Faux-Friday Night Links (10/29/2009)…

As you can see from the title of the post, today was The Digitante’s fake Friday. I’m taking a day off work tomorrow to relax, so that means I am going to toss you some links today. Today we are doing food day. All food-related tips. And since I am skipping out on tomorrow’s posting, I’ll throw you a non-food bonus.

• Homemade Coffeeshop Goodies (http://thedig.in/4p) – Starbucks’ coffeecake and lattes are good, but they are also an excellent way to become broke and fat. Now you can just be fat by fixing all your coffeeshop goodies at home. Various coffees and baked goods should hold you over until its time to give up Starbucks for your New Years’ resolution.
• Per-Serving Budget Meals (http://thedig.in/4q) – Think of this as a cookbook with a price list. Not only does the author show you how to completely prepare the meal, she also lets you know how much the ingredients cost and what you will end up spending per serving. Considering a chicken meal at KFC costs well over $5, $2.42 for BBQ chicken, broccoli, and potatoes sounds like a straight up bargain.
• Awesome $30 Knife (http://thedig.in/4r) – More expensive doesn’t always mean better. This is especially the case for the Victorinox Chef’s Knife that you can pick up for about $30. It performs almost as well as a number of $100-200 knives. In our house, we love tossing around the phrase, “Inexpensive, NOT cheap.” Especially true in this situation.
• Potatoes in the Dishwasher (http://thedig.in/4s) – Need to clean that sack of potatoes for your semi-automatic potato gun? Toss them in the dishwasher, no detergent and put them on the rinse cycle. No word on water temperature. If anybody tries this out, be sure to leave a comment.

Bonus:

• Liven Up Your Photos (http://thedig.in/4t) – Most heavy-duty photo editing requires the skills of Photoshop or GIMP. However, for the quick sprucing up, you might give Tintii a look. It can be used for creating the effect of colorizing a black and white picture. You might have a couple in black and white and the girl’s dress may be yellow. You don’t have to stop there. With Tintii, you can add more than one color to the photo. The controls are simple and modifying a picture is quick.

No More Ads…

Have you ever opened a website in your browser, only to be greeted by a flashing pop-up, a bunch of rotating banners, and an ad so big you couldn’t see more than about 20 words on the page? You certainly may have, depending on what sites you go to. Many sites try to be discrete about their ads, but others have no qualms about pasting ads all over your screen.

We are going to find out how to block those ads, and in the process, we’ll speed up and secure your internet browsing.

First, why ads?

Well, as you may have noticed, a lot of sites on the internet are free. By free, I mean no cost to you. However, it costs someone time and resources to make that page available to you. Since you and thousands of others look at that free page, an advertiser might want to show you some product you may be interested in. Advertisers really enjoy when they can get their target audience in front of their ads, so maybe they post an ad about the latest pop album (Jesse McCartney’s Departure) on a music website (JMClovers.net: Don’t worry, I’m not a member… yet).

For this reason, it is always good to support the sites you appreciate by viewing the ads and if you see one that appeals to you, click on it.

However, many sites just plain go overboard. For those sites, we’ll learn how to combat those ads.

What do we need?

Here are our tools for tonight:

• Mozilla Firefox – Chances are you have it if you read and followed along with the post from last night, you already have Firefox installed.
• Adblock Plus – The Firefox add-on pulls data from a filter list that is automatically updated. You can also add “whitelist” sites and remove items the filter may have missed. We’ll learn how to add sites to the whitelist and filter missed items later.

What? You were expecting more? Let’s get going.

After you’ve installed Adblock Plus and restarted your Firefox, you will be presented with a filter selection box.

The above image is from the Adblock Plus site.

Choose the list that is closest by for you (or perhaps in a different language if you need). For US and Canada, you may select the Easy list.

When you begin navigating to your favorite pages, you will notice fewer of the banner ads and annoying blinking ads. The added benefit to this add-on is that once you install it, it blocks the ads before they ever even come to your computer, therefore, instead of waiting for ads to load THEN waiting for your content to load (because they give you the ads first!), you get to head straight to the content.

Want to see the difference?

So much more visually appealing! Well, except for that guy in the middle of the picture.

If you are still seeing elements and pictures on the page that you don’t want to see, you can easily right click on the element or image and select the option “Adblock Plus: Block image…”

On the other hand, if you end up at a page that you frequent, you want to support them, and they have ads that appeal to you, you can head to the stop sign icon in the upper right corner of your browser, click the down arrow, and select to disable Adblock Plus for the site. Lifehacker is one of my favorites and they are ad supported, so I whitelist their ads.

Now you are in complete control

It used to be that you had to deal with ads. If they were large pictures or rotated ads on a regular basis, that slowed down your connection. Avoiding ads altogther meant not visiting your favorite sites. With Adblock Plus, that is a thing of the past. You now control what ads you see and what ads you don’t.

If you need help setting up Adblock Plus or you have a stubborn ad that just won’t go away, feel free to contact The Digitante either by clicking the Google Voice widget on the right or by heading to the About page to send an email.

Easy Gmail Access…

Oh, the humanity! Imagine having to type in that password every time you go to use Gmail. Not to mention what if you have multiple Gmail address inboxes. Wouldn’t you rather just click and have your Gmail instantly available? Of course you would.

Gather your tools

Here is what you are going to need:

• Mozilla Firefox – Probably the greatest browser in the world at this point. If you aren’t using it, I have to ask, “Why not?!?”
• Gmail Manager – If you remember, I mentioned Gmail Manager as one of my favorite Firefox addons a couple of months ago. There are other Gmail addons out there, but this one has the bonus of allowing multiple accounts, which can come in handy.
• Gmail account(s) – I have my personal account that goes to my BlackBerry, my non-Blackberry account for confirmation emails, order status updates, and newsletters, and my work account that contains client communication.

Once you have those items, continue on with these instructions.

1. Install Mozilla Firefox.
2. Install Gmail Manager.
3. You will be asked to restart Firefox. Please do so.

Now you will see a gray envelope down in the lower right corner of your Firefox window. It should look like this:

Now you need to right click the icon and a menu should pop up. Click ‘Add Account…’ from that account. It will ask you to enter your email and password. You can also check if you want it to remember the password. Only check this option if no other people are using your computer or if you don’t mind if others using the computer see your email.

Enter your information and click ok. It should log you into. All you have to do at this point is click the red (or blue if you have mail) envelope and it will instantly take you to your Gmail inbox. No password entry required since we saved it already.

By right clicking the envelope, you have some options such as logging out your account or accounts, logging in, checking the accounts now, and modifying your preferences.

The preferences menu item brings up a configuration tool that:

• allows you to add more gmail accounts,
• change the alias for your account (I could make it show Digitante instead of thedigitante@gmail.com for example),
• automatically login when Firefox starts up,
• play an alert sound when email arrives, and
• tons of other features that you will have to dig through.

What’s left?

Chances are you have some emails to read or write, so you can do that instead of spending your time logging in and out.

If you want some help getting this or other addons set up in Firefox or if you are having trouble installing Firefox itself, you can always contact The Digitante by heading to the About page or clicking the Google Voice widget over on the right.

Google Voice Invites…

I currently have THREE Google Voice invites to give away. Anybody interested?

Of course, you didn’t think it would be THAT easy, did you?

Here is what you need to do: promote The Digitante! Post my links on your Twitter. Become a fan on Facebook and share my links. Post a link and a review of my site on your blog.

After you’ve done that, come back here and leave comment with your promotion. It’s that easy.

If you don’t want to leave a comment, you can also call using the Google Voice widget or email by heading to the About page.

A Few Odds and Ends…

First of all, I warned you a couple of weeks ago that I was going to get an email subscription box put on my blog and I did so. You can access it from the upper right corner of the blog. Or if you want to sign up now, you can use this:

Enter your email address:

Delivered by FeedBurner

Once you enter your valid email address, go to your inbox (or possibly check your spam folder) and follow the instructions in the Wecome! message. Once you have confirmed your subscription, you will receive a copy of every post a few moments after I hit the big, blue publish button on my end.

Some advantages of subscribing by email is you get the content quickly after it published, but it will also come to any email address so if you aren’t allowed to read The Digitante via the website during your lunch break, you can now read it via email while you snack on your leftover Rocky Mountain oysters.

If you want to get adventurous and subscribe in an RSS feed reader, you can click the orange below, or it is also available on the right, below the email subscribe box.

<– Click here

Keep an eye out for a visual change here and there. I am going to try some new layouts and would love your feedback if there is something you like or don’t like.

Friday Night Links (10/23/2009)…

Man, I gotta get through these links. My copy of Windows 7 arrived and I am chomping at the bit. Let’s get to it!

• Dishwasher Detergent Soak (http://thedig.in/4a) – I’ve always tossed some liquid dishsoap (eg Dawn, Joy) and water into my baked on pots and pans. Even with that, it seemed that I still ended up running through my industrial-sized bottle of elbow grease. Turns out I was taking the wrong approach. Turns out that dishwasher detergent (eg Cascade, Electrisol) was the better route to take. Apparently, it melts away the stuck-on food. I haven’t had a chance to test it out, but I have cooking duty next week, so I’ll have to give it a go.
• Facebook Security (http://thedig.in/4b) – Just today, a buddy of mine had his Facebook account hacked. Its a scary thing to know that someone is defiling something that is yours. This article doesn’t really touch on protecting yourself from being hacked (a comprehensive password would do that). This article will help protect you from people spying on your information. It is fun to share your life, your photos, your connections with other, however, you need to be sure it is people you can trust.
• Update Checker (http://thedig.in/4c) – Ever wish your programs had all the updated features at all times? FileHippo’s update checker keeps most major programs updated at all times. You will get the latest features and up-to-date security without much work.
• Dropresize (http://thedig.in/4d) – A major caveat: this program is currently very beta (testing phase) and has a number of bugs. First, this program watches a specified folder and whenever a .jpg file shows up there, it is automatically resized based on chosen parameters. Second, unfortunately the big bug currently is the fact that occasionally, the original file being resized gets lost. You can pretty easily avoid that issue by copying and pasting the file in the folder and leaving the original outside the resizing folder.

Windows 7 Upgrade: What You Need to Know…

I was talking to my sister today and we discussed upgrading to Windows 7 for an hour or so. We discussed a number of things: licenses vs. installation discs, 32-bit vs. 64-bit, and hardware requirements. Don’t worry. Even the in-depth portion won’t be too technical and maybe you can pick up a factoid here and there to impress your friends and pets.

While this discussion will mention Windows 7, it isn’t specific to Windows 7 and can apply to most any software you use. Even the free stuff that isn’t made by a big corporation.

Licenses vs. Media

Let’s start with a simple example: My sister is a student. She can purchase a copy of Windows 7 for $30. She can give me the disc and I can install it at my house on my computer. It is physically possible for me to do that. However, if I read the license agreement, it says that it can only be installed on the personal computer of a student. In other words, the license governs the stipulations of use.

Now we can dig in a bit more. Media may consist of installation discs which are CDs or DVDs that hold all the files you will need to install Windows 7. Fairly easily, you could make a hundred copies of the disc. It would only take a couple of days and a large stack of blank DVDs. You could copy those files to a computer or even post them on the web. You can do all these things, in a physical sense.

From a legal sense, however, the legality of the above uses is questionable due to the existence of the software license. The license is a contract between you and the software provider that says what you can and can’t do with the software. Proprietary software says you can’t reverse engineer (find out how its made) or disseminate (pass around the code). Open source might say the opposite: you can freely distribute the software, but you MUST include all the code so others can modify it.

Additionally, the license tells you who can install the software (student version can be installed by students), how many times it can be installed (family pack can be installed on three computers in the same household), and what the terms are (personal licenses can’t be used in a corporate environment). Below is a sample portion of a Windows 7 license from Microsoft’s website.

32-bit vs. 64-bit

Computers know what to do based on commands. The terms 32-bit and 64-bit refer to the length of those commands (a bit is a alphanumeric character. Once again, let’s do a little example.

Imagine I am telling you how to navigate around a room blindfolded. I can only tell you a certain amount of the instructions at once before you have to perform my instructions. It wouldn’t be too bad if the instructions were “Turn left.” You would turn left and wait for my next instruction.

Now imagine that I have to give you instructions on how to step over a cord strung across the room but all I can get out is, “Lift your foot thirteen inches high,” at which point you had to lift your leg and hold it there until I finished the next portion, “move your foot forward seven inches,” so you move and wait for, “then place your foot on the ground.” That could get tiring for your legs if you had to do very complex moves. This is the equivalent of 32-bit instructions.

This time we are going to do the 64-bit instructions. In this scenario, I can now say about twice as much information at once. So I can ask you to both lift your foot thirteen inches AND move it forward. It takes much less time because there is less waiting for me to give the next instruction.

One of the major advantages of a longer instruction set is that you can keep track of more information. With 32-bit Windows, you can only use a maximum of 4Gb of RAM in your computer. This is because the computer can only keep track of 2 raised to the 32nd power gigabytes of RAM (2^32= about 4 billion aka 4 gigabytes).

As you can imagine, 64-bit Windows can use a maximum of 2^64 bytes, which is equivalent to a 1 with 19 zeros after it. Don’t worry, its a bunch and you certainly couldn’t afford to buy enough RAM to use it all.

Hardware Requirements

If you think that upgrading is going to mean more speed and a cooler interface, you might want to hold off. If you have a computer purchased in the last year or so, Windows 7 will probably run fairly well on it. If your computer is older than about 3 years, you might have some issues.

The official minimum specifications for Windows are a 1GHz processor (pretty easily accomplished), 20Gb of hard drive space (also pretty easy to do), and lastly 1Gb of RAM for 32-bit and 2Gb of RAM for 64-bit. These last requirements are a the tough part. Even if all these stipulations are met, you might still not get the snazzy graphics if you don’t have a great graphics chip in your computer.

If your computer IS over 3 years old, it is probably best to wait to upgrade until you get a new computer. If you did buy a nicer computer, you can always contact The Digitante to discuss if your PC will be a good candidate for upgrade.

That about covers it

If you have other questions, you can always ask in the comments section. If it your first time commenting, you may have to wait a bit before your comment appears.

In the meantime, you are always welcome to contact The Digitante to discuss any questions you might have about Windows 7 or your computer. You can email me by heading to the About page or you can always call by clicking the Google Voice widget on the right.

Countdown to Windows 7…

For being as techie as I am, sometimes I let my own self down. Windows 7 has been available in beta (aka testing) and release candidate (aka almost finished) form for free for months now. I should have been the first on the block to get it because I love when new things come along. But what happened?

Well, a couple of things including two little girls being born, being swamped with work, and the fact that I really kind of love Windows Vista.

Vista? As in “Everybody hates Vista” Vista?

Yes, that Vista. A couple of things happened that nobody ever forgave it for:

1. Broken compatibility – Microsoft required higher quality drivers for all hardware. What this meant was that Microsoft had to inspect and approve all drivers. This was a slow process and some manufacturers took their sweet time in the first place. This meant that the printer, web cam, or any number of other accessories for your computer simply would not work. This stopped a bunch of people in their tracks.
2. User Account Control (UAC) – Microsoft included the computer equivalent of a helicopter parent with Vista in the form of UAC. Basically anytime you did anything, you had to click a confirmation box. This lead to endless user frustration since you would start to install a program, walk away to make a peanut butter and bacon sandwich, only to return to an installation that paused 5 seconds in so you could push the UAC confirmation button. You got a sandwich out of the deal, but you still had to finish the installation. This lead to one of two risky behaviors: clicking the UAC confirmation button indiscriminately or completely disabling UAC.
3. Incomplete – Microsoft was in such a hurry to finish up Windows Vista that they ended up pulling a bunch of features and they didn’t work on some areas that they had hoped to. One of those areas was to work on the bloat of the product. Bloat refers to all the processes that run in the background. The less processes you have in the background, the faster your machine will perform the main task you are working on. Service Pack 1 for Vista fixed nearly all the slowdown caused by the bloat, but at that point, the damage was done.
4. Vista Capable – Microsoft started slapping Vista Capable stickers on a bunch of new computers that couldn’t handle the bloat of Vista. This ended up resulting in lawsuits and lots of very upset customers with very slow computers.

I wasn’t so concerned about any of these things and really appreciated it’s advancements over Windows XP, especially in stability (lack of crashes).

Windows 7 a savior?

It appears that way. The reception for the betas and the release candidates of Windows 7 was almost purely positive. Many of the negatives listed above had been fixed and people were raving about the next generation of Windows.

So today, I remedied the sad situation and ordered up some Windows 7 action for myself.

The downside is that it doesn’t arrive until Friday, but that is ok because it will give me some time to back up my data due to the upgrade stipulations. Here they are:

• Windows XP (32-bit and 64-bit) –> Windows 7 (32-bit and 64-bit): You must do a clean install. That means you must save all your documents and write down all the programs you need to re-install afterward. From what I hear, you have to be sure to have your XP disc with you so you can prove that it is an upgrade.
• Windows Vista (32-bit) –> Windows 7 (32-bit): You can do a straight upgrade keeping your programs and saved files intact. I would recommend backing everything up regardless, just in case though.
• Windows Vista (64-bit) –> Windows 7 (64-bit): Same as the previous. Straight upgrade. Be sure to back up.
• Windows Vista (32-bit) –> Windows 7 (64-bit): This is my scenario for both the laptop and home theater PC. Clean install, same as XP. Save all your files and record your programs to re-install.
• Windows Vista (64-bit) –> Windows 7 (32-bit): Same as above. Clean install. Save everything.
• Anything other than Windows XP or Vista: Sorry, no upgrade for you. You have to buy the full version and install it fresh and clean.

Two notes on the above list: 1) I would recommend going ahead and doing the clean install in all the above scenarios just because stuff builds up over time, slowing your computer and it needs to be cleaned out occasionally. 2) Most all computer hardware these days is 64-bit. Use the 64-bit version where possible. The only exceptions to this rule are if you have a netbook. Most netbooks only have 32-bit processors. There is a Windows 7 Starter edition for netbooks. The other exception is if your machine is older than 3 or 4 years. Your machine needs to have at least 2Gb of RAM for 64-bit, otherwise you need to stay with 32-bit.

Chomping at the bit

I want Windows 7 to be here NOW! Plus I’m going to do a number of write-ups on the new features that Windows 7 brings to the table.

In the meantime, if you are thinking about putting Windows 7 on your PC, but you are confused about which type will work for you (full or upgrade), whether your computer will handle Windows 7, or how to determine what data is important enough to move over to Windows 7, you can call The Digitante by clicking on the Google Voice widget over to the right or head to the About page to send an email.

Vote for The Digitante…

A new website was recently launched called Indiana’s Top 50 Blogs. The Digitante was nominated and I would like to enlist my readers’ help to move up in the rankings.

Head to Top 50 Indiana Blogs to vote. The Digitante might be located on the second page so you may need to scroll to the bottom and click the “previous entries” link.

This Curse…

Technology is a funny thing.

Some people couldn’t care less about what is coming down the pipe. Give them whatever is cheap and available. Cell phone? The free flip phone and 450 minutes is perfect for them. Computer? The $400 Dell on sale. MP3 player? What the heck is that and why would anyone ever need one?

I, on the other hand, am obsessed with technology. I will buy a laptop that has twice as many features as I’ll ever need, but I can find it for $100s off the regular price because I know where to look. I look over 10-15 reviews before I purchase a TV, router, or any other gadget. I’ve spent so much money on gadgets that were only used once because I thought they were going to change my life and the lives of those around me. The only change they brought was the amount of my office that is still usable.

So what’s the big deal?

The curse of the technophile is what I call “the lag.” Today is October 20th. I am due for new customer pricing on a cell phone on November 1st. It sounds like a no-brainer: I want the best thing out there, so I would opt for the BlackBerry Tour.

However, I know too much because I read everything I can about technology. I know that there is a new version of the BlackBerry Tour coming out codenamed the BlackBerry Essex. Its got WiFi, a better camera, and a touch-sensitive pad instead of the old, unreliable track ball. There are rumors that it will be coming out anywhere from mid-November to the first part of 2010. My current phone is getting shaky, but I think it can hang in there.

Great! You can just wait till then!

It seems that way, but unfortunately, the cycle repeats. There are already even fainter, more trumped up rumors that there may be a BlackBerry that has a full touchscreen and/or a slide out keyboard. Why not wait for that?

I go through this everyday when I read my tech news. You hear about the amazing technology that just came out. Then you hear about the even more amazing technology that is going to be coming out shortly. Then you hear about the most amazing thing in the world that is still just a twinkle in some engineer’s eye. Each iteration is more amazing than the last and I’m always hoping to get my hands on the furthest one down the road.

What now?

We’ll, I’ve made the final decision that I’m going to wait for the Essex to come along. We’ll see how long that decision lasts before I breakdown and make a run over to the store to pick up a brand new BlackBerry Tour. I’m sure I’ll be happy with that rash decision… at least till the Essex comes out.

In the meantime, if you would like to pick my brain about the technology that is out there, feel free to give me a call via the Google Voice widget on the right or you can email me from the About page.