Category: Technology

Goodbye Evernote

I’ve been using Evernote for a few years now and have enjoyed it’s feature set and the ability to plan and document a complex project (namely home/shop projects) with shopping lists, ideas, etc. But recently every time I attempt to use Evernote to create a quick note or maybe just jot something down, I’m presented with a request to upgrade to a pay plan, or to update or just general advertising. I can no longer just open it and create a note. Because of this, I have now backed up anything I need and uninstalled Evernote from all my devices. I guess I’ll have to use Google’s Keep or Microsoft’s One Note.

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I’ve been using Evernote for a few years now and have enjoyed it’s feature set and the ability to plan and document a complex project (namely home/shop projects) with shopping lists, ideas, etc. But recently every time I attempt to use Evernote to create a quick note or maybe just jot something down, I’m presented with a request to upgrade to a pay plan, or to update or just general advertising. I can no longer just open it and create a note. Because of this, I have now backed up anything I need and uninstalled Evernote from all my devices. I guess I’ll have to use Google’s Keep or Microsoft’s One Note.

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Posted in Misc, Technology

Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas!! I hope everyone is having a great holiday. I thought now might be a good time to look back over the year and review some of the technology I’ve dealt with. Surface Pro 4: Last year I got a Surface Pro 4 tablet. I started the process of switching to it instead of my aging MacBook Pro. While I REALLY like the hardware and how everything works there were just a few issues which got on my nerves so bad I couldn’t ever completely make the switch. As far as performance, I experienced about the same performance as my MacBook. It performed very well and was a solid machine,

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Merry Christmas!! I hope everyone is having a great holiday. I thought now might be a good time to look back over the year and review some of the technology I’ve dealt with. Surface Pro 4: Last year I got a Surface Pro 4 tablet. I started the process of switching to it instead of my aging MacBook Pro. While I REALLY like the hardware and how everything works there were just a few issues which got on my nerves so bad I couldn’t ever completely make the switch. As far as performance, I experienced about the same performance as my MacBook. It performed very well and was a solid machine,

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Posted in Family, Misc, Rambling, Technology

Visual Studio Code Editor

I’ve been using the Visual Studio Code editor for the last couple of weeks and thought I would share my experience. I’ve mainly used this in a plain ‘ole polymer application which consists of html files. Using the editor this way has shown some of it’s shortcomings. Don’t get me wrong, I think it’s a fine editor and has a lot of features I really like. However with CSS, HTML and JavaScript all residing in the same file, a lot of the typeahead features just don’t work, which is my biggest complaint. So onto my review, I’ll first start with my dislikes: JavaScript intellisense doesn’t work with JavaScript embedded in an

Keith Stricklandmore_vert
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I’ve been using the Visual Studio Code editor for the last couple of weeks and thought I would share my experience. I’ve mainly used this in a plain ‘ole polymer application which consists of html files. Using the editor this way has shown some of it’s shortcomings. Don’t get me wrong, I think it’s a fine editor and has a lot of features I really like. However with CSS, HTML and JavaScript all residing in the same file, a lot of the typeahead features just don’t work, which is my biggest complaint. So onto my review, I’ll first start with my dislikes: JavaScript intellisense doesn’t work with JavaScript embedded in an

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Posted in Microsoft, Technology

What is Modern?

I've been working a lot lately towards the concept of a modern application. What exactly makes an application modern? Is it the UI? What about the platform the application runs on? Is modern just a feeling the user experiences? If so, what determines that the experience is modern? These questions make me think that what determines something is modern is all of the things questioned above. A modern application must have a modern user interface that runs on a modern platform. OK, that's fine, but what exactly is a modern UI? If you take a look at the Yahoo! Design Pattern Library they define almost every type of pattern that you may

Keith Stricklandmore_vert
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I've been working a lot lately towards the concept of a modern application. What exactly makes an application modern? Is it the UI? What about the platform the application runs on? Is modern just a feeling the user experiences? If so, what determines that the experience is modern? These questions make me think that what determines something is modern is all of the things questioned above. A modern application must have a modern user interface that runs on a modern platform. OK, that's fine, but what exactly is a modern UI? If you take a look at the Yahoo! Design Pattern Library they define almost every type of pattern that you may

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Posted in Domino, Technology, XPages

Feeding Innovation and rewarding success

Over on Tim's Blog he made a post about being at Lotus 911/GBS for 5 years (Congrats Tim) and in that post he stated: I've learned more, had more fun, been more inspired, and been witness to (and, occasionally, even integral to) more amazing innovation in the past few years than I even imagined possible. This got me to thinking on just how does a company drive innovation and foster an innovative environment that makes people want to be a part of it? In my career I've seen both sides of the coin. Companies that squash innovation because they either aren't interested in hearing what lowly worker bees have to say.

Keith Stricklandmore_vert
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Over on Tim's Blog he made a post about being at Lotus 911/GBS for 5 years (Congrats Tim) and in that post he stated: I've learned more, had more fun, been more inspired, and been witness to (and, occasionally, even integral to) more amazing innovation in the past few years than I even imagined possible. This got me to thinking on just how does a company drive innovation and foster an innovative environment that makes people want to be a part of it? In my career I've seen both sides of the coin. Companies that squash innovation because they either aren't interested in hearing what lowly worker bees have to say.

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Posted in Innovation, Technology

Samsung Galaxy S II

As an early christmas present my wife got me a new Samsung Galaxy S II from T-Mobile. This is by far the best gadget I've ever owned. My initial impression is WOW! It's very fast, much faster than my old myTouch or the LG that replaced the myTouch when it started over-heating. The T-Mobile version of the Galaxy S II is a little different than the stock Galaxy S II. It sports a 1.5 GHZ Dual Core Processor (as opposed to a 1.2 GHZ Dual Core), a huge 4.5" Super AMOLED screen (as opposed to a 4.3" screen) with Gorilla Glass and a very slim, light case (it's lighter than my

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As an early christmas present my wife got me a new Samsung Galaxy S II from T-Mobile. This is by far the best gadget I've ever owned. My initial impression is WOW! It's very fast, much faster than my old myTouch or the LG that replaced the myTouch when it started over-heating. The T-Mobile version of the Galaxy S II is a little different than the stock Galaxy S II. It sports a 1.5 GHZ Dual Core Processor (as opposed to a 1.2 GHZ Dual Core), a huge 4.5" Super AMOLED screen (as opposed to a 4.3" screen) with Gorilla Glass and a very slim, light case (it's lighter than my

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Posted in Technology

Cool Chrome Debugging features

This week while troubleshooting various issues I came across some cool features of the Chrome browser. While not really all that jaw dropping they may come in handy none-the-less. Click the wrench icon in the top right corner and then pick “View Background Pages” this will bring up a dialog which shows you how much memory and cpu the browser, each tab and each extension is using, which is pretty handy. You can also end these processes from this window. Now click on the “stats for nerds” link at the bottom left of this dialog. This will show you more of the same information but with much more detail. Open up

Keith Stricklandmore_vert
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This week while troubleshooting various issues I came across some cool features of the Chrome browser. While not really all that jaw dropping they may come in handy none-the-less. Click the wrench icon in the top right corner and then pick “View Background Pages” this will bring up a dialog which shows you how much memory and cpu the browser, each tab and each extension is using, which is pretty handy. You can also end these processes from this window. Now click on the “stats for nerds” link at the bottom left of this dialog. This will show you more of the same information but with much more detail. Open up

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Posted in Technology

Best Buy PC Optimization not such a good deal….

From consumerist.com comes this article which goes into a full review of the changes and value of purchasing the Geek Squad PC Optimization package when you purchase a new computer at Best Buy. The article describes the steps taken and the results compared to buying an un-optimized computer. It’s kind-of a long read, but the detail it provides is rather eye opening. Share This:

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From consumerist.com comes this article which goes into a full review of the changes and value of purchasing the Geek Squad PC Optimization package when you purchase a new computer at Best Buy. The article describes the steps taken and the results compared to buying an un-optimized computer. It’s kind-of a long read, but the detail it provides is rather eye opening. Share This:

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Posted in Technology

Cool website, Last.fm

I came across Last.fm last week or so. It allows you to play music for free. There are apps for iPhone and Android so you can listen via those devices also. But you define your favorite artists across different genres and Last.fm will provide recommendations of music you might like. For example, if you make one of your preferred artists say Trace Adkins, there is a link called “Listen to Trace Adkins Radio” and that will play music from Trace Adkins and also other artists like Trace Adkins. It’s very cool and allows you to find music you otherwise wasn’t aware of. As tracks are played you have the option of

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I came across Last.fm last week or so. It allows you to play music for free. There are apps for iPhone and Android so you can listen via those devices also. But you define your favorite artists across different genres and Last.fm will provide recommendations of music you might like. For example, if you make one of your preferred artists say Trace Adkins, there is a link called “Listen to Trace Adkins Radio” and that will play music from Trace Adkins and also other artists like Trace Adkins. It’s very cool and allows you to find music you otherwise wasn’t aware of. As tracks are played you have the option of

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Posted in Misc, Technology

Cool Tool…

While looking to see if I could find some kind of emulator for mobile browsers I came across BrowserShots.org. This is a tool which allows you to select browser versions to test your website with. Once the test is done screen shots of the results are published on a web page that you can look at and then download all the screen shots. It takes a little while to run, but it seems to do what it advertises. Best of all, it’s a free service! Share This:

Keith Stricklandmore_vert
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While looking to see if I could find some kind of emulator for mobile browsers I came across BrowserShots.org. This is a tool which allows you to select browser versions to test your website with. Once the test is done screen shots of the results are published on a web page that you can look at and then download all the screen shots. It takes a little while to run, but it seems to do what it advertises. Best of all, it’s a free service! Share This:

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Posted in Technology, Website