A burst of 8 links for you to chew over, as picked by the Technology team
Violet Blue is none too pleased about Google+ and its policy of insisting on real names, now Vic Gundotra has left:
Google's response was that her outing was "user error" — Google blamed her, the user for not understanding the new, confusing integration.
After Sorenson's nightmare hit the press, more stories emerged from transpeople who had been outed at the hand of Google+, spanning all the way back to the beginning of 2011's Nymwars.
Google+'s appalling, absolute inhuman detachment was probably deemed a necessary price tag attached to the shiny prize of product saturation.
In case you're wondering, the "Hangout" feature was Sergey Brin's idea. Gundotra had told 2011's Web 2.0 audience, "He was intimately behind pushing us to make Hangout happen."
Google+ embodied the Internet's cardinal sin: It broke everything it touched.
The discussion on Hacker News is spirited too. The key problem - highlighted by Blue - is that Google+ is no good for handling people who want to have multiple personalities.
The technology in the Play fits in a cigarette-lighter-size package inside the handle, the bulk of which is dedicated to the battery. An array of electromechanical sensors detect the way the racket is moving, twisting, or turning. Another set analyzes the racket's vibrations. "Tennis is a combat sport, so you always want to know how you're doing compared to the guy in front of you," says Eric Babolat, the fifth generation of Babolats to head the company.
"The first thing I saw [when I introduced the racket] with the kids is that their concentration went up," says Adriana Serra Zanetti, 38, once a top-ranked tennis player who now works as a private coach. "Because they know that everything is being recorded." For adult players, the app offers a series of levels that can be unlocked through regular play, or lost if the racket is left to sit for too long. A dedicated social media network allows users to compare their stats—power, technique, and endurance are combined into a single number called the pulse—with people around the world, including some pros.
Can see how that might be attractive for golf players too.
Say Alice registers on Facebook and consents to the pillage my address book function. Somewhere in that address book are contact details for Bob. Let's say email and mobile number. The first step is to check if there's a registered account in the system matching those details. If there is then Bob gets suggested to Alice as a possible friend. But if Bob isn't registered or is registered but hasn't supplied those details, Ghost Bob gets created
The implications are quite weird - Facebook has entire ghost cities of people who haven't yet joined, yet about whom it knows all sorts of things.
In iOS 8, Apple has a new feature in Safari that allows users to scan a credit card with the device's camera rather than manually entering the number when making a purchase online.
When entering a credit card number into a form online to, for example, make a purchase, Safari already allowed users to quickly select credit cards stored in its Passwords & AutoFill settings. You can still do that, but in iOS 8 you'll now also have the option to select "Scan Credit Card" and snap a picture of the card. Apple then uses optical character recognition of sorts to input the number into the text field in Safari.
Clever.
David Cameron has ordered ministers to improve mobile phone coverage across the countryside after becoming frustrated about the lack of reception in the often core Conservative-voting territories.
Earlier this year, Downing Street asked then culture secretary Maria Miller to draw up plans to boost coverage of A and B roads in rural areas following complaints from senior ministers, say mobile executives.
"We were requested to meet Maria Miller after complaints from David Cameron and Owen Paterson that calls were dropping," said one. "Apparently this was an issue that grabbed the attention of the cabinet."
Perhaps there might be a chance of him noticing slow rural broadband speeds if he were to use the internet in Chipping Norton too.
Spoiler: article about how David Pogue does Facebook updates and tweets with clickbait headlines and what they mask - and thinks you should too.
In most of the consumer web, I've come to believe switching costs are significantly greater than I ever suspected. A few months ago, I switched my home storage from Dropbox to Google Drive. On the surface, the services are identical, perhaps differing a bit in price. I thought, no switching costs in this market. But transferring the files from Dropbox and uploading them to Google took an entire weekend of file uploads. It was grueling and my wife asked me why I spent all the time to switch for such a tiny gain. Next, I replaced Rdio with Spotify. Both services have for all intents and purposes identical content libraries, but the user interfaces differ which required learning something new and the playlists didn't port. I had to rebuild them from scratch. Again, time spent for a tiny gain.
Switching costs in commodity services like search are much lower... but people still generally don't.
Katherine Boehret used the Surface Pro 3 for two weeks:
with its top-heavy build and comparably flimsy keyboard, it's still not nearly as sturdy or comfortable to use for a long time as the MacBook Air.
The Surface Pro 3 comes with a pen that works as a fun, quick solution for taking notes. Even when the device is asleep, a click of the pen wakes it, and immediately opens its screen to a note-taking section for quick scribbles. Another click of the pen sends the note off to your Microsoft OneNote account. I did this often, and missed it when I switched back to using the iPad. I also used the pen to play Sudoku, writing directly in my onscreen puzzle, and watching as my handwriting was immediately converted to typed, onscreen digits.
But folding the keyboard over and using this thing as a tablet is not an enjoyable experience. Its honking 12in screen feels big and bulky, and with the keyboard, it weighs more than twice as much as the one-pound iPad Air. Take off its keyboard, and the Surface still weighs more, at 1.76 pounds.
The feeling that emerges is that the Surface Pro 3 is going to be a hit with people who adore Windows 8; not so with others.
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