Newsletter Archives

• The best news of the year

  Posted on December 18, 2023 at 02:44 CST by B. Livingston • Comment in the Forums

  PUBLIC DEFENDER

  

  By Brian Livingston

  The year 2023 revealed many poor decisions made by Internet giants. Almost every big company seemed to make at least one techno no-no.

  The good news is that the year also saw several positive developments — or, at least, an incremental change that might lead to something better.

  I’ll update you today on some of the most significant news. These situations were first described in stories that I originally covered in an AskWoody column this year.

  Read the full story in our Plus Newsletter (20.51.0, 2023-12-18).

  Public Defender Generative AI, images, iMessage, Keyboards, Newsletters, RCS, Rich Communication Services, SMS, TenKeyLess, Texting

• Google explains why videos sent from iPhones look so terrible

  Posted on August 29, 2022 at 02:44 CDT by B. Livingston • Comment in the Forums

  PUBLIC DEFENDER

  

  By Brian Livingston

  Visuals sent from iPhones and iPads via iMessage are seriously degraded, sometimes unrecognizably so, when received on Android phones — and even sometimes on other iPhones. This is because Apple refuses to support a common tech standard, according to a new public effort by Google.

  You may be surprised to learn that some very solid Mac users are the first to complain about Apple’s garbling of their multimedia files.

  Read the full story in our Plus Newsletter (19.35.0, 2022-08-29).

  Public Defender iMessage, Messages, MMS, Newsletters, Public Defender, RCS, SMS, Texting