personalization
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YouTube Music puts more focus on personalized playlists
A new activity bar has filters for mood-centered playlists.
Skullcandy’s Crusher Evo headphones are even better at rattling your brain
Skullycandy's Crusher Evo wireless headphones pack 'more multi-dimensional haptic vibration patterns.'
Yelp adds personalized search results to its iPhone app
For good or ill, it's common for internet services to track what you do and offer "personalized" suggestions. But Yelp, that stalwart of internet reviews, is for the first time letting its users build a profile of their tastes which will be used to make better recommendations. Those preferences will be weaved throughout the Yelp experience going forward, starting with the iPhone app. It's rather surprising that Yelp's results weren't more customized yet, but now the company says two users in the same location conducting the same search will see different results for the first time. Recommendations that pop on the home screen will also reflect your personal preferences, as well.
Pandora's Voice Mode is your personal music assistant
Pandora is rolling out Voice Mode to all users today. While you may have used Pandora voice controls on smart products like Amazon Alexa or Google Home, the new feature takes voice commands to the next level. It's meant to be more like a personal assistant for music, and it promises to deliver music selections tailored to each individual user.
Spotify's Pandora-style Stations app arrives in the US
Spotify's Pandora-esque Stations app has arrived in the US after it previously emerged in Australia. It's officially an "experiment" for now, though you can grab it from the App Store or Google Play.
Spotify experiments with curated podcast playlists
Beginning today, a handful of Spotify users will see curated podcast playlists in their accounts. According to The Verge, the playlists are an experiment to help Spotify understand how it can help users discover new shows. The hand-picked lists will be broken into five categories: comedy, true crime, "geek culture," motivation and mindfulness. The Verge reports the playlists will include a mix of Spotify originals and third-party shows.
Google Assistant will understand even more about your life
Google Assistant will be able to use information you share with it about the people, places and events in your life so it has a stronger understanding of queries related to them. Google Assistant VP of engineering Scott Huffman said, with the Personal References feature, it'll have better context for queries such as "weather at Mom's house" or asking it to remind you to buy a gift before someone's birthday. With an eye on privacy, Huffman said you'll be able to add, edit or delete those details at any time from the You tab in the Assistant app settings.
Spotify will personalize some of its biggest playlists for users
Spotify isn't just reserving personalization for obvious playlists like Discover Weekly. The streaming giant is planning to personalize some of its other playlists based on your tastes. You won't get the exact same playlist as a friend, in other words. The company was betting that this will increase the odds of songs reaching the "right listeners," not to mention encourage longer listening sessions.
Alexa will pepper you with questions to build better playlists
Amazon is rolling out a few tweaks to Alexa that will make it easier to find the music you want to hear. By telling Alexa what you like and don't like and by conversing with Amazon's assistant about what you enjoy listening to, Alexa will be able to create more personalized suggestions and playback even when you just say, "Alexa, play music."
Pandora's personalized playlists are available to all premium subscribers
Back in March, Pandora announced that it would start building playlists personalized to each user's tastes. After a short testing period, those playlists should now be rolling out to everyone subscribed to Pandora Premium, the company's on-demand music service. The company has long offered customized music experiences for its users, learning about what kinds of songs users are likely to enjoy and dislike through its Music Genome Project. But until now, that knowledge has only applied to the radio-style, genre- or song-based "stations" that were Pandora's only listening option until Premium arrived last year.
A first look at Spotify’s redesigned free mobile experience
As rumored, Spotify today unveiled a redesigned app that's geared toward users of its free music-streaming service at an event in New York City. The new mobile experience is all about personalized on-demand listening, with 15 playlists that are curated by Spotify based on your listening habits. That includes sets like the Daily Mix, which feature songs you've "hearted" (aka liked) and Discover Weekly, which is designed to help you expand your music taste with artists and tracks you may not be too familiar with. The Release Radar playlist, meanwhile, will let you keep up with all the new music popping up on the service. Spotify says that the more songs you "heart" or "hide," the smarter its playlists will get and others will begin to populate as a result.
Corning can now print high-res images on its Gorilla Glass
Corning revealed a new use for its line of toughened touch surfaces on Tuesday, dubbed Vibrant Gorilla Glass, which will enable manufacturers to print high-resolution images on the material. "It provides a wide range of color possibilities that you just can't get from traditional screen printing processes," Scott Forester, director, Gorilla Glass Innovations, told me during a recent call.
Reverb: A unique personalized news tool for iOS
Personalization is the Holy Grail for news apps. Give the app an idea of what you want to hear about, and let it learn over time so that your news reading is always relevant. Reverb (free) bills itself as a personalized news discovery app. You can get an overview of the latest news, and the app "tunes" itself using algorithms to learn what you like. Reverb displays an attractive graphical representation called a "word wall" showing what topics are hot, and you touch the topics to read more. The app then lets you dig deeper and add topics of interest, all of which are saved under a button called "My News". Stories come from a variety of sources, including newspapers and TV and cable networks. Using the app is easy enough, but some of the choices of topics are downright bizarre. Things like "pottery" and "wedding photography" show up in general news, and I can't imagine why they are there. Reverb does learn from your choices, but it seems to cast a pretty wide net. Worse, you can't tell Reverb that you don't want any more news on a particular topic or from a specific source. Zite does both very well. For my personal interests -- the "My News" feature -- the app did quite well, leading me to articles I would never have discovered from casual browsing. That wide net of Reverb easily delivers things of interest to me, like photography stories, even though photography articles generally aren't news. The app allows you to add your Twitter and Facebook feeds for a summary of what your friends are sharing, and you can share directly from Reverb to your favorite social network. Reverb also allows you to send articles to people using messaging or email. The latest version of Reverb supports Pocket for offline reading. Stories are nicely formatted, and you move from page to page by swiping. A back button takes you back a screen if necessary. Reverb knows my location, but it failed for me in southern Arizona only showing a map of my location and no news. When I moved the map location to a larger city I did see some things pop up on the map, but the app should fetch the local material automatically. Reverb is a very nice start in the rarified domain of personalized news apps. The user interface is attractive, and stories display in a consistent way. But there are some things that would make Reverb much better. First, it lacks a help feature. When you first run the app there are some explanatory screens, but they are not complete and can't be recalled at a later time. While Reverb is good at noting stories you want, it has no way to eliminate stories from the main news feed that you don't want. You can do this with topics in the "My News" feed, so it should be consistent and let you eliminate stories from all news feeds. Further, I'd like to see the feeds have an option to be mixed, so I don't have to go to multiple places to find news of interest. The king of personalized news apps for my money (and it's free) is Zite. Although Zite has been purchased by Flipboard, over time the Zite technology will hopefully be folded into Flipboard. Reverb is a useful app, and if it grows it could fill the space left by Zite when it melds into Flipboard. In fact, many Reverb users say they were looking for a Zite alternative. Reverb is worth a look if you are a news and information junkie. It requires iOS 7 or later, and it's a universal app.
I searched for all 74 of the stickers in Apple's new ad so you don't have to
Putting stickers on your MacBook is cool. I know this because the majority of you told me you're totally cool with it in a recent poll. Oh, and also because Apple just ran a TV ad showing just how amazing your MacBook can look with a little bit of vinyl applied. If you saw something you liked on that fast-moving ad, you're in luck because I did the legwork of searching for every funky sticker that made an appearance. Well, ok, not every sticker -- I ignored the section of the ad with the generic music stickers -- but every sticker you probably care about. All 74 of them. Not every sticker Apple shown is actually available for purchase... anywhere. Others are clearly inspired by decals you can buy, but they're not exactly the same. Apple definitely fabricated some of these specifically for the ad itself, but others are available for you to buy right this minute. I've listed all of them, and noted their status. If there is a sticker similar to the one shown in the commercial, I've linked it. If not, I've linked an alternative for most that has a similar theme. Enjoy. Shutter shades (Close, not exact) 3D glasses Headphones Baseball cap Hat and tie Heisenberg Mowhawk Afro Aperture Simple camera (Close, not exact) Abstract camera Rectangular camera (Close, not exact) Polaroid Guitar pick Turntable (Not available, alternative) Vinyl record Gramophone Record player (Not available, alternative) Round tree Simple tree (Not available, graphic found here) Bonsai tree (Not available, alternative) Palm tree (Close, not exact) Design for nature Tree w/birds Birdcage New York skyline Golden Gate Paris Toronto London (Close, not exact) Sydney Nashville Tokyo Pyramids Dubai King Kong (Not available) Red lipstick (Not available, alternative) Vampire mouth (Not available, alternative) Cat (Chi's Sweet Home) eating Apple Scrat (Not available, alternative) Cookie Monster (Close, not exact) Snoopy (Close, not exact) Snow White Pac-Man Homer (Not found, alternative) Pointing (Not found, alternative) Bullet (Close, not exact) Dandelion (Close, not exact) Batman (Not available, alternative) Tasmanian Devil (Not available, alternative) Catwoman (Not available, alternative) Wonder Woman(Not available, alternative) Hello Kitty (Not available, alternative) Hello Kitty peeking (Not available, alternative) Space Invaders Galaxy (Close, not exact) Skydive (Close, not exact) Atom (Close, not exact) Divers Donut (Not available, alternative) Black cat (Not available, alternative #1, alternative #2) Saturn ring (Not available) Rings (Trance) Zebra Abstract (Not available) Inferno Flash (Not available, pattern found here) Pink leopard (Close, not exact) Mickey hand Skeleton hand (Close, not exact) Simple hands (Not available) Zombie hands (Not available) Heart hands
Blizzard's vision and player choice
This past Thursday, Cory Stockton (aka Mumper) answered a simple question on Twitter. He told players that the faction hubs would no longer be located in the Temple of Karabor and Bladespire Fortress, but on the island of Ashran. The firestorm of controversy that followed seemed to take Blizzard by surprise. Lore took to the forums to explain the change. He gave Blizzard's reasoning, including the lore explanation for the new hubs. Far from mollifying the player base, it only served to inflame those who disagreed with the shift in locale. My response is this: Why not both? Why must one city or the other be the One Hub to Rule Them All? Why can't we, the players, choose which city to bind our hearthstone to -- without being punished for it? Why does there have to be one "right" answer on such a basic quality of life issue? Let us choose and use phasing so we only see our own choice as a hub. Although I don't condone the extremely negative way that some reacted to the announcement, the anger didn't surprise me at all. It points to a problem that has loomed over WoW for a long time: lack of player options and personalization.
Firefox gets a big redesign that's all about customization
Firefox has had a tough time standing out among browsers -- Chrome gives you Google's ecosystem, while both Internet Explorer and Safari have the luxury of being system defaults. Why would you choose Mozilla's software over the others? As of today, customization may be the answer. The organization has just released the finished version of Firefox 29, a major overhaul that makes personalization easy on the desktop. Its new customization mode lets you put any feature or service in the toolbar or menu bar; if you just have to keep a Pinterest add-on available at all times, you can make it happen. It's quicker to customize your bookmarks, too.
Rhapsody and Napster leave Echo Nest following Spotify's takeover
Echo Nest must have developed cooties after Spotify bought it. Just days after Rdio said it would stop using the song recommendation provider to avoid sharing data with a rival, Rhapsody has announced that it's ramping down its own Echo Nest deal (which also applies to Napster) within several months. The company doesn't characterize the split as a defensive move, though. Instead, it's a chance to stand out. Rhapsody says it has "never been completely satisfied" with leaning on others for music personalization -- independence theoretically lets the company improve its advice to listeners. Whether or not things pan out as planned, it's clear that Echo Nest has lost at least some sway over the streaming radio industry.
Customize a Moto X the lazy way with Moto Match for Facebook
If you start to see a lot more of the Moto X on Facebook in the coming days, there's a good chance that it's a result of Moto Match. The app is new to the social networking site, which presents users with a smartphone that's color coordinated with their photos -- think of it as Moto Maker for the uninspired. The service is hardly a first of its kind, and is reminiscent of a design tool called Nike PHOTOiD that taps into one's Instagram gallery. Still, to get the full experience, you'll have to try out Moto Match for yourself. Just as a head's up... if you pick an outdoor scene with green in it, don't be surprised if you get an Olive Silver model.
This is the Modem World: Please don't personalize me. I know who I am
Each week Joshua Fruhlinger contributes This is the Modem World, a column dedicated to exploring the culture of consumer technology. Here's the thing: I know who I am. I don't need Facebook or Google or Microsoft or Apple or anyone else to collect data and tell me what I'm interested in. I'm pretty sure I know what I like and don't like. I'm also pretty sure I know my friends, and if I am looking for a recommendation on something, I'll hit particular ones up based on what I know of who knows what. Know what I'm saying? This week Facebook announced its new search technology that a lot of us knew was coming. The premise is, if I may minimize, that what my friends like is probably good for me. I can see how scientists may think that this is plausible, but in reality, this can't be further from reality.
Massively Exclusive: Matt Higby reveals account-wide SC unlocks coming to PlanetSide 2
Back at SOE Live, Creative Director Matt Higby spoke about PlanetSide 2's goal to appeal to a broader audience than just the shooter fanbase. It might just have worked: It's been just a little over a week since launch, and PS2 seems to be pulling in players ranging from die-hard veterans of the original PlanetSide to first-time or non-FPS gamers (like yours truly). In fact, as Higby tells it, the number of folks flocking to the new free-to-play MMOFPS has exceeded Sony Online Entertainment's expectations. Of course, this is only the beginning of PS2's life. With launch now under the developers' belts, the question becomes what's up their sleeves? I cornered Matt Higby to talk about the first week of live servers, how many soldiers have joined in the war, and what's next for the game.
