Mobilized

Even before the iPad existed, Steve Job expressed loathing for the stylus.

The whole point was to have a simple device that required no accessories to fiddle with or to lose (take that Palm!) Since then, the iPad and other tablets have also proliferated, and they arguably could benefit even more from accessories than hand held devices might. There are also situations and creative use cases for mobile devices that Jobs might not have thought of back in 2007. Anyone who needs to be mobile but also writes long pieces or sketches and diagrams a lot could undoubtedly boost their comfort and productivity with an accessory or two.

Some of the accessories most often used with mobile devices include an external keyboard, a cable to connect to a projector or big screen, and yes, the lowly stylus. Do you use any of these, even occasionally? Let us know and feel free to share more about your use in the comments.

Select as many as apply.

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For a long time, Google Reader served as the hub of my online life. It’s how I kept up with a certain segment of friends from college, a number of colleagues, and the news more generally. Then, in late 2011, Google announced it would be “updating” Reader, and getting rid of all of the social / sharing features. I was pretty upset, and began looking for a replacement, when one of my friends pointed me to NewsBlur. Long story short, I’ve been hooked ever since.

Now that Google Reader will be “powered down” as of July 2013, a whole new wave of web denizens are left to look for a replacement. Here are just a few of reasons why I love, and hope you’ll consider, using NewsBlur.

A (local!) labor of love

NewsBlur isn’t owned by a large company, or a conglomerate looking to use your personal data for their financial gain. It’s developed by a single person: Samuel Clay, who lives in Cole Valley, just a short walk from UCSF’s campus. After Google gutted Reader’s social components, he gave up his job to work full-time on making NewsBlur the RSS reader of his own dreams. Despite running a one-man show, he does a fantastic job of handling user requests and bug reports. Case in point: when the recent and unexpectedly ginormous wave of Reader evacuees exceeded NewsBlur’s capacity for a couple of days, he worked overtime to get the service back to stability, and to update the site’s structure to prevent it from happening in the future.

Import directly from Google Reader

If you’re moving directly from Reader, you can import your feeds directly into NewsBlur. No need to re-curate. Easy as pie. The (small) catch? If you have more than 64 feeds, you’ll need to purchase a premium account, at $24 / year. Speaking of which …

Sustainable business model

Back when NewsBlur was still pretty new, Sam was considering moving away from the then-new yearly premium model, and instead offering lifetime subscriptions, as the best way to get NewsBlur off the ground as a self-sustaining business at a fair price to the users. Fortunately, Sam’s user base at the time helped him realize that the lifetime subscription model would be disastrous for everyone. As a result, NewsBlur has a free account that is good, but somewhat limited, and a premium account which provides full access to the service for a relatively inexpensive yearly fee. In short: NewsBlur is financially solvent, and not dependent upon the charity of its creator to keep it around.

Feed organization and reading

(click the image for a larger version)

If you follow as many feeds as I do, you’ll probably want to group similar sites together to make the list easier to navigate. NewsBlur makes it easy to organize feeds into folders, and you can see at a glance how many new stories are available in each folder or in an individual feed. You can then choose to read stories just from one feed, from a particular folder, or all stories from all feeds at once. If you are on the bus and don’t have the time to finish a story, you can save it for later review, and if you’re looking for new content, you can view stories shared by the people you follow, or all stories shared by NewsBlurians.

Cross-platform availability

If you want your RSS reader to be available to you anytime and anywhere, NewsBlur is a great choice. Its iOS and Android apps are free, well-supported, and mirror the interface of the web-based client both in interface and in function. The status of your feeds and posts are automatically synchronized across devices, so you can move seamlessly from iPad to laptop to Android phone without losing your place.

Privacy and sharing

If you want your RSS reader to serve as a walled garden, NewsBlur is a good choice. You can set up a free account and simply forgo sharing, or pay for a premium account and use the Privacy options to choose who gets to see your shared items.

If you want to keep your reading activity private not only from other people you know, but from companies who stand to gain from selling you advertising, you can host your own version of NewsBlur — it’s free (as in no cost, and also as in open-source) and available for download on GitHub. You’ll be in complete charge of your stories, your data, your shared items. (The downside is your personal installation will likely be a good deal slower than the centralized servers.)

If you want to share your stories with others, however, and have others share their stories with you, NewsBlur is the best choice on the market. Whether you know them in person or only on the internet, whether they are talking about why my grits are terrible, when Janelle Monae’s new album is coming out, how urban cycling is like the internet, or the potential for solar panels to destroy the utility business model as we know it, NewsBlurians will provide you with direct and easy access to hundreds of the most entertaining, thoughtful, informative stories available online.

I’m not a shill. No, really.

In the interest of full disclosure: I’m not getting kickbacks or free service for trumpeting Sam’s product. So why am I being so persistent on Twitter and elsewhere about getting people to join? What I want is more connections and conversations based not on geography or career field, but around shared ideas. Selfishly, I want a bigger community, with more people sharing and getting into conversations around stories I wouldn’t know about otherwise. UCSF is full of smart, creative, fun, interesting people that would bring a lot to, and I think get a lot from, the NewsBlur community.

Give it a try!

I could write about NewsBlur for another 1000 words … but hopefully by now I’ve provided you with at least one reason to give it a try. Just go to the NewsBlur homepage, check out the interface by clicking “Try out NewsBlur,” or sign up for your own account — free or premium — by clicking “Sign up or Log in.”

Have you tried NewsBlur? Did you like it, or find it lacking? Want to share a link to your Blurblog (i.e. your curated list of shared stories — mine is here)? Leave a note in the comments!

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Have an iPad? Help us evaluate a new research tool that is being considered for possible subscription. The libraries of the University of California are running a trial of a new app called BrowZine. It allows you to browse and monitor many academic journals right from your iPad. To facilitate research, articles discovered through BrowZine can easily be sent to Zotero, Dropbox, iAnnotate or several other services to integrate with your existing workflow.

To learn more, check out this short video:

If you are affiliated with UC, your feedback on BrowZine would be helpful. Please fill out this short survey after you’ve given it a test drive. To do so, search for “BrowZine” in the App Store and download. When initially launching BrowZine, select your campus from the drop down list. This trial access ends April 30, 2013.

A few things to note about BrowZine

• The app is free, but your library must subscribe to both BrowZine and the journals for you to get content (with the exception of some open access titles)
• The content is tied to the device. That is, you can’t log into a personal BrowZine account from a different iPad or the web.
• There is an Android app coming this summer

Competitors

There are some similar apps and services out there that do allow access from multiple devices. Some are more visual and have been compared to Flipboard. Some of them also integrate journal updates with relevant Twitter or newspaper feeds and trending topics.

• docwise
• Read
• Docphin

Let us know if you use any of these, and how they compare to BrowZine.

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Having experienced some chronic digestive issues, I’ve tried various methods of tracking what I eat and how it makes me feel, including pen and paper, Google spreadsheet, and a web application geared mostly for the desktop.

I figured out some of my food sensitivities, but I’ve been looking for an Android app that would let me track foods more conveniently and might do some analysis to make sense of the still sometimes mysterious and unpredictable Stomach Troubles.

There are many apps for counting calories, but finding one for tracking allergies and sensitivities is more difficult. I tried out two apps to track symptoms from food and other triggers. (Neither of the apps below tracks calories or portion size.)

With so many people experiencing allergies, gluten sensitivity, lactose intolerance, irritable bowel syndrome, and other issues, the following discussion may be helpful for you, as well as for patients you might see in clinic. And while I’m focusing on food sensitivities, these apps could really be used to track the occurrence and severity of any symptom.

I want a food journal that:

• has a user-friendly, intuitive interface. Logging my food and symptoms should be easy.
• is fast. I don’t want to wait a long time for the app to load, and I want to be able to use it without a network connection.
• lets me export my food diary to show to a healthcare provider.
• analyzes my symptoms to detect patterns

Ideally, I’d like to be able to enter data via desktop computer as well as mobile device. Sometimes it’s just more convenient to enter foods with a keyboard. But I didn’t find this in either of the apps I tried.

mySymptoms Food Diary ($2.99; Android, iPhone, and iPad)

mySymptoms has detailed symptom analysis, is fairly easy to use, and comes with a large database of foods.

However, the user interface could be improved, it’s not free, and — most  importantly — I’m still not sure how much useful information it will give me. So as I’m writing this, I can’t endorse it 100%.

mySymptoms has many good features:

• Pre-existing database of foods, symptoms, and medications. You can edit, add, and delete items.
• Individual ingredients can be grouped under other food items, which is important for tracking sensitivities to particular ingredients.
• Complex analysis to detect triggers and patterns for various symptoms. Symptom intensity is factored in, and you can adjust the time period for analysis.
• Does not require a network connection.
• Lets you track stress, environmental triggers (like smoke or pollen), exercise, and more.
• Notes can be added to foods and events.
• The app is well-supported. It seems to be updated frequently, and when I submitted a bug report, I got a response the next day.

But I do have some complaints:

• It takes a while to get a hang of the interface. It’s not the most intuitive and doesn’t make good use of my phone’s Back button.
• You can export your food diary, but can’t export the analyzed results.
• Many of the pre-loaded foods are not broken down by ingredient. For example, yogurt should contain milk, tea should contain caffeine, and bread should contain wheat.

Also, there are a lot of somewhat obscure items in the database, but I was surprised that some common foods are missing. The database definitely has a British feel — when was the last time you ate bloater,  Wensleydale cheese, or a Knickerbocker glory? There are no brand names or fast foods, which may be inconvenient for some users.

I’ve tracked my food for three weeks, and I’ve gotten some interesting leads, but no conclusions. mySymptoms reports some surprising “suspect” foods which I hadn’t considered, so that’s promising. I know getting results will take time, but at this point it still feels like a matter of faith that all the tracking will pay off. The testimonials on the mySymptoms website make me hopeful.

I don’t have a true food allergy, so I’d be interested to know how well mySymptoms can detect something more clear-cut, like celiac disease or a true allergy.

Allergy Journal (free; Android, iPhone, and iPad)

I wanted to be able to recommend a free app, so I also tried Allergy Journal. This app helps you keep a food diary and lets you review a) what happens after you eat a particular food, or b) what you ate prior to a particular symptom.

Honestly, I didn’t spend much time using its analysis tool, because I found it inconvenient to enter my food using this app:

• There’s no pre-existing database of foods.
• You can’t organize foods by their ingredients or group foods into meals.
• There’s no running list of what you’ve entered for a particular meal. To confirm what you’ve entered, you have to navigate to a separate section of the app, which is inconvenient.
• When I entered a new food, the current time did not always display.
• The interface is a little clunky in general.

I did like that there’s no need to categorize your food as a particular meal or snack. Foods are simply organized by the time you ate them.

The symptom analysis is more simplistic than in mySymptoms, but during my brief review, it functioned well:

• You can adjust the analysis window for reports.
• Export your food diary and symptom reports in PDF or Excel format.

Options for iPhones

While I only evaluated Android apps, Food Allergy Detective ($3.99) looks promising, as reviewed in What’s the Best iPhone Food Diary App?

I would also recommend trying the iOS version of mySymptoms, which has some additional functionality not available for Android.

Conclusions

In this case, it seems like you get what you pay for, as mySymptoms is definitely more robust and sophisticated than the free alternative. If I can determine a particular food or two that’s causing problems, mySymptoms will be well worth the three bucks, and hopefully, the time involved.

I didn’t find a lot of apps to try (and my time was limited, as well as my patience for using multiple trackers at once!). So if you have an additional app to recommend, I’m all ears!

Images of mySymptoms Diary (at top left) and Results, SkyGazer Labs Ltd.
Allergy Journal images, IBKR Analytics LLC.

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Are you a hardcore Gmail user? The kind with multiple Gmail accounts, who compulsively archives, stars, and labels, and who relies on priority inbox and search to find your important messages? If you use an Android device, then you’re probably content. But if you’re a power Gmail user with an iPhone or iPad, then you might consider switching from Apple’s built-in Mail app to the Gmail app for iOS.

Overview of Gmail 2.0 for iOS

 

• Search through all of your mail with the aid of text predictions
• Easily archive, label, star, report spam, or delete messages
• Switch between up to 5 accounts
• Receive notifications of new emails quickly
• See profile pictures and read your mail in threaded conversations
• Auto-complete contact names as you type from your Google contacts or your phone
• Respond to Google Calendar invites and Google+ posts right from the app

Sounds great, right? The app does a good job of capturing the key functions — as well as the look and feel — of Gmail in the web browser. For the most part, any Gmail fan should appreciate the features listed above, all which work well…that is, if you can forgive the app’s sluggish speed. Although the email notifications come through quickly, loading the actual messages can be painfully slow.

In addition to its clunky speed, the Gmail app has some design issues to work out. There is no “next” button, so you can’t easily switch between messages; you have to return to the inbox to access a new email. And when you pinch and zoom, email text doesn’t reflow as it should.

Is it worth switching from Mail to Gmail for iOS?

You should consider switching to Gmail if:

• you regularly search your archived emails in Gmail
• you heavily rely on Gmail’s advanced features — labels, priority inbox, undo actions, and the option to archive or delete a particular message
• you receive a lot of Google calendar invitations through your email account
• you want the familiarity of Gmail on your mobile device

You should stick to the Mail app if:

• you dislike waiting for incoming messages to load (Gmail for iOS can be frustratingly slow, especially in low reception areas)
• you need email text to flow properly when you pinch and zoom
• you want to quickly flip between emails in your inbox (Gmail offers no “next” button and its offline caching is unreliable)

For me, it comes down to having a seamless experience between my desktop computer and my mobile device, and so I choose the Gmail app. But I definitely look forward to future enhancements that address the problems listed above.

Have you tried Gmail for iOS? If so, what did you think?

Update: As of March 27, 2013, the Gmail app for iOS allows users to flip between messages within the inbox. For details, see the Gmail blog.

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Battery life is something you can never get enough of. Every click, swipe, tweet and song draws life from an ever-diminishing pool of watts in your pocket or bag. Here’s a handful of ways you can extend the usable time of your gadgets.

Laptop Upgrade your hard drive to a SSD

You can replace your laptop’s hard drive or make sure your next laptop is equipped with a Solid State Drive (SSD), which use a negligible amount of power and are much faster. Regular hard drives are like a record player: they use a motor to keep a physical disk spinning nearly all the time. As a result, a hard drive uses more power and generates more heat than a SSD, which is like a gigantic, lightning-fast USB flash drive. The faster response time also means you’re wasting less time and battery power waiting for the computer to process tasks. The main drawback is the cost: ~$1/GB for a SSD, compared to ~$0.15/GB for a hard drive. If you’re upgrading your existing laptop, you’ll need to reinstall the OS & applications and transfer your data as well.

Runtime gain: Moderate
Cost: High

Buy an Extended/Slice Battery

You can buy extended and/or “slice” batteries for many PC laptops, which can more than double the battery capacity. Unfortunately they also significantly increase the weight of the laptop and add to the size. Most extended batteries protrude past the edge of the laptop, and “slice” batteries cover the bottom of the laptop and increase the overall thickness.

Runtime gain: High
Cost: Moderate

Optimize Charging for Battery Lifespan

Most laptop manufacturers set their laptops to continuously charge the battery while plugged in to AC power, even when the battery is at 100%. A rechargeable battery’s capacity will naturally decrease with age and use, but continuous charging can drastically hasten the aging process. It doesn’t affect day-to-day battery use, but it can make a big difference when your battery can only hold half of it’s original charge after a year. This provides the manufacturer a chance to sell you a replacement battery or a battery warranty. Notable exceptions to this are Lenovo and Apple, which started optimizing for battery lifespan once they switched to non-removable batteries. If your battery is at 100% and you plan on using it near an AC outlet for a while, you can remove the battery to stop charging. Just be sure to save your work frequently and don’t pull the power cable out!

Runtime gain: Low
Cost: Free

Lower the Screen Brightness

Screen brightness is usually the single largest draw of power on a laptop. You can reduce it to the minimum that is comfortable to minimize the power usage.

Runtime gain: Moderate
Cost: Free

Buy a Travel charger

You can purchase a travel/compact charger for most laptops, which are usually far easier to carry with you on a day-to-day basis. You also get the added convenience of not having to unplug the regular charger every time you go out. Some have a cigarette-lighter attachment so you can charge your laptop while you drive. You can typically find a travel/compact charger from your laptop manufacturer’s website, and they’re around $60-$90.

Runtime gain: High (if you are near AC outlets)
Cost: Moderate

Use the Laptop Lockers in the Parnassus Library

The Parnassus Library has a set of laptop lockers in CL240. Each locker drawer has 2 AC outlets. Just bring your laptop, charger, and a padlock. You can charge your laptop (or other mobile device) securely while you eat lunch, go to the gym, or run errands.

Each locker has 2 AC plugs.

Runtime gain: High
Cost: Free

Turn Off Wifi

For times when you don’t need to use the internet – for instance if you are taking notes or working on a paper – turn off wifi. Wifi is a relatively small drain on power, but it adds up over time. You can always turn it on briefly if you need to look something up, plus it’s a small discouragement against distractions like Facebook, Twitter, or cuteoverload.com

Runtime gain: Low
Cost: Free

Remove Your DVD Drive

If your laptop has a removable DVD drive, you can remove it for slight reductions in power drain and weight . On some laptops (such as the Dell Latitude or Lenovo Thinkpad series) you can swap the DVD drive for an extra battery, which adds a moderate amount of battery capacity for a minor increase in weight.

Runtime gain: Low (DVD removal) / Moderate (battery replacement)
Cost: Free (DVD removal) / Moderate (battery replacement)

Phone Buy a Compact Charger and spare USB Cable

You can buy pocket-sized USB chargers and extra USB cables for less than $5 each.  Amazon.com and Monoprice.com are good sources for both. Most non-Apple smartphones use a Micro USB cable, and third-party Apple charging cables work just the same as the official ones.The brand of mobile device doesn’t need to match the charger, as pretty much all USB chargers are interchangeable. If possible, get a charger that will put out 2A (amps), which is 4x the power a regular computer USB port provides. Even if you aren’t near an AC outlet, the spare USB cable will let you charge your phone from your laptop in a pinch.

Runtime gain: High
Cost: Low

Use Wifi Instead of Cellular Data

When you’re on campus, you can turn on wifi and use UCSFwpa instead of your cellular data service. Most 4G phones released prior to 2012 have less efficient 4G radios (the HTC Thunderbolt is a notable example), and wifi uses less power than 3G/4G cellular data. The UCSFwpa wifi network is also much faster, so you will waste less time and power waiting for things to load.

On an iPhone, you can turn cellular data on/off in Settings > General > Celluar

Runtime gain: Moderate
Cost: Free

Stop Apps that Run in the Background

Some apps stay running when you aren’t actively using them – mapping apps are one usual culprit because they tend to keep the GPS system on.

• You can end apps on an iPhone by double-clicking the home button and then tapping the on an app.
• On Android 4.0 and later you can hold the Home key or tap the button to show a list of all apps, and then swipe them left or right to close them.

Automatic task-killing apps aren’t really necessary with Android 4.0 and later due to improved application management and in some cases can actually reduce battery life.  Some Android phones come with apps that you can’t uninstall; if you never use them, you can disable them in Settings > Application manager.

Disabling an app prevents it from running.

Runtime gain: Low to Moderate
Cost: Free

Minimize Screen Brightness

Just as with laptops, the screen backlight is usually the largest single consumer of battery power on a smartphone and this is even more pronounced on tablets. You can turn the brightness down to the minimum you need to conserve battery power.

Runtime gain: Moderate
Cost: Free

Buy a Spare/Extended Battery and a Battery Charger

For phones with removable batteries, a spare or extended battery can extend your run time by double or more. To simplify the recharging process, you can also purchase a separate battery charger (as opposed to a device charger) so you can charge your spare battery separately from the one in your phone. You can also buy an external battery pack, which is helpful for devices with non-removable batteries. Some provide you with a USB charging slot and you can also find external batteries molded into an iPhone case, like those made by morphie.

Runtime gain: High
Cost: Moderate

Install a Battery Monitoring App to Unveil Thirsty Apps

I use a free Android app called Battery Mix to keep an eye on estimated run time and also see which apps are using the most power. It also will give you an estimate of how much run time you have left, how long a full charge will take, and the power usage of individual apps or processes.

BatteryMix battery history and per-process power usage

Android 4.0 and above also has decent power use tracking in Settings > Battery

Runtime gain: Moderate
Cost: Free

There are 3 basic ways to get more life out of your gadgets: make them faster, reduce the battery “burn rate”, and charge them whenever you can. If you’ve got a tip for getting more use out of your gadget, please share it in the comments below. Likewise, let us know if you try any of these tips and see a noticeable gain in useful life of your device.

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