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Chaos Puppy - Read Your Pet's RFID Chip

noreply@blogger.com (jenny) — Thu, 19 Jan 2017 02:45:00 +0000

Most pets have an RFID chip in them so when they are lost it can be scanned and the owners information can be retrieved. I would like to harness the power of this RFID technology to allow my pet, Chewie, to control my house and update her Twitter.

I've learned that pet RFID transmits at 125 kHz. I had an RFID reader lying around from Adafruit, that I doubted and confirmed could not read Chewie's RFID chip. I've order a 125 kHz Arduino compatible reader that should arrive on Friday. Will update blog in a few days with the results of the new reader.

Github project here. Until next time.

3d Printing Basic Tools of the Trade Part 2

noreply@blogger.com (jenny) — Sun, 03 Mar 2013 19:03:00 +0000

As a follow up to 3d Printing Basic Tools of the Trade:

Netfab STL Repairer - this amazing free little web utility repairs your STLs making sure all the surfaces are connected and the model is solid. I run all my models through it pre-print.
Painters tape - cover build plate with this to help model sticking and protect plate. The wider the better
Pallet knife - used to pry the model off the build platform. Works amazingly well. I bought mine at local art store, but here's a set of similar ones for cheap on amazon
Rubbing alcohol - use when printing models that have small foot prints to improve sticking. Using: you rub the build plate (even if it's covered in painters tape) down with this pre-print. It makes the model stick MUCH better, so it should only be used if you have a model with a small surface area touching the build plate.

3d Printing Basic Tools of the Trade

noreply@blogger.com (jenny) — Fri, 01 Feb 2013 16:56:00 +0000

I've been getting into 3d printing lately. I have a makerbot replicator 2 and love it. Here is a list of some of the tools I'd recommend picking up if you would like to create custom models from scratch:

Digital Calipers - used to measure dimenions of physical objects ie diameter of a cylinder
Ruler
Notebook - for skething, I like the Rhodia brand b/c their graph paper has 5mm squares
Google Sketchup - free software software for creating models
STL export plugin for sketchup - if you go the Sketchup route you're going to need this plugin to export files the printer can read

You've Got Mail iPhone Mail Alert

noreply@blogger.com (jenny) — Thu, 13 Oct 2011 04:05:00 +0000

With the release of iOS 5.0 for iPhones and iPads it's now possible to set a custom sound for emails (among other items). I thought it'd be fun to use the old school "you've got mail" sound byte for my emails. To set a custom tone for your incoming mail make sure your iPhone/iPad has iOS 5.0 then:

1. On you iOS device click Settings>Sounds

2. Scroll down to the new mail option. After you click on it you can see you can load any of your custom ringtones. (Here's an article on how to make custom ringtones).

Restore Missing Airplay Icon on iPhone and iPad

noreply@blogger.com (jenny) — Mon, 20 Dec 2010 23:58:00 +0000

My Airplay icon went missing from both my iPhone and iPad. Luckily it's an easy, but weird fix to get it back. You need to change your phone language from English -> French (or any other language) -> English. To do this:

Settings>General>International>Language
Select "Francais" and click done. iPad/iPhone/iPod will change over to new language.
Repeat steps one and two but change device back to English.
Settings>General>International>Keyboards
Click "edit"
Delete the non-English keyboard

Now go try to play media. Your Airplay icon will be back!

How I Use Text Message Payments to My Make Life Easier

noreply@blogger.com (jenny) — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 14:12:00 +0000

I recently started using a service called Venmo which is "The Paypal of text message payments." I can pay and charge friends or merchants for goods/services. It's definitely one of those services a la cell phone esque. If you don't have it you don't know what you are missing, but once you have it there's no going back. Below I've listed some simple use cases to try to illustrate the power of the service:

Paying others - Splitting a lunch bill:

When I'm out to lunch w/friends, one person pays the bill and the rest of us text that person.
"Pay Jenny $21.37 for lunch."
Jenny receives $21.37 for the bill from all of her friends. It's great b/c it eliminates the friend who says "I'll hit you later" and then never hits you later. It also eliminates the need for everyone to have cash

Paying others - Cashing in/out of poker night:

When we do poker night, one person is the "pot" and we all send them buy in money.
"Pay Brad $20 for poker buy in." At the end of the night cashing out is super simple, no dealing w/breaking of bills or coins. "Pay Jenny $11.41 for poker winnings."
In this case Brad is the pot. At the beginning of the night we all send him money, then at the end of the night he sends out the winnings.

Charging others - picking up laundry

When I pick up my brother's laundry I charge him for it. The money is taken directly out of his account b/c he "trusts" me.
"Charge Andrew $13.75 for laundry."
$13.75 comes into my account

These are just a few use cases of how to use text message payments to make your life easier. If you would like to try Venmo, which is in beta, to text message payments please email me and I'm friends with the guys who made it, so I can shoot you an invite.

In the comments, tell me how you use text message payments to make your life easier.

Record Video on Any iPhone without Jailbreaking

noreply@blogger.com (jenny) — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 14:09:00 +0000

The app everyone has been waiting for has finally been released: iVideo Camera. With iVideoCamera 2g and 3g iPhone owners can record video without jailbreaking their phones.

iVideoCamera currently only captures video at three frame per second and can only record up a minute long video, but for 99 cents it's a steal. I recommend buying it as I assume future updates will include better/longer video quality.

Space Invaders Floor Decals

noreply@blogger.com (jenny) — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 00:50:00 +0000

It pays to have friends with vinyl cutters...

My boss has a sweet donkey kong 8 bit graphic on her door to her office. I've always admired it so one day I asked her where she got it. She pointed me to blik. After perusing their inventory I finally landed on the idea of putting space invaders on the floor of my apartment, but quickly realized that the stickers on blik would not hold up to the wear and tear that a floor would get.

In come my friends over at Laan Labs. They have a vinyl cutter....after a quick Google search I located the vector graphics I needed, emailed them to my friends, and they cut my decals. I was ready to roll within a matter of days.

Quick Tip: Embed Youtube Playlist in SIte

noreply@blogger.com (jenny) — Mon, 17 Aug 2009 22:51:00 +0000

To embed a Youtube playlist into your site, follow the steps below:

Go to the "Playlists" section of your account.
Select the playlist you'd like to embed.
Copy the embed code from the upper right corner.
Paste the code into your website or blog.

Google Analytics iPhone App - View Traffic Reports on the Go

noreply@blogger.com (kortina) — Fri, 20 Feb 2009 14:50:00 +0000

Google Analytics is probably the most essential tool for anyone running a webservice, blog, or other online property that wants to grow traffic and understand existing traffic.

I've been searching for quite some time for a good way to access Google Analytics from the iPhone, have tried a few apps that just didn't cut it, but found yesterday (via @brit) an app that actually works.

The Analytics App gives you access to all your different sites in Google Analytics, so it's perfect if you manage many different accounts like I do. Plus, it has all your favorite analytics reports:
* Dashboard Summaries
* Length of Visit
* Browsers and OS
* Referring Sites
* Keywords
* Adwords Campaigns
* Content Reports
* Top Landing Pages
* Top Exit Pages
* Custom Event Tracking
* Plus, pretty much every other report from Google Analytics

You can view reports by date range, too. I've found it most useful to set the Date range to the Past Day to get a quick summary of what's happening on my sites right now.

I'm loving this app. Check it out at: http://bit.ly/iphoneGAnalytics

Recover Corrupted Excel Spreadhsheet Files Using Only Excel for Free

noreply@blogger.com (jenny) — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 01:33:00 +0000

My mom sent me an .xls file this evening that she had spent hundreds of hours working on and managed corrupt within a matter of minutes. After a quick Google search I found lots of pay for programs to recover the file, but nothing quick and free.

Things to note:

This method can be time consuming if you have an Excel file with tons of individual workbooks.
We are only recovering the data, this method cannot recover the forumlas from cells. Sorry!

To recover a damaged Excel .xls File using only Excel:

Open a new blank Excel sheet
In cell A1 paste the following formula (without the quotes): "=FileName!A1" Make sure you replace the FileName with the name of your original document.
A window should pop up with the names of all your worksheets. Select the name of your first worksheet. Click "Ok"
The first cell of your original damaged worksheet should now appear in cell A1 of your new worksheet. Highlight cell A1 in your new workbook
Move your mouse into the lower right hand corner of cell A1 until the mouse pointer turns into a crosshair. When the pointer turns into a crosshair click and hold moving your mouse down and right, filling the spreadhsheet up. Continue to drag the mouse until you have selected area that is approximately the same size as the range of cells that contain the data in your original file.
After you have all of your data, highlight all the cells with data and select Edit>Copy
Open a new worksheet
Select: Edit>Paste Special>Values This step removes references to the damaged file and only leaves the data.
Repeat the above procedure for all worksheets in the workbook.

There you have it, recover a damaged Excel file using only Excel! Have fun!

Receive Twitter @ replies via SMS, email, & IM for FREE

noreply@blogger.com (jenny) — Fri, 06 Feb 2009 02:46:00 +0000

I'll admit it, I'm addicted to Twitter. The only thing that I have found that I don't like about Twitter is the inability to receive updates, either via email or SMS, for all of your @replies; I fix things I don't like.

I've used a combination of Yahoo pipes and a free service, notify.me, to receive all of my @replies via SMS. A few notes about my method:

You can configure your updates to come as any combination of the following: SMS, email or IM. This tutorial focuses on SMS.
Since we're using Yahoo pipes to create the RSS feed of all the @replies there is a bit of lag between the actual Twitter @ reply and the notification.
The Yahoo pipe that we are using catches all @replies, not just ones that start with @reply ie: "great link from @jennykortina"

To receive all of your Twitter @replies via SMS:

Head over to this Yahoo Pipe
Enter your Twitter username in the field and click the "Run Pipe" button
After the pipe is done running, click the "Get as RSS" button
A new window will be loaded with your RSS feed. Copy the RSS link from the navigation bar
Head over to notify.me and register for a new account
Configure each notification method that you would like to use: SMS, Email, and IM
Click the "Sources" tab
Paste your Yahoo Pipe RSS feed from step 4 into feed box and click the "Add Feed" button
The field will appear in the blue box below the "Add Feed" section. Click on the buttons for the type of notifications you would like to receive. In my case, I only have SMS selected.

You now will get all of your Twitter @ replies as SMS messages to your phone. Like I said earlier, there is a slight delay between the time the actual @ reply message is posted and when you get the SMS, but it's worth the wait!

Beginner's Guide to SEO

noreply@blogger.com (jenny) — Tue, 03 Feb 2009 19:15:00 +0000

A friend of mine who runs a small business asked me to do SEO for her website the other day. I used a combination of different on page tricks and external services to get her site's SEO up to speed:

What is SEO?

SEO is the process of improving the volume and quality of traffic to a web site from search engines. Basically, good SEO answers the question: "How do I make my website appear at the top of a Google search?"

Why is SEO important?

Typically, the higher a site's "page rank," the more visitors it will receive from the search engine.

On page SEO:

Create unique, accurate page titles (Pages 2-4 in Google SEO Starter Guide)
Make use of "description" meta tag (Pages 4-6 in Google SEO Starter Guide)
Improve the structure of your URLS (Pages 6-9 in Google SEO Starter Guide)
Write better anchor text (Pages 13-14 in Google SEO Starter Guide)
Use heading tags appropriately (Pages 14-15 in Google SEO Starter Guide)
Optimize your use of images (Pages 15-17 in Google SEO Starter Guide)

****I recommend reading the entire Google SEO Starter Guide, the things I listed above are just the tips every webpage should follow.***

Services to sign up for:

Google Webmaster tools (See tutorial directly below)
Google Analytics - track your site's traffic.
RSS Feed of the Official Google Webmaster Central Blog - this blog is great way to keep up to speed with all the new products and tips & tricks from the Google team.
Create a blog on blogger - creating a blog is a great way to develop credibility and drive traffic to your site.

Google Webmaster Tools Configuration:

Add site in dashboard
Verify site
Create sitemap (Manually) (Generator)
Add sitemap to webmaster dashboard
Generate robots.txt ~ click on the "Tools>Generate Robots.txt" section of your Google Webmaster Tools for your domain
Add robots.txt ~ upload text file from step 5 to the root directory of your website.

External Sites everyone should submit their site to:

External sites brick and mortar business should submit their site to:

We put in all the effort, but did it work?

So, to figure out if all of our hard work paid off we need to head over to Website Grader.

"Website Grader is a free seo tool that measures the marketing effectiveness of a website. It provides a score that incorporates things like website traffic, SEO, social popularity and other technical factors. It also provides some basic advice on how the website can be improved from a marketing perspective. "

I found it helpful get websites graded right before I make any changes, right after I make my changes, and a few weeks later. If I did everything correctly, the score should improve over time.

One last trick for measuring effectiveness:

If you have a product or service that customers will be ordering, you can do one last trick to measure the effectiveness of your SEO. By simply putting a coupon on your site you can tell which customers have been there. This method is by no means a 100% accurate way to measure your SEO, some customers may have found the website before your SEO, but it should give you a ballpark idea of new website traffic.

Alright, hopefully these few tips and tricks will help all of you who are struggling with SEO. Please feel free to leave more tips and tricks in the comments, every little bit helps!

Gmail URL Shortener

noreply@blogger.com (jenny) — Tue, 02 Dec 2008 15:53:00 +0000

URL shorteners are a useful tool when sending emails. Not only are long links unsightly, they often break inside email clients becoming useless. I use Gmail for my email client and was delighted to see that bit.ly introduced an application that provides a URL shortener right inside Gmail.

To install bit.ly's URL shortener:

Go to Settings > Labs
Scroll down to the very bottom and click the radio button to enable "Add any gadget by URL"
Click "Save Changes" at the bottom of the page
You should now have a gadgets tab at the top of the settings page. Click it.
In the "Add a gadget by its URL:" box paste this link:
http://hosting.gmodules.com/ig/gadgets/file/107368512201818821991/bitly-shortener.xml
Congratulations you now have a URL shortener application right inside Gmail!

How to Track Multiple Topics, Brands, and People on Twitter

noreply@blogger.com (kortina) — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 01:00:00 +0000

Tracking conversations about people, brands, ideas, topics, or any area of interest really, is a new part of my daily routine now that I can track all of these things in real time with using Twitter.

Over the weekend, I found myself hopping back and forth between several browser tabs doing Twitter searches for things like "bitly," "quantum of solace," and "bbq nyc". Usually I monitor this sort of thing in Tweetdeck, but I was on a friend's laptop and didn't want to download the app. So I started writing some javascript, and ended up with a pretty cool tool called Convo Monitor.

Convo Monitor is a simple Twitter dashboard that allows you to view up to 10 searches on a single page. I wanted to keep things lightweight, so there's no signup / account creation necessary. To save your Convo Monitor, you bookmark a link to the dashboard you created and load it up next time you want to check the Twitter conversations you're tracking.

One of the cool things Convo Monitor can do because there are no accounts and everything is saved as part of the URL is dashboard sharing. If you make a dashboard of topics you think a friend or colleague may be interested in, you can just grab a bookmark to that page and Email or IM it to them.

I whipped up a quick screencast demo-ing some of the features of Convo Monitor. Here it is:

Setting up a dashboard tracking the topics I frequently check has saved me lots of time and Convo Monitor has become part of my routine. Post some dashboards to the comments if you come up with interesting ones.

Check out the app at www.convomonitor.com

How To Ad Arbitrage with Amazon Affiliates & Google Adwords or Facebook Ads

noreply@blogger.com (kortina) — Sun, 16 Nov 2008 21:14:00 +0000

I posted about this over on my personal blog, but I told Jenny about this and she thought the hackaddict crowd would dig this:

1. Create an Amazon affilates link to the product you want to arbitrage. The guy advertising this laptop used this affiliate info: tag=track25-20&linkCode=ur2&camp=1789&creative=9325

2. Based on the price of the product your advertising, determine how much you’re willing to spend in Google Adwords and setup a campaign using the affiliates link you created above. Be sure to put “amazon.com” in the text of your ad, because this is a trusted vendor and it will help you get clicks.

3. Once you started getting clicks, examine your conversion rate and tweak your ad bids until you’re profitable. For example, suppose your conversion rate is 2%, ie, 2 out of every 100 people clicking your ad actually buy the laptop. Your ad spend should be .02 (conversion rate) * .04 (referral fee) * 1549.00 (avg. product purchase price) = $1.2392. As long as you spend less than $1.24 / click, you’re making money.

via How to arbitrage ads with Amazon Affiliates and Google Adwords

Track Craigslist Page Views

noreply@blogger.com (jenny) — Wed, 22 Oct 2008 12:00:00 +0000

I saw this article a while back (thanks to lifehacker) which explained how to track page views on Craigslist. I loved the idea but did not love the implementation: it required hosting your own image and using either a third party web application (but did not describe the process) or using a shell script to list the number of times the server loaded the image. Today I am going to explain a much easier way to track your Craigslist page views which does not involve hosting your image or using complicated scripts (my mom could use this method).

Create a regular Craigslist ad making sure you include at least one image
Publish your Craigslist ad and go to the link Craigslist provides to "View your ad"
Right click on your image and select "Copy Image Location"
We are done on Craiglist for now. Open a separate browser window and navigate to www.bit.ly
Create a new account. After you successfully create your account you will be automatically logged in.
Paste your link that we copied from Craigslist into the "Enter Web Address (URL) Here" box
Click the "Shorten" button
You will be provided with a new, shortened URL. Click the "Copy" button.
Now navigate back to your Craigslist page, and choose the edit my ad option.
Go to the images section and remove the image that we turned into a Bit.ly link (whatever image you right clicked on earlier and selected "Copy Image Location").
Click "Make Changes" (This is an important step, you MUST save it without the image for this to work)
A preview of your ad should pop up and your picture should be gone. If your picture is gone, click the "Edit" button again
Go to the bottom of your ad and insert this code:
Click "Make Changes" to save the image
Finally, navigate back to your bit.ly account and look for you image link (it will be at the top of the "Recent" list). Click the "Info" button to see your link stats.

Get your zombie guns, cause we're back from the dead!

noreply@blogger.com (jenny) — Wed, 22 Oct 2008 01:50:00 +0000

Just thought I would throw a quick post up to let everyone know where I've been and what I've been up to:

A few months ago I applied for a gig at The Apple Blog to write how to's, and sure enough I got it. So for the past couple of months I've been lurking at The Apple Blog, posting my typcial hackaddict articles, bu over there. You can check out my Apple Blog posts here:

http://theappleblog.com/author/jenny/

So if it's so great at The Apple Blog, why I am back? Good question...although The Apple Blog is fantastic, it is unfortunately only about Apple. This being said, all of non-apple related posts have no where to go and are getting lonely. So folks, hackaddict is officially revived (and we are right on time for Halloween...spooky).

Custom Themes on Google Presentations

noreply@blogger.com (kortina) — Wed, 21 May 2008 02:46:00 +0000

I wanted to insert a logo at the top of every slide in a presentation I was working on today. It was obvious how to do this in Google Presntations, so I did a quick search and found this great tip:

Don't limit yourself to the default themes available in Google Presentations. Here's how to go beyond those defaults.

Google Presentations offers only a small set of predefined layouts for your presentation. But what if you want to do something unique, such as getting your company logo and background colors on every slide of the presentation?

The "Change Background" Dialog

One way to do this is to right-click a blank part of any slide, and then select "Change background" from the context menu. A dialog like the one shown in Figure 4-1 will pop up. Click the "Insert image" link to upload an image or click the color bucket icon to pick a new background color. When done, check the "Apply background to all slides" checkbox, and click Save.

via http://safari.oreilly.com/9780596515881/the_google_docs_family_colon-id1

Also, size your background image 640x480 px for best results!

lookupd --flushcache in OS X Leopard

noreply@blogger.com (kortina) — Sun, 20 Apr 2008 22:41:00 +0000

This is a fairly technical one, but for anyone that's done

sudo lookupd --flushcache

in versions of OS X before Leopard, you may have noticed that it doesn't work in Leopard.

The new way to clear your hosts cache is

sudo dscacheutil -flushcache

This is useful if you happen to be messing with the /etc/hosts file.

Last Minute Tax Tips: File for Your Extensions Electronically

noreply@blogger.com (kortina) — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 05:07:00 +0000

I have been working on my taxes like crazy, but today a few kinks came up that are going to make it impossible for me to file on time. Luckily, I found how to e-file for extensions for both Federal and New York State income taxes.

http://www.taxbrain.com/taxcenter/extensions/fed.asp

Make your credit card payment to the IRS at the PAY1040.com web site. Making your payment in this way automatically qualifies you for an extension of time to file your tax return until October 15, 2008. You will not need to file any other forms at this time.

http://www.taxbrain.com/taxcenter/extensions/NY.asp

New York accepts payment by credit card through Official Payments Corporation. Making your payment in this way automatically qualifies you for an extension of time to file your tax return until October 15, 2008. You will not need to file any other forms at this time.

Quick Tip: Speed up Apple's Time Capsule

noreply@blogger.com (jenny) — Wed, 09 Apr 2008 19:26:00 +0000

I recently purchased a 1 TB Time Capsule and was very excited to get home to hook it up. After the initial set up, which didn't go as smoothly as every other Apple product I've set up, I was extremely disappointed with the slow file transfer and constant disconnects I was encountering. I couldn't even stream my iTunes library (which is why I got it).

Here are some tweaks I've done:

Reduce Interference:

Connect the Time Capsule directly to your router with a LAN cable, then log into it via the Airport utility. Click on the manual set up button, then the wireless tab to disable wireless and give her a reboot. When the Time Capsule restarts it should now say "Wired" in the connection status. - Please note, I live in an apartment with 20 or so wireless networks around me, which was causing major interference. After hard wiring the Time Capsule I no longer have drop outs.
Rename your Time Capsule to a single word, mine is named Tera. Don't use weird symbols either, straight up letters and numbers here folks.

Speed her up!

Disable searchlight indexing. Go into system preferences, spotlight, privacy and add your time capsule to the list "Prevent Spolight from Searching these Locations"

Following suite, I removed the Time capsule from Quicksilver's catalog - before I did this Quicksilver would crash or freeze when I tried to use it when my Time Capsule was connected, now I can use both in harmony

After performing all my tweaks, I can now stream iTunes music and videos and quickly update my iPhone and iPods! I haven't had any disconnects either.

Please post any other tweaks to the comments.

Use an Eyedropper to Get Colors from Any OS X App

noreply@blogger.com (kortina) — Sun, 06 Apr 2008 19:40:00 +0000

I just discovered the Digital Color Meter in OS X. This built in tool that comes with OS X is definitely one of the most awesome hidden features of OS X I've found. Here is a video demo:

http://www.screencast.com/users/kortina/folders/Jing/media/02b87105-9968-417f-8c16-13687ca169d4

In short, this tool allows you to get the hex value of any color from any app and put it into your clipboard. So if you're looking at screenshots in Preview and need to find a certain color blue or red, you don't need to open Photoshop and use the eyedropper. Just open DigitalColor Meter by going to
Applications > Utilities > DigitalColor Meter

The first time you use this app, you need to change the default output setting to make this useful for CSS editing. From the dropdown box in the app, select RGB As Hex-Value, 8 bit.

Now, move your mouse over the color you want to grab (in Firefox, Preview, Word, or whatever) and hit cmd + shift + c. This will copy the hex value of the color to your clipboard, and you can then easily paste it into a CSS document.

This is so freakin sweet!

Google's April Fool's Joke 2008

noreply@blogger.com (jenny) — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 14:27:00 +0000

Wake yourself up with our new Google Wake Up Kit!

Click for the original article.

Quick Tip: Find Free Software In Under a Minute

noreply@blogger.com (jenny) — Thu, 20 Mar 2008 14:05:00 +0000

Finding good, free software usually leads to a twenty minute Google search that routes me to dead ends (aka shareware).

To solve this problem, a few months back I started using a combination of the Google reader search function and a site called Cool OS X Apps (a great blog that features different OS X software daily - which is often freeware) to perform filtered searches which lead to actual downloads.

Check out this screencast to see this method in action.

*I am sure there are other Mac and Windows blogs out there that would work just as well, I just haven't found them (please post to comments if you know of any).