I am very impressed with how long the Apple MacBook battery holds a charge. But as a gadget geek, I am always trying to tweak things, and extending the battery life of my MacBook, or PC laptop for that matter, is something I do often. Here are a few simple tricks that will really extend the life of your MacBook battery.

A word of warning for the advanced MacBook user, this might seem logical and basic to you, but you’d be surprised to discover the number of people who don’t think about this.

So, the easiest, quickest, and most overlooked way to extend your MacBook battery life is to adjust the brightness of your MacBook display.   This is very easy to accomplish with the F1 and F2 keys on your keyboard. I find the MacBook display to be so bright, that I can really adjust the brightness lower with little to no impact on my viewing comfort.  Obviously if you are in direct sunlight this won’t work, but I don’t like to work on my computer in the sun anyways.  This simple step can increase your MacBook battery life substantially, allowing me to drink several Starbucks grande coffees on one battery charge!

The next quickest, and easiest way to extend your MacBook battery is to bring up your system preferences screen, and click on Energy Saver:

Then, click the Better Battery Life button at the top . From there, you can play around with the computer sleep minutes and the Display Sleep minutes to maximize your battery life.   I find that for my needs, setting the computer sleep to 15 minutes and the display sleep somewhere roughly in the middle of 1 and 15 minutes.   I then click the first three buttons below the slides as shown in the picture below. These settings seem to give me the best battery life performance for my MacBook.

So, there ya have it.  A simple, logical way to extend your MacBook battery life, allowing you to get out of the house/office for a few hours each day.  Hmmm, now that all you newbies can extend your Macbook battery life, I’ll probably have trouble finding a table at my favorite local Starbucks.

©2009 WebChicklet | Just a Geek Girl. All Rights Reserved.

I’m a curious geek, and a gadget geek, and a big fan of USB tools, so the very cool USB Microscope appears to have been made for Webchicklet!  USB Microscopes come in a variety of shapes and sizes, either handheld, or a larger desktop variety.  As the name implies, the USB microscope is plugged into your USB port of your laptop or desktop, making it an easy plug and play installation.

A decent digital USB microscope will take good magnified high resolution (1.3 megapixel) pictures with magnification from 10x to as much as 200x.  You should also choose one that will record videos as well, for extra coolness factor (see spider, in video below).  The USB Microscope generally uses several white LED lights as the light source, such as this model, the HDE  200X USB 1.3MP Digital USB Microscope Video Camera Webcam Kit:

So what cool things can you do with a USB Microscope?  I think the list is endless, but here are a few to get you started.  Be sure to leave a comment below if you have some other suggestions!

• Science and Engineering study tool – This is an obvious application for the USB Microscope
• Dermatology (skin/scalp) exams -  You could screen yourself for skin issues -for fun only, as you should see a doctor for a formal checkup!
• Detailed Repair and Assembly (i.e. electronics, mechanical, etc) – a USB microscope is perfect for the electronics builder geek!
• Hobbies & Collection (coin, stamp, watch, jewelry, etc.) – take close up pictures of your stamps and coins, great for Ebay sellers wanting to show the quality of their valuables for sale
• Counterfeit ID – store owners could use it to check for bad bills!
• Personal Entertainment - This is probably the most used application for the USB Microscope.  Satisfy your curiosity taking magnified pictures of everything in your house.  Your kids will love it, and can use it as a learning tool!  And of course, no house party is complete without a good USB Microscope.  I guarantee you there will be some “not safe for work” pictures taken by your guests.
• Web Design & Publishing – With the USB Microscope you can take some amazingly unique, detailed, close up pictures, suitable for your website backgrounds, and posts.

Here’s a great video of another gadget geek using his Digital USB Microscope:

I think the USB Microscope is one of the coolest image gadgets out there right now!  Satisfy your geeky curiosity, and wow your friends today, with your own personal digital USB microscope!

©2009 WebChicklet | Just a Geek Girl. All Rights Reserved.

I’m a bit of a gadget geek, and have always wanted an Apple Itouch (iPod touch), but I’m also a frugal geek, so have been waiting for a good deal during an iTouch sale.  Well, my patience has paid off, and for all you other patient and frugal gadget geeks, Best Buy is currently offering great deals on all of the Apple iPod Touch models!

The main reason I want the iTouch is for the free wifi capability, as I don’t have, or want, the apple iphone at this time.  But I love the ability to check my emails, and my web stats, while I’m on the go!


Not only are Best Buy’s Apple iPod prices very competitive, they are currently offering a free $30, $40, or $50 gift card if you buy one of the iTouch models!  Here’s the Best Buy iTouch deal:

Buy an 8GB Apple iTouch (iPod Touch) at $218.49, get a $30 Best Buy Gift Card!

Buy a 16GB Apple iTouch (iPod Touch) at $284.99, get a $40 Best Buy Gift Card!

Buy an 8GB Apple iTouch (iPod Touch) at $379.99, get a $50 Best Buy Gift Card!

I actually can’t find an expiration date on this deal, so if you’ve been waiting for a great Apple  iTouch deal, you’d be wise to act now.


Apple iTouch Deal at Best Buy

©2009 WebChicklet | Just a Geek Girl. All Rights Reserved.

As you may, or more likely not, have noticed, Webchicklet.com is now hosted on HostMonster.com. They frequently provide discounts, coupon codes and sales offers that make them a cheap web host alternative. In fact, their current web hosting special is only $5.95/month!  That is certainly fantastic, but not the reason I switched Webchicklet.com to Hostmonster.

Sure, I love to keep my web hosting and domain registration costs down.  What savvy Webchicklet doesn’t?

However, what’s most important is what you get for that low price: hosting options that are standard, not premium( keep shelling out more money) addons (Unlike some BIG “father figure” type hosting companies that will remain nameless), the customer service quality that you receive day in and day out (especially those days when you’ve messed something up and need it fixed asap! not that I would mess anything up), the network uptime, and last but not least, ease of setup.

Hostmonster has been providing web hosting services to businesses and personal sites,  since 1996, so you know they are in it for the long haul.

HostMonster Hosting Services

The HostMonster list of included services is absolutely incredible.  For one low fee, you get:

• UNLIMITED Hosting Space – that’s awesome!
• UNLIMITED Site Bandwidth – Especially good if your running a lot of video traffic.
• Host UNLIMITED Domains – This is a great feature and it’s only $10 to register each additional domain AND Privacy is included in that price.
• Unlimited Pop/Imap Email Accounts
• Full cPanel admin full of useful tools, including wordpress installation with a click of the mouse!
• SSH Access (Secure Shell)
• SSL, FTP, Stats
• CGI, Ruby (RoR), Perl, PHP, MYSQL
• Front Page Extensions
• Free Domain Forever
• Free Site Builder with templates
• Free Domain Name or Domain Transfer
• Instant Setup – Use Site Right Away!
• Free Site Promotion
• Free 1 Click Installer For Over 50 Scripts
• $25 Free Yahoo Ad Credits
• $50 Free Google Adwords Credits

HostMonster Customer Service:

I can tell you from first hand experience, HostMonster.com provides the most amazing customer service, either by phone, email, Help Center Knowledgebase, or my personal favorite; LiveChat. We’ve all had that nightmare live chat customer service experience with some company on the internet.  If your experiences have been anything like mine, it probably wasn’t the most helpful customer service experience. The first time I needed help with something a few months ago, I noticed  Hostmonster Live Chat and I was slightly dubious, but willing to give it a try.  I almost fell off my chair when the rep answered after about 10 seconds!  He proceed to wow me with his full understanding of my problem and his rapid solving of the problem (which, for the first time ever, was my own doing!).  I’ve used it a couple time since and both times the response time and problem solving abilities of the rep was first rate.

But most times I’ve needed help I didn’t even have to talk to to one of their reps, as, in addition to their excellent customer service, HostMonster also has a very useful and easy to use help center knowledgebase with which you can quickly keyword search your problem and find an easy to understand, step by step solution to your problem.  This level of customer service really is the big reason for me hosting alot of my sites at Hostmonster.com, and why I chose to move Webchicklet.com.

But let me just say, there is nothing at all wrong with the level of service that Webchicklet.com received from Hostgator.com, and they will continue to be used by me some of my sites, especially since they are a green hosting service.

HostMonster Network Reliability

HostMonster states on their site that they guarantee 99.9% network uptime.  Of course they do, every hosting company does!  But the difference, at least in my experience, is that HostMonster really does have 99.9% uptime.  In fact, in the 8 months I’ve been using them, I’ve never been made aware of, or noticed, any downtime!  That of course doesn’t mean there haven’t been outages, but the important thing is no long outages or frequent short outages = happy Webchicklet.

HostMonster Rocks

So in a nutshell, I switched Webchicklet.com to HostMonster.com because they rock! Oh, and because they are affordable, dependable, easy to use, and a total pleasure to deal with.  If you are looking for a new, or additional (never hurts to spread your sites around) web hosting company, I strongly recommend that you check them out. If you already have web hosting with another company, Hostmonster makes it easy to transfer, and will even provide full support with the transfer.  With the current HostMonster.com sale, you can pay as little as $5.95 per month, down from their already low $6.95 per month.

©2009 WebChicklet | Just a Geek Girl. All Rights Reserved.

I often have to scramble to try and find just the right font-family for a site I am working on, so I created this little cheat sheet for myself. I decided it might be useful for others as well, so I’m sharing it here. Included are the various font-families that are typically used, along with a representation of what they look like. Keep in mind that not every computer has every font, so any fonts you don’t have will display the default generic font family instead (sans-serif, serif, or monospace). I just cut and paste the code in gray when I want to use one of these in my CSS.

Sans Serif

Sans serif is generally best for most text on screen.

Common Version:

font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;

  »  Arial – The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog. 1234567890

  »  Helvetica – The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog. 1234567890

More Choices:

font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, “Trebuchet MS”, Tahoma, Geneva, “Lucida Sans Unicode”, “Lucida Grande”, “MS Sans Serif”, sans-serif;

  »  Trebuchet MS – The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog. 1234567890

  »  Verdana – The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog. 1234567890

  »  Tahoma – The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog. 1234567890

  »  Geneva – The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog. 1234567890

  »  Lucida Sans Unicode – The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog. 1234567890

  »  Lucida Grande – The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog. 1234567890

  »  MS Sans Serif – The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog. 1234567890

My Favorite:

font-family: “Trebuchet MS”, Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;

Serif

Serif is generally best for text designed to be printed.

Common Version:

font-family: Times, “Times New Roman”, Georgia, serif;

  »  Times – The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog. 1234567890

  »  Times New Roman – The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog. 1234567890

  »  Georgia – The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog. 1234567890

More Choices:

font-family: Times, “Times New Roman”, Georgia, Garamond, “Palatino Linotype”, Palatino, “Book Antiqua”, “New York”, serif;

  »  Garamond – The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog. 1234567890

  »  Palatino Linotype – The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog. 1234567890

  »  Palatino – The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog. 1234567890

  »  Book Antiqua – The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog. 1234567890

  »  New York – The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog. 1234567890

My Favorite:

font-family: Garamond, Georgia, Times, “Times New Roman”, serif;

Monospace

Monospace is generally best when representing code or typewritten text.

Common version:

font-family: Courier, monospace;

  »  Courier – The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog. 1234567890

More Choices:

font-family: “Lucida Console”, Monaco, Courier, “Courier New”, monospace;

  »  Lucida Console – The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog. 1234567890

  »  Monaco – The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog. 1234567890

  »  Courier New – The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog. 1234567890

My Favorite:

font-family: Courier, “Courier New”, monospace;

©2009 WebChicklet | Just a Geek Girl. All Rights Reserved.

I decided to export all the contacts I have in Evolution today and import them into Gmail. I wondered if it would be hard to do (or even possible) and luckily I discovered it was a piece of cake. I’ll call it a 3-step process.

Step 1: Export Evolution Contacts

This step is super-simple. Open terminal and paste the following command:

evolution-addressbook-export --format=csv > evolution.contacts.csv

You now have a .csv file (spreadsheet) with all your contacts in it, located in your home folder.

Step 2: Clean Up Contact List

Open the evolution.contacts.csv file in OpenOffice or whatever spreadsheet program you use. I deleted any rows that I didn’t want to keep, and any columns that weren’t being used. I ended up with just a First Name, Last Name, and Email_1, Email_2 and Email_3 column, but you may choose to keep mailing addresses and phone numbers if you have data in those columns. I also renamed the first name and last name columns from given_name and family_name to First Name and Last Name. Gmail is very flexible about column names so the defaults might work, but I was certain that First Name and Last Name would be recognized by Gmail, so I just went with those. Once you’ve cleaned up the file, save it.

Step 3: Import Into Gmail

In the left sidebar of Gmail, click on Contacts. Once the Contacts page opens, click on Import in the upper right corner. Click the Browse button, choose the file you just saved from your home folder, and click on Import. Gmail will tell you if it deletes any duplicates or merges any together, and will let you know that how many it successfully imported.

That’s it! All done.

©2009 WebChicklet | Just a Geek Girl. All Rights Reserved.

I go on and on and on about the importance of regular, automated, backups. I won’t rehash that right now. (I will in the future though I’m sure). Right now, I want to talk about how the backup and file syncing space is really heating up. More choices is a good, good thing.

I’ve been using Dropbox for a while now and am very happy with it. I know I can access my important files no matter where I am. If my computer crashes and the hard drive bites the dust, no problem. Dropbox has me covered. Don’t get me wrong. I also backup everything to an external hard drive as well. I’m a big fan of having multiple backups “just in case”. I pay $9.99/month for the ability to backup 50 gigs of data to Dropbox. For my peace of mind, it’s worth it to me. Plus Dropbox is available in PC, Mac, and Linux flavors, so that works great for me. My various flavors of computer operating systems is covered.

A very similar service has just come across my radar screen. SugarSync appears to be very similar in concept and functionality to Dropbox. You can backup your files, sync your computers, and access your data from just about any device. You can also share stuff as well, if you’d like. Two main differences from Dropbox jump out at me.

1. SugarSync offers more pricing levels, so if you prefer to spend less and get a little less, you can, or if you prefer to spend more, and get a little more you can do that too. More options is always a good thing.

2. Downloads are available for PC and Mac, but not Linux. That will prevent me from switching to it, but it probably won’t be an issue for many of you.

Of course there are other players in this game as well, including Mozy and Carbonite. In fact, even Canonical is jumping into this with its announcement of Ubuntu One (currently in beta). Any of these services are likely to be great choices. Which you choose is entirely dependent upon what makes the most sense for your situation. I have no doubt that the competition will get even fiercer in the backup/sync space, but that means one thing – more competition is better for us as we will likely get more choices and better pricing in the future. For now, either Dropbox or SugarSync may be just what you need.

Whatever you do, do something. Backup. Ok, sorry, I just couldn’t help myself. I just had to remind you.

©2009 WebChicklet | Just a Geek Girl. All Rights Reserved.

A month ago, I released a free script to help fight against site hackers called MonitorHackdFiles. Today, I’m releasing a new version that has a few requested features added. This is strictly a new feature release, so you don’t have to upgrade if you don’t want to.

New features added:

• Ability to create an option admin area so that you can easily edit the options at a later date.
• Ability to change the name of a file if you wish (the default name has already been changed in this release, but users can opt to change it again, just to obfuscate the script’s intent).
• A version check was added so users could be alerted if I release new versions in the future.

In addition, the readme.txt file was edited to reflect the new features as well as clarify some older points.

You can download the new version here.

To Upgrade:

Follow the normal installation procedure as outlined in the readme file included, overwriting the existing files.

For more information about the script, see the original post.

©2009 WebChicklet | Just a Geek Girl. All Rights Reserved.

Once in a while I like to do a quick roundup of some of the cool sites and apps that I come across, and today’s list is one that centers around our senses – specifically some eye candy and auditory apps.

Bumptop

First up in the list is Bumptop. We got a sneak preview of Bumptop 2 years ago at a Ted conference, but it’s finally been released, and it’s as cool as expected. This 3D interactive desktop manager has to be seen to be appreciated. Here’s a video I found of it.

Babbel

Let’s switch over to the sense of hearing for a moment. If you’ve always wanted to learn a foreign language, the web makes it so easy these days. I’m sure there are lots of places to learn this, but I’ve recently been using babbel.com to learn Spanish. The exercises are fun and intuitive. You can learn on your own or practice with other people around the world. It uses images and real voices, and it keeps track of your progress. There’s lots of reasons babbel.com makes it easier to learn a language, but you almost need to try it to understand. Here’s a little screenshot of my dashboard.

Speed Dial

Switching back to the visual again, there’s Firefox’s Speed Dial addon. This addon mimics Opera’s speed dial functionality. It’s configurable, and you can have separate tabbed speed dials allowing you to visually organize your favorite sites. Here’s a screenshot of one of my tabbed Speed Dials.

CoolIris

And finally, to end this sensory journey on a visual bang, is CoolIris. This is eye candy that allows you to quickly browse photos and media in a very cool way. By quickly (and infinitely) scrolling through a wall of photos or videos, you can easily pick out what you need. Works for media on your computer, or on websites like MySpace, Facebook, Hulu, Youtube, Picasa, Flickr, Google Images, and lots more. Again, only a visual look at it does it justice, so here’s a video I found that shows it better.

Technology is starting to get fun again as the bling catches up to the imagination. Have fun with these cool apps.

©2009 WebChicklet | Just a Geek Girl. All Rights Reserved.

I’ve just started using Tonido, but I’m already massively in love wih it. Can a geeky web chicklet be in love with an application? Of course she can! And I am.

Tonido is all about social networking, sharing of files and photos, workflow, and everything else you probably use the web for – all rolled into one – and the best part? Your data and contacts are stored right where they need to be – on your own computer.

How many times have websites folded, and all of your precious data, friends, and contact information disappeared with it? Maybe it hasn’t happened to you, but it has to lots of people. Tonido aims to solve that problem, by making sure your data stays with you.

Tonido apps work whether you are online or offline. There are some features that require being online to use, yes, but the applications themselves work just fine offline. I’d love to see a way to have EVERYTHING work even if Tonido disappears, but some things would stop working if they no longer existed. Certain sharing and remote connection features would not work if they disappeared. Nevertheless, you’d still have access to all your data and contacts, and that’s important.

Essentially, Tonido creates a trusted peer-to-peer network between you and the people you trust. Your network can securely share data, files, pictures, etc. using a beautiful, well-designed interface. It currently comes with several nice apps, including a blog, a jukebox, photo manager, calendar/todo workspace manager, messaging system, and more. And it is extendible, so more apps will be added over time. It’s really cool, and I can’t possibly do it justice by talking about it. You need to see it for yourself.

Go to Tonido.com and also check out the screenshots and video at www.tonido.com/application_screenshots.html. Here are a couple screenshots, just to whet your geeky appetite, but go check them out at the site.

Yes, this thing works from an iphone. Yes, it works from ANYTHING that is web-enabled. Yes, it is browser-based. Yes, it can be used via your browser even when you aren’t online (although not all features can be). It rocks. Really. Seriously. Am I gushing enough yet? That’s the sign of a geek gal in love with a killer app.

Oh and did I mention it works on basically anything? Windows? Yep. Mac? Yep. Linux? Yep. Seriously cool. Go get it now. (Oh yeah, and it’s free too. My heart goes pitter-patter at the thought).

©2009 WebChicklet | Just a Geek Girl. All Rights Reserved.