Wednesday, July 02, 2014
I'm not an appy camper today
I lost my techno-virginity a few years back, I know a few moves. Now I don't have the same knowledge as one of those e-dorks you see hanging out at the public library all day with their devices but I do feel I'm fairly literate in the area now. We can talk about the pros and cons of sideloading .apk files and I'm comfortable. So lately I installed on my tablet one of those much-ballyhooed cleaner/sweeper apps to improve memory and storage and so there's an option for cleaning your media files so I read the prompts and messages very carefully and took my time mulling it over. Now nowhere does the app say this will delete your media files, the very word "delete" is not even used but the operative word is clean so eventually I went ahead. Lo and behold my entire music library was deleted as well as a few videos I downloaded. Not the end of the world, there were no important docs but I just sat there on my bed and it was a warm and muggy night and I was just stunned just the same. Mind you this was an app update so I went to read the app reviews and the vast majority were negative. Now instead of actually addressing the complaints of the app-users the Mobile Support Team kept repeating one or two stock answers over and over again. Very annoying. So I HAD to uninstall the little monster yesterday else it might one day actually eat up, inhale my tablet. I've kind of come to the conclusion over time that while Apple is vastly more expensive than anything Android the iOS is not as annoying and frustrating as the Android OS and they say malware is not really a problem. Read any tech support forum devoted to Android users and you get the drift. WHY all the suffering, is it necessary? I mean folks are busy, they don't have time for this. So yesterday I did my first Google Maps street views and while it's creepy it's also fascinating. Is that BB there trimming his hedges? All these techno-issues though, no wonder everyone's walking around so irritable. Maybe this is what happened to Shia LaBeouf, dunno:)
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Being an atlas type, I use google maps a lot. With the convenient directional sliding
ReplyDeleteand zooming in an out, it is sort of like being in a helicopter or running a drone. I have used that to relive a lot of my MN-WI river canoe journeys from back in my
coureur des bois days.
Just this morning, I traveled down the St. Croix river thusly and zoomed in right down to the rocks in the rapids where we came around a bend and bobbed past
some Ojibway fellows standing in the river spear fishing. At my age, I don't miss
downpours and mosquitos, but google doesn't show the deer along the bank or
the bald eagle peering down from a white pine. Computer data: used to save all my important stuff on floppies. Took one into the computer store and they gathered around like archeologists-the geeks had heard of them but never actually seen one.
Not only are there no 5" readers anymore, all my stuff was in shareware, MS-DOS
and Edlin...millions of useless bits and bytes from the 'Early Bronze Age' of computer
history.
I just used Google street maps to spy in on Whistling Willie's restaurant in the Hudson Valley village of Cold Spring NY. Well I know it's not spying 'cause the image was captured in 012 but I felt like a kind of techno-stalker anyway. That's the fun part, the better part of Google......
ReplyDeleteOK as you know this AVG cleaner really f--'d up my Music Library. Folks can blame me if they like but there's a difference in meaning, connotation between "cleaning" media files and "deleting" them. OK I really don't care about the songs I downloaded for free but I did buy a few tracks from Google Play and now I can't redownload them because the message box says a song can only be downloaded 2X and apparently I've reached that limit. TWO TIMES, does this make sense BB? I mean shit happens. It's like a conspiracy of perversity.
ReplyDeleteOK so here is a partial list of sites I've judged that have viruses or other malware:
ReplyDeleteThe Alex Jones Info Wars app by Vapor Central - my virus scanner picked this up the other day.
Popular MP3 downloading sites:
MP3 Juices - a suspicious message pops up saying your tablet needs a system update. Mine checks automatically but I checked anyway, doesn't need an update and anyway immediately after this my tablet make a loud alarm noise.
Skull MP3 at least from my browsing experience in the past.
Clip.dj which converts videos from video portals like YouTube and Vimeo for downloading. Big-time mal, popup after popup of fiendish messages.
Interestingly AVG Scanner warns you against allowing installation of non-market apps meaning nonGoogle Play apps but the Alex Jones app IS in the Google Play market. Does all this stuff happen with iOS?
Here is a study of ios v android which may be of interest.
DeleteI just use a stand alone old fashioned pc, where the usual spamware/spyware tries to imbed. The last few years, I've gone with Norton
which seems ferret out and block the stuff. About once a month I get a landline phone call from some Indonesian (hi, my name is Chuck) or Bombay call center (Hello, my name is Andrew) in thick accent saying they
work for Microsoft and my computer is slow and full of embeds. They are as apparent as that Nigerian banker that will send you 1$ million if you first
send him $1500 to cover costs. PT Barnum lives.
I look at it this way, iOS may have more app crashes and slower updates but when balanced out against the increased malware in Android and some of Google Play's pesky rules like the 2 downloads from the web limit on new songs you purchased iOS might be less in the overall user-frustration department.
DeleteIt's funny but as soon as I got rid of the sweeper I noticed much better battery power/life.
ReplyDeleteI am not a real techno geek. My knowledge of this stuff is basically relegated to 'how do I make it do what I want it to do' and it stops there. There aren't many things I actually use on a frequent basis. I do love Google Maps. When I pulled up my address I could see my truck. That's both creepy and seriously cool at the same time. As far as other stuff on my phone goes, I use Facebook all the time. I read HuffPo on a regular basis. I have the Weather Channel app which I like very much. Basic things like a world clock, the alarm clock, I am obsessed with time. I already told you about Cozi Organizer, this I use frequently both for its calendar portion and its shopping portion. It also has a to-do list. The absolute coolest thing about this app apart from it being free is that it crosses onto your PC so for example he can sit at home and update the shopping list while I'm actually shopping and it comes up on my phone. For a free app it has amazing functionality and utility in my life. As far as games go I have Candy Crush, Papa Pear, Words with Friends, and Scrabble... but my favorite game by far is Marvel Puzzle Quest Dark Reign. This is not surprisingly based on comic book characters and it has both a story mode and a versus mode where you play with other people. It's not required, but I actually have invested some money into this game. I enjoy it, the graphics are great, sound is great, they continually have a lot going on, lightning rounds, sub-stories, episodes, so on. It does suck the soul out of your battery at an alarming rate but I keep it plugged in even at work so it's not so bad. My phone has the enormous screen so this works really well, but I'm not sure how great it would be on a tiny one. Anyway, that's the current game I'm obsessed with.
ReplyDeleteOn my PC for virus control I use Webroot which was recommended to me by the guy when I bought it. It seems to have been working quite well and so I just recently renewed it for another year.
I still use my Kindle an average of 1.5 hours per day and have never gotten tired of it. It has stopped being "my Kindle" and is now just "my book" as in "Have you seen my book?" I do love paper books and especially old books but seriously how do you argue with the capability of walking around with 500 books in your purse? There is like no downside to this: no trees killed, no need to build bookcases, no piles of books all over the house, literally thousands of titles available for free, library options (I don't use that but I know you can)... I cannot find a way to argue against it. Mine is the Touch and I've had it now I guess a couple of years. No plan to replace it anytime soon-I am not big on having the 'newest thing' and so I tend to use these things til they become obsolete or fall apart, but if I were to replace it I would like one I could read in the dark. I don't know if the Paperwhite has that capability. It would not be terrible to read it with a booklight (which is what I do now) if that was the only way to get the Paperwhite but it sure would be nice to not have to. Everyone at work is all about the HD Fire but these are people who have to have the latest technology (replacing the Fire with the HD Fire, ooo) and I don't want the thing for watching movies or playing games, I want it to read my 500 books. For me technology is not as important for its own sake as it is to give me whatever specific functionality I feel like I need. If something simpler will do the job, I don't see why I should have to pay an extra however many dollars just to get things I don't really need. This also explains why I drive a 2006 Tacoma that has neither bells nor whistles (crank windows, no cruise, no power locks or anything of that nature). But I think I will be getting a new car this year... it looks like it will be a Subaru Crosstrek.
And in other news, I still have a raging crush on this doctor.
In terms of games the hot new one is "Kim Kardashian - Hollywood."
DeleteA couple other things I like about my phone which I am not sure whether other phones do: the ability to talk to Google and ask it to do things (searches, remind me of stuff, etc). I think Facebook Messenger (which I use) also has this capability but I'm not sure. I use Google Maps for navigation as well as being a secret voyeur. And I forgot to mention that one of the coolest things about the Kindle is that you can touch a word and it will bring up a definition. My vocabulary is good but I do use this feature a lot. On the last software update now you can even link into Wiki about things you read. This I've never used so I'm not precisely sure how it works. You can highlight things and also share them which I will do occasionally and when you finish a book you can give it X stars and share that as well, which I do almost every time. I don't think enough good can be said about the Kindle. Of all the new bits of technology out there I think this one has to be one of the most revolutionary. At least to me. And if your Kindle gets dropped in the toilet or run over by a dump truck or otherwise smashed beyond use, all your books are still in the Amazon cloud so you can just reload them onto your new one. Seriously, is there anything at all in this picture that is less than stellar?
ReplyDeleteI'm slogging through my 'Journals Of Lewis & Clark' for the 4th time. My hardcover
ReplyDelete1904 reprint is 7 volumes and a box of Clark's map sketches, expensive when I bought them 25 years ago. But for those that don't bore easily, the same can be had
at Kindle for about $250. Extraordinary true adventure:
29 tough guys and one tougher Shoshone girl that walked, horsebacked and canoed
7500 miles through uncharted territory. Each night, the captains filled out their journal with the events of the day, which varied from fighting with an attacking grizzly,
meeting with some new tribe, or discovering a new species of plant or animal. I never recommend books, but to me it is THE American epic.
Oh-oh- the Kindle version is $2.50 NOT $250. My boo.
DeleteI read The History of the Donner Party last week. That one was free.
ReplyDeleteI have alot of apps I like like the Pocket Ranger for Westchester Country Parks and WebMD but for now I'd say avoid like the plague those Cleaners. You might set it on automatic cleaning mode and it literally sweeps all your media files away. Even on the AVG Cleaner when I unchecked the box for media files next time I wanted to do a cleaning it's like the box checked itself on again and if you automatically set it up for cleaning cache and stuff every so many days you just might find all your music files you worked so hard on missing. Dunno why an app would have an option for deleting your media files (which they call "cleaning") when I can just do that myself. App Uninstallers, don't need that either. I hate apps that try to do everything.
ReplyDeleteYou may be at the point where you want to make your ownapp . Put on your geek hat, write a bit of code..if it is a good app,
ReplyDeleteZ-Man Productions could market it under Zapp. Just sayin, here.
There's even a new app out there whose sole purpose is so you can say "yo" to each other. I hate it when I'm at the library and I'm in the Play Store/the apps section and I type in "Dick's" as in sporting goods and other things start popping up.
ReplyDeleteI'm assuming you have the NSA spying alert app?
ReplyDeleteI'm sure that strikes fear into the hearts of the NSA. You're better off getting the Kardashian game.
DeleteSo I've been thinking malware continues to plague Android because Google denies that there's a problem. Was reading a tech support forum recently and seems Apple users don't have the same problem downloading "incompatible"apps. I've been a lifelong resident of Yonkers lo these fifty years and I can't even download the official YPD app!!
ReplyDeleteBeing teckie-geeky, maybe you can explain how the XKeySourceCode permits the decoding of
ReplyDeleteTOR data. Me, I got a lawn to mow.
We'll let soapie answer that.
DeleteI mean I still don't get why people root their devices, to change the build.prop file just to spoof an incompatible app into liking you.
ReplyDeleteI see the latest is a software upload that allows a person wearing 'google glasses' to
ReplyDeleteglance across the library at you and your android. It evaluates your button pushing and steals your passwords. By next year, they should have them for contact lenses.
In other words don't be a glasshole.
DeleteMy wife said "what sort of creative crook would write software to steal
Deletepasswords?" I figure there must be market there.
I'm slowly recovering from the damage caused by my cleaner deleting all my media files. Everybody at work who has a tablet only uses it for reading. I'm the opposite, I wanna know all its capabilities. I'm a techno-Kama Sutra guy to their predictable cyber-missionary position.
ReplyDeleteAt the rate you are going, you should be to the "beam me up, Scottie" stage
Deletein a few months.
I'm absolutely amazed at the number of people I know who have Android smartphones but no antivirus scanner. With the state of Android today maybe you need a scanner for the scanner.
ReplyDelete