tech stuff » cap

Captivating Winery Websites For Your Inspiration

Cody Taylor — Sun, 03 May 2009 19:00:20 +0000

From the Napa Wineries in California to the vineyards of Australia and France, the beautiful designs of these wine maker’s websites embody the spirit of the vine. Trends for winery websites have been leaning towards a dynamic Flash introduction, animation and beautiful graphics, which would give the best representation of the products.

Linux : 3 ways To Record Your Linux Desktop.

Cody Taylor — Sun, 03 May 2009 03:00:15 +0000

In this article I’ll include three ways to screencast your Linux desktop with the help of recordMyDesktop, XVidCap and Istanbul. These three applications are included in every major distribution.

Flu Models Predict Pandemic, But Flu Chips Ready

Cody Taylor — Fri, 01 May 2009 23:00:10 +0000

An anonymous reader writes “Supercomputer software models predict that swine flu will likely go pandemic sometime next week, but flu chips capable of detecting the virus within four hours are already rolling off the assembly line. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), which has designated swine flu as the ‘2009 H1N1 flu virus,’ is modeling the spread of the virus using modeling software designed by the Department of Defense back when avian flu was a perceived threat. Now those programs are being run on cluster supercomputers and predict that officials are not implementing enough social distancing–such as closing all schools–to prevent a pandemic. Companies that designed flu-detecting chips for avian flu, are quickly retrofitting them to detect swine flu, with the first flu chips being delivered to labs today.” Relatedly, at least one bio-surveillance firm is claiming they detected and warned the CDC and the WHO about the swine flu problem in Mexico over two weeks before the alert was issued.

Computers Smarter Than Humans Are Inevitable This Century

Cody Taylor — Fri, 01 May 2009 19:00:19 +0000

For 50 years now we have been inculcated by science fiction, so we have to take the blame for it as writers, I guess, that computers are inherently evil. Starting with HAL in 1968 (2001: A Space Odyssey), every computer that Captain Kirk every dealt with, The Matrix, the Terminator films … all of this stuff preaches that AI, artificial intelligen

Iranians Outwit Censors With Falun Gong Software

Cody Taylor — Fri, 01 May 2009 19:00:13 +0000

Hugh Pickens writes “The NY Times reports that since last year more than 400,000 Iranians began surfing the uncensored Web using software created for the Falun Gong, a spiritual movement that has been suppressed by the Chinese government since 1999. More than 20 countries now use increasingly sophisticated blocking and filtering systems for Internet content, according to Reporters Without Borders, including Iran, China, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Syria. The creators of the software seized upon by Iranians are members of the Global Internet Freedom Consortium, based largely in the United States and closely affiliated with Falun Gong. Interestingly enough, the United States government and the Voice of America have financed some of the circumvention technology efforts, and a coalition is organizing to push for more Congressional financing of anti-filtering efforts, bringing together dissidents of Vietnam, Iran, the Uighur minority of China, Tibet, Myanmar, Cuba, Cambodia, Laos, as well as the Falun Gong, to lobby Congress for the financing. ‘What is our leverage toward a country like Iran? Very little,’ said Michael Horowitz, a fellow at the Hudson Institute. ‘Suppose we have the capacity to make it possible for the president of the United States at will to communicate with hundreds of thousands of Iranians at no risk or limited risk? It just changes the world.’”

Will video on the iPhone change the game?

Cody Taylor — Fri, 01 May 2009 11:00:16 +0000

As cool and advanced as the iPhone is, it still can’t do a lot of things that “lesser” phones can. The next version of the iPhone OS will deliver many of these features, and more. Of particular interest: Indications are the iPhone OS 3.0 will enable not just the capture of video, but the editing of it as well.

Google Chrome moves from comics to videos

Cody Taylor — Fri, 01 May 2009 07:00:10 +0000

Google has launched a video campaign to promote its Chrome browser, which is every bit as innovative as the comic-book it commissioned for the browser’s launch. The 11 short videos guide you through just what Chrome is capable of, and even have their own YouTube channel. The films (mostly animations) are all under two minutes long and attempt to

Fennec is Firefox for Phones. Will it succeed?

Cody Taylor — Fri, 01 May 2009 07:00:08 +0000

Fennec has finally escaped into the wild. Mozilla’s mobile browser is currently in beta for Nokia Internet tablets, with a beta for Windows Mobile due later this year. It looks gorgeous, but there’s more to it than a nice interface. The big idea is to take Firefox and make it deliver on mobile devices.

Google Custom Search Cuts uTorrent Off

Cody Taylor — Fri, 01 May 2009 03:00:11 +0000

The immensely popular BitTorrent client uTorrent recently added a Google powered torrent search engine to its website. This added search capability used Google’s custom search program and allowed visitors to search for .torrent files on Google. For reasons unknown, Google appears to be blocking the use of its search technology on the site.

Forensics Tools Finds Headerless Encrypted Files

Cody Taylor — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 23:00:16 +0000

gurps_npc writes “Forensics Innovations claims to have for sale a product that detects headerless encrypted files, such as TrueCrypt Dynamic files. It does not decrypt the file, just tells you that it is in fact an encrypted file. It works by detecting hidden patterns that don’t exist in a random file. It does not mention stenography, but if their claim is true, it seems that it should be capable of detecting stenographic information as well.”