Entries Tagged 'Dominating the World Technologically Speaking' ↓

I’ve always wanted the power to smite people. You throw your arms up in the air, call on the powers of heaven and lightening, and fry the offending party where they stand. Generally, this urge comes on when I’m driving around Salem.

Now I hear that Sony has developed wireless technology that sends electricity through the air.

While my mind is boggled – Flying invisible electricity! Get excited! – I have to ask myself. How is this not dangerous?

I understand that this is not strictly a new concept. My cell phone works, and it’s not plugged in. My laptop can connect to the internet while I wander around the room, carrying it like the surrogate child it is. But electricity just seems more intense.

Perhaps it’s an after-effect of all those Hollywood movies and storm chaser shows. I just imagine sitting calmly on my couch while bolts of lightening zap around my head, charging my electronics and periodically frying my cats.

Not being a scientist or an engineer, I’m just going to assume they’ve got this under control. Because in a related technological breakthrough covered by Apartment Therapy, there are now wireless charging mats available on amazon. And I want one.

Why? Well, practically, I could charge my electronics more efficiently. I’m a big fan of toys and I’m pretty OCD about keeping them charged. In this scenario, I’d come home, empty my pockets of gadgets and gizmos a-plenty, and drop everything on a Powermat. I wouldn’t have to plug anything in, and when I went out again, I’d just scoop everything back up and it would be magically charged.

Aesthetically, this means I could dispense with some of the cords that currently make my home an unsightly nest of plastic and wire. Also, we’re in the process of baby-proofing, and going cordless (even a little) would help a lot.

Considering the future, I am somewhat concerned. In a society with both wireless electricity conduction and tasers, it can’t be long before smiting-in-traffic is a reality.

You’ll be sitting in your vehicle, someone will cut you off, and instead of moving on with your life (or yelling obscenities out the window) you’ll press a button on your Honda Powermat Traffic Enforcer and zap the other driver from 3 car lengths away.

I fear for the world. And I’m also going to advance order any road rage related powermats stat.

Image credit: mat & taser.

Article credit: Thanks to Apartment Therapy, Jon Heller and PC World.

I hate to wait for things. I also hate to wait for people. Sometimes, when someone is explaining something, I yell at them to talk faster. I adore Jon’s Dad, because he and I can actually have conversations in which we both talk and listen at the same time. Seriously. You can quiz us afterward and we’ve processed what the other person is saying.

Once, when I was in Florida helping to create a title processor training guide for the title insurance company where I worked, in the midst of a heady brainstorming session, an exasperated co-worker cried, “talk slower!” to which I replied, completely without thinking, “hear faster!”

Everyone laughed like it was a great joke, which was fortunate, but uh, I wasn’t joking.

Anyway, I’ve finally stumbled upon a form of delayed gratification that I don’t mind, due entirely to clever marketing.

Since I live with Jon, and therefore have to keep my technological toys up to date in order to keep up with all the cool stuff he’s getting into, my laptop loads programs almost instantly. Some programs take a few seconds longer than instant, and I actually get impatient while waiting. I mean, if you’re not Adobe Photoshop, you really have no reason not to load immediately.

But one program’s load time doesn’t bother me. This is because when the program loads, the tagline is “Take a deep breath.” And I do. So, not only does that buy the program some time to load, but all that extra oxygen calms me down.

If more people incorporated sneaky relaxation techniques into their delays, it would be a different world. I mean, imagine instead of “we are experiencing technical difficulties” the announcer lead everyone in a meditative chant of “om.”

Should you attempt to take over the world, I suggest that you use this technique whenever possible. This will enable you to pacify your populace as well as to buy yourself more time to stash your treasury’s gold bars in your island slush fund. And if it’s taking you awhile to get started on your global domination, I suggest you slowly stretch your arms over your head and yawn 10 or 12 times, while taking frequent herbal tea breaks.

Every time I move my files from one computer to another, I ask Jon to transfer everything, and then I reload my files into iTunes manually. As a result, my current computer has about 30 GB of duplicate mp3 files.

Recently, I’ve been working with larger image files, which has made me aware of how much space I have left on my MacBook Pro. Understandably, I’d rather not have 30 GB of duplicate files.

Download Here

I started weeding through these manually, and then realized there’s a script for everything and I was wasting hours of my life. After a quick Google search, I found Doug’s AppleScripts for iTunes.

I checked with Jon to make sure I wasn’t going to fry my computer with this download (always a good step in your download process) and downloaded the file. There are directions on the site re: the correct way to download & open the file, just in case you do not also have an IT guy held hostage by marriage.

Getting All Your Mp3 Files Into Your iTunes Library

You can skip this section if you don’t have mp3 files outside of your iTunes Library.

If you have mp3 files outside of the iTunes Library (Music > iTunes > iTunes Music), you may want to move all the mp3s on your computer to iTunes first. To do this, open iTunes, go to File > Add to Library and select your main home folder, or whichever folder where you store your non-iTunes mp3s.

Read this whole paragraph before taking any action: After copying these files, you can delete all mp3 files outside of your iTunes Library. When I did this, I searched for “mp3″ and deleted any folder outside of the Library. Before you do this, you may want to back up your files first. (I used Time Machine.) You may also want to check a few files manually to make sure they are still working before you click Empty Trash.

Organizing Your Files

For organizational purposes, you may want to run File > Library > Consolidate Library. This will organize all your iTunes within your Library.

Using Dupin to Remove Your Duplicate Mp3 Files

Criteria

Now that you’re all organized, open Dupin, select your Criteria on the sidebar on the left and click Get Dupes on the top left. This will give you a list of 40 files, or 20 Dupe Groups. Initially, all of the files will be checked, meaning that Dupin will save these files. The criteria I use is: Name, Artist, Album, Time, Size and Track Number, but you may need to adjust it depending on your files.

Filter

Filter your playlist using the Filter Controls. I recommend Single Arbitrary, but just think about what makes the most sense for you. For example, since I had a lot of copied files, most of my file names looked like this: “Float On.mp3″ and “Float On 1.mp3″ so I filtered by Shorter Filename and removed all the files with the “1.mp3″ added on.

Check Your Work

Once half your files are checked and half are unchecked, take a quick look at the files to make sure the unchecked ones are the ones you want to delete. After a couple runs, you’ll be confident in your Criteria and Filter method, and will be able to skip this step.

Purge

When you’re ready to delete the duplicates, go to Tools > Purge. Click Remove when prompted. You will be asked if you want to keep the files or move them to trash. Since I wanted more space, I selected Move to Trash. If space isn’t an issue for you, you might choose to keep the files.

Paranoia Test

And you’re done! If you’re paranoid like me, you’ll test files periodically to make sure that they’re still working correctly in iTunes.

Warning

If you have files that vary widely in terms of quality, you may need to be more stringent with your Criteria and Filter methods. You may even want to go through these files manually, to avoid deleting the better quality files.

Dupin Review

This is a good application. It works exactly as advertised, is pretty simple to use, and it’s free (the demo version). This is a feature Apple might want to consider incorporating in iTunes to make it available to more users.

Recap

In a post last February, I decided to buy a Speck SeeThru Hard Shell to protect my Macbook Pro. I promised to follow up with a review once I’d tried it out for awhile, so here is the review.

Summary

This case is actually pretty awesome, as cases go.

Heat

I run a lot of programs on my laptop at once, and I use it all day – 8 hours at work, and a few more at night. The case hasn’t made the laptop noticeably warmer, and I haven’t had any problems with it overheating (knock wood). The 74 vents in the bottom (I actually just counted them, and I came up with 75) provide enough ventilation to keep your laptop comfortable and running smoothly.

Port Access

The holes for the ports on the sides of the laptop are aligned correctly, so you don’t risk damaging your machine when you plug in your mouse or headphones or whatever weird things you like to attach to your laptop. The holes in the front allow you to access your disk drive and open your laptop easily.

Open Angle

Although you can’t open your laptop as far as you can without the case, there is ample space in the back. You can open it up enough to view the screen comfortably, far over 90 degrees. It is easy to view the screen sitting or at a desk – no problems here.

Attaching Your Case

The case is easy to put on, and it snaps into place. I haven’t yet tried to remove it, but it seems pretty similar to a hard plastic iPod case, where you wedge a penny or a credit card between the case and the machine and carefully pry it off. Again, I haven’t tried this yet.

Case Surface

It is a little more slippery than the actual laptop, so if you’re carrying it around, just be careful not to let it slide. Likewise, if you place your laptop on a slick surface, I doubt it would slide off, but it’s slightly less secure than without the case. This is not a reason to avoid this case – just don’t be an idiot about how you handle your laptop and you should be fine.

Price

Price was pretty good – after discounts and coupon codes found online, the case cost $21.82 including shipping.

Attractiveness

If you’re into that kind of thing, there’s a decent variety of colors. I’m happy with my Aqua case, although it’s been suggested that I buy one to match my outfit each day. Which, considering I’m currently wearing maternity clothes and thus don’t have many choices about my wardrobe, is actually feasible. But unlikely.

Finally, the case stays pretty clean, seems to be sturdy (no scratches on it after a month), and is streamlined & light weight. Your covered 15″ MacBook Pro will still fit into the average laptop case, and will not attract any more cat hair (fun when it sticks to the surface) than before you put on the case.

Recommendation

All in all, I’d rate the Speck SeeThru Hard Shell as a worthwhile purchase at a good value. It accomplished what I needed, which was to protect my MacBook from dings and scratches without slowing or preventing any of its functions.

It took about an hour and 15 minutes for poor Jon to troubleshoot this issue remotely for me.

Google had several tutorials on how to add images to your gmail signature, but most of them referenced Firefox add-ons that no longer supported this function, like Better Gmail.

Open Firefox, go to Tools > Add-ons > Get Add-ons, type in “greasemonkey” then download the add-on and restart Firefox. Or, you can download it here.

Then go back to Tools > Add-ons > Get Add-ons and type in “wisestamp” and install. Restart Firefox. Or, you can download it here.

Go to Tools > Add-ons > Extensions. Select WiseStamp and click Preferences. This window will open. (Fields will be blank.)

If you have an HTML version of your signature, paste the HTML into the editing window. You can make adjustments to your formatting using HTML.

If you don’t have an HTML version, click on the Visual button above your editing window. This will let you make changes in the editor, which is similar to the visual mode in WordPress or even Microsoft Word.

Make sure any images you use are uploaded somewhere. If you use the HTML mode, just use regular HTML code to insert the image. If you use the Visual mode, use the insert image icon and enter the image URL.

You can also add any social services (LinkedIn, Flickr) or contact methods (IM, Skype). These will appear below the information you entered in the editing window.

If you don’t want to promote Wisestamp, go to the Settings tab and check off Hide WiseStamp statusbar icon and uncheck Promote Wisestamp Project.

Use the Preview button to test your signature, and be sure to save your work. Log into gmail and click Compose. Your signature should show up automatically.

Thanks again to @jonheller for finding the add-ons and figuring out which ones worked the best. If you use this tutorial, please tweet him and tell him he’s great!

Good luck with your signatures and please feel free to post any questions.

Oh, Twitter. Why are you always causing me to delay my gratification?

Quit being broken. It’s not cute and 2.0 anymore. It just makes me grumpy and more prone to use Facebook.

On a related though less important note, your bird icon scares me. It reminds me of the PacMan ghosts.

Please stop that immediately.

Image credit: twitter.broken.com and ghosts.

When it comes to personal finance, if I can’t do it online, I don’t want to do it at all.

I realized this today when I went to increase my credit limit on two of my credit cards.

I went to one bank site, clicked on request increase, and received a message seconds later that my credit limit had increased 600%. (I guess it’s been awhile since I last requested an increase.)

I went to the second site, and they said to call their 800 number and request an increase. What? I have to use a phone? I can’t just click on a glossy button and get instant gratification? I have to interact with other humans? And I can’t even email them? Forget it. I’m good with my 600% increase on my other card, and I’ll just quit using your services.

Likewise, if I can’t pay for something online, I don’t want to use it. Amazon.com, Paypal and eBay have set a trend that makes any site without an online payment option dated and unfriendly. Most major stores support this trend by offering online catalogues with shopping carts to streamline your purchase process.

When we were running a business from home, we discovered that even the Post Office lets you pay for postage online, print out your packing slip and schedule a pick up time for the mailman to come to your house and get your package.

As a business, why would you not want to make it easier for people to pay you? Ever?

As a consumer, I realize how easy it is to impulse buy when your purchase is instant, so I try to take the time to think each online purchase through. But once I’ve made the decision, I don’t want to have to call someone to make the purchase. There are just too many other places that will take my money instantly for me to bother with you if you won’t.

What sites irritate you because they don’t offer an online payment option? From a customer’s standpoint, is there ever a valid reason for a business not to offer this?

Image credit: credit cards, button, old phone, usps.