26 January 2019

The state of the foldable


You’d be forgiven for being cynical. I’ve been seeing foldable display concepts for as long as I’ve been attending tech trade shows (which, quite frankly, is longer than I care to mention). Big names like Samsung and LG have been pumping countless R&D dollars into the technology in hopes of being first to next step in the evolution of the smart phone form factor.

The concept is nothing new, of course. The flip phone pre-dates the ubiquitous smartphone slab by decades. And a number of companies have tried to cheat the system. 2017’s Axon M was one of the more memorable attempts in recent memory — though that device amounted to little more than two screens jammed together on a hinge.

It bold and brash, but more than anything it was completely silly with an execution that left a lot to be desired. In my review, I called it “a fascinating mess.” But hey, ZTE deserves at least some credit for a run of products that attempted — with varying degrees of success — to buck the trend of samey smartphones.

There are plenty of reasons to be pessimistic about the state of technology in 2019, but I humbly offer you a beacon of light. This is the year smartphones become fun again. With their back to the corner, facing flagging sales, smartphone makers are taking leaps. Hell, it’s still January, and we’ve already caught a glimpse of what’s to compete.

At the front of the charger are foldables. That seems to be the term we’ve settled on for now — and it suits the category just fine. What convertibles were to the laptop category, foldables are to phones. True foldables require the display itself to do the folding, so devices can ostensibly transform from a one-handed smartphone to a larger tablet.

The Axon M didn’t fit the description for a number of reason, not the least of which was the gap between the two displays, which, quite frankly, made for a pretty crappy movie viewing experience, among others.

The first real foldable we’ve seen was a surprise contender. If the name “Royole” meant anything to you, prior to the Flex Pai, it was probably followed by the phrase “with cheese.” From the moment we first saw grainy footage of the handset, it was clear that being first and being best are rarely one and the same. “Folding screens are here,” I wrote at the time, “and they look crappy.”

I got some time with an updated version of the handset about a month later in China, and reappraised my initial impressions a bit. Even still, the Flex Pai didn’t and doesn’t strike me as much more than a little known company’s push bid to make a name for itself simply by being first.

Romain spent a bit more time with the device at CES, and appears to have come to similar conclusions. Royole does get credit for actually making the device a reality — even if it’s one that’s more developer focused than consumer. That does, of course, speak to a broader issue around usability.

It was a cause Google was happy to take up in November, when the company announced Android support for foldable displays. Like the notch before it, Google was attempting to get out ahead of the looming trend.

Here’s how Android VP Dave Burke described the category at the time, “You can think of the device as both a phone and a tablet, Broadly, there are two variants — two-screen devices and one-screen devices. When folded, it looks like a phone, fitting in your pocket or purse. The defining feature for this form factor is something we call screen continuity.”

It’s going to be fascinating to see if the industry coalesces around a single form factor here. The Flex Pai is one of the simpler ones — essentially operating like a sheet of paper that (somewhat awkwardly) folds in half so you can slip it in your pocket.

The same day that Google announced Android support, Samsung (briefly) showed off its own version of the technology. In the whooping 45 seconds the company devoted to it during a its two-hour keynote, we caught a glimpse of what looks to be an early prototype. Here, the device sports a display on the outside and unfolds to reveal a larger display within.

The “Infinity Flex Display” appeared at first glance to be more sophisticated than Royole’s — but “glance” is really the operative word here. It was a big, blocky prototype that we’ll be hearing more about at Unpacked next month.

Earlier this week, meanwhile, Xiaomi debuted what’s since come to be regarded as the most advanced of the bunch, but like Samsung, we only got a glimpse. And here it was in a much more controlled environment of a short, pre-recorded clip and extremely low resolution. That said, “the world’s first ever double folding phone” looks like a thing out of a sci-fi film.

The company, telling, tossed around the word “prototype” quite liberally there.

And then there’s Huawei. Mobile Chief Richard Yu highlight plans to announce a 5G folding phone at Mobile World Congress next month. As ever, details are scarce. Same goes for Motorola’s Razer, a $1,500 folding throwback, which is firmly in the rumor stages.

If that price point gives you pause, well, get used to it. The Flex Pai is already available at $1,300, and most other handsets are appear on track to hit roughly the same price point, making the latest iPhone and Samsung Galaxy devices look like a downright bargain.


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Startups Weekly: Is Munchery the Fyre Festival of startups?


It was a tough week. Journalists around the U.S. were hit hard by layoffs, from HuffPost to BuzzFeed News to Verizon Media Group, which owns this very site. The government entered day 35 of the shutdown before President Donald Trump agreed to a short-term deal to reopen it for three weeks. And in the startup world, a once high-flying, venture-subsidized food delivery startup crashed and burned, leaving a cluster of small businesses in its wreckage.

Some good things happened too — we’ll get to those.

  1. Munchery fails to pay its debts

In an email to customers on Monday, Munchery announced it would cease operations, effective immediately. It, however, failed to notify any of its vendors, small businesses in San Francisco that had supplied baked goods to the startup for years. I talked to several of those business owners about what they’re owed and what the sudden disappearance of Munchery means for them.

  1. #Theranos #Content

If you haven’t read John Carreyrou’s “Bad Blood,” stop reading this newsletter right now and go get yourself a copy. If you love to read, watch and listen to the Theranos saga as much as I do, you’ll be glad to hear there’s some fresh Theranos content released to the world this week. Called “The Dropout,” a new ABC documentary and an accompanying podcast about Theranos features never-before-aired depositions. Plus, TechCrunch’s Josh Constine reviews the Theranos documentary, “The Inventor,” which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival this week.

  1. Deal of the week

Confluent, the developer of a streaming data technology that processes massive amounts of information in real time, announced a $125 million Series D round on an enormous $2.5 billion valuation (up 5x from its Series C valuation). The round was led by existing investor Sequoia Capital, with participation from other top-tier VCs Index Ventures and Benchmark.

  1. Wag founders ditch dogs for bikes

Jonathan and Joshua Viner, the founders of the SoftBank-backed dog walking startup Wag, launched Wheels this week, an electric bike-share startup with a $37 million funding from Tenaya Capital, Bullpen Capital, Naval Ravikant and others.

  1. Go-Jek makes progress on a $2B round

Indonesia-headquartered Go-Jek has closed an initial chunk of what it hopes will be a $2 billion round after a collection of existing investors, including Google, Tencent and JD.com, agreed to put around $920 million toward it, according to TechCrunch’s Southeast Asia reporter Jon Russell. The deal, which we understand could be announced as soon as next week, will value Go-Jek’s business at around $9.5 billion.

  1. Knowledge center

There’s been a lot of chatter around direct listings since Spotify opted to go public via the untraditional route in 2018, but what exactly is a direct listing… We asked a panel of six experts: “What are the implications of direct listing tech IPOs for financial services, regulation, venture capital and capital markets activity?” 

Here’s your weekly reminder to send me tips, suggestions and more to kate.clark@techcrunch.com or @KateClarkTweets

  1. Contraceptive deserts

Through telemedicine and direct-to-consumer sales platforms, startups are streamlining the historically arduous process of accessing contraception. The latest effort to secure a significant financing round is The Pill Club, an online birth control prescription and delivery service. This week, the consumer-focused investor VMG Partners led its $51 million Series B. 

  1. More startup cash
  1. Fundraising activity

Sunil Nagaraj spent years investing in startups at Bessemer Venture Partners, but he was itching to meet with younger companies and strike out on his own. So in the summer of 2017, he did, and now, Nagaraj said he’s closed Ubiquity Ventures’ debut fund with $30 million. March Capital Partners, the Los Angeles-based venture capital firm, raised $300 million for its latest fund. Plus, Zynga founder Mark Pincus is reportedly raising up to $700 million for a new investment fund, called Reinvent Capital, that will focus on publicly traded tech companies in need of strategic restructuring.

  1. Finally, meet the startups in Alchemist’s 20th cohort

A mental health startup, a construction tech business and a fintech company, among others. Take a quick look at the startups that just completed Alchemist’s six-month accelerator program.

  1. Listen to me talk

If you enjoy this newsletter, be sure to check out TechCrunch’s venture-focused podcast, Equity. In this week’s episode, available here, Crunchbase editor-in-chief Alex Wilhelm, TechCrunch’s Silicon Valley editor Connie Loizos and I chatted about Munchery’s downfall, The Pill Club’s mission to make birth control more accessible and the VC slowdown in China.

 


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5 Sites to Download Free and Copyright-Free Music for YouTube Videos


Copyright Free Music for YouTube

Don’t post a video on YouTube with background music from a copyrighted source. It’s probably going to be taken down. Instead, get free and royalty-free music from one of these sites.

It doesn’t matter if you’re hoping to be a viral sensation or just posting something for family and friends to see. If it’s free for the public to see, the copyright owner of that music can make a claim and remove your video. And yes, YouTube is notorious for making your favorite videos disappear because of this.

A better option is to use copyright-free or royalty-free music. These sites will give you background choices that are free, as long as you add a link to the source in your description.

Thematic (Web): Free Tracks From Legit Artists

Thematic has free music fom professional musicians to use on youtube

Thematic is the service that most YouTube creators should be looking at for free songs from established artists and musicians. To get access, you’ll need to become a member of Thematic, but you don’t even need a credit card to sign up.

After you’ve become a member, you’ll get to see the full Thematic music catalog, which includes music from several indie as well as decently popular musicians like Olivia Lane or Kingdm. That’s right, you can use an Olivia Lane song without VEVO taking down your video.

Of course, there are some rules for that. Thematic members have to follow a particular attribution link and style to use the songs on YouTube or Instagram, and those are the only two platforms where you’re allowed to show your video. But as long as you follow the necessary requirements, you’ll get a fantastic, professionally-made song for your videos.

WOWA (Web): Unsplash for Music

WOWA is the unsplash for music

WOWA has only about 20 tracks on the website. They vary in style, and you can download all of them for free. But this site is different from all the others here because the tracks come with a Creative Commons Zero (CC0) license.

In case you don’t know about Creative Commons licenses, the CC0 license lets you use any work for free, in personal or commercial causes, edit it as you see fit, and without attribution. This means you can do whatever you want with the music on WOWA, and you don’t have to add a link for it in the YouTube description or include it in any credits roll.

New tracks are added to WOWA only once in a while. If you want to know the next time new material is available, subscribe to the newsletter for alerts.

Icons8 Fugue (Web): Browse by Themes, Genres, and Moods

Icons8 is a well-known resource for free stock icons and photos, and they now also offer a great selection of royalty-free music and audio tracks. Each track can be downloaded to your drive as a free high-quality MP3, or you can pay to unlock the WAV file.

The music collection is divided into three categories: themes, genres, and moods. Each has its sub-categories to further refine your choices and quickly find what you’re looking for. You can stream any song in full before downloading it, and get information like runtime, visualizer, and so on.

Of course, there’s a search function as well. But you’re probably better off using the large number of tags on the site to browse and find what you need.

TeknoAXE (Web): One Musician, 1500 Free Songs

TeknoAXE has a large collection of free and royalty free music to download

For nine years now, musician and YouTuber TeknoAXE has been making new songs and scores and letting anyone on the internet use them for free. The majority of these tracks are electronic dance music, rock, and metal, but there are plenty of thematic compositions too.

The CC 4.0 license only means you need to attribute the original link, and note if you made any changes. In exchange, you get a collection of almost 1,500 songs spread across several genres, and even moods like comedy, drama, horror, and so on. Listen to a few tracks and you might think, “Hey, I’ve heard this before.” That’s because TeknoAXE’s music has been used widely on YouTube already.

For his latest music, you can follow TeknoAXE’s YouTube channel. He usually uploads a new track every week, and this is a good way to find a new sound for your video before it becomes popular.

CCHound (Web): Hand-Curated Picks By Musicians

CCHound has hand-picked royalty free music

The internet is filled with royalty-free, Creative Commons-protected music, but not every song is a winner here. That’s why a few taste-makers got together to pick their favorites and put them on CCHound.

The collection isn’t actively updated anymore, but even with what exists, it’s a good way to find the cream of the crop rather than go trawling through the huge number of royalty-free tracks on sites like Jamendo or SoundCloud. You can browse by tags, genres, or search for something. And each song is clearly marked whether you can use it with attribution or not.

If you don’t find something on CCHound, you might need to go to its sources. This collection of sites with free Creative Commons music should help you find a track that suits your taste.

You Know Copyright, But What About Copyleft?

Finding the right music and using it legally will ensure that your video stays up for as long as you want. It isn’t subject to the whims and fancies of copyright takedown notices, or cease and desist letters.

That said, it’s best to familiarize yourself with a bit of copyright law, as well as some of the ways of using copyrighted material on the internet. In fact, the first place to get started is the new concepts of copyleft and copyright.

Read the full article: 5 Sites to Download Free and Copyright-Free Music for YouTube Videos


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How to Create Forms that allow File Uploads to Google Drive


With File Upload Forms (demo) for Google Sheets, you can receive large files from anyone directly in your Google Drive. You can automatically send email confirmations to the notify the form respondent. The forms can be created inside Google Sheets using the built-in drag-n-drop form builder and the forms can CAPTCHAs, e-signature and more.

file-upload-forms.png

A school teacher may want to build forms for students to upload assignments and the files are automatically saved to her Google Drive but in separate student folders. The HR team may want an online form where job applicants can upload their resumes in PDF or Word format. Business can build forms with eSignatures that respondents can sign on their desktops and mobile phones.

Google Forms do allow file uploads but the respondents need to be signed into their Google accounts before they can upload files. File Upload Forms impose no such limitations – anyone can upload files to your Google Drive. They may not have a Google account and they’ll still be able to use your Drive uploader forms.

File Upload Forms – Getting Started

Here’s a step-by-step guide on how you can build your own File Upload Forms in a few minutes. Or watch the YouTube video to get started.

Step 1. Copy the Google Sheet for File Upload Forms

The File Upload Form is written in Google Scripts and the code needs to be attached to your Google Sheet for it to work.

To get started, go to forms.studio/copy and click the “Copy” button to create a copy of the Google Sheet template to your Google Drive. This sheet includes the form builder, email designer and it will also be storing your form responses just like Google Forms responses are stored inside Google Sheets.

Step 2. Deploy the Uploader form as Web App

Inside your Google Spreadsheet, go to Tools -> Script Editor to open the Google Script editor. Don’t worry, you don’t have to write a single line of code, you only have to deploy this script as a web app so anyone can access your form via a simple web URL.

Go to Publish -> Deploy as Web App, choose Me under Execute the app as, choose Anyone, even Anonymous under Who has access to the web app and click the Deploy button.

google-form-deploy-web-app.png

You may have to authorize the script once since it has to do all the operations – like sending emails, uploading files – on your behalf.

Also, if you get the “App Not Verified” screen, just click on the Advanced link and choose “Go to File Upload Forms” to continue. While this step is optional, you can submit your app to Google for verification and they’ll drop the ‘not verified’ warning.

Step 3. Design the File Uploader Form

Switch to the Google Sheet, expand the File Upload Forms menu (near Help) and choose Edit Form. It will launch a simple but powerful drag-n-drop form builder right inside your Google Sheets.

Screenshot 2019-01-26 at 11.41.25 AM.png

Your forms can have multiple file upload fields, eSignatures, date, time picker, and all the standard form fields. Use the Rich HTML field to embed YouTube videos, Google Maps, SoundCloud MP3s, Google Slide presentations, Images or any HTML content.

You can also add data validation rules to various form fields using simple regular expressions. The file upload fields can be configured to accept single or multiple files. You can also limit uploads to specific types like images, videos, zip, and more.

Step 4. Customize the Form’s Settings

After your form is designed, go back to the File Upload Forms menu and choose Configure Form. It will open a sidebar in your Google Sheet where you can customize the form and Google Drive settings.

The confirmation message can include place-markers – form fields enclosed inside double curly braces like – for personalized messages. You can also place a URL inside the Redirect option and respondents would be redirected to that website after submitting the form.

file-upload-form-settings.png

In the advanced settings section, click the Select Folder button to choose the parent folder in your Google Drive where all the files would be saved. You can also specify a sub-folder path for storing files and this path can be dynamic – \\\\ – based on form answers.

You can also change color schemes, track visits to your form with Google Analytics and protect your forms with Google CAPTCHA and passwords.

Step 5. Send Confirmation Emails

With File Upload Forms, you can send email notifications when people submit the form. The emails can be personalized by including the form fields in the email subject and message body.

Use the special place marker in the message body to include a summary of the form response in a neat table. The TO, CC or BCC field can include the where you ask for the email address and it will be replaced with the actual value in the form response.

drive-uploader-forms-email.png

That’s it.

Your form is now ready for the world. Expand the Share section and you’ll be given the URL to directly access the form and also the embed code for adding that form to any website.

You can use Gmail Mail Merge to send the form link to all your contacts in a personalized email. The  Document Studio add-on can help you create beautiful, pixel-perfect PDFs from the form response and they are auto-saved in Google Drive.

Things to Know – File Upload Forms

  • To stop accepting new responses, go to Publish -> Deploy as web app menu and click the Disable link.
  • If you wish to restrict the forms to users inside your GSuite organization, choose your domain under Who has access to the app in place of Anonymous.

File Upload Forms – Compare Plans

File Upload Forms for Google Drive require a license for extended use. The basic version is free, however.

Personal Business Enterprise
Form Responses Unlimited Unlimited Unlimited
Number of Forms 1 5 Unlimited
Drag & Drop Form Builder Yes Yes Yes
Customized Confirmations Yes Yes Yes
Email Notifications No Yes Yes
Redirect on Form Submit No Yes Yes
Multiple Color Schemes No Yes Yes
Google CAPTCHA No Yes Yes
Save Files in Custom Folders No Yes Yes
RegEx Input Validation No Yes Yes
Upload Multiple Files No Yes Yes
E-Signature Fields No Yes Yes
Capture Browser’s User Agent No Yes Yes
Technical Support Email Email Phone
Price per year $29 (Buy) $49 (Buy) $199 (Buy)

The post How to Create Forms that allow File Uploads to Google Drive appeared first on Digital Inspiration.


MakeUseOf Is Hiring Technology Writers


were-hiring-makeuseof

MakeUseOf is looking for freelance technology writers to cover Linux, Security, macOS, Programming, DIY, and/or Creative.

MakeUseOf is a consumer technology website with 15 million monthly readers, mainly in the US, UK, and Canada. We’ve been teaching people how to make the best use of their digital tools since 2006.

Our team consists of tech enthusiasts from around the world. Many of us have been with MakeUseOf for 5-10+ years and have advanced from writers to editors and more. We pride ourselves in supporting our team members to become the best they can be.

Please refer to this site for more details: //www.makeuseof.com/jobs/

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