Tag: Software

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Adios, Feedly

rss_iconReading RSS feeds from multiple websites in a central, organized location that lets me quickly save items of interest without bothering me about posting to Facebook or telling what my friends are doing is a very important piece of my life. A good, clean RSS reader lets me quickly devour the day’s news, the latest trends, things my friends and family have written, and whatever else may be of interest to me.

I was an avid user of Google Reader until they shut it down earlier this year. Along with many other people, I sought an alternative home for my collection of important RSS feeds. I quickly found Feedly, and move everything over there. They seemed pretty hip, and while the interface and options took a little getting used to, it managed to satisfy my RSS needs (along with the mobile app) for a while.

Feedly started deploying a paid subscription model to get extra features, which seemed like a logical part of being a business, and I was OK with that. They didn’t take away anything I was used to in my free account. But they started making some boneheaded decisions, and the doubt started to percolate in the back of my mind.

2013-12-08_11-12-58
I am digging the options in InoReader so far

After perusing Reddit this morning, the last straw was drawn when I discovered this thread and this blog post dicussing Feedly’s new approach to hijacking shared links, thus cutting out the original content publishers (something they apparently backpedaled on pretty quickly). Not being someone who tries to make money from his blog, this was mildly concerning, but not that upsetting to me.

What did it for me was the CEO of Feedly making some off-putting comments on that blog post and generally being a jerk about it rather than listening to concerns and doing PR the right way. I decided to take my feeds and head over to InoReader. It was an easy import/export process, and InoReader feels much more comfortable to me so far. Their Android app looks decent as well.

Feedly's "support" page
Feedly’s “support” page

The funny thing is, I went to try and cancel my Feedly account, but I could not find a way to do so anywhere in the settings. I clicked on the “Support” link, and was taken to a page that advertised their services. There were no support options to be found anywhere.

If I figure out how to completely cancel my Feedly account, I will let you all know.

I will hopefully be happy in my new RSS house, but if not, there are still plenty of good looking alternatives out there.

Are you still an RSS user? What is your favorite reader?

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Hey Microsoft, I Heard You Need a New CEO

Dear Microsoft,

It’s been all over the news this week that Steve Ballmer has decided to step down as CEO. At first this seemed like a decision he had come to by himself, perhaps having felt as if his work here was done. Some started speculating that he was forced out by the board. Whatever the case, it has become clear that you will be seeking out a new CEO over the coming 12 months.

You need to choose me, and here is why:

1. I will work for half the money. It was reported that Ballmer made $1.3 million in 2012. I will step into his job for half the money.

2. I know what is wrong with your products, and I know how to fix them. I am someone who is intimately familiar with your apps and operating systems, and I am even more intimately familiar with fixing them. From disinfecting them, hardening them, cleaning them up, making them usable, and working around their aggravating inconsistencies, I know what is wrong with your shit. And I know how to fix it.

3. I know your competition. I got so fed up with you around the time Windows ME came out, I wrote you off completely, wiped all my machines, and became a Linux die-hard. I only used you when I had to. Eventually I ended up becoming a Mac user as I matured into adulthood and could actually (almost) afford the damn things. I know what it’s like to hate on Microsoft, I know why people do it, and I know what you can do to turn that around. I know what makes a Mac so much more appealing in the eyes of those customers you are so quickly losing.

My experience is based in reality. The reality of day-to-day usage and frustration with your products. When is the last time Ballmer sat down and tried to wipe a hard drive and reinstall Windows XP for someone? When is the last time anyone on your board, for that matter, had to disinfect a Windows 7 box riddled with malware and explain to their mother-in-law how her computer completely stopped functioning and why she now needs to change her online banking passwords?

Sure, there are thousands of consumers such as myself who are equally as familiar with your problems, and each have their own opinions on what you need to fix about yourself, but I bring to the table the experience of seeing you fail in many environments: colleges, non-profits, corporations, and federal government. I have worked across all of these sectors over the years, and I have witnessed each one seek out alternative solutions to the problems you consistently present.

Microsoft, you are out of touch, and that is why you are quickly becoming irrelevant. As you seek a new CEO, I hope that you strongly consider someone who is in touch, and I hope you even more strongly consider that person to be me.

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Tips, Tricks, Enhancements

I love the things that make my job easier, make a task simpler, or help protect me in the event of a problem. I collect lists of these things so that I can share them with you, my dear blog readers. Enjoy!

Lazarus
A web browser add-on that auto-saves any web form you are filling out. Never again will you lose that perfect Facebook political argument reply you’d been working on for an hour until your browser crashed. It be free. It be cool.

Feedly
This is what has replaced my Google Reader account now that Google has announced it will be shutting down Reader this summer. It’s simple, though it takes a little getting used to, and it will import all your feeds from Google Reader automatically.

Mailplane
My favorite way to use GMail and Google Calendar on my Mac(s). It lets me keep multiple accounts open at once in a tabbed interface, seamlessly switching back and forth to get things done. It also works with Google tasks.

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Leaving Evernote

Leaving EvernoteYesterday I got the email that millions of other people got in regards to Evernote resetting my password due to someone hacking into their user data system.

The investigation has shown… that the individual(s) responsible were able to gain access to Evernote user information, which includes usernames, email addresses associated with Evernote accounts, and encrypted passwords. Even though this information was accessed, the passwords stored by Evernote are protected by one-way encryption. (In technical terms, they are hashed and salted.)

After following the very geeky discussion about it in /r/netsec I was left wondering if I was placing too much faith in Evernote to protect all the brain dumps, notes, files, and private information I like to store in it.

Cloudy with a chance of security breach

After stumbling across this blog post entitled “Evernote doesn’t really care about security” I became convinced that it was time to leave Evernote. The security breach was actually the last straw in a number of things that have been bugging me more often than not — frequent crashes being the chief one.

Sometime around when Evernote added Skitch, the whole shebang started crashing on me frequently. I’m a premium Evernote user, and dealing with the app crashing multiple times a day quickly became aggravating. It has been almost unusable at times. That does not bode well for something you need to access frequently throughout a given day.

Then there were the issues where my notes were not synching between my laptop and my desktop, which I don’t really need to go into. You’ve probably had them too, if you are an Evernote user on more than one computer.

Lastly, I mentioned I was a paid Evernote user, but I never found myself using the paid features. The other big issue for me was with tagging – I would add tags to notes but then forget about them and never use them to find things. The inability to organize notes hierarchically is very necessary to me as someone who thinks that way due to my years as a sysad and developer, and I couldn’t get used to everything having to be arranged with tags.

Faith In The Cloud?

So my question yesterday became: “Where do I put all this info I have in Evernote that is more secure and can be synched and access between my phone, laptop, and desktop?”

Security experts mostly agree that putting secure information in the cloud is not a very good idea. But I want to have faith that it can be, and there are companies making an effort in that regard. I turned to a solution that was right under my nose: Google Drive.

Why Google Drive over Dropbox or some other service? Because it integrates easily with everything I already use, and more and more features and interactions with it are becoming available. I, for one, welcome our new Google overlords.

I’m still working on moving everything over from Evernote to Google Drive, and it’s not a simple process, but I think I will be able to live with it. I’ll also be able to rest a little better knowing that, while my data is still in the cloud, Google seems to value it more than Evernote.

Other fed up users are coming up with their own solutions for replacing their faith in Evernote.

What will be yours?

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Evernote 5 for Mac

I love Evernote and I use it a lot to keep my life organized. Still, I wish it had a few things that it doesn’t:

  • Notebooks full of notebooks. I’d like to nest things more deeply. It keeps things organized better than tags.
  • The ability to work with non-Evernote-approved scanners. I want to scan my receipts, docs, and pics to Evernote without having to buy a new scanner/printer.

That’s about it. Until now.

Evernote 5 came out the other day for Mac, and I gotta say I don’t like the new interface. It feels like it introduced extra steps to find things. I’m not crazy about it at all, and I’m hoping there will be a way to revert to a simpler interface.

What do you think?

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So long, old friend.

After 10 years, I am quitting Firefox and moving to Chrome. This is a big change for me. I’ve used Firefox since it was called Phoenix. I’ve written magazine articles about how much I loved it. I’ve rubbed elbows with its developers and championed its cause.

But I gotta move. Chrome has evolved and has surpassed my old friend. I do not feel great about having to depart from my allegiance with the browser that began the death of Internet Explorer, but I really can’t justify clinging onto it anymore.

Since becoming a full-time Mac user last year, I’ve noticed the flaws of Firefox. The locking up, the memory leaks, the slowness. It has become quite annoying.

Now that I’m a full-time user of Google Apps at work and at home, it just makes sense.

Now that my favorite plugins for Firefox are all available for Chrome, and even some new ones that are awesome, it just makes sense.

So after I gave Chrome a decent trial this week (something I’ve done in the past just for kicks), I have decided it is time.

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Better WP Security

I have been cleaning up a lot of hacked websites/malware and doing security updates and hardening for WordPress websites lately. Ideally I’d be able to lock down a client’s server more thoroughly, implement a good firewall, and run some intrusion detection software, but since many people can’t afford this sort of thing and are on shared hosting environments, I have to lock down what I can.

For hardening WordPress I have traditionally been a fan of Secure WordPress, but lately it has seemed a little too simplistic and not proactive enough. Malware infestation on websites has been spreading like wildfire lately for whatever reason, so staying on top of things is a must.

WordPress Firewall 2 seemed to work pretty well in the past, but it would often kick back false positives which caused issues with plugins and prevented things from working that should otherwise not have a problem. Not to mention it hasn’t been updated in a while.

I was happy to see that Sucuri made their premium plugin free recently. It is pretty slick and has some cool features, and I really like what Sucuri does for web security.  But with this plugin they are trying to walk the line between simplicity for the end user and comprehensiveness for being secure. It’s kinda weird to use for that reason, as you don’t really get a good understanding of what is being done behind the scenes.

I tried this a few weeks ago and orginally gave it up, but I have since returned to Better WP Security, especially now that I can specify an email address to send notifications to and can disable warnings in the WP admin area. These are things that mattered a lot to me, as they would inevitably lead to clients or bosses emailing me asking what all these warnings were. The recent update to the plugin fixed all that, and I’m a happy camper.

I really like that the plugin shows you what needs to be done, makes it easy to do it, and keeps you well informed about what is going on behind the scenes. There is intrusion detection, there are logs, there are password strength policies, there are database tweaks, there are database backups, and there are many other ways to tighten up security. You don’t find so many useful tools in one place with any other plugin.

You should try it – Better WP Security (website) – Plugin Download

 

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Install missing GarageBand Content (loops etc.)

When you’ve missed installing the GarageBand Extra Content (I.E. “GarageBand Instruments and Apple Loops”) for whatever reason,
and when GarageBand DOES NOT give you the option to install from DVD when clicking on a non-installed loop/synth etc, then you can try the following. YMMV

Note: iLife 11 doesn’t seem to have the extras on the DVD (I could have missed it though)

So, with that in mind, break out your MAC’s Applications installer disc and pop it in and download the attached instructions.

GarageBand.Extra.Content

HTH

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MP3/ACC ID Tag issues (iTunes / PS3) – Part 2

If you missed my first rambling, see it here – Part-1

Now in Part 2, I’ve brought back more food for thought and some updated info between PS3’s ability to read MP3 tagging and AAC tagging as well.

So after some further testing, I’ve realized the broken part seems to be in iTunes MP3 tagging forArtwork only.

Setup used:

Windows 7 (and a few pre-encoded files from Vista for comparison)
iTunes 9.0.2.xx (latest as of Jan.5.2010) – Default ID Tag v.2.2 (but tested with 2.3 conversions)
dBpoweramp  13.3 using Lame 3.98.2 and ID Tags v2.3
PS3 – Fat and Slim models (tested on Firmware 3.00 and 3.15) which can read ID Tag v.2.1, 2.2, and 2.3

Here are the results I’ve found (based on MP3 encoding):

  1. A song encoded with iTunes that auto grabs the Artwork and using ID Tag v.2.2 (or even altering the same song to v.2.3) doesn’t show up properly under the PS3 or Windows Explorer.
  2. However, using that very same song encoded in step one, if I copy and paste a graphic from the internet etc. and drop it into the Album Artwork window in iTunes, it will then show up on my PS3 and through Windows Explorer!
  3. I decided to move back to dBpoweramp and run some test encodes/tagging for comparisons. While using dBpoweramp, all ID Tagging worked out of the box, all art work pulled from the net and inserted correctly, which was readable by all applications (iTunes, Black Berry, PS3, Windows Explorer, iPod, Sandisk Mp3 player) etc.

Thoughts:

There’s obviously something different with how artwork is stored when iTunes grabs it from the web (automatically) versus when you copy/paste artwork into the album art window.

I know (and have known) iTunes kept a separate “Album Artwork” folder, but it never dawned on me that they wouldn’t also keep that info in the headers as well.  So it seems when you copy and paste Artwork (vs. Auto-grabbing) in iTunes, it then writes it / tags it in the headers properly.

I guess they were trying to achieve a better way of Artwork storage? I guess we’ll see when I send off my letter to Apple, if they write back.

AAC:

As for the AAC part of this….it’s Sony’s fault, mostly……

While iTunes does the exact same thing with Artwork as the MP3’s, the Artwork doesn’t show up properly no matter what you encode with (dbPoweramp, EAC, etc) as the PS3 is expecting the container to be a 3GP/AAC file! Arrrgggghhhhh my PS3 isn’t a damn cell phone.

So until Sony updates the PS3 (like the later PSP updates) to read the entire m4a container (and tags) properly, it seems we’re out of luck for AAC encoded files (unless you go through a huge mess)

Note: However, there are ways around all of this crap, you could just use a streaming media server, but then we wouldn’t have learned this little bit of info.  😉

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MP3/ACC ID Tag issues (iTunes / PS3) – Part 1

This isn’t a guide or how-to article, it’s really just an informational blabber (in two parts), but maybe it will stir some thinking/experimenting with an old friend or two.

While messing around with my PS3 as an AAC/MP3 encoder, I quickly realized it doesn’t pull Art info etc. However, even if it did, I wouldn’t advise using the PS3 as your main ripper/encoder, as it’s always easier to replace standard PC DVD drives vs. a PS3 Blue Ray drive. 😉

Over the years I’ve moved from app to app and codec to codec (Audio Grabber, Lam3 via CLI, batch processing, EAC, dbpoweramp, linux tools with Lam3, OGG and so on) always looking for a great rip/encode combo. It’s funny, I swore off iTunes for encoding funtions until they starting using better versions of an MP3 encoder etc, I also stayed away from AAC, not because it’s not good (as it’s VERY good) but there was so  few players (car/mobile) that could play them (except iPods) etc. Well…..years passed and lots of things started supporting AAC, so I moved to AAC a year or so ago.

Now days, I truly do love iTunes ability to encode AAC/MP3’s (plus managing my iPod Touch) and supposedly Apple supports and uses the standard tagging functions for MP3 ID Tags, well…..at least that’s what it looks like and feels like except for one little minor flaw I found recently.

However,  keep in mind, unlike MP3’s, the AAC group has never set an industry standard as far as tagging goes, but Apple implemented a pretty good format on their own.

ENTER PS3 and Windows Explorer issues:

Continue reading “MP3/ACC ID Tag issues (iTunes / PS3) – Part 1”

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