A cool Adobe Air application designed to display Google Reader posts in a clean 0SX-themed desktop client. It’s not perfect yet (glitches, disappearing scrollbars on occasion) but it’s a project worth keeping an eye on.
Download at: http://code.google.com/p/readair/
(note: requires installation of Adobe Air)
![[del.icio.us]](http://images.del.icio.us/static/img/delicious.small.gif){kind=small}
In addition to the extensions described in the previous post, Chrome includes functionality for a few helpful keyboard shortcuts and diagnostic/status information about browser operations.
Keyboard Shortcuts: Many of these are well known but they are all incredibly helpful
(Full listing available at: Explore Google Chrome Features)
Omnibar commands:
The Omnibar is Chrome’s address bar and search bar rolled into one thing. Typing a URL goes to that site, typing a search query looks up results in Google Search.
In addition to those operations, Chrome allows access to some valuable information about the browser’s inner workings.
This is the first in a series of several posts outlining ways to take advantage of lesser-known Chrome features.
To try out the most recent development version of Chrome, you will need to make a few easy changes to your installation.
(img src: popandpolitics.com)
Instructions:
This developer channel might be a bit buggy but it gives you the chance to try out the newest Chrome release. A few notable features at the writing of this post:
Info about current releases on each channel can be found on the updates blog for versions: stable, beta, and dev
Available Chrome extensions include:
Additional flags for adding functionality: (turn them on just as you did –enable-extensions)
¡ʎɐqǝ uo pɹɐoqʎǝʞ ɐ ʎnq ı ǝɯıʇ ƃuı…ɟ ʇsɐן ǝɥʇ sı sıɥʇ
It’s stupid but cute. In the extended alphabet sets of, there is a vast selection of letters. Among these are those that can be used to model normal english characters upside-down. This site has a script for converting text and a key of each character’s representation.
How to type upside down text and letters in HTML
After many revisions on the basic to-do list idea, I’ve settled on what is essentially a buffer. I love immersing myself in information – books, music, podcasts, blogs, traditional media, emails, radio, newspaper, tv, etc. but there’s just too much to do justice to. If I tried to find a straight path through the mess, there would be lots of good content slipping by.
This is ancient and probably old news to everyone out there, but I just discovered this text animation of Star Wars: A New Hope.
It’s nothing incredibly special but I found it incredible that after more than 7 years they’re still hosting and running this server.
Click here to see the animation
If that doesn’t work:
So I found this site. It’s a magazine me and my friends found and it basically has projects in which you use stuff you might find at home and MAKE it into something. They give step-by-step instructions that have been helpful to me sometimes.
You can got to their volumes and find an issue you might find interesting..yay? Sadly there are only a small number of issues. This one Nathaniel would like.
Update: This is indeed something I enjoy. Look to Instructables and Instuctables: MAKE group for more projects and detailed project instructions.
I like to keep my iTunes organized but as it’s grown, there’s just not time to do justice to the job. That’s where iTunes Scripts come in. Apple has made it possible to write scripts for windows that access things like playlists, albums, songs, song info, the iPod and more. Using JavaScript, Perl, C#, etc. developers have written a number of incredibly helpful tools for cleaning up and organizing the iTunes library.
Be careful though – some of these delete metadata or files without much warning. Make sure you’re doing what you intend to do.
Teridon’s site has a nice library of tools available in an executable package.
Apple released a few sample scripts with the iTunesCOMWindowsSDK package of developer header files.
Moreover, the methods for developing custom scripts are very approachable in case these scripts don’t do quite what you need.
Yesterday’s inauguration was about more than Obama’s presidency. The country came together to close the door on years of political partisanship, and to remind ourselves once again that it is the American people that make the country great. It is the joining together of individuals from all over the country and from diverse backgrounds and ways of life from which this country draws its strength.
A token of that unity is the CNN image taken by the GeoEye satellite of between one and two million people on the national mall to observe this inauguration, despite hours of security checks and frigid cold weather.
CNN: Satellite image of crowds on the mall
New to the field of computer science, I set out this month to find myself a job for after graduation in the Spring. As a new graduate, I’ve been looking for entry-level positions into the field. As my search grew, I became more and more astounded by the degree to which it was impossible to directly find potential jobs.
To some degree I’m sure this is a reflection of the miserable general job market and the especially poor tech job market at the moment. That’s to be expected. There are nevertheless plenty of possible jobs listed. It’s just that none of them are actually done by companies themselves. At least 90% of all interesting job listings encountered are done by recruiters from staffing agencies looking to market me as a consultant.
The decision by companies to look to consultants rather than individual job seekers probably comes down to a question of qualifications. When a company or division is expanding or replacing someone on the team, someone in human resources is tasked with filling the spot. These people are not necessarily informed enough to know that Ubuntu administration and linux administration skills overlap or that someone with Javascript expertise is qualified to some degree for AJAX. Rather than go to the trouble of bothering the software guys in the company to screen applicants, they turn to staffing agencies to supply people, the same staffing agencies which, by the way, skim off a significant chunk of change for their services.
This setup makes it quick and easy for HR people to fill developer slots, and maybe some developers with targeted skills can benefit from this matchup. I am of the opinion, however, that a software company without the informed scrutiny to screen applicants on its own may not be as concerned about the quality of the employees it settles for, and may not care whether they’re happy enough to stick around for the long term.
