I enjoy playing around with different APIs, and the Layar API gives you basic control over the colors and icons in your layer. I checked out the Custom circular info widgets documentation to figure out the best way to handle the CIWs. Layar has some nice best practices listed, but sadly, there was no Photoshop template to speed things along.

I decided to make a Layar custom info widget Photoshop template (zipped .PSD) for myself, and am posting it in case anyone else might find it helpful.

Within the file, guidelines are at the 55×55, 38×38 and 28×28 sizes. The squares are the recommended sizes from the documentation for the inner, middle and outer ring sizes. Note: you will have to zoom pretty far in to see the boxes properly, but you were probably going to do that anyway…

I hope this helps someone out. I always like having a comprehensive template to stay somewhat organized.

The new version allows users to view hashtag conversations without having to login. This will help people get a better feel for what the conversation is about before joining in.

There were also some tweaks made to the visual styling of the site and I am happy with how things turned out.

It retrieves recent tweets from a Twitter user and encodes them into a QR code. You can then use your smartphone or other QR code reader to decode the now secret message.

Pretend you are an international spy, pretend you are an über nerd, pretend TweetDecoder has a profound purpose. Technology for technology’s sake! Hurray!

Essentially, my whole family will be going on a cruise to Alaska in May and we are all pumped. I have been toying with the idea of getting a Flip MinoHD to record some lightweight family video on the trip.

At first I was stoked to get the Flip and the underwater housing, but the realized the underwater kit only works with the Flip Ultra…

Hmm. One of the main reasons I wanted the smaller camera was so that I could use it in non-ideal conditions…

So, is the Flip MiniHD still worth it or should I save my $250 to purchase post-apocolyptic weapons?

Gotta run, the bench press is open…

I needed to upgrade the memory in my grandma’s old Dell Dimension 2100 and one of the only places that said it could deliver the goods the next day was Circuit City. My one-year boycott was up in 5 days, but I wanted to hold true to my word.

So, what did I do? I looked up computer recycling facilities in my grandma’s area.

Much to my surprise, there was a fantastic facility less than 5 minutes from her house. Not only that, but the total cost of the near-antique components I needed was only $20 versus over $100 at Circuit City (and much more directly from Dell).

I called the facility, spoke to a friendly technician who said he had just what we needed. My grandmother and I made a quick drive down the street, grabbed the goods which he had just checked on his test bench, and we got on down the road. The whole scenario took less than 15 minutes total.

So, the moral of this story is: look around for a small computer store or recycling facility before you upgrade an aging machine. You will help out a small business, help out the environment and not pay high rates for hard-to-find computer parts.

Another upshot is now my grandma has a place to drop off all her old electronics instead of throwing them in the trash (shame on you grandma).

A huge thank you to http://www.floridacomputerrecycling.com for making a Christmas miracle come true at a great price. Anyone in the Orlando area really should check them out.