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NightStand for Apple Watch→

Cool-looking upcoming Apple Watch dock by ElevationLab:

NightStand makes daily charging a breeze. Just set your watch on, from out of the corner of your eye, no careful alignment required. Locks to your bedside table so you never have to hunt for the cord. Undocking is one-handed. Solid, soft, seamless construction. Low-profile, minimal design.

It would have been nice if Apple included a charging dock with every Apple Watch. I’m intrigued by the NightStand because of how it can be placed vertically anywhere:

Optionally mounts vertically. NightStand ships with an ultra-strong, optional to use, custom 3M adhesive back (the same adhesive GoPro and our highly-rated Anchor headphone mount uses). Mount NightStand safely to the side of your bed frame, stealthily behind your headboard, on your wall anywhere. If you ever have trouble removing it, just heat it with a hair dryer to soften the adhesive.

$29, ships May 29th.

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Jony Ive on Apple Watch, Working with Marc Newson→

Vogue’s Scarlett Kilcooley-O’Halloran, quoting Jony Ive from today’s Condé Nast International Luxury Conference in Florence, Italy:

“I think that we’re on a path that Apple was determined to be on since the Seventies, which was to try and make technology relevant and personal. If people struggle to use the technology then we have failed,” said Ive. “The consequences of that path? I don’t know. Sadly so much of our manufactured environment testifies to carelessness - something that was built to a price point or a schedule. The products that we have developed describe who made them. I hope that people will like the watch and find it a beautiful item.”

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Connected: My Technique, but in France→

This week, Federico, Stephen and Myke discuss Apple Watch shipments, search on Android, Chrome on iOS and music on the go.

A good episode of Connected this week, covering some of Google’s latest initiatives on mobile and what we’d like to see in a music streaming service from Apple based on Beats Music. You can listen to the episode here.

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Betting Big on the Camera→

Neil Cybart has some fascinating thoughts on the role of cameras in the modern age:

_Interpretation. _While there is still plenty of innovation left with how we use cameras to communicate with others, the camera’s most exciting role will be utilizing software to help us interact with and navigate the world. The camera will become an input device for software to interpret clues in various settings at home, the office, or school. The camera essentially becomes a pair of intelligent eyes that goes beyond simple image capture.

Mobile cameras are outgrowing “taking pictures”. They’re becoming a completely new input method for what’s around us.

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Apple Details Apple Watch Heart Rate Sensor→

New to me, via 9to5Mac this morning, a support document by Apple detailing how exactly the heart rate sensor in the Apple Watch measures a wearer’s heartbeat:

The heart rate sensor in Apple Watch uses what is known as photoplethysmography. This technology, while difficult to pronounce, is based on a very simple fact: Blood is red because it reflects red light and absorbs green light. Apple Watch uses green LED lights paired with light‑sensitive photodiodes to detect the amount of blood flowing through your wrist at any given moment. When your heart beats, the blood flow in your wrist — and the green light absorption — is greater. Between beats, it’s less. By flashing its LED lights hundreds of times per second, Apple Watch can calculate the number of times the heart beats each minute — your heart rate.

The document also explains other conditions and factors that may influence the sensor:

Many factors can affect the performance of the Apple Watch heart rate sensor. Skin perfusion is one. A fancy way of describing how much blood flows through your skin, skin perfusion varies significantly from person to person and can also be impacted by the environment. If you’re exercising in the cold, for example, the skin perfusion in your wrist may be too low for the heart rate sensor to get a reading. Motion is another factor. Rhythmic movements, such as running or cycling, give better results compared to irregular movements, like tennis or boxing.

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Twitter Rolls Out Option to Receive DMs from Anyone→

Vindu Goel, writing for The New York Times:

Twitter announced Monday that its users will be able to change a setting on their accounts to allow anyone to send them a private message. In addition, if a person follows a big account — for example, from a company like United Airlines — the Twitter user can respond to messages sent by that account even if the account, United in this case, does not follow that individual.

According to early reports, the option is off by default and can be managed from a user’s Settings on the Twitter website. On the Twitter blog, the company explains how businesses and other profiles could benefit from the new setting:

Communicating with people you may or may not know in real life just got easier. Previously, if you wanted to send a Direct Message to the ice cream shop down the street about how much you love their salted caramel flavor, you’d have to ask them to follow you first. With today’s changes, the ice cream shop can opt to receive Direct Messages from anyone; so you can privately send your appreciation for the salted caramel without any barriers.

The Twitter apps for iPhone (iPad not mentioned) and Android will get a new icon to indicate whether a user can receive direct messages from anyone or not. This new DM feature is not exactly new as, like many other options, the company first rolled it out for a limited amount of time in late 2013.

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Glide→

A new Kickstarter project by Chris Harris, Glide aims to simplify app creation with drag & drop of text and images in Dropbox and a variety of templates for different app types and native iOS features.

From the project’s page:

Building an app yourself is hard work. Normally you need a lot of technical skills that most people don’t have. Glide makes it easy to create beautiful apps that look professional right from the start.

You simply put text, images and movies into folders, and Glide will build the app for you. When you change the content, the app updates automatically.

We have created a number of award winning apps using Glide, but we believe that everyone should be able to afford their own app. This Kickstarter is our way of making this happen.

If this sounds too good to be true, Harris and team have been building apps with Glide for years, including The Loop Magazine and Wonders of Life. Glide has been optimized for various app types, and it also sports integration with iOS features such as push notifications and iBeacon.

This is an interesting project for me, especially because it’s entirely based on files in Dropbox, which makes content creation easy for someone who primarily works on iOS.

Here’s how Marco Arment describes Glide:

I’ve never seen anything quite like Glide, and I think it’s going to be huge.

The best way I can explain it is that Glide is to apps as Squarespace is to websites: it lets you build a lot of common app types (especially content, informational, and portfolio apps), with very little effort or expertise, and yields stunning results.

I’ll keep an eye on this. You can check out the Kickstarter campaign here.

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Day One for Apple Watch→

Another one of my favorite iOS apps, Day One, is coming to Apple Watch with a slimmed down UI focused on quick logging of new journal entries.

The Day One team has only shared one screenshot of the Watch app, but it gives a good idea of what it’ll be capable of. Like others, I often forget to create new entries in my Day One journal because I get distracted by all the other apps on my iPhone and creating a new location check-in takes too many taps. Day One for the Watch will have shortcuts for one-tap check-ins, dictation, and even customizable entries with tags. I’m curious to see if easier access to Day One will help me save journal entries more often.

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