services

I have just gotten off an American Airlines flight on which, as I approached my window seat, an off-duty airline lady crew member suggested I sit in the aisle seat instead "as that's what men normally want."

This peculiarly sexist foray into the personal psychology of the male I found slightly disturbing.

However, would I find it disturbing if, on checking in with an airline, the member of staff said: "Loved your post yesterday about men who code naked."

I fear I might like it. Which is why I am in three minds (at least) … Read more

When you open a document in OS X, the default application for that file type is used to read the file; however, you may have alternative applications installed for handling the document, which can be accessed from the Open With menu when you right-click the document in the Finder. For instance, a text document may open in TextEdit by default, but if you right-click the document, you may see programs like Pages, Word, TextWrangler, or others you have installed listed as options for opening the document.

These behaviors in OS X for handling documents and applications are done by the … Read more

The first time I heard someone say "Everybody has a book in them," I recommended that they see a doctor right away.

At least that explains all those books I've read that appear to have traveled through the author's colon. Writing can be painful, but there are limits.

Lots of people have unpublished novels and other book-length documents sitting forlornly on their hard drive, waiting and waiting for an audience. If your magnum opus (or even half-pint opus) is a Word document that's ready for the world to fall in love with, give the free … Read more

Amazon Web Services' prolonged down time over the weekend was caused by lightning, according to the company -- but was lengthened by software bugs in the cloud provider's infrastructure.

The bugs, disclosed by Amazon in an analysis of the failure, show how the size at which cloud providers operate can make them acutely vulnerable to failures in their software systems -- and acts as an object lesson of Google's statement that "at scale, everything breaks."

According to Amazon, its cloud in its U.S. East region (10 data centers split across four availability zones) was … Read more

Cell phone providers can be annoying. They do all sorts of unspeakable things like charge us for texts that cost them very little to send.

However, one gentleman seems to have enjoyed an extra level of irritation at the services provided by T-Mobile in the U.K.

I am grateful to TechCrunch for directing me to footage posted on YouTube that shows a gentleman in a T-Mobile store in Manchester, England, who expressed his displeasure a little too aggressively. … Read more

Apple could be changing how its brick-and-mortar stores are laid out, according to a new report.

Apple Store tracker ifoAppleStore.com reported yesterday that Apple is currently testing out a new Genius Bar layout in its stores. Rather than have the table run parallel to the wall at the back of the store, the company is considering turning it 90 degrees to make it perpendicular to that wall.

The blog claims to have obtained an image of the new layout, which shows a table stretched from the back wall, and flanked on two sides with stools. That effectively increases the … Read more

Uber, a company that lets people request private car service in select cities, is trying to appeal to a less-affluent customers by using non-luxury, hybrid vehicles, according to a new report.

According to Uber, which spoke with The New York Times in a story published yesterday, the hybrid service will kick off in San Francisco and New York on Wednesday. The cars will cost customers 10 percent to 25 percent more than a standard taxi fare between two locations. According to the Times, its premium service typically costs customers between 40 percent and 100 percent more.

Uber is one of … Read more

Live in an area prone to flash floods, hurricanes, blizzards? Smartphone users will soon get a severe-weather alert from the National Weather Service, a division of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

The new nationwide emergency alert system, called the Wireless Emergency Alerts (WEA), sends 90-character text messages to smartphones of people facing extreme weather conditions. Severe weather defined by the NOAA includes tornadoes, flash floods, hurricanes, extreme wind, blizzards and ice storms, tsunamis, and dust storms. Note that thunderstorms aren't on the list because they occur so frequently. … Read more

Oh good, I can get one second more sleep the night of June 30. In an effort to keep our extremely accurate atomic clocks in line with the more arbitrary nature of the way the world wobbles, we're getting a leap second this weekend.

Sure, it's not as dramatic as what happens during a leap year, but it's still exciting for clock aficionados, science geeks, and time lords. The leap second will be added to Coordinated Universal Time at the end of the day on June 30.… Read more