As many of you know, I just left a job. Part of my process for that is clearing out any data I’ve captured. One thing I always need to do is clear out any of the old Google accounts I’ve used. Like what you see in this view:
The first step to getting rid of the other screens is to sign out of everything:
Next, go to the login screen, which will now look like this:
Click on “Remove an account”, and you’ll be able to choose the account(s) to remove from the screen. And, boom, it’ll be nice and clean for the next log-in.
Yesterday, it took me ages to figure out how to convert a .mov to an animated PNG. One of our services can’t use gifs at all, only pngs. (Here’s more insight into the format.) I remembered that there were such things, but damn, I’d never created one before. It looks like browsers don’t support then that well, so that Adobe doesn’t support their creation natively. I saw in several forums that you can download a plug-in to do that, but no one linked to one. I found EZGif.com, a free website that let me do the conversion. It’s not the most elegant process. It works fine if I open it in a browser, but not if I try to open it in Windows. My, what a pain!
Watching this gem by Marques Brownlee brought out some great tech memories. Retro-Tech: Cell Phones and Pagers. I never owned one of the first gen cellphones, but did have a pager. I never knew there were “codes”, working something emojis. Such were the times.
As the smart-watch and AI (think Google Assistant and Siri) intersect, more people will adopt smart-watches. The ability to interact accurately only with our voice will be the crucial element to this. Once I can have a full SMS exchange solely via voice, the need to lug around a cell phone will whither.
Now, is the smart-watch a cell-phone killer? I hate that construct ” ____-killer”. Much like the idea of a laptop being a desktop killer. And, of course, all these cellphone elements being “iPhone killers”. Anyway, in this situation, no. Cell phones won’t be killed by smartwatches. I don’t foresee games becoming really fun on a watch. Maybe with some sort of integration with a Google-Glass-esque device. Maybe.
The phone’s current centralness to our personal communication system, I expect, will migrate. I see the watch to take that role. Possibly with the watch being the central device, and everything else connecting through it.
What do you think? How far off-base do you think I am? Or am I a true oracle, prescient to the point of prophecy?
I’m a heavy user of Evernote. I love the product, as much as I love anything. It does a pretty great job with my notetaking needs. There are some recurring bugs that annoy the hell out of me, but that’s true with pretty much all software.
Then there’s the business. Evernote looks to be in significant trouble. I know so many people who were really annoyed at Evernote’s rebranding initiative. Especially since it appeared that that work came at the expense of feature upgrades.
However, even bigger: their CTO, CFO, CPO and Head of HR all have stepped down. That sends a powerful message. Even it’s a random string of happenstance, it’s hard to accept that. The video below summed the situation, and my concerns, up as of a few days ago.
Now, today, Boing Boing writes that Evernote announced layoffs. The compound effect of all this gives me deep concern. I’ve started exploring the other alternatives. Steve Dotto had talked about Notion, which I’ve started messing with. There’s a bunch of things I like about it, but have only started that exploration.
I’m not ready to fully abandon them yet. However, I also have no interest in getting caught off-guard by the failing of a product I depend on. I’ve been bit by this before.
Hey there, my tech-savvy friends, my son has an original Pixel, which he loves. However, it’s picked up an annoying glitch. When anyone calls it, the answering screen doesn’t come up. It’s physically impossible to answer it; nothing there at all. Oddly, the phone rings and vibrates, just nothing else.
Here are some key details:
Do Not Disturb isn’t on.
The phone settings screen is greyed out (I think this is significant, but not able to drill down any further).
He can answer calls with a bluetooth headset (tapping “answer” there).
I’ll check and see if Google assistant will answer the calls. Hadn’t thought of that.
Recently his phone updated to Android 9/Pie (did he get Pie in the face?)
Searching Google and Bing I’ve found many folks looking for solutions to this, going back a couple of years. Otherwise, that has been remarkably fruitless. Though I found a forum where the problem was stated to be a broken codec on the motherboard, and you’ll need a new one. Amusing by not helpful.
So, anyone have any ideas? My current best guess is that this some kind of bug or conflict related to the update. Haven’t seen anything formal from the Google, so it makes me wonder if it’s on their radar.
I’m eager for advice and counsel, oh my techie friends!
Zany days. A 2 hour meeting in the morning disrupted everything. Not too uncommon, but it can be discomforting. Today, though, it was good. My team gave me a ton of space, so I was able to tunnel in and make AutoCAD sing. Well, to the best of my ability, at least. I’ve grown massively with my CAD skills, but I see a huge amount of growth out there.
Hours passed quite quickly, I was focused and in my zone. I love that feeling and really relish those moments I get to dive in like that. No distraction…focus! That is my happiest place!
With that, music really helps me deeply dive into focus. I pulled together a decent playlist on Google music based on Ghost in the Shell and Attack On Titan soundtrack elements, Then, this evening, I stumbled upon Maddy Meyers. This album below is exactly what I would’ve loved to queued up. So, it’ll just need to be tomorrow’s. For I expect focus will be important then, too.
