I’m very proud to announce the launch of FavePersonal; a WordPress theme designed for personal websites. I have been using (and building and…
Fellow Colorado web geeks, I made you a t-shirt. The code that comprises the white stripe is a full, working HTML page with canvas code that draws…
It’s been very interesting to me to see how some folks are re-evaluating their work/life balance in the wake of reading Isaacson’s Steve…
Quite simply, Paper is the best app I’ve seen in a long time.1 It just turned my iPad from a device I leave at home for email, browsing and playing games to a business tool I want to have with me all the time. Over the last six months I’ve been using paper sketches more…
For the last few months just about every time I do anything on my iPhone that uses Location Services, I’ve had that icon come on and stay on. I couldn’t get it to go away unless I turned off Location Services entirely; and even then it would come right back as soon as I re-enabled…
While the iPad *can* live as a stand-alone machine with iCloud, I still plug mine in every so often to load up photos, etc. As a contrast, the Kindle Fire didn’t even come with a connection cable (just a charger). I guess Amazon is backing up/hosting media in the cloud for me, no idea about…
One of the things I love about Google Voice is the way I can receive and send text messages from my phone, iPad and laptop. To borrow from “the best camera is the one that’s with you”, the best device for messaging is the one you’re currently using. It’s blindingly obvious that this sort of…
Awesome to see Google using the Share Icon in the Android Market app.
Many people, myself included, blast Android for UI inconsistency; but it’s a problem in iOS too. Here we have two screenshots from the built-in iOS settings screens. In this one, you see a Back button and a Save button in the toolbar. Clicking Save will apply changes, while clicking Back will act as a Cancel…
Since getting my iPhone earlier this year, I’d kept all of of the photos I’d taken in the iPhone’s camera roll. I’d accumulated over 1200 of them. It was handy to have a bunch of photos with me, but there was a cost on several fronts: storage and speed. This past week I’ve completely revamped…
One of the things I’ve liked about Verizon with my Droid and iPhone is the ability to flip on the HotSpot feature via the My Verizon app. I click on Plan Features and turn it on/off. Easy. Last month I made some account changes and added some family members to my plan. I discovered that…
If you’re using Moderinzr to detect browser support for touch events, be aware that non-touch BlackBerry devices claim to support touch events. As you might expect, the touch events are pretty much impossible to trigger on a non-touch device. I worked around this by making the check for touch vs. non-touch browsers also test for…
I’ve been a mobile tech junkie for a while now, and watching HP recently kill their webOS devices (effectively, webOS itself) has given me an interesting feeling of deja vu. The situation here has some strong parallels to the plight of the Newton. Both the Newton and webOS were considered to be good technology, with…
If you’re looking for an iPhone app that gives you the ability to annotate and draw circles and arrows on screenshots the way the excellent Skitch app for the Mac does, I recommend trying Sketches 2. It’s not quite as good as Skitch, but definitely the best of the ones I’ve tried for iOS. Thanks…
The reasons that Android phones are either slow to get system updates, or fail to get them entirely are pretty clear. The process of getting an update ready to push to a handset is decidedly non-trivial: Google creates, tests and releases a system update. Handset manufacturers take the system update and apply their vendo-specific tweaks…
Can’t wait for that iPhone 4 on Verizon? If you aren’t already a Verizon customer and don’t want to wait until Feb 10th, here’s what to do. Go sign up for a Verizon account today and purchase the cheapest phone they have, without a subsidy. Don’t use the cheap phone. Get online at 3AM US/Eastern…
Corey mentioned it on Twitter a few weeks back: @alexkingorg it’s the whole concept of new vs unread. I knew to open mail for new mail. Unread is a meaningless number. BlackBerry, Android and Palm all have a notification system that allows the user to know when new email has arrived. The notification remains present…
A little background: I spent the last few months with a Droid 2, just switched back to a BlackBerry and I expect to have an iPhone again pretty soon (currently sporting an iPod touch).1 My experiences across each of the platforms has shown me the strengths of each. Or put another way, it’s made it…
In the last 5 years I’ve spent time on all 4 of the major US carriers here in Denver.1 During that time I’ve also done some traveling while carrying phones on multiple networks. If there’s one thing that I’ve learned, it’s that mobile coverage is a very dependent on location. In Denver you can’t connect…
The Perception iPhone apps are beautiful and exhibit consistent user interface conventions while Android apps are functional, but lack elegance, polish and consistency. The Truth iPhone apps are beautiful and exhibit consistent user interface conventions while Android apps are functional, but lack elegance, polish and consistency. The false promise of Android is that any day…
If you’re trying to sniff the Samsung Galaxy Tab, here is the current User Agent string1: Mozilla/5.0 (Linux; U; Android 2.2; en-us; SCH-I800 Build/FROYO) AppleWebKit/533.1 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0 Mobile Safari/533.1 It looks like SCH-I800 may be the best thing to look for. Would it have killed them to add “Android Tablet (7 inch)” in…
I’ve switched back to the Droid 2 and plan to return my Droid Pro. I like the Droid Pro form factor better1, but even though it has the same model battery and I’ve triple checked that my settings are the same as the Droid 2, I get 2 real days of battery on the Droid…
I have been waiting for a few years for someone to create an Android device in a candybar format with a keyboard on the bottom. I ordered the Droid Pro the first day it was available and used it for the last 2 days, switching from the Droid 2. Here are some initial impressions. Overall,…
I’ve used mobile devices for over a dozen years. The input mechanisms of these devices have ranged from handwriting recognition and Graffiti with a stylus, to a portrait and landscape oriented physical keyboards, slider keyboards and virtual keyboards. Over that time I’ve gained an affinity for hardware keyboards over virtual keyboards, and portrait keyboards over…
My foray into the Android world has sent me searching for the best available apps for my various needs. Here is the set I’m currently using along with some general thoughts: Email: K-9 mail. The built-in IMAP client on the Droid 2 is fundamentally broken. It fails to move and delete messages on the server.…
Set the Droid 2 to “Maximum battery saver”. Leaving WiFi, Bluetooth and 3G on I still had 60% battery left at 11:45pm.
Input methods and devices are very personal things. Most folks I know are pretty particular about their keyboard, mouse (or trackpad), desk set-up, etc. It makes sense. You spend a lot of time with these tools and you want them to fit you and the way you work. Mobile devices are no different in this…
This week I started looking in earnest at the currently available Verizon Android phones. I find my BlackBerry to be an awesome device for PIM activities (email, SMS, calendar) and the official Twitter client is pretty decent, however I really miss having a good browser, feed reader, podcast client, etc. and will generally grab my…