Once you graduate college or high school and start moseying out into the real world, you start to notice: finding dates is hard. You are no longer surrounded by potential partners just your own age; you’re surrounded by, well, everybody. Including old pharts like yours truly. So how do you find a partner?… Continue reading on Gear Diary ...
As Mike recently pointed out, Adele is a phenomena who popularity exploded this year because… she has a great voice and the songs are great! She’s had a rough time lately however thanks to throat surgery and a silent recovery.
After a polyp was removed Adele was told not to speak for a month. According to an upcoming interview on 60 Minutes, Adele, who loves to talk, found the silence more difficult than the actual surgery. Fortunately for her she lives in the era of smartphone apps. As she explained,
I had an application on my phone that you type the words into it and then it speaks it.
But there’s more. You see, most text-to-speach apps offer G-rated language and Adele is a self-professed potty-mouth. … Continue reading on Gear Diary ...
Show some love for your favorite apps by nominating and voting for their glory in the 2012 Appy Awards by February 17th. Continue reading on Gear Diary ...
This is a sponsored post, all opinions here-in are mine.
As crazy as it sounds, there are still people in the world who use their iPhones and Android handsets to … make voice calls. I know, Crazy! Right? If you are one of them, and, especially, if you travel internationally, the cost of those calls can add up quickly. Vonage has been around for quite some time, but they’ve just released a new iPhone and Android calling application that is pretty impressive. I’m already using it for calls when I’m in a WiFi network; although the app works over 3G, over WiFi the calls are fantastic and they don’t use any of my data plan. I had a chance to speak with the Vonage mobile app team yesterday, and as soon as the call was over I downloaded the app.
I’m impressed. The app is easy to use, loads quickly, and the quality of the calls is excellent.
Let’s run down what stands out in this app, and then walk through the process of actually setting it up so you can see just how easy it is to use …… Continue reading on Gear Diary ...
Update #2 by Dan: We reached out to Evernote CEO Phil Libin to bring this to his attention. He let us know that the feature is supposed to be off by default when you add a person manually AND, if you change the settings the app is supposed to remember the settings. Currently it is on by default aND it doesn’t remember changed settings but that is a bug that will be addressed ASAP.
That’s great news. I also hope Evernote will highlight this functionality in the future so people know it is there in the first place.
Update #1 by Judie: Dan just called to tell me that it turns out that there is a “Send my contact info when I meet someone” option that is checked by default, meaning that the app is installed to send the offending introduction email. You must uncheck the box, and thereby OPT OUT, or this app will send an automatic email to the contact. My advice would be “make sure that you check that box!”
I just downloaded it (on my iPad) to see for myself, and I didn’t find any opt-out check box during the set up process, much less any notice anywhere that the app would send an email to anyone. It was only when I went searching after the fact that I found the option inside my personal info in settings.
I can tell you right now that if I met some guy at an event and then got an email from him moments later saying he was pleased to meet me, I would think it was more than a little bit weird. To top matters off, there is the “If you’d like to remember the people you meet, get Evernote Hello” tag at the bottom of the email, which makes the sender look like they wouldn’t be able to keep people straight if it weren’t for the app.
My opinion is that it would be best to collect a business card upon introduction and scan it later, rather than fool with this app.
I ripped on Evernote ‘Hello’ when it was first released over a month ago. The “meet people and get in contact” app from Evernote seemed to me to be completely unnecessary. And when they suggested you give it to a stranger and allow them to take their own picture with your smartphone … umm no!
Well Evernote Hello got updated, and the update post on the Evernote Blogcast even includes CEO Phil Libin discussing the improvements. Quite frankly when Phil goes into explaining why giving the other person your iPhone in order to take a picture “You almost get a photo booth type experience with them smiling”, I had to wonder if some of the explanations were direct responses to our criticisms. Of course they are not, but each (and every) hole we punched in the app WAS addressed.
The good news is that the update actually makes a crApp potentially useful. So I went to use it and guess what? This is still NOT an app I want on my iPhone, and you probably don’t either. Why? Because it does something I didn’t know about, I don’t want, and something they don’t mention!… Continue reading on Gear Diary ...
Well, it could be “grandmother of PC games” for all I know. My biology background didn’t include methodology for determining software sex identity and their gender bits look the same to me.
XVision has released DONKEY.BAS for iOS 5.0+ mobile devices, based on one of the original IBM PC DOS games written by Bill Gates and Neil Konzen. Yes, that Bill Gates.
The concept is simple: The player is driving down the road in what appears to be a late 1940s race car, destination unknown. Suddenly, up ahead, a donkey appears in your lane. What to do!? Change lanes before it’s too late! Read on to see my review of the game plus a chance for a reader to win a copy of the game!… Continue reading on Gear Diary ...
Have you ever had a YouTube video or audio segment you wanted to transcribe but didn’t have the patience to sit and manually type out what the speaker/s said? I ran into just such a situation yesterday and, instead of it taking hours for me to listen, pause, type, listen, pause, type etc I was able to transcribe the two YouTube videos I needed in under ten minutes. Here’s how…… Continue reading on Gear Diary ...
Even after reading the description of Royal Trouble I wasn’t sure exactly what to expect in terms of gameplay – and frankly I was nervous that I was getting burnt out on hidden object games after Spirit of Wandering (though ‘Letters from Nowhere 2′ tells me otherwise). Fortunately this is an entirely different sort of casual adventure game – and an absolute blast that you simply MUST try! Let’s take a look!
The Hype:
In this critically acclaimed adventure quest, help two charming royal heirs escape from a secluded island! Princess Loreen and Prince Nathaniel find themselves locked in a dungeon without any idea of how they got there. She is bright… Continue reading on Gear Diary ...
There are some smartphone accessories that make you go “huh? Who would buy this?” And then sometimes there are ideas so smart you think, “Wow! Why didn’t anyone do this sooner?” Finally, there’s the “GREAT idea, poor execution” accessory. The Kingston Wi-Drive fits into one of these categories, but you will have to read to the end to find out which one!… Continue reading on Gear Diary ...
General Sherman (the tree, not the guy who marched from Atlanta to the sea)
Despite what you may think, “going green” and thinking about the environment and the future are not new things. There is the story–possibly apocryphal–about the New College at Oxford planting oaks to replace the beams in the Great Hall . . . several hundred years later, when they (inevitably) became beetle-infested. Teddy Roosevelt was thinking green when he designated huge swaths of the United States National Parks, to be preserved for everyone. Johnny Appleseed is an American legend for planting a zillion trees, and many nations around the world celebrate Arbor Day by planting trees.
Now we have a lot… Continue reading on Gear Diary ...
Last week Apple worked to make the iPad an even more important educational tool than it already is. The textbooks and their own publishing app Apple set the stage for some really huge increases in iPad-in-education adoption rates. The iPad as study tool is nothing new and one of the best educational apps for it has been around for some time. Mental Case is a flashcard creation and study tool for both Mac OS X and iOS. The Mac version of the app is $29.99 and can be found here. The iOS version is $4.99 and can be found here. I’m using it to create a tutorial system for my students becoming Bar and Bat Mitzvah and am impressed with just how flexible it is. Here’s a video of it in action with a little extra “tech” at the end!… Continue reading on Gear Diary ...
The other day one of my Rabbinic colleagues asked what “system” I use in the synagogue to keep track of all of the various lifecycle “events” that take place in the community as well as make sure that all of my colleagues have as accurate and up-to-date information as possible. I wrote up my answers and then, after sending them to him, realized that while our uses for the services I mention are rather specific, the way in which we use them can easily be adapted to a host of different work-settings.
Here’s what I told him.… Continue reading on Gear Diary ...
Have you heard of Tiny Tower? Chances are you have, at least if you use an iOS device. It was named Apple’s 2011 Game of the Year, which is how I stumbled upon it while browsing the App Store. But now that I’ve discovered it, it has become my go-to game throughout the day. Worst of all, I’ve now gotten Sarah hooked on the Android version, despite the fact that neither of us can really point to what’s so exciting about the game!
If you’re not super familiar with Tiny Tower, here’s the App Store description:
Tiny Tower lets you build a tiny tower and manage the businesses and bitizens that inhabit it!
★Make money
If you use an iPhone 4S and are Apple-centric in your computing this quick tip is for you.
The tasks application built into iOS 5.0 is good but it is a bit on the basic side. For many it might be a great option but for others, those of us who need task management with some muscle behind it, it just won’t do the job. the OmniGroup has made it possible for you to now use Siri and the iOS 5.0 task app to add new tasks to OmniFocus. That gives you the best of all worlds- voice input AND a deep, rich task management.
Here’s how.… Continue reading on Gear Diary ...
(yes, I am very obsessive about keeping all my apps neatly in folders.)
Recently Thomas commented that he had re-read my “Farewell, Android” post, and he wanted to know if I felt the same way since buying my 4s back in October. At the risk of ruining the surprise, the short answer is “Heck yea!” But that would make this a rather short follow-up, so read on for how life on iOS has treated me and whether I miss anything from my robot-loving days!
The impetus for my initial decision to move to iOS was frustration with Android’s fragmentation and how poorly my Droid aged. Nothing from Android in the last few months has made me regret that decision. The Galaxy Nexus is nice, but huge, and Motorola’s DROID offerings have the shelf life of a carton of milk. Plus nothing HTC has pumped out on the Android side has been particularly intriguing. However, the iPhone hardware still feels solid, and I don’t feel like the 3.5in screen is a limitation. So I don’t feel like toting an iPhone has left me out in the cold as far as anything exciting!
More importantly, and universally, let’s talk software. Yes, I complained I missed the back button, but I’ve adjusted. I do find the homescreen-centric UI to be a bit limiting sometimes, but I get around it by using the home button double click and flipping through my most used apps. Most importantly, the apps I’ve encountered on iOS just seem more well-developed and fully baked than their Android counterparts. I feel more productive on iOS than on Android, and that says a lot. I did everything on my Droid, from email to calendar to writing Gear Diary posts and editing photos, but all of it is so much easier on iOS that it just blows me away. In some cases comes down to app quality while in other cases it is a matter of stability. Either way it makes me happy!… Continue reading on Gear Diary ...
