Google Fast Flip

Google is trialling a new kind of news feed. Fast Flip is based on Google News, and Google says it came up with it to address the fact that browsing through news sites is usually a slow process – not like the effortless instant gratification of flipping through a magazine or newspaper. Google has partnered with several dozen news sources–including the BBC, BusinessWeek, the Christian Science Monitor, the Daily Beast, Esquire, the New York Times, Newsweek, Salon, Slate, and TechCrunch – to create previews of their stories that live on Fast Flip but which display the first several paragraphs of the article in a form that looks like the originating site. You rifle through these previews by clicking left and right arrows, and the pages zip on and off-screen in high-speed, fluid animation–hence the “Fast Flip” name. Fast Flip is in Beta stage at the moment - and like many Google innovations, only time will tell whether it sticks around.

Read twice, send once

Murphy's Law: what can be misunderstood will be misunderstood. That's why you should be doubly careful with everything you write, especially in email. Things like personal responses to sender's questions, debating a point, or even just trying to be funny. Email guru, Heinz T., has a sound bit of advice on how to reduce miscommunications.

Overwhelmed by data

One in three organisations cannot recover files from backup tapes and a similar number would not be able to easily retrieve email from 18 months ago, according to research from data storage specialists Hitachi. This article in the NZ Herald probes how many companies are being overwhelmed with electronic data.

Boundaries between real and virtual are blurring

The boundaries between real and virtual, public and private will disintegrate further as augmented reality spreads. That's the prediction of one researcher discussing "augmented reality". Things that might have been considered science fiction even a decade ago are rapidly becoming very possible, or are already here. But what are the implications? This article in the NZ Herald discusses some of them. One trend not mentioned, though, is the tendency for technology to move rapidly along a continuum from the possible, to reality, to the norm, to the obligatory. And each one of these developments make it harder for the individual (that's you and I) to be an autonomous person. The scary thing is that we happily give away so much for the sake of the technological baubles. In a book based on the TV sci-fi programme Red Dwarf, the characters get hooked on a virtual reality system called Better Than Life. Read the book and ponder. Or if you can't get hold of the book, Wikipedia has a summary.

Quote of the Day

Programming today is a race between software engineers striving to build bigger and better idiot-proof programs, and the Universe trying to produce bigger and better idiots. So far, the Universe is winning. ~ Rich Cook

Disposable email addresses

There are times you don't want to divulge your real email address, especially when you are trying an online service for the first time. Maybe you want to take that "free" psychology test online, or test out a new download for your iPhone. There are services that will let you create "disposable" email addresses, where you can disable the address as soon as you want to stop receiving spam messages. About.com introduces you to eight of the best choices here...

Avoiding forgotten email attachments

How many times do I forget to attach a file to an email? Probably at least once a week. Always embarrassing, and usually when I am trying to project a professional impression. PC World has some helpful tips to avoid the problem, at least with Microsoft Outlook. It suggests several free tools that scan your outbound messages for keywords like "file," "attached," and "attachment." If they detect such a word but there's nothing attached, you get an alert - allowing you to attach the intended file and avoid future embarrassment.
Outlook 2007 users can grab the Missing Attachment PowerToy, or the more robust Forgotten Attachment Detector (which supports custom keywords and can even warn you about blank subject lines). If you're using an earlier version of Outlook, try Attached4Sure which supports all versions dating back to 2002.
I don't know of any similar tool for Outlook Express, but Google Mail users get the same service with its Forgotten Attachment Detector, with is a setting within the program.

Panorama photos

Back in February I posted about the difficulty of finding a good free program to create panorama photos. I use Serif Panorama Plus, which does the job of stitching several pics together very nicely, but it is a paid program. However, I have just come across an updated version of http://www.image-editor.net/Pos-Panorama-Pro-Panoramic-Image-Software.asp?RefName=PosPanoramaPro1.00, which used to be commercial but has now been turned into a free program. Having given it a quick trial, I can thoroughly recommend it. In fact it has a very good feature missing in Serif Panorama - the ability to create vertical panoramas. It also allows greater control over the way in which the pics are combined, and the resolution of the end product. I think I will be switching permanently.
Incidentally, did you realise that the average digital camera has a wide-angle lens? In the old days of film cameras, the average lens had a focal length of 50mm, so the resulting photograph was pretty close to how the eye sees things. But most digital cameras are more like 35mm. This means that you are getting a horizontally compressed photograph which is not true to life. To bring things back to better perspective, I suggest trimming either the top, bottom or both of the photo, which will give a semi-panorama anyway.

Fold a world record-setting paper airplane

Many years ago I was a journalist with what was then known as the BCNZ, the state corporation that controlled virtually all radio and TV stations, apart from Radio Hauraki and a couple of other new upstarts that were easing apart the bureaucratic log-jam. The Christchurch newsroom was on the top floor of the Manchester Unity building on the corner of Manchester and Worcester Streets, and on lazy, hot Sunday afternoons we had way too much time on our hands - so we made paper airplanes. One of my co-workers had developed a model that would just about hover, and we spent many fun hours pushing these out the windows to see how far they would go. With a decent warm updraft, on at least one occasion we saw the airplane top nearby Christchurch Cathedral. I am therefore delighted to see that a very similar version to Derek's design has appeared online, and there's even a video to show you how to fold it. (Note: the video at Lifehacker does not play properly, so use this link.) Now, if they can develop a radio-controlled model.......

The weirdest USB gadgets

From a dental microscope to electric ties, there's an astounding array of weird and wonderful gizmos you can plug into your computer, reports the Stuff website. There are so many bizarre USB (Universal Serial Bus) gadgets available that people didn't even blink when news of a USB chainsaw recently hit the tech websites.

Speed up your browser

There are many things that can slow down your internet browser. If you use Firefox, one of them is the way the browser keeps a track of what you are doing. Firefox automatically takes a snapshot of your browsing session every ten seconds. It does this so that if Firefox crashes, you'll be able to get back to where you were quickly and easily. But when you view Flash content (eg, YouTube videos), this default snapshot feature can make your video pause and buffer, spoiling your viewing experience. To fix this is not difficult, fortunately. All you have to do is adjust how frequently Firefox creates session restore save points. Doing this might mean that if the browser crashes, a recently opened tab may get left behind, but if you watch a lot of Flash video, this tweak may be a good compromise.
1. Type ‘about:config’ in to the browser address bar and press the return key. This will bring up a bewildering array of Firefox’s more detailed settings.
2. In the the filter box at the top of the page, type in the following command (minus quotes): "browser.sessionstore.interval" (or just scroll down till you find it).
3. Once you find the command, edit the value of 10000 (10 seconds in milliseconds) to something more suitable such as 180000, which is 3 minutes.

Are you already running Google Chrome OS?

There’s been a lot of discussion around the Web following Google’s announcement that it plans to introduce its own operating system, Google Chrome OS. It has thrown down a gauntlet to the three other main systems – Windows, Mac and Linux. Where Google plans to be completely different is that apart from a small system kernel (Linux-based), almost nothing will reside on your computer. Everything will be done in what has become known as “the cloud” – in other words, online. If the vision comes fully to pass, your computer will have no other software. All your documents will be stored online. No more buying Word, Excel, PhotoShop or anything else, or upgrading them at ridiculous prices every year or so. All those applications will be internet-based.
In fact, if you use Google Chrome and the web applications Google has already released, then you're effectively already running Google Chrome OS. Just maximize Google Chrome's window and imagine that each tab is an instance of an application. Gmail is your mail client, Google Calendar is the calendaring application, Google Docs is the office suite and the file explorer. Google Chrome's new tab page is the desktop, the dashboard that lists frequently used applications and lets you add widgets.
Besides those, there are hundreds if not thousands of other online applications, from image editing programs to media players (and not just YouTube).
By the time Chrome is released towards the end of next year, you will be so used to working in this way, you’ll barely notice the transition – or so they hope. The only two questions maybe left to ask: Do you trust the cloud to store all your critical data; and do you have adequate broadband at a reasonable price to cope with the traffic?

10 tips for Google image search

Google System Blog says Google Image Search could be used in many ways beyond the obvious. For instance:
If you want to know if a person is a man or a woman and the name doesn't help, do a search for the name.
It provides a better search for Flickr. Google uses information from other sites that link to Flickr photos, so you may find Google search better.
Find a new wallpaper for your desktop by restricting your search to large images. You can automate this using an application.
Find random personal pictures, using standard file names from digital cameras.
Type the name of a painter and you can take an art class.
Install a Greasemonkey script so you can view the original version of the image directly by clicking on the thumbnail. (Greasemonkey is a Firefox add-on that provides thousands of scripts to perform a vast range of functions not normally part of the browser experience.)

Quote of the Day

"Man is the lowest-cost, 150-pound, nonlinear, all-purpose computer system which can be mass-produced by unskilled labor." ~ NASA in 1965

Finding recent documents

Because I easily forget where I have stored a document or file, I frequently use the My Recent Documents feature of Windows. You find this under the start menu, at the top of the RH column (although if you are using the Classic mode of XP, it is just called Documents, and found on the LH side). The last 15 documents you have worked on or opened - which includes photos, Excel spreadsheets, pdf files, etc - are listed, saving you the need to go hunting all round the computer. Personally, I find the maximum 15 rather limiting, specially when I am working with photographs. Reading the online help forums, there does appear to be a way to expand this in XP, but it involves altering the computer's Registry, and when I tried it I lost all items completely, so obviously I didn't implement the plan properly. There is a Vista sidebar gadget available which can increase the number of items My Recent Documents will list. Not having Vista, I can't try it, but you will find it here if you want to give it a go. Apparently the new Windows 7 operating system will give you even more control over this helpful feature.

Typing special characters

From time to time, I want to type special characters into my documents. It might be the pound symbol for British currency, or the Euro symbol. Most word processors have the ability to insert special characters - for instance, in Word 2007 if you go to the Insert tab, you will find the Symbol option on the far right. Select the font and then the character you want, and click Insert. That's a rather long-winded way of doing things, but okay if you have only an occasional need. If there are regular characters you use, you might find it helpful to write down the Unicode numbers and use those instead.
To find the number, click on the character and you will see a shortcut key listed at the bottom of the dialogue box. For instance, the code for the French e-acute is Alt+0233. To type this, first check the Number Lock on the numeric pad of your keyboard is on. Then press and hold down the Alt key while keying in 0233. When you release the Alt key, the character will display.
Some characters have a number followed by Alt+X. In this case, you type the number and then press the Alt and X keys simultaneously. Voila! Up pops the correct character. In Word, you can also assign special key combinations to do the same job - just be careful you don't choose a key combination that would block out a normal function in your programs (so avoid any combination using the Ctrl key, for instance).
The Unicode symbols cover a very wide variety of languages, including Arabic and other non-Roman scripts. I happen to be trying to learn Chinese. While it is possible to download a Chinese character set, I mostly use the Pinyin system of Roman letters invented by the Chinese to represent the sounds of the language. Chinese has four tones, which are noted by marks above the vowels. While I could use the method I have outlined above to write these, I have also discovered a great little program which does the job automatically. It is called PinyinInput, and a manual is also available here.

Digital painting

Most free paint programs have very limited options when it comes to creative work, such as painting and manipulation of images. An exception, which I have just come across, is TwistedBrush Digital Painting and Photo Editing. While the main version is a paid-for program, with thousands of brush styles and effects, a free version has 55 filters, 19 paper textures, 14 artsets (with up to 60 brushes per set), and 17 mediums. You can turn a photograph into a hand-made image, or start from scratch. The gallery at the website shows some amazing examples of what you can do with this program. Definitely worth a dabble.

Can you trust free anti-virus software?

The short (although qualified) answer is 'yes' in this very helpful PC World article. The mag puts a range of popular applications through their paces, and notes their good points and their limitations.
Another PC World article looks at yet another security threat, botnets. Thousands of computers in New Zealand have been taken over by these nasties; is yours one of them? Here is a way to tell, and what to do about it.

Disaster recovery

I once spilled a cup of well-sweetened coffee over a control panel at the radio station I worked (back in the days when 3ZB was 3ZB). It's fair to say I was not the technicians' flavour of the month for quite some time. But what do you do if something similar happens to your cellphone or computer? PC World provides a series of nine articles on how to help your gear recover from emergency scenarios.

Quote for the day

"The perfect computer has been developed. You just feed in your problems and they never come out again." ~ Al Goodman