Welcome to the 87th issue of Mobile Apps News!
Hi everyone!
Hope you’re having a good last week of 2022 and a happy new year! It’s been several months since my last issue, so a lot has happened in the world of mobile apps.
In this issue I’m going to focus on a few trends (and the related mobile apps).
Twitter’s changes since Musk took over, and the move to other tools like Mastodon.
Advancements in AI tools for images and text, with a focus on ChatGPT.
The continued expansion of remote and hybrid work.
I hope you’ll enjoy this newsletter and spread the word to your friends and colleagues.
️ ❤️ Enjoy! (And if you like this issue, please “heart” it - thanks!)
🐦 Moving away from Twitter
I’m staying on Twitter for now, but I also joined Mastodon (and I like it). I find Twitter and Mastodon useful in different ways.
As many have recommended, I downloaded my Twitter archive. Here’s a screenshot of my first few tweets ever (from that archive). Looks like I’ve been on Twitter since April 17, 2007. See below for how to download your archive.
How-to:
How to Download a Copy of All Your Twitter Data - MakeUseOf
6 Ways to Save Twitter Bookmarks for Free and Find Favorite Tweets Later - MakeUseOf, I use TweetMarks.
New tool ‘Movetodon’ makes it easier to find your Twitter friends on Mastodon - TechCrunch
Export the accounts you follow on Twitter for import into Mastodon. Movetodon worked well for me!How to Find Your Twitter Friends on Mastodon - AllThings
Interesting thoughts about Twitter:
Twitter’s potential collapse could wipe out vast records of recent human history - MIT Technology Review
Here’s how a Twitter engineer says it will break in the coming weeks - MIT Technology Review
✅ Twitter alternatives
8 best Twitter alternatives - Tech Target
Need a Twitter Alternative? Try Mastodon or One of These Other Social Media Networks - PC Magazine
🦣 Mastodon
There are other alternatives people are moving to, but I’m focusing on Mastodon. You can follow me here: @nic221@techhub.social. I’m enjoying it so far. I like that it’s simply a chronological feed of accounts you follow and hashtags you follow - (without ads or a feed controlled by algorithm).
A few answers to your burning Mastodon questions - Fast Company
Mastodon Help - Guide
An oversimplified guide to setting up Mastodon - Sarah Higley
Some thoughts about Mastodon - Teri Kanefiled
12 best Mastodon app for iOS and Android - Tech Briefly
I like and use the mobile app, Metatext.
📚 My offerings
Check out some of my books, if you haven’t already.
Keeping Up with Emerging Technologies: Best Practices for Information Professionals - Nicole Hennig
Focuses on best methods for staying current with new technologies, not on any specific technologies.Best Podcasts for Diverse Audiences - Nicole Hennig
My set of short ebooks recommending best podcasts by and about specific audiences.
🧠 Artificial Intelligence
A. AI tools for images
There are so many AI image tools these days! Try Futurepedia to search a huge directory of AI tools and apps.
With Stable Diffusion, you may never believe what you see online again - ArsTechnica
This House Does Not Exist- Levels.io
Stable Diffusion Is the Most Important AI Art Model Ever - The Algorithmic Bridge
Meta announces Make-A-Video, which generates video from text - ArsTechnica
Canva Has a Text-to-Image Generator in Beta- Synthedia
Picsart adds an AI Image Generator and AI Writer to its suite of creative tools - TechCrunch
AI-Created Art Cannot be Copyrighted, US Copyright Office Says - PetaPixel
The approaching tsunami of addictive AI-created content will overwhelm us - Social Warming
We Need to Talk About How Good A.I. Is Getting - New York Times
The next Google search engine will be Generative AI - Whilst in Arrakis
B. AI tools for text
There are lots of AI tools and apps for text, and ChatGPT is making the biggest splash in the news lately. It’s worth playing with.
I agree with these words of Zeynep Tuffekci, in her New York Times opinion piece:
“At a minimum, because it will soon transform many occupations. The right approach when faced with transformative technologies is to figure out how to use them for the betterment of humanity.”
The basics
What is ChatGPT And How Can You Use It? - Search Engine Journal
ChatGPT: Why Everyone’s Obsessed With This Mind-Blowing AI Chatbot - CNET
ChatGPT: The Future of AI Is Here - TidBITS
Warnings about AI
AI’s Jurassic Park moment - The Road to AI We Can Trust
What are the politics of ChatGPT? - Marginal REVOLUTION
Exponent podcast, Episode 197 — ChatGPT
Discussing the potential impact of AI on white collar work.
Use in higher education
The Mechanical Professor - One Useful Thing
A professor at the Wharton School, demonstrates use of ChatGPT for some of the tasks in his daily work. It can do a lot!What might ChatGPT mean for higher education? part 1 and part 2 - Future Trends Forum (webinar recordings on YouTube)
Australian Universities Seek to Curb ChatGPT Use by Students. How will higher education react to AI text generators? - Synthedia
Large Language Models (e.g., GPT-3) and the problem of plagiarism - Aaron Tay
”One academic librarian’s musing.”
What ChapGPT is good for (and why to use it)
Azeem’s commentary: My second robot brain - Exponential View
Three ways in which ChatGPT improves our quality of thinking.Artificial intelligence is transforming our world — it is on all of us to make sure that it goes well - Our World in Data
20 Entertaining Uses of ChatGPT You Never Knew Were Possible - Mark Schaefer, Medium (Rutgers Univ. faculty)
What Would Plato Say About ChatGPT? - by Zeynep Tuffekci, New York Times
”Why rely on it at all, then?
At a minimum, because it will soon transform many occupations. The right approach when faced with transformative technologies is to figure out how to use them for the betterment of humanity.”
”The way forward is not to just lament supplanted skills, as Plato did, but also to recognize that as more complex skills become essential, our society must equitably educate people to develop them.”
C. More AI tools
Futurepedia - The Largest AI Tools Directory
(keep up with all those new AI tools)Try these AI writing tools in 2023 - Wonder Tools
Lex, Copy.ai, Canva Docs and more.RT @jeffistyping: I just put up a @huggingface space to use @OpenAI’s Whisper model for YouTube videos transcription.
YouTube Summarizer with ChatGPT
”A free Chrome Extension that lets you quickly access the summary of the YouTube videos you are watching with OpenAI's ChatGPT AI technology.”
💻 Remote work
I’ve always been a big fan of remote work. During my five years as a digital nomad I worked from around the world, see my blog: A Location-Flexible Life. And now that I’m living in Tucson year-round, I still have the good fortune of 100% remote work as an elearning developer at Univ. of Arizona. There are so many advantages, if you can do it.
Spurred by Remote Work, All-Virtual Companies Thrive - Forbes
Bosses say remote work kills culture. These companies disagree. - The Washington Post
Returning to the Office: The Current, Preferred and Future State of Remote Work - Gallup
The next frontier after remote work is async - Levels.io
4 Myths About In-Person Work, Dispelled - Harvard Business Review
Remote work boosts opportunities for workers with disabilities - Axios
Distributed Work is Eating the World - Chris Herd
♿ Accessibility
Care Tactics | Hacking an Abelist World - The Baffler
(disabled people repurposing objects to make the world more accessible)XRAI turns speech into subtitles for deaf people wearing smart glasses - TrendWatching
Twitter Was a Lifeline for People With Disabilities. Musk’s Reign Is Changing All of That - TIME
Sign Language in Virtual Reality Actually Looks Kinda Awesome - Futurism
🤔 Thought- provoking
Dot’s Home illuminates the effects of housing inequality on People of Color - Input
Jess Wade Has Written More Than 1,750 Wikipedia Pages for Overlooked Women and Minority Scientists - People
The GIF Is on Its Deathbed - The Atlantic
Teens, Social Media and Technology 2022 - Pew Research
I tried replacing Google with TikTok, and it worked better than I thought - The Verge
(for certain kinds of searching - interesting)More Americans are getting news on TikTok, bucking the trend on other social media sites - Pew Research
Google is trying to reinvent search — by being more than a search engine - The Verge
Consensus - Evidence-Based Answers, Faster
A useful search engine. Learn more about Consensus: “Our mission is to use AI to make science accessible and consumable for all.”The Age of Social Media Is Ending - The Atlantic
(not sure I agree with all of it, but worth thinking about)Swurl - Search everything instantly
(useful search engine, see tabbed results)
😷 Pandemic
A. Vaccines
New Yale study finds promising results with nasal COVID-19 vaccine - Yale News
The needle-free future of vaccines – Brighter World - McMaster University
US risks falling behind foreign competitors on next generation vaccines. Congress must act now - The Hill
B. Masks
The Masks We’ll Wear in the Next Pandemic - The Atlantic
(good article on the future of masks)Mask innovation challenge BARDA DRIVe
(winners of a competition for improved masks)Universal Masking in School Works. New Data Shows How Well - TIME
C. Long COVID
Long COVID is still disabling millions of Americans, CDC reports - Axios
Long-COVID Resource Guide. - Google Doc by @SashLG413
”It’s a compilation of articles & studies about the impact of LongCOVID on the brain, body, economy, and society at large. It also includes studies on masking & multi-layered methods of transmission reduction.”
D. More pandemic news
Introducing the COVID-19 Web Archive - Internet Archive Blogs
Great Books on Pandemics: Non-Fiction Edition - Books with Laurie
Carbon dioxide monitors ‘flying off the shelves’ after 2 Metro Vancouver libraries stock them - CBC News
The Pandemic’s Legacy Is Already Clear - The Atlantic
Can you shed infectious SARS-CoV-2 virions even if COVID vaccinated?
“The results indicated that people who are infected despite receiving vaccinations could spread SARS-CoV-2.”The off-patent drug that could protect us from future COVID-19 variants - Univ. of Cambridge
🤖 The future
The Dream of an ‘Internet Country’ That Would Let You Work From Anywhere - Time
The End of Programming - Communications of the ACM
”… the conventional idea of "writing a program" is headed for extinction, and indeed, for all but very specialized applications, most software, as we know it, will be replaced by AI systems that are trained rather than programmed.”“122 Things” you will be able to do in the library of the future that you can’t do today - Thomas Frey
Atoms are local - The Century of Biology
(fascinating essay on the biologization of industry - make anything locally)Paper-thin solar cell can turn any surface into a power source - MIT News