Open up your mind and say, ahh...

In 2005, whether you were using a dumb phone with T9 Word or a BlackBerry with a physical keyboard, you were probably texting without looking at your phone, at least occasionally. It was just part of the times, like Brick Breaker, or Nelly. Then, in 2007, the iPhone showed up with its bold, buttonless design and erased all of that functionality. Texting suddenly became a two-thumb, eyes-on affair–a Dark Age of text entry we’re still suffering through today. Fleksy wants to change that. And what sets it apart from all the other alternative keyboard apps is that, from the moment you try it, you get the sense that it just might be able to.

Ioannis Verdelis and Kostas Eleftheriou, the two Greek computer scientists behind Fleksy, didn’t just set out to make a better touch-screen keyboard. They set out to make one as good as the keyboards we were using in 2005–or at least to make one that lets us type as well as we were on those infinitely more primitive devices. Their software is currently available in beta for Android and as an iOS app, and while it’s still rough in places, that core, no-look functionality is already there to a remarkable extent. I loaded up Fleksy on my iPhone, directed my gaze elsewhere, and thumbed in my best approximation of the word “difficult.” Without having to learn anything new, and without letting the app figure out what kind of thumb-typist I am, and without even pausing at first to make sure my fingers were lined up in any particular way beforehand, Fleksy got it right on the first try.

The founders claim Fleksy can recognize words even if you miss every single letter in them. Or if you’re not even typing on the keyboard section of the screen at all. The reason it’s able to do so, Verdelis explains, is that in addition to using conventional autocorrect cues like context and word frequency, Fleksy was built from scratch to accommodate the sorts of errors we make on our mobile devices. Errors, unsurprisingly, that are totally different from the ones we make on our laptops–and ones that demand a totally different approach to autocorrection.

“Most other touch-screen keyboard technologies, including those built-in and most third-party ones, use technology that derives from research done for Microsoft Word and hardware keyboards,” Verdelis says. Essentially, those keyboards look at the buttons, or letters, you tap, and then attempt to suss out your intended words from there. But on a smartphone, that’s a problematic approach for one huge reason: Those touch-screen buttons don’t really exist, and we’re not very good at using them.

On our laptops, the tiny bumps on the “F” and “J” keys keep our fingers oriented. With time, you learn to find them every time you put your index fingers down on the keyboard, and your other digits just fall in place naturally. Touch-screen keyboards don’t offer this type of tactile feedback, so our thumbs can never be sure where they are–at least not without our eyes double checking. As a result, we’re not missing letters every so often on our smartphones; we’re missing them as a matter of course. Occasionally, we drift off and miss entire words at a time.

But still, that doesn’t mean we’re typing poorly. We’re just not typing in quite the right place. “A user will be typing,” Verdelis explains, “and the overall pattern of the word might be the same, but he’s missed all the buttons because his finger has been 10 pixels up … So rather than look at buttons, which don’t exist, we look at where you touched the screen and the pattern of the words you’re trying to type.” That’s Fleksy’s secret sauce. Instead of looking at the on-screen buttons you happen to be tapping, it looks at the patterns between those taps and from them deduces what you meant to type. It erases the very possibility of not typing in the right place.

The solution is a smart one, and it’s clearly effective. But for the last several months, Fleksy has had the added benefit of being in the hands of a large, concerted group of test users: the visually impaired. The developers introduced an early version of the app to the blind community last summer at a conference for the National Federation for the Blind, and they quickly amassed a user base numbering in the thousands that has generated a great deal of insight, feedback, and, of course, raw typing data.

For the rest of us, though, the current version of Fleksy will only be so useful. The Android beta is the newer of the two versions, so it still needs considerable polish, and the iPhone version, shackled by Apple’s unwillingness to let users swap in alternative keyboards on a system-wide level, is constrained to a standalone app. And while the word-to-word accuracy is astonishing right from the start, that iOS version version relies on a somewhat complicated series of swipes for spaces and punctuation–upping the learning curve for true adoption considerably.

Verdelis hopes that someday Apple might reverse that policy, but he and Eleftheriou think there’s plenty of room for their technology to flourish regardless. In fact, their real vision is for Fleksy to become not just a replacement available to users but a replacement for suboptimal stock keyboards at large. Verdelis says he and his partner have seen “incredible interest” from hardware manufacturers about building the app into next-gen smartphones, and they’re currently in talks with a handful of potential partners. Hopefully that pans out. We could certainly use a more enlightened way to text.

Android users can grab the beta here; the iOS app is available in the App Store here. More on the app can be found on the Flesky site.

Illustration: Shutterstock

For the founder of a company as hot as Pinterest, Ben Silbermann has been awfully quiet of late. After claiming the title of fastest-growing web site ever (according to Comscore, at least), wowing audiences at the South By Southwest Interactive conference, and bagging a cool $100 million in venture capital from the Japanese retail giant Rakuten, Silbermann went off the grid this summer to address what has been in the eyes of many a rare shortcoming: The lack of apps. Despite Pinterest’s exploding web traffic, the three-year-old company has not had a presence on either the iPad or Android platforms.

“Pinterest was made for tablets,” Silbermann confided to me last month. He agreed to temporarily lift Pinterest’s summer-long lockdown to give Fast Company an inside look at its development process. (It was the first time he’d spoken with a reporter at length; the results will be published next month in a cover story as part of October’s Design Issue.) During a visit to the company’s new headquarters, an expansive loft in San Francisco’s SoMa neighborhood, I sat in on a design critique for the new iPad app and got to play with an early version, which Silbermann unveiled at a launch party last night.

Sharp, on the left, and Silbermann Pinterest calls this their biggest launch since the grid design was unveiled, in 2009.

Reporters and some of Pinterest’s most active users were treated to a make-your-own terrarium station (terrariums being a popular Pinterest meme), as Silbermann showed off the new iPad app as well as a new app for Android devices and an updated version of the Pinterest’s iPhone app. It was the biggest, Silbermann told me, the most important launch since he and co-founder Evan Sharp created the original Pinterest grid at the end of 2009. “In perfect world we would have had this a year ago,” says Sharp.

Though the update to the iPhone app and the new Android offering give Pinterest an improved presences on mobile phones, the big news is the iPad app. Even before last night’s launch, iPad use accounted for more than 50 percent of Pinterest’s mobile traffic—despite the fact that the company had no app—according to data from AddThis. More than that, iPads, which tend to be used in more relaxed settings, seem perfectly attuned to the laid-back user experience Silbermann and Sharp are trying to cultivate. “You want to be comfortable and just let yourself really explore things,” says Silbermann. “Pinterest is a discovery experience.”

The iPad app largely mimics the look and feel of Silbermann and Sharp’s popular website. Users can share, or “pin,” images and can explore the pin boards of users they follow. But crucially, the new app uses a feature called “sheets” designed to make it easier to skip between pin boards in a manner similar to tabs on a web browser. Another nifty tweak: A button that allows users to see all the pins from a given web site. The idea behind both features is to subtly encourage users to find new people to follow, and ultimately, to create a way for users to easily discover new stuff without going to a Google search box, the Amazon.com homepage, or anywhere else.

That’s important to Pinterest as a business. As Silbermann told me repeatedly—and as the forthcoming Fast Company feature will explore in depth—Pinterest isn’t trying to be just another social network. Silbermann and Sharpe are trying to solve the problem of discovery, helping their millions of users find (and eventually buy) new things. “We want to build a service that helps you discover things you didn’t know you wanted,” Silbermann says. “There’s a ton of opportunity in that core behavior.”

Top image: Africa Studio/Shutterstock

illustration by matt dartford

For decades, Steve Jobs extolled the virtues of “building the whole widget”–in other words, designing and manufacturing a computer or a digital media player or smartphone as an organic whole, from the molecular materials of the hardware to the abstract bits and bytes of the software. The resulting products may not always have been as inexpensive or utilitarian as the standardized machines that ruled the PC marketplace, but they did always possess the svelte and winsome quality that Apple’s loyal customers love with a passion.

Earlier this summer, Microsoft tried to make like Apple. The company had never itself built computers, out of deference to its many hardware partners, but on June 18, it revealed the results of a three-year secret project: a sleek and distinctive Windows tablet PC called the Surface. No mere iPad knockoff, the Surface is Microsoft’s effort to build a “whole widget” of its own. It could well be the most beautiful and best engineered Windows device ever made. And it has bells and whistles that won’t be easy for Apple to quickly mimic.

Google too has concluded that it can’t really compete against the iPhone long term without its own end-to-end laptops, handsets, and tablets–hence its $13 billion acquisition of Motorola’s cell-phone design and manufacturing business. The Motorola patent portfolio is valuable, to be sure, but Google wants to find a remedy to the fragmented world its Android architecture has fostered. The immense diversity of Android devices and generations of not-quite-compatible operating systems are beginning to look like liabilities, especially to app developers who don’t want to have to support multiple versions of their own products.

So with Google and Microsoft as emerging widgeteers, might Apple finally be losing one of its historic advantages? Hardly.

At the annual World Wide Developers Conference held June 11 in San Francisco–the first big event since the death of Jobs–Apple demonstrated how its software prowess and skill at building interlocking digital platforms is the real game changer. How? By enlarging the definition of the whole widget. Increasingly, the Mac, iPhone, and iPad do not exist alone. Instead, Apple now offers a multidimensional, integrated ecosystem of devices held together by the centripetal force of iCloud. Apple’s ideal customer, who likely owns at least one of each kind of product, can now share a single user identity, and core personal content and data can be viewed, consumed, used, or manipulated in familiar ways regardless of platform, with any changes or additions from one gadget instantly available on any of his other Apple gear.

In other words, Apple can now boast of providing a complete, coherent, and consistent digital experience at home, at work, in your car, and on the go–without any conscious effort on the part of the user. It’s as if just at the moment when the visiting team finally steps up to the plate, they discover that the home team has moved the fences out, raised the pitcher’s mound, and increased the distance between the bases. This is a different ball game.

Apple didn’t announce some silver-bullet innovation at the WWDC to make all this possible, but instead described literally hundreds of new features and data services borne of software, many of which integrate how all its hardware products create, display, and share digital information. New versions of its Mac OS X and iOS for portable devices, along with much-improved data storage and remote processing services accessible via iCloud, will all come together in the next few months to markedly improve the quality of the entire Apple digital experience. Indeed, in many ways, improvements for the Mac will result in new capabilities for customers’ existing iPhones and iPads with no new hardware required.

That is what you get when you enlarge the widget, and it doesn’t even reflect the inevitable hardware improvements Apple is so famous for delivering like clockwork.

Microsoft and Google clearly understand this strategy. But Apple’s ecosystem is the product of carefully nurturing smaller whole-widget ecosystems in such a way that they could be stitched together. Until recently, Microsoft has always tried to contort Windows to fit just about any class of hardware–using a one-size-fits-all strategy that has never played out well in non-PC devices. Google has tried to turn its browser software into a modest computer operating system, even as it took a completely different approach to Android smartphone software, and now is trying to make coherent architectures that are intrinsically different. Software can paper over just about any incompatibility, but a patchwork is not an ecosystem.

Apple’s Tim Cook knows he has to be very careful not to over-standardize these individually dazzling devices. That’s why it is unlikely that Mac OS X and iOS will ever subsume each other. The masterstroke is in using iCloud to knit them together, which hides the complexity of managing and not duplicating all those trillions of bits that each of us consume or manipulate every day. For today’s digital consumer, syncing data, managing your access to it, and keeping it all straight and secure is the key to a powerful digital experience that we are only now beginning to grasp. Cook, an operations wonk who is a master of taming complexity, might even be better at figuring this out than Jobs was. And since Apple usually improves any screen it focuses on, a new and improved AppleTV platform could become an intriguing fourth species in the ecosystem.

So while it’s certainly a bonus for consumers that Microsoft and Google have joined the game, Apple’s lead could conceivably widen before they can even begin to play. There will be glitches as Apple moves into its post-Jobs era, but Microsoft and Google have so much to learn that the company has plenty of time to figure out how to live without Steve.

I basically never use Siri. Half the time she has no idea what I’m asking her for, which is only funny when you’re not in a hurry. The times she’d be most useful to me, I’m usually out on the streets of New York City, and the background noise seems to confuse her, which leads to me yelling the same phrase at my phone over and over while worried New Yorkers hurry past me, shielding their children.I can’t remember the last time I used Siri on purpose, but I must accidentally launch her at least once a day. For some reason, it always happens when I’m on the subway: “Siri not available. Connect to the Internet,” she tells me in her humorless bot voice. Usually, the other people in my car pretend not to notice, tho earlier this week another passenger helpfully shook my arm with both his hands and told me, “Siri doesn’t work when you’re underground!” I thanked him and moved to a different seat. I should probably just turn Siri off, but I keep thinking I might suddenly think of a great reason to use her.

A quick Twitter search proves I’m not the only one who has a rocky relationship with Apple’s faceless lady:

I think Siri is a great idea and has lots of potential, but so far she hasn’t lived up to it. Maybe that will change with the iPhone 5 (or 6). As Ilya Gelfenbeyn, CEO of Speaktoit (Siri’s Android cousin), told Fast Company recently“The field is still in a really early phase of development. It’s something like the search engines in the beginning of the ’90s.”

Do you find Siri useful, or annoying? Share your best–and worst, and funniest–Siri stories below, along with any tips you might have for the unconvinced (me).

Image: Flickr user Scott Moore

A huge number of components that are allegedly part of Apple’s upcoming new iPhone have surfaced via Apple’s Asian supplier chain–seemingly many more than we’ve seen for an unreleased iPhone. With so many pieces available from different sources, and all of them connecting together so well, it’s pretty certain that they’re genuine.

So what can we learn? It’s pretty familiar–an evolution of the incredibly densely populated iPhone motherboard. There’s some chatter about Apple using the newly approved nano-SIM card, but since the card is technologically the same as every other SIM it’s not an interesting development.

Then there’s talk of modified antenna connections offering proof that the next iPhone will be 4G. Makes sense that 4G will be present–it’s not clear why the antenna changes are present since they may even point to the presence of NFC antennas.

The big take-away from these leaks is that Apple’s phone is definitely en route and that despite Tim Cook’s promise of even tighter Apple security, the information is still leaking out.

The date has been rumored since July, but now multiple sources (or possibly two different outlets relying on the same source) are pinning the launch date for the next iPhone, as well as the iPad mini, for September 12. Pre-orders would begin that day, with the U.S. release for later that month (September 21) and an international rollout in October.

We’ve heard for a while that the new iPhone will be the first to use a newly designed dock connector, finally ditching the clunky, large iPod socket. Now there are photos of what’s said to be the new connector, which sports eight parallel pins inside a very slender metal tine that itself acts as the ninth pin (probably the voltage ground point). There’s a mirror set of connections on the other side, which could indicate 17 pins in total–nearly tallying with early rumors about a 19-pin version.

But what’s really going on is that the plug can be inserted either way up, finally ending the awkward scrabble we all have to do to get the current plugs the right way up or even to get a micro USB socket inserted correctly–the new charger standard used on rival phones like the Galaxy S II. Apple’s basically putting good user-friendly design ahead of other considerations.

The new iPhone’s back shell seems to be milled out of a single piece of metal, including the short bosses that are dotted across it so that the motherboard, battery and other pieces can be screwed down. The shell’s design, strength and the thinner screen (as suggested by older rumors) means the phone may be up to a third thinner than the iPhone 4S.

It’s a relatively minor detail, but what Apple’s trying to do is make the phone feel thinner and smaller than earlier versions, though it’s actually taller to fit in the larger 4-inch screen.

We’ve been wondering when Apple will redesign its iMac, MacBook Pro, and Mac Pro computers, building in lessons from its MacBook Air line.

Now there’s evidence, from code fragments inside the new Mountain Lion OS X release, that updates for these machines are coming. They may even lack optical drives, as we’ve long expected. A 13-inch Retina Pro model is even on the cards.

Is Apple Going To Release Everything At Once?

Some murmuring among Apple suppliers suggests that Apple may be about to proceed with the largest launch in history. The theory is that Apple will reveal the new iPhone alongside a new iPad Mini and a refreshed iPad design that has the new dock connector and a few other improvements. A new iPod touch may arrive too, and perhaps even the updated Macs.

We’re not sure Apple would try this. It would leave the company’s unreleased product locker looking pretty bare–not good for keeping it in the limelight. Releasing a few of the products at once makes more sense–we’re guessing the new iPhone, iPod touch, and perhaps the iPad Mini (if it actually exists). The “refreshed” iPad will come early 2013 alongside the new version of the full-size tablet, and the new Macs could get a quiet release in the months at the end of this year.

Image: Flickr user twicepix

Your iPhone’s health monitoring capabilities just got a little more advanced. Cardiio, an app built by scientists from MIT, can quickly check your heart rate. All you have to do is stare at the phone–no touching required.

We first discovered Cardiio at Rock Health’s demo day, where the health startup incubator showed off the creations of its latest class. Like many of its Rock Health peers, Cardiio takes today’s technology (and ideas) one step further.

There are already apps that allow users to check their pulse by putting a finger over the iPhone camera, measuring changes in light intensity that correspond to blood pulses. Cardiio takes a similar tack–albeit one that’s more hands-off. The app measures the amount of light reflected off the face, which matches up to the amount of blood pumped into the face (every time the heart beats, more blood is pumped).

It’s simple to use: just stare at the app and wait for it to measure your heart beat. You can keep a running log of your heart rate at different hours and days. Cardiio also offers helpful statistics, revealing how your heart rate compares to an elite athlete and the average citizen. A lower resting heart rate generally indicates better physical fitness, though your heart rate may vary wildly throughout the day–according to the app, mine jumped from 59 to 81 and back down to 61 within the span of a couple hours.

In peer-reviewed literature, Cardiio’s heart rate measurements have shown to be within 3 beats per minute of a clinical pulse oximeter–the gold standard. That makes it more than accurate enough for non-medical uses (it’s not FDA approved).

Cardiio is available in the app store now for $4.99.

Most iPhone peripherals aim low. They make the case a bit more durable or add a better speaker. They marginally improve a pretty darn good product.

The full Lapka sensor suite, along with its abstract viewing mode. A steel probe checks for nitrates, which are commonly used in chemical fertilizers.

But Lapka is something totally different. It’s an appcessory billed as a “personal environment monitor,” and through its collection of four peripherals, Lapka gathers analog measures of humidity/temperature, radiation, electromagnetic frequencies (EMF) and organicity (whether or not a food is truly organic). And it does so beautifully, with a mix of plastic and wood components–aesthetics that were considered down to the circuit boards, which will also match in white.

“Since this is a healthcare and environmental product, we used organic materials like wood and ivory-like plastic, it will look better with time… it’ll become your very own, personal talisman,” says Creative Director Vadik Marmeladov. “Our aim was to build an native iPhone accessory–not a design copy attempt. All our designs, usage simplicity, attention to detail and quality are based on Apple philosophy and mood, so we don’t have to copy iPhone’s shiny body to fit its aesthetics.”

Each peripheral obviously works a bit differently. The most compelling–the organicity device–uses a steel probe to check for nitrate concentration, which are commonly used in non-organic fertilizers. But the cleverness comes in how Lapka shares this information with the user. A parts per million measurement would make no sense to the average person, just like few of us have any understanding of acceptable radiation levels.

Sensors from left to right, top to bottom: EMF, Radiation, Humidity/Temp, Organicity.

In turn, the UI (which we’re currently unable to test) approaches each measurement at two levels. The first is a simple “is this acceptable” style measurement screen, which can contextualize worries like EMF based upon your predicted environmental exposure, or weather by typical temperatures in your area that time of year.

“For example, you can measure radiation on the plane and little bit higher level will be okay, because app knows that you’re won’t stay there for 24 hours and that higher radiation is common for the planes,” Marmeladov writes. “But with the same level of radiation in your kid’s bedroom it will alarm you and give you explanation to motivate your further actions. So, people don’t have to rely on their knowledge about radiation anymore to protect their family and themselves.”

This environmental snapshot can then be sent to friends.

The second way Lapka visualizes information entirely abstract. Marmeladov likens the experience to an Ambilight television, as onscreen particles accelerate in a red pool as the environment becomes less safe. This environmental snapshot can then be sent to friends, who can view it without purchasing the system. Of course, not having seen the effect in person, it certainly sounds a bit strange. But then again, how else but abstraction are we going to visualize these absurdly tiny details like radiation and nitrates?

As of now, Lapka is in prototype stage, ramping up for mass production soon. (We’ll see if these sensors can really do what they promise.) The collection of four peripherals should be available this December for roughly $220. And following that, Lapka’s team will likely chase all other peripherals, like an allergen sensor, glucometer, blood pressure monitor, oscilloscope, vehicle diagnostics device and fitness tracker. Your iPhone may soon resemble a centipede.

In the battle for your mobile wallet one company has been noticeably silent: Apple.

Google has its own mobile payment service: Google Wallet, and Microsoft even announced in June that it would be adding a digital wallet service with NFC capabilities to Windows Phone 8 that would store credit card and mobile payment information.

So, where is the world’s favorite fruit company?

In its announcement of iOS6 mobile payments were left off the agenda. The company unveiled Passbook, a service for keeping track of tickets and coupons, but not credit cards.

According to the Wall Street Journal, some Apple engineers fought for mobile payment functionality. However, the decision –- a very intentional one -– to leave mobile payments out of iOS 6 was made anyway.

The reason?

“Apple is always a comfortable number two,” said Piper Jaffray Analyst Gene Munster to the Wall Street Journal. “They let their competitors do their market research for them.”

Mobile payments are expected to hit $600 billion worldwide by 2016; however, most mainstream consumers are still not adopting them. NFC, the technology that allows you to tap your phone on a surface in order to pay, also isn’t expected to be available in most merchants for another few years.

According to the WSJ, Apple doesn’t want to be the one facilitating mobile credit cards payments when the service isn’t ready, for fear that customers will blame Apple for merchant’s failures during the process. Under that logic, we may not see Apple deploy NFC or mobile payments in the iPhone for some time, and especially not in the upcoming iPhone 5.

What do you think about NFC? Would you like the ability to make payments by taping your iPhone at a point of sale or is the technology still a little too new for your comfort? Let us know your thoughts in the comments.

Via Mashable: http://www.mashable.com

As competition in the fast-growing mobile web space continues to heat up, Amazon is working on a device to grab a slice of the pie currently dominated by the iPhone and Android smartphones, according to a Bloomberg report.

Interestingly, the hardware, cloud computing and e-commerce juggernaut is said to be working with Foxconn — which has come under intense scrutiny in the past year for working conditions in the Asian factories where it manufactures Apple gadgets — to create the Amazon iPhone competitor.

Bloomberg‘s report is based on “two people with knowledge of the matter.”

Amazon is also reportedly seeking to acquire a wide range of smartphone-related patents to guard against infringement accusations. That’s likely motivated in large part by Apple’s recent success in getting a U.S. District Court judge to grant a preliminary injunction blocking sales of Samsung’s Galaxy Nexus — currently the only smartphone capable of running the Android operating system’s most recent version.

Amazon’s Kindle Fire tablet has emerged as a very popular lower cost alternative to the iPad among consumers, so an Amazon smartphone does have some precedent for potential mobile success. A decent Amazon smartphone would also help it continue to reap profits through selling digital media including books, movies and music.

The future of the web is widely accepted to revolve around mobile access — and competition among tech companies is becoming increasingly fierce as hardware and software manufacturers jockey for position and profits in the next generation of consumers’ online lives. Last month, for example, Microsoft and Google announced tablet offerings meant to take on the iPad as smaller, more portable alternatives. In response, Apple is now said to be planning an “iPad mini” for release in time for this year’s holiday season.

Do you think Amazon would be wise to get into the smartphone market — or is that waste of time and resources for Jeff Bezos and company? Share your opinion in the comments.

Image courtesy of iStockphoto, tumpikuja

Do you know FOMO? That’s not some fancy latte — it’s Fear Of Missing Out, and something that’s become a recognized thing by many social media users these days.

You’re probably familiar with the concept, if not the name. Here’s an example: It’s been a long workweek and you really just want to spend Friday night at home watching a movie. But then that old familiar urge hits, and you can’t resist grabbing your smartphone for a jolty fix of quick-burst information. One friend’s Twitter post mentions an awesome concert. On Facebook, someone else put up photos of a raging house party.

Suddenly, your mellow evening feels entirely inadequate and you wonder what else you’re missing out on. You put the phone down, only to pick it up again and again because you can’t shake the feeling that you’re missing out on finding out just how much you’re missing out on. The vicious cycle continues.

But don’t get too down — you’re not alone with your FOMO. There are other people out there just like you, and they’ve gone public with their problem.

The iPhone and Android app TimeRazor, which finds and suggests fun activities in your area, recently pulled research from studies and articles by JWTIntelligence, comScore and The Wall Street Journal to produce the infographic below. It gives a good snapshot of how much time people spend online and whether it makes them feel like they’re missing out on great experiences. Check it out for the full rundown.

How do you fight FOMO — or is it even an issue for you? Let us know in the comments.

Thumbnail image courtesy of iStockphoto, LeoGrand