Technology

On Monday afternoon, June 4, Apple handed out its annual Apple Design Awards onstage at its Worldwide Developer Conference in San Jose. The awards, now in their 21st year, are meant to highlight those apps that set a benchmark for high-quality design, taking into consideration things like the user interface and user experience, originality and other factors that represent those types of applications that Apple would like to see more of in its App Store.

Other app developers often look to the list of design award winners to get a sense of the type of apps and designs that Apple values.

This year, the award winners were an international crowd — only one winner comes from the U.S., despite the U.S. being one of Applelargest markets.

The American award winner was also a bit unusual — instead of being a consumer-facing app or game, itone built for the medical industry.

Several others showcase quality game development featuring beautiful artwork and music.

And others, still, rethink in interesting ways our standard utilities like note-taking apps, language translators and calculators.

The full list of the winners is below:

Agenda (Netherlands)

Agenda is a minimalist note-taking app for Mac and iOS that takes a unique approach of organizing notes into a timeline, giving it the ability to track the past, present and future of tasks at once. The app also includes beautifully styled notes and typography, along with well-thought-through navigational design elements, search and support for iCloud sync and Handoff.

Whatalso interesting about Agenda is that its website highlights the standalone Mac app download. The Mac App Store download link is buried at the bottom of the page.

Bandimal (Finland)

Bandimal is an adorably designed music composer for kids where animals are used in place of instruments. Kids can swipe through animals to change instruments, set up drum loops and compose melodies without knowing about notes, chords and scores.

Calzy 3 (India)

Calzy 3 is a smart, modern calculator app that adds a unique bookmarking features for saving calculations for future reference. It also integrates a host of Apple technologies in thoughtful ways, including Drag - Drop for sharing results in other apps, iMessage integration, Spotlight search for finding bookmarks, iCloud sync and Handoff.

iTranslate Converse (Austria)

While Google Translate is the best known among real-time translator apps, iTranslate Converse, downloaded some 80 million times, offers an app with a simpler design and the ability to automatically detect the correct language, even in noisy rooms. The app supports 38 languages, works offline, uses 3D Touch and works on both iPhone and Apple Watch.

On Apple Watch Series 3, you can use the app without your iPhone.

Triton Sponge (USA)

Triton Sponge, by Gauss Surgical, is an app dedicated to a very specific task — use in medical operating rooms to track blood loss, as estimated by whatcollected on surgical sponges and suction canisters. While not a consumer-facing app, Triton Sponge has a very critical and even life-saving task to manage. And it does so with the use of iOS technologies including Core Image, camera Depth Map to detect the sponges, Core ML and machine learning to perform blood loss calculations. The app also is capable of detecting duplicate sponges, even if they&re held up in front of the camera in a different orientation. Triton Sponge is FDA approved and HIPAA compliant.

Florence (Australia)

Florence is an interactive graphic novel fromMonument Valleydesigner Ken Wong of Mountains, which is sort of a half game/half comic that tells a story of love and relationships. Players/readers follow along as Florence and Krish meet, date, fall in love and move in together. It showcases hand-drawn art and original music, while it shows you what itlike to go through life as Florence as she experiences her first love.

PlaydeadINSIDE (Denmark)

This multi-award winning puzzle-adventure platformer from the team behind Limbo includes gorgeous art and animation, but with a darker and even frightening tone. You play as an unnamed boy exploring a monochromatic, scary world, solving puzzles along the way. The (creepy) sound design also stands out, and works well to immerse players in the world when wearing their headphones. The app works across iPhone, iPad and Apple TV and has 10,000 5-star reviews on the App Store.

AltoOdyssey (Canada)

AltoOdyssey, the follow-up to the popular AltoAdventure, brings a similar magic, but instead has players on an endless sandboarding journey instead of skiing. The game takes advantage of 3D Touch and haptics, as well as Metal optimized artwork and design, and other immersive soundtrack, like its predecessor.

Frost (Austria)

This free-form puzzle game has players drawing paths to guide the flocking spirits to their home planets. Itboth beautiful and — thanks to its soundtrack — calming. Frost uses Metal technology to create its smooth animations, and takes advantage of other technologies like multi-touch. This is the second win for the team, which previously won for their game Blek.

Oddmar (Turkey)

Oddmar, four years in the making, is a hand-drawn Viking-themed side-scroller that looks almost like it could be a film instead of game. The story focuses on Oddmar, the main character, trying to redeem himself and be worthy of a place in Valhalla. The game is optimized for touch controls, supports game controllers, takes advantage of Metal and includes a soundtrack influenced by traditional Swedish music that was actually recorded in small studio in Sweden.

All the winners receive a solid aluminum trophy (pictured above) that lights up and a treasure trove of Apple swag, including a tricked out iMac Pro, iPad Pro, iPhone X, AirPods, MacBook Pro 15″ and exposure on the Apple iOS App Store.

You can watch a replay of the winners here.

While hose-toting drones may be a fantasy, hose-powered robo-dragons (or robotic hose-dragons — however you like it) are very much a reality. This strange but potentially useful robot from Japanese researchers could snake into the windows of burning buildings, blasting everything around it with the powerful jets of water it uses to maneuver itself.

Yes, ita real thing: Created by Tohoku University and Hachinohe College, the DragonFireFighter was presented last month at the International Conference on Robotics and Automation.

It works on the same principle your hose does when you turn it on and it starts flapping around everywhere. Essentially your hose is acting as a simple jet: the force of the water being blasted out pushes the hose itself in the opposite direction. So what if the hose had several nozzles, pointing in several directions, that could be opened and closed independently

Well, you&d have a robotic hose-dragon. And we do.

The DragonFireFighter has a nozzle-coveredsort of &head& and what can only be called a &neck.& The water pressure from the hose is diverted into numerous outlets on both in order to create a stable position that can be adjusted more or less at will.

It requires a bit of human intervention to go forwards, but, as you can see, several jets are pushing it that direction already, presumably at this point for stability and rigidity purposes. If the operators had a little more line to give it, it seems to me it could zoom out quite a bit farther than where it was permitted to in the video.

For now it may be more effective to just direct all that water pressure into the window, but one can certainly imagine situations where something like this would be useful.

DragonFireFighter was also displayed at the International Fire and Disaster Prevention Exhibition in Tokyo.

One last thing. I really have to give credit where creditdue: I couldn&t possibly outdo IEEE Spectrumheadline, &Firefighting Robot Snake Flies on Jets of Water.&

The company at the center of a major Facebook data misuse scandal has failed to respond to a legal order issued by the U.K.data protection watchdog to provide a U.S. voter with all the personal information it holds on him.

An enforcement notice was served on Cambridge Analytica affiliate SCL Electionslast monthand the deadline for a response passed without it providing a response today.

The enforcement order followed a complaint by the U.S. academic, professor David Carroll, that the original Subject Access Request (SAR) he made under European law seeking to obtain his personal data had not been satisfactorily fulfilled.

The academic has spent more than a year trying to obtain the data Cambridge Analytica/SCL held on him after learning the company had built psychographic profiles of U.S. voters for the 2016 presidential election, when it was working for the Trump campaign.

Speaking in front of the EU parliamentjustice, civil liberties and home affairs (LIBE) committee today, Carroll said: &We have heard nothing [from SCL in response to the ICOenforcement order]. So they have not respected the regulator. They have not co-operated with the regulator. They are not respecting the law, in my opinion. So thatvery troubling — because they seem to be trying to use liquidation to evade their responsibility as far as we can tell.&

While he is not a U.K. citizen, Carroll discovered his personal data had been processed in the U.K. so he decided to bring a test case under U.K. law. The ICO supported his complaint — and last month ordered Cambridge Analytica/SCL Elections to hand over everything it holds on him, warning that failure to comply with the order is a criminal offense that can carry an unlimited fine.

At the same time — and pretty much at the height of a storm of publicity around the data misuse scandal — Cambridge Analytica and SCL Elections announced insolvency proceedings,blamingwhat they described as &unfairly negative media coverage.&

Its Twitter account has been silent ever since.Though company directors, senior management and investors were quickly spotted attaching themselves to yet another data company. So the bankruptcy proceedings look rather more like an exit strategy to try to escape the snowballing scandal and cover any associated data trails.

There are a lot of data trails though.Back in April Facebook admitted that data on as many as 87 million of its users had been passed to Cambridge Analytica without most of the peopleknowledge or consent.

&I expected to help set precedents of data sovereignty in this case. But I did not expect to be trying to also set rules of liquidation as a way to avoid responsibility for potential data crimes,& Carroll also told the LIBE committee. &So now that this is seeming to becoming a criminal matter we are now in uncharted waters.

&I&m seeking full disclosure… so that I can evaluate if my opinions were influenced for the presidential election. I suspect that they were, I suspect that I was exposed to malicious information that was trying to [influence my vote] — whether it did is a different question.&

He added that he intends to continue to pursue a claim for full disclosure via the courts, arguing that the only way to assess whether psychographic models can successfully be matched to online profilesfor the purposes of manipulating political opinions — which is what Cambridge Analytica/SCL stands accused of misusing Facebook data for — is to see how the company structured and processed the information it sucked out of Facebookplatform.

&If the predictions of my personality are in 80-90% then we can understand that their model has the potential to affect a population — even if itjust a tiny slice of the population. Because in the US only about 70,000 voters in three states decided the election,& he added.

What comes after Cambridge Analytica

The LIBE committee hearing in the European Union parliament is the first of a series of planned sessions focused on digging into the Cambridge Analytica Facebook scandal and &setting out a way forward,& as committee chair Claude Moraes put it.

Todayhearing took evidence from former Facebook employee turned whistleblower SandyParakilas; investigative journalist CaroleCadwalladr; Cambridge Analytica whistleblower Chris Wylie; and the U.K.ICO Elizabeth Denham, along with her deputy,James Dipple-Johnstone.

The Information CommissionerOffice has been running a more-than-year-long investigation into political ad targeting on online platforms — which now of course encompasses the Cambridge Analytica scandal and much more besides.

Denham described it today as &unprecedented in scale& — and likely the largest investigation ever undertaken by a data protection agency in Europe.

The inquiry is looking at &exactly what data went where; from whom; and how that flowed through the system; how that data was combined with other data from other data brokers; what were the algorithms that were processed,& explained Dipple-Johnstone, who is leading the investigation for the ICO.

&We&re presently working through a huge volume — many hundreds of terabytes of data — to follow that audit trail and we&re committed to getting to the bottom of that,& he added. &We are looking at over 30 organizations as part of this investigation and the actions of dozens of key individuals. We&re investigating social media platforms, data brokers, analytics firms, political parties and campaign groups across all spectrums and academic institutions.

&We are looking at both regulatory and criminal breaches, and we are working with other regulators, EU data protection colleagues and law enforcement in the U.K. and abroad.&

He said the ICOreport is now expected to be published at the end of this month.

Denham previously told a U.K. parliamentary committee sheleaning toward recommending a code of conduct for the use of social media in political campaigns to avoid the risk of political uses of the technology getting ahead of the law — a point she reiterated today.

&Beyond data protection I expect my report will be relevant to other regulators overseeing electoral processes and also overseeing academic research,& she said, emphasizing that the recommendations will be relevant &well beyond the borders of the U.K.&

&What is clear is that work will need to be done to strengthen information-sharing and closer working across these areas,& she added.

Many MEPs asked the witnesses for their views on whether the EUnew data protection framework, the GDPR, is sufficient to curb the kinds of data abuse and misuse that has been so publicly foregrounded by the Cambridge Analytica-Facebook scandal — or whether additional regulations are required

On this Denham made a plea for GDPR to be &given some time to work.& &I think the GDPR is an important step, itone step but remember the GDPR is the law thatwritten on paper — and what really matters now is the enforcement of the law,& she said.

&So itthe activities that data protection authorities are willing to do. Itthe sanctions that we look at. Itthe users and the citizens who understand their rights enough to take action — because we don&t have thousands of inspectors that are going to go around and look at every system. But we do have millions of users and millions of citizens that can exercise their rights. So itthe enforcement and the administration of the law. Itgoing to take a village to change the scenario.

&You asked me if I thought this kind of activity which we&re speaking about today — involving Cambridge Analytica and Facebook — is happening on other platforms or if thereother applications or if theremisuse and misselling of personal data. I would say yes,& she said in response to another question from an MEP.

&Even in the political arena there are other political consultancies that are pairing up with data brokers and other data analytics companies. I think there is a lack of transparency for users across many platforms.&

Parakilas, a former Facebook platform operations manager — and the closest stand in for the company in the room — fielded many of the questions from MEPs, including being asked for suggestions for a legislative framework that &wouldn&t put breaks on the development of healthy companies& and also not be unduly burdensome on smaller companies.

He urged EU lawmakers to think about ways to incentivize a commercial ecosystem that works to encourage rather than undermine data protection and privacy, as well as ensuring regulators are properly resourced to enforce the law.

&I think the GDPR is a really important first step,& he added. &What I would say beyond that is theregoing to have to be a lot of thinking that is done about the next generation of technologies — and so while I think GDPR does a admirable job of addressing some of the issues with current technologies the stuff thatcoming is, frankly, when you think about the bad cases is terrifying.

&Things like deepfakes. The ability to create on-demand content thatcompletely fabricated but looks real… Things like artificial intelligence which can predict user actions before those actions are actually done. And in fact Facebook is just one company thatworking on this — but the fact that they have a business model where they could potentially sell the ability to influence future actions using these predictions. Therea lot of thinking that needs to be done about the frameworks for these new technologies. So I would just encourage you to engage as soon as possible on those new technologies.&

Parakilas also discussedfresh revelations related to how Facebookplatformdisseminates user data published by The New York Times at the weekend.

The newspaperreport details how, until April, FacebookAPI was passing user and friend data to at least 60 device makers without gaining peopleconsent —despite aconsent decree the company struck with the Federal Trade Commission in 2011, which Parakilas suggested &appears to prohibit that kind of behavior.&

He also pointed out the device maker data-sharing &appears to contradict Facebookown testimony to Congress and potentially other testimony and public statements they&ve made& — given the companyrepeat claims, since the Cambridge Analytica scandal broke, that it &locked down& data-sharing on its platform in 2015.

Yet data was still flowing out to multiple device maker partners — apparently without users& knowledge or consent.

&I think this is a very, very important developing story. And I would encourage everyone in this body to follow it closely,& he said.

Two more LIBE hearings are planned around the Cambridge Analytica scandal — one on June 25 and one on July 2 — with the latter slated to include a Facebook representative.

Mark Zuckerberg himself attended a meeting with the EU parliamentCouncil of Presidents on May 22, though the format of the meeting was widely criticized for allowing the Facebook founder to cherry-pick questions he wanted to answer — and dodge those he didn&t.

MEPs pushed for Facebook to follow up with answers to their many outstanding questions — and two sets of Facebook responses have now been published by the EU parliament.

In its follow up responses the company claims, for example, that it does not create shadow profiles on non-users — saying it merely collects information on site visitors in the same way that &any website or app& might.

On the issue of compensation for EU users affected by the Cambridge Analytica scandal — something MEPs also pressed Zuckerberg on — Facebook claims it has not seen evidence that the app developer who harvested peopledata from its platform on behalf of Cambridge Analytica/SCL sold any EU users& data to the company.

The developer, Dr. Aleksandr Kogan, had been contracted by SCL Elections for U.S.-related election work. Although his apps collected data on Facebook users from all over the world — including some 2.7 million EU citizens.

&We will conduct a forensic audit of Cambridge Analytica, which we hope to complete as soon as we are authorized by the UKInformation Commissioner,& Facebook also writes on that.