Mobile Apps News from Nicole Hennig
Mobile Apps News
August 2, 2018
Hi everyone,
Welcome to the 61st issue of Mobile Apps News! I hope you'll enjoy this newsletter and spread the word to your friends and colleagues. Please get in touch if you have any suggestions for topics you'd like to hear about.
This issue includes news of:
some interesting AR and VR apps
the coming "live listen" feature of AirPods (good for hard of hearing and anyone in noisy situations)
my self-study privacy course: Online Privacy and Security (see HALF-PRICE COUPON below)
several tips, including how to stop Facebook from accessing contacts on your phone
accessibility, voice-computing, thought-provoking articles, interesting stats, and articles about the future
Enjoy!
App News
Featured apps
The best app for managing, editing, and reading PDFs on your iPad: PDF Expert 6
If you want a very robust app for doing everything with PDFs, this is your app. It’s $10, so not for everyone, but if you work with PDFs constantly, this one is worth it. Read, edit, annotate, merge, organize, file, and more.
The best third-party camera app for iPhone: Halide ($5.99, iPhone)
If you want more manual controls and the ability to capture photos in RAW format, this app is for you.
Google PhotoScan Is a Handy Pocket Photo Scanner (free, iOS and Android)
There are a lot of good scanner apps, but most are tailored towards scanning documents. This one is for photos. It’s an easy way to digitize them and remove glare.
AR/VR
Visit The Great Northern Forest With New AR Experience From Greenpeace
Get the Arylin app for iOS or Android to view this AR experience. Greenpeace aims to raise awareness of the destruction of the Great Northern Forest with this augmented reality experience. (The forest covers Canada, Scandinavia, and Russia and every year vast areas are being lost due to logging).
View the pyramids of Ancient Egypt in this 360 degree VR capture
“The tomb of Nefertari, an Egyptian queen who died in 1255 BC, is the biggest in the Valley of the Queens and has been called the Sistine Chapel of Ancient Egypt. Now there's a novel 360 degree VR capture of the tomb, which has been closed to visitors since undergoing a major restoration in 1992.” You’ll need HTC Vive headset to view it, but if you don’t have one you can watch 360 degree videos in your desktop web browser, Android devices, and in iOS devices in the YouTube app. See https://curiositystream.com/VR/#how-to.
Sansar and Intel remake the Smithsonian’s art of Burning Man exhibit in VR
Watch the video here to get a sense of what virtual reality can do to bring works of art to more people. “The VR exhibit is part of the Smithsonian’s mission to reach a billion people with its art, and virtual reality is one of the ways that the museum will accomplish that mission.”
App lists
Escape reality with the best augmented reality apps for Android and iOS
Quite a long list, with not just games, but apps that use AR for stargazing, tracking the sun, interior design, crime-spotting, drawing and sketching, language learning, choosing a tattoo, and more.
Four Qualities of The Most Useful Apps For The Classroom
“Cost-effective, cross-platform, cloud-based and collaborative.” Read this to learn about the best apps for project-based learning in classrooms.
App updates
Apple is Rebuilding Maps from the Ground Up
Read this to learn how Apple is gradually improving Maps. The second half of the article has many interesting details about how they are doing it while protecting user privacy.
Google Assistant Adds Visual Snapshot to Provide a Simple Overview of Your Day
Open the Assistant app for a visual overview of your day with an emphasis on projected travel times, calendar, and reminders.
All The Ways iOS 12 Will Make Your iPhone More Secure
Less ad-tracking, smarter two-factor authentication, better password management, and more.
Just for Fun
Google Doodle Honors Science Fiction Author Octavia E. Butler
Robotics Engineer Barbie builds robots, teaches kids to code
My Offerings
$2.99 ebook
Best Podcasts: Technology and Society
This is an annotated guide to 29 podcasts on the ethical and social issues related to new technologies, and future predictions for technology. Recommended apps for listening are included, along with the benefits of podcasts. It's part of my ebook set: Best Podcasts for Diverse Audiences.
(available from any store where you buy ebooks: Amazon, Apple, Kobo, Smashwords, and more)
Online Privacy and Security
Self-Study Online Course, Udemy.com
If you feel like it’s finally time to bring yourself up to date on security & privacy best practices, this course is for you!
Get this course for HALF-PRICE with this discount link:
https://www.udemy.com/privacy-security-action-plan/?couponCode=HALF-PRICE
$44.99 (marked down from $89.99)
I'm extending this sale for one more month. Expires end of August.
"This is the best ecourse I have ever taken. The content was current, the assignments were relevant, the instructor was accessible." — Linda Azen Martin, Santiago Canyon College, Seal Beach, CA
Two Forthcoming Books on Technology Topics for Librarians
Coming later this year — two “Librarian’s Quick Guides” to be published by Libraries Unlimited.
I’ve finished the manuscript for the first one, and I’m almost done with the first draft of the second one. I’ll announce them in this newsletter when they are ready for purchase.
Spread the word by sharing this post:
Two Forthcoming Books on Technology Topics for Librarians
Tips
20 Hidden Instagram Hacks and Features Everyone Should Know About
Alexa, turn up the bass! Amazon rolls out equalizer controls for Echo devices
Apple’s USB Restricted Mode: how to use your iPhone’s latest security feature
Accessibility
Personalized “deep learning” equips robots for autism therapy
Learn how human therapists are using robots to help with autism therapy in this story from MIT Media Lab.
AirPods could revolutionize what it means to be hard of hearing
When iOS 12 comes out, AirPods users will be able to use a “live listen” feature that helps you hear conversations in noisy settings. Beta testers with hearing loss are excited about how well this works. This could be a lower cost option for people who don’t want to use hearing aids or can’t afford them.
OrCam’s MyEye for the visually impaired: ‘It’s opened up a whole new world’
The Orcam My Eye is a tiny camera and microphone that attaches to eyeglasses and speaks information to you. It’s designed for the blind and visually impaired. It reads text, recognizes faces, identifies products, and more. Watch the video to see how it works: https://www.orcam.com/en/myeye2/.
This Amazon Echo mod lets Alexa understand sign language
Someone made a proof-of-concept tool that lets Amazon’s Alexa assistant understand some simple sign language commands. Hopefully, something like this will be built-in someday. (Watch the video).
Amazon’s Echo Show lets users tap the screen to access Alexa
Here’s another step towards making Alexa more accessible for those who are hearing or speech impaired.
Voice Computing
Smart speakers and voice assistants for librarians
Ideas from librarian Aaron Tay for potential uses of Google Assistant and Alexa for library and academic services.
Google Home Arrives in Mexico
It includes native Spanish-language localization for Google Assistant.
The Story Behind Boston Children’s Hospital KidsMD Alexa Skill
“The goal of KidsMD is to provide a trusted source of pediatric education. We wanted to engage more with consumers and provide decision support tools to help parents and patients better understand common symptoms.”
The Accent Gap — Why some accents don’t work on Alexa or Google Home
“To learn different ways of speaking, the AI needs a diverse range of voices — and experts say it’s not getting them because too many of the people training, testing and working with the systems all sound the same.”
Meet the Women Shaping the Future of Voice with Alexa
Interesting stories of nine women involved with voice computing in different ways. These are some interesting career ideas — and the women range in age from just out of college to 60 years old.
Apple’s Shortcuts Will Flip the Switch on Siri’s Potential
“Every action you take in an app can be shared out with Siri, letting people interact right there inline or using only their voice, with the app running everything smoothly in the background.”
Thought-Provoking
The Google Translate World Cup
Interesting stories of people using the newest features of the Google Translate app at the World Cup.
Adobe's new AI can identify altered images
Useful for finding images that have been manipulated. This technology may be included in future updates to Adobe Photoshop or other Adobe software.
AI could soon clone your voice
“The company's software recorded Vance's voice [a journalist] and cloned it within minutes. The AI version was so realistic that Vance's mother didn't realize she was talking to a computer rather than her son when Vance phoned her.” Lyrebird is the company, and their technology can be used to help those with speech disabilities, replacing robotic voices. I’m sure you can imagine possible misuse of this technology as well.
‘ICE Is Everywhere': Using Library Science To Map The Separation Crisis
An inspiring story of a digital humanities team, started by a digital scholarship librarian at Columbia University. They built “Torn Apart/Separados,” an interactive website that shows locations of shelters around the U.S. where children are housed after being separated from their parents at the border.
New Google Assistant Ad Shows Google Duplex Making a Restaurant Reservation and People Are Using it Today
Watch the video to see how Duplex can make a phone reservation. Unlike the first tests back in May, it now identifies itself: “Hi! I'm the Google Assistant calling to make a reservation for a client.”
Apple’s Next iPhone Could Spell Big Trouble for AT&T and Others
“The eSIM is not a card, it is a chip that can be soldered to the circuit board of the phone at the factory. The most obvious advantage is that it obviates the need for a tray, which means a device can be smaller. … It can potentially allow a phone user to switch carriers at will, simply by signing up for deals from a variety of operators and having the phone immediately switched over, like an easier version of “prepay” cards.”
Google Glass Is Back—Now With Artificial Intelligence
It’s aimed at manufacturing workers, kind of like Alexa for the factory floor. Google has moved from offering Glass to consumers, to offering it to companies, renaming it as “Google Glass Enterprise Edition.”
Rising Seas Could Cause Problems For Internet Infrastructure
“Large, dense coastal cities such as New York, Miami and Seattle appear to have the highest risk of Internet disruption from sea level rise.”
Blockchain Is Helping to Circumvent Censorship in China
“Ethereum is a public blockchain that hosts the cryptocurrency Ether." Someone embedded information that had been censored into the metadata of the cryptocurrency Ether. “Transactions generate distributed copies of themselves within the network, which ensured that Yue’s letter would be permanently documented in the public domain and accessible to any user who looked the transaction up.“
Mobile phones and cancer – the full picture
“An article we published last week about links between mobiles and cancer proved highly controversial. Here a cancer expert and physicist argues that it misrepresented the research and that fears are ill-founded." Read both articles and consider the findings: The inconvenient truth about cancer and mobile phones (YES, causes cancer) and Mobile phones and cancer – the full picture (NO, does not).
Forbes Got Torn Apart by Library Twitter for Saying Amazon Should Replace Public Libraries
I’m sure you heard about this since it was all over the internet. This article includes many of the tweets that librarians and other defenders of public libraries wrote in response. (Forbes deleted the original article, so here’s a copy from the Wayback Machine)
Some interesting news about Wikipedia with “a recognition that Wikipedia is embedded within the fabric of learning now.”
Merrilee Proffitt on collaboration between Wikipedia and cultural heritage institutions
The 'guerrilla' Wikipedia Editors Who Combat Conspiracy Theories
Interesting Statistics
Most popular social networks worldwide as of July 2018, ranked by number of active users (in millions)
Top 3: Facebook, YouTube, WhatsApp.
Use of mobile devices for news continues to grow, outpacing desktops and laptops
About six-in-ten now often get news on a mobile device, according to Pew Research.
SMART SPEAKERS
Smart Speaker Users Pass 50 Million in U.S. for the First Time
Smart Speaker Owner Demographics Are Getting Younger as Market Nearly Tripled in 12 Months
Smart Speakers to Reach 100 Million Installed Base Worldwide in 2018, Google to Catch Amazon by 2022
Smart Audio Report from NPR and Edison Research Spring 2018 (PDF)
REMOTE WORKING
In coming years we’ll see more people working remotely, either all of the time, or part of the time, and either for an employer or as a freelancer. If you need some statistics to convince your boss to let you work from home part of the time, see these articles.
10 Stats That’ll Change The Way You Think About Remote Work
77% of People Are More Productive Working at Home—Plus More Fun Facts About This Growing Trend
State of Remote Work 2018 Report: What It’s Like to be a Remote Worker in 2018
Remote work is “the new normal”
The Future
Augmented Reality Could Be 'Bigger Than The Web', Says Adobe Executive
Some thoughts on the future of augmented reality.
Leap Motion Concept Videos Imagine a World Where Augmented Reality & VR Merge
Watch the videos to see what is meant by “a new kind of immersive computing referred to as mirrorworlds."
Mixed Reality Will Transform Learning (and Magic Leap Joins Act One)
“… a device by a company called Magic Leap, and it uses a pair of goggles to project what the company calls a ‘lightfield’ in front of the user’s face to make it look like digital elements are part of the real world.” Read to learn how learning experiences might be awesome with mixed reality in the future.
3-D Printing Is The Future Of Factories (For Real This Time)
“Today, 3-D printing is finally starting to be used for high-volume, mass production.” (printing with metal)
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