Silly Mystic

PC World recently published an article 10 Great Digital Photography Downloads. In it it lists 10 downloads (all free) that help your edit, manipulate, and organize your digital photos. I wholeheartedly agree with their recommendation of GIMP, Picasa 3, and Image Resizer for Windows and can only imagine the rest are useful as well.

I have found Picasa 3 (and the online storage of Google Picasa) very useful for editing, organizing, and uploading my photos. It does have its limitations and I have used Photoshop in the past to make up for those limitations. But Photoshop is expensive and I’ve more recently started using GIMP in the hopes that it can replace Photoshop as my advanced tool of choice. Picasa 3 lets you export images to a folder and resize them, but you can also easily resize images on the fly with the Image Resizer for Windows.

Filed under: Software on February 15th, 2010 | 1 Comment »

Out of nowhere, I got asked to add Google Buzz to my Gmail when I logged in this morning.  Never heard of it before (Google released it yesterday), but it’s definitely copying facebook and twitter in allowing you to post status updates as well as images and videos. I’m decidedly pro-Google, just because I like how their apps work. Do I need another social network – no, not really. But I’m willing to give this one a try because it integrates with my already existing Google applications such as Gmail, Picasa, and Google Reader.

Filed under: Google on February 10th, 2010 | No Comments »

Wave is Google’s new for communicating in real time.  It’s still in development and not available to the general public, except by special invite (I got an invite from my super-cool brother.). To loosely quote Google, a wave is a conversation and a document in which people can collaborate in real time. They can reply and they can edit each other. It is going to be very interesting to see how it works out. I really like the idea of being able to collaborate on a project in real-time with someone else thousands of miles away. The internet allow for quick communication through multiple media such as IM and email, but there still is a delay, no matter how small it is. Google wave allows you to communicate in real-time. You can see the other person typing. It’s really cool.

And now to quote one of my favorite movies (Serenity – I even watched the series while I was in labor):

WASH (0.S.): Mal! You up? Got a wave. I’m a bounce it down to you.

MAL: Inara.

INARA: Mal. I uh, is this a bad time

MAL: Good as any.

INARA: Please tell me you’re wearing pants.

MAL: Naked as the day I come cryin’. How’s your world?

INARA: Cold. It’s autumn here.

MAL: Still at the Training House?

INARA: Right where you left me.

MAL: I remember it as nice enough. picturesque.

INARA: It is that. What about you?

MAL: Still flying. So what occasi the wave? Not that to see you ain’t… well you look very

INARA: Oh. Thank you, I… I guess we have something of a problem here. With the locals, I thought maybe…

MAL: You could use a gun hand?

INARA: I’m hoping not. But if you were close at all, you — the crew — could take your ease here a while… and there’d be payment…

MAL: Payment is never not a factor. I could sound out the crew… This pot like to boil over soon?

INARA: Soon. Not right away.

MAL: Well, it would be, I mean I would like to… Kaylee’s been missing you something fierce –

INARA: I miss her too. I even miss my shuttle, occasionally.

MAL: Yeah, you left a… got some of your stuff in a trunk, never did get a chance to drop it off.

INARA: Oh.

MAL: I didn’t look through the… stuff… just sundries I expect. Well, it’s kind of late where I’m at. I’ll send a wave as soon as I can.

INARA:  Thank you.

Filed under: Google on November 24th, 2009 | 2 Comments »

You know what’s really sad, Internet Explorer 6 is still used by 10-20% of website visitors.  Working for a web-development company, that’s not something to ignore even if I do think that users need to upgrade for security reasons.

Internet Explorer 6 Usage as of Oct 2009

• W3Counter: 13%
• W3Schools: 11%
• MarketShare: 23%

Filed under: Internet on November 16th, 2009 | No Comments »

iGoogle has been around for a while. I tried it before, but didn’t really use it. I reconfigured it again about a month ago and I’m loving it now. Maybe it’s because I’m using to many more Google tools. iGoogle allows you to configure one page to display a number of useful tools, not all of them even Google.

From my one iGoogle page, I can easily see:

• My last five Gmail messages
• New Facebook posts
• The weather (for multiple locations)

I also have a few minimized widgets that allow me to access them with one click. These include:

• Google Calender which I also print out monthly and put on the fridge
• Google Docs which I find myself using more since it allows me to work on the document regardless of what computer I am on
• Google notebook where I jot down quick notes such as websites to visit later or grocery lists

Technology has been moving off the computer and online.  Your pictures and files will be online; your applications will be online; everything you do will be online.

Check out iGoogle, especially if you’re already using Google applications. And even if you’re not, iGoogle has a widget for that (such as Yahoo mail). Set it as your homepage and you can have a quick overview of everything important as soon as you open a browser.

I have iGoogle as my homepage in Chrome.

Filed under: Google on November 11th, 2009 | 3 Comments »