Where I am off to (Again)

Well the next few days are going to be crazy busy so I thought I’d take advantage of the small amount of down time I have right now. I am back from the Florida Keys (obviously). Pictures can be found here. They are not exactly National Geographic quality, but hey…I don’t have time to brighten them up and tweak them right now. I’ll be taking plenty of pictures in Norway (my next destination). I leave Wednesday night for Norway to see my amazing girl. I can’t wait. I get into Oslo arond 9:30 AM Thursday. I’ll be gone until February 11th so that is the reason for the lack of posts. This will in fact by my first trip to Europe so I am just a tiny bit nervous. Plenty of pictures and stories to follow.

[tag]Chaos[/tag]
[tag]Thoughts[/tag]
[tag]Life[/tag]
[tag]Personal[/tag]

Retrievr – Search by Sketch

Retrievr – Search by Sketch

Retrievr is an experimental service which lets you search and explore in a selection of Flickr images by drawing a rough sketch. Currently the index contains many of Flickr’s most interesting images. If you’d like to have your images (or the images for a specific tag) added, please let me know. A submission interface is planned!

It really does work surprisingly well. Try it, and waste countless time like I have.  tongue laugh

[tag]Chaos[/tag]
[tag]Tech News[/tag]
[tag]Internet Related[/tag]
[tag]WebDEV[/tag]

Top 10 Websites You Should Know About

Top 10 Websites You Should Know About

Recently a ton of great sites have popped up on the internet. Many of them you may not have heard of, that is the main point of this post. I’ve decided not to list popular well known sites such as flickr and others (although it could be disputed what is well known and what isn’t).

#1 http://www.meebo.com – A small upstart company that has brought trillian (http://www.trillian.cc) like features to the web. You can access Yahoo! Messanger, Jabber, Gtalk, AIM, ICQ and MSN directly through the web in a desktop like enviroment that supports multiple connections to different IM networks much like trillian.

#2 http://www.rememberthemilk.com – Another cool web 2.0 creation. If you are like me you tend to forget to do things. Also if you are like me you are connected to the world in some fashion no matter where you go (my cellphone has yet to leave my side in years). Remeberthemilk is excellent because it supports reminders via cellphones, email and instant messaging.

#3 http://www.blinklist.com (Site might be down) – Blinklist is another bookmark management site competing for attention ever since the success of del.icio.us. However Blinklist has a snazzy look and a bunch of awesome features that make del.icio.us dull in comparison. Make sure to check this site out to see all the different features it sports.

#4 http://www.digg.com – Some might call digg.com the slashdot.org killer. It might well be. Digg.com is an excellent technology news source that has put editorial control back in the hands of users. Digg is worth a look, or a blink (see #3).

#5 http://www.clusty.com – Clusty.com is a nifty little search engine that will most likely always live in Google’s shadow but is worth a look all the same. Clusty like its name implies clusters your search results into different categories which makes finding the desired information you are searching for easier. There are a bunch of other small features that make this search engine worth checking out.

#6 http://www.writely.com – Word processing on the web? It was bound to happen eventually. Writely is the perfect for firing up that word document in the library or … well I’m not sure how often you run into a computer without word processing. Regardless of its usability it still is pretty cool.

#7 http://www.last.fm – Last.fm is kind of hard to describe. It is part social music tagger, part personal radio and well I guess you have to check it out to figure out the rest. Basically if you find yourself listening to lots of music while you are at your computer Last.fm might well become your best friend… well a new site you check out lots at least.

#8 http://www.pixel2life.com – Is the haven for all things tutorial. Its huge database offers a range tutorials on anything from ColdFusion to Microsoft Outlook. The tutorials are all computer related (you won’t find out how to install the plumbing here).

#9 http://www.blummy.com – Blummy.com offers a unique approach to keeping and sharing bookmarks (something that seems to be all the rage recently). Check it out if you have more bookmarks then you know what to do with.

#10 http://pandora.com – Pandora is an excellent music discovery site.

[tag]Tech News[/tag]
[tag]Internet Related[/tag]
[tag]WebDEV[/tag]
[tag]Thoughts[/tag]
[tag]Life[/tag]

SiteAdvisor blog: The Web’s Download Disasters

SiteAdvisor blog: The Web’s Download Disasters

When we first started crawling the Web looking for bad downloads last year, we weren’t sure what we’d find. Today, a million Web sites and 140,000 download tests later, I can say with confidence that there are some great programs to be downloaded out there. I can say with equal confidence that there’s also plenty of train wrecks waiting to happen to your PC.

These are the website you need to stay clear of like the plague. This is just sad and frightening how terrible some of these products are.  angry 

[tag]Chaos[/tag]
[tag]Tech News[/tag]
[tag]Internet Related[/tag]
[tag]Security[/tag]
[tag]Software[/tag]

Try Internet Explorer 7 (IE7) without updating

Try Internet Explorer 7 without updating
Here’s how to try Internet Explorer 7 (IE7) without having to install it and update from IE6.

1. Extract all the files from IE7-WindowsXP-x86-enu.exe in one folder using WinRAR.
2. Delete: folder, update and files, ie4uinit.exe spuninst.exe spupdsvc.exe install.ins
3. Create a new empty text document and rename it to iexplore.exe.local
4. Done! Run iexplore.exe

I won’t tell you where to get IE7 Preview Beta 2 Build 5299 *cough*, but if you happen to find it, this is all you need to do to try it out. It’s still IE, and in that sense it’s definitely still lacking in rendering and CSS support, but it is a vast improvement over IE6. Try at your own risk. Beta 2 once it is officially released will be a public preview so you can just wait if you’d like to be all official and such. tongue rolleye

[tag]Chaos[/tag]
[tag]Tech News[/tag]
[tag]Internet Related[/tag]
[tag]Security[/tag]
[tag]Software[/tag]
[tag]WebDEV[/tag]
[tag]Thoughts[/tag]
[tag]Life[/tag]
[tag]Windows Modding[/tag]
[tag]File System Modding[/tag]

FYI: I Will be Gone For a While

I know I’ve been a little spacy (at best) on updates lately. I’ve been keeping myself busy with other things, for that I apologize. I will be headed off to Florida Monday morning for all of next week. We’re flying in Fort Lauderdale and then driving down to the Keys. Specifcally we’ll be doing a lot of scuba diving in Islamorada. There is also this rather interesting bridge named the 7 Mile Bridge…just look at the picture, and wow. Image that sucker during a hurricane. Yeesh. Upon my return from Florida I will briefly be home for 3 days. I’ll write more about my next trip during those 3 days.

image

Caption: Satelite Map of the Florida Keys

image

Caption: Islamorada

image

Caption: 7 Mile Bridge

[tag]Chaos[/tag]
[tag]Tech News[/tag]
[tag]Thoughts[/tag]
[tag]Life[/tag]
[tag]Personal[/tag]

JCXP – Microsoft To Ship All OS Bits With Every Version Of Vista

Microsoft To Ship All OS Bits With Every Version Of Vista

That’s right, Microsoft plans to market several versions of Vista but will distribute all of the OS bits with every product shipped so users can easily unlock and step up to more full-featured versions using electronic keys.
Having a master Windows Vista operating system means customers that buy PCs preloaded with one Vista SKU, Home Basic, for example, will be able to punch their credit card into a Microsoft Web site to unlock Vista Home Premium and more speedily deploy media center features without an on-site visit or requiring a wipe and reload of the system.
“No matter which edition you buy you get all the bits and a key to unlock it. Everyone will have all the bits,” said one source familiar with Microsoft’s plans. “Right now we maintain master images for each version of Windows XP and it’s a lot of work. Now there’s just one master image.”

Wow…clearly they fail to see the HUGE risk of massive amounts of piracy here. Everyone and there mom is going to buy the cheapest Home Basic edition and then just crack it (using some type of key generator that will obviously be created) to make it become the Ultimate Edition which will likely cost 2 or 3 times as much. Hmm…maybe this isn’t such a bright idea guys? big surprise

[tag]Chaos[/tag]
[tag]Tech News[/tag]
[tag]Internet Related[/tag]
[tag]Security[/tag]
[tag]Software[/tag]
[tag]Thoughts[/tag]
[tag]Life[/tag]
[tag]Windows Modding[/tag]
[tag]File System Modding[/tag]