Twitter's new log in screen shows a strong resemblance to Facebook's.  The layout is virtually the same, a diagram of the world appears in both, the slogans sound similar and are positioned in the same place, the language links are both at the bottom, etc.  Twitter has even changed its blue to look more like Facebook's. Coincidence or a case of imitation being the best form of flattery?

Love the minimalist qualities of the iPod Shuffle 4th Generation.  Just the basics: volume up, volume down, forward, back, play/stop, pause.  Simple battery indicator: green full, yellow OK, red low.  400 songs in a one square inch dial with a clip.  Brilliant.

Picture credits:  marc_buehler

I had always been an advocate for real, paper books until I got an iPad and downloaded the Kindle app.  While skeptical at the beginning, I was slowly won over by the user-friendliness of the interface, and the convenience of accessing all my books from a high-tech, portable device.

I recently, however, came across a realization: I travel a lot overseas for work, where the $500 iPad can be a tempting target for thieves, and the potential for misplacing it or forgetting it is high. I really didn’t want to worry about the iPad all the time, which left me with two choices: one, to download the Kindle app. on my company’s PC-and having to pull out my heavy laptop every time I wanted to read, or buy Amazon’s $139 Kindle.

I decided to fork out the $139 and get the Kindle.  Now I read my books on the iPad when I’m at home, and I take the Kindle with me when I travel.  I also take it around town to enjoy  with the impromptu cup of coffee at Starbucks.

How do they compare?

Well, on one hand you can’t match the amazing resolution on the iPad, the intuitiveness and speed of its touch-screen navigation, and its full color capabilities.  Needless to say, you can also surf the web and read your email. On the other hand, it’s bigger than the Kindle, which makes it harder to carry around and, starting at $499, you stand to take a fairly large financial hit if you lose it.

On the Kindle’s side, you certainly can’t beat the small size and light weight (you can even carry it in your pocket), and the low price means that you don’t need to be as concerned with losing it as you would be with the iPad.  On the negative side, you can’t surf the web, the resolution is not as good (especially on pictures) and the cursor-based navigation is pretty slow compared to touch-screen systems.

In conclusion

If you’re planning on buying the iPad and you don’t mind carrying it around all the time, you can download the Kindle app and be perfectly OK with that.  If you don’t plan to get an iPad and just want a reading device (sort of like an iPod for books) or if, like me, you have an iPad but don’t want to take it with you everywhere, get the Kindle. 

Just added social media icons to my signature file in Gmail.  Gmail doesn't allow HTML or image files embedded in your messages, so this must be accomplished through a Firefox add-on (obviously, you need to be using Firefox instead of Internet Explorer, but you already knew that, right?).  I used an add-on called WiseStamp.  Just go to Firefox's WiseStamp page and follow the instructions.  This is how my signature file looks:

Photo Credits: re-ality

If your Blackberry is acting up and deleting your call logs and Email, it might be that it is running out of memory.  To free up some memory, try these five tips:

1. Use the Bluetooth feature to transfer all your pictures to your personal computer.  Don’t keep pictures in your Blackberry (they take a lot of space).
2. Delete unused applications:  If you review your Applications list I bet that there are at least five or six that you never use.  Delete them by doing the following:
   
   • Go to Options → Advanced Options → Applications
   • Highlight the application you want to delete.
   • Delete
3. Clear the web history and web content cache every few days.  This is how you can do it:
   
   • Click on the browser icon
   • Press the menu button and click on Options
   • Click on Cache Operations
   • Click Delete History
   • Click on “Clear” next to Content Cache
4. Delete Blackberry’s Sample Video:
   
   • Go to Options → Advanced Options → Applications
   • Highlight Blackberry Sample Video.
   • Delete
5. Delete Email every two or three days: Trying to stay up to date with our Email and deleting messages more than two days old is a good way to free up phone memory (and to keep our sanity!)

If you have other tips, please leave them below, in the comments section.

There is no excuse for not backing up your computer files.  For about $100 bucks, you can get an external hard drive that you can easily connect to your computer's USB port (I use a WD 500GB Passport Essential portable drive).  Once connected, just drag and drop your files from your computer's hard drive to the portable drive.  I just moved 10GB worth of files in about an hour.  So easy...

Now I can finally listen to my podcasts on my way to work without earphones.

This is Magalhaes, a new mini laptop developed as a result of the Magellan Initiative, a joint project between Intel and the Portuguese government.  The computers will be distributed to every Portuguese kid between 6 and 9 years old. The Magalhaes is pretty powerful for its size and price (you can read more here: http://blog.centopeia.com/2008/09/23/magalhaes/ ), and it looks cool too.