2.24.19 SB_Q

SPRING 2019

BEST REVIEWS

BEST WIRELESS KEYBOARDS

E XC L U S I V E

BEST OF THE BEST

BEST STREAMING DEVICES

It makes a noticeable clicking sound when you type, and it’s not bluetooth.

The keys are not back-lit, and the spacing could prove difficult for those who type frequently

Magic Keyboard

This affordable keyboard is smaller and more compact than a regular keyboard but has problems with the keys.

Instead of batteries, this keyboard charges with a lightning cable — an intriguing yet pricey option.

It’s easy to pair up this keyboard through Bluetooth, and the keys have a great feel to them.

Amazon

Responsive back-lit keys light up in 7 colors. Easily pair and connects.

The connection can experience a lag, and there is a tendency for random k

Keys sometimes have a tendency to stick or pop off.

Charge lasts a long time. Operates within a good range, with smaller keys lend themselves to faster typing.

Smaller keys can be difficult for those with larger hands/finger

BOTTOM LINE

A lightweight, low-priced keyboard with a few known flaws.

BEST BANG FOR THE BUCK

Apple

HB030B Universal Slim

BOTTOM LINE

A lower-priced option from a wellknown brand. It’s small and easy to store, but it could be difficult to use for those with larger hands/fingers.

Quick setup and long battery life.

Keys are responsive and have a great movement to them. Comes with a mouse.

Arteck

Ultra-Slim Bluetooth Keyboard

NVIDIA

Fire Stick

Shield TV

You won’t find a better streaming device at this price point. Without question the best value for your money.

PROS

Lightweight ergonomic keyboard/ mouse combo. Wave design has a natural feel and shape for the hands.

Many programmable buttons and added functions. Wrist rest and kickstand to elevate. Auto-shutoff.

K360 Wireless USB Desktop Keyboard

OMOTON

PROS

BOTTOM LINE PROS

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Logitech

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Streaming services offer higher quality video and audio, they offer content with few — if any — commercials, and subscribing to multiple services still is cheaper than paying a single cable TV bill. There’s no other way to say it: streaming is the future.

BEST BANG FOR THE BUCK

BEST OF THE BEST

Logitech

Wireless Wave Combo MK550

CONS

INSIDE

BEST REVIEWS

For the professional on the go or the neatnik, a wireless keyboard does away with cords and keeps your workspace clean and free of clutter. You can sit comfortably without worrying about cable length, and type from your desktop, lap or the couch.

Incredibly easy to set up and use.

Works perfectly with Amazon Prime, Netflix, Hulu, HBO and Pandora. Comes with a handy controller.

An all-in-one device — streaming, gaming, smart home hub and media player.

4K ultra HD. Controlled via voice command to Alexa or Google Home. Works with all the popular apps. Uses Silk and Firefox browsers. Dolby Atmos sound quality

Roku

Streaming Stick

A great value, though it has a shorter lifespan than other streaming devices.

Great search functionality within thousands of apps. Controller is user-friendly.

Apple TV

Roku

Premiere - HD and 4K UHD Streaming Media Player

A suitable choice if you are a Mac aficionado and need to connect all your Apple devices. Otherwise, you might prefer a different choice.

A complete package: excellent performance, features and overall user experience.

Airplay capability allows you to stream music, videos, games — just about anything, really — from any Apple device in your home.

Extremely fast and powerful due to dual-core processor. Audio jack easily connects to stereo system.

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TAKE A TOUR OF YOUR

VIRTUAL A HOME

BY GEORGIA FRANCES KING

In the future, moving houses will be just a matter of uploading and downloading furniture

home meets the same basic needs as a cave did 10,000 years ago: a safe place protected from the elements, enemies and predators.

It also provides privacy; a place to eat, sleep, and rest; and a location to call your own and store your belongings.

Technology hasn’t changed those needs significantly. It’s just changed the ways in which they are met.

A number of social and technological developments are converging to change what we want from our homes. One trend among recent generations is that they are more experience-focused and less materialistic than previous generations. Many of them will be restricted from home ownership because of price disparities, and they also will live more nomadic lifestyles.

They therefore won’t want to accumulate lots of possessions that need to be moved when they rent a new place or move to a new city. Instead, they’d prefer to spend any spare money on going out, holidaying, having fun and making memories.

CONTINUED ON PAGE 2

INSIDE

SIMPLIFY SPENDING PARENT LIKE A PRO A case study on the pitfalls of too much screen time and the need to set logical boundaries.

PAGE 8

Three ways to save when purchasing new tech. PAGE 19

MORE WAYS TO BE MOBILE Your mobile device can make you healthier and more active. PAGE 6

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2

SPRING 2019

COVER STORY

SPENDING

The lure of virtual reality

R

emember the View-Master you had as a child that let you see images in 3-D? A virtual reality headset is like a View-Master for the 21st century. But instead of inserting a wheel of images, you use a phone, PC or other device to stream content.

The magic isn’t just in the headset.

VR content is created either by stitching a series of images KAITLIN into a 360-degree PITSKER video or by presenting slightly different images to each eye and creating the illusion of depth. Both aim to trick your brain into believing that you’ve been transported to a different place than the space your body currently occupies.

Video gamers already are using the technology to enhance their experience of games such as Minecraft. But you don’t have to be a gamer to take advantage of VR. With a headset and apps such as Google Street View and YouVisit, you can sneak a peek at the site of an upcoming vacation. There also are apps that let you see places you won’t be visiting anytime soon — say, Mars or the ocean floor. You even can help an aging family member visit or revisit a place of their dreams.

Want to make some DIY home improvements? Lowe’s has started rolling out in-store VR demo areas to teach you how to make, say, a redo of your shower tile a reality.

VR headsets range from large, clunky and pricey models to lightweight, affordable versions powered by your smartphone. But with virtual reality still firmly in its youth, it makes sense to hold off spending hundreds of dollars for one of the high-end models, such as the Oculus Rift ($500) or HTC Vive ($800).

The easiest and cheapest way to try out VR is Google Cardboard ($15 in the Google Store). To use Cardboard, you insert an Android phone or iPhone into the box and secure it with the Velcro strips. Using Google Cardboard’s app (or search Google Play or the Apple App Store for “Google Cardboard” to find other compatible apps), you’ll be able to choose from thousands of options that let you, for example, play Pong in space.

The Samsung Gear VR ($130) is a solid option if you already own one of the latest Samsung phones, such as the Galaxy S8 or S7 Edge. You can select from a variety of apps, such as Polyrunner VR for racing, NextVR for sports, concerts and other live events, and Discovery VR for immersive documentaries.

Kaitlin Pitsker is a staff writer at Kiplinger’s Personal Finance magazine.

Kiplinger’s Personal Finance

CONTINUED FROM PAGE 1 Combine this with the rising costs of housing and an ever-increasing urban sprawl, and our current notion of home as an intimate, unique sanctuary becomes harder and harder to attain. As more people move to urban areas, more homogenized skyscraping apartment buildings are built and fewer people are able to afford to create a personalized home that feels truly theirs, society will need to find ways to reinvent our emotional connection to the four walls in which we live.

Community housing may find its solution in a new technology: augmented reality. Advancements in AR already are being used in our homes in smaller ways.

People now can use AR to see how a new extension might look or how new kitchen units, bathroom suites or even furniture and curtains might look in situ before they commit to buying them. In this way, we are able to visualize our ideal interiors without the actual presence of furniture and paint jobs.

But what if instead of actually buying a new couch, you could just upload an image of it onto your old one? In the near future, visors that appear to superimpose data or computer imagery onto

anything you’re looking at will become commonplace. Some will use lenses and conventional displays (such as Microsoft’s Hololens) and others will use direct retinal projection (such as Magic Leap). Why own a fancy, expensive wall hanging when you could just project it?

By using AR, we will be able to superimpose digital architecture and design onto any surface, then add a few pets, plants, aliens, zombies or whatever else you like roaming around your living room. AR visors will provide virtual TVs without the need for a physical screen, so you wouldn’t even need to buy those: You could lie in bed and watch Netflix on your ceiling instead.

This would change the way that we live. With minimal possessions and our home’s “skin” loaded in the cloud, you could rent a very small flat, put your small collection of essential furniture and gadgets in it, and use AR to make the rest look like a super luxurious penthouse suite. Combining virtual and physical worlds means you don’t even need windows: Instead of looking out onto a run-down street, you could make a virtual window that projects a beautiful forest, beach or exciting cityscape.

Whenever you move, you could simply reconfigure your settings to the param-

eters of your new space and feel right at home again.

With high housing demand, rapid population growth and a low supply of cheap accommodation, this could help solve a major problem. Small, cheap flats that only need simple architecture already are being 3D printed cheaply and easily, and this demand will go up as costs continue to plummet. Soon we also could have residential buildings that act like vertical cities, with hundreds of floors for recreation, business, keeping fit, eating out, socializing and hundreds more for administrative and support functions.

When we’re living in mass-residence buildings where we can personalize our boxes using AR headsets, residents might rarely need-or want-to leave and tribal bonds may form that separate them from those in other mega-buildings.

It is in areas such as this that we need to show great care. Technology can deliver some very exciting possibilities for future buildings, but without appropriate thought, new social problems could result that are straight out of sci-fi dystopias. And we can’t simply take our headsets off Quartz to make them go away.

BY USING AR, WE WILL BE ABLE TO SUPERIMPOSE DIGITAL ARCHITECTURE AND DESIGN ONTO ANY SURFACE, THEN ADD A FEW PETS, PLANTS, ALIENS, ZOMBIES OR WHATEVER ELSE YOU LIKE ROAMING AROUND YOUR LIVING ROOM.

Seize the future of typing without a keyboard

BY CASSIE WERBER

There will come a time when sitting in front of a screen and tapping keys with your fingers will seem impossibly clunky and laughably old-fashioned. Instead, researchers say, the most likely next phase of human-computer interaction will be typing in “thin air” while gazing, for example, at the ocean.

As computers become smaller and largely virtual, researchers are having to think of other ways for us to interact with them. The current generation of smartphone users may be willing to learn to type with just two thumbs; some of us have carried around bluetooth keyboards for train journeys and conferences. But no one wants to connect a keyboard to a smart watch, and while voice recognition software is improving, users are highly resistant to talking to computers in public. If the future of screens is augmented reality — as Tim Cook, Apple’s CEO has predicted — a virtual space where the user sees both what’s really in front of them and the “objects” on the screen, how are we going to interact with it?

The question is not just a philosophical one but has major commercial applications. Per Ola Kristensson, a professor in Interactive Systems Engineering at the University of Cambridge, said desks in the future likely will be almost entirely free from hardware: No laptop, no phone and certainly no keyboard.

A move away from restrictive unergonomic keyboards would help those affected by problems like carpal tunnel

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syndrome, repetitive strain injury, back pain and eye strain, which have become some of the modern worker’s most troublesome physical problems, and they can be debilitating.

There are two big challenges to designing human-computer interaction in this reality, Kristensson explained.

Designers no longer control what the user is looking at (what he calls the “pixel-space” of the traditional screen); and if someone’s work takes place in a space without traditional limits — no buttons being pressed or screens swiped — there’s an added challenge of working out what it is the user wants to do.

Kristensson presents a possible solution to this challenge. His researchers used a head-mounted piece of hardware to project a virtual screen and a virtual keyboard, on which users “typed.” The fingers don’t touch anything; their movement was detected by a depth-sensor, which tracked both where the fingers typed and how “deep” they pressed into the virtual surface.

The problem with the resultant data was that the imprecision of hitting a virtual key rather than a real one meant lots of errors. To correct for this, the researchers created a model of what humans were most likely to type.

Working from a dataset of billions of words from Twitter, blogs and other online sources, they used machine learning to train a program to recognize the most-common letter combinations. (The technology, which currently exists in English and German, is similar

PUBLISHER John M. Humenik, Vice President/News and CCO, Lee Enterprises

to that used in predictive text on a traditional smartphone.)

The speed at which users learned to type virtually was fascinating. After users had practiced on the visible keyboard, they removed all the letters. Users’ typing speed barely altered. “It turns out people remember the QWERTY keyboard very well,” Kristensson said. “So you can actually not show the keys at all.

It can be completely blank, and people can still type.” Rather than screensavers of beautiful views, we could be staring at the views themselves.

But wait: If we’re removing the keyboard, shouldn’t we be removing the need to move the fingers as if they’re touching a keyboard? Indeed, technology allowing people to type simply by looking at the letters does exist. Early eye-gaze typing, developed for adults with cognitive function but reduced mobility, was once slow and straining, but it now has come a long way. At a recent artificial intelligence conference in Cambridge, Kristensson presented a method for typing which combines eye-tracking with prediction, meaning that a user can slide their gaze from letter to letter, not dwelling and not worrying if their gaze “touches” intervening letters. (It’s somewhat similar to the Android keyboards that allow a user to slide their finger from letter to letter; Kristensson was one of the inventors of that technology back in 2002.)

The Tobii-Dynavox, a robust tablet-like computer that can be controlled with only the gaze, is one example of

EDITOR Ben Cunningham, Director of News Presentation, Lee Enterprises

“dwell-free” eye technology being marketed to people with decreased motor function.

All these solutions, of course, maintain at least the idea of a keyboard. Is it necessary? Interacting with a computer via thought alone is a tantalizing prospect. In fact, thought-only typing is technically possible, but as previous experiments have shown, it’s still a laborious process.

Facebook was for a time seriously researching brain-only interaction, though the head of its moonshot division at the time, Regina Dugan, has since left.

Mind-typing, Kristensson said, had engendered a lot of interest, but relies on signals too faint and imprecise to lead to real outcomes — or as he puts it: “the equivalent of being outside a concert house and trying to listen for the flute.”

To make it actually efficient, he said, you’d need to drill a port in your head.

There are those who want to take that step. Elon Musk has said he sees the future of AI as necessarily involving the implantation of hardware in the human brain, and he has suggested a fine mesh of electrodes that can knit, over time, with brain cells.

How soon until it’s normal to see someone lying on a comfortable sofa, gazing at the ceiling and using a pair of glasses or nearby eye-tracker to compose an email or write a novel? Tech companies are secretive, but “everybody’s racing to figure out how to do this and how to make it deployQuartz able,” Kristensson said.

DESIGNERS Matt Arroyo and April Burford, Lee Design Center

Content featured in this section was gathered from resources associated with the Tribune Content Agency, including Inc., Quartz, New Scientist and The Atlantic Online.

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SPRING 2019

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COVER STORY

EMBRACE VIRTUAL

RETIREMENT Old age shouldn’t just be about survival — it should be about fun

T

BY GEORGIA FRANCES KING

o look at Albert is to stare the untapped possibilities of later life in the face.

He is physically fit, lives on his own and, as a member of the Lifestyle Leaders group at Massachusetts Institute of Technology AgeLab, he works with students and researchers seeking to chart the future of life after 85.

Unfortunately, however, his time at the lab only occupies a single day of his week. He is long since retired, lost his wife years ago and finds it a constant struggle to fill his days with more than television.

Three days a week are accounted for with activities, he said, “but there are four more days.”

He looked down, exhaling softly.

“I just never realized just how much time there would be”.

“Old age” as we currently know it is just a fictional story we tell ourselves. We’ve inherited a narrative of what is normal in later life: that old age is a time to relax, rest and retire. These are fine pursuits, to be sure, but they don’t necessarily add up to a full life.

People over the age of 65 have a lot of time to fill. That story isn’t an immutable law of nature.

It was rather written by humans surprisingly recently to serve the purpose of an economy that was built around manual labor. In this narrative, a ready and endless supply of youth was necessary to keep factories humming and farms productive. Despite changes in industry, this outdated story continues in our minds today, perpetuating a mental image of a time when older workers need to simply retire — or, more to the point, get out of the way to make room for countless young people eager to take their place at the head of the line.

But the physical capacity of an individual worker is far less important in today’s knowledge economy. Even manufacturing, farming and construction environments are increasingly automated, making physical labor less demanding at any age. As the work has changed, so too should our outdated story of old age.

If it was written once, it can be rewritten again. In fact, it must be rewritten, because it now is hamstringing what is possible for up to a third of our adult lives. In most industrialized countries, the 85-plus comprise the fastest-growing part of the population. If you assume a typical retirement starts between ages 60 and 65, and you live to 85 or more, that’s two or more decades of passivity.

That’s a lot of time to fill.

In the United States, adults over age 65 report that they spend more time pursuing

leisure activities than any other age group. While that may sound relaxing — troublingly — most leisure time for older people consists of solitary activities, such as reading or watching television.

Add to that the fact that as many as half of older people in some nations likely are to live alone, and you have a recipe for social isolation and loneliness. This takes both a mental and physical toll; research suggests that social isolation may have the deleterious physical impact of smoking a pack of cigarettes a day.

So instead of solely focusing the future of aging on care and compassion, let’s address an overlooked element that could have an outsized impact: the question of fun.

WHY CAN’T IT BE ALL FUN AND GAMES?

For businesses seeking a piece of the fast-growing longevity economy, reinventing the future of fun in old age is perhaps the most promising option of all. After all, today’s older adults have more money and education than any previous generation of older adults — and, of course, lots and lots of time.

Our notions of permissible fun remain stuck in the 1950s, however, inextricably coupled with the norm of retirement not just from work, but from society at large.

But it doesn’t have to be that way.

The market for new sources of socially connected fun in the longevity economy could provide lucrative business opportunities for the groups serving it up, and, more importantly, crucial social benefits for the fun-havers themselves.

BEYOND BINGO: GROUP EXERCISE

Exercise has been described as the wonder drug for many physical and mental health conditions. Organizations therefore are investing in group exercise activities for older adults.

In the United Kingdom, Age UK offers a host of innovative, age-adapted opportunities, such as walking football matches and Zumba Gold. Singapore’s Health Promotion Board sponsors a group exercise program named Sundays@ThePark: The mass workouts are held at 50 parks across Singapore, engaging older adults in intergenerational exercise ranging from kickboxing to stretching set to Korean pop songs. As one 66 year-old said in a Singapore Ministry of Health interview, while the program is a convenient way to stay fit, “the sessions have also allowed me to get to know my

neighbors and make new friends.”

In this way, group exercise has social benefits, too. In the US, a recent MIT AgeLab study showed that membership in group exercise programs had direct physical activity and health benefits — as predicted — but also reduced social isolation. For example, an older woman who had been a longtime member of Tivity Health’s Silver Sneakers program, which engages millions of older adults in group exercise, described the group as a social lifeline. Once, when she became ill for a protracted period and unable to attend her group exercises, her “exercise buddies” regularly visited her at home and kept her refrigerator stocked with food.

HERE COME THE SILVER GAMERS

You’re never too late to start.

That said, disability or the absence of transportation can relegate many older adults to lives of solitude in their homes. For people who spend most of their day in chairs of one sort or another, it’s essential to build routes to social fun that are accessible from a seated position.

Here, the rise of virtual reality headsets holds real promise. Take for instance the startup Rendever, which offers VR tours to such destinations as the streets of Paris and even up to the highest elevations of Macchu Picchu.

Importantly, users often “travel” in groups, which provides a social outlet for those physically unable to socialize in that way. Demonstration studies conducted in senior housing settings, such as a pilot program at Benchmark Senior Living, have shown that VR can brighten a person’s day with a novel experience and spark spirited chatter among fellow travelers in a guided virtual tour.

A new generation of older gamers — called silver gamers — also has arrived. As 84-year-old Doris Oram told The Guardian, her favorite way to wind down in the evening is by playing video games on her Kindle Fire. And in community centers and senior housing, Nintendo Wii and Microsoft Xbox consoles have made video golf and bowling not just a way of having fun but building camaraderie: Today, the National Senior League collects and reports schedules for older-adult Wii Bowling leagues across the United States.

••• The future of aging is not about older people: It’s about all of us.

As you look toward your own future, it’s worth asking yourself what you see.

It’s worth thinking about how young people can build a world where more will be possible in their later years: more social connections, more interaction and more fun. By investing in such uncharted aspects of the longevity economy now, we may pave the way for ourselves to live longer, better — and perhaps Quartz with a smile.

Motion sickness is likely to get worse in VR age

BY ROSIE SPINKS

The word nausea comes from the Greek word naus, which means ship. And indeed, ever since humans figured out how to traverse the earth by boat — and then train, car and plane — they’ve also had to contend with the nausea, vomiting and queasiness that tends to afflict us when our bodies are in constant, jostling motion.

But just because it’s been around forever doesn’t mean we understand why it happens. Indeed despite years of research, nobody has definitively explained why being shaken around on a ship or while strapped into an airplane seat causes such digestive system distress. In a globalized world, with more people than ever traveling by air and ship, there’s plenty of motivation to get to the bottom of it. And it’s a problem Silicon Valley is applying itself to also, as motion sickness is acknowledged as a growing problem in virtual reality settings.

And yet it’s a question that still confounds scientists. Lawrence Hettinger, a retired consultant who worked on systems theory for the US Navy, Army and NASA said it best: “What earthly purpose does that serve, to throw up in response to motion?”

VR SICKNESS

“There’s a Nobel Prize in there for someone who figures that out,” said Dr. Thomas Stoffregen, a professor of kinesiology at the University of Minnesota and someone who has been studying the causes and effects of motion sickness for the bulk of his career. (He wanted to be an astronaut, but he ended up pondering why astronauts get sick instead.)

Stoffregen and some other researchers take issue with one of the most prominent theories, the neurotoxin response. The theory goes that being on a moving boat, car or plane causes a sensory conflict. In other words, the way your body is moving and what your senses are observing the world don’t match what your body is used to on stable ground. This confusion of inputs upsets your vestibular system, which is the body’s internal balance system. Your body’s adaptive response to that confusion is to assume it’s being poisoned, and therefore to eject the contents of your stomach.

The theory dates back to a 1977 paper in the journal “Science,” and despite being believed widely, Stoffregen said it’s not only not been proven — it’s not testable.

Stoffregen’s research points to another idea. It’s not sensory disruption that upsets our bodies, it’s postural imbalance — the way your body has to work a little harder to keep you upright and walking on a ship or plane. This, he said, explains the fact that some people get sick and some people don’t — something for which the poison adaptation theory doesn’t account. His research has shown that “individual variations in the way people move their bodies naturally exist and are, in fact, related to who is susceptible to sickness and who is not.” The people on board a ship who “learn this changed pattern of motor control quickly will regain stable control of their body quickly. People who learn it slowly will be walking around in wobbly unstable manner.”

But as for why this unstable posture triggers vomiting and nausea? “Why doesn’t it give you a headache? Why doesn’t it make you tired? Or dizzy? I just plain don’t know,” Stroffregen said.

WANNA GET SICK? TRY A FLIGHT SIMULATOR.

Hettinger, whose work involved trying to solve the sickness that occurred in flight simulators, agrees that the poison theory has little evidence to back it. But he notes that people who lack a vestibular system — something that can happen through disease — simply don’t get sick, indicating that there might be a multi-variate, context-dependent cause.

Research has shown that women and migraine sufferers are more likely to get motion sickness, and both Stoffregen and Hettinger said they come across people who either age out of their suffering or all of a sudden develop motion sickness despite never having had it before.

As technology evolves, motion sickness is a problem that’s likely to get worse, not better. Hettinger said that sizeable amounts of investment from companies like Oculus Rift have gone into figuring out not only how to reduce sickness while using virtual reality mounted headsets, but also the “perceptual after effects” that can affect your spatial judgment when emerging from a virtual world.

“It’s not just being moved,” Hettinger said. “It can happen in response to head motion just sitting there looking at a virtual environment.” That’s a big problem as VR becomes more widespread in work and other environments beyond gaming.

And technology aside, we’re still left with the ancient problem: What can the sick seafarer do to feel better? Stoffregen said there is evidence that ginger candy and cookies can help settle the stomach of sick passengers (just don’t ask him why).

Anti-histamines are only likely to work because the drowsiness they cause makes you put your head down and go to sleep — thereby removing the postural disturbance problem.

Your best bet, he said, is simply to close your eyes and stabilize your Quartz head on something.

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COVER STORY

Embrace a new reality in 2019 with mixed reality

BY ELIZABETH KIEHNER

In December 2018, Lego launched their Playgrounds AR app for children of all ages. Weeks later, Tesla revealed their patent around augmented reality glasses for factory workers. In the healthcare space, surgeons in Poland demonstrated how Google Glass could be used to help plan heart procedures, and NHS clinicians are using Microsoft’s HoloLens to help surgeons plan operations in Alder Hey hospital in Liverpool.

Will 2019 finally be the year where we see AR and VR scale? With all of the recent hype surrounding the promise of 5G, AR’s infrastructure will be enabled and the implications for businesses of all sizes are profound.

Take Adobe’s Project Aero, which will be an AR authoring tool that connects with other platforms like Photoshop, Illustrator and Dimension. Designers will be able to author AR experiences without learning to code, and they can use existing Creative Cloud tools in new ways to bring their work to life in AR. Imagine placing 2D and 3D artwork, client projects and more in the real world around you.

According to global research and advisory firm Gartner, by 2020, 100 million consumers will shop in AR and this year International Data Corporation, a provider of market intelligence, predicts 20 percent of mobile apps will have AR features embedded. But what are these features and how do they impact your business? Let’s focus on three areas, and going forward let’s use the term mixed reality.

In customer experience, mixed reality empowers consumers to: Try before you buy Enable virtual browsing Offer digital contextual guidance Provide personalized fan experiences For the enterprise, the primary benefit is in training with things like: Virtual operating room, virtual aircraft Just-in-time training Decision support — cognitive guidance Finally there’s business insights to help get ahead of issues before they occur: Data visualization and decision support Preventive maintenance Where is this happening in real life?

Last fall, Macy’s expanded its partnership with virtual reality startup Marxent Labs to help the retailer reduce return rates on furniture. Marxent soon will operate at Macy’s in 70 stores nationwide, and they plans to spread to 20 more locations through early 2019. After pilot tests at three stores, Macy’s reports product returns decreased to under 2 percent for VR-influenced furniture sales. New robust experiences like these can drive profitability for businesses of all sizes by offering customers a test drive, demo or way to visualize a product in their space and on their terms.

While extended reality offers myriad benefits to retailers, high upfront costs remain a barrier to adoption for some.

That said, new devices like the Oculus Go may make the experience more accessible and attainable for all audiences, while low code developing environments should pave the way for broader accessibility and adoption. For AR to truly prove its worth, we’ll need to see companies move beyond proof of concepts and usher in an era of broad and consistent AR deployInc. ment across multiple sectors.

WE LOVE VR

V

Virtual reality and augmented reality have a lot of skeptics, but they’re here to stay

BY TOM POPOMARONIS

irtual reality continues to defy expectations and expand, with adoption levels higher than ever before, but the technology still boasts its fair share of skeptics. For many observers, VR merely is another video game peripheral, which severely limits its appeal.

Critics tend to respond to any defense of VR with the usual talking points. It’s for kids’ games. It’s not for business. It’s just a “fad.” It’s merely a novelty.

Even so, the breadth of users and markets that use VR — and similarly augmented reality — expand far beyond what most skeptics would like to believe. The industry slowly is changing its public perception, not simply by refuting doubters’ criticisms but by demonstrating its versatility, diverse use cases and game-changing potential.

REMOTE EDUCATION IS NO LONGER REMOTE

One of the key areas where VR can and already is making a big impact is all levels of education. In its most basic form, this means providing students the ability to attend lectures and classes from their own homes in a completely new manner. While Massive Open Online Courses have failed to live up to their promise as a way of breaking down physical barriers in the field, VR offers a completely immersive experience that is more conducive to learning.

Even for more advanced fields like medicine, VR offers a unique opportunity for students to simulate medical procedures, different scenarios and other important lessons in a safe and risk-free environment. Yondr, a VR production shop that specializes in creating immersive employee training experiences for corporations, has been able to warm up sales prospects simply by demonstrating the power of its VR solutions in remote webinar presentations.

“We want to show people how to integrate VR within their companies as a new tool and a medium to become more sustainable,” Yondr Marketing and Events Manager Niels Waem said in a case study for ClickMeeting, the platform his team uses. “We have received some really great feedback. No matter what subject of the webinar is or what type of audience, the feedback is always positive.”

CONNECTING BUSINESS WORLDS

Even the world of urban planning and architecture has started to embrace VR, albeit in more targeted ways, making use of the technology to build more detailed and precise renderings and decisions.

Robert Allen, who handles marketing for carbon-neutral home design firm Citu, noted that “if you put someone in a VR experience, they can walk around the house just as they would in reality.

They can poke their head around a door or look up to see things that they would have missed in any other format — even though the real house doesn’t yet exist.”

When getting stakeholders on board with an initiative requires leaps of imagination, VR tech can help the conceptual to feel material.

CREATING EXPERIENTIAL ENTERTAINMENT

Finally, VR can open the world of entertainment to whole new markets.

The current reality of ticket prices for attending sporting events and concerts means that a wide demographic is priced out of these activities.

VR is changing this paradigm by giving people shared remote attendance experiences. Facebook’s new “Oculus Venues” initiative, for example, allows groups of friends to convene at a Golden State Warriors game, a screening of American Psycho or a New Orleans jazz jam session — and that’s just a fraction of regular programming.

Wearing headsets allows participants to talk with friends and strangers seated virtually nearby. This creates a whole new industry for VR and provides a much more realistic use case than even video games, which, booming as they may be in popularity, have less mass appeal. It’s a deeply immersive way to consume content.

BREAKING DOWN [VIRTUAL] WALLS

The VR industry isn’t as mature as we thought it would be by now, but it does seem to be moving in the right directions. More of the industry’s innovators and proponents need to help demonstrate why the technology possesses so much potential.

As TECHnalysis Research Founder Bob O’Donnell noted, “the enthusiasm in today’s consumers will only grow.

The opportunities may be a bit slow in coming, and the technology is unquestionably in its early days, but there’s little doubt that both will likely surpass our current expectations.”

Inc. Time will tell.

THIS SURPRISING TECHNOLOGY MAY BE THE KEY TO ENCOURAGING EMPATHY AND KINDNESS

BY PETER ECONOMY

“Empathy is seeing with the eyes of another, listening with the ears of another and feeling with the heart of another.” - Alfred Adler As a tech-obsessed society, do we now have less empathy? Do we have less kindness?

With the rise of technology, many of us are spending hours and hours on social media and online platforms — communicating through screens. We have less face-to-face interaction with our peers — interaction that is crucial for learning how to read and express emotion.

And we often see viral content and news coverage that may have a hand in desensitizing us.

Our ability to share and understand others’ emotions, which can foster helpful and altruistic behavior, is more important now than ever. But is technology doomed to destroy our empathy and compassion?

According to new research, now may be the time that technology actually encourages and builds empathy and compassion.

A study published this month in the

journal “PLOS ONE” suggests that virtual reality could be a “useful tool to encourage empathy, helpful behavior, and positive attitudes towards marginalized groups.” This study, led by Fernanda Herrera from Stanford University, investigated if VR systems could

aid “perspective-taking” — that is, if participants could successfully imagine what it would be like to be someone else under specific circumstances.

In the study, one control group of participants only read information about homelessness.

Meanwhile, other groups experienced the narratives interactively on a computer or by experiencing the narrative in 3D using VR. The results? In comparison to narrative-reading or computer-based task participants, VR participants were more likely to sign petitions to support homeless populations when asked.

Follow-up surveys also showed participation in the VR task has longer-lasting positive effects on empathy when compared to those in the narrative-reading task.

When we work to truly understand the perspective of others, we work toward removing judgment and hate from this world. Technology may have made building empathy difficult in the last few decades, but it may now be the solution we have been needing all along Inc. — hiding in plain sight.

VR CAN EASE FEAR OF PUBLIC SPEAKING Hate public speaking? Practicing in front of a virtual crowd may help you conquer your fears.

One third of people feel excessive anxiety when they have to speak in front of others. Philip Lindner at Stockholm University in Sweden and his colleagues wanted to see if virtual reality could provide a safe environment in which people can face these fears.

They recruited 50 adults with public speaking anxiety to try a training app. It works via a VR headset that allows them to pretend to address a large hall of people, a small office meeting or a wedding party. After 3 hours, the participants reported feeling significantly more confident.

They also felt less nervous, shaky and sweaty when they were given real-life exercises to try like asking questions in meetings or giving presentations.

New Scientist

THE DIGITAL USER

SPRING 2019

5

ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE

ENVISIONING AI’S FUTURE

IBM UNVEILS ITS NEXT STEPS IN ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE

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BY GREG SATELL

ver since IBM’s Watson system defeated the best human champions at the game show Jeopardy!, artificial intelligence has been the buzzword of choice. More than just hype, intelligent systems are revolutionizing fields from medicine and manufacturing to changing fundamental assumptions about how science is done.

Yet for all the progress, it appears that we are closer to the beginning of the AI revolution than the end. Intelligent systems still are limited in many ways. They depend on massive amounts of data to learn accurately, have trouble understanding context and their susceptibility to bias makes them ripe targets for sabotage.

IBM, which has been working on artificial intelligence since the 1950s, is not only keenly aware of these shortcomings, it is investing heavily to improve the basic technology.

IMPROVING LEARNING

Smarter, sleeker AI will continue to evolve in 2019

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BY JARED ATCHISON

rtificial intelligence is invading our everyday lives, but it’s not as scary a concept as people once thought. AI has shown it can make our personal lives much easier, but it doesn’t stop in our homes. Businesses constantly are coming up with new ways to use AI to engage with customers, make processes easier and drive sales.

We’ve already seen the popularity and effectiveness of AI-powered chatbots in recent years and how Facebook uses AI to improve the results of ad campaigns.

But what’s next for AI and how can it further boost the success of businesses?

Here are key trends to watch in 2019:

SPEECH RECOGNITION

Amazon’s Alexa was a big hit with consumers in 2018, making it easier for people to search for information on the web and do things around the home. In fact, 66.6 million Americans are projected to be using speech or voice recognition technology in 2019.

This year, Sony, TiVo and Hisense unveiled TVs that can be controlled by voice. Even home appliance makers such as Delta, Whirlpool and LG have added Alexa’s voice recognition skills to help people control everything in their homes from microwaves to faucets.

What makes AI different from earlier technologies is its ability to learn.

Before AI, a group of engineers would embed logic into a system based on previously held assumptions. When conditions changed, the system would need to be reprogrammed to be effective. AI systems, however, are designed to adapt as events in the real world evolve.

This means that AI systems aren’t born intelligent. We must train them to do certain tasks, much like we would a new employee. Systems often need to be fed thousands or even millions of examples before they can perform at anything near an acceptable level. So far, that’s been an important limiting factor for how effective AI systems can be.

“A big challenge now is being able to learn more from less,” said Dr. John Smith, manager of AI Tech at IBM Research. Improving a system’s ability to learn is key to improving how it will perform.

UNDERSTANDING CONTEXT

One of the most frustrating things about AI systems is their inability to understand context. This flaw can get extremely frustrating when we’re trying to converse with a system that takes each statement as a separate query and ignores everything that came before.

IBM made some important headway on this problem with its Project Debater, a system designed to debate with humans in real time. Rather than merely respond to simple, factual questions, Debater is able to take complex, ambiguous issues and make a clear, cogent argument based on nuanced distinctions that even highly educated humans find difficult.

A related problem is the inability to understand causality. A human who continues to encounter a problem would start to wonder where it’s coming from, but machines generally don’t. “A lot of the AI research has been focused on correlations, but there is a big difference between correlations and causality,” Smith said. “We’re increasingly focused on researching how to infer causality from a large sets of data. That will help us do more than diagnose a problem in say, a medical or industrial setting, but help determine where the problem is coming from and how to approach fixing it.”

THE FUTURE OF AI

When IBM announced its System 360 mainframe computer in 1964 at a cost of $5 billion (or more than $30 billion in today’s dollars), it was considered a major breakthrough. The launch of the PC in the early 80s had a similar impact. Today’s smartphones, however, are infinitely more powerful and cost a small fraction of the price.

We need to look at AI in the same way. We’re basically working with an early version of the PC, with barely enough power to run a word processing program. In the years and decades to come, we expect vast improvements in hardware, software and our understanding of how to apply AI to problems.

One obvious shortcoming is that although many AI applications perform tasks in the analog world, the computations are done on digital computers. Inevitably, information gets lost. A challenge ahead is to develop new architectures, such as quantum and neuromorphic computers, to run AI algorithms.

“We’re only at the beginning of the journey” IBM’s Smith said, “but when we get to the point that quantum and other technologies become mature, our ability to build intelligent models of extremely comInc. plex data is just enormous.

SMARTER RETAIL RECOMMENDATIONS

When you shop online, many companies give you product recommendations based on items you’ve previously purchased or browsed. In 2019, retail recommendations will be even smarter. AI will be able to better recommend products based on tone and sentiment as well as browsing history.

Similar to what 1-800-Flowers did with their AI gift concierge, Gifts When You Need or GWYN, more companies will be providing more personalized and guided shopping experiences overall. Even shoppers in brick-and-mortar stores will be able to get product recommendations from AI-powered store displays like the one offered by Mystore-E.

IMAGE RECOGNITION

AI, Amazon are changing the retail industry

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BY MICHELLE CHENG

rtificial intelligence is making its way into the retail industry in a big way.

From 2013 to 2018, retail AI startups raised $1.8 billion across 374 deals, according to a recent report by CB Insights. The flurry of activity is largely thanks to Amazon, which is forcing retailers to reconsider both their e-commerce and their physical store strategies to stay competitive.

So how exactly is AI changing the retail environment? Here are some of the most fascinating trends to watch.

BETTER SHELF INTELLIGENCE

CB Insights reports that Whole Foods, which is owned by Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, considered charging its top vendors around $300,000 for several weeks of prime shelf space. Even if you can pay for top billing in Whole Foods and elsewhere, you’re still competing with many other brands for visibility.

That’s left an opening for a slew of startups to develop technology to track metrics like share-of-shelf and distribution. Computer vision platform Trax Retail analyzes what happens on shelves using images from in-store cameras, robots or mobile phones to create a digital version of the physical store. Walmart already is using Bossa Nova robots to monitor price tags and missing items on shelves.

SMARTER BEAUTY PRODUCTS

Last year, L’Oral acquired augmented reality startup Modiface, which helped L’Oral launch its Style My Hair mobile app — letting users virtually try on different hairstyles. L’Oral also partnered with Facebook to let customers show off their looks — and then click to the website to make a purchase. Brands like Sephora and Este Lauder also use AR apps that “We can virtually eliminate glo bal poverty, allow customers to try on different massively reduce disease, an d provide virtual makeup looks. Retailers then better education to almost eve can analyze the data collected on face ryone on the planet. That said, AI also shape, wrinkles and skin tone to betca to increasingly concentrate we n be used ter predict inventory needs.

WHAT THE EXPERTS ARE SAYING ABOUT AI

BY ERIC MACK

To try and bring some clarity to the issue of artificial intelligence, the Pew Research Center surveyed almost 1,000 smart people with salient thoughts on thinking machines.

In their responses, many of the experts elaborated on their vision of our future with AI and some of the quotes make for the most fascinating parts of a rather lengthy report.

AI has made it possible to teach computers how to understand speech, but did you know that we also can teach computers how to see? Image recognition refers to the ability of computers to acquire, process and analyze data from visual sources.

“AI will drive a vast range of efficiency There are many uses for image optimizations, but also will enable recognition including the ability to diagnose diseases, detect license hidden discrimination and arbitrary plates and allow for photo analysis penalization of individuals in areas for verification. It also can help like insurance, job seeking and businesses improve their marketing. performance assessment.”

Gum Gum uses its vision technology tor of the Andrew McLaughlin, executive direc to scan millions of pages across the Yale University at king Thin e vativ Inno for ter Cen web, allowing brands to place relevant ads where users are most Inc. likely to see them.

alth and power, leaving many people behind.”

Erik Brynjolfsson, directo r of the MIT Initiative on the Digital Economy

“The developed world faces an unprecedented productivity slowdown that promises to limit advances in living standards.

AI has the potential to play an important role in boosting productivity and living standards.”

Robert D. Atkinson, president of the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation

CASHIERLESS STORES

Since debuting its first cashierless store in Seattle in 2016, Amazon Go has encouraged other startups, such as San Francisco-based AiFi, to develop cashierless store technology, using artificial intelligence, cameras, and sensors.

According to the National Retail Federation, shoplifting and paperwork error cost U.S. retailers around $47 billion.

CB Insights suggests that these new cashierless store models reduce the likelihood of stealing — they’re loaded with cameras and automatically charge customers. Plus, the Go stores, which are a fraction of the size of a traditional supermarket, are currently restricted Inc. to Prime members only.

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HEALTH

Why rich people won’t be addicted to tech (but the rest of us will)

BY JEREMY GOLDMAN

An entrepreneur can rarely afford to unplug. If you want the best opportunities at your fingertips, you need to build credibility and connections online.

Also, you can’t afford to stop checking your inbox, media feed or calendar and project management apps, lest an important opportunity slip through.

Is it OK to use technology 24/7, though?

Apps are designed to be addictive — think of YouTube’s endless stream of recommendations, LinkedIn and Twitter’s notifications systems, Netflix’s uninterrupted streaming. But tech overuse causes unhappiness for kids and adults alike.

TECHNOLOGY ADDICTION 101

Modern technology makes use of an age-long human weakness: behavioral addictions. Instead of injecting a substance, you directly get a pleasurable feeling every time you plug in. This is your brain’s reward for repeating a low-cost activity that brings you a lot of value. Modern technology makes it easier for people to engage in traditionally addicting activity — gambling, compulsive shopping — while also introducing new habits such as binge-watching, browsing on your smartphone or keeping close tabs on your social media likes, each of which generates a rush of pure dopamine.

Innovative apps and websites are useful. But a lot of people get hooked, especially to social media. Some experts, like former Google design ethicist Tristan Harris, are alarmed that technology is going to keep demanding more attention from us. “Every time you open an app, there are 1,000 engineers behind it trying to keep you using it,” he said.

Dorie Clark, the author of “Stand Out,” compares this issue to alcohol companies’ marketing strategies a century ago. To maximize profit, they had to get people addicted. Over time, the dangers to public health became clear.

Alcohol brands finally resolved the issue by taking a socially responsible stance and keeping their product away from minors. “I think that’s probably an analogy of the type of dance the social media companies are going to have to do,” Clark said.

WAYS YOUR MOBILE APPS CAN MAKE YOU HEALTHIER (AND MORE EFFICIENT)

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BY ILYA POZIN

mounting body of evidence indicates that some of our favorite digital distractions aren’t very good for us. Smartphones are a major culprit: In their first five years of use, the percentage of Americans who reported the internet was getting in the way of family time spiked from 11 percent to 28 percent. Still, there’s a time and a place for technology. It has the ability to help you form healthier habits, and in the workplace, it has the capacity to enhance our productivity rather than distract us from it.

When it comes to making a business successful, efficiency is key. As employees, it’s helpful to view your own efficiency in the same way. Are there ways technology distracts you at work rather than boosting your productivity?

Here are just a few ways to turn the problem into the solution.

THE NEW DIGITAL DIVIDE

Up until now, unequal access to technology and information has been a big problem. But this so-called Digital Divide gap is closing quickly in Western cultures: as of 2017, more than 70 percent of low-income families in the U.S. report having a computer at home. Almost half of American children aged up to 8 have their own tablet (as opposed to 1 percent in 2011).

Nowadays, the question is more of how technology is being used. Wealthy business owners continuously outsource their work overseas because it’s cheaper, and they are able to let others do the screen work for them so they may unplug from technology on their days off.

Clark addressed the issue succinctly.

“I actually think that in some ways this is going to be the next frontier, sort of like if we think about class-based divisions,” she said, “where the rich people are eating really healthy organic food from Whole Foods and the poor people are eating Big Macs.”

Addiction is nothing new for people; it’s been hardwired into our brains for millennia. However, modern technologies are providing us with brilliantly designed distractions at a pace we’ve never seen before. It’s not just media hype; it’s a danger to our society. The only question is how good of a job we’ll do at reining this addiction in Inc. before it gets much worse.

GAMES TO TRAIN YOUR BRAIN Having games readily available on your phone can be a tempting distraction from work, and mobile phone addiction is all too real.

While some games and apps may be little more than a temporary distraction, though, there are others that aim to keep your brain healthy and your focus sharp. For example, Pariveda Solutions, an IT

and management consulting firm, and the Center for Brain Health recently created a mobile app that measures your brain’s speed and ability to focus. As users play the game, the center gains more data to improve what its tech can do.

Other software such as RescueTime track how you spend time on your computer and mobile devices.

RescueTime then generates a report so you can see where you tend to lose your focus. Once you know what’s causing you to drift away, you can more easily address it.

TECH TO STRAIGHTEN POSTURE It’s probably not a surprise that your level of physical comfort affects your focus and productivity, and the tech you’re required to use at work is likely causing you some discomfort. The American Optometric Association reports that we spend seven hours each day on the computer. While many of us recognize that this is not good for our eyes, you may not know that it also has debilitating effects on posture.

Bad posture can negatively impact your breathing, circulation and even your mood.

But while tech has the potential to make you physically uncomfortable and distracted at work, it also offers many solutions to this problem. For instance, if you’ve noticed your posture suffers after hours at the computer or phone, check out Posture Man Pat, which uses your webcam to keep tabs on your head height. When your head drops a

certain distance because of slouching, the app will make your screen flash or give an audio notification.

PREVENT MULTITASKING I know you’ve been there: You’re sitting at your computer focusing on one task, but then your smartphone dings with an email or a text. You probably cave to the distraction without a second thought.

After all, it’s probably work-related, so you tell yourself you’re “multitasking.” In reality, you’re doing what some brain researchers have called “rapid toggling” from task to task. When you switch between tasks, your brain has to quickly focus on one topic then switch to another.

When your brain switches gears, you lose time because you have to ease into a different topic or mindset. Wouldn’t it be great if you could limit or mute these distractions and discourage yourself from “toggling”? Fortunately, there’s a setting — and an app — for that.

Your phone allows you to set do not disturb times, and commonly used workplace apps like Slack also offer “snooze notifications” mode.

If you require even more saving from yourself, the Freedom app will block you from certain apps, websites or even the entire internet for the length of time you select.

That means you can hunker down and focus on the task at hand rather than continuously being distracted and having to refocus on Inc. your work after each ding.

Want a healthier relationship with technology? Try these simple resolutions

BY JEFF BERCOVICI

W

e love our technology. But we also resent it. It comes into our lives and makes them better, but, eventually, it changes us in ways we don’t anticipate and don’t like. By the time we appreciate those changes, though, it feels like it’s too late. Going back to a life before Facebook/iPhone/Amazon/Netflix/Gmail/fill-inthe-blank seems unimaginable. Very few of us want all the tech gone from our lives, but most of us crave a healthier relationship with it. We want a reset.

Since the average American spends nearly 11 hours a day interacting with some type of screen, establishing a more mindful approach to one’s devices is arguably of more benefit than other common resolutions.

If you’re looking to reboot your tech behaviors, here are a few ways to use your smartphones, laptops, apps and feeds without getting used by them.

1

TAKE A SOCIAL MEDIA VACATION. Many of us feel like social media has become a drain on our well-being, yet still find it hard to walk away. That’s partly because Facebook, Instagram and Twitter are addictive by design, but it’s also because they’re free. Paying for them with our time and attention makes it hard to understand the value we’d recoup by quitting.

One simple way around this problem is a temporary hiatus. Psychologically, it’s easier to contemplate giving something up for a few weeks than doing it forever

— even if you’re likely to arrive at the end of that break feeling like quitting for good would be surprisingly painless. Facebook knows the only thing more addictive than time spent on Facebook is time spent off Facebook, which is why it bombards inactive users with increasingly desperate notifications begging them to come back.

2

TURN OFF NOTIFICATIONS FOR BASICALLY EVERYTHING. Speaking of those notifications, you don’t need any of them. Shutting off alerts from all of your apps is the simplest and

most regret-free ways to restore a large measure of your digital sanity. Even calling them “notifications” is buying into the fiction that they exist for your convenience rather than the app makers’. Call them what they are: engagement prompts and growth-hacking tricks.

Social media apps are plenty addictive enough without dings, buzzes and badges demanding your attention every few minutes. You might feel like you need to know about new emails or messages as soon as they come in, but you’re better off checking your various in-boxes on a schedule that allows for uninterrupted spans of focused work in between.

3

STOP WEARING YOUR WEARABLES. Wearable fitness trackers are not unlike social media: When you first start using one, it’s easy to grasp the benefits, from more physical activity to better sleep. The problem is when they become a daily habit. If you’re going to be giving a company vast amounts of data about your personal behaviors, you should be accruing proportionately large benefits

over time, and that’s simply not the case with most wearables that exist now.

Plus, you have to charge them all the time. Save the wearables for when you have a specific purpose for them, like losing weight or training for a race.

4

ESTABLISH NO-PHONE ZONES. Without question, smartphones are the world-changing invention of the 21st century so far. The quality that makes them so indispensable is also what makes them so nefarious: They do everything. It’s hard to think of an activity you can’t use a smartphone for or at least in conjunction with. But in 2018, even the smartphone makers acknowledged we should all be looking for ways to reduce our screen time.

The new iOS and Android features designed to help users monitor how often they’re interacting with their devices are nice, but a simpler and more effective remedy is to pick a couple places where you often find yourself falling into a scroll hole and designate them Inc. phone-free zones.

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HEALTH

SMART LEARNING FOR THE FUTURE OF HEALTH CARE

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BY DOUGLAS HEAVEN

n the five steps from the door to the reception desk, my photo has been taken, my face saved in the system and an ID number assigned. For the rest of my time at this new hightech unit in Great Ormond Street Hospital in London, I am followed by artificial intelligence.

Video screens that will be visible only to staff show my head in a red box, annotated with a score showing how confident the computer is that I am who it thinks I am.

Tracking systems like this are just one of the technologies being tested at GOSH’s DRIVE (Digital, Research, Informatics and Virtual Environments) unit, which opened last October. The

unit is a collaboration between the United Kingdom’s National Health Service, University College London and several tech companies, including Microsoft, Samsung and UK chipmaker Arm. Although the unit is part of GOSH, it doesn’t provide clinical care. Instead, it is a place where engineers can interact with patients, doctors and nurses — sometimes role playing actual scenarios — to find out what new tech can and can’t do before it is rolled out in clinical settings across the NHS. “It’s a digital sandpit,” said Noel Hurley at Arm. “It lets us experiment and play and build and break things in a safe environment.”

Arm’s chips power most of the world’s smartphones, but it also is

involved in healthcare, providing the hardware for many medical devices.

The company now wants to embed AI in those devices so they can make quick, automated decisions.

Medical AI has made great strides in diagnosing certain conditions, such as cancer and eye disease. But Arm is more interested in the smaller tasks. By streamlining the simple actions that are performed in hospitals thousands of times a day, such as registering patients and tracking people’s movements, it hopes to free up more staff time for patient care.

Since GOSH is a children’s hospital, there will be a focus on how tech can improve the care of younger people.

Several projects are under way, including a blue whale in the main entrance

THREE BEST BLOOD PRESSURE MONITORS BEST REVIEWS RECOMMENDS

BY KAREN ROTH RIDDER

An at-home blood pressure monitor can be an important health maintenance item for people trying to make healthy choices. Keeping your blood pressure in check can help shield your arteries from damage that could lead to major health incidents like heart attack or stroke. The best at-home blood pressure monitors are easy to operate and read. While a wrist monitor may seem more convenient, doctors advise that the best readings come from a cuff on your upper arm. If you need a convenient way to track and share your blood pressure information with your doctor, you can find products with the ability to store and send data.

CONSIDERATIONS WHEN CHOOSING

Accuracy is the most important factor when choosing an at-home blood pressure monitoring system.

Many people prefer monitors with large LED displays that are easy to read and understand. Some displays include color-coded information to warn you if your readings are reaching dangerous levels.

Unless you are medically trained to take blood pressure readings manually, an automatic monitor with a digital readout is a wise choice.

Consider the speed of the readings, which can appear on an automatic screen quite quickly on some models.

BLOOD PRESSURE MONITOR PRICES

Budget-priced blood pressure monitors cost between $20 and $40.

For this money, you should be able to get a monitor that provides accu-

Best of the best: Omron/10 Series Wireless Bluetooth Upper Arm Blood Pressure Monitor Our take: A top-notch at-home blood pressure monitor with the ability to wirelessly communicate with an app on your phone.

What we like: When calibrated correctly, this monitor is very accurate.

It has large numbers that are easy to read, and it allows for the storage of information from two different users.

An app allows you to email information directly to your doctor.

What we dislike: The phone app does not automatically sync.

More reviews starting on page 13

For accurate readings, try to take your blood pressure at the same time every day. Place the cuff at the same point on your arm each time, and try to be still while the monitor takes your reading. These consistent practices will help with longterm tracking.

Best bang for your buck: LotFancy/Blood Pressure Monitor Our take: This low-cost digital blood pressure monitor can track up to four people at a time.

What we like: An easy-to-understand color-coded range is included on the readout. The device also checks for an irregular heartbeat and shows your last three readings.

What we dislike: Does not have the included app to communicate wirelessly with your doctor. It may wear out sooner than some other models.

rate readings and is easy to operate.

If you’re looking for a cuff that’s larger or smaller than the standard size, or if you need to track more than one person’s blood pressure at a time, expect to pay between $40 and $80. A blood pressure monitor with the ability to send information through an app to your doctor could cost as much as $150.

Choice 3: Panasonic/Portable Upper Arm Blood Pressure Monitor Our take: This is a simple, easyto-use choice that provides decent value and longevity.

What we like: Easy to store. Large readout. Can hold up to 90 readings in memory. Very accurate readings.

What we dislike: Doesn’t have as many readout options as some others. Can’t track more than one set of readings.

HEALTH TIPS

and rabbits hopping about the wards — visible only to those with an augmented reality app.

One project already up and running is Project Fizzyo, which helps children with cystic fibrosis put up with their physiotherapy by making the physio device they have to squeeze into a game controller. The better you get at doing physio, the better you are at the game, said Neil Sebire, managing director at DRIVE. Hospital staff also are asking young patients what they would like in a hospital. “Most of them want robots,” Sebire said. Two robots now are being developed that can tell stories inspired by nearby objects. “Children are not limited by what they think tech New Scientist can do,” he said.

Ghostly X-rays could lower radiation risk

BY CHELSEA WHYTE

An excess of X-rays is bad for your health — which is why radiographers step out of the room before they zap you. Now a ghostly physics trick could reduce the dose needed for a clear image, because it requires only a small portion of the X-rays to pass through the object being imaged.

“Ghost imaging has several benefits: reduced dose, super resolution, cheap and faster data collection,” said Andrew Kingston at the Australian National University. Ghost imaging has been done with visible light rays, but Kingston and his colleagues have shown for the first time how it could be done with X-rays.

They started with a series of X-ray beams, each in a unique, checkerboard-like pattern. Most of the rays in each beam reach a digital camera that records the precise details of the patterns.

A small portion of the X-rays are reflected toward the object that is being imaged.

They pass through the object and enter a camera with one large pixel that measures only the total brightness of the light.

By combining the data from both cameras, you can compute a full 3D image of the interior of the object.

“The ‘ghostly’ thing is that most of the X-rays never pass through the object, yet all of the X-rays are used to construct the 3D ghost image,” said David Paganin at Monash University in Australia, also part of the team. This is similar to computed tomography (CT) scans, Kingston said, but it has the potential to provide higher-resolution images with lower doses of X-rays.

The more you know about the object being ghost imaged, the fewer X-rays you need to find an anomaly. That means that it could lower the dose for cancer screening, assuming we can get a decent model of what healthy tissue should look like in a person of a particular age and gender, Paganin said. New Scientist

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Information overload? We’re just beginning

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BY HOWARD TULLMAN

e keep hearing new statistics about the accelerating rate at which new information — content of all kinds — is being created both by humans and machines. The latter is accelerating at an exponentially greater pace, one that has been driven by machines exchanging data with other machines. There’s no end in sight to this growth, and absolutely no slowdown is even imaginable at this point. One of the most interesting challenges for the next few years will be “throughput” — how will we keep the enormous flow of data from the machines and zillions of sensors from clogging or breaking the whole internet?

And, if the nonstop output from the machines isn’t bad enough, the explosive growth of big, slow and clunky videos on the web continues to increase congestion, impose constraints and raise complex questions about prejudicial pricing, inequitable throttling and other anti-competitive and anti-consumer conduct by the gatekeepers.

Companies like Xaptum, one of the first Internet of Things startups at 1871, the Chicago-based tech incubator, have been addressing the machine volume concern for some time. Xaptum is talking specifically about a separate edge pathway or an entirely new network devoted exclusively to M2M transactions. But today, no one has any good ideas about what to do with the equally problematic video situation. Because, in all fairness, no one expected that everyone in the world would become a consumer and creator of video.

The current statistics are interesting and demonstrate that, while we are clicking on more and more videos, we’re watching fewer and fewer of them from start to finish. Our patience these days is non-existent, and our attention spans continue to shrink.

It’s clear that this isn’t especially good news for anyone, and in most instances, no one would even be tempted to describe this glut of infojunk as a source of pride. In fact, to call this flood of facts, factoids and fake news a mixed blessing is an understatement of a magnitude comparable to those old Vietnam-era military reports where we were assured that “to save the town, it became necessary to destroy it.”

It’s getting harder and harder every day to effectively connect to anyone as our attention becomes an even scarcer and a more precious commodity in our lives than our time, which is increasingly and wastefully consumed by slogging our way through all this stuff. If I’m not listening to what you’re trying to say, you’re just wasting your breath.

And keep in mind that this is a two-sided problem, where the pain is shared by both the companies and the consumers. It’s an enormous problem for each of us as individuals and an equally sizeable and critical problem for every business, as well. If we can’t figure out how to manage the overwhelming influx, to filter and focus the flow, and to create some tools to help infuse some meaning and value into the mess, the emergent digital communiInc. cation channels soon will resemble all the third class mail and catalogs that never even make it into the house.

And “meaning” in this context includes an appreciation of the context in which all this new material is being created. Today the context of most communications is more critical to successful reach, reaction and response than the content of the materials themselves.

In the same way, “metrics” don’t mean anything when there’s no one on Inc. the other end of the line.

I

BY EPHRAT LIVNI

f you are like pretty much everyone, you probably have a to-do list filled with seemingly simple tasks that somehow never get done. Instead of tackling the list, items linger and fill you with guilt.

Technology promised to simplify our lives, but errands seem to overwhelm us now. Automation, “smart technologies,” and “virtual assistants” haven’t magically made tedious tasks easier, but rather replaced old steps with new ones. You don’t necessarily have to go places to get things done, but you do have to recall old passwords or reset new ones, deal with infuriating bots that take your calls but can’t answer questions, and manage a slew of accounts. And because we change jobs more often and lead increasingly hectic lives, we experience a kind of “errand paralysis,” as Anne Helen Petersen writes in BuzzFeed.

Peterson posits that the inability to deal with

life’s mundane tasks is a symptom of burnout, something she diagnoses as “the millennial condition.” She argues that millennials — loosely defined as those born between 1981 and 1996 — face unique challenges. And while she’s right that many people today feel paralyzed in the face of simple tasks, she’s wrong to imagine that this burnout is unique to her generation.

The disease that Peterson correctly and eloquently diagnoses is not limited to a set of arbitrarily constructed and often meaningless generational lines. What she describes is true of anyone who participates in the global, digital economy. After all, 45 year-olds also have to go to the dentist, do their taxes and sign up for health insurance.

Burnout is a ubiquitous symptom of living in these times. No generation is immune to the effects of a transforming global economy and ever-changing technologies. If anything, millennials should be best-equipped to manage postmodern life, given that they were born into it. But we’re all struggling to adjust to existence in a world that’s more connected and yet more alienating, than ever before.

HAS TECHNOLOGY MADE US MORE EFFICIENT?

As Judy Shapiro wrote in Ad Age in 2009, already expressing skepticism about the iPhone 3G, “The seduction of new technology belies the reality that technology is often neither a time saver nor even more efficient.”

All this technology was supposed to help people “hack” life. Apple’s 2009 iPhone ad campaign

PHILOSOPHY PROFESSOR ARGUES

I

BY JENNY ANDERSON

f you’re a parent, you’ve probably despaired more than once at the sight of your kid indelibly glued to their smartphone. Philosophy professor Jordan Shapiro has a radical proposal: Don’t despair, rejoice.

Better yet, join in.

Kids aren’t losing themselves in their devices but potentially finding themselves. What’s more, they’re doing exactly what generations of kids have long done: Immersing themselves in the toys and objects of the moment that reflect the society they inhabit, and which will help prepare them for the future.

Shapiro, an assistant professor of philosophy at Temple University and a respected thinker on education, childhood and technology, presents his case in his book “The New Childhood: Raising Kids to Thrive in a Connected World.” He encourages parents to dive into technology headlong with their kids, be it video games or social media. On one level, parent participation is just common sense: Technology is a major part of their lives, and if you aren’t there to mentor and contextualize it for them, they will find guidance elsewhere. But Shapiro also folds in developmental psychology, philosophy and history, unpacking why people have defaulted to thinking every major technological innovation — from the printing press to television — would

isolate people, compromise their ability to communicate and destroy society.

“Your job as a parent is not to stop unfamiliar tools from disrupting your nostalgic image of the ideal childhood, nor to preserve the impeccable tidiness of the Victorian era’s home/work split.

Instead, it’s to prepare your kids to live in an ethical, meaningful and fulfilled life in an ever-changing world,” he writes. To do this, he argues, families and schools must embrace technology, including gaming, to prepare kids for an uncertain but determinedly digital future.

“The New Childhood” arrives at the perfect moment, when the pendulum has swung so far against tech that it almost feels dangerous to put technology and kids in the same sentence. “We are attached to our digital devices,” Shapiro acknowledges. “But that is not necessarily a bad thing. After all, life is always lived through the tools of the times.

Digital tools act like a bridge between individual and common experiences.

They help us to mediate our relationship with the world around us. They ease the strain between inner and outer realities.

They do this exceptionally well.”

THE PITFALLS OF SCREEN TIME

Digital tools may help us mediate our experiences of the world, but there’s good reason for parents to be concerned about their effects. Apps, video games and social media platforms are

designed by adults who work for commercial entities that exist to profit from maximizing every customer’s attention — kids included. Children do not have the self-regulation or executive function to resist the lure of such powerful persuasive design. Adults don’t either — what does that tell you?

A generation of children who grew up on tech are showing us the results of their experience. They are more anxious and more medicated. Work is 24/7, in part because of the nature of jobs, and in part because they find it increasingly hard to divorce themselves from their devices.

Part of my job involves speaking to parents, teachers, psychologists and pediatricians. Nearly all are alarmed at rising levels of anxiety among all children, and they see social media as part of the problem. The research linking smartphone use and mental health problems is tenuous; a 2017 report from the UK’s Education Policy Institute concluded that there is “evidence of a beneficial impact of social media on young people’s emotional well being,” while simultaneously noting that 37 percent of kids are extreme internet users and extreme internet use may have harmful effects.

One thing we do seem to know is that kids need sleep — and devices mess with it. “If we wanted to invent something to undermine thriving, we would invent something to undermine sleep,” said Lisa

Damour, a psychologist and author of the forthcoming book “Under Pressure: Confronting the Epidemic of Stress and Anxiety in Girls.” Phones may qualify, she says, pointing to a longitudinal study that showed that kids whose phones disturbed their sleep went onto have greater mental health issues.

AUTHOR’S PERSPECTIVE: THE BEAUTY OF BOUNDARIES

It would be hard to prove that most children are addicted to technology, going by the definition from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual. But they certainly are distracted by it, just as we grown-ups are. I have to put limits on myself. I leave my phone upstairs when I get home from work because the pull of reading one more thread on Slack, editing that last story or reading one more study is too great. My kids need my attention, and I can only fully give it to them when I am not distracted. In this, I am modeling exactly what I want them to learn: Technology is amazing, and we should embrace all it has to offer. But we also should know its perils and recognize its power.

I am not longing for the nostalgic days of yore. My kids engage plenty with technology. But as with education, I try to scaffold it; Everything builds on what comes first. They practice using Instagram and YouTube with me, using them in short stints. Soon enough, they will be on their own with their own devices.

THE DIGITAL USER

SPRING 2019

9

SOCIETY

OUR DIGITAL MALAISE The life-draining tedium of errands is even worse in this age of digital convenience

WHEN TECHNOLOGY WORKS, IT CAN HELP SAVE A LOT OF TIME. BUT IT DOESN’T ALWAYS WORK lives wisely. The present self isn’t always inclined to follow through on those plans. One reason for that is because the present self and the planning self can feel disconnected. If you can’t see the “you” of the future, the one who will benefit from dealing with today’s tedium, then it’s difficult to get the present “you” motivated.

These theories apply to all aspects of our lives, not just retirement planning. Admittedly, it’s difficult to see the future in a turbulent world where your circumstances keep changing. But you can impose some controls. To tackle your to-do list you have to be able to see beyond the present, which can feel overwhelming when you’re already checking all your social media feeds and responding to emails and are steeped in the needs of the moment.

SIMPLIFY YOUR LIFE

centered around the idea that “there’s an app for that” — namely, that smartphones would help humans do everything they needed to do faster, better and with the tips of their fingers.

Instead, for many people, omnipresent technology turned life into an endless and insurmountable to-do list. And a lot of technology actually makes accomplishing a task less efficient.

Take customer service lines. To set up or cancel most services today, you have to call a customer service number that often is understaffed and overwhelmed. Marchex, an advertising analytics company, found in 2016 that Americans wasted more than 900 million hours waiting on hold. An older survey, conducted in 2013 by the texting app TalkTo, found that over half of US respondents reported spending between 10 to 20 minutes a week on hold, which totals about 13 hours a year.

When technology works, it can help save a lot of time. But it doesn’t always work. Passport scanners at airports, for example, are meant to cut down waiting times at customs and make traveling more seamless. But when the machines are broken, lines get longer. And there are no immigration agents there to help; they’ve been sent to do other tasks because the machines were meant to replace them.

LEARNING TO DEAL

It was once taken as a given that people act rationally — we do what we should because we know it’s good for us. Or at least that’s what economists thought when they built their models. The Nobel Prize-winning economist Richard Thaler introduced the notion that this isn’t true. Thaler pointed to a slew of cognitive biases and strange behaviors to prove that humans often avoid choices that would serve them well — like opting into a 401K — because they just don’t want to deal with decisions. He proposed that governments and institutions nudge people in the right direction, making it easier to choose wisely, and incentivizing rational choices by forcing workers to opt out of a pension plan rather than opt-in, for example.

In Thaler’s view, each of us is two people. We encompass a present self and a planning self.

The planning self wants to pay taxes on time, tick things off of our to-do lists and manage our

HALF THE WORLD IS NOW CONNECTED TO THE INTERNET This year will prove to be a transformative moment for the internet. For the first time ever, more than half of the world’s population will be using the internet, according to the International Telecommunication Union. Much of that progress was seen in Africa, which recorded the highest growth globally in just over a decade. But while internet penetration continues to increase, affordability continues to remain an issue, especially in Africa. Here’s a look at the numbers:

3.9 billion

The number of people who will gain access to the internet by the end of the year, according to United Nations estimates.

96

The percentage of the global population who live within range of a mobile network.

24

The percentage of Africans who had internet connections in 2018, up from 2.1% in 2005.

45.3

The percentage of people in developing countries who now have internet access, up from 7.7% in 2005.

One approach to becoming more efficient about what must be done is to simplify your life by having fewer demands on your time. We’re not as busy as we think — we spend a lot of time gratifying the present self with activities that don’t advance our future self. We would benefit from heeding Nobel Prize winning psychologist Daniel Kahneman’s advice: “The easiest way to increase happiness is to control your use of time.”

In practical terms this might mean taking measures to break our screen addictions; developing systems that help us prioritize our commitments such as the Bullet Journal or Eisenhower Box; or on a more fundamental level by understanding time better by reading up on chronemics, the study of time.

Another option is to accept the current condition.

This isn’t exactly giving up, more like adjusting mentally. In the beginning of her Buzzfeed feature, Peterson beats herself up for not taking her shoes to the cobbler, for example, all the while noting that she is writing books and exercising regularly and managing a cross-country move at the same time.

She ends up in a place of self-acceptance: “I don’t have a plan of action, other than to be more honest with myself about what I am and am not doing and why,” she writes. “This isn’t a task to complete or a line on a to-do list, or even a New Year’s resolution.

It’s a way of thinking about life, and what joy and meaning we can derive not just from optimizing it, but living it. Which is another way of saying: It’s life’s actual work.”

If we learn to accept that, in order for us to keep our sanity and fully participate in society and our lives, some things will have to slip through the cracks, we can stop feeling guilty when they do.

Less time spent lamenting would free up the energy to get this tedious task done — or just to have more fun.

One reason so many of us feel burnt out is because we put excessive pressure on ourselves. We imagine success involves doing it all — while looking good, too. Some of this pressure is real, and some of it is invented. As Thaler points out, no one is perfect.

And we don’t have to be. It’s liberating to learn to distinguish between the idealized lives presented on Instagram and the reality that existence is messy and complicated and that we have limits.

Your to-do list could fill you with pleasure if you connect to your future self, knowing that tackling certain tasks will make you happier later (or zapping them like you’re playing Space Invaders). But part of that process is simultaneously letting go of the bits that don’t matter as much.

Perhaps what we are missing most now is a sense of perspective. There’s no app for that, Quartz but it is worth your time.

CHILDREN MUST USE MORE TECH They will have a model of time management to draw from; they will likely ignore it. But it’s there as a tool.

Shapiro and I agree on many things, including on the need for schools to better use technology in the classroom. And his context is different than mine in many ways: I am raising my kids in Britain, where I am constantly struck how much younger kids seem compared to their US peers.

Culture and context matter: Our kids are the same age, but none of their friends have phones, which makes it easier to be resolute that mine won’t either. Shapiro grew up loving gaming; I grew up loving

sports. Not surprisingly, my kids love sports; his, gaming. We are creating contexts for our kids that makes sense to us. We’d both probably argue that the tools we are giving them will prepare them for the future (though his may be more employable).

But we diverge on plenty of points.

Shapiro says he doesn’t impose limits on his kids’ screen time, pointing out that children often are using their digital devices for educational or creative purposes. “Balance and boundaries no longer makes sense as the organizing principle of child-rearing,” Shapiro writes in reference to a conversation he had with NPR education correspondent Anya Kamentez, who suggests a sort of Goldilocks approach to screens: not too little, not too much, mostly with others.

I enthusiastically set limits on my kids’ tech use. Everything I have learned about parenting suggests that kids thrive with boundaries. We remove these boundaries as they get older because our goal is not to make clones but to let them develop into fully actualized and independent humans.

But for a brief time, we have a big role in showing what we value and what constitutes fun. That said, Shapiro has set plenty of rules around what his kids do need to do: Read books before bed, allow themselves to feel bored on short car rides, get exercise, and, like many families, no devices at his dinner table.

“The New Childhood” opened my mind to the context in which technology exists. Historical perspective is useful when confronting raising kids with devices we did not have. Adulthood, he writes, “is about one’s capacity to creatively adapt the pillars of human wisdom so that our collective values remain meaningful even when situated in new contexts.” After reading his book, I am not convinced that our collective values are best reflected in video games, but I understand my own fears a bit better and am more convinced of some of the benefits technology can offer.

But if humans have forever been resistant to change, we also have managed to change anyway. Maybe my parents worried TV would fry my brain; now I spend 10 hours a day on a screen. Were they right or wrong? The change came, resistance be damned.

Childhood is shockingly short, and parents are stars in it for a fleeting moment. What makes parenting hard is that we design that role with a million different decisions every day, from what values we model to what snacks we pick.

Also, how we approach tech. I’m still sticking with the digital-light path, an approach that’s more board games and bike rides than Minecraft. Maybe that means my kids will be ill-prepared for an uncertain future. Or maybe they’ll have just the tools they need Quartz to work it out.

THE DIGITAL USER

10

SPRING 2019

SOCIAL MEDIA

WHO’S TO BLAME FOR FAKE NEWS?

BABY BOOMERS

M

BY JESSICA STILLMAN

alevolent foreign governments, morals-challenged party hacks and click-hungry opportunists produce fake news, but their misleading posts wouldn’t do any damage if no one actually shared them. And when you go looking for who spreads divisive nonsense on Facebook, you find a culprit much close to home.

When a team of researchers out of New York and Princeton Universities dug into the data recently in an effort to get a handle on just who spreads fake news, their investigation led them straight to ... the baby-boom generation.

In general, a Boomer might be a politically and technologically savvy person.

But the detailed analysis of the posting histories of 1,300 Americans from the period around the 2016 election did reveal that older folks are nearly four times as likely to share fake news as Millennials.

Who’s to blame for spreading fake news? Mostly Boomers.

The good news from the study, recently published in “Sciences Advances,” is that sharing fake news actually is less common than you might imagine given the political firestorm around the issue. “According to our data, fewer than 1 in 10, or 8.5 percent, of our respondents shared links from fake news domains,” report the researchers behind the study: Andy Guess, Jonathan Nagler and Joshua Tucker.

That small amount of sharing wasn’t equally distributed among the population, however. One group did wildly more to spread fake news than any other.

WHATSAPP TRYING TO BEAT ITS FAKE NEWS PROBLEM Rumors, hoaxes and misinformation find fertile breeding ground on social media. But as Google, Facebook, Twitter and other social media platforms increasingly crack down on misinformation, the purveyors of false stories are seeking refuge on direct messaging apps such as WhatsApp. In developed countries, WhatsApp is primarily used as a personal messaging app. But in developing countries many people rely on it as a social network.

Here, it’s not uncommon to join groups with hundreds of members. People follow groups dedicated to topics ranging from interests in sports and entertainment to media and politics.

The problem is that WhatsApp is particularly vulnerable to misinformation.

Because its messages are encrypted, the app provides a safe haven from snooping individuals and governments. This, combined with a mistrust of government, often prompts people to use WhatsApp to exchange private information that they feel hasn’t been “contaminated” with pro-government or corporate bias.

But as the encryption stops WhatsApp from moderating messages, it’s difficult for the company to fact-check or delete misleading messages or links.

“More than 1 in 10, or 11.3 percent, of people over age 65 shared links from a fake news site, while only 3 percent of those age 18 to 29 did so,” report the authors. “No other demographic characteristic we examined — gender, income, education — had any consistent relationship with the likelihood of sharing fake news.”

If you’ve ever been bombarded by non-

WhatsApp itself isn’t at the root of misinformation. Political polarisation, ethnic tensions, the rise of instant communications and a growing mistrust of politicians contribute to the current environment in which fake news has flourished. But because misinformation on WhatsApp is so difficult to debunk, fake stories about politics can quickly spread to others.

WhatsApp maintains that it neither can nor wants to access any of the messages that are sent on the platform. So content moderation, as Facebook and Twitter are carrying out, isn’t an option.

Intead, WhatsApp has commissioned several research groups to investigate the problem of misinformation on the app and look for alternative ways to address it. The University of Cambridge Social Decision-Making Lab has had some success with a psychological intervention in the form of an online game, Bad News.

The idea is that when people play this game, they will learn more about the various techniques of misinformation and how they often are deployed. The lab now plans to develop a new adaptation of the game that can educate players about the complex spread of misinformation on WhatsApp and its potential Quartz social consequences.

sense posts from that one crazy uncle or older acquaintance, this might not come as a huge shock to you, but it did surprise Guess, who told The Verge: “For me, what is pretty striking is that the relationship holds even when you control for party affiliation or ideology. The fact that it’s independent of these other traits is pretty surprising to me. It’s not just being driven by older people being more conservative.”

Which isn’t to say that conservatives and liberals were equally likely to share fake news. Older folks of either political persuasion were more likely to spread misinformation than their younger counterparts, but conservative seniors spread by far the most.

“While 18 percent of Republicans in our sample shared links from fake news sites, only 3.5 percent of Democrats did,” the authors report (self-identified independents shared as much as Republicans). But the authors note that most of the fake news produced before the election was pro-Trump, so conservatives may just have had more options to be misled.

Whatever the explanation for conservative older folks being the most prone to sharing misinformation, share they did. “Republicans over the age of 65 were seven times more likely to share fake news than respondents of any political leaning aged between 18 and 29,” NewScientist’s write-up of the study highlights.

FIXING THE PROBLEM

These numbers pretty conclusively prove that Boomers are the main culprits when it comes to spreading fake news, so clearly the next question to ask is, why? Does an aging brain tend to make it harder to tell the difference between a genuine news story and a hoax? Or is the main problem digital literacy? Perhaps less technologically experienced seniors just aren’t as good at reading the clues that help people tell dubious from dependable sources online.

This research didn’t weigh in on that question, but the scientists behind it hope to study the issue further this year with the aim of devising more effective strategies to beat back Inc. fake news.

Prolific Instagrammer is second-oldest U.S. senator

BY HANNA KOZLOWSKA,

While social media generally might be seen as a younger person’s game, with Congressional newcomers using Instagram to shed a new light on the daily lives of lawmakers, the most prolific Instagram user in the US Senate is Iowa Republican Chuck Grassley, who runs his own account, according to his staff.

Grassley, 85, has served in the Senate for nearly four decades, making him the second-oldest Senator behind Dianne Feinstein. He likes to post photos of himself with his constituents and political friends, almost always posing in the same way, often with the classic arm-around-the-shoulder pose. The feed might be repetitive and quotidian, but Grassley is taking advantage of a political tool that is becoming more powerful than ever.

Grassley led the senatorial pack for a second year in a row, posting more than 585 times in 2018, according to a new report from public affairs software company Quorum. That’s more than

any of his Senate colleagues, even though his account is far from the most popular, with only about 18,000 followers compared to Bernie Sanders’ 2.8 million.

“From meeting with Iowans visiting Washington to weighing in on the important issues of the day to sharing a bit of history from the Capitol and to chronicling how corn grows, Sen. Grassley uses Facebook, Twitter and Instagram to be as transparent, accessible and informative as possible,” Michael Zona, Grassley’s communications director, told Quartz by email.

Grassley’s Facebook page is run by his staffers, where they share items more related to the news, while Instagram and Twitter updates come from the senator himself, Zona said. He’ll often post his Instagram photos on Twitter.

Many Senate Instagram accounts appear to be carefully curated by staffers, including polished, professional shots and photos with text overlays of issues the politicians care about.

From time to time, some senators will include photos from when they are at home, cooking and spending time with family, or behind-the-scenes shapshots.

Grassley’s account, on the other hand, frequently is sprinkled with badly-lit photos of office plants, ancient vacuum cleaners or grandatherly pictures of himself by a pile of chopped up wood at home. His feed may be dull, but these moments show the senator in a more genuine, uncontrived way. That’s where Instagram is at its best: More than on any other social platform, it’s where politicians can reach younger constituents, who use Instagram more than other networks, and de-mystify the life of a politician.

The new guard in Congress is very well aware of this, particularly those that grew up as digital natives.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a congresswoman from New York, is especially adept at making her Instagram a glimpse into the life in Washington, through the eyes of a new-

comer. Her account could be a signal of what’s to come from US politicians: a radically transparent Instagram as a megaphone used to speak directly to constituents in ways that previously just weren’t possible.

An unsuccessful Senate candidate from Texas, Beto O’Rourke fills his feed with posed photos, but he’s taken to Stories to document his daily life.

His account was the most prolific on the House side, which is unsurprising, considering his Senate campaign’s strong presence on social media overall. Overall, 70 percent of senators posted on Instagram, and only 50 percent of House members did. (Twitter is the most-updated platform for both sides of the aisle and both houses of Congress, with Senate octogenarians like Grassley and Democrat Dianne Feinstein as frequent posters.)

This could be because Senate offices have more staff and resources to dedicate toward a digital communications than their House counterparts, Kevin King, head of communications at Quorum, told Quartz Quartz.

THE DIGITAL USER

SPRING 2019

11

SECURITY

MORE WAYS TO PREVENT CREDIT CARD THEFT

BY JOHN DISCALA

Although new technology is constantly emerging to fight against credit card theft, hackers also are constantly crafting more elaborate schemes. For frequent business travelers, the chance of going somewhere and having your information stolen vastly increases since you are constantly flying and moving through different networks.

That doesn’t mean we can’t prevent it from occurring by taking additional steps to ensure it’s protected. Here are a few ways to protect credit card information and stay safe from malicious attacks.

ENABLE TWO-STEP AUTHENTICATION

BEWARE OF

HACKERS More than 2.5 billion accounts have been hacked this year alone.

Here are 4 things you can do to protect yourself

I

BY HEATHER WILDE

t hasn’t been great time recently for companies having to disclose their data breaches.

In just one week, both Marriott and Quora disclosed breaches totaling 600 million consumers.

The compromised data is similar — and staggering.

For some users, partial bank account information was compromised, including name, bank name, country, currency type, last 4 digits of their account number, routing number, and transaction times and amounts.

While these are disturbing, they’re only the latest in a string of megabreaches that have become commonplace. Just last year, Facebook, UnderArmour, Exactis, British Airways, Air Canada, T-Mobile, TimeHop, MyHeritage, Ticketfly and Aadhaar had incidents affecting nearly two billion people combined — and while those are the most sensational, they are by no means all of them.

What’s worse, these are happening so frequently, there’s a fear that people are becoming desensitized to them. Here are four things you should do right now to protect yourself from harm from these digital pirates.

1

START MONITORING YOUR IDENTITY.

There’s an entire new industry of identity theft protection services that has risen precisely because of these breaches, as the standard solution most companies employ after a breach is to offer one year of free credit and identity monitoring. In fact, research shows that individuals affected by a breach who receive free credit monitoring or identity theft protection are six times less likely to file a lawsuit against the breached company.

While they can’t protect your accounts from being compromised, they will let you know as soon as they are, so you can alert

the bank, credit agency and authorities immediately — reducing your liability.

2

CLEAN UP AFTER YOURSELF.

If you’re anything like me, when you see a new website that interests you, you’ll sign up for an account to test it out. And then you’ll promptly forget about it when you’re done.

The best way to protect yourself from breaches is to sign up for accounts only that you really need — use guest accounts wherever possible, and delete your account on sites you no longer use.

USE A PASSWORD 3 MANAGER

When all 50 million Evernote users’ passwords were reset after a 2013 data breach, the most common support request was from users to be able to change their password back to the one they had before.

The common reason was that it was the same password they used everywhere else, and they didn’t want to have to remember a new one.

Reusing passwords is something a lot of people do. Hackers know this. If you use 1Password, LastPass or another password manager, you can use just a single password and still have unique, secure passwords on every site.

4

FREEZE YOUR CREDIT.

The most extreme but effective way to keep anyone from opening a new account in your name is to set up a credit freeze or lock with each credit agency. If you don’t want to go that far, you can set a free fraud alert that requires lenders to verify your identity before issuing new credit.

No matter what you do, whenever a new breach is announced, check the affected site, change your password, and check any associated accounts for unusual transactions.

This problem isn’t going away, so the more proactive you Inc. are the safer you’ll be.

HACKERS WILL INCREASINGLY TARGET VIDEO GAME PLAYERS In the online gaming world, it’s normal to play with or against strangers — and this is presenting an important security threat as the value of the industry grows.

A new forecast report

by Experian, the credit and identity theft protection firm, predicts that videogame data breaches will be a major issue in 2019.

Cybercriminals can “easily pose as a gamer, build trust within a particular game or community, and gain access to privileged inside information,” the report said.

While video-game hacks are nothing new, it is now more lucrative because of the industry’s growth and shift towards selling in-game assets. According to Newzoo, a gaming analytics firm, the industry is worth about $138 billion worldwide.

Young gamers, Experian’s report notes, are particularly at risk, especially if they do not fully understand security practices or believe they are in a trusted community. And with the growth of games like Fortnite, which has 80 million monthly players and is popular with kids and teens, more minors are playing games.

Some companies, like Xbox, have parental controls in place to monitor activities, and the US Federal Trade Commission has agreed to investigate whether children are being lured into gambling via video games. Until the industry is more regulated, however, players can take added security measures like downloading a password manager or enabling twostep authentication.

— Aisha Hassan, Quartz

Saving your credit card information on your digital device does make it easy and convenient to make purchases. But even if your password is complex, it shouldn’t be your only line of defense between your personal information and the dark web.

To ensure that your information has the highest level of protection, enable two-step authentication. Instead of using just your password to log into an account, you’ll have a time-sensitive code you’ll need to enter to confirm that it’s you.

TURN OFF AUTO-PAY

Auto-pay is a convenient and useful option, especially when you have multiple credit cards. However, it’s wise to check your credit card statements each month.

This way if something is suspicious, you can catch it before things escalate.

In addition to turning off auto-pay, check credit card statements at least every two weeks.

FREQUENTLY MONITOR YOUR CREDIT SCORES

Keeping an eye on your credit score and any new activity can help resolve problems that you didn’t catch. Besides worrying about hackers attacking you directly, they also breach consumer’s data from companies. By the end of the summer of last year, there were 864 data breaches and over 34 million records were compromised, according to Rippelshot.

Thirty percent of the data stolen was credit card numbers.

Make sure that you have safeguards in place from all angles. You may also be able to get free credit reports and credit card monitoring from your credit card issuer.

CONSIDER USING CONTACTLESS PAYMENT

Similar to Apple Pay and Google Pay, contactless payment is when you can tap your card in front of payment systems and in seconds, your payment is processed.

Besides the fact that it’s so fast, most users enjoy contactless payment because it’s a lot easier than fiddling with your mobile wallet, it’s travel-friendly, and most importantly, it’s secure.

It’s accommodated with a one-time security code so a hacker can’t copy it and get your credit card information. Although chips have reduced this type of fraud, it still helps to know that you have a payment option that’s both secure and fast.

WATCH OUT FOR PHONY EMAILS

Full disclosure: A few years ago, I almost fell prey to a phishing email. It was a ‘Delta’ flight itinerary asking me to confirm my ticket. Besides the fact that everything in the email looked legitimate, it also had a route from JFK-SFO that I previously took.

If I’d been extremely preoccupied when I checked my email, assumed it was real, and entered my account information, I would’ve been telling a different story.

Most of the time, their targets are people who travel frequently or those who have frequent flyer accounts. If you ever have an email from a credit card company, an airline, or even a hotel that wasn’t prompted by you, don’t click any links in the email. Instead go directly to their website and Inc. inquire there.

FAMILY FINANCES: KEEP DATA SAFE IN THE CLOUD

BY KAITLIN PITSKER

You probably got the memo ages ago that you need to back up your computer’s files religiously. Otherwise, they could disappear into the void should your computer’s hard drive implode or your machine fall victim to hackers.

Today, much of what you do on your computer, tablet and smartphone — from accessing email to streaming music and movies — relies on the cloud.

Experts still recommend regularly backing up files on an external hard drive and disconnecting it from your computer when you’re done. But you also should use an internet-based service to save, sync or back up your files.

In recent years, space in the cloud has gotten cheaper, and many cloud storage providers have expanded their menus to offer a wider variety of plans and features.

Keeping your documents and other files in the cloud will lighten the load on your computer’s hard drive and allow

you to access your files from anywhere.

Most cloud services offer a limited amount of storage free, then they charge monthly or annual fees for additional space. For example, Amazon Drive for Prime members, Apple’s iCloud and Microsoft’s OneDrive provide 5 gigabytes of free storage; Box offers 10GB, and Dropbox provides 2GB. One terabyte of data storage — enough to hold tens of thousands of digital images, plus files and documents — typically costs $100 to $120 a year. That’s plenty of memory if you’re sharing the space or using it to store movies or lots of photos.

The service that’s right for you will depend on the types of files you store,

how much space you need and whether you plan to edit or access the files regularly or share them with others.

Before signing up for a larger, paid storage plan, use a service’s tools to upload and view a handful of files to make sure you find the process straightforward and convenient. Consider keeping documents with sensitive information on your computer’s hard drive or encrypting the files before uploading them to the cloud.

It’s hard to beat Google’s offerings, including 15GB of free storage if you have a Google account. Need more space? Upgrade to a paid storage plan and share your storage space with up to five family members. A 2TB storage plan costs $100 a year. And regardless

of how much storage space you have, Google provides a robust workbench of tools that allow you to edit documents, spreadsheets and other files on the go and share them with others. Or, if photos from your smartphone are gobbling up space, stash the images in Google Photos.

Other solid options include Dropbox and iCloud. Dropbox’s meager 2GB of free storage won’t hold many files, but the company’s Plus plan ($99 a year) includes 1TB of space and makes sharing files between devices a breeze.

Apple devotees are best served by iCloud. The service works with both Apple and Windows devices, but iCloud already is baked into Apple devices and is an easy way to back up your smartphone. You’ll get 5GB of free storage, and a 2TB storage plan — which can be shared with up to five family members — costs $10 a month.

Kiplinger’s Personal Finance

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WORKPLACE

HERE’S WHY YOU NEED TO HIRE A VIRTUAL ASSISTANT

BY AMANDA PRESSNER KREUSER

0

ENJOY THE END OF

INBOX ZERO E

BY WANDA THIBODEAUX

mail is one of those things you can’t help but love to hate. While it’s a great communication tool, it also is nasty like dirty laundry, growing back and smothering you with dark, overwhelming feelings of deja vu. But don’t be fooled.

Inbox zero isn’t something you need to achieve.

The real problem is in our perception of “done.” We often associate the empty inbox with having taken care of current issues and, therefore, effective leadership. So if there’s even one little digital message in our email, we feel like we have to attack it.

If we don’t, we feel like we’re missing something. And that’s before you add in the fear of getting overwhelmed — we rush to respond because we’re afraid that we won’t catch up later.

But here’s the reality. Much of what comes into the inbox doesn’t need you. Don’t let your ego trick you into thinking otherwise. More than two thirds of email is spam. A lot of the rest is non-urgent material, such as simple acknowledgments of receipts or even blank emails sent just for the attachment you’ll need later.

Assuming you’re not able to hand 100 percent of your email off to someone else, here’s what you should do. At the beginning of your workday, instead of starting at the top of your inbox and working your way down each message, scan through your inbox for urgent-looking subject lines that match your objectives, or do a filtered search by keyword or sender if you’re expecting something critical. Move those emails

to a folder labeled “Mail That Matters” or flag them. Mass select everything that’s left and move it to a folder called “Non-Urgent Unread”. Now go back to “Mail That Matters”. Visually, now you see only what’s truly important.

This simple technique helps you visually distinguish between what likely doesn’t deserve your attention and the small percentage of messages that probably do. It puts your attention back on the message content, rather than on message quantity, so it’s easier not to get distracted from the goals of your business. The reduction in stress you get from seeing fewer communications can help you concentrate well and make better decisions. You always can go to the “Non-Urgent Unread” folder when you get a few extra moments, and since most people expect you to reply to an email within 24-48 hours, a good rule of thumb is that you probably can delete what’s left in the “Non-Urgent Unread” at the end of each week. Trust that people will send a new message or phone you if you make a mistake and a critical email gets misfiled.

This divide-and-conquer trick also doesn’t mean you can’t use all the other email strategies out there. Go ahead and keep using filters and clear email policies. The idea is just get to the point where, as those strategies help you out, you can look at your inbox based on your goals and objectives and not worry about the rest.

Judge your success by whether you’re communicating on issues that relate to the company vision, because that’s where real leaders allocate their Inc. time.

DON’T REPLY TO YOUR EMAILS

The day after Christmas, I spent seven hours sifting through more than 2,700 unread emails.

Like many other people, I intended to begin 2019 with a fresh inbox and zero unread messages.

Since the idea of “Inbox Zero” was first coined in 2007 by Merlin Mann, a blogger who championed “finding the time and attention to do your best creative work,” it has become what many people consider the pinnacle of digital organization.

Products such as Polymail, Mailstrom and Superhuman were built to help make our inboxes more manageable. And a growing number of offices have instituted chat systems such as Slack to help minimize interoffice emails.

Despite all these developments, we receive more email than ever. According to a recent study by the Radicati Group, a market-research firm, people across the globe sent and received 269 billion emails a day in 2017. By 2021, that number is projected to reach more than 333 billion.

There simply is no way for anyone with a full-time job and multiple inboxes to keep up with the current email climate.

Even after deleting and sorting my 2,700 unread messages, I awoke the next day to more than 400 more.

In 2019, I suggest you let it all go.

— Amanda Pressner Kreuser, The Atlantic Online

Ever wish you could clone yourself so you could get more done in a day? Then you’d force “other you” to do the boring grunt work so you can do the fun parts you enjoy the most or those that increase your bottom line? (At least, that’s my own not-so-secret plan!)

Whether you’re a small business owner, freelancer or an independent contractor, the idea of hiring someone else, like a virtual assistant, to work for you might seem ludicrous. Who can afford it? The reality it, offloading a few time-consuming, lower-level projects can actually free you up to earn more money by doing the higher-level work that you do best.

Many of us were first introduced to the idea of a virtual assistant after reading Tim Ferriss’ “The 4-Hour Workweek,” where he “outsources work and life” to virtual assistants so he can pursue other passions.

Now, with an estimated 25,000 virtual office assistants worldwide helping others grow their business, it’s a role you can’t ignore when you’re not ready to hire an employee but need more hands on deck to help you get work done.

But before you decide to siphon off your hard-earned freelance dollars for a VA, read on to learn more about their services and how they can help you grow your business.

WHAT DOES A VIRTUAL ASSISTANT DO?

Think of a VA as someone who is an employee that does hourly work for you remotely. Some virtual assistants do research on behalf of a writer, others can help you set up calls for phone interviews and meetings or help you with accounting, while others can work on your website, to name just a few.

Common skills among VAs include data entry, internet research, emailing, customer service support, email services, bookkeeping and administrative support.

If you find that you need help scheduling and juggling your personal life and work life, a company like FancyHands. com can help you research services — doctors, beauty, dog walkers — and complete tasks that take less than 20 minutes.

THE BENEFITS OF HIRING A VIRTUAL ASSISTANT

When you’re considering leveraging this type of worker, it’s because you want to free up your time to make more money for your business.

Freelance writer Diana Kelly Levey uses a virtual production assistant to help her build articles on her site’s portfolio section. It’s something she says she can do but it’s not the best use of her time and Levey can spend that hour working for a higher-paying client instead of doing the production work herself.

Know your limitations. You could hire a VA pro to help with video editing, adding SEO to your website so clients can find you, starting a blog for your business or helping you plan a business trip.

Freelance content marketing writer, Jennifer Goforth Gregory, cites outsourcing more work to her virtual assistant as one of the reasons why she made over $100,000 freelance writing one year.

Outsource help for tasks others can do, which leaves you more time for the work that only you can do for your clients.

FINDING A VIRTUAL ASSISTANT

Check with your freelance network and ask on social media if anyone has a great virtual assistant they’d refer to you or a friend who does this kind of work.

Some websites to peruse for virtual assistant services include: VirtualGirlFriday.com, Guru.com, VirtualAssistUSA. com, Freelancer.com, Upwork Inc. and Fiverr.

The remote workforce: Creating productivity outside the office

BY RHETT POWER

What if the best way to improve the office were to eliminate it? A 2017 Gallup study found that 43 percent of Americans worked from home at least part of the time, and many more would like to. Working remotely offers the advantages of no commute, chooseyour-own attire, and more organic scheduling. Overall, it’s just a lot more comfortable and convenient.

There’s no reason employers should cling to the idea that people must be on-site. In fact, there are a lot of reasons to encourage remote work.

Letting employees work remotely, at least for part of their workweek, can save your company money. One study found that companies can save $1 million on expenses each year by letting at least 100 employees work remote at least half of the workweek. Less expectedly, going remote also might help with recruiting. Fully 90 percent of people who currently work remotely say they plan to continue doing so for the rest of their career.

A remote workforce, in whole or in part, is the logical future of employ-

ment. Preparing for this future now will make the transition easier overall.

USE TECHNOLOGY TO KEEP TEAMS ENGAGED

A remote workforce can become disconnected and uncoordinated if you’re not careful. Technology ensures that ideas and information — formal and informal — flow throughout the organization. Videoconferencing, group chats, online training modules and digital recognition platforms are great tools for keeping employees engaged.

There’s no doubt you need the technology necessary to support your remote team, but your distributed tech also creates cyber risks. Robin Hau, founder and CEO of SimplyClouds, warns that lax security could create regulatory compliance concerns as well.

“Small businesses and IT managers face many complex data management issues, not least of which is security,” he says. Before sending all your employees to work from home full-time, make sure you have the cybersecurity safeguards in place to protect the data your company holds.

EQUIP MANAGERS FOR THE TRANSITION

Working remotely can feel liberating to team members but overwhelming to team leaders. The simple fact is that leading remotely is not as easy. It’s important to prepare managers even more extensively than employees. Managers must become adept at treating fully remote and on-site workers equally. Most importantly, managers have to continue to fulfill their core role — assigning responsibilities and setting expectations — without face-to-face contact.

Developing a new mindset around productivity is important during this process. Donald Hatter, a business development consultant, recommends focusing on the big picture rather than the minutiae of task management. “Don’t worry as much about what is being done. Instead, concentrate on what is being accomplished,” he notes.

The writing is on the wall, and it says that the traditional office is on the wane. If you start preparing now, the transition will be seamless. Better still, the advantages will be Inc. immediate.

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BEST REVIEWS

WHO WE ARE AND WHAT WE DO BestReviews is the site to turn to when you’re about to buy something. From heated blankets to trampolines to cordless drills, we compare the top products in thousands of categories to give you the most reliable purchasing advice. Our goal is to make it easy for you to pick the best product and be confident in your decision.

SIMPLIFY YOUR TECH SHOPPING WITH INSIGHT FROM OUR EXPERTS WHY TRUST BEST REVIEWS?

BestReviews spends thousands of hours researching, analyzing and testing products to recommend the best picks for most consumers. We make money only if you purchase a product through our links, and we never accept free products from manufacturers.

HOW WE DO IT

When you’re getting ready to buy a product, you have options. There may be hundreds of products to choose from, dozens of them with user reviews that make them sound great. It can be confusing and time-consuming to cut through the data to find the best product for you.

THAT’S WHERE WE COME IN

Our reviewers and subject-matter experts evaluate the dozens (or hundreds) of available products in each category, and from them, select the shortlist of the most promising and best-selling products.

When we decide you, the consumer, would benefit from additional product insight, we buy these products, just like you would, and subject them to independent evaluation and tests.

ALL ABOUT ALEXA

New Alexa devices and what they can do for you

W

BY JAIME VAZQUEZ

hen Amazon first announced the Amazon Echo and introduced us to Alexa, one of the first mainstream digital assistants, everything changed — but the world had no idea that that was the tip of the iceberg. As users began to rely on Alexa’s ever-growing list of digital services, Amazon responded by creating more platforms for Alexa. Soon after the original Echo came the smaller Echo Dot — and now there’s an entire product line of devices that include Alexa’s digital assistant services. Here are a few of our favorite new places to find Alexa.

THE ECHO AUTO

The Echo Auto takes everything you love about Alexa and brings it to the comfort of your car. It connects to your smartphone for web access and listens for voice commands. You can ask for anything from the latest sports scores to directions to your favorite haunts, all while you’re driving. Here’s what you

need to know before buying.

The good: The Echo Auto is a fantastic road trip companion, and it’s best-inclass voice recognition means you can always keep your hands on the wheel.

Having a digital assistant in the car giving you turn-by-turn directions feels like a new level of luxury.

The bad: The Echo Auto will rely on your phone’s internet connection, so depending on what type of data plan you’re on, it can increase the risk of monthly overages.

THE VECTOR ROBOT BY ANKI

If you’ve ever wanted a voice-controlled, real-life version of WALL-E, you’re in luck. The Vector is a robot companion that’s only a few inches high, but it can be easily controlled with the included smartphone app or with voice commands to Amazon’s digital assistant, Alexa. With more than a little artificial intelligence under the hood, the Vector can even respond with emotional faces.

The good: The Vector is a capable smart companion for all ages. Whether you want it to tell you the time, set an alarm or even play games with you, it’s as close as you can get to having a pet you don’t have to clean up after.

The bad: It uses 2.4GHz WiFi connectivity, which is an older, slower standard.

It can take pictures, but it requires a lot of light for the pictures to come out well.

SECOND-GENERATION ECHO SHOW

When Amazon released the first-generation Echo Show, its first smart speaker with a screen, it was a bit underwhelming. It had a seven-inch screen, text that looked good but not great, and a built-in speaker that produced audio with the quality of an FM radio.

Thankfully, they’ve learned from their mistakes and surpassed expectations with the second-generation Echo Show.

The new model has a 10-inch screen, vastly improved audio, and a plastic and fabric casing that’s perfect for any setting. If you’re into making video calls or you just want a kitchen companion to walk you through your favorite recipes, the new Echo Show is a slam dunk.

The good: The second-generation Echo Show looks and sounds significantly better than its predecessor. In comparison, the first version feels like a toy. It’s got new functionality, too: with a built-in Zigbee controller, it now can work with a host of new smart home devices, so you don’t have to buy any separate hubs to use them.

The bad: It often can struggle with streaming video, even from Amazon Prime Video. It’s not currently possible to customize the home screen, which means you’re stuck with the options that come with the Tribune Content Agency hardware.

ECHO DEVICE FUNCTIONS

When using Echo, you issue voice commands to the device. Just ask a question in a conversational tone, preceded by the wake word, “Alexa,” and the software will attempt to fulfill your request. Some functions you perform with Alexa and Echo are informative, some result in physical functionality and some are just fun.

Ask questions Looking for a bit of entertainment from Echo? Feel free to ask Alexa any silly questions you can think of, and you may receive some funny answers.

Obtain information You can ask Alexa for a weather report, information on your personal calendar, or for sports scores.

Control smart home devices As long as your Smart Home hardware — like thermostats and lights — are compatible with Echo, you can control the devices through voice commands. The simplest way to control your home devices is to use an Echo-compatible outlet converter.

BEST AMAZON ECHO DEVICES

CONS

PROS

BOTTOM LINE

Personal assistant devices are one of the next steps toward the self-aware home and car. The family of Amazon Echo devices ranks among the most well-rounded personal assistant device hardware available.

BEST OF THE BEST

BEST BANG FOR THE BUCK

Amazon Echo

Amazon Echo Dot

Amazon Echo Plus

Amazon Echo Spot

Amazon Echo Show

The original and still the best, most well-rounded device on Amazon’s Alexa Voice service. Amazon is focusing on constantly improving it and it gets regular updates.

A great starter Echo.

If you need the built-in hub, this is a good pick. But if that’s not a necessary feature, the original Echo is just as good and more affordable.

Choose it if you are an Echo fan and like to stay current on the latest state-of-the-art smart technology.

While many users love the technology this intuitive device offers, the high price and known issues may deter some consumers.

A fun and surprisingly practical voice assistant for your family.

Plays music, helps in the kitchen, and even controls lights and other devices.

Reasonable price. Tiny. Does 99 percent of what the original Echo does. Bonus feature: You can plug it into an external speaker for excellent audio quality.

Tech lovers who want to connect all of their home’s smart devices will love this Alexa-friendly Echo’s built-in hub. Compatible with Phillips hue and even comes with a bulb. Has Bluetooth.

A promising new release with exciting features, including video, Bluetooth connectivity, slim design and Alexa function. Very smart — adapts to individual preferences, requests and even speech patterns.

An Alexa-compatible device that sports a vivid 7-inch screen that’s ideal for video streaming. Easy to use once set up. Bluetooth connectivity.

Expensive. Doesn’t work on batteries.

Not very good audio quality by itself, but simple to connect to a Bluetooth speaker.

A bit more costly than the basic Echo, but has more features. If you have other hubs, it may not be practical. Design is bulky compared to the first-gen Echo.

On the higher end of the price range. It’s a new release, so any bugs and quirks are yet to be discovered.

Pricey. It takes some tech-savvy to set up the device. Has some technology issues — some users have commented that it’s “not ready for prime time” yet.

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BEST REVIEWS

BEST WIRELESS KEYBOARDS For the professional on the go or the neatnik, a wireless keyboard does away with cords and keeps your workspace clean and free of clutter. You can sit comfortably without worrying about cable length, and type from your desktop, lap or the couch.

BEST OF THE BEST

CONS

PROS

BOTTOM LINE

Logitech

BEST BANG FOR THE BUCK

Logitech

OMOTON

Arteck

Apple

Wireless Wave Combo MK550

K360 Wireless USB Desktop Keyboard

Ultra-Slim Bluetooth Keyboard

HB030B Universal Slim

Magic Keyboard

Lightweight ergonomic keyboard/ mouse combo. Wave design has a natural feel and shape for the hands.

A lower-priced option from a wellknown brand. It’s small and easy to store, but it could be difficult to use for those with larger hands/fingers.

A lightweight, low-priced keyboard with a few known flaws.

This affordable keyboard is smaller and more compact than a regular keyboard but has problems with the keys.

Instead of batteries, this keyboard charges with a lightning cable — an intriguing yet pricey option.

Many programmable buttons and added functions. Wrist rest and kickstand to elevate. Auto-shutoff.

Quick setup and long battery life.

Keys are responsive and have a great movement to them. Comes with a mouse.

It’s easy to pair up this keyboard through Bluetooth, and the keys have a great feel to them.

Responsive back-lit keys light up in 7 colors. Easily pair and connects.

Charge lasts a long time. Operates within a good range, with smaller keys lend themselves to faster typing.

It makes a noticeable clicking sound when you type, and it’s not bluetooth.

The keys are not back-lit, and the spacing could prove difficult for those who type frequently.

The connection can experience a lag, and there is a tendency for random keys to not function occasionally.

Keys sometimes have a tendency to stick or pop off.

Smaller keys can be difficult for those with larger hands/fingers.

Arrow keys have awkward placement.

WIRELESS KEYBOARD FEATURES

There are plenty of features to choose from when browsing wireless keyboards. Like regular keyboards, wireless models are available in a variety of styles. Here are some of the functions you may encounter when shopping for your new peripheral.

Style: If you have curated your office décor, you might have a particular preference for the look of your keyboard.

Thankfully, there are numerous options.

From hardcore gaming keyboards to simple white models, there’s a keyboard that’s right for you. Colors and designs vary, but the trick is finding one that

matches your desk area aesthetic. Don’t care about what your keyboard looks like? Choose a keyboard based on other factors.

Layout: The layouts are generally the same, but some keys may be located in a different spot depending on the model selected. Are these keys in the right place for you? Does the layout feel comfortable for extended periods of typing?

Keyboards in a different language may have a slightly different key placement.

If you prefer a model with extra keys (such as a number keypad), make sure the layout feels natural.

Ergonomic design: Keyboards with a curved design allow for a more natural placement of the hands, but not everyone finds this style comfortable.

Options with a built-in palm rest are excellent choices for long periods of typing. If a keyboard isn’t quite at the right height, choose a model that can be elevated to suit your typing position.

Programmable buttons: Save time by programming keys to perform specific functions. Nearly all keyboards allow for some degree of key customization.

Power-save function: If your wireless

keyboard is always on, it will drain the battery very quickly. Choose a model with auto shutoff to help save battery life.

Connectivity: Wireless keyboards connect to your computer in one of two ways: USB or Bluetooth. Models with a USB receiver transmit radio frequency signals in order to connect, but these require the use of a USB port. Bluetooth requires no USB port, but a poor-quality keyboard might be slow to connect at times. There is also evidence that Bluetooth keyboards lose battery power more readily than RF units.

BEST HEADPHONES

Although headphone technology has been around for more than a century, the greatest improvements have happened in the last several years. Features like noise cancellation, and even build materials like bamboo, have dramatically increased audio quality, and modern manufacturing has made them more affordable than ever.

BEST OF THE BEST

Bose

Sony

Sennheiser RS 165 RF Wireless

Mini Lightweight Wireless

Soundpeats

Bang & Olufsen

Pretty much what you’d expect from Bose.

Though the sound quality won’t match higher-end models, they have some good qualities and are a bargain as far as headphones go.

Excellent sound quality. These wireless headphones block background noise better than many competitors.

Not the cheapest earbuds out there, but they might be among the best in terms of comfort and sound.

A premium option with active noise cancelling from a leader in the audio/speaker industry.

The sound is nothing short of phenomenal, and the adjustable noise cancellation works very well.

Inline microphone for phone calls and inline volume controls.

Stands out for noise cancellation and comfort. Nice sound range and up to 80 hours of battery life.

Reasonable price.

Connects to your entertainment system wirelessly and has a 100-ft. range. People with hearing loss rave about it.

Incredible sound from a set of earbuds. Very comfortable, too. A great option if you don’t want bulky headphones.

Top-notch audio quality from a well-known brand in the industry of sound. Rechargeable, up to 14 hours playtime. Three color options.

Aluminum and leather look good and wear comfortably.

Expensive. Those who brave the sticker shock love them, though.

Made from plastic and don’t feel particularly durable. The sound is a bit tinny for some listeners’ tastes.

Occasional durability complaints.

A bit bulky to use during workouts.

Uses a battery, but at least it is rechargeable through a standard USB port. No mic for answering phone calls.

Expensive. Some reports of Bluetooth issues and other quirks.

PROS

BOTTOM LINE

QuietComfort 35

CONS

BEST BANG FOR THE BUCK

Noice Cancelling

HEADPHONE COMPONENTS TO KNOW Size and style The smallest headphones are called earbuds. Some earbuds fit just inside the bowl of the ear; others extend slightly into the ear canal. Small wires may connect the earbuds to an audio jack, although you also can find wireless options on today’s market.

Earbuds come in many colors and are much more portable than larger headphones. Lots of people prefer to use them when exercising.

Larger headphones fit atop the ear or even cup the ear. Padding makes these larger headphones comfortable to wear.

An adjustable headband containing some wires connects the two over-theear parts. Another wire with an audio jack trails away from the headphones.

(Again, wireless options are available.)

The popularity of these larger headphones has exploded in recent years.

Manufacturers have responded accordingly by providing many different styles and colors to consumers. The size of these headphones makes them better for listening to audio at home, rather than while exercising.

Audio quality Style is important when choosing new headphones, but for most people, audio quality is even more crucial. Below, we examine some of the factors that affect audio quality.

Should you buy corded or cordless headphones? Through the course of our research, we discovered that corded

headphones nearly always provide better audio than wireless units that operate over Bluetooth or RF. Furthermore, Bluetooth audio quality tends to outperform RF. Of course, you might want wireless headphones anyway. Lots of people do. They’re conveniently portable in a way that plug-in models just aren’t. If you’ve got your heart set on a cordless headphone set, look for one that works in the 2.4GHz wireless spectrum. This should have less interference from other wireless devices than the more commonly used 900MHz spectrum.

Wireless headphones have their drawbacks. They require batteries, which some people find to be a nuisance. What’s more, the units can suffer from occasional skips, hisses and

H8 Wireless On-Ear Headphone

crackles in the audio stream. But wireless audio quality continues to steadily improve as time marches on.

Earbuds vs. over-the-ear A small set of earbuds can’t physically deliver the same type of fidelity that large, over-the-ear phones can.

But not everyone wants to wear a pair of large headphones. They can mess up your hair, and some people find them to be uncomfortable.

Earbuds are light and unobtrusive, and the cord that connects the two ear pieces is small. You’ll get the best sound quality from a pair that’s comfortable yet snug in your ear canal. Some people purchase separate ear pads and ear tips to help their earbuds fit better.

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BEST REVIEWS

BEST STREAMING DEVICES Streaming services offer higher quality video and audio, they offer content with few — if any — commercials, and subscribing to multiple services still is cheaper than paying a single cable TV bill. There’s no other way to say it: streaming is the future.

BEST BANG FOR THE BUCK

BEST OF THE BEST

Amazon

NVIDIA

CONS

PROS

BOTTOM LINE

Fire Stick

Shield TV

Roku

Streaming Stick

Apple

Roku

TV

Premiere - HD and 4K UHD Streaming Media Player

You won’t find a better streaming device at this price point. Without question the best value for your money.

An all-in-one device — streaming, gaming, smart home hub and media player.

A great value, though it has a shorter lifespan than other streaming devices.

A suitable choice if you are a Mac aficionado and need to connect all your Apple devices. Otherwise, you might prefer a different choice.

A complete package: excellent performance, features and overall user experience.

Incredibly easy to set up and use.

Works perfectly with Amazon Prime, Netflix, Hulu, HBO and Pandora. Comes with a handy controller.

4K ultra HD. Controlled via voice command to Alexa or Google Home. Works with all the popular apps. Uses Silk and Firefox browsers. Dolby Atmos sound quality.

Great search functionality within thousands of apps. Controller is user-friendly.

Airplay capability allows you to stream music, videos, games — just about anything, really — from any Apple device in your home.

Extremely fast and powerful due to dual-core processor. Audio jack easily connects to stereo system.

Not compatible with universal remotes. Does not have access to Google Play Movies.

Pricey. Some issues with lag, and may not be as user-friendly.

Some complaints of the remote failing after 6 months.

Not compatible with Spotify.

Pricier than some other options.

WHAT DO YOU WANT TO STREAM?

Once you’ve chosen between a stick and a box, you’re still only halfway there.

The other important question to answer is this: what do you want to stream? It’s true that each system contains apps for your usual array of providers – Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Prime, Crackle and so on – but different systems contain different content providers that others don’t carry.

So, what’s your pleasure?

Original series When it comes to original content, Amazon, Netflix and Hulu are all producing. If you’re a fan of Netflix and

Hulu material, a Roku or Apple TV would do fine.

But an Amazon Fire or Stick utilizes Amazon Prime’s service to get a lot of its programming.

If you’re drawn more to that, Amazon would be the way to go.

Classic shows Just about every service delivers some classic television, but it’s spread across different platforms. For example, you can watch Friends on Netflix, but you can’t watch individual episodes on Amazon.

It’s a difficult balancing act, but de-

pending on the kind of classic shows you like, Roku will probably do the best. The reason: Roku has better access to channel-specific apps than Amazon.

Current television Due to the complicated nature of broadcasting rights and ratings, a lot of current television episodes are shown on streaming services a day after they air.

Apple TV and Roku have the best access to channel-specific programming, such CBS, HBO, NBC, ABC and more.

Movies When it comes to films, Amazon is

king, as they have access to pretty much everything current. You’ll find some cool selections through specific channels provided to Roku and Apple, but Amazon definitely leads in the area of current content.

Sports One of the sad parts to streaming media is that people are still working out the kinks to sports channels. The current leaders in this are the MLB and WWE, both of which offer subscription-based services. The rest are simply highlight channels that rarely offer full games.

BEST HOME SECURITY SYSTEMS With an estimated two million homes burgled in the US annually, it’s no surprise that a host of new-and-improved home security systems have taken the market by storm. Today’s consumers have more options to choose from than ever before.

That’s great news, but it also means that finding the home security system that’s perfect for you can seem overwhelming.

BEST OF THE BEST

SimpliSafe

Fortress Security Store

Fortress Security Store

A popular system. Customers love the features, the price and the fact that no contract is required. The best on today’s market.

Suitable for small to medium-sized homes. Good equipment in a modest package.

GSM connectivity is a hit with owners. No monthly fee (because no monitoring service).

A standout device with wireless service, cameras and cloud connectivity. Monthly fee not required, but more or less necessary for quality service.

A low-cost option that proves you don’t have to spend a lot to get reliable security for your home. The best value for your money.

Customizable add-on features (like carbon monoxide detection).

Wireless emergency signal is nearly impossible to block. Easy to set up.

Can auto-dial up to six emergency numbers. Customizable alarm.

Quick and easy to install. No monthly fees.

A great system for larger homes.

Features that appeal to bigger families, such as multi-person enable/disable mode. You’ll still get the message if a burglar cuts your land line.

Two wireless IP cameras let you keep tabs on your home remotely.

Wireless operation prevents intruders from tampering with your security system.

An affordable stand alone WiFi alarm and motion detector. Very easy to set up, and the app is easy to download. Loud volume. Tech support is accessible and helpful.

External siren is not standard, but an add-on is available for purchase.

Land line is usually required to operate. Occasional failure of individual units. System does not connect to an external monitoring service.

No monitoring service means a delay if you call law enforcement.

Occasional problems with mount sensor adhesive.

Although there is a free option, most owners agree the monthly fee is a “must.”

Sensor adhesive isn’t very strong.

Occasional dropped connectivity and false alarms. No monitoring service, which is a plus for consumers who don’t want the expense.

PROS

BOTTOM LINE

Wireless, 8-Piece

CONS

BEST BANG FOR THE BUCK

S02-A Wireless Home and Business

HOW DO HOME SECURITY SYSTEMS WORK?

It’s vital to familiarize yourself with the various components of a home security system. Just like a puzzle, knowing where each part fits allows you to see the whole picture. To understand exactly how a home security system works, let’s take a look at some common elements found in most modern home security systems.

Motion sensors Motion sensors can be used to protect high-risk areas within the home or areas that don’t normally get a lot of traffic.

When a motion sensor detects movement, the security panel interprets it as a breach in security. An alarm sounds, and a notification is sent to the monitoring company or preselected number.

GSM-B Wireless Cellular

Door and window sensors Each sensor consists of two individual components which are installed alongside one another. On a door, one of these components will be placed directly on the door while the other is placed on the corresponding section of the door frame. The same setup applies to windows and window sills.

When the door or window with the sensor is closed and the two components are aligned, a security circuit is formed. Once the system is armed, the control panel receives a notification that these sensors are intact and secure.

Should the door or window be opened, the circuit breaks, and the control panel is alerted to a breach in security. An alarm sounds, and the moni-

Home8

BIBENE

Oplink Connected TripleShield

WIFI Home Security Alarm System

toring company (or another preselected number) is contacted.

take advantage of any signage included with your chosen security system.

High-decibel siren or alarm Once activated, the alarm usually is enough to send intruders running. Even if not, those in the home certainly will become aware of the security breach.

The alarm also serves the purpose of alerting neighbors to the situation at hand.

Control panel At the heart of every home security system lies the control panel. Most control panels feature a touchpad that’s used to key in the code to arm/disarm the system. Some of the latest models are programmable to work with voice commands and/or key fobs.

The brains behind the brawn, the control panel communicates with each individual component, sounding an alarm when a designated security zone is breached. The control panel also will alert the alarm-monitoring company (if you choose to subscribe to one) of possible security risks and breaches.

Window stickers and/or yard signs Some home security systems come with signage in the form of window stickers or yard signs. This signage serves as notification to others that the home is protected by the security system. We highly recommend that you

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E-COMMERCE

VIEWPOINT

DIG IN TO DATA

D

uring the last two decades, a few technology giants have come to dominate digital markets. Google performs about nine out of every 10 Internet searches worldwide. Facebook, the world’s leading social media platform, has well over two billion users. Apple, originally a computer manufacturer, now runs the world’s largest mobile app store in terms of revenue, with about 80 percent of the market, and the second-largest music streaming business, approaching a third of the market. And Amazon captures close to every other dollar spent online in the United States. These companies are what the economist David Autor calls “superstar firms,” able to gain huge market shares and translate their market power into enormous profits.

Their success has brought tremendous benefits to users — and grave dangers to societies and economies. Each company hoards the information it collects and uses centralized systems to run its huge businesses. That hoarding has hampered innovation and allowed the companies to abuse user data, and their centralized systems leave online markets vulnerable to unexpected shocks, posing risks to the wider economy.

MARKETS IN EVERYTHING

What sets the new digital superstars apart from other firms is not their market dominance; many traditional companies have reached similarly commanding market shares in the past. What’s new about these companies is that they themselves are markets.

Markets have been around for millennia; they are not an invention of the data age. But digital superstar firms don’t operate traditional markets; theirs are rich with data, which they use to improve transactions and thereby make consumers better off. More data about the products on offer and the preferences of buyers and sellers helps people find what they are looking for and allows businesses to figure out how best to serve their customers.

Yet these gains in consumer decision-making mask dangers for both individual users and the wider economy. As data-rich markets replace conventional ones, competition withers. On Amazon, for example, consumers can still choose from a variety of products, but Amazon decides what brands to carry — and it pushes its own products, from batteries to food. Market dominance isn’t illegal, but if history is a guide, it commonly causes problems.

MAKING IT WORK

Requiring companies to share their data will come with challenges. Governments will have to overcome several organizational and technical hurdles, and making such a policy effective will require some fine-tuning. But the successful cases of regulated data sharing and the rising interest in such policies suggest that regulators will be able to find pragmatic solutions.

If, on the other hand, governments allow superstar companies that run centrally planned systems to maintain their dominance will erode the most important quality of capitalist markets, the decentralized way they make decisions. Worse still, this centralization has begun to spill over into politics. Just as healthy markets rely on people making independent decisions, democratic systems are founded on the individual choices made by voters. Yet today, much of public discourse is shaped by a few companies with exclusive access to vast quantities of voter data. Ignoring the problem is no longer Foreign Affairs an option.

ONLINE REVIEWS

Look out for what you can trust

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BY MIRIAM CROSS

hen you’re splurging on a vacation, other travelers’ opinions can help you decide where to go. Their online reviews can point you toward hotels with great ambiance and ultra-comfortable beds and away from those marred by poor upkeep and noisy surroundings. Online reviews are more up-to-date than print guidebooks and reflect a more realistic experience than Instagram-famous travel “influencers.”

But scrolling through comments from strangers online has downsides: You might have to wade through dozens of overblown complaints — “Beach is too sandy,” for example — or vague praise — “I loved it” — to glean valuable information. Or a suspiciously effusive review could be a plant by the business owner, a friend or a hired promoter.

Travel websites Airbnb, Booking. com, Expedia, HomeAway, Hotels. com, Priceline and Viator allow only “verified” reviews, meaning the writers must have reserved through the site and completed their stay or activity before their assessment is posted.

But at TripAdvisor and Google, reviewers don’t need to prove they experienced whatever

they’re evaluating. Both sites say they look for and remove bogus reviews; TripAdvisor even participated in an investigation that resulted in a fake-review peddler in Italy being sentenced to prison last June. Also, phony reviews have less impact today than several years ago because they’re crowded out by the huge volume of legitimate reviews.

Sean O’Neill, an editor at Skift, a travel industry news site, said the most-reliable surveys report that as much as 15 percent of TripAdvisor reviews are suspect, so “even in the worst case, most reviews are legitimate.”

Sites often rate hotels and destinations using a star or numerical system, but this only tells part of the story. “Those scores are a great way to weed out the chaff,” said Chris Anderson, a professor at Cornell University’s School of Hotel Administration. “But a 4.2 versus a 4.0 is useless.” A classic old hotel, say, may receive a middling score because some visitors loved the historical experience while others expected modern

amenities. You wouldn’t know that unless you read the reviews.

Sort reviews by date because things in the hospitality industry change frequently, said Ulrike Gretzel, of the University of Southern California’s Center for Public Relations. Focus more on reviewers whose travel style is similar to yours than on authors who contribute a lot of reviews, she said.

On Booking. com, TripAdvisor and other sites, you can filter by reviewers who traveled as a family, a couple, solo or for business.

Your best bet is to cross-check the same hotel, activity or tour on multiple sites for consistent observations. A few lesser-known review sites are worth a look, as well. Oyster.com sends professional “investigators” to review hotels in 76 countries and cruises on about 100 ships. For a highly curated look at hotels and resorts in 100 countries, Andrew Harper’s Hideaway Report sends anonymous reviewers to luxury hotels and resorts and recommends only its favorites. You’ll pay a steep $395 per year ($250 for a digital-only membership) but receive services such as updated online reviews, a printed monthly report, regional guidebooks and exclusive perks when booking through a partner travel agency.

Kiplinger’s Personal Finance

SCAN HERE TO PAY

BY DONNA LU

Cash is rapidly becoming a thing of the past in China. Consumers have abandoned banknotes in favor of paying with their phones in unprecedented numbers — and this vision of a cashless economy could well be the future throughout the world.

The country isn’t alone in rejecting coins and notes — Sweden leads the world as the most cashless nation as a percentage of GDP — but the pace of change is accelerating. Since 2013, China has experienced the highest growth in the number of cashless transactions out of the top 10 leading cashless economies and it now accounts for about 40 per cent of global e-commerce transactions.

And unlike Sweden, where physical card payments dominate, people in China are paying via local equivalents of messaging services.

QR codes for Alipay and WeChat Pay, the two most popular such apps, are now ubiquitous in China: in shops, restaurants, metro stations and even among buskers and beggars.

Anyone with the app can scan a code with their smartphone to transfer money, without the need for physical cards or chip readers. In 2017, such mobile payments totaled $17.5 trillion.

The country’s regulators have scrambled to keep up with the boom.

A new e-commerce law came into effect at the start of this year, aiming to give consumers stronger legal protections when they buy through e-commerce apps and social media.

Brian Sui, a doctor who lives in Shanghai, said he hasn’t used cash in more than two years. “Occasion-

ally, if you come across a place that accepts cash only, people become furious. I carry about [$1.50 or $3] in case of emergency, but I never have to use it.”

WeChat allows users to pay bills, reserve taxis, book a doctor’s appointment, order food or shop online The ability to perform multiple services is key to the success of these platforms, said Dave Birch of Consult Hyperion, an electronic transactions consultancy. “Payments are part of their warp and weft, but what they’re actually delivering is a massive range of what they call microservices.”

These platforms have achieved success thanks to the explosive growth of smartphones, and to China’s conservative banking system, says Hans Hendrischke, who studies Chinese business and management at the University of New Scientist Sydney.

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E-COMMERCE

BUYERS REMORSE?

S

People still aren’t into buying things through their smart speakers

BY JANE C. HU

mart speakers promise to be your voice-activated personal assistant. Devices outfitted with Amazon’s Alexa, Google’s Home and Apple’s Siri can tell you the weather, add an event to your calendar or — as these companies are hoping — purchase whatever you need in that instant.

But according to a new report from market research company eMarketer, consumers aren’t really using speakers to make purchases. eMarketer predicts that just 27 percent of smart speaker users will make a purchase through the device in 2019, which is down from 31 percent in the previous year.

That still means that more than a quarter of users are talking to their devices to make purchases — a higher number than estimates from earlier reports, which suggest that relatively few people (less than 18 percent) use their smart speakers to shop and that only 2 percent of Alexa-enabled devices were used to make purchases.

However, there are more smart speaker shoppers: according to eMarketer, 37 percent of smart speaker users have put items in their digital shopping cart using their device. Based on the discrepancy between smart speaker buyers versus shoppers, it appears that 10 percent of shoppers begin the purchasing process but don’t follow through on the buy.

As the number of smart speakers grows, perhaps the volume of sales they generate will, too. eMarketer projects that in 2019, US smart speaker users will grow by 15 percent, with 74.2 million people using a smart Quartz speaker device.

THE SECRET BEHIND HOW AMAZON RUINED ONLINE SHOPPING There’s a Gatorade button attached to my basement fridge. If I push it, two days later a crate of the sports drink shows up at my door, thanks to Amazon. When these “Dash buttons” were first rumored in 2015, they seemed like a joke. Press a button to one-click detergent or energy bars? What even?, my colleague Adrienne LaFrance reasonably inquired.

They weren’t a joke. Soon enough, Amazon was selling the buttons for a modest fee, the value of which would be applied to your first purchase.

The whole affair always felt unsettling.

When the buttons launched, I called the Dash experience Lovecraftian, the invisible miasma of commerce slipping its vapor all around your home. But earlier this year, a German court went further, ruling the buttons illegal because they fail to give consumers sufficient information about the products they order when pressing them or the price they will pay after having done so. (You set up a Dash button on Amazon’s app, selecting a product from a list; like other goods on the e-commerce giant’s website, the price can change over time.) Amazon, which also is under general antitrust investigation in Germany, disputes the ruling.

Given that Amazon controls about half of the United States’ online-retail market and takes in about 5 percent of the nation’s total retail spending, it’s encouraging to see pushback against the company’s hold on the market. But Dash buttons are hardly the problem. Amazon made online shopping feel safe and comfortable, at least mechanically. But now online shopping is muddy and suspicious in a different way — you never really know what you’re buying, or when it will arrive, or why it costs what it does, or even what options might be available to purchase. The problem

isn’t the Dash button, but the way online shopping works in general, especially at the Everything Store.

They sent the wrong tea lights,” my wife announced recently, after tearing open the cardboard box Amazon had just delivered.

“It’s the wrong brand, and 50-count instead of 75.” This is not so unusual, actually.

Amazon moves a huge volume of goods, and its warehouse workers are humans, not just robots. Errors are bound to happen.

On top of that, Amazon is more than willing to fix its errors. In most cases, you can return an item for a refund or exchange with a few button presses on the website or in the app. And when Amazon messes up, as in the case of our tea lights, the company usually offers free return shipping and even free UPS pickup, so you don’t even have to leave the house to rectify the error.

These are some of the reasons Amazon consistently ranks high in customer-service satisfaction: The company appears to give people what they want, including correcting problems when they arise.

But a customer-service orientation masks how Amazon has changed consumer expectations and standards as they relate to retail purchases. At BuzzFeed News last year, Katie Notopoulos wrote about how terrible Amazon’s website is, prompted by its offering her a subscription deal for bassoon straps (a product Notopoulos reported needing to replace once every two decades or so), and a warranty for bottle brushes (which cost $6.99).

Notopoulos’s examples just scratch the surface of all the possible confusions that can arise when shopping on Amazon: Products are offered for “Prime” delivery, which is supposed to mean two-day shipping. But sometimes Prime means four days or longer.

In other cases, one color of a given product —

neoprene AirPods-case cozies, for example, which I recently purchased — might be available via Prime, but another might not.

I recently even tried to search for a heatpump-compatible thermostat on the site. I got a litany of results, all thermostats for sure, but it was difficult to figure out which ones really worked with a heat pump. Eventually I gave up and resolved to visit Home Depot, which I still haven’t done.

It’s a far cry from Amazon’s beginnings as a retailer of books — “among the world’s most reliable, durable units,” as my colleague Derek Thompson recently put it. There’s no ambiguity about what you’re getting when you buy a particular book, CD, or DVD. But as the retailer expanded into the Everything Store it has become, it also changed consumers’ expectations about the experience of shopping.

Amazon doesn’t necessarily agree that it has altered online commerce so significantly. “There is an important difference between horizontal breadth and vertical depth,” an Amazon spokesperson told me. “We operate in a diverse range of businesses, from retail and entertainment to consumer electronics and technology services, and we have intense and well-established competition in each of these areas.”

But there’s a reason that we used to have shoe stores, hardware stores, grocery stores, bookstores, and all the rest: Those specialized retail spaces allow products, and the people with knowledge about them, to engage in specialized ways of finding, choosing and purchasing them.

On Amazon, everything gets treated the same. The problem with an Everything Store is that there’s no way to organize everything The Atlantic Online effectively.

New apps help you move and mind your money

T

he world of financial apps and platforms has grown more creative and clever as a generation that lives without paper gravitates toward digital financial control. Not all will thrive over the long run, but here are a few that are “gaining traction,” as they say in the fin-tech TERRY SAVAGE world. And you don’t have to be a millennial to find them useful and easy to use.

FeeBelly. Here’s an app designed to save you costly fees that lurk in the fine print of many financial transactions. Better to find out before you open a credit card, take on a mortgage loan or make an important financial commitment. Now you can know the additional costs of out-of-network ATM usage!

FeeBelly lets users scan or import a financial document into the app, and it will search for a list of keywords typically found in that type of agreement.

Statements related to those keywords are highlighted quickly, allowing the user to identify the hidden and costly details. Then the user can renegotiate,

eliminating onerous conditions, before signing the agreement.

The app maintains the highest security levels — important if you are entering specific financial deals. And it can easily handle even large documents.

FeeBelly can be downloaded free at the Apple App Store in its most basic format. Upgrades are available for $8.99 a month, offering a wider range of documents. If it saves you even one late fee or overdraft charge, or keeps you from making a mortgage mistake that lasts the life of your loan, this app will be worth even the upgrade cost.

PeerStreet. This platform allows individual investors to take the risk of making short-term, high-yield real estate bridge loans. (It’s up to you to decide whether you’re willing to take that risk.) But if you want to get returns of 8 percent or more with an investment of as little as $1,000 by buying into a “bridge loan” then this is the site for you — if you’re a sophisticated, accredited investor with assets of $1 million or more, not including your residence.

The site offers the opportunity to invest in a variety of short-term loans made to property owners across

the country. The average loan size is $400,000 — so you’re not taking on the entire risk of a one-property loan.

Instead, you can diversify your risk by taking a small portion of many loans.

The average maturity of the loans is 10 months. And they are carefully vetted before being posted on the site.

PeerStreet says it is making real estate lending transparent, allowing its members to view all the properties, all the details of the loan, including photos of the property, and how many other investors have chosen to invest alongside them, as well as what percentage of the loan is still available to investors.

PeerStreet has been funded by wellknown venture capitalists, and it has been accepted on the platforms of Wealthfront, Betterment and Personal Capital. That’s a pretty strong endorsement of its process. But you don’t earn 8 percent without taking on some risk — even though in the current economy PeerStreet has had zero losses on its loan portfolio.

Venmo and Zelle. If you’re not familiar with these two apps, you’re likely over 50 and maybe still write personal checks. These apps allow you to transfer

funds directly from your own checking account into another person’s account, even at another bank.

Venmo has been around for a while and is so integrated into the millennial way of thinking that it has become a verb, in the sense that Xerox (remember that?) came to represent the verb “copy.” You “Venmo” money to a friend.

A consortium of 30 banks, led by JPMorgan Chase, decided this peer-topeer money transfer business was too big to let it get away to a private company. So they created Zelle, which has one advantage: Zelle makes the transferred money available the same day in your bank account, while Venmo makes you wait a day. Either way, checking has become obsolete and cash is following fast for the tech generations.

Technology moves money these days — and it’s a fast-growing field, worth checking out if it makes or saves you money. And that’s The Savage Truth.

Terry Savage is a registered investment adviser and the author of four best-selling books, including “The Savage Truth on Money.”

Tribune Content Agency

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GADGETS/TECH

3-D printing is here to stay

Here are three ways to use the technology in your business

BY ARIANNA O’DELL

By now, many of us have heard about 3D printing and how it’s changing the way businesses innovate and make their products.

And the industry shows no signs of slowing down.

Last year, I dabbled in 3D printing product creation for my e-commerce store and was impressed on how far the barriers have dropped for business owners like myself to implement and use the technology. By creating something as simple as image files, I could create my own cookie cutters that were printed on demand.

Estimates place the American 3D printing industry market size at 14.2 billion dollars in 2019, growing an average of 2 billion dollars every year. And according to 3D printing service Sculpteo’s annual survey, 76 percent of businesses polled expected to increase their spending on 3D printing anywhere from 50 percent to 100 percent.

Want to get in on the action?

Here are three ways that you can use 3D printing in your business.

1

CREATE NEVER BEFORE SEEN PRODUCTS. Today, 3D printing can be used to create practically any shape or design. And with a wealth of materials used in 3D printing, including metals like gold and stainless steel, businesses can create more durable and aesthetically pleasing products than what was previously possible.

According to Sculpteo’s survey, most businesses said their top priority for 3D printing was “accelerating product development.” The technology allows you to quickly iterate designs at a low cost to create new products for your business.

What gaping holes still exist in your market? Your business could be the first to fill them, quickly and easily with 3D printing.

2

PIONEER NEW EXPERIENCES. Yes, 3D printing can be used for more than just making plastic parts.

In December 2018, Bulleit Frontier Whiskey unveiled the world’s first 3D-printed bar for a new experience that will travel across the US this year.

But the bar wasn’t the most innovative use of the technology by Bulleit. The whiskey brand took it a step further by 3D printing creative shapes into guests’ cocktails with flavored liquid. (Imagine a pointillist Eiffel Tower inside your drink.)

Bullet described the experience as one that “will give artists, bartenders and creators a place to collaborate, celebrate — and push the boundaries of craft, technology, art, culture and gastronomy.”

With a bit of creative thinking, you can find a way to use 3D printing in an innovative way that will make waves in your industry.

3

PROVIDE 3D PRINTING AS A SERVICE. There’s a huge business opportunity in creating 3D printing opportunities for others. Coworking spaces across the world are now adding 3D printers for their users. And professional 3D printers like Shapeways, Sculpteo and Voodoo are cropping up to meet the unstoppable demand of this $14 billion-and-growing industry.

3D print-on-demand services like the ones above give entrepreneurs the ability to upload their digital designs and set up an automatic system where products are printed and shipped as soon as an order comes in.

Not only does this mean no wasted inventory if a product doesn’t sell, but it also means no risk to a fledgling business venture.

The market for these types of services doesn’t seem to be saturated yet, so enabling fellow entrepreneurs to 3D print their own products is a great way to utilize the technology in your Inc. business.

No, You Don’t Really Look Like That ‘Selfies’ are influenced by AI and tech, and it’s changed the way we see the world

W

BY ALEXIS C. MADRIGAL

hen a prominent YouTuber named Lewis Hilsenteger (aka “Unbox Therapy”) was testing out this fall’s new iPhone model, the XS, he noticed something: His skin was extra smooth in the device’s front-facing selfie cam, especially compared with older iPhone models. Hilsenteger compared it to a kind of digital makeup. “I do not look like that,” he said in a video demonstrating the phenomenon. “That’s weird … I look like I’m wearing foundation.”

He’s not the only one who has noticed the effect, either, though Apple has not acknowledged that it’s doing anything different than it has before. Speaking as a longtime iPhone user, I find it undeniable that Portrait mode — a marquee technology in a recent edition of the most popular phones in the world — has been glowed up. After weeks of taking photos with the device, I realized that the camera had crossed a threshold between photograph and fauxtograph. I wasn’t so much “taking pictures” as the phone was synthesizing them.

This isn’t a totally new phenomenon: Every digital camera uses algorithms to transform the different wavelengths of light that hit its sensor into an actual image. In the smartphone era, apps from Snapchat to FaceApp to Beauty Plus have offered to upgrade your face. What makes the iPhone XS’s skin-smoothing remarkable is that it is simply the default for the camera. Snap a selfie, and that’s what you get.

These images are not fake, exactly. But they also are not pictures as they were understood in the days before you took photographs with a computer.

What’s changed is this: The cameras know too much. All cameras capture information about the world-in the past,

it was recorded by chemicals interacting with photons, and by definition, a photograph was one exposure — short or long — of a sensor to light. Now, under the hood, phone cameras pull information from multiple image inputs into one picture output, along with drawing on neural networks that are trained to understand the scenes at which they’re being pointed. Using this other information as well as an individual exposure, the computer synthesizes the final image, ever more automatically and invisibly.

In the book “How to See the World,” the media scholar Nicholas Mirzoeff calls photography “a way to see the world enabled by machines.” We’re talking about not only the use of machines, but the “network society” in which they produce images. And to Mirzoeff, there is no better example of the “new networked, urban global youth culture” than the selfie.

The phone manufacturers and app makers seem to agree that selfies drive their business ecosystems. They’ve dedicated enormous resources to taking pictures of faces. Apple literally has created new silicon chips to be able to, as the company promises, consider your face “even before you shoot.” First, there’s facial detection. Then, the phone fixes on the face’s “landmarks” to know where the eyes and mouth and other features are. Finally, the face and rest of the foreground are depth mapped, so that a face can pop out from the background.

All this work, which was incredibly difficult a decade ago, and possible only on cloud servers very recently, now runs right on the phone, as Apple has described. The company trained one machine-learning model to find faces in an enormous number of pieces of images.

The model was too big, though, so they trained a smaller version on the outputs of the first. That trick made running it

on a phone possible. Every photo every iPhone takes is thanks, in some small part, to these millions of images, filtered twice through an enormous machine-learning system.

But it’s not just that the camera knows there’s a face and where the eyes are. Cameras also now capture multiple images in the moment to synthesize new ones. Night Sight, a new feature for the Google Pixel, is the best-explained example of how this works. Google developed new techniques for combining multiple inferior (noisy, dark) images into one superior (cleaner, brighter) image. Any photo really is a blend of a bunch of photos captured around the central exposure. But then, as with Apple, Google deploys machine-learning algorithms over the top of these images.

The one the company has described publicly helps with white balancing — which helps deliver realistic color in a picture — in low light. It also told the Verge that “its machine learning detects what objects are in the frame, and the camera is smart enough to know what color they are supposed to have.”

Consider how different that is from a normal photograph. Google’s camera is not capturing what is, but what, statistically, is likely.

Since the 19th century, cameras have been able to capture images at different speeds, wavelengths, and magnifications, which reveal previously hidden worlds. What’s fascinating about the current changes in phone photography is that they are as much about revealing what we want to look like as they are investigations of the world. It’s as if we’ve discovered a probe for finding and sharing versions of our faces — or even ourselves — and it’s this process that now drives the behavior of the most innovative, most profitable companies in the The Atlantic Online world.

PERSONAL CHATBOTS ARE ABOUT TO TAKE OVER. HERE’S WHAT TO EXPECT

BY WANDA THIBODEAUX

You already know them well. Those little chat boxes that let you interact not with a person, but with a bot that simulates a person. Right now, they’re most popular as customer service tools. But in the notso-distant future, these programs are going to transform like Bumblebee into personal chatbots and change business communication forever.

Here’s your desk, user ID and, oh yeah, a personal assistant.

Chris O’Neal, evangelist at software company Workfront, said that other current communication options are distracting and take up too much time.

He predicts that, in the upcoming year, chatbots will take over much of business interaction and help perform work.

“We will begin to separate our communication into tiers,” O’Neal said.

“One tier aimed at the chatbot for specific tasks, and another tier for our fellow human that requires critical, human thinking. The lower tier of communication with our chatbots will initially be single-step, request-driven queries: Can you [chatbot] send me Jane’s presentation on next year’s sales plan? I need to schedule an hour for me and John to meet on Thursday or Friday.”

No need to seem human required.

Now, I know what you’re thinking.

It’s going to be creepy to think we’re talking to a person at work when we’re not, right? People saw Google Assistant making calls earlier this year that way, largely because the assistant initially didn’t identify itself as not being human in demos.

But O’Neal asserts that’s not going to be a problem, and that we’ll actually be able to trust the personal chatbots quite well. “[We] will finally have discontinued this idiotic fad of trying to disguise the use of chatbots by passing them off as real people,” he asserts.

“Why did we ever think that was needed? As society continues its drive toward greater transparency in digital spaces, chatbots will be programmed to openly identify themselves as chatbots, so that humans know exactly what to expect from the interaction, who/what they are interacting with, and when they get passed off to a genuine human. ... Our communication with chatbots should be purposeful and specific, not conflated with the

misguided notion of having them mimic humans, and poorly at that.”

LITTLE PROGRAM, BIG BENEFIT

O’Neal presented the goal for business communication overall as being much the same as it is within customer service — take out the little stuff, the time-consuming unnecessaries that bite at your ability to focus on key initiatives or larger issues. While the assistants get the “junk” or mundane jobs done for you, you can have more real, purposeful conversations that build your relationships and propel the business forward faster.

“To make this a reality will require organizations that adopt next-generation thinking in terms of team productivity, worker ex- and music perience and future work environments. Honestly, the technical hurdles are not that great. It’s the organizational and cultural values that will require a bit of retooling so that this model of worker assistance, through personal chatbots, can become widely accepted and useful at the enterprise level.”

For many people, going through this kind of mindset shift just takes actually seeing the usefulness or results Inc. of the technology in action.

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THE DIGITAL USER

SPRING 2019

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GADGETS/TECH

25+ T

(Guaranteed You Won’t Know All of Them!)

BY LARRY KIM

hink you know everything Google is capable of?

Think again.

Google is so much more than a search engine. You can use it as a unicorn tool to do everything from converting currencies to tracking your physical location, all without ever leaving the confines of Google.

Keep reading to discover Google tricks, including lesser-known hacks, time-savers, Easter eggs and search shortcuts.

1

USE GOOGLE AS A TIMER AND STOPWATCH You can use Google as a timer or stopwatch with a simple query.

Enter a search phrase like “set timer for 15 minutes” and you’ll see Google do just that.

2

PINPOINT THE TIME OF SUNRISE AND SUNSET Enter “sunrise in” or “sunset in” followed by a geographic location in Google to find out what time you can expect the sun to rise or set.

For example: “Sunset in Los Angeles.”

3

WEATHER FORECAST Check the weather to know if it’s a good time to go out or do something outdoors.

Enter “weather in + geographic location” in Google.

For example: “Weather in New York.”

4

USE GOOGLE TO CALCULATE A TIP Search for “tip calculator” to have Google help you with calculating exactly how much you should leave as a tip.

5

CONVERT CURRENCIES Google can help you with how much one currency is in another currency.

Type in “amount + currency A to currency B.” For example: “20 USD to JPY.”

6

GOOGLE TRICKS

BOOKS WRITTEN BY FAVORITE AUTHORS If you’re looking for books by a specific author, simply type in “books

written by + author name.”

For example: “books written by Salman Rushdie.”

You’ll get a carousel showcasing their work.

14

FIND RELATED WEBSITES If you’re looking for websites related to a specific website, use “related:website.com.”

For example: “related:facebook. com.”

more security.

22

7

15

TBT: GOOGLE IN 1998 Type “Google in 1998” and the search engine will automatically show you what the search engine looked like the year it was created.

DOWNLOAD SEARCH HISTORY You can obtain a list of all the search queries you’ve entered throughout your history of using Google.

This is super helpful if you’re trying to track down a particular webpage you visited but can’t recall the name of.

8

16

DISCOVER FUN FACTS Are you bored at the moment?

You can type “fun facts” or “I’m feeling curious” in Google and get some awesome trivia factoids.

23

17

24

CALCULATOR You can use Google as a calculator if you don’t have one lying around.

Just type in a formula and have Google calculate it for you.

FIND THE ORIGIN OF ANY WORD Want to know the etymology of a word?

Google can help with that, too.

Put “Etymology + word” to discover the origin of any word.

9

USE DOUBLE QUOTES TO FIND AN EXACT SEARCH PHRASE If you wish to make your search more exacting, you can enclose your search phrase in double quotes.

That will make Google search for results that contain only that exact phrase.

10

RESULTS FROM A SPECIFIC SITE Use “query + site:website.com” to get search results only from that specified website.

For example: “marketing tips site:mobilemonkey.com.”

11

USE OR OPERATOR TO FIND TWO DIFFERENT THINGS AT ONCE Search for two different things at once with the OR operator.

For example: “Iphone OR Android.”

12

USE AND OPERATOR TO GET RESULTS CONTAINING TWO SPECIFIC ITEMS If you’re looking for search results that contain both two of your queries, use the AND operator.

For example: “chatbot AND messenger.”

13

SEARCH BY FILE TYPE You may be searching for a particular file type on Google.

Enter “query + filetype:extension.”

For example: “Truecaller filetype:apk.”

DO A BARREL ROLL If you haven’t tried this yet, get on it.

Type “do a barrel roll” into Google and watch the magic unfold.

MAKE SURE YOUR DOWNLOADS ARE SAFE Google’s safe browsing site status tool can check if a file you wish to download is safe.

GOOGLE NEWSPAPER ARCHIVE Google Newspaper Archive is pretty much the most comprehensive online news file there is.

You can read newspapers from 1798 to present day from all over the world.

18

LOOK AT OLD ACCOUNTS WITH INACTIVE ACCOUNT MANAGER Google’s Inactive Account Manager lets you look at accounts you may have in Google that are not being used.

You can then delete accounts you’re no longer using or make them active again.

19

ADJUST YOUR AD SETTINGS Did you know you can choose what type of ads you want to show up on your browser.

Head to ad settings and adjust the ad types you see.

25

GOOGLE TIMELINE HISTORY You can use Google Timeline History to see where you have been at a particular date and time.

If you need to be able to track your own whereabouts, then this is a powerful tool.

26

GOOGLE TRENDS Google Trends is an excellent tool for identifying the hottest topics at the moment from around the world.

Digital marketing mastermind Neil Patel considers it one of his top seven marketing tools.

Like Neil, you can use Google trends to identify topics to incorporate into your content strategy.

20

REPORT A GMAIL USER Unwanted or abusive emails on Gmail can be problematic.

You can report them to Google using this form and Google will deal with the problem for you.

21

USE STARTPAGE StartPage isn’t actually a Google-owned trick, but it’s still a good service to know about.

StartPage is like an incognito version of the Google search engine — your searches there are totally anonymous, and StartPage pulls results from Google itself.

Unlike the incognito version of Google, however, your IP address is not tracked or stored, giving you

27

GOOGLE PASSWORD MANAGER Google Password Manager is one of the most convenient features on Google.

You can have Google save passwords for your various online accounts.

It makes having different passwords for different accounts easier to manage.

Just make sure your Google password itself is both secure Inc. and easy enough to recall.

SPENDING

Three ways to save on technology

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echnology doesn’t have to be expensive. Here are three ways to save money on electronics, cloud storage, and streaming movies and music.

REFURBISHED AND OPEN-BOX DEALS

Save up to 50 percent on small appliances and electronics by buying certified refurbished items KAITLIN through manufacturers PITSKER or authorized dealers.

Returned or overstock items often are inspected, serviced, tested and repackaged, then sold at a discount with warranties of 90 days to a year. You’ll find the biggest savings on older models, but you can save about 30 percent on current-generation items.

Your safest bet is to buy directly from the manufacturer, according to DealNews.com, a bargain-hunting website.

You may not get the lowest price, but you’ll have the security of a manufacturer-backed warranty. Also worth checking out: Amazon, Crutchfield, eBay or Newegg.

Best Buy Outlet sells clearance, openbox, refurbished and preowned items at BestBuy.com and at outlet and warehouse locations. Open-box appliances typically are up to half off list price, and you can get refurbished tech products — including smartphones and smart watches — for up to 30 percent off.

LOW-COST CLOUD STORAGE

Free and cheap cloud storage is widely available, but Google Drive stands out for its 15GB of free storage for users who

have a Google account. Drive can serve as a storage shed for your files or for backing up your device, but it’s also a workbench, allowing you to edit documents, spreadsheets and other files on the go and share them with others.

If you want more space — to store large files or back up your computer’s hard drive — Google Drive still is a deal. For example, 1TB of space costs $10 a month.

Apple users should consider iCloud Drive. You’ll get 5GB of free storage, and a 2TB storage plan costs $10 a month and can be shared with your family.

NO-STRINGS STREAMING

Fees for cable and streaming subscription services can add up. But many public libraries are branching out, partnering with streaming and other digital media services to offer library-card holders

free access to tons of movies, TV shows, music and e-books. For example, Kanopy.com partners with more than 4,000 libraries and features more than 30,000 films. Its selection focuses on indie flicks and educational titles rather than blockbuster productions, but unlike most other free streaming services, Kanopy doesn’t show ads. And Hoopla (www. hoopladigital.com)offers patrons of more than 1,500 libraries free access, without ads, to movies, music, audiobooks, e-books and television shows.

Kaitlin Pitsker is a staff writer at Kiplinger’s Personal Finance magazine.

Send your questions and comments to moneypower@kiplinger.com. And for more on this and similar money topics, visit Kiplinger. Kiplinger’s Money Power com.

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SPRING 2019

ENTERTAINMENT

4 GREAT VIDEO GAMES YOU’VE NEVER HEARD OF

BY ARNOLD CARREIRO

There are plenty of excellent lesser-known video games sure to grab your whole family’s attention, and just because they aren’t big names like Minecraft, Mario or Pikachu doesn’t mean these games are any less entertaining.

You might not have heard of these five fun family video games, but they’re all guaranteed to get everyone in your home to put down the smartphone and pick up the controller for game night:

KIRBY STAR ALLIES (NINTENDO SWITCH)

The pink puffball is back, and up to three friends can join him at any time during this new adventure. This makes Star Allies an easy way to get the family to cooperate to save his planet while having a blast every step of the way.

Kirby is known for copying the unique abilities of his foes, and there are 28 of these to overcome any obstacle in your way, such as stone, sword, beetle, water and staff. Longtime fans especially will love playing as Kirby’s pals from older titles, including Kine the fish, Taranza the spider and Gooey the hungry blue blob.

Families who come together to play as Kirby and three of his friends will enjoy working together to solve puzzles to find bonuses, and easily thrashing oversized baddies who would have taken Kirby some serious effort to take down on his own.

ASSAULT ANDROID CACTUS (XBOX ONE, PLAYSTATION 4, PC)

Retake an abandoned starship by blasting countless enemy robots as Cactus the assault android or one of her nine unique assault android allies with up to four players in this colorful and frantic twin-stick shooter. Teamwork is essential — players aren’t just fighting an endless horde of creatively-designed robotic opponents who contort and reassemble themselves as you navigate the stage. There’s a constantlydepleting supply of battery power encouraging teammates to blast every baddie in the level as quickly as possible so their mission doesn’t end. Your family might be lured in by the adorable personalities of Cactus, Lemon, Shiitake, and the other androids, but there is a surprising amount of depth and strategy under that cute exterior. It’ll keep them running and gunning for a high score on the global leaderboards for a long time to come.

TETRIS EFFECT (PLAYSTATION 4/ PLAYSTATION 4 VR)

If you thought Tetris was a super-addictive puzzle game on your Game Boy back in the day, Tetris Effect takes it to a whole new level with its surprisingly immersive VR presentation of lights, colors, backdrops, and music. If the roster of 30 stunning 4K stages wasn’t enough to keep dedicated VR players and puzzle game fans entertained for countless hours, Tetris Effect’s Marathon, Ultra, and Sprint modes certainly will.

One of these stages is set on the ocean floor, where bioluminescent fish swim lazily around the screen. As soon as the player begins to remove horizontal lines as they would in any other Tetris game, the inky waters light up with excited manta rays and humpback whales, as the hauntingly pretty background music speeds to match the rising intensity of falling shapes.

Tetris has been reinvented many times over the years, but it is clear the developers went above and beyond to craft the ultimate VR experience for Tetris fans, and it’s a great game for PlayStation VR owners.

YOOKA-LAYLEE (XBOX ONE, NINTENDO SWITCH, PLAYSTATION 4, PC)

Yooka-Laylee proudly presents itself as a revival of 3D platforming classics from the ’90s like Banjo-Kazooie and Donkey Kong 64. Both younger and nostalgic players alike will have fun guiding Yooka the chameleon and Laylee the bat around a series of colorful and creative worlds.

The most interesting feature of Yooka-Laylee is the ability to spend some of your collectables to expand worlds you’ve already unlocked, and when you do, you can return to old stomping grounds to discover new challenges, items, friends, and boss battles.

Between the retro side-scrolling mine cart stages, large collection of mini-games, and tons of well-hidden secrets, there’s plenty to see and do within the twisted halls of Hivory Towers. Best Reviews

SUPER

MOVIES Fascinating tech that is helping — behind the scenes — to remake Hollywood

M

BY GRAHAM WINFREY

arvel Studios made history in December when the trailer for its 2019 film “Avengers: Endgame” racked up a record-breaking 289 million online views in its first 24 hours.

Arguably more remarkable than the trailer’s popularity, however, is the technology behind the film.

Marvel used artificial intelligence to capture human faces and recreate them on digital characters in the movie. Though AI is making its mark in Hollywood in visual effects, or VFX, companies also are experimenting with using machine learning to analyze film content in fascinating ways.

“Viewers will not only be able to search and find video based on an actor or genre, but on more complex things like tone of a scene or societal message of the clip,” said Arvin Patel, chief intellectual property officer at entertainment technology company TiVo. By turning to AI to automate more and more of the work behind the scenes, Hollywood stands to benefit from some pretty transformative innovation.

Here are four companies using AI to change the way Hollywood does business.

DIGITAL DOMAIN

One of the most exciting ways AI is changing film production involves computer-generated imagery, or CGI. While the motion-capture suit has long been Hollywood’s favorite tool for creating CGI characters that mirror the movements of real actors, motion-capture technology provides VFX artists only with basic visual reference points. At Los Angeles-based production company Digital Domain, co-founded by “Titanic” director James Cameron in 1993, VFX artists are using proprietary AI to incorporate humans into the design of their CGI characters much more efficiently.

“We can actually take actors’ performances — and especially facial performances — and exactly transfer them to digital characters,” said Darren Hendler, director of Digital Domain’s appropriately titled Digital Human Group, a division the company created just last year. “In the past, doing that would have required building a full CG version of the actor’s head and getting it to look photo-real.” Digital Domain used this technology to recreate the facial expressions of actor Josh Brolin’s Thanos in 2018’s “Avengers: Infinity War” and in next year’s “Avengers: Endgame”. An eight-foot supervillain

with a condition called the Deviant Syndrome, Thanos has a menacing appearance that’s unique among the characters in the film.

Though Hendler expects the technology to become much more mainstream, reducing VFX costs for both studio movies and independent films, he doesn’t anticipate it putting people out of work. “The amount of people required to make a feature film is definitely getting to be less, but at the same time there are more feature films in production, so I don’t know that there’s any net loss,” he said. “It’s just a massive improvement in quality, streamlining and throughput.”

IBM

In 2016, IBM used AI to create an alternate movie trailer for 20th Century Fox’s science-fiction movie “Morgan”, which follows an artificially created humanoid. To teach the company’s supercomputer Watson what scenes make for a good trailer, IBM researchers had Watson “watch” 100 movies and their corresponding trailers.

After identifying patterns in the visuals and sounds of the 100 trailers, Watson then watched Morgan and quickly suggested 10 scenes to include in the trailer. A film editor used nine of them, turning out the new trailer in a single day.

“Where IBM has made advances is in developing improved capabilities for computers to understand things like vision and speech and language,” said John R. Smith, IBM Research’s head of AI Tech at the company’s T. J. Watson Research Center. “Over time, the computer will be able to get deeper and deeper information out of that content.”

Last year, IBM worked with Disney to teach Watson how to identify the 10 most emotional moments featuring the robot character C-3PO from “Star Wars”.

Because C-3PO can’t move his face, however, Watson wasn’t able to derive any information from facial expressions. “We had to look at a lot of information including body gestures, signals of agitation in voice inflection, and other sounds in the scene that could be indicators that is was an emotional moment,” said Smith. “AI has the potential for helping us understand content better.”

ARRAIY

Founded in 2016, Palo Alto, Calif.,-based Arraiy has developed proprietary AI that, among other things, can seamlessly add photorealistic CGI objects to scenes, even when both the camera and the object itself are moving. One of the reasons this has always been so challenging is that as the camera moves, the angle from which the viewer sees the CGI object also has to change. Instead of having VFX artists alter the appearance of the CGI object one frame at a time, 24 times per second, Arraiy’s AI software does it automatically.

“What would otherwise require a whole team of people to turn out, one artist can do at his or her desk,” said Arraiy co-founder

Ethan Rublee, adding that the company’s software can be trained

by VFX artists to automate an infinite number of specific use cases.

“When you train a network to do these things, you train it once, and then it works basically in real time for any number of frames.” Arraiy has demonstrated its technology on several short-form projects, including the Black Eyed Peas music video for “Street Living”, in which the company superimposed band members’ mouths over images from the civil rights era.

Arraiy raised more than $10 million in a Series A round led by Lux Capital and Softbank Ventures in March and is bringing its software to market in early 2019. “You no longer have to be a multibillion-dollar studio to have access to the very best visual effects,” said Shahin Farshchi, a partner at Lux Capital. “You can now be a smaller studio or even an independent artist and be able to get the same level of visual effects that you otherwise see in the “Iron Man” and “X-Men” movies.”

SINEMIA

Founded in 2014 by engineer Rfat Ouz, Los Angeles-based Sinemia is a subscription-based movie ticketing service that lets subscribers see three movies in theaters per month for a monthly fee of $8.99, among other pricing plans. Formerly known as a competitor to movie subscription service MoviePass — before MoviePass ran out of money — Sinemia uses AI to recommend specific film titles to its subscribers. Unlike Netflix, which gathers data only on the movies you watch on its platform, Sinemia’s mobile app asks users which movies they liked or disliked, including films that are no longer in theaters. After collecting data on enough titles, the company cross-references your responses with other subscribers to predict which films you’ll enjoy.

“The AI tries to find your movie soul mate,” Ouz said. “Because you’re so similar to these people, you’re most likely going to also love this movie. ... They’re almost like your teacher.”

If subscribers trust the company’s movie recommendation AI enough to go to the movies more often, Sinemia could help reverse declining theater attendance, which fell 5.8 percent to 1.24 billion in the U.S. and Canada in 2017, the lowest figure since 1992, according to data from researcher Box Office Mojo.

Perhaps most interesting about the use of AI in Hollywood is the fact that the industry experts don’t expect the technology to eliminate jobs like other kinds of automation.

“The common thread you hear from those commingling AI into the creative filmmaking process is that AI takes more and more of the mundane tasks away from the human, allowing them to focus more time and energy on their creative skills,” TiVo’s Patel said. “When you cast your sights far into the future, there are many significantly transformative Inc. possibilities.”

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ENTERTAINMENT

HOME THEATER GOES HOLLYWOOD A cutting-edge speaker system and TV that are worth the hype

IMMERSIVE SOUND The cineplex might not beat your living-room sofa for comfort, but it likely does for sound. The solution: speakers that use the same 3D sound format, called Dolby Atmos, that many theaters do. Unlike previous surround sound, Atmos uses a height element: Its speakers fire up toward the ceiling, enabling “object-based” sound — meaning a plane moving onscreen will sound like it’s flying right over your head. While Atmos-enabled home equipment has been around since 2014, uptake has been slow due to cost and a limited catalog of movies and shows tracked with the tech. No longer. Atmos-enabled home-theater-in-a-box speaker units priced less than $500 just hit the market; Apple’s 4K TV supports Atmos; and Amazon Prime Video has started streaming content in a 3D sound format, joining rivals such as Netflix.

THE FUTURE OF

ENTERTAINMENT

Our collection of the most exciting news in movies, music, television and events WELCOME TO THE REAL-LIFE THUNDERDOME MSG Sphere, a wildly ambitious tech-first venue, is rising over the Las Vegas desert

What does it take to create the world’s most audaciously advanced concert venue? The answer, according to billionaire James Dolan, whose Madison Square Garden Co. broke ground on Las Vegas’ MSG Sphere in September, is 157,000 ultra-directional speakers, a three-and-ahalf-acre spherical ultra-high-res video screen and vibrating floors, all wedged into an enormous dome built from scratch. His modest goal, as MSG Ventures CEO David Dibble tells it: to “reinvent the live-entertainment business” with a “technology-driven” facility. Touring acts can certainly play the MSG Sphere, but the venue seems geared for residencies and special projects that could fully exploit its capabilities. There’s that LED screen, which arcs over the audience “like a planetarium times 10,” Dibble said. The speakers, which will be hidden in the walls, are from a German startup, Holoplot, that specializes in targeting narrow sound beams, so each section gets its own sound (per MSG, audio in different languages could even be beamed to different sections). The “haptic flooring system,” meanwhile, is all about the bass. Explains Dibble, “The lowest bass response, instead of being transmitted through the air, is transmitted through the floor, directly into your feet or the chair in which you sit.” With another Sphere planned for London, MSG’s hopes are high.

“Three years from now,” Dolan promised at the groundbreaking, “you’ll say, ‘I had no idea this was what it was going to be.’ It is that crazy and that incredible a project.”

- Brian Hiatt

INTERACTIVE TV PUTS YOU IN CHARGE

Look out for shows that let viewers choose the plots Craving even more options when you watch TV? Get ready for choose-yourown-adventure shows. In 2017, Netflix tested the waters with two kids’ programs, Puss in Book and Buddy Thunderstruck. But when word leaked in October that the streaming giant would produce an interactive episode of Black Mirror — the acclaimed sci-fi series, expected to return in December, about the dark side of technology — as well as

THE BATTLE FOR LIVE SPORTS

Streaming services’ plans to steal the NFL, NBA and more from network TV As more consumers cut cable — and with the rights packages for the NFL, NHL, NBA and MLB all set to expire by 2025 — it seems just a matter of time until sports are streamingonly entertainment. But how much will tech giants be willing to pay for them? Despite deals like the one boxer Canelo Alvarez notched in October with the platform DAZN — an 11-fight contract worth $365 million — some industry experts are skeptical that the major streaming players will pony up enough dough to unlock network TV’s hold on sports.

(Netflix CEO Reed Hastings, for one, has stated the company has no interest in pursuing live sports.) Still, the transition took a step forward when MLB gave Facebook Watch exclusive rights to Wednesdayafternoon games in 2018. It was the first time a major sports league had produced broadcasts specifically for a streaming platform, an experiment that drew under-40 viewers to a game that’s struggled to connect with young fans.

- Michael Weinreb

at least one other unnamed live-action show, the experiment became a new reality. The lure: of course, Gen Z. “A generation has grown up actively engaging with their content,” said Andrew Hawn, head of cultural strategy at trend forecaster Sparks & Honey. “From liking on social media to multiplayer video games, having a say in what they watch is built into their DNA.” - Paul Katz

GAMING GROWS UP

Esports moves out of the basement and into its own tournament-ready stadium Arlington, Texas, 20 miles outside Dallas, may be best known for AT&T Stadium, or “Jerry World,” a standing paean to football (and Cowboys owner Jerry Jones). But with the November opening of Esports Stadium Arlington, officials are hoping the city becomes the epicenter of esports, the rapidly growing industry expected to generate $1.7 billion in revenue by 2021.

The largest such venue in North America, at 100,000 square feet, it features an 80-foot-wide stage where some of the best gamers in the world go head-tohead, an 85-foot LED wall that displays their moves, theatrical lighting and seating for 2,000. It is the latest in a wave of dedicated esports temples, including Esports Arena Las Vegas at the Luxor and Esports Arena in Oakland, both of which opened last spring. The facilities are designed not just to host championship events, such as the $750,000 contest for the first-person-shooter game Counter-Strike Global Offensive that opened Arlington, but also to be training centers where gamers can gather and hone their skills.

- Jesse Will

SHARPEST-EVER PICTURE While many of us are just upgrading to 4K LCD TVs, Samsung already is developing a set that far surpasses anything in stores — and may even shift what we think a TV should look like. “The Wall” TV, a behemoth set that’s 12 feet across and just a few inches thick, is powered by micro-LED panels, which put out a picture both brighter and blacker than competing technologies. And since it’s essentially made from small panels stitched together, a micro-LED display like the Wall could one day be built modularly to nearly any size or shape a buyer wants.

Commercial units are available for preorder now; a consumer version six feet wide and just over an inch deep is rumored in 2019.

- Jesse Will

CAN ROBOTS BUILD BETTER HITS?

Music-industry insiders may dismiss it, but AI songwriting is a trend that’s here to stay Attention, Ed Sheeran: Artificial intelligence is coming for you. While the idea of a computer-crafted chart-topper seems far off, AI songwriting is gaining traction. Startups such as Amper, Popgun, Jukedeck and Amadeus Code have raised millions of venture-capital dollars on the bet that machines will become valuable creative assistants to artists in the near future. Several artists utilizing a songwriting algorithm called Flow Machines already have appeared on Spotify’s New Music Friday playlists.

How does it work? An algorithm ingests thousands of songs in a specific genre and rapidly cranks out chord progressions and melodies optimized for that style — even indistinguishable from music written by people. While these programs might not be consciously driving or tapping into musical trends the way human artists do, they churn out content much more efficiently than, say, an exhausted musician who’s been touring for months. This productivity could have obvious appeal to record labels and streaming services: Generate tons of new music without ever having to pay a human writer? Yes, please. Spotify, in fact, drew criticism in 2017 for featuring on several mood playlists artists who did not appear to exist. The assumption: The company was using AI-crafted songs and crediting them to made-up people. But few on the AI development side believe that their creations will replace artists altogether. Citing electric guitars and drum machines, Amadeus Code founder Taishi Fukuyama says, “History teaches us that emerging technology in music leads to an explosion of art.”

- Cherie Hu Rolling Stone Magazine

YOUTUBE ANALYZED TRILLIONS OF DATA POINTS IN 2018, REVEALING FIVE EYE-OPENING BEHAVIORAL STATISTICS

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BY TOM POPOMARONIS

ow often do you find yourself on YouTube? Have you picked up any of your specific behaviors or patterns?

Don’t worry, YouTube has you covered — as they’re known for blowing minds with its crazy statistics. For instance, did you know that: 100 hours of video get uploaded to YouTube every 10 seconds over 1 million different videos are viewed on YouTube every 30 seconds over 50,000 hours of content are watched on YouTube every minute

And if you really want your mind blown? Watch it being counted in real time.

Of course, YouTube isn’t all about cat videos anymore. It’s one of the world’s biggest marketplaces for sharing products, education, artwork, news, political opinions and more — making it a hub for advertisers as well.

In other words, there are a lot of people interested in not only how much is

being uploaded and viewed, but what that content is and who is watching it.

With that in mind, here are some of the more intriguing stats that came about over the last year on YouTube: Videos related to “relaxing” went collectively viral, with watch time increasing more than 70 percent in the last year From January 2017 through June 2018, there was a 248 percent increase in views per month of primitive technology, survival and bushcraft videos Watch time of videos about “which product to buy” has doubled year over year 7 out of 10 of shoppers expressed interest in learning about products on YouTube, directly from brands 70 percent of Gen Z members (people 25 and under, roughly) claim that they use watching YouTube videos to connect with others That’s already a lot to unpack, and it’s only the tip of the iceberg, considering how giant the platform is.

SO, WHAT’S REALLY GOING ON UNDER THE HOOD OF OUR VIDEO—WATCHING OBSESSION?

As far as the “relaxing,” I’m pretty sure we can credit that stat to the explosion of videos that try to stimulate your ASMR, or autonomous sensory meridian response.

Meanwhile, some people seem to be integrating YouTube further into their overall experience as digital consumers (almost like assisted shopping), while others see it as a tool for moving in the other direction — back

to the basics of outdoor living and survival.

Perhaps most interesting is the stat about Generation Z. Once upon a time, YouTube was just how we wasted time when there was nothing better to do. What it’s evolved to is something far more meaningful, with people taking to the platform to discover common values — and enjoy time with each other. So much for screens making us less social.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I have some YouTube Inc. subscriptions to catch up on.

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ENTERTAINMENT

Podcast Perfection N Want People to Take Your New Podcast Seriously? Follow These 5 Steps

BY ROBERT GLAZER

ot all podcasts are created equal. Many people start podcasts to give their business a boost, but a bad show is pointless — and there are a lot of bad

podcasts. I know this from my experience hosting a podcast, Outperform, and being a guest on 50 others.

CEOs and entrepreneurs who really want to promote their businesses need to do more than just fill up the digital ether. They need to develop high-quality content.

To get some tips on how to produce a really professional podcast,

I checked in with Jordan Harbinger, who has hosted a top 50 iTunes podcast for over 12 years and receives more than 4.5 million downloads per month. The Jordan Harbinger Show is one of the most popular podcasts in the world.

Here are five great ways to up your game if you want to start a podcast in 2019:

1

USE A TWO-CHANNEL RECORDING PLATFORM. If you’re serious about this, you need to use a high-quality recording platform like Ringr or Zencaster, rather than Skype. You want separate audio tracks for each guest, which makes editing easier and ensures that problems with one person’s recording don’t impact other parts of the show.

ULTIMATE GUIDE TO PODCASTS:

BY LAURA JANE STANDLEY AND ERIC MCQUADE

The word podcast has by now become completely untethered from its namesake — the iPod. Analytics that were once uncapturable have become fairly comprehensive (downloads from Apple Podcasts surpassed 50 billion in 2018) and specific (Chicago streams more podcasts on Spotify than any other US city does), which has brought new money and possibility to the form.

Recipes for how to create a decent series were invented through trial and error, and thousands of producers now understand what makes our ears stand up: cults, cold cases, politics, feminism, and relationships, but most of all: stories.

The shows on this list highlight innovation where it collides with craft and entertainment. They are the ones that answer the call “Make it new!” They made space for new voices, ideas and methods of connecting with and harnessing audiences, the internet and the material world. They are the ones that don’t require advanced preparation, and likely the ones you’d recommend to your friends.

CALIPHATE

Rukmini Callimachi, the New York Times journalist known for her authoritative reporting on the Islamic State, leaves listeners weak in the knees at

times with “Caliphate.” The 10-part series follows her as she travels to Canada to meet a young man known as Abu Huzaifa, who claims to be an ISIS defector.

Each installment not only illuminates the tactics ISIS uses to lure in and train mujahideen, but also reveals Callimachi’s tedious methodology for vetting everything Huzaifa says. Whether or not he’s a reliable source is a key part of the plot: Huzaifa unquestionably has insider knowledge about ISIS, and yet his timelines don’t quite check out.

Callimachi struggles to reconcile the apparent veracity of his story with his possible motivations for lying; she labors over why he would confess to murder or describe the way blood splatters against the ground when you whip someone, and yet not be honest about when he was in Syria. “Caliphate” forces listeners to wrap their minds around the no-

tion of evil and also somehow amplifies reasons listeners can and should have faith in the world.

Gateway Episode: “Chapter One: The Reporter”

HEADLONG: SURVIVING Y2K

You may think Headlong is an entirely new show given its title — and it is — but it’s also the successor to last year’s Missing Richard Simmons, whose host, Dan Taberski, is back at the helm. For those who tagged along on his journey to find the fitness legend, it was hard not to be impressed with Taberski’s numerous charms, even if Simmons didn’t want to be found.

“Headlong: Surviving Y2K” is the perfect vehicle for Taberski’s emotional intelligence and humor. Set in the late ‘90s, the show centers on the drama of the Y2K bug that people feared would be cat-

astrophic enough to shut down power grids and fry computer processors. The podcast delves into a series of life-altering dramas set just before the stroke of the new millennium, and with these stories, Y2K blossoms into a fullfledged classic.

Gateway Episode: “Millennium Approaches”

NO FEELING IS FINAL

Honor Eastly, an Australian podcaster, has achieved something extraordinary in her six-part memoir, “No Feeling Is Final.” She documents her struggles with suicidal thoughts and behaviors, while listeners follow along as she tries to improve her quality of life and her thinking — or even just how she thinks about her own thinking. Eastly uses various sound-engineering techniques as well as recordings she’s made of herself over the years to render the feelings of anxiety and fear. Sometimes she even enlists friends to reenact conversations. She says she hopes to foster a more human way of viewing mental-health struggles, and here Eastly triumphs-thanks in part to her sense of humor and her musical stylings (her sweet scores help with the emotional comedown at the end of most episodes). As Eastly says, “Getting to the other side of things is as much common sense as it is complete mystery.” Such is

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23

ENTERTAINMENT

ESSENTIAL EPISODES THAT YOU MUST LISTEN TO

BY ELIJAH WOLFSON

YOU ONLY GET ONE CHANCE TO MAKE A GREAT FIRST IMPRESSION. IF PEOPLE TUNE IN AND DON’T LIKE WHAT THEY HEAR, YOU’LL LIKELY NEVER GET THAT AUDIENCE BACK. Have a backup system ready in case the primary platform crashes. Communicate your backup plan in advance to everyone involved. This will prevent last-minute panicking.

2

DO YOUR OWN GUEST RESEARCH. If you have guests on your show, they should be of interest to your unique audience, so be selective. The best podcast hosts do their homework and knowledgeably guide the conversation.

Don’t send your guest a huge list of generic questions to answer in writing, or ask them what they want to talk about. That’s passing the buck. Instead, develop specific questions based on what you know about them, and send a few out in advance so your guest can prepare. Be thorough — like dealing with a concierge at a fivestar hotel, not like showing up at a BYOB party.

Harbinger said his team spends at least 10 hours researching each guest before every episode reading online profiles and book reviews.

Tim Ferriss, whose podcast has been heard by hundreds of millions of people, is similarly known for great questions and background research. If these guys can make the time, so can you.

3

MARKET THE PODCAST YOURSELF. While you should make it easy for your guests to promote the episode by sending them social links, don’t count on them to promote your podcast, and definitely don’t harass them about it. They are coming on your show because they believe you have an audience of your own. If you push too hard, they will get the sense that you need their audience, in which case, what value are you bringing?

A great way to get people to share more easily is to create some fun graphics using quotes from the podcast for social media. Be sure to tag them so your guests see them and share them.

4

OVERDO THE DETAILS, AND NEVER BE LATE. Your guest’s time comes at a premium. Don’t waste it.

Set a firm time and date for the interview, and follow up with a calendar invite with links to the recording platform. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had to email a host at the last minute for this info.

It’s also a good idea to reconfirm all the details a few days beforehand, and suggest that each guest talk from a quiet room using a headset or dedicated microphone. This shows you care about quality.

Whatever you do, don’t be late. People who are serious about their podcasts are on the line 15 minutes before the start time testing everything. They don’t rush from their latest client meeting.

5

NEVER INVITE GUESTS WHO DON’T INTEREST YOU. According to Harbinger, one of the biggest mistakes new hosts make is inviting guests just because they think those people will attract an audience. This practice, called “standing on the shoulders of giants,” doesn’t work. Unless you really hit gold (you get Tom Cruise on your show because he’s your cousin), nobody wants to listen to the 100th interview of a media darling that offers nothing new.

Few people subscribe because a show has one guest or another.

They subscribe for the content.

So, stop chasing influencers thinking their fame will rub off on you. Instead, pick quality guests who match your show’s theme.

Maybe you’ll discover an up-andcomer and end up with an early interview of an industry star.

That podcast, like wine, will get better with age.

You only get one chance to make a great first impression. If people tune in and don’t like what they hear, you’ll likely never Inc. get that audience back.

BEST OF 2018

the case for the success of “No Feeling Is Final,” which is both straightforward, excellent work and total magic.

Gateway Episode: “Hi, My Name Is Honor”

THE SHADOWS

The creator Kaitlin Prest — best known for her acclaimed series “The Heart” — has returned from a brief podcast hiatus with a remarkable artistic achievement: “The Shadows,” a story about a girl, Kaitlin, who meets a boy, Charlie. It’s a work of fiction, set in the made-up town of MontYuron, that includes actual events from Prest’s life. “I always cry when I fall in love,” Kaitlin’s character says after the two admit their feelings for each other. “I cry because it’s the moment I realize I won’t be getting out of this unscarred.” “The Heart,” which ended in 2017, was a dissonant, high-culture reckoning with the jaggedness of intimacy. “The Shadows” is precise and devastating without losing any of the subversiveness of its predecessor. The way that relationships ebb and flow should be familiar to anyone who’s ever risked heartbreak. From a craft perspective, the writing, multiple points of view and sound design make the romance tactile. “The Shadows” is a love letter to anyone who falls too hard for beautiful strangers, or can’t

seem to stay faithful, or find anyone who can.

Gateway Episode: “Romantic”

SLOW BURN

Season 2 of “Slow Burn” might as well be the first time listeners have heard the full truth about the Starr Report and the headline-stealing relationship between Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky. Using interviews and footage of Starr, Linda Tripp, Lewinsky and others, the host, Leon Neyfakh, unravels the events that led to Clinton’s impeachment in 1998.

In this excellent follow-up to 2017’s “Watergate” postmortem, the story of the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal plays out differently, almost as though the American public wasn’t ready to grasp the plot the first time around. The eight-part series is about history being recast in real time as the culture’s vocabulary improves: about the shift from talking about false statements and infidelity to talking about abuses of power. If most reporting at the time wrote out Lewinsky’s agency (the former White House intern was portrayed as naive at best), “Slow Burn” makes ample room for Lewinsky, who is undeniably its most compelling character.

Gateway Episode: “Deal or No Deal” The Atlantic Online.

Have you been holding on to a loose button that belongs to a shirt you love, but haven’t worn for six months because it’s… missing a button? Have you wanted to reorganize your closet, bookshelf or medicine cabinet, but keep putting it off because it’s just so boring?

I have a life hack for you: this list of podcast episodes.

I’ve listened to podcasts on walks, on bike rides, on the train, in the car, in the shower, while trying to fall asleep, and while trying to wake up. In the process, I’ve discovered that instead of dreading these sometimes menial, annoying, or mind-numbing tasks, you can be laughing aloud, getting smarter, or feeling chills down your spine. Over the past few months, I raised a wool winter coat from the dead. I scrubbed down and relaced a pair of old sneakers so they look as fresh as they did in 2016. I cleaned and brushed every single one of my records and put them all in new plastic sleeves. It was a glorious year for podcasts. The list below covers the best of the best.

BEST BUSINESS/ ECONOMICS EPISODE

Podcast: The Daily Episode: “What the West Got Wrong About China” One of the most insightful podcast episodes 2018, this two-parter combines essential contemporary analysis from Philip Pan, the New York Times’ Asia editor, with archival audio from the past 40 or so years, to provide a clear and concise narrative that explains China’s economic transformation in that time frame. Combined, the two parts are under an hour long, and in that short time, Pan and Daily host Michael Barbaro make an effective argument for listeners to reconsider the conventional wisdom that democracy is the only path to achieving economic stability and development-indicator success. The Daily doesn’t cut Beijing slack for its record of humanitarian abuse, but it does skillfully raise questions about the efficacy and morality of a US democratic system driven by capitalist, corporate interests.

-Elijah Wolfson

BEST CULTURE EPISODE

Podcast: The Nod Episode: “An Oral History of ‘Knuck if You Buck’” If you’re between the ages of 24 and 44, even if you’ve never been especially into rap or crunk, chances are you were at least aware of the 2004 hit “Knuck if you Buck” by Crime Mob. It’s a powerful, confidence-boosting jam that’s pretty much entirely about getting into a fight at a club. Wallace Mack, a producer of Gimlet Media’s “The Nod,” a show that reports stories on black culture, told Vice that at the time of the song’s release, there were conservatives who complained that it inspired violence. But it’s popularity then (and legacy now) was driven by the role it played as an anthem for young, black Americans. Crime Mob, who were teenagers themselves when the song was released, had managed to encapsulate teenage angst in a hit. “When people talk about angst, they don’t ever associate that as a thing that black kids have,” Mack says on the podcast. “I feel like if there’s any group of kids in America to have angst, it would certainly almost be us.”

Mack managed to track down the now-adult members of Crime Mob and got them to talk on the mic about how their childhoods in suburban Atlanta inspired the lyrics, handling their unexpected fame, and the deceitful management and interpersonal tension that led to the group’s demise (although there are rumors they’re working on a new album, and new song appeared on the Creed II soundtrack last year). -Katherine Ellen Foley

BEST HISTORY EPISODE

Podcast: Uncivil Episode: “The Fugitive” In the late 18th-century, Pennsylvania outlawed slavery through the “Gradual Abolition Act.” A slaveholder from another state could live in Pennsylvania with his slaves for six months. If those slaves were held in Pennsylvania beyond that deadline, they were free. But there was a loophole: send the slave back to another state where slavery was free before those six months were up, and the clock reset. In this episode of “Uncivil,” Ona Judge, an enslaved African-American woman living in Philadelphia, has a decision to make: return to Virginia as instructed by her owner — he intends to “gift” her to his granddaughter — which would trigger that loophole and keep her enslaved, or run away to find freedom.

Ona makes a break for it, running away, and, of course, her owner pursues. What may surprise listeners is that Judge’s pursuing owner is George Washington, the first president of the United States of America. This is how season two of “Uncivil” opens. “Uncivil,” a Peabody Award-winning podcast, is the brainchild of host Chenjerai Kumanyika, a researcher, journalist and professor at Rutgers University. Each episode unfurls what we commonly get wrong about the Civil War. And — as the season opener shows — there’s still a lot left forgotten in America’s uncivil history. -Daniel Wolfe

BEST INTERVIEW EPISODE

Podcast: Longform Episode: “Jerry Saltz” “I am making this up as I go just like everyone else is,” New York magazine’s art critic Jerry Saltz tells “Longform’s” Aaron Lammer. “I don’t know what I’m doing, but I know how to do it.”

Saltz is more than just a critic; he is a champion for struggling artists everywhere, largely because he’s been there.

In this interview, after Saltz shares stories of his own experience as a young and tortured artist, “eaten alive by envy” and self-doubt, Lammer asks Saltz to turn over those well-trodden memories. What was the flip side of that feeling, he asks, when Saltz still felt optimistic about his own art?

“That’s a great question, because it makes me feel good again,” Saltz replies, before painting a sense-memory picture of being in the flow-state, in the studio. “I loved every second except I hated it,” he says.

Like an easygoing therapist working with few words, Lammer pushes Saltz to explore the source of the demons that forced him temporarily from the art world, and how he eventually, at 40, “found a way to speak” as a writer about art. Saltz is funny, vulnerable, and generous with his insights in an episode that inspires one to go experience the “eternal present” that can be found in art, and also to find their own voice, just as Saltz found his.

A must-listen for anyone who has ever experienced a creative block, professional envy or just plain anxiety about their own future. -Jenni Avins

BEST SCIENCE EPISODE

Podcast: The Habitat Episode: “She likes to camp alone in the Finnish winter” If we’re ever going to make it on Mars we’ll need to understand the emotional and psychological toll — the simultaneous loneliness and perpetual company — of living with a single crew in a small, isolated space for extended periods of time. Lynn Levy, the producer of “The Habitat,” had the crew members of the fourth iteration of the NASA-funded Hawaii Space Exploration Analog and Simulation (HI-SEAS) record audio diaries over the course of a year spent together in a dome encompassing less than 1,200 square feet.

In this particular episode, Levy explores what happens when the crew members’ relationships move beyond just being friendly coworkers. Love between crew members could be an advantage, if it led to seamless communication and unbreakable trust. But it could also be a disaster.

“There are no separate ways in a confined environment,” says Pete Roma, an experimental psychologist and one of the six members of HI-SEAS #4, on the podcast. The episode considers the history of romance in space, and ponders how it might disrupt future space travel-while also trying to piece clues from the crew’s audio diaries together to figure out if any of them have coupled off.

-Katherine Ellen Foley

BEST ROUNDTABLE EPISODE

Podcast: The Weeds Episode: “Imma Let You Finish” An hour-long discussion of Kanye West may not seem like it’s for everyone. However, whatever your feelings about Kanye, it’s hard to deny his impact on the culture, public rhetoric and even politics of the past decade, and this is one of the best explorations of those influences yet.

In fact, I would argue that the episode — a conversation between Vox journalists Dara Lind, Jane Coaston and Matthew Yglesias — uses Kanye West as a sort of pop-culture Trojan horse to discuss history of black conservative politics, Trumpism, criminal justice reform, political optics and messaging, black political activism, the role of pop culture celebrities in politics, the contemporary crises of “truth” and “facts,” and more. In other words, whether you own every Kanye album on vinyl or still have no idea what I’m talking about, this podcast is for you. -Elijah Wolfson

BEST TECHNOLOGY EPISODE

Podcast: Darknet Diaries Episode: “Chartbreakers” This is a podcast episode about podcasts, which I realize is a bit irritatingly meta, but if you’ve read this far, it’s probably fair to assume you are pretty into podcasts.

More specifically, this is a podcast episode about how to game Apple’s most-downloaded podcast list — one of the most powerful forces in deciding whether a podcast lives or dies.

“Darknet Diaries” host Jack Rhysider started noticing weird, unexpected podcast titles showing up in Apple’s list: ones you’ve likely never heard of and that certainly don’t have the reputation or quality of most shows on the charts. So he began to investigate: Could you buy your way onto the list somehow? He ended up discovering a vast industry of what might be called “dark podcast marketing,” and, after a year of reporting, eventually tracked down the man who invented Quartz the system.

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PROFILES

A RIDE INTO

INDIA’S PAST Google chronicles the people and places behind Indian Railways’ 165-year journey

O

BY MARIA THOMAS

n April 16, 1853, India’s very first passenger train set out on a 34 kilometer journey from Bombay (now Mumbai) to Thane, carrying 400 people. In the 165 years since then, the railway network in India has grown to become one of the world’s largest, covering more than 151,000 kilometers of tracks and ferrying about 24 million people every day.

These days, however, Indian Railways is more likely to make the news for a lack of hygiene and terrible accidents. But the system itself is inextricably connected to the story of India.

So now, an online project on Google Arts & Culture (artsandculture. google.com/project/indian-railways) is celebrating this rich history and heritage with more than 100 exhibitions.

Besides featuring scenic routes and historic events, this project, designed in partnership with the Indian ministry of railways, tells the lesser-known stories of the people who keep the trains running. These range from the trackmen and keymen to the pioneering women who’ve become signal engineers and rail managers in an overwhelmingly male-dominated industry.

The goal is to make this rail heritage more accessible to Indians. So the exhibitions will be taken to 22 railway stations across India, including New Delhi, Bengaluru, Coimbatore, Guwahati and Secunderabad.

Here’s some of Quartz’s favorite exhibitions online:

VETERANS OF THE RAILWAYS

WOMEN IN INDIAN RAILWAYS

EVERYDAY HEROES

RAILWAY TIMETABLES OF THE PAST

This exhibition introduces viewers to three long-time railway employees who have witnessed different eras in the long history of India’s railway network. There’s Ganey Khawas, the oldest living ex-worker of the Darjeeling Himalayan Railway, who was born in 1916 and vividly remembers the days of the steam engines.

Balbahadur Majhi, a 76-year-old former locomotive pilot, remembers the hazards of the job during natural disasters. And Deepak Das, a former senior section engineer, talks about some of India’s historic locomotives and working on the iconic Darjeeling Himalayan Railway.

Technically several different exhibitions, this section highlights the work of the on-ground staff who keep the trains running safe. It includes interviews with trackmen and keymen, revealing how they lay down tracks and check and repair them.

One exhibition covers the station masters of the Nilgiri Mountain Railway, featuring conversations with the men who ensure the safe arrival of trains on a route popular with both foreign and local tourists. Along with his team, Kundan Singh, the station master of the Hillgrove station, possibly has the most unique commute to work in India — an around three kilometer trek through a jungle and multiple tunnels with the constant risk of wild elephants and bears coming in the way.

Women account for just up to 7 percent of Indian Railways’ workforce, but one of the exhibitions highlights the untold stories of the pioneers among them. For instance there are M Kalavathy, one of the first female signal engineers, who was from the 1981 batch of railways aspirants, and Mona Srivastava, from the 1998 batch, who became the first woman to join the Indian Railway service of engineers.

Another delightful exhibition introduces viewers to Ms Valli, a singing ticket checker on the Nilgiri Mountain Railway who regales tourists and commuters with Indian classical songs.

A visual feast for anyone obsessed with vintage advertisements and typography, this exhibition is dedicated to the once ubiquitous railway timetable, now obsolete in the internet era.

Beyond the schedule of trains arriving and departing, these booklets contained calendars of fairs and festivals, colorful bookmarks and advertisements for products and even movies.

IMPACT ON ART AND CULTURE

From the evergreen Bollywood song Mere Sapno Ki Rani to stories by Ruskin Bond, a beloved children’s book author, references to the railways are found throughout Indian culture. These exhibitions explore this deep connection to films, literature, sports, music and street art, using archival Quartz images and virtual reality.

Wearable tech helps scientist remember it all

T

BY NATASHA FROST

hink back to a recent event: where you were, what it looked like, how it made you feel. Perhaps you recall the decor in the room or who was with you. If you’ve got a really good memory, you might even remember what they were wearing. For scientist Neo Mohsenvand, accessing recollections of recent events is a little different-and quite a lot more accurate.

Mohsenvand can all but place himself back in the room for any event. For the past nine months, he’s used a variety of technology to record every aspect of his life, from what he ate for breakfast down to the shifting speeds of his own heart rate over the course of the day.

Mohsenvand is a researcher in the Fluid Interfaces team at MIT Media Lab, where scientists are developing wearable technology they hope could make us better at regulating emotions, making decisions or re-

membering the past. The project — called Mnemo, from Mnemosine, the Greek goddess of memory — may one day be able to help people suffering from memory loss.

Before the team can do that, they need data. That’s why Mohsenvand has become his own research subject, collecting a trove of information — the faces he sees, the objects he interacts with, the patterns around him — for them to work with. Now, he has a database of sorts of everything that’s happened to him — or, as he calls it, a “collection of his memories.”

He wears a contraption that allows him to record video, paired with devices that monitor physiological changes, from skin conductance, which reveals stress levels, to his body temperature. Initially, he said his girlfriend wasn’t delighted about being filmed all the time. But she’s learned to adapt, and now she says she’s grateful for the record of their time together.

Almost every evening, Mohsen-

vand sits back and rewatches the day’s events at lightning speed. He’s built what he calls a “sort of memory amplification system,” which condenses the day into five minutes while focusing on the “important moments.” It’s taught him to appreciate the little things that make him happy, from cooking lunch for his girlfriend to time spent biking together. “It’s kind of like a private psychologist,” he said.

Both of Mohsenvand’s grandmothers developed Alzheimer’s disease, the most common cause of dementia. Looking after one of them inspired him to help develop products that don’t just soothe Alzheimer’s patients or prevent them from hurting themselves but perhaps even bring them back to functionality. A virtual-reality experience such as this may help, making memories instantly accessible externally for those who may otherwise be unable Quartz to recall them.

ON SOCIAL MEDIA, TWO LAST NAMES IS THE NEW NORM

A

BY ASHLEY FETTERS

mong her friends, 30-yearold Molly Weissman is known as Molly Weissman.

Her colleagues at her office in New York refer to her in conversation as Molly Weissman, too. But on Facebook, ever since she got married in 2015, Weissman is Molly Lister Weissman — a nod to the fact that before her marriage, she was known among friends, and on all her official ID documents, as Molly Lister.

Weissman, the media director for the nonprofit Global Citizen Year, legally changed her last name to match her husband’s shortly after their wedding.

“It was important for both me and my husband that our family just have one name,” she said. But still, she wanted to be “findable.” She didn’t want her new name to pop up on the computer screen of a friend or acquaintance who didn’t know she’d gotten married and be totally unfamiliar. “If I had just been ‘Molly Weissman,’ ” she says, “they might be like, ‘I don’t know that person.’ ” For people in English-speaking countries who’ve aged out of their teen years and into adulthood in the age of Facebook, it’s a familiar phenomenon — the brief moment of bewilderment that ensues when an unfamiliar name pops up on one’s Facebook timeline.

It’s not a terribly complicated problem for friends of a newly married woman to solve, all told; it usually takes just a minute of detective work to unravel the mystery of her identity. But the unhyphenated double surname some women have adopted online to prevent that confusion is a naming custom heretofore more often seen in textbooks and foreign countries. And, it’s popularizing another option for women’s last names when they marry men, beyond just “keep,” “change,” or “hyphenate.”

There’s a long tradition of women using their family name from birth in addition to a husband’s family name.

Some prominent American women in literature, politics and society have been known to go by a married name tacked on after their original or “maiden” names, sans hyphen: Coretta Scott King, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Sandra Day O’Connor, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Hillary Rodham Clinton, to name a few.

Still, according to Laurie Scheuble, a Penn State professor who researches marital naming, while rates of women doing anything non-conventional with their last names after marriage have risen slightly in the last two decades, some 90 percent of women who get married to men still adopt their husband’s last name when they marry.

Historically, the primary reason women have gone by two last names without a hyphen is because “these are women who are more established in their career, very educated. So they do that to maintain their identity,” Scheuble said.

Today, in many lines of work, one’s professional reputation is inextricably tied to one’s Google search results.

Molly Weissman, for example, published some work as a journalist before her marriage. In addition to using both last names on Facebook, she sometimes refers to herself as Molly Lister Weissman in more formal online settings, too, such as her outgoing work-email signature, so her current work retains some identifiable link to her old articles.

Of course, one of the many ways in which social media has altered humans’ interactions is by making casual friendships easier to maintain over wide distances and to pick back up after long periods of dormancy — making social recognizability just as important to many as professional The Atlantic Online recognizability.