Direct Download Links
Small | Medium | Extra Large
Windows Media
Nokia N95 | Nokia N800/N810
I’ve been a little bus obsessed for the last couple of days. Our lease is up on May 21st. Our plan has been to downsize and move into a small apartment for the summer while we finish planning The Big Trip. Even though we won’t be ready to hit the road, we’re really anxious to get the bus and start geeking it out for the trip.
Times is an RSS feed reader for Mac that is beautiful. It creates a Newspaper-like context for news delivered via RSS. It isn’t a static experience though. Times takes advantage of Core Animation to make reading the news an enchanting experience. When you click on a headline, the page folds down to reveal the text of the story. A featured called Shelf lets you organized stories into stacks. You can download it from here and try it for 14 days. It’s the one newsreader I’ve found that’s worth paying for.
The PC Decrapifier is a freeware application that removes all the trialware nonsense that comes pre-installed on a new PC.
Evernote is an extension of your brain. Clips from Web pages or photographs you take with your phone camera can be sent to your Evernote database where the information is searchable. It’s very cool.
Lycos Cinema is a social video viewing experience. You pick the video, invite up to 10 friends and the video is synced to everyone watching at almost the exact same time. A chatroom gives viewers a way to talk about what they’re watching. The big downside, though is the very limited supply of interesting content.
The conversation about prerolls and Beck’s Beer is on my blog, iCali.tv.
« GBTV #357 | GeekBrief.TV
GBTV #359 | GeekBrief.TV »
May 7th, 2008 at 5:00 am
I love RSS feeds, but mainly just for headlines. It makes it far easier and faster than checking if a site was updated. But, for personal/opinion-ish type blogs, I’ll want to actually go to their site. Ditto photoblogs.
But Times looks really interesting, I think I’ll have to give it a shot. Although, most of my news reading is done at work and not at home (no mac at work).
Evernote looks interesting too… lots to try from this brief!
May 7th, 2008 at 8:14 am
Hi,
Even though I’m a mac user, I still got miffed at the way the crap-ware story was presented. It sounded a bit condescending.
Let’s try to keep it positive! Windows lovers are geeks too you know :)
Sam
May 7th, 2008 at 9:32 am
As one of the ‘60%’ of viewers you haven’t convinced to switch to Mac, I probably have the same reason as the others. As soon as Apple let you build and endlessly customise your own PC with your parts, and not ‘Apple approved upgrades’, I won’t.
Anyway, if you don’t want ‘crapware’ on your PC and you can’t or won’t build it yourself. Then go to your local computer store. They can build you a PC usually cheaper, with the hardware you need, and with a ‘crapware’ free copy of windows as you would pay for a new licence in the price. As they install this from the disc, you get a ‘crapware’ free PC.
May 7th, 2008 at 9:52 am
Ever look at something hundreds of time and then all of a sudden really go OMG! At the start of GeekBrief you have a bar graph with a blue line that has a little blue truck. The truck is slowly moving every episode towards the big trip icon. But that trip icon is only half way with the far end of the graph showing a baby. So do we assume that this graph is showing the world the time line you want to have a baby?
If this in fact is the reason for the baby at the end of the time line. I can think of a few reasons why publishing a time line to a personal event such as having a baby baby may not be the world’s best idea. But that is your call not mine. That said… Best of luck…
May 7th, 2008 at 2:07 pm
The pcdecrapifier didn’t do its job. It found some things to remove and I told it to do it, but several hours later it hadn’t finished the second program to remove. I’m not impressed. Doesn’t seem to be any different than the programs it allegedly is removing.
May 7th, 2008 at 3:29 pm
I love Evernote, Cali! The Mac version of the app is absolutely gorgeous, and I use the Windows Mobile version all the time on my Pocket PC phone to send myself notes, bits of a story, or ideas. I even created a separate account to use for work, and I’ve started inputting client notes, business cards, etc. Spread the Evernote love!
May 7th, 2008 at 3:55 pm
Hi Cali,
Tried out Times. Pretty cool. It’s terribly buggy, though… :(
I started out trying to delete all the existing crapware feeds that it comes pre-loaded with. The sofware completely crashed TWICE while trying to go through this process. And, since it doesn’t update the preferences after each delete, none of my changes were recorded either time… :( Gave up on that effort.
Finally, I tried dragging in all 141 of my existing RSS feeds that I happily read using Safari. No matter how I did it, Times would only accept the first of the 141 each time. So, to get all 141 in there, I’d have to drag each one in, one at a time. Not good all the way around… :(
I like the UI of Times, I just wish it was better suited to handling a LONG list of feeds. Even the management window pane is far too tiny to make management of feeds worthwhile. Each feed needs much more then an icon and some text on a chicklet button.
Piko
May 7th, 2008 at 5:06 pm
Hi Cali, I watch your brief mostly before going to sleep on my Eee pc and I love it. I know this is a Mac centered brief but when the opportunity presents itself I would like it a lot if you could trow also some Linux related news in the mix once in a while like you do for windows. Greetings from Belgium!
May 7th, 2008 at 5:27 pm
Speaking of RSS, I’ve had an issue with the Geekbrief (medium) feed twice in the last 2 weeks. Both times, 100 episodes were redownloaded and iTunes attempted to put them all back on my iPhone (would not fit). I unsubscribed/resubscribed after the first time, now it happened again today.
Is this related to the duplicate posts problem that I continue to see from the BigTrip RSS feed?
Is there a reason for having 100 episodes in the RSS feed? Wouldn’t 20 suffice?
Hopefully this will get worked out. Keep up the good work.
May 7th, 2008 at 6:13 pm
I love the decrapifier!
I don’t think it is condescending whatsoever. I work with Linux and Windows at my work, and you quickly realize that you have to maintain a certain sense of humor when using Windows or it becomes depressing :-)
I switched to the Mac about 4 years ago since Mac hardware is so much better made, and OS X is fantastic and virus/malware-free. I go with whatever is best at the time regardless of brand. In the 1990s I was a PC/Windows advocate and hated Macs because they were expensive, difficult to expand or find software for, and built like crap (we called them “beige toasters” at the university). Now, those are simply myths (BTW, PowerMac and Mac Pros are the easiest computer to expand).
I am surprised that 60% of GeekBrief viewers are still using PCs. Switch over! Borrow someone’s Mac for a weekend and you will definitely switch – that is how I got hooked – just find a MacDaddy (first hit is free). When you go Mac, you never go back…
I have an OS section on my website for anyone interested in switching to the Mac: http://jasoneckert.net/computing_site/
Best,
Jason.
May 7th, 2008 at 10:21 pm
“geeking out the bus” – I LOVE IT when people make up new ways to use words! kudos cali. i nearly geeked out as soon as i heard it.
geek-life,
brian
May 8th, 2008 at 7:17 am
Hi Cali
The PC decrapifier is excellent news. More recently, I have been using Virtual Box (a software like VMWare/Parallels) and it runs excellent.
For people like me who will still stay with non-OSX it is a great boost – I run XP as guestOS with Ubuntu and it is very snappy and free also – with easy installation.
Ise it to make snapshots and revert once in while when XP has problems.
-Karthik
May 8th, 2008 at 2:13 pm
Hi Cali,
Hope you enjoy using Evernote.
Since you’re a Jott fan, you should check out this Jott/Evernote hack that Lifehacker posted a little while back. It’s really useful.
http://lifehacker.com/373815/jott-your-way-to-evernote-bliss
-Andrew
May 8th, 2008 at 2:18 pm
Hey Cali,
Following your show on potcast here in the netherlands. Love it. Like your style and love the stuff. I’m also doing a item on een regional radio station here about gadgets and stuff and must say that you bring a lot of inspiration for new items.
Cya,
Erwin
May 8th, 2008 at 4:31 pm
What! Lycos is still around? Cool beans.
May 8th, 2008 at 8:46 pm
Cali, I know some will be excited about the PC Decrapifier, but it does nothing to get rid of the true crapware — MS Windows! Here’s a link to some *real* decrapifiers: http://iso.linuxquestions.org/
;)
Shawn
May 9th, 2008 at 12:27 am
Where can i buy the bigtrip t-shirt?
May 9th, 2008 at 12:49 am
Ever since I started to use Google Reader about 5 months ago, it *is* my number one used app. I love it. Evernote sounds cool. I’ve been using Goolge Notebook with the firefox extension and it works a lot like evernote. And I can access my google notebook from my cellphone or any web browser where I can log into my Google account. In fact that brings up something interesting…with just one account (google), I can access my email, RSS subscriptions and my saved web clippings. It’s not a bad combination, IMHO.
May 9th, 2008 at 5:20 am
@Mark The tshirts aren’t ready yet. Should be in about a week!
May 10th, 2008 at 1:04 pm
Gotta say, as a long time Geek Briefer, the short (key is short) preroll add is starting to grow on me… I enjoyed the music in it.
Love the show!
July 23rd, 2008 at 12:36 pm
GO GEEK BRIEF!
May 1st, 2009 at 6:24 pm
@stannyc #358, as in episode 358 – http://tinyurl.com/ar3xh9