App-To-Date Episode 14 Hanx Writer Show Notes

25/11/2014\"The App-To-Date Podcast\"Episode 12 - Ad Free GuaranteeBy Cameron Norris & Luke Besant at 3Deal Studio.On this weeks show we’ll be discussing all the latest appdevelopments set to revolutionize the Transportation, music andficial industries. Just what is going on with Uber, SnapCash andApple Beats Music?I’ll also be reviewing the Hanx Writer app, explaining how to playpc games on your iPad and discussing why the App Store is turningRed, yes Red. I'll also be explaining what I've uncovered this weekin my adventures on the dark web using the TOR red onion browser.And we’ll be making a stand against product placement andadvertising on our show.On this week’s show we have an important announcement to make,We have made the decision to exclude any and all advertising fromour shows entirely. We’ve all heard ‘one of those’ podcasts wherehosts awkwardly read scripts provided by their sponsors.It’s not only annoying but a waste of your time and theirsbecause, let’s face it no one really cares.After discussing this for a couple of weeks, we feel sponsoredadverts just don’t belong in the show, you get bombarded withenough ads on TV, Radio and even YouTube, so this show should be awelcome break from that, not something adding to the problem.A lot of these people sound like glorified internet street hawkersand we don’t want to be a part of that.From now on we’ll be including show notes and links in thedescription of each episode, (now that iTunes have finally enabledHTML links) where you can find out how you can support us.

Transportation industry:Ridesharing Service Uber Expands in Nordics(Finland, Norway and Denmark)Also launching UberGo Low-Cost Car-for-Hire Service in Indiaclaiming that it is \"cheapest ride in town\", saying the price islower than an auto rickshaw.In retort Ola (formally ola cabs) has released a (you guessed it)an app that that summons rickshaws in bangalor.A US Entrepreneur Considered Suing Uber Over Tracking Activitiesand broadcasting them to a room of people.Following that Uber Hired Team to Help Fix Privacy Issues.Despite the fact that there executives use a tool called ‘God View’to see activity so that shows their mind set.It has also been announced that Uber and Other Taxi-Booking Appsto Be Regulated in Singapore. this will be the first time anyonehas attempted to regulate services.Ubers executives have also been reported in BuzzFeed to havesuggested spending millions to hire a team in order to ‘dig updirt’ on critics. SO I THINK THEY ARE AWESOME.Cameron Notes:Uber have an obligation to improve shareholder value like anyother company, app developers have this happy go lucky publicimage of being small teams of enterprising creatives, but for themost part that’s a complete misconception.But looking at this with too much of a kind of political eye, werisk losing sight of the most important aspect of any product orservice… is it any good? And the overwhelming consensus is thatUber is a reliable, well priced and convenient service.It’s also arguable that Uber wouldn't exist if the competitionwasn't so bad.I read a comment on The Guardian actually explaining how in mostmajor cities taxis have been controlled by a small number of rent-seeking companies that own all the licenses and then rent outvehicles to drivers at, what can only really be described asextortionate rates.So we end up with drivers spending a miserable life ripping offcustomers and generally working long hours for not much money.

In contrast, Uber drivers are guaranteed their fare (with nodrunken idiots running away), can rate their passengers as well,so sleazy passengers quickly get turfed off the service (which hasgreatly encouraged women Uber drivers), and the drivers don’tstart a shift already down hundreds of pounds, dollars, bitcoins,whatever, to their employer.The result is you can now get an Uber car in many places thatcabs won't go because it's too expensive for them to waste timedriving back to a profitable place, whereas the Uber driver willturn up within minutes rather than hours, and seems to be a muchhappier, less stressed person.However, problem is that Uber is no more a tech company thanMarks & Spencers or WalMart. Uber is a company that usestechnology in order to operate in the offline world. And it’sborrowed two important ideas from the pure internet businessmodels.First, it takes the standard tech business model of being a“platform” – by putting buyers in touch with sellers, taking a cut(and harvesting a bit of data on the way.The second, is introducing user metrics to keep track of bothdriver and passenger performance, which is why Uber has beencompared to eBay in the past.Now, I’ve been quite active on the dark web, or the hidden internetthis week, accessing secret sites using the Tor Onion browser, andwhat I have found isn’t online drug and weapons suppliers, but acollection of manifestos and political ideologies that all seem togravitate to a central theme, Agorism. Now I’m not going to go tooin depth with this, but essentially Agorism is a political ideologythat promotes peaceful revolution through alternative strategies,not politics, in order to achieve a free society,which includes education, direct action, alternative currencies(bitcoin anyone!), entrepreneurship, self sufficiency, and mostimportantly in this case \"counter-economics\".any of the tech companies and internet based organisations we'reseeing today, everything from Tor, Bitcoin, WikiLeaks, Anonymousand even to some extend Uber, are proponents of Agorism. So are wein fact engaging in a secret revolution by using these services?

Splashtop review:This weekend I decided to start experimenting with the iPad'sability to play PC only games by streaming the games to my iPadfrom the PC over my local wifi network.Using the Splashtop app, I was able to remotely control my PC andplay major titles including Skyrim and Final Fantasy 14, from thedevice via steam with almost zero technical problems.The only drawbacks were the heavily watered down graphics and thesketchy controls, which initially were almost impossible to useuntil I discovered a feature which allows users to map out theirown custom controls in the form of selective keyboard buttons andonscreen joystick controls. However, quite disappointingly, arecurring £1.99 monthly fee was required for the privilege.Despite advancements in both iOS and mac apps, Apple are stillquite far behind when it comes to serious gaming with both theirmobile and desktop devices, which was quite clear when streamingthese games.I believe there is a definite demand for remote streaming of games,and we’ve discussed in previous shows, but I think the Nvidiashield, rather than an Apple product will be the answer to that.The Nvidia shield, which is a purpose built gaming tablet, enablesyou to stream your PC games on the move and connect to any smartenabled TV to mirror the gameplay there.If the splashtop had third party iOS gaming controllercompatibility, didn’t require a recurring monthly free and didn’twater down the graphics quite so much, it would have been a greatalternative to the Nvidia shield thanks to its incredible stableand secure streaming connection.While not the perfect choice for the hardcore gamer, the app isdefinitely great for remote accessing your computer for otherreasons, such as managing, updating and transferring files whileyou’re away from the home or office.

Music Industry:Apple's Plans for Beats Music Service Taking ShapeLast May Apple acquired Beats music for $3 billion. Until now theplans for development have been as quiet as a church mouse. AppleIntents to include its Beats music in future versions of iOS. Allof this information comes from an anonymous source. so itscredibility is lucrative but Apple are working to make thestreaming music service cheaper for consumers.It is rumoured that Apple have begun discussions with recordlabels over new licensing terms that will allow it to drop themonthly subscription price for Beats Music to as low as $5 amonth, significantly lower than all other music streaming serviceswork with major labels. According to the anonymous source thelabels are declining this price seeking a better deal.This all comes at the same time that Sony and their major recordlabel sony music entertainment are Re-Evaluating Music StreamingServices After Taylor Swift Snub. Now theoretically if Sony orany of the three major labels decide to pull out of thesestreaming services or ask for more money this could driveconsumers away from the services and increase the price of themdramatically.However Spotify don’t seem phased at all by this as it releasedplans to expand their staff by up to 2000 employees which coulddouble their team.so if you’re looking for a job…Financial industry:Now last week we briefly got to throw in that SnapChat werelaunching SnapCash but unfortunately all of the news about itcame out about 7 hours after we recorded the show and about anhour before broadcast so we quickly edited something in but wedidn't get a wider discussion on the issue.So for a long time now me and Cameron have been saying that allthese new peer-to-peer messaging services must be racing forsomething, and we decided it was probably peer-to-peertransactions. We thought that Facebook would get there first butwe were flabbergasted when SnapChat got there first. So for anyonewho missed the story snapchat have released a service calledSnapCash that allows users to send money to friends via square.

Now as we all know snapchat is super non-encrypted and superunsafe but it appears they’re shaping up their act banning 3rdparty apps, despite not closing the holes they’re alerting peopleto the issue and using Square to make the transactions, who arerelatively trustworthy.One of the weirdest things about this move is that over 50% ofsnapchat users are under 17 years of age and in order to makefinancial transactions using snap cash you must be at least 18 orolder.Have snapchat made a bad call on this?Will this drive new users?What if I could cross reference previously leaked photos of usersusing facial recognition software and blackmail them into makingtransactions?Square was actually founded by one of the creators of twitter;Jack Dorsey. Last week we reported that twitter too were lookinginto a standalone private messaging app so perhaps they’ll havehim back to help include transactions?Square have been busy themselves this week launching Register.Register is a free point of service payment app for and Androidand iOS. The service is only available in the US, Canada andJapan. However i don’t think its going to go too far. It has a2.75% transaction fee which is significantly higher than theexisting market place from the likes of Amazon and PayPal.Hanx Writer review:Vintage has been a popular theme of 2014, influencing everythingfrom music to fashion…What’s that song about your Grandads clothes, Luke?Macklemore - ThriftshopWell now even apps getting involved in the fun, with the app HanxWriter for iPad bringing back the clickety-clack of themechanical typewriter!This app is far more fun and entertaining to use than aconventional word processor and features pretty realistic soundeffects and animations.The ability to easily export an authentic looking typed up printto PDF is another useful feature.Interestingly, the app has been developed by Tom Hanks! Yes the

Tom Hanks, along with Hicents.com Inc. meaning every time I openit I can’t help but think of all the best parts of Cast Away andForest Gump, which might explain the subconcious hold the appseems to have on me.The only downside for me has been its slightly iffy built in spellchecker, but I haven’t had any problems typing on the screen ofthe iPad mini.While I would certainly recommend the app to people who eitherkeep a diary or like to write short stories, I wouldn’t recommendHanx Writer as an everyday word processor for the lack of arobust spelling and grammar checker and limited formattingoptions.Although the free version is perfectly usable in it’s own right,I’ve paid for the full version just to show my support for the app.Anyone with an iPad should download the app immediately, youwon’t be disappointed.Monument Valley and RED Campaign:The app store is hosting a two-week fund raising and HIV/AIDSawareness campaign which started Monday and runs until December7th.The charity behind the campaign, Red, (started in 2006 by U2 frontman Bono) has a mission to rid the world of HIV/AIDS and willturn the campaign's proceeds over to The Global Fund with an aimto help provide antiretroviral treatment to AIDS sufferers inAfrica.Apple have already raised $75 million for the charity and thistime decided to focus on encouraging iOS developers to becomedeeply involved with the cause.Approaching the 25 top-selling app creators, Apple asked thecompanies to customize their products with (RED) themed tweaks andadditional features.Apple asked the top-selling app designers if they would modifytheir apps them to help promote the campaign.In response, Monument Valley have offered a whole new chapter tothe game, IDA'S (RED) DREAM, marking the final new feature of thegame in support of Apple apps for red campaign. 100% of yourpurchase will go to the charity during the campaign.

To the disgusting freemium advocates, your sense of entitlementdoes not extend to this, if you’re going to complain I will huntyou down!Over to Our Friends at Facebook:This week they have announced another stand alone app for Groups.They claim that over 700 million of its users use groups of there1.35 billion users. With the amount they were ridiculed over themessaging app is it worth it?What is it they could be offering extra with this?Will there be anything left of the FB app if they keepcompartmentalising?I see the benefit in that users complain they don’t see enough ofthe content they subscribe to see but if this the most effectiveway of doing it?Could we not just have a groups & pages news feed?Now back in the historic Episode 7 which was a bit of a turningpoint for the show we discussed hearsay that faceobok were goingto release an encrypted messenger that would allow users tocommunicate not using their real names. Is this that or is thissomthing diffent?Anyway staying with Facebook, their other messenger app whatappis about to receive end to end encryption An online privacy toolendorsed by Edward Snowden is being used to protect WhatsAppmessages from snooping by encrypting them as they travel theInternet.Open Whisper Systems on Tuesday announced a partnership withFacebook-owned WhatsApp to use TextSecure protocol to essentiallyscramble messages in transit, hiding whatever is inside fromprying eyes.Thanks for reading the show notes, we hope you enjoyed the episodeand we'll see you next week.:)