MedCityNews:

Virginia resident Ken Robson, 64, had been visiting his son in the San Diego area in mid-June. “I had been noticing that I had been feeling weak and lightheaded,” he said. He also noticed severe drops in his heart rate. “Your heart rate doesn’t go into the 30s and 40s unless you’re an Olympic athlete,” Robson said. He knew something was wrong, so he went online and self-diagnosed with a heart arrhythmia known as sick sinus syndrome.

Robson had a doctor’s appointment for shortly after he was to return home, but a day before he was scheduled to depart San Diego, he went to the emergency room at Scripps Mercy Hospital. “I didn’t want to be ‘that guy’ on the airplane” who caused an unscheduled landing due to a medical emergency, or worse, who died in flight.

When he got to the hospital, Robson told staff that he had been tracking his heart rate on the watch, and had two weeks of back data. “Going in with the data certainly reduced my stay by a couple of days,” he told MedCity News. It also assured that he could have the operation nearly immediately.

Because the hospital could check his Apple Watch data, Robson did not have to wear a heart monitor for a week before the medical team at Scripps Mercy could confirm the diagnosis of sick sinus syndrome.

"Health Tracking" isn't exactly the sexiest feature that'll get airtime on TV commercials.

Often times, instead of making you go "WOW," the biggest innovations are the ones that you take for granted and make a difference when you need them most.

1. I’ve never heard of it.
2. I’ve heard of it but don’t understand it.
3. I understand it, but I don’t see how it’s useful.
4. I see how it could be fun for rich people, but not me.
5. I use it, but it’s just a toy.
6. It’s becoming more useful for me.
7. I use it all the time.
8. I could not imagine life without it.
9. Seriously, people lived without it?

Kevin Clark reports on how The 49ers are changing their operations to cater to millennials:

As players arrived for voluntary workouts and minicamps this spring and summer, they noticed sweeping changes designed to cater to how research shows millennials learn. That means making concessions for people with shorter attention spans, a desire to multitask and, yes, a need to check their phones all the time.

Facing this new reality, the 49ers turned the typical meeting, which on some teams can go for as long as two hours, into 30-minute blocks, each followed by 10-minute breaks that allow players to do what young people do. That is, as Tomsula puts it, to “go grab your phone, do your multitasking and get your fix” before returning the meeting.

“The [experts] are telling me about attention spans and optimal learning,” he said. “I’m thinking, ‘My gosh, we sit in two-hour meetings. You are telling me after 27 minutes no one’s getting anything?’ ”

The bulk of the changes—from enhanced digital playbooks to weekly briefings on social media—have a common theme. Instead of the coaches making millennials change, the coaches are changing to better work with the millennials, even if that means allowing some necessary evils.

As millennials grow up and start entering the work force, catering to short attention spans will progressively become our future. Instead of resisting it, we must work with it and embrace it, in anything and everything.

One small, personal example — I've changed the way I write.

Shortly after posting my Apple Watch review, an old high school buddy of mine called me up to talk about it. He joked about how our old high school English teachers would rip me apart for my writing style.

I told him, "They can just kiss my ass."

My English teachers were experts on writing in a previous version of the world. Our world is different now and I've adapted my writing style accordingly.

I now make a very conscious effort to break up my long form posts into smaller sections. My paragraphs are usually 2-3 sentences long. And I liberally make use of tweet-size bullet points to allow for easy scanning.

Based on the response I've been receiving from my social media-savvy friends, Twitter followers, and mobile readers, my millennial-friendly writing style is working pretty well.

Matthew Panzarino:

People that have worn the Watch say that they take their phones out of their pockets far, far less than they used to. A simple tap to reply or glance on the wrist or dictation is a massively different interaction model than pulling out an iPhone, unlocking it and being pulled into its merciless vortex of attention suck.

One user told me that they nearly “stopped” using their phone during the day; they used to have it out and now they don’t, period. That’s insane when you think about how much the blue glow of smartphone screens has dominated our social interactions over the past decade.

This is exactly what I've experienced since getting my Pebble smartwatch last year. It's helped me greatly in getting me to stop fiddling with my phone when I'm out with friends while still allowing me to stay on top of urgent notifications, usually from my boss.

It really doesn't seem like much, but the time you save by not having to whip out your smartphone every time you get a notification really starts to add up. Being able to stay on top of your notifications with a half-second glance has done wonders for allowing me to live more in the moment instead of behind my iPhone.

This time and attention-saving solution is definitely not the most sexiest feature to market, but it's something that everyone will benefit from once they actually experience it.

David Chartier:

It's far too difficult to find sustainable plugins with the features I need, and even when I do, they were most likely abandoned at least five months ago because the developer got an actual job or understandably grew tired of entitled freeloaders demanding features without offering any kind of financial support to keep the project alive.

Andrew Watts, a teen, breaks down how his generation views all of the different social networks. Here are my highlights:

Facebook:

It’s dead to us. Facebook is something we all got in middle school because it was cool but now is seen as an awkward family dinner party we can't really leave.

Instagram:

Facebook gets all of the photos we took — the good, the bad, etc—while Instagram just gets the one that really summed up the event we went to. It is much more selective, and honestly people spend more time on the captions to make them relevant/funny.

Snapchat:

Snapchat is a somewhat intimate network of friends who I don't care if they see me at a party having fun. [...]

There aren't likes you have to worry about or comments—it’s all taken away. Snapchat has a lot less social pressure attached to it compared to every other popular social media network out there. This is what makes it so addicting and liberating. If I don’t get any likes on my Instagram photo or Facebook post within 15 minutes you can sure bet I'll delete it. Snapchat isn't like that at all and really focuses on creating the Story of a day in your life, not some filtered/altered/handpicked highlight. It’s the real you.

Tumblr:

Tumblr is like a secret society that everyone is in, but no one talks about. Tumblr is where you are your true self and surround yourself (through who you follow) with people who have similar interests. It’s often seen as a “judgment-free zone” where, due to the lack of identity on the site, you can really be who you want to be.

Neil Cybart:

There has been a trend to either mock, or make fun of people, that want to buy products simply because a certain company makes them. Some will say this type of buyer is being guided by marketing, or is just a follower, but in reality it comes down to trust. Many people trust Apple. It is this very important connection with users that will likely get people to at least try the Apple Watch, and for Apple that is the best outcome they can wish for.

It's the same thing as fans pledging on Kickstarter for a new album by their favorite indie musician. Fans don't know exactly what they'll be getting but they trust it will be as good as past albums.

I've been switching around my homescreen a lot since I got the iPhone 5s. Here are some quick notes on my latest iteration:

• Only one page for my homescreen.

• Dark wallpaper for slightly better battery life.

• I love keeping the bottom row of folders and the homescreen empty. It feels more spacious and gives me a natural place to swipe when I want to go to the next page.

• I spent a lot of time organizing my less-than-important apps into four folders.

• "Camera" folder is mostly for photo editing.

• For the "Personal" folder, the general idea is, "If I had a personal assistant to help me organize my life, what apps would I have to give her access to?" So these apps would include: messaging, Dropbox, to-do lists, calendars, and online banking.

• "Media" folder is for anything non-essential that I'll read, play, or watch.

• "Utilities" is for everything else, including navigation apps.

• My most frequently-used messaging apps get a spot on the homescreen so their badge notifications keep me up-to-date.

• The four apps in the dock are by far my most frequently used apps.

• Photos app gets a spot on the dock because, with iOS 8 especially, I do all of my photo touch-ups there.

• Phone app is under the Personal folder. I'm not much of a phone person. 85% of my calls are to my parents and my brother, whom I just call via Siri.

• Tweetbot is my primary method of keeping up with breaking news, tech bloggers, friends, and NBA news. (I have separate Twitter accounts for each and just swipe-left on Tweetbot’s navbar to switch accounts.)

• Reeder is mostly for following blogs and articles that aren't news-breaking, e.g. Lifehacker.

• Waze is placed near the top-right for easy thumb access while I’m driving.

Tweet me for any questions! @meltajon

Former Apple Genius, Scotty Loveless, shares his insights on iOS battery drain from his two years of working as an Apple Genius.

Two things stuck out to me:

I have confirmed this behavior on multiple iPhones with the same result: percentage points actually increase after disabling these background functions of Facebook.

After iOS 7's changes to multitasking, this sheds some light for me:

By closing the app, you take the app out of the phone's RAM . While you think this may be what you want to do, it's not. When you open that same app again the next time you need it, your device has to load it back into memory all over again. All of that loading and unloading puts more stress on your device than just leaving it alone. Plus, iOS closes apps automatically as it needs more memory, so you're doing something your device is already doing for you. You are meant to be the user of your device, not the janitor.

The truth is, those apps in your multitasking menu are not running in the background at all: iOS freezes them where you last left the app so that it's ready to go if you go back. Unless you have enabled Background App Refresh, your apps are not allowed to run in the background unless they are playing music, using location services, recording audio, or the sneakiest of them all: checking for incoming VOIP calls , like Skype. All of these exceptions, besides the latter, will put an icon next to your battery icon to alert you it is running in the background.

As part of my annual tradition, here is a list of my favorite apps, services, and tech products that I used throughout 2013.

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