@steffennork

Self-made Google Glass.

Fri, 10 May 2013 14:19:56 +0200

Self-made Google Glass.

Night Mode

Sun, 24 Feb 2013 22:57:44 +0100

I spend a lot of my reading in bed at night. There’s just not that
much time for me during the day to catch up. And when I do it’s dark
(obviously) and that’s when an app’s night mode comes in handy. Night
mode always shines when it comes to spend longer times in an app.

These are the apps I frequently use and love for their night mode:

Feedly - My current #1 RSS reader
Twitterrific 5 - That’s what I use for Twitter right now.
Instapaper - Where longer articles go to
The Magazine - An amazingly innovative magazine with all kinds if
different articles
Jasmine - The best YouTube client. Fluid and elegant.
Kindle - My ereader app of choice

Among those Twitterrific 5 and Instapaper offer an automatic switch
which I really really love. I wish all apps would offer to switch
automatically. I admire and appreciate the technical approach
Instapaper uses but I’m also satisfied with the apparently (at least
that’s what I think how it works) timely switch Twitterrific uses.

Day in the life of my iPhone

Fri, 22 Feb 2013 06:53:21 +0100

5:50am - Alarm clock, time to get up. Update sleep status on Path.
6:05am - Start the day with a run, tracked by the Nike+ app, accompanied by either Spotify or the Podcast app
7:20am - Sync run to Path, Twitter and Facebook
7:25am - Save weight in Weightbot
7:45am - Breakfast - Flipboard, Feedly, Twitterrific 5 and Safari for news
8:15am - Geoalert at child care
8:15am - Maps app and Podcast or Spotify
8:50am - Checking in at Location via Path and Spotify
9:00am - Make myself a tea. Let Siri set the timer for 8 minutes
10:00am - Check notes on Simplenote
11:30am - Check and organize Todos on Gtasks
1:00pm - Check news on cir.ca, Twitterrific 5, Feedly and Safari
4:40pm - Receive nice image updates from my family on Path
6:30pm - Tell Siri to navigate me home
10:30pm - Sync my Nike Fuelband, status gets updated both on the app and on Path
10:31pm - Tell Path that I’m sleeping now

My main computer is my iPhone 4S. That’s just a small glimpse of what I’m using that thing for everyday.

A Siri enabled Nike+ Fuelband

Thu, 24 Jan 2013 13:42:38 +0100

Since June 2012 I’m a proud owner of a Nike+ Fuelband. I wear it everyday, almost 24/7. I only look at my actual Fuelpoints and occasionally use it as a watch and have removed the Calories and Steps from my view. My daily goal is: Keep that streak alive and to reach my Fuelpoints goal every day.

It is known that Tim Cook also wears one and the idea came up that with Bluetooth v4.0 maybe a Fuelband that’s constantly connected to my iPhone isn’t that much of a dream anymore. Wearable computing is on everyone’s agenda (Pebble Smart Watch, anyone?) and Apple has a history of partnering successfully with Nike, in fact creating the very first Nike+ iPod experience.

With an ever-connected Nike+ Fuelband an integration with Siri could be possible:

Holding the Fuelband’s button for a second enables Siri (right now that triggers the Sync but with a constant connection that wouldn’t be necessary anymore).
Activate normal Siri commands like “Remind me to bring out the trash when I arrive home”. The Fuelband is more than capable to display something like “OK” with its LEDs or even repeat the command. Of course Siri would need a remarkable overhaul in terms of speed and understanding (it usually doesn’t understand my commands correctly on the first attempt, especially when showing Siri to other people).
A Nike+ integration would definitely involve some kind of life/health improvement thing, such as special voice commands like “I had a salad and a diet coke for lunch” in order to integrate with an extension of the Nike+ website or apps like Lose it would make sense.
Another classic: “Start my workout”, “I’m off for a 10km run”, etc. which triggers the Nike+ Running App and starts a run.

Let’s see how big Tim’s love for the Fuelband is. I guess there’s much more potential to this than I can envision today.

Suggestions for the @circa news app

Thu, 29 Nov 2012 16:26:47 +0100

Some thoughts and some feedback on the wonderful and innovative Cir.ca news app, maybe some thoughts from this post make it to future versions of the app:

Search functionality

I miss the possibility to enter a word and find related articles, e.g. “iPhone” and get all articles that are about the iPhone.

“Mark all stories as read”

After using this app for over a month now on a daily basis I am following quite a lot of stories. There might be updates I won’t read at this particular time and I sometimes wished for a “mark all as read” button.

Group by newest first

It’s nice that I can jump to a particular article from a push message, however when I simply open the app and know that I have 4 unread stories I have to scroll through all my subscriptions to find the ones I subsribed to that are new. Having all unread updated stories at the very top would be a nice addition.

Other than that: I’d love to beta test future versions of the app, feel free to contact me at steffennork - at - gmail.com

EarPods and Running

Thu, 11 Oct 2012 05:00:17 +0200

Let’s start with a “confession”: I’m a runner and I have weird ears.

Well, not that weird, but apparently my right ear is slighty different to my left one which seems to have a natural aversion against earpods of all kinds. Anyway, as soon as the iPhone 5 and the new EarPods have been announced I wanted to give them a try (I haven’t upgraded to the iPhone 5 yet; still an iPhone 4S user). What sold me was the intensive testing which I will simply believe and not consider it as pure marketing bla.

To make a long story short: I bought the EarPods a couple of days after they have been out and I have to say I really like them.

Fitting

Yes, they do fall out of my right ear after a couple of minutes while running, but I decided I can live with that. It will be winter time soon which will put a beanie on my bald head for running and then this issue will be solved, too.

Sound

I really like the sound and their bass. My personal benchmark are some Sennheiser running earbuds and the original Apple ones.

Remote Control

That’s a big one for me: I’m constantly fiddling with volume settings, skip a song here and there, etc. My Sennheiser do have a remote control, but this one’s harder to use than the Apple ones. What I don’t like on Apple’s EarPods is that the remote is so big. This amount of weight helps even more to pull the EarPod out of my right ear. Additionally since I wear a running jacket when temperature falls below 10 degrees Celsius the remote is being pushed by my jacket’s collar which doesn’t help either. So my wish would be to go back to the previous remote size of the old Earbuds.

Conclusion

Yes, I think I can recommend the EarPods. There might be better ones, but I think I’m quite happy with these ones. They’re comfortable for running, have an easy-going remote control, are Apple signature-white ^^ and provide a nice sound which is good enough for me.

How advertisers teach children to avoid ads

Fri, 24 Aug 2012 10:45:00 +0200

As mentioned before, my children will grow up living in the future. Mobile devices are a daily constant in their lifes, either when we take photos of them, when they see us checking maps for the closest playground, when seeing photos together or when (on some rare occasions; I prefer them to play with “real” toys) they play a game or solve a puzzle on the iPad.

And here comes the thing where advertisers teach children to avoid ads entirely.

Take this screenshot from a regular kids game on the iPad:

A huge part of the screen is covered with ads. Children obviously don’t know what ads are and tap on them. It closes their game they have been playing with and redirects them to the App Store. “Dad, my game is gone!”, bummer.

But children are fast learners: They have much smaller fingers than adults and are much better than us in avoiding these ads. And that’s simply what they do. They learn: When I tap on this surface it will hinder me from playing my game. Simple as that. They learn this lesson from early on and it is very likely that this lessons will be in their brains for their entire life. Ads = no fun.

So developers of software for children: Either provide your apps for a reasonable price without ads - or if you have to embed ads don’t spoil the user’s experience by making them interfere with the game flow.

How to share photos from Path to Flickr

Thu, 26 Jul 2012 10:11:00 +0200

I love Path. It’s the #1 social network I use and I use it only with my family. We all love to share special moments and that obviously includes a lot of photos. A thing that I personally like very much is that I can also share these photos to other social networks that I use: Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr and Foursquare. One site that’s missing, though, and that I still frequently use (because it ties into my Apple tv) is Flickr. Unfortunately, as of now and even with the latest update to Path 2.5, there is no native way to post photos to Flickr.

But I think I found a way to make this work.

The solution includes a workaround and there might be a simpler way to do it but here’s what I came up with.

What you need is:

A Tumblr account
An ifttt (If this then that) account
A Flickr account

The internet magic lies in the ifttt sauce: You need to tell ifttt to share photos that are being posted to Tumblr to upload automatically to Flickr. Here’s the ifttt recipe that I have created: http://ifttt.com/recipes/46861 (I set up a separate tumblr account just for that purpose since I don’t want to have my pictures in here).

So whenever you want to share a photo from Path to your Flickr account, simply tap on the Tumblr icon within Path and let ifttt do its trick.

The best way to prevent your iPhone from flying from your shirt pocket

Fri, 13 Jul 2012 11:31:51 +0200

Don’t buy shirts with shirt pockets.

Newsify RSS Reader for iPhone Review

Wed, 23 May 2012 10:38:00 +0200

I wanted to take a minute to talk about my favourite RSS reader for the iPhone (no iPad version, yet) which I have been testing for the last month: Newsify. RSS for me is the most important way to stay on track and ahead of news so a solid RSS reader is key. I have tested a lot of them, recently switched back to the Google Reader mobile web version because all of the available readers lacked something for me.

Then Newsify came along.

The feature I love most: The “Mark Previous Articles as Read” feature. It’s such a simple and great feature that I am missing so badly on other Google Reader apps. If happens quite often that I have just a couple of minutes - 5 to 10, maybe - that I can use catching up on my RSS news. As far as I know, most readers simply download all your news and display them in a more or less readable way. But then an email comes in that needs to be answered, sometimes they crash, sometimes you start playing a game - and when you get back to your RSS reader app it has been wiped out from memory and you start at the top of the list of your feeds and see - again - all the posts that you didn’t want to read, that you scrolled by, etc. - and that at least to me is very annoying. With Newsify I can simply select the “mark previous articles as read” and don’t have to worry about seeing the posts that I didn’t want to read again.

There are some flaws, of course, and please note that this is the first iteration of Newsify. And since the last weeks of testing some kind of a wishlist came up that I would like to share, hoping that the developers might see them:

Deeper Instapaper Integration
I can instapaper every article from within Newsify (see how “to instapaper” became a verb for me? I could also say “save it to Pocket or Readability”, but since Instapaper is my read-later-client of choice…). However, many blogs (e.g. Daring Fireball) often simply link to interesting articles which I want to save for later. I can click the link to the respective article in Newsify, however I can only read it right there or open in in mobile Safari and instapaper it there. Not so elegant. Reeder has a great solution for that and I wish Newsify copied the Send to Instapaper feature from there.

Switch between browser views
I can predefine how I want to see webpages within Newsify. Either the original web version, the Instapaper version or the Google Mobile version. I would like to see a in-browser switch here as I have it in Tweetbot.

In-app article counter
When scrolling through my subscribed feeds I would like to have a small counter telling me how many articles I have left to read. Please copy here from Tweetbot, again: They have a little number on a transparent bar that tells me how many unread tweets I have left. A tap on it and it goes away. So easy.

Timeline scrolling placement
A little tricky to describe..: Say I have scrolled from one article to another to another, etc. - say 5 or 10 articles. Then I swipe back to list view. What happens is that I get right to where I started reading the very first article and that the ones that I already read do appear as read, however I have to scroll down the list again to find the position where the next logical posting would come. My wish would be to simply come out at the very same position within my articles list where I just stopped reading.

Nicer arrows
OK, eye candy only, but I really don’t like the arrow design when I do a rubber-band scroll from one article to another.

Zoom photos
I’d like to see a way to zoom into photos within an article. To be able to see them fullscreen, at least.

Night mode
Due to lack of time I often read in bed at night or in the evening. Please add a night mode. Even better: If possible, please copy the Instapaper automatic night mode switch which is an awesome feature. I hope Marco is ok with that.

Improvements on the swipe back gesture
I have set Newsify to display posts in full screen mode. A simple swipe back gesture brings me back to the list view. However, sometimes an article is rendered “too wide” and some horizontal scrolling kicks in. Then I am not able to swipe back to the list view.

Save position in articles
When I read an article I sometimes accidentally swipe back to list view. It just happens, no big deal. However what I think is annoying is that I have to scroll all the way back down to the position I were within this particular article.

So this post here might sound like a rant, but it is not. It is a praise of the great work the developers of Newsify put into this little app. It’s free on the App store right now and for me right now it is the best RSS reader for the iPhone I can think of at the moment.

Why I switched back to mail app from Sparrow (but still love it)

Mon, 26 Mar 2012 12:21:00 +0200

A couple of weeks ago a new email app for iPhone launched - Sparrow. A great new approach to processing email on a mobile device, fast when you work on emails you have already downloaded and a beautiful interface.

Reading through many reviews about Sparrow you will find one common “con” that everybody mentions: The lack of push mail. While this is no big deal for me (and perhaps even manageable in the foreseeable future) there is one gripe that actually made me switch back to Apple’s built-in mail app: Accessibility and speed of incoming emails. And this is a “con” that - as far as I know - all Apple iOS apps have. You can’t have content updated in the background (exception: Newsstand content, I guess) so here’s what happens: You receive an email alert (be it via Boxcar, e.g., or via the default email app notification. Then you open Sparrow. And then you wait. You wait, until the new emails have been downloaded. With the built-in mail app you don’t have that problem. You hear the notification and boom your email has already been downloaded and is readable.

I guess it’s really just me being an impatient person and it is definitely not Sparrows “fault” but that’s just the way iOS works for now. Background downloads would be one of my favorite requests for iOS 6. For Sparrow, Instapaper, Flipboard, etc.

Until then I happily switch back to Sparrow from time to time, but when it comes to quick email access I will continue to rely on the built-in mail app.

Growing up in the future

Wed, 14 Mar 2012 11:24:00 +0100

My daughter is two and a half years old. Growing up for her means knowing and accepting technology that for many of us seems futuristic as everyday appliances.

For her, every screen is a touchscreen. She knows how to unlock an iPhone or iPad, swipe to her favorite applications and interact with them. Some weeks ago she wanted to see the pictures on a regular point and shoot camera that didn’t have a touchscreen. Pictures needed to be clicked through by using buttons. Guess what, she kept on swiping on the glass screen, dismissed the camera as a dumb thing to use and was really disappointed that you had to use something as unnatural as a button.

For her, having a phone conversation means to be able to visually interact with her counterpart. My whole family - her grandparents, her uncle - have FaceTime either on their iOS devices or on their Macs. Yesterday I had a regular phone call with my own grandmother who wanted to talk to my daughter. Naturally my daughter wanted to show her all the cool things she learned recently like standing on just one leg, for example. She didn’t really understand why the other person on the line wouldn’t see her. Another dumb experience. You hear a voice but can’t show and visually interact whereas her young life provides so many things to show and share?

She grows up in a world with constant connectivity to the Internet. A world where tablet computers will most likely be the regular way to use a computer when she enters school.

For her it’s not the future. It’s her reality and presence.

Pre Apple Keynote RSS Deletion

Tue, 06 Mar 2012 09:20:00 +0100

Right now I am subscribed to 405 RSS feeds in Google Reader. And most of the times I manage to keep track with them. However, there are at least two times a year when I really struggle to come to RSS zero by either reading (or Instapaper’ing) all of them or simply deleting them.

That time is before Apple keynotes.

Right now especially my tech feeds are full of iPad 3 and Apple TV rumors and speculation. These are the feeds that I usually ignore. And the worst thing that can happen after an Apple keynote is to find such a rumor post in my feeds. It just doesn’t make sense. When the news is out then I will happily go through all of my tech feeds, read about the little findings that might have been missed during the keynote and I will spend a lot of time reading all of that.

But I would really hate it to find one single rumor here.

Show unread emails in iOS

Thu, 23 Feb 2012 18:02:00 +0100

Ever since the iPhone came out I envied one particular feature from the phone app that I would like to see in the mail app: Solving the “unread emails” issue the same way the have solved it within the call history menu item.

In the call history there are two buttons on the top: “all” and “missed” and I can easily see the calls I missed.

Right now, my iPhone’s mail app tells me that I have 28 unread messages. The only option for me is to scroll down and down and down in order to find those unread messages. Even the Gmail app let’s me do a search for “is:unread” and shows me just that.

Well, there is a solution: Using the notification center.

Now - even when I’m in the mail app - I can simply swipe down the notification center and see all the emails that are still unread. So simple. I wonder why I hadn’t thought of that before, having it right before my eyes ever since the first iOS 5 beta came out.

Todo list variety

Wed, 15 Feb 2012 13:26:00 +0100

Realmac’s “Clear” todo app for iPhone is out and I was able to test it for a couple of hours today. It’s a button-less eyecandy’esque simple no-nonsense todo application that also impresses with a very speedy interface and startup time. I really like it so far and it made me think about my personal todo list behaviour.

I realized that I now use at least 3 different todo lists for different purposes - and I don’t want to trade either one for the other:

Clear

Clear is now my business-related todo list. During the day I have to type in all kinds of tasks and here’s where the blazing speed of Clear helps me to focus, type away and going on. No time to fiddle with settings, etc.

Reminder

Apple’s own built-in reminder app is my private todo list. Especially in combination with Siri here’s where I use mostly location based reminders (remind me to do this or that when I leave work).

Our Groceries

My wife’s and my shared shopping list. Everybody can add items to the shopping list, it syncs automatically and updates in realtime. Works on nearly every OS and is free.

AirPlay displays for iOS?

Sun, 12 Feb 2012 20:11:00 +0100

Interesting post over at Ben Brooks’ blog (“What is the Everyman’s PC?”). Well, for me it’s clearly my iPad and iPhone and I have been following the discussions around that for the past couple of weeks. The iPhone (4S in my case) is for sure the most used digital connected device in my household. I wouldn’t consider it a PC per se, mainly due to its screen size.

I wonder if the screensize issue could be solved like this: I can mirror my iPhone’s screen to my TV set via Apple TV. What if someone came up with an AirPlay capable display that I can use regularly with my iPhone? Or let’s not mirror the screen, but have it display additional - scalable - information. On Apple TV it’s the same: I can already play a race game, see the map on my iPad and have the racing action on the TV screen.

This might add some great functionality to any iOS device.

SplatF iPhone 4S review

Tue, 07 Feb 2012 06:43:00 +0100

SplatF iPhone 4S review:

Same reason I upgraded (besides my 3GS’ shattered screen):

“The time you spend waiting for the next new thing is time you’re spending with crappier tools.”

No Comments

Wed, 01 Feb 2012 15:43:38 +0100

No Comments:

One of the reasons I don’t have comments here is what you see on BGR (spammers). Another reason is that I don’t want to spend time moderating them.

Saying no to one thing (comments) means saying yes to other things (life, for example).

Charge my iPhone the Pre way

Tue, 31 Jan 2012 09:06:50 +0100

I just put my iPhone down on my nightstand and plugged the charging cable in. I would so much more like to have some kind of tray where I could lay my iPhone in and it would charge inductively as the Palm Pre does. Out of the box.

And another thing: I would very much like that the iPhone didn’t vibrate when charging. It doesn’t make sense in my car mount, it doesn’t make sense at night when I have the ringer/mute switch turned on and it doesn’t make sense when it’s generally hooked up to a cable.

I guess there’s room for hope, assuming that Apple take their “cut the wire” claim serious.

Why the iPad isn't an expensive textbook

Tue, 31 Jan 2012 09:06:13 +0100

There are a lot of discussions going on that the iPad is way too expensive for children to be an affordable school companion. And while it might have an expensive price tag at first sight (479,- EUR for a basic 16 GB Wifi only iPad 2 model) there are a couple of points to consider:

The iPad 3
We don’t know yet wether Apple will sell an upcoming iPad 3 at the very same price that an iPad 2 costs. However we do know that Apple has a legacy working together with schools and providing students with a special discount.

The iPad 2
Even with the iPhone 4S in the market Apple still sells the iPhone 3GS. There’s still a chance that Apple might sell an iPad 2 at a reduced price to schools. Even with bigger and better graphics on an iPad 3 iBooks Textbooks were fairly fast and snappy on an iPad 2.

Text book prices
By today’s standards regular “analog” textbooks can cost a lot more than 15 USD. By offering less. Calculating the costs of an iPad and iBooks textbooks in comparison to these analog textbooks might be cheaper in the long run.

A personal computer
A regular computer with a desktop, mouse and keyboard costs money. A laptop costs money (and has less battery power than an iPad). Even a Chromebook might be more expensive than an iPad by offering less. For many students the iPad will be the only computer they have - and the only computer that they need. It’s a computer that backups itself everyday to iCloud. It’s a replaceable commodity. Whenever it Whenever it’s broken all it takes is a new iPad and even before leaving the Apple store each and every piece of information will be back again on it. Try that with a regular computer.

Health costs
This might be far fetched, but the amount of weight students put on their backs due to heavy text books is tremendous. How many people suffer from aching backs? And why do we let our children carry these heavy bags, considering that their bodies are still growing? Giving them a lightweight computer that they can carry instead of heavy books will surely reduce sore backs and thus reduce the risk of unnecessary and expensive medical costs.

A smaller bag
Another far fetched point, but when there’s no need to carry that many books there’s no need for a big bag pack. Usually a smaller bag costs less.

So all things considered I think it’s fairly safe to say that the iPad isn’t as expensive as it might appear at first sight.