Tool Kit: Better Smartphone Typing Is Just a Tap Away

TOUCH-SCREEN phones have become so astonishingly good at some tasks they have all but replaced landline phones, pocket cameras and printed maps. But there is one feature that they still struggle to get right — the keyboard. The flexibility of the full touch screen has won out over tactile, physical buttons, leaving us with a keyboard that is just an image on glass and small keys that sometimes get cranky around big thumbs.

Still, users don’t have to settle for the default keyboard on their smartphone. The advantage to virtual keyboards is just that — they are virtual — and can be easily swapped or altered for one you like better. Sometimes all it takes is a change in your settings. At most, it requires buying an app.

Here’s a sampling of tips and apps to help improve your typing experience on Apple iOS and Android, the two most popular operating systems for smartphones.

FEWER TAPS Many smartphone users make the mistake of tapping out whole words one letter at a time. A quick way to speed up typing on almost all phones is through predictive text. Once the feature is turned on, the device will predict what word you are typing after filling in only a letter or two. Choosing the full word takes just a single tap.

To turn on predictive text, you’ll have to dig through the menus, under settings. Look for the keyboard options and select “auto correction,” or whatever the similar name is on your phone. Then start typing, and when the complete word appears, usually in a list just above the keyboard, tap it. The best part is, the predictions usually improve over time, as the device learns which words you prefer. So the more you use it, the more time it will save you.

Another option is using a nonstandard keyboard layout, like the one provided by Fast Keyboard, a free app for Apple products. With the app, you won’t need to keep switching the keyboard from letters to numbers — they all appear on the same screen. Symbol keys like hashtags appear on the screen, too, and cut, copy and other functions are also within reach.

The downside of the app (and other auxiliary keyboards for Apple products) is that it doesn’t completely replace the default keyboard. It can be used for certain apps, like e-mail, text messaging and social media. Android replacement keyboards can work with all of its functions and apps.

Fleksy, a free iPhone app meant to help the visually impaired, can help you type without looking at all. Just approximate tapping where you think letters belong on a keyboard. When you have completed a word, flick the screen to the right. Fleksy will read its guess aloud. Flick down for it to guess similar words. The sloppier you are the better it seems to work. But as with other auxiliary iPhone keyboards, it can’t completely replace the standard keyboard.

HANDY CODE If you find yourself repeatedly using the same phrases over and over — and who doesn’t? — so-called typing expansion programs are for you.

When using these programs, you assign an abbreviation like “omw” to automatically turn into “I’m on my way home, honey, need anything?”

Typing expansion is built into Apple products and the free Android app Google Keyboard. For Apple products, go to Settings, then select General and then Keyboard. Click Add a New Shortcut, then enter the abbreviation and phrase you want it to become.

In Google Keyboard, open the app and go to Personal Dictionary. Touch the plus sign and then add your abbreviation and phrase. Press done and the back button.

One tip for all the devices: Make sure your shortcuts use unusual letter combinations so you don’t activate phrases at unwanted times.

GESTURES Gesture keyboards figure out what you mean to type as you to trace your finger loosely over the keys. It is faster than single-letter typing, but before it becomes really accurate, it has to learn your patterns. Sometimes, the process can be exasperating. One keyboard developer said it takes at least 50 messages for these programs to learn your patterns.

Swiftkey, a $4 app for Android, has an additional way to increase accuracy right off the bat. Give the app access to your Facebook, Twitter, and Gmail accounts and it will observe your vocabulary to better anticipate words you are likely to use. It has recently added a cloud backup service that saves your personal dictionary of often-used phrases in case your device is lost or dies. It also searches the Web for phrases coming into heavy use (like “sarin,” “twerking” or “Middleton”) to better guess what you are typing.

Swype, a popular $1 gesture-based keyboard app for Android, can also check your Facebook, Twitter and Gmail accounts to improve accuracy, but it has long had a feature called “living language.” Activate it to anonymously collect new and unfamiliar words from across the Web and add them to the dictionary.

Many phones already have gesture typing if you look in the settings. Usually it is under a heading like “Language and Keyboard” or “Language and Input.”

For Apple products there are Swiftkey and Swype imitators but, like the previously mentioned Fleksy, they can be used only for writing text.

PRIVACY SETTINGS There is a potentially alarming side to predictive technology. It is possible for an app to collect data that you would not want it to. Here is a warning that appeared when installing Google Keyboard: “This input method may be able to collect all of the text you type, including personal data like passwords and credit card numbers. It comes from the app Google Keyboard. Use this input method?”

While reputable developers will tell you in their privacy policies that they don’t collect credit cards and passwords, you can take steps on your own.

Turning off the option that shares to the cloud will increase your security (at the sacrifice of some accuracy), by keeping your personal dictionary on your phone only. Then be sure to lock your phone.

The Race to Build a Better Business Class

Six feet six inches long and almost two feet wide, the V concept is the German carrier’s latest weapon in the fierce competition among global airlines. It is designed to withstand shocks 16 times the force of gravity and comes with a cozy padded footrest. It is a new business-class seat, and if you are traveling round trip from Frankfurt to New York, it can be yours for about $5,000.

“Business class is where competition really is serious,” says Björn Bosler, the airline’s manager for passenger experience design, business and premium, who led Lufthansa’s team of dozens of seat designers and engineers. Bob Lange, senior vice president, head of market and product strategy at Airbus, the European plane maker, agrees: “There’s an arms race going on among carriers.”

Billions are being spent on research and development, architects, industrial designers and even yacht designers to pack seats with engineering innovations and fancy features. Just fabricating a single business-class seat can cost up to $80,000; custom-made first-class models run $250,000 to $500,000.

Those who fly coach may have had a glimpse of these expenditures as they shuffled past the elaborate reclining, angled, semiprivate accommodations in business and first class on their way to the knee-scraping spaces and overstuffed overhead compartments in the main cabin. Travelers in business and first class may represent 10 to 15 percent of long-haul seats globally, but they account for up to half of the revenue of airlines like Lufthansa or British Airways, says Samuel Engel, a vice president at ICF SH&E, an aviation consulting firm. Carriers vying for the attention of these passengers, who have money or corporate accounts that pay for their travel, are counting on good design to escape the grinding commodity nature of their business.

But there is only so much space inside a plane. As the more lucrative seats expand, the coach section often contracts, with more seats jammed into the same cabin space and more discomfort for coach passengers.

“The seat is one of the few elements that an airline can actually make its own,” says Patricia Bastard, an architect and designer who has worked with Air France on its first-class cabin. “There are very few elements like it inside an airplane. There’s customer service, of course. Maybe there’s a bar. But seats are unique to the airline. Seats are critical.”

Lufthansa, Europe’s largest airline and the world’s fourth largest in terms of passengers, is investing $4 billion to improve its cabins, offer satellite-based Internet and upgrade its onboard entertainment system. But the new business-class seat, which first appeared last year on the company’s new Boeing 747-8 planes, is perhaps the boldest attempt to lure the high-value passenger. The seat research, design, manufacture and installation accounts for roughly a third of that $4 billion investment, says Mr. Bosler — more than a billion dollars. Eleven planes are now outfitted with the new seats, and Lufthansa is expected to install about 7,000 of them on 100 wide-body airplanes by 2015.

Lufthansa’s task — like that of all the big airlines — was to create a special environment for those big-spending travelers within the inflexible boundaries of an aircraft fuselage.

“The challenge was finding a solution that provides all customer benefits but also tries to save as much space as possible and get as many passengers on board as possible,” Mr. Bosler says. “There’s only one way for Lufthansa to make money. It’s with passengers on board.”

THE first airplane business-class sections date to the 1970s, when the seats were like oversize, padded armchairs that could recline about 40 degrees. More comfortable seats for frequent business travelers came with the arrival in the 1990s of planes that could fly nonstop almost anywhere in the world. This new generation of ultralong-range airplanes that could fly for 10 to 14 hours — like the Boeing 777 — meant passengers wanted to be able to get real sleep, not just a fitful, head-snapping catnap.

Kirkman Expects Us to do Better Next Time

Robert Kirkman was joined by a packed room of fans for a in-depth question and answer session to celebrate 10 years of The Walking Dead at this year’s Comic-Con. A massive line formed on the center of the room as Kirkman joked and talked about everything from charcter’s death to tigers. Be warned, there are massive spoilers for the Walking Dead comic series and TV show contained below.

To kick things off, a fan asked how the death of Glenn is going to affect the survivors. “His death is at the center of everything. There is stuff coming up with Maggie,” Kirkman said. He expressed that killing Glenn was going to be a major factor in the upcoming war.

The next fan wondered if Kirkman had a favorite character? “I’ve had favorite characters in the past and I’ve killed them.” Kirkman laughed. “My favorite characters historically have been Tyreese and Axel and all the other dead ones.”

When asked how involved he was in the AMC television show, he responded, “I’m in the writer’s room full-time… I’m involved in the process.” Kirkman said he loved to see the show change and diverge from the comics. “It’s really rewarding and really fun. It’s a fun process to go back and do things differently and improve things. Everything is different. If it was just the comics again I’d be bored.”

Another fan asked for advice for the Walking Dead zombie run course. “Find the dead spots and rest. There are people handing out water and you should drink it.”

On the subject of Carl and whether or not he would ever have any peers his own age around Kirkman laughed, “If they survive the war, there will be a quite larger cast. There will be more kids. Assuming they don’t die.”

He also discussed the Walkers and whether or not fans could expect any sort of evolution from them. Would they change as the series progresses? “The Walkers are not evolving. That’s a Romero trope that I think I should stay away from, because I’ve done enough of those. I’m taken enough from him.” He stressed that it was more about the characters learning more about the zombies and not how the zombies change. The living had to adapt to the dead, not the other way around.

“No, even if I am writing the same characters, the Rick Grimes in the comic is not the same as the Rick Grimes of the show. The comic existed a very long time before the show, and I don’t want to the show to change it, Kirkman said when asked if the decisions of the show effected the way he writes characters in the book.

When asked if the tiger was going to be a problem in upcoming issues Kirkman laughed causing the audience to join him. “The tiger is gonna be a problem. It’s a tiger.”

Apparently asking a question for a friend who was a self-proclaimed “super fan,” an audience member wanted to know what the title of the series represented. Are the Walking Dead the zombies or the humans struggling to find a place in the world. “It’s whatever you want to think. It’s a play on words. It is kinda of about the characters, but I’m not artsy fartsy so it’s whatever you want it to be, I don’t care,” Kirkman answered.

The next fan wondered if the series could survive the death of Rick or if he was central to the title. “Sure. No one is safe. The book could survive Rick, there are enough strong characters that the book could continue,” Kirkman said.

Kirkman was then asked if he based anyone in the book on real people, perhaps friend or family?  “Not really, there are certain aspects of me that are in the characters, but not really. I have dead heads in a fish tank, so I added that.” He then relayed the story of killing Glenn in the comic and having to face the actor who portrayed him on the TV series. “It was nothing personal,” he laughed.

The panel was then awkwardly silent as Kirkman pointed out that there was no one else in line to ask questions. “Are we out of questions? Oh.. this is awkward,” he said to laughs from the audience. Fans quickly jumped from their seats and ran to get in line. “It’s okay, we can end early!”

One of the question from the newly formed line was whether fans of the video games, television show and comic could expect crossovers. Would characters from one series appear in another? “I don’t wanna spoil anything, but you can expect more Easter eggs. We like to reward fans of the comic,” Kirkman cryptically added.

When asked if there would be more webispodes in conjunction with the new season, Kirkman said yes. “I think there might be, but don’t quote me on that. I feel like I might be announcing something I’m not supposed to.”

A fan then said he had just received a teaser image that simply read “Dead.” He wanted to know what it meant and what it was teasing. “There will be another one tomorrow and another the next day. It’s a teaser; you are supposed to be intrigued. Check the Skybound panel; we’ll be announcing that at the panel,” Kirkman answered,

Kirkman was then asked what his favorite story was. Presumablly, the fan wanted to know which story arc from Walking Dead was Kirkman’s favorite, but since he did not specify, Kirkman took the moment to joke around.

“I loved zombie movie and I hated how they ended. There wasn’t anything long term and I thought it would be fun to do,” Kirkman said of his initial idea for the show. He just wanted to know if people could still make pizza in a post-apocalyptic world. “It’s not hard, right? They could still make pizza, yeah?”

Finally, Kirkman was asked what his favorite comic series and television show are?

“Savage Dragon has been my favorite comic forever. Of new stuff, I really like Manhattan Projects and Saga. For TV, Breaking Bad. Sons of Anarchy is probably my all-time favorite, I think.”

As the panel came to an end, Kirkman ribbed the audience for the silence and lack of questions earlier. “I am extremely disappointed in all of you. I rely on you people for these panels! I don’t prepare at all. I expected more from you people. If we do this again next year, I expect better.”

Benjamin is a writer and storyteller. He owns many leather-bound books and his office smells of rich mahogany. Follow Benjamin on Twitter @616Earth, or find him on IGN.

Pogue’s Posts Blog: A Better Google Maps App for Apple and Android Devices

Google Map’s new directory buttons.

Our story so far: Last September, Apple decided to dump the Google Maps app that had been on the iPhone for years. Apple replaced it with its own Maps app — software with so many problems that Apple’s chief executive, Tim Cook, apologized and even recommended that people use other apps until Apple could fix its own one.

In December — incredibly quickly — Google responded by introducing its own Maps app for iPhone. It’s a spectacular app, among the best apps ever written. It’s fast, beautiful and so good at guessing what you mean when you start typing a destination, it’s almost mind reading. You can read the details here.

Today, that delightful news gets even better. Not only has Google improved Google Maps for iPhone, it’s also brought that same free app to three machines that never had it: the iPad, Android phones and Android tablets. (The Android versions are available for download today; it requires the Ice Cream Sandwich or Jelly Bean version of Android — recent versions, in other words. The iOS versions will be available shortly.)

For Androidians, the biggest news is the design of the app itself. It’s modeled on the iPhone app, the one that’s simple and fast and elegant. It’s also uncluttered by the morass of menus that have always plagued the existing Maps app for Android.

But for practitioners of all religions — tablet, phone, iOS, Android — the other news is the new features that today’s new version brings. They include:

* Greater speed. All app versions are faster than before.

* Better place information. Half the time, you don’t even need navigation instructions; you just use Google Maps as the world’s smartest Yellow Pages, to find a nearby restaurant, movie theater, drugstore or whatever.

The details for found places now include a one-line description (“Chinese restaurant famous for dim sum”); a five-star rating system (including a decimal — “4.3,” for example — because, let’s face it, almost everything these days winds up with a four-star rating); the ability to upload your own photos of a place; and a more complete integration of the Zagat guides, which Google bought.

* Greater emphasis on exploration. Google Maps has always excelled at getting you to a known destination. But Google now wants the app to help you choose a restaurant, bar, store, recreation center or hotel, at least in major United States and European cities.

If you tap in the Search box without typing anything, new, photographic buttons appear: Eat, Drink, Shop, Play, Sleep. Each opens lists of corresponding facilities, sorted by criteria like Local Favorites, Popular with Tourists and so on. (Google says that these recommendations are never paid placement.)

* Traffic incidents and auto-rerouting. At last: Google Maps shows more than colored lines indicating current traffic speeds on major roads. Now it also displays tiny icons that represent accidents and construction. Tap one to read the details: “Right lane blocked on 680,” for example. (In case you were wondering, the information on traffic incidents doesn’t come from Waze, the traffic-incident app that Google recently bought. That data has yet to be incorporated into Maps.)

Better yet: Maps now looks ahead for traffic jams on your route, and interrupts your drive with a dialog box that offers to route you around it (if the new path would be quicker, of course). On its own.

* Offline maps. This feature is something of an Easter egg. It’s undocumented, a feature inserted by Google engineers simply because they wanted it. You can access it only if you know the secret. But wow, is it worth it.

This feature memorizes the map data for whatever area is displayed on your screen right now (up to a whole city in size). That way, you can use Google Maps even when you’re overseas and don’t want to turn on data roaming (because that’s insanely expensive), or when you’re in an area where there’s no cell reception. It’s very handy.

To capture a map snapshot like this, tap in the Search box. Use the speech-recognition button and say, “OK Maps.” (It’s a riff on the command “OK Glass” that prepares Google Glass, the company’s “smart headband,” for voice commands.)

A message quietly lets you know you’ve successfully stored the displayed area.

*Nice tablet layouts. On a tablet, Maps really shines. The app smartly reformats itself to take best advantage of whatever screen shape you have: two or three columns of place listings, for example, and luxuriously displayed photos and reviews for each business.

This new, improved Maps app works identically on both major flavors of phone and tablet. You know what? I don’t care how much you distrust Google and its motives. This is crazy good software, some the best work Google has ever done.

Bits Blog: With Big Data, Fail Cheaper, Fail Better

Kim Steele for The New York Times More than big computers or huge databases, diversity of information is at the heart of what is called big data.

There are lots of reasons for the current boom (some would say bubble) in data, including cheap computing, sensors everywhere and lots of new algorithms.

To all of those, perhaps we should add the rising likelihood of failure, both the expensive kind and the cheap kind.

The expensive kind is when your business or employer gets wiped out. That is happening with greater frequency. According to Richard N. Foster of Yale University, the average tenure of a company in the Standard & Poor’s 500 is now about 16 years, down from 60 years in 1959.

“The duration of your working life is now almost certainly greater than the lifespan of a company,” said Alistair Croll, an entrepreneur and author. “That makes everyone more willing to accept that they will be disrupted.” When people know there are reasons to think their business will be blown up by new market developments, he said, they’re more likely to seek data that helps them respond.

Alistair Croll, author of “Lean Analytics.”

Mr. Croll is the author of the book “Lean Analytics,” which is about how companies, and start-ups in particular, can better focus on change by working with lots of different data sources.

More than big computers or huge databases, diversity of information is at the heart of what is called big data. That term may be somewhat hyped, but there is no doubt that analysis of standardized information is becoming the norm in more of our lives, from personal medicine to real-time analytics of big industrial machines.

It is also cheaper to take risks and fail, both for start-ups and corporate divisions. Many costs that existed even a decade ago have fallen sharply. Computer hardware and software are now rented through cloud computing, social media is a proxy for much of marketing and a burgeoning number of business applications are sold cheaply in Google’s Android and Apple’s iOS stores.

“When things like that happen,” Mr. Croll says, “companies focus less on costs, and more on experimentation about what is going to make their original idea work. There is more desire to experiment.”

Experimentation, of course, involves a lot of failure, as failure is where most learning takes place. Data around the failures of others are collected and studied as part of the overall process now. Data on failure is cheaper to create, and cheaper to come by. That is another way of saying that people are more likely to make new and interesting mistakes, instead of the same old ones, which is probably a good thing.

One big result of this failure-driven world, Mr. Croll says, is that organizational leadership is changing toward a more structured learning environment. “In the past, a leader was someone who could get you to do stuff in the absence of information,” he says. “Now it’s the person who can ask the best question about what’s going on, and find an answer.”

Gadgetwise Blog: Better Sound From Your Smartphone

The Vamp Verza headphone amplifier from V-Moda.

When V-Moda introduced its Vamp headphone amplifier last year, it won over critics and fans by offering richer, more lustrous sound.

But the Vamp worked only with the iPhone 4 and 4S, which limited its usefulness. Aiming for greater versatility, V-Moda created the Vamp Verza, for iOS as well as Android devices.

In a nutshell, the Vamp bypasses a device’s digital-to-audio converter and runs music through its own high-fidelity processor. The result is noticeably better sound with clear vocals and firmer bass. The amp also has a lithium-ion battery that can provide power to your smartphone.

The original Vamp cradled an iPhone in a case with a dock, making it a single unit. The updated Vamp Verza has no case, just a strong rubber band and some micro-USB cables to connect the amplifier to any device, even a Mac or PC.

For those who don’t care for the hard-core look of a phone strapped to an amplifier, V-Moda offers the Metallo case for the iPhone 5 and Samsung Galaxy S3. Each case has a removable back plate that allows the case to slide onto the Vamp Verza and lock into place. Made of lightweight, anodized aluminum, the case looks gorgeous.

But all that aural and visual beauty comes at a cost. For starters, there’s the price tag: $598 for the Vamp Verza and $101 for the Metallo case. Ouch!

But there are other trade-offs. The Vamp Verza does not have a touch screen or an app, which would make the controls easier to maneuver. The amp has several external switches and buttons that serve to intensify the sound, but don’t include play or pause functions. The Metallo case provides little protection from shocks and bumps, and once the phone is finally locked into place (a process that involves four tiny screws and an Allen wrench), it’s awfully hard to remove.

Over all, the Vamp Verza stands out for creating a pure listening experience; however, this device was made not for the masses, but for producers, musicians and other audio connoisseurs.

Gadgetwise Blog: Nessie Surfaces to Make You Sound Better

Nessie stands about 10 inches high and plugs into a USB slot.

Blue Microphones has made a number of quality USB microphones for broadcasters, podcasters or anyone who wants their audio recordings to sound better than the typical laptop or desktop mic allows.

But to get that professional sound takes some accessories and post-production expertise. Enter Blue Microphones’ Nessie, a $100 mic that adjusts itself to give you professional-style sound at a moderate price.

Nessie, presumably named for its profile, which (if you squint) vaguely resembles the Loch Ness Monster, stands about 10 inches high and has a weighted base that makes it tip the scales at about a pound and a half.

It plugs into a USB slot and requires no special software drivers, although you will need a recording program, of course.

The mic has three settings, one for voice, one for music and one raw, enhancement audio. There is a 3.5mm plug so you can listen to the sound directly from the mic through your headphones (the fancy term is a “zero latency” connection), and there is a mute button. When it’s on, a light in the base pulses.

In a test, the voice mode certainly gave my speech a professional sound, deepening it and making it richer. The music setting was subtly sharper sounding, a tad more clear. The raw setting, which would be best if you wanted to add your own enhancements later, produced a less engaging sound.

There is some room for improvement. The built-in pop filter is good, but isn’t foolproof, so you do have to keep a proper distance from the mic.

In my test model, Nessie’s adjustable head would occasionally droop on its own – perhaps saying, “test, test” repeatedly lulled it to sleep. There was also a problem with an intermittent connection, causing Nessie to just stop recording.

The company said that mine was a very early model, and that they are working to insure the head’s hinge is as tight as a computer screen hinge. No one else had experienced intermittent sound, a spokesman said. In either case, I was told, the company would replace a faulty mic.

I can’t quibble about the sound quality though, droopy head or no.

Bits Blog: Facebook Is Betting Longer Videos Are Better

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Bits Blog: Facebook Is Betting Longer Videos Are Better

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Unboxed: Big Data, Trying to Build Better Workers

In telephone call centers, for example, where hourly workers handle a steady stream of calls under demanding conditions, the communication skills and personal warmth of an employee’s supervisor are often crucial in determining the employee’s tenure and performance. In fact, recent research shows that the quality of the supervisor may be more important than the experience and individual attributes of the workers themselves.

New research calls into question other beliefs. Employers often avoid hiring candidates with a history of job-hopping or those who have been unemployed for a while. The past is prologue, companies assume. There’s one problem, though: the data show that it isn’t so. An applicant’s work history is not a good predictor of future results.

These are some of the startling findings of an emerging field called work-force science. It adds a large dose of data analysis, a k a Big Data, to the field of human resource management, which has traditionally relied heavily on gut feel and established practice to guide hiring, promotion and career planning.

Work-force science, in short, is what happens when Big Data meets H.R.

The new discipline has its champions. “This is absolutely the way forward,” says Peter Cappelli, director of the Center for Human Resources at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. “Most companies have been flying completely blind.”

Today, every e-mail, instant message, phone call, line of written code and mouse-click leaves a digital signal. These patterns can now be inexpensively collected and mined for insights into how people work and communicate, potentially opening doors to more efficiency and innovation within companies.

Digital technology also makes it possible to conduct and aggregate personality-based assessments, often using online quizzes or games, in far greater detail and numbers than ever before.

In the past, studies of worker behavior were typically based on observing a few hundred people at most. Today, studies can include thousands or hundreds of thousands of workers, an exponential leap ahead.

“The heart of science is measurement,” says Erik Brynjolfsson, director of the Center for Digital Business at the Sloan School of Management at M.I.T. “We’re seeing a revolution in measurement, and it will revolutionize organizational economics and personnel economics.”

The data-gathering technology, to be sure, raises questions about the limits of worker surveillance. “The larger problem here is that all these workplace metrics are being collected when you as a worker are essentially behind a one-way mirror,” says Marc Rotenberg, executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, an advocacy group. “You don’t know what data is being collected and how it is used.”

Companies view work-force data mainly as a valuable asset. Last December, for example, I.B.M. completed its $1.3 billion acquisition of Kenexa, a recruiting, hiring and training company. Kenexa’s corps of more than 100 industrial organizational psychologists and researchers was one attraction, but so was its data: Kenexa surveys and assesses 40 million job applicants, workers and managers a year.

Big companies like I.B.M., Oracle and SAP are pursuing the business opportunity. So is eHarmony, the online matchmaking service. It announced in January that it would retool its algorithm for romance so it could examine employee-employer relationships, and enter the talent search business later this year.

THE penchant for digital measurement and monitoring seems most suited to hourly employment, where jobs often involve routine tasks. But will this technology also be useful in identifying and nurturing successful workers in less-regimented jobs? Many companies think so, and can point to some encouraging evidence.

Tim Geisert, chief marketing officer for I.B.M.’s Kenexa unit, observed that an outgoing personality has traditionally been assumed to be the defining trait of successful sales people. But its research, based on millions of worker surveys and tests, as well as manager assessments, has found that the most important characteristic for sales success is a kind of emotional courage, a persistence to keep going even after initially being told no.

The team of behavioral and data scientists at Knack, a Silicon Valley start-up firm, uses computer games and constant measurement to test emotional intelligence, cognitive skills, working memory and propensity for risk-taking. Early pilot testers include the NYU Langone Medical Center, Bain & Company and a unit of Shell, says Guy Halfteck, Knack’s C.E.O.

Tool Kit: Make Better Use of Backup in Apple’s iCloud - Tool Kit

See if this sounds familiar: Every morning you are greeted with a notice on your phone: “Not Enough Storage,” meaning nothing was backed up because you used up all the space allotted to your iCloud plan. If you use iOS 6, you’ve seen it, right?

The problem is that Apple’s iCloud makes it a little too easy to save copies of your music, photos, contacts, calendars, videos and such for backup and sharing with other i devices and computers. When you set up an iPhone or iPad it asks you if you want to back up to iCloud. “Sure,” you think. “Why not?”

Here’s why: because backing up all of your devices means you will fill the free five gigabytes of iCloud storage in no time at all. In a common situation, users find themselves within weeks being asked by Apple to pay $20 for an additional 10 gigabytes, then weeks later $20 more for yet another 10 gigabytes, and still more weeks later topping out at $100 a year for the 50-gigabyte level.

This isn’t an insidious plot. It’s just that when you accept the easy setup, you may save multiple copies of your files as well as a lot of stuff you probably do not need. You can put your data on a diet, without risk of losing anything important. The trick is to be more selective in what you save.

First you have to find your fattest files. Go into your device and tap Settings. Scroll down to “iCloud” and tap it. Your iCloud account for this device should appear above a list of apps (we’ll get to those). Scroll down past the apps to Storage & Backup, and tap that.

Now you should see how much storage is available on your plan. (There is going to be a lot of tapping, but bear with it; it will be worthwhile.)

Below that is a line that says Manage Storage. Tap it. Now you should see what devices are backing up to iCloud. In my case, an iPhone and iPad that I no longer own were taking up iCloud space. I deleted those, saving close to two gigabytes.

Now you can tap on the button showing the device you are holding. You will see when you most recently backed it up, and the size of that backup. Scroll down to the backup options. At the bottom you should see a line reading Show All Apps.

Touch Show All Apps and you will see a list of all the apps on the phone and how much space they are using, listed largest to smallest. Be prepared for some surprises. You will probably find that you are backing up data unnecessarily.

On mine, Shazam, the music recognition app, had saved four megabytes of data. I do not need that saved. I turned off the storage by tapping the on/off slider. Shazam still worked just fine; a record of all the songs I had looked up was still on the phone. If I ever lose the phone, the list will not be on iCloud to restore to my phone, but I can live without it, along with the data from hundreds of other apps, like Flashlight (1.4 megabytes) or NPR News (319 kilobytes).

The biggest improvements come from changing settings on the most corpulent apps. That starts with photographs and videos on your Camera Roll. There are a lot of ways to save photos and videos, but leaving them on the Camera Roll is the only one that uses iCloud space. Photos and video use a lot of data, and if you’re keeping them on Camera Roll, iCloud makes a complete copy of each from each phone and tablet you have.

Those photos don’t have to be on the photo roll to be saved, though. You can back up your phone regularly to a desktop computer by cable. When the photos are transferred into iTunes (or Lightroom, or any organizer) you can discard the copies on the device’s Camera Roll.

If you want to carry some of those images on the device, you can put them back on in an album, which will not add to your iCloud storage.

In fact, you may not want to back up the photos to iCloud on your phone at all (just turn it off in Manage Storage). Apple offers a feature, called Photo Stream, that saves the most recent 1,000 photos (but no videos) on your device, and backs them up online for 30 days as well. And neither counts against your five gigabytes of free iCloud storage.

While documents usually account for small amounts of data, e-mail can be an exception because it often comes with attachments and image.

In this case, iCloud isn’t backing up your e-mail, it’s an account on a cloud server that sends a copy of your mail to your phone, pad and computer — just like Gmail or dozens of other services. There is no control on your iPad or iPhone to prevent Apple account messages from being sent to iCloud. Turning off mail in the iCloud settings means you won’t get e-mail on that device, but e-mail from @icloud.com, @me.com or @mac.com will still pile up in iCloud. You can manually delete them to save space, or use a service like Gmail, which doesn’t count against iCloud storage.

With your fattest files trimmed, you can peck away at other apps on the list that are retaining smaller bits of data that you don’t need.

There are some apps that you should always back up from your phone. As a general rule, apps you use to create data or content should be backed up. If you use incoming calls to create new contacts on your phone, back them up. If you use a note-taking app, you might back that up to keep your jottings safe.

If you are determined to keep your iCloud account spare, you can choose to religiously back up to your computer by cable every day.

There are two disadvantages to managing your devices this way. One is that it can take quite a while to go through all of your apps, turning them off one by one. It’s a fairly mindless exercise though; you can do it while watching TV.

The second is a slightly bigger drawback. If you lose your phone and need a new one, backing up from a slimmed-down iCloud account means the phone will not be identical to the one you lost: some settings may not have been saved, for instance. If you back up regularly to a desktop computer, though, you can restore from that.

So if you don’t want to back up manually, and want your phone to be completely restored in event of a loss, you have a decision to make: is it worth $20 or even $100 a year to you?

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: October 14, 2012

The Tool Kit article on Thursday about managing iCloud for iPhones and iPads described incorrectly how to keep iCloud space from being consumed by e-mail. E-mail sent through an Apple account (@icloud.com, @me.com and @mac.com) is automatically sent to iCloud and must be manually deleted; there is no control on the iPad or iPhone to prevent messages from being sent to iCloud. (While delivery of e-mail to the device itself can be turned off, the e-mail will still be sent to iCloud. To avoid filling iCloud storage with e-mail, use a third-party e-mail provider such as Gmail rather than Apple.)

Tool Kit: Make Better Use of Backup in Apple’s iCloud - Tool Kit

See if this sounds familiar: Every morning you are greeted with a notice on your phone: “Not Enough Storage,” meaning nothing was backed up because you used up all the space allotted to your iCloud plan. If you use iOS 6, you’ve seen it, right?

The problem is that Apple’s iCloud makes it a little too easy to save copies of your music, photos, contacts, calendars, videos and such for backup and sharing with other i devices and computers. When you set up an iPhone or iPad it asks you if you want to back up to iCloud. “Sure,” you think. “Why not?”

Here’s why: because backing up all of your devices means you will fill the free five gigabytes of iCloud storage in no time at all. In a common situation, users find themselves within weeks being asked by Apple to pay $20 for an additional 10 gigabytes, then weeks later $20 more for yet another 10 gigabytes, and still more weeks later topping out at $100 a year for the 50-gigabyte level.

This isn’t an insidious plot. It’s just that when you accept the easy setup, you may save multiple copies of your files as well as a lot of stuff you probably do not need. You can put your data on a diet, without risk of losing anything important. The trick is to be more selective in what you save.

First you have to find your fattest files. Go into your device and tap Settings. Scroll down to “iCloud” and tap it. Your iCloud account for this device should appear above a list of apps (we’ll get to those). Scroll down past the apps to Storage & Backup, and tap that.

Now you should see how much storage is available on your plan. (There is going to be a lot of tapping, but bear with it; it will be worthwhile.)

Below that is a line that says Manage Storage. Tap it. Now you should see what devices are backing up to iCloud. In my case, an iPhone and iPad that I no longer own were taking up iCloud space. I deleted those, saving close to two gigabytes.

Now you can tap on the button showing the device you are holding. You will see when you most recently backed it up, and the size of that backup. Scroll down to the backup options. At the bottom you should see a line reading Show All Apps.

Touch Show All Apps and you will see a list of all the apps on the phone and how much space they are using, listed largest to smallest. Be prepared for some surprises. You will probably find that you are backing up data unnecessarily.

On mine, Shazam, the music recognition app, had saved four megabytes of data. I do not need that saved. I turned off the storage by tapping the on/off slider. Shazam still worked just fine; a record of all the songs I had looked up was still on the phone. If I ever lose the phone, the list will not be on iCloud to restore to my phone, but I can live without it, along with the data from hundreds of other apps, like Flashlight (1.4 megabytes) or NPR News (319 kilobytes).

The biggest improvements come from changing settings on the most corpulent apps. That starts with photographs and videos on your Camera Roll. There are a lot of ways to save photos and videos, but leaving them on the Camera Roll is the only one that uses iCloud space. Photos and video use a lot of data, and if you’re keeping them on Camera Roll, iCloud makes a complete copy of each from each phone and tablet you have.

Those photos don’t have to be on the photo roll to be saved, though. You can back up your phone regularly to a desktop computer by cable. When the photos are transferred into iTunes (or Lightroom, or any organizer) you can discard the copies on the device’s Camera Roll.

If you want to carry some of those images on the device, you can put them back on in an album, which will not add to your iCloud storage.

In fact, you may not want to back up the photos to iCloud on your phone at all (just turn it off in Manage Storage). Apple offers a feature, called Photo Stream, that saves the most recent 1,000 photos (but no videos) on your device, and backs them up online for 30 days as well. And neither counts against your five gigabytes of free iCloud storage.

While documents usually account for small amounts of data, e-mail can be an exception because it often comes with attachments and images.

Chances are, unless your phone or tablet is your only computing device, your e-mail is being saved on a server or on the hard drive of your desktop computer. If that is the case, you may not want to back it up at all on your mobile devices. The controls to turn this off are in a different place. When you tap iCloud, the toggle to turn off Mail is on the first screen, along with Contacts, Calendars and some other apps.

With your fattest files trimmed, you can peck away at other apps on the list that are retaining smaller bits of data that you don’t need.

There are some apps that you should always back up from your phone. As a general rule, apps you use to create data or content should be backed up. If you use incoming calls to create new contacts on your phone, back them up. If you use a note-taking app, you might back that up to keep your jottings safe.

If you are determined to keep your iCloud account spare, you can choose to religiously back up to your computer by cable every day.

There are two disadvantages to managing your devices this way. One is that it can take quite a while to go through all of your apps, turning them off one by one. It’s a fairly mindless exercise though; you can do it while watching TV.

The second is a slightly bigger drawback. If you lose your phone and need a new one, backing up from a slimmed-down iCloud account means the phone will not be identical to the one you lost: some settings may not have been saved, for instance. If you back up regularly to a desktop computer, though, you can restore from that.

So if you don’t want to back up manually, and want your phone to be completely restored in event of a loss, you have a decision to make: is it worth $20 or even $100 a year to you?

Bits Blog: Apple on Its iOS 6 Maps: Things Can Only Get Better

Apple’s Maps app for iOS 6.

Maybe Apple should have slapped beta — the label it reserves for unpolished technologies like Siri — on its new maps application.

After the maps in its new iOS 6 mobile operating system were greeted with widespread criticism after its release on Wednesday, the company issued a statement Thursday saying that it is working hard to improve the technology.

“We launched this new map service knowing that it is a major initiative and we are just getting started with it,” said Trudy Muller, an Apple spokeswoman. “We are continuously improving it, and as Maps is a cloud-based solution, the more people use it, the better it will get. We’re also working with developers to integrate some of the amazing transit apps in the App Store into iOS Maps. We appreciate all of the customer feedback and are working hard to make the customer experience even better.”

The response to Apple’s mapping service has been unusually harsh for a company that typically puts far more care into delivering polished products. But Apple has a checkered history when it comes to delivering services that rely heavily on the Internet.

Siri, its voice-activated virtual assistant, has been criticized since it came out last year for both outages and its frequent misunderstandings of user commands. At least Apple signaled that Siri was a work-in-progress by describing it as being in beta.

The maps service carries no such disclaimer and is likely being viewed even more critically than Siri because maps have become such an essential tool for smartphone users. The service was blasted for everything from inaccuracies in its location data for businesses to the sometimes distorted imagery of landmarks.

Some of the criticisms were tongue-in-cheek. The Washington State Department of Transportation issued a tweet saying that the Tacoma Narrows Bridges had not melted half way through its span, even though the distorted aerial photograph of the structures in Apple’s map service suggested that it had.

Someone else posted a more comprehensive chronicle of the shortcoming of Apple maps on a Tumblr site called “The Amazing iOS6 Maps.” It shows an aerial image of Louisiana State University on Google and Apple maps, with far more detail, including the names of campus buildings, shown on the former. Other images show botched driving directions and out-of-date names for businesses and landmarks on Apple maps.

Gadgetwise Blog: Three Tips for Better Google Searching

Want to improve your Google search skills?
Here are the three tips — basic, intermediate and advanced — from Dan Russell at Google. He studies how people use the search engine and teaches classes on how to do it better, including a free online course this month, for which registration started Tuesday. He promises these tips will make you happy, and he cares a lot about that — his official title at Google is über tech lead for search quality and user happiness.
Basic tip:
Say you know you were mentioned in an article online, so you search to read what was said about you. But when you click on the link, you get the entire article and no idea where to find your name. The solution is simple: Control- F. Typing those two keys allows you to enter a term to find it anywhere it appears on the Web page. Ninety percent of United States Internet users do not know how to find the word they are looking for on a Web page, according to Mr. Russell’s studies. “Control F changes the way you read anything.”
Intermediate tip:
You tried to snowboard and ended up back at your computer with a possibly broken arm. Instead of typing “What do I do with a busted arm” into Google, try to use words that you imagine someone else would have written about broken arms, Mr. Russell said. “Put yourself in the mind of the author of a perfect Web page,” he said. “Emulate the language of the person you want to read the answer from.” But do not take that too far, by making up words that you think are expert, but are not real words. “Don’t overdo it using words you think are medical, like ‘fracturated,’ because you will find results, at which point you’ll be in even bigger trouble,” Mr. Russell said. Which leads us to his final tip.
Advanced tip:
Before you ask Google what to do with a “fracturated” arm, look up the word, or any word, by typing “define:” followed by the word. Mr. Russell advises promiscuous use of the word “define” followed by colon. “Before you search, make sure you’re searching the right word. The worst thing you can do is to search for something you think means one thing but in fact means something else, but you believe the answer when you asked the wrong question.”

Bits Blog: Kleiner Perkins, for Better or Verse

Eloy Alonso/ReutersLeonard Cohen

Leonard Cohen’s “Book of Longing” must be the most discussed book in Silicon Valley since Walter Isaacson’s life of Steve Jobs. The Canadian songwriter’s collection of verse and drawings, first published in 2006, plays a highly visible role in the suit Ellen Pao has filed against her employer, the venture firm of Kleiner Perkins. That case will again be in the news on Friday, when Kleiner goes to court to argue that it should go to arbitration.

When thinking about the case, “Book of Longing” offers a useful prism. Are these poems and sketches offensive, as the plaintiff charges, or benign, as the defense would have it?

Ms. Pao asserts that she was harassed into a brief affair with an unmarried colleague, and that her efforts to deal with this and other instances of unseemly behavior were met with retaliation and punishment. Kleiner says there is little record of her formally or even informally complaining, and denies any retaliation.

Mr. Cohen, now in his late 70s, is an unlikely artist to figure in a Silicon Valley trial. His recordings are redolent of the Beat era of coffeehouses; “Suzanne,” his most covered song, dates from the late 1960s. Like much of Mr. Cohen’s work, “Suzanne” deals with the mystery and wonder of women: “You can spend the night beside her/ And you know that she’s half-crazy,” etc.

Ms. Pao suggests in her suit that a senior partner’s gift of “Longing” was equivalent to making a crude proposal or touching in an inappropriate place — way beyond the pale for acceptable office behavior. That senior partner, Randy Komisar, says the truth is more prosaic, according to the legal papers. He and Ms. Pao had a discussion about Mr. Komisar’s Buddhism, and she gave him a statue of Buddha as a holiday gift, the papers say. Mr. Komisar’s wife chose the Cohen book as a return gift. Kleiner notes in the papers that The New York Times called the book “profound.” True. But the same review also called it “steamy.”

What to make of this? Well, if I gave a copy of this book to a co-worker who decided she was offended, there are plenty of lines I would be uncomfortable hearing read to me by someone from the Human Resources Department: “You came to me this morning/ And you handled me like meat/ You’d have to be a man to know/ How good that feels how sweet.”

“The Mist of Pornography” begins this way:

when you rose out of the mist
of pornography
with your talk of marriage
and orgies
I was a mere boy of fifty-seven
trying to make a fast buck
in the slow lane

Other poems here could not be quoted in a family newspaper.

On Friday morning in a San Francisco court, Kleiner will get another chance to move the case to arbitration and avoid the humiliation of a trial. If the firm loses this bid, and wants to avoid a public trial, it may end up paying a very large settlement to Ms. Pao. Someone will lose big here. Which somehow brings to mind a poem of Mr. Cohen’s:

I said I’d be your lover
You laughed at what I said
I lost my job forever
I was counted with the dead

Bits Blog: Kleiner Perkins, for Better or Verse

Eloy Alonso/ReutersLeonard Cohen

Leonard Cohen’s “Book of Longing” must be the most discussed book in Silicon Valley since Walter Isaacson’s life of Steve Jobs. The Canadian songwriter’s collection of verse and drawings, first published in 2006, plays a highly visible role in the suit Ellen Pao has filed against her employer, the venture firm of Kleiner Perkins. That case will again be in the news on Friday, when Kleiner goes to court to argue that it should go to arbitration.

When thinking about the case, “Book of Longing” offers a useful prism. Are these poems and sketches offensive, as the plaintiff charges, or benign, as the defense would have it?

Ms. Pao asserts that she was harassed into a brief affair with an unmarried colleague, and that her efforts to deal with this and other instances of unseemly behavior were met with retaliation and punishment. Kleiner says there is little record of her formally or even informally complaining, and denies any retaliation.

Mr. Cohen, now in his late 70s, is an unlikely artist to figure in a Silicon Valley trial. His recordings are redolent of the Beat era of coffeehouses; “Suzanne,” his most covered song, dates from the late 1960s. Like much of Mr. Cohen’s work, “Suzanne” deals with the mystery and wonder of women: “You can spend the night beside her/ And you know that she’s half-crazy,” etc.

Ms. Pao suggests in her suit that a senior partner’s gift of “Longing” was equivalent to making a crude proposal or touching in an inappropriate place — way beyond the pale for acceptable office behavior. That senior partner, Randy Komisar, says the truth is more prosaic, according to the legal papers. He and Ms. Pao had a discussion about Mr. Komisar’s Buddhism, and she gave him a statue of Buddha as a holiday gift, the papers say. Mr. Komisar’s wife chose the Cohen book as a return gift. Kleiner notes in the papers that The New York Times called the book “profound.” True. But the same review also called it “steamy.”

What to make of this? Well, if I gave a copy of this book to a co-worker who decided she was offended, there are plenty of lines I would be uncomfortable hearing read to me by someone from the Human Resources Department: “You came to me this morning/ And you handled me like meat/ You’d have to be a man to know/ How good that feels how sweet.”

“The Mist of Pornography” begins this way:

when you rose out of the mist
of pornography
with your talk of marriage
and orgies
I was a mere boy of fifty-seven
trying to make a fast buck
in the slow lane

Other poems here could not be quoted in a family newspaper.

On Friday morning in a San Francisco court, Kleiner will get another chance to move the case to arbitration and avoid the humiliation of a trial. If the firm loses this bid, and wants to avoid a public trial, it may end up paying a very large settlement to Ms. Pao. Someone will lose big here. Which somehow brings to mind a poem of Mr. Cohen’s:

I said I’d be your lover
You laughed at what I said
I lost my job forever
I was counted with the dead