Apple Support Calls Me Rebecca!?

I decided to call Apple Support about a question I had about the Apple Watch, just because I wanted to know more about how it actually works with the iPhone (I might concider buying it). This is what happened.

Getting through to the customer support service was easy. I didn't have to do anything fancy, I just started Hangouts and called the USA phone number because that one is free and for some reason the Belgian 0800 number (which should, by law, be free too) complained about me not having enough money on my Hangouts to make the call.

Suddenly I hear a male voice say "Hi Rebecca, are you calling about your recent repair?". I freaked out because I thought I had done something wrong and called from someone else's number, so I was seriously speachless. The guy proceeded and told me to press 1 if it was about the repair and 2 if it wasn't. I honestly should've pressed 1 in order to see if they'd kick me off the call or not but I didn't want to do any harm to this "Rebecca" so I pressed 2 and he asked me what it was about. I was confused, so I really didn't know what to answer. I ended up asking the question but didn't get any reply so I hung up.

I think this is very weird and I decided to make a post about it just to see if anyone else has been experiencing this and if I did anything wrong by trying to make a call to the USA number while I live in Belgium.

If you know any more about this issue, please tell me by leaving a comment on this post.

My Move from Firefox to Chrome

As you might have noticed because of me actually having posted some Google Chrome App reviews recently, I've changed browsers from Mozilla Firefox to Google Chrome. In this post, I'll cover why I downloaded Chrome in the first place and why I ended up sticking with it.

Okay, first of all I want to tell you guys that I don't want to hate on Firefox and I think that it's a great browser and does exactly what it needs to do. I really liked Firefox and I still think that for those who use their browser for productivity purposes only it's probably the perfect browser.

The big problem here is: I don't try to be as productive as possible with my internet experience.

The reason why I downloaded Google Chrome is because I wanted to see the difference between YouTube videos in 30 FPS and 60 FPS. It turns out you can't actually notice the difference, but that doesn't really matter as I ended up sticking around anyways. Here's why.

I like some stuff to do on the side, a never-ending journey of finding out about new functions you can use to make your computer as personal as possible. This usually makes me pretty productive in the long run, but that's just because I always end up choosing the apps/programs that make my PC/smartphone as fast to use as possible (due to me not liking to waste loads of time knowing that it could actually be done faster).

And that's where Google Chrome comes in. Its App Store makes me able to add an almost infinite amount of apps to my browser so that I can get the most out of my browser. In fact, I'm using the MyMusicCloud app to listen to my music without the need of a thousand songs being stored on my laptop (this app will come in extremely handy in the future, because I usually fill my phone and laptop up with thousands of songs within a month and decide to delete most of it just to stumble upon the same problem a month later).
Firefox just didn't do the job in this aspect: it has extensions, but good Firefox extensions are harder to find than apps on Google's extremely user-friendly App Store.
That, apart from me liking the Chrome design more than the Firefox one, is pretty much the reason why I stuck around with Chrome.

Google Chrome App Review: Drumbit - Creating Music for Beginners

Drumbit is basically just a kind of soundboard you can use to create sound loops using various pre-made kits, so that creating music is now easier than ever before.

While apps like these really aren't new (you'll find quite a couple on any app store out there), they keep on convincing me to try them out. It's just something that I really love to do: create little loops of music and eventually, if they sound good, put them together and create myself a little song.
This one was really nice. Unlike with most others that I've tried out so far, you can actually choose every single sound. It's built up in a grid of squares, where you basically check the squares of the right instrument at the right spot in the timeline. This timeline consists of 16 beats, something that should probably get expanded in a future update because it's really not enough if you want to create a professional-sounding loop.

You also have the usual volume for every single instrument. This one isn't smooth like you'd expect it to be, but it doesn't have that annoying stutter either. It's pretty much like the volume on a smartphone: limited yet good enough.

A feature I really liked to play around with was the different kits. The coolest thing I've been doing with this is just creating a nice loop in one kit, and trying out what it sounds like in the other kits. It turns out that this actually... works! I really liked the different "songs" that I was able to create using this little trick and I think João Carlos Santos (the creator of the app) probably wanted this to be like that so that people could explore music in a different way. I know I'm just jumping to conclusions here, but he seems like a music genius to me.

I think that if you're planning on getting into music more than just putting the radio on every now and then to see what the newest trends are, you should at least try this app out to get a taste of how easy it can be to create music.
That's it for now, if you want to get the app just search it up on the Chrome Web Store.

Google Chrome App Review: TweetDeck

I've just tried out a Google Chrome app called Tweetdeck, and I decided to make a review on it. You guys might be seeing more reviews like these coming up in the future, so let's get started.

It's essentially just a tool for your Twitter account that makes it easier to keep up with everything going on on there. It's made by Twitter itself, so you don't have to worry about any spam randomly appearing on your twitter account.

It puts the various pages Twitter has (messages, activity, mentions and so on) on a single page. You can change it up the way you like it: you can choose what appears and where it appears and much more, but I'll leave all of that for you guys to discover.

A really interesting feature that I will use quite a lot is a little page that shows you the various keyboard shortcuts that are on this thing. There's a lot, so it'll take me some time to get used to.

As you can see, it makes what you can do with it pretty clear. All of these shortcuts are pretty logic, but it'll still take me a lot of time to get used to as I've already stated before.

Another cool-looking panel is the New Tweet one. You can access it by either using the "N" shortcut on your keyboard or clicking the icon on the top-left corner of your screen.

Apart from it looking good, it also supports a feature that I did not yet know of. You can actually schedule tweets! This is something that I haven't really found any use for yet, but I just KNOW will come in handy some day.

As you can see, it looks very good while not being so big that you can no longer see any new tweets.

That's really all you can say about the TweetDeck App. You can find it by clicking here or searching for it in the Chrome Web Store.

My opinion on social media (RANT)

My blog may be called "The Average Life", my opinion on social media like Facebook, Instagram and Vine is all but average. I like stuff like Twitter, YouTube and Blogger because those have what you need without any additional crap that comes with it. Google and Twitter are both great platforms for creativity combined with productivity. But Facebook, Instagram and Vine are just full of people that are ruining your fun by spamming you with stuff you didn't ask for. I've tried all three of them and deactivated my accounts on them because of people just putting unnecessary stuff on there. I don't need to know how much your dog hates bathing, and certainly not how much slices of bread you ate this morning! In my opinion the platforms themselves are great, but the way they're being used ruins it all.
Sorry for the rant, I just got carried away by my old Facebook friends spamming my e-mail with stuff like " Why don't you come on Facebook anymore?" or "Why did you disappear from my friends list?". If you've ever concidered sending such a message, think about wether or not the person you want to send it to has a personality that matches the platform.
Thanks.