Tech Talk News

TechTalkNews No Longer

Andrew — Fri, 26 Oct 2007 02:15:12 +0000

I’ve decided to make a switch from where I’m hosting my blog. I would like to encourage everyone to visit my blog here instead. I will be using this domain for something in the future, but TechTalkNews.com as we know it will be discontinued. I’d like to thank all you faithful viewers and hope that I will see you at my new blog site where I’ll still be hosting much of what you’ve found here.

Do You Visit a Blog via the URL or Do You Use a RSS Reader?

Andrew — Tue, 16 Oct 2007 04:54:46 +0000

I’m starting to wonder whether we need to worry about making our blog look all sexy or if we need to worry about how we handle our posts so that they can be viewed properly in an RSS reader? I’m starting to question whether I should have a nice sexy blog, or a simple elegant blog that the posts will work well with RSS readers? What are your thoughts?

27 Environmentally Friendly Cities to Live.

Andrew — Thu, 11 Oct 2007 01:22:21 +0000

With air pollution, traffic and gas prices all on the rise, it increasingly makes sense to consider how environmentally friendly a city is before moving there.

read more | digg story

Proper Way to Submit Support Ticket

Andrew — Wed, 29 Aug 2007 19:42:24 +0000

So this is really just a test post, but I wanted to show you what the proper way of contacting TechSmith’s Technical Support department.

A little silence never hurt anybody

Andrew — Wed, 22 Aug 2007 02:47:14 +0000

So I thought I’d write a little post letting everyone know that I haven’t forgotten about them. I’ve been a little busy with working on a Rails blog that I was going to be creating, and have had a few web design projects I’ve been trying to get finished up. Hopefully I won’t be much longer! I have a few cool things for you to check out while I’m away. The first one is called Synergy. It’s a cool open source utility that I’ve been using at work to connect all my computers (6 in total) together with the ability to use 1 set of keyboard and mouse. The second is called iShowU. It’s a cool little screen recording utility that I just purchased to help with creating some screencasts on a Mac. It’s about 20 bucks and gives me a clean looking file that through the use of a few programs I can convert the MOV file to an AVI file so I can edit and produce in Camtasia Studio. Hopefully sometime in the near future Camtasia Studio will be for a Mac. But until then, iShowU will do the trick for me.

I hope to have a new screencast up soon that will show you Synergy (at least on each side, Mac and PC), and maybe one that shows you a few things about iShowU. I have a list of some ROR screencasts that I’d like to do, but I’m finding that I need to really just record and then splice together all sorts of pieces to get a screencast. Maybe I’ll have the option soon to create shorter ones with the use of Jing, iShowU, and Camtasia Studio.

DC Startupweekend

Andrew — Tue, 14 Aug 2007 05:22:18 +0000

Uploaded with Skitch!

So I just wanted to remind people that I’m still planning on going to the DC Startup Weekend. There’s some great ideas so I’m really looking forward to what other ideas get added. Check out the list of already growing cities that have committed to hosting a Startup Weekend.

New Design

Andrew — Mon, 13 Aug 2007 04:16:08 +0000

I’m sure some of you have noticed the new design I’ve put to my blog. I decided that it was something that I wanted to do to spruce up my blog, and make it a little more “web2.0″ looking. I also wanted to make the post area a little bigger so that I could add videos that will actually be a little bigger in width and height. I also wanted to test out Skitch since I had got my invite this weekend. Please feel free to give me some feedback about the template and hopefully in the next day or so I’ll have up a quick little video about Skitch.

Uploaded with Skitch!

Look What Jing Can Do!

Andrew — Fri, 10 Aug 2007 22:19:31 +0000

Check out what can be done with Jing on a Mac! I was talking around the office today and decided I wanted to know if Jing could capture the dashboard and some widgets. Guess I was right! The hint is that you need to use your hotkey, by default on a Mac it’s Command + Shift + 1.

Where’s the Business Mac?

Andrew — Fri, 10 Aug 2007 14:51:21 +0000

Tuesday Apple Inc. announced a new generation of the iMac. Something the rumor mill has called, as well as what most of us have been expecting. But why not make a business mac? Isn’t that what we are all lacking? Let’s take a look at Apple’s computer lineup. First off we start out with the Mac mini. A cheap starter PC that’s really rather useless except for the people that are only going to sit on the internet. It doesn’t pack a big enough punch for businesses to use it. It also doesn’t offer dual-link AVI. Something us designers and developers require, since most have dual monitors around the office today. What’s also strange about this computer is the lack of customizable options. Let’s take a look at their next computer, the iMac. So the iMac has a little more in the feature category, you can customize things like RAM, Hard Drive, but that’s about it. Still no options when it comes to video cards. Jobs said that he expects the business users to like the iMac, however, I tend to disagree. Monitors are something that lasts 2, 3, maybe 4 generations of computers. Business users aren’t going to get rid of a perfectly good monitor because the computer goes bad; they usually need to save money!! The next class of computers are the Mac Pros. Now these are powerful! A little too powerful for the daily business user, and expensive at that. Why pay $2,000-$3,000 dollars fora PC that’s too powerful for you. Yes you can say that it’ll last long, however, do we really need server class processors for daily work? Why not take the server class processors out, bring in some other features to compare with Dell, HP, Gateway, etc. and knock off a couple hundred dollars or so. Personally, working in the software development environment, it would work. You seem people carry around MacBooks and MBPs but when you ask them what their work computer is you usually hear them say Dell. If Apple were to compete with Dell (and others), I think we’d start to see a higher market share with Macs in the business environment.

Ruby on Rails Spam Protection

Andrew — Tue, 07 Aug 2007 02:26:49 +0000

So I’ve been looking through various tutorials and such trying to find something that protects comment spam. So far the only thing I’ve been able to come up with is Akismet. Us WordPress users know what Akismet is, but there’s some various tutorials out there that show us how to use Akismet in our ROR apps. There is a Akismet plugin that’s out there, but what I’ve found out there, things are either too hard to figure out myself, or they are confusing. So I’m wondering what other ROR developers are using to protect against comment spam. I have heard of people using different plugins for captchas, but I’m looking more for IUE (Initial User Experience) in my app then a user having to put in characters for a captchas. Is there anyone out there using something different? An easy way to implement things? Your knowledge would be muct appreciated.