What Is a Virtual Mailbox? (And Why You Should Get One)

If you’ve never heard of them, a virtual mailbox is a service that provides you with a physical mailing address anywhere in the United States.

There’s an obvious benefit for international shoppers who want to buy products from businesses that only ship to addresses in the United States. But there are not-so-obvious benefits even if you already have a physical US mailing address.

What Is a Virtual Mailbox?

A virtual mailbox is a service that receives all your physical mail for you.

Here’s a quick rundown of the features you can expect from a virtual mailbox.

• You can have a single US physical address that never changes no matter where you live
• When mail arrives, the service scans the outside of envelopes and packages
• You view the scans of your incoming mail and tell the service whether to shred, hold, or ship the items to you
• Some services will also open the mail and scan the contents for you
• You may also be able to ask for incoming checks to be deposited (via mail) to any US bank

These set of features provide unique opportunities for different people, even if you live inside the U.S and have a physical postal address.

How Digital Nomads Use a Virtual Mailbox

Have you ever wondered how traveling journalists or globe-trotting executives manage their mail when they’re away from home for weeks at a time?

With the US postal service, you can put your mail on hold by filling out a form on their website.

This works for 30 days at a time. Beyond that, you need to switch to long-term mail forwarding.

If you’re a digital nomad or an executive who travels frequently, remembering to enable and disable USPS mail forwarding would be a real hassle.

This is when a virtual mailbox would really come in handy. No matter where you are, whether it’s in an airport waiting for a flight, or in an Airbnb rental in Amsterdam, you can “receive” your physical mail.

This is much more convenient than letting mail pile up in your mailbox or having to remember to enable or disable USPS mail holding.

And if you’re staying in one location for more than a week, you can even ask the virtual mailbox service to ship only important mail to you.

Since virtual mailbox services ship such a high volume of mail, they receive discounted shipping rates. You can also request that they box multiple items up in a single box to save even more on shipping costs.

Hike the Appalachian trail for six months. Hitchhike across Europe. No matter where you travel, you always have access to your incoming mail.

So let’s take a look at three core benefits that can tempt you to sign up for a virtual mailbox service today.

1. Get Rid of Mail Clutter

Even if you live in the US and don’t move frequently, a virtual mailbox is still very useful.

According to NYU School of Law, in the US junk mail makes up 5.6 million tons of paper and plastic that end up in landfills.

“The average American household receives 848 pieces of junk mail per household, equal to 1.5 trees every year—more than 100 million trees for all US households combined.”

You may find that you waste precious minutes every day dealing with that pile of useless mail that arrives in your mailbox.

With a virtual mailbox, you wouldn’t even have to open your mailbox anymore.

All you have to do is take a few minutes during your lunch break to log into your virtual mailbox account. Scan through all of the received items, and just click whether to shred or save each piece.

Many virtual mailbox services will even open individual letters (if you ask them to) and scan the documents.

This provides you with a digital copy of any bills or correspondence, and you don’t have to deal with the leftover waste.

Most of the virtual mailbox services also shred hundreds of thousands of letters every day, so they’ve streamlined the recycling process.

2. Saves Time and Enjoy Security

There are endless opportunities to save time with a virtual mailbox service.

• Have incoming paper checks forwarded to your bank for deposit (many virtual mailbox services offer this feature)
• Read your scanned correspondence and respond to it immediately, then have it shredded.
• You’ll never have to waste time going to the post office or checking your mailbox
• Have gifts you want to send to someone forwarded directly without having to touch the package yourself
• Check incoming mail from your office, while commuting, or while you’re on vacation

A virtual mailbox also boosts your personal security.

• Thieves can’t swipe credit card numbers of statements like they could with ones sent to a physical mailbox
• Private investigators can’t search through your mailbox looking for information about you
• There’s no risk of trash thieves recovering sensitive information about you from discarded mail
• No one you’re living with will see the addresses of your personal correspondence

By having all of your mails shipped to a remote location and handled by trained, professional staff, you can better protect your privacy.

3. Stop Changing Addresses When You Move

If you’ve ever had to deal with changing your physical mailing address through the US Postal Service, then you know what a pain it can be.

You can launch the change of address process online through the USPS website, which triggers their mail-forwarding service for 12 months.

This means you have 12 months to ensure every single company you’ve ever dealth with has your new address.

That’s fine if you don’t move too frequently. But if you’re in the military, or you work for a company that moves you around alot, this can become a real hassle.

The best virtual mailbox services out there have locations all across the country.

You just pick the state that you want to consider your “home state”, receive your physical address, and you never have to change your address again. It doesn’t matter how often you move, or where you move to.

The 5 Best Virtual Mailbox Services

If you’re ready to sign up for a virtual mailbox, there are a few that have been around a while. Any of these would be a good choice.

For any of these services, you’re looking at costs ranging from $10 to $40 depending on whether you also want to include extra services.

1. US Global Mail

One of the longest-running virtual mailbox services is US Global Mail. It’s especially popular among US expatriots.

Like most virtual mailbox services, it’s also very popular among international shoppers who need a US address to buy products from many US companies.

Services they offer include:

• A physical address in the US (not a PO box)
• Scans of every envelope or package that arrives
• Open-mail scanning available
• Package forwarding to any address in the world
• Reduced shipping rates

2. iPostal1

iPostal1 offers roughly the same rates as US Global Mail, depending on the volume of items you receive each month.

Services they offer include:

• Over 500 street addresses available throughout the US.
• A free mobile app to check your mail, available for iPhone or Android
• Scanned incoming envelopes and packages with 2 GB free cloud storage
• Phone or faxing available
• Check depositing offered if the bank accepts mail-in deposits

3. Anytime Mailbox

Anytime Mailbox is a virtual mailbox service that lets you choose from any of 410 street addresses around the country.

Rates are some of the lowest in the industry, at roughly half the cost of other services.

Services they offer include:

• Access to your virtual mailbox via multiple devices
• Opening and scanning of your mail contents
• Free cloud storage (no limits)
• Forwarding of any envelopes or packages
• Mail-in check depositing to any bank

4. PostScanMail

PostScanMail offers most of the same services as others listed above. But there are fewer physical street locations to choose from. Most of the addresses are in major cities.

Rates are slightly higher than other services and depend on the number of incoming items every month.

Services they offer include:

• Access your scanned email from any device
• Mail opening and scanning available
• Envelope and package forwarding
• 30 days free storage of physical items
• Online mail management filters for organizing your scans

5. Traveling Mailbox

Traveling Mailbox is priced on the high end of the other services offered here, but allow for more items received per month than many others.

Also, while other plans limit the basic plan to one user, this one allows up to three. It also features a “junk mail filtering” option where your junk mail isn’t scanned or counted toward your plan.

Services they offer include:

• Open and scan the contents of mail to PDF format
• Mail forwarding anywhere in the world
• Integrated with other services like Evernote and Bill.com
• Unlimited cloud storage
• Mobile access via iPhone or Android
• Deposit check via snail mail

Choosing Your Virtual Mailbox

With affordable pricing, owning a virtual mailbox would be useful for anyone whether or not you travel much.

Snail mail doesn’t appear to be going away any time soon. But by using a virtual mailbox, you can transform your physical mail into a digital format. Not only is it convenient, but it lets you store your correspondence on the web just like all your regular email.

If a virtual mailbox is too expensive for your taste, there are other solutions for international shoppers. We’ve offered a list of online shopping sites that ship internationally for free as a great alternative.

Read the full article: What Is a Virtual Mailbox? (And Why You Should Get One)

Read Full Article

9 highlights from Snapchat CEO’s 6000-word leaked memo on survival

Adults, not teens. Messaging, not Stories. Developing markets, not the US. These are how Snapchat will make a comeback, according to CEO Evan Spiegel. In a 6,000-word internal memo from late September leaked to Cheddar’s Alex Heath, Spiegel attempts to revive employee morale with philosophy, tactics, and contrition as Snap’s share price sinks to an all-time low of around $8 — half its IPO price and a third of its peak.

“The biggest mistake we made with our redesign was compromising our core product value of being the fastest way to communicate” Spiegel stresses throughout the memo regarding ‘Project Cheetah’. It’s the chat that made Snapchat special, and burying it within a combined feed with Stories and failing to build a quick-loading Android app have had disastrous consequences.

Spiegel shows great maturity here, admitting to impatient strategic moves and outlining a cohesive path forward. There’s no talk of Snapchat ruling the social app world here. He seems to understand that’s likely out of reach in the face of Instagram’s competitive onslaught. Instead, Snapchat is satisfied if it can help us express ourselves while finally reaching even meager profitability.

Snapchat may be too perceived as a toy to win enough adults, too late to win back international markets from the Facebook empire, and too copyable by good-enough alternatives to grow truly massive. But if Snap can follow the Spiegel game-plan, it could carve out a sustainable market through a small but loyal audience who want to communicate through imagery.

Here are the most interesting takeaways from the memo and why they’re important:

1. Apologizing For Rushing The Redesign

“There were, of course, some downsides to moving as quickly as a cheetah We rushed our redesign, solving one problem but creating many others . . . Unfortunately, we didn’t give ourselves enough time to continue iterating and testing the redesign with a smaller percentage of our community. As a result, we had to continue our iterations after we launched, causing a lot of frustration for our community.”

Spiegel always went on his gut rather than relying on user data like Facebook. Aging further and further away from his core audience, he misread what teens cared about. The appealing buzz phrase of “separating social from media” also meant merging messaging and Stories into a chaotic list that made both tougher to use. Spiegel seems to have learned a valuable lessen about the importance of A/B testing.

2. Chat Is King

“Our redesigned algorithmic Friend Feed made it harder to find the right people to talk to, and moving too quickly meant that we didn’t have time to optimize the Friend Feed for fast performance. We slowed down our product and eroded our core product value. . . . Regrettably, we didn’t understand at the time that the biggest problem with our redesign wasn’t the frustration from influencers – it was the frustration from members of our community who felt like it was harder to communicate . . . In our excitement to innovate and bring many new products into the world, we have lost the core of what made Snapchat the fastest way to communicate.”

When Snap first revealed the changes, we predicted that “Teen Snap addicts might complain that the redesign is confusing, jumbling all content from friends together.” That made it too annoying to dig out your friends to send them messages, and Snap’s growth rate imploded, with it losing 3 million users last quarter. Expect Snap to optimize its engineering to make messages quicker to send and receive, and it even sacrifice some of its bells and whistles to make chat faster in developing markets.

3. Snapchat Must Beat Facebook At Best Friends

“Your top friend in a given week contributes 25% of Snap send volume. By the time you get to 18 friends, each incremental friend contributes less than 1% of total Snap send volume each. Finding best friends is a different problem than finding more friends, so we need to think about new ways to help people find the friends they care most about.”

Facebook’s biggest structural disadvantage is its broad friend graph that’s bloated to include family, co-workers, bosses, and distant acquaintances.  That might be fine in a feed app, but not for Stories and messaging where you only care about your closest friends. With friend lists and more, Facebook has tried and failed for a decade to find better ways to communicate with your besties. This is the wedge through which Snapchat can attack Facebook. If it develops special features for luring your best friends onto the app and staying in touch with them for better reasons than just maintaining a Snap “Streak”, it could hit Facebook where it can’t defend itself.

4. Discover Soars As Facebook Watch And IGTV Stumble

“Our Shows continue to attract more and more viewers, with over 18 Shows reaching monthly audiences of over 10M unique viewers. 12 of which are Original productions. As a platform overall, we’ve grown the amount of total time spent engaging with our Shows product, almost tripling since the beginning of the year. Our audience for Publisher Stories has increased over 20% YoY, and we believe there is a significant opportunity to continue growing the number of people who engage with Discover content . . .We are also working to identify content that is performing well outside of Snapchat so that we can bring it into Discover. “

Discover remains Snapchat’s biggest differentiator, scoring with premium video content purposefully made for mobile. What it really needs, though, are a few must-see tentpole shows to drag in a wider audience that can get hooked on the reimagined digital magazine experience.

Snapchat beyond Stories: Be the HBO of mobile

5. But Discover Is A Mess

“Our content team is working hard to experiment with new layouts and content types in the wake of our redesign to drive increased engagement.”

Snapchat Discover is an overcrowded pile of clickbait. News outlets, social media influencers, original video Shows, and aggregated user content collections all battle for attention in a design that feels overwhelming to the point of exhaustion. Thankfully Snapchat seems to recognize that more cohesive sorting with fewer images and headlines bombarding you might make Discover a more pleasant lean-back consumption experience.

6. Aging Up To Earn Money

“Most of the incremental growth in our core markets like the US, UK, and France will have to come from older users who generate higher average revenue per user . . . Growing in older demographics will require us to mature our application . . . Many older users today see Snapchat as frivolous or a waste of time because they think Snapchat is social media rather than a faster way to communicate. Changing the design language of our product and improving our marketing and communications around Snapchat will help users understand our value . . . aging-up our community in core markets will also help the media, advertisers, and Wall Street understand Snapchat.”

Snapchat can’t just be for cool kids anymore. Their lower buying power and lifestage make them less appealing to brands. The problem is that Snapchat risks turning off younger users by courting their older siblings or adults. If, like Facebook, users start to feel like Snapchat is a place for parents, they may defect in search of the next purposefully built to confuse adults to stay hip.

7. Finally Prioritizing Developing Markets

“We already have many projects underway to unlock our core product value in new markets. Mushroom allows our community to use Snapchat on lower-end devices. Arroyo, our new gateway architecture, will speed up messaging and many other services . . . It might require us to change our products for different markets where some of our value-add features detract from our core product value”

Sources tell me Snapchat’s future depends on the engineering overhaul of its Android app, a project codenamed ‘Mushroom’. Slow video load times and bugs have made Snapchat practically unusable on low-bandwidth connections and old Android phones in the developing world. The company concentrated on the US and other first-world markets, leaving the door open for copycats of Stories built by Instagram (400 million daily users) and WhatsApp (450 million daily users) to invade the developing world and dwarf Snap’s 188 million total daily users. In hopes of a smooth rollout, Snapchat is already testing Mushroom, but it will have to do a ton of marketing outreach to convince frustrated users who ditched the app to give it another try.

8. Fresh Ideas, Separate Apps

“We’re currently building software that takes the millions of Snaps submitted to Our Story and reconstructs parts of the world in 3D. We can then build augmented reality experiences on top of those models and distribute them as Lenses . . . If our innovation compromises our core product of being the fastest way to communicate, we should consider create [sic] separate applications or other ways of delivering our innovation.”

Snapchat has big plans for augmented reality. It doesn’t just want to stick animations over the top of anywhere, or create AR art installations in a few big cities. It wants to build site-specific AR experiences across the globe. And while everything the company has built to date has lived inside of Snapchat, it’s willing to spawn standalone apps if necessary so that it doesn’t bog down its messaging service. That could give Snapchat a lot more leeway to experiment.

9. The Freedom Of Profitability

“Our 2019 stretch output goal will be an acceleration in revenue growth and full year free cash flow and profitability. With profitability comes increased autonomy and freedom to operate our business in the long term best interest of our community without the pressure of needing to raise additional capital.”

Snapchat is still bleeding money, losing $353 million last quarter. Snapchat ended up selling 2.3 percent of its equity to a Saudi Arabian prince in exchange for $250 million to lengthen its rapidly shortening runway. And last year it took $2 billion from Chinese gaming giant Tencent. Deals like that could threaten Snapchat’s ability to prioritize its goals alone, not the moral imperatives or developer platforms that would benefit its benefactors. Once profitable, Snapchat won’t have to worry so much about struggling with short-term user growth and can instead focus on retention, societal impact, and its true purpose — creativity.

Read Full Article

9 highlights from Snapchat CEO’s 6000-word leaked memo on survival

Adults, not teens. Messaging, not Stories. Developing markets, not the US. These are how Snapchat will make a comeback, according to CEO Evan Spiegel. In a 6,000-word internal memo from late September leaked to Cheddar’s Alex Heath, Spiegel attempts to revive employee morale with philosophy, tactics, and contrition as Snap’s share price sinks to an all-time low of around $8 — half its IPO price and a third of its peak.

“The biggest mistake we made with our redesign was compromising our core product value of being the fastest way to communicate” Spiegel stresses throughout the memo regarding ‘Project Cheetah’. It’s the chat that made Snapchat special, and burying it within a combined feed with Stories and failing to build a quick-loading Android app have had disastrous consequences.

Spiegel shows great maturity here, admitting to impatient strategic moves and outlining a cohesive path forward. There’s no talk of Snapchat ruling the social app world here. He seems to understand that’s likely out of reach in the face of Instagram’s competitive onslaught. Instead, Snapchat is satisfied if it can help us express ourselves while finally reaching even meager profitability.

Snapchat may be too perceived as a toy to win enough adults, too late to win back international markets from the Facebook empire, and too copyable by good-enough alternatives to grow truly massive. But if Snap can follow the Spiegel game-plan, it could carve out a sustainable market through a small but loyal audience who want to communicate through imagery.

Here are the most interesting takeaways from the memo and why they’re important:

1. Apologizing For Rushing The Redesign

“There were, of course, some downsides to moving as quickly as a cheetah We rushed our redesign, solving one problem but creating many others . . . Unfortunately, we didn’t give ourselves enough time to continue iterating and testing the redesign with a smaller percentage of our community. As a result, we had to continue our iterations after we launched, causing a lot of frustration for our community.”

Spiegel always went on his gut rather than relying on user data like Facebook. Aging further and further away from his core audience, he misread what teens cared about. The appealing buzz phrase of “separating social from media” also meant merging messaging and Stories into a chaotic list that made both tougher to use. Spiegel seems to have learned a valuable lessen about the importance of A/B testing.

2. Chat Is King

“Our redesigned algorithmic Friend Feed made it harder to find the right people to talk to, and moving too quickly meant that we didn’t have time to optimize the Friend Feed for fast performance. We slowed down our product and eroded our core product value. . . . Regrettably, we didn’t understand at the time that the biggest problem with our redesign wasn’t the frustration from influencers – it was the frustration from members of our community who felt like it was harder to communicate . . . In our excitement to innovate and bring many new products into the world, we have lost the core of what made Snapchat the fastest way to communicate.”

When Snap first revealed the changes, we predicted that “Teen Snap addicts might complain that the redesign is confusing, jumbling all content from friends together.” That made it too annoying to dig out your friends to send them messages, and Snap’s growth rate imploded, with it losing 3 million users last quarter. Expect Snap to optimize its engineering to make messages quicker to send and receive, and it even sacrifice some of its bells and whistles to make chat faster in developing markets.

3. Snapchat Must Beat Facebook At Best Friends

“Your top friend in a given week contributes 25% of Snap send volume. By the time you get to 18 friends, each incremental friend contributes less than 1% of total Snap send volume each. Finding best friends is a different problem than finding more friends, so we need to think about new ways to help people find the friends they care most about.”

Facebook’s biggest structural disadvantage is its broad friend graph that’s bloated to include family, co-workers, bosses, and distant acquaintances.  That might be fine in a feed app, but not for Stories and messaging where you only care about your closest friends. With friend lists and more, Facebook has tried and failed for a decade to find better ways to communicate with your besties. This is the wedge through which Snapchat can attack Facebook. If it develops special features for luring your best friends onto the app and staying in touch with them for better reasons than just maintaining a Snap “Streak”, it could hit Facebook where it can’t defend itself.

4. Discover Soars As Facebook Watch And IGTV Stumble

“Our Shows continue to attract more and more viewers, with over 18 Shows reaching monthly audiences of over 10M unique viewers. 12 of which are Original productions. As a platform overall, we’ve grown the amount of total time spent engaging with our Shows product, almost tripling since the beginning of the year. Our audience for Publisher Stories has increased over 20% YoY, and we believe there is a significant opportunity to continue growing the number of people who engage with Discover content . . .We are also working to identify content that is performing well outside of Snapchat so that we can bring it into Discover. “

Discover remains Snapchat’s biggest differentiator, scoring with premium video content purposefully made for mobile. What it really needs, though, are a few must-see tentpole shows to drag in a wider audience that can get hooked on the reimagined digital magazine experience.

Snapchat beyond Stories: Be the HBO of mobile

5. But Discover Is A Mess

“Our content team is working hard to experiment with new layouts and content types in the wake of our redesign to drive increased engagement.”

Snapchat Discover is an overcrowded pile of clickbait. News outlets, social media influencers, original video Shows, and aggregated user content collections all battle for attention in a design that feels overwhelming to the point of exhaustion. Thankfully Snapchat seems to recognize that more cohesive sorting with fewer images and headlines bombarding you might make Discover a more pleasant lean-back consumption experience.

6. Aging Up To Earn Money

“Most of the incremental growth in our core markets like the US, UK, and France will have to come from older users who generate higher average revenue per user . . . Growing in older demographics will require us to mature our application . . . Many older users today see Snapchat as frivolous or a waste of time because they think Snapchat is social media rather than a faster way to communicate. Changing the design language of our product and improving our marketing and communications around Snapchat will help users understand our value . . . aging-up our community in core markets will also help the media, advertisers, and Wall Street understand Snapchat.”

Snapchat can’t just be for cool kids anymore. Their lower buying power and lifestage make them less appealing to brands. The problem is that Snapchat risks turning off younger users by courting their older siblings or adults. If, like Facebook, users start to feel like Snapchat is a place for parents, they may defect in search of the next purposefully built to confuse adults to stay hip.

7. Finally Prioritizing Developing Markets

“We already have many projects underway to unlock our core product value in new markets. Mushroom allows our community to use Snapchat on lower-end devices. Arroyo, our new gateway architecture, will speed up messaging and many other services . . . It might require us to change our products for different markets where some of our value-add features detract from our core product value”

Sources tell me Snapchat’s future depends on the engineering overhaul of its Android app, a project codenamed ‘Mushroom’. Slow video load times and bugs have made Snapchat practically unusable on low-bandwidth connections and old Android phones in the developing world. The company concentrated on the US and other first-world markets, leaving the door open for copycats of Stories built by Instagram (400 million daily users) and WhatsApp (450 million daily users) to invade the developing world and dwarf Snap’s 188 million total daily users. In hopes of a smooth rollout, Snapchat is already testing Mushroom, but it will have to do a ton of marketing outreach to convince frustrated users who ditched the app to give it another try.

8. Fresh Ideas, Separate Apps

“We’re currently building software that takes the millions of Snaps submitted to Our Story and reconstructs parts of the world in 3D. We can then build augmented reality experiences on top of those models and distribute them as Lenses . . . If our innovation compromises our core product of being the fastest way to communicate, we should consider create [sic] separate applications or other ways of delivering our innovation.”

Snapchat has big plans for augmented reality. It doesn’t just want to stick animations over the top of anywhere, or create AR art installations in a few big cities. It wants to build site-specific AR experiences across the globe. And while everything the company has built to date has lived inside of Snapchat, it’s willing to spawn standalone apps if necessary so that it doesn’t bog down its messaging service. That could give Snapchat a lot more leeway to experiment.

9. The Freedom Of Profitability

“Our 2019 stretch output goal will be an acceleration in revenue growth and full year free cash flow and profitability. With profitability comes increased autonomy and freedom to operate our business in the long term best interest of our community without the pressure of needing to raise additional capital.”

Snapchat is still bleeding money, losing $353 million last quarter. Snapchat ended up selling 2.3 percent of its equity to a Saudi Arabian prince in exchange for $250 million to lengthen its rapidly shortening runway. And last year it took $2 billion from Chinese gaming giant Tencent. Deals like that could threaten Snapchat’s ability to prioritize its goals alone, not the moral imperatives or developer platforms that would benefit its benefactors. Once profitable, Snapchat won’t have to worry so much about struggling with short-term user growth and can instead focus on retention, societal impact, and its true purpose — creativity.

Read Full Article

Instagram prototypes handing your location history to Facebook

This is sure to exacerbate fears that Facebook will further exploit Instagram now that its founders have resigned. Instagram has been spotted prototyping a new privacy setting that would allow it to share your location history with Facebook. That means your exact GPS coordinates collected by Instagram, even when you’re not using the app, would help Facebook to target you with ads and recommend you relevant content. Worryingly, the Location History sharing setting was defaulted to On in the prototype. The geo-tagged data would appear to users in their Facebook Profile’s Activity Log, which include creepy daily maps of the places you been.

This commingling of data could upset users who want to limit Facebook’s surveillance of their lives. With Facebook installing its former VP of News Feed and close friend of Mark Zuckerberg, Adam Mosseri, as the head of Instagram, some critics have worried that Facebook would attempt to squeeze more value out of Instagram. Tat includes driving referral traffic to the main app via spammy notifications, inserting additional ads, or pulling in more data. Facebook was sued for breaking its promise to European regulators that it would not commingle WhatsApp and Facebook data, leading to an $122 million fine.

 

A Facebook spokesperson tells TechCrunch that “To confirm, we haven’t introduced updates to our location settings. As you know, we often work on ideas that may evolve over time or ultimately not be tested or released. Instagram does not currently store Location History; we’ll keep people updated with any changes to our location settings in the future.” That effectively confirms Location History sharing is something Instagram has prototyped, and that it’s considering launching but hasn’t yet.

The screenshots come courtesy of mobile researcher and frequent TechCrunch tipster Jane Manchun Wong. Her prior finds like prototypes of Instagram Video Calling and Music Stickers have drawn “no comments” from Instagram but then were officially launched in the following months. That lends credence to the idea that Instagram is serious about Location History.

Located in the Privacy and Security settings, the Location History option “Allows Facebook Products, including Instagram and Messenger, to build and use a history of precise locations received through Location Services on your device.”

A ‘Learn More’ button provides additional info (emphasis mine):

“Location History is a setting that allows Facebook to build a history of precise locations received through Location Services on your device. When Location History is on, Facebook will periodically add your current precise location to your Location History even if you leave the app. You can turn off Location History at any time in your Location Settings on the app. When Location History is turned off, Facebook will stop adding new information to your Location History which you can view in your Location Settings. Facebook may still receive your most recent precise location so that you can, for example, post content that’s tagged with your location. Location History helps you explore what’s around you, get more relevant ads, and helps improve Facebook. Location History must be turned on for some location feature to work on Facebook, including Find Wi-Fi and Nearby Friends.”

As part of a 2011 settlement with the FTC over privacy violations, Facebook agreed that “Material retroactive changes to the audience that can view the information users have previously shared on Facebook” must now be opt-in. But since Location History is never visible to other users and only deals with data Facebook sees, it’s exempt from that agreement and could be quietly added. Most users might never dig deep enough into their privacy settings to turn the opt-out feature off.

Delivering the exact history of where Instagram users went could assist Facebook with targeting them with local ads across its family of apps. If users are found to visit certain businesses, countries, neighborhoods, or schools, Facebook could use that data to infer which products they might want to buy and promote them. It could even show ads for restaurants or shops close to where users spend their days. Just yesterday, we reported that Facebook was testing a redesign of its Nearby Friends feature that replaces the list view of friends’ locations with a map. Pulling in Location History from Instagram could help keep that map up to date.

Sources tell TechCrunch that Instagram founders Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger left the company following increasing tensions with Zuckerberg about dwindling autonomy of their app within the Facebook corporation. Systrom apparently clashed with Zuckerberg over how Instagram was supposed to contribute to Facebook success, especially as younger users began abandoning the older social network for the newer visual media app. Facebook is under pressure to keep up revenue growth despite it running out of News Feed ad inventory and users switching to Stories that advertisers are still acclimating to. Facebook is in heated competition with Google for last-mile local advertising and will take any advantage it can get.

Instagram has served as a life raft for Facebook’s brand this year amidst an onslaught of scandals including fake news, election interference, social media addiction, and most recently, a security breach that gave hackers the access tokens for 50 million users that could have let them take over their accounts. A survey of 1,153 US adults conducted in March 2018 found that 57 percent of them didn’t know Instagram was owned by Facebook. But if Facebook treats Instagram as a source of data and traffic it can strip mine, the negative perceptions associated with the parent could spill over onto the child.

Read Full Article

Instagram prototypes handing your location history to Facebook

This is sure to exacerbate fears that Facebook will further exploit Instagram now that its founders have resigned. Instagram has been spotted prototyping a new privacy setting that would allow it to share your location history with Facebook. That means your exact GPS coordinates collected by Instagram, even when you’re not using the app, would help Facebook to target you with ads and recommend you relevant content. Worryingly, the Location History sharing setting was defaulted to On in the prototype. The geo-tagged data would appear to users in their Facebook Profile’s Activity Log, which include creepy daily maps of the places you been.

This commingling of data could upset users who want to limit Facebook’s surveillance of their lives. With Facebook installing its former VP of News Feed and close friend of Mark Zuckerberg, Adam Mosseri, as the head of Instagram, some critics have worried that Facebook would attempt to squeeze more value out of Instagram. Tat includes driving referral traffic to the main app via spammy notifications, inserting additional ads, or pulling in more data. Facebook was sued for breaking its promise to European regulators that it would not commingle WhatsApp and Facebook data, leading to an $122 million fine.

 

A Facebook spokesperson tells TechCrunch that “To confirm, we haven’t introduced updates to our location settings. As you know, we often work on ideas that may evolve over time or ultimately not be tested or released. Instagram does not currently store Location History; we’ll keep people updated with any changes to our location settings in the future.” That effectively confirms Location History sharing is something Instagram has prototyped, and that it’s considering launching but hasn’t yet.

The screenshots come courtesy of mobile researcher and frequent TechCrunch tipster Jane Manchun Wong. Her prior finds like prototypes of Instagram Video Calling and Music Stickers have drawn “no comments” from Instagram but then were officially launched in the following months. That lends credence to the idea that Instagram is serious about Location History.

Located in the Privacy and Security settings, the Location History option “Allows Facebook Products, including Instagram and Messenger, to build and use a history of precise locations received through Location Services on your device.”

A ‘Learn More’ button provides additional info (emphasis mine):

“Location History is a setting that allows Facebook to build a history of precise locations received through Location Services on your device. When Location History is on, Facebook will periodically add your current precise location to your Location History even if you leave the app. You can turn off Location History at any time in your Location Settings on the app. When Location History is turned off, Facebook will stop adding new information to your Location History which you can view in your Location Settings. Facebook may still receive your most recent precise location so that you can, for example, post content that’s tagged with your location. Location History helps you explore what’s around you, get more relevant ads, and helps improve Facebook. Location History must be turned on for some location feature to work on Facebook, including Find Wi-Fi and Nearby Friends.”

As part of a 2011 settlement with the FTC over privacy violations, Facebook agreed that “Material retroactive changes to the audience that can view the information users have previously shared on Facebook” must now be opt-in. But since Location History is never visible to other users and only deals with data Facebook sees, it’s exempt from that agreement and could be quietly added. Most users might never dig deep enough into their privacy settings to turn the opt-out feature off.

Delivering the exact history of where Instagram users went could assist Facebook with targeting them with local ads across its family of apps. If users are found to visit certain businesses, countries, neighborhoods, or schools, Facebook could use that data to infer which products they might want to buy and promote them. It could even show ads for restaurants or shops close to where users spend their days. Just yesterday, we reported that Facebook was testing a redesign of its Nearby Friends feature that replaces the list view of friends’ locations with a map. Pulling in Location History from Instagram could help keep that map up to date.

Sources tell TechCrunch that Instagram founders Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger left the company following increasing tensions with Zuckerberg about dwindling autonomy of their app within the Facebook corporation. Systrom apparently clashed with Zuckerberg over how Instagram was supposed to contribute to Facebook success, especially as younger users began abandoning the older social network for the newer visual media app. Facebook is under pressure to keep up revenue growth despite it running out of News Feed ad inventory and users switching to Stories that advertisers are still acclimating to. Facebook is in heated competition with Google for last-mile local advertising and will take any advantage it can get.

Instagram has served as a life raft for Facebook’s brand this year amidst an onslaught of scandals including fake news, election interference, social media addiction, and most recently, a security breach that gave hackers the access tokens for 50 million users that could have let them take over their accounts. A survey of 1,153 US adults conducted in March 2018 found that 57 percent of them didn’t know Instagram was owned by Facebook. But if Facebook treats Instagram as a source of data and traffic it can strip mine, the negative perceptions associated with the parent could spill over onto the child.

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Nametag Makes It Easy to Add Instagram Friends

Instagram has launched a new feature designed to make it easier to follow people you meet in real life. It’s called Nametag, and it allows everyone on Instagram to create a personalized name tag that’s unique to them. Yes, just like Snapchat’s Snapcodes.

How to Share Your Instagram Nametag

As described on the Instagram Blog, Nametag is a “customizable identification card that allows people to find your Instagram profile when it’s scanned.” This makes it very easy to follow people on Instagram, or help other people follow you.

To create your own Nametag, click on your profile, and find Nametag behind the three lines at the top. You can then personalize your nametag, adding different colors, emojis, and selfies so that your Nametag perfectly reflects your personality.

Now you can quickly add friends on Instagram by scanning their nametags. You can also customize your own nametag with emojis, colors and selfies. pic.twitter.com/fq4HFNiDMy

— Instagram (@instagram) October 4, 2018

Once you have your Nametag set up you can share it with friends via social media sites and messaging apps. And you can scan other people’s Nametags by swiping right into the camera, hovering over the Nametag, and holding down on the screen.

Instagram Fosters School Communities

Instagram is also launching a feature called School Communities. This, as the name suggests, lets you connect with other people who currently attend, or recently graduated from, your school. This is currently being tested in a handful of U.S. universities.

Once you have access to School Communities, you’ll be able to list your school, year, major sorority, and other interests. You’ll then see a directory listing of everyone who attended the same university, allowing you to connect with them through a shared experience.

Snapchat Snapcodes By Another Name

OK, so Instagram’s Nametag feature is something else the company has copied from Snapchat. Albeit years after Snapcodes arrived on the scene. Still, Nametag makes it much easier to find people on Instagram, so we shouldn’t really complain.

While Nametag makes it easier to follow someone on Instagram we’ve previously detailed how to remove Instagram followers. And given Instagram’s interest in school communities now also might be a good time to read the parent’s guide to Instagram.

Read the full article: Nametag Makes It Easy to Add Instagram Friends

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VP Pence calls on Google to end work on a search engine for China

On Thursday, Vice President Mike Pence called for Google to end its development of a search engine custom built to accommodate China’s disposition for censorship.

Pence gave the speech at conservative think tank in D.C., dipping into a range of anti-Beijing sentiments, from intellectual property concerns to tariffs and the trade war. Pence didn’t mince words, calling on Google to abandon its plans for a China-friendly mobile version of its otherwise ubiquitous search engine.

Pence accused any company with plans to work around Chinese internet restrictions of “abetting Beijing’s oppression” and didn’t hesitate to call the search giant out by name.

More business leaders are thinking beyond the next quarter, and thinking twice before diving into the Chinese market if it means turning over their intellectual property or abetting Beijing’s oppression. But more must follow suit. For example, Google should immediately end development of the “Dragonfly” app that will strengthen Communist Party censorship and compromise the privacy of Chinese customers…

More journalists are reporting the truth without fear or favor, and digging deep to find where China is interfering in our society, and why – and we hope that more American, and global, news organizations will join in this effort.

More scholars are speaking out forcefully and defending academic freedom, and more universities and think tanks are mustering the courage to turn away Beijing’s easy money, recognizing that every dollar comes with a corresponding demand. We’re confident that more will join their ranks.

And across the nation, the American people are growing in vigilance, with a newfound appreciation for our administration’s actions to re-set America’s economic and strategic relationship with China, to finally put America First.

Pence’s full remarks are available on the Hudson Institute’s website.

Google’s covert project, known as Dragonfly, is reportedly a version of the search engine that blocks forbidden sites like Facebook and Twitter, censors search terms like the Tiananmen Square massacre and cuts out prominent Western news sources like the BBC and the New York Times. The project, first reported by the Intercept, sparked internal turmoil at the company and a letter of protest from employees who felt too in the dark to make “ethically-informed decisions about our work, our projects, and our employment.”

Google drama aside, Pence’s tough talk on China might be politically expedient bluster, but it’s not without irony: The Trump administration has repeatedly expressed its outright contempt for a free press, a hallmark of an aggressively restrictive government like China. The irony of Pence’s derision of China’s “unparalleled surveillance state” are also fairly rich, given domestic policy on warrantless surveillance.

The vice president also took the opportunity to refresh controversial claims that China is “meddling” in the U.S. midterm elections, echoing language often used to describe Russia’s substantiated election interference efforts. President Trump suggested as much last week, claiming that China “has been attempting to interfere in our upcoming 2018 election, coming up in November, against my administration.” Yesterday, Department of Homeland Security Kirstjen Nielsen declined to endorse the president’s unsubstantiated claims, noting that China pursues a “holistic approach” to cultivating a positive image in the U.S.

Chinese chip spying report shows the supply chain remains the ultimate weakness

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Mars Rover Curiosity is switching brains so it can fix itself

When you send something to space, it’s good to have redundancy. Sometimes you want to send two whole duplicate spacecraft just in case — as was the case with Voyager — but sometimes it’s good enough to have two of critical components. Mars Rover Curiosity is no exception, and it is now in the process of switching from one main “brain” to the other so it can do digital surgery on the first.

Curiosity landed on Mars with two central computing systems, Side-A and Side-B (not left brain and right brain — that would invite too much silliness). They’re perfect duplicates of each other, or were — it was something of a bumpy ride, after all, and cosmic radiation may flip a bit here and there.

The team was thankful to have made these preparations when, on sol 200 in February of 2013 (we’re almost to sol 2,200 now), the Side-A computer experienced a glitch that ended up taking the whole rover offline. The solution was to swap over to Side-B, which was up and running shortly afterwards and sending diagnostic data for its twin.

Having run for several years with no issues, Side-B is now, however, having its own problems. Since September 15 it has been unable to record mission data, and it doesn’t appear to be a problem that the computer can solve itself. Fortunately, in the intervening period, Side-A has been fixed up to working condition — though it has a bit less memory than it used to, since some corrupted sectors had to be quarantined.

“We spent the last week checking out Side A and preparing it for the swap,” said Steven Lee, deputy project manager of the Curiosity program at JPL, in a mission status report. “We are operating on Side A starting today, but it could take us time to fully understand the root cause of the issue and devise workarounds for the memory on Side B. It’s certainly possible to run the mission on the Side-A computer if we really need to. But our plan is to switch back to Side B as soon as we can fix the problem to utilize its larger memory size.”

No timeline just yet for how that will happen, but the team is confident that they’ll have things back on track soon. The mission isn’t in jeopardy — but this is a good example of how a good system of redundancies can add years to the life of space hardware.

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5 Apps That Make the Weather More Entertaining

As some pricey coding camps fade away, Codecademy barrels ahead with affordable paid offerings and a new mobile app

Between 2013 and last year, the number of boot camp schools tripled to more than 90 in the U.S. alone, according to Course Report, an outfit that tracks the industry. Some — including The Iron Yard and Dev Bootcamp — have since folded, unable to find enough eager recruits willing to pay top dollar to learn coding skills. (The average cost of a 14-week program last year was $11,400.)

At the same time, it has become apparent that when it comes to massive open online courses, a very high percentage of students don’t stay the course.

New York-based Codeacademy, which began offering free coding courses at its outset, has managed to keep plugging away — and grow — despite these headwinds. In fact, the company today employs 85 people, up from 45 when we last sat down with cofounder and CEO Zach Sims in 2016. Its revenue is also up 65 percent year over year.

None of it has been a walk in the park, admits Sims, who dropped out of Columbia University in 2011 to start the company. “There’s been a ton of ups and downs,” he says, explaining that the company struggled for years with how to produce meaningful revenue before introducing two premium products in the last couple of years, both of which are affordable by design.

One of these is Codecademy Pro, meant to help users learn the fundamentals of coding, as well as develop a deeper knowledge (and receive certification from Codecademy) in up to 10 areas, including machine learning and data analysis. The cost is $20 per month, money that Pro users often see back in the form of a a $5,000 to $10,000 raise from their employer, insists Sims. He says the course “isn’t so much for those who are transition to full-time jobs but people who are learning skills to level up in their existing career.”

A second offering is Codecademy Pro Intensive, which is designed to immerse learners from six to 10 weeks (depending on the coursework), in either website development, programming, or data science. Students follow a structured, detailed syllabus that’s broken into focused units to organize the learning experience, which is synchronous but collaborative. To wit, users are placed in a moderated Slack group and can chat with people who are learning the same materials at the same time. They also receive unlimited access to a pool of 200 mentors who work with Codecademy, some of them “graduates” of Codecademy themselves.

Sims declines to talk about what percentage of the 45 million people who’ve taken a Codecademy course has paid the company, but he notes that the “macro trends in the market are going our way. People still need to find jobs, and tech is still an important skill to get them there.” Indeed, according to Code.org, a nonprofit that seeks to expand computer-science instruction in schools, there are more than 540,000 open computing jobs. At the same time, fewer than 50,000 computer-science majors graduated from school last year.

Sims also stresses the importance to Codecademy of ensuring its offerings remain “free and low cost everywhere in the world.” Toward that end, the company is today rolling out its newest product, a mobile app that enables users to learn on the go, though it is accessible to paying customers only after a seven-day trial for everyone. (No credit card is required.) The idea, says Sims: “Lots of people use mobile phones, and we should be letting them practice whenever and whereve they want. They end doing twice as many exercises if they can learn on the subway, then pick up where they left off on the desktop later.”

How much of an accelerant the app will be remains to be seen, but certainly, Codeacademy’s approach — catering to people who can’t take or aren’t interesting in expensive offline programs — seems as relevant if not more as some of its competitors fade into the distance.

“When we first started,” says Sims, “the skills gap was just making itself evident. There were tons of tech reports about tech jobs and not a lot of people to fill them. A lot of boot camps and other options emerged in that vacuum because, at the time, colleges weren’t equipped to handle [the knowledge gap]. Plus, student debt continued to be an issue, which made [underprivileged] students particularly ill-prepared for the workforce.”

What has changed since then is, well, not much, argues Sims. He notes that aside from a glut of hyped offerings to come and go, people still need ways to adapt to rapid-fire technological change, and with college costs as high as they’ve ever been — prices have soared upwards of 200 percent over the last 20 years —  they need affordable alternatives in particular.

If Codecademy needs more capital to provide them, it isn’t saying. Asked about fundraising — Codecademy has raised $42.5 million to date, including Union Square Ventures and Naspers — Sims says it isn’t talking currently with VCs. “We’re pretty capital efficient. We still have the majority of our last round (raised in 2016) in the bank. And we’ve been able to grow pretty sustainably. If we see opportunities to accelerate growth down the line,” he adds, “we’ll go raise it.”

Asked if it can see a day where it works more closely with enterprise customers that want to help employees burnish their skills, he says that’s a high likelihood, too. But “so far,” he says, “we’ve seen pretty good consumer growth. It kind of comes down to how many things can you focus on.”

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15 Great Arduino Projects for Beginners

Completing an Arduino project gives you a sense of satisfaction like no other. It can be, however, difficult to know where to start. Luckily there are many ways to get started. Here are 15 beginner Arduino projects to get you going!

A note on required equipment: For the sake of brevity, items that are usually included in Arduino starter kits aren’t included in the overviews provided here. Any other required components will be listed in the project description.

1. Make a Buzz Wire Game With an Arduino

You will need:

• 1 x Small Arduino compatible buzzer
• 1 x Old metal coat hanger.

This build combines a classic carnival game with simple electronics and code. Using cheap components and a little DIY craft, the Arduino Buzz Wire Game is a fantastic project to work on with children.

2. Arduino MIDI Controller

You will need:

• 1 x 5-pin DIN female Socket
• 1 x MIDI cable
• 1 x MIDI interface or MIDI capable device

Any musician who is familiar with MIDI controllers knows how powerful they can be. Did you know that you can use an Arduino to make a DIY controller? Even if you’ve never used one, this is a perfect way to get started, rather than buy an expensive keyboard or controller.

The project uses a free MIDI code library and simple components. It’s beginner friendly, and has the potential to be improved over time, until you have a fully featured custom MIDI controller!

3. Control Your Arduino With Python

If you already know Python, you can learn about Arduino hardware without learning a new language. This project is especially useful for people just starting out, as Python is a beginner-friendly language. The code side of this project is straightforward, and requires no components at all, just an Arduino board!

4. Arduino Game Controller

You will need:

• Unity3D (free)
• Uniduino Unity Asset

The only thing cooler than making your own games is making your own game controller.

This custom Arduino game controller project covers both building your own hardware, and step-by-step coding of a simple game.

5. Arduino RFID Smart Lock

You will need:

• 1 x Logic-level N channel Mosfet
• 1 x MFRC522 module
• 1 x 12v Solenoid
• 1 x 12v Power supply

This Arduino smart locking system looks complicated. But due to a cheap and easy-to-use RFID reader, it’s more straightforward than you’d think.

This project uses a few parts that may be new to you. Rather than starting from scratch, the code is modified from existing examples. This is an excellent introduction to multi-component devices with real practical uses.

6. Simple Arduino Alarm System

You will need:

• 1 x Ultrasonic “ping” sensor
• 1 x Piezo buzzer
• 1 x LED strip light

A simple alarm system that uses a motion sensor to detect movement, LEDs flash and a high-pitched warning tone is emitted when an intruder is detected.

While it’s not exactly proper home protection, it does offer a perfect solution to protect small spaces. Ideal for keeping an eye your snack drawer!

7. Traffic Light Controller

This project is a great introduction to Arduino programming. The traffic light controller uses a red, yellow, and green LED to re-create a traffic light on your breadboard. It’s an easy way to get hands-on with writing and editing code. As a bonus, all the required components should be included in your starter kit.

8. Companion Cube Mood Lamp

You will need:

• Square glass jar or bottle
• Hard-drying clear glue
• Gray and red modeling clay
• White candle

Remember the video game Portal? In this project, a Portal-themed mood lamp uses a square glass jar to create a color-shifting display that looks incredible. Creating the lamp is a great DIY project for beginners. The wiring and code are relatively simple, and you’ll end up with a striking DIY creation!

9. Arduino-Powered Temperature Controller

You will need:

• Temperature sensor, such as the TMP36
• Relay or RC plug switches
• Screw terminals
• Box to trap the heat
• Heating/cooling element, or incandescent bulb with fixture (or both)

Using just an Arduino and a few parts you can create a temperature control device instead of paying for a commercial model. Not only is this an excellent beginner level project, but it has real-world applications!

10. Recreate the Arcade Classic “Pong”

You will need:

• An Arduino compatible OLED screen

Coding a retro game is great programming practice. Pong is a classic, and there are two ways you can play it on your Arduino. You can code the game from scratch, and play on an inexpensive OLED screen.

11. “The TV Devil” Arduino Prank Remote

You will need:

• IR transmitter LED, such as TIL38
• IR receiver, such as TSOP382

An Arduino along with an IR(infrared) transmitter and receiver can cause some innocent chaos. Bombarding any IR controlled device with IR signals makes them act as if they have a life of their own.

In this project you’ll learn how to build a remote control using an Arduino and some IR components. The result is assured to drive anyone nearby mad!

12. Make Your Own Ambilight

You will need:

• 10A 5V power supply
• WS2812B LED strip

Originally developed for Philips TVs, the Ambilight features ambient lighting that reacts to the images on your television screen. It’s not too difficult to recreate the Ambilight for any screen. Cheap addressable LEDs cut the cost of this impressive looking build, and at the time of writing the component list for this project has dropped much lower than the $60 guide cost.

13. Arduino-Powered Laser Turret

You will need:

• 2 servos
• Laser module
• Piezo buzzer
• Metal wire and cable ties

While there aren’t many practical reasons for building an Arduino-powered laser turret, that shouldn’t stop you! The code in this project is easily extendable and allows you to customize your turret’s movement. This is an excellent introduction to using servos with Arduino boards, the building blocks of robotics!

14. Pulsating LED Cube

You will need:

• 64 LEDs
• Craft wire
• Component wire
• Crocodile clips
• Scrap wood
• Drill

If you are looking for something beautiful to build, the pulsating LED cube is a perfect choice. Controlled from a single Arduino via multiplexing, it is still easy enough for beginners to make. This project is also excellent soldering practice, which is one of the essential beginner’s electronics skills you need to know.

15. Weekend Project: Build a Giant LED Pixel Display

You will need:

• 10-meter strip of LED pixels
• 5V 10A power supply
• Thick wire
• Ikea RIBBA photo frame
• Glass frosting spray
• White paint

The LED pixel display uses strands of LEDs to create vibrant patterns, text, or even animated GIFs that you can frame, and hang right on your wall. The build relies on external software, called Glediator (free) that allows you complete LED matrix control, and the ability to create live or pre-recorded mixes of your LED animations.

Endless Possibilities With These DIY Arduino Projects

Most simple Arduino projects use few components and teach you the basics of DIY hardware. The best way to get familiar is to follow beginner tutorials like these.

Once you feel confident, why not move on to something more significant like automating your home!

Read the full article: 15 Great Arduino Projects for Beginners

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