The iPhone 6 Plus Wins The Longer Race

Apple’s new iPhones have been available for around a month now, and something interesting has happened with this generation: I’m forced to revisit my original reviews and change my initial impression based on later experience. After further testing of the two devices, I find the iPhone 6 Plus has become my smartphone of choice, as a surprising first choice over the iPhone 6.

The 6 Plus initially struck me as too large for normal use; it definitely feels more comfortable to use as a two-handed device than as a single-handed gadget, which is what you’d typically expect from a smartphone. But after subsequent weeks of additional testing, I find that the 6 Plus ends up being the one I’d choose for almost any situation, despite its additional size and not-so-pocket friendly dimensions.

Why does the 6 Plus end up prevailing? Mostly the screen size, which provides you with a lot more viewing area in general applications like browsing the web or reading e-books. The screen is also amazing for viewing pictures, and the 6 Plus is also just a far better mobile camera than anything else out there, partly because of the optical image stabilization technology that Apple has built into it, but mostly just because the huge display gives you lots of viewfinder advantages and more space for working with the picture UI.

Pocket size ends up being a minor concern when you take into account using the 6 Plus in the car, as a veritable in-car entertainment system replacement. It’s not so important when you work with the device in landscape mode, giving you additional options for working with Message and Mail apps to deal with more communication quickly. It’s less of a concern when you’re watching media apps like Plex and Netflix and taking advantage of the additional viewing real estate.

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My initial set of reviews put the iPhone 6 on top, and the 6 Plus as a close second; further testing suggests they might actually be better characterized as reversed in order – the 6 Plus ends up being a better mobile computing device for my everyday use habits, even if it isn’t necessarily as mobile as its other new companion. Sure, it doesn’t fit quite as nicely in the skinny jeans I generally favor, but it still fits, and it’s a much better device for typing out a post on the go, if I end up needing to do that.

Apple’s event next week will show us what’s next for the iPad in the world of the iPhone 6 Plus, and I’m very curious to see what else Apple brings to the table for its tablet, in a world where its flagship smartphone offers a lot of tablet-style love for the mobile worker.

How To Hide Text In Microsoft Word 2007, Reveal It & Protect It

Sometimes what we hide is more important than what we reveal. Especially, documents with sensitive information, some things are supposed to be ‘for some eyes only’. Such scenarios are quite common, even for the more un-secretive among us. You want to show someone a letter composed in MS Word, but want to keep some of the content private; or it’s an official letter with some part of it having critical data. As important as these two are, the most common use could involve a normal printing job. Many a time we have to print different versions of a document, one copy for one set of eyes and others for other sets. Rather than creating multiple copies and therefore multiple printing jobs, what if we could just do it from the same document? That too, without the hassle of repeated cut and paste. We can, with a simple feature in MS Word – it’s just called Hidden and let me show you how to use it to hide text in Microsoft Word 2007. It’s a simple single click process. Open the document

Clip & Convert Your Video Faster With Quicktime X & The New Handbrake 64-bit [Mac]

Recently a friend of mine asked for my help to find a video of a good presentation to be shown to one of his classes. He also requested for it to be iPod friendly as he would also distribute the video to his students. Three things came to my mind: Steve Jobs, Quicktime and Handbrake . Mr. Jobs is well known for his great presentations which are often used as references. I have several Apple Keynotes videos. For my friend, I decided to choose the one that introduced MacBook Air – the one that never fails to deliver the wow effect to the non-techie audience. It’s a part of January 2008 Macworld Keynote. First step: The Cutting To get only a specific part of the Keynote, I clipped the 1+ hour video into about 20 minutes using Quicktime X (which comes with Snow Leopard). I opened the movie using Quicktime X and chose Trim from the Edit menu ( Command + T ). Then I chose the start and end of my clip by moving both edges of the trimming bar to the desired position. To increase th

Ex-Skypers Launch Virtual Whiteboard Deekit

Although seriously long in the tooth and being disrupted by a plethora of startups, for many years Skype has existed as an almost ubiquitous app in any remote team’s toolkit. So it seems apt that a new startup founded by a team of ex-Skype employees is set to tackle another aspect of online collaboration. Deekit, which exits private beta today, is a virtual and collaborative whiteboard to help remote teams work smarter. The Tallinn, Estonia-based startup is headed up by founder and CEO, Kaili Kleemeier, who was previously a Head of Operations at Skype. She and three colleagues quit the Internet calling giant in 2012 and spent a year researching ideas in the remote team space. They ended up focusing on creating a new virtual whiteboard, born out of Kleemeier’s experience collaborating with technical teams remotely, specifically helping Skype deal with incident management. “Working with remote teams has been a challenge in many ways – cultural differences, language differences, a

Kiran Upadhyay

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