It’s the most recent operating system to date

Less bloat

Ubuntu Software Center

Slick, not overbearing animation

Multiple desktop support out of the box

FREE

Mac-like simplicity without Mac-like prices

No viruses

Great support

Breathes new life into old hardware

GNOME-Do

Ubuntu One

(Sorry for the blurry pictures.)

I’m a Disney World man. I love the parks. I love going and hitting up all the rides, basking in the sun, and generally getting lost in the Disney merriment, even if it is manufactured. But my least favorite part about visiting the parks is the transitions – moving from inside to outside and back again. There are lots of great rides that just happen to be indoors. So, any normal person will need to take off their sunglasses before heading in. But I’m a glasses wearer, so that always meant carrying an extra glasses case in my bulging pocket, pulling it out, opening it up, taking off my prescription sunglasses, taking out my regular glasses, folding up my sunglasses, putting them in the case, putting the case in my pocket, unfolding my regular glasses, and putting them on my face.

Can you see why this would get old?

A couple years ago, I tried contact lenses and absolutely loved them. I finally had the freedom to wear regular sunglasses, and just throw them on top of my head or clip them to my shirt collar if I needed to take them off for a second. It was beautiful… for about six months. I learned through an arduous process that my eyes can’t handle contact lenses, and I am doomed to an eternity of regular glasses – at least until I can afford laser eye surgery.

I went back to the eye doctor a couple months ago to get checked out and see if there was any way I could wear contacts. No go. We tried a different brand, and the same things happened. The night I came to terms with my misfortune, I started looking online at the possibility of buying a pair of glasses for cheap, and I discovered Zenni Optical.

Zenni Optical is an online purveyor of eyeglasses – there are plenty of other options, but I liked Zenni Optical for two big reasons:

1. If I considered it to be too much of a risk, I could buy an $8 pair of glasses to try out. Then I wouldn’t lose out so much if they didn’t work.
2. They have models called “Sunshade+”, with magnetic sunglasses to discreetly clip on to your regular glasses. More on that later.

After about an hour of browsing and measuring, I decided to try a Sunshade+ model. They were a little pricier on the site, but far less than your typical mall glasses shop. I dug into my file box, pulled out my old prescription, and entered in the numbers. Less than two weeks later, I had new glasses. Observe.

These glasses are completely frameless, which generally run about $200 or so in a glasses store. My total, with the clip-on shades and shipping, came to $37.85. Oh yeah. And here are a couple shots of the glasses wearing the shades:

The reason I chose the Sunshade+ model is because I can quickly clip the shades on to the glasses with one hand, and take them off and slip them into my pocket, or even a thin case. This allows me much quicker and easier transitions, and it was worth paying extra for it. This is going to come in handy when I’m honeymooning in Hawaii this October! Here are some tips to take advantage of sites like Zenni Optical without risking too much.

Get your prescription, and try to get your pupilliary distance (PD), too.

From what I’ve heard, eye doctors have no right to withhold your PD from you – they just don’t tend to write it on the prescription that you get. I awkwardly measured mine in a mirror, and settled on what turned out to be the average PD for most people. It worked great, and my glasses prescription is spot-on. You don’t need to understand the numbers, the form you fill out will be nice and clear.

Get to know your tape measure, or ruler.

Every little measurement about a pair of glasses on Zenni Optical is provided, and it’s important that you compare those measurements with your current glasses. I chose glasses that were a little bigger than my last pair. If these had frames, they’d probably look too big on my face. This is good information to know.

If you want to minimize risk, go with an $8 pair at Zenni Optical.

There are a lot of places to buy glasses online, but if you are looking to buy for the first time and aren’t very confident in the process, get an $8 pair to try out. Oh, and that price includes the lenses, too.

Get your glasses adjusted at the mall – for free.

You don’t need to tell anybody that you bought them online. I went to the mall for a haircut the other day and decided to drop in to a glasses shop, because my glasses were a little loose on my face. I kindly asked them if they wouldn’t mind just giving me a quick adjustment. They told me to have a seat and they took my glasses. This place actually went far above and beyond, and they took apart my glasses, added a few washers for a tighter fit, put them back together, and cleaned them for me. For free. No questions asked.

If you are considering clip-on sunglasses, go with the Sunshade+ models.

There are lots to choose from. You can buy clip-on sunglasses for any pair, but the Sunshade+ models at Zenni Optical have custom-built shades for each pair. They have tiny magnets in the bridge that allow you to connect them with one hand, quickly and easily. When wearing them, nobody can really tell that they are clipped to my glasses unless they look pretty closely.

Be prepared to wait a little bit, especially if you are outside the U.S.

…and save your confirmation number and receipt! Zenni Optical has a base in California, so it took less than two weeks for my glasses to arrive. But I have heard of customers in other countries having to wait 8-10 weeks for them. If nothing else, brace for the worst, and you’ll be impressed at how quickly they arrive!

The Sunshade+ shades skew light – go darker.

If there is one thing I would change about my glasses, I would go back and get the shades tinted a little darker. I took the default tinting, which works fine, but I would have wanted them a little darker. Also – the shades come with a protective film over both sides of them. Take the time to peel those off before you try on the glasses.

Have fun with it!

Think about how much money you are saving! This is a great time to try out a different style, or even order a couple different pairs. Once you are confident in the process, you can afford to enjoy yourself with it a little bit!

For more info, visit Zenni Optical (NOT an affiliate link!).

Look at the cute li’l sunshine! Awwww….

As I type this, it’s Monday morning, and the beautiful sunlight is streaming through my tiny window. It’s the only taste of sunshine I’ll get today without sitting in a car driving to work at my windowless cubicle. I like to think of moments like this as motivation to keep plugging away at the business. It’ll get there…

Here are some of my favorite stuff from around the Web this past week:

Gettin’ crap done

Yes, the little-mentioned “GCD” techniques. I’m always about looking at different ways to approach my workweek.

• 8 Small Habits That Make My Daily Life Simpler, Easier, and More Effective [The Positivity Blog] – The beauty of tips like these is that they don’t require a complete overhaul of your life. I already took time this morning to declutter some stuff (#4), wrote down my goals for the week (#5), and I spent my Saturday morning doing my week’s worth of grocery shopping (#2). Boom.
• on economy [mnmlist] – When you see the word “economy”, you immediately think of government spending. That’s the curse of being an American. Economy actually refers to how effectively you make the most of stuff – and it goes beyond money. Leo shares a few simple words that encourage economy in every part of your life.
• 9 Simple Tips for Getting Rid of a Bad Habit [The Positivity Blog] – Yup, another one from TPB. Destroy your bad habits by involving others, focusing on one at a time, and letting yourself feel a little bit of pain (news flash: pain is okay sometimes!).
• The Hard Truths About Building Your Own Success [Dumb Little Man] – The beauty of following blogs is that, every once in a while, you’ll come across a great post that will totally hit home with your current situation. This one was mine.

Make your body happy, and make your mind happy

What’s life without happiness? Answer: a big ball of suck. Take care of your health and your happiness with these articles:

• How to Be Kinder: 11 Fine Tips [The Positivity Blog] – TPB is just knocking it out of the park this week, folks. If you don’t think you need to be kinder, chances are you need to. Part of being happy is sharing in the joy of others. Life ain’t just about you, my friend. Follow these tips to be a more pleasant person to be around.
• 7 Superpowers You Act Like You Have But Don’t (And How That Messes You Up) [Dumb Little Man] – After re-reading this one, it may be my favorite of the week. Everybody pretends they have these, but you just don’t think about it. Mind control? Precognition? Time travel? I’m guilty of these. What a creative article!
• Getting By Is Worse Than Failing [Location Independent Professionals] – I do a lot of guest posting at this particular blog, and it is geared towards entrepreneurs, but this is great advice for everybody. Taking those risks and falling down a few times is infinitely more beneficial to you than just “getting by”.
• 7 Life Changing Lessons Learned From Walt Disney [Dumb Little Man] – Want to ensure that I’m going to read your article? Put “Walt Disney” in the title. The guy had an incredible attitude about life and business.

Buying stuff and selling stuff

In other words, the art of personal finance:

• Going Up? [The Simple Dollar] – Ah, the age-old argument of “good debt” versus “bad debt”. This is a great article that quickly summarizes the good and the bad (hint: pretty much anything on a credit card is bad debt, and a house isn’t always good debt, but it can be). This article also shows a startling difference between what you want and what you need.
• 8 Life Landmines That Will Blow Up Your Financial Plans [LiveCheap] – We all know disaster will strike us at some point. This article aims to make us aware of these moments, react to them, and proactively live life to prevent these things from happening (or lessening their blow).
• 10 Things You Should Never Pay For [LiveCheap] – It actually kind of scares me how many people pay for this stuff.
• 7 Ways My Clunker Is Smarter Than a Hybrid [Wise Bread] – News flash: hybrids are “better” cars because marketing campaigns are designed to convince you of that fact. Save your cash.
• Fifteen Great Websites That Saved Me Money in 2010 [The Simple Dollar] – Some of these are obvious (Craigslist), but some not so much (Yard Sale Treasure Map). And I’m heading over to PaperbackSwap today to sign up.
• ClickFiller Finds the Best Possible Amazon Filler to Net You Free Shipping [Lifehacker] – I am a huge fan of Amazon, and their free shipping for most orders over $25 is just the icing on the cake. If your order is close, use this tool to put it over the top.
• Four Atypical Things to Do Before You Consider Buying a House [The Simple Dollar] – Figure out why you’re buying a house is a great tip. A better tip is to save like clockwork for two years to get you used to a mortgage. My favorite tip is to start fixing stuff – because you’ll have to.

“Feed me, Seymour!”

Little Shop of Horrors? Anyone?

• 10 Cheap Shortcuts to Making Cooking Oh-So-Much Easier [Cheap Healthy Good] – It amuses me that people think cooking is a lot of work.
• How I Learned To Stop Worrying and Love Seasonal Produce [Cheap Healthy Good] – Since I started buying from a CSA, I’m learning the value of buying seasonal. There are some great tips here.

Nerdy Stuff

Because that’s why this site exists:

• 8 Reasons To Use Google Chrome As Your Primary Browser [Dumb Little Man] – I wrote a while back about my painless switch from Firefox to Chrome, and I still stand by this browser as the one to beat.
• Five Ways to Make Productive Use of Foursquare (and Not Be Annoying) [Lifehacker] – I know a handful of people that are using Foursquare. It’s an intriguing tool, but it’s too easy to be annoying with it.

There you go! Have any links you liked from this week? Share ‘em, or send them to me for next week’s Pile!

Google Chrome is one of those programs that has been around for a while, but when you first tried it, you weren’t that crazy about it. It was somewhat buggy, it didn’t have any type of customization available, and you couldn’t block ads. As much as I wanted to make the switch (being the Google nutjob that I am), I couldn’t do it without a few features that just weren’t available:

1. I needed ads blocked. Period. Even most of them would be sufficient.

2. Add-ons. I want to be able to customize it.

3. A way to integrate my Google Bookmarks so that I can use them like regular bookmarks.

Then one day a couple months ago, I heard that extensions were finally hitting the mainstream. Google Chrome Extensions were a great idea, but you needed to download Chromium, which was the “guinea pig” version of Chrome (which means it doesn’t always work properly), and you had to do a lot of nerdy command-line work to get it up and running. It wasn’t pretty. Once one-click extension support came around, it was time to dive back in.

Now, a few months later, I couldn’t be happier.

Why Switch From Firefox?

Hey, Firefox is a great product. Go ahead and download it if you’d like. It’s stable and it’s popular. But Firefox is very prone to bloatedness. After a while, it takes forever to load Firefox. Chrome just pops right up. It just feels light. Check out the screencast I took below of a comparison between a Firefox start and a Chrome start and you will see what I mean. The little box that pops up in the middle is Launchy, which is my application launcher. In layman’s terms, the box pops up and I start typing the name of the program. When the box disappears, that means I hit “enter” and the application is starting. First I try opening Firefox, then Chrome. Check it out:

If you time it, Firefox takes a full 7 seconds to load up for use, and Chrome takes about 1/2 a second – that means Chrome, in this situation, is 14 times faster loading!

Interested yet? Here are my full reasons why you should give Chrome a chance:

1. Speed. See the above video.
2. Full script support without any extra extensions. One of the best plugins for Firefox is Greasemonkey, which allows you to install “scripts” that will modify a particular website for you. For example, I have a script installed that makes my Google Calendar go full-screen without any sidebars by hitting the “F12” button. But working through Greasemonkey is a little abstract for the average user. In Chrome, you can just go to a site like UserScripts.org, find one you like and click “Install”. Chrome does the rest – and if you like wasting time on Facebook with Mafia Wars and FarmVille, they have tons of scripts to make it a more awesome experience for you (if you’re into that sort of thing).
3. No restart necessary. Want to install an extension? Go for it. It’ll just show up. You don’t have to interrupt your entire browsing session to install one script or extension. They’ll just be there for you.
4. Speaking of no restarts, the whole application won’t crash on you. Say you are in Firefox and you have a problem with a website that causes your browser to close. That sucks. Now you have to restart and possibly “restore” your session. In Chrome, only that tab closes out on you. So if you have a bunch of open tabs, they don’t depend on each other – minimizing the interruption.
5. More screen real estate – look at sites, not toolbars. I had to install plugins and customize Firefox to get as much screen as possible for browsing. Chrome’s got it all set up already. In fact, it doesn’t have a bottom toolbar, giving you even more room for surfing.
6. Turn web pages into applications. Sometimes I just want to open up straight to Gmail. I browse to my Gmail, then click the little page icon in the upper-right corner and click “Create application shortcuts…”. I can put a shortcut on my desktop, in my Quick Launch, and/or in my Start Menu. It will go straight to that site in a full window, just like an application (i.e., no address bar, etc.). I have that set up with Hootsuite as well.

Okay, okay – enough gushing. Time to get into the nuts-and-bolts: how do you set this thing up? Remember – it needs to do all the stuff that my awesome Firefox setup could do.

After installing Chrome, you need to block some ads

This is easily the most complicated part of the process, but it’s not that hard, really. Without a true contender to the ad-blocking throne, the best way to do it, in my experience, has been through a program called Privoxy. There’s a 7-step process to it that is awesomely-simplified in this post by Lifehacker and Geekzone. Just follow it, step-by-step, and you’re done. Bada bing.

Throw on your bookmarklets

Remember from my Firefox setup, I make full use of bookmarklets – little bookmarks that can do some awesome things in your Bookmarks Toolbar. I’ve found the easiest way to do this is to open up a Firefox window next to your Chrome window and literally drag your bookmarklets from Firefox and drop them into the Chrome toolbar. If you don’t have that, here are links to my bookmarklets and what they do. Instead of clicking on the link, just drag it up to your Bookmarks Toolbar:

• StumbleUpon Toolbar – All the fun of StumbleUpon with none of the bloated toolbar taking up space.
• GmailThis! – Like a page/article and want to quickly email it to your buddy? Click this icon and a new “Compose Email” window will pop up with the site title in the subject line and a link to the page in the body. Very handy!
• Subscribe in Google Reader – If I find a new blog, I can just click this button and it will automatically open up Google Reader and subscribe to it for me.
• The Hootlet – If you use Hootsuite to share stuff on Facebook and Twitter, clicking this will automatically open a new “hoot” with the title and shortened link to the site. GREAT for link sharing on Twitter!
• Lifehacker Random – The latest addition to my bookmarklets: Lifehacker just put out this button to go to any random article from their vast archives. What a great site.
• Readability – After setting this one up, you can just click it and it will clear your webpage of anything except the article text and pictures. Very useful with Evernote (I’ll be doing an article on that one soon).

Get some sweet extensions

Like Firefox plugins, these add-ons help you further customize your browsing experience. There are plenty out there, so feel free to browse around. Here are mine:

• GBX – Google Bookmarks For Chrome – This is a third-party extension that inserts my Google Bookmarks into the bookmarks toolbar to work like any bookmarks on a browser. Probably my favorite extension, just because I never think about it.
• Evernote Web Clipper – Like a page/article and want to save it for later? Just click this button and it will save it and set up a new note in your Evernote for you.
• Google Docs – One-click access to your most recent Google Docs, which is great if you just want to open up one quick document (or create a new one right away).

• Handy Google Shortcuts – If you like Google like I do, you use a lot of their products. This is a nice drop-down box of Google products (customizable, too) so that you can go straight to your Gmail, Reader, YouTube, or any of your favorite Google stuff.

Take it to the next level with scripts

No complicated Greasemonkey stuff. Just click “Install” on these bad boys:

• Facebook Fixer – There’s not enough room to fit all its features in here, which is why I wrote a full post on it a while back.
• Facebook Purity – Don’t care what quizzes people took? Annoyed by FarmVille announcements? God bless you. Hide them all with this script.
• Remove Facebook Ads – Privoxy doesn’t catch these. It does as promised.
• GooglePreview – Adds a little screenshot of each web site in the Google search results. Helps you figure out where you’re headed before you click on it.
• Google Images Enlarger – When doing an image search, this allows you to mouse-over the thumbnail and see a full-size picture without having to click through to the site. Very handy and a big time saver!

Your turn

Am I preaching to the choir? Do you already use Chrome? What are your favorite extensions/scripts? Why should we encourage more Chrome usage? If you’re a diehard Firefox user and you’re not convinced, tell us why. If you’re an Internet Explorer advocate, seek help immediately – we cannot help you here.

Okay, so you read 6 Ways The Average Person Can Use Twitter Without Feeling Like A Loser. You’re convinced you want to try this thing out and see where it takes you. But when you hop onto the Twitter homepage and sign up, you still don’t quite “get it”. And that’s okay, because to be honest, the native Twitter interface is kinda clumsy and is missing several key features. You want Twitter to be easy on the eyes, contain what you want it to contain, and be insanely easy to use. Enter HootSuite.

HootSuite is billed as the “professional Twitter client”, but it’s much more than that. I was looking for a place to handle multiple Twitter accounts (for business purposes). I found every Twitter-related need fulfilled under one roof. Let’s take a look, shall we?

Need #1: Sending out a new tweet.

Easy as pie. The Hootsuite box at the top lets you type up a new tweet with a running counter of what you’ve got left (for those unfamiliar, Twitter only lets you use 140 characters in a tweet). I can click on the profile picture of whichever Twitter profile I want this to post to (it will put a little green checkmark on top of the selected picture). If I want to, I can post to all of my Twitter accounts, or just a select few. It also has a wonderful little box for you to enter in a URL to shrink using Ow.ly, HootSuite’s URL shortener.

Need #2: Scheduling future tweets.

When you click on the “Send Later” link, the box opens up to reveal a little scheduler, allowing you to post tweets for the future. This is a great piece of integration. Just like URL shortening, tweet scheduling was something that previously needed a separate service. Here it is, just a click away. For example, I will be scheduling a tweet to announce this post that will hit Twitter tomorrow morning. I’ll probably still be in bed.

Need #3: A clean, sharper, customizable interface.

On Twitter’s official site, looking at all these different things shown above had to be done on separate pages. Here we can see them all at a glance: your home feed (where your tweets are integrated with the tweeters you are following), your mentions (when somebody makes a public reference to you or replies to something you tweeted), your direct messages (private tweets sent directly to you), and the tweets that you’ve sent. These are all columns I added. They can be moved, rearranged, or deleted. Other column options include search terms (great for monitoring a topic of discussion), among others.

At the top of the page, there is also the ability to add tabs – in my case, one for each account that I am managing – and a “Featured” tab, which has two columns: one with Hootsuite’s official Twitter stream, and one of their favorite tweeters. This “at a glance” feature makes it easy to navigate your Twitter account.

Need #4: Twitter Statistics.

Now here’s where things get good: sharing a link on Twitter is great, but it’s nice to know if people are clicking on your links at all. Previously, this meant using a specific URL shortener – bit.ly is the most popular one – and checking back with it to see how it is performing. HootSuite’s URL shortener tracks the link for you, and provides the statistics in real-time with just a click. In this case, it turns out 4 people were interested in watching the 12-minute video of a guy beating Super Mario World on YouTube (hey, give me a break, it’s late at night). When posting links to The Practical Nerd, this can come in handy, so that I can determine how my links are performing.

Need #5: Easy sharing.

If I had a nickel for every service I’ve used to automatically tweet a link… well, I’d have about 15-20 cents. But that’s not the point. When I want to share a link on Twitter, I like to use a solid bookmarklet for one-click access. My most recent move was using TBUZZ, which automatically inserted a shortened URL for me to share with the world. The only snag was that I constantly had to open a new pop-up to log into Twitter any time I started a new Firefox session.

But HootSuite again solves the problem with the Hootlet, a cute name for a sharp little bookmarklet. When I’m on a webpage that I want to share with the world, I click the Hootlet in my bookmarklets toolbar, and up pops a little box for me to fill in:

As you can see, the Hootlet has already shortened the URL for me (using their shortener, meaning I can track the link’s performance), adds the title of the page, and has all the other features of a HootSuite tweet: selecting profiles, scheduling for later, etc. It’s also lightning-quick.

Conclusion: It’s a winner!

HootSuite has all the features that I could possibly think of, under one roof. This is a completely integrated solution for any Twitter user, professional or recreational. It makes tweeting as easy as a few clicks. Want to make it your desktop solution, as opposed to a web-based program? I use Google Chrome’s great feature that turns any web page into its own desktop application. Then I use TrayIt!, a simple little program that allows me to minimize HootSuite to my system tray:

Now Hootsuite runs in the background (using Google Chrome’s extremely lightweight browser), and if I ever want to bring it up, I just click on that little owl there.

Do you have your own favorite Twitter client? Or have you tried HootSuite? Share with all of us in the comments!