Rumors suggest the next iPhone in 2017 will have wireless charging. False.

The next iPhone (iPhone 8?) looks like it will have inductive charging so you won’t have to plug the phone itself directly into the wall, but don’t confuse this with “wireless charging.”

This is wireless charging:

Where a transmitter sends energy, through the air, to receivers plugged in or built into a device. Energous is a company that is exploring (actual and magical) wireless charging.

Plugging a charging pad into the wall, and then needing to take the phone over to a location and set it on top is not “wireless.”

Inductive charging would be an awesome feature on the new iPhones, but for the love of everything, please don’t call it wireless.

Why does Netflix’s iOS apps only provide a 10 second rewind button? Amazon’s Prime Video app, by comparison, offers 10 seconds forward and 10 seconds back.

Don’t worry, there’s a trick to change this if you own an Apple Watch and enable a native 10 second skip forward button.

Netflix iOS app

Amazon Prime Video iOS app

If you pull up the Now Playing app on Apple Watch, it’ll magically display a 10 second forward skip. Enjoy.

There’s no excuse needed to go over some of the best apps for creating gifs from your phone, but if you do need one: iOS 11 will natively support gifs in the camera roll. ?

Here are some of the apps I use. Type any of these app names into the App Store and you’ll be set.

From scratch: Giphy Cam

Looking to make your own gif from scratch? Giphy Cam can help with that. You can also upload existing images and add plenty of effects.

Quick fire fun: Giphy Stickers, Sticky

Using Giphy Stickers, take a photo, trace an object, and then pick an animation to add to it. The app leads to super quick turn around when you come across good photo opportunities.

Sticky is a cool new app that will auto-detect the main objects in a photo and cut around them for you. Put it through Giphy Stickers, or another app, and you’ll have a gif in no time.

Live photos: Motion Stills, ImgPlay

Motion...

Here’s a causal game inspired by playing in a band, listening to a click-track. The tempo and beats per minute are the heart of a song, in the sense that it breathes and pumps blood at a certain rate, in order to sustain it. (The obvious comparison is The Bee Gees live-saving song “Staying Alive”.

While hopefully playable to some degree in its current state, this mostly serves as reference to an app or full feature implementation in the future.

BPM Game Objective:

The goal is to be able to correctly identify or articulate how many beats per minute a song plays at. The player (or team) with the most points at the end of the second round wins.

Song collection: 500 most listened to songs on Spotify during 2016.

Round one: Guess that BPM range

During the first round, a randomly selected song (out of the collection) will play and the player or team whose turn it is must guess the range...

On Wireless Earbuds

A few years ago I thought that tiny earbuds, wireless and independent of each other were science-fiction. They were impossibly small and unrealistic in all their depictions.

At a certain point they were a tiny bit bigger, slightly poking out of ears, but at least they were real. The Motorola Hint Bluetooth headset, a mono device made for calls and voice commands was the first time I remember thinking, Maybe this could happen. Then there was Earin in 2014. The stereo earbuds which wirelessly connected to each other and a device.

There was no wire to be found anywhere.

Those, along with The Dash from Bragi, sparked my interest so much I decided to ask why (and how) they were able to create them now. What was the catalyst to bring independently wireless earbuds into the real world at this time?

Turns out it was mostly software — the hardware being used was from...

It seems obvious, but there seems to be some confusion: if you have earbuds or headphones plugged into your phone that have a microphone built-in, then you don’t need to hold the phone up to your face.

The other person can not hear you better if you do that. Think about it like this: when you have earbuds with a microphone plugged in, the microphone has been moved from the phone, next to your face.

Also, fyi, you probably don’t need to hold the microphone close to your mouth either, but at least that makes more sense.

Just as memorable as a James Bond film, is usually the theme song which accompanies it. Here’s a top 10 list of my favorites in order.

10 - Chris Cornell - “You Know My Name”

9 - Ike and Tina Turner - “Goldeneye”

8 - A-ha - “The Living Daylights”

7 - Shirley Bassey - “Diamonds Are Forever”

6 - Garbage - “The World Is Not Enough”

5 - Jack White & Alicia Keys - “Another Way To Die”

4 - Sheena Easton - “For Your Eyes Only”

3 - Paul McCartney - “Live And Let Die”

2 - Carly Simon - “Nobody Does It Better”

1 - Adele - “Skyfall”

Other notable mentions: Madonna’s “Die Another Day” is a decent song, but sticks out horribly as a James Bond movie theme.

Sam Smith’s “Writing’s On The Wall” is probably my least favorite James Bond theme ever.

The Sweet Setup is a site that aims to help the average person decide which apps and services are best suited for them.

I wrote a post for the site in 2014 which I picked Rdio as the music service people should be using. In 2015, that recommendation no longer holds true and I wrote a follow up post for The Sweet Setup which now recommends Spotify.

Spotify is the go-to choice right now because it has nearly every feature other services have, it has the most users (your friends,) plus it’s gotten really good at what it does.

Apple Music is a very close second and is extremely promising, but lacks some features and has some software bugs out of the gate.

Once Apple Music gains an Android app, Sonos support, and more stability and consistency, it will be a force in the music industry.

Not only is Spotify the best option, but it’s the service least likely to call it quits on music...

I had no idea ponchos were creating so many problems for fans during baseball games, but after seeing these videos keep popping up in MLB’s feed, I’m starting to see a trend. No matter how many times it happens, it’s still hilarious.

Recently my four year old son has been waking up really early and getting out of bed around 5:30 am. My wife and I thought about getting a clock for his room and trying to explain when it was okay for him to get up. But the idea of explaining the numbers on a digital or analog clock seemed too daunting with a young kid waking up early in a still mostly dark room.

Then it hit me. There’s already a Sonos speaker in his room which we use, among other things, to play lullabies when he’s going to sleep and the speaker also has an alarm feature.

Instead of using the alarm in the traditional way to wake him up. I set it to 6:45am and told him that he couldn’t get out of bed until he heard the music. Here’s another benefit of the Sonos alarm: I can set it to any song using Rdio’s on-demand service. So I let him pick the song he wants to hear in the morning that tells him he can get out of...