Take care of the little jobs with Organized, a new widget from iSlayer featuring a calendar with events, world clocks, notes and to do’s. The calendar and to do’s utilise OS X’s inbuilt databases, so they’re always in sync with iCal and Mail. The world clock uses our very own database with over 700 locations. (Link)
Flip video cameras are a good choice for quick and simple video recording but don’t offer much in the expandability/department. This article runs through relatively easy methods for macro & micro lens add-ons, achieving some nice results (see macro vid above)
- DIY: A Macro Lens and Microscope for Your Flip Mino [via Hack a Day]
(Via MAKE Magazine.)
Adobe AIR is Adobe’s entry into the field of widgets. It’s a better idea than just something on your desktop. Developers are able to create a potentially rich experience, and have it run cross-platform. Even though I think the whole Adobe AIR platform is quite ready yet, some of the apps that are available are truly getting there. I found a few of them that I think are pretty good, and I now have on my own computer.
- FotoBooth is an application built for fun where you can quickly snap pictures using your webcam. It offers a dozen different filters to distort your images and also integrates with flickr for one click uploads to your flickr account..
- iSpy uses your web cam to take a quick snap shot and save it to your local disk whenever it senses motion. If there is a level of motion that exceeds the sensitivity level, it will either take a quick snap shot and display on screen or if ‘Save pics to disk’ is checked it will also save a copy to the user’s picture/iSpy directory.
- ReadAIR is an OSX Themed Desktop Client for Mac or Windows.
- PandoraBoy allows you to control your music with global hotkeys or your apple remote. Additionally, it supports growl notifications so that you always know what you’re listening to.
- ShrinkOMatic lets you resize photos easily. You can set size and ratio limits, change the output format, and then drag and drop your pictures.
- WebKut allows you to feed it a URL and you can snapshot it. It will save the page out as a .PDF file with just a couple of clicks of your mouse.
- Clevr is a seriously easy way of creating and sharing panoramic photos. It not only helps you create stunning panoramas, but it also lets you turn them into interactive images that you can move around and navigate.
- CL Desktop is a user friendly way to browse Craigslist. Setup just the right searches to find what your looking for, and save them for instant access anytime you need. CL Desktop is an application that runs on your desktop to bring you a better view of Craigslist postings.
(Via The Chris Pirillo Show.)
Twitter just announced yet another sum of funding, this including money from Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezo’s fund Bezos Expeditions. The company says the money will be spent on building up its infrastructure and reliability to become the communications utility it needs to be before it can become profitable.
read more | digg story
Magic SEO tactics for blogs! Get listed in hundreds of catalogs, directories and search engines!
read more | digg story
YouTube has announced The YouTube Screening Room, a dedicated area on YouTube that will showcase an international selection of films.
The YouTube Screening Room will feature four new high-quality short films every two weeks, as well as feature-length films on a case-by-case basis.
Filmmakers will have the opportunity to submit their work for consideration through an online submission process. YouTube says that his will create new business opportunities for filmmakers and bring films to YouTube users that they otherwise wouldn’t see.
People will be able to communicate directly with filmmakers to share thoughts, exchange opinions with fans, and provide honest feedback using YouTube’s features to comment, rate, and share films. The YouTube Screening Room will also include a ‘Buy Now’ button, allowing filmmakers to link to websites selling DVDs and digital downloads of their films, as well as a High Quality player, which offers users the best viewing experience possible.
If you own a piece of web real estate, Google Analytics is, as Gina pointed out, a seriously useful tracking tool. The Analytics Reporting Suite puts all the great data tools offered up free by Google into an easy-to-navigate, all-in-one container. Move fluidly from unique visits to pageviews, escape the wait for new data pages to load, and quickly filter data for specific time spans. This kind of interface-improving app is precisely what Adobe AIR was built for.
Which AIR apps are worth the spot on your own desktop? What apps are you still waiting to see before committing to a download? Let’s hear both sides in the comments.
(Via Lifehacker.)
Mac OS X only: Run multiple versions of Firefox side by side and quickly switch between profiles with donationware application MultiFirefox. If the Firefox 3 hubbub has convinced you to upgrade but not all of your must-have extensions have caught up yet, MultiFirefox lets you get used to Firefox 3 in one window while sticking to your tried-and-true extensions in Firefox 2. From another perspective, switching between user profiles on Macs is a pain, and this app provides a simpler point-of-access to the Profile Manager. MultiFirefox is donationware, Mac OS X only. If all you want to do is run different profiles and you don’t want another app to do it, here’s how to manage multiple Firefox profiles.
(Via Lifehacker.)
John Chan from Cnet Asia has been given a tour of Android by Google’s Andy Rubin. However, the touchscreen handset that the software was demoed on was deemed out of bounds—FYI, it’s veeery similar to an HTC TyTN II. Anyway, this is what he had to say about the software.
The Android user interface, like any other mobile phone’s, has an information bar at the top which tells you how much battery you have left, which network you’re on and what time it is. The main screen area is a blank slate much like the desktop space on a PC. Swiping the finger at the sides of the screen will move this desktop around as it is larger than the actual resolution of the LCD. As expected, there are many Google applications by default, 20 in total, according to Rubin. These include a YouTube program with which you can search and view all YouTube clips, a Gmail app and Google Maps.
An exclamation mark appears in the corner of the screen when the phone wants to tell you something—new mail, warnings and system errors. Click on the exclamation mark and a menu drops down with the information.
Chan also says that you can run multiple apps pretty smoothly. He witnessed Google Maps running at the same time as a photo and music application, and says that this works because Android ‘freeze dries’ the apps that are running in the background, so they don’t drain the system resources. [hardwarezone.com and CNET Asia via Engadget]
(Via Gizmodo.)
It seems that people keep coming up with ingenious things to with Twitter. Reminding you to water your plants is relatively inventive, but for shear practicality, [Shantanu Goel] created a security camera using a webcam, a few freeware apps, and a Twitter account.
To make this work, install Motion on a system running Linux. As its name suggests, Motion is a free motion-detecting application that monitors movement in a webcam’s field of view. Once installed, it should be configured to take a snapshot of the event whenever something moves; with the locate option turned on, it draws a square frame around the area where motion occurred. The program includes http server functionality, so the photos can be viewed from a remote location. When all of that is properly configured, motion can be set to trigger cURL, Wget, or [Goel]’s Perl script to post a message to Twitter about the event. From there the Twitter account can be configured to send text messages to a phone, creating a virtually instant notification of motion sensed by the webcam.
(Via Hack a Day)
Ian Scott
Recent Comments