Reader Shawn Blanc pointed me to a great post of his covering ecto, a popular desktop blog publishing client for OS X. Shawn goes step by step through using ecto and explains the features. Personally, Continue Reading »

Disclosure: This is another one of those paid-reviews-trying-to-pay-off-tuition things.
It’s a rather well-known fact that Microsoft’s attempts at integrating a top-notch firewall into their operating systems have come up short. If their integrated “firewall” was any good, they wouldn’t have made it so easy to disable it to use a real firewall and would have Continue Reading »

By popular demand, Apple has introduced a new and extremely useful feature called Complete My Album into iTS. Frequent iTunes Store buyers will have no doubt found themselves in the predicament when they’ve bought a single for a yet to be released album. A few weeks or months Continue Reading »

Pete Cashmore seems to believe that the current changes YouTube is undergoing tonight will be much more than just the maintanence they claim. The potential changes would include a new way to organize videos and facilitate user stickiness where they stay around Continue Reading »

Over the next few months, Yahoo! Mail users will begin having unlimited storage at their disposal. From the news pieces I’ve come across, the attachment size limit of 10MB (20MB for Y! Mail Plus subscribers) per email hasn’t changed. So much for emailing large movies of your Continue Reading »

I put my old school Firewire iSight to good use by recording a time lapse video of downtown Atlanta, as seen from my bedroom window. I started recording at 3am last night and stopped it at 10pm tonight. I used the iSight’s magnetic Continue Reading »

On the flight back to Atlanta today I was without my laptop, which is at Apple’s repair depot for who knows how long, and started to think of things geeks tend to do when they get bored. I had considered making a “you know you X when..”-type post similar to one of my favorite posts, Continue Reading »

Well that didn’t take long at all. Someone on the something awful forums was able to get his Apple TV to play videos in various encoding formats by adding codec support with Perian (a codec pack for QuickTime). Apple TV essentially runs a stripped down version of OS X. Continue Reading »

Mac users are well aware of MacUpdate, the definitive resource for discovering new software titles and version updates garnering the attention of more than 3 million people each month. However, there hasn’t been much coverage of their latest project, MacUpdate Promo, so I’ll be going over it in this paid review. Continue Reading »

Google silently added themes to personalized homepages today. Not including the basic Google theme, there are 6 themes you can try out. Interestingly enough, they are dynamic and change according to “your local weather conditions.” Continue Reading »

After a near month-long delay, Apple has begun shipping their Apple TV units which provide a long-needed connection between the media on your computer and your high-definition TV. Walt Mossberg of the Wall Street Journal took the Apple TV for a spin. Continue Reading »

I love flickr and I’ve always yearned for a unique and interesting way of displaying my recent flickr photos on my site. Yeah, I could always just grab the standard flickr badge and style it up nicely with some CSS kung fu but in the end it will still be a bunch Continue Reading »

Tomorrow night I’ll be attending a Refresh Houston meeting down here in Texas. There will be a special appearance by WordPress founder Matt Mullenweg as well. If you happen to be in the area, please stop by and meet us. Otherwise, you can keep an eye on my flickrstream to see what went down. [Upcoming.org page, Matt's post, Erica's post and Kelsey's post]

Over the summer I wrote a post called 5 Ways to Speed Up Your Site that went through some basic tips for getting your site to load faster. I mentioned enabling gzip compression in WordPress and using services that remove the whitespace Continue Reading »

Derek has posted an excellent comparison of three popular online project management and collaboration services. The most interesting of which, to me at least, was Webreakstuff’s new Goplan. I just moved over the random ideas I keep on my Basecamp account to Goplan. Which do you prefer?

Georgia Tech’s Spring Break kicks off today and I’ll be flying home to Houston in a few hours. I’m most definitely ready for it to begin after this project-filled week. I was at the College of Computing from 6pm to 8am just now attempting to finish up a computer science project. Of course, it was packed as most people had projects due today. Continue Reading »

Just a reminder for all WordPress bloggers - check your Akismet spam in the admin panel from time to time. I just bailed out 9 legit comments. And to think how many comments have wrongfully been marked as spam and deleted. If you ever find that a comment you posted Continue Reading »

Disclosure: I was paid $231 for this post and it’s something I would have never covered on my own. I only accepted this review due to the ~$100k worth of student loans in my name.
GetWebContent.com is a copywriting service that connects you with web content writers experienced in producing search engine optimized copy. Continue Reading »

Notice: Anti-Apple rant contained within.
I got an email from reader Ben today, asking

How is your white MacBook doing? Any more problems? Do you still like the white?

so I thought I’d take the time to respond to Ben with an update on my MacBook experience. For those of you keeping score at home, I have not been too happy with my Core Duo MacBook. Before I state all of my MacBook problems Continue Reading »

Last week at the Game Developer’s Conference in San Francisco, my fellow Computational Media major friend John Swisshelm won a game design competition. For that, he was awarded one of the $100 laptops created as part of the One Laptop Per Child initiative. I was able to get my hands on the $100 laptop for a bit and took Continue Reading »

I just noticed that flickr added a minor tweak just now. You can change the layout of your photos page. There are some small design changes as well but the Flickr logo still bears the gamma tag. To change your flickr photo page’s layout, head over to Continue Reading »

Apple has released OS X 10.4.9 today, so run your software update now. On my Macbook the update runs 99.4 megabytes. As you might expect, 10.4.9 is the last major update to Tiger until Leopard’s launch. The update is rather comprehensive and includes a good deal of performance and security fixes. Continue Reading »

Having trouble keeping track of the 37 social media services you use daily? Having an even harder time recalling your profile URL for those 12 social networks you use when a friend asks for it? Don’t worry, now there is Show Yourself. Continue Reading »

When it comes to turning your Mac into a multimedia machine with a TV tuner, there isn’t much of a choice except for products by Elgato. I’ll be taking a look at Elgato’s EyeTV Hybrid, an affordable OS X-compatible TV tuner complete with a software bundle. Elgato sent me an EyeTV Hybrid to review, so let Continue Reading »

Back in July I “realigned” this site’s design after having gotten bored with the old design. I began thinking this realigned design lacked some branding and could be tweaked up quickly. I ended up taking a break from watching all the cool SXSW happenings on twitter to “refresh” the design tonight. If you’re reading this through RSS, click on over to see the new look. Continue Reading »

I’m not one for politics… I’m actually rather apathetic about most political issues. One thing, however, that instantly caught my attention was how John Edwards is absolutely rocking it when it comes to making a presence online. He has accounts on dozens of social networking sites and just made one on twitter, even going so far as to friend me. Of course, Mr. Edwards also has a blog setup. Continue Reading »

Wired has an article discussing software that Adobe is developing that will be able to detect “improper manipulation of images”. The software will debut in the form of photo-authentication plug-ins for Photoshop in 2008. The plug-in could potentially be used by a Continue Reading »

Remember that hip new social network I gave out invites for a few weeks ago? Well, it launched and went public today. Virb is geared more towards the arts-oriented crowd (music, etc), or so it seems. Similar to MySpace, bands seem to be taking over Virb, as exemplified by this Fall Out Boy page. Continue Reading »

Josh Pigford, the creator of The Apple Blog, has posted an extremely well-written rant of sorts regarding the major flaw with Alexa website traffic statistics. Alexa is a serviced owned by Amazon that provides website traffic statistics based on information collected from web surfers with the Alexa toolbar installed. The problem is that the Alexa toolbar only runs Continue Reading »

Okay, I’ll admit that the idea of a socially-driven site built around sharing documents doesn’t sound terribly enticing, but I have fallen in love with Scribd. Scribd has a great design and a surprisingly simple and low-key method of embedding document files (support for .doc, .lit, .pdf, .ppt, .ps, .txt, .xls) within websites Continue Reading »

A common problem with mobile computing is the inability to find a comfortable and safe computing position without using some sort of TV dinner-type stand or pillow. It’s no secret that my Core Duo MacBook can get rather hot and that my swimmers prefer cooler climates. When LapDawg asked me to review their laptop stand, I couldn’t decline. Continue Reading »

An upcoming web application called MyMint aims to help you save money by analyzing your spending habits. While I can’t say too much about MyMint at the moment, I do know that it is a comprehensive personal finance tool geared towards college students, young professionals or just anyone who wants to improve their finances. MyMint analyzes your finances and shows you exact ways you can save money. Continue Reading »

Lots of great news in the Apple software realm today. Apple released iTunes 7.1 which includes the notable feature addition of full-screen Cover Flow and support for Apple TV. The iTunes update comes bundled with QuickTime 7.1.5 and also includes a few security fixes and Vista Continue Reading »

Ben Guild, the 19 year old mastermind behind Mobile17, has just launched a news site dubbed Whitesoap. Interestingly enough, Whitesoap kind of goes against the whole Web 2.0 mantra in that it’s not a social environment per se. News is automatically indexed and queued by Whitesoap. Continue Reading »

Deligio is a new web service vying to be an alternative for Download.com. Created by an Amsterdam-based startup, deligio is a comprehensive software bookmarking site and search engine. Upon first visit, you’ll see a simple homepage with a single search interface. Deligio aims to provide a quick and easy experience, helping you find the software you need and sharing with others. Continue Reading »

As you probably already know, I am an avid Ars Technica reader. They always lead the pack in top-notch reviews, well-known for reviewing the latest Apple products, as well as report on news first. Ars Technica has launched a redesigned site and the new layout is very fitting. A new feature, sections, splits up Continue Reading »

If you were an early adopter and upgraded your WordPress installation to version 2.1.1 you might be running with a severe vulnerability. A cracker got access to one of the servers and edited the code to allow for exploits. Matt has the rest. You can get the download for v2.1.2 in the usual place.

The Pragmatic Programmers, an excellent publishing house for technical books and resources, has started shipping TextMate: Power Editing for the Mac. TextMate is, hands-down, the best editor for the Mac - if not for any OS. Just ordered the book and PDF combo myself. Continue Reading »

To start off March with a bang, the RIAA sent out 400 letters to 13 different universities regarding potential copyright infringement cases, according to Information Week. In their typical ways, the RIAA expects to settle with most students outside of court. Continue Reading »