Props to @Citruspi on App.Net for alerting me about Droplr’s price change, which led to the discovery of the iOS-web discrepancy. Basically online Droplr Pro is $59.99/year… …while Droplr Pro on the App Store is (drum roll please) a whopping $39.99/year! Why Droplr is charging web users $20 USD more online is perplexing, although they may want to update their iOS app price in the not so distant future....
Read MoreI’m very impressed with the About.me iOS App! (the iOS 7 version to be precise!) They took a boring and crowded niche (digital name plates) and made them fun again! I do like the business/social aspect of the app as it helps you to find interesting people minus the “biz spam” (which is why I stopped using LinkedIn). Oddly though the About.me app is a little slow on the response side (especially tapping on people’s profiles) but aside from that I really love the UI. A couple of annoyances aside I do plan on upgrading my account from free loader to beta awesome as soon as ICANN approves the domain extension that I desire–and no it’s not this one below! Until then you can find me at about.me/darnell and if you have an iPhone you might want to add it to your “must have apps” list. 🙂 Note: Sadly there is no About.me app upon Google Play, which means my Android brethren and sistren are (once again) abandoned to the cold (something Windows Phone cultists are use...
Read MoreThe NSA won’t be pleased about this, but it looks like I can finally send encrypted text messages to my Android brethren and sistren without any hiccups now! 🙂 Silent Circle released an iOS update today that addressed the digital divide between iLovers and Android geeks: Aside from the cosmetic changes, I can finally setup burn notices that last longer than a day! (which is great if you’re sending confidential files to friends!). 99 days and change seems to be the limit though (although truthfully you probably do not want to send anything over a week). Sadly I can not change the wall paper to something more glorious–like this image of Sharon “Athena” Agathon) from Battlestar Galactica… …but alas stylizing my silent circle wall paper is not as important as having private conversations with friends (something I can no longer do within email, FaceTime or Google Hangouts). Note: To answer future questions, my Silent Circle username is @Darnell and yes I do have a silent circle phone number but…you’ll have to text me to get it!...
Read MoreBeing collateral damage of the GAM (Google-Apple-Microsoft) wars is not what I had in mind as a pre-Cylon human being. Sure, every fan boy (or girl) loves a flame war, but the last thing I want is to be locked into an OS ecosystem (desktop or mobile) because some executive wants to defecate (figuratively) upon the competition. So for the foreseeable future I’m going to reduce my dependence upon the big three as much as possible by choosing decent alternatives (that don’t suck). So far I’ve chosen: Vimeo over YouTube Dropbox over Google Drive, iCloud or SkyDrive Remember The Milk over iTasks or Google Tasks Last.fm over iTunes Radio and Google Music Evernote over iWork, Google Docs, or Office (I do need to find a spreadsheet alternative though) Feedly over Google Currents For security reasons I’m still using Gmail, Google Calendar, and Google Chrome and I am experimenting with Silent Circle (as I don’t like my privacy being raped by the...
Read MoreiHaters of the NSA, take note: it looks like iMessage has a security hole that rhymes with iCloud. “If you can recover your recent iMessages onto a new iPhone – as I was able to do in an Apple store this afternoon – then Apple isn’t protecting your iMessages with your password or with a device key. Too bad. […]” “The sad thing is there’s really no crypto to understand here. The simple and obvious point is this: if I could do this experiment, then someone at Apple could have done it too. Possibly at the request of law enforcement. All they need are your iForgot security questions, something that Apple almost certainly does keep. (Cryptography Engineering Blog)” It looks like I will not be renewing my iCloud account now. Fortunately I have Dropbox (to back up my media files) as well as Silent Circle for secure calling (SMS & voice). Note: Silent Circle has launched apps for iOS as well as Android. Sadly they have no plans for either Blackberry or Windows Phone. Although I’ll continue to use iMessage, I’ll no longer use it for private messaging as I suspect the NSA has already reversed engineered Apple’s iSecurity without the assistance of the robed masters in black (aka federal...
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