TechLifeWeb

Sites that I found interesting for September 25th 2009 through September 27th 2009:

• It’s Official: Water Found on the Moon – New observations from three different spacecraft return what has been called "unambiguous evidence" of water across the surface of the moon. via @Macht_Nichts on Twitter.
• Install Picasa 3.5 In Linux – Want the same kind of facial recognition, name tagging and easy geo-location of Picasa 3.5 for Windows and Mac on your Linux desktop? There’s no official release, but you can fairly easily plug Picasa into your system.
• Microsoft’s Chiller-less Data Center – Microsoft today announced that its huge facility in Dublin, Ireland is running without any chillers. Outside air is drawn into the facility to cool the thousands of servers powering the company’s “Live” suite of online services for users in Europe, the Middle East and Africa.

Sites that I found interesting for September 2nd 2009 through September 8th 2009:

• Microsoft Spills the Beans on Silverlight 4 Features – Microsoft today announced that it plans to showcase some new Silverlight features at the International Broadcasting Conference (IBC) in Amsterdam (September 11–15).
• Monopoly City Streets: Google Launching Online Version of Monopoly – This could be very addictive: Google is teaming up with board game maker Hasbro to launch a Google Maps version of Monopoly City Streets, which launches Wednesday, allows users to compete in a live, worldwide version of the popular game, creating the biggest Monopoly tournament ever played.
• Movie studios again demand HDTV disabling powers from FCC – The Motion Picture Association of America has once again asked the Federal Communications Commission for the right to selectively control output streams to the TV entertainment systems of consumers. via @mrgunn on Twitter.

Sites that I found interesting for August 11th 2009

• Saturn's Rings to Disappear August 11th – In a celestial feat any magician would appreciate, Saturn will make its wide but thin ring system disappear from our view Aug. 11.
• Skywatchers set for meteor shower – Skygazers are preparing for the high point of the annual Perseid meteor shower.
• Google's super secret search upgrades: They want your feedback – Google is upgrading its search infrastructure and it's being very secretive about it.
  In a post on its Webmaster Central blog, however, Google engineers Sitaram Iyer and Matt Cutts insist that ordinary users won't even see the difference.

Sites that I found interesting for July 16th 2009 through July 24th 2009:

• Guide: How to Enable Concurrent Sessions in Windows 7 RTM – Missing Remote shows us how to enable concurrent sessions in Windows 7 Ultimate. Concurrent Sessions allows you to Remote Desktop into a system that someone else is on, under a different user account, and access the system without kicking the user off.
• Engadget’s guide to building a HTPC for under $1,000 – This is an interesting build. Worth reading if you are thinking about building an HTPC. I wouldn't use a video card with a fan on it though. Try to keep fans to a minimum.
• New element named 'copernicium' – Discovered 13 years ago, and officially added to the periodic table just weeks ago, element 112 finally has a name.

Sites that I found interesting for June 17th 2009 through June 18th 2009:

• Intel Rebrands Chips, Announces Core i3 and i5 Conventions – Going forward, the Core family will fall into one of three tiers: Core i3 (entry-level), Core i5 (mid-level), and Core i7 (high-level).
• ArcSoft TotalMedia Theatre 3 public beta – Looks like some issues with Windows 7 and Media Center have been fixed.
• 'Cloak of Silence' Tech Could Hide Submarines – A new invisibility cloak for sound could help doctors find tiny tumors or hide submarines from enemy sonar.

Sites that I found interesting for June 11th 2009 through June 12th 2009:

• Military Hush-Up: Incoming Space Rocks Now Classified – Space rocks that explode in the atmosphere are now classified.
• Ain’t She a Beauty? – A Look at Some HTPC Chassis Solutions. Via @Java_Jack on Twitter.
• LG Ships First Netflix-Ready HDTV Sets – LG Electronics said Thursday it has started shipping a pair of flat-panel TVs that are among the first with built-in capability to stream movies from the Netflix online service.

Hulu labs has launched Hulu Desktop. Desktop is a new program that lets you sit back from the PC and navigate Hulu via a standard remote control. It is currently available for both Windows and Mac.

It would be better if we could just use all the features from with in Vista or Windows 7 Media Center but at least this is a start. There are other solutions for Hulu in media center such as PlayOn with the vmcPlayIt Media Center add on but this new Hulu Desktop gives you a much richer navigation experience.

Hulu – Labs: Hulu Desktop.

Sites that I found interesting for March 24th 2009 through March 26th 2009:

• Apple Mac Trojan caught on film – This is a bit staged but still worth a view. Shows you have to be careful what links you go to.
• Media Center Plugin Brings Netflix Hulu and more Online Video via PlayIt – Brilliant. I'm going to give this a try as I already use the excellent PlayOn software.
• A guide to Silverlight 3 new features –

There are some web sites out there that make things hard to read. I don’t mean for quick browsing. Most of us who have been using the web for any length of time have trained ourselves to get the gestalt of a page fairly quickly. I mean for time when you really want to read an news or other type of long article.

Over at arc90 they have a new lab experiment where they have created a bookmarklet that you install easily in your browser. Then, when surfing to a page that you want to read for a while, you click the bookmarklet and instantly the page changes to a much more readable format.

Here is a quick video they put together to visually explain what they are doing.

Readability : An Arc90 Lab Experiment from Arc90 on Vimeo.

You can get the bookmarklet here: Readability

There are so many articles around about how to find people to follow on Twitter. It is never clear to me why people are searching for some kind of instant friends list. You didn’t show up at school and get a Xeroxed list of people titled “Your New Friends.” It is the same on Twitter. There really is only one good way and it is mind numbingly easy. Go into your Twitter notifications settings and check it from the default (Show me @ from the people I am following) to Show me all @ replies. Save. Done.

I hear you scratching your head. How could this help? Because you will start to see people you follow talking to other people. Granted, until you follow that other person you will only see one side of the conversation but things start to look interesting and you’ll click through to find out more about that new person and then start following and being part of the conversation. Then those new people follow a slightly different circle of friends and you see them talking and add another. And so on and so on. Get it? It is all about finding people naturally.

One simple change. No need to learn anything new. Start following people you are actually interested in following. Make it your own micro community.

Twitter Replies Summary

• A reply in Twitter is any Tweet that you start with @username.
  You can reply to anyone even if they don’t follow you.
• Anytime you create a Reply in the proper way (see #1), the reply will always show up in the Replies tab of the person you are replying to.
• This is true if the person follows you or not and regardless of their reply settings.
• Putting @usernamein other places in your Tweet is common courtesy when you are referring to someone else on Twitter but is NOT considered a reply in any way.

Tips on reply settings

• To keep your recent time line clutter free, set your reply settings to “no @ replies”. Replies to you will always show up in your Replies tab.
• To keep up with conversations with mutual friends, set your reply settings to “@ replies only to those I am following” (default setting)
• To follow all conversations and have more potential to find more Twitter friends, set your reply settings to “all @ replies.” (This is the setting I recommend in this post)