Entries Tagged 'tech' ↓

Kind of funny, after a previous post of mine wondering about why Twitter hasn’t really caught on here in Australia, to find a news piece talking about how Twitter is taking off in a hurry down under, albeit in a slightly oddball Australian way. Typical…

I love my iPhone, but there are a couple of things that I’m looking forward to them fixing along the way. One of those things is the power management. I am a fairly heavy user of my phone, so I sort of expect it to get through the battery a bit, but the iPhone seems particularly poor in this regard.

I could go on about this but won’t bore you with my frustration, other than to say that the other day I suddenly noticed that my battery seemed to be dying right before my eyes. It was just draining away within a few hours, and the phone was really hot to touch. I mean really hot. It was weird. I also discovered after the fact that it was doing a bunch of serious download/upload activity too, but this wasn’t obvious to me at the time, except for the temperature issue which made me suspect something was going on in the background.

I tried all kinds of things. I searched the net high and low for solutions and options. In the end, I figured out what it was and what to do about it.

Some sites talked about turning off push email, along with just about every feature on the phone that might use power. This seemed to me to be a stupid way to go. What’s the point having an iPhone if you basically have to turn it into an old Nokia 5110 to save power?! So, I discounted these answers as being a bit goofy.

So, what is the problem here?

Turns out that there is some sort of bug with the iPhone Exchange setup. Not exactly sure what, but there are lots of articles on the web that pose all sorts of possibilities. Many point to the calendar syncing as perhaps being the prime problem. Either way, my setup was working just fine until this past weekend when the battery drain kicked in and something was obviously wrong. I have no idea what caused this to suddenly happen, but it was clearly not working right.

All the sites around suggested that the fix was to delete your Exchange account on the phone and reinstall it again after rebooting the phone.

I balked at this because it sounded like a pretty hardball solution. But, in the end, driven by frustration, I did exactly this and discovered two things… firstly, it wasn’t as big a hassle as I thought it would be. The deletion/reinstall process was pretty painless, so it’s not a big thing. One of the beauties of an Exchange account, I guess. The phone just sucks up all the data again and off you go.

Second thing I discovered was that this fixed the problem. Boom. Done. All good. For now…

If you’re suddenly having battery drain on your iPhone in a way which is beyond the normal drain, your phone is hot, and something is just not right, and if you are using your iPhone to hook into an Exchange server, then I will put money on it that this solution will fix it.

Your biggest issue is making sure you know all the account settings for reinstalling your Exchange account, but after that it’s a pretty quick fix.

Enjoy!

UPDATE – After a couple of days, I am SHOCKED at how much better my battery life is after nixing and reinstalling my Exchange account. Wow! Should have done it waaaay sooner.

I’m currently faced with a small dilemma…

I have been a longtime Twitter user, which is a pretty one-dimensional and simple networking tool, but in recent times far more people in my more immediate zone of relationships are all over Facebook. Preaching a sermon series called “Beyond Facebook” may not have helped in this regard. The bulk of my Twitter connections are in the US.

For a while now, though, I have been updating both services with my status changes. Now I’m starting to wonder whether it’s worth keeping both running, and re-assessing my rationale for participating in each of them.

In a lot of ways I prefer the simplicity of Twitter, but Facebook seems to have the numbers in my world at the moment.

Perhaps I should preach a series entitled “Topping Twitter”…?

Is it possible?

As someone who is vitally interested in all things communication oriented, especially regarding technology, I found this piece on IBM dude Luis Suarez very interesting, but also perhaps a little perplexing.

He has, apparently, shifted away from email as much as possible and focused most of his communication with colleagues to IM, and to me this is totally mystifying. IM, to me, is perhaps the most invasive and distracting piece of tech in existence, whereas at least with email you have the option to choose when and how to deal with stuff that comes your way. Whether you are driven by email or not is simply a matter of personal discipline and good work habits/systems. And, aside from this issue of interruptions, I wonder how it works with communicating across a bunch of different time zones, where email would definitely have an advantage of being less time-bound. Luis apparently lives in the Canary Islands, so you’d have to think time zones would become an issue now and then.

I dunno… perhaps some of you have had better experiences with IM, but to me it’s hard to justify… every time I tinker with it, I quickly turn it off because it is just such a disruptive thing to have, unless you specifically only turn it on when you schedule time for IM stuff, which seems to kill the interactive nature of it a bit. I watch young people get absolutely nothing done in a day because they’re just constantly involved in a variety of inane IM chats that keep dragging their focus away. Add the tech to a phone, and they’re done for when it comes to productivity!

As for Facebook, I’m quickly developing some strong thoughts about that which I will share in the next few days, my vacation permitting… :-)

If you’re like me and have to crank out the odd spreadsheet to get your numbers together or make sense of stuff, etc., then the advice found here is absolutely invaluable.

Can’t tell you how many spreadsheets I’ve revisited after a few months and couldn’t figure out what the heck I was thinking and doing with the numbers, so this is a good model to follow.

OK, as someone who was forced to use these things in a previous life, I thought this was VERY funny…

[via xkcd.com]

Having had issues with transporting media from one space to another, this cartoon has a certain logic to it which is disturbing…

OK, so this one got me smiling… I discovered the app below for the iPhone, specially designed for those door-knocking folks from the JWs. Asides from being kind of humourous that someone would get something like this up and running for door-knocking, it gives an interesting insight into the expectations placed on JWs for their “service”…

Beyond this, don’t forget to check out my other iPhone-based blog for more bits and pieces…

New: FieldMinistry (productivity): “

FieldMinistry 1.0

Category:
Productivity
Price: $4.99 (iTunes)

src="http://appshopper.com/images/screenshots/292/694645.jpg"
align="right">Description:

This app (written specifically for Witnesses), lets you keep track of your time, literature placements and return visits for each month. It automatically keeps track of your progress through the service year. You can start a timer at the start of your work and add your placements directly in the main screen. No need to keep the app open. It will keep tracking time even when it is off. Entries can always be added or changed. At the end of the month a single click on the months report will generate an email addressed to you as well as one more person (optional).
Always keep track of your time… anywhere !

“

(Via 0: App Store – New Apps.)

as those who know me can attest to, i love technology and i keep up with a lot of the new stuff that comes down the pike.

my latest productivity tool is the apple iphone, and i’m really enjoying it a great deal. i’ve been learning a lot about the phone, what works and what doesn’t, and in the interests of not muddying this personal blog with tech bits related to the iphone, i’ve started a new blog up specifically to post stuff i discover about the iphone, especially with a regular aussie audience in mind. almost all of the current iphone info and news comes from the US, which is ok, but sometimes not relevant here. and, this it not intended for geeks who speak a special language! it’s for regular folks, especially those hitting problems they can’t figure out.

so, if you own an iphone, would like to own an iphone, or know someone who has an iphone, come and check out my new effort… i really think you will find it helpful… iphonedowunder.com.

it’s kind of my hobby… :-)

This is an interesting piece on learning and Facebook… I still continue to be amazed at how suddenly, in my circle of connections, Facebook has taken off. Personally, I had almost assumed that Facebook was “old hat” until the middle of this year when it was all go.