Links to where I don't fail at updating

I realize I haven't really been posting here as I had planned, which is mainly because I obtained a job through Gadgetell for blogging. You can find all my work that I do there here:

http://gadgetell.com/tech/author/lordkertaz/

I'm also doing a lot of things at college between club activities and working on my double major. I'll try to update this more often, but for now you can see the links above, and the links below:

http://twitter.com/shawn_i
http://www.brighthub.com/members/lordkertaz.aspx

GUD magazine

So, for a while now I've been reading this literary magazine GUD (pronounced "good"). it turns out the third issue is coming up soon. You should check it out, the stuff the have is pretty awesome. They're holdinf a contest to promote the new issue you should check it out at this link.

Mac Apps article

Here's an article I wrote a while ago for my college newspaper. I'm posting it here mainly so I can put something up here at the moment.


It’s happened to everyone at least once, your on your Mac, trying to do something, when you come across an application that does what you want it to, just not exactly, or not as fully as you would like. Sure, Leopard’s Mail can store notes, Pages and Word can word process, and iChat can use AIM. But what about other things you might want to do with your files and information? Shareware developers feel your pain. I’ve downloaded and tried many, many different shareware apps, and I have found a few that other students would find useful.

I’ll start off with possibly the most popular and cheapest Mac application out there, Adium (adiumx.com). I have yet to meet another Mac user that doesn’t use Adium, or hasn’t tried it. Adium is a free messenger app, which allows you to use all of the major messenger services: AIM, Yahoo Instant Messenger, MSN, ICQ, Jabber, and even Google Talk. Even if you only use one or two of these, Adium is well worth the download. Adium allows you to view all your contacts and groups in one window, or to make your own windows from just certain groups. The biggest draw, though, is the interface. Adium is open source, meaning you can download Xtras (think Firefox extensions) that change anything about the look and feel of the app, from the icon, the the contact list, message window, and even smileys. For example, I currently have my Adium contact list sitting at the top left corner of the screen, with 80 percent transparency, with both Trillian and original MSN smileys in my clean green and blue chat window.

If you’re like me, iTunes is constantly open on your computer, playing through the entire music library. However, there are time when you are typing something, say a paper, or an article, and you don’t want to have to mouse down to iTunes to change the song. Coversutra (coversutra.com, 14.95€) helps with that problem. It adds universal hot-keys to your computer, that can do certain things with iTunes, change songs, pause, search tracks and playlists, and toggle shuffle and repeat on and off. It also puts a small jewel case anywhere on your screen that shows album artwork as well as the song title, artist and album name below the jewel case. There’s even a floating window that can appear with a hot-key showing everything you need to know about the song that’s playing.

A major problem I always have with any sort of word processing app is the lack of features. Most, such as Pages or Microsoft Word simply show a page and a toolbar on the top of the window. Scrivener (literatureandlatte.com, $35), solves this problem. With Scrivener, writing can be broken down to different component, such as each scene to it’s own section. Each of these can be put into separate folders which can be chapters, or acts depending on what you’re writing. This is a great organizing tool for creative writers, or even if your writing a paper, and want to separate each topic. Footnotes can be added to the document, and printed as such, saving a lot of time for people who need them. Other files, such as PDFs can also be added so all your research can be right there with you as you write. Perhaps the best feature, however, is fullscreen mode. As you can guess, fullscreen mode takes the entire screen, placing the text in a white rectangle at the center of the screen, blacking out both the right and left sides of the screen. It makes typing so much easier, especially when you enable the typewriter mode, putting the text you are editing at the middle of the screen so you can see what comes before and after, and also so your eyes don’t have to focus on the bottom of the screen.

These are only a few of the apps I use nearly everyday. Some other, however won’t be useful to everyone, or only to some people. These ones do cost some money, though the support and the time put into the app more than make up for the cost. The costs can seem like a lot of money, until you use the apps, and wonder how you ever went by without them.

[Quick Post] Wired's iPod touch Moleskine

I found an interesting article over at Wired on how modding a Moleskine into an eBook reader [link]. The process requires an iPod touch with jailbreak, making a hole inside the Moleskine to hide the iPod touch, and, of course, eBooks. I've been half-lusting over the Amazon Kindle since it's release. While this has an overall cost of slightly less than an Amazon Kindle, it has just over half the screen size. It might not be as simple to get the books, or as easy to read as the Kindle, but I imagine it being infinitely more useful. An iPod touch (even without jailbreak) can play music and video, as well as surf the internet over WiFi, all without sacrificing anything. This might even be made easier later by the App Store that will be added to iPhones and iPod touches soon.

Subnotebook obsession

It seems like nearly everyone wants to get into the small-laptop market lately. Since October of last year when the Asus Eee Pc was released a lot of competitive, ultra small notebooks came to light. The size of these laptops seem to center around a screen of about 8.9", though there are also those with screens of 13.3" (those are about the size of a small laptop, just incredibly thin and light).

The newest two entries seem to be the upcoming Dell E, and the Voodoo Envy 133 (pictured above from Tech Specs PDF). The main concept of these, as well as all the others is simple: portability. All of these devices are aimed to be something between a smart-phone and a laptop, a second laptop if you will. None of them are exceptionally fast, and most completely forgo the idea of having a disc drive in order to save space and battery life.

Personally, I think it's great that all these companies are getting into the small market. Granted, I'm a Mac user at heart, and only use Windows for gaming, but I like to see many companies trying to outdo one another in niche markets. It means the Intel Atom processor (the "next-gen" laptop processor, it's supposedly quite fast while using minimal energy) and other tech will have a reason to get better, and cheaper. I wouldn't be surprised if in a few years one of these things will sell for less than an iPod or iPhone does now. Plus, the Linux option is always cheapest.

The reasons I'm so enamored with these laptops are the same reasons they seem to have been created. I love the idea of a lightweight computer that can do simple word processing and internet access while in a hot spot, as well as other simple functions like video playback. Most have Solid State Drives (flash memory, like the one in flash or "thumb" drives), which makes the data secure if it's dropped, and it's fast to boot because there are no moving parts.

These things can have several uses for almost anyone. They could provide a quick means of checking email if don't have a smart-phone and are in a hot spot. They could play videos while on a flight. Students could use them for taking notes during class (or browsing Facebook during class, which is more likely for a lot of them). I personally think it would be great for writers to start writing whenever the inspiration has them (if they prefer typing to pen and paper, that is). It's great for bloggers if they like to blog about stuff right when they see it, or if they are live-blogging something (say, a keynote speech). Or, there's always the chance for a journalist to quickly get a story out from the scene, or possibly record some audio/video for the story with built-in microphone and webcam (however, they will probably be of somewhat poor quality).

I can only imagine showing up to class and taking notes on such a small laptop that won't get in anyone's way. Or perhaps, showing up to a gaming session with the PDF versions of the rulebooks on an Eee PC or similar, instead of a 15.4" or 17" Mac/Dell/Toshiba/etc., allowing for easy reference and little barrier between people. Or, perhaps, I am simply too much of a nerd and want to get my hands on every cool, somewhat useful piece of tech I can see.

Join me on Download Day!

A few weeks ago, Mozilla announced their plan to set a Guinness World Record for most software downloads in a single day. The software is none other than Mozilla's excellent web browser, Firefox 3. The date of Download Day (as Mozilla is calling it) has finally been set as June 17th, this coming Tuesday.

Along with the announcement came a new version of Firefox 3, Release Candidate 3, which fixed a bug for Macs. I've been checking out Firefox 3 since the Gran Paradiso alpha, though I haven't really started using it too much since beta 3. When beta 4 and 5 launched, I had switched from my native Safari over to Firefox 3. I never really liked Firefox on a Mac before, but I just can't resist it now, though it will take a bit more getting used to.

Firefox 3, aside from the obvious number increase, holds a lot of new stuff that should make everyone at least consider using it if they hadn't already. For me, one huge difference is the new look. The back button is not larger than the forward button, making it much easier to click, as well as making navigation toolbar look less bland. The look of Firefox 3 has also been upgraded. Whether you use XP, Vista, Linux, or Mac OS X, Firefox will look more unified with the rest of your OS.

Aside from the graphical differences, Firefox 3 also has a better URL bar, that learns as you use it. In Safari, I could start typing a URL into the URL bar, and it would complete it for me. In Firefox 3, I could type anything from the URL, or the page's name, and it will detect that. For example, I could type in "du" and the drop-down box will first recommend DuelingAnalogs.com, or the second option will be the D&D website. It's almost like using Quicksilver or Launchy to surf the web.

The URL bar also features a little star on the right-most end of it. This is used to easy bookmarks. Find a site you wanna read, but don't have time? Just star the page, and be done with it until you want to check it later. If you want to get really fancy, you can use the star button to bring up a small window that allows you to sort the bookmark, and even apply tags to it. Though I have yet to use it, bookmarks can be sorted or searched for by the tags you give them, adding more use for the smart URL bar. Also, say you deleted a bookmark that you wanted to visit again, but forgot the address. Firefox 3 automatically backs up your bookmarks, so you can restore them to a previous state, so you can find that page again.

Other features that should help you decide to download Firefox 3 include: improved malware/phishing detection, a smart folder that tells you what sites you visit most, better performance (less taxing on computer's resources), improved downloads manager, less intrusive "remember password" handling (shows in small toolbar at top of page, as in Safari), and it already works with most extensions, while rendering some other obsolete.

Start with Apple stuff

Okay. I'm fairly new to blogging in general, so bear with me if I forget to update for a while... Yeah, I'm sure that's a great line to start out with.

Anyway, I'm going to use this blog for my thoughts on random things that I see or hear about. Things ranging from music, to movies, to video games, role-playing games and just tech in general. I know it's a pretty broad range of things, but whatever. it's my blog, and I'll run it how I wanna.

So, the first thing that I wanna talk about is Today's (or yesterday's, rather, by the time this gets up) Steve Jobs keynote at World Wide Developers Conference. If you've heard anything about the new 3G iPhone, then you know at least a bit about it. Apparently news about the iPhone travels fast.

However, what really got me excited was the apps that were shown that are being developed for the iPhone. The first one that made me actually say to my computer screen while watching it was the Associated Press. The app will allow you to view stories in any category or market. What's really amazing to me, though, is the idea that it will find your current location, and give you local news stories from the area. Now, it's no real secret that I think local news is quite boring most of the time, but I think that's a pretty cool idea. Imagine driving cross-country and being able to find stories from about the area your hotel is in without having to search for it, that's pretty nifty. It also has a feature to submit a photo, or news tip straight to AP, which is cool to journalists like myself (note: I am a journalism major, not just a simple "citizen journalist").

Moving away from the iPhone (I'm sure it gets plenty of press elsewhere, and I don't wanna bore you with my fanboy-ish ranting for a device I cannot afford, even with an extremely lowered price), Jobs also announced the rumored revamping of .Mac. As a .Mac subscriber, it intrigued me especially. I've taken to recently adding things I need to do (class deadlines and such) to my Google Calendar simply because it was viewable on any computer. Now, that's not necessary. With the new MobileMe, I can use iCal, and view it on the web on any computer I need to. It will be especially helpful at school, when I work on so many computers in classrooms and whatnot. It'll also make it easier to share anything with anybody, be it a document, or a photo album.

I can't wait for MobileMe to be released so I can actually get something useful out of my .Mac. I also await the day I can actually afford to have an iPhone, even with lower price, I can't really afford my own cell phone plan.