Apple - Batteries - iPhone

Apple has 11 tips for increasing battery life on your iPhone.

• Turn off 3G
• Minimize use of location services
• Fetch new data less frequently
• Turn off push mail
• Auto-check fewer email accounts
• Minimize use of third-party applications
• Turn off Wi-Fi
• Turn off Bluetooth
• Use Airplane Mode in low- or no-coverage areas
• Adjust brightness
• Turn off EQ

In a nutshell? Use it as an iPod. But not too often.

NB: there’s appears to still be an instance of “Push” in there. Was the decision to pull that term just for the non-email stuff?  read more »

Compelled to Blurt… | Ask Metafilter

Like a lot of people in this Ask Metafilter thread, I thought I was the only person in the universe who made an unconscious little noise when remembering something stupid I did or said.

It’s not especially loud, in fact it’s often under my breath. The sound is usually just a quiet grunt, or a word/syllable or two. If I remember an embarrassing conversation, I tend to blurt out a random word of the conversation (as in, I’m replaying the dialogue in my head but then all the sudden one of the words pops out of my mouth). If it happens while I’m reading, I tend to blurt out one or two of the words that happen to be under my eyes at the moment.

For context, my tic (which can also be heard when someone near me does something dumb) sounds a little like the noise Leo Bloom makes after he falls on his keys (00:34). “Ooooooom….”  read more »

43 Folders Jobs

You’ll see your company or organization on 43 Folders when you post to the 43f Job Board. Featured jobs will even appear in periodic posts like this one.

Many thanks to all our posters.

• Programming Intern - The Colbert Report, New York, NY
• Build Engineer, AdSonar and FeedPoint Products - Platform A, New York, NY
• Principal Front End Web developer - Adsonar - Platform A, New York, NY
• Front-end Web Developer - Veer, Calgary, AB, Canada
• Senior Rails Developer - Netbooks, SAN FRANCISCO, CA
• Great job opportunity in escrow management company. - escrow-trust, USA
• WEB DEVELOPERS - Wall Street On Demand, Boulder, CO
• Junior Web Developers - Wall Street On Demand, Boulder, CO
• Software Engineer II : Remedy Developer ARS - Employment Strategies, Inc., San Diego, CA
• Software Programmer - UCLA Center for Embedded Networked Sensing, Los Angeles, CA (UCLA Campus)

Chairman Gruber recently discovered (via his sharp-eyed reader, Earl Misquitta), that the aforementioned iPhone Remote application can also be used as a virtual keyboard for entering search text, login information, and what have you on your AppleTV. Seeing the typed characters appear on the TV screen as you type them is simply magical. So, if, like me, you’re in the amazingly tiny sliver of the Venn diagram for people who own both these products, this is hugely convenient, and what a welcome trick it is.

As I’ve alluded to before, the AppleTV’s torturous keyboard entry (via the hardware Apple Remote’s 4-way joystick) is abysmal. In 21 uninterrupted years of using Apple products, it’s probably the most consistently frustrating and poorly-designed interface I’ve encountered. I literally hate using it.

The ability to enter text via the superior (but far from perfect) iPhone keyboard is wonderful but it doesn’t and can’t address a deeper problem with the keyboard-challenged devices Apple are focused on vending right now: assy and annoying text entry encourages the use of crap passwords. This is bad, and here’s why.  read more »

Big Contrarian → Tacky.

My favorite bloggers are great at articulating something I feel in my gut — but they regularly present it better, more clearly, and (on days like today), more succinctly than I ever could. Such is the case with Jack Shedd’s post, “Tacky,” a razor-sharp polemic on the industry of cheese-food manufacturing that “pro blogging” has turned into.

Write top ten lists and whore yourself on many other sites as you possibly can. Don’t be thoughtful, long-winded or interesting. Don’t write about you love, unless what you love is popular on Digg. And for god’s sake don’t even think about writing about more than one topic.

Whether their strategies work or not is slightly beside the point. It’s cheap. It’s marketing driven, instead of content driven. It’s the type of thinking that leads to a sequel to the movie Garfield.

For myself, I think there’s nothing wrong with having a blog and wanting to make money with it. Obviously. But I also hold an increasingly old-fashioned view that you ought to start with something you’re passionate about sharing with people — something besides how to make easy money with a blog — and try to build an audience of people you respect based on producing work you’re happy with or even proud of.  read more »

Guadian UK: Hi-tech is turning us all into time-wasters

(via Rich Siegel)

A few weeks ago, I pointed you to a startling stat in the New York Times stating that 28% of the average worker’s day gets blown on unnecessary interruptions — helping contribute to a crisis that a company like Intel now considers a $1 billion per year problem. From yesterday’s Guardian comes more numbers on the growing cost of distraction:

Ferrari says that chronic procrastination is now so serious a condition it needs to be recognised by clinicians. In a study to be published later this year, he estimates that 15 to 20 per cent of people are chronic procrastinators. ‘We now have data on 4,000 people, and it doesn’t seem to matter what age you are, or your sex or background.’

Of course, as the Inbox Zero guy, I think a real eye-opener sneaks in with this passing note about the cost of all those noisy email notifications you created:  read more »

Google Docs Templates

Google Docs recently added over 300 templates for a variety of business documents, spreadsheets, and presentations. Need templates for a calendar, a letter, a resume, or even Avery-compatible labels? You’re good to go.

My favorites are in the eclectic “Miscellaneous” section, where you’ll find templates for athletes, parents, wedding or event planners, wine nerds, screenwriters — even “animal guardians”.  read more »

As I wrote yesterday, I’m loving the new iPhone apps on the iTunes store. Also, as we mentioned on MacBreak Weekly yesterday, it seems likely that we’re just seeing the tip of the iceberg in terms of what people will do with that SDK.

But it got me thinking about the stuff I want — the itches I want to scratch. So, iPhone developer friends. Please make these three apps.  read more »

There are so many amazing new apps on the iPhone store that I hope to review here (and I’ll certainly spend time on a few more over coming weeks), but today I want to point you to three applications that make me feel like I’m a music fan of the very-near-future — where personalized data flies through the air, phones play rock music based on your personal preferences, and everybody listens to Silkworm on moving sidewalks and in tricked-out rocket cars.  read more »