The latest political bombshell (unconfirmed, so far as I know) is that Lynne Cheney is claiming that her husband, Vice-President Dick Cheney, is distantly related to Sen. Barack Obama.
Mrs. Cheney told MSNBC on Tuesday that it was "an amazing American story that one ancestor ... could be responsible down the family line for lives that have taken such different and varied paths." The common ancestor was Mareen Devall, who the Chicago Sun-Times said was a 17th century immigrant from France, according to Reuters.
Normally, given a chance like this, opportunism strikes. It just so happens, however, that genealogy site Ancestry.com's DNA service did not take advantage of this. So we're doing it for them.
Disclosure: I tried out the Ancestry.com service a few months ago, got hooked, and signed up. What I like about the site is that it's made for lazy genealogists like me: once I input a few key pieces of data, such as a full name and birthdate, the site instantly starts checking public databases in the background, to see if there's a match. That data includes the U.S. Census, which generally includes the names and ages of people living in a given household when the census was taken, which are extremely helpful clues to flesh out your family tree.
The service that Obama and Cheney might be interested in checking out is DNA.Ancestry.com, which allows you to submit a sample of your own DNA (a service that costs between $149 and $199) for Y-DNA (chromosomes that pass from father to son) and mtDNA tests (matching chromosomes that pass from mothers to their children).
In the coming months, DNA results will integrate with online Ancestry.com family trees. You can already add your DNA results to an existing family tree. (For privacy's sake, Ancestry.com hides all information on living members of your family, unless permitted.) A sample of what the tests might look like can be found here.
It's unclear how useful this will be, given that (thankfully) there exists no publicly accessible DNA record. It would seem that users would have to come forward and make their own DNA records accessible to determine if, say, I was actually related to the actor Gene Hackman. My understanding is that my rugged good looks are sheer coincidence.
Thursday, August 20, 2009
World's Oldest Blogger Celebrates 108th Birthday
Google the words "world's oldest blogger," and you'll get no shortage of results. The bulk of the stories focus on folks in their mid-to-late 90s--mostly 95 and 96. Impressive, to be sure, but they've got nothing on Australian great-grandmother, Olive Riley. One would be hard-pressed to find someone who might be able to snatch the title away from Riley, who, in three days, will be turning 108.
Over at Riley's blog, The Life of Riley, they've already started the celebration--the home that Riley lives at insists that they hold birthday celebrations on Weekdays. But heck, she's already live 3,9417 days, so what's another three, right?
Born in 1899 in Broken Hill Australia (outside of Sydney), Riley started her blog--what she calls a "blob"--in February of this year. The entries consist largely of Riley's transcriptions to her friend Mike, consisting of her day to day events and stories for her 108 years of life.
Yep, sounds like a blog to us.
Over at Riley's blog, The Life of Riley, they've already started the celebration--the home that Riley lives at insists that they hold birthday celebrations on Weekdays. But heck, she's already live 3,9417 days, so what's another three, right?
Born in 1899 in Broken Hill Australia (outside of Sydney), Riley started her blog--what she calls a "blob"--in February of this year. The entries consist largely of Riley's transcriptions to her friend Mike, consisting of her day to day events and stories for her 108 years of life.
Yep, sounds like a blog to us.
ShowHype: Entertainment News for the Web 2.0 Crowd
There's something about the lives of celebrities that makes people obsessed. I'm not that type of person, but I admit that every now and again I like to know who Angelina is adopting and what Madonna is studying. For entertainment news provided by the community, check out ShowHype. ShowHype is a Digg-like social news site where the users and contributors provide the news and the community gets to vote on whether the story is worth reading. The site would be great if it stopped there, but there's more.
ShowHype is broken into three major parts. The front page contains all of the news submitted by the users. The Charts page tracks the most popular movies, television shows, and music. And the Community page is a place where users can create groups dedicated to specific celebrities and topics and discuss, interact, and submit stories.
All of the top stories are displayed on the front page, and users can vote on them from there. If you're interested in up-to-the minute entertainment news and celebrity gossip, this is where you'll spend most of your time. The news is broken out into multiple categories including the top stories, movie news, celebrity news, television news, and more. If you sign up for an account at ShowHype, you can rate the stories up or down depending on how you feel, or comment on them and interact with other users.
The charts section pulls information from services like Box Office Mojo and Nielsen Media Research to provide the top ten movies, television shows, and albums for a given time period. For more information on a given album, television show, or movie, click on the entry in the top five (the bottom five you have to click through to see) to be taken to the ShowHype story where the item is featured and participate in the discussion there.
In the community section, users can create groups based on their interests, and see if other members of the community share their passions. For example, a celebrity gossip group is the most popular group on the site at the moment, followed up by the group created to provide updates and obtain feedback from the site developers. There's also a group dedicated to paying attention to whether or not Britney Spears does crazy things for attention, a fan club dedicated to VHS and Beta tapes, and fans of the television shows The Wire and Prison Break.
Sure, sites like Digg and Mixx have entertainment sections, but they're usually poorly populated and the site depends completely on the readers and community to provide the stories. ShowHype cheats a little and scrapes a number of popular entertainment news sites and blogs for its hot stories, and the community then votes on them. This ensures a steady feed of news and fresh content, and the Charts and Community pages add even more features to an already attractive social news service.
ShowHype is broken into three major parts. The front page contains all of the news submitted by the users. The Charts page tracks the most popular movies, television shows, and music. And the Community page is a place where users can create groups dedicated to specific celebrities and topics and discuss, interact, and submit stories.
All of the top stories are displayed on the front page, and users can vote on them from there. If you're interested in up-to-the minute entertainment news and celebrity gossip, this is where you'll spend most of your time. The news is broken out into multiple categories including the top stories, movie news, celebrity news, television news, and more. If you sign up for an account at ShowHype, you can rate the stories up or down depending on how you feel, or comment on them and interact with other users.
The charts section pulls information from services like Box Office Mojo and Nielsen Media Research to provide the top ten movies, television shows, and albums for a given time period. For more information on a given album, television show, or movie, click on the entry in the top five (the bottom five you have to click through to see) to be taken to the ShowHype story where the item is featured and participate in the discussion there.
In the community section, users can create groups based on their interests, and see if other members of the community share their passions. For example, a celebrity gossip group is the most popular group on the site at the moment, followed up by the group created to provide updates and obtain feedback from the site developers. There's also a group dedicated to paying attention to whether or not Britney Spears does crazy things for attention, a fan club dedicated to VHS and Beta tapes, and fans of the television shows The Wire and Prison Break.
Sure, sites like Digg and Mixx have entertainment sections, but they're usually poorly populated and the site depends completely on the readers and community to provide the stories. ShowHype cheats a little and scrapes a number of popular entertainment news sites and blogs for its hot stories, and the community then votes on them. This ensures a steady feed of news and fresh content, and the Charts and Community pages add even more features to an already attractive social news service.
Hatebook: The Anti-Facebook
If you're tired of all of this social-networking nonsense, Hatebook might be the answer. Sure, it's a social network, but it's a social network dedicated to connecting you with new people to hate. Your visitors are called suckers, and you collect haters, not friends. People who comment on your profile send you warnings, and the eventual goal is to make enemies and take over the world.
Hatebook looks a lot likeFacebook. It's clean and fully featured, and the color scheme is red and white as opposed to Facebook's blue and white. Red is a passionate color, after all. On the front page, the Hatebook community encourages you to connect with the people you hate by uploading blackmail material, publishing lies, collecting gossip and hate points from the people who hate you back, and customizing your hate profile with photos and videos.
Hatebook has all of the features of a social networking service. You can customize your profile with video and photos, and you can invite friends to the service, add people to your enemies list (you even have a "homies" list for those folks who'll die last in your world takeover plan), add warnings to other people's profiles, and search for new people to hate. The community at Hatebook is pretty big, so you won't have much trouble finding someone in your area worth hating.
Hatebook, for all intents and purposes, is simply a parody of Facebook. But it's got its own community and its own users, so it works pretty well as its own social network. When you sign up, you give the service your zip code so it can place you on a Google map along with other haters in your area, and your profile asks you for movies that bother you and reasons why you're better than everyone else. My only warning to Hatebook users is that there are no real privacy controls, and the site is probably not safe for children and only marginally safe for work, so tread lightly.
Aside from that, if you're looking for someone to hate or you just think social networking is a laughable idea, Hatebook might be the perfect network for you.
Hatebook looks a lot likeFacebook. It's clean and fully featured, and the color scheme is red and white as opposed to Facebook's blue and white. Red is a passionate color, after all. On the front page, the Hatebook community encourages you to connect with the people you hate by uploading blackmail material, publishing lies, collecting gossip and hate points from the people who hate you back, and customizing your hate profile with photos and videos.
Hatebook has all of the features of a social networking service. You can customize your profile with video and photos, and you can invite friends to the service, add people to your enemies list (you even have a "homies" list for those folks who'll die last in your world takeover plan), add warnings to other people's profiles, and search for new people to hate. The community at Hatebook is pretty big, so you won't have much trouble finding someone in your area worth hating.
Hatebook, for all intents and purposes, is simply a parody of Facebook. But it's got its own community and its own users, so it works pretty well as its own social network. When you sign up, you give the service your zip code so it can place you on a Google map along with other haters in your area, and your profile asks you for movies that bother you and reasons why you're better than everyone else. My only warning to Hatebook users is that there are no real privacy controls, and the site is probably not safe for children and only marginally safe for work, so tread lightly.
Aside from that, if you're looking for someone to hate or you just think social networking is a laughable idea, Hatebook might be the perfect network for you.
Introducing Napster 4.0
Napster dropped its Web-based functionality when it acquired AOL Music Now earlier this year. Well, that feature makes a welcome comeback in its latest version, Napster 4.0, which has a Web-based interface that allows you to stream music online, no client app needed. The software is still there if you want to use it, but you'll probably spend most of your time listening to Napster's 5-million-plus song library right from your browser. As great as that sounds, bugs, DRM protections on all songs, and other irritating limitations hurt Napster 4.0's appeal. Is it still worth using? Find out what the PC Magazine software team thought about Napster's latest upgrade in this in-depth review.
Wednesday, August 19, 2009
Free Exorcism on Halloween
Has a Trojan or 'bot possessed your computer? Are lesser devils dragging down its performance? Is it haunted by inexplicable error messages written in eldritch runes? This Halloween call in the Ghostbusters - CyberDefender is offering free unlimited support all day on October 31st by email, phone, or live chat (though email may be too slow for this one-day offer). The offer starts at the witching hour, midnight, and runs to the next midnight (Pacific time). With your permission they can benignly possess your computer and remotely cast out its evil spirits. Of course, they hope to impress you so much that you'll sign up for a year of their unlimited support.
On ordinary days, when the gates to the underworld aren't open, CyberDefender can still help. The $59.99/year COMPLETE version offers to scrub your system squeaky-clean, eliminating all malicious software and even helping you get competing security products working correctly. For $99.99/year the ULTIMATE edition supports you with any problem you may have with software, hardware, or any device attached to your computer. And hey, don't forget that the price includes the CyberDefender security suite plus 2GB of hosted online backup provided by partner
SOS Online Backup.
Given the cost of a single paid tech support incident, those prices are almost scary!
On ordinary days, when the gates to the underworld aren't open, CyberDefender can still help. The $59.99/year COMPLETE version offers to scrub your system squeaky-clean, eliminating all malicious software and even helping you get competing security products working correctly. For $99.99/year the ULTIMATE edition supports you with any problem you may have with software, hardware, or any device attached to your computer. And hey, don't forget that the price includes the CyberDefender security suite plus 2GB of hosted online backup provided by partner
SOS Online Backup.
Given the cost of a single paid tech support incident, those prices are almost scary!
Windows XP Service Pack 3 Beta
For those of you Windows XP users who haven't made the jump to Vista just yet, Microsoft recently released a beta version of Windows XP Service Pack 3(SP3). This latest service pack pretty much rolls up all the fixes and updates you might've missed into one convenient package. Handy goodies like Media Player 11 and Internet Explorer 7 are included in SP3 as well as security upgrades that better secure your system. However, you'll need to know about the compatibility issues before applying SP3. PC Magazine software analyst Neil Randall shows you what you can expect from this latest service pack in this detailed report.
Heads Up: Microsoft Launches Popfly as Public Beta
Remember Popfly? We looked at it back in May. It's Microsoft's attempt to create a Web page designer for laypeople (and an excuse to liberally toss around the word "mashup"). The site was built on top of MS's post-Flash Silverlight platform and features, among other things, its own social network (Popfly Space) and a Google My Maps-like app.
We haven't heard much about the service over the past few months, most likely because it's remained in limited alpha all this time.
Popfly emerged into public beta today, boasting some new features that weren't found in the previous build. It now has Facebook/blog/Web site plugins, including games, slideshows, eBay auction trackers, and Halo 3 stat trackers. You'll also find "leverage blocks" from companies such as Twitter and Facebook, designed to "drive awareness of and traffic to your site." The new Popfly also includes the ability to create Web pages for groups.
I wasn't quite as impressed by the first version of Popfly as the Microsoft team very clearly thought I should be. Perhaps it's time to take another look.
We haven't heard much about the service over the past few months, most likely because it's remained in limited alpha all this time.
Popfly emerged into public beta today, boasting some new features that weren't found in the previous build. It now has Facebook/blog/Web site plugins, including games, slideshows, eBay auction trackers, and Halo 3 stat trackers. You'll also find "leverage blocks" from companies such as Twitter and Facebook, designed to "drive awareness of and traffic to your site." The new Popfly also includes the ability to create Web pages for groups.
I wasn't quite as impressed by the first version of Popfly as the Microsoft team very clearly thought I should be. Perhaps it's time to take another look.
Is China Redirecting U.S. Search Requests?
There have been some mixed reports coming from various blogs today reporting that the "Great Firewall of China," owned by the government, has been redirecting attempts by Chinese users to access American Web sites such as Yahoo! and Google. The target? Baidu.
So far, we have not seen anything definitive, nor has there been a consensus of opinion whether this is actually happening. Posters responding to this TechCrunch article as well as this Google Blogoscoped forum seem to indicate that many users are getting through, with YouTube being listed as one of the exceptions.
Baidu is traded on the Nasdaq stock exchange. Say what you want about Google's stock price, but Baidu's share price keeps increasing--it's at a lofty $320 per share as of this writing, almost quadrupling its value in a year. If its revenue (and as a result, its share price) has been in effect manipulated by a foreign government, however, I would think the International Trade Commission (the independent, quasijudicial federal agency that advises the government on matters of trade) might get involved, as well as the U.S. government itself.
So far, we have not seen anything definitive, nor has there been a consensus of opinion whether this is actually happening. Posters responding to this TechCrunch article as well as this Google Blogoscoped forum seem to indicate that many users are getting through, with YouTube being listed as one of the exceptions.
Baidu is traded on the Nasdaq stock exchange. Say what you want about Google's stock price, but Baidu's share price keeps increasing--it's at a lofty $320 per share as of this writing, almost quadrupling its value in a year. If its revenue (and as a result, its share price) has been in effect manipulated by a foreign government, however, I would think the International Trade Commission (the independent, quasijudicial federal agency that advises the government on matters of trade) might get involved, as well as the U.S. government itself.
Thousands of "Daily Show" Clips Going Online
Craving a little old-school "Daily Show"? You're in luck because Viacom is looking to make every single clip from "The Daily Show with Jon Stewart" available via the Web.
All 13,000 clips from 1999 onward will soon be featured on www.thedailyshow.com, according to the LA Times. Want to watch Lynne Cheney present Stewart with a Darth Cheney doll, Samantha Bee re-enact "Sex and the City" or Rob Cordry navigate the streets of New York in a stretch Hummer over and over again? It will all soon be available via a searchable database on the site.
Sound a little like the YouTube version of "The Daily Show"? Indeed. Viacom might be suing YouTube for copyright infringement, but that doesn't mean it can't steal the idea and pocket some ad revenue for itself. Stewart actually referenced the battle on the show this week, jokingly telling viewers they could watch Stephen Colbert's presidential candidacy announcement on the Web, just "not on YouTube."
If anything, I'll look forward to watching older videos from former "Daily Show" correspondents Colbert and Steve Carell, a few of which were re-aired during a recent anniversary special. I also (mercifully?) missed commentary from the first few months of President Bush's term while I was studying abroad in 2001, so I imagine there might be a few gems I have yet to view.
All 13,000 clips from 1999 onward will soon be featured on www.thedailyshow.com, according to the LA Times. Want to watch Lynne Cheney present Stewart with a Darth Cheney doll, Samantha Bee re-enact "Sex and the City" or Rob Cordry navigate the streets of New York in a stretch Hummer over and over again? It will all soon be available via a searchable database on the site.
Sound a little like the YouTube version of "The Daily Show"? Indeed. Viacom might be suing YouTube for copyright infringement, but that doesn't mean it can't steal the idea and pocket some ad revenue for itself. Stewart actually referenced the battle on the show this week, jokingly telling viewers they could watch Stephen Colbert's presidential candidacy announcement on the Web, just "not on YouTube."
If anything, I'll look forward to watching older videos from former "Daily Show" correspondents Colbert and Steve Carell, a few of which were re-aired during a recent anniversary special. I also (mercifully?) missed commentary from the first few months of President Bush's term while I was studying abroad in 2001, so I imagine there might be a few gems I have yet to view.
Tuesday, August 18, 2009
TrekEarth: Sharing the World Through Photography
Travel and photography are two of my favorite hobbies. Fortunately, they often go hand in hand. I'm by no means a professional photographer, but I'm always looking for tips to help me get the perfect shot. Thankfully, I found TrekEarth, a social networking site whose focus is less on building a huge friends list than on sharing and commenting on photography and travel stories.
Saying that TrekEarth is a social networking site is almost an insult; it doesn't look or feel like other social networking sites that pride themselves on user profiles with horrible backgrounds, embedded flash music players, or a "how many friends can you collect" attitude. User profiles at TrekEarth are clean and simple, with a quick bio, some contact information, the type of camera that the user has, and links to featured photos, galleries, and the member's location. It's just enough information to make you curious about someone and willing to click through to their photographs and read their travel experiences, but it's not maddening or frenetic like other social networking services.
The front page of TrekEarth is a great jumping-off point for a new explorer. You can immediately browse featured travel stories or photographs, click on a map of the world to jump to photos taken in that area, or view photos from a featured artist or artist's workshop to see how they've taken one of their photos and touched it up.
TrekEarth's mission is to share the world through photography, and I can't think of a better way to do it. TrekEarth members have uploaded photos from all over the globe, from small villages in Pakistan to tourist beaches in Mexico, and their stories are there next to each one. Once you've created an account, you can connect with other members, add their photos to your favorites, or add the user to your favorite users list. You can critique other members' photos or open your own up to comment, so you can develop your skills and share tips and tricks.
Members can also set their accounts to alert them when new photos from their favorite parts of the world are uploaded, or when their favorite TrekEarth members upload new photos and stories. If you have your own photos to upload, and want to use them to narrate your travel experience, you can create a "travelogue," where you can sort photos into a chronological order and make a slideshow of your trip, narrated with text.
Another strength of TrekEarth is the ability for artists to create "workshops," where you can compare original photos and edits and show off your retouching and editing work. Other members can make suggestions and provide advice on how to further edit your photos or refine your Photoshop technique.
TrekEarth has a very large memberlist, yet remains a very close-knit community. It's proof that you don't need a huge community to be a success, just a dedicated one that believes in your purpose and needs a place to come together. TrekEarth takes you on a trip with every photo gallery, and the experiences of the members are reflected with every click.
Post by Alan Henry
Saying that TrekEarth is a social networking site is almost an insult; it doesn't look or feel like other social networking sites that pride themselves on user profiles with horrible backgrounds, embedded flash music players, or a "how many friends can you collect" attitude. User profiles at TrekEarth are clean and simple, with a quick bio, some contact information, the type of camera that the user has, and links to featured photos, galleries, and the member's location. It's just enough information to make you curious about someone and willing to click through to their photographs and read their travel experiences, but it's not maddening or frenetic like other social networking services.
The front page of TrekEarth is a great jumping-off point for a new explorer. You can immediately browse featured travel stories or photographs, click on a map of the world to jump to photos taken in that area, or view photos from a featured artist or artist's workshop to see how they've taken one of their photos and touched it up.
TrekEarth's mission is to share the world through photography, and I can't think of a better way to do it. TrekEarth members have uploaded photos from all over the globe, from small villages in Pakistan to tourist beaches in Mexico, and their stories are there next to each one. Once you've created an account, you can connect with other members, add their photos to your favorites, or add the user to your favorite users list. You can critique other members' photos or open your own up to comment, so you can develop your skills and share tips and tricks.
Members can also set their accounts to alert them when new photos from their favorite parts of the world are uploaded, or when their favorite TrekEarth members upload new photos and stories. If you have your own photos to upload, and want to use them to narrate your travel experience, you can create a "travelogue," where you can sort photos into a chronological order and make a slideshow of your trip, narrated with text.
Another strength of TrekEarth is the ability for artists to create "workshops," where you can compare original photos and edits and show off your retouching and editing work. Other members can make suggestions and provide advice on how to further edit your photos or refine your Photoshop technique.
TrekEarth has a very large memberlist, yet remains a very close-knit community. It's proof that you don't need a huge community to be a success, just a dedicated one that believes in your purpose and needs a place to come together. TrekEarth takes you on a trip with every photo gallery, and the experiences of the members are reflected with every click.
Post by Alan Henry
Wegor: Travel Together
I love to travel, and I think that everyone gets a bit of wanderlust now and again. The trouble starts when we get back from our travels and want to show off our photos to friends. Let's be honest: No one really wants to see all of your photos, and hear you drone on about your trip and who you met and what you did. If only there were a community dedicated to travel where people could share their photos, blog their experiences from the road, and join a social network of people who love to travel and are interested in reading and sharing one another's experiences. Wegor (pronounced we-go-er, partially a jab at all of the other Web 2.0 services that add an "r" to the end of their names) is aiming to be just that.
Wegor is relatively small and new, but it already has a fairly large and active user community. The list of members is a couple hundred strong, and many of the site's most active members blogging and sharing photos from different countries around the globe. Some of the featured members are from Sweden and Austria as well as the United States, and their photos are from their hometowns along with the places they've visited.
Accounts at Wegor are free, and each month you get 50MB of storage that you can fill with photos of your travels; you can organize the photos into albums. You also get a blog that you can update like a trip diary, and a personal map (using the Google Maps API) to update with your location, where you're going, and where you've been. I had some difficulty adding locations on the map that I had visited, but other members have their maps populated with destinations they've visited, so it might have just been me. At the same time, the ability to add your locations on a map that others can view is a great idea.
All of the other features at Wegor worked flawlessly, however. Editing my own blog was simple and easy, and although Wegor doesn't appear to have a method in place for blog updates or photo uploads from mobile devices, if your mobile device has Web access, you can update your Wegor account from the road. The site appears to be more about updating your blog and your photo galleries after your trip is over rather than keeping a travel diary. Some users do both, though; some of the blogs on the site appear to be updated with each step of the writer's journey, and others seem to be travel reviews of the places the author has visited and what they thought about the trip.
Either way, the site is easy to use and easy to browse. You can view members, read their travel blogs, and browse their photos with a few clicks, and featured members and their photos are listed on the front page. Some featured members have written about their visits to locations like the Museum of Flight in Seattle, Washington, or posted photos of their trip to destinations as far away as India, Vienna, and Ibiza.
Wegor has the makings of a great social networking site for people who love to travel and love to hear about the journeys of others. The community is growing, but the site has a very insular feel, and the members regularly interact with one another by commenting on their travel posts. If you're looking for a community that's focused specifically on travel and people who won't roll their eyes when you offer to show them the photos from your last vacation, Wegor might be worth a look.
Post by Alan Henry
Wegor is relatively small and new, but it already has a fairly large and active user community. The list of members is a couple hundred strong, and many of the site's most active members blogging and sharing photos from different countries around the globe. Some of the featured members are from Sweden and Austria as well as the United States, and their photos are from their hometowns along with the places they've visited.
Accounts at Wegor are free, and each month you get 50MB of storage that you can fill with photos of your travels; you can organize the photos into albums. You also get a blog that you can update like a trip diary, and a personal map (using the Google Maps API) to update with your location, where you're going, and where you've been. I had some difficulty adding locations on the map that I had visited, but other members have their maps populated with destinations they've visited, so it might have just been me. At the same time, the ability to add your locations on a map that others can view is a great idea.
All of the other features at Wegor worked flawlessly, however. Editing my own blog was simple and easy, and although Wegor doesn't appear to have a method in place for blog updates or photo uploads from mobile devices, if your mobile device has Web access, you can update your Wegor account from the road. The site appears to be more about updating your blog and your photo galleries after your trip is over rather than keeping a travel diary. Some users do both, though; some of the blogs on the site appear to be updated with each step of the writer's journey, and others seem to be travel reviews of the places the author has visited and what they thought about the trip.
Either way, the site is easy to use and easy to browse. You can view members, read their travel blogs, and browse their photos with a few clicks, and featured members and their photos are listed on the front page. Some featured members have written about their visits to locations like the Museum of Flight in Seattle, Washington, or posted photos of their trip to destinations as far away as India, Vienna, and Ibiza.
Wegor has the makings of a great social networking site for people who love to travel and love to hear about the journeys of others. The community is growing, but the site has a very insular feel, and the members regularly interact with one another by commenting on their travel posts. If you're looking for a community that's focused specifically on travel and people who won't roll their eyes when you offer to show them the photos from your last vacation, Wegor might be worth a look.
Post by Alan Henry
Scientific Research Made Easy with Scitopia
When I was studying Physics back in college, I spent a lot of time using the resources at my school libraries when I had lab reports and research papers to write. If I had Scitopia, I might have been able to do a lot of that research from my dorm room instead of a library computer lab. Scitopia indexes millions of documents from over 15 academic and research societies and government agencies and makes all of that information available for free.
Scitopia is a science student's dream. The service partners with over societies like the American Institute of Physics, the Acoustical Society of America, the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), and the Electrochemical Society for journal articles and scientific papers. Scitopia is enrolling more scientific societies and organizations and is hoping to expand its database of resources.
The service is very simple, and reminds me of Google. There's a search box in the middle of the page and not much else. Type in your search term and you'll be get results sorted by relevancy. If you click the Advanced tab at the top of the page, you'll see filtering options that will help you refine your search.
Scitopia's search results include research papers, journal articles, patents, and government documents. Scitopia doesn't aggregate documents or crawl the Web, either; all of its documents are provided by the scholarly societies and groups that participate. This means that you won't find someone's non-peer-reviewed opinion paper or rambling manifesto mixed in with your search results, and you can be sure that the documents you get have been reviewed by members of the scientific community.
The only downside to Scitopia is that the search results lead you to the individual sites of the organizations who own the paper. This means that once you click through, if you need the full text of an article, you may need to have a membership with that society, or be part of an educational or government institution that has access to those documents. Most colleges and universities provide this kind of access to their students, staff, and faculty, so if you're a student you're in good shape.
Even so, Scitopia is a great resource to add to your list of bookmarks if you're doing any kind of academic research. The search is speedy and the results are accurate and useful, something I can't always say about a Google search for a scientific term.
Scitopia is a science student's dream. The service partners with over societies like the American Institute of Physics, the Acoustical Society of America, the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), and the Electrochemical Society for journal articles and scientific papers. Scitopia is enrolling more scientific societies and organizations and is hoping to expand its database of resources.
The service is very simple, and reminds me of Google. There's a search box in the middle of the page and not much else. Type in your search term and you'll be get results sorted by relevancy. If you click the Advanced tab at the top of the page, you'll see filtering options that will help you refine your search.
Scitopia's search results include research papers, journal articles, patents, and government documents. Scitopia doesn't aggregate documents or crawl the Web, either; all of its documents are provided by the scholarly societies and groups that participate. This means that you won't find someone's non-peer-reviewed opinion paper or rambling manifesto mixed in with your search results, and you can be sure that the documents you get have been reviewed by members of the scientific community.
The only downside to Scitopia is that the search results lead you to the individual sites of the organizations who own the paper. This means that once you click through, if you need the full text of an article, you may need to have a membership with that society, or be part of an educational or government institution that has access to those documents. Most colleges and universities provide this kind of access to their students, staff, and faculty, so if you're a student you're in good shape.
Even so, Scitopia is a great resource to add to your list of bookmarks if you're doing any kind of academic research. The search is speedy and the results are accurate and useful, something I can't always say about a Google search for a scientific term.
Free Feature Idea: 'BackTalk' for Web Video
While trying to parse the ongoing tit-for-tat video battle between Gearlog and CNET's Crave, my reaction was something on the order of Scrubs' Dr. Cox saying sarcastically, "For cripes' sake, get back to work!"
But I couldn't really say that, either on YouTube or any of the other eleventy-billion video sites. So here's my idea: allow users to embed a small blurb of video, limiting it to ten seconds or less. Shrink down the video's size to give the visual clue that it's a response, allow it to be attached to the source video, and -- here's the kicker -- cache them while loading the original video, then trigger the clip through a mouseover.
Simple and pithy, sure, but that's the whole point. It doesn't replace comments or "video responses," and lends itself well to the snippets of video captured by cell phones and other devices. Call it a "BackTalk". (I liked "Snapback," but it seemed like that term's more commonly used.)
Is this a free idea? Not entirely. If you implement it, record a video with your development or management team singing an ode of praise to AppScout, to the tune of Ode to Joy. We'll link (or embed it) here.
But I couldn't really say that, either on YouTube or any of the other eleventy-billion video sites. So here's my idea: allow users to embed a small blurb of video, limiting it to ten seconds or less. Shrink down the video's size to give the visual clue that it's a response, allow it to be attached to the source video, and -- here's the kicker -- cache them while loading the original video, then trigger the clip through a mouseover.
Simple and pithy, sure, but that's the whole point. It doesn't replace comments or "video responses," and lends itself well to the snippets of video captured by cell phones and other devices. Call it a "BackTalk". (I liked "Snapback," but it seemed like that term's more commonly used.)
Is this a free idea? Not entirely. If you implement it, record a video with your development or management team singing an ode of praise to AppScout, to the tune of Ode to Joy. We'll link (or embed it) here.
Google Docs Goes Mobile
You think the browser and OS wars are exciting? Just check out what's going on in the world of online office apps. Granted the space isn't hyped as, say, Vista vs. Jaguar Ubuntu or IE vs. Firefox vs. Opera, but damned something exciting doesn't pop up, week in, week out.
Google is making their already terrific Docs and Spreadsheets that much better, by bringing it to the small screen, with Google Docs Mobile.
The app still suffers from some pretty key limitations, however. For one thing, users can only read docs--not edit them. Also, you can presently only use the service with a Blackberry or iPhone. If you want to open up a spreadsheet, you'll have to view it as an HTML document or download it as XLS.
Google is making their already terrific Docs and Spreadsheets that much better, by bringing it to the small screen, with Google Docs Mobile.
The app still suffers from some pretty key limitations, however. For one thing, users can only read docs--not edit them. Also, you can presently only use the service with a Blackberry or iPhone. If you want to open up a spreadsheet, you'll have to view it as an HTML document or download it as XLS.
Monday, August 17, 2009
Hands On: The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass
Tested and reviewed by Alex Sanfilippo, age 13.
Are you ready to continue your epic quest? The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass for the DS begins right where our hero, Link, left off at the Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker. At first I was a little skeptical toward the game, because I enjoy playing games with consoles that hook up with the TV, but I have had a lot of fun playing this game. The Phantom Hourglass is the first Legend of Zelda game to be featured on the Nintendo DS; the graphics are very clear for a DS game, and the new controls are fun and easy to learn. Similar to previous Legend of Zelda games, Phantom Hourglass is a challenging game filled with adventures, puzzles, and quests.
In this sequel, Link sets sail with Tetra (who decided to stay a pirate) and her swashbuckling crew. The adventure kicks off with a search for a legendary ghost ship that disappears with whoever is brave (or foolish) enough to board it in search of its treasure. When they find the ship, Tetra, who believes the ghost ship is just some pirate crew up to no good, jumps onboard to get to the bottom of the mystery. Link heroically jumps after her, but he falls into the water--and the ship disappears.
Link wakes up and finds himself on an island. He meets a friendly fairy named Celia who has lost her memory. She takes him to an old man (who she calls Grandpa) to tell you about the ghost ship. Grandpa says to stay away from the ship, but (of course) Link doesn't listen. Now you have the entire island to explore and new skills to learn with the help of Celia and the island's natives.
The controls of this game are completely different from those of its predecessors: All the controls are activated by touch. To move Link, you just drag the stylus to where you want him to go. All sword combat involves the stylus too. When you draw circles around Link, he does a spin attack .To lunge at a bad guy than slash him, you just tap. For a horizontal slash, you swipe the stylus across your foe. To roll, you draw small circles where you want Link to roll to.
For some tasks, you may need to blow or talk into your DS's microphone. Conveniently, when you receive dungeon or island maps, you can draw on them with the stylus to mark important paths and places. You also use the touch screen to sail around and perform tasks while sailing. To my relief, sailing doesn't take as long as it did in Wind Waker. The controls are a new and fun way to experience The Legend of Zelda.
Link also has a stock of his classic weapons. Bow and arrows, the hookshot, bombs, boomerangs and more aid Link on his quest. They all perform the same functions as in previous Legend of Zelda games but have new controls on the DS. For example, you can draw the path you want your boomerang to follow, and tap exactly where you want to throw your bomb. You receive these weapons in dungeons; they're needed to defeat certain foes and perform certain tasks in the dungeons.
In addition to the adventure part of the game, there is a multiplayer mini-game. You can find opponents via Wi-Fi or just by challenging someone close to you who also has a DS. One person plays as Link, and the other player controls three phantoms. The objective of the mini-game is to get as many force gems on your side as possible while avoiding the phantoms. You have three chances to get as many force gems as possible. If you get caught by a phantom or time runs out you switch places with your opponent. You now control the phantoms, and your opponent becomes Link. Whoever has the most force gems at the end wins the game. This minigame can be a lot fun to play with friends.
The release date for the game was October 1, 2007. It is available at stores such as EB Games, Game Stop, Best Buy, and Circuit City for about $34.99, and it's worth every penny. The Phantom Hourglass is one of the best games I have played on the Nintendo DS. It has challenging puzzles, amazing graphics, and fun-to-solve dungeons. It is a truly unique game for the DS.
Are you ready to continue your epic quest? The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass for the DS begins right where our hero, Link, left off at the Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker. At first I was a little skeptical toward the game, because I enjoy playing games with consoles that hook up with the TV, but I have had a lot of fun playing this game. The Phantom Hourglass is the first Legend of Zelda game to be featured on the Nintendo DS; the graphics are very clear for a DS game, and the new controls are fun and easy to learn. Similar to previous Legend of Zelda games, Phantom Hourglass is a challenging game filled with adventures, puzzles, and quests.
In this sequel, Link sets sail with Tetra (who decided to stay a pirate) and her swashbuckling crew. The adventure kicks off with a search for a legendary ghost ship that disappears with whoever is brave (or foolish) enough to board it in search of its treasure. When they find the ship, Tetra, who believes the ghost ship is just some pirate crew up to no good, jumps onboard to get to the bottom of the mystery. Link heroically jumps after her, but he falls into the water--and the ship disappears.
Link wakes up and finds himself on an island. He meets a friendly fairy named Celia who has lost her memory. She takes him to an old man (who she calls Grandpa) to tell you about the ghost ship. Grandpa says to stay away from the ship, but (of course) Link doesn't listen. Now you have the entire island to explore and new skills to learn with the help of Celia and the island's natives.
The controls of this game are completely different from those of its predecessors: All the controls are activated by touch. To move Link, you just drag the stylus to where you want him to go. All sword combat involves the stylus too. When you draw circles around Link, he does a spin attack .To lunge at a bad guy than slash him, you just tap. For a horizontal slash, you swipe the stylus across your foe. To roll, you draw small circles where you want Link to roll to.
For some tasks, you may need to blow or talk into your DS's microphone. Conveniently, when you receive dungeon or island maps, you can draw on them with the stylus to mark important paths and places. You also use the touch screen to sail around and perform tasks while sailing. To my relief, sailing doesn't take as long as it did in Wind Waker. The controls are a new and fun way to experience The Legend of Zelda.
Link also has a stock of his classic weapons. Bow and arrows, the hookshot, bombs, boomerangs and more aid Link on his quest. They all perform the same functions as in previous Legend of Zelda games but have new controls on the DS. For example, you can draw the path you want your boomerang to follow, and tap exactly where you want to throw your bomb. You receive these weapons in dungeons; they're needed to defeat certain foes and perform certain tasks in the dungeons.
In addition to the adventure part of the game, there is a multiplayer mini-game. You can find opponents via Wi-Fi or just by challenging someone close to you who also has a DS. One person plays as Link, and the other player controls three phantoms. The objective of the mini-game is to get as many force gems on your side as possible while avoiding the phantoms. You have three chances to get as many force gems as possible. If you get caught by a phantom or time runs out you switch places with your opponent. You now control the phantoms, and your opponent becomes Link. Whoever has the most force gems at the end wins the game. This minigame can be a lot fun to play with friends.
The release date for the game was October 1, 2007. It is available at stores such as EB Games, Game Stop, Best Buy, and Circuit City for about $34.99, and it's worth every penny. The Phantom Hourglass is one of the best games I have played on the Nintendo DS. It has challenging puzzles, amazing graphics, and fun-to-solve dungeons. It is a truly unique game for the DS.
Is Web 3.0 Here? Is It Twine?
Radar Networks is hoping to have the first Semantic Web killer app in its just-announced product, Twine. In case you haven't been following Sir Tim Berners-Lee's pet technology, the Semantic Web will be better than the boring, old, plain-vanilla Web in that everything will be tagged using Resource Description Framework (RDF) and ontologized with Web Ontology Language (OWL) so that pages and content will be meaningful. The newly added meaning will make it possible for other computers to use the content intelligently: by giving you more-useful and context-aware search results, for example. Twine extends this to all of your information--email, sites visited, feeds--and will automatically generate the tags to "semantify" the data.
Radar's Nova Spivack treated PC Magazine staff to a phone-and-Web demo of Twines this past Wednesday, though we weren't able to start actually playing with the product yet. Spivak stressed the importance of the product's motto,"Tie it all together," and likened the Twine interface to "a Facebook, except for information." Each user of the hosted Twine service will have his own "twine," which analyzes and stores all the collected metadata for all of his information. Twine will offer several ways to enter content into its uber index of all your information--via a Web button, by importing from documents, receiving it from collaborators, or sending email to your twine. Connecting your twine to other users' will result in a network effect benefit to knowledge management, claimed Spivack.
Twine is a hosted service that uses open semantic standards RDF, OWL, and SPARQL (Simple Protocol and RDF Query Language), but will probably become available for large organizations. It will be free, supported by personalized advertisements, but premium versions will become available that have storage and admin options.
I'm skeptical of the idea that machines can find the meaning in Web pages without the page's creator specifying the information, as is Twine's proposed goal. Say a Web page for a product contains this data: "This is a consumer electronics product. Here's the product name. It's a television. It's a widescreen television. It costs $999. This is the description." Without someone supplying the metadata for each of these pieces of information, how can an algorithm know where on the page the relevant data is? Maybe that's just where Radar's secret sauce comes in, and you have to give the company credit for tackling this challenge.
Though even its creator seems to have given up the idea that the Semantic Web will replace our tried-and-true Web, there are rumblings in the developer community that the idea will still be used for something alongside the existing Web--most likely intra-organizational collaboration. Twine seems to fit that scenario, and seems suited to use by trusted team members who need to share knowledge for their projects.
Radar's Nova Spivack treated PC Magazine staff to a phone-and-Web demo of Twines this past Wednesday, though we weren't able to start actually playing with the product yet. Spivak stressed the importance of the product's motto,"Tie it all together," and likened the Twine interface to "a Facebook, except for information." Each user of the hosted Twine service will have his own "twine," which analyzes and stores all the collected metadata for all of his information. Twine will offer several ways to enter content into its uber index of all your information--via a Web button, by importing from documents, receiving it from collaborators, or sending email to your twine. Connecting your twine to other users' will result in a network effect benefit to knowledge management, claimed Spivack.
Twine is a hosted service that uses open semantic standards RDF, OWL, and SPARQL (Simple Protocol and RDF Query Language), but will probably become available for large organizations. It will be free, supported by personalized advertisements, but premium versions will become available that have storage and admin options.
I'm skeptical of the idea that machines can find the meaning in Web pages without the page's creator specifying the information, as is Twine's proposed goal. Say a Web page for a product contains this data: "This is a consumer electronics product. Here's the product name. It's a television. It's a widescreen television. It costs $999. This is the description." Without someone supplying the metadata for each of these pieces of information, how can an algorithm know where on the page the relevant data is? Maybe that's just where Radar's secret sauce comes in, and you have to give the company credit for tackling this challenge.
Though even its creator seems to have given up the idea that the Semantic Web will replace our tried-and-true Web, there are rumblings in the developer community that the idea will still be used for something alongside the existing Web--most likely intra-organizational collaboration. Twine seems to fit that scenario, and seems suited to use by trusted team members who need to share knowledge for their projects.
Is Web 5.0 Here? Is It Pizza?
Inspired by the quickly becoming pretentious definitions of various Web "generations," , I offer you "The Joy of Tech's take on the subject. It's not a bad webcomic; sort of a Daily Show take on tech news, in the way Penny Arcade treats gaming news. John Markoff at the New York Times offers his perspective.
(Thanks to Kara Swisher at AllThingsD for the link.)
(Thanks to Kara Swisher at AllThingsD for the link.)
On Beyond Vista: First Public Demo of Windows 7
Still hesitating about the big move to Vista? Maybe you're best off waiting for Windows 7, the successor to Vista, which Microsoft is already hard at work on. Want proof? Long Zheng, the Australian hacker behind the blog istartedsomething, has posted a clip from what I'm pretty sure is the first public demonstration of the forthcoming operating system. Sure, it's not scheduled to be released until 2010, but still, I'm confident that when it arrives, it'll be super neat--and well worth the wait!
So what can be gleaned from the video? The portion Zheng highlights is a discussion of the Windows 7 core, which turns out to be a relatively lean machine. In it, engineer Eric Traut shows off a streamlined app called MinWin--get it?--not a product itself but probably the basis for future products, he points out. The Windows 7 source code is about 25MB on disk, an interesting comparison to the 4GB that the full Windows Vista takes up. Oh, and there's no graphical system yet, which explains the ASCII logo.
There's also an interesting walk through the history of Microsoft's operating systems. You knew Vista was OS 6, right? And that XP was 5, and NT 4.0 was 4, and Windows 3.1 ... well, you get the picture. If Windows 7 doesn't interest you, watch the clip for a quick walkthrough of Windows 2 and 1 as well.
So what can be gleaned from the video? The portion Zheng highlights is a discussion of the Windows 7 core, which turns out to be a relatively lean machine. In it, engineer Eric Traut shows off a streamlined app called MinWin--get it?--not a product itself but probably the basis for future products, he points out. The Windows 7 source code is about 25MB on disk, an interesting comparison to the 4GB that the full Windows Vista takes up. Oh, and there's no graphical system yet, which explains the ASCII logo.
There's also an interesting walk through the history of Microsoft's operating systems. You knew Vista was OS 6, right? And that XP was 5, and NT 4.0 was 4, and Windows 3.1 ... well, you get the picture. If Windows 7 doesn't interest you, watch the clip for a quick walkthrough of Windows 2 and 1 as well.
Tutsbuzz: Design and Programming Tutorials
If you're a graphic designer or a programmer, you understand how important it is to stay on top of new technologies and why you need to learn the ins and outs of new versions of the programs you likely use every day. But time is usually of the essence, and sometimes you don't have a chance to read the change notes and play with new features before they're released and you're expected to use them. That's where Tutsbuzz comes in.
Tutzbuzz is packed with tutorials and demos that show you how to make the most of your favorite design and development applications, learn new programming languages, and find new uses for programs you may already have. Many of the tutorials are available in video, so you can follow along while watching the masters at work.
All the videos and tutorials at Tutsbuzz are aggregated from other sites, so the service is less of a tutorial builder than a place to find tutorials from elsewhere online. The community at Tutsbuzz ranks and votes on the tutorials that they find. You can rate one highly if you thought it was particularly useful, and also add it to your favorites if you need to come back to it. The tutorial descriptions are available in three languages--English, Turkish, and German--even though tutorials themselves may not be.
The tutorials at Tutsbuzz aren't just for graphic designers and desktop publishers. While there are dozens of tutorials and links for people wanting to learn more about Photoshop, Illustrator, and other Adobe applications, 3D graphic designers can find tutorials. Applications such as Maya, Cinema 4D, and Poser have tutorials available at Tutsbuzz. If you're into video editing with Final Cut Pro or Adobe Premiere, or audio editing with Sound Forge and Adobe Audition, there are tutorials for you as well. If you're a programmer or developer and looking to brush up on C , C#, Visual Basic, or even Ruby, you'll find resources that will keep your skills sharp. There's even a section for database administrators looking for training on SQL, MySQL, Access, and Oracle.
When you find a tutorial you'd like to take, simply click on it to go directly to the site that hosts it. If you're interested only in video tutorials, you can click the Video button on the left side of the page to browse search results that contain just video tutorials. The default search at the site includes both HTML tutorials and how-tos as well as Web video.
The only way I can think of to make Tutsbuzz better would be to include site-exclusive tutorials. (Actually, there are two available directly from the people behind Tutsbuzz; unfortunately, neither of them is all that great.) For now, the site's strength is in finding tutorials from around the Web and making them available to the public. If you have a tutorial of your own or from another site to submit, you can sign up for a free account and submit them, as well as rate others.
Tutzbuzz is packed with tutorials and demos that show you how to make the most of your favorite design and development applications, learn new programming languages, and find new uses for programs you may already have. Many of the tutorials are available in video, so you can follow along while watching the masters at work.
All the videos and tutorials at Tutsbuzz are aggregated from other sites, so the service is less of a tutorial builder than a place to find tutorials from elsewhere online. The community at Tutsbuzz ranks and votes on the tutorials that they find. You can rate one highly if you thought it was particularly useful, and also add it to your favorites if you need to come back to it. The tutorial descriptions are available in three languages--English, Turkish, and German--even though tutorials themselves may not be.
The tutorials at Tutsbuzz aren't just for graphic designers and desktop publishers. While there are dozens of tutorials and links for people wanting to learn more about Photoshop, Illustrator, and other Adobe applications, 3D graphic designers can find tutorials. Applications such as Maya, Cinema 4D, and Poser have tutorials available at Tutsbuzz. If you're into video editing with Final Cut Pro or Adobe Premiere, or audio editing with Sound Forge and Adobe Audition, there are tutorials for you as well. If you're a programmer or developer and looking to brush up on C , C#, Visual Basic, or even Ruby, you'll find resources that will keep your skills sharp. There's even a section for database administrators looking for training on SQL, MySQL, Access, and Oracle.
When you find a tutorial you'd like to take, simply click on it to go directly to the site that hosts it. If you're interested only in video tutorials, you can click the Video button on the left side of the page to browse search results that contain just video tutorials. The default search at the site includes both HTML tutorials and how-tos as well as Web video.
The only way I can think of to make Tutsbuzz better would be to include site-exclusive tutorials. (Actually, there are two available directly from the people behind Tutsbuzz; unfortunately, neither of them is all that great.) For now, the site's strength is in finding tutorials from around the Web and making them available to the public. If you have a tutorial of your own or from another site to submit, you can sign up for a free account and submit them, as well as rate others.
Saturday, August 15, 2009
Green Deals Daily: Find Eco-Friendly Bargains
Shopping for environmentally friendly products from socially responsible companies doesn't have to be expensive (though it often is!). A lot of companies are lowering the prices of their green products and services to attract more buyers and get the products into mainstream markets. If you're looking for a deal when shopping for green goods, you might check out Green Deals Daily, a Digg-like social news site where users and editors post bargains and let the community vote on them. The site is brand new and just beginning to get attention.
Green Deals Daily uses the Digg model to rank and promote the deals and bargains posted to the site. Registered users (registration is free) and the editors behind the service post at least one deal each day, and the community votes on it. The higher the vote, the more people thought the bargain was worthwhile or at least worth being featured.
The service isn't just for new products and services, though; Green Deals Daily features a number of tips and tricks to help you reduce your environmental impact and make the most out of the products you already own. After all, it's important to reduce and reuse as well as recycle. Green Deals Daily does bring you bargains on products with socially responsible and eco-friendly companies, but just as often it suggests other relevant links and information.
To illustrate: On the home page today is a link to a credit card company that donates a portion of its profits (and each of your purchases) to eco-friendly organizations and environmental causes, five things you should know before buying LED light bulbs, and a site that'll help you find eco-employment if you're looking for jobs in Canada. If you're interested in older deals, just scroll down the page, or click the tag cloud to find specific stories on items that interest you. You can click on "new deals" to find the bargains and articles that have been recently added to the site. The most highly rated and popular deals (along with the featured deal of the day) make it to the front page.
Green Deals Daily looks to be new, and most of the articles and deals published on the site only have a few votes. But the site has a lot of potential to bring environmentally friendly deals and articles to the masses and provide a real source for people who are interested in reducing their impact on the environment.
Green Deals Daily uses the Digg model to rank and promote the deals and bargains posted to the site. Registered users (registration is free) and the editors behind the service post at least one deal each day, and the community votes on it. The higher the vote, the more people thought the bargain was worthwhile or at least worth being featured.
The service isn't just for new products and services, though; Green Deals Daily features a number of tips and tricks to help you reduce your environmental impact and make the most out of the products you already own. After all, it's important to reduce and reuse as well as recycle. Green Deals Daily does bring you bargains on products with socially responsible and eco-friendly companies, but just as often it suggests other relevant links and information.
To illustrate: On the home page today is a link to a credit card company that donates a portion of its profits (and each of your purchases) to eco-friendly organizations and environmental causes, five things you should know before buying LED light bulbs, and a site that'll help you find eco-employment if you're looking for jobs in Canada. If you're interested in older deals, just scroll down the page, or click the tag cloud to find specific stories on items that interest you. You can click on "new deals" to find the bargains and articles that have been recently added to the site. The most highly rated and popular deals (along with the featured deal of the day) make it to the front page.
Green Deals Daily looks to be new, and most of the articles and deals published on the site only have a few votes. But the site has a lot of potential to bring environmentally friendly deals and articles to the masses and provide a real source for people who are interested in reducing their impact on the environment.
TinkerTool Lets You Tweak Out Your Mac
Mac users familiar with Mac OS know that Apple hides a number of features and tweaks in the OS for the sake of usability and ease-of-use. They can be unlocked only by power users who know what they're looking for. But a lot of those features can really improve the user experience. Thankfully, tools exist that help open them up to the average user. TinkerTool is one.
Some of the features TinkerTool (completely free) opens up make the interface more attractive and customizable, and others improve performance by changing graphics settings and turning off animations. If you're looking for more control over your Mac, TinkerTool is worth a try.
The version of Mac OS you're running determines what options TinkerTool can uncover for you. The app works with OS 10.2 through 10.4, and its developer expects TinkerTool to be ready for 10.5 as well, when it's released later this month.
Among some of the best tweaks that TinkerTool offers are ways to turn off Dock and Finder animations, which occur when you open files, applications, select items in menus, and more. Turning off these options can help some Macs, especially those with less RAM or running on older hardware, perform a bit better.
If you're a Mac user who often works with Windows network shares or portable storage, you're familiar with the annoying .DS_Store files that Mac OS creates on those volumes when they move from system to system. TinkerTool can keep your Mac from creating them. Additionally, TinkerTool gives you more options to customize your Dock; you can place it at the top of the screen (a feature hidden in OS X by default), make the icons transparent, change the animations, add shadow to the icons, and more. And TinkerTool offers a world of customization options for Safari, the way the Finder handles network files, displays icons and text on-screen, and more.
If you love TinkerTool, you can keep it installed for free as long as you like. If you need to remove it, it can safely revert your tweaks and settings back to OS X defaults, or back to the way they were before you started tweaking.
Don't expect a tool that'll help automate processes and run regular disk checkups though; TinkerTool is meant to help you customize your user experience and get rid of some of the more annoying aspects of the OS, not to keep your Mac running smoothly. TinkerTool handles a number of things that I've heard Mac users grumble about in the past, like why Safari can't open PDFs inside the browser instead of launching Preview, and why you can't re-order login items. Tinkertool fixes both of those issues, and much more.
Some of the features TinkerTool (completely free) opens up make the interface more attractive and customizable, and others improve performance by changing graphics settings and turning off animations. If you're looking for more control over your Mac, TinkerTool is worth a try.
The version of Mac OS you're running determines what options TinkerTool can uncover for you. The app works with OS 10.2 through 10.4, and its developer expects TinkerTool to be ready for 10.5 as well, when it's released later this month.
Among some of the best tweaks that TinkerTool offers are ways to turn off Dock and Finder animations, which occur when you open files, applications, select items in menus, and more. Turning off these options can help some Macs, especially those with less RAM or running on older hardware, perform a bit better.
If you're a Mac user who often works with Windows network shares or portable storage, you're familiar with the annoying .DS_Store files that Mac OS creates on those volumes when they move from system to system. TinkerTool can keep your Mac from creating them. Additionally, TinkerTool gives you more options to customize your Dock; you can place it at the top of the screen (a feature hidden in OS X by default), make the icons transparent, change the animations, add shadow to the icons, and more. And TinkerTool offers a world of customization options for Safari, the way the Finder handles network files, displays icons and text on-screen, and more.
If you love TinkerTool, you can keep it installed for free as long as you like. If you need to remove it, it can safely revert your tweaks and settings back to OS X defaults, or back to the way they were before you started tweaking.
Don't expect a tool that'll help automate processes and run regular disk checkups though; TinkerTool is meant to help you customize your user experience and get rid of some of the more annoying aspects of the OS, not to keep your Mac running smoothly. TinkerTool handles a number of things that I've heard Mac users grumble about in the past, like why Safari can't open PDFs inside the browser instead of launching Preview, and why you can't re-order login items. Tinkertool fixes both of those issues, and much more.
Google Goes Black, Goes Back
Remember Blackle? The site, designed by Australian Web design company, Heap Media, was created as a "more energy efficient" alternative to Google, after reports claimed that a switch to a black background by the search giant would save 750 megawatts a year, worldwide.
Last Saturday, the city of San Francisco celebrated Lights Out San Francisco, which urged that everyone in the city turn off their lights for one hour--8-9:00 PM. Google, who has been making their own strides toward increasing energy efficiency, adopted a black background on Saturday, visible to all bay area users.
The move was more out of solidarity than anything else. Google reverted back to their old white background at the end of the day, reiterating their position that a move to a black homepage would in fact have little effects on global energy consumption.
Last Saturday, the city of San Francisco celebrated Lights Out San Francisco, which urged that everyone in the city turn off their lights for one hour--8-9:00 PM. Google, who has been making their own strides toward increasing energy efficiency, adopted a black background on Saturday, visible to all bay area users.
The move was more out of solidarity than anything else. Google reverted back to their old white background at the end of the day, reiterating their position that a move to a black homepage would in fact have little effects on global energy consumption.
Find Eco-Friendly Building Materials at Ecolect
If you're building your dream home, renovating your current home, or just starting a new project in your house, you're probably sensitive to how energy-efficient you can make your building plans. At the same time, many local and regional authorities are offering rebates, tax breaks, and other incentives to build with green materials or in an environmentally safe and friendly way. If you're looking for more advice on environmentally friendly building products and materials than you might get from the guy at your local hardware store, head over to Ecolect. The goal of the service is to provide a community where builders and developers as well as homeowners and renovators can learn about new building products and sustainable materials for their building projects.
The word "ecolect" is a coinage from a combination of the words "ecology" and "intellect," and that's exactly what the people behind the site bring to the table. The service aims to educate new and prospective builders on sustainable technologies and materials, explain how those materials are made and what makes them sustainable and environmentally friendly, and finally, tell you where you can go to get them. The people behind the site are designers, so expect more emphasis on materials you can use to design the interior of your home and less on insulation and such. At the same time, Ecolect is moving to include building materials with in-depth articles and reports on topics such as flooring materials and affordable solar panels.
The service has an extensive catalog of sustainable materials: paints and resins, flooring and roofing materials, and more. When you find an item you're interested in, click on it to read more details and to find out where you can order it and who manufactures it. Some of the products at Ecolect are available at your local building-supply stores, and others are specialty items you need to order directly from the manufacturer.
The editors at Ecolect have their own standards for sustainability, which are outlined on the site, so you can be sure that the products featured meet some standard of environmental responsibility. Additionally, the Ecolect editors keep a staff blog that follows company events, peripheral environmental news, and events in the industry. If you know of some eco-friendly building or design materials, you can submit them to the site and even submit your own business, if you're a seller of sustainable building goods.
I found the list of products at Ecolect remarkable for a site that, in theory, shouldn't have too much to write about. I rent my house, but I can definitely see myself turning to Ecolect when it comes time to build my dream home or renovate a fixer-upper that I might buy someday. Ecolect can save you money on your energy bills and qualify you for green building bonuses, not to mention reduce the environmental impact of your building project or home renovation.
The word "ecolect" is a coinage from a combination of the words "ecology" and "intellect," and that's exactly what the people behind the site bring to the table. The service aims to educate new and prospective builders on sustainable technologies and materials, explain how those materials are made and what makes them sustainable and environmentally friendly, and finally, tell you where you can go to get them. The people behind the site are designers, so expect more emphasis on materials you can use to design the interior of your home and less on insulation and such. At the same time, Ecolect is moving to include building materials with in-depth articles and reports on topics such as flooring materials and affordable solar panels.
The service has an extensive catalog of sustainable materials: paints and resins, flooring and roofing materials, and more. When you find an item you're interested in, click on it to read more details and to find out where you can order it and who manufactures it. Some of the products at Ecolect are available at your local building-supply stores, and others are specialty items you need to order directly from the manufacturer.
The editors at Ecolect have their own standards for sustainability, which are outlined on the site, so you can be sure that the products featured meet some standard of environmental responsibility. Additionally, the Ecolect editors keep a staff blog that follows company events, peripheral environmental news, and events in the industry. If you know of some eco-friendly building or design materials, you can submit them to the site and even submit your own business, if you're a seller of sustainable building goods.
I found the list of products at Ecolect remarkable for a site that, in theory, shouldn't have too much to write about. I rent my house, but I can definitely see myself turning to Ecolect when it comes time to build my dream home or renovate a fixer-upper that I might buy someday. Ecolect can save you money on your energy bills and qualify you for green building bonuses, not to mention reduce the environmental impact of your building project or home renovation.
MySpace Launches "Roommates" Web Series
What's the future of Web video? Lots of giggling blond girls, if MySpace has its way. MySpace TV just launched Roommates, the first original series created specifically for the site.
Created in conjunction with Iron Sink Media, the series revolves around eight attractive females who have recently graduated from college.
Roommates seeks to appeal to the large overlap of viewership between those who strive to be attractive sorority girls, and those who just like to look at them. Both demos should be sufficiently satisfied by the highbrow subject matter tackled by the series. Says NewTeeVee: "the first episode features one of the girls standing in her underwear scolding her dog, followed by some girl-on-girl farting."
You're going to have to take their word for that one. I didn't make it that far into the first three minute webisode.
The series is scripted, though MySpace seems to be positioning it as something of an even ditzier version of The Real World, leading some on the Web to mistakenly refer to it as a "reality series" (not that reality shows are ever especially real to begin begin with, of course, but let's digress from the moment).
The interesting thing here, however, is the interaction between the series and the Myspace community. Character profiles and vlogs aren't especially groundbreaking, but the fact that MySpace audience interaction will affect the storyline certainly gives the series something of an edge.
Roommates premiers today, running Monday through Friday, until December 21, for a totally of 45 glorious episodes.
Created in conjunction with Iron Sink Media, the series revolves around eight attractive females who have recently graduated from college.
Roommates seeks to appeal to the large overlap of viewership between those who strive to be attractive sorority girls, and those who just like to look at them. Both demos should be sufficiently satisfied by the highbrow subject matter tackled by the series. Says NewTeeVee: "the first episode features one of the girls standing in her underwear scolding her dog, followed by some girl-on-girl farting."
You're going to have to take their word for that one. I didn't make it that far into the first three minute webisode.
The series is scripted, though MySpace seems to be positioning it as something of an even ditzier version of The Real World, leading some on the Web to mistakenly refer to it as a "reality series" (not that reality shows are ever especially real to begin begin with, of course, but let's digress from the moment).
The interesting thing here, however, is the interaction between the series and the Myspace community. Character profiles and vlogs aren't especially groundbreaking, but the fact that MySpace audience interaction will affect the storyline certainly gives the series something of an edge.
Roommates premiers today, running Monday through Friday, until December 21, for a totally of 45 glorious episodes.
Fall CTIA: Windows Mobile Gets More Manageable
The fall wireless show which I'm attending here in San Francisco is typically lower key and more enterprise focused than the big spring show, and Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer's keynote today was a bit of a snoozer for anyone who isn't an IT manager.
The big announcement was Microsoft System Center Mobile Device Manager 2008, a server application which pumps up IT departments' abilities to manage and deploy Windows Mobile gadgets. Mobile Device Manager lets Windows Mobile administrators deploy applications remotely, manage many devices from a unified console, turn devices' features (like cameras) on and off remotely and provision multiple phones with policies over the air. To a large extent, it's designed to give Microsoft's infrastructure the same management capabilities that RIM's Blackberries have always been famous for.
Mobile Device Manager won't work with all current devices, though. It will work with the AT
The big announcement was Microsoft System Center Mobile Device Manager 2008, a server application which pumps up IT departments' abilities to manage and deploy Windows Mobile gadgets. Mobile Device Manager lets Windows Mobile administrators deploy applications remotely, manage many devices from a unified console, turn devices' features (like cameras) on and off remotely and provision multiple phones with policies over the air. To a large extent, it's designed to give Microsoft's infrastructure the same management capabilities that RIM's Blackberries have always been famous for.
Mobile Device Manager won't work with all current devices, though. It will work with the AT
Ask the Presidential Candidates with 10Questions.com
Dying to know what the presidential candidates think about universal healthcare, global warming, and other important issues? Voice your concerns and questions on 10Questions.com. TechPresident.com partnered with The New York Times and MSNBC to form a user-generated presidential video debate, which welcomes all users to submit online video questions addressed to the candidates. Submitted videos can be shot through various video platforms including YouTube, MySpace, Yahoo and Blip.tv; just tag your video with the word "10Questions." 10Questions.com will then display your videos and let the public vote on the ten best videos to be sent to all of the major candidates. (I hope "major" includes Ron Paul!)The candidates will be given four weeks to respond to each of the ten videos and will post their responses on the site. After viewing their responses, you can comment on whether or not you feel the candidate answered the question (because sometimes they don't).
Video questions are accepted until November 14, 2007. The entire project is said to be completed by December 31, 2007. One video question per user.
Video questions are accepted until November 14, 2007. The entire project is said to be completed by December 31, 2007. One video question per user.
Agreeship: Prenups go Web 2.0
Yesterday we explored the impact of new technologies on the world of players. Should your relationship blossom past those initial rounds of player hatin', you may want to seek the service of Agreeship, which will help you hash out all of those pesky legal details, before you're inevitably calling 1-800-Divorce in the ensuing months.
For $15, the site, which positions itself as an, "affordable online prenup and relationship consultation service for couples," provides a survey of 20 yes or no questions, which, "help increase awareness [and] improve communication among couples." The service will be adding consultation with lawyers, financial planners, and counselors, next year.
The site is specifically targeted toward international and intercultural couples, and the legal and cultural issues might come about, being from different backgrounds.
Scores from the survey are used to determine whether a prenup should be signed and what kind of issues couples can expect to face, down the road.
All said, $15 seems like a small price to pay for the romance of a well-timed Internet prenup.
For $15, the site, which positions itself as an, "affordable online prenup and relationship consultation service for couples," provides a survey of 20 yes or no questions, which, "help increase awareness [and] improve communication among couples." The service will be adding consultation with lawyers, financial planners, and counselors, next year.
The site is specifically targeted toward international and intercultural couples, and the legal and cultural issues might come about, being from different backgrounds.
Scores from the survey are used to determine whether a prenup should be signed and what kind of issues couples can expect to face, down the road.
All said, $15 seems like a small price to pay for the romance of a well-timed Internet prenup.
A Grim Google Map of California's Wildfires
For the hundreds of thousands of people who have been evacuated from the wildfires raging through Southern California, this isn't news. For those of you who live nearby, however, check out calfires.com, set up by the Governor's Office of Emergency Services. Fires blown by the notorious Santa Ana winds are more frequent than the major earthquakes that California is notorious for, and as the map shows, they're every bit as catastrophic.
eMusic Launches Audiobooks
We established the other week that a fairly good method for grabbing my attention is sending along a press release featuring just about any film centering around a rockabilly samurai battling evildoers in a post-apocalyptic Las Vegas. Another good method? Get one of my current favorite local bands to play one of your press event.
Last night in New York's lower east side, ivy league afro-pop indie-rockers, Vampire Weekend, helped eMusic introduce their new audiobook catalog. A fitting match, I suppose, given eMusic long history of being a friend to the indie community and Vampire Weekend being a quartet of Columbia grads who surely read a few books between them on a fairly regular basis.
That can't be too easy, however, given their undoubtedly hectic rock 'n roll lifestyles. Perhaps the introduction of an audiobook like Perry Keenlyside's The History of English Literature Unabridged, read by Derek Jacobi or Nietzsche's Thus Spoke Zarathustra, read by Jon Cartwright and Alex Jennings into their regular van drive schedule would help ease some of the strain.
Now available on the site, via a beta tab, the new audiobook features what appears to be a pretty solid selection of titles in a number of categories like fiction, biography, drama, classics, history, and sciences. I'm not a huge audiobooks fan myself--I prefer the rush of papercuts--but if I were, I'd surely download a copy of the new Haruki Murakami book, which is avialable through the site.
The selections, which comprise the "world's first audiobooks catalog in mp3," according to eMusic, will be offered to users as a monthly subscription rate, at $9.99 a month for one or $19.99 a month for two, as part of an "introductory offer."
Last night in New York's lower east side, ivy league afro-pop indie-rockers, Vampire Weekend, helped eMusic introduce their new audiobook catalog. A fitting match, I suppose, given eMusic long history of being a friend to the indie community and Vampire Weekend being a quartet of Columbia grads who surely read a few books between them on a fairly regular basis.
That can't be too easy, however, given their undoubtedly hectic rock 'n roll lifestyles. Perhaps the introduction of an audiobook like Perry Keenlyside's The History of English Literature Unabridged, read by Derek Jacobi or Nietzsche's Thus Spoke Zarathustra, read by Jon Cartwright and Alex Jennings into their regular van drive schedule would help ease some of the strain.
Now available on the site, via a beta tab, the new audiobook features what appears to be a pretty solid selection of titles in a number of categories like fiction, biography, drama, classics, history, and sciences. I'm not a huge audiobooks fan myself--I prefer the rush of papercuts--but if I were, I'd surely download a copy of the new Haruki Murakami book, which is avialable through the site.
The selections, which comprise the "world's first audiobooks catalog in mp3," according to eMusic, will be offered to users as a monthly subscription rate, at $9.99 a month for one or $19.99 a month for two, as part of an "introductory offer."
Friday, August 14, 2009
Penguin Removes Audiobooks From eMusic Shelves
It's been just over a month since eMusic, the second largest music store on the Web (and proud of it), launched their new audiobook store, and but the site's already encountering a pretty major stumbling block--Penguin Audio, one the first five major publishers to be distributed by the site, has pulled out, citing fears over potential piracy.
The move means that 150 titles will disappear from eMusic's eShelves.
Like eMusic's longstanding DRM-free approach to music, the store's audiobook catalog doesn't carry the same sort of restrictions as the selections carried by iTunes. "At this moment we're not going to have our titles on eMusic or with anyone else who sells non-DRM until the landscape shakes out and we feel very comfortable and confident that our titles will not be pirated," sPenguin Audio publisher, Dick Heffernan told The New York Times.
It's unclear why what seemed like a good deal initially is now a deal-breaker a mere month later, but Heffernan referred to the deal as a "experiment" that was subsequently rejected by his superiors.
The move means that 150 titles will disappear from eMusic's eShelves.
Like eMusic's longstanding DRM-free approach to music, the store's audiobook catalog doesn't carry the same sort of restrictions as the selections carried by iTunes. "At this moment we're not going to have our titles on eMusic or with anyone else who sells non-DRM until the landscape shakes out and we feel very comfortable and confident that our titles will not be pirated," sPenguin Audio publisher, Dick Heffernan told The New York Times.
It's unclear why what seemed like a good deal initially is now a deal-breaker a mere month later, but Heffernan referred to the deal as a "experiment" that was subsequently rejected by his superiors.
PC Enthusiasts Unite and Fight at The Mod Shop
When I built my desktop, I made sure I had all the right components to customize my rig and make it truly mine. I think a lot of PC enthusiasts and gamers know what I mean. It's about personalizing your system, adding lights and even LCDs to the exterior of your case, liquid cooling your CPU and your video card, and making sure you have the quietest fans. Even if you do all that, there's a whole other level of PC customization in which modders become artists and create something truly unique. At The Mod Shop, those creations are on display, and their creators battle over who's got the best rig.
There are a lot of people out there right now busy with their Dremels, drilling and shaping their PC cases, making geeky art, and then stuffing it full of the latest components. Their systems are art pieces worthy of display in a gallery, but often they're also serious and powerful rigs capable of playing the latest games with the display settings turned up all the way.
At The Mod Shop, PC enthusiasts and modders alike can browse amazing rigs and read about what's in them and how they were made. Some people spend hours and days on their systems; others on the site have spent months and even years getting their machine to look just right. If you're a modder, you can come away with ideas. If you just like to watch, you can marvel at the work required to put some of these together.
The site is partially a social network for the mod community. You can sign up for free, customize your profile, and post photos and descriptions of your system from top to bottom: what kind of case you used, how you customized it, what components are inside, and so on. Other people can then link similar rigs to yours, comment on your system, and click to give you "props" (their word, not mine). Tag your rig, describe it, and label yourself "ready for battle." That's when the fun begins.
Once your system is "ready for battle," you can be chosen at random to throw down against another rig on the site. The two of you will be posted to the front page, and the Mod Shop community gets to vote on who's got the better machine. Sometimes the folks behind the site do a tournament where the winner gets prizes, but other times they just make two machines battle one another. Either way, the community always determines who wins. Win or lose, your battle record is posted in your rig's profile.
You don't have to be a PC modder to understand and enjoy the photos and galleries at The Mod Shop, but it definitely helps. Otherwise you can just have an artistic eye and a love for PC hardware. My system pales in comparison to the rigs battling it out at The Mod Shop, but after looking at all of the systems in the gallery, I'll admit I'm inspired.
There are a lot of people out there right now busy with their Dremels, drilling and shaping their PC cases, making geeky art, and then stuffing it full of the latest components. Their systems are art pieces worthy of display in a gallery, but often they're also serious and powerful rigs capable of playing the latest games with the display settings turned up all the way.
At The Mod Shop, PC enthusiasts and modders alike can browse amazing rigs and read about what's in them and how they were made. Some people spend hours and days on their systems; others on the site have spent months and even years getting their machine to look just right. If you're a modder, you can come away with ideas. If you just like to watch, you can marvel at the work required to put some of these together.
The site is partially a social network for the mod community. You can sign up for free, customize your profile, and post photos and descriptions of your system from top to bottom: what kind of case you used, how you customized it, what components are inside, and so on. Other people can then link similar rigs to yours, comment on your system, and click to give you "props" (their word, not mine). Tag your rig, describe it, and label yourself "ready for battle." That's when the fun begins.
Once your system is "ready for battle," you can be chosen at random to throw down against another rig on the site. The two of you will be posted to the front page, and the Mod Shop community gets to vote on who's got the better machine. Sometimes the folks behind the site do a tournament where the winner gets prizes, but other times they just make two machines battle one another. Either way, the community always determines who wins. Win or lose, your battle record is posted in your rig's profile.
You don't have to be a PC modder to understand and enjoy the photos and galleries at The Mod Shop, but it definitely helps. Otherwise you can just have an artistic eye and a love for PC hardware. My system pales in comparison to the rigs battling it out at The Mod Shop, but after looking at all of the systems in the gallery, I'll admit I'm inspired.
How to Send Email to SMS Cell Phones, By Carrier
You may already be aware of how to send emails to people as SMS messages. Like the name implies, you simply send an email to someone, and it shows up on their phone or PDA as a handy text message.
Loyd Case of ExtremeTech found this handy email-to-SMS guide posted on the QuartertoThree forums, where the industry's game designers and hardware writers sometimes hang out. Here's a list in random order, with the carrier, format, and an example address listed. You'll need to know what service the person subscribes to, of course.
T-Mobile
Format: 10-digit cell phone number @ tmomail.net
Example: 3335551111@tmomail.net
Verizon Wireless
Format: 10-digit cell phone number @ vtext.com
Example: 3335551111@vtext.com
Rogers Wireless
Format: 10-digit cell phone number @ pcs.rogers.com
Example: 3335551111@pcs.rogers.com
Sprint PCS
Format: 10-digit cell phone number @ messaging.sprintpcs.com
Example: 3335551111@messaging.sprintpcs.com
Cingular Wireless
Format: 1 10-digit cell phone number @ cingularme.com
Example: 13335551111@cingularme.com
AT
Loyd Case of ExtremeTech found this handy email-to-SMS guide posted on the QuartertoThree forums, where the industry's game designers and hardware writers sometimes hang out. Here's a list in random order, with the carrier, format, and an example address listed. You'll need to know what service the person subscribes to, of course.
T-Mobile
Format: 10-digit cell phone number @ tmomail.net
Example: 3335551111@tmomail.net
Verizon Wireless
Format: 10-digit cell phone number @ vtext.com
Example: 3335551111@vtext.com
Rogers Wireless
Format: 10-digit cell phone number @ pcs.rogers.com
Example: 3335551111@pcs.rogers.com
Sprint PCS
Format: 10-digit cell phone number @ messaging.sprintpcs.com
Example: 3335551111@messaging.sprintpcs.com
Cingular Wireless
Format: 1 10-digit cell phone number @ cingularme.com
Example: 13335551111@cingularme.com
AT
Ubuntu's Desktop Effects: Proceed with Caution
One of the first things my boyfriend and I wanted to check out on our new Dell Inspiron with Ubuntu was installing Compiz Fusion, which gives your Ubuntu system really cool 3-D desktop effects. Desktop effects are an "experimental feature" in Ubuntu, meaning that they may not work with all computers and could cause your system to, well, act up. Sure enough, that's what happened to us. First, check out the video above (sorry for the dark lighting) of the two effects we played around with, then read on to learn why you need to proceed with caution when installing 3-D effects.
We struggled a lot in the beginning to get the "Windows Wobble" and "Workspaces on a Cube" effects to work without crashing the OS. But when it did work, it was so much fun! Enabling "Windows Wobble" causes your windows to "wobble" when you click on them and move them around your screen. With "Workspaces on a Cube," your desktop becomes a virtual 3-D cube: You're able to move the cube around with your mouse by pressing Ctrl Alt on your keyboard.
So what exactly went wrong with enabling these desktop effects, and why do they cause your PC so much misery? Here's what happened:
The driver for our graphics card (that was installed by default in Ubuntu) did not allow us to use desktop effects; it was a "restricted driver" and it crashed our system when we tried to do so. Thankfully, nVidia provided a driver for the graphics card that's meant for Linux on the company web site. We installed it using the step-by-step directions on the nVidia site, which set up the driver on our system.
The next day after a restart, Ubuntu wouldn't work at all! We got a white screen. We discovered that when installing the new nVidia driver, it disabled the old one and also misconfigured the X Server (which tells the hardware which drivers to use).
It took four times to reinstall Ubuntu before figuring this out, and we had to reconfigure the X Server manually and disable the old driver manually by putting it in a "disabled list". Thankfully, it finally worked.
The desktop effects seemed to work smoothly after this fix; that is, until a couple of weeks later. For no reason at all, the "Cube" effect stopped working. After many restarts, shutdowns, and throwing things, it magically started to work again. How, we're not sure.
As you can see, this is the chance you take when you enable desktop effects on your Ubuntu system. Of course the easy solution would be to just disable them, but that's not the point. The point is that if you're going to use an operating system
We struggled a lot in the beginning to get the "Windows Wobble" and "Workspaces on a Cube" effects to work without crashing the OS. But when it did work, it was so much fun! Enabling "Windows Wobble" causes your windows to "wobble" when you click on them and move them around your screen. With "Workspaces on a Cube," your desktop becomes a virtual 3-D cube: You're able to move the cube around with your mouse by pressing Ctrl Alt on your keyboard.
So what exactly went wrong with enabling these desktop effects, and why do they cause your PC so much misery? Here's what happened:
The driver for our graphics card (that was installed by default in Ubuntu) did not allow us to use desktop effects; it was a "restricted driver" and it crashed our system when we tried to do so. Thankfully, nVidia provided a driver for the graphics card that's meant for Linux on the company web site. We installed it using the step-by-step directions on the nVidia site, which set up the driver on our system.
The next day after a restart, Ubuntu wouldn't work at all! We got a white screen. We discovered that when installing the new nVidia driver, it disabled the old one and also misconfigured the X Server (which tells the hardware which drivers to use).
It took four times to reinstall Ubuntu before figuring this out, and we had to reconfigure the X Server manually and disable the old driver manually by putting it in a "disabled list". Thankfully, it finally worked.
The desktop effects seemed to work smoothly after this fix; that is, until a couple of weeks later. For no reason at all, the "Cube" effect stopped working. After many restarts, shutdowns, and throwing things, it magically started to work again. How, we're not sure.
As you can see, this is the chance you take when you enable desktop effects on your Ubuntu system. Of course the easy solution would be to just disable them, but that's not the point. The point is that if you're going to use an operating system
Flute Hero: Another Frantic Flash Rhythm Game
For those of you who can't stop thinking about the rhythm game "Guitar Hero" while at work, I give you "Flute Hero," a Danish knockoff that probably isn't long for this world once the copyright lawyers get hold of it.
Because five buttons and a strum controller are conceivably too easy, Flute Hero asks you to control 10 buttons, which are most easily played using the 1-0 keys at the top of the keyboard, as the accompanying illustration shows. Obviously, this isn't to be taken too seriously.
Incidentally, the volume goes to 11. As it should.
EDIT: I should note that the game starts with a weird message: "Dance b***ch". For that reason, it might not be considered work-safe.
Found via the Ars Technica gaming forums.
Because five buttons and a strum controller are conceivably too easy, Flute Hero asks you to control 10 buttons, which are most easily played using the 1-0 keys at the top of the keyboard, as the accompanying illustration shows. Obviously, this isn't to be taken too seriously.
Incidentally, the volume goes to 11. As it should.
EDIT: I should note that the game starts with a weird message: "Dance b***ch". For that reason, it might not be considered work-safe.
Found via the Ars Technica gaming forums.
HeatSeek: Get Paid to Download Porn?
Neil Rubenking forwarded a press release from HeatSeek, this morning, under the impression that it was, "some gadget to seek spots where your house is leaking heat," and would therefore be appropriate fodder for our eco site, GoodCleanTech.
That, fortunately, was only the beginning of the of the fun.
There's also the fact that, in the first sentence, the company proudly refers to themselves as, "the iTunes of adult content." Understandable. What respectable Web site wouldn't want such a distinction?
The real gem here, however, is HeatSeek's "get paid for porn" program. The deal's not quite so sweet as it sounds, however--it's actually a rebate program to get you discounts on porn site subscriptions purchased through the site. Damn these porn aggregators and their double speak. Surely there are plenty of Web denizens who have been eagerly awaiting the day they could turn their hobby into a lucrative career.
Oh, one last nugget, in case you've been doubting the site's validity, thus far: "HeatSeek was chosen by Maxim Magazine as 'the best way to hide porn' on your computer.
The lads don't lie, friends.
That, fortunately, was only the beginning of the of the fun.
There's also the fact that, in the first sentence, the company proudly refers to themselves as, "the iTunes of adult content." Understandable. What respectable Web site wouldn't want such a distinction?
The real gem here, however, is HeatSeek's "get paid for porn" program. The deal's not quite so sweet as it sounds, however--it's actually a rebate program to get you discounts on porn site subscriptions purchased through the site. Damn these porn aggregators and their double speak. Surely there are plenty of Web denizens who have been eagerly awaiting the day they could turn their hobby into a lucrative career.
Oh, one last nugget, in case you've been doubting the site's validity, thus far: "HeatSeek was chosen by Maxim Magazine as 'the best way to hide porn' on your computer.
The lads don't lie, friends.
Suite Deal from Webroot
Webroot's Spy Sweeper 5.5 with AntiVirus, our current Editor's Choice for spyware protection, has a new name and new skillz. As you can tell from the lengthy moniker Webroot AntiVirus with AntiSpyware and Firewall, this version adds firewall protection to the existing antivirus and antispyware. In other words, it has the most important elements that I look for in a security suite. Available now for Vista and XP, it costs $39.95 - but if you already have SSAV 5.5 you can upgrade for free.
Webroot will also sell you the Webroot Desktop Firewall separately for $19.95... but for a limited time you can get a better price - free. If you've already got spyware and virus protection but want to level-up from the built-in Windows Firewall, that's a good deal.
Like the built-in Windows Firewall, Webroot's firewall puts all your computer's ports in stealth mode, making the system invisible to outside attackers. In addition it controls which programs are allowed access to the Internet. To avoid the initial plethora of popup queries it starts in "learning mode", assuming that any program not detected by antivirus or antispyware is legitimate. Once it has learned your normal programs it can alert to anomalous behavior. According to Webroot it uses a "unique packet inspection technology to detect and block unauthorized access to systems".
So, does it work? The answer to that question will have to wait until PC Magazine can put it through a full evaluation. But since the antivirus and antispyware protection is the same as that of our current Editor's Choice for antispyware, it certainly has a head start.
Webroot will also sell you the Webroot Desktop Firewall separately for $19.95... but for a limited time you can get a better price - free. If you've already got spyware and virus protection but want to level-up from the built-in Windows Firewall, that's a good deal.
Like the built-in Windows Firewall, Webroot's firewall puts all your computer's ports in stealth mode, making the system invisible to outside attackers. In addition it controls which programs are allowed access to the Internet. To avoid the initial plethora of popup queries it starts in "learning mode", assuming that any program not detected by antivirus or antispyware is legitimate. Once it has learned your normal programs it can alert to anomalous behavior. According to Webroot it uses a "unique packet inspection technology to detect and block unauthorized access to systems".
So, does it work? The answer to that question will have to wait until PC Magazine can put it through a full evaluation. But since the antivirus and antispyware protection is the same as that of our current Editor's Choice for antispyware, it certainly has a head start.
Report: MySpace to Partner with Oberon for Online Games
Craving a little Minesweeper with your social networking? MySpace is reportedly partnering with Oberon Media Inc. to add casual gaming options to the site.
Oberon, which focuses on games for cell phones and PCs, will debut its offerings on MySpace starting in January, according to the WSJ. Users tired of re-arranging their Top 8 or creating backgrounds that make the rest of their pages indecipherable can now amuse themselves with a game of virtual backgammon or an Agatha Christie murder mystery.
The idea is that users will invite their friends to multiplayer games and chat while playing. If anything, these basic offerings just speak to the site's limited platform. I've admittedly ignored the News Corp.-owned MySpace of late in favor of Facebook and its constant, stalker level friend updates. While these games might help me briefly procrastinate, I'm not sure they will help draw me, or others, back to MySpace. Never underestimate the power of Rupert, however.
Oberon, which focuses on games for cell phones and PCs, will debut its offerings on MySpace starting in January, according to the WSJ. Users tired of re-arranging their Top 8 or creating backgrounds that make the rest of their pages indecipherable can now amuse themselves with a game of virtual backgammon or an Agatha Christie murder mystery.
The idea is that users will invite their friends to multiplayer games and chat while playing. If anything, these basic offerings just speak to the site's limited platform. I've admittedly ignored the News Corp.-owned MySpace of late in favor of Facebook and its constant, stalker level friend updates. While these games might help me briefly procrastinate, I'm not sure they will help draw me, or others, back to MySpace. Never underestimate the power of Rupert, however.
Flute Hero: Another Frantic Flash Rhythm Game
For those of you who can't stop thinking about the rhythm game "Guitar Hero" while at work, I give you "Flute Hero," a Danish knockoff that probably isn't long for this world once the copyright lawyers get hold of it.
Because five buttons and a strum controller are conceivably too easy, Flute Hero asks you to control 10 buttons, which are most easily played using the 1-0 keys at the top of the keyboard, as the accompanying illustration shows. Obviously, this isn't to be taken too seriously.
Incidentally, the volume goes to 11. As it should.
EDIT: I should note that the game starts with a weird message: "Dance b***ch". For that reason, it might not be considered work-safe.
Found via the Ars Technica gaming forums.
Because five buttons and a strum controller are conceivably too easy, Flute Hero asks you to control 10 buttons, which are most easily played using the 1-0 keys at the top of the keyboard, as the accompanying illustration shows. Obviously, this isn't to be taken too seriously.
Incidentally, the volume goes to 11. As it should.
EDIT: I should note that the game starts with a weird message: "Dance b***ch". For that reason, it might not be considered work-safe.
Found via the Ars Technica gaming forums.
Should Your E-Mail Be Forwarded After Switching ISPs?
Here's an interesting article from today's NY Metro. In Washington, DC, there's a debate over whether or not your e-mail should be forwarded after switching service providers. For me, this doesn't really concern me since I've used AOL's e-mail system since I was 15, and over the years signed up for a Yahoo! and Gmail account. But I know many people who rely on their ISPs e-mail service, and once they switch, their e-mail address and messages are gone forever. Well, you can't get to them at least. Right now, there isn't a mandate for e-mail forwarding, like there is for mail forwarding or forwarding your phone number. However, this could all change, because "federal regulators are studying the issue more closely after a complaint from a former AOL customer, Washington-based freelance editor Gail Mortenson, who claims an abrupt termination of service devastated her business." Ouch. How do you feel about this issue? Should there be a mandate for e-mail forwarding, or is there really no point?
Thursday, August 13, 2009
Google, Microsoft Reportedly Battling for Facebook Stake
Google poked Microsoft. 7:54am
Microsoft threw a sheep at Google. 8:01am
Google wrote on Microsoft's Wall "I will crush you" 8:34am
Microsoft wrote on Google's Wall "You're so cute when you're angry" 8:57am
Google and Microsoft's Internet popularity contest is reportedly no longer confined to online ad sales and office software. The two giants are battling for a 5 to 10 percent stake in social networking site Facebook, and a deal could be announced in the next 24 to 48 hours, according to the New York Post.
The deal could bring in between $750 million and $1.5 billion. Microsoft has an existing advertising deal with Facebook, which could expand with a successful bid, but be squashed should Google emerge victorious.
A Facebook spokesman said in an e-mail that they are "not commenting on the speculation."
Ad sales are nice, but a little boring. I'm thinking Google should bring its "Street View" technology to Facebook with "Friend View" or "Facebook Earth" for a whole new level of social network stalking. Microsoft, meanwhile, could give MySpace's recently announced gaming plans a run for its money with some Xbox level Facebook gaming.
Microsoft threw a sheep at Google. 8:01am
Google wrote on Microsoft's Wall "I will crush you" 8:34am
Microsoft wrote on Google's Wall "You're so cute when you're angry" 8:57am
Google and Microsoft's Internet popularity contest is reportedly no longer confined to online ad sales and office software. The two giants are battling for a 5 to 10 percent stake in social networking site Facebook, and a deal could be announced in the next 24 to 48 hours, according to the New York Post.
The deal could bring in between $750 million and $1.5 billion. Microsoft has an existing advertising deal with Facebook, which could expand with a successful bid, but be squashed should Google emerge victorious.
A Facebook spokesman said in an e-mail that they are "not commenting on the speculation."
Ad sales are nice, but a little boring. I'm thinking Google should bring its "Street View" technology to Facebook with "Friend View" or "Facebook Earth" for a whole new level of social network stalking. Microsoft, meanwhile, could give MySpace's recently announced gaming plans a run for its money with some Xbox level Facebook gaming.
Microsoft Defeats Google for $240M Facebook Stake
Microsoft has bested Google in its bid for Facebook. The software giant will invest $240 million in the social networking site in a move that will preserve Microsoft's existing advertising deal with Facebook.
Media reports emerged Wednesday that Microsoft and Google were locked in a battle for a piece of Facebook. Microsoft last year was named the exclusive provider of standard banner advertising on Facebook through 2011. Had Google been successful in its bid, the search engine company would likely have severed or severely clamped down on Microsoft's Facebook advertising capabilities. As a result, Redmond apparently pushed extra hard to maintain the lucrative partnership. Wednesday's deal makes Microsoft the exclusive third-party ad platform for Facebook and expands the deal internationally, Microsoft said.
The $240 million stake is part of Facebook's next round of financing at a $15 billion valuation, according to Microsoft.
Microsoft and Facebook executives issued that standard "we love each other and look forward to a wonderful future" statements. A press conference about the deal is planned for 5pm EST, so stay tuned for more details.
UPDATE: Facebook chose Microsoft over Google because it was pleased with the way Microsoft's ad partnership had developed over the last year, said Owen Van Natta, vice president of operations and chief revenue officer at Facebook.
"We were very fortunate to have a lot of folks who were interested in partnering with us," Van Natta said, though he declined to reveal who else had expressed an interest. "We have been working with Microsoft for over a year now in the US [and that] relationship that has been really great for both of us."
"Being able to deepen [our] partnership with one of the greatest tech companies on planet [was] something that made sense for us," Van Natta said.
The deal with Microsoft will not mean restrictions on third party platform development, he said. There will be "new opportunities to tap into Microsoft technologies and adCenter as we continue to go forward," Van Natta said, though he declined specific details.
He also declined to say whether the deal would mean Facebook applications would be integrated into any of Microsoft's Web properties. Today's deal does not include a Microsoft Web search component, Van Natta said, but he did not rule it out for the future.
Facebook is not revealing who else will be investing in the company.
Media reports emerged Wednesday that Microsoft and Google were locked in a battle for a piece of Facebook. Microsoft last year was named the exclusive provider of standard banner advertising on Facebook through 2011. Had Google been successful in its bid, the search engine company would likely have severed or severely clamped down on Microsoft's Facebook advertising capabilities. As a result, Redmond apparently pushed extra hard to maintain the lucrative partnership. Wednesday's deal makes Microsoft the exclusive third-party ad platform for Facebook and expands the deal internationally, Microsoft said.
The $240 million stake is part of Facebook's next round of financing at a $15 billion valuation, according to Microsoft.
Microsoft and Facebook executives issued that standard "we love each other and look forward to a wonderful future" statements. A press conference about the deal is planned for 5pm EST, so stay tuned for more details.
UPDATE: Facebook chose Microsoft over Google because it was pleased with the way Microsoft's ad partnership had developed over the last year, said Owen Van Natta, vice president of operations and chief revenue officer at Facebook.
"We were very fortunate to have a lot of folks who were interested in partnering with us," Van Natta said, though he declined to reveal who else had expressed an interest. "We have been working with Microsoft for over a year now in the US [and that] relationship that has been really great for both of us."
"Being able to deepen [our] partnership with one of the greatest tech companies on planet [was] something that made sense for us," Van Natta said.
The deal with Microsoft will not mean restrictions on third party platform development, he said. There will be "new opportunities to tap into Microsoft technologies and adCenter as we continue to go forward," Van Natta said, though he declined specific details.
He also declined to say whether the deal would mean Facebook applications would be integrated into any of Microsoft's Web properties. Today's deal does not include a Microsoft Web search component, Van Natta said, but he did not rule it out for the future.
Facebook is not revealing who else will be investing in the company.
Are Ron Paul Supporters Destroying the Internet?
Are Appscout's Ron Paul-related headlines becoming far too sensationalistic?
Wired has a fascinating (and some will almost certainly claim biased) story up today about how the Texas congressman's supporters are--according to those interviewed--are wreaking havoc on Internet polls. The story contrasts Paul's finishing with less than one-half of 1-percent as the 1988 Libertarian candidate with the current outpouring of support for the candidate across the Internet, with numerous unscientific Web polls ranking Paul as the most popular candidate for the 2008 elections. We noted the results of a Slashdot poll late last month, which had Paul racking up 200% the votes of the next closest candidate (incidentally, a fictional demon from an H.P. Lovecraft story--take that, Giuliani).
You see, we've been taking special notice of Paul's name since Jen did a fairly light-hearted post about Barrack Obama's Myspace page, back in March. For better or worse, in the last paragraph, she wrote, "The candidate with the least amount of friends? That goes to Ron Paul. Poor guy." And with that, the flood gates had opened, with a deluge of supporters crying foul in the Appscout comments section.
Their methods may have some site administrators prematurely graying, but Ron Paul's Web-based supporters are certainly getting their candidate noticed--no question there. The candidate is getting the sort of coverage he's largely denied by what his supporters refer to as the "MSM." The question ultimately is: is all coverage good coverage?
Wired has a fascinating (and some will almost certainly claim biased) story up today about how the Texas congressman's supporters are--according to those interviewed--are wreaking havoc on Internet polls. The story contrasts Paul's finishing with less than one-half of 1-percent as the 1988 Libertarian candidate with the current outpouring of support for the candidate across the Internet, with numerous unscientific Web polls ranking Paul as the most popular candidate for the 2008 elections. We noted the results of a Slashdot poll late last month, which had Paul racking up 200% the votes of the next closest candidate (incidentally, a fictional demon from an H.P. Lovecraft story--take that, Giuliani).
You see, we've been taking special notice of Paul's name since Jen did a fairly light-hearted post about Barrack Obama's Myspace page, back in March. For better or worse, in the last paragraph, she wrote, "The candidate with the least amount of friends? That goes to Ron Paul. Poor guy." And with that, the flood gates had opened, with a deluge of supporters crying foul in the Appscout comments section.
Their methods may have some site administrators prematurely graying, but Ron Paul's Web-based supporters are certainly getting their candidate noticed--no question there. The candidate is getting the sort of coverage he's largely denied by what his supporters refer to as the "MSM." The question ultimately is: is all coverage good coverage?
RedState.com: Ron Paul Supporters ARE Destroying the Internet
Way back in June, we posed the question: Are Ron Paul supporters destroying the Internet? Among the truckloads of comments that we received on the post, there arose a pretty strong consensus: Ron Paul supporters are not destroying the Internet. Also, Ron Paul, is, like, pretty much totally awesome.
I'll be the first to admit that the headline is pretty sensational by software blog standards, but the genesis of the question was this: Ron Paul supporters have been extremely aggressive (some might go so far as to suggest overly so) when it comes to making their presence known in online forums.
We cited a Slashdot poll and the first prophetic post to utter Ron Paul's name on Appscout. It was an off-hand mention of the Republican candidate's name in a story about MySpace (with Barack Obama's name in the subject line). The utterance placed our poor, unsuspecting Jen DeLeo in the middle of a presidential flame war. The "Are Ron Paul Supporters Destroying the Internet?" post ultimately posed the question, "Is all coverage good coverage?"
Conservative news site RedState.com is drawing a line in the sand on the matter. The site is effectively banning comments by Ron Paul supporters suspected of abusing the site's comments section. The New York Times' political news blog, The Caucus, excerpted the official statement from RedState, which reads, in part:
Effective immediately, new users may *not* shill for Ron Paul in any way shape, form or fashion. Not in comments, not in diaries, nada. If your account is less than 6 months old, you can talk about something else, you can participate in the other threads and be your zany libertarian self all you want, but you cannot pimp Ron Paul.
The comment ends with a parting shot against undercover liberal posters to the site.
A bold move from a fed-up webmaster, to be sure, but one suspects that Rep. Paul's supporters won't be so easily silenced.
I'll be the first to admit that the headline is pretty sensational by software blog standards, but the genesis of the question was this: Ron Paul supporters have been extremely aggressive (some might go so far as to suggest overly so) when it comes to making their presence known in online forums.
We cited a Slashdot poll and the first prophetic post to utter Ron Paul's name on Appscout. It was an off-hand mention of the Republican candidate's name in a story about MySpace (with Barack Obama's name in the subject line). The utterance placed our poor, unsuspecting Jen DeLeo in the middle of a presidential flame war. The "Are Ron Paul Supporters Destroying the Internet?" post ultimately posed the question, "Is all coverage good coverage?"
Conservative news site RedState.com is drawing a line in the sand on the matter. The site is effectively banning comments by Ron Paul supporters suspected of abusing the site's comments section. The New York Times' political news blog, The Caucus, excerpted the official statement from RedState, which reads, in part:
Effective immediately, new users may *not* shill for Ron Paul in any way shape, form or fashion. Not in comments, not in diaries, nada. If your account is less than 6 months old, you can talk about something else, you can participate in the other threads and be your zany libertarian self all you want, but you cannot pimp Ron Paul.
The comment ends with a parting shot against undercover liberal posters to the site.
A bold move from a fed-up webmaster, to be sure, but one suspects that Rep. Paul's supporters won't be so easily silenced.
CSI: Second Life
Now that CSI and its many variations have conquered the real world, the series is setting its sights on the virtual.
The next episode of CSI: New York will be taking place, at least partially, in Second Life. The episode, which airs tonight, is titled, "Down the Rabbit Hole," and revolves around one Detective Mac Taylor investing a murder, via the virtual world.
CSI fans who sign up for Second Life can also visit a virtual New York, including the CSI lab, and play "forensic games." The world will also feature a game called Murder by Zuiker--the first 100 users to solve the crime will receive some virtual swag.
Video Games Blogger has more info and a link to the episode's trailer.
The next episode of CSI: New York will be taking place, at least partially, in Second Life. The episode, which airs tonight, is titled, "Down the Rabbit Hole," and revolves around one Detective Mac Taylor investing a murder, via the virtual world.
CSI fans who sign up for Second Life can also visit a virtual New York, including the CSI lab, and play "forensic games." The world will also feature a game called Murder by Zuiker--the first 100 users to solve the crime will receive some virtual swag.
Video Games Blogger has more info and a link to the episode's trailer.
Wednesday, August 12, 2009
GeneTree: Using DNA to Create a Global Family Tree
A number of sites let you create and customize family trees and keep on top of your ancestry and family history, but they all depend on you doing the research yourself to find out where your lineage comes from and who's related to you. GeneTree is a whole new idea: It maps how everyone on Earth is related to one another, not based entirely on research and historical documents but based on DNA.
GeneTree is part social-networking and part ancestry site. The service is founded and funded by the Sorenson group of companies, which specializes in biotechnology and DNA testing; explains why it wants the idea to go mainstream. That's not to say that building a family tree based on DNA information isn't a bad idea! You can still build your network based on historical record, family trees, and personal histories, but if you'd like to expand it to include the rest of your community and even the rest of the world, GeneTree can give you a way to do that.
The service claims to be able to help you answer basic identity questions, such as "Where do I come from?" But the service is only as good as its database of genetic information. GeneTree just launched this week, so before it can help you answer the big questions about how you're related to your ancestors in Africa or Europe, its database of DNA information will have to grow significantly.
In the meantime, you can use the service as a genealogy service and ancestry site. Sign up for a free account, and you can customize your profile, add close relatives or distant family, build a family tree, and upload photos and documents. You can even add friends and other people who are close to you but aren't related to build a real community.
If you'd like to toss your hat into the genetic ring and find out how all of your family members are related or how you're related to other people who have submitted their DNA test results to the site, you can order a DNA test with just a few clicks from your profile. The test is shipped to your house; you complete it and send the test material back to the labs that GeneTree partners with. When it gets the DNA test results, the information is published to your account, and you can share it with others, find other people with similar DNA profiles on the site, and in the end, see how you're related (if at all) to everyone else on the site.
GeneTree's goal is to have a network of DNA information large enough that any person can sit down and find out how they're related to any other person on the site. It's a great idea, but I wonder if the idea isn't too far ahead of its time. As the database grows, that might be a real possibility, but as with other biotechnologies, I'm not sure how willing people would be to submit a DNA sample to a private company who then publishes some or all of the data to a social networking site.
GeneTree's privacy policy does address site security and privacy, but it doesn't say much about what information from your DNA sample is published, who can view it, and how and with whom GeneTree is allowed to share that information. The site will have to make some strong statements on that before a lot of people will be willing to buy tests and submit samples for the purpose of networking with others, building family trees, and seeing how they fit with the human family.
GeneTree is part social-networking and part ancestry site. The service is founded and funded by the Sorenson group of companies, which specializes in biotechnology and DNA testing; explains why it wants the idea to go mainstream. That's not to say that building a family tree based on DNA information isn't a bad idea! You can still build your network based on historical record, family trees, and personal histories, but if you'd like to expand it to include the rest of your community and even the rest of the world, GeneTree can give you a way to do that.
The service claims to be able to help you answer basic identity questions, such as "Where do I come from?" But the service is only as good as its database of genetic information. GeneTree just launched this week, so before it can help you answer the big questions about how you're related to your ancestors in Africa or Europe, its database of DNA information will have to grow significantly.
In the meantime, you can use the service as a genealogy service and ancestry site. Sign up for a free account, and you can customize your profile, add close relatives or distant family, build a family tree, and upload photos and documents. You can even add friends and other people who are close to you but aren't related to build a real community.
If you'd like to toss your hat into the genetic ring and find out how all of your family members are related or how you're related to other people who have submitted their DNA test results to the site, you can order a DNA test with just a few clicks from your profile. The test is shipped to your house; you complete it and send the test material back to the labs that GeneTree partners with. When it gets the DNA test results, the information is published to your account, and you can share it with others, find other people with similar DNA profiles on the site, and in the end, see how you're related (if at all) to everyone else on the site.
GeneTree's goal is to have a network of DNA information large enough that any person can sit down and find out how they're related to any other person on the site. It's a great idea, but I wonder if the idea isn't too far ahead of its time. As the database grows, that might be a real possibility, but as with other biotechnologies, I'm not sure how willing people would be to submit a DNA sample to a private company who then publishes some or all of the data to a social networking site.
GeneTree's privacy policy does address site security and privacy, but it doesn't say much about what information from your DNA sample is published, who can view it, and how and with whom GeneTree is allowed to share that information. The site will have to make some strong statements on that before a lot of people will be willing to buy tests and submit samples for the purpose of networking with others, building family trees, and seeing how they fit with the human family.
Windows Live Expo Takes on Craigslist
Craigslist has a lot going for it: a huge community, thousands of listings, and incredible popularity. At the same time, it's not very pretty, and numerous competing services have sprung up to challenge it. Now Microsoft is getting into the game with Windows Live Expo, a service that allows you to search and browse items for sale, from CDs to condominiums. You can sign up using your Windows Live account and post your own items, customize the view for your region and categories that interest you, and even browse the personals if you're looking for love.
Some of the services at Windows Live Expo hook into other services that Microsoft already offers, either through the MSN network or the Windows Live network. The personal ads, for example, are hosted at Match.com. Microsoft also appears to have partnered with a number of companies to get dedicated--and perhaps exclusive-- listings for apartments for rent, available real estate, and consumer electronics for sale. Windows Live Expo even has job listings, pulled from services such as CareerBuilder and other companies looking for talent.
Windows Live Expo is attractive and well laid out, and the categories are available either at a glance or with a single click. You can sign in to customize the view to your region, or choose a category first and narrow the search results to what's in your area. The site keeps track of the items that you browse so you can return to them easily. Just like Craigslist, Windows Live Expo allows you to reply to a listing by emailing the poster, and to comment on the posting to get more information or share your thoughts.
I do like that Windows Live Expo takes some of the chatter out of Craigslist by forcing you to comment or reply, to communicate with the original poster, instead of using entire posts at the service as chat threads. At the same time, as the community grows and people have more to talk about, the comments may well become just as unwieldy.
Each listing includes basic information, and the poster can also include relevant photographs and important details. If the post is an item for sale, for example, you'll see a description of the item and how much it's selling for, and you might even get driving directions or an MSN map with the location plotted on it, as well as what (if any) shipping options are available. The listings are highly customizable, so regardless of whether you're posting a job or trying to sell an MP3 player, you can include as much or as little information as you like.
Signing up for a Windows Live account is free, and once you have one, you can post at Windows Live Expo as much as you like. If you want to make your listings public, you can opt to share them with the world--or you can limit the listing to "communities," or groups of users at Expo who have common interests. You can browse the communities that Microsoft has already set up at the site or create your own.
The built-in communities and social aspects of the service are significant. Not only can you list products and services and go shopping, get in touch with others, and even look for a job: Expo also integrates with Windows Live Messenger and PayPal, so you can add buddies, create individual profiles, and be alerted when people send you messages or update your communities. You can set up a community just for your neighborhood or friends and post items for sale that are only viewable by those people, or you can use a community as a closed discussion group, for example.
Windows Live Expo looks good and does a lot more than a classified service. Since you need a Windows Live account to use it, Microsoft is betting on the people who already use Microsoft services such as Windows Live Spaces and Windows Live Local to take advantage of it. The real key to Expo's success is how quickly people adopt it and whether anyone is really looking for an alternative to the already popular Craigslist. Expo looks like it could be a great contender, but it just might be too late to the game.
Some of the services at Windows Live Expo hook into other services that Microsoft already offers, either through the MSN network or the Windows Live network. The personal ads, for example, are hosted at Match.com. Microsoft also appears to have partnered with a number of companies to get dedicated--and perhaps exclusive-- listings for apartments for rent, available real estate, and consumer electronics for sale. Windows Live Expo even has job listings, pulled from services such as CareerBuilder and other companies looking for talent.
Windows Live Expo is attractive and well laid out, and the categories are available either at a glance or with a single click. You can sign in to customize the view to your region, or choose a category first and narrow the search results to what's in your area. The site keeps track of the items that you browse so you can return to them easily. Just like Craigslist, Windows Live Expo allows you to reply to a listing by emailing the poster, and to comment on the posting to get more information or share your thoughts.
I do like that Windows Live Expo takes some of the chatter out of Craigslist by forcing you to comment or reply, to communicate with the original poster, instead of using entire posts at the service as chat threads. At the same time, as the community grows and people have more to talk about, the comments may well become just as unwieldy.
Each listing includes basic information, and the poster can also include relevant photographs and important details. If the post is an item for sale, for example, you'll see a description of the item and how much it's selling for, and you might even get driving directions or an MSN map with the location plotted on it, as well as what (if any) shipping options are available. The listings are highly customizable, so regardless of whether you're posting a job or trying to sell an MP3 player, you can include as much or as little information as you like.
Signing up for a Windows Live account is free, and once you have one, you can post at Windows Live Expo as much as you like. If you want to make your listings public, you can opt to share them with the world--or you can limit the listing to "communities," or groups of users at Expo who have common interests. You can browse the communities that Microsoft has already set up at the site or create your own.
The built-in communities and social aspects of the service are significant. Not only can you list products and services and go shopping, get in touch with others, and even look for a job: Expo also integrates with Windows Live Messenger and PayPal, so you can add buddies, create individual profiles, and be alerted when people send you messages or update your communities. You can set up a community just for your neighborhood or friends and post items for sale that are only viewable by those people, or you can use a community as a closed discussion group, for example.
Windows Live Expo looks good and does a lot more than a classified service. Since you need a Windows Live account to use it, Microsoft is betting on the people who already use Microsoft services such as Windows Live Spaces and Windows Live Local to take advantage of it. The real key to Expo's success is how quickly people adopt it and whether anyone is really looking for an alternative to the already popular Craigslist. Expo looks like it could be a great contender, but it just might be too late to the game.
OS X Leopard Reviews, Round One
When it comes to tomorrow's release of OS X Leopard, Apple is being its usual secretive self. We've got a few PC Mag operatives picking up copies of the OS today, and you can expect a full hands-on preview of the software on PCMag.com by tomorrow morning. Meanwhile, the usual suspects (read: the same folks who got iPhones ahead of everyone else) have already gotten their paws on OS X 10.5.
The reviews, perhaps not too surprisingly, are largely--if not universally--positive. The upgrade is admittedly not as large a jump as the one Windows experienced between XP and Vista (the last true large-scale reimagining of the OS was arguably the move to the first iteration of OS X, back in 2001). As such, the review sentiments thus far seem to be that, as The Wall Street Journal's Walt Mossberg puts it, OS X 10.5 is an "evolutionary, not a revolutionary" release. Which is to say, while it isn't likely to convert any Apple haters, it will almost certainly appeal to existing Apple users and to those who have been looking to make the switch.
As expected, it includes Apple's new backup program, Time Machine. Improvements to the finder, the proprietary IM aggregator, iChat, and the virtual desktop app, Spaces, are also getting good marks.
Here's what they're saying:
The reviews, perhaps not too surprisingly, are largely--if not universally--positive. The upgrade is admittedly not as large a jump as the one Windows experienced between XP and Vista (the last true large-scale reimagining of the OS was arguably the move to the first iteration of OS X, back in 2001). As such, the review sentiments thus far seem to be that, as The Wall Street Journal's Walt Mossberg puts it, OS X 10.5 is an "evolutionary, not a revolutionary" release. Which is to say, while it isn't likely to convert any Apple haters, it will almost certainly appeal to existing Apple users and to those who have been looking to make the switch.
As expected, it includes Apple's new backup program, Time Machine. Improvements to the finder, the proprietary IM aggregator, iChat, and the virtual desktop app, Spaces, are also getting good marks.
Here's what they're saying:
Connect2Elect: Helping You Decide The 2008 Presidential Election
The 2008 Presidential campaign is already the longest and most expensive in history. Candidates have been debating, making trips to strategic primary states, and appearing on TV and the radio; we see more of the candidates in the media than ever before, and often we hear the same talking points over and over again, but never learn where they stand on the issues that matter to us. Enter Connect2Elect. Connect2Elect is a new service from social-networking company Neighborhood America that wants to help us learn more about all the candidates running for the Presidency.
Before we begin, Connect2Elect has no party affiliation and no political allegiance to any one candidate or party. While the majority of the candidates profiled on the site belong to one of the the two major political parties, some independent candidates are also listed. The candidates profiled on the service aren't limited to the so-called "front-runners," either; voters will be pleased to see that the gamut runs from Hillary Clinton to Mike Gravel and from Rudy Giuliani to Ron Paul. Candidates are included regardless of their standing in the polls and their perceived popularity by the media.
To use Connect2Elect, sign up for a free account and then customize a profile with your demographic information, age, ethnicity, party affiliation, and the top three issues that matter to you for the 2008 election. Then you can create a list of tags and key issues that will help define which candidates line up with your personal beliefs and convictions the most. The key issues are in four categories: candidate attributes (time served in office, religious beliefs, etc), social issues (global warming, stem-cell research, etc), political issues (health care, social security, etc), and core beliefs (stance on taxes, foreign relations, etc).
You can choose the top 10 issues to you in each category and your stand on them, and the service will take your input and cross reference your personal convictions and important issues with the information they've collected from each candidate's campaign headquarters. The candidates are mapped on a grid, with you in the center. You can zoom in on the map to see which candidates match you most closely on the issues that are important to you, and click on each one to bring up their profiles, see where they were an exact match, and what other issues they're campaigning on.
Also in the candidate profiles are links to e-mail the candidate and their campaign Web sites, and more information about their political histories and personal backgrounds. You can choose the List view to see them ordered in likeness to your political beliefs, or click the Resources tab to learn more about the service or any of the candidates.
The goal of Connect2Elect is to help people find the candidates that most closely match their opinions and beliefs, not necessarily who fits their party affiliations. In some cases you might find that your party affiliation is cemented by your results; in other cases you could be more aligned with a candidate from another party than the one you always believed you belonged to. Connect2Elect is designed to help people, especially those who consider themselves moderates or undecided voters, find the candidate that most closely represents them, using real information collected by the development team.
Before we begin, Connect2Elect has no party affiliation and no political allegiance to any one candidate or party. While the majority of the candidates profiled on the site belong to one of the the two major political parties, some independent candidates are also listed. The candidates profiled on the service aren't limited to the so-called "front-runners," either; voters will be pleased to see that the gamut runs from Hillary Clinton to Mike Gravel and from Rudy Giuliani to Ron Paul. Candidates are included regardless of their standing in the polls and their perceived popularity by the media.
To use Connect2Elect, sign up for a free account and then customize a profile with your demographic information, age, ethnicity, party affiliation, and the top three issues that matter to you for the 2008 election. Then you can create a list of tags and key issues that will help define which candidates line up with your personal beliefs and convictions the most. The key issues are in four categories: candidate attributes (time served in office, religious beliefs, etc), social issues (global warming, stem-cell research, etc), political issues (health care, social security, etc), and core beliefs (stance on taxes, foreign relations, etc).
You can choose the top 10 issues to you in each category and your stand on them, and the service will take your input and cross reference your personal convictions and important issues with the information they've collected from each candidate's campaign headquarters. The candidates are mapped on a grid, with you in the center. You can zoom in on the map to see which candidates match you most closely on the issues that are important to you, and click on each one to bring up their profiles, see where they were an exact match, and what other issues they're campaigning on.
Also in the candidate profiles are links to e-mail the candidate and their campaign Web sites, and more information about their political histories and personal backgrounds. You can choose the List view to see them ordered in likeness to your political beliefs, or click the Resources tab to learn more about the service or any of the candidates.
The goal of Connect2Elect is to help people find the candidates that most closely match their opinions and beliefs, not necessarily who fits their party affiliations. In some cases you might find that your party affiliation is cemented by your results; in other cases you could be more aligned with a candidate from another party than the one you always believed you belonged to. Connect2Elect is designed to help people, especially those who consider themselves moderates or undecided voters, find the candidate that most closely represents them, using real information collected by the development team.
Starz Announces Vongo 2.0
Starz announced today the launch of Vongo 2.0, the latest version of the cable network's video-on-demand download service. The update includes compatibility with an expanded list of portable devices and a handful of feature upgrades.
On the device end, Vongo is now compatible with a number of Archos and Creative devices, including the Archos 405 and 605WiFi and the Creative Zen, Zen Vision: M, and Zen Vision: W. The service was already compatible with Toshiba's Gigabeat S and V series.
As far as new features, the new Vongo boasts an updated personalized recommendation engine, improved device management, and increased PC speed and efficiency.
Vongo is available for a fee of $9.99 a month, which allows subscribers to connect up to three devices, PCs included.
On the device end, Vongo is now compatible with a number of Archos and Creative devices, including the Archos 405 and 605WiFi and the Creative Zen, Zen Vision: M, and Zen Vision: W. The service was already compatible with Toshiba's Gigabeat S and V series.
As far as new features, the new Vongo boasts an updated personalized recommendation engine, improved device management, and increased PC speed and efficiency.
Vongo is available for a fee of $9.99 a month, which allows subscribers to connect up to three devices, PCs included.
Create Custom Cookbooks with TasteBook
I love to cook and I love to eat. So naturally, I have a lot of recipes printed out from various Web sites, and handwritten ones from friends and family. Keeping them organized is a pain, and when I want to share them with others, passing along a handwritten recipe usually means I'll never see it again. TasteBook is a new service that can help with these problems. You can make your own hardcover cookbook to give as a gift or sell, archive your recipes from other Web sites, type in your family recipes, and share them with friends online.
I have three binders at the top of my pantry that are stuffed full of recipes. I used to punch holes in the sheets and organize them by type of meal (dessert, meat, veggie, and so on) but after a while, I wound up printing them out faster than I could file them. TasteBook offers a way to take those recipes directly from the Web sites that I found them on, and add them to my own cookbooks online. I can organize a single cookbook by type of recipe, or I can make separate cookbooks for different food topics and share them with others online or reference them whenever I want a new recipe to try out.
The beauty of TasteBook is that I can take any cookbook that I make and have it printed out in color with a hardcover, include photos of the meals that match the recipes, and give the books as gifts. Using TasteBook, you can pull recipes in from popular Web sites such as Epicurious.com and add them directly to your cookbooks, add your own recipes from any source (including the note cards that your grandmother passed down to you), personalize the cookbooks, and share them with other TasteBook members.
Accounts at TasteBook are free (although printing cookbooks costs money), and you can create individual TasteBooks to categorize types of recipes by food or by topic. You can search the recipes on the site already and add them to your list of personal recipes, and browse other users' shared Tastebooks for recipes to use. If you have a personal collection of recipes that you'd like to include in a printed TasteBook or share with the world, you can upload it to your TasteBook profile and add it to any of your TasteBooks.
TasteBook started as a method to get everyone to share recipes and rid themselves of their binders and folders stuffed full of hand-me-down scraps of paper, but quickly evolved into a method of creating custom cookbooks and sharing and remixing cookbooks between friends and family. Since creating TasteBooks online, sharing them, and pulling recipes from other sources and uploading your own are completely free, most of the value of TasteBook is available without paying anything. Even so, once you have your recipes uploaded and organized into TasteBooks, you may want to try printing your own cookbook, if for no other reason to have all of your recipes bound and professionally printed for posterity.
I have three binders at the top of my pantry that are stuffed full of recipes. I used to punch holes in the sheets and organize them by type of meal (dessert, meat, veggie, and so on) but after a while, I wound up printing them out faster than I could file them. TasteBook offers a way to take those recipes directly from the Web sites that I found them on, and add them to my own cookbooks online. I can organize a single cookbook by type of recipe, or I can make separate cookbooks for different food topics and share them with others online or reference them whenever I want a new recipe to try out.
The beauty of TasteBook is that I can take any cookbook that I make and have it printed out in color with a hardcover, include photos of the meals that match the recipes, and give the books as gifts. Using TasteBook, you can pull recipes in from popular Web sites such as Epicurious.com and add them directly to your cookbooks, add your own recipes from any source (including the note cards that your grandmother passed down to you), personalize the cookbooks, and share them with other TasteBook members.
Accounts at TasteBook are free (although printing cookbooks costs money), and you can create individual TasteBooks to categorize types of recipes by food or by topic. You can search the recipes on the site already and add them to your list of personal recipes, and browse other users' shared Tastebooks for recipes to use. If you have a personal collection of recipes that you'd like to include in a printed TasteBook or share with the world, you can upload it to your TasteBook profile and add it to any of your TasteBooks.
TasteBook started as a method to get everyone to share recipes and rid themselves of their binders and folders stuffed full of hand-me-down scraps of paper, but quickly evolved into a method of creating custom cookbooks and sharing and remixing cookbooks between friends and family. Since creating TasteBooks online, sharing them, and pulling recipes from other sources and uploading your own are completely free, most of the value of TasteBook is available without paying anything. Even so, once you have your recipes uploaded and organized into TasteBooks, you may want to try printing your own cookbook, if for no other reason to have all of your recipes bound and professionally printed for posterity.
Porn on The Company Computer? BUSTED!
Do your company's computers contain pornographic images? Are you sure? What about that strange guy down in Accounting--have you checked his computer? And if Ermintrude in Advertising gets sued by the RIAA for illegal downloads, are you sure they won't go after the company too? The people at
GuardWare LLC (makers of
iShield Plus 2.0) hope you're worried now, because they have a solution for you--the USB-based
File Audit Facility. Stick the gadget in a USB port, let the software run, then take it away and review what you found. BUSTED!
The FAF costs $195 (including the USB key) for a year's unlimited use, or $395 for a lifetime license. It sounds pricey, but a sexual harassment lawsuit costs a lot more. In my testing of iShield Plus, its pornographic image detection was quite impressive (I gave the iShield product a less-than-stellar rating for other reasons). In addition to reporting exactly what porn images were found, it lists all music files--significant if company policy bans music downloads. And it leaves no trace on the audited computer. GuardWare says it will help companies and government agencies "enforce sexual harassment and use of assets policies". Makes sense to me, and it's a good use of the technology.
GuardWare LLC (makers of
iShield Plus 2.0) hope you're worried now, because they have a solution for you--the USB-based
File Audit Facility. Stick the gadget in a USB port, let the software run, then take it away and review what you found. BUSTED!
The FAF costs $195 (including the USB key) for a year's unlimited use, or $395 for a lifetime license. It sounds pricey, but a sexual harassment lawsuit costs a lot more. In my testing of iShield Plus, its pornographic image detection was quite impressive (I gave the iShield product a less-than-stellar rating for other reasons). In addition to reporting exactly what porn images were found, it lists all music files--significant if company policy bans music downloads. And it leaves no trace on the audited computer. GuardWare says it will help companies and government agencies "enforce sexual harassment and use of assets policies". Makes sense to me, and it's a good use of the technology.
Ulanoff on Facebook Valuation
PC Mag Editor in Chief Lance Ulanoff has an interesting column online about whether Facebook can possibly be worth the $15 billion figure that's being thrown around. From the column, it sounds like he's had some frustrations with little things about the social network, and about the lack of that one killer feature that makes Facebook worth his time.
"My big problem with Facebook is that I haven't had a "eureka moment." A moment of realization in which I say (preferably out loud), "Wow, I am so glad I have Facebook! Without it I couldn't have..." That hasn't happened. I wonder if it ever will."
I have "Eureka moments" with Facebook all the time. The killer feature is that Facebook lets me keep track of my friends without requiring, you know, actual interaction (who has time for that??). And their news and updates come to me via the News Feed instead of me having to track it down on a hundred different user profile pages. That might not sound like a big deal, but MySpace users know what a pain it is to keep track of friends by constantly having to click around the site looking at profiles. Facebook's privacy features are also great (including the double-verification that annoys Lance).
That said, I can't see how Facebook is worth $15 billion. Remember when YouTube was sold for $1.6B? That was only a year ago this month, and reading over the analysis at the time, nobody thought Google was getting much of a bargain, even though YouTube had an enormous userbase and plenty of feasible options for making money. Facebook also has a huge userbase--all of whom love that they aren't bombarded with ads like they were when they were MySpace users.
"My big problem with Facebook is that I haven't had a "eureka moment." A moment of realization in which I say (preferably out loud), "Wow, I am so glad I have Facebook! Without it I couldn't have..." That hasn't happened. I wonder if it ever will."
I have "Eureka moments" with Facebook all the time. The killer feature is that Facebook lets me keep track of my friends without requiring, you know, actual interaction (who has time for that??). And their news and updates come to me via the News Feed instead of me having to track it down on a hundred different user profile pages. That might not sound like a big deal, but MySpace users know what a pain it is to keep track of friends by constantly having to click around the site looking at profiles. Facebook's privacy features are also great (including the double-verification that annoys Lance).
That said, I can't see how Facebook is worth $15 billion. Remember when YouTube was sold for $1.6B? That was only a year ago this month, and reading over the analysis at the time, nobody thought Google was getting much of a bargain, even though YouTube had an enormous userbase and plenty of feasible options for making money. Facebook also has a huge userbase--all of whom love that they aren't bombarded with ads like they were when they were MySpace users.
Mozilla Prism: Your Favorite Web Apps on Your Desktop
Even though it was launched just over a week ago, Mozilla has already abandoned the name WebRunner in favor of the sleeker Prism. Makes sense to us. After all, that's sort of the whole point of the program: giving users a light-weight method for accessing Web apps via their desktops.
It's perhaps not quite so revolutionary as it sounds, and in fact might prove a bit niche-y, in terms of who it appeals to. But surely some people are looking to access Google Docs and Spreadsheets and other Web apps without having to go through the trouble of launching their browsers.
Download Squad has a good rundown of the way the app works: "You download and install Prism. The first time you run it, a window will pop up asking you for a URL, name, and where you'd like to 'install' the application. Installation basically means creating a shortcut on your desktop, Start Menu, or Quick Launch Bar. To 'uninstall' a web app, just delete the shortcut."
Essentially Prism is a desktop-shortcut middleman that cuts out the more resource-heavy browser. Download Squad is predicting integration of the app as a button in Firefox, which actually makes a lot more sense than a standalone download.
It's perhaps not quite so revolutionary as it sounds, and in fact might prove a bit niche-y, in terms of who it appeals to. But surely some people are looking to access Google Docs and Spreadsheets and other Web apps without having to go through the trouble of launching their browsers.
Download Squad has a good rundown of the way the app works: "You download and install Prism. The first time you run it, a window will pop up asking you for a URL, name, and where you'd like to 'install' the application. Installation basically means creating a shortcut on your desktop, Start Menu, or Quick Launch Bar. To 'uninstall' a web app, just delete the shortcut."
Essentially Prism is a desktop-shortcut middleman that cuts out the more resource-heavy browser. Download Squad is predicting integration of the app as a button in Firefox, which actually makes a lot more sense than a standalone download.
The LOLcat Code: Even Worse than Da Vinci's
What's the bigger threat to the English language: leetspeak or LOLcats?
Thankfully, the world may no longer have to choose. A group of programmers has harnessed the language of the LOLcats (popularized, for better, or for worse, by the folks at I Can Has Cheezburger) to create a working computer language.
According to Boing Boing (who else?), ""LOLCode is an emerging esoteric (and hilarious) language based on the dialect used in LOLCats images. It's been seized upon by a group of people (myself included, now), and is being expanded into a real, workable, Turing-complete esoteric language (though nobody has proven its Turing completeness yet!). The LOLCode.NET compiler is now working, and as a nearly-free bonus for using the .NET platform, you can even debug it in Visual Studio."
I can has a headache?
Thankfully, the world may no longer have to choose. A group of programmers has harnessed the language of the LOLcats (popularized, for better, or for worse, by the folks at I Can Has Cheezburger) to create a working computer language.
According to Boing Boing (who else?), ""LOLCode is an emerging esoteric (and hilarious) language based on the dialect used in LOLCats images. It's been seized upon by a group of people (myself included, now), and is being expanded into a real, workable, Turing-complete esoteric language (though nobody has proven its Turing completeness yet!). The LOLCode.NET compiler is now working, and as a nearly-free bonus for using the .NET platform, you can even debug it in Visual Studio."
I can has a headache?
Tuesday, August 11, 2009
Microsoft Moves 88 Million Copies of Vista
Apple may be hogging the OS spotlight today with the much-lauded release of Leopard, but that won't stop Microsoft from grabbing a bit of the glory. According to company officials, Microsoft has managed to move more than 88 million copies of Vista worldwide since the OS's January release.
Not too shabby, especially considering that a lot of folks in the industry were recommending that consumers hold off, at least until the release of the Vista's first service pack.
Sales of the OS have been growing steadily, up about 20 percent for each subsequent quarter since it shipped.
Not too shabby, especially considering that a lot of folks in the industry were recommending that consumers hold off, at least until the release of the Vista's first service pack.
Sales of the OS have been growing steadily, up about 20 percent for each subsequent quarter since it shipped.
MillionDollarPubes.com: A Tale of One Lady's Jungle
There comes a time in a woman's life when she must take a stand and say no to bush. One such anonymous UK-based female did just that by creating the Web site MillionDollarPubes.com. The aptly-named site was set up in order for her to have the necessary funds ($1 million) to receive laser hair removal in the coochy.This woman in question struggled with every method available to try and rid of her jungle: waxing, shaving, applying creams...laser treatment seemed like the only logical choice.In order to help support her laser treatment costs, each of her pubic hairs are offered for sale for $200 on the site. But wait, there's more! With every purchase of a hair, you also receive a 10 by 10-pixel advertisement on the homepage of MillionDollarPubes.com. To date, the site has attracted over 50,000 pervs visitors.To get started, click on the "BUY PUBIC HAIR"' link. You'll be presented with a screen in which you can select exactly where on her body you would like your advertisement and link to appear. However, if you wish to just place an ad and not receive her pubic hair, she understands. Approximately 200 hairs have already been purchased. So get busy.
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