I was going to title this post “Atlanta Startup Weekend 2 Brings New Skribit Feature” but then I went through my Skribit account and saw that there are a lot of suggestions asking me Skribit-related questions, so I’ll devote this post to it. First, Atlanta Startup Weekend 2 went down this weekend at Georgia Tech’s Advanced Technology Development Center, where I also happen to spend some of my time Continue Reading »

After slapping an Intel X25-M solid state drive in my MacBook Pro I received a few inquiries from readers asking if it was safe to use PGP Whole Disk Encryption with SSDs being known for having limited lifespans. I reviewed PGP WDE for OS X two months ago and fell in love with it; utter simplicity, trusted security and it doesn’t affect system performance. However, a common misconception is that there is a lot of encryption happening in the background Continue Reading »

When you talk to accomplished programmers, it’s no shock to hear they began programming at a very young age. Unfortunately, I was not the same way and did not grow up programming. I was much more into hardware during my childhood. I learned how to solder, read and write circuit schematics and build small projects. For my 7th grade science fair project I built a so-called breadboard robot Continue Reading »

AskMeGo is a recently launched company that aims to engage website visitors with their live Q&A toolbar. However, their plans go much further than the toolbar. AskMeGo enables publishers and their users to tap into a “distributed knowledge network.” Anyone can ask a question through the toolbar and get paired with an self-proclaimed expert in that topic for a live one to one chat, all within the toolbar. Continue Reading »

Dropbox is the recently-launched YCombinator-backed startup that aims to seamlessly sync files between multiple computers as well as act as a conduit for backing up files to the proverbial cloud. They have been the subject of some great reviews and truly deliver what they claim. That being said I don’t plan on reviewing Dropbox, Continue Reading »

I had forums on this site a very long time ago but nothing ever really happened with them. After the prodding of Andrew McCuller (a Mac Genius at an Apple Store, among other things), I’ve decided to give forums another whirl. I went with bbPress for its tight integration with WordPress and lightweight footprint. I still have a lot of editing to do but it’s up and running. Continue Reading »

Last week I boasted about the release of PGP Whole Disk Encryption for Mac OS X and how it is definitely something to consider if data privacy is of utmost importance to you. By encrypting my hard drive, I am able to keep all of my data safe from physical disk access and other such tampering. Since publishing that post I have installed and been using PGP WDE Continue Reading »

It’s all too often that laptops are stolen and data like company secrets and employee social security numbers is divulged to unauthorized sources. It’s not just that; there are a number of reasons why you might want to enforce the privacy of your digital documents. It might have something to do with the U.S. government’s recent publishing of its policy for seizing laptops at borders or Continue Reading »

There’s a new kid on the block when it comes to web-based applications for creatives. It’s called Aviary and I don’t believe I have ever seen anything like it. Aviary is soon to become a powerful brand. They are developing a massive suite of such Adobe Flex-based applications. I first heard about Aviary through a Skribit suggestion on my blog many months ago. Continue Reading »

Back in May I did a bit of traveling and became somewhat paranoid about the Internet connections I found at various hotels. I began using SSH tunnels to protect my web traffic when using Internet connections I did not trust. While setting up an SSH tunnel is a fairly trivial matter for those familiar to the command line, it’s not the same for everyone. Continue Reading »

When Firefox 3.0 was officially launched last Tuesday, I updated my copy of Firefox and installed a few select browser add-ons. This included my normal batch of add-ons like Firebug, YSlow, Delicious Bookmarks, and a recently discovered Quartz inline PDF plugin (nifty!). Then I found out about Feedly. Continue Reading »

In the first part of this Going HD series I discussed the arrival of a 50-inch Samsung plasma HDTV as the core of my new HD setup. I’ve spent almost two weeks with the HDTV and I have no complaints thus far; it’s a stellar display. The only problem has been getting 1080p HD content on the display to really use it. Continue Reading »

Go back to 1998 and remember when you had your shiny new Palm III PDA. It was the first of its kind to sport an infrared port. At the time, the killer feature of the Palm infrared port was not turning off walls of televisions at Best Buy but rather exchanging vCards with other Palm users - wireless business Continue Reading »

If you have a MacBook Air or recent MacBook Pro with a multitouch trackpad, you have probably already fallen in love with the “swipe” gesture. Three fingers swiped across the trackpad to the left or right take you back or forward a page, respectively, in your browsing history. Only native apps like Finder and Safari have built-in Continue Reading »

This post suggestion has been sitting in my Skribit account for a while so I thought I would finally address it. S3 is Amazon’s developer-aimed online storage solution. In recent years, consumer-friendly applications and tools have added support for Amazon S3, Continue Reading »

Back when I wrote Startup 101: Tools for the Job, I had briefly mentioned Campfire by 37signals but had not gotten around to using it for Skribit. In the last month or two, things have changed completely as we have not only begun using Campfire but made it our primary form of communication and how we work. I’m not alone either. Telecommuting web professionals such as those involved with ENTP Continue Reading »

By the time most people read this post I will have stayed in three different hotels in New York, New Jersey and Maryland while trekking along with Challenge X teams for their final competition. That means I have had a chance to glance through several terms of service agreements for various hotel internet Continue Reading »

Macbook Air owners know what I’m talking about - the dreaded core shutdown. When the MacBook Air gets too hot, there is a built-in thermal shutdown feature that turns off one of the two cores in the Core 2 Duo Intel processor found in the MacBook Air. The problem is that one of the cores often shuts down at temperatures Continue Reading »

Amazon EC2 is among the more potent items in Amazon’s web services arsenal. You’ve probably heard of many of the other services such as S3 for storage and FPS for payments. EC2 is all about the “elastic compute cloud.” In layman’s terms, it’s a server. In slightly less layman’s terms, EC2 lets you easily run Continue Reading »

WordPress 2.5 came out earlier today. I just updated and am going to give the gallery features a whirl with this test post. I have actually been tinkering a lot with customizing a gallery for this site a while ago Continue Reading »

After working on Skribit for the last 4 months, I have gotten a grip on my workflow and the tools I as well as the other co-founders use. The scope of this post is to give potential starter-uppers an idea of how to get work done collaboratively with others Continue Reading »

Last September Yahoo! announced they had acquired Zimbra, a leader in email and collaboration software focused towards businesses, ISPs and universities. It was with that same announcement that Yahoo! said Georgia Tech would be one of the first universities to adopt Zimbra’s webmail application. Georgia Tech’s Continue Reading »

Today Mozilla, the company behind your favorite open source web browser and email client, has launched a subsidiary of the Mozilla Foundation, focused entirely on email and Internet communications. Mozilla Messaging is the name and ignoring prevalent Continue Reading »

So you’ve built a nifty file server running Linux after following your favorite blogger’s series of DIY 200 Dollar PC articles (Part 1, Part 2, Part 3). Now what? Wouldn’t it be nice if you could turn that server into a speedy downloading machine? Continue Reading »

John Ratcliffe-Lee writes in with a question about how to use Subversion to easily keep tabs on a frequently updated software CMS he wants to use. First off, what is Subversion? It’s a widely used version control system, or in Continue Reading »