The Quicksilver-for-Windows Showdown

Before I owned my first Mac, Quicksilver was the application that made me wish I did. Luckily, slowly but surely, Windows developers began building apps intended to successfully attain that Quicksilver-for-Windows status. They started as simple application launchers, but recently the Quicksilver-for-Windows battle has exploded with tons of new applications.

[From LifeHacker]


Sometimes Dreams do Come true. I use Quicksilver so much, that whenever I use my Dell Latitude, I instinctively hit [CTRL] - [SPACE] and start typing. I have ruined the formatting in many a document by doing that. I have found however that it's not Quicksilver itself that suprimo awesome but the way Quicksilver talks to OS X that makes you want to take it behind the middle school and make mad passionate love to it. Of course, I blame Merlin Mann for this infectous love affair.

If you are using a Mac and don't use Quicksilver, get it [here] and of course unlike it's Windows counterparts like Dash Command, it's Free As In Beer as well as being Free As In Speech.

Depriving the Middle East of YouTube

Disruption to internet services in south Asia and the Middle East continues after undersea cable damage.


[via the Beeb]


Stealing their oil and trying to instill democracy is one thing but depriving the Middle East of YouTube is just plain cruel and most contravene the Geneva Convention.

[UPDATED] FEB 6th, OK this isn't funny anymore. There are now _FIVE_ cut cables in middle eastern waters.

Download your Free PUGScreen Cleaner Here

The Flash video of the pug licking you monitor from the inside has been taken down. Some like to call this the Fat Dad effect!

I try to keep my blog as clean as possible, but sometimes you need a little extra help from some professionals.

Thanks to Eric for sending in the Pros

Currys stops selling analogue TVs

[From BEEB] Electrical retailers Currys, Dixons and PC World will now promote digital TV sets with built-in Freeview tuners.

Why hasn't this happened in be in Canada yet? This is perfect excuse for going out getting that 50 LCD everyone absolutely _needs_!

Mahalo's Veronica Belmont Interviews Stan Lee, Excelsior!

Mahalo's Veronica Belmont had the chance to interview one of the childhood heroes and the person responsible for making comic books, like Spider-Man, so damn cool by not having superhero gods! Yup, I'm talking about you Superman! Marvel comics will always be my favourite and it was pretty awesome to see Stan Lee interviewed by someone who didn't just want to pick his brains about why Peter Parker did such and such in issue four hundred and does it really matter!

Email Etiquette - Emailers Anonymous

I am a huge fan of email etiquette, I spend so much of life in Outlook or on my BlackBerry that whenever I encounter random acts of email stupidity, I simply want to go postal. In a previous life, I would refer offenders to the company email etiquette policy  I had written up. Now I either send them Merlin Mann's Inbox Zero video (the whole video just to prove a point) or hold it on and take it out on their inbox in person when they finally cal up for  some friendly tech support. I now have a new tool from my "web belt" that I will be sending out to repeat offenders.

The following is from Download Squad

Today we'd like to introduce the first in a new weekly series of posts at Download Squad called Emailers Anonymous, a series for anyone that is addicted to email as part of their daily life. We're going to explore email from all angles - everything from email clients to email etiquette, email productivity to email formatting. And anything else you have questions about.

Today's post will focus on email etiquette, and how to be a good email neighbor.


It's easy to feel frustrated with friends and co-workers when they make basic email mistakes like sending messages with no subject text, or referencing an attachment but not actually including one. But are we completely innocent of making email offenses ourselves? Have a look at the ones listed below; maybe you could be a better email neighbor.

Links without context

This is maybe one of the most common, and most egregious faux pas that can be committed online. It happens on instant messaging programs and frighteningly often on Twitter, but it also happens very often in email. Think about the last time you came across a website you really wanted a friend to see. When you emailed it to them, did you give any descriptive text so that they had a clue as to what they were about to see when clicking on your link, or did you simply give the a link and expect them to blindly follow it? This is tantamount to saying "close your eyes and open your mouth" - no thanks! If you really want people to follow your links, take a moment to explain what they are about to see - a sentence or two is enough.

Continue reading Email Etiquette - Emailers Anonymous

Creepy Google Maps Video

Thanks to Eric for sending this one in. We all love Google Maps, but do you just wish that sometimes, you could see a little more from the Street View. Well this creepy Google Maps video does just that.

[from Google Blogoscoped ]

BlackBerry's Dark Little GPS Secret

You _don't_ need TeleNav! What you say? BlackBerry holding out their beloved _crackberry_ loyalists? Well yes, in the case of their GPS services they have completely undersold their own apps in order to sell you something you probably don't even need.

I had never really used BlackBerry Maps on the my previous BB 7250 and 7130, simply because Google Maps is such a better application especially once they activated the little blue dot that used triangulation to find your location. But when I got the 8130 Pearl, I decide to give all the old apps a once over to see how RIM had improved/adapted them for the BlackBerry OS 4.3. I was delightfully surprised by just about every app and actually quite shocked at how much better BB Maps was. For a start they added GPS support for the 8830 World Edition, the 8130 Pearl and the Curve. Most of us will go to the Maps app, turn on the GPS, wait a few minutes and then after seeing where we are will turn it off again until we get lost somewhere without or TomTom's.

This is probably our first mistake. If you leave the GPS on and then plot a course for say your local ski hill, then BB Maps will use your current GPS position and plot the rest of the course for you. So far this is still pretty much par for the course with other devices. So how is it so different? Well once you have your directions, instead of click on [Get Directions], simply click on view on map and then hit the [6] key and start driving. Your little red arrow will start moving along the map and if you are zoomed to 3 or 2 (two is a little extreme when doing any kind of decent speed) you will see your self moving along the purple course. As you pass your first step simply hit [6] again and the map will display the next marker and your location to it. Your location marker may be off screen but as you approach the next step you'll pop into view again. If you missed the step or were a little over zealous with the [6] key, simply hit [4] top go back again. Clicking the trackball will switch between the zoom mode and pan mode. OF COURSE, You shouldn't do any this while driving!

Most carrier will offer the TeleNav service for $10.00 on top of your data charges. Which is really quite steep for what you are getting more than what the basic Maps has to offer:

• Turn-by-turn driving directions by voice and onscreen.
• Biz Finder with more than 10 million points of interest.
• TeleNav Traffic alerts and intelligent rerouting.
• Full-color maps nationwide.

Turn by turn is pretty cool and has a lot of advantages, but if this is really what you want, you're better off buying a TomTom for $150 and not get get bogged down with data charges. Every other feature is already covered in either the BB Maps or the FREE as in Beer Google Maps application.

So go ahead and use the BlackBerry Maps application for the few times when you really have no idea where you are going and save your pennies to eventually get a real GPS unit with a large screen, Bluetooth, and a sexy British voice like the TomTom ONE XL

The 60 Second Keynote!

I love Mahalo for this kind of stuff. This truly is the only way to watch his Steveness with out being affect by the Reality Distortion Field. I must admit that into the 58th second, I could start to feel it.

So far my favourite review is from Scott Davis, who was force fed the keynote by Adi and I at the office. Here are my two favourite quotes of his :

In his Cultnote, HRS floated another biscuit called AIR. A notebook the size and weight of bathroom tissue, touted as the best, the skinniest and the flattest thing this year save the latest batch of European Supermodels. A dubious distinction but no Mickey Mouse about this latest iCrap.

You can pinch, rub, perch and rotate your way to Internet porn just like the rest of us PC twits, whilst doused in the soothing light emanating from the LED display/backlit keyboard. That way, you won't need extra lighting when mooning the iSight, slapping the Safari, screaming oohh's and aahh's, extolling the power of Apple for 5 hours, secretly wishing to become the next viral Leave-Steve-Alone poser!

Scott is absolutely right and describes the new MacBook Air amazingly accurately, all the way down to the multi-touch track pad features. You can tell he secretly wants one of these books, but a long time ago Scott made a pact with the Devil: Belza-Gates-Ballmer that he would continue using beige boxes of boredom with their Fisher Price interface dreading the next BSOD. Sure he knows all about the Unix goodness inside OS X and he openly admits he lust after the Cupertino Designs, he even own an iPod! But the demons of Redmond refuse to release the shackles on his soul. And without quoting Tenacious-D or getting all Jack Black, I am glad that he has fueled all those years of MS_sochism, Dell_usion and Asus_nine rebooting into writing some truly wonderful and colourful blog posts.

;)

Getting Ready for the Big SteveNote 2008

I will be spending my lunch hour, following this year's Macworld KeyNote by Steve Jobs (SteveNote) on Engadget, TUAW and possible Cali Lewi's GeekBreif coverage as well.

Hoping for a sub compact notebook, a MacMini/AppleTV Hybrid and an iPod Touch update. Oh and a Beatles Yellow Submarine iPod!

UPDATE

The GeekBrief Stream is not working well, So I'm streaming with iJustine. She seems to be sitting with The MacBreak Crew. and and Cali as well.

Why My New BlackBerry Pearl 2 Deletes Txt Msg (SMS)

It's not a conspiracy plot against other forms of non-email communications and for once it's not even Bell Mobility's fault. It's just a little bit of bad planning on behalf of BlackBerry maker's RIM.

Here is what happened, I received my BlackBerry Pearl 8130 just before the Christmas break and like any other BlackBerry user would quickly do I quickly loaded up my favourite Google Apps, tried out the new FaceBook application (more on this another time), added Twitterberry and then proceeded to walk around the Office taking every one's picture so I could "test" the 2 mega-pixel camera and update my address book with photos of who is calling. During the course of the day I had received quite a few text messages,SMS, and also replied to quite a few; Twitter had finally started working properly so this had brought on a wave of new "txts". By the time I got home that night and check my new messages, the entire list was gone...

This was weird, so I checked my email and they were still there safely, even my GMail. I continued to look around, the address book was fine, same with the calendar, task list, and notes. But now the call log was also clear; I know that I had made at least 5 calls and received at least 3, yet there was no record of this anywhere. This was very weird, the email was fine as I had expected it to be but all other communication had been wiped clear. At first I thought it might have been theBlackBerry policies set up on our corporate BES (BlackBerry Enterprise Server), so a quick call to our Network Admin on a Friday night confirmed there no such policies, he suggested checking the memory and taking the battery out. CHECKING THE MEMORY!!! Of course I had taken all those pictures and loaded up a bunch of apps including Google Maps. Even though I was using a 2Gb microSD card, the Pearl's Default settings are to store pictures on the device which only has 64Mb of shared memory. Shared memory on any phone usually means 14 - 20 Mb available to the user. So I pulled out the laptop and moved all my pictures to the card using the included Roxio Media Manager (tepid experience at best) moved all the pictures from the device memory to the card. This freed up a little space next I had to make sure all new pictures would be stored on the card as well.

To do this you need to access the camera application, press the funky new BB menu button and go to [OPTIONS], scroll down to Store Pictures: and choose [ON MEDIA CARD] (make sure you card is inserted). Then scroll down to folder and select the pictures media card/BlackBerry/pictures folder. Now press the Escape key, the one to the right of the trackball, and select save. You now have to the same for the video camera application as well. Once this is done you will have to pull the battery out in order to the Pearl's memory. Removing the battery seems to be the standard way to reset all BlackBerry's, however be warned BB boot up time is quite slow, especially if your on BES . So now you are probably think that all my problems are over and that I should be able to following text message threads without any problems.

Well not exactly, you if you surf the web on a BlackBerry, the pages you visit will get cached so you need to clear your cache regularly as well. To this go your BlackBerry Internet Browser, hit the [menu] key and scroll to [OPTIONS] now go to [Cache Operations] and clear your [Content Cache] and your [Pushed Cache]. You want to leave your [Cookie Cache] alone as this is were your auto-login stuff is stored. Like when you click on your Facebook bookmark and automatically get logged in. If your using opera Mini do the same for that as well. (You don't really need to pull the battery out for this.)

Something else you could try is reducing the amount mail you store on the device, if you're on a BES, you can simply view you folders and they will go get your older mail. If you're a using BIS, try using the GMail app which will go get your older mail when you search for it, or you can use the web interface to see older mail. Personally I find emails to be quite an important part of my BlackBerry experience and prefer to sacrifice elsewhere. The same goes for the address book, the calendar, task and notes. You can set all these to only hold 30 days instead of 60 or 120 days.

Next is the big one! I found this out after a lot of searching and trolling the various BB Forums, I don't recall where I found it but I'm giving it out for free as this is the one thing that really seems to make the biggest difference. When you get your Pearl, Curve or World Edition, it comes with a nice demo video of the device swirling around with lot's of music. This video is 2 Mb and try as you might you will not be able to delete using the delete key in the Media Browser. Now your saying that 2.2Mb is not a lot on a 64 Mb device, but remember that you only have 12Mb at best to _YOUR_ disposal on a clean Pearl; so 2.2Mb almost 20% of your available storage space. That is a lot of call history and text messages. So how do you get rid of it? It's actually quite easy. On you home application screen scroll down to the [Options] application, open it the go to [Advanced Options] now select [Applications]. Warning: This the list of applications on your device, do not delete anything unless you installed and you know what is it. Now scroll down to preloaded media and hit the menu button and select delete. Once your done, hit escape and return to the home screen. Now you will have remove the battery to see the extra memory. Remember to Sync your data and make a back up before you start playing around in the advanced options or deleting stuff from your device.

Since I have done this, I have almost aways had 10Mb of memory on the device. I store no media on the Pearl itself and now feed the need and desireTxt msgs when they either in German (Ich Habs: has nothing to do with Les Canadiens) or FaceBook pokes from Nick! (You can not win Nick! Resistance to an unlimited SMS plan is futile...)

Guitar Wizard: Learn to Play for Real!

With Guitar Wizard, you plug in your own guitar play real notes. By the time you won the game, your jammin like Carlos Santanna.

Thanks to Mahalo's Veronica Belmont and Engadget for the CES 2008 video

Robots! Veronica Belmont Tours CES

This one is just for the Burg, my buddy Scott Davis who just loves laser. Listen out for Veronica going all Austin Powers on the Meccano Booth Girl. Might have to get me one of those Wifi models.

BTW Mahalo Daily's Veronica Belmont has teamed up with Engadget for this year's CES and the coverage has been great to watch so far. Thanks V!

Facebook PWNS U & UR Stuff!

Excellant article on DownloadSquad about how the stuff you post on Facebook and other social networks does not belong to you and how you'll have a lot of trouble getting any of it back.