iPhone | At Home with Tech

October 23, 2016

Cheap Portable Power to Feed Your Smartphone

goes for your tech… and your smartphone. If you can keep it going all day, that takes it a long way to “happy.” Can the Anker Astro E1 power stick do the job in a pinch? Let’s find out!

Happy Vs. Not Happy. That’s much of what life boils down to, right? And so it goes for your tech… and your smartphone. If you can keep it going all day, that takes it a long way to “happy.” Can the Anker Astro E1 power stick do the job in a pinch? Let’s find out!

My 83-year-old father likes to keep up… technologically speaking. Every time we have dinner together, he pays attention to each piece of tech I’m carrying. And then he invariably decides he wants to get it for himself.

Barrett’s iPhone? – BAM! Now, the Octogenarian has one.
That Bunker Ring on the back of my iPhone? – Yes, please.

One day as we were having tea after dinner, I checked my email and realized I needed a little more juice for my iPhone. So I pulled out a tiny battery-driven ‘Innergie’ charger out of my briefcase.
(I don’t use a Mophie Juice Pack battery case for my iPhone 6 Plus only due to size considerations. The Plus is bulky enough in my pants pocket!)

“What’s that?” my dad asked.

“Oh, this? It’s just a rechargeable battery to help out my iPhone.”

“Do I need one of those?”

“I don’t know. Do you?”

Power Sticks are a Must
Well, you can imagine how the conversation went from there. Before I knew it. I was on the hook for helping him figure out which portable charger to get.
No big deal…

These little power sticks are everywhere. Like little sticks of gum. I figured it shouldn’t be too difficult to quickly choose one for my dad.

And in fact, I’ve been somewhat consumed in recent years by how to generate my own power, especially if I’m off the grid…

So where’s the harm spending a little more time on this mini obsession…?
(But not too much time)

Anker Astro E1
So it wasn’t a big deal to simply go to Amazon, type in ‘portable smartphone charger’ and see what quickly rose to the top.

It was the Anker Astro E1.
(self described as ‘The Candybar-Shaped Powerpack’)

19.99 at Amazon
That’s so cheap!
It’s highly reviewed- 4.7 stars.
And it comes in multiple colors- black/blue/white.

The E1’s capacity is 5200 mAh
(Which can charge an iPhone one to two times)

The truth is there are plenty of other choices, and I’ve always liked my own Innergie ‘battery bank,’ power stick but I must admit I didn’t do much more competing research.
(Okay… None.)

The Anker seemed just fine for what it was.

Click.

Powering Up Takes Time
But when I opened up the box, the Astro E1 seemed more than just fine…
I was pleasantly surprised by its sleek black design, its practical, spongy carrying bag, and an enigmatic little card at the bottom of the box.
(More on this in a moment)

My father will love the Astro E1… if he ever ends up using it!

A word of minor caution:

A 1-amp iPhone charger is supposed to take 5 hours to charge the Astro E1.
That said, I spent more than 6 hours charging mine before I packed it in to go to bed. So think of it as needing an overnight charge…
(Anker of course sells its own charger, which does the job much faster.)
Don’t forget you’ll need buy/provide a separate USB cable to connect the Anker.
(The Astro E1 doesn’t come with one.)

Happy/Not Happy?
Remember that little card in the bottom of the Anker box?

There was a “Happy?” on the front with a little icon for the sun.
And “Not Happy?” on the back with a rain cloud.

Hmmm. What was this?
I was simultaneously confused and invigorated.

What was I supposed to do with this card?

I quickly imagined I could have hundreds of these little cards and carry them with me as I moved about my life, placing them in choice locations to reflect my experience.

After attending a two-hour meeting that was scheduled for only one, I would get up and leave a card behind, positioned appropriately to display my sentiment.

“Barrett, you forgot this ca….. Oh. Oooh.”

Or when I leave a movie theater after watching a great flick… I would deposit one on my seat with the right side up.
(That’s far more polite than leaving behind an explosion of popcorn, right?)

I wasn’t immediately sure what Anker had in mind with the Happy/Not Happy card, but I liked it!

Then I realized the card actually opened up…
And inside it invited me to share my happiness online or how to reach customer service should I have a frown on my face.

Of course.
(Now I felt I needed a ‘Silly/Embarrassed’ card.)

Survey Says…
All right, then.

So they say money can’t buy you happiness.
But sixteen bucks for the Astro E1?

“Happy.”

October 2, 2016

Try This Time-Lapse Idea with Your iPhone

I’ve found numerous opportunities over the past couple of years to shoot slow motion videos with my iPhone. (My six-year-old boy usually moves so fast… it’s often fun to slow some of that down.) But time lapse? Not so much.

In fact, I’ve rarely attempted time lapse. Part of the challenge is you’ve got to plan for it, and it’s going to take you some time to capture.
(That’s the whole point.)

Imagine my glee when I spontaneously generated a time-lapse sequence over the weekend during one of my more mundane of chores… recycling cans and bottles at my local Stew Leonard’s supermarket.

The new variable this time was my son had accompanied me…

What makes this 28-second movie more than the sum of its parts is the fact that my first grader took over all of the heavy lifting.
(I quickly realized I was just along for the ride.)

Take a look at the top of this post!

DIY Tripod
Being an observer for fifteen minutes allowed me the opportunity to try this time lapse.

The hard part was figuring out where to put my iPhone without a tripod. I ended up propping it up against a two by four near the ground, hoping it wouldn’t fall over.

Repetition is the Key
I think this movie is fun because it magnifies repetition to tell its story…
What is boring in normal time is something entirely different sped up.
(Though it’s clear my son was not particularly bothered by the challenge of popping over 300 cans and bottles into the recycling machines. I suppose it didn’t hurt that I told him he could keep all of the redeemed nickels for his piggy bank.)

My difficulty with time lapse to date has been my limited belief that time lapse is supposed to show something grand that’s playing out very slowly.
(You just can’t do that in the moment without some planning.)

Something like this turns that equation on its head. Now we’re looking for repeating, ‘simple’ moments to capture that are anything but grand.

But by collecting the sum of them, you’re creating more of a ‘point of view.’

Now that’s interesting.
(And if you find this obvious, please cut me some slack. We all learn at our own pace!)

Lots of Cans
You might be wondering…
Why so many cans and bottles?

One word – seltzer.
My family loves the stuff.
(But to be fair, I was long overdue for this recycling trip. This represented all of our summer seltzer fun.)

Find More Time Lapse in Your Life
So keep an open mind as you traverse your day to day.
If you find yourself thankfully sidelined during an otherwise mundane series of moments, that series could have some fun visual value as a time-lapse video.

Try it out!

September 18, 2016

How to Use Dropbox on Your iPhone to Listen to Podcasts

If you’re not into iTunes to help transfer a podcast from your computer to your iPhone, then you should think about moving that file up to the cloud where your phone can find it.

My wife recently invited me to listen to an hour-long podcast that she was interested in discussing with me. “An hour?!” I wondered. Where would I fit that into my busy day? The obvious choice eventually percolated to the top of my narrowly focused brain…

Listen on my way to work on my iPhone!

Whether I was driving or commuting on the train, I could consume this content on the go.

Great!
Now the question was how…

Stream It
The podcast lived on a website… so I could simply stream it directly from there. Sure… that’s the easiest way. But when I travelled through dead zones in cell coverage, I’d be stuck.

iTunes is Always There for You…
The podcast creator, having already thought through this limitation, invited its Apple listeners to download the audio file onto their respective Macs. From your computer, you can move the audio file to iTunes and then manually sync your iPhone/iPad with iTunes to move the file over.
(And no… this particular podcast can’t be automatically accessed and downloaded online from iTunes. That, of course, would make it easier…)

The whole ‘transfer in… then transfer out’ process with iTunes on your computer seemed like an unnecessary amount of work, since I was intending to listen to this podcast only once.

Look to the Cloud
Hmmm…
It all felt so yesterday. I immediately thought that a cloud solution should be able to better handle the challenge….

And of course it can!
Here’s how I did it…

Four Steps to Easy Podcast Prep

Dropbox is my personal cloud-sharing solution.
(There are many others out there.)

Step 1
So I downloaded the audio file from the website to my iMac and then simply dragged the file to a new folder I created in Dropbox.

Step 2
Then, I picked up my iPhone and opened up the Dropbox app…
(Can you believe it… the audio file was magically right there!)

I was already at the finish line in two steps, but the file would only stream when I tapped on it. I wanted to listen locally…

Step 3
There’s a ‘Make Available Offline’ option in the Dropbox app.
I tapped that, and Bam!
Now, I was ready to listen, regardless of cell coverage…

Step 4
I tapped the ‘downloaded’ file, which I could also access in the ‘Offline’ section, and a Dropbox audio player opened up.

My podcast began to play.

Sweet.

Happy Listening
Again, there’s nothing wrong with moving your podcasts into the iTunes ecosystem. I was just too lazy to take the time to get it there.

Dropping the file into Dropbox was so much quicker.

And that’s more time you can put towards your podcast listening!

Tag: iPhone

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