Jan 19

Bubbl.us: Online Mind-Mapping Fun

Posted in: Today's Chili, Web Sites

This article was written on January 26, 2007 by CyberNet.

There’s no need for a white-board or paper the next time you need to organize your thoughts and make a diagram.  Instead, try bubbl.us, a mind-mapping product powered by flash that makes great use of Web 2.0 technology. This is for anyone who needs help organizing, or planning and sorting out your ideas. By visiting bubble.us, you can easily, and quickly get started in the planning process.

It uses linked text bubbles and color coordination to create an easy to read diagram.  The process begins with a parent bubble.  By hitting tab, it will create another bubble the same color, and the same level of hierarchy.  By hitting enter, it will create a new level of hierarchy with different colored bubbles (child).  Each of the bubbles are connected with lines.  You’re able to click to drag each of the bubbles and arrange them how’d you like it.

They’ve added a little bit of fun with the deleting process.  By pressing the x in the corner of a bubble, you’ll delete the bubble.  Instead of simply deleting the bubble, a counter will begin counting from three, right on down to zero.  The line that connects each bubble looks like a lit fuse, and when it reaches zero, the bubble blows up into a cloud of fire. Fun.

Bubbl.us places the navigation to the right.  Your list of current projects will be there, and easy to access.  You’ll also find the save function, along with the print function.  Certainly there are more complex mind-mapping products out there, but this is free, and it’s easy to use for your basic needs.

One thing that would be nice to see implemented in the future would be a collaboration feature.  If you were using this for work or school purposes, it would be great to be able to collaborate with group or team members. Overall I think bubbl.us is a great Web 2.0 mind-mapping product that gets the job done.

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Jan 17

Zac Browser: A New Browser for Autistic Kids

Posted in: Software, Today's Chili, Web Sites

This article was written on June 05, 2008 by CyberNet.

zac browser 2.png

Technology is really amazing, isn’t it? Most of us are able to freely use it on a regular basis without the wink of an eye because it’s just second nature. Unfortunately, the same technology the majority of us are able to use freely, often times isn’t created with people that have disabilities like deafness or blindness in mind. Over the years things have slowly gotten more accessible for them thanks to assistive technology but there are still some people who are “left out.”

One man, John LeSieur felt as though his six year old grandson wasn’t able to take advantage of computers because he is autistic. Without going into too much detail, Autism is a brain development disorder that impairs communication, social interactions with others, and more. it’s considered a spectrum disorder meaning that there’s a range of impairments and some people are considered low-functioning while others are high-functioning. No one person with autism is going to function exactly the same as another which can make things tricky. LeSieur set-out to simplify the experience of using a computer for his grandson and felt one way he could do this was to create a web browser.

This new browser is called “The Zac Browser” in honor of his grandson and it’s free to anybody. Because as we mentioned, not all Autistic children are the same, not everybody will benefit, but a lot will. Here’s what he did with the browser:

  • Hand-picked sites that could be visited and enjoyed by autistic children and included some that were educational, others that were visually stimulating, and some that had appropriate music and videos
  • To keep children from getting overwhelmed with multiple buttons and keys to press, keys that wouldn’t be necessary to a child like “print Screen” are disabled, the right-click mouse button is also disabled he says doing this “eliminates commands most children don’t need anyway, and it reduces the chance an autistic child will lose confidence after making a counterproductive click
  • Icons are much larger than normal and large symbols are used like a soccer ball to signify games or books to signify stories
  • No advertisements or flashing distractions appear which could cause the child to lose focus

Essentially what LeSieur did was limit the distractions an autistic child will come across as much as possible so that they won’t get frustrated, and it gives them the opportunity to be independent. As we mentioned, it’s not going to be the perfect solution for every autistic child out there, but it will probably help many.

The Zac Browser is an interesting concept, isn’t it? Assistive technology is so expensive and in some situations, simply creating a customized web browser could be of tremendous help to those with disabilities. Perhaps this will be the start of a new trend and we’ll see more customized browsers out there that cater to different groups of people?

Source: AP via Yahoo

Checkout the Zac Browser – it’s free!

Thanks for the tip Kiltboy!

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Jan 17

Is DRM Finally on the Way Out?

Posted in: Apple, itunes, Microsoft, Screenshots, Today's Chili, Web Sites

This article was written on April 27, 2007 by CyberNet.

DRM FreePretty big news was just released by MacRumors.com which mentions a recent notice that Apple sent out to all iTunes partners who sell music on the iTunes store. The message said:

Many of you have reached out to iTunes to find out how you can make your songs available higher quality and DRM-free. Starting next month, iTunes will begin offering higher-quality, DRM-free music and DRM-free music videos to all customers.

That’s right! Apple will be offering music publishers the chance to make their content DRM-free! Is this finally the momentum that is needed to fully eliminate DRM? I’m thinking that it could be since companies and artists will want to compete with each other.

All of this has started because EMI (an independent music company in London) drew up a deal to have their entire catalog of music placed on iTunes store without the DRM, and at higher quality. That is something many independent artists have requested since it will encourage users to buy their music.

Now we just have to hope that this will spark a domino effect…and that DRM will come tumbling down!

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Jan 17

Flickr Taking Photos on a Picnik

Posted in: Photos, Today's Chili, Web Sites

This article was written on December 05, 2007 by CyberNet.

We knew it was coming, and now it’s here! Now you can edit the photos you’ve uploaded to Flickr right in Flickr using Picnik, my favorite online photo editing service. The folks at Flickr must have “creating a fantastic experience for our users” at the top of their priority list, because the service continues to get better and better. It was just two weeks ago when they launched a new version of their popular uploader with a bunch of changes so that  the whole process of uploading photos is effortless. It looks like they have the uploading experience down pat, and now they’re incorporating the editing portion as well. Ultimately, Flickr is taking care of any photo need that you may have starting with the uploading, moving on to the editing, and finishing with the option to have your photos printed thanks to their partnerships with a few different companies.

flickr picnik

Here’s how the editing process will work:

  1. Log in to your Flickr account
  2. Click on the photo that you’d like to edit
  3. Click “edit photo” button at the top (in between “rotate” and “delete”)
  4. A box will appear asking if you’d like to enable Picnik to open inside of your Flickr account – click OK
    flickr message
  5. Picnik will load right within Flickr, and then you can start editing your photos

You’ll have all of the same great editing features that you have available to you when you visit the Picnik site like auto-fixing, rotating, cropping, red-eye removal, resizing, etc. You can even convert a colored picture to black and white by adjusting the saturation and temperature in the “colors” option. There are a few effects and features that you won’t be able to use unless you have a Picnik Premium account (which is $25 per year), but the common things that most people would want to do are available for free and easy to use. If there’s something you’ll only be able to do with a premium account, it will be noted.

The whole editing process is so simple and works perfectly right from Flickr. Two thumbs-up to both Flickr and Picnik – what an awesome collaboration!

Source: Lifehacker

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Jan 16

Skype Offers “Unlimited World” Calling Plans for $9.95!

Posted in: Phones, Today's Chili, Web Sites

This article was written on April 21, 2008 by CyberNet.

skype unlimited world Regularly making phone calls Internationally can get pretty darn pricey these days! Coming to the rescue of those callers is Skype who today, just announced new unlimited calling plans to overseas phones for an extremely reasonable price. When I say reasonable, it’ll only cost $9.95 per month to make a phone call to 34 different countries around the World. You really can’t beat that price, can you?

Countries included with this new “Unlimited World” calling plan include most of Europe, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Chile, China, Singapore, Taiwan, Japan, Korea and Malaysia (view the full list here). What’s nice is that users will be able to call the landline phones of friends and family for that price. So for example, I (living in the United States) can call the land line of my cousin living in the United Kingdom  or the landline of my friend living in Portugal and talk to them for as long as I want in a month’s time for $9.95. Crazy, isn’t it?

Worth pointing out is that their “unlimited calling” isn’t actually unlimited. They’ll give you up to 10,000 minutes, but who really needs more than 10,000 minutes in a month? Because there are no long term contracts, this ought to be a really enticing option for people who call overseas frequently.

Overall, people still use Skype the most for calls made from one computer to another. In the first three months of this year alone, users called phones for around 1.7 billion minutes. On the other hand, over 14 billion minutes were used from those making computer-to-computer calls. This new Unlimited World plan may change that and we’ll see more people calling landline phones over the next coming months.

Source: AP

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Jan 16

Digg’s API is up for Grabs – Contest Begins

Posted in: Today's Chili, Web Sites

This article was written on April 20, 2007 by CyberNet.

DiggshirtDigg users are celebrating! Finally, the head honchos over at Digg have decided that it’s time to offer up the API that developers have been requesting for a while. Along with it comes a Flash application toolkit, and access to Digg data going all the way back to 2004.

On top of this, they’ve started a contest to promote the Digg API and creativity.  You have to have an account to enter, but if you win, there are some pretty decent prizes.

Using the API and the Flash toolkit, users will need to come up with something great using Adobe Flash and Apollo. I’m looking forward to the mashups that will come out of this because for me, Digg has lost its appeal. Hopefully there will be something that’ll bring the excitement back.

The prizes that they’re offering up to the winners aren’t bad either! The first place winner will receive a Falcon Northwest Gaming PC, along with the full catalog of EA games for the PC(that’s a lot of games), and the Adobe CS3 Master Collection. There are second and third place prizes as well, and 10 finalists will get the complete collection of Digg Gear– more than you ever wanted.

You’ve got until May 16th to submit your entry, and unfortunately it’s not open to residents outside of the U.S. (Details Here)

 

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Jan 14

Apple Drops iTunes Plus Prices to 99 Cents!

Posted in: amazon, Apple, itunes, Music, Today's Chili, Web Sites

This article was written on October 17, 2007 by CyberNet.

itunes plus music Oh the benefits of competition are a sweet thing, really! It took Apple approximately three weeks to respond to the launch of Amazon’s DRM-Free Music Store. It was a simple as this- Amazon started selling DRM-free songs for 89 cents to a maximum of 99 cents while Apple’s iTunes was selling DRM-free songs for $1.29. When we wrote about the whole Amazon deal, we said that Amazon’s move may have actually caused Steve Jobs to get a bit concerned now that iTunes has a real competitor, and it appears this was true. Apple made the official announcement today that DRM-free songs from iTunes Plus will now be sold at 99 cents, obviously to match the competition.

Prior to this change, users were able to upgrade their DRM-infested songs to the DRM-free version for 30 cents, the difference between what they originally paid for the song (99 cents) and what the going rate for DRM-free was at the time ($1.29), which made sense. From the sounds of it though, Apple is still going to charge users the 30 cents if they want to upgrade, despite the fact that there’s no difference in price between songs from iTunes and iTunes Plus. This hasn’t been confirmed, so if you decide you want to upgrade some of your songs to DRM-free, let us know if you were still charged the 30 cents.

All that’s left to say is, YAY for competition! For once Apple was left squirming and had to respond, and thankfully they did!

Source: Ars

Thanks for the tip Cory!

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Jan 13

Free Music Downloads

Posted in: Music, Today's Chili, Web Sites

This article was written on August 09, 2007 by CyberNet.

RIAA Toilet PaperWouldn’t it be nice to get some free music downloads with no strings attached? That’s something many of us long for, and it’s the same thing that the RIAA despises. One of the places where I can legally download free music is a site that one of my friends told me about, and it’s called PureVolume. There they have a wide variety of artists (both signed and unsigned) that have songs available for download. They may not be people you’ve heard about, but I’ve found a lot of really good music on there from many different genres.

If you can’t find anything there that you like, Mahalo has put together a lengthy guide on downloading free music. They discuss using services like The Hype Machine, SeeqPod, Elbo.ws, Del.icio.us, Google, and even the BitTorrent network as sources of getting some tunes at no cost.

I had known about the Google trick before, but the Del.icio.us trick was what really caught my attention. By adding some parameters onto the URL you are able to filter bookmarks based upon the file extension they point to. Here’s how it works:

  1. Create a custom search by typing http://del.icio.us/tag/system:filetype:mp3 into the URL box. This will bring up a list of all of the MP3s on del.icio.us.
  2. In order to search for music from a specific artist, add "+ArtistName" to the end of the URL. (i.e. http://del.icio.us/tag/system:filetype:mp3+Radiohead).
  3. Right-click on the link and choose "Save Link As" in order to download the file.

Now how cool is that? I tried doing searches for a lot of different artists, but didn’t come up with many results. So don’t expect this to be a gold mine, but it is still pretty cool.

The Google trick is similar in how it works:

  1. Typing: -inurl:htm -inurl:html intitle:"index of" mp3 "White Stripes" into the Google search box will bring up directories that contain songs by The White Stripes. You can replace "White Stripes" with the name of the artist you’re looking for.

This used to be a pretty effective method for finding music back when it was first discovered. You would browse through sites in an FTP-like manner and download the songs straight from their servers. However, there are a lot of spammers out there now that have created similar sites that are only made to redirect you to somewhere else that is infested with "click the monkey and win" ads.

If you’re looking for more ways to download some free music, head on over to Mahalo where you’ll find a great guide awaiting you. If you’ve got a great place you get free music from let us know in the comments (yes, we already know about BitTorrent :) ).

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Jan 13

Google Adds New Privacy Measures in Quest to Takeover the World

Posted in: Google, search, Today's Chili, Web Sites

This article was written on March 15, 2007 by CyberNet.

Google PrivacyThe web is buzzing with Google’s new announcement that they are making search data more anonymous after 18–24 months of it being collected. As of right now Google stores the query itself, IP addresses and cookie details each time a user performs a search. This gives Google personally identifiable information about every user.

The question that I have read virtually everywhere asks why Google even has to store the IP address of a user? Wouldn’t it be just as effective to come up with a “user ID” for the different visitors which would serve the same purpose? When AOL leaked their search data to the Internet it only contained an ID number for each user. Sure you could find all of the searches done by the same user, but at least no one could specifically identify you via your IP address. With that ID AOL is still able to track search patterns, but they do so in a non-personally identifiable way.

Google doesn’t plan making this new plan effective for several months (maybe even a year), but they just wanted to keep everyone informed as to what they do with your information. I commend them for even posting about this because other than AOL I have no idea what information these search engines are keeping from me.

According to ValleyWag, a marketing firm retained by Ask.com and Yahoo have started a site to “stop the online information monopoly.” The site is called Information Revolution and it says:

One company could eventually control all access to information on the Web! Controlling your mind would only be a step away! Then they’ll have you.

I was flipping through the blog posts and they did end up admitting that it is the Ask.com UK site behind the whole thing. The very first comment I saw on that blog post was pretty amusing:

“or try Ask and then switch back” – I did try an I immediately switch back (to Google). Choice isn’t about choosing something else just for the sake of it.

I chose Google because it gives the the best results every time, Ask.com simply doesn’t – maybe someday you will – but not by clever marketing but by improving your results until they are as relevant as the competition.

So is Google trying to take over the world by controlling everyone’s information? Maybe, but if they do it will be because people voluntarily use their services. They have developed some great products, and that is why I use them. Sure I know that they collect some information on me, but that is a tradeoff I’m willing to make for services that I don’t have to pay for.

I remember when there was a huge uproar with the initial announcement of ads in Gmail. People were in awe that Google would scan emails to generate related advertising. Google assured people that it was not storing any content from the emails and that it was just looking for keywords. People were still wanting in Gmail so bad that invitations were selling on eBay like hotcakes!

While the latest development in Google’s search privacy is nice, it isn’t something I’ll really think about later on. It’s not like I’m going to think about what their collecting from me every time I search, because the truth is that all search engines are keeping tabs on you in some way or another. The only way to get around that would be to develop your own search engine!

Maybe the Patriot Search is what you need if you don’t want to worry about Google keeping your information. The Patriot Search (a joke thought up by Google Blogoscoped) has a mission like no other search engine out there:

Our mission is to provide the best possible search engine to you while at the same time, making sure the government is informed should you search for something obscure, illegal, or unpatriotic.

Oh yeah, and you probably should view the privacy policy page:

In fact, your motivation to read this privacy policy seems highly suspicious to us. Rest assured you’ve just been reported to the government.

I felt the need to throw some humor into this article. :) All right, there are a lot of different stories I read on this topic so I’ll just list them all here as my sources: SlashDot, InfoWorld, InformationWeek, Yahoo! News, Google Blogoscoped, TechDirt, ValleyWag, TechMeMe, and the Official Google Blog

Thanks to everyone who sent this in!

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Jan 11

Don’t Get Comfortable With Your @Live.com Addresses

Posted in: Today's Chili, Web Sites

This article was written on November 15, 2006 by CyberNet.

Windows Live Last week Microsoft had a loop hole in their email sign-up system that allowed anyone to create a @Live.com email address using a single line of JavaScript code. Three days later they were able to patch the problem but now they might close all of the accounts that were created says the Windows Live Mail Blog:

If you created an @live.com account using the instructions below, it’s quite likely the account will get blown away.

So how smart would that be for Microsoft to close all of those accounts? They would be discouraging the people who care the most about getting one of those addresses and if they closed my account I definitely wouldn’t ever create a new one (I also wouldn’t inform anyone else about the service when it launches). It is their fault that the loop hole existed so they need to cut their losses and move on.

I didn’t create an account this time around but I did do it several months ago and my account still remains active. I don’t really use it much, if at all, but it is always there if I need it. I’m not sure if I’ll be effected should they decide to close the accounts since mine was not created using this trick, but rather a different one. :D

Use this as a warning not to make it your primary email address because you know as soon as you switch everything over to it they’re gonna cut you off. That’s how it always seems to work. ;)

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