Tech at the speed of Warp

Multicolr Search Lab

2008-11-28T11:31:00.000+01:00

Multicolr Search Lab is a Flickr search tool with a twist. It uses colors rather than words to describe what you are looking for. Additional feature is that you can stack wanted colors so you can search for pictures that have multiple color attributes.
Give it a try...

Unpowerd Holographic outdor display

2008-11-17T13:38:00.000+01:00

Synergy - Share computers with one mouse and keyboard

2008-10-21T10:45:00.001+01:00

If you are like me and are thinking of using a array of Atom 330 computers to distribute work or to construct a nice little workstation. Or, you just need different OS running on different computers Synergy is a Open Source project you should check out.

I love to Sketch

2008-10-13T13:03:00.000+01:00

I Love to Sketch looks like an interesting approach to fast 3D modeling. Check out the video below.

ILoveSketch from Seok-Hyung Bae on Vimeo.

Recovering Censored Text Using Photoshop and JavaScript

2008-10-09T09:07:00.000+01:00

Not very useful now but when they perfect it you will be able to recover text obscured with famed photoshop filter mozaik.
Check video for proof of concept, currently it only works under controlled conditions and resembles bruteforce password cracking.

Recovering Censored Text Using Adobe Photoshop CS3 from Tom Robinson on Vimeo.

Picvi.com, a place to find your daily picture fix.

2008-09-23T09:53:00.000+01:00

I just recently found this site and found it refreshing, well organized and with fresh and quality pictures. Picvi.com is structured as blog with posts that are updated often with a small treat at the end of each page in form of some flash game that acts as a break from all pictures.
A nice place for a start of those pesky chain letters with some funny picture attached.

Vector Magic - Online Bitmap to Vector convertor

2008-08-29T11:50:00.000+01:00

In the spirit of online applications here is one that I find extremely useful when needed and it is nice to know that such service exists.
VectorMagic is a simple service that provides a way of getting your bitmap or raster images to vector file format used in publishing. To say it is simple service is an understatement as after uploading your image you are presented with full blown application, which is also available for desktop, build with Adobe Air/Flex platform.

When needed, there is no substitute for free solution.

OpenPhotoVR

2008-08-28T09:13:00.000+01:00

Unlike Photosynth, OpenPhotoVR is a open source version of it. But unlike Photosynth that does the processing by computer here only the interface is copied and humans need to create links between pictures.
Making it nothing more than a "pseudo-3D photo browser in Flash, a free analog to Microsoft Photosynth."

Exploring photo collections in 3D

2008-08-28T09:06:00.000+01:00

A collaboration between Microsoft and University of Washington produced a interesting concept of how a photo collection could be explored in 3D. This is one amazing piece of programing achievement.
Now, lets just hope it will make it to the mainstream sooner rather than latter.

Content-aware image resizing

2008-08-27T11:16:00.000+01:00

Content aware resize hase been shown on siggraph 2007 and has touched a nerve with design comunity. It offers simles resizing with minimal detail loss, eather when stretching or scaling down a image.
Almost immediately after release of the paper detailing the process and algorithm did the open source versions and even a plugin for GIMP and in the future versions (slated for CS4) of PhotoShop.

The video demonstrates the amazing abilitys of this new approach to resizing and is welll worth the watch.

For more information visit:
Original Document
Attempt at open source version
Another Open Source Version
Untested Photoshop Plugin

Return after some time

2008-08-27T11:03:00.000+01:00

There has been a significant pause in my postings which was due to some preoccupations of my that took much of my time.
I will restart my posting and will see where it lead to.

Swivel - Web 2.0 for data

2007-06-09T15:32:00.000+01:00

If you love statistics as I do then this is the site for you. Swivel is a online community that posts data, there are some analysis but most of the site is composed of pure data.

Swivel lets you explore data and share your insights with others. Swivel has data about politics, economics, weather, sports, business and more.

You can view information in a graph form but the most satisfying feature is that you can download a CSV file (can be opened in Excel without any problems) and preform what ever action you want on it.
Currently, Swivel is in Public Preview mode which means that any data set you post on it is visible to everybody else.
The amount of data is surprising but the quality can be an issue as some data sets that you find interesting are not of sufficient depth. This will improve over time, and reminds me of Wikipedia but for data. A person can find all sorts of information on it and is a site worth of your visit.

What happend on the day you were born?

2007-06-09T15:25:00.001+01:00

Well, at least there is one site that can tell you that and its has a really weird name, Kakophone.

Flight Patterns visualizations

2007-06-02T13:34:00.000+01:00

More details can be found here

Meshly - Bookmarking via IM

2007-04-26T20:02:00.000+01:00

I really like DIGG but one feature that could be better is link submission. Here comes in Meshly. Before, if I found some interesting link that I wanted to visit later I had to send the links back to my email and then bookmark it home. You might already have noticed that I don't use del.icio.us. I never found it, user friendly.

The most interesting feature of Meshly is how links are submitted. Meshly uses a novel approach with IM bot. By using your favorite IM like Google, AOL or MSN and adding a bots name to your contact list you have a direct line to the Meshly. First time you contact Mashly it will ask you to register and after that you just write "post" and follow the instructions for posting links.

That reminds me of my past time favorites, IRC bots. Some were smart some still are. It is interesting that no one utilized Google chat together with a Bot system before.

Meshly could be a start of a very interesting trend in IM.

Interactive scale of the universe

2007-04-04T20:28:00.000+01:00

Sometimes the surprising works come from surprising source. Nikon made a really smart web flash presentation.
Just like the video that is going around the internet depicting the sheer size of space using planets and stars, this flash application goes one step further. It shows us the comparison from really really small to really really huge.

Online Image Mosaic Generator

2007-03-21T18:29:00.001+01:00

Image Mosaic Generator takes PNG, GIF, JPG files and creates a mosaic out of them.

User has no control over what images are used for mosaic but this is a quick way to create visually stunning images.

Scrib - YouTube for Books

2007-03-12T23:09:00.000+01:00

This site is a wish come true. A birth of a new form of public library. Current count of texts online is 7606, which is not much but if someone uploads the entire Project Gutenberg, FullBooks.com or Internet Archive texts this site could explode.

Scribe.com represent a coherent way of exchanging, organizing and finding documents online. Kinda like Google book search but with social component, the ability to create, upload texts and not only download them. Scribe.com alongside user created texts offers ebooks that are not copyrighted but it is only a mater of time before copyrighted material starts to appear on Scribe.
This web site shows that there is still a large need for printed word, and not only the printed word but also images and presentations. Presentations can be downloaded in PPT or PowerPoint format and as PDF. All of texts are available in PDF, DOC, TXT.
What is interesting, they can be downloaded as MP3. An server side software converts the text to speech that can be played on the website but also downloaded for later listening. Of course the intonation and speed of such automatic text2speech is far from perfect but its something to have in mind. Choose text, hit play, and instead of reading you can listen to the text while working on something else.

Online Converters

2007-03-08T09:10:00.000+01:00

From time to time everyone has a need to convert some file format to another one. This usually involves installing a bunch of converters. Some put watermarks; some have other restrictions as most are shareware.
Online converters are here to fill the gap. In this era of broadband using the online service to convert documents and video is not a big problem.
Personally, I like ZamZar. Its interface is slick and minimalist.

Exploring photo collections in 3D

2007-02-27T22:38:00.000+01:00

Designers best friend - Blue Vertigo

2007-02-23T18:29:00.000+01:00

If you ever searched for royalty free stock photos, clipart, fonts or vector based images that you wanted to use in your own projects this is the place to visit. Blue Vertigo offers up to 1,000 links sorted by quality and quantity, not by alphabetical order so choosing the first 10 links from any category gets you instant satisfaction. I was extreamly surprised by the quality of yotophoto.com, a license free photo search.

This footage made me cry - Reliant Robin as Space Shuttle

2007-02-22T00:14:00.000+01:00

This is simply amazing. Top Gear, a British show about cars/other more or less important things, built a small space shuttle like vehicle and stuck a car on it.

And not just any car, the Reliant Robin, Del Boy's car. They actually launched Del Boy's car! Trotters are going to outer space.
A three wheel car, famous for staring in BBC "Only fools and horses" comedy show.

EDIT: As I was informed, the actual car used by Del Boy was actually Reliant Regal VAN. Three wheel car reminded me of them so I put reference to them, and lets face it, its still is a Trotters car what ever its name is.

The sheer complexity of the task and the probability of a failure make this one of TV's history making moment. For me this is up there with such footage as first launch of SpaceShipOne, the Moon landing and very few others.
It all started as a joke but after seeing the first finished booster rocket it looked more real and interesting. By the end of the show they have assembled it on a military testing site and I was expecting it to go BOOM on liftoff.

BUT THE SUc** LIFTED OFF.

Some of the specs are:

- 1/5th scale Space Shuttle...well sort of.
- Weighing in at 1.4 Metric Tonnes (3080 lbs)
- Installed impulse over 200kNs (R impulse)
- Main power plants consisting a cluster of 6 Hybrid Contrail O motors.
- Two of which were designed to be airstarted.
- Supplemented by 20 other Cesaroni composites.
- Size: 27 cubic metres. (>1000 cubic feet)
- Man capable - seating for 4.
- 4.5 months from design to ignition.

And just to emphasise the point, because it’s so damn cool, this really was the largest non-commercial rocket launch in European history.

Top Gear Shuttle Launch Aka. The New Car Bomb. - The best free videos are right here

the ending is definitely added but thats TV.

For all of you that have not seen the other TV's historic moments here are additional two that rand the highest in my book:

Freespace 2 or is it Freespace 3 ?

2007-02-11T21:57:00.000+01:00

After a huge disappointment with Star Trek franchise and its inability to produce a game worth while a moment of nostalgic made me turn once again to Descent Freespace 2 for the rescue. So I installed the Freespace 2 and went in search of mods, I remember that there was a modding community up and running making good, not bad, but just good mods for Freespace 2.
Then it happened or better yet, when did it happen? Freespace 2 is open source, with community of developers that are slowly and painstakingly taking this game to the next level.

Let’s face it, Freespace 2 was and is the best Space FPS available. The story is excellent, the interface was astoundingly manageable but provided with so much features that sometimes you had to use the entire keyboard which felt like you are trying to play a flight sim, the AI and computer controlled players were smart as was the interface to control them. It allowed the players to produce their own maps and mods with ease as a very good editor (FRED) was shipped with the game.The only thing that is not good is old graphics. This also changed, supported resolutions are maxed to 1024x768 but you can turn on the unsupported ones... OO... the joy. And then you put new textures, the game just lifts up. It can really be argued that now, this is a completely new game and we have there The Freespace 2 Source Code Project to thanks for that.
Not only did Freespace 2 get a new life but its graphic engine is being used for some upcoming games. Some of them are:

Babylon 5

but the most compleate conversation is for the upcomming Battlestar Galactica. This will be a beauty.

WikiSky - Wikipedia of Stellar proportions

2007-02-10T16:03:00.000+01:00

In the age of Wikis, Google Earth/Mars and after WikiMapia it was just a mater of time before someone creates a Wikimapia styled web service for the heavens. It is surprising that we had to wait so log to get such web application.
WikiSky has a database of more than half a billion (500,000,000) stellar objects. Thats one impressive database. One additional feature next to the shear size of the database is the SDSS mode. WikiSky uses Sloan Digital Sky Survey images to display real photographs of the sky you are looking at through WikiSky.
A couple of comments; search could be better, lists of available high-res images for selected object should show in tooltip on main map and not on separate page that is hard to navigate.

They are looking for people who are willing to code and improve their service, also they are publishing their API so all you MashUp junkies, start coding.

Fauxto, online Photoshop

2007-02-04T19:07:00.000+01:00

There have already been some reviews of similar attempts to bring the desktop grade drawing applications online. One such application is Fauxto. It is a Flex based web application with aim to become web based Photoshop, and its coming out really nice.
It is visible that it is still Alpha as many features are still missing. Nevertheless this is by far the most usable drawing application next to Litha on the web.

Web 2.0 explained

2007-02-04T13:01:00.000+01:00

The biggest buzzword and none knows what it is. Its been used over and over again in the media, on blogs, everywhere since 2004 when it was crafted. Everyone you ask gives a different explanation. O'Reilly, the creator of the term describes the Web 2.0 at Wikipedia as a

business revolution in the computer industry caused by the move to the internet as platform, and an attempt to understand the rules for success on that new platform. Chief among those rules is this: Build applications that harness network effects to get better the more people use them. (This is what I've elsewhere called 'harnessing collective intelligence.')

(Link: Wikipedia)

In another words, not even a clue to the larger portion of the population that lack Internet education of what he is talking about.

Now, enters another, more Web 2.0 way of describing the meening of the term. It was created by Michael Wesch, an Assistant Professor of Cultural Anthropology at Kansas State University. Which if you look at it makes a perfect sence. It takes a non technical person to explain technical details as tech people always get stuck using technical terms.

NASA WorldWind storm visualisation

2007-01-29T20:36:00.000+01:00

NASA WorldWind is a direct competitor of Google Earth. It offers some interesting features that are still missing from Google Earth. One such feature is direct display to globe of climate data gathered by NASA. This video shows the formation of 27 storms in the Atlantic for 2005.

Size of Space

2007-01-15T21:39:00.000+01:00

Many people have trouble visualizing the shear size of the universe. They may look like dim lights in the night sky but some of most recognizable stars are almost the size of our solar system.

Online Flash Commodore 64

2007-01-14T13:14:00.000+01:00

The good old days. Days when even programing complex things meant you only needed to know one or perhaps two programing languages. When 64kb of memory was sufficient to produce games that are even now played with joy. There are many Commodore 64 emulator software out there but all of them are, lets say, not that user friendly.
Darron Schall and Claus Wahlers created an interesting Flash and Action Script implementation of C64 emulation. Once you load the page with the emulator it automatically loads the start message we all know and love from C64 and strait on we can play games or program the legendary machine.
Emulation is still not complete and a list of things has to be added but I love it. It would also be nice if you could save the program you made or upload your own games, stretch the emulation to full screen and etc.

Wikimapia

2007-01-07T23:26:00.000+01:00

Wikimapia is to Google maps as Wikipedia is to general encyclopedia. The concept is simple, take Google Maps and stick on it little boxes indicating that certain locations have wiki entries.

The Phrase Finder

2007-01-06T11:10:00.000+01:00

Ever so often someone tells us a phrase we haven't heard before, of have heard it but don't know the meaning of it. The Phrase Finder is an awful site to look at but has almost all phrases that are used. One of my favorite is "Generation X" which is a phrase that describes people born between 1960 and 1970 goes something like this:

The ultimate responsibility of Generation X is to guide the human race through the final and crucial decades of this explosive century into the enlightenment of the next one.

Charles Hamblett and Jane Deverson's

Well, they got that one wrong.

Poor mans Google Earth

2006-12-26T14:13:00.000+01:00

All who ever played around with Google Earth knows how addictive the application can become. The only drawback is that Google web based solution is not very user friendly.
Here comes Flash Earth. It not only provides Google Earth pictures but can also connect to Microsoft VE, Yahoo Maps, ask.com, NASA and OpenLayer.

Musicovery Updates to 2.1 - Internet Radio

2006-12-19T22:26:00.000+01:00

Musicovery is an online radio station that has some interesting features. The concept is so catchy that it borders on addiction. With this said it should also be said that it creates playlists without your input or preferences outside of the select era from which you can hear music from, or the selection of mood you want your music to be delivered to you. I find this amazing, simple but affective. Some may find this a little restrictive and would like to fashion their own playlists but then this wouldn't be a radio. It boasts itself as interactive radio and it does that exceptionally well.

The selection box for mood is presented as a matrix with Energetic, Calm and Dark, Positive.
One of biggest downside until now was that there was no way of pausing the playlist. Some other nuisance were that if you select the next song in the playlist it refurbishes the playlist according to some mysterious rule.

The pause and play are now added in 2.01 version which is a big plus.Along side the pause/play button a subtle indicator that displays from which era the current playing music is also a welcome addition.

Now they have to fix the skipping of songs when selected from the playlist or even add the ability to rearrange the songs in a playlist. Or, just leave it as is and just explain what is the point of the playlist path and why is it so wavy....

Blogger Beta Social bookmarking

2006-12-12T21:34:00.001+01:00

Yesterday I wanted to add social bookmarking clickets to my webpage but found that many just supported Blogger and not Blogger beta.

One interesting site is 3spots. Actualy it is the only site that offers some advice on how to implement Social Bookmarking in Blogger BETA.

I had some hard time and I know what I was doing so here is a "template" to add some of more popular Social Bookmarking sites to your site.

First open your template and edit HTML, check Expand Widget Templates and locate 'post-footer-line post-footer-line-2' line and insert text as shown below. Bolded text is to be inserted.

EDIT:> IF you are using Blogger Classic then remove "EXPR:" infront of HREF tag.

Preview, and if everything is ok, save.

<b:if cond='data:post.labels'>
<data:postLabelsLabel/>
<b:loop values='data:post.labels' var='label'>
<a expr:href='data:label.url' rel='tag'><data:label.name/></a><b:if cond='data:label.isLast != "true"'>,</b:if>
</b:loop>
</b:if>

<a expr:href='"http://digg.com/submit?phase=2&url=" + data:post.url + "&title=" + data:post.title' target='_blank'><img alt='digg' height='16' src='http://img2.imagepile.net/images/ycc2106/61822091.png' width='16'/></a>

<a expr:href='"http://del.icio.us/post?url=" + data:post.url + "&title=" + data:post.title' target='_blank'><img alt='delicious' height='16' src='http://img2.imagepile.net/images/ycc2106/80727937.png' width='16'/></a>

<a expr:href='"http://www.furl.net/storeIt.jsp?u=" + data:post.url + "&t=" + data:post.title' target='_blank'><img alt='furl' height='16' src='http://img2.imagepile.net/images/ycc2106/47600014.png' width='16'/></a>

<a expr:href='"http://www.google.com/bookmarks/mark?op=add&bkmk=" + data:post.url + "&title=" + data:post.title' target='_blank'><img alt='google' height='16' src='http://img2.imagepile.net/images/ycc2106/10847106.png' width='16'/></a>

<a expr:href='"http://ma.gnolia.com/bookmarklet/add?url=" + data:post.url + "&title=" + data:post.title' target='_blank'><img alt='ma.gnolia' height='16' src='http://img2.imagepile.net/images/ycc2106/10998644.png' width='16'/></a>

<a expr:href='"http://reddit.com/submit?url=" + data:post.url + "&title=" + data:post.title' target='_blank'><img alt='reddit' height='16' src='http://img2.imagepile.net/images/ycc2106/10796749.png' width='16'/></a>

<a expr:href='"http://technorati.com/faves?add=" + data:post.url' target='_blank'><img alt='Technorati' height='16' src='http://img2.imagepile.net/images/ycc2106/81723336.png' width='16'/></a>

<a expr:href='"http://myweb2.search.yahoo.com/myresults/bookmarklet?t=" + data:post.title + "&u=" + data:post.url' target='_blank'><img alt='yahoo' height='16' src='http://img2.imagepile.net/images/ycc2106/54687920.png' width='16'/></a>

<a expr:href='"http://www.squidoo.com/lensmaster/bookmark?" + data:post.url' target='_blank'><img alt='Squidoo' height='16' src='http://img2.imagepile.net/images/ycc2106/25436023.png' width='16'/></a>

BIG disappointment for Trekkies everywhere

2006-12-11T21:06:00.000+01:00

I've been a Trekkie as long as I can remember and has always wanted to be emerged in Star Trek universe interactively. Discovery's, space battles and diplomacy are main components of Star Trek, or at least I thought they were.

A new Star Trek game came out and I was very eager to check it out. So a couple of hours ago I downloaded a demo and started to play.

What was the last good Star Trek game anyone on the planet has played? It seams that people that are trying to create Star Trek games are ruining them on purpose. One such example of late is Star Trek Legacy. I waited a long time for some decent ST game but Star Trek Legacy absolutely fail to live up to any expectation. I even dare to say it is the worst ST game ever. Or, this may be an overstatement as there are worst ST games out there.

Not to totally tarnish ST gaming as there are shining examples of good ST games like; ST Elite force I and Elite Force II, ST Bridge Commander and even ST Armada to some extent.

Star Trek Legacy has nothing to offer to gamers, its engine is retarded and old. The entire game has a feel that it was made in 2000 and not 2006. "In game" shots posted on line are nothing like the game engine can render. Ships break apart always the same way, not to mention that they are block of something and nothing near "realistic". The speed of the game is good until you get to some nebula and it starts grinding, I PLAY FEAR ON HIGH SETTINGS IN HIRES, and you can't manage to render a fucking nebula right?
The gameplay is frustrating. slow and after 10 minutes, boring. Control of your fleet is nonexistent except that you can switch from one ship to another. A homeworld 2 style of combat would have been allot better. There is something that resembles a story line but game doesn't allow you to choose anything. There are no upgrades for ships. Shall I continue?

I don't get one thing. Why didn't Universal Studios take ST Bridge Commander and just improved the graphics, added more depth to it, more exploring? ST Bridge Commander is one of my favorite games out of ST universe. There is still a lot of activity around this game. Moders added more animation to consoles, more variations in bridge designs and more ships. Why not take that game idea and just expand it.

Watch the GameSpot video review to see what I mean.

I can't imagine that anyone at Universal Studios didn't play ST Legacy before they embarrassed all the fans with yet another absolute failure. As a Trekkie, if something doesn't change soon in the direction in which the whole ST universe is going and people in charge of it aren't removed, I QUIT. Stargate offers more than Star Trek and at least they cancel games that don't live up to the challenge of fans.

Star Trek Legacy is an insult to any Star Trek fan.

addition> Oh MY GOD... uninstall lasts longer than installation.... its over 10 minutes and it's not over....

litha-paint is back online

2006-12-08T22:16:00.000+01:00

Some time ago I wrote about how some companies that have future in front of them are running out of money. It would seem that at least some of them are getting back on their feet. One of my favorite candidate when looking at the underdogs of Web 2.0 is definitely Litha-Paint. They are the only good vector based online drawing application that I know of.

Lately, Litha-Paint published a blog that follows the development of its application. One thing I noticed is that they described their "out of money, please donate" message as a joke, hmmm....fishing for money .. aa guys... Well played, well played. One constant theme is funding so if anyone has a ear for it please check it out. They deserve it.

They had a skype meeting with one possible investor but refused to fund as they needed to see them in person and ... as I figure ... have problems with getting visas for USA. Hmm... yep they are now on official US gov black list as hackers. A proper definition of what US gov considers a computer threat can be read here, trust me its interesting ... aaa ... opinion.
Litha-Paint changed server provider and are looking to get out of Alpha version. The long development cycle is understandable as they are trying to create a fully fledged vector based web application or at least I hope so. It is a giant task by any means. They are currently adding support for layers and if they manage to cram that in it would be a big step forward.

Any, guys please change the color, I mean ... green? and ultra green at that. Why green?

Best of luck....

Krugle

2006-12-06T11:55:00.000+01:00

There is always a need to reduce work and programing is no exception. Alot of times there is some algorithm or function that are simply to dirty to code, I call it "manual labor". Under "Manual Labor" I take any programing problem where solution is known but to get to that point we need to spend hours of coding.
With Introduction of Krugle and Google Code Search this task has become alot easier.

Krugle is a search engine designed for searching large stacks of source code for variety of programing languages.
Demo of Krugle capabilities can be seen here.

Tactile Time Simulation

2006-11-29T23:11:00.000+01:00

a video time-warping machine with a tangible deformable screen. Homepage

Online Demonstration Applet

7 Best Color Schemers Online

2006-11-23T21:17:00.000+01:00

Choosing a color pallet for your website usually is hard and if not chosen properly they can ruin a page. Not everyone understands color theory or knows what colors are complimentary to each other. With this handicap in mind a lot of color schemers has emerged. One of the best is Color Schemer and costs $49.99. But, there are very efficient and usefully color schemers online that don't cost anything.

Number 7 on the list there is 4096 Color Wheel.
4096 Color wheel offers just the basic functions of a color schemer. It will not offer complementary colors but will only provide you with color value that is web smart or web safe color. But, as most of web designers already have Photoshop that can also identify web safe etc. colors. This tool has little purpose in professional realm.

Number 6 is Color Scheme 2
Color Schemer 2 is more advanced and is a Color schemer unlike 4096 Color Wheel. Its interface resembles the Color Schemers but does not offer some advanced options. It will allow you to select the mode of selecting complementary colors like contrast triad and others.
One interesting feature is that it enables user to see how people with different color blindness or convert a existing color scheme to more pastel based colors.

Number 5 is Color Bender
Color Bender does not offer visually as much as Color Schemer 2 but the results are more usefully. You can save your color scheme or view saved profiles from other users. You can export your color scheme to ACT (Photoshop Color Table) or ESP (Illustrator). There is also PANTONE matcher.

On Number 4 is Color Schemer Online v2
Color Schemer Online v2 is online version of excellent Color Schemer. It is really rudimentary but offers the best result.
You just select your base color and it will display colors that can go along side your base color.

The third best is The Color Wizard v3
The Color Wizard v3 is a Color schemer that features most of functionality of a proper color schemer. What struck me the most is that this nice looking web application has no save,load feature, no export to Photoshop or Illustrator Color profiles and it does not offer the ability to test how our scheme will look to people with color blindness.
Nice execution but... not the best.

At number 2 we will find HTML color code
HTML color code is by far the best online color scheme generator. We can select that kind of complimentary color scheme we want to use. It has easy to use color sliders that take into account the complimentary scheme when dragging. We can check and correct web safe colors and see the results in a windows divided into five regions that enable us to compare if colors work well together. There are also Saturation and Brightness sliders that other Online Color schemers lack.

And the Best but "something's wrong with me and I refuse to load correctly" is Adobe Kuler
Adobe Kuler is a Flash based online Color Schemer tool. It is the best but for some reason it loads correctly but does not display any color schemer. It offers all functionality of all described above and is more intuitive and visually attractive.
This is the king of color schemers.

Create Excel database the easy way

2006-11-18T19:38:00.000+01:00

Past week I had a really big problem. There was a document that I needed to make each and every day.

The problem consisted of having one unsorted sheet with diverse data and as it is not constant, on one day a piece of data would be in row 113 and the next it would be in row 65, it would be simply a mammoth mask to undertake each day in organizing the data to fit the table.

The picture on the left is a sample of one such table. Code column is scrambled and you have to unscramble it every day. Now imagine that there are more than 100 or 1000 such entries.

First we need to create on another sheet (in this case it will be Sheet1 and unsorted table on Sheet2) a layout of how we want our report to look like. On the right is yet again a sample of how it could look. Note that the code Column is sorted. This is our reference for extracting data from the table. It could contain any form of data (text, date etc). There is no specific need for code column to be the reference one, it could have easily been the Value or Name column.

Now comes the "Hard" part. In columns that we wish to populate we need to enter this formula:

=INDEX(Sheet2!B:B,MATCH(A3,Sheet2!A:A,0))

There are two functions in this formula. First is INDEX and the second is MATCH.

INDEX(Sheet2!B:B,MATCH(A3,Sheet2!A:A,0))

Sheet2 is from where we will take the data
B:B identifies the column from which the data will be taken
MATCH(A3,Sheet2!A:A,0))
- A3 is that we are looking for and in our case it is the Code (product code, etc.)
- Sheet2 is where we will conduct our search
- and A:A is the range in which we will search. A:A means the entire column A.
- 0 is a Match Type argument number and for more information on it type MATCH in Excel Search bar. With this set to 0 there is also a possibility of doing searches with wildcards like * or ?. Where * is any length or letters sequence sequence and ? stands for just one letters character. This does not work with numbers.
- All of this together searches entire column A in Sheet2 for value in A3 on Sheet1 and returns the row in which that data was found.

INDEX takes information about the row number that is provided by MATCH and completes the formula so that we get the data from the row we want and from column B on Sheet2.
After entering the formula we can copy it to others and we have our self a report that stays the same regardless of how our data change. The only prerequisite is that data is sorted into columns that don't change places.There is additional improvement on the original that does not return errors if nothing was found but more on that later.

If any questions or comments please feel free to contact me.

Lumenlab starts to accept orders - $500

2006-11-17T09:28:00.000+01:00

Evo Projector V1 from Lumenlab offers a 854×480 native and supports 800 x 600 or 1024 x 768. But, as it is known the biggest problem with projectors is that lamps are really expensive. What Lumenlab offers is a decent projector with 6,000 hour 150W HID that costs $30 to replace. Excellent for DIY projects like Multi input touch screen of a cheap Home theater.

HowTo: Control Keyboard Lights

2006-11-15T21:41:00.001+01:00

Ever since I first used WinAmp plugin to turn off/on my keyboard lights I wanted to reproduce that effect. finally some time ago I found out how its done and here's how.

The image on the left is from KeyLED 0.9.3 plugin for Samurize that I made.

My programing language of choice is Delphi from Borland since its first birth as Pascal for Windows and later as Delphi 1. Never needed to change so code will be for delphi but it is such a small part of code that it could be translated to any programing language with relative ease.

The trick with controlling your keyboard lights is a very old one. Computer communicates with keyboard on I/O ports 60h which is data port, and with port 64h which is Command/Status port of keyboard. By writing to port 60h we bypass the system and change the LED indicator for eg. Caps Lock to off even if Caps Lock is on but without changing the Caps Lock status. Caps Lock stays on even if LED is off. This enables us to play with keyboard lights without any worries.

Port 64h is used to detect if keyboard is ready. We do that by waiting that status of port 64h becomes 0. Then we prepare keyboard to change keyboard light by writing EDh to port 60h and then wait port 64h to once again become 0.

The waiting for 64h port to become 0 is a safety measure that can be bypassed but I would recommend against it. You would still be able to change the LED state but by waiting for ready state you remove some unwanted artifacts like missing keystrokes etc.

After we prepare the keyboard we can turn off and on Keyboard lights. By writing to port 60h combinations of

Caps Lock = 4 or second bit = 1 (00000100)
Num Lock = 2 or first bit = 1 (00000010)
Scroll Lock = 1 or zero bit = 1 (00000001)

we can selectively turn on and off lights on the keyboard without changing caps lock or numlock status.

This is all just theory but how it is applied in reality? Well, Windows XP introduced restrictive methods for accessing hardware ports so we need a library that can to that for us. In the good old Dos there was Int 9 and direct access to ports but not anymore. Library that I use is Inpout32.dll. It is open source so if you really like it you could incorporate it directly into your applications removing the need for "one additional file to carry around".

First we need to create functions connecting to DLL by

function Out32(wAddr:word;bOut:byte):byte; stdcall; external 'inpout32.dll';
function Inp32(wAddr:word):byte; stdcall; external 'inpout32.dll';

With functions for port access defined we can now proceed with writing and waiting and writing and waiting by:

PROCEDURE Set_keyboard_lights(n,c,s : boolean);
var
bErr:byte;
val : byte;
BEGIN
val := 0;
IF s THEN inc(val);
IF n THEN inc(val,2);
IF c THEN inc(val,4);
repeat until (inp32($64) AND 2)=0;
bErr:=(Out32($60,$ED));
repeat until (inp32($64) AND 2)=0;
bErr:=(Out32($60,val));
END;

Procedure presented will take three parameters that can be either true of false; NumLock Status, CapsLock Status and NumLock Status.

This small snippet is all you need to control your Keyboard Lights. Have Fun!!

Tune Glue

2006-11-12T21:40:00.001+01:00

TuneGlue is a service that in its intent is similar to LivePlasma or MusicMap but with one distinction. It is quite usable. Data used to produce results comes from Last FM and Amazon.

To start using TuneGlue just enter desired artist name into the search engine and the first node will appear shortly. By clicking on it you get additional options like to expand to similar, browse news related to the artists or to view their discography.

Unlike MusicMap it utilizes more data sources and unlike both MusicMap and LivePlasma it offers prettier eye candy. I also found it faster in discovery.

It is somewhat bare and minimalistic but with small improvements it could be a much better. Features missing or not easily accessible are such as album lists could be visible all the time as a sidebar and a track preview would be nice.

TuneGlue is a must see site for any music lover.

Visual display of Chess algorithms

2006-11-12T20:00:00.000+01:00

Thinking Machine 4

Ever since the dawn of computers man played chess with them and in 1997 IBM Big Blue was the first computer that won a match with a world champion, Garry Kasparov.

Chess programing algorithms are one of basic algorithms every programmer learns sooner or later. Along side the traveling salesman problem chess problems are usual problem posed to high school student on computer programing competitions.

One of interesting sites actually shows the generation of paths inside the algorithm or the "thinking" process of the computer, Thinking Machine 4.

Feed the Google

2006-11-11T11:08:00.000+01:00

Cambrian House went all out and fed Google 1,000 pizzas.

It's like Open Source, but with money

2006-11-11T11:01:00.000+01:00

Cambrian House

Cambrian House defines them self as crowdsourced. They started with a simple idea in 2005, and that idea was to allow

"brilliant ideas are submitted (by you) for the community (that's you too) to rate. If an idea gets a lot of support, Cambrian House will build it with the help of the worldwide development community (there you are again). Contributors take their pick of exciting projects, and in return, they get a piece of the royalty pie (...that's money)."

Cambrian House is a part of SourceForge.org and there are currently 3288 ideas submitted.

One of interesting moves in order to thank people that pay, Cambrian House decided to feed Google 1,000 pizzas.

NameVoyager

2006-11-11T10:33:00.000+01:00

Baby Name Wizard

Some time now I been been playing with voice recognition shipped with Windows and how to interface with it and make a custom voice control application. This posed a slight problem, not with programming part but with something quite different.

After 16 years of owning a computer I was compelled to name my computer. Lame, but necessary. I didn't want computer to activate voice recognition every time someone yells "computer". So I decided to name it. should it be a girl or a boy. I choose a girly name.

First off, I had problems choosing a name so I checked the web for some page that could help me. The Baby Name Wizard - NameVoyager was the best I found.

It not only provides boy and girl name but also shows how popular was any given name in a span of over a century. There is also a search function and to spike things up its a Java app that is animated and nice to use.

Planing a family or just want to name a pet or a gadget check it out.

Bleenks Updated !!

2006-11-09T23:05:00.000+01:00

Bleenks just updated its online index of streaming full length episodes. Some of new TV shows listed are SG1, X-Men animated, Robot Chicken, Amazing race etc.

Pretty soon there will no longer be any need for that non interactive box called the TV.

It seams that the list of shows is growing and is going to continue to grow. Nice!

Cost of Iraq War in Human life

2006-11-09T18:43:00.000+01:00

We can debate was the War in Iraq necessarily, did they have WMD etc. But, one thing is non debatable, people died. Iraq War Coalition Fatalities web site displays animated flash map of Iraq with one day per frame. Its fast and a scroll bar would be nice as you cant stop or rewind the animation which is a shame as it is really nicely done. Thous features would add whole different dimension to the animation making it a tool. Only thing you can control is which country's fatality's in Iraq you would like to see animated on the map.

Not only instant death on the battlefield is recorded and displayed but also death from injuries in hospitals. You will recognize these, they appear on different locations and sometimes even on sea, presumably a ship.

Data is gatherd from icasualties.org and geographical locations from www.globalsecurity.org. s
When this article was written the last update was 10/23/06.

Impressive visual research and correlation tool

2006-11-08T17:51:00.000+01:00

Making sense of the world by having fun with statistics!

GamMiner is a non-profit venture focused at delivering statistical data in statistical form so anyone can understand it. They mainly produce stunning visuals from available statistical data.

Available data ends with 2004 but starts with 1975. Nevertheless it offers very intuitive interface. You can change what each axis will represent; will it be life expectancy in correlation with income or with urban population. There are 16 different statistical indicators which you can combine as you wish. You can also select more countries to track.

One interesting thing I found is that Rhuanda, if looking at life expectancy with urban population you can see a sharp decrease until 1992 where only 6.5% of population is considered urban while life expectancy was ONLY 24 years. One missing feature is interface with for example Google Trends that would automatically input news and we could make more sense of what we see.

In addition to this flash application their main site is full of animated graphs that show from education indicators to the failure of UN's effort in reducing child deaths.

They Rule!!

2006-11-07T16:39:00.000+01:00

we pay!

On the eve of this "historic" day while surfing for some political news I stumbled upon TheyRule. It is a website that indexes connections between companies or government institutions or between both of them.

"They Rule aims to provide a glimpse of some of the relationships of the US ruling class. It takes as its focus the boards of some of the most powerful U.S. companies, which share many of the same directors. Some individuals sit on 5, 6 or 7 of the top 500 companies. It allows users to browse through these interlocking directories and run searches on the boards and companies. A user can save a map of connections complete with their annotations and email links to these maps to others. They Rule is a starting point for research about these powerful individuals and corporations. "

It looks like it was last updated in 2004 but the site is still active with last post in 2006 so it is possible that data has been refreshed. Even if it wasn't refreshed it is still a rich source of information and a well thought out research tool.

To immediately start using it go to load map option and choose between recent of popular.

Spaceship designer Burt Rutan on TEDTalks

2006-11-06T17:11:00.000+01:00

Rutan won the $10M Ansari X-Prize for SpaceShipOne, the first privately funded craft to enter space twice in a 2-week period.

TED 2007 awards

2006-11-06T17:01:00.000+01:00

Technology, Entertainment, Design awards

This is a presentation of this year winners. A must watch, amazing people, great role models.

Multi Touch Screen ready to see the light of day?

2006-11-05T22:31:00.000+01:00

Come on.... We like IT !

At the beginning of 2006, Jeff Han from TED conference 2006 held in Monterey. He displayed an absolute revolution in Human Computer interaction. There are some really interesting project alongside this one at his webpage.

For a long time the only input devices for computer were the keyboard and the mouse. In 1971, Dr. Samuel C. Hurst invented touch screen. Touch screen is “display overlay which is typically either pressure-sensitive, electrically-sensitive”.

They are expensive and their price increases drastically with size. But now, Jefferson Y. Han from Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences, NYU demonstrated the new approach to how users approach the computer. Technology is not new and is nothing drastic but the application of available technology is stunning.

It is a “simple, inexpensive, and scalable technique for enabling high-resolution multi-touch sensing on rear-projected interactive surfaces based on frustrated total internal reflection".

This basically means that the technology is independent from the size of the display and relatively inexpensive. The most expensive part is the projector. But not necessary. LumenLab has offered to the general public (or non DIY community) a cheap but interesting projector for less then $500.

What it means is that this whole project almost has a a DIY potential. What you need is a projector, slightly better "web cam", a plate made of Plexiglas or acrylic. Plexiglas would be a bad choice but maybe it could work. Trough the sides light is inserter at an angle where no light passes to the outside of the plane, also called the Total Internal Reflection.

When a finger is pressed to the plate it lights up. Video from web cam is afterward processed by a computer. Now, the only tricky part is how to program multi input. Imagine having 10 mice's moving around your windows. Windows wouldn't know what to do with all of them clicking at the same time.

Good, old Star Trek (actual shot, not taken from Star Trek).
Now I know where they got the idea from.

New approach to classic eye glasses

2006-11-05T22:20:00.000+01:00

Functional Piercing

While doing research for prior posts about web shops that "sell" Cyborg equipment and augments I found this site quite interesting.

Shannon Larratt from BMEzine.com wrote a very interesting article on how piercing can be more then just decorative art. It can actually serve a purpose, just like pierced tongue (go for it ladies).

I also wear an eye piece so this approach to the classic "problem" of that is the best way we can augment our eyesite is interesting to me.
One distinct problem with this approach is that to many people still distrust or are disgusted by a thought of inserting a foreign object into their body.

But this is a completely different debate.

Human Upgrades

2006-11-04T20:18:00.000+01:00

Hi-Tech upgrades for your body
Human Upgrades is one of most disturbing as it is fascinating websites that exist on the web. It has no graphic violence, there are non of gruesome pictures and vids shown on websites like rotten. There is something about the website that sends chills down my spine.
Are we this close to making this a reality, are there people that would like to have webs between their fingers, clitoris on their palm, or one nostril?

Nevertheless the content, unlike Cyborg Web Shop , takes it self really serious. It looks like it could be real but, but its just to stretched out to be.
Where Cyborg Web Shop admits its a test site, this site does not. Who knows, my bee its for real.
I sent them a email request but still no reply.

Human 2.0

2006-11-03T19:44:00.000+01:00

Ever so often there is a site that just brings smile on your face. For me this is one of them, Cyborg Web Shop. It is just a concept site representing a future web shop for a aspiring Cyborgs. We can find titanium bones, news chip that implants into the brain, DNA aging inhibitor, younger skin or a play station implant chip.

Can I use the play station implant chip for applications other than the playing of video games?
Of course! The play station implant chip is a microcomputer in your head and can be used with all standard software packages. You can even use the Internet if you have the mobile phone implant chip implanted. However, you must have additional equipment for using the wireless mouse.

(sites FAQ)

For a test site it is quite detailed. Every entry is described and categorized, there is also detailed FAQ. Only thing that is somewhat awkward is the entrance where you are not presented with a web shop but a small questioner.

The design was made at the beginnings of 2004 but it still look fresh, not a Web 2.0 but close enough for that era.

10,000 Free fonts - Web 2.0 way

2006-11-02T20:27:00.000+01:00

Does anyone remember how a search for a particular font used to look? They were just links to download or rar archives with huge number of fonts that once installed brought computer to its knees. If a site had preview they were static images much like TypeNow still has.
Now theres a site called BetterFonts. It offers, or declares that it has over 10,000 free fonts for download and its all packed into nice little webpage that lets you preview the font with text of your choosing.

updated> There is another interesting site called DaFont. Also you can also check this post with alot of links to other font resources.

Drawing tools migrating to Web

2006-10-31T19:06:00.000+01:00

and having a hard time at it

When we look at what kind of applications Web 2.0 gave birth we can see there are no real ports of "usable" applications. They are just "one more" social networking site, social bookmaking site, social news site, social this, social that. When it comes to being productive there are just a small number of websites that offer such services.

One of them was LithaPaint.com. And I say “was” as it ran out of money. It was a new company that provided to users a vector based drawing tool. What is good to hear is that there are interested parties that would like to contact them for possible cooperation.

Another company that is trying to provide similar application is Mikons.com. I was very pleasantly suppressed. They are marketing it as Symbol or Logo creation with inescapable social component.

The Mikons drawing application requires more attention as it can easily become something more. Of course, don’t expect Corel Draw but someone has to show the way.

It is fair to say that more serious applications are just coming online but the technology exists today as LithaPaint and Mikons.com have demonstrated.

Automatic generation of "Digg it" URL Code

2006-10-30T18:52:00.000+01:00

The most time consuming thing about writing and posting is generating the "Digg It" code to put on the page.
Digg Button Generator does this automatically and should be a integral part of Digg.

The art of complex problem solving

2006-10-27T19:40:00.000+01:00

I was first drawn to idiagram by its visuals representation of complex problem solving mechanics, and basically this is the only function it does. Idiagram offers visualization of complex problems within organizations so they can be solved more efficiently and with higher quality of end solution.
A added value is that picture is laced with mouse hot spots. This mens that as you move your mouse around the image it displays additional info regarding specific step in problem solving diagram.

Train yourself to recognize Emotions

2006-10-27T19:39:00.000+01:00

While reading the Malcolm Gladwell book, Blink, I wondered if there is somewhere a visual dictionary of Facial Action Coding System or FACS.

ARTNATORY is a flash driven visual dictionary of all our facial muscles and what usage of those muscles means.
This website is small gold mine for information about muscles that govern our outward emotional appearance. It is well organized and design follows functionality, but at certain moments it is a bit restrictive. It would be nice to have an option to combine facial expressions and to have more insight into micro-expressions.

After selecting the Actions and Expressions tab together we get a meaning of certain muscle and a animated "preview" of the action itself.

How to create ASCII Art - The Web 2.0 way

2006-10-27T19:00:00.000+01:00

Online ASCII Art Generators

Ever since the early 90's and the start of the end of Bulletin Board Systems ASCII Art has become neglected unlike Pixel Art that is still doing fine. Coding, Demo scene have kept the tradition and continue to use ASCII codes extensively. One of best examples is cosmblop 4k demo. More about what is ASCII and for what it is used, and it is used ALL the time, can be found on Wiki.

The basic form of ASCII art is creating big letters out of special characters. There is a online ASCII Generator that does this function rather well. Also, there is ASCII Text Signature Generator,

A step from using ASCII just for creating large letters we can use them to create pictures. This started almost with the dawn of computers as they had no Graphic User Interface. When something graphic had to be shown it was done using combination of special characters from the ASCII set. They are still used today and the most famous is the smiley. Smiley is the most used ASCII art. :)
There are allot of archives online that organize and host tutorials on how to create ASCII art. Some of them are Chris.com and Ascii Art Dictionary. ASCII Art Dictionary also hosts tutorials on how to create animated ASCII graphics. ASCII Art doesn't has to be black and white. Wikipedia has surprisingly detailed entry about all kind of ASCII art.
One Web 2.0 application that can be found online is asciiomatic. Site also generates HTML code for your websites but can only take 60x50px image. This shouldn't be a problem as ASCII Art is not about detail.

Some other image2text conversation tools online that are wort checking are TextImage and ASCIImator. ASCIImator can also animate your ASCII Art, but it requires some work.

For more examples of ASCII Art go to Google ASCII Art Search

Web 2.0 company running out of money

2006-10-27T11:21:00.000+01:00

It is really sad to see companies that have innovative technology and services running out of money.
One example is litha-paint.com. I first found litha-paint when I was searching for a drawing application online that could beat paint brush but did not require any bells and whistles. I found litha-paint. Litha provided, or did provided, a unique service of drawing online using vectors much like Corel Draw. Of course it wasn’t as powerful as Corel but it provided an application that was unique and different then the rest of Web 2.0 community.
Now it is out of business, hopefully not for long.

Update: It seems that Litha was offered free hosting and will continue to push the limits of what is possible with Web 2.0. More info later.

Interesting Graphics usage in data representation - Web 2.0 era

2006-10-26T17:59:00.000+01:00

The dawn of Web 2.0 saw a rise of graphical rethinking of how users use and see web pages.
From, what is now called "Web 1.0", Web 2.0 is more interactive, colors are more in tune and everything looks and feels more responsive, a synergy of design and functionality.
Flash, AJAX, Ruby and countless other web technologies that have spawned the birth of the New Web are now showing us something very interesting.
They are showing us how it is possible to manage and display data that would otherwise overwhelm us, or at least they show data in more manageable way.
With this said, we still have to address some issues in that design should lead the functionality but not if it impairs the functionality itself. No mater how nice the design is its function is not properly implemented.
Listed below are some interesting examples (not all) of what the ways data is presented on the Web today.

Digg Swarm

Digg needs no introduction, but it is a prime example of Web 2.0, user driven content website. Digg Swarm is currently just a part of Digg Lab. It is a first example of mismatch between design and function. It is nice, but just nice as it is plague by problems in the functionality. Design is very well made but Diggs popup to fast and fade to fast for anyone to follow. If there was just a list on left side with currently displaying stories it would increase the look and feel dramatically.

MappedUp

MappedUp together with Digg Swarm, is another example of News generated content. It has somewhat different approach than Digg Swarm. It does now show all of news at once but shows only the "hot" news. The problem here is that it is to slow, and some what to awkward to set up the feeds.

AmazoNode

This is an excellent example of how mapping tech can help up go trough massive amount of data from user generated content. It looks good and functions good. Amazonode shows relations between books and if you are into books this is a site for you to visit.

MusicMap

MusicMap does basically the same thing as AmazoNode but is more sophisticated in design and only searches music. An EXCELLENT example of design and functionality, its a shame the depth of information is limited.

LivePlasma

LivePlasma and MusicMap are one and the same but different. LivePlasma has more in depth information but its design and functionality is somewhat limited and harder to manipulate then MusicMap.

Breathing Earth

Breathing Earth is an interesting concept. It only function is to show current state of the Earth. Some shown data are CO2 emissions, birth and death rates. It is updated in "real time" but most probably it uses historical statistical methods.

Havaria

Havaria also an interesting concept. Well, its more then concept. It is exceptionally up to date map of disasters or potential disasters around the world. This site is an example where functionality takes a sidestep from design.
This site would benefit a lot from design overhaul.

WordNet

There are a lot of dictionaries out there but this one is different. WordNet uses connections to show relations between words.

MusicLens

MusicLens is another approach to music search. It enables a user to specify the preference in music and it will show the list of possible matches. It is also possible to listen to part of presented music.

This is just a part of interesting thing happening now in the way we see data.
We live in interesting times.