Subscribe to RSS FeedTechTips: RockMelt: The Social Web Browser
If you are a heavy Facebook and Twitter user, you might want to hunt for an invite and try the RockMelt web browser. RockMelt works like any other browser with one big difference: it integrates Facebook and Twitter. In short, one can use the browser to browse web sites AND keep up-to-date with your friends without opening Facebook or Twitter. [...]
TechTips: Read It Later With Instapaper
How many times a day do you come across articles or interesting items online that you don’t have time to read at that moment? The most common method of saving such content is to create browser bookmarks. However, over time browser bookmark lists can become very long and unorganized. Another common approach to saving content [...]
TechTips: URL Shortening
URL shortening is the process of taking a long URL and turning it into, well, a shorter one. For example, instead of using the 168 character URL http://library.ohio-state.edu/search~S7/?searchtype=a&searcharg=+gee+e+gordon&searchscope=7&SORT=DZ&extended=0&SUBMIT=Search&searchlimits=&searchorigarg=ae+gordon+gee, one could use the 27 character shortened URL of http://tinyurl.com/geebooks. The mechanism for resolving a shortened URL is relatively simple. The long URL must first be registered [...]
TechTips: Extending Cellphone Battery Life
I recently purchased a new Android-based mobile phone. I spent the first day checking out all the features and options, downloading a bunch of applications, and experimenting with the GPS and location-based services. It didn’t take very long to notice the battery drained relatively quickly. The problem with the current generation of phones is that all [...]
TechTips: Can My Smartphone Get a Virus?
A couple of weeks ago I bought my first Android phone. As I was researching cool applications to install, I stumbled upon this blog posting from the security company Panda about smartphones sold by Vodafone in Spain being infected with the Mariposa botnet.While the Vodaphone outbreak was limited is scale it did make me think. If [...]
TechTips: foursquare
Foursquare is an location-based social networking service (some call it a game) that is a combination a Facebook status, a Twitter update, and a Yelp restaurant review. Users “checkin” at different locations, unlock badges, post “to-dos” and “tips” for different locations. The goal of the service is to help users find new ways to explore a city [...]
TechTips: Augmented Reality
In the movie The Terminator, the viewer is taken frequently to the Terminator’s point-of view. We know this is Terminator’s POV because there is image digitization and the people he is chasing are more luminous than objects in the foreground and background, which suggests infra-red. In the margins of the view we see columns of [...]
TechTips: Micro-blogging
Most readers should have at least heard of Twitter by now. Twitter is one of many social networking micro-blogging tools which are available. Simply defined, micro-blogging is a form of blogging that allows individuals to publish brief text or multimedia updates. If you are a Facebook user, you become a micro-blogger every time you update [...]
TechTips: High Capacity Bar Codes
An academic librarian hands out a one page summary sheet at a library orientation program. Glancing down, an attendee notices a weird looking bar code placed at the bottom of the page. Taking out their mobile device, the attendee photographs the bar code and software converts the image into an Internet accessible address. The [...]
TechTips: Third Generation Mobile Phones (3G)
This TechTip comes from the mail bag. The reader’s question: What is a 3G phone? 3G refers to third generation mobile phones, and associated networks, which incorporate high-speed Internet access and multimedia. This particular phone/network architecture enables mobile service providers to offer a wide range of more advanced services through greater network throughput and capacity. [...]
