Katherine Boehret | Vox

Cleaning Up Your ‘Personal Brand’ Isn’t as Easy as You Think

2019-03-06T05:02:49-05:00

Let’s assume that you’re one of the seemingly few people who isn’t running for president in 2016. Maybe you’re just applying for a job, or going on a date.

Do you know what someone will find when he or she Googles your name? More importantly, can you do anything about controlling those search results?

If you’re really unlucky, a criminal with the same name as you might be getting mixed up with your search results. Or the problem could be less extreme, like an embarrassing or outdated personal blog that keeps showing up when you wish it would just disappear. In my case, my second Google search result is an old Twitter handle that I no longer use, and I’d like to get rid of it.

Google made news last month by allowing people to submit requests for removing search results that included revenge porn — sexually explicit material that gets posted online without permission. This is a step in the right direction, but still leaves a lot of opportunity for other messy, reputation-harming search results to appear.

This week, I started using Web-based software that’s geared toward educating average people on how to tidy up their online reps: BrandYourself. It works for free, with an option to upgrade to a Premium account for $99 a year if you want extra features and a little more control. I tried both options. For now, BrandYourself only exists as a website, not as a desktop or mobile app.

But the harsh truth is that in order to alter Google search results, you’ll need to put in a lot of time and work — maybe two hours a week using the Premium version of BrandYourself. Search results are just hard to bury, depending on how much authority they have. For example, a negative story about you in the New York Times would be significantly harder to get rid of (if at all) than a personal website that mentions your name.

You could try paying more money — BrandYourself also charges $399 a month for a Concierge service that creates new content for you, which, over time, may rank higher than your negative search results — but even then you might not get the results you want.

BrandYourself CEO Patrick Ambron admitted that one month of the Concierge service probably wouldn’t do the job to clean up a real problem online, so you could be looking at nearly $5,000 for a year of reputation-cleanup work.

To get started with the free version of BrandYourself, I followed a handful of quick steps.

I signed up for an account using my email address and a password. Connecting your Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn accounts for sign-up is also allowed, but I didn’t like the permissions that BrandYourself wanted to use with my accounts, like the ability to tweet on my behalf if I connected my Twitter account. BrandYourself’s co-founder said he plans to change these permissions in the near future so that they take fewer liberties and explain more specifically what they’re doing with your accounts.

Next, I entered my name as I wanted to find it online. Though I entered “Katie,” I got search results for “Katherine,” too.

A quick scan showed me a list of my Top 10 search results on Google, and I quickly followed instructions to label each of these as Positive, Negative or Not Me.

Sorry this isn’t more salacious, but I didn’t have a lot of negative or unwanted results to clean up.

I labeled all but one of these results as Positive, but I’m guessing that some people would find more than a few results that fit into the Negative category. I labeled my old Twitter account search result page as Not Me, which hid it from view on BrandYourself’s My Links page.

But this gave me the impression that I had magically erased that unwanted website, which was deceptive. A quick check on Google showed that my old Twitter account page still ranked second in search results. To see how your actual Google search results page looks from within BrandYourself, you’ll need to open a Report Card tab, then click on a link that says “Show your search results” — not exactly obvious.

It was frustrating that, even with the paid version, I couldn’t get the website for my old Twitter handle to disappear (it ranks second in a search for my name). Just imagining that as some kind of reputation-damaging website gave me a glimpse at how futile the whole process of trying to clean up an online reputation would be.

BrandYourself tries to encourage a lot of DIY solutions for managing one’s online reputation, and it gives you points toward a good virtual report card whenever you take these steps. Examples include creating a BrandYourself profile page (surprise, surprise), adding your bio to it, and building 10 profiles or websites to bolster your reputation.

But though BrandYourself can walk you through the process of what they can do to optimize more positive links, Google is still the only source that can guarantee the way search results appear.

On July 6, BrandYourself will launch a free Online Reputation Scanner, which looks through your Top 100 Google results for anything that might damage your reputation or expose private information. This feature already works within the website, but next week it will work on its own landing page — even for people who haven’t created accounts on the BrandYourself.com account.

There are, of course, alternatives to BrandYourself. But services like Reputation.com are laser-focused on businesses, not average people. And many boutique firms offer to clean up your online profile, but they charge significantly more than $99 a year — or even more than BrandYourself’s $399-a-month Concierge service.

If your online profile is squeaky clean, congratulations: You won’t have to worry about what will happen when a future boss Googles your name. But if you find search results you don’t like, only Google can control whether or not those results appear. This is why the recent news about Google taking down revenge porn is such a huge step.

Meanwhile, the Concierge version of BrandYourself may help, but there are no guarantees. If you’re looking for some basic education on how to manage search results on your own, BrandYourself helps — but it can’t work miracles.

This article originally appeared on Recode.net.

Everything You Need to Know About PayPal, Square Cash and Venmo

2019-03-06T05:24:47-05:00

My sister and I keep a running tab with each other. She sent a bouquet of flowers for our cousin’s high school graduation; I owe her. I bought our Dad a dual-blade hedge trimmer for Father’s Day; she owes me. She got another cousin the wedding gift that we agreed to split; I owe her. You get the idea.

Neither of us is too concerned about the balance; we know we’re good for the money. But when I sent my sister a text inviting her to use the peer-to-peer payment app Square Cash so we could pay each other without sending checks, her response was, “Do you need me to do this?” She wasn’t thrilled about downloading yet another app, learning how to use yet another service and creating an account with yet another company.

Given my job as a tech reviewer, I often hit up my relatives and close friends for testing help. It’s understandable that they have symptoms of download fatigue.

Yet, when I polled a broader group, most of the people I talked to weren’t using peer-to-peer payment apps, even if they had heard of them. Whether it’s app overload or nervousness about digital transactions, P2P payments have a way to go before they catch on with a majority of my friends and family. Forrester Research, however, is hopeful: In a study published last fall, it updated its U.S. forecast for mobile P2P payments from $4 billion by 2017 to $5 billion in 2014.

This week, I dived into three P2P payment apps — PayPal, Square Cash and Venmo (acquired by PayPal in December 2013). Facebook also joined the fray in March, enabling fee-free P2P payments via debit card between friends in Facebook Messenger, but the feature is still rolling out and hasn’t been added in my app. My hope is that this guide will make you at least a little more comfortable with digital payments — even helping you pay your sister back on time.

The basics

All three of these apps work on iOS and Android, as well as via Web browsers. Square Cash originally launched using a system that involved sending an email to someone with the dollar amount in the subject line and “Cash@square.com” copied in the message, but the majority of people now use the Square Cash app, which doesn’t involve email. None of these apps requires NFC (near field communication) technology in your phone; all you need is a connection to the Internet. It took me just a few minutes to set up each app, entering details like my debit card number, ZIP code, full name and phone number for verification.

Privacy and security

All three of these apps want you to feel as secure as possible so you won’t hesitate to use them (and so they’re not on the hook for fraud). On iOS, they can each verify your identity with Apple’s Touch ID, the iPhone’s built-in fingerprint tool, every time you use them, giving you an extra layer of in-app security.

Venmo requires multifactor authentication if you sign up for the service on one device and then try to use it on another. PayPal confirms your identity using various security questions, and all three apps can send authentication codes to your mobile device to make sure you are who you say you are. You can also set up Square Cash so that every transaction requires you to enter the three-digit secure code on the back of your debit card.

Cut out middlemen using direct deposits

One of my favorite features of Square Cash is that the money you send or receive comes and goes directly from or to a bank account linked to your debit card. Most payments deposit instantly, according to Square, but some take one to two business days, depending on the bank. For example, a payment my husband sent to me on a Saturday night showed up in my bank account on Monday. But having money sent direct to your account is a big differentiator between Square Cash and PayPal and Venmo, which keep money sent to you in your account as a balance. From there, you have to take the extra step of transferring the money to your bank account.

Some people see an upside to keeping a balance in their account. PayPal points out that you can use this balance to pay businesses that accept PayPal, and its app has a cool feature that shows you nearby merchants that accept PayPal.

Not a popularity contest, but …

If you’re trying to pay someone or get paid using a P2P app, it helps if that app is popular enough to be used by a lot of your friends. PayPal’s app has 165 million active users globally; Square Cash and Venmo won’t say how many users they have, and are limited to the U.S.

Transactions made social

If you don’t mind sharing your financial transactions with the world, go for Venmo. If you sign up for Venmo using your Facebook account or connect your Facebook account to Venmo, whenever you send or receive a payment, the rest of the Venmo community sees this transaction. This Public setting is the default, though settings can be changed to share only with your friends or only with the people in the transaction.

Some people who really like adding a social element to their otherwise-dull financial transactions might be put off by Venmo’s limited social network ties, preferring other networks like Twitter or Instagram over Facebook.

Do any of these payments involve fees?

Square Cash transactions are free, but only work with debit cards — not with credit cards or bank accounts. Free transactions are limited to $2,500 a week. Square Cash Pro, which is aimed at small businesses, has no dollar amount limit, but charges 1.5 percent for debit card or bank account transactions. So if you’re paying a friend using Square Cash, it won’t cost you anything, but if you pay for your hairdresser who accepts Square Cash Pro, he or she will incur the 1.5 percent fee.

PayPal transactions that are made directly to or from your bank account or PayPal balance are free, but if you make a payment to a friend using your debit or credit card, you’ll have to pay a 2.9 percent transaction fee. PayPal has no limits to the amount of money exchanged per week.

Venmo is a fee-free app if you use your Venmo balance, bank account or debit card for P2P payments, but when you pay with a credit card you’ll get slapped with a 3 percent fee. Venmo limits users’ weekly spending to $299.99, but people can increase this to $2,999.99 by verifying their identity. This is done by either adding one’s Facebook account to the Venmo account or adding one’s ZIP code, last four digits of one’s social security number and birthdate.

Sending money around the world

PayPal’s longstanding clout gives it extra long reach: It lets people make P2P payments across borders, sending money in 25 currencies. Neither Venmo nor Square Cash lets you do this.

Hiding your identity

Maybe you’d rather not give your full name to the guy who buys your couch. For that, Square Cash has $Cashtags, or handles you can create to disguise your full identity. For example, I could go by “$KateTheGreat345” if I wanted to be a bit more anonymous. PayPal and Venmo don’t yet offer options like this.

As more and more people find it impossible to go anywhere without their smartphones, mobile payments stand a better chance of becoming the simplest cash alternative. Just make sure you know how to pay, and how much you can exchange to avoid pesky fees.

This article originally appeared on Recode.net.

Shutterfly’s TripPix Photo Book App Is Aimed at Millennials

2019-03-06T05:02:16-05:00

Remember the coffee-table photo book?

They were once the slam-dunk gift for Father’s Day or other Hallmark holidays, but today you’ll be hard-pressed to find a millennial who has made one. Younger consumers rely on smartphones rather than point-and-shoot cameras, and rarely sit down at a PC for a long enough time to gather and edit a book of images.

But Shutterfly is betting that millennials do want to make photo books — as long as they get to show off their memories and adventures with minimal effort.

Earlier this month, Shutterfly introduced its TripPix app in Apple’s App Store. (An Android version is in the works.) The free app, which is almost completely disassociated from the Shutterfly brand, makes a $20, 6×6-inch photo book in one sitting; in fact, it won’t even save a book that you start making, stop making and try to open again later. And to really move you along, it doesn’t let you rearrange or edit photos at all.

A finished TripPix book arrives in the mail in five to eight business days, and comes with a little stand made of bamboo wood — my favorite feature — so that it can be displayed on a table like a framed photo.

This book-making app uses screen taps and swipes to glean information from you and your photos, quickly creating a short story. This is a change from the $2.99 GrooveBook (also owned by Shutterfly) or the $30 Mosaic, which I reviewed here; both of those alternatives simply group a bunch of potentially disassociated, captionless photos into one book. And compared to those apps, the experience of making a book with TripPix is more playful and enjoyable.

In some ways, TripPix feels a little like Google Stories, if Google Stories created a physical artifact.

The TripPix title page displays the name of your trip, and lists your fellow wanderers, weather, places visited, activities, trip time and distance traveled. Each photo has a caption that includes its timestamp and date. Maps of where you captured the photos are interspersed throughout the book. Playful icons are sprinkled on pages, and each book has a few full-bleed pages with sayings like, “Eat Well. Travel Often.”

Many of the story details in each book are automatically generated from data associated with each photo, as long as the photo was shot on a phone. (Images that aren’t geotagged aren’t usable in TripPix books.)

So what’s not to like?

Some of the data TripPix automatically generates in your book feels out of place. For example, a book I made called “Easter Weekend in DC” had a map in it with the caption, “Day 1: highest elevation 37 ft.” I like seeing maps of places I visited, but each map in the book lists the location’s highest elevation — and there’s no way you can delete this. Elevation might be a fun factoid to add if a trip involved skiing or climbing mountains, but listing the elevation of the Foggy Bottom area of Washington, D.C. — a former swampland — was a lot less impressive.

Another thing that irked me about TripPix was the process of gathering photos for my book. The app’s first step is to select 15 to 30 photos, which was easy enough when said photos were recent and appeared at the top of my list. But when I wanted to scroll back a few months through a long list of images, the app froze up on me.

And I couldn’t pull in shots from other sources like Facebook or Instagram. I didn’t mind this too much, but I’m pretty sure that the Instagram omission would frustrate my 18-year-old cousin, or any other Instagram fan.

Start to finish, TripPix walks you through 10 steps to build and order your book. Depending on how much tweaking you want to do, this can take between five minutes and a half hour.

One app screen showed a list of images and suggested location maps that were associated with the images. Here, I could select whether or not I wanted to show maps with my photos, and could then edit the map to zoom in or out on a specific spot.

The following app screens let me select icons to represent my trip’s weather, highlights of what we did — like a deck of cards that meant “casino” and a fish to represent “aquarium” — modes of transit and things we ate or drank. These data points are used in the book’s title page or on the last page of the book, where 25 trip-related icons appear.

Before you tap “Order it” on the last screen, the app shifts to landscape view and shows you a final version of your book. You can swipe to page through each page, but here’s where things can get frustrating: You can’t rearrange or edit anything.

This was a deliberate decision on Shutterfly’s part — it didn’t want people getting bogged down in the editing or rearranging of photos. I get it: I’ve abandoned many photo books over the years due to what I’d describe as Overly-Exhausting Editing Syndrome.

Still, I would’ve liked to have the option to do some simple edits, like moving one photo to appear before another, or deleting the highest-elevation captions that appeared with maps.

Shutterfly eventually plans to take TripPix beyond simple photo books and use data from you and your smartphone photos to do even more. For example, if this app knew your baby’s birthdate, it could remind you to take a photo of your baby at certain milestone ages, like the six-month mark. Busy parents like me appreciate nudges like this.

TripPix brings abbreviated storytelling back to the photo book — without all the work. And its playful format stands a good chance of resonating with a generation that never used photo books in the past.

This article originally appeared on Recode.net.

Webcams Grow Up: Personify and PanaCast Enhance Video Chats

2019-03-06T05:01:56-05:00

If you feel like the technology for videoconference calls hasn’t changed much in the past few years, get ready to be impressed.

Lately, more tech companies are bringing high-end or futuristic videconferencing features to average consumers. Over the past month, I’ve used two of these: Personify, a software app that utilizes a 3-D camera, and PanaCast by Altia Systems, which is an expensive standalone camera.

This isn’t a comparison review of the two products, since they’re quite different; rather, it’s an introduction to smart, practical technologies that could change the way we videoconference. Neither of these is without limitations, but they offer an encouraging look ahead.

Personify is a free desktop app (download here) that uses computer vision and imaging technology to capture just your head and shoulders, creating a floating bust of you on the screen. It feels a little like something you’d see in a futuristic movie.

This “floating head” is a plus for two reasons. First, it hides anything you don’t want people to see in your background, like piles of dirty laundry, a living-room floor covered in kid toys, or the, uh, bathroom walls (admit it).

Second, a floating bust takes up a lot less real estate on your computer screen than a video chat window, freeing up space for you to continue working on other things, or to share your screen without feeling squeezed.

The other videoconferencing solution I used is PanaCast. It’s a $995 standalone USB camera that captures a 180-degree view of the room in 4K resolution with stereo sound. It solves the problem of leaving Bob from HR out of the shot during boardroom videoconference calls, and avoids that irksome pass-the-phone scenario during video calls to relatives at holiday dinners.

I made a few long video calls using Personify, and found the results immersive and entertaining, but frustratingly spotty.

On one hand, the floating head thing looks really cool. Two other people and I virtually gathered around a green felt table for a game of PokerStars. We also collaborated over a spreadsheet, and opened a Web browser to check out one another’s local weather forecasts. Each person’s head can be made bigger or smaller using a slider to adjust size, and faces appeared brightly lit — even when the person was in a dark space.

On the other hand, video feeds froze on a few occasions, and audio occasionally sounded so bad that I had to ask the person speaking to repeat himself.

To use Personify’s head-isolating technology, you’ll need a 3-D webcam and a Windows PC (double groan). Generally speaking, 3-D cameras are only found built into big, high-end computers, like the honkin’ $1,100 Lenovo ThinkPad Yoga 15 laptop with an Intel RealSense 3D camera that I used for my Personify calls. Midrange computers will soon join the party with their own built-in 3-D cameras, according to a Personify spokesperson.

Currently, three Lenovo PCs ship with Personify pre-installed, but anyone can download the desktop app for free — as long as their device has an Intel RealSense 3D camera. Two standalone 3-D cameras also work with Personify: The $169 Asus XTION Pro Live and the $235 standalone PrimeSense Carmine 3-D camera, though the latter is harder to find.

Personify plans a Web-based version for this fall, but this will still require a 3-D Web camera to take advantage of the features that make it special.

With PanaCast, the standalone webcam that captures panoramic video shots, I found the video quality to be remarkably crisp, without the horizontal facial distortion I often see in panoramic photos. Audio sounded clear, and neither video nor audio had any dropouts or stuttering. As advertised, I could easily see a panoramic view of the other participants on a PanaCast call.

Most of my video calls are one-to-one personal calls rather than video calls with large rooms of people or colleagues, so PanaCast is less valuable to me than, say, a roomful of people in a business meeting. I can see it being a real boon for corporations.

But PanaCast has its own issues, not the least of which is its nearly $1,000 price tag. And its optional PanaCast Experience software costs $20 a month. The company points out that this is significantly less than some alternatives. For example, Skype for Business works with a Polycom CS5100 camera to give people a 360-degree HD video, but this setup costs around $5,000, plus the monthly fee for this Skype service.

PanaCast plugs into USB 2.0 and 3.0 on Windows (7 or 8) and Mac OS X, but requires recent-generation computers, like Windows PCs running Intel’s core i3 or better. If you don’t want to pay for the pricey PanaCast Experience software, this camera runs with programs like Skype, Skype for Business, WebEx, Google Hangouts, Citrix GoToMeeting, FaceTime and Facebook. The camera works by itself or when propped up on a stand.

Despite PanaCast’s high-end features, a standalone camera felt antiquated to me — especially compared to sleek, built-in webcams that are barely noticeable. (Also, PanaCast won’t be available in production units until late July.)

Considering the 3-D camera requirements with Personify and the fact that PanaCast isn’t out yet, these solutions aren’t going to change your videoconferencing life tomorrow. But one thing is for sure: Your video calls stand a good chance of becoming a lot more accommodating and high-tech in the near future.

This article originally appeared on Recode.net.

Digging Into My Digital Past Using Timehop and Facebook

2019-03-06T05:01:37-05:00

In my favorite Cher song, the famed diva speculates about what she would do if she could turn back time. She would take back those words that had hurt you, and you’d stay, obviously.

Yet as appealing as Cher makes the past sound, our social networks focus mostly on the present time. We get real-time or recent news updates from friends and media outlets on Facebook and Twitter, and we like photos of our friends’ oven-fresh, homemade lasagna on Instagram.

But if you could turn back time in your digital life, would you?

For the past several weeks, I’ve been intently focused on the past, with help from two free services: Timehop and Facebook’s On This Day. They both work in a similar way, going back in time to dredge up digital photos, status updates, anniversaries, videos, text messages, location check-ins and other data from the same date last year. Or the year before that. Or five years ago. Or whatever year the event occurred.

The content you see in Timehop and On This Day is only visible to you, but if you like the memory enough, you can re-share it to other people in a few quick steps.

On This Day, which launched this past spring, only works on Facebook. It can be turned on via this link; click Notifications in the top right to turn these on. Reminders to look at your On This Day content appear in your Facebook notifications (i.e., “You have memories with Joe Schmo to look back on today”); these memories will also occasionally appear in your Facebook News Feed.

Facebook does a bit more curating than Timehop, which some people may prefer. If you’ve blocked or unfriended someone, content from that person won’t show up in On This Day. Likewise, if you’ve used Facebook to say you ended a relationship with someone, you won’t see tagged content with that person in your News Feed; the same is true for someone whose account has been memorialized after their death (here’s how to do that, if you’re curious).

Timehop, on the other hand, works as a standalone app on Android or iOS, and as a photo-retrieving tool that installs and works in the background on your computer. Its app has a cute dinosaur avatar named Abe who appears every so often with funny quips and news-related anniversaries.

The app, which has been around since 2011, surfaces memories from all sorts of sources, including your phone (photos and videos), Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Foursquare, Dropbox photos and desktop photos (it works on Windows or Mac).

Timehop reminds you to look at its reminiscences on your phone via a daily push notification, and shows you all of your content, unfiltered.

I’ll admit it: I’ve turned into a total sap looking back in time, remembering my pre-marriage, pre-baby days and realizing how much more I used to go out. (Once upon a time, I was a lot of fun — I swear!)

I reminisced over past status updates about nights out at the bar with friends, photos of meals at memorable restaurants and even Web links I shared for work events, like Mark Cuban’s appearance at our D Conference on May 27, 2009.

But the catch with both Timehop and On This Day is that you can only look back at today’s date, however many years ago. On a few different occasions, I was too busy to look through my past memories on a certain day. After that day ended, I could no longer look back a day, because Timehop and On This Day had moved on to the next day.

Another potential problem with both of these services is that not everyone wants to reminisce about the past. While many social network status updates tend to err on the positive (even if people are just bragging rather than being honest), life happens. Relationships end, people die, loved ones get sick and employment statuses change. And let’s not forget about the moments you wish weren’t documented on Facebook, including nights of debauchery and really bad fashion choices.

Looking back could hurt.

Of course, you can always edit, delete or un-tag yourself from old Facebook posts. Or you could opt not to use these apps at all.

After using both Timehop and On This Day, I found that I really appreciated Timehop’s ability to pull up photos and videos from my phone. My husband and I were moved to tears watching a video of our then-10-month-old son giggling and rolling around on the floor. My sister said she laughed when I sent her a photo of how exhausted she looked two years ago, holding her newborn son — now a toddler.

Though I use various services, including Apple’s Shared Albums, to digitally memorialize photos and videos, the majority of the photos and videos I capture are stuck on my phone and forgotten. Even though I had a bunch of duplicate photos (the result of trying to capture an always-moving baby in still photos), I was grateful for Timehop’s ability to automatically walk me down memory lane each day.

It’s worth noting that On This Day shows you more than just your own shared photos and status updates. It pulls up anniversaries of things like when you started a job (if you’ve told Facebook this information) and when you became friends with someone. It shows you content you were tagged in, which could help you have more to look back on if your friends are more active on Facebook. It also shows check-ins, events you attended, groups you joined and birthdays.

And, naturally, Facebook’s relatively new On This Day feature works best if you have a rich history with Facebook. If you aren’t a heavy Facebook user and never were, chances are that its updates will be pretty meaningless.

After using Timehop and On This Day a lot and realizing that they were acting as my lazy person’s diary, documenting life events in a way that let me look back — albeit only one day at a time — I started updating my social networks a little more often. The tech landscape puts a lot of emphasis on looking ahead toward the future, but Timehop and On This Day prove the value of looking back, too.

This article originally appeared on Recode.net.

How to Solve Tech’s Diversity Problem? Code Speakers, Attendees Weigh In. (Video)

2019-03-06T04:56:12-05:00

Here at the Code Conference, we asked a handful of speakers and attendees to explain how they think the tech industry can address its diversity challenges.

Mary Meeker highlighted the challenge of unconscious bias; Simeon Simeonov discussed how growing up under communism affected gender expectations; and Apple’s Jeff Williams described some of the company’s feeder programs, including its $100 million donation to President Obama’s ConnectED.

See more in the video above.

This article originally appeared on Recode.net.

Wand Aims to Add Magic Touch to Digital Sharing

2019-03-06T04:56:08-05:00

You’ve heard the lecture: If you want to keep digital passwords secure, don’t share them with anyone else.

But real life doesn’t always work that way.

Guests stay in your home and they need access to your Wi-Fi network, so you share the password. Spouses type in your credentials to log into your Pandora One account. Grandparents get your Dropcam password so they can peek in on their favorite new grandchild.

And you never bother to change the password later on.

But at Re/code’s Code Conference, a company called Wand has introduced a mobile app that has a unique solution to that problem — letting people give, or “wand,” account access to someone else without having to share or reveal passwords.

Another element of convenience: Anyone granted access to an account through Wand doesn’t need to have that particular app downloaded first.

“Wand is chat that does stuff,” said Vishal Sharma, founder and CEO of Wand labs. “We call it actionable messaging.”

Wand works for short-time sharing (I wand you my home Wi-Fi password while you’re visiting me for the weekend and it expires Monday) and indefinite account sharing (I wand you my Twitter credentials forever, unless I choose to revoke your access). It also lets people access physical devices, like Sonos music players and Nest thermostats.

Sharma demonstrated this technology, which he describes as semantic linking, onstage today at Code. His previous work at Google, on Google Now and a variety of other projects, gave him experience in machine learning and helped him amass his current team, made up mostly of ex-Googlers.

Sharma’s examples included sending an Uber ride to a friend under his own account and sharing home Wi-Fi credentials with an out-of-town visitor.

Since most people are used to working in app silos — someone starts chatting with you using the Facebook Messenger app and you respond on your own Facebook Messenger app — the way Wand works feels a little foreign. For example, instead of downloading the Spotify app to listen to a song shared from someone’s account, everything you need to hear the song is encapsulated in Wand.

Of course, both people in this transaction scenario need to have the Wand app downloaded. Initially, it will work on iOS and Android operating systems, accessing more than 35 services and devices.

But what about app developers? If Wand takes off, won’t they be irked to discover that people are no longer downloading and using their apps?

These services — which include Spotify, Amazon, Rdio, Gmail, Instagram, Uber and Yelp — will still be used on the back end, which Wand’s CEO thinks will make them happy.

“It’s not creating a whole new app for these companies,” Sharma said. “It’s a link to their service. We think of it as a new platform, just like a new mobile operating system or a new browser.”

This article originally appeared on Recode.net.

Nexar Uses iPhones to Capture Road Rage and Flag Bad Drivers (Video)

2019-03-06T05:23:23-05:00

When you get cut off by a reckless driver, what’s your best recourse? A beep of the horn, flash of the high beams or flick of the middle finger might offer fleeting satisfaction. But that nut job of a driver is still on the road.

Nexar wants to change that by giving people the power to slap a digital scarlet letter on hazardous drivers. The Israeli company launched its same-name app into public beta at the Code Conference today.

As you drive around, Nexar runs on your iPhone, which has to be propped up on your car’s dashboard. The idea is that the phone’s rear-facing camera has a clear view of the street and cars ahead. If any kind of incident occurs — like cars speeding past, someone cutting you off or anything that causes you to suddenly slam on the brakes — a Nexar prompt automatically appears on the phone screen.

For now, these app alerts are mostly visual with a subtle audio cue, but the company will continue to explore alerts that use more audio and gestures.

If you tap your screen to give the okay, the Nexar app will automatically capture footage from 20 seconds before the incident and 10 seconds after (when you start driving, the app detects your car movement and turns on to start recording unless you say otherwise). That footage is then sent to Nexar to compile in a database.

Along with footage of the incident, Nexar simultaneously captures the license plate number of the at-fault car; the app “sees” this plate number using machine vision. Eventually, Nexar plans to start flashing the license plate numbers of repeat offenders in red across the bottom of your app screen as you drive around.

“This is an outrageous invasion of the privacy of bad drivers,” Re/code’s Walt Mossberg said (after colleague Katie Boehret noted his questionable driving).

If someone is designated as a “bad driver” and they’re using the app, they’ll receive an alert that another user has called them out. But Nexar CEO Eran Shir has said that the company can’t download your driving history data because it’s yours and only visible to you; Nexar simply extracts data from it to use in its catalog.

Another obvious concern is whether using the app will cause more distraction while driving. In a pre-interview, Shir said that he focused on that issue when he created the company.

“I don’t want your attention,” Shir said. “I want your attention on the road.” He described Nexar’s user interface as the most important part of the app, and said that wherever your finger lands on your phone screen, that’s where the app interface — a dial with just a few icons for reporting an event — appears.

“We want the UI to be dynamic so it can adapt to you, rather than the other way around,” Shir said.

Nexar is different than typical GPS-reliant apps like Waze, the Google-owned navigation app that crowdsources driving data to show alerts for things like accidents and speed traps. GPS hogs your smartphone’s battery; Nexar takes into account sensors like your phone’s gyroscope, accelerometer and compass and from that, interprets location data and other information. According to Shir, this method reduces the amount of time and frequency that the app needs GPS.

The CEO added that Nexar wasn’t possible three years ago because phones weren’t powerful enough to offer robust machine vision and sensor fusion. Now, he says, on-device deep learning is a reality.

Nexar is free to download and use. It’s launching first in Los Angeles, as well as Tel Aviv, where the company is based. It’s also only available on iOS to start. Nexar has no immediate plans to expand to Android, though Shir says this will come after the company proves its value.

This article originally appeared on Recode.net.

ResearchKit, Apple’s Medical Data Experiment, Explained

2019-03-06T04:55:39-05:00

If an Apple product is released and hundreds of people aren’t lined up outside the Apple Store to buy it, is it still an Apple product?

Yes. Yes, it is. The product I have in mind has been downloaded from the App Store and used by over 65,000 people in two months, and the results could impact us over several lifetimes.

I’m talking about ResearchKit, which is Apple’s way of letting people use their iOS devices and apps to join medical studies and send data to researchers.

In this column, I answer some questions about ResearchKit and how its various apps work for doctors and patients. Not every app requires that you have the specified disease or condition to use it, which might just prompt the do-gooder in you to open it instead of playing your 11th round of Candy Crush. In my case, even though I don’t suffer from Parkinson’s or cardiovascular disease, I was still able to contribute data to these apps.

How does ResearchKit work?

ResearchKit was announced and launched at an Apple event on March 9. To kick things off, five free ResearchKit apps were added to Apple’s App Store. Each focuses on a different disease: diabetes, asthma, breast cancer, Parkinson’s disease and cardiovascular disease.

These apps can be downloaded on an iPhone 5, 5s, 6, 6 Plus or the latest-generation iPod touch. With your consent, they pull data from Apple’s Health app, which was loaded onto your device in an iOS update last September. If you have an Apple Watch, activity data from it can also be sent to these apps.

Though there are currently only five apps that fall under the ResearchKit umbrella, they’ve already changed the way doctors get research data and how often patients provide it. For example, one doctor told me that a traditional study would take a couple of years to get 500 to 1,000 participants, while his Asthma Health app in ResearchKit got more than 3,500 people within 72 hours of the ResearchKit launch.

Who are the doctors and researchers behind these studies?

Eight different organizations are tied to these five ResearchKit apps. They include big names you’ve probably heard of or read about, like the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute for the Share the Journey breast cancer app, Mount Sinai for the Asthma Health app and Stanford for the MyHeart Counts app.

What can I expect in the way of privacy if I use these ResearchKit apps?

Naturally, some people might be weirded out by the thought of sharing their health data with Apple, but Apple says it never sees this information. Instead, the ResearchKit framework was designed so that data gets encrypted, then goes directly to the researchers who are conducting the studies. Also, your name is replaced by a random code, so the data isn’t tied to you.

Details about how this information is shared can be found in the e-consent forms you read and sign before joining a study. (You sign a digital, on-screen form with your finger.)

In the apps I tried, I was able to choose between sharing my data only with the medical institution conducting the study and its partners, or sharing my data with that medical institution and qualified researchers worldwide. I could also opt out of sharing certain information, like my name. Your consent form automatically gets emailed to you for your records.

Also, reopening a closed app required me to use my iPhone’s touch ID for access, which I found to be a privacy bonus.

What’s required of me once I start using the apps?

I downloaded all five of the current apps within ResearchKit, and discovered that different studies track different data. For example, one might be based on a survey, without any need to access your activity data. Another might ask for details about what medications you take and how often you take them. Or certain apps may require that you perform specific in-app activities each day, like walking for 20 steps, or saying “ahhh” into your phone’s microphone. (This voice test was for the Parkinson mPower app, which measures your voice’s variations and trends over time, and may reflect variations and trends in Parkinson’s symptoms.)

I found that I could skip certain questions I wasn’t comfortable answering — or simply couldn’t answer. The Parkinson mPower app, for example, is open to people with and without Parkinson’s disease, so I could use it. But when it asked in what year I was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease, I had to skip the question.

App home screens are broken into four categories — Activities, Dashboard, Learn and Profile — and are represented by icons at the bottom of the screen. In the case of the Parkinson mPower app, my activities included tapping the screen for 30 seconds with two fingers three times a day, and walking 20 steps with my phone in my pocket or bag to measure my gait and balance. The MyHeart Counts activities consisted of several survey questions about my behavior, like, “In the last 24 hours, how often did you have your phone or wearable device with you?”

How easy is it to fool these apps?

The MyHeart Counts app only asked me three questions (if I was over 18 years old, if I lived in the United States and if I could read and understand English) to determine my eligibility.

But the Asthma Health app asked five questions and determined that I wasn’t qualified to participate (I answered that, yes, I am pregnant; and no, I wasn’t currently taking any medicines). Instead of getting locked out of the app, I discovered that I could simply go back one screen and change my answers to proceed.

I spoke with several doctors who said that most people who are participating in these studies to trick the system won’t likely keep up with the app on a daily basis. Even if they do, the doctors said that they have enough data that a handful of outliers won’t have a huge impact on their studies.

And they correctly pointed out that people can lie on traditional paper surveys and in-person research studies, too.

Do these apps only work on Apple devices?

In April, Apple open-sourced its code for ResearchKit apps (developer details can be found here). This means that developers for other platforms — like Android — can create their own smartphone apps for ResearchKit. This gives researchers access to even more people, and more data.

ResearchKit might not have the hip cachet of a product like the Apple Watch, but it’s a major advancement from those flyers in the doctor’s office that had tear-off phone numbers soliciting participants for research. Its impact on the medical community will only grow over time as more people start to understand how it works and what it does.

This article originally appeared on Recode.net.

Three Dropcam Alternatives Improve on Sorting Footage

2019-03-06T04:55:21-05:00

When it comes to consumer-friendly home-monitoring cameras, Dropcam reigns supreme. This $199 camera is the number one seller in its category at Home Depot and Amazon, and people like its straightforward design that’s easy to set up out of the box. And it’s now part of Nest, the Google-owned company that made a name for itself with a tech-savvy thermostat and smoke and carbon monoxide detector.

But Dropcam footage can be cumbersome to review. No one wants to take the time to sift through hours of dull home monitoring video clips of things like a view of the front steps. And activity alerts that automatically ping users when movement is detected can be so redundant and overwhelming that some simply ignore them or turn them off.

This week, I took a close look at three potential Dropcam rivals that are trying to do a better job of organizing your footage: Camio, Flir FX and Simplicam.

Unfortunately, I ran into a few testing troubles. When a firmware update for the Flir FX failed to download, my camera stopped working. And Simplicam had trouble receiving power from its wall and computer cables, which prevented me from using it. So I focused on Camio.

In both instances, the companies said these were unusual glitches, but I can’t say with certainty that you won’t experience the same issues.

The software-only approach

Camio doesn’t make its own camera; rather, it focuses on being a free software service that works with your existing cameras, including Dropcam (compatibility was added last month), the webcams on laptops or desktops, and the cameras built into phones and tablets.

I like the concept here. Rather than dropping $200 on a new camera, I can download Camio and use an old smartphone or tablet that’s otherwise gathering dust — and I have lots of those lying around. Camio comes with free 30-day cloud video storage, and makes money by charging people for adding cameras to an account ($9 per camera per month). You’re only charged if those additional cameras record at the same time as your original camera.

Camio has a lot of smarts. It learns your footage-watching behavior to understand what you do or don’t want to record. Every time you play, share, delete or pin a video clip, you’re automatically training Camio. At the end of each day, it embeds what it considers to be your four top video clips in a Camio Daily email, saving you from watching footage. And you can search your Camio footage using plain language, like “foot” or “blue shirt.”

You can also manually train Camio by clicking a star beside events in the Feed section of the Camio website. And you can tell the service to only alert you about movement in certain zones that you designate — like if there’s activity near your doorbell or mailbox.

Dropcam lets people customize Activity Zones, too, but only if they’re paying for the Dropcam cloud recording service, which costs between $100 and $300 a year, depending on how long you want to save footage.

But repurposing computers and mobile devices as Camio cameras posed a few problems I didn’t expect. Phones and tablets don’t have a built-in mounting system or stand like single-purpose cameras, so I had to use tape and a few books to get them positioned correctly for recording. I also had to plug in these devices, and some didn’t have long power cords like a Dropcam does. Also, if you use a computer’s webcam, the PC’s power-saving mode must be turned off so it won’t shut down.

Finally, I was surprised when my Camio-enabled iPad and iPhone repeatedly made the shutter-capture sound. This irritating noise can be shut off if you turn off the device’s sound altogether. Camio co-founder and CEO Carter Maslan explained that this was an iOS issue that the company will fix in an app update within the next month. It doesn’t happen on Android or when you use a computer webcam.

Pay-to-play cloud storage services

Flir FX and Simplicam use their own methods for trying to simplify and enhance your video-footage viewing experiences. But both only make these features available for customers who pay the companies for cloud recording services.

Flir FX costs $200 or $250 for a camera with weatherproof housing that you can set up outdoors — something a lot of home-monitoring cameras can’t do. Its unique way of summarizing lots of footage into a fast, one-screen glimpse is called RapidRecap. This shows you one video with each moving object or person as they appear, time-stamped for when each one showed up throughout the day.

Three tiers of Flir’s cloud service range from free to a $20-a-month option. Only three RapidRecaps come with the free account.

Though my Flir FX camera had technical troubles, the examples of RapidRecap that I saw looked good, summarizing a lot of activity in one quick snippet. Tapping on any of the moving objects showed close-up views of that thing and its movements.

Simplicam costs $150 by itself, or $200 with a year’s worth of one-day recording services. Simplicam uses Facial Recognition to identify people when they appear in the footage. Events captured on the Simplicam can be sorted by motion, sound or face, and the app can be trained to ignore certain people while alerting you about others.

I really like Camio’s software-based approach to video monitoring, but sometimes a standalone camera just works better than a repurposed device with a built-in webcam. Camio’s new relationship with Dropcam could really soup up Dropcam’s meh existing software, so if you own a Dropcam, I suggest marrying the two by following the instructions here.

This article originally appeared on Recode.net.