Speak Volumes

Watch the Throne General web Apple has released the WatchKit SDK [developer.watchkit], providing tools for developers and some insights into what the Apple Watch experience will be like for users. Here are some initial impressions [david-smith]. react-google-maps [github] is a library for integrating Google Maps into React.js. Facebook released Flow [github], a static typechecker for JavaScript, built in OCaml. Gitinfo [github] will give information about the state of a local GitHub repo.

Up a Tree Design Here’s an interesting post on SVG animation and CSS transforms [css-tricks], an uneasy relationship, for sure. This is an interesting interactive tree visualization [pjoy.fr] (thanks Pierre!).

Speak Volumes SitePoint First up on SitePoint today, here’s a guide to creating a form that can be filled by speech, an example of the fun you can have experimenting with the Web Speech API. Meanwhile, design editor Alex Walker takes a look at Adobe Extract, an app designed to make sharing, discussing and collaborating on Photoshop documents easier, coming away impressed with the effort. Then we look at a thorny issue for established web development teams: Moving everyone over to Sass. And then there’s a quick video on building a freelance business in 90 days.

Uber Blackmail News/business It’s hard to believe this is news to anyone, but Uber has a pretty terrible internal culture. This became even more apparent this week, when Uber execs discussed using US $1 million to create a team to dig for dirt on journalists critical of the company[buzzfeed]. Given the firestorm of coverage since the story was published, they’re probably going to need to up that fund a bit. Richard Nixon called, he wants his PR strategy back. Here’s a post from Pando Daily’s Sarah Lacy [pando], a journalist singled out as an example of the kind of person Uber would want to target. She's as stoked as you might expect. Also, it turns out Uber executives are pretty casual about tracking Uber users and digging into their ride history [buzzfeed] using an internal tool called “God View”. Subtle. Is Uber the worst company in Silicon Valley? [theguardian]. Sure, why not? In less awful news: Twitter will now let you search for any tweet ever tweeted [blog.twitter], but you probably shouldn’t unless you like cringing. Google has created a system that can automatically add captions to photos[googleresearch.blogspot], terrifying journalists and newspaper photographers around the world. Some awesome company (*waves*) made it easier for startups to advertise on their sites [startupdaily]. And here are some clever little changes companies make to improve their results, petithacks [petithacks], if you will.

Sock and Awe Off-topic A new Barbie book titled “I can be a… computer engineer” begins with Barbie admitting she won’t be doing the actual computer engineering, instead getting some boys to help [gizmodo], and it just goes on from there. That link contains some swears because it’s written by a rational person. Startup t-shirts are a dime a dozen. You know what’s better? Startup socks [swag.sockclub]. The New Yorker takes a look at Spotify, and asks whether the company is a friend or a foe of the music industry [newyorker]. Facebook now has a dedicated app for its Groups platform [theverge]. Finally, Tony Hawk rides the world’s first hoverboard, is pretty good at it [youtube].