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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

The iPhone as a GTD Swiss Army Chainsaw

I have to be honest – this past Christmas, the item at the top of my wish list was the completely drool-worthy Amazon Kindle. I had watched the video intro a dozen times and was completely smitten. And while I had been secretly longing for an iPhone since they were released, I simpley [...]

So, You’re Not Using Jott?

I spend a good deal of time in the car every day. Not as much as some, but it’s typically somewhere around 90 minutes round trip on a given work day. And being one of those people whose brain is pretty much always going, I tend to have many thoughts and ideas during [...]

Why I Never Turn Off My Cell Phone

One of the major tenets of this whole personal productivity dance is the elimination of distraction. Many productivity-related sites and blogs (including this one) espouse everything from the closing of email clients and instant messenger applications to the wearing of headphones as possible ways to reduce “background noise” while working. Another one that [...]

How to Make Your Outgoing Voicemail Message Not Suck

I have a handful of friends who, despite numerous pleas and death threats, refuse to carry their cell phone with them. They’re perfectly willing to leave it in the car while out somewhere, or leave it in their bedroom while watching television in the living room. Personally, these are stack-blowing, what-the-hell-is-wrong-with-you-types of behavior, [...]