Digital Cheat Sheet

Every now and again, a user needs to break free of web interfaces for e-mail and use dedicated, standalone clients. There is a sea of alternatives, ranging from the small and free to the powerful and costly. Postbox is one of these alternatives, competing with applications the like of Micosoft Outlook/Outlook Express/Windows Live Mail, Apple’s Mail, Mozilla’s Thunderbird, and other popular e-mail clients. It is based on Mozilla’s Thunderbird client and uses the very same engine that has proven itself time and time again for Mozilla, but curiously Postbox is only available for Windows and OS X--no Linux version is available.

Because it is based on Thunderbird--a wise choice if we may say so, Postbox inherits some already great features. The Postbox team took it one step farther and made using those features feel like a more polished experience. Included in this extra polish is rudimentary support for Twitter, Facebook, and Friendfeed accounts, allowing one to quickly post updates to any of the services with a few clicks of the mouse. Also worth noting are a more advanced search engine visible throughout the program (especially when composing new messages), a slightly tweaked to-do list function that makes it easier to send an e-mail to yourself for simple reminders, what feels like an optimization of the raw power and performance within the program, and a set of interfaces that mesh better with the corresponding operating system on which the program is running.

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Today, Wednesday, January 20, 2010, I will go on the record for officially giving up on writing for Windows for this website. As a Mac owner and a college student the only computer I happen to own is a 15" Macbook Pro....

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Being a college student for better or worse I get a first-hand perspective into the college technology scene. This obviously blinds me to certain truths, but does shead some light on interesting trends around the campus. When I mean interesting trends I mean the push to the cloud. While many students do not put that much thought into it, many of my fellow students are moving their data to the cloud whether or not they realize it. The most plain example of this is communication. Between Facebook/Myspace and email most of my fellow college students use web-based chat and messaging programs. Hotmail, Gmail, Yahoo, and AOL web mail are common and very few people I have witnessed really have trouble managing their email on the cloud. Many times a week I have friends come over and ask me to check their email or Facebook whenever they are visiting my dorm room. Every day much of the communication that takes place on campus is done via cloud-based software solutions as opposed to traditional programs such as Mozilla Thunderbird, Microsoft Outlook, or Apple Mail. This trend is silent, but with the evolution of websites such as Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, and Hulu many students are slowly making the transition to the cloud without even knowing it.This image is probably fake, but PC World thought it was good enough to write an article on. This gets my point across though

I believe the transition to the cloud will really be a non-event. People will shift their content over time, but not all at once. People obsessed with technology feel right now that cloud computer will be the renassance of computing, but I feel that we sometimes get wrapped up in this because it is new and shiny. I have already witness people I previously thought incapable of understanding how to use online storage using cloud-based services like Google Documents to create, edit, and store their homework. Blogging services such as Facebook, Blogger, and Wordpress are very popular around my campus and most people have very little trouble adjusting to the online aspect of things. They are not always quick to pick things up, but over time many of my friends have learned how to post blog posts with text, music, photos, and even videos.

I see more and more of this activity every day. I am constantly assauted with event invitations on Facebook or people sharing website links with me. The notion of inviting a multitude of people to an event over the internet was a very difficult process years ago via local-based software solutions such as Outlook, but with the design of the cloud these complex operations become trival. The web basically puts everyone on the same computing network and makes sharing and managing data much easier. You do not have to worry if somebody on Facebook has the latest calendar patch or if their email client is up to date. People from what I have observed generally use what gets the job done, what is the easiest, and most convenient. Everything will probably not move to the cloud for a long time and some operations like high-end video editing or gaming may never perfectly make the transition.  However, I believe that within the next ten years it will be very possible for ordinary people (non-tech enthusiast) to live a very digital life in the cloud.  

Where does Google's Chrome OS come into the picture? Obviously being the first mainstream cloud OS this operating system has potential to turn the technology world on its head. Even if Google Chrome OS is not a financial success with a ton of market share it will probably effect OS X and Windows. You already see a little bit of that in both Windows 7 and OS X with mainstream social media sites such as Youtube and Flickr being integrated right into the media sharing software of the operating system. None of these may be terribly significant in the short run, but the cloud has the potential to virtually eliminate certain categories of local software. Mail clients are the obvious example, but other categories of software that may transcend into the internet is financial software,  basic photo editing, basic video editing, and file storage.

So that was my two cents, what do you think?

I try to do my provide a good balance between Mac and PC content in my blog and podcast. However, my life is a different story because I primarily use my Apple's OS X as my primary operating system. During the summer I get to work and therefore spend a lot more time with the glorious Windows operating system (I fix a lot of XP machines). Spending so much time fixing Windows machines during the summer my mind often wonders about what is the best Windows software to use (I fancy myself a Windows user sometimes) when a client comes in asking me what kind of software they should use. 

Well, over the weekend I was forced to use Windows PCs all weekend to work because I accidently left my Macbook's power adapter at work Saturday. One thing that I like to have open while I work is a chat client. My primary client is AIM and Facebook, but I do have a few friends that use MSN. On my Mac I use the free Adium to have combine all my chat services into a nice, neat window. I wanted something like that on Windows and after a few minutes of research I came across a nice little gem of a program by the name of Digsby.

Digsby, like Adium, is a free application you can download off the internet. The website is http://www.digsby.com/ and if you are a PC user you can download it right now (Mac and Linux versions are coming). Like Adium (Mac only), Digsby allows you to have AIM, MSN, Facebook ,Yahoo, and several chat clients in the same window. The best thing about this is that you do not have to have the other programs open at the same time. Facebook, Myspace, Twitter.....none of them have to be open at the same time. Digsby is also nice because it looks great on Windows XP, Windows Vista, and Windows 7. Most of the application can be customized to look the way you want it to and the program very quick (Probably faster than AIM on Window). Digsby also has the options for video and voice chat, but I unfortunately did not get to test that feature. So if you want to try to save some space on your laptop screen or are tired of having multiple chat programs open I would at least take a look at Digsby. It is nice program that I have really grown a liking to. 

Throughout the history of television series people have complained about missing their favorite shows. Most of us TV watchers all have that one show that we have to see every week. For years people would clumsily try to record it on a VCR and if you are technically inclined enough you set up time recordings at the mercy of a power outage. As the 1990s progressed the format moved to DVD’s and then time recording became easier with the introduction of DVRs like TiVo. All of things are wonderful, but anyone using these devices will tell you they often fail because of user errors like someone forgetting to set the VCR to record or add the TV show to your TiVO list, but if God-forbid the device fails.... Hulu eliminates the hardware component from the equation and as long as you have a pretty decent DSL connection and a computer you can watch hundreds of television shows and even movies for free. More often than not the shows are online about 18-24 hours after their initial airing for better or worse, but they do appear online on a regular schedule. All the content is ad-funded, but then again it is free and the ads are not too terribly oppressive for me not to recommend this wonderful service. One interesting little point is that if you have to leave in the middle of an episode, most modern web browsers (Internet Explorer 7, Safari, Firefox, Google Chrome, etc.) will save your place for you. Also, for the hearing impaired or if you cannot turn your sound up any louder (Trying not to annoy your roommate) you can turn on closed captioning.

You can watch videos in high definition 480p as an option, but unless you have a really good connection I do not suggest turning it on. Of course, like all modern video websites, Hulu lets you “turn down the lights” by darkening the background around the video and full screen mode. One helpful thing I have found is that if a video is not working very well (Skipping, shutters, etc.), give your computer a minute or two to “buffer” and just watch the buffer meter. The more of the buffer bar is filled, the longer you will be able to watch the video without trouble. So, again, Hulu is free and you can check it out at www.hulu.com . I suggest that everyone should pick it up as a better alternative to trying to watch TV on Youtube.

-Hobie Henning May 14, 2009