Google has released a new Labs project called Image Labeler. It’s a game where you and another random user try to give images the same label in a 90 second period. 100 points for every match. It’s very addictive. I wasted an hour playing it. Google in turn got human intelligence labelling their images, so the image search quality should improve.
Cool
15
Jul 05
The future of Keyboards
The Optimus keyboard is a stunning concept in which every key is an LCD display. The same keyboard can be used for any number of applications, with the display on the keys changing appropriately. It would be extremely useful for gaming where the Windows key is a mighty pain. Unfortunately, it’s only a concept for now. [Via]
12
Jul 05
Wikipedia history animation
Recently Andy Baio of waxy.org, offered $50 for the best tool that animates Wikipedia history, i.e, a tool which seamlessly shows in real time, like a video, the changes that have shaped an article into its present form. With contributions the prize quickly became $250 and other goodies. All the participants used Greasemonkey to show their wizardry, and the results are simply amazing.
Wikipedia Animate was declared the winner and rightly so. Watching how an article grows using this tool is in essence watching what Wikipedia is all about. It’s very difficult to describe what it does, so I suggest you try it out for yourself.
1
Jul 05
del.icio.us direc.tor
del.icio.us direc.tor is an excellent alternative user interface to del.icio.us accounts. As all nifty web based UI hacks do these days, it uses AJAX. Desktop application like responsiveness in a browser window seems to have the potential to change the way we use computers. Not even considering the thin client/network OS argument, I can already notice how such applications are changing the way I use the internet, Gmail being the prime example. We have exciting times ahead of us!
29
Jun 05
Google Earth
Google recently acquired Keyhole, the satellite imaging company. They have now released a product which integrates satellite imagery and Google search. It’s called Google Earth, and in traditional Google style, there’s a free version. I had tried out Keyhole earlier and it was a lot of fun. Google Earth aims to be more than just fun, but that’s just for users in the United states. For users in other countries, it’s more of a toy that is a lot of fun to play with. Features like the one which flies you along the route you want to take along real roads are really cool. Users in the US, especially those living in big cities, can enjoy the integration of Google Earth with Local search, to actually ’see’ search results. The combination of actual photos with relevant search results are a huge improvement over graphical maps.
Just to illustrate the difference in the resolution of the images available, I chose Chicago in the US and Mysore in India.
The image above shows houses and cars on the streets too.
I took this screenshot as the name is shown in the way it is pronounced in my native language, Kannada, and not as it is usually done in English. That was cool. If you’re familiar with the area, you can actually identify some landmarks.
12
Jun 05
Tiger design for Wordpress admin
Wordpress, the blogging software on which this site runs, has an unexciting admin area. That’s now been taken care of by an excellent redesign, inspired by the new OS X Tiger. That’s the reason Wordpress rocks. If someone feels something needs to be fixed, they just go out and fix it, and everybody benefits from it.
4
May 05
Java based bandwidth speed test
This really cool Java based bandwidth speed test shows both upload and download speeds of a connection. The graphic is updated in real time, ending up at the speed on an increasing graph showing the different kinds of connections.
(via jkOnTheRun)
28
Apr 05
Darth Vader’s blog
Darth Vader’s blog. Laugh out loud funny, the comments and Darth’s replies more than the posts themselves.
25
Apr 05
Apple’s ideas for the future
From kottke.org :
An Apple employee made some very interesting comments on Slashdot regarding what OS X, and in particular, Spotlight, the OS level search application will be able to do in the future. I’ll just quote from the article.
You’re doing a multi-party teleconference. A recording is made of that teleconference (each angle), and separate audio tracks are recorded for each participant. In real time, your computer transcribes each voice track and stores it as ancillary content on the recording, content that Spotlight indexes for you. At any time, you can type “meeting in San Jose” into Spotlight, and it’ll take you right to the angle and track on which your co-worker Laurent talked about next week’s meeting in San Jose.
Another amazing example…
Let’s say you take ..[a].. picture of your dog and drop it in a Pages document, then export the document as a PDF and mail it to your sister Jan. The computer records, as metadata, the fact that that picture of your dog is related to Jan. It knows that.. [you].. associated the picture with that Pages document, that the Pages document was associated with the PDF file, and that the PDF file was associated with an e-mail to Jan.
There are some more things mentioned in the article, but, it’s just mind blowing where they are going with this. Steve Jobs has been accusing Microsoft of shamelessly copying from Apple. If this is the kind of stuff Microsoft wants to copy, then, I don’t think anybody will complain (except Apple of course).
If this kind of technology is implemented in Windows, it better have an efficient and easy data backup system. If a user spends years builing up metadata and relationships between his/her data, and one fine day Windows crashes and requires a fresh install, well, screwed. Having just reinstalled Windows today, that’s what I’m thinking of right now.
My exposure to OS X has been minimal at best. If only their computers weren’t so expensive……
23
Apr 05
extisp.icio.us
extisp.icio.us provides a visual representation of the tags that a user gives to links posted to del.icio.us. The text is sized according to the number of times the tag has been used. Another cool, but not really useful del.icio.us hack. Here’s my tag representation.
15
Apr 05
yahoo! vs. google
yahoo! vs. google provides a nice comparison of the relative ranking of a search term by Google and Yahoo!.
30
Mar 05
Spell with Flickr
Here is a really cool use of the online photo sharing service Flickr. Enter any word and have it displayed as randomly picked photos. A number of innovative uses of the vast collection of photos on Flickr are popping up these days. Amaztype is another.
No wonder Yahoo! recently bought it.
Update – There are many more user created Flickr hacks. Find a list of them at The Great Flickr Tools Collection.
30
Jan 05
New age radio
Unbound Spiral has a how-to on creating a personal radio station using Skype. Really cool idea. It’s amazing how people are coming up with so many applications for Skype. It’s called the iPod radio, as an iPod is used as the source of the music in this case. But, as the how-to mentions, any device that can be connected to the line-in of a sound card can be used, a CD player, FM radio, anything. The only problem is that a separate sound card is needed to play music and talk on Skype simultaneously. Another problem is that an unlimited number of listeners cannot be supported, and the bandwidth required is an issue.
I think a more user and network friendly idea would be using a BitTorrent like system to do this, where all you have to do is select a playlist, create a .torrent file and seed it. If many users are listening in and everyone stores only the last few minutes of the broadcast and uploads it to whoever is joining in, a large number of users can be supported. This will definitely support better quality music too (in terms of bit rate only!). I wouldn’t be too surprised if software which enables this pops up in a few days…
Got to the Unbound Spiral through Conversations with Dina.
15
Jan 05
First images of Saturnian moon Titan’s surface
The Huygens probe has sent it’s first image of the surface of Titan, Saturn’s biggest moon. More images can be found at the ESA website. ESA had this to say about the above image –
This raw image was returned by the ESA Huygens DISR camera after the probe descended through the atmosphere of Titan. It shows the surface of Titan with ice blocks strewn around. The size and distance of the blocks will be determined when the image is properly processed.
The Cassini-Huygens mission to Saturn was launched way back in October 1997. It has reached saturn after taking a circuitous route by orbiting thrice around the sun in order to get the energy required for the long journey to Saturn through gravity assist.
Unlike the Mars Rover, Huygens will stay put, but still return a wealth of information using it’s onboard instruments.
The ESA website also has a few audio recordings made by the Huygens Atmospheric Structure Instrument. Not chart busters, but still very interesting.
18
Dec 04
Bug me not!!
Ever encountered web sites which require free registration to view their content? Well, it’s annoying. But, there is a way to bypass it. Just goto www.bugmenot.com and enter the URL of the site that’s bugging you and you’ll get a username and password. I totally agree with their argument about why its justified (and it’s a lot simpler than registering in a hundred sites). You can read all about it in their FAQ page.
I swear I didn’t check it, but, I’m pretty sure it won’t work with porn all sites.
Tags – bugmenot