A belated Pick of the Week, I chose a really useful tool for all sorts of web design and development, Firebug. This is really useful to inspect page elements for CSS styles, but really shines when inspecting Javascript errors. You can view the console easily and really debug Javascript problems, something that was very troublesome in the past. If you are doing any sort of web design or development, I highly recommend Firebug, a free extension for Firefox.
Archive for July, 2008
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iPod Touch Apps
One week with the iPod Touch and I feel it is time to share some apps that I have found interesting or useful. All of these are free apps, I have not found an app that I have wanted to actually purchase yet.
Pandora - For those of you familiar with Pandora, you will love this app because it brings everything Pandora has to offer to your iPod or iPhone. You can listen to any of your stations, thumbs up, thumbs down, etc. If you are not familiar, go to pandora.com and check it out.
NetNewsWire - While not perfect, it does fit well into my news reading workflow. Using the NewsGator service, I can sync what I have read on either the iPod or my Mac. The browsing experience isn't great on the iPod, but I can save items to the Clippings to read later on my Mac.
Twittelator - One of 4 or 5 Twitter apps, this is my preferred one. It has no ads and doesn't try to do a bunch of other things. Simple and works well, that is what I am looking for in a Twitter app.
Labyrinth LE - The Lite (read: free) edition of Labyrinth. This is a great example of the accelerometer in action as you tilt the device to move the ball around just like you would a real labyrinth board. The physics of the ball are also amazing, making this a great app to show off the abilities of the device.
Mobile News Network - Basically a pull from the AP of stories nationwide and locally. It has a nice collection of the day in pictures as well. I like this better than the NYTimes app because of it's simplicity.
WordPress - The official application to post to a WordPress blog, this has most of the features of the standard web posting. The only thing it is missing is the ability to do rich text editing of posts, meaning you have to know basic HTML to do any linking or whatnot.
I should note all of these are first generation applications. It is pretty impressive to see this much quality stuff initially and it just whets my appetite for bigger and better things to come down the line in the next 6 months or so.
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iPod touch
So just short of a week ago, I became an iPod touch tester for ITS. While I admit that I am not upset about this, I have done my fair share of testing for the enterprise apps. Things that work well include the email and calendar syncing, global address list searching, and overall stability of the device. I even tested out the remote wipe feature today, sucessfully "bricking" my phone in the instance the device is lost or stolen. Overall I am really impressed with the new software for the device. Tomorrow I will post thoughts on some of the third party apps I have installed.
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Bookmarks & Link Reorganization
For those of you subscribed to my del.icio.us feed, I apologize for two reasons. First off, I apologize because there has been no activity on it for months and months. Second, I apologize because you got bombarded with a bunch of stuff today. All of this was due to my new organization for bookmarks and stuff to read. I had been gathering links all over the place, Firefox, NetNewsWire's flagged items, old del.icio.us links, etc. This made it difficult to figure out where stuff was and what I had read already. I decided to put everything together on del.icio.us now. Stuff I have read and want bookmarked will get thrown up there for everyone to see and stuff I have not have had a chance to read yet will get the clever toread tag on it. If you are curious about stuff I am reading or going to read, feel free to follow them.
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Gravatar
As you may have noticed after the redesign of my site, in the comments area there is a nifty little icon next to people. This feature is called a Gravatar, and it is my pick of the week. Gravatars allow you to have a common icon on any site that uses that service. It is really easy to sign up for an account and upload your picture. Then each time you make a comment on a site that supports them, it will grab the picture by the email address you use. It is a simple idea, but works really nicely.
Note: If you don't have a Gravatar, my site automagically generates an icon for you, so you don't have to see some weird grey figure next to your name.