Just how popular are add-ons to Mozilla Firefox’s Web browser? A usage survey taken by Mozilla as of one year ago revealed that one-third of all Firefox users—at least—use add-ons in some capacity. That’s a pretty big deal, but not quite as eye-opening a number as the raw statistics from Mozilla’s official add-ons page.
According to the company, more than two billion add-ons have been downloaded since Firefox’s started tracking statistics back in August of 2007. There are currently 125 million add-ons in use as of this article’s writing, with more than 890,000 registered users attached to Mozilla’s official add-ons directory. I won’t bore you with any more statistics; suffice, there’s a lot of neat stuff you can install into your browser. And it appears that many are indeed doing so.
But what?
Where does one begin?
These are both questions that hit to the core of the Mozilla add-on experience. Simply put, your browser is only as good as the extensions you choose to install, and trying to get a handle on the ever-increasing world of Firefox add-ons can be as difficult for a first-timer as it is for an experienced add-on enthusiast. So we’ll make it simple. We’ve scoured the Web to come up with a listing of must-have add-ons for any Firefox installation, period.
And, even then, did we mention that we’ve found twenty? Download them here as part of one, honkin' Maximum PC extension collection!
Stylish
The developers put it best: “Stylish and userstyles.org are to CSS as Greasemonkey and userscripts.org are to JavaScript.” But if that doesn’t help, please allow me to make the comparison even simpler. Stylish allows you to take ugly websites, apply the power of your mind (and styling skills), and pretty them up as far as your CSS abilities will take you.
Building your own style for any site or domain is as easy as clicking the “S” icon in the lower-right corner of your browser. From there, all you need to do is fire up the included “Write new style” feature and—assuming you know CSS coding—you’re off to the races.
If you don’t have a lick of skills with CSS, don’t fret. You can also tap into the power of a community of styles, created and shared by a batch of users, which you’ll access via a link off of the “S” menu as well. Making the Web a bit prettier couldn’t be easier.
NoScript
Browser security is important, yo. More importantly is the sanity that you can preserve by using NoScript to keep your browsing session devoid of Javascript and other executable content that you just don’t want or need to see. I kid but, really, this add-on is as simple as that. Once you fire it up, you’ll find that any and all scripting on the various pages you frequent has been turned off by default.
When such an instance occurs, a little drop-down bar will appear and ask you whether you want to permit or deny said site from running its scripts. You’re presented with a variety of options for limiting access: You can permit or deny the various scripts on a temporary or permanent basis and, even better, you can change your mind back and forth on a whim. A built-in whitelist feature allows you further fine-tune your preferences to let the good in and keep the bad… out!
Adblock Plus
Hey, we didn’t need that advertising revenue, right? No, the beauty of Adblock Plus is not that it permanently eliminates all advertising throughout your journeys on the Web. That would be silly. Instead, this add-on is useful for the degree of control you now have over said displayed advertisements. Block and whitelist sites that annoy or otherwise entertain you, so you can thus reward your favorite places with a little supplemental cash while simultaneously blocking sites that attempt to pummel you into submission with their revenue generation tricks.
The nice thing about Adblock Plus is that it’s totally newbie-friendly as well. If you have no idea what you’re doing, just use one of the add-on’s downloadable filters to make most of your anti-advertising decisions for you. And, like NoScript, you can enable or disable Adblock Plus’ technology on specific sites or domains at the click of a mouse. Simple, effective advertising control: You won’t find this in vanilla Firefox!
Greasemonkey
One of Firefox’s most popular add-ons, by far, is Greasemonkey. But the add-on is hardly as useful at its core as is the vibrant community built around this single, seemingly simple extension. To put it bluntly, Greasemonkey allows you to make Web pages better. And if you can’t do it, there are a whole bunch of custom-designed scripts over at userscripts.org that’ll likely do it for you.
What do I mean? Greasemonkey allows one to insert customized HTML elements directly into a Web page. And more importantly, these changes persist over time, effectively altering the page for as long as you have the add-on (and subsequent user script) installed. To list the number of changes that you can make to any Web page under the sun—including adding the fabled “dislike” button to Facebook—would take the rest of this article’s word count. If you can’t alter or add it with Greasemonkey, it doesn’t exist.
Firebug
Web developers take note: Firebug is your solace for on-the-fly fixes for the pages you design. And simple Firefox users take note as well: This add-on allows you to investigate how the code of a page correlates to its displayed elements and, more importantly, it gives you the ability to alter a page’s display on a whim just to see how HTML and CSS interrelate.
Okay, so those two descriptions are somewhat similar, but that’s really the crux of Firebug. Install the add-on to get a fun little window at the bottom of any page you view, which details said page’s HTML and CSS code in an easy-to-read, clickable fashion. Identifying the code that displays a particular screen element is a snap. And, as mentioned, tweaking a page’s CSS on-the-fly to see how changes can ultimately affect (read: botch) design is a far more elegant solution than continually re-uploading your CSS file and hitting refresh over and over.
Xmarks Sync
How do I love thee Xmarks Sync, let me count the ways. No, that might take awhile, because the sheer number of my Firefox bookmarks that this awesome add-on syncs up into the cloud is far, far too lengthy. You’ll be hard-pressed to find add-ons as useful and as comprehensive as Xmarks.
That’s because, at its core, Xmarks fulfills an extremely valuable function—saving bookmarks in the event of an OS crash or Firefox reinstallation. But that’s not all. Install Xmarks onto any supported browser under the sun, and you’ll have access to your common set of bookmarks from wherever you happen to be. You can set up different profiles for home, work, and other named bookmark collections, and you can even encrypt the data you send back and forth to the Xmarks servers. Need anything else?
Read It Later
If you’re a connoisseur of the Web, you’ll know that oftentimes, you likely have more pages or stories you want to read versus the time it takes to read them all in one setting. Solution: Add all the pages as bookmarks, right? Wrong. Fire up Read It Later, a helpful little add-on that allows you to save pages in a separate listing to check out at some point in the future. Once you’ve started to chug through your backlog, you can mark off each individual page akin to a checkmark on a box.
But, even neater than that, you can also have Read It Later download all of your saved pages via an “offline mode,” which you can then use to read your articles if you lack, say, access to a network connection. And if you’re really wild, you can set up a free Read It later account to synchronize said articles to a mobile device (or other system) of your choosing.
Automatic Save Folder
Any power-downloader knows that the most tedious part of a binge file-grabbing experience is having to sort through all the different files you’ve downloaded and dumped into a single, solitary “downloads” directory. Or, if you’re lazy, this just happens by default—you spend a few weeks grabbing this, that, and the other off the Web, and your default download directory looks like you unzipped 35 concurrent archives and dumped half a system restore into a single folder. Yuck.
The add-on Automatic Save Folder is, thus, your ticket to organizational happiness. This add-on is very, very easy to use: You set up a list of domains or file extensions and map them to folders on your hard drive. Then, whenever you download a file from said domain (or a file with said extension), it’ll automatically be placed in whatever folder you designated without you having to do so much as copy a single bit of data manually.
Tab Mix Plus
“I have the power!” you will shout, once you’ve successfully installed the small-yet-awesome add-on, Tab Mix Plus. Many claim that this extension, which allots you increased control over how, when, and why tabs are displayed, should be a staple element of Firefox going forward. I happen to agree.
Here’s why: You can literally take control of all aspects of the “tabbed browsing” experience, from defining how new windows open, to how links from external applications open, to where exactly new tabs open in relation to you other tabs, to what happens when you briefly mouseover tabs… the list goes on. The list goes on for quite a long while, in fact. This add-on is not screwing around: For near-unlimited control over the price method in which tabs interact with your browser—a staple part of the Firefox experience—you must download Tab Mix Plus (in a new tab) right now.
WoT – Safe Browsing Tool
Look, we’re all fairly Web-savvy individuals, right? It’s usually not that hard to pick out a malicious link from, say, a Google search result. But what about those few—very few—times when you’ve been tricked into clicking something you probably shouldn’t have? And I’m not even talking about some malware-dropping bomb of a Web entity. Perhaps you just clicked on a link that seemed like a legitimate result, only to find that it was just some lame spammer page that told you absolutely nothing about your topic.
Wasted time stinks. Web of Trust, a community-driven security add-on of sorts, gives you a stoplight-series of ratings for the sites that pop up in the various searches you make. I’ll leave it to you to decipher what green, yellow, and red means—but just in case you click on the latter, indicating that a site has failed WoT’s ranking mechanisms, a little interstitial page will warn you that you’re about to head into rough waters. Steer clear, safe browser!
Download Statusbar
I’ll be the first to admit it: I’ve never been a huge fan of Firefox’s download window. The last thing I need to do, when clicking on a file, is to have some ugly window pop-up in my face and refuse to go away until I manually click the big close button each time. Yuck.
You can imagine my joy upon finding Download Statusbar, a handy little aesthetics-driven add-on that transforms your Firefox download window into a tiny little bar at the bottom of your browser. Grab a file and up pops the bar with a pleasing little visual display of how much time is remaining on your download. Once the file finishes, the bar goes away.
A host of other options with the add-on allow you to have the bar ignore downloads of specific filetypes, as well as define exactly how the bar is cleared of previous downloads after they’ve completed. Heck, you can even set up a post-download virus scan just to play it safe.
LastPass Password Manager
If the aforementioned Xmarks Sync is the best-ever add-on for keeping track of your bookmarks, then the LastPass Password Manager is like the cooler cousin who always used to hang out with you during your teenage years. This add-on is the end-all be-all for password management across multiple systems, as it synchronizes your (encrypted) login credentials for most sites to a centralized, secure location. As long as you remember the single master password for your account, LassPass will do its part to automatically log you into any sites you’ve designated during the initial saving process.
Modifying and accessing your “master password” database, or password vault, is rather simple via the handy, Web-based tool. That said, the site also presents a wealth of options for customizing how LastPass itself works, including: notifying you for saving new credentials, how the add-on parses separate-but-identical domains, and blacklisting certain sites from any of LastPass’ many features.
FoxyTunes
Rocking out while you browse has to be one of life’s finer pleasures, but why should you have to switch out of Firefox just to select your next track or playlist in an alternate program? Pshh-aw. FoxyTunes brings the musical capabilities of your player of choice directly into your browser—technically, into Firefox’s status bar.
The beauty of this add-on comes from its sheer extensiveness: It works with more audio applications than you’ve likely ever heard of, including the standard iTunes, Winamp, Windows Media Player, and MediaMonkey, to name a few. Super-tiny buttons allow you to skip through tracks, pause and play your jams, control your volume and—good gosh—even auto-post what you’re listening to directly to a Twitter account. A thousand curses on those who enable that last feature. We implore you to make use of the add-on’s info panel, album art, or search tool s instead. Far more useful; Far less annoying.
WebMail Notifier
There’s no reason why you should have to surf on over to an individual site just to check your email—not when you can do so via a tiny little button in the corner of your browser, that is. I’ve long since enjoyed using the add-on Gmail Notifier to do just that with my Google account. However, this add-on has since expanded to include a plethora of other Web-based email clients as well (and, if you’re truly hardcore, any other POP3- or IMAP-based host you want.)
Install the add-on and configure up your various email services. That’s step one… and, really, the only major step. A little number will then appear in the lower-right corner of your browsing screen to show you just how much unread email you have throughout all of your accounts. The add-on can even pop up a little alert window or play a sound to let you know that something new just came in. It’s that easy.
VTzilla
Kick your own personal security up a notch by integrating Virus Total directly into your browser. This super-useful Web tool normally requires you to go to its website and upload a file before the contents of which can be scanned by more antivirus and antimalware applications than you ever thought existed.
Of course, that’s kind of a bulky way to make sure that everything you’ve downloaded passes muster. The VTzilla extension gives you the power of Virus Total—on command—directly via Firefox’s download prompts. After you’ve installed this add-on, you’ll find a new option floating in between the typical “open” or “save” commands that appear whenever you click on a file. Select the “Scan with VirusTotal” option and you’ll know whether a file is safe for consumption before it touches your machine, not after.
As well, you can send current pages URLs and potential hyperlinks to VirusTotal’s page-scanning engine to better protect yourself against suspicious content before you even fire up the page.
Morning Coffee
Everyone has their morning routines, and every true geek has a digital version of the daily water cooler run/coffee slog/bathroom break. But isn’t it annoying to have to type in the same-ol’, same-ol’ websites that you like to check as soon as you get to work each day? Wouldn’t it be nice for Firefox to automate this process for you in a way that didn’t require you to make each site the start page of your browser?
The add-on Morning Coffee does just that: You specify a list of sites, by day,that you want to pop up when you hit a particular button on the browser. As it happens, this button is the icon of a rather large cup of coffee, and it rests precipitously close to your address bar. Click the mug and—presto—your sites for the day pop up into tabs.
Do you have to manually enter each site you want to fire up? No. You can also click on the icon to add any current site to a series of daily lists (which can be individual days or sets like M/W/F, T/Th, et cetera).
Find All
The default “search within a page” feature of Firefox, otherwise known as the “Find” command, is a bit lacking. The “highlight all” feature just does that—it applies a color to all instances of a given word or phrase, but it’s up to you to scroll throughout the page to manually identify all the potential uses of your search term. Hrmph.
Find All is a short-but-sweet replacement of this boring “highlight all” option. Instead of just a pretty page of colored text, the Find All add-on displays all instances of the searched-for phrase in a window that expands into the bottom half of your browser. Clicking on any of the text links within this video takes you right to the source of the phrase and—better still—you can see exactly how many results were found on right on the search bar itself. It’s a simple, but useful Firefox tweak!
HTTPS Everywhere
HTTPS Everywhere isn’t going to dramatically change your browsing life. However, it will do its part to ensure that—whenever possible—you’re always accessing a given page using a secure (or https) protocol. Many sites have such a connection available but, for whatever reason, might not default to https. If you don’t type in the URL as such, you’ll perpetually surf over the normal, less-secure connection.
Remember, unless your browser is showing a little lock icon in the bottom-right corner of your browser, you aren’t rocking the https connection, merely http. You aren’t benefitting from the security of an encrypted connection to a page, and you could potentially face snooping or sniffing attacks from nefarious folk. Supported sites include Wikipedia, Google, Facebook, and Twitter, amongst others!
Personas Rotator
With so many Firefox personas within arm’s reach now, it’s nearly impossible to pick just one. Or two. Or twenty. There are just so many cool designs out there, how could one ever decide on a single, isolated favorite with which to splatter across one’s Firefox browser forevermore? It’s an impossible dream, I tell you!
Thankfully, Personas Rotator fits the bill as one of those add-ons that probably should have been included into the default Firefox program from the get-go. If you haven’t figured out what the extension does by name alone, allow me to clarify. Personas Rotator pulls from an online directory of Firefox skins—sorted into a whole nest of categories—and automatically rotates through them at whatever interval you’ve set.
Don’t just assume that this add-on picks random personas from a sea of thousands. You can also set up your own personal category of favorite skins if you want your browser to remain exclusively cool.
Lazarus: Form Recovery
Oh crap. There you went, typing out a page’s worth of vitriol on your favorite political or technological Web site and poof! Your browser crashed. A thousand curses to Mozilla, eh? Looks like you’ll be typing out that freight train of dialogue and insults all over again.
That, or you could grab the add-on Lazarus: Form Recovery which, as its name implies, does a great job of preventing moments just like the one I described above. If your browser should happen to go out for some unforeseen reason, Lazarus gives you the option to recover the text of what you were typing in any web form on a particular page.
The add-on not only automatically saves the contents of a form as you type (in an encrypted database, mind you), but it makes one last-ditch effort to preserve your text whenever you click the button associated with a Web form. Take that, browser crashes!
Breaking Up with the Big G: Alternatives to 9 Google Services
Sat, 28 Aug 2010 00:08:57 +0000
Google has become a part of everyday life, both for its now-ubiquitous search engine, as well as for its huge lineup of services. Whether it's Gmail, Google Maps, YouTube, Picasa or the almighty Google Search, the company holds a large majority of users in the palm of its hand.
And there are good reasons why Google's services and products are so popular, but that doesn't mean that the competition isn’t pitting their own ideas against the internet giant. Other big-hitters like Yahoo and Microsoft are also vying for their stake in the market, and numerous smaller developers are attempting to offer comparable services that keep Google on its toes.
We’ve got a list of ten alternatives to the most commonly used Google services, followed by services from alternative developers to give you more information on the available alternatives. There are some cases where Google indeed has a superior offering to its competitors, but there are also instances where a particular user might favor an alternative product.
Gmail
At the top of a dizzying list of competing email service providers, the biggest challengers to Gmail's reign are Yahoo! Mail, Windows Live Mail, and AOL Mail. Gmail was the first to hit the 1 GB point in email storage back when it was released in 2004, but now other email providers have caught up, and some even have an advantage over Google. AOL and Yahoo! both offer free unlimited space storage, and Hotmail’s 5 GB capacity nearly meets Gmail's 7 GB. Allowed attachment sizes are also comparable, with Windows Hotmail registering at 10 MB to the other services' 25 MB, and a lengthy list of features for each email service provider.
AOL Mail
A far cry from the years when it was one of the only ways to connect to the internet, AOL Mail presents its traditionalinterfacewith AIM Messenger integration, drag-and-drop control within folders and a nifty feature that allows users to customize their domain names. The spam filter has some very simple options aimed at the beginning user, but lacks any highly-granular control.
Yahoo! Mail
Yahoo! Mail possesses a similar look and feel, but has some interesting differences from the other email providers. Yahoo! provides a registration-free way for users to attach up to 100 MB of files to emails using Drop.io, is integrated with Flickr for online photo editing and sharing, and has the option to set up dummy email accounts to use in spam-catching. PayPal is also integrated into the webmail client, which is certainly helpful if you use it frequently.
Windows Live Hotmail
Windows Live Hotmail appears minimalistic by comparison, but its look and interface can be easily changed to the user's whims. The most recent update brought a suite of useful features: one-click spam clearing, storage (up to 25 GB) on its SkyDrive service, and integration with a host of Windows Live services. It is also quite easy to lump all your e-mail accounts into the Windows Live Hotmail interface, and another recent update now allows users to access their Hotmail account from a POP3 email client.
Most email users may never approach the 7 GB limit that Gmail imposes, and the conversation interface with threaded email chains leaves the inbox uncluttered and accessible. Ultimately each email service provider has their own list of features that some users will find more attractive than others.
Google Search
There can be no argument that Google dominates the competition in the field of the web search, given that 'Google' has become synonymous in everyday vocabulary for web searches. With so many minds and resources behind its development, posing a serious challenge to Google Search is a tall order but that’s certainly not stopping anyone from trying.
Yahoo! Search
Yahoo! has been around for longer than Google and holds a commanding second place. Yahoo! Search frequently returns more search results than either Google Search or Bing, but of course what’s important is the relevancy of the first few results. Yahoo! Search also allows users to narrow the range of their search results to popular sites, like Wikipedia or YouTube.
Bing
Bing is the newcomer to the search engine game, and it holds a number of interesting and useful capabilities. First and foremost, users can preview the search results by moving their mouse over the results and easily begin another search within that particular website. It also keeps a comprehensive search history, in case you've forgotten what you were looking for last night. Looking for an image or video is a cinch, as images all appear in one scrolling window and videos can be previewed by mousing over the video. Bing has some very useful features that make it worthwhile to explore if you want to try something new, even if 'Binging' isn’t quite as catchy as 'Googling.' While it'd be nearly impossible to beat Google at its own game, Yahoo!and Bing are trying to play their own. With Yahoo! being powered by Bing in the future, the search engine wars will move in an interesting direction.
Google Maps
You can have the best sense of direction in the whole world, but finding directions to that brand-new movie theater or restaurant can still be a hassle without the help of a mapping service like Google Maps. It beats the hell out of unfolding a city map or taking directions from your friend who thinks he knows a “shortcut”. Google Maps gives users the crucial features they're looking for in a mapping service, with intuitive basics like printable directions and maps and extra features like traffic updates and mass transit integration. Yet like everything else that Google brings to the table, it finds stiff competition from services like Bing Maps.
Bing Maps
With a quick download, users can navigate Bing Maps in full 3D, providing a new perspective on getting around. Areas show up displaying 3D models of buildings and landmarks, although this feature seems to work mainly in more heavily-populated and urban areas . And if users really want to test the boundaries of other people's privacy, Bing also has the option to go to a pristine bird's eye view from satellite photos, which lets users test the boundaries of their neighbors privacy. An additional useful feature is the ability to send directions to your GPS device by way of MSN Direct or a USB key, in addition to the standard email and mobile device options.
Google Docs
Office productivity software isn't the most exciting topic, but using the right one can save you a great deal of time and effort. Google Docs gives users the advantage of not only having free access to a fully fleshed-out office suite, but also by doing so within the space of any modern web browser-which is helpful for anyone who's had to remember their PowerPoint presentation on a USB key, this accessibility cuts out a few steps and the possibility of forgetting your work at home. Nevertheless, other office suites are stepping up to Google Docs with the main contenders being OpenOffice, Zoho Office Suite , and Peepel.
OpenOffice
OpenOffice is a standalone office suite, and while it’s not web browser-based, it deserves a fair look given its open standards for file formats, it’s competitive feature set and it’s price point of: free.. OpenOffice runs on just about any OS, supports more file types than you can shake a stick at, and is updated quite regularly for new features and bug fixes. While it's more of a replacement for Microsoft Office than anything else, OpenOffice is a solid choice for users who would rather stick to a more traditional way of typing up reports and crunching numbers on the desktop.
Zoho Office Suite
Zoho Office Suite does pretty much everything that Google Docs does and then some. The standard word processor, spreadsheet application, and presentation application are here, and are comparable and equally useful. However, Zoho does have a number of applications within the office suite that are handy for online collaboration and file sharing, such as chat, wiki and web conferencing tools. If anything, Zoho would be a suite more equipped for project managers and those who need some business planning tools in addition to the usual fare.
Peepel
Peepel is an interesting alternative in the sense that it mimics the feel of a standalone office suite, with multiple windows running in the browser. The Peepel suite contains a word processor, spreadsheet application, and a workspace manager that lets you keep track of all opened documents and saves the configuration in case you want to keep things neat and tidy. The design certainly looks as though it's aimed toward beginners and younger users, but it's nice to be able to easily track and oraganize multiple documents , without losing any of the advantages of all the collaboration tools that one could expect to find in an online office suite.
Google Docs by comparison seems like a beginner's tool, albeit a practical one that works on the principles of simplicity and accessibility. Aside from it being a growing standard for many a student and upcoming professional, OpenOffice and Zoho are two perfectly good replacements for Google Docs and Peepel could fit the bill for users who want a very simple but intuitive set of tools.
YouTube
It would be hard to find someone you know who hasn't seen some viral video or recollected a favorite movie scene from the ubiquitously YouTube. Popular as hell even before Google bought it years ago, YouTube single-highhandedly kicked off video-sharing on the web and in no small part brought about the phenomenon of the internet celebrity. Of course, as this is a pie that everyone wants a slice of, a number of aspiring video hubs have popped up since then.
Hulu
One service that's caught everyone's eye and interest starting with its big marketing blitz during Super Bowl XLIII is Hulu, where the biggest draw is the option to not only watch clips of their favorite TV shows and movies, but entire episodes and full-length films. . Advertisements are a constant presence, though a necessity as well, but it's the best legal way to watch old and new TV shows for free while avoiding cable. . Add to this the ability to stream Hulu to your TV through your Xbox 360, PS3 or other DLNA-compatible device - along with the upcoming Hulu Plus premium service, and there's a good argument for getting rid of your cable or satellite TV bill.
Vimeo
HD quality video is on the rise and few services are as advanced on this as Vimeo, which is made up exclusively of user-created content and was the first video sharing site to support consumer HD video. Unlike YouTube where you'll find dozens of copies of the same video trickling through the site, Vimeo allows users to only upload content that they've created themselves and filters out excess content that makes it hard to navigate . What users are left with is a video sharing site that's chock full of creative and independent videos with stunning visual quality, which will undoubtedly appeal to those with an artistic sense.
If there's a viral music video that you simply have to find, then YouTube is still going to be your best bet in finding it. Like many things that Google touches, it's hard to compete with them on their own terms, but there's more than enough room for users to have a choice in what online videos they want to kill time with. For those who are looking to replace their TV with their computer or getting tired of the usual internet video fare, Hulu and Vimeo are the best places to turn to.
Picasa
Google's Picasa is certainly an intuitive and well thought out program for basic photo editing and web album management, but it's hardly the only choice available. Picasa does have a desktop application for offline organizing and editing, but alternatives to it are mostly web browser-based services, namely Flickr and Photobucket.
Irfanview
Ifranview is technically an image viewer and lightweight media player, but it does these things exceptionally. Irfanview's been around and kicking for well on fifteen years and can open just about any media file you throw at it, despite the fact that it uses only 1200 kB of space. There are some very handy features present here that can't be found in Picasa, like on-the-fly image editing, batch editing, file converting, and a host of plug-ins for even more utility making it attractive to professionals and beginners alike.
Flickr
It's difficult to think of online photo albums and not think of Flickr at the same time. There was some conflict about whether to include it, since their online photo editor is basically a stripped-down version of Picnik, which itself was recently acquired by Google. However, the final call was that Flickr itself is entirely separate from the big G. The interface is clean-cut and easy to navigate, it's a cinch to organize your photos using tags and a well-designed hierarchical system, and there are a great deal of options to share your photos via e-mail, social sites, blogs and of course, within Flickr itself. While the free version only gets you about 100 MB and 2 videos to work with each month, the Pro upgrade is a relatively inexpensive upgrade to unlimited traffic.
Photobucket
Photobucket presents yet another viable alternative to storing your personal photos online, with 500 MB available to free accounts and a plethora of photo sharing features. Photobucket connects with most social networking sites and provides options to send your photos around with a single click, while functionally it's not too different from Flickr or Picasa, some users might like the organization of the site more than Picasa or Flickr. However, Photobucket does an exceptional job of allowing users to edit their photos with a click or two, with most of the available tools being within easy reach of the image viewer screen. .
Though there is a limited amount of space to take into account, Flickr and Photobucket are two perfectly good routes to take in place of Picasa. Users can avoid the hassle of negotiating with Picasa’s editor and the plethora of sharing options also gives these two services a clear advantage over Picasa, so if you've got photos of adorable kittens or a wild night out that you simply must announce to your network of friends and family, try Flickr or Photobucket.
Google Calender
What's there really to say about calendars? They sit on your desk or wall collecting dust, probably displaying a few months back because you've forgotten all about it. Web calendars however are a different story, for reasons of practicality and accessibility. Google Calendar is a simple yet important feature for many users to manage their busy schedules and get reminders on important deadlines and dates. Given the relative simplicity of such a tool, it shouldn't be hard to find a ton of these little applications, right? It's actually a good deal harder to find innovative or unique alternatives, though there are a few that manage to distinguish themselves.
Remember the Milk
The creatively titled Remember the Milk (RTM) lets users manage their tasks and deadlines from offline with a small desktop shortcut built on the Gears software. Changing your tasks or calendar events offline will lead to RTM automatically syncing these changes with the online data as well with your next log-in. In addition to the number of other services it's integrated with, (Google Calendar, Twitter and Microsoft Outlook) you can also share tasks and events with other uses.
30 Boxes
30 Boxes is very minimalistic at first glance, but within all this white space lays an intriguing calendar system. Rather than having to set every parameter of an event or deadline, users can simply type in something like 'Boring meeting with boss, this Friday, 3pm, the office', and 30 Boxes automatically figures out the time, place and location. Add to this the choice of adding applets from Google Search and Mail, integration with a number of blog services and social networks, and you've got an especially complex little application that is well masked by an innately simple design and look.
Both of these alternatives seem to acknowledge the pervasive presence of Google Calendars by their integration with it, but 30 Boxes and RTM are just as usable on their own. Either way, these tools will certainly help the unwitting slackers keep time management in mind.
Google Reader
Browsing the internet for all your favorite webcomics, blogs, news sites and whatnot is definitely a fun way to take up time, but it can be troublesome to visit so many places on a mobile device or with a limited time frame. . News aggregators are perfect to this particular task, and Google has its own service to collect Atom and RSS feeds in Google Reader. The dozens of websites you visit on a daily basis are lumped into one page and you can simply pick and choose what to read from there. But surely there's a better way to do this outside of the Google spectrum, right?
Netvibes
Netvibes, for example, is a personalized web portal which holds any number of RSS feeds, widgets and integrated services and would be the first thing that users would see before navigating elsewhere. Navigating and customizing Netvibes at first can be daunting and cluttered, but it cleans up nicely and makes adding new widgets and news feeds an effortless task. Tabbed browsing and customizable windows allows users to tinker and toy around to their heart's content, and the number of integrated services and available widgets is staggering. There's email, social networking, to-do lists, Flickr, an audio player, calendars and so on.
Bloglines
Bloglines takes a decidedly more traditional approach as a news aggregator, but that's hardly a bad thing. Whether you're reading twenty different feeds or looking for a particular podcast session, it's easy to navigate through, not cluttered at all and generally serves its purpose well. As its name might imply, there are even tools available for users to make their own public or private blog with Bloglines. You can then start posting your feeds to your spanking-new blog, or you can save particular articles in the 'Clippings' folder for later reading.
The two choices here are quite different from one another in that Netvibes lets you do and see a relatively large chunk of the internet from your home page, while Bloglines devotes itself purely to feeding your news and data addiction. Users should keep this distinction in mind when choosing which place to gather all their news sites, but both are solid and useful alternatives to somewhat less-refined service that Google has available.
Google Blogger
Everyone's got something they'd like to tell everyone else. As anonymity on the internet has proven, even the meekest and quietest fellow can become especially bellicose and heavy-handed given the right conditions. For those of you who'd like a less flame-ridden method of recording your thoughts and experiences, blogs are one of the better ways to go and Google accommodates this need as well. Blogger, like a number of the services that Google has acquired during its ascension to the top, was one of the first in its field and is helped propel the popularity of blogs forward. That was long ago however, and since then the other choices have become anything but underdogs in the fight for your online journals.
Wordpress
Wordpress is a particularly notable to look at when considering creating your first blog or simply in moving to something more contemporary. It’s one of the more popular blog software around today, and for a good reason - the ease of installation and set up.. Wordpress is perfect for amateurs to pick up right away, and functional enough for advanced users to sink their teeth into. A vast range of plug-ins and widgets also exist to help users better create and manage their blogs, whether it's done through by hand-coding or through the editor that Wordpress.com provides.
Movable Type
Movable Type is another veteran to the blog scene, and has seen a fair number of updates in recent times that have brought it up to speed with its rivals. Movable Type provides the ability to create multiple blogs easily, a feature that Wordpress only just introduced, and is also a fairly easy and intuitive blog hosting to use, though it can cost a pretty penny to add any commercial features if you're planning on trying to run a business from it.
While this is hardly a comprehensive guide to the number of services available through Google and their differing options, it's a good start for anyone who wants to try out something different . Google has made its reach felt and known throughout the internet in the services and products it acquires and creates, but that doesn't mean that its reign is completely without opposition. The best advice in the end is to give some of these alternate services a run through and see what fits your needs best instead of picking the most popular service around. While some of these alternatives do have features that beat out Google's offerings, it ultimately depends on what you're looking for in a calendar, email provider or video-sharing site. If you have opinions or suggestions of your own, hit the comments and let’s us know what we’re missing!
5 Freeware Apps for Searching Thy Desktop Awesomely
Sun, 29 Aug 2010 16:25:05 +0000
This week’s Freeware Files come courtesy of podcast aficionado (and mother of the epic dream date winner from podcast #36) R. Ellen Ferare. Or, rather, you can thank her for the idea. We got to talking this past weekend and she noted that she’s been having trouble finding a legitimate way to search through her desktop for this, that, and the other. Obviously, Windows’ built-in search functionality just isn’t cutting it—and I don’t blame her for thinking so. It’s slow, it’s bloated, and I’ve personally found that it just doesn’t quite get the job done compared to other applications out there.
“Other applications,” of course, is just a code phrase for what’s really on everyone’s minds: Google Desktop. But it would sure be boring to just write 75 words saying, “Don’t use Windows Search; Use Google Desktop. Eat a cupcake.” There’s more to life than what Google bestows. And, in fact, you might have legitimate privacy or performance concerns when using Google’s great—but not deal-breaking—search utility. For example I hate that the service only indexes your drive when your system is idle. That doesn’t do me a lot of good if I need to quickly search through new contents I’ve added to a particular location.
So, grievances aside, what does one do if one doesn’t want to use Windows built-in search tools or Google Desktop to sift through one’s computer for information? Solution: Try out one of the five freeware apps buried below the jump. They vary in format and features, but all are designed to fix some aspect of system searching that, right now, just isn’t being fulfilled by the two big aforementioned apps.
Let’s begin.
DocFetcher
Google Documents has a fun little quirk whereby one can actively search through the contents of files—I’m talking about that-which-is-displayed in either a Word or Excel document—instead of just searching your drive for a particular file name (which, to be fair, it also does). But if you don’t want to deal with Google, or a mass-index of your entire computer, or any of that nonsense, then DocFetcher is the super-trimmed-down application you’ll want to use for your searches. It does create an index on a destination folder prior to your search, but you can specify this—and the exact kinds of files you’ll be looking for—prior to your entry into Searchland. After that, finding contents within your files is as easy as typing your desires into the search box and hitting enter.
Download it here!
FileSeek
I mentioned the indexing process above. In case you’re unfamiliar, here’s what I’m talking about: applications like Google Desktop run throughout the entirety of your system to build a working repository of information related to its contents—the index. Using the index to perform searches is much, much faster than running through your whole drive with each and every query. On the flip side, perhaps your one-shot search item doesn’t really need a full index—building one from the ground up does take time, after all. And what if you can use parameters to better restrict the search, which could ultimately increase the list of files that your app doesn’t even have to consider?
Enter FileSeek: This non-indexing search tool comes with a plethora of options for defining your search in the most explicit terms possible (that’s “detailed,” not “naughty”). Better still, it integrates directly into your right-click context menu in Windows; you’ll never need to use the boring ol’ Windows Search ever again, trust me.
Download it here!
Everything
Well, it’s named appropriately, that’s for sure. The beauty of Everything is that it dumps the power of a desktop search into a completely portable application. That’s right—slap this little one on a USB key to bring real-time search results of a given system (or specified folder) to any system you want. The super-speedy tool allows you to drill down your search for files by filtering the results using specific letter cases, words, or file location. And, as mentioned, it’s super-easy to include or exclude locations you don’t need to look through.
And did I mention it’s portable?
Download it here!
Index Your Files
While it’s easy to boast about this app’s useful, Windows Explorer-like interface, and filtering capabilities for your searches, and things like that… these features aren’t all that different from those found in the applications I’ve already discussed. At some baseline level, a good search tool has a pretty standard set of functions: Index Your Files is no exception.
Where the app differs, however, is in its use of multiple indices to speed up the searching process. That’s right—you can index more than one location at a given time, which is an especially helpful feature if you’re looking to quickly search a specific folder on your system and, say, the contents of a single drive elsewhere on your network. Specificity, specificity, specificity! That’s how this app rolls.
Download it here!
File Name Tag Explorer
So, I’ve covered a number of different ways you can go about performing a real-time search across your system or networked contents. Now, let’s flip the equation around a bit and consider things from an entirely different angle. File Name Tag Explorer presents just such a paradigm shift (yes, I hate that phrase too). Instead of searching for the contents of files, or file names, this app allows you to slap Flickr-style tags on as many files as you want. You’re searching by topic now—click on the “freeware” tag, for example, and you’ll be given a list of those files with which you’ve previously bestowed this identifier.
Now, I get a headache just thinking of having to tag all the files on my drive before being able to reap the benefits of this application. For what it’s worth, File Name Tag Explorer does assist you in auto-tagging files—it’s not perfect, but it’s not like you have to manually enter every tag, eh?
Download it here!
David Murphy is a technology journalist and former Maximum PC editor. He writes weekly columns about the wide world of open-source as well as weekly roundups of awesome, freebie software. He enjoys searching for files as much as he enjoys searching for buried treasure. Yarrrr.
How To: Prepare For Your Online Afterlife
Wed, 01 Sep 2010 01:08:17 +0000
It's a sign of the strange times we live in that even death isn't quite as absolute as it used to be. Everyone still dies eventually, but their carefully-crafted online personae live on. These digital remains can be a nice memorial or a disturbing remnant, depending on how well a person has prepared.
So it's worth taking a few minutes to think about what happens to your online life when your real one's over. To help you out, we've put together a 12-step guide to getting your virtual affairs in order. It's a little macabre, yeah, but if you can get over the heebie-jeebies, it'll be time well spent.
1. Start Taking Inventory
Starting now, write down every password protected online asset that you use, as well as the passwords used to access them. If you're using a password manager such as KeePass, this job shouldn't take long. Include email accounts, website hosting passwords, social networking log-ins, online banking security questions, etc. Collect this information for a week or two, perhaps as long as a month, depending the size of your online presence. Make sure the information that you collect is secured on an encrypted flash drive or zip it with a password and send it to yourself attached to an email. At some point you'll have to assign an executor to look after everything, but for now, concentrate on getting the information in one place.
2. Get Your Finances in Order
Most of what you do online is free. One thing that isn't is also the one thing that you might want to have outlive you. Websites cost money every year, both the hosting and the domain name registration. Even if you don't set someone up to maintain your sites, the hosting and registration will likely be on auto-renewal. Planning for this now will make all the difference between being able to keep your cool domain name for perpetuity or losing it forever. OK, you won't care, but your kids might!
Most web hosting and domain registration fees are charged to a credit card listed with each account. If you have the sense to prepare for your death by recording the password and log-in information, then it's simply a matter of changing the credit card information online with the hosting company. Charges will now be put on another card and the site will roll along peacefully. If you don't work out all of this beforehand, then your executor might find it too difficult to work through the maze of death certificates and legal issues that will confront them and both your site and your dot-whatever-name will vanish into the void. Even if you don't want to maintain the site, and you have a cool domain name, your executor could theoretically sell it and distribute the funds among your heirs.
So much for paying money out. What about funds that come in (such as from ads on a site you run)? If you have given out the passwords to your executor, it's a simple matter to change the account information with Google or whoever else is paying out the dough on a simple ad revenue site.
However, if there are items are being sold and a credit card company or Paypal is involved, it's vital that you sort all of this out with your financial institution beforehand. This is where a real will is needed to divvy up the money after you die. If there is going to be continuing income for someone, figure out how you're going to give them access to the website and to the money that the site generates. 3. Compose Your Famous Last Words
Now is the time to reflect on friends and relatives and attempt to say in words what they all mean to you. Notes, emails and written documents are welcome and probably will be treasured for longer than you might think. Jot down a list of the important people in your life, write a personal message to each one and lock it all up in email drafts or in a folder in your documents. Pass the information on to your executor and relax. Hopefully after this is done, you'll actually live a bit longer. Happy thoughts add years to your life, right?
4. Avoid Awkward Situations
While you might be right up there with the Dalai Lama in purity, almost everyone has things they'd rather have die with them. Before you give someone else access to all of the details of your online life, get rid of anything that might create some frowns when you're gone. References to anyone named Bambi should probably be ditched now. If you're a member of any sketchy websites, adjust your email settings for them before they have a chance to blemish your wholesome reputation. Think of marking updates from these sites as junk-mail to keep them out of your inbox. We're just sayin'.
5. Maintain Your Websites
The hours that you've spent tuning your meta tags and keywords will all be in vain unless you pass on the torch to someone else before you permanently lose your connection. To avoid the dreaded 404, write down all of the hosting details, passwords, renewal dates, etc. With a major hosting firm, the transition will be seamless, provided that your successor has all of the necessary information. Ad revenue must also be considered. A joint bank account helps to keep this seamless as well. Remember to save any templates and resources that you used to create the sites. Maintaining and updating your sites will be much easier if your designated designer has all the information they need. Maybe some cash for a web design course for your executor wouldn't be out of line either. 6. Prepare Your Facebook Account
If you get to know the privacy settings in Facebook, you can tune your final exit now, leaving your executor the simple task of tagging and adjusting the settings after you're gone. Write your message in a note, scroll down to "Note Privacy" and set it to 'only me'. Once you've signed out for good, have your executor reset the privacy, allowing the pertinent person or persons to see your note. Maybe you could do a final photo album. Create it, lock it up and let your executor take care of it. 6.b. Dealing With Someone Else's Facebook Account
If you have missed the boat you won't be reading this, right? But if someone you know, a relative or a close friend, has recently died and you can't face seeing their profile languish unattended, here's what you can do. Head over to this URL. You'll find Facebook's 'Report a deceased person's profile' form. Fill it out, making sure you provide the link to an obituary or a news article that confirms the death. The friendly Facebook folks say that "Memorialising the account removes certain sensitive information and sets privacy so that only confirmed friends can see the Profile or locate it in search. The Wall remains, so that friends and family can leave posts in remembrance."
If the thought of some gibroni at Facebook rummaging through your profile (as if they don't already) scares the hell out of you then this is all the more reason to get your act together and start this whole process yourself. Myspace will do the same thing : http://tiny.cc/5w9s6 but you'll need a death certificate or obituary and be 'next of kin', not just a friend.
Google, and all of their linked sites and services such as Gmail, Orkut and Google Chat, offers something similar : http://tiny.cc/dev9h but you must prove that you are the legal representative of the deceased person.
Do you see a pattern here? Instead of letting someone else manage your profiles for you, get off your ass and figure out what you want done with them while you're still chatting it up here on earth. If you prepare everything, then your friends and family don't have to deal with nasty things like death certificates and the legal red tape that is involved with proving someone is dead.
7. Record Your Final Rant on YouTube
If you've got fans and subscribers on a video site, record a video that sums up what you're feeling about them, the world in general or anything else that comes to mind. Adjust the privacy settings and have your executor publish it after your last 'Cut'! You might want to disable comments,too, in case some wise ass says something stupid. Just hope that it doesn't go viral. 8. Create a Safe Email Account
Just in case your executor is tempted to send out emails pretending to be you, create a neutral account, and move your contact list over to it. Write some draft emails to different contact groups, mark them accordingly and put the account password with full instructions in your package. You might want to send a pre-death email from this account to everyone on your list, with an explanation, of course, in order for everyone to mark the new account as safe and not junk. Remember to update your contact list on a regular basis.
9. Keep it current.
Once you've got everything organized, emailed and zipped, make sure that you keep everything current. If you've made changes to anything in the chain of things that are you on the Internet, update your storage every now and then to reflect the latest versions of what was deemed important when you began. If new websites or accounts have been opened, make sure you add these to the mix.
10. Zip it and Encrypt it.
The final step in this exercise is to encrypt all the data that you've organized. Depending on the size of the files, you can email them to yourself at the neutral email account you've created or you could make hard copies. Passwords can be printed out and filed in a secure location, such as a safety deposit box with your will, but it might be better to lock them up on an encrypted DVD. Using TrueCrypt, burn a DVD every now and then which will reflect the current status of everything that you've decided to pass on when you pass on. Make the password something that is easy to remember and make it known to your executor in your will. 11. Are There Other Options?
If all of this is too much for you, don't despair. There's no reason to reinvent the wheel when it comes to planning for your afterlife life. Some very smart people have set up websites that will guide you through the process...for a fee. Please read the disclaimer at the end of the reviews before you sign on the dotted line...so to speak.
One of the nicer sites we came across was based in San Francisco. Legacy Locker takes you through the sign up process and all succeeding steps in a direct and helpful manner. Sure, you still need all of the information just as if you were doing all of this yourself but with Legacy Locker, you are prompted for each detail. Overall, we liked the feeling of Legacy Locker. Fees for a lifetime membership are $299.00. This premium level gives you unlimited assets, beneficiaries and 'legacy letters' as well as both document backup and video uploads. A word of warning here. Legacy Locker's SSL (Secure Socket Layer) certificate showed as being expired for about a week during our research.
Wouldn't it make sense that a site which states a concern for its users safety could at least keep an SSL to date? Deathswitch is much simpler in its approach. Through the use of regular emails sent to you, Deathswitch waits for you not to respond. After a predetermined length of time without an answer from you, Deathswitch sends out your drafted emails, with attachments if you want, to a maximum of thirty with up to ten recipients each in the $19.95 per year premium plan. This approach seems best for anyone who doesn't have a large online presence. Deathswitch does not take into consideration things such as stroke or coma. What if you weren't dead, only disabled? After a certain period of time, everything you have collected to be sent out on your death is emailed on your behalf. Should you come back to an appropriate level of mental fitness later on, you might have a lot of explaining to do. Deathswitch also has a free account which will send one email, but no attachments, after your death. Because this system is based on non-response, no death certificate is required.
The Last Email, based in Spain and Brazil, had the slowest website that we've encountered in a long time. If you have minutes to wait for a page to load, check it out. Prices are in Euros and the most expensive plan allows for unlimited emails but only five megs of online storage.
My Last Email is an online obituary and memorial site which is based in England. Prices are in British Pounds. The website provides space for an online memorial, accessed by password only, as well as an online obituary which is open to anyone who has been given the link. We found the space very limited here, although you are allowed to upload a video that could run 'about ten minutes'.
My Web Will is only interested in your social networking life after death. For a fee, right now it's $9.95 per year for the 'beta' version, My Web Will will make the changes to your account that you have requested. You decide if you want to deactivate the account, change some information in it or transfer it to someone else. The only security breach possible with My Web Will is that your social network passwords and/or email passwords, should you decide to include them with your account, could be compromised. My Web Will works with all major networking sites including Facebook, Hotmail, Yahoo, Wordpress, etc. You will need to set up two verifiers. They will have to provide My Web Will with a copy of your death certificate before any changes are made to your various profiles.
12. But...
With everything from outdated security certificates to payments through Paypal, it seems that online merchants of everlasting virtual life want you to play a game of Who Do You Trust? Before you send a few megs of your data off to any of the companies mentioned here, take some time to think about the consequences. Remember that we're not talking about a hotmail password here. We're talking about substantial details of your personal life as well as financial data, in some cases. Are you ready to bundle all of this stuff up and send it off to a site loaded with Google ads and vague promises of 25 year guarantees? Hell, the Internet itself isn't twenty-five years old yet!
In researching this article, we were appalled at the lack of professionalism displayed on the various company websites mentioned here. Poor navigation, limited information, incredibly slow servers...these sites had it all. If you've seen the Explorer 8 'Greater Offshore Bank & Trust' ads on TV, you'll get the gist of what we're talking about. Of the group, Deathswitch stood out because they don't handle much personal information. Their service is simple, affordable and, except for the Google ads on every page, the website is about the best of the bunch. For now, however, it might be better to wait. Two things could happen. One of these companies will take the lead and become the go-to outfit for these arrangements or a major software company will create some cool app that will walk you through the steps just as Quicken and Quicktax take care of your personal financial needs. The End.
This isn't a one-size fits all guide to preparing for your own demise, but it should make you think about what's important to you. Hopefully, you will take some steps to eliminate problems for your family and friends after you shuffle off your mortal coil. Death doesn't have to be as final as it used to be.
How Blind People See the Internet
Tue, 24 Aug 2010 23:40:46 +0000
Your eyes are absorbing this webpage. They're passing over this, this, then this word, right now. That's how reading works, online: you take this for granted. But what if you couldn't?
We grant our gaze to electronic screens for most of the day, and in return, they give us anything we want. We stare; they glow. We rarely speak, and neither do they.
And this makes sense! The internet is a boundless collection of text, images and video, channeled to flat pieces of glass and plastic, beamed through lens, retina, and nerve, all the way into our brains. It can show us anything, and for most web users, that's exactly what it does.
But for millions of others—those who are unable to see—the web is a wildly different place. Characters become sounds. Layouts are meaningless. Images are, at best, words, and at worst, blank spaces. And yet the blind browse the same internet as everyone else, every day. They use the same gadgets the sighted do, and happily. But how?
The Sightless Internet
The most common way for the vision-impaired user to access the internet is with a traditional browser and text-to-speech software. You're probably already vaguely familiar with some of it—Windows users will have come across Microsoft Narrator, and I defy you to find a single Mac OS user who hasn't forced VoiceOver to hurl insults at his friends. It's these tools—or tools like these—that millions of people depend on to access the internet.
But to say that blind users just "hear" the internet is a gross oversimplification. It's not just text and images that blind users miss, it's virtually every part of the fundamental browsing experience.
Here, try this: Stop reading for a moment. Lean back and survey this page. Now think about what you do when you visit this site. You eyes are probably drawn to the stories listed horizontally across the top of the page. They look important, right? Why else would they be up there? Further down you'll see the site's banner, but you probably don't spend much time looking at that, and your eyes dart to the list of stories in the middle of the page. You scroll down, glancing at pictures then headlines, or perhaps headlines then pictures. The margins of the site are either full of ads or static information, so you probably don't pay them much mind. Now try somewhere else, somewhere more visually complicated. Think about how you're reading it.
Your habits aren't just sight-dependent (obviously), they're pretty weird. Your eyes fly around, sometimes randomly and sometimes in response to cues onscreen. You hunt for links and cherrypick from galleries. The word you're looking for catches your eye, so you click it. Consciously or subconsciously, you usually know where to look.
With a screen reader, there is no "looking." It's a simple parser, and it starts at the top. It combs through a website a lot like a web browser combs through HTML, except instead of rendering an IMG tag as an image, or an EM tag as italicized text, it converts them to sounds: a readout of the image description—the alt text—and a changed audio inflection, respectively.
Then, of course, there's all that text. On a visually rendered webpage, it lives in blocks and columns. If you're lucky, these blocks and columns will be organized in a logical or familiar way. They'll be laid out, basically. But that's such a visual concept. What happens when a layout becomes words?
"Screen reading software presents the webpage as a set of lines and links, and possibly other things—frames and headers, if the software employs that." That's Paul Schroeder, VP of Programs and Policy for the American Foundation for the Blind. Vision-impaired himself, he uses screen reading software for daily browsing. "When you log onto a website using screen reading software, what you start with is a site that tells you how many lines, and some basic structure—but not very much. When you're experiencing a cluttered site, the information you want may be 300-400 lines in, and if you're going line by line, or section by section, it can take you a very long time to find what you want."
Think about that: The internet is anything but linear—website code is nested and cryptic, and often looks jumbled and out of order. (Right click, view source! Oh, yikes, maybe don't.) Websites often have multiple visual directions, or sometimes none at all. Yet audio screen readers—and Braille modules, which display about one line of text at a time—have to render them in sequence, somehow. And listeners have to make sense of it, to develop some kind of intuition for a site's layout and structure based on very, very small amounts of information, all out of order.
Of course there are tricks. Screen reading software, like VoiceOver in OS X or JAWS for Windows, is more clever than I've made it sound. It parses websites for headers, and sometimes navigational elements. It can give you a literal description of a page's layout—"three columns, two rows"—and its surprisingly unrobotic voices reflect all kinds of punctuation. It even differentiates between outwardly identical tags. My editor actually just sent us an email to this effect: Stop using < EM > and < I > tags interchangeably. One is for italics, and one is for emphasis. It's a difference you can't see, but it's a difference some will hear.
These are the small features that make spoken webpages usable, but they can't be taken for granted: People who design websites have to be vigilant about including headers to divide large blocks of text, to include alternative text for images, and to use their tags properly. Problem is, a whole ton of sites—ours included—often don't. Ever had—or overheard—a tedious argument about whether or not a site is "standards compliant", as in W3C, HTML compliant? Well, this is like that. Actually, this is that. The W3C defines standards for accessibility just like they define standards for the rest of the web. But like those other standards, they're often disregarded.
And even a totally compliant website can be overly complicated, or simply too liquid. "Facebook is a good example, because it's an ever-changing environment," says Schroeder. "Some users master particular aspects of Facebook, find that the programming has changed, and have to rethink their strategy." But again, there are tricks: "Vision-impaired users who frequent Facebook and similar sites do one of two things: They either use the mobile version of the site, which is less cluttered, or they simply engage the specific thing they want to do and remember the specific things they want."
Properly coded websites, intelligent software, and handy shortcuts and tricks mesh together to make browsing the web tolerable for the vision impaired. Skills and persistence play a large part too. Schroeder tells me that in some cases, blind users can hop through site headers and run searches so quickly that they may be more efficient than sighted users in some situations.
But pending legislation could leave us with a much broader interpretation of the American With Disabilities act, which could mandate certain commercials websites to do those little things that make screen-reading easier. But it's a constant struggle, with technologies often outpacing the tools necessary to parse them. Oh, and I almost forgot, the web is dead. Or something.
Gadgets 'n' Apps
In case you missed last month's Wired cover story, here it is. The gist, to brutally oversimplify the piece, is that the web as we know it, this familiar hodgepodge of websites rendered in browsers—you know, the W3C's standards-based web—is falling out of vogue, making way for the new internet: the internet of apps.
I don't totally buy it, but that's not the point. Apps are everywhere, and so are the devices that run them. I read as much on my mobile devices as I do on my laptop, if not more. So if the future runs on an iPad, what does that mean for the guy who can't see?
It's really a two-part question, so let's start with the fun half. The rise of the touchscreen gadgets, flat, featureless panels they are, is actually great news for blind folks. Let me put that another way: If you're unable to see, the iPhone, with its virtual buttons and complete lack of tactile feedback, is actually easier to use than, say, a BlackBerry, with its dozens of buttons. Weird! Well, not really.
Part of the story here is software. iPhones (and now Android phones) have sophisticated text-to-speech functionality, without which they'd be useless to the vision-impaired. BlackBerry phones, on the other hand, basically don't.
But even if RIM released an update to all their button-based phones giving them flawless screen-reading abilities, they couldn't measure up to a touchscreen device.
When you use a BlackBerry (or a Mac, or a PC) your sense of place is defined by sight. You move with a cursor, or a highlighted menu item. Then you click. And for the same reason web layouts aren't very helpful to a blind person, the cursor paradigm—hell, the whole button-input paradigm—sucks. With a touchscreen, though, your fingers provide your sense of place. iPhone users can turn on the VoiceOver function, tap anywhere, and hear a narration of what's happening. Tap the upper left section of your screen, right near the volume switches, and a voice might read, "Camera app." Tap the bottom left, and you'll hear "Phone." With buttons, mice and keyboards, you're stuck back in that slow, linear screen-reading world. With touchscreens, a screen, and a piece of software, can actually be surveyed. Memorized. Used.
So that's pretty neat. But it's a rosy take. Asked about smartphones, Schroeder painted a glum picture: Apple and Google may be doing this stuff right, and building solid text-to-speech into their operating systems, but other companies are lagging. And anyway, text-to-speech in an OS is great, but today's smartphones are all about apps, developed by thousands of people in thousands of configurations. On the iPhone, for example, some apps work perfectly with VoiceOver. Plenty more don't.
Messy as it is, the capital "W" Web seems to be inching closer to universal accessibility. It has a guidebook, at minimum. But all these apps, and all their stores, may be setting progress back a few years. Suddenly, blind users' experience is at the mercy of each individual app developer, or with any luck, companies that provide their tools, and grant them access to their app stores. It's not an insurmountable problem, but it's a problem.
In any case, whether you're an app developer, web designer or just a dude who likes to update his blog every once in a while, remember that someone, somewhere, might be listening to what you've written. And that alt texts in images aren't just for jokes. And that it's still OK to make your computer recite the word "penis", for kicks.
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Illustration by Sam Spratt. Check out Sam's portfolio and become a fan of his Facebook Artist's Page.
Send an email to John Herrman, the author of this post, at jherrman@gizmodo.com.
Gizmodo is the world’s most fun technology website, focused on gadgets and how they make our lives better, worse, and more absurd.
Parrot AR.Drone Quadricopter: First Unsupervised Hands-On Testing
Mon, 23 Aug 2010 13:24:05 +0000
Here it is, folks, the Parrott AR.Drone Quadricopter, the coolest of all high-tech tech toys, and the darling of trade show floor demonstrations for the last eight months. Well, the supervised test flights in foreign fly zones are over. We’re ready to share some notes on our completely independent, longer term testing.
The Drone remains stable in light winds – stable enough to chase down Mac|Life’s Nic Vargus, North by Northwest-style! But make no mistake: Strong winds will in fact down this midget chopper.
You’ve surely seen the AR.Drone flying in videos shot at CES, Mac Expo, GDC and E3. In a nutshell, this is a battery-powered quadricopter that you control with your iPhone, iPod touch or iPad. Android support is planned, but won’t be ready when exclusive retailer Brookstone begins shipping pre-ordered units on Sept 3 this year.
The AR.Drone connects to your iDevice via Wifi, and acts as its own 802.11b/g network, so you can fly it inside or out, anywhere you like. The ‘copter has a camera in its nose, giving you a direct point-of-view of where it’s flying. Just look into your iPhone and fly with abandon! Actually, once you get the hang of using the iPhone as a directional controller, you don’t even need to look at the POV image. Just look straight at the AR.Drone, and steer it as if you were sitting in the cockpit.
During the last couple of weeks, we’ve had one of these amazing flying machines in our own offices. That’s right: We’re pretty sure Maximum PC received a review unit before any other media outlet in the entire world. Sharing the AR.Drone with sister magazine/website Mac|Life, we have been honoring a press embargo since August 12. But now we’re ready to share some key information and first impressions. After the videos read more below.
* Parrot says there is no cap on altitude; that range is simply defined by the limits of 802.11b/g spec. The company quote a distance of 50 meters. That said, we kept running into an altitude ceiling at about 12 feet. This could have been due to wind or air-conditioning push. We’ll find out more during further testing. Anyone have an indoor wind tunnel we can use?
* When the AR.Drone loses its WiFi connection, it just enters a holding pattern (literally), hovering on its own using an internal stabilization system. It works great. We found its horizontal range went as far as about 30 meters, and it probably could have gone farther: Every loss of control was due to strong winds, not a signal drop.
* There’s also a camera at the bottom of the AR.Drone’s hull. Its primary function is to serve the copter’s stability system. But, as Mac|Life senior editor Susie Ochs points out, “You could check out the bottom camera just for kicks if you’re flying over the neighbors pool while they skinny-dip, or whatever.”
* Unfortunately, neither the nose camera nor the bottom-facing camera records video that can be saved to your controller device. This ommission would seem to be a missing function of AR.FreeFlight, the iOS app you use to steer the 'copter. Parrot has an SDK that allows developers to create augmented reality games for the AR.Drone, and we find it hard to believe that recording video of gameplay wouldn't be a function of these games.
* When flying the Drone inside, you attach a hull that’s outfitted with soft, ring-shaped, polystyrene shields that protect the rotors and household items from collision. After a few days of testing, we did break one of the rings, but the crack didn’t deform the ring’s shape. Also, like all AR.Drone parts, new pieces can be ordered individually.
All in all, the AR.Drone is a fan-bloody-tastic piece of supercool technology. It’s a quadricopter! that you control with your iPhone!
Though Android support would be nice.
Old School Monday: 3D Cards of Champions
Mon, 30 Aug 2010 23:32:48 +0000
Time for another Old School Monday - this week, Online Reviews Editor Michael Brown takes us back to boot May 1998's cover story, 3D Cards of Champions:
This article is about 3D graphics cards, circa 1998, but it also shows boot Senior Editor Andrew Sanchez at the height of his editorial powers. No one could have guessed that Andrew would tragically leave this world less than a year after this story hit newsstands.
As for the 3D cards of that era (we didn’t call them videocards back then), 3Dfx was the undisputed king of the market; but since their Voodoo 2 chipset was 3D-only, you had to buy a second card for everything other than games.
Rendition took second place in this roundup, but the innovative company flamed out a year later and was purchased by Micron (where the company’s third-generation product—the V3300—was promptly cancelled). 3Dfx went bust in 2000 and Nvidia (whose Riva 128 didn’t do all that well in this story) picked up the pieces.
Take a look at the feature chart in this story: Most of the cards in the roundup had only 8MB frame buffers, and the maximum supported video resolution was 1,280x1,024 pixels. ATI’s All-in-Wonder Pro took first place in terms of features by virtue of having a strong 2D/3D chip (the 3D Rage Pro) and an excellent TV tuner on the same card. AMD acquired ATI in 2006 and announced today its decision to retire the ATI brand altogether.
Intel hoped its i740 processor would convince graphics-card manufacturers to switch to AGP from the PCI bus. AGP would eventually have its day in the sun, but when it came to the i740, Intel had effectively turned left as the rest of the industry turned right: Game developers began producing games that relied on very large textures. Since the i740 stored textures in system—versus local—memory, as the competition’s 3D accelerators did, the i740 delivered extremely poorly benchmark performance.
Meanwhile, 3DLabs was probably wondering why it even decided to enter this market: The Permedia 2 chipset on the company’s FireGL 1000 Pro card finished last in each of Andrew’s benchmarks. 3DLabs sold its FireGL product line to ATI in 2001, and Creative Labs bought the rest of the company the following year.
SLI vs CrossFire: Which Dual-Card Setup is the Best?
Wed, 25 Aug 2010 22:34:43 +0000
We look at dual card graphics and PC gaming. When you add a second card, which cards are faster? Which scale better? And which can you actually stand to have in your system?
Graphics cards have gotten faster and added more features. So we have to ask the question: is it really worth adding a second GPU to your system? Will you get enough of a performance boost to justify the extra power draw and added cost? The answer is more complex than a simple yes or no. It all depends on what games you’re running, how much you dial up features like anti-aliasing, whether you’ve dived into the world of stereoscopic 3D and what monitor you’re running.
Perhaps the most important factor in the decision is display resolution. If you’re running a 1680x1050, 22-inch display, a single midrange or high end card will get the job done. Adding a second GPU is overkill. If you’ve got a 30-inch, 2560x1600 display and want to crank up the AA and postprocessing features, then that second GPU can be a big help.
Stereoscopic 3D, like Nvidia’s 3D Vision, demands more performance as well, since you’re effectively doubling the frame rate requirements of a game. Most 3D displays currently available max out at 1920x1080, however, so the performance demands aren’t overly onerous.
Games themselves are evolving and adding more features. You can see that in a title like Just Cause 2. Still a DirectX 10 title (and it requires DX10 or higher), Just Cause 2 adds a host of postprocessing effects that can demand much from your graphics card. Toss in DX11 titles, like Aliens versus Predator or STALKER: Call of Pripyat, and frame rates can plummet as you add features. So that second GPU can indeed contribute to the overall experience.
With these thoughts in mind, let’s take a look at our SLI and CrossFire X candidates.
The Cards
We looked at seven different DirectX 11 capable cards, including four based on Nvidia GPUs and three using AMD graphics chips. We also tossed in the fastest single GPU card from the previous generation, Nvidia’s 285 GTX, in the form of a pair of eVGA GeForce 285 GTX SSC cards. Note that not all cards were identical. With the exception of the GTX 460 768MB, Radeon HD 5870 and GeForce GTX 480, all were run at reference speeds. The GTX 460s, HD 5870s and GTX 480s were factory overclocked by a few percentage points, as were the previous generation 285 GTX cards.
Here’s the lineup; note there were two of each, and we call out the models where appropriate.
eVGA GeForce GTX 285 SSC
A pair of Asus 768MB GTX 460
One Gigabyte GTX 460 1GB card and one reference GTX 460 1GB
One eVGA 470 GTX card, one Galaxy GTX 470
A pair of eVGA 480 GTX SC cards
One Radeon HD 5830 reference card, one XFX Radeon HD 5830
One Asus Radeon HD 5850 and one XFX Radeon HD 5850
One HIS Radeon HD 5870 Modern Warfare 2 Edition and one XFX Radeon HD 5870 XXX Edition. These are both 1GB, factory overclocked cards.
While the core and memory speeds of some of these cards may be higher than stock reference cards, it’s been our experience that actual game performance increases only slightly. So we can still make judgment calls on performance, even though all of these aren’t stock cards.
Our test bed is a 3.33GHz Core i7-975 Extreme Edition in an Asus P6X58D Premium motherboard with 6GB of DDR3/1333 and a Corsair TX850W PSU. The OS is 64-bit Windows Ultimate. All games were run at 1920x1200 with 4x AA. In point of fact, we ran at 2560x1600 with and without AA. But our tests were still pretty demanding at 1920x1200, with 4x AA and all eye candy cranked up. So those are the results we’re reporting here.
We installed the latest release drivers -- 258.96 WHQL for Nvidia and Catalyst 10.7 for AMD. We also made sure each card’s dual GPU feature was enabled. AMD will enable CrossFire X by default if it detects two cards, while you’ll have to manually turn on SLI with Nvidia cards.
Make sure you manually enable SLI in the Nvidia control panel
Let's dive right in.
DirectX 10 Gaming
First, let’s take a look at games and benchmarks that run on DirectX 10. This allows us to see how much we’ve gained since last generation. We’re using the fastest single GPU card from last generation, a (once) speedy eVGA GeForce 285 GTX SSC, factory overclocked to 702MHz (versus the stock 648MHz) core and 2646MHz memory (the stock memory clocks are 2484MHz.) Let’s see how the new kids on the block handle the now geriatric 285 GTX:
First up is the hoary old 3DMark Vantage, running the “extreme” test. The older 285 GTX just wins out over the newer Radeon HD 5830, but falls short of everything else. Note how even two GTX 460 768MB cards, with their relatively low memory bandwidth, still spanks the older card.
Crysis is still a demanding test, even after three years. Just when you begin to believe it’s CPU bound, tossing in a second, new generation card pumps up the frame rate. A pair of GTX 480s are the overall winner, just falling short of the magical 60fps. It’s impressive how the $230 cards – GTX 460s and Radeon HD 5830s – generally keep up with the once mighty 285 GTX.
Next up is a pair of Far Cry 2 benchmarks.
The longer Ranch benchmark was once a demanding GPU test, but it’s become pretty easy by today’s standards. Once again, AMD’s Radeon HD 5830 is the odd duck, but note how even the low cost 460 GTXs are essentially at performance parity with the pricier Radeons in this graphics intensive test.
Far Cry 2’s action benchmark is more indicative of actual gameplay, so the test is CPU limited on higher end cards – in this case, anything that’s not an older card (285 GTX) or memory limited (GTX 460 768MB). Note how tight the grouping is here – that’s because the benchmark throws of ton of physics around, plus numerous AI characters running around trying to kill you. We wouldn’t make any graphics card decisions based on this benchmark, but it’s worth noting that GPUs aren’t the entire ball of was in PC gaming.
Tom Clancy’s HAWX is an action flight sim; we used the DirectX 10 version in our testing. Once again, AMD’s Radeon HD 5830 is the weak sauce, illustrating what an odd duck AMD’s lower end midrange card really is. While the HD 5870 wins out over the two GTX 460 cards, it’s no match for the paired GTX 470s or 480s.
Just Cause 2 is one of the few titles that requires DirectX 10 as a minimum, as well as running only on Windows Vista or Windows 7. The Concrete Jungle test throws a lot of postprocessing effects at the card, and can hammer frame rate – and it’s not particularly CPU bound. Note that we disabled the Nvidia-specific Bokeh and water effects to keep the playing field even.
AMD stays in the game with Just Cause 2, at least with paired Radeon HD 5870s. The Radeon HD 5830 and 5850s don’t fare quite as well. Once again, the 5830 is the weak sister of the bunch.
Next Page: DirectX 11 Benchmarks...
DirectX 11 Benchmark Result
DirectX 11 adds demanding new features, including hardware tessellation and new lighting effects. We turned up everything we could in our DX11 benchmarks. Note that the 285 GTX is now out of the picture, since it doesn’t support DirectX 11’s new features.
We’ll begin with a synthetic test, Heaven, based on the Unigine game engine. Note that we’ve cranked up tessellation to “Extreme”. It’s interesting to see how the 768MB GTX 460 falls off a cliff, probably due to that cards smaller frame buffer, exacerbated by the lower bandwidth available with the 192-bit wide memory interface.
More importantly, AMD is roundly trounced in this benchmark. It’s worth noting that discussions with developers have noted that AMD does pretty well with shader heavy scenes, but Nvidia cards are – and we’ll quote an unnamed source here – “tessellation monsters.” It certainly shows here.
Okay, so Nvidia can pull out its self-described “can of whoop-ass” on AMD in a synthetic, tessellation heavy test. Let’s see how it does in actual game benchmarks.
There’s not a lot of hardware tessellation in BattleForge, but a lot of lighting effects – particularly SSAO style effects. You’d think an RTS like BattleForge would be CPU bound, but it scales pretty well with GPUs. AMD just can’t keep up here; the HD 5830 falls behind everyone else, while the HD 5850s and 5870s are beaten down by the higher end GTX 470 and 480 cards in SLI mode.
It’s another Nvidia sweep. While the HD 5870 comes close to the GTX 470, it still falls just short. The HD 5850 is in a dead heat with the less expensive GTX 460 1GB cards. Note how the HD 5830 once again brings up the rear.
The Aliens versus Predator benchmark uses DX11 tesselation. It’s worth noting that AMD can stay pretty close to Nvidia if you leave AA dialed down, but once you add anti-aliasing, the big green machine turns up the nitro and leaves the boys in red far, far behind.
New game, same old story: Nvidia wins. Note that it appears that the GTX 470 beats the GTX 480, but it’s really a dead heat – what we’re seeing here is the GPU waiting for the CPU in a classic CPU-bound situation.
Power, Noise and the Price of Glory
So it’s apparent the Nvidia’s high end cards rule the roost in performance. Why not just slap a pair of GTX 480s in your system and be done with it. Well, first there’s the price. Two GTX 480s will set you back a solid kilobuck or more. A pair of Radeon HD 5870s will set you back less than $800, if you shop for standard clocked cards.
Then there’s power. This chart suggest why you might not want to just drop in two GTX 480 cards.
It’s worth noting that two GTX 480s seem to use slightly less power than a pair of GTX 470 cards when the system is idling, though it’s not a large difference. But look at those numbers for system under load. Those power numbers were captured using a Watts Up Pro meter connected via USB to a PC to collect power data in real time. Power usage was captured when running the Unigine Heaven benchmark at 2560x1600 at 4x anti-aliasing.
If the GTX 480 is one power hungry cards, paired factory overclocked GTX 480s are power hungry monsters. Note that our 850W Corsair power supply had no problems delivering the 665W of system power needed under full load. A pair of Radeon HD 5870s consumed fully 230W less than the GTX 480s. At idle, two HD 4870s ran nearly 40W cooler.
It’s worth noting that neither the GTX 480 nor GTX 470 running in SLI mode ever had any problem with any game test. However, they did get extremely loud – enough so that you’d want to either use a headset to hear your game audio or really pump up your speaker volume. You’ll want a solid case with good airflow, which will mitigate both heat and noise somewhat.
The Bottom Line
AMD has invested substantial time and resources improving CrossFire X, but it’s clear that Nvidia’s SLI is currently the superior dual GPU solution. Nvidia’s generation of DX11 cards scale very well when adding the second card, and SLI still works with more titles than CrossFire X, thought that gap is narrowing.
One thing that’s quite evident from all our testing: the Radeon HD 5830 is very much an odd duck. It’s been our experience that both single card HD 5830s and 5830s running in CrossFire X mode just don’t have the horsepower to justify its current cost point.
On the other hand, there might be times you might want to consider paired Radeon HD 5850s or 5870s, particularly if power, heat and noise issues are of concern. However, both the GTX 470 and 480 in SLI seriously spank AMD’s best in sheer performance.
In many ways, the 460 GTX impresses us more. Running in SLI mode, these cards scale well, never seem to get particularly loud or too hot, and can either stay close in terms of performance to AMDs high end card. They can certainly outperform the HD 5850 in most cases. And if you’re looking at Nvidia specific features, like PhysX or 3D Vision, the GTX 460 are affordable, even if you buy a pair. We’d strongly suggest stepping up to the 1GB version, however.
So are dual GPUs worth the cost and hassle? If you’re a serious gamer with 1080p displays or better, the answer is definitely “yes.” But take a look at what you plan on running, your resolution and other factors before you drop in that second card.
Think You're a PC Nerd? Take the Geek Quiz 2010 and Find Out!
Wed, 18 Aug 2010 19:07:43 +0000
Imagine yourself competing in the geekiest of all game shows, facing off against the geekiest of geeks—those characters of pop culture whose intellectual excellence you aspired to as a child and still seek to emulate in present day. Could you hang? Could you hold your own in such rarefied company, matching wits with the best of ‘em? Sadly, we can never know that, but Maximum PC’s annual Geek Quiz is a pretty good indicator of brain power in its own right. And you don’t even need to be first to the buzzer or frame your answers in question form. So what’s stopping you, smarty pants? It’s time to get your Quiz on!
Next Page: Geeky Greats of TV and Movies >>
Geeky Greats of TV and Movies
Submitted for your approval: 17 of our favorite geeks from pop culture, past and present. We left out a bunch of worthy nerds, so make sure to send us some angry letters about our most glaring omissions!
James Elwood
Remember the Twilight Zone episode where the computer programmer is cyber-stalked by his own machine? Played by Wally Cox, the character James Elwood in “From Agnes—With Love” was likely America’s first introduction to the computer geek stereotype.
Quartermaster Major Boothroyd
Better known simply as “Q,” this character from James Bond mythology supervised the R&D for such gear as a garrote-loaded wristwatch, the “Little Nellie” one-man attack chopper, and a touchpad-driven remote control for Bond’s BMW 750iL. Gadget badassery at its finest.
Sheldon Cooper
He’s into comics. He plays Rock Band. He riffs on Schrödinger’s cat. He’s one of the very few TV characters who proudly rocks a PC instead of a Mac, and he openly discusses the joys of defragmentation and alternative OSes. Don’t knock The Big Bang Theory. This show (and its lead nerd) capture geek culture with legit authenticity.
Lieutenant Commander Montgomery Scott
Spock knew more nerd stuff, but lacking human passion, he wasn’t a geek. Scotty? He lived for technology. This line from “The Trouble With Tribbles” says it all: “Thank you, sir! This will give me a chance to catch up on my technical journals!”
David Lightman
A high school computer enthusiast (let’s not call him a “hacker”) accidentally engages a military supercomputer in a game of nuclear brinksmanship. That’s the plot of WarGames, which catapulted super-high-functioning teenage computer nerds into the pop-culture lexicon.
The Lone Gunmen
This eclectic trio of network hackers from The X-Files brought conspiracy theorization into the geek culture mix. We think our own Gordon Mah Ung would have fit in well.
Daniel Faraday
The physicist from Lost studied the Kerr Metric, Casimir Effect, and Carter-Penrose Diagram to transport consciousness across time. Sure, we never saw him work on a PC, but still.
Comic Book Guy (AKA Jeff Albertson)
Best. Simpsons character. Ever.
Dennis Nedry
Fans of Jurassic Park will remember that it was sys-admin Nedry who shut down the park’s security apparatus, causing the dino doody to hit the fan. He’s geeky, yes, but it’s his taunting, animated response to failed password attempts that gets him on this list.
Professor Roy Hinkley
The Professor was the voice of reason, logic, and intelligence on Gilligan’s Island. And aside from his inability to construct a boat, was there anything this guy couldn’t hack together with bamboo and coconuts shells?
C3P0 and R2D2
The tall one is fluent in more than 6 million forms of communication and can instantly calculate the odds on almost anything. The short one is an astromech who can hack an X-Wing fighter in mid-flight. The geekiest characters in the Star Wars universe aren’t even human!
Warrant Officer Ellen Ripley
Much like her equivalents in the U.S. military, Warrant Officer Ripley of Alien-series fame served as a technical expert with the Colonial Marines. Whether flying space vehicles, firing pulse rifles, or operating a powerloader, she was a hardware geek of the highest order.
Steve Urkel
His Poindexter personal style reinforced slanderous geek stereotypes, but there’s no arguing that the Family Matters TV star was a nerd inventor extraordinaire. Consider the Urkel-bot, Wacky Tacky Glue, and exploding “vegetable bombs.” Yes, Steve, you did that.
Robot
This General Utility Non-Theorizing Environmental Control Robot (Class M-3 Model B9) brought some much-needed geek cred to the Lost In Space mythology. And he was polite, too: “My micromechanism thanks you, my computer tapes thank you, and I thank you.”
Lucius Fox
Just as Bond has Q, Batman has Lucius Fox, a gadget-creating engineer of epic proportions. He helped outfit his batty friend with the Bat Suit, the Bat Grappler, and the Bat Pod—among other bat-themed gear and contraptions.
Doctor Emmett Lathrop Brown
If not for the time-traveling experiments of Doc Brown in Back to the Future, a nation of geeks wouldn’t hold the DeLorean DMC in such high regard. The Doc might have had a sucky car, but his mastery of flux capacitation was without equal.
Neo
Never forget that before he became the flying kung fu artist we know in The Matrix, Thomas A. Anderson was a programmer by day, and a hacker named Neo by night. He lived in a barren hovel of an apartment, and typed at command prompts in the middle of the night. That’s geeky.
