thinGk.stuff

Google Apps for business overview

2011-11-15T18:08:00.000-08:00

ThinkGeek :: Pop Art Toaster

2011-03-13T19:42:00.000-07:00

ThinkGeek :: Pop Art Toaster: "Every day, your morning routine is the same. Cup of coffee, plate of toast, morning paper. Yawn. It's enough to make you want to curl back into your regeneration cubicle, and disengage your central processor, and engage your alpha-waves for another 86,400,000 milliseconds. You need to inject some excitement into you existence before you endure yet another solar cycle in this mundane fashion."

Mobile phones could run for months between charges - Telegraph

2011-03-12T16:34:00.000-08:00

Mobile phones could run for months between charges - Telegraph: "A team of electrical engineers at Illinois University in the US believe their method will enable mobiles and laptops to run for up to 100 times longer between charges."

Online Collaboration

2011-02-16T10:41:00.000-08:00

What to Do When An Employee Asks to Telecommute: Online Collaboration "If it hasn’t already happened, it’s coming: one of your employees is going to ask you if they can telecommute. It may even happen this week, as it’s Telework Week. Many office-based jobs can now be done from anywhere with the right technology. The possibility of employees working remotely is something that is better to think about before the question comes up, rather than finding yourself grasping for an answer in the moment."

RSS Graffiti rocks.

2011-02-16T10:09:00.000-08:00

Testing this news feed thang called RSS Graffiti.

Facebook friends! - Employer link in profile fix.

2011-02-08T15:54:00.000-08:00

Facebook friends! - Employer link in profile fix.: "I finally figured this out. By default, facebook doesn't search for the employer, even if there is an existing facebook presence, so it adds a generic blank page for the employer with a 'like' button. I want that hyperlink to take my friends to my actual fb business page obviously, using a firefox webtools plugin I can access the employer_id field in the form and edit that by pasting in the correct number...voila! Please click 'like' at marinegraphics.com if you can appreciate this!"

Rentalship Is The New Ownership in the Networked Age | Epicenter�| Wired.com

2011-02-07T01:13:00.000-08:00

Rentalship Is The New Ownership in the Networked Age | Epicenter�| Wired.com: "When Pierre Omidyar had a broken laser pen to dispose of back in 1995, he took a bet on humanity’s inherent trustworthiness and listed it on his new website AuctionBay. The site, since renamed a more manageable eBay, was conceived as “a place where people can come together” and generally be trusted to behave honestly — a community of buyers and sellers who, thanks to a novel feedback system, proved remarkably decent in their communal behavior."

Cloudstock: The Woodstock for Cloud Developers | Cloudstock, a free industry developer conference to explore leading-edge cloud technologies and platforms.

2010-11-12T08:45:00.000-08:00

Cloudstock: The Woodstock for Cloud Developers | Cloudstock, a free industry developer conference to explore leading-edge cloud technologies and platforms.: "Often innovation and agility is hampered by non technical issues like complex business processes with a lot of red tapes, fullfillment issues, procurement delays, or simply the cost of building an infrastructure. By combining the eBay eCommerce APIs, the Paypal payment APIs, with new cloud computing platforms, developers can more freely innovate by leveraging the following key cloud properties:

Self Service user experience with delegated administration model. Cloud is empowering developers by giving them the capability to react quickly to changing business conditions, and go live much faster. They can deploy code more often, on their schedule, and tune their application capacity to adapt better to user demand.

Infinite capacity. On the cloud, developers should get the illusion of infinite compute capacity, removing traditional physical datacenter boundaries. Resources can be flexed on demand, or automatically to react to load characteristics."

The Programmable Web

2010-11-11T17:43:00.000-08:00

The 80legs Blog: "In fact, in an older but still applicable interview with Berners-Lee, he talks about why a open, linked data web is by far preferable than APIs for data access.

There is a foundational, DNA-level need to share data. Without openness, you loose the full value and impede any future innovation in the process.

APIs absolutely have benefits – but only when we are not beholden to them – when we can use them rationally, strategically, and carefully. And when data isn’t at the crux of your site, service or application."

Gravatar - Globally Recognized Avatars

2010-09-23T09:35:00.000-07:00

Gravatar - Globally Recognized Avatars: "Your Gravatar is an image that follows you from site to site appearing beside your name when you do things like comment or post on a blog. Avatars help identify your posts on blogs and web forums, so why not on any site?"

Peter Gabriel | Article | Scratch My Back

2010-03-17T21:43:00.000-07:00

Peter Gabriel | Article | Scratch My Back: "The project is groundbreaking for two reasons. Firstly, it's a collaboration. All the artists whose songs Peter has recorded here are returning the favour by each recording a song of his. The fruits of this exchange - or song swap - will be heard on a forthcoming companion volume, I'll Scratch Yours. 'The intention,' explains Peter, 'was that we would each do the songs in our own idiosyncratic way.'"

What Happens When You Don’t Change Your Oil For 60,000 Miles?

2009-12-02T18:13:00.000-08:00

I was always wondering that! "Know the recommended service intervals in your car handbook? This pulled pork BBQ-like sludge is what happens when you don't follow them. More mistreated BMW 328Ci schadenfreude below."

FireFTP - The Free FTP Client for Mozilla Firefox

2009-12-02T00:42:00.000-08:00

Many people wonder what to use to ftp files. Here's a free app that runs under firefox.

FireFTP - The Free FTP Client for Mozilla Firefox: "FireFTP is a free, secure, cross-platform FTP client for Mozilla Firefox which provides easy and intuitive access to FTP servers."

Google LatLong: Santa, Santa, when will you be here?

2009-12-01T14:52:00.000-08:00

Google LatLong: Santa, Santa, when will you be here?: "As I slowly emerge from my tryptophan-induced coma, I find my thoughts drifting merrily toward the next holiday on the calendar. And, like any kid trapped in an adult's body, I have to admit that I'm no more immune to the heady anticipation of Santa's arrival than I was as a wide-eyed eight-year-old lad.

I remember putting up the tree, stringing the lights, and wrapping the presents, the smell of freshly-baked pies tickling my nose and the sound of Christmas carols floating through cinnamon air. My dad would hang a wreath on the front door. My mom would tie a big red bow on the dog. And, in a small digression from this Rockwellian scene, we would call NORAD, the North American Aerospace Defense Command, to track Santa."

Twitter Support :: Introducing: Twitter Lists!

2009-11-28T14:55:00.000-08:00

Twitter Support :: Introducing: Twitter Lists!: "By popular demand, Twitter users can now organize users they follow (or users that they don’t) into groups, or “lists”. This article will help you get started with some lists basics and hopefully get you ready to make your own!

Before we get started, it should be noted that following a user is not a requirement to add someone to a list; if you want to add a user but not necessarily regularly follow them, lists allow you to do that."

Google Wave to be released to 100,000 testers Wednesday - CNN.com

2009-09-30T08:36:00.000-07:00

Google Wave to be released to 100,000 testers Wednesday - CNN.com: "'This should be something everybody uses and something everybody knows,' Jens Rasmussen said.

In Wave, e-mail-like communications can be edited by several users simultaneously. And users can chat about certain sections of Wave documents in real time, where all users see what a person is typing as it is typed. If a person comes to the conversation late, they can replay everything they've missed."

About - Platial.com

2009-08-27T17:34:00.000-07:00

About - Platial.com: "In 2007, Platial and Frappr teamed up to create the largest social map service for both people and places!

Platial maps, The People's Guide to Who and What's Nearby, a free resource where hundreds of thousands of people around the world share and discover all kinds of Places. Anyone can map just about anything including their towns, lives, travels, feeds, files, photos, video and stories in one simple interface.

'Frappr! Maps are like a triple mash-up of an online guest book, a hit log and a map -- three services that, combined, create a fun and visually appealing environment that will keep Web site visitors coming back for more.'
-- Kun, Frappr! Co-Founder

Platial and Frappr! Maps are free and can be embedded on any Web page, blog or online community that supports flash or javascript embeds, including MySpace, Friendster, Xanga, Typepad, Wordpress, Google, Facebook and Hi5. We are the world's largest social map service. We help turn your ordinary Web pages into interactive, fun and engaging destinations. Frappr! Maps give Web site owners and visitors an easy and unique way to visualize and interact with each other. Visitors can add their name, photo and message directly on a Web page embedded with Frappr! Maps, and the Web site owner gets real-time stats on where visitors are coming from and how often they visit"

Check Username Availability at Multiple Social Networking Sites

2009-08-18T04:35:00.000-07:00

Check Username Availability at Multiple Social Networking Sites: "Check to see if your desired username or vanity url is still available at dozens of popular Social Networking and Social Bookmarking websites. Promote your brand consistently by registering a username that is still available on the majority of the most popular sites. Find the best username with namechk."

Map of the Internet

2009-08-14T21:54:00.001-07:00

DoD is working to develop stance on social Web sites | font, span, windowtext

2009-08-10T11:44:00.000-07:00

DoD is working to develop stance on social Web sites | font, span, windowtext - News - Jacksonville Daily News: "The Department of Defense has issued a study of social media Web sites and the 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit is filling out waivers to keep theirs, Marine officials say.

Deputy Defense Secretary William J. Lynn III directed a study of social media sites — including Twitter, Facebook and YouTube — in hopes of establishing a policy by October, according to Associated Press reports. The study is being done to address security challenges and the communication value the sites have to the DoD.

Until the study is complete, there is not a department-wide ban of social networking and Web 2.0 tools, though restrictions may occur due to bandwidth or security concerns, according to the AP."

Onehub • Virtual workspaces for online collaboration and file sharing

2009-08-07T02:45:00.000-07:00

Onehub • Virtual workspaces for online collaboration and file sharing: "With Onehub you create virtual workspaces called Hubs to share information, documents, and files more easily. You can choose from the many Onehub Widgets to help you organize and manage your projects. Your team will benefit from having information in a central location so they can work smarter and be more productive than ever. Watch a 2 minute screencast to discover how to create your own Hub."

World Blind Sailing Championships Finish in New Zealand

2009-03-25T10:15:00.000-07:00

"The 2009 International Association for Disabled Sailing (IFDS) World Blind Sailing Championships finished after five days of racing on 21 March, bringing together some of the best athletes in Sailing from around the world to Lake Rotorua in New Zealand.

Host country New Zealand held the reigns on the water, winning first place in the B2 fleet with athlete Paulien Eitjes. New Zealand also took second in both the B1 and B3 fleets, with athletes Dick Lancaster and Dave Allerton pulling in their respective events to top positions."

Twittervision 3D

2009-03-25T01:24:00.001-07:00

OK people...This is nothing short of you standard everyday modern miracle!

What is Twittervision?
A real-time geographic visualization of posts to Twitter. Samuel Morse, meet Carl Jung.
How do I get on Twittervision?
Join Twitter and post. You must have a location and an image defined to appear on the public feed (and to be located on the map).
How can I easily change my location?
You can change your location as often as you like. Simply submit a Twitter post with your location as L:New York, NY (or wherever), or L:work. Please see the Twittermap FAQ for acceptable location examples.
What's up with the like & dislike buttons?
We want your input about what posts you like and dislike. Twittervision Favorite and Least Favorite lists are now available!

"What Hath God Wrought?" — Samuel F.B. Morse, 1844

Sit back and enjoy the show!

How do you block a friend from posting on your wall on facebook?

2009-02-25T18:12:00.000-08:00

"How do you block a friend from posting on your wall on facebook?

I still want to keep this person as a friend but don't want them posting on my wall. How do you block them from doing this, would they know about it?"

ANSWER:

When you log into Facebook, you're presented with the page that shows all the feeds.

On the top right corner you should see "your name", "Settings" and "Logout"

Click settings, choose Privacy Settings, you will see the page for Basic Profile settings.

Look at wall posts, keep the box checked but then click on the "My Network and my friends" menu and choose "Customize".

A small window will appear where on the bottom you can type the friend's name you want to block from posting on your wall

RSS Feeds, Community, Social Media Platform - KickApps

2009-02-25T08:35:00.000-08:00

RSS Feeds, Community, Social Media Platform - KickApps: "KickApps is a hosted, social media platform that makes it easy to add robust community-building functionality to your website. Create, manage, and monetize your own custom Social Network and/or User-Generated Content (UGC) site, complete with full RSS 2.0 integration and viral widgets so you can syndicate your content all over the web"

Folksonomy

2009-02-01T13:06:00.000-08:00

Folksonomy - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia: "Folksonomy (also known as collaborative tagging, social classification, social indexing, and social tagging) is the practice and method of collaboratively creating and managing tags to annotate and categorize content. Folksonomy describes the bottom-up classification systems that emerge from social tagging.[1] In contrast to traditional subject indexing, metadata is generated not only by experts but also by creators and consumers of the content. Usually, freely chosen keywords are used instead of a controlled vocabulary.[2] Folksonomy (from folk taxonomy) is a user-generated taxonomy.

Folksonomies became popular on the Web around 2004 as part of social software applications including social bookmarking and annotating photographs. Tagging, which is characteristic of Web 2.0 services, allows non-expert users to collectively classify and find information. Some websites include tag clouds as a way to visualize tags in a folksonomy."

Social bookmarking

2009-02-01T12:36:00.000-08:00

Social bookmarking - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia: "Social bookmarking is a method for Internet users to store, organize, search, and manage bookmarks of web pages on the Internet with the help of metadata.

In a social bookmarking system, users save links to web pages that they want to remember and/or share. These bookmarks are usually public, and can be saved privately, shared only with specified people or groups, shared only inside certain networks, or another combination of public and private domains. The allowed people can usually view these bookmarks chronologically, by category or tags, or via a search engine."

Joomla Community Magazine

2009-02-01T00:27:00.000-08:00

Joomla Community Magazine: "Dion Hinchcliffe declared Joomla! the number 1 platform for creating online communities in his ZDNet article Ten leading platforms for creating online communities.

Thanks for noticing, Dion! With Joomla! 1.5, developers have an object-oriented, pattern based API that follows best practices. The new MVC based component objects gives developers a platform for rapid application development and prototyping. Dion is absolutely right - Joomla! 1.5 is more than capable of empowering online communities.

Following Joomla! in this top 10 list is Drupal, PHP-Nuke, Zikula (formerly PostNuke), and Microsoft's Sharepoint. The next five include Dot Net Nuke, Community Server, KickApps, and ClearSpace Community."

ClickTale | Web Analytics by ClickTale | Visitor Movies, Heatmaps & Form Analytics

2009-01-02T00:01:00.000-08:00

ClickTale | Web Analytics by ClickTale | Visitor Movies, Heatmaps & Form Analytics: "Discover how visitors interact with your online forms: what they type, how long they take, which fields they skip, where they get stuck, and why they leave."

TRUSTe - Make Privacy Your Choice

2008-12-31T12:26:00.000-08:00

"Facebook moved into the top 20 trusted companies for the first time this year, signifying an increased trust in social networking as a mainstream communications tool."

image cross fade redux

2008-12-31T04:37:00.000-08:00

"This is a rewrite of a very old experiment. This rewrite uses unobtrusive DOM scripting and semantic markup to achieve its goals, and is somewhat less abusive of the CPU in Firefox. It also works in Safari - the original version was written prior to Safari supporting the CSS3 'opacity' property. Opera doesn't support opacity, so the images will just flip in that browser."

Award for Slickest App

2008-12-13T05:09:00.000-08:00

Award for Slickest App: "This has to be the coolest application that I have seen yet. The TouchGraph application allows you to visualize your friends that are connected to at least one other person in your network besides yourself. Ultimately this ends up displaying your closest friends through an amazing interface. Zoom in and view the pictures of your friends, drag networks and people around, and see which friends are the most connected to your other friends."

Gene 'triggers unhealthy eating'

2008-12-12T03:23:00.000-08:00

BBC NEWS | Health | Gene 'triggers unhealthy eating': "People who carry a gene variant linked to obesity eat an average of 100 extra calories per meal, research suggests.
The key variant of the FTO gene is thought to be carried by 63% of people."

Google tells us what we look for

2008-12-12T03:16:00.000-08:00

BBC NEWS | Technology | Google tells us what we look for: "The most searched term for Google users in the UK was Facebook while the BBC came second and its iPlayer service was the fastest rising query.
The list also reveals what global preoccupations are and this year the US election candidates and the Beijing Olympics figure high."

BBC NEWS | Science & Environment | IBM to build brain-like computers

2008-11-21T11:53:00.000-08:00

BBC NEWS | Science & Environment | IBM to build brain-like computers: "IBM has announced it will lead a US government-funded collaboration to make electronic circuits that mimic brains.

Part of a field called 'cognitive computing', the research will bring together neurobiologists, computer and materials scientists and psychologists."

BBC NEWS | Technology | Google unveils customised search

2008-11-21T11:52:00.000-08:00

BBC NEWS | Technology | Google unveils customised search: "Google has unveiled a tool that will allow users to customise and refine their search queries.

The company's SearchWiki lets users re-order, remove or add specific web search results.

This means the next time they perform the same search, the personalised version will pop up."

Newsreader and RSS Aggregator - Todays News Delivered the Way You Want

2008-10-28T12:50:00.000-07:00

Newsreader and RSS Aggregator - Todays News Delivered the Way You Want: "Stop weeding through web content, start reading what interests you.

Sprout is a revolutionary free piece of software that fetches the freshest news and entertainment content for you from thousands of sources online. Over time, Sprout will learn what you like, weed out what you don’t and surprise you at every turn. Your personal information needs are delivered straight to you in a downloadable, stand-alone application. Other newsreaders simply can’t compare."

What's Pando? | Pando

2008-10-28T11:35:00.000-07:00

What's Pando? | Pando: "Pando is free P2P software that makes downloading, streaming and sharing large media files fast, easy and fun. Need to email large attachments, IM a folder, or publish your downloadable videos to the Web? Maybe you'd just like to watch full-screen HD Internet TV."

Testdex.com

2008-10-20T11:08:00.000-07:00

Big Five Test Results

Extroversion (72%) high which suggests you are overly talkative, outgoing, sociable and interacting at the expense too often of developing your own individual interests and internally based identity.
Accommodation (58%) moderately high which suggests you are, at times, overly kind natured, trusting, and helpful at the expense of your own individual development (martyr complex).
Orderliness (58%) moderately high which suggests you are, at times, overly organized, neat, structured and restrained at the expense too often of flexibility, variety, spontaneity, and fun.
Emotional Stability (62%) moderately high which suggests you are relaxed, calm, secure, and optimistic.
Inquisitiveness (72%) high which suggests you are very intellectual, curious, imaginative but possibly not very practical.

Take Free Big Five Personality Test
personality tests by similarminds.com

Embedding the imager in a blog.

2008-10-19T19:52:00.000-07:00

We're up to more private labeling with a built in affiliate tracking mechanism. Want to see how this looks embedded in a blogspot?

Contact me for more information john@thingk.net

Blogger Play

2007-10-18T11:14:00.000-07:00

Blogger Help: "Blogger Play is a real-time slideshow of photos Blogger users have recently uploaded to their blogs. It's a great snapshot of what people are thinking and posting about, right now!"

Emulator | dotMobi

2007-10-12T17:13:00.000-07:00

Emulator | dotMobi: "Researchers at IDC say that 1.3 billion people will connect to the Internet via mobile phones by 2008. To see your site the same way that millions of mobile phone users do, use the .mobi mobile Emulator, which 'emulates' a real mobile phone Internet browser."

SearchEngineWatch

2007-10-07T22:03:00.000-07:00

SearchEngineWatch: Major Search Engines and Directories: "In the search engine list below, Search Engine Watch provides a guide to the major search engines of the web. Why are these considered to be 'major' search engines? Because they are either well-known or well-used."

Digital Photography

2007-05-31T10:46:00.001-07:00

The way the Copyright Law is written and currently interpreted, it’s easier than ever to legally combine parts of several digital images to make an entirely new image. And the Big 3 (Getty, Corbis, and JupiterImages) have the resources to employ this as a standard procedure. They own the rights to a major portion of the commercial stock photography in the world, and the race is still on between them. They have just about pulled it off.

Like a view under the microscope of an ever-expanding organism dividing and reproducing itself, the Big 3 present a macro view of how the world of commercial stock photography is growing. And it’s not through photographers tramping the globe, taking more photos. Instead it’s due to an incestuous technique (like cloning sheep) to which the Digital Age has given birth. The Big 3 add to this hidden trump card each time they buy up yet another stock photo agency and gain certain electronic rights for that agency’s photos. They also take steps to gain the right to digitally combine those images with other images in their files, by use of a waiver clause in their contracts with photographers. Typical is the Getty contract, in section 106A (see this at http://www.photosource.com/106A.html), sub-section (a) “Transfer and Waiver.” Photographers who are not aware of what they are signing can inadvertently waive the attributions and integrity rights to a single photo or group of photos. The mathematics of this process are ingenious. Not only do the Big 3 acquire new companies and new images, but an exponential expansion of some of those images, whose copyright can become their property, according to current copyright interpretation. In the Digital Age of photography, this new genre of photograph is emerging. It has not arrived on main-street digital yetbut we see prototypes of it in print ads and especially on TV. I call this the “kaleidoscope strategy.” (Remember the tube toy you once raised to the sky and then marveled at the changing myriad images as you turned it?) In terms of arithmetic, it goes like this: Any one of The Big 3 select five of their waivered pictures, digitize them, combine elements from the five into a variety of 25 new pictures, each substantially different from the original (green sky on this one, a small tree from that one, a vintage automobile from this one, etc.) and presto! They have a completely different mood, expression and feeling in each new photoand none are recognizable as any of the five original pictures. Photographers who have signed contracts with the Big 3 did so in good faith, expecting their pictures to continue to belong to them. While their original contracts may prohibit altering their original photos, nothing is mentioned about extracting parts of an image to produce a new image of separate copyright. Some “work for hire” contracts, for example, stipulate “we retain usage rights in any medium now known or hereinafter developed for no additional payment.” As you can see, the photographer loses control of his/her picture when it is combined with parts of other photographers’ images.

Can the courts help? No doubt court cases will toss the kaleidoscope strategy back and forth for years to come. The U.S. Copyright Law is a balance of interests: the user, the creator and the publisher. In the end, those in judicial command who interpret the Copyright Law, will probably decree that it would interfere with “creativity” to disallow the process of combining images to make new ones, in the spirit of how Picasso and other artists combined images and items to make collages or sculptures.

Firefox - Rediscover the Web

2006-10-24T23:15:00.000-07:00

Firefox - Rediscover the Web: "The award-winning Web browser is now faster, more secure, and fully customizable to your online life. With Firefox 2, we’ve added powerful new features that make your online experience even better."

WhatTheFont : MyFonts

2006-10-24T19:57:00.000-07:00

WhatTheFont : MyFonts: "Ever wanted to find a font just like the one used by certain publications, corporations, or ad campaigns? Well now you can, using our WhatTheFont font recognition system. Upload a scanned image of the font and instantly find the closest matches in our database. If WhatTheFont can’t figure it out, you can submit your image to the WhatTheFont Forum where cloak-draped font enthusiasts around the world will help you out!"

What Is Plagiarism?

2006-10-24T18:47:00.000-07:00

What Is Plagiarism?: "The word plagiarism comes from a Latin word for kidnapping. You know that kidnapping is stealing a person. Well, plagiarism is stealing a person's ideas or writing. You wouldn't take someone's lunch money or bike, right? Well, someone's words and thoughts are personal property, too."

The American Dream

2006-10-19T23:55:00.000-07:00

I love this Youtube.com stuff. Who needs a television?

The Most Addicting Game

2006-10-19T22:47:00.000-07:00

This is my current record. I'm even using the wacom pen and tablet...maybe you're better with a mouse? Proove it!

Blambot Comic Fonts and Lettering

2006-10-19T07:15:00.000-07:00

Blambot Comic Fonts and Lettering: "A S U C C E S S F U L L O G O
How do you know if your logo design is any good? Think about some of these things while you look at your work..."

Google enhanced image search.

2006-10-19T06:46:00.000-07:00

Here's a game you can play that will actually help the world.

Webmaster Help Center - What does it mean to opt-in to enhanced image search?: " What does it mean to opt-in to enhanced image search?

If you choose to enable enhanced image search, Google will use tools such as Google Image Labeler to associate the images included in your site with labels that will improve indexing and search quality of those images. To enable the images on your site to be used with these types of tools, simply, access the site in webmaster tools, then choose Diagnostic > Enhanced Image Search. Once you have opted-in, you can opt-out at any time by returning to this page and clearing the checkbox. "