Archive for the 'Tech' Category

Mark Wahlberg likes to talk to animals, will he like this app?

Birds go tweet tweet in beautiful song, humans nowadays go tweet-ing in ugly text speak.

Now technology’s *trying to bridge the gap between ourselves and animals*.

If you’re a pet owner, you probably try to speak for your furbabies, and hey it’s not even that hard, especially with dogs, but now Google is *trying to further break language barriers that have always hindered our interaction with other species*.

Could this really bring us closer to our furry friends, or just make our German Shepherds cock their heads at us in confuzzlement?

“Translate for Animals” is currently an application for Android phones only (and it’s for now only available in Animal to English translation). I’d test it out with my boyfriend’s cell, but I am currently pet-less. (Cry!)

"What a quack!"

Google.co.uk says,

Translate for Animals is an application for Android phones that recognises and transcribes words and phrases that are common to a species, like cats for example. To develop Translate for Animals, we worked closely with many of the world’s top language synthesis teams, and with leaders in the field of animal cognitive linguistics, including senior fellows at the Bodleian Library in Oxford.

"Human, you're an ass."

At least this is what they claim, but I’m sure it is actually … dun dun dun … for entertainment only … or a joke entirely…

Note: It is not Google’s responsibility if you are offended or disappointed by what your chosen animal may say. Also please note, we do not guarantee stimulating conversation.

Pro Tip: As a general rule the higher up in the food chain an animal is, the better a communicator it will be. So if you are after quick witted banter it’s best to select cats and dogs rather than rabbits, hamsters and guinea pigs.

By the way, don’t forget Step 8!

Step 8: Rewarding your pet

Give your pet a treat to say thank you for the conversation and provide encouragment for all the ones you’ll have in the future. Good luck!

Most importantly, don’t get mad at your pet if he/she disses your fashion sense.

The Apple iPad is debuting this Saturday, April 3rd 2010, and that’s no joke. (For today is April Fool’s Day, heh heh, just sayin’…)

This is important information for business owners and bloggers, whether or not you personally are itching to grab the iPad for your two-palm vs. lap-sized computing, it might matter. It might change the way we use the web, and thus the web itself. Is your website ready? Your business?

Perhaps it won’t matter much to all businesses, but it’s  so surprisingly easy to get those extra iPad visitors. Why not make the small effort?

IPad compatibility is about flash. Already search engines and manymany Internet users hate websites based solely in flash, so webmasters should too. But beyond that, did you know that many online videos, such as those ran on YouTube, are in flash as well?

I bet you’ve shared a YouTube video from time to time yourself. And it’s not that you should stop entirely, but you need to be aware enough to make a decision, and the sooner the better.

So what’s a video-happy blogger or a video-star musician, etc. to do?

Well there are sites out there who offer videos in something called HTML5. They’re popular too, and you may already be using them!

The first is Vimeo. If you don’t know much about that video provider, you’ve probably at least seen some of your favorite websites using them anyway, and now you should too! It’s not that we should hate YouTube, or even stop using them entirely right now. If you still want to show YouTube vids, you could also try to find a Vimeo alternative and just link to one, if it exists.

Another alternative mostly for your own personal videos, if you need one, is a source most of us already love for photos; Flickr. If you use Flickr you probably know they’ve been a resource for uploading (and viewing) videos for some time now. If you haven’t tried them out for your more motiony needs yet, now may be the time.

And then once your website is more HTML5-friendly than flash-based, you can try submitting it to Apple’s directory of iPad-ready websites.

One other important tip

for those who upload their own videos: Even if you decide to share/post on your website more from Vimeo or Flickr rather than others, don’t forget the importance of also sharing with YouTube.com, even if you keep the videos on there without “using” them – especially if your videos somewhat market you or your business, it’s still an uber important tool!

Will this issue and the iPad be important for your business’s online presence? Time will tell but it probably cannot hurt to try to cater to these veryvery savvy Apple-heads!

Fun tidbit. Yesterday’s Jeopardy geeked out, or perhaps, “leeted” (or l33ted? ok I’m not a “member”) out with one of their “clues”.

To paraphrase:

What search engine is spelled out in this “leet” language: 600673 (.com) ?

The answer after this…

Read more »

This new Mac Book looks great, mix the Mac Book green with pro and make it small (13″ width, widescreen would be nice) and it could be my next computer.

It’s a good thing the economy is the way it is though, because there is no mention of this machine on Apple.com whatsoever. Or any sign of it being purchasable in the near future. No “Froogle” or news jumps out at me. (And I’m demanding and require that for it to count as marketed.)

The worst thing is that Apple.com’s search doesn’t make any sense, they promote random movies when I search for what should be Apple products. Is this some lame iTunes tie-in? That’s just what it is, lame.

Add a page for every product and/or ad you serve to TV Apple, god, I thought you were smarter than that!

At least(???) we can enjoy the above ad, but it’s kind of like the fairy tale that is the rest of our hopes for bettering our planet. It’s not like I don’t trust Barack Obama, it’s just that well, it’s lame duck season, and unfortunately that doesn’t mean hunting.

A foot note, kudos to YouTube for their new video embed. Not only does it work well with WordPress, but it matches almost any site, which is so tempting now that there are so many other embeddable video sites! I just wish the Google affiliation with it could fit into my layouts (sidebars) like these vids do my posts!! (However we can go straight to YouTube to get Google code for single videos or multiples, so although it won’t fit most sidebars, it’s a great step!) (Of course, getting revenue from embedding YouTube videos into posts is also huge incentive!)

*Update* Vote for this story on these social / “green” sites here:

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When Language comes into play(ed with) on the World Wide Web… is the functionality of code lost in translation?

Stupidity wins another battle in our society, unfortunately. I just found the word, “crêpes” in a ReCaptcha box. Yes, it displayed the character “ê“. Sensing it wouldn’t even accept the correct visual – and correct spelling – nevermind only accept it and not “crepes” completely instead – I hit refresh.

Are you fabbing kidding me???!

Educational Tip: This accent is called “Circumflex” in English translation; “Circonflexe” in French. It is also used in other languages. In this case, it is placed above an “E” (or more precisely for “crêpes”, a lowercase “e”), although on PCs it is typed or “pasted” complete with the corresponding letter.

It seems one just can’t win! Either be incorrect doubly and pass, or put in extra effort (most wouldn’t) and be marked as a spammer??? I really don’t expect ReCaptcha to think people would know/type the alt code or copy from their character maps (Windows). I don’t want that type of security enforced. In fact, I depise most CAPTCHAs, because I usually cannot read them! ReCaptcha is better, for at least they use words that are often real (I did recently see what looked like a name though, ironically a name similar in spelling to a celebrity related to the article on the page, hmmm) and they have a decent refresh method (some others force a loss of comment).

*Update: I now realize this depends upon the scripting and not some lazy ethic. Sure, the site owners and ReCaptcha company may never want to force people to open up their Character Map or learn alt codes, and yet the code may force most to get this wrong – even those like I who would assume what they’re asking, yet didn’t refresh, like I.*

I also contacted the company, informing them of the “innapropriate word”. I do have hope that this is a company eager to fix such a troubling issue. I will post a follow-up to this entry if they respond in an interesting manner. *No response at all yet.*

Footer-Note: Firefox’s spell check informed me, “crêpes” is incorrect – granted, spell check is for a user’s currently-selected primary language, alone.

*Update* 12/19/08: If this tip below doesn’t work for you, check the newest tip below. Click here to jump.

I don’t know if it was my mistake, or the folks at Mozilla thought the status bar wasn’t necessary for Firefox 3.0 – but mine had disappeared. I’m a busy girl so I let this torture me for days of not being able to preview hyperlinks’ URLs (which is a scary thing indeed, it’s dangerous sometimes for real!).

But a bit of poking around led me to the simplest cure: If this happened to you –

Click View, then toggle click Status Bar. It should now be checked and remain. You may even now feel free to turn on/off as you please.

Mine’s staying. Whew!!

*Update* I just found this post on Google when I encountered this again, but this time it’s due to being mid-Firefox upgrade. What fixed it this time was closing and re-opening Firefox. The upgrade was complete and my status bar returned. I don’t know why this happened. But I hope I can help some others!

Footer-Note: This little post is no sign of the quality of great posts that are to come soon. However, we will now run a series of occasional extremely short tips, under the tag: Tip Bytes. (See the tags below.)

Is the easy micro-ness of constant 140 char-max Tweets, with capabilities for linking and sharing pics, going to kill the “art” of blogging, or “macro” blogging?

I think it’s doing it for me. It used to be I dropped a topic when I couldn’t think of more than a sentence to write, now I can Tweet it from an appropriate account that matches its comparable blog’s topic. Or perhaps I’d even ponder the subject for a while to flesh out something meaningful to write. Suddenly tweets such as, “bag-gasm!” + link suffice.

It’s become really, really hard for me to macro blog anymore. And it’s pretty evident by the fact that I’m not really doing it. Barely here, or on Kiss Me Stace, not at all at Bag Dream, etc.

One example is for this blog, I want to write about this really gorgeous laptop case. And all I can think of writing is “elegant”. God, sometimes I can’t even fill out the 140 chars, and it’s horrible.

Someone needs to do some research on whether (and if so, how much) regular blog posts have lessened since Twitter rose to such fame. But it can’t be I, because I’m not only now a Twit, but Twitterpated by a boy. Double whammy on me, and it’s really not productive!

Just watch out for when monetizing Twitter.com becomes easier and more direct. Yowch.

This will be quick, because I can’t know for sure about a full review until (if) I’m married to someone from a dating site. Or well, at my 50th anniversary, or I become a widow…. damn, where’s my mind going in this happy time? …

Anyway, I joined Chemistry.com a while back when I was fed up with Match.com. Now after an initial technical snafu, which need not be mentioned right now, I met a few people.

Basically my review is positive, because I met someone who seems to be great …. and I wouldn’t have met him otherwise. No, not on Match.com. He’s a bit far away from me, on the opposite side of Florida’s Everglades, and neither of us specifically look very far from our homes. But Chemistry still showed him my profile, and the rest is … the future? Tehe.

Now this is very different from when Match.com “matches” you (or lets winks occur, etc.) with people you’re not looking for. Like say you’re a woman and you upload gorgeous photos of yourself … and then you get people over 20 years older than you are contacting you. Yeah, not the same kind of expanding your range.

So far, Chemistry = Win.

I’ll keep you posted, since it is related to this blog. (Yay.)

So, continuing my nerdy adventures, a guy from Chemistry.com contacted me. No, not through Chemistry, but YouTube. (My YouTube account link, in case you want to check it out.) Scary? No, not to me – impressive! A guy so computer geeky he needs not to pay for dating sites. This really inspired me.

We’ve gone out a couple of times, but our nerdiness and awkwardness really slowed things down. Right now it’s like a snail in hibernation, but that’s alright.

I went on to practice my own Googling skills because I feel i should really fulfill my Internet Superpower potential, don’t you think?

So every time someone says something I want to learn more about, I now Google it. I don’t take things for granted anymore. No faulty argument can fool me!

This Googling-everything thing can get one into trouble, if one isn’t careful, like with the micro-trend of being a DIY Doctor via Google. One night I was crying and my lip swelled and I ended up thinking I was allergic to my own tears (they got on my lip). I thought this was such a romantic fantasy for being an uber nerd – so many allergies including to something from my own body. I’m such a loser – lol. But my friend and I determined it was just my allergy to dust (dust on my pillow, face in pillow). Oh that’s all. It’s ‘k, that’s nerdy, too, right?

I also searched for people via Google, and I realized the secret to actually finding people is to continue clicking on links on the results pages. Like a user has links to other pages, and also gives hints, like a username can be then put into Google, etc. So my big success is that I found a High School friend I’d been searching for for, literally, years! I found her blog, then her e-mail address, and confirmed her photo on Facebook. Even though I have her e-mail address, I’m nervous about writing, so I just friended her. I still haven’t heard back … but on the plus side I also transferred my college friend from just MySpace into being the newest Facebook user! (And I was her first friend.) Go me.

Then pondering how it seems no one does pay for online dating sites, when another computery guy winked at me on Match.com, I decided to try out this approach. I followed him on Twitter, etc. I now understand this can be a “mistake” with some people, but if they’re scared off, it’s due to their own issues, and I don’t need that! See even though this guy’s Twitter bio simply reads, “hacker”, he doesn’t seem to appreciate women who posess those skills. I did read on his Match profile his turn-off is aggression/assertiveness, but I thought I’d pass because I’m very shy in person – I forgot that my lack of shy online might matter, too! Oh well, moving on. You know he has about 500 (probably no exaggeration) FEMALE friends on Facebook, anyway – shady.

Anyway, as it’s obvious I’m able to blog (slash *work*) again, I’ve needed to slow way down on my Second Life usage. I barely sign in anymore except to pay my weekly land tier, which seems a bit ridiculous, but c’est la vie deux. Before I paused I managed to get as far as to mostly finish my first t-shirt! I’m a fast learner, no?

And now that I’ve pretty much told my downtime story, I need to get on to working, and stop this chatting. Except for on Twitter. (My Twitter link.) Can’t help that.

I was forced to take a break from blogging soon after my last post on here because suddenly my eyesight drastically worsened overnight. I went from avoiding my chic glasses (that I barely needed) because my long eyelashes fog them up—to them not even working at all for me while I squinted at any words smaller than H1 with eyes an inch away from my laptop screen, then increasing the font size in Firefox at least twice.

I was nearly blind, but only when it came to reading, for a few days before I was able to borrow a pair of those generic magnifying eyeglasses from a friend. I’ve decided these work really great for me, and plan to go shopping for fashionable pairs, but haven’t yet.

So what to do while I obviously couldn’t write (no proofreading) and couldn’t craft either (I look while I knit and sewing – forget it) – well……..

I decided to start up that web comic I’d been thinking about, but I wanted to use avatars (originally thought from meez.com) as characters to save me time. I don’t have time for more hobbies, especially ones with no wish for real money-making, so I didn’t want to spend a lot of time vectoring each scene myself….

So even though I’m virtually (no pun intended this time, I swear) banned from Second Life because I’d probably most definitely become addicted to it, I found myself trying it out again (first time I surprisingly didn’t like it – but to be fair I gave up on it quickly because after all, it was contraban, tehe).

And well. I ended up forgetting all about (for the time being) the web comic.

Because I’ve realized SL is actually an amazing outlet for me to produce fashion designs for. So I spent some time (I said some, ok? just some) learning how to get around, tweaking my avatar (because that’s absolutely necessary no matter what, doi) and um preparing for starting to learn, and eventually diving into, building in Second Life.

Um, yes, I have bought a home, and pay weekly “tier” but it’s all to help me learn to build and get by in the world. And it hasn’t been all that time consuming.

It’s not like I started having surreal dreams. Or seeing live humans and thinking they look like computer avatars, not vice versa. No no. No. No. No, ok? Well that’s the official story.

It’s all to help me in my career, you see. I’m not playing. Perish the thought!

Now I’m getting antsy with all this work and proofreading, so far, so I’m going to pause my tales for now. But I’ll be “working”, “not” “wasting time on the Internet”.