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watchOS 6 introduces several new watch faces for the Apple Watch Series 4 including the new California option. Much like the recent Infograph face, California can be customized in a range of ways to fit your style.
The post watchOS 6: Exploring California and the many forms of the new Apple Watch face appeared first on 9to5Mac.
Google Maps helps people explore, navigate and get things done—and increasingly people are using Google Maps to find local businesses. Over the years, we’ve added more than 200 million places to Google Maps and every month we connect people to businesses more than nine billion times, including more than one billion phone calls and three billion requests for directions.
To help people find the places and businesses they're looking for—both big and small—Local Guides, business owners and people using Maps every day can contribute to business information. We get millions of contributions each day (like new business profiles, reviews, star ratings, and more) and the vast majority of these contributions are helpful and accurate. But occasionally, business scammers take advantage of local listings to make a profit. They do things like charge business owners for services that are actually free, defraud customers by posing as real businesses, and impersonate real businesses to secure leads and then sell them. Even though fake business profiles are a small percentage of the overall business profiles on Google, local business scammers have been a thorn in the internet’s side for over a decade. They even existed back when business listings were printed, bound and delivered to your doorstep. We take these issues very seriously and have been using a wide array of techniques and approaches to limit abuse on our platforms.
These scammers use a wide range of deceptive techniques to try to game our system—as we shut them down, they change their techniques, and the cycle continues. Although it’s important that we make it easy for legitimate businesses to get their business profiles on Google, we’ve also implemented strict policies and created tools that enable people to flag these issues so we can take action. It’s a constant balancing act and we’re continually working on new and better ways to fight these scams using a variety of ever-evolving manual and automated systems. But we can’t share too many details about these efforts without running the risk of actually helping scammers find new ways to beat our systems—which defeats the purpose of all the work we do.
We understand the concerns of those people and businesses impacted by local business scammers and back in 2017 we announced the progress we’d made. There was still work to be done then and there’s still work to be done now. We have an entire team dedicated to addressing these issues and taking constant action to remove profiles that violate our policies. Here’s more information about the progress we made against this type of abuse last year:
We took down more than 3 million fake business profiles––and more than 90 percent of those business profiles were removed before a user could even see the profile.
Our internal systems were responsible for more than 85 percent of these removals.
More than 250,000 of the fake business profiles we removed were reported to us by users.
We disabled more than 150,000 user accounts that were found to be abusive – a 50 percent increase from 2017.
This year, we’ve already introduced a new way to report suspicious business profiles and have started to apply refined techniques to business categories where we’re seeing an increase in fraud attempts. To help foster a healthy ecosystem, we’re also donating settlement funds from litigation against bad actors to organizations that educate businesses and consumers about fraud. As we continue to fight against fraud, we’re making sure people people can flag issues when they see them. Here’s how:
People can learn more about our policies for businesses representing themselves on Google and user contributed content to determine whether or not to report businesses or content for review.
People can flag individual business profiles for removal. We use such reports to investigate content and take it down if it’s found to be in violation of our policies. We also investigate the associated accounts if they’re suspected of broader abuse.
People can report multiple business profiles at once via the business redressal form to kick off the review process.
Every month Maps is used by more than a billion people around the world, and every day we and our users work as a community to improve the map for each other. We know that a small minority will continue trying to scam others, so there will always be work to do and we’re committed to keep doing better.
Google Maps helps people explore, navigate and get things done—and increasingly people are using Google Maps to find local businesses. Over the years, we’ve added more than 200 million places to Google Maps and every month we connect people to businesses more than nine billion times, including more than one billion phone calls and three billion requests for directions.
To help people find the places and businesses they're looking for—both big and small—Local Guides, business owners and people using Maps every day can contribute to business information. We get millions of contributions each day (like new business profiles, reviews, star ratings, and more) and the vast majority of these contributions are helpful and accurate. But occasionally, business scammers take advantage of local listings to make a profit. They do things like charge business owners for services that are actually free, defraud customers by posing as real businesses, and impersonate real businesses to secure leads and then sell them. Even though fake business profiles are a small percentage of the overall business profiles on Google, local business scammers have been a thorn in the internet’s side for over a decade. They even existed back when business listings were printed, bound and delivered to your doorstep. We take these issues very seriously and have been using a wide array of techniques and approaches to limit abuse on our platforms.
These scammers use a wide range of deceptive techniques to try to game our system—as we shut them down, they change their techniques, and the cycle continues. Although it’s important that we make it easy for legitimate businesses to get their business profiles on Google, we’ve also implemented strict policies and created tools that enable people to flag these issues so we can take action. It’s a constant balancing act and we’re continually working on new and better ways to fight these scams using a variety of ever-evolving manual and automated systems. But we can’t share too many details about these efforts without running the risk of actually helping scammers find new ways to beat our systems—which defeats the purpose of all the work we do.
We understand the concerns of those people and businesses impacted by local business scammers and back in 2017 we announced the progress we’d made. There was still work to be done then and there’s still work to be done now. We have an entire team dedicated to addressing these issues and taking constant action to remove profiles that violate our policies. Here’s more information about the progress we made against this type of abuse last year:
We took down more than 3 million fake business profiles––and more than 90 percent of those business profiles were removed before a user could even see the profile.
Our internal systems were responsible for more than 85 percent of these removals.
More than 250,000 of the fake business profiles we removed were reported to us by users.
We disabled more than 150,000 user accounts that were found to be abusive – a 50 percent increase from 2017.
This year, we’ve already introduced a new way to report suspicious business profiles and have started to apply refined techniques to business categories where we’re seeing an increase in fraud attempts. To help foster a healthy ecosystem, we’re also donating settlement funds from litigation against bad actors to organizations that educate businesses and consumers about fraud. As we continue to fight against fraud, we’re making sure people people can flag issues when they see them. Here’s how:
People can learn more about our policies for businesses representing themselves on Google and user contributed content to determine whether or not to report businesses or content for review.
People can flag individual business profiles for removal. We use such reports to investigate content and take it down if it’s found to be in violation of our policies. We also investigate the associated accounts if they’re suspected of broader abuse.
People can report multiple business profiles at once via the business redressal form to kick off the review process.
Every month Maps is used by more than a billion people around the world, and every day we and our users work as a community to improve the map for each other. We know that a small minority will continue trying to scam others, so there will always be work to do and we’re committed to keep doing better.
Looking to start practicing yoga? Or maybe you’re an experienced yogi but want to start enhancing your sessions with your Apple devices? Follow along for the best yoga apps for Apple Watch, iPhone, iPad, and Apple TV.
The post Best yoga apps for Apple Watch, iPhone, iPad, and Apple TV appeared first on 9to5Mac.
Facebook's plans to launch a cryptocurrency and digital wallet for users to make online purchases and money transfers should have the financial services community in a tither, with some expecting banks to quickly follow Facebook's lead.
The social network's shift into financial services also has raised the specter of regulatory oversight of cryptocurrency. The U.S. Senate Banking Committee announced Wednesday it will hold a hearing over Facebook's cryptocurrency plans on July 16. The hearing will explore Facebook's project Libra and data privacy considerations associated with it, according to Reuters. In a tweet Tuesday, U.S. Rep. Maxine Waters, chair of the House Financial Services Committee, called on Facebook to halt its crypto plans and wants hearings to further study it.
Facebook's plans to launch a cryptocurrency and digital wallet for users to make online purchases and money transfers should have the financial services community in a tither, with some expecting banks to quickly follow Facebook's lead.
The social network's shift into financial services also has raised the specter of regulatory oversight of cryptocurrency. The U.S. Senate Banking Committee announced Wednesday it will hold a hearing over Facebook's cryptocurrency plans on July 16. The hearing will explore Facebook's project Libra and data privacy considerations associated with it, according to Reuters. In a tweet Tuesday, U.S. Rep. Maxine Waters, chair of the House Financial Services Committee, called on Facebook to halt its crypto plans and wants hearings to further study it.
Listen to a recap of the top stories of the day from 9to5Mac. 9to5Mac Daily is available on iTunes and Apple’s Podcasts app, Stitcher, TuneIn, Google Play, or through our dedicated RSS feed for Overcast and other podcast players.
The post 9to5Mac Daily: June 20, 2019 appeared first on 9to5Mac.
I varje nummer av Ottar träffar vi två sexualpolitiska aktivister – en i Sverige och en i världen. Möt sexualupplysaren Antonia Lewandowska från Polen och aktivisten Samuel Girma från Sverige.
Slack and Microsoft may be battling for dominance in the booming team collaboration market, but most organizations rely on both applications – and some companies use even more.
Those are some of the results of a survey by Mio, an Austin, Texas-based startup that sells software to enable communication between different messaging tools. Mio polled 200 IT decision-makers at organizations ranging in size from hundreds to hundreds of thousands of employees.
Slack and Microsoft may be battling for dominance in the booming team collaboration market, but most organizations rely on both applications – and some companies use even more.
Those are some of the results of a survey by Mio, an Austin, Texas-based startup that sells software to enable communication between different messaging tools. Mio polled 200 IT decision-makers at organizations ranging in size from hundreds to hundreds of thousands of employees.
It's not clear why Google has ultimately decided not to pursue the tablet form factor, but the company may be finding it difficult to compete with Apple and Samsung, the top two tablet vendors worldwide.A Google spokesperson directly confirmed all of these details to me. The news was revealed at an internal company meeting on Wednesday, and Google is currently working to reassign employees who were focused on the abandoned projects onto other areas. Many of them, I'm told, have already shifted over to the laptop side of that same self-made hardware division.
Sometimes, a change in scenery is all it takes to gain a new perspective. Apple fans in Barcelona today are learning this firsthand as Apple celebrates the grand reopening of its Passeig de Gràcia store following four months of renovation. Changes large and small add up to a new focus on creativity that Apple is sharing with the community.
The post Gallery: Redesigned Apple Passeig de Gràcia opens in Barcelona appeared first on 9to5Mac.
While Apple’s AirPort lineup has long been discontinued, the company is still supporting the devices with software updates. AirPort Express, Extreme, and Time Capsule Base Stations have received a new firmware security update today.
The post Apple releases firmware security update for discontinued AirPort Express, Extreme, and Time Capsule Base Stations appeared first on 9to5Mac.
Here's an interesting little nugget of info to chew on: Google's decided to step away from its self-made tablets and focus instead on the laptop form.
To be clear, Google hadn't actually announced any tablet-specific products this year; the last such item that made its way to the market was the Pixel Slate in 2018. But, as I learned today, the company did have two smaller-sized tablets under development — and earlier this week, it decided to drop all work on those devices and make its roadmap revolve entirely around laptops instead.
A couple of clarifying points here: First, none of this has any impact on Pixel phones. Pixel phones and Pixel computers are two different departments, and the roadmap in question is related exclusively to the latter. (The same applies to the various Google Home/Nest products. What we're talking about today has absolutely zero impact on any that stuff.)
Here's an interesting little nugget of info to chew on: Google's decided to step away from its self-made tablets and focus instead on the laptop form.
To be clear, Google hadn't actually announced any tablet-specific products this year; the last such item that made its way to the market was the Pixel Slate in 2018. But, as I learned today, the company did have two smaller-sized tablets under development — and earlier this week, it decided to drop all work on those devices and make its roadmap revolve entirely around laptops instead.
A couple of clarifying points here: First, none of this has any impact on Pixel phones. Pixel phones and Pixel computers are two different departments, and the roadmap in question is related exclusively to the latter. (The same applies to the various Google Home/Nest products. What we're talking about today has absolutely zero impact on any that stuff.)
John Sundell has secured yet another notable guest for his informative “Swift by Sundell” podcast. This time around, Chris Lattner has joined the show. Lattner created Apple’s Swift programming language before briefly joining Tesla and eventually ending up at Google.
The post Chris Lattner, Apple Swift creator, talks future of language and more in new interview appeared first on 9to5Mac.
The hybrid cloud market is expected to grow from $38.27 billion in 2017 to $97.64 billion by 2023, at a Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 17.0% during the forecast period, according to Markets and Markets.
The research firm said the hybrid cloud is rapidly becoming a leading cloud solution, as it provides various benefits, such as cost, efficiency, agility, mobility, and elasticity. One of the many reasons is the need for interoperability standards between cloud services and existing systems.
Unless you are a startup company and can be born in the cloud, you have legacy data systems that need to be bridged, which is where the hybrid cloud comes in.
Annonssamarbete med Lollapalooza
Förutom en fantastisk line-up och en matupplevelse utöver det vanliga så bjuder Lollapalooza på ett magiskt utbud av dryck. Här är det internationella vinhus och prisvinnande öl som står på dryckesmenyn – inte en ljummen öl i sikte!
Lollapalooza storsatsar på dryckesupplevelsen för festivalbesökarna.
Lollapalooza Stockholm Beer Fest – ett Oktoberfest i miniatyr
De flesta tänker nog på lättdrucken öl i plastglas när de går på festival, men Lollapalooza höjer ribban rejält, och storsatsar på ett mini-oktoberfest. I samarbete med Spendrups så kommer över 30 ölsorter serveras i ett tält på 1250 kvadratmeter – med en bar på över 90 meter! Några av de gästande ölen är specialbryggda för just Lollapalooza.
– Detta blir ytterligare ett steg i att göra Lollapalooza till en helhetsupplevelse, långt mer än enbart musiken. Förra veckan presenterade vi Lolla Eats med över 40 restauranger på plats, nu ger vi något utöver det vanliga till alla ölälskare – och vi vet att de är många bland våra besökare. Detta är något helt nytt för en musikfestival i Sverige, säger Patrick Fredriksson, en av de ansvariga för Lollapalooza i Sverige.
På plats finns bland andra Pistonhead, Brutal Brewing, Norrlands Ljus, Firestone Walker, Beavertown London, Fourpure Brewing och Blue Moon.
Njut av ett gott glas vin i en festivalmiljö som är något utöver det vanliga.
För vindrickaren – ett grönskande Wine GardenVill du hellre njuta av ett gott glas kallt vin när du går på festival? I Lollapaloozas härligt grönskande Wine Garden finns både småskaliga naturvins-producenter och större klassiska vinhus representerade. Bland annat så kommer vi få möjlighet att testa småskaliga och naturliga viner från franska producenter, hantverkscider och bubblig cava. Det här området är med andra ord helt dedikerat åt vindrickarna – och här finns något för alla som vill ha något svalt från en druva i glaset.
På Lollapalooza skäms besökarna bort med en riktigt lyxig öl- och vinupplevelse.
När?
Datum:28-30 juni 2019
Plats:Gärdet, Stockholm
Artister:Över 70 akter, inklusive Foo Fighters, Travis Scott, Lana Del Rey, The 1975, Chance The Rapper, Laleh, Billie Eilish, The Hives, Lykke Li och Hov1.
Annonssamarbete med Lollapalooza
Förutom en fantastisk line-up och en matupplevelse utöver det vanliga så bjuder Lollapalooza på ett magiskt utbud av dryck. Här är det internationella vinhus och prisvinnande öl som står på dryckesmenyn – inte en ljummen öl i sikte!
Lollapalooza storsatsar på dryckesupplevelsen för festivalbesökarna.
Lollapalooza Stockholm Beer Fest – ett Oktoberfest i miniatyr
De flesta tänker nog på lättdrucken öl i plastglas när de går på festival, men Lollapalooza höjer ribban rejält, och storsatsar på ett mini-oktoberfest. I samarbete med Spendrups så kommer över 30 ölsorter serveras i ett tält på 1250 kvadratmeter – med en bar på över 90 meter! Några av de gästande ölen är specialbryggda för just Lollapalooza.
– Detta blir ytterligare ett steg i att göra Lollapalooza till en helhetsupplevelse, långt mer än enbart musiken. Förra veckan presenterade vi Lolla Eats med över 40 restauranger på plats, nu ger vi något utöver det vanliga till alla ölälskare – och vi vet att de är många bland våra besökare. Detta är något helt nytt för en musikfestival i Sverige, säger Patrick Fredriksson, en av de ansvariga för Lollapalooza i Sverige.
På plats finns bland andra Pistonhead, Brutal Brewing, Norrlands Ljus, Firestone Walker, Beavertown London, Fourpure Brewing och Blue Moon.
Njut av ett gott glas vin i en festivalmiljö som är något utöver det vanliga.
För vindrickaren – ett grönskande Wine GardenVill du hellre njuta av ett gott glas kallt vin när du går på festival? I Lollapaloozas härligt grönskande Wine Garden finns både småskaliga naturvins-producenter och större klassiska vinhus representerade. Bland annat så kommer vi få möjlighet att testa småskaliga och naturliga viner från franska producenter, hantverkscider och bubblig cava. Det här området är med andra ord helt dedikerat åt vindrickarna – och här finns något för alla som vill ha något svalt från en druva i glaset.
På Lollapalooza skäms besökarna bort med en riktigt lyxig öl- och vinupplevelse.
När?
Datum:28-30 juni 2019
Plats:Gärdet, Stockholm
Artister:Över 70 akter, inklusive Foo Fighters, Travis Scott, Lana Del Rey, The 1975, Chance The Rapper, Laleh, Billie Eilish, The Hives, Lykke Li och Hov1.
Norrlands Guld har startat en sommarkampanj med juridiska förtecken för få folk att träffas över en öl. 12 000 svenskar har redan skrivit på. Men ”ölavtalet” profiterar både på folks längtan till socialt umgänge och på pjäsen ”Ses i baren”. Säg nej tack till ölavtalet, skriver Leena Haraké från kvinnonätverket […]
Inlägget ”Ölavtal” nej tack! dök först upp på Drugnews.
This week Benjamin and Zac discuss Apple HomeKit Secure Video, changes in iOS 13 beta 2 including a new Portrait filter, SMB Server support, a new subscription warning, and design changes to CarPlay.
Also discussed: a new feature coming in watchOS 6, new faces on older watches, Wireless Audio Sync and PIP for Apple TV, potential improvements to Mojave’s built-in apps in macOS Catalina, 2020 iPhone rumors, Apple Card testing, changes being tested at select Apple Stores, and more.
9to5Mac Happy Hour is available on iTunes and Apple’s Podcasts app, Stitcher, TuneIn, Google Play, or through our dedicated RSS feed for Overcast and other podcast players.
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The post 9to5Mac Happy Hour 230: iOS 13 beta 2, new Apple TV features, 2020 iPhone screen sizes appeared first on 9to5Mac.
It's tough to do much of anything involving technology these days without running into a virtual assistant.
Pick up your Android phone or Chromebook, and there's Google Assistant waiting for a chat. Power up any Amazon-made gadget, and Alexa's standing by with an open ear. Apple's got Siri, poor Samsung's got Bixby, and even random companies like Bank of America are getting in on the action with their own woefully unnecessary A.I. personalities (sorry, "Erica").
We've talked plenty about the reasons why everyone and their mother wants you to get friendly with their flavor of robot aid — and why that, in turn, has led to what I call the post-OS era, in which a device's operating system is less important than the virtual assistant threaded throughout it. It's no coincidence that Google is slowly expanding Assistant into a platform of its own, and what we're seeing now is almost certainly just the tip of the iceberg.
It's tough to do much of anything involving technology these days without running into a virtual assistant.
Pick up your Android phone or Chromebook, and there's Google Assistant waiting for a chat. Power up any Amazon-made gadget, and Alexa's standing by with an open ear. Apple's got Siri, poor Samsung's got Bixby, and even random companies like Bank of America are getting in on the action with their own woefully unnecessary A.I. personalities (sorry, "Erica").
We've talked plenty about the reasons why everyone and their mother wants you to get friendly with their flavor of robot aid — and why that, in turn, has led to what I call the post-OS era, in which a device's operating system is less important than the virtual assistant threaded throughout it. It's no coincidence that Google is slowly expanding Assistant into a platform of its own, and what we're seeing now is almost certainly just the tip of the iceberg.
In the last two years, most businesses (93%) have experienced a tech-related disruption that directly led to an impact on revenue, either through direct loss of money or through paying for additional recovery expertise according to research from IDC and Zerto. It’s clear that businesses are vulnerable to the impact of outages of all kinds and true IT resilience may seem unachievable.
However, digital business isn’t going to get less competitive or less demanding, and customers expect services to be ‘always on,’ 24/7. While there is no magic bullet solution for IT resilience, there are steps organizations can take to prepare for and avoid planned or unplanned downtime.