RoamingGecko

As you can see from the blog posts below, I am test driving Twitterfone. Twitterfone is a service that lets you call a phone number and record a message that is then translated into a twitter post for you from that message. I am going to hold off any opinion I have of it until after the weekend when I have had a chance to put it through its paces. I will say I find the idea of it exciting as there are some instances where you just can’t text, as in when you should be driving. We’ll see how it works out.

Back in Blacksburgg. Man, was it ever hot in North Carolina.
http://tinyurl.com/5waxz3

Stopping in Statesville for some lunch. Apparently Scotty had the take downs on for most of the trip.

Twitterfone seems like a good idea when you can’t necessarily text. Like when your driving. Seems to work, will let you know more later.

I’m off to the north Carolina border. should be pulling into newton in about an hour in a half.this is a update…
http://tinyurl.com/6zh2k5

So, I came across another little app the other day and though I have talked about screen capture already on the Mac this one still needed it’s own mention. Although it doesn’t do anything that you can find in other screen capturing software, what it does do it does with style. I’m not crazy about the icon but since that is easily changed with OS X, not a real gripe. Besides there are other things I love about the program. Screen capture, either the whole screen or the just a part of it, as well as cam shots using the iSight or web cam attached to your Mac. Photos you have in iPhoto can also be used inside Skitch with ease and all of the image captures that you use Skitch for can be annotated and doodled using Skitch. Once you are done with your images you can upload them to your Skitch site that you get by registering, Flickr, or your own FTP or WebDAV site. I’ve had a lot of fun playing with it the last couple of days so if your a Mac user check it out. Did I mention that it’s free?

Oh please, let Saturday be the last I ever see of this crank. Things are looking up already.

On one of my missions to help someone out with a setting in some program they were using I stumbled across this handy little app. If only I had this back in my tech support days it would have saved me countless hours of phone support with a client. Jing allows you to create screen shots or videos to use when trying to explain how to use a piece of software or some element of their computer’s operating system. When using the screen shot feature it gives you several options to annotate the image to get your point across. A very useful feature for tech writing. In the past I have used Photoshop to create my images for tech papers but as everyone does not have access to Photoshop this application will do quite nicely. In the image below you can see some examples of the annotations provided by Jing.

When a simple pic won’t suffice you can create a video showing step by step instructions complete with audio. This is easily the best feature of Jing as nothings gets a person through a jam like video with audio prompts showing them exactly what they need to do in order to accomplish their task. A friend new to Mac computing and Adium (a multi-client IM application for Mac OS) asked me how to set a custom away message over email, I launched Jing and created this video in a matter of minutes…

Creating a custom away message in Adium

Much faster than typing out the steps in an email and left little chance of them not understanding how to do what they wanted with their application.

Jing sits off to the side of your screen and when you need it all you have to do is hover your mouse over it and you’re moments away from creating a screen shot or video you can share via chat, a web forum or email. Jing places a link to the media you created on your clip board, so all you have to do it paste it into your conversation. It’s a cross platform application so there are versions available for both Mac and PC users and at the current time Jing is free. That’s right, free.

So, if you want to check it out head on over to their web site and give it a try. The only thing you have to spend is your time.

So I finally got around to trying the demo for the game based on the hilarious web comic featuring Tycho and Gabe. I have enjoyed their comic for years for the simple reason that I felt that we, the comic artists and I, shared the same opinion of games and the game industry as well as other gear head topics. Part of the reasons I found their digs on Call of Duty 4 or Battle Field 2 so funny was I remember thinking the same thing before they spelled it out their comic strip. Maybe you had to be there. Regardless, I have always felt their brand on humor was spot on with my own and have shared many a chuckle with others on the web over the years. So when I heard they were planning a game of their own I thought it would be cool as well as ballsy for a couple of guys that lam bast game developers with a lot of their strips.

You may have seen one of their banner ads on a web site in the last week. You would remember this one as it pretty much quotes one seriously misguide forum troll who blasts Penny Arcade. The fact that they decided to quote him in one of the games ads is priceless. Talk about getting the last laugh. That move alone made me want to plop down my twenty bucks! Here’s a link so you can read about it yourself.

Banner Ad explanation

So, after playing a little of the game demo I decided to go ahead and buy it. The humor was there, the same artistic flair of the comic and it looks gorgeous on my Mac. At $20 it’s not a bad deal and as I heard one other net gamer say, “$20 bucks for six hours or entertainment is cheap now days when you consider most people pay $10 dollars for less then 2 hours at a movie theater.” Good point, I say.

If you are interested in trying it out, I encourage you to download the demo from their web site.