“DuckDuckGo is a general purpose search engine that is intended to be your starting place when searching the Internet. Use it to get way more instant answers, way less spam and real privacy, which we believe adds up to a much better overall search experience.”

From their [...]]]>

What is DuckDuckGo?

From their official website:

“DuckDuckGo is a general purpose search engine that is intended to be your starting place when searching the Internet. Use it to get way more instant answers, way less spam and real privacy, which we believe adds up to a much better overall search experience.”

From their privacy page:

“DuckDuckGo does not collect or share personal information. That is our privacy policy in a nutshell. The rest of this page tries to explain why you should care.”

DuckDuckGo’s “!bangs”

“!bangs” are special commands that give users the ability to search 100s of other sites directly from the DuckDuckGo search box (including other search engines). There are currently over a thousand !bang commands available. The most popular “!bangs” are also available in the drop down menu.

The mobile networks in the US are designed to prevent new competition from entering the market. The US isn’t likely to see a new carrier to deliver a service that functions the same way that the current traditional carriers do. In order to succeed, a radical concept needs to be deployed. Republic [...]]]> From Geek.com:

The mobile networks in the US are designed to prevent new competition from entering the market. The US isn’t likely to see a new carrier to deliver a service that functions the same way that the current traditional carriers do. In order to succeed, a radical concept needs to be deployed. Republic Wireless hopes to deliver that radical concept, by offering unlimited everything for $20/month. The catch? The service is designed for you to use Voice over IP and your local wireless network whenever you can.

Reblogged from Cool Tools as I am waiting for my MakerBot to finish.

Printing in 3D is now no more complicated than printing photos in Picasa. First you design something in Autodesk 123D (in my case, my first project was a device housing prototype). Then pick "Make" from the menu. You can print [...]]]>  

Reblogged from Cool Tools as I am waiting for my MakerBot to finish.

Printing in 3D is now no more complicated than printing photos in Picasa. First you design something in Autodesk 123D (in my case, my first project was a device housing prototype). Then pick "Make" from the menu. You can print your object on your desktop printer, like a Makerbot (moderate quality, now), or you press another button to have it printed (high quality, later) on a commercial printer. Enter your credit card (my prototype, shown here, cost $24) and a week later it’s delivered to your house. Wow.

Best of all, 123D is free. This is the future of fabrication.

But so what, isn’t it FUN.  Why should an APP be useful?  Really, is anything social actually useful?  Stop worrying about looking silly and learn how to have FUN.

Rate Everything.

Everything about your life is exciting. [...]]]> Sure, I was played too, I showed the Videos only to find out it actually is an APP.

But so what, isn’t it FUN.  Why should an APP be useful?  Really, is anything social actually useful?  Stop worrying about looking silly and learn how to have FUN.

Rate Everything.

Everything about your life is exciting. To Everyone.

With Jotly you can:

- Rate anything. Even yourself.
- Rate nothing. This will be fascinating to friends and foes.
- Sign up without Facebook or Twitter.
- Move about freely. The app will automatically follow you.
- Earn influence points and build (street) credit.
- Earn a living.

I moved to the much simpler Secure Cam which I like a great deal better. Secure Cam [...]]]> I reviewed and installed Active WebCam.  Active WebCam would not communicate with my FTP server which is setup for sftp and is primarily a trial version of a purchased package despite all the labeling.  So it was out.

I moved to the much simpler Secure Cam which I like a great deal better. Secure Cam worked well with Motion sensors but was not easy to have the pictures sent and did tend to fill up my local hard disk even during the test.  Nothing that was going to provide a problem; however, it wasn’t easy to see how to keep the directory clean.

But the third bed was just right.

YawCam

“Yawcam is a shortening for Yet Another WebCAM software, and that’s exactly what it is . More precise Yawcam is a webcam software for windows written in java. The main ideas for Yawcam are to keep it simple and easy to use but to include all the usual features.”

I liked if from the description, and the Title: a nod to Yahoo! and earlier programs. It has a simple interface window (shown at right) and great documentation.

In addition to all of the usual features, and it appears to have the complete set, it has a excellent interface and monitoring setup for the motion sensor.  The motion sensor also allows you to run an executable and I would like to hack my house someday and have it turn on lights and an alarm (that will be a later project, aren’t they all); however, it is the only one that allows you to configure GMail SMTP server and email anyone with the pictures so that if the machine is taken, I will still have the images. 

This is a great tool and I am looking forward to using it for a variety of reasons, if nothing else, I at least get to use it to monitor my non-existent cat.