remixminiHow to Make Your Phone Battery Last Longer (Reviewed.com)

Though there’s a limit to how far any phone can stretch, battery life isn’t written in stone. How you use your phone and how you treat it determine not only much time you get on a charge, but also how long the battery itself lasts. Here are some pro tips.

The TeleRead Take: There’s some good, thorough advice here about what features and programs to disable to make your phone battery last longer. Dim screen brightness, disable animations, shut off location services and unneeded communication radios, update apps manually rather than automatically, disable background data, etc. I’ve seen plenty of these types of articles before, but this is one of the most in-depth I’ve run across.


Exclusive: CEO Nadella talks Microsoft’s mobile ambitions, Windows 10 strategy, HoloLens and more (ZDNet)

First, I want to be able to be present on every mobile endpoint. That’s a very explicit core goal. It’s not (just) the notion of having our application endpoints, Skype, Outlook, Wunderlist, Sunrise, on every one of the two billion devices. We want to have Microsoft experiences, because to me that’s a platform play. It’s not like, oh, they’re just application endpoints. Guess what is behind those applications? It’s One Cloud. It’s Office 365, either for the consumer or for the enterprise. There’s MSA (Microsoft Account) in there.

The TeleRead Take: The interview is lengthy and more than a little rambling, but it’s interesting to see what Nadella wants to do with Windows. He doesn’t just want to concentrate on Windows phones; he wants to get Microsoft applications on phones of all operating systems. For those who do use Windows, universal apps are going to be an important key to having the application work the same across all platforms—phone, tablet, and desktop.


The world’s first ‘true Android PC’ costs just $20 (Boy Genius Report)

Google’s vision for Android doesn’t work for everyone, and many OEMs are looking at different ways of using the operating system for improving our computing needs. Chinese company Jide Tech is one such Android device maker that’s imagining Android as a Windows-like platform that could deliver PC-like functionality to end users. The company has previously launched a very affordable tablet on Kickstarter, and now it’s back with a $20 device that’s described as the “world’s first true Android PC.

The TeleRead Take: Calling it a $20 device is actually a bit of a misnomer; the $20 price was just for early bird donors to the Kickstarter, and sold out; it costs $30 now. It also just includes the device and power adapter, not a monitor or (apparently) a keyboard or mouse. It’s an interesting idea, though I tend to think it approaches the idea of a mobile operating system PC from the wrong direction. From my perspective, Android is a mobile platform; it’s not really meant for something like a PC. You want something like Windows 10 to have an operating system that’s equally at home on a tablet and a desktop. Still, the Kickstarter has hit $315,000 on a $50,000 goal, so I guess a lot of other people disagree with me.


How to Turn Your Android Phone or Tablet Into a Mouse and Keyboard for Windows (Make Use Of)

Whether you have built a DIY budget Windows HTPC or just want to start the next video on your desktop while lying in bed, you don’t need to get up. If your computer mouse dies, your Android can be a good backup. In fact, this is a great way to repurpose an old phone into a nifty trackpad for your PC!

The TeleRead Take: Seems to be an Android equivalent to the Mobile Mouse software I used for the same purpose on iOS. Certainly a clever way to make your tablet or phone work as a remote control for your home theater PC if you don’t need something as fancy as a full-fledged remote desktop.


How to Succeed with Your Blogged Book or Booked Blog Project (The Book Designer)

While the idea of writing a book intentionally post by post on your blog—blogging a book—or repurposing previously published posts into a book—booking a blog—might seem simple enough, many bloggers find the process overwhelming. After all, blogging a book is not much different from writing a book. And booking a blog takes a fair amount of thought and effort; you have to gather together posts that were written randomly on your site and make them work together as a cohesive whole (a manuscript).

The TeleRead Take: This is an interesting in-depth tutorial on the idea of making a book into or out of a series of blog posts. The key seems to be preparation—you can’t just take any old series of posts on your blog and turn them into a book; you need to come up with a plan for how to make your book and blog work together on a particular thematic idea. The author makes some good points here, and I think this is the sort of piece that could be very useful to anyone who wants to write that kind of book.

1 COMMENT

  1. Regarding the Remix Mini: It’s not quite accurate to call it an Android PC. it runs the Remix OS which is based on Android but improves multitasking, has multiple windows, and adds a taskbar. I haven’t tried it, but it’s supposed to be a lot closer to Windows than regular Android. The company was founded by former Google employees.

    I don’t know if it’s a good machine, but it looks to be a good price for the hardware. I’d like to see if anyone will be able to port Linux over to run on it.

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