So yeah, I've had my new iPhone for a couple of days (and I didn't even have to camp out all night at an Apple store to get it) and love it. From its ultra-crisp screen (which makes looking at an older model like looking through fogged glass) to its snappy processor to the sweet ease of snapping a picture and then deciding to shoot video instead by just one little flick of the finger. It really is a beautiful and awesome little device. But it isn't perfect and there are a few things that it cannot do, yet as I'm sure someone's working on an App for all of these things.
So here we go with thing the new iPhone 4 cannot do...
- Can't brush your teeth
- Can't tell you when your breath is nasty enough to stun a charging bull elephant
- There seems to be no place to put my weed
- Still no damned laser pointer/lighter
- Not usable as a step stool
- No haptic sex toys to integrate with Facetime
- No fetching the paper (the dead trees one)
- No getting me another beer from the fridge
- No automatically calling me a cab when I've had four or five too many beers at the bar
- No imminent vomit alert mode
- No personal force field generator (works on rain drops AND bullets!)
- No flying carpet mode
On a slightly more serious note, I've also started using the passcode locking system. In the wake of the private information exposing nightmare that's been my wife losing her phone the other day, I can take an extra four seconds to enter in a code to access my phone. Just think about what would happen if someone happened on your iPhone without any security at all. Just think about the unmitigated access and possibilities they would have to either monkey with your life or straight up steal your identity. The passcode isn't fool proof but it is far, far better than nothing at all.
Come to think of it, I should probably put passcode lock protection on my laptop as well. There's even more sensitive info in this thing and its worth quite alot more (though really only about 2 1/2 times as much really).
Showing posts with label features. Show all posts
Showing posts with label features. Show all posts
6.25.2010
5.12.2009
Twitter Feature Requests
I make no bones about the fact that I really like Twitter. I love its immediacy, I love its rambling community, I love sharing pics from the day, I love hearing from friends and some strangers.
But, as with anything, there are downsides to the up. There are people who use Twitter like a blunt marketing instrument. There are bots exhorting you to visit some sex site or some retail site. There are wonks that do nothing but spew links to fake giveaways, that post nothing but words other people have written and then there are people who follow you solely in the hopes that you'll follow them back.
I have one "follower" who started following me yesterday morning. By the afternoon, she'd stopped following and then followed me again. Now, I have my Twitter set to notify me of new follows and the only thing I can conclude from her actions is that she was trying to nudge me towards following her back. Only she's not a Tweep, she's a sales bot. Her sole purpose for being on Twitter is to drive sales for her hand creams and other whatnot. Sorry but I'm not interested and the passive aggressive behavior is seriously off-putting.
As I tend towards optimism mostly, I'll leave the downsides at those above. There are more, of course, but let's turn back towards the light, shall we?
How could Twitter improve? Here are some thoughts from the trenches.
- Create a setting to approve or disallow new followers. Or, even better, to automatically deny access by people with user-defined parameters (like filters so that I could, for example, auto-deny followers who use the word marketing in their bios or they have to ask for permission to follow me first).
- A means to collect, keep and easily share all of the very cool Twitter add-ons. Sort of like a Delicious bookmarking system but within Twitter. It could easily be expanded to beyond just Twitter links but I'd most like to make use of it for Twitter stuff, at least at first.
[Update: Upon further thought, this is actually a pretty good place to use the Favorite function to save posts that contain links to good stuff you want to be able to revisit more easily. Still, it would be good to have a specific function to save links.]
- A conversation setting that would remove any comments outside of a specified conversation across two or more tweeps. This could also involve incorporating response outside of a Tweep's follows. It could be a great way of adding to one's follows and followers lists.
- Categories - I exist in several spheres and it can sometimes be confusing, difficult or just plain taxing to keep who is who separate. This is the same kind of thing that TweetDeck is already doing for users but I'd love to see it incorporated into the site from the get go.
- Private Tweets - less a direct message and more of a private message that only followers noted as friends or in a particular group or category could read. I mean, do I really want people who think I might still be reasonably cool to know that I'm a Skyrates, fantasy baseball, Survivor nerd?
Those are just the ones off the top of my bleached blond head. What features would you love to see loaded into Twitter.
Update: Another one I just thought of. An easy, graphical way to see if someone you follow does not follow you back. All too often, I follow someone back, they eventually realize that I'm a blithering idiot and unfollow me, I'll reply to their tweet about something and they don't see it for a day or two because it doesn't show up in their stream but on their @fenriq (or whoever they are) page.
But, as with anything, there are downsides to the up. There are people who use Twitter like a blunt marketing instrument. There are bots exhorting you to visit some sex site or some retail site. There are wonks that do nothing but spew links to fake giveaways, that post nothing but words other people have written and then there are people who follow you solely in the hopes that you'll follow them back.
I have one "follower" who started following me yesterday morning. By the afternoon, she'd stopped following and then followed me again. Now, I have my Twitter set to notify me of new follows and the only thing I can conclude from her actions is that she was trying to nudge me towards following her back. Only she's not a Tweep, she's a sales bot. Her sole purpose for being on Twitter is to drive sales for her hand creams and other whatnot. Sorry but I'm not interested and the passive aggressive behavior is seriously off-putting.
As I tend towards optimism mostly, I'll leave the downsides at those above. There are more, of course, but let's turn back towards the light, shall we?
How could Twitter improve? Here are some thoughts from the trenches.
- Create a setting to approve or disallow new followers. Or, even better, to automatically deny access by people with user-defined parameters (like filters so that I could, for example, auto-deny followers who use the word marketing in their bios or they have to ask for permission to follow me first).
- A means to collect, keep and easily share all of the very cool Twitter add-ons. Sort of like a Delicious bookmarking system but within Twitter. It could easily be expanded to beyond just Twitter links but I'd most like to make use of it for Twitter stuff, at least at first.
[Update: Upon further thought, this is actually a pretty good place to use the Favorite function to save posts that contain links to good stuff you want to be able to revisit more easily. Still, it would be good to have a specific function to save links.]
- A conversation setting that would remove any comments outside of a specified conversation across two or more tweeps. This could also involve incorporating response outside of a Tweep's follows. It could be a great way of adding to one's follows and followers lists.
- Categories - I exist in several spheres and it can sometimes be confusing, difficult or just plain taxing to keep who is who separate. This is the same kind of thing that TweetDeck is already doing for users but I'd love to see it incorporated into the site from the get go.
- Private Tweets - less a direct message and more of a private message that only followers noted as friends or in a particular group or category could read. I mean, do I really want people who think I might still be reasonably cool to know that I'm a Skyrates, fantasy baseball, Survivor nerd?
Those are just the ones off the top of my bleached blond head. What features would you love to see loaded into Twitter.
Update: Another one I just thought of. An easy, graphical way to see if someone you follow does not follow you back. All too often, I follow someone back, they eventually realize that I'm a blithering idiot and unfollow me, I'll reply to their tweet about something and they don't see it for a day or two because it doesn't show up in their stream but on their @fenriq (or whoever they are) page.
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