Features | Digitizd

Want to Win a Computer and Two Monitors? Here's How

Posted on June 22, 2010 by David Pierce David Pierce | 200 Comments

Post by David Pierce. Find me on Twitter.

Update #2: We have a winner! It’s Andrew Shipe, @ShipeSmash on Twitter. Andrew, hit me up – david at digitizd dot com – with your address. All others, sorry you didn’t win! If you really want the a63 (and you should), enter at any of these sites:

Gear Live June 27 – July 1
Bright Side of News June 28 – July 2
ActiveWin June 29 – July 3
Daddy Forever July 1 – July 5
Geek News Central July 2 – July 6
ClintonFitch.com July 3 – July 7
Absolutely Windows July 5 – July 9
PlanetAMD64 July 6 – July 10
Women Home Business July 7 – July 11
MediaBlab.com July 8 – July 12
TwentiesLife July 9 – July 13

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Lenovo ThinkCentre a63 Desktop Review (Plus: Want to Win it?)

Posted on June 21, 2010 by David Pierce David Pierce | 2 Comments

Post by David Pierce. Find me on Twitter.

(Before we get going, just a heads up: sometime this week, you’re going to have a chance to win this computer, and all the awesomeness that comes with it. Read the review, and stick around this week to find out how!)

A couple of months ago, Lenovo (working with a great company called Ivy Worldwide) sent me a computer to try, evaluate, and tell you about. The ThinkCentre a63 is designed with small-business owners in mind, and since I in fact own a business (this thing called Digitizd – ever heard of it?) I’m a good person to take a look at it. They sent me the desktop tower and two monitors, and told me to have at it.

For the most part, I’m extremely impressed with this machine. There are a few things I’m not a fan of (I’ll get to those in a second), but for the most part it’s a smart, simple, inexpensive machine that would work perfectly in most settings, particularly small business.Why do I say that, you ask? Good question: let’s dig in.

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Take Simple, Shareable, Accessible Notes With Notepad.cc

Posted on June 18, 2010 by David Pierce David Pierce | 5 Comments

Post by David Pierce. Find me on Twitter.

Now that you’ve got a bunch of different devices for a bunch of different purposes, having access to certain information becomes a slightly more complicated procedure. If you found directions on Google Maps, you email yourself the link and the directions so that you can get them from the road.

There are plenty of powerful, feature-rich ways to get your notes and information from wherever you are, like Evernote and Simplenote, and there’s even an app for that (it’s called Pastebot, and is pretty darn cool).

But if all you need is a basic, one-step way to share information with yourself and others, there’s a better solution: it’s called notepad.cc, and it’s “a piece of paper in the cloud.”

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8 Things You Should Store In Evernote

Posted on June 15, 2010 by David Pierce David Pierce | 47 Comments

Post by David Pierce. Find me on Twitter.

Over the last couple of weeks, I’ve been trying to simplify my digital life. I use way too many applications to get things done, and want to bring my number down to as few as possible.

It’s actually been a much easier task than I had figured it was going to be, and it’s largely thanks to Evernote. By thinking a little bit outside the box about what I could store in Evernote and how it could work for me, I’ve gotten rid of my need for a lot of applications, instead keeping everything in Evernote. It’s helped me remember more, find what I need when I need it, and be more on top of everything at once.

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5 Apps Bringing The Future Of Music

Posted on June 14, 2010 by David Pierce David Pierce | 8 Comments

Post by David Pierce. Find me on Twitter.

What’s music’s past? CD’s, casingles, 8-tracks, the totally awesome picture of me in kindergarten with my Walkman – and now, slowly but surely moving into the past of music, is piece-meal downloading of songs.

Don’t get me wrong, the iTunes model of music isn’t going to go away anytime soon – the record industry’s a little slow-moving, plus it’s a model that works. Ish. But the next thing in music is already making itself known in a number of different places – it’s subscription music. You pay one fee, per year or month, and the whole world of music is open to you. You can listen to whatever you want, and if you stop paying, you probably lose your music.

I, for one, am thrilled about subscription music for a number of reasons, but particularly because it brings me access to tons of music I wouldn’t otherwise listen to. At 99 cents a song, I’m not likely to go out on a limb to buy music I don’t know, and 30-second previews are rarely enough to figure out what I’m really going to like. But if I’m paying $15/month whether I listen to one song or a million, why not listen to anything and everything? Music discovery is way down right now, and subscription listening can bring it back.

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How to Handle Long-Form Reading Online

Posted on June 9, 2010 by David Pierce David Pierce | 3 Comments

Post by David Pierce. Find me on Twitter.

We all get distracted by computers, even though there’s nothing inherently distracting about the technology. Whether you’re reading, writing, or doing anything else, there’s just so much going on that it’s hard to focus on a single thing.

It’s not the reading of long things that’s hard, it’s how friggin’ distracting everything else is. You’re reading, and DING! You’ve got an email. Or your taskbar starts flashing – something’s happening! Especially when you’re reading something long, which deserves an immersed and devoted period of time, it’s easy to get thrown off. That’s why newspapers and magazines are still a great medium – there’s nowhere else to go. You’re just sitting on your couch, reading. You can flip pages, sure, but the magazine leaves you nowhere else to go.

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How Is The Internet Changing Us?

Posted on June 7, 2010 by David Pierce David Pierce | 3 Comments

Post by David Pierce. Find me on Twitter.

For years now, there’s been constant discussion of how the Web is changing how we live. Communication is faster and simpler, it’s easier than ever to find information, we’re overloaded with information, and so on and so forth.

But what’s only beginning to be studied and discussed is how the Internet and digital technology are changing us. I mean us not in the sense of democracy, or we the people, or how we do our jobs – I mean our actual physical and chemical makeups, the way our brains work, the way we live and function every second of every day.

In the last few months, there’s been an enormous amount written on this subject, all by people much smarter than I. So, instead of weighing in on the subject, which would be me parroting the smartest things I’ve read in the last three months, I want to share with you a must-read list. It’s got information from (hopefully) all sides of the debate, and I’ll throw in a choice quote or two from each one.

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How to Make Your Emails More Than Just Letters

Posted on May 31, 2010 by David Pierce David Pierce | 5 Comments

Post by David Pierce. Find me on Twitter.

People like to rag on email, and with good reason: for many, it’s a giant time-sink without a lot of productive use. But the beauty of email, and the reason I don’t think it’s going anywhere, is that everyone uses it. I can’t think of any medium other than the phone that is so universally used, accepted, and understood. Heck, my Grandma even emails me – it’s got really large text that I imagine looks like it would if she’s yelling at me from the sky, but at least she’s emailing me.

The other thing I love about email is that it’s so constantly available. You can send text messages to an email address, any smartphone can send email, any Internet Café will let you into Gmail, and so on and so forth.

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24 Killer Apps for the iPad

Posted on May 13, 2010 by David Pierce David Pierce | 3 Comments

Post by David Pierce. Find me on Twitter.

The “Killer App” is a neat concept. It’s not just apps that are killer, rad or awesome. A killer app is the application or feature that makes you toss out what you’ve already got, buy something new, fight with your spouse over the credit card bill, and giggle all the way to the poorhouse because your new thing is so incredible.

Killer apps vary enormously. When you bought an Xbox 360 even though you already had an Xbox, it was Xbox Live that made you do it. Of course, you bought the Xbox in the first place because you wanted to play Halo. You bought a smartphone when you already had a perfectly good phone, because this one had the Internet.

For the iPad, the killer app is unclear: is it a gaming console, a netbook, an e-book reader, a TV, or something else? I think the answer, and I’ll grant you that this is a cop-out, is that the killer app for the iPad is its versatility. It’s all of those things and more, rolled into one device.

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