cdharrison.com

PicLens is an add-on for Firefox, Internet Explorer and Safari that will change the way you interact with a lot of websites. The add-on is currently compatible with Flickr, Photobucket, Picasa Web Albums, DeviantArt, Smugmug, Facebook, MySpace, Bebo, Hi5, Friendster, Google Images, Yahoo Images, Ask Images, Live Images, and AOL Images.

These screen captures really don’t do PicLens justice. You really have to see it to believe it. (Here’s a brief walkthrough on how PicLens works in Firefox.)

Browsing PicLens

Browsing is initiated by clicking on a little “play” button that will appear upon hover over images in the various supported services. Clicking this button will launch PicLens full-screen where you can start browsing through your images in a 3D environments. Thumbnails appeared very quickly, even on my Dell Inspiron 6000 (1.6GHz Pentium M, 1.5Gb RAM). In the example to the left, I was only previewing a small set of photos in my Flickr stream, but it worked well when I used it to browse through my entire photo collection.

Getting in Closer

Selecting an image will create a slightly larger, higher quality thumbnail of the photo you’d like to look at. This is why PicLens is so responsive. It pulls in very low-resolution previews at first, but streams in higher quality thumbnails as you use the add-on, as well.

A Better Slideshow

The PicLens photo detail interface is pretty similar to Flickr’s built-in slideshow capabilities, except PicLens runs full-screen natively. Images stream in pretty quickly (depending on connection speed) and you can browse through images pretty quickly using back and forward buttons… or hit play and let it go on its own.

The Verdict

Overall, I’m really digging this plugin. It’s unobtrusive and doesn’t effect using your sites regularly… if you don’t want to use PicLens, you simply don’t click on the buttons to activate it. It adds enough additional functionality to enhance Flickr, the rest is just gravy. Check out PicLens for your browser.

A few months ago, I picked up a Canon PowerShot S5 IS from Amazon.com. It’s the nicest digital camera I’ve owned so far.

I chose this camera for a few reasons:

• I wanted something more than 6.0 Megapixels;
• I wanted something with at least 8x optical zoom;
• I wanted something that could use lens accessories;
• I didn’t want to spend more than $400.

The last point was most important. I would have rather invested the money in picking up a Canon Digital Rebel XTi or something comparable, but it would’ve meant spending far more money for something that would’ve had an even greater learning curve for me. The Canon PowerShot S5 IS is a full-featured 8.0-megapixel digital camera with 12x optical zoom, and it’s ended up being a perfect match for me.

My only beef with the S5 so far is the amount of noise in photos taken in lower light situations.

For the past week I’ve been testing out several Beta applications associated with Windows Live. I initially learned about them while upgrading to the latest Windows Live Writer Beta. What I’ve seen so far has been exceptional. The unified interfaces, ease of use, and quick responsiveness have earned these apps a place in my daily workflow. In this article, I’ll cover some of the things I love and hate about Windows Live Writer Beta, Windows Live Mail Beta, and Windows Live Photo Gallery and how I’m using them now.

More

I’ve been working on a couple of lengthy articles that I should have available on the site soon. The first is a review of Litmus, an email and browser testing web app. The second article is a review of the Light content management system.

Buzzword is abso-friggin-lutely gorgeous. Seriously. I learned about Buzzword when I heard that Adobe bought the company developing it: Virtual Ubiquity. After spending a good bit of time using Buzzword, I may never use Microsoft Word or Google Docs again. (Check out these screenshots.)

Adobe was smart to pick this company up. It’s a fantastic use of Flash technology and could prove to be an incredible asset to Adobe’s burgeoning line of online applications (Photoshop Express, Premiere Express). Microsoft has already announced that they would be offering an online, ad-supported version of Word soon; and Google has been offering Google Docs - which includes a word processor, spreadsheets and presentations. Not having used Word Online (or whatever Microsoft will call it), I can’t comment on how it will look, but I can say that Buzzword is light-years beyond Google Docs word-processor.

• THE GREAT
  • Simple, streamlined interface.
  • Easy-to-use.
  • Beautiful fonts - Adobe Garamond Pro, Courier Std, Cronos Pro, Minion Pro, Myriad Pro, News Gothic Std, and Tekton Pro. (Thanks, Adobe!)
• THE GOOD
  • You can easily save your file for offline use. Current formats supported include Word (.doc), XML and Rich-Text (.rtf).
  • Everything is web-based, so you can access your documents from anywhere.
  • You can share any documents you create with other people and you can control whether they can be a co-author, reviewer or a reader. (Unfortunately, other people need to have a Buzzword account.)
• THE BAD
  • Requires Adobe Flash. But seriously, who doesn’t have Flash at this point?
  • Still in Beta. You have to have an account in order to do anything with the service.
  • Can’t save files as PDFs (which seems like a no-brainer…) (Though, if you have Acrobat installed as a printer, you can always print the documents as a PDF.)
  • No style support. (Thanks Will!)
  • Other minor issues:
    • No HTML export. (Admittedly, this might be a good thing.)
    • No support for Open Document Format (ODF).

In short, even though there’s still some work to be done, Buzzword is the best web-based word processor I’ve ever used. If you’ve never heard of it before, you’ve heard of it now. Head on over to Buzzword.com to sign up for the chance to get a beta invite.

P.S. In case you’re interested, I typed up this review in Buzzword and printed it to PDF to show you how the output looks: Buzzword Review PDF

Well, I am nearly two weeks into my walking challenge and so far so good. I’ve walked a total of 7 times since August 17th, for a total of 8.59 miles and 3,291 calories burned. Considering my lack of activity prior to the 17th, I’d say I’m off to a pretty good start. Walking with the Nike+ sensor and being able to track my progress has made walking fun for me. It’s exercise meets video game in a way…

My only beef with Nike+ so far is the website. The all-Flash interface is certainly nice on the eyes, but it doesn’t offer the functionality I’ve come to expect from sites that offer “social” features. It should be easy to direct people to your profile page, but it isn’t. You should be able to see how your friends are doing, but you can’t.

1. If you want to share your progress, you have to do it via Nike-provided Flash widgets. You cannot link directly to your profile on the Nike+ website.
2. The only way you can keep track of friends is through challenges (or via widgets - IF they happen to display them somewhere). Then and only then can you click on your friends’ name … and see their last run, and total run time and distance.

Neither of these are deal-breakers for me, but they’re annoying. That’s why I am excited about RunnerPlus.com. It’s everything that Nike+ isn’t. It has profile pages. It has friends. It has better visualizations of run/walk data. And it works with or with Nike+. (You can set up your profile to sync up with your Nike+ account if you like. Otherwise, they offer a software solution that allows you to sync your runs/walks without having to bother with iTunes or NikePlus.com.)

RunnerPlus has:

• Better, more accurate visualizations.
• Calendar-view … so you can see which days you walked and how far.
• Profile pages with easy to remember URLs! Here’s mine: http://cdharrison.runnerplus.com/
• Friends! You can see how they are doing and they can see how you’re doing.

In short, it has more to offer than the official NikePlus website, and that’s a good thing. If you’re using Nike+, do yourself a favor and check our RunnerPlus.com. You’ll be glad you did.

Thanks for sharing this site with me, Patrick!

A while back, I wrote about how I was able to sync Google Calendar events with my iPod using Outlook 2007. Because of various problems I had with Outlook 2007, including data corruption issues caused in part by subscribing to Internet Calendars, I uninstalled the program and reinstalled Outlook 2003 on my system.

I’ve tried the open-source add-in for Outlook, RemoteCalendars, but installation and configuration of it requires .Net Framework 2.20 and Visual Studio Tools for Office to be installed.

I had all but given up on finding a suitable replacement, when on a whim, I did a Google search for “Google Calendar Outlook“. One of the sponsored links was to SyncMyCal. (What initially drew my eye to the ad was the Google Checkout icon.) Being curious, I clicked through to the site. I’m glad I did.

SyncMyCal made the process of syncing Google Calendar with Outlook 2003 incredibly easy. It’s available in a free and a pay version. The main limitations of the free version are that you have to manually sync your calendars and you can only sync up to 7 days at a time. (For most people, this limitation isn’t going to be a huge deal.)

With SyncMyCal you can:

• Upload events from Outlook to Google Calendar
• Download events from Google Calendar into Outlook
• Synchronize Multiple Calendars
• Synchronize Multiple Events

It even supports Google Apps! (This was a big deal for me, as I’ve been using Google Apps for cdharrison.com for quite some time.)

SyncMyCal works with Microsoft Outlook XP/2003/2007. SyncMyCal is available in a Free or Pro ($25) Edition. Also available is SyncMyCal Mobile and SyncMyCal 30Boxes.

Mountain Dew has had more spinoffs than the Power Rangers. Seriously, you’ve got Code Red, Baja Blast, LiveWire, and several limited edition flavors. (Not to mention all sorts of Mountain Dew Slurpee flavors…) The latest of these odd concoctions is Mountain Dew Game Fuel. Colored a bright orange, this citrus/cherry-flavored beverage is promoting the upcoming release of HALO 3.

The mixture of citrus and cherry is a little odd, but it works. It’ll never replace my love for regular Mountain Dew, but I would definitely drink it again.

“Full Throttle: Nature is one BAD Mother”

Full Throttle, Full Throttle Fury and Full Throttle Blue Demon are amongst my favorite energy drinks. Seeing another Full Throttle flavor crop up seemed like a no brainer and so I decided to pick one up yesterday.

Full Throttle Mother is quite possibly one of the worst beverages I’ve ever consumed. (It’s second only to Tab.)

Where Mother goes wrong is the fruit juice… The berry flavor just didn’t do it for me. It created an aftertaste that was hardly palatable. I took two sips and had to put it down. I had three other coworkers try it out and two of them had the same reaction as I did: this drink sucks.