Ad Skipping
28.Sep.08
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Found a nice little PC World magazine article titled, 5 Cool Hacks for Your Entertainment Gadgets. I’m already in love with one of the tips that involves adding some much needed functionality to my cable remote.
You see, with some remotes (including mine!) it turns out to be incredibly simple to turn on ad skipping functionality. Now, when watching a recorded game or show, I can just hit a key and instantly jump 30 seconds forward. No more fumbling with fast/super-fast/forward and overshooting everything!
It worked great while I watched my recorded copy of the Packers game today. Now I need another button that can redo bad football plays…
Google Analytics Address RegEx Tool
27.Sep.08
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One of the handy features of Google Analytics is the “Filters” feature. Want to make sure your visits to your site aren’t tracked? Just create a filter for your external IP address[1] and you’re good to go.
To setup filters you’re going to need to know a little bit about regular expressions. Another term for regex is “achilles heel” – at least for me. I just sweat trying to get my head around anything more advanced than filtering a single IP address… Total brain cramps when I need to filter a small range of addresses, for example.
Fortunately, Google has a nifty little tool buried in the help document titled, “How do I exclude traffic from a range of IP addresses?” There’s regex calculator there!
For instance, want to just filter out one address? Enter that address in the “First IP” field and then click “Generate RegEx”. I entered in 24.12.100.119 and it spit back ^24\.12\.100\.119$. Cool, huh?
It’s even more interesting for ranges, of course. Give it a try and see if it can’t help you a bit.
Oh, and there’s even a primer on regular expressions in the Google Help as well.
[1] Not sure what your external address is? Try a site like whatsmyip.org to find out. Are you a user of Google Mail? Then check the bottom of the screen to see your current address.
Wanted: Pop-ups from Mozilla Prism
24.Sep.08
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In yesterday’s article, I offered a gentle reminder that Google Chrome isn’t the only way to “app” a web site. Mozilla’s Prism has been around for quite some time.
In that post, I used WhatsUp Gold as an example of a site that works with Prism but not with Chrome.
Turns out there’s a small wrinkle I missed: Prism doesn’t appear to allow pop-ups (I’ve created the shortcut via the Firefox extension). WhatsUp displays notifications via pop-ups.
You can see the conflict.
Now, surely there’s a config file somewhere that I can edit to allow pop-ups, right? I don’t have the stand-alone Prism installed at the moment, but I could’ve sworn it allowed pop-ups…
Any tips or suggestions?
Remember: Chrome Isn’t the Only “Web App” Option
23.Sep.08
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One of the often discussed features of Google’s Chrome browser is the ability to create desktop shortops or “web apps” with just a simple click. This can be a fun or convenient feature and has likely spawned thousands of new desktop icons on desktops.
However, not all applications work well with the Chrome browser. For example, many apps use “browser sniffing” to make sure they’re running in a known/supported browser. If they haven’t been updated to know about or support Chrome then it is game over:
I’m not a real huge fan of browser sniffing for reasons like the image above…
As I use Chrome a lot at work, I thought it would be handy to have the web interface for WhatsUp Gold as an app shortcut. Alas, it doesn’t dig Chrome (see picture above)
But wait, all is not lost. Let’s not forget the Mozilla Prism project that has been around since last fall (first mentioned). Just grab the Prism Firefox add-on (announced last March) and you can create the same app shortcuts just as easily with Firefox as you could with Chrome.
And hey, more browser sniffers like Firefox than they do Chrome, right?
I Can’t Decide!
18.Sep.08
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I’d like to enter the sub-notebook space this fall. I want one of those light-weight and super portable laptops. Sure, I have a great laptop for work, but it is a desktop replacement. Super powerful – and super heavy. Not something I can just toss in a bag and go without planning (and grabbing a power cord!).
I want to be able to quickly hit web pages, email, connect to VPNs and even run Remote Desktop. I can do all these things on my HTC Mogul, but for long sessions that little keyboard goes quickly from convenience to pain in the butt. I want something a bit larger for sustained efforts.
There are some interesting choice these days and that’s what’s giving me pause.
For instance:
REDFLY
Celio corp’s REDFLY (I hate all cap. names) caught my attention earlier this year. Now that I can actually get one I’m having a hard time not impulse buying it.
What is it? They call it a “smartphone terminal.” It has no OS, no CPU or storage. It has a keyboard and 8” screen, looks like a sub-notebook and uses your Windows Mobile smartphone as the brains. Everything you could do on your phone, you can do on this – just bigger and easier.
What do I like about it?
- Small and light
- Long battery life (claimed 8 hours) – and if connected to your smartphone via USB (instead of Bluetooth) it’ll charge the phone too.
- No OS to license and manage. Heck, no additional office apps to install.
- Nothing installed means I can loan it out to co-workers with Smartphones. Or we could get a few of these and just grab one when needed. No profiles to worry about.
- Connectivity – by this I mean that everything my phone can do (wifi / EVDO / Bluetooth) this leverages. If there’s a signal you’re online.
- Huge geek quotient
What might concern me?
- The web browser experience. Pocket IE is tolerable, but I’d want more. Opera Mobile beta is awesome, but shows the “beta” by how often it runs out of memory… Not redfly’s issue, per se, but a “platform concern”. I live in a browser when remote…
- Will my WinMo remote desktop and VNC clients scale to the higher resolution?
- Price. At just under $400 we’re in the Dell Mini 9 / Asus Eee PC territory.
I’m very intrigued by this gadget.
Dell Inspiron Mini 9
Speaking of being intrigued, I’ve had a wee bit of geek-lust for the Dell Mini 9 since I first saw it announced last month. I like the options of Ubuntu or XP Home (no XP Pro though?).
Connectivity is one wrinkle I’d need to sort out before I could choose an OS though. While I lean towards Ubuntu, I’m not sure how easily I can “tether” my Mogul to use it for wireless broadband. With XP, I just use USB Modem to handle that (I once found a way to do it without 3rd party apps, but boy was that a pain to redo after each flash). And no, I’m not going to pay Sprint over $30/month for the phone as a modem plan.
What I like:
- A full featured laptop for under 2 lbs and under $400? Awesome.
- Bigger screen and higher resolution than the Redfly
- SSD for storage is nifty.
- Connectivity options (if XP) are right on par with the Redfly option
- XP or Ubuntu, either one has more features and flexibility over Windows Mobile 6.1. Not even a contest.
Concerns?
- More software to license (if applicable), install and maintain
- Battery life? Not sure on the Dell, but I’ve read reviews on other players in this space mentioning 2 hours. Not enough.
- Intel Atom proc. Just how fast is that thing? On a Smartphone there’s not much going on… but these may be running XP.
So…
Which would you go for – or what others should I consider? The newer Eee’s seem nice with the bigger screens in the same price range… I guess first I need to decide between Redfly vs. notebook before I decide which notebook.
