BinaryWolf

Google Plane Mapping Your Neighborhood

Who has spotted the Google branded plane flying over their neighborhood taking photos for Google Maps?

Tags: Google branded plane

Cool MySpace Widget

This Flash-based widget from Box.net allows you to share all kinds of files: anything on your computer, plus music, photos and videos. Many of these file types can be viewed in the widget itself: you can view a photo, for instance, or play an MP3. You can sign up within the embed itself, and upload files to MySpace, Facebook and blogs in general.

Get your own Box.net widget and share anywhere!

Wall Mounted Touchscreen PC

Hang an old laptop in the kitchen or hallway to create a touchscreen Web panel and message center.

1. Find an old laptop: Any PC or Mac will do. We used a five-year-old IBM ThinkPad.

2. Enclose it: We welded a frame out of perfor­ated steel, but you could use plastic, wood or even cardboard.

3. Add a touchscreen: The MagicTouch overlay plugs into a USB port and costs $160 at touch screens.com, but you can find similar models on eBay for as little as $40 (some require a stylus). Be sure to get one made for a laptop (not a full-size monitor) and matches your screen size.

4. Give it Wi-Fi: Use a PC-card adapter, because it leaves your USB ports free for the touchscreen and keyboard.

5. Plug in a keyboard: Instead of trying to type on the vertical laptop, we added a Logitech PlayStation keyboard to the flip-down panel, which is activated by a lever and stops at 90 degrees for easy typing.

From Popular Science Magazine’s wall mounted pc.

Hard to Find Customer Service Phone Numbers

The gethuman project is a consumer movement to improve the quality of phone support in the US. The website is run by volunteers and is for consumers who demand high quality phone support from the companies that they use.

Sometimes, you can get help with an unresolved problem by going through the office of the CEO or the president. A list of top executives and the phone number for the company’s headquarters are available at Hoovers .

Some businesses make it very difficult to find their phone number on their website.

Customer service phone numbers:
Amazon - 800-201-7575
eBay - 800-322-9266
PayPal - 888-221-1161

Tags: Customer service phone numbers, Amazon, eBay, PayPal

Antikythera Mechanism

How does technological innovation disappear for so long and then reappear in another form centuries later?

It looks like something from another world — nothing like the classical statues and vases that fill the rest of the echoing hall. Three flat pieces of what looks like green, flaky pastry are supported in perspex cradles. Within each fragment, layers of something that was once metal have been squashed together, and are now covered in calcareous accretions and various corrosions, from the whitish tin oxide to the dark bluish green of copper chloride. This thing spent 2,000 years at the bottom of the sea before making it to the National Archaeological Museum in Athens, and it shows…This is the Antikythera Mechanism. These fragments contain at least 30 interlocking gear-wheels, along with copious astronomical inscriptions. Before its sojourn on the sea bed, it computed and displayed the movement of the Sun, the Moon and possibly the planets around Earth, and predicted the dates of future eclipses. It’s one of the most stunning artefacts we have from classical antiquity.

No earlier geared mechanism has ever been found and nothing close to its sophistication appears again for well over a thousand years.

“It’s still a popular notion among the public, and among scientists thinking about the history of their disciplines, that technological development is a simple progression,” he (Francois Charette) says. “But history is full of surprises.”

Read more about the mystery of the Antikythera Mechanism at Nature.

Will the Real iPhone Please Stand Up?

The touch screen, wide-screen, media-playing iPod smart phone, Apple iPhone, priced at $499 or $599 will be available from a single provider, Cingular Wireless, (aka AT&T) at midyear. Its essential functions – music player, camera, Web browser and e-mail tool as well as phone – have become commonplace in hand-held devices. So what else does the Apple iPhone have to offer?

* Cingular, quad-band GSM/EDGE phone
* Wi-Fi and Bluetooth, but no 3G
* 11.6mm thick: apparently thinner than all those other anorexic smart phones
* 2-megapixel camera
* iPod connector, mic input, and speaker jack
* Proximity sensor: when it’s close to your ear, the touch screen and display shut down
* “Smart” screen knows which way to orient images depending on how you hold it; wide-screen playback for videos
* Highest-resolution Apple screen of all time
* Mac OS X operating system
* Touch screen interface, no stylus
* Full-on applications–more PC-like than mobile device-like
* “Visual voice mail”
* Safari Web browser
* Google Maps–including satellite and traffic data
* POP3 and IMAP e-mail capabilities–real e-mail, not mobile version
* Widgets!
* Seamless integration between EDGE and Wi-Fi
* Flash memory
* 5 hours of talk, video, and browsing time; 16 hours of audio playback
* 8GB model, $599 with a two-year contract
* 4GB model, $499
* Shipping in June

Apple chose the name iPhone even though Cisco Systems, the network and consumer wireless company, has recently introduced a Wi-Fi-based phone with the same name. Apple has been negotiating with Cisco executives over the trademark in recent days.

The latest flavor of VoIP and Wi-Fi phones is the Linksys iPhone Dual-Mode Internet Telephony Kit for Skype, the CIT400. It incorporates the Skype client directly into the phone base, so you can make Skype calls even while your PC is shut down.

The CIT400 supports Skype’s free Skype-to-Skype calls, as well as its paid features, such as SkypeIn, SkypeOut, and voice mail. The CIT400 immediately hits the market for under $200. In all, there are currently seven iPhone products offered by Linksys and you can check them out at Linksys’ Web site.

Tags: Apple iPhone, AT&T, VoIP, Wi-Fi, Linksys iPhone

Defending Search Engine Optimization Once Again

Last month California born, search engine maven Danny Sullivan, posted Yes Virginia, SEO Is Rocket Science - Defending Search Engine Optimization Once Again.

Look, I am absolutely sick and tired of the SEO community forgetting that what they know and do is NOT second nature to the vast majority of people. I’m not talking spamming or black hat stuff. I’m talking about that “simple” stuff, the loads of things that can make a real difference to how well a site does in the search results. Ignore these things on purpose or accidentally, and you miss out on valuable traffic.

Take that to the bank.

Tags: Search Engine Optimization, SEO