Friday’s Recommended Reads

Some recent saved favorites from Pocket:

It’s a Man’s Phone: The above photo is one of the many —pathetic— photos I took while struggling to document misuse of tear gas with a phone too big for my hands. All my photos from that event are obviously unusable for one simple reason: good smartphones are designed for male hands. – by Zeynep Tufekci – https://medium.com/editors-picks/a26c6bee1b69

Top Hacks from a PM Behind Two of Tech’s Hottest Products: Todd Jackson was in a small conference room with a handful of designers, engineers and Mark Zuckerberg. The topic at hand: the Facebook News Feed redesign, intended to declutter the Facebook experience and make it even more engaging. – http://firstround.com/article/Top-Hacks-from-a-PM-Behind-Two-of-Techs-Hottest-Products

WATCH: Scientists Unveil ‘Invisibility Cloak’ and Make Teddy Bear Disappear: It’s not exactly the cloak from Harry Potter, but scientists in Singapore recently unveiled a chamber of light-bending glass that promises to bring us muggles one step closer to Hogwarts territory. – by Dan Kedmey – Tags: technology, disappear, harry potter, hogwarts, invisibility cloak, light, magic, prisms, vanish – http://science.time.com/2013/11/08/watch-scientists-unveil-invisibility-cloak-and-make-a-teddy-bear-disappear/

Revolights City v2.0 Review: Revolights was kind enough to provide me with a sample of their first full production run of the Revolights City v2.0 wheel mounted LED bike lighting system, and I have been running them through the ringer over the last few months. – by Dan Saunders – http://cycletechreview.com/2013/reviews/revolights-city-v2-0-review/

Verizon Uses Phone Data to Connect Consumer Dots for NBA, Sponsors: Verizon has a location-data tracker and sponsorship-measurement tool in the pockets of millions of consumers: Verizon Wireless-enabled phones. So far it has used them to help measure the impact of its own marketing efforts, such as its sponsorship of IndyCar. – http://m.adage.com/article

Hands-on with the Xbox One: Kinect, interface, and OS impressions: Further ReadingXbox One game extravaganza: Hands-on with 10 launch exclusivesFrom Ryse to Peggle 2, Microsoft’s launch lineup is a very mixed bag. – by Kyle Orland – http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2013/11/hands-on-with-the-xbox-one-kinect-interface-and-os-impressions/

Zynga’s darkest moments: It is with some relief that once ubiquitous “games” created by social gaming giant Zynga – such as FarmVille and Mafia Wars – have faded somewhat from our national discourse. – http://www.kernelmag.com/features/report/6663/zyngas-darkest-moments/

Exclusive: Disney Reimagines Classic Star Wars Scenes in 8-Bit: Who shot first, Han or Greedo? It would probably be easier to tell for certain if everything were 8-bit. Then you’d see whose pixel bullet appeared first. – by Chris Kohler – http://www.wired.com/gamelife/2013/11/tiny-death-star/

Google barge revealed: Artistic structure with ‘fish fins’: The barge portion of the Google barge mystery is only half the story — when completed, the full package is envisioned to be an “unprecedented artistic structure,” sporting a dozen or so gigantic sails, to be moored for a month at a time at sites around the bay. – by matierandross – http://blog.sfgate.com/matierandross/2013/11/07/google-barge-revealed-artistic-structure-with-fish-fins/

A Like Is Not Enough: Facebook Tests Star Ratings Displayed On Pages: Facebook is apparently testing displaying star ratings, out of a possible five in total, on Pages on the desktop version of its site, according to a reliable tip received by TechCrunch this morning. – by Darrell Etherington – http://techcrunch.com/2013/11/07/facebook-pages-star-ratings/

Why Facebook’s New Like Button Ditches The Thumbs Up: Facebook is known for just a couple of prominent interactions that define the service. There’s the infamous poke–the strangely pseudo-sexual gesture that gives Facebook a sense of humor–and of course, its bigger, way more popular brother, the thumbs-up Like. – http://www.fastcodesign.com/3021307/innovation-by-design/why-facebooks-new-like-button-had-to-ditch-the-thumbs-up

Motorola Patent Points To Electronic Neck “Tattoos” That Double As Microphones: You’ve got to give Motorola credit these days: it’s certainly not your average smartphone player any more. – by Chris Velazco – http://techcrunch.com/2013/11/07/motorola-patent-points-to-electronic-neck-tattoos-that-double-as-microphones/

Apple’s iWatch Will Need Killer Apps: The wrist is the next frontier for technology companies. I believe this because I wear a FitBit activity tracker on my wrist; when I tap it, I am rewarded by tiny lights that blink for about two seconds, telling me how many steps I’ve walked today. – by biometrics – Tags: – http://mobile.businessweek.com/articles/2013-11-06/apples-iwatch-will-need-killer-apps

Video Games Make Your Brain Bigger, Study Says: Those addictive video games that keep players glued to the screen may actually do the brain some good — or one of them does, anyway. – http://mashable.com/2013/11/07/video-games-brain-growth/

Meet ART, Part 1: The New Super-Fast Android Runtime Google Has Been Working On In Secret For Over 2 Years Debuts In KitKat: It’s fair to say that Android went through some chaotic years in the beginning. The pace of development was frantic as the operating system grew at an unprecedented rate. – by Cody Toombs – http://www.androidpolice.com/2013/11/06/meet-art-part-1-the-new-super-fast-android-runtime-google-has-been-working-on-in-secret-for-over-2-years-debuts-in-kitkat/

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