How to Create an Ebook in Pages on Mac: 5 Easy Steps

You don’t have to rely on iBooks Author to create ebooks on your Mac. There’s a simpler solution waiting for you.

The Export to EPUB feature in Apple’s Pages can set you up with interactive ebooks ready for viewing in iBooks and other EPUB readers. Here’s a step-by-step tutorial on how to create an ebook in Pages on Mac.

Step 1: Decide Between Fixed and Flexible Layouts

Here’s the first question you need to ask yourself before you create an ebook in Pages:

Do you want the ebook layout to rearrange itself depending on the size and orientation of devices? Or do you want your ebook layout to stay the same regardless of device size and orientation?

If you want a flexible ebook layout, you’re looking for what Apple calls a Reflowable EPUB as the finished product. Otherwise, it’s the Fixed layout EPUB for you.

You’ll need to stick with a portrait book template if you want a Reflowable EPUB. That’s because landscape templates don’t support this export format. If you’re going for a fixed layout, either orientation works.

Ensure that you choose the correct format when you set up the document, because you can’t switch to a different type of template when you’re exporting it.

Ideally, you should pick the Reflowable layout for a text-heavy book or a word processing document. In the case of a book loaded with images or one with multiple columns, you’re dealing with a page layout document. And it’s best to export that as a Fixed layout EPUB.

If you plan to convert the EPUB to Kindle’s MOBI format, go with the Reflowable layout for exporting as that is likely to give you better results overall.

Step 2: Set Up a Template

You can create an ebook from a blank document or from any of the free Pages templates available in the template chooser that pops up when you open the app.

But it helps to start out with one of the templates designed specifically for ebooks. You’ll find these listed under Books in the template chooser. (Already started with a basic blank document and want to switch to a new template? You can bring up the template chooser anytime with the keyboard shortcut Option + Cmd + N.)

For this tutorial, let’s go with a Fixed layout and a landscape ebook template. We’ve chosen the Story template from Books > Books—Landscape in the template chooser. It’s a page layout document.

To confirm, open the Document inspector. Under the Document tab, the checkbox for Document Body appears unselected. That’s the indicator to look for. If you had a word processing document open, the Document Body box would appear selected.

Step 3: Add Text and Media

Now it’s time to add content to your ebook. You can insert text, images, videos, tables, charts, and shapes using the appropriate toolbar buttons. As we’re creating a Fixed layout EPUB, we don’t have to worry about wrapping text. Thus images, shapes, and other objects will always appear inline.

That’s a concern only when you’re creating a Reflowable EPUB. And in that case, to ensure that an object stays inline, first select it and open the Arrange tab of the Format inspector. Next, switch to the Move with Text tab under Object Placement and select Inline with Text from the Text Wrap dropdown menu.

Note: Keep in mind that if you insert images greater than 4MP, Pages resizes them to 4MP during export.

If you’re comfortable with the drawing tools that are now a part of the iWork suite, you might also want to add drawings to your ebook.

Since we’re going for a Fixed layout EPUB, we don’t have to worry about losing elements like page numbers, tab stops, and master objects when we export.

Are you creating a Reflowable EPUB? You’ll need to scan Apple’s Fixed layout feature list to know which elements might be missing from the exported file.

But regardless of the layout you choose to begin with, you’ll lose certain items like comments, shadows, and smart fields during the export to EPUB.

How to Insert New Pages

Every time you want to add a new page to your ebook, you’ll need to click on the Add Page toolbar button. This process is where page layout templates differ from word processing ones.

In word processing templates, adding pages equals inserting a blank page after the cursor location. You don’t actually need to do this. The app inserts new pages as you continue to type. In other words, you get a new page when you reach the bottom of the current one and hit the Enter key.

But in page layout templates such as ours, you start out with a set of master pages with varying content layouts. (There’s a blank master page too.) And when you click on the Add Page button to insert a new page, you have to select one of these master pages to duplicate.

Step 4: Insert a Table of Contents

Pages generates a Table of Contents (ToC) for you based on the paragraph styles in your document (see our advanced iWork guide for more on that).

If you would like to set up a custom ToC, you can, but only in a word processing document. Click on Insert > Table of Contents > Document to set up the ToC.

Now, with the ToC selected, switch to the Format inspector pane. Here you can enable/disable paragraph styles depending on whether you want the corresponding text to show up in the table of contents.

We can’t create a ToC for our sample book. This is because it’s a page layout document, which doesn’t support the ToC feature.

Step 5: Export Your Book as an EPUB

No, we haven’t forgotten about adding a cover for your ebook. We’ll get to that now.

You’ll find the book cover option when you proceed to export your document as an EPUB. To do that, click on File > Export To > EPUB. Here, the Export Your Document dialog box comes up. Let’s enter a title and author name for our sample book.

The radio button for switching layouts is disabled because we’ve started out with a landscape template. That automatically renders a Fixed layout EPUB.

For the book cover, we’ll stick with the default setting: Use the first page as the book cover image. You can add a custom image as your book cover with the Choose an image radio button. Pages uses this image as the book’s thumbnail in iBooks and in file explorer applications.

From the expandable Advanced Options section, you can pick a category and a language for your ebook.

Let’s leave the Embed Fonts checkbox selected to ensure that the reader’s ebook viewer displays the same fonts that we’ve chosen. After we hit the Next button, we get to pick a name and storage location for our exported EPUB. Now with one click of the Export button, our ebook is ready!

Note: If you open your Pages document from your iPhone/iPad or iCloud.com, you can also export it to EPUB from there.

Now, we’ll keep our ebook to ourselves, but you can share your ebook or even put it up for sale on iBooks with an iTunes Connect account.

Note: iBooks Author is not going away. And while you can import EPUB files into iBooks Author for editing, you can’t open IBOOKS and IBA files in Pages.

When Is Your Ebook Hitting the iBooks Store?

For creating ebooks, Pages isn’t as advanced as iBooks Author, but it’s no slouch either. If you’re familiar with the basics of iWork and want to create beautiful digital books the easy way, why not create an ebook with Pages?

And remember, ebooks are not the only impressive documents you can create with Pages on your Mac!

Read the full article: How to Create an Ebook in Pages on Mac: 5 Easy Steps

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Google Cloud’s partnership network begins paying dividends

When Google Cloud brought Diane Greene on board at the end of 2015, one of her goals was to expand the division’s partnership network, an approach she found worked quite well when she was running VMware in the early 2000s. It appears to be working at Google too.

This week at Google Next, the company’s annual cloud conference, they announced the partner program had grown significantly since the beginning of last year. “Since the start of 2017, we’ve increased the number of technology partners by 10x and we’ve more than doubled our team supporting these partners,” Google’s Nan Boden and Nina Harding wrote in a blog post on partner program progress.

Google is partnering with a variety of large enterprise vendors from Cisco to SAP to NetApp to Diane Greene’s old company, VMware. In addition, they are also working with the traditional systems integrators like Accenture, Deloitte, KPMG and others.

All of this is enabling Google Cloud customers to work through familiar channels while helping Google to build out its cloud business and gain more traction in the enterprise. Partners in general help customers work with a platform like Google Cloud more easily by providing integrations that might not otherwise exist.

One thing Google has going for it, especially on the G Suite side of the house, which includes Gmail, Docs, Drive and Calendar, is sheer numbers with millions of users. It benefits the partner to work with a company like Google Cloud to help all their common users, and perhaps attract new ones, and it benefits Google because it makes their cloud services all the more valuable to the customer.

The company sees Software as a Service in particular as a key area for growth and they announced out a new partnership program this week with access to more Google personnel and marketing funding to help encourage more interaction with SaaS partners on the platform. They already have multiple agreements in place with popular SaaS vendors including Salesforce, Box, MongoDB, Zenoss, Elastic, RedisLabs, JFrog, BetterCloud, DialPad, and many others

Cloud computing has always been different from traditional enterprise computing because cooperation has always been the watch word. Even companies like Salesforce and DialPad and Cisco and SAP that could be competing with Google on some levels see the benefits of working with them (and other cloud providers). It’s what their customers want, and cooperation when it makes sense, benefits all parties involved.

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The 8 Best Free Browser-Based Adobe Illustrator Alternatives

Adobe Illustrator is the default choice for anyone who needs high quality graphic design software. But Adobe’s subscription model is pretty expensive, and Illustrator only works on Windows and Mac.

If you’re a hobbyist on a budget, or use Linux or a Chromebook, what are your options?

Fortunately, there are plenty of free, browser-based Adobe Illustrator alternatives you can try. Not only do you not have to pay for them, but they’ll run on any device running any operating system.

1. Gravit Designer

Gravit Designer is a fast, powerful, and great-looking free vector design tool. As well as working in all major browsers you can download a desktop version for Mac, Windows, Linux, and Chrome OS. In all cases you get full cloud sync integration.

The program has all the basics you’d expect from Illustrator, including a version of the Pen tool (called Paths) and a freehand drawing tool that smooths your lines as you go.

It’s easy to create custom shapes thanks to Gravit’s take on the Pathfinder tool. There’s also a wide variety of keyboard shortcuts, including many that are the same as in Adobe’s software.

In addition to all this you get huge libraries of pre-designed shapes, illustrations, icons, lines, and more to use in your designs. For pro users Gravit Designer also supports CMYK.

2. Vectr

With support for all major browsers as well as a downloadable version for Windows, Linux, and Chrome OS, Vectr is a simple tool for creating quick vector designs.

It isn’t as feature-rich as Gravit, but that means there’s a shorter learning curve. And it has strengths for particular types of usage.

Vectr is especially good for creating social media cover pages. There are preset document sizes, and its easy to import photos and add your own text on top.

There’s seamless cloud integration. Every image has its own unique URL that you can share with anyone. Or you can export your finished work in the SVG, PNG, and JPEG formats.

3. Boxy SVG

Boxy SVG is an SVG editor that works in Chromium-based browsers like Chrome or Opera. It also has a desktop version for Windows, Mac, and Chrome OS.

Boxy works natively with SVG files, so you never need to export your images when you’re ready to use them, and can easily open them in other image-editing apps. It also means you can output HTML code for your images, which you can paste straight into a web page. If you prefer, you can create normal image files in the JPEG, PNG, WebP, and GIF formats.

So what features do you get? All the basics are here. There are lots of shape drawing tools, plus a pen and various curve tools. You also get plenty of type options, including integration with Google Fonts. Support for clipping masks gives you the power to create more complex works.

We found Boxy’s interface to be a little tricky to master at first, but it’s a fast and very capable Illustrator alternative, so worth persevering with.

4. Canva

Canva is a very popular and easy to use browser based design tool. It offers more than 50,000 templates for every type of user and purpose. You can use it to create logos, ebook covers, posters, ads, and a whole lot more.

You don’t get much control. There aren’t any drawing tools so it’s not possible to create something from scratch. Instead, you just pick the template and customize it to taste.

And that’s really the point. Canva is about simplification. You can create some beautiful, complex, and very professional-looking designs without any design skills.

Check out our guide to things you can create with Canva.

5. Figma

Aimed at professional or serious users who may already know how to use Illustrator, Figma has a growing reputation. It comes with its own Adobe-style subscription plan, but has a free offering that lets you create three projects and work in a team with two members.

Figma is primarily built for interface design, and fully supports files made in Sketch, another popular pro design tool. It also has mobile apps for iOS and Android that you can use to preview your designs on the fly.

The learning curve is steep, but there’s little you can’t do with Figma. There’s both support for Google Fonts and your own imported, offline fonts. It’s easy to create shapes and to design custom shapes through a pathfinder-like tool, and there’s full mask support. You can also save them as Components to reuse in your other projects.

When you’re finished you can export your work as PNG, JPEG, or SVG files, or just copy out your styles as CSS code.

6. Inkscape

Inkscape has long been established as one of the best free Illustrator alternatives. While it’s always been a desktop program you can use it in-browser through the RollApp service.

The effect is a little strange since you get the full desktop UI crammed into a browser window. However, once you switch the browser to full screen mode it works much better.

Inkscape is a powerful piece of software. There’s a learning curve, both in terms of mastering its tools and in that it uses a whole different set of keyboard shortcuts.

It’s also a tad slow. Using Inkscape with RollApp is ideal when you need to edit on the go, but in most cases you’d be better installing the desktop software.

7. Janvas

Janvas has a solid set of features, including support for masks, and plenty of pen tool and text options.

It suits the beginner thanks to a library of templates covering everything from icons and UI elements, to letter and photo book templates. An extra series of pre-made gradients, patterns and textures, and filters help to make common design features accessible with a single click. You can save your work in the SVG, JPEG, or PNG formats.

Janvas has its quirks. It’s got a panel-heavy interface that takes some time to master. It’s configurable, but you’ll need to experiment to find a layout that suits your workflow. The biggest downside is that it doesn’t support keyboard shortcuts at all.

All of which means Janvas is a solid choice for smaller, quicker projects, if not for more complex pieces of work.

8. Vecteezy Editor

If you have got an existing SVG file that you want to tweak, Vecteezy is a good choice. It’s best for editing files or making very simple icons and logos, rather than creating larger pieces of work from scratch.

This is due to the simplicity of the app. You get pen and type tools and not much else. Instead, there are heaps of pre-designed shapes and pre-drawn illustrations that you can import into your work. Templates are promised for the future, too.

Saving files is trivial: just choose to export as either an SVG or PNG and your final image downloads instantly.

Adobe Illustrator Isn’t the Only Option!

None of the these browser-based apps can match the full feature set that Adobe Illustrator has to offer.

But they’re more than good enough to create things like posters, illustrations, logos and the like. You can even use them to learn the principles of graphic design, since all the tools—the various drawing, text, color, and shape tools—all work in the same way.

And you needn’t stop there. Once you’ve mastered your chosen vector design app, it’s time to check out some of the best free alternatives to Photoshop, Lightroom, and other Adobe products.

Read the full article: The 8 Best Free Browser-Based Adobe Illustrator Alternatives

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YouTube is testing its own ‘Explore’ tab on iPhone

YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki on Friday promised the company would do a better job with communicating to creators about its experiments and tests. Today, YouTube is making good on that commitment with an update about a new feature it’s testing out: an Explore tab, aimed at offering viewers a more diverse set of video recommendations.

The news was announced via the Creator Insider channel – the same channel Wojcicki highlighted in her recent update as the “unofficial” resource operated by YouTube employees. The channel today offers weekly updates, responses to creator feedback, and behind-the-scenes info on product launches.

According to the announcement, the new Explore feature is currently in testing with just 1 percent of iPhone YouTube app viewers, so there’s a good chance you won’t see the option in your own app.

However, if you do happen to be in the test group, then you’ll notice the bottom navigation bar of the app looks different. Instead of the tabs Home, Trending, Subscriptions, Inbox and Library you have today, you’ll instead see Home, Explore, Subscriptions, Activity and Library.

The idea behind Explore is to offer YouTube viewers a wider variety of what-to-watch suggestions than they receive today. Currently, personalized video recommendations are very much influenced by past viewing activity and other behavior, which can then create a sort of homogenous selection of recommended content.

“Explore is designed to help you be exposed to different kinds of topics, videos or channels that you might not otherwise encounter, but they’re still personalized,” said Tom Leung, Director of Product Management, in a YouTube video.

That is, the videos are still based on viewing activity.

For example, he explains, a viewer who was watching videos about telescopes might be recommended videos about high-end cameras.

“It’s just going to give you a little more variety,” says Leung.

The tab will also feature a “Trending” section at the top of the screen, which directs users to the same sort of content that the Trending tab in the current version of the YouTube app today features.

The hope, however, with the new Explore tab is to offer creators the ability to reach more viewers, even if their content doesn’t “trend.”

Whether or not that theory proves true, remains to be seen. YouTube will review the data from the experiment before making a decision to roll out the Explore tab to more users.

Early feedback from YouTube creators in the comments section of the video seems cautiously optimistic, with many expressing hopes that the new tab would provide exposure to smaller creators rather than just the well-known names.

Calling the tab “Explore” makes sense in light of the increased threat from Instagram, whose own Explore section features personalized video suggestions, and has launched a YouTube rival with IGTV. YouTube has responded by offering its stars big, five to six-figure checks to post their best stuff on YouTube, according to Business Insider. (YouTube downplayed the report, saying it has “always invested in creators’ success.)

But an experiment involving YouTube’s own Explore section makes it clear that the company is interested taking on Instagram head-on when it comes to offering a home for discovering new video content through algorithmic recommendations.

If successful, YouTube’s Explore tab would connect viewers to more creator channels they’ll like and subscribe to, as well as increase their time spent in app. That, in turn, could potentially decrease viewers’ time in apps like IGTV, Facebook, Instagram and elsewhere.

 

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YouTube is testing its own ‘Explore’ tab on iPhone

YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki on Friday promised the company would do a better job with communicating to creators about its experiments and tests. Today, YouTube is making good on that commitment with an update about a new feature it’s testing out: an Explore tab, aimed at offering viewing a more diverse set of video recommendations.

The news was announced via the Creator Insider channel – the same channel Wojcicki highlighted in her recent update as the “unofficial” resource operated by YouTube employees. The channel today offers weekly updates, responses to creator feedback, and behind-the-scenes info on product launches.

According to the announcement, the new Explore feature is currently in testing with just 1 percent of iPhone YouTube app viewers, so there’s a good chance you won’t see the option in your own app.

However, if you do happen to be in the test group, then you’ll notice the bottom navigation bar of the app looks different. Instead of the tabs Home, Trending, Subscriptions, Inbox and Library you have today, you’ll instead see Home, Explore, Subscriptions, Activity and Library.

The idea behind Explore is to offer YouTube viewers a wider variety of what-to-watch suggestions than they receive today. Currently, personalized video recommendations are very much influenced by past viewing activity and other behavior, which can then create a sort of homogenous selection of recommended content.

“Explore is designed to help you be exposed to different kinds of topics, videos or channels that you might not otherwise encounter, but they’re still personalized,” said Tom Leung, Director of Product Management, in a YouTube video.

That is, the videos are still based on viewing activity.

For example, he explains, a viewer who was watching videos about telescopes might be recommended videos about high-end cameras.

“It’s just going to give you a little more variety,” says Leung.

The tab will also feature a “Trending” section at the top of the screen, which directs users to the same sort of content that the Trending tab in the current version of the YouTube app today features.

The hope, however, with the new Explore tab is to offer creators the ability to reach more viewers, even if their content doesn’t “trend.”

Whether or not that theory proves true, remains to be seen. YouTube will review the data from the experiment before making a decision to roll out the Explore tab to more users.

Early feedback from YouTube creators in the comments section of the video seems cautiously optimistic, with many expressing hopes that the new tab would provide exposure to smaller creators rather than just the well-known names.

Calling the tab “Explore” makes sense in light of the increased threat from Instagram, whose own Explore section features personalized video suggestions, and has launched a YouTube rival with IGTV. YouTube has responded by offering its stars big, five to six-figure checks to post their best stuff on YouTube, according to Business Insider. (YouTube downplayed the report, saying it has “always invested in creators’ success.)

But an experiment involving YouTube’s own Explore section makes it clear that the company is interested taking on Instagram head-on when it comes to offering a home for discovering new video content through algorithmic recommendations.

If successful, YouTube’s Explore tab would connect viewers to more creator channels they’ll like and subscribe to, as well as increase their time spent in app. That, in turn, could potentially decrease viewers’ time in apps like IGTV, Facebook, Instagram and elsewhere.

 

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The Best Airbnb Clones for Cars, Boats, and Other Rental Services

There are plenty of benefits to renting your next vacation stay through Airbnb, but that’s not the only peer-to-peer service that makes rentals easy.

You can use these Airbnb-like alternatives for renting cars, office space, boats, and much more.

Airbnb for Cars

ZipCar requires a monthly membership fee. Car2Go’s selection is limited. And standard car rental services are often inconvenient.

With peer-to-peer sharing sites that operate like Airbnb, you only pay for the car rental when you need it, and they also have a wide variety of car types and makes.

Two of the larger sites—GetAround and Turo—cover insurace, and GetAround provides 24/7 roadside assistance. Turo provides roadside assistance only with select trips.

GetAround

GetAround listings include information on etiquette (Is the car pet-friendly for example?), and of course the typical Airbnb type features that you’ll find in the car.

Where is it available? Get Around is available in only six US cities: San Francisco, Berkley, Chicago, Oakland, Portland, and Washington D.C.

What are the rental options? You can rent cars for as little as $5 per hour. The longer you rent a car, the cheaper the hourly price is.

What types of cars are available? You can rent SUVs, coupes, sedans, minivans, convertibles, hatchbacks, pickup trucks, and cargo vans. GetAround also offers electric cars including Teslas.

How does search work? The primary search function on GetAround relies on location. You can search for cars available in your location and then filter results by price range, car make, car category, car class, and, transmission.

What are the limitations? While you can rent by the hour or the day, some cars have a minimum number of hours for a rental (e.g. two or four hours), but there are cars available to rent for just one hour if that’s all you need.

Turo

Turo listings are accompanied by info about the cars’ features and extras. You can also see info on the car owner’s response rate.

It’s also worth noting that Turo will check your auto insurance score before granting you access to the site.

Where is it available? Turo is available in far more places than GetAround, serving 5,500 cities and 300+ airports across the US, Canada, Germany, and the UK.

What are the rental options? Turo rentals start at $10 per hour and up. The longer you rent the car, the cheaper the per hour rate becomes. For an added $10 fee, Turo car owners can bring the car to you.

What types of cars are available? You can rent sedans, SUVs, minivans, trucks, and vans.

How does search work? You can search cars by location, after which you can use a filter to narrow results by price range, features, vehicle type, make, year, number of seats, categories (elite, upscale, fuel sippers etc.), colors, and transmission.

What are the limitations? Some cars have a mileage limitation. If you exceed that mileage, you’ll be charged per mile at a rate determined by the car owner.

Airbnb for Boats

Airbnb itself does have listings for houseboats, but if you want a wider selection, you might want to check out boat-specific sites.

These sites aren’t just for swanky yachts. You can also use them to rent jet skis, kayaks, and of course, houseboats.

BoatSetter

BoatSetter listings include features for each boat, reviews, and how many people are viewing the vessel. Features include capacity, boat rules, response rate, and response time.

And if you have no boating experience—not to worry. BoatSetter rentals can also come with a captain who will manage the sailing, while you enjoy your day out on the water.

Where is it available? BoatSetter is available in 2,100+ cities worldwide.

What are the rental options? You can rent boats for half a day (which can run about four hours), for a full day, or for several days.

How does search work? When searching for a boat on BoatSetter, you’ll start by entering your location, party size, and trip date. You can filter your search results by specific activities: fishing, sailing, water sports, cruising, and celebrating.

You can also filter by power vs. sail. And that’s not all—you can narrow search results by price, size, features, and categories (jet ski, schooner, catamaran etc.).

GetMyBoat

GetMyBoat also offers the option of booking your rental with a captain.

Where is it available? GetMyBoat is available in 184 countries worldwide.

What are the rental options? You can rent a vessel per hour or per day. In addition to a rental fee, you’ll also have to pay a service fee.

How does search work? Search begins with location, and then you can filter your search results by minimum and maximum prices, minimum and maximum capacity, availability of a captain, listing type (e.g. pontoon, jet ski, day sailer etc.), features, and if you’re knowledgeable, you can even narrow your results by make and model.

Airbnb for Office Space

Coworking spaces are quite common across the United States, and beyond. Some companies offer office space nationwide, but you should also look into your own local options. Coworking search engines like Coworker can take the hard work out of it.

There are popular options like WeWork which is available across the US and in over 20 other countries worldwide, but you have to pay a hefty monthly fee. Instead, why not find a desk in an office space that you can use whenever you need to, without having to pay a membership fee?

LiquidSpace

LiquidSpace is a membership free option for finding working space to rent for your ad-hoc use.

Where is it available? LiquidSpace is available in 1,150 cities in the United States, Canada, and Australia.

What are the rental options? You can rent spaces by the hour or by the day. If you rent for a full day, the hourly price goes down. (Some locations are available only by the day.)

How does search work? As with most of these sites, a search begins with location. You can then filter your search results by dates and times, neighborhood, space type (desk, office, suite), price range, capacity, environment, and amenities.

ShareDesk

ShareDesk allows you to rent just a desk in a working hub or a private office. They also offer options for meeting rooms,

Listings include features and amenities, but there are no reviews on the listings.

Where is it available? ShareDesk is available at over 4,500 locations in 4,500 venues in 440 cities across 70 countries. Some cities (like New York for example) have far more options than other cities (like Washington DC).

What are the rental options? You can rent a desk in a public working space or hub, conference space, and in some locations, can find rentals suitable for executive level meetings.

How does search work? You begin a search by location and office type (meeting spaces or working spaces). You can then filter your search results by term (hourly, daily, or monthly), price range, dates, and venue category (shared, hub, pro, and exec.)

Croissant is another option for working spaces, but does include a membership fee, albeit at a much cheaper rate than WeWork. And PivotDesk also makes it easy to find office space, but the rentals are only available on a monthly basis.

Airbnb for Parking and Storage

There are other Airbnb like sites popping up for all kinds of services. If you’re looking for an Airbnb for parking, there are a few sites that are beginning to fill that space.

Pavemint is available as an iOS app to help you find parking spaces in the Los Angeles area.

Parqex is available as an iOS and Android app, and features parking listings in several US cities including Chicago, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Miami, and Washington D.C.

If you’re looking for storage space, rather than pay around $100 a month for a small space, you can look for peer-to-peer options using sites like Neighbor and Spacer (which also includes parking spaces).

Other Peer-to-Peer Rental Services

There are plenty more peer-to-peer rentals worth considering. Sites like Zilok are a rental marketplace for just about anything you might be looking for including computers, cameras, and gaming consoles. To rent an item through Zilok, you’ll have to pay a security deposit you’ll get back once the item is returned to its owner.

If you’re looking for a “rental” for your furry friend while you go out of town, Rover makes it easy to find welcoming homes for your dogs.

If you’re looking for photographic equipment, FatLama is an option worth considering—or if you prefer to rent from a company, take a look at BorrowLenses. Indeed, all photographers should consider renting before buying.

Read the full article: The Best Airbnb Clones for Cars, Boats, and Other Rental Services

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Peak Design goes back to Kickstarter to launch $299 travel backpack

Meet the Travel Backpack 45L. It’s Peak Design’s latest creation and the company just launched a Kickstarter campaign to bring it to life. This product marks the eighth Kickstarter campaign for Peak Design — all of which have been wildly successful.

Peak Design turned to Kickstarter in 2014 to launch the first generation of its Capture camera clip. Over 5,200 people pledged support to bring that product to life. Since then, Peak Design used Kickstarter to launch several camera straps and mounts and, most notably, the Everyday Backpack, Tote and Sling, which saw pledges from 26,000 people for over $6 million. Peak Design collected over $15 million in pledges through its seven previous Kickstarter campaigns and is now the most active crowdfunded company — miss you, Pebble.

Crowdfunding is deeply lodged into the Peak Design’s ethos, the company tells me. For one, Peak Design feels crowdfunding helps with the costs associated with bringing new products to market. The company offers pre-sale discounts through Kickstarter campaigns, which covers the costs of the product and lets the company use the extra to develop the next product. Second, Peak Design says it leverages the two-way communication Kickstarter provides to tweak product design, clean up messaging and ensure a high-level customer experience.

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The $299 Travel Backpack 45L is the company’s largest bag to date and is designed with a traveler in mind. The bag is constructed from 400D weather nylon and the inside is coated to provide additional water resistance. The bag has compression and expansion straps to let it grow or shrink as needed. A bevy of lockable zippers and access points seem to be positioned in a smart way around the bag.

TechCrunch loves Peak Design’s Everyday Backpack. Several of us use it as our everyday bag. Both sizes can handle a 15-inch MacBook Pro and they have the right mix of storage and access. I trust this new bag was designed with a similar level of competency.

Along with the backpack, Peak Design also released a series of packing cubes, each designed to address a different travel need. These are sold separately from the Travel Backpack and start at $29.95. There are six different types: standard packing cubes, a toiletry bag, an electronic bag, a camera bag, a shoe pouch, and a rain cover that’s made out of 200D rip-stop nylon.

What’s Peak Design Founder and CEO Peter Dering’s favorite part of the new bag?

“The entire back panel,” he says. “Not only does it beautifully conceal all the straps, it’s also got a beautiful grab handle that, for some reason I don’t understand, just makes you feel like a badass when you use it. It kind of feels like when Neo grabs that bag of guns in the Matrix, only my bag is full of drones, mirrorless cameras, and underwear. We’re all in agreement that any character Keanu Reeves plays is an aspirational character, right?”

I guess he’s right.

The $299 Travel Backpack 45L and packing cubes are available for pre-order on Kickstarter now and the company expects them to be in major retailers by the holiday season.

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Bag design with Peak Design

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Musical.ly’s shutdown of Live.ly was contractually obligated

Musical.ly has begun redirecting users of its Live.ly app, which it decided to kill off last month, to a competing app called LiveMe. Existing Live.ly users are being pointed to LiveMe through an in-app message, it says. While it’s a fairly common industry practice for companies to direct users to similar apps or services when a product of theirs is being sunsetted, in this case, Musical.ly’s decision to close down Live.ly and send users to LiveMe was actually a contractually obligated part of Musical.ly’s nearly $1 billion acquisition by Chinese technology company Bytedance last year.

A clause in Bytedance’s agreement to acquire Musical.ly stated that, if the deal went through, Musical.ly would have to close Live.ly within six months, according to a source with knowledge of the deal.

The agreement also said that Live.ly would have to point users to LiveMe for at least 30 days following its closure, we learned, when verifying the information.

The issue at hand was a competing investment – right around the time of the Musical.ly acquisition, Bytedance had also put $50 million into the live-streaming app LiveMe. Apparently, it didn’t want to operate two rival properties.

Clearly, this request was not a deal-breaker for Musical.ly – in fact, it’s integrating Live.ly’s feature set into its own app. That means it will still be something of a competitor to LiveMe, though now no longer a direct one. Musical.ly’s main app, after all, is not known today for its live streaming, but rather for lip syncing videos that are recorded and edited using the app’s included visual effects and editing tools.

In addition, Live.ly had not been able to attract the viewership numbers that Musical.ly had. The company said, when confirming Live.ly’s closure last month, the majority of live stream views were taking place in Musical.ly itself, not in its spinoff.

That said, Live.ly had a fair number of users. Though nowhere near as big as Musical.ly’s 200+ million registered users or 60 million actives, its live stream app had 26 million installs, around 70 percent in the U.S., according to Sensor Tower’s data.

But LiveMe is bigger – it has more than 60 million users and has paid out over $30 million to its broadcasters through its direct virtual gifting program, the company claims.

LiveMe is also not the only app operated by the company. Other LiveMe portfolio apps include the social short video app Cheez, and mobile gaming and esports live streaming app Fluxr. To date, it has raised a total of $110 million.

Live.ly isn’t only redirecting users to LiveMe, however. In its own announcement about the news today, it shows a screenshot that’s pointing Live.ly users to Twitter’s Periscope, for instance. The message also notes that the Live.ly domain name is for sale, and provides an email for sales inquiries.

Musical.ly hasn’t yet responded to a request for comment.

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Musical.ly’s shutdown of Live.ly was contractually obligated

Musical.ly has begun redirecting users of its Live.ly app, which it decided to kill off last month, to a competing app called LiveMe. Existing Live.ly users are being pointed to LiveMe through an in-app message, it says. While it’s a fairly common industry practice for companies to direct users to similar apps or services when a product of theirs is being sunsetted, in this case, Musical.ly’s decision to close down Live.ly and send users to LiveMe was actually a contractually obligated part of Musical.ly’s nearly $1 billion acquisition by Chinese technology company Bytedance last year.

A clause in Bytedance’s agreement to acquire Musical.ly stated that, if the deal went through, Musical.ly would have to close Live.ly within six months, according to a source with knowledge of the deal.

The agreement also said that Live.ly would have to point users to LiveMe for at least 30 days following its closure, we learned, when verifying the information.

The issue at hand was a competing investment – right around the time of the Musical.ly acquisition, Bytedance had also put $50 million into the live-streaming app LiveMe. Apparently, it didn’t want to operate two rival properties.

Clearly, this request was not a deal-breaker for Musical.ly – in fact, it’s integrating Live.ly’s feature set into its own app. That means it will still be something of a competitor to LiveMe, though now no longer a direct one. Musical.ly’s main app, after all, is not known today for its live streaming, but rather for lip syncing videos that are recorded and edited using the app’s included visual effects and editing tools.

In addition, Live.ly had not been able to attract the viewership numbers that Musical.ly had. The company said, when confirming Live.ly’s closure last month, the majority of live stream views were taking place in Musical.ly itself, not in its spinoff.

That said, Live.ly had a fair number of users. Though nowhere near as big as Musical.ly’s 200+ million registered users or 60 million actives, its live stream app had 26 million installs, around 70 percent in the U.S., according to Sensor Tower’s data.

But LiveMe is bigger – it has more than 60 million users and has paid out over $30 million to its broadcasters through its direct virtual gifting program, the company claims.

LiveMe is also not the only app operated by the company. Other LiveMe portfolio apps include the social short video app Cheez, and mobile gaming and esports live streaming app Fluxr. To date, it has raised a total of $110 million.

Live.ly isn’t only redirecting users to LiveMe, however. In its own announcement about the news today, it shows a screenshot that’s pointing Live.ly users to Twitter’s Periscope, for instance. The message also notes that the Live.ly domain name is for sale, and provides an email for sales inquiries.

Musical.ly hasn’t yet responded to a request for comment.

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Sonos prices its IPO to raise as much as $105M

Sonos today took the next step in its initial public offering price, setting a range for the shares it intends to sell that will help calibrate the final amount of money – and valuation — that it will have when it begins its trading debut.

This isn’t the final, final step in the IPO process as this is usually done to test the waters and figure out the exact appetite for the company’s shares when it goes public. Sonos is offering 5,555,555 (a wonderful palindrome of a number) shares, where it will raise as much as $105 million if it prices on the upper end of its range and sells them at $19 per share. The official range is between $17 and $19, but this can go up and down throughout the process — with a drop-off signaling a lack of interest or skepticism, and an increased range a sign of heavy demand. Companies will sometimes lowball their range, though we won’t find out for a little bit where everything lands.

Insiders are also selling 8,333,333 million shares in this initial public offering. Including that, the IPO could end up raising around $250 at the middle of that $17 to $19 range that it’s estimating including the shares sold by existing stockholders. The proceeds from those shares sold by stockholders aren’t going to end up in Sonos’ hands, so the company itself is only going to net around that $105 million at the top end of its range. There’s also an over-allotment, typically called a greenshoe, that consists of shares sold by Sonos and existing stockholders. That could add a total of $15 million and $22.5 million respectively at a price of $18 in the middle of that range.

The company is offering some preliminary estimates for its second quarter, saying it generated between $206.4 million and $208.4 million in revenue with a net loss of between $29 million and $27.1 million (this is probably because the final accounting isn’t finished up as we’re just about entering the front end for earnings season for major companies). The company said it sold between 880,000 and 890,000 products as an estimated range in the second quarter this year, up from 796,000 products in the second quarter last year.

Sonos is nicely positioned as a third-party option in an ecosystem that’s getting increasingly crowded by proprietary speakers from the larger companies that own voice assistants like the Echo, HomePod, and Google Home. But Sonos has been around for a considerable amount of time and has clearly built up a significant following to ensure that it could find itself operating as an independent public company. In its fiscal 2017 year, Sonos said it brought in nearly $1 billion in revenue, an increase of 10% year-over-year. The initial filing indicated that the company had sold a total of 19 million products in 6.9 million households, with customers listening to 70 hours of content each month.

This is basically the next step in the process as the company continues its march toward making its debut, and we’ll get more details soon enough as to whether or not investors are interested in a publicly-traded company that’s known for its speakers.

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Sonos prices its IPO to raise as much as $105M

Sonos today took the next step in its initial public offering price, setting a range for the shares it intends to sell that will help calibrate the final amount of money – and valuation — that it will have when it begins its trading debut.

This isn’t the final, final step in the IPO process as this is usually done to test the waters and figure out the exact appetite for the company’s shares when it goes public. Sonos is offering 5,555,555 (a wonderful palindrome of a number) shares, where it will raise as much as $105 million if it prices on the upper end of its range and sells them at $19 per share. The official range is between $17 and $19, but this can go up and down throughout the process — with a drop-off signaling a lack of interest or skepticism, and an increased range a sign of heavy demand. Companies will sometimes lowball their range, though we won’t find out for a little bit where everything lands.

Insiders are also selling 8,333,333 million shares in this initial public offering. Including that, the IPO could end up raising around $250 at the middle of that $17 to $19 range that it’s estimating including the shares sold by existing stockholders. The proceeds from those shares sold by stockholders aren’t going to end up in Sonos’ hands, so the company itself is only going to net around that $105 million at the top end of its range. There’s also an over-allotment, typically called a greenshoe, that consists of shares sold by Sonos and existing stockholders. That could add a total of $15 million and $22.5 million respectively at a price of $18 in the middle of that range.

The company is offering some preliminary estimates for its second quarter, saying it generated between $206.4 million and $208.4 million in revenue with a net loss of between $29 million and $27.1 million (this is probably because the final accounting isn’t finished up as we’re just about entering the front end for earnings season for major companies). The company said it sold between 880,000 and 890,000 products as an estimated range in the second quarter this year, up from 796,000 products in the second quarter last year.

Sonos is nicely positioned as a third-party option in an ecosystem that’s getting increasingly crowded by proprietary speakers from the larger companies that own voice assistants like the Echo, HomePod, and Google Home. But Sonos has been around for a considerable amount of time and has clearly built up a significant following to ensure that it could find itself operating as an independent public company. In its fiscal 2017 year, Sonos said it brought in nearly $1 billion in revenue, an increase of 10% year-over-year. The initial filing indicated that the company had sold a total of 19 million products in 6.9 million households, with customers listening to 70 hours of content each month.

This is basically the next step in the process as the company continues its march toward making its debut, and we’ll get more details soon enough as to whether or not investors are interested in a publicly-traded company that’s known for its speakers.

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Fritz wants to help developers bring machine learning to their mobile apps

It’s one thing to run machine learning models in the cloud, where you have plenty of resources. On mobile devices, you’re dealing with very finite compute resources, so if you want to run your models directly on the devices, they have to be highly optimized. Add to that that Apple and Google are taking somewhat different approaches and use different frameworks and you can see why this is all a bit of a nightmare for mobile developers.

Boston-based Fritz, which is opening its service to all developers today, wants to make all of this far easier. It’s an end-to-end solution for adding machine learning models to mobile apps — and have them run natively on the device.

The company argues that as Apple and Google are both pushing their own frameworks, developers are left to work with what’s at best suboptimal tooling. Fritz then wants to build better tools to simplify life for developers.

“What we want the developers to do is build a model and then we take care of the rest,” the company’s CEO and co-founder Jameson Toole told me.

Fritz is agnostic as to the runtime that the models are actually using. Developers can bring their Core ML, TensorFlow Mobile and TensorFlow Lite models to Fritz and the SDK will monitor their performance and help developers push updated models to their apps without having to release a new version.

In addition, Fritz also offers a number of standard models for use cases like image labeling and object detection that the company has already optimized to work offline and at high enough frame rates to support live video.

Among the apps that starting using Fritz during its private beta are PlantVillage, which uses on-device machine learning to detect evidence of crop diseases and gives farmers in East Africa advice for how to treat them; MDAcne, for detecting cases of acne; and the more lighthearted InstaSaber, which turns a piece of rolled-up paper into a virtual lightsaber.

All of Fritz’s functionality is available for free. Over time, Toole told me, the team plans to add to the platform a number of premium services, including more collaboration tooling for teams and more automation features for managing and tweaking models. It’ll also launch more machine learning features, including style transfer and image segmentation.

In addition to its core service, Fritz also offers a number of tutorials and other resources for teaching developers about machine learning, as well as Alchemy, a tool for analyzing and benchmarking a custom model’s performance on mobile.

Toole also is open to going beyond smartphones and supporting other edge devices for IoT use cases, for example. Right now, the team is squarely focused on mobile, though.

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Samsung is probably keeping the headphone jack around for the Galaxy Note 9

Let’s be real — the latest batch of Samsung ads are more about the company’s perception of Apple than its own devices. But hey, that tact has worked for the company in the past, so who can blame ‘em? They do, however, offer at least one key bit of insight into the company’s on-going plans.

In a spot titled “Dongle” that takes aim at the easiest possible joke in the smartphone world, Samsung takes Apple to task for the iPhone for its lack of headphone jack. A conversation ensues between a customer and Genius Bar employee, the term “double dongle” is coined and the former grimaces like someone just explained the plot of Human Centipede to him for the first time.

Again, the ad’s less about what Samsung has, than what Apple doesn’t, but it does appear to reaffirm the company’s commitment to the headphone jack. Granted, we’ve seen companies do about-faces on the issue before. The most notable instance is probably Google, who called Apple out one year and dropped the jack the next.

But releasing such an openly mocking ad a month or so before dropping the headphone jack would not, as the kids say, be a great look for the company. The inclusion of the port has been a selling point for Samsung ever since Apple dropped it way back in 2016 for the iPhone 6. It’s an easy win for Samsung. All the company has to do is literally nothing.

And from the leaks we’ve seen of the Note 9, it appears that the 3.5mm will once again be returning.

Of course, what felt like an act of aggression to some two year back has become increasingly common amongst the competition. I’ve talked to a number of manufacturers who’ve retained the jack over the past two years, and nearly all have acknowledged that it’s simply a matter of time before they go that route as well.

It’s tough to say how much of the decision to keep the jack around is Samsung simply giving customers what they want, and how much is the company simply trying to distance itself from Apple. I suspect the truth lies somewhere in the middle. Samsung can continue to use its (admittedly pretty nice) wired AKG headphones as a selling point, while making all the “double dongle” jokes its hefty ad budget can support.

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YC-backed RevenueCat helps developers manage their in-app subscriptions

Startup founders don’t usually pitch their ideas by admitting that they’re solving a “boring” problem, but it seems to work for RevenueCat‘s Jacob Eiting.

In fact, Eiting alternately described his startup (which is part of the current class at accelerator Y Combinator) as handling “boring work” and solving a “boring problem.” RevenueCat helps developers manage their in-app subscriptions, which Eiting said “is just boring — developers don’t want to do it.”

And yet it can be crucial for their business. After all, Eiting and his co-founder Miguel Carranza both worked at brain training app Elevate (where Eiting was CTO and Carranza was director of engineering), and he said shifting Elevate’s business model from one-off purchases to recurring subscriptions “saved the company.”

Eiting left Elevate more than a year ago, ultimately deciding to build a startup around “this weird skill I have.” RevenueCat offers an API that developers can use to support in-app subscriptions on iOS and Android, which means they don’t have to worry about all the nuances, bugs and updates in how each platform handles subscriptions.

Eiting said this is the kind of thing that “holds a lot of companies back — maybe not forever, but it’s usually at a time when a company shouldn’t be worrying about this.”

The API also allows developers to bring all the data about their subscription business together in one place, across platforms. Ultimately, he wants to turn RevenueCat into a broader “revenue management platform,” allowing developers to try out strategies like offering different prices to different customer segments.

More broadly, Eiting suggested that subscriptions offer a way out of the current “race to the bottom in how software is sold” — particularly in mobile app stores, where many of us expect everything to be free or dirt cheap. Obviously, that’s not a great situation for someone hoping to make money by selling software, but Eiting pointed out that it can be bad for the consumer too, because it means the developer has less financial incentive to support and update the app.

“Someone who pays for your 99-cent app once, they think they own your time,” he said. “You want to be helpful, you don’t want to let down a paid user, but your incentives aren’t really aligned.”

Subscriptions, even if they’re just for 99 cents a month, can re-align those incentives — Eiting has described this as a system of app patronage: “You want this thing to stay working, you need to pony up some money to developers.”

He also acknowledged that as more apps shift to this model, there’s a risk of subscription fatigue, which could lead to “maybe not a harsh backlash, but there might be a secondary correction.”

But in Eiting’s view, that’s less a problem for individual developers, more for the mobile platforms, which should be building better tools for consumers to manage all their subscriptions in one place.

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Apple’s Business Chat signs up five more brands, more tech platforms

Apple Business Chat, Apple’s new platform for allowing companies and brands to communicate with customers over iMessage, is expanding. In addition to Dish becoming the first TV provider to support Business Chat, Apple says it has also added four other brands, Aramak, Four Seasons, Harry & David, and American Express, in addition to five new technology platforms businesses can integrate with.

The platforms that now support Apple Business Chat include Cisco, eGain, Kipsu, Lithium and Quiq. They allow the brands to develop their Business Chat systems with a variety of features, integrate them with their own apps and services, track activity through reporting, and more.

The new brand partners represent a variety of use cases for Business Chat, from real-time ordering to shopping to general customer service.

As noted last week, Dish will now allows its pay TV customers to reach a live agent with their questions over iMessage, make account changes, schedule an appointment, and even order pay-per-view.

DISH on Apple Business Chat (PRNewsfoto/DISH Network Corporation)

Meanwhile, the Four Seasons will allow guests to search for any Four Season property and engage with “Four Seasons Chat,” a multi-lingual service that will connect guests with the hotel’s team for any need.

Harry & David will help customers shop over Business Chat, by allowing them to ask questions about products and services and get help from a gift concierge. When customers are ready to buy, they can check out with Apple Pay – as they can with 1-800-Flowers, an existing Business Chat partner.

Aramak is piloting a 10-game “Brew2You” program at Citizens Bank Park, the home of the Philadelphia Phillies. Fans will be able to scan a QR code on their seat back in three sections to order beer or water over iMessage, and have it delivered right to their seat.

And American Express is piloting a program for card members to allow them to get their account information, including their balance, payment due dates, and points balance over Business Chat. They’ll also be able to ask for a card replacement, dispute a charge, or get information about card benefit.

In addition to the five new brand partners, Business Chat also powered the official concierge service for the Cannes Lions festival in June, with LivePerson, notes Apple.

Launched into beta in March with the release of iOS 11.3, Business Chat offers companies an alternative to using social media platforms, like Facebook and Twitter, to reach their customers.

It arrives at a time when messaging is becoming an important means of addressing the needs of consumers, including the millennial audience, analysts claim.

According to Gartner, support requests over consumer messaging apps will exceed those coming in from social media by 2019. And Nielsen says that 56% of consumers prefer messaging to calling, with 67% expecting to message more over the next two years.

Research from Sapio says that 63% of consumers cite satisfaction when reaching out to brands via messaging to resolve their issues. And digital natives (aka millennials) turn to direct messaging to first reach out to brands 40% of the time.

To some extent, businesses may prefer Apple’s Business Chat system, as it allows them to get closer to their customers – their chats live right in the same Messages app, alongside conversations the customer has with friends and family. Plus, they can brand their service as they like – like as Four Seasons is doing, for example – and keep their customers’ data in-house, instead of making it available to a third-party like Facebook.

Plus, Business Chat can benefit from integrations with other macOS and iOS apps and features, including Spotlight Search, Siri, Apple Maps, and Safari, and can be added to brands’ websites and apps.

However, it’s not likely that businesses will drop social media-based customer service and support for Business Chat, so it becomes another platform for them to manage and support.

 

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