Many of my friends have been using Flickr for a long time and kept trying to convince me to join in and use it. I finally started using Flickr yesterday and have to tell what I think about it. The user-interface is both simple and elegant, you can easily upload your pictures from your web browser or a variety of installable applications that you can use to post your pictures. You are limited to posting only 100 Megabytes of pictures every calendar month with a free account however, if you pay $25 a year you will be unlimited in pictures and can also make unlimited sets and post video. Once you upload your pictures, you are able to tag people who are in the pictures and give descriptions, you can also make your pictures private so only your friends or family you designate are allowed to see the pictures or you can set it so that only you are able to view the pictures. Flickr is a great way to share your pictures and I recommend that everyone should give it a try because it is a great way to share and store your pictures. You can share your pictures that you take with your friends and family both across the street and across the World!
I will have to admit that because of all the many different things I do in my life I have accumulated over 1,000 bookmarks in my web browser! But, what would happen if something happened to my computer or a file was corrupt? All those years of bookmarking would be gone! I had been previously use Foxmarks which is a great Firefox extension that synchronized the bookmarks on my computer with a webserver which is also great, if you have many computers and need your bookmarks synchronized between them all. However, I wanted to share some of my bookmarks with the world so they know what I think are the best.
I had heard of Delicious before, and decided to give it a try and I have now been hooked! I imported all my bookmarks and allowed Delicious to automatically tag them (big mistake, I now have over 1000 tags as well) I now have all of my bookmarks online now and I can share my favorite sites with everyone and if there are still things I don’t want to share then I can just keep them private and can access them from anywhere in the world. You can also get a delicious extension for Firefox which will allow you to automatically add browser bookmarks to your delicious account. The tags you add allow you easily access the bookmarks you want. My friend Michael Plasmeier said he uses Delicious as a “micro-blog” where he can give quick links to his favorite site and Delicious is great for that!
PS. My most recent Delcious bookmarks are on this website’s sidebar!
I recently got the Wii fit for my birthday I I just wanted to write my thoughts about this new revolution in fitness. First, let me say that I am not in the best shape and should exercise so, this is really the best thing for me because the Wii fit makes exersise fun and easy. Wii fit comes with the wii fit pad, the game, batteries and plenty of instructions and documentation. Once you setup the game you go through a fitness test which weights you and tests your balance. Once the testing is complete, they give you feedback on what you need to improve and calculates you Body Mass index (BMI). You also are given a wii age based on your performance which as you get into better shape, will go down and if you get worse your age will go up! After that you can play the games in 4 categories: stength training, aerobics, yoga and balance games. As you play you get wii credits (1 for every minute you play) the more credits you earn the more games you unlock. The wii fit has a wide range of activitiues from running, to pushups to yoga exercise to virtual ski jumping! Not only that but the more exercise you do the more activites are availible for you. Wii fit also encourages you to use it everyday, as do I, because first of all, you should exercise every day anyway, plus you get to have more activities and get better at the current activities as well. I highly reccommend that if you can find the Wii Fit that you should get it because it is totally worth the price and it makes exercise fun and enjoyable! Wii fit is really like an extended wii sports but, lets you really turn your Wii into a virtual fitness center. Wii Fit is the best thing for people who are addicted to videeo games and really need to get into shape and it has been proven in several studiies that by doing the Wii fit daily for a few weeks will result in a steady weight loss!
Keeping a personal website is a great asset to anyone especially students who plan to apply to colleges and eventually enter the work force. By keeping a website you get to share your opinions and ideas with the entire world and be a source of knowledge for others. You also, demonstrate the skills needed to run and manage a website which is a extremely in demand skill in the job world in this modern tech age and you can utilize this demand by proving you have the skills of running a website. Also, if you decide to keep a blog it is a great way to keep grammar and spelling skills fresh in your mind and a blog also gives you a platform to develop your writing style without any rubrics and guidlines, allowing you to write what you feel. Blogging is a great way to express your ideas, opinions and skills to the world and can also serve as a portfolio of work you have done and can be used as part of the job interview process to show what you are capable of. Similarly, you can also post your resume on your blog and if you are lucky you might be able to get a job offer just because a visitor found your site and love what your writing about. Keeping any type of online presence also helps when you have your name searched on Google, (which has now become a step in many job interviews and college admissions processes). If a college or a future employer sees all good proactive things when they search your name you have a much better chance of getting admitted to your choice of colleges and you may also have to potential of earning a scholarship! Having your own website proves you have the skills to express yourself and discuss topics intelligently and I would reccommend that you get a FREE wordpress website, which is a great start for bloggers (Wordpress is also what gdovin.net uses) you can also get a bunch of your friends to blog and have a web ring and do a link exchange so you can help each other get more page views. You could also host your own site by buying a domain through a webhost, my favorite is 1and1 which for $3/month you get everything you need including one free domain name.
It was confirmed a few days ago that the rumors are true that Apple CEO, Steve Jobs, will take the stage September 9th in an event that will most likely be a refresh of the iPod products and music centric products. I amalso hoping for the release new notebooks before the holiday rush! Here is what I think will be released at the event next Tuesday:
1. New ipod touch- The ipod touch has not been changed since the iPhone 3G was released so, I think Apple will be unveiling a redesigned ipod touch that looks more like the Iphone 3G and most likely drop the price to some where between $99 and $150. I also think the Ipod touch will recieve a features upgrade as well as far as storage and maybe even more!
2. Itunes 8- Itunes is due for a new version and this would be the perfect venue with the music theme and I am expecting a new iTunes with more features launching on the 9th!
3. New Ipod nanos- There have been leaked ipod nano designs floting around for weeks and I also am expecting the capcity to be increased as well!
4. Redesigned Notebooks- This is probably the least likely product I am predicting to be launched on Tuesday’s event but, rumors have been floating around suggesting that Apple is going to redesign the macbook and macbook pro and significantly increase it’s power! I hope this happens but, I think it may happen at a later date.
I will be watching the event on Tuesday when the video is release and will write again what I think of the day’s events.
If you are anything like me as a student I cannot effectively use the assignment books handed out on the first day of school and as a result, I end up either breaking it or loosing it early in the academic year, this prompts me to print my own paper assignment book which is wastes of resources. Seeing that yesterday was the first day of school for many students, I would like to share an amazing web application that I just discovered and highly recommend to all students! Notely is like an assignment book, note taker, calendar, task list, a schedule, a task manager, a to-do list, a link manager, a journal, a whiteboard, a contacts list, a grade tracker, a mind mapper and did I forget to mention that it is a social network as well, so you can share everything you post with your classmates! The Notely interface is very modern and can make keeping organized a breeze! Notley allows you to add in your homework, plan long-term assignments, track your grades, collaborate with peers much more! The great part of this application is you can keep yourself organized and make earning your A+ much easier and more enjoyable. Notely also provides RSS feeds to subscribe to not only your assignments but, your friends as well. Notely also has more tools like a question services, a calculator, a translator, a converter and a dictionary! I have become a huge fan of this amazing application, after only one day of using it and recommend joining the service for any student that wants to be better academically this year and recommend it to your classmates so you can help each other out! You can have an assignment book that is available from any web browser and Notely also has a mobile version that can be accessed on mobile devices, like PDAs and cell phones, which is great because now I can make my Nokia N800 function as a assignment book that is synced so it is up-to-date information is accessible anywhere in the world! I also then have a assignment book that will fit in my pocket and can go anywhere! There is also an application available for the iPhone so it is even easier for those people to take advantage of this great tool. I hope the people at Notely will be make applications for different platforms in the near future as well because they have the perfect product for all students.
Leave it to Google to make an amazing web browser for web applications and regular web surfing alike! Today Google released it’s Chrome web browser based on both Webkit and Mozilla Firefox! A quick warning right away as of today Chrome only runs on Windows for now but it will be coming out for Mac and Linux soon! Chrome is, at least in my mind a revolution of internet browsing and will be the direction that at least I think that will be the direction that all other web browsers will go in the next few years and is also free and open source!
Chrome has many features that are not availible on other browsers. Chrome is extremely tab-centric meaning tabs of each-different web page is the primary method of surfing and the tabs are each a different process on the computer meaning you can kill a single tab that is slowing down your computer instead of your whole browser crashing when your in the middle of sending an important email in another tab which is one big improvement over Mozilla Firefox. Along the same lines, this browser also features multi-threading which is great for computers that have multiple processors, which most modern computers do! This allows you to surf the web even faster and with more ease! Another, cool feature is web apps can run in special windows separate specially made for the applications you are using. Chrome also has some amazing security built into it because it runs in what are called “Sandboxes” which separate the files downloaded from the browser from damaging your computer! Also, in most web browsers you have a standard page (or a few in Firefox) in Chrome you get the added feature of having a screen that has your most visited websites making them easily accessible for the users. Another cool thing is you can drag tabs and separate them from the main window with ease. The final cool feature is a incognito mode where if you for some reason don’t want to have your browser history or your cookies saved you can click one button and you are the invisible browser.
Chrome is a great web browser with its amazing speed and sleek user interface but, I will continue to use Firefox because of it’s extentions and comfort. If Google keeps working on it, Chrome can be an amazing browser and can over take the other browsers. I think the UI is so sleek and intuitive I think that with a little more work Chrome would be a great replacement of Safari on the mac when it’s released for the macintosh platform. In addition Google plans to be making versions for many mobile platforms and I hope they will develop for maemo because it would be an amazing mobile browser for my Nokia N800!
Note: Also if you want to learn more detail about chrome here is a really cool comic about Chrome
Many people buy their digital music from Apple’s iTunes Music store but, they sell their music with DRM (Digital Rights Management) for the regular $0.99/Song, these tracks have limitations on how many devices you can put your music on. Recently, Apple added an option for you to buy music for an extra dollar and you can unlock your music from their DRM and get freedom with your tracks! Apple has done a great job to make a one stop shop where you can play, manage, sync and buy music all from one application, and in that same application you can buy TV shows, download, watch and subscribe to podcasts, and buy or rent movies! Apple has made the Internet generation and even some of the older generations dependant on their software which in my opinion is slow and bulky and this is coming froma major Apple fanboy! I do not buy my music through iTunes because of the limitations and the rediculously slow application. The best music store is Amazon’s amazing Mp3 store that is similar to iTunes’ however, all the tracks are DRM free and the starting price is only $0.88/song! It does not have a required application to buy your tunes which let’s you free up your computer but if you want an application, you can download a free download manager from Amazon, you can go online to their store and the homepage has all the tops songs and some bargain deals just like iTunes! You pay for the tracks with a credit card and they download to your pc and you can even add it to your iTunes library! By doing this you will save $1 per song on DRM free tracks and you can put those tracks anywhere and as many places as you want and even on your iPod! Do yourself a favor and at least download your songs from Amazon and put them in iTunes and use them as you would but with Amazon you will have freedom with your music!
On and off rumors about a Microsoft purchase of Yahoo have been floating on the web for at least the past two years and the most recent deal was killed weeks ago. However, today a new deal rumor has started to float around of yet another deal. First off, I do not want the Evil Empire to get it’s hand on Yahoo and have a monopoly on second rate search. Secondly, Yahoo is not in very good shape as you can see in the Tech Crunch Yahoo Executive Tracker 114 Executives have left Yahoo in the past year and a half meanwhile, they need to fight Google for control of the search market and now have a search deal and try to manage their products. Meanwhile, CEO, Jerry Yang, is hated by many shareholders for making the right decision of not selling, and many people want him ousted!
On the other side Microsoft will be loosing Bill Gates next Monday and since he has started to delegate responsibility to his lieutenants and the one product they turned out, Vista, is probably they worst operating system Microsoft has ever released! I truly believe that when Gates leaves the product quality will continue to decrease exponentially and Bill Gates will have to pull a Steve Jobs style second act and return and save the company. Microsoft is going down the tubes and even if Gates stayed they still have to make major changes to their attitudes to open source and Vista.
Honestly I believe that these two companies are both on their way out and by merging they will be taking the fast track to failure. Personally, I have not used any Yahoo services for many years and will not effect me but all the great services they bought like Flickr and del.icio.us can be destroyed by Microsoft. These services have so many users that will be forced to either find a new service or to deal with any changes Microsoft makes. As for Yahoo I think they wil dry up over time and the last one to leave will turn out the light. As far as I’m concerned Yahoo has been dead since the dawn of Web 2.0 because they did not change enough to compete.
The Apple Worldwide developers conference is going to begin Monday June 9th and Steve Jobs will, as always take the stage and make the announcements for apple. I will be watching the video when it is posted later on Monday afternoon but here are my predictions of what announcements will be made:
- 3G Iphone- This is almost confirmed because there have been reports a 3G iphone for a long time and I think this is where they will launch it.
- Mac OS 10.6 Leopard was just released and now I think they will probably announce the next version of OSX that will most likley be out by early 2010.
- New Macbook, let’s face it the Macbook has the same basic design as the ibook G4 and no longer matches the consumer desktop, Imac. I’m thinking they will make it a alluminum lapop similar to the macbook pro with multitouch.
- New Mac Mini- The mac mini has also not changed and I think that they will make a new one maybe integrate it with and AppleTV which would give consumers a copmputer and set top box.
- 12 inch Macbook a cheap macbook air that will allow people to get a small lightweight computer that they will be able to afford.
- Faster macbook! They just increased the imac to 3 GHZ why not move the macbooks too!
These are all my predictions for this years WWDC I hope they all come true and then some.
PS. Here is a link to the Apple Keynote bingo where you can play along as you watch I almost had Bingo for Macworld
