Posts Tagged: technology

stay focused

Ever since leav­ing social media last year, I can say that my focus has def­i­nitely increased. Nev­er­the­less, I am always look­ing for ways to stay, or become, more focused. Per­haps some of you suf­fer from issues of focus, too — par­tic­u­larly due to dig­i­tal dis­trac­tions. I ran across this info­graphic and thought that it was worth shar­ing. As with most advice, not all of is prac­ti­cal or some­thing that you can, real­is­ti­cally, imple­ment; but it’s worth think­ing about how much you can work into your daily routine.

how-to-focus

Source: Mind Map Art

Do you have a par­tic­u­lar tech­nique, habit, or prac­tice that you employ when you need to really focus? If so, please share. I think that it might be good for me to revisit Leo Babauta’s book Focus. (Click here for a down­load­able PDF copy.)

fitbit flex — first impressions (updated)

A Lit­tle Background

Though not really a New Year’s res­o­lu­tion, I started work­ing on my health and fit­ness since the begin­ning of the year. Given then I am a tech and data nerd, it should come as no sur­prise that I found way to track my health & fit­ness activ­i­ties with apps and online tools. I tried work­ing with a trainer on FitOr­bit for a while. After a month, I found that the expe­ri­ence really didn’t meld well with my style. I took a lot of things that I learned from FitOr­bit and went back to the gym. Stay tuned for a post about my progress toward spe­cific weight and nutri­tion goals.

After I moved on from FitOr­bit, I wanted to find a pro­gram and/or app that would allow me to keep track of my food intake as well as daily exer­cise. There are a lot of apps and online tools avail­able, but I decided on My Fit­ness Pal. In a nut­shell, MyFit­ness­Pal has a huge data­base of food (both raw ingre­di­ents and pre­pared foods). I enter my the com­po­nents of each meal through­out the day, and all the calo­ries are dis­played. I also enter my car­dio and/or strength activ­i­ties and MyFit­ness­Pal makes caloric cal­cu­la­tions, show­ing a com­plete pic­ture of my intake and calo­ries spent. If you like data, par­tic­u­lar at the gran­u­lar level, a ser­vice like MyFit­ness­Pal will serve you well. If the idea of man­u­ally enter­ing infor­ma­tion about each meal and exer­cise is syn­ony­mous with fin­ger­nails on a chalk­board, these tools and the fit­ness bands, dis­cussed below, might not be for you.

I use the MyFit­ness­Pal app daily. That account is synced to my Fit­Bit account, because I have a Fit­Bit Aria wire­less scale, which I love! The scale auto­mat­i­cally uploads my weight and BMI directly into my account wire­lessly, using my home WiFi net­work. All of that data between Fit­Bit car­ries over to my account with MyFit­ness­Pal. Con­versely, all of the food and exer­cise that I enter into MyFit­ness­Pal shows up in Fit­Bit. To make it all work, I only rely on Fit­Bit for weight, BMI. Every­thing else is han­dled by MyFit­ness­Pal. It takes some­one ded­i­cated to enter­ing food and exer­cise reg­u­larly to make apps like Fit­Bit or MyFit­ness Pal really work for you. I am, admit­tedly, a bit obses­sive, so enter­ing all of that infor­ma­tion is not a prob­lem. Carla, on the other hand, doesn’t want a device that requires a lot of man­ual input. Thus, the Jaw­bone UP wouldn’t work, sim­ply because of because of the man­ual sync require­ment. She might like the Flex, but only for the daily steps and sleep data. How­ever, she already has a pretty advanced pedome­ter, so unless the sleep data is really impor­tant to her, I don’t know if it’s worth pur­chas­ing.
 

Fit­Bit Flex


Legit­i­mate Fit­ness Tool or a Glo­ri­fied, $100 Pedometer?

A cou­ple of co-workers have the Jaw­bone UP fit­ness band/tracker. Another pop­u­lar band is the Nike Fuel­Band. After doing a lit­tle read­ing I decided to pre-order the Fit­Bit Flex back in March.

fitbitflexbands

The Flex arrived last Wednes­day. After a nearly a week with the band, I am try­ing to decide whether to send it back. It’s not that the device is doing less than what was adver­tised. I guess that hav­ing it on my wrist and look­ing at the data col­lected feels more like a nov­elty than some­thing actu­ally use­ful in my pur­suit of fit­ness and nutri­tion goals.

The Flex band tracks your steps, and it will also pro­vide infor­ma­tion on your sleep pat­terns. You can set step or dis­tance goals using the online Dash­board or the mobile app. The band has a small series of LED lights that show how you’re doing, 20 per­cent per light, toward your goal. The lights also pro­vide a visual con­fir­ma­tion when you tap the band to start or stop the sleep mode. The Flex also has a silent alarm, that must be set online or through the app, that vibrates. I usu­ally wake up before the alarm goes off, so I can’t say that it’s some­thing that would wake me for a deep slum­ber, or sleep walk­ing (see the next para­graph). The Jaw­Bone Up has an “idle” fea­ture that will vibrate the band if you don’t move for a set amount of time. That’s a nice “get off your ass and walk around” feature.

Other infor­ma­tion, such as nutri­tion, and phys­i­cal activ­i­ties that can’t be tracked by the Flex (cycling, swim­ming, etc.) has to be entered into your Fit­Bit account man­u­ally. Speak­ing of enter­ing infor­ma­tion, the Fit­Bit can sync with your account through your com­puter. There’s a small USB wire­less adapter that comes in the box with the Flex. You sim­ply plug the adapter into one of the USB slots on your com­puter, and as long as the Flex band is within 20 feet of the com­puter, it will con­nect. I opted to sync the band with my phone. The other way to sync the data from the Flex with your Fit­Bit account is through the mobile app. The FLex uses a low-power Blue­tooth 4.0 con­nec­tion to sync with the Fit­Bit app on your smart­phone. The Flex will sync auto­mat­i­cally if you keep the Fit­Bit app run­ning in the back­ground, oth­er­wise you have to open the app to force a sync.

As it stands, the only real addi­tive fea­ture of the Flex to my health & fit­ness is count­ing my steps. I typ­i­cally work­out twice a day (Monday-Thursday) and once on Fri­days and Sat­ur­days. I was look­ing to cap­ture the steps I talk all day — hop­ing that it would moti­vate me to walk more dur­ing the day, and take pub­lic trans­porta­tion to work instead of dri­ving. I have fid­dled with the cal­i­bra­tion on the Fit­Bit dash­board, but still can’t seem to get an accu­rate read­ing of my actual steps. For instance, this morn­ing (it’s almost 10 am), my dash­board shows that I’ve walked about 800 steps, but I have only been milling around the house. There’s no way I’ve walked 800 steps. It’s clear to me that the Flex is less accu­rate than the Fit­Bit one, solely because it resides on my wrist. I wear the Flex on my non-dominant hand. You can go into the set­tings for the Flex to indi­cate which hand you’re using to wear the Flex. You can also man­u­ally enter your stride to cal­i­brate the steps. I found that fid­dling with the set­tings has made a dif­fer­ence in the data col­lected and presented.

Track­ing my sleep data is some­thing that made the Flex more com­pelling than the Fuel­Band, or some other bands/trackers on the mar­ket. Again, after a few days, I find myself a bit let down, or even incred­u­lous, by the data pre­sented. I am at a loss to fig­ure out how the Flex (or the Jaw­bone UP) knows when I am awake through­out the night. I can see the dif­fer­en­ti­a­tion between rest­less and deep sleep (pre­sum­ably because I am still), but how in the world does the band know that I am awake? Appar­ently the Jaw­bone Up will can­cel the sleep mode when it detects steps. Work­ing on the assump­tion that I am not a sleep walker, I am call­ing BS on the some part of the Flex’s sleep stats. FitBit’s pre­sen­ta­tion of the sleep data is a bit crude. I like Jaw­bone Up’s inter­face much bet­ter. I don’t mind gran­u­lar data. In fact, gran­u­lar is desired. I find it a bit too con­ve­nient (read inac­cu­rate) that I had inter­vals of rest­less sleep — all 11 min­utes in length. That, or I am an amaz­ingly con­sis­tent with my restlessness.

As for the phys­i­cal band … My first impres­sion was that I don’t care for it that much. Even though it’s on my non-dominant hand, it kind of gets in the way — par­tic­u­larly when I’m typ­ing. The metal snap that con­nects the two ends of the band is right in the mid­dle of the under­side of your wrist (read: right where your wrist con­tacts a sur­face). In fair­ness, it’s not as bad today as it was the first cou­ple days.

fitbitflexband

Other than a wed­ding ring, I’m not much for jew­elry. I used to be a big watch guy, but now I don’t wear one. Per­haps because I don’t wear a watch or any other type of bracelet, the Flex, ini­tially, was quite notice­able; and not in a good way. It is def­i­nitely a chal­lenge to snap on. How­ever, bar­ring deep water div­ing, you’ll only have to take it off once a week to charge. If you are used to wear­ing watches, a rub­ber “cause” band, or some­thing on your wrist, you’ll prob­a­bly be ok — other than fight­ing to get the band securely fas­tened. After five days, com­fort is less of an issue. It’s also worth not­ing that bands look like they will show wear pretty soon. Addi­tion­ally, the lit­tle plas­tic “screen” on the Flex band that shows your LED pro­gres­sion lights can scratch rather eas­ily. For­tu­nately, the Flex is really a rub­ber wrist band that houses a pretty small tracker, and you can pur­chase other bands. I saw a three-pack of Flex bands on Ama­zon that gives you the option to change the band color. That’s pretty cool. You’ll need to be care­ful with the USB charg­ing cord that comes with the Flex band. It’s the only way to the charge the device. The charge con­tacts on the Flex track are proprietary.

fitbitflexcomponents

In the end, I can see how a num­ber of peo­ple view the Flex, UP, or Fuel­Band, as nov­el­ties or fit­ness fad items. There’s some truth in that, par­tic­u­larly since none of the bands have heart rate mon­i­tors or GPS built in. How­ever, these bands could serve as a visual and vibrat­ing reminder or moti­va­tor for many to get up and out. For some peo­ple that’s needed.

I am pretty self-motivated, but I love data. I’ve shown that I am will­ing to drop some coin for a device, the Aria scale, the auto­mat­i­cally syncs data that I could very well enter myself. How­ever, I must admit that I am rather let down with the Flex, so far and it just might be headed back to Fit­Bit. I think that I will give it another week.

Do you use a pedome­ter, fit­ness tracker or band? If so, please share what you use and your expe­ri­ence.
 

Update (23 May)

I decided to return the Flex.

what a mess

I was lis­ten­ing to the weekly Verge­cast last Fri­day. Dur­ing the broad­cast, the panel started to dis­cuss a story and a fami­lar name popped up. Adria Richards. My atten­tion was imme­di­ately, and intensely, piqued. (I had breezed by a cou­ple of story head­lines toward the end of the week, but I was behind on some tech news.) As the sit­u­a­tion was dis­cussed in more detail, my heart sank. After lis­ten­ing to the Verge­cast, I started to comb through the stories.

I will leave it to you to read through the stories.

This is Adria’s blog post about the whole thing.

My Reac­tion

I know Adria, and con­sider her a friend. This whole thing trou­bles me deeply. I feel for my friend. Even with that, I know that that she has some cul­pa­bil­ity in this mess — namely by tweet­ing the pic­ture of the guys at the con­fer­ence. The guys mak­ing the lewd jokes also bear respon­si­bil­ity for their actions, though. There is blame to go around.

Here is the rub for me. I am bewil­dered, and even sick­ened, by the reac­tion of so many men, and some women, to this dust up. There is absolutely no place for the abu­sive, vit­ri­olic lan­guage, not to men­tion rape and death threats, directed at Adria. Could she have han­dled this dif­fer­ently? Prob­a­bly so, but it is always easy, after-the-fact, to see things more clearly and offer a calm assess­ment of how you would have han­dled being in the same place.

What really gets me is the repeated state­ment by many guys that what Adria over­heard at the con­fer­ence were “just dick jokes.” She should just “get over it (and her­self).” This is utter, and com­plete, non­sense. Who am I, or any­one else, to tell Adria or any other woman, what is, or is not, offen­sive? It’s anal­o­gous to men say­ing to a woman “you are over­re­act­ing!” I’ve learned that each per­son has a reac­tion, and he/she is enti­tled to it. I find, too often, that men are quick to put a woman’s reac­tions and sen­si­bil­i­ties in a box. If find it just as offen­sive that peo­ple are telling, or sug­gest­ing, that Adria what should, or should not, be offensive.

Why should have Adria hun­kered down and dealt with dick jokes? Peo­ple seem to be get­ting hung up on seman­tics. “The guys weren’t talk­ing to her.” “The jokes weren’t sex­ual in nature.” “The jokes weren’t directed to her.” If some­one was behind me telling nig­ger, Jew, gay, or (fill in the blank) jokes, I would be hot! I can’t say how I would deal with it. My first thought is that I would address the peo­ple directly. How­ever, if I didn’t feel com­fort­able, because of the envi­ron­ment or dis­pro­por­tion­ate num­ber of peo­ple involved, I may have taken another avenue to voice my out­rage. The bot­tom line is that I am not, nor should I, have to sit some­where — par­tic­u­larly a con­fer­ence — and accept offen­sive words or sen­ti­ments. From where I sit, a lot of true feel­ings seem to be com­ing out. Adria is being attacked for being a woman, black, Jew­ish. For all of the peo­ple scour­ing twit­ter and the blo­gos­phere for state­ments by Adria — paint­ing her as a hyp­ocrite — one need look no fur­ther than the hun­dreds of com­ments under just about every arti­cle about this mess. Most of the com­ments attack Adria, call­ing her a bitch, a cunt, a “diver­sity hire,” or much…much…worse, and sug­gest­ing that she should kill her­self. All the while these same peo­ple are shed­ding tears for the guy with three kids who got fired from his job.

Actions have con­se­quences. Irre­spec­tive of one’s opin­ion about who’s right and who’s wrong, it appears that both Adria and the guy at the con­fer­ence paid the price for their actions. What seems to be get­ting lost in this whole thing is the real issue of women in tech. It’s unfor­tu­nately that this sce­nario played out the way it did, because I fear that the under­ly­ing issue of how women, and peo­ple of color, fare in the tech­nol­ogy indus­try won’t be ade­quately addressed. Peo­ple love con­tro­versy, to most people’s atten­tion will stay on dick jokes and peo­ple get­ting fired. I’ll steer clear of using the word vic­tim because it too much of a pow­der cake. It mud­dies the water. Whether you side with Adria, or not, on how this sit­u­a­tion at the con­fer­ence was han­dled, I would hope that the dis­course could get beyond the who lit the match and focus on the fuel that feeds this rag­ing fire.

underwhelmed

Unless you just stepped out of a time machine, it’s pretty likely you aware that Apple offi­cially lifted the veil on the iPhone 5 yesterday.

I may be com­ing down too hard on Apple, but through­out the announce­ment I had a very dis­tinct feel­ing. Yawn! I was underwhelmed.

Per­haps part of the blame falls on my nerdi­ness. I read a lot of tech blogs, and iPhone 5 pho­tos and specs were leaked left-and-right. When Apple revealed the iPhone 5 on stage yes­ter­day in San Fran­cisco, there were no sur­prises. It became clear, from the leaks, that Apple was going to stick with the iPhone 4/4S design and merely stretch it out to make room for a four inch screen.

I think the other part of my frus­tra­tion with the iPhone 5, in my opin­ion, falls squarely on Apple. It’s clear to me that Apple opted for safe over dar­ing with the design. I have long admired Jony Ives, and the beau­ti­ful indus­trial design that he’s brought to Apple. (Mind you, a lot of Apple’s designs seem to draw “inspi­ra­tion” from Braun.) In fair­ness, I can’t say that I really blame Apple for how they treated the iPhone 5. As much as dar­ing, out-there design has its place, Apple is still a busi­ness with strong cus­tomer base. Para­phras­ing Ives, in a new video, he didn’t think that Apple should mess the design. Ives said that the iPhone 4 and 4S were so pop­u­lar that he thought the best thing to do was improve upon a good thing, not upturn the Apple cart. There’s merit in that, and I thought about how cer­tain designs become iconic, such as a Porsche 911. I just don’t think the iter­a­tions of the iPhone 4, over time, will prove iconic on that level. Check out this inter­est­ing piece on TechCrunch that addresses the issue of Apple not rein­vent­ing the wheel.

Of course, all of this could change when I get my hands on the iPhone 5. From the pho­tos and hands-on videos I’ve seen, the device — par­tic­u­larly the black model — looks beau­ti­ful and well-crafted. I guess that I was just hoping/expecting Apple to take the slab smart­phone to another level. I have been exhausted by all of the law­suits between Apple and, seem­ingly, every man­u­fac­turer that makes Android devices. I was will­ing to put all of that to the side, for the moment, and bask in the glory of Apple’s design prowess. It’s worth adding that aside from rev­o­lu­tion­ary (Apple’s favorite superla­tive) hard­ware inno­va­tion, Apple would have cre­ated much more buzz if they over­hauled it’s mobile oper­at­ing sys­tem iOS. It’s look­ing rather long in the tooth, par­tic­u­larly when com­pared to updates to Android and the Win­dows Phone oper­at­ing systems.

To be per­fectly can­did, I was hop­ing that the iPhone 5 would end months of hand-wringing about my next phone. I don’t often rely on sports analo­gies, but…I wanted Apple to knock it out of the park, but they merely hit a sac­ri­fice fly to advance a runner.

I am not wed to one plat­form, and will more than will­ing to move from Android to iOS if the iPhone design proved to be com­pelling. Apple didn’t help as much as I had hoped. The recently announced Nokia Lumia 920 builds on a very inter­est­ing design. (I see a trend devel­op­ing here.) In about a month, if rumors hold up, Google will announce that it has expanded its Nexus pro­gram (Google’s flag­ship Android device) to allow sev­eral man­u­fac­tur­ers to intro­duce new Nexus devices this fall (usu­ally in Novem­ber). Here is a chart com­par­ing the iPhone 5, Galaxy SIII, and the upcom­ing Lumia 920. My wife recently upgraded from a Motorola Droid X to the Sam­sung Galaxy SIII, and she seems to love it.

Social Obser­va­tion

One thing that is rather inter­est­ing to me is see­ing the devoted iPhone camp do their best to mask their dis­ap­point­ment. I think that a good amount Apple loy­al­ists released heavy sighs yes­ter­day. I checked out a num­ber of Apple blogs, and the mood seems to be rather reserved. Peo­ple are doing their best to put a pos­i­tive spin on yesterday’s reveal. Like me, I sus­pect that a major­ity of peo­ple were hop­ing that the leaked pho­tos were a slight of hand by Apple’s PR shop. What hap­pened to Apple “dou­bling down” on secu­rity? Fail!

Of course, Android fans were doing back flips. (rolling my eyes) I wrote a com­ment on an Android site, implor­ing peo­ple to keep it classy and be a fan of tech.

I am a fan of technology…period. I use an Android device, but I also own and use Apple prod­ucts. I kinda like the divi­sion of labor, if you will. With that, I refuse to allow myself to become so entrenched in one camp, or another, that I start to take things in this arena per­son­ally. I get appre­ci­at­ing your favorite brand or sys­tem. What I don’t get are peo­ple who take their pref­er­ence (alle­giance?) to a device or brand so far as to run any­thing else into the ditch.

Sure, I get the whole Apple vs. Android thing. You’d have be to blind not to. I ques­tion whether Apple was run by a mega­lo­ma­niac, and every­one — even sub­se­quent to his death — appears com­mit­ted to that same bull­shit “every­one is out to get us” para­noid path. Maybe this has cause Android camp to develop a pretty large chip on our col­lec­tive shoul­ders, but two wrongs don’t make a right. Call­ing out Apple for it’s prac­tices would be a lot more con­vinc­ing if Android OEMs didn’t bla­tantly copy (Yeah…I know the reverse argu­ments, so please don’t recite them.) and fans of the OS and ecosys­tem didn’t mir­ror the same myopia that sadly shack­les so many fans of Apple.

Objec­tiv­ity is the key word for me. I want all tech to be cool and inter­est­ing. This means that I can applaud and acknowl­edge when Apple makes some­thing com­pelling, be that the hard­ware or the soft­ware that runs the device. It means that love of great design is not exclu­sive to Android and the OEMs that pro­duce Android devices. If that were the case, I’d have a lot of pent-up self-loathing for the shig­gity prod­ucts Motorola keeps pump­ing out. (Sorry Moto fans.) Inter­est­ingly, if all of the leaks and rumors about the iPhone 5 are true, I think there will be a rather tan­gi­ble sigh release from peo­ple, even the most ardent fans of Apple, who were hop­ing for some­thing more…ummm…intriguing. Merely stretch­ing out a phone doesn’t equal inno­v­a­tive design. I’ve come to expect more from Jonny Ives.

Look…we all (Android, Apple, Win­dows fans) need to come up for air, and just fol­low­ing the mantra of “Do you.” Let peo­ple do their thing. Stop try­ing to beat someone/something down in order to ele­vate your­self or your “thing.” Per­haps, the most impor­tant thing, in my esti­ma­tion, is to stop per­son­al­iz­ing all of this stuff. It’s just not that deep. It really isn’t.

The whole Apple vs Android debate is too much like the Hat­fields vs. McCoys for my taste. It’s ridicu­lous. There’s just too much vit­riol over “stuff.”

Ok…enough belly-aching that the present under the tree was not exactly what I wanted. The iPhone 5 is a nice look­ing device. It’s just not a game-changer.


 
 
What about you? Is the iPhone 5 every­thing you wanted and/or expected? Are you going to get one? If I had to choose, I’d get the black one.

my “apple-fication” continues

For the longest time, I was almost con­trar­ian when it came to Apple. I never had an issue with the prod­ucts, but I didn’t (and still don’t) like how a num­ber of Apple users become mem­bers a cult-like tribe. It’s a turn off. My clos­est like-my-brother friend, Dotch, has been using Apple com­put­ers since we were in col­lege. His house could very well be an Apple store. (Love ya Dotch!) At the end of 2010, I put aside those con­cerns, vow­ing that I would never become a fan­boy, and took the plunge with two Apple com­put­ers — a Mac­Book Pro and an iMac. I sold the Mac­Book Pro to a friend and picked up another one. A cou­ple of months ago, I gave my son that 13″ Mac­Book Pro.

I have been using the time with­out a lap­top to see how I would func­tion. In that time, I picked up the Google Nexus 7 tablet. After a few weeks, I came to the con­clu­sion that the Nexus 7 was just too small for me. It’s a great device, but I guess that I have grown accus­tomed to a larger screen. I’ve used my wife’s iPad2 from time-to-time. The screen is larger on the iPad (Inter­est­ingly, all the rumors these days point to the release of a mini iPad this fall.) I prob­a­bly could get by with an iPad in lieu of a lap­top, but I don’t like typ­ing on the screen of the iPad and I have yet to come across an acces­sory key­board for the iPad that I like. What became clear is that I like a lap­top. How­ever, one thing that both­ered me about the 13″ Mac­Book Pro was it’s weight. Don’t like the sleek design fool you, Mac­Book Pros are hefty. So, with weight being an issue…I was really only left with one choice, in the Apple fam­ily that is.


 

It’s hard to believe, given my his­tory, that I am becom­ing such an Apple per­son. So far, the I have been hold­ing off on get­ting a new smart­phone, because I’m inter­ested to see what Apple does with the next iPhone. I’ve seen sev­eral “spy shots” of the new iPhone, and I must admit that I’m not over­whelmed. Maybe a ho-hum iPhone5 will keep me from becom­ing com­pletely sucked into the Apple ecosys­tem. We’ll see. It could become a full-blown fam­ily affair. My son’s in (he has an iPhone now, too.). Carla was using the iMac quite a bit this week­end and I caught her eye-balling my new Mac­Book Air. I may have to drop a line on her from a clas­sic (read: cheesy) 80s commercial.