Posts in Linked

Billboard to Start Counting Streaming Services in Top Charts→

Ben Sisario, writing for The New York Times:

Now Billboard and Nielsen SoundScan, the agency that supplies its data, will start adding streams and downloads of tracks to the formula behind the Billboard 200, which, since 1956 has functioned as the music world’s weekly scorecard. It is the biggest change since 1991, when the magazine began using hard sales data from SoundScan, a revolutionary change in a music industry that had long based its charts on highly fudgeable surveys of record stores.

It’ll be interesting to see how music streaming services will affect the position of recent and older songs in the charts. Here’s how the system will work:

SoundScan and Billboard will count 1,500 song streams from services like Spotify, Beats Music, Rdio, Rhapsody and Google Play as equivalent to an album sale. For the first time, they will also count “track equivalent albums” — a common industry yardstick of 10 downloads of individual tracks — as part of the formula for album rankings on the Billboard 200.

Given speculation that Beats Music will be bundled in iOS starting next year, it looks like Apple will have an even bigger influence on the Billboard 200.

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David Smith’s Initial WatchKit Impressions→

David Smith comments on today’s launch of WatchKit for developers:

Apple took a clever approach to handling the extremely constrained power environment of the Watch (at least initially). To start with 3rd Party apps will run in a split mode. The Watch itself handling the UI parts of the app with an iPhone based app extension doing all the heavy lifting and computation. This is architected in such a way as to enhance interactivity (it isn’t just a streamed movie) while still keeping the Watch components very lightweight.

As he notes, Apple enabled more than he was expecting for this first release.

What’s impressive after reading some documentation and thoughts from developers today is the technology that’s powering WatchKit remote apps – Extensions. Initially, many of us assumed that extensibility in iOS 8 would just be about sharing files between apps, but it’s turning out to much more.

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Facebook Launches Dedicated Groups App→

Dieter Bohn, reporting for The Verge about Facebook’s latest standalone app for iOS and Android, Groups:

We’ve been using the app for a few days now and found it to be fast, fluid, intuitive, and surprisingly fun. That’s not a huge surprise – it comes in part from Facebook’s Creative Labs, which has been responsible for other polished Facebook apps like Paper and Slingshot. Animation on both Android and iOS is fluid and fast, the overall app layout is simple and direct, and functionality (including privacy settings) is easy to intuit just by poking around a bit. It’s a great app.

Groups joins Messenger in the list of dedicated utilities for specific Facebook features, but, unlike Messenger, users won’t be forced to use it and Groups will still be available in the main Facebook app (for now?). Like most recent standalone experiments by Facebook, I’m skeptical that this will take off in the real world.

Anecdotally speaking, I have a lot of friends who use groups to coordinate events and chat together – on WhatsApp. I have seen WhatsApp groups that go back years, with my friends using photos uploaded to a group as essentially another camera roll for shared photos.

I wish that I could say the same about iMessage group threads, but that would only be a sad joke.

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Apple Launches WatchKit, iOS 8.2 Beta→

With a press release, Apple just announced the availability of WatchKit, a set of tools that will allow developers to extend their apps to the Apple Watch before the device’s release. WatchKit is available alongside a new iOS 8.2 beta for registered iOS developers.

“Apple Watch is our most personal device ever, and WatchKit provides the incredible iOS developer community with the tools they need to create exciting new experiences right on your wrist,” said Philip Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president of Worldwide Marketing. “With the iOS 8.2 beta SDK, developers can now start using WatchKit to create breakthrough new apps, Glances and actionable notifications designed for the innovative Apple Watch interface and work with new technologies such as Force Touch, Digital Crown and Taptic Engine.”

In the press release, Apple included quotes from ESPN, Instagram, and American Airlines, which are already building apps and features for the Apple Watch.

“Apple Watch allows us to make the Instagram experience even more intimate and in the moment,” says Kevin Systrom, co-founder and CEO of Instagram. “With actionable notifications you can see and instantly like a photo or react with an emoji. The Instagram news and watch list allows you to see your friends’ latest photos, follow new accounts and get a real-time view of your likes and comments.”

Apple also launched a WatchKit website and confirmed that developers will be able to create “fully native apps for Apple Watch” later next year.

The WatchKit website includes design guidelines, programming guides, templates, and more. As explained by Apple, WatchKit apps consist of an iPhone app extension and other assets loaded directly on the Apple Watch, and developers will be able to start building Glances and actionable notifications with WatchKit and the iOS 8.2 beta today.

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Sketch to App Store→

Created by Cluster Labs, this file for Sketch 3 sounds like a great idea for iOS developers (via Jeremy Olson):

This Sketch file is designed so you make a few changes to the setup page, and over 40 other artboards will be updated with your custom info. Within minutes, you’ll be able to export 45 screenshot images.

I constantly hear that generating screenshots for multiple resolutions and languages for iTunes Connect is a time-consuming process. Sketch to App Store seems to automate several tasks involved with generating App Store screenshots such as device templates, text, resolutions, and, of course, exported files.

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Virtual: Space Age, with Matt Comi→

This week Federico and Myke are joined by Matt Comi to talk about the newly released Space Age. They talk about how the game was developed, the importance of music and the dialog.

If you want to know more about the excellent Space Age (my review), we interviewed Big Bucket’s Matt Comi on Virtual. We talked about the development process of the game, letting an idea evolve over time, and, towards the end, spoilers. You can get the episode here.

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Connected: Dig Up an App→

This week, Stephen explains Net Neutrality to the Europeans, Myke explains YouTube Music and why Evernote Context doesn’t bother him before Federico explains how bit rot in the App Store makes him sad.

I’ve wanted to talk about software preservation and curation in the age of the App Store for a long time, and I finally discussed the topic in this week’s Connected. You can get the episode here.

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Twitter: “Several Updates” Coming for Direct Messages→

In a blog post published today, Twitter announced that native videos and more timeline experiments will come to the service. That’s great – especially if they’re planning more Cards features.

Towards the end, the company also mentions direct messages:

And we haven’t forgotten about Direct Messages. We have several updates coming that will make it easy to take a public conversation private. The first of these was announced today and will begin rolling out next week: the ability to share and discuss Tweets natively and privately via Direct Messages. Stay tuned!

“We haven’t forgotten” sounds like a curious statement from a company that, for some reason, decided to disallow sharing URLs in direct messages last year and never bothered to fix them. It sounds like Twitter will bring back the ability to discuss individual tweets in DMs, but, frankly, it makes no sense that people who follow each other shouldn’t be able to exchange any URL privately.

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Google Announces YouTube Music Key→

Widely rumored for the past several months, Google today announced YouTube Music Key, a premium service that, starting at $7.99/month, will offer ad-free videos, the ability to keep listening to videos as music in the background, offline downloads, and access to Google Play Music (the new name for Google Play Music All Access).

From the YouTube blog:

Thanks to your music videos, remixes, covers, and more, you’ve made YouTube the biggest music service on the planet. To turn YouTube into your perfect music service, we’re launching YouTube Music Key as a beta with our biggest music fans first, and then we’ll bring YouTube Music Key to the whole world together. So, if you see an invite in your app or email, try it out for six months for free.

YouTube Music Key follows a plan to revamp YouTube’s entire music strategy with a new dedicated section:

Starting today, you’ll see a new home just for music on your YouTube app for Android, iOS and on YouTube.com that shows your favorite music videos, recommended music playlists based on what you’re into and playlists of trending music across YouTube. You can find a playlist to perfectly fit your mood, whether that’s a morning motivators playlist or Boyce Avenue YouTube Mix. Check out the newest songs from channels you subscribe to, like FKA twigs or Childish Gambino. Or quickly find the songs you’ve played over and over and over again.

The YouTube Music Key beta will start rolling out next week, and it appears that current Google Music All Access subscribers will get access to it immediately.

I’m interested in Google’s plans with YouTube because the service has what other music streaming services have always lacked: a huge catalogue of videos from artists that go beyond albums and singles. As someone who regularly watches concert videos and demo recordings on YouTube, I’m curious to see how an ad-free experience with web and iOS access could improve content that I can’t get anywhere else.

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