iSnick Multi.

Quick: Google Music “Review”

So as Google came out with “Music Beta” obviously I requested an invite, and waited. Later on, I got it. Even though I don’t use it that much, and still consider it a waste .. There’s some things I think that could be an improvement to it–to possibly help it succeed in this dog-eat-dog world.

Get Social

Grooveshark,  and notably HypeM, these services have something in common – Social; Twitter, Facebook, whatever. They all allow you to tag your music and easily share it with your friends. Google Music (beta) lacks this, and could prove to be a bothersome in the future when someone really enjoys a song.

To the ‘least, add Last.FM support. This would be an excellent feature.

The “Desktop”

I understand Google has ChromeOS going on, where everything is centered around the web but.. a desktop application wouldn’t hurt.

I installed the “sync” application (that’s all it is), and while it may be useful, it as I said, lacks a music player interface.

That’s all!

Visit Google Music

Image via: WebTabLab

Must Have Applications for OS X

Finding good applications for Mac OS X that’s free is not that easy as it is in the Linux world. I did some searching here and there for software that did the job for what needed to be done. For the most part I found some really great applications that do a really great job and that are free! I’m going to go through some of them and give a description of what they do and also provide links.

1. SMC Fan Control – This is a good for laptops, you can adjust your fan speed. It sits up at the top telling you some useful information, your current temperature and current fan speed. Also you can customize a little and make your own preference’s and change the reading out between Celsius or Fahrenheit.

** Download SMC fan control

2. Magnifique – Not much to this, this just lets you change the color of things like the toolbar. I got this because i was tired of having default colors.

** Download Magnifique

3. Geektool – I found this to be extremely useful. After you install, there is a preference in your preference panel. This allows you to display log files, run system command, display image files which you can use to show a weather map on your desktop. While having a log file shown or running a command it shows a borderless, scroll bar free terminal on your desktop, in terms it looks like built into the wallpaper. One thing i do not like about this is once you exit out of the Geektool preference panel you can no longer interact with the Geektool widgets. I still highly recommend this if you use os x.

** Download: Geektool

4. WaterRoof – If you’re lazy like me then you probably want to avoid doing stuff the hard way, which is exactly what this application does. This is a IPFW GUI front end. To keep it short and simple this lets you do some neat things like view your net connection, set Internet rules, deny and allow connections etc. If you have a ssh, ftp, http or any kind of server up then i would get this.

** Download: WaterRoof

5. Transmission – This is a great torrent client for OS X, unlike other torrent clients this doesn’t hog resources. Also shows a a little icon on your dock with stats of how much you are downloading and uploading.

Download Transmission

6. Onyx – Onyx is a system tool that lets you do system maintenance on your OS X. It allows you to do clear log files, clear browser data, smart status check, fix file permissions, view man pages and a couple of other neat things. This is something worth checking out if you have not already.

** Download: Onyx

7. Fink -

The Fink project wants to bring the full world of Unix Open Source software to Darwin and Mac OS X

With Fink, it opens the world even more when you want download software. It’s simple even though you use the terminal. I was never able to get Darwin ports to work, so i decided to use Fink and remove Darwin ports.

** Download: Fink

8. KisMAC – If you want to test out wireless security then this is the tool for the job.

** Download: KisMAC

If you have any handy applications that you like to use, let us know!

Skybound: Stylizer – Review

So finally… I remembered.

Just Lookin’

The visual of Stylizer is very sleek, and user-friendly–Well it does seem a little complicated at your first look. The more you mess with it, the more you obviously become familiar with it… as any other software (well actually some software is LnP (look-n-play))

It has some basic tutorials (and somewhat intensive ones) that show you how to use Stylizer, and CSS in general. Always a good thing to have. Take a look:

Getting down to the good stuff

So after messing with it for a few minutes, I was already making some adjustments (to some of my background sites), and picking apart what this thing could actually do. I’m sure most of you out there has heard of Dreamweaver, or has at least tried the demo, or maybe even have it purchased–using it quite frequently. This for the most part is nothing like Dreamweaver.

Stylizer is simply a CSS editor and only a CSS editor – It has no main purpose for any HTML editing what-so-ever.

One

With web browsers becoming more picky in their own areas, Stylizer allows you to view your website from different browser engines in a single-click. Which by that I mean…

After seeing “Firefox 3″ and “Internet Explorer 6,” I started thinking “What if I install Safari?” So I installed Safari, and it would not put it there as a selection (shame). On the other hand, this is the Ultimate version. Which means that when using Basic, these selections are not available to you. You can only use Internet Explorer as far as I could see. And of course by using IE I get ..

Who would’ve guessed?–I don’t support Internet Explorer anyway (besides it was IE6, wasn’t it obvious?). So it’s quite reasonable that it errored up on me. However my blog still looks like that in IE. You know, all messed up and stuff? anywho

Two

Editing the CSS is fairly a sly process. With the Ultimate version, you are able get a bulleyes view, point-n-click GUI (graphical user interface), and few more features.

As you can see you have plenty of clicky options to choose from to assist you.  This is also good for rapid design (aka, being in a hurry or extra lazyness). Here’s a more in-depth of the fancy click options

Cool?–I thought so.

On the other …side of things, the basic version does not allow you to these things as smoothly. You might want to have a little more knowledge when using the basic version. Take note..

Not that pretty huh? Didn’t think so.

Three

After some-time of editing, you’re obviously going to want to see some changes. To my understanding, the basic version gives a real-time preview that allows you to see the website when you edit it. The Bullseyes feature allows you to visually see it change right infront of you as you’re making adjustments. Not only that, you don’t want to use another program to upload? Well maybe you do …. but…

I think this is a plus, not a needed really.

Downside

The biggest downside is the fact that it does not run on Linux. That was/is a disappointment to me. Only Windows and Mac for now I suppose – So I had to get a Windows machine to try it out on. I could’ve just used a VM, oh well.

In closing ..

Stylizer cost $90. For this type of program, I’d say that’s really cheap. Some of the other editors out there are crazy expensive, and they may be worth it as well – But if you’re ever feeling curious, give this a try.. It’s definitely worth your time and can probably benefit a lot of people out there.

Give Skybound a visit if you’re interested

Good luck!

Google Voice Review

yay – Received my Google Voice invite

Amazing service, my first thoughts. I’m sure from some of the other posts on blogs and so on you probably have a rough idea of what Google Voice is/how it works. I’ll explain it anyway..

Making Calls

If you wish to call people using GV, you must simply have an already-existing phone line. A cell phone, home phone, something that can accept calls basically. When you click “Call” you enter the number you wish to call, then select the number of which you want GV to call you. Which in this simple scenario, it’d be the first phone number you added (unless you added more).

After this point your phone should ring, greeted with silence!–Then it’ll start ringing, in which then it is connecting you to the person (or machine) you’re trying to call. Easy enough, eh? And wala!Your Google Voice number shows up on their Caller ID!

Receiving Calls

Receiving calls is VERY easy–As you set a forward number, it’ll ring that line whenever someone calls your GV number. And if you don’t answer, it’ll go to your GV voicemail, not your home phone (very nifty).

Voicemail + Translation

The voicemail is actually decent, as voicemail is about the same anywhere you go. However, GV provides you a service that some other voice services charge for, and that’s voicemail transcribing. Oh yea, read the voicemail someone left for you – It’s not the BEST at the moment however: very neat feature that they snuck in on me (that I didn’t see upfront) was that your voicemails are also translated while in the transcribing process.

Yea, that’s right. While I was leaving myself a voicemail, I said “ciao” at the end of it, and then noticed that the voicemail said “hey” – I then went on to speak a little French … that didn’t work out so well; Not sure if it was my bad French or it was wrong? I was going to try Spanish but I figured it’d result in the same thing. Although, it did misinterpret some of my other words that I said in English.

That’s really all there is to Google Voice. Of course, it is just the simple Vo-IP solution, with tons of features (with low calling rates).

Some things that would be neat to see

With all the Google services becoming even more useful than they ever were to me, I thought it’d be neat that: If they allowed a user of an existing service (on Google) … se, AdSense to be able to transfer their earnings into their account for later use with Google Voice.

I think this would be a reasonable approach, but then again I suppose there is some other possibilities to face when doing so.

Another thing would be to allow a user to set their Caller ID. For example, when I called myself, it said the city/state – It’d be cool if you could by reasonable measures and maybe a small deposit, to have your own name displayed on the Caller ID–For personalization reasons. I’m sure people are going to start wandering why I’m calling from another city … lol

Anyway, I’m happy to have received Google Voice – Thank you Google.

Go see Google Voice

Ubuntu 9.10 Review

Finally got around to the 9.10 test.

So, I seen that a number of things has improved on this edition of Ubuntu, and few have been added.

Software Center

One of the biggest I’d like to point out is obviously the Ubuntu Software Center:

This is a neat change. Considering there was already something like this – “Add/Remove” via GNOME. I suppose this is extra special because of the “Installed Software” (I think?).

Yay! Now that’s a handy add-on. Q&D (quick and dirty) way of looking at things. Don’t worry, Synaptic is still in there!

Install Procedure

Okay, for some time people have asked, “How do you …” … Seriously peoples! It’s easy Although there was a little bug in the 9.04?–Or was it 8.10? Can’t remember. Either way…

I was testing 9.10 on my Thinkpad, which originally runs Debian, so I didn’t install 9.10 in this review. I use Ubuntu on my main desktop Anyway! There’s a basic preview of what you’d select to install side-by-side, or you could click entire disk if you wish. Either way, it’s really easy (be glad it’s not all CLi anymore).

A little Technical

The resource usage isn’t bad at all. I hard-core tested it for about 45-1H minutes or so to get a good feel of how it would perform on my desktop (even though my laptop is a Celeron), and I am still impressed. The software runs just as good, and the support is still there for my hardware–You know, sound, video, wireless, etc.

Boot-up is about the same though, which isn’t really a big deal to someone like me as I hardly restart anyway. Then again, if it’s installed on the hard drive (or SSD now-a-days) it would obviously be a little faster, heh.

RAM usage in particular is fine FYI.

I’m glad to see the Ubuntu community working very hard, and improving Ubuntu every day.

Wait! One last neat improvement:

Ha!

Anyway, Over-n-all, I’ll be installing it soon as it reaches full release period. This’ll be the first time I immediately updated into a newer version. I usually wait.

Get Ubuntu