Category: Lifestyle
Google Discontinues Google Wallet Card
RadioShack’s VP Of Stores Keeps Reminding People That It Still Exists
RadioShack declared bankruptcy last February and closed around 2,300 of its stores. Around 1,700 of the company’s stores didn’t close, though, and the Shack’s leaders want you to …
Cubetto – Hands on coding for ages 3 and up
A playful programming language you can touch. Montessori approved, and LOGO Turtle inspired. Learn programming away from the screen.
Pinboard Switches from One-Time to Annual Fee
Bookmarking site Pinboard has announced that effective January 1st, 2015, it will discontinue the one-time signup fee and instead offer a $11/year plan, as well as the existing $25/year archival plan.
However, anyone who is an existing member, or who signs up before January 1st, will be grandfathered in.
As someone who has 32,000 bookmarks in Pinboard of articles I found of interest, I would recommend the service. It is flexible enough to be whatever you want it to be.
For me, as an archival customer, it is a record of every online source I read and found of interest that I know will be there(as it is archived on the Pinboard server). I can search that for any article I remember reading.
Other people use it in other ways. It can be social, it can be a Read It Later service…I used to use a Read It Later service, when what I really wanted was an archive.
So, if you are interested, give it a try before the price goes up.
The New Home Theater Rack
I could have hacked the thing more, but opted for replacement, as the color Besta I use was discontinued, and thus replacement parts weren’t going to be an option in the future.
All of my home networking equipment, cable modem, router, etc, happen to converge under my stereo system, which contains a receiver, Blu-Ray player, DVR Cable Box(under protest from the cable company), etc.
I needed something that was structurally strong, open for ventilation, and easily adjustable. I looked at a variety of commercial media cabinets, relay racks, etc before deciding on Elfa.
Yes, Elfa…I switched from Ikea, the Swedish home furnishings company, to Elfa, a Swedish shelving company. Elfa is owned by The Container Store, which happened to be having its annual Elfa shelving sale.
So, why Elfa? While they offer the traditional easy hang closet type shelving, they offer a freestanding option, which is what I used. While I went for ventilated shelving, they offer solid shelving as well as decorative pieces.
I did go for a simple industrial look, but I didn’t have to. I found examples online of people using the same shelving for TV stands and other functions as well.
In the end, Elfa, even with a 30% off sale, was more expensive than the Besta solution I had, and comparable to assembled media cabinets. I could have gotten a pressboard or glass cabinet of similar design.
But what appeals to me in design is modularity. I will replace a component, need to adjust the height of shelving, need to replace wires…a modular layout permits me to do this. A fixed layout means I am limited.
What solutions have you come up with to solve this sort of problem? What do you think of this one?
RIP Google Reader
Om Malik, of GigaOm, asked the question…Google killed Reader instead of updating it. If this is such a wise decision, why are so many companies scrambling to get into this space?
The truth is, Google Reader was based on the Inbox model. You’d see everything. Nowadays, there is too much information, too many sites. My feed reader is rarely empty. But the same can be said for my Twitter stream.
The option to have a more curated experience is the business these people are getting into. Build a better experience and the signal generation will allow for better ad targeting, which is why people are scrambling.
In the end, Google Reader is gone, and those who wanted what it offered will just have to move on.
For those of us who run websites, the question is how to have people learn about and follow our work. And RSS is a big part of that, and will likely continue…although I wouldn’t trust Feedburner. That’s a Google RSS product too, after all.
Information Overload – Trying to Reorganize A Workflow
Pinboard is currently available at a rate of just over $10 for a lifetime subscription, plus $25/yr for an Archival Account.
At the time, I used Instapaper, a Read It Later service, as a holding pen for stories, which I later archived in Pinboard. In April of 2011, I announced the move to Read It Later(now Pocket). There were many good reasons for this, however, the refresh from Read It Later to Pocket made service lean more toward the visual.
Which brings me to May of 2012, where I once again pondered the subject, right after I read Clay Johnson’s book, the Information Diet. At the time, I vowed to get my information overload under control.
Here we are, March of 2013, and…it is worse. I finally declared bankruptcy on Pocket(Formerly Read it Later). I exported everything I was most definitely NOT Reading Later, and sent it to Pinboard. There is some duplication there that has to be cleaned up, but now I have 25,000 bookmarks to go through and prune. The archive of which takes up 25GB.
I’ve come to the conclusion that this isn’t working, but I’m changing plans once again. I need a plan that allows me to reference old material I have in the archive, while keeping track of more relevant material. For now, I’ll be living in Pinboard, without benefit of a secondary service. But I am open to suggestions.
Will update you as this develops.
Related articles
Content Overload(cherylbecker.wordpress.com)
storing something somewhere you can remember it(vielmetti.typepad.com)
Running Personal Services on a Low End VPS
Both of these would have services running out of your home or business. But, as we are an increasingly mobile society, you might not have good upstream bandwidth, or your ISP may block ports into your home. So, that is where a low-end VPS offering comes in.
We chose ChicagoVPS, which offers a $12/year 128mb VPS, with 10GB of storage space and 100GB of monthly bandwidth. That is more than enough for personal use. They offer three locations: Chicago, Buffalo, or LA. There are similar services averaging around $12-15 a year.
This is not the sort of service where you expect a lot of reliability. The service has had some hiccups, Â but as long as you backup and take adequate steps you should on any service, there shouldn’t be any problem.
On a 128mb instance, I have Tiny Tiny RSS running, as well as ZNC, and a few other random services that I only use for my own personal interests.
What do you think? Do you have any other recommendations for a tiny VPS? Do you have alternative providers you recommend for cheap VPS services?
Related articles
Something You Ought To Know When You Buy VPS Hosting(allaboutcpanelvps.wordpress.com)
Replace Google Reader with a Raspberry Pi(geek.com)
Reader Refugees – The Death of Google Reader
It has been a long two weeks since Google announced the death of Google Reader. This left many people scrambling for new solutions as the clock countdowns to its shutdown on July 1st, 2013.
There are many alternatives out there of various types. Feedly, for example, has been working on a Reader alternative that uses the same API. The service is also working to offer more Reader like features to welcome the over half a million Reader Refugees. They seem very determined to be the new Reader, and are even welcoming those interested in their API-compatibility to enable their applications to keep working.
For me, however, this was too fancy. Most of us who are interested in replacing Reader emphasize text. We want the experience of a newspaper, not a magazine. Most Readers use the traditional Inbox style of receiving, akin to email programs. The information is the most important part.
For this, I skipped over TheOldReader, which was designed to mimic the original Google Reader design, and went straight to two open source projects.
Newsblur
Newsblur is the brainchild of Samuel Clay. In addition to the standard Inbox display, it allows you to view the original site in context, or the feed version. It also offers options for sharing a feed of what you find most interesting with others, and teaching the application what you find interesting, so it will highlight that. Newsblur offers a public API for people to build on, and the entire codebase is open source.
There is an Android app, and Clay is looking for an Android developer, but complaints of crashes, as it is an open-source project, were quickly cleaned up by a volunteer. There is also an iOS app.
The exciting thing is that with the renewed interest, Clay is ramping up. A new host for the service, more robust infrastructure, and more.
Newsblur can be installed by you as a standalone product, or you can pay for their hosted service, currently at $24/year.
Tiny Tiny RSS
Tiny Tiny RSS(TT-RSS) is another open-source project. Like Newsblur, it offers an API, a web interface, and an Android app. There are no hosted options for this, so you have to roll your own, which is what I did, using a Low-End VPS.
It can run on simple hardware, out of your home or on rented space.
Conclusion
The truth is, if you host your own solution, you can be reasonably sure it will continue to be there(as long as you keep paying the bills).
But there is something to be said for having someone else worry about it, as well as supporting the developer. So, even though I’ve settled into TT-RSS(and gave the developer the $2 for the Android app), I paid for a year of Newsblur so I could see how it develops. I never considered self-hosting of a Newsblur instance.
Next, I’ll spend a little time on where I’m hosting TT-RSS and why.
Related articles
Need A Google Reader Alternative? Meet Newsblur(searchengineland.com)
Google Reader got you down? Feedly wants to welcome you with open arms(phandroid.com)
Scaling on a Shoestring, Lessons from NewsBlur(webmonkey.com)
Finding a Google Reader alternative(unclutterer.com)
Four Google Reader Alternatives for the Hard-Core User(the-digital-reader.com)
How To Build Your Own Syncing RSS Reader With Tiny Tiny RSS(lifehacker.com.au)
Reflecting on Life with a Chromebook
A week ago, we announced a product review challenge. Spending time with a Chromebook to see if it could be our daily driver. Let’s review the conditions of our challenge. We’d use the device in lieu of our primary productivity machine. So, we’d still have our Android phone for what we used it for. So, it wasn’t the ‘only’ thing used.
Let’s go over a few areas…
Most mail services have a webmail option, so this isn’t an issue. We use Google Apps mail for our primary address anyway, which is browser based.
Social Networking
We’ve never been able to find a Twitter client we really liked anyway, so using web based ones wasn’t any better or worse. Facebook and Google Plus are web-based anyway, so no difference there.
Chat and IRC
There are no good Chrome extensions for IRC. But most IRC servers have a web client. Will do in a pinch. For chat, we tried a few options. The Chat by Google extension is nice, but only supports one account. We have two, a personal and a business account. So we tried Imo.im, Trillian, etc. Imo.im, nicely, supports desktop notifications.
Productivity
We usually use OpenOffice for simple word processing, but Google Docs is a fine option.
Connectivity
We found an SSH extension for connecting to our Linux box.
So, after all this, what is the conclusion?
We spend much of our day in a browser. This blog is run on an installation of WordPress. The interface is browser based. Our email is browser-based, although we have used email clients in the past. More and more things are based in the browser, so it is logical to have a computer that offers just a browser. And as a secondary system, that is fine. But we’re going back to a full Linux-based system for our daily use.
To that end, the Acer C7 Chromebook is a great secondary system. The touchpad was the only part of it that truly annoyed. But the solution there was to simply hook up an external mouse. After a week, we installed ChrUbuntu, a Ubuntu Linux fork designed for use on Chromebooks, and now dual-boot.
In order to install an alternate OS on a Chromebook, you have to place it into Developer Mode, which means you get an annoying splash screen every time you boot. It also doesn’t support a boot menu, so you have to change settings in a terminal window to switch OSes. But it does give the machine the ability to run full-fledged programs. And there are a few that, if ported to Chrome, might cause us to revisit this.
On a weekend trip, we opted to take the Asus Transformer, a 10 inch tablet with a keyboard dock, over the 11.6 inch Chromebook. So, a few native apps might change our mind.
What do you think? Leave a comment on the matter.
Related articles
Acer C7 Chromebook Review(anandtech.com)
Acer: Windows 8 “still not successful”; hypes “amazing” Chromebook sales(neowin.net)
John Baer: Waiting for the Nexus Chromebook(j-baer.com)
Is a Chromebook Right for You?(lockergnome.com)
Taking the Chromebook Challenge(gadgetwisdom.com)
