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.
Small Number of SwiftKey Users Discover App Leaked Private Data to Strangers
A week after launching a new emoji-predicting keyboard, SwiftKey is now facing some pushback after a few users noticed that the main SwiftKey app was propagating suggestions related to the email accounts, phone numbers, and names of complete strangers (via The Telegraph). The Microsoft-owned app, available on iOS and Android, is widely known for its artificial intelligence and machine learning tools, which create custom word predictions based on what each user has previously typed.
In order to fully take advantage of these features, SwiftKey accesses various personal bits of information — previous texts, emails, and regularly used names and phrases — to bolster its database, with a synchronization feature that keeps all of a user’s data updated across various devices. Now, one SwiftKey user has discovered that someone unknown to them was given access to this data thanks to the app’s predictive features. Thankfully, the stranger was helpful in informing the compromised user about their privacy slip.
“A few days ago, I received an email from a complete stranger asking if I had recently purchased and returned a particular model of mobile phone, adding that not one but two of my email addresses (one personal and one work address) were saved on the phone she had just bought as brand-new,” said the user. “It also suggested, when she typed a zero, the telephone number for someone I had phoned recently.”
According to the anonymous source, the stranger went through every letter in the alphabet and got predictive suggestions of the affected user’s contact list and even the address of private servers used to connect to the internet at their workplace. A similar occurrence happened for one Redditor recently, but this time it crossed a language barrier as well, with German predictions of private information suggested for a user in the United Kingdom.
According to SwiftKey, the problem stems from a bug in that synchronization feature, so the company has deactivated syncing information across devices until it can get to the root of the problem. A spokesperson for the company said, “Recently, a limited number of our customers noticed unexpected words pre-populating when typing on their mobile phone,” but promised users that the app is “okay to use” in the meantime given the low number of users affected and that their personal data will not be lost while the sync ability is down.
Tag: SwiftKey
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Nobel-Winning Economist Calls Apple’s Irish Tax Arrangement ‘Fraud’
Joseph Stiglitz, an economic professor at Columbia University and 2001 recipient of the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences, has described Apple’s tax arrangements in Ireland as “a fraud” in a recent interview with Bloomberg TV.
“Here we have the largest corporation in capitalization not only in America, but in the world, bigger than GM was at its peak, and claiming that most of its profits originate from about a few hundred people working in Ireland — that’s a fraud,” Stiglitz said. “A tax law that encourages American firms to keep jobs abroad is wrong, and I think we can get a consensus in America to get that changed.”
Under current U.S. laws, Apple is able to shift billions of dollars in profits to Ireland, where it operates multiple subsidiaries, sheltering those earnings from up to a 35 percent corporate tax rate in the United States. Ireland has a much lower corporate tax rate of 12.5 percent, but Apple is believed to have a sweetheart deal with Ireland that sees it pay less than 2 percent in exchange for creating jobs in the country.
Apple has been the subject of a European Commission probe related to its Irish tax arrangements since June 2014, with the executive body investigating whether the deal constitutes illegal state aid. Ireland’s finance minister Michael Noonan recently said he expects a decision to be reached by September or October, and Apple could owe more than $8 billion in back taxes depending on the outcome.
Apple insists it is the largest taxpayer in the world and that it pays every cent of tax it owes under current laws. In a late 2015 interview with 60 Minutes correspondent Charlie Rose, Apple CEO Tim Cook described tax avoidance accusations against the company as “political crap,” adding that the United States has a tax code that is “awful for America” and “made for the industrial age.”
Apple provided the following statement during its March 2016 meeting with the European Parliament’s tax committee:
“Apple is the largest taxpayer in the world. In 2015 we paid 13.2 billion dollars in taxes worldwide, which is an effective tax rate of 36.4%”, its representatives said when asked about the company’s tax structures in Europe and the state aid investigation launched by competition Commissioner Margrethe Vestager. However, they were not prepared to disclose its EU and Irish tax figures. “Those are confidential. When country-by-country reporting will become mandatory, we will of course follow”. Apple, like Google, pays most of its taxes in the US, where most of its employees are based and its research is done.
Apple is only one of several multinational corporations that have been scrutinized for possible corporate tax avoidance in Europe over the past few years, with others including Amazon, Google, IKEA, and McDonald’s. Last year, the European Commission ordered Starbucks and Fiat Chrysler Automobiles to each pay up to €30 million in back taxes, after ruling that the companies benefited from illegal tax deals.
Note: Due to the political nature of the discussion regarding this topic, the discussion thread is located in our Politics, Religion, Social Issues forum. All forum members and site visitors are welcome to read and follow the thread, but posting is limited to forum members with at least 100 posts.
Tags: corporate tax, European Commission, Europe, Ireland
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Apple Urges Supreme Court Not to Send Samsung Case Back to Lower Court
Apple has urged the U.S. Supreme Court to rule against Samsung’s request to send a longstanding patent lawsuit between the two companies back to lower court for further proceedings, reports Reuters.
Apple told the court that its South Korean rival has “no evidence” that design patent damages should be based on anything less than the value of an entire smartphone, according to court documents filed on Friday. The Supreme Court agreed to hear Samsung’s case in December.
Samsung argued that it has been hit with “excessive penalties” for allegedly copying the design of the iPhone. The company claims that the penalties were unfair because Apple was awarded damages from the total profits of the product, while the infringing patent only applied to a component of the smartphone rather than the whole device.
Apple was awarded nearly $1 billion in damages in 2012, but a significant part of the decision was reversed in 2015, leaving Samsung owing $548 million. Samsung has already paid the $548 million, but could win its money back if the ruling is overturned. The patent lawsuit dates back to 2011.
Tags: Samsung, lawsuit
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Apple CEO Tim Cook Plans to Host Fundraiser for Hillary Clinton Next Month
Apple CEO Tim Cook plans to host a fundraiser that will benefit Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton, reports BuzzFeed. Cook, along with Lisa Jackson, Apple’s vice president of environment, policy, and social initiatives, will host the event as private citizens, not as representatives of Apple.
Cook and Jackson plan to raise money for the Hillary Victory Fund, a committee that contributes to the Clinton campaign, the Democratic National Committee, and 38 state parties. Invites for the event, which will take place on August 24, went out this morning.
Apple CEO Tim Cook is eager to demonstrate support for Democrats and Republicans to strengthen Apple’s relationship with both parties.
The Hillary fundraiser will follow a fundraiser Cook co-hosted for Republican House Speaker Paul Ryan in June. Cook and Ryan teamed up to host a private breakfast in Menlo Park on June 28. Money raised benefited Ryan and a fundraising committee that helps elect other House Republicans.
While Cook hosted a fundraiser for Ryan, Apple elected not to support the 2016 Republican Convention in Cleveland due to some of presidential nominee Donald Trump’s controversial statements on the subjects of minorities, women, and immigrants.
Note: Due to the political nature of the discussion regarding this topic, the discussion thread is located in our Politics, Religion, Social Issues forum. All forum members and site visitors are welcome to read and follow the thread, but posting is limited to forum members with at least 100 posts.
Tags: Tim Cook, Hillary Clinton
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Add some MrMobile flare to your Android phone with this theme
We’re all very proud to have MrMobile with us.
Michael Fisher, aka MrMobile, does video like almost no one else on the net right now, and his smooth performances bring another level of class to the videos he’s sharing with us. He makes the technology he talks about more approachable not just for die-hard enthusiasts but for the everyman on the street who just wants to know what’s the best phone on Android right now or what the hell this Pokémon GO thing is.
With his fancy new set and his fancy new logos came the obvious idea that we needed to bring that MrMobile flare to the home screen. The simple custom theme below is simple, distinct, and MrMobile-approved. Here’s what you need to get it done:
- MrMobile wallpaper
- MrMobile Kustom widget preset
- MrMobile app drawer icon
- Distress’d icon pack ($1.00)
- KWGT Pro ($3.50)
- A home screen launcher that supports icon packs, custom image icons, and resizeable widgets. These instructions are written using Nova Launcher, but you could use many different launchers like Action Launcher or Apex Launcher.
- A file manager for moving files to their intended locations. These instructions were written using Solid Explorer.
Download our MrMobile Wallpaper and MrMobile app drawer icon to your device.
Long-press your home screen and select Wallpapers.
Pick image and navigate to your saved Mr Mobile wallpaper.
Ensure the image is centered and Set wallpaper.
Open Nova Settings.
In Look & feel, select Distress’d as your Icon theme.
Return to the home screen.
Long-press your app drawer shortcut and Edit it.
Tap the icon to edit it.
Select Documents from Gallery apps and navigate to your saved MrMobile icon.
Expand the preview box to cover the entire icon and confirm the icon by tapping Done.
Tap Done in the shortcut edit window to set the icon.
Download our MrMobile KWGT preset.
Use a file manager to copy the KWGT file to Kustom/widgets on your device.
Return to the home screen.
Long-press your home screen and select Widgets.
Scroll to KWGT and press and drag a KWGT 4×4 widget to the middle of your home screen. NOTE: This layout is based on at least a 6 row by 4 column home screen layout, but you could use a standard 4×4 grid if desired, instead using a KWGT 2×2widget.
Tap your KWGT widget to configure it.
Swipe from the Installed KWGT presets page to Exported and select mrmobile-widget.
Save the widget using the floppy disk icon at the top of the screen.
Return to the home screen and resize you KWGT to your preferences.
MrMobile himself prefers a simple home screen with just the KWGT and the dock, but if you want a few more widgets on-screen, I recommend a Clear 4×1 Jack’s Music Widget and/or a 4×1 1Weather widget to fill out the screen and add a bit more functionality.
Also, if you want to get more functionality out of the MrMobile KWGT, you could…
- …Add a touch action to the time or temperature items, giving you a quick shortcut to your clock, weather, or another favorite app. You can do this by editing of the the text items and going to the Touch tab.
- …Replace the temperature text with another system variable, such as your remaining battery or the date. Please note that since the temperature text is two layered items that you’ll need to make the edits to both items.
- …Add a touch action to the MrMobile logo, such as a quick link to the Android Central app or YouTube. You can do this by editing of the the image item and going to the Touch tab.
Feel free to play around with it, and make sure you’re subscribed to everything Mr Mobile has to offer!
Hearthstone players can party hard on Aug. 11 with One Night in Karazhan expansion
Blizzard has announced the next single-player expansion for its collectible RPG card game Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft. One Night in Karazhan, where players get invited to a big party, will be released on August 11.
Here’s how Blizzard describes the plot of the expansion:
Karazhan, long a potent nexus of arcane energies, is about to become the focal point of a very different kind of cosmic force. The wizard Medivh has used every bit of magic at his disposal to set up the most lavish and extravagant party of all time, and your name is on the guest list alongside the crème de la crème of Azeroth and beyond! With such an eclectic mix of attendees, it’s guaranteed that this party will be out of this world. But as you groove to the music and let the sights dazzle you, beware; one night in Karazhan, and even tough guys tumble. Keep your decks straight, your wits sharp, and above all, stay alive!
The new content and features of One Night in Karazhan include:
- New Cards: Make your way through four wings chock-full of challenging bosses, unexpected twists, and mystical mayhem. Beat the bosses and earn their brand-new cards for your collection!
- Legendary: Get ready for truly dazzling legendary cards such as Moroes and many more.
- Class Challenges: As the evening progresses, you will unlock nine all-new class challenges that test your skills in surprising new ways. Succeed, and unlock their rewards!
- New Game Board: When an archmage throws a party, nothing but the best will do. Prepare to be spellbound by the magic of Karazhan!
- Never a dull moment: Your host may be a Guardian of Tirisfal, a vastly powerful magic user, and a fantastic dancer, but nobody’s perfect. Some matters may transpire over the course of the evening that might require your… special attention. Come prepared!
- Portals Everywhere: This party is so intense, it’s warping the very fabric of space and time to bring in more guests! Use the new portal spell cards to unleash the magic and summon random minions to the field.
Hearthstone players will be able to access the first prologue mission in the One Night in Karazhan expansion for free when it is released.
AT&T starts selling the 8-inch Trek 2 HD tablet on August 5
AT&T has announced it will begin selling the 8-inch Trek 2 HD tablet on August 5, in its stores and online. The tablet will have Android 6.0 Marshmallow pre-installed.
Here are some of the other features that will be included with the AT&T Trek 2 HD tablet:
- Dual Front-facing Speakers: The tablet features Dolby Audio™ speakers that provide high quality sound.
- Battery Life: The AT&T Trek 2 HD contains a battery size of 4,600 mAh that provides up to 10.5 hours of usage.4
- Processor: Qualcomm Snapdragon 1.5Ghz Octa-core
- Internal Memory: Store images, videos and apps with 16 GB of internal storage,5 with the option for an additional 128 GB with a microSD card (sold separately).
- Camera: Capture brilliant photos & selfies with the tablet’s 5 megapixel rear and front-facing cameras.
Customers can purchase it for $0.99 with a two-year contract, or for $7.50 a month for 20 months. That usually means that it will have a no-contract price of $150.
Pokémon Go ‘tips’ that are total nonsense
Wanna know a sweet hack for leveling up faster? Go actually play the game.
Everyone’s looking for an edge in Pokémon Go. Maybe you don’t get to play as much as your friend, and that level and a half gain they have on you is sending that competitive itch you have into overdrive. Maybe your co-worker’s bike ride to work means they hatch eggs twice as fast as you because you drive. Maybe that little jerk at the end of your street has basically been playing nonstop because school is out and that makes it next to impossible to take and hold the local gym. Whatever the reason, we get it. Sometimes you need an edge, and the sudden popularity of Pokémon Go meant the internet was immediately filled with “hacks” to give you that edge.
We’ve been documenting these little hacks and testing them for ourselves. Some of them work. Surprise! Most of them are fake. To help you sort through these “tips” we’ve got everything that has been thoroughly debunked here, including an explanation for why people thought the trick worked int he first place.
No, Poké Balls cannot be recovered.
Yeah, this is going to start with a “tip” that was started right here on Android Central. The first week of Pokémon Go had a ton of server-side bugs, and that included delays in showing you how many Poke Balls you actually had left after a throw. When combined with a perfectly synced disappear animation and re-appear animation, it looked like you could tap on Poke Balls that didn’t hit their target and recover them.
Now that things have settled down a little, it’s clear this is not what has been happening in the game. There is no way to recover Poke Balls in the game, so don’t waste your time tapping behind that Porygon to and just get ready for your next throw. Maybe try a curveball throw this time?
Spinning your phone in circles is not hatching eggs faster.
You have to travel specific distances under specific speeds in Pokémon Go to hatch eggs, and players have been looking for shortcuts to this from day one. Some figured out that a skateboard or bicycle meant you could travel faster and hatch things quicker, but that’s not fast enough for everyone. People started trying all sorts of crazy things to get some extra kilometers in on those incubation meters, but all of them are crap. We know, we tested them with multiple phones on multiple carriers just to be sure.
Pokémon Go egg hatching works on a fairly simple formula. The app pings your GPS location once every 60 seconds, and measures the distance between each ping as the distance you’ve traveled. If that distance can be traveled under 15mph, that distance is added to your eggs as distance traveled. Every four minutes that information is added to your incubators.
How many steps your travel isn’t relevant, and if you’re walking circles around the same block over and over again you’ll find a lot of the distance you’re actually travelling isn’t being recorded because the GPS pings are only measuring in straight lines. Distance traveled is basically recorded “as the crow flies” because the game is only checking distance every 60 seconds.
To recap:
- Taping your phone to a ceiling fan will not make your eggs hatch.
- Shoving your phone between bike spokes will not make your eggs hatch faster.
- Leaving your phone on a Roomba while it cleans your house might help you hatch your eggs, but only if you have a really big house and the Roomba can reach from one end to the other.
But I’ve seen it work!
What you’re seeing when you go nowhere and traveled distance is still added to your incubators is GPS drift. When you see your character float around in the game while the GPS tries to lock down your actual position, there’s nothing the game can do to confirm whether that’s actual movement from you. As a result, GPS drift can count towards incubation movement. If your phone has a terrible GPS connection and you want to use that to your advantage, there’s nothing stopping you. Just stop taping your phone to your ceiling fan, that’s just asking for disaster.
Weather does not affect Pokémon spawns
Pokémon Go is not pulling data from weather services, and so cannot spawn Pokémon based on weather. As cool as it would be for Fire-type to spawn in greater capacity when it’s 103-degrees out, that’s not how the game functions right now.
Whether rain or snow or relentless Summer sun, the Pokémon that spawn around you are part of Niantic’s location-based system. This means you’ll find Water-type near water as it appears on your map, and an unhealthy amount of Rattata and Pidgey in the suburbs. There are some great tools available now to give you a better idea of where you can find what Pokémon in your area, so give this a shot instead.
Cemetaries do not have more Ghost-type Pokemon
Don’t go looking for Pokémon in cemeteries, please. While this would make sense with the whole location-based thing, you will not find more Ghastly, Haunter, or Gengar in a cemetery. You may stumble across one or two during the day, but your best bet is to go looking for these and other Ghost-type Pokémon at night.
There are specific Pokémon that show up in greater volume after the sun goes down, so keep that in mind as you adventure!
There is only one way to control an Eevee evolution
In the regular Pokémon games, Eevee have many possible evolution paths and you have some control over those paths if you know the right combination of actions. In Pokémon Go, Eevee have an evenly random chance of evolving into the Fire-type Flareon, the Water-type Vaporeon, or the Lightning-type Jolteon after you tap the Evolve button on the screen. Rumors started saying you could control the evolution if you evolved based on attack type or at certain times of day or near specific locations, but none of that is true.
Currently, there’s only one way to control an Eevolution and it’s with an Easter Egg that hails back to the television series. If you change the nickname of your Eevee before you evolve it, you can control the kind of Pokémon it evolves into.
- For Jolteon, name your Eevee Sparky
- For Vaporeon, name your Eevee Rainer
- For Flareon, name your Eevee Pyro
This is guaranteed to work as long as you change the name before you hit the evolve button, so go have some fun!
We’ll be adding to this list as we discover and test these “hacks” that find their way onto the internet. If you have any you’d like to share, toss them in the comments!
Pokémon Go
- Join our Pokémon Go forums!
- How to deal with GPS errors in-game
- Which team should you choose?
- How to play without killing your battery
- The Ultimate Pokémon Go Game Guide!
- Listen to the Pokémon Go podcast!
ICYMI: NASA hunts for life hidden in an asteroid
Today on In Case You Missed It: NASA is planning a trip to get a sample of the large asteroid Bennu and see if any organic materials can be found on it. If you remember hypercolor t-shirts, you’ll want to know about an air pollution sensing shirt that changes color and patterns when carbon monoxide, radioactivity and particle pollutants are detected.
You’ll want to see this video from Japan showing a volcano’s eruption with a thunderstorm inside. As always, please share any interesting tech or science videos you find by using the #ICYMI hashtag on Twitter for @mskerryd.
