Darren's space

A cool competition for those you love photography?! http://apps.facebook.com/bing_photo_contest/

Now in its seventh year, the Imagine Cup is a global student technology competition focused on finding solutions to real-world issues. Follow up the Imagine Cup 2009 worldwide final: check out the latest news, tweets and photos from Egypt using the new webslice!!

Get the Webslice - http://www.ieaddons.com/en/details/news/Imagine_Cup_2009/
Get Internet explorer 8 - http://www.microsoft.com/windows/internet-explorer/default.aspx

For the techies out there a little on how this works!?

The Web Slice aggregates several data sources: the IC RSS Feed, the IC Twitter tweets and the tagged images from Flickr.

SYNC (ICSlice.aspx):

• It use the Alternative Update Source to show updates in the Title. If the content changes, the title of the Web Slice will go bold and flash for a few seconds.
• The content of the Alternative Update Source is just the date of the last update of the data sources. This way we reduce the bandwidth needed for each sync.
• The back-end logic use a .NET Web Service, with an internal caching layer. This allow to avoid the common Twitter limit.
• The TTL is set to 15 minutes; this is how often IE will do a sync and check for updates.

VIEW (ICView.aspx):

• Client UI and logic written in Silverlight, using the Alternative Display Source.
• In case Silverlight is not installed on the machine, a graceful message will appear.

OTHER:

• The Bookmark link has been set to the Imagine Cup homepage.
• All the links in the Web Slice will open in a new tab (target = "_Blank”)
• The entire project is hosted on Windows Azure. Free, cool, easy. Just awesome.

Credit to http://blogs.msdn.com/giorgio/archive/2009/06/28/ie8-web-slice-and-silverlight-imagine-cup.aspx for how the Webslice works.

 <iframe frameborder="0" src="http://photosynth.net/embed.aspx?cid=c6c19730-0f98-4a29-b843-fae24f65abc8&delayLoad=true&slideShowPlaying=false" width="500" height="300"></iframe>

I know, I know….. its nothing new now but I’m the featured photosynth over at http://www.photosynth.net so check it out :)

I personally think the media circus around Michael Jacksons death is just over the top but I did find it interesting to see a post on the BBC News website about many of the sites people rely on crashing under the weight of the breaking news.

Cross posted from - http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/8120844.stm

The internet suffered a number of slowdowns as people the world over rushed to verify accounts of Michael Jackson's death.

Search giant Google confirmed to the BBC that when the news first broke it feared it was under attack. Millions of people who Googled the star's name were greeted with an error page rather than a list of results.  It warned users "your query looks similar to automated requests from a computer virus or spyware application".

"It's true that between approximately 2.40PM Pacific and 3.15PM Pacific, some Google News users experienced difficulty accessing search results for queries related to Michael Jackson and saw the error page," said Google spokesman Gabriel Stricker.

It was around this time that the singer was officially pronounced dead.

Google's trends page showed that searches for Michael Jackson had reached such a volume that in its so called "hotness" gauge the topic was rated "volcanic". The BBC news website reported that traffic to the site at 0400 BST was 48% higher than average.

Fail

Google was not the only company overwhelmed by the public's clamour for information. The microblogging service Twitter crashed with the sheer volume of people using the service.

Searches for topics related to Michael Jackson peaked at 3PM Pacific. Queries about the star soon rocketed to the top of its updates and searches. But the amount of traffic meant it suffered one of its well-known outages. Before the company's servers crashed, TweetVolume noted that "Michael Jackson" appeared in more than 66,500 Twitter updates.

According to initial data from Trendrr, a Web service that tracks activity on social media sites, the number of Twitter posts Thursday afternoon containing "Michael Jackson" totaled more than 100,000 per hour. That put news of Jackson's death at least on par with the Iran protests, as Twitter posts about Iran topped 100,000 per hour on June 16 and eventually climbed to 220,000 per hour.

Early reports of Mr Jackson's death and the confusion surrounding it caused a rash of changes and corrections to be made on his Wikipedia page as editors tried to keep up with events and the number of people trying to update the page. TMZ, the popular celebrity gossip site that broke the story following a tip-off that a paramedic had visited the singers home also crashed. There was a domino effect as users then fled to other sites. Hollywood gossip writer Perez Hilton's site was among those to flame out.

Keynote Systems reported that its monitoring showed performance problems for the web sites of AOL, CBS, CNN, MSNBC and Yahoo. Beginning at 2.30PM Pacific "the average speed for downloading news sites doubled from less than four seconds to almost nine seconds," said Shawn White, Keynote's director of external operations. He told Data Center Knowledge that "during the same period, the average availability of sites on the index dropped from almost 100% to 86%".

I’m featured as a top photosynth again :)

Check my synth out at - http://photosynth.net/view.aspx?cid=f1b01f98-d84b-436c-98af-85aa50c94331

Back in college one thing I noticed a lot was people who used to lose memory sticks with loads of important details on them. For some reason people would keep both college work and personal details like CV’s and home address on them. Even worse, in the working world, I’ve met people who carry highly important business data around on memory sticks.

With all the recent news of unencrypted laptops with highly sensitive data been stolen from companies here in Ireland, I thought I would share with you what I do to protect my data using an inbuilt feature of Windows 7 – BitLocker to go

Step one
Insert your memory stick into a pc running Windows 7

Step two
Go to my computer, then Right-Click on your memory stick and select Turn on BitLocker 

Step 3
You then will be asked for your PIN code you will use to lock the drive. You will be given a choice to Print your recovery key or save it to another drive. I recommend doing both, possibly saving a copy to your email account if you want to be extra safe.

Step 4
Easiest step – Let Windows 7 encrypt your drive and your done.

Next time you insert you memory stick, you will see this screen:

Simply enter your passcode to get access to the drive. You can also manage the encryption on the drive.

And there you have it, BitLocker to go is a easy, fast and convenient way to secure your data on memory sticks.

Please note – This is a Windows 7 only feature and you need Windows 7 to read the memory Sticks

While I use hotmail for all my email needs, those of you who use Gmail will love this -

Gmail Notifier plus for Windows 7

What's new in 1.2:
- Google Apps support
- Application will no longer appear first in alt-tab
- Fixed mail counter in preview when there are more than 99 unread messages
- Additional bug fixing

What's new in 1.1:
- Updated unread counter icon to make it clearer
- Added multi-language support: English, French and Spanish (thanks Demgel!) at the moment.
- Added automatic login to gmail when opening a message or the inbox
If the jump list is not working for you, make sure you have this option checked:

As you have probably guessed, this is a Windows 7 only mail notifier that will sit in the taskbar:


It allows you to see a preview of all unread mails you have. Clicking on the button in the center will open the mail in Gmail:


Unread mails are also accessible from the jump list. Clicking on one of them will also open it in Gmail.


And that's about it! It is using Gmail secured RSS feed to retrieve the mails so it should be pretty safe. Credentials are saved using a machine's dependent encryption. Here are some more screens:

Cross posted from http://www.neowin.net/forum/index.php?showtopic=777838

Great little post, Reposted from http://on10.net/blogs/sarahintampa/More-Windows-7-Theme-Packs-and-Wallpaper/

Now that the Windows 7 public release is just around the corner, people are getting into the spirit of celebrating the new OS by releasing their own unofficial but very cool Windows 7 logoed wallpapers and theme packs. Using the Windows 7 box art for inspiration, Zawir Rahim over on DeviantArt created a wallpaper pack featuring the Windows 7 branding in a number of HD images (1920 x 1200) in all colors of the rainbow. Redmond Pie then took those individual wallpapers and packaged them into 15 different theme packs for easy one-click installs. (Download here – zip file). 

Next, over on Life Rocks 2.0, they've aggregated 35 of the best Windows 7-inspired wallpapers, also from DeviantArt. This collection includes creations from several different designers and many unique styles. To download those wallpapers, there isn't a single zip file - you'll have to click on the images and then grab them from the DeviantArt site itself.

While you’re at it, you can also head over to The Windows Club forum and grab some unofficial Bing wallpapers, too, created by the community members. 

Post credited to http://on10.net/blogs/sarahintampa/More-Windows-7-Theme-Packs-and-Wallpaper/

STEP 1 – Get Photosynth

Firstly we need to get Photosynth so head on over to http://photosynth.net/create.aspx to grab the program. You need a Windows Live ID to upload and these can be got at http://hotmail.com.

STEP 2 – Photos!

Now its time to start taking pictures!

Here are some of the quick tips from the photosynth guide to help you along:

• Start small. Pick a simple subject first, such as a piece of furniture or a single painting. You should be able to make a great 10-photo synth in just a few minutes.
  
• Remember the “Rule of 3”. Each part of the scene you‘re shooting should appear in at least three separate photos taken from different locations. This rule means that you are going to shoot a lot more photos for a synth than you would for any other purpose.
  
• Panorama first, then move around. Start by taking a panorama of your scene, then move around and take more photos from different angles and positions. If you just do a panorama you won‘t end up with a good 3-D experience.
  
• Have lots of overlap when shooting panoramas. Try for at least 50% overlap between photos.
  
• Limit the angles between photos. When moving around objects, try to get one photo every 25 degrees or so. That will make the synth work better. Larger angle differences on a subject won‘t match up.
  
• Shoot scenes with lots of detail and texture. The visual texture in the photos is what ties them together. A blank wall won‘t synth. One with lots of art or posters will work well.
  
• Don’t crop images. It confuses Photosynth.
  
• Shoot wide shots. Wide angle shots (photos taken from farther away, or with your camera‘s lens zoomed all the way out) reconstruct more reliably than closer shots. It‘s good to have close-ups, too, but you‘ll want to have good coverage of your subject with lots of nice overlapping wide shots.
  
• Orientation. Make sure your photos are all right-side-up before you start synthing.
  
• Shoot for Highlights. Since you can call out your ‘best‘ shots when you‘re done synthing, think about specific areas of interest you‘d want to highlight.

Download Photosynth guide - The Photosynth Photography Guide (1.2Mbyte pdf) ~ The Photosynth Photography Guide (1.3Mbyte xps)

STEP 3 – Create Snyth

Now its time for photosynth to do its magic. Transfer all your pictures to your computer and fire up the photosynth program. You will then come to the
‘Create a synth‘ screen.

Click on ‘add photos’ and browse to the ones you wish to use. Select your thumbnail and tags, give it a name and brief description. You can also select the copyright the synth. By default its a creative commons license. Read more here about CC licensing.

You also have the option to make the synth ‘unlisted’, which is a private one. This comes with limits though such as no more than 500 views/month.

Once you’ve made your choices, hit Synth to begin and you will see the following window.

The upload will go through 6 steps -

1. Generating Image Tiles
2. Extracting Image features
3. Matching Images
4. Reconstructing scene
5. Generating Synth files
6. Uploading synth files

Once the program has finished you will be able to view the Synth online by clicking view synth on the program

STEP 4 – Highlights & Geo Tags

Now its time to make it easy for people viewing our Synth to find all the cool thing we want them to look at. This is done by adding ‘Highlights'

To add a highlight, simply select a picture and click ‘Add Highlight’. You can then give the highlight a ‘Title and Caption’

Fill in the details of all the area’s you wish to highlight, then click save and exit. Viewers of your Synth will then be able to jump to different parts of the synth with just one click. This is a great way to guide users through your synth.

Next thing is to Geo Tag your synth so that you can people can see where it was taken.

Click on the map icon, then scroll to where you took the pictures to drop a marker.

STEP 5 – Enjoy!

And your done! You have created your photosynth and now link all your family and friends to amaze them with your amazing 3D experience.

Also don’t forget to check out the ‘point cloud’ by pressing P

I hope my post shows clearly how easy it is to create photosynths and share them to the world!
If you want to browse my Photosynths, check out http://photosynth.net/userprofilepage.aspx?user=The.Rev

Love viewing Synths? Well check out this awesome application iSnyth (iTunes URL: http://www.itunes.com/app/isynth). You can now view photosynths with your iPhone or iPod Touch. It was built by Greg Pascale, who was an intern with the Photosynth team.

Info from Greg’s website:

Quick Menu Buttons

Tip: While using iSynth, for a quick description of what a button does, simply hold it down for a moment and a description will appear (unless you've turned off the "Description Labels" option in the settings menu). If you hold any button for longer than a moment, it will not press when you release it.

Show/hide the full menu

Quit the current synth and go back to the selection screen

Jump to the next 3D group of connected photos

Enter slideshow mode

Enter orbit mode

Exit orbit mode

Toggle point cloud-only view (show/hide photos)

Go to the settings menu

Rotate the screen

Show/hide cameras (in arc ball mode)

Go to the about/help screen

Quick Controls

Normal Mode:

Orbit Mode:

Slideshow Mode:

Not much needs to be said about slideshow mode; the controls are fairly self explanatory. To leave slideshow mode and go back to normal mode, press the stop button