Facebook Lite is Twitter on Steroids

Posted on September 13, 2009 by thatgeekychristian

A while back rumors swirled of facebook buying twitter.  You may also know that it never happened, and the rumors swirled that facebook was not happy about it.  The site shortly thereafter made some dramatic changes to its look, mainly the news feed page, that made it “twitteresque” to some degree.  Now, however they’ve stepped up their game.

Recently facebook unveiled “facebook lite” at http://lite.facebook.com.  Facebook lite is essentially a stripped down version of facebook.  It’s a news feed and your wall.  On the first page of the site you’ll see a basic news feed with your friends’ updates, buttons for “write” “post photos” and “post video”, an option to view top stories, people you may know, and links to your profile, events, and inbox.  That’s it, no apps, no chat, nothing!

Now, if you’ve ever seen twitter, you’ll notice the similarities right away.  I mean, twitter is essentially your status and your friends’ statuses, and so is facebook lite.  What is unique, however is the add photos and video options.  Twitter requires third party sites to house such content and create tweetable links to provide that functionality.

I don’t know if facebook is just trying to give its users a clean experience similar to how it was when it began, or if this is a direct stab at the twitter market, but I do know it’s nice.  I recommend any of you with a facebook account to check out facebook lite.  Sometimes it’s nice to log in to a simplified interface and just do what you do best, facebook stalk your friends!

Image Credit: Wikipedia

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Ever Lost All Your Photos on a Memory Card? Recuva Them!

Posted on May 12, 2009 by thatgeekychristian

So, I recently went out of town for a competition that I oversee.  We hold two competitions a year and for both I brought all my goodies to ensure a well documented and techy time!  I had my iPod, my laptop, my GPS, my video camera, and of course, my digital camera.  I chose to mostly use my video camera, while I let a friend take pictures on my digital camera.  Her pictures were so much better than what I’ve taken in years past, I decided to let her take them at the second competition as well.  My plan had one problem, however, my card was almost full, and I didn’t have a spare.  No problem, I thought to myself, I can just empty the card onto my laptop, format it, and I’ll be set for the weekend!

I’m always so careful that I had no fear taking care of this menial task.  I’m so careful, in fact, that apparently I didn’t feel the need to actually ensure the pictures copied over.  When I finally began to sort and burn the pictures to a disk to share with my friends, I find much to my horror, that the folders on my desktop are all empty!  Since I had already formatted the card, all I could think of was the many opportunities I had over the past week to save the pictures off the card.  Then I remembered that formatted cards aren’t truly erased, they’re just overwritten!  I began to search the net for a disk recovery program.

Thankfully, I found one named Recuva (pronounced like “recover”).  This wonderful little free (donations accepted) program is from the same people who make Ccleaner.  Ccleaner is a program I love and trust, so I immediately downloaded Recuva and put it to work.  The program could not be simpler to use.  A couple of clicks after the installation, and it was dutifully searching my memory card.  I chose to recover every file on the card and sort them out later.  Thankfully the only pictures that had been lost were saved months ago.

Recuva also works on your hard drive to recover files that have been emptied from the recycle bin.  It’s a wonderful little program that saved my hide, and could help you get out of a jam!  I hope you find it as useful as I did.  Get Recuva from http://www.recuva.com/

Photo Credit: Wikipedia

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TealOS Brings webOS Look to PalmOS Phones

Posted on March 17, 2009 by thatgeekychristian

Here’s a video overview of me showing TealPoint’s TealOS program.  It brings the Palm Pre’s webOS look and feel to the Treo and Centro line as well as to Palm’s hand held PDAs.

UPDATE: This product is no longer for sale.  TealPoint was asked by Palm to stop selling the product and complied.

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Hulu Full Screen Jerky? Try Adjusting Flash

Posted on March 3, 2009 by thatgeekychristian

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So, recently I have become practically addicted to a television show that comes on NBC. I started watching the show in its second season, and really got hooked when I bought the first season on DVD. However, since I had quite a few missed episodes in the current season, I wanted to completely catch up. Thankfully for me, NBC owns hulu.com and places many of its shows online for free. My laptop has an HDMI port, so hooking up to the television was a breeze.

Everything was clicking along nicely until I placed the video in full screen mode and voila, it stuttered like a shy kid with a speech impediment. Here I sit with a 2Ghz AMD Dual Core Processor, an ATI Radeon 3200HD integrated graphics card with 256 MB dedicated and 3 gigabytes of RAM, and I can’t watch a simple hulu video in full screen. I begin searching the internet to no avail. I updated the drivers, tweaked every setting I could, and still could not watch a video in full screen. YouTube worked in full screen, but hulu jerked horribly! I tried a MacBook, and it worked fine, I checked my old laptop with a slower processor and less video memory and it worked fine. This was simply driving me nuts!

All the help I found mentioned either updating drivers (which as I said I had already done), reinstalling flash (also did, didn’t work), or turning off hardware acceleration. Hardware acceleration! There it is, finally some hope, I can’t believe I had forgotten that! Wait, not all video cards allow you to disable hardware acceleration, and mine happens to be one of them. At this point I want to throw my computer against a wall and acquire a new one. One last ditch effore brought me to yet another google search. Finally, I came across an article that showed me how to disable hardware acceleration inside adobe flash. “What? Adobe has its OWN hardware acceleration? You’ve got to be kidding me!” I thought. It wasn’t.

After literally simply right clicking the video, and unchecking the hardware acceleration box inside flash, my videos were as smooth as silk! So, I decided to post another article that will hopefully help someone. After all, what kind of Geeky Christian would I be if I didn’t share what helped me with the rest of the world? I hope some of you find this helpful!

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Gmail Offline is Welcome Addition

Posted on February 17, 2009 by thatgeekychristian

Gmail is perhaps the best net based email provider around.  However the bane of internet email providers is that in order to use them you must be connected to the internet.  It would be nice to be able to take your Gmail with you wherever you go, just like those who use desktop based systems like Microsoft Outlook or Mozilla Thunderbird.  Well, wait no longer, a few weeks ago Gmail introduced it’s “desktop application.”  I put that into quotes because it’s not so much an application as it is a browser extension, but it’s a great feature nonetheless.

In order to activate the feature you must sign into your Gmail account and click on the Google Labs icon in the upper right hand corner.  Once inside simply click to enable offline, follow the prompts to install gears if it’s not already installed, and you’re done.  The only thing left to do is allow Gmail to archive and download your messages.  It will download your most recent 10,000 messages, attachments and all (this may take some time, so just relax, you can continue using Gmail).

While using the service without internet you can view, search, and even create new messages.  One thing that cannot be done, however, is attach files to your created emails.  However, it would not surprise me if this feature was added in the future as the service is in beta.  When you sign back on the internet, your messages will be sent and any new messages will be downloaded.  Also, there’s a setting for flaky internet for those times when your connection is weak.  So, let’s get to it.

The Good:

This is so far my favorite addition to Gmail.  I often take my laptop to work where I do not have personal internet access and Gmail is blocked on the company computer.  It’s nice to be able to bring my email with me.  For me, 10,0o0 messages goes back years so I have a nice archive of my email with me wherever I go.  It’s wonderful to have that capability while still having Gmail’s splendid user interface.

The Bad:

Since Gmail.com is no longer dynamically updated on your local computer, it changes your experience a bit.  If you are accustomed to signing into Gmail and automatically seeing your new messages, you’ll notice that you will now have to wait for a few moments to ensure that the system is synced.  Also, you will have to pay attention to make sure the sync actually occurred.  This can cause some to miss messages received because they don’t realize that their email simply isn’t synced.

The Bottom Line:

Gmail offline is a wonderful and welcome addition ot the Gmail lineup.  Despite the small flaws, it’s taking Gmail to a much higher level of usability.  I highly recommend setting this feature up on your Gmail account!

Photo Credit: Wikipedia

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3D Vision

Posted on February 2, 2009 by thatgeekychristian

3D Glasses

High Definition (HD) television is making its way into more and more homes in the U. S.  The picture quality is second to none, and screens are getting bigger and cheaper. Families can purchase high definition disks and players, surround sound systems and a large television and have a theater like experience at home. With the economy slowing, less and less people are shelling out money for movie tickets. The environment is nicer, and a family can watch movies with an almost equivalent experience right from the comfort of their own homes. So, what are movie studios to do in order to keep customers? Why, return to 3 Dimensional (3D) movies of course.

3D movies have been around for many years. In the 1950s theater goers would flock to theaters in order to see their favorite stars “pop” off the screen. However, the technology always left something to be desired, and has been more of a gimmick than the norm. However, with the movie industry hurting, and the technology improving, studios are once again jumping on the 3D bandwagon.

Admittedly, I’ve never been to a major studio release of a 3D movie, I’ve only been on the Ripley’s 3D ride (disappointing), but I’ve always been interested in the technology. So, when I heard that the Super Bowl would feature a commercial for an upcoming movie in 3D and that a show that I like (Chuck) would be shown in 3D, I was excited!

When the time came, and the television prompted me, I placed my glasses on with much anticipation, and initially, disappointment. The glasses I picked up for free at the local dollar store looked strange at first, and the television just looked strange. However, the more I let my eyes relax, quit looking for things to literally jump out of the screen at me, the better it looked! I watched as all of a sudden my television had depth! It was a very cool experience, and I’ve already set my DVR to record Chuck tomorrow night. HD plus 3D, what a great combination! Some companies are working toward the eventual goal of 3D television without the glasses, and I’m sure that day will come. Until then, you can see me in my dorky paper glasses enjoying what is shown on television. How about you? Any experience with 3D or thoughts? Leave me a note and let me know what you think.

Filed under: Current Events, Hardware | 1 Comment »

Tech Geeks: 2 Technology Challenged: 3

Posted on January 26, 2009 by thatgeekychristian

In a previous post I talked about the possibility of delaying the digital transition.  It is still my firm belief that this is a bad idea.  It will only cost money and cause more confusion (see article below).  However, on Monday the senate voted to postpone the transition until June 12.  The vote could go to congress as early as Tuesday where it is expected to be passed.  Should the vote pass in congress, I’ll post further details.

Edit: The house voted against the delay on Wednesday!  What happens next remains to be seen.

Edit 2: The senate sent the delay up for vote again and this time it passed.  President Obama promised to sign it into law, so the transition will once again be delayed.  Let more consumer confusion and wasted taxpayer money begin to flow.

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WhiteHouse.gov Goes Live

Posted on January 20, 2009 by thatgeekychristian

With the innauguration of  President, Barack Obama comes the new site http://www.whitehouse.gov/.  The site lays out President Obama’s agenda, houses his weekly video addresses and blog, provides a point of contact for the White House, and more.

If used as promised, this web site will provide more openness than any president in our nation’s history.  It’s exciting to see all this information in one place, and the contact form is promised to be constantly monitored, giving everyday citizens the clearest path to the president ever established.

I’m excited to see what takes place on this site.  I’m hoping it will be nice insight into the White House.  Time will tell, in the meantime, check it out!

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Dilbert Videos

Posted on January 16, 2009 by thatgeekychristian

Being an Engineer who has worked in cubicle world, some Dilbert strips are extremely funny.  Here are a few Dilbert videos I like.

Seriously, this should offend no one.

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The Bible On Your Phone

Posted on January 12, 2009 by thatgeekychristian

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The Bible is the best selling book of all time.  Pretty much every Christian has a copy, if not two or three.  Those of us who are tech savvy, however, can always use another one; one which is portable.  Along those same lines, what respectable geek doesn’t carry his or her smartphone everywhere?  Enter Bible Reader by Olive Tree.

Olive Tree Bible Software has been around for quite some time.  They are producers of quality bible software for PDAs and smartphones.  Since the smartphone market has almost completely killed the PDA market, the focus of the site has turned to smartphones.  Almost any translation of the Bible is available from King James Version to New International Version.  The software is free, though many of the books must be purchased.  Olive Tree does, however,  offer many free resources including some great translations of the Bible.

So, if you are a geeky Christian like me, and have a smartphone (including the iPhone) checkout www.OliveTree.com and pick out your portable Bible today.

Filed under: Software | 2 Comments »

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