Specializing in Computer Repair, Networking, Internet Solutions, Web Designing, Hybrid App Designing and Windows Operating systems.
Josh Dzieza / The Verge:
A look at the evolving safety precautions at Amazon's JFK8 warehouse in Staten Island, New York, and how changes are driven primarily by worker pressure — Early Tuesday, March 24th, Barbara Chandler drove from her home in Queens to the Staten Island Amazon warehouse where she'd worked for three years.
Reuters:
An Amazon Flex delivery driver shares his fears while working on the frontlines of the US coronavirus pandemic — DUBLIN, Calif. (Reuters) - Excelso Sabulao delivers groceries for Amazon.com Inc in California so he can help provide his parents an income. Now, with endless interactions …
Catalin Cimpanu / ZDNet:
Cloudflare says it will drop Google's reCAPTCHA bot detection service, as Google plans to charge for its use, and replace it with Intuition Machines' hCAPTCHA — Cloudflare says its moving to hCaptcha, an alternative CAPTCHA service, more private than reCAPTCHA.
FinSMEs:
Accellion, maker of an enterprise content firewall for consolidating and protecting sensitive third-party communications, raises $120M led by Bregal Sagemount — Accellion, Inc., a Palo Alto, CA-based provider of an enterprise content firewall that consolidates, controls …
Welcome back to This Week in Apps, the Extra Crunch series that recaps the latest OS news, the applications they support and the money that flows through it all.
The app industry is as hot as ever, with a record 204 billion downloads in 2019 and $120 billion in consumer spending in 2019, according to App Annie’s “State of Mobile” annual report. People are now spending 3 hours and 40 minutes per day using apps, rivaling TV. Apps aren’t just a way to pass idle hours — they’re a big business. In 2019, mobile-first companies had a combined $544 billion valuation, 6.5x higher than those without a mobile focus.
In this Extra Crunch series, we help you keep up with the latest news from the world of apps, delivered on a weekly basis.
This week we’re continuing to look at how the coronavirus outbreak is impacting the world of mobile applications, including Apple and Google’s plans to team up on a contact tracing platform and other COVID-19 apps worldwide. We’re also looking at how WhatsApp is fighting fake news, and how home quarantines are impacting online grocery and dating applications. In non-COVID-19 news, we look at Quibi’s debut, Facebook’s new app for couples and a possible iOS version of Android’s “Slices,” among other things.
Apple and Google announced on Friday a plan to join forces to create a decentralized tracing tool to help people determine if they’ve been exposed to someone with COVID-19. The first phase of the project is an API that public health agencies can integrate into their own apps. This will be followed by a system-level contact tracing system that works across iOS and Android and is opt-in. The system will involve transmitting an anonymous ID over Bluetooth. The servers will relay your last 14 days of rotating IDs to other devices that look for a match based on time spent and distance between two devices. If a match is found, you’re notified so you can get tested and self-quarantine.
The APIs will be available in May, while the Bluetooth-based system will be released in the months ahead.
Benjamin Mayo / 9to5Mac:
Apple launches a site for COVID-19 testing providers to submit info on their testing locations, which, once reviewed, will be displayed on Apple Maps — Continuing Apple's efforts in helping fight the coronavirus, Apple Maps will soon display testing sites directly on the map.
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New York Times:
Experts say social distancing directives, likely to continue in some form after the COVID-19 crisis, could prompt various industries to accelerate automation — Broad unease about losing jobs to machines could dissipate as people focus on the benefits of minimizing close human contact.
Canalys:
Canalys: global PC shipments in Q1 declined 8% YoY to 53.7M units because of supply chain issues caused by COVID-19, despite surging demand due to remote work — Shanghai (China), Bengaluru (India), Singapore, Reading (UK) and Portland (US) - Friday, 10 April 2020
When you’re working from your home instead of an office, there are more distractions than normal. But with a few apps and strategies, you can focus on the job and stay productive.
Hopefully, by now you are familiar with some of the best work from home resources that will teach you the tricks of the trade. Once you have a workspace set up in your house, it’s still not easy to deal with the many interruptions that pop up throughout the day.
Here are some of the best apps, tools, and techniques to avoid distractions and maintain focus.
You get a link to watch a YouTube video or a message on Facebook, and pretty soon, you’ve lost half an hour through distractions. By design, these websites pull your attention and want you to spend more time there.
But the solution isn’t to block them, as several extensions to avoid distractions suggest. You do need these sites as part of work too. Hide Feed has a better idea.
This browser extension lets you use some features while restricting some distractions. For example, on Facebook, you can message friends but you can’t see your wall. On YouTube, you can search for a video, but you won’t see other recommendations. It has similar restrictions for Gmail, Reddit, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, Amazon, and Netflix.
Instead of the feeds or distractions, you’ll see a random wallpaper with one focus task for the day. You can change that task any time. You can set a schedule for Hide Feed to automatically turn on during work hours. It also tracks how much time it has saved you from distractions.
Download: Hide Feed for Chrome | Firefox (Free)
The easiest way to maintain focus is to have a task list for the day. You need a simple system, it should look good, and you need to prioritize the tasks easily. Matter ticks each box to deserve a place as your New Tab page in a browser.
You can add only text tasks, and there are no deadlines. But to prioritize the tasks, you need to add resize the red circle next to each. The bigger the circle, the more important the task. Add and resize as you go, click the finish button when you’re done, or delete the task from your list.
You can sort the list by priority or by when you added it, but obviously priority is the way to go here. You can also view finished tasks, switch between light and dark themes, and change the font type and size.
Matter is wonderfully minimalist and remembers your data, which is what makes it ideal for a daily to-do list. With such daily lists, it’s best to start afresh every day.
Just ten seconds checking out a text message on your phone can derail your concentration. Cleverest tests how easily you can be distracted by notifications on your mobile. Yet, this smart little app is not too strict about it and allows some leeway.
Choose from three categories: social, work, or relax. Then set a session based on how many minutes you want to focus and not look at your phone. Cleverest will start the session and keep track of whether or not you change to something else on your screen.
This is where the app lives up to its name. There are certain notifications that you can’t ignore, like a text message. Flip to it if it’s important, but that triggers a 10-second countdown. If you don’t come back to Cleverest in that time, you lose the session (since you’ve lost focus anyway).
It’s an effective strategy to stay focussed without putting on blinders. Cleverest also tracks all your sessions (from 10 minutes to eight hours) and presents a daily data chart. This is both a timer for the Pomodoro productivity technique, as well as a digital detox app.
Download: Cleverest for Android | iOS (Free)
For those who aren’t used to it, the eerie silence of working alone can be a distraction too. A few research studies have shown that moderate ambient noise, like that of a coffee shop, can boost creative thinking and focus. If you did your best work in the low and comforting sounds of an office, this app is for you.
I Miss The Office is a web app that simulates the sounds of an average workplace. There is the low drum of central air conditioning and a few other elements. In the bottom-right corner, you can add or delete how many colleagues (up to 10) you want moving around in there.
You’ll hear muffled conversations and even laughter in the distance, the movement of people, and the kinds of sounds that go in any occupied office.
These “colleagues” also interact with elements in the virtual office, like a printer-copier, watercooler, computer, etc. Click an element to activate or deactivate it. So even when you’re working remotely from home, set it up for that comfortable feel of what it’s like in your office.
This last one isn’t an app, it’s a combination of distraction-busting techniques from two of our favorite productivity blogs. You see, distractions are inevitable. You need ways to minimize them and their impact, but you can’t escape them entirely.
Work Awesome suggests giving yourself a few “Distraction Passes” every day. The suggested number is three passes per work day. You can use them how you want, but that’s the amount of distractions you’re allowed, so choose wisely.
Instead of a hard no to all distractions, this puts you in charge of how to spend your time. Instead of your willpower, you’re using a different part of your brain, and that can be the difference in staying focused.
The Financial Diet advises keeping a distraction journal. When you feel the temptation to stop what you’re doing and turn your attention elsewhere, write it down in the journal first. That act alone can be enough to quell that impulse. Plus, it doubles up as a list of tasks to do later instead of breaking your concentration right now.
Both these systems are about reducing the mental load of staying focused. It’s a lot easier to concentrate when you work around distractions rather than try to fight them.
These apps and techniques should help you deal with the notifications from a screen and your mind’s propensity to wander. But the one thing that snaps anyone’s concentration is an odd sound or noise.
Did you know there are different types of noises to boost productivity? Learn about brown noises, pink noises, and other sounds in our guide to stay focused by controlling the noise around you.
Read the full article: 5 Ways to Focus on Work at Home and Avoid Distractions
Paris Martineau / Wired:
Some US hospitals are equipping isolation wards with tablets and smartphones so doctors can conduct virtual rounds, patients can see their families, and more — Hospitals are deploying tablets and smartphones to protect staff, preserve protective equipment, and help patients connect with loved ones.
Johana Bhuiyan / Los Angeles Times:
Instacart is paying workers about the same to do 2-3 orders at a time as it does for one order as demand rises during the pandemic, interviews and receipts show — Dina W. did her last job for Instacart on March 20. Before the coronavirus outbreak, Dina could easily avoid doing …
Mary Ann Azevedo / Crunchbase News:
Research tracking tech startup layoffs across the world since Mar. 11 finds 204 startups have laid off 16,229 employees, nearly doubling between April 2-8 — On Thursday, the U.S. Labor Department reported some staggering figures: the number of unemployment claims filed between March 15-April 4 surged to 16.8 million.
Taylor Lorenz / New York Times:
Strip club dancers and promoters are hosting virtual pop-up strip clubs on Instagram Live, accepting tips via Cash app and promoting the events on Twitter — Going digital may be better for dancers. — For the past three weeks, Justin LaBoy, 28, a former professional basketball player …
Tesla started Friday to furlough its sales and delivery workforce — with the least experienced employees bearing the brunt of the action — days after a companywide email announced salary cuts and reductions due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Several employees, who work in sales and delivery and spoke to TechCrunch on condition of anonymity, reported they were on corporate calls in which more details of the furloughs were explained. Performance is less of a factor. Instead, experience and position is being used to determine who stays and who is furloughed. Delivery and sales advisors who have been with the company less than two years will be furloughed, according to sources.
CNBC reported earlier Friday that furloughs would impact half of Tesla’s U.S. delivery and sales workforce. TechCrunch was unable to verify the total number of sales and delivery employees who would be impacted.
The furloughs also come a little more than a week after the end of the quarter, a typically busy time for delivery staff who try to meet lofty internal goals. COVID-19 hampered delivery efforts, although customers were still reporting deliveries in California, New York and other states.
The furlough calls have been expected since an internal email sent April 7 by Tesla’s head of human resources Valerie Workman informed employees that the company would be cutting pay for salaried employees and furloughing others.
It wasn’t clear, until Friday, exactly who might be affected.
The internal email, which was viewed by TechCrunch, told employees that production at its U.S. factories would be suspended until at least May 4 due to the COVID-19 pandemic, requiring the company to cut costs.
Salaried employees will have pay reduced between 30% and 10%, depending on their position. The salary reductions are expected to be in place until the end of the second quarter, according to the email. The salary cuts and furloughs will begin April 13. Employees who cannot work from home and have not been assigned critical onsite positions will be furloughed until May 4, according to the email.
