FlaminTiki: January 2005 Archives

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January 31, 2005

Project Googlefox

As far as rumors go, the one about Google's move into the browser space is heating up. Ever since it was uncovered that the search company registered the URL gbrowser.com last April, Web chatter has been abuzz with the prospect of Google launching a browser to compete with Microsoft's Internet Explorer.

Link

Posted by Ryan at 09:28 PM | Comments (0)

Google is now a domain registrar

Google has recently become an ICANN-accredited registrar. Although its uncertain what their intentions are with this, they could soon become a popular domain registrar...

Link

Posted by Ryan at 09:19 PM | Comments (0)

IE7 standards compliant patch for IE6

Nothing official from Microsoft, but this Sourceforge project is a patch for IE to attempt to make the browser more standards-compliant...

Click here

Posted by Ryan at 09:09 PM | Comments (0)

Google employee blogs

Wanna know whats going on in the life of a Google employee? Check out these blogs...

Link

Posted by Ryan at 06:49 PM | Comments (0)

Search for .torrent files directly from Firefox

Here's a cool tool... Firefox search plugin that searches Yotoshi (a torrent search engine)

Link

Get the plugin

yotoshi.com

Posted by Ryan at 06:40 PM | Comments (0)

Quick way to put an RSS feed on your site

Put an RSS feed into the form and it gives you either a JavaScript code, PHP code, or an iframe to include on your website.

Click here

Posted by Ryan at 06:26 PM | Comments (0)

Free boxes from the USPS

Not really techy, but there's no shipping cost and you could probably find something fun to do with a bunch of cardboard boxes...

Click here

Posted by Ryan at 06:19 PM | Comments (0)

January 29, 2005

Fark Photoshop contest: In anticipation of Google's upcoming Video/TV searching program, photoshop other sectors Google could intrude into

Posted by Ryan at 06:35 PM | Comments (0)

IM2 - Cross platform messaging client

IM2 is similar to Trillian, but has a few extra features and a great interface. It supports VOIP, video chat, skinning, file sharing, and a whole bunch of other cool features. Definitely worth a try.

Link

Posted by Ryan at 01:17 PM | Comments (0)

FreeMind mindmapping software

FreeMind is a premier free mind-mapping software written in Java. The recent development has hopefully turned it into high productivity tool. We are proud that the operation and navigation of FreeMind is faster than that of MindManager because of one-click "fold / unfold" and "follow link" operations.

So you want to write a completely new metaphysics? Why don't you use FreeMind? You have a tool at hand that remarkably resembles the tray slips of Robert Pirsig, described in his sequel to Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance called Lila. Do you want to refactor your essays in a similar way you would refactor software? Or do you want to keep personal knowledge base, which is easy to manage? Why don't you try FreeMind? Do you want to prioritize, know where you are, where you've been and where you are heading, as Stephen Covey would advise you? Have you tried FreeMind to keep track of all the things that are needed for that?

Link

Posted by Ryan at 03:22 AM | Comments (0)

Things to say when you're losing a technical argument

Click here

Posted by Ryan at 03:18 AM | Comments (0)

Jybe - CoSurfing re-invented

This cool little plugin for Firefox and IE allows you to surf the web with anyone else using the plugin. This could be helpful when doing a presentation online or showing someone how to use the internet.

Link

Posted by Ryan at 03:15 AM | Comments (0)

World's tallest building now equipped with world's fastest elevator

The Taipei 101 is the world's tallest building. Its elevator runs at 3,333 feet per minute, and can go from the fifth floor to the 89th floor in 39 seconds.

Link

Posted by Ryan at 03:10 AM | Comments (0)

Samsung's Linux based camcorder

The Miniket is a small device that plays mp3s, records voice, stores data, and can also act as a web camera. It has an ARM9 based processor, 16MB RAM, and runs on uClinunx. Prices are expected to be between $600 and $700 and will ship in late February or March...

Product page

More info

Posted by Ryan at 03:05 AM | Comments (0)

January 28, 2005

A mini guide for new Mac Mini owners

If you've just bought one of the new Macs and are new to OSX, check out this short little guide to the operating system...

Link

Posted by Ryan at 10:04 PM | Comments (0)

Quick and simple way to send anonymous email

AMail

Posted by Ryan at 10:02 PM | Comments (1)

January 27, 2005

XM and Sirius to merge?

The two biggest rivals in the satellite radio business, might be making a huge merger. It is unknown when the official deal will be signed, it could be anywhere from tomorrow to next year. Technology critics suspect it is impossible for these two companies not to merge at one point in the next year.

The two companies have talked in the past about merging, but the discussions never got to an advanced stage. But in the wake of Sirius' hiring of former Viacom President Mel Karmazin in November, the issue has gained renewed urgency, sources said.

Link

Posted by at 10:15 PM | Comments (0)

The alarm clock that makes you get out of bed

When this alarm goes off, you have to reach up to tap it, which puts it on snooze. The next time it goes off, its louder and also rises toward the ceiling. Eventually, you have no option but to get up and pull it back down, which turns it off.

Link

Posted by Ryan at 07:40 PM | Comments (0)

widgEditor: Standards-compliant WYSIWYG editor

This HTML editor doesn't require any HTML knowledge, and outputs standards-compliant code.

Link

Posted by Ryan at 07:33 PM | Comments (0)

Longhorn being watched closely by DOJ

Microsoft representatives will be quizzed next month by the U.S. Justice Department, which wants to ensure that the upcoming Longhorn operating system is in compliance with the final judgment in the government's antitrust case against the software maker, according to news reports. Longhorn is scheduled for release in 2006.
In a court filing, the government says its technical committee also has concerns about whether Windows XP and Service Pack 2 comply with the judgment, which requires Microsoft to make it easy for customers to use third-party software, including Web browsers and media players, with its operating systems. In a joint status report filed by Microsoft and the DOJ on the software maker's progress in complying with the judgment, the DOJ says the first meeting with Microsoft is scheduled for mid-February.

The DOJ says it has completed its analysis of Windows XP and Service Pack 2. "Further information from Microsoft is needed," the report states, to determine whether the software complies with the requirements of the judgement

Link

Posted by Ryan at 07:29 PM | Comments (0)

RIAA sues 717 more file-swappers

The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) said Thursday that it had filed 717 new lawsuits against alleged file-swappers, including 68 unnamed people at universities.
The suits come several days after the record label group filed its arguments with the Supreme Court in a case examining the broader legal liability of file-swapping software companies. Movie studios also filed their own second round of lawsuits against individual computer users on Wednesday.

Link

Posted by Ryan at 07:28 PM | Comments (0)

Pick a color, any color

Color Fields is a neat little flash applet that allows you to pick a color and brightness, and it displays the results from flickr...

Link

Posted by Ryan at 06:35 PM | Comments (0)

Got a secret?

PostSecret is a project that sent 3,000 post cards asking the public to anonymously tell a secret via reply mail. This blog shows the responses received...

Link

Posted by Ryan at 06:19 PM | Comments (0)

Parent File Scan - the MPAA's solution to copyright violations

The MPAA has just filed another round of lawsuits, but at the same time released a piece of software aimed at parents that want to know if their kids are illegally downloading audio or video. Its unknown whether all it does is scan the hard drive. People who have tested the software say that it detects most files as pirated, even if they aren't.

Try it out

Posted by Ryan at 05:34 PM | Comments (0)

Microsoft Windows XP verification for updating

Microsoft's new attempt to stop piracy is to verify XP installations before anyone can install the updates. As everything else, with the number of users out there that didn't pay for Windows XP, someone will find a way around this verification technology. This new plan won't be put in affect untill mid-2005.

Under a new verification program, users will have to prove their copy was obtained legitimately to receive "greater reliability, faster access to updates, and richer user experiences" from Windows XP, the latest version of the operating system running on over 90 percent of the world's personal computers.

Link

Posted by at 05:14 PM | Comments (0)

Google recruiting Mozilla developers

A couple days ago lead Mozilla developer Ben Goodger released a statement saying he is officially working for Google Inc. Now today another lead Mozilla developer, Darin Fisher, has announced he will be working for Google Inc as well. Rumor has it that they will be developing a Google Browser.

Link

Posted by at 05:02 PM | Comments (0)

A9 YellowPages shows pictures of businesses you search for

Amazon's search engine, A9, now has photo listings in their yellow pages. This is a great feature, and I thought I'd test it out on the local Publix. It did turn up with an image, but was about half a mile down the street. It does allow you to "walk right" or "walk left" so you can see more images and eventually I saw Publix. It still has a little bit of work to be done, but it is a pretty nice feature.

The most powerful technology A9.com invented for Yellow Pages is “Block View,” which brings the Yellow Pages to life by showing a street view of millions of businesses and their surroundings. Using trucks equipped with digital cameras, global positioning system (GPS) receivers, and proprietary software and hardware, A9.com drove tens of thousands of miles capturing images and matching them with businesses and the way they look from the street.
The whole process (except for the driving!) is completely automatic, making it fast and efficient. Block View allows users to see storefronts and virtually walk up and down the streets of currently more than 10 U.S. cities using over 20 million photographs. We are driving and at some point hope to cover the whole country.

How they did it

Posted by Ryan at 04:54 PM | Comments (0)

Global warming at its worst

The world is likely to heat up by an average of 11°C by the end of the century, the biggest ever study of global warming showed yesterday.
And the effect could be even more marked in Britain, where temperatures could soar by up to 20°C unless greenhouse gases are cut.

Link

Posted by Ryan at 04:31 PM | Comments (0)

John Dvorak on GBrowser, GoogleOS

And what's to stop them at the operating system level? What about a Googlebox? An actual machine.
Since all the X86 computers are essentially generic machines made in China, why wouldn't Google leverage its brand name and roll out the Google X1 -- the "computer for the X-Generation!" It could probably get an Apple-like premium for such a machine and load it up with proprietary software too.

Link

Posted by Ryan at 12:55 AM | Comments (0)

Running Windows viruses with Wine

Why do all the Windows users get to have all the fun with viruses, but Linux users can't? Well these guys are trying to make viruses run on Linux too... kinda. Most of the tested viruses would run, none would propogate, and one of them actually affected the system.

Link

Posted by Ryan at 12:53 AM | Comments (0)

The life of a Google employee

Here's a blog of a guy that's new to Google and describes the good and the bad of working in the company...

for those of you who don't know, google provides a pretty cool service for employees who want to live in san francisco: a free shuttle. not only is the shuttle free, but during your commute, you can connect onto the internet and do work. somehow, they have a high speed wireless internet uplink on the bus which is shared to the passengers via a wireless router.

Link

Posted by Ryan at 12:47 AM | Comments (0)

Samsung has made the world's fastest RAM

Samsung has started mass production of their new 256Mb XDR (eXtreme Data Rate) DRAM. This memory is being dubbed by Samsung as the world's fastest. It's a staggering 10 times faster than DDR-SDRAM memory and five times faster than RDRAM.

Link

Posted by Ryan at 12:27 AM | Comments (0)

January 26, 2005

Download of the day

Today's download is a classic download that is my favorite (and I am sure many other people's favorite) internet browser. This is of course Mozilla Firefox. This Browser is the open source answer to Internet Explorer. The browser has many integrated features like tabs and very good search capabilities.
Download Here

Posted by at 10:00 PM | Comments (0)

Liquid Information Hyperpopup

This is a cool new tool that makes text interactive, turning words into "hyperwords."

Demo

Project info

Posted by Ryan at 05:10 PM | Comments (0)

Ultimate Boot CD 3.2

This bootable CD comes with tons of tools to diagnose, repair, and troubleshoot computers. Includes hard disk installatino tools, hard disk diagnosis tools, hard disk device management, hard disk wipers, hard disk cloners, hard disk sector editors, partition tools, boot managers, NTFS file managers, burn-in utilities, CPU tests, peripherals tests, cup information, system information, benchmarking tools, bios utilities, DOS boot disks, antivirus tools, and networking tools.

Link

Posted by Ryan at 03:56 PM | Comments (0)

January 25, 2005

Mike's download of the day

This download is the first of many free or free for a trial programs that i will be adding to flamintiki. This program is called Nero- 6 ultra edition. For those un familiar with nero it is a cd writing utility that is amazing. It can burn image files, normal files, music and soo much more. The only downside is that you have to have a cd burner to use this and that it is a limited trial that wont let you use it after a month.Click here to Download this

Posted by at 08:25 PM | Comments (0)

Want a mac but they're just too expensive?

Macmini As of January 25, people wanting to buy a mac mini can breathe a sigh of relief because the computer giant Apple has decided to cut costs on a few upgrades. In one short week the Mac mini's ram upgrade price has dropped 100 dollers and the price of adding wifi has also dropped. While everyone is very happy because of the price slashes to the already cheap computer many people will probably end up doing the upgrades themselves.
Link

Posted by at 07:44 PM | Comments (0)

Atlanta not doomed to use wires forever

Intel has released their most unwired cities for 2005 and surprisingly Atlanta is number 16. The survey ranks cities on the amount of hotspots there are in places like hotels or cafes. No surprise that San Francisco takes the number one spot.

Link

Posted by at 07:34 PM | Comments (0)

AdSense Switch

Use this to switch the type of ads Google shows. They're targeted ads, but this allows people to see a few more ads. All you have to do is add the following javascript to your Adsense code:

google_ad_format = "160x600_radlinks_beta";

More info

Posted by Ryan at 06:01 PM | Comments (0)

Google Video

Google's new search function, "Google video" will let you search for text queries from TV shows. It plugs in to the closed captioning of stations like PBS, Fox News, C-SPAN, ABC, and the NBA. Right now it doesn't allow you to see any actual video, but they hope to introduce that feature soon...

Link

Posted by Ryan at 04:26 PM | Comments (0)

January 24, 2005

The 2005 bloggie awards

See the best blogs of the web.

Link

Posted by Ryan at 07:04 PM | Comments (0)

FindSounds

Use this tool to search the web for AIFF, AU, and WAVE sounds. You can also narrow your search by stereo or mono, resolution, sample rate, and maximum file size.

Link

Posted by Ryan at 07:04 PM | Comments (0)

Google Video Search?

Google has just created video.google.com and google.com/video which are both redirecting to the main page currently.

Via google-blog.dirson.com

Posted by Ryan at 06:32 PM | Comments (0)

Is Google creating a VOIP service?

Supposedly, Google will soon make a network for free telephone service similar to Skype. Of course, Google's VOIP service will have a few advantages over Skype...

Mr Hewitt said that a Google telephone service could be made to link with the Google search engine, which already conducts half of all internet inquiries made around the world. A surfer looking for a clothes retailer could simply find the web site and click on the screen to speak to the shop.

Click here

Posted by Ryan at 05:40 PM | Comments (0)

Windows XP 64 coming in April

Sources Claim Microsoft is planning to introduce its 64 bit operating system for Intel and AMD processors (iAMD64) on the 29th of April. The sources are close to Microsoft. It appears there will be a release to manufacturing version of WinXP 64 in March. That's the stage before the CDs get stamped out and the boxes get printed.

Link

Posted by Ryan at 05:34 PM | Comments (0)

Yahoo RSS Reader

Put an RSS reader in your taskbar

Link

Posted by Ryan at 05:27 PM | Comments (0)

January 23, 2005

Free segments from TechTV

This site has tons of segments from TechTV before the merger with G4. Over 3 gigs of video for download...

Link

Posted by Ryan at 03:31 PM | Comments (0)

eXeem Lite

eXeem without the spyware... They only have the 0.19 beta now but 0.20 is coming soon...

Click here

Posted by Ryan at 02:11 PM | Comments (0)

P2P for phones

This is a pretty clever idea... As long as you don't mind sharing your phone line for anyone in the world to use, you can use other peoples' phone lines to make calls to anywhere in the world. Great way to save on long distance...

Call ordinary phones all over the world for free; you just have to share your phone, too. With Bellster, you can call other people even if they don’t have a computer. Bellster lets you call any phone number in the world by sending the call over the Internet to a shared phone line near the person you're calling.

Link

Posted by Ryan at 02:48 AM | Comments (1)

Woman arrested for deleting MMORPG character

A Japanese woman was arrested for wiping her boyfriend's save game data…
The jilted girlfriend, said to be in her thirties, logged onto her ex-lover's Lineage account with his username and password. Once there she deleted his game data including all the items, weapons and clothes he had collected.

Although the boyfriend did not suffer financially he reported the misuse of his account to the police. Police then reported the woman of Toyama Prefecture, to the Fukushima District Public Prosecutors Office accusing her of violating a law banning illegal access to someone else's online accounts.

The woman has admitted the crime. "I did it as revenge for breaking up with me," she told police.

The couple actually met through playing the game, love blossomed in the online RPG and the lovers soon met up. However the relationship did not last long and thoughts turned to revenge.

Link

Posted by Ryan at 01:36 AM | Comments (0)

Firefox gaining ground on IE

Firefox is continuing to gain ground on IE. As of June 2004, Internet Explorer accounts for 96.7% of web surfing, as of now it only accounts for 94.7%. This might not seem like a big number, but with the number of computers out in the world, 2% accounts for a lot of people.

From the beginning of December through mid-January, 4.78 percent of Internet surfers studied by online measurement company WebSideStory used the Mozilla Foundation's FireFox browser, a gain of 0.88 percentage points. At the same time, IE usage declined 0.7 percent to 92.7 percent, the firm reported. WebSideStory said IE use has declined from 96.7 percent since June.

Link

Posted by at 12:42 AM | Comments (0)

January 22, 2005

Pepsi iTunes trick still works

Like last year, this year Pepsi is doing the iTunes promotion. Although it has not officially started, the Pepsi bottles are appearing in New York. Last year there was a trick where you could see if you won a free iPod song, it looks like this year that same "tilt" trick works.

Link

Posted by at 09:26 PM | Comments (0)

January 21, 2005

eXeem 0.20 Public beta

eXeem™ v0.20 Public Beta has been released to the public. Everybody is now able to download it and give it a try before the final version comes out. There are still some bugs that we have not been able to find yet which is why the program is still in Beta Testing. eXeem™ Public Beta includes its own network that is based on the BitTorrent idea (uses libtorrent as download component), has searching abilities and other funtions that a Peer-To-Peer program should have.

Get it here

Posted by Ryan at 03:54 PM | Comments (0)

January 20, 2005

Google hackers get dream job

Several hackers that have discovered hacks for Google were recently surprised when they received not a cease and decist, but a job offer to work at the company

Link

Posted by Ryan at 10:04 PM | Comments (0)

Laser to see through walls

Tom Hurtubise has supposibly invented a "Angel Light" that can see through walls...

Troy Hurtubise has done the seemingly impossible with his newest invention and defied all known rules of physics, he says.The Angel LightHurtubise claims the concept came to him in a recurring dreamcan reportedly see through walls, as if there was no barrier at all.

Link

Posted by at 09:14 PM | Comments (0)

imgSeek to find matches of a drawn picture

Draw a picture and this comes up with the closest matches to it...

imgSeek is a photo collection manager and viewer with content-based search and many other features. The query is expressed either as a rough sketch painted by the user or as another image you supply (or an image in your collection). The searching algorithm makes use of multiresolution wavelet decomposition of the query and database images.

Link

Posted by Ryan at 09:11 PM | Comments (0)

Western Digital will release a 1'' drive

If Western Digital goes through with their announcement then their drive would be 1/2 inch smaller than the Toshiba drives in the iPods.

Western Digital said Wednesday it would enter the 1-inch disk drive market later this year, crowding an already congested market. Western Digital said that the drive will ship in the second calendar quarter of 2005. The 1-inch hard drive will spin at 3,600 RPM and will be available in capacities up to 6 gigabytes, within a CompactFlash Type II form factor. ADVERTISEMENT Although IBM's original 1-inch MicroDrive was introduced in 1998, hard disk companies have begun jumping on board the 1-inch bandwagon in recent months. IBM, Seagate, Toshiba and now Western Digital all either have shipped or plan to ship 1-inch drives into the market. Analyst group Gartner Inc. estimated that as many as 8 million 1-inch drives shipped in 2004, up from 903,000 units in 2003.

Link

Posted by at 09:07 PM | Comments (0)

Exeem FAQ

Official site from the Exeem team...

Click here

Posted by Ryan at 05:40 PM | Comments (1)

January 19, 2005

Feedbeep - SMS alerts to your phone or pager about any RSS feed

FeedBeep is the final link between you and the wealth of information published on the internet. Hundreds of thousands of data feeds are available in RSS format, and now you can receive alerts about events worldwide — as they happen — right on your SMS-capable phone. Alerts can be set to go to your mobile device or our web messaging system based on your keywords or any time new information is posted to a feed.

Link

Posted by Ryan at 11:17 PM | Comments (0)

Mental Heuristics

How to work more efficiently

A heuristic is a "rule-of-thumb", advice that helps an AI program or human think and act more efficiently by directing thinking in an useful direction.
Some of these heuristics are age-old wisdom, bordering on cliche, but most are actually helpful.

Link

Posted by Ryan at 09:26 PM | Comments (0)

Mac Mini Colocation

Ship these people your Mac Mini (or they'll provide one for you at an additional cost) and the'll put it on their OC-12 lines for $25 a month.

Link

Posted by Ryan at 09:05 PM | Comments (0)

Windows Media DRM cracked

Apparently all Windows Media files with digital rights management have a segment in the file that prevents it from being copied. This new tool strips off that piece of the file, allowing free distribution of your media.

Link

Posted by Ryan at 09:01 PM | Comments (0)

Nofollow for blogs

Comment spam gets worse and worse every day. Spammers comment on blogs to elevate their ranks on Google since Google ranks pages by number of links to them. Google has just fixed this problem by creating an attribute for all hyperlinks that tells Google's crawler not to pick up links from certain pages...

The HTML specification allows a tags for hyperlinks to include a rel attribute. This attribute is used to specify a link type describing the relationship between the document hosting the hyperlink and the document that is the target of the hyperlink.

GoogleBlog article

MovableType nofollow plugin

SixApart: Support for nofollow

Posted by Ryan at 08:56 PM | Comments (0)

Getting back to work: a personal productivity toolkit

Great article for procrastinators. Read it now... or tomorrow... or next week... I haven't even read it yet but I've got it in my list of stuff to read...

Link

Posted by Ryan at 08:46 PM | Comments (0)

Using WD-40 to prevent people from sniffing cocaine...

The makers of the popular lubricant, WD-40 have listed 2000 uses for the product ranging from unsticking rusty screws to polishing frying pans. British police have created idea number 2001: Spraying it on toilet seats to keep people from sniffing cocaine in the bathroom. Anyone trying to sniff cocaine on a toilet thats seat has the lubricant on it ends up with a mess of unusable gelatinous material.

"A chemical reaction takes place with the cocaine that causes it to congeal and become a mess so it's unusable," a police spokesman said. "It's one very small, very cheap way in which you can very seriously restrict the amount of drug use in your premises."

Link

Posted by Ryan at 06:28 PM | Comments (0)

Will Google create a global fiber-optic network from scratch?

This CNET news article discusses Google's search for "dark fiber"...

The question has cropped up in light of a recent job posting on the search engine giant's Web site seeking experts in the field.
"Google is looking for Strategic Negotiator candidates with experience in...(i)dentification, selection, and negotiation of dark fiber contracts both in metropolitan areas and over long distances as part of development of a global backbone network," the posting reads in part.

"Dark fiber" refers to fiber-optic cable that's already been laid, but is not yet in use. Thousands of miles of dark fiber are available in the United States, but there have been few takers because of the high costs of making it operation

Link

Posted by Ryan at 05:57 PM | Comments (0)

Dissecting the iPod shuffle

These guys opened up an iPod Shuffle, documenting it with images of every step...

Click here

Posted by Ryan at 05:53 PM | Comments (0)

7 flavors of Longhorn

When Longhorn is scheduled to be released in 2006, there will be not one, but 7 different versions of the new operating system...

According to one Redmond watcher, the next version of the Windows operating system, Longhorn, will be ready for manufacturing in May 2006 and will ship to the public in seven different versions. Paul Thurrott, who runs the SuperSite for Windows website, says the seven editions will each be designed to cater for a different Windows user market. The seven versions will include the Longhorn Home Edition, Longhorn Premium/Media Center Edition, Longhorn Professional Edition, Longhorn Small Business Edition and Longhorn Mobility/Tablet PC Edition.

Link

Posted by Ryan at 04:43 PM | Comments (0)

Don't make calls to the area code 809...

According to Snopes, scammers often play a trick leaving a message on your answering machine telling you to return their call to the area code (809)... Making calls to certain numbers in the area code can leave you with a charge of $2,425 per minute...

You will receive a message on your answering machine or your pager, which asks you to call a number beginning with area code 809. The reason you're asked to call varies, it can be to receive information about a family member who has been ill, to tell you someone has been arrested, died, to let you know you have won a wonderful prize, etc. In each case, you are told to call the 809 number right away. Since there are so many new area codes these days, people unknowingly return these calls.

Link

Posted by Ryan at 11:52 AM | Comments (0)

January 18, 2005

The FBI can put a GPS system on your car without your knowledge

Close your eyes, next second the FBI could have GPS system on your car and be able to track every single place that your car goes.

When Robert Moran drove back to his law offices in Rome, N.Y., after a plane trip to Arizona in July 2003, he had no idea that a silent stowaway was aboard his vehicle: a secret GPS bug implanted without a court order by state police.
Police suspected the lawyer of ties to a local >Hells Angels Motorcycle Club> that was selling methamphetamine, and they feared undercover officers would not be able to infiltrate the notoriously tight-knit group, which has hazing rituals that involve criminal activities. So investigators stuck a GPS, or Global Positioning System, bug on Moran's car, watched his movements, and arrested him on drug charges a month later.

Link

Posted by at 07:07 PM | Comments (0)

Dell CEO claims he is not worried about the Mac-Mini or iPod

It seams as though Kevin Rollins is not afraid of iPod and there record breaking sales

Dell CEO Kevin Rollins says that Apple isn't "in the same league" as Dell, and that he isn't worried about the iPod and Mac mini. "It's interesting the iPod has been out for three years and it's only this past year it's become a raging success. Well those things that become fads rage and then they drop off. When I was growing up there was a product made by Sony called the Sony Walkman--a rage, everyone had to have one," he said. "Well you don't hear about the Walkman anymore. I believe that one product wonders come and go."

Posted by at 06:54 PM | Comments (0)

Google releases Picasa 2

This is probably one of the best pieces of software for photo and video organizing on the market.

A free software download from Google. Picasa is software that helps you instantly find, edit and share all the pictures on your PC. Every time you open Picasa, it automatically locates all your pictures (even ones you forgot you had) and sorts them into visual albums organized by date with folder names you know. You can drag and drop to arrange your albums and make labels to create new groups. Picasa makes sure your pictures are always organized. Picasa also makes advanced editing simple by putting one-click fixes and powerful effects at your fingertips. And Picasa makes it a snap to share your pictures you can email, print at home, make gift CDs, instantly share via Hello^TM, and even put pictures on your own blog.

Download Picasa 2

Posted by at 06:45 PM | Comments (0)

A sneak peak at Gnome 2.1

Screenshots and more info about the new features...

Posted by Ryan at 05:19 PM | Comments (0)

Mystery Twister 2005 cryptography challenge

As security is becoming more and more important every day, cryptography has also become a big deal. The Mystery Twister 2005 Cryptography Challenge has 13 CryptoChallenges. Go to the site for a demo of the challenge...

Mystery Twister is an international cryptology competition. Its focus is on the fun of discovering a new world and uncovering secrets. In solving the competition's tasks, the journey is the reward. Here you can test your skills with a first demo challenge. In December, another demo challenge will be published. The competition starts in January 2005, participationis free of charge.
The competition will include tasks of various difficulty levels - there will be something for everyone. Most important is the fun in figuring out the solutions and meeting a challenge that you don't come across every day.

Click here

Posted by Ryan at 04:55 PM | Comments (0)

January 17, 2005

Free Software Magazine

Great new magazine that has all kinds of information on software, internet, and other tech stuff...

Link

Posted by Ryan at 09:56 PM | Comments (0)

Bill Gates posing for a magazine, circa 1983

Posing for Teen Beat Photospread

Link

Posted by Ryan at 09:17 PM | Comments (0)

50 Strategies for Making Yourself Work

Great article by Jerry Oltion for procrastinators...

Work avoidance is one of the major paradoxes of the writing profession. Generally, writers want to write (or want to have written), but all too often we find ourselves doing anything else but. We'll mow lawns, do the dishes, polish silverware--anything to keep from facing the blank page. At the same time we know we eventually have to get to work, so we come up with all sorts of strategies for forcing ourselves to the keyboard.

Link

Posted by Ryan at 09:05 PM | Comments (0)

The Minty MP3 Player

Make your own MP3 player for less than $50

Click here

Posted by Ryan at 08:54 PM | Comments (0)

Comcast raising speeds for customers

Comcast will raise its broadband Internet speeds by at least a third later this year--part of its effort to fend off DSL rivals.
With Baby Bell local phone providers making inroads with cheaper but slower DSL service, Comcast and other cable companies hope to fight on speed rather than price. Comcast's faster service, added at no extra cost to customers, will begin rolling out this quarter, the company announced on Sunday. As previously reported, the nation's largest cable and broadband provider's current download speed of up to 3mbps (megabits per second) will jump to 4mbps. Upload rates of 256kbps (kilobits per second) will reach 384kbps, the company said. Customers of Comcast's more expensive 4mbps service will see a 50 percent increase to 6mbps downstream and 768kbps upstream.

Comcast this year is expected to introduce more of these higher-bandwidth services. Earlier this week, the company said it will launch its own instant messenger service, which will support live video streaming over Web cams. Instant messaging is one of the most popular applications on the Internet, but it is dominated by America Online, MSN and Yahoo.

Link

Posted by Ryan at 08:36 PM | Comments (0)

american-redcross.org is a phishing scam

A very convincing fake Red Cross Web site was set up on www.american-redcross.org by phishers intent on collecting credit card information. The site has since been taken down. The site not only asked for credit card numbers but for PIN numbers, a sure sign of illegal activity.
Criminal virus writers and phishers are attempting to exploit the tsunami disaster in the Indian ocean, with two previously undocumented scams emerging over the weekend.

A newly discovered worm, VBSun-A, is currently in circulation pretending to offer details of how to contribute to those left homeless or orphaned by the disaster. Infected e-mails have the header "Tsunami Donation! Please help!" The worm is contained in an attachment called tsunami.exe.

Link

Posted by Ryan at 08:33 PM | Comments (0)

January 15, 2005

Images of the tsunami

Although there are tons of websites with photos of the tsunami, my favorite is Flickr's "tsunami" tag...

Click here

Posted by Ryan at 05:15 PM | Comments (0)

Intel finished a record breaking 2004

Intel had a wonderful fouth quarter, raising their net income by about 10%.

Intel Corp. reported record revenue for the fourth quarter of 2004, capping off the year with additional records in sales of microprocessors and chip sets.

Intel on Tuesday reported net income of $2.1 billion on sales of $9.6 billion for the fourth quarter. While net income dipped 2.1 percent compared with a year ago, the company's revenue climbed by about 10 percent. For the year, Intel reported net income of $7.5 billion on sales of $34.2 billion, up 33 percent and 13.5 percent, respectively, from a year ago.

Link

Posted by at 04:10 PM | Comments (0)

Bootable Windows CD

Great tool to recover data since it can read NTFS partitions. Has a few troubleshooting tools and networking tools built in. Its a little confusing to get everything made and onto the disk, but once you have the disk its a great tool...

Link

Posted by Ryan at 03:54 PM | Comments (0)

Audioscrobbler

This is a cool plugin for Winamp, iTunes, XMMS, and a few other media players that has been out for a little while but I've ignored it... Now that I've read about it, it looks pretty cool...

Audioscrobbler builds a profile of your musical taste using a plugin for your media player (Winamp, iTunes, XMMS etc..). Plugins send the name of every song you play to the Audioscrobbler server, which updates your musical profile with the new song. Every person with a plugin has their own page on this site which shows their listening statistics. The system automatically matches you to people with a similar music taste, and generates personalised recommendations.

Link

Posted by Ryan at 03:47 PM | Comments (0)

Customizing Ubuntu

Ubuntu is a great Linux distro but needs a few minor adjustments. Here's a guy that tells you what his adjustments were right after installing and a few other cool tips and tricks for Ubuntu...

Link

Posted by Ryan at 03:44 PM | Comments (0)

An evening with Google's Marissa Mayer

Alan Williamson interviewed Marissa Mayer, a product manager for Google, and found some interesting facts about the company...

1. The prime reason the Google home page is so bare is due to the fact that the founders didn't know HTML and just wanted a quick interface. Infact it was noted that the submit button was a long time coming and hitting the RETURN key was the only way to burst Google into life.

2. Due to the sparseness of the homepage, in early user tests they noted people just sitting looking at the screen. After a minute of nothingness, the tester intervened and asked 'Whats up?' to which they replied "We are waiting for the rest of it". To solve that particular problem the Google Copyright message was inserted to act as a crude end of page marker.

3. One of the biggest leap in search usage came about when they introduced their much improved spell checker giving birth to the "Did you mean..." feature. This instantly doubled their traffic, but they had some interesting discussions on how best to place that information, as most people simply tuned that out. But they discovered the placement at the bottom of the results was the most effective area.

4. The infamous "I feel lucky" is nearly never used. However, in trials it was found that removing it would somehow reduce the Google experience. Users wanted it kept. It was a comfort button.

5. Orkut is very popular in Brazil. Orkut was the brainchild of a very intelligent Google engineer who was pretty much given free reign to run with it, without having to go through the normal Google UI procedures, hence the reason it doesn't look or feel like a Google application. They are looking at improving Orkut to cope with the loads it places on the system.

6. Google makes changes small-and-often. They will sometimes trial a particular feature with a set of users from a given network subnet; for example Excite@Home users often get to see new features. They aren't told of this, just presented with the new UI and observed how they use it.

7. Google has the largest network of translators in the world

8. They use the 20% / 5% rules. If at least 20% of people use a feature, then it will be included. At least 5% of people need to use a particular search preference before it will make it into the 'Advanced Preferences'.

9. They have found in user testing, that a small number of people are very typical of the larger user base. They run labs continually and always monitoring how people use a page of results.

10. The name 'Google' was an accident. A spelling mistake made by the original founders who thought they were going for 'Googol'

11. Gmail was used internally for nearly 2years prior to launch to the public. They discovered there was approximately 6 types of email users, and Gmail has been designed to accommodate these 6.

12. They listen to feedback actively. Emailing Google isn't emailing a blackhole.

13. Employees are encouraged to use 20% of their time working on their own projects. Google News, Orkut are both examples of projects that grew from this working model.

14. This wasn't a technical talk so no information regarding any infrastructure was presented however they did note that they have a mantra of aiming to give back each page with in 500ms, rendered.

15. Quote: Give Users What They Want When They Want It

16. Quote: Integrate Sensibly

Link

Posted by Ryan at 03:37 PM | Comments (0)

Metacritic.com

Reviews of games, music, books, and movies

Link

Posted by Ryan at 03:24 PM | Comments (0)

Great designs of 2004

From Netdiver.net - the best website designs of 2004. Great to look at if you're a web designer looking for ideas...

Link

Posted by Ryan at 03:22 PM | Comments (0)

What happens if you throw sodium into water?

This site explains it all... essentially it creates a huge explosion, but read the site for more info...

The first step was the procurement, through eBay, of three and half pounds of solid sodium metal for about a hundred dollars. This is a decent price for a small quantity like this. Small being a relative term: It's used by the ton in industry, but anything more than a few grams is a dangerous quantity if found in your home. Three and a half pounds is enough, for example, to blow your home to bits under the right conditions.

Link

Posted by Ryan at 03:19 PM | Comments (0)

Transparent PNG maker

Great tool for web designers... This makes a PNG to use for overlapping certain elements in your design...

Click here

Posted by Ryan at 03:12 PM | Comments (0)

DNSstuff.com

This website has tons of DNS tools such as Whois records, IP lookups, Reverse DNS, and much more...

Click here

Posted by Ryan at 03:09 PM | Comments (1)

Mouseover DOM Inspector

Use this handy little bookmarklet to see the properties of any HTML element on any given page.

This favelet allows you to view the properties of any HTML element on a page simply by mousing over the element. The element will be given a gray background, and a DIV element that trails the mouse cursor will contain the element type along with all of the specified attributes of the element. Hit the "esc" key to turn the favelet off.

More info

Mouseover DOM Inspector

Posted by Ryan at 02:58 PM | Comments (0)

The Rasterbator

Upload an image and this tool can turn it into a poster over 20 meters in size.

Click here

Posted by Ryan at 02:50 PM | Comments (0)

TouchGraph GoogleBrowser

Enter a URL and this java applet shows you all similar websites using Google's API in a spiderweb-like view.

Link

Posted by Ryan at 02:48 PM | Comments (0)

5 free programs no web designer should be without

This site lists and describes 5 different free Windows apps that will help any web designer. Click here

Posted by Ryan at 02:43 PM | Comments (0)

The face transformer

Upload your picture, choose a few hotspots on it, and you can visually change your age, race, or sex of yourself.

Click here

Posted by Ryan at 02:06 PM | Comments (0)

January 14, 2005

Fark Photoshop contest: The worst superhero to come to your rescue

Posted by Ryan at 12:15 AM | Comments (0)

Fark Photoshop contest: Unlikely literacy campaigns

Posted by Ryan at 12:12 AM | Comments (0)

Fark Photoshop contest: Photoshop an ad for your favorite (or least favorite) image host

Posted by Ryan at 12:08 AM | Comments (0)

January 13, 2005

How to turn your iPod into an iPod shuffle for free

Source

Posted by Ryan at 10:55 PM | Comments (0)

Apple profits boots because of iPod

This quarter Apple's profits have been four times better then last year. They can thank the iPod and holidays for that amazing accomplishment. This is the largest increase ever.

Apple said yesterday that profit in its first quarter more than quadrupled - the biggest increase ever - on strong holiday sales of its iPod music player.

Link

Posted by at 10:22 PM | Comments (0)

See the evolution of Windows

This site has screenshots back from Windows 1.0 all the way to XP... its interesting to see how far things have come in the past 20 years...

Link

Posted by Ryan at 08:37 PM | Comments (0)

The Lean Mean Fat-Reducing File-Serving Machine

A guy turned his George Foreman grill into a nice little webserver.

Inspired by a thinkgeek april fool's day joke, the iGrill is a 600Mhz Mini-ITX motherboard, an 80GB hard drive, and a 250W PSU, running Gentoo Linux, all enclosed in a George Foreman grill. Technically it's lost the grilling-functionality, but with a bit of tin foil on top of the heatsink and a fork-bomb, I reckon I could probably still fry an egg with it.

Link

Posted by Ryan at 08:30 PM | Comments (0)

RSS feeds for torrents

If you use the RSS Importer plugin for Azureus, check out this site. Has a whole bunch of links to RSS feeds for several different popular torrent websites...

Link

Posted by Ryan at 08:21 PM | Comments (0)

There's no escape: Advertising gone wild

Ted landau's opinions on advertising, and how it has become so common among the world.

Link

Posted by at 04:14 PM | Comments (0)

Now a Google Mini

In the hype surrounding Gmail, desktop search, and AdWords, Google's search-appliance business has been relegated to the background. The search firm hopes to become more entrenched in that market by releasing a budget box for searching corporate intranets. The Google Mini, priced at US$4,995, is positioned as a lower-cost alternative to the company's other search appliances which cost anywhere from US$30,000 to US$500,000.

Link

Posted by at 04:05 PM | Comments (0)

January 12, 2005

Kevin Rose, Leo, Patrick, Roger Chang, and Prager making a new show?

Following up on the last post, Leo just posted to his blog that they may make a show about technology without the G4. Hopefully this will all go over well and Kevin and Prager can get out of their contracts with G4...

Link

Posted by Ryan at 06:13 PM | Comments (0)

G4TechTV to become G4 in mid February

Well now that G4 has completely killed TechTV (and their ratings too), they're going to drop the TechTV name while they're at it. The full new name will be G4 - Video game television...

Link

Posted by Ryan at 06:09 PM | Comments (0)

Color contrast checker

Use this tool to see if foreground and background contrast are accessible to your visitors. Just type in the hex of your foreground and background and it dumps out some numbers and tells you whether the colors are compliant...

Click here

Posted by Ryan at 05:32 PM | Comments (0)

January 11, 2005

A Sprayable Infrared Detector

It might not be smartmobby today, but it soon could be. Researchers at the University of Toronto (U of T) have designed an infrared-sensitive material made of nanocrystals so small they were able to tune them to catch the Sun's invisible rays. In "this U of T news release," you'll discover that it's the first time that a light-sensitive material works in the invisible light spectrum.

This opens the way to a broad range of applications, from clothing with the capacity to turn the sun's power into electrical energy to digital cameras that work in the dark. But the real breakthrough is that it will permit to catch five more times energy from the Sun, up to 30 percent from the 6 percent achieved today by the best plastic solar cells.

Link

Posted by at 09:58 PM | Comments (0)

MS AntiSpyware vs Ad-Aware vs SpyBot

On January 6th 2005, Microsoft introduced the first public beta release of its solution to the spyware problem. Dubbed Microsoft AntiSpyware, the application was born after the purchase of Giant Software Company, which developed their anti-spyware application. Microsoft AntiSpyware offers plenty of features which is sure to turn some heads. Not only does it scan for spyware/adware, it can also offer real-time protection which prevents spyware from being installed in the first place. Though Microsoft’s new toy offers really nice feature as we are about to explore, how well does it match up against the already known spyware removal champs; Ad-Aware and SpyBot S&D? Let us find out.

More info...

Posted by at 09:39 PM | Comments (0)

News

Federal authorities fine MTV's "Pimp My Ride" and West Coast Customs auto shop for disabling or removing safety equipment. read on

Posted by at 09:26 PM | Comments (0)

Yahoo Desktop Search

The latest from Yahoo! -- A desktop search that can index over 200 filetypes

Yahoo! Desktop Search Beta is a free, downloadable desktop search application that enables you to instantly find any file, email or attachment on your computer. Yahoo! Desktop Search puts the power of Yahoo! Search on your computer, ensuring that you can always find what you're looking for - instantaneously.

Link

Posted by Ryan at 06:06 PM | Comments (0)

PodSites

PodSites are websites that you can view on your iPod. Sorta like AvantGo for the iPod.

Apple's iPod sports a simple, powerful but little used feature, called Notes. iPod's Notes lets you read text files on your iPod. Notes can also link to other Notes, as well as songs and images on your iPod.
A podSite is our name for a collection of text files, with links to other text files, and possibly sound files and image files stored, and accessible on an iPod.

Think of it as a website for your iPod. Or a slice of the web, in your pocket. podSites are much easier to create than web pages, you don't need any special tools, and you can learn the skills to create a podSite in less than half an hour.

If you are a blogger, or web developer, and already creating web content, converting that content into a podSite is simple

Link

Posted by Ryan at 06:03 PM | Comments (0)

Cool task manager replacement

Here's a great tool to use to replace the boring task manager that comes installed with Windows...

Features:

Displays list of working applications;

Displays list of working processes;

Monitors the memory status;

Monitors the CPU and network utilization;.

Displays the full list of CPU capabilities;

Displays important Windows OS parameters;

Displays Windows Network parameters;.

Displays HDD status and information;.

Displays videocard information;

Displayes soundcard information;

Link

Posted by Ryan at 05:15 PM | Comments (0)

Is Google Desktop a trojan?

All you would have to do is add a port redirector to the computer and you'll instantly have access to all that person's documents, emails, chats, and anything else Google Desktop stores.

First, install your copy of Google Desktop Search.
Next, start datapipe.exe so that it is listening on TCP port 1180 and forwarding requests to 127.0.0.1 on port 4664. The command line version of this looks like this:

datapipe 127.0.0.1 1180 127.0.0.1 4664

Next, conduct a search using the actual Desktop search. Note the special salt value after the localhost designation in the browser's address bar. (Example: &s=1548888641).

Open a browser on a remote machine with this target URL:

http://__ip_address_of_target_machine__:1180/&s=1548888641

Search the remote system to your heart's content! Note: if you select to open one of the search results, it will not open on the machine with the browser, it will open on the machine that is running the Google Desktop Search instance. Hmmmm, could Google Desktop Search become a platform for executing code remotely?

More information

Posted by Ryan at 05:02 PM | Comments (0)

NASA to send a rocket into space to blow up a comet

Tomorrow, NASA will be sending a rocket into space to blow up Tempel 1, creating a dent in the comet as large as the Roman Coliseum and having an equivalent force of 4.5 tons of TNT. The result will be an increased knowlege of the makeup of comets for scientists, but a pretty cool display in the nighttime sky for normal people right around July 4th.

"We'll understand how the comet is put together, its density, its porosity, whether it has a surface crust and underlying ices, whether it's layered ice, whether it's a wimpy comet or whether it's a rock-hard ice ball," explained Donald Yeomans, a researcher at JPL in California who advised on the making of the film. "All of these things will become apparent after we smack it."

Link

Posted by Ryan at 04:57 PM | Comments (0)

The iPod shuffle

The flash-based iPod.. Has no display and allows you to shuffle through your songs

Link

Posted by Ryan at 04:40 PM | Comments (0)

25 foot boulder falls on road

Here's a scary story... After tons of rain over in California, a 25 foot rock fell onto the road.

A boulder some 25 feet high blocks both lanes of the Topanga Caynon Road, Monday, Jan. 10, 2005, as electrical contractors fix broken power and communication lines in Malibu, Calif. No injures where reported, but the road remains closed. The storm system was blamed for at least nine deaths during the weekend in Southern California, including a man killed when his vehicle plunged into the surf off Pacific Coast Highway in Malibu, and a homeless man killed when the hillside where his tent was pitched gave way. (AP Photo/Damian Dovarganes)

Link

Posted by Ryan at 04:33 PM | Comments (0)

The Mac Mini

Here's the latest from Apple - the Mac Mini. Comes with a 1.25GHz PPC G4 Processor, 256MB memory, 32MB graphics, and a 40GB hard drive (for the $500 version).

Link

Posted by Ryan at 04:06 PM | Comments (0)

January 10, 2005

Peercasting

Here's a new way to stream internet audio... Like P2P for internet radio

PeerCast is a new, free way to listen to radio and watch video on the Internet. It uses P2P technology to let anyone become a broadcaster without the costs of traditional streaming. This means you get to hear and watch stations not normally found on commercially funded sites.

Link

Posted by Ryan at 09:24 PM | Comments (0)

Overcoming procrastination

Here's another great article by Steve Pavlina with Dexterity Software...

Procrastination, the habit of putting tasks off to the last possible minute, can be a major problem when running your own business. Missed opportunities, frenzied work hours, stress, overwhelm, resentment, and guilt are just some of the symptoms. This article will explore the root causes of procrastination and give you several practical tools to overcome it.

First, thinking that you absolutely have to do something is a major reason for procrastination. When you tell yourself that you have to do something, you're implying that you're being forced to do it, so you'll automatically feel a sense of resentment and rebellion. Procrastination kicks in as a defense mechanism to keep you away from this pain. If the task you are putting off has a real deadline, then when the deadline gets very close, the sense of pain associated with the task becomes overridden by the much greater sense of pain if you don't get started immediately.

The solution to this first mental block is to realize and accept that you don't have to do anything you don't want to do. Even though there may be serious consequences, you are always free to choose. No one is forcing you to run your business the way you do. All the decisions you've made along the way have brought you to where you are today. If you don't like where you've ended up, you're free to start making different decisions, and new results will follow. Also be aware that you don't procrastinate in every area of your life. Even the worst procrastinators have areas where they never procrastinate. Perhaps you never miss your favorite TV show, or you always manage to check your favorite online forums each day. In each situation the freedom of choice is yours. So if you're putting off starting that new program that you just "have to" do this year, realize that you are choosing to do it of your own free will. Procrastination becomes less likely on tasks that we openly and freely choose to undertake.

Secondly, thinking of a task as one big whole that you have to complete will virtually ensure that you put it off. When you focus on the idea of finishing a task where you can't even clearly envision all the steps that will lead to completion, you create a feeling of overwhelm. You then associate this painful feeling to the task and delay as long as possible. For instance, if you say to yourself, "I've got to release a new game this year," or "I must fix this bug," you're most likely going to feel overwhelmed and put the task off.

The solution is to think of starting one small piece of the task instead of mentally feeling that you must finish the whole thing. Replace, "How am I going to finish this?" with "What small step can I start on right now?" If you simply start a task enough times, you will eventually finish it. For example, if one of the tasks you want to do this year is to overhaul your web site, thinking that you have to finish this big project in one fell swoop will make you feel overwhelmed, and you'll put it off. Instead, ask yourself how you can get started on just one small part of the task. Maybe you could start just by jotting down a few ideas and making a list of goals for what you want the new site to accomplish. Don't worry about finishing anything. Just focus on what you can start now. If you do this enough times, you'll eventually be starting on the final piece of the task, and that will lead to finishing.

A third type of erroneous thinking that leads to procrastination is perfectionism. Thinking that you must release the perfect app or build the perfect web site will likely prevent you from ever getting started. Believing that you must do something perfectly will cause you to feel stressed and to associate that stress with the task, i.e. something you want to avoid. You then end up putting the task off to the last possible minute, so that you finally have a way out of this trap. Now there isn't enough time to do the job perfectly, so you're off the hook because you can tell yourself that you could have been perfect if you only had more time. But if you have no specific deadline for a task, perfectionism can cause you to delay indefinitely. If you've never started writing that program you always felt you were meant to create, could it be that perfectionism is keeping you from getting started?

The solution to perfectionism is to give yourself permission to be human. Can you think of any piece of software that you consider to be perfect in every way? I doubt it. Realize that an imperfect job completed today is always superior to the perfect job delayed indefinitely. Perfectionism is also closely connected to thinking of the task as one big whole. Replace that one big perfectly completed task in your mind with one small imperfect first step. Your first draft can be very, very rough. You are always free to revise it again and again.

A fourth mental block is associating deprivation with a task. This means that you believe that undertaking a project will offset much of the pleasure in your life. In order to complete this project, will you have to put the rest of your life on hold? Do you tell yourself that you will have to go into seclusion, work long hours, never see your family, and have no time for fun? That's not likely to be very motivating, yet this is what many people do, especially programmers. Picturing an extended period of working long hours in solitude with no time for fun is a great way to guarantee procrastination.

The solution to the deprivation mindset is to simply do the opposite. Guarantee the fun parts of your life first, and then schedule your work around them. This may sound counterproductive, but this reverse psychology works extremely well. Decide in advance what times you will allot each week to family time, entertainment, exercise, social activities, and personal hobbies. Guarantee an abundance of all your favorite leisure activities. Then limit the amount of working hours each week to whatever is left. The peak performers in any field tend to take more vacation time and work shorter hours than workaholics. By treating your working time as a scarce resource rather than an uncontrollable monster that can gobble up every other area of your life, you'll begin to feel much more balanced, and you'll be far more effective in using your working time. It has been shown that the optimal work week for most programmers is 40-45 hours per week. Working longer hours than this actually has such an adverse effect on productivity and motivation that less real work is done in the end. What would happen if you only allowed yourself a certain number of hours a week to work? What if I came to you and said, "You are only allowed to work 10 hours this week?" Your feeling of deprivation would be reversed, wouldn't it? Instead of feeling that work was depriving you of leisure time, you'd feel you were being deprived of work. You'd replace, "I want to play" with "I want to work," your motivation for work would skyrocket, and all traces of procrastination would vanish.

I also strongly recommend that you take at least one full day off each week with no work whatsoever. This will really recharge you and make you eager to start the coming week. Having a guaranteed work-free day will increase your motivation for work and make you less likely to procrastinate. If you know that the next day is your day off, you'll be less likely to put off tasks, since you won't allow yourself the luxury of allowing them to spill over into your day off. When you think that every day is a work day, however, work seems never-ending, and you always tell yourself, "I should be working." Thus, your brain will use procrastination as a way to guarantee that you get some form of pleasure in your life.

For tasks you've been putting off for a while, I recommend using the 30-minute method to get started. Here's how it works: First, select a small piece of the task you can work on for just 30 minutes. Then choose a reward you will give yourself immediately afterwards. The reward is guaranteed if you simply put in the time; it doesn't depend on any meaningful accomplishment. Example of rewards could be to watch your favorite TV show, see a movie, have a meal or snack, go out with friends, go for a walk, or do anything you find pleasurable. Because the amount of time you'll be working on the task is so short, your focus will shift to the impending pleasure of the reward instead of the difficulty of the task. No matter how unpleasant the task, there's virtually nothing you can't endure for just 30 minutes if you have a big enough reward waiting for you.

When you use this method, you may discover that something very interesting happens. You will probably find that you continue working much longer than 30 minutes. You will often get so involved in a task, even a difficult one, that you actually want to keep working on it. Before you know it, you've put in an hour or even several hours. The certainty of your reward is still there, so you know you can take it whenever you want. Once you begin taking action, your focus shifts away from worrying about the difficulty of the task and towards finishing the current piece of the task which now has your full attention.

When you do decide to stop working, claim your reward, and enjoy it. Then schedule another 30-minute period to work on the task with another reward. This will help you associate more and more pleasure to the task, knowing that you will always be immediately rewarded for your efforts. Working towards distant and uncertain long-term rewards is not nearly as motivating as immediate short-term rewards. By rewarding yourself for simply putting in the time, instead of for any specific achievements, you'll be eager to return to work on your task again and again, and you'll ultimately finish it.

The writing of this article serves as a good example of applying the above techniques. I could have said to myself, "I have to finish this 2000-word article, and it has to be perfect." So first I remember that I don't have to write anything; I freely choose to write articles. Then I realize that I have plenty of time to do a good job, and that I don't need to be perfect because if I start early enough, I have plenty of time to make revisions. I also tell myself that if I just keep starting, I will eventually be done. Before I started this article, I didn't have a topic selected, so I used the 30-minute method to get that done. Having dinner was my reward. I knew that at the end of 30 minutes of working on the task, I could eat, and I was hungry at the time, so that was good motivation for me. It took me a few minutes to pick the topic, and I spent the rest of the time writing down some ideas and making a very rough outline. When the time was up, I stopped working and had dinner, and it really felt like I'd earned that meal.

The next morning I used the same 30-minute method, making breakfast my reward. However, I got so into the task that I'm still writing 90 minutes later. I know I'm free to stop at any time and that my reward is waiting for me, but having overcome the inertia of getting started, the natural tendency is to continue working. In essence I've reversed the problem of procrastination by staying with the task and delaying gratification. The net result is that I finish my article early and have a rewarding breakfast.

I hope this article has helped you gain a greater insight into the causes of procrastination and how you can overcome it. Realize that procrastination is caused by associating some form of pain or unpleasantness to the task you are contemplating. The way to overcome procrastination is simply to reduce the pain and increase the pleasure you associate with beginning a task, thus allowing you to overcome inertia. And if you begin any task again and again, you will ultimately finish it.

Link

Posted by Ryan at 09:21 PM | Comments (0)

Y2038 Bug could be much worse than Y2K bug

On January 19, 2038, all systems based on the Unix platform will "run out of time." Pretty scary if you think about how many hospitals, major government agencies (NASA), and other critical computers are using Unix.

January 19, 2038 will be a serious problem on many platforms, especially Unix and Unix-like platforms, because these systems will "run out of time". Starting at GMT 03:14:07, Tuesday, January 19, 2038, I fully expect to see lots of systems around the world breaking magnificently: satellites falling out of orbit, massive power outages (like the 2003 North American blackout), hospital life support system failures, phone system interruptions (including 911 emergency services), bank problems, etc. That's because one second later, many of these systems will have wildly inaccurate date settings, producing all kinds of unpredictable consequences. In short, many of the dire predictions for the year 2000 are much more likely to actually occur in the year 2038! The year 2000 was just a dry run. In case you think we can sit on this issue for another 30 years before addressing it, consider that the temporal echoes of the 2038 problem are already starting to appear in date calculations for mortgages and vital statistics!

Link

Posted by Ryan at 07:26 PM | Comments (0)

Stop Ashlee Simpson

sign the petition to stop Ashlee Simpson

Posted by at 05:51 PM | Comments (0)

India may release an explanation about UFO's

New Delhi is in the middle of a big secret internal debate. On one side the largest democracy of the world is eager to explain to its citizens and to the world about the ongoing contacts with the UFOs and extra-terrestrials. On the other hand there are invisible untold international protocols that prohibit doing anything that may cause worldwide fear and panic.

It is well accepted between the UFO and extra-terrestrial experts that all the five nuclear powers are in contact with the beings from other stars for quite some time. Recently India has seen enormous news on UFO contacts and secret UFO bases in Himalayas near the Chinese bases. In Ladak, for example the locals clearly point out the everyday phenomenon of large triangular spacecrafts coming out below the ground and Indian security forces protecting them.

Link

Posted by at 05:41 PM | Comments (0)

PSP to launch this spring in the US

Sony officials said at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas that the game player will hit U.S. stores in March.

Sony executive Howard Stringer said the console will sell for less than $200.

Sony hopes U.S. demand will be strong for the black-and-silver console, which also plays music and movies. Stores in Japan sold out of the 200,000 PSPs they had in stock within hours of its debut Dec. 12.

Link

Posted by at 05:35 PM | Comments (0)

Xbox 2 could have a high pricetag

We’ve gotten used to the idea that each new rev of a consumer electronics product either gets a lower price tag, or you get more features for the same price. But it looks like the world of game consoles is about to challenge that model, led by — you guessed it — Microsoft, which may bump the price of the Xbox 2 above the current $299 ceiling for console launches. One analyst speculates that a version with accessories might go for as much as $400. The extra hundred is probably to make sure that the console doesn’t get the blue screen of death like that Xbox demo that crashed during Bill Gates’ big keynote at CES last week.

[via engadget]

Posted by at 05:30 PM | Comments (0)

Nano-propellers sent for a spin

Metallic rods about 500 times smaller than the width of a human hair have been turned into tiny "propellers" by a Canadian research team.

The "nanorods" spin after becoming anchored to silicon wafers, Chemical Communications has reported.

Their motion is driven by addition of hydrogen peroxide (H2O2) to the solution in which they are contained.

Link

Posted by at 05:19 PM | Comments (0)

A guide to ripping and encoding music

Posted by at 04:56 PM | Comments (0)

January 09, 2005

Three Windows Patches Coming Next Week

Microsoft's getting right down to business. Next Tuesday, the first patch day of 2005, the Redmond, Wash.-based developer will fix a trio of flaws in Windows, the company said late Thursday.

At least one of the three will be labeled "critical," Microsoft's highest threat rating.

Microsoft now pre-announces upcoming security bulletins and patches as part of its Advance Notification service, but limits the information to the number of bulletins it will put out. The patches will debut Jan. 11.

Critical bugs are those Microsoft says can be exploited without any user interaction by automated malicious code. In other words, a worm. Examples of such hands-off worms in the past have been the destructive MSBlast of 2003 and Sasser of 2004.

The last critical vulnerability that Microsoft patched was one for Internet Explorer in early December 2004.

Late last month, security firms warned users about three unpatched vulnerabilities in Windows' LoadImage API function, its animated cursors, and in the way it handles help files. It's not known if any of the patches Microsoft plans to release next week plug these holes.

"No additional details about bulletin severities or vulnerabilities will be made available until Jan. 11, 2005," Microsoft stated in the online notification.

Link

Posted by at 04:23 PM | Comments (0)

Happy birthday Mr Presley

SCIENTISTS have revealed a computer-generated image of how Elvis Presley would have looked at the age of 70.
The picture - produced to coincide with the King’s 70th birthday today - shows Elvis with considerably more wrinkles but retaining his trademark raven hair.

Scientists and psychologists at St Andrew’s University used the latest in computer technology to create the up-to-date picture of Elvis.

Professor David Perrett, who helped put together the image, said: “In the newly generated image there was no attempt to change the appearance of the hair.

“Indeed, in common with many celebrities, Elvis may have chosen to use artificial hair and hair colour.

Click here to see the picture

Posted by at 04:12 PM | Comments (0)

Mozilla and Firefox flaws exposed

It seams as though firefox is completely flawless...

Mozilla and Firefox users were warned of a number of potentially troublesome security vulnerabilities this week.

The most serious flaw involves a buffer overflow bug in the way Mozilla processes the NNTP (news) protocol. The bug creates a means for hackers inject hostile code into vulnerable systems, providing they trick users into executing maliciously constructed news server links. All versions of Mozilla prior to 1.7.5 are affected. Firefox users are advised to make sure they are running version 1.0 to minimise any risk. The flaw was discovered by Maurycy Prodeus of Polish firm iSEC Security Research.

Next up, Secunia has discovered a flaw that creates a means to spoof the source displayed in the Firefox's download dialog box. The vulnerability has been confirmed in Mozilla 1.7.3 for Linux, Mozilla 1.7.5 for Windows, and Mozilla Firefox 1.0. Other versions may also be affected, Secunia warns. It advises Firefox users to avoid download links from untrusted sources pending the availability of patches from the Mozilla project.

Finally, there's a less serious problem affecting Firefox and its email client Thunderbird. Security researchers have found that temporary files are stored by the popular packages in a format that makes it possible for snoops to read the content of downloads and attachments of other users on

Link

Posted by at 04:02 PM | Comments (0)

SQL Injection attacks by example

This site has all kinds of information on SQL injection attacks -- What they are, how they're used, and various examples of them. Worth checking out if you're into security or hacking

"SQL Injection" is subset of the an unverified/unsanitized user input vulnerability ("buffer overflows" are a different subset), and the idea is to convince the application to run SQL code that was not intended. If the application is creating SQL strings naively on the fly and then running them, it's straightforward to create some real surprises.

Link

Posted by Ryan at 03:31 PM | Comments (0)

Everything you ever wanted to know about sleep (But were too afraid to ask)

Until not long ago, just about until electricity became ubiquitous, humans used to have a sleep pattern quite different from what we consider "normal" today. At dusk you go to sleep, at some point in the middle of the night you wake up for an hour or two, then fall asleep again until dawn. Thus there are two events of falling asleep and two events of waking up every night (plus, perhaps, a short nap in the afternoon). As indigenous people today, as well as people in non-electrified rural areas of the world, still follow this pattern, it is likely that our ancestors did, too.The bimodal sleep pattern was first seen in laboratory animals (various birds, lizards and mammals) in the 1950s, 60s and 70s, i.e, before everyone moved their research to mice and rats who have erratic (un-consolidated) sleep patterns. The research on humans kept in constant conditions, as well as field work in primitive communities (including non-electrified rural places in what is otherwise considered the First World) confirmed the bimodality of sleep in humans, particularly in winter.

Link

Posted by Ryan at 03:16 PM | Comments (0)

Suse 9.2 is out

Novell has just released Suse 9.2 and the full download is available on their site. You can get a 3.3gb DVD ISO and it doesn't require the usual downloading while you install.

See the mirrors here

Posted by Ryan at 03:06 PM | Comments (0)

Google Mirror

This site mirrors Google...

Link

Posted by Ryan at 02:42 PM | Comments (0)

Custom Gmail skins

If you're tired of the boring old Gmail interface, here's a solution to use your own custom CSS style. All you have to do is install URLid for Firefox, download a custom CSS file, find your Firefox profile, then copy the CSS file to the "Chrome" folder as userContent.css. Read the article for more information...

Click here

Posted by Ryan at 01:32 PM | Comments (1)

January 08, 2005

Writing paper pad with a flower

This is an interesting idea...

Green Cycle, by Taiwan-based designers Wei-Ran Lee and Bo-Chin Chu, is a memo paper pad that comes with a small plant hidden in a tin. Each time you take a paper out of the pad, it reminds you to water the plant. When the plant grows up, you have to transfer it in another suitable container, and it will become a potted plant.
The concept is that when we use the paper, we're also destroying the greenness from nature, but we can still create another green life instead.

Link

Posted by at 09:36 PM | Comments (0)

Hacking Google

This site has a huge database of Google hacks updated daily. Find passwords, webcams, routers, file servers, and much more...

Click here

Posted by Ryan at 08:10 PM | Comments (0)

January 07, 2005

Transmaterial Catalog

Here's a PDF that's full of futuristic materials. Features things such as translucent concrete, woven stainless steel, aerogel, and 187 pages of other cool things.

Link (pdf)

Posted by Ryan at 11:59 PM | Comments (1)

SixApart's guide to comment spam

Recently, this site has been getting more visitors, but along with that came more comments. Usually I love having comments, but when the comments are actually google bombs they aren't appreciated. I recently installed mt-blacklist which seems to have eliminated all the spam so far. Read this article to see what SixApart has to say about comment spam and how to get rid of it.

Link

Posted by Ryan at 11:37 PM | Comments (0)

January 06, 2005

net2ftp

Here's a neat little site... Type in your FTP server information and it allows you to log on. Useful for people who are travelling, using public computers, or can't install programs on school/work computers.

Features:

* navigate the FTP server
* upload download new: unlimited nr of upload files
* copy move delete rename chmod
* copy/move to a 2nd FTP server
* view code with syntax highlighting
* view images new
* edit text files
* edit HTML in various HTML editors new
* edit code with syntax highlighting beta
* zip files to download, email or save
* upload-and-unzip (zip, tar, tgz, gz)
* search for words or phrases
* calculate the size of directories and files

Link

Posted by Ryan at 11:26 PM | Comments (0)

Ten CSS tricks you may not know

Great site with a few helpful hints for any CSS coders

Link

Posted by Ryan at 11:21 PM | Comments (0)

300 fonts that no web designer should be without

As a web designer, you know that Verdana can get real old real fast. But you also know that there are millions of free fonts on the internet and most of them are horribly bad. Here's a secret: not all truetype fonts are bad. Some of them are quite classy. The truth is you dont have to be rich and able to afford postscript fonts in order to look professional.
I've collected 300 of my favorite truetype fonts that can be used for design works. Here they are free to download in .ttf format (works on both MacOSX and Windows machines), organized into the following categories.

Click here

Posted by Ryan at 11:20 PM | Comments (4)

Hacking Sims 2

Entire neighborhoods of Sims are being mysteriously graced with eternal youth, while some characters are finding all their needs fulfilled by a single shot of magic espresso. Others no longer need to empty the toilet after potty training their toddler. Some Sims are being abducted by aliens when they glance through their telescope -- every time, instead of just occasionally, which is normal. All this mayhem is the work of a community of experimenters wielding hex editors, custom programs and reverse-engineering skills who began mastering their own Sims 2 worlds immediately after the game's release last September. The hackers share their weird science with one another through public websites and forums.

Link

Posted by Ryan at 11:18 PM | Comments (0)

ReactOS

ReactOS is an Open Source effort to develop a quality operating system that is compatible with Microsoft Windows(R) applications and drivers.

ReactOS.com

Posted by Ryan at 09:07 PM | Comments (0)

10 uses for live Linux distros

Tuxs.org has a great article of 10 distros of Linux and their uses. Some of these are very practical and it's surprising how many distros there are for one specific purpose with tons of tools built right in. Hard drive recovery, password resetting, and a virus scan are my three favorite from the site...

1. Try Linux without installing it

Knoppix is the "mother" of all live Linux CD's. It comes with 2 GBs of software making it the perfect distribution to try Linux with.

2. Use as a portable desktop

Slax fits on a small 8cm CD making it literally pocket sized and contains enough software to be useful for everyday use.

3. Maintain hard drive/recover data

SystemRescue CD includes a host of tools for maintaining a hard drive including a partition manager and resizing software and drive imaging software. SystemRescue CD can read a variety of file systems including Windows NTFS.

4. Install Linux

MEPIS Linux can be run from the CD to try it out and then installed from the running distribution in a very friendly environment.

5. Try Linux software

PCLinuxOS is similar to MEPIS in that it can be run and installed from the CD. It also includes some of the best Linux software available for you to try out.

6. Reset forgotten Windows passwords

Austrumi is a good little live CD distribution that includes a tool at boot that allows you to reset forgotten Windows passwords (including Administrator).

7. Build your own distribution

Damn Small Linux is a fantastic 50 MB distribution as is or that you can personalize with your own choice of software using the very easy to use myDSL system.

8. Watch/listen to multimedia

Movix is a live distribution designed just for playing audio and video files from the internet, CD and DVD.

9. Play games

Morphix is a modular distribution that has a version just for playing games.

10. Scan safely for virus's

INSERT is the INside SEcurity Rescue Toolkit and includes an anti-virus package making it a great way to clean an infected computer.

Article on Tuxs.org

Frozentech - all the live distros

Posted by Ryan at 08:49 PM | Comments (0)

Gates' problems at CES

During Bill Gates' keynote speech at this year's Consumer Electronics show, his computer froze while he was demonstrating Windows Media Center. Later, another machine had a BSOD problem while he demonstrated a video game...

Link

Posted by Ryan at 08:39 PM | Comments (0)

Flash-based iPods?

Think Secret has an article about a new iPod that will be introduced at the Macworld Expo in 1GB and 2GB versions. Not much information is available at this time, however these appear to be coming very soon.

Article

Posted by Ryan at 07:27 PM | Comments (0)

Sony and Microsoft vs. Apple

According to BetaNews, Apple's dominance in the portable media industry may soon be leveled out by Microsoft and Sony. Bill Gates says that the downside of iTunes and iPods is that iTunes music will only play on an iPod. A Microsoft/Sony product would apparently not have this problem...

Link

Posted by Ryan at 07:19 PM | Comments (0)

Apple files a lawsuit against a prominent mac site

Apple sues Think Secret....

Posted by at 06:46 PM | Comments (0)

Microsoft releases beta anti-spyware program

Bill Gate's latest attempt to keep his promise to Windows users and try to make Windows more secure.....

Link

Download it here

Posted by at 04:32 PM | Comments (0)

January 05, 2005

Geek breakup lines

1. (A)bort, (R)etry, (F)ail? R (A)bort, (R)etry, (F)ail? R (A)bort, (R)etry, (F)ail? F
2. Now that Half Life 2 is out, I need to refocus my priorities

3. You have been unsubscribed from my dating list. Please click this link to confirm.

4. I need a lover who understands that 20 hours a day on the internet is normal

5. I don't think we should date anymore, but we can still be on eachother's buddy lists

6. I'd like a true beauty so I don't have to spend so much time photoshopping your ugly face out of our photos

7. Let's face it. You love Intel, and I'm an AMD man. It's just not going to work out.

8. After you emailed me your full body shot, I realized I was looking for someone more feminine.

[ Via BBspot.com ]

Posted by Ryan at 06:52 PM | Comments (0)

Edge: "What do you believe is true even though you cannot prove it?"

Every year, John Brockman asks various scientists, futurists, creative thinkers, and philosophers a single question. This year it is "What do you believe is true even though you cannot prove it?"...

I can't prove it, but I am pretty sure that people gain a selective advantage from believing in things they can't prove. I am dead serious about this. People who are sometimes consumed by false beliefs do better than those who insist on evidence before they believe and act. People who are sometimes swept away by emotions do better in life than those who calculate every move. These advantages have, I believe, shaped mental capacities for intense emotion and passionate beliefs because they give a selective advantage in certain situations.

See the rest

Posted by Ryan at 02:43 AM | Comments (0)

January 04, 2005

Holographic Projectors for PDAs

UK-based startup, called Light Blue Optics, has developed a new holographic laser technology aimed at future pocket-sized video projectors, PDAs, or even cell phones.

Holographic projection of 2D images represents a compelling alternative to conventional image projection. Holograms are efficient: they work by routing light to the places where you want it, and away from the places you don’t. But on the other hand, all present systems are too complex, expensive and of very low quality.

Full article

Light Blue Optics website

Posted by Ryan at 11:31 PM | Comments (0)

How to mod your XBOX

Cool article from I-hacked.com...

Installing a Modchip in a Microsoft Xbox

Written by Syngress Publishing
Tuesday, 04 January 2005
The following is an complete tutorial from the book "Game Console Hacking" by Syngress Publishing. Installing a Modchip into a Microsoft Xbox by Syngress Publishing The goal of this hack is to install a modchip into your Xbox. Because a modchip is able to operate and interface with the Xbox’s hardware at some of the lowest hardware levels, it will allow you to gain the ultimate control of your Xbox. With the modchip installed in your Xbox, you will add different capabilities, such as alternate graphic interfaces or even alternate operating systems such as Linux. A Brief Introduction to Modchips When a viable set of exploits and workarounds is found to bypass a particular security feature, the modchip is born. Modchips are small printed circuit boards (PCBs) with wires that attach to various components on the console’s main board. A modchip is usually controlled by a Microchip PIC or standard programmable logic such as a programmable logic device (PLD), but modern modchips for the Xbox and other systems include an FPGA and Flash ROM so that they can be updated with bug fixes and new features. Many different types of modchips exist for the Xbox, all with specific functions they are designed to perform. Before laying down your hard earned cash to purchase a modchip, make sure you understand the capabilities of the device. Additionally, some modchips are very dependent on the version of the Xbox hardware they will operate on, so be sure that your desired modchip will even work with your hardware. (See the “Xbox Versions” section at the beginning of this chapter for more details.) Typically, a basic Xbox modchip will load an alternate startup routine into the Basic Input/Output System (BIOS) of the Xbox. The BIOS controls the low-level input and output functions of the Xbox. Using a customized BIOS will allow us to load functions that are not normally part of the standard Xbox user interface. Need to Know: Modchip Issues Circumventing technical protection measures to play pirated games is unlawful. Both the U.S. and foreign governments have successfully prosecuted sellers of such modchips. In addition, downloading and using BIOS images that copy Microsoft’s proprietary code infringes Microsoft’s copyrights. Please check your country’s laws regarding this potential problem before you get involved with modchips. Microsoft’s gaming service, Xbox Live (or XBL, as it’s often called), checks for the presence of modchips on the Xbox every time you check in with Xbox Live. If you attempt to use Xbox Live with a modified Xbox, the service will note the serial number of your Xbox and permanently ban that Xbox from XBL. Removing or disabling the modchip will not reverse the ban. The only way to get back on Xbox Live is to use a different Xbox. The main reason behind the XBL policy is that it prevents cheating. Due to the fact that modchips allow software modification to the games being played, allowing a modified Xbox onto the service would put those players with unmodified Xboxes at a disadvantage. The modchip used in this section is the Xecuter Lite+ from www.teamxecuter.com (see Figure 3.44). At the time of this writing, version 2.3B is now available and retails for approximately $50.00. It can be purchased from many online sites, including www.system-mods.com. As of September 2004, production of the Xecuter version 3.0 is coming shortly. Figure 3.44 The Xecuter Lite+ Modchip Modchips are installed into the Xbox in a variety of ways. Some must be soldered directly to the Xbox motherboard. Others are “solderless” in that they use “pogo pins” to make contact with test points on the Xbox motherboard, without the need to solder. Pogo pins are commonly used for product testing during manufacturing, since they can quickly make contact with the circuit under test. The pogo pin contacts are spring-loaded and look and act like miniature pogo sticks. The spring-loaded design keeps the pin in contact with a contact pad on the motherboard, thus ensuring a good electrical connection. The pogo pins on the underside of the Xecuter Lite+ modchip are shown in Figure 3.45. Figure 3.45 Pogo Pins on the Bottom of the Xecuter Lite+ PCB No matter what the specifics of the modchips, they almost all function via the Low Pin Count (LPC) data bus. The LPC bus is an industry-standard interface designed by Intel (and commonly used on PC-based architectures) that replaces the aging Industry Standard Architecture (ISA) interface. The LPC bus can be used to connect the CPU to other peripheral devices such as the BIOS, mouse, and keyboard. On the Xbox, the LPC bus is used for testing and debugging during production. It consists of 15 contacts in an 8x2 array. The LPC bus is located on the Xbox on the left side of the motherboard as you face the front of the Xbox (see Figure 3.46). You should note that Pin 4 is used only as a key, and the contact is completely missing from the Xbox’s motherboard. Figure 3.46 The LPC Bus: A Common Modchip Modchipss function by loading an alternate version of firmware or “boot code” into the Xbox at system startup. By design, the Xbox looks to load alternate firmware from the LPC if the normal boot code is not available from the Flash ROM on the Xbox. The Xbox is tricked into believing that the normal Flash ROM is not available if the lowest bit on Flash ROM’s data bus line, D0, is pulled to ground (0V). In other words, when D0 is forced to a low state, the Xbox loads alternate boot code from the modchip instead of from its standard Flash ROM. The D0 line is accessed by means of a via to the right of the LPC contacts (see Figure 3.47). A via is a plated through-hole connecting different layers of a PCB. Some brands of modchips require that a small wire be soldered to the D0 via (the protective green soldermask coating will first need to be scratched off the via using an X-ACTO knife). Other modchips use pogo-pin contacts. Due to the small size of the via, those modchips that use pogo pins need to be very precisely aligned to function. Figure 3..47 The D0 Data Line Necessary for the Modchip Preparing for the Hack For this hack, you will need to obtain a modchip. We’re using the Xecuter Lite+ for this chapter. You will also need the following tools: A Torx T-20 screwdriver (to open the Xbox) A Torx T-10 screwdriver (to open the Xbox) An X-ACTO knife or hobby blade (to open the Xbox) A Phillips screwdriver, size #2 A soldering iron and solder (optional, depending on the type of modchip you are using; for the Xecuter Lite+, shown in Figures 3.44 and 3.45, you don’t need a soldering iron since it connects directly to the Xbox circuit board with pogo pins) Performing the Hack Perform the following: 1. Open the Xbox case as described in the “Opening the Xbox” section. You do not need to remove the front panel. 2. Plug one end of the cable assembly (received with your modchip) into the Xecuter main circuit board. 3. Locate the LPC bus on the left side of the motherboard. Adjacent to Pin 16 of the LPC, there is a Phillips-head screw holding the motherboard in place. Remove the screw and set it aside. 4. Place the Xecuter modchip on the motherboard, noting exact alignment of the pogo pin for the D0 via (see Figure 3.44). Note that the D0 line has been moved slightly in versions 1.2 and higher of the Xbox motherboard. Make sure that you know the exact location of the via for your version of the Xbox or the modchip will not function properly. Complete installation tutorials for the Xecuter modchips can be found at www.teamxecuter.com. 5. Replace the motherboard screw, passing it through the Xecuter’s circuit board to secure it into place. Your Xbox should resemble the one shown in Figure 3.48. Figure 3.48 Xbox with Modchip 6. Next, mount the Xecuter’s switchboard on the front of the Xbox. The ideal placement is on the lower-left front corner, below the DVD drive (see Figures 3.49 and 3.50). Figure 3.49 Xecuter Switchboard Installed on the Bottom of the Xbox Figure 3.50 Xecuter Switchboard as Seen From the Front of the Xbox 7. Now route the cable assembly (connected to the modchip) to the outside of the case. The cable will need to pass through the interior metal RF shield and the Xbox’s plastic housing. 8. Reassemble the Xbox by following the disassembly steps in reverse. 9. Plug the other end of the cable assembly (received with your modchip) into the Xecuter switchboard on the outside of the Xbox. The physical installation of your Xbox is now complete. For the modchip to operate, you will need to obtain a boot disk image and desired firmware. The firmware is usually included with the modchip, but if it isn’t, or if you want updated or special firmware, follow the next steps. 10. Using an Internet Relay Chat (IRC) client, connect to an EFNet server (irc.efnet.org) and join either the #xbins4newbies or #xbins channel. (For more information on IRC, visit www.irc.org.) Popular IRC clients include mIRC for Windows (www.mirc.com), BitchX for UNIX (www.bitchx.org), and Conversation for Mac OS X (http://homepage.mac.com/philrobin/conversation). 11. Upon joining the channel, you should receive a message similar to this: -onjoin- Welcome to #xbins! In Order to get FILES you must type /msg xbins !list he will then give you FTP info along with a username/password. You MUST be in this channel in order to recieve any info/files. If he is not in the channel then a server split is occuring and he will be back shortly. #xbins is not a help channel, it is a distribution channel. If you would like to talk in general, join #xbins-chat. If you need help, join #xbins-help. -onjoin- For the latest releases type /msg onjoin !releases (for the 3 most recent) or !releases 10 (for the 10 most recent). Need to find a file on the FTP? Use SITE SEARCH as a raw command once logged into the ftp (CTRL + R for flashfxp) 12. In the channel, send the /msg xbins !list command. You should receive a private message from the xbins user similar to the following, which will contain the distribution FTP site, username, and password (note that the actual username and password have been deleted from this example): distribution.xbins.org PORT: 21 USERNAME: username PASSWORD: password NOTE: This Username And Password will be deleted upon connection for security reasons. This site contains 100% homebrew files and absolutly NO warez. Brought to you by #xbins and team xecuter <xbins> Each person is allowed 30 files a day. We do NOT tolerate GREED and you shall be banned if you break this rule. Got a ACCESS DENIED error? DON'T use IE or LeechFTP. Use FlashFXP/SmartFTP/CuteFTP for best results. AFTER EVERY ATTEMPT, SUCCESSFUL OR NOT, YOU NEED TO !list AGAIN.. <xbins> If you would like CVS builds of XBMP/XBMC or any other XBMP/XBMC releases, get it on our ftp at xbmp.uk.xbins.org (Europe 100mbit) Username = username Password = password 13. Armed with this information, use an FTP client to connect to the given address and log in with the given username and password. You can only log in one time with each username/password combination before it is deleted. Upon connection, you will be prompted with a list of directories: PC, DEBUG, and XBOX. 14. Download the desired BIOS and boot disk files from the XBOX directory. The files you download are specific to your modchip and the goals of your hack. Make sure that the BIOS image fits the size of the image bank(s) in your model of Xecuter (or other modchip). For this hack, we’re using the Evolution X, or Evo X, boot disk. With the firmware and boot disk images in hand (either obtained with the modchip or from the previous steps), we can now program the modchip and configure the Xbox. Follow these steps: 15. Using your CD burner of choice, write the BIOS image to a CDR. 16. Using your CD burner of choice, write the boot disk image to a CDR. 17. Boot the Xbox using the new boot disk. 18. When prompted, for the BIOS image, swap the boot CD for the one containing the BIOS image. You will then be prompted to transfer the BIOS image to the modchip. This is done by directing the program to the image on the CDR. 19. Transfer the required boot and operating system files to the Xbox’s hard drive. These will depend on the boot image The SlaYer Xbox Auto-Installer from http://slayer.xbox-scene.com is a great tool for installing the needed files for a modchip. In addition to the actual auto-installer program, the SlaYer site has an excellent instruction manual detailing all the steps of the installation process and several variations. These variations include upgrading hard drives in the Xbox and upgrading the BIOS. 19. Once the BIOS has been loaded into the modchip and the system files have been transferred to the Xbox hard drive, the Xbox can be shut down. 20. Ensure that the leftmost switch of the Xecuter’s switchboard is set to Enable, and restart the Xbox. If the Xecuter is installed correctly, the LED on the switchboard should illuminate and the Evo X splash screen will be displayed on the TV (see Figure 3.51). The Evo X is very similar to the standard Xbox boot screen, except that it has the Evo X logo in the upper-left corner. Figure 3.51 Evolution 21. Once the boot-up sequence is completed, a new dashboard should load. The dashboard is Xbox's graphical user interface. Figure 3.52 shows the standard Xbox dashboard; Figure 3.53 shows the Administr8tor dashboard, just one of several alternative dashboards that come as part of the Evolution X package.. Figure 3.52 Figure 3.53 Evolution X Administr8or Dashboard Congratulations! If you can see the new dashboard, your modchip is successfully installed and operating correctly.
Last Updated ( Tuesday, 04 January 2005 )

Posted by Ryan at 10:14 PM | Comments (0)

Sixapart soon to aquire LiveJournal

Recent rumors are, that Sixapart, the maker of Movable Type and TypePad, will soon buy LiveJournal for a mix of stock and cash. If this happens, it will make Sixapart one of the largest weblog companies in the world, with almost 6.5 million users.

More info

Posted by Ryan at 10:05 PM | Comments (1)

100 things we didn't know this time last year

Ten people die on the UK's roads every day.
UK scientists have developed a clock which ticks 1,000,000 billion times a second. Technically that's a quadrillion.

George Clooney listens to The Archers online, according to model Lisa Snowden who says she introduced him to it.

Bill Clinton revealed in his autobiography that he didn't learn to ride a bike properly until he was 22.

Space is only 62 miles away. That's 100 kilometres.

One gigabyte of information - about a quarter of the memory of an iPod mini - is the equivalent of a pick-up truck load of paper.

Bill Clinton sent just two e-mails while he was president.

complete list

Posted by at 08:00 PM | Comments (3)

New 2TB ’µcard’ Ready to Go!

The new 2TB (2048GB) “µcard,” developed by Taiwan’s Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI) and seven local-industry players, is now waiting for marketable solutions to be developed, based on the initial specifications established in early October. The developers have formed the Mu-Card Alliance to promote the new standard.

A source at RiChip, which is one of the participating companies in the alliance, has hinted to DigiTimes that the director of the US-based MultiMediaCard Association (MMCA) will hold a conference with the Taiwan-based developers in mid-January. The conference is aimed at establishing a partnership between MMCA and the developers, according to a source at RiChip. The MMCA may also launch the new specification on behalf of the developers, the source added.

The company source further indicated that a complete specification should be finalized by the end of February 2005 for interested manufacturers. The developers are all striving to raise awareness among local leading enterprises. Many have already expressed an interest, including Asustek Computer, Compal Electronics and MediaTek, the source noted.

None of the companies mentioned were available for comment prior to publication.

The latest information confirms the µcard specifications quoted in the August 6 DigiTimes article and adds the number of connection pads (20), the operating voltage (legacy 5V, 3.3V, 1.8V), the frequency (60MHz) and the interface (MMC SPI USB, x1, x4, x8, x16). There is also a micro-size card added at 24×18×1.4mm (14mm shorter than the full size 24×32×1.4mm).

Demonstration µcards were displayed to industry players during October, but volume production has not yet begun, sources indicated.

link

Posted by at 07:36 PM | Comments (1)

Microsoft Anti Spyware Beta Coming on Thursday

Neowin has just announced that a beta release of Microsoft's new spyware product from the company they just bought, Giant Software, will soon be available.The beta release is coming on January 6th however it is unknown whether it will be a private or public beta. Interestingly, the project is called "Atlanta" and detects Messenger Plus! as spyware. Plenty of screenshots in the link.

Click here

Posted by Ryan at 05:10 PM | Comments (0)

Donate your idle CPU cycles to aid in cancer research

Cool new program following in the tracks of Seti@home and Make Love Not Spam, The Cancer Blog has announced a new program that uses spare CPU cycles to assist the Human Proteome Folding Project, which is always looking for more information about cancer.

More info

Posted by Ryan at 05:02 PM | Comments (0)

Picture of Tsunami hitting Phuket, Thailand

This picture is from Snopes.com and its unknown whether it is real or not, but if it is its pretty amazing.

Be sure and open the picture for a shock of your life to see what the tsunami looked like just before hitting Puket, Thailand. This picture is not a fake. It appears to have been taken from a hi-rise building window in downtown Phuket Thailand. The power of nature is hard to comprehend, especially the destructiveness of water.

Link

Posted by Ryan at 04:51 PM | Comments (0)

Shifting map

I hope the people in Rapid City can swim...

Posted by Ryan at 02:32 AM | Comments (0)

A blogger's code of ethics

If you own a blog, here is your ethical duty..

Link

Posted by Ryan at 02:29 AM | Comments (0)

Adobe Reader Speedup

Although the new Adobe Acrobat 7 is extremely fast compared to older versions, this program removes certain plugins from Acrobat that slow down the loading process, drastically increasing its speed...

Update: I installed this along with Acrobat 7 and now all PDFs load in less than a second... I definitely recommend it

Download

Posted by Ryan at 02:27 AM | Comments (0)

Cool technical questions

This site has all kinds of questions for people that like to think... example -

"at one point, a remote island's population of chameleons was divided as follows:
* 13 red chameleons
* 15 green chameleons
* 17 blue chameleons

each time two different colored chameleons would meet, they would change their color to the third one. (i.e.. If green meets red, they both change their color to blue.) is it ever possible for all chameleons to become the same color? why or why not?"

Link

Posted by Ryan at 02:22 AM | Comments (0)

January 03, 2005

867-5309 for every area code

Some guy with too much free time called 867-5309 for every area code in the U.S. Check out the his results for 678...

Link

Posted by Ryan at 10:43 PM | Comments (0)

Teeny Tiny Strobe Tuner for $34.95

I don't think I can resist ordering a StroboPick. It's a tiny strobe guitar tuner, which lets you tune a guitar visually by shining strobing red and green lights on the strings. Peterson have been making professional strobe tuners (which cost $200+) for years - supposedly they're far more accurate than ordinary tuners, particularly if you're lazy and borderline tone deaf like me.

order now

link

Posted by at 08:29 PM | Comments (0)

JVC's Blu-Ray/DVD Hybrid Disc

Just like the recently-developed HD DVD/DVD dual-disc format from Toshiba, JVC is showing a new prototype triple-layer Blu-Ray/DVD hybrid that puts a 25GB Blu-Ray layer on top of a coventional two-layer 8.5GB DVD disc. Dual format discs are hoped to ease the transition from DVD to whatever format will win the upcoming standards war (probably Blu-Ray).

[via the register]

Posted by at 08:24 PM | Comments (0)

A cell phone glove

Trying to operate a cell phone while wearing winter gloves is difficult due to the close proximity of the keypad’s small buttons.

To use the cell phone a glove must be removed, exposing the entire hand to the cold, when only a single thumb is required to operate the cell phone.

This idea is a cell phone glove.

The glove has a slit in the insulation layer, with a zip placed along the palm side of the thumb cover. The zip is partially covered by a removable flap to ensure the zip does not interfere with the normal operation of the glove.

During use the cover is unzipped to enable the thumb to protrude through the cover material and used to depress the buttons of the cell phone keypad.

Posted by at 08:17 PM | Comments (0)

G4TechTV is dying

TechTV used to be one of the best channels out there, but after Comcast decided to merge them with G4, its been a downhill battle for the network. Nielsen ratings from October show that it is one of the least viewed networks, barely beating Biography and FitTV...

Link

Posted by Ryan at 06:48 PM | Comments (0)

Bill Gates' House

He has never let press inside his house, but this guy was able to snap a few photos of the outside...

Click here for more

Posted by Ryan at 06:46 PM | Comments (3)

Videora

Videora is the first personal video downloading program. Utilizing BitTorrent and Really Simple Syndication, Videora automatically and intelligently finds and downloads video you want to watch. With easy to use features like Wish Lists and Season Passes you will be able to watch your favorite video, no matter where you are in the world.

Link

Posted by Ryan at 06:18 PM | Comments (0)

Biojewelry

Biojewelry , developed by Tobie Kerridge and Nikki Stott, combines biotech and design to give a new emphasis to debates concerning genetics.

Biojewelry allows two persons to undergo a biopsy, in which each of them has a sample of their bone cells removed. The tissue is harvested in a lab, grown until a mass of bone has developed and used as a material for a ring. The rings can then be exchanged as a symbol of their relationship.

link

Posted by at 05:10 PM | Comments (0)

53-Key Alphabetical Keyboard Takes on QWERTY

After 130 years since inception of QWERTY, a new contender finally steps forward. The new keyboard from New Standard, whose keys are arranged alphabetically, has the first 13 alphabet keys from A to M sitting the left side and the rest on the right hand side. Besides this radical change, the cursors and the function keys are relocated to the middle and bottom of the keyboard respectively. Suffice to say, everything is changed down to the physical size.

Since the keyboard only has 53 keys, it only measures just 12.5" x 5" x 1". Inventor John Parkinson suggests the new keyboard eases learning curve for 'hunt & peck' typists and senior citizens. Available in April 2005, the USB keyboard will retail for $69.95.

link

Posted by at 05:06 PM | Comments (0)

Torrent Status

See a updated table of whether or not your favorite torrent site is offline.

link

Posted by at 04:21 PM | Comments (0)

Latest thing in hi-tech: a book

They have fought over DVDs, digital cameras, MP3 players and flat-screen televisions.

Now Japan’s gadget makers have chosen a new battleground for 2005: the electronic book. Technology companies and science-fiction writers have been predicting the death of paper for decades, and they have always been wrong.

Until now, people have happily stuck to books despite the digital age because books still represent the cheapest and easiest-to-read medium for words. The idea of a paperless office is widely scoffed at and entirely cashless financial systems remain elusive.

But Sony and Matsushita, the two largest consumer electronic companies, believe they may have turned the corner in driving the humble book to extinction.

link

Posted by at 04:17 PM | Comments (0)

Crazy-Hacks.org

Crazy-Hacks.org is one large "database of crazy computer-related project."

link

Posted by at 04:13 PM | Comments (0)

more Google competition

Another search engine has just launched, called "Nokodo." It seems like an ok search engine, but I prefer Clusy, and Google.

Nokodo

Posted by at 04:09 PM | Comments (0)

AMD Alchemy

AMD has announced a new low power, high performance, system on chip processor. It will be used for portable media devices and have support for various media formats such as DivX, WMV9, MPEG2, and more. It will be able to output at DVD quality with a resolution of 720 x 480. It will be available in the second quarter of this year in 333MHz, 400MHz, and 500MHz versions. If you want to buy 10,000 of the 333MHz chip, they're only $22.50 each.

Link

Posted by Ryan at 01:26 PM | Comments (0)

Wordcount - Tracking the way we use language

Here are 86,000 of the most popular words in the English language. They're organized by popularity. You can go from left to right or type in a word to see its popularity. It also has a cool search where you can type in a popularity rank to see the word...

Click here

Posted by Ryan at 12:40 PM | Comments (0)

More wallpaper

This site has tons of wallpapers... most of which are for dual monitors and very hi-res.

Link

Posted by Ryan at 12:42 AM | Comments (0)

January 02, 2005

Smart Boards

Interactive whiteboards which allow you to write on the screen of anything projected onto a special whiteboard. If any applications for a computer are projected onto the screen, you can click it by just tapping the board... Videos on the site

Give you instant touch control over all software applications Enable you to draw or write in digital ink Let you write over any application, even moving video Help you capture all your notes, to a single file or Microsoft Office applications The SMART Board interactive whiteboard does all this and more. Working with your computer and digital projector, it's limited only by your imagination.

Link

Posted by Ryan at 09:36 PM | Comments (0)

Just getting into the idea of 3G?

Well, you could be too late, reports Forbes.com:

The world's 26 major mobile phone operators and telecommunication equipment-makers have agreed to work on a global standard for a super fast mobile transmission technology...
The group includes NTT DoCoMo and NEC of Japan, Britain's Vodafone Group PLC, US cellphone carrier Cingular Wireless... Using the new technology called Super 3G, the group plans to launch by 2009 global services for transmitting large volumes of moving images by mobile phones at a speed 10 times faster than the current 3G (third-generation) technology, the report said.

The report said the cost of upgrading the mobile telecommunication network for Super 3G in Japan may top $975m.

Expensive stuff, and you wonder how much of a gamble souping up the networks will be - after all, 3G hasn't even been around long enough in the UK to be considered a resounding success.

Actually, it makes sense: the network is going to improve, so it is better to be there at the forefront. However, I wonder what the killer app for 3G really will be - video calling hasn't really taken off, so perhaps it will just be about fast download times and interconnectivity?

Link

Posted by at 04:34 PM | Comments (0)

Online Tsunami pleas get massive response

Some of the biggest companies of the web have been asking their customers to give money to support the Tsunami relief effort, and the online community is giving with much appreciation. some of these companies include Google, Amazon, eBay, and Yahoo. Each one of these are used by millions of people every day. Still there is a great need for more money to go to the relief effort. The death toll has surpassed 100,000 people, and even $1 could help save someones life. Please give as much as you can to help support the millions of people left without a home.

Posted by at 04:31 PM | Comments (0)

NASA Prepares to Launch Comet-Buste

NASA's Deep Impact, a spacecraft named after the 1998 movie, is scheduled to launch on January 12. If all goes as planned, the spacecraft will collide with Comet Tempel 1 six months later on July 4, and create a crater so that the inside of the comet can be analyzed.

link

[via slashdot]

Posted by at 04:18 PM | Comments (0)

One look back two steps forward

A look back at '04

Prediction: Many new VoIP enabled routers hit the market. Following Motorola's and DLink's leads, Linksys, Cisco, Netgear, Zyxel, SMVC and others release new products with VoIP ports, QOS and firewall.
What happened: Linksys and DLink both released VoIP-enabled routers last year, albeit tied to specific service providers.

Prediction: A temporary solution to the 9-1-1 dilemma (for those who keep a landline around). New VoIP telephone adaptors will include ports that connect to PSTN lines. All 9-1-1 calls are automatically routed through this port, no matter their origination.
What happened: A couple of adapters include a PSTN port (the Sipura SPA-3000 and the Grandstream HT-486), but not many. On the other hand, 9-1-1 over VoIP is improving. We expect a large number of providers to address the 9-1-1 issue this year, though the lack of PSTN-like emergency phone service in VoIP appears to be more red herring than obstacle to adoption.

Prediction: Wireless phones and VoIP begin to converge.
What happened: Yes, we were wildly over-optimistic. Other than the release of the Sipura SPA-3000, which allows more adventurous users to gateway their cell phone calls through their VoIP service, there's been little movement here. A couple of pricey and feature-poor wi-fi cell phones hit the market, but consumers stayed understandably ho-hum about them. There is some progress being made in this area. And we expect, with fingers crossed, that truly useful WiFi-enabled wireless phones will arrive soon.

Looking forward

At least one major Internet telephony service provider will merge with another. We don't expect the so-called major industry shakeout like we predicted for 2004, but rest assured, it's coming (2006?) and this will be the opening salvo in the battle for supremacy in the Internet telephony service provider market.

A standalone, non-provider locked VoIP adapter will be released and retail for under $50 USD. The closest thing we had to this in 2004 was the PAP2 from Linksys, which is based on an early version of the SPA-2000, (Sipura Technology's two-port analog telephone adaptor which did displace Cisco's ATA-186 as the de facto industry standard in 2004). The vast majority of the PAP2s out there now are locked to a provider, though a few thousand unlocked units managed to leak out for around $60. This year, we most definitely expect device manufacturers to release unlocked telephone adaptors similar to, and perhaps surpassing, the SPA-2000 for under $50 USD.

Cordless IP phones will be introduced in 2005. Many of the IP phones currently on the market today are “fixed” phones, meaning they sit on a desk and have a cord. There are a couple of WiFi phones available, but they are pricy, clumsy and brain-dead when it comes to features. Look for companies like Uniden, VTech – and even Sipura – to come out with conventional cordless phones that have an Ethernet connection and speak SIP.

Link

Posted by at 04:14 PM | Comments (0)

Really cool wallpaper site

Here's a site with great images to use as wallpaper...

Link

Posted by Ryan at 04:09 PM | Comments (0)

Mactracker - Get info on any mac

Like Aida32 for the mac... great for diagnosing or taking inventory of Macs

Link

Posted by Ryan at 04:05 PM | Comments (0)

Quick reference cards

Reference cards for all programming languages...

Click here

Posted by Ryan at 04:00 PM | Comments (0)

Hymn - Decrypt iTunes protected files

Hymn is free software that allows you to "free your iTunes Music Store (protected AAC / m4p) purchases from their DRM restrictions with no sound quality loss."

iTunes protected AAC files can be decrypted and used outside of the iTunes/iPod environment for use on other computer platforms and media players. Hymn can be used in the initial stages of converting protected AAC files to other formats like MP3 or Ogg. Currently the Mac build supports a drag-'n'-drop graphical user interface with only a command-line interface for other platforms. The software is released under a GNU General Public License.

Hymn can eliminate the five computer limit imposed by iTunes making it possible to archive backups of purchased music files. The developers believe in the freedom of information and the ability to exercise your fair-use rights under copyright law. With regards to Digital Restrictions Management they say the "purpose of DRM is to circumvent traditional copyright law. The result of DRM combined with laws that outlaw circumvention of DRM such as the DMCA is that there is no longer protection for fair use."

link

Download

Posted by at 03:59 PM | Comments (0)

SphereXP

SphereXP is a 3D desktop replacement for Microsoft Windows XP. Taking the known concept of three-dimensional desktops to its own level. It offers a new way to organize objects on the desktop such a icons and applications. Check the videos and screenshots to get the idea.

Download it here

Posted by at 03:52 PM | Comments (0)

Home made tank

Some guys built a home made tank. It is complete even with a turret, that doesn't work. That is a pretty cool idea, luckily the turret does not shoot bombs.

Posted by at 03:48 PM | Comments (0)

Typing Madness

This is a fun, but very addicting game

Typing madness!

Posted by at 03:12 PM | Comments (0)

Spam hotspots

Where does most of the spam in the world come from? This map shows the hotspots

Link

Posted by Ryan at 02:26 PM | Comments (0)

Self-cleaning glass

New kind of glass that promises to keep windows free from dirt...

"The key to Activ glass is an ultra-thin coating only 40 nm thick," Philip Webb a spokesperson for Pilkington told Optics.org. "It is applied to the glass surface during the manufacturing process."
The coating, which is based on titanium dioxide, works by combining the two beneficial effects. First, the ultraviolet wavelengths in sunlight react with a photocatalyst to break down organic debris on the glass.

"The second feature is that the coating is hydrophilic," says Webb. "This means that when rain hits the glass, it doesn't form droplets. Rain water flows down the glass in a sheet and washes the dirt away." Alternatively, a hose can be used to clean the glass when there is little or no rainfall.

The clever invention comes at a premium price though. Activ is set to cost consumers up to 20% more than conventional glazing. "The coating lasts for the lifetime of the window," says Webb. "Consumers would recoup the excess cost over that time."

More info

Posted by Ryan at 02:22 PM | Comments (0)

Right brain workouts

If you're a left brainer, try these to stimulate the right side... the creative side.

Link

Posted by Ryan at 02:21 PM | Comments (0)

Complexification | Gallery of computation

This guy makes computer programs to create stunning art images...

Link

Posted by Ryan at 02:19 PM | Comments (0)

More predictions for 2005

This one is from The Inquirer, and has some interesting predictions of tech in 2005...

Link

Posted by Ryan at 02:13 PM | Comments (0)

26 steps to a 15k day

26 tips on how to get more traffic to your site

Link

Posted by Ryan at 02:01 PM | Comments (0)

Why you shouldn't make links open in a new window...

Unless you warn them, Web users are likely to expect the new page to load in the current window. Unexpected surprises can be fun, but not when you're browsing the Web.
The act of opening a new browser window resets the back button in that window. The back button is the second most used navigation function (after hyperlinks, source: useit.com), so resetting it is a big no-no.

To open a new browser window can disorient very novice Web users and the visually impaired. They might not realise that a new window has opened and might struggle to switch between windows.

Opening a new browser window disrespects the desires of your users. If they want a new window, they'll ask for one. Don't force a new window upon users unless there's a very good reason to do so.

New browser windows can make an already cluttered taskbar even more difficult to use. We've all spent ages hunting through the taskbar in search of the window we want. Don't make this process even harder by increasing the number of windows the user has open.

More info

Posted by Ryan at 01:59 PM | Comments (0)

How to turn your old satellite dish into an extremely powerful wifi antenna

Great article... send your wifi over 10 miles with this cheap hack...

Click here

Posted by Ryan at 04:15 AM | Comments (0)

What do you want to do with your life?

This website is a collaboration of hundreds of personal goals. The larger the text is, the more people have the goal.

Among the more popular: Be a better blogger, save money, drink eight glasses of water a day, master CSS, see the northern lights, and watch a space shuttle launch

Link

Posted by Ryan at 03:34 AM | Comments (0)

Stapleless Stapler

This staple-less stapler joins your papers by punching a small, neat hole in your documents and folding the remaining flaps together for a secure binding. No paper is torn off of your sheets, and no staples are necessary.

Link

Posted by Ryan at 03:31 AM | Comments (0)

The Shadow Internet

Interesting website about web security and software pirates

Click here

Posted by Ryan at 03:29 AM | Comments (0)

January 01, 2005

50,000 word story without the letter "E"

THE ENTIRE MANUSCRIPT of this story was written with the E type-bar of the typewriter tied down; thus making it impossible for that letter to be printed. This was done so that none of that vowel might slip in, accidentally; and many did try to do so!

Link

Posted by Ryan at 11:20 PM | Comments (0)

Building a CD Bootable Firewall with FreeBSD

1. Network Topology
Before start building firewall, You need to know your network topology of my network and some special machine on the network.

Intranet<------->Firewall<------>Internet

FileServer<-----------|

I need to store the outbound traffic statistic , to the server. All Firewall log message via syslogd must go to FileServer. The firewall configuration is store on FileServer which must be loaded to FireWall when the machine start. This allow me to reconfig FireWall without rewrite new CD (FireWall has only a CD-ROM -- no writeable storage on FireWall).

Link

Posted by at 05:00 AM | Comments (0)