digisqueaks

donate rice – brush up on vocabulary

// April 8th, 2008 // No Comments » // online

I was just flipping through Women’s Day today and in one of their articles they were listing 20 things you could do in 20 minutes. Within this list there were a few sites listed to visit in 20 minutes. Most of them were to make picture presents or turn pictures into video. The one that left me curious was to visit a site called FreeRice.com to study up on vocabulary and interestingly enough – donate rice to those in need.

No kidding. The site give you a vocabulary quiz and for every right answer, the site donates 20 grains of rice to the UN World Food Program. The site won a Yahoo! Search Finds of the Year Award for 2007. Try it out!

my morning internet excursion – twitter

// April 4th, 2008 // No Comments » // applications

The internet is amazing. There is soooo much you can do. Of course it’s evolving every day and I keep finding out new and exciting features that are hidden and just waiting to be discovered.

First, Twitter. It’s a crazy idea, but it’s cool at the same time. And it’s amazing. I’ve been using it off and on for a few months now. I usually only ever remember to login to the site a couple of times a week. Yesterday I read an article on ReadWriteWeb yesterday, titled How We Tweet: The Definitive List of the Top Twitter Clients. They ended up with a list of the top 20 ways in which people submit and track their tweets. I had only ever used #1, the web, #12, Twitter Tools through my WordPress blog, and #19, Facebook. (more…)

useful browser for the everyday surfer

// April 3rd, 2008 // No Comments » // applications

In this month’s MacWorld there was a great article that compared 10 different browsers on several different levels. I usually use Safari or Firefox…sometimes IE if I need to test a site out. Safari received one of their highest ratings, a 4.5. A browser that I had never heard of ranked just the same, Flock. I decided to check it out.

The article boasted about Flock’s capability to access Feeds, Social Networks, Blogs, etc. just with a click of the mouse on a constantly updated sidebar. Very cool.

At first, the Flock interface is a little cheesy for my tastes. Lots of big blue buttons everywhere. The sidebar got to me at first, but after I started tweaking things, I found that you can customize it pretty easily to fit your own needs. The feed browser is much nicer than ones that I have used in the past. (more…)

gizmodo poll, quite slanted

// April 1st, 2008 // No Comments » // what?!

I check Gizmodo, Engadget, and a few other tech blogs…admittedly, more than once a day. I’m one of those “girl geeks” that Gizmodo is referring to and I can’t help but love gadget news. I learn as much as I can about emerging technology as I can and there’s some gadgets out there that I just have to have.

On to the point…I’ve caught it in several other Gizmodo posts, but have never bothered to comment on it: Gizmodo comes off as surprisingly sexist in some of its posts, specifically its polls. One of the latest ones, Girl Power: Girl Geeks on the Rise, Says Report is not sexist in the meat of the post, but where are the options for “I’m a Girl Geek” in their poll. Or “You’re kidding, I taught my boyfriend everything tech.” Come on now. There’s not even an option for “girl geeks” to participate.

clean notifications WP plugin

// April 1st, 2008 // 1 Comment » // plugins

Yet another helpful and informative post from Mike Davidson of Mike Industries. A New WordPress Plugin: Clean Notifications, is a plugin that Mike wrote to make email from WordPress a little easier on the eyes. I haven’t tested it out yet, but the screenshots he has as examples are impressive enough.

I first stumbled upon Mike’s Blog while I was searching for help to tweak my MySpace blog a while ago. If you’re interested, his Hacking a More Tasteful MySpace page has a lot of information and a lot of fun tweaks for your MySpace page.

making the switch – WordPress 2.5

// April 1st, 2008 // No Comments » // housecleaning

So if you see anything out of place in the next few hours, it’s because I am making the upgrade to WordPress 2.5. Sorry for the inconvenience.

UPDATE: Okay, nevermind. That was quick. With DreamHost’s One-Click Installs, I upgraded this WordPress blog in under 10 mins. I clicked the link and presto – everything’s updated! Thank you DreamHost.

The UI (user interface) is must nicer on the eyes, although I’m not sure that I actually like how minimal it seems now. We’ll see how things go from here on in. There were several small bugs I noticed in the previous version, but I can’t tell at this time if they’ve been worked out. Updates later.