Category: 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:

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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

Top 10 Developer Software packages…

Today Bob Balfe posted about his top 10 Open Source developer tools, so I thought I would follow suit. Here are my top 10 open source developer tools not in any particular order: Eclipse – This is a great open source programming tool. With it’s many plug-ins you can develop in just about any language. I use it for Java, PHP, HTML, CSS and SQL programming. As Bob mentioned there are several commercial applications built on top of Eclipse and I thought I would mention another such as XMind TextWrangler – This is a feature rich text editor which has formatting capabilities for most web languages. It’s a great tool to

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Today Bob Balfe posted about his top 10 Open Source developer tools, so I thought I would follow suit. Here are my top 10 open source developer tools not in any particular order: Eclipse – This is a great open source programming tool. With it’s many plug-ins you can develop in just about any language. I use it for Java, PHP, HTML, CSS and SQL programming. As Bob mentioned there are several commercial applications built on top of Eclipse and I thought I would mention another such as XMind TextWrangler – This is a feature rich text editor which has formatting capabilities for most web languages. It’s a great tool to

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Posted in Eclipse, Lotus Notes, Mind Mapping, OpenSource, Technology

Google Abandoning Google Gears?

In an LA Times article Google states We are excited that much of the technology in Gears, including offline support and geolocation APIs, are being incorporated into the HTML5 spec as an open standard supported across browsers, and see that as the logical next step for developers looking to include these features in their websites We’re continuing to support Gears so that nothing breaks for sites that use it. But we expect developers to use HTML5 for these features moving forward as it’s a standards-based approach that will be available across all browsers. I know that they say they will continue to support Gears so that it doesn’t break applications, but

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In an LA Times article Google states We are excited that much of the technology in Gears, including offline support and geolocation APIs, are being incorporated into the HTML5 spec as an open standard supported across browsers, and see that as the logical next step for developers looking to include these features in their websites We’re continuing to support Gears so that nothing breaks for sites that use it. But we expect developers to use HTML5 for these features moving forward as it’s a standards-based approach that will be available across all browsers. I know that they say they will continue to support Gears so that it doesn’t break applications, but

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Posted in Google, Misc, Technology

Google Chrome OS – Preview

I downloaded the Chrome OS image the other day and started playing around with Chrome OS. I installed the image into Virtual Box and it runs fine, I wasn’t so lucky with Parallels. So far, the OS is very minimal, not really a whole lot to play with. It’s basically just the Chrome browser running everything. If you close all the browser tabs, it relaunches the browser. The OS itself is very clean looking and minimalistic, which seeing as how it’s from Google, would you expect anything else? As for the apps, seems that they are only links to web applications but the ability to add more has been disabled, at

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I downloaded the Chrome OS image the other day and started playing around with Chrome OS. I installed the image into Virtual Box and it runs fine, I wasn’t so lucky with Parallels. So far, the OS is very minimal, not really a whole lot to play with. It’s basically just the Chrome browser running everything. If you close all the browser tabs, it relaunches the browser. The OS itself is very clean looking and minimalistic, which seeing as how it’s from Google, would you expect anything else? As for the apps, seems that they are only links to web applications but the ability to add more has been disabled, at

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Posted in Google, Technology

Android 2.0 – Google Maps Navigation

From Lifehacker today they outline the new Google Maps with turn by turn navigation which will be available on all Android powered phones. This is really cool and should help me find my way quite nicely. If it works as well as shown in the video then it’ll be better than the built in GPS in my Wife’s vehicle, as long as you stay in a service area for your phone I assume. Hopefully this was thought of when developing it to at least keep giving directions while disconnected by storing the data on your phone somewhere. Share This:

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From Lifehacker today they outline the new Google Maps with turn by turn navigation which will be available on all Android powered phones. This is really cool and should help me find my way quite nicely. If it works as well as shown in the video then it’ll be better than the built in GPS in my Wife’s vehicle, as long as you stay in a service area for your phone I assume. Hopefully this was thought of when developing it to at least keep giving directions while disconnected by storing the data on your phone somewhere. Share This:

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Posted in Android, Technology

First Glimpse at What the Chrome Browser May Look Like in Chrome OS

From LifeHacker : Over the weekend someone stumbled onto a Chrome browser build for Chrome OS on Google’s servers. We’ve seen several false-alarm looks at Chrome OS, and while it is only the browser, it provides a glimpse into the direction Google’s going. the Chrome browser would likely be the main, basic windowing system for Chrome OS. Here’s the link for the entire post. I thought this was interesting, plus I think what is said about Google Chrome being the basic windowing system for Chrome OS is a new approach, though I’m not sure how well it would work if you needed to do something that you couldn’t/wouldn’t normally do on

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From LifeHacker : Over the weekend someone stumbled onto a Chrome browser build for Chrome OS on Google’s servers. We’ve seen several false-alarm looks at Chrome OS, and while it is only the browser, it provides a glimpse into the direction Google’s going. the Chrome browser would likely be the main, basic windowing system for Chrome OS. Here’s the link for the entire post. I thought this was interesting, plus I think what is said about Google Chrome being the basic windowing system for Chrome OS is a new approach, though I’m not sure how well it would work if you needed to do something that you couldn’t/wouldn’t normally do on

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Posted in Technology

Cool CSS Menu generator

While working on a request for a customer the other day he had the need for a drop down menu in one of the products I developed for him. Now, I’ve attempted to do these menus before without much success. I can get it to work in Firefox, Opera and Safari with no problems, but can never get it to work in IE. So, I started searching the web and came across the CSS Menu Generator. This is a very cool tool to use to come up with a CSS driven drop down menu. You pick your template by clicking the customize link underneath the menu you desire to modify and

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While working on a request for a customer the other day he had the need for a drop down menu in one of the products I developed for him. Now, I’ve attempted to do these menus before without much success. I can get it to work in Firefox, Opera and Safari with no problems, but can never get it to work in IE. So, I started searching the web and came across the CSS Menu Generator. This is a very cool tool to use to come up with a CSS driven drop down menu. You pick your template by clicking the customize link underneath the menu you desire to modify and

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Posted in Technology

TouchPal for Android

I had been looking for a different software keyboard for my new Android powered phone I spoke about the other day. As I mentioned, the delete key was giving me some problems, actually all the keys along the edge of the screen were giving me issues, which is why I was looking for a replacement keyboard. I just happened across TouchPal while browsing the market and I started reading about it. All the reviews I read were positive so I decided to give it a try. I’ve been playing with the differences between TouchPal and the default keyboard and I must say that the TouchPal soft keyboard is great. It’s predicative

Keith Stricklandmore_vert
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I had been looking for a different software keyboard for my new Android powered phone I spoke about the other day. As I mentioned, the delete key was giving me some problems, actually all the keys along the edge of the screen were giving me issues, which is why I was looking for a replacement keyboard. I just happened across TouchPal while browsing the market and I started reading about it. All the reviews I read were positive so I decided to give it a try. I’ve been playing with the differences between TouchPal and the default keyboard and I must say that the TouchPal soft keyboard is great. It’s predicative

Read more

Posted in Android, Technology