European Identity will benefit greatly from free-roaming. Today roaming fees between European countries have been scrapped. This means that your mobile phone is the same whatever country you go to. It means that you will have the same access to minutes and data. When you travel you will no longer need to change app permissions to reduce data cost. It also means that your images keep backing up via your data plan.
Google Arts & Culture App Google Arts & Culture is an app that allows people to look at Arts and culture from around the world easily and intuitively. This app allows you to learn more about arts and culture based on your current location as well as by topic, art medium and more. With this app, you can look at 360 images of monuments and locations. You can also zoom into artworks.
The Insta 360 Nano and Air are two affordable cameras. The first is designed to work with the new iPhone shape as well as a stand alone device. The Insta360 Air works only when it is plugged into an Android device. Both are good for specific uses.
Insta360 Air The Insta360 Air requests a firmware update the first time you want to use it. This takes a few minutes and then the device uses the phone’s gyroscopes to keep the image stable.
Ecosia is an environmental search engine for those who want to do social good through their web browsing habits. The principle is simple. You go to the Ecosia main page and type in your search engine query. For every search engine query that you do ad revenue is generated. This ad revenue is then invested into tree growing projects in a number of countries. [caption id=“attachment_3527” align=“aligncenter” width=“300”] At the time of writing, Ecosia earned enough to plant 8.
There is a lot of discussion about Mental Health and social media because most people are not social media natives. They are either Luddites who do not appreciate playing with technology. They see themselves as users rather than participants and then there are extroverts and other people who see Social Media as a threat to their way of life. We live in societies built for extroverts rather than textroverts. As a textroverts social media is a place for me to have full conversations without having to compete with extroverts who often hijack conversations through charisma and the superficiality of what they have to say.
While in Spain for three weeks I was playing with the Xtorm solar Charger. I found that it worked well for the charging of tablets and e-book readers but not mobile phones. [caption id=“attachment_3462” align=“aligncenter” width=“225”] Solar charger and external battery[/caption] For years I have wanted to play with solar power. I have wanted to buy a solar panel that I could fix to my bag or that I could use to charge devices.
I have logged 799 activities with my Suunto devices. This includes hikes, via ferrata, climbing, swimming and scuba diving. I like Suunto devices because their battery life is good enough to last through entire days of hiking and the battery lasts for weeks between charges when used as a simple watch. I like to track my heart rate but I often feel self conscious about putting the heart rate monitor belt on.
Life Cycle by NorthCube AB is a life tracking application available on iphone. It allows you to keep track of your sports activities, time spent at work, sleeping, shopping, socialising and more. At first it knows nothing about it. It learns of your home location, your work location, where you go climbing and do other activities and then automatically logs the time spent doing various activities. At the end of the day you can see how much time you spent at work, at home and running errands.
Learning about Tiny Houses is interesting. There are a number of features/documentaries online where people build their own tinyhouses either from shipping containers, trailers or other structures. The aim of these tinyhouses is to maximise space and reduce costs. Some of these homes are entirely off the grid. They collect rain water and solar panels provide power. The bedroom is often built above the kitchen and climbing wall holds are used instead of ladders or conventional stairs.
Black Mirror - a television series Black Mirror is a television series that was broadcast by Channel 4 a few years ago and made available to Netflix audiences recently. The series explores a variety of topics and issues to do with technology from death to crime and existentialism. It also explores themes like family and friendship. We spend a lot of time thinking about technology and how it has changed our lives.