Dropbox’s Showcase presentation tools are faster and more flexible

Since going public earlier this year, Dropbox has been steadily rolling out new features to its all-important business customers. Earlier this month, the company’s Smart Sync feature had a wide release after several years of testing, and today Dropbox is announcing an expansion of the visual “Showcase” portfolio-sharing tools it introduced last fall. If you haven’t seen it, Showcases are meant to be a more distinctive way to share a group of files; instead of just providing links to folders, Showcases feature large images and headers alongside rich previews of the files contained inside.

Dropbox originally rolled out Showcases as part of a $20/month “professional” tier aimed at individual proprietors and small business, but as of today they’re available to the company’s Business Advanced and Business Enterprise customers. As the names imply, these are typically pretty massive corporations, but Dropbox’s Vinod Valloppillil (group project manager for premium products) said that he imagines big companies will use Showcases the same way individuals do.

“One thing we’ve seen Showcases used for in a large company is any situation where you want your content and presentation to look very professional while still having lots of control over it,” Valloppillil said. Since Showcases technically share files in the same fashion as the rest of Dropbox, you can make things read only or revoke access, and the company is adding some new control features today as well. Specifically, admins can decide whether Showcases can be shared externally or not, or whether the files can be downloaded or view-only. But when downloads are allowed, there’s a “download all” button so users can grab all the shared files in one go.

Based on user feedback during the testing period, Dropbox is also adding a handful of new features for Showcase creation. For starters, users can add multiple text headers to better organize their content. “When we started, most use cases involved three or four bits of content,” Valloppillil said, “but as Showcases grow to dozens of bits of content, there’s need for more narrative control.” Dropbox is also making it easier to add things to a Showcase even if the files are stored elsewhere — you can just drag and drop right into the web interface, and files will get uploaded to your Dropbox and added to the Showcase at the same time.

Another set of changes come from users asking Dropbox for tools to make Showcase creation faster. “Something that surprised us was that a bunch of people use Showcases in a high volume environment,” Valloppillil said, “so we’re making it easier to create and distribute to multiple audiences.” A new cloning tool takes an existing Showcase and makes a new copy, so you can share it with a different audience or use it as a template for a new document. This follows a feature added a few months ago that let users create a library of logos and headers to pull from when creating new Showcases in an effort to streamline the process of building the document.

Finally, Dropbox has improved the Showcase preview process — creators can see how their documents will look on the recipient’s end before sharing, and it includes mobile previews as well. The idea here is simply to make sure things look the way that the creator wants, regardless of what device they view on and whether they’re logged into Dropbox or not.

All these features are available as of today for Dropbox Showcase users — that includes the existing Dropbox Professional subscribers as well as the new Business user support that will begin rolling out now.

Target’s Drive Up service is now available at 270 stores

Last year, Target began piloting a new service called Drive Up that lets customers order what they need from the Target app, pick up their purchases at a Target store and have it delivered right to their car. Now, Target has announced that the service is available in nearly 270 stores throughout the south and southeast.

A number of stores in Texas and Florida now offer the service as do select stores in Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, Oklahoma and South Carolina. To use it, just be sure to select Drive Up as the fulfillment option when ordering through Target’s app. You’ll then be notified when your order is ready for pickup — Target gives a two-hour timeframe, but orders are often ready sooner than that. Tap the “I’m on my way” button when you head to the store and you can share your location so the team knows when to expect you or if you’d prefer not to do that, you can share your location status manually. TechCrunch notes that your location isn’t tracked once your order is complete.

Once you arrive at the store, you’ll park in the designated Drive Up spots and an employee will bring out your order within two minutes. They’ll scan a barcode on your Target app to confirm your identity. Then you just have to provide a signature and you’re on your way.

This is one of a few ways Target is stepping up to compete with rivals Walmart and Amazon. Yesterday, the company announced that it was introducing same-day delivery to stores in five major US cities. Today, it said that its Prime Pantry-like Restock service will hit more than two dozen markets next month while Drive Up should be available in 1,000 stores by the end of the year.

Via: TechCrunch

Source: Target

NASA may extend ISS stays following crew vehicle delays

SpaceX and Boeing are both contracted to develop vehicles to carry US astronauts to and from low Earth orbit, a capability we’ve lacked since the retirement of the Space Shuttle fleet in 2011. However, these efforts have been plagued by constant delays, which has required NASA to get creative in figuring out how to continue normal space operations without an operational crew vehicle. Robert Lightfoot, the acting administrator of NASA, has suggested a new option: longer stays on the ISS for US astronauts.

Speaking in front of the commerce, justice and science subcommittee of the House Appropriations Committee, Lightfoot said, “One thing we have is a great relationship with our Russians partners, and we’re looking at other alternatives about potentially extending mission duration for the current missions that are there so that we don’t gap the ability to get there.”

The problem right now is that the US has Russian Soyuz seats through the fall of 2019. It’s possible that commercial crew flights may not become operational (out of the testing phase) until early 2020. That would leave a gap in the US’s ability to send and retrieve astronauts from the ISS. The first commercial crew test flights are scheduled to happen later this year, though those will be uncrewed, according to Lightfoot. That means that the crewed tests will likely be delayed until next year.

NASA has modified its agreement with Boeing to operationalize the first test flight of the Starliner vehicle, adding a third crewmember and having a flight duration as long as six months. This is another method of trying to work around the commercial crew delays that NASA is facing. It’s clear that the agency is being as creative as possible in order to ensure that crewed space operations continue as normally as they can in the face of one challenge after another.

Via: Space News

Source: House Appropriations Committee

Facebook begins fact-checking news stories in India

Facebook announced this week that it has begun piloting a fact-checking program in India, it’s largest market. Boom, which is certified through the International Fact-Checking Network, will review English language stories flagged on Facebook and provide accuracy ratings after checking the stories’ facts. The pilot will first roll out in the Indian state of Karnataka where an important election is scheduled to take place in May.

Following the 2016 US presidential election, Facebook came under fire for not doing enough to stop the spread of fake news on its platform. It has since introduced a number of features aimed at stemming the spread of misinformation — fact-checking being one of them. As in other markets where Facebook already utilizes fact-checkers, stories found by Boom to be inaccurate, will be pushed further down in News Feed. Facebook says it has been able to reduce the distribution of false stories by 80 percent. Additionally, Pages that repeatedly spread false news stories will also see their distribution reduced and will lose the ability to advertise or make money off of ads.

Facebook has said elections are a major priority for the company — Mark Zuckerberg reiterated this point numerous times during his Congressional hearings last week. It made concerted efforts to prevent the spread of misinformation and remove fake accounts ahead of major German and French elections last year. Along with a number of state elections taking place this year, India is gearing up for a national election in 2019.

Alongside its fact-checking efforts, Facebook will also continue to show articles debunking false stories in the Related Articles connected to the original and anyone or any Page that shares a story found to be rife with misinformation will get a notification that they’ve done so.

Boom told BuzzFeed News that it would be hiring two additional people to focus on Karnataka-related stories.

Via: BuzzFeed News

Source: Facebook

CRTL-Labs’ EEG wristbands may spell the end for keyboards and mice

From the earliest days of punch cards, interacting with computers has always been a pain. Whether it’s a keyboard and mouse, joystick or controller, getting the thoughts out of our heads and into the machine requires numerous, unintuitive processes. But until we start implanting USB ports into our brains and downloading our thoughts directly, we’ll have to make do with the neural signal-detecting wristbands being developed by CTRL-Labs.

“When your brain wants to go and effect something in these virtual spaces, your brain has to send a signal to your muscle, which has to move your hand, which has to move the device, which has to get picked up by the system, and turned into some sort of action there,” Mike Astolfi, head of interactive experiences at CTRL-Labs, explained to Engadget. “And we think we can remove not only the mouse or the controller from that equation, but also, almost your hand from the equation.”

The as-of-yet-unnamed device is essentially an EEG wristband. It senses the changes of electrical potential in the user’s arm muscles, “the signal that your motor neurons are sending … the impulses that it’s gonna send into the muscles in your arm that’ll pull on the tendons that connect to your fingers,” Astolfi said. This information is then fed back into a machine learning algorithm which enables the system to reconstruct what the hand is doing, whether it’s typing, swiping or gesturing.

Measuring the electrical impulses through your arm, rather than your scalp as traditional EEGs do, helps increase signal fidelity. “When you put electrodes on the head, you deal with all the other electrical signals that your brain is putting out. Static from consciousness and seeing, and getting sensations back from the body,” Astolfi explained. “When you go down lower to an area like the arm, your body has already done all of the filtering for you.” That is, the signals travelling through the arm are those signifying an intentional action, “so it actually gives a lot cleaner signal, and then a lot larger density of signal as we start to drill down into finer grain detecting of the neuron spikes.”

A visualization of what the wristbands “see” as the user’s hands gesture – image: CTRL-Labs

With a cleaner signal, the system doesn’t have to work as hard to interpret the user’s intentions, which in turn helps lower the learning curve needed to acclimate to using it. “You can learn how to do this in 30 seconds to a minute,” Astolfi said. Take virtual reality for instance. Most current VR systems (Leap Motion notwithstanding) still rely on handheld controllers to replicate the user’s hands in the virtual space. What’s more, these controllers only offer between 3 and 6 degrees of freedom, compared to the human hand’s 48.

In a VR application, “we’re working toward the ability for users to be able to walk up, put the band on, not have to do any training, and be able to roll right away,” Astolfi said. “They can start using it using sort of a generalized model.”

The wristband would enable users to leverage their hands as in-game controllers as well. “We have the ability to let the user actually customize the signal that they’re sending into the device,” he continued. “We call it adaptive learning. The idea would be that the device would learn whatever gesture the user’s doing, and use that to control something inside of the game.”

For example, one of CRTL-Labs earliest demos leverages your hands to aim and fire digital projectiles at a virtual target. “You can do whatever you want with your arm to generate that,” he said. “As long as you’re consistent, then the system will learn that.” Since the algorithm learns from scratch, the user is able to program any movement or gesture that suits their needs or capabilities.

Such a system could prove a boon for users with dexterity or mobility issues since, once the algorithm figures out which muscle signals translate into which onscreen actions, there’s no need to hold a controller or even make noticeable hand or arm movements. During a 2017 demo for Wired, the team showed off the ability to type on a virtual keyboard while barely moving their fingers and play an Asteroids clone without taking their palms off of the tabletop.

“Because we’re actually looking at the muscle signals and not tracking that actual finger movement, you can start to abstract away from actually needing to move your fingers,” he explained. “So, depending on what you train into the system, you might be able to train a little muscle twitch, or actually just the initial motor neuron spike, without actually resulting in any physical movement of the finger.”

This system could eventually lead to more responsive prosthetics as well, however, initially the company is focusing on three specific applications for the wristband: VR gaming, navigating 3D environments such as immersive AutoCAD or Autodesk models, and robotics.

“We see it as being a really good analog for use with robotics,” Astolfi said. “So anything where you want to guide the movement of a real-world object, being able to use your arms sort of guide that and having a meaningful manipulator on the end, your actual hand or, really, the signals that are driving that hand, can make that easier.”

Unfortunately, the company does not yet have a set date to release the wristband, though it does hope to begin releasing its dev kit sometime next year. Whenever the technology does come of age, “we think that this has the potential to really become the dominant way that you interact with computers in the future,” Astolfi concluded. “We think this is gonna be such a big leap forward in the way that you interact with machines that people will eventually stop learning how to type.”

‘Mass Effect’ failings forced BioWare to reevaluate how it makes games

Developer BioWare is in a much different place today compared to where it was when producer Casey Hudson left. Sure, the studio cancelled its multiplayer game Shadow Realms, but no one knew much about it so it wasn’t a huge blow in terms of public perception. As far as we knew, Mass Effect: Andromeda was still on track to be the awesome space-opera RPG fans had been waiting for since 2012 and everything was on the up and up. Now, of course, we know that wasn’t the case. In a post on the BioWare blog, Hudson apologized for how that game turned out. Specifically, the scuttling of DLC that’d wrap up Andromeda’s Quarian ark storyline.

“That experience ultimately became a defining moment in refocusing BioWare’s mission,” Hudson writes. “We need to delight players with new experiences and innovation, but we must stay focused on the importance of the world, character and storytelling elements that players expect from our games.”

He goes on to say that the studio’s work must “continue delivering new stories and experiences” to players in an “ongoing relationship” in the worlds BioWare is creating. And speaking of which, Hudson says that its upcoming online shooter Anthem will do precisely that.

We haven’t seen or heard much about Anthem since E3 last year, but with 2018’s show mere months away, that’ll almost assuredly change soon. With extra development time, hopefully BioWare can stick the landing.

Source: BioWare

FCC Commissioner Mignon Clyburn is stepping down

FCC Commissioner Mignon Clyburn has announced that she will be stepping down from the commission following a tenure that featured a strong advocacy of net neutrality. Commissioner Clyburn shared her plans to leave the commission during an FCC meeting today. Appointed to the commission in 2009 by Barack Obama, she also held the position of Acting Chairwoman in 2013 prior to Tom Wheeler’s appointment as Chair.

Not only did Commissioner Clyburn support and help author the net neutrality regulations put in place in 2015, she was also vocally against their repeal last year saying during the FCC vote, “I dissent. I dissent from this fiercely-spun, legally-lightweight, consumer-harming, corporate-enabling Destroying Internet Freedom Order.” During a conversation with us at CES this year, she did express hope that we haven’t seen the end of net neutrality just yet. “I am an eternal optimist that the people’s voices and opinions will reign supreme,” she said, “and I’m looking forward to that day.”

During her statement today, Clyburn said, “It’s been the most incredible opportunity for me. In my wildest dreams, if I could have crafted my destiny, I never would have dreamed of this.” She added, “I’ve done my very best and met the most incredible people on the planet in this building. I’ve had the opportunity to make a difference to people who did not believe government was here to serve. So I want to thank all of you for making that possible and more. I want to thank all of your for raising and nurturing me and honestly, some of the lessons I could have done without, but most of them really, really helped me to be the person I’ve become.” She received a standing ovation after her announcement.

Commissioner Rosenworcel said in reply, “You do it in style. I want to say goodbye to a real dynamo at the FCC. Someone who has been my partner in the public interests. Someone I am proud to call a colleague and a friend. And I want you to know that the things you care about, the fights you fought, and the legacy you leave, I consider it a duty of all of us to make sure it stays intact. So thank you.”

Gigi Sohn, co-founder of Public Knowledge and a counselor to former FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler, expressed her support of Clyburn’s work during her time at the FCC. “Mignon Clyburn will go down in history as one of the best FCC Commissioners of all time. For nearly 9 years, she has been a vocal and passionate advocate for the public interest and defender of the most vulnerable in our society,” Sohn said in a statement. “She has traveled the country, listening to ordinary Americans and using their stories to help shape policies that ensure universal access to affordable and open communications networks. From Lifeline to prison phone reform to media ownership and net neutrality, Commissioner Clyburn has been a leader and a model for future leaders of the agency. She will be sorely missed at the FCC, but will continue fighting for the ability of all Americans to benefit from everything broadcasting, cable and broadband enables.”

Chairman Ajit Pai said in a tweet, “You leave behind a rich legacy and many friends. Godspeed and thank you for your public service.” He said during the meeting, “You led with distinction and served with honor.”

Congratulations to @MClyburnFCC on your distinguished tenure at the @FCC, including serving as 1st woman to lead the agency! You leave behind a rich legacy and many friends. Godspeed and thank you for your public service.

— Ajit Pai (@AjitPaiFCC) April 17, 2018

Clyburn noted that she hadn’t informed her parents that she would be stepping down today. “I forgot to tell my mom I was doing this so I’m in a lot of trouble,” she said.

Apple Seeds Second Beta of macOS High Sierra 10.13.5 to Developers

Apple today seeded the second beta of an upcoming macOS High Sierra 10.13.5 update to developers, two weeks after seeding the first beta and three weeks after releasing the macOS High Sierra 10.13.4 update.

The new macOS High Sierra 10.13.5 beta can be downloaded through Apple Developer Center or the Software Update mechanism in the Mac App Store with the proper profile installed.

macOS High Sierra 10.13.5 introduces support for Messages on iCloud, a feature that was previously present in macOS High Sierra 10.13.4 betas before being pulled ahead of the release of the update. Messages on iCloud is also available in iOS 11.4.

The update also likely includes bug fixes and performance improvements for issues that weren’t addressed in macOS High Sierra 10.13.4, but as Apple does not provide detailed release notes for macOS High Sierra updates, we may not know exactly what’s included until the new software is provided to the public.

No major outward-facing changes were found in the first beta of macOS High Sierra 10.13.5, but we’ll update this post should any new features be found in the second.

The previous macOS High Sierra 10.13.4 update brought support for external graphics processors (eGPUs) along with Business Chat in Messages and several other bug fixes and smaller feature improvements.

Related Roundup: macOS High Sierra
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Apple Seeds Second Public Beta of tvOS 11.4 for Public Beta Testers

Apple today seeded the second beta of an upcoming tvOS 11.4 update to its public beta testing group, two weeks after seeding the first beta and three weeks after releasing tvOS 11.3, a minor update that introduced a few smaller features.

The tvOS 11.4 public beta can be obtained by going to the Settings app on the Apple TV and navigating to the Software Updates section under “System.” “Get Public Beta Updates” will need to be toggled on, and once it is, the Apple TV will download the beta software.

tvOS 11.4 and iOS 11.4 reintroduce AirPlay 2 features that were included in early iOS 11.3 and tvOS 11.3 betas but were pulled from the update ahead of its release.

AirPlay 2 is designed to let you play the same audio content on multiple devices throughout your home, full a whole-home audio experience. AirPlay 2 works with the Apple TV, the HomePod, and it will work with future speakers that implement AirPlay 2 support.

Following the installation of iOS 11.4 and tvOS 11.4, the Apple TV will once again be listed in the Home app, as it was when AirPlay 2 features were available in iOS and tvOS 11.3 betas.

No other major feature changes were discovered in the first two tvOS 11.4 betas that were provided to developers.

Related Roundup: Apple TVBuyer’s Guide: Apple TV (Neutral)
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Apple Releases Second Beta of iOS 11.4 for Public Beta Testers

Apple today seeded the second beta of an upcoming iOS 11.4 update to its public beta testing group, two weeks after seeding the first beta and three weeks after releasing iOS 11.3, the last major update to the iOS 11 operating system. Today’s public beta is identical to the developer beta that was provided to developers earlier this week.

Beta testers who are members of Apple’s beta testing program will receive the iOS 11.4 beta update over-the-air after installing the proper certificate on an iOS device.

Those who want to join the beta testing program can sign up on Apple’s beta testing website, which gives users access to iOS, macOS, and tvOS betas. iOS betas are not always stable and should not be installed on a primary device.

The iOS 11.4 beta is much like the iOS 11.3 beta because several key features that were removed from iOS 11.3 ahead of its release have been reintroduced in iOS 11.4.

The update includes support for AirPlay 2 features, allowing you to play the same song on multiple devices and adding the Apple TV and speakers connected to AirPort Express to the Home app.

iOS 11.4 also reintroduces Messages on iCloud. Messages on iCloud was present throughout the iOS 11.3 beta testing period, but it did not make it into release. With Messages on iCloud, your iMessages are stored in iCloud rather than on each individual device, allowing for improved syncing capabilities. Currently, incoming iMessages are sent to all devices where you’re signed in to your Apple ID, but there is no true cross-device syncing.

Messages on iCloud will allow you to download all of your iMessages on new devices, and a message deleted on one device will remove it on all devices. Older messages and attachments are also stored in iCloud rather than on-device, saving valuable storage space.

The most recent beta introduces new (PRODUCT)RED wallpaper on the iPhone 8 and 8 Plus and it removes mentions of stereo sound on the HomePod that were present in the first beta.

Related Roundup: iOS 11
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