Tech of the Day

[Daniel E.]

Apple Fitness+ Review: Either Right on Time or Much Too Late | WIRED
Dec. 22, 2020

Apple invites users to sweat along with prerecorded classes on its new streaming workout platform—but the experience lags behind the competition.

Apple Fitness+ is … fine? I signed up for a three-month free trial, so I'll continue to use it in rotation with other workout activities and apps. It's one of the finest integrations of fitness and tech I've experienced-assuming "integration" is really a thing to want in home fitness. The app doesn't offer the live classes or coaching for outdoor runs you'll find on other platforms, and in general the Fitness+ classes lack the entertainment value that Peloton has. Those things could improve over time. The one thing that's likely not going to change: You're gonna need a lot of Apple products to use Apple Fitness+.

Rating: 6/10

WIRED:

Seamless interaction between Apple Watch, iPhone, and Apple TV. Diverse group of instructors with varying fitness and dance backgrounds. Workouts are not intimidating, and most offer modified versions of exercise. Seeing your heart rate and “rings” on the big screen is cool.

TIRED:

Requires an Apple Watch Series 3 [$169] or newer in order to access the Fitness+ app … which means you have to own an iPhone too. Also requires an Apple TV if you want to cast to a larger screen. No live classes, and no coaching for outdoor walks or runs. No built-in social network either.

 

[Daniel E.]

Apple Fitness+ review | Engadget

 

[Daniel E.]

Leading computer scientists debate the next steps for AI in 2021 | VentureBeat

Cognitive scientist Gary Marcus, who cohosted the debate, reiterated some of the key shortcomings of deep learning, including excessive data requirements, low capacity for transferring knowledge to other domains, opacity, and a lack of reasoning and knowledge representation.

Marcus, who is an outspoken critic of deep learning–only approaches, published a paper in early 2020 in which he suggested a hybrid approach that combines learning algorithms with rules-based software.

Other speakers also pointed to hybrid artificial intelligence as a possible solution to the challenges deep learning faces.

 

[Daniel E.]

26 great apps for your new 2020 Windows PC - The Verge

 

[Daniel E.]

Get an On-Screen Windows Key Shortcut Guide on Windows 10

 

[Daniel E.]

Link your Android phone or iPhone to Windows 10 PC

Your Phone - Wikipedia

Google Play Store: Your Phone Companion - Link to Windows

iOS App Store: Continue on PC

 

[David Baxter PhD]

Link your Android phone or iPhone to Windows 10 PC

Your Phone - Wikipedia

Google Play Store: Your Phone Companion - Link to Windows

iOS App Store: Continue on PC

Unfortunately you can't do much yet with iOS except send stuff to your PC to open in a browser there or print.

If you have an Android, I think you can send and receive SMS messages and do other stuff. Will be nice if Apple ever catches up but they have very strict compliance requirements, one of the reasons they have fewer security breaches. Most of the Android security vulnerabilities are through their apps. They just had to withdraw something like 20 for major security problems. Apple weeds those out in advance.

 

[Daniel E.]

Gyms aren't coming back. Here's how you'll work out in the future

Alexandra Bonetti, founder and CEO of tech startup Talent Hack, says she's seen a spike in instructors joining her platform, which connects them directly with clients without the gym as a middleman. Bonetti launched the company after nine years of owning a fitness studio in New York, where she observed tension growing between gyms and instructors. "It was so clear to me that clients came in because they felt a bond with a particular instructor," she says. "And yet many instructors didn't feel like they had the autonomy to manage their relationship with the client."

 

[Daniel E.]

Thousands of Open Access ebooks on JSTOR "are available from top scholarly publishers, including Brill, Cornell University Press, De Gruyter, and University of California Press."



I searched with different keywords and found this free ebook:

Wounds and Words: Childhood and Family Trauma in Romantic and Postmodern Fiction

You can also browse by subject, etc.

 

[Daniel E.]

Open-access tech books:

ApressOpen Browse Titles

Learn more about Apress' open source content, how to publish with ApressOpen, and browse out freely available quality content.

www.apress.com

 

[Daniel E.]

Patient and physician perspectives of a smartphone application for depression: a qualitative study - BMC Psychiatry

Background Despite an increasing number of smartphone apps, such therapeutic tools have not yet consistently demonstrated their efficacy and many suffer from low retention rates. To ensure the development of efficient apps associated with high adherence, we aimed to identify, through a...

bmcpsychiatry.biomedcentral.com

29 January 2021

Despite an increasing number of smartphone apps, such therapeutic tools have not yet consistently demonstrated their efficacy and many suffer from low retention rates. To ensure the development of efficient apps associated with high adherence, we aimed to identify, through a user-centred design approach, patient and physician expectations of a hypothetical app dedicated to depression...

Physician and patient expectations of a hypothetical smartphone app dedicated to depression are high and confirmed the important role it could play in depression care. The key points expected by the users for such a tool are an easy and intuitive use and a personalised content. They are also waiting for an app that gives information about depression, offers a self-monitoring functionality and helps them in case of emergency.

 

[Daniel E.]

List of Internet top-level domains - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[Daniel E.]

This is like Audible, but a 15 minute summary version.

Each day, there is a new free offering:

https://www.blinkist.com/nc/daily

 

[Daniel E.]

For dog barking and other background noise during Zoom calls:

Background noise suppression settings for videos

The Zoom desktop client has options that utilize a noise suppression filter which can help remove distracting noises that are picked up by participants' microphones and improve audio quality. Backg...

support.zoom.us

"By default Zoom automatically does do background noise reduction, however the option can be changed to be more or less aggressive based on the environment and use case."

 

[David Baxter PhD]

Very cool. Does Zoom also have built-in backgrounds?

 

[Daniel E.]

Good point. I just found this, though ideally one has a green screen.

Changing your Virtual Background image

The Virtual Background feature allows you to display an image or video as your background during a Zoom meeting. This feature works best with a physical green screen and uniform lighting to allow Z...

support.zoom.us

 

[David Baxter PhD]

I was avoiding Zoom for a while because of the security issues but I believe they have fixed those.

I need to give it a try to help my daighter-in-law with her COVID taxes. Plus it can double as a chance to chat with my grandson, although he likes Facetime.

 

[Daniel E.]

Access To Mental Health: Startups Tackle Sector’s Complexities As Investors Go All-in

Nearly $1 billion of venture capital was handed out to mental health companies in 2020, a 112 percent increase in total investment compared to 2019.

news.crunchbase.com

February 22, 2021

...Investment in mental health-focused startups has increased since 2017. The Crunchbase dataset shows 293 known venture deals since 2016 in U.S. startups working in mental health.

During that time, investors pumped nearly $2.6 billion into these companies. In fact, nearly $1 billion of that was handed out in 2020 alone, which saw a 112 percent increase in total investment compared to 2019. (It’s worth pointing out that the dollar figure is actually higher: about 88 transactions do not include a funding amount.)

 

[Daniel E.]

Effects of using a second-screen application on attention, learning, and user experience in an educational content
May 2017

Using a secondary device while viewing a primary device (i.e. TV), or media multitasking, is now common. Numerous researchers and practitioners have attempted to introduce secondary devices into education as a new learning environment providing additional information to the user. However, the learning-related effects of using a second screen remain controversial. This study examined the effects of second-screen- application use on attention, learning performance, and user experience per content relevance for three primary contents (PC; i.e. videos) requiring different amounts of cognitive load: low, medium, and high. Second-screen use reduced learning performance and user satisfaction when the PC required high cognitive load. However, participants exhibited increased learning performance, concentration, and satisfaction with the PC requiring medium-cognitive-load when highly relevant information was presented on the secondary screen simultaneously. Based on these findings, guidelines were suggested for designing a second-screen application without degrading users’ learning and experience.

 

[Daniel E.]

Track Your Happiness

Track Your Happiness is a scientific research project that investigates what makes life worth living.

www.trackyourhappiness.org