Clancy on Tech

Wikivest Embeddable Widget

2008-11-24T16:45:00.002-05:00

Here is the Wikivest embeddable widget

Zoho: A Comprehensive Application Suite

2008-11-22T17:05:00.010-05:00

While searching about for a decent online PIM, I found a really cool web-based application and productivity suite called Zoho. What's really cool about it is that provides a number of well written web 2.0 applications that fall under productivity, collaboration and business. For example, under productivity and collaboration there is a web-based email service, a word processor, spreadsheet and presentation suite. Under business applications you'll find CRM, project management, database, invoicing and web conferencing.

A really nice feature is the Notebook. In it you can place, among other things, spreadsheets, web pages, audio, video and text. Once you've created all of your pages you can publish your notebook. It will provide you with a url or code to embed into your blog or website. Here is a sample:

So check it out and create your own notebooks, write documents, create spreadsheets, and just have fun.

My Scribd-Published Resume

2008-11-08T20:27:00.000-05:00

Here is my published resume from Scribd.

Resume 12

Get your own at Scribd or explore others: Career Résumé/C.V. java ruby

Hologramania at CNN

2008-11-05T17:54:00.006-05:00

I missed it yesterday, but CNN has one of the coolest things I have seen in a long time. I might be in the minority, which is something I found quite surprising. Just like so many others, I am embedding the video here in my post:

When I was a young child I would sit in the den with my mother and watch the original Start Trek episodes. This was in the early seventies. It captured and fed my overactive adolescent imagination and it got me through a lot of awkward year: yes, I was not so popular...with anyone. But the original Star Trek lacked something that most of the subsequent spin offs had. The holodeck.

CNN's hologram technology is certainly not a holodeck. Far from it. But where others see the potential of web conferencing (boring), I see things differently. So remove Jessica (the one being holo projected) from the picture. Then add 3D generated imagine. Let's say a full sized Lara Croft. Now add dark corners of the world and you can almost literally stand next to the action as you control it. But instead of a keyboard or joystick or some other primitive device, your very movements would control her. From jumping to swimming, punching to shooting, you would control it all and have a kickass VR-like experience.

Okay. So maybe this technology is too limited and, it's certainly too expensive. But perhaps its that stone upon which CNN is the first to step.

Issuu: Publish Your Documents for Free

2008-11-01T23:23:00.000-04:00

There is a neat site where you can publish your documents (magazines, ebooks, journals, resumes, etc.) for free, and you can embed widgets into your blog or a web page that allows your viewers instant access to a very nice looking interactive version of your document. In fact here is my resume, animated, and when you click on a page you'll be taken to it at Issuu so you can browse it.

Get your own - Open publication

Embed a Digg Widget in Each Post

2008-10-27T13:54:00.000-04:00

I user Blogger.com and I wanted to add a Digg widget to each of my posts, and while searching I came across one of the best tutorials on this. At the Tips for New Bloggers blog, there is an article called "Add Digg button to Blogger or Blogspot". What I like about this article is that it takes you step by step through the process, and shows a screen shot of the layout screen to a particular blogger.com blog as well as the code snippets you need to do this. I definitely recommend doing this if you want people to digg your posts.

Speed Read Your News at Spreed:NEWS

2008-10-25T15:55:00.002-04:00

I've wanted to learn to speed read for some time now. And there was a time when I could read pretty fast, but because our eyes, whether we perceive it or not, sort of dart around what we read we tend to read slowly. But there are different techniques you can use to increase not only the speed at which you read, but you'll should also be able to increase your comprehension and retentions of whatever you read. And these techniques are simple.

One of the more interesting ways to increase your reading speed is to be able to control the speed of the display of single line phrases or sentences that are part of a larger document (e.g. a news article). At a site called Spreed:News, you can create an account and then tailor your feeds with some broad categories. Then when you select a post within some feed, you're presented with a window on the right of the screen with the first few words of the article. Push play and it begins to play through the document one phrase at a time. You can set the speed at which each phrase is presented from 240 words per minute to 1500 words per minute. You should note that as you read through these posts and slowly increase the speed youre brain will cope and you'll not only start reading faster but you should be able to retain more of what you've read, or so this is the idea.

I'm going to use it to see if even I, with my ever degrading mind, can improve my reading speed, but I won't hold my breath for expanding my comprehension of what I read. So check it out and see how well you can do.

The Importance of Social Networking

2008-10-25T14:24:00.004-04:00

The importance of social networks is not that they connect people together or allow them to share information or even play games, rather the importance of social networking lies in ranking; blogs, articles, books, songs, etc. For it is in ranking that we can see trends in thinking and popularity.

Dilbert Widgets

2008-10-24T09:51:00.006-04:00

I am usually the last one to know about such things, but I found Dilbert widgets at dilbert.com and thought I would write a post about it.

AC/DC in Excel

2008-10-24T09:13:00.002-04:00

I am an AC/DC fan...have been since the mid '80s. But I wasn't sure that I liked their new song, Black Ice, until I clicked on over to Adam Ostrow's post on mashable.com and saw their music video. It's an ASCII art (remember ASCII?) video played through Microsoft Excel. It's the first of its kind, and it is so cool that I decided I really do like Black Ice, even if it does sound like a random mix of songs from their other albums. Anyway, here is a link to their Youtube video, and if you want, you can get the Excel file for yourself on AC/DCs web site.

Evernote: A Cool App for Taking Notes

2008-10-22T11:34:00.002-04:00

Today I found an online application for taking notes. Evernote allows you to take notes that contain formatted text and images, and then save them online. Evernote provides a web 2.0 online version as well as desktop applications for Mac OS X and Windows. They even provide versions for the iPhone and iPod touch and Windows Mobile. It's quick and simple. I like it. Head over to Evernote and get your free account and software.

Browser Toolbar by Conduit

2008-10-07T17:26:00.006-04:00

Today I was looking around to see if I could find a way to make money using my blogs. Writing good things is one way to get people to come back time and again. Getting people to come to the site, however, is another thing entirely. While I'm not sure if this solution will work, I created my own toolbar plugin that you should be able to see at the top of my blogs. The toolbar works with both IE and Firefox. And I didn't even need to write a lick of code.

Here is a capture of the toolbar plugin download link that I added to the top of my blogs. Just click to install:

If you head on over to Conduit, you can sign up for free and create a customized toolbar that points back to your web site or blog. I created one to bring people to my primary blog, but I added to all of my others blogs the download link for installing the toolbar.

One of the cool things is that you can create and add your own logo, or use create your logo (text only) by selecting from a list of several graphical styles. Their choices aren't very good, but they do the trick in a pinch.

Now, I have noticed several bugs with the toolbar. When I originally created the toolbar, it contained an internet-radio gadget. I decided to remove it from the bar using the Conduit online manager and when I decided to add it back (I discovered that I could also add podcasts to it), it no longer shows up on the one I installed in my firefox. But if you look at badges that links to my toolbar installer, it is there. Oh, another cool feature is that whenever you insert or remove toolbar gadgets, all of the badges change, too. This is how I know that the radio gadget has been added.

There are a number of live gadgets that allow your toolbar users to receive updates from you in real-time. For example, using the Messages gadget you can send out a message and your users will see it. There is also a built in feed reader (which is also buggy) that gives quick access to the rss feeds you have configured. And there is also a horizontal scrolling ticker that will show a message that you create. But I think that the ticker is too ugly. While you can set the width of the ticker, you cannot adjust it's height, so it looks fat.

Despite these problems I recommend giving it a try. It's really cool to think that people are so interested in your blog or web site that just have to have a toolbar!

Intro

2008-10-04T22:04:00.000-04:00

All about tech.