Up close with Apple HomePod, Siri’s expensive new home

Up close with Apple HomePod, Siri’s expensive new home

Hardik Gandhi   January 28, 2018

Hello, HomePod. Image courtesy of Apple

If it were only a question of quality, Apple’s HomePod, which, after a months-long delay finally ships on February 9, should be an unqualified success. Its audio quality is excellent, especially considering its size.

Seven months ago, I sat is a small room and heard Apple’s 7-inch smart speaker play music for the first time. It sounded good, but the demonstration was short and lacking a key component of the smart speaker’s feature set: Siri integration.

Recently, though, I heard Apple’s HomePod again in a variety of scenarios and spaces. It sounded even better, especially when compared to larger Google Home Max and the aurally excellent Sonos One, the HomePod’s separation of sounds and fidelity to original instrumentation is astonishing.

This listening experience also added the smarts, or utility, that was missing back in June. Apple’s HomePod is, finally, a functioning Siri smart speaker.

Using the trigger phrase “Hey Siri,” HomePod responded to a variety of common Siri questions, activated HomeKit-enabled smart device tasks, and launched Siri-driven tasks, most revolving around Apple Music.

Put simply, Apple’s HomePod appears as good a smart speaker as most and a better audio device than many. However, it’s telling that Apple compares its first smart speaker to both the $399 Google Home Max and the $99.99 All New Amazon Echo. At $349, the HomePod is more expensive than virtually all of Amazon’s Echo line and most Google Home devices. The more comparably sized Google Home lists for $129.

This is a crucial moment for Siri, the voice assistant that now, according to Apple, has 500M monthly active devices. It lives in our iPhone, iPads and on our Apple Watches, but, until now, has never had a permanent place in the home. And it faces an uphill battle.

HomePod’s enters a crowded smart speaker market, one that Amazon owns, with a $350 product. This means Apple must work twice as hard to sell consumers on the HomePod’s ease-of-setup, standout audio qualities and its deep integration with the iOS, Siri and HomeKit ecosystem.

Does all that make it worth it? Let’s walk through some of the particulars and maybe you can decide.

Using the HomePod

From the outside, the HomePod looks like a mesh-covered Mac Pro (it comes in white and space gray). Underneath, there’s a stacked array of audio technology, starting with seven horn-loaded tweeters at the base, a six-microphone array in the center and the sizeable woofer, with a claimed 22mm of travel, pointed straight up at the ceiling. Apple’s A8 chip handles the signal processing.

It is, in all an excellent hardware package that, unlike most of the other smart speakers, uses its own microphones to adjust audio for each listening environment.

The matrix of audio components is not inconsequential. In my listening party, songs like Ed Sheeran’s Shape of You picked apart the track, letting me hear both Sheeran’s guitar picking and the clarity of his voice. It was like he was playing in a small café for an audience of me. The bass notes on songs like Gregory Porter’s Holding On and Ariana Grande’s Side by Side were deep and resonant.

The HomePod setup process is as easy and fast as you would expect from an Apple device. With the latest version of iOS installed on your iPhone, 11.2.5, it will recognize the HomePod as soon as you put it near it. After that, the iPhone and HomePod steer you through a handful of settings including selecting the room where you’ll place the HomePod (it can get the list from the Home app, if you’re using it). It will also, with your permission, gather connections to your lists, reminders and will transfer all your iCloud and network settings so you don’t have to do things like manually enter user names, SSIDs and passwords. HomePod even grabs your Siri settings. Like a male voice? HomePod’s Siri will speak in that same male voice.

Then you get to the Apple Music portion of setup. Since Apple Music is the only natively supported music service, it’s pretty much your only option for streaming music, unless you use the HomePod as an AirPlay-connected speaker for your phone. At least every new HomePod comes with a three-month free subscription to Apple Music.

The combination of Siri and a smart speaker is quite compelling.

Since Apple Music has access to 45 million songs you can ask it pretty much any music question and get a good answer. From playing current hits, to finding a decent 80’s channel to playing various versions of the same song. The more you use Apple Music, the more it tailors responses to your preferences. I also noticed that, even with the volume at 90 percent, the HomePod could still hear when someone said, “Hey Siri, stop.”

Image courtesy of Apple

Apple updated Siri with a full-complement of Grammy-related responses, including playlists of the nominees and, after the Grammy Awards are announced, playlists of the winners. It’s a shame that the smart speaker doesn’t ship until after the awards show airs on January 28.

Siri house smarts

HomePod’s Siri integration works just as you would expect it to. You can ask Siri the latest news and it will launch a news brief from one of your favorite sources (CNN, Fox News, NPR). The white glowing spot on top of HomePod lets you know it’s listening. It has your weather update and can tell you if you need an umbrella. Siri has access to your reminders, so you can build a shopping list by talking to Siri.

It also lets you launch scenes with phrases like, “Hey Siri, Good Morning.” In the example I saw, that phrase triggered the raising of HomeKit-compatible blinds, turning on a coffee maker and raising the temperature through a smart thermostat. I like what I saw, but I don’t think the creation of Scenes in the Home app is as straightforward as it should be. I’m hoping Apple tears down and rebuilds the Home app, so it better integrates basic functions with automation and scene-building.

HomePod is also adept at sending messages to your contacts using only your voice and reading incoming messages back to you, as well. It also handles voice calls, but only as a speaker phone that accesses your WiFi-connected iPhone (you select the audio device on your phone). The Amazon Echo, can, by contrast, make calls to other Echos and those with the Alexa app without the need for smartphone.

Since Apple doesn’t sell information or let you buy products through the HomePod, it’s not interested in your personal information. They encrypt your queries and anonymize your personal data. Apple will even let you turn off “Hey Siri” listening, which means you must touch the device to launch a request (there’s also touch for volume control and mute).

Even with all these smart and home automation features. Apple believes most people use smart speakers like the HomePod for music, which is why it’s so surprising that it won’t ship with the ability to link up two HomePods as a stereo pair. Even after the February 9 ship date, you’ll have to wait for a software update to access that feature. If you do buy one or more HomePods, though, it’ll be worth the wait. Two HomePods playing just about anything is incredible.

What Apple has here is an ultra-high-quality speaker and the first physical instantiation of Siri without a screen. The fact that Apple is finally entering the smart speaker race is cause for muted celebration. It’s attractive, sounds amazing and is an excellent Siri ambassador. And it’s $349. Is better sound and solid iOS integration (plus the added cost of an Apple Music subscription) worth spending nearly four times as much as a decent sounding Echo?

Guess we’ll have our answer when the HomePod goes on pre-order this Friday.

Clarifications (1–26–2018): The HomePod does not support calendar. In addition, the iPhone call connection is over WiFi, not Bluetooth.

How slums can inspire the micro-cities of the future

How slums can inspire the micro-cities of the future

Hardik Gandhi   January 27, 2018

Using AI, pooled energy systems and blockchain membership, today’s deprived areas could become the innovation hubs of tomorrow. Image: Reuters/Danish Siddiqui

---

Soon, one third of humanity will live in a slum. Our cities are at breaking point. Over 90% of urbanisation this century will be due to the growth of slums. By the end of this century, the top megacities will no longer be London and Tokyo; they will almost all be in Asia and Africa, and they will be far bigger than the metropolises of today. Lagos is projected to have a population of 88 million. Dhaka: 76 million. Kinshasa: 63 million. The world is fundamentally restructuring itself.

What if there were a new type of city that is a better fit for this century? One that is more lightweight, light touch and adaptive than we’ve seen before. What if the future of our cities could come from the rethinking of slums?

Sustainable. Walkable. Livable. These terms are often used to paint visions of our preferred urban future. Yet the formal notion of a city is quite calcified; it’s heavy and clunky and inflexible. Cities today lack the flexibility to absorb emerging radical possibilities. What good are new solutions if the system can’t absorb them?

City leaders across Asia and Africa are looking for solutions for their cities. What if they found them in the most unlikely of places: their slums? The informality of slums creates a white space from which a new vision for urban living could emerge — and that’s where the concept of microcities can begin to take root.

Slums don’t have to be a glitch, or a problem. They can be an asset. By considering urban living at the human scale, and from a bird’s eye view, we can redesign slums as more liveable, lightweight and adaptive places. Places that are a better fit for the modern world; places in which a diverse group of citizens can not just survive, but thrive.

What is a microcity?

A microcity is a framework for urban reform. It has three core elements:

1) A microcity is a conversion of an existing slum.

2) It is a semi-autonomous, privately owned and operated Special Demonstration Zone (SDZ) for up to 100,000 inhabitants.

3) Each microcity is designed using integrated solutions. They are urban laboratories in emerging cities in Asia, Africa, and Latin America that will become testbeds for more agile approaches to healthcare, governance, education, energy provision and every other aspect of city life.

City governments will have three main roles to play. First, they can help identify the slum area to be converted. Secondly, they have to lay down the main arteries — the main roads into the area, along with the necessary infrastructure. Third, they pass a resolution establishing the microcity as an SDZ — a semi-autonomous area, similar to a Special Economic Zone, which becomes an innovation lab to test new forms of technology and governance.

Have you read?

• Megacities: slums or saviours of tomorrow?
• Why public space planning is vital to improve slums
• 3 ways to stop the housing crisis killing our cities

Designing microcities involves several core principles. First, we’re using emergence theory — which looks at how simple rules and concepts give rise to complexity — to understand how slums and cities evolve, and we are developing algorithms to both analyse and design the microcity.

We’re placing humans at the centre of the design. Behavioural science can teach us a lot about how people best experience their cities. We start with the human’s experience in the microcity and then wrap the design of everything else around this.

Next, we are using modular, plugin solutions to the challenges of city living that can scale easily. What happens when energy production is integrated and can be exchanged between 100,000 people? What happens when private car ownership is banned and everyone shares podcars (small, automated vehicles)? What happens when creativity is unleashed through experiential education?

In designing microcities, we are also looking at how to reduce the friction generated by city living. One way is to automate; another way is to cluster. Imagine a single mother who needs to navigate work, parenthood and a social life each day. How can we make her life easier? Imagine if all her essentials were clustered in one area. And the design of every aspect of the microcity — its form and function, governance, energy and waste management, for example — will adhere to the circular economy model.

So what will a microcity look like — and what would it be like to live in one? A microcity will be a semi-autonomous area within its city, using a blockchain-based governance system that decentralises and automates much of its administration. It would feature a blockchain-based membership system, for example, that offers access to all key functions through member service hubs that become its inhabitants’ key point of contact for almost everything.

As well as connecting citizens, the microcity’s software would also work seamlessly together.

Imagine a healthcare system that takes care of 85% of people’s health needs through micro health clinics. Or a school system designed for the modern era, which focuses on project-based education. Or a food system that prioritises lab-grown food and industrial community kitchens, with a financial system that provides branchless banking. And, of course, free and fast wifi that connects everything and everyone.

The physical infrastructure would be designed with the same principle — connectedness — in mind. Energy systems that can run on their own solar microgrids, and which are integrated throughout the microcity. A transportation system that prioritises shared minibuses and podcars. A built environment that is largely prefabricated. Skinny streets that limit and slow traffic, giving the streets back to the people and enhancing a sense of community. The microcity will be strengthened by turning those who participate in it over time into shareholders. This will align inhabitants’ incentives to contribute to and improve their microcity.

Decentralising governance is another major building block. To help create a more light-touch city for this century, we’re exploring blockchain and artificial intelligence as tools to enable three things: (1) streamlined access to services (2) partially automated backend governance and (3) liquid democracy on many matters. Every microcity in the world will share the same systems, and will be able to interact with each other smoothly.

How will this benefit microcities’ inhabitants?

We see a pattern globally of slumdwellers being left out. Though they are contributing to their cities as the lifeblood of the services industry, they are seen as illegitimate, disconnected citizens. The microcity model is an attempt to change that. Where those living in slums were once undervalued non-citizens of their cities, they can now participate in creating the cities of the future.

So what’s next? We’re launching the first microcity in partnership with the city of Ulaanbaatar, the capital of Mongolia, and many of its leaders. We hope this joint venture will demonstrate to mayors around the world what they might do to repurpose their slums and, while doing so, create the future of urban living.

This will be the first in a global network of microcities. Our vision is to help establish 100 microcities that will be connected — through their economies, governance systems and identity — in emerging cities across Asia, Africa and Latin America.

---

Designing Atlis, the future of local search

Designing Atlis, the future of local search

Hardik Gandhi   January 27, 2018

How Rainfall approaches all clients as an extension of their team.

Atlis is the next generation of local search, a platform where its community can get real, personalized recommendations for almost any type of business simply by asking. In essence, Atlis has brought word of mouth recommendations to the digital space by rewarding quality interactions from its users with cash, status, and most importantly a trustworthiness score.

When Rainfall was first approached by Atlis in the Spring of 2015, that product vision had not yet been created, or in better words, discovered. The story of our partnership is a journey that includes the creation of a product, a brand, and a new behavior from scratch through constant iteration, testing, and deployment.

Our approach to the next generation of branding

At Rainfall, we call projects like Atlis “full brand expressions” because we have the ability to affect every visual element and touchpoint, not only defining the rules for how the brand is presented, but literally designing each and every component in company’s suite whether it’s printed, on the web, or in the product itself.

When developing any large system we design multiple pieces simultaneously in order to test ideas on a broad scale. Sometimes a particular approach will work well in one situation but not adequately characterize the overall language of the brand. Working holistically allows us to spot those situations and find effective solutions earlier in the creative process.

Creating a full expression involves understanding how the visual language works as part of the narrative fabric without interrupting the audience’s ability to engage. This is especially true in the digital space, as each platform serves a higher purpose than simply communicating the brand’s visual identity. Atlis’s interaction model and methods for information hierarchy are themselves components of the identity, so on the web and in the product those elements are of highest importance.

Here’s a look at what we created together with Atlis.

The Atlis Visual Identity

Atlis helps users make decisions

At the start of our engagement Atlis existed as a big idea and a product MVP. The working idea was that they could be the ultimate platform for users to get trusted recommendations for businesses through a network of their peers. At the time the mechanism for bringing that idea to live was not yet complete, but there was a strong enough narrative structure in place that we could strategically build a brand, a “favorite” between two options.

The Atlis logo, a heart between two dots, symbolizes the platform’s aim to help it’s users make informed decisions when given multiple options. It is quite simply the love that one shows for one business over another. This mark fits with the company’s aim to strike friendly relationships with both consumers and businesses in order to create a platform that is mutually beneficial.

The Badges

At this point Atlis had a visual presence but lacked the personality required to excite its audience and encourage them to engage. As part of a larger strategic exercise in gamification we developed a series of badges to reward users for their participation and become the face of the brand.

We considered all of the individuals that compose the fabric of an urban neighborhood to conceptually link each badge to a stage in one’s knowledge of the businesses nearby. Each badge memorializes the journey of discovery while also putting a face on Atlis.

The Atlis Product

Central to Atlis is its mobile product, the main platform on which community members ask for advice finding businesses or respond to others with their own recommendations. As a concept the experience design is simple. There is a flow to ask for advice, a flow to view and respond to other users’ asks, as well as the necessary user and business profiles.

What started as a simple task of designing each of these flows developed into an approach of constantly iterating to optimize interaction and effectively display large amounts of supporting information.

The Ask Flow

#AskAtlis was a term coined early in the project that embodied the ease by which users would seek information. Our job was to deliver on that promise of ease by making the Ask flow as effortless as possible.

In early versions an Ask was just one step. The user would define what type of business they were looking for, write a brief supporting question, and confirm the preferred location all at once. While this seemed easiest we found that breaking that process into three focused steps resulted in a greater number of Asks and better insight into specifically what users were looking for.

The Response Flow

With over 20,000 users, recommendations begin to roll in almost immediately. Asking is only half of Atlis’s equation, and our main concern when testing the concept was that no one would respond as those Asks came in. Our approach was to make responding just as easy as asking, but with the added support of contextual information. When users opt to provide a recommendation Atlis suggests businesses that they have previously recommended or visited aided with additional context clues such as time of day, current location, and how long ago their last visit was.

Enticement

We knew that making it easy for users to respond wasn’t going to be enough, so we wove gamification into the core of the product experience. Each interaction with Atlis is an opportunity to earn points, increasing one’s standing within the community and represented with the badges developed as part of the identity. For additional appeal, users are rewarded in cash when someone acts on their recommendation and visits a business.

Trust

With a platform for recommendations involving status and cash we soon found it necessary to develop a means by which users could evaluate the advice from others. Were users thoughtfully suggesting businesses or were they recommending a place that they figured the asker would visit for other reasons? We wanted to create a democratized system in which users held each other accountable for good advice and where trust is earned through positive engagement with the community.

A simple thumbs up and down system encourages users to give their opinion as to whether advice is relevant to the asker’s intent. Users who give thoughtful advice increase their trust score, those who try to game the system will see it decrease, simple as that.

Available anywhere

We need to cater to everybody, from longtime Atlis community members, to newcomers, to businesses owners claiming their profiles. This means that Atlis takes on many formats and exists in various contexts throughout the course of a single day or a single user’s journey.

A full application suite serves this purpose, including a responsive web product, mobile apps, marketing landing pages, and soon more. For the web, every element is fully responsive with content and interaction models that adapt to contextual information including location and time.

The result — a positive experience for businesses

Atlis is extraordinarily beneficial for its users because they can finally get real recommendations from locals and friends who know their neighborhoods. With the addition of more ubiquitous touchpoints and machine learning currently in development, the quality of information will continue to increase.

The value that Atlis is creating is just the first step in ensuring a more positive ecosystem for businesses. Businesses can make themselves discoverable to new clientele without average ratings and negativity, while leveraging satisfied customers to promote their businesses.

Rainfall’s close partnership with Atlis resulted in a consumer brand and product suite with wild initial success. It is a demonstration that our approach of honesty and mutual respect with clients leads to work that engages users and encapsulates the brand’s ideals.

---

How Far Are We from a Fully Autonomous Driving World?

How Far Are We from a Fully Autonomous Driving World?

Hardik Gandhi   January 27, 2018

Source: Business Insider

The MIT Deep Learning for Self-Driving Cars course just released their First lecture video (alternatively Here are the lecture notes if you want a quick read)

The Lecture is an overview of Deep Learning techniques and has some discussions on the future of Self Driving Tech as well, and a brief warning about the Gaps of current systems.

Here is the take on how far away are we from an Autonomously Driven Future and a brief touch on Ethics:

By 2017, Computer Vision has reached 97.7%+ accuracies! (ImageNet challenge) Amazing isn’t it?

So how far are we from a fully autonomous World?

97.7% sounds good enough. Is it?
After all driving involves a lot of Computer Vision and it is indeed better than human high scores-so are we close?

The ImageNet Challenge involves classifying 14M images into one of 22,000 possible classes.

How good is this accuracy when its extrapolated to the real world?

Now yes, the classes involved in the challenge wouldn’t all be involved in the SDC scenario but they do point out to one thing, Computer Vision, although it’s more accurate than Humans now, is still not perfect. It isn’t a 100% accurate.

That coupled with the dynamics of the real world suggest that there is a small chance of the Autonomous systems behaving in unexpected ways. Would you trust the system completely in under all scenarios? To handle every situation better than a Human Driver?

The argument made in the lecture is that SDCs as of now will work as tools that would help us drive better. They might even drive better than us, but at points, Humans would need to intervene. We have a Semi-Autonomous year as of 2018.

Roughly, in 90% of the Cases, the Car will drive itself better than us, but for the remainder of 10% cases, Human intervention/control would be required.

A 100% accuracy would have a universal approval, which would require a generalisation over all the unexpected cases too, for example: A situation of 1 in a Million, where a Deer would cross the road and the situation has to be handled.

Lex Fridman argues in the Lecture that the ‘perfect system’ would require a lot more research efforts and increase in Efficiency of Deep learning algorithms. Which as of now are highly inefficient as well (Computationally speaking).

By the perfect case- I’m not referring to the case that a car that can drive itself. The perfect case is where, we’d be so confident about the systems that we would no longer have steering wheels in our vehicles. That human driving would be considered more dangerous than the automated one.

Till then SDCs would definitely appear on the road, we might not have to hold the steering wheels for long durations, no doubt. But there will definitely be moments when Human control would be required. Hence, the term Semi-Autonomous.

---

A brief mention of Ethics with Respect to Reinforcement learning is done:

Qouting an example of Reinforcement Learning- Reinforcement Learning involves set of algorithms where the AI (agent) learns itself to maximise defined goals such that a Maximum Reward is achieved. Here is a Primer for an abstract overview.

Many Times, the System (agent to be Term Specific) behaves in ways that are completely unexpected. (which are better at getting results).

Coast Runners. Source: Lecture Notes.

The example of Coast runners from Lecture: where You and I’d probably play to race and collect Green Circles. The Agent figures Discovers local pockets of high reward ignoring the “implied” bigger picture goal of finishing the race.

The Cutting Edge AlphaGo and AlphaGo Zero Systems have already proved this, by performing moves in the Game of Go that were surprising to Human experts.

So What if we want to go from A to B in the fastest manner, and The SDC decides to take an approach/path that isn’t expected? (I understand that the Traffic rules are well coded into the core systems-but that doesn’t allow us to overlook the possibility)

Given the outcomes can be unexpected, we would definitely need to keep a check on the system.

Source: Lecture 1 slides.

Also the robustness of the Vision Systems is questionable. Here is an example of how adding a little distortion to the image, easily fools the State of the art ImageNet-Winning models.

---

So, Finally: Are SDCs here? With Voyage Deploying Self Driving Taxis in Villages; GM Motors testing their massive production vehicles?

Yes and No. Yes, we have Semi-Autonomous vehicles around us. But A fully Autonmous world is still a little away. One where the cars would not have a Steering wheel at all. A few years- maybe a few decades.

We have a Semi-Autonomous Present (or Future) that is starting to come into shape.

I believe as of now, the SDCs will work well in ways such as the Guardian Mode as showcased by Toyota.

The Machine takes control at points where a human might not be able to act promptly, for example: When the vehicle in front of your crashes and a decision needs to be made in a mili-second. Or in bad weather conditions where the vehicle can ‘see’ better than humans, thanks to the Sensors (RADAR in this case) on board.

On the other hand, when the situations are complicated — The Driver would take control.

On highways, you could turn on the AutoPilot, read a newspaper, play a game. But during complicated situations, a human control would be required over the Autopilot systems.

---

Hyperloop Interface. Around the World in a Minute.

Hyperloop Interface. Around the World in a Minute.

Hardik Gandhi   January 26, 2018

An idea emerged back in the 20th century about a brand new mode of transport involving a magnetic pad to reduce friction. In 2012, when California was all about the California High-Speed Rail project, Elon Musk suggested Hyperloop. For several years now, the world’s best engineers have been working toward a technological breakthrough. The future is a tantalizing secret and we’re constantly trying to predict and infer what will happen. Hyperloop One just disclosed their own vision of the passenger app interface, and you can easily compare the work they did with what we imagined to be the perfect Hyperloop app: https://techcrunch.com/2018/01/08/hyperloop-one-and-here-built-a-hyperloop-passenger-app/

Everything changes at lightning speed, and we can’t always keep up with the latest news. In the meantime, innovations encourage us to think up creative solutions that have everyday applications using smartphones, tablets, MacBooks, etc. Our company has a lab for generating experimental interfaces where we’re always asking what kinds of challenges we’ll get to see in a year or two, like:

• An AR app for studying anatomy which shows you someone’s internal organs when you direct the camera view at them.
• The messenger of the future which will boast additional functions like micro crowdfunding, dating options, and a bunch of other cool stuff.
• A news service which uses AI to predict newsworthy events a spine-tingling 15 minutes before they actually occur.

In this article, we want to talk about creating an app for Hyperloop. After all, they call it the 5th transport mode, with its own infrastructure. So its interface will be totally unique, with its own functionality and usability.

Obviously, what interests us most is which cities are included in Hyperloop’s network, and how long travel will take.

Route Selection

A map of the US emphasizing key cities on Hyperloop’s map and indications of travel time (in minutes, based on speeds of 1080 km/hr). The user selects two cities on different coasts. The interface shows which segments make up the route and calculates general travel time (taking into account stops along the way). We see the route screen, which presents the points of departure and arrival, travel time, cost, and a “Choose Seats” button.

If the trip takes 12 minutes, what kind of service can you offer to your passenger? A meal? Unlikely. Movies or music? We hope there’ll be wifi on board, which is more than enough to meet that demand. What about the possibility of chatting with a new friend? Link to your Facebook profile and the app will analyze your interests and select a spot beside compatible traveling companions.

Let Your Hobbies Choose Your Seat

Sync up your Facebook account and the app filters available seats next to people who share your interests, whether they be web design, subway construction, or volunteer work in Africa. The user can select one or several interests. The app will show your neighbor’s photo and a brief bio, something like: “Okay, we’ll seat you next to Amy Richards, she’s an IT security specialist and has been involved in charity work in Namibia for the past five years.”

What’s the best thing you can inherit from good old airline companies and railroads? Democracy! Hyperloop will suggest several classes of service and possibly even a free trip to go with your submersion into a diverting virtual reality which features ads.

Selecting the Right Class of Service

Standard: a carriage map with densely packed seats. Here you’ll see the seat cost and the number of pre-selected seats. Swiping left takes you to the Business class map, with fewer, comfier seats and more leg room. Suite: this gets you a full carriage including a conference table and opulent armchairs or sofas. Auto: this includes the option to bring your ride along for the ride.

So, I’m right in the middle of my 40-minute journey from Washington to Seattle. Where am I? How fast am I going? What’s going on around me? The app has to be totally able to answer such questions, especially when you’re stuck in an enclosed space in a vacuum.

Useful Info Along the Journey

During the trip you can check out a map with your designated route and trip trajectory. You’ll also see all the information relevant to you: speed, time en route, expected stops, and even points of interest along your journey.

How can a company make Hyperloop more accessible for ordinary people? By lowering costs at the expense of advertisers, for example. But how to tempt passengers into communicating with the brand? Easy: brand promotion should be available to all the passengers on board.

Lightning Speed Delivery

Every station has a special carriage with compartments. Put together all your shipment info in your Hyperloop app. Approach the carriage and use your phone to open the compartment, then insert your package. The mail carrier will take off on schedule and will soon arrive at its destination. The recipient will get an alert and receipt location beforehand. All that’s left to do is to go to the mail carriage and, using a phone, open up the right compartment. Fast and easy.

Conclusion

Cutting-edge technology expands our horizons and inspires us to think about how we’ll benefit from it throughout the course of an ordinary day. These intriguing concepts have been developed by our company, Cuberto, and we totally get that sooner or later, all of this will become reality. We grow and evolve with the times. It’s not just technology that’s transforming, but also our attitudes to everyday objects. As a product team, it’s our job to establish the most convenient conditions for the use of these technologies.

Switching from iPhone 7 to Google’s Pixel 2 XL

Switching from iPhone 7 to Google’s Pixel 2 XL

Hardik Gandhi   January 26, 2018

The Google product lineup

I recently spoke to a friend who said he “didn’t care about what a phone looks like anymore — they’re all the same”. It’s true; pretty much every phone looks like the same cold, lifeless slab of glass and aluminium. Even Apple’s iPhones, once lauded for bringing hardware design to a higher level, have started to feel boring. It seems like the looks of a phone played a way larger role a few years ago. Now, we want a phone that works well and takes great photos.

Google’s announcement of the Pixel 2 phones, Google Homes, the creepy camera, the VR headset, their Pixel buds, speaker and laptop/tablet hybrid made me think of Dieter Rams’ work for Braun—although the great Teenage Engineering also popped up.

Rams has created or overseen the creation of numerous products for Braun. Most, if not all these products, have a certain elegance and timelessness, mostly due to their materials, the sparse use of colour and typography, and their ease of use.

Without lingering on it too much, I think this line of Google products is close to achieving the same thing. Their speakers and Home products look like furniture that will seamlessly blend into their surroundings. Their phones feel like—bear with me—a useful utility made for a human being, rather than a brick of computing power. From a product design point-of-view, the look of these products is an exciting development.

If you’re interested in reading more about Google’s hardware design, have a look at this article on Design Milk.

---

The Google Pixel 2 XL

On size and battery life

I’m not going back to 4.7”

One of my fears was that the phone would be too big. I’ve been an iPhone user since the iPhone 4 and have never chosen the larger model. After six weeks with the Pixel 2 XL, I don’t see myself going back to a small phone anytime soon.

While comparing the Pixel 2 XL to the smaller version, I noticed the difference in size between the two is minor. I’d say the Pixel 2 is more awkwardly sized than the XL version, and the XL gives you a lot more screen. It runs all the way to the edges, while the screen of the smaller version reveals larger bezels. Even if you have small hands, it might be worth holding both before deciding that a big phone is not for you. I worried it might slip out of my hands, but the Pixel 2 XL has an aluminium body and the matte coating provides more grip.

I’ve enjoyed the larger screen a lot so far. Reading articles on Instapaper’s black background is very immersive. The edges of the screen seem to disappear completely. With this phone I’ve done more reading in the Kindle app than I used to, and watching YouTube or Netflix in fullscreen is great.

Instapaper in fullscreen

One charge every two days

My iPhone 7 running iOS 11 was a shitshow when it comes to battery life. I had to charge it around 8pm every evening if I wanted to keep it on until bedtime.

The Google phone’s battery lasts me so long I can afford to forget charging it. On a full charge I can use it for at least a full day. That’s snapping photos and Instagram stories, sending messages on Telegram or Whatsapp, listening to podcasts for about an hour, a Headspace session, and reading an article or chapter of a book here and there. I’ll go to bed without having thought of charging the battery. When I wake up, it’s usually at 55%, lasting me another day before charging it the following evening.

From iOS to Android

Many friends mentioned being “locked into the Apple ecosystem”. For me, switching was as easy as or easier than switching from one iPhone to the other. The phone comes with a dongle you can plug into your iPhone. Within half an hour it has copied your contacts and whatever apps you’ve decided to keep, provided they are available for Android.

After switching I realised I’m more locked in to Google’s ecosystem than I am into Apple’s. I use Google Maps, Google Mail, and Google Photos, as Apple’s offering has sucked on those fronts for as long as I can remember. I only used iCloud to sync iA Writer documents between my phone and computer, but using Dropbox instead was a piece of cake.

Nifty details and customisation

I had a ton of duplicate contacts on my iPhone for whatever reason. Deleting them on iOS is a pain, so I never got around to it and accepted a contact list three times the size it should be. After importing all my contacts, the Google phone first asked if I wanted to merge all my duplicates in one tap. Aces! ✨

It’s details like those that make the Android OS a delight to work with. The control centre is customisable — I know, Apple also introduced that recently — and if the keyboard is not to your liking, you can choose a theme (light, dark, with or without button shapes) that better suits you. It listens to music playing around you and provides you with the song on your lock screen, which is scary and more convenient than I’d imagined. You can choose to set several widgets on your home screen; my calendar widget shows me my next upcoming appointment, if available.

If you feel like going all-in with customisation, you can tap the phone’s build number 10 times to enable developer mode. “You are now a developer!”, it’ll say, after which you can customise even more things, like the speed of animations. I won’t encourage messing too much with those, but the fact that the OS has numerous ways of customising it to your personal preference is a big plus.

Squeeze for help

The Google Assistant — which you can bring up by long pressing the home button or squeezing the phone — is a gazillion times better than Siri. I actually use it now and, occasional screw ups aside, it’s very accurate. Also, you can squeeze the phone to bring up the Assistant!

😏

At home I use a Chromecast Audio to stream music to my speakers. Pairing it with an iPhone was pretty OK, although it did force me to turn Spotify or wifi on/off on a regular basis. With the Google phone, connecting is instant and I haven’t had any problems. I wouldn’t expect otherwise from one Google product talking to the other, but it’s nice nonetheless.

Swiping and squeezing

Fingerprint sensor and NFC payments

The fingerprint sensor is on the back, conveniently placed for your index finger. Swiping down on the scanner brings down the notification/control centre. When the phone is on its back, you don’t have to pick it up to see your notifications. Double tap the screen to light up the lock screen and see if you have any. The way notifications are displayed on the lock screen minimises my urge to open apps, which is a plus.

Photo: Mark Wilson (Fast Co Design)

The phone has a built in NFC chip, so I can now use it to pay at PIN terminals. I had to install an app from my bank to enable it. After that I could hold it near a terminal once the cashier had entered the amount. It has proven to be quicker than pulling a card out of your wallet, and it has worked without fault almost every time.

Photos of my food have never looked better

The camera is great. I’ve taken some photos in low light and they come out very well. It has a Portrait Mode, which blurs the background and leaves you with a nice portrait. Much has been said about the difference between Google and Apple’s portrait mode (one being software-based while the other is created by hardware), but I don’t see or care much about the difference. I’m not going to use this phone for professional photography. I just want to take a nice picture of my girlfriend or a plate of food now and then, and it more than does the job for that.

A photo in low light and Portrait Mode used on a bowl of ramen

Google Lens

The camera has Google Lens integrated. Snap a photo, hit the Lens button and it will try to find whatever it sees in the photo. Again, this works very well and has been convenient for looking stuff up now and then. It’s also built into the Google Assistant, allowing you to open the camera and tap anything you’d like to find more information about. See below.

Google Lens integrated into Google Assistant ✨

A note on apps

The only apps I’ve missed so far are Darkroom, for editing photos, and Things, for my to-dos. Luckily, Things recently added a feature that allows you to email tasks to your to-do list, so that helps. It’s a bit of a bummer that I can’t look at my to-dos on my phone — and judging by Cultured Code’s development speed, an Android app might be scheduled for 2022 — but it’s not that big of a deal. For editing photos I’ve simply switched back to VSCO.

I used iMessage with my girlfriend and 6 other friends, and have switched to Telegram or Messenger with them. This might be a hassle if you’re all-in on iMessage, but it was hardly an issue for me.

Google’s apps are high quality and I enjoy using them. Some apps from third-party developers have proven to be a little less great than they are on iOS. Instagram’s compression on videos taken with an Android phone is lousy, for whatever reason. Instapaper crashes more often than I’m used to, and it expresses the time it takes to read an article in a range of dots instead of minutes. I have no idea why an Android user would prefer that. Goodreads is an absolute mess on Android, but that’s no surprise.

Watching videos on YouTube in fullscreen is glorious 👌

I’ve found a worthy replacement for the iOS Podcasts app in Pocket Casts. For email and my calendar I use Outlook — which is basically Sunrise, rest in peace—and I’ve been keeping my notes in the great Dropbox Paper more often. The Twitter app on Android is fine (as it is on iOS). Google’s Inbox is great for email too.

Overall, the Material Design language does make well-designed apps more fun and immersive to use. As Owen Williams put it:

Apps are full of color, playful animation and fun design flourishes. Where iOS has become flat, grey and uniform, Google went the opposite direction: bright colors, full-on fluid animations and much, much more.

Aside from this, apps are able to integrate more closely with the OS. A good example of this is that Spotify, Sonos or Pocket Casts can show on your lock screen persistently, allowing you to skip or pause playback. Overall, I’m finding the Google ecosystem to be much more pleasant to work with than Apple’s, and agree (again) with Owen that Google is eating Apple’s ecosystem for lunch.

---

TL;DR — I am very happy with this phone

The Google phone is here to stay. I’m not tempted to go back to iOS, as I haven’t missed it since I switched. If you’re considering making the switch, I’d fully recommend the Pixel 2 XL 🔁

I’m currently tempted to purchase a Google Home Mini and might even replace my Apple TV (which has mostly been an expensive disappointment) with a Chromecast. Slippery slope.

I look forward to see what Google will do on their next iteration!

What It Takes to Train The Next Generation of Innovators

What It Takes to Train The Next Generation of Innovators

Hardik Gandhi   January 25, 2018

Unsplash

This article was published on GrowthX Academy’s Blog on August 28, 2017.

Sean Sheppard, founder of GrowthX Academy, discusses the critical skills for the upcoming “Innovation Economy”.

“How do we educate people for a future we can’t predict?” It’s a question that’s been on my mind a lot lately — and, it turns out, it’s been on Sean Sheppard‘s as well.

Sean is a serial entrepreneur, venture capitalist, and the founder of GrowthX and the GrowthX Academy. He’s someone who’s been steeped in modern sales, marketing and growth hacking methods, so I was excited to get the chance to chat with him recently about the skills he believes will be critical for the coming “Innovation Economy.”

The Problem: Our Outdated Education System

Most of us have the sense that our education systems haven’t kept pace with innovation. In our conversation, Sean explains how deeply behind we’ve fallen:

“The modern education system was developed in the Age of Enlightenment to support the Industrial Revolution of the 19th century as a way to take people off of farms and educate them to work in factories. That’s why there are school bells. They’re meant to mimic factory whistles. That’s why we have the people lined up in desks, in rows, because that’s how an assembly line is constructed.”

As Sean notes, this transition was critical. “In the 1900s, 40 percent of the jobs in this country were farming jobs. Today, only 2 percent are farming jobs.” Moving from an agriculture-driven society to an industrial one required education systems that prepared students for the kinds of jobs that were becoming available.

Sean points out that we’re in a similar transition now. “Very soon, 40 to 50 percent of the jobs are going to be replaced by robots and automation. We’re now entering what the World Economic Forum has called the fourth industrial revolution: the ‘Innovation Economy.’”

The Four Factors of Future Effectiveness

So what changes do we need to make to prepare for this coming transition? What skills do students and professionals need to practice today to build competency for future jobs? Sean highlights four pillars in particular that form the basis of his approach at GrowthX (I’ll give you a hint — none of them involve getting an MBA or liberal arts degree).

1. Mindset

I was happy to hear Sean touch on mindset as one of his four pillars, as it’s something I’ve been hammering into my team at Web Profits. Sean and I agree — the future belongs to those who adopt a growth mindset, rather than a fixed mindset.

None of us can predict with 100% certainty what the future of the Innovation Economy looks like (except maybe Mark Zuckerberg). Limiting yourself with a fixed mindset — one that restricts you to considering things as they are, not as they might be — could prevent you from identifying and taking advantage of opportunities as they arise.

That’s somewhat obvious, but Sean added an important note: “There is no distinction between personal and professional development in the Innovation Economy.” You can’t think of your future performance in terms of your career alone. Embracing the growth mindset Sean suggests means recognizing that every part of yourself — from your work to your health and beyond — can, and should, be improved upon.

2. Mastery

Having a growth-based mindset provides needed flexibility for an unclear future. But mindset alone doesn’t fully answer the question of how you prepare today for jobs that may not exist until tomorrow.

That’s where competency-based education comes into play, according to Sean. “Competency-based education models will be the future of education. It’s the idea that we can measure people the same way you and I measure marketing efforts in real-time. We can assess people quickly about whether or not they’ve achieved the competency.”

Out of competency, Sean suggests, mastery grows. “You acquire the knowledge; there’s a framework for that. You practice it to demonstrate that you can acquire the competencies, and then through the repetitive iteration of that, you develop proficiency and then, ultimately, mastery.”

Sean’s model makes more sense when applied to a hypothetical job. Suppose you want to become a growth hacker. There’s no “official” training program; no university you can attend. So how do you prepare for this job? According to Sean, you study the existing knowledge that’s available. You identify and develop the core competencies involved in the job. Then, through practice, iterative improvement and the simple investment of time, you eventually achieve mastery.

The beauty of this approach is that it’s available to everyone. Sean states, “It’s about being a learn-it-all not a know-it-all. It’s about understanding that the foundation of mastery is that you do not have to be born with some natural level of inborn talent or set of skills.”

3. Career

Transforming personal and professional mastery into a career will look different than it used to, according to Sean. “As an individual you have to focus on your career development, and as a manager and a leader, you have to focus on helping people develop their careers.”

Long tenures with a single company are practically nonexistent these days, and our transition to the Innovation Economy will only accelerate this change. Succeeding in this future — in whatever role you define yourself — will require that you take an active role in managing your career, as well as helping guide the careers of others.

4. Community

Mindset, mastery and career are all factors you develop on your own. But, in Sean’s opinion, where things really come together is in a focus on community. “The modern education requires diversity of thought, opinion, background, and experience from a whole host of different points of view.”

Simply put: you need a diverse community whose wisdom you can draw on to advance your learning beyond what you’re capable of on your own.

Sean attempts to build communities like these through GrowthX (the next session starts September 12th), but you can also cultivate your own community by connecting with older mentors, those in other industries and thought leaders you admire.

Now isn’t the time to remain idle. By focusing on updating your mindset, mastery, career and community, you’ll be ready to face whatever challenges come your way in the new Innovation Economy.

---

This article was published on GrowthX Academy’s Blog on August 28, 2017.

---