Chad Williams

While watching a show on hulu, I was forced to sit through this Samsung commercial several times: 

I recognized the actress as someone who appeared in a Curb Your Enthusiasm. I am a huge fan of Curb Your Enthusiasm, so I remembered the episode name. After seeing this commercial for the fourth or fifth time, I decided to find out what her name was. 

So I decided to search her on twitter while I waited for the dreadful commercial to end. What I found was not surprising. 

About a year ago, my friends and I created a tumblr. We wanted one place that we could share interesting stuff with each other. It could be anything from funny pictures, movie trailers, game reviews, or tech articles; truly anything we found interesting. We called it Super Good Network. 

After several months, we found that we did not have an audience other than each other. The goal never was to have an external audience. I did think, however, that we were providing something very valuable. We were creating a log of everything that we thought was interesting. It was the only place on the internet that 100% of the content was relevant and interesting to me. We decided to relaunch Super Good Network as a Twitter account. This made Super Good Network even easier to follow. It also let other people like us easily discover and follow us. 

We dabbled in podcasting a little when we were in high school with a show called The Tech Podcast. After only about ten episodes or so, we moved on, hoping to return to it in the future. The future has come. Super Good Network now has two weekly podcasts: SGN: Tech and SGN: Talk. 

SGN: Tech is a weekly podcast about the most important and interesting technology stories of the week. 100% of the material talked about on the show has been linked to by Super Good Network during the week. SGN: Talk is the same as SGN: Tech but it is about everything else. It includes all the other news in the week that we found worth talking about. Once again, all of the stories discussed are linked to during the week by Super Good Network. 

We think that there are a lot of people out there that are like us. Anyone like us will see Super Good Network as a goldmine of interesting tech, movie, and gaming news, with a little bit of everything else sprinkled in. Then the podcasts are there to act like a commentary track every week. 

We really hope you like it. 

SGN: Tech

SGN: Talk

@SuperGoodNet

SuperGoodNetwork.com

iOS 6 is here and there is a lot to like. As with everything, however, there is room for improvement. I have made a list of features I am hoping for in iOS 7. This is a realistic list. I tried to limit myself to things that I truly believe Apple would do. 

Notification Center iCloud Sync: 

This is a feature I was hoping for in iOS 6 but it did not come. It works with a select few of Apple apps, like Reminders and Messages, but that is about it. Right now, even with Apple apps like Mail, you have to manually tap the little “x” in Notification Center on each device to clear the notifications. Ideally, any Universal app’s notifications in Notification Center would be kept in sync with iCloud. I could just clear out notifications on one device and they would magically disappear from the others. 

Mountain Lion Dock:

Starting with iOS 4, the iOS and OS X docks always matched. They were both 3D with a mirror finish. Just a couple months ago, Mountain Lion was updated and with it came a new dock. I was expecting for iOS 6 to also share this redesigned dock and was disappointed to find that it didn’t. I think the new OS X dock looks better and would love to see it on my Retina iOS devices. 

Improved App Switching:

I do not love iOS’s solution for switching between apps. In iOS, to switch apps quickly, you can double-tap the home button and one row of your most recently used apps slides up. Notice how much of the screen is unused. Apple could completely revamp their fast app switcher by doing something like WebOS’s Cards or OS X’s Mission Control.

Notification Center Widgets for Apps:

Many people have been asking for widgets in Notification Center since iOS 5. iOS 6 added the Share Widget to the Stocks and Weather Widgets. It would be amazing if Apple let developers create companion Widgets for their apps. 

Weather and Stocks for iPad:

I have been upset since iOS 5 that the iPad does not have the Weather or Stocks widgets in Notification Center. I was hoping that the iPad would get them in iOS 6 and was disappointed again. So for a third time, I am getting my hopes up that iOS 7 bring those widgets to the iPad. 

Safari Tab View on iPad:

This is another feature that I hoped would be transferred over from Mountain Lion. I think it would be very useful to have the Safari Tab View on my iPad. 

Safari Smart Search:

Safari 6 for Mountain Lion unified the address bar and the Google search field, just like Google Chrome. I was expecting and hoping to see this carried over to iOS 6. I am not sure why they didn’t change it and I hope they do for iOS 7. 

Scrolling in Folders:

I have always found it frustrating when I make a folder for a category of apps and I cannot fit them all in. I am not asking for Apple to support nesting. I understand that they are trying to get as far away from the traditional file system as possible, and I like that. I do wish, however, that I could scroll inside folders. Folders in their iWork apps support scrolling so I do not think this is an unreasonable thing to hope for. 

Collaborative Shared Photo Streams: 

I love the new shared photo streams in iOS 6. Unfortunately, I was disappointed almost immediately when I realized that they were only one-way. You put photos in a shared photo stream and others subscribe. I like this idea but I think there should be a toggle switch to “Allow Subscribers to Add Photos.” 

I have compiled a list of features that I have found in iOS 6 that I did not know about. These are things that Apple has never mentioned and I love them. 

Notification Center: 

• Notification Center now includes the end time of calendar events. Before, you could only see the start time and would have to open Calendars to see the end time. 
• The Calendar section of Notification Center now includes the day of the week and date.
• In the old Notification Center, events with long locations were just cut off with an ellipsis. Now, Notification Center will display the entire location, even if it takes up multiple lines. 

Reminders:

• Finally, after a year of waiting, the Reminders app displays a badge for overdue events. 
• The iPad interface of Reminders got a significant improvement with a larger tap-friendlier calendar and a dedicated “Today” section. 
• The iPhone also got a big UI change. Apple took away the cumbersome tappable calendar and in its place put a fluid horizontal scrolling day-selector. 

Auto-Brightness:

• The auto-dim feature got significantly improved in iOS 6. The best improvement is brightness adjustment in the lock screen. Before, in a dark room, I would be blasted with the iPad or iPhone’s default brightness before sliding to unlock and having it dim down to match the room’s brightness. Now, from the moment the screen turns on, the brightness is appropriate. 
• In all previous versions of iOS, the light sensor would sense the room’s brightness and then suddenly make the brightness adjustment. In iOS 6, the auto-brightness adjustment is gradual and much more subtle, like the Mac. 

Mail: 

• iCloud allows you to create up to three aliases that all share the iCloud mailbox. Unfortunately, in iOS 5, you could not select an alias as the default address to send from. In iOS 6, you can. 

Settings:

• The keyboard shortcuts in the “Keyboard” section of the “General” settings panel is now kept in sync with iCloud. I am so happy Apple did this.
• In the “Brightness & Wallpaper” section of settings, the home screen thumbnail is live. It now shows app badges and download progress bars. 

Safari:

• On the iPad, Bookmarks, History, and Reading List are separated into different tabs inside the bookmarks drop-down. 

YouTube:

• When Apple killed the system YouTube app, I was worried that I would be bound to YouTube’s terrible mobile site. Luckily, if you have Google’s official YouTube app, YouTube links from Safari and other apps will automatically open in it. 

App Store: 

• In addition to updates, you no longer have to type in your Apple ID password for downloading previously installed apps. 
• In iOS 5, whenever you installed a new app, App Store would quit to show you where the new app was installing. This no longer happens in iOS 6. 

Noteworthy unpublicized features that I knew about:

• Any media that is acquired through iTunes now has its play position synced through iCloud. Start watching a movie on one device, pick it up later on another without having to sync with iTunes. 
• Metallic sliders across the OS now have a subtle reflection effect that is created with the accelerometer. See a video here. 
• You can now add a link to Safari Reading List from inside any application with a web-view.