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Gmail Labs Adds Enhanced Video Chat; Get the Newest Features First
Gmail’s significantly improved their video chat with higher quality
video; you just have to turn it on. While logged into your Gmail
account, visit the Gmail Labs menu and enable “Video Chat Enhancements”.
Toggle it on to start enjoying immediate improvements in your video
chat experience. Right away you’ll notice higher resolution and a
bigger video chat window, and once it’s enabled, you’ll be the first to
see all the new improvements Gmail rolls out to their video chat
feature in the future. To take advantage of the Lab features, both
parties need to have enabled “Video Chat Enhancements”.
CNET releases Android twin of iOS application
Many of us rely on CNET for the latest and greatest when it comes to a wide variety of news in our daily life (except for Android news, right?). Whether looking for tech articles, seeking money advice, or just reading about the happenings of the world that day, CNET is a great one stop shop for all of this. They have released a clone of their iOS application, which contains a ton of features for users. Within the application you are able to read articles on a full screen, search using their optimized mobile search as well as tweet links to your favorite articles instantly. If your an avid CNET reader and you were using their mobile site, it's definitely time to hop in the market and download this free application. Download links available after the jump. [via CNET News]
For more information regarding purchase and setup of Android phones contact 678PC at 678.404.1001
678PC is located in Lawrenceville, Ga but serves all of metro Atlanta on-site and can do remote support and sales throughout the US
Android 2.2 Froyo Feature: Adobe Flash 10.1 beta
Surely you didn’t think we would forget to show off some Flash did you? Phil and I have been hard at work finding out everything we can about what’s new in Android 2.2, and we just saved the big parts until the end.
Flash
on a mobile device used to be an idea that I just never got on board
with. That will teach me to open my mouth before trying something
new. After playing with it for a few days to prepare for this
write-up, my mind has changed and I’m now a believer. Everyone’s
experience will differ, but I’m not seeing the battery decimation
that we all expected, and even while playing games, the phone is still
responsive and the Flash content itself — well, check out the video
after the break and see for yourself.
For more information regarding purchase and setup of Android phones contact 678PC at 678.404.1001
678PC is located in Lawrenceville, Ga but serves all of metro Atlanta on-site and can do remote support and sales throughout the United States.
Top 10 External Hard Drive Tricks
So
you’ve been computing for quite a few years now, and you’ve built a
nice collection of hard drives, internal or external, collecting dust
in the corner. Here’s how to put them to good use.
10. Turn an Old Hard Drive into an External Drive
If you don’t have a ton of external drives lying around, you might still have a bunch of old internal drives, and the best thing you can do is put them in a USB enclosure so they see some use.
Furthermore, this trick also works for upgrading existing external
drives: if it dies or becomes too small to be useful, you can always
swap the current drive out of the enclosure for a better one you have
collecting dust.
9. Back Up Your Computer
If you haven’t set it up already, one of the most popular (and most
important) uses for an external drive is an automatic backup. Whether
you’re using Mozy, SyncBack on Windows, or Time Machine on OS X, an automatic, local backup is a must to make sure you don’t lose any of your important data to the ever-looming possibility of drive failure.
8. Clone Your Current Hard Drive
While backing up your data allows you to restore it should anything bad
happen, using those external drives for direct clones of your current
drive gives you a much faster solution. It requires more manual work,
but in the event of a drive failure, you can be up and running again in
no time (as opposed to reinstalling your operating system all over
again and then transferring all your data, which can be done when you
have the time to do so). We’ve walked through how to clone your hard
drive in both Mac OS X and Windows.
7. Back Up Your Backups Using Windows Home Server
Local backups are great, but they’re still vulnerable to lighting
strikes, fires, floods, and other immediate disasters. While you can
automatically back up your computers to a Windows Home Server, it’s
nice to have a backup of the server, too—even if it’s a backup of critical files and not a full backup—to keep in certain, more protected places.
6. Use an Extra Drive As a Scratch Disk
If you have a FireWire capable drive and do any kind of video editing,
using it as a scratch disk instead of your internal drive can really
speed things up. Caching files to your internal drive can put quite a
load on it, because it’s constantly reading and writing from the same
drive. By shifting that cache to another drive
(connected with FireWire or something speedy), you can increase the
speed of your renders and exports, making you a happier video editor.
5. Swap the External Drive with Your Computer’s Drive
Sometimes, you’ll actually buy an external drive for one purpose or
another, but realize you don’t need the space. In cases like this, you
can actually open up the enclosure and replace your laptop’s hard drive with the better one,
and use your older, slightly outdated drive in the enclosure (you can
even buy an external drive just for this purpose—it’s remarkably
cheaper than an upgrade from Apple).
4. Use the External Drive’s Controller to Connect Other Peripherals via USB
External drives work by having a controller that converts SATA or IDE
connections to USB. If you have an old IDE optical drive that you only
need every once in a while, you can take the circuit board from an old,
IDE-based external drive enclosure and connect it to your computer via USB.
It’s remarkably useful for netbooks that don’t have optical drives, or
those really rare occasions you need to install something from CD on
your newer, IDE-less computer.
3. Back up and Play Your Wii Games from an External Drive
You love your Wii, but your discs are fragile, disorganized, and easily misplaced. By backing up those games to an external hard drive,
you can decrease your load times, protect those disc from harm, and
always have your games on hand whenever you have a hankering for some
Wii.
2. Move Your iTunes Library to an External Drive
If your music is the reason your hard drive always seems full, consider
moving those music files to an external drive. Not only can you do so while keeping your preferences and playlists intact, but you can then use previously mentioned iTunes Export to take the most important music and export it back to your space-challenged laptop.
1. Run XBMC From a USB Drive
If you don’t want to build a full-fledged XBMC computer, you can always put XBMC Live on a USB drive
and connect it to an already built computer for certain occasions. And,
while you could do it with a USB thumb drive, a larger, external hard
drive would allow you to store your movies and TV shows on it, thus
saving you precious space on your main computer.
To utilize your existing hard-drives, purchase a new one, setup a home backup, or help with any of the other things listed above please call 678PC for a free estimate – 678.404.1001
Facebook Testing New “Subscribe To” User Feature and has added remote log-out feature
Facebook is in the process of testing a new feature which lets you subscribe to all the actions of a specific user. In other words, you can receive notifications anytime a specific user takes an action on Facebook. It also appears to be Facebook’s answer to Twitter’s follow feature. As a Facebook user who has seen the feature explained to us, “By subscribing you don’t miss any updates from people you subscribe to.”
This could also serve as a new engagement opportunity for Pages if Facebook enabled users to subscribe to their activities as well. The result would be a fan count and a “subscriber” count, which is the number of people who are guaranteed to get all of your updates. For the time being it appears to just be a test, however this would definitely change the communications flow within Facebook. It’s also the ultimate stalking tool!
While I’m not quite sure how advanced this feature will be, you could imagine a system in which you get a mobile notification every time one of your friends that you’ve subscribed to makes an update. I think that stalker aspect of the feature could also result in some backlash. Previously, it was chance if a friend’s information was displayed in your feed, however this will remove chance from the process.
As the image below illustrates, you’ll be able to subscribe to the user and then a notification (like the one pictured in the second image) will alert you whenever the person updates their status, posts a photo, or shares a link. However I’m not sure if a notification will also show up if they like things or check in places. We’ve reached out to Facebook for more information about the feature, however we’re not sure if they’ll provide any details as the product is currently in testing.
Update
Facebook gave us the following statement: “This feature is being tested with a small percent of users. It lets people subscribe to friends and pages to receive notifications whenever the person they’ve subscribed to updates their status or posts new content (photos, videos, links, or notes).”
Facebook on Thursday added a remote log-out feature that will allow users who accidentally left themselves logged in on a particular device to end those sessions from another location.
"Have you ever borrowed a friend's phone to use Facebook and then forgotten to log out before you handed it back? Maybe you logged in from a public computer, but accidentally walked away with your Facebook session still active," Facebook wrote in a blog post. "Now, you can see if you're still logged in on other devices and immediately log out on those devices from one central control in your account."
The "Account Security" section of your Account Settings page will now include a menu that displays "Most Recent Activity," as well as "Also Active," if your account is signed active in two or more locations.
Facebook will show log-in time, approximate location based on IP address, and browser and operating system. It will also show device name if you have enabled Facebook's log-in notifications feature.
If you notice a location that is unauthorized or you know that the listed location is your friend's cell phone or a public computer from which you forgot to log out, you can click the "end activity" link to the right of the listing to end that session.
"Control isn't just about deciding what you share and with whom you share it; it's also about being able to keep your Facebook login secure," Facebook said.
Facebook said the service is now rolling out gradually to all of its 500 million members.
Google has had a similar remote log-out feature enabled in Gmail since 2008. Earlier this year, Google introduced a feature in Gmail that alerts you at sign-on if Google believes your account has been compromised.
Call 678PC for a free estimate regarding the security of your personal information.
Mozilla introduces Fennec Alpha for Android (2.0 or higher), Nokia N900
Mozilla this morning introduced the Alpha release of the next version of its mobile browser Fennec for Android and Nokia N900.
Fennec, which serves as the codename for Firefox mobile, comes with
add-ons and is also built on the same technology that powers Firefox for the desktop.
An earlier version had surfaced back in April this year.
Fennec Alpha for Android and Nokia N900 comes with Firefox Sync built right into the browser, which means your smartphone browsing experience should closely match the one on your desktop.
Thanks to Firefox Sync, Fennec is able to synchronize your Firefox
history, bookmarks, open tabs, passwords and form data between your
desktop and mobile. Just login with your Firefox Sync account info and
Fennec will recognize you.
Apart from that, Mozilla says the main focus of this release is to
increase performance and responsiveness to user actions. From the blog
post:
This is being implemented using two major technologies,
“Electrolysis” and “Layers.” This Alpha release includes Electrolysis,
which allows the browser interface to run in a separate process from
the one rendering Web content. By doing this, Fennec is able to react
much faster to user input while pages are loading or CPU intensive
JavaScript is running.The upcoming beta release will start taking advantage of Layers to
greatly improve performance in graphic intensive actions like
scrolling, zooming, animations and video. We’re also working to
optimize these actions using the hardware-accelerated graphics
rendering capabilities showing up in today’s mobile devices.
No word on the launch date of that upcoming beta release, though.
Release notes are here.
Important: Mozilla says that Fennec, although compatible with
Android 2.0 and above devices, has been optimized for the Nexus One.
For more information concerning the purchase and setup of android based phones call 678pc at 678-404-1001 for a free estimate.
678PC is located in Gwinnett County and services phones in all of Metro Atlanta.
Sale of phones throughout the US
The Best Android Apps for Your Car
Having an Android along for your daily commute or occasional car trips can make the ride a lot easier, safer, and simply more fun. Here are our favorite Android apps to have on hand when it's time to hit the road.
Note: We've included links to each apps' homepage, which usually include a QR code for easy installing or Market search directions. We've also included a link to each app's page on AppBrain, where signed-in AppBrain users can easily beam the applications to their Android phone.
Note 2: For a look at the flip side of the mobile OS coin, check out the best iPhone apps for your car.
Maps, Navigation, and Car Mode
Maps, Navigation, and Car Mode all come with your Android (version 2.0 and higher), and they're all crucial to the Android-in-the-car experience. Maps is less useful when you have your hands on the wheel, but the ability to "Star" locations from your desktop or laptop browser, then quickly pull them up for directions on your phone, is very nice. Navigation, as we've previously detailed, is an entire turn-by-turn GPS navigation package, as long as you're not driving too far away from a data signal. The Car Mode makes pulling off Voice Actions and getting Navigation directions safer while your hands are occupied, and Maps' break-out app, Places, gives you a chance to see a simple list of nearby restaurants, gas, ATMs, or other spots. [Free on Android phones, but check Market for updates]
Vlingo or Voice Actions
If your phone's running Android 2.2, you can upgrade your phone's built-in Voice Search to the Google-built Voice Actions. And if you're double lucky, Voice Actions won't frequently crash on you, as it does currently on at least a few of the Lifehacker editors' phones. With Voice Actions, you can write texts or emails with your voice, search Google, activate directions or Navigation, find or call businesses—all after only touching the screen once, making it a very helpful and safe car tool.
If you're not on 2.2, or can't get Voice Actions to play nice, you want Vlingo. Actually, you might want Vlingo anyways, if only for the SafeReader function.
Vlingo's a third-party app that does pretty much everything that Voice Actions can do, but uses its own server to pass your voice commands along. It even offers its own keyboard with a dedicated Vlingo button for entering your voice in any text field (great for those stuck on much older firmware), and can take over the default action for holding down your Search button. Even if you like Google's own Voice Actions better, you can install Vlingo and use its SafeReader function. Set up the app with your email accounts, and it can read your incoming email, and text messages, out loud for you, whenever you've activated SafeReader from a home screen widget. Pretty amazing functionality, really, for a free app. [Homepage: Voice Actions, Vlingo] [AppBrain:Voice Search (Voice Actions), Vlingo]
Waze
Google's Maps & Navigation wants to get you where you're going through search, data points, calculations and voice recognition. Waze, too, gets you there with turn-by-turn directions, but it also wants you to run over cupcakes, share interesting spots and details about your trip, and help you avoid traffic jams, accident scenes, speed traps, and find good stuff through the power of social reporting. Anyone who's running Waze on their BlackBerry, Android, iOS device, or other phone while driving is feeding into Waze's maps and traffic data, and those who really dig Waze can compete on picking up power-ups, share traffic tips, point out free parking, and otherwise lend to the community spirit. [Homepage] [Waze]
Listen, Pandora, and NPR News
Your car is probably the one spot where you can really enjoy new tunes, get in-depth with your podcasts, and listen to the news uninterrupted. For Android owners with time to listen, Pandora, NPR News, and Listen are the best. Listen is Google's own podcast app, with great search capabilities, subscription syncing to Google Reader, and a pretty smart setup for deciding when to refresh and download your audio. Pandora is, of course, the very nifty streaming service that creates "stations" based on artists and songs you like, and it works just fine wherever you can get an internet signal. NPR's own app for Android can stream your local station and download entire show episodes, but also has a very handy ability to cherry-pick segments of shows like Morning Edition or All Things Considered, then queue them up in a playlist. [Homepages: Listen, Pandora, NPR News] [AppBrain: Listen, Pandora, NPR News]
GasBuddy
GasBuddy does one thing and one thing well—points out the places where you can fill up your car for less. On an Android, GasBuddy can map out or list nearby stations using your location, or search out spots where you're heading to. You also get details about the station, including an address you can navigate to. [Homepage] [AppBrain]
ParkDroid
In cities, at stadiums, and other places where you walk a long way from where you park your car, you might have once said, "Boy, I should draw a map!" Now you just open ParkDroid, tag your location with your GPS powers, then go about your day until you're ready to head back home. ParkDroid is more than just tagging, though. It pulls up paid and free parking locations from the web and maps them out, then also takes in free and paid parking finds from its users (unless you opt for "Private" when tagging). If you're parked at a meter, or need a time limitation, you can set that up in ParkDroid, too. [AppBrain]
If you need help purchasing an android based phone or setting up our existing one, contact 678PC at 678.404.1001 for a free estimate. 678PC is based out of Lawrenceville, Georgia and Services Gwinnett and much of Metro Atlanta.
Get more out of calling in Gmail
Last week, we launched Google Voice in Gmail
to let you make calls right from your computer. The uptake has been
amazing and 10,000,000 calls later, we wanted to offer some tips and
tricks on how you, as a loyal Google Voice user, can unlock additional
features when you setup Gmail to receive calls with your Google Voice
number. If you haven’t already hooked it up, go to Google Voice, click
on settings and check the box next to Google Chat in your list of
forwarding phones.
Now, you’ll be able to make and receive calls
to your Google Voice number right in Gmail. Plus, you’ll have access to
a bunch of handy features, like:
Call screening
Not
sure who’s calling you? Instead of hitting “Answer” or “Ignore” when
you get a call in Gmail, click the “Screen” button. The caller will be
sent to your voicemail and you can listen in while they leave you a
message. If you decide you want to take the call, just click “Join” at
any time to pick up.
Let’s
say you picked up a call on your Gmail, but you need to head out the
door. It’s a pain to hang up and call the person back from your cell,
especially for those important calls. Hit the asterisk (*) on the Gmail
dial pad at any time during the call and your other Google Voice
forwarding phones will ring. Just pick up the call from one of your
other phones and continue the conversation without ever having to
disconnect the call.
Recording incoming calls
Is your
conversation too good to forget? Press 4 on the dial pad at any time
and both parties will be notified that the call is being recorded. To
stop the recording, press 4 again or hang up. Call recordings will be
saved in your Google Voice inbox.
Click to dial with the Chrome Extension
Searching for your favorite restaurant or bar on Google Maps? Friend email you their phone number? The Google Voice extension for Google Chrome allows you to just click on any phone number on any website or in any email, and it will dial the number for you.
If you would like to setup Google Voice or Google Apps for your company, call 678pc for a free estimate today!
678.404.1001
678PC is located in Atlanta, Georgia but can work remotely from anywhere in the US.
JayCut Is a Great Web-Based Video Editor
If you need to edit some video away from your home, free web-based video editor JayCut will likely get your project going, whether you need simple cutting and pasting or text, transitions, and impromptu audio recording.
JayCut is a remarkably full-featured video editor for the web, comparable to something like iMovie or Windows Movie Maker (as opposed to the more advanced Adobe Premiere or Apple Final Cut). You have two tracks, to which you can upload and add video clips, audio, and add text and transitions. You can also record audio straight from the webapp with your microphone, as well as video from a webcam. After you're done, you can publish your video to YouTube or export it to your computer as H.264 Flash video, H.264 MPEG-4, or an Xvid AVI.
There are definitely a few quirks that threw me off at first—for example, transitions need to be placed between videos on separate tracks overlapping one another, and you can only preview your movie from the beginning instead of placing the playhead somewhere—but overall, it's pretty incredible for something that runs in your browser. If you want to save projects and come back to them later, you need to create a free account, but for one-shot video edits you just need to fire up the demo. Also note that I had some weird issues in Firefox trying to export my video—it wouldn't let me input my information—so you might want to run a quick test in your browser of choice before editing a 3-hour masterpiece. Hit the link to check it out.
In the Workplace: Reducing Email While Increasing Visibility
“If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.”
- Abraham Maslow (the same Maslow who wrote about the hierarchy of needs)
Nobody minds receiving email when it is a customer placing an order for your services. Besides being good news it is actionable, auditable and appropriate communication addressed from one person to another.
When a client of ours recently did a tally of the emails in their
inbox, they found that more than 90% of it was internal messages from
their colleagues. While communication is appreciated and encouraged in
this professional services firm, the deluge of email generated as a
result is not seen as adding value. Information is shared in good faith
and there is a probability that the knowledge is useful to the
recipient, just not right at that moment and not mixed in with the
feedback from customers.
Based on the volume of email traffic experienced (the CEO of the
aforementioned firm counted 438 emails received over a three day
weekend), I look at my inbox and wonder if I am unpopular with my
colleagues. But the comparative trickle of email may be explained by
our use of multiple modes of communication.
Depending on the velocity of communication we have a number of choices:
Fast-moving discussions are handled in an instant
messaging application. This is a replacement for quick get-togethers
when people are in different offices or the topic does not merit
interrupting what a colleague is doing. Technically, the transcripts
can be copied and stored somewhere else for posterity but most of the
time it is the result of the interaction that is important and not the
conversation itself.
Fleeting thoughts and questions find their way to our microblogging tool.
Statements act as useful signals about what is going on and may attract
comments from colleagues. Questions are asked and replied to, often
with links to our knowledge platform or external sites.
Slow-moving, larger pieces of analysis are
developed on our knowledge platform (which happens to be a wiki).
Groups can work together to co-draft presentations or strategy papers,
and pages can be tagged and linked together. Each project has its own
area on the platform and we use it to store notes and prepare project
deliverables. Working in this way has the useful side effect that work product is automatically shared
(unless we need to react to information barriers) obviating the need
for a specific “knowledge management” step in the work process.
We use email too, of course, but having a choice of channels means
that email gets used a lot less. Often, an email will call attention to
new developments on our knowledge platform and ask for input. What
would otherwise be a flurry of email reply-to-all manifests itself as
pages and updates on the wiki.
Some of our clients go even further in the effort to reduce overall
email traffic and increase the relevance of what arrives in your inbox.
We have helped redesign their awareness processes from internal email
newsletters to subscription-style updates where the recipient has a
choice of how to receive information, if at all.
Every email imposes a cost on the recipient in terms of filing.
Reducing the list of recipients increases the risk that information is
not communicated to people to whom it is relevant. When organisations
rely on email alone it is difficult to strike a balance. Expanding the
enterprise toolset to support signals and findability is a step towards
improved cost and risk levels.
Applying Maslow’s insight to reflect the enterprise communication conundrum might result in something like:
“If all you have is email, everybody looks like a spammer.”
Is email volume a problem? Call 678PC today to get a free consultation: 678-404-1001