The weekend is here and I’ve got some good plans: sis-in-law’s birthday dinner, moving a friend, fixing a computer, making USB flash drives filled with goodies, and a couple other odds and ends. But for now, I’ve got some links.

• Homemade Granola Bars (http://thedig.in/c3) – Man I love granola bars. I will point out that I love crunchy ones, but if someone happened to make these and drop them off at my house, I would definitely eat them and sing your praises. If you didn’t quite get what I said there, “Bring me granola bars.” Clear?
• iPod Auction (http://thedig.in/c4) – Pictures speak volumes. I’m heading over there to put up my ‘$52 reward’ sign tomorrow. Hopefully nobody is smart enough to put up a $53 sign. That would just be CRAZY.
• Survive a Tsunami (http://thedig.in/c5) – After concerns about tsunamis from the recent Chilean earthquake, I saw this guide from the US Geological Survey that has a ton of pictures, charts, stories, and tips on how to survive a tsunami. I think the amazing thing is how low and how high the water actually goes. Additionally, the pictures of the before and after are pretty scary as well. Below is my favorite chart.
  

  Image from USGS website: http://pubs.usgs.gov/circ/c1187/images/fig17.jpg

What’s the story?

Apple has brought a bunch of complaints regarding patents that they filed over the past 10 years. Some are super technical and others are just crazy, such as using your finger on a touchscreen button to unlock a screen. Umm, how else are you supposed to unlock the screen?

Is Apple justified?

Hard to tell. Patents are always a weird thing because sometimes it is very legitimate: you find a new way of doing something that is revolutionary; think inventing a CD in the land of audio cassettes. On the other hand, some companies get a way with patenting things like “how to remember things by using black liquid in a tube and creating characters of of the black liquid.” So you just described writing words with a pen. Lame. But somehow those types of patents get through, but they still have to stand up to scrutiny.

As this case is reviewed, the court will have to determine what can stand and what will not.

What about HTC?

They will most likely be fine for now. The soonest anything would come of a lawsuit like this is about 5 years. In the meantime, unless it turns out HTC is straight up making an iPhone, it should be good to keep doing business.

A majority of the hardware that contains the allegedly infringing patents are actually Android devices and the functions are core Android functions. Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you should know that Android is developed by Google. Also, unless you’ve REALLY been living under a rock, you would also know that Google has more money that most of the planet, so defending its technology against Apple really shouldn’t be too much a chore from a financial standpoint, but as I said, we won’t know from an infringement standpoint for a long time.

This all boils down to the fact that HTC is going to have Google and Google’s money in its corner. Not a bad entity to have your back.

What’s next?

I would recommend busting out a nice, big bag of popcorn and settling in for 5-10 years of legal jargon, posturing, and losses and wins on both sides of the courtroom. In the end, I predict that there will only be one true loser: the consumer. They will get the raw end of the deal as licensing fees will increase costs or injunctions against HTC and Android will reduce competition in the market. Once again, the consumer loses again.

What are your projections of what is going to happen between Apple and HTC? Are you rooting for one or the other? Let me know in the comments.

Not only does Google’s search box do calculations, but it will show you the answer in auto-complete before you are even done. Check it out in action:

As you can see, it reveals the answer of 46,656 as you type. Pressing enter isn’t really necessary. However, if you do press enter, you get more options.

If you wanted to actually search for the term 6^6, you are certainly given the option to do so.

Anybody use Google as a units converter as well? Got any other quick and easy ways to make calculations on the fly such as an abacus or your brain? Let everybody know in the comments.

However, there are applications out there that can be installed onto and used directly from a USB flash drive. Probably the first thing you would want on a USB flash drive would be a  web browser. By carrying a web browser, you can use a secure browser, such as Firefox, and be sure it is up-to-date and can even bring your setting along for the ride.

If you are interested a USB flash drive pre-loaded with about 30 portable apps ranging from a PDF reader to an office suite, contact me from the About The Digitante page and for $25, I’ll send one to you, all loaded up and ready to go. If you have specific requests for programs you would like to see on your USB flash drive, we can make arrangements for that as well.

In the past, you’ve heard me ramble on and on about Mozilla Firefox. As a reminder, Firefox is an excellent replacement for Internet Explorer, a much maligned browser amongst savvy internet users. Firefox is fast and stable when compared to Internet Explorer and a few days of using it will turn you into a Firefox convert.

While using Firefox at home is great, sometimes you end up at other computers with no Firefox and hence, none of your settings or information.

By installing Portable Firefox to a USB flash drive, all those settings and all that information comes with you. Installing couldn’t be easier either. Just download the files from Portable Apps, begin the install, and select your USB flash drive.

Once you’ve installed it, you can head on over to the directory in which you installed it; in my case, I headed to E:/FirefoxPortable.

Once there, I was sure to read the help file since using a portable app isn’t exactly like using a desktop app. Once I familiarized myself with the help file, I simply double clicked on the PortableFirefox.exe and launched the browser.

Its as simple as that. If you want to get a little more complex, the help file also gives you some tweaks that will allow you to import the settings from your regular Firefox as well as enable most addons, plugins (eg Flash), and helper apps (eg a PDF reader).

A final note: while using portable applications on a USB flash drive is super convenient, it can also be super hazardous. PortableApps.com has also provided a safety guide so you can protect yourself, especially if you use your drive with an unknown computer that may already be chock full of viruses. With a little caution, you can avoid bringing all those viruses to your home computer.

Aside from Portable Firefox, do you use any portable apps that you would like to see covered here? Did you even know such things as portable apps existed? Let me know in the comments!

Now for the links and a ton of videos, assuming three videos weigh more than one ton.

• See a Sonic Boom (http://thedig.in/br) – This is some pretty amazing stuff. When you first watch it, you think it is a special effect, but it is absolutely real. Also, here is some information on Sundogs. Be sure to check out some of the related videos when you get done with this one. Note if you click through, you can watch it full screen in HD (or maybe below, I don’t know).
  
  Link to the above video.
• Church Ratings (http://thedig.in/bs) – Having moved a number of times in my life (to Indiana, college x4, Chicago, Seattle, and back to Indy), I always found it difficult to find a church each time I’ve moved. I ended up heading from church to church trying to find something that fit my needs. A couple of weeks here, a couple of weeks there and I started to lose interest. There aren’t a ton of churches rated at this point, but you can help by rating yours. Needless to say, this site has been the focus of quite a bit of controversy.
• Dominance Displays (http://thedig.in/bt) – I didn’t know what to expect when I saw this posting on Marginal Revolution. Let me just say that the marching in the first video is outstanding. And the animals in the second have some pretty good showings too. Especially that little bird with the red head and the yellow pants. As a side note, that bordercrossing shown is the only border crossing between India and Pakistan. Pretty amazing if you check out how long it is on a map.
  Human dominance display
  

  Animal dominance display
  

• Beer Cans for Sun King (http://thedig.in/bu) – A new brewery opened in the heart of downtown Indianapolis last summer called Sun King Brewery. It is the only locally owned brewery in downtown Indianapolis and up until now, the only way to get their beer home was in jugs called growlers. Once you open a growler, you have about a day or two before it starts to go bad. No longer! Sun King just picked up a canning line and will have cans on the shelf in the next few weeks. Head to your local liquor store and tell them you want Sun King in cans!

On Monday, the Credit Card Accountability, Responsibility and Disclosure (CARD) Act went into effect. What does that mean for you?

Well, it can mean good things, as described by the New York Times – more due date lead time, longer warning before changes, rate increase grace periods, and restrictions on those under 21 getting cards, just to name a few.

Unfortunately with the good comes the bad: increased fees (especially ones not covered in the CARD Act), difficulty for even responsible 18-20 year olds to get a card without a parent co-signer, and cuts to rewards programs. Additionally, credit card companies have be jacking rates up over the past few months before the CARD Act became effective.

Personal finance can be daunting, but arming yourself with a little knowledge can go a long way.

Backupify is a service that not only backs up Gmail, but will also back up your Facebook, Flickr, Twitter, and a number of other services, protecting your online data.

If you think you might like to have your online data set up for a recurring back ups using Backupify for $50, please contact me by going to the About The Digitante page and fill out the contact form or give me a call anytime. If you prefer to do it yourself, read on.

Signing up for Backupify is simple. Just enter your name, email address, choose a password, and select the Free account for now. You can back up 1Gb of stuff with the Free account. We’ll discuss the paid version of Backupify in a bit.

You are immediately deposited on the Settings page. Before you continue, go to your email account and be sure to click the link in the confirmation email. Actually backing up your accounts fairly simple. I’ll go through an example with Twitter.

1. Be sure you are logged into the Twitter account that you want to back up.
2. Click on the Manage link to the right of the Twitter icon.
   
3. There are two check boxes and a text box. You have the option to tweet that you are protecting your account with Backupify (I did that just for fun). You can customize the message to say whatever you like. I added a note that this post would be up in the morning.
4. You can choose to follow Backupify on Twitter to get updates when new services are added and other good information.
5. Once you are squared away on those two items, click the Twitter Authentication link.
   
6. In order to finish the process, you must allow Backupify to have access to your Twitter data. I do want to clarify that Backupify will NOT have access to your Twitter password and can be denied access to your account at any time by going to the Connections page in the Settings for your Twitter account. (On an aside: Gmail does require you to enter your password, but it is encrypted, so just be aware of that).

After being redirected to the Twitter setup page, you will see your Twitter account listed at the top. Need to add another Twitter account? Repeat the above steps, but sign into Twitter with another account.

You can repeat a similar process or each service you want to back up. There are some nuances depending on what you are backing up: Facebook allows you to choose what information you back up – pictures, wall posts, profile, etc.

Size limits

As I mentioned earlier, the Free account allows you to back up a total of 1Gb of data. My Gmail account alone has well over 2Gb of emails in it, so I can’t back it up via Backupify directly. Instead, I am required to open an Amazon S3 account. Amazon S3 is online storage space that you pay a monthly fee for. For most people the cost is going to be $0.15 per Gb per month.

You may wonder why someone would pay a fee to back up things like Twitter and Facebook, and for most individuals you would be correct in wondering. However, the reason I decided to write this post was because a local restaurant owner named Scott (of Scotty’s Brewhouse) uses Twitter and Facebook extensively to market his business to his customers (about 4,000 of them actually).

As such, it would very bad if something happened at Facebook and he ended up losing all those connections, so for him, it may make sense to spend the extra couple of dollars.

In the end, I ended up going with another method to back up my Gmail but in the future it will be something I write about here.

Before I wrap things up, I need to make a little complaint: I cannot for the life of me figure out how much space my back ups I’ve created thus far are taking up. It seems like there would be a dashboard front and center telling you how much space you are using. Secondly, I wish it would at least give me an approximation of how much space my next back up is going to be consuming. It says my back ups may not complete for 24-48 hours, so if something pops up later, I’ll be sure to post a follow up.

Who’s Teh Digitante? My evil twin brother perhaps? Hardly. He’s just a phantom that we can easily make go away with a couple of keystrokes:

• Type the first letter of the username so the autofill pops up, as above.
• Scroll down to the misspelled username.
• While it is highlighted, press the delete key. If that doesn’t happen to work, you can try holding the Ctrl key and pressing delete or holding the Shift key and pressing delete. The plain ol’ delete key seemed to work in all the situations I tried it in.

The entry should permanently be gone. This also works on any other autofill field such as if you move to a new address and you want to banish your old address. Or perhaps you are embarrassed that someone might see that you were searching for Britney Spears lyrics in the search box in the upper right corner of your browser.

Using someone else’s computer? Delete YOUR username from their computer when you are done logging in. Someone else using your computer. Delete THEIR username from your computer as well.

Is this the first time you’ve ever heard of this trick? Know of some other ways to go about this? Know of any way to edit existing autofill entries? Share in the comments!

To reward a few lucky survey takers, I ended up passing out a few Amazon giftcards. Congratulations to ima, jordan, and buss on the huge $10 wins.

On to the results! I’m not going to cover everything, but we’ll hit some highlights:

• A total of 18 people took the survey and 6 of them were first time visitors. Those first timers mostly came from Twitter. All of the 6 were likely to visit the site again in the future.
  Additionally, two people wrote in suggestions. The first new visitor suggested that they would like to see a bit more mix between tech and non-tech. The second new visitor said that from the front page, it was impossible to tell what the blog was about. That is why you see the return of the ‘About The Digitante’ box along the top of each page.
• Half of the survey takers show up and read directly on the site. About 1/3 read via an RSS reader.
  
  If you read the site directly and you are interested in a simpler way to follow along and not miss a thing, be sure to check this post out as it has great tips for keeping up with me. You can check The Digitante out on RSS, email, Facebook, and Twitter. Recently I added an app for both iPhones and iPod Touches.
• The most popular types of posts are How To’s, posts with pictures, and feature. The least popular by a wide margin was my Back to School series from last fall. Apparently college-age isn’t my niche.
• A majority (11) said they would want to see 2-4 posts per week and everyone else (7) said they would want to see 5+ posts per week. Here is the plan from here on out: I plan on posting a full post on Monday and Wednesdays. Tuesday will consist of Tuesday Quick Tips. Thursday will be an archive post since my readership has grown immensely over the past 8 months and some of my old stuff may have been missed. I will do some updates and add screenshots to stuff that doesn’t have it. Friday will be Friday Night Links as always.Most everyone said they didn’t care when the posts were published, therefore I’m going to stick with the current schedule which consists of me typing up the post in the evenings and setting it to post for 6am EST the next morning. The exception: I’m going to shoot for publishing Friday Night Links as soon as it’s done on Friday evening.
• One of the comments from a reader was that some of the subjects, not matter how dumbed down, still turn into “Blah, blah, blah” after about one or two paragraphs. As such, I’m going to start making a little intro paragraph getting into how what I’m about to describe will benefit you and how much I would charge to take care of it for you. Then you can decide whether to skip the reading and call me or do it yourself. I would really love some feedback as to whether you think this will work or not.

Hopefully this hasn’t been too boring. It was really about me trying to wrap my head around how I can better serve my readers and make improvements in how I do things.

Although the Amazon giftcards are no longer available, you are still welcome to take the survey and give me your feedback. In the meantime, you can leave any questions, comments, or insights in the comments below!