Kibbles & Bytes Blog

I’m sad to report that Dawn has left Small Dog for greener (horse) pastures. We’ll miss her product knowledge, her sass and her colorful stories about a younger, crazier Don. We’re heading into our busiest time of the year in that we’re gearing up for the holidays, so we are sure to have our work cut out for us.

Of course, the holiday that we start thinking about first is Halloween — we are -zombie- dead serious about that around here, as you’re well aware! I’ve already got my costume planned, though I still need to add some finishing touches. The stakes are high for our annual Halloween Costume Contest, though, as I plan to avenge last year’s “*2nd place finish*”:http://www.flickr.com/photos/smalldog/sets/72157627895580417/ after my “*win in 2010.*”:http://www.flickr.com/photos/smalldog/sets/72157625268157484/ We’ll also be announcing some exciting things in the coming weeks, so definitely stay tuned, and get ready to vote!

Thanks for reading this issue of Kibbles & Bytes.
_Kali & Mike_

Save $20 on Chill Pill mobile speakers in Pink — for every Pink Chill Pill sold, Small Dog will donate $1 to help support Breast Cancer Research.

Mountain Lion is Apple’s newest operating system, and it has been out for a few months now. This has given us plenty of time to play around with the fun features 10.8 has brought us. I always like stumbling upon features that weren’t big enough to make the announcements, but make you say “Hey, thats pretty neat!”

One of those features in Mountain Lion is the ability to share a file directly from within Finder. To do this, simply select the file you want to share and then click the Share icon (it looks like a curved arrow going to the right out of a box). A drop down menu will list your available means of sharing, including email, iMessage, Twitter, and Facebook, to name a few. I have found that this feature has saved me a lot of time — especially when a co-worker asks me for a file I’ve been working on, because all I do is search for it in Spotlight, then Command-Click the file. It then opens in Finder, and I can use the Share button to email it to them. It’s a simple three-step process.

Apple also gave Address Book a tuneup. It is now called Contacts; sound familiar? That’s because your iOS device calls it that. __(Ed. Note: Calendar — formerly iCal — has also gotten the iOS rebranding treatment. -KH)__ There have been a handful of minor additions to Contacts, but one has stood out for me. If you click on any heading within a contact, a menu pops up with some additional options.

If you need to get directions to someone’s place in your Contacts app that you’ve never been before, simply click on the header and a pop up menu appears giving you the option to *”Map this Address.”* That will take you straight to Google Maps at the address you have for that contact. You can also create a pre-formatted mailing label that gets copied to the clipboard, or you can copy the URL to send the location to someone else via iMessage or email.

Of course, these are just two minor additions to the new operating system. They are features that I find make my life easier and allow me to do things faster than before. If you would like to see a full run down on the major upgrades to Apple’s OS, you can check them out “*here*”:http://www.apple.com/osx/whats-new/features.html on Apple’s website.

For anyone who doesn’t have Mountain Lion yet, it is a download-only upgrade for your Mac. Get your virtual hands on it by going to the App store and searching for Mountain Lion or simply click “*here.*”:http://click.linksynergy.com/fs-bin/stat?id=19XpSnZWhPI&offerid=146261&type=3&subid=0&tmpid=1826&RD_PARM1=https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/os-x-mountain-lion/id537386512?mt=12%26uo%3D6%26partnerId%3D30

As I write this, “*my beloved O’s*”:http://www.orioles.com have pushed their postseason run to game five in the ALDS, and I couldn’t be happier. __(OK, well, a World Series win would make anyone happier.)__ I have had the pleasure of going to two games at Camden Yards this year (both Opening Day and more recently in September, when my very own brother threw out the first pitch), and I must say that I am very excited that MLB has embraced “*Passbook.*”:http://www.apple.com/ios/whats-new/#passbook

When iOS 6 was announced, Passbook was regarded as an integral, highly streamlined feature that many declared would change your travel and entertainment experience. While I think that still holds true, when iOS was actually released, Passbook was met with confusion and frustration, for multiple reasons. The app and its promised integration are in its infancy, meaning that many companies and retailers haven’t become fully Passbook-compatible — either because a companion app doesn’t exist, or that when you show up in person to redeem your ticket (say, for the movie you’ve reserved), the employees aren’t all trained to know what to do.

Just as much as the latter speaks to the frustration that many users felt upon trying to use Passbook, the first part — the app — speaks to the confusion. You mean, now that I have Passbook, I have to download other apps, too?! From the original description in the keynote touting iOS 6 and its features, I, like many others, assumed that Passbook would be all-inclusive. That somehow, Apple’s developers would figure out a magical way for this app to talk to all of the other apps I already had, making them unnecessary, and that it “would just know” the businesses I used based on data that I could enter. However, it’s not quite that simple. Consider Passbook to be the vehicle (travel pun intended) to take you where you need to go, but you still have to pack your bags.

To quote Victor Agreda, Jr. from “*TUAW,*”:http://www.tuaw.com/2012/10/09/valpak-coupons-when-passbook-finally-clicked-for-me/ “Passbook … has created a sort of commercial hub of simplicity. I am getting offers I want, delivered where I want.” Though he was not used to using coupons and doing things this way, he also noted, “That’s significant. Getting consumers to change behaviors is incredibly hard.”

But, back to MLB and how they plan to utilize Passbook. As one of the major businesses to embrace Passbook, MLB is ahead of the curve (oh, the bad puns continue) and CEO of MLB Advance Media, Bob Bowman, described their reasoning thusly: “Passbook — which allows tickets and loyalty cards from a variety of outlets to be delivered to one iPhone app — proved to be an instant hit with fans.”

“*Per Market Watch,*”:http://www.marketwatch.com/story/on-deck-for-2013-the-end-of-the-baseball-ticket-2012-10-09 they did a test run during the last two weeks of the regular season, and they found that about 12% (roughly 1,500 e-ticket buyers) chose to use delivery via Passbook. Bowman said, “That adoption rate really floored us — there is no question our fans want digital tickets … [they] can use the tickets, forward them to a friend, resell them, or even donate them to charity — and they never get lost or left at home.”

Yesterday, “*on our radio show,*”:http://www.smalldog.com/sdspeaks I shared that I once had to repurchase airline tickets because I had lost my original paper tickets in a move. (Never was I happier to see a transition to digital reservations after that $500 mistake.) While the initial list of Passbook-supported apps is small (14 at the time of this writing), I anticipate that businesses will continue to come on board rapidly, saving countless others from a similar fate. Here’s hoping it’s a smooth ride (last one, I promise).

To see the full list of apps and to download, head to the iTunes Store, click *Apps* within the iTunes menu bar, and then select *Apps for Passbook.*

One of my favorite features in Mountain Lion is Notification Center. I have been using “*Growl for years,*”:http://growl.info and the impact Notification Center has on my workflow is very similar, and it’s an added bonus to see it on both my iPhone and now my Mac.

In Calendar, you can set alerts for birthdays and events, as well as turn off any shared calendar notifications and invitation notifications. Why is this helpful? I like to see a window pop up reminding me that it’s [insert someone very special here]’s birthday, so that in my increasingly hectic life, I can make sure I won’t forget. However, I __don’t__ need to see every single event I have going on.

To get there, go to *Calendar* (formerly iCal) > *Preferences…* > *Alerts.* Then, customize as necessary. Of course, this works best if you actually have birthdays entered for your contacts, so if you do that, and then actually pick up the phone once you’ve been notified, your friends and family will thank you!

_Dear Friends,_

It’s Kali, writing for Don this week, as he’s left us to travel overseas to China. While he’s checking out trade shows, new products, and the factories where some of our Hammerhead products are produced, we will be holding down the fort.

The internet is buzzing about the possibility of a new product announcement next week, and everything that has “been revealed” so far has been speculation. As dizzying as it can seem, one of my favorite things about being in this industry __is__ the buzz. It’s amazing how popular Apple’s devices have become, just in the time that I’ve been “in the biz” (eight years). One thing is for sure: whatever Apple announces next, we’ll be all over it. That said, I haven’t yet found the need for an iPad because it doesn’t feel that much smaller than my MacBook Pro. If only they could think of something…