Website of the week: Feedly

I've said previously that Website Of The Week wasn't going to be a thing, and I stand by that.

Certain websites produce 'feeds'. Bands, blogs and comic strips all produce feeds which people can subscribe to using a news aggregator. Every time a website updates, you get a notification. It's especially useful to get these notifications if the website doesn't update to a particular schedule, much like my blog. Before now, Google Reader was by far the most popular news aggregator.

If you are a Google Reader user, you'll be aware that Google is pulling the plug on July 1st. If you're not aware, where have you been?

You have exactly a week to make the transition from Google Reader to an alternative of your choice, and I'm going to recommend Feedly.

Making the transition to Feedly is simple - you log in with your Google account and it imports your feeds from Google Reader automatically. There's also a really slick iOS and Android app to go with it, and it also integrates with other applications, such as IFTTT.

Once you've signed up to Feedly, here's a subscription link to get you started ;)

Happy perusing!

Windows 8: The Start Menu Is Back!

…sort of.

Windows 8 got rid of the start menu we all know and love, and replaced it with the start screen. Although beautiful and new and touch friendly, it isn’t the same. And people hate change, apparently.

Anyway, I figured out a way to put a menu at the bottom left corner with links to your installed programmes, with no need to install any horrible 3rd party software. It sort of resembles the Programs menu of Windows 98, and it looks like this:

Raspberry Pi project #3: Beepy

Before you panic, you haven't missed my writings about any other Raspberry Pi projects. This is project number 3, but it's the first one I've actually written about.

The reasoning for Beepy came when the family were highlighting programmes in the Christmas edition of What's On TV. We used to set reminders on the TV, but it's rubbish - they only remind you if the TV is turned on.

Beepy is an alarm daemon that regularly reads a text file with a list of dates, times, numbers and words.

Website of the Week – ifttt.com

This "Website of the Week" isn't going to be a regular occurrence, but IFTTT sent me a text a couple of days ago, and I decided to write about it because it's pretty cool.

IFTTT stands for "If This Then That", and it is an online utility to perform a particular action when a particular event occurs.

I'll try to explain that again. You connect IFTTT to your other online accounts such as Google, Facebook and Dropbox. There are lots of different triggers that can occur. For example, every day at a particular time; when you are tagged in a photo on Facebook; or when you send IFTTT an email with a particular subject. You can add services like Yahoo weather and you can connect your mobile phone as well.

iThingy app – JumiMouse+

A couple of years ago, I downloaded an app for my iPod called JumiMouse+. I found it because I was looking for a remote desktop app to control my laptop, and although this wasn't exactly what I was looking for at the time, it turned out it was better than what I wanted.

In order for the app to work, JumiMouse+ requires a server application, JumiController, to be running on your PC. It can sometimes be problematic connecting the iPod to the PC, but this is usually the fault of the firewall or your router. This app works both internally and externally, meaning your iPhone could be in the same room or in China and it will work just the same.

A few months later, JumiTech released an app called JumiTap, later branded JumiRemotes, which is now integrated into JumiMouse+. This allowed the user to create their own remote controls for specific applications, or download user-submitted remotes from JumiTech's gallery. Essentially, this means you can plug your laptop into your TV and run Windows Media Center using the remote control I made for it. Or you could play VisualBoyAdvance with a Game Boy controller rather than the keyboard. Or you could present a PowerPoint presentation without the need to go and press a button on the laptop after every slide.

Help! I’m syncing!

I never had a backup schedule. I just copied my files every now and then to an external hard drive, but not nearly regularly enough. The hard drive I back it up to sits right next to my laptop most of the time. This is fine if the laptop fails and I need to get the files back, but what about if the house burns down? Both my hard drive and laptop would be destroyed without any chance of getting the data back. So I decided that I would make my computer back up the files online, because having your data mirrored somewhere else is always a good idea.

Panorama-ama

At the start of second year computer science, we were taught the concept of image stitching. There’s a lot of complicated maths involved, but it was understandable, and more importantly, interesting. Turns out my lecturer had previously contributed to the panorama stitching feature in Windows Live Photo Gallery. He’s even got an app!

Anyway, before I had those lectures, I was still using the tool to stitch photos together. When I went to Venice with the 6th form in 2010, I took a burst of photos from the top of a tower overlooking most of the city.

Ain’t no advertisers tracking me!

(except for Facebook and Google and many other corporations)

See those ads over there to the right? They are generated by looking at the text of this blog. Google can take the text here, work out what I’m writing about and push adverts of a similar theme. Most of the time I’m talking about technology or braces, and hence there are techy and medical adverts in that advertising space.

iPhone, Y U no lock landscape?

Right now, I am typing this post on my iPod, using the OneNote app. At the time of writing this, it's 1:30am and I am lying in bed, on my side. I am also typing in landscape. Now, normal people, if you don't realise how difficult this is, you obviously don't own an iPhone/iPod Touch. I suggest you stop reading this now, for this is going to get all Appley.

Spotify, Articles, Be Gone From My News Feed!

Hi there Spotify, The Guardian and The Independent. Get out of my news feed now.

Ta.

1) I don't really care about what you're listening to. Or reading.

Procrastination

Definition

Procrastination is defined as avoiding revision or coursework by any means possible.

The common forms are primarily Facebook and YouTube, but this can expand into watching random programmes on iPlayer or playing games on a certain not-so-popular-anymore games console (not mentioning names). Or they might even write a blog which no one will read.