Category Archives: Web

Cortex App

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No matter what we all browse the web. That’s how you got here in the first place. And one of the most popular things to do while browsing the web is to share different web sites with other people over facebook, twitter, and even tumblr (in this case). And sometimes you will come across an article that you want to save to read a bit later. Cortex lets you do all of those, but extraordinarily quickly.

Cortex is a chrome extension, which gives it cross-platform flexibility along with a super easy installation.

Once you have installed cortex, you need to connect your accounts by clicking on the pretty circle on your menubar then clicking connect accounts.

Connect your accounts here

As you can see, it can link to twitter, facebook, tumblr, and instapaper. Each of them use their own authorization system, and if things aren’t working right then try restarting your browser or waiting a few hours then restarting your browser.

Now, you have to pick your facebook friends. Sadly, you cannot post to your news stream. But you CAN post to other people’s walls, and click pick friends to select which friends you want to be able to share with.

Once you have accounts set up, it is time to start sharing.

To share a webpage it’s pretty simple: click and hold your mouse anywhere on the webpage. You should see something like this show up around your mouse:

Now when this shows up, keep your mouse held down and hover over which service you want to share the page with. Once you are on the letter/section, let go of your mouse and the link to the webpage will be instantly shared.

For facebook however it is a little bit more complicated.

When you hover over the f, another wheel will appear that has the profile pictures of the friends you selected up here.

Now, move your mouse over which friend you want to share it with, and now you can let go.

Although it may sound like it will take a long time, here’s proof otherwise:


I made that video when I was bored. 😛

To get cortexapp, you have to go to cortexapp.com and sign up for the beta then cross your fingers that you get an email back. 🙂

Chrome OS isn’t (can’t be) the new Windows

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So everyone is talking about how all of our normal applications are transferring to the internet; the cloud. But if you haven’t noticed, people are still buying powerhouses and desktops and the netbook business ain’t doin so hot. The iPad is selling like hotcakes but think about it: it’s not completely web-based, you can download games and things. Why isn’t the world using just the web for everything?

Because people in the world have more to do than just email and flash games and facebook and spreadsheets. The web isn’t powerful enough. Google Docs can’t do quite as much as iWork or even Microsoft Office. Because it isn’t as powerful. And we can only diagnose this if we dig down a little technically deeper.

When we are using a web-app, for example, google docs, not everything takes place on the web. The potential is actually downloaded to your computer and then executed in this tiny little cache. The processor isn’t web-based. You are just keeping the stuff up there. And this tiny little cache where the web-app is downloaded is just too small for anything more than a very lite application. If we were going to use a full featured but “web-based” Microsoft Word, it would take 10 minutes and 2 GB of a cache to download. The web isn’t fast enough to support powerful applications. What about the video editors out there. What about the photo editors out there. As amazing as it seems, The web doesn’t have enough power bandwidth to do advanced things such as video rendering.. That’s the reason that there is no online version of Final Cut. Developers can’t make their applications to rich because they are limited by the capabilities of the web-browser, download speed, and cache. But what do we get if we eliminate these barriers? We get a desktop application. What i’m trying to say is that Desktop applications are virtually unlimited. . Lets say I’m in a taxi and I just remembered that I had to do a presentation in a few hours. If I have a computer running ANYTHING OTHER THAN chrome OS, then I can open up my handy dandy presentation creation application and whip up a quick and easy slideshow. But if I’m web-based, then there is the variable of internet access. A netbook running chrome OS is completely useless if you are in a plane (unless of course the plane has WiFi).

So when google is trying to launch their Chrome OS, keep in mind why you are getting this computer/netbook. For some people, it may be fine. Maybe they just want to have a simple lite computer to use when in a meeting. But remember, if you opt for this the web is your only option, therefore you are limited in power, features, and accessibility.

YouTube Instant

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Well, Google instant is out, but I found something that takes the same idea and applies it to youtube. They’ve simplified it into a you put in a search, a video appears. No click required.

It’s simple. just go to http://ytinstant.com and type in a search. Instantly (hence the name) the first video from your query will appear below. Bam. Whatcha. boom boom pow. No refreshing, just type and BAM.

But whatever you do, please don’t type in my name. 😛

Sadly, if you try to type in goodmorninggeek it will automatically revert to a suggestion of something like good morning workout :-\

OmniWeb

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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:

OmniWeb Homepage

OmniWeb Download Page

Well, back to making fun of Microsoft

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Unless of course you live under a rock, you have heard about the terrible antenna problems the iPhone 4 has been having. Basically, if you put your hand over the left black line, all of your signal drops. Apple was having a PR disaster, but today Apple held a press conference and it seems that the truths were revealed.

But I must say, Apple wasn’t playing fair here.

First, Steve Jobs ponts out how all of the smartphones antennagate. He showed test videos of many popular phones including the BlackBerry Bold. This is simply putting down the competition and saying “we can’t go against the laws of physics… yet.” [Steve Jobs]. Fine.

So I got curious and asked I wonder if my phone does this…

Well, I gutters its back to making fun of microsoft…

New view on apple

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I used to dub apple as the greatest of all. But my view is changing as apple begins to turn into the evil empire.

If you look at some of the press you will see how apple us taking a very bad response to this iphone for antenna problem. They have been saying nothing to the press and they are not anything their problem. This is kind if odd for a company so focused on its reputation and good press.

So here what I now say: apple has some of the best computers and electronics and design basi (plural of basis?) But as a company are entirely evil.

On the good side is google, but o don’t really dub apple and google in the same field other than mobile operating system (where I dub android better, more on that later) so I cant really call them head on competitors. But I praise google for being so open. I mean I even have a google socket on the back of my macbook and iPad.

So I guess I like them both.

As far as pcs go, I’m less crazy about mac. I man, people have their reasons, but overall I still dub apple as the best overall computer creator.

That concludes this postapalooza…

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Our first postapalooza lasted from June twelfth to the twenty fourth! We had a total of twenty three posts!!

This postapalooza ended because I missed a day among all of my travel to Japan. If you think I missed a day or doubleposted, its just because of the time zone change.

Another reason is because I ran out of things to blog about. That’s why id like to have your suggestions. Click the suggestions tab on the left and suggest something that goes along these guidelines:

Technology related
Won’t cost me more than $5 (if its an iPhone or iPad app)

Thanks! I’ll try to make a postapalooza happen every quarter. 😉

Media Temple (mt)

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If you’ve been reading Good Morning Geek since 2008, you may remember the times of maxswisher.blogspot.com. I liked that because it was completely free and easy. Then you may remember the times of goodmorninggeek.wordpress.com. Just as easy and free. Then, you may have realized that goodmorninggeek.com worked. That was just a redirect.

I was getting tired of not having much flexibility and storage (I was on Hurricane Electric which gave me 5GB/mo.), and because I was now earning some more money, I decided to get some real hosting of my own.

After asking around at the Teens In Tech conference, I concluded that Media Temple would be right for me.

I signed up for the Grid Server (gs) plan, which is 100GB, $20/mo (or $200/yr), and 1TB of bandwidth.

I had no idea that those $20 gave me SO MUCH.

I got

  • Email with built in spam filtering
  • FTP
  • 24/7 help

But there were 2 things that really made it for me.

1-Click applications

Using this service I installed wordpress on this domain with a FEW (:O) clicks. I then imported the posts from goodmorninggeek.wordpress.com. You can install wordpress, drupal, and zen-cart with 1 click.

Multiple domains to one service

Because it is grid server, I can have different domains linking to different directories on a single hosting. That means that maxswisher.com, goodmorninggeek.com, teentechie.net, and every sub-domain is on a single $20/mo. hosting plan.

Definitely recommend this to everybody who is looking to host their own website. In fact, skribit (they power the suggestions tab on the left) uses (mt). Who knew?!

http://mediatemple.net

Remember The Milk

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We all have things to do.

And that’s why there’s an app called Things, which won an apple design award, etc, etc. But that costs $50! Yah, umm… NO. so that’s why I love Remember The Milk.

Remember the milk doesn’t have all of the features of Things (I’m pretty sure Things comes with a manual…), but for a great free online to-do list service, Remember The Milk is perfect.

Remember The Milk gives you features like multiple lists, tagging, due dates, priorities, the ability to postpone, the ability to share tasks, and more. It also includes smart lists (similar to Smart Mailboxes or Smart folders), which can filter multiple lists.

RTM (R.emember T.he M.ilk) will automatically sort items in order that they need to be done which depends on priority and due date. This is great becasue you just add in the things you need to do, and instead of spending 5 minutes thinking of which to do first the answer is right there in RTM.

Also, I turn to RTM when I have nothing to do because I probably have something I need to do somewhere. I also use RTM to organize ideas for blog posts, and that’s how this postapalooza has been occurring (One post every day from Jun. 9 until an unspecified date). It has boosted my productivity by 7x (I used to have on post per week).

When you add a task, you can add things like ![number] to set the priority after you enter the task name. So If somethig is really important, I ust go to the list and in the box I enter:

Really Important Thing !1

And hit return, and it will be added to the list and sorted. You can also do similar things to ad due dates and more.

Another cool feature is that you can have friends and share tasks with them. I haven’t yet been able to test out this feature, but at least the idea is a great one.

For heavy users of RTM, you can get a pro plan which is $25/yr. This allows some extra features like access from the mobile app (If you don’t have pro, you can always just go to m.rememberthemilk.com on your mobile phone for a much liter interface) and some other goodies.

Thanks to RTM and one other application (review coming… tomorrow probably), I am able to keep this postapalooza alive and I don’t know when it will stop… I guess when I run out of ideas.

http://rememberthemilk.com

Change your Google background

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If you’ve been sing bing instead of google (I sure hope not, google overpowers all), you may have noticed that there is a beautiful background picture that changes daily on the hmepage. Google is finally allowing some more customization, and you can add your own picture to the google background! Here’s how:

1. Sign in to google

Go to google.com and click sign in on the top right. Enter your google username and password and you will be signed in and redirected to the main Google page.

2. Select a photo

If you want to upload a photo from your computer, it needs to be more than 800X600. In the bottom left, click change background image. You will be given the options to get the photo from your computer, picasa albums, or public feed stuff.

You can click browse to select a file on your computer’s hard drive. Then click Upload and your photo will be added to a picasa album and applied behind your Google logo. But if you don’t find a background you think is fitting, you can select a picture from the picasa public gallery and picasa editor’s choice.  Now beware that the Google Logo will be white, so if you want it to stand out make sure you select a picture that is not white or yellow. Now beware that the picture will only appear if you are logged into your account.

Safari 5

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While Steve Jobs took the stage to announce the new iPhone, something else was happening on the apple website. It wasn’t on the front page, nobody had any idea whatsoever. Except for my friend Spencer Schoeben (CEO of Teens In Tech Networks, he ROCKS!) who tweeted that he was stickin to Safari 5 for now. I looked at is and said to myself “Wait a second… safari 5?” And here’s what’s new:

Speed

In many tests, it beat Chrome or was equivalent for speed. This is one of the main reasons to switch!

HTML5 Compatability

The new safari has a lot more support for HTML5, still expanding Apple’s belief in no flash. Of course Safari still has flash, because if it didn’t we would have… well… a small issue. And a mob in front of Apple headquarters…

Safari Reader

Safari Reader makes it easier to read posts and stories on the web. It isolates the content of a page and displays it in a clean, maginifiable interface. Just go to an article and click Reader in the URL bar.

A little more eyecandy

The Top Sites page got a facelift, and now features an easy link to get to your history in cover flow view. Also, there’s that blue loading bar in the top again, just like good ‘ol safari 3.

Improved URL bar

You can now enter the name of a webpage you’ve visited in the past and it will automatically find the URL from your history. Cool, but I still like the omnibar approach of Google Chrome.

Extensions

Exact same as Google Extensions. Developers can create toolbars and other goodies to work with Safari, just like chrome extensions. Cool, but a little behind, don’t you think?

Other than that, safari is the same browser you used to know.

Safari 5 Homepage

Safari 5 Download Page

AT&T is the data devil

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AT&T has been having network problems for a long time.

But their solution to solving it is to make people stop using it…

Hence, AT&T is the data devil.

They will be removing the unlimited data option and replacing it with a 250mb a month for $15 and 2GB/mo. for $30. The new plans will take effect on Jun 7…

Wait isn’t that the same day as something else? Hmm… Let me think… Hmm… OH yah, the iPhone. So basically what this is saying is that SOMETHING on the iPhone will take a lot of data… like.. I dunno, TETHERING? Now I find this funny. For tethering you have to pay an extra $20/mo. on top of the data plan, and you are still restricted bandwidth-wise. Another thing is I don’t know, VIDEO CALLING? This takes up an average of about 84mb per minute, so after about 4 minutes of video calling your data plan will be up. *Edit: the video chatting requires WiFi, and if I have WiF i’d rather be chatting on my computer… just sayin… I dunno, but this seems kinda devilish…

Now currently on verizon I have an unlimited plan, and I’m guessing I use more than 2GB becasue of my tethering (which im not paying extra for). Also, I get coverage at my house, which might come in handy. So even if I switched over to AT&T and got the new iPhone, I don’t know if I would be able to cap my data at 2GB. I’d rather be free with verizon.

So basically, here we have a data hungry phone that AT&T has put on a diet (nice metaphor, eh?). I don’t know how this will go over, but I can’t wait to read all of the complaints becasue people go over their bandwidth limit.

Oh, AT&T…