I’m very proud to announce the launch of FavePersonal; a WordPress theme designed for personal websites. I have been using (and building and…
Fellow Colorado web geeks, I made you a t-shirt. The code that comprises the white stripe is a full, working HTML page with canvas code that draws…
It’s been very interesting to me to see how some folks are re-evaluating their work/life balance in the wake of reading Isaacson’s Steve…
There are two essential steps for productive bookmarking. Remember to bookmark the site/page before you leave it. Remember to look in your bookmarks next time you want to find it. Failure to follow either of these, and you have a failed system. It’s a commitment.
I don’t get this commercial. Regardless of service quality/speed/etc., the way it’s presented doesn’t make sense. Wouldn’t it be more effective if the rest of the group (all using AT&T) got the email quickly, then one remaining person got the email later? Isn’t the incentive to avoid being left out? Getting the email first and…
I registered for SxSW (Interactive) last fall to get the early bird pricing. Fortunately, Shane’s panel was selected and now I have a comp’ed pass for the event. If anyone would like to buy my Interactive pass, I’m happy to let it go for the price I paid ($450) rather than the $675 that it…
I guess this is a pet peeve of mine, but why don’t any of the major browsers open a requested URL in the frontmost tab if that tab is empty (about:blank)? Camino got this right years ago, but Firefox, Safari and Chrome still open up a new tab next to the empty one. I can’t…
Corey mentioned it on Twitter a few weeks back: @alexkingorg it’s the whole concept of new vs unread. I knew to open mail for new mail. Unread is a meaningless number. BlackBerry, Android and Palm all have a notification system that allows the user to know when new email has arrived. The notification remains present…
A little background: I spent the last few months with a Droid 2, just switched back to a BlackBerry and I expect to have an iPhone again pretty soon (currently sporting an iPod touch).1 My experiences across each of the platforms has shown me the strengths of each. Or put another way, it’s made it…
In the last 5 years I’ve spent time on all 4 of the major US carriers here in Denver.1 During that time I’ve also done some traveling while carrying phones on multiple networks. If there’s one thing that I’ve learned, it’s that mobile coverage is a very dependent on location. In Denver you can’t connect…
The Perception iPhone apps are beautiful and exhibit consistent user interface conventions while Android apps are functional, but lack elegance, polish and consistency. The Truth iPhone apps are beautiful and exhibit consistent user interface conventions while Android apps are functional, but lack elegance, polish and consistency. The false promise of Android is that any day…
Are Twitter or other social networking sites suddenly being blocked by OpenDNS on your network? If you administer your own network and you run into a situation like this (like I did last night on my home network) it’s likely this is the cause. Most ISP’s will give you a dynamic IP address. This means…
Apple’s iOS devices are treating files like historical artifacts that users should be protected from while popularity surges for Dropbox’s file sync service. Discuss…
I had delayed migrating from Delicious to Pinboard I couldn’t find anything that conclusively said that the private status of a bookmark would be maintained in the transition. So I finally got around to testing it, it worked. Nice! The entire export/import process took about a minute. Misc. credential changes, utility migration and/or changing the…
I’ve been meaning to get some headphones to keep at the office for a while. About a month ago I started doing some research, inspired by Amazon’s Black Friday deals and watching Jason Fried’s TEDx talk about interruptions. Here is what I’ve gleaned so far. There are three basic kinds of headphone designs that are…
The good news is my ReadyNAS is letting me know that there is a potential problem. The bad news is that these drives were purchased and installed in the ReadyNAS just a few short months ago. Better safe than sorry… I’ve ordered 2 matching replacement drives to have on hand for the inevitabile failure.
This is one of those situations where it’s no fun to be right. Please get smart about passwords, there are lots of tools out there to help.
I think it’s likely that Gmail’s priority inbox feature is providing Google with some of its most valuable data to date. Users are explicitly telling Google what things are and are not important to them. I’m on the fence about the results of this. Are more contextual ads better for me as a consumer? Probably.…
Is it possible that the big bezel on the MacBook Air displays is there for structural reasons? Perhaps the lid is so thin that the additional rigidity is necessary?
If you’re trying to sniff the Samsung Galaxy Tab, here is the current User Agent string1: Mozilla/5.0 (Linux; U; Android 2.2; en-us; SCH-I800 Build/FROYO) AppleWebKit/533.1 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0 Mobile Safari/533.1 It looks like SCH-I800 may be the best thing to look for. Would it have killed them to add “Android Tablet (7 inch)” in…
I’ve switched back to the Droid 2 and plan to return my Droid Pro. I like the Droid Pro form factor better1, but even though it has the same model battery and I’ve triple checked that my settings are the same as the Droid 2, I get 2 real days of battery on the Droid…
I have been waiting for a few years for someone to create an Android device in a candybar format with a keyboard on the bottom. I ordered the Droid Pro the first day it was available and used it for the last 2 days, switching from the Droid 2. Here are some initial impressions. Overall,…
Inspired by Corey, here are a few thoughts on the 11″ MacBook Air. This is my third Air. I previously had the first generation (SSD) and the second generation (also SSD) 13″ models. The size is really amazing. Perhaps more amazing, the machine doesn’t feel fundamentally compromised. The 11″ is a very capable replacement for…
I’ve used mobile devices for over a dozen years. The input mechanisms of these devices have ranged from handwriting recognition and Graffiti with a stylus, to a portrait and landscape oriented physical keyboards, slider keyboards and virtual keyboards. Over that time I’ve gained an affinity for hardware keyboards over virtual keyboards, and portrait keyboards over…
I was curious about how the 11″ MacBook Air compared with the 13″ Air and the iPad. Turns out, it’s an interesting fit right in the middle. See below and the Flickr gallery for some comparison shots. A few additional thoughts: Using it feels like a MacBook, not the usable-but-cramped/can’t-wait-to-get-back-to-a-real-laptop experience I have with my…
For everyone who believes their entire website has to be “above the fold”, here’s the thing: people know how to scroll a web page. Don’t believe me? Believe Apple.
Set the Droid 2 to “Maximum battery saver”. Leaving WiFi, Bluetooth and 3G on I still had 60% battery left at 11:45pm.
Input methods and devices are very personal things. Most folks I know are pretty particular about their keyboard, mouse (or trackpad), desk set-up, etc. It makes sense. You spend a lot of time with these tools and you want them to fit you and the way you work. Mobile devices are no different in this…