Wednesday, October 24, 2007
Lifehacker Top 10: Top 10 Google Products You Forgot All About
Living in the shadow of Gmail, Reader and Calendar's got to be tough, but that's what a slew of useful Google products do every day. We give Google's front-running applications a lot of ink (or pixels, as it were), and the rest a passing mention in the fast-flowing river of news. Today's top 10 pays homage to the little brother and sister Google products that you forgot all about.
10. Google Code Search
lang: operator to limit your results to a certain language, and search by developer name, file name, or comments. Here's a search for the words "nasty hack" in PHP code—lang:PHP nasty hack—and here's a search for Javascript authored by Gmail Macros developer Mihai Parparita.
9. Google Base
Easily publish and find recipes, classifieds, vacation rentals and job listings at Google Base, a no-web site way to get data online and into Google's search results. What's great about Base is that it offers data type-specific search operators. For example, you can search recipes by ingredient, or vacation rentals by location and features like how many bedrooms, and what type of property it is (cabin, cottage, hotel, villa, house, etc.)
8. Google Trends
Compare the "world's interest" in certain words and topics at Google Trends, which charts the number of times a word or phrase appeared on the web over time. Great for checking out the history of popular neologisms and brand names (like iPhone or lifehacker), you can also pit terms against one another. You can see from the image above that the phrase "getting things done" has been around a lot longer than the word "lifehacker." (Pit GTD vs lifehacker at Google Trends.)
7. Google Alerts
Make your web search results come to you with Google Alerts, email notifications of new web pages search terms pop up on as the Googlebot discovers them. Google Alerts automatically hands me Lifehacker story ideas every morning, and it's also great to ego search your own name, web site title or product name, too. To get results for several term searches in one alert, separate them with a pipe (|) or combine terms with AND, like wildfire AND "San Diego".
6. Google Book Search
Remember those rectangular objects that you used to read by turning a page from one side to the other? Ah, those were the days. You can still get your books online at Google Book Search, whose book-scanning elves add to the digital library all the time. Flip through pages of the books scanned into Book Search, and add books to your personal virtual library as well. Along those same lines, academics won't want to forget about Google Scholar for searching papers, theses, abstracts and articles, from academic publishers, professional societies, preprint repositories, universities and other scholarly organizations. 5. Google Page Creator
When Aunt Martha and Uncle Skip ask how to set up a web page? Point 'em to Google Page Creator, a totally web-based, WYSIWYG web site creation tool that hosts up to 100MB of files for free. 4. Google Notebook
We all find snippets of web pages, quotes, and images all over the web we want to copy to a personal library, and Google Notebook is a powerful way to do just that. Whether you're researching a particular project, capturing ideas as you come across them online, or Getting Things Done, Notebook (especially coupled with its companion Firefox extension) is a powerful, useful tool.
3. Flight Simulator in Google Earth
Ok, so Google doesn't make a flight simulator, but they do hide one in the latest version of Google Earth. Download Google Earth 4.2 , and to enter flight sim mode, hit Ctrl+Alt+A (Mac users: Cmd+Opt+A), choose your plane, airport and runway. Google Earth's flight simulator isn't a walk in the park for newbs, so here's more info on how to take off and navigate the friendly, virtual skies . 2. Keyboard Shortcuts Experimental Web Search
Hidden deep in the bowels of Google Labs is the Keyboard Shortcuts flavor of web search, which takes your mouse out of web search entirely. Once you're using Keyboard Shortcuts search (just add "&esrch=BetaShortcuts" to your Google URLs), use J and K to move up and down a search results list. Open a link using O or the Enter key; bring your cursor to the search box using / (forward slash), and Esc to get out of the search box. Here, install the keyboard shortcuts version of Google search into Firefox or IE7's built-in search box for easy access. 1. SketchUp
Free 3-D modeling program Google SketchUp lets anyone virtually architect their dream house, remodeled kitchen, office, spaceship or skyscraper. Download Google SketchUp for free, for Mac or PC. This was a tough list to winnow down, as Google's full product list is long and prodigious. In fact, we're still having regrets about leaving Patent Search, Google Moon, and Google Mars off the list. What's your top lower-profile Google app? Shout it out in the comments.
HDTV: Wired Names Olevia 747i Best LCD in 38- to 49-inch Category
It's smarter, with a killer video-processing chip that helped it ace all our tests, syncing up and smoothing out the noisiest screwball video we threw its way.The reviewer also liked the set's pretty appearance, called its built-in speakers the best he tested, and even liked Olevia's 3Dish menus and remote control. The nine out of ten rating bestowed upon this $2499 HDTV constitutes quite an endorsement. Might be one to examine come Black Friday. [Wired]
Vroom: Suzuki Biplane Pities Harley-Davidson
Elcomsoft turns your PC into a password cracking supercomputer (gulp)
Filed under: Misc. Gadgets
You know all that talk about GPUs being the new CPUs ? Well it's not just a lot of hot, ventilated air. Thanks in large part to the launch of development kits like nVidia's CUDA, Russian outfit Elcomsoft has just filed for a US patent which leverages GPUs to crack passwords. Their approach harnesses the massively parallel processing capabilities of modern graphics cards to make minced-meat of corporate-strength password protection. An NTLM-hashed Microsoft Vista password, for example, can now be cracked in 3 to 5 days (instead of two months) using a simple, off-the-shelf, $150 graphics card -- less complicated passwords can take just minutes. Dial the GPU up to an $800 GeForce 8800 Ultra and Elcomsoft's approach will crack passwords at a rate some 25 times faster than existing CPU-only approaches. Yippee? [Via NewScientist, thanks Sultan]
Shigeru Ban’s Metal Shutter Houses
October 24th, 2007 by Chantal
Shigeru Ban's Metal Shutter Houses are going up in west Chelsea. That's the name for a condo with nine duplex apartments with jaw-dropping exterior features.
"The Metal Shutter Houses" have walls that lift up completely out of the way, as well as "perforated metal shutters that operate exactly like the rolling grates of the Chelsea galleries and Korean delis that inspired them."
The facade motorized perforated metal shutters serve as light-modulating privacy screen at the outer edge of each residence's terrace adjacent to the double-height living rooms.
This subtle "removable skin" echoes the neighboring gallery after-hours shutters, subtly contextualizing the building within its site. The building can literally close down, becoming a uniform minimal cube, or it can open completely (as well as virtually unlimited permutations between). South of the terrace, twenty foot tall, upwardly pivoting glass windows open completely, thus blurring the boundary between the inside and outside – the double height living room and terrace become one. Similarly, a series of interior sliding glass doors create an open "universal floor" in each of the duplex houses – one vast and uninterrupted expanse which transitions seamlessly from inside to outside, or partition the space into private areas.
Link Via [The New York Times]
Student snags maths prize - The Simplest Turing Machine that can compute any problem
Stephen Wolfram's $25,000 prize claimed.
The state of the head (up or down droplet) and the pattern of colour (orange, yellow and white) in a given row depends upon the row above. A simple start can lead to an incredibly complex picture.Wolfram InstituteA twenty-year-old university student has answered a challenge by one of the world's most well-known mathematicians.
Alex Smith, a undergraduate electrical engineering student at the University of Birmingham in the United Kingdom, has proven that a primitive type of computer known as a 2,3 Turing machine can solve every computational problem there is. Proving the "universality" of the 2,3 Turing machine was the subject of a US$25,000 challenge from entrepreneur and mathematician Stephen Wolfram.
Wolfram, founder and chief executive of Wolfram Research in Champaign, Illinois, issued the challenge this May to satisfy his own curiosity about how complexity emerges from simple systems. The idea is that a properly applied set of basic rules can create an enormously intricate result. "It's actually a lot easier to make complexity than one might have thought," he says. "I find it particularly tantalizing."
Turing machines were imagined by the British mathematician Alan Turing in 1936, and consist of a read–write head that can be put into one of several states and a long strip of tape on which can be written a set of colours. At each step, the machine looks at the state of the head and the colours on the tape. It then uses a set of fixed rules to move the state of the head into a new position and write a new row of colours on the tape (see picture).
Intricate patterns
The machine specific to Wolfram's prize has a head with only two states and a tape that can hold three colours. It is one of the simplest kind of Turing machines, but depending on the first row on the tape, the results can be remarkably intricate, according to Smith. "Even if you know the rules, you don't necessarily know how it will behave," he says. Smaller, simpler Turing machines are possible (such as 1,2 for example) but these are not thought to be capable of universality.
Smith learned about Wolfram's challenge in an Internet chat room and almost immediately went to work fiddling with the machine. After learning its behaviour, he set about proving that it was computationally equivalent to another type of simple, conceptual computer known as a tag system.
Mathematicians have already shown that tag systems can compute any problem, so proving the two were equivalent effectively proved the power of Wolfram's machine. Smith's proof is 44 pages long.
The solution isn't hugely relevant to modern computer science, says Scott Aaronson, a computer scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Cambridge, Massachusetts. "Most theoretical computer scientists don't particularly care about finding the smallest universal Turing machines," he wrote in an e-mail. "They see it as a recreational pursuit that interested people in the 60s and 70s but is now sort of 'retro'."
Nevertheless, Lenore Blum, a researcher at the Carnegie Mellon University in Pittburgh, Pennylvania, who served on Wolfram's Prize committee, says the find is interesting enough on its own to warrant attention. "This could stimulate some new work," she says.
For his part, Smith, now in the third year of his electrical engineering degree, says that he has no big plans for his prize money. "I'm just going to put it in the bank," he says.
Find a gallery of more Turing machine outputs on the Wolfram prize site.
photos, videos, music -- visual search
things we built
photos - visual search interface for stock photos (/card is for photo greetings)
http://picturesandbox.com
http://picturesandbox.com/card
videos - visual search interface for videos (/card is for video greetings)
http://footagesandbox.com
http://footagesandbox.com/card
music - visual music discovery interface for indie and mainstream music
http://mp3sandbox.com/index2.php (mainstream artists)
http://mp3sandbox.com/cdbaby (indie artists)
visual news is next -- filtered and prioritized news/rss, with drag-2-share
then a visual social networking (MySpace, Facebook, and LinkedIn are too text heavy and takes too much work, in my opinion)
power to the consumers
Recent Phone Call Reports
This is a user supplied database of phone numbers of telemarketers, non-profit organizations, charities, political surveyors, SCAM artists, and other companies that don't leave messages, disconnect once you answer, ignore the Do-Not-Call List regulations, and simply interrupt your day.
If you received a strange call, most likely you are not the only one. Search for this phone number to see the reports of others. If there are no reports yet, leave your comment to start a conversation.
- pre recorded message, hung up... they have called before
- I have been getting phone calls from this number thesedays as well. They call 3 times a day - 9:30am, 1:30pm, 3:30pm. Who is it? I am worrying that they may charge for listening their ...
- I am on O2 and keep getting calls from this number it is doing my head in. I can't wait to answer there call so I can tell them to F**K OFF
- can someone please send me a fax program with an autodialer... i got a call from these people this morning, called the # to ask to be removed from the list and they hung up!
- This is a bogus call center who is using the Iraq war as a means to get money. This is not sponsored by the Navy or anyone who is directly connected to the military. If you wish to ...
footagesandbox vs spffy video
FootageSandbox.com vs Spffy.com (video)
video search is an entirely different beast; and video for stock purposes is an entirely different planet. So we split off to a different site. The use cases are also very very different. YouTube videos are unlikely to be useful as stock. And we do one-click preview that remains on the site, rather than sends the user to YouTube - search results are identical for keyword "ferrari."
picturesandbox vs spffy photos
PictureSandbox.com vs Spffy.com
I believe that by offering more thumbnails in the search results, PictureSandbox enables image buyers to more efficiently find suitable images -- I call it "glance test," which is faster than paginating. Also, look closely at the results for the keyword "flowers" -- different collections have different strengths.
Amazon’s $100,000 Startup Challenge
The $100,000 will be split in half between $50,000 cash and a $50,000 credit for Amazon's infrastructure services. The winner will also get an investment offer from Amazon. The deadline for applying for the prize is October 28.
How To: Transfer AIM Messages to Your Cell Phone
Forward IMs to your Cell Phone [AOL via TipMonkies ]
Telephony: Get Free VoIP In-Calling Anywhere with GrandCentral and Gizmo Project
GrandCentral and Gizmo...free calls everywhere [GrandCentral Blog]
Clone Your Computer on a USB Drive - Why Carry That Heavy Laptop
Perfect. Now imagine a situation where you have all required data on the USB drive but the computer you are currently working on (say in the cyber café or a friend's place) doesn't have the necessary software programs that are required to view or edit those files.
That computer neither has Microsoft Office for creating PowerPoint presentations or Excel sheets, nor Photoshop and AutoCAD for you to edit those important CAD drawings. Even the media player is missing so you cannot watch your personal video and music collection that you have been carrying in the pocket.
What if you could carry all your favorite software applications (and their settings), Office files, emails and everything else with you on a portable drive? You just plug-in that drive into the USB port of any computer and start working as if that was your own PC.
Well, your dreams can come true with Mojopac from Ringcube - an absolutely brilliant tool that very-easily clones your existing computing environment onto any USB Drive. And if you have an iPod or a USB based cell phone or Digital Camera, Mojopac will work just fine so you have one less device to carry.
To get started, you connect the USB drive to the main computer (that has the stuff you need most) and install the free Mojopac software. What you then see is a fresh Windows XP environment without any software. Now install all the applications (and even games) that you want to carry around– they are not installed on your computer but on the USB drive.
Once you are done, eject the USB drive and plug into any Windows computer. All those programs and documents can now run off the USB drive. Mojopac will also save your application settings and software preferences as you move around computers.
Mojopac uses the resources of the host computer but runs entirely on the USB drive without modifying anything on the host. Once you eject the USB device out of the friend's computer, there are no traces left – not even your web browsing history. Nothing less than magic.
Mojopac Freedom | Mojopac Video Demo
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