Welcome to episode 236 (“Shame on Canon”) of the EdTech Situation Room from October 20, 2021, where technology news meets educational analysis. This week Jason Neiffer (@techsavvyteach) and Wesley Fryer (@wfryer) discussed the biggest announcements from Apple’s Monday “Unleashed” event, The Apple Music Voice plan, Google’s Pixel 6 Event announcements, and the forthcoming launch of Chrome OS 94 with better human sounding voices. Other topics included MacOS’ forthcoming update to “Monterey” on October 25th, the Google Assistant’s updated code to stand up to profane users, and Canon’s distasteful choice to disable all-in-one scanning features for users when they run out of ink. A counter-point to last week’s article about a former Pentagon official declaring the US has already lost the AI race with China, the mental and physical health costs of TikTok, and Facebook’s concerns about Instagram losing youth marketshare were also discussed. Possibilities for “an effective social media regulator,” Facebook’s secret blacklist of prohibited people, organizations and topics, Donald Trump’s announced “Truth Social” platform, and some miscellaneous articles about drones saving dogs from volcanoes, Russian space snafus and the confused Missouri governor who thinks “view HTML source” is criminal hacking were final article topics rounding out the show. Geeks of the Week included SortMyList.com, a podcast about Charles Babbage by Steven B. Johnson, a whimsical videoconferencing platform in beta (ooo for web) and the New York Times’ new invite-only audio app experiment. Our show was live streamed and archived simultaneously on YouTube Live as well as our Facebook Live page via StreamYard.com, and compressed to a smaller video version (about 100MB) on AmazonS3 using Handbrake software. Please follow us on Twitter @edtechSR for updates, and join us LIVE on Wednesday nights (normally) if you can at 10 pm Eastern / 9 pm Central / 8 pm Mountain / 7 pm Pacific or 3 am UTC. All shownotes are available on http://edtechSR.com/links. Stay savvy and safe!
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- Jason Neiffer (@techsavvyteach) – blog: blog.ncce.org
- Wes Fryer (@wfryer) – wesfryer.com/after
- The 8 biggest announcements from Apple’s Unleashed event (The Verge; 18 October 2021)
- Trying to Understand Why The Apple Music Voice Plan Exists (MacObserver, 20 Oct 2021)
- The biggest announcements from Google’s Pixel 6 event (The Verge; 19 October 2021)
- macOS Monterey is officially launching on October 25th (The Verge; 18 October 2021)
- Support For Chrome Apps On Chrome Os Has Been Extended Through 2025 (ChromeUnboxed; 15 October 2021)
- Chrome OS 94 Introduces More Human-Sounding Voices For Select-To-Speak (ChromeUnboxed; 15 October 2021)
- Google Assistant Is Tired Of Being Cursed Out, Asks Politely To Be Treated Better (ChromeUnboxed, 18 Oct 2021)
- Canon sued for disabling scanner when printers run out of ink (Bleeping Computer; 16 October 2021)
- Sorry former Pentagon expert, but China is nowhere near winning the AI race (The Next Web, 15 Oct 2021)
- Teen Girls Are Developing Tics. Doctors Say TikTok Could Be a Factor (Wall Street Journal; 19 October 2021)
- Instagram Struggles With Fears of Losing Its ‘Pipeline’: Young Users (NY Times, 16 Oct 2021)
- What would an effective social-media regulator look like? (Columbia Journalism Review, 13 Oct 2021)
- Revealed: Facebook’s Secret Blacklist Of “Dangerous Individuals And Organizations (The Intercept, 12 Oct 2021)
- Trump Plans to Regain Social Media Presence With New Company (Bloomberg, 20 Oct 2021)
- Confused governor says looking at webpage’s HTML is criminal hacking (Mashable, 14 Oct 2021)
- Drone operator will try to rescue dogs from Spanish volcano (Reuters, 19 Oct 2021)
- A Russian spaceship pushed the space station out of position again (Business Insider, 15 Oct 2021)
- Third-party health apps are vulnerable to hacks, report finds (The Verge; 18 October 2021)
- Jason’s Geek of the Week: sortmylist.com
- Wes’ Geeks of the Week: Wes: Babbage and the Dancer (Or, Can You Fall in Love With a Robot?) (Wonderland Podcast, 16 Aug 2016) and ooo for Web and NYT Invite Only Audio app
