Car2Go

I missed out on the early promotions related to Car2Go in Calgary (I was traveling a lot this fall). I still recall seeing a autocarrier full of little white cars in my rearview mirror this summer. It made me curious.

I'm going to be testing out this service in Calgary and Toronto and Vancouver over the next couple months. I'm really excited about it.

Services like this challenge the status quo about both car ownership and car rental. Millions and millions of automobiles in North America are just sitting idly when they could be used by other people.

Rdio Steams Ahead

I'm all over music apps. Even ones that aren't supposed to work in Canada. I went to the trouble of learning about VPNs in order to use Spotify and Pandora. It turns out that I don't have the patience to work around the legalities of music licensing. As soon as Rdio became available in Canada I signed up. Love the service but I always had this niggling feeling that it wasn't quite as good as Spotify. A year in "app time" is an eternity. The 2012 Wired App Guide is giving Rdio a 9/10 and Spotifiy 8/10. As a Canadian I'm pretty thrilled since I can't legally access Spotify anyways. More importantly, I am completely comfortable with the service. Occasionally they don't have a song that I must listen to (but then I can default to Grooveshark). Even more importantly, Rdio playlists are starting to propagate. Here's a fun one.

Year in Review Apps

I've had a couple of "year in review" summaries created by web apps. First out of the chute was Facebook - A look at your 20 biggest moments from the year including life events, highlighted posts and your popular stories. This creates a nice summary of events that Facebook thinks are important. I occasionally attend events where I don't have my phone with me (ie Leonard Cohen which was amazing) so those don't show up. Other events seem to create likes and shares but probably wouldn't make my top 20 list. Still other meaningful moments are fleeting, like how I felt at the climax of the movie Looper. I was hit with a wave of emotions that I had never experienced before at a movie. That's not going to make a Facebook list. 

The second summary is a bit more straightforward. Cemre Güngör created an app that sucks your flight data out of Tripit.com and makes a nice visual summary (Jim Letourneau's Year in the Air).  If you fly more than a few times a year, you're crazy not to be using Tripit.

LinkedIn tells me that 128 of my connections started something new in 2012. Whether these are simple profile edits or something more meaningful will require some profile creeping. Where to begin, where to begin? It turns out that just overviewing the faces on the list is a great reminder. People I know have been fired, early retired, switched consulting gigs and some have even signed up for new full time jobs at a wide range of levels. Nothing is permanent. Even the hard times. 

Foursquare has a nice 6 month summary of most explored categories that would integrate nicely into a year in review. My most explored categories were Hotel, Airport, Coffee Shop, Train Station, and Food and Drink Shop. 

These web apps are just scratching the surface but they certainly are triggering personal memories of 2012. They're only going to get better. The apps will as well.

Music Magic

I've been testing out my iPhone 5 with Airport Express and I've been really pleased with the performance. By connecting an Airport Express to the home sound system and using the built in AirPlay feature, I'm able to stream music from my iPhone or iPad. It works great!

I was able to do this previously using third party software but there were lots of skips and drop outs. I got much better performance using my MacBook than either an iPad or iPhone. I'm not sure what Apple changed (probably iOS 6) but I'm really enjoying things finally working the way they should. Especially when all I needed to do was upgrade some software.

If you love music, you owe it to yourself to hook up an Airport Express to your stereo. 

Virus

This quaint Ye Olde Virus Removal Shoppe reminds me of how fast viruses are becoming weaponized. Stuxnet to foil Iran's nuclear program. Saudi oil production nearly halted. All because of software. While John McAfee is a certifiable nutbar, his predictions about viruses have come true.

Maclean's vs Vanity Fair - Canada Wins

I'm slowly rounding up my magazine subscriptions and getting them onto my iPad. I love magazines but they are often moved to the recycling bin before I have time to read them. Other times I put them in big piles and then they get recycled a few months later. Neither is a desirable option.

I'm a big fan of Vanity Fair but my pet peeve about their app is that it only lets you download one magazine file at a time and only when the app is open and running on the home screen. Magazines are (especially Vanity Fair) pretty big downloads and it can be a frustrating wait. Why can't these files be downloaded in the background?

Maclean's is Canada's national news magazine and it's a good way to keep up on on current affairs without trying to piece together the waves of daily headlines. Their magazine app kicks, mainly because it allows simultaneous downloads and it will do them while you're using your iPad for other tasks. Graydon Carter needs to stop acting in movies (see Arbitrage, its very good) and start leaning on his social media team.

iPhone Hoopla

I dunked my iPhone into some dirty water in the bottom a large potted tree planter at Coachella. The phone eventually recovered and everything works fine except that I have very poor screen resolution. Lots of lines and ghosting. I've also dropped my iPhone from the upstairs railing onto the main floor. Call it 15' So while these little machines are amazing, I'm impatiently waiting to freshen things up.
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