NPR's All Crafts Considered Holiday Market Returns Wednesday, 11/18

Wanyu Zhang/NPR
We just can't wait any longer to unleash our winter-time spirit and kick off the holiday season!

Event Details: All Crafts Considered
NPR's annual holiday market with local artisans, music, treats and tasty bevs

Wednesday, Nov. 18
3-8PM ET
NPR Headquarters (1111 North Capitol St. NE, Washington, DC 20002)
Metro to NOMA – Gallaudet U/New York Ave; Red Line
Parking: Street parking and public lots are available in the neighborhood.

Later this month, NPR will turn the lobby of our Washington, DC, headquarters into a one-day holiday bazaar. Now in its third year, All Crafts Considered brings together dozens of artisans, makers and sellers of unique and handmade products— from right around the corner in DC and as far as New York and New England —for a festive afternoon of retail therapy and holiday cheer.

Swing by our building in NoMa on Wednesday, November 18, between 3 and 8PM ET for some holiday cheer and local goods.

The Commons, NPR's fan shop, will also be open, offering an array of great gift ideas for public radio fans of all ages!

We'll continue updating the list of vendors below, and post updates and previews of the handcrafted merch using #AllCraftsConsidered on social media.

Artologica
Auggie Froggy (+Afro Baby)
Beautiful Naked (+Near Life Soap)
C Farrell Johnson Fine Arts, LLC
Cedar + Fawn
Chocotenango
Citizen Cook
City by the Sea Ceramics
Cristina Debernardi
Dear Coco Chocolate
Eileen Egan Pottery
Elizabeth Graeber ILLUSTRATION
fawn
Fearless Threads
FuzzyMug
Handmade Habitat
Herban Lifestyle
Hilary Hachey
Goodloe Byron
jennyjen42
Julia Walther Handmade Pottery
Lorrie Rudin
Marcella Kriebel Art + Illustration
Marcelle Fozard
Michael Pappas
Model Citizen Press
Moonlight Bindery
Mr Ricardo (+Alchemy)
Native Swell
Open Eyes Press
PAX Beauty
Peace, Baby! Batiks
Poppi
Priya Means Love
Pure chocolate by jinji
Rachel Pfeffer Designs
Rockin' Lizard Soap Company
Ruth M. Nur
Scarvelous
Stitch & Rivet
The Butterfly Babe
The Secret Jewelry Garden
The Terrarium Bar
Udacha
Vintagebrook
Wood Art for Living
Woolgathering
Yinibini Baby
Yummy & Company
Zooguu

Photos from #AllCraftsConsidered 2014

Wanyu Zhang/NPR

All Crafts Considered 2014. Wanyu Zhang/NPR hide caption

toggle caption Wanyu Zhang/NPR

Bob Boilen of NPR Music's All Songs Considered at All Crafts Considered 2014. Wanyu Zhang/NPR hide caption

toggle caption Wanyu Zhang/NPR

Bob Boilen of NPR Music's All Songs Considered at All Crafts Considered 2014.

Wanyu Zhang/NPR

Wanyu Zhang/NPR

Wanyu Zhang/NPR

Wanyu Zhang/NPR

Wanyu Zhang/NPR

Facebook has transformed into a platform of platforms

If Facebook were just an advertising company, it would still be the tech behemoth it is today—but a lot less interesting.

Over its 12-year history, CEO Mark Zuckerberg has reshaped Facebook from a social network into a platform of platforms.

To be sure, it’s the ad businessthat fuels Facebook’s grand ambitions. Its mission statement is to connect everyone in the world (and to show ads to every last one of them). Beyond that, it’s made a $2 billion gamble on virtual reality, transformed its chat app into a robust platform capable of much more than sending text, and is testing a drone capable of beaming internetto parts of the world lacking it.

For each of these projects, Facebook has created a new platform. By defining the standards for developers to build external applications on top of, Facebook has become bigger than Facebook itself. Its platforms are appealing to developers given Facebook’s trove of social data from more than 1.59 billion users. With Oculus in particular, Zuckerberg saw the opportunity to be ahead of, and accelerate, a forthcoming computing platform, defining how the next generation will access and interact with information.

For platforms to succeed, companies need outside developers to buy into their ecosystems. Yahoo and Microsoft both recently had their opportunities to appeal to developers, and Zuckerberg will do the same next week, making the case for why they should build for Facebook’s various platforms at its F8 conference.

Exactly what will take place at the two-day conference, which starts April 12 in San Francisco, remains shrouded in secrecy. But the schedule provides clues on the big themes likely to emerge from F8:

Oculus

Two years ago, when Facebook paid $2 billion for VR startup Oculus, the world finally took virtual reality seriously.

Two weeks ago, Oculus founder Palmer Luckey personally delivered the first headset to a developer in Alaska, enthusiastically declaring in a Facebook post afterward: “We did it!”

There are only two VR-related panels on the schedule so far, but it would seem silly for Facebook to not put Oculus under the spotlight given the timing. Furthermore, Michael Abrash, Oculus chief scientist, gave a dazzling optical illusion-filled keynotethe second-day of F8 last year.

Zuckerberg has said he considers virtual reality the next major computing platform, but he’s warned that mainstream adoption could “ take five, seven, 10, I don’t know, maybe 12 years.”

Still, analysts are already expecting big numbers. Deutsche Bank, for example, is forecasting $600 million (but no profit) in hardware revenue and $35 million in app store revenue for Facebook this year.

Messenger

Messenger has been Facebook’s breakout success. Though the company initially faced backlash for separating chat functionality from its flagship app, users soon came to embrace the standalone Messenger. The chat app became so popular it has been downloaded more than Facebook’s big blue app. Just yesterday (April 6), the company announced that Messenger hit 900 million monthly active users. In February, Facebook’s other chat app, WhatsApp, said it had 1 billion users.

At last year’s F8 conference, the company revealed the motivation for Messenger’s split. Like its Asian counterparts WeChat, Kakao, and Line, Messenger became a full-fledged platform. Facebook users could send GIFs, transfer money to their friends, talk to customer servicereps, and buy products without ever having to leave the app. The greatest potential for revenue is shopping via chat, what some are terming “conversational commerce.”

This year, Facebook will debut more ways to let people buy products via Messenger. “Nine hundred million users suggests something really powerful in terms of an audience,” the chief executive of an upcoming Messenger commerce partner said in an interview. In the days leading up to F8, The Information discovered references to “ suggested businesses” in Messenger’s source code, and Business Insider found and chatted with some of these businessesin the app.

With chat bots the buzzy topic of the moment—just last week Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said at its developer conference that “bots are the new apps”—Facebook is expected to debut APIs that let developers build chatbots and buttonsthat direct users from a website to Messenger, where they can talk to a customer service rep.

The Next Billion

For Facebook to connect everyone in the world, everyone needs to be online.

With the company nearing saturation in North America and Europe, Facebook is eyeing Asia as well as Africa, the Middle East, and Latin America to drive user growth. Billions of people still don’t have internet access, so Facebook is partnering with local wireless carriers to provide what it calls Free Basics, a limited version of the internet that it provides for free. (Facebook is also getting ready to deploy Aquila, its internet-beaming drone.)

Free Basics’s walled garden is yet another Facebook platform. Companies apply to be featured as a website that users can access for free, and a session at F8 will showcase developers who have used the platform to reach a wider audience.

This walled garden is why Facebook’s Internet.org has been so polarizing. In February, India banned Free Basics for violating net neutrality, a principle that dictates telecom operators provide people with equal access to the internet. One million users in India opened the app 18 days a month before the ruling, according to app analytics firm Sensor Tower.

The setback isn’t deterring Facebook. In October, the company implemented 2G Tuesdays at its headquarters, simulating a slow connection so employees understand what the internet is like for its users in developing countries. It’s also optimized its news feed and created a stripped-down version of the social network called Facebook Lite, the subject of another F8 panel, that loads quickly over slower connections.

Facebook is clearly thinking about the next billion people coming online and wants its developers to do the same.

You might be missing important messages on Facebook if you haven’t checked a hidden second inbox

A few months ago, Facebook got rid of the second inbox for unsolicited messages, called “Other Messages,” in its messaging services.

A few months ago, Facebook got rid of the second inbox for unsolicited messages, called “Other Messages,” in its messaging services. It replaced itwith “Message Requests,” a function allowing users to accept or ignore messages from people who aren’t Facebook friends. You get a notification when someone you don’t know pings you if you have Messenger, Facebook’s messaging app.

Cosmopolitan revealed this weekthat those notifications are actually being filtered by Facebook, so you don’t see every single person that’s trying to contact you. This is likely an attempt to cut down on the amount of spam messages and abuse everyone receives, but it’s entirely possible that you’re missing out on legitimate messages from people who want to connect.

I checked the file for my account, and found seven messages from people who had questions about things I’d written. They probably think I just flat out ignored them.

Sorry everyone. (Screenshot)

To find out if you’ve been missing messages, follow these steps:

On the Messenger app Open the app and click on the gear icon, labeled “Settings” Click on “People” Click “Message Requests” You’ll likely see a few messages in here, but to see everyone, click “See filtered requests” Inside will be your missing messages
On messenger.com Go to messenger.com and click on the gear icon on the top-left of the screen Click “Message Requests” Same as the app, a few messages may be here, but to see everyone, click “See filtered requests”
On facebook.com Go to messenger.com and click on the messages icon on the top-right of the screen Click on the grey “Message Requests” link at the top of the drop-down menu Click “See filtered requests”

Facebook wasn’t immediately available for comment on how it filters messages, or if it plans to make them easier to find.

WhatsApp, the world’s most popular messaging service, just turned on encryption for all its data

Everything on WhatsApp is now encrypted, end-to-end, for all operating systems.

Everything on WhatsApp is now encrypted, end-to-end, for all operating systems. That means engineers at the Facebook-owned chat app wouldn’t be able to read messages or watch video calls sent by its users even if ordered to do so by a court.

“WhatsApp’s end-to-end encryption ensures only you and the person you’re communicating with can read what is sent, and nobody in between, not even WhatsApp,” according to an explanationon the app’s website. Wired was the first to report on the feature.

WhatsApp has a billion users, making it the world’s most popular chat app by some distance. End-to-end encryption is not an entirely new feature on the app: It’s been pushed to hundreds of millions of userson the Android mobile operating system since November 2014. But that rollout didn’t cover all types of messages, like group chats, videos, or photos. It also didn’t cover other operating systems, like Apple’s iOS or Windows Phone, although Android is the world’s most popular mobile OS.

WhatsApp’s latest encryption announcement is therefore just the final piece of a feature that the company has been working at for two years, in a way that renders it nearly invisibleto its own users, as one of the cryptographers working on the project, Moxy Marlinspike, told Wired in 2014. “Now every message, photo, video, file, and voice message you send, is end-to-end encrypted by default if you and the people you message use the latest version of our app. Even your group chats and voice calls are encrypted,” WhatsApp co-founder Jan Koum said in a Facebook posttoday (Apr. 5).

There are a handful of visible signs that encryption has kicked in. A text bubble now appears at the top of every new chat confirming that messages and calls are now end-to-end encrypted, if everyone participating in that conversation has the latest version of the app. Users also can manually verify that a chat is encrypted by scanning a unique QR code or comparing a 60-digit string of numbers that is generated for each chat.

It’s not entirely clear when the latest encryption features were introduced, and how much data was originally being encrypted on the various operating systems. The latest version of WhatsApp on iOS was available on April 1, while the latest Android version was available on March 29. We have asked Facebook for clarification.

A WhatsApp security code. (WhatsApp)

Encryption is top of mind for global tech companies in general, and WhatsApp in particular. Facebook’s chief for Latin America was briefly jailed in Brazil in Marchfor failing to provide WhatsApp chat data in a drug case. It wasn’t clear if the data was encrypted, but WhatsApp told the New York Timesat the time that it “cannot provide information [it does] not have.”

Apple faced down the US Federal Bureau of Investigation recently over a court order compelling it to create a way to bypass security measures on a locked iPhone. The effects of that case, which was ultimately droppedby the FBI after it said it found a way to access the phone without Apple’s help, are still being felt, as questions now arise over how powerful the FBI’s toolis, and whether it should disclose the security holeto Apple.

For Koum and his team at WhatsApp, encryption is tantamount to security—there’s no debate over whether it’ll benefit users. The feature is turned on by default and cannot be turned off. Noting his experience growing up in Ukraine when it was part of the Soviet Union, Koum wrote in:

“I grew up in the USSR during Communist rule and the fact that people couldn’t speak freely is one of the reasons my family moved to the United States. Today more than a billion people are using WhatsApp to stay in touch with their friends and family all over the world. And now, every single one of those people can talk freely and securely on WhatsApp.

Seeing The World Through The Eyes Of A Social Science Correspondent

Hidden Brain Host Shankar Vedantam.

Caitlin Sanders/NPR hide caption

toggle caption Caitlin Sanders/NPR

Hidden Brain Host Shankar Vedantam.

Caitlin Sanders/NPR

At some point during youth or young adulthood, most people arrive at – or are cast into – an earthshaking moment of truth: Your parents don't know everything. Suddenly, some of your memories from growing up take on a whole new meaning, and in that moment, the way you look at the world can change, perhaps becoming a little bit clearer.

Find 'Hidden Brain'

For more than a decade, Shankar Vedantamhas studied what we know about the mind and social sciences. His work, along with many others', is building a map for understanding human behavior, and that guide is rife with moments of clarity just like the one described above.

Shankar's reporting has been the impetus for a new podcast called, and over the last few months, I've been part of the team responsible for launching the program. Having heard Shankar's regular segments on Morning Edition for years and listening to him talk about all the information that's out there about human behavior, I wanted to know: What is it like moving through everyday life with all of that social science research in your head? So I invited Shankar to take a walk with me over to the grocery store near our building and asked him to talk me through what we were seeing in scientific terms.

Here's what I learned.

6 Things I Learned On A 30-Minute Walk With NPR's 'Hidden Brain' Host

1. Road rage doesn't mean you're crazy.

Caitlin Sanders/NPR

Caitlin Sanders/NPR

Most of us know well how a perfectly rational person (ourselves even) can go from Jekyll to Hyde in two seconds when behind the wheel. That same irritability doesn't always come out on a train ride or bus, however. As Shankar explained, one reason for road rageis that people see their cars as a personal space, similar to their bedroom.

"When intrusive things happen to you in a private space, you react with much more indignation and feelings of being upset than if something happens to you in a public space," he said. When driving down the road in a car, people act as though they're in that private space even though they're not. And the more people personalize their cars with bumper stickers , the more likely they are to drive in rude or inconsiderate ways.

2. Having good posture while driving can save you money.

Studieshave found that drivers who slouch and sit with their arms outstretched in an I'm-the-lord-of-my-manor kind of way are more likely to violate traffic rules and speed limits than people who are sitting in a constricted fashion.

This goes to the idea that posture can shape our sense of feeing powerful or powerless – when people sit in expansive postures, they get a subconscious feeling of power, and this feeling of power makes them behave in more inconsiderate ways toward others.

3. I will get used to the sirens and construction noises. Someday.

Caitlin Sanders/NPR

When we moved into a new NPR headquarters a couple years ago, there was a lot of construction going on in the neighborhood. Streets were constantly blocked off, workers were drilling away at concrete, etc. It was loud, inconvenient and generally irritating.

These annoyances in life, Shankar pointed out, are fleeting. A large body of social science researchhas established that human beings are very adaptable. It's one of the characteristics that distinguishes our species from others.

"We often think that feelings of happiness and unhappiness are going to be permanent states," he explained, "but our experience and research show that these are actually transient states. If you just hang around the unpleasant thing for a little while, after some time it just sort of stops being unpleasant."

Other researchers have found that both lottery winners and people who have lost a limb often predict they'd be in a permanently affected emotional state, but in fact, these people usually return to baseline levels of happiness within several months.

4. Buying wine by the label can make sense!

Caitlin Sanders/NPR

People use the price of the wine as a shortcut to determine the quality of the wine.

But as a result of this mental heuristic or short cut, studieshave found that if you take wine from a cheap bottle and pour it into a more expensive bottle before serving it to people, those drinking it will report that it tastes better. Brain imaging supports this too — reward centers in the brain are activated to a greater degree when people drink the cheap wine from an expensive bottle rather than from the cheap wine from a cheap bottle. In other words, people drinking the wine from the expensive bottle actually experience it as better; they're not just saying it's better because they deduce that it ought to be better.

5. The case of beer is not always cheaper.

Caitlin Sanders/NPR

Grocery stores are hip to the idea that buying in bulk is a good way to save money. Or at least that many of their shoppers share this opinion. And while this is oftentimes true, sometimes retail operators and store owners will throw a curveball and rip you off. They take advantage of this mental shortcut we've established and will price a case of beer in a way that actually makes it cheaper to buy four separate six packs.

Keep an eye on per unit pricing!

6. How to win at your next yard sale.

Caitlin Sanders/NPR

Caitlin Sanders/NPR

Walking down the cereal aisle, Shankar was quick to draw my attention to the prices. They're all over the place – $4.69 for Reeces Puffs, $4.78 for Cinnamon Toast Crunch, etc.

It's more difficult for the human mind to compute value when there aren't round numbers to work with, so how do we process offers that are specific rather than those that are rounded, such as 2/$5?

A new studylook at look at sales on eBay and found that if you list an item at $100 or another round figure, the buyer assumes that you're an impatient seller, that you haven't taken the time to price something precisely. Conversely, if you attach a very specific price to it, there's a sense that there's some reasoning and thinking that went into that decision, and as Shankar explained, "the buyer is more likely to take it seriously."

Here's the trick - when you price something with a round number, it's more likely to sell quickly. The buyer thinks you're impatient and that you want to make a sale quickly, so they may be inclined to offer less than you've asked. On the other hand, if you price the item at $98.64, you're less likely to make the sale, but you're more likely to get your asking price.

If you are in a hurry to get something sold quickly, it probably does make sense to say here's just a nice round number," he said.

NPR's new podcast Hidden Brain it is available in the iTunesstore, at NPR.org/hiddenbrainand in the NPR One app. New episodes are available each Tuesday.

Hear The Latest Episode

You can invite your girl friends to eavesdrop on your private chats in this new dating app

Boompi works like most other dating apps—see people on the app based on your geographical location, swipe in a certain direction to indicate whether you want to talk to them, and match with people who also wish to talk to you.

Here’s the catch, though: If you’re a girl, you can invite your female friends to secretly join your private conversations, without your potential suitors ever knowing.

If you’re a girl on Boompi and you start a chat with someone, you can invite your girl friend to eavesdrop on that conversation at any time. Your friend will be able to see every message sent since the beginning of the chat, and leave their own comments in the conversation, which only you will be able to see. And if you aren’t interested in finding a date and only want to read your friends’ chats, you can do that too—Boompi allows female users to use “Ghost Mode,” which makes sure guys never see their profile.

Oddly enough, the Boompi logo is a pineapple, which symbolizes warmth and hospitality.

The privacy implications are obvious: Men can never know for sure that they’re not being talked about in secret. Yet the founders, Barcelona-based Alejandro Ponce and Joan Carles Bartra stand by its design, arguing that girls already share their text messages with their friends through screenshots.

“Gossiping is fun and plays a big part of everyday life because it’s amusing to know what other people are up to,” the company said over email. “With Boompi, instead of sending several screenshots of a conversation asking for the advice of your girl friends, now you can do it seamlessly and in real time.”

Boompi, like the app Luluthat once allowed women to leave positive or negative reviews of guys for other women, would surely be getting more critical reviews if it men were the ones who who could drop in and out of others’ romantic conversations. Asked if they would ever consider opening up the feature to men, or allowing girls to invite male friends to their private chats, the founders said they are continuously working on new features and improvements.

The Essential 'Sesame Street,' Curated By Sonia Manzano

Sonia Mazano spent more than 40 years on Sesame Street, as an actor - her character is Maria, of course - and as a writer for the show.

Sonia Mazano spent more than 40 years on Sesame Street, as an actor - her character is Maria, of course - and as a writer for the show. Over the years, she guided Big Bird, Elmo and generations of children through those sensitive, challenging moments that every person encounters as they grow up.

"[She helped] the gang process their feelings about love and life and even when your buddy lets you down," NPR's Andrew Limbong reported onthis summer when Sonia announced her retirement.

Articulating these experiences and real life lessons to preschoolers watching the program was an important challenge to the entire Sesame Street team and one that Sonia says they never wanted to shy away from.

"We had this producer Jon Stone who would say, 'You know, kids want to be in the real world, and they want power in the real world. They want to grow up as fast as possible so that they do have power and can do things on their own.' So I do think the show did a lot to help empower kids."

Sonia saw this first hand. On screen and off, she faced the challenges common to so many women in the workplace dating back to the 1970s.

When feminism was "first in the air" Maria had a job as a construction worker. "This was when women were burning bras," said Sonia, who started on the show as an actor and retired as also its multiple Emmy-winning writer.

"I realized about eight years into the show that the real power is behind the camera, not in front of it," she told Limbong, "and I wanted to impact what kinds of material was being written to explore the Hispanic community."

And when actor Will Lee passed away in 1982, executive producer Dulcy Singer pushed to be candid about his death on the show.

"That was a real breakthrough," Sonia told NPR host Ophira Eisenberg before a recent taping of"Singer really wanted to do it, and she had a hard time getting it across. She had to be a strong producer. Everybody wanted to say, 'Let's just say he went on vacation,' 'Let's just say he retired,' and she said, 'Look, it's part of life.'

"That's what Sesame Street did – give [children] a straight answer."

Sonia Mazano, who played Maria on Sesame Street for more than 40 years

"That's what Sesame Street did – give [children] a straight answer. And that's a lesson we can all take away as parents and adults."

This mentality reigned even in the early days of the show, when episodes were perhaps too real by today's standards. When some early episodes – talking Cookie-Monster-had-a-pipe early – were re-released a few years ago, the videos included a parental advisory that read: "These early Sesame Street episodes are intended for grown-ups and may not suit the needs of today's preschool child."

"It was just darker. It was gritty. It was a gritty place," she told Ophira and the Ask Me Another audience at The Bell House.

Grit and all, the lessons learned on Sesame Street are timeless, and Sonia was the woman who thoughtfully taught them to so many of us as children.

Sonia Mazano, NPR's Ask Me Another Host Ophira Eisenberg and Emilio Delgado (l to r) at The Bell House. NPR hide caption

toggle caption NPR

Sonia Mazano, NPR's Ask Me Another Host Ophira Eisenberg and Emilio Delgado (l to r) at The Bell House.

NPR

When Ophira asked Sonia which episodes and moments from the show she would recommend to every parent who wants to make Sesame Street a part of their child's life, she suggested the must-show-your-children moments above. But...

"You should watch all of them," she said.

Sonia Mazanoand Emilio Delgado, who played her on-screen husband Luis, are the special guests on this week's episode ofListen to the show to hear Sonia's full interview with Ophira, catch some Sesame Street -inspired trivia (including a trivia game challenging contestants to distinguish real and factitious muppets) and hear the couple sing their famous tune "Hola." The episode is available now at iTunesand NPR.org, and will air on public radio stations around the country. Find local stations and broadcast schedules here.

Microsoft is turning Skype into a messaging platform—and, as usual, it’s late to the game

To transform Skype, Microsoft has to make it smarter, and the company’s plan for doing so rests on the shoulders of bots, and their creators.

Like Tencent did with Wechat, Facebookwith Messenger, and Slackwith Slack, Microsoft is turning its chat app, Skype, into a full-blown messaging platform.

To transform Skype, Microsoft has to make it smarter, and the company’s plan for doing so rests on the shoulders of bots, and their creators. At its Build developer conference today (March 30), Microsoft introduced the Skype Bot Program— a set of tools, including an SDK, API, and workflows—that, as its name suggests, lets developers build bots for Skype.

Some examples of what these Skype bots will be able to do include ordering a cab, booking a hotel room, and “anything that you may want to do that you’ve done historically with applications and websites,” said Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella.

If any of this sounds familiar, it’s because the whole concept of smarter AI helping humans get things done was a major theme of last year’s Google I/O developer conference. Then, the search giant touted how Google Now—a layer within Android phones that surfaced relevant information, such as commuting times or boarding passes, at just the right moment—was learning more context in order to perform more robust actions, like pulling up showtimes when a movie is referenced or making reservations on OpenTable when talking about a restaurant.

The notion of taking action via chat apps also took center stage at Facebook’s F8 conference last year. After splitting off Messenger from the flagship appin 2014, the social network revealed its grand plans to open Messengerup into a platform. The new Messenger made it possible for users to send money to their friends, buy items from stores, interact with customer service reps, and more.

For Microsoft, opening up Skype represents the most significant shift in the chat app’s 13-year history. And it comes amid an ongoing messaging revolution that has companies trying to make their apps more useful, convenient, and hopefully addictive for consumers. But Microsoft has a track record of embracing trends a tad too late, perpetually putting it in a second- (or lower-) place position.

Take, for example, smartphones. Responding to the iPhone, Microsoft in 2010 debuted its Windows mobile operating system to much fanfare, but it never made a serious dent in market share. As of February 2016, the operating system was active in 2.6% of smartphones globally, according to NetMarketShare.

It’s a similar story with search. In response to Google’s dominance in that area, Microsoft in 2009 launched Bing. Almost seven years later, Bing, which also powers much of Yahoo search results, commanded 21.4% of desktop searches in February compared with Google’s 64%, according to comScore.

Microsoft was also slow to embrace cross-platform computing, only bringing Microsoft Office to the iPad in 2014. But in that instance, a late entry hadn’t hurt the company too much, thanks to the ubiquity of that product. In fact, Apple recently started selling Office 365 as an add-onduring the checkout process for the iPad Pro, relying on desk workers’ familiarity with Office to position its tablet as a PC replacement.

Over the years, Skype has become synonymous with video calling, but that’s had the effect of pigeonholing the chat app. Unlike Office, Microsoft can’t rely solely on Skype’s reputation to compete against up-and-comers. Though it counts more than 300 million monthly active users, it’s by no means the dominant chat app. Facebook Messenger has 800 million monthly active users. WhatsApp, another Facebook subsidiary, has 900 million, and WeChat’s not far behind either. Snapchat, which is gunning to be millennials’ go-to chat app, counts 100 million daily active users.

As is the objective of these conferences, Nadella urged developers to build bots that work with Microsoft programs, presenting it as a “huge opportunity for you to write new types of applications.” But unlike Windows 10, which Microsoft projects to run on 1 billion devices in the next two years, there was no mention of Skype’s growing reach. For developers with limited resources, it simply wasn’t a strong argument for why they should create bots for Skype rather than, say, Messenger.

NPR Podcasts Turn 10!

New technologies come with a big asterisk.

New technologies come with a big asterisk. We can never be sure whether they'll catch on and stick around for more than one or two seasons worth of holiday promotions. As a media organization, we're constantly investigating these new tools – and sometimes creating them – to make things better for people on the other side of the speakers or screens.

The NPR Podcast directory circa 2005. screenshot www.NPR.org/podcasts hide caption

toggle caption screenshot www.NPR.org/podcasts

The NPR Podcast directory circa 2005.

screenshot www.NPR.org/podcasts

Ten years ago today, NPR podcasts made their debut, with a directory of 170+ programs created by NPR and public radio stations. At the time, we didn't know whether podcasts would crash and burn next to minidisks, but the format was a beautiful match for the audio programming our journalists had been shaping for decades, and it had potential. Potential to let us think about programming in new ways, to stick with our audiences as their lives became more on-demand and to take that step forward with our existing network in public radio.

Our history in the podcast space since then is an interesting gauge of how much times have changed – for producers and consumers too. Between NPR and all of the public radio stations who contributed shows to those first collections in the directory, it took about a year and a half to reach 80 million downloads. Last month, we had 76 million downloads for just those programs NPR produces or distributes, and public radio stations are seeing record high listening on their own shows.

Then

Apple launched iTunes in the summer of 2005, and not long after, Bryan Moffett, an analyst on the team that had recently launched our podcasts, traveled to the west coast to meet with Odeo, one of the first podcast directories that also had tools for creating and publishing podcasts from a browser.

A Brief History of NPR Podcasts

NPR launches a podcast precursor, All Songs Considered, as its first digital-only show.

August 2005: NPR podcasts make their debut at www.NPR.org/podcastswith 174 programs, 17 NPR-originals. Gigaomwrote of the launch: "Acura is a main sponsor for NPR podcasts and some estimates say that this is probably the biggest podcast advertising buy till date."

NPR doubles the number of original titles, adding The Diane Rehm Show and The Kojo Nnamdi Show from WAMU. alt.NPR brand launches, and All Songs Considered, already one of NPR's most popular podcasts, introduced "Open Mic Music," a tool that allowed artists to record a podcast intro, pair it with their music, and upload it for listeners to hear and vote on.
- Downloads: 5 million for all NPR and public radio programs

Wait Wait...Don't Tell Me! premieres as the first full program podcast from NPR.
- Downloads: 13 million for all NPR and public radio programs

NPR makes WHYY's Fresh Air available as a podcast, and the first video podcast appears in the NPR Podcast directory - Morning Becomes Eclectic from KCRW.
- Downloads: surpass 80 million for all NPR and public radio programs

NPR and This American Life broadcast "Giant Pool of Money," a collaborative reporting project released in the wake of the global financial crisis. It leads to the creation of the Planet Money podcast, produced by an NPR team that works to explain the global economy in ways everyone can understand.

NPR launches a new online feature called "Mix Your Own Podcast," making it easy for public radio fans to customize their podcasts by selecting from subject, program, station and favorite personalities.
- Downloads: 300 million for all NPR and public radio programs

Culturetopia podcast, hosted by arts reporter Neda Ulaby and blogger Linda Holmes, wins Gracie Award for "Outstanding Podcast."

October 2013: NPR produced and distributed podcasts downloaded 30 million times this month.

"Planet Money Makes A T-Shirt" wins 2015 duPont-Columbia Award. The project, which the awards jury called a "tour de force," was made possible by a Kickstarter campaign, the most successful in the journalism/publishing category to date.

NPR launches new podcast directory at www.npr.org/podcasts.

Invisibilia reaches 10 million plays less than one month after its release.

March 2015: NPR produced and distributed podcasts downloaded 94 million times this month.

NPR, WNYC and WBEZ hold first-ever podcast upfront with advertisers.

NPR and member station podcasts become available in NPR One.

Coming in September 2015: NPR will premiere the Hidden Brain podcast and participate in the IAB podcast upfront showcase in New York.

"It was pretty innovative for the time," says Moffett, now the GM of NPR's sponsorship team. The company wanted to work with NPR in distributing our podcasts, but they were struggling to compete with iTunes now that Apple had introduced podcasts into the mix.

"I remember leaving their offices that day and saying to Bruce Melzer, NPR's [then] director of business development, 'Man, those guys are toast,' since Apple had quickly dominated the podcast directory space," Moffett said. "Except, 'those guys' were Evan Williams, Noah Glass, Jack Dorsey and Biz Stone. Pretty much while we were there talking, they were working on the side project that would become Twitter."

The Twitter creators weren't alone in the risk and experimenting that came with being an early adopter. NPR introduced and tested different features, formats and shows over the years - an "alt.NPR" brand for our original podcasts and a build-your-own-podcast tool powered by our API (check out the timeline to see more). Not all of them have lasted through the decade, but we certainly learned from each.

Learning how to track engagement with this new vehicle for our content wasn't simple either. Moffett recalls:

No one really knew what to expect in terms of downloads. There was a lot of confusion over exactly what a download was, or how we would track people. All of it was new, and podcasts can't be measured as easily as web page traffic.

We actually came up with a novel way to try and put anonymous unique identifiers in the subscription URLs to at least understand how many people were subscribed. It worked pretty well for a few weeks until we realized it broke about 1/4 of the podcast clients out there, so we quickly stopped that.

I remember making a bet with someone that it would take us three months to get to 1 million downloads, but that goal was eclipsed in no time.

NPR podcast were downloaded that many times in the second month.

Now

The podcast landscape has expanded in profound ways since then – both technologically and socially. A podcast app is now native in Apple's iOS8, a change the company made in 2014, and certain podcast-based programs have permeated pop culture – This American Life and Serial, NPR's Invisibilia and TED Radio Hour, now one of the most downloaded podcasts in the English language (13 million+ downloads in July 2015).

The changes of the last decade go beyond the simple number of people who've made podcasts part of their media diet, too.

Programs created for podcasting are no longer bound by the platform where they began. Fans and listeners interact with hosts on social media and at live events - tapings for shows such as Wait Wait... Don't Tell Me! and Microphone Check. New audio festivals have emerged in the wake of a growing fascination with podcasts. Radio Love Fest and Cast Party are two our own hosts have participated in this year.

Podcasts have a regular presence on NPR's broadcast shows, too – Alt.Latino on Weekend Edition, Hidden Brain on Morning Edition – and those programs can also be found at NPR One, NPR.org, Stitcher, iTunes and in many other places.

Great programs are added to the collective bank of podcasts each day from NPR and others media companies - both public and commercial. We're excited to share this space with so many talented thinkers, journalists and storytellers - some of whom started right here at NPR - and the growing community of people who appreciate the power of sound in our lives.

The NPR Podcast directory circa 2015. Visit www.npr.org/podcasts. screenshot www.NPR.org/podcasts hide caption

toggle caption screenshot www.NPR.org/podcasts

The NPR Podcast directory circa 2015. Visit www.npr.org/podcasts.

screenshot www.NPR.org/podcasts

The Cake

Anniversaries, birthdays and events in the celebratory category call for a treat, no? While our digital innovation isn't quite to the point where we can send you a slice of "Happy 10 Years In Podcasting, NPR" cookie cake Willy Wonka-style, we did think of another way to celebrate with you – a playlist of must-hear episodes from the people who make them.

Current NPR podcast hosts and producers selected one episode of their show that they want you to hear. An audio party favor, if you will.

Enjoy the listening. We hope it inspires a smile or helps you understand your world a little better. You certainly do that for us.

Alt.Latino Host Felix Contreras

Alt.Latino Host Jasmine Garsd

Ask Me Another Host Ophira Eisenberg

Ask Me Another House Musician Jonathan Coulton

Bullseye Host Jesse Thorn

Car Talk Host Ray Magliozzi & team

Fresh Air Host Terry Gross & Team

From The Top Host Christopher O'Riley

Hidden Brain Host Shankar Vedantam

How To Do Everything Host Ian Chillag

How To Do Everything Host Michael Danforth

Invisibilia Host Lulu Miller

Invisibilia Host Alix Spiegel

Latino USA Host Maria Hinojosa & team

Microphone Check Host Frannie Kelley

Only a Game Host Bill Littlefield & team

On Point Host Tom Ashbrook & team

Pop Culture Happy Hour Host Linda Holmes

Pop Culture Happy Hour Host Stephen Thompson

Planet Money Host Jacob Goldstein

Planet Money Producer Jess Jiang

Song Travels Host Michael Feinstein & team

StoryCorps Creator Dave Isay & team

TED Radio Hour Host Guy Raz

Wait Wait... Don't Tell Me! Host Peter Sagal

Wait Wait... Don't Tell Me! Scorekeeper Bill Curtis

World Cafe Host David Dye

This post has been updated. A previous version incorrectly listed iOS7 as the first Apple operating system with a native Podcast app. That update was part of the iOS8 release.

Responding To Listeners With Responsive Design

NPR's new online help center offers users the best experience possible, no matter what kind of device they're using.

Justin Lucas hide caption

toggle caption Justin Lucas

NPR's new online help center offers users the best experience possible, no matter what kind of device they're using.

Justin Lucas

Need help finding an NPR story that you heard on air? Want to contact an NPR show, staff member or the? Haveorthat you want to submit for a review? Itching to pitch a story idea?

We made it easier for public radio listeners to do that and so much more with the launch of NPR's new online help center, available at.

The site now offers a more streamlined way for public radio audiences to contact/connect with NPR shows, programs, staff and departments. And the new help center was designed with users in mind, too. Nearly half of npr.org web traffic comes from mobile devices, so the new site is fully responsive, delivering a consistent user experience across all devices, from desktop to phone.

"We want to hear from listeners and we want it [contacting NPR] to be a positive, intuitive experience for them," says NPR's Audience and Community Relations Manager Justin Lucas, who spearheaded the redesign. On any given week, Lucas and three other members of his team answer between 700 and 1,000 email inquiries from the public, and with the newsite, they - like the new site - can be even more responsive.

Users can now expect to find what they're looking for in less time and receive an email an response from NPR within approximately two business days when a question is submitted. Here are some of the new features that make this possible:

The completely rebuilt webpages feature responsive design that allows visitors to view the website seamlessly on any desktop computer, tablet or mobile device Webpages load faster Based on search terms and phrases, the online help center provides answer suggestions The online help center provides quick answers to commonly asked questions. In some cases, this eliminates the need for users to email NPR Help article suggestions appear as users navigate the color-coded categories of help topics Accessibility features, including voiceover Less subfields for visitors to complete when submitting a question, ensuring that it gets to the appropriate NPR staffer in less time

We hope that the new form helps you get the info you need, faster. Explore NPR'sand send us your feedback about how we can make your experience with public radio – on air and online – a great one.

Twitter just gave T-Mobile’s CEO an honor only previously gifted to the Pope

T-Mobile’s John Legere is on par with the Pope in Twitter’s eyes.

The social network just gave the T-Mobile chief executive its top honor—an emoji of his likeness—which Twitter has only previously gifted to one other person outside of promotionsand partnerships: Pope Francis, CNN Money reported. From Monday (March 29) through Thursday, people can share a smirking emoji of Legere by tweeting with the hashtag #tweetjohn.

5/ @twittergave me my own emoji!! Can you guess what the hashtag is that activates it?! pic.twitter.com/AmzfBWxZGg

— John Legere (@JohnLegere) March 28, 2016

The 57-year-old, who is one of the most outspoken CEOs on social media, caught Twitter’s eye with his social savviness. The company chose to highlight Legere because he paved the way for other CEOs on social media by mixing personal and professional tweets in a way that humanizes the T-Mobile brand, a personal familiar with the matter told Quartz.

Selfies from the grocery aisle, cat GIFs, and profanity-laced video responsesare not what you’d expect to find in tweets from the head of the US’s third-largest wireless carrier. But they’re among Legere’s specialities.

He’s a rarity among CEOs—known for tweeting back-and-forth directly with customers and fielding service questions and complaints. The rabble-rouser also stirs things up with larger rivals AT&T and Verizon on the social network, and has gotten into public tiffswith politicians such as Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump.

He’s so active on Twitter— averaging 16 tweets a dayduring the three years that he’s been active on the social network—that he places the same stock on social communications as he does the company’s SEC filings, conference calls, and presentations.

Legere took to Twitter on Monday to tout the honor, and rub it in his rivals’ faces.

2/ I spend more time on twitter than I should admit – i.e. a lot more time than other CEOs spend on the golf course (and that’s a lot)

— John Legere (@JohnLegere) March 28, 2016

4/ But who’d have thought it would turn into something so vital to running @tmobile! And I never thought I’d be rewarded for it! :)

— John Legere (@JohnLegere) March 28, 2016

7/ Stay tuned!! You know I’ve got a fun way to use this emoji to make competition squirm ;) #tweetjohn

— John Legere (@JohnLegere) March 28, 2016

He was also spotted on Sunday (March 28) sporting a pink hoodie with the emoji.

Happy #slowcookersundayand the Easter Slow Cooker Lamb Chops with orange sauce are IN! Time to run! #HappyEaster pic.twitter.com/rJjyiB9bid

— John Legere (@JohnLegere) March 27, 2016

Updated on Mar. 28 at 2pm EST : This post was updated to include details on why Twitter chose to highlight Legere and clarify that Twitter has created emojis of other individuals as part of promotions and partnerships.

Snapchat just made a huge change to become your go-to messaging app

In 2013, Snapchat reportedly turned down $3 billion to be acquired by Facebook.

$3 billion to be acquired by Facebook. Now, the ephemeral messaging app startup, which has since been valued at $16 billion, and is aiming for$300 million in revenue this year, has announced updates to its service that position it to more directly take on Facebook’s apps.

Snapchat said today that it has rebuilt the chat section of its app, which now feels a lot like Facebook’s Messenger and WhatsApp apps. Users can now send stickers, photos, short video messages, and start voice calls to their contacts within Snapchat. To start a chat, users swipe right on their contacts as they did before, but they’re now greeted with a range of options:

More than just text (Snapchat)

Previously, users had to navigate Snapchat’s notoriously confusing interface to figure out if their friends were online and available to video chat. Now, they just press the video icon. You can tap it to record a short note, or hold it down to start calling.

(Snapchat)

And users can now receive video calls but choose not to show themselves, with a new feature, voyeuristically called “watch.”

(Snapchat)

There’s also a host of sticker images users can send to contacts, which will be eminently familiar to anyone that uses Facebook Messenger:

(Snapchat)

And the end result is a chat interface that looks a lot more like its competitors’:

(Snapchat)

With the new update, which Snapchat announced in a blog post, there’s a lot more signposting to guide users. For example, if you want to send a friend a picture, you press the picture icon; if you want to make a voice call, you press the telephone icon. This could perhaps be an indication that Snapchat is trying to make its messaging service feel less exclusive—and easier to use—as it aims to directly take on social messaging competitors like Messenger and WhatsApp, both of which have over 1 billion daily users. (Snapchat reportedly has about100 million daily users.)

Snapchat told Quartz that the updates to its app have been submitted to Apple’s App Store and should be available in the next few hours, and that the new chat function will also be coming to Android.

Even non-political ads are tapping into Americans’ anxiety over a Trump presidency

The 2016 presidential race is getting all too real for some Americans, who are fearful of a Donald Trump presidency.

The 2016 presidential race is getting all too real for some Americans, who are fearful of a Donald Trump presidency. A survey by Vox.com said 28% of people in the USclaim they will consider packing up and moving to Canadaif the Donald wins the White House in November. And Google searches about moving to the Great White Northhave surged since he began dominating the Republican primaries.

Those anxieties are fueling some creative work from brands outside the political horserace. Streaming-music platform Spotify, Canadian startup Sortable, and Canada’s Cape Breton Island are a few of the brands playing up the alleged American exodus in their latest ad campaigns.

Spotify’s ad, which breaks on TV on Thursday (March 31), touts the perfect soundtrack for the move up north: Flo Rida’s “My House.” As part of a new ad campaign, Spotify mined its data(paywall) in search of unusual insights about its users. The track, the commercial boasts, was “elected” to hundreds of moving playlists created by Spotify users.

The ad-tech firm Sortable, based in Waterloo, Ontario, Canada, also leveraged Trump fears to appeal to expatriates who are considering returning to Canada from the US. In “ Feeling homesick?” the company laid the text over a Trump image to promote Sortable’s talent search. The firm made a broader appeal in another digital ad that appeared on Facebook and Instagram:

I generally do not pay attention to ads, but this one is quite funny pic.twitter.com/WkAyHmJFca

— Simon Hedlin (@simonhedlin) March 29, 2016

And an island in Canada created a website that jokingly invited Americans to move there if Donald Trump wins in November. Started by a local radio DJin Cape Breton Island, Nova Scotia, “If Donald Trump wins,” aims to attract more people to the area. The site links to the Cape Breton’s official tourism page and says:

Hi Americans! Donald Trump may become the President of your country! If that happens, and you decide to get the hell out of there, might I suggest moving to Cape Breton Island!

The island’s tourism board, Destination Cape Breton, told CNNMoneythat it received 50,000 U.S. inquiries on its website during the first three days the site was available, more than all the traffic from the U.S. in 2015.

Meanwhile, a startup called SimpleCitizen—a ‘ TurboTax for immigration” that guides US immigrants through immigration and visa processes—asks in its Facebook ads, “Nervous? Don’t be,” alongside an illustration of Trump’s iconic hairdo. The ad tells people that SimpleCitizen can help them secure their green cards before November, when the country’s next president will be elected.

After last night's debate, who wouldn't be a little nervous? No need to worry — you can apply for a Green Card online and at simplecitizen.com.

Posted by SimpleCitizenon Friday, March 4, 2016

Bookmark This: NPR At The Library Of Congress National Book Festival

Colena Turner/National Book Festival
Colena Turner/National Book Festival
How many books fit in a tote bag?

How many books fit in a tote bag? Join more than 175 authors, storytellers, illustrators and poets at the Washington Convention Center next month, and you might find out.

About The National Book Festival
September 5, 2015
Washington Convention Center (DC)
Program 10AM-10PM / Doors 9AM
Attend: The event is free and open to the public.

Now in its 15 thyear, the Library of Congress National Book Festival celebrates page-turning literature through author talks, panel discussions, book signings and more. To learn more about the Festival and view the complete schedule, click here.

On Saturday, September 5, NPR's own raconteurs (who also enjoy getting their read on) will interview authors at the 15 thannual Library of Congress National Book Festival. Our hosts, journalists and even our VP of news will lead book chats with writers in all different genres — from romance to science. NPR Correspondent Tom Gjelten will be there as well with his latest, A Nation of Nations: A Great American Immigration Story.

Find details about these 11 events as well as some NPR coverage of books in the schedule below. More details are available in the National Book Festival App (available in iOSand Android), where you can build your own custom, public radio-infused itinerary.

Schedule: NPR at the National Book Festival

Category: Biography and Memoir

David McCullough with NPR Special Correspondent Melissa Block
5:20PM

Melissa Blocksits down with David McCullough. His newest book, The Wright Brothers follows the author's Pulitzer Prize winners Truman and John Adams , which became an Emmy Award-winning miniseries on HBO.

Category: Children

Before You Go

Catch up with more of the Festival's authors at NPR.org/Books, where you can find our latest author interviews, news from the book world, original reviews, recommendations, lists and the latest edition of the signature Books Concierge.

Buzz Aldrin with NPR Science Correspondent Joe Palca
1:20PM

Joe Palcatalks to moonwalker Buzz Aldrin about his vision for the future of space travel and his latest children's book, Welcome to Mars: Making a Home on the Red Planet .

Listen: After Moon Trip, Aldrin Required To Fill Out Custom Formvia Morning Edition

Category: Fiction

Jane Smiley with NPR Books Correspondent Lynn Neary
1:40PM

Lynn Nearychats with Pulitzer Prize-winning author Jane Smiley about her latest book, Some Luck . Her previous work includes The Greenlanders , Ordinary Love and Good Will , A Thousand Acres , Horse Heaven , Good Faith and The Georges and the Jewels .

Category: History

Lawrence Wright with NPR Senior V.P. of News Michael Oreskes
5:20PM

Michael Oreskestalks with author Lawrence Wright about his newest book, Thirteen Days in September: The Dramatic Story of the Struggle for Peace . Wright has also written Noriega: God's Favorite and the script for a movie by the same name.

Listen: 13 Days Of High Emotion That Led To The Egypt-Israel Peacevia Fresh Air

Category: International

Juan Gabriel Vásquez with NPR Producer/Editor Bilal Qureshi
5:20PM

Bilal Qureshiinterviews Juan Gabriel Vásquez, author of the best-selling The Sound of Things Falling as well as the award-winning work The Informers and The Secret History of Costaguana .

Category: Romance Fiction

Sarah MacLean with NPR Books Editor Petra Mayer
7:15PM

Petra Mayerinterviews Sara MacLean, author of the newest Rules of Scoundrels novel Never Judge a Lady by Her Cover. Previous work includes The Season , Nine Rules to Break When Romancing a Rake , A Rogue by Any Other Name, and No Good Duke Goes Unpunished .

Beverly Jenkins with Petra Mayer
7:40PM

Petra continues talking to romance genre authors in an conversation with Beverly Jenkins, whose newest romance, Destiny's Captive, joins the ranks of her previous works including Heart of Gold, Night Hawk, Indigo and Bring on the Blessings.

Paige Tyler with Petra Mayer
9:00PM

Petra concludes her trio of interviews with author Paige Tyler. Tyler's books Animal Attraction , Dead Sexy and Good Cop, Bad Girl are EPIC Award Finalists. Some of her recent works include Her Perfect Mate , Her Lone Wolf , Her Wild Hero , Hungry Like the Wolf and her latest SWAT (Special Wolf Alpha Team) book Wolf Trouble .

Check Out: Happy Ever After: 100 Swoon-Worthy Romancesvia NPR Books

Category: Science

David Quammen with NPR Morning Edition Host Steve Inskeep
11:50AM

Steve Inskeepinterviews David Quammen, also a journalist and author The Chimp and the River: How AIDS Emerged From an African Forest .

Casey Schwartz with NPR Science Reporter Adam Cole
1:40PM

Adam Colespeaks with award-winning author Casey Schwartz about her new book In the Mind Fields: Exploring the New Science of Neuropsychoanalysis .

Category: Young Adult

Sonia Manzano with NPR's Michel Martin
5:20PM

Michel Martininterviews Sonia Manzano (Maria from Sesame Street ), about her memoir Becoming Maria: Love and Chaos in the South Bronx.

Listen: In Her New Memoir, Maria Tells Us How She Got, How She Got To 'Sesame Street'via Morning Edition

Meg Wolitzer with NPR Special Correspondent Susan Stamberg
6:40PM

Susan Stambergtalks with Meg Wolitzer about her latest book, Belzhar , a story of young romance, loss and the power of acceptance.

Listen: Meg Wolitzer: Catnip For 'A Certain Kind Of Reader'via Ask Me Another

2:35PM

Tom Gjelten'slatest book, A Nation of Nations: A Great American Immigration Story , explores the effect of the 1965 Immigration Act. He is also the author of Professionalism in War Reporting: A Correspondent's View and Bacardi and the Long Fight for Cuba: The Biography of a Cause , which is a history of Cuba focusing on the Bacardi rum family.

Public Radio At SXSW 2016: 12 Panels To Vote For Right Now

Similar to many repeat badge-toters and secret show-finders, NPR has made SXSW a staple of its calendar.

Similar to many repeat badge-toters and secret show-finders, NPR has made SXSW a staple of its calendar. For years, we've been one of the programmers delivering public media in Austinwith music showcases at Stubb's; a launch party for SXAmericas; panels and discussions during SXSWedu, Interactive and Film. It's also where we launched Generation Listenin 2013.

Shereen Marisol Meraji of NPR's Code Switch team and Lauren Saks of PBS at SXSW Interactive in 2015. Ben Mook/Current hide caption

toggle caption Ben Mook/Current

Shereen Marisol Meraji of NPR's Code Switch team and Lauren Saks of PBS at SXSW Interactive in 2015.

Ben Mook/Current

Now, colleagues across NPR and public radio are looking ahead to the conversations they'd like to have during the conference next March. Teaming up with different industry leaders and organizations, they've pitched ideas for events around podcast marketing, leveraging metrics in the newsroom, diversity in tech, advances in cyber security, education and much more.

We've rounded up all 12 of these public radio panels from the SXSW PanelPicker portal, where you can find a complete list of proposals in the running for 2016 programming and vote for your favorites. If you're interested in seeing any of these on the official schedule next year, be sure to cast your vote before Friday, Sept. 4 .

Proposed SXSW Panels Ft. Public Radio Journalists

Speakers: Bryan Moffett, National Public Media; Sarah van Mosel, New York Public Radio

Podcast advertising creates opportunities for podcasters but presents new challenges. How do podcasters balance their creative freedom with commercial interests? Speakers will discuss the role of advertising in their revenue model, balancing creative independence, and the limitations of podcasting.

Speakers: Laura Sydell, NPR ; Tracy Maddux, CD Baby; David Dufresne, Bandcamp; Brune Guez, Revelator

Big data is not just for the majors any more. Independent artists are utilizing fan metrics, streaming habits and geography data to maximize income as well as to identify and reach new fans. This panel will explore tools and methods to chart a course for artists' careers at any level, using data to understand where fans are and what motivates them.

Speakers: Michael May, NPR ; Xavier K. Richard, CBC/Radio-Canada; Robert Amlung, ZDF; Eric Scherer, France Télévisions

What will the next-generation of public media look and sound like? This panel will focus on innovation models in public media such as accelerators, incubators, digital initiatives and intrapreneurship programs. Public media representatives from Canada, France, Germany and USA will cover research and development approaches, and share their successes and failures.

Speakers: Aarti Shahani, NPR ; Sunil James, Bessemer Venture Partners; Nadav Zafrir, Team8 Ventures; Pedram Amini, Independent

The line between cyber good guys and bad guys is very thin. Of necessity, the brightest minds in cyber not only consider a hacker's mindset - they often put it to use themselves. This panel will convene true experts who can speak to both sides of the hacking "coin" - cyber military operatives, security researchers-turned founders and top cyber investors - to help us understand what really motivates today's hackers and what we can do about it.

Speakers: Anya Kamenetz, NPR ; David Kunt, Knewton; V. Elizabeth Owen, GlassLab Games; Diana Shulla-Cose, Perspectives Charter Schools

Anya Kamenetz of NPR Ed leads a discussion about our standardized test obsession and then explores ways to break this addiction. The panel will discuss alternatives for schools to explore.

Speakers: Aarti Shahani, NPR ; Layla Seka, Salesforce Desk.com; Tsu-Jae King Lie, University of California, Berkeley; Unnur Gretasdottir, Pinterest

From Rosie the Riveter to Taylor Swift, every generation has an icon that empowers females and promotes gender equality. Despite these beacons of what could be, women today still make only 78 percent of men's earnings, and females with advanced degrees earn only 73 percent of men's earnings with the same education. In this session, hear what female leaders in tech have to say about the current tech climate for women and how to be the next champion of gender equality.

Speakers: Lori Todd, NPR ; Apryl Pilolli, Cox Media Group; Ryan Kellet, The Washington Post; Josh Belzman, NBC News

Using metrics and data to make better content decisions requires more than just numbers. It requires a cultural shift from a purely editorial mindset to one that combines news judgment with metrics. Four local and national media experts in radio, TV and newspaper tackle this conundrum head on and discuss how to encourage culture changes in the newsroom that will motivate adoption of data-driven practices.

Goodbye To Your Tunes? – Tech's Race To Save Music
Speakers: Ann Powers, NPR ; Jason Gross, Perfect Sound Forever/TheBlot; Andy Leach, Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum; Scott Goldman, Grammy Foundation

From the wax cylinder to 78-RPM records to LPs to CDs to digital files, music formats keep changing, but what is being done to ensure that all the music contained in these formats will be available in the future? This panel will attempt to answer how we will meet the challenge of changing technologies so that future generations will hear the music we love and that we ourselves will be able to access it years and decades from now.

Podcasts Powered By Women – NextGEN Leadership
Speakers: Sarah Van Mosel, New York Public Radio ; Lisa Chow, Gimlet Media; Chris Bannon, Midroll Media; Rena Unger, IAB – Interactive Advertising Bureau

The voice of female leadership is rapidly rising in the male-dominated world of podcasts. This session will inspire you with stories about the women who are creating gender balance in this decade-old space and growing the audience as a result. We will discuss why showcasing content by women is a lucrative business strategy for networks.

Speakers: Rebecca McInroy, KUT ; Richard Reddick, Eric Tang, Cherise Smith, The University of Texas at Austin

KUT Radio's Rebecca McInroy will moderate a discussion on racial justice with UT Austin educators Rich Reddick, Eric Tang and Cherise Smith. They'll step back from the recent events and offer frameworks for understanding the racial dynamics at play in Austin and the U.S.

Speakers: Michael Crockett, KUT ; Ron Kadish, Freelance; Brooke Parrott, Songkick; Garrett Baker, FlipSwitchPR

Anyone who has ever worked tour PR knows how grueling it can be. Each concert requires its own mini-PR campaign; press and fan outreach starts at different times for each concert market; there is a separate message for separate tour press in each city. Find out how experts in the field - a publicist, a tour manager, a PR platform, a concert syndicator and a journalist - handle all this and more.

Speakers: Anna Sale, WNYC ; Andy Bowers, Panoply / Slate, Kristin Calhoun, Public Media Platform; Jennifer Brandel, Hearken

Journalism contains some of the most trusted brands in our world today. But it's also battled hardships with integrity, relevance and, at times, a painstakingly-slow ecosystem. In this pivotal time for quality journalism, organizations must embrace intrapreneurship. Come hear stories of successful intrapreneurial Snows and the lessons they have learned along the way to becoming Starks.

Hugo Rojo is an associate with NPR's Media Relations team. A late-blooming public radio nerd, Hugo arrived at NPR's Washington, D.C. headquarters via El Paso and Austin, Texas.

Rape Is A Crime In India — But There Are Exceptions

Hanna Barczyk for NPR
Hanna Barczyk for NPR
In India, rape is illegal.

In India, rape is illegal. And the definition of what constitutes "rape" was widened only recently in response to a horrific fatal assault in New Delhi in 2012. Forced penetration by any object in any orifice is now a crime.

Despite this law, some men in India can have sex with a woman against her will. That's because Parliament chose to exempt husbands.

This decision — which makes India one of 49 nations that don't criminalize marital rape — has come under fire from women's rights advocates around the globe.

The U.N. Committee on Elimination of Discrimination Against Women recommendedthat India change its stance in July 2014. And again, in March 2016, United Nations Development Program Chief Helen Clark went on recordto say India would run afoul of the Sustainable Development Goals it has adopted if it does not amend this law.

But many of India's leaders argue that this change would be at odds with the culture of the country. That group includes Maneka Gandhi, union minister for women and child development, who had previously backed the criminalization of marital rape. Last month, she created a stir when she announced that she was reversing her position.

The argument that Gandhi and others make is that societal norms, poverty and a lack of education make such a law out of the question.

That doesn't mean that there aren't voices in India speaking out against marital rape.

In 2015, two separate pleas were submitted to the Supreme Court asking for the law to be amended by deleting the marital rape exception. In the first, the petitioner, a 28-year-old, had already filed charges against her husband for domestic violence (a civil, not criminal offense) as well as "cruelty." She used her maiden name, Reema Gaur, to shield her identity.

What she wanted next was the ability to bring him to justice for repeatedly raping her. "The law as it stands today amounts to a state-sanctioned license granted to the husband to violate the sexual autonomy of his own lawfully wedded wife," the plea stated.

Appearing on TV, heavily veiled, wearing spectacles that magnified her eyes, Gaur talked about her marriage. "Every night post the wedding was a nightmare with me. ... He would never even ask my permission," she said. "He used to beat me up, insert artificial [objects] in me. At some point I was in such a condition I was not even able to walk," she said, her voice thick with tears. On the night she decided to leave, she said, "He hit me 18 times on my head with a box and a torchlight. And then he inserted the torchlight in my vagina."

Bleeding and in a semiconscious state, she called her mother for rescue. The bleeding lasted two months. In the year she was married, when Gaur tried to talk to her in-laws and her parents, "The only thing they told me is, 'Try to adjust.' "

In Indian society, as in many nations, marriage is often seen as a private relationship in which abuse is not only tolerated but also expected. The Gates/Clinton foundations' No Ceilings Reportsays that 80 percent of women in developing countries believe their husband has a right to beat them and that 1 in 3 men has admitted to forcing sex with his wife.

A 2013 United Nations report said that of 10,000 men surveyed in six countries, including India, a quarter admitted to having raped a female partner. The study said, "The most common motivation that men cited for rape was related to sexual entitlement — a belief that men have a right to sex with women regardless of consent."

It gets more complicated. In India, according to the Hindu Marriage Act, withholding conjugal relations is reasonable grounds for dissolution of a marriage and divorce. But forcing those conjugal relations? Within a marriage, it's not a crime, unless the bride is younger than 15 (which, in itself, is a crime — the legal age for a woman to marry is 18).

So any woman who has been sexually assaulted by her husband is stuck with the same limited options as Gaur: She can only file for protection and a restraining order under the Domestic Violence Actor under Section 498A, which punishes a husband with up to three years in prison on grounds of cruelty.

Kamlesh Kumar Mishra, a legal consultant at the Human Rights Law Network, was the advocate who filed the first public interest litigation in the Supreme Court representing Gaur. The court's response was not what he had hoped for: "Since this is a petition by an individual, we would not like to intervene." The petition was withdrawn.

Unfazed, Mishra's colleagues filed a second petition, this time representing several women's right organizations. "It went before the same bench and met the same fate," Mishra said. The justification this time? "India is not a country where this can be done."

Marital rape, they asserted, is a Western concept, and they cited the Law Commission of India's 172nd Report on Review of Rape Laws of 2000, which said that the exemption of husbands should not be removed since "that may amount to excessive interference with the marital relationship" and that "marriage presumes consent."

Last year the U.N. Committee on Elimination of Discrimination Against Women recommended that marital rape be criminalized in India. After that recommendation, a question was raised in the upper house of Parliament asking what action had been taken. Haribhai Parathibhai Chaudhary, minister of state for home, replied, "It is considered that the concept of marital rape, as understood internationally, cannot be suitably applied in the Indian context due to various factors, including level of education, illiteracy, poverty, myriad social customs and values, religious beliefs, mindset of the society to treat the marriage as a sacrament." This response was repeated verbatim by Minister Gandhi in Parliament.

Deepika Narayan Bhardwaj, a filmmaker and activist, agrees that marital rape is a societal problem but does not believe the law needs to be changed.

She says its possible to get justice under the existing law: "Having a new law with no measures in place, no processes, checks and balances — in today's circumstance, the marital rape law would be a disaster," she says.

She believes that the state doesn't have the ability to support women who might seek a divorce because of marital rape. "It's naive to say women have complete right of consent and rights over their body, when the truth is they're dependent on their husbands for everything, financially, emotionally," says Bhardwaj. "A woman files marital rape, the guy lands in jail. If the woman is dependent on him, where does she go?"

But protection from marital rape is "not a Western problem. It's a basic human right," argues Trisha Shetty, founder of She Says, a website for information and action on sexual crimes against women. "People in India think sexual abuse and rape is something that happens to the poor. That myth needs to be broken," she says. People across all economic classes get abused, she adds, "That whole assumption that you're making laws for people who don't understand is nonsense. Everyone understands the concept of consent, of saying, 'No.' "

Her response to the opposition: "If you're so aware of the fabric of society breaking, then roll out awareness schemes, educate people. Don't close your eyes and pretend the problem will go away."

She Says and several NGOs, including Jagori (which in Hindi means "awaken, women!"), have organized workshops and other programs to help women speak out about rape. Online, there are additional resources, such as this Marathi language effort to educate about consentvia two folk dancers having a musical discussion about the meaning of "yes" and "no." The government has even set up an emergency hotline, staffed by women, to field calls from women who need police assistance as well as resources and instruction about their rights. In their first year, they received more than 600,000 calls from women, some describing assault and rape within their marriage.

When it comes to changing the law, however, the buck is still being passed. The Delhi High Court has agreed to revisit the second petition refiled by Mishra's colleagues on the grounds of discrimination against married women. The new case challenges the government's stand against criminalizing rape within a marriage, since it a punishable offense when committed by a stranger. The court requested a response on this issue from the Union of India, with a deadline of March 23.

How did the government reply? It filed an extension. The issue now remains tabled until May.

Can Silly Patents Help Fight Frivolous Lawsuits?

A hammock-canoe drawing, U.S. Patent No.

A hammock-canoe drawing, U.S. Patent No. 299,951, is displayed in a June 1884 publication of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office in Alexandria, Va. Critics of the patent system say it's too easy for people to save a slew of semi-realistic ideas, then sue when a firm separately tries to make something similar. Bloomberg via Getty Images hide caption

toggle caption Bloomberg via Getty Images

A hammock-canoe drawing, U.S. Patent No. 299,951, is displayed in a June 1884 publication of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office in Alexandria, Va. Critics of the patent system say it's too easy for people to save a slew of semi-realistic ideas, then sue when a firm separately tries to make something similar.

Bloomberg via Getty Images

Updated at 11:52 a.m. ET with a response from the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.

Inventors and entrepreneurs have logged years of complaining about the patent system, and there are some good reasons. In 2015, patent litigation rose 13 percent from the previous year according to a study by Unified Patents, and two-thirds of those suits were brought by nonpracticing entities, or so-called "patent trolls."

Trolls don't make products — trolls buy up patentsso they can sue companies that do actually make products. Given that patents on an invention last for 20 years, that's plenty of time to bring a lot of lawsuits. Critics of the system say there are too many frivolous patents.

Patents such as an " apparatus for facilitating the birth of a child by centrifugal force" (US 3216423 A) — a machine that spins a woman around until she gives birth — from 1965. Or a patent on toast — or a " bread refreshing method" (US 6080436 A) — from 2000.

Critics of the patent system say frivolous patents are the fuel for trolls to bring frivolous lawsuits. Most companies just settle with such patent trolls, because it's cheaper than going to court.

Frustration with the patent system is what prompted inventor, artist and MIT-trained roboticist Alexander Reben to create All Prior Art, a website that algorithmically generates and publishes patent-troll-like " prior art."

A Sample From 'All Prior Art'

"Blocks and clusters are brought to correspondence thereby to erase blocks of memory area efficiently. In the present method, an asymptote of an upper or a lower edge of a line of printing words is obtained first. Screening methods that employ genetic packages such as bacteria and bacteriophages enable high through-put identification of ligand binding molecules. The shaft of the exercise machine extends through an eccentric hole in the cam."

If someone tries to patent an invention and the idea has already been published, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office won't grant them a patent. Reben's project is trying to cut down on the number of frivolous patents by publishing lots and lots of ideas, and he thinks his database could be used by patent examiners to challenge frivolous patents.

An explanation on Reben's site says the system works "by pulling text from the entire database of U.S.-issued and published (unapproved) patents and creating prior art from the patent language. While most inventions generated will be nonsensical, the cost to create and publish millions of ideas is nearly zero — which allows for a higher probability of possible valid prior art."

Reben says his program generates about 36,000 new ideas a minute. But, it's a bit more than pure random words.

"The key is that I'm pulling language from patents that are already out there, and because of that you have a constrained data set," he says. "Once it's out there the onus is on the patent office to find the prior art."

Much of what's been generated so far by Reben's system is totally nonsensical. Yet some of the ideas may be silly but they do make some sense — after all, the language is coming from the database at the USPTO.

Consider the "fuel-injected baby diaper": It's not clear what it is, but it may make as much sense as an "apparatus for facilitating the birth of a child by centrifugal force."

High Court Ruling Likely To Control Patent Trolls

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Daniel Nazer, the Mark Cuban Chair to Eliminate Stupid Patentsat the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a high-tech civil liberties group, is amused by Reben's project — but he's not so sure it's going to help.

"The patent office looks for prior art when they review patents," he says, "but they tend to look in pretty narrow domains like published technical journals. ... Part of our work is to try and get the patent office to look more broadly."

Patent examiners may already be using the site, though: Reben sent NPR some data that showed that, in the three days since he launched his website, two visitors were from the USPTO.

Asked whether the agency would actually look at the All Prior Art site to help decide whether to grant a patent, USPTO Press Secretary Paul Fucito emailed this statement:

"High-quality patents enable certainty and clarity of rights, which fuels innovation and reduces needless litigation. To ensure we continue issuing high-quality patents well into the future, we established the Enhanced Patent Quality Initiative (EPQI). We are strengthening work products, processes, services, and how we measure patent quality at all stages of the patent process.

"In terms of wider access to prior art, the USPTO has a Third-Party Preissuance Submissionprogram which provides a mechanism for third parties to submit patents, published patent applications, or other printed publications of potential relevance to the examination of a patent application with a concise description of the asserted relevance of each document submitted."

Zambia’s currency is the world’s best, six months after the president’s national prayers

Zambia’s national prayers have been answered—it’s currency, the kwacha, is now the world’s best performer.

Late last year, president Edgar Lungu had been at his wits end with the kwacha in free-fall losing 45% versus the dollar in the year to October. In fact he felt the currency was under so much pressure he asked his country men and women to rally round and pray for its recovery.

“Our God has heard our cries, he has forgiven us our sins and we are sure he will heal our country (as) we face serious social-economic challenges,” said Lungu, a christian.

Well, it looks like their God did hear their cries.

The kwacha is back. It’s outperforming silver, gold and counterparts like the Brazilian real, to be the world’s best currency with a rise of 19.9% in value in 2016, according to analysis quoted by Bloomberg.

The kwacha is also benefiting from anticipation that Zambia’s main export, copper, is expected to see prices startto recover after several years of decline. There’s also increasing hope that a long mooted IMF loanwill soon materialize to help the country meet its obligations.

There are still other challenges ahead though. Zambia is one of several southern African impacted by a droughtin the region which is hurting its food supply. And the drought also severely impacts the country’s power supplybecause water levels in Lake Kariba are too low for its hydroelectric powered grid.

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Zambia’s currency is the world’s best, six months after the president’s national prayers

Zambia’s national prayers have been answered—it’s currency, the kwacha, is now the world’s best performer.

Late last year, president Edgar Lungu had been at his wits end with the kwacha in free-fall losing 45% versus the dollar in the year to October. In fact he felt the currency was under so much pressure he asked his country men and women to rally round and pray for its recovery.

“Our God has heard our cries, he has forgiven us our sins and we are sure he will heal our country (as) we face serious social-economic challenges,” said Lungu, a christian.

Well, it looks like their God did hear their cries.

The kwacha is back. It’s outperforming silver, gold and counterparts like the Brazilian real, to be the world’s best currency with a rise of 19.9% in value in 2016, according to analysis quoted by Bloomberg.

The kwacha is also benefiting from anticipation that Zambia’s main export, copper, is expected to see prices startto recover after several years of decline. There’s also increasing hope that a long mooted IMF loanwill soon materialize to help the country meet its obligations.

There are still other challenges ahead though. Zambia is one of several southern African impacted by a droughtin the region which is hurting its food supply. And the drought also severely impacts the country’s power supplybecause water levels in Lake Kariba are too low for its hydroelectric powered grid.

Sign up for the Quartz Africa Weekly Brief— the most important and interesting news from across the continent, in your inbox.

South Africa is targeting Chinese and Indian tourists after relaxing its visa rules

South Africa’s tourism industry is recovering from an ill-fated experiment with stricter visa regulations.

South Africa’s tourism industry is recovering from an ill-fated experiment with stricter visa regulations. The country welcomed nearly 3 million tourists in January this year, 15% up on a year ago, according to the tourism ministry this week. In the last quarter of 2015, the number of tourists from China fell by nearly half, and visitors from India dropped by 15%, according to the South African Tourism Services Association.

Tourism has consistently made up 3% of South Africa’s economy in the last decade, and is a key source of jobs and foreign income, according to Statistics South Africa, a government agency. Tourism minister Derek Hanekom attributedthe revitalized growth to South Africa’s weakened currency, the elimination of the Ebola outbreak all the way over in West Africa, and scrapping controversial visa restrictions.

The laws were relaxed earlier this year but it could take up to five years for the industry to fully recover, Tourism Business Council of South Africa CEO Mmatati Ramawela said.

In October 2014, South Africa’s Home Affairs department introduced new laws that required all visitors to have their bio-metric data captured in person at an embassy or official visa center. Children were required to travel with a certified unabridged birth certificate and the written consent of a parent where the child was traveling with one parent or a relative.

The new regulations were aimed at a broad number of issues to “balance South Africa’s openness to legitimate travelers,” home affairs minister Malusi Gigaba said at the time. His department’s main concerns were South Africa’s porous borders and national security.

But it was the “legitimate travelers” who may have been worst affected, especially from China and India. The tourism minister Hanekom has since traveled to China and India to reassure visitors that South Africa is once again a hassle-free dream destination.

The improved numbers still reflect a bias toward countries that have historically favored passports. Eight of the top ten visiting nationalities come from countries that don’t need visas, meaning remaining restrictions are still deterring a huge tourism market in the developing world.

South Africa is also missing out on tourists from its own continent. More than 98% of African tourists who visited South Africa, all came from countries within the Southern African Development Community. Citizens of the 15-member trade and diplomatic community do not need visas to travel within the community, a model South Africa, and the rest of the continent, may want to consider expanding.

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Why China Supports New Sanctions Against North Korea

People watch a news report showing footage of North Korean rocket launchers in Seoul on March 4.

People watch a news report showing footage of North Korean rocket launchers in Seoul on March 4. North Korean leader Kim Jong Un ordered its nuclear arsenal readied for preemptive use at any time following the U.N. Security Council's adoption of tough new sanctions on Pyongyang. Jung Yeon-Je/AFP/Getty Images hide caption

toggle caption Jung Yeon-Je/AFP/Getty Images

People watch a news report showing footage of North Korean rocket launchers in Seoul on March 4. North Korean leader Kim Jong Un ordered its nuclear arsenal readied for preemptive use at any time following the U.N. Security Council's adoption of tough new sanctions on Pyongyang.

Jung Yeon-Je/AFP/Getty Images

International pressure on North Korea has ratcheted up in recent days, as the U.S. imposed new unilateral sanctionsand China began taking steps to implement a strict, new United Nations Security Council resolution.

But while the U.S. has few economic ties with North Korea to cut, China has plenty of screws to tighten. And so whether international sanctions work or fail may depend to a large degree on how strictly China implements them.

Beijing has begun instructing Chinese banks, ports and shipping and trading companies doing business with North Korea to implement the U.N. resolution to the letter.

China's U.N. Ambassador Liu Jieyi speaks with U.S. Ambassador Samantha Power before the Security Council vote on sanctions against North Korea on March 2. Don Emmert /AFP/Getty Images hide caption

toggle caption Don Emmert /AFP/Getty Images

China's U.N. Ambassador Liu Jieyi speaks with U.S. Ambassador Samantha Power before the Security Council vote on sanctions against North Korea on March 2.

Don Emmert /AFP/Getty Images

Adam Szubin, the Treasury Department's acting undersecretary for terrorism and financial intelligence, tells NPR that China is taking this very seriously.

"I know from my meetings here in Beijing that my counterparts have very much taken the resolution to heart," he says.

Szubin, who visited Beijing this week, says the new sanctions will hit hard enough to change Pyongyang's "decision-making calculus."

The new U.N. resolution is not just "adding a few new companies to a sanctions list or a few new North Korean officials," Szubin says. Instead, it targets "every major aspect of North Korea's access to international shipping, international banking [and] international trade to develop revenues for its missile and illicit nuclear programs."

Although China appears committed, the sanctions put it in a tough spot.

First, says People's Universityinternational relations expert Cheng Xiaohe, some Chinese companies are going to take a hit to their bottom line. China-North Korea trade was worth $6.86 billionin 2014.

"At the same time as we protect our national security interests, we must be prepared to sacrifice some of our own economic interests in order to accurately target North Korea with sanctions," he says.

Cheng says the U.S. has its work cut out for it, collecting intelligence on the hundreds of Chinese firms doing business with North Korea, and on North Korean firms adept at concealing their business dealings behind fronts and shells.

And if Chinese firms are found to be violating the U.N. resolution, Cheng points out, they could themselves face sanctions.

"This could create new frictions between the U.S. and China," he warns. "I hope that the U.S. will think carefully before it uses this big stick to crack down on Chinese firms."

Cheng notes that China continues to supply North Korea with crude oil as humanitarian assistance. The sanctions allow this, even if North Korea may be able to refine some of the oil for military uses.

China says neither a humanitarian crisis nor regime collapse are acceptable outcomes for North Korea. But Zhang Liangui, a veteran North Korea watcher at China's Central Party Schoolin Beijing, says that at the end of the day, China cannot save North Korea from its fate.

"If North Korea is going to collapse," he says, "no external force can prop it up. Frankly speaking, whether it collapses or continues to develop will mainly depend on its own domestic and foreign policies."

North Korea's most recent nuclear test has put Beijing on the back foot, undermining its diplomatic ties with Seoul and raising the possibility that the U.S. could install missile defense systems in South Korea.

Cheng Xiaohe says Beijing doesn't like this — but there's not much it can do.

"China has neither the ability nor the political will to give South Korea the security guarantees it seeks," he says. "But the U.S. does."

The setbacks have led some Chinese observers to wonder, "Has China's North Korea policy failed?" — as the official People's Daily newspaper recently asked in an online headline.

Zhang Liangui says the possibility of failure is not one that Chinese diplomats dare admit. Then again, Zhang says, for the past two decades, no country has succeeded in keeping the Korean peninsula nuclear-free. North Korea's current suspected stockpileis estimated to include 10 to 16 nuclear weapons.

"The way this situation has developed is a collective failure for all of us," he laments, "a failure for the entire international community, including the United Nations."