by Scott on February 23, 2011
Ok I hadn’t intended this week to be mostly iPhone apps.
But this one is to cool to pass up Hipmunks new iPhone app! 
Now you can take the agony out of searching for flight on your iPhone. It doesn’t get much easier than this. The results are very straightforward and easy to understand.
Currently there is no in app purchasing of flights. After you select a flight you are given a time sensitive link to complete the transaction on a computer. I wonder if Apple wants 30% if you purchase through the app (gross speculation on my part, most likely not the case)
Get it app from the app store. Hipmunk should really have a landing page or a “we have an iPhone app” splash thingy (or acorn to stay within the theme) somewhere on their homepage.
by Scott on February 18, 2011
This is a tip for everyone that uses a computer, whether it’s a Mac, Pc or Linux. Get a Dropbox account. It’s dead simple to use. When you install Dropbox on your computer it creates a folder in your favorites. Anything that you put in that folder is automatically uploaded to the cloud. You can access your files from any computer that has internet access. The biggest benefit is Dropbox will then automatically download those files to any other computer that you have installed it onto.
If you have reliable internet it’s the fastest way to transfer files from one computer to another. Far faster then sneakernetting a thumbdrive back and forth from computer to computer. I have Dropbox installed on my Mac, Desktop pc and my laptop. When I move something into the Dropbox folder by the time I get to the other computer that file is already there.
You can get a free account that has 2GB storage. You can get extra storage by add inviting your friends, friending Dropbox on Facebook. Occasionally they will have a scavenger hunt which gives you more storage. There is an 8GB limit for free accounts.
Use this link to sign up for a new account. Using this link will help me out by giving me a little bit more storage.
by Scott on February 17, 2011
by Scott on February 10, 2011
How often have you heard people complaining about slow internet while traveling? Enter a website, click, wait on the blank white screen to load. Sound familiar? Here’s a tip for all those that travel with a WiFi phone, pad, netbook or laptop to squeeze all the bandwidth you can out of that hotspot you’ve connected to.
Run Google’s DNS benchmark tool, Namebench. Here’s why it will help. When you are surfing the internet the websites you are going to are actually not the words you type in the address. There’s a number that the words get translated into in the background.
This is the analogy that best fits: When you use the phone book to call someone you don’t type the persons name into the phone, you dial a number. When your surfing the internet this is all done for you in the background. Your computer has the “phone book” that looks up the numbers. The “phone book” is the address of a DNS server, the one I had been using was Comcast’s in Chicago.
If you bring your laptop to Bratislava and your from Minneapolis, everytime you enter a new URL your computer is still using the the Minneapolis “phone book” to look everything up. This causes a delay because the request has to travel out of it’s way to use the DNS server in Chicago. (and yes, I do realize this isn’t exactly true but it helps make my point, work with me here…)
Namebench will scan for DNS servers that are fastest and closest for your location. Which are not always the same thing. This even helps at home actually. I switched the computer I writing this from to one that is 44% faster and definitly notice a difference. The images are from the results of the test I just ran on my laptop. If your using a WiFi phone or pad you may need to run this from a computer however the server setting will be the same.
This will NOT help upload and download speeds. You will notice a difference surfing, it will increase you page load speeds (technically the query before the page load). Windows by default is set to automatically get DNS server however it may not be the fastest one. I’m using Comcast right now and when windows gets new DNS numbers it will always get the Comcast server even though they are slower. The test takes about 5 minutes to run and the FAQ at Google states the first time you run it gives you the most accurate results.
Try it out and let me know what you think.
via Unplgged (Awesome site you should bookmark it)
