Tag: tools

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The Michaelangelo of Microsoft Excel

When Tatsuo Horiuchi retired, he decided to try his hand at art. But instead of spending money on paints and brushes, Horiuchi used what he already had pre-installed on his computer—Microsoft Excel. Now, the 77-year-old artist is creating remarkably intricate digital masterpieces of the Japanese landscape, all on the free graphing software. (Source)

I have seen some works made using Microsoft Excel for example by coloring cells, but Mr. Horiuchi uses like line tools and bucket tools. The results are amazing.

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Why I Pick Telegram as My Primary Messaging Platform?

Last year, I mentioned that I used Telegram and I enjoyed it. Been using for more than a year, I feel that it’s much better than the other messaging platforms. Well, I’m not using that many platforms to connect with other friends or colleagues if I consider the other options like LINE, Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, and many more. But, why Telegram?

Since I do not experience all messaging apps, I know that some other apps might be better. For now, I’m still considering that Telegram is the perfect option (for me) for some reasons.

Cross-platform and Multiple Sessions

Currently, I have multiple devices I use on my daily basis. Well, not really daily, but I usually switch between devices. I have 15-inch MacBook Pro Retina, iPhone 5, iPad 3rd generation, and Oppo Find 7. I have Telegram installed in those devices. It makes me stay connected. I can easily be in the conversation with friends, and especially colleagues. It’s flexibility to have multiple active session is my favorite!

Features

Telegram offers great set of handy features. Go to Telegram’s website for complete features, but here are some of favorite features:

  • File sharing made easy. I can share various types of files, not only photos, videos, but also PDFs, Android packages (yes, I use this a lot at work), spreadsheets, or any other document types.
  • API. It can be integrated easily to make useful tools. I will give some examples in the bottom part of this article.

Simple, fast, and lightweight

I like it’s simplicity. It helps me a lot in communication. I feel that it’s fast, a core feature that a messaging app needs. Of course, there are some extended features like stickers — even we can make our own stickers, bots (hello, @BotFather), event animated GIF.

Bots

It’s a Telegram account and operated by machine.

Bots are simply Telegram accounts operated by software — not people — and they’ll often have AI features. They can do anything — teach, play, search, broadcast, remind, connect, integrate with other services, or even pass commands to the Internet of Things.

The other one is an inline bots.

With the new inline mode, bots become omnipresent and can be used as a tool in any of your chats, groups or channels – it doesn’t matter, whether the bot is a member or not. Inline bots can help you with dozens of different tasks, like quickly sending relevant GIFs, pictures from the Web, YouTube videos, Wikipedia articles, etc.

At work, some of my colleagues made some handy tools based on this platforms.

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Lifehacker Faceoff: Google Photos vs. Flickr

Last month, both Google and Yahoo introduced big changes to their photo storage services, Google Photos and Flickr (4.0), respectively. Both offer identical, useful features: automatic photo backups, intelligent organization, online editing tools, and sharing capabilities. So which one should you use? (Source: Lifehacker Faceoff: Google Photos vs. Flickr)

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Silp

What is Silp?

Silp matches jobs with your skills and your social graph to find the best career opportunities for you. On Silp, you don’t need to search for jobs — your dream job will find you.
Silp also matches jobs with the social graph. It provides employers with the tools to identify potential candidates in their and their company’s network. When an employer posts a job vacancy, they, their co-workers and friends can see who in their extended network (friends and friends-of-friends) might be a good fit for the position. They can then recommend the job further or seek guidance, thus letting the job travel the social graph until the right candidates are found. Most people find jobs through their network of friend — Silp automates and supercharges this process.

According to The Next Web, it gains 700,000 users within 12 days.

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Snapjoy: Backup and organize your photos


As a person who loves to photography, I think Snapjoy is an answer to some problems. What is Snapjoy? It’s a service that will help you organize your photos. The word ‘organize’ here is about putting photos you’ve uploaded to multiple services in one place, and organize them. Anyway, I like its name: ‘snap’ and ‘joy’.
There are a lot of tools and services that deals with photos. There are many ways to take photos (digital cameras and mobile devies), and to share photos (you can name services that put photos as their primary contents). But, there are problems:

  • It takes time to have them organised in one place. I like having my photos uploaded to Flickr. I like sharing photos using Instagram. Some of you might also live to have your photos stored to Google Picasa. Some photos go to one service, and the others go to another services. They’re all might be distributed.
  • Not all services are integrated one another. If I upload a my photo to Instagram, I can directly upload it to Flickr for example. But, I don’t this for some reasons.
  • Backup, and backup. Photos are memories. I want to keep it safe. Having them stored in a hardrive is great, but if you have lots of photos, it takes more effort to have them organised and backed up. Yes, there is a service like Backupify that will help you backup your photos from Flickr to storage service. It’s an option.

Having valuable contents backed up and distributed in multiple locations is a good scenario. But, having all of them organised is another thing to think about.

Snapjoy answers some of these problems. By having an account at Snapjoy — it’s free –, you will be able to import (well, I think it can be defined as “backup” too) all you photos from multiple services. Currently, you can import  your Instagram, Flickr, and Google Picasa photos. The process is easy. Connect your Snapjoy to those services, and hit the import button.
I tried to import my Instagram photos and it took less than 5 minutes to have around 500 Instagram photos transfered to Snapjoy. And, a new “Instagram” album is created automatically. All your photos will be stored by Snapjoy (and it utilises Amazon Simple Storage Service). So, you have the copy of all photos somewhere else.
The good thing is that Snapjoy will also help you organize them. I personally like the way Snapjoy display the photo archive. There are few things that can be done to have it better like keeping the photo information (It seems that photo tags are not imported).
After you have your photos managed by Snapjoy, you can enjoy some other features offered. I like the its “Remember When…”. Basically, it’s just shuffling photos in the collection. It might be easy to recognise photos taken last week, or last month. But, if you want to challenge your memory, try to recognise photo taken three or four years ago.
All imported photos are stored privately by default. You can later share them with friends. Interesting to see its upcoming social features.
It’s a free service now, and I think it will not be free forever. There are some technical costs that have to paid. But, as long as it offers people who love to keep their valuable memories something that they really need, I think people will be. Well, I don’t mind paying for a good service/product. I know that Snapjoy will improve its service. I personally would like to have these features:

  • Options to export all photos to other backup service. If it’s a paid feature, I don’t mind. So, Snapjoy will be the “bridge” between service. It’s already a bridge, but making connection to another service is also cool.
  • Keep the photo information during the import.
  • Keep the original photo size. I’m not sure which photos imported when it has multiple sizes. Having the original photos imported should be great.

Anyway, this service is not only about importing. You can also upload your photos directly there. You can upload from the web, or using and desktop uploader called “Shoebox“. My Flickr photo import is still processing. Let’s see the results later.

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Flickr: Photo Sharing or Photo Storage Service?

If you read this blog, or meet me in person, you probably know me as Flickr fan. Yes, among services owned by Yahoo!, Flickr is one of my favorite. I have friends who love to use Flickr and also bring some people to Flickr. So far, they’re enjoying it. Well, at least I heard some positive feedbacks from them. Some friends also bought/renewed their Flickr Pro account and they asked me to buy them Flickr gifts.
But, it’s 2011 now. Many photography-related services flourish. To refresh your memories, let’s take a look at 500px, Instagram, or picplz for example. And, I’m sure more to come to the game.
Butterfly
I asked myself recently: How do I use Flickr? Is it as photo sharing, or simply as a photo storage service? You can find out a bit about how I use Flickr by watching a short presentation during Yahoo! Community Town Hall few months ago. With many other options to share photos these days (again, mind the word “share”) here, I feel that Flickr is more photo storage for me. I do actively share and upload photos to Flickr. But, it’s not only about having photos uploaded there. It’s also about social web interaction.

The magic feature: Share to Flickr

Look at some applications/services that put photos as its primary contents. Many of them has “Share to Flickr” feature. Photos are shared to Flickr directly. Easily. But, where the discussion takes place? Is it on Flickr? May be not.

The way people enjoy photos

06052011315A simple question: how do you enjoy Flickr photos? There are some ways: visiting the website from the desktop, from Flickr mobile version, or using mobile applications. Even I have Flickr for iPhone, I rarely enjoying the photostream. I feel that it’s not something I’m enjoying. Try to fire up your Flickr for iPhone apps, and experience yourself. If you have your photos delivered to many services e.g. Instagram, Twitpic, and Flickr, I am sure Flickr is not the first site you (or your friends) will visit. Except you make your photos exclusively uploaded to Flickr and share the links to social networks.
It does not seem that simple though. For example: If I share a photo from Flickr to Twitter, Twitter will display the image right away. Some Twitter applications are smart enough to display the shared links as photo thumbnails and photos with bigger dimension. Will they visit Flickr — and exploring my photostream? Probably. But, I think most of them won’t.
I might sound selfish here by expecting other people to explore my photos. But, you know what I’m talking about here, right?

Shoot, share, and interact

People take photos using many devices, from simple to advanced tools. Using mobile phone or expensive DSLR cameras with fancy lenses. And, to upload the photos, there are some ways too: send directly from mobile devices, by email, or using another social network services and put Flickr as the last destination. Some people still love doing the traditional way: transfer the photo from memory card to laptop/computer, and upload them manually. I still do this sometime.
Again, what happen when the photos are stored to Flickr? Is it easy to interact with the photos? Of course, it’s easy. But, is it super easy? People might to go to Flickr for some reasons: they want to browse their photos or their friends’, or because some photos are made exclusively available at Flickr. Look at White House for example, or NASA. Or, because special event photos are displayed there at Flickr. People will go there. I will go there. But, for personal collection, or just simply “because I don’t want to loose these” photos, Flickr might be a great place to store them. When I need it, I will go there.
This is challenging. It might be a big challenge for Flickr and many other services out there. Innovations and strategies are designed to answer this kind of need. Some services come with an idea and unique approaches. So does Flickr, I think.
I might be wrong here, but from a personal perspective — as a Flickr user — I feel like using Flickr as photo storage service now. Something Flickr does not expect.

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So, what is the best Twitter Client?

Not exactly a Twitter client, but tool to manage social media accounts like Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Google+ and more.
When I created my first Twitter account in 2006, there weren’t any applications for desktop or mobile. But, it’s 2011 and the service grows so fast. It’s around one billion tweets sent per week (according to March 2011 data). I love Twitter, and I also joined some other services. I don’t use all of them on daily basis, but more about learning how the service works, and how they’are designed. This is something I consider as something-I-like-to-do.
We are connected to each other using social media services. Many people want to be in the front row to get the latest news. They also want to know what is the latest information in the industry they’re involving with. I want to get the news shared by people I’m following on Twitter, or just to see what’s happening from my timeline.
At the same time, I want to share updates. These things seemed easy to be done. But, when it’s involving multiple social media accounts, I can be very busy. Not always, but sometime.
I have been trying and have some application installed on my gadgets — and also my MacBook Pro. I’m having Nokia N8, BlackBerry, and iPhone 4 now. Okey, don’t ask me why I need to have those gadgets. I just have them and don’t use them at the same time. But, I usually switch between those gadget — and of course, applications installed.
The thing is that not all applications works on every device I have with me, even they share similar features. Among many applications (free or paid) to manage my social media account. And these are some applications (including Twitter clients) I use — I switch between applications when I’m on my iPhone as my primary device right now.

I don’t have iPad and Android-based devices anyway. So, why bother having (too) many applications when I don’t use them all? Again, I like exploring how those things work. And, I like working on my account using its native application. For example like using Facebook for iPhone to explore Facebook, even HootSuite also works fine. Why? Switching between application is easy. Right?
I don’t have any other applications like TweetDeck, or Twitter for Mac on my Mac. For the web-based tool I sometime use HootSuite, CoTweet and Twitter website.
For the next post, I think I’ll write short reviews about those applications. From a end-user perspective. There are many tools/services that offer so many features. Probably, they works for businesses, not for personal use. Some are paid service, and some are free. When it comes into a simple question: “What is the best Twitter client?”, the answer should be simple: A client that works for you. Right?

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Are you using WordPress' Post Formats feature?

If you have upgraded your WordPress installation to the latest version (right now, it’s Version 3.1), you can take advantage of its “Post Formats” feature. So, what is it anyway? WordPress Codex explains:

A Post Format is a piece of meta information that can be used by a theme to customize its presentation of a post. The Post Formats feature provides a standardized list of formats that are available to all themes that support the feature. Themes are not required to support every format on the list. New formats cannot be introduced by themes nor even plugins. The standardization of this list provides both compatibility between numerous themes and an avenue for external blogging tools to access to this feature in a consistent fashion. In short, with a theme that supports Post Formats, a blogger can change how each post looks by choosing a Post Format from a radio-button list.

This feature might be useful if you want to “format” your blog posts, especially when you want to have different output format from your WordPress theme. Just think about Tumblr service. Tumblr is very easy to use when you want to make a kind of item collections. Sometime you want to embed a video, post a link, make a regular blog post, or even embed an audio file. If you want to create a new post, you will have something like this:

Continue reading “Are you using WordPress' Post Formats feature?”
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Bloglines will be closed on October 1, 2010


If you use Bloglines, it’s time to move to another RSS reader services/tools. Bloglines will be closed on October 1, 2010. More details about this can be found in a blog post. A little bit background, Bloglines is a web-based RSS reader. It was pretty popular few years ago, and Ask Jeeves acquired this service back in 2005.
If you visit Bloglines homepage, you should see a notification about the closing and also some guides on how to migrate your RSS subscriptions to other service. I have migrated my subscriptions to Google Reader long time ago. Just in case you need to backup your subscription, you can do it now.

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Some Notes About Enabling Multi-Site option in WordPress 3.0

After upgrading my blog using WordPress 3.0, I was thinking of taking the opportunity to have the multi-site option. Previously, I played with WordPress Multi User. So, I think it would something I’m familiar with. If you’re not familiar with WordPress 3.0 features, you can check WordPress Codex first. You can find lots of useful information there. It’s a good place to start.
Currently, this blog is already using Multi-Site feature. The setup was easy, but I want to share few things I had during the ‘migration’. By default, this feature is disabled. So, you will see no settings/option under your WordPress Dashboard menus. If you’re ready to enable this feature, the first thing you need to do is to modify WordPress configuration file (wp-config.php). Add this line of code into wp-config.php:

define('WP_ALLOW_MULTISITE', true);
Continue reading “Some Notes About Enabling Multi-Site option in WordPress 3.0”
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When Will I Be Mayor?

When Will I Be Mayor? — Nice tools for foursquare users. “We search your foursquare history to find out how many more times you need to check in get that coveted Mayorship. We even monitor venues that you are close, and send you weekly updates on your progress!”

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Getting Started with Amazon S3

Amazon Web Service Logo
After I signed up for Amazon S3 and CloudFront last week, I started to use it right away. Before that, I tried to get as many information as possible. It seemed easy. I had to deal with some new words like “bucket“, “Access Key ID“, and also “Secret Access Key“.
Amazon S3 — just like its name — is a storage service. What makes it different from “storage” in webhosting is that there is no FTP access. But, the mechanism of “moving your data to a storage server” is similar to FTP. In FTP, we will connect to your server using some basic information like hostname, username and password. In some cases, we will need an FTP port. And we can do it easily using FTP clients like Filezilla, CrossFTP,  WinSCP, etc.
amazons3_keyid
Amazon S3 uses a little bit different process. Just imagine “Access Key ID” as “username”, and “Server Access Key” as the FTP password. Both information are generated by the system and they’re not easy to remember.

Continue reading “Getting Started with Amazon S3”
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Seesmic Web-Based Twitter Client

There are many tools and applications to work with Twitter, but right now, I use Twitterfox as my primary tool to interact with my Twitter account. I also have some applications installed like Seesmic desktop, DestroyTwitter, and TweetDeck. But, when I start working with my browsers, I rarely open other Twitter desktop client(s).
Seesmic introduced its web-based Twitter client. If you’re using the desktop version, it’s very similar. The web-based version recreates the desktop application. I tried it, and it looks good. The main reason using Twitterfox is because it offers simplicity with very basic features (updates, checking replies/mentioned, and direct message).
So far, my favorite feature of Seeismic (web-based version) is the Gmail-like style. Simple. And, it’s auto-updated, too.
seesmic_simple
Of course, if you have wide-screen monitor, you can switch to multi-column interface.
seesmic_cols

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Online Journalism Handbook

The Bighow Online Journalism Handbook

A free online resource for journalists, bloggers, citizen journalists and anyone else interested in publishing. The handbook covers the basics of online reporting, writing for the web and social web, citizen journalism, professional blogging, how to use Facebook and Twitter, how to deal with censorship, list of citizen journalism websites worldwide, list of free tools for journalism and much more