JC - Technology and Stuff

Well we’re at the end of what’s turned out to be a very busy 2008. I thought ‘d use the last day of the year to publish the posts from my blog that have proven to be the most popular, just in case you missed any of them.

Top Ten

1. Google Reader Part Three - 1835 hits
2. T-Mobile G1 - Hints & Tips - 734 hits
3. Google Chrome First Impressions - 636 hits
4. T-Mobile @Home - an article about the @Home phone router that allows you to replace your landline - 490 hits
5. Throwaway Ideas - ShamWow, diapers and obituary sites! - 466 hits
6. Microsoft Outlook - Useful Links - 333 hits
7. Windows Home Server Install - Part Two - 310 hits
8. Toodledo - A Getting Things Done (GTD) task processor - 302 hits
9. My Favorite T-Mobile G1 Applications - 237 hits
10. T-Mobile G1 - First Impressions - 224 hits

So there you have it. The blog has been running since July 13th - not quite 6 months - and it’s been an enjoyable experience so far.

I’m sure 2009 will have equally as many exciting experiences to write about and I look forward to discussing more of my life as an ex-techno geek, trying to survive today’s plethora of new gadgets.

Have a great New Year and I’ll catch up with you all again soon.

One of the applications that I use that sits quietly in the background and does its stuff is StatCounter. The StatCounter site allows you to set up counters for all your websites and then silently monitors all the activity to them. I primarily use it with WordPress to monitor my blog. I will give you one caveat though before I praise the product in general. At present it doesn’t hook up / sync up 100% with WordPress and so doesn’t capture all visits to my blog. What I mean by that is that it seems there are more page reads to my blog than those captured by StatCounter. How do I know this? Well I use the WordPress plugin called CyStats too. CyStats is purpose built for WordPress but doesn’t have a lot of the ‘frilly’ features that StatCounter has. Nonetheless, CyStats does record every visit to my blog, from both page views and feed views. Hmmm. I’m thinking there’s some room for improvement in two products here!

Anyway, this post is about StatCounter and I don’t want to detract too much from its excellent functionality. I also use it on one of my other sites PaulDorset.com (my author website) and for that site it works brilliantly. So, what does it do? Well it’s pretty self-explanatory really. StatCounter simply records every piece of information it can about every hit to your webpage or website. Then it allows you to view all that information in a number of different ways.

The main display screen shows you in graphical format just how many people have been cruising your site. You can configure the graph in a number of ways and show information by day, week, month, or year. It’s nice to see visually who’s dropping by for a visit.

Another feature I really like is the ability to view visitors on a map of the world. You can zoom in, click on individual entries, and do lots of interesting things. You can even zoom in to a street level address and see how often your neighbors are reading your blog!

Need to see your information in text format? No problem. StatCounter can also do that for you very well too. I even found out that one of my readers was using their T-Mobile G1 phone to read hints and tips on the G1 from my blog! It’s a funny old world.

If you’re interested in seeing some of the other types of information that are available to you then you can read the entries on screen capture opposite. As you can see, the options are very extensive.

Of course the alternatives for creating the actual display of the counter to show on your webpage are also very comprehensive. You can create all sorts of counter types and choose how to display them on your page (or not). You just embed a small piece of code and it’s done.

So, if you’re currently using a simple page counter on your page, or maybe not using one at all, I would definitely recommend a switch to StatCounter. You don’t know what you’re missing when you don’t have something!

Looking back through some of my older posts I realized I have never spoken about the anti-virus system that I use. Today’s my chance to correct that omission!

Over the years I have tried and used about every virus program there is on the market. And my conclusion is that - guess what - they all are about equal and do the job well. Some are slightly better than others at scaremongering you, and some cost a little more than others to keep renewing. Some even come with firewalls and other free goodies. But all in all, a good anti-virus program is just that. So when my current Norton anti-virus subscription ran out earlier this year I decided enough was enough. I was done paying for my virus protection.

I hunted around on the Internet and I found several contenders in the ‘free’ marketplace. One product, AVG Anti-Virus had millions of users, had several good reviews and even did well in head to head comparisons with the ‘pros’. I decided to give it a try. Guess what? It just works. That’s my litmus test. Any product that ‘just works’ is exactly what I want. I don’t need to be constantly checking my system for updates or reconfiguring my software. I want things that just work away in the background as advertised. AVG Anti-Virus is one of those products.

As you can see from the screen shot, AVG comes complete with a virus scanner (which is fully configurable and can be scheduled to run whenever it suits you), anti-spyware, email scanner, and an update manager that keeps everything fully updated. What more could you want?

I decided it was time to update my list of favorite T-Mobile G1 applications as I’ve now been using my G1 phone for a couple of months. My previous list is here.

People stop me now and again to ask what I like about my phone and what makes it different from other phones. I usually only have to show them two applications:

• ShopSavvy - scans barcodes using the G1 camera and looks them up on its internal database to give best prices and shopping availability
• Bubble - turns your phone into a three way bubble or spirit level. Simple, elegant, and very useful!

Of course apart from that the phone does all the usual phone, text and email stuff. One application that I seem to use all the time though is Twidroid - a Twitter application. This just works and keeps me updated with all the latest tweets from friends.

In my last post I said I used College Football Live. I have now replaced that application with a new one released by Google - Scoreboard. This application keeps you updated on a whole range of different sports scores and if you’re interested you can read some more about it here and here. The second article lists a few easter eggs!

Lastly I want to add one useful system application to the list. Power Manager shows you every status you want on a single screen and you can tweak the settings to suit you.

So, if you’re looking for something useful to load, I’ve given you a start…

Well I just added a new WordPress Plugin to my blog - Twitter Tools. Now everything I post on Twitter becomes a blog entry and everything I post on my blog becomes a Twitter entry. Neat!!

This also means that everything I post either on my blog or on Twitter now appears on Facebook, LinkedIn and Retaggr. The cross-posting opportunities are endless here. I just hope it doesn’t get all confused and end up cross posting forever in an endless loop! We’ll have to wait and see.

Don’t you just love modern technology when it works with you and not against you?

Later…

I thought I’d end my small series on Google reader with a list of the feeds I subscribe to. Hopefully you will find one or two new ones that you like…

Geeky:
Cool Tools - http://feeds.feedburner.com/CoolTools
Lifehacker - http://lifehacker.com/index.xml

Google Related:
Gmail Blog - http://feeds.feedburner.com/OfficialGmailBlog
Google Blogoscoped - http://blog.outer-court.com/rss.xml
Google Sightseeing - http://googlesightseeing.com/feed/
Official Google Blog - http://googleblog.blogspot.com/atom.xml
Official Google Reader Blog - http://googlereader.blogspot.com/atom.xml

Technology:
Android Phone Fans - http://phandroid.com/feed/
Android Community - http://feeds.feedburner.com/AndroidCommunity
ReadWriteWeb - http://feeds.feedburner.com/readwriteweb
CNN.com - Technology - http://rss.cnn.com/rss/cnn_tech.rss
Techmeme - http://www.techmeme.com/index.xml
Wired: Top Stories - http://feeds.wired.com/wired/topheadlines
TinyApps - http://tinyapps.org/weblog/index.rss20
TmoNews - http://feeds.feedburner.com/Tmonews
Newegg.com RSS Feed - Daily Deals - http://www.newegg.com/Product/RSS.aspx?Submit=RSSDailyDeals
Official TigerDirect.com RSS Feed - http://feeds.feedburner.com/Tigerdirectcom
Engadget - http://www.engadget.com/rss.xml
TechCrunch - http://feeds.feedburner.com/Techcrunch
Zoho Blogs - http://blogs.zoho.com/feed/

WorkLifeStyle:
fivecentnickel.com - http://feeds.feedburner.com/fivecentnickel
Lazy Man and Money - http://feedproxy.google.com/LazyManAndMoney
The Simple Dollar - http://feedproxy.google.com/thesimpledollar
43 Folders - http://www.43folders.com/rss.xml
Unclutterer - http://unclutterer.com/feed/
The Big Picture - http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/index.xml

Social Network:
Windows Live news and interviews - http://feeds.feedburner.com/liveside
Retaggr - http://blog.retaggr.com/?feed=rss2
Web Worker Daily - http://webworkerdaily.com/feed/
All Facebook - http://feeds.feedburner.com/allfacebook

Shopping:
Amazon.com Gold Box Deals - http://rssfeeds.s3.amazonaws.com/goldbox

Comics:
Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal - http://www.smbc-comics.com/rss.php
xkcd.com - http://xkcd.com/rss.xml
QC RSS - http://www.questionablecontent.net/QCRSS.xml

Previous articles on Google Reader appear here and here.

In my last post I wrote about the usefulness of Google Reader and how to manage some of the basics. In this post I want to continue with that theme and write about some of the other features it has.

Keep Unread - Sometimes you just don’t have quite the time to read an article that you thought, but you don’t want to star it and come back to it when you process starred items. All you want to do is to make sure that when you are next in Google Reader that it starts off where you left off. That’s where the ‘keep unread’ feature comes in handy. Simply check the box and the article will remain ‘unread’ until you next load that feed.

Search - How often did you know you read something but can’t find it again? Well the ’search’ feature in Google Reader has to be one the best things ever. Simply type in a few keywords into the search box and Google Reader will find every old article that contains those keywords. And it’s quick. And it’s accurate. It just works…

List View - Don’t want to see all the content of articles, but just want to see the headers and scroll through them? Then switch from ‘expanded view’ to ‘list view’. Then simply click on the article you want to read and it will switch to ‘expanded view’ for that article.

Trends - I like all the trending statistics that are available on Google Reader. You can discover things like ‘how many posts does a particular feed make each day?’; ‘what’s the percentage of posts I read from a particular feed?’; ‘which feeds do I read the most?’; ‘what days of the week do I read the most posts?’; ‘what days of the week are the most posts made?’; and lots more besides. Give it a try.

There are also tools to set up subscriptions to feeds, re-order your feeds, create ‘folders’ to group feeds, unsubscribe to feeds, and all the rest of those management tasks you’re going to need.

All in all, Google Reader is an extremely comprehensive and mature RSS feed reader and I would wholeheartedly recommend it to anyone considering managing the Internet articles they read on a daily basis. Quite simply, I have one place I can go to now and get all the information I want on all the topics that interest me. It’s taken me about a year to get the feed set to exactly what I want through trial and error, but now it saves me a ton of time and keeps me totally up to date. It’s also available as a mobile feed so you can read it on your phone if you’re that kind of a news junkie!

In my next article I’ll give you a round up of the actual feeds I subscribe to - just in case you’re interested…

It used to be that I read the newspaper every day. It used to be that I read computer magazines like they were going out of fashion. Times have changed. I no longer have a 6 foot high pile of PC magazines by my bed (I do actually have a 3 foot pile of Wired, Smithsonian and National Geographic magazines though). Instead, the majority of my reading is now done online. And I say reading online and I mean it. I don’t just mean I read the odd article, I actually do a lot of reading. Probably as much as I used to 15 years ago, it’s just that the medium is different. The only thing that has suffered has been my book reading. I think I need to get one of those Kindles from Amazon. Maybe that will revitalize my book reading too.

Anyway I digress. News has always been something that is important to me. I still religiously watch the local and national news every day on TV and read CNN.com and other news sites online. I also still read all about technology and other associated topics. I do all this reading via Google Reader. I’ve tried several RSS aggregate readers over the years and finally I’ve found one I really like. So today I thought I’d blog a little about it just in case it’s of interest to anyone out there!

Subscribing to feeds (news stories and articles) is easy using Firefox and Google Reader (it’s almost as easy in Internet Explorer - I just don’t use that browser). Whenever you browse to a site that has a RSS feed available a little icon appears in your browser address bar and you can click on it. Clicking opens up a dialog box asking how you want to subscribe. For me I have my browser automatically set up to send all feeds to Google Reader if I select them. Once they’re in Google Reader all I need to do is set up a few settings and we’re good to go. Firstly I have my feeds assigned to different categories (see below). This lets me browse news articles by topic if I want. Then I set up my feeds to display in reverse order so that I ensure I read old articles first. Lastly I set my reader to only display unread items. This saves me from scrolling through everything all the time (see below).

To read an article you just click on the feed and scroll through the text. The contents of the articles will vary according to the feed; some articles will be rich with text and pictures and others may just be headlines requiring you to ‘click through’ to the detailed article. If you need to ‘click through’ I would recommend that you right click and open a new tab to read the article. That way you will retain the reader open where you left off.

But all this is just the beginning. A news reader is no good if you can’t use it as a reference source. This is where I think Google Reader scores such good marks. Today I’m going to write about a couple of the special features that the reader has; Star and Share.

Starred Items - Whenever I come across an article that I find interesting and I know I’ll want to refer back to it later, or just haven’t got time to process right now (for example there’s a link to a piece of software I want to try out later), I mark the item with a ’star’. All my ’starred’ items are then available separately whenever I want. Every two weeks or so I go through my starred items and process the ones that I can and if appropriate I will un-star the item. This way my list is always up to date with items that I think I need to do something with. I love this feature.

Shared Items - Similar to starred items are ’shared’ items. You can choose to set up part of your feed as public and share it with the rest of the world. There are settings to make all this happen. You also get a url you can use to share this feed with the world. I use my url and publish my shared feed on my blog (LINK). This way if I read anything that I think others may be interested in reading too, anyone can see it on my blog. Also, just so you know, you can mark an article with both a star and share it, and any combination.

I’ll write more on Google Reader in my next blog post…

A few weeks ago I blogged about a website called Meetways that attempted to find a location half way between two addresses to meet for coffee or something similar. Well today I tried out another similar product MeetInBetween.us.

The bottom line is that it suffers from the same problems as the previous website. It seems that these kind of websites just draw a straight line between two addresses and then work out the halfway point. Then they look around for convenient coffee shops or whatever. People - this is not the way to do this! Anyone in their right mind knows that you have to first calculate the route between two places and then work out the halfway point. This is just common sense. As can be seen from my example below, the halfway point between us is not the middle of Lake Washington. That is just ridiculous! The halfway point is somewhere along the route we both must drive. Imagine the same problem with a mountain range in between, or a river, or a beach. I can’t believe that in today’s clever world companies like these can’t apply a little piece of common sense as well as ‘clever programming’.

Anyway, enough rant. This is something else that’s a good idea but needs ‘a lot more work’ to be fully cooked. On today’s election day I’d have hated to have to rely on this to find me a polling station!

Here are the apps that I curently use most on the T-Mobile G1 (These are all downloads from the Market and don’t include any apps that come pre-installed with the T-Mobile G1):

* AnyCuts - allows you to make a shortcut to virtually anything and put it on your home screen
* College Football Live - keep up to date with your favorite college football teams. Go Bama!
* Flashlight - turns up the brightness on your screen so you can use it as a flashlight - it really works!
* iNetwork Test - tests the download speed to your T-Mobile G1 phone
* PAC-MAN - what needs to be said except use the tracball for best results!
* Ringdroid - make ringtones out of snippets of your favorite mp3
* ShopSavvy - scan barcodes and find out where the product is on sale
* Solitaire - pass away a few minutes of boredom by playing the favorite card game
* Stopwatch - useful if you need to time something
* Telegraph - my daily newspaper of choice - from England!
* The Weather Channel - Of course you need to have the up to date view on the weather on your phone
* Twidroid - brings Twitter to your phone - It’s really good!
* WikiMobile - a wikipedia on your phone

They’re all to be recommended and I’ll let you know of more as I discover and use them.

Later…