Seize the mouse.
Posts tagged Wireless
Why I’m not upgrading to the official 2.2
Sep 1st
So the official OTA 2.2 Droid Incredible Update is finally live.
But I’m not upgrading.
So to install this, I would have to unroot my phone. There is no way to root this version of 2.2, so I won’t be able to use my beloved Wireless Tether.
Now I already have a leaked version of 2.2 so I get everything of 2.2 other than the 720p video recording, but I get my wireless tether. So it really becomes a tradeoff between the wireless tether and 720p recording. Now I know that 2.2 has the built in 3G mobile hotspot, but that holds me at 2GB and costs me another $20/mo. Riiiight.
So I’ve decided to stay how I am with a partial 2.2 update and stick with my Wireless Tether until they find a way to easily root this version of 2.2.
P.S. Sorry for the lack of posts, I have a few more coming soon. 
Wireless Tether with Droid Incredible
Aug 20th
So let’s just say that you are driving somewhere and you have your computer (or iPad or iPod touch for that matter) along with your droid incredible. Well now for free (actually, the expense of battery life) you can use your Droid Incredible as a wifi tether, so you can have an iPad on verizon.
Sadly, the speeds are dramatically reduced to a groping 70 kb/s. But I think it’s better than nothing. Can load pages, not so great for downloads and video/audio streaming such as youtube or pandora.
Step 1. Make sure your phone is rooted. Just do steps 1-4 of the tutorial HERE (continue the steps to install android 2.2, if desired!).
Step 2. On your incredible go to THIS LINK (try using chrometophone, review on that soon!)
Step 3. Once the link is downloaded open it and install the application.
Step 4. Open the application on your phone.
Step 5: Press menu and go into the settings and change around your preferences. change the SSID, and add a passphrase. Enable access control if desired.
Step 6: Press the big tether button.
Step 7: On your wifi enabled device go to the network selection and select the nework name that you had entered in the SSID preferences. Enter your asscode and Voila, you can connect to the internet!
One of the cool benefits of this is that you can be on the internet while in a car. Cool, eh?
OmniWeb
Aug 6th
I’m sorry. I really am. This is, indeed, yet another web browser.
I was recently at a technology summer camp (I’m taking a class about photoshop) and the same instructor that ended up switching me over to macs kept telling me about how mazing omniweb was. I wasn’t convinced until I finally decided to download it.
The first thing you notice is speed. I know that people call chrome fast, and, well, it is. But from tests on Good Morning Geek, it seems as though graphics render either faster or from top to bottom. I’m pretty sure omniweb prioritizes the top of the page for rendering, as the header seems to appear almost instantly, followed by widgets in the sidebar. In chrome, it takes a couple of seconds for the header to appear.
Other than that the big thing is tabbed browsing. So lets say I have a lot of tabs open in Safari. I mean a LOT. In the menubar it shows the tabs as txt, the name of the webpage. But when it gets crowded things get a little harder to make out.
(click to expand) As you can tell, it’s kind of hard to tell which news article that CNN page is about. What if I have ten CNN tabs open but all I see at the top is CNN:…
OmniWeb takes a new approach. Thumbnails.
I don’t even need to figure out what the text is trying to refer to, I can just take a glance at the tabs and click the one I want to look at. And even if I have 20 tabs open, the thumbnails don’t get smaller because you can scroll through all of your thumbnails.
Another cool thing is the ability to load tabs in the background. I know this isn’t new to the field of browsers but I find that the system it uses to tell you that a tab in the background is loading (and when it is finished loading) very unique.
When a tab is loading it is greyed out and has a spinny thing in the top right.
When a tab in the background has finished loading, OmniWeb does a nice job of letting you know.
If you open the tab the check mark wil go away.
Other than that there is one more key feature to this: site-specific browsing options.
On any website you can click a button in the top right and select your options for ads, appearance, security– let’s just show a screenshot.
The button to toggle the pane is shown in the top right.
As you can see there is also a page info pane where it shows you all of the images, scripts, stylesheets, and frames on a webpage. Here’s a gallery with pictures of each and every pane, plus all of the other screenshots from this post:
-
- The button to toggle the pane is shown in the top right.
Le Trackpad de Mágico! (Magic Trackpad)
Jul 30th
I have no idea why but this has been requested by numerous people.
Along with the launch of the new and improved iMac, Apple released the Magic Trackpad. It’s basically a larger bluetooth MacBook Pro trackpad. Their tagline is “why do notebooks have all the fun?”
I find it useful even tough I already have a MacBook Pro, because when I need gestures like exposé It is right there, not a reach across the desk to get to my MacBook.
Setup
The setup is very simple. First step is to update your software. Do that by going to the apple menu and clicking Software Update. This will then download the drivers for the Magic Trackpad.
Once you have downloaded the update and restarted, press and hold the power button on your trackpad until the green light starts flashing.
Once that is working, go into System Preferences and click on Trackpad.
Once in the pane, click on Set Up Bluetooth Trackpad in the bottom right corner.
Make sure the light on the trackpad is still blinking (if it isn’t just press the power button once) and you should see a window appear. After a few seconds it should look like this.
Once it looks like that^^^ click continue and your wireless trackpad will be setup! In the pane that follows you can configure a bunch of cool options.
Review
The Magic Trackpad is a good addition or replacement for a mouse. The large surface is convenient because you will rarely have to pick up your finger, however having it so large does make it feel a little bit awkward.
I think that if you are getting (or have) an iMac or other Mac desktop then you may prefer this over the Magic Mouse for it’s multitouch gestures. For MacBook and PacBook Pro users I find this only useful if you are already using an external keyboard and mouse because you can get the gestures right where you need them without reaching out across your desk to get to your MacBook’s Trackpad. It’s aluminum design fits in perfectly with the Wireless Keyboard and is even the exact same height. I’m thinking that apple should create a Magic Keyboard that has a Magic Trackpad on the side of it.
The Magic Trackpad is currently available at your Local Apple store for $69.
Create a WiFi network with your Mac
Jun 17th
I am currently in Japan, and in the Hotel we have no wireless in our room. We do have a wired connection, but we have iPads that need WiFi. Here’s how to take your mac and turn it into a WiFi network in a few steps.
1. Plug in ethernet
into your Mac. Make sure the internet connection is working by visiting a few sites. Many hotels have pages where you have to agree to terms. Make sure you agree and/or pay before proceeding.
2. Turn on internet sharing
Open up System Preferences and click on Sharing. In the list, click on Internet Sharing, but don’t click the checkbox. Configure it so it looks like this:
Then, click on AirPort options in the bottom right. Here you can put in the name of your Wifi network and a password if desired.
Click OK, and now you can click the checkbox next to internet sharing.
3. Connect your devices
On your WiFi enabled devices you should be able to see a WiFi network with the name you put in under Airport Options in step 2. Connect to it and enter a password if you configured one.
Tada! Now your devices should be able to browse the internet. Cool! Be aware that you can’t be on a WiFi network on your Mac while sharing your internet.
Use it wisely!
Bluetooth not available? Here’s a 10-step fix!
Jun 3rd
I’ve had this happen a few times where suddenly for no reason it appears, my bluetoth magic mouse stops working. I go to my bluetooth icon to see if it is connected and it is greyed out with a squiggly on it. Clicking it shows this text:
Bluetooth: Not Available
Usually when this happens I end up wiping out my computer and reinstalling snow leopard. but instead, I tried a little harder this time.
By instinct, I just restart. I go up into the menu and hit restart. The sad truth about this is that it never shuts down the computer, it never stops running. (If it did, how would it know to boot back up again?)
However this didn’t work. So I thought that maybe something on startup was consuming the bluetooth card, making it unavailable for the little menubar to see. To fix this, I just went into System Preferences under Accounts, Login Items, and deleted every single item there. I then shut down, unplugged the power cord, took out the battery, put back in the battery, plugged in the power cord again, turned off bluetooth in every other device I had laying around, and turned it on again. Tada! I had bluetooth again. So here’s an easier guide:
- Open System Preferences.
- Click on Accounts
- Click on Login Items under your username
- Select the top item and click the – until there are none left in the box
- Go to in the menubar and click Shut Down…
- After it shuts down, remove the power cord
- Remove the battery (If possible)
- Reinsert the battery
- Reinsert the power cord
- Turn off bluetooth on all surrounding devices
Start back up and your bluetooth should be available again!
picplz
May 29th
We all have twitter accounts.
What is twitter for? It’s for sharing what you are doing right then in less than 140 characters.
picplz is similar, but it uses pictures with tags and captions instead of just text.
Sorry guys, but the app is only available on android. 
So here’s how it works:
Open up the app and you are instantly greeted with the view of your phone’s camera. Tap the camera button to take a picture. If you have foursquare configured, tap the venue that you are at. You can then tap someone/something to tag them in the photo. Then you can click edit details and enter a caption and decide which services you want to post it to (twitter and foursquare). Then click post and your picture will be posted! This is great because you can see which pictures you’ve taken at different foursquare venues. Your profile will be located at picplz.com/user/username. Check mine out here!
Turn your iPad into display with Air Display
May 29th
Well, you got your shiny iPad. It does everything as advertised. But it can do even more. You can turn it into a secondary display for $9.99!
First, on your iPad, download an app called Air Display for $9.99.
Next, connect your Mac (sorry PC users, this won’t work for you) and iPad to the same WiFi network (if you don’t have any available create an AdHoc network on your mac). Then, open the Air Display app on your iPad. It will give you detailed instructions on how to download and install the plugin for your Mac (free). I’ll walk you through it anyway:
First, download the plugin at avatron.com/ad. Then, install the package and restart your computer. Make sure your iPad is awake and Air Display is open. Click on the Air display icon on your mac’s menubar and select your iPad from the list. Your screen will turn blue, then your iPad should be connected. By default, your iPad is configured to be on the left. So drag a window off of the left side of your main screen and it will appear on the iPad. cool! You can also touch on the iPad like a mouse (no right click though).
Now that you have your Air Display configured, lets personalize it.
Open System Preferences and click Displays. You will see a window show up on each of the displays. But the one we really want to use is the one on the main display (the main display is the one with the Menubar at the top). You will see that on this display there is a window that has an arrangement tab at the top. Click Arrangement and here you will see two screens: the smaller one is your iPad. You can click and drag you iPad to a different side of the main display depending on the physical position. You can also drag the menubar to the iPad to make it the main display.
Now this is cool and stuff, but a really cool use is that you can finally run flash on an iPad! the fps is less then 30, but it will do for the most of us.
Now if you have a physically plugged in external display, this means that you could have 3 screens without having to buy something like the viBook for $120. Here’s how I set it up with the Air Display:
System Preferences Arrangement
As you can tell, I have the Macbook to the left of my monitor. I then put my iPad on top of my monitor and am using my iPad as my main display;. This eliminates desktop clutter, and when working in photoshop all of my tools don’t get in the way so I can work on a pretty big image.
Here’s how it looks in real life:
By default the wallpaper won't span
As you can tell, it looks similar right? All of my icons are on my iPad along with the menubar, allowing more room on the main display. Sadly, the wallpaper doesn’t span across all of the monitors automatically, it just takes a lot of cropping in photoshop so you get three different pictures that eventually come together as one image. Also, cool picture right? It’s a portrait of me drawn by one of my friends. If you look on the iPad, you’ll see a thought bubble with binary.
Sadly, you need to add the iPad as a display with the menubar icon every time you restart your computer. Also, it’s hard to use it while the iPad is syncing.
There’s a cool way to impress your friends!
