Let Your Fingers Do The Walking

December 12, 2018advertisingadverts, Yellow PagesAndrew

A Yellow Pages came through my letterbox the other day along with other festive promotions. That was the first clue – a Yellow Pages didn’t used to fit through the letterbox, being usually left on the doorstep for the homeowner to trip over. The next clue was the blue flash in the top right hand corner “Final Edition”. That’s right, the paper copy of the Yellow Pages is shortly to be no more.

It’s not exactly surprising. This copy was a svelte 200+ pages of sub-A4, not the 1,000 page brick of a book that defied judo champions. First published in 1966, the last of 104 final editions will drop onto doormats in January 2019. Along with everything else, finding businesses has gone on-line and there’s now yell.com for all your local business needs.

Yellow Pages was responsible for some iconic catchphrases and adverts. “Let your fingers do the walking” and Fly Fishing by JR Hartley entered the zeitgeist in 1983, decades before the web and memes. I’m sure there will be fond memories of Bike, French Polishers and Cleaners too.

Truly an end of an era.

(This article is about the British Yellow Pages)

Huawei CFO under Arrest #1333

December 10, 2018PodcastKirk

Huawei CFO has been locked up in Canada appears to be awaiting extradition to the United States for Iran Sanction violations and the Chinese are very pissed off. Lot’s of diplomatic activity going on. One wonders if this is just a little bit of gamesmanship for the trade deal. But one thing for sure is that this is a pretty big deal and will be something the team here at GNC will be watching. Lot’s of updates as we head into the holiday period.

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Google Expedites Closure of Google+ After Bug Investigation

December 10, 2018googlegoogleJenThorpe

Google announced that it will expedite the closure of Google+ for consumers. In October of this year, Google said it would shut down Google+ for consumers “over a ten month period”.

That timeframe has been shortened to “within the next 90 days”. This decision comes after the discovery of a new bug that impacted approximately 52.5 million users in connection with a Google+ app.

We’ve recently determined that some users were impacted by a software update introduced in November that contained a bug affecting a Google+ API. We discovered this bug as part of our standard and ongoing testing procedures and fixed it within a week of it being introduced. No third party compromised our systems, and we have no evidence that the app developers that inadvertently had this access for six days were aware of it or misused it in any way.

As a result of discovering this bug, Google has decided to shut-down all Google+ APIs within the next 90 days. Google is also going to accelerate the sunset of consumer Google+ from August 2019 to April 2019.

Google says it wants to give users ample opportunity to transition off consumer Google+. It will also provide users with ways they can safely and securely download and migrate their data.

In addition, Google is in the process of notifying any enterprise customers that were impacted by the bug. That notification will come by email to those affected.

In my opinion, Google enterprise customers should take a minute and consider how much they trust Google to keep Google+ secure. This isn’t the first time this year that Google+ has had a data breach.

Pantone Color of the Year 2019

December 7, 2018design2019, design, pantoneAndrew

Last year, Pantone’s Color of 2018 took us to outer space with Ultra Violet. This year’s takes us to Earth’s inner space with Living Coral announced as Pantone’s Color of the Year for 2019. Officially known as Pantone 16-1546, the colour is “an animating and life-affirming coral hue with a golden undertone that energizes and enlivens with a softer edge.”

Pantone goes on to say, “In reaction to the onslaught of digital technology and social media increasingly embedding into daily life, we are seeking authentic and immersive experiences that enable connection and intimacy. Sociable and spirited, the engaging nature of PANTONE 16-1546 Living Coral welcomes and encourages lighthearted activity. Symbolizing our innate need for optimism and joyful pursuits, Pantone 16-1546 Living Coral embodies our desire for playful expression.”

Leatrice Eiseman, Executive Director of the Pantone Color Institute, says, “Color is an equalizing lens through which we experience our natural and digital realities and this is particularly true for Living Coral. With consumers craving human interaction and social connection, the humanizing and heartening qualities displayed by the convivial Pantone Living Coral hit a responsive chord.”

The full press release is here and discusses Living Coral in the context of everything from tech innovation to food and drink. For social media, it suggests that, “An organic shade, Living Coral is striking in digital mediums, evoking the same inspirational feeling ignited by our natural surroundings. Living Coral’s vibrancy and buoyancy captivates our attention in social media and digital design.”

If you are a designer, all the colour standards are on Pantone’s site, including some downloads for Adobe products. The codes for Living Coral 16-1546 TCX are

RGB: 255 111 97
CMYK: 0 65 54 0
HTML: FF6F61

Look for more coral in 2019! Once you start looking, you’ll be surprised how much you see.

Picture courtesy of Pantone.

DeepMind’s AlphaZero Beats State-of-the Art AI in Chess

December 7, 2018AIAlphaZero, DeepMindJenThorpe

DeepMind introduced AlphaZero in 2017. It is a single system that taught itself how to master chess, shogi, and Go, beating state-of-the-art programs in each case. AlphaZero has developed a ground-breaking, highly dynamic, and unconventional style of play.

A report titled: “A general reinforcement learning algorightm that masters chess, shogi an Go through self-play” was published by Science Magazine. Part of the report said: “The ability of AlphaZero to adapt to various game rules is a notable step toward achieving a general game-playing system.”

AlphaZero replaces the handcrafted knowledge and domain-specific augmentations used in traditional game-playing programs with deep neural networks, a general-purpose reinforcement learning algorithm, and a general-purpose tree search algorithm.

In chess, AlphaZero first outperformed Stockfish after just 4 hours. AlphaZero defeated the 2016 TCEC (Season 9) world champion Stockfish, winning 155 games and losing just six games out of 1,000.

In shogi, AlphaZero first outperformed Elmo after 2 hours. AlphaZero defeated the 2017 CSA world champion version of Elmo, winning 91.2% of games.

In Go, AlphaZero defeated AlphaGo Zero, winning 61% of games.

I wonder if, in the future, eSports will include competitions between AlphaZero and various other AI algorithms. It seems to me that people who love to play chess are very interested in AlphaZero and what it can do. I can see potential for chess players to learn some of AlphaZero’s strategies in an effort to improve their game.

WordPress 5.0 Armagedon #1332

December 6, 2018PodcastKirk

WordPress 5.0 has been released I will not be one of the first to upgrade largely because we have a lot of editors here and one thing I have found is that big UI changes like this will always cause a certain amount of chaos. Plus I want to give the automatic team a few days to fix some bugs that will likely show up in millions of roll-outs. I am not a fan of the new Guttneberg editor and will likely load the plugin to use the old editor. I will let the team decide which way to go. Big week for me ahead in the podcasting space, which I talk about on the show.

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Google will Stop Working on Allo

December 6, 2018googlegoogleJenThorpe

Google announced that it will stop working on Google Allo, a smart messaging app. Google is going to focus more on its Messages app for Android phones.

Google stated that, thanks to their partnerships with over 40 carriers and device makers, over 175 million people are now using Messages, their messaging app for Android phones, every month.

Earlier this year, Google “paused investment” on Allo and brought some of its most-loved features over to Messages. Those features include: Smart Reply, GIFs, and desktop support. Google has decided to stop supporting Allo to focus on Messages, which has shown “continued momentum”.

Allo will continue to work through March of 2019. Those who are using Allo will have up until then to export all of their existing conversation history from the app. Visit Google’s “The Keyword” blog for a link that explains how to do that.

Will people who like Allo, and can no longer use it, switch to Messages? I’m assuming that’s what Google would like to have happen. I suspect that some people are currently using Allo to talk with some friends and Messages to talk with the friends who don’t use Allo. Putting those two groups together on Messages might streamline things.