What a letter!
If Adobe were smarter, they'd start developing products that not only helped/enabled HTML5 developers, but they'd also start selling a converter application to move Flash movies to H.264 so mobile phones could display them.
Friday, April 30, 2010
Tuesday, April 20, 2010
Ah Geek Squad... how I love you.
An undercover/hidden camera story produced by KPTV in Oregon about different computer repair shops and the honesty/integrity levels of each. Take a guess how Best Buy did. What's really surprising is what they did after this story ran.
I guess just like a Moody's or S&P rating, grades from the BBB can be bought as well.
I guess just like a Moody's or S&P rating, grades from the BBB can be bought as well.
A great guide to privacy on Facebook
Update: May 2010: Wired has a great and incredibly thorough article on Facebook privacy here.
Stop hiding everyone and use FB's privacy settings to their fullest potential. Personally, I just made a custom news-feed list and I pick and choose who's updates get displayed. But, like everything, there are a bunch of different paths to the same solution. Ars Technica did a great piece on the in's and out's of Facebook's privacy features. What's your favorite?
Stop hiding everyone and use FB's privacy settings to their fullest potential. Personally, I just made a custom news-feed list and I pick and choose who's updates get displayed. But, like everything, there are a bunch of different paths to the same solution. Ars Technica did a great piece on the in's and out's of Facebook's privacy features. What's your favorite?
iPhone battery life
I wanted to know if leaving the Bluetooth setting On all the time was an extra drain on battery life, even if the BT earpiece was turned off. According to Apple, it's a small tax on the battery, but many user comments on the forums I read (and my own personal experience) was to the contrary. Regardless, this is a useful article-
"Paying attention to just a few commonsense pointers will pay off with a longer battery lifespan and battery life for your iPhone. The most important thing is to keep your iPhone out of the sun or a hot car (including the glove box). Heat will degrade your battery’s performance the most."
-From Apple's iPhone battery info page.
"Paying attention to just a few commonsense pointers will pay off with a longer battery lifespan and battery life for your iPhone. The most important thing is to keep your iPhone out of the sun or a hot car (including the glove box). Heat will degrade your battery’s performance the most."
-From Apple's iPhone battery info page.
Turn your favorite songs into iPhone ringtones
Very easy and useful tutorial if you imported a song into iTunes from a CD and you want to use it as a ringtone for your iPhone.
iPhone tips, tricks, apps, and rants
I know this info is already out there. And I can already hear my tech-savvy friends with iPhones complaining about how this info is so 2009. But whatever, this is a blog for my not-as-savvy friends, clients, and family too...
My favorite iPhone app right now, aside from Bebot, is Dragon Dictation. It's a (free) speech-to-text app that does what it advertises- simply. Initially I had some privacy concerns, as it scans your Address Book contacts so that it can better recognize names when you speak them; it also sends information back to its HQ upon doing so. In a rare move for this blog, I'm going to link to another blog because they have great comments, and an in-depth article on this already. After a little digging (and consideration of my long history with Dragon's desktop dictation/speech-to-text software, Naturally Speaking), I feel great about using this app. It allows me to compose longer sentiments quickly without having to type on that annoying iPhone screen-keyboard.
[APPLE: GIVE ME BLUETOOTH KEYBOARD COMPATIBILITY ALREADY!
Supposedly this feature is coming in iPhone's OS 4.0 this summer, but no mention of it on Apple's page.]
I'm also a big fan of the Tie-A-Tie, Sleep Cycle, White Noise, and pUniverse apps.
Most of you probably know about shake to undo (and shake again to redo), but did you know you can double-click in the top-most menu bar (by the clock) while you're say, in Safari or scrolling through photos and iPhone will fast scroll to the top of whatever you're looking at? OK so you probably knew that too, but here's a nice MakeUseOf article that covers some iPhone tips you might not know about.
Apple grounded me for swearing too much. I just want to be able to edit my iPhone's auto-correct database... guess it's another thing to add to the list of stuff I can't wait to do with a jailbroken iPhone.
My favorite iPhone app right now, aside from Bebot, is Dragon Dictation. It's a (free) speech-to-text app that does what it advertises- simply. Initially I had some privacy concerns, as it scans your Address Book contacts so that it can better recognize names when you speak them; it also sends information back to its HQ upon doing so. In a rare move for this blog, I'm going to link to another blog because they have great comments, and an in-depth article on this already. After a little digging (and consideration of my long history with Dragon's desktop dictation/speech-to-text software, Naturally Speaking), I feel great about using this app. It allows me to compose longer sentiments quickly without having to type on that annoying iPhone screen-keyboard.
[APPLE: GIVE ME BLUETOOTH KEYBOARD COMPATIBILITY ALREADY!
Supposedly this feature is coming in iPhone's OS 4.0 this summer, but no mention of it on Apple's page.]
I'm also a big fan of the Tie-A-Tie, Sleep Cycle, White Noise, and pUniverse apps.
Most of you probably know about shake to undo (and shake again to redo), but did you know you can double-click in the top-most menu bar (by the clock) while you're say, in Safari or scrolling through photos and iPhone will fast scroll to the top of whatever you're looking at? OK so you probably knew that too, but here's a nice MakeUseOf article that covers some iPhone tips you might not know about.
Apple grounded me for swearing too much. I just want to be able to edit my iPhone's auto-correct database... guess it's another thing to add to the list of stuff I can't wait to do with a jailbroken iPhone.
Mac laptop batteries
A nice how-to on calibrating the battery on your Mac laptop.
(iBook, MacBook Pro, MacBook, PowerBook, MacBook Air)
And for those more technically inclined, check out this great widget that gives you a profile of your battery life, among many other things.
[Special thanks to Chris R for the tip!]
(iBook, MacBook Pro, MacBook, PowerBook, MacBook Air)
And for those more technically inclined, check out this great widget that gives you a profile of your battery life, among many other things.
[Special thanks to Chris R for the tip!]
