The Cranking Widgets Blog

Why iPhone Owners Don’t Need Wallets

photo by shareski

Of all of the the things you’d typically find in a man’s pocket (or a woman’s purse, I suppose), the wallet is probably the most pervasively adopted piece of hardware in Western civilization. Every Tom, Dick and Harry walking around almost certainly has a wallet in his back pocket. And the [...]

How I Use Evernote

For a great Evernote+GTD experience, you should sign up for the Zendo private beta list here.
Over the past few weeks, I’ve been really pimping Evernote to friends (both in real life and online, particularly on twitter). I’m usually pretty shocked to hear how many people have tried it and simply don’t know what to [...]

The Secret to Mastering the iPhone Keyboard

I won’t bore with another diatribe about how amazing the iPhone is – the product speaks for itself. I will, however, address one of the more common complaints about the device: the keyboard. For the most part, naysayers seem to prefer the tactile response of a hardware, Blackberry-style keyboard. I can absolutely [...]

Brand New Site by Cranking Widgets

There are times in life when you decide “enough is enough“. This past week was one of those times.
I get a fair amount of email. Not as much as some, but it’s a pretty steady stream. Sometimes, those messages are from well-wishing friends who thought I might enjoy an inspirational message from [...]

11 Tips for Better Tech Support

We’ve all been there. Something’s dreadfully wrong with your trusty computer – you can’t print, you can’t get on the web, you can’t play Bejeweled. For whatever reason, the problem is major enough to warrant one of the most desperate acts you can imagine – a phone call to tech support.
Now, before we [...]

The Single Most Useful Contact on Your iPhone

Like most adults living in America today, I get many phone calls. Some from my wife, my mom, my brother, my friends. But sometimes, I get phone calls from the local health club, the local car dealership or somebody trying to get me to buy 5 pounds of veal.
Unsolicited phone calls. We [...]

Describing Twitter in Plain English

I’m a big fan of Twitter (even though we’ve had our differences in the past – mostly due to my not “getting it”). While my updates may not be as fast, furious or incessant as some of the people whom I follow, I do try to pop on there as often as is feasible [...]

Trick Out Your iPhone with These Smart Playlists

As I mentioned previously, i received an iPhone for this past Christmas. While I really love it, having to go from a 60gb iPod which held all of my music to having only 8gb of space took some getting used to. I started out by hand-picking various albums and tracks and changing the [...]

Sandy v. Remember the Milk: The Web-Based Reminder Cage Match

Within this little GTD cult of ours, there are an alarming number of battles fought over the best tool, notebook, web application, etc. In my mind, it’s a little silly – just use what works, right?
Well, sometimes there will be two “competing” services/devices/things that both offer a compelling solution to a common problem. [...]

Top 1 Thing To Keep Your Toddler Away From

Your laptop computer.
This is a picture of my Macbook after my 2.5 year old son got his hands on it: