the saladian archives

Some Of The Many Twitter Courtiers

2008-04-10T22:55:00.000-07:00

Some Of The Many Twitter Courtiers

10Apr08

Twitter started off like a confusing but fun way to keep up with what your friends or favorite bloggers were doing. Slowly more and more people started using Twitter and with that, many applications were built to accompany it. I call them courtiers. Here’s some that I like:

Twits Like Me helps you find other Twits who may share the same interests as you based on your updates. You can choose to exclude Twitter followers already included in your friends list if you don’t want to be matched up with someone you already know. I didn’t select this when trying out Twits Like Me and not one of my Twitter friends was on the list. I guess opposites attract.

Twubble wants to help you find more people to follow and it bases friend recommendations on your current set of friends. You’ll see Twubble slowing trolling through your friends friends and then it will come up with a list of people you should be friends with based on various connections between your friends. I tried it out and Twubble actually suggested a lot of people that I should probably be following. It’s just so hard to make the first move sometimes, ya know?

TweetCloud allows you to make a fun tag cloud of all of the words you use in your Twitter updates. It’s interesting because you’ll see what words you are, perhaps, overusing. For example, I frequently use the words “thanks”, “think”, and “need”. Strangely enough, the word “totally” wasn’t there and that’s one word I know I use way too much when speaking. Good to know that I’m not polluting my Twitter followers with my “valley girl” speak. (According to some members of the Digg community, I am like totally a valley girl, OMG!)

GroupTweet allows you to create and inner circle of friends to send and receive private Twitter messages. You need to create a new Twitter account for your group and activate the appropriate privacy settings to keep your updates protected. Then just register your group Twitter account at GroupTweet.com and tell the people you want included to follow your group. If you want to send a message to all group members just send the group name a direct message. Pretty handy for co-workers or family members.

TweetStats gives you statistics of your tweet activity in the form of graphs. You can see how many times you tweet per month, average tweets by day, and average hourly number of tweets. You’ll also see how many times you reply to other Twits and your most used interface. To view your TweetStats, you just need to enter in your user name so you can also check out stats of anyone else you’re following.

More noteworthy Twitter courtiers:

Post Like A Pirate - Converts your updates into priate talk. Who doesn’t like a little pirate talk?

TwitterMail - Get your very own TwitterMail email address and whenever you send email to that address it will be posted to Twitter. Your Twitter replies will be sent back to you via email.

TwitterLocal - See who’s tweeting around you. Check out the screencast here.

TwitTown - The unofficial Twitter community where you can find even more Twitter Courtiers!

source: [ link ]

Useful Find of the Day: Fake Name Generator

2008-03-25T23:26:00.000-07:00

It generates:

First and last name
Valid city, state, and zip code
Telephone number with area code/prefix that match the generated city
Mother’s maiden name
Birthday

Working on adding in valid full addresses, but that is a lot tougher. There aren’t really any random address generators out there. Well, there are, but they don’t give you a random VALID address, which is important if the website you are using it at validates it using the USPS system.

Check it out: http://www.fakenamegenerator.com/

Some possible uses:

Signing up for paid offers (like affiliate programs that pay for leads) or those annoying free iPod pyramid schemes. If it doesn’t require you to actually get something shipped to you, then a real looking fake name/address from another state can be real useful.
Pseudonym to use as your online identity to avoid companies from seeing your colorful past. If you use an “unused” name, then it will be very easy to search for everything related to yourself using Google.
Load it (or a couple) into a form filler to quickly fill out junk mail forms. Very useful if they want you to refer 5 friends or whatever.
Fake websites to promote your own website. Work at least the city/state into it somewhere and it looks like people from all over the country are raving about your *insert something cool here*. Of course, thats a lot more work than I’d be willing to do. Maybe if I generate an XML API like someone suggested, it could be done automatically… Hmmm…
Sweepstakes site that is used to gather names/emails to sell. Use the fake names/addresses as the people who “win” your sweepstakes.
Umm. Thats it really. Not sure what else you’d use it for. Guess there are a lot of illegitimate uses… Oh well…

This is one of the most useful sites for any internet junkie who prefers to remain anonymous. cheers and congrats to the author!

Image Of The Day: Were Are My Fucking Keys

2008-03-19T23:28:00.000-07:00

The worst part is, is that this could totally happen in the next couple years. Creepy.

The 25 Coolest (and Most Unconventional) Keyboards

2008-03-17T07:47:00.000-07:00

The WristPC Keyboard: This keyboard is designed for “portable and wearable” computer applications, whatever that means.

The Comfort Keyboard: This ergonomic keyboard can be split into three separate sections, supposedly for added comfort. It also features key reprogramming and a programmable “rest period indicator.”

Orbitouch keyless keyboard: This one is a little hard to explain. It was designed for people with “repetitive stress injuries” like carpal tunnel. As you can see, there are no keys.

The Roll-Up Keyboard: This standard 104 key keyboard takes portability to a new level while providing surprisingly good tactile feedback.

The Optimus Maximus keyboard: Little OLED displays on each key let you customize the layout. Probably the most talked about keyboard ever.

DataHand Professional II: Another Keyboard focused on ergonomics. Is the normal keyboard really that uncomfortable?

The Apple Adjustable Keyboard: A pretty creative keyboard considering the 1992 release date. It was designed to minimize carpal tunnel syndrome.

Saitek Eclipse Keyboard: This illuminated keyboard should turn a few heads at the LAN Parties.

The Frogpad: A keyboard meant to be used with one hand. Supposedly you could reach 40 words per minute with a days practice.

The Twiddler 2: This is a one handed, hand held, keyboard. It wins the prize for most uncomfortable keyboard to use.

The Tablecloth Keyboard: Designed by German designer Tonia Welter. Ideal for those who take every meal in front of the computer.

The Combimouse Keyboard: This Australian company decided to do the impossible: Combine the keyboard and the mouse!

The Apple Keyboard: Quite possibly the most beautiful keyboard ever crafted. Comes in wired and wireless varieties.

The Virtual Laser Keyboard: You’ll definitely turns a few heads with this one. This “keyboard” allows the user to type on almost any flat surface.

The Washable Waterproof Keyboard: Do you ever get the sudden urge to type underwater? If so, this keyboard is for you!

The Kinesis Freestyle Solo Keyboard: Basically, the fine people at Kinesis decided to split a keyboard in half and sell if for twice as much. Well Done!

The SafeType Keyboard: This one is supposedly more comfortable to use than a regular keyboard. However, it’ll probably take a long time getting used to.

Maltron’s Ergonomic Keyboard: This keyboard fits the shape of the hands to reduce tension. This may take some getting used to.

The Maltron Executive Keyboard: Are you rediculously rich and want a heavy stainless steel keyboard? Well then this is the keyboard for you!

Logitech diNovo Edge: This one’s up there with the Apple Keyboard. Sleek, Stylish, and with a touch of practicality..

Fingerworks Keyboard: Strange Keyboard that originally retailed at $340. The keys are in fact a flat surface, making them awkward to type on.

The Stealth Computer Keyboard: Made of strong component, this keyboard will function in even the most hazardous areas, or so they say.

Happy Hacking Keyboard: This one is also a little hard to explain. It is supposedly coated using a special brush made from the hair of virgins and sprinkled with gold dust. And it’ll cost you 525,000 yen.

ElekTex Fabric Keyboard: Similar to the Roll-Up Keyboard above, but a little more flexible and made of a different material. Good for people always on the go.

The EZ Reach Keyboard: Another variation of the keyboard. Why do people feel they must repeatedly reinvent the wheel?

Update: A lot of our readers suggested the following keyboards and we responded. Enjoy.
Das Keyboard: This keyboard features highly responsive tactile feedback, and the keys are completely blank.

The AlphaGrip: A controller style hand held USB ‘keyboard’ and trackball. Supposedly the “worlds most comfortable computing experience”

source: [ speedingcomputer ]

How to Watch High Quality Videos On Youtube

2008-03-12T19:54:00.000-07:00

YouTube is notorious for its low-quality videos, even then it is the world’s most popular video streaming and video sharing website. Probably the reason is that First the uploaded videos are converted to flash and then their FLV files are streamed through players which produces the resulting low quality video effect.

Somewhere i did heard that Google might be secretly working on improving the quality of some YouTube videos.

The trick is to append &fmt=18 at the end of URL of the YouTube video you are watching. This will make YouTube download a high-quality video version of that particular video. The high quality video version will of course be bigger in size and therefore will take more time to load. It shall be encoded at 480×360 with an MP4 format. This trick will not work on all videos but for some it works like a charm.

Example:

Lets say you have a YouTube video with the following URL
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yGMKgLRU-3c

you turn it into this! and it works!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yGMKgLRU-3c&fmt=18

Kentucky legislator wants to ban anonymous internet posting

2008-03-10T23:30:00.000-07:00

State Representative Tim Couch wants to make anonymous internet posting illegal. The bill would require anyone "contributing" to a website to register their real name, address and email address with that site -- the website would be fined $500 for each anonymous post. Couch wants to cut down on "online bullying." Um... right. The ACLU will love that. Hey Timmy, in addition to trampling the first amendment, we should just repeal all the others-- except the 2nd, of course.

Can I get a collective WTF?

source [ valleywag ]

5 Most Useless Website Features On The Planet

2008-03-07T01:47:00.000-08:00

1. Twitter’s Public Timeline - Brilliant, I mean who doesn’t want to see what some chinese person you’ve never met did 5 seconds ago? For those not content with the inane ramblings of your ‘friends’, you can stay up-to-date with a steady stream of bullcrap from complete strangers who insist on telling you about their sick cat in a foreign language.

What’s more, your updates never stay on the page for longer than a nanosecond because the geniuses at twitter think the last 20 posts is an adequate representation of about 40 squillion users.

2. Digg’s “Friends Activity” menu - This stroke of genius comes from the delusional idea that (a) ‘Friends’ on Digg are anything more than isolated vote-sharing syndicates and (b) anyone gives a flying crap about what other people are doing.

That aside, the menu itself is made completely redundant by the lack of any information other than a list of stats, and if anyone actually uses this retarded waste of pixels I’ll eat my own kidney.

3. Google Video’s Front Page - For what is arguably the biggest internet company on the planet, they sure don’t know how to engage their users. Google video is actually a pretty decent video site, offering large uploads and better streaming than YouTube.

The problem lies in their frankly pathetic front page, which offers no real incentive or ability to explore videos, short of a brief list of stuff I saw 2 years ago.

4. YouTube’s “Streams” feature - You might not have heard of this one as it’s still in beta, but the fact that nobody seems to be using it is a testament to the idiocy of whoever created it. This feature basically allows you to enter a ‘room’ where you can talk to other YouTube users in real-time while watching videos.

First of all, the average YouTube user spends his time calling everyone else gay, spouting horrific grammar and arguing in leetspeak like any of it even matters. Talk to these people live? No thanks.

5. StumbleUpon’s Video feature - Great for a few weeks, the service lets you discover random clips that actually fit your interests.

It all goes a bit pear-shaped when you’re kindly informed that you need to pick more interests before you can continue using it, which means eventually you get stuck watching all the stuff you didn’t want, like cat videos and crappy anime.

Complaints to the usual address, I’d also like to apologise in advance for any offense caused to the following:- Youtube users, Digg users, Cat lovers, Anime freaks and the entire population of China.

[ source ]

How to Instantly Spend 80% Less Time on Facebook

2008-03-04T22:02:00.000-08:00

4 ways to hack a traffic light

2008-03-04T00:23:00.001-08:00

This videos will teach you how to make traffic lights change. Simply amazing! I am curious what is the police saying about this methods.

1. With a secret code

2. With a button in your car

3. With an universal remote control

4. With Science

The iPhone finally gets a torrent app

2008-03-03T01:22:00.001-08:00

After almost a year, the iPhone is finally getting its own native torrent app, for all you piraters on the go! The app is based of off the Transmission mac app, and is available here: http://wickedpsyched.net/iphone/torrent.

The folks over at gizmodo have already put this nifty piece of genius through some tests, which you can check out in the source link. If I had a iPhone, I'd probobly be having seizures of joy. (maybe)

source: [wickedpsyched] via [gizmodo]

Zero Punctuation: Uncharted: Drake's Fortune

2008-02-29T01:05:00.000-08:00

This week Zero Punctuation takes on the white supremacists in Uncharted! enjoy!

Todays Useless Gadget: The Keyboad Organizer

2008-02-29T00:51:00.000-08:00

Todays useless gadget of the day is the keyboard organizer. Why waste money on a organizer, when you can keep all your stuff right in your keyboard! But, if you can't afford a desk to put all this shit, I doubt you can afford a computer...

Posting :(

2008-02-27T18:21:00.000-08:00

I'll be very blunt in saying that, since our other author stopped writing posts, there has really been no incentive or reason for me to continue posting, other then personal satisfaction. But, I'll try my best to keep posting multiple times a week, whenever I see media news of saladian quality :)

Anyway, here is the new trailer for the get smart movie, staring Steve Carell: link

Gameboy...phone?

2008-02-25T00:55:00.000-08:00

This is the Fly Mobile MC100. It's a pretty standard phone from a phone company I've never heard of. Which should make it utterly unremarkable. It's got one thing going for it, though - comprehensive and most probably completely unlicensed support for the NES, SNES, Game Boy and Game Boy Colour. I say probably unlicensed because all Fly will say is that, to play the games on the handset, you can just download them "freely" from the internet and bung them on your phone. Which I'm sure Nintendo's lawyers are totally cool with. kotaku

For hardcore game fans, the concept of playing Nintendo games on a mobile is as alluring as it is unlikely, with the Japanese giant steadfastly refusing to license its titles or get involved in development for third party hardware. Indeed, it had seemed that we'd have to wait until the much-rumoured Nintendo phone arrived before we'd get to take Mario mobile. pocketgamer

Mario Kart Wii Trailer

2008-02-24T01:38:00.000-08:00

Sorry about the lack of daily posts, its been hectic here at the Saladian HQ
Anyway, here is the new mario kart wii video debut. Enjoy!

Jake and Amir Get MTV'd

2008-02-21T12:43:00.000-08:00

The deal isn't official yet, but College Humor and MTV plan to launch a TV show together. In the finished pilot, the Tumblr-popular Jake Hurwitz and Amir Blumenfeld host, rolling clips between skits like the one in the clip below. Sam Reich plays College Humor cofounder Ricky Van Veen. Word has it College Humor insisted on getting online distribution rights and that MTV readily complied. quote from valleywag

fucking. awesome.

Jake and Amir: Florida Part VI (puzzle)

2008-02-21T12:34:00.000-08:00

The latest video from Jake and Amir's trip florida! Enjoy! And if you like their work, check out their website at JakeandAmir.com. Hop to it!

Florida Pt. lV (Puzzle) from Jake Hurwitz on Vimeo.

Zero Punctuation's GDC Special

2008-02-21T09:35:00.000-08:00

There was no Zero Punctuation yesterday :O: Why? Because he was doing a special for the Game Developer Conference, were he reviews the faceless nameless badasses of video games, the guitar based games and the year 2007. Although it is still odd hearing censor beeps. Enjoy!

Zune Games?!

2008-02-20T13:16:00.001-08:00

Well this was as unexpected as a fat man eating a sandwich. But awesome non the less. XNA Game Studio games will be supported by the Zune sometime in 08. With the Zune's unique thumb pad, you can bet on more diverse and original controls! (hopefully) Lets see Apple top this! .....Seriously Apple....We want a Apple gameboy...please....

Source: [ kotaku ]

Turn Your Wii into a Full Media Center!

2008-02-20T09:41:00.000-08:00

This article is a must-read for any person who owns a Wii. After Nintendo took out the mp3 compatibility, I thought all hope was lost in terms of media support. But now you can easily stream all your media, tv and webcam broadcasts to your wii! All through the opera browser! How cool is that!!

Article: [ lifehacker ]

Jake and Amir: Florida Part III (Sun Tan)

2008-02-19T16:39:00.000-08:00

Another hilarious Jake and Amir skit. Enjoy!

Sun Tan from Jake Hurwitz on Vimeo.

1000 hits?!

2008-02-19T11:40:00.000-08:00

After almost one month, we have hit 1,000 hits!

congrats to us ;)

Thanks for the support!

The Future of Apple's Multi-Touch

2008-02-19T01:59:00.000-08:00

Some images on macrumors have recently surfaced revealing new multi-touch patents Apple is applying for. Hopefully this is a insight on whats to come in the nextgen Apple products, and maybe even updates on existing multi-touch devices.

The patent application depicts how one could customize these advanced gestures for Expose and Dashboard, by using four finger swipes up/down/left/right:

The patent application depicts how one could customize these advanced gestures for Expose and Dashboard, by using four finger swipes up/down/left/right:

And even editing operations such as Copy, Cut, Paste, Undo, Select All, Tab, and Cancel using gestures based on your Thumb and Two Fingers:

Source: [ macromors ]

Five GrandCentral Beta Invites

2008-02-18T02:53:00.001-08:00

So, Insidious Rodent, and I have been wanting to host a contest for the longest time now, but with poor traffic the idea of having a large scale contest this early in the life of this blog is next to impossible. So I have sitting here five invites to the beta web service Grand Central. I'm really not going to go into detail here about what Grand Central does, because odds are if you are reading this you already know. So if you want to get a invite to one of the most revolutionary FREE software this year, post below, a comment and your email!

This is not a contest in the least, and we are not profiting in any way of off this, but since I have 5 remaining invites I thought I should share it with the people subscribed to us (all five of you)

Thanks!
siva guren

12 Essential Free Programs

2008-02-17T23:14:00.001-08:00

Here is a useful breakdown of some of the best free software available on the internet, from media players, to IM clients!

uTorrent - uttorent.com

one of the best torrent clients out there. Despite the RIAA rumors it still sits at the top of the pack. With a smooth graphical interface, and a slew of great useful features utorrent defiantly rises to the top of torrent clients everywhere.

NoNameScript + mIRC - nnscript.com

mIRC is the most customizable IRC client released to date. Unfortunately for those who are not very technical, most of mIRC's content is buried beneath menu after menu of hard to understand options. Thats were NoNameScript (NNS) comes in. With a very apealing array of themes, and a improved menu for those who want to unlock all of mIRC's hidden features. Definatly the best combonation of programs to date. I highly recomend NNS to any IRC user.

Foobar2000 - foobar2000.org

After I had to uninstall iTunes from my computer due to software incompatibilitys, I thought all hope was lost for another worthwhile media player. Well, needless to say I was dead wrong. After a friend introduced me to foobar, I have never gone back to any other media program. The apealing factor for me, was how simple and easy foobar could be. Not only does it require very little resources, it has a HUGE array of 3rd party pluggins and themes. Enough to satasfy even the most critical eye. But, installing pluggins can be complicated to some people, so if you are not that computer literate, but still want a easy, and simple media player. Foobar is the program for you.

Firefox - firefox.com

I don't think I even need to explain the superiorities of Firefox to Internet Explorer. Firefox has so many advantages over IE (Internet Explorer) that I could write a whole article just on that!

Notepad - no url

The word processor of choice for most everyday bloggers. Simple and fast. No addons, no special "features". Just a blank pad, that you type on.

MS Paint - no url

Do you need a quick witty caption to that picture? Open up MS Paint! One of the most obvious candidates for this list was non other then Microsoft's own paint. Just like notepad, this is just a simple, quick and fast image editing program that comes standard with any windows computer.

VLC Media Player - videolan.org

The only video player you will ever need. This program plays practically every video file known to man. Perfect for those obscure DVD and anime rips!

Skype - skype.com

Skype has recently started to dominate the free VOIP (Voice Over Internet Protocol) lately, with its release on the PSP and other hand held devices. But even though it is extending its reach to a more practical market, they still have one of the best and easiest services out there. With a very pleasing look, and easy to navigate menus, I highly recomend this to anyone who's phonebill looks like thier phone number.

Gtalk google.com/talk

I was reluctant putting Gtalk, google's own IM service on this list. Just because I wasn't sure if the reason I was putting it on was because of personal preference, or because it was legitimatly worth looking in to. Now, I use this program daily. For sending files, chatting and calling, so I definatly give this program more of a workout then most. But because of this I have noticed some things that qualify it for this list, as well as make me question wether or not I should of listed this here. First, it links to your gmail account, so it notifies you in a very unobtrusive way when you have a new email. Second it saves all your logs online, automatically. No hassle, or settings to change. And third as with most of google's programs, gtalk is simple and beautiful to look at. Now, I only have one complaint, but it is enough to almost warrant not being listed. It freezes. And sometimes not only for a second. It sometimes freezes for up to five minutes. And now this might not seem like a big deal, but when your talking to someone casually, and then out of nowhere in the middle of the conversation the window just freezes. Unable to respond, unable to view messages. This gets very VERY tedious, as this doesn't just happen once in awhile.

Pidgin - pidgin.im/

Pidgin in a nutshell is a multi-platform IM service. Say that you have 20+ contacts on MSN, then another 10+ on YIM (Yahoo), and then another 50+ on AIM! How are you supposed to keep track of all these people?! Lets not even think about the amount of resources are wasted on keeping these three monsters up and running 24/7. Pidgin takes all that unnecessary clutter, and simplifies it. By allowing you to take all your accounts and run them in pidgin.

Soulseek - slsknet.org

One of the top replacements P2P clients, is Slsk (soulseek). Slsk is a P2P file sharing program / network, that share some similarities with popular clients such as Limewire, and differences. The similarities are obviously the ability to share files that other people want to find, and find files that other people are sharing. Now here is were the differences really stand out. Instead of just blindly searching, unaware of who is sharing what, you know see user names, and chatrooms, and file lists. You could even find something just by absent mindlessly wandering through some random persons files that was in the same room as you. Slsk is a very solid P2P client that thanks to low publicity has managed to keep a somewhat low profile, were its users can share in peace.

Audacity - audacity.sourceforge.net

If you happen to be a podcaster, or just want to edit music or sounds, but don't have $700 to spend on a professional program, Audacity is a great alternative. Ask any independent podcaster what software he / she uses, and 9/10 times they are going to respond with Audacity. My only gripe about this software, is that when you want to export your creations to .mp3, you have to download a additional encoding file (it is extremely easy to find).