Well, it looks as if Google has finally gotten on it. They are stealthily removing copyrighted audio from user made and uploaded videos (like ninjas). Bam. There goes the YouTube way of getting music for free.

I suppose it's really the right thing to do, but it does also take away that quick and easy way of checking out a new song: YouTube it.

Oh wells.

Yeah, so I'm sorry for not getting in a huge post about all my computer workings recently, but I expect it will be forthcoming. What I'm here to say right now is that I did a quick mod on my wallet/billfold thing. I bought this little deal at a yard sale out near the Hostetter ranch, on my way back to work, actually. Brian Buck and I saw the sign and headed out to the sale. It's slim, durable, attractive, and holds everything I need it to. Come to think of it, I didn't actually buy it, because they gave it to me for free, considering it's low worth. It's just a plastic wallet for holding papers or something, I guess - one of those cheap courtesy trinkets companies give to their customers/potential customers. This particular one says "Courtney Motors" on it, although the lettering is too faded now to read except at an angle. I picked it up because I figured it could hold my timesheets that I wrote my hours for the day on; it being plastic might keep them dry through the weather and irrigation work. It's taken a beating, that's for sure! I've used it to keep myself from electric shocks while shutting down engines by breaking the circuit, and it's resided in my pocket through all sorts of weather and actions. Finally, the seams started to crack because of the wear. I had been repairing it with layers of clear tape, but they didn't last long....and didn't have the classy look of DUCT TAPE!!! Enjoy the pictures. Sorry they're not more thoughtfully captured, but my camera was running low on battery. (By the way, my camera gets points for surviving a car-rollover.)

OK, yeah, I know, feeds, both Atom and RSS are really popular. But apart from the techies (read: geeks), how many know what the little orange radio wave icons means?

Or do people even care? Would they use it if they knew what it meant? Would they be interested in efficient ways to keep up with an information source?

And another question, I suppose, is how do we deal with feeds? There are a bajillion feed readers out there, and the major browsers support it out of the box, either through Firefox style live bookmarks, or through a built in reader. What I would like to see is a cloud style movement, which I think might already be happening. Like Google Reader (accessing your Google Reader feeds from somewhere else than the web interface).

It seems to me that there is profit to be made in making this more accessible/popular with the masses.

Lol, that's maybe an awkward post title. Notwithstanding, I do have a cool idea.

Say you've just met someone and you're just about to leave when you pause, remembering, and arrest them before they can take off too. "Just a sec," you say. "Can I get your picture for my contacts?" "Sure," they respond, and you whip out your mobile telephone and snap a pic. "Hey, nice meeting you," you say. "See you later."

After they leave, the pic has been uploaded to your Gmail contacts and you fill in the details, grabbing their email address from the business card they gave you. Easy.

Alternately, you could store it in an internal database on the phone, which would sync with your PC software (Outlook or whatever). Or maybe you could get some kind of cloud storage service for it with your cellular service provider or some other company.

Oh, and of course, the app would provide easy access and viewing of these contacts, preferably anytime (sync with a cloud service?). Maybe it could even be a Gmail feature (or a browser add-on or something) that would do this.

How does it sound? Any idea or improvements? And, this is just an idea right now, no code that I know of =).

Hummm… more like a linkshare.

A-PDF Extractor - I was looking for an app to convert PDF to text over the holidays, and this was one of the two I downloaded. I actually didn't even get through the installation of the other one because I didn't like their terms. Which is fine, because A-PDF Extractor does the job: nice, simple, and quick. Warning: not a portableapp as far as I can tell (no .ini's or such in the Program Files folder).

How To Send Email To Any Cell Phone (for Free) | MakeUseOf.com - I have to say this could come in handy… if I ever need it for some reason. What is nice is there is an address for Unicell, which is what my dad is on. And the Gmail Labs way doesn't work. Although I think Unicell has a place on their site where you can text message phones using the service.

Bug 105843 – Cache lost if Mozilla crashes (Mozilla Bugzilla) - Nice to know that this is actually tracked. But… it's intentional, from what I read, there is a chance that the cache might be corrupted, so it just dumps it. Which is really annoying if you are on dial-up. Seems to happen to me occasionally when browsing offline. There was a patch on the page, I think, but if I recall right it was for Firefox 1.5 or something… not Fx 3.

May you see deep snow. =)

I have to say I am very impressed with the new Picasa. It seems to be faster (I think) and has gained a lot of polish. I don't really want to write a review, so I'll just list some improvements and additions.

• improved - full screen slideshow: it is a lot faster this time around. Much more viable for doing quick full screen showoffs to people clustered about your laptop or curious family members. Extra transitions have been added (take that, Windows Photo Gallery!); Cut (I think all the old one did was Dissolve), Pan and Zoom, Wipe, Circle, Push, and Rectangle. And a exit transition/animation. Very pleased with this.
• addition - tags: nice to see this in there. I don't use tags right now, but I'm sure it could be useful.
• improved - search: now does a sort of auto-complete/suggestions drop down thing. Also, you can just start typing, instead of having to hit up the box.
• improved - folder/album buttons: added some stuff: a slideshow button (labeled 'Play'), movie button, and gift CD button (that's better… I guess the old place for that at the top was kind of *out* of place).
• addition - faces filter: now you can search for photos with faces in them. Great. Also appears in the folder/album buttons. I heard you can tag people, too, but I haven't figured out how to do that yet.
• improved - folder/album bar: now it has transparency, which varies fluidly, depending on where you're scrolled too. Picks up the folder/albums button bar as you scroll by. Kind of cool.
• addition - Projects: a section for projects you do in Picasa. Appears if any exist. Useful if needed, I guess.
• addition - retouch (under Basic Fixes): it's like a magical cloning tool. Animated and very cool. I like it.
• improvement - Picasa Web Albums integration: I can't actually say much about this, as I haven't ever logged into Web Albums from Picasa, but just from looking around the app, it looks tighter… stuff like Sync to Web and Share buttons on the folder/album bar.
• addition - Geo-Tag: uses Google Earth. I think this might have actually previously been an experimental feature, so maybe not quite "new." Didn't fully try it out, but looks good so far… I suppose a direct lat-long entry might be nice (on a guess).
• improvement - Collage: still at home on the bottom button bar, but vastly improved. Launches in it's own tab, so you get a lot more room. Adds a Frame Mosaic option, which has one bigger picture in the middle. Better format (size and shape) options. Pictures are now draggable, and can be scaled and rotated in the Picture Pile. Multiple Exposure has an animation to tell you it's working and a x out of y progress meter (nice, because the old one could take seemingly forever if you dumped a big load on it). Also, it appears you can save drafts of your collages… do I hear photo gift projects coming on?
• addition - tabbed interface: Sometimes… not quite like Firefox tabs. But some actions bring down a tab bar and give you another tab with a working screen (and we find out the main view is called 'Library'). The ones I've found so far are Collage and Movie Maker. And yes, you can have more than two tabs open. And Ctrl+Tab switching works (yay!).
• addition - Movie Maker (or could the old Picasa do movies? I don't remember…): quite impressed with this. You get some transitions from the slideshow and some different ones. Lots of other nice stuff, including broad dimension support (320x240 to 1920x1080), slide duration (fit to music included… sweet!), MP3 & WMA soundtrack support, text slides, basic video clip support, and integrated YouTube upload. Playback in edited mode is pretty fast and smooth.
• improved - movie playback: lots better. No longer are we stuck with a play button. Now we have a seekable progress bar and what looks like editing via start and end points. Also, there's an edit button for videos with saved projects. Woot.

 

Well, that's all for right now. The only other thing is the Picasa Photo Viewer, which is pitched to you at update/install or first run (I don't remember which… it gets installed even if you don't set image file associations to it). I declined then tried it out later. It's pretty cool… filled with Picasa tricks (starring with Picasa closed, anyone?) and pretty quick to boot. The interface is a nice full screen overlay with pretty effects (though you can get it into a window with Alt+Tab). It's not replacing Windows Picture and Fax Viewer for me right now, but it's definitely a keeper.

Looking around the internet, I see this isn't quite unknown, but you can actually unzip .u3p files and get at the stuff inside. Most interestingly, the .exe files. Yes, you can run at least some of them. But, as I thought could be the case, Tim Clark on a PortableApps Forums thread pointed out the flaw:

As stated above not all U3 programs can be extracted and run. Some depend on the U3 platform to run.

So, you can get it out and run it, but don't expect true portability without the U3 software (and even then I've heard some U3 apps do leave traces on the host computer).

If you don't know what I'm talking about with the traces stuff, check out this page at the PortableApps Forums and read John Haller's first reply.

Short post, but something I wanted to write about. Happy New Year!