Kibbles & Bytes Blog

E-mail is great, but sometimes there’s just too much of it at work. Ok, don’t jump to conclusions just yet about me, I know e-mail is critical for most of us to perform our jobs. However, it can get a bit overwhelming and, to be honest, annoying. Sharing information as a collective team frequently brings with it e-mail that just clogs your inbox. We all can probably say we have a friend or co-worker that overly uses the share all option or responds with unnecessary answers. To continue with my theme of honesty, this is why I Bcc ( blind carbon copy ) any company wide e-mails. I have found Bcc to be the only effective means of not cluttering up the in-boxes of others with excessive responses. It is unfair, however, to insinuate that a cluttered in-box is solely due to those who overshare. Marketing offers and other junk fills your inbox almost at breakneck speed. It seems we are being bombarded from every corner, and it sometimes seems to me that my e-mail loads feel like the pile of dirty laundry that seems to never end.

Here at Small Dog, we rely heavily on e-mail for communication and the Apple chat program. Chat is a very effective means of quick communications with individuals, but it’s become more challenging to have group chats. Another downside to Chat is it’s perhaps overly easy to send a message in error to the wrong person. Most of the time there is humor in the wrong chat sent, but it’s also resulted in some red faces of embarrassment.

Recently I learned of a group messaging service Slack, which is free but includes paid plans with additional features. Slack, which has apps for macOS, iOS, Windows, and Android, isn’t conceptually all that different from Apple’s Messages app. You type short messages and other people in the conversation can reply. You can share graphics or other files in the discussion, and search through past messages. Slack supports person-to-person voice calls, and if you switch from a free to a paid plan you can also use team, group calls, video conferencing, and screen sharing. One of the hiccups we’ve had here at Small Dog with Chat is that not everyone uses the same version of software or, in the case of trying to AirDrop a file, not being able to use personal iCloud accounts.

An appealing feature of Slack is that it has channels that are easy to create. It can bring together all communications relevant to a particular workgroup, project, or topic. You might have a private #marketing channel for everyone in that department, a private #annual-report channel for the people who need to put together that document, or a public #facilities channel to talk about burnt-out lightbulbs and stuck doors. I feel this is a way better way than organization-wide mailing lists because you can pay attention to just those channels that matter to you, and ignore the others.

You can also choose to be notified of replies to threads you’re in. Then you can override those defaults for any channel or conversation you’re in, which lets you make sure that important messages get through and water cooler chatter doesn’t interrupt you. Plus, if you leave your computer, Slack can repoint notifications to your mobile devices automatically, with separate settings to make sure you aren’t overly nagged while at your kid’s soccer game.

Slack provides tons of other features that can prove useful in organizations of any size. You can share and comment on files of any type, which is far more effective than sending attachments around in email. You can create “posts” and get others to edit them collaboratively—a boon when trying to craft the perfect bit of text for some purpose. And you can integrate hundreds of Internet services into Slack so it can act as a single dashboard for many other apps.

We have not deployed Slack here at Small Dog, time will tell if we do choose to make a switch. However, this find was an exciting one for me to come across so I wanted to share this software tip with our readers.

I have been a photo bug since I was a kid. I have had cameras my entire life and even built a darkroom into my home up on Prickly Mountain. While I still own a half dozen cameras, I now shoot almost exclusively with my iPhone X. I have a nice SLR with fancy lenses and an underwater case, strobes and all the gear for shooting underwater when I scuba dive. I also have a little Olympus waterproof camera to take with me to the beach or when I am snorkeling. But for everything else it is my iPhone.

I gave up the harsh chemicals and the joy of the trays of developer and fixer under the red lights in the darkroom for digital as soon as iPhoto came out. I seldom print any of my photos, except for some underwater shots that grace my living room wall. Just like music, everything is digital with photos.

Shooting portraits has always been a trick but Apple and iPhone make portraits a snap, especially with the new iPhone X and also the iPhone 7 or 8 plus. Portrait mode uses the dual cameras on your iPhone 7 Plus, iPhone 8 Plus, and iPhone X to create a depth-of-field effect. This lets you create a photo that keeps your subject in sharp focus while creating a blurred background so as to not distract from the object of your attention. With your iPhone 8 Plus or iPhone X, you can also add captivating portrait lighting effects to your image. And the TrueDepth camera in iPhone X even lets you take a selfie in Portrait mode.

It is a piece of cake to get the perfect portrait shot. Just swipe to Portrait and take the picture. The Camera app even gives you tips in real time. So if you’re too close, too far away, or the area is too dark, the camera lets you know. You can also use True Tone flash, set a timer, or apply camera filters.

1) Open the Camera app
2) Swipe to Portrait Mode
3) Look for the yellow Portrait box
4) Snap the pic

After you take your Portrait photo, you can make photo edits—like crop and auto-enhance.

Even better, if you have an iPhone X or iPhone 8 Plus you can use the Portrait Lighting feature to apply four impressive studio-quality lighting effects to your Portrait mode images. Choose from Studio Light to brighten facial features, Contour Light for more dramatic directional lighting, Stage Light to isolate your subject in the spotlight, or Stage Mono for stage light in a classic black and white.

1) Select the photo that you want to change
2) Tap Edit
3) Swipe to choose your Lighting effect
4) Tap Done

If you have an iPhone X, you can even capture selfies in Portrait mode the same way you take a photo of someone else.

1) Just flip to the front camera
2) Open the Camera app
3) Swipe to Portrait mode
4) Hold your iPhone X in front of your face and strike a pose
5) Snap your selfie with one of the volume buttons

Oops, you didn’t want that blurred background because it contains a hidden clue to that buried treasure? No problem, you can remove it in a few quick steps.

1) Select the photo that you want to change
2) Tap Edit
3) Tap Portrait at the top of your screen to take it out of Portrait mode

If you change your mind and want to re-add the Portrait mode effect, go back to Edit and tap Portrait again.

Dear Friends,

The lilacs are in full bloom at my house and the sweet smell permeates the air. My giant arctic kiwi plant has sort of crushed my rebar arbor but the huge plant seems to be able to stand on its own. I got the rototiller out and started churning up a winter’s harvest of rocks, breaking a shear pin in the process. But the job got done and we’re all ready to plant our garden.

Jezebel seems to like Vermont but she is taking too much advantage of the free range boonies, and so we now have to keep her on leash or stay with her constantly or she will go too far out on an adventure. When she is in the living room she is either snoring on the couch or watching TV with us. She still barks at any dog that she sees on the TV and even barked at herself while we were mirroring in order to choose a picture to send to an artist who will immortalize her and Max in a stained glass piece.

Apple’s Worldwide Developer Conference starts on Monday and the Keynote will be at 1PM eastern time. We are all anxious to see the new roadmap and as usual, I will probably start running a new beta of Apple software shortly after the event. While it is unusual for Apple to introduce hardware at this software conference, it has been done. We will bring you all the details next week!

This week’s Kibbles & Bytes Exclusive features the CTO 12-inch MacBook. These units all feature the 1.3GhZ m7 processor, 8GB of ram and a big 512GB SSD drive. We only have a couple of each color so this exclusive is strictly while supplies last. This custom configuration normally sells for $1649.99 but this week only while supply lasts you can get one for $100 off at $1549.99! We have a few units in Gold, Silver or Space Gray.