Devialet’s Phantom Reactor turns music into an emotional experience

French startup Devialet has done it again. The new Phantom Reactor is a smaller, more effective speaker that packs everything that made Devialet speakers good in the first place.

Devialet’s first speaker, the Phantom, attracted rave reviews a few years ago. The egg-shaped speaker promised no background noise, no saturation and no distortion in a relatively small package.

To be clear, it wasn’t that small when you compared it with an average bookshelf speaker. But when you turned it on, it would feel like a much larger speaker — something that you’d find in a concert hall.

But that speaker wasn’t for everyone. If you live in a tiny apartment, spending $1,700 to $3,500 for a speaker capable of generating up to 4,500 Watts of power was overkill.

Hence the Phantom Reactor, a smaller version of the Phantom with the same promises — no background noise, no saturation and no distortion. It still features the iconic egg-shaped design.

The company let me borrow a Phantom Reactor for a few weeks to play with it at home. And I’ve been impressed by the speaker. It’s a tiny beast that makes any all-in-one Bluetooth speaker sound like a joke.

In many ways, this speaker reminds me of the iPod lineup. When Apple first introduced the iPod, it was the perfect device for music enthusiasts. For the first time, you could take all of your music with you, even if you had a large music library.

But that device was heavy, expensive and thick — stack three iPhone XS and you get the thickness of the original iPod. Everything was great on paper, but it was impractical if you’re not that much into music.

With the iPod mini, Apple created a device that was not only cheaper than the original iPod but also more effective. Music devices, from portable players to connected speakers, are supposed to disappear and integrate perfectly in your daily routine.

The Phantom Reactor is a damn good speaker. Music fills up my living room in a way that none of my many other speakers do. When I compare it with another speaker, I can hear that it’s the same song. But, with Devialet’s speaker, it feels like I’m experiencing the song instead of just listening to the song.

The 900W model that I’m using is still too powerful for my apartment — I can’t play music at 60 percent of the volume for too long without thinking about my neighbors. If you live in a crowded city with small living rooms, the cheaper 600W model is probably enough. If you have a house in the suburbs, that’s probably a different story.

The Phantom Reactor isn’t portable per se. It doesn’t have a battery and it still weighs 9.5lbs/4.3kg. You’ll be able to unplug it and carry it to another room every now and then, but you won’t take it with you to your friend’s house.

You can currently play music using AirPlay, Bluetooth, Spotify Connect, UPnP as well as analog and optical input. You can connect it to your network using Wi-Fi or Ethernet.

The mobile app is quite minimal. It guides you through the setup process and lets you select the source input at any time. You’re supposed to control music from your usual music players. There are also touch buttons on the top of the speaker for basic playback and pairing controls.

I’ve been mostly using Spotify Connect, which lets you stream music on the speaker directly. If you’re not familiar with the protocol, you play a song or playlist in the Spotify app just like you would normally do — you just have to select the Phantom Reactor as the output speaker. Nothing actually happens on your phone or computer, the Spotify app acts as a remote.

As you may have noticed, AirPlay 2 isn’t supported just yet and you can’t pair multiple speakers. The company says that those features will come later with a software update. Devialet also says that it isn’t in the business of voice assistants — there’s no microphone on board.

But if you’re looking for a business that sounds good and you have enough money for the Phantom Reactor, the speaker is available now for for $999/€990/£990 for the 600W model and $1,299/€1,290/£1,290 for the 900W model.

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A modest proposal to make apps suck less

Ben Schippers Contributor

Ben Schippers is a co-founder of HappyFunCorp.

More posts by this contributor

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As the landscape for designing and building technology continues to evolve, so should the process for designing such systems.

Whether it’s for investing or helping to build a product, it’s important to convey a need for the entrepreneur or company to consider the long term impact of their product and to consider a more mindful and deliberate approach.

Product processes should always go in this order: strategy first, then design and lastly, engineering.  If you approach each process pillar with “why?” you will end up with a better product, a more engaged consumer and maybe even a valuable contribution to our ever bloated internet.

PHASE 1, PRODUCT STRATEGY:

Within the product strategy pillar, it’s important to remember that just because someone can build a product, doesn’t mean they should.  Just because a type of technology is available, doesn’t mean it will improve an experience.  Purpose drives products, never technology for its own sake.

Recently at the 40th International Conference of Data Protection, Giovanni Buttarelli, the conference host stated, “Not everything that is legally compliant and technically feasible is morally sustainable.”  In other words, “Should I build it?” is a question to always be asked during this phase. A clue to truly understanding this phase is to ask “How different is my idea before starting this phase vs. after?”

The more an idea has evolved, the better.

PHASE 2, PRODUCT DESIGN:

If designers keep bouncing between phase 1 and 2, that’s a good sign.  Remember, ideas that die in phase 1 should be viewed as wins no matter how much work or time has been put in.

While transitioning to the product design phase, it’s critical to remember: the consumer is tired … really tired.

Assume that most conventions simply don’t resonate with the consumer anymore; consider it a widespread technology burnout — App Fatigue.  A perfect example of this is with notifications or similar mindless alerts.

Do notifications make the experience better?  Do notifications make users want to use the software or the app?  If it’s a question that’s being asked, then the answer is a resounding, no.  Go back to the strategy phase – rinse and repeat.

The questions to ask are quite simply, “What will make a user want to come back to this product without notifications or similar tchotchkes?”

What experience is created that’s going to resonate with the customer? If an overall user experience resonates with the end user, they will willingly come back without notifications.  This may seem obvious or simple, but the obvious answers are typically the hardest to answer and often ignored for that reason.

Consider for a moment what Uber did for hailing a cab, or Airbnb for vacation rentals.  These companies are using a technology to enable a product experience that truly provides a meaningful and rich opportunity for the consumer. They didn’t need notifications to drive consumers back – they provide a service that consumers didn’t know they needed.  It was an original, differentiated idea. The question is does any new leap that hurdle?

If developers make it through the strategy phase and understand the core features to be designed, it’s a good idea to focus on new engineering solutions that can help provide safer, more mindful experiences related to engineering architecture and user data.

ENGINEERING:

Currently, whether inside, Facebook, Google or Amazon, most user data is stored inside centralized servers. This creates security and privacy concerns.

How could developers create a more mindful approach to user data without storing it inside one of only a few major technology companies?  An architecture connecting people on a product via a follow, friending or another, similar, mechanism should have that data be encrypted and stored on the networked phones, versus a centralized server.  In short, passing the user-data baton to your friend(s) instead of a company.

While still in its infancy, the proposed architecture would pair well with an overall product experience that is focused on the future generation of apps.  It would create a decentralized architecture that plays in the favor of the consumer instead of the company. It’s another example of a mindful ‘user-first approach’.  A large leap for startups, it’s a good example of thinking about new approaches and constantly challenging the norm, in this case, user data and security.

PULLING IT ALL TOGETHER:

Consider the following case study as a blueprint:  Imagine proposing to build an inherently social application.  (This example is illustrative because many young entrepreneurs still have social at their core, and many businesses believe social is still a key first differentiator.)

For this example answer: ‘Why are you hoping to build such software?” Followed by “Do you feel this will help people or society in any positive or productive way?” (other than trying to get their attention?) Those targeted questions focus the importance of what software has become and its larger impact on society.

From there, try to shift the focus from higher level strategy — what are you building and why — to specific features: the design phase.  Typically, there’s a friend or follow connection model; a way for people to see activity and some level of bothersome notifications, prompts, or updates.

Then focus on providing mindful alternative solutions to these standard features.  Consider limiting the number of friend requests to help illuminate the product offering?  Or if the product is a bit further down the road: consider putting up a paywall tier for potential customers not wanting to see ads.  Or: consider not having an algorithm sort content and instead, show content as it comes in or give the consumer the option?

Companies are beginning to explore these types of alternatives. Consider what Apple has done for map sharing in their recent IOS release and Google is following suit.

Less is more in the current and future world of software design and development. And mindful, deliberate decisions will provide the underpinning of the next generation of apps and larger software ecosystems.

Providing value in a congested market is very challenging.  But incorporating a mindful approach to product design enables a streamlined architecture that saves time and provides a framework to building products people actually want to use.

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Apple fails to block porn & gambling “Enterprise” apps

Facebook and Google were far from the only developers openly abusing Apple’s Enterprise Certificate program meant for companies offering employee-only apps. A TechCrunch investigation uncovered a dozen hardcore pornography apps and a dozen real-money gambling apps that escaped Apple’s oversight. The developers passed Apple’s weak Enterprise Certificate screening process or piggybacked on a legitimate approval, allowing them to sidestep the App Store and Cupertino’s traditional safeguards designed to keep iOS family friendly. Without proper oversight, they were able to operate these vice apps that blatantly flaunt Apple’s content policies.

The situation shows further evidence that Apple has been neglecting its responsibility to police the Enterprise Certificate program, leading to its exploitation to circumvent App Store rules and forbidden categories. For a company whose CEO Tim Cook frequently criticizes its competitors for data misuse and policy fiascos like Facebook’s Cambridge Analytica, Apple’s failure to catch and block these porn and gambling demonstrates it has work to do itself.

Porn apps PPAV and iPorn (iP) continue to abuse Apple’s Enterprise Certificate program to sidestep the App Store’s ban on pornography. Nudity censored by TechCrunch

 

TechCrunch broke the news last week that Facebook and Google had broken the rules of Apple’s Enterprise Certificate program to distribute apps that installed VPNs or demanded root network access to collect all of a user’s traffic and phone activity for competitive intelligence. That led Apple to briefly revoke Facebook and Google’s Certificates, thereby disabling the companies’ legitimate employee-only apps which caused office chaos.

Apple issued a fiery statement that “Facebook has been using their membership to distribute a data-collecting app to consumers, which is a clear breach of their agreement with Apple. Any developer using their enterprise certificates to distribute apps to consumers will have their certificates revoked, which is what we did in this case to protect our users and their data.” Meanwhile, dozens of prohibited apps were available for download from shady developers’ websites.

Apple offers a lookup tool for finding any business’ D-U-N-S number, allowing shady developers to forge their Enterprise Certificate application

The problem starts with Apple’s lax standards for accepting businesses to the enterprise program. The program is for companies to distribute apps only to their employees, and its policy explicitly states “You may not use, distribute or otherwise make Your Internal Use Applications available to Your Customers”. Yet Apple doesn’t adequately enforce these policies.

Developers simply have to fill out an online form and pay $299 to Apple, as detailed in this guide from Calvium. The form merely asks developers to pledge they’re building an Enterprise Certificate app for internal employee-only use, that they have the legal authority to register the business, provide a D-U-N-S business ID number, and have an up to date Mac. You can easily Google a business’ address details and look up their D-U-N-S ID number with a tool Apple provides. After setting up an Apple ID and agreeing to its terms of service, businesses wait one to four weeks for a phone call from Apple asking them to reconfirm they’ll only distribute apps internally and are authorized to represent their business.

With just a few lies on the phone and web plus some Googleable public information, sketchy developers can get approved for an Apple Enterprise Certificate.

Real-money gambling apps openly advertise that they have iOS versions available that abuse the Enterprise Certificate program

Given the number of policy-violating apps that are being distributed to non-employees using registrations for businesses unrelated to their apps, it’s clear that Apple needs to tighten the oversight on the Enterprise Certificate program. TechCrunch found thousands of sites offering downloads of “sideloaded” Enterprise apps, and investigating just a sample uncovered numerous abuses.  Using a standard un-jailbroken iPhone. TechCrunch was able to download and verify 12 pornography and 12 real-money gambling apps over the past week that were abusing Apple’s Enterprise Certificate system to offer apps prohibited from the App Store. These apps either offered streaming or pay-per-view hardcore pornography, or allowed users to deposit, win, and withdraw real money — all of which would be prohibited if the apps were distributed through the App Store.

A whole screen of prohibited sideloaded porn and gambling apps TechCrunch was able to download through the Enterprise Certificate system

In an apparent effort to step up policy enforcement in the wake of TechCrunch’s investigation into Facebook and Google’s Enterprise Certificate violations, Apple appears to have disabled some of these apps in the past few days, but many remain operational. The porn apps that we discovered which are currently functional include Swag, PPAV, Banana Video, iPorn (iP), Pear, Poshow, and AVBobo, while the currently functional gambling apps include RD Poker and RiverPoker.

The Enterprise Certificates for these apps were rarely registered to company names related to their true purpose. The only example was Lucky8 for gambling. Many of the apps used innocuous names like Interprener, Mohajer International Communications, Sungate, and AsianLiveTech. Yet others seemed to have forged or stolen credentials to sign up under the names of completely unrelated but legitimate businesses. Dragon Gaming was registered to US gravel supplier CSL-LOMA. As for porn apps, PPAV’s certificate is assigned to the Nanjing Jianye District Information Center, Douyin Didi was licensed under Moscow motorcycle company Akura OOO, Chinese app Pear is registered to Grupo Arcavi Sociedad Anonima in Costa Rica, and AVBobo covers its tracks with the name of a Fresno-based company called Chaney Cabinet & Furniture Co.

You can see a full list of the policy violating apps we found below:

Apple refused to explain how these apps slipped into the Enterprise Certificate app program. It declined say if it does any follow-up compliance audits on developers in the program or if it plans to change admission process. An Apple spokesperson did provide this statement, though, indicating it will work to shut these apps down and potentially ban the developers from building iOS products entirely:

“Developers that abuse our enterprise certificates are in violation of the Apple Developer Enterprise Program Agreement and will have their certificates terminated, and if appropriate, they will be removed from our Developer Program completely. We are continuously evaluating the cases of misuse and are prepared to take immediate action.”

TechCrunch asked Guardian Mobile Firewall’s security expert Will Strafach to look at the apps we found and their Certificates. Strafach’s initial analysis of the apps didn’t find any glaring evidence that the apps misappropriate data, but they all do violate Apple’s Certificate policies and provide content banned from the App Store. “At the moment, I have noticed that action is slower regarding apps available from an independent website and not these easy-to-scrape app directories” that occasionally crop up offering centralized access to a plethora of sideloaded apps.

Porn app AVBobo uses an Enterprise Certificate registered to Fresno’s Chaney Cabinet & Furniture Co

Strafach explained how “A significant number of the Enterprise Certificates used to sign publicly available apps are referred to informally as ‘rogue certificates’ as they are often not associated with the named company. There are no hard facts to confirm the manner in which these certificates originate, but the result of the initial step is that individuals will gain control of an Enterprise Certificate attributable to a corporation, usually China/HK-based. Code services are then sold quietly on Chinese language marketplaces, resulting in sometimes 5 to 10 (or more) distinct apps being signed with the same Enterprise Certificate.” We found Sungate and Mohajer Certificates were farmed out for use by multiple apps in this way.

“In my experience, Enterprise Certificate signed apps available on independent websites have not been harmful to users in a malicious sense, only in the sense that they have broken the rules” Strafach notes. “Enterprise Certificate signed apps from these Chinese ‘helper’ tools, however, have been a mixed bag. Zoe example, in multiple cases, we have noticed such apps with additional tracking and adware code injected into the original now-repackaged app being offered.”

Porn apps like Swag openly advertise their availability on iOS

Interestingly, none of the off-limits apps we discovered asked users to install a VPN like Google Screenwise, let alone root network access like Facebook Research. TechCrunch reported this month that both apps had been paying users to snoop on their private data. But the iOS versions were banned by Apple after we exposed their policy violations, and Apple also caused chaos at Facebook and Google’s offices by temporarily shutting down their employee-only iOS apps too. The fact that these two US tech giants were more aggressive about collecting user data than shady Chinese porn and gambling apps is telling.“This is a cat-and-mouse game” Strafach concluded regarding Apple’s struggle to keep out these apps. But given the rampant abuse, it seems Apple could easily add stronger verification processes and more check-ups to the Enterprise Certificate program. Developers should have to do more to prove their apps’ connection with the Certificate holder, and Apple should regularly audit certificates to see what kind of apps they’re powering.

Back when Facebook missed Cambridge Analytica’s abuse of its app platform, Cook was asked what he’d do in Mark Zuckerberg’s shoes. “I wouldn’t be in this situation” Cook frankly replied. But if Apple can’t keep porn and casinos off iOS, perhaps Cook shouldn’t be lecturing anyone else.

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Glide helps you build mobile apps from a spreadsheet without coding

The founders of Glide, a member of the Y Combinator Winter 2019 class, had a notion that building mobile apps in the enterprise was too hard. They decided to simplify the process by starting with a spreadsheet, and automatically turning the contents into a slick mobile app.

David Siegel, CEO and co-founder at Glide, was working with his co-founders Jason Smith, Mark Probst and Antonio Garcia Aprea at Xamerin, a cross-platform mobile development company that Microsoft acquired for $500 million in 2016. There, they witnessed first-hand the difficulty that companies were having building mobile apps. When their two-year stint at Microsoft was over, the four founders decided to build a startup to solve the problem.

“We saw how desperate some of the world’s largest companies were to have a mobile strategy, and also how painful and expensive it is to develop mobile apps. And we haven’t seen significant progress on that 10 years after the smartphone debuted,” Siegel told TechCrunch.

The founders began with research, looking at almost 100 no-code tools and were not really satisfied with any of them. They chose the venerable spreadsheet, a business tool many people use to track information, as the source for their mobile app builder, starting with Google Sheets.

“There’s a saying that spreadsheets are the most the most successful programming model of all time, and smartphones are the most successful computers of all time. So when we started exploring Glide we asked ourselves, can these two forces be combined to create something very valuable to let individuals and businesses build the type of apps that we saw Xamerin customers needed to build, but much more quickly,” Siegel said.

Photo: Glide

The company developed Glide, a service that lets you add information to a Google Sheet spreadsheet, and then very quickly create an app from the contents without coding. “You can easily assemble a polished, data-driven app that you can customize and share as a progressive web app, meaning you can get a link that you can share with anybody, and they can load it in a browser without downloading an app, or you can publish Glide apps as native apps to app stores,” Siegel explained. What’s more, there is a two-way connection between app and spreadsheet, so that when you add information in either place, the other element is updated.

The founders decided to apply at Y Combinator after consulting with former Xamerin CEO, and current GitHub chief executive, Nat Friedman. He and other advisors told them YC would be a great place for first-time founders to get guidance on building a company, taking advantage of the vast YC network.

One of the primary lessons he says that they have learned is the importance of getting out in the field and talking to customers, and not falling into the trap of falling in love with the act of building the tool. The company has actually helped fellow YC companies build mobile apps using the Glide tool.

Glide is live today and people can create apps using their own spreadsheet data, or using the templates available on the site as a starting point. There is a free tier available to try it without obligation.

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The 8 Best Kodi Skins and How to Install Them

Kodi is an incredibly customizable piece of software. Long-time users know that you can tweak everything from the way you access your library to the way the RSS ticker looks.

One of the easiest and best ways to completely overhaul your Kodi experience is to install a new skin. Here are the best Kodi skins in 2019 and how to install them.

1. Confluence

Confluence was Kodi’s default skin from 2009 to 2017.

Sure, it doesn’t have the character of some of the fancier skins. However, given it was the Kodi developers’ skin of choice for such a long time, you can be confident that its layout and design is going to be user-friendly.

The skin itself uses blues and blacks; it creates an almost cable TV-esque feel. Menu items are displayed along a single horizontal bar that runs through the center of the home screen.

2. Aeon Nox

With the release of the Leia, the version of Kodi released in January 2019, you need to be careful which themes you install. They are not all compatible.

Thankfully, Aeon Nox is compatible. It’s arguably been the most popular Kodi theme for the last few years.

Aeon Nox is big on visuals; movies and TV series in your collection are displayed as large posters. They look great when you’re browsing on a large screen. Menus use a futuristic font and design, which might not be to everyone’s taste.

3. Chroma

Chroma is another of the famous Kodi skins that’s compatible with the Leia Kodi build. It is specifically built for people who want to watch Kodi on an Ultra HD television; the skin uses high-resolution background images.

Chroma also changes the background color hues depending on the on-screen content. As such, its visuals are dynamic and will help to keep Kodi feeling fresh.

4. Mimic

The Mimic skin for Kodi is aimed at people who don’t want garish or eye-catching themes. It uses “flat” design principles, so you won’t find gradients, shiny buttons, shadows, or other similar graphics.

Instead, everything is designed to appear flat on the screen. All the menus use a variation of a slate grey/blue color.

Mimic is also noteworthy for the amount of customization available. You can change everything from how movie posters are displayed to how the menus appear on the screen.

5. Black Glass Nova

If you want a neat design that’s not quite as basic as Mimic, check out Black Glass Nova. Like all the other Kodi themes on this list, Black Glass Nova is compatible with Leia.

Black Glass Nova seemingly draws on Windows’ much-loved Aero design for its inspiration. There are lots of transparent borders and softened corners.

In terms of display, we particularly like how Black Glass Nova uses the horizontal menu bar to display video artwork rather than menu items.

6. Nebula

You might have noticed a recurring theme in all the Kodi skins we have featured so far: they are all dark.

That’s not a quirk of our selections. The overwhelming majority of Kodi skins out there use darker colors, shades, and hues. People seem to prefer them.

If you’d like to use something light, we recommend Nebula. Off-whites and light grays dominate the interface and menus. A dark version of Nebula is also available.

Our biggest criticism of Nebula is its desire to fit lots of menu items on the screen at once. If you want a cleaner experience, you might not like it.

7. Unity

Perhaps it’s just us, but Unity gives off smartphone vibes. The way menus and submenus look like Android suggest the designers have taken cues from Google’s “Material Design” philosophy.

Visually, the Horizon Kodi skin pairs dark backgrounds with light gray text, or vice-versa; navigation is easy. The skin also replaces all of Kodi’s original iconography with new, more modern designs.

8. Grid

Grid is another theme that completely reimagines how Kodi should look; it doesn’t regurgitate a form of the horizontal center bar.

The developers have focused on small details rather than endless features. For example, the main menu is transparent and displayed on the left-hand side of the screen. And when you’re scrolling through your content, the entire background image changes to reflect the associated artwork. It all feels very professional.

How to Install a New Skin on Kodi

So, you’ve browsed our list of the best Kodi skins, chosen your favorite, and now you want to install the skin on the Kodi app. Don’t worry, it’s straightforward. You don’t need to visit any third-party websites.

Note: This process assumes you are running the native Estuary skin. If you have already installed another skin, you might find the menu options have moved to different parts of the screen.

First, open the Kodi app and click on Add-ons. You will find it in the menu on the left-hand side of the app.

Next, click on Download. Once again, you will find it in the menu on the left-hand side of the screen.

In the main window, you should now be looking at a list of folders. Go to Look and Feel > Skin to see a list of all the skins we discussed in this article, and more. Find the skin you want to install and click on it.

Finally, select Install at the bottom of your screen.

How to Select a Different Skin on Kodi

Once the download process has finished, you need to select the skin in the Kodi settings.

Make sure you are looking at Kodi’s home screen, then click on the Settings icon (do not click the settings icon from within the Add-ons menu sub-section.)

In the main Settings menu, go to Interface Settings > Skin. Click on Skin in the main menu, and you should see any skins you downloaded in a list and available for selection.

Other Kodi Tricks You Should Know About

Installing a new Kodi skin is just one part of making the Kodi app look and behave the way you want it to look and behave.

To learn more about how to customize Kodi, check out our articles on the best IPTV add-ons for Kodi and how to stream Kodi on a Chromecast.

Read the full article: The 8 Best Kodi Skins and How to Install Them

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Two former members of Google’s skunkworks division have launched a biomanufacturing company

Biomanufacturing technologies — taking modified versions of existing organisms and bending them to the will of humans — has moved from the world of science fiction to becoming a new reality.

Across the startup landscape companies are launching to make synthetic spider silk, or make leather substitutes, or meat substitutes, or novel chemicals and pharmaceuticals.

What all of these companies have in common is that they need to be able to rapidly experiment with different organisms and processes for cultivating them to make their visions work at a commercial scale — and that’s where Culture Biosciences comes in.

The company was founded by two Chapel Hill, N.C. natives and Duke alums Matthew Ball and Will Patrick. The two met in college at Duke and worked together in Google’s famous skunkworks division (then known as Google X).

Will Patrick, co-founder, Culture Biosciences

After leaving Google, Patrick, the company’s chief executive, wound up at MIT’s Media Lab where he was exposed to the work that companies like Gingko Bioworks was doing around biomanufacturing and became convinced that it would be transformational by human society.

“I was becoming incredibly inspired by all of that,” says Patrick. “What I was noticing was that the problem and the bottleneck in the industry was moving from industrial design to scale-up.”

The solution to that bottleneck rested in making the fermentation process more precise and more controlled, Patrick thought.

Think of biomanufacturing as a process similar to brewing beer. Organisms are sitting in a soup of goo, eating some things and excreting other things and all of that needs to be controlled. It’s one thing to be able to control the growth and extraction of goo in a test tube, quite another to do it at the scale of a hundred-gallon sized tanks.

“There are these really challenging aspects of operating bioreactors, sampling, and testing and getting data,” said Patrick . “We have been able to create this infrastructure that we can scale out.”

The company has built its own hardware — including customized robotics, sensors, and networks for its bioreactors, which, at 250 milliliters, are roughly the size of coke cans.

“That was the problem we were solving with Culture Biosciences,” says Patrick. “We do cloud fermentation.” 

The company, which just raised $5.5 million from investors including Refactor Capital, and Verily, the life sciences division of Google parent company, Alphabet, already has 50 bioreactors and is going to be scaling up to 100 really rapidly.

“What we’re helping [customers] with is making their R&D much more high throughput,” says Patrick.

Those customers include companies like Geltor, the manufacturer of a collagen replacement; Modern Meadow, the company that’s looking to make a leather replacement; and Pivot Bio, which makes supplements for agriculture to replace chemical fertilizers.

Verily and Refactor aren’t the only two investors to be impressed by Culture’s technology. Section 32, the investment shop founded by Google Ventures’ former chief executive Bill Maris, Y Combinator, BoxGroup, Shana Fisher from Third Kind Venture Capital, and Data Collective are also investors in the company.

Culture Biosciences actually shares office space with Verily, working from that company’s shared office space in South San Francisco, which was built to house startup companies in the life sciences space.

With Culture, the biomanufacturing industry and the investors who are supporting it seem to be learning one of the critical lessons from the last wave of big bets on biology — in biofuels.

“That first wave in the 2000s there were lots of lessons that were learned.” says Patrick. “You have to think with the end in mind. What can those systems actually deliver from a technical perspective? Replicate those large scale environments as much as you can in your small scale lab… Not having to compete with oil really helps.”

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Dandelion Energy, the Alphabet X spinout, raises another $16M led by GV and Comcast

As tech companies continue their race to control the smart home, a promising energy startup has raised a round of funding from traditionally-tech and strategic investors, for a geothermal solution to heat and cool houses. Dandelion Energy, a spinout from Alphabet X, has raised $16 million in a Series A round of funding, with strategic investors Comcast Ventures leading the round along with GV, the investment arm of Alphabet formerly known as Google Ventures.

Lennar Corporation, the home building giant, is also coming in as an investor, as are previous backers NEA, Collaborative Fund, Ground Up, and Zhenfund, and other unnamed investors. Notably, Lennar once worked with Apple but is now collaborating with Amazon on smart homes.

As a side note, Dandelion’s investment is a timely reminder of how central “new home” startups are right now in smart home plays. Amazon just yesterday announced one more big move in its own connected home strategy with the acquisition of Mesh WiFi startup eero, which helps extend the range and quality of WiFi coverage in a property.

This is the second funding round for Dandelion in the space of a year, after the company raised a seed round of $4.5 million in March 2018, a mark of how the company has been seeing a demand for its services and now needs the capital to scale. In the past year, it had accrued a waitlist of “thousands” of homeowners requesting its services across America, where it is estimated that millions of homeowners heat their homes with fossil fuels, which are estimated to account for 11 percent of all carbon emissions.

The company is based out of New York, and for now New York is the only state where its services are offered. The funding may help change that. It will be used in part for R&D, but also to hire more people, open new warehouses for its equipment and supplies, and for business development.

It’s not clear what Dandelion’s valuation is — we will be asking — but in its last round the company had a modest post-money valuation of $15 million, according to PitchBook. It has now raised $23 million in total since spinning out from Alphabet X, the company’s moonshot lab, in May 2017.

The premise of Dandelion’s business is that it provides a source of heating and cooling homes that takes people away from consuming traditional, energy grid-based services — which represent significant costs, both in terms of financial and environmental impact. If you calculate usage over a period of years, Dandelion claims that it can cut a household’s energy bills in half while also being significantly more friendly for the environment compared to conventional systems that use gas and fossil fuels.

While there have been a number of efforts over the years to tap geothermal currents to provide home heating and cooling, many of the solutions up to now have been challenging to put in place, with services typically using wide drills and digging wells at depths of over 1,000 feet.

“These machines are unnecessarily large and slow for installing a system that needs only a few 4” diameter holes at depths of a few hundred feet,” Kathy Hannun, cofounder and CEO of Dandelion, has said in the past. “So we decided to try to design a better drill that could reduce the time, mess and hassle of installing these pipes, which could in turn reduce the final cost of a system to homeowners.”

The smaller scale of what Dandelion builds also means that the company can do an installation in one day.

While a pared-down approach this means a lower set of costs (half the price of traditional geothermal systems) and quicker installation, that doesn’t mean that upfront costs are non-existent. Dandelion installations run between $20,000 and $25,000, although home owners can subsequently rack up savings of $35,000 over 20 years. (Many choose to finance the installation which also brings down the upfront cost.)

This is also where Lennar comes in. The company is in the business of building homes, and it has been investing in particular in the idea of building the next generation of homes by incorporating better connectivity, more services — and potentially alternative energy sources — from the ground up.

“We’re incredibly excited to invest in Dandelion Energy,” said Eric Feder, Managing General Partner for Lennar Ventures, in a statement. “The possibility of incorporating geothermal heating & cooling systems in our new homes is something we’ve explored for years, but the math never made sense. Dandelion Energy is finally making geothermal affordable and we look forward to the possibility of including it in the homes Lennar builds.”

The fact that Comcast is among the investors in Dandelion is a very notable development.

The company has been acquiring, and taking strategic stakes in, a number of connected-home businesses as it builds its own connected home offering, where it not only brings broadband and entertainment to your TV and come computers, and also provides the tools to link up other connected devices to that network to control them from a centralised point.

Dandelion is literally “off grid” in its approach to providing home energy, and while you might think that it doesn’t make sense for a company that is investing in and peddling services and electronic devices connected to a centralised (equally electricity-consuming) internet to be endorsing a company that’s trying to build an alternative, it actually does.

Viewed in terms of the segment of customers that Comcast is targeting, it’s selling a bundle of connected home services to a demographic of users who are not afraid of using (and buying) new and alternative technology to do things a different way from how their parents did it. Dandelion may not be “connected” but even its approach to disconnecting will appeal to a person who may already be thinking of ways of reducing his or her carbon footprint and energy bills (especially since they may be consuming vast amounts of electricity to run their connected homes).

“The home heating and cooling industry has been constrained by lack of innovation and high-costs,” said Sam Landman, managing director of Comcast Ventures, in a statement. “The team at Dandelion and their modern approach to implementing geothermal technology is transforming the industry and giving consumers a convenient, safe, and cost-effective way to heat and cool their homes while reducing carbon emissions.”

Landman and Shaun Maguire, a partner at GV, will both be joining Dandelion’s board with this round.

“In a short amount of time, Dandelion has already proven to be an effective and affordable alternative for home heating and cooling, leveraging best-in-class geothermal technology,” said Maguire, in a statement. “Driven by an exceptional leadership team, including CEO Kathy Hannun, Dandelion Energy is poised to have a meaningful impact on adoption of geothermal energy solutions among homeowners.”

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Amazon buys Eero: What does it mean for your privacy?

In case you hadn’t seen, Amazon is buying router maker Eero. And in case you hadn’t heard, people are pretty angry.

Deluged in a swarm of angry tweets and social media posts, many have taken to reading tealeaves to try to understand what the acquisition means for ordinary privacy-minded folks like you and me. Not many had much love for Amazon on the privacy front. A lot of people like Eero because it wasn’t attached to one of the big tech giants. Now it’s to be part of Amazon, some are anticipating the worst for their privacy.

Of the many concerns we’ve seen, the acquisition boils down to a key concern: “Amazon shouldn’t have access to all internet traffic.”

Rightfully so! It’s bad enough that Amazon wants to put a listening speaker in every corner of our home. How worried should you be that Amazon flips the switch on Eero and it’s no longer the privacy-minded router it once was?

This calls for a lesson in privacy pragmatism, and one of cautious optimism.

Don’t panic — yet

Nothing will change overnight. The acquisition will take time, and any possible changes will take longer. Eero has an easy to read privacy policy, and the company tweeted that the company will “continue to protect” customer privacy, noting that Eero “does not track customers’ internet activity and this policy will not change with the acquisition.”

Hi Steve! eero and Amazon take customer privacy very seriously and we will continue to protect it. eero does not track customers’ internet activity and this policy will not change with the acquisition.

— eero support (@eerosupport) February 11, 2019

That’s true! Eero doesn’t monitor your internet activity. We scoured the privacy policy, and the most the router collects is some basic information from each device connecting to the router that it already broadcasts, such as device name and its unique networking address. We didn’t see anything beyond boilerplate language for a smart router. And there’s nothing in there that says even vaguely that Eero can or will spy on your internet traffic.

Among the many reasons, it (mostly) couldn’t even if it wanted to.

Every single time you open an app or load a website, most now load over HTTPS. And most do because Google has taken to security-shaming sites that don’t. That’s an encrypted connection between your computer and the app or website. Not even your router can see your internet traffic. It’s only rare cases like Facebook’s creepy “research” app that forces you to give it “root” access to your device’s network traffic when companies can snoop on everything you do.

If Eero starts asking you to install root certificates on your devices, then we have a problem.

Fear the internet itself

The reality is that your internet service provider knows more about your internet activity than your router does.

Your internet provider not only processes your internet requests, it routes and directs them. Even when the traffic is HTTPS-encrypted, your internet provider for the most part knows which domains you visit, and when, and with that it can sometimes figure out why. With that information, your internet provider can piece together a timeline of your online life. It’s the reason why HTTPS and using privacy-focused DNS services are so important.

It doesn’t stop there. Once your internet traffic goes past your router, you’re into the big wide world of the world wide web. Your router is the least of your troubles: it’s a jungle of data collection out there.

Props to the spirited gentleman who tweeted that he trusts Google “way more with my privacy than Amazon” for the sole reason that, “Amazon wants to use the data to sell me more stuff vs. Google just wants to serve targeted ads.” Think of that: Amazon wants to sell you products from its own store, but somehow that’s worse than Google selling its profiles of who it thinks you are to advertisers to try to sell you things?

Every time you go online, what’s your first hit? Google. Every time you open a new browser window, it’s Google. Every time you want to type something in to the omnibar at the top of your browser, it’s Google. Google knows more about your browsing history than your router does because most people use Google as their one-stop directory for all they need on the internet. Your internet provider may not be able to see past the HTTPS domain that you’re visiting, but Google, for one, tracks which search queries you type, which websites you go to, and even tracks you from site-to-site with its pervasive ad network.

At least when you buy a birthday present or a sex toy (or both?) from Amazon, that knowledge stays in-house.

Knock knock, it’s Amazon already

If Amazon wanted to track you, it already could.

Everyone seems to forgets Amazon’s massive cloud business. Most of the internet these days runs on Amazon Web Services, the company’s dedicated cloud unit that made up all of the company’s operating income in 2017. It’s a cash cow and an infrastructure giant, and its retail prowess is just part of the company’s business.

Think you can escape Amazon? Just look at what happened when Gizmodo’s Kashmir Hill tried to cut out Amazon from her life. She found it “impossible.” Why? Everything seems to rely on Amazon these days — from Spotify and Netflix’s back-end, popular consumer and government websites use it, and many other major apps and services rely on Amazon’s cloud. She ended up blocking 23 million IP addresses controlled by Amazon, and still struggled..

In a single week, Hill found 95,260 total attempts by her devices to communicate with Amazon, compared to less than half that for Google at 40,527 requests, and a paltry 36 attempts for Apple. Amazon already knows which sites you go to — because it runs most of them.

So where does that leave me?

Your router is a lump of plastic. And it should stay that way. We can all agree on that.

It’s a natural fear that when “big tech” wades in, it’s going to ruin everything. Especially with Amazon. The company’s track record on transparency is lackluster at best, and downright evasive at its worst. But just because Amazon is coming in doesn’t mean it’ll necessarily become a surveillance machine. Even Google’s own mesh router system, Eero’s direct competitor, promises to “not track the websites you visit or collect the content of any traffic on your network.”

Amazon can’t turn the Eero into a surveillance hub overnight, but it doesn’t mean it won’t try.

All you can do is keep a close eye on the company’s privacy policy. We’ll do it for you. And in the event of a sudden change, we’ll let you know. Just make sure you have an escape plan.

Smart home tech makers don’t want to say if the feds come for your data

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The UK now has a law against upskirting

A law change that comes into force in the UK today makes the highly intrusive practice of ‘upskirting’ illegal.

The government said it wants the new law to send a clear message that such behaviour is criminal and will not be tolerated.

Perpetrators in the UK face up to two years in prison under the new law if they’re convicted of taking a photograph or video underneath a person’s clothes for the purpose of viewing their underwear or genitals/buttocks without their knowledge or consent for sexual gratification or to cause humiliation, distress or alarm.

There have been prosecutions for upskirting in England and Wales under an existing common law offence of outraging public decency. But following a campaign started by an upskirting victim the government decided to legislate to plug gaps in the law to make it a sexual offence.

The Voyeurism (Offences) (No. 2) Bill was introduced on June 21 last year and gains royal assent today.

Where the offence of upskirting is committed in order to obtain sexual gratification it can result in the most serious offenders being placed on the sex offenders register.

Under the new law victims are also entitled to automatic protection, such as from being identified in the media.

While the UK government is intending the law change to send a clear message that upskirting is socially unacceptable, there’s no doubt that legislation alone can’t do that. Robust enforcement is essential to counter any problematic attitudes that might be contributing to encourage antisocial uses of technologies in the first place.

For example, in South Korea a law against upskirting carries a maximum sentence of five years in prison yet the legislation has failed to curb an epidemic of offences fuelled by cheap access to tiny hidden spy cameras and baked in societal sexism — the latter seemingly also influencing how police choose to uphold the law, with campaigners complaining most perpetrators get off with small fines.

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BeliMobilGue raises $10M for its used-car sales platform in Indonesia

BeliMobilGue, a used car sales platform in Indonesia, has fueled up with a $10 million Series round for the race to dominate the automotive market in Southeast Asia’s largest economy.

The company was started in 2017 as a joint venture between Europe’s Frontier Car Group (FCG) and Intudo Ventures, a VC firm focused on Indonesia. BeliMobilGue said today that the capital came from FCG and new investors, which include Tunas Toyota — the authorized dealership for Toyota cars in Indonesia.

It’s worth noting that FCG itself is a venture which, as the name sounds, develops on automotive ventures in emerging (frontier) markets in Latin America, Asia and Africa. Its investors include Naspers/OLX, Balderton Capital, TPG Growth and Partech Ventures.

This Series A round follows a $3.7 million round last year for BeliMobilGue — which means ‘buy my car’ in Indonesia’s Bahasa language.

BeliMobilGue is aimed at making it easy for car owners to sell their vehicle.

The first step is an online price estimation for vehicle. If the owner is happy with the valuation, BeliMobilGue takes the vehicles in and, after a one hour check attended in person by its testers, it arranges a sale to its network of over 1,000 dealers and private buyers. The entire process is targeted at one hour and is free for consumers, BeliMobilGue CEO Rolf Monteiro told TechCrunch.

The company has 30 physical testing points across Jakarta, Indonesia’s capital city, and with this money in the bank it is targeting expansion to Java. By the end of this year, Monteiro forecasts that the number of physical stations will have passed 100.

Another target for this year is ancillary services. BeliMobilGue is focused on enabling dealers, many of whom are often small businesses rather than nationwide chains, to growth with its service so it is offering financial packages financed by a third-party bank.

“The difference between small and large dealerships is their access to capital,” Monteiro explained in an interview. “We are a little bit more comfortable [than a bank] to extend their finance because we’re not just using data, we’re sitting on that dealer relationship.

“Plus we are sitting on cars, so we are financing cars that come from our platform and [if necessary] we can help offload the car for the dealer,” he added.

BeliMobilGue aims to sell vehicles within an hour, that includes a comprehensive inspection that’s carried out by its staff and covers 300 points.

BeliMobilGue is far from alone in going after Indonesia, which is the world’s fourth most populous country and the cornerstone of most digital strategies for the region. An annual report from Google and Temasek forecasts that Indonesia’s online economy will grow to $100 billion by 2025 from $8 billion in 2015. Southeast Asia as a whole is predicted to reach $240 billion, which is telling of the significance of Indonesia.

With that in mind, regional rivals have doubled down on Indonesia.

Carro has raised $78 million to date — including a $60 million Series B last year — while Carsome has $27 million and iCar Asia, from venture builder Catcha, has pulled in $39 million to date.

Each of that trio serves multiple markets across the region, not Indonesia exclusively, which is where Monteiro believes he can find an advantage. While he admitted that BeliMobilGue could have raised more money — it stuck to finding ‘smart money’ over amassing pools of cash, he said — he sees the existance of competition as win-win for the industry.

“Indonesia is a massive market,” he said. “Whether it is us, Carro or Carsome, the competition helps educate the market and it will get us new business. But, as much as I welcome them, I want that dominant position.”

Adding strategic investors like Tunas Toyota is, Monteiro believes another key differentiator.

“An investor like Tunas has 25-30 years of experience, so, for us, this partnership is golden. We’re quite content with the round and how it played out,” he said.

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Sub-brands are the new weapon in China’s smartphone war

Google takes Hire, its G Suite recruitment platform, to its first global markets, UK and Canada

The recruitment market is big business — worth some $554 billion annually according to the most recent report from the World Employment Confederation. In the tech world, that translates into a big opportunity to build tools to make a recruiter’s work easier, faster and more likely of success in finding the right people for the job. Now Google is stepping up its own efforts in the space: today it is expanding Hire, its G Suite-based recruitment management platform, to the UK and Canada, its first international markets outside the US.

Google is a somewhat late entrant into the market, launching Hire only in 2017 with the basic ability to use apps like Gmail, Calendar, Spreadsheets and Google Voice to help people manage and track candidates through the recruiting process and doing so by integrating with third-party job boards. In the interim, it has supercharged the service with bells and whistles that draw on the company’s formidable IP in areas like AI and search.

These tools provide robotic process automation-style aids to take away some of the more repetitive tasks around admin.

“Recruiters want time to talk to candidates but they don’t want to sit in systems clicking things,” said Dmitri Krakovsky, the VP leads Hire for Google. “We give time back by automating a lot of functionality.” And they also to sift out needles in haystacks of applicants and surface interesting “lookalikes” who didn’t quite make the cut (or take the job) so that they can be targeted for future opportunities.

And — naturally — while Hire links up with third-party job boards via services like eQuest to bring inbound people into the system, it also provides seamless integration with Jobs by Google, Google’s own vertical search effort that is taking on the traditional job board by letting people look for opportunities with natural language queries in Google’s basic search window. 

Krakovsky said that the first international launches in Canada and the UK made sense because of the lack of language barrier between them and the US. The UK was key for another reason, too: it gave Google the chance to tweak the product to comply with GDPR, he said, for future launches.

While markets like the UK and US represent some of the very biggest for recruitment services globally, it’s a long tail opportunity, and over time, the ambition will be to take Hire global, positioning it as a key rival against the likes of Taleo, LinkedIn, Jobvite, Zoho, SmartRecruiter and many others in the area of applicant sourcing and tracking.

Currently, Hire ranks only at number 23 among the top 100 applicant tracking systems globally, according to research from OnGig, but it also singles it out for its potential because it is, after all, Google. For now, Krakovsky said it’s not taking on large enterprises or even tiny mom-and-pop shops, but the very large opportunity of between 10 and a couple of thousand employees.

Google’s supercharging of Hire with AI and taking it international highlights another point. One of the biggest meta-trends in recruitment has been a push to try to hire with more diversity in mind, not just to bring fairness to the process, but to infuse businesses with different ways of thinking and catering to different audiences.

While AI is something that can definitely speed up certain processes, it has also been shown to be a potential cesspool of bias based on what is fed into it. One particularly messy example of that, in fact, came from an attempt by Amazon to build an AI-based recruitment tool, which it eventually had to shut down.

Google is well aware of that and have been keeping it in mind when building and expanding Hire particularly to new territories, which in themselves are exercises in handling diversity for AI systems. Krakovsky noted that one example of how Google has been building more “understanding” AI is in its searches for veterans, who can look for jobs using their own jargon for expertise, which automatically gets translated into other skills in the way they might be described by employers outside the military.

That’s for sourcing jobs, of course. The key for the tech world, if it wants to build products that will have international staying power to upset the existing “hire”archy (sorry), will be to bring that kind of levelling to every aspect of the recruiting process over time.

Those at the top are not sitting back, either: just yesterday Jobvite (ranked fifth largest ATS tracking platform) announced a funding round of $200 million and three acquisitions.

 

 

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Put Your Tax Return in Expert Hands with Visor for $89

Optimizing your tax return is a great way to save money. The irony is, many of us can’t afford to hire a CPA (Certified Public Accountant). While DIY apps can help, Visor provides a better option. This app matches you with a CPA or EA (enrolled agent), who will optimize your tax return for you. The best part? You can get Visor to handle this year’s return for only $89 via MakeUseOf Deals.

Hands-free Optimization

Most tax apps out there are DIY solutions. Sure, they can provide some useful pointers — but you’re still doing all the hard and confusing work.

Visor is different because you get access to a real human with the knowledge to reduce your final bill. You don’t even need to fill out the return yourself — simply upload your documents and Visor’s tax professionals will do the rest.

Visor helps with filing for federal tax and any number of state tax returns, along with itemized deductions, interest and dividends, home ownership, and retirement contributions. With this deal, you can also add stock sales and cryptocurrency or self-employment income.

You can access Visor online or download the app for iOS. This deal covers your 2018 taxes, and you can schedule a 1-on-1 session with a tax professional at any time.

Get Your Taxes Filed for $89

Visor’s service is normally priced at $198, but you can order now for $89 to get all the benefits mentioned above.

Read the full article: Put Your Tax Return in Expert Hands with Visor for $89

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5 Self-Destructing Apps to Send Secure Messages or Stay Organized

The threat to your privacy looms large. Beyond encryption, if you want to ensure your data isn’t stored anywhere, use these self-destructing apps to send sensitive information.

Even if you use the most secure apps, there is a chance someone might get sensitive or personal data at a later date because it was stored somewhere. If you want to send something without it being stored forever, try these self-destructing apps that blow up the message, once and for all. Of course, if you use Gmail, you can already send self-destructing emails with Confidential Mode, one of the best new Gmail features.

These apps have different uses. Some let you send a single message or even a message on Slack. Others use self-destruction to keep your system lean and make you productive. Pick what you need.

SafeNote (Web): Send Notes or Files, Choose When It Self-Destructs

SafeNote is the new kid on the block for self-destructing apps, and it’s already doing everything right. Like all the other apps, it encrypts any note you write, or any file you upload. Then it creates a link, which you can share with the recipient.

What makes it better is that SafeNote lets you set when and how the link self-destructs. You can either set a time period (from one hour to one month) or use the option to delete the note immediately after it is read the first time. The latter is useful for one-on-one communication, while the time limit lets you share it with multiple users.

You can password-protect the link too. And you can choose to be notified when anyone opens the link, or when the note is destroyed. It’s a simple, easy-to-use app that does everything right.

1ty.me (Web): One-Time Self-Destructing Links for Passwords

It’s a bad idea to send a password for any account over email, instant message, or any such service. Instead, when you need to share passwords, use a self-destructing note like the ones created by 1ty.me.

Write your password in the notes field, and click the “Generate Link” button. You’ll get a link that can be shared with anyone. The first time it is opened, 1ty.me will destroy the message forever from its servers. So there’s no way to share this with multiple users, but at least you know it’s not going to be stored anywhere.

There’s an option to be notified when the link is opened. And 1ty.me warns the user before opening the link that it will be destroyed forever, so they should copy-paste the sensitive information immediately.

Secret Message for Slack (Free): Self-Destructing Notes Within Slack

Slack has become the chat and instant messaging app of choice for most organizations. And in organizations, you often need to send sensitive information. If your IT guy or boss can find that later, it would be disastrous, right? That’s why you need Secret Message.

This Slack integration adds the ability to send self-destructing notes to anyone in Slack. Once you add it, start a message with “/secret” (without the quotes). The recipient won’t see it till they click the “Read Note” button. The note will be available till they refresh Slack, or they can immediately delete it too. It’s a much safer and more private way to message on Slack.

Secret Message is as free and awesome as all our other favorite weird and wonderful Slack integrations. Try it out, you won’t be disappointed.

Add: Secret Message for Slack (Free)

Confide (Android, iOS, Windows, macOS): Confidential Instant Messenger

If you want a full-fledged instant messenger that secures messages and auto-deletes them, as well as works across different desktop and mobile operating systems, check out Confide. It does most things right.

All messages are end-to-end encrypted. Also, no one can take screenshots of the app, which makes it even more secure. And all messages disappear forever once they are read. These features work across one-on-one chats as well as groups.

Confide lets you send photos and videos, and has premium features that allow unlimited attachments as well as the ability to “unsend” messages before anyone reads them.

Download: Confide for Android | iOS | Windows | macOS (Free)

Deelete (Chrome): Auto-Delete Downloads After 24 Hours

Not every self-destructing app is about privacy and security. Deelete, a Chrome extension by Organizely, uses such scheduled auto-deletion to declutter your hard drive from the many one-time-use files you routinely download.

All of us get emails with attachments that we need only once, or just for the day. But then they sit in our Downloads folder forever. Over time, this builds up into a cluttered mess, which might even be slowing down your PC.

With Deelete, every time you download an attachment or any file on the internet, you’ll get a popup asking if you want to keep the file, or delete it in 24 hours. If you choose the second option, Deelete will ensure it removes the junk. It’s a fantastic tool and one of the best Gmail extensions for Chrome that we’ve seen.

Download: Deelete by Organizely for Chrome (Free)

Obliviate Your Messages

These self-destructing apps are great to use on desktops or mobiles, and especially with emails or Slack. But if you want a secure self-destructing app for your chats, check out our homemade brew.

MakeUseOf made obliviate, a secret messaging app that auto-destroys messages. You can set a timer, and even destroy the message before it has been read. Check it out, you’ll love obliviate.

Download: obliviate for Android and iOS (Free)

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