Tangential, sort of: in the early days of mobile phones for the masses, when there was no WiFi/3G in the underground, I will often enable Bluetooth in my phone, look for nearby devices and try to match names and looks.
That was before everyone had their "John's IPhone" or "Samsung A55" boring names everywhere and some of us cared to personalise our device's name.
2006, sat in a job interview. Interviewer says he'll Bluetooth over a file to me - what's by phone's name?
2006, the year that Tool's 10,000 Days had been released, which I was enjoying and, being a bit of an Edge Lord, I'd named my device after a lyric from Vicarious - which, IIRC fit perfectly into the name space and made me very happy:
What I remember is that you could push OBEX calendar objects without much refusal from the phones and make people have alarms ringing at 3am, fun times!
Yeah, but it stopped pretty soon stores figured out that they could flood you with advertisements over Bluetooth. In some places it was bad enough that I had to turn off Bluetooth.
How did this play out? Were the ads from an app from the store that you had installed? Or did they spam you over SMS because they associated your bluetooth info with an account you have with the store, or contact info they bought from a third party?
> Were the ads from an app from the store that you had installed?
This is my main concern over installing apps in general but specifically store apps. I've noticed that grocery stores are moving past existing loyalty cards and want you to use their apps for exclusively available digital coupons. The prices I'm seeing are very compelling and are on top of existing loyalty card discounts, and I could see lots of people using the app because of it. The assumed amount of abuse keeps me from lemminging my way through the store.
Kroger here has done that with their app. The loyalty card/phone number still works for many of the specials, but the "digital deals" thing by using the app and scanning a QR code on the price sticker gives BIGGER discounts. Its not the most convenient way to shop, but I am willing to save 15-20% more usually.
As someone explained it below in this thread, walk into a mall with Bluetooth turned on and phone starts chiming with multiple "... wants to send you a media/audio/image etc." Not just ads, some bad actors would try to infect the phone with malware. Luckily never happened to me, but I heard from my acquaintances.
When I set up my iPhone and it asked who's iPhone it is, I thought it would be funny to put in Kim Jong Un. Now it shows up as "Kim Jong Un's iPhone" when I enable my hotspot. Or even better, it says it out loud when I connect to some Bluetooth speakers.
It was interesting to see what people named stuff as even back then I figured you could use that metadata for tracking devices...but even more interesting was looking at the Mac address to see the manufacturer and try and find some rare or cool device.
Yep, never again. I tried to take a pragmatic position with the DRM, and it is just not possible. I buy the crap out of DRM free stuff, but if it's not DRM free, it's not for me
We experimented with ironing, but you can't see it in those views. The A1 is a pretty good printer OOTB. There were a few iterations on the case design though to optimise the edges.
Slightly off-topic, but as this will require kids to have access to an unlocked phone...
I remember Windows Phone had the feature of "unlocked apps", which you could run without having to unlock the phone: think calculator, browser, games. It was called Kids Corner[1].
Have any other OS (iOS/Androind) copied anything similar to that? This app will (or at least in my case) live in a place like that, where they do not have access to the whole platform.
For Android w/Playstore you can set up a child's account through Google and then use Google Family Link app to control app downloads, block specific apps, and set content restrictions for apps, movies, and games.
You can set down times for the whole phone and lock it remotely which is of huge benefit for bedtimes!
That's parental control, that's not the same. I want to hand my phone to my kids and let them access only one or two apps that I have listed as allowed.
I don't want (yet, but it will come) for them to have their own device that I control as you explained.
Depends on your device then. Some Android Devices allow multiple-user accounts, one of which can be a specially locked-down child account. I think Samsung Galaxy have a proprietary flavour as well.
Android should have a Kiosk mode that's available sometimes that locks it to one app full screen.
Android may have alternate launchers you can install (they are just apps) which you can customize how you need. One of the best features of Android imho.
I tried helping a friend with their kids Amazon tablet and left the experience wanting to wipe it clean and just define what 4 buttons parents can put on the screen.
Other tech:
Apple has a guided access feature which locks it to one app (except it's handed to them).
We're holding off on personal screens for now until the information diet can be tamed and managed. Looking for a smartwatch with a phone with physical buttons and no screen. Seem to be some options.
my android (/e/OS) allows to create multiple accounts that you can switch. i create a second account that only has the apps my kids are allowed to use. they can't switch users as that would require them to log in.
i don't think multiple account is an /e/OS feature, but must be coming from lineage/ASOP so other ROMs should have it too (unless it was intentionally removed)
I still have some nostalgia for Windows Phone. I genuinely liked the platform - even bought an Omnia 7 back in the day, and later a Lumia 1020 (that camera was so good).
I still think the tile based UI was underrated. Live Tiles felt like a smart idea that never quite got the support it needed. It's one of those "what could have been" stories in tech.
Yeah, that's a valid concern. We use an older spare iPhone for this, which worked out well. iOS doesn't have a "Kids Corner" equivalent unfortunately - you'd need to use Screen Time restrictions to lock down the device (block apps/calls/etc) but still need to unlock the phone
Yes, and I do the same. However, Kids Corner was a curated list of apps that you chose to share freely without password/FaceID.
I don't want to lock my browser, photos, maps, etc. behind FaceID. I want to hand my phone knowing they will only use one or two apps and the fun stops when they hand me over the device.
That was before everyone had their "John's IPhone" or "Samsung A55" boring names everywhere and some of us cared to personalise our device's name.
Anyone else played this game?
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