Shining bright in this week’s iFixYouri employee spotlight is Daniel “Fitz” Grant. Fitz was born in the Bronx, New York, to a nurse mother and a father who worked in the World Trade Center as an accountant. After his father passed away due to illness, Fitz moved to South Florida with his mother and has lived here ever since. While the local live music scene lacked in comparison to New York, he played bass and guitar for several rock bands in the Palm Beach County area as a teenager. He performed his first repair at this time, reviving the family dishwasher after watching a home-repair TV show on fixing appliances. Fitz is currently studying forensics at Palm Beach State College, but is “thinking of switching.” In addition to his love of the White Castle burger chain, his interests include military history, and medieval history, and firearms, and he engages these in very active ways. For the past four years, he’s enjoyed pistol shooting, competing in IDPA, a shooting sport based on defensive pistol techniques, using equipment including full-charge service ammunition to solve simulated “real world” self-defense scenarios. Having recently performed in a qualification match for IDPA, Fitz is honing his skills in the hopes of moving up to IPSC, a more advanced organization of the same sport. He became interested from the videos of a Youtuber named Jessica Cross, who competes in the same sport. In addition, Fitz has been learning the ancient art of blacksmithing, creating objects from wrought iron or steel by forging the metal and using tools to hammer, bend, and cut it into shape. So far, he’s only created simple armor and blades but hopes to become advanced enough to combine both hobbies and fashion metal components for firearms (gunsmithing). Fitz has a girlfriend and is the proud dad to Dawn, a Chow Chow/Jack Russell mix. His family is from Jamaica, and he has spent extensive time studying on the island nation. Before becoming a technician, he had the interesting job of working security on a construction site freight elevator. While he now enjoys repairing devices for the customers of iFixYouri, Fitz dreams of owning a business or becoming an inventor. Thanks for letting us in your head, Fitz!
Employee Spotlight – Chase
This week’s iFixYouri employee spotlight is on Chase! As our recycling manager and online sales specialist, Chase is responsible for making sure our broken screen glass and other parts get safely and ethically disposed of. Beneath his quiet exterior, Chase is a complex individual. A student of Dreyfoos School of the Arts and New York Film Academy, the Jupiter, FL native has worked on feature films, short films, music video, and more. He makes music, primarily playing guitar and singing, and performed on many stages throughout South Florida and beyond. He’s even a black belt in tae kwan do! A hard worker with a journeyman streak, Chase has been a mascot at Roger Dean Stadium, a sous-chef, an artist-in-residence at Dreyfoos, and an iFixYouri repair tech before arriving at his current position. We’re glad to have Chase as part of the iFixYouri team and appreciate all the great work he does.
Photo taken in front of iFixYouri Northlake
Employee Spotlight – Josh
This week’s employee spotlight focuses on Josh, general manager of our retail location in Winter Park! Josh has been repairing phones for iFixYouri for almost as long as he’s been growing out his exquisite handlebar mustache. He enjoys politics (he participated in the first weekend of Occupy Wall Street back in 2011) and playing bass guitar, jamming out with Neil from our Longwood store in their band Hazardous Folk. Josh is also from Jupiter, FL, hometown to several employees at our corporate headquarters and location of two of the newest iFixYouri stores. He also has a scary secret. Every October for seven years straight, Josh worked as a scare-actor for Universal Studios Orlando’s Halloween Horror Nights, where he “made men and women pee themselves, fall over all sorts of objects, fall to the ground, cry, and run for their lives.” We’re glad he’s a little less spooky now; the only thing scary about Josh is how quickly and perfectly he performs repairs for our customers!
Employee Spotlight – Michelle
Happy new year from iFixYouri! Our first employee spotlight of 2017 is Michelle, our director of human resources and finance. This mom of two is responsible for combing through stacks of resumes, looking for those who are talented and hard-working enough to become our master iFixYouri techs. A native of Sweden, Michelle is also a proud UCF Knight and was once cast as Cinderella and several other princesses at Walt Disney World Orlando…but her oddest job was as a promoter for the Bud Light Taste Test Challenge. We’d like to thank Michelle for gathering important boozy info (Bud Light reportedly won), and also for being the check-signing, employee-hiring rockstar of iFixYouri!
Web Censorship Around the World…and at Home
As we enter 2017, it’s important to know who’s watching us while we watch the ball drop. Internet surveillance has been a hot-button issue for the past decade, and everyone is scrambling for info on how they can hide their browsing history from prying eyes. But what about the reverse? Governments around the world are censoring the internet that its citizens have access to. In fact, we’re fairly sure that our title alone will cause this page to be blocked in quite a few of them. Today, we’ll look at three of these nations, found using Reporters Without Borders’ “Enemies of the Internet” list, and how browsing the web there might be a little different than what you’re used to.
In Havana, Cuba, only about 280 miles from our Florida headquarters, hermano grande is always watching. Watching your internet use, anyway. There are actually two internets; an “international” one that offers access to the entire web (restricted to government employees) and the “national” network that is heavily monitored. Cubans must enter their name and address to log on, and all usage runs through government-run proxy servers that steal usernames and passwords. Typing in the wrong word results in a friendly message informing you of what you’ve done then locks you out. An ambassador claims that this is to “regulate access to [the] Internet and avoid hackers, stealing passwords, [and] access to pornographic, satanic cults, terrorist or other negative sites” and, reportedly, aside from those and a few anti-Castro websites, the internet isn’t too blocked off. It is, however, extremely difficult to get on. Internet usage costs around $1.30 per hour, in a country where average monthly wage is $20. And if you try to save money by working quickly, the average download speed is a measly 1 megabit per second. 
One reporter noted that foreign news sites were not censored; rather, the bandwidth needed to load their homepages made checking CNN.com prohibitively time-consuming and expensive. Warming relations between the US and Cuba should help their IT infrastructure (the American embargo against the island extends to network hardware) and make internet more affordable and accessible.
While not alone in the Middle East, Saudi Arabia might be the most direct about controlling what its denizens view online. All international web traffic to the country is routed through several content filters to block “immoral” web pages from reaching citizens. The “immoral” definition makes things tricky; the definition tends to be along the lines of
“pornography, drug use, gambling, religious conversion of Muslims, and filtering circumvention tools” and anything “against Islam, public morals or public order” but obviously includes very subjective opinions. 140 Wikipedia pages are blocked, such as “evol
ution” and “bikini waxing.” Recently, the Saudi government has been attempting to crack down on popular homegrown YouTube channels, which until now have been an escape from the rigid control over television programming in a country with half the population under 25.
It might be fairly surprising to learn that the United States also falls on the “Enemies of The Internet” list. The First Amendment extends to internet usage, so in theory there is very little government-mandated filtering. However, using “a complex set of legally binding and privately mediated mechanisms,” it is considered by organizations such as OpenNet Initiative to be highly regulated. State governments and private companies are often pressured by the federal government into censoring the internet for their users. Some domain name registration companies will deny public access to websites that the US Treasury places on its official blacklist. For example, a European travel agency found itself blocked out of the country for arranging loophole ways for American tourists to visit Cuba, still under embargo. School libraries throughout the country are required to install certain “internet safety protocols” if they wish to acquire federal funding. Branches of the military are seemingly allowed to censor what they wish. After British newspaper The Guardian published whistleblower Edward Snowden’s report on the NSA’s global surveillance program, their website became blocked on all personnel computers at US Army facilities around the world. The US Air Force has a similar policy in place for The Guardian and many other news websites that published leaked diplomatic cables. In the public realm, many websites apply filters and censors, and there’s a lot of debate on how much is too much. Facebook is known to remove what it deems to be “hate speech,” but many believe that opposing worldviews shouldn’t be removed simply for being unpopular. What is anti-homosexual to one person is pro-Christianity to another, and vice-versa.
We’d like to hear your take on it. Ever visit Cuba or Saudi Arabia or any other country and have an interesting story to tell about trying to access the internet there? Leave us a comment!
Employee Spotlight – Anthony
We head back north for this week’s iFixYouri employee spotlight to bring you Anthony! When he’s not managing the iFixYouri location at the Cambridgeside Galleria, “Woodze” is a professional vaper, competing and attending vaping conventions all over New England. He’s also a typical Bostonian supporting the Bruins and the New England Patriots. Like most iFixYouri employees, Anthony listens to hard rock, metal, and the like, with his favorite being Florida natives A Day to Remember. A former worker in a seafood warehouse (“worst job I’ve ever had”), both Anthony and iFixYouri are happy to have him working in the warm, comfortable, unfishy environment of the mall, greeting customers with a smile and bringing their devices brought back to life.
iFixYouri Cambridge is located in the CambridgeSide Galleria on the first floor near the entrance.
Four iOS Apps to Buy with Your iTunes Gift Card
Ah, December 26th. Boxing Day. Christmas is finally over and it’s time to take stock of your gifts. Invariably, many of us receive colorful plastic cards, with a dancing silhouette on it, worth trading for digital things on iTunes. A fine gift and all, but what the heck do you do with it? You don’t buy music (Spotify Premium takes care of that) or movies or TV shows (Netflix!) so that just leaves apps and games to blow a measly $10 gift card on. Believe it or not, there are applications that are worth spending money on, and it’s all the sweeter when you’re not spending your own money.
10000000 ($2.99) and You Must Build A Boat ($2.99)
10000000 is a simple fast-paced match-three game with RPG elements. Your little guy runs through a 16-bit dungeon and into monsters, and you need to match tiles in order to attack, defend, and get items. Easy to pick up yet painfully addictive, 10000000 gives you plenty of replays as you try to ultimately get the ten million points needed to open the door to your freedom. Once you hit that milestone, download the sequel: You Must Build A Boat. The goal is different (you must build a boat) but the gameplay is the same, and with tons of new features and secrets as you build your boat bigger and bigger, recruiting monsters to act as your crew while moving up-river.
If you’re tired of the iTunes podcast interface, give Pocket Casts a try. We prefer it for two main features: reverse-chronological sorting (for starting a podcast series at the beginning) and easy downloads for offline listening. Almost everything is customizable, from playback to storage, and convenient features such as intro-skipping, silence-removal, and variable speed lets you get the most pod for your time. We also believe that every app should have at least an option for a retina-pleasing dark theme, and Pocket Casts makes the cut. Some podcasts the iFixYouri crew enjoys:
- 99% Invisible – Interesting stories about day-to-day designs you don’t generally think about (examples: revolving doors, the NBC chimes, and “Busta Rhymes Island”).
- Welcome to Night Vale – Regular updates from the creepiest town in the Southwest. Surreal, often-dark humor in the form of local newscasts from the fictional Night Vale.
- Embedded – Investigative journalism for people who like self-contained stories, unlike the months-long yarns of Serial. Each episode stands alone and covers its topic in gripping, explorative fashion.
Algoriddim’s popular app lets you be a pro DJ, allowing playback and mixing of digital audio files with a user interface that tries to simulate the concept of two turntables and a microphone. Works decently well on your phone but you really need an iPad to fully realize its potential. Integrates with Spotify (Premium account required) and features a huge array of effects, waveforms, and sampling capabilities. A lot of professionals use Djay for both composing and live performances, but for such a low cost, it can be just as much fun for a desktop disc-jockey to start mixing their favorite tunes.
AirPods: Good Enough, but Worth the Wait? (Or the Price?)
The wait is over, and Apple’s AirPods have arrived. For $159, you get a plastic box resembling a Tic-Tac container with rounded corners, but instead of mints, there are wireless earbuds inside! Superficially, they resemble the old EarPods with the cords cut, but they’re a little beefier; the thicker stalk presumably holds the W1 chip (in all its connective glory) and enough battery for the promised 5 hours of use.
The AirPods fit decently well. They’re slightly larger than the wired EarPods for a more secure fit, but that means you’re out of luck if you already have issue with getting the stock Apple buds staying put. If they fit, though, they fit. After a few migraine-inducing head-shakes and creaky jumping jacks, the AirPods stay put. Sweaty exercise (although we’re ashamed to admit that our three jumping-jacks met that criteria) might be a whole other animal, however. Pairing them to a device is as simple as advertised; just open the lid of the case and hold it a few inches away from your iPhone, hit “Connect” on the prompt, and…that’s it, let the tunes flow.
The sound quality is about what you’d expect from this price point. Full, rich sound, nowhere near wired over-the-ears, but the bass response is surprisingly adequate. Many are pleased by how much nicer the quality is over the EarPods, but $159 headphones should always sound better than the freebie ones. We played genres from classical to club music and it all sounded fairly good, and the bass didn’t get crunchy even at higher volumes while vocals stayed crisp.
As a controller, the AirPods work great. Pull one out of your ear and the music stops after a second; pop it back in and it continues. You can also call up Siri by double-tapping. If you don’t use Siri regularly, it seems especially odd to call her up without a visual interface and you might not initially know what to do with her besides play the next track or find an album or playlist, but off the top of my head, I like the idea of having Siri jot down memos or add to my shopping list. If you’re not a Siri fan, just open the settings via your iPhone and change the double-tap to simply pause and play.
Overall, we think the AirPods are solid but not mindblowing. It’s sort of absurd that early iPhone 7 adopters had to wait so long and pay so much for something so ordinary. The price point is a little unnerving, especially when you consider the $69 price to replace a lost bud regardless of warranty. But they do work, and they work well. If Apple is able to start bundling the AirPods in for free (as they do the EarPods), it’ll definitely push the company ahead as far as audio is concerned. For now, we recommend saving a little more and exploring the other options out there on the market. If the headphone jack on your device is broken, you should know that iFixYouri repairs them for much less than the cost of good Bluetooth headphones, so send it in and save some money!