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Recommended Google Chrome Extensions

Matt — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 00:34:58 +0000

Now that Google Chrome supports extensions in the latest builds, we can now extend and make the best and fastest browser on the planet even better. Below is a list of extensions that I recommend and personally love:

AdBlock: Blocks ads on websites.
AutoPager: Popular sites with pages are all put on one page so you don’t have to constantly click to go to each page.
Better Gmail: Features to make Gmail … better.
Clickable Links: Text with http: and mailto: are made clickable if they’re not already.
Google Quick Scroll: Quickly find the passage you were searching for on Google.
IETab: For those websites that only works in IE (banks and government sites for example)
LastPass: Securely save and generate passwords to sites. Stores in the cloud.
Slinky: Google image links go straight to the image, instead of the frame/website.
Xmarks: For bookmark backup and syncing.

Be sure to check out all the other Google Chrome Extensions for others that fit your personal preferences.

FingerGaming.com – Gaming on the iPhone and iPod Touch

Matt — Sun, 03 Aug 2008 07:09:54 +0000

I’m announcing my new website I’ve just finished putting together and now unveiling to the public, FingerGaming.com. FingerGaming.com is all about gaming on the iPhone and iPod Touch, now that Apple’s new App Store is open to the public and cranking out games every single day. Mobile gaming a rapidly growing industry, and FingerGaming.com is going to be a part of that by covering everything games on the iPhone and iPod Touch.

The reviews, the main features on the site, will feature videos I’ve recorded of me playing these games, screenshots, price, link to the developer of the game, and of course my thoughts on the game itself.

Already we’re seeing a slew of very fun, polished, widely talked about games. You have my personal favorites, MotionX Poker, a dice poker game with achievements, dozens of dice you can unlock and use, and gameplay mechanics that take advantage of the iPhone (multi-touch, accelerometer support, vibrate, etc.) There’s also Galcon, a fast-paced space strategy game that is incredibly addictive and easy to pick up and play. Labyrinth is an age-old game, with a modern approach. It’s the wooden box in a maze with holes that you have to tilt the iPhone/iPod Touch to avoid. It’s simple for everyone to pick up and enjoy, with over 500 levels to play through, with more that you can download over time.

All of these games can be had for $10 or less, some are even free, such as the excellent Aurora Feint. Portable gaming has never been this powerful, and intuitive, and now it’s here. Visit FingerGaming if you want to be part of this wonderful new world.

Declining Online Chats, Me or Them?

Matt — Thu, 26 Apr 2007 20:16:56 +0000

Years ago, I had a lot of online “buddies” on my buddy list, whether it’s for AIM, Yahoo, or MSN (I used Trillian to use all 3 service at the same time.) As the years gone by, the list has dwindled, and today there’s only 3 people I talk to on a regular basis. I’ve always wondered why; have I become anti-social online, or shied away from making new contacts?

It could be a number of factors, one of them being that I can’t stand the original, bloated interfaces for AIM, Yahoo Messenger, or MSN Messenger. All 3 suffer from feature-creep, use too much resources for such simple tasks, and sport terrible user interfaces. Which is why I used Trillian, until version 3 came out, and it suffered from a lot of the problems the other IM clients had. I ended up going back to version 2, which was minimalistic, easy to use, and use little resources.

Another reason is that I’ve discovered that a lot of people are willing to lie online, more so than if you were in person. I’ve had a number of friends and associates blocked and ignored because I found out things they had told me was a lie. I imagine a psychologist would have his hands full studying this phenomenon; there’s already research material on it already. Because it is harder to detect lies during textual interaction compared to face-to-face, and the consequences are less severe, people are as likely to lie than not. So there’s the lack of trust on my part with new friends.

The other reason is that most old friends have gotten busy as the years gone on, and I’ve changed my habits, so we see each other online less and less. Eventually we would just stop talking, and after 2 years, I’d remove them from my buddy list. There’s nothing wrong with this, we all have to live our lives.

If I did have a lot of friends online to talk to, I wish they’d all use Google Talk, which is my ideal instant messenger client. It’s simple, easy to use, uses little resources, and quality software. I’m sick of Trillian, AIM, Yahoo, and MSN Messenger, and anyone using the MySpace messenger should be shot on sight.

Firefox 2 Browser Released

Matt — Wed, 25 Oct 2006 02:48:49 +0000

For the love of all that is holy, people, upgrade your browser to the latest and greatest on the planet: Firefox – Rediscover the Web

Sure, Internet Explorer 7 was released by Microsoft recently, but it’s too little, too late. This review from Download.com gave it a 7.0. In comparison, Firefox got an 8.3 at Download.com.

Some of my favorite highlights of this new update of Firefox 2.0:

Live Titles (for bookmarks)
Inline spell-checking
Session Restore
Easier to add and maintain extensions/addons.
Strict anti-phishing technology for better security
Better handling of RSS feeds

And really a bunch more that I can’t think of off the top of my head. I already have family and friends enjoying this browser, and having less problems with viruses, spyware, and other annoying problems. This means less frustrating phone calls for me to answer.

SteelSecurity Review

Matt — Thu, 19 Oct 2006 23:10:20 +0000

SteelSecurity is a suite of applications put together into a single interface. It is aimed at the hardcore gamer who wants his/her computer secure while not having it eat away precious resources while gaming, either offline or online. In fact, I’m the type of gamer that has eschewed antivirus software for years entirely because I got tired of forgetting to shut down the program before I start a game.

Everytime I got infected, I’d just reformat and reinstall Windows all over again. It was a complicated solution to the problem, but I had to have my gaming. With SteelSecurity, it looks to provide the solution that I’ve been looking for as a gamer, and I know many other gamers out there too would find it incredibly useful.

What does SteelSecurity do that other, more well-known, security suites doesn’t? The main draw is that it has built-in game profiles (and you can add your own, if needed.) These game profiles detect if a supported game is launched, and if detected then the firewall will open the ports that game needs, then switch the antivirus scanning to use minimal resources.

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Then there’s the biggest offender when gaming with security software running: popup notifications. This was the #1 reason why I never had a security software installed on my computer. Ever been in an intense firefight and suddenly a popup notifies that you that your antivirus program just updated, or it discovered an infected file, or some other such nonsense? At best, it disrupts your concentration, and sometimes it minimizes the game, and at worst it crashes the game. The game profiles prevent this from happening when it detects you’re gaming. In a nutshell, it lets you get your game on while not fully compromising your computer’s security, nor your sanity.

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While in use, SteelSecurity registers a small footprint. As you can see below, it took up only 31MB of my memory, which fluctuates between 30-35MB at any given time. When a game profile is activated, it’s even lower, and varies depending on the profile settings.

The antivirus is powered by BullGuard, a veteran in the antivirus industry. I had planned on doing a controlled test to evaluate the capability of the antivirus protection within SteelSecurity, but when the 3DGPU forums became infected via a forum exploit, I ended up with viruses, trojans, and malware wanting to infect my computer when I tried to figure out how to get rid of the malicious code infecting visitors to the forums using Internet Explorer.

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I had both AVG and SteelSecurity installed, and when the viruses and trojans wanted to infect my computer, SteelSecurity notified me that it had stopped the infection from taking place. AVG notified me a few minutes later of the same thing. However, some of the viruses got through, as apparently they were new and unidentified. SteelSecurity had me send the data to their servers when it discovered it couldn’t delete nor quarantine the malicious files, while AVG did nothing of the sort. A reformat and reinstall of WindowsXP later saw me reinstalling SteelSecurity and avoiding AVG.

The firewall is powerful and flexible, allowing for both beginners and advanced users to control the firewall and control what data leaves your computer and what is allowed in. The firewall engine is powered by Sygate/Symantec, respected names in firewall technology. This is especially handy to have in case a trojan got on your system and wants to send personal and private data to some punk elsewhere. Additionally it has phishing/pharming protection, so if you visited a known scam site, it’ll keep you from unwittingly giving away sensitive data. There are some proxies out there that does this, but it’s nice to have it already in SteelSecurity.

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Firewall options

In addition to a software-based firewall, and comprehensive virus protection, it will also protect you from spam by filtering them out of your email client. It uses the collective input from SteelSecurity users to help stop spam from reaching your inbox. It works a lot like Cloudmark’s antispam database, wherein if User A reports a particular email as spam, it uploads that data to the database and if that same email reaches User B, it flags it as spam and keeps it from your inbox. It is effective and simple. Unfortunately the only email clients supported, as of this writing, are Outlook Express and Microsoft’s Outlook (the full featured version of Outlook Express.)

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Although one point to take note is that SpamFilter uses up a decent amount of memory, so if you don’t intend to use this feature, it’ll be a good idea to disable this. SteelSeries plans on making the next version allow disabling of the SpamFilter when a game profile is loaded while gaming.

Finally, there’s a backup solution that allows you to backup any file you want, to a secure server online. All subscribers get 1GB of space to upload to, and you can upgrade to 5GB or more as needed (which costs extra, although I couldn’t find out how much at the time of this writing.) During the upload, the files are encrypted for maximum security, and once uploaded, you can then access the files anywhere, on any computer. You don’t even need SteelSecurity installed to access the backed up files, you can simply visit Steelseries.com and login to access the files.

This is great to be able to backup your custom game configurations, replays you’ve saved, or anything else you want. Additional features are smart transferring of files, meaning that if you already have the file uploaded, it won’t upload it again. You can also schedule a time to do automatic backups.

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Uploading backed up files

There’s a lot of other little touches that goes a long way with this program. Such as the recommended actions, where it gives you advice on what you should do to keep your computer secure, with a button right next to it that says “Do it!” to perform the advice right there. The main screen also lists other important information on each function, plus gives you an easy way to grab the latest update. On top of it is a functional, eye-pleasing interface that gets the job done.

After using SteelSecurity for over a week, I’ve made it my dedicated security software of choice. After over 5 years of never using one, it’s nice to know that I can get my game on and not worry about leaving my system open to malicious attacks and disruption. It leaves me wondering why it took this long for such an obvious solution to come into fruition. The only negative I could find was that the program has crashed on me while uploading via the backup function. It gave me a Microsoft C++ runtime error. It was the only error I experienced, and hopefully that is the only time.

If you’re interested in trying SteelSecurity for two months free, visit this SteelSeries page. If after that period you want to continue using SteelSecurity, you can subscribe for $70 for 12 months.

Are you taking steps to protect your family? Have you been browsing for security products? Look no further. Buy a CCTV camera and monitor. You will start feeling safe and protecting your loved ones immediately.

For iTunes (SpotDJ, The Filter, & Qloud)

Matt — Tue, 17 Oct 2006 01:08:21 +0000

There’s been a number of new applications and services recently that are looking to extend the usefulness and fun of iTunes. I’m always looking for new ways to have a better iTunes experience. With that in mind, I thought I’d provide my thoughts on these new iTunes extensions. After the jump, you’ll find my thoughts on Qloud, The Filter, and Qloud.

Qloud: Qloud is a people-powered music tagging service that integrates into iTunes and allows you to tag your songs. In theory this will provide you with a more customized personal database of songs that you can search for. For example, you can tag a number of songs from a variety of artists as Christmas if you feel the songs all have a holiday feel to it. Then you can simply search for Christmas to find those songs again. Along those same lines, you can go online to Qloud.com and find songs based on tags by people using Qloud. Then it effectively becomes a music recommendation service similar to how Last.fm works.
As it is now, Qloud is still in a beta stage and pretty rough around the edges. Due to this, I’ve uninstalled Qloud as it is too rough around the edges. However, it has promise, and I wouldn’t be adverse to trying it out again in the near future. Some of the issues I had with it is that it is too slow, uses up too much resources, and the user interface is clumsy and confusing. The inability to tag albums is a major drawback, in my opinion. The font it uses isn’t the same as the size setting you have for iTunes, and for me, is too small to read comfortably. The blue Qloud icon that sits within iTunes looks out of place and mars an otherwise clean interface. Also, since the service is still new, the online version of Qloud isn’t terribly useful at this point. Once more people participate, it should be more effective.
The Filter: With an endorsement by famed musician, Peter Gabriel, The Filter is grabbing attention as the application to get for your iTunes media player. What The Filter does is create playlists based on the song you’re currently playing (also the artist and the genre, your choice), and it does it smartly by accessing the All-Music Guide database for recommendations. Simply hit the big F button and it’ll create the playlist for you. Clearly, everyone’s mileage may vary because it depends on a few factors, but the biggest one is how big your library is. The Filter recommends that you have more than 300 songs, but it’d really benefit from a much larger library. I have 12,000 songs and based on the playlists I’ve created, it has not disappoint.
In fact, of the three programs/services I’m reviewing in this blog post, The Filter is the only one that has stayed on my computer and seen regular usage daily. With so many songs, I’ve rediscovered a lot of songs I’ve forgotten about, and it’s like digging up treasure chests of memories each time.

SpotDJ: SpotDJ, another application in beta testing, allows you to hear what others said about a particular song you just listened to. You can set it to only do DJ spots at certain intervals, or listen to one (if available) by pressing the SpotDJ button in the interface. With the way it is set up, it interacts with iTunes but isn’t really a part of iTunes. It pops up an interface that isn’t anything to write home about. If there’s no spot to listen to for the song you’re listening to, you can add one if you have a microphone plugged in, simply just hit the Spot this song button and record a spot for the song. Then users can rate spots, and the spot that has the best rating is played for everyone else who listens to that song.
SpotDJ has potential, but relies heavily on participation by users. The few spots I did get to hear, have either been too low to hear, too hard to understand what the DJ was saying, or background noise was too loud. Obviously the rating system should take care of that, but as it is in this early stage, it’s not entirely fun to use now. On top of that, the program eats up a huge amount of resources. As I’m looking at it now, it is at 50MB. That’s a lot for a program with a simple function.

Update: Be sure to check out the comments, as the co-founder of SpotDJ addresses the concerns I brought up in this post, and provides some clarification on what they’re working on.

Google Analytics

Matt — Thu, 17 Nov 2005 21:08:21 +0000

After checking out both Mint and MeasureMaps in this post, I figure I should check out the new Google Analytics, which is a rebranded Urchin software. Analytics, while not entirely similar to either Mint or MeasureMaps, still provides essential stats about your visitors to your site. Google bought up Urchin last year, and Analytics is the result. From what I can tell, it’s an older version of Urchin, possibly because it is the stablest for Google to work with.

Analytics is full of graphs, numbers, and options for you to choose from. In fact, it’s so loaded, that it would be easy to feel overwhelmed, which isn’t a problem with MeasureMaps or Mint. However, it is a good thing, as it covers just about everything you could possibly want to know about your site, and the visitors that come there. Installation is simple; just fill out a few details, and Google hands you a javascript code to put on your site, and 12 hours later, Google has all the information presented for you.

The Latest Stat Tracking Services

Matt — Thu, 03 Nov 2005 01:12:57 +0000

As a web designer, I’m afforded one of the luxuries (read: addiction) of checking to see who visited my site, other sites that have linked to mine, and what search terms were used for search engines to refer traffic to the site. It’s always fascinating to see what other sites have to say about your site, or a particular topic you wrote about. Think of it as a mild ego boost, readily available at your command.

There are two new services that give you the power to track your stats; Mint from Shaun Inman, and Measure Map from the folks behind MovableType. They’re both a bit different, and don’t warrant a comparison. Mint costs $30 per site, and Measure Map, as far as I’m aware, is free. Mint is available now, while Measure Map is still in an alpha state and you need an invitation to try it out, which I did; hence this post.

Mint is for the hardcore stat junkie, as it has everything you could possibly want to know, and then some, thanks to the extensions known as Peppers (get it, Peppermint?) It is easy to use, features a great design, and presents all the infromation in a fluid way. Thanks to further support from other people out there, you can easily install a Pepper that adds even more functionality. While $30 is a bit steep if you just want to track stats on a simple blog or website, it’s worth it for larger sites. Not to mention it supports Shaun Inman, who deserves the support.

Measure Map, while not feature complete yet, is still quite nice. It features a simple, concise design that won’t confuse you. While the information could be presented better, it will be more user-friendly to those who haven’t jumped onto the stat tracking bandwagon yet. It also features some Flash goodness to give you a visual indication of how many people are using what browsers, what countries they’re from, and more. I can see Measure Map becoming a popular service, as long as they offer it for free.

Personally I plan on using both, as they complement each other, and well, I’m a stat junkie, too. Both are worth trying out.

Google Talk Released

Matt — Wed, 24 Aug 2005 05:15:20 +0000

Once again Google has done it again. They’ve released a stellar software that you can’t help but love. Google Talk hopes to compete against AOL’s AIM, MSN’s Messenger, Yahoo’s Messenger, Cerulean Studio’s Trillian, and GAIM. Essentially it’s an instant messaging software with quality VOIP capabilities so you can call someone up over the internet and chat via voice in case you don’t feel like typing. If you have a Gmail account (required right now for beta testing) it’ll notify you of new emails.

The UI is clean, snappy, and feels nice as you use it. No advertisement, no bloat, no useless features. It’s classic Google goodness. I’ve been using Trillian for years, but the feature creep bloat has me itching for something new, and Google Talk may just be the ticket. Here’s a review from DownloadSquad.

New AOL Explorer Browser

Matt — Wed, 27 Jul 2005 01:08:21 +0000

Just saw that AOL has just released their AOL Explorer browser for download. As a web designer, I’m surprised to see this out, especially since it’s just a Internet Explorer 6.0 shell. With IE7 beta just around the corner (August 3rd, last I heard), this makes the announcement unexciting and disheartening, as both a web surfer and a web designer.

I do have to admit the UI design is very slick (see screenshot), I really like it. The features it has are nice too, it’s just a shame that it is being held back by the inferior IE6 engine. AOL should’ve used the Firefox codebase, and slap on this UI on, and it would’ve been a lot more exciting, not to mention more secure.

Update: If you install the IE7 beta, you’ll find that AOL Explorer will use that, and since the UI on IE7 beta is horrible, it works out to use AOL Explorer as the shell, since its UI is a lot nicer and usable. Never thought I’d actually use an AOL product again, but Firefox is still my main browser, for obvious reasons.