Daily tech tips

Infrequent posts on Daily Techtips

2011-04-17T22:26:00.001+02:00

I have been posting on Daily techtips almost every day for close to three years, and it feels like its time to change the setup of the blog a little bit. I have not fully figured out how to proceed, so there will be some infrequent postings on the blog for a while.

Best regards,

/jonas

Google Sketchup

2011-04-11T21:00:00.001+02:00

Need to draw some 3D designs? I do, and a great tool for this is Google Sketchup. It provides an easy way to do conceptual designs and similar with an easy to use interface. Using Sketchup is very simple, and you get great results without having to get a degree in 3D modelling beforehand.

Google Sketchup is a free download and there are a lot of guides and helpful tips available at the web site.

/jonas

http://sketchup.google.com/

A great list of micro apps for Windows and Mac

2011-04-10T21:00:00.001+02:00

Micro apps, small utilities that do time saving tasks or add a lot of functionality is something essential for all operating systems. Lifehacker.com have put together a list with ten great micro apps for both Windows and Max OS X.There are several great tips for both OSes, check it out!

/jonas

http://lifehacker.com/#!5790110/top-10-micro+apps-for-windows-and-mac-os-x

Fixing little the things in Gmail

2011-04-08T21:44:00.001+02:00

Gmail is great, but there are several small things that can be very annoying.

Google have been listening to this and have just recently made some small tweaks that will give you a better experince. Read the full story at the official Gmail blog.

/jonas

http://gmailblog.blogspot.com/2011/04/fixing-little-things.html

Space flight going forward

2011-04-07T21:28:00.001+02:00

A couple of days ago, SpaceX, the company founded by Elon Musk (of PayPal, and Tesla fame among others) revealed their latest addition to their line of rockets, the Falcon Heavy. It has twice the lifting capacity of existing rockets and it promises to bring a new era to space flight. And it will be ready for trial during 2012-2013, so it is pretty far along and not just a paper product!

Great stuff if you are interested in space flight!

/jonas

http://www.spacex.com/falcon_heavy.php

Feeling nostalgic?

2011-04-06T21:00:00.001+02:00

Commodore 64.

A name that brings a lot of memories to an entire generation of computer geeks. A lot of us learned our first programming skills on a Commodore 64 and the first computer games was played on the same.

Now it is possible to buy a new Commodore 64. The machine is looking just like the old classic, but the internals sports a modern day PC. Hit or miss? I'm leaning towards a failure, it feels a little bit sacrilegious and it would probably be best to leave it as a good memory. But hey, it is pretty cool to have a Commodore 64!

/jonas

http://www.commodoreusa.net/CUSA_C64.aspx

Sonos Wireless Dock

2011-04-05T21:00:00.001+02:00

I just got a great addition to my Sonos system, the Sonos Wireless Dock. It is a great little dock, that enables you to play your iPhone or iPod content (and the content from music applications as well). And of course, since it is part of your Sonos system, you can stream your music from the Wireless Dock to any combination of your Sonos zones.

A great addition to any Sonos system if you have a iPhone or iPod.

/jonas

http://sonos.com/products/accessories/wd100/default.aspx?rdr=true&LangTyp...

Building a Lego ship in a bottle

2011-04-04T21:25:00.001+02:00

Building Lego ships can be a lot of fun, but if you find it not to be challenging enough, there is a way to add to the complexity. Build it in a bottle! Check this video of a Lego ship built in a bottle.

/jonas

Which URL Shortener Should You Use?

2011-04-02T22:45:00.001+02:00

URL shorteners are an important part of today's web experience. You would think that all URL shorteners are all the same, but as it turns out, that is not the case. The Next Web have a very interesting article covering the performance of the most popular URL shorteners, have a look!

/jonas

http://thenextweb.com/socialmedia/2011/04/02/which-url-shortener-should-you-use

New bodies in Google body browser

2011-04-01T22:54:00.001+02:00

Google have increased the number of bodies in Google body browser. Check out the new entries!

/jonas

p.p1 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Arial; color: #3b2fee} span.s1 {text-decoration: underline}

bodybrowser.googlelabs.com/moo.html

The history of Internet speeds and usage

2011-03-31T21:00:00.001+02:00

A lot has happend in terms of speed and usage with the Internet in the last fifteen years. When people started to get Internet connections at home, it was over 28 kbit or 56 kbit modem connections and now the same values but in mbps are not uncommon.

TechCrunch have a post showing this evolution and it is quite impressive seeing what has happend over the last fifteen years.

/jonas

http://techcrunch.com/2011/03/30/the-history-of-internet-usage-and-speeds-inf...

World backup day

2011-03-30T22:02:00.001+02:00

Tomorrow is World Backup Day. This may sound like a trivial thing not in need of its own day. But in fact, doing backups is one of the most important tasks you can do on your computer. With the ever increasing number of photos, videos and documents, a failed hard drive would mean disaster for a lot of us. And harddrives fail, it is just a matter of time.

So, to celebrate World Backup Day, do yourself a favor and make sure you have a sound backup strategy for your important files.

/jonas

http://worldbackupday.net/

World backup day

2011-03-30T21:57:00.001+02:00

So, to celebrate World Backup Day, do yourself a favor and make sure you have a sound backup strategy for your important files.

/jonas

http://worldbackupday.net/

Amazon Cloud Player

2011-03-29T21:20:00.001+02:00

Amazon have just launched a cloud based music player called Amazon Cloud Player. It gives you the possiblility to stor your own music in the cloud and stream it to any computer or Android device. You can upload your own music or buy mp3 songs from Amazon.

It is currently only available in the US, so if you live there, go and check it out!

/jonas

http://goo.gl/MpnA4

Great bookmarklets for iPhone and iPad

2011-03-27T21:26:00.001+02:00

Mobile Safari for iPad and iPhone doesn't support extensions, but there is another way to add useful functionality to the browser and that is using bookmarklets. Digital Inspiration have a great article covering how to install bookmarklets and several great bookmarklets that you can install. Excellent!

/jonas

http://www.labnol.org/software/iphone-ipad-bookmarklets/18969/

Learning to edit videos

2011-03-25T21:05:00.001+01:00

Even if you don't have a video camera, today most of us have a lot of video recorded in our cell phones, point and shoot cameras or DSLRs. Watching your raw video files is usually not a pleasnat experience, the absoulute majority of videos need to be edited.

"But I don't know how to use a video editing program" you say. Well fear not, Lifehacker have a great set of posts in theri nightschool series covering how to edit video files. A great resource to improve your video editing skills.

/jonas

http://lifehacker.com/#!nightschool/5783802

Color

2011-03-24T21:01:00.001+01:00

Yet another social networking photo app? Well, yes and no. Color have just released their new app for iPhone and Android and it promises to bring some new twists on photo sharing and social networking. It looks very intriguing and may very well be a game changer or (something that will be forgotten in a week...). Mashable.com have an article covering Color. Check it out and give it a try!

/jonas

http://www.color.com/

http://mashable.com/2011/03/24/color/

Getting a better understanding for radiation dosage

2011-03-23T21:00:00.001+01:00

With the ongoing events in Japan, there is a lot of questions on radiation and how dangerous radiation is. What a lot of people forget is being exposed to radiation is something all of us are on a daily basis and this is perfectly natural. So how does natural background radiation compare to the radiation coming from the Fukushima plans and for that matter, from Chernobyl? Mashable.com have written a post on the subject and also included an excellent chart showing how radiation doses compare to each other. Very interesting!

/jonas

http://mashable.com/2011/03/21/radiation-dosage-chart/

Firefox 4 is here!

2011-03-22T22:50:00.001+01:00

Firefox 4 have finally been released. Now go and update that browser!

/jonas

http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/new/

Updates to Google latitude and Google places on iOS

2011-03-21T22:20:00.001+01:00

Google just released updates to two of their apps on iOS, Latitude and Places. Latitude adds checkin capabilities and Places the possibility to save your favorite places to google maps. Check out the details at Google's mobile blog.

/jonas

http://googlemobile.blogspot.com/2011/03/explore-world-with-updated-apps-for....

New mobile bit.ly site

2011-03-20T21:04:00.001+01:00

Bit.ly, one of the best URL shorterners on the net have just made a major overhaul to its mobile site. There are a lot of great features that makes it much easier to use bit.ly on your mobile device. Check out the info over at the bit.ly blog!

/jonas

http://blog.bit.ly/post/3941676281/bitlys-got-a-brand-new-mobile-site

Visualisation of the geophysical impacts of the earthquakes in Japan

2011-03-19T22:34:00.001+01:00

The horrendous earthquakes that have hit Japan recently struck one of the most well developed parts of the world. That means that there are a wealth of sensor data available on how the earthquakes have affected the Earth. Univeristy of Alaska have setup a great web site with a lot of geophysical data from the quakes.

/jonas

http://goo.gl/9V8PQ

Securing your portable data

2011-03-17T21:28:00.001+01:00

Bringing data with you or transporting data means that you potentially expose your data to other people. Whet can you do to protect it? ArsTechnica covers this in a post.

/jonas

http://arstechnica.com/ask-ars/2011/03/ask-ars-how-can-i-secure-data-i-need-t...

How to avoid time zone troubles when travelling

2011-03-17T21:00:00.001+01:00

If you travel between time zones and bring a smart phone or laptop, you most likely have had some problems with changed times, missed notifications and such. There are some help to straighten things out, Lifehacker. com have a post covering what you can do to avoid problems when moving between time zones.

/jonas

http://lifehacker.com/#!5782671/how-do-i-prevent-time-zone-mess+ups-while-traveling

Increasing security for your Twitter account

2011-03-15T23:30:00.001+01:00

Improving security is always a top priority, especially on the web. Twitter have made it possible to increase security by using TLS (https) for all access to your twitthow's count. Head over to Twitter and learn how to set it up.

/jonas

http://blog.twitter.com/2011/03/making-twitter-more-secure-https.html