purchased for use on blogs. This is an example of a 400x400 px image.
search for LuckyOliver images through the PictureSandbox interface - when you find an image you like, click the blue arrow to go to the LuckyOliver page
or go directly to LuckyOliver.com to search and buy there.
To use PicLens, a user clicks a small translucent icon that appears atop the image of interest once the plugin is installed. The PicLens slideshow interface appears and the user can move from one photo to the next or press play and enjoy the show. A user can intuitively browse images within search results, photo albums, and Media RSS enabled websites.
Support is currently provided for Flickr, Facebook, Friendster, Picasa Web Album and image search results from Google and Yahoo. Site owners can add support to any site with photos by including Media RSS support.
The best way to describe PicLens is that it’s a like the slideshow feature in Picasa or a similar photo viewing tool, but applied to web pages. The full screen rendering does require a decent internet speed when displaying large photographs, but visually the results are stunning. This Firefox plugin is going to find a lot of fans very, very quickly.
(thanks to Ouriel Ohayon for the tip)
Slapvid runs as a Java applet coupled with a Flash video player. Unfortunately this means users have to authorize the 300Kb applet to run the first time, but that still requires less initiative on the users behalf than a full blown browser plugin. The applet runs in the background, managing the delivery of video chunks to be displayed in the player.
To demonstrate the peering technology, they’ve developed their own flash player that shows the top Youtube videos in 5 minutes. The player mashes together short clips of each video. You can see the whole video by clicking the hand. However, because of bandwidth concerns on their central server, the peering technology is only turned on for a small sample of users. All other users will just see videos streamed from Youtube. To guarantee you get the peering applet, you can apply for one of 100 beta accounts for Techcrunch readers. You can see the video player after the jump.
Slapvid is a Y Combinator startup from 4 Carnegie Mellon grads.
For all the 64GB SSDs announced, only one manufacturer has the skillz to bring them to market: Samsung. Starting today, Sammy is mass producing the world's first 64GB, 1.8-inch SSD. Right, the ideal size for UMPCs and super slim ultra-portables. No word on price but it's not like you'll find these up for retail anyway. We expect 'em to go OEM-only baby as $1,000 (at least) premiums inside your latest VAIO, Latitude, Lifebook, and Sammy's own Q40 and Q1 Ultra machines to name a few. Apple too, if there's any life to that ultra-portable rumor.
To use a TV news cliche, it's like a horror movie come true: three families from Fircrest in Washington State are being harassed by a unknown individual, who somehow has the power to turn cellphones on, send messages, and change ringtones. Over the last few months, the families have had calls that threaten death and violence against them, calls that tell the people what they're doing at that time, and calls that originate from the cellphones of other members of the family. In one case, the stalker changed the ringtone of a phone to say "answer your phone." According to one James M. Atkinson, an apparent expert in these matters who used to provide the CIA with advice in counterintelligence, the technical profficiency to pull off this level of stalking isn't that high: if the FBI can do it, why not some anti-social kid, right?
Frank DeMartin, vice president for marketing and product development at Mitsubishi, casually mentioned in a recent NY Times article that the company will be showing off its large-screen laser TVs at the next CES (in January, put it in your calendar!). As we mentioned in 2006, the new tri-laser projectors are said to have higher picture quality and a larger range of color than LCD or plasma screens, making them a bit of a threat to the status quo -- although currently it looks like the TVs will be promoted to the "premium" end of the market, thus waylaying any direct competition (save for the videophile crowd). Then again, since we'll all be getting these under the tree this year anyway, we're not sure what the big deal is.
While LG's ambitious plans didn't exactly pan out in 2005, the idea of upping those megapixels in mainstream cameraphones sure is getting a lot of attention today. Shortly after Kodak announced its plan to unveil a five-megapixel iteration for future phones, NEC is hitting back with a development of its own. Apparently, the company is already shipping samples of a "system chip capable of processing cameraphone images at resolutions of up to eight-megapixels," which even includes "image stabilization circuitry as an option." Best of all, the CE131 sample device is priced at just ¥4,000 ($33), and hopefully that cost will diminish even further as mass production goes forward in October. [Warning: Read link requires subscription]
Just compose a new email message, attach document(s) that have to be converted into PDF and send the email to pdf@koolwire.com. The PDF file(s) should arrive in your inbox the next moment.
The big advantage is that Koolwire PDF converter requires no software installation and, unlike Google Docs or PDFOnline, you don't have to upload documents to any webserver in order to print them as PDF - just send them across as email attachments. PDF creation couldn't be simpler.
Best of all, you can attach multiple documents / images to the same email message and Koolwire will batch convert them into PDF. Don't think any free PDF writer software offers such a convenient option to create multiple PDFs in one go.
koolwire.com/ | Developer Blog | PDF Presentation
One software can rationalize those operations:prostock master. It manages very easily tagging and uploading on major microstock sites (8 of them so far). And because it uses Java it is Multi platform.
I wonder what will be the consequences if this kind of software get massively used. The market might be reshaped. Anyway this high growth market might still surprise us in many ways…
Jun 26, 2007 6:05 AM, PROMO Xtra, By Patricia Odell
The Nebraska Attorney General last week warned consumers about a fraudulent sweepstakes that appears to be sponsored by major companies including Virgin Mobile USA and McDonald’s.
AG Jon Bruning called the mailing “a new type of sweepstakes fraud that lists false sponsorships to deceive consumers into participating.”
In addition to McDonald’s and Virgin Mobile, the notices, which state that consumers have won tens of thousands of dollars, also appeared to be sponsored by Wal-Mart, Pizza Hut, Sears, Budget Rent-A-Car and Gap, the AG said.
However, an inquiry by the AG’s consumer protection division found that these businesses were not involved in the promotion, Bruning said.
The letter tells consumers that they must pay a “clearance fee” to receive the prize because the award money is bonded. A check from one of the “sponsors” is enclosed in the letter to cover the costs of the clearance fee. The consumer is instructed to deposit the check and send the money back to the sweepstakes organizers.
“The check is fraudulent, and consumers lose the money they send,” Bruning said in a statement.
One “sponsor” learned that checks for up to $4,720 were being written from one of its bank accounts and immediately closed it, Bruning said.
“If it seems too good to be true, it probably is,” he said. “Nebraskans work too hard for their money to lose it in a scam. Being skeptical and researching an opportunity is the best way to avoid falling victim.”
FactSpotter is text mining software that combines a linguistic engine that allows users to make queries in everyday language. FactSpotter looks for the keywords contained in a query along with the context those words have.
According to Xerox, FactSpotter is capable of combing through almost any document regardless of the language, location, format or type; take advantage of the way humans think, speak and ask questions; and discriminate the results highlighting just a handful of relevant answers instead of returning thousands of unrelated responses.
Frédérique Segond, manager of parsing and semantics research at XRCE said that the tool is more accurate because it delves into documents, extracting the concepts and the relationships among them. “By understanding the context, it returns the right information to the searcher, and it even highlights the exact location of the answer within the document”.
Whilst it sounds appealing, FactSpotter will not be coming to a browser near anyone, anytime shortly. Xerox plans to launch FactSpotter next year as part of the paid Xerox Litigation Service platform and has no plans for a wider or public release. Here’s betting that a Steve Jobs character comes along and steals the concept and turns into the next Google; history often does repeat itself.
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