Technology

Fun / Technology — No Comments
20
Feb 12

This is why people pirate

Awesome Oatmeal comic about trying something as simple as watching your favorite show online http://bit.ly/Aeok0T

To quote Valve's Gabe Newell:
"We think there is a fundamental misconception about piracy. Piracy is almost always a service problem and not a pricing problem. If a pirate offers a product anywhere in the world, 24 x 7, purchasable from the convenience of your personal computer, and the legal provider says the product is region-locked, will come to your country 3 months after the US release, and can only be purchased at a brick and mortar store, then the pirate's service is more valuable."

That said, Game of Thrones rocks! :)

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Fun / Technology — No Comments
17
Feb 12

Microsoft: Google.com is malware site

Mark this as #fail of the week: Google.com was marked as a #malware distributing site by Microsoft Security Essentials program due to a buggy update. #Google was labeled as a “severe” threat due to being infected with the Blackhole Exploit Kit – a nasty sounding exploit developed in Russia that allows hackers to target Windows users. The error has since been caught and corrected… More at http://bit.ly/wmkGWF

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Technology — No Comments
9
Feb 12

Piracy??

What's the point of the music industry continuing their arguments on piracy and losing revenues (or worse, regular people "stealing" revenues) when you can legally have pretty much any music video stream to your computer? The ease of listening to any music anywhere has gotten to the ridiculous point where you can have a continuous stream of music (and video) on a window of your browser at excellent quality with zero cost (and no ads usually) just by doing a search on the Google+ YouTube widget.

And how long before this happens for movies? :)

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Fun / Technology — No Comments
9
Feb 12

This is completely wrong, but it doesn't really matter

Finally, a computer for your mom's living room? Which magically turns to an iPad?
Price not set yet. If you really want to know more, click here http://bit.ly/xxa2h3
And yes, there is also an iPhone version….

On a more serious note: this started as a #Kickstarter project, where 37 people funded the product with an average of $159 each. Which goes to show, there IS a market for you out there, you just have to find the the right way to reach the proper people, no matter how #crazy or "crazy" your idea is ;)

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Technology — No Comments
30
Jan 12

Amazing: killing MegaUpload didn't stop sharing

Sharing sites like rapidshare, uploaded.to and hotfile.com should be sending chocolate gifts to the FBI. Since the closing of #MegaUpload they have seen as much as 3 times the traffic they usually have. Job well done feds :)

More at TorrentFreak http://bit.ly/wyCOtK

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Photography / Technology / Web Development — No Comments
22
Jan 12

JPEGmini: Less bytes, same quality on your photos

Here is a way for making your website faster: #JPEGmini http://bit.ly/zb7QdM is a new service that compresses a JPEG file without any change in the quality. I tried some random tests with pretty good results.
a) Flower photo by +Thomas Hawk : 2048x2048px at 964KB turned to 721KB (1.3x compression)
b) "Bird" photo by +Elena Kalis : 754x700px at 369KB turned to 100KB (3.7x compression)
c) Stadium photo : 1024x768px at 602KB turned to 260KB (2.3x compression)

I didn't have #Photoshop handy to compare this with the "Save for web" feature but the beauty of JPEGmini is that doesn't seem to alter the quality of the photo at all, where as on "Save for web" you have to experiment between different compression ratios.

Currently a free web service is offered (also allowing you to upload entire folders) as well as a Photo Server for big clients. A cloud service and a desktop app (that would be more convenient in a web development workflow) are on the way.
Hat tip to +Robert Scoble

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Technology — No Comments
19
Jan 12

25 Universities and Colleges Offering Free Courses Online

See also http://opencontent.org/ocwfinder/
If you have trouble accessing the link below here it is
http://freevideolectures.com/blog/2012/01/universities-colleges-offering-free-courses-online/

Reshared post from +Michelle Marie

25 Universities and Colleges Offering Free Courses Online

Open courseware offered by top universities allow self-learners to access high quality educational materials for no cost. Whether expanding your knowledge on a variety of topics or sampling the programs offered at universities, free courses can benefit you. List of colleges & courses offered: http://goo.gl/j5FFu

You can also access free online course materials from around the world at World Lecture Hall: http://wlh.webhost.utexas.edu/index.cfm

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Photography / Technology — No Comments
18
Jan 12

Escaping Flickr

I previously http://bit.ly/x0KSf0 wrote about my troubles with Flickr: my Pro account expired (Flickr cared so much about keeping me as a client that it sent me a total 1 (one) mail about it) and according to Flickr policy I could only access only the 200 most recents og my photos. The solution (according to #Flickr was easy: pay them for another year).

Thankfully, I had most of my photos in my iPhoto library. So for most of the photos I could just export them again to Picasa and then delete them from Flickr. As soon as I deleted some photos, Flickr would release a few more, always holding me on the 200 limit.

So I ended up with about 100 photos I didn't have elsewhere. To the rescue came #Migatr http://bit.ly/xTGzjE . Migatr, a Windows-only application, allows you to migrate from many web platforms to another. The following are supported:
- 23HQ
- Aol Pictures (Import Only) (CLOSING)
- Faces.com
- Flickr
- Menalto Gallery (Self-Hosted)
- Picasa Web
- Phanfare
- Photobucket
- SmugMug
- Zenfolio
- Zooomr

The process was quite pain-free (I was only troubled having to find the .NET Framework that is required not the actual migration). Your photos are first downloaded locally and then uploaded on the service of your choice. Unfortunately titles from Flickr are not saved, but titles embedded in EXIF data will of course be read on the other end (e.g. Picasa in my case). I'd like it the photos were also separated in folders when they are downloaded, as it is they are all dumped in a single folder. Still, it's free and worked without issues, and I'm free from Flickr now :)

See the liberated photos here http://bit.ly/ygyScu

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Photography / Technology — 3 Comments
7
Jan 12

I'm a Flickr hostage

I had seen the notification by #Flickr that my Pro account was expiring. The single mail of notification linked to a FAQ page http://www.flickr.com/help/limits/#73 mentioned that photos above the 200 free limit would be hidden. I made the mistake to believe that that meant that the extra photos would simply be hidden from public view.

Instead, when your account expires, not only the public but also you lose access to any photos over the 200 limit. This means your photos are now hostage to Flickr, which gives you a supposedly funny notice when you login, informing that your photos are "safe & sound". You just have to pay to see them again.

I can't seem to avoid thinking there was a reason why they only send a single notification mail about the account expiration…

So what are my options now (if any?) except from paying Flickr #extortion money?

[update]
1) +michael arrington describes the situation also here (nice photo :) ) http://techcrunch.com/2011/04/08/i-wont-use-flickr-until-they-release-my-photo-hostages/
2) It seems that if you delete some of the most recent photos, Flickr will show you some of the older ones… An still no official way to massively download your photos. Thankfully most of my photos are also stored locally but I don't have them properly categorized in all cases.

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Search Engines / Technology / Web Development — 1 Comment
3
Jan 12

If Google bans Google

[Update]
In an excellent move of fairness, the Google Chrome page no longer appears on the organic results for "browser".
Here is a screenshot (G+ doesn't allow me to add another photo on this post any more)
http://giannopoulos.net/2012/01/03/if-google-bans-google/google-chrome-demoted/
Here is Matt Cutt's post on the matter
https://plus.google.com/109412257237874861202/posts/NAWunDzJSHC
It would be nice if they also stopped the paid ad for Google Chrome from appearing on the top spot of the results by the way… :)
[/end]

will it break the internet? :) Apparently Google has been paying for blog posts about Google Chrome, against it's own rules for the rest of the internet. On the issue:

The original article by SEOBook
http://www.seobook.com/post-sponsored-google
Article on Search Engine Land
http://searchengineland.com/googles-jaw-dropping-sponsored-post-campaign-for-chrome-106348
Google's "Paid Links" guidelines
http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=66736
Google says it's the marketing firm that did it
http://www.theverge.com/web/2012/1/3/2678948/google-unruly-media-response-chrome-sponsored-post

Damn marketers! We told you, "NO EVIL"! :)

P.S. I love the quote from Search Engine Land: "So what have we got? Google’s paid for a content-light post that’s not a review of Google Chrome, nor a review of how Google Chrome helps small business, pushing a video that also doesn’t show how Google Chrome helps small businesses."

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