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The Traffic-To-Publishers Edition Wednesday, November 23, 2016

After A Slow Start, Apple News Is Emerging As A Significant Traffic Driver For Some News Orgs, by Ricardo Bilton, Nieman Lab

Alongside the launch of iOS 10 in September, Apple announced a handful of updates to Apple News, which it launched last fall. Along with some cosmetic changes like a new logo and typeface, the new version of the app brought some much-needed features for publishers, including breaking news notifications and support for paid subscriptions. But for many publishers, the most welcome change was to the traffic it gives publishers, which has grown in a big way.

Auto Regulators Ask Smartphone Makers To Implement Function-limited 'Driver Mode', by AppleInsider

Federal auto safety regulators looking to cut down on smartphone-related accidents and fatalities are asking device manufacturers like Apple and Samsung to develop and include a so-called "driver mode" in their products, a function-limited operating configuration akin to existing airplane mode settings.

MacPlant

Old Apple Computers Make Excellent Plant Pots, by Nick Summers, Engadget

What should you do with old Apple hardware? Keep it and maintain it as the company intended, old software and all? Or maybe donate it to a museum, where fellow fans can gaze at its chunky keys and adorably low-res display longingly? Christophe Guinet, also known as 'Monsieur Plant,' has another idea. For his latest project, Plant Your Mac!, the Parisian artist has converted some classic Apple products into tiny gardens. All of the machines, which include the Macintosh Classic, the iMac G3 and G5, now house a selection of lush, exotic plants in unusual, imaginative ways.

About Apple Watch

How watchOS 3 Makes My Apple Watch More Accessible, by Steven Aquino, The App Factor

I regularly wear a good-looking watch and the accessibility gains I get from it outweigh any annoyances over performance lag. watchOS 3’s growth has renewed my enthusiasm for the platform.

The Wrist, by Ben Brooks, The Brooks Review

I’ve written before how the one thing I like best about the Apple Watch is the notifications — and that’s absolutely true. There’s simply no better way to get notifications than on the Apple Watch — they discretely get your attention in almost every scenario.

But only when I removed the Apple Watch did I realize the painful downside which came with how well the watch excels at notifications: it’s distracting as fuck.

Designing Apple

How Apple Helped Democratize Typography In The '90s, by John Brownlee, Fast Company

There are dozens of reasons why the last 30 years have seen a renaissance in type design. But when you talk to Rickner, you get the sense that one company played an outsized role in democratizing type during those years: Apple. And he had a part in it.

On Jony Ive’s Role At Apple, by John Gruber, Daring Fireabll

Importantly, I’ve also heard from well-placed sources within Apple that there is nothing to this — that while Ive is devoting much of his time and attention to architecture recently (both for the new campus and Apple retail), every aspect of every new product remains as much under his watchful eye as ever. That his chief design officer title isn’t the least bit ceremonial, and instead is an accurate representation of his increased authority.

Stuff

Are Paper Coloring Books & Classic Crayons Dead? This Guy Thinks So., by Stephen Altrogge, SnapMunk

Coco Color is both a stylus and two coloring apps. The digital pen, which only works within the app, provides a combination of 768 different colors, stroke styles, and stroke widths. The styles and colors can be changed by pressing the various buttons on the stylus.

Radio Silence 2 Review: Set It And Forget It Mac Firewall For Outgoing Connections, by J.R. Bookwalter, Macworld

Apple’s software is designed to monitor incoming connections, while Radio Silence is designed to do just the opposite, keeping tabs on applications or other software communicating with remote servers outside the user’s control.

iPhone App Gives Treasured Photos New Life, by David Pierini, Cult Of Mac

The apps also recognize that copying a photograph with a phone can be challenging, especially if a photo is curled, and have tools to correct the orientation. You can even do some blemish fixing, like torn edges and creases, that used to be removed only with an advanced knowledge of PhotoShop.

Make Time Travel With Time-lapse Video Apps, by Shweta Taneja, Livemint

A sunset crunched in 3 seconds. A party shortened to a few minutes. Time-lapse videos used to be a pain to shoot but now with smarter apps they’re as simple as, well, taking a selfie. Here are a few apps to turn you into a video pro.

Pick Up The Pieces Of A Writer's Life In Unworded, by Aldrin Calimlim, AppAdvice

Unworded is a story-driven puzzle game. And in order to drive the narrative forward, you have to solve puzzles by building objects out of letters and punctuation marks, using the clues provided through enigmatic poems.

Notes

Apple Pay Will Change The Way Your Brain Thinks About Buying Things, by Andrew P. Han, Wired

“You might assume from a rational point of view, there should be no difference in spending behavior based on how you’re paying for the item, using Touch ID versus a credit card,” says Sachin Banker, a consumer researcher at the University of Utah. But behavioral economists like him, who mix psychology and neuroscience methods with economics, know that the way you pay can make a big difference in what you buy and how much you’re willing to spend.

Great. Now Even Your Headphones Can Spy On You, by Andy Greenberg, Wired

Their malware uses a little-known feature of RealTek audio codec chips to silently “retask” the computer’s output channel as an input channel, allowing the malware to record audio even when the headphones remain connected into an input-only jack and don’t even have a microphone channel on their plug.