My Love-Hate Relationship with "Hey, Siri"

What cannot be overcome is, whatever you ask Siri, will be heard by someone else. Even an innocent question to get the sports score can be something to fear asking in public. Someone will hear, and then you will have to converse with that person about your team.

Ben Brooks does an awesome job summing up something I am working on trying to get myself used to. I am a massive Bluetooth lover, and while using BT earbuds/a headset/headphones helps this somewhat, there is still an element of "where am I?" when you are thinking of using Siri, and that is a real limitation. 

This is further exacerbated by my lovely fiancée converting to the Apple world, so we now have 2 devices that listen for "Hey, Siri" 100% of the time, and a third that joins the fracas when it is plugged in (my iPad Air 2). It can be fun to pit them against each other, but it would be cooler if they could figure out which is closest to me...

 

Calculated Metrics Come to Google Analytics

Wrote this for the work blog, but it gets me excited enough that I also wanted to touch on this here. Google Analytics has rolled out support for calculated metrics, which means we can now define custom metrics (such as Revenue per User) inside of Google Analytics, rather than needing to pull this data and process it with a spreadsheet before reporting. 

This is the kind of move that makes me happy to still be firmly hitched to the Google Analytics wagon. I still have yet to find a better analytics suite, and it has hit the point where I have very little fear of Google Analytics going the way of Google Reader. This is the perfect example of that - little by little, Google has managed to fix or enhance pretty much every deficiency within the suite, and has rolled out some great features in the process. Demographic data, Social data, Multi-Channel Conversion information, and Real Time are features and reports I rely on daily, and they are all features added within the last several years (primarily, with the rollout of Universal)

 

Pause: A Relaxation App for iPhone

After opening the app, you simply place your finger on the screen and slowly and continuously move it around so that the airy orb of color floating beneath your finger gathers smaller orbs like itself, growing larger and larger until the screen is filled.

I've been playing with this app for a few weeks, and have found myself really liking it. It's a great way to create some space for your brain to catch up, and figure out what to tackle next. While it seems really simple, it also works really well.  

Emerald of Chivor

I have been absolutely in love with this ink since it first shipped. While it is in no way an every day ink, I've taken to using it for my weekend todo lists - makes me all that much more likely to look at it.  

It seems like it is way more well behaved than my bottle of Stormy Grey is - it took a lot less shaking/rolling to get the gold flecks flowing. They really knocked it out of the park with this version. It's a dark-horse candidate to sign my wedding certificate with.