Communicating in a networked world
Yesterday I had to answer my phone.
Does that sound odd? First of all, what’s a phone for if you don’t answer it? But second, who answers the phone any more, given the overwhelming volume of spam calls we receive every day?
You’re probably thinking “Why is he even asking this? When was the last time I answered a phone call?”
When I upgraded from iPhone 4S to iPhone 6, I was on AT&T. As a “reward” for upgrading, after being a loyal customer (“We want to thank you for being the best part of AT&T”), AT&T charged me $40 and then increased my monthly data plan by $15. And locked me into the full plan for 24 months. I had a hellish experience but was able to cut my monthly costs drastically by unlocking and then switching to T-Mobile. Here’s how I did it… [Read more…]
I need a mode for my iPhone where I can leave an app running on the screen and ”turn off touch” so that I can watch what’s happening but not cause anything to happen if I accidentally touch the screen.
I have decided to call this ”fingerprint only” mode because you can touch the screen, but nothing happens.
I particularly need this for mapping and travel apps, where I want to keep the app open while I’m walking or hiking and holding the phone in my hand, but touching the screen could cause the app to fly off to different coordinates, or even to change mode or shut down. Great example is Everytrail where it tracks my movement and I frequently have it in my hand so I can watch as I walk along. Fascinating, but way too easy to touch the wrong thing and completely screw up the trip map.
Digital nomads, you can finally and really be the system administrator for your cloud (and other) servers from your iPad. Since December, each time I’ve left town, I have intentionally left my MacBook Pro at home in favor of my iPad. I found that just having a few specific apps allowed me to fully administer my cloud servers from the pad. Please note that a bluetooth (or other) keyboard is required for some of these apps to function fully. But generally I can do everything I need to when I’m on the road. [Read more…]
When the web was new, the goal was to get as many “eyeballs” as possible looking at your site content—to aggregate readership with your site being the aggregation point. This pretty much followed the old rules of advertising and promotion—you needed people to see your advertising in order to succeed financially[1. Oh, wait, what do I mean “old rules” here? It’s still true, and that’s why the rest of this article is germane.]. The phrases “visit us often” or “bookmark this site” or “come back frequently” were the conventional wisdom, and web surfers used bookmarks to remember what sites they wanted to go back to and read later. But they mostly never did except for the big news or entertainment portals.
RSS feeds and news readers began to change that. (Thanks Dave[2. Dave Winer].) I use NetNewsWire’s standalone software on my Mac, and online services like Google Reader let you integrate feeds into your iGoogle home page. You can also sync your Google Reader settings across multiple programs and devices. But in the last couple of months, the scene is greatly changing is subtle ways I think people haven’t spotted yet… [Read more…]