David Kadavy is author of Mind Management, Not Time Management, The Heart to Start & Design for Hackers.
I recently spent a boatload of time researching cameras, lenses, and lighting to improve my video quality for conference calls, streaming, and podcast interviews. I had to wade through many YouTube videos by streaming gamers and camera gearheads who get too technical. So here’s what I found out, specifically for conference calls, in the most basic terms possible. keep on reading »
The BOOX Poke5 is a 6″ e-ink e-reader that runs Android, and so can run apps from the Google Play store. I am extremely excited about this and other e-ink Android devices from ONYX because I have long hoped for a way to read on an e-ink screen EPUBs that aren’t from Amazon, and sync my highlights to Readwise. keep on reading »
I’ve come to a frightening realization. As the little car icon jitters towards my apartment on the map, I discover…
…I’ve once again forgotten how to tie a bow tie. keep on reading »
The basics of SEO are stupidly simple; and it seems like everyone knows – or at least pretends to know – those basics. Still I get asked about SEO pretty often. I don’t consider myself an expert, but I’ll share what I know, and hopefully it will help some people.
I’ll be talking Google-centrically because Google will likely account for the vast majority of your inbound search traffic. Additionally, if you rank highly on Google, you will probably do pretty well on other search engines anyway.
Remember last week when I told you that Google Webmaster Tools was reporting faster page load time? Well, I found another interesting metric, under Diagnostics < Crawl stats. It looks like the Googlebot is also crawling my site much faster: keep on reading »
Note [February 11, 2013]: Since writing this article, I found administering my own server to be a bit over my head. I got sick of getting hacked, update WordPress, and trying to manage my own CDN. So, I’ve been experimenting with various hosted WordPress solutions. These are like hosting companies, but they keep your WordPress installation up-to-date, fast, and secure, for a slightly higher rate than working with your own server.
I have hosted various sites on three different WordPress hosts over the past couple of years, and have finally settled on WP Engine. They are reliable, have great support, and serve things up fast. I’ve lined up a special WP Engine coupon with them that will save you some money.
I’ve also written a WP Engine Review, and you can use their speed test to see how your site performs. I’m a member of the WP Engine affiliate program, so if you sign up with them, I will get a commission.
WP Engine does cost a bit more, so if you’d prefer something cheaper (though not as fast), I’ve written a tutorial on the Design for Hackers blog on how to create a WordPress blog on a Hostgator free trial.
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I heard rumblings last year that Google would start altering their rankings based upon speed of page loads. This was confirmed a couple of weeks ago on the Google Webmaster’s blog, and – while they say that their new speed standards will only affect 1% of searches – you can bet that portion will rise in the future. keep on reading »
My post about transferring my iTunes library got a lot of traffic, and a lot of great comments in which people shared their experiences and expanded on my advice. The post still gets a lot of hits, and people have been asking me for the best techniques of moving music off your iPod onto your computer. Being neck-deep in writing a book, I haven’t a lot of time to experiment directly with the various methods yet, but I thought it would be helpful to round up some resources and talk about the leading techniques that are out there.
Apple doesn’t want you taking music off your iPod and putting it onto a computer, because they’re worried about unauthorized trading. But if your hard drive crashes and take your entire music collection, being blocked from shifting your iPod contents back onto your new laptop is going to be infuriating. Fortunately, there are ways.
If you’re trying to get your music onto a Windows machine, it’s not so hard. Windows thinks of your iPod as a simple storage device, and if you know how to find the files, you can grab them as easily as you’d pull them off a thumb drive.
For step-by-step instructions, check out Method One in this easy-to-digest article. That 2007 article is a little outdated — it goes on to suggest several software programs that are no longer available — but its instructions for getting into your iPod’s hidden music folder (where everything will look like alphabet soup) are still good. Depending on your version of Windows, finding the hidden files might be slightly different process (in Windows 7: After clicking on the iPod under My Computer, click on Folder Options, and under the View tab, select “Show hidden files, folders, and drives.”)
But pay attention to that initial step about not having your iTunes set to automatically sync your iPod, or the first thing you do will be to wipe your iPod clean. The writer here had only tested the technique with music files, which works fine (although you lose the metadata). I haven’t tested it yet with videos and other media.
This video also outlines how to browse – and transfer from – your iPod as if it were just another hard drive:
If you’re looking to get the iPod content onto a Mac, you’ll need a software program that will do it for you.
If you want a program that will transfer music from iPod to PC without you having to do the backdoor work yourself, Sharepod comes pretty highly recommended. Download.com gives it a glowing review, and the program promises to grab songs, pictures, videos and other content, as well as your playlists, album art and ratings, from your iPod (or iPhone) and pull them to your PC.
Floola is a freeware program that offers to do a lot of things besides copy music off your iPod, from copying YouTube videos to synchronizing with your Google Calendar. Comments I’ve seen are strongly positive but, like any free program, slightly mixed. Check out reviews at Download.com and Lifehacker for starters.
If music is your only problem, FreeSync for Mac will readily move the files. If you’ve got video, photos, etc., the maker will want you to pay for the more robust version (see below).
Another free solution is iPod Folder, which works for both PCs and Macs. The drawback: Not only does it not do video, it only handles MP3 files, so if you’ve purchased music from the iTunes store, or ripped your CDs into any format other than MP3, this one won’t help you.
There are a number of programs you can buy for, of course. They’ll usually start you out with a free demo that gives you a number of days and songs before you need the license. I’m limiting the scope of this quick survey to free solutions, but here are a couple of pay-to-play programs that kept popping onto my radar:
One leading contender is Senuti, which gives you 30 days or 1,000 songs free before asking $18 for a license. Here’s a full review that walks you through the process of transferring your music from iPod to Mac.
iSkySoft, whose FreeSync for Mac moves songs for free, offers to get everything off your iPod with either of two programs, SyncPod for Mac, which will run you $39, or SyncPod for Windows, whose lower price tag ($19) may be due to the greater number of free solutions for the PC user.
I won’t get around to actually experimenting with these programs and techniques until either the book hits the shelves or a hard drive failure wipes out my iTunes library, but until that great or disastrous day, this post should get you started. If you’ve used any of these programs or techniques, or have a different or better solution, comment away!
While the 00’s are being called a lost decade for the US economy, there’s no doubt that it was a decade of incredible changes in technology, communication, and the way we see the world. I’ve compiled a list of my favorite books that define a decade that was full of exciting changes for the world, as well as for myself. I have to admit that sometimes difficult to separate the enormous personal changes I experienced in this decade – which was a coming of age one for me – from those of the world. Fortunately, they aren’t mutually exclusive. So, here they are: the eight books that define the decade, in an order that seemed intuitive to me. keep on reading »
Inspired by the great pictures of food that people tweet using services such as TwitPic, myself and some friends have collaborated on nom.ms, a photo-sharing site especially for food lovers. With nom.ms, you can Tweet what you eat – and share recipes and restaurant info – simply by sending a photo of some food to new@nom.ms. And to sign up – well, do the same thing: send a photo of a dish to new@nom.ms. Once you get your nom.ms account hooked up to your Twitter account (we wouldn’t dream of asking for your Twitter password), we’ll start tweeting the subject line of your e-mail. The body will be used as a description for your nomm. Start nomming some nomms today, and tell your friends so you can nomm nomms with them, too!
One of the Eight Life Hacks for Health, Wealth, and Happiness is to Buy Used. But, sometimes this can be tough. Really hot items can go fast off of Craigslist, and then there’s the rarer items – how are you to know when they show up? It can be tempting to just go to the store and buy that food processor you need; but what about all of those food processors out there that need new homes? Here’s a video showing you how I get a text message notification when new items I want show up on Craigslist: keep on reading »