Tag: innovation

Mastering Micro-Learning for Exceptional Technical Writing

Mastering Micro-Learning for Exceptional Technical Writing

Micro-learning has been gaining popularity in recent years as a way to effectively deliver content in short, easily digestible formats. This type of learning is especially well-suited for technical writing, which often covers complex topics that can be difficult to master. In this blog post, we’ll explore how micro-learning can be used to improve technical writing skills and help writers effectively communicate with their audience.

What is Micro-Learning?

Micro-learning is a term used to describe a learning approach that delivers small, bite-sized pieces of information in a manner that is easily digestible and remembered. This approach is designed to help learners focus on one specific topic at a time and retain information more effectively. micro-learning is also well suited for busy professionals who may not have the time to commit to traditional forms of learning, such as attending a live workshop or taking an online course.

Why Use Micro-Learning for Technical Writing?

Technical writing can be a complex skill to master. Writers must be able to effectively communicate complicated information in a way that is easy for their audience to understand. Using micro-learning can help technical writers hone their skills by breaking down complex topics into small, manageable pieces. Additionally, micro-learning is an effective way to deliver training remotely, which can be especially helpful for writers who work remotely or in different locations.

There are four main elements to micro-learning: short duration, focused content, specific learning objectives, and immediate application. When creating micro-learning content for your documentation, it’s important to keep these elements in mind in order to create an effective and memorable learning experience.

Short Duration: The average attention span of an adult human is eight seconds—that’s shorter than the attention span of a goldfish! So when creating micro-learning content for technical writing, it’s important to keep videos, articles, etc., short and sweet

Focused Content: In addition to being short, micro-learning content should be focused on one specific topic or concept. Trying to cover too much ground in one go is a surefire recipe for confusing your audience and achieving nothing in the end.

Specific Learning Objectives: Every piece of micro-learning content should have a specific goal or objective. What do you want your audience to learn from this particular piece of content? Make sure your answer is clear and concise before moving forward.

Immediate Application: The best way to ensure that your audience remembers what they’ve learned is to provide them with an opportunity to immediately apply what they’ve learned. This could be in the form of a quiz at the end of a video or article, or an interactive element built into the content itself.

By breaking down big concepts into manageable chunks, micro-learning can help make technical writing more accessible and less daunting. When applied correctly, micro-learning can help writers master even the most complex subject matter. And because micro-learning content is typically short and focused, it’s easy for busy professionals to fit into their already packed schedules. If you’re looking for a way to improve your technical writing skills, consider incorporating micro-learning into your professional development plan.

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Tales from the Orchard: Hear Steve Jobs nail the future of mobile a decade ago

An audio recording of an interview with the former Apple CEO comes to light.

By Marrian Zhou of CNet

“The phone of the future will be differentiated by software.” A decade later, in the era of iOS and Android, that prediction by Steve Jobs has come true.

Jointly published Wednesday by The Information and The Wall Street Journal, an audio interview from 2008 reveals the Apple CEO’s thoughts on the future of mobile phones when Apple’s App Store was barely a month old.

“I think there are a lot of people, and I’m one of them, who believe that mobile’s going to get quite serious,” Jobs told reporter Nick Wingfield, then at the Journal and now at The Information. “They can be mighty useful and we’re just at the tip of that. That’s going to be huge, I think.”

The App Store turned 10 this year on July 10, and it’s evident that our lives are vastly different from 2008. Today, 500 million people from 155 countries visit the App Store every week, choosing from more than 2 million apps available for download, according to Statista.

The Apple co-founder, who passed away in October 2011, also got it right when it comes to mobile games.

“You’ve got everything from games to medical software to business analytics software to all sorts of stuff on it,” Jobs said in the 2008 interview, “but games is the single biggest category … I actually think the iPhone and the iPod touch may emerge as really viable devices in this mobile gaming market this holiday season.”

Today, the games category of apps available on the App Store tops the platform with a 25 percent market share, according to Statista. The second largest category is business apps, with a 10 percent market share.

Apple didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

You can listen to the full interview at The Information or The Wall Street Journal.

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Tales form the Orchard: Apple may release new iPhone colors this year, including red, blue, and orange

 

 

 

  • Apple is expected to release three new iPhone models this fall.
  • The least expensive model could come in a variety of colors, including blue, red, and orange, according to an analyst.

By Kid Leswing of Business Insider

Apple could release an iPhone later this year with gray, white, blue, red, and orange color options.

The colorful new phone would be a less expensive model that has facial recognition and an edge-to-edge screen, according to details from the TF International Securities analyst Ming-Chi Kuo shared by 9to5Mac.

The iPhone 8 is available in silver, black, gold, and red. The iPhone X comes in silver and black.

Apple watchers are expecting three new iPhones this year: one that looks like the iPhone X but with updated components; a supersize version of the iPhone X; and a less expensive, colorful iPhone with an edge-to-edge LCD screen and facial recognition that costs $650 to $750.

The supersize iPhone X could come in another new color — gold — according to the note shared by 9to5Mac.

Apple most recently released a lower-cost iPhone model with the iPhone 5c in 2013. That too came in a variety of colors, but it was not as strong a seller as Apple had hoped, and the model was discontinued soon after its release.

Kuo is a well-regarded analyst who often reveals new details about Apple’s production plans before they are public. While he was at another bank last November, he shared this graphic with his prediction about the 2018 iPhone lineup:

 

How do you feel about the potential colors for the new iPhone lineup? Sound off in the comments below!

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Tales from the Orchard: How Apple Killed Innovation

 

 

 

By Simon Rockman of Forbes

Mobile World Congress 2018 was strange. All the innovation was in the network side, handsets have become boring. While those touting 5G were talking about network slicing, full duplex radio, millimetre waves and massive MIMO, the handset folks seemed to think a better camera, smaller bezels and painful emojis were in some way special.

Phones were not always like that. Back before Barcelona it was the 3GSM, which those of us on What Mobile Magazine called the Cannes Phone Festival. Each handset manufacturer had something new and exciting. Maybe it was the 8810, Razr or P800, all fabulous innovative phones. Sometimes it was the N-gage, V.box or Serenata. At least they tried.

But somehow there is the Orwellian myth that Apple invented the Smartphone. Indeed there was a recent BBC radio documentary charting the need to de-tox from smartphones which said ‘now the country which invented the smartphone is working on the cure’. I did a triple-take. Was the BBC saying that Apple invented the smartphone? It was, so Radio 4 was wrong, but America did invent the smartphone, it’s just that the SIMON was an IBM invention. So the BBC was right, but didn’t know it. SIMON was the first ever smartphone, with predictive text and a touch screen 13 years before Steve Jobs sprinkled marketing fairy dust over an overpriced 2G phone with severe signalling problems, broken Bluetooth and the inability to send a picture message.

Nothing in the iPhone was something which hadn’t been seen before, it’s often seen as the flagbearer for the devices we have in our pockets, and maybe it was: Apple showed that marketing was more important than technology. The mobile phone industry is suffering the consequences, not only has Apple sucked all the revenue out of the rest of the industry it imposes huge technical challenges by ignoring standards.

I work at a mobile network which doesn’t sell Apple products and yet we’ve had to spend a huge amount of time and money making sure that our customers don’t get corrupted messages when they are sent from an iPhone.

We went from a world of bars, flips, clams, sliders and rotators each with a design language where you could spot the manufacturer from styling cues to a world of two designs. Phones that looked like an iPhone and phones that looked like a Blackberry. Now all phones are just black rectangles.

Apple charges operators through the nose. It’s taken all the portal revenue and now no-one makes any money out of devices so there is no fundamental research done. It all comes down to what Qualcomm and MediaTek tell the manufacturers to make. Testing phones is hard, very, very hard and it’s about to become many times more difficult with 5G where the complexities of mmWave testing mean you can’t use cables and all testing has to be done over the air in an expensive-to-rent anechoic chamber.

So everyone plays it safe.

 

It’s not like the ideas are not out there. Plucky Brit start-up Planet Computers has built the Gemini  , The gestating Monohm Runcible , and there are some amazing concepts like the Arcphone which is inspired by the Motorola Razr.

Just googling ‘concept phone’ will bring up a swathe of ideas.

But there is hope. Not just in the form of small companies doing interesting things. Indeed not even in that hope. Planet are very unusual in shipping a product the vast majority fall by the wayside.

The hope comes in the death of the smartphone. You see smart is escaping. It will no longer reside in the one device you stare at but become omnipresent. One trend at Mobile World Congress was increased virtual assistants. Samsung will be there with a dedicated Bixby device, T-Mobile wants you to shout “OK Magenta”, and Telefonica has announced commercialisation of its product. All this follows on the heels of Alexa and her friends. And people like the devices.

As your cooker, television and bath all become smart there is less need for the single smartphone.  What is the phone today will become something else and we’ll go back to the time when phones were used for voice.

Such generational changes are normal, when I started in the analogue mobile phone industry the dominant, unassailable handset manufacturers were Motorola and NEC. It became Nokia, Ericsson and Motorola. The belief that the status quo of today with a dominant Samsung and Apple is to fail to remember the future. Peak Apple? Maybe not yet, but we are well past peak innovation and the disruption can not come soon enough.

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WIT: Why Are There Few Women in Tech? Watch a Recruiting Session

 

 

By Jessi Hempel of Wired

EACH AUTUMN, BUSINESSES flock to elite universities like Harvard and Stanford to recruit engineers for their first post-university jobs.

Curious students pile into classrooms to hear recruiters deliver their best pitches. These are the first moments when prospective employees size up a company’s culture, and assess whether they can see themselves reflected in its future.

More often than not, this is the moment when these companies screw up, according to new research.

Tech companies have employed a host of tactics to help lift the scant number of women and minorities who work within their ranks, like anti-bias training, affinity groups, and software that scans job postings for gendered language. Yet the numbers remain dire. Of men with science, technology engineering, or math (STEM) degrees, 40 percent work in technical careers; only 26 percent of women with STEM degrees do. That means that qualified women are turning away from the field before they even get started.

Some of the problems start in these preliminary recruiting sessions, which routinely discourage women from applying at all, according to a paper published in February by Alison Wynn, a postdoctoral fellow at Stanford University’s Clayman Institute for Gender Research, and Stanford sociology professor Shelley Correll.

In 2012 and 2013, researchers attended 84 introductory sessions held by 66 companies at an elite West Coast university. (They never explicitly name Stanford, but…) Roughly a quarter of attendees at these one-hour sessions were women, on average. The researchers documented an unwelcoming environment for these women, including sexist jokes and imagery, geeky references, a competitive environment, and an absence of women engineers—all of which intimidated or alienated female recruits. “We hear from companies there’s a pipeline problem, that there just aren’t enough people applying for jobs. This is one area where they are able to influence that,” says Wynn. They just don’t.

The chilling effect, according to Wynn, starts with the people companies send to staff recruiting sessions. As students entered, women were often setting up refreshments or raffles and doling out the swag in the back; the presenters were often men, and they rarely introduced the recruiters. If the company sent a female engineer, according to the paper, she often had no speaking role; alternatively, her role was to speak about the company’s culture, while her male peer tackled the tech challenges. Of the sessions Wynn’s research team observed, only 22 percent featured female engineers talking about technical work. When those women did speak, according to the sessions observed, male presenters tended to interrupt them.

Similarly, the follow-up question-and-answer periods were often dominated by male students who commandeered the time, using it to show off their own deep technical know-how in a familiar one-upmanship. Rather than acting as a facilitator for these sessions, male presenters were often drawn into a competitive volley. Wynn and Correll describe one session in which men asked 19 questions and women asked none. Of the five presenters, the two men fielded all the questions while the two female engineers spoke very little; finally, a female recruiter jumped in at the end with application instructions. This clearly didn’t entice female attendees. Of the 51 men attending, only one left the room during the q&a. Four of the 15 women left.

The paper also describes recruiters using gender stereotypes. One online gaming company showed a slide of a woman wearing a red, skin-tight dress and holding a burning poker card to represent its product. Another company, which makes software to help construct computer graphics, only showed pictures of men—astronauts, computer technicians, soldiers. Presentations were often replete with pop-culture images intended to help them relate to students, but that furthered gender stereotypes. One internet startup, for example, showed an image of Gangnam style music videos that featured a male artist surrounded by scantily clad women.

In an attempt to appear approachable, presenters often made comments that disparaged women or depicted them as sexualized objects, rather than talented technical colleagues. For example, in one session, a man mentioned the “better gender ratio” at the company’s Los Angeles office compared with its Silicon Valley office. “I had no girlfriends at [University Name], but now I’m married,” he said, suggesting that the better odds had helped get him hitched.
This type of informal banter occasionally devolved into overtly sexualized comments. One presenter from a small startup mentioned porn a couple of times. Another, when talking about a project that would allow banking on ships, suggested that sailors needed access to cash for prostitutes.

The few sessions that featured women speaking on technical subjects had fewer such problems. When these women spoke on technical issues—and connected those issues to real-world impact—female students were much more engaged. In these sessions, female students asked questions 65 percent of the time, compared with 36 percent of the sessions without these features.

While the Stanford research looks explicitly at gender, its findings have broader implications. Namely: First impressions are everything. To attract a more diverse workforce, companies need to present themselves as diverse communities of professionals. Wynn says she’s presented this research to recruiters and people within tech firms. “They’re astonished. They often just don’t know what’s going on in their recruiting sessions,” she says. Knowing where your problems lie is the first step to eradicating them before they block your pipeline.

 

What do think tech companies could do better when recruiting women? Tell us about it in the comments below!

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Tales from the Orchard: Apple Needs to Make Siri Great at Something.

 

 

By JHROGERSII of iPad Insight.com

With the HomePod showing up on my doorstep next Friday, I’ve been doing some thinking about Siri lately. Why is the overall impression of Apple’s digital assistant so negative? There are recent surveys and tests showing it as being competitive with Alexa, Google Assistant, and Cortana in some areas. There is real evidence that many “normal” users aren’t as dissatisfied with it as we in the tech community and the “Apple bubble” are. So what is the problem? Where is the disconnect?

Consistency is Key

I think the problem with the general perception of Siri is twofold. First, I have been begging for Apple to unify Siri across its platforms and make its feature set consistent from device to device. Unfortunately, not only has that not happened, but now we have yet another unique Siri implementation on the way that will be specific to the HomePod.

Users shouldn’t have to remember that Siri on Apple TV can only handle media requests and HomeKit, or that Siri on the Mac can save a list of previous responses, but can’t talk to HomeKit devices. Why can’t we get the saved Siri results from the Mac at least on the iPad? Now we have an intelligent speaker that won’t work for a lot of common Siri queries that we can perform on the iPhone we will use to set it up. Why Apple? Why? None of this makes any sense at all. All it takes is Siri not coming through or confusing a user a few times for them to give up on it and move on.

One positive is that I’m certainly not the only one talking about this. I was very happy to hear Rene Ritchie of iMore also discussing making Siri consistent across all Apple platforms during Monday’s Vector podcast. He was also advocating for Apple to make Siri a cloud-based service that works across all devices, which would also be a very welcomed addition. This could still be done while maintaining users’ privacy, so Apple shouldn’t try to hide behind that excuse anymore.

While many of us have been asking about this for a while now, the fact is that Mr Ritchie has eyes and ears inside of Apple and may actually be able to exert some influence on the situation. If he is brining it up, at least it is likely to be heard within the glass walls of Apple Park. I mean, the guy was able to get an Instagram pic with Tim Cook at a hockey game, right? That’s a lot closer than most of us will ever get.

Make Siri Great…For the First Time

Even as an Apple fan, I have no problem admitting that Siri has NEVER been great at anything. I, like most people, gave it a pass at release because it was new and different. However, when Apple didn’t improve it or truly move it forward after several years, most people lost their patience with it. I have still use it often for basic tasks, such as reading messages, creating alarms, and placing phone calls. However, we are a long way down the road from those tasks being impressive.

In my opinion, for all of the things Siri does, the biggest problem is that Apple never focused in and made it great at any of them. Some of its features, such as entering or reading off appointments or reminders, or setting timers, are very good and pretty consistent. The ability to ask Siri to remind me about a phone call, email, voicemail, or web page that is on the screen is also very useful (for those who know the feature exists).

However, I wouldn’t qualify any of the above features as “great,” because there are still times when they break down. For example, Siri will just stop recognizing the “Remind me about this” command on occasion, and ask me what I want to be reminded about. When this happens, I have to reboot my iPhone to get the feature back online. That just makes me shake my head, because this is a really useful feature that I take advantage of often. It is two years old now, so this really shouldn’t be happening anymore.

Unfortunately, these features are still the best that Apple has to offer with Siri, and they still have glaring issues. Then you get into the real problem areas. Dictation still comes and goes and struggles mightily with proper names and context. Asking Siri questions often just results in a web search that will quickly disappear from the screen. Trying to use context between actions will sometimes work and sometimes just break down. Combine the failures with the lack of consistency and shortage of and restrictions on third party integrations and you have too many pitfalls for users to fall into.

What is the difference?

So what’s the real difference between Apple on the one hand, and Google and Amazon on the other? Both of their assistants have legitimate issues and shortcomings, as well. Google doesn’t play much better with third parties than Apple, and in some cases, Assistant is actually harder for them to work with (although this year’s CES shows that Google is addressing this). As for Alexa, just try using it on a smartphone or other non-Amazon hardware. Amazon has the same issues as Apple with sub-par mics that aren’t set up to be used with a voice assistant.

While Amazon has given third party developers an open door, Alexa doesn’t allow for any contextual awareness with its “Skills.” Users have to memorize set commands and queries, and if they forget, their requests don’t work. I have heard Echo users who are otherwise very happy with Alexa curse it over this shortcoming. Even the most favored voice assistant of the moment has its issues if you get past the hype.

So, both of Apple’s primary competitors in voice assistants have legitimate shortcomings that users are very aware of. Why do they get a pass on them while Apple doesn’t? It is because both Assistant and Alexa are legitimately great at one or more things that users find very useful. If you ask Google Assistant questions, it will give you direct correct answers very quickly. It will translate on the fly. It will search, recognize and digitize written text. Oh, and it has a very similar feature set across the board where it is available. Google handles this better than any other assistant by far, and frankly, no one else is even close right now.

As for Amazon, they doubled down on making the basics near perfect. The Echo devices have multiple beam-forming mics that do an impressive job of picking up your voice and accurately parsing your requests, even in the presence of background noise. The Alexa experience may have a steep drop-off on third party hardware, but most people are using it on Amazon’s because of how inexpensive and easily available they have made it. Their system’s combined ease of use has made people comfortable using voice assistants. And again, like Google Assistant, Amazon’s Alexa feature set is very consistent, no matter what device you are using it on.

Along that same line, another key for Amazon (that Google wisely copied ahead of Apple) is that they made a device that put the voice assistant in a different context. Many people are still self-conscious about using Siri and other assistants in public, especially when using a headset or AirPods. While this has become more commonplace over the last decade, it can still look pretty odd watching someone “talk to themselves” while walking down the street. There are a lot of people who are too self-conscious to do that.

The beauty of the Echo is that it takes the voice assistant and makes it available throughout a room. You don’t have to carry a phone around and be subject to the limitations of its mics. “Hey Siri” works, but it is locked to a device that is meant to be with you, not across the room. The Watch is great if you have one, but it isn’t capable of making all of the same voice responses to your queries yet. The Echo took the genie out of the bottle by making a device that is dedicated to monitoring an entire space, and it is clear that users prefer this experience. Alexa was also set up in such a way as to not make users feel less self-conscious about using it in the open. They are having a conversation with a device that responds aloud, so the experience is natural and more “human.”

Another strength of Amazon’s Alexa is the third party ecosystem that has sprung up around it. While I mentioned the limitations of Alexa Skills as being a drawback, the fact that they exist is still a big strength. HomeKit may have been there first, but people have embraced Alexa because there is convenience in being able to link devices that they want to use together without headaches and restrictions. While the defined commands required to use Alexa Skills may cause some frustration, the amount of third party integrations available is still a strength that Amazon has over both Google and Apple.

Getting a pass

The bottom line is, Google’s Assistant and Amazon’s Alexa do get a pass on their shortcomings, but they get it for legitimate reasons. People don’t get as irritated over them because both of these assistants have aspects that are truly great. On the flip-side, Apple doesn’t get a pass for Siri’s shortcomings because there isn’t a similar feature that it has or task it performs that is similarly great. There is no positive bubble or reality distortion field here. Without that, people will pile on the negative aspects and won’t give much credit for the things that are good.

Every time I hear Siri discussed on a tech podcast, even an Apple-centric podcast, this is what it comes down to. There are complaints and the typical, “Siri sucks” comments. Then someone will usually mention a feature or two that is good and works well for them, and people will backpedal a bit and agree. Then there is usually a more reasonable discussion about all the things that don’t work as well. I hear the exact same in reverse with discussion on Assistant and Alexa, with the overall impression being positive. However, you will often hear the same backpedaling and admissions that certain features of those assistants don’t work so well. These overall positive and negative impressions come down to doing a few things very well, and the reactions around the three assistants are remarkably consistent across the tech world because of this.

We just heard a rumor this week that Apple is scaling back the planned features in iOS 12 to focus on software stability. I can only hope that Siri will be one of the items that will be focused on over the course of this year as part of this. The fact that Craig Federighi was supposedly behind this move and that Siri is now under his jurisdiction is cause for some optimism that improvements will be made going forward into 2018. Even if Apple won’t say it, the moves they have made to bolster their AI and machine learning efforts over the last two years, as well their downplaying of Siri as an intelligent assistant in the first HomePod, show me that they see the problems. However, the question remains- do they have the right answers to fix them?

If Apple can create a more consistent user experience for Siri across all of its platforms, it will help cut down on frustration and might actually encourage more Apple device owners to use it. However, to turn around the service’s tarnished reputation and get it seen in a favorable light, Apple needs to double down on one or two core features that they know users want to be improved. They need to taken them, hammer everything out and make them great, whatever that takes.

I’m talking bulletproof. Rock solid. The kind of great that no reviewer can deny. That is what it will take to turn heads at this point, so that’s what they have to do.

The current path of incremental upgrades and new feature additions isn’t improving the situation or user’s impressions of Siri. Apple needs something that its competitors already have. They need something great to hang Siri’s hat on going forward. Without this, the negative perception won’t change, even if Siri does improve incrementally over time.

What would you add to Siri’s feature list? Sound off in the comments below!

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Tales from the Orchard: Apple can win electronic medical record game with Health Records in iOS 11.3

 

 

 

By Larry Dignan of ZDNet

Apple’s next update of operating system for iPhones and iPads will include a feature called “Health Records” that may ultimately be best positioned to aggregate electronic medical records for individuals.

The move to electronic medical records and the patient portals that go with them has been underway for years.

There are multiple players in the space and tech giants such as Microsoft and Google and now Apple have been inserting themselves into the health care market.

Meanwhile, wearable device companies can also be players in the patient data game. Fitbit and Apple have been partnering with medical device makers and that data can ultimately be rolled up into a portal and health record.

 

So what’s in Apple’s favor with Health Records in iOS 11.3?

1 The Apple Watch and iPhone is a conduit for micro-level data such as heart rate, activity and if in some cases medical conditions. Apple’s HealthKit already gives the company a foothold in the healthcare market.

2 Apple is good with partnering. Just like Apple has with enterprise technology giants, the company has partnered with the leading players in the health record space. Apple is going for the aggregation approach and partnering to suck in data from participating medical institutions in one place.

3 The leading medical data players are on board with Health Records. Apple is starting with a dozen hospitals including Johns Hopkins Medicine and Penn Medicine and has connections into Epic Systems and Cerner. Epic and Cerner are the leading players in the medical record management space. Think of Epic as the SAP of hospital management software. The hospitals listed as Apple’s launch partners run on Epic and Cerner for the most part.

4 Apple is going along with standards. Health Records is based on FHIR (Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources), which is a standard for transferring electronic medical records.

5 The healthcare industry has already done a lot of the heavy lifting. The real work to move to electronic medical records has occurred over the last decade with a push from the government. All that IT integration primed the pump for a player like Apple to bring healthcare data to consumer devices.

6 Apple’s enterprise footprint can be leveraged. When Apple is pitching its health record and portal wares it appeals to IT executives directly.

7 Privacy. Apple has played the privacy marketing well and differentiated itself from Google’s cloud and data centric approach. In areas like artificial intelligence, Apple’s approach is a handicap. In healthcare, that approach is an asset as Health Records will be encrypted and protected under a user’s iPhone passcode.

What do you think of Apple’s influence in our Healthcare System? Sound off in the comments below!

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App of the Week: Out of Milk

Out of Milk, the popular shopping list app, just added support for Amazon’s Alexa and Google Assistant.

By Ryne Hager of Android Police

There are a lot of shopping list apps out there, and that’s an understatement. Back in the early days of app development, shopping lists were one of the most popular simple projects, and even now people learning the ropes typically toss one together. But Out of Milk has stood the test of time for the last seven years. And now managing your shopping list is getting just a bit more convenient via the new Out of Milk voice assistant, which works with both Amazon’s Alexa and Google’s Assistant.

There are a couple of steps you’ll have to make to get things working as they should. The full instructions for Google Home are here (and Alexa instructions are here), but remember that the Out of Milk voice assistant requires you to use an account created on the Out of Milk app or website. Once it’s set up you’ll be able to yell at your assistant of choice and make use of the following features:

• Add and remove items to a list (e.g. “Add rice to my list.”)
• Include the quantity of an item on a list (e.g. “Add two gallons of milk to my list.”)
• Add multiple items at once to a list ( “Add bananas, cereal, & butter to my list.”)
• Check which list their editing (e.g. “Which list am I in?”)
• Switch between existing lists (e.g. “Switch to my ‘Walmart’ list.”)
• Read off items on a list (e.g. “What is on my current list?”)
• Read off all lists (e.g. “What lists do I have?”)

If you haven’t used Out of Milk, it’s pretty nifty. It allows you to add items to lists synced with other devices as well as friends or family. And you don’t just have to type or dictate, it can also scan barcodes. So the next time you toss out an empty bottle or box, you can quickly make sure you’ll grab it on your next shopping trip.

 

 

Ready to give things a try?

You can download Out of Milk at Google Play and iTunes.

Do you have a favorite App for Grocery Shopping? Tell us about it in the comments below!

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Tales from the Orchad: Apple seems to have forgotten about the whole ‘it just works’ thing.

 

By Adrian Kingsley-Hughes of ZDNet

This is the phrase that Steve Jobs trotted out year after year to describe products or services that he was unveiling. The phrase expressed what Apple was all about — selling technology that solved problems with a minimum of fuss and effort on the part of the owner.

Well, Steve is now long gone, and so it the ethos of “it just works.”

2017 was a petty bad year for Apple software quality. Just over the past few weeks we seen both macOS and iOS hit by several high profile bugs. And what’s worse is that the fixes that Apple pushed out — in a rushed manner — themselves caused problems.

• A serious — and very stupid — root bug was uncovered in macOS
• The patch that Apple pushed out for the root bug broke file sharing for some
• Updating macOS to 10.13.1 after installing the root patch rolled back the root bug patch
• iOS 11 was hit by a date bug that caused devices to crash when an app generated a notification, forcing Apple to prematurely release iOS 11.2
• iOS 11.2 contained a HomeKit bug that broke remote access for shared users

And this is just a selection of the bugs that users have had to contend with over the past few weeks. And it’s not just been limited to the past few weeks. I’ve written at length about how it feels like the quality of software coming out of Apple has deteriorated significantly in recent years.

Now don’t get me wrong, bugs happen. There’s no such thing as perfect code, and sometimes high-profile security vulnerabilities can result in patches being pushed out that are not as well tested as they could be.

I also recognize that Apple has changed almost beyond recognition since Steve was on stage at keynotes telling us how stuff “just works.” Apple’s products are far more complex, the company is selling stuff at a rate that it could have once only dreamt doing, and the security landscape is totally different, and vulnerabilities now put hundreds of millions of users at risk.

But on the other hand, Apple isn’t some budget hardware maker pushing stuff out on a shoestring and scrabbling for a razor-thin profit margin. Apple’s gross profit margin is in the region of 38 percent, a figure that other manufacturers can only dream of.

And Apple is rolling in cash.

All this makes missteps such as the ones that users have had to endure feel like Apple has taken its eye off the ball, and that it’s perhaps putting increased effort into developing and selling new products at the expense of keeping users happy.

Apple owes a lot of its current success to its dedicated fanbase, the people who would respond to Windows or Android issues with “you should buy Apple, because that stuff just works.” Shattering that illusion for those people won’t be good in the long term, which is why I think Apple needs to take a long, hard look at itself in the run up to 2018 and work out what’s been going wrong and come up with ways to prevent problems from happening in the future.

Do you think Apple has dropped the ball when it comes to the finer details of their software? Sound off in the comments below!

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Weekly Round Up 1/12/18

 

 

Again?! Steve Jobs may have been a tyrant when it came to the details but, this sh*t rarely happened on his watch.

Yet another macOS High Sierra bug: Unlock App Store system preferences with any password.


With all the Technology surrounding these guys, you’d think they’d pay better attention to the world around them. I mean, I know they live in a bubble, but c’mon!Data Sheet—Darkness Hits CES Amid the Tech Backlash.

 

And my hometown made the list! Charlotte NC for the win!
Tech’s New Hotbeds: Cities With Fastest Growth In STEM Jobs Are Far From Silicon Valley.

Wait, does this mean no more Jitterbug?!
Tech for the elderly is a growing area, but founders should think more about whether their gadget will be used.

 

I think Steve would be more worried about the lack of leadership in his company right now, actually.
The ‘father of the iPod’ says tech addiction would worry Steve Jobs if he were alive today.

 

What, bribes don’t work on Congress anymore? Since when?!
Tech executives join more than 100 business leaders calling on Congress to move quickly on DACA.

 

You know, when I was a kid, I remember my parents writing to Captain Kangaroo and asking him to cut his programming in half so I’d watch less. SMH
Kids and Smartphones: Should Tech Companies or Parents Set the Limits?

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