Ideas from Mark Stout

Hard to keep up with the fast paced Evernote.  They recently upgraded their Chrome Web Extension .  If you are not using Chrome & Evernote's web extension together, you should think hard about doing so. The updated extension lets you easily select the portion of the web page you want to capture. I almost wish I was back in college dong research papers, when I see this.

I just realized when you click in the Safari for the iPad URL box, the bookmark bar appears.  I want that same behavior in Google Chrome. The sole design flaw I've found with Job's latest baby, is that when I go to plug in the power cable to the iPad at night, in the dark, there is no tactile indicator on the connector as to which side is up.  The logo on the connector is perfectly smooth.  My bedside table has become the family charging station, and the iPad cable is the only one that has to have a light on to plug it in.  Ironically, my $1.58 6 foot cable from MonoPrice.com (before shipping) does have the tactile clue, so that minor Apple design flaw is dealt with. Isn't it nice that the only design flaw I can find so far is so trivial? Of course, I'm not considering iTunes--what a disaster.

  My Family Tech column this week was about the choices we have in browsers.  I mentioned to my readers that I love Google Chrome and promised a blog post outlining my favorite extensions. I moved to Google Chrome full time a few months ago.  Now that the latest release supports extensions, and there are many useful extensions out there, I can fully recommend Google Chrome for most people. With web access most people's number one use of a computer, your browser is a big deal.  Changing it is akin to a sales company moving their CRM from Seibel to Salesforce, or a corporation converting their financials to SAP.  Of course, it is safer for browsers.  You can, and should, have multiple browsers on your PC.  While I use Chrome primarily, I also have Internet Explorer 8 which I use for one mis-guided web site that seems to work only with IE.  And I keep Firefox, my long time favorite, around too. I thought I'd review some of the extensions I've ...

As I've said many times before, I am smitten with Google Voice .  In the last job, as an Account Representative, I used Chad Smith's excellent Google Voice Add-On for Firebox .  It allowed me to click on a phone number, say in Salesforce.com, the CRM system, and that number would automatically call my Gizmo5 client and I could speak with my client using my computer headset.  It was an awesome part of my workflow. That Add-On is the one of two things that keep me using Firefox.  The other is Firebug that I only need when doing Javascript programming; something I have not done much of recently. Since being laid off I haven't really needed the click-to-dial capability so I've used Chrome almost 100% of the time. Today, via TechMeme , I was alerted to an Official Chrome Google Voice Extension that gives me the click-to-dial capability in the Chrome Dev version  Chrome.  ( Update 1/25/2010  : Today's new release of the stable r...

Getting a new computer for Christmas or anytime, gift or not, is like buying a car with some assembly required. You really can't just fire it up, and take off.  There are a host of irritating little jobs you need to do before that new computer is truly useful About once a year it seems, someone here gets a new computer.  Since there are three of us, that's about right.  Rotating your computer every three to four years isn't extravagant, especially for the two here who carry laptops out into the world--that's rough on a machine. My son and wife truly want the power up and go experience from a new computer, so I've gotten rather used to prepping a new computer.  If you are giving a new computer as a gift, perhaps my little workflow can help you. Note : This is going to assume a Windows 7 laptop with wi-fi as an example PC. Take Notes Before you even take it out of the box, open up either a paper notebook, or if you have another computer close by, open up...

Yesterday, Google announced extensions for their Chrome web browser.  I've been using Chrome as my primary browser for the last several months.  It is fast and much better on memory management then Firefox. There are a few Firefox extensions I missed.  Xmarks for coordinating bookmarks was a big one.   About the only time I think I'd need to go to Firefox now was if I was dong some Ajax/Javascript development. Firebug is pretty handy. Ironically, I stopped my only real javascript app.  It was my own tool to store the snippets of information I needed.  Evernote did what it did and a thousand times more, so I was glad to stop having to re-invent that wheel. In Chrome, I could use an bookmarklet for grabbing content to Evernote.  However with the release of add-ons for Chrome, there is now a legitimate Evernote Web Clipper.   Evernote's blog today details it. Right now, Chrome extensions only work with the developers version.  You can ge...