Personal Technology Tips in Plain English
Software
Blogging On My iPad with Blogsy App
Jun 12th
One of the biggest challenges in becoming a successful blog author and publisher is to figure out ways of integrating that actual sitting down and writing a blog post into your daily workflow.
And usually, producing posts take longer than your really think it will take, at least when you’re first starting out – mostly for the little things that add up like formatting, making sure you have appropriate graphics or photos accompanying each posts, etc.
This is why with my coaching clients, we spend a lot of time upfront trying to reduce the friction in getting things out of the blogger’s head and into the computer. If you can solve that ongoing battle for your time and attention’ you are in a for a great blogging experience. The question is just how can you do that?
So I was very happy to hear about the Blogsy app for iPad the other week. The developer was kind enough to let me take the app for a spin for this review and so far I’m impressed.
This just might do the trick for my writing praxis while I am out and about with my iPad.
Out of the gate, there are a couple of things I really appreciate about the Blogsy app. Here are 3 of them:
- You can easily search for video/images on Flickr, Picassa, YouTube, or even search on the web for images — all right from inside the app. This is a huge time saver since on the iPad, you would normally have to jump out of the app, launch a new one, find the image or video, copy paste the copy for it and then go back to the writing application. You don’t understand the convenience until you do it yourself with Blogsy.
I do wish Blogsy supports Vimeo soon. It seems like it is on the to-do list to add for new capabilities by the developer. But at least you can use the in-app browser to go to vimeo.com and grab the HTML embed code.
- You can manipulate any inline embeded image and video size via pinch and zoom. Again, one less hassle which actually takes advantage of the iPad platform touch screen controls.
- Multiple blogs support. Anyone that is a serious bloger is more likely to have multiple blogs. Having access to all of them from one app is a treat. . .especially when I am on a trip, I won’t have to consider bringing my laptop or not. This makes my iPad just that more productive while I am traveling or out of the office for extended periods of time.
Blogsy just got updated to version 2.0 this week, and I have seen a couple of crashes, but I assume these will be addressed in the coming weeks by the developer.
I have written a couple of drafts already in Blogsy, but this is my first live blog posting by the actual Blogsy app itself.
I will be blogging more about Blogsy 2.0 and beyond as I continue to use it, especially on an upcoming international trip where I will certainly ditch my laptop for the iPad (actually, with TeamViewer, I will be able to use my laptop on my iPad remotely just in case, but that is another blog post).
Are you a blogger with an iPad? How do you write and publish blog posts on your iPad? Please leave a comment below!
Backup, backup, backup…
Mar 16th
Doing a backup of your files on your computer is as fun as scheduling a dentist appointment for most people. Yet in both cases, we all know that it is something we really can’t ignore for too long. Scott Adamson of www.1110consulting.com shares with us today, two specific applications that do the trick with minimal effort. If only the trip to the dentist was just as easy. . .Enjoy this week’s guest blog post.
What are your memories worth? What is acceptable loss? What kind of investments have you made into your personal computer (financially or just in the time to make it an efficient tool for everyday use)?
These are the questions that are most frequently asked by people AFTER they have lost years of photographs, countless MP3s or irreplaceable documents.
Recently I had to break the news to a friend that the hard drive that I had to force out of a laptop after it fell from a bookshelf did not appear to be recoverable (at least not by my rudimentary toolkit). Date of the last backup of photos, about 2 years ago. Very little else exists anywhere else aside from this drive and that is a very sad state of affairs.
A rather expensive data recovery company could take a couple of weeks and cost several hundred to thousands of dollars to possibly recover the files from a failed drive. What alternatives and options does the average user have to protect against accidents, loss, damage or theft?
By this time, many of you have seen commercials online of on TV for service like Mozy. More and more backup solutions leverage “the cloud” with the fast and convenient Internet speeds most of us enjoy in our homes or offices to backup key files (or all files if you see fit) to an online storage location. Internet-based solutions are generally very cost effective (running about $10 per month for “unlimited” storage) and give many people the peace of mind of having data outside their home in case a laptop goes missing, a computer is damaged or a flood or fire ravages their home. One key issue with this is as fast as your internet connection may be, backing up everything to “the cloud” will take days or weeks to complete and maybe a little less time to recover (if God forbid you do need to recover a vast majority of your files).
Online solutions are very good options but the truth of the matter is, most often, users are going to be looking for the song they deleted from iTunes last week thinking it was on their iPod or overwriting the wrong Word file and needing to just go back to last hour or last night. This is where local backups are simple, quick and truly lifesavers.
Apple has incorporated Time Machine in the last couple of versions of their system (10.5 and 10.6). Just plug in an external hard drive (costing $50-100 depending on total storage capacity from buy.com or amazon) and Time Machine will ask if you would like to use this “new” drive for backups. Click yes, the system sets up the drive and puts together a schedule. The system is now good to go. If you have multiple computers in a home, check out Apple’s Time Capsule that acts as a wireless network router for the home and backup device for any Mac connected to it. Set it and forget it….
With the latest versions of Windows (Microsoft did a very nice job of integrating backup into Windows 7) provides an automated backup can be directed to a second drive in a similar fashion to Apple’s Time Machine. Connect a drive, configure the basic backup settings and let the backup do its thing.
Of course there are many options for buying backup software (some come with the drives you get from Amazon, Best Buy or the Apple store), but nothing that I have seen works as seamlessly and smoothly as the built in solutions from Apple and Microsoft.
Before investing in backup software, I would work with what you have from the manufacturer. Next step, seek out some help in getting it set-up once so that you’re good to go….backup!
Scott Adamson is a technology professional having spent most of his professional life in the NYC area supporting everyone from individuals to larger organizations. His goal as a consultant and technologist is to be the helpdesk you always wanted…Connect with Scott at www.1110consulting.com
Poor Man’s iTunes: How To Download / Extract mp3 Audio From YouTube Videos
Dec 25th
iTunes = Lots Of Choices
There are over 13 million music songs priced at 69¢, 99¢, or $1.29 each on the Apple iTunes store as of 2010. That’s a lot of downloadable music content.
YouTube = Even More
But there’s another source of audio content that some people don’t think about — YouTube. I still use iTunes (or the Amazon mp3 store) for regular music downloads. But I also like to listen to other types of audio content to make good use of my time on my commute, waiting in lines, and other periods of downtime.
YouTube actually has tons of video content that is great even for the audio portion alone — I’m talking about lectures, tutorials, podcasts, interviews, sermons, and speeches. But by having them trapped within a video doesn’t make it as useful when you want to listen to it on the run (and sometimes literally!).
Extract Audio From YouTube Videos
The question is how to get the audio out of a video file on YouTube?
A couple of sites lets you download just the audio within a YouTube video. All you have to do is supply the video url and let them know if you want a regular or high quality version of the audio to be extracted.
Free Download Helpers
Two sites that work well (there are a bunch!) are:
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www.video2mp3.net
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www.vid2mp3.com
After the site does some quick thinking, it supplies you with a download link or even a direct URL to pass along to someone else so they can grab the audio file as well.
There’s over 150 million videos on YouTube supposedly. That’s a whole universe of potential mp3 files to download for you! Enjoy!
14 Educational iPhone Apps Parents Should Know About
Sep 17th
If you’re a parent like me, making the most out of any screen time is something you have to attack with relentless pursuit. Instead of letting our kids become TV or game device zombies, there’s an alternative in today’s tech-dominated world.
With hundreds of thousands of apps being sold in the iTunes app store, there’s got to be a handful of great educational app, right?
Well, I was relieved and excited when I found out that there are in fact a bunch of really good educational apps available to choose from.
Here’s a selection of educational apps that fellow parents, teachers and app developers themselves have tipped me off about so that you can go straight to the App Store and start download these apps for your kids. . . Read the rest of this entry »
Free Screen Capture Software That Clicks With Me
Jul 11th
More and more, I’m find the necessity to create screen capture images of my desktop or a portion of a browser window more and more.
Typically, I’ve used the actual “Prt Sc” Print Screen button or the SHIFT+ALT+PRT SC combo to capture just the active window. This puts the screen grab into the clipboard memory.
From there, it’s an easy paste into MS Paint to resize or annotate with arrows, callout boxes, etc before saving it as “screen-URLorPROGRAMNAME.jpg” to use elsewhere – on blogs, twitpic, email, etc.
I’ve used a couple of Windows screen capture apps but none does what I want without cluttering my icon tray and hogging up resources. Recently, I’ve been testing out browser-based apps that do pretty much all I need. . .
One of them is called FireShot Pro and I used it with FireFox:
It’s been an easy-to-use screen capture program that works as a live browser plugin. The free version does most of what I need and even does Read the rest of this entry »
How To Enlarge Your Field Of Vision: Multi-Monitor Set-Ups
Apr 20th
As HDTV flatscreen TV’s get bigger and bigger, so do computer monitors.
As of April, 2010, Samsung makes the largest LCD computer monitor at 46″ in size. . . But you can enjoy the benefits without paying $48,000 that is required to buy a big fat computer LCD monitor display!
If you have more than one monitor, that will work too.
It’s one of the best ways to increase productivity (and your geek factor) – chances are you have an extra monitor lying around in the back closet somewhere – it doesn’t even have to be a flat-screen monitor to add value either.
Setting up a multi-screen computer monitor set-up is easy. Windows and Mac have built-in tools to extend your desktop to more than your main screen.
But sometimes it’s better and easier to use 3rd party tools. Lifehacker to the rescue with their roundup of 5 multi-monitor management tools for the pc (actually it should be 4 since the include Windows 7 as one of them):
Of course there are bunch of other utilities out there to use, but the first two above do offer freebie versions which may work for what you need. And the other two made the list for good reasons too.
QUESTION: ARE MULTIPLE MONITORS ONLY USED BY GEEKS? Share your comments below!
Pencil Pushing Made Easy
Jun 5th
This just might be the right moment for you to go it your own way and start your own business.
You know you’ve been thinking about it on and off for awhile now.
Well, since the time is right, where do you start?
When you open for business, one of the first critical steps is to make sure your books are in order.
Accounting is so important in business. Not just for tax purposes, unless you know exactly where your money is coming from and where it is going, you won’t be able to make strategic decisions to keep your business afloat and succeed in the future.
While it’s no replacement for a good accountant that can be a great advisor on your side, bookkeeping software can really make your daily business life a little less stressful. Seriously.
Here’s one strong suggestion I have for all entrepreneurs when they open the doors to their new business and haven’t paid any attention to the numbers side of business yet. . . Read the rest of this entry »
I love tech, gadgets and the web. Hope you pick-up a useful tip or two here today that helps you use technology to your advantage! Better yet, why not share your own expertise in a comment on a post today to help the other readers that land here for answers!