The Verge: How Nokia ringtones became the first viral earworms. “Today, Fusoxide is behind the popular @ringtonebangers Twitter account. With others, like @OldPhonePreserv, he helps to maintain Andre Louis’ phonetones directory — a repository of phone software, sound banks, ringtones, and audio ephemera from a bygone era.”
The Verge: We live in notification hell. “The apps never shut up. They’re hungry for engagement. They want you to know that your favorite items are on sale, that you haven’t practiced your Spanish today, that your delivery driver is five stops away, that your child at daycare just had a blowout — all day, all at once. Welcome to a place we all live, a place called notification hell.”
WIRED: How to Set Medication Reminders on Your Phone. “Some medications come in packs organized by day, and you can always snag a cheap pill box like this one ($10), but it’s also easy to set up medication reminders on your phone. We’ll run through a few different ways you can have your Android or iPhone remind you to pop that pill and track your medications.”
Mashable: How to use the new Live Captions in iOS 16 . “Apple is launching a new suite of accessibility features in the soon-to-be-unveiled iOS 16, and (finally) adding a Live Captions feature for all audio content across devices. The new option lets users easily turn on automatic captioning in their Settings menu, which will apply to any audio played within the device, from phone calls, to FaceTime sessions, to videos.”
Popular Science: How to use built-in parental controls on Instagram, TikTok, and more. “Both Android phones and iPhones have built-in system-wide safety measures that allow you to limit the sites your kids can see, the apps they’re allowed to run, or the time they spend on their device each day. But some apps also have parental controls included—social media is no exception. These bespoke settings let you tailor an app to be suitable for your kids, keeping them away from inappropriate content and making sure they’re using social platforms responsibly.”
Lifehacker: You Can Make Your Smartphone Read Out Loud to You. “Why are you reading this article? Wait, don’t click away—what I mean is, why are you reading this article? Chances are, you visited this article from your smartphone, like so many of us do. Whether you have an iPhone or an Android, you can make your phone read text out loud to you, so you never need to read it yourself again.”
SlashGear: How To Use An Old iPhone As A Dash Cam. “If you’re particularly frugal or want better features with minimal investment, you can utilize an old iPhone as a dash cam instead of tossing it. In this article, we will take you through how to use an old iPhone as a dash cam.”
Hackaday: Launch And Track Your Model Rockets Via Smartphone. “Building and flying model rockets is great fun. Eventually, though, the thrill of the fire and smoke subsides, and you want to know more about what it’s doing in the air. With a thirst for knowledge, [archy587] started building a project to monitor the vital stats of rockets in flight.”
WIRED: How to Digitize Old Photos With Your Phone. “Bring memories back to life by taking your old pictures into the future. We tested three popular photo scanning apps against a scanner.”
Oregon State University: Harm from blue light exposure increases with age, Oregon State University research suggests . “The damaging effects of daily, lifelong exposure to the blue light emanating from phones, computers and household fixtures worsen as a person ages, new research by Oregon State University suggests.”
CitizenLab: Hooking Candiru: Another Mercenary Spyware Vendor Comes into Focus. “Candiru is a secretive Israel-based company that sells spyware exclusively to governments. Reportedly, their spyware can infect and monitor iPhones, Androids, Macs, PCs, and cloud accounts. Using Internet scanning we identified more than 750 websites linked to Candiru’s spyware infrastructure.”
Mashable: The 22 most useful free iPhone apps, according to Reddit . “Redditors are providing an online public service by recommending extremely helpful iOS apps that are absolutely free. There are adventure apps, sleep apps, education apps, sleep apps, mental health apps, food apps, sleeeep apppppps. Yeah, you get the point. Check out our compilation of the best free iPhone apps that Redditors love.”
TechCrunch: New documents reveal ‘huge’ scale of US government’s cell phone location data tracking. “It’s no secret that U.S. government agencies have been obtaining and using location data collected by Americans’ smartphones. In early 2020, a Wall Street Journal report revealed that both Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Protection (CBP) bought access to millions of smartphone users’ location data to track undocumented immigrants and suspected tax dodgers. However, new documents obtained by the ACLU through an ongoing Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit now reveal the extent of this warrantless data collection.”
Penn State: Delayed diagnosis inspires student to create AI tool for mental health. “Each year, Loc Phan, a physics major in the Eberly College of Science, would travel from his urban home in Ho Chi Minh City to the rural Vietnamese province of Vinh Long and visit family members. One summer, Phan said he observed something different about one of his relatives. The events that followed ignited a journey of seeking change that brought him to the Nittany AI Challenge and gave him the chance to create a tool for mental health in rural communities.”
Make Tech Easier: 7 Android Accessibility Tweaks to Set Up a Phone for Seniors. “It’s getting increasingly complicated to use Android devices, thanks to newer models that come with a bunch of advanced features. This is especially frustrating for senior citizens. However, you can help them out by making their phones easier to use. All it requires is a few Android accessibility tweaks like the ones we discuss below.”
