I'm reading a great novel by Patrick Rothfuss called The Name of the Wind. Much of the book involves the main character, Kvothe, recalling the (exciting) events of his life with great detail. At one point he notes that his most defining attribute is his memory, and I've always been jealous of people (like my wife) who are great at remembering things. It always seemed that they barely needed to study in school; they hear or read something once, and then they know it. Fortunately, my iPhone does a perfect job of remembering things so that I don't have to. I jot down something in a Notes app or tell Siri to remind me of something, and the iPhone never forgets, freeing up my brain to focus on analyzing issues instead of worrying about rote memorization. New York Times columnist David Pogue (the keynote speaker at ABA TECHSHOW earlier this year) wrote a great article in Scientific American discussing how smartphones are starting to make memorization obsolete. It's a good read. And now, the rest of the news of note from the past week:
- Pennsylvania attorney Sara Austin showed me an iPhone charging connector called the Kii that is small enough to fit on a keychain. Neat idea.
- New Orleans attorney Ernie Svenson told me that he encountered a strange bug that was preventing him from updating apps on his iPad. He pointed me to this thread on Apple's forums to show that he is not alone. But I see that the very latest posts on the forum indicate that Apple may have finally done something on its end to fix it, so if you are having the same problem, hopefully you won't have it for much longer.
- Readdle is celebrating its sixth birthday by reducing the price of six apps by up to 70%. This includes the great Scanner Pro for $1.99 instead of $6.99 (my review) and PDF Expert for $4.99 instead of $9.99 (my review).
- Serenty Caldwell of Macworld offers advice for traveling overseas with your Apple devices. One suggestion: bring an iPad instead of a laptop. I agree; I travel a lot within the U.S., but I can't even remember the last time I brought a laptop.
- If you ever receive an iMessage that is spam, Lex Friedman of Macworld explains how to report it to Apple.
- Friedman also offers advice on the best battery cases for the iPhone 5.
- Jeff Gamet of The Mac Observer shares a neat trick that was new to me for selecting multiple photos in the Photos app that involves using two fingers at once.
- Rene Ritchie of iMore shares a few more tricks, gestures you can use in Siri, Mail, Safari, Calendar and the keyboard.
- Daniel Eran Dilger explains what the future holds for iPhone and car integration. Sounds great to me.
- Brad Nicholson of Touch Arcade notes that Bad Piggies, a game from the folks that brought you Angry Birds, is Apple's app of the week. Meaning it is free. I've never played it, but my seven-year-old son likes it.
- And finally, here's a product that is still in development but looks promising: Egg Minder, an egg tray that holds your eggs in your refrigerator and tells your iPhone how many eggs are in the tray. No more sleepness nights wondering how many eggs you have left!
