Category: blogging

  • Looking for the best Google Reader replacement, don’t forget the plumbing

    Google is shutting down Google Reader, its RSS feed collector, in July. Google’s bare bones reader web site was never the greatest way to actually read your RSS feeds, automatically updated collections of all your blog post subscriptions. There were plenty of alternatives for that function — I was using Reeder on my iPad and…

  • Putting a close on a great 2012, blogwise

    As 2012 winds to a close, I’m looking back at another year on Gravitational Pull dot net, my eighth writing this blog. This year, I suspended my experimental commentary blog, The Orange View, in an effort to write fewer and better stories here. Some months worked out better than others — I had no posts…

  • A blog about technology and other things I’m interested in

    Post my experiment with running a daily link bog over at The Orange View, I’m going to re-position Gravitational Pull again, back towards a broader focus than just gadget and software reviews. In that spirit, I’ve changed the tag line to  “A blog about technology and other things I’m interested in,” which is both accurate…

  • Macbook Airs, Android phones and other updates

    I’m in the process of kicking up the activity here and I started by overhauling and updating my “tools of the trade” pages. That’s my attempt to keep a running tally of the hardware and software I’m actually using on a daily basis, a kind of personal “best in class” list. Read about the too…

  • Review: Hypercritical is the best new geeky podcast

    With my unavoidable daily commute, I’m desperately in need of some entertainment in the car. Sometimes, Boston sports radio obliges (especially now that we have a couple of talented Gen Xers on the air) but what’s my backup for all the rest of those slow rides down the Mass Pike in rush hour traffic? Podcasts,…

  • Narrowing the focus

    I changed the tagline on this blog tonight to “Notes on gadgets, software and web services.” That’s because I’ve set up a new blog, TheOrangeView.net, to carry the weight of commentary, analysis and debate on tech issues of the day. Here, I’ll narrow my focus to reviews and how-to’s, letting you know about the best…

  • Review: Subtle but useful improvements in WordPress 3.1

    WordPress kicked out the latest upgrade to its popular blogging platform software this week and I upgraded GravitationalPull.net yesterday. So far the improvements are subtle and useful. Almost as important, nothing appears broken, particularly among the dozen or so plug-ins I have installed. WordPress posted a complete list of all the new features and tweaks here.…

  • What a year – more ideas and more clicks

    It was another year of growth for the GravitationalPull blog in 2010, with total visits up about 25% to 45,000 and total page views rising 23% to around 54,000 according to Google Analytics. I wrote 45 posts, up slightly from the 42 you got in 2009. As per the last few years, traffic spiked dramatically…

  • Not so simple way to grab screenshots on the Nexus S

    As I’ve noted a few times, unlike the iPhone, there is no simple way to grab and save a screenshot on the Nexus S phone, or on any Android phone that hasn’t been rooted. There is a complex work-around, however, that delivers beautiful screenshots. Credit to this post from Androidcentral for getting me started. To…

  • How to use Twitter to promote your blog: go narrow

    In the beginning, the old-school media man is stuck to his ways. But over time, he evolves. When I first started blogging, I blogged about anything of interest to me — sports, books, gadgets, the weather, whatever. Eventually, I realized that was no way to build an online audience. I am not a personality of…