Jul 15

Leap Day Around the Web!

Posted in: Today's Chili, Web Sites

This article was written on February 29, 2008 by CyberNet.

leap year google logo

This morning after I woke up, it just took a minute to realize it was leap year day, February 29th. Thanks to Google I was able to figure this out. The “L” in their logo was replaced by a frog which reminded me that today was something special. Around the web and in stores, it seems to be special too. Marketers are using this once-every-four-year occasion to promote products and services. Before we get to that, here are a few Leap Year/Day facts from Wikipedia:

  • A leap year is a year containing one or more extra days in order to keep the calendar year synchronized with the astronomical or seasonal year.
  • February 29th is a date that occurs only every fourth year. This day is added to the calendar as a corrective measure because the earth does not orbit around the sun in precisely 365,000 days.
  • A person born on February 29 is sometimes calling a “leapling.” An article by the associated press today talks about a woman born on Leap Day in 1912. Today she’s celebrating her 24th birthday at 96 years old.

Now on to Leap Day around the web…

Circuit City: Save up to 29% on certain items like HDTVs, home audio, computers, cameras, GPS & more… www.circuitcity.com

leap year circuit city

 

Papa John’s Pizza: If your birthday happens to fall on Leap Year, Pap John’s will give you a free pizza (must order online). Additionally, they’re using this day to promote their new “Perfect Pan Pizza” which they say is “One Giant Leap for Pankind.” All customers are eligible for three large pizzas with three toppings for $29.29. www.papajohns.com

pappa johns leap year

Boston Market: By visiting the Boston Market web page, you’ll see a message which says “Happy Leap Day!” Those who were born on the day will get a free lunch. www.bostonmarket.com

leap day

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Jul 13

Microsoft’s Security Site Pictures A Mac User

Posted in: Today's Chili, Web Sites

This article was written on August 16, 2006 by CyberNet.

Microsoft Mac Security Site

MacDailyNews did a pretty thorough investigation to prove that Microsoft’s security site had an image of a Mac user. Their research consisted of going over to Fotosearch and finding the image that Microsoft had nabbed in order to create the banner. Upon zooming in they noticed that the computer was obviously a Mac…oops! They then go on to say “Hey, Microsoft, if you’re going to pretend to be serious about security, shouldn’t you use a picture of a Dell or HP or something instead of reminding people about the truly secure Apple Macintosh?“

Microsoft has since taken the banner down and replaced it with a different one. Funny enough is that the new banner still looks like it is an Apple PowerBook. Maybe they should have used an image with a black computer this time.

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Jul 13

Chat With Users On Your Web Site Using MeeboMe

Posted in: Today's Chili, Web Sites

This article was written on August 02, 2006 by CyberNet.

Chat With Users On Your Web Site Using MeeboMe


Meebo just launched a new service called MeeboMe which lets you put a chat widget on your Web site. Users will then be able to see when the publisher is online and chat with them directly. This only allows one-on-one conversations at this point but could be expanded to group chats in the future.

The weirdest thing about MeeboMe is that the visitor doesn’t have to be the one that initiates the conversation. A publisher can also ping a visitor and start chatting but that would be pretty weird for the visitor. If I didn’t know about the MeeboMe service then I would be a little freaked out and wonder how someone has started a chat with me. Well, being the geek that I am I would probably try and figure out how they did it first :D .

I remember seeing a WordPress plug-in that does something similar to this by adding a “shout box” to your blog. The bad part about using a plug-in is that you are eating up your own bandwidth. Using MeeboMe not only means you save money on bandwidth but they take care of all the development costs. I am sure they will continue to add new features to it that will make it even better…and it won’t cost you anything!

News Source: TechCrunch

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Jul 13

YouTube Starts Sharing the Wealth

Posted in: Today's Chili, videos, Web Sites, YouTube

This article was written on May 04, 2007 by CyberNet.

As expected, YouTube has started the process of sharing the wealth and paying some of their top users for their unique video content.  User-created content has turned YouTube into a massive, wildly popular video service.  They rely heavily on those user-created videos, so it only makes sense that they share the ad revenues with those who create the content.

Jamie Byrne who’s the vice president of marketing for YouTube said, “We want to ensure that these talented people can start making a living off of their efforts.  We hope this will inspire others to create their own original content.”

This is a process that will be rolled out slowly.  They’re starting with 20 to 40 of their top users including Lonelygirl15 who was probably one of the first major YouTube “stars.” Revenue will be split 50/50 with them which seems like a fair deal. Afterall, these people haven’t made a penny so far off of their videos, so I’m sure they’ll appreciate the money now.

It’s taken YouTube a fairly long time to get this process going, because several other video services have offered it for quite a while now including Metacafe and Revver. Just as some bloggers have been able to turn their hobby into a full-time job, so will some the users who have created popular videos on YouTube.

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Jul 11

Vertor Torrent Tracker Verifies Files Before You Download Them

Posted in: Movies, Screenshots, Today's Chili, videos, Web Sites

This article was written on January 13, 2009 by CyberNet.

vertor.jpgOne of the things that is always hard about downloading from the BitTorrent network is trying to figure out what’s legit and what’s not. A lot of times I rely on the comments from other people to tell me whether the content is what it should be, or whether someone is trying to play a cruel trick.

Vertor is a BitTorrent tracker that is trying to circumvent this problem with bogus or infected files. What it does is download all of the torrents it can get its hands on, scan them for viruses, and if the torrent is a video it will provide screenshots taken throughout the movie. All of this can help play into whether you’re downloading the torrent that you think you are.

Want to see what I’m talking about? A good example is of the Big Buck Bunny video that, as some of you may know, was released for free to demonstrate the power of an open-source 3D modeling program called Blender. Vertor was able to download the video and snag some shots so that you can visually verify the torrent before even starting the download.

As of right now Vertor has processed over 400,000 torrents of which 256k had download errors, 130k have been successfully verified, 2800 had viruses, 5400 were password protected, and another 11k were blocked by moderators. So their servers are definitely hard at work to try and save you some hassle! It’s a service that’s definitely worth bookmarking.

Vertor Homepage

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Jul 09

April Fools Jokes 2007: The Google Drive is Real?

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

This article was written on April 01, 2007 by CyberNet.

Everyone has been hoping for a long time that Google would soon release a Google Drive service for users to store all of their files. Google Blogoscoped did an amazing job of setting up an “official” blog for what would appear to be for the Google Drive:

Google Drive
Click to Enlarge

However, it is currently in the “Beta” stage right now and is only available to a limited number of people:

We have heard users complain from time to time that we don’t provide enough space for them to store emails, photos, and files. Realizing the growing demand of the Web 2.0 users, over the past year we have been working on a ultimate backup system.

Today, our team pleased to announce the launch of Google Drive beta, an online file backup system from Google that integrated with Google Services like Gmail, Picasa Web Albums, Google Calendars, and many others.

This service will only be available to a limited amount of users during its beta stage. If you are invited, you can find a link called “Drive” in the Gmail Navigation Links.

Does anyone see the “Drive” shortcut in their Gmail Navigation Links? ;)

Stay tuned as we feature a wide array of April Fools Jokes throughout the day!

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Jul 08

MobileMe Users Are Going Phishing

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

This article was written on August 15, 2008 by CyberNet.

As though MobileMe users haven’t had enough issues do deal with since the service launched with outages, incorrect descriptions of the service, and more, and now many of those users are going phishing. What we mean by that is, hundreds of MobileMe users are getting caught up in a phishing scam that targets the service, and they are giving out their credit card information. Computerworld says that in one day alone, between 100 and 200 people got scammed already.

Recipients were receiving a message that of course, looked like it came from Apple, and it read:

Welcome. We were unable to process your most recent payment. Did you recently change your bank, phone number or credit card?

To ensure that your service is not interrupted, please update your billing information today by clicking here, After a few clicks, just verify the information you entered is correct.

Other than a comma that should have been a period after the word “here,” (often times phishing messages are plagued with spelling and grammar errors) the message looked legitimate.

If you receive a message like the one shown below, report it as a phishing attempt (if you don’t know how, read our Helpful Tip on how to do so).

mobileme phishing.png

Image Source

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Jul 05

Contribution to Wikipedia Declining but Traffic is Up!

Posted in: Today's Chili, Web Sites

This article was written on October 11, 2007 by CyberNet.

Has Wikipedia peaked? Was it just a fad? These are questions that people are asking today after an independent analysis found that activity over at the popular online encyclopedia has been declining.  More specifically, editing has been down 20% while new account creation is down 30%. Wikipedia hasn’t bothered to update their statistics page for just about two years which is why the analysis was conducted independently.

So what does this mean? In my opinion, I see this as more of a natural decline.  There is SO much information already available on Wikipedia and at some point, it was bound to drop.  A drop in editing and new account creation doesn’t mean that Wikipedia’s growth has come to a halt by any means, nor does it mean that it was just a fad.  I think the more important question to ask is how many people use Wikipedia as a “read-only” service and don’t contribute? I’m definitely one of those people. I’ve never once contributed, but I sure do read it and I think at this point, that’s how the majority of people will use Wikipedia.

The graph below from Compete.com shows us that Wikipedia’s traffic has actually increased over the last several months:

wikipedia graph

Beta News points out how this decline could also be from recent arguments among the site’s community.  They write, “Those known as the “deletionsists” seem quick with the delete key and have high standards for “notability.” However “inclusionists” disagree, saying that articles shouldn’t be deleted quickly because they may be expanded later” It’s possible that the disagreement over what should and shouldn’t be included could be keeping some of their biggest contributors from adding new content to the site.

Wikipedia Moving

In other related news, Wikipedia is making the big move from Florida to San Francisco – the Technology capital of the U.S. They’ll make the move in January, and once they move, they plan to hire on more staff to add to the six full-time employees that they currently have.  According to Florence Devouard, chair of the Wikimedia Foundation, “San Francisco is the center of high-tech in the United States and will give the foundation access to a rich array of resources.” Considering how long Wikipedia has been around, I’m surprised they didn’t make the move sooner. They join the long list of other tech companies who have left their homes to relocate in California.

Source: Reuters

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Jul 02

Multi-Monitor And High Resolution Wallpaper

Posted in: Today's Chili, Web Sites

This article was written on August 06, 2006 by CyberNet.

When you’re out on a search for a wallpaper, regardless of the monitor size or set up, sometimes it’s hard to find a good site that isn’t filed with pop-ups and other advertisements. It is especially difficult if you’ve got a multi-monitor (dual-head), or a high resolution set up. I came across a website that has some good options for those with the multi-monitor set up without the pop-ups. Some of them look pretty cool, and to top it off, there are very few advertisements which makes it an easy viewing site. Two examples are below, and you can find the website here.

Multi-Monitor And High Resolution Wallpaper

Even if you don’t have a multi-monitor setup but you have a high resolution monitor, it can be tricky as well.This website has free high resolution widscreen wallpapers. They even offer wallpapers for the 2560×1600 resolution, the 30 inch monitors (Dell Version, Apple Version) we all wish we had! You can search the website by the most downloaded or recently added. Additionally, if you come across a bunch you like and want to save them, you can create a login and save your favorites to access later.

If you’re on a search for a desktop background, both the listed sites are worth checking out.

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Jun 30

Yahoo to Sell DRM-Free Music Soon?

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

This article was written on January 24, 2008 by CyberNet.

drm The latest forming trend in digital music downloads seems to be that everyone wants to start offering DRM-free music.  Both Amazon and iTunes offer a DRM-free catalog of music as well as several other sites like eMusic. People like DRM-free because it means once they download a song or album, they can play the song on multiple devices. When Amazon’s service launched, it got rave reviews. People were generally happy with the selection, but even more happy with the price. Now there are rumors that Yahoo is wanting to get in on DRM-free fun too and that they have plans to launch a DRM Free music service sometime within 2008.

Yahoo has publicly denied that they are even working on such a project, however, the Associated Press is reporting that record executives have come to them and said that they have met with Yahoo and that they already had preliminary talks last month. They’re trying to work out a deal with major companies like Universal, Sony, Warner, and EMI to offer unprotected songs either for sale, or as part of an ad-supported  music service. When the AP went to the record companies to ask about such a deal, they simply declined to comment which could very well mean these rumors are true.

As Mashable points out, if these talks had occurred months before, it probably would have been a pretty big deal.  However, because there are other sites out there that offer DRM Free MP3s like Amazon, this isn’t really groundbreaking. Would you be happy to see yet another big name enter the scene? Eventually, I think DRM-free will be the new “norm” and consumers will be able to buy the unprotected songs anywhere they’d like. Perhaps record labels are finally realizing that sales of music and life do go on when they don’t have tight control?

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