Mobile Apps News #78
Another stay-at-home edition. Hope you are healthy and safe!
I hope you’ll enjoy this newsletter and spread the word to your friends and colleagues.
This issue includes news of:
an app for more easily tracking all your video meetings on Zoom and other services (Meeter)
updates from the recent Apple event (new iPads and Apple Watch)
the next session of my course, Keeping Up with Emerging Technologies — begins Oct. 13. Sign up at Infopeople.
tips, accessibility, voice-computing, thought-provoking articles, interesting stats, pandemic news, #blacklivesmatter news, and more.
️ ❤️ Enjoy! (And if you like this issue, please “heart” it - thanks!)
Featured Apps
Photo by Daniel Romero on Unsplash
Decibel: dB Sound Level Meter Lets You Measure Noise like a Pro, Test and protect Your Hearing, and Much More
Compare the noise level in different places, test your hearing, and more.
Inside Fitbit’s Plan to Detect Covid Symptoms With a New Wearable
The Fitbit Sense watch is $329 and provides several kinds of useful health measurements.
Juggle Video Meetings More Easily with Meeter and Fantastical
”One of these tools, a currently free Mac utility called Meeter, resides in the menu bar and collects upcoming meetings from several dozen videoconferencing services into a handy drop-down menu.”
The First U.S. Contact-Tracing App to Use the Apple-Google System Is Finally Here
”Four months ago, Apple and Google announced a privacy-protecting system to use Bluetooth for contact-tracing apps. Yet only this week did the first state—Virginia—release an exposure notification app using that Apple-Google framework.”
To learn more about Apple-Google’s system for this, see a video I made for my Online Privacy course: “Contact Tracing Apps.”
App Updates
Search for Sound: A New Feature on Internet Archive
Search through radio transcripts.
Google shows off .new domain shortcuts for web services
Examples: docs.new will open a new Google Docs document in your browser. Playlist.new lets you create a playlist on Spotify. See a list of them at https://whats.new/.
Google Images Launches ‘Licensable’ Badge and Search Filter
New icon over images lets you see credit/copyright/creator info and get a link to the license details.
LinkedIn Sells SlideShare to Scribd
It will still be free and you can still access your slides at SlideShare.net.
Updates From the September Apple Event
New iPads and iPadOS 14
Apple announces new iPad Air with edge-to-edge display and Touch ID in the power button
Apple announces updated eighth-generation 10.2-inch entry-level iPad for $329
iPadOS 14 Offers a Number of Tablet-Specific Improvements, Handwriting Recognition for Apple Pencil
Online services
Apple announces Fitness Plus virtual workouts
”There are 10 different workout types available, including cycling, treadmill, yoga, core, strength, rowing, and HIIT routines, and there’s a program built in for absolute beginners.”Apple announces Apple One subscription bundle for Music, TV Plus, and more
You can combine Apple’s streaming services with three types of bundles: individual, family, and premier. Take a look if you already subscribe to any of these services individually (Apple Music, Apple Arcade, Apple TV Plus, iCloud storage, Apple News Plus, Apple Fitness Plus). It could save you money.
Apple Watch
Apple announces Apple Watch SE, an affordable successor to the Series 3
New Apple Watch Series 6 has blood oxygen sensor & bright new colors
Family Setup will let you manage multiple Apple Watches from a single iPhone
My Offerings
Keeping Up with Emerging Technologies Course: Identify, Evaluate, and Recommend the Best New Technologies for Library Services
The next session of my course begins on October 13. Join us! Sign up at Infopeople.
This course was fantastic. Very relevant, informative, and engaging. I found it worth the time, and plan to implement much of what I learned in my own workplace, even though I’m not technically an Emerging Technology Librarian. Many concepts covered can easily be applied universally.
Marie Harris, Charlotte Mecklenburg Library
My tutorials on accessibility are available for purchase by your library, see Making Library Services and Websites Accessible .
Just for Fun
Carrot Weather is a paid weather app that’s worth it
”When you boot it up, a quirky robotic voice chimes in with an insult or joke.”
Voicemod arrives on iPhone to change your voice to Darth Vader, T-Pain, and more
Free and fun!
How to Create and Use Memoji and Animoji on an iPhone
Send fun stickers to friends or disguise yourself during a FaceTime call.
Tips
Boook.link Lets Authors Create “Universal” Book Links (Including to Libraries and GoodReads)
Stitch Screenshots the Easy Way: Tap to learn how to save long web pages and chat threads.
Accessibility
Schools Say They Have To Do Better For Students With Disabilities This Fall
Special education teachers and their efforts work with students remotely.
“Are You Blind?” Navigating A Socially Distanced World With A Visual Impairment
A story of how difficult it is right now for someone with visual impairments. Not all disabilities are visible, so react with kindness first if someone is standing too close.
Voice Computing
How iOS and macOS Dictation Can Learn from Voice Control’s Dictation
What works well, what doesn’t, and suggestions to Apple for improvements.
Next in Line: How Voice Tech is Poised to Transform Retail as We Know It
”Voice-navigated smart displays can direct customers to specific products and brands. 40% of consumers said they would be comfortable with using conversational AI in grocery stores. Of the consumers who said they would prefer using a voice AI assistant over a human assistant, 73% attributed their preference to COVID.”
Interesting Stats
The Nielsen Total Audience Report: August 2020
“Working remotely gives me more freedom and flexibility to live a lifestyle that best suits my need (73%).” And more stats about working from home.
Voters’ Attitudes About Race and Gender Are Even More Divided Than in 2016
Sad and not surprising.
Thought-Provoking
Research Reveals Inherent AI Gender Bias
AI was mistaking photos of people wearing masks with people wearing duct tape over their mouths. But only for women, not men. Can you guess why? (It’s sad).
How QAnon works like a video game to hook people
After reading this I can see why it’s so compelling to be into QAnon. Addictive game mechanics.
How the Democrats Humanized Zoom
The power of storytelling.
The office, as you know it, is dead
“The pandemic is proving employees don't need to work in cubicles to be successful.”
Design engaging in-person and remote meetings
Good advice from Stanford for designing online meetings that work well.
Belarus Turned Off the Internet. Its Citizens Hot-Wired It.
Interesting. Using VPNs, IP addresses instead of domains, and more.
40 Ways to Fight Fascists: Street-Legal Tactics for Community Activists
Many different ideas. Most can be done from home.
A robot wrote this entire article. Does that scare you, human?
Read the bottom of the page for how it was made: “This article was written by GPT-3, OpenAI’s language generator.” Interesting.
Online Learning
College Is Everywhere Now
Interesting story of groups of students at schools where the semester is online, renting houses together in interesting locations (MIT students in Hawaii, Columbia students in Portland, Harvard students in Montana).
80 Tips for Remote Learning From Seasoned Educators
28 educators give advice and creative ideas for teaching well online.
Forget college and debt, Google wants to get you skilled in six months
”Google Career Certificates will train people for in-demand jobs without taking years to complete or saddling them with mountains of debt.”
10 Predictions for Higher Education’s Future
No federal bailouts, many closures, consolidation, corporate partnerships, and other depressing predictions.
Pandemic
Quick and affordable saliva-based COVID-19 test developed by Yale scientists receives FDA Emergency Use Authorization
”SalivaDirect is simpler, less expensive, and less invasive than the traditional method for such testing, known as nasopharyngeal (NP) swabbing. Results so far have found that SalivaDirect is highly sensitive and yields similar outcomes as NP swabbing.”
The Plan That Could Give Us Our Lives Back
Smart ideas for “front-end pooling” of COVID-19 tests, using saliva testing.
Better testing can fight more than the pandemic
”The burst of innovation around disease diagnostics — as well as the growth of at-home health tracking devices — could lay the groundwork for a range of tests that rapidly detect infections of all kind.”
Your ‘Surge Capacity’ Is Depleted — It’s Why You Feel Awful
Best mental health article I’ve seen recently. Experiment with “both-and” thinking, and other useful tips.
The race to save the first draft of coronavirus history from internet oblivion
Good work from the Internet Archive and Library of Congress to preserve history.
Pandemic spurs a freelance boom
”More than a third of American workers — or 59 million people — took on some freelance work this year as the pandemic spurred rapid changes in the job market, according to a new report commissioned by Upwork.”
Black Lives Matter
Support for Black Lives Matter has decreased since June but remains strong among Black Americans
“The recent decline in support for the Black Lives Matter movement is particularly notable among White and Hispanic adults. In June, a majority of White adults (60%) said they supported the movement at least somewhat; now, fewer than half (45%) express at least some support.” Sad, and I’m not surprised.
Protests this summer were mostly peaceful and new data proves it
”Researchers at the US Crisis Monitoranalyzed over 10,600 nationwide protests between May 24 (the day before George Floyd was killed by police) and Aug. 22, and found that nearly 95 percent were peaceful.”
Black Lives Matter Resources
A Libguide made by some of my colleagues at Univ. of Arizona Libraries. Free to copy and reuse. Here’s one based on that, made by librarians at Wellesley College: Black Lives Matter: Race, Policing, and Protest.
RT @latimes: Good Humor is “calling on ALL drivers to STOP playing ‘Turkey in the Straw’ immediately” because of its association with minstrel shows in the 1800s. But Good Humor has good news! They have an idea for a new song.
Listen to the new ice cream jingle in this story.
The Future
University of Arizona gets $26M grant to host center aimed at developing ‘internet of the future’
Working to develop the underpinnings of the “quantum internet,” expected by many experts to revolutionize how humans communicate.