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JuiceDefender – Improve the Battery Life of Your Android Device

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I’ve been using JuiceDefender for several months now to help extend the battery life of my Droid Eris. One of the biggest criticisms of all the Android phones has been the short battery life. Giving the multi-tasking capabilities of the Android OS this isn’t really that much of a surprise. But it is a problem.

The most frustrating thing for many Android users is the way their battery drops even when they aren’t using the phone. That’s where JuiceDefender comes in. The developer Latedroid has cleverly tweaked android’s data settings so when you’re not actively using the phone it powers down the wifi, 3G etc. But it if you want to keep getting your updates it has a user configurable schedule to reactivate the data and grab the latest information for you. For those of you with rooted phones Juice Defender can also throttle your CPU up or down. Exactly how big a gain you get from JuiceDefender depends on how you use your phone. It won’t help your battery life while you’re actively using it, but my personal experience is it has almost doubled the battery life of my phone because there’s a lot of down time when I’m not using it.

I’m constantly surprised that more people aren’t aware of JuiceDefender. I’d consider it an essential Android app. If you’d like to try it out, then check out the free version (with limited features) and if you’re as impressed as I am I’m sure you’ll want to purchase the full Ultimate Juice version. Do you have any battery saving tips for Android?

JuiceDefender at the Latedroid website. JuiceDefender in the Android Market.

Use Vinegar to Clean Your Microwave

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Image by elycefeliz via Flickr

I’d heard about using vinegar as a quick and cheap way to clean a dirty microwave, but I’d never actually tried it out before. My normal routine involves spraying, wiping and scrubbing for about 15 minutes to try and remove the caked on splatters from the side and top of a microwave. It’s a tedious process and I’ve often wondered what chemical residues I’m leaving behind in the microwave when I do that. So today I figured I’d give vinegar a shot. The recipe I used was very simple: 1/2 cup of vinegar combined with 1/2 cup of water in a microwave safe bowl. I then blasted it on high for a few minutes and let it sit and steam for another 5 mins. The result? Well initially a strong smell of vinegar, but that didn’t last. In fact I quickly noticed that the microwave no longer had the unpleasant odor which had been building up for the last few weeks. I then took a paper towel and wiped the front door of the microwave. To my surprise the debris came right off. 5 minutes of wiping and I had a microwave that was if not sparkling new, certainly much nicer than it’s looked in a few months. As cheap as vinegar is and as quickly as you can do this, I can definitely see including this in my weekend cleaning schedule. If you haven’t tried it I’d definitely recommend giving it a shot. It’s greener and cheaper at the same time. I’ll also be investigating some of the other cleaning tricks I’ve read about. Next up I think might be window cleaner. Related articles by Zemanta

Eco-Friendly Miracle Product: 23 Ways to Use Vinegar (blisstree.com) 50 Ways to Use Baking Soda (blisstree.com) Kitchen Cleaning Uses for Vinegar (greenliving.suite101.com) Bathroom Cleaning Uses for Vinegar in a Green Home (greenliving.suite101.com)

Eoghann Irving is a sci-Fi fan, self professed geek, owner of too many computers and general know it all. Follow me on Google Buzz, LinkedIn or Twitter to chat about this or anything else.

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June 13 2010, 1:15pm | Comments »

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Companies Are Not Your Friends

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If you hang about on any of the social networking sites, you will of course have noticed that more and more companies are joining you there. The advantages to them are obvious. It’s another way to promote their brand and try to convert you into a customer. But now more than ever it’s important remember that companies are not your friends. The nature of social networks means that companies now have to interact directly with you. While this is a relatively new thing for the big brands, comic book companies amongst others have done this for years nurturing fans at conventions. Giving people a glimpse behind the curtain makes them feel a sense of ownership which of course encourages them to keep buying.

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When people feel this sort of connection with a company their decisions are based at least partially on emotion rather than facts. They’re also likely to go to surprising lengths to promote the company for free, both online and amongst their family and colleagues. In some cases, people have formed this sort of connection with a company even when it doesn’t embrace the social media. Apple is perhaps the most obvious example of this. Owning a Mac has taken on a cultural significance far beyond the qualities of either the hardware or software under discussion. All this loyalty and enthusiasm is of course wonderful for the companies involved. It’s the sort of promotion that money can’t buy. A free sales force and PR team rolled into one, and an audience that is primed to buy whatever they are offering. An obvious extension of this for companies has been to set up Facebook pages and Twitter accounts to “interact” more directly with their customers. Don’t mistake this for real interaction however. This is a carefully controlled and directed PR exercise using employees paid to do customer relations work. They’re not there out of love. Just to be clear, there are enthusiastic employees for many companies actively involved in social media. But they do it on their own time and not via company sponsored accounts. So why am I droning on about things that seem perfectly obvious to you? Because I guarantee you are affected by this too. For me it seems to be Google. For no goodreason that I can give you, I find myself hoping for Google to win in battles that I’m not even involved in. This is utterly irrational. I have no vested interest in Google. I don’t work for them, I don’t have friends who work for them and I don’t own any shares. I’ve assigned a personality to a company and decided that that personality meshes with my own. Google is not my friend. Apple is not my friend. Marvel and DC are not my friends. They are companies. They don’t have a personality and their sole function is to earn money. The decisions made by the people running these companies are made with the aim of earning money, not making me feel warm and fuzzy. Related articles by Zemanta

Why dumb PR loves social media, but shouldn’t (socialmediatoday.com) Microsoft tops social media use (blogs.msdn.com) How to promote your brand in social networks [adtech keynote video] (loiclemeur.com) Analysis of a company’s Employment Brand on Social Media (gautamblogs.com) Social Engagement Aids Branding (marketingvox.com)

Eoghann Irving is a sci-Fi fan, self professed geek, owner of too many computers and general know it all. Follow me on Google Buzz, LinkedIn or Twitter to chat about this or anything else.

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April 28 2010, 5:35pm | Comments »

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What will reading look like in 2010?

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Well, it’s been a lively year for changes in the publishing industry, hasn’t it? This time last year, I wrote a post titled 2009 – the year the physical bookstore lays down and dies? – and over here in the UK, Borders has just gone into receivership, a few days before Amazon claimed to have sold more Kindle ebooks over the holiday period than dead-tree books. The times, they are a-changin’. I still don’t have an ebook reader myself, because I’ve not seen one that’s open enough for my tastes – I don’t want to be tied to one retailer (same reason I don’t have an iPod), and I want to be able to read multiple formats without jumping through hoops. But 2010 looks like the year that the tablet computer makes its presence felt (if Apple are going to release one, you can bet your boots that cheaper and more open devices will follow close on its heels), and that means all we need is a decent platform for reading ebooks. Enter inventor and Singularitarian Ray Kurzweil, who has a track record of disruptive developments in an assortment of industries; his new company knfb Reading Technology (a cooperative venture with the National Federation of the Blind) is set to debut an ebook software platform called Blio at the Las Vegas Consumer Electronics Show next week. It’s already available for free download, with versions for PC, iPhone and iPod Touch, and (according to the linked article) it trumps pretty much all of the competition on features and accessibility. Blio may well turn out to be the grenade in the ebook punchbowl… I’m hoping an Android-native version appears pretty soon. And what of the humble magazine? Distribution and print costs are killing off all but the most tenacious print publishing niches at a ferocious rate, but there’s plenty of people trying to find a new paradigm for the format – here’s a video demo of Mag+, the result of a collaboration between a Swedish publisher and BERG, the London-based design outfit [via MetaFilter]:

Of course, you may be thinking that all these developments are attempts to saddle a horse that has already fled the stable… after all, no-one reads any more, do they? Well, actually, they do – the consumption patterns and preferred media have changed rapidly, but a recent University of California study shows that the amount of text consumed by the average American has actually tripled since 1980, and social networks like Facebook have ordinary people writing more regularly than ever before (although the quality and nature of the material they write is admittedly pretty variable). The one thing we can probably say for certain is that people are still going to be reading in 2010, and for a long time afterwards. The challenge for writers and publishers (of fiction or otherwise) are to find the channels that work best for the material they produce, and then to find a way to leverage that channel to make it a viable business model. Interesting times ahead, don’t you think?

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Tags: 2010 • business • disruption • ebooks • publishing • reading • technology

Eoghann Irving's Lifestream

JuiceDefender – Improve the Battery Life of Your Android Device

Use Vinegar to Clean Your Microwave

Companies Are Not Your Friends

What will reading look like in 2010?

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