Wow! For the third time, Bibi's box is a finalist in the Best Latin American Blog category on the Bloggies! First, I'd like to thank all those who voted for this blog on the Eighth Annual Weblog Awards: The 2008 Bloggies, since I hadn't even annoyed people for votes. I really appreciate your support. It makes me a happy Bibi.

However, now that I am one of the finalist, and I really hope that third time is a charm.I would like to ask all of you who visit, read, or just stopped by for a peek, to vote on the 2008 Bloggies for Bibi's box and, if at all possible, to spread some love on your blog, asking people to vote for me. Specially if you are Brazilian. Think about it, I am the only Brazilian there, and a woman, and I think that is something special.

Thanks again for your vote, love and comments. And don't forget to vote until January, 31.

Posted by Bibi on January 24, 2008 09:25 PM in Blogging, Internet ||

(Almost) All the cool kids are now using micro-blogging tools to communicate with friends, family and / or readers. I'm using too, because I can't stop joining to social networks and all kind of web2.0 tools and sites. I've joined to Twitter, Pownce, Jaiku and some others that I don't remember now. If you are using any of those sites, fell free to add me.

However, I'm not crazy enough to update all those sites. I'm "officially" using Twitter to "micro-blog", to share links I don't post here, like news about technology, events and some other things. Since its integration with GTalk is easy, I'm using the IM to add new messages. I'm also using it more frequently, because my friends are there, and many blogs and sites are using it to share links, news and content too.

I'm using Pownce more to test its features, for now, than to communicate with other people. The site/tool provides a nearest idea of "micro-blogging" than Twitter, in my humble opinion. It's now accepting sharing files, profiles, videos and photos. I just don't use it more, because I forget to open the site, and I don't want to install the software required in this old computer. By the way, I have ten invitations to Pownce that I would like to donate to the regular readers of this blog. If you want one, just post a comment asking for it.

And Jaiku. Well, I don't use it because I don't remember to do it, and I don't have time enough to keep updating it. For those who never use it: it's easy to create an account, easy to use it, and it has some nice features, like add your feeds and send messages using your IM software. The feeds feature can be great and terrible: it can to keep your friends up-to-date, while it automatically adds new info to your profile, and this can be also means overload them with information.

Posted by Bibi on September 18, 2007 04:37 PM in Blogging, Internet, Social Software, Tools ||

How pretty or cool is the not found page of your blog / site? I'm ashamed of the layout of 404 pages of my blogs: they are boring normal. I wanted some funny image, as the several images collected by 404lounge.net. The gallery has almost four hundred screenshots the most funkiest, freakiest and funniest examples 404 pages.That's just the begining.

The 404 Research Lab has a huge collection of links to 404 pages divided by category and themes. There are no screenshots, but they worth the visit, at least the categories I checked. They also have: a do-it-yourself 404 tutorial, with good reasons to build it and step by step with the technical information; pages with tips to fix your pages with errors;news; and the history of 404.

Posted by Bibi on July 26, 2007 02:44 PM in Fun, Fun, Geek, Internet ||

It's Sunday - a not blogging day, almost lunch time and I'm tired, just because I had been blogging since yesterday. I'm going to have a break to sleep, and maybe enjoy the rest of this sunny day. However, I have more links of silly stuff to keep you busy:

- I Want One Of Those is selling the perfect gift to some of my friends: a RoboGirlfriend. "She" cames in three models: Jolie, with a large assortment of 'babies' (activation optional), Ritchie - a smaller model designed for easy storage, or for the vertically-challenged human boyfriends, and Spears - features a number of pre-recorded dance routines, ideal for lovers of the club scene.

- MAKE: Blog announced they have decided to relocated the offices from California to Easter Island. The post Easter Island here we come! explains the idea and shows the cover of the new magazine edition.

- Technorati shows another meanings to its name, like haterTonic, Tritenacho, heartTonic, Threaticon and others. Just keep reloaing the page to find another meanings.

- Yahoo!'s Yodel Anecdotal announced a new initiative that explores America’s fringe cultures with reporting brought to life with original songs and music: Yahoo! Underground. With videos, photos, slideshows, and blog posts about the world of the weird, the strangely compelling, the land of “who are these people?”

And much more April Fool's Day jokes at Wikipedia's April 1, 2007, Urgo's 2007 list of April Fools' Day Jokes on Websites, my April Fool's Day screen shots set and my bookmarks tagged with "aprilfool" on del.icio.us.

Update: The site is back to normal, since I didn't receive any offer to my joke.

Posted by Bibi on April 1, 2007 12:41 PM in April Fools, Fun, Fun, Internet ||

The Wikipedia main page displays some curious articles today: George Washington the inventor, the independence day of San Serriffe and it announced that editors will be charged in order to edit (screenshot). Wikitravel (screenshot) also points to unusual places, like Earth and Hell.

Posted by Bibi on April 1, 2007 11:46 AM in April Fools, Culture, Fun, Fun, Internet ||

Wow, Google announced two new services today. Google TiSP, a free in-home wireless broadband service, and Gmail Paper. At the Official Google Blog there is a brief note about Google TiSP, also called "Project Teaspoon". A Press Release of it is available at the Google Press Center, but the page of the product have all the information you need it, including the explanation of How TiSP Works with images and a FAQ. And in case of any doubt, contact the Google TiSP Groups.

How can Google offer this service for free?
We believe that all users deserve free, fast and sanitary online access. To offset the cost of providing the TiSP service, we use information gathered by discreet DNA sequencing of your personal bodily output to display online ads that are contextually relevant to your culinary preferences, current health status and likelihood of developing particular medical conditions going forward. Google also offers premium levels of service for a monthly fee

The second great news from Google came from Gmail. They developed the free service Gmail Paper, to you receive in paper all your e-mails, including the photo attachments, which will be printed on high-quality, glossy photo paper.There is no limit and no environment problem, because Gmail Paper is made out of 96% post-consumer organic soybean sputum, and thus, actually helps the environment. Now you just need to find some space to archive your Gmail Paper.

PS.: I have one question: Google Writer is a joke too, right? It doesn't sound real, but they didn't classified as April Fools Day.

Posted by Bibi on April 1, 2007 09:57 AM in April Fools, Fun, Fun, Google, Internet, Tools ||

For many times I said to Chris, from Cynical-C Blog, to change the layout of his blog, because it looks too much a guy's blog. He never gave much attention to my words and kept the guy-not-coloured-layout. Maybe the problem was that he was afraid of the final result of a cute layout with his blog content.

Chris, you don't need to worry any more. With this new cool tool called Mashup Reader I created a Cynical-box blog. I also try a mix of the content of this blog with Cynical-c style, but the result of that Cynical Bibi wasn't so good, as I imagined.

That's a good way to test somebody else's layout or your favourite site's layout with your blog's content before you stole borrow its layout. Mashup Reader is invented as a brand-new RSS feed reader to mashup blogs in a smarter way. Don't wait: go try it now, because the service will close in April 1 24:00 GMT.

Posted by Bibi on April 1, 2007 08:27 AM in April Fools, Fun, Fun, Internet, Tools ||

Hi guys, I hope you are having a loving night - or day. I selected some interesting news about internet and technology to blog in this amusing day. Let's go to the latest news.

- Astronomy Picture of the Day posted an incredible picture of Americans Defeat Russians in First Space Quidditch Match (image above). But it doesn't beat Water on Mars.

- Following the steps of several social sites, Slashdot started to use a rating system similar to Digg, but open to everybody - no registry is required. Choose an article and vote. (image)

- From the French site Techno-Science: Découverte d'un miroir gravitationnel: observer la Terre du passé (discovered a gravitational mirror). The text is in French, but the very illustrative image has the text in English.

- Interesting and scary news from Mobile Gazette: Will Mobile Phones Destroy the Earth? The interview with the Professor Dummkopf explains why we should be afraid. (screenshot)

- If you are a Metafilter user don't forget to visit Ask MetaFilter and help to solve some questions. The doubts could be interesting for non users too.

- PC Magazine has a very nice article about Haptics Turns Phones into Weapons.

- The Swedish torrent site The Pirate Bay announced in its blog: Finaly a permanent solution for the hosting. Today we announce that we're moving some of our servers to the North-Korean Embassy in Stockholm, Sweden. (screenshot)

- The Australian on-line community Gush decided to redo Gush as a myspace page because it's a place where there's heaps of young people, so they can get so many more people involved! (screenshot)

- The excellent internet and web 2.0 site TechCrunch Has Acquired FuckedCompany.com. More details, including the press release on the Techcrunch and Fuckedcompany 2.0 sites. (image)

- Reg Hardware, a The Register site, says that Research reveals mislaid microprocessor megahertz. Not only are chip companies regularly releasing ever-faster microprocessors, but new research has revealed that modern CPUs actually lose megahertz over time.

- The Warcraft Universe wiki site, WoWWiki, was redesigned, changed the name to MeoWWiki and it looks much better now! (screenshot)

- This sounds great: New Eco-Friendly Computers, a Sharpened article.

- Whirlpool News says Mandatory ISP filtering will block P2P. The federal government has shocked industry by rushing a bill through parliament that will compel ISPs to block all P2P traffic. (screenshot)

Posted by Bibi on April 1, 2007 03:46 AM in April Fools, Astronomy, Internet, News, Science, Science, Technology ||

A long long time ago, before the existence of the Internet as we know it today, there was the Usenet and living in it was the omniscient Oracle. Unfortunately I couldn't experience of this era of innocence, when everything was fantastic and it was much easier to teach people to be kind with each other on-line. At that time, I had no idea of how computers work.

Many years after all this period of happiness, around 1998, I received the answer to all my questions in an email. This wise message was the translation of probably the most brilliant answer that the Internet Oracle gave to the eternal question of the Buttered cat paradox. It was the translation of a question answered in 1993 for The Usenet Oracle:

Oh omnipotent oracle! If there were a single molecule from a forgotten oraclelean 10,000-year-old fart I would not be worthy to inhale it! Timorously, I ask you:

If you drop a buttered piece of bread, it will fall on the floor butter-side down. If a cat is dropped from a window or other high and towering place, it will land on it's feet. But what if you attach a buttered piece of bread, butter-side up to a cat's back and toss them both out the window? Will the cat land on it's feet? Or will the butter splat on the ground?

Mike

And in response, thus spake the Oracle:

Even if you are too lazy to do the experiment yourself you should be able to deduce the obvious result. The laws of butterology demand that the butter must hit the ground, and the equally strict laws of feline aerodynamics demand that the cat can not smash it's furry back If the combined construct were to land, nature would have no way to resolve this paradox. Therefore it simply does not fall.

That's right you clever mortal (well, as clever as a mortal can get), you have discovered the secret of antigravity! A buttered cat will, when released, quickly move to a height where the forces of cat-twisting and butter repulsion are in equilibrium. This equilibrium point can be modified by scraping off some of the butter, providing lift, or removing some of the cat's limbs, allowing descent.

Most of the civilized species of the Universe already use this principle to drive their ships while within a planetary system. The loud humming heard by most sighters of UFOs is, in fact, the purring of several hundred tabbies.

The one obvious danger is, of course, if the cats manage to eat the bread off their backs they will instantly plummet. Of course the cats will land on their feet, but this usually doesn't do them much good, since right after they make their graceful landing several tons of
red-hot starship and pissed off aliens crash on top of them.

You owe the Oracle two slices of toast and a bag of kitty litter.

That was part of the final answer that I receive. The e-mail I received was more complex. It joined the theory above with the attraction of tomato sauce to white shirts and how space ships work. I'm not contesting the wisdom of the Oracle, I wouldn't do that, but this woman did it. Eliane, aka Elly, says in her post that the Oracle answer is nonsese. How? Well, she start her theory this way:

Let us assume a normal Einsteinian universe (although a Euclidean universe would serve our purposes just as well, the Einsteinian is both cheaper and drinks are readily available.)

To test BFAD, one must procure:

Bread
Butter (margarine, for some reason, will not work)
A cat
A strapping device.

Let us assume that all of these are readily available.

Attach the strapping device to the cat.

See?

No cat.

What has happened? We have run up against an a priori universal law. By a priori, we mean that it takes priority over either the Buttered Bread Principle or the Law of Feline Landings.

What happens is that the instant a strapping device and a cat occupy the same four dimensional space, the cat disappears. Now, this can easily be tested, and has been repeatedly. There are two schools of thought about this phenomenon.

The first holds that a cat and a strapping device are constituted out of different fundamental building blocks. According to this theory, a cat is constituted primarily of superquarks, (called meows by current theorists.) These superquarks demonstrate qualities that are both atomic (constituted as they are of groupings of normal quark particles) and feline (because these quarks exhibit characteristic of "charmed" or "lucky" particles.) Again, according to this theory, strapping materials are fashioned out of non-charmed particles. Bringing the two together causes one or the other to cancel out. One aspect of this theory that has not been sufficiently explained to date is the fact that it is always the cat, not the strapping device, that disappears.

And that's just the beginning. There are two other theories that she explains in her post Around 100 and an unusual CAT Theory BFAD. Scholars of this theory also quote the excellent Uncyclopedia article Murphy's law application for antigravitatory cats. As all the great scientific articles, it has equations, the demonstration of forces (as the image above) and visual demonstrations of the results. A precious article.

Based in all those facts, a cinema student called Kimberly Miner made a short animation film to explored the potential implications of the cat and buttered toast idea theory, but she used jelly in the place of butter - don't try this at home! Her film Perpetual Motion won the Student Academy Awards of 2003. This short animation that clearly demonstrates how effective is theory can be watch at YouTube or bellow.

Posted by Bibi on February 26, 2007 11:33 PM in Animation, Cats, Fun, Fun, Internet, Memes, Video ||

Art Face Off is a new social site for artists upload their works describing and adding tags, and it's also a competition, where the visitors vote for the best of two works. Winners move on to the next level of competition, and final prize is $1000US to the overall winner of each general media, a spot in the Athena Awards collective exhibition, and an award at the ceremony.

The experience of chose between a picture and a drawing can be strange. You can select to see works of the same support. For me it's a place to discover new artists and explore beautiful new images. BTW, some of the works you will see aren't safe for work. (via Techcrunch)

Posted by Bibi on January 30, 2007 05:20 AM in Art, Internet, Painting ||

The children's classic book The Wonderful Wizard of Oz has a special session at Wikipedia: Portal:Oz, or something like, all you ever wanted to know about Oz, but was afraid to ask. Or something near of that. The WikiProject Oz is designed to organize and create better articles about the books in Oz series as well as their authors, illustrators, characters, and stage/film adaptations. And it's open to contributions, as all the Wiki projects.

Even if you don't like the story, you can't deny that it's open to many interpretations, from semiotics, psychology, literary, political and historic (why not?). And I'm not counting the versions of it, to cinema theatre and the different visual interpretations, like illustrated versions. It's a vast an interesting area to explore, based in a series of books.

Let's talk about the Oz books. In case you never had read one of them, the Project Gutenberg 14 different versions and books about Oz by L. Frank Baum. From Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz to The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. And more four audio versions: Dorothy and the Wizard, The Marvelous Land of Oz, The Marvelous Land Of Oz and Little Wizard Stories of Oz. Unfortunately there are no illustrated versions there.

Don't worry, there is a LibraryThing group to The Oz books and it seems that they created a site, International Wizard of Oz Club, where there are many images of covers and some illustrations too. The Library of Congress has more images at its on-line exhibition The Wizard of Oz: An American Fairytale. Book's covers, illustrations, posters, sheet music, pictures, artifacts and more memorabilia images are available to satiate the curious.

Ok, maybe you didn't read the book, but you saw at least one film based on The Wizard of Oz book, didn't you? I bet you saw. The Portal of Oz has 29 entries for stage and film, however, IMDb goes even far, with 40 results. Probably the most famous of them was the 1939 with Judy Garland as Dorothy. That version, considerate classic wasn't the first adaptation to the screen.

Probably, the first version ever made to the cinema was The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, made in 1910 by Selig Polyscope Company. This early version, directed by Otis Turner, was partly based on the 1902 stage musical, though much of the film deals with the Wicked Witch of the West, who does not appear in the musical. This film, or what survived of it, I'm not sure, is available at Google Video (13 min), but to be sincere, if you never read the book or watched any other version this almost rudimentary film will many few sense to you.

Films, plays, toys, stickers, sites, blogs, exhibitions, instalations, games, dolls, series, music, in almost all that you can imagine The Wonderful Wizard of Oz was transformed. You can spend a week searcing for imformation about it and that's why my contribution stops here. But, before I finish this post I have to give a last suggestion: visit The Dark Side of Oz, a site about the urban legend around the Pink Floyd's album The Dark Side of the Moon and its correspondence with The Wizard of Oz. Read also the Dark Side of the Rainbow article about that.

Posted by Bibi on January 12, 2007 03:28 PM in Books, Cinema, Culture, Internet, Literature, Video ||

Finally, the most loved day of the year (for some) arrived: Christmas Eve. Is everything ready for this night? The tree? Food? Gifts? Cookies for Santa? Your Christmas spirit? Well, I hope that everything is fine. Nevertheless, if you need of something to get in the mood of Christmas I made a list with some suggestions for this night with recipes, music, the history about Christmas, some Christmas papercraft for the children and for you, games and more fun stuff. Here is the first part of my suggestions. I hope you enjoy it!

Audio

Christmas songs are great, but how about hearing some stories about Christmas or radio programs about it before the Christmas Eve midnight supper?

Among the tons of audio files that you will find at Internet Archive, I selected five audio versions books, texts and even classic carols provided by LibriVox: A Christmas Carol, from the classic of Charles Dickens; Christmas Carol Collection 2006, a collection of traditional Christmas carols; The Gift of the Magi, by O. Henry; 'Twas the Night Before Christmas, poetry by Clement C. Moore; Yes, Virginia, There Is A Santa Claus.

An Occulterati Christmas episode 5: A special Yuletide treat from Irreality.net, and a panel discussion of the meaning of the season. (via Gpod)

Santa’s Journal. Santa's Journal? Yes, Santa has a blog, and a podcast! - that's why the link is here. So even if you were a naughty boy or a naughty girl you can hear the wise words of Santa before and after Christmas. Have fun kids!

Storynory is a fantastic place to find audio versions of books and short stories for children. For Christmas they have A Christmas Carol, A Visit From St. Nicholas, The First Christmas, Tim Learns About Father Christmas and more. Make the most of it and subscribe the podcast to your kids.

With 8 channels, at Radio Nostalgia Network there is a big probability that you find something you like. They did some special programs for Christmas, like Ye Old Christmas Radio, with 13 episodes, Christmas Special #2... The Revenge!, at their film score podcast, Big Band Serenade 79 Glenn Miller and His Orchestra Christmas Eve in the War Years and Radio Journeys ... Christmas Special ... Commemorating Reginald Fessenden. Take a look thre for much more.

And if you are English, or lives in UK, don't miss the latest 'episode' of the Royal Podcast, that will be The Christmas Broadcast (The Queen's speech), which will be available from 1500 GMT on Christmas Day 2006. I don't live there and I won't miss it; this sounds very curious to me.

Food

What is Christmas without all the food? For me, the delicious food made at Christmas is the best part of it - maybe I shouldn't have say that. Anyway, here are some recipes to delicious supper.

At Flickr I found this fantastic photoset: Building a Gingerbread House - step by step. I have to try it one day, maybe soon I hope.

Expert Village has a collection of videos of Classic Christmas Cooking with 5 traditional recipes for the season. How about try Traditional Eggnog Recipe? I won't try this today. May I do this tomorrow? Is that ok? Let me know about it, because I never had it.

I tried this one today and it really works: Chocolate chip perfection. It's easy and the cookies will be delicious. Santa will be very happy if you make some to him. (via digg)

More cookies recipes, this time with a video and instructions of Santa Claus. To be sincere I used Santa's method with the first recipes of chocolate cookies.

Slashfood posted many recipes and links to Christmas' recipes. Among all I liked of this one: Vanilla Cutout Cookies. It looks very easy to do and the pictures with suggestions to decorate the cookies look great.

This is not part of the recipes, but it's food: The Christmas Tree all made with chocolate by La Maison du chocolat. This is definitely the best Christmas Tree I've ever seen! It's a pity that I don't live in London, Paris or New York, because they don't send it over here. (via Slashfood)

The blog The Old Foodie did a special post with Vintage Christmas Recipes. There are recipes of pudding, pies, Christmas Cake and drinks. I'm not so sure if the ingredients are easy to find, since I didn't check all, but it's always an inspiration to create new recipes. (via Plep)

And, if you speak French, try one or a few recipes for Christmas from Blog appétit.

Funny stuff

What is Christmas without some funny stuff? Some people have fun cooking, other buying presents, and other entertaining the family with amusing and funny stories. But while you are there, in front of your computer, spread some happiness (or must I say silliness?) with this collection of cool internet sites, or just take a look at them to amuse yourself.

Buy Nothing Christmas isn't part of the silliness, however it fits better in this session as the "spread the word" links. It's a new way to see and enjoy the Christmas: without all the stress and all the shopping stuff. They propose to you give something that you made, offer coupons for free massages - my boyfriend would love that - or desserts, or try something of their catalogue.

Does your browser need to be more festive? Try one of those themes for your Firefox: Tinseltown - I'm using this one and if you have many icons at your navigation bar it may get a little hard to see them; X-Mas and X-Mas (Light) - the difference is the CPU usage of the normal version, since it "creates" some snow to you.

Elf Yourself does what it says: it helps you to do an elfamorphosis! It has also an option to send your elf version dancing with a message - you must see it. And just in case of some of you ask, yes, I tried this silly stuff. (via Micro Persuasion)

I should have posted this earlier, but you can try it tonight or find the toys that Santa hid in Google Earth: Track Santa in Google Earth. Today, December 24th, Santa will load his sleigh, take the reins and soar into the skies, delivering presents to good children all over the world. And now you can follow his fabled flight in real-time. (via
Official Google Blog)

Mix-Mas: World Greeting Chain. It's a kind of social site where you creates an avatar with a message and spread it to your friends. In the site you will find the avatar and the messages of other people from around the world. We hope this greeting chain will spread the holiday spirit beyond country and culture. Well, I put a little message there yesterday.
t
More stuff from Google to your Google desktop: Holiday Gadgets. There is a Christmas tree, a countdown to New Year, a Christmas frame and more.

Simon Sez Santa 2.0 has the same principle of Virtual Bartender and the Subservient Chicken. Just type and order, expression or word and see what happens. Try: insult me, yodel, sex, kiss, hug, dance, run, destroy, milk, cookies, book and sleep - I had more suggestions but I forgot all the words that I tried. (via Unscathed Corpse)

There are other options if you don't want to be an elf. Try PikiPimp and pimp your pictures. I'm suggesting it, because it has holidays and Christmas options to get a new life to your old portraits, like turn yourself into Santa Claus.

This is one of my favourites: Enlighten Holiday Party Excuse Generator. This is very useful if you were invited to some boring party or to visit a friend or a relative that you don't like very much. You choose the kind of party it is, what are your feelings about the host, how badly do you want to avoid the party, the tone of your excuse and how believable your excuse looks like.That's all: your excuse is read, just copy or send it to whoever invited you.

History

The history of Christmas is always good to entertain the kids, to refresh your memory of what is all about of just to amuse you. So, why not read about Christmas before, to get the spirit, or after open the presents, so you won't need to talk about the last news or embarrassing things to you?

Let's start with the basic, with Wikipedia. It has a very good article that explains what is Christmas. I won't say that you will find everything you always wanted to know about Christmas, but it will keep you busy for some time. The best part: the article is available, not all of it, in many other languages.

From the Herbert Hoover Museum, An American Christmas Exhibit: How We Came to Celebrate Christmas as a National Holiday. The text starts in 1840, with The Origins of the "Christmas Tree".

Salon has a nice article about Santa: The man in the red suit - An endearing enigma in a scarlet fur-trimmed jacket, Santa has spent the past 150 years spreading joy -- and shilling for Macy's, Maxwell House and Dewar's scotch. BTW, you must watch a short ad before read anything at Salon, if you don't subscribe to it.

The Library of Congress is a fantastic place to find material about the history of American culture. That's why they also have a small page about Santa Claus, called Yes, Virginia, There Is A Santa Claus. It's a kind of guide to know more about him, with links to help you to explore the site. Don't forget to check Santa Claus hides in your phonograph, an old recording made by the Thomas Edison Company in 1922,

The site from The Herbert Hoover Presidential Library-Museum, The Legends of Christmas, explains the traditions and customs, like Caroling, Santa, stockings, and gingerbread, that came from Europe, and other elements that are part of the Christmas in many countries, like the elves, the cards, the music and other subjects related with it, like the classic Dickens novel, the Nutcracker and even Rudolph.

How-to

Here Comes Santa Claus: Holiday Tips from the North Pole. Santa Claus explains How to wrap a Christmas present, How to build a toy boat and he gives a guitar lesson. There are seven videos available with Santa's tips. (via Making Light)

Lifehacker always have great suggestions to make your life a bit easier. They made a contest for holidays suggestions and those are my favourite: The giant wreath and The Advent calendar - that won the contest.

Is the camera ready for the Christmas pictures? So, before you begin, take a look at this helpful guide: 16 Digital Photography Tips for Christmas. (via Lifehacker)

Will It Blend? has many crazy videos about what it can be blended with the powerfull blender of Blendtec. I will die for it, specially because I could do some snow with it. Remember, I live in the tropical part of globe and it's too hot to have any snow here - with a lot of luck there is snow in southern Brazil (but not at this time of the year). So, if you also want some snow, and have that blender, make your own snow.

More

More about Christmas tomorrow and at Christmas Linkdump, A Christmas Carol, Cats Cards, Christmas BlogCard, Christmas Music Linkdump, Christmas Trees, Holidays without CATastrophes, Santa Claus!, Santa Santa Santa and Top 11 Ways Geeks Celebrate Christmas.

Posted by Bibi on December 24, 2006 09:21 PM in Audio, Events, Firefox, Food, Food, Fun, Fun, Internet, Tools ||

Professional bloggers, or those who want to win something other than "fame" while blogging have a new good option, beyond ad banners: ReviewMe. It's a new web site whose idea is to join bloggers and advertisers to reach their goals.

And how does it work? Well, that's very easy. Go to site of ReviewMe and choose whether you are a blogger or advertiser. The forms are easy to fill out, or at least the blogger's form. If you are an advertiser, just choose one, or more, blogs available in the categories that best fit your product - the reviews pays from $40.00.

However, I know that most readers will want to know how it works for bloggers, so let's do it. First: add your blog or blogs in one of the categories available - unfortunately there is no art category. Ad also up to six tags that best describe your blog. And, if it will be approve, wait for the clients to purchase reviews from you. And you decide to accept the review or not - you don't need to review about something that you don't trust or didn't like.

We do not allow advertisers to require a positive review. The vast majority of reviews are measuredly positive, although many do contain constructive criticism. We view this as a bonus: how else can you quickly and cheaply get feedback on a product or service from influences?

Sounds fair, doesn't it? Now, how much do they pay for a review? Well, all reviews that I wrote until today where for free - and I think that will keep being so for a long time, but I write exactly what I think, not more, not less. So, I have no idea whether their price is fair or not: you tell me. For bloggers the reviews will be paid $20.00 to $200.00 for each completed review that you post on your site. Let me explain how they get the price of the review for each blog: it's an average of your's blog punctuation/position in Alexa, Technorati, RSS and ranking (Google I think). It could be better, because I never liked Alexa, but it could be worst too, like just Alexa.

The idea is good, the site design is pretty and very intuitive. Is this going to work? For now I think that the things are going to be slow, since the two parts must know about it and have trust in it. However, this is a great alternative to connect bloggers and advertisers, and we know that blogs are a new growing media, with a bright future, so I bet in a happy end.

Posted by Bibi on November 12, 2006 11:43 AM in Blogging, Internet ||

Time presents its 2006 selection of the 50 Coolest Websites. The sites were divided in 7 areas, however my interest went only to Entertainment, Arts and Media session. As usually I don't agree with most of their choices, except Drawn, their best choice in my humble opinion. Other good choice was Pandora, which one my boyfriend loves. I prefer Last.fm just because I don't like to open one more tab and it's easier use the Last.fm software.

I must say one more thing about the sites listed there: YouTube. If you just go watch funny videos there it's great, if you have an account and just upload you home-made videos, it rocks, but if you are a hard user, if you upload videos in public domain it sucks.

Well, I could give more examples of angry users that had problems with You Tube and no answers. First example: me. They deleted my first account, ok I survive. But now I stopped to upload videos in the new account, because they made 2 mistakes and didn't corrected them. The first one was say that two videos that were in public domain weren't. They said sorry and that they weren't put the videos back. They didn't do. Second: more two videos wrongly accuse that aren't be in public domain, that someone flagged. Curiously in all the other places that I search, including databases of films in public domain, they were in public domain, so I sent one more email. No answers. More two emails: no answers.

So, after those emails, no answers and with the threat of have my account suspended in case that I upload more "copyrighted material", what I didn't do in both cases, I stopped to add any material there. And I'm not the only one which had a problem with them and I won't be the last one. Am I look furious? It's because I'm.

There were other cases, like the posts of Cartoon Brew, The Shelf and Llámame Lola. Here is my advice: do you just want to watch cool stuff? Fine, use YouTube, or any other site of video storage. Do you want to upload a video? Use Google Video, Dailymotion, Veoh or any other, but don't use YouTube. That's all I have to say, sorry for the relief.

Back to the TIME site, read also 25 Sites We Can't Live Without, a cool article with good tips of sites, specially if you are American.

Posted by Bibi on August 16, 2006 05:07 PM in Internet, Video ||