Thursday morning I noticed one of my older posts (this one) was receiving comments… I figured someone, somewhere posted it on their own blog and people were following the link over here. Then my mailbox blew up as people started “liking” the same post, subscribing to the blog, and commenting… I had no idea what was going on until a friend on Twitter out to me that the post had been selected to be featured on WordPress’ frontpage!? Yup, my writing was featured on “Daily Press”!
What does that mean exactly? For one it means a lot of comments! That post now has over 120. It also means a lot of pages views. Before today my the most hits I’d had on my page was 180. In the last three days DiMortuiSunt has had 5,176 hits?!?
I'm still in shock!
This is just a quick post to thank everyone. Those of you who have been reading here for a while, those of you who showed up in the last few days, and WordPress for noticing me. I promise I won’t try to disappoint any of you!
So it hailed on Sunday, and Monday it rained. It wasn’t supposed to rain it was only supposed to be cloudy. But it rained and I was unprepared.
I only have to bike about a mile from my house to the train station… It was only sprinkling, but I got wet. I suppose I’ll need to pick up rain gear a little earlier than I expected this year.
I have had my new cellphone for about a month now. I’m still trying to figure a lot of it out: I’ve lost count of the times I’ve texted something unintelligible thanks to autotype; I’ve hung up on/accidentally dialed numerous times; and, I still haven’t quite figured out how to use the GPS think on there.
Despite the growing pains that come with a new high technology device I’m learning quite a bit. I’ve even noted that just about everything I need a computer for I can also do on the phone. I looked at my start menu and the programs I used most and then compared them to the applications I can get (and already have) on my smartphone. It’s pretty much one for one here.
The Apps, All of Them
First, I should that the internet has made a lot of this possible. So many of the things we used to need computers for can now be done through the internet: word processing, presentation making, spreadsheets, email, etc. We used to need separate pieces of software for all of this and now all you need is a web browser. On the smartphone all you need is 3G and a data plan…
Web Browsing: I use either Firefox or Chrome on the PC. You can find Firefox for smart phone here and chances are the browser that came with your android phone is based on Chrome.
Word Processing: I use LibreOffice, an open source alternative to Microsoft’s Office. I have QuickOffice and GoogleDocs on the phone. Both work fine, Google Docs is better only because it syncs with my Google account. These are work for spreadsheets and slide presentations.
File Storage: The hard drive serves this purpose admirably… My smartphone came with 8 gigabytes of memory but why fill that up with files when I can use Dropboxoneverything and keep it all in one place, on-line? Dropbox is great. Regardless of where I am if I need access to a file, image, video, etc. I make sure it is in my dropbox file and I have it.
Blogging: I don’t use any software for blogging; I do everything in-browser with WordPress. I now also use it on my phone to blog when I feel the need to do that right now!
Chat: Pidgin is my universal IM client. It’s open source and it supports every chat I can think of: IRC; G Chat; Yahoo; AIM; MSN; and a bunch more I’ve never heard of or used. On the smartphone I use eBuddy for chatting and AndChat for IRC.
Social Media: Facebook and Twitter dominate the social media environment so it shouldn’t come as any surprise that both of them have numerous official and unofficial apps for smartphones. They’re probably already installed on your smartphone.
Image manipulation: I don’t know how to use Photoshop or GIMP. The most I’ve ever was Microsoft’s built image modifier (it removes red eye, rotates, crops, etc.) or Paint. I have Paint.NET just in case… Smartphones now come with pretty good digital cameras, I think the one on mine is 8 or 10 megapixels, if you’re not looking for an SLR, this is all you’re ever going to need from a digital camera. The generic camera app on my phone works great for things like red eye and such. For fancier things I just use vignette.
Music: This is the big one for a lot of people. Weirdly, I don’t use my phone for music (though there are plenty of apps just for that). I have an old Ipod Mini that works great and it never got used either. Rarely, I’ll want to listen to podcasts and for that I find that Google Listen works fine.
It’s getting to the point where if I didn’t need a computer for fancy, hi-techvidja games I wouldn’t even own one. Also the battery on this phone sucks at holding a charge…
If you’ve got a smartphone what apps do you use all the time, and/or replace things you used to only do on your computer?
PS – If you’re looking for a good way to manage all your apps, I use appbrain. It manages all my apps as well as monitors them for updates, etc.
