iPhone 4 versus HTC EVO · Nicole Lee does the hard work so I don't have to: feature by feature comparison of the iPhone 4 and the 4G HTC EVO. As far as I'm concerned, the EVO's the better deal: bigger screen, more customizable OS, Google Maps navigation, Google Voice native app, tethering/portable hotspot, kickstand, Sprint 4G network support, expandable MicroSD up to 32GB, and removable battery. No-brainer. · June 8th, 2010, 13 comments
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Steve Jobs announced the iPhone 4 yesterday in his WWDC keynote, and it's a gorgeous device with software upgrades that include multitasking, a video chat app called FaceTime, and more. I'm still a happy Android user, but I have to hand it to Apple. They continue to school the industry on aesthetics and marketing. Case in point: the FaceTime demo video.
This Week in Google Episode 45 · In this week's episode of TWiG, Leo, Jeff, and I talked about Google's "ban" of Windows PCs for employees, Android tablets, the Sprint EVO (which I love), blogger journalism, and some of Steve Jobs' remarks at D8. My tip of the week was the new "Save to Google Docs" link in Google's PDF viewer. · June 4th, 2010, 4 comments
Hilary Mason: How to Replace Yourself with a Very Small Shell Script · Just stumbled upon a YouTube clip of one of the best Ignite presentations I've seen, by Hilary Mason, a computer scientist at Bit.ly. Mason wrote a series of scripts that auto-respond to email with particular content, and auto-nag folks she's emailed but hasn't gotten a response from yet. Hit the play button to hear more. She says once the code's fit for sharing she'll put it up on GitHub. Cannot wait. · May 25th, 2010, 6 comments
Android 2.2 (code-named "Froyo," the next alphabetical installment of dessert-named releases after Cupcake, Donut, and Eclair) is now rolling out to Nexus One handsets. If you're tired of tapping and re-tapping the System Update menu item and getting nothing, you can update your N1 to 2.2 manually. Lifehacker runs down how. This method worked perfectly on my T-Mobile Nexus One, but I hear reports it does not work for the AT&T Nexus One. The manual update method does NOT work for the Droid, EVO, or any other Android handset that I know of. (Correct me if I'm wrong in the comments.)
Android 2.2 has three marquee features: built-in tethering/portable hotspot capabilities, Flash support, and noticeably sped-up JavaScript performance in the web browser. (Update: Oh yeah, there's Microsoft Exchange support, too.) There are several more subtle interface improvements as well. Perhaps my favorite is the most simple: a revamped homescreen dock, which you can see at the bottom of the screenshot here. (Click to enlarge.) It gives you one-tap access to the three things you want to get to on your phone quickly: the dialer, your apps, and your web browser. Compare this screenshot to Android 2.1's homescreen.
Come on in to see more screenshots of my favorite Froyo features.
Released a few fix-it updates to the Better Gmail 2 and Better Flickr Firefox extensions this week, which you can get by pressing the "Find Updates" button in your extensions dialog box.
Better Gmail 2 version 1.2 plays catch-up with Google's latest changes to Gmail: Hide Spam Count now works, and I swapped out Folders4Gmail (which no longer works) with Label Links, a script that does something similar to the Labs version of Nested Labels. Also replaced the CPU-hogging Highlight Rows with Keyboard script with something that does the same thing without the performance hit. Better Flickr also got a much needed once-over, and now doesn't break editing photo descriptions when Rich Edit Controls are turned on. Enjoy the updates! As always, questions about the extensions should go to the Better Firefox Extensions mailing list.
Google Gives HTC EVO Phones to Google I/O Attendees · Not only did Google pre-mail Droid handsets to I/O attendees, today they gave the Sprint HTC EVO 4G out to conference attendees at the Moscone Center, with a 2GB Micro SD card filled with music. Awhile back I tweeted that I wouldn't accept "free" phones like these, since I cover Google on TWiG and at web sites and magazines where I occasionally freelance, and accepting a "gift" from a company I talk and write about so much seemed like a bad idea. But, I'm not a full-time journalist who has to operate under the kinds of stringent rules that a New York Times reporter does. I'm a developer and independent commentator, and I'm at this conference on my own dime--no press pass, no expense account. So, I'm going back on my initial word: I did accept the phones as part of the $400 ticket price to the conference, and I plan to use them to develop for Android. · May 20th, 2010, 22 comments
Yesterday's live wave coverage of the Google I/O keynote was so much fun we're doing it again today. The Day 2 keynote starts at 8:30am (in less than 20 minutes), and Adam Pash, Kevin Marks and I will be live-waving it. Watch the live video stream on YouTube and follow along in the live wave embedded below.
Google kicks off its annual two-day developerfest Google I/O today in San Francisco, and no doubt there are goodies in store during the opening keynote this morning from 9 until 10:30am Pacific Time. Google TV? Google Storage? Android 2.2? A better Buzz, Wave, or Chrome? You can watch the live video stream on YouTube as it happens. I'll be in a seat in the audience at the Moscone Center, live-typing commentary in the wave embedded below, along with Adam Pash from Lifehacker, Leo Laporte from TWiT, and former Googler Kevin Marks of Ribbit. Open up a couple of side-by-side windows--one with the video stream, and one with the embedded wave--and come on in to follow along.
Maintaining your privacy online isn't as simple as Pirillo puts it, but his tweet made me laugh, because it's such an important point. Awareness and prudence are more critical than any piece of software or privacy setting when it comes to protecting your personal data. Over at Fast Company this week, I took a stab at the most important things you can do to protect your privacy online. It's common sense, worthy of repetition.
Online Privacy: Check Yourself (Before You Wreck Yourself) [Fast Company]
From Facebook to Diaspora · Diaspora is a distributed, open source alternative to Facebook that a few NYU graduates want to spend this summer building. They set out to raise $10,000 on Kickstarter, and on the strength of all the backlash against Facebook's privacy problems, the project has raised over $175,000 as of writing. Good for them. There are a LOT of existing projects doing work in this area (like OneSocialWeb, DiSo, Activity Streams), but I'm ok with a new effort working both together and in parallel with existing ones--it increases the chances that something will hit the the target. Interestingly, a Facebook employee recommended to the Diaspora developers that the app exploit Facebook as a platform for third-party apps to host social data but make it accessible on Facebook. Clever. This reminds me of Postel's law: "Be liberal in what you accept, and conservative in what you send." A lot of people have and will leave Facebook, but for now, the majority won't. Any social app that wants success should allow Facebook users to find and interact with its users seamlessly. · May 17th, 2010, 7 comments
Yesterday's post generated some interest in an Android application that manages a todo.txt file, and I've got an itch to try my hand at a mobile app. So, I've just created a skeleton Java-based Android app called Todo.txt Touch. The source code is located on GitHub, and it literally does nothing right now, except list some faux tasks from an XML file.
Goal is to get the app to read a todo.txt from Dropbox (and eventually, other configurable cloud sources), sort and list tasks by context or project (like @phone, or @grocerystore) in tabs, mark items as done and move them to the done.txt file, and sync todo.txt and done.txt back to Dropbox in the background. Right now this is just an experimental, educational undertaking; I'm not yet committed to seeing this through to completion. There are already a gazillion decent task managers for Android, and I've got a full-time job, so I'm not sure Todo.txt Touch will be a long-term thing. But, it would be awesome to do a little collaborative work and learn a bit about Android development with a very basic app that does a very simple thing right now. Interested in joining in? Fork the project and talk to us on the Todo.txt CLI mailing list.
On May 12, 2006, I hacked together my first bash script that was more than a dozen lines and published it on Lifehacker. todo.sh manipulated a todo.txt file at the command line using grep, tail, head, sort, and cat: all the shell-based text tools that I knew and loved. Back then, in Lifehacker's heyday, I was obsessed with the simplicity and portability of text files, mostly because Danny O'Brien featured them front and center in his original life hacks talk.
Since then, Todo.txt CLI has grown into a legitimate open source project with dozens of contributors, hundreds of people on the mailing list, regression tests, custom add-ons, and a Python fork. This script has literally run my life since 2006, but using it hasn't been its greatest value--the collaborative development experience has.
The best use of Google Wave's new anonymous access feature is public group chats on a specific topic that anyone can watch or refer to on a vanilla web page, no Wave login required. Last week, in lieu of IRC, I started holding virtual "office hours" with the ThinkTank community, and it's been super fun and productive. Here's how I set things up.
Spokeo is the new people search engine that's freaking users out, because when you "spokeo" yourself there's a good chance you'll find your home address, phone number, interests, gender, occupation, wealth level, marital status, photos, and more. The search engine compiles information from public records and public social media network pages to put together a pretty complete profile of individuals. My local news station ran a piece on Spokeo and profiled a user, and the lower third of the screen described her as "weirded out by web site" (which amused me enough to take a screenshot).
My Spokeo search results were mixed in the accuracy department. It listed a few old home addresses of mine, but not my current one; it also missed the mark on a few other details, like saying my occupation is "retired" and misidentifying my spouse's ethnicity.
Creepy people search engines aren't new. Back in 2005, ZabaSearch was the tool of choice for stalkers. There's also Pipl, Wink, ZoomInfo, and hell, Facebook and Google. But if you don't like the idea of people finding out how much your house is worth on Spokeo, just click on the Privacy link at the bottom of a page of Spokeo search results to request that the engine remove your listing. You will have to enter an email address to do so. How accurate are Spokeo results for your name?
I'm Gina Trapani, and I love software. Here I blog about how to work smarter with digital tools. Read more about Smarterware.
“Be true to your work and your work will be true to you.” —Charles Pratt
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