A few weeks ago I let me MobileMe account expire.  I was a decision that I’ve been contemplating for awhile.  I had mentioned it over Twitter and someone asked what I decided, so I thought I would share my reasoning why I decided I no longer needed to spend $99 a year on the service.

1. Mail, Contacts, Calendar Sync – There are a couple of reasons why this wasn’t important to me any more.  One I must use a Microsoft Exchange server at work so this performs the same function with all my work Email, Contacts, and Calendar.  And for all my personal info I use the Google Suite – Gmail and Gcal.  The Google products perform the same function, and the cost is FREE.

2. Online Gallery – The online galleries that .Mac and now MobileMe have look great, and there was a time they were the best thing out there, but now with Flickr and Picasa once again a free service offers a comparable solution.  iPhoto will even upload to Flickr now.  And I bet for most people photo sharing on Facebook is good enough.

3. Back-to-My-Mac – Now I must confess, I was never able to get this to work right, and I know very few people that use it consistently without problems, but it’s still a feature that could be a great service.  And [...]

Continue Reading “MobileMe or Not for Me”

Amazon announced today the Kindle DX.  It’s a larger version of their existing ebook reading.  The larger screen is suppose to make reading Newspapers and Magazines easier.  In addition to the larger screen, it has native PDF support and storage for up to 3500 books.  Another cool new feature is it will auto rotate from Portrait to Landscape modes.  Looks interesting, but I think I would still have to go with the original sized Kindle.  Even though native PDF support would be great.

I’m still holding out for the rumored larger iPod / iPhone tablet.  I think that would be the device for me.

We’ve had some runaway script problems on the site.  I’m working on them now, but to make sure you are still able to access the content of the site I’ve reverted to a theme that won’t cause problems.  I hope to have everything back up and running very soon.  As a fellow geek, I’m sure you understand.

Summer’s coming, and we are all gearing up for traveling with busloads (or church vanloads) of teens to random places throughout the country for camps, mission trips and all around fun. But how do you know where to stop for lunch? How can you find the exit or town with the most fast food places so that your stop lasts minutes instead of hours? Google maps of course!

I know you are already using them to figure out mileage and time on the road, but did you know you can look at fast food restaurants along your route? Here’s how to do it. First, click here, put in your route and check the boxes next to the places you would ever consider stopping (for those fast food snobs among us), and voila! An easy guide to all your burger desiring delights!

Don’t worry if you don’t see the promised push pins right away.  If you see a series of large numbers, zoom in or click on a number and the pins that were too numerous to display will come up clearly. I guess that leaves only one question: would you like fries with that?

I told you about the Super Awesome bundle last week, I just found out the Super Awesome Bundle now has a new tier.? If they get to 5oo bundles they will add Save the Planet to the bundle.? It’s a deal that just keeps getting better.? Remember it’s only good till Friday.

Maybe you have a once a yer cleaning ritual, or maybe you are just running out of space on the hard drive that you were sure was way bigger than you needed when you initially bought the machine. Whatever the case, you probably find yourself wondering where to start. Where did all your gigabytes go anyway? That’s where JDiskReport comes in. The software is easy and intuitive. After you install it, it will do a scan of whatever directory tree you specify and then come up with an easy to understand pie chart showing where your precious space has gone. You can click through the tree structure on the left or on the pie chart to the right to drill down into the cluttered depths of your hard drive.

The only thing I wish it could do is delete the files/directories from within the program, but that is not a hard drawback to get over in such a handy piece of freeware.

The best news? Not only is it free, but since it is based on java, it is available on Windows, Mac (though with a decidedly Windows look and feel), or even over the web.  Just check out their site for all the details!

A few weeks ago I posted about the Macheist bundle, which was a great way to get great software at an incredible price.  Today we have a bundle that’s made for Youth Workers, the Super Awesome Bundle.  For only $49 you get over $230 of resources.  It’s a great collection of speaking series, games, and training for volunteers.  The nice thing for us geeky media types all the games and series are made with media in mind and include backgrounds and other elements.

It includes: Hooked, All Out War, Hmmm, Race This! 2, Game On 4, Power Play 5, and Training on the Go.  Check out: Super Awesome Bundle for complete descriptions.

It also gets better the more that are bought.  At 100 bundles,  Transmit Vols 1 & 2 and Backpacks 6 (Summer Pack) will be added (which already happened), and at 250 Guy Talk Girl Talk 2 for everyone whose purchased the bundle.

10% of the sales to the Glue Boys organization.

Check out this video showing how the products were picked:

In honor of Earth Day, here’s a video to one of my favorite David Crowder songs.

If you’re looking for a Resource that could help you here also check out
Save the Planet from Josh Griffin.

I got an question submitted to the site the other day from Haley about Photoshop alternatives and thought there may be others with similar questions.  (Haley, I tried to write you back, but your email kept bouncing, hopefully this will help you out.)

Photoshop is a really powerful program, but it comes with a price tag (Amazon lists Adobe Photoshop CS4 at $641.99), but the good news is there are a lot of cheap (or free) alternatives that may work for you.

One option is just to go with Photoshop Elements (PC or Mac) at only $74.99 is considerably cheaper, but can still give you most of the functions that those of us who don’t make a live as graphic designers need.  It’s heavy in photo editing features, but still gives some of the advanced images tools as well.

Another option that is closer to full blown Photoshop is called GIMP.  GIMP stands for GNU Image Manipulation Program, and is an Open Source project so the cost to you is nothing.  Remember you get what you pay for, and it’s definitely not as polished as Photoshop, but is incredible full featured for a free program.  You can find the PC version

Continue Reading “Photoshop Alternatives”

I have recently stumbled upon a service called Fliggo. It is focused on creating websites to share your videos.  It can create a site that is more as gallery, or one more like a Vlog where each video has comments or as a video sharing community similar to YouTube where users can upload their own videos.

One of their best features is the ability to enter a YouTube video address instead of uploading videos from your computer. It doesn’t merely embed the videos in your site; rather, it rips the video from YouTube, saves it on their server and inserts it into your site.  This is great because it removes the linked videos YouTube placed on the end of your video over which you have no control.

The service is free with a paid pro version in their ner future that adds custom domain support and some other options, but all the imporant features are available on the free version.