I like to tinker. I always disregard warranty voiding disclaimers. If it can be opened, I’ll find a way to open it and see what’s inside. If it can be modified, I’ll do it. My iPhone is no different. The stock iPhone is meant to function all the time. It’s simple for a simple audience.

Activator – Creates a pull down menu to access many core iPhone functions like turning on and off wifi, bluetooth, airplane mode, etc. I have it configured so that a swipe across the screen will pull down the menu.

FolderEnhancer – iOS4 introduced folders but only allowed 12 apps per folder and no folders within folders. This extension allows pages within folders and no limits to the number of apps in a folder. You can also have folders within folders. As an experiment, I was able to create 10 layers of folders. I was too afraid of creating an 11th level, not knowing where it’d take me.

HapticPro – There’s no feedback on iPhone touch screen. This extension vibrates the iPhone when a button is pressed. You can adjust the vibration length and events that cause the vibration. Seems a little gimicky but I like the slight feedback.

Iconoclasm – Rather than the standard 4 x 4 layout of apps, this lets you change it to what you want. I’m currently using a 4 x 5 layout with a fifth column of apps. This lets me squeeze in more apps per page. There’s a number of different layouts possible up to 10 x 10.

Infinidock – One of my favorites, this extension lets you add unlimited apps to your dock. To reach apps outside of current view, you can scroll or create “pages” in your dock. All my frequently used apps are now on my dock.

LockInfo – This extension creates a pull down menu that can be activated on the lock screen, home screen, or any of the pages. I installed the HTC clock plugin to have a big clock and weather on my home screen. At any other screen, I configured it so that a swipe down from the top of the screen pulls down quick info like email, tweets, and messages.

Multifl0w – This simulates the Mac expose feature. It allows you to visualize apps running in the background and quickly access them. It runs in parallel with Apple’s multi task implementation so does not create any extra drain in battery life.

Mywi – Last, but my very favorite jailbreak app is Mywi. It lets you turn your iPhone into a mobile hotspot. You can create a wifi network with password and turn it on and off. The speed is pretty fast, dependent on your iPhone signal. However, it burns through the battery pretty fast and heats up your iPhone. Not recommended to use your iPhone as a true mobile hotspot. Get a dedicated device if you plan on using it a lot. The heat generated and battery drain will wear out your iPhone battery. That said, i has come in really handy for those few times I’m without wifi access.

Photo by Richard ParmiterIf things slow down for you during the holidays, take a moment to change your passwords and enhance your security. Lifehacker posted a great list of tutorials. Their latest breach in security left a lot of usernames and passwords vulnerable. Make sure to use different logins for your financial accounts vs. a social networking account.

Enhance Your Security This Weekend via {Lifehacker}

1. Amazon Mechanical Turk – Unlike other automated computing sourcing systems, Amazon relies on human beings to perform small tasks. When combined, hundreds of thousands of individuals perform tasks for a few cents to dollars. Some example tasks could be finding an image of a Point of Interest and uploading it.
2. Wikipedia – This online encyclopedia is completely volunteer written. Anyone can make changes and update the site. Surprisingly, there is virtually no spam on the site. The close knit community keeps everything at bay. There’s always someone that’s an expert in one narrow subject. The site is constantly updated and a go to source for information.
3. OpenOffice – Through a volunteer community, OpenOffice has developed an open source Microsoft Office replacement. The volunteers include programmers, quality control reviewers, user experience, writing, and marketing.
4. BOINC – UC Berkley developed this platform for volunteer computing and desktop grid computing. Users signup for various scientific research projects such as SETI (finding green men on Mars). Pieces of data are transmitted to volunteer computers for computation and sent back to the lab for compilation. Most users don’t fully use their computers potential. This project allows those unused processing power to combine into one massive supercomputer.
5. StumbleUpon – Like other voting sites such as Digg, StumbleUpon users submit interesting URLs and they get voted up and down. The popular ones particulate up the stream and become headline stories. This is how viral marketing sites get top hits.

Ryan Coleman, founding member of VizThink, created an amazing presentation on visual thinking and the writing process. Although it was presented at an event for journalists, I think it applies to all of us and our writing process.

Visual note-taking or graphical recording is the processes of taking notes using images and graphics. It happens live, during the discussion. Sunni Brown is a talented visual note-taker and graphical recorder. She gives us 18 tips for more effective note-taking.

You can’t write as fast as people can talk. When working with a group as a scribe, we have to use techniques to record down the information.

Tips and Truisms: Listening for Graphic Recording or Visual Note-taking via [Sunni Brown]

I’m currently reading Brain Rules. Rule 7 is “sleep well, think well.” Sleep deprivation costs US businesses more than $100 billion a year. That’s no chump change.

Loss of sleep hurts attention, execution function, working memory, mood, quantitative skills, logical reasoning, and even motor dexterity.

What if we change the way we work. Rather than the typical 9-to-5 model, what if we allowed employees to work when they are most effective. The night owls can stay late at night and the early risers can come in early. Would it be possible to gain productivty, create a better quality of life for employees, and reduce the sleep deficit. This way, night owls don’t have to wake up early to get to work and early risers don’t have to stay late to punch  the clock.

If we replace the sleep deprivation with optimal sleep, employees may actually increase their productivity. Work may be higher quality, innovation may increase, errors will be reduced, and customer service may be better.

Photo by Casey Serin

On a personal note, I’ve been struggling with sleep problems for the past few months. At the bottom of my problems, the lack of quality sleep made me moody, created memory loss, slowed my thinking, and drained my motivation. I had to work twice as hard just to accomplish tasks I could previously do. After a sleep study, some medical treatment, I’m slowly getting back to 100%. Sleep deprivation is a debt we owe. You can’t simply take a pill or buy a new bed and expect to recover instantly. For me, I’ve found that the changes are helping but it’s taking weeks to recover from months and years of deprivation.

Intersect is an up and coming social network. I’ve been beta testing the site with an invitation from @davidhoang and @moniguzman. Their biggest challenge will be getting people past the learning curve. It’s simple like Tumblr, or technically easy like Posterous. It’s not a blog. It’s not Facebook. It’s not a photosharing site. You don’t “friend” people and you don’t follow people.

Intersect is based on two things: Going to the intersection of Time and a Place.

Before I give you a little tour of the site, let me first mention that this is still in beta. The process, bugs, and kinks are still being worked out.

Below is an image of the timeline. Using the [+] and [-] buttons, you can zoom in or out of the timeline, down to 5 minute increments. Stories can be told using very specific timelines or approximations such as a year.

It’s not linear like a blog. It’s based on a timeline that you can zoom in and out. Think of Google Finance where you can view a stock price on various times frames. Your posts can be specific down to the minute, or broad and general like in a year. Each post can contain photos, video, time and date, place, participants, tags, and a text description. It’s more like telling a story. Unlike a blog, Intersect guides you through all the data that makes a good journalistic story.

What’s great about Intersect

• It’s about telling cohesive story and not randomly posting blurbs.
• It connects you closer to other people.
• Stories connect.
• It’s more than blogging and it’s more than other social networks.

What needs to improve

• There is a steep learning curve. It uses new terms and requires many more data fields.
• It requires work. It’s not twitter where you can make short posts during the day. This is a sit down and think about it journal.
• There aren’t many users yet due to the beta state. If this site gets adopted by users, it could be a really useful forum.

Conclusion

I really could see Intersect replacing my blog and other sites. It’s a journal that can be public, private, or both. More importantly, it’s a recollection of stories with meaning and purpose. It’s documenting what’s happening. Unlike a blog, it’s forcing you to really be a journalist, rather than a casual writer. You need to recollect the who’s and where’s and what’s and there are specific fields for capturing such information. The timeline also shows that stories are not linear like a blog. They connect with other stories. They exist in short and long frequencies.

Keep an eye out, sign up for the beta, or wait for the official release. Either way, this is going to be big.

Screen shots are great. They help create a visual that can replace a lot of written text instructions. There are plenty of options out there.

First off, show me the free options

Don’t want to spend money and buy software. Most operating systems contain some free options.

• Windows 7 – The Snipit Tool will do screen captures.
• Windows XP – There’s no built in tool. Press the print screen button (Prt Scn). It will save the image in your clipboard. Just paste it anywhere you want. You’ll have to use some tool to crop the portion you want.
• Mac OS X – Type in Command-Shift-3 to capture the full screen, or Command-Shift-4 to capture a portion of the screen. For the latter option, your cursor will change and you can select the portion of the screen you want to capture. Images will be saved on your desktop.

What about a more advanced way

I use Techsmith Snagit to capture screen images. It’s been on the market for a long time and is a great tool. There was a recent promotion that let me upgrade my Windows version to the latest version and also get a copy of the Mac version as well. The Mac version was just released.

If you need to capture screen images often, Snagit comes with many predefined workflow processes. For example, you can click a button to capture a portion of the screen, save it at a certain resolution, and copy it to your clipboard. I use this when creating user manuals. There are tools out there that will automate these functions but I still prefer to do this manually to capture the right images.

The new Snagit also has the ability to capture just portions of the menu bar, great if you’re trying to display navigation.