a multi-tasked stream of consciousness or perhaps just emails to myself
StatTraq Beta 0.1 c: StatTraq for WordPress tracks public activity of WordPress and reports:
I just installed this… looks like a winner!
I’m always amused (perhaps too easily) when the bigger sites discover something you’ve known about for a pretty long time… Salling Clicker is an amazing tool to use if you’ve got a bluetooth connection between your Mac and either a Palm or mobile phone. Version 2.2, which was released yesterday and that I happily beta tested allows for additional controls and even lets you remote command your Slim Devices server… rock on!
Justin Ried of TheFeature has good things to say about a neat-sounding application called Salling Clicker that turns a Bluetooth device into a remote control for your Mac.
One of the really amazing features is that you can see not just ordinary information about the track you’ve got currently playing in iTunes – artist and song name, track length, etc. – but also the album art, directly on your mobile device. [Boing Boing]
Not sure how much I’ll get to use this right now, but certainly good to have handy for when it might matter…
Bay Area Free Wi-Fi Wireless Hotspots has a downloadable listings of San Francisco Bay locations: wiPod is a little database that you can download to an iPod to be able to scroll through and see free locations throughout that region. [Wi-Fi Networking News]
Gmail Wiki is a site I just discovered that lets the users create and manage content and tips on using GMail…
So some tweaks need to be worked out…
It’s great to post a picture via MMS or email to Flickr and have it show up in your blog feed, but I’d like some more control over the process like:
Still great and very cool.
We are very happy to announce our partnership with the smart folks at Flickr [The FeedBurner Weblog]
What does this mean? It means that Flickr photos you are sharing can automagically get inserted into your Feedburner Feeds. I’ve just turned this on… so feed readers have probably just noticed a few extras.
Lately I’ve been snapping some phone-cam shots and MMSing them to a variety of services to check it all out – Flickr, Buzznet and T-Mobile all offer services that let you snap a shot with your camera and send them to a site (there are others like TextAmerica which I tried previously) they host for you. I’ve been running a moblog on my sidebar for a while now with images hosted by Buzznet, but the more I play with Flickr the more I like it. I am still working out a kink (fixed!!) with a feature on their service which lets you post directly to your blog… not sure exactly what the issue is, but it’s something with WordPress…
Still toying with things… may add the Flickr sidebar widget instead of the Buzznet one.. it runs in Flash which is interesting and offers some a more dynamic presentation of your shots.
Picasa enables users to easily manage and share digital photographs, and its technologies complement Google’s ongoing mission to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful… [PhotographyBLOG]
This photo sharing – posting to blog is heating up. As JD pointed out yesterday, Flickr now also supports posting to blogs and many more types than just Google owned Blogger.
I have yet to try this, but it seems the main limitation is the size of the SD card you carry which enables the compression size to expand. Looks like it is designed for the T3…which they say plays better than a PPC.
Carry DVD movies in your pocket. Turn boring time into fun right from your pocket, anywhere, anytime. Let your children have something to do and keep quiet while travelling. This software makes life easier with much more fun. Convert DVDs into palm video is simple and fast. Any movie less than 3 hours long can be compressed into a 128MB/256MB/512MB card. It’s a great application that justifies the purchase of your palm device. [Palm Movie]
Update – So I had downloaded this and gone to do something else. Upon coming back to my desk, I realized that this only exists as a .exe, windows only app. Guess I won’t be trying it out after all. Seems that the image on the page is a tad misleading since it seems like an Aqua screen…
Saw this one pop up as a new update today and gave it a whirl while eating some breakfast… It’s definitely worth a go! I knew it was chugging along a bit, but had no idea it could be clear this easily.
System Optimizer X can improve your system’s speed and stability using the following routines:
- Update prebindings
- Run system maintenance scripts
- Clean system/application cache
- Repair UNIX file permissions
- Optimize internet buffer sizes
- Compress minimized window buffers
Use the “Optimize” feature to run several routines automatically. You can also set the schedule to automatically run specified routines weekly, monthly or bi-monthly. [MacUpdate]
Thanks to a link at Boing Boing, I discovered this application for the iPod. Lookout Berlitz!
Talking Panda sets a new standard for language translation software. Designed for the iPod, it’s stocked with over three hundred essential words and phrases of the language you want to speak, organized for instant access. … Virtual fluency available in French, Spanish, and Japanese for $10 per language. [Talking Panda]
Arrow Launcher is a slick pop-up shortcut launcher for the Palm OS. It works great with both graffiti and keyboard devices…
Arrow Launcher is a new type of launcher that launches applications, e-mail, contacts, and can SMS a contact, DIAL a contact, PLAY an mp3, and load a bookmark, launch applications AND contacts AND more FAST! [mytreo.net]
Just signed up… what the hell right? If you know me and want to talk, you can send an email and we can give this a whirl. I’m still hoping that Skype is an interesting bit for Mac when it arrives and may switch over to it when that day finally comes.
With SIPphone, users get a phone number, free voicemail to email, free conference calling, free SIP-to-SIP calling anywhere in the world, very cheap International dialing, and the option of a virtual number in the US or the UK so they can receive calls from the ‘traditional’ phone network.”
Alleged Hacker Now Works for Microsoft
A man accused of hacking into search engine company AltaVista’s computer systems about two years ago is now employed by Microsoft, reportedly working on search technology. [eWEEK]
Competition for advanced web services is heating up! Oddpost also noted in the recent WSJ article on feedreaders, combines a nice webmail client with a feedreader… it should be very interesting to see how this falls into place in the world of Yahoo. I’ll be looking forward to giving it a whirl for sure.
Yahoo has acquired Oddpost. A couple of weeks ago I got a heads-up that this deal had been consumated and would be announced shortly. Little did I imagine then that they would pick a Friday evening to make the announcement, but that’s the way it goes. It’s a big one. Oddpost turned the idea of what you could do with a browser upside down, by producing a clone of Microsoft Outlook in JavaScript and DHTML running in MSIE. Since then, they have labored in relative obscurity, growing a customer base, raising VC money, adding people, and staying out of the way. Then Google launches Gmail, with a very Oddpostish interface, and someone at Yahoo says “Hmmm, I’ve seen that somewhere,” calls up Ethan and Iain and their new VCs and asks “Are you for sale?” and the rest is history. [Scripting News]
Listening now…as usual, it’s a very interesting conversation with people who are not only well connected, but highly involved.
I just posted the July 9 show with special guest Brendan Eich, chief architect, Mozilla Foundation. (Is this the start of Browser War II? Can Mozilla-based browsers corner 6% of the market by year end? And if they do, will they be targeted by the same crackers who go after IE flaws? Does the potential for “tag soup” sound like what Microsoft did to the browser market in 1996?) [Doug Kaye: Web Services Strategies]
This is a totally cool way to access the SD slot on a Palm without removing it and having to use a card reader… works on Mac as well as PC.
TreoCentral gives a short, but very positive preview of the latest version of Card Export II, a bit of software that emulates the USB Mass Storage standard that, this time around, lets your Treo 600 plug-and-play with your PC just like a USB flash memory drive. What that means to you is that simply plugging your Treo into any random machine will enable you to copy data back and forth to the SD card without installing any drivers, greatly easing the hassle of just trying to copy a few bits of data off a work or friend’s machine. Card Export II is $15 to purchase, but they do have a free trial.
And for what it’s worth, Card Export supports many different Palm devices, not just Treos.
Read – Treo as a flash memory drive [TreoCentral]Read – Product Page [Softick]
[Gizmodo]
Might want to snag this before it has to get pulled down…
Jon “DVD Jon” Johansen has released FairKeys, a program for extracting your iTunes DRM FairPlay keys from Apple’s servers.
Tom Weber (not Walt Mossberg) introduces Feed Readers and mass-blog reading to the audience in the latest Personal Technology column. He reviews FeedDemon, NewsGator, Oddpost and Bloglines which turns out to be his favorite based on the ability to read the same subscriptions across machines.
While he mentions the pending release of Safari RSS (coming in Tiger), it was disappointing to see that there was no mention of any actual software for the Mac. NetNewsWire is by far the most popular and mature… happens to be my reader of choice as well.
In a related note, I like the redesign of Bloglines… I’ve been trying to use it more just to keep tabs on things in the world of newsreaders. The mobile version is very slick for use on connected handhelds…
Nothing too revolutionary, but still good to see.
palmOne today introduced a resource center for Mac enthusiasts who want to get the most out of their palmOne handhelds and smartphones. New web pages highlight using iPhoto, wireless syncing and many mac friendly applications. [PalmInfocenter]
MotionApps recently released mNews, a new RSS reader for Palm – actually Treo Only – devices. It seems to be quite nice, keeps things simple and is well integrated with the system (5-way and Blazer browser). The main missing feature at the moment is import of OPML – either from an online source or your SD card.
Optimized for Treo 600 devices from PalmOne, mNews will leverage full power of your phone. You will be able to read news in variety of formats, including Web browser view for content rich items. When you find a topic you want to know more about, just a single tap or key press will take you to the publisher’s site where you can find all the details you need. [MotionApps]
