Interesting news from Russia today again. I have already mentioned that the way social networks operate here in Russia is often more than peculiar and they can come up with the most unexpected approaches to how they work. Yet it looks like we are watching a new example of some civilization arriving to Russian social networking space with a new court proceeding reported today by the local media outlets. The story is about a guy who accessed an account of his girlfriend on Odnoklassniki.ru, one of the largest social networks in Russia. In fact, the guy did not even need...
New web service Nombray is out to help folks establish their online identity by registering their name-based domain. Enter your name into the Nombray search engine and register the various available combinations of vanity URL available. (For example, a search for my name returns GinaTrapani.name, GinaTrapani.us, GTrapani.com, etc.) Then, register the URLs of your choice for $20 apiece, and use Nombray's simple web page designer and hosting service to link to the various social networks and profiles you've set up across the web. (See CEO Chris Lunt's Nombray-powered chrislunt.net site above for an example, where Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter...
As I’ve started shooting photos more often, I’ve picked up on some interesting patterns: habits, if you like. And, as I struggle to absorb the insane physics of capturing light with some glass and a black box, I accept upfront that the improvements to my actual photos will be slow, incremental, and, largely undetectable to anybody but me — a fact that’s never more painfully clear than when I swoon over the work of the more talented friends who inspire me (Heather, Ryan and Chris each come to mind here). But, being instantly great at this couldn’t be further from...
Filed under: Internet, Productivity, Mozilla, Search, Browsers Good things really do come in small packages, as is the case with the URL Alias Firefox addon. I originally installed it looking to make the address bar more launcher-like. For example, I wanted http://mail.google.com/mail/#inbox to open when I type mail or http://www.freep.com/apps/pbcs.dll/section?Category=SPORTS05 when I enter wings. I prefer using words or abbreviations I can remember easily instead of hotkey combinations, and this experimental addon is the perfect tool for the job. Since URL Alias also supports a variable (yep, just one), you can do a whole lot more with your aliases than...
Web site traffic and activity follows a fairly regular flow. Any administrator or stat junkie can tell you that the vast majority of sites see much more activity on the weekday than the weekend, and businesses tend to see Sunday traffic higher than that of Saturday, as people start to gear up for the coming workweek. Times of holiday, whether worldwide or just in the United States, also impact the activity, reducing traffic, and seeing a slowdown across the board when it comes to publishing. This year, Google Reader hints the slowdown is as much as fifty percent.As I've mentioned...
I don't generally do a lot of food posts over here, but I thought this was really clever - love noodles, but getting bored with your same old combinations? Consult the Noodlr, the noodle soup idea generator cooked up by Serious Eater Michele Humes. Via Angry Chicken Read more | Permalink | Comments | Read more articles in Online | Digg this!...
Filed under: Utilities, Productivity, Web services, Education The biggest players in the online translation game are Yahoo! Babelfish and Google Translate. They both have their unique charms, but a site called Frengly might offer a little competition. Its selection of languages isn't quite as extensive as Google's -- you won't find Hindi, Latvian or Catalan, for example -- but it does offer more languages and more combinations than Babelfish. Frengly's killer feature is auto-detection, though.Frengly's language detection is even cooler than Google's, for a couple of reasons. First, you don't have to select auto-detection from a language list, like you...
iKnow! is a social language learning platform that is intended to make web-based learning of foreign languages an easy and enjoyable process that will actually help users learn and remember languages. iKnow! is developed by a Japanese company Cerego and initially started as an English learning site for Japanese people - and eventually reached the status of the largest site in this category in Japan. After that it further developed into a platform for people speaking just about any language to learn and collaborate with other language learners in the process. iKnow! platform is already very popular with its 340...
What a Lovely Name is a tag-based search engine for baby names. Rather than take the traditional approach of searching for a name and then reading what traits are associated with that name, with What a Lovely Name you select a handful of traits you value and the gender of the child and the site suggests names. The name suggestions are refreshingly multicultural, in testing various trait combinations I wasn't stuck with a laundry list of Anglo-Saxon names. Interestingly when I chose the two traits I find most endearing in my own daughter, elegance and strength, her name appeared in...
With one week left to go, Black Friday (aka the day after Thanksgiving) is almost upon us. Historically, Black Friday sales were typically called After-Thanksgiving sales, but thanks to a growing number of websites leaking retailer promotions, Black Friday has become part of the vernacular for consumers (rather than an industry term). Both searches around Black Friday and traffic to a custom category of 12 Black Friday websites has been increasing over the past 6 weeks, but fewer publicized sales to date and a late Thanksgiving has the total market share of visits currently lower than the same timeframe last...
iPhone/iPod touch only: Streaming media server Orb has released free and $9.99 versions of an app that lets you watch videos, listen to music, check documents and even stream live or recorded TV to your iPhone or iPod touch. Like other combinations that use Orb's Windows-only (for now) software at their core, connection speeds and lag vary depending on the two sides of the connection, but streaming video to my iPod touch was decent enough, if a tiny bit out of sync. The main difference between the free and paid versions is a big one—the free version picks three items...
There used to be a time where you either had a mouse or your were totally lost. Then there came the time of simple keyboard shortcuts like ctr+c. Nowadays each application, desktop or web, has its own set of key combinations, and the fault is not yours if you don’t know all these. There are a number shortcuts which are common to all, or at least a great number of applications, like copying, closing, and so on. This may be common knowledge to many of you, but perhaps you’ll find something new nevertheless, so take a peek after the fold!...
This LEGO safe is made out of modular plastic blocks called LEGO bricks. And it has a Mindstorm NXT unit attached to handle its secret combination. Five double digit codes protect your valuables, and the dial goes both ways, so there's a left and right entry for each number -- hence, over 305 billion possible combinations. Moving the safe will trip motion sensors and set off an alarm, and bars inside strengthen the structure. Not bad -- as long as you're only locking up old Halloween candy or your little sister. But what if you need to protect something...
