A blog about life amidst technology.

At Google Conference, Cameras Even in the Bathroom

May 17, 2013 by Leave a Comment

At one point as I climbed the stairs and approached the sec­ond floor, I saw a group of five peo­ple wear­ing Google Glass, all silently star­ing off into space. I couldn’t tell if they were wire­lessly hav­ing a con­ver­sa­tion through their eye­balls, or just bored by the pres­ence of real humans in front of them.

Nick Bil­ton writes from the Google I/​O 2013 con­fer­ence.

I love new tech­nol­ogy. I love lots of new things Google is doing. But Google Glass scares me because peo­ple already dis­ap­pear from real­ity into their phones — and that’s with a phys­i­cal thing they have to make a choice to pull out of their pock­ets and use. And these are decid­edly non-​​tech people.

Imag­ine giv­ing those same folks even more immer­sive, dis­tract­ing tech­nol­ogy that they don’t have to make any sort of obvi­ous exter­nal sig­nal that they’re using? At least right now when some dumb par­ent dri­ves through a school zone with their face down in their phone, you know what they were doing.

If they’re wear­ing a pair of Google Glass(es), you’d have no idea.

I think a lot of the new stuff we’re being sold in tech­nol­ogy is too pow­er­ful for the aver­age per­son. At least on a soci­etal level. It’s like giv­ing a 16 year old a brand new Fer­rari for their first vehi­cle. Or maybe a loaded up semi truck.

And par­ents can’t teach their kids about proper phone/​device usage eti­quette because they don’t know how to han­dle it either.

As some­one who loves new tech­nol­ogy it wor­ries me how poorly I see peo­ple han­dling and cop­ing with new tech­nol­ogy as it invades their lives. And it scares me that it often feels like I, the guy who loves new tech­nol­ogy, am the only one notic­ing it.

It should be the other way around, no?

See also: Tech­nol­ogy is Evil, Long Live Tech­nol­ogy.

Filed Under: Google, Nerds Tagged With: ,

Reader Question: Backing Up My Stuff

May 15, 2013 by Leave a Comment

Crys­tal (web­site, twit­ter) emailed me this ques­tion regard­ing back­ing up her work:

I was hop­ing you could give me some tech advice/​suggestions: how do you back up your work? Exter­nal hard dri­ves, I’d imag­ine? Do you store them on DVDs as well or is that anti­quated? My one and only exter­nal hard drive decided to quit work­ing today and I store ALL of my stuff (includ­ing com­puter back­ups) on it. I’m kind of freak­ing out. I can mount it tem­porar­ily but there’s a lot of GBs on there that would take hun­dreds of disks to back up to. So would it make sense to back up my exter­nal hard drive with another exter­nal hard drive? I need some­thing that makes the most sense, is cheap, and takes lit­tle space on my desk. Please help!

My advice to Crys­tal went some­thing like this:

  • Bite the bul­let and buy another hard drive. $130 or so for plenty of space to back up your data. Hav­ing local backup that you can quickly access if you need to is impor­tant. Plus with Time Machine run­ning you can very eas­ily grab a pre­vi­ous ver­sion of a doc­u­ment if you make a mis­take on one file — rather than hav­ing to re-​​install every­thing to get it back.
  • I use a paid Drop­box account to store all my client files (images, HTML/​CSS files, con­tracts, meet­ing notes, etc.). Besides being an off­site backup, it makes it really easy to access some­thing on my iPhone with the iOS app.
  • Finally I use Back­blaze to keep a backup of my Mac­Book Air. Back­blaze oper­ates in the back­ground, con­tin­u­ously back­ing up every­thing impor­tant on my lap­top. Since I have a Time Machine backup hard drive at home con­nected to our iMac that I only occa­sion­ally con­nect to my Air, it’s nice to have another backup run­ning in case a week or two goes by.

Backup. Backup. Backup.

Filed Under: Q&A, Technology Tagged With: , , , , ,

Pixelmator Update

May 9, 2013 by Leave a Comment

New update for an already great photo/​image edi­tor, Pix­el­ma­tor 2.2 Blue­berry ($14.99, )

Get the free trial before you buy.

Pixelmator Update

Filed Under: Apple, Mac Apps, Technology Tagged With: , ,

Screens VNC on Sale

May 8, 2013 by Leave a Comment

If you’re look­ing for a way to remotely con­trol a Mac (i.e. in an office with a bunch of Macs you admin­is­ter or from your couch because you want to turn on iTunes) you need to use a VNC1 program.

I use Apple’s own Remote Desk­top, $79.99 , which works great but doesn’t have an iPhone/​iPad client.

Enter Screens

Screens VNC is what I’d buy if I had it to do all over again. And both their Mac and iOS apps are 50% off right now. Screens VNC for Mac is $14.99 and Screens VNC for iPhone and iPad is $9.99 right now dur­ing their sale.

With iCloud sync­ing of all your book­marked com­put­ers it would make it sim­ple to log in and update, fix or check on any of your Macs, Win­dows or Linux PCs.

Video Review

Check out iMore’s review of Screens for iOS below to see how it works.

Direct link to video

  1. Vir­tual Net­work Com­put­ing. It wouldn’t be tech­nol­ogy with­out some sort of acronym right? ↩

Filed Under: Apple, iOS Apps, Mac Apps Tagged With: , , , , ,

Turn Off the Screen if You Can’t Sleep

May 8, 2013 by Leave a Comment

It isn’t only that young peo­ple are kept awake by mes­sag­ing their friends or using the inter­net. The light from the screen, held close to the face, is phys­i­cally dis­rup­tive to the nat­ural onset of sleep.

From BBC News: Lack of sleep blights pupils’ edu­ca­tion.

I hear of a lot of peo­ple who com­plain about not being able to sleep and then talk about how when they can’t sleep, they stick a bright, flash­ing, ani­mated light up close to their face as if that’s going to help.

As Dr. Kar­rie Fitz­patrick is quoted as say­ing in the article:

Hav­ing a com­puter screen that is eight inches away from your face is going to expose you to a lot more light than watch­ing a tele­vi­sion on the oppo­site side of the room.

I’m not say­ing you can’t ever use an iPhone before bed — I do it all the time read­ing arti­cles I’ve queued up in Instapa­per  — but I don’t com­plain about a lack of sleep and then not look at the most obvi­ous rea­son shin­ing right in my face. 1

  1. We have 3 obvi­ous rea­sons why there’s a lack of sleep in our house. ↩

Filed Under: Life, Technology Tagged With: , ,

The Story of Facebook Buying Instagram

May 7, 2013 by Leave a Comment

Sys­trom down­plays the idea that this courtship was in any way remark­able. “I think every­one thinks that the acqui­si­tion was made in a dark room with Trent Reznor music play­ing. Do you know what I mean? Like there was some dra­matic thing,” he says, ref­er­enc­ing a scene from The Social Net­work. “And it turns out that some of the biggest deci­sions get made rel­a­tively quickly, with­out much fanfare.”

Kara Swisher at Van­ity Fair.

Filed Under: Facebook, History, Technology
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