Saturday, February 28, 2009
back to the future - what if?
found at cynical-c.
Friday, February 27, 2009
Protection From Spam Emails
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With the home and corporate user in mind we have created Spam Agent - your anti spam filtering solution!
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- "friends" list ensures your friends emails are never blocked
- runs automatically at computer bootup
- compatible with all POP3 and IMAP email accounts
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- compatible with all versions of Windows
Anti Spam Tools Freeware
Spamihilator
Spamihilator is an full featured anti-spam filtering program that works with any email client. It runs as a local POP server that sits between your email program and your mail server and filters mail based on a built-in filtering mechanism. In addition, you can maintain a blocklist as well as a list of friends (their mail will never be filtered) and customize the filtering with a variety of settings and plug-ins. The program automatically configures popular email clients (Outlook, Outlook Express, Netscape etc.) to work with the filter. Among many other options, you can change the aggressiveness of the filter, block certain attachment types, block specific senders and also add your own spam words to look for. Spamihilator does not delete the spam right away, but moves it to a recycle bin from where you can review it, restore items or permanently delete them. A very flexible and capable spam filtering system.Iconix eMail ID
Iconix eMail ID is a client application that verifies the sender of an incoming email, and guarantees that the mail is actually coming from the company that it claims. The service works with companies that have registered with Iconix, which currently includes more than 400 companies such as eBay, PayPal, Citibank, Amazon.com, Expedia, and many others. Whenever an email arrives from one of the known senders, it is authenticated, and an icon displayed next to the message that indicates the validity of the mail. Once Iconix is installed on your computer, it will automatically verify email messages whenever you use any of the supported services, there is no interface or additional configuration required. If are concerned about phishing scams involving major companies, give this software a try. Iconix eMail ID supports IE and Firefox and works with Gmail, Yahoo, MSN and Hotmail accounts as well as Outlook Express.More Anti spam Freeware Tools
Broadcast Your Live Video
Try These Websites For Broadcasting Your Videos
Rotor Blog's Top Six Broadcasting Sites
Video streaming is so in today that a lot of online services have sprung up the web recently. These video streaming services either lets you broadcast an event, your performance, and everything else that could be captured by your web camera or camera phone. And yes we mean live streaming. Here are 10 live video streaming sites that should get you on the road to web stardom.
Livecast provides a simple, convenient way of capturing and sharing events by saving videos on their web server where users can publish them to online communities, video sharing sites and blogs through one-button functionality. The site eliminates the need for uploading your video to a server, but instead let you webcast it from your mobile phone.
Justin TV offers a place to broadcast and watch video online. It became famous when its founder, Justin webcast his life 24/7. It gained a cult following among online video fans and soon Justin.tv started offering a service where anyone can share their life through videos. Justin tv streams video fboth from webcams aand mobile devices. The site offers a one-click online video broadcast for as long as you a webcam or a camcorder connected to Internet. You can also share your videos to anyone by using the “share” button on the page where your video are streaming. The site is categorized into eight channels - producers, music, social, gaming, sports, entertainment, pets, and comedy.
Qik.com is a mobile video streaming service that provides a platform for streaming high quality live video across mobile phone platform. Qik’s video streaming service is fast. Video streams are tagged at every path it takes from the moment a user click on the video streams to the video appearing on the web. Qik.com lets you stay connected with your family and friends and broadcast events and news spontaneously. It also supports MySpace, orkut and other websites including Justin.tv.
UStream.TV provides an interactive video streaming platform which lets you broadcast video using your camera and Internet connection. It features quick broadcasting tool which can be through Ustream’s server or through a user’s own website. Your viewers can interact directly with you while you are broadcasting online. As a user you can watch specific broadcasts and explore various channels on Ustream. Ustream offers broadcasts including political events, talk shows, entertainment events, music showcases, conferences, school and business events and training, sporting events and many others.
ShoZu lets you share life’s moments, be it on photos or videos on your blog. It lets you share your content to your friends and family either through email or through various social networks. In addition, ShoZu also lets you add tags and titles to your videos, read friends’ video feeds, update your status while on the move, geo-tag your videos, as well as post to your blog whereever you are.
Like ShoZu, Flixwagon lets you broadcast live videos you’re taking using your mobile phone directly online. It lets you store videos and manage them, share these videos with your friends, family and business contacts. Users can search, view and share live broadcasts and store videos on Flixwagon even if they have not uploaded any videos yet. Flixwagon is a social video platform that lets you broadcast your life.
Email A Huge File
Popular Email Service Providers Like Gmail , Yahoo! Mail , Live Mail , Etc Limits The Attachment File Size To 20-30 , It Doesn't Satisfies Our Needs , There For Here Is A Solution.
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* Upload The File In Youtube ?
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the moon and venus, goodbye "evening star"
while the moon has passed by venus in our evening sky during the last several months, this will be our last opportunity to see the evening alignment for a while. next month, venus will pass between the earth and the sun so that it will rise in the morning sky for the rest of the year! venus will not be our "evening star" again until 2010!
according to solar system live, here is the alignment of the planets around the sun tonight:
if you imagine the earth spinning counterclockwise, you see that venus is in the sky as the sun is setting.
here is the alignment of the planets on 30 march, 2009, showing venus passing between the earth and sun.
in this case, venus rises in earth's sky just before the sun and is therefore visible in the morning! you can also see from these images, how much more quickly the closest planet, mercury, moves around the sun than the 4th planet, mars.
so... look up tonight, take some pictures, and enjoy venus next to the moon!
Wednesday, February 25, 2009
excuse me, you have a gaping hole!
and really, there's no bad time to wear a good wig.
neatorama
the moon, mercury, jupiter, and mars over australia
unfortunately, he was also clouded over last night, so didnt image comet lulin or saturn :(
lulin passes by
luckily, other people in the world have taken lovely photos of comet lulin! one of the coolest things i've seen so far is this MOVIE! by patrick colestock.
these images were taken by francisco rodriguez 22 feb 2009, from the canary islands!
from phillip jones 22 feb, 2009 in clifton, texas.
i havent seen images or movies of saturns moons passing in front of it yet, but i'll post some when i find them!
Tuesday, February 24, 2009
see thru fish heads
if only that pesky brain would stop getting in the way...
Monday, February 23, 2009
India In The Glory Of Oscars
It was perhaps the first time ever that some residents of Mumbai's sprawling Dharavi slum forgot Monday morning's grind and watched television to hear what news would emerge from the Oscar ceremony in Los Angeles.
image source: filmsite
The crowd broke out in lusty cheers each time the film bagged an award, although not many residents of Dharavi were even aware of what exactly the Oscars were.
The heart of the film Slumdog Millionaire - the rags to riches story of a boy from an Indian slum - is based in Dharavi, Asia's largest slum. Two of the children who act in the film came from Dharavi.
The Oscars received by the movie has triggered a rush of national pride across India, particularly in Mumbai - the city where India's film industry popularly known as Bollywood is based.
The film has a British director, producer and writer. But most of the actors, crew, and locations are Indian and some won the top recognition in the world of cinema.
Music Director A.R. Rahman took two Oscars. One came for best score. He also shared the Oscar for best song, "Jai Ho" with lyricist Gulzar - also an Indian. Resul Pookutty won an Oscar for best sound mixing.
Cheering fans of music composer A.R. Rahman, who has won many national awards, are confident that the Oscars he has won will give Indian music an international identity. He is already one of world's best-selling recording artists.
And, filmmakers are optimistic that these Oscars will turn the global spotlight on musicians, technicians and talent from Bollywood.
Bollywood filmmaker Rakeysh Mehra hopes the film will inspire talent to cross borders.
"I hope we see a lot of kind of coming together of various talents from all over the world, a lot of amalgamation and kind of collaborations, whether they are directors or technicians from out west coming here to make Indian stories or whether it is technicians and directors from here going out West to make world stories," Mehra said.
Although the spotlight remained on Slumdog Millionaire, some people noticed that another Indian story won recognition at the Oscars. American filmmaker Megan Mylan's short film documentary Smile Pinki is the story of a poor Indian village girl, who was ostracized because of her cleft lip, until surgery organized by a social worker transformed her life by making her a "normal girl".
Like Slumdog Millionaire it is a story of hope and triumph, rooted in the poverty that is widespread in India. Some critics have complained that such stories reinforce Western stereotypes about India.
But, for much of the country, the Oscar ceremony brought a rush of pride. Indians have only won two previous Oscars - one in 1982 for costume designer Bhanu Athaiya and a lifetime achievement award in 1992 for filmmaker Satyajit Ray. And, seeing stories about India and many Indians at the center stage of Hollywood's red carpet were moments to relish.
pancakes or costumes?
i've been listening to some great new orleans music from NOLA radio all day to get in the mood! now i want to cook a gumbo or etouffee!
here are a few photos of the carnival floats in sao paulo, brasil that i saw in 2007.
Sunday, February 22, 2009
advertising to the universe
*fine print: calendars most relevant for beings whose location in the universe is on a planet called earth, located 150 million kilometres (93 million miles) away from its g-type sun, 26,000 light years from the center of the in the milky way galaxy, of the local group, virgo supercluster. thank you.
Saturday, February 21, 2009
the ultimate search for cosmic company
she discusses the possibility of detecting technological signs of life around distant stars and how and why the SETI program has set out to detect it.
Friday, February 20, 2009
Add Your Own Icon To The Drives
You Can Make Your Own Icon For Your Local Disk Drives , CD’s , Dvd’s , USB Pendrives , And So On…
Like This …
Procedure For Making An Autorun Icon :
*Open Your Drive
*Open Paint.exe , And Create A Suitable Image For Making An Icon ,
Like Your Face , Your Beloved One’s Face … , Then Re Size It To 95×95
(width x height) And Save The Image With The Extension name.ico (you can change “name” to what ever you like )
*Copy The Saved name.ico Image To Your Drive .
*Create A Text File (notepad) , And Open The NotePad File ,
And Type These Words
” [autorun]
icon=name.ico “
( Without “” , Remember : replace name.ico with your image’s name )
Then Save The Text File .
* Now Go To ” Tools -> Folder Options -> View “
Then Uncheck “Hide Extensions For Known File Types”
Then Click Ok .
* Then Rename Your Text File To ” Autorun.inf “
* Done…
After Restarting Your System You Can Find Your Icon On Your Drive …
[:)] Keep Smiling …
comet lulin in x-rays!
there's a big cloud of atomic gas around the comet. when streams of particles from the sun, called solar wind, react with the comets extended gas, they emit x-ray light! as far as i know, this is the first view of a comet with such a range of wavelengths!
adopt the "jesus" star!
the good news is that i recently found out about an organization that allows one to "adopt" a star and gives all the money to support scientific research! welcome the pale blue dot project, which is hosted by a non-profit organization - the white dwarf research corporation (WDRC)!
as i was investigating the validity of this project, i discovered that i know most of the members of the board of directors of the WDRC!! of the 6 BoD members, i've met ed, observed with anjum, danced the samba with kepler, played bluegrass music and sand volleyball with mike, and enjoyed a few beers in austin with travis! that's travis on the right, and nairn on the left, who informed me of the pale blue dot project.
so what is it you ask?
the members of the WDRC will help detect planets revolving around distant suns from the data of NASA's kelper space telescope, scheduled to launch next month! since the WDRC is a non-profit group and not funded by NASA, support for their analysis of Kepler's data will come from donations the public makes to the pale blue dot project to adopt a star! you can search thru a catalog in google sky and adopt any star available! as a result, you will "receive a personalized certificate by email and will be acknowledged in both the text version of the catalog, and in the placemark for their adopted star in Google Sky." cool!
each star that you can choose to adopt has a designated string of numbers like "022009" to identify it. amusingly, travis noticed that the catalog number of a particular star - 47 53787 - spells "Is Jesus" on a telephone!! therefore, he is offering the opportunity for one lucky bidder to officially adopt the "jesus" star on ebay!! the bidding ends 26 february, 2009! :)
as of today, humans have detected evidence for 340 planets outside of our solar system! none of these planets are earth-like as no current systems have the sensitivity to detect earth-like planets around other stars! astronomers predict that with kepler, we should be able to find hundreds of planets the size of earth or bigger at various distances from their suns!
to hear more about the process of how the white dwarf research corporation will search thru kepler's data for new exosolar planets, here's travis (metcalfe) speaking for a google tech talk on january 13, 2009.
info on the video:
ABSTRACT: In February 2009 NASA will launch the Kepler satellite, a mission designed to discover habitable Earth-like planets around distant Sun-like stars. The method that Kepler will use to detect distant worlds will only reveal the size of the planet relative to the size of the host star, so part of the mission is devoted to characterizing distant Suns using a technique known as "asteroseismology". I have developed an automated approach to matching computer models of stars to such observations, based primarily on a parallel genetic algorithm. I will give a broad overview of how we can probe the insides of stars using seismology, and I will provide a general background on the operation of our model-fitting application. I will conclude with our first results on a nearby star: the Sun.
Speaker: Travis Metcalfe
Travis Metcalfe is an astronomer at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado. He started his career in the backyard of his childhood home in rural Oregon, and continued it in such places as Tucson, Austin, and Boston before landing in Boulder four years ago.
a day in the life of abbey road
you can even watch LIVE as people cross abbey road, and nearly get hit by cars and double-decker buses, while trying to take photos!! of course, one day i will be one of those silly people... where is abbey road, anyway?!
this also gives me an excuse to share some recent artwork of my friend, shay, of the wicked chickenz.
i love it!
Thursday, February 19, 2009
Facebook & privacy controversy
Facebook has bowed to the users' verdict by rolling back the changes that it had made to its privacy policy in the wake of severe crticism by
Nine trends for IT in 2009
Technology Watch
What's new in IE 8?
users and also a federal complaint from a leading privacy advocacy organization. The company has temporarily reverted its terms of service to the previous version. The move came after Facebook polled its users as to whether it should revert to its previous terms.
Image Source : Epic.org
Recently, Facebook had changed its privacy policy which implied that the networking site would have perpetual rights to users' uploaded content. Initially Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg tried the calm the opposition by saying that users still owned the content. But the critism later spilled into a barrage of formal complaints and also a threat from the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC), demanding the social-networking service return to its previous terms.
"Many of us at Facebook spent most of today discussing how best to move forward. One approach would have been to quickly amend the new terms with new language to clarify our positions further. Another approach was simply to revert to our old terms while we begin working on our next version. As we thought through this, we reached out to respected organizations to get their input.
Going forward, we've decided to take a new approach towards developing our terms. We concluded that returning to our previous terms was the right thing for now. As I said yesterday, we think that a lot of the language in our terms is overly formal and protective so we don't plan to leave it there for long." Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg wrote in a blog post late Tuesday.
In the blogpost, Zuckerberg also said that the company would be adopting a new set of terms that would more carefully take users' rights into consideration.
Image Source : Flickr
"More than 175 million people use Facebook. If it were a country, it would be the sixth most populated country in the world. Our terms aren't just a document that protect our rights; it's the governing document for how the service is used by everyone across the world. Given its importance, we need to make sure the terms reflect the principles and values of the people using the service," he added.
Our next version will be a substantial revision from where we are now. It will reflect the principles I described yesterday around how people share and control their information, and it will be written clearly in language everyone can understand. Since this will be the governing document that we'll all live by, Facebook users will have a lot of input in crafting these terms."
Source Economic Times
Read The Book Of Harvey Jones, Jose Hiram Soltren
Facebook: Threats to Privacy
film trilogy meter
i think the third back to the future was better than the second. other than that, i mostly agree with his ratings for the movies i've seen!
comet lulin approaches
i've collected some images taken around the world, but check out space weather and caffeinated astronomy for other nice collections!
jack newton took this image in arizona on 18 february 2009.
the green glow of the comet comes from the gases around the nucleus. cyanogen and diatomic carbon both glow green when illuminated by the sun's light. the tails of comet lupin change over time, innocently changing positions and brightness as they interact with the sun's energy output!
here's a diagram of lulin's path around the sun, showing rough positions of the planets as well.
comet lulin will reach a brightness of 5th magnitude, which means some people might be able to see it with their eyes. you can definitely see it with a steady pair of binoculars, or even better, with a small telescope.
link
here's a nice image by schur's astronomy, created by a long exposure while moving the telescope along the sky, following the motion of the comet!
saturn's quadruple transit
go's movie shows a preview of the event happening on february 24th, 2009! not only will that date treat us to comet lulin's closest approach, we will also see *four* of saturn's moons pass directly in front of the planet at the same time: titan, mimas, dione and enceladus!!! a quadruple transit!
saturn will sit very close to comet lulin on feb 24, 2009, so get your telescopes ready and look to the southwest before dawn!!
kid's got moves
i hope that MM stays healthy and uninjured over the next decade of his life, so all options are available to him when he's gets old enough to make big choices. i also hope that the big teams tracking him remember to give him enough space to be a kid and enjoy his life!
Wednesday, February 18, 2009
Hear The Contents Using "Text To Speech"
Alive Text to Speech is a Text-to-Speech software, which can read Text in any application, and convert text to speech, or convert text to MP3, WAV, OGG or VOX files. This text to speech lets you listen to the Text in Emails, web pages, news articles, PDF, Word or Excel Documents,etc. Just highlight the Text your want to hear, and then press Ctrl + C to hear it.
Alive Text to Speech enables you to convert Text to MP3, WAV, OGG, or VOX files with a single right click. It is very simple and easy to use. Just right click on files in the Windows Explorer, select "Convert to MP3" (or WAV, OGG, and VOX) and convert them using your predefined settings.
Alive Text to Speech allows advanced users to finish conversions with Command Line. You can download more voices from the Internet. In addition, Alive Text to Speech Toolbar will be installed into Internet Explorer, with the this toolbar, you can read webpages, or convert webpages into MP3, WAV, OGG or VOX files.
Features:
* 1) Read Text in any application, including Emails, web pages, news articles, PDF, Word or Excel Documents, etc.
* 2) Convert Text to speech, convert text to MP3, WAV, OGG, VOX files.
* 3) Convert Text Files or text to MP3, WAV, OGG, VOX files.
* 4) Install Alive Text to Speech Toolbar in IE (Internet Explorer) Browser.
* 5) It is very simple and easy to use. Just right click on files in the Windows Explorer, select "Convert to MP3"(or WAV, OGG,VOX) and convert them using your predefined settings.
* 6) Alive Text to Speech supports command line.
* 7) Support converting in batches.
* 8) Schedule converting supported.
* 9) High converting speed, wonderful output quality.
You can complete following conversion with Text to Speech:
* Text to MP3
* Text to WAV
* Text to OGG
* Text to VOX
* Text to Voice