I write for a living. While I don’t suffer writers block too often, I do have one major problem that affects my productivity and reduces my output – distraction. I love my MacBook Pro. I’m just a few clicks away from 16,000 songs, and all day long various applications ping, click and bing, alerting me to new Facebook photos, emails from friends and comments on my blogs. Entertain...
There are mobile apps that will help you improve your health, but what about when you’re sick or injured? You need to know what is wrong with you and where to get it treated (probably more important). The iTriage app for Android, iOS, and Palm will help you diagnosis what ails you. If you don’t have a smartphone, you can still access the information on the web. It starts out with a...
I’m a Mac, but I used to be a PC. (Just in case you haven’t seen them, I am referring to the popular series of TV adverts comparing the Apple and Microsoft ways of doing things.) This is an app review, so it’s not the place for a Mac vs. Windows debate. For the sake of context however, I should say that after switching and enduring a sharp learning curve, I personally came to appreciate and ...
When Google launched “Search Plus Your World“ (SPYW) it took a big step toward becoming the company that everyone loves to hate. By integrating search results from the Google+ network into your regular search, plenty of people cried foul. And not just the ones working for Twitter and Facebook. By excluding results from other social networks, critics claim that Google is tampering wit...
When Apple rolled out iBooks 2, it also released a tool to create interactive ebooks called iBook Author. It’s free and supposed to be easy to use. The catch is that you can only use it to sell books via Apple’s iBooks store, although you can use it to create ebooks that you can distribute for free. iBooks Author is an important tool because creating an ebook is a bit more complicated ...
Python is a high-level programming language that has gained popularity in recent years for its emphasis on clear code that is easy to read, combined with surprising power and flexibility. Because Python is free and open-source, it has become a widely used scripting language primarily for web-based applications…but did you know that a little help from the .NET framework can bring your Python...
There are two ways you can use YouTube to gain fame and fortune: Create a viral video that gets viewed by millions of people. Create a YouTube channel that drives traffic to your brand over time. Viral videos rely a lot on quirkiness and luck. Despite that randomness, there are some best practices that will help your video. The more methodical approach to building a popular YouTube channel requi...
I recently discovered Visual Studio Achievements, which as the name indicates, adds video game-style “achievements” to Microsoft’s premiere IDE while you code. Visual Studio Achievements was even created by Microsoft’s Channel9 team, so you know it’s the real deal. Some of the unlockable achievements include positive awards like “Add 10 regions to a class. Your code is so readable, if ...
In a world filled with short attention spans and thinning short-term memories, it can sometimes be difficult to remember to mentioning important topics while making a phone call. Heck, give a person 30 minutes of phone conversation to wander, and their mind will stray further than the island of Lilliput (hint: it’s a fictitious location from a book). Well I don’t know about you, but ...
Evernote has created a tool for people who are easily distracted. Clearly is a Google Chrome extension that strips out navigation, links and advertisement from any Web page and presents you with a cleaner, less distracting online reading experience. Clearly is a Chrome browser extension that strips navigation, links and ads from a page The Clearly reading experience is customizable: you can choos...