Eternal Sunset

Eternal Sunset is a website that tracks 250 webcams across 49 countries. At any given time, the sun’s setting somewhere, and Eternal Sunset will show it to you.

http://www.eternalsunset.net/

 

Ocean Tomo To Sell Ground-Breaking Social Networking Patent at Oct 25 Auction in Chicago

Interesting… (from Forbes.com)

 

Welcome to goowy media, inc.

Some neat Flex examples…

We develop innovative online products and services that provide simple, intuitive tools for managing your digital life and expressing yourself on the web. Our two consumer services, yourminis and the goowy webtop, have received high acclaim and are being used by people from all over the world to manage their digital lifestyle.
Try yourminis.com
Try the goowy webtop

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Also, for a really great list ER pointed out this exhaustive list:

http://flex.org/showcase/

 

Automated online backup (from the WSJ - Walt Mossberg)

Q: I was wondering if you could recommend a good service for automated online backup of a PC running Vista. All the services I have found require the user to manually transfer files to the online site. In my ideal world, I could set up my machine to transfer the files during the evening.

A: There are two automated online backup services I've tested and reviewed, Mozy (mozy.com) and Carbonite (carbonite.com).

Both work on Vista, neither requires manual file transfers, and both are good, though I preferred Mozy when I last tried them in December 2006. However, Carbonite has released a new version I haven't tried yet, and Mozy has also been updated since then. I don't think you'd go wrong with either. You can read my review at ptech.allthingsd.com/20061214.

Mozy offers two gigabytes of backups free, and charges $4.95 a month for unlimited backup, though you can save by paying one year or two years in advance. Carbonite offers a 15-day free trial, after which you pay $50 a year for unlimited backup, though you can save if you pay upfront for two years.

You can find Mossberg's Mailbox and my other columns online free at the All Things Digital Web site, http://walt.allthingsd.com.

 

Yahoo! Mail

Interesting, my Yahoo account still says beta….

Focus is a pseudoclass (who knew?)

Ever wanted to prevent Firefox from displaying a border when a hyperlinked object receives focus? Sure you have. Thanks to MB for mentioning this behavior.

a:focus {

                -moz-outline:0;

                outline:0;

                outline-offset:0;

}

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Hungry for more knowledge? Here it is from the w3.

Graphical user interfaces may use outlines around elements to tell the user which element on the page has the focus. These outlines are in addition to any borders, and switching outlines on and off should not cause the document to reflow. The focus is the subject of user interaction in a document (e.g., for entering text, selecting a button, etc.). User agents supporting the interactive media group must keep track of where the focus lies and must also represent the focus. This may be done by using dynamic outlines in conjunction with the :focus pseudo-class.

Example(s):

For example, to draw a thick black line around an element when it has the focus, and a thick red line when it is active, the following rules can be used:

:focus  { outline: thick solid black }

:active { outline: thick solid red }

Exporting JPGs from an FLV Using Flash and PHP

This is simply awesome. Check out these tutorials created by Alessandro Crugnola on Flash’s BitmapData class. The second example illustrates how to export jpegs from an FLV Using Flash and PHP.

Programming Collective Intelligence

A cool book ER pointed out!

Programming Collective Intelligence
When Time Magazine picked "You" as their Person of the Year for 2006, they cemented the idea that Web 2.0 is about "user generated content" -- and that Wikipedia, YouTube, and
MySpace are the heart of the Web 2.0 revolution. The true story is so much more complex than that. The content that users contribute explicitly to Web 2.0 sites is the small fraction
that is visible above the surface. 80% of what matters is below, in the dark matter of implicitly-contributed data. More

The book covers:

• Collaborative filtering techniques that enable online retailers to recommend products or media
• Methods of clustering to detect groups of similar items in a large dataset
• Search engine features -- crawlers, indexers, query engines, and the PageRank algorithm
• Optimization algorithms that search millions of possible solutions to a problem and choose the best one
• Bayesian filtering, used in spam filters for classifying documents based on word types and other features
• Using decision trees not only to make predictions, but to model the way decisions are made
• Predicting numerical values rather than classifications to build price models
• Support vector machines to match people in online dating sites
• Non-negative matrix factorization to find the independent features in a dataset
• Evolving intelligence for problem solving -- how a computer develops its skill by improving its own code the more it plays a game

 

Extract Text From HTML

Handy! I should try this for searching.

“In the course of improving this website's search engine, I wrote a routine that would extract the text from an article given a URL, strip out the HTML, and then convert all of the white space and carriage returns into single spaces. This was done to compress the size of the text involved, which was then stored in the database and used for full-text searches.”

 

Article: Democracy Heads to Web Laboratory

An article from the WSJ:

WASHINGTON -- Last month's YouTube Democratic presidential debate, starring "Billiam the Snowman" and other Internet questioners, was just the beginning. In coming months, the candidates will become guinea pigs in a host of Web-based debating experiments -- from "video mashups" to instant-message questioning -- that will continue to transform how debates are produced and watched.

Removing Annoying Line Breaks From Form Tags

This may already be old news to you, but I was just reading about how to prevent the <form> tag from adding line breaks (I hate that). J The solution is simple:

form {margin: 0px 0px 0px 0px; }

 

Vague Law Scares Off Toolmakers in Germany

An interesting article from O’Reilly courtesy of ER:

Vague Law Scares Off Toolmakers in Germany

“Today in Germany the Hacker Tool Law goes into effect. With the

official name of Paragraph 202C, it states that it is illegal to possess,

use, produce, or distribute a "hacker tool".
In theory, law enforcement could come and arrest everyone here at

Chaos Communications Camp. A group of hackers gathered in

solidarity to protest this law. Hackers in Germany have been

protesting the making of this law for the past year and are stunned

that it passed and has gone into effect.”

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“Security professionals in Germany have started removing exploits

and hacking tools from the Internet in response to a new German

law that expressly forbids the distribution of any software that can

be used in computer/network attacks.
Stefan Esser (left), the PHP security guru behind the recent

Month of PHP Bugs project, has yanked all the proof-of-concept

exploits from the project page because of legal concerns related to

the new law.
“This new law renders the creation and distribution of software

illegal that could be used by someone to break into a computer

system or could be used to prepare a break in. This includes

port scanners like nmap, security scanners like nessus and

of course proof of concept exploits,” Esser explained.”

Web History a la Google

I think I’m a bit too paranoid to give Google even more information, but this is an interesting service.

“With Web History, you can view and search across web pages you've visited in the past, including Google searches. Web History also provides interesting trends on your web activity, such as which sites you visit most frequently and what your top searches are. Finally, Web History helps deliver more personalized search results based on what you've searched for and which sites you've visited.”

 

3dswym

The interface still needs a little work, but the idea is great – and just the sort of thing ER has been forecasting for quite some time:

(From Virtual Worlds News)

Publicis and Dassault Team on 3D Browser Tool 3dswym

Global marketing and communications company Publicis and 3D design company Dassault have teamed up on a new plugin-based 3D browser tool called 3dswym, which will “offer a collaborative Web-based platform allowing marketers to connect directly to consumers in order to jointly create and adapt new consumer goods and new retail environments using advanced Web and 3D tools.”  3pointd.com has the insight.

 

Fusion

I wonder if Parallels would still be better on a hefty machine? (More capabilities)

Integrating Fusion Is Latest Way For Macs to Operate Windows, PC Software

 

 

InDesign Notes

These are minor notes for an expert user, but handy for moi.

Text wrap

This link provides a nice (and quick) overview of the technique. Basically, we were on the right track, but we needed to select both the object and text box.

http://www.photoshopaid.net/viewtutorial.php?tutorial=1

Quark vs InDesign

A blog dedicated to the “war of the publishing giants.”

http://quarkvsindesign.com/

ADOBE® Indesign® CS3 Conversion Guide

“A hands-on resource for switching from QuarkXPress to InDesign CS3”

 

 

Convert QuarkXPress files to InDesign

Interesting…apparently, ID can only convert from Quark 4…

“Perhaps the greatest concern to QuarkXPress users who want to use Adobe® InDesign® is the large store of XPress files on our hard drives. Fortunately, you can convert most of your QuarkXPress files and templates into InDesign documents. In this tutorial, we’ll tell you what you need to know to make this feature work for you.

Note that InDesign CS 2 can open QuarkXPress 3.3 and 4.x documents and templates. It can convert documents and templates from multi-language QuarkXPress Passport 3.3 and 4.1x files. (InDesign CS can open QuarkXPress Passport files of the same versions only if they have been saved as single-language files.) QuarkXPress 5 files must be saved backward to QuarkXPress 4 format. Files from XPress 6 are an even bigger hassle: You have to save them as version 5 files, then open them in version 5 and save them down to version 4. (InDesign can also open Adobe PageMaker® 6.5 and 7.0 files as well.)