plug

Google Wave = ?

/ Shane / 1 Comment

What to say about Google Wave?

First off, let me say that it is pretty cool. I could see the potential there. It is sort of a combination of chat and email, but the possibilities really shine when multiple people are using it at the same time. It also has some cool potential for work/school/group collaboration. I can see where they were going with it.

BUT

For the average person there doesn’t seem to be much point. It fills a niche that most people didn’t really need to be filled. It doesn’t offer me much more than Gmail already offers me (I even have chat built in to Gmail!). So the net result is that I just have one more website to check. As far as I can tell, Google Wave seems to be a website where people can go to ask each other what the heck Google Wave is and what we are supposed to be doing with it.

So, in summary, Google Wave is kind of cool but kind of useless, until such time that it completely replaces email (a.k.a. just short of never). Anybody disagree?

(And after all that, I have invites! Ask in the comments and I’ll send you one!)

Christmas, coming to a cube near you!

/ Shane / 1 Comment

Now that Thanksgiving is past, I don’t feel bad about putting up some Christmas stuff (It is the 1st of December after all). Now, if you work a desk job like me, your cube (or what have you…I don’t actually sit in a cube) can always use a little sprucing up. The problem is, the second you start plugging things in, the safety people are all over you. But if you work at a computer, you have a convenient source of power just sitting there. As always, we turn to the leader in USB powered devices, ThinkGeek, for all our festive desk decorations.

First up, a USB-powered Fiber optic christmas tree.

ThinkGeek always goes above and beyond. In this case, they not only provide us with a nice product, but even a festive song to go with it:

O USB! O USB! A wonder of technology;
O USB! O USB! A wonder of technology;
Our favorite toys are plug and play,
Just stick it in and we’re on our way.
O USB! O USB! A wonder of technology!

If you’d rather go with something a little more low key, more traditional, you can just stick with the USB-powered Christmas Lights:

Image Editing

/ Shane / 2 Comments

My post the other day on Fences got me thinking of what downloaded software I have that I use a lot. As I said, there really aren’t a lot of things that I use a lot, but there is one program that I use quite a bit that I’ve never mentioned on here. And that is a disservice to you, my readers.

The program is Paint.NET, and it is an image editing software. Don’t let the “Paint” in the name fool you, it is more  similar to Photoshop than to the Paint program that comes with Windows. Except that Paint.NET is free, and Photoshop costs about $700.

It takes a while to get used to, just like it would if you were new to Photoshop. There are a lot of crazy complicated features. But once you get your bearings, it is pretty easy to do some pretty advanced stuff. And I’ve always been able to find tutorials specific to Paint.NET about anything that I couldn’t figure out. There is a pretty active community, including people making many plugins, which you can install to get extra functionality.

So, before you go drop $700 on Photoshop, give Paint.NET a try. And if you’re happy with whatever image editing software you have, ignore this post.

Make My Mood

/ Shane / 3 Comments

I was recently alerted to a new college humor-esqe website, Make My Mood. Basically, every day there’s just a new, completely random little picture of some sort to brighten your day. There seems to be no connection or theme, other than “funny”.

I was originally on the site to see this great 10 second rundown of a CSI episode (how do they get away with making that show a whole hour?), when I started clicking through the archives and saw a lot of other good stuff, including:

This unbelievable video of a guy almost getting hit by a bus:

And these totally awesome fire screens that make it look like you’re sacking a city:

If that isn’t enough to make you want to visit the site, I don’t know what you want from me.

Fences

/ Shane / 1 Comment

When i was in college, I probably had 20 or 30 nifty little programs that I used for various things on the computer. Eventually over time, most of those programs were eclipsed by, or absorbed into, the standard set of software, in some cases by Windows itself. Also, I don’t use a computer the same way I used one back in college, so some of the apps probably became less useful to me personally.

So it’s not often these days that I come across a neat little program for the computer, but a co-worker referred me to one the other day, called Fences, which is used to clean up your desktop icons. Interestingly, the makers of the software are a company named Stardock, who make another program I used to use, a Windows skinning software called Window Blinds.

Basically, you make little areas called Fences, into which you drag and drop your icons. These areas can then be named with some logical name for the grouping, such as “Games”, “Photo Editing”, or “Random Junk”. Then the areas can be moved as a group, keeping icons logically together. You can also resize the fence to be smaller, which will give it scroll bars. For example, lets say your desktop is cluttered with a bunch of text files that represent notes to yourself. You can make a group called “Notes” and drop them all in there, and then make that group small enough to see only one or two icons. Then, if you want to see the rest of your notes, you can just scroll within that group.

Another nice side effect is that you can double click on the background to hide or show your icons. So, for example, if you have a really cute picture of your daughter on the desktop that you just need to show off, you can hide all the junk. You can also decide what to hide or show, meaning you can have sort of a normal mode with some icons and an advanced mode that reveals the rest of your icons.

I found it useful, both at home and at work, and I thought you might too.