Tech News Digest—Issue XLVII
This version of my Tech New Digest comes late—I was too busy even to comment. Interesting.
Honestly speaking, I do not think the move is wise. As a comparison, Zynga, being another game maker, with a broader line of online games, is still trying to survive with a series of high rank executive shakes. King has only one game that’s making money for the moment. It has to change. By the way, I do not play Candy Crush; I’ve heard a few of my friends playing it, claiming that they will never go beyond Level 35(?) since that’s the level that requires you to connect to Facebook and be a marketing victim.
One reason that I do not like Facebook is that it tries to determine for me what I should read. In fact, that is just a hokum: what it really wants to decide is what ads to show me. I view Paper by Facebook as a positive step that Facebook wants to return some freedom to end users by putting some lures (articles, what users want to read) to an external app so that the Facebook timeline could hopefully be purer (with updates from friends that I really care). I must be that Paper has not achieved this goal very well that people disliked it pretty soon. (Disclaimer: I have not tried Paper at all. If I still were a believer of Facebook, I might have tried it.)
Game over for MtGox as Bitcoin exchange files for bankruptcy protection
I really do not think there is much security in digital currency.
I think this is a good idea; definitely a company that I will follow up later to see how it has grown.
The world’s largest photo service just made its pictures free to use
Quote: “Our content was everywhere already.” So the smarter idea is to attract users to Getty Images site, instead of setting up high copyright walls and guard people outside.
I still cannot like Google docs. It is OK to create a little piece of something, or simply viewing some others file quickly; but in terms of content creation and taking as a main productive suite, there is a long way to go.
iOS 8: Apple considers Notification Center + Messages tweaks, removing Game Center app
What interests me more in this article is the inter-app communication. It can be a huge deal to enable this (without breaking the sandboxing rules) in the next iOS version.
Android And iOS Gamers Will Soon Be Able To Play With Each Other
So is this news sorta conflicting with the one above?
And quote: “Google’s approach to mobile games is very much like its approach to everything that touches the Internet: It wants to be the central platform for discovery, interaction, development and monetization. Google doesn’t want to limit its mobile gaming reach to just Android when it thinks there is an opportunity to pull in iOS gamers and developers as well.”—And I think this is just a good daydream.
Though I am now using a Mac, I still miss the good old days with Windows XP. Quoting security concerns for the reason of stopping Windows XP is lame. Quite a bunch of recent security breaches (e.g., the most recent heartbleed bug in OpenSSL) are no longer due to problems in operating systems.
Apple’s Jony Ive Seeks Product Inspiration In Unlikely Places, Heads A Team Of Just 15
I read this a very good marketing article.
Details on Apple’s iOS health tracking app hint at advanced iWatch features
Quote: “Healthbook reportedly can measure more complicated things like your blood oxygen saturation, breathing rate, and hydration.”—This is indeed worth expecting.
However, what I dislike about all the smart watch hypes is that, people talk about tracking and collecting data too much, but not very inadequate on analyzing what you have collected. For example, some sleep tracker that I use can tell me for how long I am awake, in light sleep, or in deep sleep; but so what? I finally ditched that iPhone app and started taking regular gym classes and I feel much energetic each day and have sound sleep each night now.
So my question to Apple is, how are you going to solve this problem?
This is Healthbook, Apple’s major first step into health & fitness tracking
This is a relatively complete review of Healthbook in case you have not read it yet. But my question to Apple is still the same.