Current Tech Blog

I’ve decided to embark on the experiment of disabling most of my social network sync/forwarding/cross-post settings and just funneling everything through Posterous. The main idea is to create a single pipeline through which all content is routed, and Posterous is a great service to do so, as long as you’re comfortable giving that service a lot of power.

Several heavy social network using friends have recommended Posterous to me already, but I’ve always felt turned off by the email part. I know email’s convenient and ubiquitous and for the most part accepted by the entire world, but it’s my least favorite place to hang out these days (ok, my voicemail inbox is worse, but barely). I pretty much hate checking my Gmail… a wasteland of starred items that I starred to remind myself to come back to, but never did, and now they make me feel bad about myself every time I log in.

But I digress. Using Posterous isn’t about hanging out in my inbox, it’s simply about using the email protocol to post pretty much anything to anywhere: text, photos, videos, etc., to blogs, Facebook profiles/pages, Twitter, etc. I can access my email with my computer or my mobile phone, and I always have one or both of them on me at all times. The service is a lot more robust than how I’m explaining it, so if you’re befuddled I recommend you read the Posterous FAQ for a very thorough walk-through.

Essentially I’m disabling cross-posting Del.icio.us links to Tumblr, blip.fm posts to Friendfeed, Flickr photos to Facebook, Facebook status updates to OMG I CAN’T KEEP TRACK OF ALL MY CROSS-POSTING ANYMORE, DID IT ORIGINATE IN MY LAST.FM SETTINGS OR MY TWITTER OAUTH, I NEED TO START OVER. See? I’ve gone crazy. So I’m linking all my online accounts to Posterous only, and I’m going to use the Posterous email protocol to send my content exactly where I want. I like experiments! This will be fun!

Here’s how it works:

• *I want to post a photo to Flickr: flickr@myaccount.posterous.com
• *I want to post the same photo to Flickr and Friendfeed: flickr+friendfeed@myaccount.posterous.com
• *I want to post the same piece of content to every service I’ve linked to Posterous: post@myaccount.posterous.com
• *I want to post something to my Posterous account, but not to any of my linked services: posterous@myaccount.posterous.com

And so on.

Now, because I really do belong to a ton of social networks that I use regularly, completely switching up my sharing methods is a little complicated, and I’ve already run into a few stumpers. So I thought this would be a good opportunity to share any little tricks I figure out along the way with all of you that 1) might already be baffling you, or 2) you may come across eventually if you decide to use Posterous the way I’m using it.

My first issue arose when I posted a Photo Booth pic from my computer to Flickr via Posterous email:

As you can see, the subject line of my email posted perfectly as my Flickr photo title, but notice how my Flickr “description” is some lame promotional Posterous code and not what I wrote in the body of that email (it was about my stylish pajama bottoms)? No hard feelings Posterous, I know that’s how you’re getting the word out and all, but… no thanks. I already wrote my own Flickr photo description in the body of the email I sent, and that’s all I want to see.

How to fix it:

In your Flickr account advanced settings on Posterous, you see how Posterous auto-populates your Flickr photo’s description with their own footer, which makes perfect sense. They’re not hiding anything or being devious, and I was able to achieve what I wanted simply by replacing their default code with this:

Now, when I send an email to flickr@myaccount.posterous.com, whatever I post in the subject line will convert to my Flickr title, and whatever I post in the body of my email along with my attached photo will become my Flickr description! It will be as if I uploaded through Flickr directly. Nobody will know. Easy as pumpkin pie, right? (Obviously you can screw around with the codes to get your own desired effect).

More Posterous tips as I discover them along the path of my little experiment. If you use Posterous and have any tricks of your own, please share them with the rest of us. This effer took me all morning.

I’ve gushed about my love of the beloved “tips to hack your life” website Lifehacker recently, but creator Gina Trapani is always giving me reasons to love her more, and not just because she runs a personal site called SmarterWare.

Here’s the latest: I signed up for a Google Wave account way back when, and was one of those not-so-lucky-people-that-I-got-my-account-first, but still-pretty-lucky-and-way-before-almost-everyone-else-i-knew people. Problem was, I launched it a few times, got a little confused, got a little bored, got a little frustrated when something seemed unnecessary or oddly designed, and essentially abandoned the whole thing after some halfhearted settings reviews.

Back to why Gina (with help from Adam Pash) is awesome. She just wrote a complete Google Wave guide called “The Complete Guide to Google Wave” (shocking title, I can’t believe it either) which is available to you, me, and everyone else, for free, on the great big Internet!
It’s pretty much the most comprehensive, inclusive Google Wave-based piece of modern literature that I’ve seen, anyway. God, I’m glad they did all this so I don’t have to.

It’s worth noting their official “Buy the Book” policy:

“The preview edition of The Complete Guide to Google Wave will be available for purchase as a DRM-free PDF in November of 2009. The first edition will debut in January as both a PDF and a softcover print book, with new editions to follow throughout 2010.

Keep an eye on this site, follow us on Twitter, or subscribe to our mailing list to find out when the book will be available for purchase. Read more about our grand experiment in quick, iterative, and independent technology publishing on our About page.

The Complete Guide to Google Wave is and will continue to be freely available to read online at completewaveguide.com.”

Now, if that isn’t an early gift under the tree, I DON’T KNOW WHAT IS, PEOPLE.

Yeah, just watch the video and you’ll see what all my fuss is about.

The transcripts only get worse from there, btw. I used my own voice thinking somehow it would work more accurately? Yeeeeeah NO.

The link to my full story on current.com/tech is here.

Once you get done laughing at my misfortune, you might like to watch me create an award from thin air and present it to a deserving website. I DON’T MAKE THIS STUFF UP, PEOPLE.

Thanks for being you!

Here’s the link to my full story on current.com/tech.

You can also subscribe to my Current Tech videos on iTunes!

Great idea, great service, great results! Now, how do I get an invite?

Here’s the link to my full story on current.com/tech.

You can also subscribe to my Current Tech videos on iTunes!

A smart fellow I follow on Tumblr who happens to be the service’s lead developer, Marco Arment, did a little digging around on the specific specs (say that five times fast) of Apple’s new 27″ iMac and arrived at some interesting findings:

It has a resolution of 2560×1440, which no other monitor in the industry seems to have (that I can find). 30” LCDs are the same width but 1600 tall. Shrinking 2560-wide into a screen that’s 3” smaller diagonally yields an impressive pixel density, especially given the panel’s still-immense size.

It has an IPS panel. IPS is the best and most expensive LCD type, giving the best viewing angle and the least color- and brightness-shifting as the angle increases in any direction. Nearly every panel on the market, including every laptop panel, is the cheap TN type. (TN panels wash out as soon as you move your head slightly, especially vertically, which is why it’s so hard to find a good viewing angle for your laptop lid while watching a dark movie.) Other 27” TN panels exist (only at the lower 1920×1080 resolution), but I can’t find any other 27” IPS panels.

It’s also LED-backlit.

So it’s a very high-specced, brand new panel that’s apparently not being mass-produced yet (since no other monitors for sale are using it). That must be expensive. How much of the base 27” iMac’s $1700 retail cost does this represent?

Marco’s entire writeup is pretty fascinating, actually. Every time someone points out Apple’s bottom line not quite making sense, I wonder what crazy product shift we’re in for, because these things always make very specific sense eventually.

The overwhelming reaction from beta testers and early reviews leading into the launch of Windows 7 has been positive. And as the follow-up to Vista, one would think Windows 7 would need to be pretty terrible to garner anything other than a sigh of relief from PC users.

Now that Windows 7 is out in the wild, what are your thoughts? Were initial reactions simply knee-jerk to how non-Vista Windows 7 is? Or, is it truly a leap in terms of performance? If you’ve already gone through the install, was it chore? Some report that upgrading could take 20 hours. What was your experience like?

If you haven’t picked up Windows 7 yet, why? Are you sticking by XP until the waters start to calm? Let us know!

We haven’t had a chance to play around with it yet, so tell us what you think.

One of the most annoying things to me in the world is getting “poked” by someone on Facebook. Seriously, it’s second only to actually getting poked in real life. I have no idea why Facebook created this stupid feature in the first place, why they continue to offer this stupid feature, or why people think it’s funny and cute.

So I had a little snicker when I read this delightful story on Current Tech out of Tennessee:

A woman was arrested for virtually “poking” someone on the social networking site Facebook.

Shannon D. Jackson, 36, was arrested Friday, Sept. 25 for allegedly violating an order of protection.

According to the affidavit filed in Sumner County General Sessions Court, Jackson is accused of using the “poke” option on Facebook to contact a Hendersonville woman, thus violating the terms of the order of protection, which stipulates “no telephoning, contacting or otherwise communicating with the petitioner.”

Poking is a feature unique to Facebook that conveys no other message but informing a user they have been “poked” by another user.

Serves you right, Shannon! You’re annoying! Poke me, go to jail!

I’m sort of kidding. I’m assuming she did lots of other bad stuff before the Facebook poking that warranted a restraining order. But still. Annoying.

I came across a website called Hello Health in my Tumblr feed today, and decided to give it a look. Although still in its infancy with only a handful of participating doctors, Hello Health is, in my opinion, the inevitable future of healthcare. Here’s a partial explainer video from their info section:

Meet up from Hello Health on Vimeo.

Here’s the deal: the team behind Hello Health is in the process of partnering with doctors all over the U.S. in order to set them up with the latest web tools so they can interface with their patients in modern ways (email, IM, video chat). Think about patients’ options now: you don’t feel well, but you have no idea how to diagnose yourself. What can you do besides make an appointment (same day if you’re really lucky), sit around waiting for 30 minutes in order to see your doctor for five minutes, and almost hope that something really is wrong with you so you haven’t wasted several hours of your time and gotten behind at work for nothing? That’s not a good system, but neither patients nor doctors have much choice.

Hello Health’s aim is to give both sides better tools to interact, like setting up an appointment or refilling a prescription online. Got a quick question? Ping your doctor. Obviously this can’t replace emergency care, and many health issues still require an in-person visit, but most don’t (especially having to go see your doctor to get a freakin’ referral… maddening!).

I really like the Hello Health concept and I’m curious to see how quickly it catches on with forward-thinking doctors nationwide. I’m not at all worried about this catching on with patients. If they build it, we will come.

Social networks are getting more creative as new sites come up with unique angles to connect people (and get attention). I took a look at two fun new services that you might like, especially if you’re sick of Twitter and Facebook! Enjoy:

Here’s my full story on Current Tech, with links.

By the way, I should point out that both Twitter and Facebook are evolving as social networks, too. Here’s my tutorial on how Facebook’s new tagging feature works, and a recent video on all the apps you can try to make Twitter more useful. I’m an equal opportunity social networker! Or something.

You can also subscribe to my Current Tech videos on iTunes!