100,000 Invites: Everything You Need to Know About Tomorrow’s Google Wave Preview Launch

money management

Money management is now easy with moneystrands.

If you do not want to monitor multiple bank sites and maintain painful spreadsheets anymore, then moneyStrands automatically pulls together data from your bank, credit card and investment accounts to provide an accurate, up-to-date picture of your financial life broken down by meaningful automatically identified categories along with flexible user defined transaction types. Best of all, moneyStrands is 100% FREE.

Where does your money go?

Get a clear view of how much you spend eating out, gassing up the car and those guilty pleasures. Then look at your spending trends or drill down into individual categories to see just where all the money you earn goes. Easily define budgets, see projectionsalerts to help you follow your plan.

Your data wherever you go

Thanks to our easy to use mobile widget you’ll have immediate access to all your financial data anytime, anywhere on your smart phone. Check balances and receive text alerts on-the-go. moneyStrands keeps working for you where ever life happens to take you. All you need is a web browser to enjoy moneyStrands on the go.

How do you mesure up?

Find and connect with like-minded members who share your goals and your traits. See how you compare, share your thoughts on best bargains or just exchange financial tips and money missteps. Your experience is as valuable as any others and there is no better insider track than following to the word of mouth.

Savings and recommendations

moneyStrands intelligent recommendation engine constantly searches through numerous offers from a multitude of service providers to find the best deals on everything from credit cards to complementary products that fit your financial condition. We know recommendations are only as good as the value they add to your bottom line. moneyStrands recommendations are bias free and are uniquely tailored to your needs based on your spending, saving and investing patterns.

outright offers you free online bookkeeping

Outright is out of beta.
Outright is a very simple-to-use web service that helps you track income and expenses, pay estimated taxes on time, and see how your business is doing. It’s perfect for self employed people. Unfortunately only for the US, but a great product.

Iris Notes

IRISnotes is a pen and mobile note taker that can capture handwritten notes and drawings, as well as edit, save and export them. Your handwritten notes can be instantly converted into editable text in a wide range of languages.

Turn your handwritten notes into editable text*!

Simply write your text using the provided ink pen. Your handwritten notes will be instantly converted into editable text!
Use your pen as a mouse

You can set the pen to mouse mode. In this mode, tapping the pen in the writing area or pressing the button on the side of the pen will act like a single mouse click.

Easy-to-use wireless connection*

Write your notes anytime, anywhere! When you are back to your computer, simply connect the USB receiver. Your notes will be instantly converted!
Works on any paper with normal ink refill

You can write your notes on any kind of paper! Simply place the receiver on the top or the corner of your document and you are ready to write!

*Only on Windows

Etze, buying and selling handycrafts online

Etsy is an online marketplace where you can buy and sell items that are handmade, as well as vintage goods and crafting supplies.

Etzy mission is to enable people to make a living making things, and to reconnect makers with buyers.

Their vision is to build a new economy and present a better choice:

Buy, Sell, and Live Handmade.

The Etsy community spans the globe with buyers and sellers coming from more than 150 countries. Etsy sellers number in the hundreds of thousands.
If each of these sellers stood outside at night with a really bright flashlight pointed towards the sky, it might look something like the image to the right.

Mobileme not synchronizing your contacts any longer?

I had a problem with mobileme. I could not sync my contacts. They were fine in my iphone (my main input tool) and on mobileme. My macbook pro was not synchronizing…

I tried everything, from going to the settings of mobileme in my mac and reseting it, to delete everything on my mac in order to have mobileme overwritting…. nothing worked. I got a message saying that there was an inconsistency.

Finally I came up with a solution.

I do keep backups of the contacts of my macbook. The problem was that the ones in the iPhone/mobileme were updated and those in the mac were not.

The solution was:

1.- Export vcards from the mobileme site.
2.- Import them into the mac (here I lost all the profile photos and groups…)
3.- At this stage mac and mobile me and iphone was syncronizing again. Good.
4.- Import the latest backup to my address book in the mac. That overwrites the  everything. No big deal, in the back up, even if it was not updated I had all the photos and groups.
5.- Import the vcards but, do not merge them though. You will be prompted with what to do and you have to select to duplicate contacts, so you will end up with two different entries for each person (plus those unique sure).
6.- Now you go to the address book and click on find duplicates, then merge them.

There you are. Now you have all your contacts, plus the new ones, and you have recover the groups and photos.

iPhone 3GS voice commands in Spanish

Llamar a un contacto

Diga “llamar” o “marcar” y, a continuación, el nombre de la persona. Si una persona tiene más de un número de teléfono, puede añadir “fijo” o “móvil”, por ejemplo.

Marcar un número

Diga “llamar” o “marcar” y, a continuación, el número.

Realizar una corrección

Diga “error”, “ese no” o “no”.

Controlar la reproducción de música

Diga “reproducir” o “reproducir música”. Para poner en pausa la reproducción, diga “pausa” o “poner música en pausa”. También puede decir “siguiente canción” o “canción anterior”.

Reproducir un álbum, artista o lista de reproducción

Diga “reproducir” y, a continuación, “álbum” “artista” o “lista” y el nombre.

Reorganizar aleatoriamente la lista de reproducción actual

Diga “aleatorio”.

Obtener más información sobre la canción que se está reproduciendo en estos momentos

Diga “qué suena”, “qué canción es esta”, “quién canta esta canción” o “de quién es esta canción”.

Usar Genius para reproducir canciones similares

Diga “Genius”, “reproducir más canciones así” o “reproducir más canciones como esta”.

Cancelar “Control por voz”

Diga “cancelar”.

No to all in windows xp

When you drag the files from the source to the target directory, Windows XP alerts you that a file exists in the target location with the same filename as one you’re trying to copy. It also asks you whether it should replace the existing file or not, as shown.

If you were working in Windows Vista, Windows 7, or Mac OS X, you could easily tell the operating system not to replace the duplicate file and to apply that action to all the other duplicates. Windows XP however, doesn’t give you a “No to All” or “Apply to All” option, just a “Yes to All”, which would replace all the duplicate files and isn’t the action we want.

Shift + No button

Luckily, there is a hidden solution. Hold down the Shift key when you click the No button. This will produce a “No to All” effect. Why Microsoft didn’t include a “No to All” or “Apply to All” option in Windows XP is beyond me, but at least this simple trick works.

Picasa 3.5 with face recognition and google maps

Picasa 3.5, a new version of our free photo editing software for Mac or PC. Picasa 3.5 has name tags and uses the same technology that powers name tags on Picasa Web Albums. With name tags, you can organize your photos based on what matters most: the people in them.

When you first launch Picasa 3.5, it will start scanning the photos in your computer’s collection to create groups of similar faces. It puts all these groups into the “Unnamed People” album, where you can easily add a name tag to a set of faces by clicking “Add a name” and typing the person’s name. Make sure you’re signed into your Google account so names you type will auto-complete with your Google contacts.

After you add a name tag, all pictures that Picasa has identified as that person are automatically added to a new album named after them. As Picasa scans more faces, it will suggest pictures that it thinks match faces already in your people albums. These suggestions are shown with an orange question mark next to the person’s album.

In addition to uploading and sharing your newly tagged photos to Picasa Web Albums, you can use the name tags you’ve added and your new people albums to do creative things with your photos. For example, you can find all of the photos with the same two people in them, create customizable face collages, time-lapse movies, and more.

Since name tags now work on both Picasa and Picasa Web Albums, you can share name tags between the two. If you’ve added name tags in Picasa Web Albums, go to Tools > “Download Name Tags from Picasa Web Albums” in Picasa to import all the names you’ve added online (and save yourself a lot of time). It works the other way as well: if you’re using name tags in Picasa Web Albums, any name tags you add in Picasa are automatically uploaded to Picasa Web Albums when you upload tagged photos, but you can keep all name tag info on your computer if you choose.

Picasa 3.5 also has integrated Google Maps to make geotagging even easier. Now you can add location info to photos — one photo at a time or several photos at once. Simply select pictures, click the Places panel, search or surf to a place, and drop a pin in the right place on the map. Once you’ve added geo tags, you can select a group of photos and see where they were all taken.

Nothing has changed in the way the geo information is applied to your photos — it will still write exact location data to your photo file, but now you don’t need to install and open Google Earth to add geo tags (although you can still geotag with Google Earth if you want). And of course, any location data you add in Picasa will automatically sync to Picasa Web Albums when you upload.

We’ve also given our import process a major make-over. Designed based on feedback from Picasa users, you can now upload photos right to Picasa Web Albums during the import process from your camera or memory card. Since you don’t always want to share or upload every photo that you import, you can choose to upload or share only the starred photos, while the rest are imported to your hard drive.

Plus, we’ve added an entirely new ‘Tags’ panel in Picasa 3.5. You can use the ‘Quick Tag’ functionality to access your most commonly used tags, or use tag counts to see the number of photos to which a tag has been applied.

Finally, we launched Picasa for Mac as a beta Labs product 9 months ago. Now that Picasa for Mac has almost all the same features as the PC version, we’ve decided it’s time to remove the beta label. Remember that Picasa for Mac is designed to “play nice” with iPhoto — Picasa takes a special read-only approach to editing photos stored in the iPhoto library, duplicating files as needed, so your iPhoto library isn’t ever affected when you use Picasa.

Here’s a short video overview of what’s new in Picasa 3.5.

Starbucks Goes Mobile: Pay For Coffee With Your iPhone

Starbucks and the iPhone are sort of the perfect combination. You can browse the web for free on the AT&T hotspots, you can buy in-store songs from iTunes right from your phone, and now you can use two new official iPhone apps.

Now available in the App Store, myStarbucks (iTunes Link) and Starbucks Card Mobile (iTunes Link) let users find their nearest Starbucks and manage their Starbucks Card. If you live near one of 16 stores in the Seattle or Bay Area, you can even pay for your purchases with the Starbucks Card Mobile app via barcode.

Starbucks is a little late to the store-locator game, as a number of unofficial applications — both free and paid — already exist to show store locations or keep track of your Starbucks Card balance, but the official apps offer a lot of functionality, great design, and an unbeatable price — free.

In myStarbucks, you can find the locations near you, either by entering in your address or letting the app use your iPhone or iPod touch’s built-in GPS or WiFi locator. You can search for stores based on certain factors, like drive-thru, operating hours (are they open now) and what type of food they offer. You can also add a store to your favorite’s list and call the store directly from the app or invite people in your address book to join you for a latte.

One of the cooler features is the ability create your own drink configurations — hot and cold –and save them. The order is viewable and you can show it to a barista if you are in a hurry. Hopefully, the pay via iPhone option is rolled out across more locations, because combined with the drink configuration tool, it would certainly make grabbing coffee more convenient.

What do you think about store-branded iPhone apps? What are some of your favorites?

WebNotes, a nice web annotation tool

Web annotation services let people add their own virtual Sticky Notes or comments to Web pages for others to see. But Web annotation is back with the launch today of Google’s Sidewiki. To be honest, I don’t have high hopes for Sidewiki. Marking up the Web has limited appeal to the average consumer.

A better approach, if you are not Google, is to make Web annotation an enterprise product and go after a specific industry that will actually value (and pay) for it. Boston-based WebNotes is doing just that by shifting its focus from consumers to professionals. Today, it launched WebNotes PR, which takes its basic Web annotation technology and turns it into a press clip service for public relations firms.

One thing PR firms do is keep track of all press and blog mentions of their clients and deliver these clips on a daily or weekly basis. These clip files used to come in the form of Xeroxed articles from newspapers, magazines, and other print publications,with the name of the client company highlighted every time it was mentioned. Some companies still get these dead-tree clip files, but for the most part they’ve been replaced by daily emails with links and other digital descendants of the original.

WebNotes PR lets someone at a PR agency highlight articles and blog posts online, add sticky notes, and pull excerpts into digital reports with links back to the highlighted versions. These reports can be sent out as emails or PDFs. The articles can be organized into folders. It supports keyword searches via Google News, Google Blog Search, Technorati, or Twitter, and these searches can be saved as an RSS feed. Any RSS feed from any publication can be added as well.

The highlighting and collecting are done via a browser toolbar or bookmarklet, and the service costs $300/user/year or $35/user/month. Any information source that can be accessed over the Web can be annotated (although if it is a password-protected service, the viewer must also have access). Here is an example of a what a highlighted version of a TechCrunch page looks like—you can drag the note around, but it is read-only. I personally have no interest in marking up Web pages for the random public, but if it was my job to mark it up for specific clients, this is the way I’d do it.

Wedding Proposal

Human Canvas: Body Painting Meets Fine Art

Emma Hack has made a name for herself as one of the most creative and visionary Australian artists to come along in years. But she doesn’t work on canvas or clay; her medium is the beautiful form of the human body.

Hack began her career as a makeup artist, hairdresser and children’s face painter. But her talents have continued to grow and evolve over the last two decades into the mature and fascinating form she works in today. Her paintings are applied directly to models’ bodies and match up perfectly with their background, acting as a kind of camouflage. But the bodies are not entirely hidden in the patterns; rather, they become part of the pattern and allow the background to flow even more beautifully.

The wallpapers featured are by the legendary designer Florence Broadhurst, licensed specifically for Hack’s use. The intricate designs can sometimes take up to 19 hours to apply. When finished, the model’s body is at once a continuation of the design and a completely unique work of art on its own. The designs accentuate, rather than hide, the fluid beauty and grace of the human form.

The wallpaper paintings began with Emma doing the painting herself and a photographer making the images. However, as she has continued to grow as an artist, Emma has taken over the photographyas well. She has experimented with adding creatures and other types of designs in to her paintings, adding a new element to the concept of her amazing body art.

Although most of her subjects have been female, Emma has also experimented with painting the male form. The wallpaper designs she uses with the male models are necessarily different; they highlight the strength of the male form and the very different curvatures of the male body. She calls all of her models her “muses,” and her affection for the art and for the human form is apparent in every painting. She manages to make the bodies of her muses look infinitely inviting, fragile and soft without once over-sexualizing them.

Emma’s work has been shown and celebrated all around the world, winning her several awards and establishing a firm following for the budding artist. She has done many series other than the Wallpapers, including “Cowscape” which features stunning paintings on cows. Her inspiration, she says, comes from nature and all of the diverse cultures of the world.

(from weburbanist)

PBworks Adds Microblogging And Email Upload Features To Wikis

PBworks (formally known as PBwiki), a startup that specializes in helping businesses, non-profits, and educational institutions collaborate via wikis, today announced its Social Collaboration Update for PBworks Project Edition and Legal Edition, which integrates social media-style user profiles and microblogging to help teams work together more easily.

The new user profiles in PBworks allow organizations to specify which fields to include (e.g. office location, department, relevant skills and experience, etc., converting a company’s PBworks Network into a searchable personnel roster. Now, user profiles automatically include a list of the users contributions such as edits and file uploads, as well as tasks each user is working on.

PBworks is also going more social with the release of real-time, Twitter-style microblogging to facilitate unstructured collaboration such as brainstorming and discussions. Along with real-time updates, PBworks has added email upload support, so authorized users can add wiki pages and upload files simply by sending an email to that wiki.

The “Social Collaboration Update” as PBworks is calling it, is available today for all Project Edition and Legal Edition customers. PBworks is based in San Mateo, Calif., and has raised $2.45 million in venture funding to date.

Crazy Contortionist Art: Bodies in Urban Spaces

How would you react if you were walking down a crowded city street and 20 people suddenly ran past you and crammed their bodies into the tiny space between two buildings? What if you happened to look up and see someone hanging from a street light, wedged into a window frame, or squeezed into the space between a tree and a building? It’s those reactions that spur Willi Dorner to create his intriguing, though temporary, living sculptures.

The Vienna-based Compagnie Willie Dorner was formed in 1999. Dorner strives to do more than simply entertain: he wants to create an experience for the audience. He wants to inspire viewers to change their perspective and see things in a slightly different way. Seeing a group of people in a place where people usually do not go and in a configuration that’s never been seen forces the mind to open to new possibilities. It inspires the viewer to see these overlooked spaces as a living part of the cityscape, and to reconsider which behaviors they deem appropriate for public places.

Cie. Willi Dorner has toured all over the world, though the “bodies” are different in each location. Dorner uses local performers in every city. He chooses dancers who are strong, flexible and light; they need to hold difficult and uncomfortable positions, squeeze into tight spaces, and pile on top of other performers without crushing them.

The group’s guerilla art performances consist of the dancers trotting from location to location, then leaping into formation for a short time. The spaces and their positions vary widely; from squeezing a few people under a park bench to piling a dozen bodies into a doorway to creating a mound of people that cascades over a fence. After holding the position for a bit, they silently stand up and job to the next location. Viewers are urged to follow the group around, seeing how their bodies interact with the settings in each new location.

You might even call these performances urban exploration. After all, the performers are putting themselves into spaces where bodies normally do not go, using urban spaces in a completely new way, and exploring the cities’ environments in a way that no one has before. And, even better, the performers are involving the public in their exploration. The interaction between the artists and the viewer makes for a completely unique experience, one that differs entirely based on whether the viewer saw the group before they assembled in the gathering point or noticed them as a static part of the scenery.

The public – and police – have a variety of reactions to the group’s performances. Some watch in amazement, some laugh, and some – particularly the police – disapprove of the displays. However, Dorner is careful to clear the performances with local authoritiesbeforehand. According to him, some cities are much more difficult to get permission from than others. In particular, Dorner says, American and British cities pose a problem where the authorities are concerned. His performers are often stopped by police who think they are vandals or thieves.

(from weburbanist)