Productivity week : Let somebody read you the web with Pocket.
May 13There are certain things in the universe that are constant. Toast always falls with the Marmelade coated side DOWN, cats land on their feet and Will Smith’s son Jayden will never be able to utter an intelligent sentence on social media.
And the same goes for interesting articles on the web. Their will be a constant relation between the moment you find an interesting article you want to read and the lack of time you have to do so. So how about fixing that problem. What if you could store those interesting articles and .. have them read TO you when YOU have the time.
No time right now ? It’s in the pocket.
Enter “pocket” : A notebook service that lets you store articles in the cloud to read them later (either on or offline). Pocket consists of a free cloud based account that lets you store articles and webpages and an application that allows you to read those articles when you have the time.
Adding articles to the “library” can be done with a Chrome or Firefox extension. You can access your collection of stored articles via Pocket’s website or use the application.
The application “syncs” your pocket articles so you can read them offline on your mobile device (Smartphone or Tablet) and is available on IOS and Android.
The one excellent feature you can use in the Pocket app is that you can have it READ the article out loud via text to speech.
Its a bit like listening to a podcast of articles you have collected on the web. The voices are fairly natural to listen to and you can adjust the speed AND the language so your Dutch article doesn’t get read by an English voice. (You should try it though , its hilarious).
The pocket service, the extension AND the pocket apps are free and available on all the major operating systems. Don’t read the web.. have somebody read it to you !
Links :
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Switch Week : Export your iWorks documents.
Feb 22You might not know it, but one of the greatest ways to sell an application is not only by making it a very good application, but also by using an enclosed file format. Its funny, but the majority of decisions in small businesses of whether to migrate to a newer version of office, is fuelled by the argument that “other people use office an its needs to be compatible”. That way a commonly present, closed file format used by a certain number of users ..ensures long time sales of your product.
With Pages Numbers and Keynote, Apple chose their own file formats to use. That also creates kind of a “legacy” problem. Part of that problem is that you need to be able to open / share your documents with other iWork suite users and part of that is that you need the iWorks suite to be able to open your own documents. Being able to break free from that locked in loop gives you the flexibility not only to exchange documents with others who do NOT have the iWorks suite, but also to make sure you can open those documents on your other computers that aren’t macs.
How to do it.
iWorks documents don’t ‘slide’ very well across operating systems. iWorks suite is capable of opening .doc .xls .ppt .rtf and .txt formats from other programs like the Microsoft Office suite and Openoffice (beware : Open document format is NOT supported). The other way around is a lot harder : No applications outside the iWorks suite are capable of opening and editing Apples closed iWork suite file formats.
What is the workaround.
Luckily there are the EXPORT options that allow you to ‘export’ your iWorks spreadsheet, document or presentation to a more open file format so you can open them up with non-iWorks applications.
supported formats – suggested formats
Pages documents can be exported to.
- DOC
- RTF
- TXT (not all versions of iWorks support this)
Depending on the file format you export to you will loose more functionalities and layout options. The PDF export gives you a document with all the layout but without the ability to edit, the other file formats have less and less of the .pages layout and markup options in favor of being able to edit the text.
Numbers spreadsheets can be exported to :
- XLS
- CSV
The same is true here, the farther you go down the list the less functionalities you can export. PDF gives you a read only document, XLS gives you the ability to open and edit the document in applications like Excel, Google Drive and Open Office. You might still have your graphs and pie charts but they won’t look as nice. With CSV you export your spreadsheet to a flat file with all your data separated by comma’s.
Keynote presentations can be exported to :
- PPT
- Quicktime
- HTML (not all versions of Keynote support this)
- Images
With Keynote you can export your presentation to static images, or a pdf document or to a Quicktime movie giving your viewers the total presentation experience. Only when you export to .ppt will you be able to edit your presentation slides. When you do the latter you will loose some of the mark-up or effects of your presentation.
You win some you loose some.
With an “export” you go down to the lowest common denominator of functionalities between the different applications. Whatever .pages can do with a document that Word cannot .. Will be lost. Most of the times your documents will still be editable but they need “touching up” after the exports. Other times you might find that certain transitions or effects that are unique to the iWorks suite are completely gone or do not work.
Be open in the choice of your applications.
So if you don’t want to go live in proprietary-file format-purgatory we suggest using “open” applications as much as possible. Openoffice and Google Docs are largely geared towards cross platform availability AND the ability to be compatible with many other ‘office like’ applications. If you have to share your documents with others, be polite and use “open” file formats like .pdf .doc .odf and even .rtf .html or .txt. This way you assure that the other party can read (and if needed, edit) your document without having to run to the store to buy iWorks (and quite possibly a new Mac). Using open filestandards shows “digital maturity” and ensures that you can still open that essay that you wrote on your old mac .. on your brand new Chromebook, Windows Tablet or Linux PC.
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49 Euros for the Pyrus Mini ebook reader : Totally worth it.
Aug 25Books : Some like the smell of paper, the sounds of gentle footfalls in the hushed silence of libraries, some like flipping though pages and the rustling sound of paper turning in the night … I’m not one of those persons. To be honest : I’ve been reading digital books since the beginning of this century. From devices as primitive as the Palm to my much beloved Sony PRS-505 I am proud to say that I only read about 2 paper books in the last 12 years. My latest device of choice on which I have devoured many a book was my iPad mini. ( I had ‘loaned’ my Sony eBook reader to my 86 year old gran .. and she’ll never ever give it back). But where the iPad mini shines in the dark (its active screen is great for reading in the bedroom) it gleams in sunlight (its reflective glass is terrible for outside reading). So with my holiday coming up and plenty of reading to do .. I thought I would try out something new.
It was in fact Niejana who pointed out the Trekstor Pyrus Mini on our last visit to our favourite geek-friendly store in Aachen. Three things immediately made me fall in love with the device : The size (It reminds me of my trusty Palm devices) The color and texture (It has this rubbery enclosure thats a dark blue) and its price : 49 euro’s ! I mean : What could go wrong for 49 euro’s ?
The Pyrus has a 4.3 inch 800 by 600 Pixel E-Ink display. It has 2 gigabytes of onboard storage that you can extend by shoving in a micro SD card. There is no Wifi, Bluetooth or 3G connection. Just some buttons to navigate pages and adjust things like character size and the language of the interface. In the end this device is horribly horribly simple .. and that is just brilliant ! The Micro Usb connector is used for charging and adding titles to the onboard memory and since the screen is pretty small .. the battery time will last you quite a while. It can read all popular formats (it does have a hard time with large PDF’s) but can not read .mobi (Epub is fine though).
But aside from the price, the one thing I love more about this gadget is that its so small, thin and light that you can just slide it into your coat pocket and whip it out anywhere without having to bother with lids and casings and having enough room on the bus to read your book. At the size of a smartphone it might appear to small to read on, but the variable character sizing does make up for that. The screen has a very good contrast ratio and not a micron of ‘glare’.
Sure its not as robust as some of the ebook readers out there, sure it does not have all of the functionality of a Kindle or a Fire .. But for 49 euro’s this is the “paperback novel cousin” to the “hardcover collection” ebook reader that you can find on the market today I’m NOT afraid to use it, loose it, break it or get mugged for it. It just lets me read my favourite collection of Justin Bierbers Fanfic .. anywhere.
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Whats the fastest Usb Disk ? Find out now !
May 21Ever wondered which Usb flash drive you own is the fastest ? For copying your My Little Pony picture collection back and forth, speed might not be the biggest issue, but what if you want to do more. For example : Run a complete operating system from that USB stick ? As we mentioned in the last podcast episode it’s possible to run a complete (Linux) operating system from your stick. And since you are using your little portable friend as a hard drive ..Speed is essential.
So benchmark your own Usb drive with the USBFlashSpeed.com site to help you buy the hyperspeed on a stick .. from your keychain.
Links : UsbFlashspeed.com
(Thanx Listener Lloyd for the tip)
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Free audiobooks and other strange stuff at the Internet Archive.
Nov 22
If there is one place you should check out for some interesting and crazy content , it has to be the internet archive. Now I know that ‘The archive’ is mostly known by many of you in the form of the “way back machine ” , a sort of time machine that stores old versions of websites. You can have a laugh looking at what yahoo.com looked like in 1994 , or even take a peek at Knightwise.com as it looked like 5 or 7 years ago. There is a lot of interesting stuff. Most of the content on the internet archive is stuff that no longer has any ‘intellectual rights’ tied to it. Meaning that the producers of the content are either dead, that the content is so old even their pet hamster is dead (and so there is no one left to state a claim) or that the creator of the content has donated the content to the public domain. (Like for example .. me !) So I know what you think : The internet archive is just filled with a load of old and useless crap ! .. But there you are wrong. Unlike the movie ‘A night at the museum’ , that still has me waking up screaming at night .. this ‘museum’ of content is filled with the strangest of things. We will tick off 5 interesting finds for you to take a peak at.
‘1984, by George Orwell‘. If you are in IT, Social Media, Management or … are a Biped alive in the 21st Century : This book is a must read. Social visionary Orwell describes a world of total control, zero privacy in a run down reality in 1984 ( Sounds like Myspace ! ) Why read if you can listen .. and why pay Audible some big bucks if you can download the audiobook for FREE
‘NYFD Radio communication on 9/11′ A truly chilling listen : The radio communication logs of the New York Fire department on 9/11. Hearing them go into action , hearing the sirens, the noise and the confusion gives you a chilling feeling that you are part of that day in history … A tribute to the heroic firefighters if there ever was one. A must listen.
‘Cosmos , War of the planets’ A terrible B-movie filled with overacting, poor costumes , horrible screenplay and hilariously stupid aliens. Forget “The Avengers” .. Watch THIS
‘Open Security Training” How about a screen recording of an online tutorial on security ? If you are on the Internet archive .. Why not take the time to learn.
‘Nbc Short Stories‘ Nothing more nostalgic then picking up old radioshows that are by now only consumable halfway on the other side of the galaxy. Their radiowaves have long departed , but you can still listen to them HERE.
So enjoy your little trip through the internet archive. Everything is free and there is no farting allowed in the reading room.
(Thanx to listener Lorddrachenblut for the 1984 tip)
