When is choice a bad thing? When the choice comes from YouTube, that’s when. Over on Technologizer, Jared Newman discusses a new advertising model that YouTube is trying out on a limited basis. Let’s get one thing out of the way- ads aren’t going away. The streaming of online video is expensive. One report predicts that YouTube is on pace to lose $470 million in 2009, thanks largely to bandwidth costs that exceed $1 million a day. It is only natural that YouTube needs to find a better way to monetize its service. The Technologizer article indicates that you’ll be able to "select from two advertisements to watch at the beginning, or intersperse a grab bag of ads throughout the video." Depending on how YouTube implements it, this could be an annoyance for tech-savvy users and busy users, who would be better off having no choice in the ads that are fed to them. Why?
Month: June 2009 (page 2 of 3)
I previously have professed my love for Evernote as a way to unclutter my life. One of the nice features of Evernote is its cross-platform support. I use Evernote on my iPhone to take photographs of notes, business cards, and even wine labels. The iPhone isn’t ideal for this, as its camera doesn’t have autofocus, and is not designed to take clear photographs of text at close range. To address this, I purchased the Griffin Clarifi iPhone case. Read on for my take on the Clarifi, using the Griffin Elan iPhone case as a point of reference.
What makes the Clarifi different from other cases is the lens on the rear, that slides over the iPhone camera lens. The Clarifi lens acts as a magnifying lens of sorts, making most text much more legible. The lens slides with the touch of a finger to cover or uncover the iPhone lens. I had read other reviews that complained that the lens would slide on its own, but I haven’t experienced that problem. There is plenty of friction, at least on mine, that prevents the lens from sliding until I want to slide it. Here is an example of the same text taken first with the Clarifi lens in place (top), and then without it (bottom):
If you’re using someone else’s computer and an application that you need or want isn’t available, you are in luck if you have a portable version of the application on your flash drive. SanDisk is a flash drive manufacturer that installs its own proprietary software launcher, U3, on flash drives. Some portable applications are designed specifically for U3, and are simple to install. But what if you have a SanDisk USB flash drive with U3 installed, and want to use other portable applications aside from those specifically designed for U3? One option would be to uninstall U3 from the drive and then install the PortableApps.com Platform. Some folks despise U3 and this is the first step they take when getting a new flash drive. But what if you want to keep U3, but also install apps from a place like portableapps.com? Here is how I installed non-U3 apps on my SanDisk flash drive, including how I placed a shortcut for each application in the launcher.
I find that the older I get, the more cluttered my mind becomes. You don’t have to be 40+ to be cluttered and disorganized in today’s fast-paced world, but until recently it seemed like my brain was becoming more scattered with each passing year. My desks at work and home looked like I was farming Post-it® notes, with notes everywhere filled with ideas, reminders, and lists. I would have bills and receipts in a stack, waiting to be filed. My filing cabinet looked like something out of a horror flick. Needless to say, my wife was less than thrilled with what this did to her well-planned decor. How to tame this mess? Evernote to the rescue. Read on for more on how Evernote can help you “unclutter” your mind and your life.
My personal site runs on WordPress, and hosts family photos, videos, and news. I’ve just switched to running NextGEN Gallery to power the photo portion of the site. The hardest part of the switch was figuring out the difference between an “album” and a “gallery” in NextGEN Gallery. This might be because the terms have a different meaning than they did in other software I used. I looked all over, but the only way I was able to get my brain around the concept was through trial and error. So, here I will try to explain a gallery versus an album in NextGEN Gallery.