Thursday, May 31, 2007

Invitr.com - So Everyone Can see Your Flickr Photos


Invitr is a Flickr related application which simply extends your sharing capabilities. With Invitr you can share your Flickr photos with non-Flickr members; so photos that have been catagorized as private can now be sent and shared with anyone you choose. Invitr also lets you set up an expiration date for your photos, so after your predetermined date that photo is no longer available for viewing. To use Invitr just log into your Flickr account as usual, select the photos you wish to share and fill out the email address info. Those who receive the photo links can only view items, commenting etc is not allowed. The URL sent out by Invitr with your photos can be passed along, so if you're super secretive about your photos Invitr isn't for you, but for everyone else who wishes to share their beautiful Flickr pics without having to goad their grandma and friends into joining, Invitr's a treat.

In their own words:
"Invitr introduces the only missing feature of the almighty Flickr. Invitr allows you to specify one (or more) private pictures to be shown to as many/little people as you want. Think of an extension of the Public, Friends, Family and Private status."

Why it might be a killer:
Invitr is simple but effective. Takes care of that annoying little fact of registration and sharing; you can share your photos with whomever you want.

Some questions:
How's the site going to make a profit? Is it really a useful app that people will use? People could just sign up with Flickr and then they wouldn't need Invitr. 

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Apple conceals buyer data in DRM-free iTunes tracks

May 31, 2007 (Computerworld) -- A security researcher warned iTunes customers today that Apple Inc. encodes the buyer's account name and e-mail address in the new DRM-free tracks that debuted yesterday.

The data added to noncopy protected files purchased on iTunes can be viewed after the track is played by pulling up its File Info dialog in Mac OS X, said "mordaxus," one of the regulars who writes on the security blog Emergent Chaos.

"They [Apple] aren't the only one to watermark the files," said mordaxus, who pointed out that eMusic does something similar.

All iTunes files include the name on the buyer's account and the associated e-mail address -- not just the new DRM-free tunes. But their inclusion on noncopy protected songs is significant, mordaxus said, because some people might be tempted to share bought music on a peer-to-peer (P2P) network.

"If you're going to put music files up a P2P network, you cannot be paranoid. They are out to get you," said mordaxus. "It would be folly to take any music you bought from any service and serve it up."

The Unofficial Apple Weblog posted a three-step set of instructions on how Mac OS X users can use Terminal to dig into an iTunes Plus file.

Apple did not returns calls asking why iTunes tracks, whether protected by DRM or not, contain buyer data.

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Transparency comes to cars

Rick points us to this article about a Saturn initiative. You'll be able to test drive the competition at the Saturn dealership.

Brilliant.

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Google Goes Offline, on Purpose

Google is looking to help web applications get offline, releasing a new Gears open source project. At a demonstration, today it is releasing a version of Google Reader that works offline via a manual sync.

Google Gears is a developer release with new JavaScript APIs for data storage, application caching, and multi-threading features, the company says. In a demo today at headquarters in Mountain View team members said it should work for everything from spotty Internet access to total offline status. They said Google applications like Gmail would be a natural extension, whereas applications like search would not make sense.

Google is looking to start an industry standard and has brought Adobe, Mozilla, and Opera in to support the project. It is looking to outside developers to explore the capabilities of the tools. The announcement comes on the eve of a worldwide developer day, where Google is also announcing a Mashup Editor as well as one million downloads of its Google Web Toolkit.

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Screen Capture a Long and Scrolling Web page Online

Picnik.com, one of the favorite Flash-based tool for editing images online just keeps getting better and more useful. They have a excellent add-on for Firefox 2.0+ that will help you grab a screenshot of any webpage with a simple right click and it will automatically export the image to Picnik image editor for further editing (like resizing, including borders, overlay text, rounded corners, etc) For instance, this page from Steve Rubel was enhanced using the Vignette / Matte effect and it's trasformed from a boring screenshot into something that immediately invites attention. screen capture webpage online You can screen capture either the visible portion of the webpage or the entire webpage even if extends several folds. Very handy for saving snapshots of webpages (like an ebay paypment receipt) or for creating thumbnail images of your websites for MyBlogLog, Facebook or other services. Picnik Firefox Add-on | Picnik.com The Picnik Screen capture extension is Firefox only but here are some screen-capture options for IE. And some more Firefox extensions for taking screen capture of websites and HTML web pages.

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