Tag: small business news

This clever app turns your spreadsheets into slick interactive web tools

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A hot trend in tech these days is coming up with the next great “spreadsheet killer”—the dazzling app that’ll make us all abandon Excel and Google Sheets in favor of some newer, sleeker, and more versatile alternative. From Notion and Coda to Airtable and its rivals , there’s no shortage of alluring services trying to remake the tired old spreadsheet and trade it in for something more modern. Grid is not one of those services. Yes, it’s Yet Another New Spreadsheet App—but unlike most such creations, its aim isn’t to replace your tried-and-true spreadsheet setup. Instead, it wants to work alongside that environment and add an extra layer on top of it to make it even more empowering. “We are very much building for someone that is already a spreadsheet user, has already built spreadsheets, and wants to do something more with them,” says Hjalmar Gislason, the founder and CEO of the Reykjavik, Iceland-based startup. The service—which launched last week—lets you inject a dash of web-based interactivity and a pinch of presentation polish into your existing spreadsheets. And instead of requiring you to import your data and then work within an entirely new structure, Grid syncs with your Excel or Google Sheets setup,  allowing you to keep working within the app you already know while simultaneously getting a whole new set of tools to complement it. For anyone who’s ever shared a spreadsheet or used one as part of a presentation, it might be just the finishing touch that’s long been missing. Evolution, not substitution Before we dive deeper into Grid’s philosophy, let’s address the basics: Anyone can use the full set of Grid spreadsheet-enhancing tools for free. The service is open and available right now, and it takes all of two seconds to sign up . The only real catch is that if you stick with Grid’s default, free plan, you’ll end up with a small watermark at the bottom of any presentations you embed within another website. A $348-per-year (or $35-a-month) Professional plan eliminates that watermark and adds custom branding options along with advanced statistics into the equation. As for the driving philosophy behind Grid, it’s really quite simple: Practically everyone uses spreadsheets. And practically everyone’s invested a lot of time and energy in learning how to make the most of them. We are meeting people where they’re already comfortable.” Hjalmar Gislason, CEO, Grid But capable as they may be, spreadsheets are woefully lacking in one increasingly important area: the ways in which they can be shared and presented. And that’s where Gislason sees an opportunity to do something special—and something that doesn’t force everyone to start over entirely. Read More …

Niantic’s ‘Codename: Urban Legends’ wants to be the first great 5G AR game

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The first experience meant to demonstrate that high-quality augmented reality games could be the killer app for 5G wireless networks is here. Last summer, Pokémon Go creator Niantic announced it was teaming up with an international roster of wireless carriers to expand the availability of high-quality AR experiences for 5G networks . Now, seven months later, some of those carriers’ customers can finally play a demo version of the first game to emerge from the alliance. Dubbed Codename: Urban Legends , the demo was built on the same global location-based AR platform powering megahits like Pokémon  Go and Harry Potter: Wizards Unite . The goal of the project is to showcase the attractiveness of high-quality AR games on the 5G networks of a subset of alliance partners—Verizon, Deutsche Telekom, and Globe Telecom. Although Niantic isn’t yet saying when the full version of Codename: Urban Legends will be available, the release of the demo is an important milestone as the alliance moves toward a broader deployment of 5G-ready AR experiences. Each of the networks is doubtless eager to prove to customers that it’s worth paying for access to the next generation of wireless network. “Many of today’s 4G applications will simply work better or evolve in 5G,” Ross Rubin, principal analyst at Reticle Research, told me last year when the alliance was first revealed. At the time Rubin said he believed AR might be the only “pillar” technology that could “fundamentally change how we interact with the world if it can gain access to the high-bandwidth, low-latency, and eventually broad coverage of 5G.” Since then, he’s concluded that cloud gaming may also be a winner on 5G networks. Still, Rubin now says, “AR has the most transformative, long-term potential in driving consumers’ interest.” Niantic’s alliance with 5G carriers might hint at where it will go with its hardware efforts. And that’s exactly what Niantic is hoping to show the world. As its CEO, John Hanke, said last year, the goal of the alliance is to marry the edge-computing element of the carriers’ 5G networks with Niantic’s platform in order to let millions of people play the advanced games and other applications that will eventually be available. According to Niantic, alliance partners’ 5G networks will deliver one-tenth the latency of 4G networks as well as the ability for 10 times as many people to play games concurrently. Read More …

The Google Nest Hub offers the perfect sleep tracker for lazy people

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Google’s newest Nest Hub is the tech giant’s best attempt yet to be all things to all people. The device so far has made a name for itself as a modern picture frame , the perfect kitchen assistant, and even a cool tool for makeup tutorials . Now, the Nest Hub can function as a sleep tracker, providing a better reason for you to let Google into your bedroom. Nest Hub’s sleep tracking is built for anyone who is on the fence about using technology to assess how well they’re sleeping. It’s a very stripped-down experience compared with popular sleep trackers like Oura Ring or even the Apple Watch, but it won’t make you feel judged for your bad habits. And, if you do feel ashamed of your sleep statistics, you can easily delete them at any time in the Google Fit app (oddly, you can only delete your data on the Nest Hub itself within two hours after you wake up). That makes the Nest Hub a great addition to the roster of available sleep trackers. In the week I spent trying it out, I found the Nest Hub to be extremely low maintenance. You don’t need to wear it, you don’t need to check it every day, and you don’t need to remember to charge it—it’s always plugged in. The tracker works in the background on its own. The sleep tracking is enabled by Google’s motion-sensing Soli technology, which also powers the device’s new gesture-control feature, a user favorite that was previously available only with the Nest Hub Max . With gesture control, users can pause music simply by air-high-fiving the screen or move to the next step in a recipe with a wave. (Soli, which uses radar to detect motion , first launched in the Pixel 4 smartphone.) [Photo: courtesy of Google] In order for the sleep-tracking feature to work, the Nest Hub has to sit on a night table that is the same height as the top of your mattress (my side table is a few inches higher, though I don’t think it affected my results). Read More …

This smart ring lets you remote-control Zoom and PowerPoint

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In the age of remote work, a smart ring for productivity such as the Genki Wave seems like a clever idea. Instead of making you search for the right keyboard shortcuts to unmute yourself on Zoom or turn your laptop’s volume down, the Genki Wave for Work  ($149, with a launch price of $99) lets you wear those same shortcut buttons and more right on your index finger. And since you’re not working in an actual office, no one’s going to judge you for wearing an unashamedly dorky accessory. [Photo: courtesy of Genki] But the more I used the Genki Wave myself, the more disappointed I became by all the things it wouldn’t let me do. While the idea of wearable computer shortcut buttons has some promise, Genki’s approach doesn’t live up to its potential yet. Not your typical ring The Genki Wave is technically not a new product. It debuted last year as a wearable MIDI controller for musicians, the kind you’d use to quickly trigger a drum fill or dial down the volume. But during the pandemic, Genki Instruments saw a chance to pivot to a broader audience by using the Wave to help people deal with an onslaught of Zoom calls and remote PowerPoint presentations. To that end, the ring is decidedly utilitarian, with one half containing its eight-hour battery and electronics, and the other half comprised of a Velcro loop. You wear the ring on your index finger, and the chunkier half is supposed to stick out to the side, letting you easily press its three rubberized buttons with your thumb. The Wave uses Bluetooth to connect with your computer, and it has a companion app to control what its buttons do. Despite its bulk, I found the Wave to be fairly comfortable. I wore it loosely enough to pull on or off without undoing the Velcro strap, and at one point I forgot that I was still wearing it after getting up from my computer. [Photo: courtesy of Genki] Out of the box, the ring is most helpful for video calls in apps such as Zoom or Google Meet. Read More …

Hackers put a back door in a code library that powers 79% of websites

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On Sunday some malicious actors tried to install a back door into the PHP code library, a server-side programming language that powers 79% of sites on the internet, including Facebook and Wikipedia. The attack recalled one of the worst government hacks in history , on SolarWinds, the IT management software used by many government agencies and large U.S. companies. The SolarWinds attackers—widely thought to be employed by Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service—planted malware in the SolarWinds system that sends out updates to end users. As in the SolarWinds attack, the PHP hackers targeted the code base of a widely used library so that the changes they made would impact instances of the software run by end users. The hackers attempted to install a back door that would have allowed them to remotely execute changes to the PHP code after it was put into use by websites. Since they might have activated malware, the hackers may have been able to take control of websites, freeze them, or take them offline. The PHP exploit was first reported by the BleepingComputer blog. The hackers made two additions to the PHP Git repository on Sunday. The attackers signed the first addition using the name of the PHP library’s creator, Rasmus Lerdorf, and the second was made using the name of well-known PHP maintainer Nikita Popov, likely to avoid suspicion. They also tried to disguise the major change to the code base they proposed as something trivial by labeling the additions “Fix Typo.” The work of the hackers was discovered and reversed during a standard review process on Sunday. Still, this was no trivial event. Popov said in an email to the PHP developer community that Sunday’s incident was likely the result of the git.php.net server being compromised, rather than just a single Git account. The PHP maintainers have now decided to migrate the official PHP source code library over to GitHub. “We have decided that maintaining our own git infrastructure is an unnecessary security risk, and that we will discontinue the git.php.net server,” Popov explains in the email. Read More …