Elizabeth Lunday's Blog, page 2

One Photo in Many Places

How do I make my Instagram photos also post to Facebook and Twitter simultaneously?

To have the photos you upload to Instagram appear on your other profile pages around the social web, you need to go into your Instagram settings and connect your account with the account credentials you use to log in to Facebook and Twitter. In addition to those networks, you can also link your Instagram account with Swarm, Tumblr and Flickr. Instagram can share posts with several international social networks, too, including VK (also known as VKontakte, which is popular in Russia and parts of Europe) and Japan’s Ameba blogging platform.

To link your Facebook and Twitter accounts, open the Instagram app on your phone or tablet, and select the Profile tab in the bottom-right corner of the screen. In the top-right corner of the profile screen, tap the gear icon on the iOS or Windows Phone version of the Instagram app; Android users should press the three vertical dots for the app’s Options menu. On the Linked Accounts screen, select Facebook and follow the instructions.

Repeat the process by selecting Twitter on the Linked Accounts screen and entering your login information. When you link each account, Instagram displays a list of permissions it needs in order to work with the other services, like the ability to update your profile page, and asks you to authorize it to do so.

After you have connected your Facebook, Twitter and any other services to your Instagram account, if you want to post a photo to all (or some) of them select the photo and apply your filters. When you get to the caption screen, tap the Facebook and Twitter buttons to include them in the upload.

Tech Incubators on a Mission

CHICAGO — Many tech start-ups are in the business of making themselves successful. But some entrepreneurs have set up businesses with the express mission of training others to be successful in the tech sector.

Several of those start-ups have dedicated themselves to creating programs, incubators or accelerators to train blacks and Hispanics for tech jobs.

Their efforts are coming at a time when Silicon Valley has increasingly been scrutinized for its lack of diversity. But instead of leaving it to the tech giants to solve the problem alone, some see their own connections as a way to address the issue.

From NewME in California to Blue1647 in Illinois, entrepreneurs are cultivating talent within the groups that have been underrepresented at established tech companies.

Data from the Census Bureau’s American Community Survey shows that there are more black and Hispanic students graduating with computer science degrees than there are working at tech jobs, despite campus recruitment efforts from companies like Google.

Founders of these start-ups say tech companies have to try new ways of seeking out talent. With the guiding hand of these programs, many alumni have gone on to secure tech internships and jobs or form their own start-ups.

Angela Benton, founder of NewME, an accelerator for entrepreneurs of different backgrounds, said she faced skepticism about whether her business model was possible. Instead, Silicon Valley influencers encouraged her to scour elite institutions to find minority entrepreneurs to help.

“I spent almost a year in Silicon Valley meeting with people, getting advice on our business model. They all wanted me to play it safe,” said Ms. Benton, who was a teenage mother and went from graphic design to helping start B20, a black tech innovators site, in 2007. “I don’t come from that background.”

Ms. Benton said she discovered that some of the most talented entrepreneurs weren’t aiming to create the next billion-dollar start-up. Rather, the entrepreneurs of color were content to begin a company worth a few million dollars.

Over five years, the NewME accelerator has helped businesses raise more than $20 million in venture capital funding. It offers one-week programs and has more than 20,000 members so far.

Many established accelerators and start-up incubators tend to be in regions and cities dominated by existing tech or business firms. For the new entrepreneurs, a key to success is setting up in underserved areas.

Emile Cambry Jr., the founder of the nonprofit tech incubator Blue1647, chose to open its first location in Chicago’s Pilsen neighborhood, a primarily Hispanic neighborhood southwest of the city’s bustling downtown.

The classes are not for dabblers. The company developed its curriculum to train students in Java, Ruby and other computer languages. It also provides a shared work space for entrepreneurs and connects students with internships, jobs and networking opportunities.

Since its founding in 2013, the nonprofit has expanded to Chicago’s Roseland neighborhood, as well as St. Louis and Compton, Calif. A low-income area of Austin, Tex., is next.

Some alumni have interned at Google, Answers.com and other tech companies, while others have started their own businesses or landed tech jobs, Mr. Cambry said.

Cleaning Up Your Conversations

I just looked in my iPhone’s usage settings and saw Messages was taking up more than a gigabyte of storage space. Do text messages really take up that much room and how can I reclaim some of those megabytes?

The text messages themselves may not take up much room, but the photos, videos and other files you have received with those text messages over Apple’s iMessage service can start to eat away at your phone’s storage space. Additionally, if you never delete old conversations and attachments, you will see the Messages app begin to balloon in size, especially if the program is set to keep everything forever.

You can get back some of your iPhone storage space by deleting old conversations and file attachments you no longer need. (If you want to preserve a copy of your Messages archive before you begin dumping stuff, inexpensive programs like iExplorer or iMazing can back up Messages and other content on your phone to your PC or Mac so you can preserve the history on a larger drive.)

To delete a message or messages in a thread, open a conversation on the Messages screen and then press and hold the text bubble you want to delete. Tap the More menu that pops up, and then tap each message in the thread that you want to remove. When you have selected the ones you want to dump, tap the trash-can icon in the lower-left corner of the iPhone screen. (Alternatively, if you have skimmed the whole thread and decide you do not need any of it, tap the Delete All button in the upper-left corner of the screen.)

You can also trash entire conversations right from the list on the Messages screen by swiping from right to left and tapping the red Delete button. To quickly remove multiple conversations, tap the Edit button in the upper-left corner of the Messages screen, tap the unwanted conversations in the list to select them, and then tap the Delete button in the lower-right corner.

If you do not care about old conversations and want the iPhone to stop saving all your old messages, open the Settings icon on the home screen, scroll down and tap Messages, then proceed to the Message History area. Here, you can set the iPhone to only save messages for the previous 30 days or the last year instead of “Forever.” If you select a shorter period, the iOS software will permanently delete the older messages and attachments for you — which is a very quick way to free up space on your phone, as long as you do not need any of those old conversations.

Living With a Teenage Data Hog

After children reach a certain age, most parents give in to their desire for a mobile phone. We like being able to find them at any moment, and they risk being left out if their friends can’t ping them. A Pew Research Center report from last year found that 88 percent of American teenagers now have phones.

But today’s smartphones have earned that name because of their ability to suck in and spit out data at ever-faster rates. That gets expensive, quickly, and figuring out who should pay for the data, how much, and according to what rules, can be a giant headache.

So first, an opening proposition: The ability to access the internet via a cellular signal, in those passing moments when Wi-Fi is not available, is a want and not a need for most teenagers. And if they want it, they should pay for it themselves.

But when I share that assertion with many parents I know, they often respond by patting me on the head and telling me to get back to them when my 10-year-old has a phone and all her friends do, too. To those parents, a data plan is no indulgence. Their kids are busy — constantly on the way to an athletic event or rehearsal. They don’t want to deprive their kids of the ability to stream music or stay connected with their friends on data-draining apps like Snapchat. So a data plan is a given, and the parents are willing to pay.

But just how high a bill is reasonable? I suggest the budgeting approach: Parents pay for a certain amount of data each month, the children track how much they’ve used, and then they pay for anything beyond that allotted amount.

It’s simple enough in theory. Carriers lets customers check to see how much data each person in a family plan has used so far during the month, and the privilege of having a phone should come with the responsibility of keeping track.

That approach does, however, require you to sit down with your teenager and identify the sources of data drain and perhaps set rules for when those apps ought to go off. The Times’s Wired Well columnist, Jennifer Jolly, lives with a data-draining teenager. She suggests turning off any features on a teen’s phone that drain data automatically in the background. Also, track the apps that use the most data and limit data hogs like Spotify or Snapchat to times when the teenager has Wi-Fi access. One additional hint: The more video an app records, transmits and receives, the higher the data bill is likely to be. Call your carrier or consult online forums if you need more help.

In an ideal world, this approach teaches patience, self-control and restraint. Your kids can always watch a video a little later over Wi-Fi, after all. And many messages – most, even – can wait a bit.

But in a less than ideal world, teenagers tend to go over their caps, especially if their friends send lots of videos back and forth via Snapchat. Some parents have enough money to simply pay for the overages. But discussions about those bills are useful. If we don’t set limits, after all, who will? And isn’t our job to get our kids ready for the moment when they really will be paying their own bills?

A few years ago, I wrote about the Russell Plan, named after Mary Kay Russell, a mother of four sons in Naperville, Ill. She added her sons to the family’s cellphone plan when they were ready for their first phones, and the cheap devices they received came with unlimited calls and texting. The boys were welcome to burn data to their hearts’ content on an upgraded phone, but if they wanted to do that, they would have to pay for the device and prepay $360 for a year’s worth of data. The oldest waited until age 21 to get his first fancy phone.

Perhaps his response to the family’s strategy was not such a big surprise. The cost of a smartphone plus data is a big pile of cash to a middle school student who may not have many ways to earn money. Parents who can afford it might consider raising a child’s allowance some to put the decision just within their reach – and make the possibility of waiting on an upgraded phone more enticing.

How much more allowance might they get? It depends on whether you’re asking them to use allowance to cover lunch, snacks, transportation and clothing, too. But you could increase the allowance enough to pay for 50 or 75 percent of a basic data plan, so that the choice to purchase it would involve some sacrifices elsewhere.

Yes, you’re technically “paying” for the data plan in this instance, but that’s true with allowance in general. Once your children have it, the money will feel like it’s their own, and the trade-off will feel real, too.

The Russell children could have asked for upgraded mobile devices and money toward data for birthdays or Christmas, but they often had other priorities. Which is great: We want our children making financial trade-offs, since that is what they’ll have to do as grownups just about every day of their adult lives.

A Drone Explores Underwater

GLENBROOK, Nev. — A vast, largely unexplored world is being opened by hobbyists piloting robotic submarines capable of traveling hundreds of feet below the surface of lakes, rivers and oceans.

Styling themselves as citizen scientists, two young engineers, Eric Stackpole and David Lang, have created OpenROV, a small start-up based in Berkeley, Calif., that builds submarine drone kits. They hope to create a mirror image of the airborne drone craze.

This month, the OpenROV researchers took over a vacation home here and turned it into a command center for the maiden dive of a prototype of the next version of their Trident submarine. The sub explored the wreck of the Tahoe, a turn-of-the-last-century steamer that now lies less than a half-mile offshore in depths up to almost 500 feet below the surface of Lake Tahoe, which divides California and Nevada.

OpenROV has sold more than 3,000 of a first-generation submarine, which is able to navigate below the surface, connected by a thin cable and controlled by software running on a tablet or smartphone. The new Trident, which will go on sale this fall for $1,499, will travel at speeds of almost four knots underwater and will have a high-resolution camera and a lighting system as bright as car headlights. It will operate from a wirelessly connected buoy.

From a converted bedroom filled with computer displays, Charles Cross, an OpenROV software engineer, piloted the Trident down through the crystalline waters of Lake Tahoe. Within minutes the researchers could see the Tahoe as it emerged from the blue gloom on the lake floor.

The 154-ton, 170-foot-long steamer was once called the “Queen of the Lake,” carrying passengers and mail in style. Built in San Francisco in 1896, it was intentionally scuttled in 1940. The intent was to sink the ship in shallow water to make it easily visible from a glass-bottom boat, but the underwater slope was steeper than the ship’s owners realized.

The boat slid out of sight, ultimately coming to rest with its bow in 360 feet of water and its stern at a depth of 490 feet. The Tahoe was first reached in 2002 by a highly technical dive team that in the process set a record for high-altitude scuba diving. (Lake Tahoe is more than 6,200 feet above sea level.)

Now the hobbyist team hopes it can democratize the science and adventure that has previously been accessible only to someone with the resources of Robert Ballard, the oceanographer and explorer who has investigated ships like the Titanic and the Bismarck, a German battleship sunk in the early stages of World War II.

The idea also intrigued professional archaeologists as well as an official from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, who joined the expedition last week.

David McKinnie, a senior adviser at the atmospheric administration’s Ocean Explorer program, met the two engineers several years ago. Last year he invited them to make a presentation at an event for ocean explorers that the administration sponsored.

“They were by and far the hit of the show,” he said. “People were captivated by the potential of citizen exploration.”

The Trident submarine, which was steered by a video game controller, was able to float gently around the shipwreck and dip into the ship through an exposed roof section that had been torn away.

In keeping with the citizen-science aspirations, the dives were broadcast live over social media platforms like Facebook and Twitch. Trailed by a thin power and networking cable, the sub glided over the length of the wreck, beaming high-resolution video back to a command center, where it was displayed on a large computer monitor in a room overlooking the lake.

The goal of the explorers is to have “a lot more eyes in the ocean,” said Mr. Lang, who worked for a start-up firm before co-founding OpenROV in 2012 with a Kickstarter campaign.

The OpenROV researchers now manage a nonprofit website, OpenExplorer, to encourage their community of drone submarine explorers to share the results of their adventures.

“We’re actually legitimately building the world’s largest ocean observation platform on a shoestring,” Mr. Lang said.

While poking around the Tahoe wreck, the OpenROV team found a plaque that had been left behind by the previous team of divers, who reached the site over a decade ago.

Navigating underwater was challenging, and the dive team had to be careful to keep from tangling their tether deep below the surface. They tracked their location in part by periodically observing a bright light that was suspended under the surface from their control boat hundreds of feet above.

They were able to easily reconstruct how the ship had come to its final resting place and trace the furrow that it created as it slid deeper into the lake.

An observer noted that one of the old myths that had been passed on to visitors to the lake by a mailman in the 1940s was that Lake Tahoe’s deep waters were so cold that drowning victims actually stood up when they came to rest on the lake bottom.

No bodies were seen by the Trident, only the occasional fish.

The Dual Roles of Money

Money is an interesting actor that plays two roles in our lives.

In the first, money equals money. It fits in a spreadsheet. It’s something to be calculated. In the other, money equals stories. It’s what we tell ourselves about our relationship with money.

Let me share a story I’ve told myself. For six years, we have rented a home in Park City, Utah, and put off making any long-term real estate commitments. We knew we would get to it — eventually. Well, eventually arrived, and we looked at the spreadsheet.

Even after entering conservative assumptions (guesses, really) about income, savings, housing prices, and the renting-versus-owning calculation in Utah, the numbers don’t lie. The spreadsheet shows that if we want to stay in the community we love, the best thing we can do is buy. That’s great news, right?

But here’s the story I’ve told myself: The moment I, Carl Richards, buy a single-family home, this one action will cause a global financial meltdown. The housing market will crash. The financial markets will collapse. It’s a powerful story based on strong emotions around my experience losing a home in Las Vegas.

I know I am not alone here in telling myself stories that are almost certainly not true. So what stories are you telling? Maybe you have told yourself a story that you don’t need to worry about the spreadsheet. If you just try a little harder or get a little luckier, things will be fine. You don’t need to bother with the actual dollars and cents. I think we know how that will turn out.

Or maybe your spreadsheet is perfect. You live within your means. You have even saved enough for retirement. But that doesn’t stop you from telling the story that you’re a day away from living under a bridge.

Even when the numbers add up, fear and anxiety can still drive our stories. So dealing with money is both a science and an art. We need the cool logic of the spreadsheet to help us separate fact from fiction. But we can’t ignore that we tell ourselves stories to figure out how we relate to that money. It may seem like a small thing, but paying attention to and understanding both roles can be the difference between feeling good or feeling miserable about money.

I choose to feel good. Check back with me again once we have moved into our house.

Chelsea Condo for $45 Million

A full-floor penthouse at the Walker Tower, a 24-story Art Deco condominium conversion in Chelsea, where a record-breaking sale took place more than two years ago, sold in a private deal for $45,000,000, according to city records, and was the week’s most expensive closed transaction.

The sale of PH2, at 212 West 18th Street, was nearly $6 million below the downtown record of $50.91 million that was paid for a neighboring penthouse in January 2014. But it still generated a relatively quick and hefty profit for the owner, who used the limited liability company BBC Chelsea; the apartment was bought from the sponsor for $40.73 million about 18 months ago and was used as a pied-à-terre.

Monthly carrying costs total $14,385, according to the Corcoran Group, whose agents handled both sides of the transaction for the unlisted property. Carrie Chiang represented the seller, while Jerry Huang brought the buyer, whose identity was also shielded by a limited liability company — Walker Tower 1-8.

The penthouse has 6,738 square feet that includes five bedrooms and five and a half baths, along with a spacious north-facing terrace off the enormous living room and dining space. There are three wood-burning fireplaces and floor-to-ceiling windows that provide panoramic vistas of the harbor and cityscape.

The master suite has two walk-in closets and features a bathroom with a free-standing cast-iron tub, a steam shower and a heated towel rack.

The brick Walker Tower, completed in 1929, was designed by Ralph Thomas Walker and had served as home to the New York Telephone Company. It was converted by the JDS Development Group and the Property Markets Group, in partnership with the Starwood Capital Group, to 47 luxury condominium units about three years ago. CetraRuddy was the architect.

The week’s runner-up, at $42,550,000, according to property records, was another penthouse — this one a duplex atop the Baccarat Hotel and Residences, a new glass tower in Midtown developed by TriBeCa Associates and designed by Skidmore, Owings & Merrill that sits opposite the Museum of Modern Art.

The 7,381-square-foot sponsor apartment, at 20 West 53rd Street, features five bedrooms and five and a half baths, as well as a formal dining room, a library and an eat-in kitchen. Interiors are by Tony Ingrao.

Its monthly carrying costs are $33,012.

The sprawling penthouse, which was originally listed for $60 million, provides views of Central Park as well as city panoramas that include the Empire State Building and One World Trade Center. There is also a 602-square-foot terrace on the lower level.

Dina Scheinman of Halstead Property represented the buyer, identified as PH 20 West 53rd LLC. Gail Sankarsingh, Lauren Muss and Janice Chang of Douglas Elliman Real Estate are the listing brokers at the 50-story building, where most of the 59 apartments above the hotel have been sold. Residents began moving in around the spring of 2015.

Big Ticket includes closed sales from the previous week, ending Wednesday.

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