New Scientist has obtained a legal agreement between Google’s health division and the UK National Health Service (NHS) that includes provision to pass five years’ worth of patient data in bulk as part of a contract novation process.
If you’re feeling a sense of deja vu that’s quite right: Back in 2016 it emerged — also via New Scientist Freedom of Information request — that Alphabet-owned DeepMind, acquired by Google in 2014, had received a bulk patient data injection from a London NHS Trust.
The revelation that vast numbers of NHS patients records (around 1.6 million in that case) had quietly been passed to a Google-owned company led to a lengthy regulatory investigation and, finally in 2017, a finding that the Royal Free NHS Trust had breached UK law when it passed patient data to DeepMind for the development of an alerts app called Streams.
But despite the finding of no legal basis for data to be shared during the app’s development, DeepMind continued inking agreements with NHS Trusts.
It also went on an aggressive PR offensive — holding meetings with patients, publishing its contracts with NHS Trusts (albeit with redactions), and establishing an independent oversight board to scrutinize its health division.
These DeepMind-appointed reviewers went on to warn about the risk of the company being able to exert excessive monopoly power as a result of data-access infrastructure it was bundling with the Streams app.
And then last year a bombshell announcement: DeepMind’s health unit would be folded into Google — as part of a business reorganization instructed by their shared parent, Alphabet. The controversial takeover was completed last month. So for DeepMind then read Google now.
The move made DeepMind’s years of protestations during the data governance scandal — when it had claimed repeatedly that patient data would never be shared with Google — entirely worthless. UK citizens’ medical records are now headed directly for Google’s servers.
Three years on and it’s as if nothing much has changed except the order of names. Regardless of a regulatory slap-down and pointed guidance from the UK’s National Data Guardian on the use of patient data for app development.
Taunton and Somerset NHS Foundation Trust — one of the trusts that signed a five-year contract with DeepMind for Streams — has inked a new contract with Google which includes the same provision for “active” patient data to be passed in bulk.
This is a curious backwards twist given the Trust is what’s known as a ‘global digital exemplar’ (GDE), meaning it’s received extra government funding to fund digital best practice in areas such as information sharing in order to create a model for digital transformation that other trusts can follow. Which includes, in its case, developing open APIs using an international standard for data interoperability between healthcare systems known as a FHIR (aka: Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources).
DeepMind, meanwhile, bundled the licensing of an FHIR API into its Streams contracts with Trusts — meaning it would own the underlying delivery architecture for data-dependent digital services as well as the Streams app itself. And the new contract Taunton has inked with Google covers the same ground, with clauses pertaining to the design and development of the FHIR API for Streams.
It also includes an unredacted section specifying that this FHIR API, now provided by Google Health UK, will act as the gateway via which third party app makers (initially on iOS) can gain access to “relevant Trust data”.
But with commercial sections of the contract redacted it’s not clear whether Google will charge developers for API access. When we asked DeepMind’s founder about that point back in 2016 Mustafa Suleyman told us he “didn’t know”. (Google did not respond to a question now about Streams commercial terms.)
Its novated contract with Taunton includes provision for sending five years’ worth of historical encounter and diagnostic information on patients, as well as the electronic patient record database in bulk.
We asked the Trust why the contract includes provision to pass patient data in bulk now it has its own FHIR APIs readily available. A spokesman told us it’s because “back in 2016 when we signed the contract we weren’t a GDE so didn’t have access to FHIR” — adding that “we would have needed to cancel the contract and renegotiate, whereas we have novated it like for like”.
Yet one NHS Trust, Yeovil, chose not to novate its contract from DeepMind to Google — having never having rolled out the Streams app. So, in Taunton’s case, it’s not entirely clear why it went ahead and novated.
Its spokesman confirmed to us it hasn’t rolled out Streams either. Nor does it have any plan to do so at this time, he said.
But a Google spokeswomen told us the Trust has an agreement with Google Health to explore what she couched as future collaborations on ways which mobile tools could support its digital priorities.
Taunton’s spokesman suggested that if the Trust were to move forward with Google on developing digital healthcare apps that made use of the bulk patient data provisions in the novated contract it would seek to consult with patients beforehand. But the contract terms do already provide for access to patient data.
The spokesman suggested the Trust is viewing maintaining a contractual relationship with Google-DeepMind as an “opportunity”. Though it’s not clear whether it risks being contractually bound to Google as sole FHIR API provider for any third party digital healthcare apps. Or whether it could use its own FHIR infrastructure to open up to outside innovation despite having inked this agreement with Google. (We’ve asked the Trust for technical and legal clarification of that.)
Taunton also sent us this statement, attributed to David Shannon, its director of strategic development:
No patient data is currently shared between Taunton and Somerset NHS Foundation Trust and Deepmind or Google Health, nor are we using any Google Health applications. If we were to work with DeepMind or Google Health on any digital innovations to support patient care in the future, the work would be led by clinicians and we would engage openly and transparently with our patients. When we signed the contract with DeepMind in 2016 we did not have FHIR infrastructure but we are now a Global Digital Exemplar and would use the most appropriate, secure technology available to us.
We contacted the UK’s data protection watchdog, the ICO, for a reaction to confirmation that the novated contract provides for bulk data to be passed to Google — and a spokesperson pointed us to a statement it issued earlier this month, when it said: “Although the ICO cannot approve the steps taken to mitigate any additional risks to personal data as a result of contractual changes, we have been regularly updated on these changes and have made the organisations aware of their obligations under data protection law.”
In July the regulator also posted an update on its Royal Free Streams app investigation, writing then:
… ahead of the transfer of Streams from DeepMind to the new Google Health Unit, the ICO has made it clear to controllers using the Streams service that they will need to have the appropriate legal documentation in place to ensure their processing is in line with the requirements of the GDPR [General Data Protection Regulation]. Organisations must assure themselves and document how they have taken appropriate steps to mitigate data protection risks beyond contractual obligations and the obligation on Google Health under data protection law, such as audits, reports and other appropriate measures.
As we’ve said, Google’s contract with Taunton is redacted to remove all details about commercial terms so it’s not clear what terms are being attached to potential future work on Streams/an FHIR API for third parties. Although DeepMind had been offering the Streams bundle free to Trusts for the first five years, with payments only kicking in if its service support costs exceeded £15,000 a month. So presumably the terms remain the same for the duration of the original contract term.
Taunton’s bulk data provisions in the new contract with Google define “active” patients — which is the only type of patients whose data can be passed, per its stated terms — as “(1) Patients with open elective pathways; (2) Patients with emergency admission pathways with unscheduled pending activity; (3) Patients with emergency admissions within 6 months prior to the point of transfer (i.e.) before Streams go-live;”.
Sam Smith, coordinator at health data privacy advocacy group MedConfidential, argues this is a contradictory definition for a one-off upload. Or else will entail a huge amount of work for the hospital which he says also won’t help for patients who don’t meet the ‘active patients’ definition the day before the export but will the day after.
“These deals show just how little has changed for one of the most controversial NHS data projects of the last half decade,” he said in a statement. “Despite the deal with the Royal Free being ruled unlawful, Trusts have now signed contracts to hand Google five years of patients’ data from over a dozen hospitals — and won’t even say how much they’re being paid.
“If this is the sort of deal that [UK prime minister] Boris Johnson is going to encourage, then it’ll be catastrophic for public trust. Patients must know what is happening to their data, and be able to see exactly what sort of deals are being done to get it.”
Unlike DeepMind, which was on the defensive back foot throughout 2016-17 following the Royal Free data governance scandal, Google Health has not committed to publish its contracts with NHS trusts.
So far its other contracts with NHS Trusts have not been released into the public domain. Though, presumably, if they have all been novated in the same way they’ll contain identical terms as were agreed with DeepMind.
Google has also disbanded the independent oversight board that DeepMind had established, claiming it’s not the right structure to oversee Google Health’s global focus. So there’s been a marked reduction in the level of transparency around what’s being done with patient data as contracts have moved over to the tech giant. Which hardly looks good from a patient trust point of view.
One thing is clear: Google’s ambitions for its now enlarged health division include seeking to apply artificial intelligence to health data for predictive and diagnostic purposes. This was also the intent of AI specialist DeepMind, which had early plans to reuse the Royal Free patient data for training AIs, though it claimed to have stepped back from doing so — once it realized additional regulatory clearances would be required.
This July, just prior to handing off its health division to Google, DeepMind and Google scientists published a research paper in which they detailed a deep learning model for continuously predicting the future likelihood of a patient developing a life-threatening condition called acute kidney injury (AKI). The same condition the Streams app currently uses an NHS algorithm to generate alerts for.
DeepMind claimed the AI AKI model supports faster intervention, describing it as its “biggest healthcare research breakthrough to date”. However the model was trained using U.S. patient data from the Department of Veteran Affairs that skews overwhelmingly male: 93.6%. So there are major caveats about how the AI model could be safely applied to other less skewed, more diverse populations.
Google’s contract with Taunton states that patient data (should the company actually get any) can only be used for direct patient care purposes — so not for developing any software.
Nor, we must presume, for developing any AI models. Additional regulatory approvals would be required for such an experimental purpose which clearly would not fall under a ‘direct patient care’ umbrella.
At the same time the contract sketches the clearest picture yet of what Google has in mind with Streams: An app that’s already evolved in scope from a mobile wrapper for NHS algorithmic alerts to a broader task management and alerts app served via a Google-owned streaming FHIR API.
In a section of contract definitions, the “Streams: Task Management” software is defined as “a clinical task management and text based messaging platform provided in the form of a mobile software application”; while the “Streams: Mobile platform” is defined as a Class I non-measuring medical device provided in the form of a mobile app that can currently assess the real-time detection of AKI — and “which is extensible generally to (i) patient safety alerts, and (ii) real time detection and decision support to support treatment and avert clinical deterioration across a range of diagnoses and organ systems, including any new releases and/or new versions (including, without limitation, releases to include the development of functionality for vital signs entry and viewing and other aspects as set out in the Roadmap) provided as part of the Support Services”.
Within those broad parameters there is clearly scope for Streams to become the wrapper for delivering AI-powered alerts and decision support to clinicians at the hospital bedside.
Though — in the UK at least — there is a question mark over how Google could push AI down its FHIR pipe unless it can gain advance access to the necessary population-level data in order to train relevant AI models.
After all, it’s the NHS, not Google, which holds that sensitive personal information in trust for patients.
And as Sir John Bell said , after penning the UK government’s review of the life sciences sector a couple of years ago: “What Google’s doing in [other sectors], we’ve got an equivalent unique position in the health space. Most of the value is the data. The worst thing we could do is give it away for free.”
 |
| Videos generated from various models trained on sequences from the StarCraft Video (SCV) dataset. |
 |
| A key component for both metrics is a pre-trained model that converts the video or audio clip into an N-dimensional embedding. |
 |
| Examples of videos of a robot arm, judged by the new FVD metric. FVD values were found to be approximately 2000, 1000, 600, 400, 300 and 150 (left-to-right; top-to-bottom). A lower FVD clearly correlates with higher video quality. |
 |
| In the animation, we can see that as the magnitude of the distortions increases, the Gaussian distributions of the distorted audio overlaps less with the clean distribution. The magnitude of this separation is what the Fréchet distance is measuring. |
 |
| This figure compares the FAD calculated between clean background music and music distorted by a variety of methods (e.g., pitch down, Gaussian noise, etc.) to the associated worth values from human evaluation. Each type of distortion has two data points representing high and low extremes in the distortion applied. The quantization distortion (purple circles), for example, limits the audio to a specific number of bits per sample, where the two data points represent two different bitrates. Both human raters and the FAD assigned higher values (i.e., “less realistic”) to the lower bitrate quantization. Overall log FAD correlates well with human judgement — a perfect correlation between the log FAD and human perception would result in a straight line. |
The Daily Crunch is TechCrunch’s roundup of our biggest and most important stories. If you’d like to get this delivered to your inbox every day at around 9am Pacific, you can subscribe here.
1. New Facebook features fight election lies everywhere but ads
Facebook made a slew of announcements designed to stop 2020 election interference — including the takedown of some foreign influence campaigns, the labeling of some state-owned or state-controlled media organizations and a new feature called Facebook Protect, which adds extra security.
However, during a press call about these changes, CEO Mark Zuckerberg was hammered with questions about Facebook’s continued unwillingness to fact check political ads.
2. Elon Musk tweets using SpaceX’s Starlink satellite internet
SpaceX CEO Elon Musk used an internet connection provided by his company’s Starlink constellation of broadband satellites early on Tuesday to send a simple tweet.
3. Roku buys adtech platform dataxu for $150M
Roku is beefing up its advertising business with the acquisition of Boston-based dataxu, a demand-side platform that will allow marketers to plan, buy and optimize their video ad campaigns that run on Roku’s devices and services.
4. FTC settles with Devumi, a company that sold fake followers, for $2.5M
The U.S. Federal Trade Commission has put an end to the deceptive marketing tactics of Devumi, a company that sold fake indicators of social media influence.
5. Sandbox VR raises millions more in celebrity party round
Location-based virtual reality startup Sandbox VR announced a huge $68 million Series A led by Andreessen Horowitz at the beginning of the year. Now it’s bringing on some new investors — including Justin Timberlake, Katy Perry, Orlando Bloom and Will Smith — in an $11 million “strategic” round.
6. Medium says it will compensate writers based on reading time, not claps
According to Medium’s Emma Smith, reading time is “a closer measure of quality and resonance with readers.” She also said Medium has now paid out more than $6 million total to 30,000 writers.
7. 6 tips founders need to know about securing their startup
We sat down with three experts on the Extra Crunch stage at Disrupt SF to help startups and founders understand security — what they need to do, when and why. (Extra Crunch membership required.)
Over the past year or two, Squarespace has been expanding beyond website-building with new products like email marketing and its first acquisition (of an online scheduling tool) .
Today, it’s announcing a move into social media content creation with the acquisition of Unfold, which offers templates for creating stories on Instagram, Facebook and Snapchat — you might even call it a Squarespace-style approach to social media.
“As part of our pursuit to be the all-in-one platform for anyone who wants to stand out, we’re excited to welcome the publishers of Unfold into the Squarespace family,” said Squarespace CEO Anthony Casalena in a statement. “Whether building a business or personal brand, social media is a place where many creators get started before launching a website. As a first in our category, we’re excited to provide our customers with a way to stand out no matter how they are getting started.”
The Unfold app is available for free, with premium templates available for individual purchase or a $2.99 monthly subscription fee. In the announcement, Squarespace said that Unfold has been used to create more than 700 million stories.
The financial terms of the acquisition were not disclosed, but Squarespace said Unfold co-founders Alfonso Cobo and Andy McCune will be joining the company.
The U.S. Federal Trade Commission has put an end to the deceptive marketing tactics of Devumi, a company that sold fake indicators of social media influence — like Twitter followers, retweets, YouTube subscribers and views, and more — which was also the subject of a 2018 investigation by The New York Times into the world of social media fraud. The FTC says it reached a $2.5 million settlement with Devumi’s owner and CEO German Calas, Jr., which requires the first $250,000 to be paid, with the rest deferred unless it’s discovered that Calas has misrepresented his financial situation.
According to the Times’ investigation, Devumi had made millions selling fake social media influence to celebrities, businesses or anyone else who wanted to appear more popular online. The company at the time of the report had operated a stock of at least 3.5 million bots (automated accounts), and had sold its customer base over 200 million Twitter followers, combined.
Unlike early and more basic bot armies, Devumi’s accounts were made to resemble real people — they would have the same names, photos, hometowns, and other personal details of real Twitter users, including minors.
The FTC says Devumi wasn’t limited to selling Twitter influence, however. In addition to its website Devumi.com, it also operated TwitterBoost.co, Buyview.co, and Buyplans.co, and sold influence across Twitter, Vine, LinkedIn, YouTube, Pinterest, and SoundCloud.
Its customer base included actors, athletes, musicians, writers, and other social media celebs or high-profile individuals like motivational speakers, law firm partners, investment professionals, and more.
The company had filled more than 58,000 orders for fake Twitter followers, more than 4,000 orders for fake YouTube subscribers, over 32,000 sales of fake YouTube views, and more than 800 fake LinkedIn followers — the latter to marketing, advertising, and PR firms, as well as software companies, banking, investment and other financial service firm, HR firms, and others.
All this allowed the customers to commit deceptive acts and practices, in violation of the FTC Act.
The FTC’s order imposes a fine of $2.5 million against Mr. Calas, representing the amount he was paid by Devumi or its parent company. He must pay $250,000 of that fine and the remaining amount is suspended unless he’s found to have misrepresented his financial status. (Devumi had shut down last year, in the wake of a probe by the NY Attorney General’s office.)
The Commission voted 5-0 in favor of the proposed final order.
In a similar case, the FTC also took action against Sunday Riley Modern Skincare, LLC (Sunday Riley Skincare) and its CEO, Sunday Riley, which misled consumers by posting fake reviews of the company’s products on a major retailer’s website, at the CEO’s direction. It also failed to disclose that the reviewers were company employees.
The company sold its cosmetics on Sephora, which was where the fake reviews were posted. When Sephora identified the fake reviews as by the company IP address, the employees were directed to use a VPN.
The FTC ordered the company to halt the illegal activity by way of an administrative order but did not fine them. The Commission was more split on this one, voting 3-2 in favor of the Sunday Riley consent order. (The dissenters believed the punishment should have been harsher, and have a monetary component.)
“Dishonesty in the online marketplace harms shoppers, as well as firms that play fair and square,” said Andrew Smith, Director of the FTC’s Bureau of Consumer Protection, in a statement. “Posting fake reviews on shopping websites or buying and selling fake followers is illegal. It undermines the marketplace, and the FTC will not tolerate it,” he said.”
In the broader world of fake influence, companies like Devumi only played a small role. It’s been estimated there were as many as 48 million Twitter bots back in 2017, according to one study. But that number may have been too low. Twitter itself said it wiped 70 million fake accounts from its site just last year.
Meanwhile, Instagram removed fake follows, likes and comments from users’ accounts last November, and threatened accounts that used services to buy their way to influence. Facebook says it removed 2.2 billion fake accounts in Q1 2019. YouTube, at one point in 2013, was half bot traffic — and some employees were worried the ratio would flip in the bots’ favor, a prospect they called “the inversion.”
In fact, studies have found that less than 60% of the web traffic is human, and sometimes, the majority is from bots.
Although Devumi is gone, there are still plenty of places to buy social media influence, so it’s not clear how much of a deterrent the FTC action will be in the grand scheme of things.
Bootstrapped tech company Doist, the company behind popular task management Todoist, is releasing a major update called Todoist Foundations — the update should be rolled out over the next 24 hours. As the name suggests, it lays foundations for many new features down the road.
But there are already some interesting improvements. Task lists in Todoist don’t have to be an endless list of checkboxes anymore. You can now create sections in your projects. You can then move tasks from one section to another, collapse sections when you don’t need to see them.
Down the road, those sections could play a bigger role. For instance, a project could have sections representing multiple steps to achieve a task. You could imagine other views that let you move a task from one step to another.
When it comes to labels, they are now sorted in two categories — your personal labels and shared labels with other coworkers.
Todoist has also added a new task view on desktop and mobile that centralizes everything you can do related to a task. You can modify the due date, the priority level, see comments, add labels and more. Even better, you can see all the subtasks associated with a specific task in this new view.
When it comes to mobile-specific improvements, the quick add bar has been overhauled. Quick add has always been one of my favorite features in Todoist. For instance, you can type “Send contract tomorrow at 9am @bestclient #work” to create a “Send contract” task in the “work” project, with a due date and the label “bestclient”.
Todoist first added buttons on mobile to surface those features and make them more intuitive. The company is simplifying the bar as it got really busy. It now displays existing due dates, projects and assignees in buttons directly. There are now fewer icons for less important features.
Todoist also borrowed a feature from Things 3 with the plus button. You can now drag and drop the plus button anywhere in a list to add a new task in the middle of the list. That feature is incredibly useful.
Behind the scene, everything should be faster as well. Finally, Todoist updated icons and its color palette.
If you’re a gamer, you’ll already know about some of the must-have gaming accessories and peripherals. Fancy joysticks, relaxing chairs, multiple monitors—they’re all essential items for people who play games regularly.
But what about some of the more unusual gaming peripherals out there? Which are the most weird-and-wonderful accessories that you can buy?
Train simulators have always been a niche-but-popular genre of games. Titles such as Microsoft Train Simulator, World of Subways, and Trainz RailRoad Simulator have kept hobbyists entertained for years.
If you’re into train simulators, the RailDriver USB Desktop Train Cab Controller is probably the gaming accessory of your dreams. It looks exactly like what you’d expect to find in a real train cab. There are levers for the throttle, brake, and reverse, buttons for your horn and whistle, and a three-digit speedometer.
The controller even has a built-in subwoofer to help replicate the feel of driving a real train. And below the levers and dials, you’ll find 30 programmable buttons. You can customize them depending on the game you’re playing. All the major train simulator games are supported.
Resident Evil 4 on the Nintendo GameCube was an all-time classic title. At the time of its release in 2005, it received near-perfect reviews from GameSpot (9.6/10), Edge (10/10), IGN (9.8/10), and many more. Millions of retro gamers around the world still play the game today.
If you’re a retro gamer with a GameCube who’s looking to inject some freshness into your gaming experience, check out the NUBY Resident Evil Chainsaw Controller. It looks exactly like the saw wielded by the infamous villager, Chainsaw Man.
The unit itself includes everything you’d expect from a GameCube controller, including rumble technology, a memory card slot, and a complete array of buttons. More impressively, no two NUBY Resident Evil Chainsaw Controllers are the same; each has unique blood splatters on the front and rear.
Today’s gaming controllers are fine pieces of technology. They feature screens, wireless connectivity, ergonomic designs, custom decals, and a whole lot more. But let’s be honest, there’s still something wonderfully romantic about old-school joysticks with a couple of buttons.
Thankfully, those joystick controllers didn’t die with the gaming arcades of the 1980s. Some companies are still manufacturing them for present-day consoles. One such example is the Mad Catz Street Fighter V Arcade FightStick; the controller is compatible with the PlayStation 3 and PlayStation 4.
As the name suggests, it is primarily designed for people who play Street Fighter V, but it will work with any mainstream fighting game, including Mortal Combat, Dead or Alive, and Tekken. You can also use a special button to turn the joystick into a regular left/right analog stick, allowing you to use it with non-fighting games. The controller is wired via a USB port; there is no Bluetooth or Wi-Fi connectivity.
The Wii Football controller (that’s American Football, not soccer!) is compatible with any of the Wii football titles. Madden NFL, Blitz, Family Fun Football, and Tecmo Bowl are all supported.
The Wii Football controller looks like, well, a football. All the Wii buttons are hidden below a pop-up panel. As such, you can still use the unit to control menus and other in-game items, but you won’t accidentally press them while throwing that perfect touchdown pass. There’s even a retractable hand strap; it prevents you from losing your grip and smashing your TV screen.
The OCZ Neural Impulse Actuator links with your gaming mouse and keyboard, allowing you to control them with tiny bio-signals. Indeed, the manufacturer claims that it can cut your gaming reaction times by up to 50 percent.
The device works thanks to a headband you need to wear. It has nanofiber sensors that read your bio-electrical signals. The headband amplifies and digitizes the signals, then sends it to your computer as input commends. The Neural Impulse Actuator is compatible with all games.
The Cakce One-Handed Mechanical Gaming Keyboard is an affordable keyboard for gamers who rely on using lots of keyboard inputs. With built-in wrist support and extra grip on the W, A, S, and D keys, it’s perfect for people whose regular keyboard isn’t suitable for the rigors associated with prolonged gaming.
It has LED backlights that can display in red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple, and white. You can also program the keyboard to cycle through the different colors. The keyboard supports macro recording and deletion and has six “G” buttons for custom commands. It is compatible with a PlayStation 4, Xbox, and all Windows operating systems and connects to your system via USB.
On the downside, some users have complained that the keys are overly noisy when you press them. But for the price, you won’t be able to do much better.
Tony Hawk’s is another classic video game series. There have been 16 different titles across all the major consoles of the last 20 years. If you have a copy of Tony Hawk’s Ride for the PlayStation 3 lying around, the Tony Hawk Ride Skateboard is a gaming accessory that you need to have in your life.
It is a motion-sensitive board controller—there are no buttons, no d-pads, no analog sticks; it’s just a skateboard (without wheels!). As you perform specific moves on the board, they translate into in-game tricks and stunts. To aid balance, the bottom of the board is flat and sits flush to the ground. However, the edges curl up, allowing you to mimic real-life movements. The top of the board is even covered with a skateboard-like tape to help you keep your grip on the deck.
The seven unusual gaming peripherals we’ve covered in this article are only a small taste of the bizarre accessories you can find on Amazon. Make sure you share your weird discoveries in the comments below.
And if you’d like to browse through more accessories, make sure you check out the best gaming accessories for all gamers.
Read the full article: 7 Unusual Gaming Accessories to Consider Adding to Your Setup
Apart from taking dope selfies and recording fun videos with friends, did you know that Snapchat can be good for business? This is thanks to Snapchat Insights, a tool that lets Snap Stars and creators with large audiences analyze their audiences.
In this article we cover everything you need to know about Snapchat Insights, including what it is and who can access it.
Snapchat Insights is an analytic tool similar to Twitter Analytics (how to use Twitter Analytics.) With it, you can monitor the growth of your brand, the engagement your posts get, as well as information about your target audience.
To access Snapchat Insights, all you have to do is:
Did you follow the above steps, but you were unable to locate the button for Insights? Don’t panic; there is nothing wrong with the app or your phone. Right now, Snapchat has only made this feature only available to a select few users, mostly influencers. Hopefully, Insights will be made available to more Snapchat users over time.
In today’s business world, data analysis is very important for information gathering and interpreting. Snapchat Insights aims to give you this convenience by providing access to:
The Story Views (YTD) shows you the total number of unique viewers who opened your Snap story. The basis for counting the viewers depends on if they viewed your post for more than one second.
If you’re worried about the app calculating one viewer more than once, you shouldn’t be. Viewers are only counted once regardless of the number of times they open your story.
The views you get are broken down into per week, per month, and per the cumulative year to date (YTD). From this, you can determine if your views have fallen or risen over a week, a month, or a year.
Next up is the total number of minutes your viewers watched your Snap story. The format is similar to your story views as you can view the per week, per month, and the cumulative YTD summary.
So, how do you interpret this information? When combined with story views, view time shows you how effective your content is at drawing people’s attention and keeping it.
Therefore, if you notice that your story views have dipped, you might want to consider changing your content. To find out how to go about this change, check the next feature.
Below the windows for view time and story views, there is another window. Swipe to the middle to see your average view time for each day in the week. It shows the length of time your story was watched before your viewers moved on to the next one.
The data you see has two interpretations:
Before Snapchat Insights, it was difficult for users to know the percentage of people who saw their stories from beginning to end. But, not anymore. Now, you can tell if your target audience is connecting to your content.
You must keep the percentage between 90 to 100 percent. Anything below 90 means your audience does not find your content engaging.
Apart from the views on your Snap story, how can you track the engagement of your post? Snapchat Insights incorporates a screenshot count to enable your account for this.
However, when compared to the likes, retweets, and shares on Twitter and Facebook, this feature appears a little lacking. Why? Well, because screenshots are not exactly a reliable measure for the success of a marketing initiative.
Are you curious about the gender, age group, interest, and location of your Snap followers? Then explore the “Subscribers” field.
With this feature, you can develop a focus for your content and the target audience to push it to. This is better than just pushing out random content you think a general audience would like.
Who are your followers? Are they the people that view your stories, or are they the ones that send you messages?
Snapchat aggregates your engagements and gives you a score that more or less represents your follower count. That means, your followers are not necessarily people that have added you on Snap. Instead, they are the ones that keep up with your content and interact with it.
Therefore, what you should do regularly is monitor the changes in the follower count. Has it dipped since the last month or increased? If so, backtrack to what time of the week you had the lowest or highest follower count.
After doing that, try to pinpoint the content you posted during that period to find out the reason for the change.
We all know how fun geofilters can be. From illustrations to images and branded videos, it is quite easy to boost your story’s engagement with them.
But, how do you know the geofilters are responsible for the views you have? This is where the geofilter analytics tool comes in. It is quite handy for tracking the effectiveness of your post’s geofilters.
Here is how to access it:
Snapchat Insights is a powerful tool, especially if you optimize the features to craft your content. However, at the time of writing Snapchat’s analytics tool is not open to everybody. As a non-influencer, this does not mean you cannot keep track of your traffic.
While it’s nowhere near as insightful, our beginner’s guide to using Snapchat includes a section explaining how to see how many times your Snapchat stories have been viewed.
Read the full article: How to Use Snapchat Insights to Analyze Your Audience
Given Bitcoin’s extraordinary growth in the last decade, it’s vital that you understand what it is and how it works. Failure to grasp the basics could see you left behind as the world moves into a decentralized future.
Sadly, many people (wrongly) assume that Bitcoin is a complicated beast that they have no hope of understanding; they don’t even try to learn.
Nothing could be further from the truth. For end-users, the technology is easy-to-understand and readily accessible.
Yes, there are some terms and concepts you might not recognize. But with the right guide, you’ll be able to comprehend the fundamentals in no time.
This free ebook—written by iBek Esengulov, the co-founder of Horizontal Systems, a company specializing in decentralized services—is the guide you’re looking for. It explains all the Bitcoin basics in a concise and jargon-free way.
If you download “Bitcoin Explained in Simple Terms,” you’ll learn about the following topics:
And that’s not all. Throughout the ebook, you’ll find expert insight and analysis from the author, dozens of links to useful external resources, and recommendations on the best Bitcoin services you should use.
To gain access to the ebook, simply sign up to Horizontal System’s newsletter. The ebook will be delivered to you immediately upon subscribing.
Read the full article: FREE EBOOK: Bitcoin Explained in Simple Terms
When choosing the best video editing software, huge feature lists can be daunting. Maybe you just want a program that will help you edit your videos without any fuss. If so, then look no further than Adobe Premiere Elements.
Adobe Premiere Elements offers what you need and more to produce the best video content possible. And all without over-complicating matters. Here are our reasons to start using Adobe Premiere Elements for your video editing.
For anyone that has ever dealt with poor lighting while shooting video, you know how much it can ruin the best moments. With Premiere Elements, the hassle of dealing with overly grainy and speckled videos disappears via a very simple process.
Once you have dragged-and-dropped your video file to the program’s timeline, simply select Video Effects > Reduce Noise to clean it up.
If you want a little more control over the process, you can tweak the quality settings. Rather than leaving it as the default option, you can also opt for a moderate or high-quality conversion. Then say goodbye to the need to only shoot in ideal lighting.
Do you take a lot of videos and need help sorting them? Those with extensive collections can get help sorting through their video pile by utilizing both Smart Tags and facial recognition.
Using an automatic feature detection system, Smart Tags will automatically try to detect distinct items such as a beach, house, ocean, mountain, sunset, family, and more. Similarly, Adobe’s facial recognition system will detect by facial features and create an unnamed stack of videos focused around them. You can then mark faces to have them remembered for all future videos.
For anyone that remembers creating folders upon folders to sort their videos, an in-built and searchable system provides welcome relief.
While the automated functions help a little, Element’s guided edits also deserve special mention. If you’ve ever shot a vertical video with a smartphone then you’re familiar with those black bars visible when viewing it horizontally. Eliminating these with the new Fill Frame Guided Edit allows for a much more fluid watching experience.
Whether the bars are on the top and bottom or on the sides, your videos will now have their frames filled to match. Your vertical videos can transition easily into horizontal videos with a simple drag. Similarly, horizontal video shots can become fully vertical.
As another simple video touch-up, you can flexibly make more immersive and seamless transitions between videos. We have covered video transitions more fully in a previous article, so if you’re interested be sure to look over our list of Adobe Premiere transitions to liven up your videos.
The next guided edit offers a simple solution to make your photos feel more alive. Rather than leave your skies as a non-moving image, the Animated Sky Guided Edit creates a colorful alternative. This provides a welcome change for anyone that takes shots in a very unchanging environment.
While not the flashiest of edits, the applications can be almost endless. If you have a favorite picture at home, you can use this edit to transform it into a fun desktop wallpaper. An outdoor slideshow can become an amazing sequence of vibrant skyscapes. If you need to just give your YouTube video some added visual spice, consider using this edit too.
The timelapse feature comes as the last guided edit to Premiere Elements. If you want to recreate an experience and have a large sequential stack of photos or videos, you can bring the moment back to life.
Imagine speeding up shots to show a dynamic sunrise or recreating the illusionary passing by of clouds. Simply upload your media, sort by its creation date, and adjust the time stretch based on whether you’re dealing with photos or videos to create a previewable timelapse. Utilize titles, text, and audio as well for added personalization.
With a bit of ingenuity, you can continue to create immersive vignettes of the world.
One less acknowledged element of any video editing suite comes in the form of new file support. New file formats and compression types arise regularly, and you want to make sure you can use it when it’s relevant. Thankfully, Premiere Elements stays on top of the game with each update.
With a new update, the ability to import and edit HEIF photo files and HEVC video files for both macOS and Windows come into play. If you’re a quality buff, these high-efficiency types allow for some extra oomph before getting into editing.
For a bit of added clarity, note that HEIF uses a 16-bit color versus the 8-bit of JPEG files. Doubling the file quality can play a pivotal part when working with new features like the Timelapse Guided Edit.
When looking at software that updates on a yearly basis, it’s worth questioning whether it’s value for money. You don’t want to waste money on a program that doesn’t have the features you need. Adobe, with its brand reliability, always makes sure to offer deals to its loyal consumers.
If you’re unsure about paying towards an upgrade or the full version, Adobe offers a free 30-day trial to test the update and experience the new features. The need to have an Adobe account is the only prerequisite. After the quick registration or log-in, you’ll be able to begin sampling and creating without committing.
Download: Adobe Premiere Elements ($99.99, With Free Trial Available)
Adobe Premiere Elements stands above the competition when considering the slew of easy editing options, video sorting, and regular updates. For easy entry-level video editing with plenty of options to master, consider giving it a shot.
And if you’re ready to take advantage of Adobe Premiere Pro for even more powerful video editing, consider looking at these Adobe Premiere Pro video-editing tips.
Read the full article: 7 Reasons to Start Using Adobe Premiere Elements
Most of us don’t want to think about insurance; especially when it comes to homeowners’ or renters’ insurance. We’d just like to pay it and be done with it, trusting that if something goes wrong, we’ll be covered. However, that’s not always the case, and even with good insurance, it can be like pulling teeth to get reimbursed after a life-changing accident.
The insurance industry is filled with pain points, a great irony considering it’s supposed to be a lifeline. But thanks to modern innovation, Lemonade has developed a tech-driven platform to revolutionize and revitalize the industry. Their platform eliminates the stressful claims process and irritating back-and-forth with insurance companies by putting the power in your hands. Using an innovative AI named Maya, Lemonade helps you craft your ideal insurance plan for your needs in as little as 90 seconds, and resolves claims in as little as three minutes. When a window breaks, you can submit, process, and get reimbursed fast rather than spending needless hours on the phone or filling out paperwork.
Lemonade works by taking a flat fee and treating the premium you pay as your money. Then, when you get paid for specific claims, a portion of the unclaimed funds are sent to charities on your behalf, so you’re doing good even while you’re benefiting.
The full Lemonade experience is based on either the iOS or Android app and you can get renters’ insurance starting at just $5/month or homeowners’ insurance starting at just $25/month. The world is progressing, shouldn’t your insurance, too?
Read the full article: Lemonade Uses Tech to Streamline Insurance Policies
Experts recommend maintaining a daily journal to anyone seeking to boost their productivity or even manage their mental health. These free apps will help you write a daily journal on your phone or computer.
Each app takes a different approach to digital journaling, so pick the one that suits your style. Some focus on privacy, others target beginners and time-constrained users. And there’s even an app that turns the concept of a diary on its head by making your journal entries public.
If you’re new to journaling, Cactus is a good app to start with. It will guide you through the basics of digital journaling while helping you strengthen and improve the core experiences of your daily life.
Once you register for an account, Cactus asks you to check in once a day. There, it will ask you a question based on one of four essential elements: meaning, experience, energy, emotions, relationships. You won’t know the element till you answer the question, in the form of a journal entry.
Questions vary like “who is a person who makes you smile” or “what experiences are you looking forward to this week?” After answering, you’ll get an idea of why the question matters for your mental health. Each entry is a private note to check back later.
At times, Cactus also encourages you to share your notes with people. It’s a nice exercise for gratitude journaling, and it’s easy to share a single note without unloading all your thoughts on that person.
Psst, sign up now and you’ll also get some cool free phone wallpapers.
Productivity gurus and mental health experts have several thoughts on what you should record in your journal. Each approach has different apps guiding you with questions that you can answer daily. With JournalBook, you can create a custom digital journal with your own questions.
You don’t need to register or sign up to use the app. Fire it up in your browser and you can start writing. It suggests four popular daily questions to get you started and has extra fields to add your own. Every day, it will prompt you to answer those questions. When you have a particularly big day, you can highlight it, and reflect upon those highlighted days later.
This is a progressive web app that works on any browser. All data is stored on your device, not on a cloud, so you’ll need to use it on the same gadget every day. It works offline and is mobile-friendly to use on a phone. You could even turn the site into an Android app.
Sol Journal is another progressive web app journal that works offline in your browser. In fact, the developer says JournalBook was an inspiration for it. But the difference here is that you can host it yourself, thus giving you full control over privacy.
Privacy is a key factor in digital journaling. You didn’t let anyone see your diary as a kid, why should you trust that your deepest thoughts would be safe on a web server that someone can hack? Sol Journal lets you deploy a journal to your own server, so the data is protected. The GitHub instructions are simple.
You can try out Sol Journal before installing it. You’ll find a minimalistic interface for a journal, with day and night modes. There’s a handy “Quick Add Time” button to put the current timestamp into an entry. And you can export it all to a JSON file. You’ll need to register to use Sol Journal, but that only means you can use it on multiple devices instead of just one.
A diary should be kept secret, or so we have been conditioned to believe. The Open Diaries questions that notion and urges you to be more open about the digital journaling experience. What would happen if you could read other people’s diaries, and they could read yours?
Don’t worry, it’s not like your entire journal is open for anyone. You get to choose which entries to make public and which ones to keep private for your eyes only. The interface is a bit kiddish, using a handwritten script-like font that you’ll have to live with. There’s also a decent text editor for formatting, and you can add images too.
On The Open Diaries public feed, you can browse and read entries from anyone. In our cursory browsing, it seemed like an active social network with people from different parts of the world.
Openly writing a diary might not be everyone’s cup of tea, and we’d advise not sharing personal details with which someone can identify you in real life. As long as you’re careful, it can be therapeutic in a whole new way.
Download: The Open Diaries for Android | iOS (Free)
You can’t escape artificial intelligence, even in digital journaling apps. On a serious note, Reflectly does a good job of using AI in a journal app, especially for those who don’t want to do long diary entries daily.
The app divides journaling into tracking your moods and noting major highlights. Every day, it prompts you to note how the day went, what type of activity made it feel that way and note any thoughts about it.
Along with these three, you get a new daily question. The type of question varies but it’s usually a good self-assessment or a place to vent. This is where the AI comes in, as it uses your mood and other data to come up with the questions.
You can also view statistics on Reflectly after you unlock stars by using it regularly. The app aggressively pushes its Premium version, but keep tapping “No Thanks” every time it pops up and you can still use the free version without a hitch.
Download: Reflectly for Android | iOS (Free)
The term “Dear Diary” was meant to suggest that you’re talking to a friend. What if you could keep a journal by the modern mechanism of talking to friends? JournalFlow is a neat app that hooks into Telegram and Facebook Messenger, so you can chat to add to your journal.
Sign up and add JournalFlow to the messenger of your choice. From then on, it’s like any other chat with a friend. Type into the chat window and it’ll get automatically added to your journal. You can also post photos.
Periodically, JournalFlow will ask you questions pertaining to your day or mood, like any of the other guided journaling apps. You can also use JournalFlow through email, replying to one message a day with those questions.
The downside is that JournalFlow is free only for 30 days, after which you’ll have to pay $2.49 per month to use it. Try it out and see if it’s worth it for you.
Note: At the time of testing, the Telegram feature wasn’t working.
The benefits of digital journaling cannot be ignored. There are multiple studies that conclude this daily practice can help in mental clarity and emotional well-being. But different apps work for different people. So if the above tools aren’t your speed, try these other diary apps to start a journaling habit.
Read the full article: 6 Digital Journal Apps to Boost Mental Health With a Daily Diary
