Widgets for your Blog

Weather Channel widget:

Calendar Widget: (you can add activities!)

Do you know how to add a Flickr slideshow to your Blog?

I found the answer and I really like the result!

This week in technology by Reuters

Yes, Apple iPhone in UK on November 9

Finally the iPhone is getting closer and closer for European users. The first country receiving it is UK. You can read more about on Apple's web site.
O2 will be the exclusive carrier for the UK.
An article is also available in News.com.

One place for all your information

I like Google services but I'm not a fan of them. Any way what is good must be always mentioned and shared, so this time I will talk a bit about Google Reader.
You probably heard many times the strange term: RSS Feeds or RSS 2.0. Well actually it is a technology that helps publishers (bloggers, news services, companies, organizations, etc) to transfer information to their audience. The concept is similar that a subscription service, so the "feeds" are the units that include information and the subscription is what makes users to receive new information published on that feed. Normally the feeds are organized by topic. Each Blog includes at least one feed. Those feeds are identified with the logo shown to the left.
The problem starts when you subscribe to many feeds, let's say tenths of them. Why is that a problem? well because is like receiving each day one page of tenths of magazines, it is a mess and then normally it is difficult to organize and mark what was interesting, readed, not interesting, etc. the solution is a good Feed Reader.
There are many readers available, each one with a special functionality. Even Internet Explorer 7 is a feed reader. But until now nothing like Google Reader. Why? here some of the reasons:

1. It is a web based reader. That means that I don't need to load my computer with software that will make it slower. And of course that when I change PC I just need to login to my account.
2. It works very fast.
3. It lets me organize my subscriptions easily. It includes functions like marking automatically which articles or posts are already read. It also can send the posts by email and of course each feed can be easily be part of a category.
4. It works well with Mobile Phones. This is a great advantage because you could be checking some posts from your phone and when coming back to your PC all what was read is marked like that. If you like a story you can mark it with a star so it will be easy to remember.
5. It works fine with the Nintendo Wii!
6. It gives you statistics of what you are reading the most.
7. It hides all the posts that were read in the past, but also makes it easy to show them all when desired.
8. It is free.
9. It creates an RSS feed with all your subscriptions!
10. If it is well used and the feeds are well organized Google reader can become a "learning" center with all the information one person needs.
    

Learn more about your Mac

In the Windows world it is not so easy to get a good software for capturing screenshots or to learn some very useful shortcuts to perform some tasks. In the Mac is not needed event to look for that software because many are part of the operating system (OS).

Like in the image: if you press "command" + "shift" + "4" will give you the chance to capture a section of your screen. Just with this trick you can save some 20$ in a software like that. There are many other tips like that so I advise you to visit the video tips in Apple site. Click here to check them.

Video news

Actually I'm normally getting world news using the BBC or CNN. But for some reason I always have some kind of problem with the videos.
Reuters, one of the most important news agencies in the world, publishes videos about what is going on in the World. They are clear, short, interesting and objective.
I think you should give a check on them.
One of the things I like the most is that you only find news, no jokes or personal kind of videos. It goes right to what is needed. And of course you can also subscribe to their RSS feed.

iMovie ’08, avoid problems on upgrading, buying or replacing

I'm waiting for buying the new iLife, it is still not available in Slovenia, but it is coming in a few days. And while waiting I found a very important post about iMovie '08 you need to read before upgrading or buying the iLife '08. Click here to read it.
It looks like you will not be able to open your iMovie '06 files on the new version, also you will be incapable of using your iMovie '06 plugins. The article is so important that could cause a delay in my decision to buy the software! Why? because I will buy soon 2 macs, so they will come with it for free, while I keep the superior iMovie '06 on my notebook.

Upgrade iWork '06 to iWork '08

As you may know, yesterday, Steve jobs released new iMacs, new iLive '08 and new iWork 'o8.
the problem is that just 3 weeks ago I bought my iWork '06 so I was worried about how to upgrade. Maybe they will give me a free new version? or maybe an upgrade price?
Well, I have called Apple and they told me that it could be changed if I bought the iWork within the past 2 weeks.

In my case that's not possible because I bought it 3 weeks ago. But if you just bought iWork or iLive you can receive a replacement with the new version. That's good news.
Actually I feel not a lot of pain because the price of the new iWork is really low and now it comes with a spreadsheet that I really want to see.

Something also interesting is that the .Mac now gives you 10GB instead of 1GB for the same price than before.

Voki, a new way to communicate in your Blog

This is a test of a female avatar with text to speech technology. Really easy to make and I thing it can be very useful.
Voki is a service that is offered for free but for non commercial purposes or web sites.
Here the first sample:




Get a Voki now!