Boot up: offline Sheets, Japan's apps boom, robot writing, snooze = lose, and more

Plus visualising the commuter belt through travel time, Colombian smartphone 'imports', colourblind Chrome, and more

Commuters at Paddington Station, London: the commuting time versus house price equation isn't simple. Photograph: Rex Features

Google adds offline editing to its spreadsheet offering >> TIME.com

One decision Google made about this new version is unexpected: It only affects new spreadsheets you create. Old ones still show up in the old format, and can't take advantage of new features like offline editing. That complicates matters if you want to share spreadsheets with someone who isn't using the new version. (For now, you opt into the upgrade in your Google Drive settings.)
The fact that Sheets now involves two different file variants will take some getting used to. Normally, one of the advantages of working with a web-based productivity tool such as this one is that you don't need to worry about file formats. For now, in Sheets, you will. But maybe Google will enable existing spreadsheets to support the new features before it flips the switch and puts everyone on the updated version.

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Hey big spender! Japan outspends US, continues its meteoric growth >> App Annie Blog

The Only Major Country Where Google Play Vies With iOS on Equal Revenue Terms:
Japan bucks the platform revenue trend seen in most countries as far as platform revenue is concerned. In the last year, Google Play app revenue has caught up with iOS in Japan, compared to the rest of the world where iOS app revenue is well over double that of Google Play on an aggregate basis.

An amazing statistic. Once again Japan is sui generis.

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Can robots write sports previews? >> Kontra

In one millionth of the time it takes [Associated Press writer Brian] Mahoney to write one of his NBA previews, Automated Insights can generate previews for all the games not just in NBA but in all sports, anywhere on the planet, as long as there's underlying data. And in a domain like sports, there's plenty of data.

Then again, if people write like robots, it's unsurprising if robots come to take over their space.

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More Apples, fewer BlackBerries forecast for Canberra >> Sydney Morning Herald

Troubled handset supplier BlackBerry had a strong install base in [Australian government agencies in] Canberra owing to its strong security pedigree, but agencies had begun branching out to iPads and iPhones and this was likely to continue, [analyst Rodney] Gedda said.
The federal government published its mobility roadmap in June. It cites improving operational efficiency and providing greater access to services among benefits of a government-wide mobility strategy.
Software for managing fleets of mobile devices would be in growing demand as more agencies embraced mobile ways of working, Market Clarity founder Shara Evans added.

Former PM Julia Gillard is quoted on her use of an iPad in the mobility roadmap; of course that was before all the NSA fun...

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The trouble with snooze buttons (and with modern sleep) >> The New Yorker

The difference between one's actual, socially mandated wake-up time and one's natural, biologically optimal wake-up time is something that Till Roenneberg, a professor of chronobiology at Ludwig-Maximilians University in Munich, calls "social jetlag." It's a measurement not of sleep duration but of sleep timing: Are we sleeping in the windows of time that are best for our bodies? According to Roenneberg's most recent estimates, based on a database of more than sixty-five thousand people, approximately a third of the population suffers from extreme social jetlag—an average difference of over two hours between their natural waking time and their socially obligated one. Sixty-nine per cent suffer from a milder form, of at least one hour.

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Train times v. house prices: the commuter belt, on a graph >> Anna's blog

Anna Powell-Smith:

As well as crawling Rightmove listings, I've been looking at transport and house-price data. Specifically, I've scraped travel times to London by train versus house prices, to examine the theory that houses get much cheaper once you escape the commuter belt.
To test this, I gathered mean journey times to London from Traintimes for every railway station in the UK, and mean asking prices for 3-bed houses near each station from Nestoria. Here's the graph of all stations, with a moving-average line added.

You can find your station (if you commute to London by rail). Powell-Smith has just joined the Government Digital Service - a sort of tiger team which gets government departments to think digital. A great hire.

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How stolen smartphones end up in the hands of Colombian cartels >> Huffington Post

Gerry Smith:

The influx of traffickers to the stolen smartphone trade was confirmed by an active Colombian police informant who spoke to HuffPost on condition he not be named, citing threats to his life. He said cartels favor high-end devices like the iPhone and the Samsung Galaxy. Many of the phones arriving here in bulk and destined for retail distribution are stolen in the United States, the informant said.
"When you turn on the phone," he said, "it says AT&T or T-Mobile."
According to the informant, the traffickers take stolen phones from the United States to an electronics market at a shopping center in downtown Bogota, where the devices are refurbished and then smuggled across borders, mostly by ground.
Colombia has become so central to the global distribution network that stolen smartphones are arriving by air and sea from points as distant as Spain and Singapore. A sophisticated stealth courier industry then delivers the devices across the continent, from Brazil to Argentina.

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Spectrum >> Chrome Web Store

Instantly test your web page with different types of color vision deficiency.
Color Vision Deficiency (CVD) affects people's ability to distinguish certain colors. Estimates indicate that approximately 200 million people worldwide are affected by some kind of CVD.

Another great one to bookmark, or install.

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