S-T-R-E-T-C-H-I-N-G iPhone Battery Life

Image via WikipediaI've never been one to chat much on my iPhone.  In fact, there are months when I don't use any of my available talk minutes even though I have used the data features.  So, unless there is a crisis of some kind in the works, when I travel a long distance I often turn my iPhone off completely to conserve its battery since I may not be able to recharge it until late at night or, in the case of overseas flights, until sometime the next day.   As a member of the baby boomer generation, I was not raised with cell phones so don't feel "disconnected" when I am not "available".  But for those of you who can't quite bring yourselves to sever your umbilical to your connected friends, family members and colleagues, this article offers other less drastic ways to help stretch the battery life of your iPhone, iPod or iPad.  I'm sure these techniques would also work with non-apple Smartphones as well.

Of those listed, I found the following most helpful to me:

Make Sure the Screen Locks Quickly

Even if you’ve adjusted the screen brightness, there’s still no substitute for having it turn off quickly when you’re not using it. Head into General -> Auto-Lock to set the screen lock to happen as quickly as your device will let you. This makes a big difference if you are always picking up your phone and putting it back into your pocket without turning the display off.

 I have mine set for 1 minute.

Use Airplane Mode When You Don’t Need Internet (iPad/iPhone)

If you’re busy spending the next 8 hours playing Angry Birds, there might not be a good reason to have internet access, so you can consider using Airplane Mode, which turns off both Wi-Fi and the regular wireless radio. Of course, this will prevent phone calls if you’re on an iPhone—but if you’re busy with Angry Birds you probably don’t want the interruption anyway.

 My grandson recently loaded Angry Birds on my phone but I much prefer iFishing, Spear Fishing 3D, Sims 3 World Adventure or Sudoku and I hate to be interrupted if I have a fish on!!

Use Wi-Fi Instead of 3G if Possible

According to Apple, the iPad will get 10 hours of battery life under regular use with Wi-Fi enabled, but will only get 9 hours using 3G—the iPhone gets 6 for 3G and 10 for Wi-Fi. Of course, if you’re heavily using the Wi-Fi, you’ll still be draining the battery—the point is under similar workloads, Wi-Fi is better than 3G for battery life.

I actually can't get a cell signal when I'm at home anyway so I always have my Wifi network configured to ON.

Reduce or Eliminate Mail & Calendar Checking

If you’ve got a bunch of email, calendar, or contact accounts configured, and they are all being checked and downloading email on a regular basis, you’ll be draining the battery an awful lot faster than you need to.
Head into Settings -> Mail, Contacts, Calendars -> Fetch New Data and change the setting to the least frequent check possible. If you don’t use it often, you can just turn Push off entirely and then manually check when you need to.

Now that I'm retired, I don't have to worry about someone other than me updating my calendar and I seldom use my iPhone to check mail.  Since I no longer have to worry about malfunctioning servers or frantic grant researchers who can't perform some technology function and are facing a grant submission deadline, I can usually wait until I'm in front of my regular computer to respond to email.  So I turned off the constant checking and will just manually enable it if I need to take a peek.

Disable Bluetooth If You Don’t Need It

If you don’t use a Bluetooth headset or keyboard, you should keep the Bluetooth radio disabled to save some extra battery life. Head into Settings -> General -> Bluetooth to flip it on or off.

Since I never treat talking on the phone as a priority I have never seen a reason to buy a headset so this one was a no brainer for me.

Probably the most important advice was at the end of the article.

Charge and Discharge Your Battery Regularly

Your iDevice needs to be fully discharged and recharged at least once a month to operate at maximum efficiency and keep the battery from dying. You’ll also want to make sure that you don’t store the device with a dead battery, as that can also cause the battery to lose charge capability—when your battery dies, make sure to recharge it quickly.

This one is hard for me since I seldom run my phone's battery down.  This also probably applies to laptops and serves as a good reminder for me since my netbook has only been recharged a couple of times since I returned from Rome in March of 2009.  I'll obviously have to be more dilligent!

Related articles

• Native Google Voice Returns To iPhone (informationweek.com)
• Apple iPhone 5 Specs Leaked (geniusgeeks.com)

     

Music Games bring new markets to recording artists

By golly, I think the music industry, like the street wench of "My Fair Lady", is finally starting to "get it!" Unfortunately, I can't get an iPhone with Verizon Wireless, but I see that the iPod Touch can play many of the games designed for an iPhone. My old trusty video iPod can't hold a charge beyond about an hour now anyway and I have to plug it into the computer for a recharge after my morning workout. I know I can buy a third party battery replacement for it but maybe I should be considering an upgrade!

Tap Tap Revenge, a free game that challenges players to keep up with catchy tunes by tapping in the right spots on the phone’s screen, was available in Apple’s iPhone application store when it opened in July.

It quickly climbed the store’s charts, and more than three million downloads later, Apple declared it the most popular free iPhone game of the year.

“We went to No. 1 in three days,” said Bart Decrem, co-founder and chief executive of Tapulous. “Within a week, artists reached out to have their music featured in the game.”

Many software companies have jumped on the iPhone bandwagon, seeing promise in the popularity of the phone and the demand for programs for sale or free download through the App Store. They include Smule, a start-up that created a program that turns iPhones into flutes; and giant game publishers like Electronic Arts, which recently released a version of its classic SimCity game for the iPhone.

Tapulous, based in Palo Alto, Calif., was founded in January after Mr. Decrem, a Belgian software executive, and his business partner, Andrew Lacy, came across an iPhone game called Tap Tap Revolution. They sought out its creator, Nate True, and brought him on board as a developer. (A third co-founder, Mike Lee, was forced out in August after the men disagreed over the company’s direction.)

For Mr. Decrem, who earlier helped create a social Web browser called Flock, the low cost and fast pace of making software for the iPhone made it feasible to create a company that focused exclusively on the device.

“It took two years and north of $5 million to bring Flock to market,” he said. “In this case, the longest you spend building an iPhone application is three months, and it takes four or five people. There’s less risk in terms of betting millions and years on something that might not work.”

To keep its game fresh the company created Tap Tap Thursdays, when it releases new music from artists like Michael Franti and the pop singer Katy Perry. Mr. Decrem said those songs regularly inspire a million game plays — and occasionally a lot of music sales, because players can click to buy the song through Apple. In October, Tap Tap Revenge players bought 50,000 copies of the featured track “Hot N Cold” by Ms. Perry.

The popularity of the game led Tapulous to begin introducing paid versions for $4.99 each, aimed at fans of specific artists or genres of music. In late October it released a Nine Inch Nails edition, followed by a holiday version called Christmas With Weezer, for which that band recorded some carols. Tapulous plans to release one of these each month, including a special edition featuring the Dave Matthews Band.

Tap Tap Revenge is patterned after games like Guitar Hero and Rock Band, which test players’ abilities to keep rhythm with popular songs. Those games have been hits on consoles like the Xbox 360, and strong sales of music through the games have given some hope to a beleaguered music industry. Harmonix, the creator of Rock Band, said last week that the game’s players had bought 30 million songs.

“The gravy train of the old days of having CD sales buffer you as an artist are gone,” said James L. McQuivey, a principal analyst specializing in media technology at Forrester Research. “Artists recognize that and are trying to be in more places at once.”

The British music label EMI, seeking a new source of revenue, collaborated with Tapulous on a version called Tap Tap Dance that includes tracks by Moby and Daft Punk.

“We absolutely feel these games could be the next big Rock Band or Guitar Hero,” said Cynthia Sexton, a vice president at EMI Music worldwide.

Ms. Sexton said she viewed the expansion into games and other outlets as a natural evolution of the music industry, though that revelation was not necessarily an easy one. “For a moment, we hid our heads in the sand and thought this was the end,” she said. “But it’s not. It’s really the beginning.” [FINALLY!!!]

Mr. Decrem said his company saw the opportunity in music sales. “We’re fortunate to be sitting at the intersection of a couple of powerful forces right now,” he said. “The iPhone is a device that is on fire, and artists are looking for ways to reinvent themselves.” - More, New York Times

Blog-for-pay websites create storm of controversy

"Does it exist to game Google search results and generate revenue through Google's AdWords advertising service by displaying contextual ads next to the copy? Or is it a new kind of media site, chock-full of original articles written mostly by average folk about everything from presidential pardons and karaoke to smoker's guilt and ventriloquism?

Add to the mix at Associated Content two prominent board members--Tim Armstrong, head of advertising for Google in North America, and venture capitalist Eric Hippeau, a managing partner at SoftBank Capital, who also happens to serve on Yahoo's board of directors--and you have a little company that's drawing outsized and quite possibly unwanted attention.

But while there are plenty of questions about this start-up, no one seems to be able to say it's actually doing anything wrong.

"This kind of service is not entirely clear-cut," said Danny Sullivan, editor of the Search Engine Land blog. "It's not a case that they are bad or should be banned, but they are embroiled in this kind of a debate."

Denver-based Associated Content was formed in 2004 and received $5.4 million in funding from SoftBank. It bills itself as a "user-driven information portal" and content provider, licensing content to other online publishers. The articles are "optimized for discovery and revenue generation," according to a news release on the company Web site. In other words, they're designed to be easy to find on Google through various search optimization techniques used by many publishers, not just people accused of gaming search results.

The company asks bloggers to write on the subjects of their choosing and accepts text, video and audio. Contributors can be paid based on the quality of the article and keyword optimization.

In most ways, Associated Content's methods seem fitting for any typical Web site--do your best to get play on Google search results and make money off its advertising. In fact, Associated Content is hardly the only company churning out content to match with Google ads. The success of Google's AdSense program, which matches ads with content on Web sites, and the growth of blogging applications have led to the emergence of pay-for-blogging companies that help match willing writers with sites that want content.

What separates legitimate content marketplaces from so-called "Made for AdSense" companies that generate content purely for marketing purposes is the intent of the company and the quality of the articles, said Rand Fishkin, co-founder and chief executive of search marketing firm SEOmoz.

That gets closer to the heart of the controversy. The dividing line between people who don't have a problem with Associated Content and those who do seems to come down to one of the most hard-to-define aspects of a Web site: quality. And quality, as most people know, is terribly difficult to define. As the 20th-century U.S. Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart once said in declining to venture too far into a definition of pornography: "I know it when I see it."

Well, since quality seems to be the bone of contention here, I decided to go up to Associated Content's website and have a look. I'm afraid I wasn't too impressed with either the topics or the writing quality.

Let's examine some of their "showcase" headlines:

Do Modern Prophets Exist?

Funniest Fortune Cookies Ever

The Awesomeness of Baseball
(awesomeness???)

Should Parents Let Kids Sip Beer?

John's Relevance in American Culture
(an article about the significance of the name "John" in American Culture)

I'm afraid I don't find any of these topics worthy of my reading time or a valuable use of the so-called author's time either. I'm not even sure what Google Ad Sense ads would be triggered by these inane topics.

There were at least two other headlines that had some potential:

DIY iPod Skins in Photoshop

As a technology person, I was interested enough to open this article. I was a little disappointed that the author was really talking about designing stickers for your iPod, not a software "skin" that changes the look of the iPod interface. But, he did mention the use of an overlay using the blend mode "Color Burn" in Photoshop. I have spent thousands of hours in Photoshop but had never used the Color Burn blend mode. I am going to try it out because I want to create a line of tote bags that feature my photography for sale up at Cafe Press and they provide downloadable templates to fit the base stock that will be used for the final product. Like the template example in the iPod skins article, I need to see the lines of the template through the image as I am sizing it. I'll give Associated Content at least 2 stars for this piece.

Does Internet Chatting Affect R Grammar?

This article would have been interesting if it had included an interview of an English professor expounding on the observed effects of internet chat "shorthand" in other communication formats. As it was, it was only a couple of paragraphs of internet chat gooblety-gook that you had to struggle to read followed by a couple of dictionary paragraphs about the definition of jargon. Then a couple of paragraphs giving the author's opinion about what it all means.

I was a bit surprised by one of his assumptions:

"A large motivation for the evolution and creation of what is referred to as "Netspeak" was to defeat IRC parsers that go through large amounts of logged IRC text searching for keywords. Everyone from the FBI to other hackers were constantly trying to monitor them, steal their secrets, or whatever hidden agenda they had. Introducing symbols, random capitalizations, and numbers into words was viewed as a way to defeat these individuals."

Quite honestly, I thought keyboard shortcuts were derived to ease the burden of people who were less than stellar typers!

I checked the author's education and he claims only "educated guesses". At least he's honest. Of course he's falling into the trap I used to discuss with my Creative Writing students. He is writing an opinion piece about a topic in which he has no particular expertise. If he had produced a quick reference list of online acronymns and their meaning, it probably would have been fine. But, his headline promises more - an analysis of the effect of extensive use of these chat shortcuts on English grammar as a whole. This promise requires at least some expert quotes.

Many academicians refuse to allow students to cite Wikipedia because it is user-produced content. But, many articles in Wikipedia are heavily annotated with extensive bibliographies. Associated Content makes Wikipedia look like the Encylopedia Britannica!