There's a reason Gmail is far and away the world's most popular e-mail program with 1.5 billion users. It has way more features than rivals.
Are you using them?
Wouldn't you like to make free phone calls from your e-mail program or translate a French e-mail into English, right from within Gmail? Google's free e-mail program, which turned 15 this week, continues to innovate.
Here are seven things you can do with Gmail that you can't do with AOL, Yahoo or Microsoft Outlook.com or Hotmail.
Make free phone calls
Technically, Microsoft lets you do this, too, via Outlook.com, but it takes you out of the program and over to Skype. In Gmail, just click "Make a call," at the bottom of the left-hand screen, type in the number of your contact and connect via your webcam mic. Calls to the United States and Canada are free and connected to Google's Hangouts app for the call.
Translate to other languages
When an e-mail arrives in a foreign language, depending on which version you are using, you can click "View translated message" at the top of the e-mail or click the three stacked dots on the right of the email and select "Translate message" to reveal that option – and voila, right on the spot Google will put it into English, or any number of languages from Afrikaans or Albanian to Yiddish or Zulu.
Happy birthday, Gmail: Google is adding email scheduling and 'smarter' features
Voice ordering: Walmart, Google make grocery shopping easier with new voice ordering
Have the robot help compose your sentences
With Google's Smart Assist, Google's artificial intelligence figures out what you're trying to say and auto-completes the sentence for you. It also offers suggested responses in an e-mail to save you some keystrokes. For instance, in the example below, we typed "What time do you want to meet" and Google added "tomorrow?" On another e-mail, it throws in "will do" and "got it," as appropriate responses.
Send disappearing Gmails
It's not Snapchat, but it's a similar idea. You can put an expiration date on your Gmail and have it expire within a certain period of time. You can even add an extra layer of confidential protection by requiring a passcode that's sent to the recipient by text message.
Request money or pay a friend directly within Gmail
Apple has this feature in the iChat program, but Google has it built directly into Gmail. You can request money or pay a friend directly from within the mail – but first, you and your friend will have to be registered for Google Pay.
Only see the good stuff
In Gmail, Google separates the most important communications into the "Primary" folder and puts the rest into two other, rarely viewed categories, Social and Promotion. Thus, all of those endless offers on sales, and forum updates, don't clog up your main inbox.
Schedule e-mails in advance.
This is a new feature that is coming to Gmail shortly, per the company. When you click send, you'll be given a choice of sending it now or having it go out at a later date.
Readers: What's your favorite Gmail feature? Tell us about it on Twitter, where I'm @jeffersongraham
Biometrics have often been used as a form of access control. While this was initially limited to bank vaults in Hollywood movies, it’s now common to see such features on many laptops and smartphones. Despite the laundry list of reasons why this is a bad idea, the technology continues to grow in popularity. [darkshark] has shown us an easy exploit, using a 3D printer to fool the Galaxy S10’s fingerprint scanner.
The Galaxy S10 is interesting for its use of an ultrasonic fingerprint sensor, which continues to push to hardware development of phones minimal-to-no bezels by placing the sensor below the screen. The sensor is looking for the depth of the ridges of your fingerprint, while the touchscreen verifies the capacitive presence of your meaty digit. This hack satisfies both of those checks.
[darkshark] starts with a photograph of a fingerprint on a wineglass. This is then manipulated in Photoshop, before being used to create geometry in 3DSMAX to replicate the original finger. After making the part on an AnyCubic Photon LCD resin printer, the faux-finger pad is able to successfully unlock the phone by placing the print on the glass and touching your finger on top of it.ster
[darkshark] notes that the fingerprint was harvested at close range, but a camera with the right lenses could capture similar detail at a distance. The other thing to note is that if your phone is stolen, it’s likely covered in greasy fingerprints anyway. As usual, it serves as an excellent reminder that fingerprints are not passwords, and should not be treated as such. If you need to brush up on the fundamentals, we’ve got a great primer on how fingerprint scanners work, and another on why using fingerprints for security is a bad plan.
With its latest update, Amazon has brought a blast from the past to its modestly-priced Fire TV Stick 4K. The $50 streaming stick now supports Miracast, letting you mirror programs to supported smartphones, tablets and PCs as if they were attached displays, according to AFTVnews. Amazon had dropped Miracast support with Fire OS 6 on the Fire TV 3, but has now re-introduced it with the Fire TV Stick 4K.
To use it, you can enable display mirroring from the shortcut or settings menus. Your device will need to support Miracast, which has largely fallen out of use and was actually dropped by Google with Android 9 Pie. That's because there aren't likely too many use case scenarios (such as a lack of internet connection on your device) that don't let you use an app to watch programs. Miracast is still largely available on Windows devices, however.
New features let Alexa schedule urgent-care appointments, check health-insurance benefits, read blood-sugar results and handle other health-care tasks.
Photo:
STEPHANIE AARONSON/THE WALL STREET JOURNAL; ISTOCK
Seattle-based Amazon says Alexa can now transfer sensitive, personal health information using software that meets health-privacy requirements under federal law. Five companies, including insurer
Cigna Corp.
, diabetes-management company Livongo Health Inc. and major hospital systems, said they developed new Alexa features for consumers using the federal protocol. The features let Alexa perform tasks such as scheduling urgent-care appointments, tracking when drugs are shipped, checking health-insurance benefits or reading blood-sugar results.
Newsletter Sign-up
For developers of digital health services, the move is an avenue to expand the use of voice commands. Smart speakers have proliferated rapidly since their 2014 introduction, with one in five adults reporting they owned at least one in a 2018 national survey by Edison Research and NPR.
But voice technology has been slow to take hold in health care because of patient-privacy concerns. The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, known as HIPAA, requires that health-care companies and their contractors, like Alexa, take steps to keep patient information confidential, ensure it can be accessed when needed and prevent tampering. HIPAA violations can expose health-care companies to penalties and criminal charges.
Consumers have been measured in their willingness to use Alexa for all but basic tasks, raising questions about whether the new features will be used widely. Alexa, too, has stumbled publicly on privacy. Last year, it recorded and shared a private conversation after miscues.
With the new health-care features, Amazon will be able to further expand Alexa’s offerings as it battles technology giants with competing voice assistants, including
Alphabet Inc.’s
Google Assistant and
Apple Inc.’s
Siri. Amazon’s smart-speaker market share fell to about 40% last year from 59% the previous year, according to technology-focused, venture-capital firm Loup Ventures.
A spokeswoman for Google said the company’s developers aren’t allowed to create features that transmit information protected under federal privacy law. Apple declined to comment.
Health-care executives said they see promise in voice commands as an easier alternative in some circumstances to typing or tapping a screen.
“We were waiting for this level of privacy and security to be complete because it’s obviously critical,” said Richard Roth, head of strategic innovation for Chicago-based CommonSpirit Health, one of the nation’s largest hospital systems. The system, which operates 142 hospitals across 21 states, is developing its own Alexa option for appointment scheduling, he said. It wasn't among those unveiled last week.
Still, while health-care companies might be ready to connect with consumers via voice, consumers might not be.
New York hospital system Northwell Health launched a service on Alexa roughly two years ago that searches for wait times at local emergency rooms and doesn’t require HIPAA compliance. It isn’t used widely, said Emily Kagan, Northwell’s vice president of digital and innovation strategy. “It’s been tepid,” she said of demand.
That hasn’t dimmed hopes for the use of voice, she said, and younger adults are far more comfortable with the technology than older generations. “Everybody feels like it is going to be really game-changing,” she said. “We’re all still experimenting.”
Alexa made headlines last year after mistakenly recording a private conversation and sending it to someone else on a user’s contact list. The device picked up sounds it believed to be commands, but weren’t.
Amazon recommends that its Alexa health-care features verify the identity of the speaker, either with a voice code or by requiring users to log in with passwords for existing health-care accounts. Developers of new features caution users in a disclaimer that their information “may be available to anyone using your Alexa devices.”
Developers of Alexa’s new health features include Livongo, Cigna and its pharmacy-benefit manager Express Scripts, Providence St. Joseph Health and Boston Children’s Hospital. Each requires users to verify their identity to initiate the feature, according to Alexa product web pages and some of the companies. Atrium Health’s Alexa urgent-care scheduling feature does not.
Livongo worked to avoid possible confusion that might occur when diabetic customers ask Alexa for blood-sugar readings, said the company’s chief product officer, Amar Kendale. Users must state both words—“blood” and “sugar”—for a response, to prevent any potential mixup caused by using the word “sugar” alone.
Parents of heart-surgery patients treated by Boston Children’s Hospital can use the hospital’s new Alexa feature to report whether their children are experiencing pain or diminished appetite after surgery. The new feature will also offer appointment reminders.
“Voice is natural,” said John Brownstein, the hospital’s chief innovation officer. Users don’t need to download apps or review tutorials to use speakers, he said.
Amazon and health-care providers will also collect some data to improve voice recognition and track how consumers use the services. Developers of new Alexa services said such data would be valuable as they push to expand the use of voice in health care. Data will be stripped of identifying information before being shared and studied, some of the companies said.
The Alexa feature offered by Providence St. Joseph allows consumers to book and cancel appointments at most of its express clinics in Washington state.
The hospital system based in Renton, Wash., developed its feature by asking users to test it and studying their reactions to Alexa’s replies, said Aaron Martin, the company’s executive vice president and chief digital officer. User data will help further refine the technology, he said. “We’re training it and it’s training us,” Mr. Martin said.
New features let Alexa schedule urgent-care appointments, check health-insurance benefits, read blood-sugar results and handle other health-care tasks.
Photo:
STEPHANIE AARONSON/THE WALL STREET JOURNAL; ISTOCK
Seattle-based Amazon says Alexa can now transfer sensitive, personal health information using software that meets health-privacy requirements under federal law. Five companies, including insurer
Cigna Corp.
, diabetes-management company Livongo Health Inc. and major hospital systems, said they developed new Alexa features for consumers using the federal protocol. The features let Alexa perform tasks such as scheduling urgent-care appointments, tracking when drugs are shipped, checking health-insurance benefits or reading blood-sugar results.
Newsletter Sign-up
For developers of digital health services, the move is an avenue to expand the use of voice commands. Smart speakers have proliferated rapidly since their 2014 introduction, with one in five adults reporting they owned at least one in a 2018 national survey by Edison Research and NPR.
But voice technology has been slow to take hold in health care because of patient-privacy concerns. The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, known as HIPAA, requires that health-care companies and their contractors, like Alexa, take steps to keep patient information confidential, ensure it can be accessed when needed and prevent tampering. HIPAA violations can expose health-care companies to penalties and criminal charges.
Consumers have been measured in their willingness to use Alexa for all but basic tasks, raising questions about whether the new features will be used widely. Alexa, too, has stumbled publicly on privacy. Last year, it recorded and shared a private conversation after miscues.
With the new health-care features, Amazon will be able to further expand Alexa’s offerings as it battles technology giants with competing voice assistants, including
Alphabet Inc.’s
Google Assistant and
Apple Inc.’s
Siri. Amazon’s smart-speaker market share fell to about 40% last year from 59% the previous year, according to technology-focused, venture-capital firm Loup Ventures.
A spokeswoman for Google said the company’s developers aren’t allowed to create features that transmit information protected under federal privacy law. Apple declined to comment.
Health-care executives said they see promise in voice commands as an easier alternative in some circumstances to typing or tapping a screen.
“We were waiting for this level of privacy and security to be complete because it’s obviously critical,” said Richard Roth, head of strategic innovation for Chicago-based CommonSpirit Health, one of the nation’s largest hospital systems. The system, which operates 142 hospitals across 21 states, is developing its own Alexa option for appointment scheduling, he said. It wasn't among those unveiled last week.
Still, while health-care companies might be ready to connect with consumers via voice, consumers might not be.
New York hospital system Northwell Health launched a service on Alexa roughly two years ago that searches for wait times at local emergency rooms and doesn’t require HIPAA compliance. It isn’t used widely, said Emily Kagan, Northwell’s vice president of digital and innovation strategy. “It’s been tepid,” she said of demand.
That hasn’t dimmed hopes for the use of voice, she said, and younger adults are far more comfortable with the technology than older generations. “Everybody feels like it is going to be really game-changing,” she said. “We’re all still experimenting.”
Alexa made headlines last year after mistakenly recording a private conversation and sending it to someone else on a user’s contact list. The device picked up sounds it believed to be commands, but weren’t.
Amazon recommends that its Alexa health-care features verify the identity of the speaker, either with a voice code or by requiring users to log in with passwords for existing health-care accounts. Developers of new features caution users in a disclaimer that their information “may be available to anyone using your Alexa devices.”
Developers of Alexa’s new health features include Livongo, Cigna and its pharmacy-benefit manager Express Scripts, Providence St. Joseph Health and Boston Children’s Hospital. Each requires users to verify their identity to initiate the feature, according to Alexa product web pages and some of the companies. Atrium Health’s Alexa urgent-care scheduling feature does not.
Livongo worked to avoid possible confusion that might occur when diabetic customers ask Alexa for blood-sugar readings, said the company’s chief product officer, Amar Kendale. Users must state both words—“blood” and “sugar”—for a response, to prevent any potential mixup caused by using the word “sugar” alone.
Parents of heart-surgery patients treated by Boston Children’s Hospital can use the hospital’s new Alexa feature to report whether their children are experiencing pain or diminished appetite after surgery. The new feature will also offer appointment reminders.
“Voice is natural,” said John Brownstein, the hospital’s chief innovation officer. Users don’t need to download apps or review tutorials to use speakers, he said.
Amazon and health-care providers will also collect some data to improve voice recognition and track how consumers use the services. Developers of new Alexa services said such data would be valuable as they push to expand the use of voice in health care. Data will be stripped of identifying information before being shared and studied, some of the companies said.
The Alexa feature offered by Providence St. Joseph allows consumers to book and cancel appointments at most of its express clinics in Washington state.
The hospital system based in Renton, Wash., developed its feature by asking users to test it and studying their reactions to Alexa’s replies, said Aaron Martin, the company’s executive vice president and chief digital officer. User data will help further refine the technology, he said. “We’re training it and it’s training us,” Mr. Martin said.
The AMG GT R Pro is the road-legal sum of Mercedes-AMG’s expertise in production-based motorsport. It exists for one purpose only: so that a small number of rather well-heeled owners can drive it to a trackday, spend many joyful hours lapping the circuit and fiddling with damper clicks between sessions, then drive home again at the end of the day. This is a car that really should be used as intended, and not left to gather dust in a climate controlled lock-up somewhere.
The drivetrain is unchanged compared to the GT R. The Pro uses exactly the same 4-litre twin-turbo V8 that develops 577bhp and 516lb ft of torque. Drive goes rearwards via the transaxle that houses a seven-speed twin-clutch transmission. Mercedes-AMG quotes a 0-62mph time of 3.6 seconds and a 198mph top speed.
What's it like?
Taut, responsive, agile and exceptionally well controlled. Quite how that uncompromising chassis setup will deal with a bumpy public highway is anybody’s guess, because for now we’ve only tried the car on Hockenheim’s flat and smooth grand prix circuit.
What’s curious about the GT R is that it’s pretty firm and unyielding on the road, but then just a little loosely controlled and hesitant on circuit. This new Pro model addresses almost every one of the on-track criticisms we’ve levelled at the GT R because it feels so at home on a circuit. There is a little body roll to allow you to feel the grip building along the outside of the car, but otherwise the Pro is keyed-in to the track surface. The instant the front axle is locked into a bend the car takes a set, as though it’s dropped into a groove, then carves its way through the corner. There’s none of the hesitancy or up-down heave that could make the GT R a wild ride, just immediate and precise responses.
The steering is fairly light but intuitive while the brakes didn’t show any sign of fade during a quick four-lap stint. What counts against the GT R Pro is its sheer size, because the front axle feels so far ahead of you and the car’s nose in another county altogether. It’s wide as well, all of which means there’s a significant familiarisation period while you learn where the car’s extremities are. And despite the Pro’s weight saving measures, 1575kg is still a significant amount of weight for a trackday machine.
It is an absorbing and thrilling track car, though. Being able to fiddle with its chassis settings adds another dimension to a trackday and allows you to play out your race engineer fantasies. It isn’t a particularly difficult car to drive quickly, though, nor is it intimidating. All that results from an overcooked corner entry is predictable and safe front axle push. There is good traction as well thanks to the transaxle layout and an electronically-controlled LSD, although with so much power on tap it is easily overcome with a generous extension of your right foot. The multi-stage traction control system that first appeared on the GT R is present here too, which means you can find the exact right setting for a given circuit and the conditions on the day to balance security with playfulness.
Evan Spiegel has finally found a way to fight back against Mark Zuckerberg’s army of clones. For 2.5 years, Snapchat foolishly tried to take the high road versus Facebook, with Spiegel claiming “Our values are hard to copy”. That inaction allowed Zuckerberg to accrue over 1 billion daily Stories users across Instagram, WhatsApp, and Facebook compared to Snapchat’s 186 million total daily users. Meanwhile, the whole tech industry scrambled to build knock-offs of Snap’s vision of an ephemeral, visual future.
But Snapchat’s new strategy is a rallying call for the rest of the social web that’s scared of being squashed beneath Facebook’s boot. It rearranges the adage of “if you can’t beat them, join them” into “to beat them, join us”. As a unified front, Snap’s partners get the infrastructure they need to focus on what differentiates them, while Snapchat gains the reach and entrenchment necessary to weather the war.
Tinder lets you use Snapchat Stories as profile photos
Snapchat’s plan is to let other apps embed the best parts of it rather than building their own half-rate copies.
Why reinvent the wheel of Stories, Bitmoji, and ads when you can reuse the original? A high-ranking Snap executive told me on background that this is indeed the strategy. If it’s going to invent these products, and others want something similar, it’s smarter to enable and partly control the Snapchatification than to try to ignore it. Otherwise, Facebook might be the one to platform-tize what Snap inspired everyone to want.
The “Camera company” corrected course and took back control of its destiny this week at its first ever Snap Partner Summit in its hometown of Los Angeles. Now it’s a camera platform thanks to Snap Kit. Its new Story Kit will implant Snapchat Stories into other apps later this year. They can display a more traditional carousel of your friends’ Stories, or lace them into their app in a custom format. Houseparty’s Stories carousel shares what your buddies are up to outside of the group video chat app. Tinder will let you show off your Snapchat Story alongside your photos to seduce potential matches. But the camera stays inside Snapchat, with new options to share out to these App Stories.
Snap CEO Evan Spiegel presents at the Snap Partner Summit
This is how Snapchat colonizes the native app ecosystem similarly to how Facebook invaded the web with the Like button. Snap’s strong privacy record makes these partners willing to host it where now they might fear that Facebook and its history with Cambridge Analytica could tarnish their brand.
Instead of watching these other apps spin up mini competitors that further fragment the Stories world, Snap saves developers the slow and costly hassle while instantly giving them best-in-class tools to boost their own engagement. Each outpost makes your Snapchat account a little more indispensable, grants its camera new utility, and reminds you to visit again. It’s another reason to stick with Snap rather than straying to other versions of Stories.
If Spiegel knows what’s up, he’ll douse the Story Kit partnerships team with resources so they can sign up as many apps as possible before Facebook can copy this idea too. For now, Snap isn’t injecting ads into App Stories, but it could easily do so and split the cash with its host. This would attract partners, generate revenue, and give Snap’s advertisers more reach.
Houseparty embeds Snapchat Stories
Either way, Snap will score those benefits with its new Ad Kit. Later this year the Snapchat Audience Network will launch allowing partners to host Snap’s full-screen vertical video ads and earn an as-yet-undisclosed revenue share. They won’t have to build up an ad sales force or build an auction and delivery system, but just drop in an SDK to start displaying ads to both Snapchat users and non-users. The company’s message again is that it’s becoming easier to cooperate with Snapchat than copy it.
Snap’s new ad network
Giving its advertisers more reach and reusability for Snap’s somewhat proprietary ad unit format helps Snap address its core challenge: scale. Snap’s 186 million total users can look small in comparison to Instagram, Facebook, or YouTube, especially since that count sank in Q2 and Q3 before stabilzing in Q4 of last year. That makes it tougher for advertisers to justify the chore of spending on Snapchat. Ad Kit and potentially Story Kit give Snap more reach even without user growth.
Added size could tip the cards in Snap’s favor given it’s already popular with an extremely important demographic. Snapchat now reaches 75 percent of 13 to 34-year olds in the US, and 90 percent of 13 to 24-year olds there. It claims to now reach more of that younger age group than Facebook in the most lucrative countries: the US, Canada, UK, France, and Australia.
Facebook has massively neglected this segment. Case in point: Facebook Messenger’s Stickers feature that’s popular with kids has hardly improved since its launch in 2013, which I hear was a fight to get approved internally. Meanwhile, Snapchat keeps growing its lead on virtual identity with Bitmoji. Now Snap will let you put your personalized Bitmoji avatar on your FitBit smart watch face, use them to joke about Venmo purchases, and even represent yourself with one in Snap’s new multiplayer games platform.
Again, Snap wants partners to integrate the real thing rather than try to build some half-assed facsimile of Bitmoji. Surprisingly, Facebook’s Avatars have been mired in development for over a year and Apple’s Memoji can’t escape iMessage and FaceTime yet. That’s why Snapchat would be wise to double-down on trying to make Bitmoji the ubiquitous way to represent yourself without a photograph. Facebook’s lack of design cool and Bitmoji’s massive headstart with this differentiated product is a powerful way for Snap to wedge itself into partnerships.
Snap needs all the help it can get if the underdog is going to carve out a substantial and sustainable piece of social networking. Teaming up was the theme of the rest of the Snap Partner Summit. It’s built ways for Netflix, GoFundMe, VSCO, and Anchor to share stickers and for publishers like the Washington Post to share articles back to Snapchat. It’s got Zynga and ZeptoLab building real-time multiplayer Snap Games that live inside chat and are a clever way of slipping ads into messaging.
Snapchat’s new Scan augmented reality utility platform has signed up Giphy and Photomath as well as former partners Shazam and Amazon to let you squeeze extra interactivity out of your surroundings. And since the physical world is too vast for any one developer to fill with AR experiences, Snap beefed up its Lens Studio platform with new templates and creator profiles so developers add to its warchest of 400,000 special effects. Facebook may be able to clone Snap’s features, but not its developer army.
“If we can show the right Lens in the right moment, we can inspire a whole new world of creativity” says Snap co-founder Bobby Murphy . From partnerships to utilities to toys, all the new announcements drive attention back to Snapchat’s camera. That makes it ripe to become the augmented reality brower of the world.
It all feels like a coming of age moment for Snapchat, punctuated by the glitzy press event where media bigwigs gnoshed on Chinese steak buns and played with AR art installations in West Hollywood.
Spiegel has discovered a method of capitalizing on his penchant for inspiring mobile product design. With this strategy in place and Snap’s reengineered Android app and new languages rolling out now, I believe Snapchat will grow again, at least in terms of deeper engagement if not also total user count. Perhaps it will need a little bit more funding to get it over the hurdle, but I expect it will reach profitability before the end of 2020.
During a pre-event press briefing with a dozen Snap executives including Spiegel and Murphy (that was on ‘background’ so we can’t quote or specify who said what), one Snap higher-up joked that Facebook has been copying it for seven years so it’s started to feel normal. Zuckerberg recently declared he wanted to reorient Facebook around privacy, ephemerality, and messaging — the core tenets of Snapchat. But a Snap leader used some colorful language to describe how they don’t care what Facebook says its philosophy is until it fixes the 2 billion-user product that keeps doing harm.
Subtly throwing shade from the stage, Spiegel concluded that “Our camera lets the natural light from our world penetrate the darkness of the Internet . . . as we use the Internet more and more in our daily lives, we need a way to make it a bit more human.” That apparently means making other apps a bit more Snapchat.
