Tech

Someone buy me one of these. I promise I’ll become your friend.

These things look a little strange, but they’re actually flash drives. They come in 1 - 4GB models, and the smallest one retails at $80. Ouch! But, if anyone wants to be the king of nerd-chic, you have to get one. As for me, maybe Lacey will get me an R2 flash drive for Valentine’s Day.

[tags]star wars, mimoco[/tags]

DailyLit lets you read books a little at a time by email. It’s a great way to read a book, especially if you’re the kind of person that doesn’t usually read, or doesn’t have a lot of time.

Lacey and I have each been enjoying the service for a few weeks now. Every morning a new section of Treasure Island comes to my inbox. Lacey is enjoying reading Moby Dick. (I don’t know why, but seafaring seems to be a theme with us.)

Anyhow, go check the site out. Their books are older. I think they have to be out of copyright. This is actually a good thing, as it gives you a chance to read a classic novel, a little bit at a time.

[tags]DailyLit, Moby Dick, Treasure Island[/tags]

If I’ve ever had a conversation with someone about email, it involves me raving like a lunatic about how much I love my Gmail account. I’m sure some of my friends get tired of me labeling them heretics for not using it. Of course, once you use it any other webmail service becomes heresy.

Fortunately, I’m not the only one that thinks Gmail is great. In fact, Rob Pegoraro of the Washington Post agrees with me that Gmail is the best. He does this while comparing it directly to Yahoo! mail and Hotmail.

These are some of the things he says:

“Google’s Web-mail has the cleanest interface…”

“Gmail is smarter about organizing messages…”

“Gmail is also the most compatible service around…”

This is all true, but I have my own reasons for loving Gmail. Here are the 4 best ones:

The great things about Gmail in my opinion are:

1. Conversation view: It’s hard to explain without seeing it in action, but I’ll try. In Hotmail, if I write an email with the subject “Movie on Friday”, and send it to three friends, I’ll get 3 emails with subjects “Re: Movie on Friday”. If this conversation goes on a few days, I could have 10 emails sitting in my inbox labeled “Re: Re: Re: Movie on Friday”. That’s 10 separate emails I have to trudge through, and I never know if the friend who wrote email #8 is responding to email #1 or email #7. It’s really difficult to decipher. Fortunately, in Gmail those 10 emails with the subject “Movie on Friday” will only take up one line in my inbox. And when I click on it I can see every email at once. It makes reading emails much less confusing, and I have a better idea of what’s going on in the conversation.
2. Google Search: It’s too easy to lose an email. With Gmail you can perform a google search on your mail account. And you can use cool search phrases like from:, subject:, date:, etc. So, if I’m looking for the email I wrote Joe about the Nintendo Wii my search looks like: to:Joe Nintendo Wii. When I hit Search it’s the first email on the list. Nifty, huh?
3. Google Chat: On the left side of the screen is a little box that lists the contacts I talk to the most. If a contact is checking their mail at the same time I am, a little green dot lights up beside their name. I can now chat with that person like I’m using an instant messenger. Many times I haven’t had to write an email because the person I needed to write was online anyway. Instead of wasting time writing email I was able to chat instead.
4. No Annoying Advertising: One thing that I absolutely despise while checking my email is being distracted by ads. I was constantly being served Singles websites, weight loss programs, real estate bargains, and those annoying seizure-inducing ads that flash red and white text until you’re eyes cross and you pass out. Gmail does display ads, but they’re only little boxes of text that stay out of the way. They aren’t annoying.

Those are my favorite things about Gmail. For those of you that have it, congratulations. You’re a better person for it. For those that have it but don’t use it, make the switch. You won’t regret it. Finally, for those of you that would like to try it, leave a comment. I’ll send an invite to your email address. That’s right, Gmail is so cool you have to be invited to use it!

[tags]google, gmail, email[/tags]

I saw this plug-in and couldn’t resist.
Enjoy!

The obligatory link to the author.

We spent the whole day shopping in North Platte yesterday, and when we returned we were pleasantly surprised to see that we had 3 packages waiting at the post office. It being Christmas time and all, each one of us have been waiting for a variety of gifts, packages and cards. Each one of us had no less than 3 that could arrive at any time.
The packages were:

That’s right, they were all mine!
The reason I got these packages is because the laptop Lacey and I got for Christmas last year hadn’t always worked the best. The first thing I noticed about the laptop when I got it was all of the crap on the desktop. AOL, Earthlink, RealPlayer, MusicMatch, blah, blah, blah. I went on an exuberant, yet ill-advised, hack and slash campaign against all the software I didn’t want. I did manage to rid myself of the garbage…but I also assassinated some software that should have stayed. Furthermore, for reasons which may or may not have related to the previously mentioned campaign, the CD/DVD player stopped reading CDs. The whole time Lacey and I were in China we could not use CDs, had to put up with a finicky operating system, and could have had our laps blown off at any time!
Finally, after 11 months of using a crippled laptop I can get it to work properly. And this time I’ll be a little smarter.

[tags]dell, laptop, de-crapifier[/tags]

I change the way this blog looks about as often as I post on it. Honestly, making visual changes to it is part of the fun of having it. But I’ve never stopped to mention how I’ve done the things I do.
The thing that impresses me most about the software I use is not how good it is, though it is good, but how cheap it is. It’s free!
I created the above image with two free little web programs: the Gimp, and Inkscape.

1. The Gimp isn’t exactly a photoshop killer, but it’s close. It’s a little tricky to learn, but well worth the energy if you need a high powered photo editor.
2. Inkscape is great for working with text. And, it’s a bit more intuitive than the Gimp also. Lemmertorium was written in Inkscape first, before being transfered over to the above image.
3. The font for Lemmertorium is another freebie find. It’s called Seven Swordsmen, and from Blambot. Blambot specializes in fonts for Comic Books, and I always get giddy whenever I stop by there. (Giddy in a nerdy sort of way).

Oh, and the original image that started it all, is here:

Technorati Tags: inkscape, blambot, gimp

So to the right of this page is a rather large and hard-to-miss chat box. It’s linked into Meebo, one of my favorite websites, and my sole means of chatting and instant messaging. Anyone viewing this website can now write to me whenever I’m logged in to meebo, just type in the box and hit enter.

Pretty cool, huh?

[tags]meebo[/tags]

Gizmo – A free phone for your computer

Many of you have heard about Skype, and my parents and I have talked frequently using Google’s gTalk program. These services allow you to use your computer as a telephone, and can allow you to call someone’s landline phone.

The Gizmo project has just ended prices between China and the United States. So, any of you who download this program, and sign up to the service can call us here in China for free! Also, we are able to call you. I suggest poeple download this and sign up for it. And let me know if you do.

[tags]Gizmo, Gizmo Project[/tags]

The last post was written with two intentions in mind. A). to show everyone the crazy pictures we took that became stickers, and B). to snag myself a “Pro Account” from Zooomr.com.

Zooomr.com is an internet photo-sharing site (like flickr or yahoo! Photos) that is giving away free pro-accounts to anyone with a blog that will post one of their pictures on it. A pro account lets you upload 2 gb of photos a month, and you get unlimited storage.

I know my readership is small, and not especially tech-savvy, still some of you may be interested (I’m thinking Brian, Andy, or Kari especially). Also, if anyone is crazy enough to start a blog just to get this, I’ll help.

If interested, look for details here.

[tags]Zooomr[/tags]