Month: March 2008

Tuaw.com offer up a great tip on how to use the ‘whois’ query in your Mac Terminal. What is it anyways? Using ‘whois’ you get all sorts of information on an IP address , a domain name or a website. It’s a great way to learn who owns what or who is behind the website your visit. It can be useful to check if you’re not visiting a dodgy site or just to learn more about a site out of curiosity.

Generally you can use ‘whois’ simply from any search engine from your browser. There is another slightly more techie way to do it, from the lesser used Mac Terminal. Just open it up from your Utilities in Applications. In the Terminal type whois followed by a space and then the url your searching for. Then all you have to do is press Enter and all the information you’re searching for will show up.

I’m not Giorgio Armani – in fact I’ve never been a dedicated follower of fashion although I have occasionally shopped at Topman and River Island. I guess PC users in general are not known for their fashion sense which is presumably why developers give the theme a wide berth although there are some useful design apps and games that can indulge the clothes horse in you.

In fact, Virtual Fashion is an immensely popular program proving what a powerful tool the PC can be for serious designers. This 2D design environment is mainly aimed at those learning their trade but amateurs can easily use it to see how they’d look in a silk tiara and high heels (which I didn’t by the way). And if you need a website to promote and sell all those wonderful designs you’ve come up with, try Trendy Flash Site Builder which is ideal for creating impressive fashion based websites. Even if your fashion taste isn’t great, this design tool will ensure that at least your website is.

However, it’s games that most developers have chosen to focus on in the fashion arena. Fashion Fable sees you play the role of a fashion designer as you move through 60 levels in an attempt to launch your very own fashion chain. Posh Shop meanwhile has nothing to do with Victoria Beckham but requires you to respond to the demands and whims of high class customers who know their Armani from their Adidas. Finally, there is the platform style Dress Shop Hop which attempts to combine the best of both games as you try to satisfy customers on the spot by using weird and wonderful machines to design clothes. Continue reading “Fun and games for fashion victims”

Before the internet came along, cookies were what we Brits knew as American biscuits and the weakness of that distinguished member of Sesame Street, the Cookie Monster. Then Netscape began, invented one of the world’s first web browsers and eventually, invented the concept of HTTP cookies that are now an essential part of virtually all browsers. From the very start, cookies were controversial because they raised some of the first serious invasion of privacy issues for internet users. Should any website be able to leave behind data on your PC that a website can recognise at a later date, even if it facilitates your user experience? Of course, most people don’t mind this as long as there is nothing malicious involved.

It’s when the cookies that are left behind are of a more devious or harmful nature that the problems begin. There are still a lot of misconceptions about what cookies are and are not. This useful FAQ delves into the issue in a lot more detail but if you’re the kind of person who doesn’t want to risk any breach of your privacy, no matter what the cookies are for, then you may need to use one of these dedicated cookie cleaners:

Powerful Cookies – Deletes and destroy all cookies including typed URL’s

Cookie Viewer – Allows you to pick and choose which cookies to delete

Expired Cookie Cleaner – Gets rid of those long-term cookies that others leave behind

Delete Cookies – Designed especially to get rid of those cookies that target Internet Explorer

Cookie Monster – Manage cookies stored across multiple browsers on your system

After hearing the news that Babelgum will invest €10m in new productions, mostly shorts and documentaries, we wanted to find out more about where online television is heading, and what we can expect from it. We spoke to Valerio Zingarelli, Babelgum CEO, to ask him about what’s going on in the market. He let us know the company’s views on their current content strategy, the future of web TV and the low-down on their revenue-share system, as well as responding to some criticism in the blogosphere.

It is in the news that Babelgum will invest €10m into independent film production. Could you tell us where your company is heading and why it is independent film worth investing in?

Babelgum remains primarily a web distribution platform for non exclusive “long-tail” content; a platform that allows professionals to showcase and monetize safely and instantly their content, bypassing today’s distribution bottlenecks. The self produced content will always represent a small minority of all our content on offer (1%). The reasons why we are dedicating a budget to develop also our own productions are:
1) As Spike Lee put it, Babelgum’s mission is to nurture young talent;
2) Having exclusive self produced content is part of – I would say – every good content strategy. It helps to attract users in those areas where Babelgum wants to become a point of reference: indie films and Nature. Continue reading “Babelgum talks about content and the future of web TV”

Having uncovered a basketful of Photoshop Easter eggs yesterday, today I decided to delve into Windows XP for some more hidden treats. It turns out the guys at Microsoft are pretty kind-hearted, as there are plenty of cool tricks buried in the OS. For instance, as BizzNTech reveals, you can get up-close and personal in MS Paint simply by opening an image, clicking the Zoom tool and left-clicking on the line directly beneath the 8x mark. As if by magic – a 10x zoom function!

Fed up of getting stumped by Solitatire? Well, you can win a game in an instant just by holding down Shift+Alt+2. What about Minesweeper? Bide yourself some time by launching the game then pressing the Windows key+D to display the desktop. Select Minesweeper from the taskbar and you’ll notice that the clock has stopped.

Here’s a great one for all you conspiracy theorists out there, courtesy of The Easter Eggs Archive. Load up Notepad and type “bush hid the facts” into the editor. Save the document (it doesn’t matter what name you choose), close the application, then load the .txt document again. What the heck happened to your text??

Keeping with the censorship theme, it seems Windows won’t tolerate foul language either. Go to the Control Panel and open up the ‘Speech’ properties dialog. Type the word “crotch” into the preview box and click ‘Preview Voice’. Instead of saying “crotch” Windows will say “crow’s nest”. I’ll leave you to watch some more cracking hidden XP features, while I go off to search for some more eggs to serve up to you tomorrow.

[youtube]gELIrIw89xM&hl[/youtube]

Continue with the Easter egg hunt here.