Posts Tagged
web
Outside of reading numerous different tech blogs on a daily basis, I keep up with my technology news through podcasts. There are a lot of great tech podcasters out there that not only keep you up to date on the latest and greatest, but also offer a huge amount of insight into the tech world. Most of the time, I use my iPhone to store and play them in my car or while I am out and about.
But, I don’t always want to use my iPhone to play podcasts, especially when I am at my desk working on my computer. Yes, I could use iTunes and just play them through it, but today I am going to talk about another alternative. I came across Podcast Gallery about a week ago and it is a web based app where I can find and play a variety of podcasts. It actually is a pretty nifty alternative for those of you that are looking for something that is on the web. Let’s take a more in depth look at it.
When it comes to saving things from the web, there are a lot of different ways to do this. For me, when it comes to saving articles, I am a huge fan of Pocket for many reasons that I won’t get into here. But, now that I am going back to school, I find that I am having to save a lot more information from the web than I have in a long time. The main reason why I don’t use a service like Pocket or Instapaper for this is because I want a place where I can dump whatever I find into something temporarily. I don’t like to mix up the articles that I want to read or save for later with my snippets of research for my thesis.
I have used Evernote before for this purpose, but then I came along a web app called Dragdis, which takes a different approach to saving things online. Instead of saving articles or texts to a service, it lets you drag and drop what you want to save so that you can come back to it later. It is actually a pretty neat idea and with some help from HTML 5, this is a slick app to use. Let me show you more about what it can do.
I admire app developers that are willing to take a fresh look at what they have developed after releasing something for a while. It shows that they are passionate and believe in what they are building, not only for themselves, but for the general population as a whole. In my opinion, it takes a lot to be able to swallow your pride a little, take in user feedback and be willing to tweak a product or app so that it can better meet the demand for the user.
The reason why I am reflecting on this is that I have been using Kippt for the past couple of days and have been really impressed by what they have done to their app. They haven’t necessarily done a full facelift to it, but they were able to analyze how well the app worked and took user feedback to produce an even better product than before. If you are unfamilar with Kippt, we did a review on their old version a couple of years ago.
Well look at that! Just after announcing it would discontinue Reader, Google has decided to release a simple note-taking service, one with the name Keep. When I first heard about it, I thought the service was aiming to compete with Pocket and Instapaper to be an official Google project that allowed you to save anything for viewing later. Something like this would have been fantastic after seeing Reader leave, but that wasn’t Google’s aim for this basic notes service.
When I say basic, I mean it, but there might be more to this little Web and Android app than meets the eye, and the mere icon invites creativity. I investigate after the break. (more…)
Anyone who has to write at any length at their computer will know that it’s all too easy to get distracted. Using many modern word processors is akin to working in a cartoon with endless brightly colors buttons vying for attention, and when you add in the risk of being drawn to browsing the web in the name of “research”, it’s a wonder any words ever get written.
Writer is a distraction-free online word processor that has been designed to make it easier to focus on what you need to get down on the page. It’s like an online version of the popular Mac app WriteRoom, and might be just what you need to help you stay focused when writing online.
Google.
For many people, Google is the internet. It is one of a handful of companies that have become part of everyday language of the young and old. I’ve grown up with Google, and recently realized just how many of the company’s tools I use on a daily basis. I’m not a fanboy, but I’m living in a Google world, and loving it.
It could be argued that Google has gained something of a monopoly, but even still, Google is a company that has earned a place in many people’s hearts. It is generally looked on rather affectionately, rather than with the suspicion that is reserved for Microsoft. That may be changing, but for me – and many others – it’d be hard to imagine life without many of the tools the company has produced.
The Chrome web browser has a great deal going for it: fast page rendering, a clean interface, powerful extensions, and the marketing of Google behind it. If there are any complaints to be made about it, though, I’ve found that it can be slow to launch when when you’re reopening it with a large number of tabs.
You may well have tried out Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari, and any of countless other lesser known web browser, but you’ll likely find that Chrome’s not the only one with this problem. Chrome does, however, have a solution: Session Buddy. Session Buddy is an extension that could make your tabs easier to manage and help to dramatically improve Chrome’s performance. Let’s take a look.
A big part of development, coding, or web design is repeating yourself. No one likes to admit it, but a lot of the work we do is repetitive. A great way to reduce the number of times you have to write something is to save it to use again later using code snippets. Snippets are little bits of code that you have written before that you think you might find useful again later, they could be a specific way to show images on a site, the SQL to create a handful of tables in one stroke, or an entire class for the backend of an ASP.NET web application. Whichever it is you need a place to keep the snippets so that you can get to them when you need them.
This is where the cloud based snippet storage comes into its own. You can access it from anywhere that you have an internet connection, which is everywhere these days. It saves you messing around with memory sticks with your code in text files on, or sending yourself snippets by email (we’ve all done it!) and allows you to find what you want when you want it. I’ve compiled a list of 17 super slick snippet storage sites below in no particular order, check it out, you might find the perfect one for you.
The internet continues to amaze me all the time, and that is one of the reasons why I love it so much. What really gets me passionate about consistently using the web is the ability to do things in a virtual world that before wasn’t possible. Take for example the topic of collaboration. In years past, you wouldn’t dream of being able to have a company or business where the people who work at it are all in different states or countries.
A perfect example of this is Web.Appstorm, where although I have been writing for them for almost a year now, I have never met my editor or the other writers face to face. Yet, we are able to work together and produce quality content for all of you to read.
So where am I going with this? Well, the internet has given us the opportunity to have no boundaries when it comes to getting work done together. One web app to help with this, called Dispatch, has given us the ability to collaborate on documents and other things regardless of whether we work in the same building or miles a part, and all we need is an internet connection.
When I think of AOL, I cannot help but also think about the “You’ve Got Mail” tone that they made famous. As you take a look back on email, AOL was a pioneer in the field as they were one of the first companies to offer it to the masses, way back in the late 90′s. But outside of that and Instant Messenger, they have been very quiet now for quite some time.
Well, that all has changed recently, with their newly, upgraded email client called Alto. Yes, email has come a long way since AOL last came out with a client, and some would even say it is an already crowded space. When I got into the beta for this, the main thing that I wanted to see was whether or not this could replace the apps I currently use for email. I tried to use it by itself for the last couple of weeks and I came away with some interesting thoughts about it.
