I was using Android long enough to get used to some of it’s handy features that I now miss a lot on iPhone. One of these features is the way you switch your profiles (usually normal to silent and vice versa). iPhone has a different way to do it.
When I saw iPhone for the first time, I was excited about the handy profile switch it had near the volume buttons. It’s great when you can set ‘Silent’ without turning on the screen and attracting attention, say, on a meeting. You can do it not looking, even!
But in a few days, my initial excitement turned to disappointment. On Android (and even on a Symbian phone Nokia E51 I had before it), you could download an application that would look into your calendar and set/unset silent mode automatically, based on the events you have. That was great, I remember. I never had to worry about forgetting my sound on or off for a long time. If I chose the silent mode manually, it would stay until the end of my next calendar event and then went back to normal, again, automatically.
For iPhone, everything’s different. You have this fancy switch, but that’s it. No indication whether your phone is in ‘Silent’ mode, or not, except when you look at the switch. Nothing on the screen. No way to change profiles from within the system; no apps for auto change as well.
Usually I do not forget to switch my phone to ‘Silent’. Auto-switching was handy, but still, having no auto-switch doesn’t make a big deal. If I forget, I always can set it later, when something reminds me about it. The outside switch could be handy when I need to do this fast, but — let’s be honest — how often do you need to do it so fast?
And now we are at the point where auto switch matters. When you need to turn the sounds back on. And when you (most likely) will forget about this again and again. When you needed to mute all sounds, it was important — you had a meeting or any other event requiring silence. Now it’s not important anymore, so your brain will most likely skip and forget about sound switch. Digital profile setting works best in this case. Analog one… no, don’t tell me about it.
As I said, you could install a handy app for a profile switch for Android or Symbian phone. The only sort of apps for iPhone I saw on iTunes market are those that show you a pop-up reminder telling you to put the ‘Silent’ switch off. And, I must say, this is ridiculous! Getting an app for this sort of reminder, because your phone can’t do it automatically — you’re basically signing up for spam that your brain will most likely skip as well.
The only thing Apple did right with this silent mode is, actually, two things: your morning alarm, that will be loud no matter what, even if everything else is muted, and the ‘Find My Phone’ sound message, that will do the same. Latter even saved me a half an hour of search, when my phone sinked into the sofa with silent mode on. This is how it should be.
So, let’s wrap up. Digital profile switch? It may take longer time, but it allows extra features such as auto profile change based on calendar events or a pre-set time. This is actually very handy and helps to back up your mind when you’re most likely to forget your phone on ‘Mute’. Analog profile switch? This is handy for fast sounds mute, but no indicator icon and no auto-set-back makes this feature pretty useless.
I don’t blame Apple for this no-digital-switch thing. Analog thing can be useful, too. And if you think on having best of both worlds, you get another problem: the way it is designed on iPhone, how can you automatically set your analog switch back?
Here is my answer: if you re-design the switch and make it a button, like volume buttons on iPhone, then it would work. Or, even better, get rid of this button and keep this function up to the industry standards: long press on ‘Power’ gets you the profile menu.
Unfortunately, Apple isn’t used to follow industry standards. They set them. Usually it’s good, but sometimes it just doesn’t work.
Summit is now over, and I’ve been asked so many times about the t-shirts.
They are not just randomly designed, they actually have an idea behind them.
OLPC is for kids, right? I remember, when I was a child, I loved the stories of Arthur Conan Doyle, especially his ‘The Adventure of the Dancing Men’. That’s where the font of the t-shirt message comes from.
Can you guess what the message is about? Well, it’s not that hard when you know that XO icon is not a letter, just a decorative element. Don’t worry, I won’t keep you guessing for long.
There is a phrase that greets you every time when you enter Terminal Activity, ‘Hello, Children Of The World!’. I took the word ‘Children’ and wrote it in the Dancing Men Script. I know it could be just the word ‘Children’, no matter where it from, but I like to think I took it specifically from the phrase you see in Terminal.
This is basically it. If you were at the Summit in San Francisco this year, and got the t-shirt, I hope you liked it.
Yesterday Amazon announced a bunch of new devices in Kindle series. I looked [online] at all of them, and bought the new basic kindle, the version for $109, the one without special offers.
Why didn’t I go with Touch or Fire? Well, to my taste, the Touch version is a way too far from a real book, although it may sound strange.
I had the Sony Reader Touch Edition for a while, buying it as a gift to my parents. Touch is OK overall, but it crudely interrupts reading for me. Touch feature means that your screen won’t be nicely clean and unscratched anymore, just as with your favorite smartphone from Google.
It is fine to buy protective screens for a smartphone: although they make the screen look less crisp, it is still acceptable. But for the device that’s main purpose is reading and only that… I don’t want any more layers here. Just the screen as it was designed originally, preferably without the scratches and fingerprints. Side buttons to turn pages is OK. Nothing more is needed.
A kind of the similar concern I have about Fire. It’s too far from the device I would call a book now. Even an electronic book.
Surely, having a colored screen is nice, and I was anticipating the color Kindle from Amazon, but… that’s just not it. I don’t want an overpowered under-tablet that lives on the battery less than 8 hours for reading. I would be happy with colored pictures, but not at the point when they make my battery last thirty times less. Between color and battery life for a so-called book, I always choose battery life.
Why no special offers? Well, there are a lot of people out there who just doesn’t notice the ads, and therefore usually prefer the cheaper version of software, hardware, and everything. I just can’t. Maybe it’s my former media experience (I was designing ads for a while in the past), maybe something else, but I always notice the ads and most of the time they irritate me. And I just don’t want any ‘special offers’ in my book. I know Amazon does everything to make my reading experience nice and smooth anyway, but ads are still ads. Even if they are placed only on the idle screen, I don’t want to have them there, and I choose not to. Really.
It is the era of multifunctional devices, indeed. But for the old-fashioned activity such as reading a book, I prefer a simple, single-functioned machine such as a basic Kindle. With no touch, no color, no 3g and no ads.
It is my choice. What’s yours?
I recently went on a two-week vacation to St. Petersburg, Florida. It was going to be a calm and even boring time: swimming in the ocean, getting tan, doing everyday yoga and gathering energy for the rest of the year.
In terms of making this vacation less boring, I decided to take OLPC XO instead of my regular MacBookPro with me. I planned an experiment: go and see if I, a geek and a technology lover, can really work and live on this small green machine. And if I can, then how it would look.
XO is a really exceptional piece of technology, but it’s definitely not your MacBookPro. It is much slower, interface is different, especially in Sugar [Learning Environment], and made for a completely different purpose. And on top of all that, it is Linux, not an all-polished Mac.
Most of the things I do day-to-day on my MacBook, especially when on vacation, don’t require a 2011-ish extremely powerful machine. I do write a lot, but it can be done using any text processor on any platform. I do read a lot, but there is Kindle, and for internet I can use any browser, even the no-tabbed one supplied with XO. I do take pictures a lot, and this is a kind of tricky. My perfect-shooting-machine Sony NEX-5 saves images to RAW-files, and I used to edit them in Aperture. And I do use Photoshop sometimes as well.
Well,—I decided, I can live without this for two weeks. I will take photos indeed, cannot live without it,—but I will take a large SD-card, and a spare one, and a spare another one, and edit everything when I am back home.
So, it was set. I packed my green small precious monster, and in a couple of days started my unboring experiment.
Stillness on Flickr.
A few months ago I was surfing the web looking for the interesting stuff that happens in the IT-related area. This is how I learned about OLPC.
The odd thing is that I didn’t hear about them earlier. The great one is that I finally did it.
OLPC is a non-profit organization making the education accessible for all children. What they basically do is building and bringing laptops to schools in countries that wouldn’t be able to afford this otherwise.
The whole idea is fascinating and great. It’s not only about laptops. It’s about knowledge and education, and that is an important part of the whole OLPC philosophy.
Their existence triggers a lot of questions and even ‘holy wars’. Opinions are very polar on this matter. Many people think OLPC does a good thing, providing education for kids who couldn’t get it otherwise. Others don’t believe in this ‘greater good’ and try to find a catch in the whole idea.
One my friend said—”OK, maybe bringing laptops to kids in Nigeria is a good idea. But don’t these kids have bigger problems to worry about?”. I can say—certainly. In some places there is no electricity, somewhere else is a war ongoing. Not having enough water to live certainly is a much bigger problem than not having a laptop.
You can describe a lot of things that are much more important than having a nice electronic device to play with. But nothing is more important than a good tool to solve problems, and OLPC is one for sure.
Look at the bigger picture: these laptops give kids education and knowledge that is priceless; they help them learn to read and give access to the worldwide pool of information of how to solve almost any problem. It’s not just the information—it is patterns, rational thinking, faster learning. Our minds will never be so flexible, innovative and creative as in childhood, so it is a crime not to give kids a chance to learn.
If somebody has problems with water you can go and fix it for sure, if you have all necessary tools. But this somebody will then be dependant on you, on your knowledge and authority. If you give that person right tools and resources, and show how to get more resources, create more tools and use them—you will help creating a free individual that can do nearly everything by himself. It is giving a fishing rod and helping him learn to use it instead of just throwing in a basket of fish.
Knowledge is power and knowledge is everything. You can’t just restrict certain countries and people from being educated, free, powerful—it’s one of the natural rights people have and should know about.
That’s why I think OLPC does a great thing. This small green laptop gives hope to many kids around the world. And this open community gives everybody a chance to help, in many ways. I am just happy I can contribute to this project now.
P.S. OLPC Mission Statement on YouTube: Part 1 and Part 2
I finally did it!
The keyboard behaved strangely from the very beginning. First, I didn’t know if it’s a problem, or a normal behavior. Then I began to realize I had some kind of a hardware problem, since it couldn’t be normal.
So I took a deep breath, got a screwdriver and a manual and opened my tiny green laptop.
And-you won’t believe this-I fixed it finally.
There was a small thing like a breadcrumb or a tiny piece of wire stuck in the keyboard. It was the reason of all glitches I had. Now it is gone, and the cursor keys work just fine.
Also, just in case, I made sure I didn’t break anything else.
I am so happy I fixed it!
Btw, a big post about OLPC is on the way.
I was wondering if I can write blog posts with my Kindle.
It seems I can, using Tumblr’s web interface.
Good to know.
Creativity at #olpcsf summit
Early morning on Monday, 30th September I got a Kindle. I was somehow familiar with digital readers before—bought a Sony Reader (the touch one) to my mother, cause she literally had no place for the new books at her home.
In my childhood I was a swift reader: I had plenty of time, and read a new book almost every day. And surely, there was no day without a book. I read tons of books — starting from some kids literature, then classics, then physics textbooks and computer manuals. Everything I could reach.
When I finished reading our home library I went to the public one. Many books there, and then… University, work, university again. No time for literature—just textbooks, manuals, etc. Then I stopped reading everything except blogs and some internet manuals for a while.
Since that time I remember the only one non-technical or non-business book I read. It’s painful to read such amounts of text from the display, you know, so I ended up reading something just when I really needed that.
Now, with Kindle, the things have already changed. I can easily read not only manuals, but also a lot of classics. Almost all classics is free at Kindle Store.
Nothing is wrong with the paper books, I still love them and keep them on my shelves. But I am a tech girl and need something modern and tech to accompany me in reading.
Now I got that.
Kindle