Decaflon Clips

Uqibuity for Firefox - smooth to the touch!

hthth — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 22:44:15

If you’re a Firefox user and live on the web like I do, neck deep in trying out new features and beta services, then you should give Mozilla Lab’s Ubiquity a try. It’s an experimental plugin for FF that reminds me a lot of the desktop application Quicksilver.

It does a lot of things; instant dictionary definitions, translations, conversions to tinyurls, etc. A great productivity tool!

The Top 9½ In a Hacker’s Bookshelf

grokcode — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 01:03:53

Every developer should have a good solid dead tree library to draw ideas from and use as reference material. This list has a bit of everything - textbooks you will encounter at top tier computer science universities, books giving insight into the industry, and references you shouldn’t be caught without. It is a list of hackers’ classics.

Insanely clear tutorial to fully understand the MVC design pattern

99nut — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 13:44:18

Step by step transformation of a plain vanilla PHP script into a fully MVC-powered web machine.

How to Write a Book Report

janiquemiller — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 11:46:07

Writing a good book report requires summarizing a lot of information in a very small space. Your job is to extract the main ideas of a book and possibly analyze it as well and then type it up into a presentable report. Follow these steps to make the task easier.

50 Free Photoshop Pattern Sets

hiperia3d — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 09:27:47

50 free photoshop pattern sets that contain many patterns.

Tempest in a Mobile Phone: Protecting Your Geo-Privacy

Tyme — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 22:46:55

The next great privacy tempest seems like a yawner: What will happen with the data gathered by social networking or personal information services that track where you and your friends are?

Injured? Horsing Around With Stem Cells May Get You Back in the Saddle

Tyme — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 23:01:38

Doctors might soon be able to regrow injured muscles, tendons and bones without invasive surgery, simply by injecting a person's own stem cells into the site of an injury. Veterinarians are already doing it with injured horses, and research into human applications is well under way.

Many Fail to See the Humor in ‘I Am Rich’ for the iPhone

Tyme — Mon, 11 Aug 2008 21:25:20

Last week, an application turned the iPhone into a megaphone to proclaim: “I Am Rich.” That is the name of a downloadable program that promised to do nothing except signal to the world that its buyer was wealthy enough to have spent $1,000 to download an image of a multifaceted ruby.

Seems like the people who bought it had a different understanding of what the app did....

Google doubles its cookie tracking: Will you opt out?

Tyme — Fri, 08 Aug 2008 14:37:23

Google on Thursday rolled out improvements to its ad network and will add DoubleClick tracking across its sites. Google also made it easy to opt out of its double dose of cookies with one click. The larger question is whether users will choose to go cookie free.

Matt Harding Dances at Yahoo - so does Yang

Tyme — Fri, 08 Aug 2008 14:47:42

Yahoo recruited the Internet dance sensation Matt Harding to perform with employees, from chief executive Jerry Yang to the cafeteria staff, in a music video that shows there's at least a little joy in 'Hooville.

Your iTunes Library Anywhere? An iPhone No-Brainer For Apple

Tyme — Fri, 08 Aug 2008 14:55:02

Want to take your whole iTunes music library on the road -- even the stuff that doesn't fit on your 8-gigabyte iPhone? Apple is supposedly on the case: According to AppleInsider, a filing with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office details a new version of Apple's iPhone software that could give you access to your home computer's iTunes library, over the air, from anywhere.

MobileMe drops subscribed calendar syncing

Tyme — Mon, 04 Aug 2008 20:52:59

Jon Gruber points a piece the troubling news that you can’t sync read-only iCal subscription calendars to your iPhone, as confirmed in Apple knowledgebase article TS1213. What’s worse is that Apple took this feature out of their US$99 subscription service, but it’s still available when you sync your iPhone (for free) with a cable. The problem is that they’re mutually exclusive so if you use MobileMe you lose the ability to sync subscription calendars.

AT&T may hold on to exclusive iPhone deal until 2010

Tyme — Mon, 04 Aug 2008 21:02:39

In what may be a rare peek at negotiations between Apple and carriers, a prominent newspaper claims AT&T agreed to hefty iPhone 3G subsidies on the condition that it remained the lone US carrier for the handset until 2010.

Midori musings: Thoughts on a "post-Windows" OS

Tyme — Mon, 04 Aug 2008 23:16:28

The big excitement in Microsoftland this week has been further news of Midori. Midori is claimed to be Microsoft's "post-Windows" operating system—a new platform for the future. The SD Times claims to have seen internal Microsoft documents describing the company's plans for the new OS, and it says that Midori will be a commercial derivative of the Singularity project. Say hello to a cloud-computing-ready .NET OS.

Spider vs. Bee... BBC vs. National Geographic

Scrivs — Wed, 30 Jul 2008 00:38:53

When The Ranger was young he enjoyed greatly the diverting summer sport of tossing hapless invertebrates into spiders' webs and seeing the ensuing fight. Even today he's not above the odd experiment, just to see what happens. Of course, we all know what's likely to happen. That's why it's such fun.

Apple seeds developer tools for background-conscious iPhone apps

Tyme — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 20:30:43

Apple has equipped some of its developers with the tools needed to begin authoring iPhone applications that can receive data over the internet, like instant messages, even when they're not running.

IE8 Beta 2 getting heavy performance, crash-recovery tweaks

Tyme — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 20:47:22

The next beta of Internet Explorer 8 is due in August. Improved standards conformance is the headline feature, but there's more to a browser than how well it displays web pages. This week news has been released of some of the new reliability and performance improvements that beta 2 will contain.

Microsoft’s Mind-Altering Vista Experiment

Tyme — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 20:51:44

The software giant Tuesday unveiled a Web site called the Mojave Experiment, where unsuspecting people test an upcoming operating system – only to learn that it’s really Windows Vista. Why the shenanigans? Because most people think Vista is a dud.

We're Really Sorry, Says Apple, Really We Are

Tyme — Mon, 28 Jul 2008 17:08:24

Apple scrambled to limit the damage caused by MobileMe, the company’s first step into cloud computing, by posting an apology and acknowledging continuing problems.

Economy Down, PC Sales Up

Tyme — Mon, 28 Jul 2008 17:11:11

The worldwide economy may be faltering, but PC sales are in growth mode, according to numbers released Tuesday by Gartner Inc., and IDC, two information technology research firms. Apple's growth was particularly strong.

A solar cooled air-conditioning system

Tyme — Mon, 28 Jul 2008 17:15:19

Spanish scientists have developed a new eco-friendly air-conditioning system. The researchers are relying on solar energy for cooling their devices. They claim that their technology does not harm the ozone layer and reduces the use of greenhouse gases.

Defective campaigners target Apple Genius Bars worldwide

Tyme — Mon, 28 Jul 2008 17:21:35

The Defective by Design crew are campaigning against DRM. They also complain that Apple's insistence all iPhone software be vetted blocks free software development; they are concerned at its location-sensing technologies, which they believe, "provides ways for others to track you without your knowledge. They also want Apple to widen support for different audio formats in the device.

Is Apple becoming Microsoft?

Scrivs — Mon, 28 Jul 2008 23:22:02

Leave aside for the moment the seemingly-deepening hardware shortages: frantically popular hardware products are always in short supply at launch, and often even for months or years afterward (Nintendo Wiis remain elusive, and the company is girding for a third straight Christmas season shortage, if you can believe it).

No, your code is not so great that it doesn’t need comments

Scrivs — Mon, 28 Jul 2008 23:30:50

It’s not a sensible goal for beginners and inexperienced developers. Tell them that they should write good code without any comments and they will deliver on the second part but struggle with the first. Even among experienced developers, assuming for a moment that it is possible to write perfect code that doesn’t require comments, there will be far fewer who are capable of this than there are who think that they are.

Ex-Google Engineers Unveil New Search Engine

Tyme — Mon, 28 Jul 2008 17:12:45

The former Google engineers roll out Cuil, which they say will index a larger portion of the Web than Google, and more quickly and at less cost.

BSA: pirated software taking cops off the street, costs jobs

Tyme — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 23:58:06

The Business Software Alliance has had IDG conduct another piracy survey, this one focused on eight US states. The report attempts to shock everyone from their piratical ways by calculating the losses in unusual units: police officers taken off the street.

'Sleepless' gene hints at the nature of slumber

Tyme — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 23:52:24

Flies with a single genetic mutation sleep 80% less than normal flies, and some get by with no shut-eye at all.

The mutation – in a gene that controls how brain cells fire and now dubbed Sleepless – suggests that, at the most basic level, sleep is caused by a slowdown in certain neurons.

Hasbro Orders Facebook to Remove 'Scrabulous'

Tyme — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 22:44:24

Hasbro said Thursday that it has sent a DMCA notice to Facebook, asking the social-networking site to remove the popular Scrabulous application from the company's Web site. Facebook representatives did not immediately answer requests for comment.

TiVo to stream YouTube videos

Tyme — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 15:43:24

Beginning Thursday, TiVo will offer thousands of its subscribers the ability to stream YouTube videos onto their television sets through their broadband-enabled TiVo boxes.

Would Google destroy Digg or take it to the next level?

Tyme — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 19:32:01

Digg commenter Hiji writes, "This is the beginning of the end. In a few years all the major blogs and social-media sites will be owned by large corporations, putting us right back where we started."

The topic of discussion is, of course, TechCrunch's rumor that Digg will soon be acquired by Google for somewhere in the neighborhood of $200 million. Digg's users are debating what Google acquiring Digg might mean for their community in this thread on the site. The question is, would being controlled by a big company like Google ruin--or enhance--the community that Digg has worked so hard to build?

5 Steps to Upgrade From a Hacked iPhone to an iPhone 3G

Tyme — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 19:35:23

I know what you’re thinking: “Matt, I hacked my original iPhone. Now I want to share in the iPhone 3G fun, but I’m worried that something horrible will happen if I upgrade to the iPhone 3G.”

Buck up, fellow iPhone hacker. I’ll tell you how to upgrade from your hacked Apple phone and keep all the settings you love from your original iPhone. The good news is that it’s not hard and there’s a set of five steps that will combine the comfort of your old settings with the joy of the new 3G iPhone. I’ll lead you through the steps.

The App Store’s buggy update process

Tyme — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 19:36:32

The application update procedure for iPhone is a complete and unadulterated nightmare. The App Store tells you you need updates with a nice little red bubble in the upper right of the App Store icon, simple enough, right. Unfortunately that’s where the fun ends.

Cancer Center: Cell Phone Risk

Tyme — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 20:13:50

The head of a prominent cancer research institute issued an unprecedented warning to his faculty and staff Wednesday: Limit cell phone use because of the possible risk of cancer.

Apple may be eying sub-$1000 notebook market

Scrivs — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 19:41:26

Investment bank Piper Jaffray said Tuesday it believes Apple is readying new iPod and notebook products that will apply downward pressure to profit margins because they'll be priced more affordably, such as 13-inch MacBook that will fetch less than $1000.

Trap Jaw Ants Leap Out of Trouble

Scrivs — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 01:28:05

You don't need superhuman powers, just the power of ants to be the most incredible person in the world.