Open for business

Webspiration the online incarnation of leading visual thinking and planning package Inspiration is open again!
They have reopened sign-ups for free beta accounts. Got an email a couple of days ago and “Audrey” also left a comment on the earlier post. (Thanks Audrey!)
Good news for those who didn’t get in earlier. I make no secret of the fact that I am a massive Inspiration fan. Webspiration is a great development and I anticipate it will only get better.

Roboform2Go

I’ve mentioned Keepass before which is a handy open source application for managing passwords and other private data. Roboform is in the same vein. It’s not open source but there is a “lite” version and more importantly a mobile version which is super sweet. The paid version is well recommended by many in the tech industry and isn’t too expensive but if you’re needs aren’t great Roboform Lite will do just fine. I’m going to try on Roboform2Go for size and compare to Keepass. Windows only so if you’re on OSX your out of luck. Check out the video for more info.

YouTube – GC Season 2 – Ep. 6 – Roboform2Go

GC2 – Tech Look – Ep. 6 – Seg. 11 Get Connected host Mike Agerbo takes a look at Roboform2Go, a way to bring all your secret passwords with you on a single USB device.

A lesson for us all

iWork ’09 Torrent Carrying OS X Trojan [Updated] – Mac Rumors

A security alert posted this morning by antivirus vendor Intego reveals that the company has discovered a new Trojan horse that is being carried by pirated copies of iWork ’09 circulating on a number of torrent sites.

Largest security vulnerability when using your computer regardless of operating system is user behaviour. In this case you could call it karma. If you’re using torrents to download stuff especially if it’s movies, music or pirated software you’re risk profile increases significantly. You better know what you’re doing (i.e. have a quarantine machine or similar.)

Pimpin’ and protecting your tech

Gelaskin by Tim Sorsdahl

Originally uploaded by jonrawlinson

You have paid good money for your laptop investment so it’s not so strange to want to protect it a little and make it last a little longer. “But how can I do that without looking all untrendy?” I hear you ask. Well, I got a “bit o’ love fo’ ya”
Gelaskins, according to the site “…are removable covers for protecting and customizing your portable devices.” There are heaps of designs you can get from some well and lesser known artist (see pic). The gallery of covers is a bit slow to browse through on the site but well worth the effort. While you’re there you can get a matching skin for your iPod, iPhone or Blackberry.

If putting a massive sticker on your laptop makes you a bit nervous instead you can be “da biza” and “da shiza” with some kit from Foof. Truly trendy sleeves for your iPod, camera and laptop so next time you pull out your piece of technology everyone will go “Ooooh! That person is super cool and hip”. The website is super elegant and very browseable and all Foof-bags are handsewn in Australia.

New Palm

Palm Pre’s Touchstone Induction Charger originally uploaded by The Vagabond Project

The new Palm Pre was announced at CES (Consumer Electronics Show) the other day and looks quite promising. That said, the Blackberry Storm raised expectations but disappointed in the hand so I’m not buying all of the hype just yet. Features that caught my eye the most, at least compared to my Treo680, were the integrated Wi-Fi, 3.0 megapixel camera (with flash), bluetooth 2.1 (supports stereo), laptop tethering via bluetooth and 3.5mm audio jack (I can use my Senheisers yay!) Retaining the hardware keyboard is a no brainer in my opinion, if for no other reason than to distinguish itself from the iPhone. These are all hardware features you may have noticed but the new webOS “card” interface and the way the PIM apps will supposedly merge your data from mulitple sources (Google services, Facebook, Exchange server etc) are also impressive. An end to those duplicates! (Okay, so maybe if I didn’t try to synchronise GCal, iCal, Exchange server AND PDA it might be easier…)
I will look very seriously at getting one to replace my chipped and bruised Treo but shudder to think what it might cost not to mention when it would be available in Australia.
Looking on the bright side, it will be thoroughly road tested and reviewed before it reaches Australia so I can make a more informed decision.

GButts

I don’t really go searching for the latest Firefox add-ons. I have ones to meet certain needs in my workflow and that is that. While setting up a laptop for a “client” however (and installing add-ons), I stumbled across GButts. It’s a simple but awesome extension for Firefox that adds toolbar buttons with nice pretty little icons (see the pic) to the Google services you select in GButt’s settings. Tres handy!

Storage price war

Some of the larger chain stores like Dick Smith Power House, Big W and Office Works seem to be joining the digital storage price war. For external hard drives at least. Things have heated up so much that they are even out pricing MSY Technology the bargain shop frequented by any tech geek worth their salt all around the country.
All of this spells great news for the consumer. Except you can’t help but feel a little miffed when you see the same thing but cheaper in a junk mail catalogue 3 days later. In the fast paced world of technology however, you just have to suck that up and dive in.
If you haven’t got a current back up, now is a great time to get a big drive and copy all that data.

VLC player

VLC has a nice little feature that can capture sections of video from any source that it can read to file called the “Streaming/Export Wizard” (it’s found in the File menu). So I was trying to grab this little section of video by using the “Partial Extract” option (see pic to the right) and it was annoying the shirt off me.
I couldn’t’ get the section I wanted!
The clip was always too short (like a couple of frames) and always right at the beginning of the video not where I wanted it. Then a lightbulb popped into existence above my head and I was in business!
The trick was the time code.
Don’t use one!
The “From” and “To” input boxes are in seconds. A bit of simple multiplication (you know, 60 seconds in a minute and all that) and we were in business. Nice!

VLC, timecode

RSS Ep1 A quick intro

What is it?

RSS or Really Simple Syndication is basically an “inbox for your websites”
At the risk of “doing the thing that has been done to death” there is an embedded video of the Common Craft Show RSS in Plain English. I figure if you’re still reading this you may not have seen it before

Reading your feeds

First you need a feedreader. There are many flavours but they can be broadly grouped into three categories; online, built in (to the browser) and standalone. I use a standalone RSS reader application called NetNewsWire which synchronises with my NewsGator account. That way if I am on anther machine I can still get to my feeds when I’m desperate and I can read my syncronised feeds offline on my laptop. Best of both worlds.
If you’re a newbie I would suggest starting out with your browser (or mail client’s) built in RSS reader. Of IE7, Firefox, Flock and Safari I like Safari the best. It’s just a very clean interface with nice sliders and search functions. IE6 doesn’t have a feed reader but no one is still using IE6 are they. (Are they?)
Online readers are Google Reader, the afore mentioned NewsGator, Bloglines and a couple of others (list of top five here). You have to create an account obviously.
Desktop email applications like Outlook 2007, Mail.app v3 and a couple of others have you covered too. The advantage here is when you check you’re mail you can check your feeds at the same time. This is a great fit if you’re starting out fit as your “reading” is easily integrated into your current work habits. If you use webmail (OWA, GMail, Yahoo!, Windows Live etc), use a browser reader.

Keeping track

You keep track of your feeds by “bookmarking” them (of sorts.) It’s called “subscribing” when referring to RSS because it’s like a magazine or newspaper subscription. You automatically get the latest edition delivered to your door. Or in this case your feedreader. You need to be on the lookout for the words RSS or icons that look like the one shown to the left.

iPod touch/iPhone apps I would like to see

I guess this could apply to any of mobile device. The touch screen interface with gestures and
If there is already something like these out there let me know

1. Inspiration (that synchronises to the desktop) : A version was created for the Palm OS a few years ago. The iPod platform would be an even better fit IMHO. There are a lot concept mapping/diagramming packages available but none of them do the “visual” to “heirachical list” conversion quite as well as Inspiration. Adding the “mobile app” would truly seperate them from the rest in this crowded market. The new beta release of Webspiration is unfortunately Flash Player based which is not supported by Safari on the iPhone.
2. Digital story creator : It seems like a logical extension.  The iPod already holds a bunch of your media (video, photos and audio) This could be mega hot. Combined with a voice input option (accessory would be required for the Touch)