Gdovin.net

Mike Gdovin gives a review and tour of the great Cloud software, Evernote

Apple’s app store was a brilliant move on their part because it is a one stop shop for every iPhone application and because they developed a great payment program, where developers take 70% of revenue and Apple keeps 30% to maintain and host the store. This is great for developers and Apple and if the developer wants to make the application free, then they do not have to pay to host the app. This makes buying and installing applicatioons so simple because instead of going on Google and searching the whole web for a program, you can search a all inclusive store and find every app that meets that criteria. Linux has a very similar model with their Add/Remove Program installer where users can simply check boxes to install linux applications and not need to go onto the internet to get programs although there are more applications online. I think every major operating system should add this function to their operating system and partner with major and minor software developers and try to get as many applications availible.I am not saying the iphone model is going to work for everyone I think they should leave software installation the same as it has always been but develop this “store” to make applications easier to find and buy for the users and less expensive to distribute for the producers and just makes getting software so easy!

What if I told you for the next four days that you could get over $1,000 of software for only $40 and give 25% of that to charity. Well it is true! Macheist lets mac users buy some of the best shareware applciations for a limited time and only for $40! This bundle provides a lot of great apps like: KineMac, a easy to  use Mottion graphics program, Sous Chief , a great cooking application that suggests recipies based on supplies you have, iSale, a program that simplifies selling stuff on E-Bay, Picturesque, a easy image editor, World of  Goo, a great game, PhoneView, an app that lets users view the contents of their iPhone or iPod Touch, Little Snapper, A powerful screenshot utillity, Acorn, a simplified photo editor, and Wiretap Studio, a powerful audio recording utillity. Also, as MacHeist raises more money for charity they will “Unlock” more applications. When they raise a total of $400,000 they will unlock the “killer app” for me Boinx TV because it turns your computer into a video mixer without any  extra equipment. Also when even more money is raised, they will “Unlock”  Espresso, a very powerful web editor and Hit List a great productivity application.

If one application I described peaked your interest, then you should buy it, not only do you get a bunch of great applications but you also give money to charity and help people in need. I suggest that all Mac users invest the $40 and get a great collection of applications  but make sure you do it before time runs out!

As I mention is Why Firefox Is the Best Browser, one of my favorite parts of using Firefox is because, there are thousands of extentions and add-ons that allow users to add features they want to the Firefox browsing expirence.I use a bunch of add-ons in my installation of Firefox and would like to share them because I think they are the best and want to help everyone get the most out of using Firefox.

1. Bookmark Duplicate Detector- Prevents saving already saved bookmarks and provides an easy way to reduce your bookmarks for no reason.
2. Bugmenot- Saves the trouble of having to sign up for an account with a service when you are only going to use it one time. This site allows people to submit accounts to share with everyone and save the trouble of getting an account for every website.
3. Delicious Bookmarks- Integrates Delicious Social bookmarks into web browsing and helps me add all the best sites I find on my Delicious Account with one click of the mouse.
4. Download Toolbar- Download toolbar allows you to track downloads without having to open another window and saves a lot of screen Real Estate.
5. Foxmarks- Is a must-have for anyone who has multiple computers because it synchronizes both bookmarks and account passwords between all installations and keeps all computers up-to-date!
6. Google Gears- Gears allows people who use Google web services like: Google Docs, Gmail and Google Reader to access therse services even when they are unable to connect to the internet. This is very useful to anyone who is dependant on Google Web Services like I am.
7. Google Reader Watcher- This add-on is a very simple couter to alert Google Reader users of how many unread stories are in their GoogleReader Feeds.
8. Password Exporter- Very simly exports passwords and allows users to modify their password list in Firefox.
9. Picnik- Alows users to simly right click an image in a website and edit it in the online image editor, Picknik.
10. Screengrab- An extremly powerful screenshot add-on that give the user the ability to take screenshots of website and use them how they like.
11. Tab Counter-  It does exactly what it’s name suggests, , it counts how many tabs are open in a Firefox window.
12. Tab History- When you open a link in a new tab it usually does not retain it’s history but, this add-on allows you to go back into the history of the tab.
13. Twitterfox- This is my only Twitter client and the onlky way I update and check Twitter!
14. URL Fixer- Fixes misspellings in domain ending so if you make mistakes like I do typing in domains quickly, then this is a must have.

If you are not already using these add-ons I reccommend giving them a try because they make me more productive and they will help you as well!

There are so many web browsers available but, there is on that is significantly better than all the rest. Mozilla Firefox is the greatest Web Browser currently available. Firefox has so many advantages over other browsers from it’s extendibility with the thousands of add-ons available to get the most out of Firefox, to it’s superior speed to other browsers, Internet Explorer, Opera, Safari, Netscape and all other browsers are blown away!

First of all, Firefox is free and open source so if there are any problems, they can be fixed by anyone who knows how to code and can be submitted for approval to be released to all other users. In addition, users can type: about:config and tweak the internal settings of Firefox and optimize the browser. I would like to warn you all, that if you make a mistake with those settings it may make Firefox crash or just stop working so only make these modifications if you know what your doing. But, even without tweaking it, Firefox is still much faster than any other browser!

Another amazing part of Firefox is add-ons, which allows you to choose and install additional programs that extend the functionality of Firefox. This is my favorite part of using Firefox because I can integrate additional services into my browsing experience and makes using Firefox even better!

Similarly, Themes allow you to install different color schemes and icons schemes for Firefox and lets you make your browser your own! It makes you feel more at-home using a browser that has colors that you like.

With all these options and advantages it makes Firefox my sole web browser on all computers I use because of it’s flexibility.  Firefox allows the user utilize it to get what they want done.

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