annoyances

How to build your own app for free

Ever want to build an app for yourself?

It's actually not hard. There are a number of companies that offer the ability to create your own app for a minimal fee, which is great for small businesses looking to stay relevant in this increasingly mobile world. Or if you just have a lot of time on your hands.

Take Conduit. The company made its money creating branded toolbars found on your browser. But over the past few months, it has been expanding into the mobile world with a free service that allows you to build an app and mobile … Read more

Woman kicked off train after 16-hour cell phone chat

It's curious to me that some people still think that cell phones are for talking to someone.

No, they're for playing games, checking in, and sending naked picture of yourself.

So how odd that one woman seems to have managed to talk on her own little device for 16 hours, while traveling from Oakland, Calif., to Salem, Ore.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, KATU-TV reports that not everyone in the car in which she was sitting was entirely amused by her conversation. Oh, didn't I mention it? She was reportedly in the quiet car of an Amtrak train.

Lakeysha Beard … Read more

iQ Alarm Clock annoys you awake

It's like waking up beside a Geeks Who Drink champion. Designer Oliver Sha obviously has a hard time crawling out of bed in the morning. He solved the problem by creating the iQ Alarm Clock, a smarter-than-thou invention that won't shut up until you solve a series of quiz questions. Forget about a snooze button. This device demands mental awareness.

Questions may involve figuring out which object doesn't belong in a group of illustrations or what comes next in a numerical series. Thankfully, there's a hint button to keep you from throttling the alarm into submission.

Sleep lovers may try to reach for the battery compartment, but Sha has already thought of that workaround. The battery cover is tamper resistant to keep prying fingers at bay. The only way out is to get your questions right or hold down the power button for 30 seconds. The prospect of having an Alex Trebek experience every morning may not sound too appealing, but it will get the job done. You'll be up and at it and maybe feeling a little smug for having conquered your clock in a battle of the brains. … Read more

Facebook fine-tunes game nags, notifications

SANTA CLARA, Calif.--Facebook knows you don't want to see as many FarmVille news items and is doing something about it. That is, unless you play FarmVille all day. If that's the case, now there's a way to get even more of it in your news feed.

At a barbecue for game developers and staff here today, Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg outlined ways the company is changing the frequency of game notifications that show up in a user's news feed. The bottom line is that if you play a lot of games, you'll … Read more

Vuvuzela sim: Goooooaaaalllll, bzzzzzzzzzzzzz!

Vuvuzela 2010 is a free vuvuzela simulator--an iPhone and iPad app for reproducing the droning buzz of the globally infamous stadium horn heard in every World Cup 2010 soccer match.

Vuvuzela 2010 has a simple interface: a long vuvuzela fills your screen lengthwise, and you just tap it (or, even better, shake your device) to produce a loud, realistic "vuvu" drone, which sounds even better on speakers or headphones.

You can tap (or shake) it repeatedly to create a looping--and potentially even more irritating--sound, and you can customize the horn's color by tapping one of 10 jerseys … Read more

A plea for gadget interface consistency

Something that has begun to drive me batty in the past few years are the buttons on modern day gadgets. No, it's not how they've gone from real and tangible buttons to the touch-sensitive variety. It's that where they are typically located on the device keeps changing.

Most recently it's been on cell phones, where the standardized buttons that are used on different platforms across different handsets--things like a volume rocker, the sleep and wake button, and soft keys are being moved around from device to device. And for the comfort, and familiarity of both lefties, … Read more

Real-world iPad annoyances: A timeline

Everyone knows the first-gen iPad is lacking a camera and multitasking and that many of its apps are overpriced. Annoying. But those of us who bought iPads knew this going in, and we've found ways to work around or to justify to ourselves these omissions in the product. What we didn't know about on iPad Day, April 3, was all the little things that would drive us up a tree. These are the annoyances and roadblocks that makes this appliance, otherwise engaging and attractive, feel like it was rushed out the door. Or done on the cheap. Which, … Read more

Year's biggest tech disappointment: MacBook Air

I was in the early crowd of MacBook Air buyers and for the first month I absolutely loved it. I originally bought the Air after a trip to Japan where I lugged around the 15 inch MacBook Pro on all the trains and subways until my back couldn't take it. The Air's weight and form factor are near-perfect if you commute or travel and when I was in the office a USB hub and power supply were always available.

However, once I started hitting the road, the MacBook Air disappointed on many occasions. Hands down the biggest issue is the terrible battery life. Despite trying every setting, even custom configurations, I was never able to get more than two and one-half hours of battery and in some cases couldn't get more than one hour. I'm not going to dwell on the performance except to say it was weak. I knew what I was getting into with a low-horsepower processor and limited (2GB) memory.

Battery life is embarrassingly bad My first really annoying experience was when I rented Lars and the Real Girl from iTunes and tried to watch it flying from SFO-NYC. However, watching it in full-screen mode made the machine die in about 45 minutes. The movie wasn't great so I figured I would wait until I got to NYC and charge the machine. But, by the time I got there my 24 hours had elapsed and I couldn't finish it.

I had a similar experience flying from San Diego to SFO trying to calm my crazed infant with videos. The damn Air died after 45 minutes of full screen Elmo, which was just ridiculous for everyone around us. … Read more

Why is Spotlight using 98% of my MacBook Air CPU?

UPDATED: August 19, 2008 7:42pm

Problem solved. It was a hanging process that got triggered when I installed a new VPN client. The weird thing was it could only be killed via the command line and didn't show up in the Activity Monitor

This MacBook Air goes from decent, to bad, to terrible, back to decent and now into the ridiculous.

Even when running zero applications there are pieces of Apple software that are doing very strange things. The latest issue is that Spotlight is somehow using 98% of my CPU horsepower and the total percentage used is … Read more