How My Friend Found His iPhone in Antipolo Because of the Find My iPhone App

I get a call from my friend. Let’s call him Blad. He tells me he can’t remember what happened last night and that he lost his iPhone.

I’m sorry I tell him. “Maybe next time you should wear a lanyard.”

Half an hour later, Blad sends me a Google Maps link to something. He says his phone is still turned on, that he tracked it using the Find My iPhone app, that it’s somewhere in Antipolo and the best part: that I should help him find it before the phone’s battery dies.

I laugh at the ridiculousness of this idea. There is no way in hell we can find that.

Blad is Filipino-American but unfortunately can’t speak a lick of Filipino other than “Nasaan yung CR.” Obviously, I can’t let him try to find it by himself so I decide to help him. I also call another friend, EJ, and ask if he wants to help out. EJ says yes. We all agree to meet up at the McDonald’s in Katipunan.

We head out excited but also feeling like dumbasses. Blad is sure now, thanks to another friend who was in the cab with him, that he left it there. On our way to wherever his iPhone is, I ask them about our plan. Turns out we don’t have any. Maybe we should look for a cab parked there and ask for the driver?

What if it’s a warehouse and it’s a trap and their plan is to kidnap us? Naaah. We have two bowling balls in the trunk which we could use as a projectile. We’re safe.

We finally get to where the iPhone’s location is.

It’s a Saturday morning so no one’s really outside except for someone hanging clothes. We didn’t spot any cabs.

Great. Now what?

EJ comes up with a brilliant idea: let’s knock on all the doors and ask if someone came in at 3AM and found an iPhone!

Sounds time-consuming but we’re already here so sure, let’s do it!

After our 3rd door, we decide that it’s not a brilliant idea after all. Whoever we were asking would just end up asking someone else in the house so this method was too slow.

We go back to the guard house (we entered the subdivision without him noticing us) and ask the guard for help. Maybe he can show us his log book?

He says he will need to call the president of the subdivision association. We tell both of them the story and how the phone is still turned on and that it’s here somewhere.

“Ang galing pala niyan! Hindi talaga pwedeng manakaw!”, exclaims the subdivision president. He then looks at my iPhone (I signed in using Blad’s account so we can track it there) and says “Pwede pa bang i-zoom yan?”

I zoom it in, he looks at it with squinting eyes and says that’s not their subdivision. The dot is in that area behind it.

We see it from where we’re standing and it’s a shantytown.

The subdivision president insists that it’s safe but that we should go in there with a Barangay Tanod just in case. We figured it’d be a waste of time if we back out now so we soldier on.

A guy comes in riding a bike, he’s our guy says the guard. We follow him into the shantytown area as he goes to another Tanod’s house. We tell our story again but this time surrounded by 20 other people, half of which are shirtless men. They pass around my phone, talking amongst themselves how crazy it is that we can track it.

At this point, we were getting slightly scared. What if they start getting mad at us for accusing them? We look at each other thinking we should probably head back.

Then another shirtless man approaches us.

“Anong hinahanap?”

“iPhone daw brad. Ganito oh.”

“Nasa akin yan.”

In my head I’m like WTH just happened. Blad overhears this and asks me, “Did he just say he doesn’t have it?” I give him my straight face and tell him to follow the shirtless guy.

He goes inside his house. And then comes back outside and shows us a phone.

Turns out he did have it!

Apparently, he was the guy that cleaned the taxi cab where Blad’s phone was left. The shirtless man explains that he didn’t touch it, didn’t know what to do with it but that if someone looked for it, he’d return it. We thank him for his honesty.

From this experience, I can tell you that the Find My iPhone feature actually works. So if you have an iPhone, make sure you enable it.

It’s not foolproof though. If someone finds your phone and turns it off, you’re SOL.

How do I know this?

Well after we found Blad’s phone, a couple weeks later…

He loses it again.

This time the person turns the device off. We couldn’t track it.

So no, Blad did not live happily ever after.

He’s stuck with an Android now. Bummer. Should’ve gotten a lanyard. :)

5 Tips When Applying for a Job

I may not be part of an official HR department but I do help our small company find the right people for our team. I’ve seen thousands of resumes over the past few years that I’ve been tempted to create a blog like Clients from Hell only this time, for applicants.

A lot of fresh grads will now be looking for jobs (unless they’re still in Boracay) while those who have been with their respective companies for a year now can pretty much tell if they want to quit or stay. I figured it’s a good idea to go over what I commonly find in applicants’ resumes/interviews and come up with a tip-list post on it.

Here’s my list on what job applicants need to do before sending that resume or going to that job interview:

1. Google your own name.

Very very important.

I’ve found hate blog posts about a candidate, old and unflattering YouTube videos, and embarrassing status messages on Facebook/Tumblr/Twitter from simply googling their names. You can have the best resume and answers to our follow-up questions but if we find that you love bashing other people or (gasp) your current employer on your social networking accounts… yeah.

If you google your own name and find a significant number of unflattering links or images, it’s time to reflect. After that, read up on reputation management or SEO. Here’s a quick read from Tony Ahn on how he removed a client’s pictures from Google Image Search.

2. If the job ad says you need to answer questions and/or include your transcript of records, do it. Don’t think so highly of yourself that you think you can get away with not following directions.

This was an applicant’s actual cover letter:

Hi!

I know that I have to do certain things for this application (according to the Jobstreet post) but I’m not gonna do it. Because I go straight to the point and I know that I have the passion, the skills and the wit for this job. And I can kick all of your asses on Call of Duty. Check out my resume. Passion and learning are my game.

I’m not sure whether it’s laziness or overconfidence that I spot here.

3. Double check your resume.

Unless you’re applying to become a flight attendant or model, you do not need to include your height and weight on your resume. I also don’t know why we Filipinos like adding our religion in there as I’m not exactly sure how valuable that is to an employer. Also, I don’t think we need to know that you were awarded Best Student when you were in… first grade.

Here’s an example:

Primary: ******** Catholic School
Grade 4 – 6 (March 2002 – June 1999)
Best in Reading CEM Test
Top 2 – grade 5
Top 10 – grade 6

4. Re-read your cover letter and/or answers to your potential employer’s questions 3, 4, even 5 times.

Basic writing rules. Use capital I if you’re talking about yourself in the first person. If you include “i love writing” in there, I’m not sure I will believe it. Don’t forget your punctuation marks. I’ve seen tons of responses that don’t use periods or commas. Don’t use “PLS” as substitute for “please.” That tells us you’re lazy and that you don’t think spelling is important.

Some examples (all in verbatim):

As a newly graduate i was attracted on the written or posted on your site in jobstreet.com, i feel that in this company boredness is not an option to employees but enjoyment in the environment of the workplace is a must.

i am not expecting to be hired actually LOL :)) i just wanna answer the questions you posted in you’re ad because that’s the funkiest job advertisement iv’e even seen dude! nice job by the way.



I suppose we can ignore the second one as s/he did mention that s/he isn’t expecting to be hired. This young woman though who writes about eating her mom (!), seems pretty scary!

5. Be professional during your interview.

You’d think this is something everyone should know by now…

Don’t cover your mouth when talking. Don’t do the hand-on-chin face when something is being explained to you. We had someone look like this while we were talking about what his job responsibilities would be:



It’s okay to be nervous, it’s not okay to slouch. It’s okay to take your time when answering questions, it’s not okay to make your interviewer wait because you’re on your mobile phone talking to someone.

If you can’t show up for whatever reason, tell your interviewer ahead of time. We had one interviewee who made us wait 15 minutes and when I called said interviewee, he sounded like he was making an excuse and told us he forgot to say he can’t make it. And he was laughing (the “hehehe” type)! That’s just rude. Just because you’ve decided you’re no longer interested in the job, doesn’t mean you can waste other people’s time.

There you have it! If you have any more tips, feel free to add to what I have. Funny job interview experiences welcome too!

Why Scheduling Tweets Sometimes Sucks

I discovered tweet scheduling  early last year thanks to Flowtown’s timely.is followed by buffer a couple months later thanks to some Twitter friends.

For those clueless as to what these things do, they basically just schedule tweets so that even when you’re sleeping, sick, or working (you can’t after all, get shee done if you’re tweeting the entire day – unless your job involves tweeting), you still seem like the ultimate Twitter pro… or addict – awake and active all hours of the day. (You can now use the motto “Sleep is for the dead.” on your Twitter bio although I realize some people really just don’t sleep.)

If you’re wondering what the difference is between these tweet schedulers and popular Twitter tools like HootSuite and TweetDeck, the latter two are not only social media dashboards, they also allow you to schedule individual posts to be published to whatever social media account you have at whatever time you want.

Buffer works the same way in that it allows you to schedule your tweets (or Facebook posts) but  with this one, you only tweak your “tweet times” once and after that, your job is to just keep feeding it tweets then it queues them for you.  The only downside is that you can only add 10 tweets per day. If you want more then you’ll have to start paying $10/month to get 50 tweets.

Timely on the other hand schedules them for you based on your “best” tweeting times.  It analyzes your past tweets (199 to be exact) and determines when you’re most “retweetable” or when your Twitter audience responds to your tweets the most. And while you can feed it as many posts as you want, it can only tweet them out as much as 9 times per day. Timely also does this for your Facebook posts.

How to Sync Your Files Through the Interwebz

If you work on your computer a lot (and you probably do if you’re reading this), I hope you’re not using your USB stick to transfer Word docs or Excel files so you can work on them at home.

Probably the only time I will think of using USB sticks is when I’m transferring BAFs (big ass files). And by that I mean 3GB and up. But on the off chance that you still plug in that USB stick every day for transferring work files so you can edit them later on, maybe I can show you a better way.

My work needs me to be on the internet ALL the time (okay fine, just most of the time). I need to constantly have access to files I just sent, files that have been sent to me or files that are just sitting there but at one point could be urgently needed. It’s nice to have all my work-related files available from my office computer.

But sometimes these things happen:

• Diarrhea. Can’t stay at the office obviously. But you need to get sh*t done. (Pun intended)
• Vacation. Or maybe even weekends. (Don’t deny it, you check emails even when you’re not supposed to.)
• Work computer died. (Something to do with torrents? Hmmmm.)

You NEED to be prepared. Now that free Wi-Fi is offered almost everywhere and ‘unlisurf’ plans are available even for prepaid accounts, you have no excuse not to have access to the internet. (Note that I didn’t say fast internet!) Unless of course you’re still using a brick phone…? Exactly! 

So let me share with you my top 2 tools for SYNCING your important files at work with your home (or any other) computer.

1. Use Dropbox or Sugarsync.

Some of you might find this too basic but see, I’m also trying to write thispost for people like my sister who doesn’t care about online tools and how itwill help her tremendously with her school work. “Huh, what’s the internet?”

I’m kidding. She knows what the internet is although she probably thinks it’s Facebook. Mark Zuckerberg will be very happy to hear that.

But yes, I will have to explain what the ‘cloud’ is.

Just imagine an actual cloud.

Okay that looks good. Now imagine that’s the internet.

Actually, ignore that. Here’s a better image thanks to whatisthecloudcomputing.com:

If you upload your files to any of these tools, that cloud I showed you saves them so that even when you’re using a different device like your mobile phone or your mom’s computer, as long as you remember your login details, you can still access those same files and even make changes to them.

I don’t need to email myself documents anymore!

Work on that article from your office computer and when you get more ideas for it after you get home, you can just easily access that same file from your home computer and make changes. What? You need to run errands the next day? Does that involve falling in line and waiting for eternity? Don’t worry, you can access, make changes or add even more content from your mobile phone. All changes are saved and synced! Phone, work or home computer, it’s there. 

Just download Dropbox or Sugarsync!

If you only want to sync documents and not your entire photo album, I suggest using Dropbox instead as it is free as long as you don’t use up more than 2GB.

You just drag all your files that you want synced to your Dropbox folder and you’re done. You can access it from your phone (you need to install the app of course) and from other computers (either through the desktop app that you download and install or through the Dropbox website). Don’t forget that you need access to the internet to do all this.

I’ve been using SugarSync  for about 2 years now and it has helped me countless times especially during the days I’ve mentioned above. One thing to keep in mind with Dropbox is that they don’t encrypt your files. If you’re planning something against the government, downloading files you don’t want other people knowing (hmmm) or just plain paranoid, this is definitely a deal breaker.
With SugarSync, I just sync all my work folders so that if I have unfinished documents that I need to work on when I get home, it’s just there! I don’t need to drag files tofolders. And I can even work on it while I’m on my phone.

Pricing for SugarSync starts at $49.99 a year for 30GB. Dropbox on the other hand is at $199 a year for 50GB.

Again, if you don’t wantto pay, just use Dropbox’s free 2GB!
 

2. Use Google Docs.

If you haven’t noticed the upload button when you go to your Google Docs page, you can actually upload all sorts of files to it! This feature has actually been available since 2006 (FIVE years ago) but I’ve never really paid attention to it until… last month.

Best thing about this of course is it’s free. So if you’re dead broke, but need to protect more than 2GB of data, then Google Docs it is.

Now as to that question about your files being safe… I’ll leave that up to you.

Check out how it looks like now:

That’s Word, Excel, PDF and PowerPoint right there. They look fine when accessed via Google Docs. Of course you’ll lose comments and edits if you like tracking changes made to your Word documents so I hope you’re not expecting to get all the capabilities of  a full Word doc version. I consider this the super last resort if you don’t want to download anything and just want to be able to quickly upload your documents and access them later on.

I won’t be using this though because I’m happy with SugarSync. I don’t need to do anything, it just saves all my changes automagically!

There you have it! 2 simple ways! I’m sure most of you already know this but for those who are still highly dependent on them USB sticks… it’s time to move on.

The New Facebook Timeline

Yes yes, I’m one of the many people who pretended to be a Facebook developer just to see how this new timeline feature looks like. After reading about it on almost every single tech blog after the f8 conference, and seeing the video for it, I decided that testing out the new Facebook Timeline should be on my to-do list. Surprisingly, it was really easy to do!

If you haven’t tried it out yet, head on over to Mashable’s how-to blog post. It’s pretty straightforward and the process is not complicated at all.

Now that Facebook has their own ‘timeline’, I wonder how this will affect Twitter’s version of it?

See, the word ‘timeline’ used to be just for Twitter even though some people claim it’s a ‘Twitter thread’ (I don’t know why when it doesn’t look anything like a forum) while some call it ‘Twitter stream’ (which makes more sense). But still, most people who really use Twitter should know that it’s called a timeline.

Facebook on the other hand, takes ‘timeline’ to the next level mainly because theirs is the real thing. It’s literally a timeline. Your posts, photos and wall posts are organized by month, year and even from when you were born! With Twitter? It’s just a tweet stream that disappears eventually depending if you’ve been archiving them.

While it may look complicated during the first 2 seconds you see it, it’s really not. In fact, the design is clean and… I hate to say this, but it actually looks nice. Timeline makes more sense than how the old Facebook profile page looks like… IF you like looking back at your old posts or photos.

The design also encourages users to add old photos or even places you’ve been to. Check this out, you can even add your life events – with surgery and breaking a bone already added in there!

Some may want to make full use of this and have their ‘lifebook’ open for all their friends to see but I know a bunch who just want to put the past behind and forget that they even wore elephant jeans when they were in high school or that they actually dyed their hair blue in college. It’s a good memory bank but not everyone wants other people to see that!

My aunties, uncles and parents will probably like this because this gives them a chance to show the world that they actually used to be skinny or that at one point, they also used to have hair. (Now if only they can figure out how to use it.)

The Facebook timeline is cool but I don’t think I’ll be adding old pictures to complete my very own lifebook. I’m happy using Facebook to share links, some pictures and to talk to my friends and family. I don’t think I’m the real target demographic for this release.

You have to think, “Why are they suddenly asking me to add details of my entire life on Facebook?”

Is it because they just want you to tell your life story so you can express who you are to your friends? Or is it because they want you to live on Facebook so that they will have more chances of serving Facebook ads to you and make more money from it?

Remember, Facebook is expected to IPO late next year so these changes are intended not just to increase users’ time on Facebook but to add more ways to serve even more targeted ads.

If you’re interested in how this works, check out what they released just a month ago: Facebook Ad Targeting by Topic.