TheWebMirror.com » Computers

Funny Geek License Plates

Rev — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 13:00:27 +0000

Tux the penguin, mascot of the Linux kernel. OS family

The hex color for white

Binary for the letter “J”

Great Geek Girl Panties

Rev — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 13:00:00 +0000

If You Printed The Internet

Rev — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 13:00:35 +0000

Some interesting facts to show just how big the internet currently is.

Want to sleep at work?

admin — Tue, 04 Aug 2009 17:50:38 +0000

There’s an app for that.

If ever an iPhone app was created for the George Costanzas of the world, it’s this one: iNap@Work simulates office sounds so you can snooze while the people around you think you’re working.

I mean, seriously, wouldn’t a 20-minute siesta be fantastic right about now? Just fire up iNap@Work, then adjust its five sound-effect sliders until they accurately reproduce the sounds that would normally come from your cubicle.

The app simulates mouse clicking, keyboard tapping, paper crumpling, stapler stapling, pencil sharpening, and tissue, um, using.

Needless to say, it’s a pretty hilarious piece of code. I’m sure it’s the rare office where you could actually put it to use (without getting caught and fired, anyway), but it’s definitely good for a laugh.

Funny WiFi Network Names

admin — Sun, 02 Aug 2009 13:00:34 +0000

So you turn on your laptop, check the available WiFi networks, and find…

MySpace now a “digital ghetto”

Rev — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 16:54:59 +0000

Abandon your MySpace account for Facebook? You might just be a racist.

At a keynote speech during New York’s Democracy forum at Lincoln Center, Danah Boyd spoke of the racial disparity and possible reasons for mass abandonment of MySpace for the “more cultured” and “less cheesy” social networking site Facebook. Boyd, a social media researcher for Microsoft and fellow of the Harvard University Berkman Center for Internet and Society, stated:

“We might as well face an uncomfortable reality … what happened was modern day ‘white flight’.”

Boyd also observed that:

“The fact that digital migration is revealing the same social patterns as urban white flight should send warning signals to all of us. It should scare the hell out of us.”

Referring to MySpace as the “ghetto of the digital landscape,” Boyd indicated that MySpace users are more likely to be “brown or black” and espouse a different set of ideals in conflict with those espoused by the teens she surveyed over four years. She said that patterns in migration across social networking sites echoed those of a white exodus from cities in the past. Boyd also said that teens who use Facebook are more likely to condescend their MySpace-favoring peers.

“Any high school student who has a Facebook page will tell you MySpace users are more likely to be barely educated and obnoxious… like Peet’s is more cultured than Starbucks and jazz is more cultured than bubblegum pop. And Macs are more cultured than PCs.”

Teens aren’t even the worst culprits when it comes to socio-economic social media judgment passing. The New York Observer cites a quote from BusinessWeek’s Jon Fine in December 2008:

“If you’re on MySpace now, you’re a [expletive] cretin. And you’re not only a [expletive] cretin, but you’re poor. Nobody who has beyond an 8th grade level of education is on MySpace. It is for backwards people.”

Boyd’s research indicated that the class divisions were likely to only worsen over time, as the media continues to portay MySpace as a seedy stomping ground for pedophiles and Facebook as a “utopian savior.” She contends:

“There’s a cultural wall between users. If there’s no way for people to communicate across the divide, you can never expect them to do so.”

Facebook Breast Ban Ended by Cancer Case

Rev — Fri, 29 May 2009 21:19:16 +0000

An outcry from breastfeeding mothers wasn’t enough to get Facebook to lift its ban on “exposed breast” earlier this year. But a breast cancer awareness campaign has finally ended the absurdly broad restriction.

Sharon Adams uploaded a picture of her post-mastectomy chest to the social network as part of an effort to encourage women to get regular breast exams. Facebook removed it within a day as “sexual and abusive.”

After 900 people joined a Facebook protest group, the company backed down and reinstated the picture (the graphic image is attached to this Daily Mail story).

The site even went so far as to say it was sorry:

Our user operations team reviews thousands of reported photos a day and may occasionally remove something-that doesn’t actually violate our policies. This is what happened here. We apologise.

Better than an apology would be for Facebook to finally fix its long-abused content-flagging system, perhaps by hiring enough staff to keep up with the growth in its user base. Or maybe the company just needs a seminar to get its moderators more comfortable with the sight of the female chest.

25 Firefox Extensions to Make You More Productive

Rev — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 14:44:07 +0000

Firefox is my weapon of choice when it comes to browsing the web. It’s fast, free, and gives the user the best feature ever: Choice.

The beauty of the Firefox extension is that it allows you to add a specific feature or function, fully customizing your browsing experience. For someone wanting to make the most of their online time, this is a huge opportunity. There are limitless ways to tailor your browsing with Firefox extensions. Here are 25 of my favorite extensions that help me save time while online.

Autocopy – The name pretty much says it all. Instead of having to hit cmd +c (or ctrl + C for our Windows readers), every time you highlight text it automatically copies it to the clipboard. If you don’t want it on 100% of the time, you can toggle it on and off in the bottom-right of the browser.

Better Gmail – A must-have for any Gmail user. Maintained by the legendary Gina Trapani of Lifehacker, Better Gmail adds some killer features that would make any developer at Google scratch their head and wonder “Why didn’t I think of that?!”. Keyboard macros, saved searches, right-click preview views and integrate Google Reader to name a few. (The keyboard macros are enough of a reason to install this little filly, in my humble opinion.)

Better GReader – Another gem from Gina for Google Reader. Add feeds to GReader and bypass the default add page from Google, make the most of the reading area and take advantage of some great keyboard shortcuts, to name a few.

No Squint – Finding yourself going cross-eyed form leaning too close to the monitor? No Squint can fix it. Specify a percentage to show all text that’s larger than the default for your screen resolution. You can either make all sites a default size, or only specify a few with different font sizes.

Remember the Milk for Gmail – If you’re a fan of the todo list application Remember the Milk, you’ll love this extension. Fully mange your todo items inside of Gmail, instead of having to trek over to the RTM website every time you want to check off a task. You can also quickly assign emails as tasks. Very slick.

Shareaholic- An indispensable extension for those who do a lot of social bookmarking with digg, del.icio.us, twitter, or maintain a tumblelog. In one click you can share the page you’re on with the previously mentioned services (plus a few more) without spending any more time than you have to away from the article.

LeechBlock – If you’re feeling a little vulnerable to the addictive qualities of certain websites, use LeechBlock to literally force you from visiting them within a certain time period of the day. No joke. Not for the faint of heart, or those with problems with authority.

Read it later – Don’t have time to really focus on an article you’ve found? This extension will enable you to quickly save the page you’re browsing until you’re able to read it. Once you’re ready to read your saved articles, the extension will open the articles in new tabs with the click of a button.

Scrapbook – Much like the Read it Later extension, Scrapbook allows you to quickly save pages for later reading. However, it has a few more great features, like taking whole snippets of pages (like Google Notebook), searching within snippets, saving whole websites, and you can even organize the snippets like bookmarks. Perfect for researching or in-depth bookmarking.

Meetimer- Meetimer is a great way to get a handle on just how much time you’re spending on various sites around the web. You can group sites into categories (ie. facebook.com = “procrastination”), and track just how much

Copy Plain Text- The name pretty much says it all. If you do a lot of writing in WYSIWYG editors (blogging and other word processors), then this extension can come in pretty handy. Copy Plain Text will leave all the bolds, italics and other unwanted formatting when you copy and paste into text fields.

Ad Block Plus- For those obsessed with a zen-like minimalist approach to web browsing, this Ad Block Plus will surely keep you focused. Kill annoying banners and ads by simplying installing the extension and right-clicking the banner on the page. Once you’ve clicked the banner, you’ll never see it again as long as the extension is turned on.

Gmail Conversation Preview – A nifty little Greasemonkey script that allows you right-click and see the body of the email, without opening it. Simple and slick.

Invisibility cloak – Lifehacker’s solution to blank out certain time-wasting sites that kill productivity. This is a much smaller version of LeechBlock.

Add a second inbox to your Gmail account – Quickly and easily toggle between Gmail inboxes. Perfect for those with a business and personal email accounts at Gmail.

FEBE – On the surface, FEBE will quickly and easily backup your Firefox extensions. But the fun doesn’t stop there. You can also sync multiple computers with the same Firefox extensions, and even set up automatic backups, ensuring that you’ll never lose your Firefox configurations again.

del.icio.us bookmarks – Save, search and share your Del.icio.us bookmarks easily inside of Firefox. Browsing your bookmarks is especially easy with the del.icio.us sidebar.

Googlepedia – I find this extension extremely valuable for getting a more holistic Google search. Googlepedia splits the Google search results in half and shows the relevant Wikipedia page for the search alongside the Google results.

Errorzilla Mod – This extension is pretty nifty for troubleshooting error pages that you might come across, giving you the Google Cache, Wayback Machine, Whois, and tons of other useful information about the site and page in question.

Pageaddict – Pageaddict simply shows your internet usage by website. It’s not as intrusive as Invisibility Cloak or LeechBlock, but it can provide a helpful look at where you really spend your time online.

urlfixer – I can’t tell you how many times I’ve typed in “gmail.cmo” to get a frustrating error page. Instead of having to perfectly type in every url, urlfixer can usually guess where you’re trying to go, and will send you there anyway.

Colorful Tabs – This extension is deceptively useful. Much like office file-folder tabs, colorful tabs gives a color to each tab opened in Firefox. Quickly find which tab you need without having to read it.

Faviconize Tab – Save some serious tab bar real estate with Faviconize tabs. With a simple right-click, you can shrink each tab to only the size of the favicon(16×16px), giving you much more room for open tabs.

Google Notebook- Google notebook is another bookmarking tool, except it can save whole excerpts from pages, images and links. Quickly save all parts of a page into an digital “notebook” for easily collecting. Not quite as nifty as the Scrapbook extension, but definitely a contender.

Dictionary Tooltip – A perfect companion for any writer. Just highlight any word and hit Ctrl + Shift + D to see the word’s definition, without having to open a new window.

Google’s Zurich Office

Rev — Sun, 16 Mar 2008 02:35:38 +0000

Seeing such offices makes you wish you were working for Google. They have
everything a person needs in there and even more. They have massage chairs,
slides, pool tables and other games, private cabins and much more. These photos
are from Google’s office in Zurich.

Extreme computer cases

Rev — Wed, 19 Dec 2007 19:40:01 +0000

“Virgil” by Valery Zhuk

Outfit your humble PC for world domination

Extreme computer “case modding” community has some truly talented designers, who are as passionate about their PC cases, as MI6 wizards were about James Bond killer gadgets. In some cases (pun intended), the end product has truly radical looks and some wicked innards ready to unleash a gamer’s fury upon the world…

Here is an update of what’s going on in Ukraine, for example:
DPK modding community 2007 competition entries:

“Age Reincarnation”, by Alexander Kolesnikov

‘Mirtus Communicus” by Artem Novikov

“R2D14m” by Pavel Rafalovich

“Recycle Your Computer” by Alexey Chistov

“Me Lady” by Artem Zheleznyak

“Wheel Case” by Alexander Kolesnikov

mod by Alexander Brikov

“Charged!” by Alexey Chistov

mod by Vogdan Suk
(images credit: dpk.com.ua)

On the other side of the ocean, American case-modders are going nuts, too:

WMD
Weapons of Mass Destruction can now be a feature of any office, if you so desire.
The whole project is documented here

WMD II:

via Gadgets Fosfor. They have another interesting weird mod list.

Probably the best case modding company

Best Case Scenario certainly rocks.
Here is the “Matrix Regenerator”
(there is something living inside of it…possibly)

They also have very cool Alien case mod

Fusion Mods has a nice thread devoted to this art:

More after the jump…

The Best Laptops For Work and Play.
Download Your Favorite Music Onto These MP3 Players!

Tumbler Batmobile PC:

———
Everybody has seen “The Microwave PC”:

(image credit: Engadget)

Neatorama has compiled the ultimate case mod catalog, featuring plenty of “household appliances” PC mods, for example. Some of my favorites:

“The Skeleton Case Mod”:

(image credit: http://www.extremetech.com)

best case is no case:

(image credit: bit-tech.net)

and Stained Glass computer case:

(image credit: BoredStop)

Pick up a pre-modded computer case.

———

Check out some photos from the recent Computer Case Mod Show:
(images courtesy Shutki-mozga.ru)

(images credit: Shutki mozga)