After two years of enjoying our 3GS phones, Levi and I finally upgraded to the new iPhone 4S. We’ve been enjoying the new features in our own way–Levi by harassing Siri mercilessly with rude questions and me by obsessively compiling my life in iCloud. You know, to each his own…

One feature we both have been enjoying is the new Siri-enabled Reminders app. If you haven’t already checked it out, the new iPhone Reminders app is a basic task app which allows you to remind yourself. What makes it cool is that it is GPS-aware.  It is able to set up little geo-locating fences around basic areas (home, work) in your contacts. So in addition to reminding you of a task at a specific time, it can also remind you of a task when you are in a certain location, like: “Remind me to feed the dog when I get home.” Sure enough, pull into my driveway and I get “Feed the dog.” on my phone.

That’s cool enough, but with Siri, you can dictate reminders to your phone. Levi and I were playing with it, and I jokingly remarked, “I wish I could tell Siri to remind YOU of something!” We both laughed because–ha, ha! Allowing your spouse to order your phone to nag you! Using Siri! Wouldn’t that be creepy and annoying? “We could give each other nagging rights!” We joked.

Turns out, you can totally let your spouse nag you using Siri. Apple doesn’t do a very good job of broadcasting the ability, but here’s how:

1. Have someone you trust to use the power of Reminders for good rather than evil. You may want to create a special list in Reminders just for this, or you can share your default list. Keep in mind whomever you share it with will be able to add/remove items. (Marital counseling not included in this tutorial.)
2. Share your list in iCloud by going to the iCloud Calendar app. Your Reminders list will appear on the left hand side along with your calendars. Click the little grey broadcast symbol.
3. Enter the email of the person you want to share your list with.
4. The recipient will get an email and they’ll need to accept the invite. Once they accept, the list will show up in the Reminders app as a new list.
5. Viola! Instant Siri nagging rights. Your shared partner will also get an email every time you add something.

Tip: If someone invites you to share their default reminder list, you can also rename it on your end. For example, Levi shared his “Reminders” list with me, but I had trouble getting Siri to add things to it because I had my own “Reminders.” Instead, I went to Edit in the Reminders app and renamed his list “Levi’s List.”

So now I can tell my phone “Add ‘Take out the trash’ to Levi’s List.”

Or “Add ‘Bring Your Wife Flowers’ to Levi’s List.”

Or “Add ‘Remember that Valentine’s is only 6 months away!’ to Levi’s List.”

He’s so thrilled.

Photo credit: Some rights reserved by Will Hastings

We recently cut the cable bill. Again. (We did this previously while paying off massive student loans with minimal success.) This time, rather than go cold turkey, Levi and I looked into video streaming options for our cheesy television fix. We looked hard at the virtues of Roku and Boxee and the like, but eventually settled on the AppleTV so it could easily integrate with the rest of the Cult of Mac products in our house. We were primarily looking for something to stream Netflix and play videos off the computer and look sexy doing it: that’s AppleTV in a nutshell.

Levi and I are both digital junkies, so we had two quite sizeable iTunes libraries to integrate. And due to our individual OCD methods of maintaining our digital horde, merging into a single account wasn’t an option. We wanted both iTunes libraries to stream seemlessly onto the AppleTV without having to switch log-ins every time. Turns out, Apple does let you do this, but it’s a little convoluted. Since I didn’t find many other write-ups on the process when I was looking, I thought I’d do one myself. Read more →

Last week, I talked about how I have been reading more since I was gifted a Kindle. If you’re a reader like me, that means your library of books can quickly grow unwieldly. Luckily, the Kindle comes equipped with user-defined “collections” which allows you to sort your library into manageable categories or tags. Read more →

For our first anniversary in November, Levi bought me my very first e-reader device, an Amazon Kindle. The fact that I hadn’t owned one yet is pretty amazing–I’m the kind of geek girl who picks up gadgets soon after release, especially if it’s for an activity I already do a lot of like reading. .And I read. A lot. But I just wasn’t sure I was sold on ebooks. I like my gadgets… love my books. In grad school, I prided myself on lining my apartment walls with row after row of books. Science fiction, science non-fiction, history, physics, fantasy, biographies, horror…I was an equal opportunity bookworm. An early test of our relationship was when Levi had to help me pack all six bookcases-worth of my books for moving. Twice.

Come to think of it, Levi probably got me the Kindle to avoid doing that again.

But another side effect of graduate school was that my reading for pleasure had drastically dropped off. I spent years doing nothing but reading and analyzing theoretical texts then talking, teaching, writing 30 page papers on it for a living. Reading became Serious Business(tm) in grad school, and if a book wasn’t in my field of study, it felt like cheating to spend time on it. This allowed me to cultivate lots of other hobbies and interests, but it wasn’t the same.

Since I got my Kindle, I’ve found myself happily reading more. a LOT more. I’m back to my old, pre-grad school levels of a novel a week, easily. My interests haven’t changed, nor has my free time, so I got to thinking about what it is about the Kindle that encourages me to read more. Read more →