Author: Clinton

After several days of customer and general tech community backlash, Evernote has reversed their policy that would have allowed a select number of their employees read your notes.  The change was announced late last night on the Evernote Blog where it is made clear, in bold, that employees will not be able to read your notes without your express permission.  Good.

In addition, we will make machine learning technologies available to our users, but no employees will be reading note content as part of this process unless users opt in. We will invite Evernote customers to help us build a better product by joining the program.

Frankly, this is how this should have been in the first place and it is good to see the company respond to consumers and their customers.

Instagram has a nice new feature in the latest build of their app for Android.  The new 10.2 version has a save feature that allows you to save posts in a private area of your account for viewing later.  The new version is rolling out from the Play Store now so everyone should see it in the next day or two.  Once you do have it, the new save feature is easy to use.  Just open up Instagram on your phone and below each photo, on the right, you will see a bookmark-like icon.  That’s the save feature.  When you see a photo or video you want to save for later, just tap that icon and it is bookmarked to your account.  It is quick and simple to use and a great way to save those posts that you want to remember or reference later.

Today’s Deal is a great deal on one of the top phones for 2016.  The Honor 8 is being sold unlocked so it will work with any GSM carrier here in the US like AT&T and T-Mobile.  It has a 2.3GHz octa-core processor, 4GB of RAM and either 32GB or 64GB of storage (expandable up to 256GB with the MicroSD slot).  The Honor 8 has a 5.2″ display, fingerprint scanner and a 12MP dual-camera rear shooter. Normally the Honor 8 is $399.99 but today it is down to $289 for the 32GB model while the 64GB model is normally $449.99 and it is down to $348.

Evernote has announced a policy change that goes into effect on January 27, 2017.  In that change, the company outlines that a limited number of Evernote employees could access and read your notes as part of their “oversight of machine learning” that the company has deployed.  And, more or less, you can’t do much about it.  The company has provided an opt-out for this new machine learning process but even if you opt-out, employees could still access your notes.

Not cool on so many different levels.

So first, not every employee can access your notes.  The list is small but there is a bit of a mystery as to what gets an employee on that list and how often they could access your information.  In the broader Privacy Policy of Evernote, they list the following as reasons that your account could be accessed by employees:

• We believe our Terms of Service has been violated and confirmation is required or we otherwise have an obligation to review your account Content as described in our Terms of Service;
• We need to do so for troubleshooting purposes or to maintain and improve the Service;
• Where necessary to protect the rights, property or personal safety of Evernote and its users (including to protect against potential spam, malware or other security concerns); or
• In order to comply with our legal obligations, such as responding to warrants, court orders or other legal process. We vigilantly protect the privacy of your account Content and, whenever we determine it possible, we provide you with notice if we believe we are compelled to comply with a third party’s request for information about your account. Please visit our Information for Authorities page for more information.

The problem is, especially with the first three on this list, that could be left up to interpretation.  Basically an employee on this list could claim that they believe ToS is being violated and access your account.

Amazon has set their sights on Netflix as the global expansion of streaming content providers continues.  Today the company announced that Amazon Prime Video is available in over 200 countries, up from 130 countries from the expansion earlier this year, and for several countries the new service is no additional cost to existing Amazon Prime memberships.  Like Netflix, Amazon has been pushing hard to make original content, the most well know of these currently being The Grand Tour, and with this expansion, more people will be able to see the show (legally).

For Prime customers in Belgium, Canada, France, India, Italy and Spain, you can start watching Amazon content through the Prime Video app at no cost today.  You just need to have the Prime Video app installed on your devices but you can also watch on primevideo.com if you want to view content in your browser.  For other countries, the add-on subscription will be $2.99 for the first six months then going up to $5.99 thereafter.

Google has been very clear and vocal that one of the primary goals of the new Google Pixel lineup of phones is to lure iPhone users away from iOS and Apple to Android.  While the success of the Pixel and Pixel XL looks strong and the phones are certainly attractive, users moving from one ecosystem to another as they would in this case have one big challenge:  Data migration.  Keeping all your calendar events, photos and videos and contacts are critical for migrating from iOS to Android.  To that end, Google has launched an all new Switch to Android site which outlines exactly what those who want to migrate need to do to assure all their content is backed up.  The key to all of it:  Google Drive.

The step-by-step site has users first download Google Drive onto their iPhone then use the new Backup Wizard built into the app to backup their Contacts, Calendar events, and Photos & Videos.  Once the content that you want to back up is selected, they are all backed up via Google Drive to the respective Google services.  Your contacts go to Google Contacts, your calendar events to Google Calendar and your photos & videos to Google Photos.  Because of limitations in iOS, in order for the backup to work, you must have Google Drive running and in the foreground on your iPhone (iOS doesn’t allow background syncs) and depending on how much data you have, this process could take several hours.  Obviously, use Wi-Fi to do this as it will speed things up (and be cheaper!).