Mick Darling's posterousAll my blogging in one spot. (mostly)Filed under: readerHack an Ikea Solar Lamp to Charge an iPad [Weekend Project]
In the past we've covered how to turn the inexpensive Ikea Sunnan solar lamp into a solar display case and today we have a hack from electronics manufacturer Voltaic Systems to turn the same lamp into a solar charging station for an iPad or other power-hungry phone or tablet. More »
The iPhone wallet has a place for your stuff
I ordered 3 different cases for three different purposes: an AmazonBasics Silicone Case for everyday use, a Mophie Juice Pack Air Case/Rechargeable Battery for "really long day" use, and an iPhone Wallet from the folks at Waterfield Designs/SFBags.com. Back in February, I bought a bag for my MacBook Air from Waterfield Designs, and I absolutely love it. I carry my 13" MacBook Air and my iPad in it every day. When I decided to get an iPhone, I knew I'd be heading to SFBags.com to see what they had to offer. The iPhone WalletI love this idea. You carry a wallet, you carry an iPhone, why not carry one thing instead of two? For the past several years I've had a wallet which was used mostly to carry cards. If I have cash (which I often don't) I carry it in my pocket but not in my wallet. I have also been known to walk out of the house without either my iPhone or my wallet, so having one less thing to remember seemed like a good idea. Let's start with what's good about the iPhone wallet. The first thing I noticed is that it looks and feels well made. This isn't a case that's going to start fraying around the edges after a few months. It also already feels "broken in" rather than stiff. The window in the front will allow you to see the entire screen. I was pleasantly surprised to realize that I could actually use the touch-screen right through the plastic. Even the plastic window seems to be made of sturdy material that won't easily scratch and won't start to pull away from the edges. I assumed this plastic would be the "weakest link" in the case, but it seems just as good as the rest of it. The window is just a bit too small to let you see the iPhone's home button, but you should be able to judge where it is, and you can press it while it is still in the case. You can fit the iPhone in the wallet while it is in the silicone case (which I assume is about the same size as Apple's "bumper" case). It will be snug, but it will fit. However, once you do that, you have added considerable "bulk" to the iPhone (relatively speaking) and putting it inside the wallet like that will not leave room for much else. If I have the silicone case on, I can only fit 3-5 cards in the wallet before it really starts to feel "too big." (I tried the wallet with the Mophie Juice Pack on it... I did, and it does not fit. The Juice Pack extends the length of the iPhone, and the wallet does not have enough extra room to accommodate that. Nor should it; I only mention this because I assume someone else might want to know.) If you carry the iPhone "naked," then you can easily fit about 8-10 cards inside the wallet. There are two separate pockets which hold the cards securely. One unexpected detail was a divider between the "iPhone" part of the wallet and the card section. It is mentioned in the wallet description and shown in the video (see below) but it is thicker than I expected it to be, about 2-3 credit-cards, and covered in "ultrasuede." At first I thought that was intended to protect credit cards from being demagnetized, but Richard tells me that isn't much of a concern these days. I'm not sure the divider is 100% necessary, but I'm willing to bet that someone at Waterfield Designs had practical experience with another a case that led them to include it. My best guess is that it is probably intended to keep the cash or anything from the "money side" from falling out when you are taking the iPhone out of the wallet. It adds a bit of bulk, but it's not a huge deal. As Gary points out in the video, it does help keep the iPhone pressed up against the window Two minor complaints...There's one drawback to the iPhone wallet that should be fairly obvious: if it's in your pocket and you get a call, you have to get the wallet out of your pocket and then the iPhone out of the wallet before you can begin your conversation. The only other minor complaint I have with the iPhone wallet is with the placement and direction of the zipper. If you think of the "window" side of the case as the "front" then the zipper runs from top-left (when zipped) to bottom-right (when unzipped, as shown above). The headphone jack is on the top-left of the iPhone. Why is this combination a problem? Because if you are using headphones, you can't keep it in the wallet. If they had made the wallet so that it zipped from "top-right" to "bottom-left" then you could have stuck the headphones in and threaded the wire out. However, that would have made it a little more awkward for people who are right-handed. ConclusionLet's be clear: this isn't a wallet for slipping into the back pocket of your "skinny jeans" before you go out clubbing. It has a certain heft to it. But before you decide whether or not it's "too big" take a minute and walk through this next section with me. Take out your wallet, put your iPhone on the table, and stack up all of the cards that you carry around with you. Then imagine that wrapped in leather and lined with ultrasuede. Ok, now take a look at those cards again. How many of them do you really need in your wallet all of the time? I took most of my cards out of my wallet and put them into my old wallet and leave it in my office desk drawer or the glove compartment of my car. Library card? Sam's club? Prescription card? AAA? I never carry any store card if they can lookup my account by my phone number. I was able to get my total down to 5 (and could probably get by with 3 for 95% of the time), which means that I could even leave the silicone case on and still have it not feel "too big." The biggest adjustment for me is that I am used to having my wallet in one pocket and phone in the other, but I love being able to feel it in my pocket and not have to think "Is that my phone or my wallet? Do I have both?" With this I know if I have one, I have the other. If the idea of a combination wallet/iPhone case appeals to you, the Waterfield Designs iPhone wallet is a great option. A reasonable $41 ($39 + $2 US shipping) buys a great product that will most likely still look and work great even when you're thinking about the iPhone 6! If you're on the fence, Waterfield Designs has a 90 second review video available too. It shows that you can text or email through the case, and even suggests you could talk on the phone while it was still in the case. I haven't tested that theory because the only people I know who talk into their wallets are crazy people. The iPhone wallet has a place for your stuff originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Sat, 05 Nov 2011 10:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds. Formspring Partners With MTV, Hearst And Others For Topical Q&AFormspring, a 27 million member platform for asking and answering questions, is partnering for the first time with media outlets including MTV, Hearst, Funny or Die and The Huffington Post. The startup is launching a new feature next week that asks users to follow interest-related categories including music, humor, celebrity gossip and gaming. Users can choose publications within each of the six categories with which they’d like to stay in touch, and those publications will ask them questions that can include links, embedded videos and photos. Formspring’s “interest categories” are in many ways similar to Twitter‘s former suggested user lists: They are a way for users to find accounts that might be relevant to them, and the publications that are listed (two in each category to start) are likely to quickly gain a large following. The eight partner publications launching next week hope they’ll be able to engage these large followings and attract traffic to their sites by using the Q&A platform. Most publications use Twitter and Facebook with similar goals. But on Formspring, says COO Ro Choy, every time users respond, their response ends up being visible in their friends’ queues. Formspring users have on average 30 followers each. According to Choy, about 30% of them answer questions each month. “I would hazard to say that [Formspring] has a higher response rate [than Facebook and Twitter] because that is what our site is about,” Choy says. The startup’s motive for placing publications in interest categories is more about attracting advertisers than users. Users flocked to the site almost immediately. In the first 45 days after launching in 2009, 1 million of them had signed up, and by the end of a year 20 million had signed up. What Formspring needs most is a way to monetize its large userbase. Sponsored questions — delivered through a “question of the day” feature — have been its main attempt at doing so. While Choy didn’t acknowledge any particular monetization road map for the new media partnerships, asking users to define their interests no doubt makes the site a much better environment for advertisers who want to target specific types of users. More About: formspring, hearst, mtv, q&a For more Business coverage:
An improved OAuth 1.0a experienceAsk a developer what the most complicated part of working with the Twitter API is, and there's a very good chance that they'll say OAuth. Anyone who has ever written code to calculate a request signature understands that there are several precise steps, each of which must be executed perfectly, in order to come up with the correct value.
Google Tweaks Search Ranking AlgorithmGoogle’s search algorithm underwent another little upgrade today. This time, the search giant tweaked its ranking algorithm to help more recent information zoom to the top of search results. The change, which will affect about 35% of searches, is designed for queries about recurring events, recent activity in the news and frequent updates. Writing in The Official Google Blog, Google fellow Amit Singhal outlined how each of those categories would be affected by the change. A recurring event, for example, might be the Olympics. “If I search for [olympics], I probably want information about next summer’s upcoming Olympics, not the 1900 Summer Olympics,” Singhal writes. A “freshness algorithm” will ensure that Summer 2012 Olympics results float to the top. As for recent events, a search for “Occupy Oakland Protest” would yield the latest news. “You’ll see more high-quality pages that might only be minutes old,” he writes. Frequent updates refers to things that aren’t a hot topic or a recurring event, but nevertheless change often. For instance, a search for “slr cameras” should produce only the most-recent models. The latest tweak builds on a Google initiative called Caffeine that provided 50% fresher results for searches than Google’s previous index. The reason? As Carrie Grimes, a Google software engineer, outlined in a December 2010 blog post about the completion of Caffeine, “People’s expectations for search are higher than they used to be. Searchers want to find the latest relevant content and publishers expect to be found the instant they publish.” Given Google’s dominance in search, any change to its algorithm will be closely watched. The company’s last major change, Panda back in February, diminished the impact of content farms and gave Google’s YouTube higher visibility. Google, however, updates its algorithm 500 to 600 times a year, according to SEOMoz, and tends to announce major tweaks every few months or so. Image courtesy of iStockphoto, Kontrec More About: Google, Google Caffeine, Search Lion Designer customizes Lion's Dashboard, Mission Control and Launchpad backgrounds
If there's anything bad about OS X Lion, it's that it provides many more opportunities for boring backdrops. By default, Mission Control uses the familiar grey linen background with a miniature of your desktop, and with the login screen, you just have the grey linen. Dashboard has that pebbled grey Lego-like background, while Launchpad uses a blurred version of your regular desktop image as a background. If that doesn't have you yawning, then you've probably had a few too many cans of Red Bull this morning. Now there's a shareware app, Lion Designer, from developer Moritz Wette, that makes your Lion-based Mac a bit more exciting to look at. Install Lion Designer, and everything is customizable -- the background for Mission Control and Launchpad, the folder background for Launchpad, and the background for the login screen. If you do something wrong, there's a Reset button for going back to the defaults. For your own images, Moritz suggests that you use PNG files that have the same or greater width and height as your monitor so that no tiling occurs. Lion Designer is shareware, so you have nothing to lose but your boredom. Download and install it now, and if you like what you see, be sure to send Moritz a donation to encourage development of future apps. Lion Designer customizes Lion's Dashboard, Mission Control and Launchpad backgrounds originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Thu, 03 Nov 2011 06:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds. Protecting Your Online Reputation: 4 Things You Need to Know [INFOGRAPHIC]You don’t have to be running for president to care about your online reputation. Almost everything you do online is easy to track, especially when you’re using social media sites. This infographic shows you how to manage your “e-reputation,” perhaps saving you some embarrassment, or even your career. Gathered by digital marketing firm KBSD, it’s a treasure trove of tips, techniques and information about what companies and individuals are looking for inside your personal profiles and social information, and what you can do to show off your best side to those who might want to find out unflattering things about you. It’s not too late to protect yourself and polish up your online image. So now that you’ve grown up (you have grown up, haven’t you?), this would be a good time to do a bit of backtracking, cleaning up those mistakes you made in the past as much as you can, and at the same time, keeping an eye on your online behavior so there won’t be anything to hide in the future.
Infographic courtesy KBSD, photo courtesy iStockphoto/Yuri Arcurs More About: infographic, online reputation, Personal Data, social data How Algorithms and Editors Can Work Together to Burst the “Filter Bubble”The algorithms that surface content for us on Facebook and Google are miracles of modern programming. But Eli Pariser, author and chairman of the board at MoveOn.org, has concerns. In March, Pariser gave a popular TED talk about “filter bubbles” — the idea that when search and social networks only serve us content that we “like,” we’re not seeing content we need. He cited examples where liberal-leaning Facebook friends only see fellow liberals in their “Top Stories,” or a frequent traveler only got tourism results when Googling “Egypt” in the midst of the Arab Spring. As users increasingly get their news from curated social channels, this trend has the potential to isolate us and damage our world view. At Friday’s Mashable Media Summit, Pariser offered some solutions, and focused on how human editors and algorithms can work together to get users clicking on content that matters. 7 Things That Personalization Algorithms Do PoorlyPariser pointed out the critical things that social personalization gets wrong when it comes to content.
How Do We Fix It?In his talk, Pariser noted that nearly every major online media company and platform is moving toward some level of personalization. And why not? It drives clicks and engagement, which drives revenue. But how can we create balance? For his book The Filter Bubble, Pariser asked the big platforms (Facebook, Google and Netflix, among others) about the difference between implicit and behavioral intent. “In this era where we have data about everyone, do you trust behavioral data, or what people actually say they want?” he posed from the stage of the Media Summit. “If you don’t trust what users say they want, then users lose agency. You’re just sending them things they will click on.” It’s clear the current platforms don’t get us there on their own. But by striking a balance between editors and code, Pariser thinks we can get the best of both worlds. “The great thing about the Internet is that it’s a very malleable thing,” he said. “It’s not a medium, it’s a meta-medium.” By hooking people with content users like and pairing it with content users need, editors can drive traffic and value simultaneously. “How do we make hard news as irresistible as LOLcats? That is what news is competing with. We need to find new ways of packaging it,” Pariser asserted. “The Internet can go either way. It can encapsulate us in a little bubble of our narrow interests, or it can connect us to new people and ways of thinking.” The latter is what we all hoped for, Pariser said. And his hybrid media strategy might be one way to save us from creating “a bubble of one.” Media Summit 2011![]() We had a packed house in attendance for this year's Media Summit. Click here to view this gallery. ![]() Presenting Sponsor: AT&TMore About: eli pariser, journalism, mashable media summit, Media, News, personalization, Tech For more Media coverage:
TVGuide.com Watchlist Predicts Fall TV Shows’ SuccessNine of the top 10 new fall TV shows on TVGuide.com‘s Watchlist were picked up for a second season, illustrating the platform’s success in predicting hits, said Christy Tanner, EVP and general manager of TVGuide.com. Tanner, who spoke at Mashable‘s Media Summit Friday, provided a list of the shows, which include, in order: New Girl, Pan Am, Person of Interest, Terra Nova, Ringer, Once Upon a Time, Prime Suspect, Revenge, Unforgettable and Up All Night. Nine of the 10 shows have been given the green light for a second season, except for Pan Am. The highest-rated among those shows and for all new shows for the week of Oct. 24- Oct. 30 was Person of Interest, which drew a 7.2 “live + same day” rating, which translates to about 8.3 million households. New Girl starring Zooey Deschanel (pictured) was on hiatus that week, but got a 3.5 rating when it last aired on Nov. 1. TVGuide launched Watchlist in August. The free online service lets users search to see where they can find their favorite shows on TV or on other connected devices. Though the service is designed for consumers, information about the most-engaged shows may have some relevance for network execs looking to find proof new shows are taking off. However, several others are attempting to do the same, including BlueFin Labs, Networked Insights and Trendrr. Media Summit 2011![]() We had a packed house in attendance for this year's Media Summit. Click here to view this gallery. ![]()
Presenting Sponsor: AT&T
More About: Bluefin Labs, Networked Insights, Trendrr, TV, tvguide.com For more Entertainment coverage:
HBO Go now available on Roku boxes, HBO subscription still required to take advantage
Not a bad turnaround time, we have to say. Nary a month after revealing that HBO Go streaming would soon be pushed to Roku boxes around the known universe... HBO Go streaming has been pushed to Roku boxes around the known universe. As of now, Roku addicts can tap into unlimited access to over 1,400 HBO programs (that's movies, original series, sports, comedy, etc.), with one mondo stipulation: you have to be an HBO subscriber via some pay-TV company. Of course, HBO Go can also be accessed via your laptop, and you've probably got some form of HBO on-demand already, but look -- this is better. This is comprehensive. Use it, and don't ask questions. Capiche?
HBO Go now available on Roku boxes, HBO subscription still required to take advantage originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 04 Nov 2011 16:49:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds. Permalink | Roku Blog | Email this | Comments
from Engadget http://www.engadget.com/2011/11/04/hbo-go-now-available-on-roku-boxes-hbo-sub...
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