Cloudy with a chance of SaaS

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Cloudy with a chance of SaaS
Number 3249
Broadcast Date MARCH 28, 2018
Episode Length 30:07
Hosts Tom Merritt, Sarah Lane
Guests Chris Ashley

A note by Morgan Stanley suggests Microsoft might be on its way to becoming the 1st trillion dollar company. Has the company’s refocus towards Software-as-a-Service the key reason for that and how long can the company rely on it to maintain its current trajectory? Plus, FB attempts to simplify user accessibility to privacy settings and Saudi Arabia and Softbank are planning the world’s largest solar farm.

Guest

Quick Hits

Sources tell Bloomberg Facebook will not unveil the Facebook Speaker at its F8 developer conference on May 1st, instead choosing to focus on its commitment to improving data-privacy practices. Rumors that Facebook would announce connected speakers with digital-assistant and video-chat capabilities at F8 have been said to be replaced by the need to explain new, more restrictive rules around what kinds of information app makers can collect on their users via Facebook’s service.
The Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) now includes Ubuntu, SUSE, Debian, and Kali AND Microsoft now has an open source tool called the WSL Distro Launcher on GitHub that lets you build your own Linux package. The tool lets Distros create packages for distribution through the Windows Store but also lets developers sideload distros onto their development systems.
Google announced the addition of new support for 39 languages in Google Maps. Among the languages are Finnish, Vietnamese, Swedish, Afrikaans, Zulu and Turkish. About 1.25 billion people speak the languages added.

Top Stories

Playboy's chief creative officer announced that the publication is the latest high profile account holder to remove its Facebook presence. However, The Next Web notes that Facebook's Monthly Active User data shows increases of more than 4% since January in the US and UK. This jump may be due to people investigating their privacy settings. App Annie reports a brief drop in Facebook downloads last week that has now returned to previous levels. Overall data does not indicate a significant number of users deleting their Facebook accounts.
Following up on Mark Zuckerberg's post last week, Facebook announced changes meant to simplify access to its privacy settings. Primary controls are now on one page instead of spread across 20 and its now clear what info is shared with apps. Privacy shortcuts will be added to the menu for things like two-factor authentication and data deletion. Some of these changes are required to meet the EU's GDPR requirements. Facebook is not changing what data it collects or how it uses it.
Knowing that The Verge's Vlad Savov is a critic of the notch in mobile phones, OnePlus reached out to explain why the next OnePlus phone will have a Notch. Because apparently OnePlus likes a challenge. Carl Pei from OnePlus told Savov, OnePlus and most phone makers see notches as adding screen real estate not taking it away. “What you are essentially doing is moving the entire notification bar up, giving users more content on their screen.”
Softbank and Saudi Arabia are planning the world's biggest solar farm. The $200 billion solar power installation would produce 200 GW of energy, 1/3 of the worldwide supply last year. Saudi Arabia generated 77GW in 2016, almost entirely from natural gas and oil.
Mashable notes the latest Snapchat beta has a tab called Connected Apps in the settings page. Right now the page doesn't do anything. Snapchat only connects Snap-owned Bitmoji as well as an integration with Shazam.

Discussion

Mailbag

Tell the truth, when you were talking about the story involving the new material that can extract moisture from desert air, weren't you thinking of Uncle Owen and Aunt Beru moisture farming on Tattoine?

I know I was.
Sent by Al


Tom and Posse,

I think Apple really loses out to Chrome OS in education when it comes to handling user accounts. The issue is that iOS is inherently a single-user device. This makes it difficult to share devices for schools with small budgets, as you lose out on a lot of personalized content. Meanwhile, Chrome OS not only supports multiple users, but that experience is easily transferred to any other machine, without having to do an extensive backup and recovery process.

Apple’s announcement do add some essential fleet management to the platform, which is key for success in education, or in an enterprise deployment. But the lack of user accounts seems like a major hurdle unless these are exclusively personal devices.
Sent by Rich from Lovely Cleveland


Was watching the events unfold today at Lane Tech in Chicago closely as that is where I went to High School!

The school has a long history of being one of the top, technical, science and match high schools in Chicago. It started out as more of a trade school early on with a lot of robust shop and drafting courses preparing students to enter the skilled workforce. It even boasted a full four color printing operation when I was there. It has evolved to focus more on math science and college prep but still retains a lot of the technical roots to be sure.
Sent by Russell

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Links



Preceded by:
"A Walled Garden for Every School"
Cloudy with a chance of SaaS
Followed by:
"Cloudy with a Chance of Nuts & Bolts"