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Tuesday, May 8, 2012
Top Stories from the last 24 hours
How to Make Your iPhone Read Your Mind
May 8th, 2012Top StoryHow to Make Your iPhone Read Your MindBy Whitson Gordon
Every day I manually turn down my phone's brightness when it gets dark outside—the auto-dimming just doesn't work for me. I'm sick of turning on Bluetooth every time I get in my car, and turning it off to save battery when I'm everywhere else. I've also been woken up in the middle of the night by someone "liking" my post on Facebook one too many times, and I'd like a way to automatically silence it when I'm sleeping (and, more importantly, remember to un-silence itself when I wake up). I turn on the passcode lock on my iPhone b/c I care about security, but more than anything, I'm sick of entering it when my phone is in a secure place—that is, in my own home. I want these things to happen automatically, so I don't have to worry about them. Below, I'll walk through five different ways you can make your phone read your mind, though each is just a small example of the things you can do with any given app. I'll show you how to:
You'll need to be jailbroken for this to work, since it's essentially Tasker for iPhone—don't worry though, it's super easy to do. And it's well worth it, because when you're done, you'll be able to automate just about anything with your iPhone. If you have an Android phone, be sure to check out how to turn your Android phone into a fully-automated superphone with Tasker instead. Turn Off Passcode Lock When You're At HomeHaving a passcode on your iPhone can be good for security, but do you really need it when you're just sitting at home? Here's how to turn it off whenever you're at home, and automatically turn it back on when you leave. What you get: Automatically turn off your iPhone's passcode when connected to the Wi-Fi network(s) of your choice.
You can also turn off the PIN lock when you're playing music, charging, or in airplane mode. It'll automatically reactivate your passcode when you leave the house, too, which is convenient. Turn Off Notifications When You Place Your Phone Face DownYour phone's mute switch can be useful, but I often find I forget to switch it back when I want the phone to ring. Instead of using it to silence your phone, you can use an app to automatically turn off notifications when you put your phone face down. Here's how. What you get: Automatically put your phone in airplane mode when face down.
That's it! When you place your phone face down, wait a few seconds and your phone will emit a sound letting you know it's going into airplane mode. You can turn this sound off, tell it to go into airplane mode based on the time of day, increase or decrease the sensitivity of the accelerometer, enable on AC only, and more. The one thing you have to be careful of with iSleepWell is that your phone may go face down more often than you realize. When you put it in your pocket, for example, it'll go into airplane mode whenever you sit down if you have the screen facing toward you (putting it in your pocket the opposite way fixes this). If you carry it around in a backpack, you'll want to be similarly careful it doesn't go face down. This is why I like to keep the sound enabled; it lets me know if my phone's silencing itself accidentally. Overall though, it works pretty well, and assures I won't forget to unmute my phone when I wake up in the morning—since all I have to do is pick it up and start using it. Turn Bluetooth On When You Dock Your PhoneI only use Bluetooth when I'm in my car, so I'd rather not have it sitting around eating up battery when I don't need it. Here's how to automatically turn Bluetooth on when you dock your phone, and turn it off when you undock it. What you get: Automatically turn Bluetooth on when you plug your phone into AC power.
From now on, whenever you plug in your phone, it'll automatically turn on the Bluetooth service and connect to any known devices (like your car or a Bluetooth headset). Note that if you want it to turn Bluetooth off when you disconnect it, you'll have to repeat the above steps, but pressing "Disconnected" in step 2. Note that there's a tiny quirk with this method: Activator doesn't actually know whether to turn Bluetooth on or off when you plug in your phone, it just toggles it. So, if you had Bluetooth turned on for some reason when your phone wasn't plugged in, it would turn it off when you docked it. It'll give you a little popup every time it toggles the setting, though, so just pay attention and make sure it's doing what you want it to do. Otherwise you may accidentally find yourself without Bluetooth when you want it. If you don't use Bluetooth, you can obviously use this same feature to toggle any other setting when you plug in your phone. You can also set Activator to open up a specific app when you plug in, reboot the device, activate voice control, and more. You can also set it to perform an action when you plug in your headphones, as well as assign actions to a number of different button presses. Play around with Activator to see all the cool stuff you can do. Turn Off Battery-Draining Services You Don't Need (and Perform Other Actions) Whenever You're at HomeYour phone has a lot of settings you don't need when you're at home, like Location and Bluetooth. Instead of manually turning them off every time you walk through the door, you can set your iPhone to automatically turn them off whenever you're home. Here's how. What you get: Automatically turn Bluetooth on when you plug your phone into AC power. There's a trick to installing SBProfiles to get everything working as it should, so if you're installing it for the first time, use this quick guide before you start making profiles. When you're ready, here's how to turn off battery-hogging services:
To turn thosesettings back on when you leave, you'll need to create another profile (called something like "Not Home"), choose "Leaving Wi-Fi" under Trigger, and drag those services to "On" under Toggles. Obviously, this isn't the only thing you can do with SBProfile's Wi-Fi trigger feature. You could also use it to silence your phone when you're at the office, for example. Play around with the settings to see what else you can do. Turn Down the Brightness at Night (and Perform Other Actions on a Schedule)The iPhone's auto-brightness setting isn't very good. I find that it's always too bright at night, but if I turn it down, it stays pretty dark during the day. Free app Flux will help you make the screen less harsh at night, but your phone will still be pretty bright. Here's how to change your brightness on a schedule. What you get: Automatically change your brightness (and perform other tasks) according to a schedule. There's a trick to installing SBProfiles to get everything working as it should, so if you're installing it for the first time, use this quick guide before you start making profiles. When you're ready, here's how to tweak your brightness on a schedule:
Again, if you want to set the brightness high in the morning, you'll have to create a new profile called "Daytime" and repeat the process, setting the brightness to a higher level than in the "Evening" setting. There are a lot of other useful things you can do with SBProfile's scheduling, too. You can put it in airplane mode when you're sleeping to turn off notifications, reboot your phone once a day to clear out active apps that slow it down, and more. Play around with the settings to see what other fun stuff you can cook up. And, if you don't like SBProfiles, the $6.99 iScheduler does a lot of the same things, though it can also send SMS messages and launch apps on a schedule, too. Those are just a few things you can try with some of the great mind-reading apps out there. It's not quite as powerful as Tasker for Android—I still wish there were an app that could perform actions based on my location—but you can automate quite a few things with only a schedule and Wi-Fi detection. Got any profiles you love to use, or other automation apps we missed? Share them with us in the comments. Photo by olly .  |
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The First Facebook Game from the Creator of NBA Jam Is... Bubble Safari
May 8th, 2012Top StoryThe First Facebook Game from the Creator of NBA Jam Is... Bubble SafariBy Stephen Totilo
1) You might be a fan of NBA Jam and NFL Blitz fun, over-the-top arcade games masterminded by a guy named Mark Turmell. If you had to guess what his first game for his new bosses at FarmVille juggernaut Zynga would be about, you'd probably guess "something about sports" and you'd be wrong. But to you, we'd point out, you can be "on fire" in this new game—this, uh, evolution of bubble-popping classic Bust-a-Move called Bubble Safari. 2) You might be a fan of Zynga games, in which case you're used to games that you can play for free on Facebook and keep on paying or waiting in order to go further. Uh-uh. The rules are changing with Bubble Safari. Zynga and Turmell are calling this a Zynga Arcade game. You can play as long as you'd like, as long as you keep winning. It'll cost energy points to play each new round of the game, but you get your energy back if you win the round. No more waiting for a recharge or paying to hurry it up. 3) The third option might be that you think Facebook games are stupid or a scam or something. You might disdain this stuff. Well, consider the following: Bubble Safari is Turmell and co.'s acknowledged riff on Bust-a-Move. They take the classic shoot-similarly-colored-bubbles-at-other-bubbles mechanic and add in special trick shots and an NBA Jam-style "On Fire" mode. (He says to us: "Even though the genre has been around for long time there is so much room for innovation: Different ways to scroll, new hazards... when I thought about bringing the boost bubbles [think: trick shots] and the on-fire mode so you can go into the rack and do massive destruction and combine that with match-3, I think that is really magical.") "I think it's important for players to lose and be challenged," Turmell told me. "That's unlike a typical social game." Bubble Safari, skeptics, is the first Zynga game, they say runs at 60 frames per second. It is indeed designed for skilled players and—you might like this best—it doesn't coddle you. You can't buy your way to success. Yes, Zynga will sell you bonus bubbles to shoot if you've fired all the pre-set bubbles that were offered in a level, but the game will only let you make one of these purchases per level. Or if you fail a level but want to spend energy to continue? You can only do that once. "I think it's important for players to lose and be challenged," Turmell told me. "That's unlike a typical social game." God bless this man. Zynga won't say if the game is a response to the super-popular Bubble Witch Saga, which has been tearing it up on Facebook with its own riff on Bust-a-Move. Turmell only points out that he joined Zynga last August (he'd been at EA Sports). What he will say is that this isn't it for him. He's loved Bust-a-Move for a long time, but we can still think of him as a sports guy, too. "It's certainly in my core," he says of making sports games. "That's definitely something that's in my future." It's just not in his tomorrow. Tomorrow is launch day for Bubble Safari. If you're on Facebook then, give it a shot.  |
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Creative Destruction: How Advertising Is Swallowing the Creative Class
May 8th, 2012Top StoryCreative Destruction: How Advertising Is Swallowing the Creative ClassBy Hamilton Nolan
"I think creative people are interesting," she clarified. "I think creative departments are shit." Well. Can you imagine? With that, fellow panelist Gerry Graf—the only man in a 100-yard radius wearing a tie (with tennis shoes, to be fair)—declared "I'm done!" and walked off stage right, with a wave. At first it seemed that he had to be joking, but he didn't come back. He was so offended by the statement "creative departments are shit" that he stormed off the stage, in a huff, never to return. There was a bit of nervous laughter, and the panel wrapped up without him. Impolite, yes. But he had taken a stand on behalf of his cherished principle: creativity is not something to be mocked. Gerry Graff makes Skittles commercials. Advertising likes to speak of itself as a "creative" industry. Whether you buy this or think it's bullshit is largely a philosophical matter. Rather than forge ahead with endless bickering on the subject as usual, I decided to see what advertising's finest creative minds had to say for themselves. As your connected young brand influencer friends have no doubt told you, it is "Creative Week" in New York City right now—a weeklong fiesta of panels, open houses, and awards shows, all honoring the "creativity" of the advertising industry. Who can go to all of it? Not me, god willing. I chose two of the most creative-centric panels, in order to hear from the Finest Creative Minds of Our Generation (Advertising Edition) just what all this creativity really means to people whose job is, fundamentally, to sell beer. The first was "The Creative Suite," a "deep look at creativity and the Chief Creative Officers who live it every day." Every day. This was "the equivalent of the 1927 Yankees of creatives," according to our host. At the City Winery on Varick Street yesterday afternoon, the crowd was not quite sparse, but not quite what you'd call a crowd. Crowded enough for a panel discussion, at least. It was the type of crowd that would be referred to as "hip" by, say, Forbes magazine, a smattering of young people and t-shirts amid the grownups, a distinct prevalence of open collars, and virtually no ties. One audience member, William "Spaceman" Patterson (who had held a vague series of television, music, and advertising jobs) chatted with me about the future of the music business, in which everyone will need "a story—real or concocted." The panel's moderator was Facebook's Carolyn Everson, a small tan woman with the bright white hair of the Khaleesi princess on Game of Thrones. The five creative guys on the panel represented the sort of outward diversity that the ad industry achieves so well: the bald guy, the Indian guy, the guy with dreads, the lovably gruff grownup white guy. The bro position was played by Dave Clemans of an agency called Taxi, whose adult frat-boy look and constant stream of empty positive affirmations would have qualified him as the heartthrob counselor at a teen summer camp. "It comes down to understanding people," Dave said. "It's really cool... Steve and I were just rapping about this last night..." Dave said. "I said this before and I really believe it: culture is everything," Dave said. "If there is any new craft in the industry, innovation is the new craft," Dave said. "It's about assembling the right team—the 'Make It Happen' people," Dave said. "Ideas are acorns," Dave said. "They're only powerful because that acorn becomes an oak tree." "The biggest award I want is my kids' smiles," Dave said, before I stopped writing down what Dave said. Advertising rhetoric is notable in that it uses the language of art to describe the activities of business. I interpret this as the purest sort of propaganda, though it could more generously be interpreted as a sort of subconscious maneuver to invest a dreary business activity—selling things—with a more noble and attractive sheen. The panelists talked endlessly about the "culture" of their various agencies, an interesting word choice to replace "H.R. activities." Talk of advertising agency employees coming up with ideas for advertisements to help make money for clients is verboten; the process is one of "creatives" manifesting "creativity." In this world, that creativity exists in a bubble, allowing it to be admired and marveled at by peers without making the dreary connection to its actual societal function. The Most Interesting Man In The World, yes; the fluctuations in the market cap of Heineken International, no. "The worst thing for a creative person is to work with people who think they are, but aren't, that good," said Lee Garfinkel, chief creative officer at the massive agency Euro RSCG. I can think of far worse things for creative people—being unable to make a living off their creativity, for example, or being forced to channel their creativity into marketing—but this should be understood as the ad industry version of creativity. It's a $153 billion industry in America, and it's getting larger every year. It requires a constant infusion of new talent to keep the machine running. And the ad industry, it is clear, is waiting to scoop up all of the failed starving artists when they get tired of starving. On the topic of recruiting new ad talent, the dreadlocked Jimmy Smith (who constantly referred to ads, ad colleagues, tech products and many other decidedly non-dope things as "dope") said, "If they aren't in schools, we gotta go to the poetry lounge, or the kid putting up an art piece." Watch out, artists. If you think Corporate America is watching you, you're right. Galapagos Art Space in Dumbo is more suited to a Martian poetry slam than a panel discussion at 9 a.m. It's dark, with purple mood lighting, and the seating consists of large round leather-backed booths linked by metal walkways, forcing you to network, whether you like it or not. Someone spilled coffee on someone else by the free breakfast area. "I know how much blow you were doing in the 90s," someone said to someone else. No matter. "We're making a bet on Brooklyn," the Creative Week organizer said this morning. "We think Brooklyn is a creative hub." (Watch out, Brooklyn.) This morning's panel was "Creative Renegades," meaning people who had peeled off from large agencies to be creative in their own firm, or somewhere else. Black leather-pantsed Colleen Decourcy, from Socialistic, and Ty Montague, from co:collective, both represented the socialist language that weirdly permeates this non-socialist industry. Colleen the Socialist, ironically, is not a fan of social media, because she thinks it's still "nascent" and doesn't really have its shit together yet. "I'm sure the first thing that came out of the Gutenberg press wasn't that great," she said. "The Bible?" asked the startled moderator. "No, I'm sure there was a lot of crap before then..." "No, I think the Bible was the first thing." There was quite a bit of talk about various agency business models which has no direct relevance here except to highlight the fact that Creative Week consists at its core of businesspeople discussing business. "There's $100 billion worth of opportunity in the marketplace," said Jae Goodman, the boyish creative director at CAA. His jeans were neatly rolled up at the bottom, exposing several inches of sock. As an example of the ease with which he's able to execute amazing creative ideas in his current job, he told a story about getting Willie Nelson to cover Coldplay on behalf of Chipotle. To trump that, Ty Montague told a story (which sounds apocryphal but is apparently true) about the ad agency JWT inventing the grilled cheese sandwich in order to sell more Kraft cheese. Nifty, sure. The grilled cheese sandwich: the pinnacle of the advertising industry's creative history. I'm willing to accept that. [Image by Jim Cooke]  |
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