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"Technology"
For the past week, I have changed by default browser on both my home and work computers (Apple iMacs running Mac OS X Snow Leopard
The Good
The absolute first thing I noticed when I opened it up is that if I had blinked, I would have missed it. When it comes to opening speed, Firefox is, well, slow. I had previously thought Safari was quick to load, but Chrome even makes Apple’s default browser seem sluggish. Beyond just opening, page loading is also speedy and smooth. Also a terrific feature is the ever-growing selection of extensions. This is something that I’ve always enjoyed about Firefox and is a great first step if Google wants me to switch over to their offering. Even the interface itself is clean, intuitive, and simple to use. Overall it is a very appealing browser and is constantly being updated with new features trying to stay ahead of the competition.
The Bad
I’m not a big fan of the search box and address bar merger. I have a ton of different search engines that I use regularly and the ability to rapidly toggle between them. Chrome, sadly, does not make this an easy task.
The Ugly
There were more than just a handful of sites with nagging visual errors that just simply are not there when using Firefox or Safari. I can overlook just about every other issue I have with Chrome, but incorrectly displaying pages that I frequent is a dealbreaker.
After a week, I will admit I am impressed. Although Google Chrome will not be usurping Firefox as my primary browser, it has earned a spot in my Applications folder and I will be continuing to use it as a secondary browser.
I saw this elsewhere on the ‘net and absolutely had to share it here. Want your own copy? Click it to buy it from Amazon.com
The 2009 holiday season is rapidly approaching! Do you know what you’re going to get your geek this year? Here’s a guide for those of you looking for ideas.
- Blue Violet Laser Pointer
– $72.99
For some reason unbeknownst to me, even though I am a self-described geek, laser pointers are absolutely fascinating to geeks and cats. This thing is a king among laser pointers. The unique blue violet color really makes it stand out among a sea of red and will even impress geeks who have the cherished green laser pointer. - RAM Upgrade
Unless your geek has already maxed out his or her computer with memory, more is always appreciated. RAM will make the computer faster and more responsive which means your present will make it’s recipient very happy. Just make sure you get the right kind. - USB Flash Drive
Storage is king in a digital world and every geek needs something small and pocketable to store their stuff. Thankfully, USB flash drives just keep getting more storage for a lower price. On the high end you can get a 16GB drive for under $40, whereas even as much as 2GB will only set you back a ten spot. - Griffin PowerMate
– $40.99
This little guy is probably one of the coolest USB input devices ever greated. For the audiophile and/or videophile in your life, there is no better computer accessory. This brushed metal spinning knob is perfect for audio or video editing, works on the Mac and PC, is compatible with pretty much any application, and can even be mapped to pretty much any repetitive keystroke. - Powermat Charging Station
– $99.99
I’ll be honest, I’ve got no clue how this thing works, but it looks sofa king awesome. Essentially, there’s something you do to “enable” your mobile device, then all you have to do is set them on this thing and they wirelessly charge. Pretty cool, right? - iPod Shuffle
Coming in at either 2GB or 4GB of storage and in a variety of colors, this is easily the best of the less-expensive mp3 players and allows you to do exactly what is advertised: Listen to your music, shuffled, wherever you are. It can hold up to 1000 songs and can play music for up to 10 hours on a single charge.
I hope you’ve enjoyed my list of the top gifts for geeks priced at under one hundred dollars. If you have suggestions for gifts that you don’t see on this list, please feel free to leave a comment and share it. Also, don’t forget to check back very soon for the next installment: Gift Guide for Geeks – Over $100.
DISCLAIMER: For those of you that are a bit slow, this is a joke! Apparently, the creator of the video has been getting some hilarious responses from people wondering when it will be available in the app store.
Because of the popularity of my Top Ten Must-Have Free iPhone Apps, I’ve decided to put together yet another top ten free apps list, but this time entirely games. Some of these you may have played, some you may not have, but all are awesome and free. These time wasters are sure to amuse you for hours and hours on end.
- Mancala FS5 Free
This is by far the best online-player board game available for the iPhone. It allows for single player, two player on a single phone, and multiplayer via WiFi (there’s a world-wide leader board!), local networks (bluetooth or wifi), and AIM. It even allows push notifications so you can invite a friend to play. I’ve easily clocked more time playing Mancala FS5 than any other iPhone app. - TapDefense
Anyone who loves flash games on the Internet has probably lost hours of their life to one defense game or another. TapDefense is no different. This highly addictive tower-style defense game is fun, challenging, and offers a huge amount of variety in levels, playstyle, and challenges. No two games are even completely alike. - iMafia
There are many types of MMORPG-style games available on the iPhone, but the ones I liked the most are by PlayMesh. They make at least a dozen variations, be it Ninjas, Wild West, Warbots, etc, but they’re all very similar in playstyle. If you enjoy online gaming for your computer, this is a must-have time waster for your iPhone. - Sol Free Solitaire
Hands-down the absolute best solitaire game available for the iPhone, paid or otherwise. The interface is extremely intuitive, it keeps in-depth statistics, and there are a nice variety of solitaire games to choose from. - Paper Toss
This game seems extremely easy and boring at first glance, but for some reason I just keep coming back to it. The concept is simple: Flick a wad of paper in to a trash bin compensating for a fan blowing one way or another. It seems simple, but it’s harder than it looks, even on the easy level. Give it a try, you won’t be disappointed. - Enjoy Sudoku Daily
It took me a while to find a Sudoku game that is easy to use and offers great features for both novice and advanced players. This game does exactly that. It offers eight different levels from “Just Starting” to “Fiendish” and has a very intuitive hint system, should you get stuck on the tougher levels.. The only downside is that the free version offers only 1 game per day per level, but that’s still 8 games a day. - Fish Food Frenzy
You’re a tiny fish. The more fish you eat, the bigger you get until you can eat bigger fish. Sounds easy, but this game is extremely challenging and is an absolute blast when using the accelerometer to move your fish around. - Checkers FS5
Brought to you by the same folks that did the Mancala FS5 that I’m so hooked on, this is the best checkers game available for the iPhone, allowing you to play against the computer, against a friend, or online against the world. - Unblock Me
What’s a top-ten game list without a puzzle game? Unblock Me is extremely simple to play, yet each level offers different challenge. Just move the blocks around until you can get the red one out. With 400 levels, this will take you quite some time to beat. - JellyCar
This driving-platormer looks like it was drawn by a four year old, but the goofy graphics somehow just add to its charm. Drive your car through the various worlds to try to reach the exit. Careful, though, it can sometimes be trickier than you’d think.
As always, I hope you’ve enjoyed this list and maybe even found some new games to play. Got any games you felt deserved to be on here that I missed? Feel free to share them with a comment.
It really is a great product for the casual and dedicated reader alike and can hold as many books as even the most extensive home library. The Amazon Kindle and other products like it have the potential to be regarded by future generations as the biggest development in reading since moveable type was first introduced to Europe sometime in the 15th century.
Section 1: Plug-ins
The following list are a few highly popular plug-ins that anyone who’s serious about their blog should have installed. Each plug-in has great documentation and support, so they’re good for beginners and essential for the most seasoned WordPress veterans.
- WordPress.com Stats
If you’re at all concerned over who your readers are, what brought them to your blog, how many people read your blog, or what search terms people are typing to to search engines to find it, then this plug-in is absolutely essential. It’ll tell you pretty much everything you need to know about your blog’s visitor statistics. - Akismet
If you don’t plan on having comments enabled, then you can completely ignore this plug-in. If, however, you do want your readers to be able to leave comments on your posts, then this is an absolute must. As far as comment spam filtering goes, there is absolutely nothing better than Akismet. It is extremely accurate and only maybe once or twice since I first started using it has there been true spam that got through and I had to delete or a false positive that I had to approve. - Google XML Sitemaps
This excellent SEO-related plug-in automatically generates a Google-compatible sitemap file of every single post and page on your blog. Every single time you create a new post or page, it will automatically recreate an updated sitemap for search engines to index. As if that isn’t awesome enough, it will then automatically ping Ask.com, Google, Bing, and Yahoo letting them know that your sitemap has been updated and that they should re-check it. Just having this installed and running is enough to start getting your site indexed by all of the major search engines. - All in One SEO Pack
The All in One SEO Pack has pretty consistently been the most popular WordPress plug-in of all time. To be honest, some if not all of it’s features should just be built in to WordPress, but because they aren’t it is still around. I can’t even begin to list all of the great SEO features that this offers, so just visit the download page to view them.
Section 2: Themes
You’ve got WordPress installed and you’ve added some key plug-ins to make it work even better and help with SEO, but now that it works great behind the scenes, you want it to look awesome to your readers. Here’s are some great theme resources to check out, all of which are free.
- Official WordPress Themes Directory
- Top WordPress Themes
- FreeWPThemes.net
- 100 Excellent Free WordPress Themes – Smashing Magazine
- 40 Excellent Free WordPress Themes – Six Revisions
Section 3: Search Engine Optimization
Search Engine Optimization (commonly called SEO) is key to getting your blog noticed by the search engines and ranked will for certain search terms or keywords. There are entire books written on the subject that still don’t cover the subject, which is constantly evolving, so I’m not going to attempt to teach everything there is to know in this small paragraph. What I will instead do is offer some tricks to getting your blog recognized by search engines, quickly indexed, and some basic tips to improving the ranking of your blog.
- Link Structure – You’ve probably been to some websites and noticed that they have long hard to understand links, whereas others have shorter links that are easy to read and often have the title of the post in the link. If you look under the settings section of the admin section of your WordPress blog, you will notice a link that says “Permalinks”. If you click this, it will bring you to a page where, if your web server supports it (most do, ask your webhost if you’re unsure), you can change your link structure. The default is the “ugly” style of links, but I prefer the “Month and name” or the “Day and name” setting. Play around and find a link structure you like, but be aware that once you choose one, you should stick with it.
- Search Engine Submission – Many search engines have a submission page where you can enter your URL and it will be added to a presumably very long list of websites for their spiders to crawl. This works, but isn’t always the best solution. Pinging the search engines with your sitemap, as I described earlier, is a good way to get them to recognize your site. The best way for search engines to find your site, however, is for them to find a link to your site on other sites. Talk to your friends with their own blogs and ask them to put a link to your site on theirs (if you’re really nice, you’ll do the same for them). Add a link to your website in your signature or profile page on any social networks you’re a member of as well as any forums you post on. Not only will some people see the link and visit your site, but the search engines will see it and start to be aware of your blog. My last little trick is to click this link, type in your URL, click submit, and then click every link in the list that will appear on the next page.
- Anchor Text – When you’re adding your link to the places I mentioned previously, be sure to choose a good anchor text where you can. The anchor text is the what text appears as a link. For example: Chai Life is a link to this blog. The anchor text for that link is “Chai Life”. The more consistent you are with your links’ anchor text, the better you will rank in search engines when someone searches for that term. Using a few different anchor texts will help you rank better for those different keywords, but I would recommend choosing only a few keywords and sticking with them. Too many will saturate your results and not really be any help.
- Content – Having original content is very important. For most blogs, this isn’t really an issue because you’re writing your own posts. Keep in mind, however, than most search engines, Google included, will essentially just regard your blog as trash if it has duplicate content (articles, blog posts, etc) from other sites on other domains.
Well, there you have it. Is this guide the definitive guide to starting your blog and increasing it’s popularity? No way. Is it missing stuff that I didn’t go in to or could have done in more detail? Probably. Will it help someone who is new to WordPress, SEO, and blogging get started? I sure hope so!
The install was as simple as ever, essentially just clicking install and accepting the ToS. It took about 40 minutes to complete on my iMac, reboots itself when it’s done, and that’s all there is to it. The absolute first thing I noticed once it rebooted was a speed boost. Booting up, opening programs, the Finder, Spotlight search, and just about every other major aspect of the operating system is noticeably faster. I didn’t pay close attention to exactly how much disk space I had used before the install, but it freed up at least 5 gigs of space from Apple cutting some of the fat out of the OS. Just about all of the changes between Leopard (10.5) and Snow Leopard (10.6) are under the hood, but very next thing I noticed was what is more or less the only visual tweak: Stacks. The the grid that the stacks on your dock appear in got a visual overhaul and, at least in my opinion, look a lot nicer. I am so far very impressed with what I’ve seen, even though most of the major changes are in the background and won’t necessarily be noticed by the casual user.
As with any major update to any major operating system ever, third party programs written for prior versions of the OS are bound to have issues. Snow Leopard is in no way immune to this. Apple has a handy short list of known issues for some major applications, but as I don’t use any of specific versions listed on that site, I didn’t run in to any of those known issues. Instead, I noticed immediately that my awesomely useful iStat Menus were gone, but iSlayer already has a compatable v2.0 in the works that they say will be available soon. I also immediately noticed that the non-standard buttons on my Microsoft Wireless IntelliMouse Explorer 2.0 have stopped working. I’ve managed to get one of the buttons working again, but I’ll have to wait until Microsoft decides to release an update, which will supposedly be “on or before 10/2/2009“. Other than those two issues, I’ve yet to notice any other incompatibilities.
Unless you have a vital use for the programs that Apple lists as not working, I highly recommend upgrading to Snow Leopard. There are no major user interface changes, so the learning curve for users upgrading from Leopard is exactly zero and the speed boost is well worth the $29 to upgrade.
Mac OS X version 10.6 Snow Leopard
Mac OS X Snow Leopard Family Pack (5-User)
Mac Box Set (with Snow Leopard)
The iPhone is a very awesome palm-sized computer and phone and is the catalyst of a new generation of smart phones, but there are certain things it lacks that would greatly improve it. Some of these features are even already available to those willing to jailbreak their phone and install unauthorized 3rd party software, so Apple should take the hint and build them in to the OS.
- Lock Screen Display
There’s some useful information already displayed on the screen when you first wake your phone from its slumber, including battery life, date, time, wireless signal and, “slide to unlock”, and of course, whatever picture you chose for your background. Some of this comes in handy, but there is just so much wasted space. The improvements needed are pretty straight forward and, at least in my opinion, obvious. Display upcoming calendar events, quantity of unread emails (if push/fetch is enabled), and the weather. Some or all of this would obviously eat in to the battery life a bit, so allow users to enable/disable which they want to see and how often it is updated. - Home Screen Improvements
Generally, I like the home screen and the way it works, but it still feels like a cluttered OS X Desktop after doing “View -> Clean Up”. First and foremost, flipping it over to landscape mode would be nice. Just about everything else can change orientation, so why not the iPhone OS’s equivalency of a desktop? On top of that, how about cleaning things up by organizing apps in to folders. The Palm Pilot had this a decade ago. It was a good idea then and it’s a good idea now. Last, but certainly not least among home screen improvements would be the ability to add more rows to the dock. It’s nice to have 4 icons on every screen, but doubling or tripling that would be terrific. - Enable/Disable Default Applications
My guess would be that very few iPhone users actually use every single default app. Most, like myself, probably just put the unused ones all the way to the back screen where they sit and collect dust. All I’m asking for is a simple setting that allows you to toggle these applications on and off so the unused ones don’t take up space. I’m not a programmer so I don’t know this for sure, but that seems like it would be easy enough to implement. - To-Do App
I realize that there are approximately a thousand different options for a to-do list on the app store, some free and some not so free, but there’s really no reason Apple should have their own. This has been a staple application of PDAs and smart phones since their inception and for Apple to not realize that and write there own (perhaps with a syncable Mac OS X counterpart) is a bit embarrassing. Just like pretty much every other default application, something simple and easy to use yet fully featured would be terrific. - Improved Home Button
The home button is under-appreciated. I’m not saying it needs any physical changes, as I like the button itself just fine. It just needs the option to double click it and open any application you have installed. Currently you just have the options of Home, Search, Phone Favorites, Camera, or iPod. Those are all useful, but it would be nice to be able to double click it to open up that default or 3rd party app that you use more than any other.
Got other ideas for future improvements? Feel free to leave a comment and share them with me.
Emoji Icons are a rather extensive set of icons (Emoji being the Japanese word for what we call emoticons or smilies) that are common in Japanese text messaging and web sites and are essentially have been standardized in Japan. They are available on the iPhone and are very fun to use, but it takes a bit of trickery to get them unlocked. Here’s a step-by-step on how to unlock them. Once unlocked, you can sent them in text messages, emails, or whatever else you can type on the phone and they will be viewable by anyone who has a phone or computer that supports them. Even other iPhone users, even if they haven’t done these unlocking steps themselves. So, without further ado, here’s how to unlock them:
- Install the “Spell Number” app at the iTunes App Store. Don’t worry, it’s completely free.
- Once installed, launch the app.
- In the box, type this exactly: 91929394.59
- As soon as you have that typed in, without doing anything else, press your ‘Home’ button.
- From your home screen, go to Settings -> General -> Keyboards.
- Choose International Keyboards, then scroll down to Japanese, click it, and turn on Emoji.
- That’s it! You’re done! Thought it might be harder? Too bad. You can delete the app now, unless you feel you need it for other purposes. Whenever you’re typing, there will now be a little icon on the bottom left to switch back and forth between Emoji and English (or whatever other languages you use).
Here’s a small selection of the 461 emoji icons now available to you:
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