7 Cat Games for Your iPad or Android Tablet

Long gone are the days when a scratching post or toy mouse was enough to entertain your furry companion. The feline world has entered the digital age, with a plethora of games on iPad and Android tablets made specifically for your cats.

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Most of them are free to download. Simply give your cat a nudge and show them the ropes; before you know it, they’ll be painting or catching digital fish like the rest of us.

So if you’re ready to inject some extra fun into your and your cat’s day, here are the best games for cats to download on your iPad or Android tablet.

1. Friskies JitterBug

This game is definitely a cat favorite. You can either choose Play Game or Advanced from the main screen. In both modes, you see a totally black screen with big bugs on it. When your cat taps a bug it disappears, but new ones enter all the time.

The game has no sound and your cat “wins” by getting all the bugs. Make sure you clean your tablet screen properly to get rid of all the paw prints afterward.

If you choose Play Game, a timer starts with various prompts and levels, which don’t really mean much to your cat. Whereas in Advanced, you can choose exactly how many bugs appear onscreen and choose to start an endless game to keep your cat entertained for hours.

Download: Friskies JitterBug for iPadOS | Android (Free)

2. Cat Fishing 2

If you’d rather your cat went fishing instead of catching bugs, Cat Fishing from Go-Cat is the obvious choice. The goal of this game is for your cat to tap on the fish, which makes them disappear and increases your cat’s score.

The game gets more difficult, with more fish appearing and disappearing from the screen as your cat progresses to different levels. Unfortunately, the game does end after a certain amount of time. While this might frustrate some cats, most reviewers claim their pets love this game.

Download: Cat Fishing 2 for iPadOS | Android (Free)

3. Game for Cats

When you launch Game for Cats on your iPad or Android tablet, you see a split screen with lasers on one side and cheese on the other. The cheese option requires in-app purchases to play, but the laser option is totally free.

If your cat likes to play with a laser pointer, they’re going to love this. The laser dot moves around the screen in a surprisingly lifelike way, drawing your cat to chase after it. When your cat manages to catch the laser pointer, it blows up with a small sound and a new dot appears.

To exit the game, tap and hold the paw icon on the bottom-right while shaking your iPad (hopefully your cat can’t do this by itself).

Download: Game for Cats for iPadOS | Android (Free, in-app purchases available)

4. Catch The Mouse Cat Game

As one of the only paid apps in this lineup, Catch the Mouse is worth the small amount you pay for it, but only if you turn off the sound.

What you get in this iPad-exclusive game is a cute orange mouse running around the screen for dear life. Unfortunately, the sounds are a bit over the top and most cats aren’t really into it. But once you mute your iPad, the game becomes much more appealing for cats.

If you don’t like the orange-on-black color scheme, there are five different background colors to choose from and three different mouse colors. So you can play around to find the best fit for your cat.

Download: Catch The Mouse Cat Game for iPadOS ($0.99)

5. Mouse for Cats

This free, 2D, high-definition iPad and Android game was built by cat lovers, for cats. With over 10 levels, the aim is—once again—to catch the on-screen mouse. This time, your cat can pin the mouse in place then let it run away again, just like in real life!

In-app purchases are available for different mice colors or noises, each of which were created specifically for your cat’s entertainment. You do need to put up with popup adds on the home screen, but they go away when you start playing.

Cycle across the different background levels or add multiple mice to keep this game engaging for your feline pals.

Download: Mouse for Cats for iPadOS | Android (Free, in-app purchases available)

6. Paint for Cats

As your cat tries to catch the mouse that scurries around the screen, it’ll simultaneously paint you a masterpiece. You can choose from a variety of color palettes, and even have the option of saving or printing the finished work of art.

Given the amazing reviews this app has received, it might be justified in its claim as the “world’s best painting app for cats.”

This is the second paid app in the lineup, but there’s a slim chance you might sell your cat’s artwork to make your money back. Who knows, you might have the cat reincarnation of Jackson Pollock on your hands—Catson Pollock.

Download: Paint for Cats for iPadOS ($1.99)

7. Best Game for Cats

Similar to the other apps mentioned, the aim of this iPad-exclusive game is for your cat to catch the on-screen mice, cat bells, woolen balls, or lasers. There are also sounds to let you know how well your cat is doing without hovering over its shoulder. If the sounds annoy you, you can easily disable them.

While some games end after a certain amount of time, Best Game for Cats keeps going until you close the iPad app. It should keep your cat entertained for hours, provided the poor graphics aren’t too much of a turn off for those astute feline eyes.

Download: Best Game for Cats for iPadOS (Free)

Keep Your Cat Entertained

Although most of these iPad or Android tablet cat games follow the same formula, if one doesn’t keep your cat’s attention, try a few others. The sounds and designs all have an impact on how your cat interacts with the game; one of them is bound to work.

For more, check out some of the best pet cameras on the market. These let you keep playing with your cat while you’re out of the house, using laser pointers and sounds. That way your cat never needs to know boredom again!

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What Is Data Analysis and Why Is It Important?

The world is becoming more and more data-driven, with endless amounts of data available to work with. Big companies like Google and Microsoft use data to make decisions, but they’re not the only ones.

Is it important? Absolutely!

Data analysis is used by small businesses, retail companies, in medicine, and even in the world of sports. It’s a universal language and more important than ever before. It seems like an advanced concept but data analysis is really just a few ideas put into practice.

What Is Data Analysis?

Data analysis is the process of evaluating data using analytical or statistical tools to discover useful information. Some of these tools are programming languages like R or Python. Microsoft Excel is also popular in the world of data analytics.

Once data is collected and sorted using these tools, the results are interpreted to make decisions. The end results can be delivered as a summary, or as a visual like a chart or graph.

The process of presenting data in visual form is known as data visualization. Data visualization tools make the job easier. Programs like Tableau or Microsoft Power BI give you many visuals that can bring data to life.

There are several data analysis methods including data mining, text analytics, and business intelligence.

How Is Data Analysis Performed?

Image Credit: Faithie/Depositphotos

Data analysis is a big subject and can include some of these steps:

• Defining Objectives: Start by outlining some clearly defined objectives. To get the best results out of the data, the objectives should be crystal clear.
• Posing Questions: Figure out the questions you would like answered by the data. For example, do red sports cars get into accidents more often than others? Figure out which data analysis tools will get the best result for your question.
• Data Collection: Collect data that is useful to answer the questions. In this example, data might be collected from a variety of sources like DMV or police accident reports, insurance claims and hospitalization details.
• Data Scrubbing: Raw data may be collected in several different formats, with lots of junk values and clutter. The data is cleaned and converted so that data analysis tools can import it. It’s not a glamorous step but it’s very important.
• Data Analysis: Import this new clean data into the data analysis tools. These tools allow you to explore the data, find patterns, and answer what-if questions. This is the payoff, this is where you find results!
• Drawing Conclusions and Making Predictions: Draw conclusions from your data. These conclusions may be summarized in a report, visual, or both to get the right results.

Let’s dig a little deeper into some concepts used in data analysis.

Data Mining

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Data mining is a method of data analysis for discovering patterns in large data sets using statistics, artificial intelligence, and machine learning. The goal is to turn data into business decisions.

What can you do with data mining? You can process large amounts of data to identify outliers and exclude them from decision making. Businesses can learn customer purchasing habits, or use clustering to find previously unknown groups within the data.

If you use email, you see another example of data mining to sort your mailbox. Email apps like Outlook or Gmail use this to categorize your emails as “spam” or “not spam”.

Text Analytics

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Data is not just limited to numbers, information can come from text information as well.

Text analytics is the process of finding useful information from text. You do this by processing raw text, making it readable by data analysis tools, and finding results and patterns. This is also known as text mining.

Excel does a great job with this. Excel has many formulas to work with text that can save you time when you go to work with the data.

Text mining can also collect information from the web, a database or a file system. What can you do with this text information? You can import email addresses and phone numbers to find patterns. You can even find frequencies of words in a document.

Business Intelligence

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Business intelligence transforms data into intelligence used to make business decisions. It may be used in an organization’s strategic and tactical decision making. It offers a way for companies to examine trends from collected data and get insights from it.

Business intelligence is used to do a lot of things:

• Make decisions about product placement and pricing
• Identify new markets for product
• Create budgets and forecasts that make more money
• Use visual tools such as heat maps, pivot tables, and geographical mapping to find the demand for a certain product

Data Visualization

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Data visualization is the visual representation of data. Instead of presenting data in tables or databases, you present it in charts and graphs. It makes complex data more understandable, not to mention easier to look at.

Increasing amounts of data are being generated by applications you use (Also known as the “Internet of Things”). The amount of data (referred to as “big data”) is pretty massive. Data visualization can turn millions of data points into simple visuals that make it easy to understand.

There are various ways to visualize data:

• Using a data visualization tool like Tableau or Microsoft Power BI
• Standard Excel graphs and charts
• Interactive Excel graphs
• For the web, a tool like D3.js built using JavaScript

The visualization of Google datasets is a great example of how big data can visually guide decision-making.

Data Analysis in Review

Data analysis is used to evaluate data with statistical tools to discover useful information. A variety of methods are used including data mining, text analytics, business intelligence, combining data sets, and data visualization.

The Power Query tool in Microsoft Excel is especially helpful for data analysis. If you want to familiarize yourself with it, read our guide to create your first Microsoft Power Query script.

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How to Extract a Number or Text From Excel

Microsoft Excel is great at working with both numbers and text—but if you’re using both in the same cell, you might run into some difficulty. Fortunately, you can extract numbers or text from cells to work with your data more efficiently. We demonstrate several options, depending on the format that your data is currently in.

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Excel Numbers Formatted as Text

This is a common situation, and—fortunately—very easy to deal with. Sometimes, cells that contain only numbers are incorrectly labeled or formatted as text, preventing Microsoft Excel from using them in operations.

You can see in the image below that the cells in column A are formatted as text, as indicated by the number format box. You might also see a green flag in the top left corner of each cell.

Convert Text to Number in Excel

If you see the green flag in the top left corner, select one or more cells, click the warning sign, and select Convert to Number.

Otherwise, select the cells and, in the Number Format menu in the Ribbon, select the default Number option.

If you need more granular options, right-click the highlighted cell/s and select Format Cells, which will open the respective menu. Here, you can customize the number format and add or remove decimals, add a 1,000 separator, or manage negative numbers.

Obviously, you can also use the Ribbon or Format Cells options outlined above to convert a number to text, or text to currency, time, or any other format you desire.

Apply Number Formatting With Excel’s Paste Special

For this method to work, you’ll need to enter a number (any number) into a cell; it’s important that this cell is also formatted as a number. Copy that cell. Now, select all the cells that you want to convert to the number format, go to Home > Paste > Paste Special, select Formats to paste only the formatting of the cell you copied initially, then click OK.

This operation applies the format of the cell you copied to all selected cells, even text cells.

Extract Numbers or Text From Mixed Format Cells

Now we get to the hard part: getting numbers out of cells that contain multiple formats of input. If you have a number and a unit (like “7 shovels,” as we have below), you’ll run into this problem. To solve it, we’re going to look at a couple different ways to split cells into numbers and text, letting you work with each individually.

Separate Numbers From Text

If you have a lot of cells that contain a mix of numbers and text or multiples of both, separating them manually might take a monumental amount of time. To get through the process faster, you can use Microsoft Excel’s Text to Columns function.

Select the cells that you want to convert, go to Data > Text to Columns, and use the wizard to make sure the cells come out correctly. For the most part, you’ll just need to click Next and Finish, but do make sure you pick a matching delimiter; in this example, a comma.

If you only have one- and two-digit numbers, the Fixed Width option can be useful too, as it will only split off the first two or three characters of the cell. You can even create a number of splits that way.

Note: Cells formatted as text will not automatically emerge with a number formatting (or vice versa), meaning you might still have to convert these cells as described above.

Extract a Number or Text From a Delimited String

This method is a bit cumbersome, but works very well on small datasets. What we assume here is that a space separates the number and text, though the method also works for any other delimiter.

The main function we’ll be using here is LEFT, which returns the leftmost characters from a cell. As you can see in our dataset above, we have cells with one-, two-, and three-character numbers, so we’ll need to return the leftmost one, two, or three characters from the cells. By combining LEFT with the SEARCH function, we can return everything to the left of the space. Here’s the function:

=LEFT(A1, SEARCH(" ", A1, 1))

This will return everything to the left of the space. Using the fill handle to apply the formula to the rest of the cells, this is what we get (you can see the formula in the function bar at the top of the image):

As you can see, we now have all the numbers isolated, so we can manipulate them. Want to isolate the text as well? We can use the RIGHT function in the same way:

=RIGHT(A1, LEN(A1)-SEARCH(" ", A1, 1))

This returns X characters from the right side of the cell, where x is the total length of the cell minus the number of characters to the left of the space.

Now you can also manipulate the text. Want to combine them again? Just use the CONCATENATE function with all the cells as inputs:

=CONCATENATE(E1, F1)

Obviously, this method works best if you just have numbers and units, and nothing else. If you have other cell formats, you might have to get creative with formulas to get everything to work right. If you have a giant dataset, it’ll be worth the time it takes to get the formula figured out!

Extract a Number From One End of a Continuous String

Now what if there’s no delimiter separating your number and text?

If you’re extracting the number from the left or right of the string, you can use a variation of the LEFT or RIGHT formula discussed above:

=LEFT(A1,SUM(LEN(A1)-LEN(SUBSTITUTE(A1,{"0","1","2","3","4","5","6","7","8","9"},""))))

=RIGHT(A1,SUM(LEN(A1)-LEN(SUBSTITUTE(A1,{"0","1","2","3","4","5","6","7","8","9"},""))))

This will return all numbers from the left or right of the string.

If you’re extracting the number from the right of the string, you can also use a two-step process. First, determine the location of your first digit in the string using the MIN function. Then, you can feed that information into a variation of the RIGHT formula, to split your numbers from your texts.

=MIN(SEARCH({0,1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9},A1&"0123456789"))

=RIGHT(A1, LEN(A1)-B1+1)

Note: When you use these formulas, remember that you might have to adjust the column characters and cell numbers.

Extract Numbers From Both Ends of a Continuous String

With the strategies above, you should be able to extract numbers or text out of most mixed-format cells that are giving you trouble. Even if they don’t, you can probably combine them with some powerful text functions included in Microsoft Excel to get the characters you’re looking for. However, there are some much more complicated situations that call for more complicated solutions.

For example, I found a forum post where someone wanted to extract the numbers from a string like “45t*&65/”, so that he would end up with “4565.” Another poster gave the following formula as one way to do it:

=SUMPRODUCT(MID(0&A1,LARGE(INDEX(ISNUMBER(--MID(A1,ROW($1:$25),1))*
 ROW($1:$25),0),ROW($1:$25))+1,1)*10^ROW($1:$25)/10)

To be completely honest, I have no idea how it works. But according to the forum post, it will take the numbers out of a complicated string of numbers and other characters. The point is that, with enough time, patience, and effort, you can extract numbers and text from just about anything!

You just have to find the right resources.

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How to Transfer Music From an Old iPod to Your Computer or iPhone

Do you have an old iPod that’s sitting around gathering dust? It might still have old music on it that you no longer possess in any other form. If that’s the case, grab your old music player, because you can transfer the music from your iPod to your computer.

To do so, you just need to consider your iPod as an external drive that you can take music from. Once extracted from the iPod, you can add music to your iTunes library and even sync it with your iPhone. We’ll show you how.

Prevent iTunes From Automatically Syncing With Your Device

First, you’ll need to make sure you can transfer the music on your iPod without iTunes erasing it while syncing.

When you connect a device to iTunes, the music in your iTunes library is automatically synced to your device. You cannot download music from an iPod (or iPhone or iPad) into iTunes. So if you connect an iPod to iTunes, the music on the device will be overwritten with what’s in your iTunes library.

The method for preventing iTunes from automatically syncing with your iOS device is mostly the same for Windows and Macs running Mojave or earlier:

1. Make sure to disconnect all iOS devices from your computer. Then, open iTunes. In Windows, go to Edit > Preferences. On a Mac, go to iTunes > Preferences.
2. On both platforms, click the Devices tab and check the Prevent iPods, iPhones, and iPads from syncing automatically box. Then click OK and close iTunes.

However, Macs running macOS Catalina and newer use Finder instead of iTunes to sync iOS devices. Because of this, you’ll need to open your device in Finder and uncheck the Automatically sync when this iPhone is connected box.

Copy Music From Your iPod to Your Computer

Now, you can connect your iPod to your computer. It should show up as a drive both in File Explorer on Windows and Finder on Mac. Open the iPod drive and navigate to the iPod_Control > Music folder. You’ll see many folders labeled with an F and a number.

If your iPod drive appears empty, you need to reveal hidden files and folders on your computer. Windows users can follow our easy way to show hidden files and folders in Windows. For those using macOS, hold down Cmd + Shift + Period to toggle hidden folders on or off.

Select all the folders in the iPod_Control > Music folder and copy and paste them to a location on your hard drive. This will transfer your music from your iPod to your computer.

The files all have random four-letter file names. If you’re using a Windows PC, you can see the tags for each music file in File Explorer. You won’t see the tags in Finder on a Mac.

Later, we’ll show you how to easily change the file names using the tags.

Once you’ve copied the files, you can eject the iPod and disconnect it. On a Windows PC, right-click on the iPod drive in File Explorer and select Eject. Mac users should right-click on the iPod icon on the desktop and select Eject.

Add the Music to Your iTunes Library

After transferring the music from your iPod to your computer, you can start making adjustments. First, add the music from your iPod to your iTunes library on your Windows PC or Mac. Note that on macOS Catalina and newer, your music library appears in the Apple Music app since iTunes is gone.

By default, on Windows , adding items to your iTunes library creates a reference to the file’s current location. The original file remains in the current location. Thus, if you were to move the original files, iTunes would no longer see them.

You can have iTunes for Windows make a copy of each file and place them into the iTunes media folder. Moving the original files would then not affect the music in your iTunes library.

How to Centralize Your iTunes Music on Your Computer

Open iTunes for Windows and go to Edit > Preferences. Click the Advanced tab and check the Copy files to iTunes Media folder when adding to library box. This option is checked by default in iTunes for Mac (on Mojave and earlier).

Once enabled, all media added to your iTunes library from then on will copy directly to the iTunes media folder. Now you won’t have to worry about moving the original files anywhere else. Just remember media added to your iTunes library before enabling that checkbox still links to the original media files.

How to Organize and Expand Your iTunes Library

To organize your iTunes Media folder into artist and album folders, check the Keep iTunes Media folder organized box. Again, iTunes/Apple Music for Mac enables this option by default.

If you have space, it’s a good idea to copy all your media files to the iTunes Media folder. That way, they’re all in one location and easy to back up.

To copy the remaining media files linked to in your iTunes library, go to File > Library > Organize Library. On the Organize Library dialog box, check the Consolidate files box and click OK.

To add some or all of the music from your iPod to your iTunes library, go to either File > Add File to Library or File > Add Folder to Library in iTunes for Windows. If you’re using a Mac, go to File > Add to Library. Then select the files or folder you want to add.

You can also add music to iTunes by dragging music files from File Explorer or Finder to the iTunes window. If you find yourself running into any issues while updating your library, here’s how to fix a damaged iTunes library.

Change or Fix Music Tags

If you need to change or fix tags on your recently added music, you can do so directly in iTunes/Apple Music. You can change or fix tags for either a single song or multiple songs as needed.

Editing a Single Tag

To edit tags on Windows, right-click on the song and select Song Info. If using a Mac, hold Control and click to select Album Info.

On the dialog box that displays, you’ll see several tabs containing information about the selected song. You can edit items like the song title, artist, album, and genre. Click the buttons at the top to view and change the different information.

To go to the next song in the list, click the arrows at the bottom of the dialog box. When done editing the tags, click OK.

Editing Multiple Tags

You can also edit common information for multiple songs at the same time. Use the Shift or Ctrl (Cmd on Mac) keys to select the songs you want to edit. Then right-click on the selected songs and select Get Info.

A confirmation dialog box displays. If you don’t want to see this dialog box every time, check the Do not ask me again box. Click Edit Items to continue.

Only the tags that apply to all the selected items display in the window. Click the buttons at the top to access the different types of information. Edit tags as you want and click OK.

Create a Playlist in iTunes

If you use playlists on your iPhone, you can create them in iTunes and they’ll sync to your iPhone. Whether using Mac or Windows, the procedure is the same.

To create a playlist, select the songs you want in the playlist. Then right-click on the selected songs and select Add to Playlist > New Playlist.

For similar songs (such as an album), the playlist is created using artist and album title as the name. If you create a playlist from various songs, you’ll need to enter a custom name. To change the name of the playlist, click on the title and type a new title.

You can also rearrange the songs in the playlist by dragging and dropping them to different positions.

Transfer Music to Your iPhone

To transfer the added music to your iPhone, make sure iTunes is open and connect your device to your computer. Then click the device icon at the top of the iTunes window (or select the device in Finder on macOS Catalina and newer).

If you want to quickly sync content to your iPhone, you can have iTunes to sync your entire music library. Alternatively, if you only sync selected items, just the chosen playlists, artists, albums, and genres will sync. In case you see a Replace and Sync message, remember that the iTunes library replaces everything on your iPhone.

To sync your entire library, click Music in the sidebar on the left under Settings. Then make sure to select Sync Music on the right and select Entire music library.

Now press the Apply button in the lower right. If syncing doesn’t begin, you can press the Sync button.

Rename the Music Files

Once you’ve transferred your old iPod music, you can rename the copied files. The random four-letter file names assigned to the files copied from your iPod aren’t descriptive at all. On a Mac, you won’t know what the songs are without adding them to iTunes or utilizing another app.

You can manually rename the files, but there’s an easier way using a free tool called Mp3tag. It’s a Windows program, but with a workaround you can use it on Mac as well.

Rename Your Files With Mp3tag on Windows

On Windows, download Mp3tag and install it. To add Mp3tag to the File Explorer menu, check the Explorer Context Menu box on Choose Components screen during installation.

To rename music files from your iPod, select the files in File Explorer. Then right-click on the files and select Mp3tag.

Inside the program, highlight your songs. Go to Convert > Tag – Filename or press Alt + 1. On the Tag – Filename dialog box, enter a Format string using placeholders to set up your filename scheme.

For example, look at the Format string in the image below. It creates a file name with a two-digit track number, song title, artist name, and album name.

If you want to construct your own file name, you can use different format string placeholders available. Go to Help > Contents to get more info about them. After the manual opens in your browser, click Renaming files based on tags under Working with tags and file names.

You’ll find a list of placeholders you can use in the Format string. Use these to create custom file names for your music files. For more help, check out our full guide to Mp3tag.

Alternatives and How to Use Mp3tag on Mac

There are music tagging apps for Mac like Kid3, but they aren’t as easy to use as Mp3tag. The developer of Mp3tag offers a prepackaged wrapped application for use on Mac. You can download this Wine-ready version of Mp3tag for use on Mac.

After it’s finished, add it directly to the Applications folder on your Mac and run the prepackaged application. Unfortunately, macOS Catalina doesn’t support apps utilizing Wine, so this won’t work until the developer releases a native version.

Use the same steps listed above to rename music files using Mp3tag on your Mac.

Breathing New Life: Transfer Music from an Old iPod to Your Computer

If your old iPod still charges enough to use, you can easily transfer music from that iPod to your computer. After transferring music from your iPod to iTunes or your iPhone, give it a new purpose. Consider reusing your old iPod as an ebook reader or a secondary music collection holder.

Meanwhile, if you don’t like iTunes, check out the best music manager apps for iOS.

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Browsers are interesting again

A few years ago, covering browsers got boring.

Chrome had clearly won the desktop, the great JavaScript speed wars were over and Mozilla seemed more interested in building a mobile operating system than its browser. Microsoft tried its best to rescue Internet Explorer/Edge from being the punchline of nerdy jokes, but its efforts essentially failed.

Meanwhile, Opera had shuttered the development of its own rendering engine and redesigned its browser with less functionality, alienating many of its biggest fans. On mobile, plenty of niche players tried to break the Chrome/Safari duopoly, but while they did have some innovative ideas, nothing ever stuck.

But over the course of the last year or so, things changed. The main catalyst for this, I would argue, is that the major browser vendors — and we can argue about Google’s role here — realized that their products were at the forefront of a new online privacy movement. It’s the browser, after all, that allows marketers to set cookies and fingerprint your machine to track you across the web.

Add to that Microsoft’s move to the Chromium engine, which is finally giving Microsoft a seat at the browser table again, plus the success of upstarts like Brave and Vivaldi, and you’ve got the right mix of competitive pressure and customer interest for innovation to come back into what was a stagnant field only a few years ago.

Let’s talk about privacy first. With browsers being the first line of defense, it’s maybe surprising that we didn’t see Mozilla and others push for more built-in tracking protections before.

In 2019, the Chrome team introduced handling cookies in the browser and a few months ago, it launched a broader initiative to completely rethink cookies and online privacy for its users — and by extension, Google’s advertising ecosystem. This move centers around differential privacy and a ‘privacy budget’ that would allow advertisers to get enough information about you to group you into a larger cohort without providing so much information that you would love your anonymity.

At the time, Google said this was a multi-year effort that was meant to help publishers retain their advertising revenue (vs their users completely blocking cookies).

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The past, present and future of nicotine addiction | Mitch Zeller

The past, present and future of nicotine addiction | Mitch Zeller

Tobacco use remains the leading cause of preventable disease and death in the United States, killing more people each year than alcohol, AIDS, car accidents, illegal drugs, murder and suicide combined. Follow health policy expert Mitch Zeller into the murky depths of the tobacco industry as he details the sordid history of nicotine addiction -- and invites us to imagine a world where policy change helps stop people from becoming addicted to cigarettes in the first place.

Click the above link to download the TED talk.

Finding the right reporter to cover your startup

Pitch the wrong reporter or publication, and your story won’t see the light of day.

Before you start seeking press, you’ll need to look for reporters who have reach, respect and expertise when you choose who to talk to. You’ll also need to be prepared to accept the truth about your business, even if it hurts. It’s critical that you find a writer who’s a good fit for the business you’re building and the audience you’re seeking.

If you don’t use a strategic approach when reaching out to journalists, you’ll get few responses, fewer meetings, and articles that either misrepresent you, shortchange you, or blow up in your face. The goal isn’t just to secure positive coverage, because no one will believe it; startups are tough. There are challenges and setbacks and scary looming questions. But an honest article from a respected voice with a big enough audience can legitimize a business as it tries to turn vision into impact.

Here we’ll discuss how to find the publication and reporter who understands you and can tell the story that aligns with your objectives. In part one of this series, we detailed why you should (or shouldn’t) want press coverage and how to know what’s newsworthy enough to pitch.

In future ExtraCrunch posts, I’ll explore how to hire PR help, formulate a pitch, deliver it to reporters, prepare for interviews and conduct an announcement. If you have more questions or ideas for ExtraCrunch posts, feel free to reach out to me via Twitter or elsewhere.

Why should you believe me? I’m editor-at-large for TechCrunch, where I’ve written 4,000 articles about early-stage startups and tech giants. For 10 years, I’ve reviewed startup pitches via email and Twitter, at demo days for accelerators like Y Combinator and on stage as a judge of startup competitions. From warm introductions to cold calls, I’ve seen what gets reporters’ attention and why stories become enduring narratives supporting companies as they grow.

Deciding which publications to target

Which publications do you currently read and respect?

Starting here ensures that you’re approaching PR from a place of knowledge with personal context rather than going by what someone else tells you. But you also have to consider which publications appeal in that way to your target demographic. For example, if you’re aiming to reach teens, parents, or Chief Information Officers, you’ll have very different target publications.

If you appeal to a niche audience aligned with a specific publication, you can definitely score some leads and installs, priming the pump so when users hear about you again, they already have a positive association for your brand. You can score SEO to help your get discovered when people search for keywords related to your business, but if you’re looking for user growth or SEO, be sure to work with a publication that links to the websites and apps they write about, as many don’t. But if you’re hoping for ‘the servers are on fire we’ve got so much traffic’ attention, you need to first build network effects and viral loops directly into your product.

Once you identify a realistic objective for gaining press coverage, you can figure out which reporters and outlets will best help you achieve your goals.

Typically, you’ll aim to work with more prestigious publications and writers first, as they can inspire other outlets to write up follow-on coverage. It rarely works the other way around, since top publishers want to be seen as first to a story and forging trends rather than following them with late coverage. These outlets often have greater reach in terms of home page traffic, social following, SEO and shareability.

The exception to this strategy: if there’s a specific writer at a less-prestigious publisher who’s renowned as the expert in your space whose word has more weight, or if that publication better aligns with your overall goals. For example, you might want to work with a transportation expert like Kirsten Korosec if you’re an electric car company, or a publication focused on startups like TechCrunch if you’re trying to stoke fundraising. If you’re a more general mainstream consumer business or are seeking maximum growth, you might instead choose a popular national newspaper with a big circulation.

Who should tell your story?

After you’ve set goals and have an idea regarding the kind of publication or journalist you want to work with, it’s time to build a ranked list of specific reporters. Here, expertise is key.

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Snapchat quietly acquired AI Factory, the company behind its new Cameos feature, for $166M

After acquiring Ukraine startup Looksery in 2015 to supercharge animated selfie lenses in Snapchat — arguably changing the filters game for all social video and photo apps — Snap has made another acquisition with roots in the country, co-founded by one of Looksery’s founders, to give a big boost to its video capabilities.

The company has acquired AI Factory, a computer vision startup that Snap had worked with to create Snapchat’s new Cameos animated selfie-based video feature, for a price believed to be in the region of $166 million.

The news was first reported by a Ukrainian publication, AIN, and while I’m still waiting for a direct reply from Snap about the acquisition, I’ve had the news confirmed by another source close to the deal. Snap also confirmed the news to another publication, VC.ru (in Russian).

Victor Shaburov, the founder of Looksery who then went on to become Snap’s director of engineering — leaving in May 2018 to found and lead AI Factory — declined to provide a comment for this story.

Cameos, launched last month, lets you take a selfie, which is then automatically “animated” and inserted into a short video. The selection of videos, currently around 150, is created by Snap, with the whole concept not unlike the one underpinning “deepfakes” — AI-based videos that look “real” but are actually things that never really happened.

Deepfake videos have been around for a while. But if your experience of that word has strong dystopian undertones, we now appear to be in a moment where consumer apps are tapping into the technology in a race for new — fun, lighthearted — features to attract and keep users. Just today, Josh reported that TikTok has secretly built a deepfake tool, too. I expect we’ll be hearing about Facebook’s newest deepfake tool in 3, 2, 1…

From what I understand, while AI Factory has offices in San Francisco, the majority of the team of around 70 is based out of Ukraine. Part of the team will relocate with the deal, and part will stay there.

Snap had also been an investor in AI Factory. Part of its early interest would have been because of the track record of the talent associated with the startup: lenses have been a huge success for Snap — 70% of its daily active users play with them, and they not only bring in new users, but increase retention and bring in revenues by way of sponsorships or users buying them — so creating new features to give users more ways to play around with their selfies is a good bet.

It’s not clear whether AI Factory will be developing a way to insert selfies into any video, or if the feature will be tied just to specific videos offered by Snap itself, or whether the videos will extend beyond the timing of a GIF. It’s also not clear what else AI Factory was working on: the company’s site is offline and there is very little information about the company beyond its mission to bring more AI-based imaging tools into mainstream apps and usage.

The company’s LinkedIn profile says that AI Factory “provide[s] multiple AI business solutions based on image and video recognition, analysis and processing,” so while the company will come under Snap’s wing, there may be scope for the team to build some of its technology into more innovative ways for businesses to use the Snap platform in the future, too.

We’ll update this post as we learn more, and if/when we hear back from Snap directly.

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Samsung shipped more than 6.7 million Galaxy 5G smartphones in 2019

Samsung Electronics announced today that it shipped more than 6.7 million Galaxy 5G smartphones in 2019, surpassing expectations set by the company earlier.

During remarks at IFA in September, Samsung Electronics vice president JuneHee Lee suggested that more than two million Samsung 5G smartphones had already been sold, and that the company expected to double that number by the end of the year.

The company also said today that its devices made up 53.9% of the global 5G smartphone market, according to a report by Counterpoint Research. It will release its next 5G device, the Galaxy Tab S6 5G, in South Korea during the first quarter of 2020.

Let’s talk Samsung Galaxy S11

The company is expected to launch Galaxy S11 models with 5G in February. While no iPhones currently have 5G support, Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo forecast in July that all three versions of the device expected to be unveiled by Apple this year will support 5G. The release of Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 865 and 765 means more manufacturers will be able to offer mid- and high-tier smartphones with 5G support this year, and that may help revive sluggish sales.

What we know about Qualcomm’s next-gen Snapdragon 865 and 765 chips

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The "opportunity gap" in US public education -- and how to close it | Anindya Kundu

The "opportunity gap" in US public education -- and how to close it | Anindya Kundu

How can we tap into the potential of all students, especially those who come from disadvantaged backgrounds? Sociologist Anindya Kundu invites us to take a deeper look at the personal, social and institutional challenges that keep students from thriving in the United States -- and shows how closing this "opportunity gap" means valuing public education for what it really is: the greatest investment in our collective future.

Click the above link to download the TED talk.

Samsung announces ‘Lite’ versions of the Galaxy S10 and Note 10

Seems Samsung couldn’t wait a few more days for CES to arrive. The hardware giant this morning just announced the launch“Lite” versions of its popular handsets, designed to bring key features from the Galaxy S10 and Note 10, without breaking the bank.

The devices are a clear response to a sea change in consumer demand over the last several years. While Samsung has long offered mid-range devices, the additions of the Galaxy S10 Lite and Note 10 are an appeal to users looking for something in the flagship ballpark. While Samsung has yet to offer specifics on pricing, one images they’ll fall somewhere between its mid-range A series and the $1,000+ cost of the high end products.

Notably, both devices appear to feature actually the same display, a 6.7 Full HD+ plus at 394 PPI, with a hole punch “Infinity-O” camera up top. Aside from some fairly minor spec differences, the Note’s S Pen and some camera differences appear to be the primary distinction between the products.

Both feature a three camera array, on a large, rectangular bump on the rear. Each version has their strengths. The S10 has a five-megapixel macro, 48-megapixel wide angel and 12-megapixel ultra wide (123-degree). The Note, meanwhile, has a 12-megapixel ultra wide, 12-megapixel wide-wide-angle and 12-megapixel telephoto.

“The Galaxy S and Galaxy Note devices have met consumer wants and demands around the world. These devices represent our continuous effort to deliver industry leading innovations, from performance and power to intelligence and services,” Mobile CEO DJ Koh said in. A release tied to the news. “The Galaxy S10 Lite and Galaxy Note10 Lite will introduce those distinct key premium features that make up a Galaxy S and Galaxy Note experience.”

Developing…

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