MyAppleMenu - Mon, Dec 14, 2015

Mon, Dec 14, 2015The Robot-Or-Not Edition

Ten-Year-old Girl With Rare Liver Cancer Who Is Too Sick To Go To School Uses A ROBOT To Make Sure She Never Misses A Class, by Hannah Parry, Daily Mail

Ten-year-old Peyton Walton, from Montgomery County, Maryland, was recently diagnosed with a rare, and particularly aggressive type of liver cancer.

The youngster was started on a course of chemotherapy, followed by several rounds of radiotherapy in New York as she battled the disease.

But now the keen student has been able to return to her Montgomery County school in Maryland, if not in person, thanks to a special robot which she has named Peyton's Awesome Virtual Self, or PAVS for short.

1989

Swift To Release Concert Tour Exclusively On Apple Music, by Mesfin Fekadu, Associated Press

Taylor Swift is releasing a live concert special from her star-studded "1989 World Tour" exclusively on Apple Music.

The pop star announced Sunday, on her 26th birthday, that she will release the "The 1989 World Tour LIVE" on the streaming platform on Dec. 20. It will not be available for purchase, but it is free for streaming for Apple Music users.

Apple Gets A Giant Taylor Swift Concert Exclusive (Because It Paid Taylor Swift), by Peter Kafka, Re/code

Apple also gets the ability to use Swift’s name and likeness in promotions at its stores, where it will have big displays as well as Taylor Swift-branded iTunes gift cards for sales; Swift is also going on Apple’s Beats 1 Radio tomorrow to talk about the concert with Zane Lowe, Apple’s chief DJ.

Stuff

SpamSieve 2.9 Review: A Must-Have Spam Filter For Your Mac Email Client, by Kirk McElhearn, Macworld

Filtering spam on my Mac makes my life easier, and SpamSieve is so accurate and so easy to use, that it's one of my 10 essential Mac utilities.

Try PhotoWall+ For The Apple TV To Liven Up Social, Corporate Events, by Dennis Sellers, Apple World Today

The app lets you stream a “wall” of photos on your television set using the Apple TV. If your guests or family members are snapping photos (and, with everyone packing a smartphone these days, you know they are), they can post ‘em on the big screen for everyone to see.

Patina For Mac OS X, by MacTech

Mac users in search of a simple drawing app now have an appealing option in a polished but low cost app called Patina. Developed by a California company called Atek, Patina echoes the simplicity of Microsoft Paint, the widely used go-to drawing tool for generations of Windows users.

BBC iPlayer Goes Live On New Apple TV In The UK, by Eric Slivka, MacRumors

The BBC today launched its BBC iPlayer app for the new Apple TV in the United Kingdom, bringing the popular streaming service from the UK's public broadcaster to Apple's set-top box for the first time.

Channel 4 Brings Catch-Up Subtitles To iPad And iPhone App, by Seenit

Develop

How To Make Your App Zoom To The Top Of The App Store, by Jessica Hullinger, Fast Company

"We were very excited about the ranking," says Azadeh Jamalian, Tiggly’s cofounder and chief learning officer. And rightfully so. With more than 40,000 new apps released into the app store each month, landing one of those coveted top spots is no accident. For Tiggly, it was the result of a lot of hard work and strategizing.

Moving The Washington Post To HTTPS, by Will Van Wazer, Washington Post

In June of this year, the Post announced that we were switching our site to be HTTPS by default, starting with the homepage, the National Security section and the technology blog, The Switch. Since then, we’ve moved over all remaining sections and parts of our site. Today, more than 99% of our traffic is redirected to HTTPS.

The launch was the culmination of about 10 months of efforts, touching not just every technical team in our engineering department but all divisions of the Post.

The challenges we faced in this migration weren’t strictly technical in nature. We knew exactly what we had to do at each step but we faced challenges in the following areas: infrastructure, advertising, and newsroom.

Notes

2015: The Year Windows, OS X And iOS Became Naggy And Annoying, by Adrian Kingsley-Hughes, ZDNet

Even Apple has resorted to nags. A company that was once renowned for the beauty and simplicity of its platforms and applications has succumb to the temptation of using their platform to deliver marketing messages. I've seen nags to upgrade to El Capitan, nags to give Safari a chance, nags to sign up for Apple Music, and even nags to buy a new iPhone 6s.

Give me a break!

Apple’s Irish Tax Deal Faces Further Scrutiny By Brussels, by Christian Oliver, Jim Brunsden, and Vincent Boland, Financial Times

While Irish authorities had expected the case to be concluded soon, they have instead been sent bulky sets of supplementary questions, meaning it will be difficult to reach a final verdict until after the 2016 election, which is expected as early as February.

Cinema Apps That Help Bypass The Popcorn Lines, by Brook Barnes, New York Times

The largest multiplex chains in North America, AMC Theaters and Regal Entertainment, are rolling out technology that allows customers to preorder and prepay for food and drinks from the comfort of their smartphones. The goal is to significantly reduce that pinch point — the time moviegoers spend waiting in line at the concession counter.

Let’s Outlaw Math, by Jean-Louis Gassée, Monday Note

When, as is the case today, organizations use encryption technology for which there is no backdoor, we have safety. Once Golden Keys are forged (unintended pun, I promise), some will fall into the wrong hands. There’s no need to be sarcastic about possible government ineptitude or carelessness in large organizations: Experience shows us that backdoors get broken, especially when the payoff is large enough in financial or strategic terms.

The Quantum Computing Era Is Coming… Fast, by John Naughton, The Guardian

Processors that use the strangeness of quantum mechanics are reportedly achieving much greater problem-solving speed than standard computers – but what will the effect on security be?

Bottom of the Page

So, this morning, I wanted to give money to an e-commerce shop. The site required me to sign up for an account. And to sign up for an account, there's a CAPTCHA. Of which I've spend probably more than a dozen times before the CAPTCHA accepted what I've typed. And then the payment gateway refused to load when I checkout, and I've tried both Safari and Chrome browsers.

So, I didn't part with my money this morning.

~

Thanks for reading.