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  • Adobe Wants to Recruit Lifelong Fans with Huge K-12 Discount

    Adobe Wants to Recruit Lifelong Fans with Huge K-12 Discount

    Do you want access to the Adobe Creative Suite for $5 a year? Then you’re in luck…as long as you’re under 18. Adobe hopes that their latest promotion will introduce a whole new generation to their design tools.

    Major Discount for Kids

    Adobe announced that, starting May 15, students in the US will be able to use its full suite of creative tools—including Photoshop, Muse, Dreamweaver, Illustrator, and more—for just $5 a year. That’s a massive drop from the previous educational discount of $240 per year.

    Kids will be able to use all of the Adobe products through the Creative Cloud. The cloud-based system allows users to log in from home or school and access their files anywhere. Even after they age out of the program, students will be able to keep their files from the cloud.

    Training the New Generation

    As smartphones and web-based apps dominate the market, especially for younger generations, Adobe has seen its popularity begin to wane. To stay competitive and bring in new users as early as possible, Adobe is also revamping its training tools and tutorials to make their products easier to use.

    Considering that software like Photoshop can be challenging even for industry professionals to master, it will be interesting to see how the company can make its complex products more user friendly.

    No Break for College Students

    Unfortunately for students over 18, the new price drop stops at the end of high school. College students can still take advantage of a slight discount for access to the Creative Cloud ($420 per year, compared to the full price of $600).

    Although the deal is only available to schoolchildren in the US, Europe, Japan, New Zealand, and India right now (albeit with slightly different pricing for different territories), an Adobe spokesperson says that the company plans to expand to other countries soon.

  • What Is Going on With Tesla Right Now?

    What Is Going on With Tesla Right Now?

    Tesla—the brainchild of real-life Tony Stark, Elon Musk—has been in the headlines a lot lately. We’re pretty sure Musk isn’t actually building a cyborg dragon, as he Tweeted earlier this week, but he’s certainly been busy. Here’s a roundup of the news you might have missed.

    Record Revenue…and Record Losses

    Although Musk promises that Tesla will be in the black by Q3, the company reported net losses of over $780 million for the first quarter. This is despite also reporting record-setting revenue for the same quarter. The troubled production of the Model 3 (see below) has been a stumbling block for the company.

    Model 3 Production

    Roll-out for the Model 3, the most reasonably priced of Tesla’s electric vehicles, has been anything but smooth. Last year, they only managed to produce 260 cars during Q3. Considering that Musk’s stated goal was 5,000 cars a week, there were obvious problems afoot.

    Production seems to be back on track, however, with April showing a rate of 2,270 cars per week. The goal is still 5,000 per week, a number that Tesla expects to hit before the end of summer.

    Nikola Versus Tesla

    Nikola Motor Company and Tesla have been at odds since day one. Both are named after the legendary inventor, and both are developing electric vehicles. Nikola filed a lawsuit that alleges Tesla’s electric truck infringes on their patents. The truck company is seeking $2 billion in damages, claiming that Tesla’s design has created “confusion in the market” and will “harm Nikola’s ability to attract investors.” Musk has dismissed the lawsuit as baseless.

    Workplace Safety Concerns

    California’s Division of Occupational Safety and Health (Cal-OSHA) is investigating Tesla’s Fremont factory for evidence of workplace hazards. The factory has been running night and day to hit the ambitious Model 3 production numbers, and reports claim that Tesla has been underreporting injuries on the factory floor. A separate 2016 investigation found that Tesla’s plant had significantly more injuries than the average auto manufacturer.

    Self-Driving Ridesharing

    Self-driving cars are the current Holy Grail for auto companies. Tesla hopes to create an autonomous ridesharing network by the end of next year. Musk described his idea as something of a hybrid between Uber and Airbnb, where you can let others use your car for a fee during times you don’t need it.

    Considering that both Tesla and Uber have been in the news for crashes of their autonomous vehicles, the world might not be ready for this idea.

    Model Y on the Horizon

    Finally, Musk announced that the long-awaited Model Y—a crossover-style vehicle—will go into production sometime in 2020. Model Y will be built at an all-new factory, the site of which has not been decided. This isn’t the first time that Tesla has teased the electric crossover, however, and eager consumers might need to prepare for another pushback.

  • Facebook Wants to Help You Find Love

    Facebook Wants to Help You Find Love

    Are you one of the 200 million Facebook users who listed themselves as “single”? Soon, you’ll be able to try out their new matchmaking feature. After all, Facebook knows more about you than all but your closest friends, so the company may have a better shot at introducing you to the love of your life than, say, your coworker or an acquaintance from book club.

    The new feature was announced by CEO Mark Zuckerberg at Facebook’s annual F8 developers conference. Considering that Zuckerberg originally created Facebook to rank the relative hotness of his female classmates, it seems only fitting that the social media platform would make a foray into online dating.

    How It Works

    Although we don’t yet have a firm release date for Facebook Dating, we have an idea of how the service will work. According to the official announcement, it will “mirror the way people meet in real life — through the experiences they have in common.”

    Once the feature becomes available, users can opt in by creating a profile. This will be quarantined from the rest of your social media presence so that your friends and family won’t know that you’ve signed up. You also won’t be matched with anyone already on your friends list. Instead, you’ll be able to browse Groups and Events in your area to find other Facebook Daters and browse their profiles.

    If you find someone you like, you can exchange messages through a text-only system, meaning that you won’t be able to exchange pics—wanted or otherwise. The communication system will be separate from Facebook Messenger.

    Tinder Stock Plummets

    Although it uses some of the same mechanics as hookup apps like Tinder, Facebook Dating is more focused on matchmaking for long-term relationships. Despite this, Tinder’s parent company Match Group saw their shares drop by 17 percent following Zuckerberg’s announcement.

    It’s not clear yet whether Facebook users will embrace the dating feature. On the one hand, it could be an effective way to meet like-minded singles in your area. But on the other hand, do you really want to give Facebook even more influence over your life and the data collected about it?

    Concerns Over Safety and Privacy

    Facebook is still trying to do damage control over the Cambridge Analyitca scandal, and many people are already wary about the way the company handles personal data. It doesn’t help that in April, Grindr was discovered to have shared sensitive information—including HIV status—with its advertisers.

    Beyond concern over how Facebook will use the information it gathers, there’s also a question of how safe those who opt in to the dating service will be from creeps and stalkers. Facebook Dating profiles will show your first name as well as the city you live in, and potentially your workplace. Determined stalkers could easily use that information to find you.

    Zuckerberg did not address these privacy concerns at F8, but the company should be very careful as it proceeds to ensure that its users are protected. Otherwise, it’ll be Cambridge Analytica all over again.

  • Hulu Hopes Updated Features Will Entice New Customers

    Hulu Hopes Updated Features Will Entice New Customers

    In the battle of the streaming media titans, Hulu has long been struggling to compete with Netflix and Amazon Prime. The company announced several new features and updates, along with the renewal of their most popular original show, The Handmaid’s Tale. But will it be enough to continuing growing their customer base?

    Manage Your Suggestions

    One feature that’s been missing from Hulu is the ability to stop the site from suggesting you watch shows that you’re not interested in viewing. After the twentieth time the streaming service helpfully recommends you check out the Will Ferrell/Mark Wahlburg movie Daddy’s Home, you just want it go away.

    “We want you to be in control of the experience. If you don’t like something, you should be able to tell us,” said Hulu’s Head of Experience, Ben Smith. With that in mind, you will soon be able to choose “Stop Suggesting” whenever Hulu offers up a show or movie you don’t want to see. The button will be underneath the suggested content.

    New Original Series

    Hulu’s original content has lagged behind their competitors, but the company hopes that their new slate of projects will change that. In addition to securing an exclusive agreement with DreamWorks Animation to stream their feature films, Hulu will also be premiering several new prestige series this season.

    George Clooney will be bringing Joseph Heller’s mind-bending war novel Catch-22 to the small screen, while Mindy Kaling will be producing a comedy series based on the 1994 film Four Weddings and a Funeral. Blumhouse, the studio that brought us The Purge, Split, and Get Out, will be dipping its toe into television with a one-hour horror anthology called Into The Dark, which will roll out a new episode on the first Friday of each month beginning in October.

    Offline Viewing

    Other streaming services have offered offline viewing for a while, but Hulu is doing it in a slightly different way. Subscribers will be able to download content for future viewing, but there’s a catch—if you don’t have a premium commercial-free membership, you’ll be forced to sit through ads. Hulu will be the first streaming platform to package commercials with downloaded content, and since the ads can’t be skipped, advertisers can be confident that their message is being seen.

    That’s good news for the company and its advertisers, but slightly less good news for viewers. Only time will tell how much pushback Hulu will get from its downloadable ad-supported content, but if it works, you can expect to see other streaming services trying something similar.

  • MoviePass Is Back

    MoviePass Is Back

    A few weeks ago MoviePass tried to quietly downgrade its movie theater subscription service to a limit of 3 movie per month. Thankfully MoviePass has come to their senses and went  back to its old one-movie-per-day plan. CEO Mitch Lowe now says the subscription service is “absolutely committed” to keeping it that way. This is Good News and just in time for summer.

    Now there are still some updates to their Unlimited plan. From now on including those of us on the former unlimited movie plan, we are only able to use the movie pass once per movie. I found this out the hard way when I tried to see Infinity war for the second time. This hurts, I was planning on seeing Solo everyday for an entire month..

    This isn’t the first time we have seen MoviePass make updates, tweak or change their plans. Actually the only constant in the MoviePass subscription plan is that it is ever evolving. We know the company is hemorrhaging money as they struggle to make the brilliance of bringing folks back to the theaters a profitable venture. Do you all remember the plan from last fall, the annual subscription plan for $89.95 upfront, which worked out to a lower monthly fee, but didn’t allow users to ask for refunds.

    The 3 movie a month plan is still available for $7.95 with the Iheartradio promotion, if you want to save that $2 a month. Its not a horrible plan either, how many good movies a month come out that you want to see.

    The Final Thought

    MoviePass is on to something here, people are talking about. Not in a negative way either. They are making noise, alot in the way Netflix did early in the millennia. Something is telling me the movie theater business model may end up molding to MoviePass subscription base. Ill continue to keep an eye on this and update you when necessary in the mean time their stock is trading at less then $3 a share, like Netflix did early in the millennia

  • Aloe Bud Is the Self-Care App You Need Now

    Aloe Bud Is the Self-Care App You Need Now

    Do you ever feel stressed out? Well, there’s an app for that.

    Aloe Bud offers push notifications to remind you to be kind to yourself. You can configure notifications for everything from drinking more water, taking deep breaths, to getting up from your desk to move, and many other options.

    Millennial Mindfulness

    With its quirky design and cheerful retro graphics, the Aloe Bud app is clearly designed with Millennials in mind. The oft-maligned generation is more open to incorporating practices like yoga and meditation into their daily routines. Not only that, but they’re willing to shell out a few bucks at a time to get the latest mindfulness app.

    Self-care is a thriving business, and with an increased focus on wellness pervading almost every industry, it’s easy to get cynical about the whole thing. However, there is real value in being reminded to take a moment out of your day to look after your wellbeing. Aloe Bud makes it easier to do just that.

    Easy-to-Use App

    Aloe Bud is unusual in that it doesn’t require a ton of personal information to create an account—no sign-up process that gathers your name and address, and no Facebook link to turn self-care into a competitive sport.

    The interface is straightforward, with a grid of boxes containing a cute graphic and intuitive label for each type of self-care activity. You can choose to get alerts for any of these activities throughout your day. The app is also useful for tracking your good habits!

    Deceptively Simple

    Developer Amber Discko created the app based on her own need to de-stress and take better care of her wellbeing. Working with a mental health professional, her team carefully chose language that was positive, encouraging, and respectful of common triggers for anxiety.

    The app is free from the Apple store, although there is a $4.99 expansion pack of new texts to keep things fresh.

  • Facebook Is Rolling Out a Downvote Button

    Facebook Is Rolling Out a Downvote Button

    Facebook is experimenting with a downvote button in certain markets. But before you get excited, it’s not the same thing as a dislike button. We’re still waiting for a thumbs-down react option, but in the meantime, there will be a new way to rank comments so that the “best” content appears first.

    Follow the Arrows

    In addition to the set of emoji reacts—like, love, haha, wow, sad, and angry—you’ll soon be able to hit an up or down arrow to show whether a comment was helpful, insightful, or relevant to the discussion.

    This new feature mimics other platforms like Reddit or the commenting system Disqus, used by many sites around the web. After the hits Facebook’s reputation has taken recently, the move can be seen as part of an overall strategy to make the social media site a more appealing place to spend your time. By downvoting comments that are disrespectful, hateful, or off-topic, users have more control over the content that’s displayed.

    Fostering Communication

    The goal with the downvote option is ultimately to clean up the comments with less hate and fake news. “People have told us they would like to see better public discussions on Facebook, and want spaces where people with different opinions can have more constructive dialogue,” a Facebook spokesperson said. “Our hope is that this feature will make it easier for us to create such spaces, by ranking the comments that readers believe deserve to rank highest, rather than the comments that get the strongest emotional reaction.”

    Limited Trial Run

    For now, the feature is only available in New Zealand and Australia. Assuming everything goes well there, the social media giant intends to extend the downvote feature to other territories. No word on when it will arrive in the US, but you can probably expect to see the upvote/downvote options sometime this year. As for how Facebook plans to deal with potential abuse of the system…well, we will have to wait and see.

  • Gilfoyle’s Bitcoin Alert Noise from Silicon Valley Now Made a Reality

    Gilfoyle’s Bitcoin Alert Noise from Silicon Valley Now Made a Reality

    Spoilers for Silicon Valley Season 5, Episode 3 ahead

    Are you a fan of HBO’s hit comedy show Silicon Valley? Do you mine bitcoin? Did you find Gilfoyle’s use of death metal to alert himself to bitcoin rises and drops hilarious?

    Well, you’re in luck.

    Viska Offers Real Death Metal Bitcoin Alert

    That’s right—now you can get your own obnoxious bitcoin alert just like Gilfoyle’s. Icelandic website design agency Viska has just created a web version of Gilfoyle’s loud and jarring alert.

    According to Viska representative Sindri Guðmundsson, he and others from the Viska team watch Silicon Valleyevery week during each season’s airing. Guðmundsson said the team decided to make the Gilfoyle-inspired alert system “just for fun.”

    Gilfoyle’s bitcoin alert sound bite is a 1.36 second clip from the song “You Suffer” by Napalm Death.

    How Did Viska Make the Alert?

    Guðmundsson described that the Viska team wrote a simple Javascript plugin that follows the price of bitcoin from Coincap.io. Then they built their site off of WordPress—in three hours, no less.

    Now, any user who wants Gilfoyle’s alert system can connect it to their home mining rig, so they can toggle off and on remotely.

    Guðmundsson also said in an email to The Verge—a tech news site—“We actually follow the bitcoin price quite a lot and playing beautiful music each time it passes a certain amount makes the day better.”

    While Guðmundsson may believe “You Suffer” is beautiful music, it’s an equal guess that he was joking since they created the bitcoin alert for a laugh. The joke in Silicon Valleywas most certainly because the alert was loud and sudden, startling everyone in the office each time it went off (which was a lot).

    So, if you want to annoy your office-mates or just make yourself laugh as you follow the rise and fall of bitcoin, you can now be just like Gilfoyle thanks to Viska.

  • New Smart Wall for Smart Homes

    New Smart Wall for Smart Homes

    Smart homes are getting smarter and smarter. The Wall++ offers a new way to control smart homes, one that doesn’t involve repeating phrases to a smart speaker.

    Wall++

    The Wall++ was developed by researchers at Carnegie Mellon University and Disney Research. They created a way to make the walls of a smart home into gesture-sensing touchpads. They used conductive paint and a custom sensor board to create electrodes to turn walls into an “electromagnetic sensor to detect and track electrical devices and appliances.”

    What’s so great about a smart wall? Researchers say the wall system could monitor activity in rooms, send alerts when an appliance goes off, adjust lights, and control televisions. It can also track people who are wearing certain electronic devices that emit an electromagnetic signature.

    The Wall++ is an idea that built off of Carnegie Mellon’s previous work in a system called Electrick. Electrick took the first step in spraying conductive paint onto smooth surfaces to enable touch controls.

    Smart Wall Could Replace Smart Speaker Systems

    Home smart speakers are popular, but Carnegie Mellon researchers predict the smart wall could be an improvement and become more popular.

    It will be some time before the Wall++ is available to the public, however. Researchers are currently installing prototypes by putting a sensor board in the wall’s baseboard, but they think they can make improvements for easier installation. They also have aims to optimize the Wall++’s energy consumption. Overall, the Wall++ is looking to be extremely promising for the future of smart homes.

  • Sprint Plans to Merge with T-Mobile

    Sprint Plans to Merge with T-Mobile

    Two major wireless carriers in the United States are about to merge into one company. The combined company will be called T-Mobile and will be based in Bellevue, Washington. The current T-Mobile CEO John Legere will run the company, and T-Mobile’s current COO Mike Sievert will be the new company’s COO and President.

    Merger Plans to Lower Prices

    By combining into one company, Sprint and T-Mobile believe they will be able to lower their prices. They also hope they will be able to pursue overtaking their competition, AT&T and Verizon.

    T-Mobile and Sprint have been in talks for quite some time. Sprint originally broached the idea of buying T-Mobile back in 2014, but nothing came of their proposal. Talks between the two companies resumed, however, in May of 2017.

    Both Sprint and T-Mobile batted the ball back and forth on which company would buy which. Sprint’s offer was tabled in October 2017, followed by an offer by T-Mobile that failed in November 2017.

    But it looks like Sprint and T-Mobile have finally come to a decision. CNBC said that the two companies were closing in on a merger on Friday. The merger is worth $26 billion.

    Deutsche Telekom, T-Mobile’s majority owner, will hold a 42 percent stake in the new company, and Sprint majority owner SoftBank will hold 27 percent. Public stakeholders will hold the rest. Sprint CEO Marcelo Claire and SoftBank SEO Masayoshi Son will sit on the new company’s board.

    This merger comes in an opportune time when T-Mobile and Sprint are ready to send out their new 5G network across the U.S. The new company will serve almost 100 million customers.