Top 10 Chrome Extensions

These are my current Chrome extensions. There just so happen to be 10 of them. Hence a top 10 list. Chrome is available for Mac OSX, Windows as well as Linux.

Continue reading

Posted in Browser | Leave a comment

Mounting Discs and Disc Images in Windows and Mac OSX

Mounting and Dismounting Disks and Disk Images

In Windows there are several ways to mount and dismount disks, as well in Mac OSX. It’s a bit easier in Mac as there is a built in utility called Disk Utility, but you have to go find it in the Utilities section of Applications (or run from a command line).

For Windows, the easiest way is to use a free utility called MagicDisc. Then you can add and mount discs at your leisure and have them mount on bootup.

For Mac OSX, dismounting a disk is as easy as dragging the icon to the trash. This is counter-intuitive as some people might think they are deleting the contents. For Windows, there is the right-click and disconnect from the windows tray. Or, as I prefer, to use the disk flush utility Sync.

In both the Mac OSX and the Windows cases, the important idea is to flush any pending writes to the contents of the disk before physically disconnecting them, whether these be USB memory sticks or hard disks. Otherwise data corruption is possible.

Posted in Utilities | Leave a comment

Truecrypt Open Source Disk Encryption Software

For disk and file encryption needs, Truecrypt is a great open source, cross-platform (mac/win/linux) option to consider. Given 6 months and an encrypted disk, the FBI was unable to crack this encryption implementation.

Continue reading

Posted in Security | Leave a comment

Prey Project – Open Source Computer Theft Recovery

Prey is an open source (freemium) tool for computing device tracking and theft recovery. Downloads available for Windows, Mac, Ubuntu and other Linux, as well as Android (in the Android store).

Continue reading

Posted in Security | Leave a comment

SSD not HDD

There are many advantages and disadvantages of Solid State Drives vs. Hard Disk Drives. However, it comes down to performance. The biggest bottleneck of any computing system is the human operator. SSD makes the human faster. The entire system is optimized by optimizing at the bottleneck.

Now that 256gb SSD are available in the Samsung Series 9 and Apple MacBook Air. For those who don’t want a complete system upgrade, replace the HDD with SSD. It is a game changer.

Oh, and make sure you are at 4gb RAM as well. The combination makes a significant difference.

Posted in Hardware | Leave a comment

Development Toolkits for iOS, Android and Beyond

There are various options in terms developing Android (Java) and iOS (Objective-C) applications. There is also the difference between web apps and native apps. A lot has changed over the last year in this fast-moving ecosystem. Let’s get started.

Continue reading

Posted in Development | Leave a comment

Dropbox and Why it Matters

There is a ridiculous post about dropbox at the Bangkok Post. This is obviously written by someone who has got not much of a clue. We tried contacting this writer and the response was a defense of their column along with more errors.

Note: this Failboat is for the article, not for Dropbox.

Continue reading

Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Screen Resolutions and Form Factors for 2011

We’ve recently taken a look at two sets of data for website traffic with a combined 230,000 visits, 48,000 of that was from 12-24 months ago. In sum, the message is that a diversity of browsers and screen resolutions is the current and future reality. As well, we can thankfully forget about supporting IE6.

Continue reading

Posted in Form Factors, Screen Resolutions | Leave a comment

Hello world!

And… we’re back! Yeah, lost all the posts because of an asshat host. In any case, stay tuned. June 2011 is still the deadline to get something going here. Thoughts? Hit the comments belowwwww…

Posted in Uncategorized | 2 Comments