Having used Palm Pilots and Pocket PCs for nearly a decade, you can call me a styli junkie. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t miss them. But when I see one I become a bit curious. I tried a capacitive stylus a couple years ago and found it to be very unresponsive. Figured it was time to give it another shot.

The Targus Slim Stylus is a tiny thing, measuring 4.375” long and about 0.25” across, not including the handy pocket clip (to store in your geeky pocket protector). Being a capacitive stylus, the target area is not as precise as a resistive stylus or one of those Wacom digitizer thingies. As a result, its use is somewhat limited, but I knew that before laying down my cash.

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I am finally out of denial that Google will shut down Reader. Additionally, I have found my new home, I set it up just right, installed some Chrome extensions for it, tweaked my RSS adding thing, exported/imported my zillion feeds, getting the hang of the keyboard shortcuts, the whole deal. Haven’t switched yet but I’m ready.

I know there are lots of shiny alternatives to Google Reader and this one in particular may not get the most votes, but I just liked the actual old Google Reader the most, and I want something as similar to that as possible, basically. RSS stands for really simple syndication, did you know that? I don’t want to jazz it up. So I’m with TheOldReader.com, and so far so good.

But they don’t have an Android app yet. They say they’re working on it. I like what I’ve seen enough to risk some period of no app during which I could get by with something like Feedly, but I think that would be a better opportunity for me to take Google+ for a spin finally. Or maybe I don’t need an effing app?

Today I have what turned out to be a rather large review of a case for a phone. When you think of cases for phones, you think of simple things and usually reviews for them are small. Somehow this review got really big with forty plus pictures in it, I’m not sure what happened but I guess I just had a lot to show you about this case. I think everyone by now knows that if you want one of the best cases for you phone then you buy an Otterbox case and that’s what I have for review today, the Defender Series for the new HTC One Android phone. The Otterbox Defender Series is the top of the line case you can get if you want the most protection for your phone. This case offers multiple layers of protection from bumps, drops, scrapes, scratches and more and it even comes with a built-in screen protector and a belt clip so your phone will always be handy. So if you’re looking for the ultimate in protection for your new HTC One, then read on…

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Browsers are an important part of the internet experience. But of all the internet browsers, the top two are Chrome and Firefox. Both have their advantages and disadvantages. So, here’s a comparison between the two.

Speed

Chrome edges out Firefox on speed. This is because Chrome is a bit more streamlined in its startup system. But Firefox is catching up in this area. However, the difference between the two from InternetProviders.com is barely noticeable and upgrades in Firefox could put them on equal footing quite soon.

Security

Of the two browsers, Firefox has the better security features that stop tracking cookies. Chrome has some major security loopholes and is working to fix the issue by asking its users to inform them of the worst offenses. While Chrome is working through these issues, Firefox is so far keeping up with new threats.

Program Tools Support

There are a couple of programs like JavaScript and reading pdf files that the browsers need at least some capability with. This category goes to Chrome in working with these types of files. While you can download separate readers for both JavaScript and pdf files, it is still a nice to read these sites without the downloads. Firefox is fixing its pdf reader issues and for the most part has solved them. They are working on getting a faster upload for JavaScript.

HTML5 Test

The HTML5 test is of the browsers to see if they are ready for the future upgrade coming to the internet. This little test determines whether a browser can handle this new revision of communications. A perfect score is 500. Bonus points are also awarded. Chrome scores higher in this particular category at the moment. But expect new upgrades in Firefox to start closing the gap.

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I swear I went in with an open mind, primed to give it five stars for just for effort. The app which you may have heard about (if not, here) scans through the apps you have installed and attempts to find and list identical or presumably acceptably-similar apps for Windows Phone, the idea I believe being that it quickly snuffs out what may be a heavily-exaggerated reluctance to switch from Android to Windows Phone due to a perceived lack of apps. Right?

As I was installing it, I saw some harsh reviews, the term bait-and-switch here, used car salesman there etc. Whatever, hit the install button, it went through my apps, came up with a 77% match figure — higher than I had anticipated actually, I was impressed and wanted to take a closer look at the list and explore the notion of getting a Windows Phone (or at least playing along). I imagine the bait-and-switch remarks were along the lines of this app failing to find a significant portion of your apps on Windows Phone made by the same developer and therefore quite similar, rather making matches under the perhaps liberal discretion of the app’s producer. But I didn’t get to that bait-and-switch. I didn’t get to a list.

I didn’t get there because I encountered a sign-in box for a Microsoft account (Skydrive/Live/MSDN/Hotmail/Xbox/MSN/etc) that I either had to sign into or go through the motions of creating an account with them and then sign in to have this list dumped someplace else unnecessarily. Seems using Google Drive or, heck, just displaying the damn list without involving cloud storage was just not good enough an idea in Redmond where you gotta juice these opportunities, they seem to feel, to take advantage of this situation to get a few more Outlook.com signups. So what if it’s much less effective in its ostensible purpose. So what? Screw just pushing WP, got the original bigger picture to think about, golden opportunity to get a couple new Hotmail users!

Anyway, thanks a lot Microsoft, or whoever made this thing that might otherwise have impressed me were it not for this bullshit. Just another sign that Windows Phone rides in the back seat of priorities still at Microsoft. So I guess that’s the takeaway..

You rely on your smartphone for many things. One area that is lacking is integration with your TV watching. At best, the smartphone was used as a simple remote control to change channels. New apps make use of your phone as a search tool and scheduler. Finally, the phone and TV might really work together.

DirecTV Taps Into Your Phone

This summer, DirecTV will release into beta its latest app, DirecTV Voice. They have been working with Nuance, creators of Dragon Naturally Speaking, to create a voice controlled app to search DirecTV channels for your favorite shows. Their goal is to finally get rid of scrolling through the program grid displayed on the TV screen to find programs.

By using voice recognition, they are trying to also get away from pushing buttons or sliding through nested menus. Nuance is the county’s premier voice recognition specialists so they plan this release to have a high rate of success with this voice-driven application. Think of it as Siri with infinite knowledge of TV shows and movies.

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There is no doubt that iOS is in desperate need of upgrading. It has been around too long in it’s current state. Android and more specifically Windows Phone have a much more intuitive and modern look. Apple even borrowed some of Androids notification goodness in iOS 5. Now it seems that Apple may borrow some of Microsoft’s Metro UI flava for it’s own in the upcoming release of iOS 7. 9to5Mac is stating that multiple sources are claiming the new interface and general design will be “very, very flat”. While other sources are stating that the new design "loses all signs of gloss, shine and skeumorphism"

Jony Ive, who is now in charge of the iOS design team is said to favor the Metro minimalistic style and bring elements of that UI into Apple’s new UI that should be previewed at the WWDC 2013. Macrumors has a pretty cool mockup of the new UI and I can already tell you I am not a fan. What makes the “flat” style work on Windows Phones is that it is now tunable to your own desire by being able to make the truly live tiles bigger or smaller and move them around at will.

If these formerly called icons could be more like Android widgets and have the scalability of Windows Phone I think it would be more of a hit. It is also being stated that the "new panels [that] swipe from the left and right side of an iOS device’s display."

So it could very well possibly be that iOS 7 falls flat in a good way, but Apple better have something more up it’s sleeve than the mocked up image or it could find it’s not so shiny new UI falling flat in a bad way.

Doug Simmons (10:07EST 4/30/13): Hey Stephen, in my quest for more traffic and making this whole thing more interesting to us, I’m forming a feasibility exploratory committee to size up maybe the best and most revolutionary idea I’ve ever had that keeps failing to come to any fruition, and the remaining step of the Committee is to run this by you: Continue reading »

While on Linux converting a pile jpegs to WebP is not a problem, for some reason it doesn’t seem possible yet to do it on Windows with cwebp. That’s okay because Цветелин Новкиришки (not sure about the pronunciation..) came to the rescue with MultiWebP which lets you convert huge directories with a couple right clicks. How? With a nostalgic DOS-ish .bat file, you right click your folder of interest > Send To > MultiWebP, go for a walk, and presto. If you’d like you can tweak the .bat for cwebp options including quality levels, lossless, auto filter and so forth.

Though a tad tricky to rig up at first, you can pull it off if you follow his steps and grab MultiWebP from his website. I profusely recommend it if you have any interest in this fantastic image format, or for anyone who really loves … pictures but is tight on space. When was the last time you used a .bat file (that had a happy ending)?