April 2009Monthly Archives

This is, by far, the best ice cream I’ve made.

And it’s among the easiest — just a couple of ingredients, very little effort, and the best, chocolate-y, most decadent result.

So you've gone back in time with just a gun, a few clips and your pants. What now? This is what.

The battle between Linux and Windows over the netbook market share has been the hot topic this week. So does Windows really have 96% share? Or is it less than that?

Virtual machines can seem juuuuust a bit too geeky for most otherwise computer-friendly people. That’s sad, because it’s an easy, free way to try or use a separate OS without messing with your hard drive.

The following are 10 of the most extraordinary and creative uses of Twitter updates. These amazing updates have made the news, pushed the boundaries of what the status update can do, and have even fundamentally changed people’s lives.

Oh Brando, will your wonders ever cease? The company famous for making our days with random, wacky, off-the-wall gizmos has just unloaded a small cadre of new USB hubs, all of which are delightfully eccentric and totally destined for neglected desks the world over.

iPhone/iPod touch only: Read It Later plugs one of the gaps in its mission to offer your reading bookmarks anywhere at anytime with an official iPhone application, which features browser syncing and offline saving.

Linux only: Just over a year ago, we offered a semi-easy way to rip DVDs in Linux to video files. Had we been up on AcidRip, we could’ve saved ourselves about 900 words

The action comes two weeks after the house of the German WikiLeaks domain sponsor, Theodor Reppe, was searched by German authorities. Police documentation shows that the March 24, 2009 raid was triggered by WikiLeaks' publication of Australia's proposed secret internet censorship list.

There are some Gmail Labs features that are creative, neat, and truly new. Then there are the things that make email veterans say, “Well, finally!” Inline image additions certainly fall in the latter category.

Need a worry-free background track for a multimedia project, or just some new tunes to work into your daily mix? The Free Music Archive, a project of indie freeform station WFMU, has downloads and streams galore.

Many of us consider networking a necessary evil of maintaining a healthy, robust career, but it doesn’t have to be. In reality, it’s more often than not bad networking that puts people off networking altogether.

How many times have you gotten an @reply and had no clue what it was in response to? Twonvo addresses this much needed Twitter feature, threaded conversations. Just enter a conversation ID or Twitter status URL and Twonvo will do the rest by searching through all of the tweet @replies and displaying the full conversation.

I’ve been thinking about editing some of my pictures in GIMP and I’ve seen the brushes in Photoshop which could be used for cute effects. Photoshop brush envy?

But you can use them in the Gimp!

eGroupWare is a Web-based groupware suite. It contains many modules, including Calendar (personal calendar and group scheduling, notifications and alarms), Mail (Email (IMAP and POP3) or FeLaMiMail (IMAP only)), InfoLog (todos, notes, and phone calls linked to contacts (CRM)), Contacts (an addressbook to store and share contact information), and SiteMgr or JiNN (content management).

When I first started freelancing as a college student, I was eager to do any website and would say "Yes" to anything, regardless of my skill set or the time involved. It was just nice to know that someone needed me for a skilled task. Unfortunately, I quickly found myself working all the time, eating Ramen noodles, and not getting anywhere in terms of paying off my wonderful college debt. To make things worse, these people were also giving my contact info out to other such people (you know, the lady who has been thinking about selling dog sweaters online and has a $100 budget for an e-commerce site, 1000 brochures, and a guaranteed #1 Google search result for the words "dog", "sweater", and "love").

Anyways, now four years later, my world (AND financial success) now requires ample use of the answer "No." And here are ten questions I almost always answer "No" to:

Over the last few months I have been madly documenting all the free and open source tools and applications I have used or come across during my working day. So below you can find 100 of the best tools and applications I have found.

In fact, the open source model, which began with programmers, has been so successful that it is currently being applied in government, media, education and private business. But despite these new applications, the unique combination of the open source model with the universalism of web design remains one of the ideal applications of open source. This pervasiveness of the open source spirit in web design now means that you can use open source software to design both graphics and your CSS and HTML, and you can also use the dozens of reliable open source code resources or thousands of web design templates to base your own designs on. In this article we highlight 100 open source web design templates, resources, and tools.

You are looking at 1301 fluorescent bulbs planted in an English farm, powered entirely by electrical fields generated by the power lines that float in curves over the top of this field.

Intel remains committed to its mobile Linux project, it has said, despite handing over supervision to the Linux Foundation.

Facebook has finally fixed this problem in a sensible way by adding Comments to Wall postings. In the same way you can now comment on Status Updates (which, seems to have become the most popular means of communicating within my network), you can now comment on Wall Posts, both on your profile and on those of your friends.

Even though we predict big things to come from these short status updates, the reality is that the present day status update has the potential to make you more productive in and outside of Twitter , help you extend your reach, improve your visibility, and of course have a little fun. So, we can all look to the future for even more innovation, but we’ll show you how to do more with your status updates right now.

When Ableton forum member AlexMC came across plans for a no-fuss, no-muss USB foot controller for the company's world-renowned music app, he liked what he saw — but not so much that he couldn't make a few changes his own self. By adding a sturdy wooden case, a 30 degree pitch to the top of the thing, some extra buttons, and some razzle-dazzle (that'll cost you extra) he now has a device that sports twenty buttons and a bank switch (making for forty unique outputs total), useful for things like play / record on individual tracks, stop / fade, and of course, everybody's favorite — tap tempo. The best part? He built this bad boy for ten bucks! The excruciating step-by-step plans and photos (including circuit diagrams and all that jazz) are yours when you hit the read link below — and you'll be mashing up Katy Perry and the Cure live on stage, while jamming along on your keytar, in no time. But please, don't mash-up Katy Perry and the Cure.

The hardest part about being a freelancer for me is deciding what jobs are worth taking on, and what I should turn down. I want to do and have it all–but the whole “only 24 hours in a day” thing really throws a wrench into that plan.

Fact is, when you’re the boss of you, you’ve got to be a really good editor: recognize the good gigs and avoid everything else. Over at the FreelanceSwitch blog this morning, I published a piece called How to Craft Your Personal Business Model, in which I describe how I am attempting to do just that. Part of it was designing my ideal work mix, a high-tech pie chart I scribbled on a piece of paper, which you see here.

According to a source at Nintendo (the source being Nintendo's website) the company will include its long-awaited, not-yet-duplicated Wii MotionPlus with the upcoming Wii Sports Resort collection, to be bandied about at E3 this June. The sequel to the Wii Sports promises an even greater sense of submersion for games with titles like Sword Play, Power Cruising, and Disc Dog. Disc Dog!

The key to a successful indoor herb garden is to start with the hardiest and easiest plants and expand your collection from there. Check out the following suggestions to get started.

The grandeur and sadness of a post-human Earth will be coming back to your TV screens soon. The History Channel is turning its hit documentary Life After People into a series, with more stunning visuals.

Compatible with Firefox 2+ and Flock 2+, GoogAzon shows you search results from eBay and Amazon right in a regular search through Google, Yahoo & MSN Live. GoogAzon simplifies your shopping by showing you results all in one place. Best of all, there’s no setup required – just install and start using right away.

No-one’s going to say no to faster broadband, but would you really pay $100 a month for the privilege?

Two years ago, a bright engineer, Anand Agarawala, gave a presentation at the TED conference (see the video at the bottom) about a new technology he and a team were working on that showed how they believed the desktop should work. Just like how people use a real desk, they believed that the user should be able to interact with desktop items in 3D, pin up photographs, pile related items into stacks, and more.

Today, that dream has become a reality with the launch of BumpTop for Windows (Mac version coming soon), a gorgeous desktop application that transforms the desktop from a cold, vertical interface into a dynamic 3-dimensional room that makes not only organizing files easy, but browsing images, writing notes, and even updating your Twitter (Twitter reviews), Facebook (Facebook reviews), and email.

Maybe your tweets have little lasting value, but what about those Flickr photos or those YouTube videos that went viral? Those assets are worth something right?

That’s where Legacy Locker comes in and helps you protect your email, social networking, virtual world, and photo and video assets, even when you’re no longer here to appreciate them.

iPhone OS 3.0 is riddled with hints that video recording is on the way, and the latest is is this supposed screenshot of a revised camera app with a video toggle. MacRumors says it comes up when certain config files are edited to make it seem like a video camera is present, but it's not clear exactly what steps have to be taken, so we're treating this one cautiously until we can confirm it. Other secret features buried in the plists are said to include "auto-focus camera," "voice control," and "magenetometer," which is assumed to be a compass. Yep, all stuff we'd expect from an iPhone revision around, say, June, but nothing earth-shattering — and if the video features are as mediocre as the current iPhone camera, we don't think the Flips of this world have too much to worry about.

If you've been losing sleep in eager anticipation of the new Gmail for mobile, rest assured that you'll sleep soundly tonight. With support for both Android phones and iPhone / iPod Touch OS 2.2.1, the gang over at the Google mobile blog are justifiably proud of the new app

So I had to be smart with LinkedIn. In my quest for nuclear industry expat candidates I found some really cool ways to work LinkedIn which continue to help me tremendously.

Free and open source software is all about sharing so, prompted by a reader who emailed me last week to ask about books on Linux, I spent some time over the weekend doing research. The result is a short list of books that users – from newbies to gurus – can download and read at their leisure. There are many more books than just these available online but I chose to limit the list to books that could be downloaded in full. I also chose a wide range of books, from introductions to Linux, books on implementing open source in schools and in Africa, to books that defined the evolution of free software.

PHP is popular server-side scripting language,mostly you seen in wordpress blog platforms. wordpress blog platforms totally build in PHP. PHP is a powerful server-side scripting language for creating dynamic and interactive websites. It is the widely-used, free, and efficient alternative to competitors such as Microsoft's ASP.

So, it looks like we might actually get that NBN after all, despite it seeming like the neverending stall-ey (boom-tish). K-Rudd this morning announced that all five tenders from the private sector to build the NBN were a load of crap, so he, Conroy and his entire Labor Government posse has decided to build the damn thing themselves (with some help from the private sector).

iPod-love’s got you stuck with iTunes, but you’d prefer to cut down on the extra bloat iTunes requires on your hard drive? Here’s how to install iTunes without QuickTime, Bonjour, or that pesky iTunesHelper.

Sir Terry Pratchett yesterday dropped in on a new Somerset housing estate where two roads have been named in honour of his Discworld novels.

Some 30 residents of the Kingwell Rise development in Wincanton will in future be able to boast they live on either Peach Pie Street or Treacle Mine Road – an agreeable result of the town's official twinning in 2002 with the fictional city of Ankh-Morpork.

Environmentalists would have you believe that leaving the faucet running while you brush your teeth puts an unnecessary drain on the environment. We always disagreed, and if Jin Woo Han's concept Mini Hydro Turbine ever goes into production we might finally have something to back up our argument

Spies on the set of David Tennant's final Doctor Who story have spotted a certain actor on set… with weird hair. Meanwhile, Russell T. Davies and David Tennant talk Star Trek and Star Wars. Spoilers!

The iPhone and iPod Touch have a variety of applications for gamers, ranging from music-based games to role playing games. But what if you just want to play some chess or classic tic-tac-toe? The iPhone has that covered, too. There’s no need to lug around a chess set as long as there’s an iPhone in your pocket.

Web Design Ledger cooks up an great list of the 14 Most Useful Web Design Cheat Sheets. You’ll find everything from Adobe shortcuts to CSS guides.

I am sure that you might have a song or two which you’d like to make into custom ringtones for certain people who frequently call you. The boss could have a ringtone like the Star Wars’ Imperial Death March (especially if he’s always giving you impossible deadlines) or your sister could have a ringtone of her favorite song. It could be anything. Sometimes these tunes are not available or you only want certain segments to be used. In any case, you could do it yourself using Audacity.

Long gone are the days where snapshots came back from the photo lab and disappeared into albums and shoe boxes. Now, digital photos are tweaked, adjusted, and remixed in ways their analogue counterparts couldn’t imagine. Here’s the top five contenders for the crown of Best Image Editor.

Got a lust for Photoshop but a budget for GIMP? These tips will actually add many of the functions and capabilities of Adobe’s flagship photo editor to its open-source counterpart.

So, good news: Rape is now legal in Afghanistan.
In case you've been living under a rock — or in, you know, Afghanistan, which is pretty much the same thing — the country we supposedly freed from Taliban tyranny just passed something called the Shia Family Act through its parliament. It was signed into law by none other than Central Asia's answer to Governor William J. Lepetomaine himself, Hamid Karzai. The new law negates the need for sexual consent between married partners, tacitly endorses child marriage, and restricts a woman's right to leave the home should she find any of this crap utterly condemnable.

Are you an unemployed developer? Did you get the pink slip because your company found it costly to retain you after the economic down turn? Then cheer up because Adobe has decided to provide some succor by releasing it's flagship product Adobe Flex Builder Professional for free. The catch is that – of course, you have to be unemployed and, you can use the software only for personal use to improve your programming skill

While I despise spam email, I must confess that I get a certain guilty pleasure from the copywriting 'skills' of the spammers.

A few years ago, I started collecting some of the more outlandish and (at least to me) amusing email subject lines from the many thousands of spam emails I received promoting various 'solutions' related to my private parts.

Whatever kind of work you do at home, your office is one place you want to spend the time to make comfortable and convenient. Take 10 of our tips on organising, fixing, and streamlining that space.

When major events or big stories occur, people tweet about it and it inevitably ends up at the top of Twitter Search as a top trend. But this only scratches the surface of tracking Twitter trends.

There are a wide variety of web applications, Twitter accounts, and even iPhone apps that can help people do everything from track popular hashtags to graph out recent Twitter trends. As Twitter grows, this information will only become more useful for understanding what is popular at any given moment, or even what was popular in the past.

Windows only: Free application Portable Ubuntu for Windows runs an entire Linux operating system as a Windows application. As if that weren’t cool enough, it’s portable, so you can carry it on your thumb drive.

A new trailer for SGU: Stargate Universe, called "Philosophical," has been released. And if you can ignore the music, it suggests a much more uncertain show than Stargate fans may be used to.

If you’re looking for an abstract splash of colour to spruce up your desktop, the collections here should have something that catches your eye.