Talentopoly.com – Social Bookmarking for Programmers, Designers, and IT Professionals

By on May 31, 2011 in Opinion

Following is a guest post from Jared Brown, a friend I’ve made via Twitter and Talentolopy. Jared Brown is the founder of Talentopoly.com, a community for programmers, designers, and IT professionals staying current by sharing the best of what they discover online.

I’m a programmer by education, a designer by desire, and an IT profesional by necessity. One of my favorite apps for the past couple of months has been Instapaper. It’s such a simple but big impact concept. Before Instapaper I would save links to articles by emailing them to myself. Then later that day when I was winding down for the night and looking for something to read I’d read through them. Instapaper has simplified the process and I now read more articles than I used to.

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iChromy: A Chrome Lookalike for iPad

By on May 26, 2011 in iOS Apps

The iPad is one of the best devices ever for reading online. When it was initially unveiled to the public in 2010Steve Jobs said it was like holding the web in your hands. That’s not too far off. It feels like the perfect way to catch up with the news, check your email, and more, without a keyboard and mouse.

The only problem is, Safari on iPad isn’t as robust as most desktop browsers. We’ve grown to rely on tabs and extensions to get the most out of our browsing experience. Safari on iOS uses a multi-page interface that makes it rather difficult to switch between sites.

If we could actually choose any browser on iPad, many of us would choose Chrome. Google’s kept Chrome one of the fastest browsers around, and the unified search and address bar makes using a separate search box seem odd. However, it’s highly unlikely we’ll ever see Chrome on the iPad, as Apple doesn’t allow 3rd party Javascript engines, and Chrome’s V8 engine is its main difference.

The team at Diigo has created a new alternative for Chrome on the iPad: iChromy. This new browser app tries to bring the best of Chrome’s interface and speed to the iPad, while still working with Apple’s rendering policies. It’s an interesting alternate browser, and if you’ve wished you could get Chrome on your iPad, it might be the browser you’ve been waiting for.

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Taking Tech Writing To The Next Level

By on May 17, 2011 in Techinch, Writing

The internet is an amazing place. I live in a small town in Thailand, and am originally from Knoxville, TN and the Dallas, TX area. Through all the differences between the places I call home, one thing’s the same: the internet. Facebook, Twitter, and chat may be incredibly easy ways to kill time, but for me, they keep me connected to all of the parts of the world I’d like to be in. I’m currently finishing my degree from a college I’ve never actually been to, and have been blessed to work with colleagues around the globe that I’ve never met in person.

I started out writing about technology on my first WordPress.com blog, and then shortly thereafter started writing for Labnol.org, a blog from the talented Amit Angarwal in India. I then began writing for Howtogeek.com, a Virginia based site that’s started by Lowell Heddings with contributers today from around the globe. Then, I started writing for Envato’s AppStorm.net network, which is based in Australia but is about the most global company you could imagine.

This month, I’ve been privileged to take a larger role with the AppStorm.net team, as I’m now the official editor of Web.AppStorm.net. I’ve enjoyed writing about the latest web apps there over the past months, and am very excited about the new opportunities as the editor. We’ve got an amazing team of contributors from around the world, and it’s always comical to look at my Skype list and see the multitude of time zones represented today.

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Win a Copy of “Digging into WordPress 3.1″ from Techinch and AppSumo

By on May 3, 2011 in Techinch

When you need to publish anything on the web, WordPress is just about the best solution for building your site. WordPress may have started out as just a standard blog publishing engine, but today, it’s powerful enough to let you create everything from complex real estate sites to an online eBook. Best of all, it’s still simple enough to let you make cute and easy to update Tumblr style blogs.

There’s only one problem: How are you going to figure out how to do all of this on your own? Sure, you could purchase a theme and some plugins, but if you don’t know what’s going on behind the scenes, you’ll have a much harder time customizing it to your needs. That’s where the excellent Digging into WordPress eBook comes in. This eBook takes you through everything you’ll need to know to understand the basics of building WordPress themes and plugins, and customizing the core software. It’ll even help you learn how to make your site more secure, and more that we covered in our review last year. The latest edition that was just released even covers the latest features of WordPress 3.1, including custom post formats and more. Continue Reading →

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Change Default Image Upload Sizes in WordPress

By on April 19, 2011 in Techinch

One of my biggest problems with WordPress is with uploading images. I try to keep all images a max of 640 px wide, but then link the images to the original size so you can click and see the full image with Fancybox. The only problem is, by default, WordPress sets large images to 1024 px width, then medium images are a tiny 300 px width. And if you go to change the image size in the default WordPress photo uploader, you have to choose a size percentage. Not an ideal situation, and it was frustrating enough that I’d started resizing images in Photoshop Elements before uploading them.

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