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The Burning-Man Edition Thursday, June 16, 2016

Why Apple’s Global Flagship Store Features Burning Man-inspired Art, by Kif Leswing, Business Insider

Since then, she’s done several commissions for large words sculptures — but the new rainbow-colored Love at Union Square is arguably the most high-profile yet.

“Big words are everywhere now, it’s so funny and I’ve been doing it for ten years. I’ve never seen it in a gallery situation, but big words are in every place on TV,” Kimpton said.

Coming Soon

New For Accessibility In iOS 10, macOS, Apple TV & Apple Watch: Magnifier, Dwell Control, Taptic Time & More, by Jordan Kahn, 9to5Mac

Apple briefly mentioned some accessibility enhancements during its press event this week — watchOS 3 is adding wheelchair specific optimizations to Apple Watch — but iOS 10, macOS Sierra, tvOS 10 and watchOS 3 also have many other improvements to assist users with motor, vision, hearing, and learning impairments.

Photo Problems

Apple's New Facial Recognition Feature Could Spur Legal Issues, by Russell Brandom, The Verge

Both Google and Facebook are currently facing lawsuits over their facial recognition systems, which plaintiffs claim violate Illinois’ Biometric Information Privacy Act. Recognizing a person’s face requires building a faceprint to compare it to, akin to collecting a person’s fingerprint for future reference. According to plaintiffs, that counts as collecting biometric information, which requires more notice and consent than either company is providing.

Why Apple’s Photos Announcement Should Offend You, by Steven Max Patterson, NetworkWorld

Apple boosts its R&D with free research, saving millions of dollars. But it should pay for it by contributing its research back to the community, not just for the good of the community but for the good of Apple.

Stuff

Hands On: Textkraft Professional 4.1 (iOS), by William Gallagher, MacNN

Textkraft Professional comes with a strong set of tools. If it has one distinguishing feature, then it's that the regular onscreen keyboard comes topped with myriad extra options that give you fine and fast movement around the document.

Notes

How Yahoo Derailed Tumblr, by Seth Fiegerman, Mashable

But the team behind Tumblr was derailed for a year by mass staff departures, internal politics with its parent company, Mayer's questionable executive appointments and a flawed attempt to integrate Tumblr's ad sales team with Yahoo’s, according to interviews with a dozen current and former employees from Tumblr and Yahoo as well as conversations with media buyers, analysts and peers in the industry, many of whom requested anonymity citing sensitive personal relationships with the company.

How A GPS Glitch Can Change The Taste Of Your Salad, by Geoff Manaugh, The Atlantic

In other words, even before news breaks that GLONASS is down, or that there has been a regional GPS interruption, the wobbly machines shivering out of line across a family’s beet field will betray evidence of malfunctions in the sky.

Google Workers Manipulated Into Taking More Brussels Sprouts, Fewer M&Ms, by Ethan Baron, Siliconbeat

“In one high-traffic café where Googlers eat free meals, we promoted an unpopular vegetable (beets, parsnips, squash, Brussels sprouts or cauliflower) as the ‘Vegetable of the Day!’ with displays of colorful photos and trivia facts next to a dish containing that vegetable as its main ingredient,” the Google and Yale researchers said. “By placing the campaign posters at the Moment of Truth, right next to the dish — rather than, say, emailing an article about the health benefits of vegetables — we increased the number of employees trying the featured dish by 74 percent and increased the average amount each person served themselves by 64 percent.”

It should be noted that the cafeteria results far surpass the success of Google’s AdWords, which have a click rate of only about 2 percent.

Bottom of the Page

After hearing so many stories about Apple stores in all parts of the world, I can't wait to see what Apple brings to Singapore when it opens its first Singapore store later this year. Please, Apple, don't disappoint me with a standard-issue mall-based Apple Store. :-)

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Thanks for reading.