hmm ...

Interesting article about how we historically had two shorter sleeps with a short waking period in between.

jailbreak101:

[Tumblr]: [CultofMac]

Like many Apple fans, I love the idea of the an iPod nano watch. I adore the fact that an idle comment from Steve Jobs about how the new nano is so small it can be worn as a watch got turned into a cottage industry of Kickstarters fashioning a multitude of hip new…

minimalmac:

In June of 1985, 30-year-old Microsoft CEO Bill Gates sent the following remarkable memo to both the then-CEO of Apple, John Sculley, and then-head of Macintosh development, Jean Louis Gassée, and urged them to spread their wings by licensing their hardware and operating system to other companies. Apple ignored his advice.

An amazing read for those with an interest in history. 

Remember, folks, sometimes to get it right, you have to do it wrong.

minimalmac:

Recently, while on vacation in New Orleans for Mardi Gras and visiting family, we stayed at my sister’s house. She was kind enough to let us have her place while she found accommodations elsewhere. She moved in to this place herself not too long ago and was proud to point out to us the brand new,…

streakmachine:

A lot of people love to have the latest technology, which includes companies as they can use them on comparison sheets between their products and the competitors products. Anything you can offer than the competition cannot must be a huge boon, right? Well, how about it it doesn’t really benefit…

The way I use LTE (I think) gives me the best of both worlds. My iPad is Wi-Fi only and I recently moved my iPhone from AT&T to Verizon (USA) to get better voice quality. But I also have a Samsung credit card sized “hotspot” that creates a Wi-Fi cloud around me in 4G. I used to have the (Novitel) 3G hotspot card to give connectivity to my iPad and notebook, but now I also use it for my iPhone.

This way, I spend just a little more than I would have spent to add AT&T or Verizon’s hotspot service to the phone, but I get fast 4G speeds for my iPhone only when I need the extra speed — and without draining the phone’s battery. If the 4G card runs out of juice, I still have the 3G in the phone.

Real time tests in my area give me around 1 Mb/s for either AT&T or Verizon (a little more for AT&T, a little less for Verizon), but 21 Mb/s when using the 4G card.

The link is to the full NY Times article (which requires a free online registration). If you don’t want to do this, there is an abbreviated story here.

streakmachine:

A while back I decided to use DuckDuckGo as my main search engine, not so much out of concerns of Google turning into SkyNET any day, but rather out of curiosity about the alternative search engine. I will admit that the design of DuckDuckGo also appealed to me, harkening back to days of yore when…

Just tried it on some Google searches I did this morning and I’m very impressed with DuckDuckGo.com - even on some searches that were a bit obscure.

A nice step-by-step intro from Apple

Some of these are less obvious than others and one came as a surprise.

- Loyalty cards - of course - that’s the whole purpose. So, just get a new one every year or so. But don’t tell them that you lost the old one - that lets them link the two accounts together - tell them you’re a new customer. I’m sure they’re wise to this and they will try to link your new account to an existing one using your name, address, etc, so use phony info whenever you can.

- One they didn’t list = the $20 gift card for transferred prescriptions coupon. Yes, most of that is because they want your lucrative Rx business. But have you noticed that only companies that have loyalty cards do this ? It’s an easy way to put a REAL name, address, phone number etc on your loyalty card data (vs the possible faked data).

- Credit card transactions - I was surprised by this. I thought that only the credit card processsor ever saw your credit card number and the store only saw the last 4 or 5 digits. Maybe that’s enough for them?

- Facebook & Google - of course. Don’t stay logged in to anyplace that makes money off of you while surfing to other places. How do you know they make money off of you? You’re either the customer or the thing being sold (sometimes both). If the service is free, you are the thing being sold (your data).

And on a related note, why are so many of you giving your real birthday to Facebook, Google, etc ? Of course you have to give your correct data to financial institutions, but what is Facebook or Google going to do to you if you don’t use the right birthday or zip code or gender ? Try something like 5-6-78 - they’ll start wondering about what caused the baby boom on that date. If you have trouble remembering your fake persona, stick a post-it note on your monitor.

- Use private browsing whenever you can.

If you wanted an inexpensive ebook copy of “Design Patterns” by the “gang of four”, you can get it from the publisher today for $10.

You get both PDF and EPUB, but they are watermarked - which means that every page has a footer that has your name on it. I like this way of preventing piracy better than the DRM ways.

This is a trustworthy site - I have over 100 ebooks from them, most of which I paid $10 for. Come to think of it, that would have paid for the Aeron chair I want - oh well.

If you miss the sale, just watch the site every day - it will come back in a few months.

In case you were looking for hints for your own setup. Most interesting parts for me:

- Steelcase Think chairs - I was hoping these would be a cheaper alternative to the Aeron chairs, but they cost just as much. One company I used to work for (SRA International) gave every employee an Aeron chair - it was great! One of these days, I’ll buy one for my home office.

- SynergyKM - sort of like a KVM but with multiple displays. Imagine you have multiple computers with different OSes on your desk. SynergyKM lets you use a single keyboard & mouse (hence the KM) to control all of them. Just move your mouse to the edge of one display and it goes to the next machine’s display.