Leak: Samsung’s next Gear VR works with your old phone
The Galaxy Note 7 isn’t likely to be the only treat at Samsung’s August 2nd media event… and you may well be happy even if you have no intention of buying a new smartphone. Well-known tipster OnLeaks and French tech site Nowhereelse claim to have both a photo and details of the next Gear VR headset, and it’s all good news if true. While the virtual reality gear will reportedly support the Note 7, which should have a USB-C port, it should still support Samsung flagship phones as far back as the Galaxy S6. And it could be a more immersive experience, too — the new Gear supposedly has a wider 110-degree view versus the 96 degrees of its predecessor, so it’ll feel less like you’re staring through a porthole.
There’s no mention of pricing in the leak, although the sources hint that the new wearable might arrive in August (ahead of the Note 7 itself, which may wait until September). Last year’s Gear VR sold for $99, mind you, and it wouldn’t be out of line for this version to remain similarly affordable.
Via: 9to5Google
Source: OnLeaks (Twitter), Nowhereelse (translated)
The Axon 7 finally fulfills ZTE’s ‘affordable premium’ promise
Over the years, smartphones have either been high end and expensive, or dirt cheap and shoddy. But, two years ago, the industry shifted and midrange phones that had great specs for lower prices started to fill the gap. ZTE has long been a proponent of what it calls the “affordable premium” device, and has thrown out middling handset after middling handset that met only the “affordable” part of that promise.
Last year, the Chinese company debuted its Axon line, which was stuffed full of features to fulfill the premium promise. But the Axon Pro fell short, with an oddly hollow metal body, glitchy software and short battery life. It was also more expensive than last year’s OnePlus. This year’s Axon 7, however, is shaping up to be a far better contender, with the same $399 price as the OnePlus 3 and offering a higher-res screen, sharper camera and more premium design.
The Axon 7’s design is the result of a team up between ZTE and BMW DesignWorks, and it’s a definite improvement over its predecessor. My gold review unit has a smooth matte finish on its metal body that helps it reject fingerprints and is accented by eye-catching glossy chrome edges that are also around the camera and recessed fingerprint sensor. It looks and feels gorgeous in an elegant way that upstages the OnePlus 3.
Just like its predecessor, the Axon 7 has a row of dot cutouts on the top and bottom of its front face, but unlike the Pro, these grilles actually hide speakers. (The old Axon’s grilles misled a lot of people into thinking it had dual speakers, but it only had one.) Below the display are capacitive keys for Back, Home and All Apps. There’s also a dual SIM card slot on the left edge — a welcome feature for frequent travelers.
ZTE says the Axon 7 will eventually be ready for Google’s “Daydream” mobile VR platform, and its display certainly seems prepared for the task. The 5.5-inch Quad HD AMOLED screen was a great canvas for my Netflix binging and Instagram sprees, but it was unfortunately dim in sunlight. Although it doesn’t fix the lack of brightness, the Axon offers built-in software that lets you customize the display’s color output. The tool lets you pick from three saturation profiles — “Natural,” “Colorful” and “Gorgeous” — as well as “Warm,” “Normal” and “Cool” color temperatures. I set the screen to “Gorgeous” and “Normal,” which delivered higher contrast levels and deeper hues.
Complementing the screen is a HiFi audio setup. Not many smartphone makers pay attention to quality sound, but ZTE is so proud of its system that it devoted six pages out of a 33-page reviewer’s guide to it. The only other component that got as much love was the camera. For the most part, the coverage was justified.
The Axon’s dual front-facing stereo speakers pumped out distinct, clear sound that drowned out my laptop’s speakers while both devices were set to their maximum volumes. The phone’s speakers were so clear, in fact, that I could easily hear the crinkling of wrapping paper in the background of a scene over dialogue and overlapping music. The Axon was also loud enough to hear from another room. Dolby Atmos enhancements created a surround sound that is more immersive than I’ve experienced on other devices. One of the few other phones to place such a heavy emphasis on audio is the HTC 10, which lets you tailor music output to your hearing.
Continuing its quest to outdo the competition, ZTE also stuffed a 20-megapixel rear camera into the Axon 7. That sensor is sharper than what you’ll find on the iPhone 6s, Nexus 6P and Galaxy S7. The Axon 7’s camera has phase detection autofocus (PDAF), with optical and digital image stabilization that, when combined with the high megapixel count, should theoretically result in crisp pictures. However, real-world image quality was hit or miss. My shot of mosaic art at the 8th Street NYU subway station was clear enough to show individual tiles on the wall, but landscapes with buildings in them sometimes looked blurry.
The camera struggled in low light, too. Upper East Side buildings looked like grainy, dark brown, blobs in a nightscape, and the whole scene was covered with artifacts. Other phones, such as the similarly priced Alcatel Idol 4S, fared better in the same situation.
Up front, the Axon 7’s 8-megapixel front camera takes decent portraits that have accurate colors and are sharp enough to see details such as my individual eyelashes. Thankfully, the “Beautify” mode erases imperfections on your face without going overboard and making you look like a painted-over caricature. Unlike most of this year’s smartphones, though, the Axon doesn’t offer a front flash feature for low-light selfies.
Armed with the same Snapdragon 820 chip as this year’s Android flagships, the Axon 7 was impressively responsive. I relished taking down an enemy Pokémon Go gym as well as catching an oddly evasive Pidgey without any annoying lag — in both cases with a host of apps running in the background.
Even when I used AZ Screen Recorder to capture my exploits while switching between the game and a Netflix video, the Axon kept pace without missing a beat. The only app in which I encountered delay was Pokémon Go, but that appeared to be a server issue rather than the device’s performance.
You’ll be able to enjoy day-long Pokémon Go expeditions without fear of running out of juice, too. The Axon 7’s 3,250mAh battery typically lasted about a day and a half of light use, and I was surprised by the hours of “White Collar” I was able to stream (an impressive 6.5) before the low-battery alert popped up. When powered up with the included charger, the Axon 7 can get back up to 50 percent life in just 30 minutes, the company said.
Although it runs a pretty clean version of Android 6.0.1, the Axon 7 comes with some ZTE-made software changes that I was surprised to find helpful. Most interesting of these is the Power Manager that not only lets you monitor your battery consumption but also gives you the option of setting “power-saving policies” for individual apps such as disallowing autostart, scheduled background wake-up and allowing deep sleep.
A cool Mi-Pop tool adds a floating shortcut to the screen that you can place within reach of your thumb so you can access essential navigation buttons such as Back, Home and All Apps without stretching across the phone. This is a handy tool because trying to reach across the Axon’s face can cause you to drop the phone.
There’s also an intriguing “Voiceprint” function that’s supposed to let you unlock your phone with your voice, but after I excitedly went through the setup process and said my keyphrase three times for the Axon to store it, the method never worked. No matter how many times I said, “Hello there” to the phone, whether its screen was on or off and regardless of the angle at which I held it (ZTE recommends 45 degrees away from your face), I couldn’t get into my phone.
A small thing that infuriated me: Taking a screenshot doesn’t automatically save it to your phone. You’ll have to tap a checkmark below a preview of your snapshot to keep the file. What a waste of time.
Though software glitches like this exist, they’re thankfully rare, and overall the Axon 7 feels like a dependable, well-made handset. If you want a cleaner OS and can live with a less-sharp screen, the OnePlus 3 is a better bet at the same price. But those who prefer a great multimedia experience and a distinct aesthetic will find a more suitable companion in the Axon 7.
Mini review video: Our quick verdict on the Alcatel Idol 4S
Alcatel isn’t a tier-one company. And the Idol 4S, its latest creation, isn’t a tier-one phone. So why did we even bother reviewing it, then? It’s all about the value — specifically, what comes in the box. For $399 (or $350, if you pre-order), you get both the mid-range phone and a simple virtual reality headset to go with it. It’s true, this VR viewer isn’t at the same level as the Oculus Rift, HTC Vive or even the Samsung Gear VR, but it’s good enough for people who haven’t yet experienced this whole virtual reality thing and are keen to give it a try.
As for the phone itself, we enjoyed its loud, two-way speakers and bright 5.5-inch AMOLED display. Just know that because this is a mid-range phone, after all, the performance and camera won’t match any of the high-end devices we typically review. If you weren’t going to spend high-end money anyway, and are also looking to get into VR, this could be the ticket.
Host other people’s Twitch streams from your mobile device
The line between using Twitch on mobile and desktop is getting even more blurry. The live-streaming juggernaut recently announced that now, you can host another channel’s broadcast from the mobile app. Twitch writes that all you need to do is tap the gear button in the app, hit “Host” and you should be good to go. It’s available for everyone on iOS at the moment, and will be rolling out slowly for Android. Need to update? Hit the source link below if your iDevice hasn’t updated yet.
Source: iTunes
SwiftKey leaked user email addresses as text predictions
Autocorrect mistakes are supposed to be funny, but a new SwiftKey glitch turned out to be sort of alarming. For the last week, some SwiftKey users have been offered predictive text for slang they’ve never used before, words in other foreign languages and, most concerning, email addresses and phone numbers they’ve never seen.
The trouble, it seems, was with the third-party keyboard’s cloud sync service. Users were somehow receiving data from other user’s SwiftKey language models — providing them with text entry predictions intended for someone else entirely. On a surface level, the glitch sounds harmless enough, but commonly used contact information can wind up in your Swiftkey database. Users on Reddit reported finding email addresses they weren’t familiar with offered to them on login pages, and some users even received phone calls from folks who found their number through SwiftKey’s predictive text. That’s a really weird way to have your contact information leaked.
SwiftKey says that the issue only affected a small number of its customers, and has temporarily disabled its cloud sync service and removed email address predictions from its apps. The company asks users who think they may still be experiencing the problem to contact them at reviews@swiftkey.com. As for the rest of us? We’ll probably text a little more cautiously. Autocorrect errors may be a meme, but not everybody wants to be a part of the joke.
Via: Telegraph
A day with BlackBerry’s all-touch DTEK50 smartphone
BlackBerry pulled back the curtain on its new DTEK50 smartphone a few days ago, and soon after gave hungry journalists units to play with. I’m still working on my full review of BlackBerry’s $299 Hail Mary pass, but since I spent a day playing with it, here’s a peek into an evening of nutso, BlackBerry-centric thinking. Long story short, it’s all at once a perfectly adequate phone with serious security chops, a shrewd business move and a lesson in lousy marketing.
1:00PM: After a handy Q&A session, I’m given a DTEK50 of my phone to play with. First impressions: Yep, this feels like an Alcatel phone. In case you missed it the other day, the DTEK50 is based on the TCL reference design that ultimately gave us Alcatel’s (still-unreleased) Idol 4. Both share a 5.2-inch, 1080p screen, a Qualcomm Snapdragon 617 chipset, 3GB of RAM, a 13-megapixel main camera, a 2,600mAh battery and even a convenience key on the phone’s right side to which you can assign shortcuts. (Alcatel called it a “Boom” key, but BlackBerry’s naming choice was the right one.) If you’re like me, though, you’d keep trying to wake up the phone using that button, which doesn’t work unless you specifically set it to.
Oh, and there’s more. There’s no fingerprint sensor, and it only has 16GB of internal storage. (You can at least you can flesh it out with a microSD card.) The DTEK50 is startlingly light too, lacking the reassuring density of the high-end BlackBerry Priv.
I’m torn. It’s a BlackBerry in name and in functionality, but this is the first time I can remember the company leaving hardware design almost entirely up to someone else. Even the low-cost Leap we first met last year felt more substantial. There was a certain level of aesthetic pride that went into BlackBerrys, but the company’s shift in strategy has given us a phone that doesn’t feel special in the way the company’s older phones did.
2:30PM: Ran down to St. Marks to get some footage of the DTEK50 for our hands-on video. Setting up the phone was business as usual, but the phone got noticeably warm for reasons that weren’t readily apparent. At the same time, battery drain kicked into high gear for a spell, even though few apps were running at the time. Weird. My hopes for this phone start to sink a bit.
4:30PM: Hustled back to the office to give the DTEK50 a much-needed charge. Thankfully, Qualcomm’s QuickCharge 2.0 tech got the phone back on its feet within minutes and I let it regain about a half charge. I fiddled with it more in the meantime; it’s a pretty smooth little machine, and the DTEK50 seemed like a decent, slightly underpowered workhorse. It would’ve been nice to see BlackBerry choose a reference design with a beefier chipset like a Snapdragon 652, but the company wanted to keep costs down. I haven’t yet gotten a great feel for the camera but early test shots seemed in line with other devices that cost the same, and the screen’s pretty decent, to boot. Meanwhile, my boss Dana says the DTEK50’s textured back reminds her of a cat’s scratching post.
6:30PM: My latest meeting ends and I’m back at the office contemplating the DTEK50 again. BlackBerry insists that the DTEK isn’t a rebranded device — it’s a standalone smartphone with security as its biggest selling point. From security keys baked into the processor during manufacturing to the full disk encryption that’s enabled by default, It’s clear that BlackBerry’s security know-how is one of its most powerful assets.
You won’t notice much of that in practice, though. The phone’s namesake DTEK app gives you a quick look at how secure your device is and how you can lock it up even further, but that’s really all the insight you’ll get. On the plus side, though, DTEK also gives you the option to manages your apps’ permissions from inside it, which is a nice touch made possible by Android Marshmallow.
If you’ve used a Priv before, you’ll feel immediately at home with the DTEK50’s software features. As usual, you can manage your messages from the BlackBerry Hub and swipe up on app icons to see their widgets. The DTEK50 is another mostly-stock-Android affair and I’m warming up to it more because of it. It certainly doesn’t hurt that the company’s secure software approach hasn’t impeded performance; it’s as fast as the new Moto G4, but I wonder if there’s anything here regular consumers would respond to.
8:30PM: After a beer — fine, a few beers — the DTEK50 makes perfect sense. As a business move, it’s a great idea: BlackBerry gets a new device on the market without spending loads of money on product development. It’s also an appropriate follow-up from the Priv, if you think about it. BlackBerry’s first Android phone dealt with some serious scrutiny from critics and security buffs alike, and for the most part the company is pleased with how it all turned out. Now that it had a better sense of how responded to an Android-powered BlackBerry, the company was free to take that formula and apply it to a device that meant to be sold in bulk — to businesses, say, or governments. The DTEK50 is, as company spokespeople called it, a “fleet” device. If the DTEK50 finds a foothold with regular people, great! If not, so be it. As long as those corporations snap them up.
11:00PM: It’s late, I’m tired and the DTEK50 is still hanging on — 15 percent battery to go. And seriously, this thing is actually called the DTEK50? BlackBerry says it’s meant partially to evoke the numbers used by BB10 devices — the company topped out with the Z30 before switching back to proper names, so “50” was the next logical step. Still, it’s straight-up gibberish without a nuanced understanding of BlackBerry’s recent history.
I’m growing fonder of this thing, though, partially because it’s a solid little phone, but also because it’s a symbol of John Chen’s shrewdness. He’s said countless times before that BlackBerry will bail out of the hardware business if it’s not profitable, but dangit, the company just keeps trying anyway.
SMS two-factor authentication isn’t being banned
Another week gone by, and the place is in cybersecurity shambles again. A years’ old hacking issue, unencrypted wireless keyboards, being featured in an upcoming Defcon talk mystifyingly became a hot new Internet of Things threat. Obama gave us a colorful “threat level” cyber-thermometer that no one’s really sure what to do with. Ransomware is hitting hospitals like there’s a fire sale on money. And the DNC-Wikileaks email debacle exploded, splattering blame all over Russia.
Just when I thought I’d picked the wrong week to stop sniffing glue, a U.S. National Institute for Standards and Technology (NIST) report came out that included recommendations about the inherent risks in two-factor authentication, upon which the tech press basically lost their minds and told everyone to assume crash positions because the password sky was falling. Again.
What actually happened was, the NIST released the newest draft version of its Digital Authentication Guidelines. In its public preview, the agency included language that hinted at the depreciation of SMS-based Two-Factor Authentication (2FA) because, basically, phone numbers can be hijacked, and SMS can be intercepted — making the NIST impetus sensible for government employees or those dealing with sensitive medical information or state-level secrets.
But for normal people, 2FA is still going to limit the ability of an attacker to intercept or alter both your password and your SMS code. (Which is, incidentally, the point.)
Using a text message-based code is what would have prevented what happened to tech journalist and editor Mat Honan. In August 2012, a malicious hacker logged into just one of his online accounts and reset the password.
Then the attacker went to town resetting and taking over the rest of Honan’s accounts, remotely erasing (forever) everything on his iPhone, iPad and MacBook, including photos of deceased in-laws and the first year of his daughter’s life. That attacker also deleted Honan’s Google account and took over his Twitter account to post a bunch of racist and homophobic tweets under his name.
With two-factor activated, Honan would’ve gotten an SMS alerting him that someone was logging into his account. In fact, the only reason he realized something was wrong was because his iPhone prompted him for a reset code.
But neither the practical use cases for 2FA nor the emphasis on a draft recommending depreciation were what came out in this week’s mainstream news. Hardly anyone seemed to mention that NIST’s guidelines aren’t legally binding (we did!), though government agencies often follow them.
Defense Daily pointed out the obvious thing that everyone missed — this is a work in progress, directed at government. It said, “This new NIST draft was released as a public preview wherein it is considered a stable draft illustrating what the agency has learned through public comment periods, public workshops, and industry collaborations.” However, it is “neither complete nor perfect-and it’s not intended to be.” They added, “This is the point where the agency is articulating the direction it is going but seeks comments from stakeholders on what is right, wrong, and entirely missed in the guidelines.”
Headlines cried out that the freewheeling halcyon days of 2FA were soon to be forbidden fruit. CNET claimed, “SMS-based two-factor authentication will soon be banned.” Dabbing away tears, we were told, the age of 2FA is over and we should “Say Goodbye to SMS Two-Factor Authentication.”
Suddenly, news outlets and tech blogs were telling us, bizarrely, that Apple was under attack by NIST. Apple wasn’t actually targeted in the NIST document, but headlines proclaimed “U.S. to ban Apple and others from SMS two-step authentication.” Here at Engadget we came this close to making a video, our mascara running as we sobbed into the camera begging NIST to leave Apple alone!
Ultimately, the anti-2FA mob mentality out-crazied our craziness. We were simply outdone when people started telling the public that SMS authentication was now deemed “no longer safe.”
The punchline? No, I think we’ve been punched enough, thanks.
Still, there’s always room for a little insult added to injury. While CNET was telling readers that 2FA was decreed dangerous and about to be banned, government publications bothered with the details and got to the truth.
The coming two-factor apocalypse was only really coming for government agencies, and the recommendation to depreciate SMS would be for new implementations on the road ahead. “The SP-800-63 document set provides technical and procedural guidelines to agencies,” Defense Daily wrote. “The recommendation includes remote authentication of users (employees, contractors, or private individuals) interacting with government information technology (IT) systems over open networks.”
The public may be none the wiser after this week. If they’re reading Apple Insider or Sci Tech as gospel, the logical next step would appear to be quitting two-factor altogether. Or, just setting fire to your laptop and throwing it out the window.
Either way, it’s a bad message to send. As many people as possible should be adding this second step to logging in because they are not edge cases, and 2FA is actually making the general public safer.
The real problem here is, as usual, people freaking out about security issues that require more than a “hot take.” It’s a phase in our collective infosec adolescence I worry we’ll never grow out of.
Evernote’s CEO on ‘unlocking the potential of every idea’
Evernote carved out a name for itself in the startup world with its relentless focus on productivity, synchronization and mobility (it debuted on the iPhone with the App Store’s launch in 2008). Today, almost 10 years since it was founded, the company has more than 200 million users. It wasn’t an easy path to success, though: For years its customers complained about unstable apps, it suffered a major security breach in 2013 and recent pricing changes caused an uproar by removing key free features. I sat down with the company’s new CEO Chris O’Neill, who replaced longtime exec Phil Libin, to chat about where things are headed.
It’s been a year since you joined Evernote. What’s the progress been like, and where do you see the company headed?
I’m tremendously pleased. I was pretty quiet when I showed up. I was focused on the core product, the team and the path to sustainability. We’ll be relentless and continue to invest in the editing experience, search experience and other features. The team is just amazing. We’ve put in place a world-class leadership team, people who have experience navigating from startups to more mature companies.
I’ve spent over half my time building the team. Not just the leadership team, but the next level down, rounding out our technical side, building up marketing and design. Also, I’ve been articulating the values about how we’ll operate as a company, as well as being clear about why we exist as a company.
On the path to sustainability, we’ve raised a lot of money [over $200 million], we’re an early on pioneer in a very attractive area. Over 2 billion notes are taken every day. We’re seeing a surge in cloud-based acquisitions and productivity apps. But I didn’t want to raise any more money. I wanted to control our own destiny without dipping into anything beyond the cash we have in the balance sheet. We’re prioritizing monetization. We’ve had our first cash-flow positive month in March, Q3 is shaping up to be the best in the history of the company.
So, how has the response been to the new pricing?
Any time you make changes to prices, there’s going to be an uproar, true as night follows day. We saw some noise for a few days … It’s pretty much died down. In terms of the response, it’s been fantastic frankly. I’d say equally sized group of people saying “I love this product, I use it quite extensively and I’m willing and happy to pay.” Incidentally it’s the only time we’ve raised prices in the history of the company.
We have an obligation to our users to be a sustaining company that lasts forever. We call it Evernote for a reason. If we want to invest and make the service incredible, we need to make decisions on how to sustain the business model. Freemium is fantastic to build scale, but ultimately we felt it was the right move for the company to set us up for the long term … There’s social media noise, but then people vote with their feet. And we’re far, far ahead of our expectations.
We’re not being bashful about it — we’re being open. We’re being transparent and saying we have something of value. We have a free tier to the product; it’s quite generous and robust, and people who use the product extensively we’re not being shy about asking them to pay. There’s no such thing as a free lunch in life.
Are you worried about not attracting as many users if the free offering is more limited? Or is the focus now more on trying to get the people who actually use it to pay?
You need to invest across all stages of the funnel. We haven’t seen noticeable changes to our registered user count, which are hovering north of 75,000 every day … We’ll continue to invest in that, we’ll continue to invest in engagement with the product, which is in many ways the biggest challenge. That’s true for ourselves and any productivity-related app. How do you introduce someone, explain the value, it doesn’t happen right away. The benefits pay off over time. But once the people use the product, they’re generally more than happy to pay.
Evernote used to have a lot of side apps and other aspects that have been shut down over time. Were those decisions more about focusing on the core product?
At the heart it’s about being true to what the original mission of the company was, which was really to solve information overload. In our case it was to help you remember things. But in terms of the side apps, companies take risks, and there was a point where it was the game to have many apps covering lots of different use cases. And what we found was that it made sense to embed a lot of the functionality of these side apps. For example, some of functionality in Penultimate or Skitch, you’re finding a lot of those things in the actual app. They’re really valuable things that users want, as opposed to having a side thing.
“Once the people use the product, they’re generally more than happy to pay.”
There are others, like Evernote Hello or Food, those were more geared towards a lifestyle sort of brand. Each of those apps had a great and passionate following. Ultimately, business sometimes is about making tough decisions. In order to make the core as incredible as it could possibly be, I have a belief you can only do one or two things really well. So you really need to double down on that. A relatively controversial choice, which I thought was even easier, was shutting down the physical goods market.
It was a nice thing to have for a while, but it never made much sense.
Well, it didn’t to me, but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t a wise bet at the time. I think good companies take bets, but they also have the discipline afterwards to look back and see if it panned out as they expected. That’s what all that was about: getting laser focused, reinvesting in the core and adding new experiences.
The syncing stuff, which by definition is almost invisible, we’re fundamentally overhauling it. Search upgrades, like with the quick switcher [Press Open Apple + J on Mac], you’ll fall in love with. It’ll actually learn over time to find things more easily.
How are you evolving Evernote’s security? Are you looking at encryption or anything like that?
I think about three things around Evernote, the scale, the global aspect and the user trust. And nothing else really matters more than the latter. We’re looking at a world-class security team, and we’re also exploring what moves to a public cloud might look like. There’s been a whole bunch of innovation when you look at Microsoft and AWS. The amount of encryption and security have evolved in incredible ways. I think that’s where we’ll see the biggest amount of pickup, wrapped together with our security.
Can you tell us any more about the behind the scenes changes you’re making?
Basically, we put quality at the very front and center, and with sync we track crashes, latency, and in all those cases many of those are down by 95 percent. Ultimately, I want to get those things to zero. People trust us with their memories, their ideas big and small, Evernote just has to work every time. The proof is in the pudding, we see fewer people reaching out to us in our customer support centers. That’s one pretty tangible bit of evidence … We’ve hired a new CTO [Anirban Kundu] — he’s in the midst of rethinking sync to take advantage of new technology.
How does your vision for Evernote differ from what [former CEO] Phil Libin was talking about? He had ideas around augmented reality and Evernote spreading across devices easily.
I was having lunch with Stepan [Pachikov], the founder of the company, who really likes to focus on memory. He wanted to build a place to keep things he wanted to recall, he viewed it as an extension of his brain. I think he was very prescient in predicting information overload. He figured we’d see mobile phones explode, and he was right.
We’ve consistently delivered on this idea of being a digital archive, because your brain is just a terrible place to store things … If you think of evolving from just sort of remembering things, but to remembering and thinking. My vision is we should facilitate the thinking process. So what does that mean? The digital archive needs to be there, and we basically need to allow ingestion at the speed at which thought happens. You’re typing right now, but clearly voice is tomorrow … There’ll be a world where we can tap into the synapses, I don’t know when that’ll be, but you’ll have a thought and it’ll just go to Evernote.
The opposite of that is surfacing information … We’ll find a new word for what it means to have just the right information at just the right time. It’ll really tap into the context graph.
The thinking process evolves in a couple different ways to me. One is that there’s so much shallow work, like Twitter feeds and Slack messages. Work has changed fundamentally in a couple different ways, in many ways for the better, but in many ways for the worse. Talking about the better side, we collaborate across borders within companies, and teams are the primary unit of actually getting things done. I primarily believe the company you build is the team you build.
The bad side is, knowledge workers are spending 80 percent-plus of our time in meetings, responding to email, creating email, communicating to death. Research shows that typically a third to 40 percent of meaningful collaboration happens with 5 percent or less of people. So you have your stars being drown out by asking for opinions. There’s this idea that real work usually happens at night, usually after all of your other responsibilities. That just really stinks.
In a society laden with distractions, we envision that uncluttered space, where you can work on ideas that change the world in big or small ways. The mission we have is to unlock the potential of every idea … So going from remembering to thinking, when I’m in a meeting, I basically don’t want to have my next meeting suck because no one captured the notes, or no one captured the action items. Everything should be captured, whether it’s voice, whether it’s written, or a transcription. There’s task management software out there, but I think in a lightweight way, I see a world where the collection and management of information is tied to tasks. Not in a heavy way, though: Our research suggests that’s just another thing to manage.
This interview has been edited and condensed.
Microsoft is laying off 2,850 more workers
Microsoft is cutting an additional 2,850 jobs on top of 1,850 announced in May 2016, meaning it has laid off over 10 percent of its workforce in the last two years. Most are ex-Nokia employees from its mobile hardware division, it said in its annual SEC filing. That means Microsoft has almost nothing left of its $7.2 billion Nokia acquisition, originally intended to make it a smartphone hardware player. The software giant has already notified 900 of the employees and will complete the remaining layoffs by mid-2017.
Microsoft’s mobile phone plans are a big question mark, as sales are in a free fall. The only ray of hope for Windows Phone fans (if there are any left) is that Microsoft hinted last year that it needs to make a mobile device as good as the Surface line. A “Surface Phone,” however, is still nothing more than a rumor and if it does come along, would likely be aimed at Microsoft’s core business market and not consumers. With layoffs now totaling 12,100 in two years, however, Microsoft seems to want nothing to do with building smartphones.
Via: Gizmodo
Source: SEC filing
Sony’s mobile division (sorta) makes a profit
Sony’s most recent financial report is out and, if you squint, things almost look good for its moribund mobile division. Sony Mobile posted a profit of $4 million, which the company attributed to the fact that it’s fired enough people to get its costs to break even. If you want to put a positive spin on things, it looks like a greatly-slimmed down phone business might generate just enough money to keep it going. Given that Sony’s had to cover Mobile’s losses with PlayStation’s gains for the last few years, some executives may be reaching for the champagne.
But this is Sony, so there’s no silver lining without some pretty dark clouds covering the horizon in the form of Japan’s currency. The Yen has been getting stronger of late, which means that Sony’s exports are more expensive, and less competitive. That’s important because Sony needs to sell its products to the world — something it expects to get harder in the near future. As for Mobile, the company expects sales of Xperia (and its successor) devices to fall once again, because fewer people are buying smartphones — and when they are, they’re going for cheaper Chinese brands.
Overall, the picture for the company isn’t looking particularly rosy, with falls in performance noted across almost all of its divisions. The only bright spot was PlayStation, which saw profits increase thanks to more people buying PlayStation 4 games. But a drop in image sensor sales, TVs and the fallout from April’s Kumamoto Earthquake mean that profits are down pretty much across the board. So, it’s one step forward, three back for Sony which, at this point, most people would call business as usual.
Via: TechCrunch
Source: Sony (.PDF)
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