The Associated Press reports that “Google apps automatically stores time-stamped location data without asking, “even if you have location history paused.” CNET also has the story.

The AP says that “Google stores a snapshot of where you are when you merely open its Maps app. Automatic daily weather updates on Android phones pinpoint roughly where you are.” Even some searches like, ‘ “‘chocolate chip cookies,’ or ‘kids science kits,’ pinpoint your precise latitude and longitude — accurate to the square foot — and save it to your Google account,” according to the AP.

This applies not only to Android phones but also Google Maps on iOS devices.

On a Google’s support page on the subject states: “You can turn off Location History at any time. With Location History off, the places you go are no longer stored.”

But the AP bluntly says, “That isn’t true. Even with Location History paused, some Google apps automatically store time-stamped location data without asking.”

View your Google Activity and manage your location history

You can view what Google knows about you at Google My Activity and there is another webpage with instructions on how to Manage or delete your Location History

The process can be laborious. For example, from the web you can go to your Maps Timeline , pick a date, pick a trip and delete that particular trip — one by one.

The blue bars on this graphic from that site represent a day — click on any given day and you’ll see where you went that day with the opportunity to delete that record.

From an Android device

Here are Google’s instructions for deleting location history from an Android device which, says Google, is permanent.

Click here or picture for free booklet

When I was in school, the only way to copy someone else’s work was to painstakingly retype or re-write it from a book, periodical or another student’s paper. Today it’s as simple as copy and paste.That has many publishers and educators worried. Educators worry about plagiarism, lack of integrity and loss of learning opportunity by those who take the lazy way out by stealing other people’s work. Publishers, along with those in the music and video industries, worry about the theft of their intellectual property and potential loss of revenue.

This post first appeared in the San Jose Mercury News

But unlike most of the ink in books and newspapers, it’s not all black and white. There is such a thing as “fair use,” that actually protects the rights of students, educators, journalists and others to use copyrighted material without having to ask for permission. There are also works that are not copyrighted or licensed specifically to be reused.

I say this not to encourage the mere copying of other people’s work, but to point out that one cannot only be legal but also creative by using material from others to add value to what they create.

My nonprofit, ConnectSafely.org, has just published a free online booklet, The Educator’s Guide to Creativity & Copyright to explain what students and educators can and cannot legally and ethically do with material they find online. Some of this advice also applies to journalists, podcasters and other creators. The guide was written by Kerry Gallagher, David Sohn and me.

Fair use

As the guide points out, “Copyright generally requires you to get permission before you copy, distribute, or re-use someone else’s copyrighted work. But sometimes, permission isn’t needed because what you want to do qualifies as fair use.” For example, fair use allows “limited use of copyrighted work without permission for purposes such as news reporting, commentary, education, parody, and the creation of new works that use someone else’s creative work in entirely new ways.”

While there are no hard and fast rules, there are four factors that, together, determine if something likely qualifies for fair use:

1. Purpose and character of use, such as commentary, news reporting, criticism, or education, or to create a new work that transforms the original by adding new expression
2. Nature of the original, such as if the material you want to use is primarily informative or factual in nature, as opposed to highly creative
3. Amount and substance: It is generally OK to use only a small portion of the other person’s work and only as much as you need to make your point – such as a single paragraph from a much longer text or a short clip from a much longer video. There are, however, cases where you can use an entire work such as a song or video, but the more you use, the less likely it is to be fair use. But even a short video or audio clip could be a copyright violation, especially if used for commercial purposes.
4. Effect on the market, such as whether your use of the material is likely to impact that original owner’s ability to sell or otherwise distribute the work.

In addition to fair use, there are many other ways to use content to incorporate in academic papers or, in some cases, even for commercial use. These include material in the public domain that is not copyrighted or whose copyright has expired (any content created before 1923). Material from government websites may be in the public domain, but some government sites may include copyrighted material, such as photographs obtained from other sources. There is a website usa.gov/government-works that explains how you may be able to use content from places like NASA, National Park Service, Library of Congress and other government sites.

There are also works that are licensed under Creative Commons where the creator of the work has authorized people certain rights, depending upon the specific Creative Commons Licence. Some of these licenses allow for virtually any type of use while others have restrictions such as non-commercial use or only if you don’t make any changes. There are rules about attribution but it’s always a good idea to cite the source of any material you use. Our guide goes into detail on these licenses. There is even a Creative Commons search engine (search.creativecommons.org) that makes it easy to find materials that you can use in your work. The results pages on Google Images search has a tools menu that includes usage rights.

Of course, just because something may be legal doesn’t necessarily mean it’s right. Parents and educators need to work with students to make sure they understand academic rules and ethics such as citing your source, making sure you’re adding value with your own thoughts and ideas and making sure that sources you quote are credible. It’s also important to understand the difference between plagiarism (claiming other people’s work as your own) and copyright infringement (using someone’s work without permission) and how that affects both legal and ethical standards. Even taking a single paragraph from an uncopyrighted work could still be considered plagiarism if you make it appear as if it’s your original work.

It’s about creativity

At the end of the day, the purpose of our guide is to encourage people to be creative and expressive. It’s great when you can legally incorporate and cite someone else’s work to help amplify your original thoughts, but whether it’s a student paper, a blog post, a video, a podcast or a newspaper column, the goal should always be to add value and be creative.

Larry Magid is a tech journalist and internet safety activist.

Google One

• 15 GB Free
• 100 GB for $1.99
• 200 GB for $2.99,
• 2 TB for $9.99 per month

Dropbox personal (there is also a business plan)

• 2 GB — Free
• 1 TB — $8.25 per month
• 2 TB — $16.58 per month

Microsoft Onedrive

• 5 GB — Free
• 50 GB –  $1.99 per month
• 1 TB with Office 365 personal —  $69.99 a year or $6.99 a month*
• 5 TB with Office 365 Home — $99.99 a year or $9.99 a month*

These plans come with the Microsoft Office suite of programs. The Home edition lets you use it on 5 machines.

Apple iCloud

• 5 GB Free
• 50 GB $0.99 a month
• 200 GB $2.99 a month
• 2TB $9.99 a month

ConnectSafely has just launched the new Cyberbullying Quick-Guide for Parents. This two-page guide is designed to be read online or printed back-to-back on one sheet for distribution at parent meetings and other venues. The guide is based on the organization’s more extensive Parents Guide to Cyberbullying.

The new Quick-Guide is part of a series that also includes short Quick-Guides on secure passwords, teen sexting, safe online shopping and ‘Creativity & Copyright.”

Fake sites with web addresses designed to trick people (Source: Microsoft)

Microsoft’s revelation that websites controlled by a group with ties to the Russian government is not only a warning to political operatives from both parties, but to everyone who receives email or goes to websites.

Realistic looking URLs

The sites in question used domain names that were similar — but not identical — to prominent conservative think tanks in an attempt to lure people into visiting those sites.

One example of a fake site was “Hudsonorg-my-sharepoint.com,” which included the the name and URL (web address) of Hudson Institute whose real URL is Hudson.org. Another is my-iri.org, a spoof site posing as the International Republican Institute whose actual URL is IRI.org.

Here’s Microsoft’s blog post about what they found and their continued efforts to “help protect the democratic process.”

Look at web addresses carefully

My warning: Look at the web address of any site before you click or provide any information.

If you get an email asking you to visit a site, examine the URL before you click on it. Usually (though not always) the organization’s name will be just before the .com, .org or .net. Most prominent organization’s URL will end in one of those domains rather than something like .email or .group. This isn’t a hard-and-fast rule. Some organizations might choose one of those newer domain designations and sometimes a group can’t get a URL with its own name so it has to change it up a bit.

If you see something that looks like a derivation of the group’s name, that should — at least — be a yellow flag. When in doubt do a search, but even then there is the possibility of a bogus listing, especially if it’s not the first search result for that organization.

Don’t fall for a realistic looking website. It’s very easy for to create a site that looks exactly like the site it’s spoofing and if the hackers are sophisticated (as they almost are when affiliated with governments), there may be no telltale signs other than the web address.

Dangers of spoofed sites & cautionary tales

Also, never enter any personal information on a site unless you’re very certain it’s legitimate. This is a way for attackers to harvest names and contact information and, if you make a donation or purchase, steal both your money and your credit card information which it can then exploit or sell to other criminals.

But even if you don’t enter personal information, the site can easily track your IP address (which, in some cases, can be traceable to you, or your company, if you’re at work) and it’s possible for a site to download malware on your device, which can give hackers control of your device and access to your files, the websites you visit and what you type at the keyboard.

Also be careful about what you download. A PDF or other file on a fake site could subject you to malware.

Beware of search results

Usually, but not always, if you search for an organization or company, its legitimate site will come up as the first site in the actual listing. HOWEVER, it is possible that a fake or unrelated site could come up first and some may come up shortly below the first. Also, it is very possible that a site not affiliated or owned by the company or organization will be listed above the search results.

For example, if you search HP support, you will probably get a site at HP.com as your first listing, but you will also get sites that are not affiliated with HP. Such as the one depicted below, whose URL begins with “HPsupportassistant.”

Looks like an HP site — but it’s not

It almost happened to me

I hate to admit this, but I almost fell for such a scam. My HP printer had a paper jam that I couldn’t fix so I searched Google for “HP Support” to find their phone number and accidentally wound up calling a third party. My first clue was that a person answered the phone right away (sadly that almost never happens with real support lines) but when I explained that I had a paper jam, he asked me to download software so that he could “fix” it. I knew there is no software fix for a paper jam and took another look at the site and hung-up when I realized I had fallen for a fake one. I knew that for sure, when I realized that the site didn’t end in HP.com, which is the official URL for HP.

Take some time to avoid ‘wrong turns’

We’re all in a hurry and we have a tendency to click on web addresses and even links on sites we visit without giving it too much thought. I’m guilty as are many others. But we need to be a little more thoughtful. Just as we avoid turning down the wrong street when we’re walking or driving, we need to avoid going to the wrong sites when we’re online.

Top results from Google search for ‘Momo Challenge’

by Larry Magid

Several years ago, David Finkelhor, director of the University of New Hampshire’s Crimes Against Children Research Center gave a talk and wrote a paper called The Internet, Youth Safety and the Problem of “Juvenoia.” His argument, based on his extensive knowledge of actual online risks to children, was that there is an “exaggerated fear about the influence of social change on children and youth,” which manifests itself whenever new technology emerges. Back then it was the internet, the web and social media. It still is but now we can add games and mobile apps.

The latest bit of hysteria is centering around two stories: a deadly game called Momo Challenge and another called Deleted that The Sun, a British tabloid, called “a chilling new online suicide game targeting kids.”

Momo Challenge

According to the Times of India, “the Momo challenge was initially started on Facebook but is now spreading via Whatsapp.” The article describes Momo as “a social media account on WhatsApp, Facebook and Youtube.” The paper said that “several web security blogs describe the Momo game as a social engineering attack which may not necessarily be real, but can still cause harm through online harassment and cyberbullying. The article went to to say that the game “challenges users to communicate with an unknown number, and complete a series of violent acts that ultimately end in death.”

The Buenos Aires Times reported that Argentinian authorities are investigating the suicide of a 12 year-old girl and trying to determine “whether she was motivated to take her own life because of the so-called Momo Game, a WhatsApp-based terror game that originates from Japan.” Fox News describes Momo as  a “viral challenge that asks people to add a contact via WhatsApp – they are then urged to commit self-harm or suicide.” Australia’s 9 News reports that “The Momo trend, which appears to have originated in Japan, has been likened to the ‘Blue Whale’ game which was reportedly linked to more than 100 teenage deaths in Russia.”

‘Fake news?’

But as I wrote last year, the so-called “Blue Whale Challenge, which got enormous coverage around the world, was, according to experts, “fake news from Russia.”  A post by Anne Collier on NetFamilyNews.org quoted an expert from the Bulgarian Safer Internet Center who said that “it is a sensationalist fake started by Russian media back in May 2016,” and that “several Russian politicians already mentioned ‘Western intelligence services’ and ‘Ukrainian nationalists’ as creators of the ‘horrible game’ with the aim to exterminate young Russian generation.”

And, based on an analysis by Austria’s Safer Internet Center, the Momo Challenge appears to be a hoax.

Based on a Google machine translation from the original German, the Center stated, “Many WhatsApp users report that they are suddenly contacted by an unknown number and are sometimes harassed with very scary pictures, texts and voice messages. … Momo is nothing more than a so-called hoax and should be blocked and deleted.”  If you get the message on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube or any other social media platform with an abuse reporting mechanism you should report it. On NetFamilyNews, Anne Collier suggests that “Momo is probably more than one account because copycats often join the “fun” as coverage grows, and more than one phone number associated with it has been found in WhatsApp.”

There are some in the security community who suggest that Momo Challenge is more about planting malware on people’s devices than getting them to harm themselves. Others have suggested it’s about harassment and bullying.

Momo is nothing more than a so-called hoax and should be blocked and deleted.”  If you get the message on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube or any other social media platform with an abuse reporting mechanism you should report it.

Saferinternet.at

The most vulnerable victims to these types of social engineering attacks are young people. Even though the Blue Whale Challenge and Momo WhatsApp could be construed as urban myths, instances of cyberbullying and online harassment are very real.

Psafe Blog

Deleted

The article in The Sun describes Deleted as “a chilling new online suicide game targeting kids – as death of boy, 11, is linked to 150,000-member strong forums.” The paper said that “Police suspect 11-year-old Svyatoslav Chapala, who fell to his death from a nine-storey building in Moscow, was the latest victim of the sinister craze.”  The Sun  quotes Russian tabloid Komsomolskaya Pravda claiming that the boy “is one of many Russian kids who belonged to these secretive online communities before their untimely deaths.”  As per that Russian paper’s credibility, The Telegraph, in 2015, reported that Komsomolskaya Pravda once claimed in a front page story that “American intelligence services carried out the Charlie Hebdo terror attack to punish France for considering dropping sanctions against Russia.”

Giorgia Apostolov from Bulgaria’s Safer Internet Center researched the origin of the story of this Russian boy and, in an email, said that ” relatives (not even parents) reportedly said that the boy spent a lot of time in the Russian social network Vkontakte. His profile displayed images from online games and Japanese anime and he reportedly was member of 17 online groups including 2 groups named DELETED.” He added that there were “22,000 groups in Vkontakte with the same name with 5 to 149,000 members and that some unnamed teenagers reportedly said they have received posts on their profiles reading DELETED but they don’t know what that could mean.” The Sun picked up the story but, so far — it hasn’t been widely reported on by other publication. Apostolov published his own blog post where he pointed out that stories like Blue Whale, Momo Challenge and DELETED “share also two important characteristics:”

• These are scary urban legends often rooted in the specific slang and patterns of online communication of today’s teens.
• Though invented horror fairy tales, they can induce real psychological harm to young and vulnerable minors. Because when they become widely popular one cannot prevent the desire of some teenagers to exploit them to scare peers or younger kids.

Education — not panic or rumors — is always appropriate

Although the Sun story is clearly aimed at stirring up fear, the otherwise sensationalist article  does quote  the British helpline Childline on how to say no to peer pressure, including what kids might  be urged to do in a game, app or website:

On a web page titled “What Peer Pressure Means, Childline offers the following tips:

• It’s okay to say no to things if you don’t feel comfortable
• You can make your own choices
• There are ways to say no to something, but still be accepted and have friends
• There are ways to feel more confident about saying how you feel

Risk of suicide contagion

One of my biggest concerns about rumors like Momo, Deleted and Blue Whale is the risk of suicide contagion, which could turn these stories into a tragic self-fulfilling prophecy for a small number of vulnerable youth. “Suicide contagion is real, which is why I’m concerned about it,” Madelyn Gould, a professor of Epidemiology in Psychiatry at Columbia University, told the New York Times. That’s one of the reasons why the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention has published media guidelines for journalists who cover suicide that include avoiding “Big or sensationalistic headlines, or prominent placement” of suicide reports,” as well as “Describing recent suicides as an ‘epidemic,’ ‘skyrocketing,’ or other strong terms.”

Take a deep breath

As David Finkelhor pointed out in his talk on Juvenoia, “We can educate children and families about the dangers that surely exist in the Internet world, without having to exaggerate the nature of the danger and the degree to which the Internet itself is a risk amplifying environment.” And as ConnectSafely points out in our free online booklet, The Parent & Educator Guide to Media Literacy & Fake News, it’s time for all of us to learn to recognize fact from fiction not only by increasing our media literacy but also our emotional literacy. There are risks in this world, including the risk of child and teen suicide and risks associated with the inappropriate use of technology. But every day hundreds of millions of children and teens pick up their smartphones or access websites without horrible consequences. One tragedy is, of course, one tragedy too many, but panic, fake stories and exaggeration do nothing to make our children safer but instead have been found to increase risk.

Several years ago my wife’s parents power failed while they were on vacation and everything in their freezer and refrigerator was ruined.  Recently the power to my entire house went out because of a breaker switch. I immediately fixed the problem and restored power but, if we had been away for an extended period of time, we would have come home to a big mess and a considerable expense to replace the food.

It got me thinking about how I could get a warning if that ever happens again, which led me to an iSocket 3G plug that sends a text message to alert you to a power failure. The $208 iSocket, plugs into any 3-prong electrical outlet and has a passthrough plug for a lamp, appliance or any other device. If power to that outlet goes out, it will send an alert to your smart phone as a text message, a phone call or both. It will also automatically notify you if the power comes back on, even if you’re not home.

Most smart home devices work on WiFi but this uses a cellular carrier for a simple reason — if the power fails your WiFi will stop working too. As a result, it requires you to have a SIM card from a carrier. Most US cell phone carriers will let you add this to your existing plan for $10 a month, but iSocket recommends you buy a SIM card from Truphone.com, which has no monthly fees.  You’ll pay $30 for the card, which includes $15 usage credit and you’ll pay 9 cents for each text it sends out. But, because you’ll, hopefully, get few if any power outages per year, that $15 should last you a very long time.  If you ever need to buy more credit, you can give it your credit card on sign-up and it will be you as needed but, for most people, I suspect your credit card would have expired by the time you need to shell out another $15.00.

Installation was pretty easy. I had to activate and insert the SIM card (Truphone has good phone support, which activated it for me) and then I had to text “MakeMeBoss” to the phone number associated with the SIM card. There are lots of other commands you can issue, including “status,” which tells you if power is connected as well as the temperature in the room where the iSocket is located. There are lots of other commands and controls that you can do via text messaging or the app.

My hope is that i’ll never get an alert but if I ever do get one while out of town, I have a neighbor who can enter my house and do whatever needs to be done to restore power. If it’s a utility company outage, I’ll have to wait for them to fix the problem, but at least I’ll know when it goes out and comes back on again.

Leak detection

Streamlabs Smarthome Water Monitor

Losing all the food in your freezer or refrigerator may be bad, but having your house flood can be a lot worse. I know. About two years ago a plastic pipe going to an upstairs sink in my house failed, causing tens of thousands of dollars of damage to  upstairs and downstairs rooms. Insurance covered most of the cost but it was a major hassle that required us to move out for a few weeks, put up with months of construction and repairs and pay for what insurance didn’t cover.

Turns out there are devices for detecting leaks too and, shortly after the flood, I asked Vivent, which provides my home security and automation system, to add flood sensors under or near all our sinks and toilets as well as our washing machine. Now, if any of these sensors detect moisture, we’ll get an alarm on our phone and a call from Vivent’s monitoring service.

Vivint charges a monthly fee but there are devices you can purchase that will send an alert to your smartphone if a leak is detected.

One clever device is the Smarthome Water Monitor from Streamlabs ($199) which consists of a device that you put around the main water entry  line going into your home. You have to plug it into a power outlet and connect it to your home’s WiFi and if the water pressure changes, possibly indicating a leak, you’ll be notified via the company’ app. The product can also be used to monitor water usage and could aid in water conservation. It doesn’t require any pipe cutting but measures water flow throughout the house via “ultrasonic technology“

There are lots of other leak detection devices available including the Honeywell Lyric Wi-Fi Water Leak & Freeze Detector, which can be placed near or under any location that could leak. I also detects frozen pipe, which can be a problem in some parts of the country. If it does detect a leak or a freeze, you get a notification through the Lyric app. They cost about $58 each and you may need several, so the cost could add up.

There are plenty of other less expensive leak detectors on the market, including Samsung – SmartThings Water Leak Sensor ($25), which requires a SmartThings Hub ($90) that works with an entire family of smart devices from the Samsung-owned company.

In a pair of Tweets Tuesday morning, President Trump accused Google having “RIGGED” news search results “for me and others, so that almost all stories & news is BAD.”

The implication is that Google’s algorithms, which automatically generate links to news stories, are biased in favor of liberals and against Trump and other conservatives.  In a statement, Google responded that “we don’t bias our results toward any political ideology,” adding “Every year, we issue hundreds of improvements to our algorithms to ensure they surface high-quality content in response to users’ queries. We continually work to improve Google Search and we never rank search results to manipulate political sentiment.”

Trump’s claims are based on a post by Paula Bolyard of PJ Media  who did a search for “Trump” in Google News and found that, among the firt 100 results, “CNN has a disproportionate number of articles returned when searching for “Trump” — nearly 29 percent of the total. In fact, left-leaning sites comprised 96 percent of the total results.” Bolyard acknowledges that her tests as “not scientific.”

She wrote that “Not a single right-leaning site appeared on the first page of search results,” but when I did a search for “Trump” on August 29th, a Fox News video showed up near the top of the page.

Based on a chart

Her definition of “left-leaning” sites was based on a chart (below) from former CBS reporter and now conservative pundit Sharyl Attkisson, who ranked news sources based on her perception of whether they are left or right leaning.  As you can see from the chart, most of mainstream media outlets, including the New York Times, Washington Post and major broadcast networks are on the left. On the right are a few major outlets, including the Wall Street Journal and Fox News but many of the outlets listed on the right are pretty obscure and some, such as Alex Jones Infowars, are extremely controversial.

Chart by Sharyl Attkinson

The sites that had the most number of hits about Trump, according the the PJ Media post, included CNN, Washington Post, NBC and CNBC but, for the most part, these are sites that heavily cover President Trump and report on his statements and policies. They are also sites that use mainly original content, avoid repetition (at least on the web) and employ trained journalists. That is also true of some of the conservatives sites, including Fox News and Wall Street Journal, but not true of some of the others listed on both sides of Attkinson’s chart.

Boston Globe columnist Hiawatha Bray analyzed Attkinson’s chart and pointed out:

“On Alexa’s list of the world’s top 50 news sites, hardly any of Attkisson’s conservative sites make the cut. Fox News is seventh, but the Drudge Report is 19th, the Wall Street Journal is 20th, the New York Post is 23rd. Meanwhile on the left, CNN ranks at No. 3, trailing only Google’s own news page and, in first place, the popular Internet hangout Reddit. The New York Times is fourth, the Washington Post 10th, Bloomberg is 16th, and USA Today is 18th.”

I also question whether Attkinson is accurate in her assumption as to what is left left or right learning. It’s hard for me to see how Pew Research would wind up on the left side of the spectrum (its surveys are pretty down the middle) and it’s not clear that the news writers and reporters of the mainstream sites listed on the left have a liberal bias in their writing, despite the likely liberal leanings of some of their editorial boards or commentators.  And I certainly don’t disagree that some, like MSNBC and The Nation, are clearly to the left of center.

Sites that appeared most frequently in the top 100 results (PJ Media)

From PJ Media

By Larry Magid

(scroll down for podcast audio & transcription)

I don’t usually transcribe my podcasts, but this one is with Sam Liang, the CEO and co-founder of AISense, the company behind Otter, a free app for iOS, Android and the web that automatically transcribes conversations, panel discussions or any other audio that your phone or computer hears. It’s a pretty amazing piece of technology that could, someday, put stenographers and maybe even court reporters out of business. It even has the potential to be used for simultaneous translations if integrated with products like Google Translate.

What follows (after embedded podcast) is an edited transcript of my interview. It’s similar — but not identical — to the machine transcription. One reason is to make it more reader friendly, and another  because, as impressive as it is, Otto’s automatic transcriptions aren’t perfect. It did make mistakes, but transcribed most of the interview right. You can Click here for the unedited machine automatic transcription on Otter’s site, which also allows you to listen as you read to see exactly what mistakes it made. The transcript was created by importing the MP3 file of our interview into Otto’s web app, but I was also able to make an identical transcript, in real time, by recording the conversation on my smartphone.

Edited transcript

Hi, I’m Larry Magid of CBS News. I had an opportunity to sit down with Sam Liang, who’s the co-founder and CEO of AISense, a company which has a free app for Android, iOS, and the web that will transcribe audio into text automatically, and in real time. In fact, if you want to follow along, or just read the transcript of this interview, you can do so at LarrysWorld.com, because I used Otter to transcribe both the raw interview in real time and the edited interview that you’re listening to.

We began by having him tell me what Otter is, and how it’s different from other speech recognition engines that you might know from the likes of Google, Amazon and Apple

AISense CEO Sam Liang

Sam Liang: Otter is a mobile app and a web application that transcribes human voice conversations. So this is very different than Siri or Alexa and Google Home. They handle a conversation between the human being and a robot. You can ask a short question like, what’s the weather tomorrow? And the robot will answer that question. However, Otter is doing something totally different. It listens to human to human conversations and transcribes the conversation in real time. You can also upload an old recording to Otter,it will also transcribe it. In addition, it’s able to recognize different speakers’ voices and separate them properly. It uses new technology called diarization and speaker ID. Diarization is a technology to separate one person’s voice from another speaker’s voice.

Larry: I would imagine, for example, that it knows your voice but has never met me before. How will it know when it transcribes this podcast? If you’re speaking, or I’m speaking?

Sam: When it hears a new person, it doesn’t know the identity of the person, but it does, know it’s a new person. So, at the end of the recording, you can tag a segment of the speech and you tell it this is Larry and that technology in the cloud will create a voice profile or a voice print similar to your fingerprint which can be used to match the rest of the recording.

Larry: Okay, so it’s similar to the way for example, Google and Apple recognize faces.

Sam: Absolutely it’s conceptually very similar to face recognition. Once you label a few faces, it’s able to remember

Larry: So if I were to record, let’s say, a debate between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump’s, would it because they’re famous? Would it know their voices, for example?

Sam: It could. Because they have a lot of public speech recordings, we can easily download their speech in advance and label their voices in advance and create their voice print in advance. So, when they are engaging in a debate, the system is able to recognize their voice in real time as well. Although it right now the real time speaker ID recognition is not available in the current product, yet.

Larry: And what are some of the practical applications of the technology?

Sam: We see a very broad range of applications. Obviously, for reporters, they do a lot of interviews. So this definitely helps them a lot. Traditionally, you have to spend $1 per minute for human being to transcribe it for you. And turn around time, could be slow. With Otter, you can get it instantly.

Larry: So we’re recording this in real time as we’re conducting this podcast, I can actually see our words on the screen. But I’ve got hundreds of podcasts and broadcasts on my hard drive. Can I go back and retroactively transcribe those?

Sam: Absolutely. It’s very easy to upload an old podcast on to the website. It’s called Otter.AI. Once you login, there is a import button. You can use that button to import all your old podcasts.

Larry: As I recall Dragon Systems (AKA Nuance), which does very good speech recognition, does well when you’re talking into it. But it hasn’t done that well, for example, when you load an old recording. Is that your understanding?

Sam: I think they can do old recording too, but the accuracy is very different. Nuance has been doing this for 20 years. But they are actually lagging behind in the last few years. Because their technology is pretty old. The new technologies are all based on deep learning. So that’s what we have created in the last few years.

Larry: Could you use it, for example, if you wanted to just write a letter and have it transcribed?

Sam: Yes, for that purpose it’s called dictation. Dictation is one person using voice to write a letter or email. Otter can definitely support that very well. However, Otter actually does something even more difficult than dictation. When people dictate they usually speak a little slower and more clearly. But when people are engaged in a conversation with another human being or several other speakers, they speak much faster.

Larry: Let’s say I’m riding in a car or I’m an airplane. I have this great idea that I want to write down. I could just go ahead and load Otter and use it for that purpose and speak my idea. And I’d have I’d have  a transcription?. That’s not the main purpose. But it’s a you could you could use it that way.

Sam: We actually just saw a YouTube video yesterday. Somebody said, I’m using Otter to write a book. Sure. When they’re walking their dog, they’re actually writing a book using Otter

Larry: Does it transcribe barking, if the dog if getting into the conversation?

Sam: Unfortunately, we’re not able to understand dogs barking yet. But eventually, with deep learning, you could figure that one. Yeah. When the dog barks, you know, what does it mean? is he hungry?

Transcribe meetings

Larry: There actually are people working on that on that very problem. But seriously, what’s unique about this, I think, is the fact that he does for allow for a group conversation. So for example, if I were at a conference and there was a panel and a number of people were speaking, I could essentially transcribe every one of those speakers at the panel. And ultimately, we would know who the speaker was, that would actually label their names once I trained to do so.

Sam: Absolutely. We have actually done that many times already ourselves. In addition, we actually used the product ourselves in our own company, we actually record all our project meetings, marketing interviews, so we actually eat our own dog food. All our company meetings are in the Otter system.

Larry: And so you have a transcript of who said, what at all of your meetings?

Sam: Yes.

Larry: If somebody had a great idea and  someone else takes credit for it, it’s not going to work,

Sam: Right. Sometimes people have different interpretations about who about somebody’s opinion, and we can always go back and listen to it again.

Larry: In other words, if you don’t, for whatever reason, don’t trust the transcript, you can go back and get the actual audio? ,

Sam: Yes. Both the audio and transcript is available and the audio and transcription is synchronized word by word.

Larry: This operates on iOS and Android. And then there’s a web app, which I presume, operates on all web browsers. Mac, Windows, whatever. And I did notice it on the web. I could play back an audio simultaneously while reading the transcript, which was really great. I actually uploaded an audio portion of one of my broadcasts — my Eye on Tech broadcasts — and I found one or two mistakes, but when I listened to it, I could see exactly what I had said. Is that true if you listen to what on the phone as well?

Sam: It does the same thing on the phone. It works on iPhone, Android, you know, so you mentioned any web browser on PC or Macintosh. We built the speech recognition engine or by ourself, we’re not using Google technology.

Larry: So just to review, this is a free app that runs on iOS and Android, anybody can get it just from the Play Store. Search for Otter in the App Store on iPhone, or in Google Play Store on Android. Or you can go to Otter.AI. I, that’s how you get it. And you can use it on the web as well. So for example, if there’s a YouTube video, for example, where television program or a Netflix show that you would like a transcription of if you had the MP3file, you could load it in. If you didn’t, I suppose you could run the Otter app and simply listen to the speaker and get a transcription.

Sam: Yes,

Privacy implications

Larry: Now, I have to ask you about privacy. You used to work for Google, so you understand the complexity. In fact, you used to work on Google Maps. And that’s an example of a wonderful product that I use every day, which has enormous privacy implications. It strikes me that this product is also quite useful. But it brings up some interesting privacy implications as well. ,

Sam: Yes, we definitely take privacy extremely seriously. We see this as a personal tool, and the user owns the data himself. Whenever the user wants to delete the data, we erase everything. Absolutely, we’re not going to sell the data for advertisements. We have a freemium model, so that we make money from the user subscription, and also for enterprises, so we don’t need to. We don’t want to sell the data.

Larry: So speaking of law, the state law varies as to whether it’s allowed to record without telling the other person. I think in New York, it is legal — I know this because of the Michael Cohen case. In California, you’re required to disclose it. But either way, it might be useful to have a transcript of your phone calls. Is that a possibility? With this technology,

Sam: It can. You can record phone calls, as long as you tell the other guy you’re doing it.

Larry:  Does the app allow that on both iOS and Android?

Sam: On iOS, you cannot record a phone call on the same iPhone. You could use another phone or use a PC or Macbook to record the phone call when you have it on speakerphone. It’s technically possible to record a phone call on the same Android phone.

Larry: You and I have different accents, but of course there are many other accents. Is that an issue for some speakers? Is it harder for them to understand their voice?

Sam: It does make the speech recognition engine more difficult to build. However, you know, with the deep learning technology we are building, we actually collected a lot of different speeches with different accents and train the engine to teach it how to do the mapping between different accents to English words. So specifically, here in Silicon Valley, there are a lot of Indian engineers and Chinese engineers. So we did a lot of enhancement and training for Chinese accent and Indian accent. But in addition to that, there are UK accents from Britain, from Australia, even in southern America. You know, people have different accents. So we have in on the internet, there are a lot of a public speech, and we use that to train the speech recognition.

Larry: And of course, also people with speech impediments, I imagine you can eventually get to the point where you could translate transcribe virtually any speech. Right?

Sam: Right. But if somebody has  very different pronunciation, different pace or style, they could do a personal training as well. Right now, it’s for the general public.

Larry: And the the other thing that excites me about this technology is simultaneous translation. I go to a lot of conferences that are sponsored by the UN and they have very highly skilled people who not only translate it in real time, but also put it up on the screen in real time. I’m always amazed how they can do that. But I presume we could get to a point where I could be speaking in English and my words could be in French or Chinese or Spanish or Arabic on a screen in real time as I’m speaking.

Sam: Yes, absolutely. We already transcribe the sound  into English words. And we can easily use another API to translate it into Spanish or Mandarin or Japanese and show that in real time as well

Larry: Well Sam, speaking of time, we’ve run out of it. This is great. And of course, as I mentioned there’s transcript of this entire conversation at LarrysWorld.com So if you go to LarrysWorld, you’ll find both the audio and a transcript of the conversation.

Larry: Sam, thank you very much.

Sam: Thank you, Larry.

Note: The preceding transcript has been edited for transcription errors and to improve the readability. Click here, for the actual machine translation from Otter.AI

In an open letter to U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer, Apple said that President Trump’s proposed 25% tarrifs on some Chinese imports woud result in higher prices on several Apple products “including AppleWatch, Apple Pencil and Air Pods; Apple computing tools such as Mac Mini; Apple adapters,cables and chargers.” The company argued that “the U.S. will be hardest hit, and that will result in lower U.S. growth and competitiveness and higher prices for U.S. consumers.”

The company said that the U.S. economy will take a greater hit than China

“Given the balance of Apple’s economic footprint, the burden of the proposed tariffs willfall much more heavily on the United States than on China. The traditional method of calculating the U.S. trade balance attributes the entire value of our products to the country where final assembly is located, in most cases China. That calculation, however, does not reflect the immense value that Apple generates in, and returns to, the United States. Every Apple product contains  parts or materials from the United States and is made with equipment from U.S.- based suppliers. And every one of these products reflects the labor of 2 million U.S. workers across all 50 states, including our 80,000 direct employees, the 450,000 employees at our 9,000 U.S. suppliers, and 1.53 million U.S. app developers.”

ConnectSafely.org has published a revised version of its popular Parent’s Guide to Instagram to reflect recent changes to the service. The organization also now has a one-sheet printer friendly Quick-Guide for distribution at school events and classrooms.

In addition to the version on ConnectSafely’s site, there are versions in multiple languages on Instagram’s site.

As Hurricane Florence bears down on the east coast, it’s important to make sure that your tech is ready and able to operate even in the event of a power failure. The same goes for earthquakes, tornadoes, impending fires and other disasters.

• Batteries, flashlights and portable radios are a must. Also consider flashlights and radios with a crank that don’t even need batteries.
• Get an external backup battery for your cell phone that can recharge the battery even if the power goes down. They’ve pretty cheap and easy to find at places like Walgreens, CVS and Walmat, so maybe get a second one just in case.
• Be sure to charge your cell phone and laptop ahead of any possible power outage.
• If you have a landline, have a corded (not cordless) phone plugged in that will work without power (as long as phone lines are OK).
• Be aware that landlines can fail and even cell phones could be unavailable if their towers are down or if the network is overwhelmed.
• Consider an uninterruptable power supply or UPS that can keep your computer, broadband modem and Internet router charged for at least a couple of hours. I have a separate UPS for my modem, router and Internet phone adapter.
• Get a car-adapter so you can plug your cell phone into your car’s power (cigarette lighter) plug. If you have two phones in your household, get one that can charge both devices
• Back up your computer and mobile devices. It’s best to use “cloud storage” like Dropbox, iCould, Microsoft One Drive and Google Drive because those are safe even if your devices and backup disks are damaged.
• Know how to set up a Wi-Fi hotspot from your phone (also called “tethering”) so you can access the Internet on your laptop if your home Internet connection is disrupted (data charges may apply so don’t use it to stream video). Here are instructions for iPhone and Android.
• Be aware that home security systems may not work during a power failure.
• Have a plan for where you can go if you need Wi-Fi access and have no power or Internet access at home or work.

Keep your tech as dry as possible — have a way to override electronic door locks

We’re increasingly dependent on tech that could be exposed to elements, including electronic door locks, doorbell cameras and outdoor security cameras. It may not be possible to fully protect these items but you might be able to put some plastic sheeting over them which may or may not help. Some items can be disconnected and brought inside. If you have an electronic door lock, make sure you have another way to enter your home, such as a key that overrides the electronics or a different door to enter. If you’re worried about water entering your home, put your electronic devices as high as possible to reduce the risk of water damage. It’s a good idea to have security cameras inside the house (and outside if they can withstand the storm) to alert you if someone breaks in during or just after the storm, while you may be away.

Protect your car

If you have a car, consider parking your car away from big trees during a major wind storm so it’s there for  you if you need it. If you park in a garage with an electric opener, make sure you know how to open the door in the event of a power failure. If you’re concerned about the garage being blocked, consider parking on the street, away from trees.

Unplug during power outage

If the power does go out, it’s a good idea to unplug computers and TV sets to protect against a power surge when it comes back on. Don’t panic if you forget. You’re probably OK, but it’s still a good idea. Avoid opening refrigerator and freezer doors to keep the cold in.

This post first appeared in the San Jose Mercury News

iPhones are great. But so are a lot of Android phones. I’ve owned iPhones in the past, but right now I’m using a Google Pixel 2 XL Android phone and I’m happy with it. Apple’s new iPhones, introduced Wednesday, are an improvement over their predecessors, but there isn’t enough there to tempt me into spending $1,100 for the 64 GB iPhone Xs Max or even $750 for the newest entry level iPhone Xr.  That is, if it weren’t for the improvements in the Apple Watch, which requires that you also have an iPhone.

What impresses me about the Apple Watch Series 4 isn’t the cool apps and watch faces or even how nice it looks on your wrist, but the fact that it can, literally, save lives. Apple has built-in a sensor that it says is “capable of generating an ECG similar to a single-lead electrocardiogram.”

The watch can also detect signs of atrial fibrillation, an irregular heart rhythm, and alert you if your heart is beating too fast or too slow.

The $399 (and up) Apple Watch Series 4 with all these heart-sensing features isn’t out yet, but earlier this year, Apple and Stanford Medicine launched the Apple Heart Study where volunteers agreed to send data from their Apple watches to Stanford to analyze potential irregular heart rhythms, a leading cause of stroke.

One of the people who joined the study was ZDNet senior technology editor Jason Perlow, who recently wrote an article for ZDNet called “How Apple Watch saved my life.” Perlow, like myself and many other tech journalists, wrote that he flips “between my iPhone and Androids pretty much seamlessly,” and that “I have never felt a sense of loyalty to the company, or appreciation in any sense.” But, he did buy a reconditioned 42mm Apple Watch Nike+ Series 2 to try out. He said he “wasn’t committed to it. I was also playing with the Samsung Gear and Android Wear as well. I felt they were about the same in levels of utility.”

But that was before he got some pretty important health news from his Apple Watch and the Stanford study, which informed him, “your heart rhythm appeared to vary more than expected during five different 60-second measurements taken by your Apple Watch.”

That led him to seek medical attention and a series of other tests to diagnose a condition he didn’t know he had. Perlow wrote that he was “extremely lucky the Apple Watch picked up the Afib relatively early.”

Going forward

I remember when you needed a Mac to use an iPod but that changed at some point when Apple introduced software that made the iPod compatible with Windows. That led to an enormous growth in iPod sales. When the iPhone was launched, it worked with either Mac or Windows and now works independent of any computer. You don’t need a Mac or a Windows PC to use an iPhone.

I wish that were the case for the Apple Watch. I suspect that Apple could develop apps that make it compatible with Android phones and could — for the Apple Watch with built-in cellular connectivity — even make it work independent of any smartphone.

Of course, Apple isn’t the only company thinking about how to make products that can improve our health. Google is hot on the same trail as are all of the companies that make smartwatches and fitness bands. But there is a difference between fitness products and medical devices.

Even though the Apple Watch isn’t sold as a medical device, the heart functions have been approved by the Food and Drug Administration and the head of the American Heart Association was on-stage at the announcement, endorsing the potential life-saving features of the new Apple Watch.

Other companies are sure to offer similar technology and push the envelope even further. At CES this year, Omron showed off its Oscillometric Blood Pressure Watch, which is a smartwatch that can measure your blood pressure. I don’t know when the product will go on the market. Last I heard it had been submitted for FDA approval.

There are rumors that Apple has been testing a blood sugar monitor for the Apple Watch that won’t require breaking the skin. If it ever comes to market it could be great for people with diabetes or people who are concerned that their blood sugar may be inching up.

What’s amazing about all these devices is that they can bring medical-grade health evaluations to people in-between office visits, enabling many — like Jason Perlow — to identify problems that may not even show up during routine exams. It can also bring diagnostics to communities and individuals around the world that don’t have access to medical care either because it’s not locally available or not affordable. To me, that’s a lot more exciting than a shiny new iPhone.

Apple announced some shiny new iPhones but you don’t have to buy a new phone to get an upgrade. Simply download a free copy of iOS 12.

CNET has details on all the important new features, including:

• Siri improvements
• Screen time management
• Better notifications
• Facetime upgrades
• Free “tape measure”

TCL 49-inch set

A few weeks ago I bought a 55-inch TCL 5-Series 4K TV. A few days later, I brought it back to the store to exchange for an otherwise identical 49-inch model.

Before I bought the first set, I did some research to determine the ideal-size set for my room. People who write articles about TV size generally focus on the distance between the set and where you’ll sit.

That’s a sensible concept, but the formulas didn’t work for me. I put the TV in our new “media room,” which is basically a medium-sized bedroom. Because of the dimensions of the room, the maximum distance between our eyes and the screen is 87 inches. Based on the calculations from Crutchfield, Reference Home Theater, RTINGS and other expert sites, it was about right. If anything, based on the recommendations, that 55-inch TV might have actually been too small.

This post first appeared in the San Jose Mercury News

But these recommendations are based on formulas that mostly have to do with the amount of distance you need to avoid seeing the pixels on the screen as separate dots. Because 4K TVs are very high resolution, it’s almost impossible to be “too close” to a set based on that criteria. But as my wife and I sat and watched TV, we had a different criteria and we found that big set overwhelming.

So we swapped out the 55-inch set for a 49-inch one and are much happier.

Inexpensive yet adequate 4K set

The TCL Series-5 is far from the most expensive 4K TV but, based on reviews and my own observations, it’s a solid performer, especially considering the price at $400 for the 49-inch model and $500 for the 55-inch set. Other sets (including TCL’s own more expensive Series 6 models) get better reviews but when I looked at several models side-by-side, I found relatively little difference. It’s not like the old-days when the Sony Trinitron or Vega cathode-ray-sets where orders of magnitude better then less-expensive sets. The differences between the most and least expensive 4K sets, while noticeable, are not enormous.

What I like about TCL sets is that they have Roku built-in so you don’t have to buy or connect a separate device for streaming TV. Of course, Samsung and most other TV manufacturers also have “smart” TVs with streaming stations, but none has as many channels as Roku. There is even a Comcast/Xfinity Roku app which allows us to watch regular cable TV (including shows recorded on our Xfinity digital video recorder) via the Roku without our having to go to the expense and hassle of renting another set-top box and wiring the room for cable.

Regardless of brand, if you are upgrading from a 1080p TV to a 4K, don’t expect to be blown away by the difference. 4K is definitely sharper than 1080p, but the difference is not all that great, simply because 1080p is already amazingly good. We still have our old Vizio 1080p 55-inch set in our living room and, frankly, I don’t see a world of difference between the two sets.

One thing you do give up with almost any new TV is great sound. That’s partially because these sets are so thin that they don’t have room for good speakers. The sound on our older, thicker and much heavier 1080p set is much better than any of the thinner new 4K sets I tested.

Fortunately, there is an easy fix. You can add a soundbar to any TV for as little as $100. We opted for a Vizio SB3651-E6 36″ 5.1 Channel SmartCast Soundbar System, which Costco was selling for $200. The soundbar itself, which sits in front of the TV, has a left, right and center speaker plus there is an external sub-woofer and two external surround sound speakers. You can pay a lot more for a TV sound system but, for this small room and our needs, it’s more than adequate.

If you get a new TV and a new soundbar, make sure they both support HDMI ARC. Most new TVs have two or more HDMI ports including one labeled ARC that connects to compatible soundbars. With ARC, you can control the soundbar volume with the TV remote. Other functions need to be controlled from the soundbar remote or the soundbar itself.

Soon you’ll be able to use your voice to re-heat pizza and have your microwave automatically order more popcorn using the $60 AmazonBasics Microwave.  And that’s just one of several new products coming in the next couple of months.

Others include:

• A redesigned Echo Dot
• An in-car device that allows you to listen to music, program your navigation system and open your garage door and turn lights on as you arrive home. There is a $24.99 “invitation only” price and then it will be $50,00.
• A $35 Dot the lets you plug-in your own powered speaker (it doesn’t have one)
• An Echo sub-woofer designed to work with a pair of Echos to give you stereo plus better bass
• An Echo Amplifier and a Link to connect to your own amplifier
• A redesigned Echo Plus
• A smart plug
• A $30 Echo Wall clock
• A new FireTV Recast that records both internet video and over-the-air content

Details at CNET

T-Mobile G1 from Sept 2008

by Larry Magid

This post appeared in the Mercury News on October 16, 2008

Like my Mercury News colleague Troy Wolverton, I agree that the new T-Mobile G1 — the first phone to use Google’s open-source Android operating system — doesn’t quite measure up to the iPhone.

But after using the G1 and several smart-phones with other operating systems, I’m convinced that it will make an impact

This post appeared in the San Jose Mercury News on September 16, 2008

not so much because of how good it is but because it might help further slash prices and improve the functionality of other smart-phones.

Smart-phones — including some models of the BlackBerry and phones running Windows Mobile — have dramatically come down in price over the past couple of years. I recently walked by a store that was offering the BlackBerry Curve for $49 with a two-year contract. AT&T sells the full-featured BlackBerry 8700c for that price and you can easily find plenty of other smart-phones for under $80. True, $49 isn’t free, but it wasn’t long ago that you had to pay that or more for a regular entry-level cell phone.

Serious but flawed

Despite some flaws, the G1 is a serious smart-phone with a pull-out QWERTY keyboard and the ability to run lots of third-party applications.

But what’s most interesting about the phone is its open-source operating system. There are already more than 30 companies that have endorsed the platform. That group, which calls itself the Open Handset Alliance, is made up of major phone makers like LG Electronics, Motorola and Samsung as well as HTC, which builds the G1. Carriers from around the world, including China Mobile, Japan’s NTT DoCoMo, Telecom Italia and Sprint, also are members. Germany’s T-Mobile, the first carrier to deploy an Android phone, claims to have more than 112 million mobile customers in Europe and the United States.

While it’s great to see such a coalition of major companies, my guess is that the real growth in cell phones will come from no-name companies in China and other parts of Asia. Just as with Linux phones, these companies can create phones based on Android without having to pay royalties to Google or any other developer.

While a few of these companies will take advantage of the open-source nature of Android to distinguish their phones from others, many will simply ship whatever flavor of Android they can get hold of for free.

That won’t raise the bar in terms of quality but it will lower the price point for those users who want the basic smart features and don’t care about cutting-edge innovation.

Competitive marketplace will challenge Apple

In the meantime, other phone makers and carriers can try to compete based on quality and features, which could result in a robust competitive marketplace that really does challenge Apple by taking advantage of the real power of Android — the ability to modify the source code and add applications that enhance the functionality.

For example, one of my biggest complaints about the T-Mobile G1 is that it doesn’t offer an optional touch-screen QWERTY keyboard. I love the fact that it has a pull-out physical keyboard but there are plenty of times when it might be more convenient to type on the screen.

To enter a Web URL, for instance, you pull out the keyboard and turn the unit on its side to landscape mode, but in many cases it might be a lot easier just to bring up a virtual keyboard on-screen.

Another flaw in the G1 is the relatively weak approach to e-mail (other than Google’s Gmail), including the lack of Microsoft Exchange support and inability to synchronize your PC’s address book and calendar (it does automatically sync with the Web-based Gmail address book and Google calendar but not Outlook). These are serious flaws, but because this is an open-source operating system, anyone with the skills to fix them is free to do so.

And, unlike the iPhone’s application store, which is policed by Apple, Google and its Open Handset Alliance partners say they won’t block applications unless they have security flaws or otherwise violate Google’s terms of service. Google does reserve the right to “remotely remove” applications that violate its terms, but the company has said that it would do this only in the case of malicious software. “In limited cases where an application has a malicious intent, we will remove it from the market and potentially uninstall it from user devices to ensure the safety of the Android Market community.”

This robust open application environment could, over time, encourage thousands of developers to create interesting programs for Android.

Of course, there are already thousands of iPhone applications thanks to Apple’s market success and incredibly energetic developer evangelism. And we are already seeing some of the iPhone apps being ported over to Android.

In the meantime, Microsoft, Research In Motion, Apple and Palm are not likely to sit still. We’re already seeing some creative new phones from RIM, including the BlackBerry Storm and the Bold that are aimed squarely at the consumer market, and a new, more consumer-friendly version of the Palm operating system is said to be in development.

Let a thousand cell phones bloom

I never palled around with Chairman Mao, but I agree with the statement “let a thousand flowers bloom” that was attributed to him (albeit a slight misquote). His cultural revolution is over, but thanks to his country’s manufacturing prowess, I expect to see the blooming of thousands of smart cell phones.

3 new iPhones, each a different size and a different price

After several days using Apple’s new iPhone XS Max, I can testify that it’s an excellent phone. The screen is brilliant, the camera better than ever and the fit and finish is everything you’d expect from an Apple flagship phone. It’s even more durable than previous models. I haven’t dropped my phone, but CNET “dropped a brand-new gold iPhone XS onto the sidewalk four times,” and it didn’t crack.

This post first appeared in the Mercury News

Even though the phone has a whopping 6.5-inch display, it fits nicely in my relatively small hands. It’s a little heavier than previous iPhones, mostly due to its stainless steel frame, but I don’t think it’s too heavy.

The 2688×1242 (458 pixels per inch) resolution “Super Retina” OLED display is one of the best I’ve ever seen on a phone in terms of its color accuracy, brightness and contrast.

Faster chip

Apple says that its new A12 Bionic chip provides for faster and better pictures as well as enhanced editing options. The company claims the new chip has a 15 percent performance increase over the previous A11 chip and uses “up to 50% lower power.” I didn’t benchmark power consumption, but I was able to get through an entire day on a single charge. Tom’s Guide rated the XS Max battery at 10 hours and 38 minutes, which is mid-range compared with other high-end phones. The smaller XS came in at 9:41. By comparison, the Huawei P20 lasted for 14:13  while Google’s Pixel 2, scored 12:9 on their endurance test.

Like last year’s iPhone X, the phone has Face ID, which immediately unlocks the phone as you glance at it. I found this to work almost flawlessly, with my glasses on or off. Face ID can also be used to unlock some apps and payment services.

Better camera and sound

I really like the phone’s camera and, despite what other reviewers have said, I think it’s better than the excellent camera in Google’s Pixel 2 XL — the phone I’ve been using nearly every day for the past year. The Pixel 2 is reputed to have the best phone camera on the planet, but I prefer the images I get from the new iPhone.  I find that especially true with pictures of people where flesh tones look richer and better on an iPhone than they do with the Pixel 2.

As with previous high-end iPhones, the XS has a “dual-camera system,” with 2x optical zoom. All phone cameras have digital zoom, but optical zoom gives you higher-quality images. One impressive feature is the ability to adjust depth of field after a picture is taken, which determines what part of the image is in focus and what part you want to be blurred. Getting depth of field right on high-end cameras can be tricky. On an iPhone it’s incredibly easy. As with previous iPhones, there is also an optional portrait mode that automatically blurs the background for closeup photos, including selfies.

And there’s one improvement that you can’t see but can hear. The phone’s stereo speakers make music and videos sound better, though most people probably listen via headphones. The phone’s video camera can now record stereo, which might be a bigger deal.

All of the features I described for the XS Max also apply to the smaller (5.8-inch screen) and somewhat less expensive ($999 and up) XS.

Less expensive iPhone XR

Apple also announced a $750 iPhone XR, which will be available for pre-order on October 18 and will ship on October 26. This phone, which I saw at the announcement but haven’t yet reviewed, will have a 6.1-inch “Liquid Retina” LCD display with a resolution of 1792×828 or 326 pixels per inch, compared with the higher resolution 458 pixels per inch of both the XS and XS Max. Like its more expensive siblings, the XR screen fills up the entire front of the phone, what Apple calls an “all-screen design.”

In most important ways, the XR appears to be nearly comparable with the XS and XS Max. Its 6.1-inch screen is a tad smaller than the XS Max (though bigger than the 5.8-inch XS) and it doesn’t have a 2X optical zoom camera like its more expensive brethren. It also has a less expensive aluminum frame, but I don’t think that matters a great deal. It has a less expensive and somewhat lower resolution LCD screen, but it still looks great. But it’s an iPhone with all the requisite qualities. $750 is hardly an inexpensive smartphone, but it is a way to get what promises to be an excellent large-screen iPhone for $350 less than the XS Max. I have a feeling it’s going to be a popular choice.

And, of course, you can save money by buying a phone from almost anyone but Apple. There are a lot of great Android phones on the market, including the aforementioned Pixel 2 and Pixel 2 XL, and Google is expected to announce its Pixel 3 phones on October 9, which are likely to be even more of a challenge to Apple. And then there is Samsung, LG, Motorola and so many other manufacturers to choose from, with an array of choices and price points.

I rarely lose things but I often misplace my keys, wallet, phone, laptop and other items. More often than not they’re somewhere in my house but it’s still frustrating to have to take time — often when I’m about to leave the house — to find them. There are times I worry that I’m starting to lose my memory but my wife Patti, whose known me for nearly 40 years, assures me that I’ve always been that way.

Finding my phone is easy as long as it’s turned on and in range. I either call it or use Apple’s iCloud or Google’s Find Your Phone feature to have it ring at its loudest setting, even if the ringer is turned off. And, thanks to products like Tile and TrackR, it’s possible to find almost anything as long as it has a tracking device attached to it.,

Both Tile and TrackR are small  devices that attach easily to a keychain, backpack or other items that can accomodate a keyring-like attachment. Tile also has a “slim” version that’s thin enough to fit into most wallets. You can also attach one of these trackers to almost anything via double sided tape or handy 3M double-sided squares. With both TrackR and Tile, you pair the tracker with an app that runs on your smartphone and, as long as you’re within Bluetooth range, you can use your phone to locate and cause the device to ring. If you’re out of range, you might still be able to find the device because both Tile and TrackR offer a service that turns every phone that’s running their app into a search tool, always seeking out nearby lost Tiles or TrackR devices and then reporting their location back to the owner.

I’ve been using both Tiles and TrackR for years and, until now, the pros and cons of each made them something of a trade-off. But, with new versions that just came out, Tile is the clear winner.

What TrackR had over Tile was a replaceable coin-sized battery. Tiles had built-in batteries that lasted for about a year and when they were dead, you had to replace the Tile. Tile, on the other hand is sturdier, has a better look and feel, and a louder ring, though neither was loud enough in many circumstances and even within my house, I often had trouble finding lost items because they weren’t within Bluetooth range.

With a new Tile Mate ($25) and Tile Pro ($35), the tiles now have replaceable batteries, are considerably louder and have a longer Bluetooth range.  The batteries, which cost as little as $1 to replace, should last about a year. Tile says that the Mate has a Bluetooth range of 150 feet and that it is now 50% louder than the previous model. The Pro is claimed to have a range of 300 feet with an alert that’s 3 times louder.  I didn’t measure the exact range but I put a Pro on my keychain and walked to a far corner of my house and was able  to not only ring the device but hear it. I put the Mate on my backpack and, from that far room, couldn’t reach the device but as I walked around the house it eventually connected and rang it loud enough to easily find it. That’s more than I could say for the previous model which sometimes never got within range and — even when it did — I often couldn’t hear it ring.

The Tiles also have a find my phone feature, which enables you to double-press a button on the Tile to have your phone ring as long as it’s within Bluetooth range, even if the ringer is turned off. That’s a feature, but in my case, a bit of a bug because — when I put a Mate in my wallet, which I usually keep in my back pocket, it would sometimes ring my phone when I sat on it. The iOS app has a way of turning that off but it’s always on with Android. I didn’t have that problem with the Tile Slim ($30) which, at a 10th of an inch, fits easily into my wallet and doesn’t activate when I sit on it. The Slim is also a good option for laptops and other items where thickness might matter. By contrast both the Matt and Pro are about a quarter inch thick, which is fine for a keychain or backpack. The Slim, however, has only a 100 foot range and isn’t as loud.

The company is also launching a Premium service which, for $30 a year, will include Smart Alerts to notify you if you leave home without an item that has an attached Tile. I suppose this could help you remember to take your wallet or backpack. The good thing about car keys is that you can’t drive away without them. It also offers free annual battery replacement for all your Tiles, access to a map of where your items have been in the last 30 days and the ability to share your Tile tracking with as many people as you want so that they can help you find lost items. You can share location with one person without the premium plan.

My only complaint about Tile is that you need the app to locate a device. I wish there were a web interface, which would be especially useful if you, for example, lost your backpack with your phone in it and don’t have access to another phone to run the app. But I have that complaint with a lot of apps that don’t have a companion website. I realize I’m showing my age, but not everyone — at least not everyone over 30 — wants to use their phone for every task.