I’m a browser snob. I run Chrome. I ran Firefox until it go popular. But besides popularity, here’s three tiny things that make Chrome my favorite browser for client-side development.
Just right click that element.
- element inspection: right click and there it is. Then the element you’re inspecting is clearly identified and it’s dimensions (margin, padding too) are easy to see.
- easily view style inheritance and edit styles: when you inspect an element, its styles are at your fingertips. No more pixel pushing – if I need to fix a style, just make it look right and copy the new values to my style sheets.
- javascript debugging: yeah FF and IE8 do that. Chrome does it best. I’ll get into the head to heads in a second. But I can javascript the DOM the same way I edit the styles using the console. And I can easily explore variable contents in the same place I call them up. (more…)
Let’s root my slide!
That’s right I finally got it to work. Here’s how I did it and what you might expect if you’re trying to root a myTouch Slide 3G from the fiends at T-Mobile (and HTC).
Why I did it:
1) I HATE THE BOOT SCREEN (more…)
Hello September!
Today Apple is having a big surprise ‘thing’, so no doubt there will be some kind of shiny new technology for everyone to coo over. I’m hoping they resurrect Lala and get rid of that Genius crap. I never bought a single thing on iTunes because of genius. Whereas on Lala my web (and some mp3s) library was up to date with the latest in what I was listening and what was in my library. I’ve never gotten relevant or interesting recommendations for purchase on iTunes. So mostly I just torrent mp3s. On top of that I’ve been floundering around trying to get my library streaming on the web. The replacement services never really matched up to lala’s awesomeness so I dabbled in home media servers. First I tried Sockso, and that was sufficient for awhile. The playlist and flash player system was functional, but mostly annoying and it was only for audio. It did a good job letting me share my library in a user by user way, but had no social plugins. Then I needed to share video with my xbox, so I tried out TVersity. That definitely worked when I needed to stream P90X from computer to home gym, but listening to music at work has been so bad I’ve ditched it almost entirely, returning with tail tucked in to Pandora. Don’t get me wrong, I love Pandora, but sometimes I like to dig into the recesses of my own library, and no ADS please. So there it is, my only wishlist item for Apple: bring back lala…. please….
Today in apps!
Last night I went uninstall crazy. A good thing too, because at dinner last night Tom the Talking Cat was requested the cutesy parlor trick it is. I ended up taking Broadsides off too. I loved the game, the writing was phenomenal. I figure I reached the best and worst possible endings and was skimming most of it so I feel like I outgrew it. I’m ready and waiting for them to come up with a new story though! They did a great job on it. I took out Craps and Othello because I never really played them.
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This is the second time I’ve put taskswitcher on my machine. This would be a helpful app, but I need it to overtake the homebutton longpress. The current options of search longpress and home press simply don’t work on my phone due to the genius crapware from T-mobile that I haven’t been able to root out.
This looks like it could have been a pretty powerful app for contact list management. There are two problems. One, it took me on a contact by contact odyssey that I just don’t have the patience for. And two, I have come to the realization that the contact access on the phone is good enough that I don’t really care about duplicates etc. I need to just stop being attracted to all the OCD contact management apps
This probably could be a great grocery list manager. It purports to sync family lists, it organizes items by category and store and well, it’s a list manager. I’ve got SpringPad to do that for me. I realized it just as I finished the install and I immediately just deleted it off my phone for the precious space. Sorry.
I also removed Financisto, Google Sky and my weather widgets to make room on the system memory. Financisto looked to be an awesome finance app, but I already have one (mvelopes, which needs an app version). Google Sky is mostly a parlor trick app for me. It was fun for the double moon night, Friday and when I’m hanging out on the back porch with friends and brews. But it isn’t really worth it day-to-day for the size it costs. I’m still looking for the perfect weather widget since I switched to launcher pro and can’t use the HTC widget. The one I just removed did weird things with time and location that I just didn’t feel like dealing with, twice.
It has been well over a year since the last time I posted. I wanted to highlight a few things that I’m using lately.
http://www.appbrain.com/
http://www.appbrain.com/my_apps
In addition to learning how to build apps on android, I’ve also gotten my very own android based phone. I found appbrain to be the best alternative to the Android Market. It syncs my apps and tracks them in a shareable way. I find that its recommendations are terrible and never really changing, but I do love the “hot” listing. It changes frequently and I’m always finding new.
My other new awesome app for your desktop is the Vista Switcher: http://www.ntwind.com/
I used to use the XP advanced switcher when I was on XP, and then Vista’s tab switcher was OK. I recently found this in one of my software feeds and I’ve really liked it. Moving forward it will be my new must-have switcher.
Hi all, some banal updates from yours truly.
First off – I’m on twitter as prodaea. Fun little microblogging piece of software that you can update from anywhere and basically do anything you want with it. Some sites that I like to use with twitter are:
- twtrfrnd.com - for those times when christi1987 is following you and has NSFW pics.
- tweet stats - nice graphs etc. to let you and your friends know just how much you tweet.
- twanalyst.com - brings you one of those personality tests – based on some twitter stats algorithms. is fun.
- twitpics.com - by far the most useful you can email or txt twitpics and it will post a short url for that pic to your twitter account.
- twitter.grader.com - gives you a grade out of 100 based on how you’re networked and some other stuff that i never really took the time to care about. i got a 70.
- www.twibes.com – is a system for group management and group tweeting based on the # thing that some genious came up with. i’m in a twibe, but i’m hoping twitter just integrates groupings.
I’m sure there’s a ton more that I’m not aware of, but I use these fairly regularly. Also you can plug twitter right into your facebook status. is fun.
Finally get involved in politics using twitter. Starting with Mr. Obama, there have been many politicians to get into Twitter. Some are good and informative – even responsive, some suck. Here’s a great aricle I found that highlights several and let’s you know how useful they found them to be.
Ok, I’ve been a blog slacker, but since my wife is making me post at our new family site : Talk Is Sheep, I’ve been more apt to write interesting things.
I’ve started using some new fun software that I thought I’d fill you in on.
Digsby – Multi chat client that also logs into social services like facebook and twitter, putting all that stuff in one fun place. Also has a nice proxy and account setup system which makes it great for going from my work computer to my home computer.
Songbird – they say it’s an iTunes killer, but I’m holding my breath. Mostly because I’ve moved my media to the cloud using Lala, and I get my music recommendations from Pandora (despite the ads, its still my favorite for music discovery).
Dropbox – this thing is a life saver. Its software that syncs a file on your computer (up to 2GB) over the web. You can install it on multiple computers and if you can’t install it, you can grab your files over the web. I’ve also heard rumor of a portable version that would allow you to have a thumb drive that synced with dropbox. I need to get a big enough thumb drive, but don’t worry, I’ll get there. Currently, I’m using it to keep my working files in a convenient location.
The suburbs will be the next ghetto wargrounds. Its only a matter of time. Abandonments are just the first step.
