Errors in Reporting

If you read the paper or watch the news, and know something about the topic of a segment, you will often find lots of obvious errors. The Chicago Tribune has an article that is a good example of this, relating to the spread of computers in India. Did you know that its dangerous to "take out the power cord" from a computer or that you can disassemble a hard drive, put it back together and expect it to work without a clean room?

Enjoy the article, and feel free to laugh.

Look for similar errors in other articles, you will find that it is dangerous to trust the media too much.

Thanks to Dad for pointing this out (I'm not a big newspaper person)

Geocaching, No Posts for a Couple Days

I'm leaving for a camping trip this morning, so I won't be posting for a couple days (no wifi in the woods).

If your planning to do the same, you might want to check out a sport that merges technology and the outdoors, geocaching. Geocaching involves people hiding boxes (usually ammo cans) in the woods and posting precise coordinates on geocaching.com. You can then take those coordinates, find the box using a gps and log it, both in the box and on the website. Many of them are quite difficult to find, making it a fun challenge even if you are pretty good with a gps. You might also want to take a compass along, since a gps can't track direction very well unless it is moving fairly quickly. You can find out more on the Geocaching website.

I should be back posting next week, so enjoy your weekend.

Google Talk: Vote on New Features

This is just a quick post for all those using Google talk, Google's instant messaging program.

Google has a list of the most common requests made by users is asking people to pick the top 5 that they want. Go Vote Here, if you use Google talk.

If not, you can give it a try by downloading it here or checking it out in the Gmail interface (left side, blue box) if you use one of the more common web browsers.

Buying a Computer at Retail Stores

I posted the other day about some considerations in buying a computer. Slashdot has an article today about experiences in buying computers in retail stores, and answers they received to some very basic questions. The article also brings up something I forgot to mention in my article, warranties. If you break something it is always nice when you can get it fixed for free.

The best thing to do when buying anything is to do some research beforehand.  As far as computers go, both Tom's Hardware and AnandTech usually have good hardware reviews.
(of course, you could just do a quick Google)

Anyway, You can find my original post here and the Slashdot post here. Be sure to look through some of the comments on the Slashdot post as well.


Happy Shopping ;-)

Google Testing New Features, At Random?

There is an interesting post on the Google Blog tonight about feature testing. Apparently, Google chooses people at random to test new features on, which is why people occasionally get different versions of Google. I wonder if there is any way to get yourself a greater chance of being selected, and how many other companies do this? Anyway, its some interesting food for thought, and talks about some upcoming Google features (something I always enjoy keeping track of).

Oh well, back to my normal, productive activities. Check out the post here. Hopefully I will be able to return to adding more of my own content in the near future, but I have a lot of "reviews" to go to before some major tests over the next couple weeks.

"Freespire"

Linspire sent me an email this afternoon about a new, free version of their Linux distribution called "Freespire".
Personally, I don't like Linspire (too much is hidden from the user) but for a lot of people, its an ok choice as a free operating system. I will probably give Freespire a try sooner or later, but If your not on the Linspire mailing lists, I though I would share the news. The note didn't say too much about what the differences are between Linspire and Freespire, but I'm sure there will be some. I'm as curious as anyone else, so feel free to leave some thoughts in the comments of this post if you give it a try. It looks like they aren't offering a download yet, (probably because the web server is being hit pretty hard right now), but you can check out the Freespire site here. If you weren't already familiar with Linspire, (some may know it by its former name of "Lindows") you can go here. Of course, for most people Windows or MacOS is fine, if you just want to give Linux a try, then I recommend you give Knoppix a look.

Orbitfiles

Just a quick post tonight...

If you have been keeping track of this blog for awhile, you may remember that I have posted about free online storage a couple times before. I tend to use box.net but there are a number of alternatives. Orbitfiles is a new (to me at least) site, which I saw on digg today. It combines some of the features of other storage sites I've mentioned, combining an upload utility with some of the social features of box.net. I haven't actually tried it out yet (I'm fine with what I have right now) but if you are looking for some free online storage (or >1G for a fee) then you might want to check out Orbitfiles.

On a totally unrelated note, I enjoyed this article on CNET, be sure to read some of the comments, lots of interesting back and forth. It does happen too.

How to Purchase a Computer

As promised...

People have been asking me how to buy a computer for college, in particular. (If this is what your doing, I'd check with your college before buying anything). As long as it meets all your software's requirements, Any computer should be fine, but there are a number of considerations in purchasing an ideal computer.

I wrote an article about the basic considerations in purchasing a computer, and put it up on my "Google page" for your enjoyment. If it leaves you with questions please let me know and I will try to get back to you with some answers and add them to the article. Note that this was mostly written in the car, on I90 so if there are any errors I apologize, and please point them out (either by email or comment on this post). I am very busy these days, so If I don't answer in a few days, I will after my tests (2nd week in May).

After reading the article, you might want to look back at this post for some info on online shopping and finding discounts.

If you haven't already go read it here!

Project Gutenberg => Proofreading

If you are looking for something to do while you wait for me to finish my homework and get around to post something more exciting I noticed that Project Gutenberg is looking for proofreaders the other day. If you are unfamiliar with Project Gutenberg, it is a collection of ebooks (computerized copies of older, out of copyright, books) for free on the Internet. They have a huge collection, you can look at the catalogue here.

Well, back to my work, now you have a way to help out and a source of reading material. Sorry for not posting more lately, but I ended up visiting some family earlier in the week (wasn't planning to) and have a lot of work before some major tests over the next two weeks.

Web Caches

I have been surprisingly busy this week, considering that I have been on vacation the last couple days. Anyway, to keep everyone interested, how about a quick post on web caches:

Some of you might have noticed that certain websites tend to slow down after they have been linked to by a large news site or mailing list. This is simply caused by the huge load put on a server as many people try to connect at once.

One popular solution is the Coral Cache Service. All you have to do is append ".nyud.net:8080" (without the quotes) to the server section of the URL. (after the top level domain identifier, so www.site.com would become www.site.com.nyud.net:880). As soon as one person views a site through Coral Cache, it is in the "cached" so that others can view it quickly, through Coral Cache, without putting much, if any, stress on the server hosting the content. If you run a high traffic site, then you may want to link other, smaller sites, in this manner. This is particularly good if you are linking a free geocities or similar account that has a very small bandwidth quota.

If you are hosting a file, or trying to download one from a slow server, Dijjer works much the same as Coral Cache, only for files. It works through a background service, that fetches files and provides bandwidth back to the rest of the network. There is also a firefox extension to help in downloading things through Dijjer. For more information, it might be best to visit the Dijjer website.

Neither service is very useful generally, but If you have a use, they are both worth a look. Hopefully I will have some more time to post here soon, but for now, Go enjoy the nice spring weather (here in the North Eastern US anyway), and thanks for all the feedback.

Thumbnail Generator for RAW files on Windows!

If you are lucky enough to have a digital camera that can produce a RAW file, made by Nikon or Cannon, Microsoft has a power toy that allows the built in Windows XP picture viewer to read RAW files. This will allow you to have your RAW files displayed as thumbnails in their folders or do any of the other normal things you could do with jpegs on Windows. I don't know when this was released, but it is a handy feature, and can be downloaded here. I know that Nikon at least charges for their RAW viewer.

 

If you haven't already heard about power toys, Microsoft releases small, functionality adding apps with most of their operating systems. Usually these "toys" do neat things, but aren't useful to most people (a couple of the XP ones are). TweakUI is the most famous power toy, and allows you to change the user interface of windows, but there are a whole bunch of them at this point. You can take a look for your self, and see what is available here. I particularly like the virtual desktop manager, because I am used to having virtual desktops on UNIX like operating systems, running XFree or Xorg, but go take a look for your self. A few of the downloads require that you are using a Validated, legal install of XP, but not all of them. If you search Microsoft, you should find power toys for all the other versions of windows too.

 

At the request of some of my friends, you can look forward to some comments on considerations in buying a new computer sometime this week, but I don't have time right now. For now, off to Biology.

"Doodle 4 Google"

If you have or are a child between 4 and 18 years old, living in the UK you might want to check this out. Google is having a contest to get your sketch of the Google logo up on on google.co.uk for a day. Too bad this isn't happening in the US too, but I know I have at least a couple UK readers from time to time, so I thought I would mention it (I don't know how many follow the google blog). If you don't have a child or aren't artistic, then you could always forward the info to your local school. The public, (I'm assuming US too) will be able to vote on the top 30 in a little while.

If you want, you can always check out the article on the Google Blog too.

Good Idea Google! I know a bunch of people who would have fun with this.

Preinstalled Junk on Commercial Computers

Quick post, before I loose the link:

Most of the prebuilt computer manufacturers (Dell, HP/Compaq, etc) package their machines with a lot of junk. Games, Demos, things you won't use and are taking up valuable disk space/boot time. Techbargains has linked a post yourspace.com that has a tool to automatically remove the worst of this junk, while leaving the drivers and useful stuff intact. If you have a  new Dell computer, this might be  very useful for you (I spent several hours recently setting up a new Compaq for my grandparents, much of it removing demos and automatically starting junk).

Of course, you could always just reinstall windows from scratch. Apparently, if you ask Dell at least will send you a normal windows cd.

The above mentioned tool uses a scripting tool called AutoIT which I am not familiar with, but looks promising for a variety of applications, so If you are into that sort of thing, you might want to give it a look. (I'm going to play with it if I ever get time, so maybe I'll post more info later)

Blogger Downtime

Blogger seems to be completely down right now, obviously if you are reading this it is fixed but right now its dead.
Sorry for the downtime and you should be able to look forward to a useful post in the very near future.

Enjoy your evening

Video Sharing Services Reviewed

I haven't had much time in the last couple days, and I've been sick, so sorry about not posting more.

Anyway,
If you are looking for something to do with your Sunday, (as pointed out on a large number of other sites) dvguru.com has a good review, with a blurb about most of the most popular video sharing sites.

On the topic of video, there are a number of good video review sites out there, to filter out some of the junk. Among them, I like:

Google Video of the Day
Fosfor Video
The Official Google Video blog

I would use the rss feeds, over visiting the sites, particularly if you have a slowish computer. Many of these sites have lots of embedded, flash based, players that like to crash web browsers. If you use the rss feed, you only have to deal with one player at a time.

If you are just looking for more video clips (although I would think google video and youTube would have plenty) check out these sites:

Archive.org (my comments)
MSN Video (Windows/IE6 only)
Ifilm
PBS: Nova
WindowsMedia
RealVideo

Flash Based (often pretty weird):

AlbinoBlackSheep
Weebl's Toons
RatherGood
A few single clip sites: VikingKittens, BadgerBadger


That should keep you busy.

Run MS Windows on your Intel based Mac.

If you haven't already noticed, it is now possible to run Windows on the newer Macs (with Intel Processors). A couple weeks ago, the community managed to produce a program to allow this, and yesterday, Apple officially released a bootloader. People seem to be having some mixed luck with it. PCWorld seems to be having some success with the new (official) bootloader, named BootCamp, but the owners of HackADay.com don't seem to be as lucky, because of a non Apple keyboard.

For more info on the community version, you can look at Cnet's blurb or look at OnMac.net

Now that this is out, MacMinis are a lot more appealing, (Fairly fast, very small formfactor machines)

Edit: Everything has its disadvantages. I wonder why no one has published an attempt at installing Linux instead of Windows yet? I guess BSD is close enough for most.

Free Virtual Server Programs

If you want to run multiple operating systems on your "server" (computer) at the same time, both Microsoft and VMware have released free copies of their server software. I commented on VMware workstation awhile ago, but I haven't tried the Microsoft one. Still, they probably both work quite well, and you can't beat the price. If you want to try them out, click below:

Microsoft Virtual Server 2005
VMware Server (beta)


Virtualization software is also great if you want to try out other operating systems, like Linux.

JAlbum -> Free HTML Photo Album Gnerator in Java

JAlbum was mentioned in today's Java.com newsletter, and I thought it might be of interest here, particularly after all my other photography posts. JAlbum is a java program (don't worry, it comes with a very nice installer) that generates a very nice HTML (web page) photo album. All you have to do is install JAlbum and point it at a folder of jpegs. Since its written in Java, it works on just about any operating system, currently in use (and some that shouldn't be). It will even automatically post your album, if you have web hosting that offers ftp access. JAlbum is worth a try if you need such a program, if you just want to look at your pictures, you might want to try the slide show function built into XP (look on the left bar of a directory of jpegs).

If you still need Java (I doubt it) you can get it from java.com or java.sun.com (if you want the developer version). I would probably get a 1.5.X version.

Back to my homework so I can finish sometime tonight.

New Gaim Beta

So, I'm a little behind, but I think some may be interested to know that a new beta of the great, multi-protocol,  instant messaging client Gaim has been released. I installed it today, and while I can't find a changelog, I did notice that they fixed some of the problems with the away message system (ie. you won't end up with one message listed twice in the drop down box, among others). If you use the GaduGadu plugin, then you have to stick with the old version, but otherwise I'd upgrade. See the announcement on the Gaim homepage, and download the new version from Sourceforge. If you don't use Gaim yet, and you do use several different IM services, then you should, visit the homepage for more info. If you don't like Gaim, and run windows, then Trillian basic from Cerulean Studios is another, free, option. I don't like the interface as much, but then I'm used to Gnome/GTK+, so maybe I'm biased.

Online (ajax) Vector Drawing Program

I posted about ajaxWrite last week, and  how  the creators of Linspire are  releasing a new ajax based webapp each week . This week's is a vector drawing program called ajaxSketch. For those who have no Idea what I'm talking about, a vector drawing program is a program which allows you to draw using lines and shapes, instead of pixels ( see the post about how bitmaps work). This is advantageous because it allows you to scale the images with very little loss in quality, while still keeping the file sizes under control.  Go try out ajaxSketch (requires >= Firefox 1.5), but if you want something more powerful, and can't afford Microsoft Visio (very useful program), try  OpenOffice,  InkScape, Sodipodi or QCad, although I don't like any of them very much (Openoffice is a great word processor). Most Flash animations/drawings are also vector based.

If you have a very fast computer and lots of RAM, you can try to convert (trace) a bitmap into a vector image using AutoTrace, but I find that it doesn't work too well, and the RAM requirements are huge. There aren't many reasons to want to do this anyway, but I mention it because there are a  few (Computerized Embroidery software uses this process to Embroider pictures).

Enjoy your Sunday afternoon, back to my Homework ;-(

Annual silliness is done!

Now that its almost April 2, the web should be going back to its normal boring self. Meanwhile, Wikipedia has a list of this year's festivities, which might be worth a look, if you are into that sort of thing. Hopefully I will have time for a more useful post tomorrow.

Be sure to fix your clocks, "Spring Forward, Fall Back" (here in the US anyway)

Google Joins the April 1 Fun

Check it out

(Official Announcement)