→ There is just one Internet

September 5, 2015
by Riccardo Mori
Briefly

Speaking of Benedict Evans, his latest article, Forget about the mobile Internet is indeed quite interesting, and I generally agree with his assessment. However, I’m not sure I agree with how the main stance is worded:

For as long as the idea of the ‘mobile internet’ has been around, we’ve thought of it a cut-down subset of the ‘real’ Internet. I’d suggest it’s time to invert that — to think about mobile as the real internet and the desktop as the limited, cut-down version.

When it comes to pure Web browsing, I consider the experience with my iPhone 5 and the experience with my 15-inch MacBook Pro, and I have a hard time thinking of ‘desktop Internet’ as the “limited, cut-down version” of the Internet. I understand the point Evans is making — it’s time to think mobile-first, desktop-later, but I also believe it’s time to think about better tailoring the internet experience for all devices, mobile and desktop together, without relegating either to a second-class element. Sure, mobile has grown at an incredible pace and it’s now become ‘more important’ than desktop computing thanks to its inherent portability and ubiquitousness:

Mobile is not a subset of the internet anymore, that you use only if you’re waiting for a coffee or don’t have a PC in front of you — it’s becoming the main way that people use the internet. It’s not mobile that’s limited to a certain set of locations and use cases — it’s the PC, that can only do the web (and yes, legacy desktop apps, if you care, and consumers don’t) and only be used sitting down. It’s time to invert that mental model — there is not the ‘mobile internet’ and the internet. Rather, if anything, it’s the internet and the ‘desktop internet’

But that distinction — the internet and the ‘desktop internet’ — sounds a bit unfair as it sounds unfair to consider the ‘mobile internet’ as a cut-down subset of the ‘real’ internet. A lot of people still use laptops and desktops to browse the Web and carry out Internet-related activities. I’ve already seen the effects of putting mobile first in certain areas of Web development, and the result is extremely sparse websites design-wise, which may look cool and functional on a phone, but become horribly bland experiences on a computer with a bigger screen. Computers may be more stationary tools than mobile devices, and mobile devices may now be the first point of internet access today, but that doesn’t mean that the ‘desktop internet’ should now become a second-class experience. The real internet is everywhere, through every device.

→ Not the same photos

September 5, 2015
by Riccardo Mori
Handpicked

Benedict Evans has done some calculations and estimates, and his conclusion is that all the digital photos shared this year are going to be more than all the photos taken on film in the entire history of the film camera business:

Hence, at least 2 trillion photos will be shared this year, and possibly 3 trillion or more. Spread across roughly 2bn smartphone users, that’s only 2–3 photos per day per person, which is not so extraordinary, and of course use is not actually spread evenly, so there’s room in that number for some people to be sharing lots and others none. 

That’s just how many photos were shared, though. How many more were taken and not shared? Again, there’s no solid data for this (though Apple and Google probably have some). Some image sharing is probably 1:1 for taken:shared (Snapchat, perhaps) but other people on other services will take hundreds and share only a few. So it could be double the number of photos shared or it could be 10x. Meanwhile, estimates of the total number of photos ever taken on film range from 2.5–3.5 trillion. That in turn would suggest that more photos will be taken this year than were taken on film in the entire history of the analogue camera business. 

Apart from being the classic bit of trivia that makes you go, Huh, who would have thought? I struggle to find this comparison meaningful. The context around the act of taking a photo and sharing it has changed dramatically over time. It has changed within the history of film photography (before and after the revolution introduced by the 35mm format, for example), and of course it has changed after the shift to digital photography and after smartphones have become ubiquitous photographic tools always connected to the Internet.

Before, the average person didn’t carry a camera with them all the time. Taking photos was usually an activity planned in advance: you brought your film camera with you on trips and holidays, or at gatherings such as weddings, and at certain parties and dinners. The photo enthusiasts would bring their cameras to photo-walks, too. Sharing photos was always a delayed activity (you had to finish a roll of photos, then go to a photo lab to have it developed and the photos printed). With slides, there was the typical, often boring occasion of gathering around the slide projector in a darkened room to see dozens of holiday pictures at a time. Instant photography meant Polaroids, but given that packs of Polaroids have always been expensive, and more expensive than a regular 35mm film roll, instant sharing with film wasn’t even remotely comparable to the instant sharing we carry out today with smartphones and global connectivity.

Before, fewer people owned cameras. I’m thinking about my family, but I believe it was common in many other households. There was one ‘serious’ camera in my household, that belonged to my father. He took photos at birthdays, during Christmastime, sometimes brought the camera with us during Sunday walks at the park or around the city we lived in, and during extended excursions or trips. I had a less sophisticated camera he passed to me, but used it rarely and wasn’t particularly fun to use either. Today, when I happen to see a family of tourists, everyone has a camera or a photo-taking device. Today I see 10-year-olds with low-end smartphones taking photos of everything that surrounds them. They probably take more photos than I did even in my most trigger-happy film photography phase, when I went through a disposable camera after another. 

Today, the convenience and ubiquitousness of connected smartphones, and the fact that snapping a photo virtually costs nothing, make more people shoot more photos, also with an unprecedented level of compulsion I may add. In 1990, you didn’t see people in a cafeteria or restaurant snapping photos at their food before eating. Photography was a purposeful activity with higher associated costs. You generally thought twice or thrice before wasting a shot when you loaded your camera with 24- or 36-exposure rolls. Today there’s plenty of room for very spur-of-the-moment pictures, especially because the sharing part of the process has gained much more weight than in the analogue photography days — you can share your photos with the world now, not just with your circle of friends — so every moment, every situation in your waking hours has the potential of getting photographed, documented, shared. 

So yes, the amount of photos taken and shared has increased exponentially, but so have changed the tools, the technology, the habits, the culture and the whole context behind photography. That’s why it shouldn’t be surprising that today the whole world is taking and sharing a crapload of photos all the time. And that’s why a comparison between the current digital+connected scenario and traditional film photography makes little sense to me in this regard.

On Spotify's updated privacy policy

September 2, 2015
by Riccardo Mori
Tech Life

(Please note: I’m not affiliated with Spotify in any way. I’m just trying to offer a more balanced view on the matter.)

I first learnt about the new Spotify privacy policy when I read this article by Kirk McElhearn, titled Spotify’s New Privacy Policy Is Downright Invasive (But They’re Sorry). The potential invasiveness of said privacy policy must have triggered quite the uproar because, shortly after, Spotify CEO Daniel Ek wrote an apology and explanation on Spotify’s official blog. It is important to read Ek’s post to fully understand the nature of the policy changes. And one aspect in particular — you won’t be forced to share personal information you don’t want to share. Ek states:

In our new privacy policy, we indicated that we may ask your permission to access new types of information, including photos, mobile device location, voice controls, and your contacts. Let me be crystal clear here: If you don’t want to share this kind of information, you don’t have to. We will ask for your express permission before accessing any of this data – and we will only use it for specific purposes that will allow you to customize your Spotify experience.

He then proceeds to explain how the information you choose to share will be used. Read the post in full before rage-quitting Spotify.

It’s true, Spotify should have better clarified its new privacy policy terms from the start. Did the company try to pull a sneaky move? Who knows, but as a long-time Spotify subscriber, I’m willing to give it the benefit of the doubt. So far, I’ve never received spam or an excessive amount of notifications from Spotify, despite having a lot of entries ticked in the Notification Settings of my account:

Spotify notification settings

And (for now, at least) there’s a lot of personal information that’s still pretty optional: Spotify doesn’t know what type of mobile phone I have, nor my phone number. And there’s a specific setting for sharing my account information with third-party providers which is deselected by default:

Spotify marketing

I always keep a close eye on privacy policies and I’ll certainly review my account settings carefully in the future. If I notice any kind of abuse, or if the new privacy policy terms work in different ways from what has been explained in Ek’s post, I’ll also consider deleting my Spotify account, eventually. In the meantime, please, take some time to read Daniel Ek’s clarification (and even the previous post in Spotify’s blog). Don’t just voice your shock for these new terms, urging people to pre-emptively move away from Spotify, and generally spreading FUD. A few people and friends contacted me, doing exactly that, and the real irony is that they’re all avid Facebook users…

→ Art of the Title: The Thomas Crown Affair (1968)

September 1, 2015
by Riccardo Mori
Briefly

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While finally catching up with a lot of unread RSS feeds after the summer holiday, I was quite happy to see that one of my favourite sites, Art of the Title, has covered one of my favourite Steve McQueen’s movies, The Thomas Crown Affair.

The Art of the Title’s article focuses on the multi-screen technique of designer Pablo Ferro, who created the movie’s opening titles and some key montages within the movie.

So impressed were Jewison and Ashby by Ferro’s efforts, that one multiple screen sequence soon became another and another and another. The technique was used alternatively to draw attention to small details and to build suspense, revealing the intricacies of Crown’s masterfully staged heists from every possible angle. “In the three to four minutes of multiple image time, audiences had really been exposed to close to 15 minutes of straight-cut film,” Jewison said of the sequences.

In the film’s title sequence, Ferro’s multi-screen technique creates a layout not unlike a moving magazine spread, an effect that would not look out of place on a modern tablet computer. Unlike the subsequent multi-screen sequences, the title sequence features no actual footage from the film. Not wanting to spoil the movie in its opening moments, Ferro suggested assembling the titles out of publicity stills and other behind-the-scenes photos from the production.

If you love this movie, you’ll enjoy the full article. And please support Art of the Title, it’s an awesome site featuring excellent-quality content.

The summer special: being locked out of your own accounts

August 30, 2015
by Riccardo Mori
Tech Life

Computer security is difficult, and sometimes erring on the side of caution only gets in the way of the users you’re trying to protect, giving them unnecessary headaches.

Pretty much every August, I leave for the holidays, often to go and visit my parents in Italy. Pretty much every August, I get locked out of my Gmail accounts because Google detects a login from a different IP address than the usual, and prevents the login as a precautionary measure because it thinks someone else is hacking into my account.

When I voiced my frustration at the beginning of the month, a few people contacted me, all suggesting I turn on two-factor authentication, which is perhaps the swiftest way to put the whole issue at rest. But I’m not comfortable with giving Google my mobile phone number, and my medium-to-long-term plan is to solve the problem in a totally different way anyway — by getting rid of all my Gmail accounts. 

But let’s get back to the problem. Every Gmail account I have has a recovery email account associated with it. To these secondary email accounts I receive the standard warning email from Google: Suspicious sign-in prevented. The links provided in such emails basically help me regain control of my Gmail account by resetting the password. Again, good practice in theory, hugely annoying in practice when the person trying to log into my Gmail account is just me but from an ‘unusual’ location. Annoying because I have to update the password on every other device and computer I use to access that account. And of course Google won’t let me revert to the old password once I manage to access the account.

When I was finally able to access the first Gmail account I had been locked out of, there was a scary-sounding email message from Google: Someone has your password. You can follow the link provided in this message to review your devices and — more importantly — tell Google that the ‘suspicious activity’ was actually yours. This is the crucial point: if Google flags a login attempt because it came from an IP address that is not in the usual range of addresses associated with your activity, but you indicate that such address was in fact okay, the flagged IP address should get whitelisted. But it doesn’t. Not in my case, at least. On a hunch, I went back and checked my Gmail inboxes on August 2014 and August 2013, and I found an eerily familiar situation: suspicious sign-ins prevented, activity originating from basically the same IP addresses (only the last number changed). 

Google is all about learning patterns, yet it doesn’t seem to understand that a user logging into his own accounts from a different IP address but always from the same place every August might in fact be the legitimate owner, accessing his email from the site he’s spending the summer holidays. Especially after the user himself indicated that that IP address was fine and not suspicious.

After begrudgingly resetting the password of the first Gmail account I was locked out of, and unwilling to undergo the same annoying process for the remaining two accounts I still had to check, I got an idea which fortunately saved me from further trouble and I wished it had come to me before — I connected to the VPN of the university where my wife works, and logged into my Gmail accounts from there.

Before this little ordeal started, I had figured I’d spend 10–15 minutes to check my email and, if need be, respond to any urgent message. Instead I lost almost two hours. But oh yes, I felt very protected all the time — apparently even from myself.