Digital Media Minute

‘The Pattern on the Stone’ Review

Tom — Fri, 02 Mar 2012 14:26:48 +0000

If you have friends or relatives who wonder how exactly computers work, here is a book to offer them which has probably the most lucid explanations that I’ve ever read on the foundations of computer science. This short book will not help neophytes distinguish between RAM and ROM-we have Wikipedia for that-but it’s hard to [...]

Check Your App Permissions Easily

Tom — Wed, 04 Jan 2012 08:33:32 +0000

As time goes on you’re aware that you’ve given permission to various apps to access information tied to online accounts you have with services such as Twitter, Facebook, Google, Yahoo, Dropbox, Linked In, Instagram and Flickr, and possibly others. If you’re like me you can name only a few applications for which you have registered [...]

Hiding Icons On OS X Desktop With Terminal

Tom — Wed, 28 Dec 2011 14:20:04 +0000

Do you need a way to hide all the icons on your desktop before you make that screencast, or for another reason? It’s easier than you think, and this little tech tip I am going to share will make your presentation much cleaner with fewer onscreen distractions. Simply go to the applications folder in your [...]

Video: Around The World In A Minute

Tom — Sat, 17 Sep 2011 16:55:48 +0000

There can be no better use of a single minute to make you want to travel: I know that 2012 is coming and that I should be pretty jaded about the richness of You Tube and all the other Web 2.0 extravaganzas that surround us in a virtual river of information, but I’m not. Maybe [...]

The Game Of Games

Tom — Sun, 11 Sep 2011 17:27:31 +0000

Robert Scoble waxes damn near poetic on 40 minutes worth of audio as he describes what he calls the ‘game of games’, which is the way that Facebook and Google will encourage us to increase our involvement with them, as they get to know us ever better. Google is building an ‘identity system’; it even [...]

Dave Navarro’s Generous, Mysterious Offer

Tom — Sun, 04 Sep 2011 13:56:02 +0000

Here is a pretty amazing, potentially free offer that has some intrigue surrounding it as well. Dave Navarro is an Internet marketing guy who in my opinion always delivered a lot more value than most do on basically teaching you to translate whatever expertise you might have into products you can sell online, should you [...]

Holy Robot Swarms, Batman!

Tom — Mon, 29 Aug 2011 12:20:45 +0000

You might think that robots will get more capable of performing complex tasks, but the way forward may be simpler, and more complex… Take a look at this amazing video of footbots, handbots and flying eyebots all working together as a “swarmanoid”, a parallel distributed system, to accomplish a task. It’s just like ant colony [...]

Google Docs To Create Online Surveys?

Tom — Thu, 25 Aug 2011 12:44:24 +0000

I have used a couple of WordPress plug-ins to create surveys for my sites in the past, but I just ran across a very fast tutorial on how to use Google docs to create surveys and embed them in blog posts. As the accompanying article points out not only are surveys handy for finding out [...]

The Netflix Of Reading?

Tom — Wed, 20 Jul 2011 15:51:27 +0000

Interesting overview of Float, which aims to be the ‘Netflix of reading’ by using what it calls ‘spaceship navigation’ to make it more pleasurable to read everything you consume on all your devices, for a monthly fee. I’m not sure that reading needs this much help to make it somehow more compelling; maybe I should [...]

What’s UP With Your Health?

Tom — Sun, 17 Jul 2011 07:59:46 +0000

The UP system from Jawbone, consisting of a sensor-filled wristband, will combine data that it records about the amount of sleeping and moving you’ve been doing with information you provide it about what you’re eating, and give you little ‘nudges’ as to what you can do to feel better and live healthier. All aided by [...]

Easy Reminders With FollowUpThen

Tom — Sat, 16 Jul 2011 06:10:40 +0000

I use Google calendars for recurring reminders but it takes a couple of minutes to set up. What if you want a free, quick way to get a reminder in your inbox without even having to sign up or register for anything? Followupthen will do it for you, simply by sending an email to them [...]

Thinking Startup?

Tom — Thu, 14 Jul 2011 09:46:40 +0000

For anyone who is wondering if they have what it takes to create their own startup, this essay from Paul Graham (one of the founders of Y Combinator) is a must-read. In it he talks about differences he noticed on a recent trip to Africa between the way animals behave in the wild and how [...]

Google+ Basics

Tom — Wed, 13 Jul 2011 12:34:17 +0000

Robert Scobel has a pretty comprehensive set of tips on how to get the most out of Google+, culled from his own experience so far with it. Might be invaluable to pass along to friends and relatives who are less than tech- or social media savvy. A lot of people have been somewhat skeptical of [...]

Program Web Games With These Javascript Tools

Tom — Tue, 12 Jul 2011 07:51:50 +0000

If you’re a developer interested in expanding your game-programming toolbox, here’s a nice list of javascript game development tools, platforms and game engines from Developer.com, with plenty of links to demos. This is one of the most comprehensive game development tool resources specific to JavaScript that I have ever seen. Chances are if you use [...]

What’s New In WordPress 3.2

Tom — Mon, 11 Jul 2011 17:19:53 +0000

There are five new features in the latest WordPress version (3.2) that make it quite a bit different from previous installations. For instance if you are running PHP 4 or MySQL 4 you’ll find that you have to upgrade to PHP 5.2.4 and MySQL 5.0 in order to install WordPress 3.2. Read all about it [...]