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So I couldn’t wait any longer to join the touch screen revolution. I was getting tired of my blackberry and made the jump. I quickly unpacked the new HTC Incredible with high hopes. The speed and UI was awesome but I pretty much couldn’t do anything without plugging it in every few hours. It was literally just completely dying.

I googled, read forums and all I got was mixed reviews and feedback.

So I started tinkering with the settings and I’ve found a technique which literally improved my battery life by at least a half day.

With normal usage I can literally make it a day and a half without recharging.

Naturally if you are obsessively using foursquare or other apps that tap into the GPS you are going to want to purchase an extended battery.

To really maximize the battery life there are a few key tweaks you can make which will make a world of difference.

1. Get an App Killer. While most Verizon or other Cell phone stores will tell you to grab the little green guy (Advanced Task Killer) I have found that Task Panel X is a great deal more effective for killing apps. The only application I’ve needed to put in the ignore list is “clock” in fear of not having my phone wake me up in the morning. I’ve set it so when I lock my phone it auto-kills applications.
2. Change your Screen timeout. Goto Settings > Display > Screen Timeout and change the setting to 15 or 30 seconds. The less bright your screen is the less it will suck from your battery. When you don’t need the brightness at 100% don’t leave it there. I use the  “power control” widget which lets me quickly toggle Wifi, Bluetooth, GPS, Sync and brightness depending on my situation. If my phone is sitting in my pocket not hooked up to anything its pointless to leave sync services, wifi or bluetooth running so simply toggle them off.
3. Now comes BY far the biggest tweak which made an instant noticeable difference. Change your Sync Settings. If you are using Microsoft Exchange or even Gmail your phone is consistently looking for new emails. Why does your phone need to look for new emails when its locked and sitting in your pocket? The second you pull your phone out and go to check your emails your phone will in seconds pull in the latest emails. Even someone like me who is processing 200+ emails a day only needs to have the setting running every 15 or 30 minutes. To get here goto Settings > Accounts & Sync. If there are things like Stocks or Twitter for HTC sense that you are not using make sure you disable them too so the green icon is not highlighted.
4. Train your App Killer. Goto your phone and literally open and app, then hit home and open another app. Open up Task Panel X and look at all those applications running! hold down each of them and be sure to “Add to Auto Kill list”. There are some applications that will run as a service such as Qik, Hootsuite or Kik Messenger to name a few of mine. Services you will have to manually terminate but to be quite honest you don’t really need to do this. For those of you that wish to do this goto Settings > Applications > Running Services > from here you can see all the services and click on them to manually kill them. Do not kill the Google Services Framework, Transaction Service or any other applications that mention the Android operating system.

So there you have the short list of things you actually should pay attention to for increasing your battery life.

If you have tested this and found success please share this post with your friends and comment so when I stumble on random stuff like this I’ll keep posting it.

Whether you are an old Apple fanboy or a recent convert instant messaging is something no computer geek is complete without. After all the irc chats, forum flame wars and blog lurking everybody taps into some type of instant messaging program for their one to one conversations. For me it was first Aol (yes i’m getting old I know) and then aim. Recently I’ve settled for iChat or Adium for my mac instant messaging program. File sending is easy, and the bare-bones UI does basically what I need it to.

Despite the basic essentials of video chat, file sending and messaging there are a few little gems that I miss from some instant message clients like Trillian, or Adium.

I Stumbled upon this awesome little gem for ichat today and figured i’d share. Chax is a handy little installer (DMG) that adds the following “missing” features into iChat.

• Growl Notifications – Adium Style
• Built-in, searchable log viewer. Along with Text Export. No more .ichat files
• Change preferences right from within ichat.
• Unified Contact List

Download Chax here

Hope you enjoy it as much as I did.

Came across the greatest time waster today.

Copy the code above, paste it in your address bar and hit enter to see it in action.

How to play?

• Steer with the arrow-keys.
• Shoot with space.
• To activate click the bookmark once on your webpage of choice.
• Can’t see your remaining enemies? Then press and hold B

erikperik you rock for creating this!!

Infographic by PPC Blog

Once you get past the layouts and color palletes, most browsers seem pretty similar. But what sets them apart is under the hood. Take Internet Explorer and Chrome, for example. Currently their main differences include Cross Platform Availability, Webpage Rendering and manufacturer.

Microsoft Internet Explorer has been the primary Web browser for computers running the Microsoft Windows operating system. This browser is integrated into the windows operating system and configured as the default web browser application for a windows computer out of the box. Microsoft Internet Explorer is currently only available for the Windows computer; their support for Apple (mac osx) and other desktop computers has been discontinued.

Google Chrome is Google’s answer to web browsing based on the open source WebKit viewing engine. This popular and acclaimed web browser is available cross-platform for download on Windows, Apple (Mac OSX), and Linux Operating Systems.

As mentioned, the average user will notice mostly aesthetic differences. Internet Explorer closely mirrors the Glossy windows buttons to match the look and feel and user experience offered on a Windows based operating system. Chrome, on the other hand, sports the minimal Google look and feel with fewer buttons and interface elements in plain sight. Chrome “skins” can be downloaded to modify the colors and graphics of the application itself.

Other than aesthetics the other key difference is how the browsers render pages. Google’s Chrome browser uses the WebKit Open source browser engine, which supports popular HTML5 based techniques such as page animations, transitions and support for more in depth multimedia content using something called Canvas. Mac enthusiasts might have heard the term WebKit when listening to presentations about various Apple software and hardware devices. Examples include Mac Osx’s Safari browser and Ipad/ipod devices which also run on the open source standards inspired browsing engine WebKit.

Internet Explorer on the other hand can directly access the windows system since it is closely integrated into the operations system using Direct X. Some argue that this increases the need to run an Antivirus/Anti-malware application.

Many users argue that WebKit based browsers offer a faster processing of pages due to the engine used, but these results differ depending on the testing device hardware and software configurations.

For additional information on Google Chrome, Microsoft Internet Explorer and the other technologies mentioned above see the below links:

Google Chrome:

Download Google Chrome

Google Chrome on Wikipedia

Microsoft Internet Explorer:

Microsoft Internet Explorer

Microsoft Internet Explorer on Wikipedia

Webkit

HTML5:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTML5

http://lifehacker.com/5416100/how-html5-will-change-the-way-you-use-the-web

Cool Infographic from Focus.com on what is HTML5 and why we should all care about it.

I wrote a blog post a while back about the shift in interactive and HTML5 giving way to new experiences. Take a peek and throw me some feedback.

At the F8 Conference yesterday a game changer was introduced into the social media ecosystem. Facebook is positioning itself themselves to potentially become the center of the social web.

They introduced their new Open Graph API and protocol along with its abilities to integrate websites and applications within facebook.

Companies like Pandora, Microsoft, CNN and Yelp have already released these new ways to connect on their websites.

For example, visiting CNN you can see what your friends are reading and liking. This allows an understanding your circles of friends and colleagues viewing behavior.

They have also added a slew of new items to tackle three key features (or so they focus on)

• Registration + Login - Replace your Authentication / Login system with Facebooks. No longer will you need to maintain and track multiple registration and login data.
• Engagement - Adding Activity Feeds, like buttons and other social experiences with the dropping of a simple line of HTML. No more complex development just copy/paste a line of code.
• Growth – Publishing content, and hooking into users viewing activity are just a few things that this will offer. All your interests and likes will now be available providing a user has not chosen to opt out.

I have mixed feelings on this new technology. The geek inside me is grabbing and reading every API document I can get my hands on and thinking up cool new ways to incorporate it into the next awesome mashup but being someone who likes their privacy has me getting a little concerned.

Whats so new about all of it?

Previously applications required an elaborate “allow” process. Developers were allowed to store the information for 24 hours before having to purge it for privacy reasons. This meant we would have to download and export information every 24 hours in order to retain the user data. With the release of these new protocols the restriction is lifted so once a user has opted into your application you can continue to grab and store their information seemingly forever.

With the implementation of the new Open Graph facebook has replaced Facebook Connect with these new social widgets and drop-on capabilities.

Users now have to be weary of what they click  when “Liking” an article that can potentially show up in their friends activity streams or in their customized view as we see above on CNN.

Danger on the interwebz?

I’m sure it’s just a matter of moments before the phishing attacks and malware begins. I mean after all by clicking on a “like” if i am not logged into facebook throws open a new window.

All I have to do is login to facebook and then I can start sharing with my friends and taking advantage of this cool new feature.

But what if this is a malicious website? What if it were something other than CNN or a trusted source? The popup window doesn’t have the chrome so I cannot see that I am actually about to submit a form that goes to crazyhackerinnigeriawillstealyourinfo.zn

Without actually going into the source file of this site I have no clear indication that I am actually passing my information to a secure facebook form.

All a mean all a hacker would have to do is recreate this simple html/css and have the form post the information into their system and start a slew of worm-like activities infecting their facebook with malicious links and javascript snippets as well as anyone who also got the link.

Remember when people were doing that on PayPal Payment pages?

This might not be an issue in some peoples eyes but lets face it theres a lot of people that still click on the blinking red banner ads that say win 1 million dollars which lead to bogus information spam sites.

I should probably be writing some code to steal people’s facebook logins and sell them to some Russian or Chinese syndicate right now but I figured I’d rant about it to hopefully have someone who matters listen and respond to this.

One of the bigger potentials for phishing scams is centered around their announcement to utilize Facebook Credits to become a commerce center. At the F8 conference they presented “App2User” which is going to enable (cough cough FORCE cough cough) to convert their rewards into “Facebook Credits”

Financial Institutions and consumer brands might present “offers” that give users the ability to convert their credits into “facebook credits” so they can redeem and spend more on Facebook.

This doesn’t just stop at the cheesy virtual gifts anymore we are talking airline flights, flowers, and products.

Are you nodding your head yet and seeing how phishing scams can be a problem now?

It’s not just “check out my webcam” links going to your facebook wall; your wallet can now potentially be affected if you’re not a savvy user.

With the advancement of these “credits” and global adoption of facebook being a reality Facebook is getting closer to pulling in the power of a paypal and the mass appeal of an Appstore for purchasing both tangible and digital products.

In short what that means in short is they can potentially become a top player in the commerce sector similar to how paypal did back in the web 1.0 days. The larger their network gets the more connected and seamless online becomes the easier it will get.

Your Online Life all in a bubble?

This new Open Graph is one huge aggregation channel that will just collect my viewing activity along with my likes and interests for publishing and mining data. Sure I may want to show my friends that I am a big Star Wars Fan but I might not want to show my business colleagues some of the random things i’m reading and getting inspired by.

Obviously this is great information to be gathering because then Facebook can start delivering more relevant advertising as a result of all the information they have collected about me.

Now while I would love to get advertisements that are relevant to me there’s a lot of times that i will learn about something new or pursue new purchase behavior as a result of something I’ve never done before.

For example I was randomly served an advertisement the other day about Organic foods. Before seeing that ad I could give a care less about eating organic food but after clicking through and getting some valuable information about it made me head to the local whole foods and I’ve started to shop and really eat a great deal more of those types of products.

If I was only being served ads from my interests and my friends interest I might not ever see that ad.

But then again I suppose it’s all about relevance and further connecting us but where does the disconnection happen?