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Enjoying the freedom of portable apps.
Portable Apps is an interesting option for those of us who use work computers rather than our own. It is also a good solution for those of us who change desktop all the time but can’t play with our phones whilst at work.
A few days ago I wrote about Chrome as a PAF file and things have become more interesting as a result.
What I particularly enjoy are the extensions that you can install within the browser. Anyone who works in an office always faces the challenge of getting authorisation to install the simplest of applications. With google chrome and extensions you regain some of that freedom.
The browser allows you to install the extensions of your liking and use them. Some of these applications are the mobile phone version implemented in the desktop format. The best example of this is the yahoo messenger app. Very similar builds are running on the desktop and mobile phone.
The other features are google calendar, facebook and feedly extensions. There is choice. I have feedly running to let me know how many RSS items are left to read. With the google calendar application I can see how much time is left before my next meeting/time commitment. With facebook I can see how many pending messages are waiting for my action.
The advantage of this way of doing things is that you can cut down on the number of open tabs. It is an on demand interaction. It is only open for as long as you are doing something. That’s like mobile applications.
What we see here is a shift away from the traditional web browser where information is displayed according to a cascading style sheet and towards an application based system. The application is installed locally and the only information that you gather from the server is raw data. As a result even with slower connections you can participate, whether from a mobile phone or whilst travelling where roaming charges apply.
It’s an interesting space to keep an eye on. I like having the ability to customise my web surfing environment whatever the environment and platform. I wish that the app syncing would work for extensions, rather than for bookmarks and certain settings.
Slow data transfers and self satisfaction
Playing with technology is a great way of learning new skills but occasionaly you are let down by it. This happened to me tonight when I wanted to do episode four of twittervox. The entire day I had an excellent connection and things were downloading at a good speed. Wait until it’s time for twitter vox and the connection crashed down to just 500 bytes per second up and 1.5 kilobytes per second up. That’s hardly enough to do text chat.
There are two reasons why this problem may occur. The first of these is that someone is downloading torrents and this is eating up all the bandwidth. The second option is that because this home is using a cable rather than adsl connection the speed ebbs and flows according to how many people are using the connection.
Tomorrow at some point during the day I will record some answers to the various points in such a manner that I will have participated even if it’s with a lag of several hours. If I can’t use the technology when I want then there is so much redundancy that I will use other methods.
Initial Thoughts on the DJI Mini SE
Today I went for my first flight with the DJI Mini SE and it feels very familiar, after flying a spark so frequently, until I crashed that drone. I would have replaced the spark but I didn’t because it would either cost two thirds to replace the old one, or cost a lot to buy a new drone, with batteries and the rest of the gear. I waited. I didn’t wait for four weeks, four months, or four seasons. I waited for two years, until I saw the DJI Mini SE was about to come out.
What I like about this drone is first and foremost its price, but also its form factor. In Europe drones that way more than 250 grams have stricter rules than drones below 250 grams, so with a small light drone, you can fly in more places. The other advantage is that you can go for a two hour walk, without ever been bothered by the weight. I know because that’s what I did today.
Another nice feature is that the DJI Mini SE Flymore pack comes with a three battery charger spare props, and a carrying case. Everything fits neatly into the carrying case, and the carrying case fits nicely into a 10 litre hiking bag.
With the DJI spark it was a pain because the charger was large and needed to be transported in one case. In another case I had the drone and three batteries and because batteries were good for just 20 minutes you had to have a few. In the end it was a pain to keep everything charged and ready. Thinks have improved over the last three or four years.
If you crash this drone, and break one of it’s arms you can unscrew the broken arm and replace it, without replacing the entire body. Repair-ability is important with something that can get stuck and fall from a tree onto a tarmac road, as mine did.
And finally, I have flown just once for about 15 minutes and I feel a little rusty. It feels just the same as the Spark, but maybe a little slower. I notice that between telling it to go full forward to full backwards there is a little control lag. I would consider getting a landing mat, for when landing in grass. With the Spark if you tried to start it near grass it would behave like a lawnmower. This one tells you there is a motor error. I took off from the edge of a farm road. I had good visibility and could see cars if they were approaching.
That’s it for now. I will update you as I learn more
Of Casio and Smart Watches
Over the last five and a half years I have tracked every walk that I have been on, and I have tracked about five and a half million steps per year. That’s a lot of steps and a lot of going around in clrcles. Going around in clrcles makes tracking walks with smart watches/gps watches less interesting. That’s probably why I have been distracted by Casio watches.
I haven’t been distracted by the 300-600 CHF watches. I’ve been distracted by the 30-50CHF ones. The simple watches that people of my age wore as children. These are simple, easy to use watches that have batteries that are meant to last for 10 years between battery changes. Compare that to one day for the Apple Watch and 30 days for Suunto and Garmin watches.
There is something cosier about a watch that doesn’t speak with the world, a watch that tells the time, has an alarm or five, one or two time zones, and that familiar beep beep, that is turned off, but could exist, should we want it back.
With this watch you get 10 years of battery life, an alarm clock and you know the time of day. It fits under your shirt sleeve with ease, and you can forget you’re wearing it until you need to know what time with it. For six CHF more you can get this one, with world time, and a timer. Timers are most useful when you’re cooking, to know when to do the next step.
The pandemic affects us in strange ways. I didn’t expect to rekindle my interest in simple casio watches but for some reason the pandemic has. For three years, over this pandemic I have walked in circles, and my interest in that data has waned, so simple watches have re-awoken simpler desires for simpler watches.
Don’t be mistaken though. These are simple, limited watches and I want them to do more, but conversely I like the idea of wearing a watch for as long as I want, without having to recharge it. It doesn’t nag me, unless I tell it to wake me up, or to tell me that 20 minutes have elapsed.
Excitement for live streaming from mobile phones
Live video streaming from the mobile phone is normal for me. Yesterday for example I was streaming from the boat as the Croisière de l’espoir came back into port.
Jose Castillo and Tim Siglin talk about highlights from Streaming Media East in New York, including AT&T’s re-emergence as a CDN, a jaw-dropping mobile video webcasting demo by Steve Garfield, and interviews with show attendees.
Interesting to listen to other people discuss this topic.
The case for the Xiaomi Smart Band 8
The more you read about gadgets and the more you read about devices that cost from 300 to 1200 CHF or more. I encourage you to look in the opposite direction, at the devices that cost 38 CHF. Within the last day the Xiaomi Smart Band 8 came out in the Swiss market.
With the Xiaomi Fit app you can track Sleep, heart rate, steps, kcal, moving time, standing, blood oxygen, stress, weight, PAI (more on this soon), Vo2 max, and training load. I skipped blood pressure and sugar because I haven’t figured these out yet.
You get the same functionality, for 38 CHF as you do for 200 CHF with an Apple Watch, excluding GPS access. You can get the same features as apple provides, at a fraction of the price.
The niche feature I spotted on the Xiaomi Smart Band 7 is the Personal Activity Intelligence reading.
PAI may have a huge potential to motivate people to become and stay physically active, as it is an easily understandable and scientifically proven metric that could inform potential users of how much physical activity is needed to reduce the risk of premature cardiovascular disease death.
In brief: PAI looks at heart rate and effort. When we exert ourselves, by sprinting up the stairs rather than taking a lift, or walking from A to B instead of taking a bus our PAI score increases. The more we make an effort that increases our heart rate, the faster the PAI score increases. The aim is to have a PAI of 100 or more to live a longer and healthier life.
Versatile
One of my biggest frustration with fitness trackers like the apple watch is that you can’t count your steps while the watch is in your pocket. If you try it you will get zero steps counted. With the Xiaomi Smart band devices you can turn off hr monitoring, and track steps wearing it as a pendant, or in your pocket, or a 3d printed carrier.
Pebble
If you’re a runner you can even use it in “pebble mode” With pebble mode you put it in a specialised carrier and fix it to your shoe to track your running that way. I am not clear whether you would need one clip and tracker per shoe, or if one tracker is enough. The same would cost 79 CHF with Garmin. With other brands that specialise in this tracking it can be hundreds of francs.
Plenty of devices come with a GPS that is built in. In theory we can leave the phone at home, as we run, but how often do we leave the home without our phone? In my case, never.
The GPS is Delegated to the phone
Some devices, such as the Garmin 45S, suunto peak 5 and others have GPS that may be slower to detect where they are, or be less accurate due to cheaper components.
With the Xiaomi Smart Band series they get around this limitation by tracking heart rate and steps whilst the phone takes care of mapping.
Another brand that does this is Casio. Plenty of their steptracker watches track steps and time an activity, but rely on the phone to track location, speed and more. This reduces the load on the watch. With Casio watches you have a life expectancy of two years.
Long Battery Life
From what I read the Xiaomi Smart band devices have a life span of from 7 days to 14 days without needing to be charged. This isn’t as good as the Garmin Instinct but it’s better than the daily charge for the iphone, and the charge every three to four days that the Garmin 45s requires.
Devices Get Old and Have Niche Uses
I have more than one Garmin device, because I want one for hiking and climbing, and another for running. I have three Suunto. One of these I used for climbing, cycling, via ferrata and more for years before replacing it when the battery got low. The same is true of a second Suunto device. The third one replaced the failing battery of the second device.
With Garmin I often want to wear the Instinct during the day, and the 45s when running. If I swap between watches the app will keep up, but the track from that day does not synchronise from the app to the other device and vice versa.
Two Way Synching
With Xiaomi you have two way synching. If you use device A and swap to device B, half way through the day, the data will sync automatically. If you had 3000 steps from going shopping for food on one device, you will have the same count on the second device. Synchronisation is seamless, and practical.
At the moment it connects to Apple Health and Strava natively. I suspect that it could be worn and replace the apple watch, if so desired but I haven’t proved this yet.
And Finally
Our natural instinct is to look at the most expensive, most advanced, and most aspirational product. With this blog post I encourage us to look in the opposite direction.
It is easy for us to assume that cheap devices are worthless crap, and in plenty of cases, we’re right, but in this case I think we have a gem. We can remove it from the watch band and use it as a step, stand and more tracker, or we can put it in a pendant, and track everything except heart rate, stress and blood oxygen levels. We can buy an adaptor for our shoes and it becomes a running tracker.
I like playing with Suunto, Apple and Garmin trackers but my biggest frustration is that unless we want to manually enter data we will have an incomplete log, if we don’t wear three devices despite having just two arms. With this device, if we’re not interested in PAI data, we can put it in our pocket, or pendant, and track our activities anyway.
Every article I skimmed about various Xiaomi smart bands says the same. It’s the best budget tracker on the market.
The goal of this blog post is to encourage us to look at what the cheaper devices are capable of. Some people want to track their activities but without the nuissance of a smart watch. Others want to track their activities, but without having to wear a watch on their wrist. This is a cheap, versatile device.