bibeh.com

Filed under: Google, Browsers

Filed under: Utilities, Productivity

Dear diary,

Today I found OhLife. It’s an interesting service for maintaining a private journal. It aims to do the same thing Penzu does, but offers a different take on things to help people journal more consistently: Writing is done over email.

Once you sign up, you get a nightly email, asking how did your day go. You simply reply and jot down whatever it is you have to say about the day. OhLife receives your email and files today’s entry into your private archive.

Filed under: Utilities, Google, Android

Google announced a new Android feature called Voice Actions today, and it’s useful, but maybe not a big enough deal to warrant the press conference they held for it. Voice Actions allows you to control your Android phone (2.2 Froyo only) with spoken commands: you can send email, call any contact, get a map of a location, load a webpage or leave a note to yourself.

Here’s the full list of commands:

• send text to [contact] [message]
• listen to [artist/song/album]
• call [business]
• call [contact]

Filed under: Security, Windows, Open Source

May aunt walt lumen thyme, people. Now you all know my secret!

Well, not really, but that’s the passphrase that PWGen, a free, open source password generator for Windows, came up with after I tweaked some of its settings.

After telling you about Diceware, which lets you generate passphrases from your browser, it’s now time to look at a more robust Windows utility that does the same (but better).

PWGen collects entropy (i.e., “random data”) using mouse movements and key presses. So, to get random passwords, you don’t need to roll any dice. You just move your mouse around, or mash your keyboard (for me, mashing the keyboard worked faster).

Filed under: Google, Browsers

Filed under: Google, Browsers

Over at the Chromium blog, there’s some good news for Chrome fans… Which is simultaneously bad news for those of you who already think they’re getting a little silly with the version numbers. Starting now, Google plans to push a new stable version of Chrome every six weeks.

Yes, you read that correctly. Six weeks.

Filed under: Security, web 2.0, Browsers

You may recall a couple of months ago when I falsely reported on what I thought was a new feature of Chrome. It was admittedly kind of neat: I thought websites could link themselves to a Chrome Extension, and pop up an alert at the top of your browser if you hadn’t installed it.

As it turned out, it’s just a cheap JavaScript hack that looks just like an official Chrome alert. I had hoped that I wouldn’t see it again, but of course that was too much to ask of the Internet. As of today, The Next Web is now using it on every single one of its pages. Click through, check it out — I’m sure they’ll appreciate the extra ad impressions.

Filed under: Utilities, Windows

Filed under: Business, Search

Business Insider just published June’s comScore Search Numbers. The picture is actually quite predictable; Google seriously dominates the market, and Microsoft and Yahoo trail behind. There’s no big news there.

What is interesting is that comScore apparently thinks that Yahoo and Microsoft are trying to game its system. For example, both Bing and Yahoo show relevant search suggestions at the top of the results page. Clicking a suggestion generates another search query, which serves to boost that search engine’s market share in comScore’s reports.

Filed under: Developer, Microsoft, Mobile

Developers, you can now grab a shiny, new, ‘near final version’ of the Windows Phone Developer Tools!

Since its announcement in February, Microsoft has obviously been ploughing a lot of resources into its next-generation mobile operating system. With consumers (and developers!) are jumping from the ailing Windows Mobile platform in record numbers, Windows Phone 7 can’t come soon enough. Microsoft, to put it frankly, needs an absolute miracle or the finest mobile operating system ever to turn around its mobile phone operations.