Using software is like using any other tool. The more time you spend with it, the faster you get at interacting with it. Nowhere is that more apparent than with keyboard shortcuts: less time spent navigating menus is more time spent making stuff.
A lot of the keyboard shortcut sheets I found online were either out of date or had terrible quality and most of all, were full color. I don’t need to print an entire sheet of purple for some shortcuts. That’s why I made some new ones.
The gadget gods decree slimmer phones and battery life measured in weeks is a relic of the past. We’re still hunter-gatherers, only do we now hunt for chargers and gather energy. At some coffee shops, electrical outlets are in higher demand than the actual coffee. Airport construction engineers around the world seem to have agreed that the best spot for an outlet is closer to the ceiling than the floor. Phones angling by a thread in mid air, just held up by already worn out USB-plugs. All of these suck and logging power strips around with you is a necessary, but terrible solution. Especially when bulky laptop power supplies block half of the ports. The same goes for extension cords and worse, still, packing clunky travel adapters.
None of these are life threatening issues (until the first person gets killed in a fight for the last electrical outlet). But that is the beauty of platforms like Kickstarter: people coming up with clever solutions to problems you did not even know you had.
Mogics, a Singapore-based company, came up with a solution: the power bagel. Their Kickstarter campaign got successfully funded in just 9 hours. Although success in this case meant amassing $440,000 in pledges, way past the humble goal of $10,000.
The company is rather Kickstarter savvy, having already launched five products on the platform. Still, raking in 44 times of what you planned for is still quite impressive.
Apple has done it again. After courageously dropping the headphone jack from the iPhone, they have now continued their war against legacy ports and killed every port that was on the 2015 MacBook Pros (except, curiously, the headphone jack). Instead of HDMI, regular-sized USB, SD-card slots and Thunderbolt, there is now only one: USB-C.
Good arguments can be made (and certainly have been made) in favor of four multi-purpose ports instead of a singular-purpose legacy ports. One can cry over the omission of an SD card slot as a slap in the face of all creative professionals, something that Apple with all its engineering prowess should find space for. But find it they did not and here we are. With ports from the future causing frustration in the present.
The problem is: USB Type-C mostly relates to the form factor. It describes the reversible plug and port, but not necessarily what goes through. To add to the confusion, Apple sells these ports as Thunderbolt 3 ports on the 2016 MacBook Pro, but on the 2015-2016 Macbook they don’t even support Thunderbolt - while still using the same USB-C plug. So what’s going on?
Sometimes Kickstarter feels like a backpack and wallet store. Hardly a week goes by without someone proposing a revolutionary backpack that transcends everything that came before. And a lot of them come close to these aspirations. Everyone who travels with the folding-open-like-a-suitcase backpack cannot go back. Stuffing your backpack from the top now seems like pure and utter chaos.
On the other side of the Kickstarter-backpack-rainbow are the stylish urban backpacks for city dwellers and commuters. One of which is the Riutbag, and it’s back for a second round. Sarah Giblin, the founder of Riut, got the original Riutbag funded back in 2014 and then used her backers’ feedback to go for a second round in late 2015. It got it funded in just four days. I backed the second round in October 2015 and got mine just in time for Christmas.
The Riutbag is a small and light backpack that distinguishes itself with one main feature: all zippers face the backside. You can only open them after taking the bag off. This is a big deal for every commuter who carries around expensive electronics on public transport: with the Riutbag you don’t just buy convenience, but also peace of mind.