Sixty Second Tech

Sixty Second Tech Episode 20
FireFox 3

The browser wars are long over but there’s a rebel force still fighting and winning. FireFox, has long been the favorite browser of geeks world wide is now making a serious dent into Microsoft’s usage numbers. The way they keep getting new users is by constantly pushing the envelope with new features. No, not “features” like smart tags or nonsense, real features.

The latest version of FireFox, Fire Fox 3 is out and there have been over 15,000 improvements made to the browser. It’s faster, more secure and even more customizable. The most visible change though is the “Awesome Bar”.

The Awesome Bar is FireFox’s new location bar. (the place where you type the URL) It now does more than just allow you to enter the URL, it now learns as you use it. It adapts to your preferences and offers you better fitting matches the more you use it. So if you don’t know exactly where you want to go, the Awesome Bar helps you figure that out.

So if you are using Fire Fox, you really want to download and install the latest version. If you are part of the 40% of the listeners of this podcast that don’t use FireFox, join us and see what you are missing.

My name is Cal Evans and I am your sixty second tech.

 

 FireFox 3 [1:00m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

If you don’t subscribe to it, The NewMediology Podcast did their latest episode on twitter. Its a great listen for anyone looking for a more indepth discussion about twitter.

They also mention Twitter for Marketers as a resource for people looking for additional info.

=C=

Sixty Second Tech Episode 19
MobileMe

We’ve talked about the “Benevolent Triad” - Google, Amazon and Apple - and how they are changing how we use the web. Recently Apple kicked it up a notch with the announcement of their MobileMe service. If you are familiar with their .mac service, it’s like that, only a lot better. If you aren’t familiar with .mac then let me pull your head out from under the rock and show you MobileMe.

MobileMe has been called “Exchange in the cloud”. Microsoft has long had their Exchange server for businesses and offered things like email, contact and Calendar sync between laptops and mobile devices. However, up till now you had to pay big bucks for this functionality. MobileMe gives you all of that and more. Using your OSX mac, you can update your calendar, contacts, email, and photos and have it sync automagically to Apple’s MobileMe cloud and then back down to your iPhone. Unlike an Exchange server though, Apple’s MobileMe is cloud based, eliminating any single point of failure. The coolest feature of MobileMe though is the iDisk which has no comparable feature in Exchange, it’s just a freakin cool way to share large files without pissing off your email admin.

While MobileMe isn’t free, it’s $99/year single or $149/yr family plan are reasonably prices for the services provided. (iPhone not included)

My name is Cal Evans and I am your sixty second tech.

 

 MobileMe [1:06m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Amazon has earned its place next to Google and Apple in the “Benevolent Triad”, the three companies shaping how our future will look. I don’t like everything they do but two years ago they rolled out a service called S3 that is pretty good.

S3 or “Simple Storage Solution” is your hard drive on the Net. With it, you can quickly and cheaply store and share files on the web with anyone.

Companies like SmugMug uses it to store all of their users photos, companies like JungleDisk create easy to use, remote backup solutions for you, and companies like Sixty Second Tech use it to serve their podcasts.

Best of all, S3 is much less expensive than normal web hosting charges. Most hosts charge you when you go over your bandwidth limit. With S3, you pay for every gigabyte but at a greatly reduced price. Apparently running one of the largest sites on the net gets you a huge discount on bandwidth.

S3 is easy. Visit Amazon’s Web Services page and sign up for an account, then start uploading files. The best program I’ve found for managing my S3 account is S3Fox, a FireFox plugin that looks like a ftp program.

So go ahead, upload that video of cousin Carl’s wedding where Aunt Tilly was “over served” by the bartender, with Amazon S3 you can share the hour long ordeal with the entire family without emptying your wallet.

My name is Cal Evans and I am your sixty second tech.

Ten-hut Minute Men!
Major PITA here with your marching orders for the week!

I know that most of you use iTunes to pull this podcast down to your iPods. I also know that to date there have been a grand total of two reviews posted on iTunes about this, your favorite of all tech podcasts. So, grab your mouse, fire up iTunes (or click here) and start writing! What are you waiting for, an invitation? Get out there and review, I wanna see five stars, right now! Go! Go! Go!

 

 Amazon's S3 [1:35m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Sixty Second Tech Episode 16
Attention not SERP

For years SEO experts have been telling us that our website is only worth what search engines say its worth. That was true in the past but these days “attention” is more important than SERP, but it’s much harder to measure. Now there’s a tool to help you get a handle on your site and the posts that are getting attention, AideRSS.

AideRSS analyzes the posts in your feed and ranks them based on it’s own secret sauce called PostRank. Nobody is really sure how PostRank is calculated but we know a few of the factors. They combine things like how many people have bookmarked it in del.icio.us, the number of comments, the digg score and other factors to rank it between 1 and 10.

Because each post’s rank is relative to the other posts in your feed, you can use it to figure out what topics are working for you.

AidRSS won’t help you build the most popular blog on the earth, but it is an important tool in your tool box. It helps you measure “attention”, and attention is more important than keywords, title tags or where you rank in any given engine. Given that all of the current features are free, it manages to give you something else most SEO experts can’t, bang for your buck.

My name is Cal Evans and I am your sixty second tech.

 

 Attention, not SERP! [1:00m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

IWantSandy is something totally different than you’ve ever seen before. She is a calendar program, todo list keeper, goals reminder and everything you would want in a virtual assistant except for the paycheck.

I know, I know, you’ve seen calendar programs before and you’re just not impressed. Well I’m here to tell you that Sandy is not just another calendar program, if anything she’s Calendar 2.0! (yea, uh-huh, I went there!)

The thing that sets Sandy apart is the fact that once you have logged in and setup your account; you never have to visit the website again. Sandy is fully versed in such new media tools as twitter, jott and Google Calendar. You can email Sandy, Direct Message her via twitter, and even jott to her. She recognizes plain English command like
Remember meeting tomorrow at 9:00 AM with the lovely and talented Kathy
Or
Remember I want to lose 10lb @goal

She can even decipher to-do lists.

I’ve used a lot of calendar programs, PDAs and “dashboards” (that kiddies, what we used to call them back in the days before Internet) and none of them allowed me the freedom to communicate with them in ways that are natural to me.

So the next time you don’t want to forget a special date, tell Sandy, just don’t forget to tell your significant other that she’s just a program.

My name is Cal Evans and I am your sixty second tech.

 

 I Want Sandy [1:01m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download