Tech Brew Ride Home - Mon. 11/04 - Everyone Got a New Logo

Episode Date: November 4, 2019

Your smart speakers aren’t secure in a wild new way, crazy product announcement day from Microsoft and Adobe, crazy new logo design day from everyone but especially Facebook, and Wikipedia makes a big change to citations. Sponsors: Metalab.co go.conga.com/techmeme SoFi.com/ride Links: Hackers Can Use Lasers to ‘Speak’ to Your Amazon Echo or Google Home (Wired) Microsoft’s new Office app for iOS and Android combines Word, Excel, and PowerPoint (The Verge) Microsoft's Chromium Edge browser arrives January 15th (Engadget) Microsoft Teams is getting Outlook integration, tasks support, and more (The Verge) Microsoft Ignite 2019: Meet Project Cortex, Office 365 knowledge-management service (ZDNet) Microsoft is bringing Cortana to Outlook for iOS and Android with a new ‘masculine’ voice (The Verge) Introducing Our New Company Brand (Facebook Newsroom) Photoshop for iPad is now available in the App Store (WCCFTech) The Internet Archive Is Making Wikipedia More Reliable (Wired) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On April 4th, 2023, around 2 in the morning, a man was found stabbed multiple times on a sidewalk in downtown San Francisco. Hey, who did this to you? What happened next turned the story into a political firestorm. Reports have identified the victim as Bob Lee, the founder of Cash App. From Bloomberg Podcasts, this is Foundering, the Killing of Bob Lee, beginning April 16. The tech meme right home is sponsored by MetaLab. I think it's been a while since I told you about their work for Slack. Slack has taken off and it has become known for its gorgeous, bubbly interface with tons of delightful little interactions throughout the app.

MetaLab was there with Slack from the very beginning. Stuart Butterfield and his team came to MetaLab when Slack was a rough, unstyled prototype and MetaLab worked with them to design the app from the ground up. the brand, the web app, the mobile app, and even the marketing site, the whole works. All those fun little interactions, MetaLab worked hard to get those sprinkled throughout the entire product. The design and features Slack is now known for have propelled it to become the fastest growing business application ever at a current valuation of over $7 billion. MetaLab wants to bring that same level of delightfulness and hopefully success to your project. They want to take your idea and turn it into the next billion dollar company.

Have a great new product idea and nobody to start building it. Well, MetaLab is your team. Visit Metalab.co. That's Metalab.co. And when you get in touch, tell them Brian sent you. Welcome to the Tech meme right home for Monday, November 4th, 2019. I'm Brian McCullough. Today, your smart speakers aren't secure in a wild new way.

Crazy product announcement day from Microsoft and Adobe. Crazy new logo design day from everyone, but especially Facebook. And Wikipedia makes a big change to citations. Here's what you missed today in the world of tech. This one comes completely out of left field. Researchers have demonstrated that they can use lasers to inject commands into smart speakers, tablets, and even smartphones to trigger Siri, Alexa, and Google Assistant, even from very far away because lasers. This little trick, quoting. wired can open garages, make online purchases in all manner of mischief or malevolence,

the attack that can easily pass through a window when the device's owner isn't home, to notice a telltale flashing speck of light, or the target device's responses. It's possible to make microphones respond to light as if it were sound, says security researcher Takeshi Sugarawa. This means that anything that acts on sound commands will act on light commands, end quote. In months of experimentation that followed Sugarawa's initial findings, the researchers found that when they pointed a laser at a microphone and changed the intensity at a precise frequency, the light would somehow perturb the microphone's membrane at that same frequency. The positioning didn't need to be especially precise. In some cases, they simply flooded the device with light. Otherwise, they used a telephoto lens and a geared tripod to hit their mark.

As a result, the microphone interpreted the incoming light into a digital signal, just as it would say. sound. The researchers then tried changing the intensity of the laser over time to match the frequency of a human voice, aiming the beam at the microphones of a collection of consumer devices that accept voice commands. When they used a 60-milwatt laser to speak commands to 16 different smart speakers, smartphones, and other voice-activated devices, they found that almost all of the smart speakers registered the commands from 164 feet away, the maximum distance they tested. Smartphones proved trickier, an iPhone was only susceptible from a range of around 33 feet, and two Android phones could only be controlled from within around 16 feet, end quote.

We were worried just about quality control workers listening in on our conversations, but I guess keep your echoes and such away from open windows. For years now, Microsoft has made iOS and Android versions of Word, Excel, and PowerPoint for your smartphone. But to heck with separate apps, Microsoft this morning unveiled a new office app for both iOS and Android, which combines those three productivity programs into a single download. Quoting Tom Warren at the verge. I've been testing the new Office app on iOS for a few days, and it really feels like Microsoft has done a good job of combining all of the functionality

from the separate Word, Excel, and PowerPoint apps into a single office app. The apps are identical, but they're now in a single app that's significantly smaller than the separate Word, Excel, and PowerPoint apps. This new app now feels like a central hub for Microsoft to showcase all of the new features it has been gradually adding to Word Excel and PowerPoint in recent months. There's a prominent action section that includes the ability to transfer files from your computer to a phone, convert images into text or tables, scan pictures into PDFs, and even scan QR codes. These were features that were always hidden away before, but they'll likely be used frequently

now that they're surfaced up top in this office app. They're also useful, quick tasks that you're more likely to use on a phone than a PC, end quote. This new Unified app is not widely available yet, and you'll have to sign up to test it out in a public preview, and so far it will only be available on phones. No timeline on tablet support at the moment. Can you tell that Microsoft's Ignite Developers Conference kicked off in Orlando this morning? Because I've got a ton of Microsoft news still to go. Microsoft announced that the new Chromium-based Edge browser will be generally available on January 15th, with new privacy feature. including in-private browsing and tracking prevention.

Obviously, the move to the Chromium engine was a big deal, but also Microsoft really wants you to know that the new browser will be focused on privacy and security. Here's Devendra Hardware in Engadget. The Chromium Edge browser will also be much more secure than before. In its default balance mode, it will block trackers from sites you haven't visited, as well as known harmful trackers.

And while you'll lose a bit of personalization from some sites and ads, Microsoft says sites should work as you'd expect. A stronger strict mode blocks even more trackers and might stop some sites from working, but it's all in the name of keeping you more secure. The basic security mode will also block harmful trackers but give full access to everything else. My recommendation, just keep it on the default balanced security mode. Microsoft says the new edge and Bing search will also be more secure while using in-private tabs. Typically, you'd expect those to be secure, but it turns to.

out most browsers still track bits of data in private browser tabs. Moving forward, Microsoft is working to make sure searches and browsing aren't tied to you at all while using in private mode, end quote. P.S. going forward, new Windows installations will only feature these new edge browsers, but Microsoft will not be removing the old Internet Explorer apps from current Windows 10 systems. Gunning ever harder for the Slack crown, Microsoft has added, new features to Teams, its workplace collaboration and chat tool, including Outlook and Yammer integrations, pinned channels, private channels, polls, tasks, surveys, and a bunch more. More from Tom Warren, who is obviously putting in some serious overtime today. The integration of Outlook, quote,

will allow Teams users to move and share an email and all of its attachments into a chat channel. A new Share to Teams button will be made available Inside Outlook early next year, and it simply moves an email into Microsoft Teams. It will allow employees using Teams to have a private conversation about an email thread or simply bridge the gap between the systems a little easier. It's not exactly the same as the full bridge that Slack is attempting, as you won't be able to reply to emails and have them show up in Slack. It's simply a static move of an email into Teams. Outlook integration has been highly requested alongside the ability to create private channels and pin channels in the team's client.

Private channels has been in beta in recent months, and it's finally making its way to all teams users this week. Microsoft is also planning to enable pin channels later this year, so you can keep important channels at the top of the team's channel list, and reorganize them into your own custom list, end quote. And speaking of teams, in a way, Microsoft has announced Project Cortex, a knowledge management service,

which represents the first major new Office 365 cloud service that Microsoft has introduced since Teams, which was debuted in 2017. Quoting Mary Jo Foley, who is no doubt also having a busy day, quote, The service is meant to help organize businesses content that's accessible in SharePoint and make it available to users in a proactive way. Project Cortex can turn customers' content into an interactive knowledge repository, officials said. It can intelligently ingest content in a variety of forms, analyze documents and contacts, and allow subject matter experts

to teach the system how to understand semi-structured content, including information from conversations, meetings, and videos. Project Cortex will create and update new topic pages and knowledge centers that are meant to act like wikis. Topic cards will be available to users in Outlook, teams, and office. Cortex builds on top of Microsoft cognitive services for image and text recognition, forms processing, and machine learning via Luis. At the heart of Project Cortex is an updated, managed metadata service, which enables tagging across Microsoft 365.

Cortex can connect to third-party repositories using the new Microsoft search connectors, which are already available for Windows FileShare, ServiceNow, SQL database, intranet websites, MediaWiki, Azure Data Lake, Gen 2, Salesforce, and more, end quote. And Cortana is coming to Outlook for iOS, which will enable a whole bunch of fun new stuff, including reading emails allowed.

There's also now a mail voice option for Cortana. And again, this is iOS for now, Android apps to follow some time in the spring. In addition to that, from the verge, quote, alongside the outlook for iOS changes, Microsoft is also generating a daily briefing email through Cortana that will include a summary of meetings and important documents. This will be available for Office 365 users in the U.S. in coming weeks. Cortana will also be able to organize meetings with a new scheduler feature, That works like how you'd CC an assistant into an email thread. You can tell Cortana the location, timing, and duration of a meeting, or ask it to, quote,

find a time for us. And Cortana will book a room or call and respond via email. Cortana will look at calendars to find free time for everyone, and then email participants a few meeting times before working out the best time and sending a calendar invite to everyone, end quote. Closing up this app parade for today, Photoshop for iPad is now officially available in the App Store, FYI, featuring full PSD editing, layers, context-aware tools, and a bunch more for $9.99 per month after a 30-day free trial. Among that bunch more that's available, as I said, the PSD files are completely identical to a desktop version of Photoshop. Swipe, pinch, tap, scribble, slide. It can all be done fully tactile with your fingers. There's sync across

devices in Adobe's Cloud. There's compositing and rebuttal. touching and quoting WCCF tech. Along with its initial set of tools, Adobe has promised to bring the complete Photoshop engine to the iPad. The app supports multi-touch gestures like swipe, pinch, and so on. It takes full advantage of the fast processors in iPads, giving the best possible performance to users. The design is also native to iPad with a context-aware user interface that only shows the right controls when they are needed, keeping the user interface minimalistic, end quote. P.S. at Adobe Max 2019 today, it was nice of Adobe and Microsoft to have their developer conferences on the same day. Adobe also previewed Illustrator for iPad, their next touch-first app with aspirations to have desktop parity.

Illustrator to iPad will apparently ship sometime in 2020. And also, Adobe demoed a free Photoshop camera app, powered by its Sensei AI, and feature a curated selection of lenses. Basically, this app will let AI edit your photos for you. You can sign up for a limited preview of Photoshop camera today, but it should launch sometime in early 2020. And weirdly, it was new logo day for a whole bunch of things. Remember that new Unified Office app, it got a new logo. The new Edge Chromium browser debuted a new logo as well. And Facebook debuted a new corporate logo. Now, to be clear, this doesn't mean that blue F icon is leaving your phone's screen. This is the new logo for all of Facebook, for Facebook proper, for Facebook corporate, if you will. This is part of an effort by Facebook, the company, to distinguish itself from

Facebook the app. Facebook, the app will keep its branding, but Facebook the company now has a new logo with shimmering text. And yes, you will soon start seeing the new logo when you will soon start seeing the new logo when you say log into Instagram. Down at the bottom, it will say from Facebook. Quoting Facebook, people should know which companies make the products they use. Our main services include the Facebook app, Messenger, Instagram, WhatsApp, Oculus, workplace, portal, and Calibra. These apps and technologies have shared infrastructure for years, and the teams behind them frequently work together. We started being clearer about the products and services that are a part of Facebook years ago,

adding a company endorsement to products like Oculus, workplace, and portal. And in June, we began including from Facebook within all our apps. Over the coming weeks, we will start using the new brand within our products and marketing materials, including a new company website, end quote. The font on this new logo, you font fans out there, is a custom design by Facebook. And there's a ton of snark out there about this logo rebranding. I really couldn't pick a favorite. But a couple of themes that were out there, number one,

why not just dial up a whole new holding company like Google did with Alphabet? And number two, why not bring back that old icon of that creepy guy's face, back from when Facebook was still known as the Facebook? And finally today, huge news from the world of Wikipedia. Wikipedia has partnered with the Internet Archive to turn book citations inside of Wikipedia entries into links to pages in the actual books cited. At least two pages of previews of the book cited. Thanks to the Internet Archives Library of Scan Books.

The new preview links are going live for around 130,000 links citing 50,000 books. Here's how it works, according to Wired. Quote, you can click the name of the book and see a two-page preview of the cited works so long as the citation specifies a page number. You can also borrow a digital. copy of the books so long as no one else has checked it out for two weeks. Much the same way

you'd borrow a book from your local library. Some groups of authors and publishers have challenged the archive's practice of allowing users to borrow unauthorized scanned books. The Internet Archive says it seeks to widen access to books in, quote, balanced and respectful ways, end quote. Our goal is to be a library that's useful and reachable by more people, says Mark Graham, director of the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine Service. If successful, the Internet Archives project would be a boon to students, journalists, or anyone who wants to check the references of a Wikipedia entry. Google Books also has a massive collection of digitized print books, but it tends to only show small snippets of a text. Quote, I've tried to verify

Wikipedia pages by searching blurbs in Google Books, but it's an unpredictable link, and you often don't have enough surrounding context to evaluate the use, says Mike Cawfield, a digital literacy expert and director of blended and networked learning at Washington State University, Vancouver. The ability to read a page or two of context around a quote is crucial to both editors trying to protect the integrity of articles and to readers who need to get to that next step of verification, end quote. Speaking of that new edge browser, I was just thinking this weekend that I think I'm finally ready to ditch Chrome as my main web browser. My intention is to jump back to Firefox, but I thought I'd solicit feedback first. anything I should know about Firefox that would make me regret my decision.

I mean, anything I should know about day-to-day use and things like that. Hit me up on Twitter or at the subreddit at R-slash ride home if you've got any advice. Talk to you tomorrow.