And that’s just the Dot. In all, there are dozens of different “Echo” devices. And each one is either a newly-introduced product or an iteration of a previous generation. And there will be more next year and more the year after that. That’s what the status quo looks like in smart gadgets. If you got a smart TV for your birthday last year, you can probably get a new version of the same TV on your birthday again this year....

Like every year, Adobe’s Max 2021 event featured product reveals and other innovations happening at the world’s leading computer graphics software company. Among the most interesting features of the event is Adobe’s continued integration of artificial intelligence into its products, a venue that the company has been exploring in the past few years. Like many other companies, Adobe is leveraging deep learning to improve its applications and solidify its position in the video and image editing market....

Developers and ops people sometimes have different perspectives on why a deployment went wrong. Was it the code? Or the infrastructure? In the end, it’s the user that suffers, and that user doesn’t care about why your product was broken. They just want it to work, so they can do their work. It really did work in staging Everyone on the team wants to get things right the first time, deploying a quality product with every feature release....

In 2017, I left Apple, tried to build a web startup, failed, discovered machine learning, fell in love, signed up to a deep learning course with zero coding experience, emailed the support team asking what the refund policy was, didn’t get a refund, spent the next 3-months handing in the assignments four to six days late, somehow passed, decided to keep going and created my own AI Masters Degree. Then, 9-months into my AI Masters Degree, I met Mike, we had coffee, I told him my grand plan; use AI to help the world move more and eat better, he told me I should I meet Cam, I met Cam, I told Cam I’m going to the US, he said why not stay here, come in on Thursday, okay, went in on Thursday for a 1-day a week internship and two weeks later was offered a role as a junior machine learning engineer at Max Kelsen....

I’m the founder of a small sustainable, socially responsible, and zero-waste fashion label that works with a community of women single parents in North Macedonia. Operating from a country with such limited resources can be, to put it mildly, challenging. I founded the company back in 2013. It started as a marketplace for local designers, which quickly expanded to cover international designers from all over the world. Four years into it, we pivoted to become a standalone fashion label....

We are concerned that widespread perceptions of “digital natives” lead people to believe that digital media use is constant across certain ages or generations and that all members of this generation have similar experiences of technology. This could not be further from the truth. Building on our previous research, we have divided digital technology users of all ages into five groups. These are extensive political, extensive, general, limited, and social and media users....

Before we get started, yes, like another electric vehicle maker Nikola is named after a certain Serbian-American inventor of the same name, Nikola Tesla to be exact. That parallel to Tesla is going to crop up on more than one occasion too, so take note. Nikola was founded in 2014, guided by the dream of electrifying semi-articulated trucks with hydrogen fuel cells and hybrid drivetrains. In many ways, the company positioned itself as the Tesla of commercial haulage vehicles....

Apple today revealed it’s offering a rewards program to incentivize going to the gym by making certain ones “Apple Watch Connected.” Now when you make more of an effort to close your rings, you’ll be earning rewards. At the moment, the connected gyms include several from familiar franchises: OrangeTheory, Crunch Fitness, YMCA, and Basecamp. The rewards vary based on which gym you go to, with some benefiting you personally and others benefiting the community — most notably YMCA, which lets you unlock free classes for kids with your workout....

Feedback is a popular topic in design. You can find great insights out there highlighting the importance of feedback, different ways of giving them, handling common types of feedback from others, and more. Feedback and critiques are an integral part of the design process. To get the best out of feedback though, I realized that walking into a room with confident designs and a growth mindset isn’t enough. Looking back, I began wondering if there is a structure to facilitate time to be well-spent....

Have you ever wanted more control over the direction of your company? When is it time to rethink your role? One study from Honeypot found that many developers become less satisfied with their working environment and company culture as they age, describing an increased risk of ageism from 29 onwards. As we grow more accustomed to working life and professional responsibilities, it’s common to become frustrated with elements that might feel outside your control as a single developer....

As a coach and facilitator, I’ve become convinced that everyone, regardless of their role, needs uninterrupted work time every day. Engineers need to write code without errors. People managers need to synthesize a day of one-on-one calls. Support and sales roles need to manage their pipeline after a day of context-switching between customers. When my clients get this dedicated work time, they’re more motivated and focused. But uninterrupted calendar blocks are hard to design into your schedule....

Here’s what you have to do to find it: Open your browser, and Google “Wimbledon Scores.” Scroll to the rightmost point on the scorecard. Click on the tennis ball icon to launch the game. Move left and right using the arrow keys on the keyboard, or touch the on-screen buttons on your phone, to return. Google releases these quirky games from time to time and they’re super fun to play....

I’ll spare you the exact details and reasons why, but I recently had to change my phone number. I also used the opportunity to get a new device. In the early days of smartphones, this was about as stress-inducing as consumer decisions could get. Upgrading your phone would require hours of reinstalling apps, upgrading firmware, and so on. Getting a new number too only adds to the headache. One of the main challenges when upgrading your phone is migrating your WhatsApp chat histories to your new device....

Getting meetings right will be imperative for any business leader — whether they run a startup or big corporation — to create an inclusive and productive environment where people can thrive. Here are five tested meeting design tactics that have worked for me and my team. 1. Ask everyone to join from their own computer Even if there’s just one online participant, you should treat your whole meeting as a virtual one....

HBO’s parent company WarnerMedia is launching its streaming platform, HBO Max, this week. With this launch, WarnerMedia can join the rest of the massive media companies vying for attention in the streaming wars. But how does HBO Max relate to HBO Now, or HBO Go, for that matter? What do these services have in common, besides the name? Whoever in Warner’s design department approved the name “HBO Max” needs to be dressed down....

By default, Google Maps stores your location history so you can keep track of places you’ve visited. This is helpful when you want to remember that great food joint you stumbled upon while you were out and about. However, sometimes you don’t want to leave a trace of where you’ve been. Earlier, you had to completely turn off location history for that. Now, Google is rolling out an incognito mode for its Android app that’ll allow you to use Maps privately for a limited amount of time....

It took hours to charge devices from 0 to 100%, and we would frantically look for chargers if the battery level went below a certain threshold. That has changed in the last couple of years, during which we’ve seen the evolution of charging tech that fully juices up phones in under half an hour. Phew. There’s also a fast-charging arms race going on with companies trying to push hundreds of watts into phones to charge them in minutes, and claim the title of fastest charging technology on the market....

And I hate that. Let’s backtrack a bit though. We’ve covered Apple’s approach to Privacy a few times lately. The most recent was to do with the iOS clipboard story, a saga that has evolved from the iOS 14 beta, where apps are being shamed for continually snooping on users’ copied text. Another was this piece following the launch of iOS 13 where we talked about how the company has made privacy one of its main selling points....

The BlockDown Web3 conference was kicking off the next day. TNW was flying in to attend — but the fates had other plans. After descending towards the landing strip in Split, Croatia, the plane suddenly reversed course and climbed back into the skies. A shroud of Saharan sand had made it too dangerous to land — and the real drama had only just begun. When we finally arrived in Croatia the next day, the crypto market had entered its biggest downturn in years....

Why? It’s simple. Virtually every industry that depends on new releases and new information to push its news cycle forward makes use of the embargo. This includes arts and entertainment, publishing, science and medicine, gaming, and, of course, tech. Whether B2B or B2C, large corporation or startup, tech PR relies on embargos to manage constantly changing product release schedules and updates. This is an industry that likes to keep things under wraps — if not totally secret — until launch day, and that requires a dizzying amount of coordination, calendars, and planning to make happen....