If you own a tablet, especially and iPad, you need to have this FREE app installed. Flipboard. It's fantastic! It brings all of your information sources together, and gives you a general overview of what you need to be reading.
As colourful as this could be, my morning sabbatical would not be the same without Flipboard. All your RSS, Twitter, Facebook, web, etc. feeds, aggregated in one awesome view!
It's kind of like your folks reading a newspaper, but way more current dynamic. It's instant... what's happening now, and looks up all content related to a tweet, for example, and you read the full story... not the snippet. Add this, and add Flipboard content that you find interesting, and more than likely, you don't even need to go beyond "Cover Stories" - which summaries the most popular items across all content.
Totally part of my daily routine, I even prefer this to checking Facebook (Flipboard aggregates this content as well).
Sunday, June 24, 2012
Waze - Outsmarting traffic, together
Every now and then you come across something that is just awesome.
I very recently had that very experience, and stumbled upon an iDevice app that is just that... awesome! In fact, it's so awesome, I think everyone should have Waze on their iPhone! And it's available on Android, but I can't comment on this platforms experience.
Waze is a social GPS navigation system, the key element here being social. In a nut shell, maps are generated by the user community (so no more waiting YEARS for map updates), and users (and the application itself) report traffic conditions in real-time. Combine this with navigation and routing abilities, add alerts from fellow commuters about traffic jams and accidents, and Waze gets you to your destination in no time avoiding major traffic obstacles. And Wazers are 19 million strong!
Add to the mix a social game element, and "Hey Presto!", you get a mix between TomTom/Garmin and Foursquare.
We live the Dubai, in the United Arab Emirates, and the community using Waze here is still quite small, and with that the maps are far from complete, and not very usable at the moment. But I say give it a year or two, get some dedicated users updating it, and within that same time span you'll end up with the Lambourghini of GPS navigators, that is traffic aware and able to route accordingly.
The best part of it all, is that I as a Waze user, have the ability to login and edit the maps with a super simple, easy to use editor. In just a few short weeks, I've managed to edit the maps in areas that effect my routes, and now can navigate to and from work, following my preferred routes (Waze learns these over time) - and best of all, I get notified if there are traffic problems on those routes!
It's a real time saver, and this integrated with Foursqaure, Google Maps and Bing Maps, makes finding destinations infinitely easier. Again, it has a way to go, with regular outages as the system grows, but I use this every day. I loathe sitting in traffic and Waze has spared me many hours of unnecessary mental vacations, and encourage you all to try it at least. You don't have to actively participate in mapping, but everyone who just runs the app while they drive, helps the mappers accurately map the roads in your respective countries (it's a GPS thing).
I very recently had that very experience, and stumbled upon an iDevice app that is just that... awesome! In fact, it's so awesome, I think everyone should have Waze on their iPhone! And it's available on Android, but I can't comment on this platforms experience.
Waze is a social GPS navigation system, the key element here being social. In a nut shell, maps are generated by the user community (so no more waiting YEARS for map updates), and users (and the application itself) report traffic conditions in real-time. Combine this with navigation and routing abilities, add alerts from fellow commuters about traffic jams and accidents, and Waze gets you to your destination in no time avoiding major traffic obstacles. And Wazers are 19 million strong!
Add to the mix a social game element, and "Hey Presto!", you get a mix between TomTom/Garmin and Foursquare.
We live the Dubai, in the United Arab Emirates, and the community using Waze here is still quite small, and with that the maps are far from complete, and not very usable at the moment. But I say give it a year or two, get some dedicated users updating it, and within that same time span you'll end up with the Lambourghini of GPS navigators, that is traffic aware and able to route accordingly.
The best part of it all, is that I as a Waze user, have the ability to login and edit the maps with a super simple, easy to use editor. In just a few short weeks, I've managed to edit the maps in areas that effect my routes, and now can navigate to and from work, following my preferred routes (Waze learns these over time) - and best of all, I get notified if there are traffic problems on those routes!
It's a real time saver, and this integrated with Foursqaure, Google Maps and Bing Maps, makes finding destinations infinitely easier. Again, it has a way to go, with regular outages as the system grows, but I use this every day. I loathe sitting in traffic and Waze has spared me many hours of unnecessary mental vacations, and encourage you all to try it at least. You don't have to actively participate in mapping, but everyone who just runs the app while they drive, helps the mappers accurately map the roads in your respective countries (it's a GPS thing).
Resetting Parental Passcode on XBOX 360
*** If you want to reset your Xbox for any other reason, this is the way to do it.
I recently bought and XBox 360 Kinect for my daughter for her birthday, and hastily set it up during a birthday party. Somewhere during the festivities, someone managed to add a passcode to the parental controls and set them really low.
Save yourself a lot of headaches, and DON'T Google this. There are millions of instructions and guides on how to reset your Xbox... and well, 1 in 10,000 will work.
The reset code is console specific, and more specifically, related to the console ID. No point in entering all the combinations to reset your console, mine was different.
Contact Microsoft support on the Xbox.com website, I just started a chat, registered the unit in my name and gave them the console ID - they provided me with the correct information to reset the Xbox.
Caveat: I must say though, to complete the sequence, I just kept pressing the last key over and over until it unlocked. Stopping where the sequence stopped didn't work for me.
This is guaranteed to work, unlike all the advice you get on the interweb!
I recently bought and XBox 360 Kinect for my daughter for her birthday, and hastily set it up during a birthday party. Somewhere during the festivities, someone managed to add a passcode to the parental controls and set them really low.
Save yourself a lot of headaches, and DON'T Google this. There are millions of instructions and guides on how to reset your Xbox... and well, 1 in 10,000 will work.
The reset code is console specific, and more specifically, related to the console ID. No point in entering all the combinations to reset your console, mine was different.
Contact Microsoft support on the Xbox.com website, I just started a chat, registered the unit in my name and gave them the console ID - they provided me with the correct information to reset the Xbox.
Caveat: I must say though, to complete the sequence, I just kept pressing the last key over and over until it unlocked. Stopping where the sequence stopped didn't work for me.
This is guaranteed to work, unlike all the advice you get on the interweb!
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