Apple sees voice messaging as the next wave of digital communication

Apple sees voice messaging as the next wave of digital communication

Ellis Hamburger

The Verge 

Remember Push-To-Talk? Before Blackberry’s ascent, and before the launch of the original iPhone, Nextel’s range of PTT devices were the hottest phones in America. Cell phones were still relatively new at the time, offering high-tech connectivity and voice calls, but PTT devices offered
instant connectivity for a hefty price tag. Then, with the rise of smartphones and the death of Motorola flip phones, walkie talkie-like functionality disappeared. Texting was in. Facebook messaging was in. FaceTiming was in. PTT was out. Today, PTT’s signature chirp can only be heard on constructions sites and in taxi cabs.

But, within the last couple years PTT has become popular again, but under a new name — "voice messaging." As consumers have experimented with the various ways you might reach someone — a call, a text, a WhatsApp message, an email, a FaceTime, a voicemail — voice messaging has once again proven useful. It’s perfect for when you’re driving or when you simply don’t feel like texting. Apps like Taptalk and Cord make "one-tap" voice messages dead simple, and see crazy-high engagement from users. Viber, which has more than 100 million active users, tells The Verge that its users send more voice messages than photos.

VIBER'S 100-PLUS MILLION USERS SEND MORE VOICE MESSAGES THAN PHOTOS

The trend has gotten so big that even Apple is joining the fray, cementing voice messaging as a legit trend. In iOS 8, the Messages app includes
one-tap access to sending a quick voice message

, a task that used to take several steps to accomplish. In the Apple Watch, "walkie-talkie" mode is a feature worth boasting about on marketing pages, and worth elevating above almost every other feature on the device. The Watch also lets you send voice notes inside text messages. Both these functions are easily accessible through the Watch's dedicated messaging button on its side. Apple and others have taken what was most compelling about PTT — that it’s easy, fast, and immediate — and combined it with what’s best about texting — it’s asynchronous and lightweight.

In the future-world of the film Her, people talk to their phones all day and night. They dictate reminders, emails, send voice messages, and carry on lengthy phone calls without any regard for those around them. We’re not quite there yet. Voice messages aren't going to replace texts, however simpler it may be to send one.

There’s an oddness to sending short sound bites that I can’t quite shake. There’s an awkwardness to dictating a reminder to Siri in public. It’s one thing to get caught talking on the phone by a stranger, but another when you get caught blurting out "Yes, ham and cheese!" seemingly to no one at all. From my experience, using your voice to send a message or control a computer is still strange unless you’re completely alone. But then, it’s a godsend.
This is why voice has taken on such a prominent role in operating systems like Ford Sync and Apple CarPlay that work when you
are alone. "Voice is the only way to communicate and multi-task," says Thomas Gayno, co-founder of Cord. "A few seconds of voice has much more to offer than a few hundred characters." Factor in devices like the Amazon Fire TV and Xbox One, which marketed themselves on voice search features, and you’ve found Silicon Valley's favorite new way to interact with technology.

This stuff is coming — it’s just a matter of when. Voice commands already work pretty well in places like the car and on your couch, but soon, you’ll likely hear them more and more on the street. With Apple’s distribution network, which seeds millions upon millions of devices into the hands of consumers, voice messaging could soon become more mainstream than ever. Voicemail usage has been dropping for years, but perhaps not for the reasons we thought. With the right interface, voice messages have proven to be a really great way to talk.

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How Someone Can Track You With a Photograph You Took

How Someone Can Track You With a Photograph You Took

Grant Burningham

Newsweek 

Chances are, if you're currently a living, breathing human, you take digital pictures.
No longer the provenance of fancy cameras, digital photographs can now be taken on pretty much every cell phone out there and uploaded to computers with equal ease and gusto. Today, 91 percent of American adults own cell phones, for a total of 285,649,000 potential citizens out there with cameras. And every one of those JPEGs you upload to your computer and to the web don't just contain images; they contain a slew of extra information, collectively called metadata, that could be used to track you down.

Metadata can be extremely useful to photographers; nearly all metadata includes information like the focal length used to take the photo and the photo's exposure. But more and more often, GPS-enabled cellphones and cameras mean metadata now includes where, as well as when, the photograph was taken—meaning if you post frequent JPEGs, RAWs or TIFFs to the Internet, people could well be tracking you by your photos.

This is not an idle threat. John McAfee, tech mogul and maker of the famous McAfee anti-virus software, was living in Belize in 2012 when he was sought by police as a “person of interest” in a murder case. Convinced the police had it in for him, he fled Belize for the jungles of Guatamala — only to be tracked down by a Twitter user when two reporters from Vice magazine, who’d joined him on his trek, posted photographs online with the metadata still included.

And there’s no need for Vice Magazine to be involved, either: anyone could be just as easily tracked by way of their Facebook photo album. Already websites have popped up aiming to raise awareness of the problem. The most well-known example, IKnowWhereYourCatLives.com, raises the privacy red flag by tracking public pictures of cats to their owner's homes. Despite the site-owner’s (truthful) claim that he’s only showing what’s already public, the site can be a creepfest to look at — especially if you’ve posted a picture of your cat taken, well, anywhere close to your home.

Luckily, if you'd prefer to post to Instagram without people knowing where or when you took your photos, stripping metadata is pretty easy. For mobile phones, CNET recommends simply disabling location settings for the cameras on iOS and Android; for photos that find themselves on a computer, there's plenty of freeware for Windows, Mac and Linux that will strip the metadata from files. Those more curious than paranoid can also read their photo's metadata in plaintext by right-clicking the photo and scrolling to “More Info” (on a Mac) or doing the same and then scrolling to “Properties” and then “Details” (on a Windows PC).

And for those times when even stripping the metadata won't suffice? Well, there's always old-fashioned film.

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Double solar storms headed to Earth raise disruption concerns

Double solar storms headed to Earth raise disruption concerns

By Irene Klotz

Reuters

CAPE CANAVERAL Fla. - A rare double burst of magnetically charged solar storms will hit Earth Thursday night and Friday, raising concerns that GPS signals, radio communications and power transmissions could be disrupted, officials said on Thursday.

Individually, the storms, known as coronal mass ejections, or CMEs, wouldn’t warrant special warnings, but their unusual close timing and direct path toward Earth spurred the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Space Weather Prediction Center to issue an alert.

The first CME, which burst from a magnetically disturbed region of the sun on Monday night, should reach Earth Thursday night, center director Thomas Berger told reporters on a conference call.
The same patch of solar real estate produced a second, more powerful storm about 1:45 p.m. EDT on Wednesday.“We don’t expect any unmanageable impacts to national infrastructure from these solar events at this time, but we are watching these events closely,” Berger said.

The sun currently is in the peak of its 11-year cycle, though the overall level of activity is far lower than a typical solar max.

Storms as powerful as the ones now making their way toward Earth typically occur 100 to 200 times during a solar cycle, Berger said.

“The unique thing about this event is that we’ve had two in close succession and the CMEs could possibly be interacting on their way to Earth, at the Earth’s orbit or beyond. We just don’t know that yet,” he said.

The highly energetic, magnetically charged solar particles could hit Earth’s magnetic field and disrupt some radio communications and degrade GPS signals, NOAA said.
The storms also have the potential to impact electric field power grids in the northern latitudes, which are more susceptible to geomagnetic disturbances.

Power grid operators and the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) have been notified “just in case,” Berger added.

On the plus side, the storms should trigger beautiful auroral displays, visible wherever clear skies prevail along the northern tier of the United States. Aurora are caused by electrically charged solar particles hitting oxygen, nitrogen and other gases high in the atmosphere, creating curtains of light above the planet’s magnetic north and south poles.

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Demi Lovato Reveals the Outfits She Feels Most Confident In

Credit: Splash News/Image Courtesy of Sketchers

We were so excited when we heard that Demi Lovato was announced as the new face of athletic brand Sketchers, because if any there's any celeb who flawlessly incorporates sporty elements into her edgy style, it's definitely Demi!

Credit: Splash News/Image Courtesy of Sketchers

Even though the singer quickly goes from fierce stage costumes to cute casual styles, she makes sure that her outfits always represents who she is.

Credit: Twitter

 "My style philosophy is to stay true to who I am. To be my own unique self. That is when I am happiest," she explained during her new campaign. "When I'm on stage, it is probably edgy heels or boots and a leather jacket – as fun and crazy as I feel at that moment. When I am not on stage, chances are I am comfortable in a T-shirt and my Skechers."

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Samsung Galaxy Alpha review: a direct iPhone 6 competitor

Samsung Galaxy Alpha review: a direct iPhone 6 competitor

Samuel Gibbs

The Guardian 

Samsung’s new Galaxy Alpha Android smartphone finally demonstrates that the South Korean giant can do high-quality design and fantastic build quality, and begs the question why wait till now to do it.
The 4.7in Galaxy Alpha the smallest flagship smartphone in Samsung’s large range of devices. It sits under the 5.1in Galaxy S5 as the “design” smartphone, for people who want a smaller, better designed smartphone that doesn’t have to have all the latest technology packed in. Or at least that’s how Samsung puts it.
In reality it’s the first of a range of Samsung smartphones with metal bodies created in response to criticism over its plastic construction. The second metal smartphone will be the 5.7in Galaxy Note 4, due for release at the end of September or early October.

Premium design, build and feel

The Galaxy Alpha is both the most attractive smartphone Samsung has ever made, and the best built. The metal sides with chamfered edges feel great in the hand, and the plastic back has a soft-touch quality to it feeling a bit like a cat’s ear in texture.
It’s also very light at 114g - that’s 2g heavier than the 112g iPhone 5S, 15g lighter than the iPhone 6 and 31g lighter than the 145g Galaxy S5. It is solidly built with no give or twist in the body at all.
The smaller size of the phone compared to the majority of 5in flagship Android and Windows Phone smartphones makes it much easier to hold and use in one hand.
The 4.7in screen is colour rich and vibrant with good contrast and wide viewing angles. It has a 720p resolution resulting in a pixel density of 312 pixels per inch (ppi). While it is certainly sharp for reading text and viewing photos, it is noticeably less crisp than the Galaxy S5’s 5.1in 1080p screen with 432 ppi. For comparison the iPhone 5S has a 4in 326ppi screen and the incoming iPhone 6 a 4.7in 326ppi screen.

Specifications

• Screen: 4.7in 720p Super AMOLED
• Processor: Samsung Exynos 5 octa-core processor
• RAM: 2GB of RAM
• Storage: 32GB
• Operating system: Android 4.4.4 “Kitkat”
• Camera: 12MP rear camera, 2.1MP front-facing camera
• Connectivity: LTE, Wi-Fi, NFC, Bluetooth 4.0 with BLE, USB 2.0 and GPS
• Dimensions: 132.4 x 65.5 x 6.7mm
• Weight: 114g

Eight cores of power

The Alpha uses Samsung’s Exynos 5 octa-core processor, which has four low-power cores combined with four more powerful cores. Only four cores are used at any one time, with the lower power cores used until something demanding like playing a game or producing video is required to save battery.
The phone feels snappy, apps load instantly with no hint of lag and it handled blasting through graphically intensive games like Asphalt 8 without issue.
The Alpha has a smaller 1,860 milliampere-hour (mAh) battery than Samsung’s other flagship phones with batteries larger than 2,800mAh. The battery lasts about one day of solid use, with constant push email, three hours of listening to music over Bluetooth, two hours of browsing and 30 minutes of playing games. It will have to be charged every night, however. The Galaxy S5 with the 2,800mAh battery can last a day and half without a charge under similar usage.
Samsung’s Ultra Power Saving mode, which was praised in the Galaxy S5, works well, shutting down features, turning the screen black and white and limiting the number of apps available to a small handful, dramatically extending the battery life by days, with 10% battery listing around 24 hours of standby.
Unlike most other Samsung phones the Alpha has 32GB of built-in storage for apps, games, music, photos and movies, but no microSD card slot for further expansion.

Android customisations that you’ll have to live with

The Alpha uses the same version of customised Android as the Galaxy S5, and I have the same complaints. Known as TouchWiz, the customisations add clutter to the already good standard Android experience, duplicate experiences like Samsung’s S-Voice which performs most of the same jobs as Google’s built-in voice search, and has less than premium look.
Samsung’s My Magazine social news app, which sits on the very left most home screen and is powered by the Flipboard app, is slow and a detractor for most. Users can remove it from their home screens.
Some Samsung fans will love TouchWiz, while anyone who has used an Android phone before will know how to use it. There are a few good additions like the aforementioned Ultra Power Saving mode.

Fingerprint scanner

The Galaxy Alpha has the same swipe-over fingerprint scanner under the home button as the Galaxy S5 and Note 4. Samsung has spent a lot of time improving it and the difference is noticeable. You can register three separate fingers, but with each finger you can also record an associated thumb, which is the digit most people will use to unlock the phone.
The fingerprint scanner now has above a 95% success rate for me making it useful and convenient to unlock the phone or authenticate a purchase through PayPal and others. The improvements were recently pushed to the Galaxy S5 via a software update boosting my finger swipe success rate from 75% to above 95%.

Heart rate sensor

There is an optical heart rate sensor beside the camera on the back. It works fine, feeding data into Samsung’s S Health app, but I’m unconvinced as to whether it’s useful for the majority of people.

Camera

The 12-megapixel camera is a step down from the 16-megapixel camera in the Galaxy S5, but it is still a solid camera, with good colour saturation, crisp details and fast auto-focus. Photos in good lighting conditions look great, those snapped in lower light levels can look a bit grainy when enlarged beyond the size of the screen.

Price

The Galaxy Alpha will be similarly priced to the Galaxy S5, available for around £500 without a mobile phone contract from 12 September.

Verdict

The Galaxy Alpha is the best made smartphone Samsung, which shows the Korean giant can make very solid, premium metal smartphones like competitors Apple and HTC. It bodes well for Samsung’s new smartphones that are expected to follow a similar design.
The smaller screen, thin profile, light weight and enhanced thumb-friendly fingerprint sensor make using the Alpha one-handed very easy. It feels great in the hand with the cat-ear-like plastic back and chamfered metal edges. The Alpha is snappy and responsive and the battery lasts a full day.
The screen is noticeably less sharp compared to phones with 1080p screens while the lack of microSD card slot hampers how much music, movies and photos users can store, despite having 32GB of built-in storage.
The Alpha is the best smaller smartphone Samsung has ever made and a solid competitor to the upcoming iPhone 6, which has the same size screen, similar weight and thickness.
Pros: Metal frame, solid build, super thin, decent camera, snappy performance, all-day battery life , one-hand use easy
Cons: Screen less sharp that others, low-light camera performance could be better, no microSD card slot

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Taylor Swift Slams Rumors That She's Feuding With Selena Gomez

We almost thought Taylor Swift and Selena Gomez had the kind of rocky relationship that rivaled Jelena, but it turns out that's totally not true! In the outtakes from her recent Rolling Stone interview, Taylor reveals that she never fought with Selena over her relationship with Justin Bieber — and she actually laughed about the rumors with Selena.

"People think they have my relationships all mapped out. There were all these blogs, like, 'Are they feuding? Are they fighting?' Meanwhile Selena and I would be on the phone that night, laughing about it. We let them have that one."

While we knew that Selena and Taylor were hanging out again, we hadn't seen them together in a while, so we thought the feud rumors were true. It's good to know they're still BFF! And if Taylordoes succeed in getting Selena to move to New York, we'll probably see them hanging out a lot more.

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What An Actual Watch Expert Thinks Of The Apple Watch

What An Actual Watch Expert Thinks Of The Apple Watch

James Cook

Business Insider 

We've seen a vast amount of "hands on" stories on the new Apple Watch, but here's one with a difference. Hodinkee editor Benjamin Clymer has published his first thoughts on the new Apple Watch after handling it at the Apple event on Tuesday.
Uniquely, this review doesn't come from a fashion journalist or a tech journalist, but a writer who specialises in watches. Actual watches, the kind with hands and dials.
Here's what Clymer thought of the Apple Watch after giving it a try:

• The design of the Apple Watch is better than any conventional watch priced around $350: "There is nothing that comes close to the fluidity, attention to detail, or simple build quality found on the Apple Watch in this price bracket."

• The Apple Watch's design is restrained enough to be worn by men, women, and children: "They didn't exaggerate the options and make one decidedly male oriented at 44 mm and a girly equivalent at 35 mm or the like."
• Apple's selection of Apple Watch straps are really high-quality: "Changing straps is one thing, but the attention to detail on the straps and bracelets themselves is downright incredible."
• It's tough to fit the Apple Watch under your shirt cuff: "I believe that great design should not disrupt daily life, and a watch that doesn't fit under a shirt sleeve is missing something."
• BUT! ... It's still a digital wristwatch: "I don't see people that love beautiful things wearing this with any great regularity." 

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China misses out on first wave of new iPhone releases

China misses out on first wave of new iPhone releases

Reuters

BEIJING - Consumers in China, who represent an increasingly critical pillar of Apple Inc's business, will not be able to buy the new iPhone 6 as part of the first wave of buyers around the world this month.
Although the two new smartphone models will go on sale Sept 19 in the United States and other markets, Apple is yet to set a release date for China, the world's biggest smartphone market.
The staggered debut is a departure from one year ago, when Apple released the iPhone 5s and 5c simultaneously in 11 countries and territories including the United States, China, Hong Kong, Japan and Germany, a feat that was seen as setting a new standard for its supply chain and retail management.

It also comes after a 50-percent year-on-year rise in iPhone sales in China, which now carries Apple's fifth-generation phones on all of its three carriers, effectively salvaged an otherwise lacklustre second quarter for the Cupertino company.
Apple declined to comment on its latest release plans, saying only that "China is a key market for us and we will get there as soon as possible".

Chinese media speculated Apple has not yet received a routine certification from the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT), which inspects new smartphones before they are allowed on Chinese carrier networks.
The ministry website, which notifies the public of newly approved phone models, did not list the new iPhones as of Thursday. If the MIIT certificate were the only hurdle, iPhone sales could theoretically begin as soon as they are approved.

Adding to the confusion this week was an Apple Web page that said consumers in Australia, China, Hong Kong and Singapore would be able to buy the new iPhones on Sept 26 as part of the first wave of sales in Asia.

In an overnight edit, Apple deleted the reference to the date and removed China altogether from the list of Asian markets to receive imminent iPhone shipments.
Third-party sellers and sales representatives at China Mobile's Beijing branch said the launch date had been pushed back from when they had expected, but offered differing accounts of when the phone would go on sale.

Two customer support representatives at China Mobile's Beijing subsidiary and a sales representative said Thursday they had received a staff-wide notice saying the iPhone 6 will begin shipping at the end of 2014.

A spokeswoman for China Mobile could not confirm that such a notice had been sent or otherwise provide comment. China Unicom and China Telecom could not be reached for comment.
Although Apple has never officially announced a release date in China, Chinese carriers had stoked excitement in recent weeks by taking hundreds of thousands of pre-orders for an unnamed device accompanied by a not-so-subtle number "6" graphic.

Apple's status in China has been the subject of speculation after reports emerged last month that the government has banned Apple products from official use.
Both the government and Apple have denied the reports.

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RIP iPod: Apple kills its oldest unchanged product

RIP iPod: Apple kills its oldest unchanged product

Alex Hern

The Guardian 

An iPod Classic laid to rest. Photograph: Lea Latumahina/flickr

Not everything Apple did during its event on Tuesday was announced on stage by the executive team.
As the company focused the world’s attention on the stage of Cupertino’s Flint Center, it was carrying out a murder in the wings. The victim: the iPod Classic.
By far Apple’s longest-running product, the iPod Classic – once known simply as the iPod – was introduced in its final form in September 2007: the sixth generation of iPod had a thinner body, longer battery life and an aluminium design. Three months earlier, the iPhone had been introduced and the writing was on the wall for the classic.

At the event where the iPod Classic was introduced – and given its new, respectful moniker – the iPod Touch was also born. It had the advantages of an iPhone bar the cellular connectivity but a price closer to the rest of the iPod line. The Touch was supposed to be the death knell for the classic.
But instead, the design showed a remarkable durability. A large part of that was down to the capacity of the device, which started at 80GB and had been bumped up to 160GB by 2009. Next to an iPod Touch which, even today, maxes out at 64GB of space, it appealed to those with enormous music collections and a desire to carry everything with them all the time.

Even though Apple appeared happy to take the classic fans’ money for the time being, every new hardware announcement was shadowed by the possibility that this would be the end for the venerable MP3 player. It was the last product the company shipped with a 1.8 inch hard-drive, an expensive component liable to fail with over-use. And in a world of streaming music services even the idea of a “music collection” was starting to seem outdated, let alone the idea that it needs to be stored on the same device.

Still, we didn’t expect the murder of the classic to be done with such brutality. Apple’s never been a company for looking back but typically when they discontinue a product they offer up something new as recompense. Not this time. The iPod line was not mentioned once onstage – though a redesign of the iPod touch might come in October – and no time was spared for the classic. The future is touchscreens on our wrists, not scrollwheels in our pockets.

Except. Announcing the Apple Watch, the company’s CEO Tim Cook put special emphasis on the “digital crown”, a whole new input paradigm invented just for the device. “It translates rotary movement into digital data,” he told the audience, dazzling them with the “IR LEDs and diodes” used to make it work. But beneath the bluster, it’s a physical scroll wheel, the same technology introduced in the original iPod in 2001. 

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5 million Gmail passwords published, but don't panic

5 million Gmail passwords published, but don't panic

Jon Fingas

Engadget

You might need to change your email password in the very near future. A member at a Russian Bitcoin forum has posted almost 5 million Gmail passwords, around 60 percent of which are reportedly still working. It's not clear how the poster managed to scoop up all this account info, but Google tellsCnews that it comes from a long stretch of hacking and phishing attempts that stole data from individual users. Gmail's servers weren't breached, the search giant says, and much of what's there is old. That's somewhat comforting, but you may want to check if your account is one of the unfortunate targets -- you don't want to give thieves easy access to your most sensitive info.

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Steve Jobs Was a Low-Tech Parent

Steve Jobs Was a Low-Tech Parent

NICK BILTON

The New York Times

When Steve Jobs was running Apple, he was known to call journalists to either pat them on the back for a recent article or, more often than not, explain how they got it wrong. I was on the receiving end of a few of those calls. But nothing shocked me more than something Mr. Jobs said to me in late 2010 after he had finished chewing me out for something I had written about an iPad shortcoming.
“So, your kids must love the iPad?” I asked Mr. Jobs, trying to change the subject. The company’s first tablet was just hitting the shelves. “They haven’t used it,” he told me. “We limit how much technology our kids use at home.”

I’m sure I responded with a gasp and dumbfounded silence. I had imagined the Jobs’s household was like a nerd’s paradise: that the walls were giant touch screens, the dining table was made from tiles of iPads and that iPods were handed out to guests like chocolates on a pillow.
Nope, Mr. Jobs told me, not even close.
Since then, I’ve met a number of technology chief executives and venture capitalists who say similar things: they strictly limit their children’s screen time, often banning all gadgets on school nights, and allocating ascetic time limits on weekends.

I was perplexed by this parenting style. After all, most parents seem to take the opposite approach, letting their children bathe in the glow of tablets, smartphones and computers, day and night.
Yet these tech C.E.O.’s seem to know something that the rest of us don’t.

Chris Anderson, the former editor of Wired and now chief executive of 3D Robotics, a drone maker, has instituted time limits and parental controls on every device in his home. “My kids accuse me and my wife of being fascists and overly concerned about tech, and they say that none of their friends have the same rules,” he said of his five children, 6 to 17. “That’s because we have seen the dangers of technology firsthand. I’ve seen it in myself, I don’t want to see that happen to my kids.”

The dangers he is referring to include exposure to harmful content like pornography, bullying from other kids, and perhaps worse of all, becoming addicted to their devices, just like their parents.
Alex Constantinople, the chief executive of the OutCast Agency, a tech-focused communications and marketing firm, said her youngest son, who is 5, is never allowed to use gadgets during the week, and her older children, 10 to 13, are allowed only 30 minutes a day on school nights.

Evan Williams, a founder of Blogger, Twitter and Medium, and his wife, Sara Williams, said that in lieu of iPads, their two young boys have hundreds of books (yes, physical ones) that they can pick up and read anytime.
So how do tech moms and dads determine the proper boundary for their children? In general, it is set by age.

Children under 10 seem to be most susceptible to becoming addicted, so these parents draw the line at not allowing any gadgets during the week. On weekends, there are limits of 30 minutes to two hours on iPad and smartphone use. And 10- to 14-year-olds are allowed to use computers on school nights, but only for homework.

“We have a strict no screen time during the week rule for our kids,” said Lesley Gold, founder and chief executive of the SutherlandGold Group, a tech media relations and analytics company. “But you have to make allowances as they get older and need a computer for school.”
Some parents also forbid teenagers from using social networks, except for services like Snapchat, which deletes messages after they have been sent. This way they don’t have to worry about saying something online that will haunt them later in life, one executive told me.

Although some non-tech parents I know give smartphones to children as young as 8, many who work in tech wait until their child is 14. While these teenagers can make calls and text, they are not given a data plan until 16. But there is one rule that is universal among the tech parents I polled.
“This is rule No. 1: There are no screens in the bedroom. Period. Ever,” Mr. Anderson said.
While some tech parents assign limits based on time, others are much stricter about what their children are allowed to do with screens.

Ali Partovi, a founder of iLike and adviser to Facebook, Dropbox and Zappos, said there should be a strong distinction between time spent “consuming,” like watching YouTube or playing video games, and time spent “creating” on screens.

“Just as I wouldn’t dream of limiting how much time a kid can spend with her paintbrushes, or playing her piano, or writing, I think it’s absurd to limit her time spent creating computer art, editing video, or computer programming,” he said.

Others said that outright bans could backfire and create a digital monster.
Dick Costolo, chief executive of Twitter, told me he and his wife approved of unlimited gadget use as long as their two teenage children were in the living room. They believe that too many time limits could have adverse effects on their children.

“When I was at the University of Michigan, there was this guy who lived in the dorm next to me and he had cases and cases of Coca-Cola and other sodas in his room,” Mr. Costolo said. “I later found out that it was because his parents had never let him have soda when he was growing up. If you don’t let your kids have some exposure to this stuff, what problems does it cause later?”

I never asked Mr. Jobs what his children did instead of using the gadgets he built, so I reached out to Walter Isaacson, the author of “Steve Jobs,” who spent a lot of time at their home.

“Every evening Steve made a point of having dinner at the big long table in their kitchen, discussing books and history and a variety of things,” he said. “No one ever pulled out an iPad or computer. The kids did not seem addicted at all to devices.”

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Scientists: 'Extreme' solar storm heading to Earth

 Scientists: 'Extreme' solar storm heading to Earth

SETH BORENSTEINAP Science Writer

Associated Press 

WASHINGTON —An extreme solar flare is blasting its way to Earth and could mess up some power grids, satellites and radio transmissions, scientists say.
It's been several years since Earth has had a solar storm of this size coming from sunspots smack in the middle of the sun, said Tom Berger, director of the Space Weather Prediction Center in Boulder, Colorado.
Solar storms happen often, especially during peaks in the solar cycle, and don't directly harm people. But what makes this one more worrisome is its location on the sun along with its strength, he said.
"There's been a giant magnetic explosion on the sun," Berger said. "Because it's pointed right at us, we'll at least catch some of the cloud" of highly energized and magnetized plasma that can disrupt Earth's magnetic sphere, which sometimes leads to temporary power grid problems.
Forecasters don't yet know when Wednesday's solar storm will arrive here and which part of the planet will be facing the sun and bear the brunt of the effects. It could arrive as early as Thursday morning or may take a few days.
Berger said scientists will have a better idea after they get more satellite data. The first part of the storm, which arrives in only a few minutes, has already affected radio transmissions. It can also damage satellites.
The flare is considered "extreme" on forecasters' scale, but just barely so, Berger said.
On the plus side, sun flares expand the colorful northern lights so people farther south can see them..

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