If you are used to read IT news, in time you start suffering from information overload. You add sources on Facebook, Twitter, RSS reader and the information keeps coming. And then comes a moment when you start thinking that you need to make a clean up. But you have no idea where to start.
Well here a pro tip on how to clean up your sources and be more efficient:
When a source has articles that contain phrases like:
This is an Apple [InsertProductName] killer
The new Apple [InsertProductName] is a large disappointment
Apple stock is doomed
Sell your Apple stock now
Apple [InsertProductName]‘s hardware is behind competition
Android has Flash
etc
Drop it! Delete without remorse. Not only that you are not loosing anything but in time you will see that you will have a better view on the IT field. There are only 2 situations in which the above statements are possible:
1. Stupidity: The author is an idiot that has no freaking idea what is he talking about. More than that, who pays for those articles is a bigger idiot that most likely employs only idiots
2. Greed: The author and who pays him know that the above statements are not true but they use the momentum for link baiting. A legit business model but not a reliable source of information
In the never ending debate of WordPress comments vs. Facebook comments one of the most idiotic arguments is: But I own the comments and I don’t want to give them to Facebook or any other entity.
Really? Do YOU own the comments made by OTHER people on your website? By proxy, does your hosting company own the blog posts you create?
Breaking news to you social media blogger expert: the comment creator is the most likely person to own the comments he makes. And FB comments are the easiest way to put the owner in control of his content.
If you own both an Android telephone and an Apple TV, until now you must have been jealous on all the Iphone owners that could use Airplay to push multimedia content from their phones to the big screen.
Well, be jelaous no more because there is an app for that . An app for your Android phone.
Eye-C is an app available for both Android and Iphone that goes beyond sharing local media files from your phone. They allow you to connect your YouTube, Picasa, Twitter, Facebook and Soundcloud accounts into one unified multimedia timeline that you can play on your big screen.
Eye-C own description:
Play mixed playlists from YouTube, SoundCloud & more on your phone, TV & stereo.
Download Eye-C Taglists for free, and your timeline becomes your own personal TV channel, music player, or photo gallery. At any point, just push play, and the feed comes to life – on your phone, TV, Apple TV (even from an Android phone), PC and more. Add a hashtag (#tag) to any video, song or picture to build a taglist – a playlist that combines items from multiple sources – YouTube, Picasa, Facebook, or even your personal music library (see below for tech specs). More sources are coming every month, so play tags – it’s easy and free.
Geotagging your photos is not something new and can be done in various ways:
Most desktop apps include a mode that allows you to place your photos on a map through drag and drop and geotags will be automatically added (EX: Picasa / Iphoto). Unfortunately these are not very friendly with large number of photos and most likely you will be ending like me to drag all the pictures from a trip over a city.
Web based services: Flickr, Picasa and even Facebook allow you to place the photos on maps just like their desktop counterparts. The down side? Again, large number of photos.
Take pictures with your camera phone. Most of the new telephones (no matter of their operating system), if they have a GPS they most likely add geotags to your pictures. The downside? Even if the mobile cameras become more and more powerful, they still don’t compare with a dedicated camera
You don’t want to drag and drop hundreds of pictures over a map
You don’t want to buy a new camera or accessories
You have an Android smart phone or Iphone
Well, the answer is Geotag Photos, a mobile app that allows you to automatically geo tag your digital pictures after you have taken them. The app idea is quite simple but efficient: you start the app and synchronize the time with your camera and then you start taking pictures. Pictures will be automatically geo tagged on your desktop once you download them and the associated track.
What can you do after you geotag your images:
View or showcase your images in Google Earth. Here is how you can prepare a special file to open it in Google Earth. This is useful in many cases:
Your own viewing to browse through your memories using places
Showcase your vacations to others
If you are a real estate or a travel agency, showcase personalized offers
In flickr, you can browse sets/groups and streams in map mode. In addition, your pictures will appear on the city pages
The tech world is broken by design will be a series of posts that cover different aspects of the tech world (hardware/software) that are obviously broken.
But what broken means in this context. Broken means that there is a huge difference between intention and implementation and this reflects on the user satisfaction, company’s revenue and progress. There are multiple levels unfortunately and all summed lead to a not so bright future:
User experience: what the user wants and what the user gets
Product development: the development cycle from the idea to the end product
Organizational culture: how companies function in order to transform an idea into a product
Marketing: what are the marketing department doing to get the product into the user’s home and the money from the user’s pocket to shareholder’s bank accounts
This series is inspired 99% by comparing how Apples does things and how the others do it. I started with this introduction to kill procrastination and have a start
I would like to take the opportunity and thank our sponsor: IntoVPS that offers linux vps hosting services on servers located in USA (Dallas and Fremont) and Europe (Amsterdam and Cluj-Napoca). Using premium hardware and data centers they’re able to offer a high quality service for affordable rates.
