Guardian Unlimited, a UK newspaper with a large subscriber base, has published a list of websites that changed the world. The list is numbered and there are 15 sites on the list, but if the numbers indicate their rank, then I have to strongly disagree. Number 1 on the list is eBay, followed by Wikipedia, and Napster in the number 2 and 3 spot. While I can see the case for Napster, I think it was Napster the application that revolutionized the web rather than Napster the site. The usual suspects - Google, Yahoo!, and Amazon - also grace the list and there are a few surprises (Friends Reunited), but overall it is a respectable with good background information about each site.
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Wednesday, October 04, 2006
Websites that changed the world: Guardian Unlimited
AOL releases OpenRide - Browser, e-mail, AIM, Media Center, Search All-in-one
AOL has released an all-in-one application called OpenRide that lets user's browse, check e-mail, manage contacts, chat, play their media and, of course, search. While this is not for everyone, it is a great app for users of AOL services. Best of all, it is free, but only works on Windows XP. Basically, you can think of OpenRide as a rehash of their subscription software with some enhancements. One of these enhancements is something they call the Dynasizer. Dynasizer automatically resizes the application, normally tiled with other OpenRide applications, to have the most real-estate when you click on it.
Tags: aol, openride
Support a good cause using your computer's idle time
You can volunteer your computer's spare cycles to good causes with the Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing (BOINC) project. So, how is this different from SETI@home you ask? Not a whole lot. In fact SETI@home is a module in BOINC. You can use your computer for projects in biology/medicine (malaria control), astronomy/physics/chemistry, earth sciences (climate prediction), and mathematics and strategy games (chess). BOINC is cross-platform and works wherever Windows, Mac, and Linux does. You can download and set BOINC as your screensaver and choose the projects you want to support. You can also specify the percentage of time you wish to devote to each project.
Tags: charity, computing, boinc, setiathome
Monday, October 02, 2006
How To: Dismantle an Atomic Bomb
If you were curious on how it is done, here is your fix. As for me, I will try to remember most of what is instructed, but I wish to god there never comes the time when I have to put this in practice. Because I know, I will not have a web-enabled machine with access to my del.icio.us account while that clocking is ticking away.
Tags: howto
iTunes smart playlists not so smart
Even though iTunes is my favorite player, I really bemoan their implementation of smart playlists. Don't get me wrong, I love smart playlists and have used them in creative ways.
For example, I use PodNova to subscribe to podcasts because it lets me update my subscriptions using a web interface. It creates a regular playlist for each podcast that you subscribe to in iTunes and labels each downloaded podcast by setting the Genre to Podcast. All this is well and great, but if I wanted to listen to all my new podcasts, then I had to move from playlist to playlist which was starting to become a pain. So, I created a smart playlist by matching Genre to Podcast and Play Count to less than 1. To AND conditions in a smart playlist, you simply set the playlist to match 'all' the rules.
Now, I also have news related podcasts from Wall Street Journal, Business Week, etc. that I would like to separate from my other podcasts. I want create a single smart playlist for my news podcasts by matching 'any' album that belongs to a news podcast (Wall Street Journal OR Business Week). I also want to specify that Play Count for all these albums must be less than 1. And herein lies the limitation of iTunes' smart playlists. iTunes will either let me AND all my conditions by matching 'all' rules or let me OR them by matching 'any' rule. It will not let me create a smart playlist by using a combination of AND and OR cases. When Apple lets me create complex playlists such as these I will have no problem in calling it a Genius Playlist.
Tags: itunes, podcasts, podnova
Sunday, October 01, 2006
Want to edit a PDF?
An article in The Register-Guard describes all your options for editing a PDF file. While there are no free ways to achieve this, the cheapest option is the Foxit Reader Pro for $39 and it goes up from there. The only gripe I have is that article does not provide links to the software in question, so you are just going to have to search Google for it.
Tags: pdf, adobe, pdfeditor, pdf editor
White House RSS Feeds and Podcasts
White House is certainly more Web 2.0 savvy than I had imagined. They are offering RSS feeds and podcasts for everything from White House news, Presidential speeches, and Presidential radio address (also in Spanish) to vidcast of the first dog, Barney. Hail Bush!
[via Micro Persuasion]
Tags: government, rss, podcast
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