Gmail | Nerdlets

More Gmail IMAP Options

Oct 092008

For those of you who use gmail, and have IMAP enabled (IMAP allows you to keep your email client–such as Thunderbird, Outlook, iPhone, or Blackberry–perfectly in-sync with all your other email clients, including Google’s web client, so you only have to check your email once), now there are even more options available to you. Read about them here.

For those of you who don’t use gmail, you should. Seriously, even if you want to keep your main email, a Gmail account can be useful as a backup or spam filter.

Don't Pay for Software

Software, Webapps and Websites 3 Responses »

Oct 062008

I am still a little surprised that people are willing to shell out hundreds of dollars on computer software when there are often dozens of free alternatives available. Most of us use computers for pretty basic tasks: emailing friends, browsing the internet, editing photos, listening to music, writing letters, and maintaining blogs. All of these tasks—and many others—can be performed using excellent free software that is easily installable and maintainable.

Why you should not be afraid of “Free”

Consumer Reports recently ran an article instructing its readers to be suspicious of free software. There reasons were sound, but only apply to a certain kind of “free.” There is certainly a lot of “free” stuff on the internet that can cost you in the end, but there are also a lot of excellent resources as well; the trick is being able to tell the difference.

I think the other reason people are afraid of free software is that they assume it’s “second class.” Since it’s free, it can’t be very good. Again, this applies to some software, but not the kind I’m talking about. Think about it this way: who would you rather buy a car from? Do you pick the used car dealer, primarily interested in his bottom line? Or do you pick the enthusiastic hobbyist, the guy (or girl) who refurbishes old cars because he loves it? All things being equal, the second individual is probably the more trustworthy.

So what do you mean be “free”?

There are three kinds of free. The first type of free software is “free” software—notice the quotation marks. This includes malware (software that pretends to be useful, but actually damages your computer), shareware (software that pretends to be free at first, but then cuts you off after a certain amount of time, or holds back on you until you pay its premium), and crapware (software that really is free, but sucks). Of these, shareware is the only one worth talking about, and even here you should be careful. While I don’t particularly care for the shareware model, there are some useful programs in this group.

The second kind of free software is free in the sense of “free beer.” Many programmers and organizations develop software for their own personal use, and while they want to maintain absolute control over their creation, they nevertheless offer it to others out of kindness (or self-promotion, or for some other non-monetary motivation). So this includes all software that is “closed” (the programmer does not release the source code) but does not require payment.

The third kind of free software is free in the sense of “free speech.” Free-speech software is (almost) always also free-beer software. The difference here is that in addition to being free to use, those who produce the software also publish the “source,” the internal nuts-and-bolts that determines how the software functions. This is useful for other programmers—anyone can improve or add functionality to the software, without having to ask permission or pay a fee. Firefox is a good example here; it is free to use and also free to modify, which means there are plugins that can do almost anything right in the comfort of your browser. This is the best kind of free because, in addition to keeping money in your wallet, you are not ultimately dependent on any one individual or organization, and so your software is less likely to go out of date or be unusable.

The Recommendations: Free Software you Should Download or Bookmark

Over the course of the next few weeks I will be posting about free software to get you started, organized by function. All the software will be at the very least “free beer” software (unless otherwise noted). Most of it will also be “free speech” (open-source) software. I will also include a number of web-apps, which are generally “free beer” services.

The following is a list of the types of software I will discuss in the forthcoming posts. You can check back here, as I will edit this page when new posts are available, or you can always subscribe to the blog and get updated automatically!

Planning/Productivity
Office
Music, Movies, and Media
Internet
Social
Utilities
Photos
Security.
Backup

An Open-Source Alternative to Apple's iPhone

Tech/Gadgets No Responses »

Sep 232008

No one can dispute it: the iPhone is cool. But Apple maintains absolute control over the software you can install and the services you can use, so the iPhone is still tethered to your home computer. The problem with the iPhone is that it is not open-source.

Google has been working on an alternative platform for some time now, dubbed Android (for a summary and overview, go here, for more technical details, start here). Its not a phone; its a platform, that is, a collection of tools and software that runs a phone. Think of it as an operating system for your cell, and in this case that operating system is free and open-source (for the most part).

The Android platform has been in development for over a year, and today marks the official announcement of the first phone to utilize that platform: the T-Mobile G1, otherwise known as the HTC Dream, and includes a full slide out keyboard and a touch screen interface. Like the iPhone, it will play music (purchases are through Amazon’s DRM-free music store), support podcasts, and include an application store for community-produced software.

Ars Technica reports:

In addition to being chock full of Google’s open source goodness, the
companies have worked to ensure that the Android-enabled Dream is chock
full of familiar features and apps. Users will have one-click access to
all of Google’s mobile apps, such as Gmail, Google Maps (including
street view, a feature that is infuriatingly missing from the iPhone),
Google talk, Google Calendar, and more.

Check out the full story here.

Update: Read The New York Times’s take, complete with pretty pictures.

Avoid Attachment Embarrassment

Webapps and Websites 2 Responses »

Sep 162008

From Cnet:

There’s really nothing worse than sending out an important e-mail with mention of an attachment then forgetting to actually attach the file that goes with it. To that end, a brilliant new Gmail labs feature is an opt-in nagger that will give you a warning pop-up if you try to send without a file and have used the word “attached” somewhere in the message.

Read the whole Cnet Article, or just follow this guide to set things up on your gmail account.

If anybody knows of a similar plugin for Thunderbird, post in the comments!

Google enters the Browser Wars with "Chrome"

Software 6 Responses »

Sep 012008

Google is entering the browser wars.

But true to its “Don’t be evil” slogan, Google is not really waging a war. In fact, just last week Google announced that they would continue their support of Mozilla’s Firefox browser until at least 2011.

So why launch a new web browser?

Because we believe we can add value for users and, at the same time, help drive innovation on the web.

What, more specifically, does Google think it can contribute?

Because we spend so much time online, we began seriously thinking about what kind of browser could exist if we started from scratch and built on the best elements out there. We realized that the web had evolved from mainly simple text pages to rich, interactive applications and that we needed to completely rethink the browser. What we really needed was not just a browser, but also a modern platform for web pages and applications, and that’s what we set out to build.

On the surface, we designed a browser window that is streamlined and simple. To most people, it isn’t the browser that matters. It’s only a tool to run the important stuff — the pages, sites and applications that make up the web. Like the classic Google homepage, Google Chrome is clean and fast. It gets out of your way and gets you where you want to go.

In other words, Google’s browser will apparently focus on web applications, rather than on the comparatively “simple” matter of web browsing. This reflects a more general trend towards “Web 2.0/3.0″ and, to bring in another buzz word, “Cloud Computing.” In short: Google anticipates that more and more of your interaction with the computer will actually be interaction with the web. The software you use, the files you store, and the Operating System you run will increasingly be web-based, not hardware-based (Microsoft agrees, by the way). To put the matter even more succinctly, in 10 years Google expects that your web browser will be your OS. I suspect that their release of this new browser is intended to reflect this prophecy, while at the same time assisting Google (in its real war against Microsoft) to fulfill its own prediction. A self-fulfilling prophecy, in browser form.

Will it work? We will see (I personally would like to see a hybrid system—I hope the “cloud” will be grounded in open-source-supported home-hardware). In the meantime, it is encouraging to again reiterate: Google is still supporting Mozilla, and in addition to this continued Firefox support, which serves Google’s own interest (for the time being), they have committed to an open-source model for their own offering:

We owe a great debt to many open source projects, and we’re committed to continuing on their path. We’ve used components from Apple’s WebKit and Mozilla’s Firefox, among others — and in that spirit, we are making all of our code open source as well. We hope to collaborate with the entire community to help drive the web forward.

This is a good move (and the only legal one available to them, since Mozilla publishes Firefox ‘s code under an open-source license that requires open-source reciprocation).

So how can you get your hands on this technology?

Check in again tomorrow to try Google Chrome for yourself. We’ll post an update here as soon as it’s ready.

The only hurdle I can foresee here is the recent controversy Google has had over privacy issues (regarding ad-targetting in Gmail, the Viacom/YouTube controversy, and, of course, Google street-view concerns). But Google makes such good “products,” it’s hard not to trust them.

Read the whole story here.

Back to School Web Apps

Webapps and Websites No Responses »

Aug 272008

Web-based applications are a handy way to stay organized and get-things-done both on and off campus. The advantage of web-based applications is that they are accessible anywhere there’s a computer, and are are usually free.

Here is a list of 10 handy web-apps that are perfect school (and office) needs. A couple are particularly noteworthy: google calendar, remember the milk, zotero, and evernote. Keep an eye on my blog for an upcoming post og google calendar and remember the milk, along with Gmail and Mozilla Thunderbird.

Firefox 3.0 Released!

Software 2 Responses »

Jun 172008

The much anticipated release of the excellent web browser Firefox 3.0 is available for download. Curious what all the fuss is about? Wondering if you should switch from Internet Explorer (you should, by the way)? Check out the discussion here and here for the best Firefox analysis. Wondering what’s new? Check out this list or a more in depth visual tour.

Convinced? Help Mozilla (the organization behind Firefox) set a record for most downloads in a day by downloading now! Once you have your very own copy, you can start adding extensions and customizing to your heart’s content.

In honor of this milestone in Web development, I thought I would provide some of my favorite extensions. Check them out!

Zotero of course. I have already posted a brief introduction. If you do any amount of research, Zotero is a must for organizing bibliographical material. It also generates citations in a variety of formats, including Chicago and SBL. If you are having trouble getting start, make sure you check out their online screencast, and I plan on developing my own tutorial for SBL/OpenOffice support in the near future.

Ever wish you could access your most-used internet bookmarks anywhere? Or maybe you want to share them with friends and family? Or post automatically generated links to your favorite posts on a blog (as I have in the sidebar to the right)? Well then del.icio.us is for you. The interface takes a little getting used to, and the website has the kind of interface only a techie could love, but its worth the effort. More to the point, it has a brilliant Firefox Extension.

If you’re a longtime use of Firefox, you probably already have a collection of favorite extensions. Some of them might not yet be updated for Firefox 3. Don’t worry, you can still use them: just download Nightly Tester Tools to override Firefox’s default functionality.

Gmail is wonderful, but it is even more wonderful when you install Better Gmail 2, which adds some customizable functionality to gmail’s site.

If you’re a blogger, you definitely want to check out Scribefire. Like Zotero, it runs inside Firefox, allowing you to browse and blog at the same time; no more switching tabs and juggling windows!