CHRISdotTODD

Posting and viewing pictures on the Internet has become a popular activity with sites such as Flickr and Picasa , as well as social networking sites Facebook and MySpace . I have always thought that the quality of the photos are not what they should be; now my opinion has changed. With the PicLens plug-in for Firefox , Internet Explorer, and Safari, there is a new way to browse pictures that really helps bring out the quality of high-resolution photos. PicLens instantly transforms your browser into a full-screen, 3D experience for viewing images on the web. Photos will come to life via a cinematic presentation that goes well beyond the confines of the traditional browser window. With PicLens, browsing and viewing images on the web will never be the same again. At first glance, this just looks like an alternative to browsing photos -- which works quite well, by the way. But what really sold me was how good my photos look using PicLens. It is simple to use, click the arrow that is sup

In a blog on February 26, 2008 , I told you about Comcast being investigated by the FCC for their network management -- specifically P2P apps. I also suggest that you should quit using Comcast as a vendor. Well today I canceled my Comcast services as I now am using Verizon FIOS . So far, no problems with Verizon's service. Now, only time will tell.

A 2007 Independent Games Festival finalist, Armadillo Run is a fun, unique game that tests your creativity, knowledge of physics, and engineering skills to win. Armadillo Run presents you with a series of more and more complex puzzles to solve -- using a selection of building materials with various characteristics, build a way for the Armadillo to escape. Building materials? Armadillo? It's not as crazy as it may sound. First, the Armadillo is just a round ball. And, your materials include the following: Metal bars Rope Cloth Sheet metal Elastic Rubber Rockets Oh, and you are given a budget too; you don't get those materials for free. Finally, you have the ability to set tension and a timer that will break a connection free. Combine this with increasingly difficult, 50 levels of play, plus 10 bonus rounds, and we're talking many hours of brain struggling fun. Think this might be for you? You can try the demo for free, and buy for only $19 USD. Oh, and it's less than 2

Some colleagues at work have been touting AutoHotKey as a good way to write macros for Windows. I thought, "what do I need to write any macros for?" Well today I finally had a need, and AutoHotKey came through with flying colors. AutoHotKey is an open source macro program for Windows. You can use it to replace keyboard, joystick, and mouse operations; you can even save it as an .exe so you can run your macros on machines that do not have AutoHotKey installed. I had to update about 50 entries in a database with the same text, but my only interface was through my web browser. I had a list of records in Excel, so using AutoHotKey, I was able to perform my updates in 1/10th of the time. All I did was select the next record and press my keyboard shortcut -- AutoHotKey did the rest. Here's what AutoHotKey did: Copy the record number from Excel Go to my web browser and paste the record number in to find the record Click modify record Click to another tab Go to the 5th line and

The New York Times just released an article that indicates the problems within Microsoft with Vista. “It would be a lot less costly to do the right thing for the customer now,” said Robin Leonard, a Microsoft sales manager, in an e-mail message sent to her superiors, “than to spend dollars on the back end trying to fix the problem.” This is just one of the many quotes found in this article. How about the 3 strikes of Vista Capable branding? It's there too. If you bought one of these products, you should know that "Last month, Judge Marsha A. Pechman granted class-action status to the suit, which is scheduled to go to trial in October." And they wonder why so many folks are thinking Mac...

Ever wonder how you get MS Office applications to display their entire full menu by default, instead of forcing you to click the arrow at the bottom or waiting? This can be accomplished through checking a setting called Always show full menus . Once set in one Office application, it makes the change for all Office applications. You will find the option under Tools | Customize..., then the Options tab.

I recently replace a hard drive and wanted to reset my preferred behavior for how My Documents opens. The default behavior for double-clicking the My Documents Desktop icon on a new Windows XP install is a single-pane "My Computer" view, and I prefer the two-pane "Explorer" view. If you right-click on My Documents and select Properties, the Properties dialog box will open on the Shortcut tab. By updating the Target field, you can change the behavior of how the window opens. Default value: "C:\Documents and Settings\ctodd\My Documents" Two-pane value: %SystemRoot%\explorer.exe /e, "C:\Documents and Settings\ctodd\My Documents" NOTE: ctodd is my Windows username You can use the same format for any folder path. Right-click on the Desktop and select New | Shortcut. A wizard will launch where you can select the folder path followed by a name for the shortcut. Once your new folder path shortcut is created, right-click as before, and use the same for

Seems like whatever application we use, it's never fast enough for us. And of course in today's computer world, all our applications are on the network, which is just one more bottleneck. Well if you're browsing the Internet, it can now happen faster. I have found 3 options for improving the performance of Firefox -- choose 1 based on your level of expertise. Option 1. For the person who just wants their computer to work, there is FireTune from Totalidea Software . Totalidea Software has created a small application that will backup and modify your Firefox configuration to optimize the performance of the browser. You tell it if you have a fast or slow computer and a fast or slow Internet connection, and FireTune will do the rest. In addition, FireTune offers some additional optimizations (Other optimizations tab) that should improve the performance for all Firefox users. What I like about FireTune is that you don't need to be a computer geek and get under-the-hood to im

The FCC held a hearing on Network Management at Harvard on February 25, 2008. Under scrutiny is Comcast's practice of blocking BitTorrent P2P traffic. Comcast claimed to only delay P2P traffic during congested periods -- but they are accomplishing this "delay" through terminating the P2P traffic. This "delay" of the P2P traffic is counter to the service Comcast sells its customers -- Comcast sells a throughput rate ("... 4 times faster than 1.5 Mbps DSL,...") for upload and download of Internet traffic, regardless of protocol being used. You can visit the FCC site to view the entire hearing . Comcast must know its in trouble, as they hired folks to take up all the space at the hearing -- keeping the public from being heard. It's hard to say what will happen next; big business seems to win all too much. Each of us can do our part -- don't use Comcast, when you have a choice; tell your congressman to fight for net neutrality; and join the Sav

I hooked up my new Apple TV on Wednesday, and have had a great time exploring all the content that it has opened up. Actually all the content was already available, but now I am spending the time to view it, because I can view it from the comfort of my favorite chair. And it took more no more than 5 minutes to get going. I like that I can easily view my favorite video podcasts (or listen to the audio ones) with just a few clicks on the remote. In addition, I can explore the iTunes store for new ones. Thinking about traveling to Europe? The checkout Rick Steves' video podcasts . Perhaps you want to see highlights from the Discovery channel , but don't have cable or satellite TV. No problem, there are video podcasts for that too. If you don't mind the low quality video of YouTube , using the Apple TV, it has never been easier to explore YouTube. I've watched many great clips from " Who's Line Is It Anyway? " to comedians such as Jeff Dunham and Jim Gaffiga