According to an article from CNET, our Macs might be listening to us without our known permission. That is, if you have the Shazam app. Shazam has been around for seven years now, with the purpose of telling you what song is playing. All you have to do is click a button on your phone or Mac, the app listens for you, and the song details pop up on your screen. And, while everyone thought this invention was incredible, there is one downfall.

Well, news has been released this week from hacker Patrick Wardle that the Shazam app, only on Macs, keeps listening through your microphone, even after you instructed the app to stop listening.

Although, according to a report at Motherboard, the data isn’t being saved or processed, Shazam users are still upset by the companies decision to leave the microphone on when it should be off.

Shazam’s Chief Product Officer Fabio Santini brought light to the issue after speaking with CNET. He said it was a choice the company made from the beginning, and even if an outside source could get ahold of that sound data, it isn’t usable. Santini said that the app “samples a few points along the audio wave to create a digital fingerprint,” and that the original sound and conversations being held near your microphone cannot be heard in full.

But, nevertheless, Shazam is now being held accountable for this safety issue, and customers are worried of being hacked and their personal information being dispersed. And, due to the wishes of their users, Shazam is in the process of changing this feature on Macs.

In class, we have talked a lot about safety, especially with technology evolving so rapidly, and the Internet of Things becoming a real issue. Some believe, if it is going to make our lives easier, listen away. Others, on the other hand, don’t want the details of their personal lives to be exposed in any way, shape, or form. And, that is the issue that we are dealing with with technology today.

In the TED talk “We need a moral operating system,” by Damon Horowitz, he discusses the morality behind these technology based decisions. In the end, he concluded, the best way to deal with these types of issues, is to think and communicate and come to a decision yourself. It’s not based on any type of equation; just our own human moral code. Now, Shazam has to change theirs.

Source: https://www.cnet.com/news/shazam-always-listening-microphone-mac-os/

As a part of CNET’s “Tech Enabled” series, they introduced David Grissam, who has been legally deaf since the age of six and losing his hearing steadily since, and portrayed how technology played a role in helping him as a disabled man.

Grissam is a 911 dispatcher in Oklahoma. And, as most of us know, you kind of need your hearing to be a 911 dispatcher, to take emergency calls. But, Grissam had been losing his hearing for very long, and hearing aids just weren’t cutting it now.

This is where the technology comes in. Grissam decided to get the Cochlear Baha 5 Sound Processor. This is a hearing aid that is implanted inside of your skull, and it gives the opportunity to connect the Baha to an iPhone through bluetooth. This way Grissam, and all other hearing impaired, can stream phone calls directly their ears. This makes hearing even clearer than for the average person, who has to listen through a device.

There are currently 44 audiologist-issued hearing aids that are compatible with Apple’s “Made for iPhone” program. “Made for iPhone” is a program that allows certain technologies to connect with iPhones, iPods and iPads, such as headphone jacks, Air Play, and, in this case, hearing aids. The hearing aids work exactly as any normal Bluetooth headphones would, and work with any application on a phone such as taking calls, watching videos, or listening to music.

With the use of these Made for iPhone hearing aids, the hearing disabled will be able to hear wirelessly like never before, “helping remove the social stigma associated with them.”

Some additional features of these hearing aids include being able to see the battery life and the adjust volume and settings through your iPhone, geotagging your location so it can switch its setting from “home” to “restaurant” depending where you are, a “find my hearing aid” feature, and Live Listen, which allows the user to hear people from across the room through a remote control microphone.

Again, this brings the concept of the Internet of Things into play, with the device knowing the user’s location and in return changing the settings of the hearing aids to compliment that setting correctly.

Additionally, during one of our in-class activities this semester, each row had to talk about how they would change the design of a device to fit a certain niche audience. The niche that I had to come up with a design plan for was the visually impaired, taking into consideration what they already can and cannot do on a normal phone. Thinking about these niche audiences and the disabled is so incredibly important and something that doesn’t cross most of our minds. Being here to witness technology progress so that these types of people can feel disability-free is actually pretty amazing, and I can’t wait to see what is next.

Source: https://www.cnet.com/news/apple-iphone-hearing-aid-tech-deaf-ios-accessibility-cochlear-starkey-bluetooth-watch/

Just last month Uber’s CEO, Travis Kalanick, said that Uber is in the beginning stages of becoming a “robotics company,” and that artificial intelligence will be foreseen in the future. And, with the apps most recent update, these changes might be proof.

Kalanick also spoke recently on the update, saying that it isn’t just your average update – the app is literally being rebuilt from the ground up, with the purpose of saving customer’s time and money.

Uber has been around since 2009 (although gaining its popularity in 2012), and its system and design were simply outdated by 2016, which makes sense. Along with the company’s huge success, operating in 70 countries and bringing in $68 billion, it was time for a change. With this, the new changes to the app include “a faster app-loading time, more effecient passenger pickups and a personalized user experience.”

For instance, when opening the app, users see a screen that reads, “where to?” Like before, you can type in the address, but in addition, you are also able to select a personalized suggestion. This could be “home,” “work,” or even the location of one of your contacts in your phone. Uber allows a user’s contacts to be synced with the app, then they can request to be driven to one of those contacts, the app will notify that person and ask permission to share their location. This makes things much easier in the real world, for when you simply send a pin through an iPhone, you can’t then explain that pin to an Uber driver, and the address isn’t given.

Also included on the updated application, users get to choose between economy or premium rides, seeing the prices for each in front of them. And, since you are adding in your destination before riding, the app is able to calculate just how much money it will be to ride and the estimated time of arrival.

Diving in even deeper into the new “personalization” features to the app, users can even sync their phone calendars with Uber so that Uber will know when and where they’re going. Based on this, Uber will even give the user “optimized pickup points,” showing them the best place to wait for their driver.

Lastly, there is now an “Uber feed,” which turns Uber into it’s own social media experience to enjoy during the drive in which companies including Yelp, Foursquare, Snapchat, and Pandora have partnered up with them.

So, looking at the application transformation as a whole, we can see a lot into what the future of technology will look like, and that’s the Internet of Things. In class we talked about how the Internet of Things will eventually catch up to us and our devices will know things such as our Starbucks order before we walk in the door, or what time we want to wake up without even setting an alarm ourselves. Uber is beginning to show signs of this with their calendar feature telling Uber where and when they need to be somewhere. And, with the addition of social media platforms to the app, it is becoming what I would like to call a “super app.” If we can find our friends, get a ride, listen to music, and scroll through our friend’s posts all in one application, what more do we need?

Source: https://www.cnet.com/news/uber-app-update-radical-redesign-travis-kalanick/