pinkasphalt

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After an extended visit in the land of Chrome, I have come back to Firefox. Why?

• Full use of 1Password
• I got tired of having to switch to Firefox for sites that weren’t working correctly in Chrome
• Userstyles, especially the one I use for Google Reader, which were not rendering properly in Chrome

I will miss how much snappier Chrome felt though. Sigh.

Test your Swiss IQ with the Helvetiq iPhone App.

YouTube and my Mac do not get along. Actually Flash and my Mac don’t get along. As soon as a Flash video starts playing the fan kicks in, the computer gets too hot, the video stutters, and things get a bit crashy. At first I thought it was just me, but it appears Flash runs less well on the Mac than on Windows (unlike Windows, Mac OS X does not expose access to the APIs required  to allow hardware decoding of H.264).

So what’s a Mac owner (or anyone who wants to avoid Flash) to do? Well, if you are using Google Chrome, Apple Safari (version 4+), or IE with the Google Chrome Frame installed, you can opt to use the HTML5 player instead of the Flash player. Using the HTML5 player, my computer is much quieter and less crashy.

Feather is another YouTube opt-in beta project. Intended for people on older computers, netbooks, or slow connections, Feather presents you with a stripped down YoutTube that is much snappier, especially on less powerful machines.

You can find these, as well as other in-development projects on YouTube’s TestTube.

Is your deadbeat friend claiming he can’t pay you back because he doesn’t have any cash on him? No problem. With Square, you can just run his credit card through your iPhone. Of course if he doesn’t have a credit card then this won’t work. Or if his credit card is maxed out. Maybe you need to get richer friends.

I love love this! (via)

A couple years ago, I came across Bemz, a company that makes slip covers for a number of Ikea sofas and armchairs. Over the years I visited the Bemz site countless times and thought about ordering some covers to breathe new life into a couple of mismatched Ikea armchairs. I looked online for reviews and photos by people who had actually ordered the covers, but I mainly found write-ups by design blogs lauding Bemz’s concept and showing photos from the Bemz website.

In spite of the dearth of real-life reviews, I recently decided to take the plunge and I placed an order. In an effort to offer some real-world reviews for any potential buyers, here are some photos, along with my impressions.

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