BinaryWolf

Track Friends With a Cellphone

Mologogo is a free service that will track a friend’s GPS-enabled cell phone from another phone or on the web. Mologogo also serves as a dirt-cheap tracking system that allows you to share your location in realtime.

To order a starter kit, which includes a phone preloaded with the tracking application, as well as two chargers, a USB cable and $10 in prepaid credit, go to mologogo.com. (Disclaimer: I have no business relationship with any of these products or services).

1) Activate the phone following the included instructions
2) Choose the Mobile Data plan.
3) Create two accounts at mologogo .com, one for the phone and one for the person tracking it. In each account, add the other as a “friend.”
4) Set up the mologogo software on your phone and enter the account information you got from the mologogo site.
5) Give the phone to someone. Sign on to the site and see where they are.

Budget DIY Photo Lighting System

Are you interested in how to put together a flexible and robust lighting system that is relatively inexpensive?

A flexible lighting system is something that I have wanted to play with for a while, but like everything else in photography it seems to be a fairly expensive area to get into, at least when you consider the relative simplicity of a light-bulb.

Thankfully there are a number of cheap and widely-available or easily-made items that can provide most of the same functionality at a small fraction of the price. For under US$75, this article will show you how to put together a flexible and robust lighting system that is both useful and relatively easy on the hip pocket.

This author of the article advises using the inexpensive 500watt high-power halogen lights you find at Home Depot. You need to overcome the problem of the bulbs throwing a very yellow light that is not desirable for color photography. He suggests replacement bulbs available for these halogen lights that are tinted blue to cancel out the warm color temperature of the original bulb. The blue tint of the bulbs is designed to give off a light that is closer to daylight. Lumiram (true light) bulbs make big differences in colors like peach and pink. Buy the good full spectrum bulbs from Europe. They make a cheap copy in Asia but the active ingredients are not nearly as good.

Will Self Destruct

Will Self Destruct, a free one-time secure web messaging service, allows you to create a one-time secure web page for a recipient.

You can create a secure anonymous email message to a friend or colleague by entering their e-mail address and the message, i.e. sending a password or other sensitive information that you don’t want other people to see.

The recipient will receive an e-mail with a link to a one-time secure web page which they will be able to view once and only once. Once the url has been accessed the message is deleted.

From the Will Self Destruct FAQ:

Q: Okay, so what do I use this for?
A: To be honest with you, were not precisely sure. Here are some ideas:

Sending out passwords? it’s much better than your password sitting in someone elses mailbox for eternity, or
Report fraud to your boss or institution, or
Inform authorities about illegal activities, or
Tell employees to stop using the internet for private use, or simply…
Tell someone you love them (why not?)

What You Need to Use Boot Camp

Prerequisites for using Boot Camp.

1. An Intel-based Mac (MacBook Pro, iMac or Mac mini model) that uses Intel CPUs. Boot Camp does not work on PowerPC-based Macs.

2. The keyboard and mouse must be connected via USB or integrated in your Mac. Boot Camp does not currently support wirelessly connected input devices.

3. The Mac hard drive must have at least 10GB of free disk space. 20GB or more is better if you intend to install several Windows applications and regularly use Windows XP.

4. Before running Boot Camp, you must upgrade your Mac to OS X Tiger 10.4.6.

5. Before running Boot Camp, you must upgrade your Mac’s firmware to the latest version. Download the update from the Apple Support Downloads page.

6. A blank, recordable CD or DVD, which will be used by Boot Camp to create a Windows XP drivers disc for your Mac.

7. “Full install” version of Windows XP Professional or Home Edition with Service Pack 2 is required.

Password Recovery Tools

Asterisk Logger is a handy tool to have when you need to reveal a password behind the asterisks to recover an ftp login. Other password recovery tools might be of some use.

Totally No Noise Fan-Free Computer Case

The Zalman TNN 500AF silent case was developed for an elite group of high-end users. For example, a silent PC might be highly desirable for the following applications:

• Digital audio PC (broadcast, recording, and post production studios)
• High-performance noiseless workstation (Multimedia or CAD)
• Noiseless workstation or server for SOHO
• Elite Home Theater PC (HTPC)

This is one of the biggest, baddest, most technologically advanced (not to mention expensive) PC enclosures on the planet.
Yours for only $1200.

Video Sharing Services Compared

Nicely done comparison of 10 video sharing services.

The number of video-sharing sites has shot through the roof recently, as dozens of companies try to become the Flickr of the online video world. To this end, many video services have started offering new features like editing and remixability in an attempt to snatch a piece of the ever-expanding online video pie. But for the average user–who just wants to post a video on the ‘net and share it with some friends–there are already too many options out there. All one really wants to know is, which site is going to work, with the least amount of hassle?

I took 10 of these sites out for a test drive, and picked some winners. If you want to post, watch, share, or edit video online, this post’s for you.