Doubting Thomas Blog

Archive for the ‘geek stuff’ Category

I love that there are so many tech gadgets available now. When I was a kid, I was the 2nd person in my Area Code to buy his own Commodore VIC-20. (No, I have no way of proving I was the 2nd…. But I do know that I wasn’t the first, because my friend Craig bought his first.) I never would have dreamed that things like the iPad would ever be created, much less at a price that we commoners could afford.

I am not shopping for cool tech gadgets myself, but I like to know about them. So, I look at their specs, their features, prices, and I even read background articles about how the designs were developed, how they affect (or are affected by) other tech gadgets that are available, etc. With all that info, it is easy to form an opinion, and it is easy to picture how I might use the gadget. But it is not any easier to choose one gadget out of the available set of gadgets.

If I had to actually make a decision and pick one of the new gadgets that has come out in the past month, I don’t know which I would choose. First of all, I don’t think I actually need anything. It’s all a matter of want, which I think most commoners would agree is also the case with them. What can’t we do without gadgets? I probably have more gadgets than I can fully utilize as it is, but please don’t ask me to be circumspect about my consumerism, I don’t know if I have enough headache pills to handle that.

One of my best friends bought a Kindle, and when he showed it to me, I was amazed. It is very good at what it does. And it does some things that aren’t necessarily advertised, which my friend was quick to show me. Cool. If I were a person who does a lot of reading (oh, I miss grad school), I would need a Kindle.

And then along came the iPad, which also lets you do a lot of reading, but it does a lot more than the Kindle, too. And a lot of the things that the iPad does are things that I like to do: look at photos, read web sites, listen to music, find stuff on a map, etc. Cool. If I were a person who didn’t already have a laptop computer, I would need an iPad.

But then I read in the tech news web sites that Google is going to try to get in on this game too. Google published some pictures of what a portable flat computer thingy might look like if it were running the Chrome web browser (which Google gives away for free). Google is also putting out operating systems for mobile phones and computers now, so the only cost involved in using their product is the hardware, which is mainly produced by other people.

You may know that I prefer Apple computers over Windows computers, but I do use Windows (I’m writing this blog entry on an old Windows XP desktop), and I use Linux a lot, too (specifically, ubuntu). My newest computer, a netbook I use for meeting with clients on-site, runs both Windows 7 and the netbook remix of Ubuntu, and I like both of those systems about the same. So, at least in terms of operating systems, I don’t have to choose one–I use whatever is handy at the moment, and whatever best suits the activity or project that I’m working on.

And that’s what guides my decision-making process for the mobile gadgets I started this post with. I have a mobile phone that is not a smart phone. Would I like a phone running Android? Sure, you bet. Would I like an iPhone? No doubt. But neither of those mobile gadgets is better suited to accomplish what my current phone does for me. And while they are cool, I won’t be buying a Kindle, an iPad, or a Chrome-something, because, as far as the developers have brought them so far, they don’t suit me any better than the gadgets I already have.

At my day job, I occasionally come across things that I want to remember to do at home, but by the time I get home, I forget…does that ever happen to you?

So today, I’m marking a couple To Do list items down on this blog, so that, when I get home, I’ll remember the web addresses of the programs I want to try out at home.

1. The first is a free application for syncing the files between computers.
   • Dropbox

I use use three computers at home (an Apple notebook, a Linux desktop, and a Windows desktop), and there are times when I have to stop and think, on which computer is the file I need? (Okay, I admit that often, when I think of such questions, I don’t use proper grammar, so what I really think at those moments when I need a certain file is more like “where’s that file at?”)

And the beauty part is that it works with Linux, Windows, and Mac computers! It’s perfect for my needs.

2. This next program I came across is going to help me get rid of a different free application that I haven’t been able to uninstall from my Mac. It was only free for a trial period, and it wasn’t that great, so I didn’t purchase the program when the trial period ended.
   • Apptrap

   Even though I dragged that application into the trash on my notebook, the program still gives me pop-ups when I start Firefox. It’s annoying, but as far as I know, it doesn’t cause any problems with my system or with Firefox’ I just have to click Quit every time.

Let me know, if you have tried either of these programs, how they have worked for you. Or, if you use other programs to accomplish the same thing, let me know what they are, and how well they work. FREE is preferred, but if you know of a low-cost file-syncing program that works on Mac, Windows, and Linux, let me know, in case Dropbox doesn’t work.

Need a secure OS?

As featured on DesktopLinux.com, Tin Hat is an open-source operating system designed to run in RAM (which means no physical hard drive holds the OS) and is completely encrypted. The project is driven by the nominally paranoid Dr. Anthony Basile, who is a friend of mine.

I use Google’s applications with my domain name WoodsWebDesign.com quite a bit, and I use Gmail separately, so I have noticed that there are some differences in what features are available through those separate services. What I want from Google is for every feature/service that’s available in the low-end version of their free services (i.e., everything that’s offered in Gmail) to be available to users of their mid-range free services (i.e., Applications).

When Gmail came out with themes this week, I was glad to see they had done something to update the Gmail service. And other innovations, such as video chat built-in to the Inbox, are cool, too. But why can’t all of those services be made available to those of us who have made the leap and are using Google Applications?

Last week, the Code Weavers company made good on its promise to give away licenses to use its Cross-Over program, which lets users run software applications designed for one operating system on some other operating system.

Code Weavers promised that if gas prices came down below $3/gallon during President Bush’s term, they’d give away licenses that normally cost $40 each.

I got a license so that I can run Windows programs on my Mac, and today I finally got around to installing it.

Right of the bat, it offers to install a bunch of programs that are in its list of “supported” programs, and those are most of the popular programs people use, such as all the Microsoft Office programs, and a bunch of other stuff. (Note: Microsoft Office for Mac is fully compatible with all the files created or opened by Microsoft Office on a Windows computer, so it is probably redundant to have both.)

I didn’t install any of the supported applications, because I generally have what I need on my Mac already, such as Office for Mac, for example. I used Cross-Over to install a Windows-only program that I bought a while ago, a photo/clip-art program that came with thousands of royalty-free stock photos.

So far, so good, and I’m glad I upgraded my Mac’s RAM to 2 GB, because Cross-Over uses the WINE emulation code-base to act like Windows, but it is running on top of the Mac OS, so it is a little like running to OS’s at the same time. I don’t think my Mac would be very happy doing that much work on the 1GB of RAM I had when I bought it.

The first thing I did after browsing through the photos on the CD was start exporting them as GIF’s into a folder on my Mac’s hard drive, so that I won’t have to run this program every time I want to select a stock photo for the projects I’m doing.

Here’s one of the photos from this collection: