Fliptop was introduced at the DEMO conference this week in Florida. This application will make you sit up and take notice. You may even gasp loudly, and trip over your fingers in your rush to grab this for yourself. RSS feeds can be a pain to manage – we all know this. Additionally, normal RSS feeds only offer you a direct feed that you have to add to a reader of some sort.

Fliptop has several interesting features that normal RSS feeds do not. The application gives you the ability to filter content by keyword, follow only certain topics or categories that interest you, and allows you to receive email digests of only the things you want to see. The service is available in two different styles. One is designed with website owners in mind. The other, of course, is geared towards the users who visit those sites.

The interface for site owners will give you a button to embed on your site. When clicked, the button will ask the user which topics they want to follow. Below that there is the option to also filter by keywords. The user then chooses how they wish to be alerted to new content: via traditional RSS feed, email, Twitter, Facebook, or text message. If you want to receive email updates, you can also tell the application how often you want to hear from them.

After reading all about Fliptop, I can admit that I will be tripping over my own fingers very soon in my rush. What about you? How fast will you be typing this into your favorite search engine?

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Fliptop Makes RSS Feeds Work for You

The iPad officially became available for pre-order earlier today. A group of particularly prudent Apple fans from the APPL Sanity Board at Investor Village decided to put together a spreadsheet of order numbers, times that orders were placed and contents of those order. After six hours of tracking the data, the group reported that nearly 90,000 orders had been placed for the iPad. This does not count multiple orders (a single consumer can order two at a time), nor ship-to-store orders, for which no payment is required. In reality, the number of iPads ordered today is likely well over 100,000!!

According to Victor Castroll from the Valcent Financial Group and AAPL Sanity, “$54 million in revenue in a quarter of a day is a great opening. Looks like contrary to much speculation about who would actually want one of these, like the iPhone, people are voting with their wallets. Considering these are just pre-orders for a product still three weeks out, iPad is home run.”

Whether or not you think you want an iPad, a whole lot of people out there have already decided! What are your thoughts? Are you planning to get an iPad, or did you pre-order one today?

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Did You Order Your iPad Today?

I am like many of you out there… I cannot work unless there is music playing in the background. My assistant Kat is the same way. If she’s at her computer (which is always!), there is music playing. She swears she cannot concentrate unless she has music pumping through her speakers or headphones. It apparently makes her more productive than if she has silence or a different type of noise in her immediate area. Thinking about it, I guess I’m the same way. I do my best writing when there is music to fit my mood at that moment playing.

That’s the key for me… my mood. I don’t listen to any one particular style of music all the time. I like a pretty wide variety of stuff. Some call me “eclectic” in my tastes, and that’s fine with me. I like what I like… and I don’t expect you to listen to it if you don’t. However, I do encourage you to always broaden your musical horizons by listening to something completely different than your normal playlist every once in awhile. Pandora is great for that!

What type of music are you addicted to? Do you work better when you are rocking out, or do you need complete quiet in order to concentrate?

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What Type of Music Helps You be More Productive?

Startup video site Vevo was created by three of the largest record companies – Universal Music, Sony Music Entertainment, and EMI Music. Warner Music Group is in negotiations to join as well. They chose to start their site based on the huge following that music videos attract on YouTube. YouTube owner Google helped to create the site, believe it or not. In January, the site posted approximately 35 million unique visitors. That’s not too shabby for a site that only launched a few short months ago.

Lady Gaga has emerged over the past year as a music phenom. Whether or not you approve of how she dresses, you have to admit the woman can sing her face off. Her videos account for over a quarter of all views on Vevo! Additionally, if you click an official video of hers on YouTube, you’ll be redirected to Vevo to actually watch the content. That is the kind of partnership I like to see happening.

Vevo may not yet be profitable, but I have no doubt that it won’t take long. They are seeing billions of page views according to the website. Reactions to the site around our community have been very positive from what I’ve seen, and I admit to using it quite often myself! What are your thoughts on Vevo? Have you used the site yet? If you haven’t checked it out yet, I think you’re silly for waiting!

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Lady Gaga Tops Vevo

A report released today says that about 44% of Google users simply skim through news headlines, and never click through to read the full stories. The report goes on to predict the continuing decline of print news in favor of being able to get it online. This doesn’t come as much surprise to me – or anyone else, really.

However, I don’t agree that that many people never bother to click through. Sure, I scan headlines, much like the rest of you. However, if something catches my eye then I cannot stop with just a few sentences in a Google search. I have to click through and read the rest of the article. I have a feeling most of you are the same way. The article states that 2,787 US news consumers were polled. That’s fine… but who did they poll? How do we know that very tiny number of the population truly represents us all? I don’t agree that they possibly could.

What are your thoughts? Do you turn to the Internet for your news? Do you scan and go, or click and read? What other sites do you enjoy reading articles on, to find out what’s happening in the World around you?

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Do You Google the News?

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Warren has done a couple of screencasts for our channels over the past weeks, and has done a very good job with them. In this one, he’s going to show you how to re-petition your hard drive. Keep in mind that this is something anyone can do, with the right instructions. Warren’s are clear and easy to follow. Remember that it’s not too late for you to submit a screencast for possible use on our channels.

If you want to allocate space on your hard drive in a different way, you can use the cool built-in feature found in Vista and Windows 7 both. You’ll need to first go to your Start menu, and right-click on “my Computer”. Now, choose “Manage”. Over on the left, go to “Storage”, and then “Disk Management”.

Disk Management will show you all of the hard drives available on your system at the present time. Choose which drive you want to create a partition on. Select it, right click it, and click on “Shrink Volume”. Once it’s done that, it will scan your drive to see how many MB are available to use.

Choose your partition size, keeping in mind that one GB is equal to 1024 MB, not 1000 as many people assume. After you type your partition size in, just click on the “Shrink” button. Once it is finished, you’ll need to right-click on the new partition, and choose “New Simple Volume”.

The wizard will pop up. Click through the first window. If you want to use all of the newly-allocated space, simply click through that window, as well. On the third frame, it will ask you to assign a drive letter. Choose any letter you wish that isn’t already being used on your machine. The next frame allows you to decide if you want to format the new volume, and how you wish to format it. The last frame will be a summary of what settings you just chose.

Once the wizard closes out, go back into your Computer icon. You’ll see your new partitioned drive. You can open it up, and it is ready to use. Drag whatever data you wish into it and begin using it!

Thanks again Warren for another excellent screencast!

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How to Re-Partition a Hard Drive

When it comes to partitioning your computer, there are really two schools of thought. Some people see no need to partition. The opposite camp views partitioning as a valuable tool for organizing, for security and for overall efficiency. Many of our readers are on the side of partitioning and the following argument will support that position.

One of the best arguments on the side of partitioning was given by Mitch Tulloch, in an article for Microsoft. The three major points that Mitch bases his argument on are:

• Partitioning organizes work.
• Partitioning safeguards the data.
• Partitioning increases the computer’s performance.

One of the points is that Mitch makes is: “At the end of each month I copy last month’s Archive subfolders to CD, label it by date, and put it somewhere safe. That way I have last month’s backup ready if both my hard disks fail from a lightning bolt hitting my office, or my computer is infected with a virus, or a thief steals my computer.” Needless to say, the security programs should be run to make certain that the back-up is not infected.

Acronis Disk Director Suite is one of the most popular and well used partitioning programs. It has won industry recommendations and users’ praise.

The Acronis Disk Director Suite is easy to use and effective. It supports Windows (NT 4, 98, ME, 2000, XP, Vista). And, until December 9, 2009, the Acronis people are offering our readers an amazing thirty per cent (30%) discount.

This program is a CNET Editors’ Choice Award winner: “A suite of utilities that will keep your hard disk healthy. An excellent set of tools that will allow you to keep your hard disk healthy and organised.” The Acronis Disk Director Suite has had many third party reviews and it has been top rated. – Thanks to the Acronis people for the generous offering for our readers.

To Partition or Not to Partition

It is surprising how strongly some people feel about the issue of partitioning or not. Voices are raised – faces become a bit redder – language becomes a bit more colorful. If you are from the school of thought that partitioning is absolutely not necessary, please leave a comment at the bottom of the page. Your point of view is valuable and should be considered.

This presentation, however, will favor partitioning. There will be some of us who will remember the days when, for example, a 3GB hard drive on your laptop was considered to be “state of the art”, and the cost of that machine was several thousand dollars. Now, that seems archaic, and the hard drives increasingly grow in size – and some are partitioned.

One of the best arguments on the side of partitioning was given by Mitch Tulloch, in an article for Microsoft. The three major points that Mitch basis his argument are:

• partitioning organizes work
• partitioning safeguards the data
• partitioning increases the computer’s performance

One of the points is that Mitch makes is: At the end of each month, I copy last month’s Archive subfolders to CD, label it by date, and put it somewhere safe. That way I have last month’s backup ready if both my hard disks fail from a lightning bolt hitting my office, or my computer is infected with a virus, or a thief steals my computer. Needless to say, the security programs should be run to make certain that the back-up is not infected.

One of the most popular and well-used partitioning programs is Acronis Disk Director Suite. It has won industry recommendations and users’ praise.

The Acronis Disk Management and Partitioning program is easy to use and effective. It supports Windows (NT 4, 98, ME, 2000, XP, Vista). And, until July 22, 2009, the Acronis people are offering our readers an amazing thirty per cent (30%) discount.

This program is a CNET Editors’ Choice Award winner: A suite of utilities that will keep your hard disk healthy. An excellent set of tools that will allow you to keep your hard disk healthy and organized. The Acronis Disk Management program has had many third party reviews and it has been top rated.

Thanks to the Acronis people for the generous offering for our readers.

Should You Create a Partition?

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I haven’t installed Boot Camp since I used the Beta version on the Mac Mini. Ponzi needs to use Windows on her MacBook Pro, so she can run various applications. Using Boot Camp allows you to either boot your Mac like an actual Windows machine, or boot to OS X.

Leopard is the world’s most advanced operating system. So advanced, it even lets you run Windows if there’s a PC application you need to use. Just get a copy of Windows and start up Boot Camp, now included with Leopard. Setup is simple and straightforward — just as you’d expect with a Mac. Use Spotlight to search the word boot. Ah, there it is. The first thing it will do is ask if you want to print the instructions. I don’t want to, so I’m just going to click through. Next, it asks how much space you want to partition for use of Boot Camp. Ponzi will be doing a lot in Windows, so I’m going to allocate 25GB of space. Click the button to partition, and wait a couple of minutes for it to do so.

Once it has finished partitioning, you’ll need to grab your Windows install disc. Simply put that in and let it run through setup. After that is done… you’re going to need to pop in the OS X disc and update drivers and things for Windows to run. When you install Windows using Boot Camp, you won’t need to search the Internet for drivers or burn a disc. After you run Boot Camp, simply insert the Leopard DVD to install the necessary drivers. Everything you need to make your Mac work with Windows is right there. When you use a Windows application, you’ll have full access to unique Mac features (iSight, Apple Remote, trackpad, specific keyboard keys, keyboard backlighting) and connectivity (wired and wireless).

See how simple it is to install Boot Camp on OS X and run Windows? I’ve even heard from many sources that Windows actually runs better on the Mac than it does on a regular PC. Of course, a Mac is a PC… and a Mac… and a PC… well, you get the point.

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How to Install Boot Camp on OS X

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For any of you going through the Boot Camp install on your Mac for the first time, I wanted to show you something that is VERY very important in this process. Failure to do this step properly can result in OS X being completely messed up.

When you get to the screen that allows you to select the partition to install, you will see all of your partitions listed (including unpartitioned space). Make SURE you select the partition that has the Boot Camp label, and is formatted using Fat32. If you choose any of the others listed there, you will honestly completely mess up OS X. Why Fat32 you ask? According to Bwana.tv:

Fat32 gives you read/write access to the partition which is, in my opinion, the main benefit. NTFS is better overall since you don’t have partition and file size limitations and you also get the security features of the file system. The main drawback is that NTFS is read-only from Mac OS X so you can’t write files to your Windows partition.

Also, be sure to choose to “Leave Current File System Intact”.

As I said, this video is dedicated solely to this part of the Boot Camp setup process. I cannot stress enough how critical it is to follow these steps.

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Boot Camp Hard Drive Warning

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Many of you have asked me for a recommendation for a partition tool. In the past, I’ve recommended Partition Magic, which of course is not free. Wirelesspacket gave me a link to a free partitioning program that appears to be quite good!

PartedMagic is an open source project. It is a Linux LiveCD/USB/PXE with its elemental purpose being to partition hard drives.

What is a partition, you ask? Well, to put it in simple terms… take your Disk on your computer. Usually, your C drive of course. You can use this tool to create “partitions” on it, that is, separate sections. You can have one that boots a Linux distro, one that boots Windows, and even one for your music files. You see where I’m going with this? A partition tool will help you divide that hard disk, and manage the separate sections… or partitions.

There are two things that make PartedMagic stand out above other alternatives. One is the fact that it comes with complete documentation. The other thing is the sheer number of file systems it supports. Parted Magic supports the following: ext2, ext3, ext4, fat16, fat32, hfs, hfs+, jfs, linux-swap, ntfs, reiserfs, reiser4, and xfs.

I’m always interested in hearing your tips, tricks, ideas and programs you can’t live without. I encourage you to send me your thoughts via a comment to this or any other video, or by sending me and email to chris@prillo.com.

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Free Disk Partition Tool