Every Summer, my family drives from New Orleans to the beaches of Alabama or Florida, and we often drive through the tiny town of Robertsdale, AL. I never knew that was where Apple CEO Tim Cook grew up until I read this interesting article by Michael Finch of Al.com. The article includes some fun pictures of what Cook looked like in high school. There are equally silly pictures of me when I was that age, so I guess that means there is still a chance that I will one day be CEO of the largest company in the world. While we wait for that to happen, here are the news items of note from the past week:
- Pennsylvania attorney Gina Rubel offers a few iPhone tips “for lawyers” — although frankly they are good tips for anyone — on the Avvo Lawyernomics blogs.
- Missouri attorney J. Clifton Smith offers tips on preserving text messages for use in Court. The very few times that I have had to do this, I just took a screenshot by pressing the home button and the lock button at the same time. The Tacoma, WA attorney who pointed me to this article, Dan Montopoli, tells me that he has good experiences using the iExplorer program mentioned in that article.
- John Edwards of Law Technology News recommends apps that you can use to protect confidential information.
- Philip Elmer-DeWitt reports for Fortune that, according to a study by the NPD Group, one-third of Apple’s U.S. sales in 2013 went to people making more than $100,000 a year. And among those who make $100,000 or more a year, Apple had a 65% share.
- Kevin Tofel of GigaOm reports on the first hearing aid made to work with the iPhone and that doubles as an iOS headset.
- All of your phones in the U.S., including your iPhone, have an area code. Megan Garber of The Atlantic wrote an interesting article on the history of the area code.
- I updated my review of the Nimblstand, an iPad stand that also holds the Apple Wireless Keyboard, to note that you can use the free iPad Air Sustainability Kit to use the product with an iPad Air.
- If you use multiple messaging apps — such as the built in Messages, Facebook, WhatsApp, etc. — Rene Ritchie of iMore suggests putting them all into one folder so that you can see all at once whether you have any new messages, because a red number shows up on the folder icon. Good tip.
- And finally, Chris Wong was skiing when his iPhone fell out of his pocket and into the snow, where it was lost. The battery died so he couldn’t find it with Find my iPhone, but he was able to find it the next week using a cheap metal detector he bought on Amazon. Here is a video of his discovery, and it is fun to watch. Jump to 2:30 if you just want to get to the part where he finds the iPhone, and then he subsequently dries it out and brings it back to life. (via The Loop)