeross.me, on Twitter or in the comments.
Listen: CMD + Space
I want to tell you about one great podcast every week. This shouldn’t be a problem for at least a and a half or so because I am currently subscribed to about 80 podcasts. The first Podcast of the Week is CMD + Space.
An interview show by Myke Hurley, CMD + Space typically features a wide-ranging conversation between he and a guest from the Apple world. App makers, pundits and others talk about how they approach app development on Mac and iOS.
Find out more about the show at its homepage on the 5by5 podcast network. If you need a podcast player, I highly recommend the one made by the guest on this week’s episode, Russell Ivanovic. His app Pocket Casts is available on Android and iOS and can sync subscriptions and played position across multiple devices.
Popcorn Time streams movie torrents, but maybe it’s more than that
The image above is the first screen you see when you open Popcorn Time. The app, available on Mac, Windows and Linux, streams movies from the peer-to-peer file sharing protocol BitTorrent. The technology is similar to what old school music swapping service Napster used from about 1999 to 2001, before being shut down.1
It’s getting a lot of attention this week, much of which focuses on its copyright infringement implications. And for good reason, because according to the FAQ, while you’re watching a movie, the app is using your computer and internet connection to seed the same movie to other viewers. That means you’re sharing what you’re watching, and if what you’re watching is copyrighted or otherwise protected by your country’s intellectual property laws, you may be committing a civil violation or a crime.
Yeah, it’s like that.
I messaged the Buenos Aires-based developers of Popcorn Time on Facebook asking whether they would consider adding a Creative Commons / Public Domain channel to the app. It couldn’t hurt to include some non-infringing content, and it may be a cool new way for indie filmmakers to distribute their work.
But while copyright infringement is the easy story (and the one I would usually focus on here), there’s a more interesting angle to Popcorn Time.
It has the potential to introduce “normals” to the concept of peer-to-peer file sharing. This is similar to what BitCoin has done to the idea of digital currency. While it is the first cryptocurrency, using cryptography to secure transactions, it was not the first digital currency. Several video games allow players to trade items for virtual money and have done so for a long time.
But BitCoin brought the concept to the forefront of an international conversation. I’m not sure Popcorn Time is going to be that big or game-changing (it’s still in beta; only the third movie I tried to play, American Hustle, actually began to play. I turned it off right away, because it’s good policy for would-be attorneys not to, you know, break laws).
I do think there is real value to a proof of concept when it gets a technology usually limited to geeks into the hands of a larger audience.
And the infringement potential doesn’t have to be a deal-breaker. A quick Google search for legitimate uses of BitTorrent turns up about 146,000 results.
Some totally legal uses of BitTorrent include game updates and downloads, distributing your own music, and (take note, Popcorn Time developers) public domain movie trading.
So the question is whether the extra attention Popcorn Time is getting can be turned toward the lawful uses of peer-to-peer protocols. If so, it could be the boost the system needs to become a permanent fixture in the national conversation. In other words, the interest in Popcorn Time could be peer-to-peer’s BitCoin moment.
Teehan+Lax on redesigning Prismatic
Teehan+Lax on redesigning Prismatic
It’s a great post by great designers about the work and value that goes into and comes out of great design. It also happens to explain very clearly the concept behind my own website here at Constant & Endless.
Geoff Teehan of Teehan+Lax writes:
In the end, a successful project is never done. It is never perfect. If you aren’t learning from it, then you’ve given up. It’s a constant process of assessing the landscape, making hard choices and accepting trade-offs.
Like Saleem Sinai says in Salman Rushdie’s novel Midnight’s Children, “the process of revision should be constant and endless.”
Prismatic is a content discovery engine powered by your own wide array of interests, aiming to avoid being limited by your filter bubble of common sharing tendencies. Check it out on iOS or the web.
Reuters nixes Next: Failed redesigns and the challenge of expanding a digital audience
Reuters nixes Next: Failed redesigns and the challenge of expanding a digital audience
That’s a shame. This image alone illustrates the design strides made by the Next team (the cancelled redesign is on the right).
The Reuters iOS app is better than that of Associated Press, for what it’s worth.
Facebook Testing VIP App With Some Celebs
Facebook Testing VIP App With Some Celebs
In case you thought I was becoming a Facebook fanboy, let me just say that this celeb crap is something Zuck will be adding to his list of regrets within the year.
Granted, that’s probably a very short list, but this VIP thing is a distraction an a gimmick and it’s going nowhere.
And yes, I’m prepared to try some claim chowder if I’m wrong. I’m just pretty confident I’m not.
Fast Company's Austin Carr profiles Foursquare founder Dennis Crowley
Fast Company’s Austin Carr profiles Foursquare founder Dennis Crowley
This profile of Foursquare founder Dennis Crowley by Austin Carr at Fast Company does a great job of humanizing the app and its maker.
That’s probably because the man behind the location-sharing and, more recently, stuff-to-do discovery app, has put so much of himself into Foursquare. There are many profiles written about business and tech personalities, but few intrigued as much as this one does.
I think it’s because Carr really communicates how Crowley is finding himself at a cross-roads not only with Foursquare as a company, but with his life’s direction and essence.
Evernote's desktop apps get integrated reminders and a task list, no love for mobile yet
Evernote’s desktop apps get integrated reminders and a task list, no love for mobile yet
Evernote’s reminders are great news, and something I’ve been waiting for since at least February, but here’s all that matters to me:
We have big plans to expand the functionality, and to bring it to more platforms in the very (very) near future.
I can’t wait to get this on mobile. I’ve long hoped that some day Evernote would become the one-app-to-rule-them-all for me. I already use it as a data archive, storage for manuals, occasional journal, research tool, and songwriting management tool. True, cross-platform task management would supercharge the service for me, and may even end my Any.do versus Wunderlist problem.
In related news, Wunderlist has added hashtag support in its web incarnation, and so far I’m actually finding it’s very useful.
Not a Bad Quarter
Marco Arment, he of Instapaper, and of excellent commentary:
If you sell a 99-cent app to just 1% of the people who bought new iOS devices in the 2012 holiday quarter alone, you’ll clear about $519,750. Not a bad quarter.
Not bad indeed.
How to add tasks to Any.do or Wunderlist via SMS
This post is exactly what it says on the tin: I’ll share two recipes from if this then that (IFTTT), the service that connects otherwise unconnected pieces of the internet together in epic productivity bliss.
Did I oversell that? IFTTT is truly amazing. One of its most useful functionalities is the ability to send an SMS to the service that triggers IFTTT to do something else. So, you can create a “recipe” that will forward all text messages in which you include a “#t” to another internet service, like an email address. Email addresses are particularly handy because many other services use them, everything from Evernote to Tumblr assigns users an email address so you can send stuff into your account right from your email provider of choice.
That way, an IFTTT recipe can receive a text message and, as long as “#t” appears somewhere in the message (without the quotes), it will send an email to anyone I ask. Some services that let you add content via email assign unique email addresses that can receive email from anyone. They’re secure from spam because the email address is nonsense. Evernote does this.
Others, however, use a universal email address and whitelist each user’s own email as the only one allowed to send stuff to that account. Task management services Any.do and Wunderlist both use this method, allowing registered users to send email to do@any.do and me@wunderlist.com, respectively. If the address you use to send the message is registered, the message subject is added to your account as a task, and the body is included as a note.
Any.do is dedicated to creating the best task management experience on a mobile device, and they’re doing a great job. Wunderlist, while they have great mobile apps, is more focused on combining them with solid native desktop apps on all platforms. While I watch them add and refine features, I’m using them both.
I know, I need to get a life.
Anyway, this IFTTT recipe adds a task to Any.do via SMS. And this IFTTT recipe adds a task to Wunderlist via SMS. You should be able to edit the tag if you want, but I find “#t” is conveniently short, and the recipe will remove it from the final task anyway.
I have a couple more IFTTT recipes to share, so if you’re interested in this stuff, stay tuned.
Google Keep isn't an Evernote killer
Evernote will be just fine, despite Google’s recent announcement of a new note-taking app called Google Keep, currently available for the web and Android. Keep allows for text, audio, and images to be added to a single notebook and synced between the web and Android devices. You can even add stuff via Google Now. It’s neat, but it’s no Evernote killer.
The two products cater to very different use cases, and Keep will not be able to replace Evernote for its core customers. Evernote had 1.5 million premium subscribers in November 2012. At 45$/year, that’s around $67 million annually, and the number of subscribers has been rising for years.
It doesn’t make them profitable, at least at the moment, but it helps. Coupled with Business accounts and other endeavors, Evernote isn’t worried. For those premium users, who pay because they make the most of Evernote’s vast feature set, Keep won’t be good enough. And I suspect that even if every user of Evernote’s free tier left the product, Evernote would hardly notice from an operational standpoint (if anything, operational costs would decrease).
Instead, makers of task management apps should be concerned. Google Tasks is as neglected as Google Reader was, and we all know what happened to Reader. Keep looks like an elegant upgrade to Google Tasks, and while Evernote has hinted at its own task management solution, I don’t think the future of their business will depend on it.
It’s worth remembering: there just aren’t as many zero-sum games in the apps and services spaces as many, especially in the tech press, would have us believe. Design, feature set nuance, and adaptability to users’ current workflow all allow for multiple apps to be successful in the same space. The Keep/Evernote dichotomy is no different.
This article was adapted from a comment I left on The Next Web’s post about Keep.
Transitioning from Google Reader to feedly
Transitioning from Google Reader to feedly
From the Feedly blog:
We have been working on a project called Normandy which is a feedly clone of the Google Reader API – running on Google App Engine. When Google Reader shuts down, feedly will seamlessly transition to the Normandy back end. So if you are a Google Reader user and using feedly, you are covered: the transition will be seamless.
Feedly is my top contender for a Reader replacement right now: multi-platform, ready to clone my Reader feeds, and prepared to essentially take over much of Reader’s core subscribe-and-sync functionality when Google pulls the plug.
Also, I can’t help but assume that they’re calling it Normandy because there are tens of thousands of Google Reader users suddenly storming their shores.
Whitson Gordon finally figured out Evernote
Whitson Gordon finally figured out Evernote
I’m not being snarky: he writes at Lifehacker about how he never “got” Evernote, until recently. It’s a great article and I can say I’ve made at least some use of every technique Gordon discusses. The most important? Use Evernote all the time, for everything, and it will become a powerful part of your workflow.