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TestFlight, One Year Later→

Nick Arnott has taken a look at TestFlight a year after its relaunch and I agree with his overall take. I write about apps for a living (I currently have 74 betas in my TestFlight), and the simplicity of Apple’s system is unparalleled. I just need to give developers my email and that’s it.

I also agree with Nick’s comments on frustrations with using TestFlight. I hope that Apple will continue tweaking these aspects going forward.

I’ve experienced a few minor frustrations with as a user though. For example, I can’t accept an invitation from my computer — I have to accept an invitation from the device I want to test on. Also, TestFlight emails don’t contain any release notes. With other services like HockeyApp, developer release notes are included in the email, so you can decide from the email if you care about the update or not. Lack of these release notes from TestFlight means you’ll have to tap through to the app and view on your testing device to see if you want the update or not.

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“Laughing and Crying My Way Through the New Google Photos”→

My first watch of this video hit me emotionally in a way that’s hard to articulate. The film itself is a new kind of uncanny valley for digital artifacts: Assistant and its algorithms combined these clips in a way that no reasonable person would attempt. Ever. The result is surreal, random, creepy, sad, and oddly funny. It had to be a coincidence of timing that I had only just returned from visiting Grumpy on his deathbed. But partly because of that timing, this video present came at a moment when I was primed to appreciate it. Maybe it won’t be long before services try (and fail) to do this sort of thing on purpose, offering us narratives that highlight timely memories, or videos designed to fill anticipated emotional needs. My photos are still uploading.

Ryan Gantz has shared a personal story about photos he took at family events and how Google Photos put them all together automatically. The result is indeed funny and weird at the same time, but Ryan ended up appreciating it anyway.

There have been some interesting discussions about privacy and the value of Google Photos over the past week. So far, I agree completely with Manton Reece:

My family photos are the most important files I have on my computer, and I very rarely share any photos of my kids publicly. But ironically I’m willing to overlook some of the privacy concerns around this exactly because the photos are so valuable to me. I want multiple copies in the cloud, and I want the power of search that Google has built.

“Kind of creepy but I appreciate it” seems to be a common theme around Google Photos.

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Connected: Intellectual Ambiguity→

This week, Stephen and Myke talk to Russell Ivanovic about Google Photos and then go on to make their WWDC predictions.

I couldn’t join Myke and Stephen this week, and, as usual, they did a great job at covering Google’s announcements and predictions for WWDC 2015. You can listen to the episode here.

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Instapaper Launches Notes, Bringing Annotations to Articles

I’m a voracious web reader. I spend most of my working days either writing or checking Twitter, NewsBlur, Nuzzel, Techmeme, and The Tech Block looking for interesting stuff I can link to or longer articles I want to read later. When I’m not writing or looking for stories, I spend my time reading and playing videogames. I read a lot. And Instapaper has always appealed to my reading taste with a thoughtful design, fair business model, and powerful features.

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What Twitter Can Be→

Chris Sacca’s essay on what Twitter can become is worth a read if you’re interested in the future of the company. The piece contains several interesting ideas for enhancements to Twitter’s curation, discovery, and timeline design – this bit on Nuzzel in particular:

A third way to organize content from Twitter is to highlighting what the Tweets are linking to. If you’ve used Nuzzel (disclosure: one of our portfolio companies) you know exactly what I mean and how simple yet magical that experience can be. If you haven’t used it, try it. Nuzzel makes Twitter better.

Want to know what are the most popular articles linked to on Twitter? That should be a channel. What are the most popular sites linked among the people we follow or people that our friends follow? Great channel. Which books are people Tweeting about? Channel. Which videos are garnering the most attention? Channel. Any particular .gifs blowing up? Channel.

I use Nuzzel every day, and I love it. As I argued last year, I’m a fan of Twitter’s experiments with the timeline on iOS, but I also believe they should experiment more and break free of old ideas about Twitter. I disagree with some of Sacca’s proposals, but the entire piece is spot-on.

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Apple’s Privacy and Cloud Services→

Thomas Ricker, writing for The Verge in response to Tim Cook’s speech on privacy and cloud services:

Arguably, Google Maps is better than Apple Maps, Gmail is better than Apple Mail, Google Drive is better than iCloud, Google Docs is better than iWork, and Google Photos can “surprise and delight” better than Apple Photos. Even with the risks.

If Apple truly cares about our privacy then it should stop talking about how important it is and start building superior cloud-based services we want to use — then it can protect us.

As John Gruber eloquently commented:

There’s much I would quibble with regarding Ricker’s piece, but his conclusion, quoted above, is spot-on. Apple needs to provide best-of-breed services and privacy, not second-best-but-more-private services. Many people will and do choose convenience and reliability over privacy. Apple’s superior position on privacy needs to be the icing on the cake, not their primary selling point.

This is a tricky scenario: is machine learning the only way to build intelligent services and client apps for the future? Google Photos is showing impressive results in recognizing places, objects, and people – but at the cost of letting Google’s cloud analyze your entire memories and visual history. It’s only natural for some people not to be okay with that today.

Will consumers start demanding that sort of intelligence going forward? Is there any way to build intelligence at scale without being creepy? Is privacy a product or a feature?

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Sunrise Launches on Apple Watch

Sunrise, the calendar app/platform acquired by Microsoft earlier this year, has always been about integrating your schedule with as many devices and services as possible. Pierre Valade and his team wanted to build a calendar app that could go beyond a traditional representation of calendar events, and this meant opening up Sunrise to third-party services like Todoist, Wunderlist (now also part of Microsoft), Songkick, and more. Sunrise’s willingness to integrate deeply with users’ workflows can even be seen in Meet, a custom keyboard that brings Sunrise’s scheduling features to any app.

Sunrise is launching on Apple Watch today, with another integration that rethinks a core aspect of the app for a new device. Sunrise for Apple Watch, which I’ve tested over the past month, puts the focus on viewing what’s coming up, with an elegant UI and a glance that make it easy to check and act on upcoming events.

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Todoist Launches PowerApp for Integrations with Google Calendar, Evernote, and GitHub

Todoist tasks as calendar events in Fantastical and Google Calendar.

Todoist tasks as calendar events in Fantastical and Google Calendar.

Todoist – my favorite task management service that recently also landed on Apple Watch – has never shied away from integrating with other services. The company has long supported automation through IFTTT and Zapier; it can mirror a user’s daily tasks to Sunrise; and, it can import files from Google Drive and Dropbox when you need to add attachments to a task. Today, Todoist is launching PowerApp, the next generation of the company’s integration system based on a new developer platform they’re also debuting today and opening up to third-party apps.

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Apple Watch Launching in Seven More Countries on June 26, Retail Store Sales Begin in Two Weeks

Apple announced today that the Apple Watch will go on sale in another seven countries beginning Friday, June 26. Those countries are Italy, Mexico, Singapore, South Korea, Spain, Switzerland and Taiwan. They join Australia, Canada, China, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Japan, the UK and the US, where the Apple Watch first began shipping to customers on April 24.

10 Corso Como in Milan, BOONTHESHOP Cheongdam in Seoul and Malmaison by The Hour Glass in Singapore will have a curated selection of Apple Watch available at launch.

To customers in the original launch countries, Jeff Williams, Apple’s senior vice president of Operations, says they will begin selling ‘some models’ of the Apple Watch in their retail stores in two weeks time. Williams also notes that all Apple Watch orders placed in May will be shipped to customers within the next two weeks, “with the sole exception of Apple Watch 42 mm Space Black Stainless Steel with Space Black Link Bracelet”.

“The response to Apple Watch has surpassed our expectations in every way, and we are thrilled to bring it to more customers around the world,” said Jeff Williams, Apple’s senior vice president of Operations. “We’re also making great progress with the backlog of Apple Watch orders, and we thank our customers for their patience. All orders placed through May, with the sole exception of Apple Watch 42 mm Space Black Stainless Steel with Space Black Link Bracelet, will ship to customers within two weeks. At that time, we’ll also begin selling some models in our Apple Retail Stores.”

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