Kibbles & Bytes Blog

We do not celebrate Columbus Day for reasons I have talked about before but the hills will be alive with leaf peepers as this weekend promises to be huge for fall foliage. Who knows, I might even get out on the bike for some peeping myself.

I had an interesting experience at Costco this week. I went it to get a part replaced on my hearing aid and when I gave my name the woman says “Oh, you are the one that wrote in your blog – we have had dozens of customers coming in for hearing aids after reading Kibbles & Bytes! Thank you for supporting Costco!” Wow, I didn’t think we had that many readers. As I am wandering the aisles in Costco, I run into an old friend of mine who tells me he was there for hearing aids based on my writing, too! That made my day for sure.

Thank you for reading this issue of Kibbles & Bytes!

_Your Kibbles & Bytes Team,_

_Don, Dean, Emily & Michael_

The new Tiki is the world’s first USB microphone that mimics the intelligence of human hearing by focusing on desired sounds, minimizing background noise and knowing when to mute altogether. Tiki’s two modes give any Skype user, podcaster or musician the versatility to quickly choose the best option in any situation. First, Intelligent Speech Mode brings your voice to the forefront of a conference call or chat while noise-canceling technology simultaneously minimizes unwanted, competing background noise. Natural Recording Mode captures a wide range of sources from vocals to acoustic guitar, recording high-fidelity audio with exceptional clarity. Tiki sets a new standard for crystal clear audio for wherever you go.

Blue Microphones’ Mikey Digital is an ultra-compact stereo condenser microphone that turns your iPhone or iPad into a sleek mobile recording device. Capture crisply clear recordings of live music, audio for video, interviews, guitar, and vocals—whenever and wherever you get an inspiration. Plus, it’s Lightning and iOS 7 compatible, so you can just plug in and go.

Calling all leaf peepers!

We are giving away a vintage Apple Think Different poster from Don’s personal collection as part of an Instagram giveaway contest. The rules are simple:

1. Follow @hellosmalldog on Instagram

2. Tag three Apple enthusiast friends in our contest announcement post

3. Tag us in your best Fall foliage photo.

The contest runs now through 10/16. Here in Vermont it seems like this weekend looks to be the peak weekend for many of us! Submit your fall best and happy peeping!

Siri is great for resolving trivia disputes, setting reminders and even texting or sending email but Siri is also a talented assistant. Here’s a few of the more non-intuitive tasks Siri can accomplish:

*1) Split up that restaurant bill and add a tip*

Ask Siri “What’s a 20% tip on a $105 bill split among 3 people and Siri will not only tell you what the total tip would be but also how much each of the 3 owes.

*2) Flip a coin*

Siri will bail you out if you do not have a coin to flip if you ask her to flip a coin. Or if you are killing time and want to play dice, ask Siri to “throw the dice”.

*3) Counting Calories*

Siri can help! Ask Siri how many calories are in that Big Mac and Siri will tell you that you are consuming 520 calories.

*4) Take a Selfie*

Ready to take that selfie and find yourself looking for the camera app? Just tell Siri to take a selfie and *boom!*, the camera app will open. Siri isn’t smart enough, yet, to ensure you have the front facing camera active so you might have to click that first.

*5) Name that Tune*

Siri integrates with Shazam to listen to the music. Ask Siri “What is this song?” and with some help from Shazam, Siri will let you know and if you click on the result it will play that song if you are a subscriber to Apple Music.

*6) Find your Friends*

If you use the Find My Friends app you can ask Siri to find them by asking “Where’s my wife?” and assuming that your wife has agreed to share her location in the Find My Friends app, Siri will let you know where she is.

*7) Convert Currency*

If you are traveling out of the country you can use Siri to make those currency conversions. Asking Siri “What is 100 euros worth?” today reveals it is worth $112.49.

Recently I got the Apple Watch, and as I am sure all of you know you can do amazing things with it. I easily respond to text messages with voice response, I have my watch face set to include my calendar (ensuring I have no excuse for missing any appointments), and I never miss a game update for my favorite sports teams. However, even with all these amazing features, none of them are why I love my Apple Watch.

What has made me fall in love with my Apple Watch is how it’s helped me to get up and move! I, like I am sure many of you, have an incredibly busy life between work, my kids sports activities, and just the day-to-day tasks on my calendar. After my first week with my watch, and thanks to the built in activity monitor I realized just how LITTLE exercise I had in my life. I must admit, while clearly I wasn’t and am not someone whom works out, I had no idea just how much of my time was spend not moving at all. Honestly, I was a bit mortified! Suddenly I find myself making some pretty big changes in my day to day routine and my greatest motivator each day is watching the rainbow of colors on the activity monitor complete their circles.

I now find myself doing little things like coming to work just a bit earlier than usual to fit time in for a short walk before starting my day, taking an real break from my work during the day and going outside with my dog Piper for more than just a trip outside and just moving every chance I get. If you don’t have an Apple watch you can still get the same motivation and integration with the Health App on your iPhone and the “*Misfit Shine*”:http://www.smalldog.com/product/86617/misfit-shine-fitness-sleep-monitor-black with some added bonuses!

There are several benefits to the Misfit shine: it features a replaceable watch battery, it’s extremely lightweight, is waterproof, and tracks your sleep patterns. To sync your steps, distance, and calories burned you can either place the Misfit on your iPhone or it will automatically sync the information when your near your phone. There are a series of LED lights that indicate your progress throughout the day. One drawback is that there is not a digital display like some other devices out there, however, with the wireless integration of your daily stats, you likely won’t notice you can’t tell the time.

Sometimes we all just need a little motivation to get a bit more exercise in our lives and both of these devices start to make exercise feel like a bit of a game. It’s amazing how just watching some charts or graphs can be such a motivator. Plus, when you get to use some of the coolest products out there they actually make getting more active fun!

One of the most frequent questions we get is how to open files with a particular app. This most commonly occurs when someone has discovered that Preview is so much better that Adobe Acrobat reader but whenever they click on a pdf file it opens in Acrobat. Another common one is when folks that have been using Microsoft Office for a long time but find that Pages and Numbers serves their needs just fine.

Well, it is easy to tell your Mac which app to open what type of files. If you want to open a file in an app other than the default, select the file and press *Command + I* or choose *Get Info* from the *File* menu. Scroll down to the *Open with* section and use that drop-down menu to choose the new app that you want to use. In the case of making sure that your Mac opens pdf files with Preview instead of Acrobat, simply select Preview to open that file and click on the box below that says: *Use this application to open all documents like this one*. Mac will ask you if you are sure and once you confirm you are done and all your pdf files will be opened by Preview. The steps are the same to open MS Word docs with Pages or MS Excel docs with Numbers.

To reverse the process you just have to select the original default app in the Get Info screen.

_Dear Friends,_

How about those Cubbies! Grace and I were hoarse after the Wild Card game where Jake Arietta shut out the Pirates for the Cubs win and a ticket to the Divisional playoff against long-time rivals St. Louis. I have been a Cubs fan my entire life. As a young child, my family lived in Wrigleyville and my mom would use Wrigley Field as daycare center, especially on Ladies Day. My brother and I would go to the games, knew many of the players, and Cubbie blue was infused into my being. I try to get to a Cubs game at least once a year and this team is something special this year. Go Cubs Go!

We are nearing peak foliage here in the Mad River Valley and as I drive the back way to work there have been hundreds of Canada geese in the farmer’s freshly cut corn field resting on their journey south. It is a bit later than usual for the brilliant color display but the patchwork of colors are getting brighter with blazing red maple trees, yellow birch leaves, and a complete spectrum of browns, greens, yellows and red.  

The Steve Jobs movie comes out this weekend and even with all of the commentary as to whether it is a fair portrayal I think that it should give us some more insight into the man that literally changed the world with his vision, innovation, and drive. Few people have had the impact that Steve Jobs had upon so many lives and the story lives on within Apple and those that seek to emulate Steve’s vision.   

Have you upgraded to El Capitan? The latest version of the OS X operating system is ready for you and it is a free download from the App store. As we have said so often, be sure your Mac is compatible and back up your data before you run the upgrade. Once you do, however, you are in for a treat as you explore all of the new features and improvements. “*See all of the details here.*”:https://www.apple.com/osx/how-to-upgrade/

This week’s Kibbles & Bytes special is the Apple Factory Certified Refurbished 13-inch MacBook Air. This unit carries the same 1-year warranty as new Macs and features the 1.4GHz i5 processor, 4GB of RAM and a 256GB SSD storage. We are bundling it with AppleCare, which not only extends your 1-year warranty to 3 years, but also provides 3 years of free Apple tech support instead of the standard 90 days. Normally this bundle is $1179.98 but for Kibbles & Bytes readers this week you can save $50 and get this bundle for only $1129.98!

“*See this special here.*”:http://www.smalldog.com/wag900001982/special-save-50-on-macbook-air-13in-1-4ghz-i5-4gb-256gb