Nate-Tech Reviews

One thing that I really liked when I did not have a laptop that I could take back and forth with me from school to home was portable applications.

Labels: blog, check it out, FireFox, portable applicaions, portable apps

Electrified Clothing Seems to be coming no matter what in the next few years.

Whether its going to be some sort of computerized clothing or clothing with embedded GPS in it so you can keep track of your kids or my personal favorite clothing as of today.

Surfing the web today I cam across a jacket that serves as a sort of taser in case of attack. Check out http://www.no-contact.com/ to see this jacket.

The goal of this jacket is to according to the website:

"The goal of the No-Contact Jacket is to call attention to violence against women and to offer an alternative response to the body's vulnerable space and boundaries that society, culture and fashion have created. The development of the No-Contact Jacket is to intervene into the social condition of violence against women. This project enters a new realm of communication by expanding the borders between technology, visual arts, culture, product and the mass market. These alliances create new vocalizations and encourage thoughtful explorations into new social dialogues and new human/machine relationships."

This week also in the news, Russian astronaughts tested a space suit that has a computer and LCD display in it that hopes to reduce the chances of errors by displaying contingency plans on the LCD monitor. Read More Here

Either way computerized clothing is comming, be on the look out for this cool new self defence clothing.

Read More at "How Stuff Works" Here

Labels: blog, computerized clothing, look for it, self-defence clothing

There are alot of social networking websites out there, and most of them are copy cats to MySpace, Twitter, or FaceBook; but once and a while a new social network comes along that does something unique and better than any other social networking website.

Enter ShoutEm if you prefer check out Nate-TechCom on ShoutEm

ShoutEm is similar to Twitter in that it allows you to post 140 character updates to the site, and everyone can see these updates. The ShoutEm also has a mobile API which allows for integration with Mobile Browsers.

Labels: blog, Micro Blogging, publishing, ShoutEm, social networking, twitter

Today Google is honoring the 25th anniversary of Tetris Holdings LLC, by changing their standard "Google" image to a Tetris looking version of the Google homepage image (see image below).



Given that image I decided to play a little Tetris this morning to celebrate "Tetris Day" as it were.

I found an awesome place to play Tetris online against other players for free, and it is a version of Tetris that is very close to the classic version of Tetris. (they also do have a flash version of the 1989 version of Tetris)

The website is called Tetris Friends.com

My favourite version of the Tetris Friends game is the 6 player Battle Version, where you have to get a higher score than everyone else by eliminating as many lines as you can. (see screen shot below)



I would check out Tetris Friends if you have some time to waste while you are at work, or bored at home.

Follow TetrisFriends on Twitter if you would like to hear about their updates, they are currently in Beta, so I am sure they will be comming out with some more cool updates to the online game.

p.s. I would be willing to argue that playing Tetris as a child improved my ability to pack my trunk when moving Laura to California and back to Minnesota

Labels: blog, browser, games, internet, online games, tetris, twitter

Last week Microsoft released their new search engine to the world... Bing. After windows live search, did not catch on very well Microsoft decided to launch Bing to try and level the playing field for the search engine wars.

Bing's interface is very sleek, simple, and un-cluttered. Seems like Bing is patterned after Google. (Hey! If you cant beat them, imitate them, right?)

Both Google and Bing have links right on their home pages to search for images, videos, maps, and news.

Below is a image of Bing Compared to google on the "Bing Search Challenge" web page.



Performance wise Bing seems to be the same as Google, very quick, and generally very relevant search results. I was pretty excited that the keywords "Google Wave Review" gets me into the top 3 results on Bing.



Bing's main goal is to reduce the number of wasted clicks while searching, which Microsoft says accounts for about 24% of click in search results.

Below is some talking points from the Microsoft Press Pass Website...

---

Providing Tools to Help You Complete Tasks

Bing was designed to help you make smarter, more informed decisions faster. Bing focuses on four main areas:

• Shopping. Bing combines many of the shopping features available across the Web into one intuitive and easy-to-use experience. In addition to providing many product search refinement tools, Bing also scans the Web for user and expert reviews, organizes them by product attribute, and then ranks the sentiment in the reviews as either positive or negative. This enables you to filter quickly through lots of information to inform a purchase decision.
• Travel. BingTravel analyzes billions of pieces of airfare and hotel data to offer you flight Price Predictors and hotel Rate Indicators. Based on science, not marketing, Bing Travel enables you to make smart, well-informed decisions when planning a trip, every time.
• Local. Today’s search engines don’t always help people make informed decisions about the quality of a restaurant or the best way to contact a local mechanic. Bing presents relevant content including user reviews aggregated from local content sites, hours of operation for local businesses, one-click directions, maps and traffic reports.
• Health. Bing helps people find health information online. While there is no substitute for the expertise of a trained physician, Bing provides you with easy access to medical information from nine trusted resources to help you make more informed decisions about personal care.

---

To Sum It All Up- Check out Bing.com if you want a new and interesting search experience.

Labels: bing, bing.com, blog, browser, google, Microsoft, MSFT, Search Engine Optomization, SEO, web publishing

Something that I have been looking for on the G1 for a while is more desktop type widgets for the home-screens on the G1. Today I found a widget called Twidgit, Twidgit lets you see your friends updates right on the home-screen of your Android G1 phone.

Also, Twidgit lets you update right from the home-screen of your phone. Check out some screen shots of this app in action at, http://buffawhat.com/2140/android-app-twidgit/

Or on your Android Device download the app and check it out for yourself.

Labels: blog, g1, twidgit, twitter, widget

My G1 today had the new Android Firmware Pushed to it (Version 1.5).

Labels: android, blog, g1, google

I have been reading a-lot about creating websites lately, and I keep running across 2CreateAWebsite.com, this website is pretty cool Lisa explains everything in a down to earth way, she is usually giving a high level overview of different tactics you can take in designing a website; but she is very easy to understand, and is very stimulating to thought.

She has been around for about 6 years so you know she is legit.

Check it out if you are interested in publishing a website or blog online.

Labels: blog, internet, lisa, publishing, web publishing

Nate7181's Geek Chart

Labels: blog, browser, Geek Chart, internet, publishing, social networking, Try It, web hosting, web publishing, widget

The Rock Hard Times, is a new project from the creators of FireFTP, in my most recent post I told you about how my fave app for FireFox is FireFTP (Its probably the only reason I have not uninstalled FireFox as I have replaced most of my browsing with Chrome).

Labels: blog, browser, FireFox, FireFTP, google, wikipedia

Well, In my most recent posts I have bashed FireFox but, there is one add-in that I really like for FireFox.

Labels: add-in, blog, FireFox, FireFTP, FTP, Try It, web hosting, web publishing

I am always looking for quick shortcuts to get something done, and if I can do it through a wizard interface, than even better.

Meta Tags are important pieces of information mainly for how search engines index your web page, and in order to optimize indexing of your page, you should have relevant Meta information in the head tags of your web page.

The most legit accepted standard of how to format your meta tags is by the Dublin Core Standards.

You could go out to DublinCore.org and read everything you could ever want to know about the DC Standards, or if you want to generate meta data in a few seconds, than just simply use the link below from Stanford to generate the standard meta data tags.

http://soap.stanford.edu/plugins/dublincore/

Labels: blog, google, internet, Meta Data, Meta Tags, Search Engine Optomization, SEO, web hosting, web publishing, wikipedia, Yahoo

First Add the Twitter Widget from twitter.com/widgets, than make sure you have a properly functioning CSS Style Sheet.

Set the Following Value for the bullets...

.article ul li, #subContent ul li {
padding-left: 1em;
padding-bottom: 1em;
background-repeat: no-repeat;
background-position: top;
}

Make sure your selector is selecting the Twitter UL or just set a general selector for the UL LI

I have put a twitter widget out on the http://nate-tech.com home page.

Note this only works with the HTML widget.

Below is a screenshot of my nicely formatted twitter widget, with a line break between each tweet.

Labels: blog, browser, social networking, twitter, web publishing, widget

Google Wave is going to be the next social crave, in an effort to stimulate collaberation between people in groups, schools, work, charity...

Labels: blog, browser, chrome, google, google wave, internet, publishing, social networking, web hosting, web publishing

I dont know about this most recent move by Wikipedia to ban Scientology editors from the refrence site. But they have blocked all Scientology IP addresses from the website to prevent them from making self serving edits to the website.

Labels: blog, internet, publishing, social networking, wikipedia

If you are a technology website, hoping to offer services to people in your community. You need to get to the top of search results, I have already covered how to do this with Ping.FM and posting to mutiple networks with Ping.FM but, to go one step further, you should increase your activity in the online communities, and create link backs to your site from forums and comments on other peoples blogs (Please Note that you should not SPAM peoples websites).

Labels: blog, internet, SEO, social networking, web publishing, Yahoo

Alot of "wannabe" Techies out there like to use Firefox instead of Internet Explorer because they think that it makes themselves more secure and that it is the fastest browser out there along with these "wannabe" techies like to gather around the water cooler and say "well I use Firefox, that Microsoft company is evil". I will concede that IE8 is far better that IE7, but whatever they both are nothing compared to Chrome.

I would like to argue the best browser out there for windows is now Chrome. Its far more stable than Firefox, far faster that Firefox, and it renders HTML, CSS, XHTML, and all the other Web scripting languages better then IE or Firefox.

Try out Chrome and see for yourself.

Labels: blog, browser, chrome, internet

Ever wounder how to control your kids online, possibly prevent them from accidentally using your eBay account to buy a earth digger, well the answer is very simple.

Apply a password on your user account on your pc, than when you are not using your computer lock it, or log off.

To apply a password on any windows based PC, go to your control panel and than click on the "User Accounts" option.



If you are just adding a password to the account you are already logged into, click on "Change Your Password"



If you are changing a password on another account click on the manage another account option.

Enter in a password for whatever account you are wanting to add a password to.

Once you have set a password you must use it that means locking your computer when you are done using it.

To lock your computer press ctrl+alt+del and click on lock this computer. Or you can log off, the difference between locking and logging off is that when you log off your session will tottally end, any windows that you had open will not be open next time you log in as opposed to locking your computer which means that your session state will be the same when you log back in (assuming the power is not cut to the PC).

Now you can prevent your childeren from being on the interwebs when you dont want them to be on it.

Labels: blog, internet, passwords

Labels: blog, IMVU, instant messeging

Today, I was presented with the problem of quickly creating an image map for a SharePoint website. Without any of the fancy web design software close at my finger tips, I started searching Google for a online solution to getting an image map for myself. I stumbled across, http://www.image-maps.com/ which lets you generate an image map in no time at all, and I dint even have to clean up very much of the code to let it be 'presentable' for my purposes.

Case and point if you are in a bind or if you are just cheap try http://www.image-maps.com/ they kept me from having too many headaches today.

Labels: blog, image map, SharePoint, web publishing

One of my obsessions is trying to register the username "nate" on as many websites as possible, preferably social networking websites. My tried and true method for finding these social networking websites has been a little website called Ping.FM this website allows for you to register with almost any social networking website that has an API that is open to developers.

Having one utility to publish updates to all of these sites allows you to connect with more people, combine Ping.FM with TwitterFeed and you have the ability to post blog updates across 40+ social networks all at once. Using Ping.FM can greatly increase your visibility on the internet, and allow for you to have a decent chance at increasing the traffic to your blog.

This method of posting to all of these social networks at once, is phase two of my development ideas for this website.

* Bebo
* Blogger
* Brightkite
* Custom URL
* Delicious
* Facebook
* FriendFeed
* Friendster
* hi5
* Identi.ca
* Jaiku
* Kwippy
* Koornk
* Laconica
* LinkedIn
* LiveJournal
* Mashable
* MySpace
* Plaxo
* Plurk
* Pownce
* Rejaw
* Tumblr
* Twitter
* WordPress.com
* Xanga
* Yahoo 360
* Diigo
* Multiply
* YouAre

Labels: blog, social networking, web hosting, web publishing

Well, there is a-lot of services out there that you can use to host your website, there are a few that I have used and the past and use currently that I like a-lot.

The first service that I have used for about 8 years has been bravenet.com bravenet allows you to modify your dns entries as much as you want, and does offer some free hosting services though their free hosting is no match for freehostia.com the but on the converse freehostia does not allow you to modify your dns entries as much as bravenet does. The main reason I have used bravenet.com and will continue to use bravenet.com is the ease of customizing the dns\mx records which allows you to use a service like google apps, to host your own gmail email within your domain, and I really love having my own domains for email purposes.

The other service that I have thought about moving to in the future would be, bluehost.com this service runs about $9 a month and has the best of both worlds to offer for the DNS services and the Hosting services.

The other cool thing that I have learned about is FTP publishing from blogger.com to your website, this is how this blog works here, and has been working out allright. Getting Google Adsence up and running has been a bit of a pain but, all in all it has been good; integrating the blogger code into my existing web template was a simple process.

To sum it all up:
Bravenet.com - Good for hosting domains and customizable domains on the cheap.
Freehostia.com - Good for hosting website on the cheap
bluehost.com - Does everything you could want but, can get expensive.

Labels: blog, bravenet.com, freehostia.com, web hosting

Well, I got Adsence up and working on this site, along with Amazon.Com affiliate...

Now all I need to do is find a way to generate some meaningful content.

This always seems to the the "GotCha" issue for me.

Labels: adsence, blog

One of the most important things that I have found with my computers and with my own self (I have allergies), is that having an air purifier around minimizes the amount of dust that you (as a human) suck in, and minimizes the amount of dust that your computer sucks in.

Labels: Air Filter, blog, WhisPure510

In January 2009 I wrote an essay about German beer on the Germany.info website.

I ended up winning a Stein (see picture below).



If you want some free stuff, I would suggest checking out Germany.info and entering any contests they are running.

It paid off for me, it most likely will pay off for you.

Labels: beer, blog, germany.info, stein