Coffee Shop Revolution » Computers/Technology

Glossy or Matte Screen?

posterous — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 02:20:38 +0000

Are you trying to decide between a matte and glossy screen on a new laptop? I think this picture speaks for itself. The laptop on the bottom is glossy (our new "backup" laptop at BloomSpot), the monitor on top is matte. Both are displaying a fully black terminal.

Conclusion: You could already have guessed this, but Glossy is the wrong choice, especially for developers and really in general people who spend time in bright offices working directly on their laptop. Go with Matte!

Does the fact that I can’t fix Macs demonstrate their quality?

posterous — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 21:17:56 +0000

I grew up on Windows. Starting with Windows 3.1, then Windows 95, 98, ME, 2000, and so on. In my family I was (and still am) known for my knowledge of how to fix broken computers. A few days ago, however, one of my friends called me with some weird problem with his Mac. Even though I’ve been on Mac for about 1.5 years now, I felt totally lost in helping him. I could tell him everything about how to use his Mac to the max, taking advantage of all the cool features, but when it came to figuring out why his computer wouldn’t turn on or why he was seeing some crazy error while booting up — I found myself lost. How is it that I knew so much about fixing Windows but have been so clueless about complicated Mac problems?

I came to a basic realization: I don’t know how to fix Macs because I’ve never really had to fix my own Mac! (actually I did once when I had permissions issues with my drive, but that was caused by my mistake). On Windows, every week or two I remember troubleshooting some issue or another. I fought countless viruses, created and resolved major havoc on my machines. In this process, I learned a lot about fixing Windows.

So does the fact that I don’t know how to fix Macs really speak for their top quality? Or am I just over-thinking my laziness in educating myself about Mac internals?

Preserve battery life on your iPhone with Airplane Mode

Nimit Maru — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 02:50:50 +0000

This weekend I went camping at Big Sur. The campgrounds there are pretty much out of range of any cell phone towers and thus I was getting no signal on my iphone. Secondly, I had no way of recharging the phone as there was no electric power outlets. So how did I save enough power to last me the whole trip?

I put my phone on Airplane mode!

Airplane mode turns off all wireless and phone connectivity of your iphone, and thus saves a TON of power. I was able to take pictures, take notes, play games, listen to music, do all kinds of stuff the whole time and still had half my battery left by the time I got home.

So if you are trying to make your iphone battery last (and don’t care if you can’t receive calls)…put it in Airplane mode till you need to make a call…you will be surprised how long you can make it last.

Great way to research cameras

Nimit Maru — Tue, 21 Nov 2006 18:05:03 +0000

Recently a few of my family members have contacted me about advice in buying a digital camera. One cool new tool to research cameras I recently found is using the Flickr Camera stats.

Flickr lets you see stats on the cameras that photographers on Flickr are using. This can give you a good indication on how popular certain cameras are. You can also narrow down to a specific camera (for example the Canon SD450, the camera I use). On the specific camera page you can see pictures taken with the camera, latest prices of the camera, reviews, and full product specs.

Also, you should realize the majority of Flickr users are photography enthusiasts. The most popular cameras on Flick r may be “too much camera” for the average photographer. The majority of us use “Point & Shoot” type cameras, and you can sort by that type on the Camera’s by Brand page (here is the Canon page sorted by type for example).

PS – another great website for digital camera research & education is dpreview.com.

Windows live Writer, Arrested Development & blogging

Nimit Maru — Tue, 15 Aug 2006 06:22:11 +0000

I like to make posts with these three topic themes. Keeps me (and you) interested I hope. Blogging as an art form and skill has become more clear to me as I have started reading other people’s blogs more regularly now. The main revelation I have gained from this is that I am not a blogger. And truthfully I may never be one. Blogging requires a lot of hard work, thought and dedication to writing. Not only writing, but writing for an unknown audience consisting of (for the majority of bloggers) roughly 10 readers (and that’s if you have a lot of friends). And yes you may find it ironic I am blogging about how I am not a blogger, but that is simply not my problem

This is the first post I am making to this blog using Microsoft’s new beta blogging tool, Windows Live Writer. So far, it has flawlessly attached itself to my blog and has had quite a few pleasant surprises. This is actually the 2nd client side blogging tool I am trying out (the first being Flock’s, which I am sorry to say really sucks at its current state, compared to this one). Live Writer automatically downloaded the styles from my blog so that my currently writing looks exactly like it will when I publish it (this is a very pleasant feature). Since I have yet to publish this post…I will only let you know next time how that process goes (but if you are reading this then you can bet it went well). All in all, this looks like one Microsoft tool that I will be using. It is really great to have a clientside tool to compose blog posts.

David Yang (yes the same fool who got me started on Movable Type at UIUC while switching to Wordpress himself) introduced me to Arrested Development (the tv show) recently. I have gotten the first two seasons of this show and have enjoyed watching it so far. I try not to watch it while doing any serious work though because it is one of those shows that is very capturing. I can’t seem to concentrate on much else while watching it. None the less, it is pretty damn funny, and its fun to watch

Ok, now I am back to doing some work. I’ll talk to you guys later…enjoy your evening (yeah, everyone has an evening coming up soon enough).

Trying to Fall in Love with a New (domain) Name

Nimit Maru — Thu, 22 Jun 2006 23:06:31 +0000

I am looking for a new cool 3 or 4 letter domain name to take on the identity of my personal projects. The one thing is that I don’t want this name to relate to my name…I kinda want some abstract random crazy web3.0 sounding name. This process is much harder than it seems–especially for someone picky like me. I am planning to register it using Yahoo!’s $2.99/first year deal on http://domains.yahoo.com.

Some tools I am using are:

http://instantdomainsearch.com/ : lets you search for .com/net/org domains in realtime. The problem is their database isn’t the most recent and the application itself has bugs.
http://www.iwebtool.com/instant/ : only lets you check .com/.net/.info/.co.uk. Which is usually good enough, so not bad.
http://url.vg/onlineaccess/e95024 : I shortened the url cause this one has a funky url, but the live domain search is pretty good looks through a lot of domains.

Just about everything I want is taken!

No wonder all these new Web 2.0 companies are coming out with funky names. It is almost uncool these days to have a name that looks like you bought it from a domain squatter. I think the same thing that happened to band names is happening to domain names.

Anyway — back to work. Peace.

Trying out Flock 0.7 beta

Nimit Maru — Wed, 21 Jun 2006 04:42:48 +0000

Hey guys. This is the first post I am trying with Flock, the new Firefox based media charged browser. You can check out the beta 1 of this browser here: http://www.flock.com.

Here is a picture I uploaded to flickr automatically using Flock!

Not bad right? Ya, not bad…but they do have a long way to go. But I think they are making a great contribution to the open source browser community.

Gmail Javascript Error is Shameful

Nimit Maru — Tue, 13 Jun 2006 09:29:13 +0000

The last few weeks, users of Gmail have been recieving this javascript error while loading the application:

Error: _B_Err is not defined
Source file: http://mail.google.com/mail/?view=page&name=js&ver=803cefb78571d775
Line: 12

I’m sure it is some silly problem on their end but it is pathetic how long it is staying (not to mention just sloppy). At Yahoo! we fix JS errors right away…they are usually obviously apparent and annoying to many users. Anyway just wanted to rant about that since for some reason no one else has commented about it.

XBox 360 and crazy people

Nimit Maru — Wed, 23 Nov 2005 00:36:00 +0000

The Xbox 360 was released today, and there are some CRAZY people who are paying crazy amounts of money the console on ebay. I just saw an auction complete for $1800!! I think the premium package costs about $400 in stores (which are of course all sold out). But who would pay $1800 for a gaming console? God only knows.

Anyway, speaknig of spending money, I spent some money recently and got some new furniture! I have a sofa now =D Pictures and more info to come soon Finally feel like I am settling in…

My Recent Song Playlist

Nimit Maru — Sun, 04 Sep 2005 23:20:06 +0000

As you may have just noticed, now, on the right side bar of the front page of my blog, you can see a dynamic list of the 10 songs I’ve listened to the most in the last 3 days! This can give you some insight into what songs I am currently addicted to and listening to…for those of you who care

I may post here a bit later how I programmed this song tracking engine for those of you who are curious and for those who want to have similar features in your own blog

Ok, now back to studying! Hope everyone is having a great Labor Day weekend (and that those who have family or are themselves involved in the Katrina disaster are seeing some hope for their lives in the future).