Fast Company published an interesting article on what is calls "The Great Tech War of 2012" among Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Google." The thought-provoking article describes various battlefields in a war to win our tech hearts and minds. My friend Raul's tweet that Apple didn't need dominant market share to win this war set off my "Media bias towards Apple" alarm. Does Fast Company (or the article author) have a vested interest in Apple? Other media players (e.g. iOSWorld, aka InfoWorld) frequently exhibit bias towards Apple, promoting it's products and services, while glossing over its failures, and treating Apple's competitors with a much harsher approach.
Since I hacked an Apple IIe in 1983, I've never been a big fan of the company. Yes, the article treats Apple with kids gloves and glowing references ("brilliant"), with a much more critical view of its competition, especially Google. Still, there is really only one battlefield where I had significant issues with the points presented: profitability.
It's not an iWatch (Apple isn't really THAT innovative). It's an i'mWATCH - one of the more stylish forms of the newest generation of the smartwatch. Unfortunately, the €299 to over €10K, Android-based smartwatch won't be available until early 2012. Like a kid on Christmas, if you can't wait, the developer's MetaWatch - with investment from Fossil - can be yours for just over $200. Similar to the i'mWATCH, the $100 to $200 inPulse smartwatch is available "soon."
MetaWatch
There are several approaches to today's smartwatches, including:
enhanced bluetooth device (aka "smartphone companions") that are really controlled by an app on your smartphone
"Take one down, pass it around," one less feed aggregator on the web. It seems several once-popular sites that combine feeds (aka feed aggregators, blenders, combiners, mergers, mixers, multiple feed merge) are no more. These sites combine 2 or more syndicated (RSS / ATOM) feeds into a single feed. This can be desired if you want a single source for multiple sites or have limited space for displaying syndicated content.
Several feed aggregators discontinued their free feed aggregation services, including RSS Mixer and FEEDblendr, for various reasons including RSS spam and cost of operations. Several others, including ChimpFeedr, Feed Informer, and Yahoo Pipes, continue to provide this free server. In addition to combining feeds, some of these hosted services provide the ability to filter stories based on keywords in addition to setting the number of items to display in the feed and the maximum number of items per source feed. Read More...
Posted by: kguske on Friday, November 25, 2011 @ 23:41:18 CST
A quick survey of jQuery content sliders identified almost 30 options! Since the goal is to integrate this with the RavenNuke™ content management system primarily for news articles that may or may not have associated images, the ability to slide HTML content (as opposed to just images) knocked out almost one third. Having an open source license without requiring branding (sorry, SlideDeck), knocked out almost another third - leaving 11 real options.
Check out this feature comparison of 11 jQuery content sliders. Which do you prefer? Key factors include license, size, navigation capabilities, supported transitions, and other features. Although I'd like to consider how well the tool degrades (i.e. does it work without javascript), most do and it's quite a bit of work to verify. Similar issues exist with HTML compliance and support for browsers (few list compatibility). Some aren't true plugins and don't have a license beyond that of jQuery and other components like the commonly supported easing transitions plugin.
Want to automatically tweet your Google+ posts, blog posts or new RSS feed topics? Of Course!
The most popular choice for this is Twitterfeed. But many accustomed to using the popular Twitterfeed service are looking for alternatives due to problems with Twitterfeed. Several alternatives (PingVine, Rss2twitter, and HelloTXTfeed) have come and gone, but there are viable, currently free alternatives:
dlvr. it auto posts to Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and more, and provides statistics, too.
Google Feedburner (select Publicize, Socialize) provides several options for auto-tweeting from your RSS feed.
Proxifeed, currently in Beta, can select keywords from one or more feeds and provides statistics.
Twitterlive, also called BlogsFeed. net, is similar to Twitterfeed, can also post to Ping.fm, and can use bit.ly and other URL shorteners
Posted by: kguske on Tuesday, July 19, 2011 @ 12:00:14 CDT
Although I was an early adopter (I had an original color Palm phone - the Samsung SPH-i300 for 6 years before switching to a combination of Motorola Razr for personal use and Treo 650W for work), I resisted the masochistic urge to get an iPhone, was tempted by the Palm Pre, but waited patiently for the arrival of my now-beloved HTC Incredible (aka Verizon Droid Incredible). With about 80 additional apps (and counting), I frequently review new apps and consider developing new apps. The question arises: do I develop in Java using Google's Android SDK? (My Java skills were last used around the time I got the SPH-i300: 2001). Maybe...but what if there was a way to develop mobile apps for multiple platforms, say iPhone and Android, and maybe Blackberry, Symbian, WebOS (Palm) and Windows Mobile?
Actually, there are at least 3 - and, incredibly, they're FOSS (free, open source software):
As Google's Android overtakes a rotting Apple in the marketplace, the availability of quality applications continues to grow. Though I'm still evaluating apps for several purposes (e.g. 2 apps for file management, 2 apps for tethering my Droid Incredible, 2 FTP servers - not clients), it's simply, pardon the pun, Incredible what is already available. Check out AppBrain.com's combination of web-based app installation and Android-based app utility. As a bonus, AppBrain provides this nifty web accoutrement, which shows my Incredible Android apps:
While discussing my crash plan with my brother-in-law and fellow swamp geek, he asked if I'd ever seen his plug. Since that's too personal for him, I assumed he wasn't talking about a hair implant and asked him to explain.
He showed me what looked like an AC adapter with a USB port connected to an external hard drive and an Ethernet port connected to his network. "Yes," he confirmed, "that's a small computer called PogoPlug that creates a NAS drive out of an external hard drive." In other words, an instant file server.
Interesting, but even more interesting: it cost around $100 and uses much less energy that a spare desktop configured for the same purpose, and works with a service to provide access to the files over the Internet. Free software allows the PogoPlug to be mapped as network storage for Linux, OS/X and Windows computers and the iPhone / iPod Touch. Apparently, it had already saved the day for my nephew, who left his homework at home, but was able to retrieve it via PogoPlug.
I wanted to learn more about this personal cloud and plug computing... Read More...
Posted by: kguske on Sunday, December 27, 2009 @ 09:41:07 CST
http://www.gladinet.com – free software that lets you map SkyDrive, Picasaweb, Google Docs and other free and commercial cloud storage as a local drive
http://www.syncback.com – free software that synchronizes and backs up to local, virtual and FTP storage
On Sunday, my home backup drive failed. Unfortunately, it also included some free music I’d downloaded only to that drive. So I decided to review backup options because I definitely needed a new crash plan. Little did I know that what I needed IS CrashPlan…
You may have heard about a nasty virus (technically, it's a worm) that will strike infected Windows computers on April Fool's day. This April Fool's virus is also known as Conficker, Cornflicker, Downup, Downadup and Kido. Microsoft even offered a US$250,000 reward for the capture of the Conficker creator.
If you automatically update your Windows and anti-virus software, there is little chance that your computer is infected. However, there is a free, easy way to detect and remove it:
Download and run the free Conficker Removal Tool from http://www.enigmasoftware.com (there is a link to download the tool).
That's it! Be aware that when the tool is completed, it will take you to complete a survey on the Engima Software website (a sales pitch so you'll use Enigma's antivirus tool). You can complete the survey or simply close that browser / page.
i'mWATCH 
MetaWatch 