Category Archives: Things-I-Like

Printing from the iPhone and iPad

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I have waited for this for a while and didn’t think to check the app store for this little app.  No, I am not an apple Airprint guy so I don’t have the native print capability in my iDevices. I have an HP All-in-One printer I bought several years ago. So all of you HP fans who are not aware of this cool application you should think about getting it.  I have already used it a few times for some web printing and got the application installed on my iPhone and iPad. You can connect directly to a Wifi printer or the printer just needs to be on the network your device is attached to.

Just search for “HP ePrint” in the App Store, it’s free!

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Why LinkedIn should be worth more than Facebook

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It’s an age-old adage - Business vs Pleasure.

In a world where athletes make millions and the average business person makes less than $100K it is hard to argue that a market designed for entertainment isn’t big business. However, the customers are clearly in it for pleasure. This is why Facebook on paper is more valuable than LinkedIn – how can you argue with almost a billion users? LinkedIn, however, has over 200 million “business users” and the entire focus of LinkedIn is to “link” you with other business people.

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Can’t remember that person who Sametime’d you?

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There is a cure for that!

With over 400,000 employees, IBM can be considered a very large company and too often I have accidentally closed a chat window or had to reboot and could not remember who I chatted with! Well, there is a tiny little down arrow in the title area for the Sametime Frequent Contacts window in your Notes client. You can select what contacts to show in the list. Notice you have several options:

  • Sametime Frequent Contacts – shows a list of contacts you often chat with.
  • Sametime Primary Contacts – is a static list you define of your “favorite” people.
  • Sametime Recent Contacts – shows in order of date the people you have chatted with. A little different from frequent contacts as it’s just sorted by date.

So maybe this would be a good “badge” if you used this feature in Sametime. I would be interested to know who actually knew about this and who uses it.

LeetPress – a great game review WordPress theme

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A few weeks ago my youngest son Nathan and I talked about creating a game review blog. I figured this would be a great learning exercise for him and make “gaming” into a positive by applying critical thinking. The idea is he gets a new game on the xBox, Wii, iPad, etc and he has to write a review of the game in a notepad I gave him. So far he loves the idea and has written up some pretty impressive reviews. I do minor edits to his reviews but in general he does most of the writing behind them.

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Where GIMP 2.8 went wrong

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I have used GIMP for many years, too many to count or remember actually but I know it was in the early 1.x time frame. This latest release has me a bit confused in the Save As, Export area.

I rarely ever save a file in the native GIMP format (XCF) and usually save the images as PNG or JPG. Given that, I always use short cuts like CTRL+S to save the image and in GIMP 2.6 in “just worked”. Now, you are forced to use the Export function from the menu any time you want to save the image as anything outside of an XCF file – very bad! The shortcut key doesn’t work like it did and now I can’t just edit an existing PNG or JPG and just click “Save”. I really don’t understand this change because the save dialog is almost identical – they didn’t make it smaller or optimize it in any way. Check out the images below.

Save Dialog in GIMP 2.6

Save Dialog in GIMP 2.8

Effectively using #hashtags with Twitter

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One of the features I love about the Twitter application for iPad and iPhone is the use of the hash tag. I follow a particular hash tag during events like #debates, #ibm, #survivor, etc. The applications on the iPhone and iPad under the Discover area allow you to follow the activity for that particular hash tag and quickly use that hash tag in your own posts. When you click the write icon you get the hash tag placed in the entry field automatically for you and highlighted. This is a big time saver and removes error, especially for large search terms or hash tags. Check out the screen shots below where I follow the hash tag #ibm and then click the write button.

Other sources:

Twitter help about Hashtags – link here.
Article – 5 Ways Your Business Should Use Twitter HashTags.