This is one cool product. You can learn more over at their website. My only question is how this will work in the UK where “Chip & Pin” has been pushed so hard.
Flavors.me is a pretty simple little site that helps you create a personal landing or splash page. You have put your name, a description and a bunch of links to your blog, twitter, photos and videos. There are quite a few services available for adding, but not so many you can’t be bothered. I filled out only 4 because it’s more functional that way.
You can customise it very easily and it works really well. It’s just a shame I don’t have the imagination to make a page as beautiful as some of those at the end of this video. A cool service I won’t use much, but am glad is out there.
The situation with Google and China this week has been fascinating to me. CNet have done a great job covering it.
I’m not big on New Years resolutions, for the same lame reasons everyone else. Still, I do like to re-evaluate every now and then. In November 2008 I decided I was going to be more patient, spend 1 year without coffee and quit smoking permanently.
It has been more than a year since, and it’s not New Year any more. I have managed to complete all 3 goals so I guess now is as good a time as any to try a few more.
- Drink more water and tea to replace the soda. Coffee is still okay as long as it’s balanced
- Get the tattoo I said I would after 12 months not smoking
- Walk more and start climbing again
- Be less frugal with sleep (SleepCycle is helping this already)
- Be more positive in posture and mind (and swear less)
- Find more happiness in my work
- Be more patient (an extension of Nov 08)
- Finally read 4 Hour Work Week by Tim Ferriss (it’s been sat here long enough)
Perhaps I will write more about each of these goals in the future, perhaps not. I wanted to get them out there and see how I do. Make the effort and meet the goal.
We all know that Apple prides itself on the beauty and simplicity of it’s products, so when I noticed this little flaw I was shocked.
During a call on an iPhone you can press the home button to allow access to other applications while talking. When you do this you get an omni-present green bar at the top of the screen to allow you to return to controlling the call. All you need to do is tap that bar.
The iPhone can also become a 3G modem for your computer; this is tethering. If you do this you get a blue omni-present bar at the top of the screen to alert you to this service running. It would make sense that tapping that bar would take you to the tethering section of the Settings app to allow you to turn it on and off (control that service). Sadly it does not and I can’t for the life of me figure out why.
Without a doubt, my favourite video repository onilne is Vimeo. I love the design of the website, the staff, the kind of videos it attracts, it’s HD feature and most of all I love the player. I have had only one complaint of Vimeo (other than not enough people using it) and that’s a lack of mobile support.
Today, Andrea updated their staff blog announcing they are going mobile. Check out www.vimeo.com/m form your smartphone (iPhone, Android or Pre) and you will get a beautiful interface. Log in to see a wonderfully designed mobile site. it’s feature lacking right now, allowing you only to see your videos and featured videos, but here is a new toy.
Under My Videos you can Make mobile videos, which creates versions of all your videos that will play on these mobile devices. After that, any future videos you upload will do the same automatically. That’s pretty awesome. The guys at Vimeo have done a great job, so well done all. The only thing I’d add would be to allow the iPhone Autofill to save my login details, but I’m sure that will follow.
Check out Vimeo yourself today, it’s far superior to YouTube, Viddler and other onilne video services.
Historically people on both sides of the computing fence have sighted Apple’s design as a huge draw to the Mac. I would agree, but mostly for reasons people don’t think about. Today gave a good example.
I was tasked with repairing a Toshiba Satellite something or other laptop. It had an issue where the power connector socket had been pushed back into the case. I had seen this before and began to replace it.
While working on the unit it occurred to me that this wouldn’t have happened with a Mac. Even before the invention of the MagSafe, Apple’s DC-in boards were tucked up tight against the side of the unit, and screwed securely into place.They were fairly solidly constructed and broke only when excessive force (a fall) snapped the power adapter pin into them. So really, they still hadn’t failed, the adapter had.
On the Toshiba it’s a different story. The bare hole in the side of the unit conceals a huge gap with very little to fill it. It’s as if Toshiba electronics designers managed to shrink the PCBs but couldn’t find the case designers (probably because they had all been fired). Within this gap there are a few bits of plastic poking out which are apparently there to hold the DC-in board in place.
This board is more of a connector. It plugs into the motherboard near the middle of the unit, and fat wires lay in the case entangled in the antenna cables, eventually leading near a hole in the side. The connector is pushed (not held) between the previously mentioned case lumps. After a while the corners break off, leaving no way for it to stay in place, and a perfectly working connector now requires me to replace it.
Instead of putting a flat board near the edge of the unit and screwing it solidly into place like Apple designed, there was a piece of plastic shoved between two other pieces of [cheap] plastic, way away from any support, which just breaks off. This is bad design, and just one example of Apple’s design superiority.
I went through a period of around 6 months early last year when I consistently slept for 8 good hours a night. Recently however external pressures and laden shoulders have led to my sleep has becoming erratic, light and short again. Waking up tired and irritable is less than desirable, and doesn’t lead to a constructive day so I have been looking into sleep recently.
It turns out that one of the most important factors in waking up feeling rested, relaxed and ultimately happy is waking up at the right time for you. That is, during your lightest sleep phase. I have an alarm set for 6AM most days, but why pick and arbitrary number when you can wake when best suits your sleep pattern? It turns out there is an app for that; Sleep Cycle.
Went to bed / woke up: 22:41 / 06:56
Total time: 8h 14m
Total time: 8h 14m
Simply, this application uses the iPhones accelerometers to measure your movement in bed, and thus your sleep patterns to determine when is best to wake you. This can happen any time in the last 30 minutes before your set alarm time. This morning it woke me at 6:56AM as apposed to 7AM. It’s early days, but between that, coupled with techniques in working meditation I have felt great today. I will update you when I have spent some time with it.
New pucks, new digs. I have started posting more online again recently and while the quality and attention to those posts has been lacking I have enjoyed it none the less. As anyone reading this probably knows, I have been a huge fan of Posterous for a while now, and have been using it as my main blog. Today that changes.
While I love the guys and gals over at Posterous, and I love the service, the sheer beauty of professional themes and Vimeo will have to take over for now. There may well be a few test posts going up over the next week, trying to ascertain how different services post some of this stuff, but please bare with me – it will end soon.
So, the changes; I have moved houltmac.com to point to a new blog based on Wordpress. The beautiful theme is from the brilliant Michael Whalen. The idea is to post some better (not good, but better) content here. I will be doing so through Posterous still as this is my favourite way to distribute content. That way I can continue to upload media to Flickr, Vimeo, YouTube and so on even from my iPhone. Most of the quicker, more mobile, silly blog stuff will end up at houtlmac.net which I have pointed at Posterous (where the .com used to point).
The idea then is a segregation of the one liners and photos I post through twitter, and the blog posts I want to post here. In any case, I hope you enjoy whatever ends up here, and I will continue to post and strive to share interesting things.
