Digital Inspiration

Blogging Phones : Sony Ericsson new "Blog This" feature will allow people to blog directly from their handset. All future Sony Ericsson mobile phones will come preloaded with Google Blogger software . Users of the new K800 and K790 phones that don't already have a blog can set one up on Blogger.com over the blogging mobile phone. They'll be able to take photos with the camera and then easily add them to their blogs Google is being made the standard search engine on all Sony Ericsson phones with Internet access. The Google search bar will appear on every page users view so they can search without launching a new page. Motorola and Vodafone also plan to offer users access to Google Search. Read Sony Press Release

Microsoft Windows Live ID will be the new authentication services for Windows Live replacing Microsoft Passport. Windows Live ID, an unified login service similar to Google Accounts, will be integrated with Windows Live family of Web services by 2007. Gates provided the first clues to the existence of Windows Live ID at the RSA Conference , when he said InfoCard was intended to replace Passport and would make password-based authentication obsolete. Nobody will miss Microsoft Passport. Source: BetaNews.com

Cory Doctorow is a Sci-Fi writer, copyright activist, and co-editor of what Technorati has suggested is the Most Linked-to Blog in the World, Boing Boing. In a recent interview , Cory talks about his blogs, his writing and his opinions on the world of content and DRM. With films, that might be to sign up for cable and get an analogue to digital converter. You can plug in and get your movies that way, without the crippleware, or get them off P2P - that's one way to get out of the DRM lockbox. I think that joining FreeCulture, joining EFF is a really important step, because understanding that there's a political dimension to this is also crucial. Finally, use Creative Commons licenses in your work.

Apple CEO Steve Jobs, a master of surprise, is set to announce new products today. Though Apple product announcement details remain shrouded in secrecy, the rumors center around movies. CNN Money writes on how Apple might go Hollywood today. A widescreen iBook . It's been a while since Apple refreshed its consumer laptop line, so new iBooks are overdue -- especially if they have Intel inside. iTunes Movie Store - Since Apple already sells music videos and primetime TV shows, selling movies just means giving users bigger files. An Intel Mac mini . Now that shortages of Intel chips have eased, Apple could be set to roll out an Intel-based Mac mini. Since the Mac mini doesn't come with its own screen, it could just as easily plug into a widescreen TV. A true video iPod - Apple recently patented a touchscreen interface for a handheld device, which would let it make a video iPod whose screen covers the entire front side of the device, and displays a virtual click-wheel to contro

Hollow book safes provide the perfect hiding and storage place for your small valuables. They also make a great surprise gift. This step-by-step tutorial illustrates how to convert a real book into a box by hollowing out the actual pages. Related Reading: If you don't want to destroy that book, arrange a book swap over the internet - Online Book Swap Websites for Bibliophiles

Photoshop CS2 Ecosystem Partner Support Adobe today announced new services for Adobe Photoshop CS2 at PMA 2006, the US photography trade show. Lexar has developed a smart image acquisition plug-in module for Adobe Bridge that will let users directly download images from multiple cards at once. HP has developed a new HP Photosmart Pro B9180 Professional Photo Printer which automatically synchronises Adobe Photoshop CS2 and the printer driver for a single user interface and colour management. Adobe is collaborating with Logitech to create innovative navigational tools , perhaps special keyboards for Photoshop users. Adobe is also working with MorePhotos.com that provides a personal Web page where customers can view and order pictures either directly from the photographer or through Eastman Kodak's online printing services. Another partnership, with Iron Mountain will provide professional shutterbugs with automatic online archiving and data protection . Read Adobe Press Release S

Build your own iPod DVD converter . The Wired has a simple three step guide for putting those DVD movies on a Video iPod and playing in iTunes. 1. Decrypt the DVD DVDFab Decrypter removes a DVD's copy protection. 2. Combine the Video files Ripping a DVD produces a bunch of cryptically named .VOB files. VOBMerge 2.5 will string them together. To find the movie, look for a series of very large files named something like VTS_07_1.VOB, VTS_07_2.VOB, and so on. 3. Convert the Movie into MPEG-4 format 3GP_Converter turns your DVD movie into an iPod-compatible MPEG-4 file. Select "Model: MP4, for iPod" as the conversion mode (there is also an option for the PSP). The resulting file is ready for iTunes. Source: Wired

Keyloggers wait for certain Web sites to be visited - a banking site, for instance, or a credit card account online - or for certain keywords to be entered - "SSN," for example - and then spring to life. The key stroke monitoring software are often hidden inside ordinary software downloads, e-mail attachments or files shared over peer-to-peer networks. They can even be embedded in Web pages. Police in Brazil arrested people (including minors) for seeding other computers with keyloggers that recorded their typing whenever they visited their banks online and sent the stolen user names and passwords back to members of the gang. A similar ring in Russia used keylogging software planted in e-mail messages and hidden in Web sites to draw over $1.1 million from personal bank accounts in France. Get Google Anti-Phishing Firefox Extension Read full story @ NYTimes

Bill Clinton needs interns who are proficient in MS Office (Word, Excel and PowerPoint); have good communications skills, written and oral ... Interns are also required for website development and monitoring website. Sex, Whitehouse and Bill Clinton One of things the Clinton internship program offers to give you is: Hands-on experience . Will Ms. Monica Lewinsky apply ? Source: NYPost via ReveNews

Greg has a list of Microsoft Office 2007 blogs that cover the individual Office components. They do have a Microsoft Frontpage blog that also covers Microsoft Office SharePoint Designer 2007 and Expression Web Designer. Microsoft Office Project 2007  •  What's New in Project 2007 (Dieter Zirkler)   Microsoft Office Publisher 2007  •  Publisher 2007, XPS and more (Jeff Bell)  •  What's New in Publisher 2007 (Rob Dolin) Microsoft Office Visio 2007  •  Visio 2007 (Eric Rockey) Microsoft Office Word 2007  •  What's New in Word 2007 (Joe Friend) Microsoft Office Access 2007  •  What's New in Access 2007 (Eric Rucker) Microsoft Office Excel 2007  •  What's New in Excel 2007 (David Gainer) Microsoft Office FrontPage 2007  •  What's New in FrontPage 2007 (Rob Mauceri) Microsoft Office OneNote 2007  •  A User-oriented View of OneNote 2007 (Chris Pratley)  •  OneNote General (Owen Braun) Microsoft Office Outlook 2007  •  Outlook General (Will Kennedy, GM)  • 

How to transform the PC into a phone conversation tape recorder. You can record telephone conversations on your computer using a simple cable connecting the modem to the sound card. Modems have an output channel called TAD which can be used to connect the modem to the sound card, through a cable similar to the one used in the connection of CD-ROM drive to the sound card . If you are on a broadband connection (no modem), you need to assemble the circuit (see graphic) illustrated by Gabriel Torres . Connect the circuit to the phone line on one side and to the Mic In channel of the sound card on the other. To record conversations, you will need a recording program, like Sound Forge.

A notebook computer filled with valuable data is the biggest risk these days. Earlier, Ernst and Young lost a laptop containing SSN of Scott McNealy, CEO Sun Micrososystems. Today, E&Y employess left their Dell laptops in a conference room - thieved walked off with the laptops containing client's confidential information . In another case, a computer containing insurance claims of nearly 4,000 patients treated at the University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center was stolen. Identity thieves frequently use names and Social Security numbers to fraudulently apply for credit, work and even commit crimes using other people's names. Databases containing such personal information are routinely sold and traded among criminals on the Internet. Related: CompuTrace Lojack for laptops enhances the likelihood of recovery of stolen notebooks. Source: Miami | TheReg | SF Gate | Chron

It requires no rocket science to guess your email address from your GooglePages website . And email spammers are even smarter. The query site:googlepages.com on Google or Yahoo will retrieve the entire list of websites hosted on GooglePages that have been indexed by Google . (see graphic) When your website on Google Pages goes live, it publishes to username.googlepages.com . And your email address works out to username@gmail.com Email spammers may already be using this trick to to harvest GMail addresses from Google Pages. If you want to remain safe , either switch to Yahoo Geocities or prohibit search engines robots from indexing your website using Meta tags or simply use a separate new GMail account (just send a GMail invite to yourself)

Photocasting is a new way of sharing pictures that also offer sound commentaries. If you are without Apple iLife iPhoto, try these simple photocasting guides that work on both PC and a Mac . Photocasting with Flickr Create Photocasts with BubbleShare All you need is an email account, photographs that you want to share and a good microphone for recording voice-overs.

Blinkx is developing Pico, a smaller version of Blinkx desktop search tool that is just 1 MB and consumes little PC system resources. Blinkx founder Suranga Chandratillake says the Pico approach "reverses the process of search" and "simplifies it by bringing content to you". Pico works by identifying the main topic and then shows similar items, categorised by media type and accessible via icons at the top of the current web page [ Smart Folders ]. Pico's context-sensitive technology will automatically retrieve news stories, Wikipedia entries , TV and video , blogs and podcasts related to the item on the web you’re currently viewing. Blinkx Pico is not related to PicoSearch that offers site search box for websites. Source: PC Advisor

CNet could be a prime takeover candidate. CNet has hired Zander Lurie who advised Internet companies on mergers and acquisitions at JPMorgan . Lurie will be a senior vice president for strategy and development at CNet. Matthew Wurtzel speculates that either CNET is up for sale or preparing for an acquisition spree of its own. The New York Post earlier reported that CNet had held informal talks with Viacom, Yahoo and Time Warner about a possible sale. Source: MarketWatch | Tech-Conf

Associate professor Chen Tangfa found a blog diary full of insults directed towards him on the website www.Blogcn.com, as he randomly searched the Web last June. Chen called Blogcn's customer service department and asked them to remove K007's blog diary. But staff rejected his request, saying they had no right to delete their users' blogs. According to Chen, by taking Blogcn to court, he hopes to bring order and discipline to cyberspace. Read: Lawsuit filed against blog website

Apple plans a special invitation-only event to introduce new products on February 28. The invitation e-mail features a large rendering of an iCal-style icon with the date set to February 28, 2006. Apple CEO Steve Jobs is famed for his penchant of delivering a little unexpected magic at such events. Let's see how he surprises us this time at the Apple Town Hall - Apple TrueVideo iPod , Intel-based Macs or iTunes Movie download service ? Stay Tuned.

Currently, when you search for stock prices on Google, the live stock quotes are supplied by ECN while the detailed results are from Yahoo Finance, MSN Money Central and Fool.com. Google may be preparing to replace this workaround soon with Google Finance or GFinance . Loren of SEJ is speculating that Google Finance may be nearing launch. First, he noticed a few referrals from Google.com/finance. Second, the referrals come from computers tracked back to Google.com. http://google.com/finance?q=goog&btng=search+finance finance.google.com returns "Server not found" error while google.com/finance returns a 404 error. Loren also feels that the Google Finance portal is listing either blog or news stories related to stock ticker symbols, as the referrals were pointing to his most recent stories on Google Japan and Google Page Creator. A previous Google Finance launch rumour suggested that Google wants to replicate Yahoo Finance and is in talks with data vendor Revere Data

A Mac fan has released a patch for running Mac OS X, version 10.4.5, on any non-Apple computer running an AMD or Intel x86 processor. Apple issued legal notices to several Mac websites for posting links to this patch which were immediately removed . Those who install Mac OS X on non-Apple hardware are unable to download updates directly from Apple website , so these patches are the only way to take advantage of the fixes made in each release. Update: Apple lawers may be after OS X Hacker as the Web site of hacker called "Maxxuss" is unavailable. Maxxuss says some issues still remain, such as problems with DVD playback and iTunes on systems with AMD CPUs. Download Mac OS X for x86 PC Source: Maxxuss Homepage | BetaNews | Desktop Pipeline

Click Fraud seems to be the biggest threat to Google stock price . Now, Wired magazine notes that Google Wallet may be a possible answer to Click Fraud. Google Wallet is an online payment system in works like PayPal, which allows consumers to pay for purchases by funding electronic-payment accounts from their credit cards or checking accounts. Google could process the payment to the advertiser without having to know anything about its costs, profit margins, or other sensitive data. Like Gross's cost-per-action, Google Wallet would be immune to click fraud - zombie machines could click away, and the system would simply ignore them. ValleyMag further adds that if Google rolls the Wallet out in time, they could save their revenue stream, and Larry won't have to go crazy over his falling net worth.

A High School student was arrested after he posted pictures of himself on MySpace.com holding handguns. The pictures were brought to the attention of the school by a parent and the principal contacted the sheriff's department. One photo showed him lying on a floor surrounded by nine rifles with the caption, "Angel o' death on wings o' lead." In another photo, the teenager was wearing a trench coat and holding a gun. In the "about me" section, he wrote of his dislike of people, deserving to die and disdain for authority. In another picture the teen was holding a handgun with a caption that read "Rally round the family with a pocket full of shells." Read: Teen Arrested For Pictures On MySpace.com

Qarbon has silently dropped the Mac version of Viewletbuilder software . Related: Screencasting on a Mac Qarbon released ViewletBuilder for the Mac in May 2005 but this month, Qarbon removed the Mac edition from both the Qarbon trial dowload page and Online Store. The Viewletbuilder Features page still talks of Viewletbuilder support for Windows, Mac, and Linux. Download Mac Viewletbuilder 4 datasheet [pdf] Update: We have received no official comment on Mac Viewletbuilder from Qarbon.

After taking down the eDonkey2000 indexing server Razorback2 , MPAA has filed seven new lawsuits against Newsgroup indexing sites believed to be hubs for illegal fileswapping activity. The following is a list of the sites being sued by the MPAA and its member companies. BitTorrent: ISOHunt, TorrentSpy, NiteShadow.com, BTHub.com and TorrentBox.com eDonkey2000: Ed2k-It.com Newsgroups: NZB-Zone.com, BinNews.com and DVDRs.net. Isohunt.com, BTHub.com and TorrentBox.com all owned by one individual. Read MPAA press release [pdf]

NuLOOQ is an innovative hardware-software solution for navigating images, adjusting option values, and accessing menus in Adobe Illustrator CS2, Adobe InDesign CS2, and Adobe Photoshop CS2 . NuLOOQ is designed exclusively for the Mac, and includes the scroll wheel-like NuLOOQ navigator and NuLOOQ tooldial, a customizable application that offers quick access to design tools. The NuLOOQ Navigator is a hardware solution for the left hand to complement a mouse in the right hand , giving users programmable buttons for one-click access to favorite tools, smooth zooming with a mechanical scroll wheel, and touch-sensitive controls. Dragging images and documents on the screen is also convenient, courtesy of its navring. It also has integrated triggerpoint buttons that launch tools that are commonly utilized by the user. Logitech has jointly developed NuLOOQ with Adobe for creative professionals Sources: Logitech Nuloq | PCWorld | MobileMag

Hyperwords is a Firefox and Flock add-on that turns every word into a hyperlink. When you double-click any word, Hyperwords pops up a menu of related items: searches, definitions, maps, shopping and more. (see screenshot) If you want to select a two-word phrase, like a name, double-click between them to search for that string. When the menu pops up, click the menu item that interests you to get more information. Hyperwords can search sites like Dictionary.com, Flickr, Slashdot, Yahoo Maps, and more. Additional functions include blog posting (Blogger, WordPress), tagging (del.ico.us, Furl), blog searching with Technorati and translation. The language translation capability comes from freetranslation.com; search options include Google, Yahoo, Alexa and Clusty; the Reference links takes you to Wikipedia, Dictionary.com, IMBd (Internet Movie Database), and so on. A Hyperwords extension for Internet Explorer is also planned soon. Download Hyperwords Firefox Extension Source: HyperWords |

A UK Trading Standards officer contacted the Mozilla Foundation to report catching a business selling copies of Firefox . The organization confiscated the CDs with the intent to prosecute said business. When informed that such distribution was authorized, the officer first expressed disbelief that Free Software could be sold then said 'If Mozilla permit the sale of copied versions of its software, it makes it virtually impossible for us to enforce UK anti-piracy legislation'. It demonstrates how the free software model disrupts the old proprietary way of doing things, where copying was theft and you were guilty until proven innocent. Read story

Apple today announced that 1 billion songs have been downloaded from the Apple iTunes Music Store. The person who downloaded the billionth song from the iTunes Music Store won a new 20-inch iMac, 10 60GB iPods, and a $10,000 iTunes Music Card to jumpstart their digital music collection. iTunes hit the 500 million download mark last July, and needed only seven additional months to double those sales.

Watch this amazing collection of Google Logos on Dick Cheney, Lorena Bobbit, Holocaust, etc created by Fark members here . Dick Cheney shoots a man Google Stock Price Boston Tea Party Hiroshima Bombing Google Logo Subpoena Day National Tax Evasion Day Wife Beating Logo Google Logo on Tax Day - April 15 Lorena Bobbit Hollywood Pregnancy Holocaust Rememberance Day Breast Cancer Awareness Week Google Adobe Photoshop Logo

Secondhand retailers in Japan and auctions sites like eBay are likely to face tough times in Japan because of " denki youhin anzen hou " (denki means electrical, and anzen means safety). Effective April 1, electrical appliances in Japan manufactured before fiscal 2002 will have to be certified for safety to be put on sale. About 450 types of product will become illegal to sell without a PSE mark, meaning untold numbers of used electrical appliances, such as dryers and kotatsu heaters, will have to find a new home. Although it may be extended to cover all electrical products someday (like LVD in Europe), only the items listed in the ministerial ordinance are covered by the Law at this time. Read: Electrical Appliance and Material Safety Law

Google has made it easy for your grandpa to create a website. The no-frills AJAX based online HTML editor codenamed "Google Trogdor" was today released as Google Page Creator . Google Page Creator will eventually be integrated with other content uploading Google services like Blogger, Google Base and Picasa. While Google has said that Page Creator will not offer e-commerce capabilities, the product does compete directly with Microsoft FrontPage WYSIWYG software, currently being phased-out by Microsoft and will be gone by the time Office 2007 arrives . Microsoft Office Live already contains a web page hosting service. Website Templates Google is also providing very professional looking CSS templates for your webpages. You can reuse these templates for your blogs or websites. Layout styles Google Page creator has four layout styles like PPT presentations. See graphic. Google Web Hosting - sort of The web pages and any files you upload (100 MB limit) are hosted on Google se

An anti-sleeping pill Modafinil (sold as Provigil, Alertec, and Vigicer) keeps you awake without the jitters, euphoria and eventual crash that come after caffeine or amphetamines. It is also a memory-improving and mood-brightening psychostimulant. These lifestyle pills could even allow people not to sleep for several days in a row. New Scientist writes about a Seattle software developer who often doesn't have time for a full night's sleep. So he swallows something to make sure he doesn't need one. "If I take a dose just before I go to bed, I can wake up after 4 or 5 hours and feel refreshed," he says. "The alarm goes off and I'm like, let's go!" Related Reading: Sleep Debt: Sleeping Lives Affect Waking Lives Get ready for 24-hour living | Sleep A Thing Of The Past