The Next Web: Google employees want to teach you to code for free with their cute new app. “A bunch of Google employees participating in the company’s Area 120 internal incubator have launched Grasshopper, a free mobile app for Android and iOS that teaches you the basics of programming. It’s beautifully designed and is suitable for just about anyone who can be trusted to use a phone on their own. By solving simple challenges and answering quiz questions, you’ll soon get the hang of basic JavaScript.”
smartphones
New York Times: A Beginner’s Guide to Taking Great Video on Your Phone
New York Times: A Beginner’s Guide to Taking Great Video on Your Phone. “Not long ago, a filmmaker wouldn’t dream of shooting a movie on a phone because the quality was so inferior to what you could capture on pricier devices. But that’s changing. Consider this: The most recent project from the renowned American film director Steven Soderbergh, ‘Unsane,’ was shot entirely on an iPhone. Today, there are lots of reasons everyone from pro photographers to amateur shutterbugs are using phones to shoot video projects.”
Engadget: Study finds over 3,300 Android apps improperly tracking kids
Engadget: Study finds over 3,300 Android apps improperly tracking kids. “There’s little doubt that mobile apps sometimes overstep their bounds by collecting more data from kids than the law allows. But how often does that happen? It might be more than you think. Researchers using an automated testing process have discovered that 3,337 family- and child-oriented Android apps on Google Play were improperly collecting kids’ data, potentially putting them in violation of the US’ COPPA law (which limits data collection for kids under 13). Only a small number were particularly glaring violations, but many apps exhibited behavior that could easily be seen as questionable.”
How-To Geek: The Best Ways to Automatically Back Up the Photos on Your Smartphone
How-To Geek: The Best Ways to Automatically Back Up the Photos on Your Smartphone. “The best camera is the one you have with you, and most of the time that’s going to be your smartphone. You probably capture lots of important moments with your phone, so you also need to make sure you’re keeping those moments backed up.” Multiple comments on the article point out the non-inclusion of OneDrive.
EurekAlert: Deep learning transforms smartphone microscopes into laboratory-grade devices
EurekAlert: Deep learning transforms smartphone microscopes into laboratory-grade devices . “Researchers at the UCLA Samueli School of Engineering have demonstrated that deep learning, a powerful form of artificial intelligence, can discern and enhance microscopic details in photos taken by smartphones. The technique improves the resolution and color details of smartphone images so much that they approach the quality of images from laboratory-grade microscopes.” WOW.
TechCrunch: App Store shrank for first time in 2017 thanks to crackdowns on spam, clones and more
TechCrunch: App Store shrank for first time in 2017 thanks to crackdowns on spam, clones and more. “The App Store shrank for the first time in 2017, according to a new report from Appfigures. The report found the App Store lost 5 percent of its total apps over the course of the year, dropping from 2.2 million published iOS apps in the beginning of the year to 2.1 million by year-end. Google Play, meanwhile, grew in 2017 — it was up 30 percent to more than 3.6 million apps.”
NoCamels: Israeli Startup Launches AI-Powered Alert App To Help Farmers Save Crops From Disease, Pests
NoCamels: Israeli Startup Launches AI-Powered Alert App To Help Farmers Save Crops From Disease, Pests. “Saillog, a Tel Aviv-based agriculture tech startup founded just last year, has come up with an innovative way to help farmers stay ahead and devise a containment and management strategy. The company launched a free smartphone app, Agrio, leveraging artificial intelligence (AI) and computer vision algorithms to identify plant diseases and deficiencies. Agrio allows users to take images of crops they suspect are affected, upload them to the platform and, within moments, receive a diagnosis and recommendations on how to proceed.”
