I've already talked about all kinds of geekware before, but this one sounds more interesting.
How about using QR-coded clothing to disguise what you want to say to the world and let only a few people to actually know what you're "saying"?
The Space Invaders-themed scarf shown in the picture on the left is a great example of QR-code based geekware.
Want to know what's this lovely girl's message? Well, install a QR-code reader on your cellphone and you'll be able to read it :-)
Had to much to eat or drink on Christmas? Well, web 2.0 can be a helpful diet programmer and provide you with the necessary tools to get back on shape and get ready to the next summer season (I know that's a few months away, but it's never to early to start thinking about it):
Are you a Photoshop geek-wannabe? This will give you the boost you need.
Check out these 60 advanced Photoshop tutorials that range from text effects to photo manipulation and video techniques.
UPDATE: a few more can be found here.
Can anyone tell? Look closer...
Still don't see it? What's holding the red ribbon to the condom? Clever, humm??
This is the kind of thing that triggers enough rage to start a world war:
One of the main problems of Firefox is the memory consumption while loading and maintaining websites in view. A few minutes of using Firefox can boost up the memory to values over 100,000 KB.
But as a new memory test review that compares Firefox 2 with the new beta version Firefox 3 shows, the new version of the well-known internet browser will greatly improve this feature.
Can't wait for the stable version. This will be a really interesting upgrade :-)
Here's an original idea that uses photos of people with cards to display the current month's calendar: the human calendar.
And the most amazing of all is that it changes everyday to adapt to the new day, so the faces of all the people adjust their look to simulate as if they're watching to the correct date.
Remember when I gave some tips on how to react if you get caught sleeping at your desk? Well, I have some new ones:
Make it look like you have to tie your shoes:
Or pretend you need absolute concentration:
There are more here.
For all of you that are now starting on the world of Web Design, have a look at what you're getting into:
Source: humour.beecy.net
In this past summer I suggested that the plastic popper gadget was the most ridiculous/genius gadget of all times.
However, I've found this new gadget that can seriously face off the competition: the Foot Mouse.
If you think that the number of buttons on your mouse are not enough and are limiting your 
potential to do great things on your computer, then the Foot Mouse is for you.
In the words of the creators, the benefits are:
- Speed up computer workflow in designing, editing, etc
- Hands-free computing and online surfing
- Enable people to multitask simultaneously
- Avoid repetitive hand/eye movement between hand-controlled input devices
- Much easier and faster shortcut entry (Multi-key finger control is replaced by 1-button foot control. Plus, no more eye/hand movement!)
- Reduce hand/wrist stress and help prevent/heal carpal tunnel syndrome or other injuries
- Keep clean/dirty hands off keyboard/hand mouse
- Give video gamers more "hands" to fight
- Offload hand work, outsmart hand mouse, outpace keyboard in shortcut entry
- A foot mouse with brain can boost your gain and kill your pain! It saves time and hands!
Digital technology has been the catalyst to the change of our way of living. Who thought that 15 years ago, when we would send paper letters to our friends to tell them about our summer vacation, that nowadays doing that task would be as simple as attaching some pictures to an e-mail and send it and our friends receive the message in less than 5 minutes?
Digital technology can also change the way we produce art. And here's the perfect example: a new paint brush that uses a built-in camera and a special canvas to allow painters to create modern-day paintings by using the textures, colors and all kinds of surrounding elements.
This gadget basically “lifts up and captures photons”, allowing artists to draw with “special ink” picked up from their immediate environment.
Check out the video below to see the paintbrush in action:
Source: ComNetSlash
It's not as naughty as it seems! This new research is aimed at people with accessibility limitations, which allows them to control the computer by simply blowing towards its screen.
The system uses the microphone as the input device and calibrates it to distinguish sounds associated to the areas at which the user is pointing the blow at. Confused? Nothing better than a demo video to let you know what it looks like:
For those more interested in the scientifical/technical details or if you're looking for an implementation of your own, here's the link for the research paper.
Source: Makezine via Walyou
5 Best Things to Say When Caught Sleeping at Your Desk:
5. "They told me at the Blood Bank this might happen."
4. "This is just a 15 minute power nap they raved about in the time management course you sent me to."
3. "Whew! Guess I left the top off the Whiteout. You probably got here just in time."
2. "Did you ever notice sound coming out of these keyboards when you put your ear down real close?"
And the NUMBER ONE best thing to say if you get caught sleeping at your desk...
1. Raise your head slowly and say, "...in Jesus' name, Amen."
Source: Atlanta Illustrated
Have you ever noticed what you get if you put http://www.ie7.com on your web browser? No, it's not Internet Explorer 7 download page!!
Having Windows running on machines that are supposed to be running flawlessly for a long, long time, might not be a good idea (as the BSOD in Frankfurt Airport shows).
Just this week, while I was browsing around for Christmas presents for the family in some shopping mall here in Portugal, I found this odd screen for an ATM machine:
Here's a magnification of the previous picture:
If you still can't read it, this is what it says:
"Windows NT could not start because the following file is missing or corrupt:
WINNT\SYSTEM32\CONFIG\SYSTEMHardware Profile\Last Know Good menu" (I don't know if this last word is actually "menu")
"You can attempt to repair this file by starting Windows NT setup using the original Setup floppy disk or CD-ROM. Select 'r' at the firt screen to start repair."
I don't even have to describe File Destructor. The words of the creators are self-explanatory:
"Want to play games on your Playstation but got a deadline for an exam or report that didn’t match your gaming ambitions? Then you have come to the right place. Send trashed files and blame your faulty computer, instead of confessing that you are a lazy bum who just wants to play videogames."
There are geeks all over the world and they all have weird ideas. But sometimes, some of those ideas can actually be very funny or useful.
Check out this experience which uses the sound of sparks coming from tesla coils to play the Super Mario Bros. theme song:
And what about this guy, which decided to create a "Minority Report"-like interface by using the infrared capabilities of the Nintendo Wii controller?
Not to brag myself, but I still think that my GELToC solution is far more simple and elegant :-)
By using two led torches and a webcam, I was able to create an application that processes the light sources (from a dark background) and maps them into mouse control movements, which in turn are converted into Google Earth control movements, giving the illusion that you are controlling the World map with just a pair of tiny lights.
Check out a demo video:
GELToC is an open source application and you can obtain more information on it here.
Remember when I talked about "Context-aware Image Resizing"? Well, now there's a free open source solution for GIMP.
Liquid Rescale plugin is a free, open source implementation of a context-aware image resizing algorithm. It aims at resizing pictures non uniformly while preserving their features, i.e. avoiding distortion of the important parts.
Check out a demo of this software in this screencast:
The iconBase.com community offers a lot of free high-quality and creativity icons. Check it out.
The thing that I love about the Internet is that you can find gadgets for every taste (check this, this, this, this, this and this). And you don't even have to try very hard. Just search a little bit and you'll find a lot of interesting items, such as:
The flameless USB Zippo lighter (source)
The Hello Kitty Toilet Paper Dispenser (source)
The Static Electricity Eliminator (source - in PT, source - in EN)
The OhMiBod - an item for the ladies. It vibrates at the sound of your iPod music. What you do afterwards, it's your business :-)
If you need to create an MP3 file with an electronic voice saying a specific sentence, then vozMe is for you.
All you have to do is write a sentence on the website's form and then click "Create MP3".
You can also add this "Hear this post" kind of feature to your blog (as this blog will have from now on), by either using the WordPress plugin or the instructions to add this widget to Blogger. You can also add this widget to your iGoogle home page.
That's right, this a real iPhone and I tested it in a Media Markt store in Portugal. Sorry for the out-of-focus picture...my hands were still shaking from the excitement.
I have to say that, even though I've seen a lot of iPhone reviews, images and videos, I still ran into a few surprises:
We've all seen our share of strange gadgets, which don't seem to have any special purpose other than to make you look like a silly person (as Monty Python would say). But every now and then you get to see some interesting gadgets concepts, such as the Projector/Cellphone and the mini MP3/CD Player.
The future of technology is all about these concepts and it is always entertaining to see where some of these ideas are heading. Check out the following images:
Here's a phone that takes the concept of "hanging up" too seriously:
Continuing the wave of addictive games, who doesn't remember Lemmings, the stupidest creatures on the entire Universe that needed help to get from one door to another?
Well, now you can play it again, no matter which OS you're using, because the game is available on-line here.
DISCLAIMER: the author of this post cannot be held responsible for the consequences that may be derived from the knowledge that you acquire by reading this, such as (but not limited to), the total and absolute addiction to iSketch, which ultimately may lead to the total loss of your social life. You've been warned. Continue at your own risk.
If you don't know what iSketch is, then it is best that you remain ignorant about it. Nevertheless, if you choose to continue, do so at your own risk (see DISCLAIMER).
iSketch is like an on-line Pictionary with the difference that you can play with people from around the world. It is highly addictive, very stressing but most of all, super-fun.
But as any addiction, the absence of the natural addictive element may have brutal consequences. To this day, people still think that the role of Hitler in WWII was due to some hatred towards Jewish people.
I was able to travel back in time and obtain the necessary proof to show you what the real reason behind Hitler's rage was:
Just when you think you've seen all the geekery out there, a guy comes along with a crazy idea of turning a regular XBox 360 into a gaming console laptop:
Yeah, I know what you're thinking: "bahh! This is only a picture of a plastic-made pseudo-laptop photoshoped to make it look like an actual XBox 360 game is being played!"
Well, folks, you couldn't be farther from the truth. This is as real as taxes. This guy actually made this spectacular transformation of an XBox 360 into a laptop that you can carry around and play whenever you feel like it. And the best of all: he made a complete guide off of his 3-month experience:
I was browsing along my photo library searching for some work-related photos and I ended up finding this masterpiece:
Google Trends is a tool from Google that allows you to check the history of a specific term's search on Google in recent years. Such a tool allows us to perceive the tendencies of Google users throughout the years and in specific times of each year.
Interesting conclusions can be reached. For instance, if you search for the terms "stop smoking", this is what you'll get:
You can see that this search has more hits in the beginning of each year. Funny how people always try to quit smoking as a new year resolution :-)
A similar behavior can be seen through the term "diet":
People don't change: every new year's resolution are the same, either quit smoking or go on a diet :-)
What about if we search for other terms or people? For example, if you search for the "crazy socialite" Paris Hilton, this is what you get:
The highest point on this information search was in the beginning of 2005. That was due to the rumor that a certain "intimate" video of Paris Hilton and her boyfriend at the time was traveling around the Internet.
The other highest point was in the middle of 2007, when she went to jail because of being caught driving under the influence of alcohol.
If you search for the term "pope", this is what you'll get:
Funny how this term is relatively ignored by most Google users throughout the years and then suddenly it reaches a high point when the Pope John Paul II died (C) and then another high point when Benedict XVI was named the new Pope (D). After that, the term "pope" vanishes again from Google searches, only to rise once again when the new Pope decides to offend the Muslims (E).
But there are also things in Google Trends that don't really make sense. For instance, searching for "yogurt" will give you this result:
Can anyone explain why the term "yogurt" becomes uninteresting while close to the end of each year, only to rise again in the beginning of the following year????
And to end this already long post, why not search for something like "love":
No, it's not a coincidence that this term is most searched for by valentine's day :-)
...go to Songza. There's millions of musics available, but for listening only.
You can also use it to post musics on your site such as this "hit" from Supermen Lovers:
We all have the so called "blindspot", an area in our field of vision that it's not processed by our brain. So, any element that is positioned in that specific area will appear invisible to our brain.
Don't believe me? Take the test then.
Cover your left eye with your hand and look at the star. Then slowly approach the screen while keeping your eye focused on the star. Don't look at the ball. As you approach the screen, you'll notice that there's a specific point where the ball will no longer be visible to you.
The all test and explanation is available here.
... and he's famous. Can you figure out who?
I'll give you a clue: it's a man...singer...famous...already dead. Still can't guess who he is? Well, try backing up from the computer a bit. Ahhh, now you see it, right? :-)
Source: Bits & Pieces
One of the things that annoy me on Safari is the impossibility to change Safari's behavior for opening links in new windows.
It seems that there is a clear link between P2P music sharing and the increase of music CD sales. Well, at least in Canada. A study (available here) shows that the use of P2P applications to share music, helps users get access to new music, which ultimately leads to an increase of CD sales.
The study concluded that about half of all P2P downloads were done because users wanted to hear an album before purchasing, or because they did not want all of the songs of an album.
Even though I may relate to that (because the 30 seconds available for each song on iTunes are just not enough), I hardly believe that this is the behavior of the common P2P downloader. It may be the case for the Canadian P2P file-sharing community, but then again maybe that's why Canada is such a great place :-)
Source: Michael Geist
Quick question: what if GMail had been designed by Microsoft? It probably would look something like this:
Source and Image: Blogoscoped
Today I have two geek challenges for you:
Apparently, a company in Sweden is offering file-sharing insurance. But what's "file-sharing insurance", anyway? It's simple, you pay around $19(13€)/year and the insurance company will pay your fine in case you get sued by a copyright-holder company or representative such as the RIAA in the USA.
This might actually be a good business for both sides, since the probability of being sued by RIAA is 1 in 1840. So, the insurance company may end up with a lot of money but you pay only a small yearly amount and you have a "jail free" card, just in case...
Source: boingboing
The gaming industry is constantly evolving and new concepts are emerging that may revolutionize the way we interact and play games. Playstation's motion camera EyeToy and the motion-awareness Nintendo Wii's gamepads are just two of the most recent examples.
Augmented reality, a concept that exists for a few years now, may be the key to deliver new gaming experiences as the mix between the reality and computer-generated data promises to deliver new ways to interact with games.
A New Zealand digital artist, Julian Oliver, is working on a cool game that blends the electronic universe with the real world. By using a cube with special symbols and a webcam to film it, he presents an interesting game where the user must help a digital player move around in a 3D maze. Check out the video to get a full understanding of the technology:
Source: Technabob
From now on, Prince will be known as The-Artist-who-formerly-liked-the-Internet-but-decided-to-sue-the-fans-for-copyright-issues-
-and-that-now-offers-them-a-song-as-a-peace-offer.
Catchy, isn't it?
Now that we have an official Portuguese Apple Store, hopefully we'll have the same opportunities and support as in other countries.
But this Apple Store doesn't seem to be that much Portuguese. It looks more like a bad translation from the Spanish store. Here are a few snapshots of the website where you can see that a few Spanish words can still be seen and that Spanish sentence formation are still present even though the text is already in Portuguese:
Update: And here are a few more:
Interesting how a store that only has one day, already shows advices about what other users have bought...in Spanish:
And this one is particularly interesting since it joins Spanish and English, in a "Portuguese" store:
Oh good, let me be the first to comment a product...maybe I'll do it in Spanish:
The launch of the most complex scientific instrument of all times, which was due this month, is now scheduled to May 2008. The Large Hadron Collider, a 27-km ring tunnel built deep underground between the Swiss and French borders, promises to recreate the conditions right after the Big Bang. By revisiting the beginning of time, scientists hope to unravel some of the deepest secrets of our Universe.
Since on March this year, a pressure test of one of the "inner triplet magnets" (whatever that is) failed, the team decided to extend the experiment to make sure everything goes as planned. And they better make sure that everything will work as planned, because otherwise, we might be looking at a new Big Bang and I'm pretty sure that wouldn't do wonders to France and Switzerland's landscape. Or the Planet's, for that matters.
Nevertheless, the successful ending of this experiment might reveal the answer to the ultimate question: how was the Universe created? While some authors have interesting theories about the beginning of the Universe, we can only wait to see if the most complex experiment of our world will shed some light on the subject.
If you're interested on knowing a bit more about this experiment, check out these videos:
Large Hadron Collider - part 1, part 2 and part 3
I recently needed to import my Address Book to Thunderbird, but using CSV format was a real pain in the "bottom" and a lot of errors were showing in the final result.
If your previous Mail program uses a vCard format it's better to use this one as it is widely accepted. And yes, I know that Thunderbird doesn't support it. That's where the tip comes in :-)
Use this on-line conversion tool to convert your vCard-formatted address book into the LDIF format which is accepted by Thunderbird. Guaranteed success :-)
Tip from Thunderbird Help Documentation
Previously on the "Tech in Me":
I'm officially now a Mac Switcher. My MacBook Pro has finally arrived and I will now enter the realm of Apple. It's my first experience at it and I bet I'll feel strange at the beginning after so many years of being a Windows user but hopefully I won't regret this decision.
It might take some time now to come back to regular posts on this blog. It will depend on my level of adaptation to the new Operating System :-)
If you're curious about my experience, check out my new blog, dedicated to all Mac Newbies out there.
Wish me luck...
Hello! Just wanted to update you that this blog's feed is now hosted on FeedBurner. Please update your RSS reader with the new RSS feed address.
Thanks for reading :-)
Apparently, the BSOD (Blue Screen Of Death) is not a Microsoft's exclusive. Recent reports of users that tried to upgrade to the new version of Mac OS X, Leopard, point out to a very annoying Blue Screen freezing problem on the installation process.
In fact, Apple has acknowledged that there are some problems with the installation of their new operating system. But they point out that the problem may be related to APE (Application Enhancer). So, if you're trying to upgrade to Leopard and you are faced with the BSOD, follow Apple's instructions for booting into single-user mode to remove the offending software.
The fact that this seems to occur only to users that are trying to "update" instead of making a clean install, rises the everlasting doubt: should we upgrade or clean install our operating systems?
There seems to be a general opinion (mine included) that "clean installs" are always safer, mainly because "upgrading" is the installation method which will most likely leave files in the system that are incompatible with the new OS. Hence, unless users have the necessary tech knowledge to know which files will cause incompatibilities with the new OS, it's always better to perform a "clean install".
But still, "upgrading" has a very compelling argument: you get to keep your personal files - no need to retrieve them from boring, lenghtly and difficult backups. Anyway, Leopard will probably be the last "clean install", you'll ever make as the new "Time machine" feature in Leopard seems to be a work of art when it comes to backing up your data. It is simple and easy to use and it works on the background as if it wasn't even there. The simplicity of it all is even more evident when you plug in an external hard drive. And in the end with all your data easily backed up and manageable on a external hard drive, upgrading to a new version of the OS is a piece of cake.
Installation problems aside, it is also a general opinion that Leopard is a great advancement comparing to its previous version, Tiger, but not as mind-blowing as it should. And that leads to the obvious question: is it better to make smaller but constant improvements on the OS (as Apple has done in the last five years with constant updates of Mac OS X) or to make giant leaps that can totally change the view that people have of their OS (as Microsoft did from 98 to XP and now to Vista)?
What's your opinion?
If only we could use computer shortcuts in real life...CTRL+Z would come in handy sometimes.
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