When it comes to EQing, there are certain frequencies that seem predominant for every instrument. Many call them the magic frequencies, because they do tend to work most of the time.
This is a great place to learn what frequencies to use with certain instruments.
No shortage of these, but check this one out, see if you like it. Be sure to click on a few tags to get a sense of the interior pages.
Bloomberg:
The Boston Consulting Group has outfitted about 100 volunteer employees in its new Manhattan office with badges that embed a microphone and a location sensor. Made by Humanyze in Boston, the badges track physical and verbal interactions. BCG says it intends to use the data to see how office design affects employee communication. Outside critics have called the plan Orwellian and despotic—“It is a little bit invasive,” says Ross Love, 57, a BCG managing partner who volunteered—but the data collected is anonymized, and the company has pledged not to use it for performance evaluation.
Sure, you say that now. But once those badges are in place, once they become the new normal, all bets are off.
TweetDelete.net will automatically delete your tweets after a certain amount of time has passed. While this is definitely an interesting idea, not sure I get the use case. Given that all tweets are backed up almost as soon as they are issued, deleting your tweets won’t keep them off the net. And there’s no limit to the number of tweets you can have.
But an interesting idea.
If you say “Hey Computer” to Siri, she’ll respond as if you are Lego Batman. Is this just humorous content, or a new paid marketing/advertising path for Apple?
Play Pokémon Go? Big changes are coming. Rene Ritchie lays out all the details.
Jacob Kastrenakes, The Verge:
Silicon Valley has a long way to go on diversity, but most tech companies would argue that they’re making progress. Intel beat its initial hiring goals; Microsoft is tying executive compensation to diversity success; and Google says it’s made changes to remove pay inequality, even though the diversity of its workforce has remained flat.
Apple also claims to have removed pay disparities and has made slight gains on hiring women and people of color. It’s even launched an “Inclusion & Diversity” page with visualizations of its hiring data.
But a small group of Apple investors believe the company isn’t making progress fast enough, and they’re trying to force the company to pick up the pace. “Some of the excuses given by Apple and others — there’s not sufficient people in the pipeline, this and that,” says investor Tony Maldonado. “Excuse my language, it’s bullshit.”
And:
Maldonado is leading an effort to mandate that Apple accelerate its work toward becoming a more diverse company. For the second year in a row, he’s submitted a shareholder proposal asking that Apple “adopt an accelerated recruitment policy … to increase the diversity of senior management and its board of directors.”
From Apple’s point of view:
In a filing with the SEC, Apple’s board wrote a note recommending that shareholders vote against the proposal. The company argues that it already has “much broader” diversity efforts at work and, in the past three years, has made “steady progress in attracting more women and underrepresented minorities.” The proposed policy, Apple concludes, “is not necessary or appropriate because we have already demonstrated our commitment to a holistic view of inclusion and diversity.”
Is Apple doing enough on their own? They have certainly proven that they think well beyond the boundaries of profit and revenue, leading their corporate cousins in issues like clean/renewable energy and supply chain ethics. That doesn’t mean they always do right, but my sense is that Apple listens on issues like this and, when they listen, change is sure to follow.
Apple CFO Luca Maestri spoke at yesterday’s Goldman Sachs Technology and Internet Conference. If you are interested in where Apple is going as a company and the potential for growth, take a few minutes to listen to Luca speak. Here’s a link to the audio, found on Apple’s web site.
One set of comments I found particularly interesting was Luca addressing the question, “Is the iPhone still a growth business?” Luca’s (slightly edited) response:
I want to point out that during the December quarter, we went back to growth with iPhone, and it was actually was very good for us to see. We definitely continue to believe that there’s a lot of room for growth with our iPhone business.
And
When we look at the smartphone as a consumer product, we really believe it’s become more relevant to people’s lives than it was, ten years ago, five years ago, and two years ago, when you look at how much people rely on their iPhones in every aspect of life, from payments, in the car, in the home, and that’s a great foundation, the fact that the product is extremely relevant to people’s lives is very important.
We also believe that there is a lot of innovation left in the iPhone, when we look at the key foundational technologies that go into the product. When you look at processors, look at sensors, displays, batteries, cameras, we made a lot of progress during that last few years on those dimensions and we think there is a lot that is left. Innovation can help us continue to grow the business.
When we look at markets around the world, there’s a lot of growth that is available to us in emerging markets, starting from China, to India, many places around the world, the demographics are such that we can expect a rise in the middle class, we can expect that LTE adoption and smartphone penetration will increase over time and our market share is extremely low in a lot of these emerging markets.
Luca is not in marketing. He’s the Chief Financial Officer, a numbers guy. This take seems objective, based on demographics, and gives me a sense that there’s still a lot of room for future iPhone growth.
Wired:
The flying experience feels like it gets crummier all the time, and people trudge through it. But, it seems, other passengers’ phone calls would fly right past the breaking point, and keep on going.
In a bid to preserve sanity, the federal Department of Transportation is considering a ban on in-air calls using WiFi, and invited the public to share their thoughts. And boy did they: Over 8,000 of people logged on and left comments before the consultation ended Monday. And probably no surprise to anyone: The American people are gaga for this travel-related ban.
I really hope the federal Department of Transportation institutes a ban on in-air calls using WiFi. As the article points out, flying is already awful enough without have to listen to one-way conversations at 30,000 feet.
Cute.
New Republic:
The popular conception of a lemming blindly rushing to its death does a poor job of describing the animal’s nature, but an excellent job of describing human nature—lemmings has entered the vernacular to denote any group of unthinking followers hastening their own demise.
To paraphrase Voltaire’s chestnut on God, since no animal that regularly commits mass suicide exists, it was necessary to invent one. We turn to nature documentaries not to understand nature, but to see our own behavior reflected back at us. The natural world—wild, chaotic, mutable—can be endlessly recut to tell whatever story we need to tell ourselves.
Like many of us here in Canada and the US, as a kid I sat down on Sunday evening’s to watch “The Wonderful World of Disney”. They often had “documentaries” about various animals. As an adult, I learned many of them weren’t in fact documentaries but often staged to get the desired response from the audience. I still like nature documentaries (I’m a huge fan of the “Planet Earth” series) but I’m much more wary of the staging that is possible.
Digg:
At the end of the day, dog shows are kind of cruel: How can you expect dogs to just ignore an adoring crowd all around them? Mia, to her credit, stood up for her species and basked in all that lovely human attention.
I love the Westminster Dog Show (I watched hours of it last night and will watch more hours of it tonight) and wish they televised more of these agility events as opposed to nothing but the actual “Best of Show” stuff.
The Verge:
Interactive television has long been the holy grail for TV content makers, but Apple’s Eddy Cue thinks the tech company has all of the right tools in place to actually make it happen. And it’s something that could impact sports, news — even polling.
In an interview with The Verge, Cue said that Apple isn’t against the idea of making more original TV, but emphasized that there would have to have some sort of interactive element for it to make sense for the tech giant right now.
Interesting POV from Cue but I’m not sure he’s correct. TV has always been a consumption medium – you sit in your comfy chair and just watch. I don’t doubt that a certain portion of the population wants to have greater “interactivity” (whatever that means) with the TV and its programming but I don’t know that the average consumer does.
Good Food:
Even if you’re not the most avid reader, chances are you’re familiar with the work of Donald Lau. For 30 years, Lau served in the unique position of “Chief Fortune Writer” at Wonton Foods—America’s largest fortune cookie producer. Sadly, Lau has been forced to is step down due to an affliction that has stymied even the world’s most prolific scribes. “I have writer’s block,” says Donald Lau, “I used to write 100 a year, but I’ve only written two or three a month over the past year.”
I’ve never thought about the person who writes the pithy sayings in a fortune cookie but I do know the meal isn’t complete without munching on the cookie and reading the “fortune”.
Twitterrific for Mac was first released 10 years ago way back in 2007 and had regular updates until 2013. Development of Twitterrific has continued exclusively on iOS since then, but many of us still use Twitterrific on the desktop – despite it missing many recent Twitter features and Twitterrific for iOS refinements. It is time we fixed this, but we need your help!
I loved Twitterrific.
PCWorld:
Twitter rolled back a new fix aimed to prevent abuse a few hours after it met with protests, reflecting that the company is still scrambling to find solutions to the problem of harassment on its service, but is willing to make changes quickly in response to its users.
The social network on Monday rolled out a new feature that would ensure that users would not get notified when they are added to a list. “We want you to get notifications that matter. Starting today, you won’t get notified when you are added to a list,” wrote Twitter Safety. One user pointed out that it was critical for people to know if they have been added to a list intended for targets.
Does it feel like the people who manage this stuff at Twitter have no clue how Twitter works? As soon as I heard about this “feature”, I knew it would cause problems. Why didn’t anyone at Twitter see it coming?
Drag a song from the left onto a song on the right, then sit back and listen.
This works really well. Seems to me, this would make an excellent app, especially if you could figure out a general approach that mapped all the songs in a playlist. I see possibilities here.
Quartz:
On Feb. 14, an Indian PSLV rocket will attempt to set a record by deploying 103 small satellites in a single launch, including 88 satellites owned by Planet. With a successful launch, the San Francisco-based imaging startup will operate a total of 143 satellites—the most of any company in the world.
If all goes according to plan, Planet expects to be able to image the entire Earth daily; right now it covers about a third of the world’s landmass every 24 hours.
And:
The US government technically prohibits American companies from using India’s rockets, since the company that markets them, Antrix, is state-owned and arguably distorts the market for space access. The rule is in part designed to protect American rocket-makers from competition, but also to protest Indian policies that effectively block foreign satellite companies from doing business there.
Yet with so few options available to small satellite firms, the US has increasingly granted waivers for companies to contract with India.
With this launch, Planet will become one of the largest satellite image providers in the world. Check out the picture of the rack of satellites. So tiny!
Fascinating. Don’t do this at home, kids!
Interesting that Will.i.am planned the show Planet of the Apps with his production company, then pitched and sold the concept to Apple (as opposed to the show being a brain-child born inside of Apple).
Also interesting is that the show is being designed around an app which will let you pause the show and dive deeper into a specific app or concept. This is very non-linear. I think it would be a mistake to pigeonhole this as a traditional reality show.
Watch the video.
From the info page:
Planet of the Apps celebrates the world of apps and the talented people who create them. Hosted by Zane Lowe and featuring advisers Jessica Alba, Gwyneth Paltrow, Gary Vaynerchuk and will.i.am, the series highlights developers who have the vision to shape the future, solve real problems, and inspire change within our daily lives.
This feels like a mix of Shark Tank and The Voice. As a developer and investor, I’m intrigued by the concept. The hard part is to straddle the channel between broad entertainment and entrepreneurial detail. Keep it fun while still teaching some skill or lesson.
I’ll definitely give this a watch.
A sign of things to come. Note the Planet of the Apps reference (no way that’s accidental) at 2:08 in.
Google blog:
Starting today, you can create lists of places, share your lists with others, and follow the lists your friends and family share with you—without ever leaving the Google Maps app (Android, iOS).
And:
Open the Google Maps app and find that BBQ spot you’ve been wanting to try. Tapping on the place name and then the “Save” icon adds the place to one of several pre-set lists like “Want to Go” or “Favorites.” You can also add the restaurant to a new list that you name yourself, like “Finger Lickin’ BBQ.” To recall the lists you’ve created, go to Your Places (in the side menu) and then open the saved tab. Icons for the places you’ve saved to lists will appear on the map itself.
I love the concept. Only issue I have is that I tend to move between different Google accounts and if I am logged in to the wrong account, I won’t see my place lists. One workflow is to always share place lists with all accounts, then each added place will automatically appear in all accounts.
Amazon is entering the Go-to-Meeting and Skype space with Chime, now available on Android, iOS, Mac, and Windows. From this Android Police post:
Conference calls and video meetings have almost been synonymous with Skype for the longest time, but Amazon is looking at changing that. Chime, a new Amazon Web Services platform, wants to simplify communications between teams and individuals and cater to their different aspects in one app: video call, voice call, chat, and screen sharing.
And:
There’s also a chatroom component to chime, with attachments to share important documents. Chime is free to try for 30 days, but after that, there are three plans to choose from. Basic Edition gives access to all of these options, minus screen sharing and with a 2 attendee limit, for free. Plus Edition is great for companies who want to manage users, but it costs $2.50/user/month and still keeps the 2 attendee limit. Pro Edition costs $15/user/month, but makes it possible to have meetings with up to 100 users and brings a host of add-ons.
Wondering if this will become a tool for podcast interviews.
Sign up here.
Popular Mechanics:
Up, up and away: Dubai hopes to have a passenger-carrying drone regularly buzzing through the skyline of this futuristic city-state in July.
The craft can carry a passenger weighing up to 100 kilograms (220 pounds) and a small suitcase. After buckling into its race-car-style seat, the craft’s sole passenger selects a destination on a touch-screen pad in front of the seat and the drone flies there automatically.
Yes, this is the future. But, even if I weren’t too big (1’m 110 kilograms), I still wouldn’t fly in one.
Fast Company:
The year was 1996.
Apple wasn’t doing well, suffering through the awkward years between the Mac and the iPod. Jobs would return officially in 1997, but in the meantime, Apple was contemplating how to make some fast cash by licensing its name. In this gap leading to its renaissance, Apple considered a concept that feels wild, yet, in retrospect, almost inevitable: the Apple Cafe.
Like many of you, I’m old enough to have been around when this idea first came to light in 1996. I’m also old enough to remember thinking, “Well, that’s not going to fly”. But perhaps the germ of this idea came to fruition in today’s Apple retail stores.
Apple has climbed 50 percent from lows in the first half of last year and is up 15 percent so far in 2017. It was still short of its all-time intraday high of $134.54, set on April 28, 2015.
Impressive.
For anyone familiar with Kurstin’s track record, his hand in Adele’s repeat success was no surprise. A multi–Grammy Award nominee, Kurstin is known in the industry as an “artist whisperer” who brings out the best in performers like Sia, Beck, Katy Perry, Foster the People, and many more. He does it by bringing a unique set of producing skills to his sessions — world-class ability as an instrumentalist, deep understanding of music and song structure, and a highly effective writing and producing process that runs through Logic Pro X.
It is truly amazing what talented people can do when they get together to write music.
Ars Technica:
The next time you’re in a parking lot, or when you’re walking on the sidewalk along a street with lots of parked cars, take a look at the windshield wipers. On some cars, the wiper arms are mounted fairly close to each other and are designed to move in unison. On others, the arms are mounted at opposite sides of the car and face each other in the center of the windshield. Some wiper arms are short and some are long. Some are straight, and some, especially on newer cars, are curved or bent.
But the reality is that wiper design is driven primarily by practicalities, not aesthetics.
Dave tweeted this earlier today. I love these articles about common, everyday technology that most of us give no thought to.