Archive for January, 2009
Audible
Audible is the internet re-incarnation of books on tape. They have over 50,000 books to choose from. Once you’ve selected your book, you download it and sync it to nearly any portable audio player, or one of thousands of PDAs, smart phones, GPS and other devices that support Audible. Books typically run about $10 to [...]
TWiT
This Week in Tech (TWiT) is a weekly podcast hosted by Leo Laporte and an ever changing panel of guests. The show discusses the week’s tech news. Guests are often former TechTV personalities or technology journalists. The format is a round table discussion where Leo typically gives a summary of the news event and then [...]
Google Reader
Google Reader is a great way to aggregate all of your RSS feeds and view them from anywhere. I use it in combination with Yahoo Pipes (see yesterday’s post) to keep tabs on news, tech and some of my favorite comics. There’s also a mobile interface for Google reader for your phone. The two keep [...]
Yahoo Pipes
Yahoo Pipes can take some getting used to. The slogan for it is “Rewire the web.” What it allows you to do is work with RSS feeds to combine or filter them to create your own custom feeds. Instead of having to write your own program in PHP, or something similar, to do this, Yahoo [...]
Security Now
Security Now is a weekly computer security podcast hosted by Steve Gibson of Gibson Research Corporation with Leo Laporte. The content typically alternates between a technical discussion of some aspect of internet security, a recent security threat, or questions from listeners. The content can get technical at times but the conversation between Steve and Leo [...]
Adblock Plus
Firefox is fast, but you can squeeze a little more speed out of it by not having it draw all those ads that are on almost every web page. I use Adblock Plus to keep them from showing up. It works great, blocking nearly every ad and not messing up the page layout. If you [...]
Tips From the Top Floor
Tips From the Top Floor is a photography podcast. I started listening to it about a year and a half ago. At the time, I wasn’t sure just how you could describe photography tips and techniques through an audio podcast, but Chris Marquardt, the host, does an excellent job. There’s also an occasional video podcast [...]
Twitter Phishing Scare
If you haven’t heard yet some scammers are harvesting passwords on Twitter through direct messages. You’ll get a direct message from someone you follow (whose account has already been compromised) that asks you to click a link, for one of many ever changing reasons. When you click the link, you’re taken to a page that [...]
Total Commander CE
Windows Mobile has a built in file manager, but it’s slow and doesn’t give you all the features you’re used to in Explorer. Total Commander CE fills this gap. In addition to letting you view hidden and system files and having a search feature, there are also included plugins for FTP and registry. These allow [...]
PockeTwit
I finally decided on PockeTwit for posting to Twitter from my phone. The app has an Iphone like interface with smooth scrolling menus and a full screen display. The developer is actively adding features to it and is very quick to respond to bug reports and general support questions. There’s just one trick to getting [...]
Opera Mobile (Bonus tip)
Opera Mobile also has some built in keyboard shortcuts for common tasks. Since I couldn’t find these documented anywhere very well here’s what I’ve found through trial and error: 1 – Open URL dialog (also includes history and bookmarks) 2 – Window list 3 – Home page 5 – Toggle images (requires page refresh) 6 [...]
Opera Mobile
After trying to get Pocket IE (the Windows Mobile version of Internet Explorer) to behave nicely, and display web pages quickly and in a usable format I finally gave up. I switched to Opera Mobile. It’s not free, but with Firefox Mobile still a ways off the $25 is well spent. Some things that it [...]
M@'s Picks
The M@’s Picks section of this site has some of my favorite tips, applications and web sites that I use every day. I’ve keeping an eye on my computer usage recently and will be updating it with my favorite windows and windows mobile tips over the next few weeks. Be sure to check it out [...]
