Dr. Augustine Fou's Online Scrapbook

Thursday, April 23, 2009

The Accidental Typography of Google Maps [Google Maps]

Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/gizmodo/full/~3/nnqlZBIkYg4/the-accidental-typography-of-google-maps

Google Maps is many things: It's a rabble-rouser; a penis repository; a rare physics phenomenon; not to mention a library of deer carnage and terrifying Americana. Now, with this guy's help, it's also a type foundry.

Mr Dashwood spent months gathering all the letters of the alphabet, accumulating a collection that ranges from passable to perfect. These letters were spotted in Victoria, Australia, but the concept would work anywhere—if its citizens have the time and dedication to find it, then any country, state or city can have its own regional Google Maps font. [RhettDashwood via TodayandTomorrow]

Nokia 6216 Classic packs NFC for contactless payments

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2009/04/23/nokia-6216-classic-packs-nfc-for-contactless-payments/

It's 2009 and we're still waiting for the Near Field Communication revolution. However, due to tough economic times and a lack of consumer devices, planned commercial NFC rollouts will likely be pushed into 2010. Still, we can add one more device to the NFC tally -- the Nokia 6216 Classic. The 6216 is Nokia's first handset with an embedded NFC chipset that communicates with NFC applications stored on the SIM. That little trick keeps the carriers happy while allowing consumers to keep their credit card info and contact-less ticketing and payment applications on the SIM for easy mobility between NFC devices. A good thing too, since this middling 3G candy bar with camera, FM radio, and microSD slot will be of limited appeal to most.

Read -- Nokia 6216 Classic
Read -- Economy, standards stand in the way of NFC

Filed under: Handhelds

Nokia 6216 Classic packs NFC for contactless payments originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 23 Apr 2009 04:48:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink | Email this | Comments

Wednesday, April 22, 2009

Toshiba Mini NB200 Netbook Includes Fat, 9-Cell Battery [NetBooks]

Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/gizmodo/full/~3/OF9PD_d6bb0/toshiba-mini-nb200-netbook-includes-fat-9+cell-battery

While most netbooks are settling for 3 and 6-cell batteries, the Toshiba Mini NB200 will be bundled with a 9-cell battery for a promised 9 hours of run time.

Just announced for the UK, the Mini NB200 is completely typical aside from its battery, with an Atom N270 or N280 processor, 160GB hard drive and unspecified (but probably 1GB) of RAM.

Yet in spite of its fatty power source, the NB200 still weighs under 2.5lbs—which is either an extreme feat of engineering or the result of an overzealous press release. We'll hope for the former.

The NB200 will be out in the UK in May, starting in the mid-$400s. [T3 via Ubergizmo]

ASUS gets official with business-minded P30A laptop

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2009/04/22/asus-gets-official-with-business-minded-p30a-laptop/

We already knew that ASUS's P30 laptop (or P30A, as it's now apparently known) would come equipped with Intel's latest and greatest anti-theft technology, but ASUS has only just now gotten fully official with the laptop itself, and dished out all the rest of the specs that at least some folks have no doubt been waiting for. This being a full-on ultraportable, you won't exactly get a ton of power, but you can expect a snazzy LED-backlit 13.3-inch display (1366x768 resolution), along with a low-voltage 1.4GHz Core 2 Duo processor, up to 4GB of RAM, your choice of 250GB or 320GB hard drives (in either 5,400 or 7,200 rpm variations), a DVD drive, HDMI out, a 4-cell battery, and even some built-in 3G -- all in a package that weighs in at just over three pounds. Still no official word on a price, but it looks like you should be able to pick one up any day now -- or you could just wait for a similarly thin-and-light and slightly more stylish Acer Timeline, your choice.

[Via Electronista]

Filed under: Laptops

ASUS gets official with business-minded P30A laptop originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 22 Apr 2009 18:36:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

Western Digital finally releases the 1TB My DVR Expander, TiVo owners rejoice

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2009/04/22/western-digital-finally-releases-the-1tb-my-dvr-expander-tivo-o/

Finally! We've been waiting for Western Digital to put out the 1TB My DVR Expander for so long we almost thought that Amazon listing a couple weeks ago was a mistake. The external eSATA drive allows any number of HD DVRs to record an extra 120 hours of HD content, but the real noise is that it's certified to work with the TiVo HD and TiVo XL, which have locked-down eSATA ports that prevent you from using just any drive. (The original Series3 doesn't have this restriction.) Stupid, we know, but at $199 list and $167 at Amazon, the markup on this thing doesn't seem overly ridiculous, so we won't complain too loudly. Just ship 'em already, okay?

Filed under: Storage

Western Digital finally releases the 1TB My DVR Expander, TiVo owners rejoice originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 22 Apr 2009 12:55:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

Seagate rolls out low-power Barracuda LP hard drives

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2009/04/22/seagate-rolls-out-low-power-barracuda-lp-hard-drives/

Seagate's Barracuda drives have been plagued with a few problems as of late, but it looks like the company is doing its best to push the line in a fresh new direction with its just-announced Barracuda LP series, which promise to cut down on power consumption without making too many compromises in performance. Specifically, Seagate says that the drives will use up to 50% less electricity than standard hard drives, while also cranking out 5,900 RPM, along with an average latency of 5.5ms, and a 32MB cache. No word on what so of premium, if any, they'll demand, but you'll apparently be able to get 'em in 1TB, 1.5TB, and 2TB varieties (all 3.5-inch) right out of the gate.

Filed under: Storage

Seagate rolls out low-power Barracuda LP hard drives originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 22 Apr 2009 13:57:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

Google News Timeline is a Slick Headline Skimmer [News]

Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/lifehacker/full/~3/m4l2JWALYeE/google-news-timeline-is-a-slick-headline-skimmer

Want to track a topic across the web's news sources from the last few years, the last few months, or since yesterday morning? A new Google Labs tool provides an easy-to-navigate headline timeline.

It's an intriguing experiment, though not a complete one by any means. Head over to the timeline site, type in a topic and a time frame, and you get a column-by-column breakdown of certain Google News sources' headlines on the topic. The Timeline can also pull from specific news sources and, in a clever move, dated Wikipedia entries, so you could browse the month-by-month happenings of 1897, if that's how your lunch break goes.

Many major news sources aren't included yet, and the default Time Magazine covers seem a little unncessary—as much as we like to see Kate Winslet in the morning, she has little to do with Google's Android phone. Still, it's an interesting and perhaps mind-orienting view of the news. What kind of timeline tools would you like to have on hand when you're doing research?

Google News Blog: Introducing Google News Timeline [Official Google News Blog]

Know How to Spot an ATM Skimmer [Security]

Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/lifehacker/full/~3/M1cuci45hpg/know-how-to-spot-an-atm-skimmer

If you've seen warnings lately about ATM "skimmers"—data-reading devices added onto machines by thieves—you might be wondering how you could tell if one's been rigged up to where you're about to insert your card. The Consumerist blog hosts a PDF copy of a PowerPoint explainer from an Australian security firm (that still applies to U.S. machines). It might not cover what your specific bank's teller machines should look like, but it does point to warning signs to look out for—like the flashing lights on a card feeder being obscured. [Consumerist]

Recipe Puppy Chooses Meals Based on the Ingredients You Have [Recipes]

Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/lifehacker/full/~3/uRP7NVqUiio/recipe-puppy-chooses-meals-based-on-the-ingredients-you-have

Recipe search engine Recipe Puppy finds meals by a list of ingredients or keywords, searching through more than 500,000 recipes across dozens of web sites.

Once you've searched using the list of ingredients you want to use, Recipe Puppy will suggest other similar ingredients that you might want to add to your search, a very nice feature to help pick an interesting meal. Since the search engine is powered by Google APIs, you can use some regular search operators to help—for instance, you can add a "-" in front of an ingredient you don't want to see. The popular web site AllRecipes provides a similar find-by-what-you-have feature, but Recipe Puppy's ability to search many sites at once makes it worth a look for anybody trying to figure out what to make for dinner.

Recipe Puppy is a free website, works anywhere. For more, check out how to find recipes to satisfy your cravings, or make the most of what's in your pantry with RecipeMatcher. Thanks, Kris!

SiteShoter Takes Web Site Screenshots Over Time [Downloads]

Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/lifehacker/full/~3/3YPIo98ukR4/siteshoter-takes-web-site-screenshots-over-time

Windows only: Portable freeware application SiteShoter takes screenshots of web sites with a powerful array of features.

Using the utility, which (like all of the excelllent NirSoft applications) requires no installation, is easy—just add the URL to the web site you want to capture, choose a filename to save the image to, and click Start to save the screenshot. What makes this utility great is the wide range of powerful options, including a full-featured command line—you can place special formatting codes in the filename to specify a timestamp or add the URL to the filename, which becomes very useful if you wanted to save screenshots for multiple sites at once.

You can choose how often you want the screenshots to be taken—the default is every 5 minutes, but you could take a screenshot every few hours instead. Rounding out the great feature list is the ability to save your configurations for later re-use—you could use the GUI to save the options and create a command-line shortcut to run that configuration on demand.

SiteShoter is a free download for Windows only. For more great utilities, check out how to customize your right-click menu with ShellExView, or just look through our top 10 tiny & awesome Windows utilities.

SiteShoter [NirSoft via gHacks]

Google Profiles Give You Control Over What Google Says About You [Online Identity]

Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/lifehacker/full/~3/5nxVwjOr0gQ/google-profiles-give-you-control-over-what-google-says-about-you

We've always preached about the importance of having a say in what Google says about you, but today Google's making it easier by integrating your Google profile directly in search results.

Last week we pointed out that the new Google Profile page comes complete with a custom URLs designed to make it easy for people to find your profile. Apparently that was a first step in bringing more prominence to your Google profile; as of today, those profile pages will start appearing on the first page of Google search results.

The explanation we got when we talked to the folks at Google: Google has always been about information. In this case, searching for a person in Google has always been a bit of a black hole—particularly when you have a common name or share a name with someone famous enough to dominate page after page of results. The new profile integration will fix these problems and make it easier to find someone via Google—or at least that's the idea.

When we asked the obvious question—whether this was Google's first serious step toward competing with Facebook—we were told that it is not (not that they would have laid out their plans either way). As is, though, Google profile pages certainly don't tread too much into the social networking realm. What they do is create a personal homepage from which you can link to all of your important information—like your blog, your nameplate site, your Flickr account, or anything else online that represents you.

If you want to search Google profiles specifically, just point your browser to Google Profiles Search and plug in the name of the person you're looking for. One additional feature for Google profiles: If you were to simply Google "me", you'll get instructions on how to create and build out your own profile. (It's sort of like how "me" always denotes your email in Gmail.)

Search for "me" on Google [Official Google Blog]

LinkScanner Flags Dangerous Search Results [Downloads]

Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/lifehacker/full/~3/GB4wh1KshBw/linkscanner-flags-dangerous-search-results

Windows only: AVG LinkScanner is a free browser plug-in for Firefox and Internet Explorer that automatically scans your search results and flags links pointing to potentially dangerous content.

Just download and install the plug-in, and from then on LinkScanner will automatically scan search results from both Google and Yahoo in either popular browser. If all's clear, LinkScanner will display a green checkmark next to the result; if not, you'll see a red 'x', indicating a threat. Hovering your mouse over the flag displays more information about the threat. (Two more icons with exclamation points indicate caution, but we never saw these while using it.) LinkScanner is a free download, Windows only.

AVG LinkScanner [via CNET]

Fling Automates Remote Backup and Network Transfers [Downloads]

Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/lifehacker/full/~3/IbhlXIGZfVQ/fling-automates-remote-backup-and-network-transfers

Windows only: If you need to automate local and remote backups, sync folders, or update remote files or websites automatically, Fling is a free and effective solution for those tasks and more.

Fling is an FTP designed to make remote backup and folder synchronization painless. Not only can you use Fling to monitor a local directory and sync it to a remote FTP site or remote folder on your network you can also manage and sync local files on hard drives and removable media. Fling integrates with Windows, you can easily send files to remote and local locations using the right click menu. You can set up Fling automatically update and sync files or restrict it to certain times or only when the transfer is manually started. Fling supports secure FTP via SSL and can be run as a service to ensure it's running even when you're not logged in. For other great file syncing solutions, make sure to check out the Hive Five: Best File Syncing Tools. Fling is freeware, Windows only.

Fling [via Freeware Home]

CometDocs Converts Between More than 50 File Types [Conversion]

Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/lifehacker/full/~3/VsFmB7LG_e0/cometdocs-converts-between-more-than-50-file-types

We know of one or two sites (or many more, actually) that provide file conversions between PDFs, Word documents, and a few other files. CometDocs takes the all-in-one approach, supporting more than 50 file types.

That's a pretty catchy selling point in itself—you can convert PDFs to Excel files, huge TIFF images to PDF, icon files into images, and the site even does a little OCR work on certain image-to-text conversions, and the results were comparable with PDF to Word Converter. But the simple-to-use site also can take almost any file type that's lost an extension and tell you what kind it is, as well as compare two different text or document files and return the text lines where they're different. It can pull the ID3 tags off an MP3, convert an HTML file into an RSS feed, and, well, hit the "FAQ" tab below to see what else it can do.

The site's disclaimer says it will never rent or sell your email address. Signing up with an email and password gives you a "Premium Account," though it's not really spelled out what that offers over CometDocs' free conversions. Thanks Martha!

PBS Combines Video Offerings in One Pretty Package [Streaming Television]

Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/lifehacker/full/~3/qEtyBtnWMiY/pbs-combines-video-offerings-in-one-pretty-package

PBS has consolidated all of its programs offering streaming video into one slick, probably Hulu-inspired portal, letting anyone search, browse by show or topic, and flip through episodes as with a deck of cards.

You'll find many years worth of PBS archives from shows like Frontline, Newshour with Jim Lehrer, Julia Child's inspired cooking work, and many more. That isn't everything, and some programs, like Ken Burns' The National Parks, will limit viewing within a time frame around the PBS airing. But it's still a nice addition to the list of TV providers wising up to the ways of web video. You'll see commercials and banner ads around the site, but they're of the same "sponsored by" variety you've come to expect from public radio and television.

PBS Video [via Bits/New York Times]

Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)