Minggu, 14 November 2010
Your Smartphone Is a Better PC than Your PC Ever Was or Will Be
Posted by ordinareez | Minggu, 14 November 2010 | Category:
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Despite having spent the 2000s turning the generic term "PC" into a pejorative stand-in for "Windows", Apple may be selling the best PC on the market. It just happens to be the one that fits in your pocket.
Our goal at Lifehacker, as stated in the page title, is to cull together "tips and downloads for getting things done". (It was previously a much cooler but presumably less Google-friendly, "Geek to live; don't live to geek.") So why are we talking about smartphone categorization semantics?
Namely because a significant portion of what we've always covered involves using technology to make your work, your play, and your life better, richer, and more productive. For years, that meant focusing on desktop PC operating systems like Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux. Increasingly, it involves mobile (phone) operating systems like iOS and Android (and sometimes others). The more we've covered them, the more we've realized that your desktop PC and your smartphone really aren't all that different. Except one is a whole lot better at performing personal tasks.
Smartphones Are PCs...
When you strip away the advertising and consider the term "personal computer", you're left with a pretty broad term that easily applies to today's currently huge smartphone market (including iPhones, Android phones, webOS devices, BlackBerrys, Windows Phones 7, and so on.) Wikipedia's article on the personal computer defines the PC as "any general-purpose computer whose size, capabilities, and original sales price make it useful for individuals, and which is intended to be operated directly by an end user with no intervening computer operator." (Ignore the woefully outdated section on Pocket PCs.) Point is, smartphones easily meet the generic requirement for being classified as PCs.
...only they're more personal...
There's not much room for interpretation on what "computer" means. The tautologous answer is "anything that computes", though we can stick with Wikipedia's more specific definition of a computer as "a programmable machine that receives input, stores and manipulates data, and provides output in a useful format".
On the other hand, if we focus on the whole "personal" aspect of the PC, there's certainly more room for interpretation. And from a computing perspective, what's more personal than a gadget that:
- ...comes with you wherever you go
- ...knows where you are
- ...is always connected to the internet
- ...handles every form of electronic communication short of Morse code (oh wait)
- ...recognizes your voice and reacts accordingly
- ...doesn't just spellcheck, but corrects your typos
And so on.
Your smartphone's like HAL; your desktop's Deep Blue. (Don't look too far into that analogy—I'm sure it'll break down—but you get the point.)
...and do nearly everything better...
While desktop or laptop PCs are capable of performing most of the tasks mentioned in the list above in one way or another, most often than not they're not default features, and more importantly, today's smartphones do them better.
It's always with you: You've heard the saying, "The best camera is the one you have with you"? The same is true for PCs, and in this case, it's your smartphone. (Ignore for a moment the fact that your smartphone is often the camera you've got with you, too.) Most of us don't have the physical endurance to lug a laptop around everywhere we go, and even if we did, pulling it out every time you want to check your email is a pain most of us aren't willing to endure.
It knows where you are: Even better, when you pull out your smartphone to start using it, it quickly identifies where you are and uses that information to inform nearly everything it does for you. (I've also used both iPhone and Android as dash-mounted GPS devices and have never been disappointed.)
It's a great communicator: One of the most personal things we do is communicate, and your smartphone, surprise, is a great communicator. Voice, text, pictures, video—it spans media and medium in a way your desktop never has.
It listens to you: Most smartphone OSes come with at least some form of voice recognition, and it'll only get better. Android phones are currently at the top of this heap, allowing you to use your voice to fill in any text input on your device, search the internet, navigate to anywhere, play music, etc. I've tried really hard in the past to use voice recognition on my desktop and have always been a little disappointed.
Reader Mitchell Swirski articulates the "personal" aspects of his smartphone: "It can help me find deals when shopping, remember parking, find restaurants, calculate the tip at said restaurants, read reviews for movies before I rent them, give me directions to different places, and give me direct access to my email and means of communication at all times. If I am waiting for someone to email me something important, I am no longer constrained to the computer."
In fact, if we're considering the "personal" part of "personal computer" to apply more to those things above than to—I don't know—filling out spreadsheets, smartphones perform most PC tasks better than your desktop PC. And compared to the relatively stagnant desktop market, the smartphone market is overflowing with great ideas—both in theory and execution. (Small tweaks to desktop operating systems aside, when's the last time you remember your desktop take a significant leap toward doing something truly innovative or life-changing?)
...except for a few things
It would be crazy not to admit that desktop computers do some things better, and there are some things you still can't do on smartphones.
Namely, right now desktop PCs are better for work. They're better for typing. They're better for manipulating large data sets and for heavy computation (like video editing, data crunching, image editing). They're better at multitasking. They're better at creation.
But that's all changing. You can, for example, connect a Bluetooth keyboard to a lot of different smartphones, so when it comes to simple word processing, these small devices can work really well. (For what it's worth, though, some smartphone's software keyboards are really good. I think I can type on an iPhone keyboard nearly as quickly as on my desktop.)
Yes, you can also criticize smartphones (in the same way the iPad is criticized) for being consumption devices rather than creative devices. Leaving aside the fact that I now semi-regularly draw on my iPad (versus never anywhere else), it's not a criticism without warrant. And creation is a big part of what makes PCs great. But I wouldn't count out your smartphone's creative capacity just yet.
The thing is, smartphones get better at all of this with every OS release and every new hardware iteration. Almost everything that desktop systems do better will, in time, improve on your smartphone. You'll be able to handle serious computational tasks, if only via the cloud. (This already happens, but will happen to a greater degree.) You'll be able to plug it into a monitor or project onto a wall and get the screen real estate and (potentially) the multi-window environment you need.
I'm not saying that the desktop PC is dead (proclamations that institutions are dead are far too common in the technology sphere). But from a personal computer standpoint, your smartphone is doing things your desktop only wishes it could do. (Or, you know, things you wish your desktop would do.)
We recently went through a few ways to break into a Windows PC without the password, and it turns out it's just as easy to break into a Mac too. Here's how to do it and keep yourself protected.
Just like on Windows, there are quite a few ways to break into a Mac, but many of them are variations on the same thing, so we're going to highlight the two easiest ways—one with a Mac OS X installer CD and one without—and show you how to keep yourself protected. Note that while these two methods will get you into the OS without knowing the password, you can always just use our previously mentioned "lazy method" with a Mac too—just boot up the computer with a Linux Live CD and start grabbing files.
How to Reset the Mac OS X Password
Both of the methods outlined below are ways to reset the Mac OS X password. While there are cracking utilities like John the Ripper or THC-Hydra, they're either complicated to use or expensive to buy, so we won't go into them here like we did with Windows (which has the very easy-to-use Ophcrack). Both of these methods assume the target computer is running Snow Leopard.
Method One: Use the Mac OS X Installer CD
If you have the Mac OS X installer CD handy, it's super easy to change the administrator account's password. Just insert the CD into the target Mac and hold the "c" key as you boot up the computer. It will boot into the Mac OS X installer. Once it does, head up to Utilities in the menu bar and choose Password Reset. You'll get a window prompting you to select the drive on which OS X is installed; so choose the drive you want to get into and select the user who's password you want from the drop-down menu.
Enter a new password for that user and hit the save button. That's it! When you reboot the computer, you can use your new password to log into the computer. Note that unfortunately, you still won't be able to unlock the Keychain, so if what you're trying to access has another layer of password protection, you won't be able to access it.
Method Two: Boot into Single-User Mode
If you don't have an installer CD handy, you just need to do a bit of fancy command-line footwork to achieve the same end as the CD method. Boot up the computer, holding Command+S as you hear the startup chime. The Mac will boot into single user mode, giving you a command prompt after loading everything up. Type the following commands, hitting Enter after each one and waiting for the prompt to come up again before running the next one:
/sbin/fsck -fy
/sbin/mount -uw /
launchctl load /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.DirectoryServices.plist
dscl . -passwd /Users/whitsongordon lifehacker
Replace
whitsongordon with the user who's account you want to access and lifehacker with the new password you want to assign to that user.If you don't know the users username, it should be pretty easy to run
ls /Users at any time during single user mode to list all the home folders on the Mac, which usually correspond to the usernames available on the Mac. Note that, once again, this doesn't give you access to the OS X Keychain, so anything protected with another layer of password s will be off-limits.
Bluemind Is an Ultra-Lightweight Mind Mapping Application
Posted by ordinareez | | Category:
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Windows: If you're looking for a lightweight mind mapping tool to tuck on your flash drive, Bluemind is a speedy option with easy keyboard and GUI navigation, plenty of customization options, and support for multi-format exporting.Click on the image above for a closer look.
Bluemind doesn't add anything to the mind mapping universe that isn't already there but it is very speedy. You don't need to install it, it can run as a portable app, and keyboard-based topic and sub-topic creation is a snap using the TAB and arrow keys to quickly create and navigate new topics. You can customize the appearance of Bluemind by changing the color of mind map nodes, their padding, their shapes, the link color and style, and other details. You can also navigate the mind map like an outline using the Objects pane beside the main window. When it comes time to save you can save the file in the Bluemind mind map format or export it as an image—in common formats like PNG, JPEG, and more—or in outline format as a TXT file.
On a personal note, I try out every single portable mind mapping application I come across. I use mind mapping applications in my college classroom and so many of them are needlessly complicated and lack natural-feeling keyboard shortcuts. Bluemind is my new mind mapping tool for use in group brain storming sessions where a mix of computer savvy and computer semi-literates will need to use it quickly and efficiently.
Bluemind is a free, portable, and Windows only tool. The Bluemind site is written in Chinese, click on the translation link below to see it translated into English. For more mind mapping tools check out the Hive Five on Best Mind Mapping Applications.
Firefox 4 Beta 7 Is Nearly Complete and Much Speedier
Posted by ordinareez | | Category:
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Firefox 4 Beta 7 is out, and it's an impressive preview of the final release. Mozilla has let loose the JaegerMonkey engine, enabled hardware graphics acceleration on Windows and Mac, and integrated Sync and the awesome Panorama/"Tab Candy".
Mozilla says their JaegerMonkey compiler, combined with their other improvements, leaves Firefox 4 with a seriously impressive engine for rendering web pages and interpreting webapps and games. Their chart of three benchmark tests, including their own, shows what looks like some serious improvements, at least over their previous releases (and we can't wait to put them to the test):
In a demonstration video, Team Firefox makes the case more clear for how JavaScript performance can speed along tomorrow's webapps:
In addition to the raw code and horsepower additions, Mozilla also notes the inclusion of hardware-based graphics acceleration in this beta, along with more obvious integration of previous experiments like Sync, Pannorama, and App Tabs.
Firefox 4 Beta 7 is a free download for Windows, Mac, and Linux systems. Download it, give it a spin, and tell us what you think of the new browser and its liquored-up simian core.
Speed Up Firefox by Moving Your Cache to RAM, No RAM Disk Required
Posted by ordinareez | | Category:
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We've talked about moving your cache files to a RAM disk to speed things up, but it turns out Firefox has this feature built in. Here's how to turn it on.
Since your computer can access data in RAM faster than on a hard drive, moving cached data to RAM can improve your page load times. In Firefox, all you need to do to move your caches to RAM is open up
about:config and make a few tweaks.Once you get into
about:config, type browser.cache into the filter bar at the top. Find browser.cache.disk.enable and set it to false by double clicking on it. You'll then want to set browser.cache.memory.enable to true (mine seemed to already be set as such), and create a new preference by right clicking anywhere, hitting New, and choosing Integer. Call the preference browser.cache.memory.capacity and hit OK. In the next window, type in the number of kilobytes you want to assign to the cache (for example, typing 100000 would create a cache of 100,000 kilobytes or 100 megabytes). A value of -1 will tell Firefox to dynamically determine the cache size depending on how much RAM you have.
#filesharing Create an Offline, Peer-to-Peer Filesharing Network with USB Dead Drops
Posted by ordinareez | | Category:
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While online file sharing protocols like BitTorrent have their uses, but if you want to discover and share cool files with the community, a new project called Dead Drops—in which you leave files on flash drives scattered about—may offer inspiration.
The idea behind Dead Drops is that people can share their favorite files and data through USB flash drives embedded into walls and buildings, and can discover other people's files in the same way. Each dead drop is installed empty except for a readme file explaining the project. It's a neat idea, and while it isn't without flaws, could serve as inspiration for similar smaller projects.
Obviously, my first issue is with the publicity of these drives—anyone can come along and install malicious software onto one and infect others. Also, embedding it into a building only works if you have permission to do so—which I can't imagine is that widespread. All that said, the idea of an offline peer-to-peer network is interesting, and could certainly give birth to smaller, similar ventures—perhaps in your closer, more trusted group of friends, a college dorm, or other small community. Hit the link to read more about it, and then come back and share your thoughts. Are there any instances in which this would be a project you'd want to start? Or would you just as soon stick with BitTorrent, Google Docs, and other online file sharing methods? Let us know in the comments.
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