The RIAA vs. John Doe, a layperson’s guide to filesharing lawsuits
A much easier to read guide to what is going on with the RIAA and its illegal lawsuits. Maybe you’re someone who has recently received a letter from your ISP claiming the RIAA is interested in you, or maybe you’re just someone who wants to know what is going on around you, either way…this is worth a read. Especially considering March is “Boycott the RIAA Month”.
This is an interesting tool for all you Vista folks, it allows you to launch programs and what not from the search or cmd prompt. For instance, w bob dole, will go to the wikipedia article about Bob Dole, should you want to read about him. You can also launch a program as administrator by sudo cmd, or look up stuff on google by, g stuff. Another function about this I like is the play command, just do something like, play winger, and BAM!
Great start for something that can be quite useful. It is a little rough right now with the occasional bug, and the configuration screen is not exactly the most intuitive thing, but it is an excellent start.
In case you missed it, last Friday we declared the month of March Boycott the RIAA Month. We’ve gotten sick and tired of always seeing the RIAA pulling deplorable moves and decided it was time for us to do something about it. We’re kicking the month off with this, our manifesto. We want to be absolutely clear about what this fight is about and why it’s so important. This is an overview of what the RIAA does, why it’s damaging, and what we need to do to stop it. Consider this our planted flag.
I whole heartedly agree with what they are doing. Tell your friends, tell your family, hell tell a stranger you run into. The RIAA and its members need to be put in their place, and this is an excellent place and time to start.
xFruits is a Web 2.0 service. You do not need any specific learning to deal with it. It is a free online service offering to every user the possibility of:
- Enriching your home
- Enlarging your blog’s functionalities
- Creating, generally, your information system from the RSS feed
XFruits makes possible the Mashup RSS creation in a very simple way thanks to the Composer. You can assemble the bricks together so as to build your own feed-based service.
Interesting idea, and really could be quite useful…it just takes a little bit of vision to figure out what could be possible with this. Some quick examples off the top of my head:
The title speaks for itself… I definitely Twitter after the recommendation of a friend. It’s an interesting example of micropublishing. I am not using this site for its intended purpose which is to stalk keeping track of your friends so you can find out where they are and such …but it’s useful for a kind of “flight of ideasâ€. One interesting aspect is that you can update your status via the website (which is boring), over IM, or by cell phone (what? no email option?). Wonderful…another site, another login, and another toy to waste my time play with.
Have you ever found an image on Flickr and looked for a higher resolution copy of the image to use as a wallpaper only to find that the author has decided not to offer anything larger than the small teaser copy of the image?
Well you’re in luck (most of the time).
It turns out that with a little bit of exploring you can easily get a full resolution copy of any image that is displayed on Flickr. Two notes: 1. I do not condone stealing someone else’s work. I only use this hack to acquire a high resolution copy of an image for my personal use as a wallpaper. 2. This hack only works if the person uploaded the original high resolution copy of the image (which is pretty often).
Here is how to hack Flickr to get full resolution images:
Let’s use this image as an example… see how he only offers this small image?
Step 1: Right Click on the page, View Source (IE is a little different)
Step 2: Control + F … Search for â€JavaScript-enabled†(without the quotes)
Step 3: When you find that inside the source, look for a link that looks like this: “http://farm1.static.flickr.com/97/253376175_e4e532e1dc_t.jpgâ€
Step 4: Copy that link and paste it into your browser
Step 5: You now have a t (t = thumbnail)of the image …replace t with o (o = original)
Step 6: Enjoy your full sized image.
[Update] Apparently this post has rubbed a few people the wrong way. I guess we’ll see what happens, but keep in mind…by no means did I discover this hack. I read about something similar nearly 6 months ago and just took it in a different direction. Don’t shoot the messenger, but feel free to keep sending me angsty emails, I am ok with those.
APML – Attention Profiling Mark-up Language
- Ask Amazon to export an APML file of your Attention Profile (the same one they use to recommend books to you) so you can move to another bookstore (just like OPML lets you easily switch feed readers).
- Upload your APML file to Digg to get a customized view of Digg stories that match your interests.
Intriguing idea, and I definitely see how this could be useful. If you’ve ever used an OPML file to get started using a new RSS Reader then you appreciate how much time it saves. This would be a similar idea, but for information that is of interest to you.
This is photographer contributed 2 of the wallpapers that come with every single installation of Windows Vista. He shot several other images that are equally as stunning, but they didn’t make the cut. Lets just hope he can release them soon in high resolution for all of us to enjoy…
Some of these wallpapers are available at his personal site. (the ZIP files at the bottom).
Secrets of Self Taught Web Developers
Imagine a place where every object on a web page bows its head and calls you master. Every table, every header file, every color; anything your creative mind can conjure can and will happen because of your wonderful abilities to program a website. Like a golden android from a distant galaxy, you’ll be fluent in various forms of online communication, able to decipher web pages to their bitter core.
Yeah ok, he is a little over the top, but it’s a good collection of web resources for current or aspiring web designers.
Great video, great rhymes, great beat …overall some really hot stuff.
Wandering the Interwebs 