This is one of my rants, so if you’re not into snarky griping with your facts, this might not be for you. Okay, let’s do this.
I’m sick of the trend to remove the headphone jack from phones (and surely other devices). There’s nothing wrong, and plenty right, with the 3.5mm headphone jack, and replacing it with Bluetooth is totally self-serving for vendors with no benefit to consumers. I’m not going to say anything here that hasn’t been said countless times before, but I want to add my voice to the choir of the perturbed and get this off my chest.
This week we learned that 5.6 million people’s fingerprints were part of the stolen data from OPM earlier this year. Samsung and HTC have come under fire for their (atrocious) implementation of fingerprint authentication that left fingerprint data unprotected on users’ devices. Apple’s Touch ID is arguably the most secure (and widely used) consumer fingerprint authentication system, but even it has flaws that have been exploited.
There’s no such thing as bugless or unhackable software.
Apple’s Fingerprint ID May Mean You Can’t ‘Take the Fifth’
A shield law for journalists might seem like a good idea, but it isn’t – it’s actually a terrible idea
The Secret War
Why Generation Y Yuppies Are Unhappy
What Medium Is
A couple of weeks ago YouTube released their new mobile site, which added some really cool features. The most notable: watch videos directly from the mobile site in a device-native format, without the need for a dedicated app. Aside from this being really cool from a technical standpoint - as an indicator of the true potential for shifting from platform-specific apps to web apps that can run on any device - it’s important from a philosophical & content-centric standpoint.
Google has just announced that starting today, Google Voice will be open to the general public & will no longer require an invite. For those unfamiliar, Google Voice is a service from Google that gives you a phone number which you in turn can have forward to any combination of phones, use as a voicemail service that automatically transcribes them, and much more.
I’ve been using Google Voice since I got my invite in June of last year & absolutely love it.
I just discovered Qik, and it makes me want a phone with a data plan even more. Ever since I got a camera phone that could record video, I’ve wanted to find a way to have live video streams, or ultimately have video calling. Well, Qik has finally answered the call for live video streaming.
Qik is a new service that allows you to stream live video from your phone to viewers around the world via the Internet.
