📡 Stuck in paradise 🏝
Welcome to another Pulse — travelling beyond me & the lockdown.
First, I really hope you’re all well and safe; and somehow are enjoying your time at home! (too much to hope for?!)
This one’s a long but exciting issue (at least, I think!); so… let’s get scrolling, shall we?
By the way, a Pulse might brighten a friend’s quarantine… send them one! And teach them how to subscribe if they don’t know. It will feel good; I promise.
— 𝕭𝖊𝖓 𝔣𝔯𝔬𝔪 [ 𝖕𝖊𝖗𝖘𝖕𝖊𝖈𝖙𝖎𝖛𝖊 𝖎𝖝 ]
🗞 NEWS
Google uses aggregated anonymised location data from 131 countries to show which places are complying with social distancing and which aren’t [TheVerge] — People staying at home: White collar professionals with home offices People going to work: Nurses, grocery store workers, yard maintenance workers, postal carriers, construction workers, bank tellers [BrandonFriedman].
Zoom sometimes uses encryption keys issued by servers in China, uses a flawed encryption method, and hence is not suited to communicate secrets [TheIntercept] — they shouldn’t really claim they’re using end-to-end encryption.
Now, it has over 200m DAUs, up from 10m in December 2019 [Zoom].
Facebook debuts standalone Messenger app on Mac and PC, and brings free video calls and chats to desktop. [macOS | Windows] — if you like/use Facebook…
YouTube is planning to release Shorts, a rival to TikTok inside YouTube’s main app, by the end of the year [TheInformation] — is it me or the name could improve significantly?
Apple purchases hyperlocal weather app Dark Sky, ending API and killing Android apps [9to5Mac] — from an Andorid dev/user perspective, it’s a shitty move; from a business point of view, not so much; just a bit.
After reports in tabloids of Houseparty users having social media accounts hacked, Houseparty offers $1,000,000 reward to unmask those behind apparent “smear campaign” [ZDNet] — i could use the money! let’s start digging!
In early March, Apple started letting some engineers take home early versions of future devices to continue work during the lockdown period [Bloomberg] — the whole coronavirus crisis has forced Apple to embrace something it shunned forever: work from home!
🧠 INSIGHTS
The Maldives - Credit: Ishan @seefromthesky on Unsplash
They’re the Last Couple in Paradise. Eventually, It May Bankrupt Them.
Surrounded by a fleet of staff, who are also stranded, one couple is trapped in an eternal honeymoon in the Maldives.
This story is super wild. It’s about a couple who are trapped on their honeymoon due to coronavirus. They are the last two remaining guests at a resort in the Maldives, and the whole staff is stuck there serving them —indefinitely!
Read more on The New York Times by David Zweig.
📊 STATISTICS
@Brave hit 13.5M MAU / 4.3M DAU for March 2020. We will work on getting ration smaller by meeting all your Chrome user daily-driver needs. Sync v2 for all data types + wallet/ledger too.
https://t.co/artKBsQdvA
join Brave — you won’t regret it. 👆
Avg Time Spent in Apps - Credit: AppAnnie
Weekly Time Spent in Apps Grows 20% Year Over Year
and consumers spent record $23.4 billion on apps in Q1 2020, thanks to being stuck indoors! That’s the largest-ever quarter, according to AppAnnie.
iOS accounted for $15 billion of that figure and Google Play was $8.3 billion. Both of these figures were an increase of 5% year-over-year on their respective platforms.
Read more on AppAnnie.
Top Social Media Apps by Download (Feb 20) - Credit: SensorTower
Top Social Media Apps Worldwide for February 2020 by Downloads
TikTok was the most downloaded social media app worldwide for February 2020 with 112.8 million installs, which represented a 96.2% YoY increase. The countries with the most downloads of the app during this period were India at 41.3% of its total installs and Brazil at 8.6%.
Read more on SensorTower.
📱 TOOLS & APPS
to Stories: Trim and share stories to Instagram from any app [iOS]
this is soooooo handy — if you’re an iOS user.
Daymind: Train your creativity and become an idea machine [Brave/Chrome Extension]
let’s give this a try, shall we?
my personal favourite note-taking app.
lil OS: a bundle of apps that make a lil operating system.
super creative; bunch of lil apps (in beta); available through Testflight on iOS
🔍 SPOTTED
Instagram is also working on “Delivery” sticker to help supporting restaurants
This is also part of Instagram’s efforts to help out SMBs during COVID-19, apart from the “Support” sticker that I tweeted about (https://t.co/BioPcwMKyu) https://t.co/zHsh5t4b94
Spotify is working on a new navigation bar UI https://t.co/Essu7JStEY
🎧 AUDIO STIMULATION
Sierra Nevada Brewing Company: Ken Grossman - How I Built This with Guy Raz
Ken Grossman was experimenting with beer before he was old enough to buy it. As a high school student in the late 1960s, he bought his first home brewing kit and mixed the ingredients in a bucket, hiding his early batches from his mother. About ten years later, before most Americans knew what craft beer was, Ken decided to build a brewery in Chico, California. With $50,000, a few piles of scrap metal and some hand-me-down dairy tanks, Ken and his partner built Sierra Nevada Brewing Company, and crafted a beer with a distinctive, hoppy bitterness. Today, as the third largest craft brewer in the U.S., Sierra Nevada Brewing Company – like so many other businesses – faces unprecedented challenges due to the Coronavirus crisis.
it’s one of the first post-coronavirus HIBT episodes, and it’s a great one.
🐦 TWEETS of the WEEK
Today I made a Zoom background of myself accidentally walking in on myself in a Zoom meeting. https://t.co/Rl2AsjfZ7V
Why the fuck did I buy a 2020 planner
My son just asked me if I when I was little I had to stay inside for COVIDs 1 through 18
Walmart said it’s seen a boom in sales for tops but not for bottoms as our new collective work dress code is strictly waist-up.
[meteor hitting earth]
Dinosaur: oh no the economy !!
i, too, feel that about @naval; don’t you? 👇😁
@naval Do you ever get tired of being so wise? Seems like a lot of responsibility.
how about some anti-social distancing?
having no expectations means no disappointments
😂 FUN STUFF
10 of the World’s Best Virtual Museum & Art Gallery Tours [via The Guardian]
J Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles [getty.edu]
Vatican Museums, Rome [museivaticani.va]
Guggenheim, Bilbao [guggenheim-bilbao.eus]
Natural History Museum, London [nhm.ac.uk]
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam [rijksmuseum.nl]
National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, South Korea [mmca.go.kr]
Musée d’Orsay, Paris [m.musee-orsay.fr]
British Museum, London [britishmuseum.org]
MASP, São Paulo, Brazil [masp.org.br]
National Gallery, London [nationalgallery.org.uk]
Image Credit: Photo by Vitor Pinto on Unsplash
This what happens when folk have too much time 🤣 https://t.co/mCyBzFwAjo
you watched 🐯Tiger King yet? 👆😂
“Used – Like New” https://t.co/4Q91Zyl6Iu
The Cooper Hewitt's Tech Collection
If you laugh, you're evil. 😈
seriously though 😂
That's all for this week...
stays safe people — and send this email to one quarantined friend.
i’ll try to stay alive and send you a pulse next week.
ciao
btw, here’s something i wrote this week… and it has nothing to do with anything.