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Mutiny at HQ Trivia fails to oust CEO

This week’s banishment of host Scott Rogowsky was merely a symptom of the ongoing struggle to decide who will lead HQ Trivia. According to multiple sources, over half of the startup’s staff signed an internal petition to depose CEO Rus Yusupov who they saw as mismanaging the company. But Yusupov then fired some core supporters of the mutiny, leading to a downward spiral of morale that mirrors HQ’s plummeting App Store rank.

TechCrunch spoke to multiple sources familiar with HQ Trivia’s internal troubles to piece together how the live video mobile game went from blockbuster to nearly bust. Two sources said HQ recently only had around $6 million in the bank but was burning over $1 million per month, meaning its runway could be dwindling. But its early investors are reluctant to hand Yusupov any more cash. “

Employees petitioned to remove HQ Trivia’s CEO Rus Yusupov

HQ reimagined gaming and mobile entertainment with the launch of its 12-question trivia game in August 2017 where players all competed live in twice-daily shows with anyone who got all the answers right split a cash jackpot. The games felt urgent since you could only participate at designated times, fun to play against friends or strangers, and winning carried a significance no single-player or non-stop online game could match.

When TechCrunch wrote the first coverage of HQ Trivia in October 2017, it had just 3500 concurrent players. But by January it had climbed to the #3 game and #6 overall app in the App Store, and grown to 2.38 million players by March. Quickly, copycats from China and Facebook entered the market. But they all lacked HQ’s secret weapon — its plucky host comedian Scott Rogowsky. Affectionately awarded nicknames like Quiz Daddy, Quiz Khalifa, Host Malone, and Trap Trebek from the “HQties” who played daily, he was the de facto face of the startup.

Yet HQ had some shaky foundations. Co-founder Colin Kroll, who’d also started Vine with Yusupov and sold it to Twitter, had been fired from Twitter after 18 months for being a bad manager, Recode reported. He’d also picked up a reputation of being creepy around female employees, as well as Vine stars, TechCrunch has learned. Rapid growth and an investigation by early HQ investor Jeremy Liew that found no egregious misconduct by Kroll paved the way for a $15 million investment. The round was led by Founders Fund’s Cyan Bannister, and it valued HQ at over $100 million.

Yusupov failed to translate that cash into sustained growth and product innovation. His public behavior had already raised flags. He yelled at a Daily Beast reporter after the outlet’s Taylor Lorenz interviewed Rogowsky without Yusupov’s approval, threatening to fire the host. “You’re putting Scott’s job in jeopardy. Is that what you want? . . .  Please read me your story word for word,” Yusupov said. When he learned Rogowsky had expressed his preference for salad restaurant chain Sweetgreen, Yusupov shouted “He cannot say that! We do not have a brand deal with Sweetgreen! Under no circumstances can he say that.” The next day, Yusupov falsely claimed he’d never threatened Rogowsky’s job.

With HQ’s bank account full, sources say Yusupov was extremely slow to make decisions, allowing HQ to stagnate. The novelty of playing trivia for money via phone has begun to wear off, and people increasingly ignored HQ’s push notifications to join its next game. But beyond bringing in some guest hosts and the option to buy a second chance after a wrong answer, HQ ceased to evolve. HQ fell to the #196 game on iOS and the #585 overall app as concurrent players waned.

That’s when things started to get a bit Game Of Thrones.

Pawns In A CEO War

Liew pushed for HQ to swap Kroll into the CEO spot in September 2018 while moving Yusupov to Chief Creative Officer, which was confirmed despite an HR complaint against Kroll for aggressive management. However, three sources tell TechCrunch that Yusupov pushed that HQ employee to file the complaint against Kroll. As the WSJ reported after Kroll’s death, that employee later left the startup because they felt that they’d been exploited. “There was definitely what felt like manipulation there, and that’s also why that employee resigned from the company.” one source said. Another source said that staffer “believed Rus used their unhappiness about work to use them as a pawn in his CEO war and not because Rus actually cared about resolving things.”

Cyan of Founders Fund stepped down from HQ’s board after the decision to swap out Yusupov due to her firm’s reputation of keeping founders in control, Recode’s Kurt Wagner reported. Sources say that despite Kroll’s reputation, the staff believed in him. “Colin loved HQ and was dedicated to all the employees more than Rus. Rus cares about Rus. Colin cared about the content” a source tells me. 

Three sources say that in a desperate ploy to retain power and prevent Kroll’s rise, Yusupov suggested Rogowsky, a comedian with no tech or management experience, be made CEO of HQ Trivia. He even suggested the company film a reality show about Rogowsky taking over. That idea was quickly shot down as preposterous.

“It was a very personal desperation tactic not to have Colin be CEO. It was not a professionally thought-out idea” a source tells me, though another said it was always hard to tell if Yusupov’s crazy ideas were jokes. Both Yusupov and HQ Trivia declined to respond to multiple requests for comment, but we’ll update if we hear back.

HQ Trivia co-founder Colin Kroll passed away in December

Then tragedy struck in December. Kroll, then CEO, was found dead in his apartment from a drug overdose. Employees were distraught over what would happen next. “Colin’s plan was to ship fast, and get new things out there” a source says, noting that Kroll had pushed for the release of HQ’s first new game type HQ Words modeled after Wheel Of Fortune. “He wasn’t perfect but in the time he was in charge, the ship started to turn, but when Rus took over again it was like the 9 months where we did nothing.”

Coup d’éHQ

By February 2019, HQ’s staff was fed up. Two sources confirm that 20 of the roughly 35 employees signed a letter asking the board to remove Yusupov and establish a new CEO. With HQ’s download rate continuing to sink, they feared he’d run the startup into the ground. One source suggested Yusupov might rather have seen the whole startup come crashing down with the blame placed on the product than have it come to light that he played a large hand in the fall. The tone of the letter, which was never formally delivered but sources believe the board knew of, wasn’t accusatory but a plea for transparency about the company’s future and the staff’s job security.

At a hastily convened all-hands meeting in late February, HQ investor Liew told the company his fund Lightspeed would support a search for a new CEO to replace Yusupov, and provide that new CEO with funding for 18 more months of runway. Liew told the staff he would step down from the board once that CEO was found, but the search continues and so Liew remains on HQ’s board.

“Mostly everyone was on Jeremy’s side as no one wanted to work under Rus. Jeremy wasn’t trying to screw him over the way Rus would screw other people over. He just wanted to do what was right, getting behind what everyone wanted” a source said of Liew. 

Instead, HQ’s board moved forward with instituting a new executive decision-making committee composed of Yusupov, HQ’s head of production Nick Gallo, and VP of engineering Ben Sheats. Yusupov would remain interim CEO, and he continued to cling to power and there’s been little transparency about the CEO replacement process. Until a new CEO is found, HQ must subsist on its existing funds. The staff is “always worried about running out of runway” and are given vague answers when they ask leadership about how much money is left.

On March 1st, the committee emerged from a meeting and fired three employees — two who had spearheaded the petition and been vocal about Yusupov’s failings.

One who wasn’t fired was Rogowsky, despite sources saying at one point he’d tried to organize the staff to go on strike. Other employees had been cautious about standing up to Yusupov. “Everyone was terrified of retaliation. Their fears have totally been validated” a source explains. Engineers and other staffers with strong employment prospects began to drain out of the company. Those left were just trying to hold onto their jobs. Without inspiring leadership or a strategy to reverse user shrinkage, recruiting replacements would prove difficult.

Yusupov remains on the board, along with Tinder CEO Elie Seidman who Yusupov appointed to his additional common seat. Liew retains his seat until the new CEO is found and given that seat. And Kroll’s seat appears to have gone to Lightspeed partner Merci Victoria Grace. Lightspeed and Cyan of Founders Fund declined to respond to requests for comment.

Losing Face

Tensions at HQ and a desire to diversify his prospects led Rogowsky to pick up a side gig hosting baseball talk show ChangeUp on the DAZN network, TMZ reported this week. He’d hoped to continue hosting HQ during its big weekend contests. But tensions with Yusupov and the CEO’s desire for the host to remain exclusively at HQ led negotiations to sour causing Rogowsky to leave the startup entirely. TechCrunch was first to report that he’s been replaced by former HQ guest host Matt Richards, who Yusupov bluntly told me Friday had polled higher than Rogowsky in a SurveyMonkey survey of HQ’s top players.

In tweets, Rogowsky revealed that that “Sadly, it won’t be possible for me to continue hosting HQ concurrently as I had hoped” noting, “I wasn’t given the courtesy of a farewell show.” Finding a way to preserve Rogowsky’s ties to HQ likely would have been best for the startup.  TechCrunch had raised the concern a year ago that unless Rogowsky was properly locked in with an adequate equity vesting schedule at HQ, he could leave. Or worse, he could be poached by Facebook, Snapchat, or YouTube to host an HQ competitor.

“Rus is a visionary but not a good leader. He is extremely manipulative in an unproductive way. He’s a dude who just cares a lot about his reputation” a source noted. “A lot of the negative sentiment amongst staff is the belief that he cares more about his reputation than the company itself.”

HQ’s next attempt to revive growth appears to be HQ Editor’s Picks, is described as “a new live show on your phone where our host shows funny viral videos and you decide on who gets paid.” Finally it seems willing to embrace the potential of interactive live video entertainment outside of trivia and puzzles. HQ Editor’s Picks will face an uphill battle, since HQ dropped out of the top 1500 iOS apps last month, according to App Annie. Sensor Tower estimates that HQ saw just 8 percent as many downloads in March 2019 as March 2018.

After the loss of its spirit animal Rogowsky, the employees’ chosen leader Kroll, the supervision of veteran investor Cyan, and its product momentum, tough questions are what remain for HQ Trivia. The company’s struggles have paralyzed its progress towards finding a new viral mechanic or game format that attracts users. While HQ Words is fun, it’s too similar to its trivia competition to change the startup’s trajectory. And all of the in-fighting could scare off any talent hoping to turn HQ around. Unfortunately, securing an extra life for the game will take a more than a $3.99 in-app purchase.

Read Full Article

Mutiny at HQ Trivia fails to oust CEO

This week’s banishment of host Scott Rogowsky was merely a symptom of the ongoing struggle to decide who will lead HQ Trivia. According to multiple sources, over half of the startup’s staff signed an internal petition to depose CEO Rus Yusupov who they saw as mismanaging the company. But Yusupov then fired some core supporters of the mutiny, leading to a downward spiral of morale that mirrors HQ’s plummeting App Store rank.

TechCrunch spoke to multiple sources familiar with HQ Trivia’s internal troubles to piece together how the live video mobile game went from blockbuster to nearly bust. Two sources said HQ recently only had around $6 million in the bank but was burning over $1 million per month, meaning its runway could be dwindling. But its early investors are reluctant to hand Yusupov any more cash. “

Employees petitioned to remove HQ Trivia’s CEO Rus Yusupov

HQ reimagined gaming and mobile entertainment with the launch of its 12-question trivia game in August 2017 where players all competed live in twice-daily shows with anyone who got all the answers right split a cash jackpot. The games felt urgent since you could only participate at designated times, fun to play against friends or strangers, and winning carried a significance no single-player or non-stop online game could match.

When TechCrunch wrote the first coverage of HQ Trivia in October 2017, it had just 3500 concurrent players. But by January it had climbed to the #3 game and #6 overall app in the App Store, and grown to 2.38 million players by March. Quickly, copycats from China and Facebook entered the market. But they all lacked HQ’s secret weapon — its plucky host comedian Scott Rogowsky. Affectionately awarded nicknames like Quiz Daddy, Quiz Khalifa, Host Malone, and Trap Trebek from the “HQties” who played daily, he was the de facto face of the startup.

Yet HQ had some shaky foundations. Co-founder Colin Kroll, who’d also started Vine with Yusupov and sold it to Twitter, had been fired from Twitter after 18 months for being a bad manager, Recode reported. He’d also picked up a reputation of being creepy around female employees, as well as Vine stars, TechCrunch has learned. Rapid growth and an investigation by early HQ investor Jeremy Liew that found no egregious misconduct by Kroll paved the way for a $15 million investment. The round was led by Founders Fund’s Cyan Bannister, and it valued HQ at over $100 million.

Yusupov failed to translate that cash into sustained growth and product innovation. His public behavior had already raised flags. He yelled at a Daily Beast reporter after the outlet’s Taylor Lorenz interviewed Rogowsky without Yusupov’s approval, threatening to fire the host. “You’re putting Scott’s job in jeopardy. Is that what you want? . . .  Please read me your story word for word,” Yusupov said. When he learned Rogowsky had expressed his preference for salad restaurant chain Sweetgreen, Yusupov shouted “He cannot say that! We do not have a brand deal with Sweetgreen! Under no circumstances can he say that.” The next day, Yusupov falsely claimed he’d never threatened Rogowsky’s job.

With HQ’s bank account full, sources say Yusupov was extremely slow to make decisions, allowing HQ to stagnate. The novelty of playing trivia for money via phone has begun to wear off, and people increasingly ignored HQ’s push notifications to join its next game. But beyond bringing in some guest hosts and the option to buy a second chance after a wrong answer, HQ ceased to evolve. HQ fell to the #196 game on iOS and the #585 overall app as concurrent players waned.

That’s when things started to get a bit Game Of Thrones.

Pawns In A CEO War

Liew pushed for HQ to swap Kroll into the CEO spot in September 2018 while moving Yusupov to Chief Creative Officer, which was confirmed despite an HR complaint against Kroll for aggressive management. However, three sources tell TechCrunch that Yusupov pushed that HQ employee to file the complaint against Kroll. As the WSJ reported after Kroll’s death, that employee later left the startup because they felt that they’d been exploited. “There was definitely what felt like manipulation there, and that’s also why that employee resigned from the company.” one source said. Another source said that staffer “believed Rus used their unhappiness about work to use them as a pawn in his CEO war and not because Rus actually cared about resolving things.”

Cyan of Founders Fund stepped down from HQ’s board after the decision to swap out Yusupov due to her firm’s reputation of keeping founders in control, Recode’s Kurt Wagner reported. Sources say that despite Kroll’s reputation, the staff believed in him. “Colin loved HQ and was dedicated to all the employees more than Rus. Rus cares about Rus. Colin cared about the content” a source tells me. 

Three sources say that in a desperate ploy to retain power and prevent Kroll’s rise, Yusupov suggested Rogowsky, a comedian with no tech or management experience, be made CEO of HQ Trivia. He even suggested the company film a reality show about Rogowsky taking over. That idea was quickly shot down as preposterous.

“It was a very personal desperation tactic not to have Colin be CEO. It was not a professionally thought-out idea” a source tells me, though another said it was always hard to tell if Yusupov’s crazy ideas were jokes. Both Yusupov and HQ Trivia declined to respond to multiple requests for comment, but we’ll update if we hear back.

HQ Trivia co-founder Colin Kroll passed away in December

Then tragedy struck in December. Kroll, then CEO, was found dead in his apartment from a drug overdose. Employees were distraught over what would happen next. “Colin’s plan was to ship fast, and get new things out there” a source says, noting that Kroll had pushed for the release of HQ’s first new game type HQ Words modeled after Wheel Of Fortune. “He wasn’t perfect but in the time he was in charge, the ship started to turn, but when Rus took over again it was like the 9 months where we did nothing.”

Coup d’éHQ

By February 2019, HQ’s staff was fed up. Two sources confirm that 20 of the roughly 35 employees signed a letter asking the board to remove Yusupov and establish a new CEO. With HQ’s download rate continuing to sink, they feared he’d run the startup into the ground. One source suggested Yusupov might rather have seen the whole startup come crashing down with the blame placed on the product than have it come to light that he played a large hand in the fall. The tone of the letter, which was never formally delivered but sources believe the board knew of, wasn’t accusatory but a plea for transparency about the company’s future and the staff’s job security.

At a hastily convened all-hands meeting in late February, HQ investor Liew told the company his fund Lightspeed would support a search for a new CEO to replace Yusupov, and provide that new CEO with funding for 18 more months of runway. Liew told the staff he would step down from the board once that CEO was found, but the search continues and so Liew remains on HQ’s board.

“Mostly everyone was on Jeremy’s side as no one wanted to work under Rus. Jeremy wasn’t trying to screw him over the way Rus would screw other people over. He just wanted to do what was right, getting behind what everyone wanted” a source said of Liew. 

Instead, HQ’s board moved forward with instituting a new executive decision-making committee composed of Yusupov, HQ’s head of production Nick Gallo, and VP of engineering Ben Sheats. Yusupov would remain interim CEO, and he continued to cling to power and there’s been little transparency about the CEO replacement process. Until a new CEO is found, HQ must subsist on its existing funds. The staff is “always worried about running out of runway” and are given vague answers when they ask leadership about how much money is left.

On March 1st, the committee emerged from a meeting and fired three employees — two who had spearheaded the petition and been vocal about Yusupov’s failings.

One who wasn’t fired was Rogowsky, despite sources saying at one point he’d tried to organize the staff to go on strike. Other employees had been cautious about standing up to Yusupov. “Everyone was terrified of retaliation. Their fears have totally been validated” a source explains. Engineers and other staffers with strong employment prospects began to drain out of the company. Those left were just trying to hold onto their jobs. Without inspiring leadership or a strategy to reverse user shrinkage, recruiting replacements would prove difficult.

Yusupov remains on the board, along with Tinder CEO Elie Seidman who Yusupov appointed to his additional common seat. Liew retains his seat until the new CEO is found and given that seat. And Kroll’s seat appears to have gone to Lightspeed partner Merci Victoria Grace. Lightspeed and Cyan of Founders Fund declined to respond to requests for comment.

Losing Face

Tensions at HQ and a desire to diversify his prospects led Rogowsky to pick up a side gig hosting baseball talk show ChangeUp on the DAZN network, TMZ reported this week. He’d hoped to continue hosting HQ during its big weekend contests. But tensions with Yusupov and the CEO’s desire for the host to remain exclusively at HQ led negotiations to sour causing Rogowsky to leave the startup entirely. TechCrunch was first to report that he’s been replaced by former HQ guest host Matt Richards, who Yusupov bluntly told me Friday had polled higher than Rogowsky in a SurveyMonkey survey of HQ’s top players.

In tweets, Rogowsky revealed that that “Sadly, it won’t be possible for me to continue hosting HQ concurrently as I had hoped” noting, “I wasn’t given the courtesy of a farewell show.” Finding a way to preserve Rogowsky’s ties to HQ likely would have been best for the startup.  TechCrunch had raised the concern a year ago that unless Rogowsky was properly locked in with an adequate equity vesting schedule at HQ, he could leave. Or worse, he could be poached by Facebook, Snapchat, or YouTube to host an HQ competitor.

“Rus is a visionary but not a good leader. He is extremely manipulative in an unproductive way. He’s a dude who just cares a lot about his reputation” a source noted. “A lot of the negative sentiment amongst staff is the belief that he cares more about his reputation than the company itself.”

HQ’s next attempt to revive growth appears to be HQ Editor’s Picks, is described as “a new live show on your phone where our host shows funny viral videos and you decide on who gets paid.” Finally it seems willing to embrace the potential of interactive live video entertainment outside of trivia and puzzles. HQ Editor’s Picks will face an uphill battle, since HQ dropped out of the top 1500 iOS apps last month, according to App Annie. Sensor Tower estimates that HQ saw just 8 percent as many downloads in March 2019 as March 2018.

After the loss of its spirit animal Rogowsky, the employees’ chosen leader Kroll, the supervision of veteran investor Cyan, and its product momentum, tough questions are what remain for HQ Trivia. The company’s struggles have paralyzed its progress towards finding a new viral mechanic or game format that attracts users. While HQ Words is fun, it’s too similar to its trivia competition to change the startup’s trajectory. And all of the in-fighting could scare off any talent hoping to turn HQ around. Unfortunately, securing an extra life for the game will take a more than a $3.99 in-app purchase.

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After its first attempt botched the landing, SpaceIL commits to second Beresheet lunar mission

The minds behind Israel’s SpaceIL attempted lunar landing convened today to begin planning for a second lunar mission.

In an announcement yesterday, the chairman of SpaceIL, Morris Kahn, said that the leaders of the group behind the Beresheet launch would begin meeting to find a new group of donors for another run at a lunar landing.

The dream goes on! Morris Kahn just announced the launching of Beresheet 2.0 #Beresheet2.0 #IsraeltotheMoon pic.twitter.com/fHlo3jeQ4W

— Israel To The Moon (@TeamSpaceIL) April 13, 2019

On Thursday the first Israeli mission to the moon ended in failure when the organization’s spacecraft Beresheet (which means Genesis in Hebrew) crashed on the lunar surface.

“This is part of my message to the younger generation: Even if you do not succeed, you get up again and try,” Kahn said in a statement.

At a cost of $200 million the Beresheet mission would have been among the cheapest lunar landings ever attempted — and the first legitimate attempt by a private organization to make it to the moon (even though the SpaceIL organization had significant backing from the Israeli government).

Israel’s Beresheet spacecraft is lost during historic lunar landing attempt

The project started as an attempt to claim the Google Lunar Xprize, which was announced over ten years ago and was not awarded because no team could make an attempt at a landing within the timeframe specified. But, Beresheet’s developers labored on with help from Israel Aerospace Industries — the country’s state-owned aviation business.

In part, the cost of the lunar landing was defrayed by using existing launch technologies. Beresheet started its voyage by hitching a ride on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket.

After spiraling out of earth’s orbit for a month and a half, the Beresheet spacecraft entered lunar orbit just over a week ago before making its attempted landing last Thursday.

Israel’s Beresheet spacecraft enters lunar orbit and prepares for landing

The final maneuver was an engine burn that would slow the spacecraft’s descent onto the lunar surface so that it could park on the Moon’s Sea of Serenity.

The vehicle made it most of the way to the moon. It took a picture of the blue marble from about 22 kilometers above the lunar surface and — a few minutes later — was lost.

Both Peter Diamandis, the founder of XPrize, and Anousheh Ansari, the foundation’s current chief executive, spoke to TechCrunch about the landing last week.

“What I’m seeing here is an incredible ‘Who’s Who’ from science, education and government who have gathered to watch this miracle take place,” Diamandis said. “We launched this competition now 11 years ago to inspire and educate engineers, and despite the fact that it ran out of time it has achieved 100 percent of its goal. Even if it doesn’t make it onto the ground fully intact it has ignited a level of electricity and excitement that reminds me of the Ansari Xprize 15 years ago.”

Meanwhile, Ansari emphasized the potential to reinvigorate commercial interest in lunar exploration and experimentation that the landing could evoke.

“Imagine, over the last 50 years only 500 people out of seven billion have been to space — that number will be thousands soon,” she said. “We believe there’s so much more that can be done in this area of technology, a lot of real business opportunities that benefit civilization but also humanity.”

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Spy on your smart home with this open source research tool

Researchers at Princeton University have built a web app that lets you (and them) spy on your smart home devices to see what they’re up to.

The open source tool, called IoT Inspector, is available for download here. (Currently it’s Mac OS only, with a wait list for Windows or Linux.)

In a blog about the effort the researchers write that their aim is to offer a simple tool for consumers to analyze the network traffic of their Internet connected gizmos. The basic idea is to help people see whether devices such as smart speakers or wi-fi enabled robot vacuum cleaners are sharing their data with third parties. (Or indeed how much snitching their gadgets are doing.)

Testing the IoT Inspector tool in their lab the researchers say they found a Chromecast device constantly contacting Google’s servers even when not in active use.

A Geeni smart bulb was also found to be constantly communicating with the cloud — sending/receiving traffic via a URL (tuyaus.com) that’s operated by a China-based company with a platform which controls IoT devices.

There are other ways to track devices like this — such as setting up a wireless hotspot to sniff IoT traffic using a packet analyzer like WireShark. But the level of technical expertise required makes them difficult for plenty of consumers.

Whereas the researchers say their web app doesn’t require any special hardware or complicated set-up so it sounds easier than trying to go packet sniffing your devices yourself. (Gizmodo, which got an early look at the tool, describes it as “incredibly easy to install and use”.)

One wrinkle: The web app doesn’t work with Safari; requiring either Firefox or Google Chrome (or a Chromium-based browser) to work.

The main caveat is that the team at Princeton do want to use the gathered data to feed IoT research — so users of the tool will be contributing to efforts to study smart home devices.

The title of their research project is Identifying Privacy, Security, and Performance Risks of Consumer IoT Devices. The listed principle investigators are professor Nick Feamster and PhD student Danny Yuxing Huang at the university’s Computer Science department.

The Princeton team says it intends to study privacy and security risks and network performance risks of IoT devices. But they also note they may share the full dataset with other non-Princeton researchers after a standard research ethics approval process. So users of IoT Inspector will be participating in at least one research project. (Though the tool also lets you delete any collected data — per device or per account.)

“With IoT Inspector, we are the first in the research community to produce an open-source, anonymized dataset of actual IoT network traffic, where the identity of each device is labelled,” the researchers write. “We hope to invite any academic researchers to collaborate with us — e.g., to analyze the data or to improve the data collection — and advance our knowledge on IoT security, privacy, and other related fields (e.g., network performance).”

They have produced an extensive FAQ which anyone thinking about running the tool should definitely read before getting involved with a piece of software that’s explicitly designed to spy on your network traffic. (tl;dr, they’re using ARP-spoofing to intercept traffic data — a technique they warn may slow your network, in addition to the risk of their software being buggy.)

The dataset that’s being harvesting by the traffic analyzer tool is anonymized and the researchers specify they’re not gathering any public-facing IP addresses or locations. But there are still some privacy risks — such as if you have smart home devices you’ve named using your real name. So, again, do read the FAQ carefully if you want to participate.

For each IoT device on a network the tool collects multiple data-points and sends them back to servers at Princeton University — including DNS requests and responses; destination IP addresses and ports; hashed MAC addresses; aggregated traffic statistics; TLS client handshakes; and device manufacturers.

The tool has been designed not to track computers, tablets and smartphones by default, given the study focus on smart home gizmos. Users can also manually exclude individual smart devices from being tracked if they’re able to power them down during set up or by specifying their MAC address.

Up to 50 smart devices can be tracked on the network where IoT Inspector is running. Anyone with more than 50 devices is asked to contact the researchers to ask for an increase to that limit.

The project team has produced a video showing how to install the app on Mac:

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Don’t Want to Learn Coding? 5 Ways to Still Make Powerful Automated Tools

Learning to code helps. But you don’t have to learn coding to build tools on the web. With the right no-code development tools, you can quickly create automated docs that are just as powerful as apps. Think about it… you can take short cuts through everyday chores that would take complicated scripts or an expensive app. You don’t need to call a software engineer or learn a programming language on your own.

Just bring your creativity and create simple apps or automated documents that get the job done. Dive into these five no-code platforms here.

1. Coda: Stretch Your Docs and Spreadsheets

Think of Coda as what a spreadsheet can be with some clever automation. Coda starts with a blank canvas. Then add a table, add a few rows and columns, and integrate a few pre-built automated building blocks. The humble text document or spreadsheet starts behaving like a native app.

Coda is designed with automation and flexibility in mind. You can use automatic triggers to do away with any repetitive tasks. For example, Uber used Coda to build a team tracker that helped them re-design their taxi-hailing app. You can automate your to-do list to autogenerate both daily and weekly tasks without typing them every time.

Coda is a collaborative tool that is free for now. Expect price tiers to come in once the tool matures. You can start with a blank canvas or use the many templates available. Any documents you create can be used with the iOS app too.

Download: Coda for iOS (Free)

2. uCalc: Make Your Own Calculators

Not every calculator is about math. But it is always about different types of calculations. There are a variety of free calculators online. But uCalc helps you build your own. It is a visual DIY builder for calculators and forms that don’t need any coding skills.

You can make calculators and intelligent forms for every need—personal or professional. For example, you can build one that calculates the cost of pizza based on its ingredients. Or make a calculator that adds up the cost of an interior decoration project.

Create a calculator in minutes with the drag and drop visual editor. You can take advantage of templates too. After you customize it, take the code and embed it on the platform of your choice. uCalc supports uCoz, uKit, WordPress, Joomla, Wix, Drupal, ModX, OpenCart, Magento, and many others.

uCalc has a pricing tier. The free calculator allows three projects and limited CRM.

3. Carrd: Build a Single Page Website in Seconds

If you do any kind of work on the web, then you should advertise your presence with a simple portfolio or a website. Gone are the days when you had to labor over HTML and CSS, or even Adobe Dreamweaver. A slew of drag and drop DIY website builders have made it so easy. Add Carrd to the list.

Carrd is an automated website builder for clean, one page portfolios. The responsive portfolios look just as good on any screen. Start off with a blank page, or choose from the beautiful templates. Then, design your page with the drag and drop content blocks: drag text under an image, make a row of links across the top, or even add some of your own code.

The free plan allows you three sites per account. With the Pro plan ( $9/year), you can have custom domains and Google Analytics.

4. Glide: Create a Mobile App From a Google Sheet

Everyone seems to be creating mobile apps these days and earning “millions”. Well, it isn’t as easy as it sounds and a fraction move up with their checking accounts. But mobile app development isn’t going anywhere. Even then you must be feeling a bit left out? How about learning Android app development or Swift? No? Well, try Glide then.

Glide isn’t alone in helping you make a mobile app from Google Sheets. But it does offer a comfy free plan. The Google Sheet acts as the database. Glide imports the data and assembles a default app which you can customize with layouts, images, icons, and more.

The finished app gets a landing page of its own from where you can share it with others. Glide has Free, Pro, and Business plans.

5. VoiceFlow: Voice Bots for Alexa and Google Assistant

Yes, you can even build voice bots without any coding. It takes just a bit of logic to sequence the flow of information that the voice app will process. Voiceflow makes that easier with its pre-built lego style block system which you assemble step by step.

For example, the starting greeting from Alexa or Google Assistant is one block. Your query could then be handled by the different choice blocks, with each leading to different results. Voiceflow connects to APIs & 3rd party services for queries and interactions.

Voiceflow gives you one visual designer from where you can make and launch both Alexa and Google Assistant bots. Thanks to the absence of coding, you can become an Alexa (of Google) Skills builder in a fraction of time.

Start with the Free plan that allows for three projects. Professional and Business plans are paid tiers.

Be Creative Without Learning to Code

Code is all around us. But these “no-code” platforms show that the future of our digital society need not depend on coders alone. If you can think “out of the box” it will be yours too. Of course, the code-less apps you build will not instantly turn you into the next Mark Zuckerberg but will turn you into a person who can design solutions.

There are many other things you can build online without code. Get your confidence up with these no-coding templates for personal websites.

Image Credit: wowomnom/Depositphotos.com

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The 7 Best Microsoft Office Alternatives for Mac Users

It’s fairly easy to leave Windows behind. Just buy a Mac, take a couple of days to settle in, and never look back. But for Microsoft Office users, the need to buy Office for Mac again can be a hassle.

If you work in a traditional office environment that runs on Excel and Word, you might have to bite the bullet. But if you’ve outgrown that world and still need to edit and send Office documents every now and then, you have alternative options.

If you’re not ready to buy Microsoft Office, here are your best free Office alternatives for Mac.

1. Google Suite

If you’re going to let go of the Microsoft world, your best bet is to join the Google alliance. Google Docs, Sheets, and Slides are the three alternatives to Microsoft Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. There’s no real alternative to Outlook beyond Gmail, and you can get OneNote on Mac for free.

Google’s suite is really good and integrates well with your Google account. You’ll be able to open an Excel file you received via Gmail in Google Sheets with a quick button press.

You can easily import Microsoft Office files to work on them, then export them again in Microsoft Office formats to pass them around. And if what you’re doing is fairly basic, with standard fonts and formatting, you can get away with it. The other party will never find out that you’re not using Microsoft Office proper.

In some ways, Google Docs is more powerful than Microsoft Word. There’s an extensive add-on gallery, beautiful templates, superior research tools built-in, and Google search capabilities to boot.

Plus, there’s the advantage of Google’s cloud prowess. Collaborating with multiple users simultaneously in a document is a pure joy. It’s a little benefit, but it does wonders for productivity.

The entire suite is free and you get 15GB of storage included. The only problem is that there’s no real desktop app for any of these (though you can work offline on documents in Chrome, using the Offline mode). Accompanying apps for iPhone and iPad are great too.

Visit: Google Docs | Google Sheets | Google Slides

2. LibreOffice

LibreOffice is widely recognized as the best open source alternative to Microsoft Office suite. This means it’s completely free and available on a host of platforms. It’s the best Office alternative for Mac.

If you’re used to the Microsoft Office user interface (pre-Ribbon era), it won’t take you long to adjust to LibreOffice. Unlike Google’s apps, the LibreOffice suite comes with fully featured offline desktop apps with all the pro features you expect.

To make the deal even sweeter, LibreOffice recently added an online component. So you can sync files from Google Drive or OneDrive and edit them right in LibreOffice (there’s no collaboration feature, though).

LibreOffice also does a good job in regards to formatting when importing Microsoft Office documents. Even complex Excel spreadsheets imported into LibreOffice Calc work like they should.

LibreOffice actually grew out of OpenOffice, which used to be the de facto alternative to Microsoft Office. But OpenOffice hasn’t seen any meaningful updates recently, and its management is considering retiring the project. So we advise you to stay away from OpenOffice. Conversely, LibreOffice’s track record in the recent past has been great.

Download: LibreOffice (Free)

3. iWork Suite

Included with your Mac is the iWork Suite: Pages, Numbers, and Keynote. These are Apple’s own alternatives to Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. Pages, for instance, is the best Word alternative for Mac.

As these are Mac-centric apps, the UI is quite different. Instead of being top-heavy, the options show up in a contextual menu on the side. And you don’t have as many options as the Microsoft Office suite. Since all three apps are now matured, all the basics are covered.

Once you get used to them, they’re actually pleasant to use (something we can’t necessarily say about Microsoft Office). While customization options are limited, everything that’s available is quite polished. When you create a presentation in Keynote, chances are you’ll end up creating something beautiful. The same goes with Pages—moving text, images, and graphs around is a seamless experience that doesn’t make you want to pull your hair out.

The iWork Suite lets you import and export documents in Microsoft Office formats (it will save to the default iWork format, though). And as long as you don’t use a Mac-specific font, doing a back-and-forth with Office documents shouldn’t be a big problem.

iWork also has online collaboration options but frankly, I wouldn’t recommend using them. They’re nowhere near as reliable as Google’s offering.

Download: Pages | Numbers | Keynote (Free)

4. Office Online

When nothing else will do, just open Office.com. It essentially gives you access to free Office for Mac. Office Online is Microsoft’s free and basic Microsoft Office service that works in any browser.

While the feature set is limited, the basics of document editing, spreadsheet formulas, and presentation options are all covered. You’ll get access to Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote.

Visit: Office Online

5. Edit Office Documents in Dropbox

Dropbox’s partnership with Microsoft means you can open a Word, Excel, or PowerPoint document shared with you on Dropbox. You don’t need an Office 365 license, but you’ll require a free Microsoft account. Using this option opens your document in Office Online.

6. Ditch PowerPoint for Better Online Tools

PowerPoint is powerful, but it’s also pretty old-school. If you want to stand out with your presentations, try some more modern online presentation tools:

• Slides: This is my personal favorite for creating beautiful presentations easily. The free account lets you create and present documents online. To export, you’ll need to upgrade to a paid account.
• Prezi: While this service is geared more towards startups, the visual tools offered by Prezi are beyond anything you can get with PowerPoint.
• Canva: Canva is an online image editor, but it has an extensive library of presentation templates. Plus, Canva gives you all the important tools for creating a customized presentation.

7. Embrace Markdown

Here’s an idea purely out of left field. If you given up Windows and embraced the Mac platform, you must have started appreciating macOS’s simplicity by now. If you want more of that for creating and editing plain text documents, you should try using Markdown.

Markdown is a syntax like HTML, but it’s much simpler. When you use a Markdown app to write, you don’t get lost in dozens of menu options. All the formatting happens using shortcodes.

So for example, to make a word italic, you wrap it with asterisks. You can create a complex formatted document without ever lifting your fingers from the keyboard. Plus, Markdown exports as clean HTML and you can generate beautiful PDFs using apps like Ulysses.

If Needed, Use Microsoft Office Without Paying for It

Buying the latest version of Microsoft Office will cost you a few hundred dollars (or a subscription for Office 365). Most of the time, the options listed above will suffice for you. Google Docs works as a great alternative to Word, and the same goes for Sheets and Excel. If you’re looking for offline alternatives, LibreOffice should be more than enough.

But there might be times where you have to use Office for a particular task or for a limited period of time. There are a couple of ways to do this without paying, including using Office Online or one of the mobile apps. We’ve outlined all your options in our guide to using Microsoft Office without paying for it.

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Need Free Blog Hosting? Try Blogger With a Custom Domain

There are few popular blogging platforms including Blogger, Typepad, and WordPress. So why should you use Google’s Blogger? Because it’s free and has a strong backend infrastructure support from Google. Although free hosting is a bad idea, Blogger doesn’t compromise on features, and it’s easy to get started.

Once you get a custom domain of your choice, you can start blogging with a small investment. This step-by-step tutorial will help you register a domain name and connect it with your blog. I assume that you already have a Blogspot blog.

What Is a Custom Domain?

When you sign up for Blogger, you get a domain like “yourblog.blogspot.com.” Your blog is under the sub-domain of blogspot.com. In contrast, the custom domain is a top-level root domain in the form of “yourblog.com.” They appear in the address bar of web browsers.

You do not have to be a technically savvy person to set up a custom domain, but it may help to understand a few key blogging terms.

• Domain name: They’re a vital part of internet infrastructure. Without them, you would need to remember the exact IP address for each web site you visit.
• Domain extension: Also known as Top Level Domains or TLDs, it refers to the last section of your domain name. For example, “.com” is the commonly used domain suffix.
• Domain registrar: These are companies like Namecheap, GoDaddy, Google Domain, and many others that host or manage domain names for an annual fee.

Many newbie bloggers who begin with a free blogging platform or hosting don’t invest in a custom domain. They keep on blogging for several years with the blogspot domain.

And when their blog starts getting traffic, they switch to a custom domain. That’s not the right strategy. You should invest in a custom domain if you are interested in doing this long term. It has many advantages.

Advantages of Blogger on a Custom Domain

Buying a Domain Name Is Cheap

Registering the domain typically costs between 10-$15 per year. Google doesn’t charge anything for hosting the content on Blogger. There are many domain registrars available, choose anyone and stick to it. Unlike WordPress.com, you don’t have to pay any money to set up a custom domain on Blogger.

Personal Branding

A custom domain helps you to establish your blog as a professional brand. They also look better in advertisements, business cards, and in other marketing material. It also removes the impression that you’re using a free blog for promoting spam.

Better Exposure in Search Engines

A blog with a custom domain generally gets higher search engine ranking than blogspot.com domain. You’ll also get new readers, search traffic, and social media credibility. Having a custom domain also ensures trust among other website owners and increases the chance of backlinks.

Portability

If you decide to get a full featured website in the future, it is possible to switch to a different host yet keep the same domain name and search engine rankings. But if you use a blogspot address and later on change to a custom domain, you lose all the domain authority, backlinks, traffic, and analytics you had built up.

Custom Email Address

A custom email address is always in the form of the name attached to your domain name. You can get this type of email address only when you buy a custom domain. It’s easy to set up an email address with your domain on Google Apps.

Google Adsense for Blogger

With Blogger, you can make money by running ads on your blog. You’ll see a Sign up for AdSense button right in your Blogger account backend. If you don’t see the button, it means your blog might not qualify for AdSense. Check out the AdSense eligibility checklist to find out why. With a custom domain, the chance of getting AdSense approval increases.

Register Your Domain With Google Domains

Google Domains is a domain name registrar. You can use Google Domains to search, buy and manage domains, transfer a domain you already own from another registrar, and more. Google Domains is only available for users in selected countries including US, UK, India, and more. Check your location in the country availability checklist.

To search for a domain, navigate to Google Domains and click Get a new domain. Enter a few keywords in the search box, then review the results to find out if the domain is available.

Note: Make sure that you log into Blogger with the same email ID you use to log in to Google Domains. Also, confirm that you add the domain owner as an administrator of the blog.

Filter Your Search

When you search for a domain, Google Domains automatically searches for that domain with several domain suffixes (for example, .com, .net, .org). Click the Filter Domains button to further refine your search.

• You can search for a specific ending suffix. Under the Endings section, choose a relevant domain suffix from the dropdown menu.
• Type in your preferred domain name and let Google Domains show you some available variations. Toggle All Endings at the top of your search results page to view all the possible domains. There is also a price filter to list domains within your budget.

Buy the Domain

Once you identify the domain you’d like to buy, click Add to cart. Review the following settings:

• Enable Privacy protection is on to keep the contact information private. If someone tries to look up your data in WHOIS, then they’ll see alternate contact information given by a third-party provider.
• Enable Auto-renew is on, so you don’t have to worry about domain expiration.

Click the Checkout button at the bottom of your cart. Enter the Contact information for the domain. Select your payment method and click Buy.

Connect Your Domain With Blogger

Step 1: Sign in to Blogger and select the blog you want to update.

Step 2: On the left sidebar, click Settings > Basic.

Step 3: On the right panel, under the Publishing section, click +Setup a Google Domain URL for your blog.

Step 4: Enter the sub-domain you want to use or leave it blank to keep www.

Step 5: Select your domain in the list under Google Domains settings and click Save.

Redirect Non-WWW to WWW

To change your domain (example: bloginoptometry.com) to www.bloginoptometry.com, set up a redirect. Under Publishing > Blog Address, click Edit.

Check the option which says Redirect mydomain.com to www.mydomain.com. Click Save. Google will then take care of redirection part, and if anyone opens your blogspot address, they’ll get automatically redirected to your new custom domain name.

Turn On HTTPS for Your Blog

Users expect a secure online experience when using a website. We recommend you to adopt HTTPS to encrypt their traffic with your website, regardless of the content on your site. Blogger lets you enable HTTPS easily.

To turn on HTTPS for your custom domain blog, click Settings > Basic. On the right, under HTTPS availability and HTTPS redirect, select Yes.

Even if you don’t use a custom domain, HTTPS is automatically turned on for your blog, but the HTTPS setting remains hidden. And when you turn on HTTPS redirect, visitors always reach the encrypted version of your blog.

Final Check

Once you set up your custom domain and enable HTTPS, it’s time to check everything. Type in your blog address, and you should be able to access your website without any errors. If not, wait for a few moments and let Google take care of all the technical steps.

Blogging With WordPress

Ease of use and simplicity are the main advantages of Blogger. Once you buy a domain from Google Domains, it just takes a few minutes to start your blog. The whole process may look technical, but once you’re inside the Blogger dashboard and follow all the steps in this article, it’ll be easier for you to implement.

After getting used to the basics of blogging, your next step should be to migrate from Blogger to a self-hosted WordPress site.

We highly recommend managed WordPress hosting with WP Engine, which takes all the headache of running a website out of the picture. Need something a bit more affordable? MakeUseOf readers can get a special discount at InMotion Hosting by signing up using this link.

Then check out our guide on how to set up your blog with WordPress.

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The 10 Best Camera Apps for Android and iOS

The Best Ebook Reader for PC: 6 Apps Compared

Most people probably read ebooks on their tablet or a dedicated e-reader; it’s more convenient than whipping your laptop out every time you want to read a few pages.

However, there are times when a reliable ebooks reader for Windows is essential, for example, if you need to use an ebook for reference on a school project or if your main reader’s battery dies while traveling.

When the time comes, you need to make sure you have one of the best ebook readers for PC. Keep reading to discover our top six picks.

1. Kindle

Just as Kindle is one of the best e-readers for Android, so too is it among the leading e-readers for PC (there’s a Mac version as well if you’re interested).

As you’d expect, use the Kindle app to sign into your Amazon account, and all your Amazon ebooks will instantly appear. Be aware that you need to manually download the books onto your machine by clicking on their thumbnails if you want to do some reading while you’re offline.

Prime Reading and Kindle Unlimited subscribers will also be able to use the Kindle PC app to access their books.

And if you’re not an Amazon subscriber, don’t worry. You can still use the Kindle app to open other ebooks on your computer. Unlike the Kindle e-readers, the Kindle PC app will even let you open ebooks in the EPUB format.

Download: Kindle for PC (Free)

2. Calibre

If you’re a bookworm, Calibre is a must-have app. It is perhaps best described as iTunes for ebooks.

The app lets you manage your library, edit books’ metadata, convert ebooks into different formats, and—most importantly for the purposes of this article—read ebooks using the built-in reader.

Indeed, if you’re looking for a multi-purpose app for all your ebook needs, you really don’t need to look anywhere else.

If we had to criticize anything about Calibre’s e-reader, it would be the design. It’s just not as slick as some of the other ebook readers for PC.

However, despite the dated looks, from a functional standpoint, Calibre is great. The e-reader’s tools include adjustable font size, bookmarking, a reference mode, and a full-screen mode.

Download: Calibre (Free)

3. Icecream Ebook Reader

Another ebook reader for PC that’s been around for a long time is Icecream Ebook Reader.

If the design is important to you, the most recent iteration of the app is significantly better than Calibre. The in-app icons resemble the rest of the Windows operating system, almost giving you the impression that you’re using a native app.

Some of Icecream Ebook Reader’s most important features include a night mode for less eye strain when it’s dark, bookmarks, and even a book mode which displays pages side-by-side on your screen.

The app also comes with a library feature, extensive search features, translation tools, and a way to annotate ebooks with your own thoughts and musings.

It supports EPUB, MOBI, FB2, PDF, CBR, CBZ, and TXT.

Extra features, such as custom library categories, metadata editing, and the ability to copy text are only available in the $19.95 Pro version.

Download: Icecream Ebook Reader (Free, premium version available)

4. Freda

If you’ve still not found your ideal ebook reader for PC, you should try Freda.

The free e-reader app is available on both Windows and Android, so if you frequently use both operating systems and you’d like a seamless ebook experience across all your platforms, it’s definitely worth installing.

Freda supports five different ebook formats: EPUB, MOBI, FB2, HTML, and TXT. EPUBs will only work if they are DRM-free. The app does not offer any way to remove existing DRM from your ebooks.

The app’s other features include integration with your Calibre book library, support for OneDrive and Dropbox, the ability to highlight and annotate your books, and fully customizable controls, fonts, and colors.

The app can also sync with ebook repos on the web such as Gutenberg, Smashwords, and Feedbooks.

If you use the app on Windows and Android, your reading progress will be synced across all your devices.

Download: Freda (Free)

5. Bibliovore

Bibliovore is a well-designed ebook reader that’s been developed with touch-screen laptops in mind. There are large buttons and several gesture controls which combine to make in-app navigation a breeze.

The app’s key features include:

• Personalized bookmarks.
• A night reading mode to help prevent eye strain.
• Multiple themes, including white, sepia, and dark.
• The ability to manually group multiple books into a series.
• Customizable fonts and text size.
• Advanced search tools.
• Support for EPUB and PDF books.

Bibliovore can sync your reading progress across all your devices where you have the app installed. It includes both a landscape and portrait reading mode and can display two pages side-by-side for a book-like experience.

Download: Bibliovore (Free)

6. Bookviser Reader

The last popular ebook reader for PCs on our list is Bookviser Reader. It supports three file formats: EPUB, TXT, and FB2.

(Note: Check out our article on the different ebook formats if you’d like more information about their respective differences.)

Bookviser Reader is highly customizable. Not only can you adjust the font type and size, but you can also change the margins, line spacing, page-turning animations, color themes, and on-screen indicators like the battery, time, page number, and reading progress bar.

You can also set up two different themes for day and night reading, import books from OneDrive, look up word definitions, make annotations, and highlight text.

The Bookviser Reader app is free to download and use and is ad-free.

Download: Bookviser Reader (Free)

Which Is Your Favorite Ebook Reader for PC?

The e-readers for PCs that we have reviewed in this article should be more than enough for most bookworms to find something that meets their needs.

But we’d love to hear what you think, so make sure you let us know about your favorite ebook readers in the comments below.

And if you would like to learn more, check out our article how to read ebooks on a phone or tablet and our list of sites that offer free ebooks.

Read the full article: The Best Ebook Reader for PC: 6 Apps Compared

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