About 2 weeks ago I purchased my first pair of vibram fivefingers shoes and I have not looked back since. Here is my personal vibram fivefingers review.
I had seen other wearing them and after researching the idea behind barefoot running, barefoot hiking, and Vibram’s initiative to create shoes to enhance the experience I was intrigued.  I am a big believer in doing things naturally.

I’ve really been enjoying my new 13 inch MacBook Pro and am very impressed with iMovie ’11.  It’s very easy to use and produces high quality results.  Perfect for amateur video enthusiast.

Helen and I went to the Smokey Mountains this past Fall and climbed up the Chimney Tops.

I’ve always been a big fan of anything that Piriform has to make.  CCleaner kept my computer running fast though my time at Berea College.   Defraggler came out later and is my default defrag program.  Now there is a new piece of software that will be very handy when I want know more about my computer or someone elses.  It’s called Speccy and it does a great job at putting all of your computer’s information in one place.

So I was looking for some handy iPhone Apps for freelance Web designers when I came across this one.  The name definitely caught my attention.

It looked promising I forked out a couple of bucks and downloaded it.  It’s good stuff!  The author, Jeremy Tuber, is hitting home on several topics that plague us freelancers.  I’m looking forward to becoming more proficient in Verbal Kung Fu!

Learn More:

Verbal Kung Fu for Freelancers: Master the Art of Self Defense against Difficult Clients

So I was thinking of band names for my friends band and being the internet engineer that I am I decided to see if there are any online tools that might assist us.

I introduce to you…   http://BandNameMaker.com!

It’s simple.  Just type a couple of keywords in and see what it generates.  If you don’t see something that you like just refresh the page and you’ll be given more name ideas.

Watch out… it can be a little addictive.  Have fun!

It was bound to happen. Anytime you buy something really nice the gods frown opon you and things begin to happen to put you back in your place. I am a recent and happy owner of the iPhone 3G. My wallet is also a bit lighter because of it but the phone and all of it’s amazing features make up for it.

Today gravity and the hard surface of my drive way almost ended an awesome relationship but luckily I invested in a protective case from Incipio. The case consist of two parts; a soft evelope that wraps it’s self and cushions blows, and a hard plastic brace that give extra support.

This case paid for it’s self today after dropping it on it’s edge onto my driveway. A drop like this would have surely cracked the screen.

The case also comes with a couple screen protectors that keep the screen from getting scatched. When you spend $200 on a phone you want protect your investment!

Let’s say you’re working on a series of Web sites that share similar style sheets but there are slight differences between them and you want to consolidate them into one style sheet. Yeah…

Instead of going line by line or using various Find and Replace methods check out a little know utility that comes as part of Apple’s Developer Tools, called Xcode, in Mac OS X.

It’s called FileMerge and its mission is to compare two files and then merge the differences into one. However, I never trust tools that do such things, so I simply used its amazing file comparison features to make sure I was doing the right things to the right files.

When you launch FileMerge, you’re prompted for the locations of two files which then open in one window with a vertical divider down the middle.

FileMerge highlights the sections that differ in each file, and uses an arrow in the center area to show whether the higlighted item needs to be added to the right or left file in order to make them identical. I used FileMerge to open two style sheets and compare them. I would then copy and paste and make the actual edits in TextMate or Dreamweaver. The visual cues provided by FileMerge were invaluable in helping me understand what I’d done to the code and without its help, I probably still be working on it!

I’m sure there are other tools out there that do the same thing (and perhaps even better, and I could trust the merge function), including UNIX’s diff command. But FileMerge was there, the smooth-scrolling auto-lineup feature has to be seen to be understood (it’s very cool), and it was free …

I became addicted to Apple’s FileMerge tool … even though I never used it for its full intended purpose!

I’m a big Firefox fan and always have been.  Today I finally downloaded Google’s new browser, Chrome.  It came with with my download of Google Earth and I thought that it would be unfair not to try it and open myself to something new.  Keep in mind that I am downloading it on my brand new Lenovo Ideapad which is not known for it’s speed.  I think of it as a hybrid between the iPhone and a traditional laptop.

As soon I launched the browser I noticed that it is considerably fast.  Faster than Firefox…

I pointed my browser to a couple of my own sites, both static and dynamic, and the load time is still noticeably quick!

Being a minimalist kind of guy, I appreciated the simple, clean style of my window to the internet.  No sub-bars to take up my precious internet real estate.  I’m going to try it out on my Dell Latitude and Mac Mini.  Details coming soon…

Here is a distilled list of pros and cons that I found on PCWorld.com:

Seven Reasons Chrome Could Be Cool

1. It won’t crash.

Perhaps Chrome’s biggest draw is its multiprocess architecture, which, in a nutshell, protects you from having a bad Web page or application take your browser down.

2. It’s really fast.

Again because of the multiprocess foundation, one slow site won’t drag down the rest of your browsing.

3. You barely notice it’s there.

The program barely looks like a program, and the vast majority of your screen space is devoted to the site you’re visiting–with no buttons or logos hogging space.

4. It makes searching simpler.

One of Chrome’s signature features is its Omnibox, an integrated all-purpose bar at the top of the browser.

5. It gives you more control over tabs.

Chrome gives the idea of tabbed browsing new power. You can grab a tab and drag it out into its own individual window. Or you can drag and drop tabs into existing windows to combine them.

6. It opens new doors on your home page.

Chrome comes with a default dynamic home page. As you use it, the program remembers the sites that you visit most often.

7. It lets you stay incognito.

Like Internet Explorer 8′s recent beta release, Chrome offers a private browsing option–one it calls Incognito.

Seven Chrome-Related Concerns

1. It’s only in its first beta.

This is Chrome’s first test release, so problems are bound to crop up over the coming months.

2. You won’t have any add-ons.

Add-ons are a huge draw for Firefox fans, and none of these are available in Chrome yet.

3. You can’t synchronize.
One big plus of Firefox is its ability to synchronize across multiple computers using Mozilla’s Weave option.

4. You may draw the short stick on standards.

Standards get a little less standard as this new player enters the equation. It’s based on WebKit, the same open-source system that drives Apple’s Safari; but when you look at pages in Chrome compared to pages in Firefox or IE, you’ll notice a difference in text formatting.

5. You’re giving advertisers extra ammo.

Have you seen all the hype about Google’s privacy practices and how much of your data it shares with advertisers? Imagine the potential ammo you’re giving it by using this browser.

6. The dropdown bar is dropped.

The idea of the URL dropdown bar is dropped in Chrome. To compensate, the browser offers “intelligent” features in its Omnibox; but if you like being able to see your recent URLs at the click of a button, you’ll miss the dropdown bar.

7. You lose some history power.

Chrome’s History functions are less versatile than the powerhouse ones built by Firefox.

Source: http://www.pcworld.com