Topics

701

Developer's Corner / Cheap Artwork for Web Sites and Software

« on: April 10, 2011, 12:40 AM »

When I was doing the Super Simple site, I bought a lot of artwork from Vector Stock.

They're very cheap, with the same artwork being 10x as much elsewhere.

I've written it up here:

Purchasing Artwork for Commercial Use Cheaply

Hopefully that will be helpful for some people in their next web or software project.

702

Living Room / The Evil Side of Nature

« on: April 09, 2011, 12:37 PM »

This is just too good. The article only gets better as you read.

http://www.cracked.c...ng-to-dark-side.html

Let's face it, animals are bastards. With all of the ant slavery, ape war and duck rape in the world, it's easy to decide nature is something best left to the wild. But there are those animals that -- thanks to Disney and The Far Side -- we tend to think are more likely to dispense witty one liners than bite our face. But while we've been busy rooting for them, they've been quietly revealing their true colors ...

(app103 posted it on FB)

703

Developer's Corner / MonoDroid Becomes Mono for Android

« on: April 08, 2011, 08:01 PM »

http://mono-android.net/

Mono for Android

Mono for Android enables developers to use Microsoft™

Visual Studio™ to create C# and .NET based applications

that run on Android phones and tablets. Developers can

use their existing skills and reuse code and libraries

that have been built with .NET, while taking advantage

of native Android APIs.

It's now released at v1.0!

C# for Android~! YAY~!

704

Living Room / Devil's Dictionary for Tech

« on: April 08, 2011, 07:27 PM »

http://onproductmana...onary-for-high-tech/

Agile: n. A philosophy of project management where long term planning is replaced by short term thinking.

Bug Scrub: n. A meeting aimed at deciding which product issues can be swept under the carpet without too many people noticing.

Cloud Computing: n: A nice alliteration for an externally hosted computing model, created by people who felt that the term “IaaS” was just too ridiculous to say in any professional setting.

Some fun stuff there.

705

General Software Discussion / Androids Eat Apples

« on: April 08, 2011, 05:21 AM »

http://www.businessi...-market-share-2011-4

Google's Android OS has gained an astonishing 7 points of market share in the US smartphone market in the past three months, Comscore says.

RIM's market share over the same period collapsed, dropping almost 5 points.

Apple's iPhone share increased slightly, but is dead in the water and has now fallen way behind Android (in smartphones).

(If you include iPod touches in the calculation, Apple's share has actually fallen).

Android now has a third of the US market (33%). RIM's share has plummeted to 29%. Apple is holding at 25%.

Interesting.

The article is worth a read. It's well done and intelligent. It has some good observations.

And there are more charts! Charts are good and fun~!

706

Living Room / Web Speed Graphic

« on: April 07, 2011, 01:41 PM »

http://mashable.com/...11/04/06/site-speed/

Click for the graphic. It's too big for here.

707

Living Room / Charlie Sheen Sound Board

« on: April 04, 2011, 07:54 PM »

This is fun:

http://www.ebaumswor...oards/play/81342498/



For a minute or two anyways.

708

General Software Discussion / Lizamoon Attack Targets SQL Injection Vulnerability

« on: April 02, 2011, 10:56 PM »

http://www.pcworld.c...ou_need_to_know.html

The world was rocked today by LizaMoon--a SQL injection attack which has compromised well over one million Websites. No need to panic, though. A little information and common sense are all you need to make sure that LizaMoon is nothing more than a minor annoyance.

What Happened?

LizaMoon is a SQL injection attack that inserts malicious code on otherwise legitimate sites. However, don't let the fact that it is called SQL injection cause you to jump to the conclusion that there is a flaw in Microsoft SQL Server.

An FAQ from Websense--the security firm credited with the initial discovery of LizaMoon--explains, "Everything points to that this is a vulnerability in a web application. We don't know which one(s) yet but SQL Injection attacks work by issuing SQL commands in un-sanitized input to the server. That doesn't mean it's a vulnerability in the SQL Server itself, it means that the Web application isn't filtering input from the user correctly."

Ahem...





Nuff said.

709

Living Room / Awesome Camera Lens Review

« on: April 02, 2011, 09:58 AM »

http://www.amazon.co...cm_cr_pr_product_top

Some may feel that this lens is a tad pricey but many forget about the needless things in their life that they can sell in order to purchase this beast. I immediately sold my vehicle because I was finally able to convince myself that I only use my vehicle a couple hours out of the day. It was sad that I even had to contemplate selling my car for this camera attachment but to somewhat justify my hesitation in selling it, I do drop off my children at school and use it as transportation to and from work every day. So, once I sold it, I realized that I had to come up with another $21,000.

I tried selling my apartment, but my landlord indicated that I could not legally do that. Whatever, Jim (Because I have learned not to burn bridges from past experiences, I stopped having open houses. Plus, the lawyer and court fees would put a damper on my upcoming Amazon purchase). Where was I going to come up with this $21,000? That's when a Sigma light bulb went off in my head.

I sold my two children to the Pesticide & Insecticide Testing Corporation. I feel it was a solid move on my part because they explained that my (now their's) children would always have enough to eat, exercise every day, and have a doctor present 24/7. With the money I made with this no-brainer sell and the under-the-table cash my wife was getting from working on the prestigious corner of Main Street and Almond Street, I was finally able to make the purchase of a lifetime.

I even had some extra cash leftover, so I decided to buy my first digital camera. This green monster looks great on my brand new Canon Rebel XSi. Thanks Sigma!

HAHAHAHAAHAHA~!

Make sure to check it out. It ships at 141 lbs!

710

General Software Discussion / Ever Have a Download Site Blow You Away?

« on: April 02, 2011, 07:19 AM »

Ok, I'm still in shock... Softoxi.com just blew me away...

BLOWN AWAY by a Download Site – Softoxi.com!

Not a rant. A rave.

It is RARE for a download site to impress me. Very rare. But Softoxi.com has literally just blown me away! I’m quite frankly shocked with disbelief!

Their screenshot page for Photo Resizer INCLUDES A VIDEO SHOWING INSTALLATION AND HOW TO USE PHOTO RESIZER!

I received an email from Rainer Weiss, the editor at Softoxi, at a contact email address that I don’t use for PAD submissions, and when I checked, I saw that he had registered at the Super Simple web site.

I love it when I find a reason to rave over something~!

711

General Software Discussion / DC is Much Smoother in Opera

« on: March 31, 2011, 06:51 PM »

Slowly moving to Opera, and just moved DC and Facebook over here... WOW! What a difference! It's like night and day.

I used Opera for a long time, then things started breaking, and moved away from it. So far everything has been bang on with no glitches. And much faster.

I've been finding that IE and Firefox are simply way too slow now. I use IE for a few sites and nothing else, and it's painful. Firefox is getting just as bad, but not quite. Then again, FF takes up a gig of RAM while IE takes up very little. Trade offs...

Said it before, so I'll say it again... All browser innovation begins in Opera. Now, if only the other browsers would try to copy that little innovation in Opera that we fondly refer to as "not being mind-numbingly sluggish to the point of making me want to stab myself in they eyes to make the pain go away..."

712

Living Room / The "Cloud" Goes Up in Smoke

« on: March 31, 2011, 09:24 AM »

Yet another casualty, or casualties as the case may be:

http://www.amateurph...ost_news_306605.html

Photographers nationwide have expressed outrage after thousands of their images vanished from image-sharing website fotopic.net without warning.

Fotopic.net users have not been able to access their pictures for several weeks, sparking fears that the company behind the site has hit financial difficulties and ceased trading.

At first it seemed the problem may be technical - because the site has gone down before - but, as the weeks pass, concerns grow for the future of the site.

713

Living Room / A Parrot Riding a Car's Windshield Wipers

« on: March 30, 2011, 11:22 PM »

There are many more videos of it out there. That's a news one with the parrot owner talking about it.

Seems to have ticked off quite a few people that have been very vocal about their hatred for the fellow.

714

Announce Your Software/Service/Product / Pre-launch of Super Simple

« on: March 24, 2011, 07:56 PM »

I'm happy to announce the pre-launch invitation and announcement for everyone at DonationCoder to "Super Simple"!



The first application there is the oh so cleverly named "Photo Resizer".



I've mentioned a site that I was working on in the past and this is it. It is ad supported and Photo Resizer uses OpenCandy (see below). Like I've said before, I will be making as much as possible about the site open and transparent. You can find some of that transparency on the FAQ page. I will be posting more about it over time at my personal blog, Cynic.me. I've started to post some things there already under the "Super Simple" category.

Most of the posts so far are about Robosoft and PAD, and more of that will be coming along with other aspects as well. Some posts will be more marketing-centric, while others are more programming-centric. I've mentioned some topics here.


SOME TRANSPARENCY FOR THE DC CROWD:

The following are some summaries of future posts for Cynic.me.


OPENCANDY:

I know that some people here are going to hate it because I used OpenCandy. That's fine. There's nothing malicious or devious in there. I did my homework on the topic and have a clean conscience. My irrationalities towards a computer company named after delicious fruit (that keeps the doctor away) are well known here. Everyone has things that drive them nuts. I will write in detail about OpenCandy in the future.


REGISTRY SETTINGS:

Photo Resizer gives you an option to add a right-click context menu item to Windows Explorer so that you can right-click on a picture and open it directly in Photo Resizer. Other than that, I do not use the registry at all. Any other entries are done by the system, such as "Recently opened documents" (or document history) which are stored in the registry. Those are system controlled by Windows. The context menu option is optional and is for the following supported extensions:

• bmp
• gif
• jpeg
• jpg
• png
• svg
• tif
• tiff

It looks like this:



Photo Resizer does not take any file associations.


HELP:

While the program is simple enough, it includes a help file that is actually useful. (Thank you to mouser and DC for the H&M license~!) There are a lot of extra shortcuts in there.

The help file may seem long, but that is only because it is extensively illustrated with screenshots and illustrations.


TRACKING:

Photo Resizer keeps count of the number of photos that you have resized and the number of times that you have used it. None of that information is sent back or sent anywhere. YOU ARE THE ONLY PERSON PRIVY TO THAT INFORMATION.

Part of the tracking is done using the Infralution Licensing System (ILS).

Why is it in there? (Make sure you can handle the truth...)

I got bored and thought it would be fun to look at statistics. Seriously. I've been using ILS for years, love it, and just thought stats would be fun. Incidentally, I went out for lunch the other week with the developer. We'd talked in the past, but it was nice to finally meet him.

The shortcut for stats is "s".

In the future, I may make it optional (as in opt-in) for people to send me stats so that I can improve the program. We'll see. Right now I'm thinking that there's a 20% chance of me doing that.


AUTOMATIC UPDATES:

There are no automatic updates. There is an automatic updater component in it, but it only checks to see if a new version is available. It does not install any new versions. The shortcut to check is "u".



It checks once a week. It can be hidden by clicking on it. There is no option at the moment to turn it off. That will be in a future release.


HUMOR:

The "About" page is mostly humorous and makes fun of a few things, including the target audience and myself.





Well, I hope that about sums everything up and I do hope that it gets a positive response from people here.

Cheers,

Ryan

715

Found Deals and Discounts / GOTD - Paragon Partition Manager 11 Personal Special Edition (English Version)

« on: March 23, 2011, 05:02 AM »

Yay~!

http://www.giveawayo...nal-special-english/




I've been wanting to get some partitioning software on this box.

716

Living Room / My Movie Fantasy

« on: March 22, 2011, 04:02 AM »

I would love to see a horror film that takes place during a sunny warm day with cute, cuddly critters that everyone in the audience loves, but the critters are out to do bad things.

And no flickering lights in abandoned buildings and no rain.

I suppose the closest so far is Lesbian Vampire Killers.

717

Living Room / App Store, Appstore, Tomato, Tomato, Potato, Potato

« on: March 21, 2011, 11:35 PM »

LOUD SCREAMING!

AAARRRGGGHHH!!!

http://online.wsj.co..._hpp_LEFTTopWhatNews

Apple Inc. sued Amazon.com Inc. over its use of the phrase "App Store," accusing the online retailer of trademark infringement.

...

"We've asked Amazon not to copy the App Store name because it will confuse and mislead customers," said a spokeswoman for Apple. A spokeswoman for Amazon said it doesn't comment on pending litigation.

Although Apple's trademark was approved by authorities, it is also being challenged by Microsoft Corp. and is currently subject to proceedings before an appeals board of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, Apple said in its filing.

Good grief...

What kind of retard would grant a trademark on a generic term? "app" has been around forever. It's a truncation of "application". I don't think "store" need any explanation. And what kind of retard would think that a generic term can be a trademark?

"Coke" and "Kleenex" were brands BEFORE they became generic terms. That's a different story. These jackasses have the whole thing backwards.

Spite

I hope Apple burns in Hell.

718

Living Room / KewlAid.net - My Deepening Hatred for Fanboys

« on: March 19, 2011, 11:10 AM »

http://kewlaid.net/2...-hatred-for-fanboys/

And NSFW.

I hate douches.

719

Living Room / FULL MOON tonight (March 19) is the LARGEST in 18 Years

« on: March 19, 2011, 05:18 AM »

Make sure to take time to have a look. While not particularly rare, you'll only ever have this opportunity a few times in your life.

That's tonight, March 19th.

BTW - It's beautiful!

720

Developer's Corner / Robosoft from Ground Zero

« on: March 19, 2011, 12:18 AM »

I'm about ready to launch a new site shortly, but along with the site launch, I'm going to be blogging about it at Cynic.me.

There are a bunch of things that I'm going to cover over the next few months.

One of the topics is going to be Robosoft. This is the first introductory post:

Using Robosoft from Ground Zero

...

I’ve gone on for years about how absolutely wicked amazing and mind-blowing Robosoft it and how it can catapult you in the search engines. I’ve threatened to write a book on it as well, and while I managed to start it, I never finished. Well, this is where that all stops. I’m going to blog it out here and show just how Robosoft and PAD work.

...

If you are looking to promote your software, I'd encourage you to read along over the next few months. I'm going to post a lot of information that only a very few people know.

One of my motivations is to show that it works and to silence the nay-sayers.

Now, back to work on actually doing it~!

721

Living Room / Dumbed Down Language Observation

« on: March 16, 2011, 11:07 PM »

I've noticed in the last while that a lot of (American/British) TV shows/movies use the phrase, "you're not the boss of me". In my experience, most people stop speaking like small children sometime around about or before puberty. (Which makes me wonder at what age children learn/use the "my X" vs. "X of me" structures.)

Does the phrase strike anyone as utterly childish? Do people actually speak like that in the US/UK?

It just seems to sit well with other phrases like, "nyah nyah nyah nyah nyah".

722

General Software Discussion / Bizarre Firefox Behaviour

« on: March 16, 2011, 07:10 AM »

I wrote this a short while ago:

http://cynic.me/2011...-this-internet-site/

Internet Explorer 7/8 throws an error when you pop a download through a meta refresh or iframe. The error message looks like this (I’ve blurred the domain as it’s not public yet):

Internet Explorer - Unable to open this Internet site

Searching around didn’t reveal anything of any particular use. Most “solutions” were for clients, which when you’re running a server, doesn’t help much.

Anyways, I decided to go back to basics, and try something really simple… Change the MIME type.

While the MIME type should be “application/octet-stream” for a binary setup file (program installer). However, simply changing it to “application/zip” fixes the problem in Internet Explorer, and popping meta refresh downloads then works.

Well, it was working properly... However, today I noticed that Firefox downloads it then adds a ".zip" extension. WTF? That's very odd. (It didn't before.)

Anyways, I fixed it to be a conditional download, but it just seems wrong that a browser would take it upon itself to rename files.

Is it just me, or is that odd?

723

General Software Discussion / [PREDICTION] You Will Eat a Tablet in the Next Few Years

« on: March 15, 2011, 01:36 AM »

I can see it coming. We are all going to having tablets rammed down our throats in the very near future.

The form factor is too good. They're too versatile. They will create new applications to streamline processes in daily life. Just imagine what could be done in education alone.

Not that it's a bad thing, but it's going to alienate some people.



Now, for my apologies... I know that some were expecting tabs of LSD. Sorry to disappoint.

724

Found Deals and Discounts / $20 for PureComponents

« on: March 13, 2011, 11:57 PM »

While not the best out there, they're cheap:

http://purecomponents.com/indexso.htm

$20 is hard to beat.

It comes with source code as well, so even if you only buy it for the source code as a tutorial, it's worth it.

725

Developer's Corner / Easily Create a USB Portable Version - Cameyo

« on: March 13, 2011, 10:37 PM »

I had someone email me looking for a portable version of my software. I made one using this:

http://www.cameyo.com/

And it works flawlessly.

Just thought I'd share that.