Benedict Evans wrote about office, messaging and verbs.

That is, the way forward for productivity is probably not to take software applications and document models that were conceived and built in a non-networked age and put them into the cloud, or to make carbon copies of them as web apps. This is no different to using your PC to do the same things you used your typewriter for. And of course that is exactly how a lot of people used their PCs – to start with. Just as today we make web app copies of software models conceived for the floppy disk, so the first PCs were often used to type up memos that were then printed out and sent though internal mail. It took time for email to replace internal mail and even longer for people to stop emailing Word files as attachments. Equally, we went from typing expense forms (with carbon copies) to entering them into a Word doc version of the form, to a dedicated Windows app that looked just like the form, to a web page that looked just like the form – and then, suddenly, someone worked out that maybe you should just take a photo of the receipt. It takes time, but sooner or later we stop replicating the old methods with the new tools and find new methods to fit the new tools.

Sadly, I still come across many instances where people are unable to grasp the point of moving into a digital workflow.

Instead of filling up forms, they type the forms out in Word or Excel and print these out. And then the printed form gets passed to someone, who then scans the form and saves it in their computers. The slightly more tech savvy individuals would fill in the form digitally and send it via email, skipping the printing and scanning steps.

But that still clings onto antiquated notions of having to reproduce a form digitally in Word or Excel. And in many cases, the information in these document files need to be manually transferred into a database. The way forward is to have an online web form that automatically submits the information to the database.

The faster we embrace technology, the faster we progress and improve the workflows.

The New York Times reported on authors and booksellers accusing Amazon of antitrust violations, and demanding inquiry.

The Authors Guild, the American Booksellers Association, the Association of Authors’ Representatives and Authors United said in letters and statements being sent this week to the Justice Department that “Amazon has used its dominance in ways that we believe harm the interests of America’s readers, impoverish the book industry as a whole, damage the careers of (and generate fear among) many authors, and impede the free flow of ideas in our society.”

Federico Viticci wrote on MacStories about how apps are getting negative reviews in the App Store for issues with beta versions of iOS and OS X.

The frustration of the tweets embedded above generates from the fact that some users are leaving negative App Store reviews pointing out problems with running apps on beta versions of iOS and OS X. Some of those users may not know this (and understandably so, it’s not their responsibility to know), but App Store reviews are important to developers. It is widely believed that positive reviews affect the ranking and visibility of an app on the App Store, but, perhaps more importantly, reviews are, for customers, the primary way of knowing whether an app is worth downloading or not. An app with several 1-star reviews? Probably not worth installing for many.

People who want to be involved in beta testing should have some basic knowledge of how to handle the issues that arises, especially from version incompatibilities.

Ken Segall wrote about poor journalism surrounding the rumours about the sales of Apple Watch.

You know, it’s easy to report a press release as fact. Real journalism requires some effort. Happily, a small number of sites chose not to reflexively publish a headline that seemed too bad to be true. They actually looked at the source, analyzing its merits and faults. Signs of intelligence were detected at The Motley Fool, Forbes and even Fox News.

Since there are no qualifications required to publish on the Internet, a Slice-like press release can actually serve a higher purpose.

The coverage it generates can help us distinguish between those who can offer meaningful insight — and those who will publish anything for a click.

The Next Web reported about Facebook CSO Alex Stamos calling for more rapid moves to force Flash’s extinction.

It is time for Adobe to announce the end-of-life date for Flash and to ask the browsers to set killbits on the same day.

It can’t come sooner.

The Next Web reported on Mozilla disabling Firefox’s flash plugin.

Mozilla has blocklisted all vulnerable versions of Adobe Flash in its Firefox browser, following the discovery of numerous critical security flaws in the platform.

Mark Schmidt, head of Firefox Support, took to Twitter to announce the change.

https://twitter.com/MarkSchmidty/status/620783674561327104/photo/1

Fall out from this.