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30 Inspiring And Creative Examples of Colorful Pattern Designs

2009-07-06T01:02:19Z

As we all know that textures, backgrounds and patterns are the most wanted freebies on the internet. Specially designers who love all of those textures that can help their designs to become more beautiful and attractive. This collection would be really useful for inspiration and ideas. SmashingApps is all about to feature all those smashing stuffs that are inspiring and useful for designers. Today, we are going to list down 30 Inspiring And Creative Examples of Colorful Pattern Designs. We hope you all will like this collection.

You are welcome to share if you know more inspiring and creative patterns that our readers/viewers may like. Do you want to be the first one to know the latest happenings at SmashingApps.com just subscribe to our rss feed and you can follow us on twitter as well.

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A smile for timbuctu

Tina

Geometric Updates

Pattern 105

Bears are so bad

Wrapping Paper Collection

Patterns

Exe Logo Pattern

Colorful Patterns 1

Colorful Patterns 2

Birds pattern

Pattern 102

Trouble

Dirty Vintage

Wrapping Paper Collection 2

Fancy Creatures

Pattern 32

Just Another Angry Pattern

Blue Lotus

Typographic Pattern

Pattern 68

700 miles

Breezy Marine

Pattern 1

Pattern 2

Pattern 3

Pattern 18

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Can You Send a FAX For Free?

2009-07-05T04:32:52Z

Add to iTunes | Add to YouTube | Add to Google | RSS Feed

Yes, I was trying to send you a FAX. I don’t know if you have a machine that can pick it up. If you don’t, I’m interested to see what happens when you pick this up! Anyway, there are times when you need to Fax something, and don’t have a machine of your own. Luckily, there are free services that let you send them without installing anything - or without having to buy a machine.

Using MyFax, you can send up to two facsimiles per day - absolutely free! Enter the To and From information, and attach your FAX (.pdf, .doc, etc). Enter an additional message, such as an Attention name, or similar instructions. That’s it - your FAX is ready to send.

It doesn’t get easier than this, and you certainly won’t find a cheaper service than this. I absolutely love coming across things like this. If you know of other excellent (and free!) services to help us with our daily lives, please pass them along!

<a rel='nofollow' href='http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B00002S9X7/lockergnome Fax with free 56k Modem</a></li> </ul> </p> <p>Want to embed this video on your own site, blog, or forum? Use this code or <a href="http://blip.tv/file/get/L0ckergn0me-CanYouSendFAXForFree516.mp4">download the video</a>: </p> <p><textarea style="width: 460px; height:60px;"><object width="425" height="350"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/DfTbXcsr6kU"></param><param name="wmode" value="transparent"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/DfTbXcsr6kU" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" wmode="transparent" width="425" height="350"></embed></object><br /><a href="http://chris.pirillo.com/">Chris</a> | <a href="http://live.pirillo.com/">Live Tech Support</a> | <a href="http://media.pirillo.com/">Video Help</a> | <a href="http://feeds.pirillo.com/ChrisPirilloShow">Add to iTunes</a></textarea></p> <ul class="related_post"> <li><a href="http://chris.pirillo.com/vonage-fax/" title="Vonage FAX?">Vonage FAX?</a></li> <li><a href="http://chris.pirillo.com/how-to-fax-over-voip-on-the-internet/" title="How to FAX over VOIP on the Internet">How to FAX over VOIP on the Internet</a></li> <li><a href="http://chris.pirillo.com/scanning-documents-with-ocr/" title="Scanning Documents with OCR">Scanning Documents with OCR</a></li> <li><a href="http://chris.pirillo.com/fast-fax-facts/" title="Fast FAX Facts">Fast FAX Facts</a></li> </ul> <div class="linkwithin_hook" id="http://chris.pirillo.com/can-you-send-a-fax-for-free/"></div><p><a href="http://chris.pirillo.com">Chris Pirillo</a> | <a href="http://youtube.com/lockergnome">YouTube</a> | <a href="http://twitter.com/chrispirillo">Twitter</a> | <a href="http://geeks.pirillo.com/">Geeks</a> | <a href="http://coupons.lockergnome.com/">Coupons</a> | <a href="http://www.lockergnome.com/">Blogs</a> | <a href="http://tagjag.com/">Shopping</a></p> <p><a href="http://chris.pirillo.com/can-you-send-a-fax-for-free/">Can You Send a FAX For Free?</a></p> <p><iframe src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~ah/f/lpj2a0s0b83fm727ahojoknhc4/300/250?ca=1&fh=280#http%3A%2F%2Fchris.pirillo.com%2Fcan-you-send-a-fax-for-free%2F" width="100%" height="280" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" marginwidth="0" marginheight="0"></iframe></p>

Cherry, The Mobile Operator That Doesn’t Care Whether You’re On Wi-Fi Or Not

2009-07-05T10:07:18Z

The chances of me being genuinely amazed at something I see a Belgian tech company achieve are rather slim. But occasionally, it happens. Last week I went to local entrepreneur meetup BetaGroup and saw five startups pitch their stuff to the 200-person audience.

The last one to get its five minutes of fame was Cherry, a new mobile operator that promised to “revolutionize the telecom world”. Needless to say, I was as curious as I was skeptical.

Then the company’s CEO got up on stage, introduced himself, took out his Nokia smartphone, called some random guy in the audience and had him call him back on his phone afterwards. Projecting his mobile phone screen on a bigger screen for everyone to see, he demonstrated how he didn’t need to launch an application and just browsed his contact list to call the other person. Standard functionality, sure, but the cool part of it was the fact that the phone was lacking the presence of a SIM card, which is supposed to identify you as a subscriber of a telephony service.

I was intrigued. By now you’ll have guessed that the calling was done over Wi-Fi, which I suppose isn’t really unique even if it made me wonder how they did it without launching a third-party app like Skype. Looking to learn more, I went to their official coming-out event the evening after, when they presented the newly founded company to a host of local geeks in more detail, giving them the chance to beta-test the service for a couple of weeks to iron out bugs before launching publicly.

Here’s how it works: Cherry - which is essentially an MVNO - pre-installs software (so yes, in the demo there was actually an application running in the background) on smartphones which it will sell as a packaged product, starting with a Symbian version for Nokia E-Series phones and expanding to other platforms later. Once activated, Cherry lets you call your contacts either over Wi-Fi or the GSM network when you insert a SIM card. Take out the card, and you can only call over a wireless Internet connection.

The funky part? Cherry automatically switches you from one to the other. This process, called a handover, can seriously cut into your current calling and roaming costs when you’re a frequent traveler or on the road often, and it doesn’t even require you to change numbers. You could easily dial your office number from your home over Wi-Fi, leave the house and have the software automatically have Cherry switch you over to a carrier’s cellular network once you’re out of range. There’s no interruption of service during the handover, which means you won’t even notice - until you receive your bill, since it’s obviously cheaper to call over Wi-Fi than the GSM network. Please correct me if I’m wrong, but I think this automatic handover is a quite unique value proposition.

I did a short interview with Cherry CEO Bernard Noël De Burlin and Telco Service Manager aka mobile guru Davy Van De Moere after the event (apologies for the abrupt ending, my Flip’s batteries ran out of juice).

And just in case you don’t have a couple of minutes to watch the video, let me save you the trouble of asking: support for iPhone and Android are on the top of their list and a Windows Mobile-compatible version should be available soon.

(Full disclosure: the company gave me a Nokia E51 and free calling minutes so I could try out the service under normal circumstances on a daily basis. I need to return or pay for the phone end of August 2009.)

Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.

OpenBitTorrent Tracker Muscles In On The Old Pirate Bay

2009-07-05T06:11:00Z

In his article ‘Playing Whack-A-Mole With Data: The Pirate Bay Lives On‘, Jamie King cut through much of the doom and gloom of the last week and took a refreshingly optimistic view of how the sale of The Old Pirate Bay might not necessarily be the death-touch many people in the BitTorrent community think it is.

Jamie mused: “What if someone was to simply scrape and copy all The Pirate Bay’s torrents over to a new tracker and Mininova and all the other indexes currently using the TPB tracker were to change their listings to point to that? OpenBitTorrent.com for example, an independent open tracker which started recently.”

So today we ask this question - was Jamie’s article incredibly prophetic? Or did it provide the spark, the catalyst, the inspiration needed to bring the BitTorrent community out of its premature misery this week, instead prompting it into positive action rather than self-destruction?

Whatever the truth, whatever the route, today the BitTorrent community has reason for cautious optimism - or possibly a full-scale celebration.

Try this for yourself, don’t take my word for it. First of all find a torrent on The Pirate Bay - I chose Montt Mardie’s “We Are All The Pirate Bay” for symbolic demo purposes here. Now paste the URL of the torrent into the editor on TorrentEditor.com and click ‘edit it’. TorrentEditor will return the seeds and peers - in this case 182 seeds and no peers.

For the next step, remove the Pirate Bay’s trackers from the torrent and replace them with the announce URL for OpenBitTorrent’s tracker, which is http://tracker.openbittorrent.com:80/announce and click ‘update’ at the bottom of the page. Result: 182 seeds, no peers.

I haven’t got time to check all 1,720,650 torrents on Pirate Bay right now but after trying a few, I reached the same result each time. Also, the scrape file of the OpenBitTorrent tracker is exactly the same size of that of The Pirate Bay tracker.

GGF would like you to think that they will control The New Pirate Bay but I believe that accolade is for the community to bestow. So is OBT (c’mon, what’s a tracker without an acronym these days?) the New TPB?

It is if you say it is.

Post from: TorrentFreak

13 Beautiful Wordpress Showcase Sites

2009-07-04T15:27:49Z

I created very similar article yesterday, but this one is because I read my feed and saw there are many similar articles with web design related inspiration. This time I wanted to show you the next step – beautiful showcase websites, which collects WordPress based blogs and delivers long run inspiration, so you can subscribe and check what’s new happening all the time!

Don’t forget to check also my last discovery – it’s very unique social bookmarking site, but guess what, it showcases only WordPress related articles, freebies, tutorials..and things like that, pretty cool don’t you think?

Updated list – now there are 14 Wordpress Showcase sites and 2 Wordpress related social bookmarking sites!

1.WeLoveWp

This site is dedicated to showcase only WordPress based sites, very good collection and website, I think this is the most popular Wordpress showcase site for now.

2. WP Inspiration

Website showcasing the best WordPress sites on the Internet – at least they are saying so. Now it’s your turn to judge this expression.

3.LoopPress

This is one more site, created by one more WordPress fan, who really want to know how other developers and designers are using ut, designing for it and adding to it and LoopPress is a gallery devoted to beautiful websites, blogs and themes built on the Wordpress platform.

4.WPLuxe

WPLuxe brings you news on the top Premium WordPress themes and plugins, and provides a showcase of gorgeous sites using Premium Themes.

5.Official WordPress Showcase

Also some time ago WordPress added showcase section to their own site too, where you can rate, vote and submit Your WordPress based designs.

6. WPCube

This site is created to showcase best designed Wordpress sites around the net, main objective is to display well designed unique WP themes created by great designers and the gallery is updated frequently, the sites listed are collected while we browse the net or submitted by our visitors or by authors themselves…

7. WP Garden

WP Garden – is here to highlight some of the beautiful websites, created using WordPress. It gives an opportunity for the site creators to show off their work and it also benefits common people as a means of inspiration. All websites featured here are carefully chosen by a panel of experts.

8. WP Float

Here at WP Float you will find an up-to-date collection of websites created using WordPress – truly amazing and open source platform.

9. WPInspire

WPInspire is is a place where beautifully designed websites powered by WordPress are showcased.

Its purpose is to showcase designers’ work and be source of inspiration for others.

10. MixCSS

Also one more beautiful website showcase site, not completely dedicated to blog websites, but has inspiring section there. One friend of mine told me this site is really previous year treasure mine, must know this one.

11. Best Web Gallery

Again not completely dedicated, but with great Blog section there, I am sure you’ve heard about this one.

12. CSSArtilery

CSSArtillery, showcase of web standards state-of-the-art & inspirational websites from all around the globe. Not specifically created for blog showcasing, but they have a nifty “Blogging” section there.

Of course, there are many web-design showcase sites with blogging sections, but I just featured three best ones in my opinion. If you feel I am thinking wrong, you can always add your picks to create this article more complete!

13. WpVote

At last I found this site and was very excited about it, maybe you’ll feel the same way, not really showcase site – but something every WordPress lover will evaluate.

WpVote is the social bookmarking site for everything related to WordPress, from hacks to news.

*Updated List

Thanks to regular readers I found out about 2 more Wordpress Showcase site and one more Wordpress related social bookmarking site:

14. WpCount

Nice showcase site with 341 Websites Currently Submitted!

15. WpForest

16. Wp-Popular

One more beautiful Wordpress related social bookmarking site, I happen to know about.

Do URLs matter anymore?

2009-07-01T06:00:00Z

With search boxes becoming increasingly the first place people go to find anything, does it really matter what your URL is?

Flickr And Twitter are Now Officially Sucking Face

2009-06-30T20:24:38Z

Earlier this month, Flickr started flirting with Twitter integration by allowing users to link their Flickr accounts to their Twitter accounts. The experiment was only for email uploads, which simultaneously created a Tweet with a short http://flic.kr link back to the photo on Flickr. Now that integration is an official feature called Flickr2Twitter.

In addition to email uploads, Flickr now lets you Tweet out any photos directly from the site. After linking your accounts, whenever you click on the “Blog this” button on any photo on Flickr, your Twitter account will be one of the distribution options. This works for both photos you’ve uploaded and other photos you find on the site. I have a feeling you are going to be seeing a lot of http://flic.kr links on Twitter pretty soon.

Developers who want to add Flickr as a photo option to desktop and mobile clients can use Flickr’s existing APIs. (You can learn more here). Once that happens, Twitpic and yFrog will have some company on those clients as a pull-down option.

CrunchBase Information

Flickr

Twitter

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Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.

The Pirate Bay Has Been Bought By A Public Company [Updated...]

2009-06-30T09:08:50Z

Details are a bit scarce at this point, but Martin alerts us to the news that The Pirate Bay has apparently been sold to a public company for 60 million SEK (about $8 million US) -- at least according to a press release from the supposed buyer, Global Gaming Factory X (GGF). Apparently it's 30 million SEK/$4 million in cash and another the rest in shares in GGF. The company claims the acquisition will be complete in August, and that it will "launch new business models that allow compensation to the content providers and copyright owners." Separately, it appears GGF is also buying another technology company, called Peerialism.

Apparently GGF operates internet cafes and gaming centers in Sweden, and also offers software for managing internet cafes as well.

I assume more details will be forthcoming soon (we'll update the post as necessary), but this raises a variety of questions -- in part about the ongoing lawsuit and the lingering jailterms for the four people who were on trial. Considering it was always quite amorphous who actually "owned" The Pirate Bay, it makes you wonder who sold it and who gets the money. Also, since the guys on trial insisted they actually didn't make much money from The Pirate Bay, they may actually be seen in a worse light after this news, suggesting that even if they didn't make money from ongoing operations, they may have cashed in on the sale. All in all, quite a surprise, and we look forward to additional details.

Update: Ok! Martin alerts us to the fact that Peter "brokep" Sunde has confirmed the deal and provided some details via a Twitter interview. Martin, helpfully, translates:

Daniel Goldberg:
@ brokep Is this correct? http://bit.ly/1YR0m

Peter S Kolmisoppi:
@ danielg0ldberg Yes.

Daniel Goldberg:
@ brokep What a thing! Who gets the money? Who owns the TPB?

Peter S Kolmisoppi:
@ danielg0ldberg Foreign company, with demands from our side to finance a fund for internet projects. We get no money.

Daniel Goldberg:
@ brokep Cool. What do you mean internet project? Will you not have to use the money to cover the damages?

Peter S Kolmisoppi:
@ danielg0ldberg Internet Project in the form of political activism, etc. TPB changed hands in 2006 already to not be sued.

Daniel Goldberg
@ brokep Congratulations, the scoop! Who is the owner of TPB today?

Peter S Kolmisoppi:
@ danielg0ldberg It's partly why we've have been so sure that lawsuits against us is pointless in the end ... :-)

Peter S Kolmisoppi:
@ danielg0ldberg I do not think that I may say for legal reasons. But they are people we trust. And have conditioned things too..

So... that answers some of the questions (and raises a few others!). The money is not going to these guys, but will go towards funding internet political activism. Also, apparently the official ownership of The Pirate Bay had been in the hands of others who are not clear.

Update 2: The official blog post from The Pirate Bay basically says the same thing as the interview above, and suggests that the site operators felt that the service needed new blood to power it and keep it evolving.

Update 3: Apparently The Pirate Bay is also close its tracker and remove the torrents it hosts itself, instead just will rely on third parties, which it will index. The claim is that this is to make the service even more decentralized, but it is a bit of a headscratcher.

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Swedish Software Firm Acquires The Pirate Bay For $7.7 Million

2009-06-30T08:24:20Z

Swedish software firm Global Gaming Factory X this morning announced it has agreed to buy file-sharing service The Pirate Bay for 60 million Swedish crowns (which currently converts to approx. $7.7 million). In addition, GGF has entered into an agreement to acquire the shares in Peerialism, a software technology company that develops solutions for data distribution and distributed storage based on new p2p technology.

The transaction is scheduled to be closed in August 2009.

Update: The Pirate Bay has confirmed the news (see their commentary below).

Last April, the founders of The Pirate Bay were sentenced to one year in jail and a fine of $3.6 million for running the site, which is one of the world largest for downloading files on the Internet (one of the 100 most visited websites in the world according to the press release). The case had been brought on by a number of groups from the music and movie industry.

For that reason, GGF has stated that The Pirate Bay requires a new business model, which “satisfies the requirements and needs of all parties, content providers, broadband operators, end users, and the judiciary.”

Global Gaming Chief Executive Hans Pandeya didn’t give a lot of detail about what type of business model it has planned for the file-sharing service, and only said:

“We would like to introduce models which entail that content providers and copyright owners get paid for content that is downloaded via the site.”

We’re gathering more information and will update this post accordingly.

Statement from TPB:

“A lot of people are worried. We’re not and you shouldn’t be either!

TPB is being sold for a great bit underneath it’s value if the money would be the interesting part. It’s not. The interesting thing is that the right people with the right attitude and possibilities keep running the site.
As all of you know, there’s not been much news on the site for the past two-three years. It’s the same site essentially. On the internets, stuff dies if it doesn’t evolve. We don’t want that to happen.

We’ve been working on this project for many years. It’s time to invite more people into the project, in a way that is secure and safe for everybody. We need that, or the site will die. And letting TPB die is the last thing that is allowed to happen!

If the new owners will screw around with the site, nobody will keep using it. That’s the biggest insurance one can have that the site will be run in the way that we all want to. And - you can now not only share files but shares with people. Everybody can indeed be the owner of The Pirate Bay now. That’s awesome and will take the heat of us.

The old crew is still around in different ways. We will also not stop being active in the politics of the internets - quite the opposite. Now we’re fueling up for going into the next gear. TPB will have economical muscles to let people evolve it. It will team up with great technicians to evolve the protocols. And we, the people interested in more than just technology, will have the time to focus on that. It’s win-win-win.

The profits from the sale will go into a foundation that is going to help with projects about freedom of speech, freedom of information and the openess of the nets. I hope everybody will help out in that and realize that this is the best option for all. Don’t worry - be happy!”

Update 2: TorrentFreak was informed by TPB’s Peter Sunde that the site will soon decentralize and quit running a properietary BitTorrent tracker, instead encouraging its user base to use a yet to be launched third party tracker for their torrents.

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The Pirate Bay

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BREAKING: The Pirate Bay Sold For $7.8 Million

2009-06-30T09:00:26Z

Today, Swedish software company Global Gaming Factory X AB has announced it has acquired The Pirate Bay website for 60 million SEK, which is roughly the equivalent of $7.8 million USD.

This was almost immediately confirmed by The Pirate Bay. Although the title of their post is entitled “TPB might change owner,” from the text of the post it is obvious that the site has indeed been sold.

Two facts strike the eye: the incredibly small amount for which The Pirate Bay was sold, compared to its huge popularity and worldwide influence, and the fact that the site which has always been perceived as independent and quite controversial, was sold at all. The second fact explains the latter: yes, The Pirate Bay is one of the top 100 visited websites in the world, but it (and its owners) is also encumbered by the recent loss of a very important lawsuit.

The Pirate Bay definitely has a lot of value beyond its controversial core business, the torrent tracker. The team behind it have launched several noteworthy projects, and their words and actions are highly influential, which has recently been proved by Sweden’s Pirate Party’s entrance into the European Parliament, largely indebted to the attention it received after The Pirate Bay’s owners lost the lawsuit.

Normally, one would think that this sale is just some quick scraping for cash while they still have something to sell. The Pirate Bay founders are trying to convince us otherwise. From their blog post:

“The profits from the sale will go into a foundation that is going to help with projects about freedom of speech, freedom of information and the openess of the nets. I hope everybody will help out in that and realize that this is the best option for all. Don’t worry – be happy!”

This might very well be true, but the bigger problem is: what will happen to The Pirate Bay now that it has a new owner? The founders claim “nothing,” but I remain skeptical.

“If the new owners will screw around with the site, nobody will keep using it. That’s the biggest insurance one can have that the site will be run in the way that we all want to. And – you can now not only share files but shares with people. Everybody can indeed be the owner of The Pirate Bay now. That’s awesome and will take the heat of us.“

Compare this to the statement from Global Gaming Factory CEO Hans Pandeya:

“The Pirate Bay is a site that is among the top 100 most visited Internet sites in the world. However, in order to live on, The Pirate Bay requires a new business model, which satisfies the requirements and needs of all parties, content providers, broadband operators, end users, and the judiciary. Content creators and providers need to control their content and get paid for it. File sharers’ need faster downloads and better quality”

It is obvious that this is an end of an era: The Pirate Bay will change; the only question is whether its independent spirit and influence – which were always more important than the torrent tracker itself – will live on, or perish.

Read the full press release from Global Gaming Factory X AB here.

Tags: global gaming factory, the pirate bay, torrent

The iPhone 3GS is Hot (And That's Not a Good Thing)

2009-06-29T12:30:00Z

The iPhone 3G may, at least for some users, have an additional, undocumented feature: It can be used to toast bread.

Firefox May Come to Android - Too Little Too Late?

2009-06-29T14:12:47Z

Last week, Google announced a change in how software can run on Android, the company's mobile operating system which powers such devices as T-Mobile's G1 and the upcoming MyTouch 3G. Instead of just allowing Java applications that run on Google's Dalvik virtual machine, Android will now allow software that runs natively in on the Linux operating system itself. This will be made possible through a new toolset for developers, the Android Native Development Kit. The change may allow Mozilla to bring their young mobile browser, Fennec (aka "Firefox Mobile") to the Android platform.

Sponsor

Mobile is one platform that Mozilla has yet to conquer. Only recently, a second alpha version of Fennec was made available for Windows Mobile devices (version 6 and up). If the Android NDK provides the proper capabilities for bringing the mobile version of Firefox to Android, that would only be the second mobile platform that Fennec supports.

According to a report from CNET, Mozilla is considering the possibilities. "I think our community would be interested in doing it, because Android will be appearing on more smartphones with the capabilities to provide a good browsing experience," said Jay Sullivan, Mozilla's vice president of mobile.

The only question now is whether or not Fennec will ever have a shot at becoming a popular mobile browser. Although development is moving along at a reasonable pace, it's certainly had its setbacks along the way...and it's nowhere near a version 1.0 yet. Meanwhile, WebKit is taking the lead when it comes to browsers on many of today's hottest smartphone platforms. The open-source WebKit code currently powers a lot of the newest browsers on the market including the one that ships on Android, iPhone's Safari browser, and the browser on the Palm Pre. Where does that leave Fennec? Apparently, it leaves it competing against Opera, which already has a solid foothold on the other mobile platforms lacking a decent mobile browser - Opera even became the top mobile browser recently.

Hopefully with the new NDK from Google, Fennec will be able to make its way onto at least one of the top smarthphone platforms out there. But we wonder: will anyone care when it arrives?

Discuss

Pirate Bay's Video Bay takes on YouTube

2009-06-29T07:26:00Z

The owners of Pirate Bay may be facing a year in jail for copyright infringement but the website is still trying to find ways to get premium content on the web for free.

The Video Bay is a video spin-off of the P2P link site and is now in "beta extreme", according to its makers.

The project has been around for two years now and is still some way from completion – a five year plan has been mooted.

However, parts of the site have been open to the public, so they could have a look at just what Video Bay will look like. Search functionality was was working, but now all this has been replaced with the ominous message that the site is "coming soon".

This seems to be all part of the plan, with the holding page admitting: "Don't expect anything to work at all."

Experimental playground

"To stay in the spirit on which TPB was founded and using the Latest Technology™, TVB aims to use the new HTML5 features, more specificly [sic] the and tags with the ogg/theora video and audio formats," notes the website.

The message continues: "This site will be an experimental playground and as such subjected to both live and drunk (en)coding, so please don't bug us too much if the site ain't working properly."

There are two demos on the website to show how the audio and video tagging will work. Both demos contain music videos for Rage Against The Machine and AC/DC.

The site also says that it is looking for a Javascript hacker to help with its 'free video' venture.

It all sounds like the free-for-all YouTube was at the beginning of its life, where users could upload pretty much anything without fear that audio on their clips would be replaced with silence or, worse, the videos taken off forever.

Related Links

The Video Bay

Related Stories

Jackson dominates digital downloads

2009-06-29T08:25:00Z

It's hardly a shock, but Michael Jackson is dominating the digital downloads market following his death last week.

Jackson – who died of a heart attack last week – has immediately become a massive fixture in top 10s, with the Apple iTunes' rundown page a great indication of what is happening on a global level.

Eight out of 10 cats

A look at the Album sales sees eight out of the Top 10 filled with Michael Jackson albums, with greatest hits compilation Number Ones filling top spot.

The US also has eight out of the ten album slots filled by Jackson, while France goes one better, with only Music for Men by Gossip keeping the King of Pop from a full sweep.

In the singles charts on iTunes, the UK surprisingly has Bulletproof by La Roux ahead of Jackson's Man in the Mirror, which tops the US chart.

Luxembourg's chart is topped by Michael Jackson's Earth Song – which probably speaks volumes – while Ireland's iTunes chart contains no Michael Jackson songs at all.

Related Stories

Ch-ch-ch-changes: A visual history of Firefox

2009-06-29T11:00:00Z

Firefox has changed in several key ways over the years. We take you through some of the big interface changes from version 0.8 up to the latest release candidate of 3.5.

Windows 7 gets “Apple style” guided tours

2009-06-29T10:41:40Z

[See post to watch Flash video]

I’ve been a big fan of the guided tour videos Apple makes available soon after a new product launch. It’s an effective way of showing off a new product without looking like an advertisement, at the same time educating potential customers about the features of the product without a wordy manual or features list. Now Microsoft has a series of guided tours for Windows 7 too.

Similarly to the recent iPhone 3GS video, the Windows 7 videos too feature a charming employee who introduces and narrates the videos, in this case, Latika Kirtane. If the face looks familiar to you, that’s because you probably watched Latika sing in the now infamous Microsoft Research Songsmith video. Interestingly, according to her LinkedIn profile, she has since moved on from the Windows team to now work on Windows Internet Explorer.

In terms of the video production, it’s fascinating to see the use of Sims-like figures in the introduction of the videos. Each of the four videos feature slightly different themed scenarios related to the topic of the video. The style of the animations are also quite interesting, and if you think of all the other elements that’s been associated with the Windows 7 brand so far – butteries, birds, trees, sunshine – this might actually be a sneak peek at what to expect in the mainstream advertising campaigns.

Kid Swaps iPod For Sony Walkman, Gets A Culture Shock

2009-06-29T11:10:44Z

The pictures of the Sony Walkman in this BBC Magazine article made me feel strangely nostalgic - the actual text of the article made me laugh out loud. The Magazine invited 13-year-old Scott Campbell to trade his iPod for a Walkman for a week, and he recounts his experiences with the device, which was launched 30 years ago this week.

Campbell, apart from being amazed at the blandly colored portable music player, correctly points out that the Walkman is much bigger, heavier and generally more clunky than the digital media players he’s accustomed to seeing within his social circle.

On the upside, he writes, the ‘monstrous box’ comes with a ‘handy belt clip screwed on to the back’.

Update: ha, Campbell is one of our interns at CrunchGear!

The funniest part of the story:

It took me three days to figure out that there was another side to the tape. That was not the only naive mistake that I made; I mistook the metal/normal switch on the Walkman for a genre-specific equaliser, but later I discovered that it was in fact used to switch between two different types of cassette.

Another notable feature that the iPod has and the Walkman doesn’t is “shuffle”, where the player selects random tracks to play. Its a function that, on the face of it, the Walkman lacks. But I managed to create an impromptu shuffle feature simply by holding down “rewind” and releasing it randomly - effective, if a little laboured.

Campbell goes on to speak wise words (”portable music is better than no music”) and lists the pros and cons of the portable cassette player compared to its latter-day successor. Go read it here.

Anyone else felt a bit nostalgic about the good old cassette tape after reading?

(Picture from BBC)

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Smartphone guide keeps it simple

2009-06-29T11:08:59Z

Wired's guide to buying a smartphone is nice and straightforward. Send it to the people you know need it. [Gadget Lab]

Firefox Mobile comes to Windows... Mobile

2009-06-29T09:57:00Z

Mozilla has taken another step towards nabbing a share of the burgeoning mobile browser market by releasing a version of Firefox Mobile for Windows Mobile users.

The new browser, still running under the Fennec codename, is only available as an alpha release, which means it's going to be slightly bug-filled to say the least.

But the good news is anyone packing a WinMo phone (version 6 or better) can try the new release, rather than just those with the specific phones Mozilla has deigned to let have Fennec.

Panning's improved - phew

In the upgrades, there's a more polished UI, better panning, a new theme and much better add on support, although most people won't have tried the earlier versions to compare.

The great news is the Awesome Bar (which actually is pretty awesome, allowing you to type a few keywords into the address bar and go directly to the site) is still there, and Mozilla is promising improved stability and better integration with Windows Mobile OS as well.

If you want to get your hands on the new release, then head on over to Mozilla's Fennec site for all the details.

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Exclusive: Mozilla looking beyond Firefox 3.5

2009-06-29T10:52:00Z

Firefox 3.5 is not even out for general release yet, but Mozilla are already suggesting that the trunk builds of its successor are 20-30 per cent faster and will build on the company's work on video integration.

Video is a central improvement of Firefox 3.5, according to Vice President of Engineering Mike Shaver, who told TechRadar that work was well underway on making the browser even better.

"3.5 is important to keep the momentum going from 3.0," said Shaver.

"It brings some momentous tools to the browser including video and extreme high performance javascript.

"We're going to continue to improve - this isn't a fire and forget thing and you know we have these graphs of our performance and already our trunk builds for the next version are another 20 to 30 percent faster"

Speed is of the essence

Shaver admitted that the focus on speed was perhaps not something that struck a chord with the general public, but reiterated the necessity of making browsers more capable of dealing with complex tasks.

"I think there is speed is an important part of the browser market but in many cases it's what I think of as a hygiene element," asserted Shaver.

"If it's not fast enough then they notice, but beyond that the user is not likely to notice for their current work.

"We are certainly continuing to improve responsiveness and start up time, and the execution speed of Firefox but we also care about speed.

"We'll keep building on that because it is underpinning capability on the web, it's not just about making your Gmail load faster its about things like image manipulation and video."

Video gains

Firefox 3.5 has a heavy focus on integrating video focus, with the company investing in standardising content on the web.

"We gave a 100k grant to the Wikimedia foundation to improve the Theora codecs and the decoder libraries that we use but also the encoders that are going to produce content so that it can be comparable in quality and comparable in bandwidth to what YouTube uses now for HD.

"So we are in active, and public, I should add, discussions with YouTube in what it would take to get behind open video that way – that would be a landmark thing."

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