How the use of technology can be so natural for us these days

My brother has recently had an experience that perfectly describes how technology can be so helpful and natural to use for most of us. It's quite amazing. Read it here.

Turn your pictures into a miniature model

By now you've probably seen around the Web some of those pictures that look like miniature models but are in fact pictures of real places that were just modified to look like it. Here are a couple of examples of photos that I tilt-shifted to make it look like a miniature street filled with small cars:



Looks nice, right? And you don't even have to be a Photoshop genius to pull something like this. All you have to do is use TiltShiftMaker.com. This website is quite simple and allows you to create this kind of photos quite easily and without having to have that much of photography knowledge.

Enjoy!

How Twitter was born

If you're curious about the history of Twitter,you may wanna check this post by one of its creators. BTW, this post has exactly 140 chars :)

Twitter Charts

Ever wondered when do you Twitter the most? Twitter Charts allows you to have a nice graphically view of your most frequent tweets distributed by hours and days of the week. For example, have a look at my Twitter Chart:

You can easily see that I'm most inclined to Twitter during the weekdays in the morning and specially between 10 and 11 AM. By the way, those little dots between 1 and 6 AM are sponsored by my baby son's crying :-)

The Following/Followers dilemma on Twitter

I usually follow everyone that follows me on Twitter (except when it's clearly spam users), but there are a lot of people that use that nasty little trick to gain some followers: follow a lot of people and once those people follow them back, they stop following the people. This way, they can boost their ego (and maybe their dicks, I'm not sure) by showing off a huge difference between Following/Followers.

I don't really care about the number of followers that I have, but I do have to watch out for the amount of people that I follow, because an overcrowded timeline is useless since I don't have the time to read everything. And a good way to purge the Following list is to start by removing those "non-followers".

Since the Twitter web site doesn't allow having a cross-referenced view of the list of Following/Followers that would allow you to easily discover these "non-followers", I decided to make use of one of the available Java APIs for Twitter, Twitter4J, and create a small program that would give me that information.

So, if you're interested, download the JAR file here. You'll also need the Twitter4J JAR file: you can either download from the official website or you can download it from here.

To run the program, just type on a prompt terminal:

java -cp crossfollow.jar:twitter4j-1.1.4.jar dev.follow.twitter.CrossFollow username password

Just substitute username password with your data and you're ready to go. Also, you can run the program without providing the username and password, in which case, the program will prompt you for it.

Then, you'll get the list of the users that you follow that are not following you and for each user, the corresponding Twitter URL will be provided for you to then use as you pleased. The program does not change anything on your following or followers list. It simply provides the list as described above. It's up to you to perform the necessary changes directly on the Twitter website.

If this program gets successful, I might consider creating a real app for this, with a graphical user interface and all :-)

Any problems/questions/suggestions, please comment...

DISCLAIMER:
This software is distributed here freely and as open-source. It is done so as a means to ensure dissemination of technical work on a non-commercial basis. All rights therein are maintained by the author. It is understood that all persons downloading this software know that the software is provided AS IS and in no way the author is responsible for anything that may happen to your hardware and/or software on your computer or network. This software may not be re-distributed without the explicit permission of the author.

Posterous: post anything to the web

Posterous is a new simple web service for when you need to post anything to the web to make it publicly available to anyone: photos, videos, MP3 and all kinds of files.

The good part: no signup is needed. Just send an e-mail to post@posterous.com (remember to attach any files you want to post) and you'll (almost) immediately receive a reply with the address of the website where your files are posted.

Longcat is looooong

One of the funniest memes I've seen on the Internet to this day, is LongCat. It all started when the owner of a strangely enormous cat has decided to post a photo on the Internet with his cat hanging in such a way that it'd seems as if it was in fact very long. See with your own eyes:

Like any other meme, this one (Longcat is long) spreaded through the net quicker than a virus. And the most amazing part is that, with it, we were able to witness some of the most creative anonymous contributions of the whole world.

For me, this image is one of the most spectacular things to represent the true spirit of the Internet Memes. Have a look.

There are more here.

Retro-blogging: best posts of January 2008

Previously, on "The Tech In Me":

• The electronic cigarette
• Internet Explorer users: do not click here
• Why is everyone so bad to the MacBook Air?
• How is technology changing us?
• How to choose a game console?
• From here to there on Google Maps
• After iSketch, Hitler gets into another fiasco with HD-DVD
• The Man From Earth (with a special comment from the producer of the movie)
• Multi-touch trackpad
• Scratched iPod? Bananas to the rescue
• MacWorld 2008: the rumours (funny to see this one now that the rumours are up for MacWorld 2009)
• Another Minority Report-like interface
• A projector for your mobile needs
• Portal: console commands list (one of this blog's most visited posts)
  
• 2007 Software guide
• Truth hurts
• Cloverfield's Monster (my prediction but I was wrong)
• Useless invention of the day
• Internet Explorer's source code
  

How to cheat on exams: YouTube to the rescue

Don't mind the ad before the real video:



Source: CNet

Make a chocolate cake in less than 5 minutes

If you're looking to turn this...

...into this...

...in less than 5 minutes, maybe you should look into this great tutorial. It teaches you how to make a one-person chocolate cake as quick as...well, chocolate cake that is ready in less than 5 minutes :-)

Free online flash games

I used to maintain a small list of the cool (and free) online games that I would encounter while stumbling upon the Internet, but since I found this list, I think mine's becoming a bit obsolete :-)

Book Meme

"...and limitations of the results, and Section 3.6 contains discussion and historical..."
in "Automated Planning, Theory and Practice" - Ghallab, M.; Nay, D.; Traverso, P.

• Grab the nearest book.
• Open it to page 56.
• Find the fifth sentence.
• Post the text of the sentence in your journal along with these instructions.
• Don’t dig for your favorite book, the cool book, or the intellectual one: pick the CLOSEST.

here

pChart: create great charts on your website using PHP

If you need to include dynamic charts on your website, then pChart is for you.


pChart is a PHP class oriented framework designed to create aliased charts. Data can be retrieved from SQL queries, CSV files, or manually provided. The framework also includes cache features to avoid having to generate the same chart over and over again. You can also try a demo to see how the all thing works.

Where are you registered?

I have registered in so many websites that I can hardly remember all of them. And sometimes, I try to register at a website with my usual username only to discover that the username is already registered (probably by me, but so long ago that I forgot).


To keep track of where you've registered with a single username, use this website. It's quick and easy and includes a huge list of the most popular websites.

Internet fails

There are some people that really haven't understand some basic aspects of the Internet:

• If you're ditching work and you tell your bosses you're doing so for medical reasons, don't post an update on your profile saying that you're doing it because you're still trashed from last night. At least this guy was cool enough to admit the epic fail! :-)
  

• If you decide to make a living of showing off your body on an webcam, the least you can do is be awake while you're doing it.
  

How to convert a PDF file to a Word document

When you need to use some text from a PDF file in a Word document, you can always select it in the PDF and copy it to Word. However, most of the times the pasted text looses all the formatting and the work you have re-formatting it into place can take more time than if you just write the text yourself from scratch.

Following a tip from my PlanetGeek's friend Silviohf (in Portuguese), you can download the Free PDF to Word converter from HelloPDF. This is a freeware program that you can use (Windows only) to do that conversion.

If you're looking for a quicker solution that doesn't include downloading a program, then you can use the on-line service PDFUndo. It's as simple as uploading a PDF file and downloading the corresponding Word document.

Or alternatively, you can let Google do it for you :-)

Portal: Prelude available for download!

The fix for Portal junkies is finished and is available for download now. You can download Portal: Prelude from the official website, or use your favourite torrent client to download this torrent.

I'm downloading it now... Tonight's going to be fun :-)

On-line games for when you have some free time (Updated)

Here's some simple, yet fun on-line games that you can play when you have some free time:

White Jigsaw - A puzzle-based game but with an extra challenge: all pieces are white :-)

Pound Ice Walls - This one is too fun and addicting. All you have to do is click at the right time to blow up the ice walls.

Where's the cat - A simple shell game with a cat. The first levels are a joke but try play the last one.

Pointer - Guide your mouse through mazes without touching any boundaries or obstacles. Really addictive...

Levers - Try to keep it balanced using the available weights

Keys & Doors - Find the key and open the door. It's that simple...or is it?

Mass Attack - Create new weights and try to keep the scales balanced

UPDATE: added more games to the list

Bow Man - Hit the other guy with your bow and arrow

Amorphous+ - Slash those green balls

Accordion Hero - Do you think Guitar Hero is too rocky? Try this more popular approach...

Light Bot - This is more of a learning platform for early-programmers, but it's always fun.

Bike Mania - Looks easy but it's not. Keep going through those obstacles...

Crush 2 - Addicting escape game. All you have to do is keep the ball safe from getting crushed against the closing walls.

Jam Legend - Ok, Accordion Hero was just a joke. This one's the real thing. If you're a Guitar Hero junkie then Jam Legend is your fix. It's invite only and I only have two left (leave a comment if you want one) but once you're there, I guarantee you hours of fun and addiction.

Intelligent Service Coordination in the Semantic Web

It seems that everybody is talking about the new trend on the Web: whether they call it Web 3.0 or the Semantic Web, it's clear that techs from around the world recognize the need to advance the current state of affairs and make use of the potential that the Internet brings in terms of information and web service computing.

While some describe what the next Internet will be, others start to adhere to new standards. But what seems novelty technology for some, for others it has been the focus of their work for the last few years.

For the last 3 years, I've been working in an European Union-funded project (along with other 7 partners from 6 countries) with the goal of developing, trialling, testing and advancing the technology for Semantic Web Services using Intelligent Agents and Mobile Technologies.

Now that the project is over, we decided to write a book about the project and the lessons learned throughout the 3-year run.

Intelligent Service Coordination in the Semantic Web presents the design, implementation and validation of a value-added supportive infrastructure for Semantic Web based business application services, which we called CASCOM.

Here's a small description of the system:

For end users, the CASCOM framework provides seamless access to semantic Web services anytime, anywhere, while for service providers, CASCOM offers an innovative development platform for intelligent and mobile business application services in the Semantic Web.

The essential approach of CASCOM is the innovative inter-disciplinary combination of intelligent agent, Semantic Web, peer-to-peer, and mobile computing technology.

Semantic Web services are provided by peer software agents, which exploit the coordination infrastructure to efficiently operate in highly dynamic environments.

For those interested in a more scientific view of the Semantic Web and related technologies, you can check out the project's website or buy the book, which will be available soon for order at Amazon.

2 years of "The Tech In Me"

Ok, no need to do a big fuzz about it, but I just would like to remind you that this blog celebrates today, two years of providing the best info on the tech world. I would like to thank all of the faithful readers that follow the blog through the RSS feed, and also to all of those that find the blog cool enough so as to provide comments on the posts. I'm always glad to hear from you and I seriously hope that you can provide any suggestions that will allow me to improve the blog and its posts.

And what's the best way to celebrate this journey than to remind some of the best moments? Check out here some of the posts that I think are worth a second visit:

• Multi-touch interfaces
• Internet Explorer 7: my experience
• Control your computer with hand-gestures
• A screen made of fog and much more
• Beware with the "evil twin" wireless router
• The iPhone is here
• Wireless energy
• 21 sms to make a thief repent
• Photoshop tip to remove objects
• Hide data in pictures
• Portable Apps
• Control the Earth with some lights
• Seti@Home finds stolen laptop, but no aliens
• The weakest link in technology
• Google Maps wants you to swim
• StumbleUpon the Internet
• The Music industry is killing itself
• Wii and anger management
• Microsoft Surface: touching the computer
• More on multi-touch interfaces
• Technology can be used for the strangest things
• Context-aware image resizing
• Ever heard of mechanical virus?
• A paradoxal mith
• McDonald's and Free Wifi: a dangerous combination
• Infinite GMail addresses
• Flight mode is not good enough to avoid iPhone users getting arrested
• Drug dealers vs. Software developers
• iPhone available in Portugal
• Geek thoughts
• Your mobile phone as QR-Code reader
• The Mac in Me
• Geek challenges
  
• Force Safari to open new windows on tabs
• BSOD in the Frankfurt Airport
• Hitler and the iSketch
• Future Gadget Concepts
• Please turn this sentence into an MP3
• There are gadgets for every taste
• Geek stuff
• Windows on an ATM machine
• G33kware
• CES 2008: The future gadgets
• Handy laptop bags
• Science Fiction is back
• Hitler and Blu-Ray
• From here to there
• How is technology changing us?
• Macbook Air: a genius before its time
• Avoid Apple Remote's evil twins
• The problem with iMovie and iDVD
• 3 degrees of Porn
• Another Photoshop tip
• Geek's last supper
• Technology that works too well
• How to play (almost) all video codecs in QuickTime
• An interesting problem: part I and II
• Windows vs. Mac: a picture that says it all
• Yahoo and the Semantic Web
• Technology and the Olimpic Records
• Have Phun
• Top 10 Super Mario Bros. theme music
• The first Olympic sprinter without legs
• Another webcam-based tracking software
• DVR, TVs and infrared sensors
• Appealing solar power
• How to download musics from MySpace
• Eco-friendly gadgets
• Rotate screen display in Windows Vista
• A differente kind of alarm clocks
• Safari and Firefox work together
• Twitter+Quicksilver: WOW
• 3D glasses are still useful
• Thank God for the Internet
• How to really cool down your laptop
• So many Olimpic records
• 42 minutes to go to New Zealand
• We use our Macs because we want to..
• The Internet unites against an XBox thief
• Spore Origins for iPod: my review
• The LHC and Gordon Freeman
• Fix iTunes crash
• Magellan: yes, I tested one
• Portal Prelude
• (Un)motivational Posters