Google Reader is Dying :(

Yesterday, as I logged into Google Reader to read various blog I follow. I got an alert message saying Google Reader is closing down.

Google Reader is Dying

Oh no!?!… I’ve come to rely on Google Reader to read various blogs and RSS news feeds, YouTube channels, Flickr photostreams and even friend’s Amazon Wish Lists. I’ve collected many feeds, all categorized into my different interests… (which is a little similar to the categories on my blog).

Luckily, I’ve read a couple articles that will help us Google Reader users move on:
– alternativeTo’s “alternativeTo Google Reader
– Lifehacker’s “Google Reader Is Shutting Down; Here Are the Best Alternatives

I’m looking for a reader that is simple like Google Reader, one that has an online website which syncs to an Android app. It also has to work after Google Reader closes down. Here are a couple that I am testing out:
The Old Reader
bloglovin’
NetVibes
Feedly
NewsBlur

What’s Joey Eating?…

Last night, I was laying in bed and an idea popped into my head. I want to take daily photos of what I eat… but I want keep the photos separate from my main Flickr or Twitter account… so I searched for an iPhone app that I can use for this purpose and I found one called Eatwit.

Eatwit is an iPhone app that allows you to record what you eat and take a photo(s) and include information like a description, rating, fullness, calories, bill and location. Then you can post that to Twitter or Facebook. I also created a new Twitter account: joeyseating that I will use specifically for this purpose. One thing I like about this app is that the images are posted to a separate server so I don’t have to store it on my Instagram or Flickr account… I can just look it up on Twitter.

I’ll see how I like this… I may change my mind later and use another photo app that is more Instagram-like… be we’ll see…

Update: I changed my strategy… Instead of using Eatwit, I will now using Instaplus which has photo effects like Instragram. I can either snap a photo directly with Instaplus or load it from my camera library. After making adjustments, I can send it back to the camera library then use the iPhone’s built-in Twitter integration to send the photo to Twitter.

What's Joey Eating?

I like this approach better because the photos are higher resolution (compared to Eatwit, which downsizes the photos) and the photos are also better intergrated with Twitter. You can easily view the photo without going to a separate site and you can see a thumbnail of it under “recent images” on the sidebar. The process handles the image storage and stores the images to Photobucket.

What can I say… I’m a geek!

Finally Found a Good Web Page Capture App…

I finally found a great free app for the Mac that will capture a whole web page from Safari. I’ve been trying to find a free app, but haven’t found one I liked.

The app is called Skitch and I’ve actually been using for a while now. I just discovered the web page capture function today by accident. The commandto capture a web page from Safari is Snap Safari under the Capture menu item.

I’ve use a Firefox plugin called Pixlr Grabber for work, but it crashes so much. Every time I release final files for a HTML emails, I need to send along a screenshot of the whole page and the Mac’s built in screenshot only captures a portion of the screen. I think Skitch will help me out a lot.

Flickr Geofences…

Flickr Geofence

I just discovered today that Flickr has added geofences… which are locations where you can specify different geo privacy settings to. I made a geofence around my house, and my relative’s homes. Now the photo taken at these locations will only show geolocation data to family members and not to the general public. In the past, I used to manually remove the geoleocation of photos at home… but now, I don’t have to do that because Flickr will automatically do it for me.

More Geofence info on Flickr’s blog: blog.flickr.net/en/2011/08/30/introducing-geofences-on-flickr/

Embarrassing…

Facebook mobile has been screwing up this evening and posting my photo comments to other random photos. A friend of mine posted a photo of her topless jeep. I commented “Sexy!”… and it ended up on a photo of her grandfather… How embarrassing!…

Xtranormal

I discovered a website called Xtranormal, where you can create animations that speak your text… So I gave it a try and made a birthday greeting for my friend Janet.

Blog Updates (Contact Me Page + Disqus)…

I made a couple changes to this blog…

First, I added a Contact Me page someone mentioned that I did not have my email address here… oops… so now I can be contacted via the new Contact Me page.

Secondly, I switched the commenting system to Disqus, which I believe has more features than the built in WordPress commenting system. I’ll evaluate it and see how I like it.

AT&T 4G Email…

ATT-4GJust got an email from AT&T saying that their network is getting faster with 4G… although I don’t think my iPhone 4 will benefit from this since it’s just a 3G device. I wonder if/when Apple will announce a 4G iPhone?