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Life's Top 10 Greatest Inventions

NewScientist.com has an interesting article about life's top 10 greatest inventions.  Death as an evolutionary strategy made number seven.  Now that's something that I haven't thought about...

Two Great Sites for Web Designers

Two big challenges I face when designing a new web site are the color scheme and the accompanying images.  For color schemes, I often save a link to sites that I can rip off inspire me, but who wants their site to look exactly like another?  For images, stock photo sites like Corbis, Alamy, and Mira have stunning collections, but the licensing can be very expensive.

The interface needs work, but Colr.org is a site that does a couple of things to help you with color schemes.  It scopes color schemes from photos, and it allows visitors to add "tags" or labels to web colors.  With today's displays, unless you're designing for Google or Amazon, you can be bold and throw "web safe" colors out the window!

Colr.org pointed to me to another great site - Freefoto.com.  It's the largest collection of free photographs for private non-commercial use on the Internet, and prices start at $30 for commercial use.  Finally there's a place you can grab pics while designing, knowing that the ones you keep won’t break the bank.  Hats off to the photographer, Ian Britton (who by the way supplied the thumbnail pic for this post).

Google Hack - Find File Folders

You'll notice that when you link to the Lily videos, it's simply a directory (folder) of files.  There is no sophisticated front-end web page.

All kinds of people and departments keep such simple web folders for convenience (not necessarily for public consumption) - and guess what - Google will help you find them!

The following is an example query you can use in Google.  Simply put the type of file you're looking for (either the extension or filename) after this search and you will get back a list of directories accessible over the web:

intitle:index.of name "last modified" 

For example, to find a list of directories containing .jpg images of San Francisco:

intitle:index.of name "last modified"  San Francisco jpg

You'll get thousands of photos dumped from people's digital cameras and forgotton.  These can be far more interesting than Google's standard image search!

(Note that savvy webmasters can spoof such directories.  They build a web page that looks like a file-listing, but with links that suck you into their site, so don't be too surprised when you see a page that looks like a directory listing but links to a commercial site instead of that compromising celebrity photo you’re searching for!)

The Way Back Machine

No, this isn't a post about John Wasdin...  One of the biggest time-wasters for me on the net is the "Way Back Machine" at http://www.archive.org.  They've been archiving web-sites since 1996.  Some sites you can visit:

First commercial web-page I authored from November 1996
First version of robmello.com from August 1999
What my Nomar.net fan site looked like
Boston.com when it was only a year old in 1996
If you miss your old bank...
See What's New in Microsoft Publisher 97!!

I find it fascinating.  I just wish I could find my old CompuServe home-site.  Now THAT was a neat site!  It basically had few poorly-scanned photos of Marylyn Monroe and some New Bedford links.

Best Picture Software (Yes, it's from Google)

Google has done it again.   This free software is amazing for organizing and tweaking digital pictures.  While it's got a ton of features, my favorites are the "I'm feeling lucky" button which automatically color corrects your photos - usually with pleasing results.  The other that I absolutely love is the EXPORT function - which allows you to batch copy and resize (for e-mailing or posting) in one command.

Click here to check it out.   (Did I mention it's free?)

Google's Most Valuable Feature

Google has more than a few useful features and capabilities, but by far the most valuable is the ability to view a cached version of the page you’re looking for.

A cached page is a copy that Google makes on its own servers.  This copy is accessible even if the link changes or disappears from the original web site. 

How many times have you seen in the list of search results exactly what you’re looking for only to get a dead link once you click through?  When this happens, click on the little ‘cached’ button after the page summary.  This will link you to Google’s copy, and often to the information you’re looking for.

View unsecured web cams with Google

Use any of these search strings below with Google, and you will find dozens (thousands?) of unsecured webcam feeds (most seem to be security cams).

inurl:"MultiCameraFrame?Mode="
inurl:"ViewerFrame?Mode="
inurl:"view/index.shtml"

Ripping MP3's

If you have audio CD's (which you do have) and an internet-connected PC (um - you definitely have one of these), then it is time to start 'ripping' your CD collection to your hard drive.  Yes, I'm talking to you avó! (grandma!)

No longer a pass-time limited to teens, 'ripping' is the process of taking the huge, inefficient digital files off of music CD's and making a small (compressed to about 1/6th the size) copy of the file playable on your computer.  "Windows Media Player" will load hundreds or thousands of songs and play them in sequence or randomly.  The Apple iPod, and dozens of devices like it are MP3 players.  You can have thousands of songs with your in a rechargeable device which at the moment is 1/4 the size of a CD player.  You can put over 100 songs on one CD which you can play on MP3 CD players which are becoming more common these days.

If you're still not convinced, here are a few reasons why you want to start ripping music: