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Updates from January, 2005 Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts

• Andy 10:23 pm on 1/11/2005 Permalink | Reply  

  Mac mini and iPod shuffle 

  There were rumors for the past couple of weeks that Apple would be announcing a new Mac today that would be “headless” (sold without a monitor) and would be the first truly affordable Mac. So, while I was expecting something new, I was not expecting this! What you see in the image on the left is the new Mac mini. It is only 6.5 inches wide and 2″ tall – and it’s a complete desktop computer. You just hook up your own keyboard, mouse and monitor and you’ll be enjoying the wonderful world of Mac OS X. To top it all off, it starts at $629 Canadian (or $599 with the educational discount) which should be affordable enough for many PC users to finally convert over to Mac.

  It was very hard for me to keep my credit card in my pocket today when I saw this – I don’t know how long I can last though. I’ve wanted a Mac for a long time now, and this might finally be the one!

  In other Apple news today, they released a new flash based iPod called the iPod shuffle. It comes in 512 MB or 1 GB models. The interesting thing about this player is that there is no screen on it and the slogan is “Life is Random”. While I was unsure about the idea at first, I’m sure Apple will sell a ton of these. It will be random like listening to the radio, but no ads and it’s only music you like – sounds good to me!

  UPDATE: Apparently, the Apple Store that is only 3 blocks away from the Expo where these announcements were made started the day with 2000 iPod shuffle units – they were sold out by noon!

   

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• Andy 2:21 pm on 12/10/2004 Permalink | Reply  

  More Episodes – The Skinny on Sports 

  
  
  In case you haven’t checked for a while, our Podcast is doing really well and we have a few more episodes posted now – the lastest coming just last night. As always, we are looking for suggestions and feedback, so feel free to leave comments on our website under each show. We are trying to make each show even better than the last and hope you are all enjoying!

   

• Andy 8:51 am on 12/7/2004 Permalink | Reply  

  Thunderbird 1.0 Released! 

  Although this hasn’t had nearly as much hype as Firefox being released, the stand-alone email client from Mozilla named Thunderbird has now been released as version 1.0. If you are using a different email client, I would recommend giving Thunderbird a try since it’s free and has the great backing of the open-source community at Mozilla.

   

• Andy 6:09 pm on 11/21/2004 Permalink | Reply  

  The Skinny on Sports 

  
  

  I’m very excited to announce that Matt and I are working on a new project called The Skinny on Sports. It’s a 10 minute audio show or Podcast about the latest issues and stories in the sports world. Our first show is now posted at http://www.andyskinn.com/skinny. Podcasting is the term given to these shows because using a program like iPodder these shows can be downloaded automatically when new shows become available, and you can even have them automatically transferred to your iPod.

  Our first show looks at the fight from the NBA the other night, Vince Carter and the trade rumors, Maria Sharapova, and Tiger Woods. Plus, in the overtime segment, Matt reviews his picks for the five biggest idiots to ever play basketball.

  We would love feedback from everyone and hopefully you’ll all enjoy the show! Pass on the word to any sports fans you know.

  UPDATE: The second episode of the show is now posted – check it out!

   

• Andy 6:55 pm on 11/19/2004 Permalink | Reply  

  dinosbasketball.com 

  I’ve been working on a website lately for the University of Calgary Dinos Men’s Basketball team. For those of you who don’t know, my brother Matt is an assistant coach with the Dinos this year as he is starting his Masters degree in Sports Psychology. The site isn’t completely finished yet, but the main design is there (probably still some work on the header after Matt gives me some action shots). The Dinos lost in the semi-finals at the Canadian championships last year, therefore, they are hoping for a big year again this time around. You can follow their progress by heading over to dinosbasketball.com.

   

• Andy 5:53 pm on 11/11/2004 Permalink | Reply  

  Lots of Tech News! 

  When reading through my feeds in Bloglines today, there was an unusually high number of interesting stories that I wanted to post about. Rather than make a lot of long posts, I decided to do a list of “teaser posts” that may peak your interest.

  Winamp, the once dominant MP3 player for desktop computers has officially shut its doors. Minor updates are expected but no more major versions. Speculation is that this is largely due to the emerging dominance of the easy to use iTunes making its way over to the PC.

  Google’s search page is now showing that they have doubled their index from 4 billion sites to 8 billion sites. This is most likely their answer to Microsoft’s new search engine that is currently in beta testing.

  Can’t decide when the best time is to upgrade your computer. Check out this link for some general thoughts about when to wait and when to lay down your money.

  Some Gmail users are now being given the option to read and send email using a POP3 client. It sounds as though this will become a permanent feature of Gmail and speculation is that IMAP might not be that far away either. Two words: This Rocks!

  Want a TV in your bathroom but have it be invisible when not in use? Check out the Mirror TV.

  Socks for your iPod? Apple is now taking orders for the iPod Socks – they come in a pack of six colours and should ship before Christmas.

  If you haven’t seen the Nintendo DS yet, it’s worth a look. For only $199.99 at Futureshop, seems like awesome value and it appears as though Nintendo will continue to dominate the handheld video game market. It’s available November 21st.

  USB thumb drives are everywhere now. I guess it was only time until someone made one actually look like…. a thumb? Kind of creepy looking if you ask me.

  Wired is running a story about the debut of Firefox 1.0. Might be a good article to pass on to anyone still not using Firefox.

  Rumors have been picking up that the next iPod could be a flashed based player despite Apple denying that they would ever want to enter that market. This story makes some good points about why the idea might not be that far off.

   

• Andy 9:08 am on 11/9/2004 Permalink | Reply  

  Firefox 1.0 

  November 9th is finally here meaning Firefox 1.0 is released. As many of you that frequently read the site know, I’m a big supporter of Firefox and feel that it is the best way to experience the web. If you haven’t already tried Firefox, now is the time. The Firefox site will be busy throughout the day, but keep trying – it’s worth it. I was able to get through to their FTP server by following this link. Enjoy!

   

• Andy 6:32 pm on 11/4/2004 Permalink | Reply  

  Thunderbird 0.9 

  There’s a new version of Thunderbird available today – version 0.9. It’s a great email client from Mozilla and is the perfect compliment to Firefox. Give it a try!

   

• Andy 9:31 pm on 11/3/2004 Permalink | Reply  

  Hoyd’s Pick – Bloglines! 

  A while back, I posted about a great Firefox extension called Sage. I’ve since moved on to a much more powerful way of organizing my RSS feeds and it’s a totally FREE web-based system called Bloglines (like Headlines, but for blogs and other pages with syndicated content). Since it’s web-based, it means that you can access it from any computer so you can always be up to date on your news. You can even have it notify you of new posts and group different feeds into folders so that everything about a particular subject all comes up together. For instance, I have a Tech folder so all the different posts on all the different Tech sites that I like to read will appear in one place – Fantastic! Plus, since it only shows new feeds, I don’t waste my time checking sites that don’t have updated content.

  One other great feature is the ability to create email addresses from within your account to give out to mailing lists. This way, instead of getting emailed from a mailing list, it shows up in Bloglines in whatever related folder you sort it in. Then, if you ever start getting spam from that mailing list, you simply cancel that Bloglines address and create another one. You get a different address for each mailing list making it really easy to keep organized.

  I think this service is great and I definetely think that RSS is the next big thing for the internet (if it’s not already). Once you start using Bloglines you’ll wonder how you ever surfed the web without it. You can check out my previous post for some ideas of RSS feeds to get you started. Bloglines also has a list of their top picks and can even make recommendations for you based on your current feeds.

  There’s so much more that I could write about this great service, but the best thing will be for you to try it yourself. It’s very easy to use, but if you have any questions at all, feel free to post them here!

   

• Andy 5:52 pm on 10/26/2004 Permalink | Reply  

  iPod Photo, U2 iPods – iTunes Music Store coming in November 

  The rumors were true. Two new iPods were released today. The first is the iPod photo and comes in 40 GB and 60 GB models featuring a colour screen to view all your photos. While the colour screen is a nice touch, I have a feeling many people will find it a tad expensive to start – but still very nice! Of course, most people initially feel that Apple’s products are a bit expensive when they are first announced but then Apple can’t keep up with the demand. This will probably be the case this time again! These are available to purchase immediately.

  The second is the U2 iPod that has been passed through the rumor mill for the past few days. It’s a black iPod with red scroll wheel on the front to correspond with the album cover for U2′s new album. These will be available in November when U2′s album is released.

  Many European countries were added to the iTunes music store today as well. While Canada is still left out, Apple also officially confirmed today that we would be getting our own music store in November. Looks like the November 26th date that’s been floating around might be correct afterall.

   

• Andy 12:07 pm on 10/23/2004 Permalink | Reply  

  DivX or Xvid in Windows SP2 

  I was having some troubles with Windows Explorer crashing – explorer.exe errors – when I was trying to either move DivX or Xvid files around on my computer or watch them. After a quick Google it turns out that it’s actually a problem with these codecs and SP2 for Windows. The latest version of DivX fixes this problem for both DivX and Xvid files. You can get the codec here. When it’s installing, it will ask you if you want a free trial of DivX Pro – no need to do this if all you want to do is playback files. I would also recommend using Media Player Classic as your default player which can be found here (scroll down until you see the file) or from the links on my Files page.

   

• Andy 9:54 am on 10/23/2004 Permalink | Reply  

  More Firefox Extensions 

  BugMeNot – If you are annoyed by having to fill in forms online just to view free content (the NY Times website is an example), just install this extension, then right-click on the fields in the form, and user-submitted logins will be automatically entered allowing you to get right to the content.

  IEView – As much as I’d like to say that I use Firefox for everything, there are the occasional sites that either aren’t functional or don’t look right. In that case, I just right-click anywhere on the page and chose ‘View This Page in IE’ and it will automatically launch Internet Explorer and go directly to the page I was viewing.

  Copy Plain Text – Ever try to copy some text from a website into Word or another document and the formatting is all off or all over the place. With this extension, it allows you to highlight text, then right-click and chose ‘Copy as Plain Text’ to have just the information and not all the formatting copied to the clipboard.

  Web Developer – For someone like myself who is always tinkering with web development, this extension makes my life so much easier. With drop down menus for CSS formatting and validation services (to name just a couple), this extension must be had for anyone looking to make developing websites easier.

  Those are most of my favourites. You can find a few more on my Files page. Let me know if you have any others!

   

• Andy 5:03 pm on 10/21/2004 Permalink | Reply  

  iTunes in Canada? – U2 iPod? (Rumours) 

  Rumours are starting to surface on the internet that Apple may be extending their iTunes Music Store to Canada this holiday season. The date that is floating around is November 26th. I for one am super excited about this since I’m an iPod owner and there is currently no online store in Canada with downloads supported by the iPod. Rumour is that the prices will be 99 cents a track.

  In other news in iPod land, it is expected that on November 23, U2 will be releasing its new album in a new way. One option instead of buying the CD will be to purchase an iPod with the new album pre-loaded. Again, this is just a rumour but U2 has been doing some advertising with Apple lately and their new single is availble from the iTunes Music Store in the US. To add further fuel to the rumours, some sites have also reported that it will be a special edition black iPod containing the new album and various songs from older U2 albums. I don’t know if I beleive that Apple will move away from its white product line, but it will definetely be interesting to see how this plays out, and if true, what kind of effect this marketing strategy will have for both U2 and Apple. Stay tuned!

   

• Andy 9:35 am on 10/17/2004 Permalink | Reply  

  Adblock – Firefox Extension 

  Time for yet another of my favourite Firefox extensions. If you’re tired of the annoying ads that are showing up on almost every website these days, the Adblock extension is for you. I know that websites need to generate revenue from ads to keep their sites alive, but some sites have become so ridiculous with ads popping up or flash animations that cover up site content that it’s time to put some of that to an end. After you install Adblock you have some options by going to Tools -> Adblock -> Preferences. Under the Adblock Options button, you can choose what you want – play around with it a bit to see what everything does. Then, when you’re surfing the web and come across an ad you don’t like, you just right-click on the ad, choose Adblock image, and you’ll never see that ad again. You can also use wildcards (*) to block a series of images. For instance, let’s say that the ad came from http://someadsite.com/ads/ad.jpg – you could block that one jpg, or you could set the filter to block http://someadsite.com/ads/* – this way, you will never see any image from that directory. You’ll get the hang of it once you start playing. Also, remember that this only blocks ad images so any ads that are text only will likely still be seen. Sometimes you can get around this if the company uses iframes by saying Adblock iframe when you right-click – but sometimes text ads will be there to stay. I don’t mind that though because if all ads were just text ads, I don’t think they would be nearly as annoying.

  If you don’t want the hassle of having to “start clean” and block all ads yourself, I’ve decided to make my adblock file available to you. Save my Adblock text file to your computer and in the Adblock Options, choose Import filters. Use OK to override your filters or Cancel to append my file to yours. This file will get your started but remember, it’s most-likely specific to sites I visit regularly or from filters that I’ve collected by visiting Adblock sites and/or forums on the internet. Therefore, you may still need to add some filters for sites that you visit.

  Enjoy the internet without ads!

   

• Andy 1:54 pm on 10/16/2004 Permalink | Reply  

  Sage – Firefox Extension 

  A while back I mentioned that I would make some posts about my favourite extensions (plug-ins) for the Firefox web browser. First off, if you still aren’t using Firefox, download it now!

  My favourite extension has to be the news reader Sage. Simply put, if a web page that you visit frequently has syndication features, in the form of RSS or Atom feeds, you can add that feed to Sage and quicly read and search your favourite sites in a consistent format.

  For instance, if you look to the left side-bar on my page, you’ll see that there is a link for RSS 2.0 – that’s the RSS feed for my site. If you install Sage into Firefox, you can then setup a folder in your Bookmarks (I call mine RSS) and put the link to my RSS feed in that folder as a bookmark. I’ve also added a Sage button to the top bar in my browser (it sits beside my Home button) that opens a side-panel for Sage listing all my RSS feeds. I can then quickly scan or search all my favourite websites each day without having to load up each page individually. I find the content much easier to read when it is shown with consistent formatting.

  Here’s a list of some of my favourite RSS feeds – let me know in the comments section if you have any other good ones that you read regularly or if you have any problems getting Sage to work for you. I find it easiest to right-click on the feed, then click Copy Link Location. Then go into Sage and under Manage Feeds, and paste the link (ctrl+v) that you just copied into a New Bookmark.

  Hoyd News Network, Scott Mills.ca, Slashdot, Engadget, Wired News, TSN

  If you like this extension, stay tunded since I’m also preparing a post about how people have now started integrating audio into their RSS feeds and have these feeds automatically update on their iPod or other portable device – it’s called PodCasting and I’ll be writing more about it soon!

   

• Andy 10:51 pm on 10/13/2004 Permalink | Reply  

  gPopper and gNotify! 

  More Gmail functionality! For those of you that love the storage of Gmail, but aren’t too keen on the web interface, you can now use a typical mail reader (I recommend Thunderbird) to read and send from your Gmail account. The program is called gPopper and is totally free! I’m only using my Gmail account as a Gmail drive right now, but if anyone tries this out, let me know how it works! I have heard that there may be issues with people using SP2 and this utility, so I’d be interested in hearing your experiences.

  If you don’t want to completely move away from the web interface, there is also a utility called gNotify that will sit in your sytem tray and notify you when you have new mail.

  Toggle Comments | Scott is discussing.

   

  • Scott 5:00 am on 10/14/2004 Permalink

    I use gNotify and I love it.

• Andy 4:45 pm on 10/13/2004 Permalink | Reply  

  Hoyd’s Picks! 

  I’ve finally gotten around to updating the Files section of this site – not only does it now match the rest of the site, it has also been updated with some new programs. I hope to have even more up in the near future but for now, these are the must have files. As always, you can get to the files section by clicking on Files on the left, or by going to http://files.hoydnewsnetwork.com.
  

   

• Andy 11:07 pm on 10/12/2004 Permalink | Reply  

  Gmail Drive 

  I saw this in a couple of places but I’m going to take the description from kevinrose.com since it explains it really well:

  “Turn your GMail account into a 1GB of off-site storage:

  GMail Drive is a Shell Namespace Extension that creates a virtual filesystem around your Google GMail account, allowing you to use GMail as a storage medium.

  GMail Drive creates a virtual filesystem on top of your Google GMail account and enables you to save and retrieve files stored on your GMail account directly from inside Windows Explorer. GMail Drive literally adds a new drive to your computer under the My Computer folder, where you can create new folders, copy and drag’n’drop files to.

  This is a great way to backup your important docs. The only downside is that it’s limited to 10MB per file (the GMail attachement limit). Hopefully future versions will break up large files, then upload.”

  UPDATE: I just got around to trying this out and I must say, this is an awesome feature of Gmail! It’ll be interesting to see if Gmail does anything to stop it. There is the downside of the attachment limit, but I can see this being great for people that use a computer at home and at work and want to be able to move files back and forth very easily. Just install Gmail drive on both computers and you’re good to go. You can choose to have it log you in automatically or not, which makes it possible for multiple users to use the program from the same computer. Very cool!

  UPDATE 2: I’ve also set up a filter within Gmail to automatically label any email that starts with GMAILFS (the header for all Gmail drive files) to be labeled as GMAILFS and automatically be sent to the archive. That way, when I’m actually using Gmail, I don’t see all the files that I’m storing with the Gmail drive in my Inbox – give it a try!

   

• Andy 1:43 pm on 9/20/2004 Permalink | Reply  

  What Should I Eat? 

  Most of us have trouble deciding what to eat each day or even each meal. How would you like to be in charge of planning the menu for the first space mission to Mars which could last a minimum of 2.5 years! Wired has an interesting article about what food scientists are working on in order to be prepared for the appetites of the astronautes. Give it a read and it may just make planning your next meal seem a little easier!

   

• Andy 8:21 am on 9/20/2004 Permalink | Reply  

  The Quest for Quiet Computing 

  The picture to the left may not look all that exciting, and to you it might not be. However, for someone like me who is trying to quiet the noise of three different computers all in my living room, this fan may be a life saver. It’s a Panaflo 80mm low-speed, low-noise fan. They are made for use in a wide range of electronics and all the reviews I’ve read about them have been very positive. The noise levles are supposed to be only 20-21 dba from these fans which is about the same as whispering to somone five feet away from you.

  The first computer that needed silencing was my old AMD 333 Mhz machine that’s used as the web server. Considering there were only 2 fans in the whole box – one on the processor and the other in the power supply – and the processor one had just been changed, the only noise being generated by fans had to be coming from the power supply. I followed the directions on various websites which all cautioned about completely discharging the power supply before opening as well as voiding my warranty. Seeing as the computer was so old, I wasn’t too concerned about the warranty, but I did take the directions about how to properly open and work on the power supply very seriously. After the power supply had been unplugged for about 30 minutes, I opened it up, removed the old fan by taking out the screws and snipping the wires. I then connected the new fan by twisting the wires together and taping them up. I put everything back together and back into the tower. When I started up the server again, near silence! The only noise I hear now is a very faint whir of the hard drive spinning up and the fan is only audible if I put my ear right up to it.

  Next weekend I’ll be silencing my main tower and my MythTV box! I’ll post the results!