Ask @WinObs: How Do You Keep Up With RSS Feeds?

Gadgets to Help Catch Up with Next-Gen USB and Wireless Technology

It seems like just when we get used to the devices we have, new ones come along to replace them. Wireless charging has been around 10 years but it is reaching the tipping point in the consumer market now. Same goes for the USB-C connection, appearing as ports on more and more PCs

Whether it’s wireless charging, wireless typing, or wireless communication, there are now a cornucopia of devices beyond mobile phones to connect our devices without the tangle of cables thanks to the increasingly available Qi technology. USB-C ports found on new PCs also requires a new learning curve on how to get the most from them.

Laptop-Size Portable Keyboard Works for Phone, Tablet, and Smart TV

My boilerplate signature on my mobile phone is “Sent from my iPhone so pArdon any TyPos” Really. I am not making this up. And that’s because typing on the teeny, virtual on-screen keyboard all but guarantees email goes out as digital alphabet soup. Same goes, but maybe not as much, for tablet keyboards. That’s why I am thankful for Zagg’s $80 Flex keyboard.

Designed in a thin, foldable, portfolio-style, the Flex keyboard and cover attach magnetically. When attached, the folding cover converts to a typing stand for a phone (see photo) or a tablet. Easily removed from the case, the Flex can be used for different uses such as keyboarding with smart TVs. If you’ve ever had to use your TV’s remote to enter data one character at a time, you will realize the Flex is a godsend.

The keys’ radical thinness belies the surprising comfort and sensory feedback they provide. The keys are backlit to make it easy to type in low light – and the lights come in seven different colors to boot.

Flex connects with any Bluetooth device and can pair with two devices at once and toggle between them. Zagg boasts that the keyboard battery lasts up to one year (based on an hour a day without using backlighting). That means one less charging cable to carry around. That’s just as convenient as the 10-inch long Flex’s under-a-pound weight.

Be Prepared for Handling USB-C Equipped PCs

USB-C is the industry-standard connector for transmitting both data and power. The USB-C connector looks similar to a micro USB connector at first glance and defaults to USB 3.1 capabilities. Unlike the static, micro USB connector, USB-C plugs can be inserted into their ports upside or downside.

First adopted by Apple for its Mac computers, then for Android phones, and now the 2018 iPhones, the USB ports on Windows PCs and laptops are becoming more common and in the next year or so will be standard components on Windows devices.

While my Asus Windows 10 Zenbook is equipped with a USB-C port, it does not support the power capability found on Apple devices, it does have incredibly fast data transfer speeds. That’s great, but to use it I needed adapters to handle the common USB-A equipped devices most of us Windows users currently use like flash drives, external drives, and printers to name a few. Fortunately, there is a flood of just such devices to choose from. Here are two small ones that serve most of my needs inexpensively and efficiently:

The Anker Powerline USB-C to USB Adapter is a 5-inch dongle that slips into any USB-C port and converts it to a high-power USB 3.1 port. Since the pair of USB ports on my laptop are already in use with a backup drive and a printer, this worthy, $8 investment essentially provides a much-needed port for the different flash drives I invariably need to load.

Another indispensable adapter tends to my needs to transfer files I have on the various SD and micro-SD cards from mobile phones, cameras and other devices. The Iogear USB-C Duo Card Reader/Writer is a finger-size dongle with a USB-C plug at one end and a USB 3.1plug at the other end. In the middle are slots of the two sizes of SD cards.

The dual plugs make it convenient to transfer files not only from the SD cards but from either USB-C or USB-A equipped computers using the dongle as the transfer handshake. And if you have a USB-C equipped Android device this dongle makes it a snap to move photos in and out of these devices.

The $15 Duo Card Reader/Writer comes with a protective silicon port cover as well.

Two-in-One Battery Chargers Add Juice Either Wired and Wirelessly

The number of battery chargers for mobile devices (and even laptops!) has expanded so much its made choosing the right one more difficult. But if some of them were tweaked with some unique features to stand out from the crowd it would make the selection a snap. And the “tweak” has arrived with new chargers including integrated Qi wireless charging features.

Qi is an open interface standard that defines wireless power transfer using inductive charging over distances of up to 1.6 inches, and was developed by the Wireless Power Consortium  Wireless charging isn’t really a completely new product. Electric toothbrushes have been using the principles of inductive charging for about a decade now. In addition to charging without cables, another advantage of the Qi charger base is that it only activates and transfers energy when an enabled device requiring charging is placed upon it.

MyCharge’s UnPlugged 10K offers 10 Watts of power, which is mighty enough to handle rapid charges for mobile phones and even tablets. The nine-ounce white brick includes two USB-A ports for charging phones with their cables and a micro USB for actually recharging the UnPlugged’s battery. But if you place your Qi-equipped phone on top of the battery, you get super-fast, no-cables-needed charging.

Qi charging is available on a host of Android phones and iPhone 8 and higher. Because the UnPlugged has 10 watts of power instead of the more typical 3 and 6 Watts, it can give juice to up to three devices, two via the USB ports and one via the Qi-base on top. Battery power when not in use is promised for up to one year. The UnPlugged 10K lists for $70 but you can find it online for under $50.

Morphie’s Charge Force Powerstation Wireless [info]  is a more petite, 6.3-ounce charger, about the size of a pack of Marlboro’s and is equally armed with a 10,000mAh battery with Qi charging on top and a single USB-A port on the bottom. The black on black color of the brick camouflages the power button but that’s a minor quibble for an otherwise powerful charger which can handle two device charges simultaneously.

When the Powerstation wireless portable battery is plugged into a power source (like a wall socket), it will send power to any device that it’s wirelessly charging first (like your phone) before recharging itself. Morphie claims the PowerStation can provide up to 48 hours of extra battery time on a phone. Of course, that depends on how much you talk or use your phone apps. The company has reduced the price from $100 to $60.

Ask @WinObs: How Do You Keep Up With RSS Feeds?

There are legitimate reasons to critique Google for how it chooses to track and use our data, but it does have some very helpful tools.

One that I found extremely useful was Google Reader (October 2005 – July 2013). It was a well-conceived and executed service that enabled users to subscribe to any RSS (Really Simple Syndication) feed and subsequently keep up with new content on those feeds. Its popularity also meant developers were building tools to interface with that service to make it more accessible across different platforms.

Google Reader was also a de facto social sharing site — people could start discussions on items in their RSS feeds. Unfortunately, Google shut down Reader in an attempt to move users over to its fledgling social media service Google+. Instead, they killed the working social site they had and booted a community of RSS fans out of the Google ecosystem.

Following Google Reader’s announced sundown, a few different services stepped in to take up that void.

The one I went with at that time was Feedly. As a replacement, Feedly made it very easy to import my 150 RSS feeds. They were also not new to the business of helping users access RSS feeds as they had their initial release in 2008 with their big competition being Google Reader. When Google announced the plans to shut-down Google Reader, Feedly benefited from that in a big way. More than half a million new users joined the service in the two days following Google’s closure announcement for Google Reader. Over the next two weeks they had a total of 3 million users join their service. By the time Google was a couple of weeks away from their own July 1, 2013 shutdown date, Feedly had surpassed 12 million users.

Since then, Feedly has worked to optimize their service to make it robust and accessible across multiple platforms. Currently, according to the Feedly App Center, their apps support the following mobile and desktop platforms:

• iPhone
• iPad
• Android phone
• Android tablet
• Kindle
• Windows 10
• Windows Phone
• BlackBerry
• Symbian
• Mac OS
• Firefox phone
• webOS
• Linux

A big part of the reason I went with Feedly is because of the app I used at the time on Windows 8 for accessing RSS feeds – Nextgen Reader – had partnered with Feedly to gain early access to their API. That same app continues to be available, now it is in the Microsoft Store on Windows 10 and is a very efficient way to review my RSS feeds throughout the day and easily share them to my social media channels.

If I am not next to a Windows 10 device, then I use the Feedly app on Android to review feeds, read content, and share those stories to social media. A recent update to the Android app has not only improved its overall performance but it has also added a night mode. It seems that is the thing to do these days and Feedly has kept up with the Jones in that sense.

Despite the regular drumbeat that RSS is dead, I can attest that is far from the case and there are some great tools and services to help you take maximum advantage of those sources of information.