Disqus - Latest Comments for lehrblogger

Re: The Best External Hard Drives

lehrblogger — Sat, 16 Oct 2021 00:41:46 -0000

Could the Seagate Backup Plus Slim (2 TB)'s poor performance on the small-file write test be a result of its default drive formatting, and thus easy to fix? I'm not a hard drive expert, but Wirecutter has another article titled The Best Portable Hard Drive that recommends this particular drive and points out the following:

Hard drives can come in one of a handful of different formats (and be reformatted), with each format having pros and cons plus varying compatibility with assorted computers and operating systems. The Seagate Backup Plus Slim is formatted as exFAT, ensuring compatibility with Chromebooks, Macs, PCs, and most recent Linux PCs, so you can copy files between computers regardless of the operating system. However, FAT-formatted drives, including those using FAT32 and exFAT, are slow when writing multiple small files, such as when a PC is backing up your work files. We saw this behavior during our Robocopy tests, when the file transfer rate for FAT drives dropped by two-thirds compared with the NTFS-formatted drives. Because of that, an exFAT drive would feel slow during everyday functions such as a daily backup of multiple small files. For those kinds of tasks, we recommend reformatting the drive to your operating system’s format to improve speeds: HFS+ for Macs or NTFS for Windows.

Re: The Best Hiking Baby Carriers

lehrblogger — Tue, 05 Oct 2021 00:42:40 -0000

The "FYI" section from 5/26/21 mentions an update coming this summer – any sense of when that might be published? Thanks!

Re: The Best Gear for Travel

lehrblogger — Sun, 15 Sep 2019 22:33:43 -0000

For what it's worth, my scale broke as well – the plastic clip snapped unexpectedly after about a year of infrequent use. Many other reviewers on Amazon cited the same problem.

Re: The Best Qi Wireless Charger for iPhone and Android Phones

lehrblogger — Tue, 25 Jun 2019 00:09:33 -0000

After the AirPower was cancelled, I ordered the Nomad Base Station Apple Watch Edition, because it was less sold-out than the Zens Dual+Watch Aluminum Wireless Charger. While I was worried at first about the lack of alignment indicators, now that I have it, I don't think this will be an issue at all.

When trying to position my devices on the pad, I wouldn't be able to see any alignment indicators anyway. Instead I can use the LED charging lights to know when I've found the right spot. The LEDs are very subtle, and they'll help me to quickly develop a sense of the proper placement.

Re: The Best Cash-Back Credit Cards

lehrblogger — Sun, 14 Oct 2018 13:28:45 -0000

I think the 3.71% accounts for the signup bonus, annual fee, and rewards earned according to their spending model. See the chart under the "Cash-back rate by card" section and the "How we calculated the cash-back rate of return" section.

Re: The Best Waterproof Mattress Protectors and Pads

lehrblogger — Sun, 05 Aug 2018 01:45:27 -0000

Thanks for the recommendations! The SafeRest mattress protector claims on Amazon to be vinyl- phthalate- and PVC-free. Is there any reason to be skeptical? If not, it might be worth updating this article to emphasize that the SafeRest is safe for people concerned about those chemicals.

Re: The Best All-in-One Computer

lehrblogger — Sun, 28 Jan 2018 11:21:07 -0000

A minor correction:

The iMac’s stand allows the screen to tilt forward and back, but as with the other all-in-ones we tested, you can’t adjust the height or attach the computer to a wall mount or monitor arm.

Apple does sell a version of the iMac with a VESA mount pre-attached. There's a link to that page at the bottom of the normal iMac "Buy" page, but it's easy to miss. The mount has to be installed at the factory, which is in contrast to the old Thunderbolt displays, where you could purchase the mount adapter separately and install it yourself.

Re: The Best Touchscreen Winter Gloves

lehrblogger — Sun, 08 Jan 2017 10:50:56 -0000

I recently lost my Aiden gloves and replaced them with the Aiden II gloves before this guide had been updated. While I prefer their full leather appearance, I've noticed that the Aiden IIs are not nearly as warm.

I also have a pair of older Moshi gloves, from before they added the dots on the palm. I've found the touch sensing to be less reliable than with either pair of Aidens, and they have a very poor grip on my case-less jet black iPhone 7.

Re: The Best USB Battery Packs

lehrblogger — Sat, 25 Jun 2016 12:18:14 -0000

Many of these batteries charge via Micro USB, and I'd rather not have the additional type of cable in my life. Can anyone recommend one of the following?
- Batteries that are charged themselves via a Lightning cable
- Batteries with integrated USB charging cables larger than the TravelCard
- Batteries with integrated wall plugs other than the Fluxmob bolt
Thanks!

Re: Pick a Card, Any Card - lehrblogger.com

lehrblogger — Sun, 27 Sep 2015 13:39:42 -0000

Ah, I hadn't heard of Marvel, cool. And I'm glad you enjoyed the post!

Re: Pick a Card, Any Card - lehrblogger.com

lehrblogger — Sun, 15 Mar 2015 22:13:53 -0000

Thanks! Let me know if you ever write/build anything, all of my lists are always too long...

Re: Pick a Card, Any Card - lehrblogger.com

lehrblogger — Thu, 27 Mar 2014 22:48:06 -0000

The thing about that hand-drawn feel, especially for non-standard UI elements like cards, is that the best way to capture it is to actually draw everything by hand. I bet it would be considerably faster with a Wacom tablet and Illustrator, since then you'd have more control and could re-use elements, but then you run the risk of making it look * too* perfect. Anyway, glad you like them :)

Re: Pick a Card, Any Card - lehrblogger.com

lehrblogger — Mon, 24 Mar 2014 18:33:20 -0000

Thanks! I used http://fiftythree.com/paper and a Wacom Bamboo stylus on an iPad Mini. It took a fair amount of trial and error, but I'm happy with how the wireframes came out.

Re: Pick a Card, Any Card - lehrblogger.com

lehrblogger — Mon, 24 Mar 2014 15:47:44 -0000

Unlimited lists can certainly be overwhelming, but on the other hand, what happens if users don't like any of the 5 or 10 options presented? I don't think users will feel "forced" to choose one of the presented options, so they'll probably just get frustrated and switch to another app.

I think I heard that Etsy once tried adding infinite scroll on search result pages, but then saw that this decreased the number of transactions, so they switched back to paginated results. There's something satisfying about getting to the end of a page of results, and it's useful for the user to be able to say "ok, only one more page," so I think pagination is not such a bad solution.

In many ways a card is simply a page with only one item on it. I don't think it would help the user make a decision to limit the size of the decks to 5 or 10 or even 50 cards, as long as there were more "good" options to choose from.

Re: Pick a Card, Any Card - lehrblogger.com

lehrblogger — Sun, 23 Mar 2014 21:28:38 -0000

Ah, I hadn't seen Wist! There are some nice UI elements, but it takes too long to load too few results, it's weird that places can only be on one list at a time, and I can't figure out how to remove accidentally-saved places from my profile. Thanks for commenting though :)

Re: Pick a Card, Any Card - lehrblogger.com

lehrblogger — Thu, 20 Mar 2014 01:05:06 -0000

Ah, interesting. I studied architecture for a while too, and understand that idea/want.

You might be able to use Pinterest in this way, since it's great for skimming large numbers of images very quickly... although repining might be a bit slower, and much less satisfying, than tearing a paper page :)

Re: Pick a Card, Any Card - lehrblogger.com

lehrblogger — Thu, 27 Feb 2014 15:14:16 -0000

Thanks, I had forgotten about Ness!

I think it's visually well done, but confusing to use, and trying to solve too many problems for the user at once. It does have cards in the interface, but all of the actions you take on them are either not useful or too complicated: swiping right goes backwards in the line and swiping left goes forward, but neither means anything; swiping up to take an action on the card or swiping down to save it to a list both require more taps; and the "Dismiss" button offers three options, two of which are too similar ("Hide for just now" or "Don't feel like [Cuisine]"), when it would be simpler not to require another decision at all.

The Dismiss options does suggest some concept of per-search state behind the scenes, but that's not made explicit, and there's no skeuomorphic guidance similar to that provided by the 'maybes' deck I describe above. Furthermore, if the user has a query in mind more specific than a cuisine type or meal time, then she is put back in the standard map-list hybrid interface, and the cards are nowhere to be found.

Re: What I Want From Rapportive 2.0

lehrblogger — Tue, 21 Jan 2014 00:42:27 -0000

+1 for Newsle, which does a pretty good job with name/person recognition and disambiguation.

Re: Twitter's Missing Messenger - lehrblogger.com

lehrblogger — Sat, 18 Jan 2014 02:08:33 -0000

Federation is also a really interesting topic. Major players like Google are moving *away* from federation, and I think there are a few reasons for this. First, I don't think users really care at an idealogical level, and they might even find it confusing to communicate across networks. Second, I don't think users really care at a UX level, since it's easy for them to keep multiple apps on their phone, in contrast to when they needed to keep multiple IM sessions open on they computers. Third, federation makes it hard for services to adapt quickly to the latest trends, since they must also stay compatible with whatever slowly-evolving protocol is chosen. Fourth, federation may make it hard to manage spam, even if whitelists are used. As much as I wish these apps would federate, I don't really see why they would bother :-/

Layer has admirable ambitions in this space (https://layer.com/blog/post..., but they will have difficulty forcing the established players to interoperate without massive scale.

Re: Twitter's Missing Messenger - lehrblogger.com

lehrblogger — Sat, 18 Jan 2014 01:59:34 -0000

Thanks! And thanks for bringing up SMS, it is indeed a huge mobile messaging player. While I suspect it's still growing worldwide, the parallel growth of the IP-based mobile messaging apps suggests it may not stay dominant even if it currently dwarfs the alternatives. If everyone loved SMS as it is, then why are competitors successful? At some point the world will be saturated with basic cellphones, and then SMS will get slowly pushed out by the other apps as more people get smartphones, as seems to be happening in Spain: http://www.asymco.com/2013/...

Why is this happening? One obvious answer is cost, since the carriers still insist on charging nontrivial fees even for domestic SMS, when consumers can get more for less from other services. That alone is likely a sufficient explanation, but the competitors also win on features, and can adopt new innovations much more quickly. MMS is clunky, for example, while competitors are branching out into other media types like stickers.

SMS is also vulnerable at the OS-level. On the iPhone, iMessage is the default, and SMS is only a fallback for other devices and poor network conditions. I wrote about that, and related disruptions, here: http://lehrblogger.com/2013.... That said, I think the delivery-assurance of SMS will ensure its place as a fallback for a while.

I'm also not sure I see SMS as open – I suppose a startup could theoretically set up it's own cell phone towers and federate with the major networks, but it's very expensive to build this infrastructure, and you'd need FCC approval. It's federated and open, but the gate to the garden has an expensive toll.

Re: Twitter's Missing Messenger - lehrblogger.com

lehrblogger — Sat, 18 Jan 2014 01:42:11 -0000

On Dashdash, existing participants have seemed happy to briefly summarize the conversation for newcomers, but I agree that it'd be simpler to have public conversations start as public and stay public. Rather than let users make private conversations discoverable, perhaps the app could make it easy for participants to fork a private conversation into a new public conversation with the same participants.

Re: Twitter's Missing Messenger - lehrblogger.com

lehrblogger — Sat, 18 Jan 2014 01:37:29 -0000

Ah, interesting, I wonder why phone companies changed the default. Did this correspond with the decline of the phone book as a search tool? There might also be other factors in play though – phone calls are less expensive than they used to be (especially long distance), and outsourcing and software presumably make it easier to hire telemarketers.

Re: Twitter's Missing Messenger - lehrblogger.com

lehrblogger — Thu, 16 Jan 2014 18:14:03 -0000

It's also worth noting that Google is slowly moving beyond email addresses and phone numbers: http://gmailblog.blogspot.c... and http://recode.net/2014/01/1...

Re: Twitter's Missing Messenger - lehrblogger.com

lehrblogger — Thu, 16 Jan 2014 16:33:22 -0000

This is a good observation, but unlike phone/email, Twitter's username space is mostly public – if I know someone's full name I can generally Google until I find their username.

Spam is already a serious problem on Twitter. Right now they don't let anyone DM links at all, presumably to make DM spam less lucrative/appealing/insecure. A lack of permissions combined with public usernames would only exacerbate the problem.

You're right that anyone can call any phone number, but people generally keep their phone numbers private/secret precisely so that they can avoid unwanted calls. There are also well-developed social norms around the specific situations in which its acceptable to call specific people, and there are elaborate social dances and complex connotations around asking for someone's phone number.

It's more acceptable to email someone out of the blue than to call them, but this is still frowned upon (e.g. it works much better to have a warm intro from a mutual friend). Also, many people also feel like email doesn't work especially well to begin with, since they get way too much email and managing their inbox feels hopeless and/or like a chore.

There are other possibilities though – maybe users could send messages to friends and friends-of-friends? – and I'll think about this some more. Thanks!

Re: Twitter's Missing Messenger - lehrblogger.com

lehrblogger — Mon, 13 Jan 2014 15:50:32 -0000

Thanks! As things are now, I think conversations already get moved to other services because users want privacy, and the improved messaging features for the new DM app are just icing. While public conversations are more valuable to Twitter than private ones, if they try to make too much public, users will just take their private conversations elsewhere. Private and public conversations correspond to different use cases, so I don't think this is zero-sum, and Twitter should support both.