PortableApps

I'm at risk of sounding like a shill for this application, because I've been telling everyone I know about it repeatedly. PortableApps.com is a piece of software you put on a flash drive. You can then choose from a healthy menu of applications to add to the package. After doing so, you can go to any computer and launch those applications directly from the flash drive!
Nothing gets installed on the host computer, so you don't have to worry about administrative rights and so on, and the available applications include many, like GIMP, Audacity, WinSCP and more, that aren't often found installed on computers but are extremely handy.
Even better, it's all free. No charges either for PortableApps or the accompanying open source software. As for space requirements, I have eight or nine programs in my suite, and it takes up less than 500 MB.

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Web analytics expert gives blogging tips

Avinash Kaushik author of Occam's Razor updated his top ten tips for novice bloggers.

Summary

If are trying to create a blog that will create your unique brand, build an audience over time and create a voice for yourself then here are my recommendations:

# 10: Names, URL’s, Looks, Your Pictures Don’t Matter

# 9: Join BAGoT: Bloggers Against Globs of Text

# 8: Go for 6th grade level

# 7: Length and Frequency: Yours to define and control

# 6: StumbleUpon, Twitter, Google (SEO) matter, Digg matters less

# 5: Read spectacular blogs, find inspiration

# 4: Become very good (top 25% in the world) at two things

# 3: Don’t be a jerk / jerkess

# 2: Cultivate your audience: Create a dialog, respect their intelligence

# 1: Be remarkable

For more details go to directly to Occam's Razor

Not your father's ebook

Bill Ray in The Register suggests that Amazon's use of a 3G telephony network rather than WiFi is a whole new experience for users. Books and magazines have the potential of becoming interactive. He goes on to say, "Authors could update their books while you're reading them; responding to reader feedback, litigation, or even whim. A book could be updated daily, or chapters added when the author has time - readers might subscribe to a book rather than buying it outright."

Web based documents

There's more than just cost when it comes to deciding to use online document applications. No matter how big a hard drive I buy - after a year or two it's never enough. Some of the small notebooks that are coming out will never have enough memory for full blown Office applications, that's why these online apps are looking very attractive to me.

Zoho.com seems to have everything Microsoft Office offers as well as mobile, iPhone, social networking support, and browser plugins. Techcrunch indicates that Zoho launched full offline access for Zoho writer this morning and a promise for offline support for their other apps to follow.

More on the Kindle

The popular tech blog Gizmodo has also been watching the Kindle. Here's what their reviewer found: http://tinyurl.com/2cbpf4
Overall, it seems pretty good, and has been selling spectacularly.

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YouTube review of Amazon.com's Kindle

Benjamin Higginbotham of Technology Evangelist has a good five minute critique of competitive ebook readers on YouTube. It's really worth viewing if all you've seen are the promotional videos on Amazon.com. What's awesome - what's not so awesome?

Free Camtasia Studio download

The latest PC version of Camtasia screencasting software is pretty pricey, but Techsmith is offering version 3 for free and if you need more features you can upgrade to version 5 for half price. Check downloadsquad for all the details.

Camtasia Studio is good to use for creating training, demo and presentation videos for your website.

Need to share really big files?

If you have up to a 250 MB powerpoint presentation or document that your e-mail service won't let you upload/download, then you might try using a free service called FileURLs. It allows you to upload your file or document to its website, gives it a URL, and makes it available to share for up to seven days. You may even password protect it if necessary. Thanks to Stephen Abram from SirsiDynix (Stephen's Lighthouse) for the heads up.

Inform or Discuss

At 1:00 am. this morning I came up with the idea of creating a blog for our technology staff to inform our public about new technologies in libraries and/or to answer any tech questions within our scope of knowledge or collective experiences. Well, in my post-Thanksgiving stupor - it sounded like a good idea, so here goes...

For the past several weeks I've been hearing about Amazon.com' s new wireless Reading Device, the Kindle, and how it will or will not revive the struggling ebook world. I guess I'm going to have to wait a while to see it for myself - Amazon's Kindle has completely sold out at $399.00. Darn those early adopters.

What makes this device different from the old Rocket book and other ebook readers? The display is supposed to look and read like real paper; it's wireless - so connecting to a PC is not necessary; and it's supposed to have a long battery life. Amazon promises that there are 80,000+ titles available and that it has 100 current bestsellers and more new releases available for $9.99 a title.

Top newspapers (US & international), magazines, and blogs are also available by auto-delivery throughout the day. Is this too good to believe? I've placed a back order and will let you all know after our staff has had time to evaluate it.