I currently don’t have many words to share, but there’s a part of me that truly wants to cry.  Steve was a creative inspiration to me.  His attitude and rebellion proved to me that not following the status quo can actually lead to success…that you don’t have to be a mindless robot to make it in this world.  I think he did that for a lot of people.  My generation doesn’t have very many public-figure role models and he was one.

The picture above is Apple’s front page, and I just felt like I should post it.  I want this screenshot to be a part of my site’s archives.  It just seems like it belongs here.  My thoughts and prayers go out to Steve’s family, friends, and the users of his products around the world who he has affected so deeply.  You truly will be missed…

TapTips is something I’ve been wanting to do for quite a while, and now it’s finally time to do it ladies and gentlemen, so grab your iPhones and get ready for the first installment of TapTips!

Are you texts messages boring?  Wanna spice them up a bit?  Wanna use funny little faces, like the ones above, and other cool symbols to help you get your message across to people you’re messaging?  Of course you do!  Plus, it can be a real time-saver sometimes.  Instead of typing out “I love you” to your special schmoopie-woopie-honeybun, just send an Emoji of a smiley blowing a kiss, or one that’s been blinded by your one-and-only-true-everlasting-love!  If this sounds like something you’d like to be able to do, follow the easy instructions below to activate Emoji on your iPhone…  (Oh yeah, by the way, this will generally only work when messaging another iPhone.  Some websites support Emoji, and some other smartphones do too, but the only 100% sure thing is that it will work in iPhone-to-iPhone messaging.  This also works on the iPad, if you have one of those also.)  Here we go!

Step 1

Tap on the Settings app on your main Home screen.

Step 2

Now tap on the General section on the Settings screen.

Step 3

Now you’re in the General section.  Scroll down the page a bit, and tap on Keyboard.

Step 4

Now tap on International Keyboards at the bottom of the screen.

Step 5

Now tap on Add New Keyboard.

Step 6

You’re now on the Add New Keyboard screen.  Scroll down a bit, and then tap on Emoji.

Step 7

After tapping on Emoji in Step 6, your iPhone (or iPad) is going to automatically go back to the Keyboards screen, where you will now see Emoji, along with any other keyboards you have activated (English is activated by default here in the U.S.)

Step 8

Have fun!!  Now, whenever you use your keyboard, there will always be a small globe icon in the bottom left corner of the keyboard, and that’s where all of your nifty new Emoji live!  Just tap on that globe and send smileys to your heart’s content.     Also, take note of the different categories of Emoji that are along the very bottom of the screen.  The category between the globe and the smiley face that looks like a clock:  That’s where your most used Emoji will be, so they’re easy to get to.  One other thing:  Notice the small grey dots just above all those smiley faces?  That shows you what page you’re on inside the category you’ve selected.  Just swipe left or right between pages.

Ok, that’s it, you’re ready to go!  Thanks for reading, I hope I taught you something fun, and check back often, as there will be more TapTips coming soon!

Here are some more examples of Emoji that you will now have available: 

Yeah, I know, this tends to be a Mac-centric blog, but today I’ve got a Windows XP tip for ya.  

After sending my dad a link to an interactive infographic about the internet’s lifetime up until now (which by the way is really cool, here’s the link to my post about it:  http://evolutionofweb.appspot.com/ ), he mentioned that he couldn’t view the page in Internet Explorer 8.  (This also means YOU can’t see that page in IE8 and earlier, I don’t know about IE9, as I didn’t test it.  If you’re using any version Internet Explorer, do yourself a favor and check out Firefox, Google Chrome, or even Apple’s own Safari.  I’m not bashing Microsoft, but they are notorious for not adhering to web standards, which means you can’t see the web as it is supposed to be seen, in many instances.  It also has security holes that tend to go unfixed.  It’s usually the first browser to get hacked at a yearly hacker conference where they test these sorts of things.  Oh yeah, and webpages will probably load faster using a browser other than IE.  I won’t go in-depth on why this is, as that is a well-researched rant for a different time…)  Another caveat to that Evolution Of The Web link:  It doesn’t seem to work very well with mobile browsers.  I didn’t really expect that it would, but it was suggested that I update this post to warn people about it, just in case.  Thanks for the heads-up, mystery reader!  

So anyway, my dad was asking my opinion on other browsers, as he had noticed some things about IE that he didn’t like and was actually considering ditching IE to go with something else.  By the way, the main thing he found that he didn’t like:  IE doesn’t support color management.  If you’re a photographer, this means you will not see photos as they are supposed to look.  This can result in some fairly major color shifts.  For my Firefox friends:  Firefox does support color management.  Good for you, FF user!!

As we were checking out the different browsers on his computer, we noticed that fonts weren’t looking right at all on webpages.  The worst was with Firefox.  You could see all the individual pixels that make up each letter and number.  It was fugly!!  I knew this wasn’t right and that there had to be a fix.  There is a fix, and it will make your fonts look better system-wide, meaning no matter what you’re doing on your computer, your fonts will look much better.  So, enough of this backstory, right?  You want the lowdown on how to make all them pretty numbers and letters look beautiful on your fancy computer machine thingy.  So here ya go….

1. Right-click on an empty spot on your desktop, then choose Properties from the menu that just popped up.
2. Now choose the Appearance tab at the top of the Properties window that you just opened.
3. Now click on the Effects button near the bottom right of that window.
4. You want to go to where it says “Use the following method to smooth edges of screen fonts”.
5. Make sure that the checkbox has a checkmark in it, then click on the dropdown menu next to it (it probably says Standard in that box right now), and choose ClearType.
6. Now click on OK on the bottom of the Effects window.
7. Now click on Apply on the bottom of the Properties window.  (If Apply is not an option, don’t freak out, just click on OK.)
8. The Properties window will still be there after clicking Apply, so now, click on OK.

All done!  Now all the fonts in your browsers will look nice and clean, and so will fonts in every other facet of your computer.  Look at the icons you have on your dekstop….do the fonts under the icons look different?  They should.  If you want, go through the process I just explained and compare what your fonts look like with and without ClearType.  Mucho improvement, right?  Yup!  Now I just helped you make your Windows experience just that much nicer!  How nice of me!  

If you’d like some more information about how fonts are rendered and how font smoothing works on different computer operating systems and in different web browsers, here’s a great article that gets pretty in-depth and will explain it all:  http://szafranek.net/works/articles/font-smoothing-explained/

More information on why you shouldn’t use Internet Explorer:

http://leslieposton.hubpages.com/hub/SayNoToIE

http://www.zdnet.com/blog/networking/five-reasons-not-to-8220upgrade-8221-to-windows-internet-explorer-9/817

http://www.worsttech.com/products/why-internet-explorer-sucks-1102887.html

http://www.iesucks.info/

This is a really cool interactive infographic that shows you the lifetime of the internet up until now.  You can click on pretty much everything on the page and it will give you more detailed info.  If you consider yourself a Nerd or a Geek, you need to click on this link (you can also click on the picture above).  If you don’t click on it, your Geek Cred card will be revoked immediately.  Enjoy!!  

FYI:  If you’re using Internet Explorer 8 or earlier, this page will not work in your browser.  I don’t know about IE9, I didn’t have the opportunity to test it.  For that matter, if you’re using any version Internet Explorer, do yourself a favor and check out Firefox, Google Chrome, or even Apple’s own Safari.  I’m not bashing Microsoft, but IE is known for not complying with web standards, which means you, my dear reader, could be using a browser that is both unsafe and could be causing you to miss out on cool things on the web that IE just won’t work with.  Give one, or all, of those other browsers a try….I think you’ll like what you see.  Oh yeah, and your webpages will probably load faster when using something other than IE too.  That’s a nice plus.     FYI:  The Evolution Of The Web infographic doesn’t seem to play nicely with mobile bowsers.

http://evolutionofweb.appspot.com/

The famous black construction walls protecting the nice, new, shiny Apple Store being built deep within...

A person with whom I interact on Google+ said this earlier this evening:

“The opening of Apple Store in Little Rock won’t feel near as exciting now.”

I don’t totally agree with that statement.  It will be bittersweet, sure, but not less exciting.  This is my response:

“I think it will be just as exciting, but it will be dulled by the sadness people are feeling right now. The fact that we finally have an Apple Store in LR is great, but there will be an air of “what’s next” for sure. I think Apple will do well under Cook, he’s been at the reigns a number of times when Jobs was on leave and he’s done great. Apple will still be the same as long as Jobs still has creative input, which he will as Chairman of the Board and as Director. The truly sad day will be the one when his health problems overcome his vigor and he’s no longer with us.”

What do you think?  Am I off the mark?  Does this make the Grand Opening of the long-awaited Apple Store here in Little Rock seem a little bit less special?

Ok, first of all, I know this is already all over the web, but I’m mainly posting this for my own personal reasons.  For posterity really.  This is a major happening in the world of Apple, a company I truly believe in, and I want to be a part of this.  I really don’t care if anybody reads this at all.  It’s just for me.  I feel a bit sad, and this maybe is my way of dealing with it.  I wan’t even paying attention to the tv, and then I heard those words… “Apple CEO Steve Jobs announced he’s resigning from the company he helped build.”  Wow.  That truly caught me off guard.  I know it’s been coming for a while now, but this just seemed sudden.  I do fear slightly for the company’s future, but I also think Tim Cook is the best man to take the reigns.  I hope Steve is ok and that this is not a precursor to much more sad things down the road…  I hope this is just a personal decision for him, and not a decision dictated by his health.  I wish you all the best Steve.

Steve Job’s resignation letter posted below:

To the Apple Board of Directors and the Apple Community:

I have always said if there ever came a day when I could no longer meet my duties and expectations as Apple’s CEO, I would be the first to let you know. Unfortunately, that day has come.

I hereby resign as CEO of Apple. I would like to serve, if the Board sees fit, as Chairman of the Board, director and Apple employee.

As far as my successor goes, I strongly recommend that we execute our succession plan and name Tim Cook as CEO of Apple.

I believe Apple’s brightest and most innovative days are ahead of it. And I look forward to watching and contributing to its success in a new role.

I have made some of the best friends of my life at Apple, and I thank you all for the many years of being able to work alongside you.

I expect that in the coming days, there are going to be lots of articles concerning Tim Cook’s background and what he’s done at Apple.  I already know a fair amount about Cook, but I’m looking forward to learning a lot more.  I hope to bring my own insight to the situation too.  Doesn’t matter if other people read my insights or not, it will be good for me personally.  I like writing about technology and about my favorite company, so it will be an enjoyable experience.  I think the Apple community wants to know about Cook too.  They need to know, because I’m sure some people think Apple will disappear.  Not bloody likely, my friend.  They will continue to be a great company.  Steve will still be a big part of Apple, and I’m super glad to hear that.  I anticipate that his vision will continue to shine through.  I look forward to that future..

Do you need one of these? Only you know the answer. Look deep inside yourself, young grasshopper...

This post is in response to an editorial post Engadget ran recently — well, this is more of an Editorial of my own.  I’m not really “responding” because the original author makes some good points that I do not disagree with.  No matter, tablets are a hot item and a hot topic, and have been for a couple of years now, so I feel I must throw my two cents out there.

I had an iPad until just last week, and I absolutely loved it.  It was great for playing games.  There were some console-quality first-person-shooter titles available, and some pretty intense driving games as well.  These are my main types of games I like to play and the iPad was great for that.  I also used it a lot for checking my RSS feeds and sharing interesting articles.  It worked great for that too.  I also got to where I was using it to read a lot of books, which I never thought I would use it for, but it was great for that too.  So for consuming media, it was fantastic.

I was occasionally bothered by the fact that I couldn’t create things very easily.  There are a lot of apps available that let you create in many different ways (many of the music apps for instance were really nice and very usable for creating), but on the whole, tablets are not meant to be used for in-depth creation.  Both the tech media and the companies creating these tablets have led consumers to believe that tablets can do anything a laptop can.  And they just can’t.  I have a friend who is a graphic designer and he uses his iPad to quickly sketch ideas when he’s face-to-face with a client, but the real creation happens once he gets back to his dektop or laptop.

People need to consider what they are truly going to use it for.  If they don’t have a laptop and they want to consume media on the go, on a larger platform than their smartphone, and they also can’t afford the particular laptop they might want at the time, then tablets could be the way to go.  But if you’re planning on using a tablet as a complete laptop replacement, then you’re barking up the wrong tree.

Tablets/slates are fun.  They can be really useful too.  But as I always suggest to anybody making any sort of purchase at all, “do your homework.”  It’s a personal decision and each person will use tablets differently.

Now that I’ve sold my iPad, I do miss it, especially since I don’t have a laptop.  Lying in bed catching up on RSS feeds and reading my digital books before I go to sleep just isn’t the same on a smartphone screen.  Maybe I’ll get another one when the 3rd gen iPad comes out, maybe I won’t.  I do freelance video production and WordPress site creation, so for those purposes, a MacBook Air or MacBook Pro might be best instead of a tablet.  The point is, there is a place for tablet devices, but it’s up to each person to decide what that place is.

Social media overload...

Google+ is an opportunity to create a new social network for yourself, to get away from the overload and over-sharing nature that has become Facebook and Twitter.  MySpace no longer matters.  It might matter to up-and-coming bands, as I believe that is the only community who ever actually used MySpace in any productive way.  So for bands who want to get noticed and share their creations, maybe MySpace is great for them.  Otherwise, MySpace has been and always will be….dead.

I think G+ is much better than Twitter if you’re looking to have any sort of conversation about things you’re passionate about.  That 140 character limit was cute for a while, but now I think it’s just an unneeded limitation.  (kinda makes me wonder why Apple decided to bake Twitter into iOS 5.)  I think many people are using Twitter as an RSS reader alternative, but even in that usage, I think it is just too limited.

I’m using G+ as an opportunity to build a community of creative and technologically knowledgeable people.  I can share interesting and informative tech articles on FB all day, but 99.5% of my community there either don’t care, or are not interested enough or knowledgeable enough to bother to comment.  That’s frustrating to me, so I’m enjoying that G+ is currently mainly populated by creatives and tech people, as they tend to be the first ones to try out new inventions.  I’m ok with it being invite-only.  It’s working to keep the signal-to-noise ratio at a level that is high on the interesting stuff and low on the “hey look at what my dog can do!” posts.

I just hope that once G+ goes public, it doesn’t get overrun by the friend-spam that everybody has come to expect and accept of social media streams.

Been having problems finding new people to add to your circles on Google+?  Check these sites out and maybe you can find some interesting people.  Plus, don’t forget, BE SOCIAL.  That’s what it’s all about!     Post some cool articles you’ve found, or just post your thoughts on something you’re interested in or passionate about – even if there are no people in your circles yet — but the key is to make these posts PUBLIC.  That way, other G+ users can find you and the social media interaction can begin!  I hope these links help…AND HAVE FUN!!

http://findpeopleonplus.com/
http://www.gpeep.com/
http://www.localstreamer.com/friendadder.html
http://www.findpeopleusingplus.com/
http://www.gglpls.com/

As some of you may know, Apple and Adobe have been trading licks concerning Flash not being available on Apple’s mobile devices.  The back-and-forth has gotten a bit childish and the press has only reported one-liners and here-say mostly.  For the average consumer, and even the tech enthusiast, it’s seemed like a blur of jabs and right-hooks that haven’t really told us anything useful.  Steve Jobs has now decided to try to clear things up with a public letter.  Even if you’re not a fan of Apple products, it’s a good read, and it’s also nice to see him trying to cool the boiling waters around this subject.  Enjoy!

http://www.apple.com/hotnews/thoughts-on-flash/