The Internet is My New PDA

Remember what a pain it used to be to bring your data with you? I'm talking about contacts and calendars. You were often stuck depending on what calendar your original data lived in, what applications you used, and what mobile devices you had. I remember having a calendar on my iPod Touch, which I synced into Outlook, which I shared through Office Online only so I could resubscribe to it in Windows Live. My contacts were an amalgam of actual information I'd put in, and a bunch of junk from my IM program. And while I love all my online peeps, I don't have addresses or phone numbers for most of them and don't need them mucking up my real-people contact list. And every time I pared it down on the iPod, it would get repopulated unless I decided not to sync addresses in the first place. After a while I did just abandon syncing, and whenever my iPod got wiped I just cut my losses and started fresh.

So the solution, for me, came with the advent of Google Sync. The service lets your data live on the ever-accessible Google cloud, and it can sync from pretty much anything, including my iPod. So I made the jump to Google, separating my real-life contacts from my online friends over on Live. The awesome sauce comes in where some of my coworkers also use the service, and we can share our schedules among ourselves. There's no effort to it at all. We just enter it all on our respective devices, and it's synced everywhere immediately. I no longer use an application on my computer for this information, since the only purpose until now had been to act as a pass-along to get it online. In the end, I've found the perfect, no muss solution to keep my data available anytime, anywhere.

Go ahead and check out Google's sync features. They just may make life easier for you. And hey, if you have your own system for spreading your delicious data jelly across the toast of your digital lifestyle, go ahead and drop a globule in the comments.

The Songbird Integration Gauntlet

As a music player, I gravitated to Songbird a short while ago. Based on Mozilla's work, it isn't exceptionally special on the surface. It plays and manages music just like iTunes and Windows Media Player. But when you start playing with addons, it becomes a very powerful, integrated app. It's like the second coming of Winamp, except the addons are more useful rather than just neat. Here's how Songbird fits into my digital life.

First, and included by default in the player, is Last.fm integration. This social music discovery service tracks what you listen to and offers streaming radio based on yours or your friends tastes. In addition to simple scrobbling, you can further add some of the functionality of the standalone Last.fm app.

Second is the Now Playing addon. This lets Live Messenger and other IM programs display your current song in your status. Additionally, you can send your current track to Twitter. The next step, and we're all hoping for this, is tapping into Blip.fm as well to make those tweets clickable and listenable.

Next up is SongSnarl. This makes use of the Snarl notification system, which holds a special little place in my heart. All Snarl does is display sleek popup notifications that replace Windows' myriad balloons and toast slices. Thing is, Snarl does it really, really well. Songsnarl taps in and will show you track information when a new song starts. Great for shuffling music when you have the player window hidden.

Finally, for iPhone and iPod Touch owners, there's a Songbird remote app. Pretty much identical to the iTunes remote, you can control playback and with the paid version, browse your library from your touch device.

So all that I'm missing right now is syncing to my iPod - Songbird supports any previous model but these newfangled devices are as of yet locked down and inaccessible to the program. Other than that, it's pretty much responsible for all my auditory needs.

And so, what media player fuels your personal soundtrack? What killer features or integration keeps you locked in? By all means, rock out in the comments.

Evernote Remembers Stuff So You Don't Have To

So I've been terrible with information over the years. I can manage an address book and a calendar, which are simple and structured, but when it comes to just random things I need to remember, good luck. You're looking at torn off bits of paper, post-it notes all over, and more often than not I'll be throwing away whatever it is that I just wrote down within minutes of using it. Basically I'm a goldfish with a pen.

How can the wonderful world of computers help? Well taking a bare bones approach gives me tiny notepad files all over my desktop, which I delete within minutes of using. Digital goldfish with a digital pen. Not helpful. I want to file stuff away and forget it until I need it. I don't need to see it unless I want it, and I don't want the temptation to clean house on my computer-assisted memory.

I transitioned to Microsoft OneNote some time ago for a solution and threw quite a bit of information in it, but I spent more tine organizing data and playing around than actually using it. The program has a very pretty and powerful interface, which is more distracting than useful. That, and the information's locked away in these files I can't access without OneNote. I can't guarantee I'll be at my desk when I need something. I need data that moves with me.

My new solution? Evernote! This handy little app exists on the Internet, on your desktop, and on your mobile device. You can sync all your data, access it anywhere, and enter new notes whenever and wherever you like. That gives it the green light for my integration-centric lifestyle. Finally, it's just data that I can put down or retrieve whenever I need to. No organization, no management, just completely optional tags and a search function. And that's perfect for me.

Do you use Evernote or a similar application to aid your memory? What's your system? Sound off in the comments and tell me all about it!

Supercharge your Network with OpenDNS

Quick bit of networking 101 for ya; DNS, or Domain Name Service. That's what's responsible for taking your human-readable web addresses and translating them into computer-readable IP addresses. It's the phone book of the internet. In most cases, your Internet provider runs a DNS server that does this for you. It's probably competent, but there's so much more that can be done. Enter OpenDNS.

OpenDNS is a free service that replaces your default DNS servers. In addition to increased reliability, they also actively fail to resolve URLs for known malware hotbeds, providing an extra layer of security. All this happens as soon as you change to their servers. Setting up an account with OpenDNS allows you to associate your network's IP address with customizable settings. Pop your own logo on the "did-you-mean" pages and create URL shortcuts, like having "mail" forward to your webmail provider of choice. And for the micromanager, you can keep tabs on your network usage with the OpenDNS dashboard. If you've got family to protect you can block adult content, social networking sites, gambling sites or other illegal activity pretty easily. I prefer this to net-nanny software on the computer side which can be slow and usually easy to bypass.

I've been using OpenDNS for a few years now, and the built in security has been keeping me out of the dark corners of the internet with no effort at all. Overall it's an excellent service, super quick to setup, and highly recommended.

RSS Your Appetite with Snackr

Here's a quick pick for you. I was marvelling with a co-worker recently about how awesome RSS is. Brilliant little technology, scraping headlines from websites and delivering them to wherever you like. As a person who avoids actually going to websites whenever possible, RSS is the tool that fuels my bite sized reading.

There are a handful of built in RSS readers in your OS, probably a sidebar gadget or a functionality of your web browser or email client. Maybe you have RSS feeds going to your home page. That's all well and good. Myself, I've got Snackr.

Snackr is an Adobe Air app, simple and elegent in execution, and more powerful than your average reader. News items scroll by your desktop like a stock ticker. Images are included, and when something strikes your fancy you can just click and it pops up its own little window with the article inside. You still have a View Post button to visit the website if you really want, but you can get a whole lot of reading done without leaving your desktop.

The feature that really makes Snackr shine is its upcoming integration with Google Reader. You need to download the beta build for this. Now you can have the same feeds on multiple machines, synced up with the reader website for reading on the go. Best of all, when you mark something as read, or star it for quick retrieval, that also syncs across. All told, that one killer feature makes this my favorite reader yet.

Go ahead and check Snackr out, see if you like it. If you have an RSS solution that works for you, feel free to leave a link in the comments and I'll check it out.

My Media Conundrum

I'm a podcast hound, subscribed to a large number of audio and video shows from the likes of Revision3, cNet, 1Up and TWiT. For the most part, these shows live on my iPod Touch, providing entertaintment during my daily 90 minute commute. But due to this choice of device, I've come across a few roadblocks to my obsession with integration.

As far as I've found, you can only sync with iTunes, so I'm locked into that program for most of the process. Songbird and a handful of other programs will sync to other iPods, but the Touch isn't supported. On the bright side, iTunes offers a pretty good sync experience and I wouldn't mind sticking with it.

If I was only dealing in audio, no problem. When it comes to video however, I'm in all sorts of trouble. Any videos downloaded in HD will not play on the iPod. They need to be downloaded a second time or somehow converted. And that's assuming I can download videos in iTunes to begin with. Downloads get inturrupted and always have to start over, numerous times. When you're talking about 500 megs at a time, that's a big deal. So the search for alternatives begins.

Both Miro and Adobe Media Player offer an much better subscription, download and playback experience, using a P2P model for actually getting their videos. But whoops, neither program integrates with my iTunes library or syncs to the iPod.

So, I'm putting this challenge to the web. How can I subscribe, download, watch, convert and sync video podcasts in two apps or less? I'll be banging my head on this one over the weekend. Leave your recommendations in the comments section.

Making Twitter Useful

So for our first lesson we're going to tackle Twitter. That magical little service that everyone's talking about and nobody gets. Twitter is a microblogging platform, where you can send out posts, or tweets, of up to 140 characters. The main idea is to keep up on what you're doing or thinking and blasting that out there to anyone who might be interested. Just jumping in and posting is great, and personally satisfying, but you start with zero followers and zero reason for anyone to follow you. You're in a big empty room with no friends. So, the big challenge you'll be faced with is getting your updates seen by people who care. Lucky for you, they've got it covered.

See, Twitter is one of those 'open' systems. That means developers can pipe information from it into their own platforms and applications with little to no effort, and nowadays Twitter integrates with everything. So the good news is, you can bring your Twitter feed to wherever your real friends actually are. For me, that means Facebook.

Jay's rule of thumb #783: Never waste your time actually clicking around on a social network site. Join up, get your friends, point your information to it, and get out before you're taken by the top 5 quizzes.

So now my updates go somewhere useful, and my real friends who spend way too much time planting gardens and biting zombies on Facebook will see them. Pretty much any social network will allow you to import your Twitter feed as a status message. This is good because it's quick and easy to update from anywhere, and it helps you be active on the site even if you never go there.

Speaking of never going to the site, our next task is getting your updates to Twitter without having to use the Twitter site itself. Again, it's an open platform and there's a wide selection of client software out there you can use to tap into it. Most mobile devices will have some sort of support for tweeting on the go. The iPhone has Twitterrific and Tweetie. On the desktop, some multi-protocol IM clients have already added Twitter support, Digsby and Pidgin being at the top of that pile. And then there's a handful of standalone apps. Tweetdeck, Blu, and Twhirl coming up as a few great contenders.

Twhirl is, by far, my favorite general-use Twitter application. It's dead simple to use, and has a great notification system for the obsessive follower. I don't like to miss a thing, and when one of the people I follow says something pithy, it floats up in a sexy little bubble in the corner of my screen. Nice and unobtrusive, great for when I'm multitasking. Observe:

Following the right people on Twitter mixes useful links, self promotion, and esoteric nonesense

So that's the extent of my expertise. Twitter is a big part of my daily life. It keeps me in the loop with people I find interesting, and helps keep my friends in the loop with me. The simplicity of it all is a big win for the casual user, and the integration with everything but the kitchen sink makes it an invaluable tool for the social butterfly.

Questions? Concerns? Got a tool or use for Twitter that I failed to mention? I'm just one man with a limited view on things, so why don't you help out and pop that information right here in the comments.