by Jonathan Hensley
on July 23, 2008
in Demo, Main, Software, Tech, Videos
I finally got my SlideRocket Invite last night. I saw their demo a couple weeks ago.
My first impression after having a bit to play with it is pretty good. They’re still calling it a “Preview” which is more like an alpha version. They actually warn you when first logging in that there still may be issues. It didn’t take me long to see why they have the warning. Most of the functionality is working correctly but I did experience several glitches when working with the slide components, text and graphics.
The biggest thing I noticed was my laptop fan kicking on very soon after opening a new presentation in edit mode. Turns out SlideRocket is pretty CPU intensive using up 60% of my 
Core 2 Duo 2.2Ghz processor and Firefox was consuming double the RAM I’ve seen since upgrading to 3.0. Firefox was sluggish at times and even froze for over a minute on multiple occasions.
All in all though I’d have to say I’m very impressed so far. The menus were totally different than traditional presentation software but were pretty intuitive and easy to navigate. SlideRocket is definitely feature rich especially when compared to PowerPoint and creates much more powerful graphics in a lot less time.
Here’s a little slideshow I threw together showcasing some of the transitions, text effects and things.
by Jonathan Hensley
on July 22, 2008
in Main, Quick Links, Tech
Here are some interesting links from today:
- Steve Job Is Having Health Problems?
Apple beat expectations for 3Q, but investors used a late trading session to punish shares of the Mac and iPhone maker after the company offered conservative forward-looking guidance and refused to comment on the health of chief executive Steve Jobs.
- Call Someone – Without Having To Talk To Them
Boston-based MobileSphere launched a 'straight-to-voicemail' service yesterday called Slydial. If you listen to a short ad, you can then be connected to the voicemail inbox of any US mobile phone subscriber, without causing their phone to ring.
by Jonathan Hensley
on July 22, 2008
in Gear, Main, News, Software, Tech
Michael Arrington of TechCrunch thinks it can be a reality and he’s setting his sights on making it happen. I agree that it could be a great product if done correctly. However, I think it may be a while before decent components will be cheap enough to stay under the $200 goal.
I’m tired of waiting – I want a dead simple and dirt cheap touch screen web tablet to surf the web. Nothing fancy like the Dell latitude XT, which costs $2,500. Just a Macbook Air-thin touch screen machine that runs Firefox and possibly Skype on top of a Linux kernel. It doesn’t exist today, and as far as we can tell no one is creating one. So let’s design it, build a few and then open source the specs so anyone can create them.
Check out the rest of what Michael has to say about it.
by Jonathan Hensley
on July 21, 2008
in Gear, Main, News, Quick Links, Tech
Here are some interesting links from today:
- Is a Google Talk Contact Invisible?
Sometimes error messages can reveal more than they were supposed to. Rahul Bansal writes about a simple trick that helps you find out if one of your Google Talk contacts is offline or uses the invisible mode. The trick takes advantage of Google's off the
- Tech Vloggers Are Phoning It In
Cell phones created a big buzz in tech lately, and YouTube's tech vloggers have been working overtime to unbox, critique and compare the latest models.
- Has Blogging Lost Its Relational Focus?
I’ve always kept an eye on my competitors in the past so that I could gain an advantage over them but bloggers seem to be doing something that is counter-intuitive to me yet it seems to benefit them at the same time. I wonder if you could write somethin
- Windows Vista tip of the week
Oh, Windows. If there's one aspect of this operating system that's been a constant disappointment, it has to be its complete and utter inability to "remember" window settings. You know the drill: You go into, say, the Documents folder and customize the wi
- A Detailed Explanation Of How The BSA Misleads With Piracy Stats
I'm still hopeful that eventually the BSA will recognize that it's doing more damage to its own position by publishing obviously bogus numbers. So, with the organization releasing another bogus stat today, it's time to explain why it's wrong and misleadin
by Jonathan Hensley
on July 20, 2008
in Apple, Humor, Main, Software, Tech, TV
We’ve all seen the Mac vs. PC ads on TV and the Internet portraying the superiority of the Mac’s hardware and software. Believe it or not, many people believe that these skewed commercials actually reflect reality. I for one, thoroughly enjoy the hilarity of them… at least until it hits me that the reason Apple continues to make more is because they’re working.
This picture illustrates the tone of the commercials perfectly.
by Jonathan Hensley
on July 19, 2008
in Gear, Main, News, Quick Links, Tech
Here are some interesting links from today:
- Clove 2 (Cemetech Bluetooth Dataglove)
Clove 2 is a bluetooth dataglove used for one-handed typing. It uses a 31-combination finger chording design with three modes to allow every key on a standard keyboard to be typed with minimal effort. The bluetooth functionality removes the need to tether
- Lifehacker Faceoff: Outlook vs. Gmail
Gmail launched in 2004 and has matured each year, but Microsoft Outlook (with Exchange) is still the most popular tool for accessing email. Comparing the two side by side, is it time to jump ship from either platform? Let's find out.
by Jonathan Hensley
on July 18, 2008
in Gear, Main, News, Quick Links, Tech
Here are some interesting links from today:
- iPhone, Blackberry locked in titanic struggle for supremacy
Determining exactly what impact the new iPhone will have on RIM's chunk of the smartphone market appears to be tricker than you might think, though. At least one market analyst seems to think RIM is doomed…
- The New iGoogle Gets Full Screen Gmail
Now the Gmail gadget can go full screen, and it looks and feels very much like regular old Gmail. You can read, compose, and archive email just as you would from Gmail (no labeling yet). Likewise, RSS feeds now look and feel very much like Google Reader.
by Jonathan Hensley
on July 17, 2008
in Gear, Main, News, Quick Links, Tech
Here are some interesting links from today:
- Portable Gmail Contacts
Google Contacts Autocomplete is a Greasemonkey script that brings your Gmail contacts everywhere you go on the web. When you start to type the name of your friend or his email address, the script shows a list of suggestions.
- Gmail and Google Calendar to Add Offline Support
It seems that this year Google's most popular web applications will work offline. After Google Reader and Google Docs, two other services will integrate with Gears. Gmail and Google Calendar will add offline support in approximately 6 weeks.
- Updates to Gmail contact manager
We've heard from some of you that Gmail's auto-added contacts can lead to too much address book clutter. One of the advantages of automatically creating contacts is that all of the addresses you email subsequently show up in auto-complete.
- Cleaner skies explain surprise rate of warming
GOODBYE air pollution, hello brighter days. That's been the trend in Europe for the past 30 years; unfortunately cleaning up the skies has allowed more of the sun's rays to pierce the atmosphere, contributing to at least half the warming that has occurred
