Technology

Appleset to up the ante with its transparency report. The same day it dropped the latest version of the twice-yearly document, the company committed to including in future updates government takedown requests for the App Store. The report covering July 1 through December 31 of this year, which is due out in 2019, should be the first to detail that information.

The information should prove a valuable insight into both Appleactivities and the asks of governments around the world. Future reports will detail the specific government that issued the request, along with whether or not the company ultimately complied.

No word yet on whether the company will detail the specific apps. That would certainly prove even more informative, as far as the motivation behind said request. In the Government and Private Party Requests portion of this most recent document, Apple briefly notes that it, &will report on Government requests to take down Apps from the App Store in instances related to alleged violations of legal and/or policy provisions.&

For this report, the company notes broader government requests, saying it received in excess of 16,000 national security requests, marking a 20 percent increase during the same time frame a year prior. As Reuters notes, the company is hardly alone on this one — both Facebook and Google have been hit with a substantial increase in requests.

As governments around the world take increasing interest in the tech world, that number seems likely to increase further.

Wi-Fi password sticker on your router Snap. Cute sweater in a storewindow display Snap. Party invitation Snap. Cool gift idea for mom Snap.If any of this sounds familiar to you, then you probably also use your iPhonecamera to take photos of the things you want to remember & maybe even more often than you use Notes to write things down. If your mental notes are more visual in nature, then you may want give the new app Collections a go instead of relying only on your Camera Roll.

I know, I know…isn&t visual bookmarking already handled by Pinterest

Well, okay, sure. You can go that route.

But using Pinterest feels heavy. Therea vast collection of images to explore and search. A Home feed of new stuff to look at. (Why, Pinterest, are you showing me spider tattoos Why). People to follow. A feed of notifications to check in on. (Where I get to write back to people things like, &hi, you&re messaging the wrong Sarah Perez. I don&t know you.& Ugh, too often. Stupid common name.)

Collections is just a little app for you to use.

Itnot overwrought. Its simple interface just helps you to better organize those photos you&ve snapped for inspiration, ideas, mental notes, or whatever else you may need to refer back to & like clothes you like, restaurants you passed by and want to try later, art or design ideas, the best photos of your dog, events you want to go to, screenshots, gift ideas, travel inspiration, or really anything else you could think of.

But unlike saving these things to the Camera Roll, where they quickly get lost into a feed of photos, Collections lets you write down little details & like the vendor or price, or your notes. For example, &Great gift for mom. Shop owner says it also comes in blue. Having a summer sale in 2 weeks.&

While your collections are largely meant just for you, if you ever want to share them, you can use iCloud to do so & friends and family won&t have to sign up for a new service to view your shares, just download the app. You can also share them to social media, iMessage, email, messaging apps, and elsewhere, if you choose.

If you prefer to keep your collections private, you can turn off iCloud syncing during setup to keep them saved to local storage only.

On iPad, the app is even better because it supports drag-and-drop & meaning you drag images from other apps to your collections.

The app was designed by a team of two indie developers, Emile Bennett and Dave Roberts, based in Chamonix, France and Liverpool, U.K., respectively. Bennett had previously launched a budgeting app called Pennies, but built Collections because itsomething he wanted for himself.

&I often find myself in clothes shops just ‘window shopping&. I&ll find a shirt, or a pair of shoes, or yet another over-priced GoreTex outdoor jacket & I&ve got a bit of a thing about them…I have too many! & and I think &yeah I like this, but I&m not going to buy it now, I&ll pick it up another time,'& he tells TechCrunch.

&So I&d take a few photos, the item, the tag, maybe me wearing it and also maybe the shop front so I remember where it is. I&d always think ‘itin my photo stream, I&ll remember it later.& But, of course, that doesn&t happen as the photos just get lost down in your stream, and even if I did find and remember the photos, thereno context around them,& he says.

He tried Evernote and Notes to keep tracking of these things, but found Evernote was too bloated and Notes was too text-centric. He also feels Pinterest is too focused on discovery and public sharing to be used for collecting your own private inspirations.

One of the best things about Collections, in my opinion, is that thereno sign-up. Radical idea, right Bennett is sick of it, too.

&I&m really passionate about not forcing people to sign up to my apps & I want your data to be yours, I don&t want you to have to sign up to a new service just to use this app,& he says. &I think we&re all getting a bit of &sign-up fatigue& these days. Most apps do it because itthe way they make their money & they give you the app for free, make you sign up to use it, collect your data, and then use that data to make their money. Thatreally against my ethos,& says Bennett.

Instead, Collections is a $2.99 download.

Hey people, this is the kind of app development we should be encouraging.

Bennett gave me a few promo codes to try out the app with friends, but I forgot about that, and purchased it.

So here you go, first come, first served:

Tesla announced a number of new hires today, including Stuart Bowers, who is joining as VP of engineering. Bowers is joining Tesla from Snap, where he worked as VP of monetization engineering.Other new hires include Neeraj Manrao, who left Apple to become Tesladirector of energy manufacturing, and Kevin Mukai, who is now director of product engineering at TeslaGigafactory.

&We&re excited to welcome a group of such talented people as we continue to ramp Model 3 and accelerate towards a more sustainable future,& Tesla wrote on its blog. &We&ll be announcing more hires in the coming days, so stay tuned.&

These new hires come following a couple of departures. In April, Tesla VP of Autopilot Jim Keller left for Intel,with Pete Bannon serving as Kellerreplacement. Bannon is a former Apple chip engineer who helped design AppleA5-AP chips. Earlier this month, Sameer Qureshi left a senior manager Autopilot role at Tesla to lead Lyftautonomous driving efforts.

Herethe full list of new hires, via Teslablog:

• Stuart Bowers is joining as VP of Engineering, responsible for a broad range of Teslasoftware and hardware engineering. Stuart has 12 years of software experience and a background in applied mathematics, and is joining Tesla from Snap. There, he was most recently VP of Monetization Engineering, leading the team with a focus on machine learning and ad infrastructure. Prior to Snap, Stuart was the eighth engineer hired at FacebookSeattle office where he worked on data infrastructure and machine learning for search.
• Neeraj Manrao has joined Tesla as Director of Energy Manufacturing. Neeraj comes from Apple, where he led the technical operations team.
• Kevin Mukai has started as Director of Production Engineering at Gigafactory. Kevin was most recently at ThinFilm Electronics, where he served as Senior Director of Process Engineering, and before that at SunPower as Director of Process - Equipment Engineering. Kevin has extensive experience in advanced factory design and development.
• James Zhou started last month as CFO, China. James previously served as CFO for Asia Pacific and India for Ingersoll Rand, and prior to that held a number of financial leadership positions at General Electric and General Motors.
• Alexandra Veitch joined last month as Senior Director for North American Government Relations and Policy. Alexandra comes to Tesla from CSRA. Before that, she served as Special Assistant to the President and Legislative Affairs Liaison in the White House under the Obama Administration. Her government service also includes time at the Department of Homeland Security and as a staff member in both the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives.
• Kate Pearson is our new Director of Field Delivery Operations. She previously worked as VP of Digital Acceleration at Walmart eCommerce, where she led online grocery and last-mile delivery.
• Mark Mastandrea started earlier this month as Director, Vehicle Delivery Operations. He comes from Amazon, where he was their Director of Logistics Operations, leading last-mile delivery in North America and working on the design and development of AmazonFresh pickup.
• Myriam Attou recently started as Regional Sales Director in EMEA. Coming from La Perla, and before that Burberry, she has a long track record of delivering strong results in sales, customer experience and service excellence.