I tasted a new iPad at lunch. Holy smokes, that display. Imagine, 60 ppi aside, surfing on a tablet that looks like the iPhone 4/4S. Stunning. Didn’t even see a game that was native to 2048×1536. That’ll be amazing as well. Have fun new iPad getters today!
I’ve been using the free version of Sparrow on the Mac for a few months now. Why? Well, I was turned on to Postbox, a pay-for-a-free-email-client-based-on-Thunderbird by a friend of mine at Wayne State University a few years back. I liked it quite a bit because it offered features that weren’t part of Thunderbird and didn’t seem to be part of their roadmap. Since then, Thunderbird added the whole unified inbox, as the queues were taken from smartphones with their unified inboxes. Thank you RIM. Yes, RIM, not Apple nor Google)!
Well, Sparrow takes the whole e-mail client that should be free (those that come with your OS or Thunderbird) and makes it a bit like Twitter. Quick and to-the-point. No frills. It’s very slick.
Now, Sparrow is on the verge (no pun intended) on releasing (if approved) an iOS app to make e-mail much simpler. Dom Leca of Sparrow talks about it here, in this article. He mentions some of his ideas and also talks about what Google did wrong with their GMail app. Me, I find the GMail app pretty weak. It’s nothing more than a wrapper to a browser-based GMail client. I never thought it was very sophisticated nor did it gave me any reason to use it over the native mail client on my iPhone 4S. Also, if the search in the mail client is adequate, I never use the GMail app. I simply go to GMail in Safari or Atomic.
I was reading some of my tech sites this morning when I noticed an article that discussed the computer science eduacation we give our youth.
I remember, way back in 1982/83, when math was boring to me (I finished our assignments rather quickly), and my 3rd grade teacher, Mrs. Luther, was searching for something to keep me busy. She handed me a book on BASIC programming to use on the Commodore PET computers we had in the media center. I think we had the models 4016 and 4032.
A few weeks before this, or maybe the year prior, we were introduced to the PET computers and turtle tracks. Turtle tracks was a simple LOGO-L-based programming language. It taught us logic and directions at a very early age.
I remember using it in this fashion:
FORWARD 100 LEFT 90 FORWARD 100 LEFT 90 FORWARD 100 LEFT 90 FORWARD 100 LEFT 90
Not only did we have a VERY EARLY lesson on programming in the 2nd or 3rd grade (and onwards), but computers were in a pioneering state and a fairly decent part of our education, for those times. We had exposure about once a week, and this raised interest in some households. I wouldn’t say a large percentage of homes had computers in 1982 or 1983, but I’d make a guess that about 15-20% of the homes had one. Those who had them were relegated to playing games on them, and a small percentage of them were using them to do things like “socially network” on bulletin board systems.
If you go back in time and investigate what these systems were, you could easily determine they were VERY EARLY social networks. Online services like CompuServe, Prodigy, and AOL expanded on the BBS, and became the definite precursor to social networks of today, like: MySpace, Facebook, and Orkut.
Let’s wrap this up. I’m a proponent of making computer science, even elementary programming (coding) education mandatory. It will teach our youth, our leaders of tomorrow, our future champions of industry, that computers aren’t meant for just hanging out on Facebook, Google+, and playing games. It could actually help to bridge the gap between playing and using a computer.
Should Kids Learn to Code was the original article that led me to Andy Young’s article.
I ran across this great 3 page article at Tom’s Hardware. It goes into adding an SSD to an aged laptop that is still plenty healthy for most of today’s computing tasks…especially home computing tasks.
One of the biggest bottlenecks we face in our daily “computer lifing” is that of mechanical drives and their slow transfer rates. Why not add an SSD to spruce things up? Normally, adding an SSD to a laptop reduces its use-cases because we taken hard drive sizes like 320GB or 500GB and smush them down to 60-120GB. Well, we NEVER use our optical drives, so why not use that space for our original mechanical drive and make the main drive our shiny new SSD?
If I were considering updating an older laptop with an optical drive in a caddy (like most Dells I’ve seen), I’d highly consider this approach.
A friend of mine kept asking me how the heck to remove or hide notifications from people who they’re friends with who play lots of Facebook games. I was stumped but also didn’t do much research aside from trial and error within Facebook’s notification settings. No luck. When I Googled it this morning, it led me to a post (will fill in URL later) that showed how do it.
To do it, you go to your notifications page and click the “x” all the way to the right of the notification. From there you edit that app’s settings (even though you don’t even have that app) and choose “Never” for how it notifies you.
Here is the two step process on how to do this:
After the US Government shut down MegaUpload.com, Anonymous took to the interwebz to pay back those responsible.
Here is a post they made that is up at PasteBin.com. I took a copy of it in case pastebin.com has to take it down. I’ve blocked out the names of Chris Dodd’s children, but it is there.
Twitter – @AnonymousWiki
January 19th, 2012
Popular file-sharing website megaupload.com gets shutdown by U.S Justice – FBI and charged its founder with violating piracy laws. Four Megaupload members were also arrested. The FBI released a press release on its website which you can view here:
http://www.fbi.gov/news/pressrel/press-releases/justice-department-charges-leaders-of-megaupload-with-widespread-online-copyright-infringement
We Anonymous are launching our largest attack ever on government and music industry sites. Lulz. The FBI didn’t think they would get away with this did they? They should have expected us.
#OpMegaupload
The following sites were taken down in response to the FBI shutting down megaupload.com
:) TANGO DOWN
justice.gov
universalmusic.com
riaa.org
mpaa.org
copyright.gov
hadopi.fr
wmg.com
usdoj.gov
bmi.com
fbi.gov
Anti-piracy.be/nl/
ChrisDodd.com
Vivendi.fr
Whitehouse.gov
DOX of MPAA CEO Chris Dodd (original: http://pastebin.com/mvLYNdWB)
Name: Christopher John Dodd, Jr.
Birthdate: May 27, 1944
Age: 67
Religion: Roman Catholic
Party Affiliation: Democratic Party
High School: Georgetown Preparatory School, Bethesda, MD
University: BA English Literature, Providence College (1966)
Law School: JD, University of Louisville School of Law (1972)
Occupations: US Senator, Connecticut (1981-2011), US Congressman, Connecticut 2nd (1975-80)
Current Position: Motion Picture Association of America Chairman & CEO (2011-Present)
Wife: Jackie Marie Clegg Dodd
Age: 49
Religion: Mormon
High School: Orem High School, Orem, UT
University: BA Communications and Political Science, Southern Utah State College (1987)
University: MA National Security Studies, Georgetown University
Occupation: Clegg International Consultants LLC Managing Partner (2001-Present)
Children: (10), (8)
Address 1:
8 7th Street Northeast, Washington, DC 20002-6022
Phone Number: (202) 548-6040
Property Value: $997,000 [http://bit.ly/A7wfpb]
Address 2:
53 Main Street, East Haddam, CT 06423-1305
Property Value: $453,400 [http://bit.ly/ynBXN0]
Motion Picture Association of America Corporate Offices:
Washington, D.C.
1600 Eye St., NW
Washington, D.C. 20006
Phone: (202) 293-1966
Fax: (202) 296-7410
Los Angeles
15301 Ventura Blvd., Building E
Sherman Oaks, CA 91403
Phone: (818) 995-6600
Fax: (818) 285-4403
New York
200 White Plains Road 1st Floor
Tarrytown, NY 10591
Phone: (914) 333-8892
Fax: (914) 333-7541
Chicago
1010 Lake St.
Suite 422
Oak Park, IL 60301
708-660-0481
Phone: (708) 660-0481
Fax:(708) 660-0484
Dallas
1425 Greenway Dr.
Suite 270
Irving, TX 75038
Phone: (972) 756-9078
Fax: (972) 756-9402
Sao Paulo, Brazil
Rua Jerônimo da Veiga, 45, Conj 121/122, 12º Floor
Jardim Europa, São Paulo, S.P
04536-000, Brazil
Phone: 011-55-11-3667-2080
Website: www.mpaal.org.br
Brussels, Belgium
Motion Picture Association
Brussels office
Avenue des Arts 46 box 8
B – 1000 Brussels
Phone: +32 2 778 27 11
Fax: +32 2 778 27 00/+32 2 778 27 50
Mexico City, Mexico
Lafontaine #42
Chapultepec Polanco
Mexico, 11560 DF
Phone: 011-5255 5280 6878/5281 6090
Singapore
#04-07 Central Mall
No. 1 Magazine Road
Singapore 059567
Phone: +65 6253 1033
Phone: +65 6255 1838
Website: www.mpa-i.org
Toronto, Canada
55 St. Clair Avenue, West
Suite 210
Toronto, ON M4V 2Y7
Phone: (416) 961-1888
Phone: (416) 968-1016
Website: www.mpa-canada.org
MPAA Email: ContactUs@mpaa.org
Other Contact Info:
Website: http://chrisdodd.com
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/SenChrisDodd
Twitter: http://twitter.com/SenChrisDodd
YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/user/SenChrisDodd
Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/SenChrisDodd
Miscellanous: http://www.peekyou.com/chris_dodd/229085828
We are Anonymous.
We are Legion.
We do not Forgive.
We do not Forget.
Expect Us.
@AnonymousWiki
So, on my way into work today, I was thinking, “Why isn’t there a desktop integration for Google Docs in the same way there is one for Dropbox?”
All it took was a 93ms search and the result was Insync! Not only is Insync the solution I was looking for: A desktop folder that is synced with Google Docs, but it can do this with multiple Google Accounts!
Taken from their site, here is some info about Insync:
Why should I use Insync over Dropbox?
- Way cheaper storage — Google charges $0.25 per GB/year and Dropbox charges $2.00 per GB/year. That’s 8x difference. Plus you can get 20GB for $5/year.
- Extensive sharing features…
- read/write + read-only sharing permissions
- nested sharing
- share recipients are not charged against their storage quota
- re-sharing permissions
- individual file sharing
- Multiple Google account support (personal, work, school, org, etc.)
- You can use Google Docs web to edit docs online
Insync is 100% free. How do you make money?
We plan on making money via premium features. Example: secure remote wipe of local GDocs.
What does “Perform these operations when I’m not using the application” mean?
It just means that if you are offline, Insync still has access to your GDocs to perform operations. It doesn’t mean Insync has forever access. By the way, you can revoke access to Insync at any time using your Google accounts page.
Why does Insync need access to my Google contacts?
We use your contacts to faciliate auto-completion when you are sharing.
What’s Insync’s favorite song?
That’s a no brainer.
Don’t let Congress censor the internet. A number of sites are “going dark” today to protest.
Watch this for more information:
PROTECT IP / SOPA Breaks The Internet from Fight for the Future on Vimeo.
More information is here: SOPA Strike.
Could I have finally found the solution to my problem that has been plaguing me ever since I started messing around with MKV files? It seems that traversing around my filesystem, in folders that have an abundance of MKV files, my explorer.exe would crash, at least 66% of the time. I’ve tried disabling thumbnails for certain folders, and all folders. NO LUCK. I’ve tried installing the K-Lite Codec Pack that others have mentioned would fix this problem. NO LUCK. Today, I stumbled upon ShellExView, after someone mentioned that the DivX Thumbnail Provider was the culprit.
First attempt at opening one of my MKV folders was a success. Let’s hope this persists. Thanks NirSoft!