I was almost to our back gate, a little over two miles into the run, and it was getting pretty dark. I saw a rattlesnake about 15 feet away, stretched out across the middle of the crushed limestone road. There was just enough daylight left that I felt safe getting off the road to look for a stick. I searched around a bit, and I finally found one that I thought would work. That stick was so dry that it broke in half on the first strike (!!), but I whacked that rattlesnake until it was dead.

The pic isn’t super clear because my hands were shaking. =P

That’s the first time I’ve ever come across a rattlesnake while running, but I didn’t think too much of it.

So I started running again, and as I was sprinting for the back gate I happened to look down and believe it or not — there was another stretched out rattlesnake in the middle of the road — not three feet from my left foot! Another step, and I would have stepped on or over it! I backed up mid-step so hastily that I almost fell down … and yet the rattlesnake didn’t even move, other than to turn its head and give me a dirty look.

Snake #2; it was so dark I didn’t even see it until I was almost on top of it!

By now it was too dark to safely step off the road to find a big stick to whack it with, so I threw the small stick that I was able to find, thinking that distraction might at least get the snake to move off the road … but instead, the snake shot out and lunged at me without even coiling up first! Rude! I’ve never seen a rattlesnake do that! It was on! I picked up a bunch of rocks and slung them at it until it was dead. By then, I was totally freaked out; I almost called Kev to come pick me up. =/

The funny thing is that I had the presence of mind to stop endomondo (the run tracking app I’m trying) each time I encountered a snake, so my pace wasn’t affected by my two major pauses!

And all of this should explain why I don’t ever run first thing in the morning when it is still dark (even though I know my pace would improve substantially in the cooler hours), and why I’ll need to be more careful in the future about what time in the evening I start my runs. Just in case you were wondering, snakes will get on the road as the temperature drops because it retains the day’s heat all night long.

What’s the weirdest thing you have ever encountered on a run?

Best I can tell, the people who use tarot cards are those who want to believe in the idea of pre-destiny, or that there is some mystical “if I do this, then that will occur” order to the universe — beyond simple cause and effect. It’s kind of sad, really, to imagine someone thinking that by spending time with a deck of decorated cards, they’d be able to figure out what makes them or their loved ones tick. Even sadder is that in most cases people will pay someone else good money in order to have these “insights” given to them. Now that you know where I am coming from on the subject, I’ll get to the point.

I had a press release for Random House’s ‘Wisdom of the House of Night Oracle Cards‘ app show up in my inbox, and my first instinct was to simply delete it. But there were a couple of things in the email that made me give it a second look. For instance, did you know that there is evidently a “World Tarot Week”? It doesn’t show up on any of my calendars, but because the press release says there is one, I am assuming that there must be those who celebrate it, or who will celebrate it, now that they know there is a reason to celebrate. In that spirit of celebration, Random House is dropping the price of their tarot app from $6.99 to $3.99 from May 22nd to May 24th; if you decide that you can wait until May 25th, it will only cost 99¢. If you are interested, you can find the app in the App Store, Google Play, and the Barnes & Noble NOOK Store.

The thing is that these cards are ugly; rather than looking like the traditional Tarot cards that any self-respecting Madame Zelda at a carnival might use, these app-based cards look like this …

Not very inspiring if you are trying to hoodwink someone into thinking that you can tell them about their past, present, or future, right? Maybe it’s just as well.

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I ordered a new Lumia 928 yesterday, and am anxiously awaiting a shipping notification from Verizon. In the meantime, I am beginning to research this huge leap into a whole new platform. Microsoft has a very helpful website that gives you an idea of how to transfer your calendar, contacts, and email, as well as answers some frequently asked questions. All my contacts are in Gmail, and I have an Outlook.com account, so I am in good shape there. However, I did find a thread at the Apple support forums that raised a red flag-apparently switching operating systems without turning off iMessage first is a bad, bad idea.

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I upgraded my camera to the Sony NEX-6 today, and I am already loving it. At $899 for the body and lens kit, the NEX-6 is pricey. But for the size, speed, and image quality — it really can’t be beat. One of the new features on both the NEX-5r and the NEX-6 is built-in WiFi. This lets you add apps to your camera and do such things as send images from the camera directly to your smartphone or tablet. Another app-powered feature is the Smart Remote Control. This feature allows you to use your smartphone or tablet as a remote viewfinder and trigger for your NEX-5r or NEX-6. Sound like a gimmick? Not even close. continue reading

Gadgets have become packed with more and more features, many of which we end up forgetting about or just never use. When the Roku 3 was announced, we had an internal discussion at Gear Diary about how the headphone jack in the remote was a useless feature — who would hook up headphones to a remote to watch TV, when they could just plug headphones into a tablet and have the same private viewing experience? We use our Roku 3 all the time but never gave the headphone jack a thought, until today when I stumbled upon a situation where it worked perfectly!

In our house the living room is next to the stairs, and off the stairs is our bedroom. Sarah was taking a nap this afternoon, and I needed to get through our pile of to be shredded mail. Normally I’d watch TV while shredding with the volume turned up, but that would have been mean to Sarah. So I had resigned myself to watching on my iPad instead of the glorious 40″ TV right in front of me, until I remembered the Roku remote. Now I could drown out the shredder, watch TV as loud as I wanted on the nice big screen, without disturbing my sleeping wife!

It’s amazing how little features, even ones we dismiss as being silly, can end up being ridiculously useful! Ever stumble across a simple little utility or feature that you dismissed, only to later realize that it  was EXACTLY what you needed? Let us know your best tips in the comments!

xkcd’s Interstellar Memes Graphic

I love xkcd.com. It’s a thought-provoking, often hilarious, sometimes sobering stick figure strip. The strip was conceived by Randall Monroe, who describes himself thusly:

I’m just this guy, you know? I’m a CNU graduate with a degree in physics. Before starting xkcd, I worked on robots at NASA’s Langley Research Center in Virginia. As of June 2007 I live in Massachusetts. In my spare time I climb things, open strange doors, and go to goth clubs dressed as a frat guy so I can stand around and look terribly uncomfortable. At frat parties I do the same thing, but the other way around.

This is a man after my own heart. I’m enough of a science geek I get the twisted science-oriented humor in his strips, as if they were inside jokes. One that caught my eye and gave me a good chuckle was the image above, titled “Interstellar Memes”. Often playing the amateur astronomy looking up at the night sky I’ve often wondered what, if any, of our transmitted media emanating from Earth has reached other star systems (ignoring the tedious inconveniences of initial signal strength and attenuation, solar and extra-solar electromagnetic interference and such). Interstellar Memes nicely correlates the age of certain well-known (and maybe not-so-well-known) phrases with the approximate distant stars they would be reaching.

For example, “Yabba Dabba Doo!”, from the Flintstones, is next to the star Castor (trivia: Castor is actually a quadruple star system), in the constellation Gemini. What does Castor have to do with the Flinstones? I’m glad you asked, because Fred Flintstone uttered his well-known shout 53 years ago, which just happens to be the approximate distance of the Castor system. Traveling at the speed of light it has taken Fred and his family, piggy-backed on a carrier wave in the 56-890 MHz electromagnetic spectrum that long to reach Castor.

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Stream Daft Punk Random Access Memories

My son is a HUGE Daft Punk fan, something he got as part of his introduction into the electronica world – courtesy of me. The group is one of the most influential in electronic pop, with people like Skrillex and Deadmau5 owing them a huge debt. The last recording they released was the soundtrack for Tron: Legacy (which was the best thing about that movie), and a live album before that … so it has been eight years since 2005′s ‘Human After All’.

Right now you can pre-order the upcoming album “Random Access Memories” on iTunes (for $11.99) or the CD version on Amazon.com (for $10.99, apparently without ‘AutoRip’). We already have it pre-ordered, but iTunes is sweetening the deal once again – for the next week you can stream the entire album for free! As they have done before, this is a single file that plays straight through, but you can manually move about the file. Based on my initial listening, it seems like a solid new entry that will require multiple listens to truly appreciate all that is happening.

Head to iTunes and stream the whole album for free now!

In 2006, I bought a TiVo Series 2. It was a great device, and it lasted me until mid-2011, when it finally stopped changing channels and went on strike. It retired to that great recycling center in the sky/the next town over, and we moved on to bigger and better electronics. TiVo however, sends me emails regularly offering us all sorts of deals to return. Today’s, though, is definitely the weirdest.

Apparently TiVo blasted this offer to every former subscriber. They probably should have filtered it though, since as enticing as $6.99 a month TiVo service is, I am pretty sure a non-HD, mostly dead Series 2 would not give me the full depth of the modern TiVo experience.

Frankly, even if I had a better TiVo, I cancelled my service two years ago. Does TiVo think I keep old devices around just in case they decide to throw out desperate deal offers? Have you ever received a really terrible “come back to us” offer? Let us know in the comments!

A few weeks ago we got exclusive information that the HTC First was in big trouble. As we first reported, sales number for the first phone designed specifically for Facebook Home were close to nonexistent. Our inside information told us that the pre-order and first weekend sales numbers of the HTC First were less than 500 total units on the East Coast. In other words, the HTC First was all but dead on arrival. My conclusion at the time was that:

I cannot begin to imagine what stock AT&T is currently holding of the device, but I have a pretty good sense that the phone which is currently $99 on contract will be dropping down to $49 or even 1¢ in a matter of weeks.

That was April 16th. Fast forward three weeks and…

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News broke today that Barnes and Noble is opening up the NOOK hardware to Google, adding Google Play to their NOOK HD and HD+ devices. Is this a canny move to capitalize on tablet demand, or a desperate grab for any port in a storm? Does this actually matter to the average buyer? As our own Mike Anderson asked, “Is abandoning their own ecosystem a desperate move?”

I think this is great news for the ten bloggers who really love the NOOK HD hardware. Except for a few Android users who can re-download their apps across their phone and NOOK, the average person probably won’t notice the difference. But this is a shift for B&N since the word “Android” rarely appears on the product pages and almost never appears in their ads. As a result, it is hard to say that their customer base was clamoring for something they may not have known they could have. Yes, a minority saw NOOKs as a neat way to make an Android tablet, but it’s not like it is hard to just buy an Android tablet … no need to deal with the B&N software as well.

That leads to the biggest problem the NOOK hardware has in my opinion: price. It’s $229 for a 16GB NOOK HD. Once someone gets over the mental hurdle of spending $229 on a tablet, I suspect it isn’t too hard to spend the extra $100 and get an iPad mini. (And with refurbs now below the $300 mark, it is even less of a leap.) Let’s look how the pricing breaks down.

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Apparently GE’s ad people are living in the late 1990′s. I can’t judge them for this, since my musical tastes are clinging tenuously to the earlier part of the same decade. However, I do question what they were thinking with their latest ad touting their medical equipment business. And since GE apparently bought all the daytime airtime and has been playing the ad non-stop on news channels, I’ve seen it many, many times, to the point where I can follow along with the script. Which gets creepier every time I watch it.

Seems like someone saw a few random scenes from “The Matrix” and thought Agent Smith looked really cool. So they made an entire ad around Agent Smith wandering around observing how GE medical equipment acts as an “agent of good”. As if it’s not unnerving enough to see the misanthropic villain from the Matrix movies stalking a hospital, they also have him handing a child candy. It’s just…bizarre. Check it out:

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I am trying to rectify a big hole in my Sci-Fi viewing history, and finally giving “Doctor Who” a shot. I knew it had a huge cult following, I knew it was from the BBC and it involved a time machine, but otherwise I was pretty much entirely in the dark about the show. A few friends on Facebook gave me some important tips, and I’ve learned a few things from the first six episodes, so I thought I would share my limited understanding with any other Doctor Who newbies out there!

Things I have learned that have surprised me:

• Never call The Doctor “Dr”. Apparently it makes the fans angry, or so I was warned.
• This show reminds me heavily of “Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy”…which gives me lots me of warm fuzzies, since I love all variations on Hitchhiker’s, even that terrible BBC series from the 80s.
• The TARDIS is totally a Somebody Else’s Problem.
• People keep telling me someone named “Captain Jack” is coming, and now I keep humming this song. Sorry for the ear worm.
• There is an old Who and a new Who. And many versions of the Dr Doctor. Both new and old.
• My dog does not like this show. He leaves the room whenever the Doctor starts talking. Apparently he’s not a fan of ADD British men.
• This show has worse special effects than Charmed. And Charmed looked like it was made on an original Apple IIe.

Now, I have a few questions as well:

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Spend enough time on the Internet, and you’ll find an infographic. These are “educational” graphics that distill bits of information into pretty pictures and at-a-glance factoids. As a concept, they aren’t terrible, but only if they’re used as a summary for a full report. Unfortunately, lately they’ve become flashy vehicles for marketers with an agenda.

Here at Gear Diary, we want to make sure we properly educate our readers to understand infographics, and the best way to do this is clearly to fight fire with fire, so we’ve helpfully put together this “Anatomy of an Infographic”! What triggered us to share this today, you ask? Well, we received an Infographic this morning regarding a certain technology company and their apparent fall from grace … all supported by random statistics culled together to look like a trend. Needless to say, we are choosing to run our guide to infographics in its place!

 

Looking for an idea of what to watch this week? Amazon is following in Netflix’s footsteps and gearing up to launch their own original content, but they’ve crowd-sourced their choices. They have twelve original pilots, from kid friendly to decidedly adult. You can offer Amazon feedback on what you liked best, which they will use in their determinations of which gets greenlit. We watched two tonight — Alpha Dogs and Onion News Network, and I have to say that we were impressed with the quality of both shows!

Alpha Dogs was the better show by far. The concept was a bit goofy (four republican senators sharing a house), but it picked up steam quickly without feeling too exposition-heavy. Bill Murray had a very amusing cameo, but the MVP of the episode is definitely John Goodman as a North Carolina senator. Mark Consuelos (aka Mr Kelly Rippa) is also quite good. What struck me was that the show had a satirical edge, but there’s enough material making fun of Congress to easily expand beyond “hehe, imagine if Senators were like college kids” roommate gag. It has a great deal of potential, and I would love to see Amazon commission more episodes!

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This is what a dead Samsung Galaxy S III looks like

We’ve all done it., killed a phone at one time or another.  I’ve had one die in the toilet, I almost lost my G1 in a glass of tea, and I broke my first PDA by dropping it on the floor at church.  My friend from church lost his in unique way; that picture above is his Galaxy S III after it was chopped up by a bush hog lawn mower.  It’s a good thing he had insurance!

Come on, fess up!  What is the worst thing that you have ever done to your phone?  Has it changed what you do with it?  Have you found a rock-solid case for your favorite phone killing person?  Tell your story of woe below.

I dislike the way the typical power strip will stick out like from under or behind my furnishings like a sore thumb. Even worse, I dislike the way power strips look when lying in plain site on top of an area rug. Because most power strips are a stark ugly white or boring beige, unless they are camouflaged by matching carpet, kept completely hidden, or their owner just becomes immune to noticing them anymore, they can be a bit of an eyesore. Maybe they don’t bother you that much, but if you agree with me, I might have found a solution. If you have hardwood floors in your home, you might want to give the Invisiplug Power Strip a try; the Invisiplug masks the typical  six-slot power surge protecting strip with a woodgrain that will (more or less) match your floors.

With the Invisiplug, you can convert a single Outlet into six surge protected outlets; the Invisiplug has a three-foot grounded cord with Master power switch, and it protects your expensive electronics with a 15 AMP (90 Joules) circuit breaker. You can even mount the Invisiplug on your wall when floorspace is sparse.

$15.99 will get you an Invisiplug in dark oak, light natural, or medium cherry. We have bamboo flooring, and I think that the light natural will work well with it.

The Invisiplug 6 Outlet Power Stripvia Apartment Therapy

photo credit

I love to find tips and tricks that make my life easier, and that’s why a recent post on Lifehacker caught my eye … the title might have had something to do with it, too, as I do love MacGuyer-esque fixes.

Three of my favorites include how you can:

Make Perfect Pancakes with a Squeeze Bottle

Make Perfect Pancakes with a Squeeze Bottle

Yes, this one is pretty self-explanatory! Whip up the pancake mix, use a funnel to put it in a large squeeze-bottle, and then make perfectly round pancakes. The best part is that if you don’t use all of the mix, the container can go right into the refrigerator (or freezer) for next time! Now there is an easy cleanup!

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Facebook Home

We have been hearing about Facebook Home since the Facebook event last Wednesday which we covered here. The general consensus was that Home was pretty much just another launcher – but a Facebook centric one. Now as the Facebook Home app arrives on Google Play, we have installed it and taken a quick look.

The big question from the post we had about the event is ‘who cares’? In other words, exactly what market does this app serve? I always thought that was obvious but had two angles – it serves the Facebook crowd, and pretty much does NOT serve the tech community.

Once installed, the app needs to also have your Facebook app updated to integrate properly, and also Facebook Messenger needs an update (or in my case, needs to be installed). Then when you unlock your phone you get updates from your friends which you can scroll through manually or auto-scroll after a bit.

Tap the screen and your Facebook icon appears, allowing you to go to Messenger, apps or the last running app. Apps brings up all of your home screens for easy launching, and of course Messenger is part of Facebook.

Overall it seems like a solid first version of the app, with some glitches I encountered as I was dumped to the normal TouchWiz home a couple of times. But for me the biggest question remains one of utility – I use Facebook a fair amount each day (though not the 20% recently reported), but the ‘Facebook everywhere’ feeling made me bristle a bit – I guess I am happy with Facebook happily walled off in a separate app. I will continue playing with it and update if I find anything else of interest.

Head to Google Play and grab Facebook Home and let us know what you think!

I hope you have been enjoying my posts on Amateur Radio.  Other than mobile tech and the typical tech stuff I am into, it is one of my most favorite things to do in the evening.  Nothing beats chatting with a group of fellow hams about amateur radio itself, the tech behind it, or other things that are related.

As you may have noticed, I use the terms amateur radio and ham radio pretty interchangeably.  They are indeed one and the same; there’s no difference.  However, one might wonder how the term ham radio come about?  Well, according to the ARRL, the term was at one point used to deride the amateur operators of the day when there were only spark gap transmitters.  A Spark Gap transmitter is a primitive radio that was first used to transmit Morse Code or CW as we call it today.  Spark gap transmitters had one very annoying trait.  When you transmitted, you transmitted on every part of the spectrum in the area.  Two hams chatting with spark gap transmitters would block not only the amateur radio communications in the area but also the commercial uses of radio at that time too.  The amateur stations at the time could be very powerful so the commercial operators would blame it on those hams.  A ham was considered a poor radio operator.  In what is a somewhat American tradition and also an informal geek tradition, the amateur radio operators picked up the terms themselves.  They may not have even known what it meant at the time.  The term just stuck.  Now the true meaning is no longer known by a majority of the amatuer radio community.

So don’t get confused!  Use either term.  We won’t be offended as it’s the same thing.

With that, I will link to a video that stars the late Walter Cronkite who explains what ham radio is and why it’s important.  This video was originally made in 2003 by the ARRL.

I’m on vacation in Jamaica with my wife Elana, her brother Rob and Rob’s girlfriend, Alison. We had a casual breakfast in our villa this morning after which Rob headed to the beach to read. I lingered a bit too long over my last cup of coffee and, as a result, had the opportunity to hear a FASCINATING conversation on shaving, electrolysis and waxing. (It made me happier than ever to have been born male.)

So why am I sharing this here on Gear Diary? Because Alison told Elana about the “best product ever” in this regard – Relax and Wax and their No Scream Cream. She absolutely swears by it and, as a result, Elana placed an order for herself and a few friends.

Here’s what Alison had to say about the No Scream Cream.

“No Scream Cream eliminates almost all of the pain from waxing because it numbs “everything”.” As she explained, “it literally makes it so you don’t feel the otherwise harsh pain.” Moreover, Alison says the No Scream Cream “is easy to use and it doesn’t ruin your clothing.” I asked what she meant by that and she explained that you put the No Scream Cream on 45 minutes before you are getting waxed and, once dried, can put your clothes on without fear of it staining your cloths. And, unlike other products, it stays on. In addition Alison said, it doesn’t prevent the wax from grabbing the hair and pulling it out.

As Alison put it, “I especially like it because it is gentle on all you body parts.” (Personally I took that to mean it is gentle on Alison’s legs but do what you want with that.)

The company sells a “survival kit” on the company website, but you can also buy it through Amazon. You can check out the company website here. You can get the No Scream Cream here on Amazon.

I can’t wait to hear what tomorrow’s breakfast conversation is.

We met with RokForm at CES 2013 and were impressed by the products they had in the pipeline. In particular I was taken with the wide array of products they planned to release during 2013 for the iPhone, iPad and iPad mini. The RokForm RokShield v3 Case Kit for iPad Mini was the real standout to my mind offering a terrific combination of style, function and protection. The case ships with an “easy-stick RMS” (remote mounting system and a 6 position KickStand for viewing, typing and browsing the web.

The features of the case include

Six-sided protection

High impact polycarbonate

A removable outer, rubber bumper

Four integrated anti slip grips

And a wide variety of compatible, mountable accessories

Here’s a first look at the RokForm RokShield for iPad mini.

My first impressions of the RokForm RokShield for iPad mini are all quite positive. The case is protective, lets you use the iPad mini in a variety of different ways. The RMS lets you use it on a wall, the refrigerator or even the car. The stand is great for typing, viewing and a host of other functions on the go.  The RokForm RokShield is $59 and ships with the Remote Mount System (RMS), 6 position adjustable KickStand and RokGard screen protector. Learn more, check out the various color combinations and order yours here.

The Jewish festival of Passover ended earlier this week and with it members of the Jewish community returned to eating leavened products known as chametz in Hebrew. (Most people I know end the holiday with the Jewish delicacy known as pizza.) According to tradition the Exodus from Egypt introduced a 40 year period when the Israelites wandered in the Sinai desert. (Three cheers for living in an era of GPS!) Having spent a few weeks hiking and camping in the Sinai I can only begin to imagine what 40 years (were the story historically accurate) must have been like.

I mean think about it…

40 years ago I was in grade school.

40 years ago Judie was too.

40 years ago Mike was also in grade school.

40 years ago Carly wasn’t even close to being born.

And 40 years ago the very first cellular conversion took place at 6th Ave. between 53rd and 54th in Manhattan when Motorola’s Martin Cooper placed the world’s first mobile phone call. (via FoxNews)

Think about it… Just four decades and one day ago there was no such thing as a cellular phone. And then, one day later, we came out of the unconnected wilderness. Then the world change and, suddenly, we could be found everywhere… Even in the Sinai Desert.

A few weeks ago, there was a lot of buzz about vulnerabilities in Apple’s security — and as a result they rolled out two-step password verification — I tried to encourage my dad to enroll his Apple ID in it as well as my mom’s. I might as well have been speaking a foreign language, because he stared vacantly at me, shrugged, and said “I’m sure it will be fine.” If he won’t listen to me about using smarter passwords for better password safety, then hopefully he was watching NBC, because tonight I saw a “The More You Know” PSA about creating and using more secure passwords!

Admittedly it was very basic advice — Bryan Williams, Al Roker, Matt Lauer and Savanah Guthrie all claimed to use ridiculously simple passwords like “1234″ or their dog’s name, and then they explained why that’s the wrong way to do it. However, since they only had 30 seconds, they mostly summed it as “Use more complex passwords, but not so complex you can’t remember them.” That’s certainly better than “1234″, and while it’s true that as a reader of Gear Diary you probably have more complex systems in place for yourself, NBC’s core audience is probably not as tech-savvy, and even that bit of advice will probably help a few viewers.

It just struck me as interesting that password security is now enough of an issue that it’s worth a “The More You Know” along with spots giving advice about cyber-bullying and the importance of teachers. It’s unfortunate, because it means security breaches, especially due to weak passwords, are becoming even more common; it also shows that NBC is at least trying to reach out and help their viewers. The choice of people pitching the PSA is no accident either; Bryan Williams and the cast of “The Today Show” have more credibility for the average viewer than, say, the cast of “Whitney”.

If this made you want to brush up on your passwords (it did for me!), then you should check out this Lifehacker infographic for tips. And if you use a password app on your smartphone, tablet, or computer, leave some suggestions for smarter passwords in the comments!

Another Way iPhone Beats Android – Battery Life in the Dungeon!

We all know that it is an Apple & Samsung world – and pretty much everywhere I go I carry both my Apple iPhone 5 and Samsung Galaxy S3. They are both excellent phones, and I highly recommend both of them to anyone looking for a phone – each has strengths and weaknesses, just like any other device. Don’t believe the hype whenever someone tells you one is ‘far superior’ to the other: it simply meets their personal needs better. Recently my work has required me to be at a remote manufacturing facility where there is no cell phone signal but there is WiFi. I set up both phones to use WiFi and by the end of the day I found another way iPhone beats Android – battery life in the dungeon!

Most older tech lovers remember before businesses had repeaters and amplifiers to deal with the massive signal degradation caused by concrete and steel – I remember having to shut off phones before entering our wafer fab building otherwise the phone would be hot and dead in a few hours. That same ‘signal hunting’ goes on now even with smartphones, and if you are in a no-signal zone for too long your phone will end up running through the battery. That is simply because phones REALLY want a signal lock and will desperately expend power trying to find and lock on a signal.

But more recently smartphones have allowed users to link up to WiFi networks. This allows for faster data transfer (in some cases), and it doesn’t use up your precious data allocation. Most smartphone users spend upwards of 90% of their time ion WiFi coverage, and smartphone makers have increasingly allowed functionality over WiFi that was previously reserved for cell data – in particular messaging.

But the question it – how should a smartphone manage power in an area of abundant WiFi but no cell coverage?

Turns out that iOS and Android have different answers! During my very first trip I discovered that while the iPhone battery lasts all day long, the Galaxy S3 will generally be totally dead by lunch – and these phones would normally have more or less equal battery life! My iPhone is my primary device, meaning I am using it all day long; the Galaxy S3 will sometimes sit in my bag most of the day.

To test it further I set up an experiment: since I have the same email accounts, Twitter, Facebook and so on installed on both devices, it was easy to partition what I looked at and where. What I did was only let myself check my phone every 30 minutes (unless a text came in), and alternated email and social media and RSS between the phones. I did this every day for a week (5 days).

The results?
- By lunch time (I had been at the plant ~4-5 hours) each day the iPhone still have >80% battery, whereas the Galaxy S3 had <10%.
- By the end of the day (we are doing ~12-13 hour days) the iPhone had >50% and the Galaxy S3 was long since dead.
- The last two days I plugged the Galaxy S3 into the PowerStick+ just after lunch to keep it on life support … and on both days by the time I left the PowerStick+ was nearly drained and the Galaxy S3 had ~20-25% battery remaining.

So there it is – Apple has figured out a way to keep your battery alive when you are totally out of cell signal range … and Samsung just keeps draining the battery in hopes that cell signal will come along and save it. This is not a normal use case, far from it – most people are around at least decent cell signal a lot of the time. But if you know you will be in a dead zone, this is one more bit of data to help you decide what phone is right for you.

One of the talks that I had really been looking forward to at South by Southwest Interactive (SXSWi)–as a contributor to an online site as I am–was David Carr’s talk, “Gates of Heaven, Gates of Hell”,on how media was adapting to the internet, and specifically about the NY Times’ experiences with pay walls, online advertising, and the like. If you’ve been online for a while and followed the business news regarding making online sites pay, you know it’s a tough row to hoe. It sounded fascinating.

It wasn’t.

The New York Times has taken a couple of stabs at charging for online content.  The first was back in the early 2000s, when the “information has to be free!/I ain’t paying for nuthin’ on that durn Web!” mania was at its highest.  The Times sealed off their most popular contributors with a paywall, despite howls from many quarters that “That will never work.”  And it didn’t.  After a few months, the Times bailed and pulled down the paywall.

More recently, the Times came up with what, in my opinion, is an extremely convoluted and quite bizarre hybrid scheme.  I won’t go into all the details, but basically you get a certain number of free views of Times articles every month, after which if you want to see any more, you need to pay.  The structure for subscription purchases is extremely slanted towards forcing you to get an “online and paper” combination subscription.  The best deal (I’ve been told) is the Sunday physical paper and online viewing option.  I wouldn’t know, because it offended my online-only sensibilities to be essentially forced to purchase a physical newspaper that I would throw immediately into the recycle bin just so I could read the online content in the event that I exceeded their number of monthly visits.  Which I rarely ever did.

In addition, there are gaping tech holes in the paywall (that I’ve been told by several people are intentional).  For example, if you follow a link in Twitter to a Times article, you get up to your maximum number of views . . . and never exceed it.  In any given month, I’ve seen the “This is your last free article” message a dozen times (Paul Krugman writes a whole lot of very short posts) without being cut off.  If this is intentional, the reasoning escapes me.

In any event, as you can see I find the Times‘ strategy to be bizarre in the extreme.  But they’re giving it a good go, so I wanted to hear what Carr had to say about the trend in general, and how the Times‘ experiment has played into it.

What I got was an apologia for how awesome the Times‘ strategy is, and why it’s a model for the industry.

Okay, yes: Carr is an employee of the Times, and so one would expect him to be very much in favor of their model (at least in public).  But he hardly addressed the many disadvantages, the lack of a solid growth curve for online subscriptions, and many other drawbacks to their model that I was really hoping to hear about.  He also had very little information about other media companies’ models and how they stacked up.  In short, I found it exceedingly dull and much too “The Times is doing it right!” cheerleading.

Now, the environment wasn’t the best: it was in a giant hotel ballroom that was only 1/4 full; the sound system was atrocious; I found Mr. Carr was a very uninvolving speaker, rather bland and dull in my opinion; and it was clear that Carr wasn’t a tech person, or familiar with the tech issues. I could only take it for 30 minutes and then left. (It’s absolutely possible that the Q&A was better, but I didn’t want to stay for it that badly.)

So in all, folks, this was a #Fail for Doug at SXSW. (And the thought of the other talks I could have gone to makes me go “Augh!”) Let this be a lesson: No matter how carefully you choose, you’re still going to get a clunker now and then!

Can you spot the Apple Lightning Connector Broken off inside this iPad mini?

Have you wondered how well the new Apple Lightning connector might hold up over time? I’ll admit not giving too much thought to it, because I chose to focus on the fact that I could plug the Apple Lightning Connector in from either side — a welcome new convenience from the old 30-pin.

So far, I haven’t had any issues with my iPad mini or my iPhone 5, but when I came home from Mobile World Congress, I got a shock. Kev’s youngest daughter had plugged the Lightning connector into her iPad mini, and the tip of the charger had broken off in the port. The port space is too small for even my tiniest-tipped tweezers to fit inside; even if they could fit, there is not enough of the broken tip sticking out to grab!

That meant an online chat with Apple support …

Customer [4:40 p.m.]:

Hi, I have an iPad mini, and the Lightning connector has broken off IN the port! =/

Advisor [4:41 p.m.]:

Oh no! That’s crazy, so when did this happen?

Customer [4:42 p.m.]:

This week. I was at MWC, came home to find out that it had happened while I was gone! (this is our house iPad, my main iPad was with me ‐‐ thankfully!)

Advisor [4:43 p.m.]:

Alright, well I knew the thing was flimsy but this is officially the first time I’ve ever heard of it breaking off in the device! So give me one moment to see what we can do for you, Judie

Customer [4:44 p.m.]:

Please. Thank you =(

Could we possibly be the first? Surely not. But if so, then what a dubious honor. We don’t have an Apple Store nearby, so we will be bringing the iPad on vacation with us when we are in Hawaii. Apple support wasn’t sure if this would be a repair or replacement situation, so that will remain to be seen.

If you have one of the new devices that use it, how is your experience with the Lightning connector going? Anything wonky happening? Or is it working well for you? Do tell!

Something doesn’t look right here …

Amazon Reminds Us Why It Is Such a Great Place to Shop

This weekend my son had a birthday party to attend, but forgot about actually getting a present until Thursday. While he had some ideas he really hadn’t decided, and with the crazy schedule each of us had it just wasn’t clear when he would get to go shopping. At dinner that night we started to talk, and by the end of the night Amazon reminded us why it is such a great place to shop. Let’s dig into the details!

After some thinking and whittling the options, my son decided he wanted to get his friend a CD for a gift (the new A$AP Rocky CD Long.Live.A$AP). On Thursday after dinner we hit Amazon, where we find we have to order within the next ten minutes to get the two-day shipping to arrive by Saturday – so we were prepared for the extra $3.99 charge for next day.

Here is what happened instead:
- The CD is on sale for $6.99 (whereas the MP3 album is $10.99!)
- I have a $5 promo credit from … can’t even remember, probably Twitter or Facebook.
- I also have another $1 credit that gets applied (again, no clue)
- I select to use my Amazon Visa … and have loads of ‘points’ from earlier purchases.
- Choose free 2-day Prime shipping to get there on Saturday

By choosing the points, I end up using 107 points (equal to $1.07, 8% sales tax), which brings my balance to $0. So as of right now I have paid NOTHING to get my son a present for his friend’s birthday. But wait … it gets better!

- Because it is a CD, we get ‘auto-Rip’ – so we get the MP3 album added to our Amazon MP3 Cloud Player account for free (and quick download to iTunes). I since found that we could have chosen ‘this is a gift’ and it would NOT have been handled as an ‘Auto-Rip’.

Oh … and to make things even better, the CD arrives on Friday (~16 hours after we ordered).

So – we pay ZERO for a CD, get a $10.99 MP3 album freebie, AND get next day shipping.

Yeah, that is why I love shopping at Amazon!

Billboard Joins the 21st Century and Starts Tracking YouTube View Data

While the top videos on MTV and YouTube (recently at least) have generally also been on the pop charts, the amount of popularity from video outlets hasn’t always translated into chart position. So it is great news for breakout video artists this week as Billboard joins the 21st century and starts tracking YouTube view data as part of compiling its ‘Hot 100′ list of pop music.

While for many tech-centric people this seems like a ‘no duh’ sort of decision, it wasn’t until 2012 that most of the popular videos on YouTube were commercially created rather than amateur ‘viral’ videos. And quite frankly, like most other things you need to ‘follow the money’ with Billboard when it comes to decision making.

For example, why was MTV the major force in popular music 30 years ago yet views were never counted towards Hot 100 position? Simply because those videos were created as part of a promotional campaign by the music companies, and resulted in a direct increase in sales since MTV wasn’t ‘on demand’. But with YouTube, many young viewers use it as a primary means of listening to music, and use it as a means of music discovery and sharing.

Back when the song ‘Chocolate Rain’ went viral, music labels really only cared about keeping things OFF of YouTube, seeing it as a pure negative and loss of control. But with a song like ‘Friday’, there was a demonstrated ability to monetize a video and then translate video popularity into huge iTunes sales. That happened again to an extreme extent with ‘Gangnam Style’ late last year – which again resulted in huge sales.

But by keeping YouTube at a distance and only hopping in late to grab sales, Billboard and the Hot 100 have started to look totally irrelevant to the very audience they hope to serve and influence. Harlem Shake has been huge on YouTube to the point of already being WAY ‘overdone’, and yet it is just now that it is being recognized on Billboard. Perhaps too little, too late for that song – but at least it shows an attempt at keeping current.

Billboard has a very realistic fear that more and more kids really don’t care what a bunch of old men around a table in New York have declared most popular, and instead hit up YouTube, Twitter, Tumblr, Facebook and more to grab the hottest stuff from their own personal ‘style influencers’. This might be the last chance for Billboard to stay in line with advancing technology … do you think it will work?

And what better way to celebrate than with the original YouTube classic ‘Chocolate Rain’:

If you’ve got a PC, Mac, or Linux set-up (read: any computer), you can download this beautiful, stylistic work for a mere $10 USD. Even if you’re not desperate for retro level design and mechanics, the art and sound direction should be enough to persuade you. The game’s pixel art stands testament to the inherent beauty of the medium. I promise that’s not an overstatement. The general aesthetic is modest, and not overly naturalistic, but provides a perfect setting considering the nature of the story.

The sound design (which features a full chip-tune soundtrack) is absolutely, brain-meltingly unique. The title’s narrative follows the journey of an introspective protagonist, and abjures Hyrule for an imaginative landscape built out of the hero’s mind. The musical backing fits this setting very well. You’ll be hard-pressed to find an indie game with such an extensive, ethereal, and relevant soundscape.

Anodyne’s soundtrack is available for purchase, download, and casual listening at the composer’s bandcamp page. You can get there through this link. It’ll run you $5.

Alternatively, you can click over here to buy the game itself, or a deluxe package including the title and the soundtrack. It’s $10 USD for the game itself, which clocks in at around 6-8 hours playtime. You can also get the title AND the soundtrack for the sweet n’ low price of twelve bucks.

If you’re on Steam, the developers have set up a Greenlight page. They’re looking for all the support they can get.

For more news and an upcoming review, keep it glued to Gear Diary.

When Jon Wirtz released his debut album ‘Sea Level’ in 2010 I thoroughly enjoyed it, drawing comparisons to such reknowned pianists as Keith Jarrett, Vijay Iyer and Matthew Shipp. The album was a solo piano recording, which is a daring move for a solo debut. Wirtz showed a maturity in terms of expression, interpretation and composition well beyond his years, and part of that came from loads of experience with top-rated music acts from various genres in high pressure situations such as TV talk shows and other live televised events.

This week Jon Wirtz let us know that he is getting ready to release his follow-up album. The title is Tourist, and this time around he is playing with a trio commonly called ‘Nuskool’ featuring Wirtz on piano, John Grigsby on bass and Alejandro Castano on drums. The album contains a couple of songs already getting some significant play: “Country” was selected by Chuck Leavell among a nationwide pool to be included on compilation album for Sing 4 The Trees charity, and “In The Body” was used as the soundtrack for independent film In The Body, which won award in 48 Hour Film Festival for Best Use of Dialogue (no dialogue was used, only the song). Having previewed those and a couple of other songs this looks like an exciting release and one I am definitely excited to give a full review!

Tourist is set to release on April 16th and we will have a full review close to the release date. But for now, enjoy John Wirtz featuring Nuskool performing ‘Politico’ from last year’s Bohemian Nights Festival in Ft. Collins, CO:

And keep your eyes open for the arrival of Tourist on April 16th.