This is a “ranty” episode (after a long hiatus). I talk of the major mobile platforms out right now and their service offerings and a little in how it shows the difference in philosophy between the companies involved.
Warning, I have no idea what I’m talking about. Merely opinions here.
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 17:49 — 16.3MB)
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It has been over a month, but I’m finally back for my take on the iOS Maps kerfuffle. You’ll find some good reading about the iOS 6 Maps below.
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 10:00 — 9.2MB)
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I’m beginning a long process of trying to move away from as many Google services as I can. Here is what I am now using:
I was lucky enough to stumble upon their offering right around the time I was really looking to move my personal and business email accounts elsewhere and they fit the bill. I can host many different domains from the same account, take care of forwarding accounts, and a lot more.
They offer ActiveSync and IMAP (which were requirements) and a lot more that I don’t use. So far besides some growing pains with the new service they have been working very well. Support has been great and I have even had the pleasure of talking with a real human being so far.
Would recommend.
I was going to switch everything over to MobileMe, but Apple changed everything again and now I’m working with iCloud.
I keep my personal, business, and work calendars within iCloud and sync everything between my MacBook Pro, iPhone, and iPad. Along with that I share calendars with my wife. I’ve never had any issues, plus it is now free.
I do the same thing with my contacts and it works the same way. I’ve never had any issues and I hope they don’t now show up.
Sadly, this is the one place where I will probably not be able to get away. While DuckDuckGo has worked pretty well, the lack of image search and the slowness of the queries really is hard to swallow. There are things that I like, and it is really clean and infinite scrolling can be nice, but the deficiencies are enough to likely push me back to Google.
Is there anyone else that can just give me a forwarding number for free?
In closing, I’ve been relatively successful so far in moving away from Google’s other services, but there are areas where they really excel (and search is the main one). I’ll keep looking, but right now I’m happy that my email, calendar, and contacts have now been moved away.
Source: Greater choice for wireless access point owners
Alright, Google, this is just ridiculous. I’m going to pick on Google here because that’s where the announcement is from. Here’s the gist:
If you want Google to NOT gather your location data attached to your wireless access point (via their Google Street Cars), then you need to append “_nomap” onto your SSID. That’s right, you need to opt out of Google driving down the street and gathering information about the location of your access point.
Why in the world is this not the other way around!? You should have to OPT-IN to allowing Google to gather this information. Have a person append “_map” to the end of their SSID so that Google has permission to gather information about you.
I just don’t get it. I just don’t.