Category: Features

The Gmail-enhancing superpower you didn’t know you needed

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For a service that’s all about interacting with other (alleged) humans, Gmail does a curiously poor job of putting people front and center. Sure, the Gmail inbox is all about communication—but have you ever found yourself staring at an email and struggling to remember what you know about the person who sent it or exchanges you’ve had in the past? If you interact with enough mammals over email, it’s bound to happen. And Gmail just doesn’t have particularly powerful tools for providing the on-demand context you need to successfully navigate your way out of that situation. Up until a matter of months ago, in fact, Gmail didn’t have any real form of integration with its companion Google Contacts service. Late last year, Google added a Contacts panel into the website’s sidebar, which was a significant step—but the information in that panel is still pretty limited and lacking. You can see basic contact info for people who emailed you and a list of past emails involving them, and that’s about it. If you want any additional details, you’ll have to stop what you’re doing, click away from the message, and move over to a whole other page to find it. Read More …

Citizen’s dystopian new feature is mass surveillance disguised as public safety

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O n October 26, 2020, police killed Walter Wallace Jr. in West Philadelphia, as his mother stood on the sidewalk, pleading for his life. Over the next few days, the neighborhood erupted in protest, and my phone lit up with alerts from Citizen, a public safety app. Writers for the app monitor and transcribe police scanner chatter, which is then converted into push notifications. There was a break-in at Rite Aid, a burglary at a nearby liquor store, a dumpster fire one block over, a trash fire 900 feet away. As local news has been decimated by budget cuts and layoffs, apps such as Citizen and Nextdoor have ascended to fill the void. Citizen in particular has increasingly positioned itself as a news organization. “We act fast, break news, and give people the immediate information they need to stay safe,” reads an overview on the company’s LinkedIn profile . Citizen often ranks higher than The New York Times among news apps in the Apple App Store. In theory, the platform democratizes reporting; it allows anyone with a smartphone to post comments and videos to a neighborhood network. But in practice, these alerts and the neighborhood commentary attached to them often read like police stenography and amplify existing biases Read More …

Here’s what’s new in Android 12, from big changes to subtle tweaks

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With a personalized color scheme on the outside and a reinforced app-privacy structure on the inside, the next version of Android should at least avoid a common fate of some previous Android updates: being mistaken for one of its predecessors. Android 12 , previewed in detail on Tuesday at Google’s I/O developer conference, leads off with those changes to form and function. But the next edition of its mobile operating system bundles many less obvious—but still notable—changes, including some that didn’t get mentioned during the two-hour keynote that opened the online event. Material You While many operating systems have offered personalization features, Google’s concept aims to make customization an automatic feature, not a distraction for interface nerds. Android 12 will derive highlight and contrast colors for its interface by analyzing your screen wallpaper. If your own screen decor already matches the current Android palette, you should still notice how many onscreen elements will be less rectilinear. For example, Google has already advised developers of onscreen widgets to get ready for rounded corners . [Photo: courtesy of Google] New visual effects will extend to animations to convey more clearly what’s going on. For instance, scrolling to the end of an onscreen list will cause it to stretch up and down the screen, and pressing the power button to wake the screen will send light rippling across the display. Quick Settings The set of toggles for such functions as airplane mode (remember that?) that you can invoke by swiping deeply down from the top of the screen should look a lot different in Android 12. The tiles you see today will be replaced by larger panes that show more detail about the state of each function. Android 12’s Quick Settings will also fold in new features. Read More …

New iPad Pro: Amazing hardware in search of equally amazing software

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There’s a long-standing urban myth that Apple designs products with planned obsolescence in mind—intentionally engineering them so that you’ll grow dissatisfied over time and want to replace them with something newer and shinier. Don’t you believe it. The company actually has a pretty impressive track record of building products that remain useful for the long haul, even well after they’ve been discontinued and replaced. One of the best recent examples is the iPad Pro that arrived back in November 2018 . Now theoretically two generations out of date, it belies its age by feeling just about as fast, fresh, stylish, and capable as it did on day one. It’s even compatible with Apple’s Magic Keyboard, which shipped 16 months later and took the iPad Pro to new heights as a laptop replacement. That 2018 iPad Pro was so good, in fact, that it hasn’t cried out for reinvention. Last year’s iPad Pro  acknowledged that by focusing on improvements to the rear camera system, including some aimed at making augmented-reality apps work better. For most iPad Pro users, it was the kind of update you could sensibly skip, biding your time to see what came next. That time has arrived. Apple is about to release  another new iPad Pro that, like last year’s model, retains the industrial design and basic feature set of the 2018 version. (It officially arrives in stores on Friday, though it’s already in enough demand that Apple is quoting availability dates for new preorders in late June and July.) I’ve spent more than a week with a prerelease 12.9-inch unit provided by Apple, along with a Magic Keyboard case and Pencil stylus. (The keyboard is the new white version , which looks mighty sharp—and, unlike any previous iPad keyboard, is color-coordinated with the Pencil.) Finally, an iPad keyboard case that matches Apple’s Pencil. [Photo: Harry McCracken] In terms of sheer technical excellence, this new iPad Pro is a good-size leap beyond its 2018 and 2020 predecessors. Read More …

Will you go back to a movie theater for more ‘Sopranos’? This filmmaker is betting on it

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Kristian Fraga ‘s new film is nearly three hours long and mostly involves people sitting in chairs talking. But the director is convinced it’s a film that will get audiences back in theaters, where it is being shown starting on May 19.   There’s another hook too. The three-part documentary, being distributed by CineLife Entertainment, is about The Sopranos , so it’s essential viewing for fans of the seminal HBO show.   Fraga admits that to those who have no interest in Tony Soprano and his turn-of-the-century mobster malaise, Sopranos Sessions “will be like watching paint dry.” But his hope is that the film will also tap film and TV lovers interested in the craft of visual storytelling and the creative process of someone such as series creator David Chase, and that its intimate, pared-down nature will be a draw for theatergoers who have been pent up at home during COVID-19.   “I don’t have vistas or camels or spaceships,” Fraga says. “But the immediacy of the big screen and the experience of being in a theater where there are no distractions—you kind of get into the zone of the conversation.”   [Photo: CineLife Entertainment] There are many conversations. Read More …