This is a letter I wrote to a friend of mine earlier this week. Of late he has been under pressure from some Web Development Companies trying to get him to pay them to build a new website. While his need for a new website is definitely there, his need…
Category: Advice
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How to Fix a Kindle that Won't Download Books From Your Archived Items
So you’ve got a new book in your Archived items on your Kindle. But for some reason every time you try to download that new purchase you get the message “Sorry your book cannot be downloaded at this time. Please try again later.” Turning the Kindle on and off doesn’t…
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How to Prototype A Website in 10 Minutes (Or Less)
Traditionally, designers have used static mockups and flow diagrams to demonstrate how a website will look and work. The problem with this approach is you can’t fully test or communicate an interactive, hypertext experience (a website) with non-interactive tools (comps, paper and back-of-the napkin sketches). Up until a couple of…
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How To Use Computer Text To Speech To Proof Your Writing
Proofreading is a bitch. Typos are the bane of my existence. So how are you expected to proof your own work after you’ve just spent an hour or (heaven forbid) hours staring at it? One of the best techniques that every proof reader knows about is reading your copy backwards. This…
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How To Protect Your Files On Dropbox
So cloud computing is all the rage. It has swooped in and lulled us en masse to upload ALL our digital stuff to it…up there…out there…somewhere barely on the fringes of our control. In what feels like no time at all we’ve abdicated physical containment of our precious information (the…
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How To Use A Bluetooth Keyboard With Two Devices
This issue came up for me when I purchased an Apple Bluetooth keyboard. The reason I splurged on the $70 device was because I needed a keyboard for my aging Macbook (the spacebar had become unstable), and I wanted a keyboard for my iPad. When I got the keyboard home,…
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How to Play Pirate's Dice
While in Germany we were introduced to this simple pub game. They call it Mäxchen, which I think is just their pronunciation of Mexican… but the game is really called Pirate’s Dice. Mäxchen is the art of being deceived and detecting deception with dice. Best to be played with four…
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How To Exclude An Image From Your WordPress Gallery
If you’ve ever added the Gallery to one of your WordPress Posts, you might have had the frustration of keeping the other images in that same Post from appearing in the Gallery. This can come up if your WordPress theme supports Featured Images. It can also come up when you…
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How To Make A Paper Boat
Here is some good clean fun for your inner Napoleon. How to make a paper boat. (scroll down for step-by-step photos). What’s so great about making boats out of paper? No…it’s not that they look cool when you set them on fire –its that they require no cutting, glue, scissors…
How to Create a Website For Under $100 That Doesn't Suck
So you need a website and you don’t have a bunch of money to sink into it. On top of that you are just about as technical as my mom. What to do? How do you get a website without it sucking? Well pony up cowpoke. Here is how you…
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Locate Your iPhone or iPad for FREE
Using Apple’s MobileMe to locate your iphone or ipad is now free. Has been for some time. If you have an iPhone 4, iPad, or 4th generation iPod touch (iOS 4.2 required), then what are you waiting for? If you’re afraid of black helicopters appearing over your house, or you…
The Secret to Delivering Online Video That Doesn't Buffer
Throughout 2008 and most of 2010 I was engaged in producing dozens of online videos. These videos were not always posted to websites through Youtube, which simplifies matters greatly–and is FREE. Sometimes, for reasons of control, it was necessary for us to use 3rd party players. After much trial and…
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How To Backup Your Entire Facebook Profile
Fellow Facebookers take heed. What would happen if your entire Facebook profile including friends, posts, links, messages, photos and videos vanished tomorrow? What if you logged into Facebook only to find your account had been deactivated, or worse…deleted!? If you’re one of the millions of people who have already found…
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Ditching Delicious for Pinboard
I was a Delicious addict until my Firefox got so junked up with plugins that I gave them all up for the speed of Safari. When I defected to Safari I lost my toolbar access to Delicious. That sucked ass. Delicious was an integral part of my day. Now with…
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5 Reasons Why You Should Pay for Pandora
I admit it. I’ve been sucking off the Pandora Internet music service teat for the past few years without giving them a dime. I’m so ashamed. That’s me, the dirty rat, carelessly skipping off to another service when I had completely used up my free monthly allotment of 40 hours….
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5 Adventure Games Worth Your Time on the iPad
It seems that adventure games are making a comeback due to the iPad. I once read that Myst marked the death of adventure games. Silly me, I thought it was Dragon’s Lair. Actually there is a huge difference between Myst and Dragon’s Lair. Myst takes hours of complex problem solving…
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10 iPad Apps You Shoulda Got In 2010
It’s just 2011 but my head (and my laptop’s power supply) are still stuck in 2010. So, before my laptop battery completely dies, here are my top iPad apps for 2010. Thanks Apple for redefining mobile computing (I don’t care what Zuckerberg says about it.) Index Card Index Card is…
10 Top Books for the Modern Geek
Daemon By Daniel Suarez If you know the difference between FTP, MMORPG and FMRI, then this techno thriller is for you. Forget about the pseudo bullshit tech that others and Hollywood try to shove down your throat (yea you heard me Jack Bower), you won’t get that here. Instead you’ll…
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How To Lose Friends and Destroy Machines: Forward Chain Emails
Warning! Your email is full of hoaxes, urban legends and scams… and you’re the one that’s responsible for keeping them alive. If you are new to email, you’re a threat to the rest of us. There’s one born every minute… How many times have you received an email from a…
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5 Reasons Why You Need To Plug Your iPad Into A Computer
Saying how great the iPad is, is so…September 2010. We’re well past that. However a growing number of people I’ve run into (and know personally) have never plugged their iPads into a computer. WTF? That’s like buying a frigerator and never putting food in it. Is iPad really supposed to be…
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Monitor Suddenly Turns Black & White
Some funny people like to play jokes on others by screwing with their computers. Personally, I think practical jokes that include someone’s computer are about as funny as getting your sneaks tied together and thrown up onto a telephone wire. However, goofy things happen to good people. A friend called…
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Avoid Big Phone Bills Using The iPhone Overseas (No Jailbreaking Necessary)
Traveling abroad with your iphone can be scary. Not for any other reason than you have no idea what your phone bill is going to look like when you return home. Some information out there tells you that you need to jailbreak your phone. Call me a pussy, but I’m…
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Parallels Vs. VMware
Ever since I scored a copy of Parallels during the MacHeist sale, I’ve been using it as my virtualization software on my Macbook, instead of VMWare. Now after six months of processor-blistering work I’ve had to dump Parallels and return to VMware. Virtualization software allows you to run Windows (or…
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If You're Not Cloning Your Drive, Your Backup Won't Save You Any Time.
I clone therefore I am. The other day a friend of mine lost his hard drive and all of his email. Needless to say, he was at the bar. The whisky was flowing. And it was only noon. On a Tuesday. Chances are if you’ve been using computers long enough,…
VMWare Reboot
For those times when NOTHING will restart your VMWare Win XP virtual machine. This is the equivalent of reaching around the back of your computer and pulling the power cord out of the wall. Do this: Under VMWare Settings, open the Virtual Machine drop down menu. Then hold down the…
Upgrading Your Black MacBook
Are you ready to put your Mac laptop on an iceberg and send it off to the great Apple store in the sky? Has it reached that time in its life when it’s just too old to crunch, flip, burn, batch and boot? If YOU are ready to buy a new…
Giving Up Dropio for YouSendIt
Transferring large files to someone over the Internet can be a pain in the butt. Sure, most of the stuff you send and receive can be done in email. However, these days with multi media applications getting easier to use, harddrives getting cheaper and bigger, some of the stuff we…
Make your WordPress iphone Friendly
Wouldn’t it be nice if your blog could detect if it’s being visited by a mobile browser and reformat itself accordingly? Hitting any wordpress site from your iphone (or other touch-enabled) device can be a bit of a bummer for your readers. Without a doubt it’s better than the dark…
Villains of Stickiness
In the book Made To Stick, by Chip Heath and Dan Heath the authors do an excellent job of outlining ways to make concepts “stick.” Here I have transcribed the “villains” of stickiness from the back of the book. This is excellent to keep in mind… VILLAINS OF STICKINESS 1….
Why 1and1 deleted one of my domains
Let me start by saying that I like 1and1 for my hosting. It’s pretty much no fuss/no muss hosting that’s easy to set up and easy to manage. I have no plans to move and all of my clients and my stuff currently resides on 1and1. So now with that…
What is a good CMS?
Someone on Linkedin asked this question the other day. Here was my response… I’ve had my eyes on http://www.squarespace.com/ for some time now. Their UI is interesting, scalable traffic, nice tools…i’ve not yet built an entire site in it however. I have heard good things about them from other people….
