(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 ||

To release the album Dylan: His Greatest Hits, a brilliant marketing idea was created: making a site with a Dylan message generator. You can go to the site and create a video message in up to "ten cards" to share with anyone you want. Designed by Ten4 Design, the generator uses the classic Bob Dylan video clip for the song "Subterranean Homesick Blues", in which one he appears holding up cue cards for the audience, with selected words and phrases from the lyrics. The video is available to watch on the site too. (via Yahoo! Picks)

Update: there is now a Facebook app. I tested it on my Facebook profile and it works fine.

Posted by Bibi on September 11, 2007 07:28 PM in Media, Music, Tools, Video ||

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 ||

At first sight, the image above looks like just the logo of this blog with a strange resolution. Now look again in a higher resolution? Can you see it? Yes! Books! It's a mosaic made with covers of my books at LibraryThing, using AndreaMosaic and a tutorial created by author David Louis Edelman.

The inspiration came from this post: You are what you read, from the LibraryThing blog. I played making mosaics with two pictures and the logo, trying to use different covers to construct the image. If you have a library at LibraryThing it is easy:

- Go to the all your covers, at LibraryThing and choose "save page as" with Firefox.

- Download the AndreaMosaic and install it: it's free but you can make a donation if you like it.

- Open the directory created with your books covers and delete all the archives that aren't "jpg" and the images that aren't covers (I think there were only two in my case). It isn't necessary, but might help.

- Open AndreaMosaic software, click at "Find Tiles", click at "Create Collection" and select the book covers directory and choose a name to save it, for instance, "books.amc"

- Click at "Load Collection" and select the collection you just created, ("books.amc" in my example). Confirm and close this window.

- Go to the "Step 3" of the software and select the image you want to transform into a mosaic (I selected the logo image)

- After that step you are ready to "Create the Mosaics", or you can change the configuration of "Step 2". For the portraits I chose 40 tiles, and, for the logo above, 60. Higher values give "better" results for the mosaic, but they also use more CPU and space.

- Wait for it to complete, and check the directory you'd chosen and find your mosaic ready! If you have any doubts, check the links, they probably have better explanations than this one.
And if you don't have any collection, but want to make a mosaic, create a directory with the images you want to use and follow the same steps.

Posted by Bibi on February 2, 2007 03:10 AM in Books, Tools ||

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.
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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 ||

Websites as graphs: HTML consists of so-called tags, like the A tag for links, IMG tag for images and so on. Since tags are nested in other tags, they are arranged in a hierarchical manner, and that hierarchy can be represented as a graph. I've written a little app that visualizes such a graph. Try this awesome tool here (it requires java). Take a look also at some of the results available at Flickr (and join with a screenshot of you site). (via Waxy)

Posted by Bibi on May 29, 2006 04:03 PM in Internet, Tools ||

FINALLY! Google announced that now there is a web-based uploader. That means that if you have videos with less than 100MB you don't need to use the uploader anymore.

I was thinking that something like this would be great for some of the videos that I'm uploading to Google Video. Yes, of the videos, because most of the videos that uploaded to it, including the cartoons, have more than 100MB. The films usually have 700MB and the last Superman cartoons uploaded is average 300MB - I'm going to talk about them in the next post.

While the video is uploading there is animation of four coloured small balls running from left to right. It's nice, but I'd rather to know how much was already uploaded. And one more note: if you add more info to the video, after the upload, like a link to your page, more categories, or producer name, you have to wait them approve the changes to see them. It's not automatic, just the information added before the upload appears until they approve the changes.

Posted by Bibi on May 17, 2006 08:36 PM in Google, Tools, Video ||

I know that link blogs don't have that many comments, but I'm trying to make my blog entries a bit more interesting to attract more commenters. I'm not sure if it's working or whether this blog has more comments now because it has more readers. The other technique that I'm trying is to reply to most of the comments, even if they don't need any answer. My next step will be to try to apply some of those 10 Tips for Attracting More Comments. It's an interesting article for bloggers and I'm going to start with the first tip: Ask.

This blog is open for comments. I like comments, specially if they are positive ones, with new ideas, links, suggestions or nice words, who doesn't love that? Comments gives me an idea of what people like, what kind of content people appreciate, issues that I may research, etc. I don't answer them all, but I read all the comments and I visit the blogs when the readers put a link to them.

Some of you have noticed that I started to use a comment tool called coComment. On the left side of my main page there is blogbox, with a "miniature copy" of my comments. There you see only comments from my blog, because I didn't see any other blog that I read using it. That's why I'm inviting more people to test it.

coComment is free, easy to install, easy to configure it, it will enable you to efficiently track your comments and conversations with others across the blogosphere and you can sign the feed of your conversations. It also works with Flickr and have an integration with the blog tools Word Press, TextPattern and Serendipity. They are planning more features, like integrating it in the comment form.

Posted by Bibi on February 24, 2006 10:44 PM in Blogging, Social Software, Tools ||

I'm not a fan of Simpsons, but I can't resist to silly stuff like The Simpsomaker. One more generator for character, where you can choose the nose, head, hair, body, eyes and another items. As I'm a huge fan of South Park I prefer the Planearium (I talked about it here).

PS.: I couldn't resist and made one more version, this time a crazier Bibi (more than the normal).

Posted by Bibi on January 26, 2006 02:50 AM in Fun, Fun, Tools ||

AutoStitch

is the world's first fully automatic 2D image stitcher. Capable of stitching full view panoramas without any user input whatsoever, Autostitch is a breakthrough technology for panoramic photography, VR and visualisation applications. This is the first solution to stitch any panorama completely automatically, whether 1D (horizontal) or 2D (horizontal and vertical).

Try the demo version (for Windows) and don't miss the Panorama Gallery with breathtaking images. (via Linkorama)

Posted by Bibi on January 23, 2006 02:12 PM in Photography, Photography, Tools ||

Tagnautica is one more neat way to explore the Flickr Tag Space. Start with a tag and dive into tag space of related tags. The creator of Tagnautica, Mario Klingemann, developed also another experimental tool to use with Flickr: Flickeur. Flickeur randomly retrieves images from Flickr.com and creates an infinite film with a style that can vary between stream-of-consciousness, documentary or video clip. (via Google Blogoscoped)

Want more tools for Flickr? Explore the links over my Flickr category or go to Flickr Toys where you can have fun for a long time trying all them. New toys to try: Captioner and Poster.

Posted by Bibi on January 15, 2006 03:39 AM in Flickr, Folksonomy, Tools ||

Blogbinders

Do you remember of Blogbinders, that helps you turn your blog into a bound book? I don't know what happened to that site, but I found something similar: BlogCollector. It's a free and neat tool to backup your blog and publish it into a book. It supports MSN Spaces, Blogger/Blogspot and other blogs through RSS 2.0, exporting them as PDF. The free version has a limit on the max number of entries and export pages, but choose the pay version and you get support to images, export in PDF, HTML or RTF, no limitations, and more features. The good part? It's available to download for Windows, Mac, Linux and Sun.

Blogracy is a kind of social software for blogs. The idea behind Blogracy is to create a community where its structure emerges from the interactions of all humans involved. The score a blog gets is the sum of its own contribution and the interest it generates in other users. Jorge, from o zombie comeu o meu blog, invited me but I added just few blogs to the page of my blog there, because it's necessary to reserve some time to do searches, and add blogs to it.

Do you need a massage on your site/blog's ego? Or you are just looking for something funny? Try egoSurf. It helps massage the web publishers ego, and thereby maintain the cool equilibrium of the net itself. We search Goggle and find links to your blog. To make a search, enter your name, or expression, and the address of your blog. If the result isn't good enough for you select the "more options" and add del.icio.us, Yahoo, Technorati and/ or MSN. Do you like it? You can add a link to your blog and sign the feed for the search. (via Micro Persuasion)

Posted by Bibi on January 14, 2006 04:22 PM in Blogging, Internet, Social Software, Tools ||

Google Pack is a new collection of free softwares developed by Google for Windows users. Yes, just for the evil system, but at least they work with Firefox. This pack is made up of Google Earth, Desktop, Picasa, Google Toolbar for Internet Explore (the browser of the dark side), Google Talk and Google Pack Screensaver. Plus: Mozilla Firefox with Google Toolbar, Ad-Aware SE Personal, Norton Antivirus 2005 Special Edition, Adobe Reader 7(the reader), RealPlayer, GalleryPlayer HD Images and Trillian. There is the option of downloading it all at once or select just what you want. One more good reason to download this package is that you can get updates and new softwares via Google Updater.

Posted by Bibi on January 8, 2006 02:04 AM in Google, Internet, Technology, Tools ||

The superb site Flipbook.info has an impressive collection with more than 3000 flipbooks since 1882. The site contains the history, the otehr tools created with flipbooks, the influence at other areas, videos of some flipbooks in action and searchable database, but all in French. (via Drawn!)

You can also try to make you own flipbooks with the free software Flipbook Printer. It is a program that lets you make your own printed "Flipbooks" from avi movie files using business cards. (via Lifehacker)

Related post: Flipbook.

Posted by Bibi on January 3, 2006 09:24 PM in Animation, Art, Books, Tools, Vintage ||

Here is my collection of new links about internet and geek stuff.

Five Blog Reading Hacks: five ideas with all the instructions to you save some time, from Micro Persuasion. They are nice, but a longer day could it be better to me.

Geek to Live: Best apps of 2005. Firefox, del.icio.us, Google Earth and Bloglines are on the list! Cool!

Google Base blog import instructions You can add your existing content to the Google Base for broad distribution with only a few easy steps.

How to Read 12 Digit UPC Barcodes because I always wanted to know how to do that. (via Make)

Now That's What I Call Blogging: 43 Top Web Hits From Across the Blogosphere. A funny parody with inspired song names. I liked the song number 6 "Why I Love My Cat". (via kottke)

Printable Mozilla Firefox Shortcuts and larger print. The cheat sheet contains easy to read and remember keyboard and mouse shortcuts for Firefox that is run on Windows. (via Spread Firefox)

Put Technorati Mini in Your Firefox Sidebar: Steve Rubel give all the instructions to instal Technorati Mini. BTW, is just with me or Technorati is making some magic and subtracting the blogs that link to me?

Ten Bloglines Hacks: one more great list by Steve Rubel, with tips and links to hacks and instructions. I like a lot the last one Post Read Bloglines Items to del.icio.us.

Ten Wikipedia Hacks by Steve Rubel, from Micro Persuasion. The tips goes to Create a User Account to Gain Access to Additional Features to Play Six Degrees of Wikipedia.

The Firefox Hacks You Must Have: a Wired article. I don't think you need to have all installed, but I have to say that can survive without SessionSaver.

Tim Berners-Lee has a blog: timbl's blog and 455 comments on his first post! I'm jealous, but it's okay I'm jealous of what he did too. (via /.)

Top 10 tips for effective blog reading from Nev n Dave. I think I need to read that since I'm spending a lot of time to read all feed that I sign. (via Lifehacker)

Top 10 Website Euphemisms from Google Blogoscoped. A very funny list. An example? Number 3: What the site says: We’re still in Beta. What the site means: Don’t write bad press reviews yet.

Top 20 geek novels 132 people have voted for the best geek novels written in English since 1932.Unfortunately I read just 4 of those books, but if you asked if I saw their movie versions my answer is much better. (via /.)

What Is Screencasting and how to make. A screencast is a digital movie in which the setting is partly or wholly a computer screen, and in which audio narration describes the on-screen action. Explanations and instructions by Jon Udell. (via Make)

Posted by Bibi on December 23, 2005 08:20 PM in Blogs, Books, Firefox, Geek, Internet, Tools ||

Toogle Image Search - The most comprehensive image buggery on the web.

Toogle is a Text version of Googles Image Search. Currently it creates images out of the very term that was used to fetch those images, later we will endeavour to create images out of the search terms entered by users past and present.

Try also Woogle - Words in pictures, based on Google Image Search. (via dadanoias)

Posted by Bibi on October 15, 2005 11:09 PM in Fun, Fun, Google, Internet, Tools ||

Hey Flickr users, this can be very useful: Flickr Backup. It is a utility that allows you to download the pictures you have uploaded to Flickr back down to your computer for personal backup or restore. This Open Source project is hosted on SourceForge.net. Any bug or features can be reported and on the forum.