Software : Download of the day: IrfanView |
- Download of the day: IrfanView
- Industry voice: The Facebook Conditioning Effect
- Industry voice: Combining Text Technologies: Text Mining & Voice to Text
- Should your company switch to Google Inbox?
- Apple may be working on virtual reality, but it's destroyed the evidence
- PayPal for Android gains Samsung fingerprint reader support in Google Play
| Download of the day: IrfanView Posted:  IrfanView is so simple to use but offers so much to users, you'll wonder why you ever used anything else to view images. Why you need itDon't be fooled by its basic appearance, IrfanView is one of the best image viewers on the planet. The super-lightweight program loads up instantly and makes image viewing an absolute cinch thanks to a huge range of features and powerful options. For starters, it can open and save almost 120 different image file extensions and around 15 audio/video formats. It's extremely easy to use and user new and old will feel well at home when using it. The simplest tasks are quick to access with well thought out hotkeys, while more advanced users will find its more sophisticated tools easy to find and simple to get to grips with. And if you want a little more from it, it has a number of powerful image manipulation features at its disposal. There's the paint tool, allowing you to draw lines, circles, arrows and more on your images, while it's also got batch conversion, scanning and text editing tools, plus a range of effects such as blur, sharpen, filters and more. If all that's not enough for you, you can also download IrfanView plugins to extend it even further. Key features
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| Industry voice: The Facebook Conditioning Effect Posted:  Here are a few astounding social photo statistics: There have been more than 250 billion photos uploaded to Facebook, with an average 350 million photo uploads every day. The average user has 217 photos uploaded to the site. And that's just Facebook; Zuckerberg's $1 billion acquisition, Instagram, has a ridiculous 55 million snapshots posted to its app per day (for those doing the math, that's more than 600 shots per second). So what do all these uploads say about us, besides the fact that we all love a good selfie? Recent survey results reveal that when given the choice, 74 percent of respondents would save their personal photos before the device (phone, laptop, or tablet) on which they're stored. In fact, of all the files kept on their devices, consumers overwhelmingly said that their personal photos are the most important. Photo albums are things of the past; new pictures head straight to the dust-free pages of social networks. But something much more profound and far-reaching is taking place: when we share photos on cloud-based social media, we're actually creating a second copy of that information – a shared copy often now owned by someone else – even if that's not the main intent. We're calling this the "Facebook Conditioning Effect" – the idea that social media is making the act of backing up more a part of our consciousness. The issue is that the image we see on social media is often a low quality copy of our pictures, even if we're unaware of this fact. And, the ironic part is that even though our selfies and food photos are stored in a second location, many of our much more important documents are left vulnerable. The good news is that the action of uploading and saving a copy of those digital files to an additional location is beginning to condition us to back up and protect more of our data overall. Why shouldn't we be thinking this way? With recent advances in cloud technologies and user experiences, backing up data is now as simple as pressing "upload." That's how it works with Instagram, right? But so much of our personal information – the really personal stuff – isn't backed up properly, safely and securely. Why isn't all of our data, not just a few of our personal photos stored safe and sound somewhere out in the digital universe? What's stopping this effect from making the jump from a social trend to a healthy all-encompassing data habit, where everything is backed up and protected? The easy answer would be that there is no Facebook for say, your taxes. Startups are making enormous strides in creating data storage systems that feature the easy-to-use and easy-to-access formatting of social media sites, yet the two largest combined have less than 20 percent of Facebook's user numbers. So if it's not an issue of simplicity, what's really keeping The Facebook Conditioning Effect from fully transforming our digital behaviors? The Problem: Privacy vs. ProtectionEven though we've become much more likely to save noncritical files in the cloud, many of us haven't backed up our entire digital lives due to a number of recent high-profile data breach cases which have highlighted our chief concern: our data isn't safe when it's not handled directly by us. Snapchat was hacked and suddenly millions of phone numbers were public. Target's much-ballyhooed breach put the personal information of 70 million individuals at risk. So while we continue to upload every adorable puppy pic we snap, we hide away what's really important - our work documents, banking information, health records, and other personal and professional information – into old-school file cabinets and documents marked "personal" on our desktops. The key is identifying and separating the issue of "data privacy" from the idea of "data protection." While data privacy focuses more on the legal and security issues regarding data use and storage, data protection is about safeguarding that information after it has been created and stored. All Web-enabled device users should be more aware and on-alert when it comes to data privacy such as carefully reading all privacy agreements on sites and apps, and only sharing information that wouldn't jeopardize anything if leaked, but not at the expense of data protection. When it comes to protecting data, the safest way is to store it in multiple, secure locations. Just as our photos now live both in our devices and on Facebook, keeping important personal information multiple places (i.e. a hard drive and the cloud, a backup drive, etc.) should come as second nature. To make it simple, just think of the 3-2-1 rule: keep three copies of valuable data on two different types of media, and one copy at a remote location. Remember though, while basic cloud storage tools are a good starting point, they're not foolproof when it comes to security, so finding the right balance of security and simplicity is a key part of the process. World Backup DayWorld Backup Day was on March 31, 2014, and it was a time for all of us to think about what we're really putting at risk by not backing up our data. Disasters natural and manmade – from water damage due to everything from massive floods to spilled drinks, and fried drives from everyday dangers including sun exposure and destructive malware, occur daily and can put all of our information at risk. If there's one useful thing the 351 minutes we each spend on average on Facebook per month can teach us, it's why not spend just one minute to protect our data by keeping extra copies and backing up, not just March 31st but every day.
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| Industry voice: Combining Text Technologies: Text Mining & Voice to Text Posted:  In 2001, the band Cake released a song entitled "Short Skirt, Long Jacket". It's one of my favorite songs of all time, and is still on rotation in my playlists. I first saw the music video in 2002, and was blown away: it's composed entirely of people listening to the song on headphones and giving the viewer their honest opinion. Check out the video. How cool is that? At the time, I remember thinking it was brilliant. They were getting honest reviews of the song, on the spot. Makes me wonder why more bands don't do stuff like that. Maybe they don't like the criticism? In any case, the music video stuck with me. And nearly 13 years later, when I saw how far voice-to-text technology had come, the first thing that came to mind was that video. What if, every time anyone gave you an opinion, it was recorded and transcribed with voice-to-text technology? Then the transcription was subsequently analyzed with text analytics software, and the results were sent back to you? That would be amazing. For any large company, that information is priceless. Every time someone calls a customer service line, or leaves a voicemail, or is interviewed about a product, that information could be analyzed almost instantly, with few resources. Rather than hire a team of analysts to listen and transcribe hours of people talk, and compile the information to find patterns, it could all be done by one person equipped with the right software, in a fraction of the time. The possibilities are endless, but all based on the same model: using text analytics software like Semantria, on top of voice-to-text software like Voci, they could determine how users feel about their latest product (positive or negative), find out what the most common problem they have is (billing? slow service? bad tech support), and chart the progress by running the same analytics on a daily, weekly, and monthly basis. Let's bring it back to the music. For Cake, at the end of a long day of vox pop style street interviews, they'd go home and run the audio they recorded through the voice-to-text text analytics combination. The software would show them instantly how many people liked their song, how many didn't like it, the most common phrases used to describe their song, and so much more.
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| Should your company switch to Google Inbox? Posted:  Introduction and key changesMaking a radical change in email at a large company is a recipe for disaster. Users tend to revolt if you push out a different productivity app, and the support nightmares start arriving in droves. Yet, with Google Inbox, there are quite a few reasons to consider encouraging users to make an upgrade. It's not a wholesale replacement, like switching from Outlook to Gmail. And it's technically a pure consumer play (since it's not part of Google for Work). Yet business users can take advantage of a few key features to pump up their work productivity. As long as you know there are some trade-offs (according to a few experts), it's worth investigating. Key changesThe key change here is that Google has offered Google Inbox as the first web app to use its new Material Design metaphor. It's really a major overhaul that takes the virtual concepts of flat colour layouts, whitespace, and a trim design structure and puts them into a browser (or a mobile app). The interface looks remarkably less cluttered, and the immediate effect for knowledge workers is that you can think a bit more clearly about what you are doing without so many options on the screen. It's arguably a cleaner interface than what you see on an iPad. Another critical change is that Inbox borrows many ideas from Google Now, the landing page and search platform you can use on many Android phones and tablets (and in the browser). Google Now "listens" to your email and knows when you are near an airport, standing by a bus terminal, or late for a meeting. In Google Inbox, similar features show reminders about flights and even things you've ordered on the web. This all integrates directly into the interface. A surprising enhancement has been made with search. When you type anything in the search box, you don't have to wait for a drop-down menu or hit Enter. The results appear "live" in your inbox as you type. This increases productivity tremendously over Gmail searches. It also means less of a reliance on Gmail labels (which still appear on the left in a drop-down menu) because you can trust that you can find your needles in the haystack just by typing a search. It improves workflow because you can search more interactively, spontaneously, and quickly. "Google seems to be taking Inbox toward what might be called dynamic messaging management – that is, trying to reframe email and related tasks as being truly productive instead of the burdens they often are," says Charles King, an IT analyst. "Some of the features appear based on practical lessons Google has learned from developing and managing Gmail. Others, like airline flight alerts, are likely to blend functionality from services like Google Now." Productivity issuesAn important question to ask before using Google Inbox (and you have to request an invite at http://www.google.com/inbox first before jumping ship from Gmail) is whether these changes will impact your productivity or if they might cause a slowdown. The app certainly does provide some improvements visually and from a technical standpoint, but any change in how you work could have a detrimental effect if the gains do not compensate for the shift. One example of this is that Google has moved the tabs for promotions, forum posts, social networking activity, and non-critical updates over to the left column above the tabs. They cannot be disabled or moved from that spot, so if you rely on labels, you will be scrolling down below these hard-coded buckets. You can decide to bundle them into groups and only view them once in a while, so they don't clutter your inbox, but you can't completely ignore them. Slow adoptionThe IT analyst Rob Enderle says adoption for Google Inbox has not exactly exploded, so business users might want to take a close look at the features and interface changes before committing to using it on a regular basis and on every laptop, desktop, and mobile device. "This is an optimised offering for professional users," he says. "Google is not good at marketing or even explaining their decisions so this move wasn't received particularly well. So I think the idea was good, and I expect the actual execution of the offering was well thought through, but because it wasn't presented well and, given Google doesn't focus well either, I expect adoption will be below potential. So a focus on professional users is an excellent idea but an inability to present changes and drive usage by Google will likely cripple this offering." Sherry Chao, a spokesperson for the company Iterable (which makes an email marketing app) says Google Inbox does lead the charge toward more intuitive email processing. She says the features are designed for power users to get more done. Yet, there are some drawbacks. It only works if you already have a Gmail account, and it only works in Chrome or on a mobile device, and seems to be geared more for speedy individual email work than for teams working on projects. "I think the bundles feature would need to be skewed more to business than personal," Chao says. "I do like how it is more like a task manager now, so if you're not using something like Asana, then Inbox can help manage your to-do list and to remember specific emails." Deserves a lookOverall, the experts agreed that Google Inbox deserves a serious look if companies have already allowed employees to use Gmail, possibly as a secondary work email. It's a visual improvement, offers plenty of power user options, and improves workflow. The most serious drawback is that it is not Gmail – users might balk at the redesigned interface, the fact that labels are somewhat hidden in a menu now, and that you have to relearn a few email tricks. If corporate employees get more work done, however, it'll be worth many of those early frustrations. |
| Apple may be working on virtual reality, but it's destroyed the evidence Posted:  Update: The job listings previously spotted on Apple's website - including the one described below and another, for a VR hardware engineer - have disappeared. It's unclear exactly why, but as Venturebeat speculates, Apple may have regretted tipping its own hand too early and removed the ads to mitigate any further damage. Then again, maybe they simply filled the positions. Either way, they're not likely to comment any time soon (read: ever), so for now we'll just have to keep on guessing. Original story follows… Virtual reality is currently the realm of Oculus Rift, Samsung and Sony - with a little Google thrown in - but Apple may soon join the fray as well. It certainly seems that way based on an Apple job listing for an app engineer with experience with "virtual reality systems." "This engineer will create high performance apps that integrate with Virtual Reality systems for prototyping and user testing," the ad reads. It also lists iOS and OS X app development and "VR/AR development" experience (i.e. virtual reality/augmented reality) as requirements. Read between the screensNaturally the listing doesn't go into detail beyond these requirements, but it's not hard to see where Apple might be going with it. Virtual reality is still on the cusp of really taking off, but with heavy hitters like Sony (with Project Morpheus), Facebook (which owns Oculus VR) and even Google (which punked everyone with a cardboard headset this year) in the mix there's little doubt that it will. There are even third-party accessories, like the Pinć, that do for the iPhone what Samsung's and Oculus's Gear VR does for the Galaxy Note 4, turning it into a VR display mounted to your face. Add Apple in officially and you just might be looking at the next big thing in tech. |
| PayPal for Android gains Samsung fingerprint reader support in Google Play Posted:  The Google Play version of PayPal's Android app has been updated with support for fingerprint recognition on a handful of Samsung gadgets. With the new version users on the Galaxy S5, Galaxy Note 4, Galaxy Alpha, and Galaxy Tab S can swipe their fingers for authentication when making PayPal purchases. This capability existed already in the version of Android's PayPal app distributed through Samsung's own app store, but not in the Google Play version. Samsung opened its fingerprint scanner up to third-party apps early in 2014, putting the ball in Apple's court, where it has since been completely ignored. But hopefully that changes if more big-name apps like PayPal continue to take advantage. |
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