Zubair has years of experience with SharePoint and is dropping several million dollar tips on us everyday.  I love it!

To make things easier on myself, I’ve implemented a mini speedtest tool right on my own website, thanks to the guys at www.speedtest.net

All the code is free to use (at your own risk), just download it and follow the instructions.

Permanent URL: http://exposedelements.com/demos/speedtest/

Here is a demo

Our requirements were:

we wanted to be able to see and hear the baby anytime using our smart phones.

Trendnet Internet Camera (Model TV-IP501P)

This little camera is connected to our home network via ethernet cable.  The camera has decent specs, including 640 x 480 pixel resolution and really good audio, which is essential for a baby monitor.  Check it out at http://www.trendnet.com/products/proddetail.asp?prod=165_TV-IP501P&cat=147

We hooked it up straight into our gigabit router with 802.11n signal.  Since the camera is connected to the router, we are able to connect to it via wireless from anywhere in the house.  The software that comes with the camera is OK.  here’s why. It only runs on Windows and you have to have a computer running all the time, this is not ideal for us, since we wanted to monitor our baby during the night from our bedroom.

Tiny Cam Monitor for Android

AnaLuisa found Tiny Cam on the Android market.  This mobile app allows you to watch live video from multiple sources.  We quickly tested our camera and gladly paid the $4.99 once we verified everything worked .  We were able to see and hear everything in the baby’s room. Thanks Tiny Cam! http://tinycammonitor.com/

Sample daytime image

Sample night-time image

Data Recovery Demo and File Recovery trial software download.

I think you understand how useful voice commands can be, specially while driving hands free. You can find out more about this little gadget at http://www.myblueant.com/q1/

I recently went to India to work with the local office on some internal business processes.  Before leaving the states, I had arranged to bring a nifty little device called MiFi from the guys at Xcom Global.

This device acts as a portable wireless hotpot anywhere there is a cell tower signal.  Lucky for me that India is pretty well covered with cell towers, with Vodafone being the most common provider.

Once ordered, the package arrived at my house via Fedex. There was a leather pouch with everything I needed inside, manuals, step-by-step guide and even international plugs for Europe, Asia and of course India.

I’m so glad I brought the MiFi with me.  I ended up using the MiFi receiver everyday at the office because my laptop was not configured to work on the local network.  The speed was not the best (Vodafone India download speeds were about 236Kbps), but it was adequate for my needs.

MiFi supports up to 5 devices, so my colleague and I were able to connect our laptops and sync our smart phones too.

The MiFi device is available for use in 26 countries at a low rate of $17.95 per day with unlimited data usage.  I highly recommend this to anyone traveling overseas.

Bonus: Once the MiFi is fully charged, you don’t even have to plug it to a wall socket.

A huge thanks to Mike Schilling from Xcom Global for hooking me up with this device.  I’m telling everyone about it!

Check out the Xcom Global Facebook page and visit their website http://xcomglobal.com

Adds an option to the context menu that lets you drop a mini marker showing the latlng of the position that the cursor was pointing at when the context menu was evoked

Thanks Marcelo C for creating such an awesome tool.  I’ll be using this in my GIS projects.

I’ve been doing online meetings for a few years now, mainly using Microsoft Live Meeting and Webex from Cisco. While these 2 products are excellent tools for conducting online meetings, they have a cost associated to them which can be difficult to handle if you are a freelancer trying to work with a shoestring budget.

Today, I’d like add a free alternative to your toolbox. Yugma web conferencing allows anyone, anywhere to instantly share their desktop and ideas online with others. It works on Windows, Mac and Linux and it’s free if your meetings have less than 20 users.

Of course they also have a professional version that you pay for, but I’ve been really happy with the free version so far.  I highly recommended it if you need to share your desktop with someone else far away.

Most people have heard of Google Chrome by now, a new web browser that is supposed to be faster, simple, and fully standards compliant. What most people don’t know is that Google Chrome is built from Chromium, an open source web browser with the same bells and whistles, but without all the Google branding.

After a full week of using Chromium, I like it so much that it has become the default web browser on my little netbook. Don’t get me wrong, I still prefer to use Mozilla Firefox with a few must-have plugins on my desktop for heavy-duty web development work; but this gives me another option.

What about you?  what is your favorite web browser?

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We can all read the data in the 1st example, but the pie chart quickly puts the data into perspective for most of us.

Did you mouse-over the pie chart? This interactivity is made possible with gRaphaël, an open source javascript library with a goal to help you create stunning charts. We are basically using pure code to render scalable vector graphics (SVG) on the fly.

If you want to visualize some boring data for your next project, head over to gRaphael for more examples and to download the source code. Remember that a picture is worth a thousand words.