After several columns devoted to targeted digital marketing, it’s time for something different. Here are a few tech tidbits that are worth your attention, fused together to form an full column.
A handy iPhone trick. For those of you who remember when you could hold your finger down in an iPhone text entry/edit box and it would turn into a vertical cursor that you could move, you may have noticed that no longer works to place the cursor inside a word.
But if you hold your finger down on the space bar, it basically serves as a little mouse pad that will allow you to move the cursor wherever you want in the text using your finger. This little hack is a game changer when entering text on my iPhone.
Flume. I live in a rural area, and our water is supplied by a well. I’ve always been a little bit curious about how much water we actually use, and when we needed a new well pump recently, I took the opportunity to install a water meter on the well. Of course, people on “city” water have a water meter that gets read periodically for billing purposes.
Whether you rely on a well or on city services, if you’re serious about monitoring your water use, take a look at Flume (flumewater.com). It consists of a sensor, which straps onto most water meters, as well as a “bridge,” which connect the sensor (via radio) to your Wi-Fi network. Of course, there’s a Flume app for your phone.
How does it work? Water flowing through your water meter spins a magnetic disc inside of the meter, creating a magnetic field that correlates directly to the flow of water. The Flume sensor strapped to the meter measures the magnetic field and sends the data to the app, which lets you track your water usage in great detail.
Though I don’t pay for water, I try to conserve it. In a world where water is becoming both scarcer and more expensive, a Flume device seems to make sense. Installation is trivial. To quote the Flume website: “Just download the Flume app, connect to Wi-Fi, and fasten the sensor. No real dirty work required, but it comes with gloves just in case.”
The Flume 2 came out in October with improved radio range, battery life and ease of use and sells for $199 on Amazon. (The original model is also available for $149.)
Social media platforms. The Social Dilemma. This is a documentary available on Netflix, which interviews a number of people who have been instrumental in creating modern social media platforms, but have grown disaffected with its downsides. While those interviewed point out that social media has had positive effects on society, they also note that it’s first and foremost a revenue-generating machine for its owners. Social media tracks your usage of the platform to see what will maintain/grow the amount of attention you give it. It then sells your attention to the highest bidder.
Sarah Cooper, a former Google UX (user experience) designer who is known for her hilarious lip-sync videos of President Trump, does not appear in the documentary. However, she said something in an interview with The New York Times’ Kara Swisher that emphasizes the dilemma.
“When I was studying at Georgia Tech, that was the question: How do you make something addictive? We were trying to make addictive things. Then you want people to — you want it to be sticky. You want people to spend all their time there. That’s a data point that people are like, oh, someone spent four hours on our app. This is great. And then it’s like, no, actually, that’s bad for that person.”
The documentary also includes the story of a fictitious family that experiences the negative side of social media engagement, which runs in parallel with the interviews. I found it a little overdone, but certainly some people fall prey to the negative effects of Facebook, Twitter and their ilk.
I highly recommend The Social Dilemma. Given the outsize importance of social media technology in our lives, it’s essential that people understand the basics of it. This documentary provides a good overview of how the technology works, presented in an understandable way.
What’s on your mind? This is my last column of the year. If you want to give me a Christmas present, please take a minute and tell me what you’d like to know about, technology-wise, in 2021. Since, unlike social media companies, my columns don’t generate data that let me maximize reader engagement. I hope to hear from you at mike@mikeduffy.com.
Best wishes for you in 2021!
