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!

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.

Do you want GMail stickers?

Do you like GMail so much that you just wanna shout it to the world? Then, this tip is for you.


Google created a set of GMail stickers that can be very handy and the good news is that you can get them almost for free. To get your own set of Gmail m-velope stickers, bookplate style stickers, and keyboard shortcut stickers, just send a self-addressed stamped envelope to:

Send me some Gmail stickers already
P.O. Box 391420
Mountain View, CA 94039-1420
United States

Google will then send your envelope back filled with stickers inside. Great!

Best apps for the iPod Touch

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Update on this blog: read here.

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And what better way to start the year than to show you my list of the best apps you can install on your iPod Touch. Keep in mind that this list is exclusive for the iPod Touch and not the iPhone. Since the iPhone has some features that are not available on the iPod Touch (such as GPS and phone capabilities), the advantages that could arise from apps using those features are irrelevant for the Touch. Hence, the warning of iPod Touch exclusivity.
Basically, this list comprises the set of apps that "survived" on my iPod Touch. Since the app store is easily accessible from the iPod Touch, I spend quite a long time browsing the latest available apps and try them out. I basically install everything with a slightly interesting description, but only those worth keeping, "survive" the "cleaning phase".
Because so many apps in the App Store are free, I seldom found the need to actually buy an app to get some interesting functionality running on the iPod. So, with fairness in mind, this list reflects (almost) only free apps and, thus may obfuscate some interesting apps that are really cool but that I didn't try because I'm too cheap :-)
It's also easy to perceive why so many of the chosen apps are games: the iPod Touch is in fact the funnest iPod ever :-)
Enough said. Off with the list (in alphabetic order):

• AppVee (free) - With the ever-growing number of apps available at the App Store it's quite difficult to keep track of the ones that are really worth it. AppVee, with insightful reviews and videos, is a great resource to know exactly which ones to install and try.

• Black Gold (free) - With the price of Oil behaving like a roller-coaster it's always interesting to keep an eye on the market value of these resources. Black Gold provides updated access to the current price of Crude Oil, Gold and Fuel prices.

• Blue Skies Lite (free) - This game is absolutely fabulous when it comes to using the acelerometer. The helicopter is controled by tilting the iPod in the desired direction and missiles and bombs are fired by touching the screen in certain areas of the display. This free version only includes a few levels, but it's enough to get you hooked on it.
  
  
• Brain Tuner Lite (free) - If you want to keep your brain in tip top shape then this game is for you. Basically, you only have to say whether or not each row represents a true statement. But you need to do this in as less time as possible. This way you can keep improving your scores and train your brain.
  
  
• Cannon Challenge (free) - This game is very addictive. It's one of the first games that I installed and I'm totally hooked up on it. Mainly because it's so simple and yet somehow challenging. The goal is simple: destroy the yellow targets using the cannon on the left. All that you can control is the angle and speed of the cannon. Simple, right? Yeah, but it takes some time to master it...
  
  
• Dactyl (free) - Just click on the bombs before they explode. Looks simple, right? Well, let's just say that the speed at which new potentially exploding bombs appear is close to a rat's heartbeat (in case you're wondering: 500 beats/min).
  
  
• Facebook (free) - If you're into Facebook, one of the most popular social networks in the web, then this app is mandatory. It gives you clean and simple access to most Facebook features.

• Google Earth (free) - that wonderful Earth navigability that you have on your computer is also accessible on the iPod Touch. And it feels even better with the multi-touch display.

• iPint (free) - Totally useless, but since this was the first app I installed on my iPod Touch it's hard to let go. Plus, it's always fun to use when showing off the iPod Touch to nearby people. This app simulates a pint of beer that behaves pretty much like the real thing, except this one won't actually leave a stain on the floor when you spill it :-) It also includes a cool game for you to guide a pint from one side of the bar to the other, all by using the accelerometer.
  
  
• Labyrinth Lite Edition (free) - Another game to show the excellent feature brought by the accelerometer. You just have to control the ball through the maze to reach the goal and avoid the holes. It feels just like the real thing.
  
  
• Loops of Zen Lite (free) - Another Puzzle game. Simple, yet sometimes quite challenging. Loops of Zen requires you to connect all the symbols together so as to create a figure where all lines end in a circle.

• Lumen Lite (free) - Excellent puzzle game where you only have to find ways of turning all the lights on. The free version only include a few levels but some are quite challenging.

• Lux Touch (free) - If you like the board game Risk, then you'll love Lux Touch. That's it :-)
  
• MazeFinger (free) - This cool game is very simple: just use your finger to go trough the maze as fast as possible. As it gets harder and harder, new obstacles will appear and the path will become more difficult. Plus, the visual and sound effects are stunning.
  
  
• NetNewsWire (free) - For a long time now, I've been using NewsGator as my RSS feeds reader and, on my Mac, I use NetNewsWire to access those feeds (for offline viewing) and the synchronization process is quite good. Most naturally, on the iPod Touch I also use NetNewsWire. This way, no matter what channel I use, the feeds I read are always in sync.

• TapDefense (free) - If you're into tower defense-like games, then you'll love this game. You have to defend your gate against the evil beings from Hell and for that you'll need to place towers across the path to slow them down and eventually destroy them.
  
  
• Tap Tap Revenge (free) - Are you a Guitar Hero fan? Tap Tap Revenge is the solution for the iPod Touch. Just tap tap the dots at the sound of music and try not to miss :-)
  
  
• Tweetie (2,39€ - $2.99) - I tried every free Twitter app available at the App Store and none (with the exception of Twinkle) is enough for the average Twitter user. While Twinkle may actually do the trick for most Twitter users, Tweetie is more complete allowing you to easily keep track of everyone you're following by clearly separating tweets, replies, messages and other parts of this social network (such as location-based tweets, trends and access to profile information).

This list is obviously incomplete and as I have the time, I will be updating it with new apps. So, keep tuned. Also, I welcome your suggestions and I thank you in advance by any help you can provide in improving this list.

Source: The Mac Newbie

1 year of Mac: Quicksilver, the best Mac application...ever

I already included Quicksilver in my list of essential applications for Mac OS X but due to the impact that this application has had on my productivity, I decided to make a special post to show how powerful this application is.

Basically, Quicksilver is an application that waits on the background for the user to call it (using a particular keystroke - I use Alt (Option) + Space) and then invoke a specific command by writing just a few letters (usually the initials of the command). So, let's have a look at the kind of commands we can use:

The basic functionality of this application is to work as an app launcher:


But it can also be used to open individual files (to use a group of files, you just have to insert a comma ',' to separate the several files):



There's a bunch of options to be used with files. For example, I can rename them, get more info, copy/move them to specific folders or simply delete them by moving them to the Trash:




And for when you have the Trash full, you can use Quicksilver to empty it:



Quicksilver can also be used as a calculator. After invoking Quicksilver, just insert '=' and automatically the app will interpret this as new math function:



Using a set of Apple Scripts, you can also use Quicksilver to control iTunes playback by skipping to the next or previous song or playing/pausing/stopping:


You can also browse your iTunes library using simple browsing/searching commands:


Quicksilver can provide access to your contacts and allows editing the contact's info and even create mail messages:


In fact, you can use Quicksilver to send a specific file (or group of files) by e-mail for a bunch of your contacts without even opening Mail.app:


If you need to Zip a folder, just select it and invoke the Compress command.


Then you can use the result to store the file somewhere in your computer or simply e-mail to a contact of your choice:


One of the most amazing commands that you can use on Quicksilver is image manipulation. For example, you can automatically scale an image using the "Scale Image..." command and providing the scale ratio (in percentage or pixels):


One useless command (but always funny) is the "Speak Text" command. Basically it can make your Mac speak any text that you input on Quicksilver (only in text mode, which is accessible by entering '.' as a command):


Since Quicksilver also monitors Safari and Firefox's bookmarks, you can take advantage of a special feature of the application. Whenever a bookmark URL contains '***', Quicksilver interprets that as input text. So, you can create your very own custom search engine directly from Quicksilver. For example, to search on Wikipedia, create the following bookmark on Safari: "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Search?search=***". Then rescan Quicksilver's catalog and invoke the bookmark and insert the input text:


For searching Google, use the following Bookmark URL: "http://www.google.com/search=q=***":


And finally, a tip for Twitter fans. If you like to post constant updates on Twitter but don't like to have to access the website just to enter your new status, you'll be glad to know that there's a way to integrate this functionality directly into Quicksilver, thus turning it into the simplest Twitter client that ever existed:


Some of these commands are not accessible in the default installation of Quicksilver. To make these commands available, you may have to install the correct plugins, but that's easily done through the application's preferences.

I hope you find this post useful and hopefully it will trigger your curiosity into testing this great application. I know it may take some time to get used to it, but once you do, you won't regret it.

Enjoy!

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 :-)

CrossSlide: javascript slide-show animations

If you're looking to put some slideshow animations of your photos on a website but don't want to spend too much time working with Flash or other complicated web development tool, have a look at CrossSlide. It's a simple jQuery plugin that implements in Javascript some common slide-show animations, enough to give your site that special touch without all the work.

Portal Prelude: the fix for the Portal junkies

No, this is not a new release from Valve to continue the great game Portal. But you can imagine how a huge Portal fan like me, was excited to hear about this project.

The game is being developed by a bunch of French Portal fans as an independent, totally-free and non-for-profit release and the hype that goes with it, is certainly well deserved, given the teaser they posted on the official website:

Portal: Prelude, as its name states it, is an unofficial prequel to the game Portal. Its story revolves around the pre-GlaDOS epoch, even before she was plugged in. At this time, test subjects were monitored by real Aperture Science employees whose work was tedious, lengthy and repetitive. This is why they decided to build a great artificial intelligence that could both replace them in these difficult tasks, but also take responsibility for many other tasks within the complex and compete with Black Mesa's superiority. All employees of the Aperture Science complex are now eagerly awaiting GlaDOS. Maybe even a little too eagerly, as the upcoming events will tell...

The game development is not being supported by Valve, but they know about it and don't have a problem with it, as long as these guys don't make money out of it :-)

So, for now, all we have to do is drool while watching the trailer and wait for the release... but let's hope it won't be long.

How to setup Apache, PHP and MySQL on your Mac

If you're a PHP developer and have recently switched to a Mac, you'll have noticed by now that setting up PHP and MySQL on Mac OS X (Apache is already bundled with Macs) is not that simple, especially for a newbie.

Luckily, MAMP (acronym for Mac, Apache, MySQL, PHP) comes to the rescue. This special-purposed application allows you to manage the three applications automatically on your Mac, making it ready to start coding your PHP-based web sites with MySQL databases right away.

The configuration created by MAMP is not intended to be the appropriate web environment for you to host your dynamic web pages, but at least is good enough for the developing stage. You can even choose between PHP4 or PHP5.

From: The Mac Newbie

Pandora's Box has been opened...again!

On May 2007, Pandora made the unfortunate decision of going "offline" for non-US users. I got very upset because Pandora was my main source for discovering new music (based on my musical taste).

Fortunately, new services appeared (such as Last.fm), which offered similar mechanisms of searching/listening music. However, the engine behind Last.fm was not as good as Pandora's. The Pandora system is connected to the Music Genome Project, a project that has been trying to define the "genes" of music, thus making way to establish more interesting connections between artists and songs.

The project analyzes the similarities of musics by comparing "everything from melody, harmony and rhythm, to instrumentation, orchestration, arrangement, lyrics, and of course the rich world of singing and vocal harmony". It's clear why Pandora works much better than other services that basically connect artists by genre, instead of using the intrinsic properties of the musics.

And now Pandora is back (in Portuguese) with a "global" version that makes it accessible to almost everyone in the world.

Enjoy!

An excellent 2007 software guide

The year of 2007 is gone, but there's still a lot of it that can be useful for the new year, such as this wonderful Lifehacker's post on the 2007 Guide for Free Software and Webapps. It's really worth a visit as it is very complete and totally free.

Enjoy!

Retro-blogging: best posts of November 2006

Previously on the "Tech in Me":

• Don't sell your (illegally) downloaded musics and you won't be arrested ... in Spain
• Wikipedia doesn't spread only knowledge
• Check your Internet addiction
• Google spreading worms
• The PS3 Madness: part I, II and III
  
• GMail is a virus...according to Microsoft
• Control your computer with hand gestures
• Get a refund for your pre-installed Windows copy that you won't be using
• One commercial application for free every day
• Fingerprint locks are not that safe
• My visit at IST2006
  

Your mobile phone as QR-Code reader

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QR-Codes, the popular Japanese 2D bar code technology, can now be used on mobile phones. For those of you who don't know what a QR-code is, I'll give you a little example:

This strange-looking figure is in fact a complex storage system that allows to encode data in a picture. In this example, reading this QR-code will give you access to this blog. How? Simple, the disposition of these black dots on the diagram can be scanned and translated to text, which in this case, translates to a URL: http://tonyvirtual.blogspot.com
This kind of technology is quite common in Japan and it can be seen in the manufacturing of cars (to allow robots to identify the parts that need to be assembled), in supermarkets (to allow people to read more information on the products they want to buy) or in museums (to allow visitors to have access to more information on an exposition).
This technology is now available for mobile phones and it's incredibly fast and easy to use. I tested with my Nokia N80 and it worked perfectly.
If you want to install a QR-code reader on your cellphone, check this site (make sure your cellphone is supported, remember this only works for camera-enabled phones)
Once you've installed the software on your phone, test it with this code I have here:

I can only say it's a funny joke :-)
Are you wondering how I created the QR-codes for this post? Easy, there are a lot of QR-code generators available here, here, here and here.
Enjoy!
UPDATE: it has come to my attention that RSS readers may not be able to see the pictures on this post (depending on the RSS reader that you're using), so just in case, use the direct link.

Need a quick way to create a PDF out of your RSS feed?

I recently needed to create a small example of my posts on one of my blogs and had to create a document for offline access (read paper).

Being a bit lazy for copy-pasting the selected posts one-by-one to a Word document and then create a PDF out of it, I decided to google my needs.

Surprise, surprise: RSS2PDF does just the trick. Just drop the RSS's URL and click "Make PDF". It's not perfect (since it doesn't include images or HTML formatting) but it's quite good for creating a PDF with your posts, bookmarks and direct links to the Internet (which sadly didn't work on the paper version of the PDF).

Want to send big files but your e-mail keeps saying NO?

Here are 5 (free) alternatives to send big files without having to use your short-limit e-mail:

• YouSendIt - until 100 MB (until 2GB with a paying account)
  
• DropSend - until 1GB
  
• SendSpace - until 300 MB
  
• MegaUpload - until 500 MB
  
• MailBigFile - until 100 MB (until 1GB with a paying account)
  

There are more alternatives available here.

450+ freeware utilities

Want freeware utilities? Check out this website here.

Stumble upon the Internet

I'm completely addicted to StumbleUpon. All you have to do is click on the "Stumble!" button on the StumbleUpon Toolbar (for IE or Firefox) and you'll be acquainted with the most interesting websites, videos, photos and more based on your interests.

Basically, each user, when surfing the web gives thumbs up (or down) for that content that he/she liked (or hated) and categorizes that according to some hierarchy of subjects.

Then, after providing some info on the subjects that you like, just click on the "Stumble!" button and you'll be surfing the interesting Internet.

Check out some of the things I've already stumbled upon:

• Never-ending zooming pictures
• Play good old Nintendo games
• Funny student exam answers
• Verizon quit letter
• The nasty car tag
• 20 Questions
  

Must-have Free Apps for Ubuntu Users

If you're on to the trend of using the new Ubuntu distribution, then these set of free apps (tip from Free Geekery) might be quite useful for you:

• AllTray - dock any application without a native tray icon
• amarok - music player that was built specifically for the Unix/Linux user
• Automatix2 - create a way to install other apps like Skype, Picasa and Google Earth with ease
• Beagle - search tool that basically "ransacks" your personal information space to find what you have stored there
• Beryl - provides the new user with an interface that can closely mimic the Vista interface
• CheckGMail - checks a Gmail account for new mail
• Cinlerra - provides users with the ability to capture, composite, and edit audio and video with sample level accuracy
• Deluge Torrent - BitTorrent client
• Flash - a Flash player for Ubuntu Feisty
• Gimp - photo retouching, image composition, and image authoring
• Gnomebaker - burn your music and videos to CD or DVD
• KMyMoney - open source personal finance software app
• MythTV - allows you to turn your desktop into a full-fledged media center/DVR with capabilities to pause, fast-forward, rewind and capture any live television program
• Opera 9 - Internet browser
• Scribes - text editor that works with the Gnome desktop
• Thunderbird - e-mail client
• VLC - media player

Need free pictures?

If you need free (or public domain) pictures for posting on your blog or for some document you need, you can use the Wikipedia's public domain pictures resource repository.

The pictures are categorized according to subject, such as Art, Music, History, etc...