Monday, July 31, 2006

"Encarta Instant Answers"

I came across this the other day, visiting some of the Microsoft Vista sites, so I don't know if you need a beta version of Messenger or not, but if you use MSN messenger you should be able to add " encarta@botmetro.net" to your buddy list. If you send this bot a message, you will be able to search and get basic encyclopedia information over messenger. If you ask it something with any depth it will try to launch Encarta on your machine though (works well with gaim on linux, not). Might be handy, so give it a try.

Sunday, July 30, 2006

Free WinRAR

As seen on Techbargains, WinRAR is giving away free keys today. The site is pretty swamped, so it might take some luck to get one, but its worth a look, not that you see RARs too often these days.

Get a key here.

Thursday, July 20, 2006

WGA

Windows Genuine Advantage has been in the (tech) news a lot lately, for being less than advantageous. There have been rumors that Microsoft can shutdown your computer and is spying on you with the WGA patches, which probably is mostly not true (though WGA does call home from time to time). That said, it has come to my attention that there are some advantages to running WGA...

Microsoft has a whole bunch of software for free here, if you verify that you have a legal copy of windows (with the WGA patches). Check it out, maybe there is something that you will find useful (they won't let me, apparently Linux isn't genuine ;-) )

While we are on the topic of free Microsoft software, MSN has recently put in a test "sandbox" of prerelease web stuff for you to play with, though there is very little that Google and Yahoo don't already have.

Repeat after me... Control, Alt, Delete!   (enjoy your Microsoft Software)

Sunday, July 16, 2006

World Firefox Day

Well, I don't know how I missed it, but it it looks like yesterday was "World Firefox Day".

Apparently, they are asking people to refer a friend to Firefox (its a great web browser if you didn't already know). If the friend downloads Firefox, then both of you get your names on the "Firefox friends wall". Go here for more information. (more about Firefox here). Of course, if you want the full kit, you could go with regular old Mozilla, or its replacement, SeaMonkey.

Or if you want something else, Opera is another good browser, and Great on Pocket PCs.

And speaking of Pocket PCs, while it still has some bugs (and is a resource hog) Mozilla Minimo is also worth a look if you have a web compatible PocketPC (don't forget ftxpbroswer either)

Or if you want to try something a little more light weight, look at dillo (UNIX only), links and lynx.

I'll bet you didn't know there were that many quality browsers (actually, there are many more, like Konqueror, Epiphany and Galeon)

Happy Browsing, and try something new!

Friday, July 14, 2006

PodCasting Awards

I have been seeing ads for PodCast awards around the net lately, the site seems to be here if you want to check it out. If you aren't already aware, a pod cast is a sort of radio show over the computer, distributed through RSS and the other XML based protocols usually. The intent is that you download the podcast and put it on your (i)pod to listen. NPR (National Public Radio) has some good ones, but other than that I am fairly new to podcasting. I would be interested in hearing what people like (particularly in science/technology topics) so go check out the contest and/or comment below (I listen to NPR's "Science Friday" sometimes, but that's about it).

Tuesday, July 11, 2006

Online Reference

Many people use the Internet (particularly the World Wide Web) to find information on a specific subject. Usually a quick search will get you what you want, but there are some handy reference sites that may help you find it faster. For example, I find dictionary.com very helpful. As I'm sure you can guess, dictionary.com is an online dictionary, but it also has a thesaurus and a relatively new encyclopedia function (which only seems to search wikipedia). Dictionary.com searches a few online dictionaries, and usually gives you a variety of possible definitions. If you don't like Dictionary.com, you could also use Merriam-Webster's site (m-w.com) which includes a dictionary and thesaurus that will pronounce words for you.

As far as encyclopedias go, many people like Wikipedia, although you run the risk of inaccurate data/vandalism because it is written by the community (though with a conventional encyclopedia, you don't know if the editor/writer knows what he/she is talking about either). If you prefer a more closed encyclopedia, you might want to try MSN Encarta, though it does cost some money to get full articles sometimes.


These are some good/popular resources to get you started, but what do you like? feel free to comment ;-)

Monday, July 10, 2006

Flash Based Whiteboard

GE has a nifty whiteboard written in flash that works quite well. Beside simple drawing, you can invite people to share your whiteboard with you through email or IM (looks like AIM only right now) and use a variety of pens/stamps/shapes, etc. [via lifehacker]

Reminds me of some of the functionality of Microsoft NetMeeting (when it actually worked). If you want to experiment with NetMeeting and it's whiteboard function as well, try going to Start -> Run and entering "conf.exe" (w/o the "s) on WinXP (not sure if its just pro or not, give it a try and post in the comments, I don't have a windows install handy right now). You can also fiddle with NetMeeting's eventual replacement, Portrait, (download it here) but I find that it doesn't work much better.

Sunday, July 09, 2006

Flash!

I got back yesterday (very tired), but I have a few links for you.

Occasionally you hear about animation, usually done in flash, that is good enough to catch the attention of enough people to be of interest to the mainstream media. Most recently, JibJab did this with their mocking of US politics. While JibJab has a few great clips, they aren't the only producers of amusing animations. Another (relatively) well known clip is the Viking Kittens song (getting to be a bit old at this point, actually). The people who produced the Viking Kittens clip have also have some more (increasingly odd) animations on rathergood.com. Be sure to check out some of the older  ones. You may also be familiar with the Badger song, produced by someone going by the name of weebl. Weebl's website also had a bunch of good (also odd) clips, that you may enjoy next time you are bored. Of course, No survey of flash animation sites can be complete without mentioning AlbinoBlackSheep which is a blog/website collecting animations from a variety of animators. Be sure to check out their most popular and classics sections (at the bottom of this page).One of the animators that is occasionally seen on AlbinoBlackSheep currently goes by "Lemon Demon" and has some particularly good/popular songs. His site is here.

As with everything on the Internet, there are a bunch of other animators and indexing sites, but the above covers most of the bigger/better ones.

Happy Watching!


( and Google IS a verb!)

Tuesday, July 04, 2006

Happy 4Th of July!

I'm going to be away from computers (surprising, I know) for a few days, so I (obviously) won't be posting. Meantime, enjoy the 4th of July celebrations (in the US anyway) and check out Wired's "Geek Fireworks Guide". The various photo suggestions worked very well for me (see below).

Firework
(Taken with my Nikon D50, 3sec@F16)

Sunday, July 02, 2006

Online (Tech) TV

If you remember TechTV, before it became G4, and wish for some of the old, decent shows, you might be able to find something on the web. Some of the old TechTV personalities have online (IPTV) shows. DigitalLifeTV, for example, is a good tech news show, freely downloadable from dl.tv. Kevin Rose, one of the later hosts of The Screensavers has also been involved with several shows and podcasts lately. Currently he does an occasional show for "systm" and several podcasts on revision3. He also did a short series called thebroken on the "shady" side of computers.

All worth checking out, next time you have time and bandwidth to spare.