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LiveLeak: Social News Meets Citizen Journalism

2009-09-24T06:19:00.001-07:00

Sites like Digg specialize in social news, letting users decide what news stories are the most popular. Sites like NowPublic, on the other hand, help citizens become local and professional journalists, engaging them in the process of creating and publishing the events taking place around them. LiveLeak is a little of both, allowing users to create their own videos and stories and publish them for the world to see, while submitting and voting on videos captured from traditional media sources.

LiveLeak was one of the first sites on the web to have the cameraphone video of Saddam Hussein's execution, and drew fire in the UK when a BBC program took note of the graphic nature of some of LiveLeak's video content. The site encourages its users to report and upload footage from real-life events. That material often includes video from war-torn countries, car accidents, and other graphic scenes. The site doesn't censor the uploaded content, although it does have filters for family-friendly and graphic content.

It might seem like LiveLeak subscribes to the "if it bleeds, it leads," philosophy, but some of its content is generated by traditional media sources, and a lot of it is boring. Wire services like Reuters and the Associated Press generate the headlines, while user-generated content make up the features and the majority of the material in LiveLeak's categories. The site only posts a few headline stories from other news outlets. A lot of the "news stories" at LiveLeak are videos generated by users with webcams rambling about their favorite topic.

LiveLeak's categories revolve around the most popular social issues discussed on the site. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are categories, for example, and there's also a politics category. If those don't interest you, you can check out the entertainment, news, or celebrity categories, or start your own. Only the popular categories are listed on the front page, but any user can create a category on their favorite topic. If you dig deep enough you'll find categories about debunking 9/11 conspiracy theories, world music, women's issues, and even how to sport a mullet. There's also a Citizen Journalism category, where amateur videos that are actually newsworthy and produced with some measure of journalistic quality are posted.

LiveLeak users can upload anything they want, so you have to wade through a lot of Webcam manifestos and horrifying car crashes to get to material that's worth watching. You can browse by category to get around a lot of the nonsense, but it's still difficult. If you're looking for a site that's mostly entertainment and silly videos, LiveLeak can help you kill a few hours at the office. Unfortunately, if you're looking for serious journalism or in-depth reporting or analysis by everyday people who are passionate about the world around them, you're better off somewhere like NowPublic.

FFFFound: Social Bookmarking for Images

2009-09-24T06:18:00.001-07:00

Social bookmarking has been around for a while. Sites like del.icio.us and Furl have made it easy to take your favorite links from around the Web, tag them to keep them organized, and save them for future reference or share with your friends. FFFFound extends the concept to images. If you see an interesting photograph, a particularly beautiful piece of art, or just an entertaining photo somewhere on the Web, FFFFound allows you to link to it, tag it, and save it to retrieve later or share with the rest of the community.

The service also sports an engine that can recommend images for you based on your previous likes, dislikes, and the way those images have been tagged by the people who found them. Once you've found an image that you like, you can upload it to the service, link to it, tag it, and then share it with others. Once your image is visible, other FFFFound users can save it or flag it as inappropriate. FFFFound's recommendation engine generates similar images that you may like and displays them underneath the image that you uploaded, so if you see another image on the site that you like, you can click through to view more images of the same type.

Most of FFFFound's images are art, photography, and graphic design. FFFFound is currently in private beta, so you can't sign up to share your own images quite yet. Luckily, you can browse the uploaded images of the most recent and active members, and most of the images uploaded are viewable by the public. You'll find images from e-cards, photographs from Flickr, and even corporate logos and odd snapshots from around the Web. FFFFound provides an IE extension and a bookmarklet to make it easier to share images without having to copy and paste links.

With all of the buzz about copyright infringement and content ownership, FFFFound invites copyright holders to contact them if users upload copyrighted material that they'd like removed. FFFFound may have to be more aggressive about this policy when the service emerges from private beta. At the moment, the quality of the images at FFFFound is very high, but that probably has something to do with its limited membership.

FFFFound images range from the beautifully artistic to the offbeat and hilarious. The images on the front page change every time you refresh. At one glance, I saw an antique poster for a Broadway play, gorgeous black-and-white vintage photography, and a digital masterpiece that made a towering rock look like a modern apartment building. There's always something new to see.

Pingie Turns RSS into SMS

2009-09-24T06:17:00.001-07:00

There are a number of apps out there designed to push RSS feeds from your favorite blogs and Websites to your mobile phone. The trouble with those services is that if you can't install software on your phone, don't want to pay for mobile Web access, or have a carrier that doesn't allow you to use those services, you're stuck. Pingie can help. The service allows you to subscribe to RSS feeds from your desktop, and then sends you text messages when the feed updates. It's quick, simple, free, and best of all works with most mobile devices.

Google Reader, Bloglines Mobile, and other services all bring news and updates to your mobile phone, but there's a catch: you have to have mobile Web access or you have to be able to install apps on your phone. That's fine if you have a smartphone like a Motorola Q or a Blackberry, but if you have a Motorola RAZR or a Samsung Juke, an app that runs on Windows Mobile or PalmOS doesn't do you any good. Worse yet, if your carrier is someone like Verizon (like many Americans), you may not be allowed to install software on your phone at all if it's not downloaded directly from your carrier.

Pingie gets around that whole issue by sending RSS feed updates to your mobile device via text message. A Verizon subscriber with a device like a Samsung Juke can get text messages, even if they can't install a news reader or don't have a cellular plan with mobile Web access.

Additionally, Pingie will send you a text message every time one of your RSS feeds updates. This is great for people who like being alerted when there's new content on one of your favorite blogs or sites instead of having to go to the site to check it yourself, or wade through pre-downloaded feeds.

[ via DownloadSquad ]

BedJump: Making Hotels Fun Again

2009-09-24T06:16:00.001-07:00

I love to travel, but staying in a hotel has lost some of its luster since I was a kid. Sure there's room service and if I'm lucky there's a mini-bar, but it's lost a little of its charm. BedJump on the other hand, makes me excited to stay in hotels again. Every couple of days, BedJump updates with hilarious photos of real people jumping on hotel beds, usually with the person in mid-air. Who says jumping on the bed is naughty?

The people at BedJump are right when they say that there's something luxurious and intoxicating about hotel beds. They're relaxing, they're usually comfortable, but best of all, they're bouncy. BedJump regularly posts photos of real hotel guests staying at hotels around the world, enjoying the bounciness of the bed they paid to sleep in. The site takes submissions from anyone who wants to send them, and posts nearly all the photos they get.

BedJump is actually part of the larger site Hotels By City, which helps vacationers find destinations for their trip depending on the type of vacation they'd like to take, the best hotels for their vacation type or the city they've visiting, and helps users book hotels and vacation packages once they've decided where they want to go. BedJump encourages people to explore the rest of the Hotels By City network of sites to book their vacations, and once they've found a hotel in which to stay, to take their best mid-air snapshots or hotel bed lounging photos and submit them to the site.

Extended features aside, BedJump is a lot of fun. You can sign up for e-mail updates when a new bedjumper's photos are posted. If you're interested specifically in bed jumps on cruise ships, entire photo sets of bed jumps, bed jumping videos, or even a tutorial on how to bed jump, you'll find links to each category on the sidebar. If you're in love with the site, you can even buy a BedJump t-shirt to wear while you're jumping on the bed during your next vacation.

Facebook 'Secret Crush' App Installing Malicious Spyware

2009-09-24T06:15:00.001-07:00

Facebook: "You have a Secret Crush invitation"

OMG, OMG, OMG! Who could it be?!

Unfortunately, if you find this note on your Facebook page, it's more likely to be an undercover malicious spyware program than a declaration of love from your Facebook crush of the moment. Love is truly dead.

Security firm Fortinet uncovered a widget that disguises itself as a normal Facebook application but actually unleashes the "Zango" adware/spyware virus when installed. Users will receive an e-mail alert that they have a "secret crush" and upon signing into the social networking site will see an alert much like a friend or group request. Clicking on it asks users to install an application on their page, but also demands they invite five friends to join.

Having gone through the trouble to install the app, most people will invite their friends, making the widget a "social worm," researchers said. "Even after that step, no crush of any sort is revealed."

Instead you get a page that requests an additional download--a download that is in fact the Zango virus.

Fortinet said that as of January 4, approximately four-percent of Facebook users have installed the "Secret Crush" application, which also goes by the name "My Admirer."

UPDATE: "Facebook is committed to user safety and security and, to that end, its Terms of Service for developers explicitly state that applications should not use adware and spyware," a Facebook spokesperson said in an e-mail. "Users should employ the same precautions while downloading software from Facebook applications that they use when downloading software on their desktop. We have contacted the developers and have disabled the Secret Crush application for violating Facebook Platform Terms of Service."

UPDATE II: Zango issued a press release last week that denied any involvement in the "Secret Crush" application.

"At no point while adding the Secret Crush application to a Facebook profile did the widget attempt to install Zango software," Zango said. "The Secret Crush widget is neither a Zango application nor is it affiliated with Zango in any way. Zango does not own it, did not manufacture it, and did not bundle software with it."

Hands On With Hulu

2009-09-22T22:33:00.001-07:00

After waiting most of the day for approval from Hulu PR, I can now post a hands-on evaluation of the beta, which was officially announced at midnight Sunday night. (When registering, the terms of service repeatedly failed to load, meaning that I had no idea if Hulu would make me watch old episodes of The Littlest Groom if I posted content without permission.)

The verdict: Broad? Extremely. Deep? No. If you were hoping for some magical archive of TV episodes, forget it. This is why piracy is winning, people. But give Hulu credit: what it does, it does well.

Fortunately, the site has learned several key lessons from the Web 2.0 design gurus: keep it clean, keep it simple, and organize it well. While you won't find any user-generated video here, both studios have presented their gems, front and center. Take for, example, the once-lost version of Saturday Night Live's "Lazy Sunday: The Chronicles of Narnia":

And that's one of the nifty things. Video can be embedded into blogs. Sure, you'll still end up watching the commercials, but that's the tradeoff. Oh, and design for widescreen.

Only the last aspect needs some more work. If you're looking for a certain show, clicking on the "Browse Titles" link at the top of the page will bring up a list of shows, each adorned by a small banner icon. No preference is given to either NBC shows or Fox properties; each is treated equally.

But Hulu made one mystifying decision: in the page marked "Popular Episodes," the user is subjected to a two-wide column of "favorites," with no indication whose favorites they are. Users? The site's editors? NBC executives, in a back-room deal with Fox? Some indication would be helpful. The same treatment is given to the bottom of the home page.

Playing a show is straightforward: once you click on the episode, a window opens with some interesting options: "Lower lights" turns the surrounding white background a dark gray, making extended viewing easier on the eyes. There's the standard "embed" and "share" options, as well as "details". For some reason, Hulu included both a "share" and "pop out" option, to give you two options to view.

There are ads, although the presentation isn't consistent; when I viewed a Simpsons episode Monday morning, the episode started with a short lead-in, and then 15- and 30-second ads played during the normal commercial breaks. (There are strange dots within the time slider that I believe correspond to commercial breaks.) However, on Monday afternoon, the ads were gone, even during a watching of the same episode.

The video is crisp and smooth, when it loads. For some reason, I received several instances of the following error message, one when trying to view an episode of House, and once when I tried to view The Blues Brothers: "Unfortunately, this video is not currently available in your country or region. We apologize for the inconvenience."

It's not quite clear what this means, since I'm sitting in Arizona right now. Has John McCain really ticked off Hollywood that badly?

The other problem is actually getting the video to load. Again, on Monday morning the experience was seamless: video loaded seamlessly, and everything worked as you would expect. At 3:15 PM PDT, it took about ten seconds to load a video page, perhaps fifteen seconds for it to actually begin, and even then the audio had a tendency to desynchronize -- evidence, it seems, of problems with the server load.

The sad thing is that Hulu will only archive the last five episodes of a current show, and a single season of a show that's off the air -- typically the first season, but not always. On the other hand, it's an excellent way to keep up with shows that don't quite make your DVR for reasons of scheduling or capacity.

Hulu suffers from two beta problems right now: an apparent lack of server capacity, and a deep stable of content. I have every confidence that Hulu will solve the first, and will refuse to solve the latter. Which, when you think about it, is just plain dumb. Yes, advertising is annoying, but it pays my bills. I'm willing to put up with it. But if the model works for the five most recent episodes of a given show, it should work for all of them. Let's hope this changes.

Hulu Beta Invites

2009-09-22T22:32:00.001-07:00

You may remember AppScout's Hands On Hulu post, about the new online video service offering full-length episodes of some of your favorite TV shows. Well, recently I got my hands on over 2,000 invitations to the private beta version of Hulu, so now you can try it out yourself. To redeem your invite, check out this Hulu preview at PCmag.com.

5Min: Tutorial Videos in a Flash

2009-09-22T22:31:00.001-07:00

We all want to learn new things and expand our horizons; in fact, one of my New Year's resolutions is to learn to cook some new dishes for friends and family. Thankfully, learning new things doesn't necessarily mean that I have to take a class or spend hours upon hours reading or studying. With 5Min, I can learn how to make a vegetarian shepherd's pie or a beef Wellington in just a few minutes.

5Min is a video site that specializes in how-to and instructional videos made by people with knowledge of their subjects. The best part is that all of the videos are short-form; none of them are longer than five minutes long.

Five minutes is all it takes to learn how to cross-stitch, to fold a t-shirt, or even to seat dinner guests. The videos at 5Min help you learn at least a little about a specific topic, and while you may not be able to learn everything there is to know about everything in five-minute snippets, you can certainly get started. The point of the videos at 5Min aren't to make you an expert, but to help you learn enough to get involved with a topic, teach you a quick tip or trick, or give you enough information that you can fill in the blanks on your own.

5Min videos are all created by the user community. The site staff and administrators provide the framework for the service and might contribute a video or two on their own time, but the bulk of the content is provided by 5Min.com users. Each user gets a "studio" where they can upload their videos in their areas of expertise. The service was founded on the principle that everyone's an expert in something, so everyone is invited to participate and share their knowledge with the rest of the community.

The topics at 5Min range from the arts, business, fashion, food, games, parenting to even sports and technology. You can find videos on how to check your HOSTS file for spyware on one page, and on another page you can learn about how scientists use DNA fingerprinting to catch criminals.

If you're not looking for a brain buster, you can head over to the Home category to get 10 Feng Shui tips for your home, or the "fashion" section to learn how to properly tie a do-rag. If the topic of the video is just too broad to cover in five minutes, you might find a series of videos on the same topic, each taking you through a specific step.

The beauty of 5Min isn't just that the videos are all short (the average video is about 3-4 minutes, and sticks very closely to a specific topic), but that the site reaches out to everyday people to share their knowledge with the world. You'll find videos on topics you didn't know you wanted to learn about, and after only five minutes, you'll find your life that much richer.

Acorn: Power Image Editing without Photoshop

2009-09-22T22:30:00.001-07:00

For many Mac users, buying a Mac and working with images in any application other than Adobe Photoshop is blasphemy. I can't count how many purchases for Macs I've seen that have the Mac on the first line and a license for Adobe Creative Suite on the second line. But if you want to do some basic image editing and photo manipulation, Photoshop might be overkill. Acorn on the other hand, is perfect. It's lightweight and affordable, and it incorporates most of the features a lot of people use in more powerful tools like Photoshop. It's no replacement for Photoshop, but it's simple, easy to use, and worth a look.

Tasks like editing and managing screenshots for blogs and technical documentation, basic photo editing, and image editing may not always require all the features and power of Adobe Photoshop or similar high-end image editing applications. Acorn combines a sleek and simple interface with power editing tools that will make most graphic designers happy that they saved some money by not choosing Photoshop.

Acorn has a number of features that Photoshop users will love, but also has a few unique tricks that come in handy. You can take screenshots using Acorn and immediately edit them, manage the opacity or blending of multiple image layers, and do auto image resizing just by changing the size of the image on your screen. You can create text styles and work with gradients all from within Acorn's simple interface. The app also allows you to write additional plug-ins if you're code-savvy and missing a feature that you'd like to see in the app.

Perhaps one of Acorn's greatest features is that it's completely powered by your graphics processor. That means no more relying on the CPU and no more slowing the rest of your system down while you do complicated image editing. Acorn is a universal binary and works on both PowerPC Macs and Intel Macs, but a Mac with a newer video card will really take advantage of Acorn's power. Acorn is only $39.99, and you can download it and give it a try before deciding to buy.

BurgerTime Delight: Build Behemoth Burgers on Your Mobile Phone

2009-09-22T22:29:00.001-07:00

I didn't make it to CES this year, but there are plenty of e-mail blasts on product announcements from the show that it feels as if I'm actually there! One such e-mail came from Namco Networks, publisher and developer of mobile games. Yesterday, the company announced its newest mobile title, BurgerTime Delight, in partnership with Japanese developer G-mode. The game is a 25-year-old arcade classic (released in 1982 as BurgerTime by Data East), enhanced and updated into this mobile version with new level backgrounds, new characters, and mini-games. In BurgerTime Delight, you play Chef Peter Pepper, "whose goal is to build behemoth burgers by knocking each burger ingredient onto plates at the bottom of the screen." I love the idea already! On each level, Peter is challenged by being chased by his food nemeses Mr. Hotdog, Mr. Egg, and Mr. Pickle. Thankfully, you can "squash your enemies with falling ingredients, stun them with pepper from a collected peppershaker, or burn them with hot sauce."Namco Networks also announced that BurgerTime Delight includes two new food baddies, Mr. Garlic, described as a "clove of garlic who drops lingering morsels of his cloves behind him" and Mr. Carrot, who can "drill himself down a level to chase Peter." Other enhancements are a word collection mini-game.

BurgerTime Delight is available now on national carriers including Sprint and Verizon.

Xinorbis: Get a Handle on Your Hard Drive

2009-09-22T06:50:00.001-07:00

IYou can buy and install a 250GB hard drive on Monday, and by Friday it feels like you're already out of space. There's no shortage of applications to help you manage your drives and show you where all your space is going, but Xinorbis is one of the best that I've seen. Xinorbis can analyze a drive or set of folder and tell you what types of files are inside and how much space you're losing to what kinds of files, all from inside an attractive interface that puts other similar apps to shame.

Xinorbis can analyze entire hard drives, network shares and mapped network drives, and individual directories. If you're curious as to what's taking up all your hard drive space, you can use the app to scan your entire system; but if you're concerned just with exactly how much of your downloads folder is, for example music versus movies, Xinorbis can tell you. The app includes shell support and allows you to launch straight from a directory that you'd like to scan. Once Xinorbis completes a scan, it generates a report that you can save for future reference and comparison later.

Xinorbis has a few features that make it noticeably more effective than other drive analyzers. Not only will the app scan your drive and tell you how much storage is being used by what files and folders, Xinorbis can break down that allocation by file type. For example, Xinorbis can tell you that the bulk of your hard drive is being eaten by music or movies, as opposed to documents and programs. You can also sort by file type if you wish, and see how much of your available space is occupied by MP3s versus AACs.

The interface is intelligently designed and reveals a great deal of information in one view. For example, one display can show you the ratio of file types on the drive, a run-down of file sizes on the drives, and a graph of subdirectories and their contents. Similar applications can show you similar information, but not in the same view.

Fans of faster apps, such as WinDirStat and SequoiaView, will miss the ability to delete files straight from the application and won't be pleased with how long Xinorbis takes to analyze your drive or directories, but they'll be pleased with the multiple views and wealth of reporting capabilities. Xinorbis is free, and supports Windows 98, ME, 2000, XP, and Vista.

[ via DownloadSquad ]

Sony BMG Goes Digital, Misses the Point

2009-09-22T06:49:00.001-07:00

The company that brought you the Great Rootkit Fiasco of 2005 has finally come around and decided to not only ditch DRM entirely, but to allow you to download music from artists on the Sony BMG label in MP3 format. Sony BMG recently unveiled its new MusicPass site, which promises fans unprotected MP3 downloads playable on any device. The problem? You have to go to a brick-and-mortar store to buy a card with a code you can redeem for your digital downloads.

It would seem to be good news that Sony BMG has decided to abandon DRM in favor of unprotected MP3s. One would hope that Sony got the message that its customers were tired of being treated like criminals and decided to change its ways. Unfortunately it seems Sony didn't get the entire message, or the company's suffering from a case of selective hearing. Sure, Sony's dropped DRM, but instead of understanding that people are interested in downloading tracks individually and buying music online, it has reproduced the old model of forcing people to go to stores to buy their music.

Now, if you want digital music from your favorite Sony BMG artists, you have to go to a physical store, buy a plastic card with the code for the album you're interested in, take it home, enter the code at MusicPass, and then you get to download the song. It's like buying a CD at your local department store, just with more effort required to actually get the music and less payoff: You get a plastic card and some MP3s for all your effort. At least a CD is a physical copy with liner notes and album art, and you can rip the CD to get the digital version.

Unfortunately, the entire project is proof that Sony still doesn't get it. It's catching on slowly but surely, which is good, but it managed to get the part that says people want electronic copies of their music while missing the part that says people want it to be convenient and worth their time. Sony is willing to concede that people want control over what they do with the music when they own it, but they're determined to have complete control over how people purchase and obtain their music.

There will be 37 albums available from a handful of artists via MusicPass when the program starts. The MusicPass cards will be $12.99 (almost the cost of the artist's CD, which will likely sit on the shelf next to the MusicPass card at the store), and will be available at Best Buy, Target, and a few other stores on January 15th. Look on the bright side--at least with MusicPass, the digital downloads won't come with a rootkit.

[ via USA Today ]

Martin: FCC To Investigate Comcast Data Discrimination

2009-09-22T06:48:00.001-07:00

Kevin Martin is raining on Comcast's CES parade.

On the same day Comcast CEO Brian Roberts gave the first ever CES keynote by a cable chief (with the Flight of the Conchords in tow, no less), the FCC chairman said at a separate CES panel that the commission would be investigating whether Comcast was involved in data discrimination.

"Sure, we're going to investigate and make sure that no consumer is going to be blocked," Martin was quoted as saying.

In October, AP conducted a test that it said proved Comcast was blocking access to peer-to-peer networks; an experiment that was later replicated and confirmed by the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF). Comcast accused AP and EFF of using too narrow a focus with its tests. The cable provider admitted to "delaying" certain P2P traffic, but denied that it was blocking access to any content.

Two months ago, the SavetheInternet.com coalition and several academics filed a complaint with the FCC calling on the commission to stop Comcast from violating customer rights.

A source within the FCC confirmed that the quote from Martin was accurate, but said that the FCC did not make any official announcement today about its plans regarding the Comcast complaint.

"We believe our practices are in accordance with the FCC's policy statement on the Internet," David L. Cohen, executive vice presiden for Comcast, said in a statement. "Comcast plans to work with the Commission in its desire to bring more transparency for consumers regarding broadband network management."

The interest groups who filed the complaint were predictably pleased.

"We hope the Chairman's statements, made two months after we filed our complaint, will lead to immediate and accelerated action at the FCC on the critical issue of whether Comcast, AT

Hands-On with Picaboo: Creating Photo Books

2009-09-22T06:47:00.001-07:00

If you're a shutterbug, you probably have discs and folders full of photos to sort through. And many of them won't ever see the light of day once you've uploaded them to your computer. But photo services like the ones we profiled in our top 10 list of Apps to Preserve Memories make it easy to organize and preserve your pictures in book form.

I recently had the chance to test out Picaboo's photo service, and I knew right away that a photo book would be the perfect holiday gift for my dad. To call him a photography enthusiast is a serious understatement. In the course of our five-day trip to Paris, he rarely emerged from behind the viewfinder of his sizable HP camera. Needless to say, the photo album was the hit of my family's Christmas. My dad still shows it off to family friends! Though there were a few hiccups building the book with Picaboo's software, I was really happy with the final product. More on the creation process after the jump.

Similar to competitor MyPublisher.com, the actual building process occurs on your local system after you download the free software from Picaboo's website. Here's where I hit the first glitch: I own a MacBook, and Picaboo only works on Windows systems. I regrouped and brought the photos to the office on a flash drive, so that I could use a Windows machine. Unfortunately, the installation process still didn't run smoothly, and I kept getting vague error messages. I tried going to Picaboo's troubleshooting page, but it wasn't particularly helpful or straightforward. Finally, after turning off all other programs and restarting my computer, I was able to fully install the software, which ran smoothly after that.

Once I launched Picaboo and selected the "Create Book!" function, I was immediately prompted to pick a theme. I was pretty impressed with the options. The basic choices are all surprisingly tasteful and allow for a lot of flexibility. The program comes with 19 basic themes and more are available on Picaboo's Web site.

The next step is to choose the photos. The program loads thumbnails, so it's pretty easy to pick the exact pictures you want. In Picaboo, you can do some photo editing (including resizing, adjusting brightness/contrast, and removing red eye), but if you want anything more advanced, you'll need to tweak the photos before you upload. The upload itself doesn't take long (even on my clunker of a computer) and the little dancing Picaboo logo is enough entertainment to pass the time.

I wanted ultimate control of the layout, but I decided to try the Auto Create function just for kicks. I was actually impressed with the result it came up with. The program took Paris photos, along with shots of the beach by our house in San Diego and the ski slopes in central California, and combined them in a visually compelling way that I was actually tempted to use. If you don't want to lay out the book yourself, I'd definitely recommend this option.

It's a good thing Picaboo offers so may page layout options, because you really can't alter them in any way once you've made your selection. Building the page is simple enough. A pane underneath the main window displays thumbnails of all the uploaded photos; I just dragged and dropped each in the preset layout I selected from Picaboo's list. If you want to do any photo editing within the program, this is the time to do it. The photos are automatically placed with a drop shadow (which can be turned off) and white border, but you can select from any number of border or corner options, or no border at all. There are quite a few choices for captions, including a broad selection of fonts and styles and the opportunity to create custom colors if you don't like the program's basic palette. Unfortunately, Picaboo doesn't warn you accurately if your captions are running a little long or going off the printable page: There are dotted lines that show you where your caption is supposed to end. I wanted mine as low on the page as possible, so I hit return until it was resting just above the line. But in printing, it cut off all the tails on my letters (like the bottoms of p's, g's, and j's). So the dotted line wasn't quite accurate.

I opted to design my own cover, instead of the default linen and leather cutout covers the program offers. I was very happy with the results; my book had a lovely glossy, laminated cover. Ordering was simple too. One of Picaboo's greatest strengths is the breadth of book selections it offers, starting at $9.99 for the basics and going up to $49.99. Regardless of the price (which is largely determined by the cover option you select) each book can hold up to 20 pages for the base fee and 140 additional pages for a little more per page. Even if you don't opt to buy a printed version, the photo book exists on your account and can be shared with other Picaboo members.

Though I didn't test it, Picaboo also offers a soundtrack option, where you can upload songs from your computer or download tunes from eMusic.

Despite my complaints with the process, with a little time and tinkering I was able to get the result I wanted. I wish that Picaboo was compatible with Macs and that the installation had run smoothly, but once it was up and running I had few complaints. My dad's book looks fantastic on the coffee table, and that's what really counts.by Nicole Price Fasig

PointUI Spices Up Windows Mobile

2009-09-22T06:46:00.001-07:00

Windows Mobile isn't exactly the prettiest operating system on the block. Sure it gets the job done, but is it too much to ask for a little form with my function? PointUI, a free skinning application for Windows Mobile, wants to help me out. PointUI brings an attractive and elegant interface to Windows Mobile's clunky program list and home screen, and makes your Windows Mobile device a bit more of a pleasure to use.

I simply can't stand the look of Windows Mobile's default UI. I carry a Motorola Q around for work, and while the interface is simple and functional, it's just not pretty. The home screen tries to squash together my upcoming calendar appointments, number of unread e-mail messages, and other information on the same screen--and unfortunately makes all of it unreadable. PointUI replaces all of that with a few simple icons and a sparse home screen that shows me where to go to get the information I want instead of trying to put it all in the same view.

PointUI isn't for everyone. It doesn't work with some smartphones and PDAs. And because the app was designed for touch-screen devices, it didn't take too well to my Motorola Q, which has a directional pad instead of a touch-screen. You should definitely check the forums before downloading it to your Windows Mobile device and expecting it to work smoothly. The app is in beta, so there are still kinks to work out, but if your threshold for bleeding-edge apps is high and you dislike the Windows Mobile interface as much as I do, PointUI is worth a try.

PointUI skins just about every aspect of Windows Mobile. You'll have to see the traditional Windows Mobile interface some of the time, but the most often-used screens, such as the home screen and the settings screens, have been redesigned to be much more attractive and to scroll smoothly between views. Additionally, if you do have a touch-screen device, PointUI turns up the touch sensitivity so you don't have to use a stylus to click on items. Instead, finger-swipes (a la the iPhone) will work just fine.

The designers behind PointUI claim that their focus is simplicity, elegance, and ease of use. I saw those characteristics show through when I tried PointUI, and I'll wait patiently for it to support my Q; my friend with an AT

MySpace Friend Adder Is Just Depressing

2009-09-21T08:04:00.001-07:00

I love social networking. I think there's a lot of promise in tools that allow people to connect with one another across large distances, connect with colleagues and professionals, or even organize like-minded people for a common cause. But for all of the promise social networking sites and services offer, there are still people who use them for nothing more than marketing a brand or making themselves feel popular. That's where MySpace Friend Adder comes in. If your MySpace profile is a little lonely and you want to make more friends, just give the service your information; in return, it promises thousands of new MySpace friends.

There are two major target audiences for a service like the MySpace Friend Adder: marketing professionals who have a brand or product to promote and who have decided that MySpace is the perfect medium, and lonely MySpace users whose paltry handful of friends isn't enough to satisfy their desire to be one of the "cool kids." In both cases, it's somewhat sad and an awful reflection on what MySpace has become, now that everyone's attention has turned to Facebook instead.

The service is simple: Just give the MySpace Friend Adder your "friend code," a number in your MySpace profile, and the service presents you with a screen of friends you can automatically add to your MySpace profile. It's likely that all of those accounts are set to automatically accept friend requests, and it's likely that all of those users have also used the Friend Adder in the past. Either that or the service just mercilessly hammers random MySpace users with friend requests.

The service gives out "friend points" for using it and for adding friends who in turn add you back. What those points are good for is anyone's guess, but some people are apparently dependent enough on the service to bolster their friends lists that they've collected upwards of 150 points. (It's worth noting that the users with the most points are all marketing services.) You can shell out $3 to be a VIP for a day, and up to $60 to be a VIP for two months, whatever that might mean.

The MySpace Friend Adder proves that MySpace is either going down the tubes or that social networking of the MySpace genre is a sham. I'd like to believe that it's more the former than the latter, but I'm sure that you could argue both based on the existence of "friend adding services" as a genre.

The Latest Frontrunner?

2009-09-18T22:19:00.001-07:00

Hillary Clinton and John McCain, at the top of the New Hampshire heap, are savoring their new labels as frontrunners. But apparently they have to share with another frontrunner, at least according to an eWEEK article by Steven Vaughan-Nichols. Is Network Solutions reveling in the label? Maybe not so much.

You see, in Internet lingo, "front running" means locking up a domain name as soon as somebody does a Whois search. A cynic might point out that if a person happens to search for a domain on Joe's registration site, and Joe immediately grabs the name, then anyone wanting to buy the domain will have to go to

QiPit Turns Cameraphone Images to PDFs

2009-09-18T22:18:00.001-07:00

I've often found myself in meetings where my colleagues and I fill a whiteboard with ideas but forget to write any of them down. When the meeting is over, we all run back to our desks, grab pens and paper, and come back to the conference room to try and make sense of our whiteboard notes.

With QiPit, we can fill up a whiteboard without worrying that we won't be able to leave the meeting with copies of everything we wrote. QiPit allows you to use your cameraphone to snap an image of a document, a whiteboard or chalkboard, or even handwritten notes and convert it to a PDF that you can e-mail, fax, or publish straight from your phone.

Whether you're sitting in a long corporate meeting, and you've filled up the whiteboard with ideas and bullet points, or you're sitting in a class where your professor likes to erase the board before you can write everything down, QPit can help. You can take pictures of just about anything with your camera phone, then send the image to QiPit, which will convert the image into a PDF document and send it back to you.

Qipit works equally well with chalkboards, written notes, whiteboards, and printed documents. The limiting factor is the quality of your camera phone. The service works with most major camera phones and offers a model selector that tells you what you can do with each type of phone. The service's basic features work best with whiteboards, handwritten notes, and printed documents, but the better the camera on your phone, the higher-quality images and PDFs it can produce for you. QiPit does some image clean-up for you--brightening up dark images to bring out the text, for example.

Once you have the converted PDF, you can store it on your phone or on the Web, e-mail it to yourself or your colleagues, fax it to a friend from your cell phone, and publish it to the Web. Alternatively, you can save PDFs in your QiPit account, tag them, and organize them. The service was designed to be used with camera phones, but you can use a digital camera as well and e-mail the photo to your QiPit account.

QiPit members use the service for ideas scribbled on napkins, class notes on chalkboards, and handwritten notes from meetings and study sessions. If you're the type of person who's always jotting down notes on random slips of paper, QiPit could be useful for you to get all of those ideas in one place. Best of all, the service is free.

FeedDemon and NetNewsWire Now Free Downloads

2009-09-18T22:17:00.001-07:00

Fans of desktop RSS readers, rejoice! Newsgator, the company behind NetNewsWire for Mac and FeedDemon for Windows, has updated and released all its desktop and mobile RSS readers for free. NetNewsWire and FeedDemon are highly regarded and generally considered the best RSS aggregators that money can buy--and now, you don't have to pay anything for them.

All NewsGator's personal products are free now, including FeedDemon for Windows, NetNewsWire for Mac, NewsGator Go! for BlackBerry and Windows Mobile devices, NewsGator Inbox for Outlook, and NewsGator Online (its Web-based offering). NetNewsWire and FeedDemon were also updated to new versions, which NewsGator claims include improvements in stability and functionality.

The biggest selling points for NetNewsWire and FeedDemon have been their ability to work with the speed, simplicity, and customization options of a desktop client, but still remain connected to NewsGator's servers so you could access your preferences and feeds remotely. This way, you have the ability to choose when you refresh your feeds, manage your feeds on one computer and have the settings filter down to all the other clients you use, and still log in to NewsGator Online to read your feeds. FeedDemon, for example, is so robust that it earned an Editor's Choice award when FeedDemon 2.0 was released.

NewsGator has promised to continue updating and developing its desktop and individual products, even though they're now free. The company will instead turn its focus to its enterprise offerings, including its Enterprise Server platform, its widget framework and social networking software for Microsoft Sharepoint. The company is aiming to bring the success its had in the end-user market to the corporate arena.

[ via MarketWire ]

As Lucasfilm Goes, So Goes HD?

2009-09-18T22:16:00.001-07:00

First Warner Brothers announced it was going Blu, then the producers of blue movies started making similar sounds about a move to Blu-ray. Microsoft has even made some noise about the Blu-ing of xBox after the fall of HD DVD.

All this is all well and good for Sony's format (and welcome news for anyone who got a PS3 this holiday season), but it's nothing compared to the legions of geeks who're waiting--nay, clamoring--for the Star Wars saga to go HD. If that series of SF masterpieces (okay, call them blockbusters) went Blu, it would be a mammoth body-blow to the HD DVD format. Lucasfilm is officially "agnostic" at this point, but what do the series hardcore fans want? You know, the ones who dress up in wookie suits for the cons.

It's anyone's guess what will actually happen, but there is an interesting poll on the starwars.com site today, and the results are encouraging for Blu-ray owners. At the time I wrote this, Blu-ray was winning by a margin of nearly seven to one--68% for Blu-ray, versus an anemic 10% for HD DVD. As anyone who's following the Primaries knows, polls are probably only one step from damned lies and statistics. Still, the number of undecideds--those who haven't picked a format yet--is a bit smaller than independents in the recent contest in the Live Free or Die State, at 22%.

Granted, the correlation between gamers and Star Wars fanatics is probably quite high, so we're probably talking about a lot of people who use their game console as their main player, and for full HD that means PS3s (some, but not all, xBox 360s can handle 1080p signals, and that requires an aftermarket add on). It's hard to say how much of a predictor this is for the other high-def movie enthusiasts out there. Still, the Star Wars franchise has racked up phenomenal sales in every format in which it's been released.

It's early days for this poll, which runs until the twenty-second of this month, but things are looking Blu in the nerd camp. How will you vote?

Post by Sean Carroll

Last.FM Goes Windows Mobile

2009-09-18T22:15:00.001-07:00

It may not be the long-promised Slacker player, but music lovers with a Windows Mobile phone will surely be pleased to hear about the introduction of a version of Internet radio service Last.fm for their favorite mobile OS.

Last.fm Mobile "scrobbles" music from Windows Media Player (basing playlists upon your existing music library) and offers "experimental radio functionality," according to Download Squad. The app works with Windows Media Player 5 or 6 and .NET Compact Framework 2.0.

RIAA Goes After Usenet Newsgroups for Copyright Infringement

2009-09-18T03:23:00.001-07:00

Perhaps empowered by a recent $222,000 ruling in its favor, the Recording Industry of America (RIAA) is now going after Usenet.com, one of the companies hosting the distributed Usenet newsgroups, for "consciously and blatantly" facilitating the illegal downloading of copyrighted material.

The recording industry filed suit Friday in a New York district court and is looking to recover Usenet profits, $150,000 per infringement and attorneys fees.

The RIAA asserts in its filing that Usenet.com is "almost identical" to Napster and other illegal P2P file sharing services. Usenet.com, however, goes further to provide "enhancements that make the service more attractive" for those looking to share files illegally, according to the suit.

Usenet.com allows users to share data on its system like a message board. The service provides a variety of service plans, from $18.95 per month for unlimited access to $4.95 per month for 2GB of space.

The RIAA alleges that these fees encourage Usenet to support infringement. Usenet.com's "profits increase with the amount of infringement it fosters [because] binary files are significantly larger than text files," according to the suit. "The more copyrighted sound recordings users download, the more money [Usenet.com] makes."

The RIAA points to notices on the Usenet Web site that appear to encourage illegal downloads like: "Shh ... Quiet! We believe it's no one's business but your own what you do on the Internet or in Usenet. We don't track user activity."

Such statement could be problematic in court in the RIAA wants to invoke the Grokster ruling, in which the Supreme Court ruled against filing sharing services because it found that "each company showed itself to be aiming to satisfy a known source of demand for copyright infringement"

A copyright policy on the Usenet Web site prohibits the trading of illegal material, but the RIAA claims that Usenet nonetheless "expressly promises its users that it will not take action against them for downloading infringing material."

Usenet.com did immediately respond to requests for comment.

A quick perusal of songs being illegally downloaded by Usenet.com users, meanwhile, include selections from Ace of Base, Air Supply, Kenny G and Milli Vanilli, so perhaps this case should be an attack on musical tastes rather than Internet practices.

Are Obama and Dick Cheney Related? Ancestry.com Could Help

2009-08-20T01:37:00.001-07:00

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.

World's Oldest Blogger Celebrates 108th Birthday

2009-08-20T01:36:00.001-07:00

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.

ShowHype: Entertainment News for the Web 2.0 Crowd

2009-08-20T01:35:00.001-07:00

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.

Hatebook: The Anti-Facebook

2009-08-20T01:34:00.001-07:00

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.

Introducing Napster 4.0

2009-08-20T01:33:00.001-07:00

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.

Free Exorcism on Halloween

2009-08-19T03:22:00.001-07:00

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!

Windows XP Service Pack 3 Beta

2009-08-19T03:21:00.001-07:00

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

2009-08-19T03:20:00.001-07:00

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.

Is China Redirecting U.S. Search Requests?

2009-08-19T03:19:00.001-07:00

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.

Thousands of "Daily Show" Clips Going Online

2009-08-19T03:18:00.001-07:00

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.

TrekEarth: Sharing the World Through Photography

2009-08-18T06:16:00.001-07:00

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

Wegor: Travel Together

2009-08-18T06:15:00.001-07:00

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

Scientific Research Made Easy with Scitopia

2009-08-18T06:14:00.001-07:00

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.

Free Feature Idea: 'BackTalk' for Web Video

2009-08-18T06:13:00.001-07:00

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.

Google Docs Goes Mobile

2009-08-18T06:12:00.001-07:00

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.

Hands On: The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass

2009-08-17T07:11:00.001-07:00

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.

Is Web 3.0 Here? Is It Twine?

2009-08-17T07:10:00.001-07:00

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.

Is Web 5.0 Here? Is It Pizza?

2009-08-17T07:09:00.001-07:00

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.)

On Beyond Vista: First Public Demo of Windows 7

2009-08-17T07:08:00.001-07:00

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.

Tutsbuzz: Design and Programming Tutorials

2009-08-17T07:07:00.001-07:00

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.

Green Deals Daily: Find Eco-Friendly Bargains

2009-08-15T20:20:00.001-07:00

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.

TinkerTool Lets You Tweak Out Your Mac

2009-08-15T20:19:00.001-07:00

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.

Google Goes Black, Goes Back

2009-08-15T20:18:00.001-07:00

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.

Find Eco-Friendly Building Materials at Ecolect

2009-08-15T20:17:00.001-07:00

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.

MySpace Launches "Roommates" Web Series

2009-08-15T20:16:00.001-07:00

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.

Fall CTIA: Windows Mobile Gets More Manageable

2009-08-15T06:11:00.001-07:00

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

Ask the Presidential Candidates with 10Questions.com

2009-08-15T06:10:00.001-07:00

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.

Agreeship: Prenups go Web 2.0

2009-08-15T06:09:00.001-07:00

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.

A Grim Google Map of California's Wildfires

2009-08-15T06:08:00.001-07:00

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

2009-08-15T06:07:00.001-07:00

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."

Penguin Removes Audiobooks From eMusic Shelves

2009-08-14T04:32:00.001-07:00

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.

PC Enthusiasts Unite and Fight at The Mod Shop

2009-08-14T04:31:00.001-07:00

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.

How to Send Email to SMS Cell Phones, By Carrier

2009-08-14T04:30:00.001-07:00

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

Ubuntu's Desktop Effects: Proceed with Caution

2009-08-14T04:29:00.001-07:00

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

Flute Hero: Another Frantic Flash Rhythm Game

2009-08-14T04:28:00.001-07:00

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.

HeatSeek: Get Paid to Download Porn?

2009-08-14T00:14:00.001-07:00

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.

Suite Deal from Webroot

2009-08-14T00:13:00.001-07:00

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.

Report: MySpace to Partner with Oberon for Online Games

2009-08-14T00:12:00.001-07:00

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.

Flute Hero: Another Frantic Flash Rhythm Game

2009-08-14T00:11:00.001-07:00

Should Your E-Mail Be Forwarded After Switching ISPs?

2009-08-14T00:10:00.001-07:00

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?

Google, Microsoft Reportedly Battling for Facebook Stake

2009-08-13T06:52:00.001-07:00

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 Defeats Google for $240M Facebook Stake

2009-08-13T06:51:00.000-07:00

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.

Are Ron Paul Supporters Destroying the Internet?

2009-08-13T06:50:00.001-07:00

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?

RedState.com: Ron Paul Supporters ARE Destroying the Internet

2009-08-13T06:49:00.000-07:00

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.

CSI: Second Life

2009-08-13T06:48:00.001-07:00

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.

GeneTree: Using DNA to Create a Global Family Tree

2009-08-12T04:31:00.001-07:00

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.

Windows Live Expo Takes on Craigslist

2009-08-12T04:30:00.001-07:00

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.

OS X Leopard Reviews, Round One

2009-08-12T04:29:00.001-07:00

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:

Connect2Elect: Helping You Decide The 2008 Presidential Election

2009-08-12T04:28:00.001-07:00

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.

Starz Announces Vongo 2.0

2009-08-12T04:27:00.001-07:00

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.

Create Custom Cookbooks with TasteBook

2009-08-12T00:09:00.001-07:00

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.

Porn on The Company Computer? BUSTED!

2009-08-12T00:08:00.001-07:00

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.

Ulanoff on Facebook Valuation

2009-08-12T00:07:00.001-07:00

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.

Mozilla Prism: Your Favorite Web Apps on Your Desktop

2009-08-12T00:06:00.001-07:00

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.

The LOLcat Code: Even Worse than Da Vinci's

2009-08-12T00:05:00.001-07:00

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?

Microsoft Moves 88 Million Copies of Vista

2009-08-11T07:52:00.001-07:00

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.

MillionDollarPubes.com: A Tale of One Lady's Jungle

2009-08-11T07:51:00.001-07:00

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.

Apple OS 9 R.I.P. For Real, This Time

2009-08-11T07:50:00.001-07:00

These big OS upgrades are always bittersweet moments. You know that for all of the fanfare surrounding the release of a shiny new system, someone, somewhere is getting the shaft. In the case of today's release of Leopard, the big losers are Apple's OS 9 and its fans.

The latest iteration of Apple's OS X will not support Classic--that goes for MacIntel and Power PC Machines. Engadget has some appropriately macabre footage from Steve Jobs' mock funeral for the OS at 2002's WWDC.

SingSnap - Sing Your Heart Out

2009-08-11T07:49:00.001-07:00

Few forms of recreation are as simultaneously entertaining and hated as Karaoke. At SingSnap, you can watch others sing someone else's songs or be part of an enthusiastic community of karaoke singers, post video and audio recordings of yourself singing, comment on other people's performances, and more.

I usually can't stand karaoke. Most people are bad at it, though I do know one or two people who are amazing singers. However, for every one of those people who can really carry a tune there's about two or three others that are painful (or hilarious, depending on my mood) to listen to. At SingSnap, the rule stands. One or two clicks will take you deep into a world of everyday people matching voices against Fats Domino, Frank Sinatra, Billy Joel, and more.

If you're into karaoke though, SingSnap is a great place for you to show off your talents and connect with other people who enjoy it as much as you do. The service is free to use (although the developers claim that premium services are coming soon) and as soon as you sign up you can instantly begin posting videos and audio recordings of yourself singing to your favorite artists' songs.

The service provides assistance to karaoke fans who aren't computer savvy enough to use their computer's microphone or set up a Webcam, and gives all of its users storage space to upload their music and video. SingSnap boasts over 15,000 song selections, and the people behind the site are always uploading new karaoke tracks for the members to try, and look to the user community for new song suggestions.

Once you've signed up and posted your videos, SingSnap members can descend on your glorious (or terrible) singing and rate the song, comment on your performance, and discuss in the site's forums and online chat. If mocking others is more your style, then head into the "hall of fame" to see the SingSnap artists who have the best performances or try the duets section to see and hear SingSnap users singing together. You can also search by artist or community member if you're looking for something specific.

Admittedly I'm the type of person who'd rather visit SingSnap because I'm entertained watching others try to sound like legendary singers and fail miserably. At the same time, SingSnap members are supportive of one another and show a lot of confidence by posting their performances for the world to see. I'm not that brave, but I certainly enjoy listening.

Flock 1.0 Enters Public Beta

2009-08-11T07:48:00.001-07:00

Flock, the "social" Web browser, made waves when it was released several months ago in beta. The browser, based on Mozilla Firefox, incorporates several blogging services, social networks, and Web services like Blogger, Twitter, and Flickr so you can browse and update your social media, bookmarks, and communities easily while surfing the Web.

The developers behind Flock have released a 1.0 beta, indicating that the social browser is finally ready for prime time. Flock makes it easy to update your blog, see your del.icio.us bookmarks, and browse your friends Flickr photostreams in the same window, but will people rush to adopt it over other browsers out there?

The past few months have been full of work for the Flock development team, since their first release received mixed reviews. Critics pointed out that the browser was built on Firefox, was fast and fully featured, and included access to a number of popular social networks and Web services, but wondered who the target audience was, and why people would download Flock, rather than the plug-ins and add-ons that each of the services already made for other browsers. That question has never really been answered, but the new Flock 1.0 beta may give people who love to blog, are addicted to their social bookmarking and news services, and are eager for updates from their favorite YouTube directors a real reason to give the browser a try.

The Flock 1.0 beta is still built on Firefox, and it looks sharp--the layout is easy to understand, and although the sheer number of buttons and options take a moment to get used to, you get the feeling that all of your services are at your fingertips.

Flock's shines when you log into those sites and services, so if you open the sidebar you can select the blogging platforms that you use (Blogger, Livejournal, Wordpress, etc), the media services you subscribe to (YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, etc), and log into them all at once. When you're logged in, Flock will customize all of the views to your accounts with those services. For example, when you log into YouTube and Flickr, Flock can update your media toolbar to include photostreams from your friends.

Flock can do this with a number of your services and blogs, and can even support self-hosted blogs if they're using supported software (like Wordpress, for example). Flock has a built-in RSS reader and blog editor, so you can keep up with your favorite blogs and update your own. Flock will even customize a start page for you with your popular feeds and sites.

Flock makes it incredibly easy to stay on top of all of your blogs, your social bookmarking sites, and favorite media services. Since all of it's built into the browser, you don't need extensions and add-ons like you would with Firefox or Internet Explorer. Even though so much function is built into Flock, it doesn't seem to slow the browser down much or increase it's memory footprint significantly.

Whether or not people will flock to Flock (pun intended) remains to be seen however; for all of the functionality in the app, most people likely only use a handful of the supported services. At the same time, if an hour doesn't go by without you checking your RSS feeds, adding to your del.icio.us bookmarks, uploading photos to your Photobucket account, or updating your Typepad blog, Flock might be for you.

MTV Renews Music Focus With ... Lyrics

2009-08-11T06:40:00.001-07:00

MTV Networks is taking baby steps toward a "renewed" focus on music by emphasizing the power of lyrics. Despite the fact that MTV rarely airs music that might get stuck in one's head, the network next month will unveil a section on its Web site - and the Web sites of sister networks Vh1 and CMT - that will allow users to search for music by entering snippets of a song's lyrics. Results, powered by Gracenote, will provide the option to buy the song, artist information and, eventually, commentary on the "social, political and historical implications" of certain artists' lyrics.

MTV, can I please write the historical and political blurbs? Sample lyrics from the top-requested songs on TRL last week that might be a good place to start:

She want that lovey dovey (lovey dovey)
That kiss kiss (kiss kiss)
In her mind she fantasize bout gettin wit me

or ...

Soulja Boy up in This Hoe
Watch Me Crank It
Watch Me Roll

Watch talented artists of decades past roll over in their graves, perhaps. Lyric searches will also be available on mobile phones for the creative mastermind on the go.

Admittedly, the ability to find a song by typing a few lyrics into a search box is a valuable tool, but if you have Google and a keyboard, you've been able to do this for years. MTV will also continue its innovative streak by becoming the third network this year to debut a gameshow that requires players to "name that tune".

Rock Band: A Gamer's Preview

2009-08-11T06:39:00.001-07:00

Former PC Magazine Lab Director, longtime fanatic gamer, and apparently, rock-star wannabe Matt Sarrel has been blogging on games for a few years now, at Game On! Recently he got a chance to preview the much-anticipated Rock Band, developed by Harmonix Music Systems and being released next month for the Xbox 360 and PS3 by MTV Games and EA.

Here's an excerpt:

To cut to the chase, I loved it. I had a great time playing the game. So much fun. It really tapped the closet musician in me. Much more than Guitar Hero, which is a hell of a lot of fun too, but Rock Band gives you more variety... I wish there were more songs in the game, but overall I totally have to recommend Rock Band for people who want to play music games.

Read Matt's entire Rock Band preview here; it's got lots more details.

And in a case of true synchronicity, just as I was about to hit "publish" on this post, I got e-mail from MTV Games with the confirmed set list for Rock Band. Check it out after the jump.

Rock Band Set List: In addition to the 45 tracks listed below, Rock Band will also feature 13 songs ranging from a variety of established bands to up-and-coming independent artists that can be unlocked as you play through the game.

1960s
Rolling Stones "Gimme Shelter"

1970s
Aerosmith "Train Kept a Rollin'"*
The Who "Won't Get Fooled Again"
Boston "Foreplay/Long Time"
Mountain "Mississippi Queen"*
The Police "Next to You"
David Bowie "Suffragette City"
Black Sabbath "Paranoid"*
Blue Oyster Cult "Don't Fear the Reaper"
The Ramones "Blitzkrieg Bop"
Deep Purple "Highway Star"
KISS "Detroit Rock City"
Molly Hatchet "Flirtin' With Disaster"
The Outlaws "Green Grass

Find Thousands of Greasemonkey Scripts at Userscripts.org

2009-08-11T06:38:00.001-07:00

If you've rolled up your sleeves and started to dig into all of the tools, extensions, and add-ons for Firefox, you've probably come across Greasemonkey. Greasemonkey is a tool that allows you to write and import custom scripts to personalize Websites, automate frequent tasks, and, in some cases, completely change the layout of different sites and Web services so they work better for you.

The trouble with Greasemonkey is that you either have to write your own scripts, or scour the Web for someone else's scripts and tools. Userscripts.org hosts and organizes Greasemonkey scripts by tag, site, and category for easy searching and retrieval.

Some of the sites that I visit on a regular basis host their own Greasemonkey scripts that give users a way to customize specific attributes of the site that the designers don't really want to change for everyone. One site provides scripts that will make a comment field larger or the default text bigger, or even reorganize the layout of the site entirely to add or remove elements like a sidebar or RSS feed. A lot of sites don't provide Greasemonkey scripts, and it's up to the users to create and share them.

At Userscripts.org, anyone can upload and download over 8000 Greasemonkey scripts that customize and provide a number of tweaks and enhancements to thousands of popular Websites and services, from Gmail to Amazon.

All of the scripts uploaded by their creators (or the people who found them around the Web) are tagged with the site or service that they modify and can be updated by the script owner. Other users can comment on the scripts and the script writer can add comments as they update and post new versions.

All of the scripts at Userscripts.org are easily searchable by name, tag, or user. There are over a thousand active members at Userscripts.org, adding comments and uploading new scripts every day. The service is completely free, and the archive of scripts is growing. If you're a script writer or Greasemonkey enthusiast, let Userscripts provide the development environment for your scripts. If you're a Greasemonkey user, check out the massive collection of scripts available.

Obama Issues Support for Net Neutrality

2009-08-11T06:37:00.001-07:00

MTVMusic VideosMTV ShowsEntertainment News

FreeRice: Test Your Vocabulary, Feed the World

2009-08-11T06:36:00.001-07:00

Know the meaning of the word "lyophilization"? It means "freeze-drying," which I just discovered while taking the vocabulary quiz at FreeRice. I had to guess at it, but I guessed correctly, which means I caused 10 more grains of rice to be donated to needy people through the United Nations. Ads live at the bottom of the screen, and each successive click for a new vocabulary word generates the money to pay for the rice.

Ten grains... doesn't sound like a lot. But the challenging quiz is so addictive (at least for the editors in this office!) that you might wind up providing a lot of rice; the site started up less than a month ago, but (at this writing) 372,382,150 grains of rice have already been earned by players.

So go get smarter and feed someone, too.

Imagekind: Get Original and Custom Art Straight from the Artists

2009-08-09T23:22:00.001-07:00

There's no money in amateur art until you're "discovered" by someone or wealthy enough to set up a gallery or partner with other artists. The Web changed a lot of those old rules, and allowing artists to host their own work virtually for the rest of the world to see. But when you find an artist whose work you'd like in your living room, how do you contact them to get a print? And how does the artist go about selling their work to the public?

Imagekind seeks to answer both of those questions. The service was designed as a place where artists and art lovers looking for original and custom pieces can connect and artists can collaborate with one another and show their material to the public without having to worry about the mechanics of running an online store.

Imagekind is laid out nearly as beautifully as the artwork featured on the site. The service has thousands of members offering a world of unique and interesting artwork. IThe site is one of the few services of its kind to sell prints and artwork of museum quality, meaning as a buyer you get the kinds of high-quality paper and super-fine printing that separates fine art from ordinary posters. Imagekind gives control over the store and sales to the individual artists so they have the final say over how the work is sold and in what formats.

Potential buyers can find a wealth of interesting and amazing artwork available in multiple sizes, styles, and genres. If you're looking for landscapes, surrealism, art deco, or modern pieces, they're all a single click away. You can also view some of the most popular pieces available and featured artists, all chosen by the site's editors and moderators. Most of the artwork available is very affordable by artistic standards, with some pieces costing as little as $10.

If you have your own images or photos that you'd like to sell using Imagekind, signing up for an account is easy. If you're just looking for a high quality print or poster, Imagekind can help you there as well. You can upload your photo or import from Flickr, and the service will walk you through customizing and purchasing prints of your own images. Additionally, if you have questions or simply want to talk to a real person regarding your order, Imagekind has a toll-free number you can call during business hours to place an order or ask questions about the service.

While Imagekind is similar to RedBubble, I found that the former is more focused on displaying and selling artwork, rather than being a social network, although Imagekind does allow members to create profiles, set up galleries, and collect fans and friends who love their work or want to collaborate with them on different pieces. Additionally, the focus at Imagekind is on visual art, specifically wall art like paintings and prints, where RedBubble spreads its focus among visual art, poetry and text, even offering t-shirts and clothing options to its buyers and sellers.

That's not to say that Imagekind is lacking; quite the opposite. Imagekind's focus on visual art makes it an excellent destination for the couple feuding over what should hang front and center in the living room or over the bed, and breaks down the available pieces by style, so you can explore based on your tastes. In addition to selling pieces by Imagekind members, Imagekind also sells classical prints and museum art, so you can find reproductions of work hanging in your local gallery, if that's what you're looking for.

The real beauty behind Imagekind is the wealth of artwork available for buyers and the unique selling experience the service offers its members. Imagekind really does try to be a professional gallery, printing, and retail house for its artists, and that effort and attention to quality shows through when you're browsing the gallery looking for something to hang above your bed.

Ubuntu Version 7.10 to be Released Oct 18

2009-08-09T23:21:00.001-07:00

In the midst of Apple announcing its upcoming $129 Leopard OS, Canonical Ltd. announced today version 7.10 (aka Gutsy) of the free Ubuntu Desktop, Ubuntu Server, Kubuntu, and Edubuntu editions, which will be released on October 18, 2007.

The latest version of the Ubuntu Desktop edition will include the following new features:
Hardware management improvements - improved plug-and-play configuration for printers, as well as automatic firmware installation for Broadcom cards

Improved support for display systems

Windows compatibility - Users with a dual partition can read from and write to files that are on located in a Windows partition (including NTFS)

Enhanced user interface - Simple 3D screen effects and graphics

Desktop search - the ability to search your entire desktop, whether for files, folders, chat logs or photos

Firefox plugins - automatic installation of popular Firefox plugins

As many AppScout and Gearlog readers know, I've been running Ubuntu at home for almost two months. Surprisingly, my boyfriend and I are quite happy with the free OS. We've learned a lot of useful information, new programs, and the Compiz Fusion effects make the desktop look awesome. My boyfriend heavily uses Adobe software, so after the Gusty upgrades, that was the only thing we really missed. The big thing is that we don't miss being scared to surf the net or downloading files, and our antivirus popping up every two seconds while using Windows.The screenshot above is from our Dell Inspiron 530 loaded with Ubuntu version 7.04.

Ubuntu: Beyond the Terminal

2009-08-09T23:20:00.001-07:00

Linux, here I come. Making the leap to Linux was a bit scary for me. I've never experienced it before, let alone even seen its interface and what it can do. And it seems more now than ever that more people are trying out Linux: PC Mag's latest issue features a guide on how to install Linux; various Dell systems ship with Ubuntu; and recently former editor-in-chief Jim Louderback hinted that he's sick of Vista and may make the switch. With much support from my boyfriend Eric, who's also a first-time Linux user, we dove head first into the deep waters of Linux.

Choosing Ubuntu. Linux isn't just one operating system like Windows or Mac; it consists of many different OSs, such as Debian, SuSE, RedHat, and Ubuntu. Eric and I decided to go with Ubuntu (pronounced "oo-BOON-too"), since it is known for being the easiest Linux distribution for new users, and it doesn't really require using the terminal. Where did that unusual name come from anyway? Well, Ubuntu is said to derive from a "South African ethical ideology focusing on people's allegiances and relations with each other." In other words, "humanity toward others." The name is fitting, don't you think? We're running the most up-to-date version, which is 7.04 (April 2007) on our Dell Inspiron 530.

Desktop environment. The default desktop environment for Ubuntu is GNOME, which is what we run. It's a very clean and organized interface (as you can see above), and it didn't take me too long to get used to it. It's kind of a cross between Mac and Windows. There's a button to hide all windows and show the desktop in the lower left hand corner. In the lower right hand corner is the recycle bin. In the upper right hand corner is the Power off button and clock; click on the clock, and you're presented with a calendar to log daily tasks. Instead of the annoying Start button, you get three navigational menus on the upper left hand of the screen entitled Applications, Places, and Systems.

"Applications" consists of all of your programs and software, including a dictionary; OpenOffice.org (Word Processor, Database, Presentation, Spreadsheet) that looks almost exactly like MS office programs; Picasa and F-Spot Photo Manager; and 14 games including Mahjongg, Gnometris, Nibbles, and Gnome Sudoku (shown below).
"Places" lets you access documents, folders, and network places. "Systems" brings you to preferences, administration, and help topics.
APT repositories. One of the annoying aspects of a non-free OS are all of those useless apps you'll probably never use; but with Ubuntu, it selects all of the apps that you'll most likely need for the ultimate computing environment. These are called APT repositories. With Windows, software isn't free; you have to pay to use Microsoft Office. With Ubuntu, you get hundreds of free programs, and you don't have to go and search for them either, thanks to the Synaptic Package Manager: it collects all of the necessary programs for you, such as text editors, image editors, and games, into one repository. Then you can install, remove and upgrade whichever programs you choose. We installed a package called WINE, which allows you to run a lot of Windows programs on Linux. Instead of Adobe Photoshop, you get GIMP Image Editor. Instead of Microsoft Word, you get OpenOffice Word Processor. Instead of Windows Media Player, you get Rhythmbox Music Player.

Web browsing. Firefox all the way! (Screenshot shown below.) Well, we wish that were so. Due to some apps we must use for work that only perform well in IE, we were forced to install IE after all. We did this by installing a .deb file called IEs 4 Linux, and were able to download IE6. I use IE strictly for these apps, and leave Firefox to searching.

GNOME Desktop effects. What I enjoy most about Ubuntu is its interactivity. Who knew you could have so much fun playing around with different desktop effects? There's this one effect called Workspaces on a Cube, which lets you toggle between four different desktops when you're running many apps at the same time and don't want to clutter one desktop. It's more or less a cube that you can move around to each side (and is so much fun to play with!). I'll get more in-depth with that effect, plus "wobbly windows" and why some aspects of Ubuntu are actually more unstable than Windows (shock!), in my next post. Stay tuned!GIMP Image Editor
OpenOffice.org Word ProcessorRhythmBox Music Player
Running IE6 for Linux
Synaptic Package Manager

From Windows to Ubuntu and Back

2009-08-09T23:19:00.001-07:00

For two months, Eric (my bf) and I journeyed the world of Ubuntu. We had Ubuntu 7.04 (Feisty) running very nicely on our Dell Inspiron 530. We installed Compiz Fusion, Avant Window Navigator, WINE, and a lot of other fun stuff. And we (finally) managed to get Photoshop CS2 and Macromedia Studio 8 installed and running with WINE to do all of Eric's Web design/development work.We wish we could say that Ubuntu is the best alternative to Windows; sadly, it isn't. It took a LONG time to get all these programs running, and MANY sleepless nights of bug fixing. Hardly anything "just worked," as is claimed about Ubuntu, which was a surprise, since we bought it directly from Dell with Ubuntu pre-installed.
By the time the next release was available (Gutsy), we were excited, because it was supposed to have fixes for all the troubles we had come across in Feisty. On October 18, the day of its official release, we simply hit the upgrade button in the package manager. Sounded simple enough. After the upgrade, we rebooted--only to find that we no longer had audio (surprise, surprise!), and neither Compiz Fusion (which is installed by default in Gutsy) nor Avant Window Navigator worked any longer. So like everything else that went horribly wrong with Ubuntu, we prepared to spend hours camped next to our computer scouring the online forums. Then, oops

Meebo Introduces Firefox Entension

2009-08-09T23:18:00.001-07:00

Funny thing about working for a software blog: We often find ourselves getting excited about various apps, but very rarely do they find a place in our day-to-day computing.

The process generally goes something like this::

1. We get pitched and/or hear some buzz about a new app.
2. We try it out.
3. We pan it, or fall in love and write all kind of wonderful things about it, somehow managing to work mentions of it into every subsequent post for the next two days.
4. We either move onto another app that does the same thing, only better, or realize that whatever it is that the app is really good at doing isn't actually something we needed to have done in the first place.

Occasionally, however, an app does become a regular part of the routine. For me, IM aggregator, Meebo, has been on of the elite few. In fact, I have it open right now, in Firefox, directly behind the Word doc that I'm currently typing on.

We met with the company's founder/CEO, Seth Sternberg, a week or so ago, and he was incredibly excited to talk about the company. It was a pretty unique vendor meeting--for one thing, Sternberg didn't bring a notebook, which meant no presentation, which, in turn, meant that he wasn't there to discuss a new product. I must have asked him five or six times whether he was totally sure that he didn't want to borrow a notebook for the meeting.

We largely spoke in industry abstractions, something I'm generally not a fan of in the context of a vendor meeting, but having been a Meebo user for a while now, I actually found myself engaged by the conversation about the future of the industry.

This week at the Web 2.0 convention in San Francisco, the company introduced an extension for Firefox, which, "greatly enhances the Firefox experience for meebo and Firefox fans."

The extension features buddy alerts, which the company claims is a first for an online IM client--I've just installed it, and am starting to realize how little I missed buddy updates, but I'm sure there are some Meebo users out there who have been waiting for this day.

There's also a buddy list sidebar--kind of cool, but again, not really necessary for those of us who are used to shoving their Meebo screen into a tab, undisturbed while we work on other things. The extension will automatically sign you on as well--okay this is kind of neat, but, yeah, not exactly earth shattering.

In all, there's nothing especially exciting about the extension, so far as I can tell. Looks like this latest update won't become a regular part of my schedule, after all.

Google Rolling Out Gmail 2.0?

2009-08-09T06:59:00.001-07:00

Google's never really gone in for traditional business practices. Take Gmail, for example. The Web mail app has been in beta for three and a half years and counting. And now, the company is apparently beginning to roll out Version 2.0.

Google isn't exactly shouting it from the rooftops, the way it did, say, for the app's new IMAP functionality. But if you're one of the lucky few with the words "Newer Version," in the upper left-hand corner of your screen, you get to take advantage of the app's updates before the rest of us.

Reports of changes appear largely incremental thus far, including minor improvements to the Contact section and an anecdotal increase in load speed. There are also a few less welcome changes, such as the inability to hide Gmail chat.

MySpace Partners with Music Merch Company, Zazzle

2009-08-09T06:58:00.001-07:00

MySpace today launched a partnership with retail merchandiser Zazzle. The deal will allow the 6 million or so musicians who currently maintain MySpace pages to sell goods via their profiles, using a Zazzle Merch Booth Widget.

The widget displays branded merchandise on a 3-dimensional model, using Zazzle's "Model Realview" technology on profiles, Web sites, blogs, and in Zazzle's own galleries. Merchandise bought via the widget is produced and shipped within 24 hours.

Are Facebook Employees Tracking Our Activity, Silently Judging?

2009-08-09T06:57:00.001-07:00

Are Facebook employees perusing our accounts for fun?

Valleywag reported earlier this week that free time over at the social networking site generally involves Facebook workers giggling at our site activities - what profiles we're looking at, how long we stay there, who is rejecting our friend requests, what pithy notes we're writing to long-lost friends, etc.

The blog was also "warned" after requesting more info on whether a Facebook employee logged into someone's account and surreptitiously altered profile information.

Facebook denied any wrongdoing and expressed its love for privacy.

"Facebook respects user privacy and access to site usage and profile information is restricted at the company," a Facebook spokeswoman said in an e-mail this morning. "Any Facebook employees found to be engaged in improper access to user data will be disciplined or terminated."

She didn't elaborate on what constituted "improper access" but let's assume for blog purposes that tracking usage is not improper. If so, I can't say I'm shocked. I don't necessarily expect the same levels of privacy on my Facebook account that I do with my online banking or credit card statements. You don't create a social networking profile to remain anonymous. And call me an unscrupulous stalker, but if seeing what profiles people I knew were looking at was a perk of working of Facebook, I'd definitely be abusing that privilege.

That being said, if Facebook actually intends to one day replace e-mail, allowing its employees to read peoples' message might not be the best way to go. Shouldn't workers be off spending Microsoft's money instead of re-enacting "1984"? Remember Facebook, you too could be one great idea away from becoming the next Friendster.

Speaking of, I remember feeling a sense of panic years ago when Friendster quietly introduced the "who has looked at my profile" feature. Unless you went into your privacy settings and manually clicked a box that made your Friendster activities anonymous, your ex-boyfriend, that kid you ate paste with in kindergarten, you high school nemesis and that hot guy from your freshman year psych lab were now aware that you took the time to search their names and troll their profiles. *Palm slaps forehead*

Apple Sells 2 Million Copies of Leopard in First Weekend

2009-08-09T06:56:00.001-07:00

OK, so it's not much compared with the 88 million or so copies of Vista that Microsoft has moved since January. But selling 2 million copies of Leopard in three days is still a pretty impressive indicator of Apple's ever-increasing market share, "far outpacing" the sales of its predecessor and current best-selling Apple OS, Tiger.

"Leopard's innovative features are getting great reviews and making more people than ever think about switching to the Mac," said Steve Jobs. Apparently, the guy's a fan.

Skype Video Calls Get High-Quality

2009-08-09T06:55:00.001-07:00

Logitech and Skype used a seasoned card magician this morning to show a roomful of reporters what they're calling "high-quality video." Here, that's defined as VGA resolution (640x480) at up to 30 fps. The setup will require three components: First, a new Logitech High Quality webcam with new drivers. Current choices are the Logitech QuickCam Pro 9000 ($99.99), the QuickCam Pro for Notebooks ($99.99), and the QuickCam Orbit/Sphere AF ($129.99). These use glass, Zeiss-branded lenses, and specially tuned firmware; next, the new Skype client software, version 3.6, currently in beta; and finally, a dual-core Intel-based PC

GarbageScout: A Dumpster Diver's Best Friend

2009-08-08T07:37:00.001-07:00

I'll admit, I've done a little trash repurposing in my time. My advice? Stay away from pharmacies and any place that handles financial info--you don't want to look like an identity thief. That said, I didn't have GarbageScout to help me find the good stuff. GarbageScout is a unique application for Google Maps: Users post photos of goodies lying out in the trash or on the curb waiting to get hauled away, upload them to their Flickr accounts, and they're added to GarbageScout as items on a map that everyone can see.

GarbageScout works like this: As you pass an item on the side of the street that's ready to be hauled away, snap a photo with your camera or mobile phone, upload the photo to Flickr with the address, and tag it "garbagescout." The service will add the photos to the map. When you view the map, you can click on a trashcan to see the address where the items are located and a photo of the item or area.

It looks like a number of the entries on the map are a little old, and some of them are useless. But others are pretty recent, like a confessional stand in Brooklyn and a pile of books someone found while biking through Manhattan. Others are just funny, like the can of beer someone found on the side of a street. I can see this service being useful if you and friends communicate and use the service collaboratively.

The developers of the site have a simple goal: to get people to buy less stuff. By using technology that's already available to help people find the things they want and need for free from the things that other people are throwing away, everyone walks away happier. They have a philosophical and practical desire to make treasure out of other people's trash.

Currently GarbageScout shows items only New York City, but in theory the service should work regardless of your location. When you visit the homepage, it centers on downtown New York City, so if you start using it for your location you'll either have to zoom out and find your town, or license the source code from the developer and build your own local GarbageScout.

The code itself could be useful not just for trash, but for mapping Wi-Fi hotspots, restaurants, or any other application you can think of to combine Flickr and Google Maps. In the meantime, try the service in your hometown and get some friends to give it a shot with you; it'll certainly make dumpster diving more fun.

Having Any Time-Change Issues?

2009-08-08T07:36:00.001-07:00

On Monday, I sent around a note asking if anyone at Ziff-Davis was having issues with the earlier time change that went into effect this year. I received a grand total of two responses:

A recurring appointment in Outlook that showed up at the wrong time this week;
And Joel Santo Domingo's "technologically advanced" 2005 Acura MDX with built in GPS that "fell back" on Sunday.

I personally haven't had any problems. What about you?

Is It 2.0? Democracy 2.0

2009-08-08T07:35:00.001-07:00

Is there anything more Web 2.0 than a user polling site? There's only one way to find out for sure: a user poll, of course!

Found via one of our favorite Web 2.0 aggregators, eHub, Is It 2.0? takes the question to the streets and beyond, asking people to rate topics on the strength of their 2.0-ness. Categories on the site include objects, humans, countries, food, animals, houses, and the site's own members.

Users rate each topic using a five-star system and can add comments as they see fit.

And that's pretty much it.

The most 2.0 human on the site at present is Angelina Jolie; France leads the country category, and the Apple Cube on 59th Street in Manhattan is the most 2.0 "house." The people have spoken.