CultCast #243 - Bustin' a squirt

The CultCast - A podcast by America's favorite Apple Podcast - Fridays

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Technology

This week: the controversy around iOS 10’s new gun emoji;  we compare Instagram’s new stories feature to Snapchat's; Gwyneth Paltrow brings her coding skills to ‘Planet of the Apps’; we attended a 5-day Apple II festival, we’ll tell you the cool parts; and stick around for the best ways to find specific Pokémon in 'Pokémon GO’.
 
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We also want to give Kevin MacLeod at incompetech.com a  thanks for the great music you hear on today's show.
 
On the show this week
 
Gwyneth Paltrow is bringing her coding skills to ‘Planet of the Apps’
Paltrow will be joined by will.i.am and serial entrepreneur Gary Vaynerchuk on the show where all three will serve as mentors and advisors to app developers in the series that will reportedly act as a launch pad to exceptional developers.
 
iOS 10 adds 100+ emoji to promote gender equality
  • The latest beta build of iOS 10 seeded to developers this morning brings more gender options to existing characters like the surfer, runner, weightlifter, detective, construction worker and much more.
  • The pistol emoji has been changed to a water gun, too
 
Apple is replacing the pistol emoji with a squirt gun
  • Emojis are not made by Apple. They are selected, designed and coded by a nonprofit organization called the Unicode Consortium.
  • Platforms like Apple, Microsoft, Samsung and Facebook decide exactly how those characters will appear on the device you're using.
  • Apple is reinterpreting how it will "read" the pistol emoji. Instead of depicting it as a metal revolver, it will show the green toy water pistol.
  • In June, Apple asked the Unicode Consortium to exclude a scoped shooting rifle from the upcoming set of emojis. Unicode complied, and the rifle was scrapped.
  • Emoji are funny, but they’re also a powerful way to communicate. This move by Apple communicates that tools of violence and death shouldn’t be part of our light-hearted, ubiquitous lexicon. (the Guardian)
 
Instagram’s new feature is a ripoff of Snapchat Stories
  • company introduced Instagram Stories, which lets you share multiple photos and videos in a single slideshow. It can be shared with select followers without showing up on your more public profile. It then disappears 24 hours later.
  • It functions in the same way as the Stories feature on Snapchat
 
There's a new way to find specific Pokémon in 'Pokémon GO,' and it works