Dial A Human! gives you the numbers and codes to get to a human being while dialing one of many 1-800 numbers. Of course, these days a lot of times the annoying automated systems actually help you get to someone who can help you, instead of getting you to a person who you can talk to, but will have to send you through to multiple other departments to get your issue fixed. Nice to know it's there though!
I'm all for nice clean cars and when I occassionally clean mine, I have taken multiple hours to do it properly. However, without a Lamborghini I don't think I'd be quite as extreme as the guy who put out the pictures of Polished Bliss: Lamborghini Gallardo. Wow, now that's dedication!
Sure you can use CVGadget to search for references to check for people's online presence for HR purposes, but really, lets just call it your new favorite tool for stalking ex-girlfriends.
A bit late, but here's a gallery of Geek Ink: Comics Fans Show Off Tattoos from Comic-Con.
Accordion guy has a link with The “Things to Say During Sex” Chart. Absolutely hilarious.
Was doing a bit of reading up tonight and found out all about compilations in iTunes. Turns out this features will solve one of my biggest organizational pet peeves about iTunes, that is random artists from albums with many artists in them (ie: best country of 1974, a favorite of mine) showing up in the regular browsing list of artists. So my Del Reeves album collections now won't be "infected" by random Del Reeves songs from the VA collections.
Cool huh?
Well, in theory of course, that sounds like how it's supposed to work anyway...
Shacknews has some nice console footage from Far Cry 2.
Now this has got to be the coolest thing I've seen in ages! Mozilla Labs Announced Ubiquity, which is sadly a bit hard to describe, but once used I'm sure it'll be hard to go back. Mac users can think of it as quicksilver for the web, linux users think gnome-do for the web on steroids.
Basically it allows you to hit a hotkey combination and then type natural(ish) language into the window that pops up. So if you're writing an email in gmail and want to include a map to an address, you'd hit alt-space (or whatever key combo you set up) and type 'map 1234 main street, vancouver, bc' and hit enter. The resulting map will be put into your email. If you're not in an email it'll go to that url.
Ubiquity isn't limited to maps of course, searching, calendar (google calendar currently), bugzilla, calculator, tabs, translation, highlighting..... lots of really cool stuff. It also operates either "alone" or on text / images you've highlighted on a webpage. Very cool stuff, I've had it for about 5 minutes now (it's a firefox plugin) and I can see this changing my browsing very very easily.
Gameplayer Best PC Money Can Buy guide. Check the high end, includes-a-nuclear-reactor version!
Paul points to a good article on how to resolve lots of Vista Annoyances over at tweakguides.
Kinda a cool little app if you're a D&D guy or gal, Mach Dice: Roll for iPhone supports up to 100 d100 die, and is funky 3d and makes good use of the accelerometer.
Via digg: Learn 10 good UNIX usage habits. Good stuff in there, lots of stuff known already by your standard unix hacker, but most likely there's something in there that you've just never gotten around to putting into your daily arsenal (for me it's the xargs tricks).
Pimping out a buddy's Dr. Who fan flick who just got a trailer out on the net: Doctor Who ::Victimsight. Cool stuff, check it out.
Oh awesome, hows this for bringing back memories.... someone found and scanned The Official DOOM Comic Book From '96. Sweet!
This is pretty cool.... iPhone factory workers send message of peace to our lands via the iPhone’s camera is from a guy who found a bunch of pictures on his new iPhone.... not the "accidental" type pictures I've heard of before, but more of a proper photoshoot!
The latest Heavy Update, pointed to me by Darren (as usual) is The Sandvich... you have to watch the video and appreciate the sound effects that they use for eating, that's awesome!
I'm not really sure what this is for or from, but as a Duel of SU-27 and F-15 it looks fairly cool :)
Darren pointed me to the Bigfoot press release. Most amusing.
Free book with Free shipping? Found by me on coding horror is Best Kept Secrets of Peer Code Review which claims to be a free book with free shipping. Is there a catch? Will I start getting Obama-spam if I believe there's such thing as a free lunch? Anyone else seen this or heard of it? Or maybe I'm just too paranoid.
From the 'wow they do weird stuff in Japan' comes Double-wide anime look for your eyeballs.
Anime eyes?
What could be freakier (and more desired by Japanese girls)?
Laughing Squid points to George Orwell's diaries publish in blog form.
Maybe the initial "all of vista's security rendered useless" may have been sensationalist, so says OSNews in their Look at a New Vista Security Bypass.
New characters from the latest Star Trek movie have been revealed thanks to Comic-Con. SlashFilm has the details on Star Trek: Sulu, Scotty, McCoy and Chekov Revealed!. Make sure you click through for the high-res update.
I'm glad that I'm not the only one who thinks Nancy Grace is Dangerous. Not only to her audience's sanity, but to the people she's talking about as well.
OMG a Vista exploit! This one sounds different though as the neowin article claims Vista's Security is Rendered Completely Useless by it. Somehow I think it might be over-exaggerating a bit, however if it is as big an issue as they claim (in that there's not much MS can do about it), maybe it has changed the game a bit.
Mark Dowd of IBM Internet Security Systems (ISS) and Alexander Sotirov, of VMware Inc. have discovered a technique that can be used to bypass all memory protection safeguards that Microsoft built into Windows Vista. These new methods have been used to get around Vista's Address Space Layout Randomization (ASLR), Data Execution Prevention (DEP) and other protections by loading malicious content through an active web browser.
The way it sounds is that it's a browser attack, which means IE, so the solution might be similar to the last time IE was found to have huge holes and the recommendation from MS will be to turn off all scripting. There's nothing actually out in the wild yet, so at this point it's a theoretical thing that smart people have come up with but no one has actually seen (like black holes I guess).
To help guard against such things, here's a link to a browser that you'll be happier with if you're an IE user :)
Of course, depending on what side of the fence you are on OS leanings-wise, this is either BS or the first sign of the MS demise. OS News has people from both sides in the comments.
Saw on kerneltrap that Btrfs 0.16 was available.
Btrfs is a new copy on write filesystem for Linux aimed at implementing advanced features while focusing on fault tolerance, repair and easy administration. Initially developed by Oracle, Btrfs is licensed under the GPL and open for contribution from anyone.
OMFG how did I miss this the first time I heard about it! Temp Fortress 2. TF Machina at it's best.
Pointed to me by a coworker is the Twenty Sided Tale blog, with the top article on The End of Piracy! being an excellent article.
I so want a poster of these Internet Safety Guidelines (via reddit). Truer words I haven't seen for ages.
Internet Memes all the way back to 1976. Sweet!
I've seen a few of these type programs before, but I'd never had a laptop before. Seeing How to Track A Stolen Laptop (via reddit) has re-ignited my interest and I'm thinking something like this is might be good to have setup in case I ever go traveling (assuming the first thing the thief does isn't simply to wipe the drive without powering it on of course).
I didn't know AIR apps worked on linux, so this story: 8 Useful Adobe AIR Applications That Work In Linux may help others like me. The RSS reader Snackr sounds especially interesting.
To balance out the last mac-vs-pc-pricing post I made a few days ago, Paul Thurrott has his own perspective on the issue of Mac laptops cost twice as much as PC laptops.
Accordion Guy has a nice retrospective on the death of the Cassette tape. Ah.... mix tapes... it's just not the same anymore now is it?
Google is awesome for mail, shared docs, your RSS reader, family photos, etc, but what happens if you lose your account? When Google Owns You is a story of just that, with follow up. It's an excellent point to remember that as awesome as google is, and as "where would they go?" as you think they might be, if one party has all the keys to the kingdom, you aren't free. I was actually thinking at one point about moving some mail services to the google hosted system, and while their webmail is the bees knees, losing that control is just too much, especially after reading this!
Nice post on John Beardsworth Photography News/Blog about how to make Lightroom 2.0 a bit more "workflow" friendly with smart collections. Non-photogeeks can safely ignore this one I think.
TorrentFreak has some notes on getting your torrents better/faster/less calories: uTorrent Developer Shares BitTorrent Speed Tips. Nothing hugely new here, still good tips for people less in the know about torrents than my audience of 4 probably already is :)
Tom's Hardware has a good article on The Apple Mac Cost Misconception. As a recent mac user, this hits my heart because I've heard a lot of these misconceptions for years from my peers (and myself of course). Good to see it all laid out.
From the section on "I can build a mac pro for half the price":
The above is essentially a baseline Mac Pro replicated using the cheapest minimum required components to build. The difference? A negligible $5.67. Those who claim that they can build "the same" PC for half the price are at this point baseless.
I always enjoy watching video of people failing amazingly and hurting themselves... what can I say, it amuses me. Therefor check this out on Break.com: X-Games My Ass! Check Out The Y-Games!
So you've heard about the iPhone app store and how people can make insane amounts of money (I heard about someone with a crossword game that is making $2k a day) and you want to get in on it, but have never written a line of Objective-C or coded for the Mac before, much less the iPhone. Never fear, the Apple Blog has a nice iPhone SDK Tutorial: Build a Simple RSS reader for the iPhone. Great resource to get your toe in the door.
I love Triumph.... here the always awesome is Triumph the Insult Comic Dog at Comic Con.
Shacknews has a good video/image Wolfenstein First Look. Looks pretty sexy, I have to admit. Makes me want to go and finish Quake 4 (finally) this weekend.
Great collection of the Best Star Wars Costumes from Comic-Con.
Webmonkey has some details on some Firefox 3DOT1 Alpha Preview Slick New Features.
Two points of random awesomeness this morning. The first is a street painting Turning River Street into a river via Darren. I've seen great street painting examples before, not this good though. Click on it to see in process images. Second is a Melbourne car park which uses signs painted on the wall that are perfectly visible if viewed from the right angle to show visitors where to go. Great practical application of the technique.
