Swipe Files: Why Apple Wants to Bust Your iPhone

At first, I thought it was my imagination. Around the time the iPhone 5S and 5C were released, in September, I noticed that my sad old iPhone 4 was becoming a lot more sluggish. The battery was starting to run down much faster, too. But the same thing seemed to be happening to a lot of people who, like me, swear by their Apple products. When I called tech analysts, they said that the new operating system (iOS 7) being pushed out to existing users was making older models unbearably slow. Apple phone batteries, which have a finite number of charges in them to begin with, were drained by the new software. So I could pay Apple $79 to replace the battery, or perhaps spend 20 bucks more for an iPhone 5C. It seemed like Apple was sending me a not-so-subtle message to upgrade. Read full article in the NYTimes.

Dear God

The Basketball Jones crew is now ‘The Starters’ – and working for NBA Digital

NBA Digital continues to boost its original content with the introduction of The Starters, a collective of fan-focused voices with a unique and unconventional take on the game, to its multimedia portfolio. The Starters, formerly The Basketball Jones, will produce original content across all screens including a daily TV show, podcast and blog, and a constant presence across a variety of social media platforms. Fans can engage with The Starters using the hashtag#TheStarters.

Full Story here

Here’s Kenny and gang “welcoming” the crew

Swipe Files: Why Generation Y Yuppies Are Unhappy

Lucy is part of Generation Y, the generation born between the late 1970s and the mid 1990s. She’s also part of a yuppie culture that makes up a large portion of Gen Y.

I have a term for yuppies in the Gen Y age group — I call them Gen Y Protagonists & Special Yuppies, or GYPSYs. A GYPSY is a unique brand of yuppie, one who thinks they are the main character of a very special story.

So Lucy’s enjoying her GYPSY life, and she’s very pleased to be Lucy. Only issue is this one thing:

Lucy’s kind of unhappy.

To get to the bottom of why, we need to define what makes someone happy or unhappy in the first place. It comes down to a simple formula:

Read the full article at Huff Post here

Swipe Files: Why I Stopped Being a Grammar Snob (And why you probably should, too)

I used to be a proud grammar snob. I secretly reveled in my schadenfreude when people muddled their (there? they’re?) homonyms. I had inflexible opinions on the subject of comma use. I laughed at people who used “whom” incorrectly.

And then I took a linguistics class that changed my whole outlook, not just on grammar but also on the social impact of language. It sounds dramatic, I know, but in university you’re allowed to have dramatic epiphanies.

Read the full post over at Medium

Swipe Files: Dear parents, you need to control your kids. Sincerely, non-parents

To the fan I lost yesterday:

I don’t owe you an explanation, but I thought I’d offer one anyway. I do this more for your sake than mine. You see, maybe, as you later suggested, I was in a bad mood. Maybe I could have been a bit more polite about it. Maybe I’m more sensitive to it now that I have kids. Maybe I’m just sick of hearing these comments about parents. Maybe I know that my wife has to take the twins with her when she goes grocery shopping sometimes, so she could easily be on the receiving end of your sort of bullying. Maybe I took it personally.

Whatever the case, there I was, walking down the aisles of the grocery store looking for the ingredients for a new chili recipe I wanted to try. I heard the kid screaming from a distance; the whole store heard him. It was a temper tantrum, a meltdown, a hissy fit — it happens. Toddlers are notorious for losing their cool at the most inconvenient times. Nobody likes to hear it, but it happens. You’re out running errands with your little guy, everything is fine, and next thing you know he’s in full-on rabid poodle mode. It’s humiliating and emotionally draining, but what can you do? Pull out that large glass sound proof aquarium you carry around and stick your kid in it so nobody can hear him shriek? That’s a possibility, but the logistics don’t always work. Slightly more realistically, the peanut gallery probably expects you to drop all of your groceries and immediately run into the parking lot, so as to save them from having to deal with the spectacle. But it’s not always that simple; maybe you don’t have time to shut down the whole operation just because Billy’s gone nuclear.

Read the full, amazingly well written post here.

Two Catchy Songs. Both Entitled ‘Cameras’. Both include Matt & Kim.

 

Man, Luis von Ahn is the Coolest

Here’s a post I just published over at Gravitate

A Minimalistic Gmail Cheatsheet

The best Mark Twain Quote

I didn’t have time to write a short letter, so I wrote a long one instead. http://t.co/JSuLVehzjq

— Pete Sherwood (@petey14) September 9, 2013