Category: Technology

I work in technology sector. And I do round a clock, not only from 9 to 5. It is my bread and butter, it is my hobby, it is the fascination of my life. And with the current rate of change particular in information technology (IT), there is always something new to learn, to try, to talk about. I often post news, thoughts, and reviews. And when I do, this is the category I use.

Postr – Gnome Flickr Uploader

Once again Flickr Web Uploader failed me. I had a bunch of photos to upload and it kept getting stuck on the first one, not uploading even that one. So, once again, I started looking around for a simple tool that would allow me to just upload a huge bunch of pictures to Flickr. No bells, no whistles – just batch upload that I wouldn’t need to babysit (my upload speed limit is rather low).

I’m glad to report that I found my dream tool – postr. Postr is a Flickr uploader for Gnome desktop. It is designed to be very simple and straight forward. And, apparently, that’s just what I need. The only minor bit of functionality that I am missing is uploading pictures to a new set. It lets me choose the existing one or none at all. But not to create a new one. Not a major issue either way. I can either create a new set before uploading images, or I can as easily drop all uploads into a new set once they are up on Flickr. Either way works for me.

I’m so glad that there are still people who make simple software for simple people. Hooray for them!

Twitter Stories

The other day, Twitter announced a new website of theirs – Twitter Stories.  Yes, of course, that’s a part of their marketing effort and they are promoting their own services.  But it’s not just that.  It is an excellent compilation of stories which show kindness, compassion and humanity – things that unfortunately aren’t so popular in the modern world of mass media and dirty politics.

A few of my friends and coworkers still doubt the usefulness of social networks.  They often see social networks as time wasters that prevent people from actually doing something good with their lives.  I always disagree with that.  Social networks are just another set of tools, like knives and hammers.  What is done with them depends entirely on people using them.  If people are wasting time of their lives, then they would be doing so regardless of the availability of social networks.  And on the contrary, if people are to do great things, social networks will be just another tool for them to find the need and the way to help it.  Showcasing that is what Twitter Stories is all about.

 

 

 

Brian Shih on the new Google Reader interface

Brian Shih, an ex-project manager for Google Reader shares his thoughts on the new interface. I agree a lot with him. I also think that Google Reader should be integrated with Google+ and other Google projects, but the current version hurts that goal more than it helps it.

new sharing flow around the +1 button has actually made it harder to share. Where you used to be able to click one button, or hit shift-s to one-click share to your audience, you now need to:

  • Click +1 (no keyboard shortcuts for you)
  • Click the text box that appears that says “Share to G+”
  • Then choose your circle you want to share to (or let it default to public)
  • Then click Share

Keep in mind that on top of requiring 3-4 times as many clicks, you also now must +1 a post publicly to share it, even if it’s shared to a private circle. That bears repeating. The next time you want to share some sexy halloween costumes with your private set of friends, you first must publicly +1 the post, which means it shows up on your profile, plus wherever the hell G+ decides to use +1 data.

While I’m not too much concerned about privacy, I too find the new sharing way more difficult, time-consuming, and confusing.

Fedora 16 dedicated to Dennis Ritchie

According to the release notes of Fedora 16 (work in progress), this release of the popular Linux distribution is dedicated to Dennis Ritchie, who passed away recently. I think this is an excellent idea.

During the preparation of Fedora 16, the computing world lost one of its great contributors: Dennis Ritchie. Ritchie co-invented Unix and the C language. He also co-authored “The C Programming Language”, a book that taught many programmers just at the time personal computing was exploding. Without Ritchie computing would be nothing like it is today.
A humble man, not well-known outside his field, Dennis will always be remembered by those of us who practice the craft. Thank you Dennis.

Google Analytics : Real Time Overview

In the last few month, Google Analytics team haven’t been getting much sleep I guess. They release features upon features upon features. I usually don’t have the time to properly check every feature they do right when they do it, so I keep a browser tab with an announcement open until I get to play with it. Sometimes though, either I lose the tab or close it or lose interest or lose hope that I will ever get to it.

Somehow I managed to miss it completely or forget to play with the Real Time beta functionality of Google Analytics. Today I stumbled upon this feature in my reports and I have to say it’s absolutely awesome. If you can’t find it straight away, switch your Google Analytics interface to the new version, navigate to Home tab at the top, then choose Real Time (beta) in the menu on the left, and click on Overview. If you have any sort of traffic on your site at that moment, you’ll see a screen like this, which will update in real time.

During your regular hours, especially on the small sites, it would probably be too boring to watch. But it can save you a lot of time and pulled out hair during a traffic spike.

If I had a busy website and an office full of people, I’d probably put a big screen or a projection on a wall with full screen page of those stats. How cool would that be!