Devir Kahan

There are really two times during the day during which I can enjoy a good podcast. One is at night on my iHome, lying in bed before I fall asleep. I enjoy that time a lot. The other is on my hour long bus ride to and from school¹.

I subscribe to a lot of podcasts, many of which can run for close to two hours on a typical show. Especially the shows on 5by5. I enjoy all the show I subscribe to a lot. Especially 5by5. I want to listen to them all. That’s why I subscribe to them.

Naturally, one day on the bus ride to school I flipped the 2X (or double speed) switch to get through the podcasts faster, and to be able to listen to every last one. And for months following, that is how I left it.

Until, that is, when I heard Dan Benjamin on, I believe it was an episode of Back To Work with Merlin Mann, speak of how terrible he envisions listening to his shows at double speed. To the best of my memory he never really gave a reason. It just bothered him. And I can understand that.

I love Dan Benjamin. And it’s very nice that he doesn’t like that 2X button, but sometimes I just gotta use it. As my Instacast queue fills up, there are just those days where I need to get through as many podcasts as possible. And that 2X button is the only way to do it. I’m sorry. I really am.

I neglected to mention this, but since hearing Dan’s opinion of that cursed button, I have made an effort never to use it on any of the 5by5 shows that I listen to². And in truth, although I never denied this, it is certainly nicer to listen at normal speed. The voices do, of course, sound better and more real, and it doesn’t put me under the false impression for a short while after listening that people in the real world actually speak as fast as they sound at double speed. That’s right, I tend to speak a little too fast sometimes. Oh well.

But I still admit to listening at double speed sometimes. And I freely admit to doing it for pretty much every podcast that I listen to outside of the 5by5 network. I just have to. It’s the only way. I don’t have that much time, especially as a lot of these great, fantastic shows are just so wonderfully darn long.

And really, isn’t it better that I listen at double speed than not listen at all? Wouldn’t even Dan Benjamin, the father of hating the 2X button, give me that? Wouldn’t he?

I don’t want to miss any of my great fantastic shows. I want to listen to them all. And try as I might, and no matter how much I wish this wasn’t so, sometimes that 2X button is the only way I can do that.

What is your take on the matter? Do you ever listen at double speed? And if so, what would you say to Dan Benjamin? And if you’re Dan Benjamin - well firstly, hello - what do you have to say after reading this all?

Regardless, stay tuned for a full list of all of my favorite podcasts coming soon to this wonderful site.

I really don’t want to be all cliché here and tell you how excited I am about my latest announcement.

But I will anyway.

What I’m so excited about announcing is that I have recently joined the wonderful staff of writers over at MacGasm. I don’t really do much reporting on this blog, as I feel like you can get it from, well, sites like MacGasm. Now I’m going to try my hand at reporting. For MacGasm. See how that works?

No, nothing is going to change about this site. Only thing different will be that now you’ll be able to read a rather different style of writing for me. At MacGasm (here are all articles by myself only). See how that works?

No single post can really sum this all up. Fact is that this is a really big deal, and I’m really enraptured about the whole thing. So, if you’d like to follow along with me - and I extend to you my most tremendous recommendation to do so - I suggest you subscribe to the MacGasm RSS feed (if you’re into that kind of a thing), read my first article that spurred quite a heated discussion (as intended, of course) or just more generally take a peek at the website every now and again. I’ll only be posting my favorite articles here. See how this all works?

Brilliant.

Can’t wait to see you there…

I have seen, quite literally, countless amounts of iPhone tips and tricks lists over the years. The problem with all these lists though, is that I already knew everything that was on them. There was never a tip I didn’t know.

That’s not to say that those lists were useless. There are many people who aren’t as obsessed with technology as people like me, and most probably you. For them, these tips are great. For me, they never were.

That of course prompted me to, over the years, collect all sorts of small tips and tricks that even the geekiest of iPhone users wouldn’t know. Of course, this list is also just as great for all those that don’t know the tips on the more common lists, and really want to impress their friends.

Today, I’m sharing that list with you.

The List

1. Don’t Tap ‘X’

In Safari on the iPhone, if you tap on the URL bar to change the, well, URL, you do not need to tap on the ‘X’ button as well. Just tap the URL bar and start typing. It will get rid if the previous URL for you automagically.

NOTE: This does not work, however, with the Google search bar, nor any others that I can see.

via Practically Efficient

2. The Three Finger Tap

Whilst in the Maps app on your iPhone try tapping with three fingers at once. Doing so will zoom out.

This does not work anywhere else in iOS. Maps is the only app that gets this feature.

Interesting.

3. The Infamous Free-Public-WiFi

This isn’t so much a tip or trick as much as it is just useful knowledge.

We’ve all been somewhere looking for good WiFi hotspot to connect to, and we’ve all seen, at one point or another, a magical network named ‘Free-Public’Wifi’.

Yeah. Doesn’t ever work.

As it turns out, this is some stupid old Windows XP glitch. Of course. You can learn all out it here.

In fact, it’s probably a good idea not to ever join this network as, since you are technically connecting to a computer as explained in the article, your security could be compromised. This is especially true if you are connecting to a network like this with a laptop.

4. Auto-Dial Extensions

Has this ever happened to you?

You want to call a number in order to reach someone, and you know when and where to dial all of the proper extensions, but you still have to painfully wait for all the prompts?!

Well luckily, your iPhone can help!

When entering in a phone number into your address book, tap the button for more symbols, and then tap the ‘Pause’ button.

Continue with the proper extensions and pauses. Now when you dial that number, it will automatically pause and dial all the proper extensions for you. If needed, you can make a longer pause by adding two.

5. The Phonetic Field

Many people like to use voice dialing on their iPhones. I am not one of them. Regardless, a problem many people face is that when the name of a person is spelled differently then it is pronounced (or even just not as it is pronounced phonetically,) the iPhone can have a hard time with proper voice dialing.

To fix this, when adding in a contact, just tap the ‘Add A Field’ button, choose the ‘Phonetic’ field, and type the name in the way it is pronounced.

Now voice dialing said person should be a lot smoother.

via Shawn Blanc

6. Bottom Buttons

Many an iPhone app has a black toolbar running along the bottom with various buttons to navigate through the app by simply tapping on them once. These buttons respond to two taps as well though.

If ever you have buried yourself in a menu after drilling down a few times, a simple double tap on the toolbar button you’d like to see will bring you back to the top level of navigation.

Also, say you’re in the App Store and you’d like to refresh your ‘Updates’ tab, a simple double tap on the toolbar button will do it.

So a double tap on menu buttons will not only bring you to the top level of that menu, but will also refresh the current tab that you’re in.

Knowledge

Well, we have come to the end of our journey. If you did actually know any (or, somehow, all) of these tips, well then, you are just the better man. I am rather confident though that everyone learned something knew from this list. Which is why I wrote it.

And I’m sure that there are plenty more tips and tricks out there that are even more hidden that I myself don’t know, so be sure to let me know.

As the wonderful Alex Leiphart was able to register my iPhone’s UDID to activate in iOS 5, I have had the pleasure of running said iOS 5 on my iPhone for the past few weeks.

I’m sure you’ve no doubt seen dozens, if not millions, or posts online outlining all the new features and improvements, which is why I am not going to bore you with another post just like that.

Oh no.

No new features or improvements here. Instead, I’m going to be talking about the exact opposite. I’m going to show you all of the little screw-ups that Apple didn’t yet fix in this early beta.

Allow me to walk you through some of the cooler glitches that I have happened upon on iOS 5.

1.

As I’m sure many of you have, I one time decided to rearrange my home screen. I wanted to move a folder from one screen, to another, to be more specific. Trouble was, when I let go, the folder remained enlarged. It was still completely functional, but although I had already pressed the home button to stop the icons from ‘jiggling’, this particular folder remained huge.

2.

This particular glitch actually comes courtesy of Ben Brooks. Apparently, while going about his day to day business on his iPhone, this happened:

No, that’s not a setting.

Yes, his iPhone’s dock just disappeared.

3.

This one is my favorite of them all. It happened to me completely out of the blue. I simply swiped over to my second screen of apps, and saw this:

Coolest thing about this was that everything still worked. Although all my icons for some reason decided to just hop on top of one another, I could still get the icons to do their little jiggle-dance, and I could still drag them all around the screen. It was as if they momentarily forgot that they were supposed to be aligned along a grid. Tsk. Tsk.

I could drag apps on top of one another, and even still launch them. As I opened up a folder, however, all the apps snapped back in to place. Which was a little anti-climactic. I was expecting something far cooler.

Oh well.

And Others

Now I am fully aware that there are plenty of other glitches that people are complaining about in iOS 5. Double emails, for one. But that’s just the thing. You know about all those already.

There are two more I will comment on, though.

1. Double Texts
   This is not a glitch. The texts aren’t coming in twice, the iPhone is just reminding you twice.

   The fix?

   Head into the Messages settings (from the Settings app, of course), scroll to the bottom, and change ‘Repeat Alert’ to ‘Never’.

2. Scroll-To-Top
   In order to bring up the iOS 5 Notification Center you have to drag your finger from the top of the screen down. Trouble is, that tapping the top bar of the iPhone currently scrolls you top the top of whatever app you are in.

   Essentially, invoking Notification Center also annoying scrolls you to the top of the current page.

   It will be interesting to see what Apple does about this, if anything at all. After all, it’s not really a glitch as both are legitimate actions. It’s more of a bothersome technicality. Perhaps touching only the time will scroll to the top? Or perhaps there will be some time delay? Or maybe, even, the iPhone will be able to sense if it was a tap, or a drag coming from above?

Bonus

This is not a glitch at all. In fact, it’s quite the opposite. It’s a small little feature within Notification Center that allows you to see the entire week’s weather forecast.

Just swipe left or right over the weather widget.

Yup, it’s just that simple and cool.

As all of this stuff is.