Google Photos adds a chat feature to its app

An argument could be made that Google has over-indulged in its creation of way too many messaging apps in years past. But today’s launch of a new messaging service — this time within the confines of Google Photos — is an integration that actually makes sense.

The company is rolling out a way to directly message photos and chat with another user or users within the Google Photos app. The addition will allow users to quickly and easily share those one-off photos or videos with another person, instead of taking additional steps to build a shared album.

The feature itself is simple to use. After selecting a photo and tapping share, you can now choose a new option “Send in Google Photos.” You can then tap on the icon of your most frequent contacts or search for a user by name, phone number of email.

The recipient will need a Google account to receive the photos, however, because they’ll need to sign-in to view the conversation. That may limit the feature to some extent, as not everyone is a Google user. But with now a billion some Google Photos users out there, it’s likely that more of the people you want to share will have an account, rather than not.

You can also use this feature to start a group chat by selecting “New group,” then adding recipients.

Once a chat has been started, you can return to it at any time from the “Sharing” tab in Google Photos. Here, you’ll be able to see the photos and videos you each shared, comments, text chats and likes. You can also save the photos you want to your phone or tap on the “All Photos” option to see just the photos themselves without the conversations surrounding them.

Explains Google, the idea with the new direct sharing option is not to replace users’ preferred messaging apps — a strategy that differs from Google’s investments in apps like Hangouts and Allo in previous years. Instead, the feature wants to relocate some of the photo-sharing activity that takes place in messaging apps to Google Photos.

Google had tried a similar idea with direct video sharing and messaging from the YouTube app. But the company later shut down that feature ahead of YouTube’s announcement of the $170M FTC fine for violating U.S. children’s privacy laws, COPPA. Likely, the chat feature there would have complicated YouTube’s product, now under increased regulatory scrutiny, because many kids were using direct messaging as a way to work around parental controls and other blocks on traditional messaging apps.

Google Photos makes more sense as a place to directly message friends and family, though, and the Google account requirement means users will have to be 13 or older to gain access. (Unless parents created a Google account for their child).

Direct messaging was previously announced as “coming soon” alongside Google Photos’ big fall update that also included the launch of Stories and other features.

The new feature is launching today but the rollout will take place over the next week. It will be supported across platforms, including iOS, Android and web.

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Developing Deep Learning Models for Chest X-rays with Adjudicated Image Labels

Posted by Dave Steiner, MD, Research Scientist and Shravya Shetty, Technical Lead, Google Health

With millions of diagnostic examinations performed annually, chest X-rays are an important and accessible clinical imaging tool for the detection of many diseases. However, their usefulness can be limited by challenges in interpretation, which requires rapid and thorough evaluation of a two-dimensional image depicting complex, three-dimensional organs and disease processes. Indeed, early-stage lung cancers or pneumothoraces (collapsed lungs) can be missed on chest X-rays, leading to serious adverse outcomes for patients.

Advances in machine learning (ML) present an exciting opportunity to create new tools to help experts interpret medical images. Recent efforts have shown promise in improving lung cancer detection in radiology, prostate cancer grading in pathology, and differential diagnoses in dermatology. For chest X-ray images in particular, large, de-identified public image sets are available to researchers across disciplines, and have facilitated several valuable efforts to develop deep learning models for X-ray interpretation. However, obtaining accurate clinical labels for the very large image sets needed for deep learning can be difficult. Most efforts have either applied rule-based natural language processing (NLP) to radiology reports or relied on image review by individual readers, both of which may introduce inconsistencies or errors that can be especially problematic during model evaluation. Another challenge involves assembling datasets that represent an adequately diverse spectrum of cases (i.e., ensuring inclusion of both “hard” cases and “easy” cases that represent the full spectrum of disease presentation). Finally, some chest X-ray findings are non-specific and depend on clinical information about the patient to fully understand their significance. As such, establishing labels that are clinically meaningful and have consistent definitions can be a challenging component of developing machine learning models that use only the image as input. Without standardized and clinically meaningful datasets as well as rigorous reference standard methods, successful application of ML to interpretation of chest X-rays will be hindered.

To help address these issues, we recently published “Chest Radiograph Interpretation with Deep Learning Models: Assessment with Radiologist-adjudicated Reference Standards and Population-adjusted Evaluation” in the journal Radiology. In this study we developed deep learning models to classify four clinically important findings on chest X-rays — pneumothorax, nodules and masses, fractures, and airspace opacities. These target findings were selected in consultation with radiologists and clinical colleagues, so as to focus on conditions that are both critical for patient care and for which chest X-ray images alone are an important and accessible first-line imaging study. Selection of these findings also allowed model evaluation using only de-identified images without additional clinical data.

Models were evaluated using thousands of held-out images from each dataset for which we collected high-quality labels using a panel-based adjudication process among board-certified radiologists. Four separate radiologists also independently reviewed the held-out images in order to compare radiologist accuracy to that of the deep learning models (using the panel-based image labels as the reference standard). For all four findings and across both datasets, the deep learning models demonstrated radiologist-level performance. We are sharing the adjudicated labels for the publicly available data here to facilitate additional research.

Data Overview
This work leveraged over 600,000 images sourced from two de-identified datasets. The first dataset was developed in collaboration with co-authors at the Apollo Hospitals, and consists of a diverse set of chest X-rays obtained over several years from multiple locations across the Apollo Hospitals network. The second dataset is the publicly available ChestX-ray14 image set released by the National Institutes of Health (NIH). This second dataset has served as an important resource for many machine learning efforts, yet has limitations stemming from issues with the accuracy and clinical interpretation of the currently available labels.

Chest X-ray depicting an upper left lobe pneumothorax identified by the model and the adjudication panel, but missed by the individual radiologist readers. Left: The original image. Right: The same image with the most important regions for the model prediction highlighted in orange.

Training Set Labels Using Deep Learning and Visual Image Review
For very large datasets consisting of hundreds of thousands of images, such as those needed to train highly accurate deep learning models, it is impractical to manually assign image labels. As such, we developed a separate, text-based deep learning model to extract image labels using the de-identified radiology reports associated with each X-ray. This NLP model was then applied to provide labels for over 560,000 images from the Apollo Hospitals dataset used for training the computer vision models.

To reduce noise from any errors introduced by the text-based label extraction and also to provide the relevant labels for a substantial number of the ChestX-ray14 images, approximately 37,000 images across the two datasets were visually reviewed by radiologists. These were separate from the NLP-based labels and helped to ensure high quality labels across such a large, diverse set of training images.

Creating and Sharing Improved Reference Standard Labels
To generate high-quality reference standard labels for model evaluation, we utilized a panel-based adjudication process, whereby three radiologists reviewed all final tune and test set images and resolved disagreements through discussion. This often allowed difficult findings that were initially only detected by a single radiologist to be identified and documented appropriately. To reduce the risk of bias based on any individual radiologist’s personality or seniority, the discussions took place anonymously via an online discussion and adjudication system.

Because the lack of available adjudicated labels was a significant initial barrier to our work, we are sharing with the research community all of the adjudicated labels for the publicly available ChestX-ray14 dataset, including 2,412 training/validation set images and 1,962 test set images (4,374 images in total). We hope that these labels will facilitate future machine learning efforts and enable better apples-to-apples comparisons between machine learning models for chest X-ray interpretation.

Future Outlook
This work presents several contributions: (1) releasing adjudicated labels for images from a publicly available dataset; (2) a method to scale accurate labeling of training data using a text-based deep learning model; (3) evaluation using a diverse set of images with expert-adjudicated reference standard labels; and ultimately (4) radiologist-level performance of deep learning models for clinically important findings on chest X-rays.

However, in regards to model performance, achieving expert-level accuracy on average is just a part of the story. Even though overall accuracy for the deep learning models was consistently similar to that of radiologists for any given finding, performance for both varied across datasets. For example, the sensitivity for detecting pneumothorax among radiologists was approximately 79% for the ChestX-ray14 images, but was only 52% for the same radiologists on the other dataset, suggesting a more difficult collection cases in the latter. This highlights the importance of validating deep learning tools on multiple, diverse datasets and eventually across the patient populations and clinical settings in which any model is intended to be used.

The performance differences between datasets also emphasize the need for standardized evaluation image sets with accurate reference standards in order to allow comparison across studies. For example, if two different models for the same finding were evaluated using different datasets, comparing performance would be of minimal value without knowing additional details such as the case mix, model error modes, or radiologist performance on the same cases.

Finally, the model often identified findings that were consistently missed by radiologists, and vice versa. As such, strategies that combine the unique “skills” of both the deep learning systems and human experts are likely to hold the most promise for realizing the potential of AI applications in medical image interpretation.

Acknowledgements
Key contributors to this project at Google include Sid Mittal, Gavin Duggan, Anna Majkowska, Scott McKinney, Andrew Sellergren, David Steiner, Krish Eswaran, Po-Hsuan Cameron Chen, Yun Liu, Shravya Shetty, and Daniel Tse. Significant contributions and input were also made by radiologist collaborators Joshua Reicher, Alexander Ding, and Sreenivasa Raju Kalidindi. The authors would also like to acknowledge many members of the Google Health radiology team including Jonny Wong, Diego Ardila, Zvika Ben-Haim, Rory Sayres, Shahar Jamshy, Shabir Adeel, Mikhail Fomitchev, Akinori Mitani, Quang Duong, William Chen and Sahar Kazemzadeh. Sincere appreciation also goes to the many radiologists who enabled this work through their expert image interpretation efforts throughout the project.

Apple and Google reveal the best apps and games of 2019

Continuing their annual tradition, Apple and Google have released their list of the best apps and games of 2019. Apple, for the first time, held a real-world event to celebrate its winners, where it crowned A.I.-powered camera app, Spectre Camera as its best iPhone app of the year and Sky: Children of the Light as its best game. Google, meanwhile, dubbed teen messaging app Ablo as its app winner and Call of Duty: Mobile as its best game.

Apple’s event held in New York put its winning developers in front of media in order to demonstrate their apps and games. The event was less formal than the Apple Design Awards held at the company’s worldwide developer conference each year, and instead focused on private presentations to press.

Apple said its winners this year sit “at the nexus of digital and pop culture,” but its list really better highlights what Apple thinks are the key selling features for its devices. For example, with Spectre Camera by Lux Optics, it’s about the iPhone’s ability to serve as your main camera even for complicated tasks like long-exposure photos.

The iPad app of the year was Flow by Moleskine, an app that already won a 2019 Design Award. In this case, the digital notebook app shows off a top iPad use case of being a device aimed at creative professionals. Users can take advantage of its digital graphite pencils and chisel-tipped markers to draw and sketch as they could in real life.

The Mac app of the year, Affinity Publisher by Serif Labs, allows users to design and publish books, magazines, brochures, posters, and more — a task that best lends itself to a larger device with a full-sized keyboard.

Finally, the Apple TV app of the year, The Explorers by The Explorers Network, showcases something that works best on your TV’s larger, high-def screen. The app’s community of photographers and videographers are working together to create a visual inventory of the natural world, which you can enjoy on your big screen.

Apple’s iPhone Game of the Year, Sky: Children of the Light by thatgamecompany (makers of Journey, the 2013 Game of the Year), iPad Game of the Year Hyper Light Drifter by Abylight S.L., and Mac Game of the Year GRIS by Nomada Studio, are all the sort of beautiful-designed games that Apple prefers to showcase.

Today’s gaming market has become over-filled with free-to-play titles due to the sort of supported business models that work on the App Store. That’s something Apple Arcade is an attempt to correct, in fact. Apple winners show that even free games can be works of art.

Sky: Children...is a free to play social adventure with in-app purchases, but is also beautiful and creative. Similarly, adventure game Hyper Light, was already a visual arts award winner at the Independent Games Festival. And GRIS has been described as one of the most gorgeous games.

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The Apple TV Game of the Year, Wonder Boy: The Dragon’s Trap by DotEmu was developed by LizardCube with the cooperation of series creator Ryuichi Nishizawa, to bring an 80’s cult classic back to life. That’s part of one of Apple’s larger App Store gaming trends — a year of “blockbusters reimagined.”

Apple also gave mention of other launches in this space like Mario Kart Tour, Dr. Mario World, Minecraft Eart, Pokémon Masters, Assassin’s Creed Rebellion, Gears POP!, The Elder Scrolls: Blades, Alien: Blackout, and Google’s Game of the Year, Call of Duty: Mobile.

And in what could be the start of a new tradition, Apple also anointed an Apple Arcade Game of the Year with the gorgeous, fast-paced and music-filled Sayonara Wild Hearts developed by Simogo and published by Annapurna Interactive.

Apple’s year-end list also highlighted App Store non-gaming trend of  “Storytelling,” which featured a variety of apps to tell stories, including visually, as well as through audio and text. Noted apps here were Anchor, Canva, Unfold, Steller, Spark Camera, Over, and Wattpad.

Google doesn’t go all-out as Apple does for its “Best of 2019” picks.

Instead, it simply featured best app Ablo and best game Call of Duty: Mobile as its editorial picks, then leaves the rest to a User’s Choice. Voters selected the same game, but gave the Best App award to a video editor, Glitch Video Effects.

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Google’s full list also includes Google Play’s best ebooks, audiobooks, TV shows and Movies, which you can see here.

 

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Want to change the world? Learn the art of fundraising | Kara Logan Berlin

Want to change the world? Learn the art of fundraising | Kara Logan Berlin

How do you raise money to get an idea off the ground, support a community, help change the world? Take a crash course on the secret art of successful fundraising with development strategist Kara Logan Berlin as she shares how anyone can learn to ask for money -- and get it, too.

Click the above link to download the TED talk.

12 HTML5 Browser Games That Don’t Need Adobe Flash

You’re on your break at work and think it would be great to play a fun game in your browser. Unfortunately, you’re not allowed to install Adobe Flash on your computer. However, you figure there aren’t any good browser games that don’t require Flash, right? Wrong!

HTML5 games are available in any modern browser and work without plug-ins or installations. You just open and play. Plus, these are just as enjoyable as Flash games. So here’s a list of free HTML5 browser games you can play without installing Adobe Flash.

1. Smarty Bubbles

There are some great bubble shooters to play online, and Smarty Bubbles is one of them.

Your goal is to get the highest score possible by eliminating bubbles from the gameboard. Plan strategically by viewing the next bubble coming, use the handy arrow to help you aim, and ricochet off the walls to make those tough shots. What’s the best score you can achieve?

2. Fruita Crush

Another great match-three, no-Flash game is the puzzler Fruita Crush. Drag to connect three or more fruits to remove them from the board and score.

Each of the 100 levels has a different objective to meet within a certain number of moves. And, matching more than three fruits will give you special pieces like explosive bombs and handy line eliminators. These provide more points than standard pieces.

3. Jewelish

When you prefer fancy jewels over tasty fruits in your match-three game, Jewelish is the way to go. With two minutes on the clock, drag to connect three or more jewels to score.

As with Fruita Crush, connecting more than three will give you cool jewels that clear columns and rows or blow up surrounding pieces. If you want a quick way of scoring without playing through multiple levels, Jewelish is a fun option.

4. Jungle Run

If you enjoy endless running platform games, then grab some bananas and play Jungle Run. You can choose to play as Kiba or Kumba, both apes with great skills.

Run and jump, collect stars and power-ups, and see if you can make it through the 30 challenging levels. And be sure to watch out for enemies because they will take you down in a hurry.

5. Pool Billiard

When you can’t get to the pool parlor, play a quick game of Pool Billiard in your web browser. Aim and shoot to pocket all colored pool balls before sinking the black 8-ball.

You can get extra points by hitting the balls in their numbered order, but that is quite a challenge. If you are up to a test of your aiming and strategy skills on the pool table, chalk up your cue.

6. Sports Mahjong

Sports Mahjong is a take on the classic game with the twist of a sports theme. Gameplay is as normal where you match open tiles to clear the board. The game has upbeat music, a shuffle option, and hints if you get stuck.

If you enjoy Mahjong and look for variations with unusual themes, Sports Mahjong is an excellent addition to your non-Flash game collection.

7. Time Connect

For a different type of matching game, Time Connect challenges you to connect tiles with a restriction. You must match two tiles that have a clear path between them with no more than two 90-degree angles.

Your goal is to clear the board and move onto the next challenge while scoring as highly as you can. The game has helpful hints, handy shuffles, and a cute timepiece theme.

8. Maya Pyramid Solitaire

For another of the games that don’t need Flash, Maya Pyramid Solitaire is an enjoyable one that makes you think quickly.

To succeed, you must match two or more cards that equal 11 to clear the game board within the allotted time. You can combine the cards from the deck on the bottom as well as those on the board. Three jokers, which act as wildcards, can save you if you get stuck.

9. Badland

If you aren’t familiar with Badland, it’s a wonderful adventure available on mobile devices, Steam, and gaming consoles. This side-scrolling platformer takes you into a mysterious and eerie world.

Your goal is to fly through the dark forest while watching out for enemy dwellers and dangerous traps. The HTML5 version of Badland has many challenging levels and missions, spooky sound effects, and fantastic imagery.

10. Galaga Special Edition

OK, Galaga and space-shooter fans, it’s your turn for an online game without Flash. Galaga Special Edition is a fun HTML5 version of the classic shooter with great visual and audio effects. You’ll feel like you are back at the arcade with a pocket full of quarters.

Fly, blast, and maneuver through 25 unique stages. Earn bonuses, unlock achievements, score big, and, of course, prepare for the big boss battles.

11. Tentrix

It sounds like Tetris, looks like Tetris, but is completely different than Tetris. This game is called Tentrix and your goal is to use the differently-shaped pieces to eliminate rows and columns on the board.

With each round, you receive three pieces to place and must fit each one in to continue. Once you fill the board and cannot make another move, the game is over. If you like free online puzzle games, then Tentrix is the one for you.

12. King of Thieves

King of Thieves is an addictive platform adventure created by the makers of Cut the Rope. In each of the levels, you’ll need to plan and show some great clicking or tapping skills. You must maneuver around obstacles and enemies while bouncing off walls to make your way to the treasure chest.

Crazy characters, dangerous cannons, and scary spikes are everywhere… so time your moves carefully.

Who Needs Flash for Awesome Games?

With awesome browser games like these, you can stop worrying about not having Adobe Flash. Plus, be sure to browse around on the sites referenced for these games because they each have tons of other fun options available.

For more nifty games without Flash, check out our list of the best Google Doodle games.

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The 7 Best Sites to Prank Your Friends With Fake Email Messages

If you want to send fake emails to prank your friends and family, there are a few online services worth exploring. They each have slightly different features and use cases.

Keep reading to learn about seven of the best prank email generators and how you can use them to make an email look like it was sent from someone else.

1. Deadfake

Deadfake is one of the most well-known prank email generators on the web. The service has been responsible for sending almost two million fake email messages since it first went online.

The app lets you send fake emails to anyone you want. Better yet, you can make the email appear that it’s from any person of your choosing as well.

To aid anonymity, you don’t need to register on the site or provide your personal details to Deadfake to use the service.

When creating your fake email, you can format it using the native text editor. Make sure you use a real domain in the From field, or the email will bounce, and your attempts to make an email look like it was sent from someone else will fail.

2. Emkei’s Mailer

Emkei’s Mailer provides a similar service to Deadfake. You can choose the From Name, From Email, To, Subject, and Message.

The most significant difference between the two services is Emkei’s Mailer’s support for attachments. As per most email services, the maximum attachment size is 25MB.

Emkei’s Mailer also offers a plain text editor and an HTML editor while you’re composing your message. As such, the app is simple to use for a quick one-liner, but can also be deployed when you want to make a fake email message look a bit more convincing.

3. Send Anonymous Email

Send Anonymous Email is a web app that can make an email look like it was sent from someone else. It claims more than 60,000 anonymous emails are sent from its servers every day. That number sounds high to us, but it’s clearly a widely-used app regardless of the real figure.

The service’s options and features are the least extensive of the three sites on the list so far. You can only specify the receiver’s email, sender’s email, subject, and message. There are no attachments, and only a standard plain text editor is available.

You cannot add colors, change the font, or fiddle with other formatting options. You’ll need to enter the security code before Send Anonymous Email will let you send your fake message.

It’s worth noting that Send Anonymous Email takes a serious stance on abuse of its services. In the company’s terms, it says if you send death threats, abuse, slander, or anything illegal, the company will publish your IP address and block you from the site.

(Note: The same company provides additional services for sending anonymous or fake SMS messages.)

4. Spoof Box

Spoof Box has the most modern-looking site on the list. It is also one of the only services that let you send fake emails from either your Android or iOS device; a free app is available for both operating systems.

The service has one feature that is unique among the prank email generators we’ve looked at—you can send your fake email message to up to 10 email addresses at a time. Just separate each address with a comma in the To field.

On the downside, you can only send 30 fake emails for free. Thereafter, you need to earn credits by following Spoof Box on its various social media platforms.

Download: Spoofbox for Android | iOS (Free, in-app purchases)

5. ZMail

ZMail provides a unique way to send fake emails or play an email spam prank. That’s because it is the only service on our list that works via a desktop app rather than via a web app.

Don’t worry; you don’t need to fret about viruses and malware. ZMail is open source; anyone can check out the code to make sure it’s safe.

Sadly, the app is only available on Windows. Mac users will have to stick to one of the web apps we have discussed.

6. GuerrillaMail

None of the services we’ve looked at so far will allow you to receive email replies; they do not provide an inbox service.

However, some services—such as GuerrillaMail—do provide an email inbox and can be used to send a fake email. But there is a trade-off. You cannot send the fake email from someone else; GuerrillaMail does not let you add a custom From address. You can set any username you wish but are restricted to one of the app’s preselected domains.

Furthermore, emails in the inbox are only saved for 60 minutes. Thereafter, GuerrillaMail will automatically delete the messages from its servers. If you don’t regularly check for responses to your prank, you risk missing the fallout altogether.

7. Letter Generator

We’ll leave you with something a bit different. Letter Generator lets you generate fake letters using topics and keywords of your choosing.

The service is the perfect app to use when you’re not sure what to write in your fake prank email. Pair this app with one of the fake email services we’ve already discussed, and you’ve got a winning prank on your hands.

The topics available include employment, relationships, apartment rentals, and even song lyrics.

Letter Generator is entirely free to use, and there are no restrictions on the number of letters you can generate.

Use Fake Email Generators Responsibly

Services that let you send fake emails can easily be abused. The act of sending fake email from someone else raises ethical and moral concerns. And depending on the content of your message (and the actions the recipients takes in light of it), there could even be legal consequences.

Sure, fake emails can provide a bit of fun among family and friends. But don’t send prank emails that could cause alarm, sadness, or panic. And it goes without saying that you shouldn’t impersonate the police or other emergency services.

To learn more about pranking people, check out our article on the best ways to play geeky pranks on your friends.

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11 Useful Tools to Check, Clean, and Optimize CSS Files

Optimizing a CSS stylesheet is a good way to increase the loading speed of your website or app. By reducing the size of a CSS file, the server will take a shorter time to load, resulting in a faster webpage. Using CSS checkers that can clean common errors can help.

In addition to optimizing, modern CSS development is improved by cleaner syntax. If you really want to take your development up a notch, CSS frameworks let you do more with streamlined code.

These tools and programs will help you clean up your code, solve errors, and improve syntax.

Tools to Check Your CSS Code

1. PostCSS

PostCSS isn’t a simple code checker, but it is one of the most powerful options. So powerful it is has been used by Google, GitHub, WordPress, and more. PostCSS is an open-source system you can deploy in your apps to open up a wide range of features through plugins.

These plugins can perform a lot of useful functions. There is a vast library, but a few examples of what they can do are:

• Lint your code to avoid errors
• Clean your code to make it more readable
• Modify your CSS to be more compatible with modern browsers

PostCSS pops up on this list again, it’s worth checking out. It has strong support from the development community, keeping PostCSS in tune with the needs of modern web development.

2. Code Beautify

The CSS validator by Code Beautify offers a descriptive CSS checker that can clean up your code. CSS Validator parses your code and provides you with recommendations to make it more efficient. It will give you warnings if your CSS could be tuned up, and check for CSS code errors.

You can either paste CSS manually into the editor or provide the URL for your live website and it will automatically load the CSS for you.

3. CSS Lint

Check out another CSS helper, CSS Lint. Named after a relatively popular term for code-cleaning, CSS Lint is an open-source tool that will provide some useful tips to enhance CSS code.

CSS Lint has a handy drop-down menu that lets you choose which potential errors you would like to check for. In the event you find yourself running into a specific problem, you can target that error and check the code.

4. Beautify Tools

Beautify Tools has a host of converters and tools for web developers. It goes much further than CSS, but it does have a CSS validator built-in. The validator is web-based and performs either a simple validation for checking or formats it to make it easier to read.

5. W3C CSS Validator

The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) is pretty well known for its resources in helping web developers learn and grow. They offer their own CSS checker that has been around for nearly a decade. There are many great resources for learning CSS, and HTML as well. The W3C Validator accepts raw code, URLs, and CSS file uploads to check your CSS syntax.

Tools to Clean Your CSS Code

6. Code Beautifier

Checking code for errors is very useful, but developers working with mountains of code know the importance of clean formatting. Trying to work with code that is not spaced properly, or has uneven indents can be a nightmare.

Code Beautifer is a CSS formatting tool that takes raw CSS code and outputs a clean sheet of CSS with improved features. You can select from various checked options to get the code just how you want it. It also offers an optimizer built-in, with the option to output as a file.

7. CSS Redundancy Checker

Avoiding redundant code is a principle of good development. That applies to CSS as well. As stylesheets grow ever larger, it’s harder to maintain every little selector.

This CSS Redundancy Checker takes your raw CSS code and shows you if any selectors appear more than once, to encourage you to package them as a group and save the code. This will help reduce your file size in the end as an added bonus.

Tools to Optimize CSS Code

Once you have completed checking the validity of your CSS and cleaned up unnecessary code, you can get the best performance out of your code by optimizing it.

One of the best ways to speed up the performance of your CSS, and your website, is to minify the CSS. Minification is a process that takes your code and condenses certain elements so that the web browser can read it much faster.

This browser-friendly code does not look like neatly formatted code. Instead, it may have reduced variable names, removed comments, removed unused code, etc. Anything the browser does not need to render.

Here are some tools that can minify your CSS.

8. CSS Nano

CSS Nano is a modern minifying tool for CSS scripts written in Nodejs. CSS Nano works through the command line in a package built into the Node Package Manager(NPM) for JavaScript. It also has an online web app that can perform the conversion instantly if you don’t want to use the command line.

This tool performs many different optimizations and uses PostCSS underneath the hood. As previously mentioned, PostCSS is very well regarded. CSS Nano builds on that strength and reliability.

9. CSSO

CSSO is a simple web tool that takes your raw CSS and minifies it with a few options.

Among these are the options to “restructure” which optimizes code, and “beautify” which cleans up the format of the CSS to make it easier to read. You can select both at the same time to combine the two settings as well.

10. CSS Minify

CSS Minify has fewer options than other more advanced tools, but it works very well. It accepts raw code and file upload to import CSS.

11. Purify CSS

PurifyCSS is a library that offers a different way to optimize your CSS. Instead of changing a CSS file you run PurifyCSS on your entire app. It will analyze your app and remove all the CSS that is not being used by your app.

This can be especially helpful if you use a CSS framework. Frameworks provide manyf options but are quite heavy because of the amount of CSS needed to build the framework. PurifyCSS can take your app once you’ve used the framework and get to the heart of your code, cutting out the unused CSS.

Hopefully, the tools listed here are enough for you to tweak and optimize your CSS stylesheet. Aspiring web developers should keep learning new tools to upgrade their development. If you have used any other tools that are more useful than those mentioned above, share them with us in the comments.

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3 Ways to Restore Data From Time Machine Backups

It’s really easy to set up Time Machine, the backup software that comes with every Mac. You just have to point it toward your external hard drive and let it do its work. But how do you restore data from Time Machine backups when you need to?

There are three ways to do this:

1. Use the Time Machine app to restore particular files.
2. Revert your entire Mac to a previous backup with macOS Recovery.
3. Migrate files or user accounts to a different Mac using Migration Assistant.

Here’s a rundown of all these methods, including what to do if your Mac spends a long time searching for Time Machine backups.

1. How to Use Time Machine to Restore Particular Files

Most of the time, you only need to restore a single file from Time Machine. Perhaps you deleted something by mistake, or need to revert a document to the way it was two weeks ago.

If you use Time Machine to create regular backups, you can fix both of these problems using the Time Machine app.

Open the document you want to restore, or go to the location where you deleted it in Finder. Then open Time Machine from the Applications folder, using Spotlight to search for it, or by selecting Enter Time Machine from the menu bar.

When you open Time Machine, it shows all the previous versions of your active document. Go back in time using the up and down arrows, or by selecting a date from the right side of the screen.

Choose the file you want to restore and press Space to preview it. When you’re certain it’s the correct version, click Restore to bring the file back into your current version of macOS.

2. How to Restore Everything From a Time Machine Backup

When necessary, you can restore every file, user account, and setting on your Mac from a previous Time Machine backup. This is useful if something goes wrong in macOS that you don’t know how to fix, or if you want to move all your data to a new Mac.

To restore an entire Time Machine backup, you need to boot into macOS Recovery. This is a hidden partition that you can use to:

• Reinstall macOS
• Run Disk Utility, to erase or repair your hard disk
• Get help online using Safari
• Restore your Mac using a Time Machine backup.

Obviously, we’re interested in the forth option here. Before we can use it, we need to boot into macOS Recovery.

How to Boot Into macOS Recovery

Shut down your Mac completely, then turn it on again while holding the Cmd + R keys. Keep holding both keys until you see a startup screen, which should be followed by the macOS Utilities window.

If this doesn’t work, try booting macOS internet Recovery instead by holding Cmd + Option + R while your Mac turns on. A spinning globe should appear while your Mac downloads macOS Recovery from the web.

Older Macs, running Mac OS X Snow Leopard or earlier, might need to boot into the Restore partition instead of macOS Recovery. Shut down your Mac, then hold Option while it turns on. Select the Restore partition next to your startup disk.

How to Restore a Time Machine Backup From macOS Recovery

From the macOS Utilities window that appears, click Restore From Time Machine and select your backup drive. Follow the prompts to choose a date and time to restore from, then choose your Mac’s hard disk as the destination.

Click Restore and wait for Time Machine to copy all the files to your Mac. It might take a while, but when it’s finished, everything will look and feel the same as it did when you made the backup.

3. Migrate Files or User Accounts to a Different Mac

Migration Assistant is Apple’s tool for transferring files or user accounts from one Mac to another. You can use Migration Assistant with a Time Machine backup to import selected files or user accounts, rather than restoring an entire backup.

A brand-new Mac prompts you to use Migration Assistant during the setup. You can also open Migration Assistant from the Utilities folder in Applications to migrate data to a Mac you already set up.

Follow the prompts in Migration Assistant to transfer information From a Mac, Time Machine backup, or startup disk. Select your backup drive and choose the date and time you want to migrate files from.

You can choose to transfer the following data using Migration Assistant:

• Applications
• Computer and network settings
• Documents and data, including user accounts and specific folders

What If macOS Is Stuck Searching for Time Machine Backups?

Whether you’re using Time Machine to restore an entire backup or migrate a single file, you might get held up by macOS searching for backups. This happens when your Mac fails to communicate properly with the backup drive.

Sometimes macOS spends hours searching for Time Machine backups with no success. If this happens to you, following the steps below should help fix it.

Step 1: Update Your Mac to the Latest Version of macOS

From the menu bar, go to Apple menu > About This Mac > Software Update. Download and install the latest version of macOS for your Mac, then try searching for Time Machine backups again.

Step 2: Eject and Reconnect the Backup Drive to Your Mac

Open Finder and click the Eject icon next to your Time Machine backup drive in the left sidebar. Once the drive is ejected, disconnect the USB or Thunderbolt cable and inspect it for signs of damage or debris.

Wait 30 seconds, then reconnect your drive. Try using a different USB or Thunderbolt port and cable if you have one available.

If you use an AirPort Time Capsule or other NAS drive for Time Machine backups, disconnect it from the network, then restart the drive and connect it to the network again.

Step 3: Restart Your Mac

Use Finder to eject your Time Machine backup drive again, then go to Apple menu > Restart to reboot your Mac. If macOS still spends a long time searching for Time Machine backups after you reconnect the drive, contact Apple support for more help.

Don’t Delete Time Machine Backups After Restoring

After you restore what you need from a Time Machine backup, it’s tempting to send that backup to the Trash. We know what you’re thinking: you don’t need it anymore, so you should make space for newer backups.

But this is a bad idea!

Not only is it unnecessary to delete backups—Time Machine automatically removes old backups when it needs more space—but Time Machine backups get stuck in the Trash if you don’t delete them properly. Save yourself the hassle and leave those backups alone.

Read the full article: 3 Ways to Restore Data From Time Machine Backups

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The 6 Best Sites That Help You Find the Best Places to Live

The process of moving is hard enough. When you’re trying to decide where to transplant your entire life, it gets even more chaotic.

How can you find out the best city for you? You’ll need to consider safety, finances, and job prospects. Luckily, these websites round up the best cities and towns around the world to help you find your spot.

1. Niche

Niche is a great way to find ratings and reviews for towns, school districts, colleges, and neighborhoods. Unfortunately, the site only works for locations in the United States.

This site offers a variety of ways to find the perfect place to live. To search for a certain town or neighborhood, head to the two search bars at the top of the screen. In the search bar that starts with Find, enter what you’re looking for. You can then type in the town or state in the search bar that starts with In.

Once you start your search, Niche will display the best places to live in a specific location. Each town and neighborhood receive a grade, the worst being F and the best being A+. Niche compiles tons of data to rate these towns—it provides you with an overall grade, as well as separate grades for schools, housing, safety, diversity, nightlife, and more.

2. Livability

In addition to giving you an in-depth profile of cities around the United States, Livability also gives you basic statistics. Scroll down the page, and you’ll see a breakdown of the city’s population, as well as charts relating to race, gender, language, economics, and commute types.

To find out even more about a city, you can click one of the categories under Topics in the left sidebar. Here, you’ll find articles about things to do and photos of the city. You can also view information about the real estate market, work environment, schools, and health systems.

If you have no idea how to find a place to live, you can use Livability’s database of helpful articles about different cities and states to get you started.

3. AreaVibes

AreaVibes ranks cities from one to 100, with 100 as the best score a place can get. It uses an algorithm that takes the cost of living, crime rate, work opportunities, weather, real estate, and education into account to create an overall score.

The site houses over 35,000 rankings for cities and neighborhoods in the United States. To get started, type in a specific address, state, city, or neighborhood in the search bar on the home page. AreaVibes will pull up your town, along with nearby towns that have a high score.

Once you click on the town you’re considering, you’ll see an overall score and grades on a variety of subcategories. Scroll down the page to find houses for sale, as well as detailed information about expenses, income, crime, and education quality.

4. Teleport

If you’re wondering “How can I find my spot to live if I’m searching for places outside of the United States?” Don’t worry—Teleport is the site for you.

To begin your search, click the Start Exploring button on the home page. Teleport will then ask you a series of questions about your preferences and current lifestyle. After entering your job status, budget, current income, and other information, Teleport will compile a list of the best cities for you to live.

All the cities should fit into your budget and have the exact qualities you’re looking for. Click on each city for even more detailed information—Teleport displays a summary of the city, quality of life scores, a cost of living chart, job salary calculator, as well as some flaws. In other words, it’s a great tool to find your spot to live or travel!

5. BestPlaces

On BestPlaces, you can find data about a city by performing a quick search. Just type in the name of a city or town, and you’ll see data about the area’s weather, cost of living, population, transportation, schools, and housing. At the bottom of the page, residents express their opinion and provide ratings.

Perhaps the most helpful part about BestPlaces is its Cost of Living Calculator. With this tool, you can compare the cost of living in your current city to the city you’re considering moving to. While the premium version of the site allows you to view renting cost comparisons, you can also compare rent rates on Rentometer.

6. HomeSnacks

HomeSnacks uses information from OpenStreetMaps, the Census, and the FBI to create lists of some of the best cities to live in the United States. To find the state you want to move to, scroll to the bottom of the page, and click on a state under the USA Cities by State heading. Selecting a state will lead you to a list of its biggest cities.

On the right side of the screen, you’ll see a menu with articles relating to the state. The site has lists of the state’s best places, most expensive places, and cheapest places to live. Most importantly, it also has a list of the most dangerous cities (and the safest)—that way, you won’t have to worry about self-defense and personal safety when you’re alone.

When viewing one of the lists, you just might find a town you like. You can click on the town to view more data. The site displays the town’s rating (called SnackAbility) in various categories. HomeSnacks ranks towns based on housing, safety, education, amenities, commute, jobs, and affordability. You’ll also see some statistics on the town’s population as well.

Find Your Ideal Spot to Live

Are you ready to uproot and start over in a new area? The above websites will definitely help you discover the perfect place for you to go. Whether you’re looking to move to a bustling city or small, rural town, the above websites have the data you need to make an informed decision.

Once you find your spot to live, you need to start looking for an apartment. These apartment finder websites can make your search much easier.

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The 10 Best Christmas Movies on Disney+ Worth Watching

All streaming services offer Christmas fayre, because when the holiday season kicks in, it’s all (some) people want to watch. Disney+ is no exception, and these are the best Christmas movies on Disney+ we think are worth watching.

Disney+ doesn’t offer a Christmas category to search through, and seasonal keywords can bring up some confusing recommendations. However, by using our list of the best Christmas movies on Disney+ you should be able to find your holiday favorites.

1. Noelle (2019)

When Santa decides to retire, his son Nick Kringle is due to take over for him this Christmas. Nick, however, isn’t doing a very good job as the Santa-to-be. His sister Noelle suggests he take a break to reset, but Nick ends up disappearing.

The film’s story sounds quite dire, but Noelle plays out like a Disney version of Elf. With offbeat humor mixed with an enthusiastic performance by Anna Kendrick, the film creates a new-yet-familiar seasonal experience.

2. Mickey’s Once Upon a Christmas (1999)

This anthology animation offers three different Christmas tales centered around Disney’s mainstay families.

Mickey and Minnie play out their version of The Gift of the Magi. Donald and his nephews experience their variation of Christmas Every Day. Meanwhile, Goofy and Max don’t parallel a Christmas story but instead examine a child’s view of Santa Claus.

For anyone who’s a fan of classical Christmas tales adapted by Disney, give this one a try.

3. Beauty and the Beast: Enchanted Christmas (1997)

Set during Belle’s original stay in Beast’s castle, where the enchanted servants are still trying to bring the two together. However, the two find themselves at odds again because Belle loves Christmas. The Beast only views Christmas as a reminder of the curse cast upon him and his castle.

Still, Belle works again to challenge the Beast’s notions and bring about the warmth of the holiday with him.

As an impressive aside, this release managed to get the original voice cast together after a six-year break. With an expanded character cast and colorful new songs, make sure you remember the magic.

4. A Christmas Carol (2009)

With his transformation from miser to the embodiment of Christmas goodwill, Scrooge’s tale makes for a riveting Christmas story. After an evening visitation by three spirits, the Victorian-era tale shows that it’s never too late to change.

Just like How the Grinch Stole Christmas, this is another Christmas movie starring Jim Carrey. However, he only lent his voice to this modern animated classic.

If you like animated movies, here are the best animated movies to download off Netflix.

5. 12 Dates of Christmas (2011)

Kate finds herself endlessly repeating Christmas Eve on a blind date with a man named Miles. To move on, she must find a way to return time to normal. She just doesn’t realize it’ll take some self-discovery along the way.

This ABC Family original movie is basically Groundhog Day set at Christmas. For anyone seeking a romantic comedy option, the chemistry between Amy Smart and Mark-Paul Gosselaar makes for an enticing watch.

6. Miracle on 34th Street (1947)

The classic tale of Kris Kringle and his claim to be the real Santa Claus. After Kris ends up unfairly institutionalized, a lawyer decides to prove that Kris is really Santa Claus.

The American classic remains one of the most consecutively watched Christmas films, being a favorite for families to watch together every year. Disney+ offers up the black and white version versus the colorized update, which we actually appreciate.

7. Olaf’s Frozen Adventure (2017)

After Elsa bemoans their lack of Christmas traditions, Olaf the snowman decides to intervene. He goes on a quest to gather the best traditions and bring them back to the Arendelle sisters.

This 21-minute-long short is a Christmas tale set in the Frozen universe. With lots of charm, humor, and musical focus, fans of the universe definitely should consider making this a seasonal staple.

8. Mickey’s Twice Upon a Christmas (2004)

As a sequel to the original Mickey’s Once Upon a Christmas, the second entry offers five tales in comparison to the original’s three. Once again, the five tales focus on Mickey, Minnie, Max, Donald, Huey, Dewey, and Louie overcoming obstacles and finding their Christmas spirit and goodwill.

Mickey’s Twice Upon a Christmas stands out as Disneytoon Studios’ first fully computer-animated film.

9. The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993)

Tim Burton’s film tells the tale of the distraught Jack Skellington smitten by his discovery of Christmas. When things go awry after Jack takes over Christmas, it’s up to the Pumpkin King to set things right.

To this day, the movie draws continual debate as to whether it’s a Christmas film or a Halloween movie. Even if you view it as being too unsettling for the holiday season, the stop-motion work alone makes it worth a mention.

10. A Very Merry Pooh Year (2002)

A Very Merry Pooh Year contains both a Christmas and a New Year story.

The Christmas portion (Winnie the Pooh and Christmas Too) tells the story of the Hundred Acre wood residents writing a letter to Santa to ask for their desired presents. Once Pooh realizes that he hasn’t asked for a gift for himself, he knows he needs to get the letter back.

It originally aired as an animated special in The New Adventures of Winnie the Pooh universe. Still, it stands out well by itself as a seasonal Winnie the Pooh story. If you’re craving the silly old bear, its short runtime makes for a pleasant visit in the Hundred Acre Wood.

Which Christmas Movies on Disney+ Are You Watching?

Disney+ offers an impressive number of Christmas movies, so you should find something worth watching. However, if none of these titles appeal, let us know which Christmas movies you want to see on Disney+.

And even if you haven’t yet subscribed to Disney+, you probably already have a Netflix subscription. If so, here are the best Christmas movies to watch on Netflix this year.

Image Credit: Marushy99/Depositphotos

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Facebook expands its efforts against ad discrimination

Under the terms of a a settlement with the ACLU and other civil rights groups earlier this year, Facebook has been taking steps to prevent discriminatory ad targeting.

Specifically, the company says ads in the United States that involve housing, employment or credit can no longer be targeted based on age, gender, ZIP code or multicultural affinity. Nor can the ads use more detailed targeting that connects to these categories.

Today, Facebook is announcing what VP of Ads Product Marketing Graham Mudd described as the next “milestone in our effort to reduce and eliminate discrimination.”

First, it’s expanding the enforcement of these rules beyond Facebook Ad Manager to encompass every other place where someone might buy ads on Facebook: the Ads Manager app, Instagram Promote, the ad creation tools on Facebook Pages and the Facebook Marketing API (which connects with third-party ad-buying tools).

Second, it’s expanding its searchable ad library — first created in response to concerns about political misinformation — to include housing ads targeted at an U.S. audience.

So moving forward, if a regulatory agency, civil rights group, journalist or anyone else wants to check on how businesses are actually using Facebook to advertise housing, they can check the archive. This portion of the library will start archiving ads from tomorrow (December 4) onward, and Facebook says it will eventually include employment and credit ads as well.

Mudd said that Facebook has also been helping advertisers understand how to work within the new rules. While he described this as “the right tradeoff” to combat discrimination, he also suggested that “there are and have always been very reasonable and legal non-discriminatory advertising practices” that use age- and gender-based targeting.

Now, he said, advertisers are having to “relearn how to use the platform given these restrictions.”

HUD hits Facebook with housing discrimination charges over ad targeting

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