Cinch for Mac

Cinch, developed by Irradiated Software, is an elegant, mouse-driven solution to window management. Inspired by Microsoft's Windows Explorer, Cinch is based off the idea of "hot-zones". Once you drag a window into one of the zones (either left, right, menubar), an outline of your resized window will appear on the screen. Just drop the window into the hot-zone and the application window will be resized. Cinching to the right or left side of the screen will resize the window to exactly half the screen's resolution. The top hot-zone resizes to will the entire screen. Dragging a window away from its cinched position will restore the window to its original size.

Drag a window to a "hot-zone" to see a preview of the resize.

Cinch automatically resizes your window to the desired length (determined by "hot-zone").

You can download the free version (occasional pop-up), or purchase a license for yourself over at the Irradiated Software store. I will be posting a video review of Cinch on my YouTube channel, which can be found here.

Why Android Will Ultimately Fail

Android has some impressive features. It can run multiple apps at once, supports the 1GHz Nexus One, and overlays demographic data onto a map.

And that is precisely why they'll fail.

If you are a geek, you may want more out of the iPhone or the iPad. You want the ability to customize the UI, run multiple apps at once, and download apps that may or may not be damaging to the core services of your phone. All these things must be done with some knowledge of how technology works; how processors deal with tasks, for example. If you are running multiple apps, you'll need to figure out which app is a CPU hog, and quit it. This is easy if you're a geek. But, if you're an average user, this may be incredibly hard to comprehend.

The 1984 Mac introduced the GUI. The GUI revolutionized computers… It let users run a computer without extensive knowledge of how it actually works… no need to know any command line whatsoever. The iPhone is doing that with cell phones. It's simplifying the cell phone. Yet, making it more powerful. So you don't have to deal with a task manager on a mobile device.

I wanted to keep this brief, but you can view the continuation here.

The Purpose of Unboxing Videos

When I posted my first unboxing video on YouTube (the previous generation Mighty Mouse), I actually received a bit of a zap from my friends. They really couldn't understand why I had posted a video of me taking a mouse (of all things) out of the box it ships in. Since I'm a large part of the online community as a whole, I couldn't grasp the fact that they couldn't grasp the fact that people worldwide post videos of themselves taking products out of the box. But then I began to think about it. Most normal people (yes, I said it, none of us are normal :p) really couldn't care less about these kinds of videos. Well, me being me, I deemed a blog post a viable option for explaining the whole point.

Before you can understand the point of unboxing videos, however, you must understand that geeks have a certain community of their own on the internet, especially Apple geeks. Apple geeks (and geeks in general) LOVE new and shiny gadgets, so they like having the opportunity to show it off to people who don't have one, or just like watching it coming out of the box (like myself). Most unboxing videos cater to this breed of humans (mostly male), however, there is still a spot for those not exactly qualifying as a geek.

A lot of people (especially those a bit older) are a bit nimble about ordering online. They go over their order details dozens and dozens of times to make sure that they will be getting exactly what they want and expect. Unboxing videos find a very particular niche with them; they are finicky and seeing an actual person take the product they were planning to buy out of the box, they know exactly what to expect when they get their aforementioned product. This niche also applies somewhat to geeks.

But, believe it or not, there is one more reason for the existence of unboxing videos. You may think that this one is stretching it a bit, but it does exist. Some people just love technology. Period. And the fact that the internet (mainly YouTube) has a huge inventory of other people talking about technology and showing off technology is extremely appealing, and can even serve as entertainment to hardcore geeks (I love unboxing videos as entertainment). 

The unboxing of a product can really be a special time for a geek, especially when it's something that person has been looking forward to/saving money for for a long time. 

In order to conclude this post, I just want to say one thing: don't hate. If you aren't in the mindset of hardcore geekery, then don't worry about it. Just ignore it then. Hating on geeks is going to get you nowhere but in trouble with the troll police.

You can contact me by emailing me at ndmacgeek@gmail.com

How it Works: Wikipedia

Everyone now knows about Wikipedia and if you don't know, it is an online free encyclopedia developed by a non-profit organization. It has become one of the 50 most popular websites and in this article, I will tell you why it is not only a good resource for looking up information but also how it works. 

Wikipedia is run totally by the community and is known for its free "Edit this Page" tab above a page where anyone is allowed to edit this page by adding new content or editing the current. This is a great feature because it does not have to rely on the developers to find the information but gives volunteers within the community that have this knowledge to add what they know. But with this comes the spamming. Of course there are people out there on the WWW that just love to ruin everyones day by adding false information to pages. Now here is where Wikipedia relies on its community to change it back. Many people have gone in to pages and changed information to make it false just how fast the community can change it and they were overwhelmed by the response. I tested it myself by adding a URL to my website onto a page based on Animals in Space and in less than 5 minutes, it had disappeared!

Another thing that Wikipedia does very well is fix problems within the community. One of these problems are:  

What if a group that disagrees to one of the pages on Wikipedia gets enough people to join together and try to remove this page?

That would be very bad if that happens because what if it is a religious group that dislikes another religion. They can overpower the community and vote the page off the site. Well the development team just answers, we will bend the rules. If they think that removing this page is because of an opinion, then they will not. 

So overall, Wikipedia is a great website that gives the community full rights to change anything on the informative pages. It feels like you run this website but you have a duty to give the rest of the community true information. Thanks for reading!

All information was found on the video Jimmy Wales on the birth of Wikipedia on TED.com.