photofeeler – do I look good on this?

Everyone knows that looking good in your social media profile pictures is important and nowhere more so than on LinkedIn. But how do you know what is the best picture to use? Well that is where online service photofeeler comes in.

Photofeeler attempts to take some of the guesswork out of selecting the optimum picture by crowdsourcing views on pictures you upload aggregating the responses to give you a score.

You start by uploading a picture that you are interested in and select a category that this would be used with, so business or social. This is then available to … Read the rest

Here’s a Question that Pains me… Is Evernote Dying?

It really pains me to say this but I am worried about the longevity of Evernote, a tool that I have been using for many, many years. So long in fact that I now have well over 30,000 notes stored in it.

Evernote co-founder Phil Libin always said that his aim was to create a “100-year startup” meaning that it’s “a company that’s around in 100 years, which means Evernote’s product needs to be durable.” Right now I cannot see them achieving that aim. Of course that aim could have been ditched when Libin left in 2016.

Why have … Read the rest

Simple Bug Tracking with Evernote

I have been starting on a side project with my son this week where I am developing a small web app for him. He has left home a while ago so we needed to find a way to collaborate on the project without too much effort and without interfering with our day jobs. So, for example, we went through the requirements while travelling on a train up to London.

When it comes to testing and bug tracking we again needed something quick and simple. In the past I have used both The Bug Genie for work and Trello for smaller … Read the rest

Useful Excel for Mac Keyboard Shortcuts

Like so many others I am a regular Excel user but having grown up on Windows finding equivalent keyboard shortcuts for the Mac can sometimes be a pain. Specifically how to manipulate cells.

So presented here as an aide memoir for me and hopefully it will prove useful to others:

Ctrl + u – edit a cell

Cmc + Alt + Enter – new line in cell

Enter – move to next cell below

Shift + Enter – move to next cell above< … Read the rest

Crapware, courtesy of Oracle Corp.

I thought that the practice of forcing useless software onto users as part of an installation had died out but apparently not by the looks of this Java installer.

That this is being foisted upon us by Oracle, who clearly don’t need the little money they must be making from this, is a surprised as I thought this practice was restricted to smaller outfits but clearly not.

If you want to help stop this practice you can sign a petition at change.org here. … Read the rest

Opening Links in Evernote Client rather than Web

Despite all it’s foibles Evernote remains one of my most used apps and being able to link to it from elsewhere, such the task app I use, adds enormous benefit.

At one point you used to be able to generate links that when clicked would open up in the desktop app, these started evernote://. At some point these were lost and the link generator in the client only returned http:// links meaning that the request opened in the web site app. Problem with this is that it is slower and I usually have to authenticate again to get access.

I … Read the rest

Resolving “Error 1 – Operation not permitted.”

Trying to unpack a zip file this afternoon I kept coming across the error message “Error 1 – Operation not permitted.”. When I have had this before I have just switched from the default Archive app to Keka or Stuffit Expander and all has been good but for some reason that wasn’t working on this zip file.

Then I cam across the following tip on Stack Exchange. Drop into a terminal session, change to the directory with the zip file and run this command:

jar xvf <zip file name>

It worked a treat. Give it a go next time … Read the rest

Windows 10 Preview

I finally got round to downloading and installing the Windows 10 preview this morning to allow me to test our web app with it and the latest version of Internet Explorer. I had also wanted to take a look at Project Spartan but it seems that isn’t available yet.

Like so many others I wasn’t a great fan of Windows 8 but based on the very brief look this morning Windows 10 is a vast improvement on what went before. The start menu has been restored and the titles are not incorporated and it’s not a bad look.

Windows_10_Technical_Preview__English_

There is … Read the rest

2 Great Apps to Help you Show and Tell

Working in a small business you have to get involved in all sorts of areas that might be outside your core skill set. In my case that includes producing training material to help our clients understand our products better. In order to make that as painless as possible here are a couple of great apps that I use.

Clarify

clarify_camera

Producing documentation with screen grabs can be a real chore and while it is possible to use something like Microsoft Word it is much, much easier to do with Clarify.

The beauty of the app is the way that it lets … Read the rest

Why I can’t get my Head Around Evernote’s Work Chat Feature

In the last major release of Evernote a new feature called Work Chat was introduced. It is described by Evernote as allowing you to “discuss your work in Evernote, in real time, with the people who help you get it done.”. So it is sort of like an inbuilt chat facility and as that it works as described.

The problem is that what is the most natural thing to want to do while chatting over a note? For me it is to update it with the other party and for both to see the updates but when you do that … Read the rest