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It caught my attention the fact they sell themselves as a Dropbox killer, I had to try.

Insync (http://insynchq.com) is, like Dropbox, a little program you can install in a mac or pc even if you are not an admin (which for my work laptop is a must) and that has for objective to sync a local folder among your computers, with a copy online… but with a huge difference from services such as Dropbox or SugarSync, or box.net…

First: it is free. But sure, Dropbox is free for a couple of Gigs too, and SugarSync free for 5Gb…

Second: it uses GDrive or Google Docs as storage and online sharing and versioning… so:

They don’t have to host anything, and you pay Google for storage.

The difference with Dropbox is that for instance a 50Gb with Dropbox costs $9.99 per month, and a 20Gb with Google costs $5…. a year!!! or 80Gb for $20 a year!!

• For $200 per year Dropbox gives you 100Gb
• For $100 per year Google gives you 200Gb

For me this is a no brainier. I was already using Google docs, so I switched to insync.

I can edit documents locally or online, I can set up sharing permissions on google docs… it works like charm.

Congratulation guys!! insync rocks.

Now, how is this Philippines based company going to survive?… we will see… maybe Google buys it…

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It is not going to be so deep as the one I did back in September 2010, simply because I don’t have too much time to write on my blog.

Since Sept. 2010 the To Do solutions have increased exponentially. Now we can easily find solutions that are web based with apps for iOS and Android, and even more solutions that are focused for teams and they are web based.

I will focus on the way I do it while mentioning the ones I encounter in my way.

Objective:

• I want a way to manage my To Dos, from my iPhone, iPad, Mac and web. I would like it to be offline.
• I need to have access to shared To Dos with my wife.

List of To Dos and Project Management tools

For collaboration project managment and to dos, take a look to this sites.

Teamly

Teamly is a great tool for managing a team. It has private and group tasks.

• http://teamly.com

Huddle

Huddle is more than a to do solution. Pretends to be a substitute to SharePoint.

Here you have a list of all the features: http://www.huddle.com/this-is-huddle/features/

• http://www.huddle.com

Teambox

Teambox is more like teamly. Webbase app for teams. It integrates with Google docs and Dropbox, and they have iPhone app. 3 projects free.

• http://teambox.com

Vitalist

Also based on David Allen’s GTD. Free to try. Take a look:

• http://vitalist.com

My Favorites

Wunderlist

Wunderlist is awesomely designed. It has apps and web and for windows and mac. It is simple and nice. It is a todo program, and has collaboration features, which makes it a perfect candidate.

• http://wunderlist.com

What do I use?

Evernote

I am an Evernote lover. You can see it from my posts. I am a premium subscriber with 1000′s of notes, from all incoming mail, to my books, wine, receipts, to the todos.

Now the new iPhone an iPad app allow you to create checkboxes therefore in combinaison with Egretlist is an option to consider. The downside continues to be the due dates and repeting tasks….

2Do app + Toodledo

I reviewed the 2Do app in September. It is the one I use, with a Toodledo sync.

Why?

I love the app. It is one of the most complete, with location (on demand so no battery concern), tagging, etc.. it is fully syncronized with toodledo and:

I can feed it via emails. I can email a secret email address at toodledo and with some queries I can control where the to do goes, so a task could have in the subject of an email something like

Call Jim !! @phone #today
Finish the Report ! #next friday *ProjectA @work $Active ~1hour
Mow the lawn *Chores @home

Also I can syncronize my toodledo account with my iCal and see it in my mac.

Downside: No mac client (or PC…)

Reminders Mac.

With iOS5 Apple released Reminders. It is a very simple to do. I use it for shared lists with my wife. The shopping list and the shared list.

This is day to day list, perfectly integrated with mac (iCal) web (iCloud).

To share a list go to iCloud click on the icon.

Other

I bumped into a nice to do website… but not to manage your todos but to outsource them… take a look:

• http://www.taskrabbit.com/

More….

ther you might consider:

• Diddit – http://www.diddit.com
• Doomi – http://doominow.com
• niid.to – http://niid.to
• Toodledo – http://www.toodledo.com
• Remember the milk – http://www.rememberthemilk.com
• HiveMinder – http://hiveminder.com
• ToDoIst – http://todoist.com

 

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I must say that most I listened to, some I read on the iPad or even on the iPhone and only a few were actual books.

1. Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap… and Others Don’t (Collins, Jim)
2. The White Lioness (Wallander #3) (Mankell, Henning)
3. The Man Who Smiled (Kurt Wallander Series #4) (Mankell, Henning)
4. Sidetracked (Wallander #5) (Mankell, Henning)
5. The Fifth Woman (Wallander, #6) (Mankell, Henning)
6. The 4-Hour Body: An Uncommon Guide to Rapid Fat-Loss, Incredible Sex, and Becoming Superhuman (Ferriss, Timothy)
7. One Step Behind (Wallander, #7) (Mankell, Henning)
8. The Pillars of the Earth (The Pillars of the Earth, #1) (Follett, Ken)
9. Firewall (Wallander #8) (Mankell, Henning)
10. The Pyramid: And Four Other Kurt Wallander Mysteries (Mankell, Henning)
11. Along Came a Spider (Alex Cross, #1) (Patterson, James)
12. Crucial Conversations: Tools for Talking When Stakes are High (Patterson, Kerry)
13. The Black Echo (Harry Bosch, #1) (Connelly, Michael)
14. The Black Ice (Harry Bosch, #2) (Connelly, Michael)
15. L’Oiseau de mauvais augure (Patrik Hedström, #4) (Läckberg, Camilla)
16. The Concrete Blonde (Harry Bosch, #3) (Connelly, Michael)
17. The Last Coyote (Harry Bosch, #4) (Conneally, Michael)
18. Trunk Music (Harry Bosch Series #5) (Connelly, Michael)
19. Angels Flight (Harry Bosch, #6) (Connelly, Michael)
20. A Darkness More Than Night (Harry Bosch, #7) (Connelly, Michael)
21. City of Bones (Harry Bosch, #8) Connelly, Michael
22. Lost Light (Harry Bosch, #9) Connelly, Michael
23. Full Black (Scot Harvath, #10) Thor, Brad
24. The Narrows (Harry Bosch, #10) Connelly, Michael
25. The Closers (Harry Bosch, #11) Connelly, Michael
26. Echo Park (Harry Bosch, #12) Connelly, Michael
27. New York to Dallas (In Death, #33) Robb, J.D.
28. The Brass Verdict (Mickey Haller, #2) (Connelly, Michael)
29. 9 Dragons (Harry Bosch, #15) (Connelly, Michael)
30. Steve Jobs (Isaacson, Walter)
31. Public Parts: How Sharing in the Digital Age is Revolutionizing Life, Business, and Society (Jarvis, Jeff)
32. The Drop (Harry Bosch, #16) (Connelly, Michael)
33. 11/22/63 (King, Stephen)

And Currently reading:

1. The Lincoln Lawyer (Mickey Haller, #1) (Connelly, Michael)
2. The Lost Science of Money: The Mythology of Money – The Story of Power (Zarlenga, Stephen A.)
3. Your Competent Child (Jesper, Juul)

So if I finish this ones, 36 books. Not bad.

2011 has been a Henning Mankell and Michael Connelly. I can say the former is my favorite.

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Teba baked some bread. Here you have the videos:

Now the biggest travel agency is Internet. We we create our custom trip, filter options like dates, type of travel and get listings of suitable options.

At the same time we can check for reviews of either the website we are using, the hotels they suggest or even the destinations.

The idea of the is post is to give you some of the tools I use and stress the idea that we don’t need to book expensive hotels anymore, that a new bree of websites where you can rent apartments wherever you are planning to, could threaten hotels in the future.

Flights

Kayak will let you search for the cheapest dates to go to your desired destination or suggest you cheap destinations for your selected dates. Kayak has an incredible iPhone app and a pretty good iPad app.

Alternatives to Kayak: airfarewatchdog, yapta, farecompare…

If you are looking for a set of flights around the world, then I have to recommend you the one we used: http://www.roundtheworldflights.com/

Hotels…

Kayak will give suggest you hotels, and it uses the most notable hotel booking sites such as expedia, booking.com, etc…

If you want Cheap Hostels and Bed and Breakfasts, the we use: HostelWorld, it is great for that.

A cool resource for knowing if the hotel you are about to book is OK with tons of reviews, is: tripadvisor (also for iPhone and iPad).

Another cool tool for hotels (specially for the US) is room77 a website where they show you the best rooms for a specific hotel, with the views and so.

but… who want hotels?

Who wants to book a hotel when you can find a great located and flat or a room shared at an incredible spot…

We went to Paris booking an apartment with hometown, luxury apartments for a fraction of what you pay for a hotel, located at the heart of Paris (highly recommended). I also used Isabel’s apartments in a couple of occasions, also great apartments, even if the website is not that nice.

Here is where I want to go:  big websites covering apartments all around the globe.

The most notable:

•  Airbnb (my favorite): this one is the more professional website, the one with more investment in it. It is incredible the choice you can find there, apartments, rooms, everywhere!
• Homelidays: this one is strong in Europe. You can find a nice house in the beach, with swiming pool for a fraction of what you would pay for a hotel…
• Lofty: similar to airbnb but smaller.
• and one focused more in france: abritel

Now if you want to sleep for free, then you have to use couchsurfing: a huge network of people all around the globe that will let you use their couch to sleep for free.

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I have another point of view on the crisis:
The money is more or less like the energy. It cannot be destroyed it can only change hands. Well, the money can also be created.
When we decided to go for free trade we forgot something. I believe the main cause of this crisis lies here.
The free trade model with the WTO does not takes into consideration the movement of people, only goods and services. Let me elaborate:
The beginning is pricing. We consumers in a capitalist world are looking for the best quality at the cheapest price.
An entrepreneur therefore, if she/he wants to be competitive has to either find a niche product or market where margins can be bigger or/and manage to get her/his product/service at the cheapest price.
With free trade entrepreneurs have outsourced production to developing countries where labour is cheaper. This has been good for the entrepreneur and for the developing country, and even for us consumers because we paid less for the end product… but…. this means that jobs are lost towards this other countries.
It is true that those loosing the jobs could move up the value chain and do something else with more value. The pie grows, at least this is the assumption.
Back to free trade. When moving production of this entrepreneur to a cheaper and efficient country we have not moved the person who was doing the job here. This person has to do/learn something else.
Theoretically if there was free movement of people as we have free movement of goods and services we would end up in a world clustered with regions or countries that are very good at one/few things doing those things only and everybody there being the best in the world at doing those things. In a way this happens even without free movement of people because we learn.
The problem with this is that we become very vulnerable as we depend entirely on trade and we are not self-sufficient.
An exception is food. Countries protect their food and agricultural sectors probably because of this fear. This is why the US, the EU and most of the countries in a way spend such large amounts of money in subsidies even if they know it would be more efficient to buy these items from cheaper countries. In the WTO a lot of the disputes and part of the reason why Doha failed is because of agricultural issues and subsidies.
So what happens? In our developed countries there are fewer and fewer jobs and the wealth is concentrated in fewer successful people and companies (remember the energy comparison).
Developing countries who benefited from this free trade are now consumer countries (We have also benefited by buying cheap). This rich people in our countries knew this would happen and now they are well established to sell their products and services there too. May be now switching production to an even cheaper country.
In theory all this is good: we buy cheap, entrepreneurs have more money and we help other countries to increase their middle class, but there is a big but. Is the pie big enough?
Wealth is partly spreading to this countries that are now consumers as well. Is the earth big enough for all of us driving cars and eating fish at 1000 km of the sea and fruits out of season?. I don’t think so.
This scenario it is not sustainable. We humans are really a plague.
Developed countries can have salaries 100 times higher than developing countries and now are competing with us at the same level…. In principle income should trend to converge with time.
So yes bank mismanagement, speculation, housing bubbles,… are contributors sure, but as I said I believe there are deeper fundamental issues.
What can be done then?
Governments should not focus on the consequences but on the root of the problem, and the problem is employment.
They should do everything to boost job creation: encouraging and facilitating entrepreneurship, aiming at being a better option for companies to stay local, by relaxing taxes, facilitating work permits, training, providing a competitive environment without subsidies.
What can we do? Expect we cannot earn the same if in other places for the same job they are paid 100 times less.
This should hopefully drop prices too or make some of us consider moving to where our skills are more valuable and cost of life cheaper.
Now for those very very rich, it is going to be difficult. The money is the power, and with money they can buy lawyers, patents and do whatever to stay on the edge. Regulation and government should then closely monitor and regulate the limits, specially after the atrocities done by the banking sector.

Most of us are like kettle. We go with the flow. There are few celebrities/leaders/entrepreneurs we follow. These include the rich who employ us, but who controls their ambition? The right laws and the governments.

What is going to happen?
I don’t know. Riots in London, disruptions in poorer districts, people defaulting payments, banks absorbing this defaults, government printing more money, countries not trusting the US money, EU bailing out Spain and others, or dissolving single currency… all this here. In the developing world? well, learning to leave without us. Us becoming the old economy, they becoming the new pole of the economy.

I see less problems for the US than for the EU though…

Note that I believe that free trade is good. It is fundamental to boost productivity and efficiency, it is just that is more complex than we believe, and it has been proven that as it is, it does not work very well.

This are just some thoughts I am writing from my iPad. I would love to see a discussion on the comments…

Logo Lounge, for the past nine years, has posted annual logo design trend reports and they have just released the 2011 logo design trends report. I would love to hear your thoughts on the showcased trends.

Do these identity / branding trends effect you or your process? Do you agree with these suggestions? Have you noticed any other trends?

• Logo Lounge: 2011 | 2010 | 2009 | 2008 | 2007 | 2006 | 2005 | 2004 | 2003
• Disucssion on JCD: 2011 | 2010 | 2009

Disclaimer

On this topic of trends, one should not follow trends for the sake of following them. As Bill Gardner points out:

Every year, it’s worth noting that this is a report on trends, not a recipe book of styles. It is also not a finite list: There are other valid trends out there that are not mentioned here.

The report should serve you as an ongoing view of where logo design is headed. The word “trends” in itself can have a very negative cast, but in truth, trends aren’t bad. They reveal our growth. It’s our take on them that allows us to move even further forward.

2011 Logo Design Trends

Gradients

Juvi

Vibrate

O

Earth

Monoline

Series

Brown

Dandruff

Concentric

Loopys

Banded

Comma

Buckys

Fruit

Back Again

Isometric

Blackhole

PickUpSticks

Reactive

Medallions

Do these identity / branding trends effect you or your process? Do you agree with these suggestions? Have you noticed any other trends?’

© Artwork shown is copyright of their respective owners. Designer’s names & clients can be found on the original posting linked above. Original compilation by Bill Gardner.

(from justcreativedesign)

How could you put 280daily to use? Below are 7 possibilities.

1. Journal. Realistically keep a journal, 280 characters only takes 2 minutes!
2. Travelling. You’re too busy having fun to write down every detail!
3. Business. Keep track of your business life.
4. Sport. Running a marathon? Track your progress.
5. Food Diary. Losing weight or getting fit?
6. Target Progress. Record progress of a large task.
7. Backwards To-Do List. What did you get done today?

280daily: Sum up your day in 280 characters from 280daily on Vimeo.

We also invite you to donate to one of the incredible

Find a bridge event near you and register, or create your own bridge event

Register to join a bridge event. Attend in person or virtually. Use the search box at the top of the map to find and select a bridge event near you. Or create your own bridge event: click the “Create new event” button at the top of the map and invite others to join using our Event Toolkit.

The Event Toolkit includes assets that you can take with you to the event such as hand held banners or use to promote it such as online banners or posters.

organizations that work to improve the lives of women worldwide. Support a cause you care about at the bottom of the page. See you on the bridge!

Support a cause that you care about

Room 77 is a site (and iPhone app) that helps you choose the right room in a hotel.

Normally you go online and book a room, and in the same hotel you could have very different room, one facing the sea, one with a building on the site. The idea is to have a database of the best rooms for each hotel… cool isn’t it?

Irina Werning is a photographer born, and currently living in Buenos Aires.

I love old photos. I admit being a nosey photographer. As soon as I step into someone else’s house, I start sniffing for them. Most of us are fascinated by their retro look but to me, it’s imagining how people would feel and look like if they were to reenact them today… A few months ago, I decided to actually do this. So, with my camera, I started inviting people to go back to their future.

iPhone was the pioneer of a new generation of smart phones… and the iPad set a before and an after on the tablet world.

The iPad was launched a year ago and we are expecting a new version in the coming months. This new version will probably have a front camera, and they expect also a back camera, but who is going to use a 10 inch device to take photos? for me it makes little sense.  Probably it will be lighter (not aluminium, maybe fiber or a strong resine) and will have a better processor (maybe dual core). The screen will be improved but not as good as the retina in the iPhone 4 (it would be too expensive).

Since the iPad was launched we have seen many promises of Android tablets, which never materialized. Only one the Galaxy Tab, with a very interesting form factor (7 inches), two cameras… very nice… but the current android version is not meant for tablets but for phones, so I guess it has not been as popular as expected.

Now we are seing many other tablets coming up: HTC, Blackberry, … some with new OS (fighting against Apple and Google) but most of them adopting the new version of android for tablets (so dual core). Now the fight becomes interesting.

I foresee that android will skyrocket and overpass iPad soon, even iPad 2. Lets remember it is not married to the hardware so everybody can build a platform for an android tablet, therefore bringing a lot more competition.

Also specific in the near future we will start to see devices targeted to specific tasks, like the nook color, based on android but just for reading, or even more into the future  we will seeing the stylus coming back, specially for students, or just to take notes and draw diagrams more precisely than with the fingers.

I did not buy any tablet so far, not even an ebook reader. The iPad lacked the camera and for me it would be mainly a tool to do email, internet, video conference and reading.

Now I am waiting to see what Apple has to show for the iPad 2 and I reckon I will buy it.

I still think I will switch to Android in the future. Android honeycomb is in the right direction…

Love Love is a sculpture created by French artist Julien Berthier that resembles a sinking ship. It’s a fully functional boat, well, half a boat created from a 21-foot yacht that he cut in half, adding a new keel and motor. Julien has taken the sculpture across the English Channel and toured it around Europe, attracting lots of attention from unknowing fellow boaters who offer their assistance before realizing the boat isn’t actually sinking.

Want to see it in action? Watch this video.

(from design milk)

A company’s brand is a succinct but comprehensive embodiment of everything the company stands for. The best logos are recognizable, memorable and let you know what the company is about with just a glance. But even the biggest companies in the world have to change with the times and grow as their brand grows. While rebranding is an expensive (and sometimes risky) undertaking, these companies have thrown caution to the wind and changed up their logos – and most of them have done it over and over.

Pepsi

(images via: PSFK and InstantShift)

Officially trademarked in 1903, Pepsi-Cola has gone through many changes over the years. Though each individual change wasn’t drastic, the evolution has led to a logo with no trace of the original. This shouldn’t come as a surprise considering the first few iterations looked surprisingly like the logo of their main competitor, Coca-Cola. The latest of these changes took approximately 5 months of research and cost in the neighborhood of $100 million (including costs of changing old logos and marketing literature).

(image via: Blow at Life)

It didn’t take long after the introduction of the new curvy logo for Lawrence Yang to notice that it looked a bit like…well, a guy who enjoyed a bit too much Pepsi. His hilarious (and free!) revamp of the new logo has been floating around on the Internet and reminding people of a bloated fat guy since 2009.

Starbucks

(images via: Starbucks)

Like Nike and Pepsi, Starbucks’ logo recently evolved away from including the company name. The famous woodblock mermaid illustration now stands on her own sans the signature Starbucks font.

(image via: Felipe Torres)

Also like Pepsi, the 2011 logo change inspired some further logo alteration. This illustrated “future” of Starbucks’ logo takes the company’s trend to its logical conclusion: a close-up so extreme you can no longer tell what in the world it is supposed to be.

Nike

(image via: Logo Design)

Nike’s famous ‘Swoosh’ logo is universally recognized. Created in 1971 by a graphic design student at Portland State University (who was paid just $35 for her work), the logo was first used with the brand name appearing behind it. Though the original logos were never retired (you can still purchase ‘vintage’ gear with the original logos), a little over a decade after its inception the company opted to drop the brand name in favor of the ‘Solo Swoosh’.

Wal-Mart

(image via: InstantShift)

Before it became the giant retailer that it is today, Wal-Mart was a single discount store in Rogers, Arkansas. As the company grew by leaps and bounds, the logo underwent only minor changes. The “Discount City” logo introduced in 1968 was used on employee smocks but never on store signage; when you take that logo out of the timeline it seems that the retailer hasn’t made many drastic changes over the years. The most noticeable alteration was in 2008 when the star was moved from the middle of the name to the end, leaving the official Wal-Mart logo without a separator (like a hyphen or a star) for the first time in over 40 years. Interestingly, the current logo looks quite a bit like the company’s original logo.

Apple

(image via: InstantShift)

Today, Apple has one of the most recognizable logos in the world, but the company’s first logo was a complicated mess featuring Isaac Newton sitting under a tree, apple dangling above his head. The too-complex logo was scrapped after less than a year in favor of the iconic rainbow apple with a bite missing. When Steve Jobs returned to the helm of the company in 1997, the old rainbow was ditched in favor of a sleek, stylish monochrome apple which now features prominently on every product the company sells.

Canon

(image via: Neatorama)

The Japanese imaging products company actually started life as Kwanon. The name was taken from the Buddhist bodhisattva Guan Yin, who is known in Japan as Kannon. When the company expanded in 1935, they adopted a name that they thought would appeal to a wider audience. Since “canon” had a similar pronunciation and positive associations, the word became the company’s new name. With the new name came a new, simple logo: the company’s name in a typeface which at that time did not exist in North America or Europe. Since then the logo has undergone a few refinements, but no major overhauls.

Microsoft

(images via: LogoTalks)

Most technology companies are particularly concerned with keeping up with the times, which makes perfect sense. Microsoft, however, does not seem to care as much about keeping their image interesting as some other tech outfits. Microsoft’s original logo (from 1975) was a disco-type font which didn’t last long. The second logo (used from 1982-1987) featured a distinctive “O” which was known within Microsoft as a “blibbet.” In 1987 the current “Pac-Man” logo was adopted (so called because of the slashed “O”) and since then various tag lines have accompanied the logo.

Xerox

(image via: InstantShift)

You have to hand it to Xerox: they have come back from so many challenges – from market changes to accounting scandals – to keep on doing business more than a century after the company was founded. These days it seems like they spend more time trying to keep their company name from becoming a common verb than actually doing business, but they bravely soldier on. Their most recent logo reflects the company’s desire to prove that they are more than just copiers.

IBM

(image via: Neatorama)

Name changes, mergers and changing times amounted to a century of logo updates from IBM. However, the most recent logo has remained in place for nearly forty years now while the machines sold by IBM have changed dramatically.

Volkswagen

(image via: InstantShift)

Volkswagen, one of the world’s most beloved car brands, actually started out life as a pet project of Adolf Hitler. After WWII, the British took control of the company and removed the graphical Nazi elements from the logo. The company’s long, fascinating history has led to surprisingly few logo redesigns, with the company choosing instead to stick with the familiar stacked letters inside a circle.

(from weburbanist)

Á (Aacute) — shift-opt-y (Mac) — alt-0193 (PC) — & Aacute; (html)
À (Agrave) — opt-` + A (Mac) — alt-0192 (PC) — & Agrave; (html)
 (Acircumflex) — shift-opt-m (Mac) — alt-0194 (PC) — & Acirc; (html)
Ä (A-dieresis) — opt-u + A (Mac) — alt-0196 (PC) — & Auml; (html)
à (Atilde) — opt-n + A (Mac) — alt-0195 (PC) — & Atilde; (html)
Å (A-ring) — shift-opt-a (Mac) — alt-0197 (PC) — & Aring; (html)

á (a-acute) — opt-e + a (Mac) — alt-0225 (PC) — & aacute; (html)
à (a-grave) — opt-` + a (Mac) — alt-0224 (PC) — & agrave; (html)
â (a-circumflex) — opt-i + a (Mac) — alt-0226 (PC) — & acirc; (html)
ä (a-dieresis) — opt-u + a (Mac) — alt-0228 (PC) — & auml; (html)
ã (a-tilde) — opt-n + a (Mac) — alt-0227 (PC) — & atilde; (html)
å (a-ring) — opt-a (Mac) — alt-0229 (PC) — & aring; (html)

É (E-acute) — opt-e + E (Mac) — alt-0201 (PC) — & Eacute; (html)
È (Egrave) — opt-` + E (Mac) — alt-0200 (PC) — & Egrave; (html)
Ê (Ecircumflex) — opt-i + E (Mac) — alt-0202 (PC) — & Ecirc; (html)
Ë (Edieresis) — opt-u + E (Mac) — alt-0203 (PC) — & Euml; (html)

é (e-acute) — opt-e + e (Mac) — alt-0233 (PC) — & eacute; (html)
è (e-grave) — opt-` + e (Mac) — alt-0232 (PC) — & egrave; (html)
ê (e-circumflex) — opt-i + e (Mac) — alt-0234 (PC) — & ecirc; (html)
ë (e-dieresis) — opt-u + e (Mac) — alt-0235 (PC) — & euml; (html)

Í (Iacute) — shift-opt-s (Mac) — alt-0205 (PC) — & Iacute; (html)
Ì (Igrave) — opt-` + I (Mac) — alt-0204 (PC) — & Igrave; (html)
Î (Icircumflex) — shift-opt-d (Mac) — alt-0206 (PC) — & Icirc; (html)
Ï (Idieresis) — shift-opt-f (Mac) — alt-0207 (PC) — & Iuml; (html)

í (i-acute) — opt-e + i (Mac) — alt-0237 (PC) — & iacute; (html)
ì (i-grave) — opt-` + i (Mac) — alt-0236 (PC) — & igrave; (html)
î (i-circumflex) — opt-i + i (Mac) — alt-0238 (PC) — & icirc; (html)
ï (i-dieresis) — opt-u + i (Mac) — alt-0239 (PC) — & iuml; (html)

Ó (Oacute) — shift-opt-h (Mac) — alt-0211 (PC) — & Oacute; (html)
Ò (Ograve) — shift-opt-L (Mac) — alt-0210 (PC) — & Ograve; (html)
Ô (Ocircumflex) — shift-opt-j (Mac) — alt-0212 (PC) — & Ocirc; (html)
Ö (O-dieresis) — opt-u + O (Mac) — alt-0214 (PC) — & Ouml; (html)
Õ (Otilde) — opt-n + O (Mac) — alt-0213 (PC) — & Otilde; (html)
Ø (Oslash) — shift-opt-o (Mac) — alt-0216 (PC) — & 216; (html)

ó (o-acute) — opt-e + o (Mac) — alt-0243 (PC) — & oacute; (html)
ò (o-grave) — opt-` + o (Mac) — alt-0242 (PC) — & ograve; (html)
ô (o-circumflex) — opt-i + o (Mac) — alt-0244 (PC) — & ocirc; (html)
ö (o-dieresis) — opt-u + o (Mac) — alt-0246 (PC) — & oulm; (html)
õ (o-tilde) — opt-n + o (Mac) — alt-0245 (PC) — & otilde; (html)
ø (oslash) — opt-o (Mac) — alt-0248 (PC) — & 248; (html)

Ú (Uacute) — shift-opt-; (Mac) — alt-0218 (PC) — & Uacute; (html)
Ù (Ugrave) — opt-` + U (Mac) — alt-0217 (PC) — & Ugrave; (html)
Û (Ucircumflex) — opt-i + U (Mac) — alt-0219 (PC) — & Ucirc; (html)
Ü (U-dieresis) — opt-u + U (Mac) — alt-0220 (PC) — & Uuml; (html)
ú (u-acute) — opt-e + u (Mac) — alt-0250 (PC) — & uacute; (html)
ù (u-grave) — opt-` + u (Mac) — alt-0249 (PC) — & ugrave; (html)
û (u-circumflex) — opt-i + u (Mac) — alt-0251 (PC) — & ucirc; (html)
ü (u-dieresis) — opt-u + u (Mac) — alt-0252 (PC) — & uuml; (html)
Ÿ (Ydieresis) — opt-u + Y (Mac) — alt-0159 (PC) — & #159; (html)
ÿ (ydieresis) — opt-u + y (Mac) — alt-0255 (PC) — & yuml; (html)

ACCENTED CHARACTERS

Ç (C-cedilla) — shift-opt-c (Mac) — alt-0199 (PC) — & Ccedil; (html)
ç (c-cedilla) — opt-c (Mac) — alt-0231 (PC) — & ccedil; (html)
Ð (Eth) — inaccessible (Mac) — alt-0208 (PC)
ð (eth) — inaccessible (Mac) — alt-0240 (PC)
Ñ (N-tilde) — opt-n + N (Mac) — alt-0209 (PC) — & Ntilde; (html)
ñ (n-tilde) — opt-n + n (Mac) — alt-0241 (PC) — & ntilde; (html)
Š (Scaron) — inaccessible (Mac) — alt-0138 (PC)
š (scaron) — inaccessible (Mac) — alt-0154 (PC)
Ý (Yacute) — inaccessible (Mac) — alt-0221 (PC)
ý (yacute) — inaccessible (Mac) — alt-0253 (PC)
Þ (Thorn) — inaccessible (Mac) — alt-0222 (PC)
þ (thorn) — inaccessible (Mac) — alt-0254 (PC)

LIGATURES

Þ (fi) — shift-opt-5 (Mac) — inaccessible (PC) — & 222; (html)
þ (fl) — shift-opt-6 (Mac) — inaccessible (PC) — & 254; (html)
Æ (AE) — shift-opt-’ (Mac) — alt-0198 (PC) — & 198; (html)
æ (ae) — opt-’ (Mac) — alt-0230 (PC) — & 230; (html)
Oe (OE) — shift-opt-q (Mac) — alt-0140 (PC) — & 140; (html)
oe (oe) — opt-q (Mac) — alt-0156 (PC) — & 156; (html)

PUNCTUATION SYMBOLS

§ (section) — opt-6 (Mac) — alt-0167 (PC) — & #167; (html)
€ (bullet) — opt-8 (Mac) — alt-0149 (PC) — & #128; (html)
(paragraph) — opt-7 (Mac) — alt-0182 (PC) — & #182; (html)
¿ (questiondown) — shift-opt-/ (Mac) — alt-0191 (PC) — & 191; (html)
¡ (exclamdown) — opt-1 (Mac) — alt-0161 (PC) — & 161; (html)
« (guillemotleft) — opt-\ (Mac) — alt-0171 (PC) — & 171; (html)
» (guillemotright) — shift-opt-\ (Mac) — alt-0187 (PC) — & 187; (html)
Š (ellipsis) — opt-; (Mac) — alt-0133 (PC) — & 138; (html)
- (endash) — opt-dash (Mac) — alt-0150 (PC) — & 150; (html)
- (emdash) — shift-opt-dash (Mac) — alt-0151 (PC) — & 151; (html)
< (guilsingleleft) — shift-opt-3 (Mac) — alt-0139 (PC) — & 139; (html)
> (guilsingleright) — shift-opt-4 (Mac) — alt-0155 (PC) — & 155; (html)
· (period centered) — shift-opt-9 (Mac) — alt-0183 (PC) — & 183; (html)
, (quote single base) — shift-opt-0 (Mac) — alt-0130 (PC) — & 130; (html)
,, (quote double base) — shift-opt-w (Mac) — alt-0132 (PC) — & 132; (html)

MATHEMATICAL/GREEK SYMBOLS

° (degree) — shift-opt-8 (Mac) — alt-0176 (PC) — & #176; (html)
(not equals) — opt-equals (Mac) — inaccessible (PC)
(infinity) — opt-5 (Mac) — inaccessible (PC)
± (plusminus) — shift-opt-equals (Mac) — alt-0177 (PC) — & 177; (html)
¾ (lessequal) — opt-comma (Mac) — inaccessible (PC) — & 190; (html)
÷ (divide) — opt-/ (Mac) — alt-0247 (PC) — & 247; (html)
Ž (fraction slash) — shift-opt-1 (Mac) — inaccessible (PC) — & 142; (html)
‰ (per thousand) — shift-opt-r (Mac) — alt-0137 (PC) — & 137; (html)
­ (minus) — inaccessible (Mac) — alt-0173 (PC) — & #173; (html)
× (multiply) — inaccessible (Mac) — alt-0215 (PC) — & #215; (html)
½ (one half) — inaccessible (Mac) — alt-0189 (PC)
¼ (one quarter) — inaccessible (Mac) — alt-0188 (PC)
¾ (three quarters) — inaccessible (Mac) — alt-0190 (PC)
µ (mu) — opt-m (Mac) — alt-0181 (PC) — & 181; (html)
(omega) — opt-z (Mac) — inaccessible (PC)
(logicalnot) — opt-L (Mac) — alt-0172 (PC) — & 172; (html)
 (delta) — opt-j (Mac) — inaccessible (PC) — & 144; (html)
f (florin) — opt-f (Mac) — alt-0131 (PC) — & 131; (html)
ß (germandbls) — opt-s (Mac) — alt-0223 (PC) — & szlig; (html)

MONETARY SYMBOLS

¢ (cent) — opt-4 (Mac) — alt-0162 (PC) — & #162; (html)
£ (sterling) — opt-3 (Mac) — alt-0163 (PC) — & #163; (html)
¥ (yen) — opt-y (Mac) — alt-0165 (PC) — & 165; (html)
¤ (currency) — shift-opt-2 (Mac) — alt-0164 (PC) — & 164; (html)

COPYRIGHT SYMBOLS

® (registered) — opt-r (Mac) — alt-0174 (PC) — & reg; (html)
© (copyright) — opt-g (Mac) — alt-0169 (PC) — & copy; (html)
 (trademark) — opt-2 (Mac) — alt-0153 (PC) — & 129; (html)

ISOLATED ACCENTS

´ (acute) — shift-opt-e (Mac) — alt-0180 (PC) — & 180; (html)
¨ (dieresis) — shift-opt-u (Mac) — alt-0168 (PC) — & 168; (html)
- (circumflex) — shift-opt-i (Mac) — alt-0136 (PC) — & #150; (html)
~ (tilde) — shift-opt-n (Mac) — alt-0152 (PC) — & #152; (html)
¯ (macron) — shift-opt-comma (Mac) — alt-0175 (PC) — & #175; (html)
š (ring) — opt-k (Mac) — inaccessible (PC) — & #154; (html)
¸ (cedilla) — shift-opt-z (Mac) — alt-0184 (PC) — & #184; (html)

OTHER SYMBOLS

ª (ordfeminine) — opt-9 (Mac) — alt-0170 (PC) — & 170; (html)
º (ordmasculine) — opt-0 (Mac) — alt-0186 (PC) — & 186; (html)
Ý (dagger) — opt-t (Mac) — alt-0134 (PC) — & 221; (html)
ý (double dagger) — shift-opt-7 (Mac) — alt-0135 (PC) — & 253; (html)

Extremis is one of my favorite outdoor brands. The reason is that they do not bother bringing designs to the market unless they have a true innovation that really works for real life. This year, their creative touch has turned to making a “Table Shelter.”

In November, they launched the Hopper table and now have a matching shade and drizzle protection system to complement it. Made in galvanized steel, it can be slotted into sockets placed right by the bench’s feet. The “structure” can be left closed or open open, acting as much as a shade structure as it does a protection from drizzle. And — in real life — that makes it a winner.

Tools for togetherness
Dirk Wynants who designed this contraption is a highly colorful character with a vision. He believes in “tools for togetherness”… Quite often when you read a company’s mission statement on their website you fail to see any relevance between those well written lines and your own experience of the brand. This is not true for Extremis. I certainly think this new Hopper bench and shade are great for easy informal gatherings year round.

For those less familiar with the brand this is a copy of how the brand describes itself:

Extremis was established in 1994 on the initiative of Dirk Wynants. The company started very modestly with the creation of the multifunctional Gargantua garden table. From the Westhoek (Gijverinkhove, situated near the French border in a far-off corner of West Flanders) Extremis has managed to secure a firm position on the international design scene. From the very outset, a major part of the production was meant for the international markets, as the home market could not secure the necessary continuity

Extremis is much more than just a line in furniture — it’s a way of life, aimed at bringing people together to enjoy life to the full. For the past 15 years, Extremis, based in West Flanders in Belgium, has been making Tools for Togetherness, to promote the true burgundian lifestyle.

As trend analysts new mantra is that “nice is the new black,” I am sure we will see more “tools for togetherness,” perhaps competing with Twitter as a means to interact? 

If you’re sick of the music on the radio and tired of the tunes you’ve downloaded onto your iPod, it might be time to give thesixtyone a try. Head over to the site – www.thesixtyone.com – and click on the word “ready” to begin. Immediately, a song will begin playing by an artist you’ve most likely never heard of before. If you like the tune, then keep listening and add the song to your playlist. If you hate the song, there’s no hard feelings. Just click the arrow on the right-hand side of the page to start listening to another song by an undiscovered artist. When you find a song you actually enjoy, download it to your hard drive and import it onto your iPod. Musicians who sell their songs on thesixtyone are paid directly without having to give a cut of the proceeds to their record companies or distributors.

Thesixtyone isn’t just a service that allows people to listen to music and sell their songs on the web, either. The web-app also offers an interactive gaming element that lets users recommend songs they like and earn points when other users download or recommend those very same songs. Users can also comment on songs, make friends through the site, and complete “quests” or journeys just for fun. For music aficionados who enjoy being on the cusp of new music trends, thesixtyone is a great web-app.

Practical Uses:

• Find new musicians whose music you enjoy
• Download songs that your friends have never heard before
• Sell your music to fans online
• Earn reputation points for recommending lesser-known songs that users enjoy

Insider Tips:

• Go on “quests” to earn points
• Comment on songs with tips and suggestions for the band
• Scroll through songs until you find one you like
• Download music to your desktop

(via appvita)

Guerrilla marketinghas perfected the technique of catching people’s eyes and grabbing their attention, targeting consumers in unexpected ways and unconventional places. That, of course, is the point of this once-fringe form of advertising, which has now been taken up even by large corporations like Adidas and Microsoft. These 10 posters show just how powerful guerrilla marketing can be, whether trying to solicit donations for charitable causes or provoking you to join a gym.

‘Real Hip Hop’ Bus Stop Ad

(image via: Geurilla de Talentos)

A floating afro sits at head-level behind a bus stop seat, just at the right height to make it look like anyone who sits there has quite an impressive head of hair. This poster by ‘Real Hip Hop’ is definitely an eye-catcher.

Snuff Clothing Bloody Cleaver Poster

(images via: Ads of the World)

What do bloody cleavers have to do with skiing? That’s anybody’s guess – apparently Snuff, a clothing brand for ‘hard core’ skiers, was just trying to get people’s attention. The campaign was based around the idea that “death is only a matter of time”. Alrighty then, let’s go skiing!

Erotika Sex Shop Car Window Stickers

(image via: Ad Goodness)

It doesn’t get much more in-your-face than this. An Italian sex shop called ‘Erotika’ covered all of the windows of a car with stickers showing people in rather suggestive poses. The car, situated right outside the door of the shop, featured another sticker that said “Toys you can’t wait to use”.

Anti-Graffiti Bus Seat Poster

(image via: EatLiver)

The Australian Public Transport Authority got tired of people spray-painting graffiti on their buses and trains, so they targeted the ‘graffidiots’ with this ad campaign that reminds would-be vandals what the consequences of their actions could be.

Witness Against Torture Elevator Ad

(image via: Ads of the World)

An otherwise blank set of elevator doors features two sets of fingers peeking out from the seam, as if someone inside is trying to escape. Once you’re inside the elevator you see the owner of those fingers: a man in a prison jumpsuit and leg-cuffs. Witness Against Torture, a human rights group, used this ad to campaign for the closure of the Guantanamo Bay detention center.

Get Up and Run Chair Posters

(image via: Brand Infection)

VIP Gym thought images of a flabby, cellulite-ridden butt topped with a pair of love handles would be enough to make people want to ‘get up and run’. Glued to chairs in restaurants and cafes, the poster gives you the uncomfortable feeling that you’re seeing way more of strangers than you would have liked.

Feed SA Shopping Cart Posters

(image via: I Believe in Advertising)

You’d have to have a heart of stone to avoid being affected by the images of poor, starving children sitting in the bottom of your shopping cart. Any food placed in the shopping cart appear to be delivered right into the needy child’s hands. Feed SA, a South African charity dedicated to feeding disadvantaged people, put these decals in shopping carts and saw a marked increase in donations and a significant boost in website traffic.

Suicide Prevention Posters

(image via: Ad Goodness)

So simple, yet so effective. These posters by a Brazilian suicide prevention organization use nothing but white paper and the silhouette cut-out of someone falling – with the negative space from the cutout appearing to save them.

Anti-Smoking Stick-Ons

(image via: Zlatanova)

Tailpipe smoke is gross… and the same goes for the carcinogen-loaded clouds that erupt from the mouth of a cigarette smoker. An anti-smoking group equated the two by placing posters of people’s faces with the cut-out mouths strategically placed at the end of tailpipes.

Where’s Your Child? Grim Drowning Awareness Campaign

(image via: Life Saving Victoria)

This poster featuring a motionless child hovering at the bottom of a pool – placed underwater so that from above, it looks real – is part of a drowning awareness campaign by ‘Watch Around Water’, an Australian safety initiative. Parents who caught a glimpse of this rather grisly warning no doubt held their children a little tighter, so perhaps in this case disturbing equals effective.

(via weburbanist)

“Neutrality”—if it’s good enough for the core of the Internet, isn’t it good enough for the edge? The biggest Internet providers say it is, and they would love to have the government slap a few neutrality rules on Google, just to see how the advertising giant likes the taste of the regulatory bridle.

In 2010, while the FCC was debating net neutrality rules, ISPs like Time Warner Cable settled on a “they’re gatekeepers, too!” strategy.

“Google has led the charge to adopt regulation to ensure Internet openness, yet it has the ability and incentive to engage in a range of decidedly non-neutral conduct due to its control over so many aspects of the Internet experience,” said one representative filing. “Google’s core search application relies on a pay-for-priority scheme that is squarely at odds with its proposed neutrality requirements for broadband Internet access service providers.”

Comcast agreed, telling the FCC, “If the Commission were to conclude that an interventionist regulatory regime is needed to preserve the ‘neutrality’ of the Internet, it could not defensibly apply that regime to broadband providers but not to Google.”

And AT&T blasted Saint Google for its sinful practices: “They ‘determine the information… that customers access online’ through algorithms that highlight some information, favor certain websites, and even omit some sites altogether.”

The answer: search neutrality. Somehow.

It’s hard to tell if this was ever a serious proposal, since it was most often deployed by ISPs as a sort ofreductio ad absurdum against network neutrality proposals. (“See, if you go down this path, you’ll have to regulate everything!“)

But outside the den of self-interest that is an FCC docket, academics were also pondering the question. In 2009, for instance, well-respected University of Minnesota scholar Andrew Odlyzko suggested that net neutrality (which he favored) might then “open the way for other players, such as Google, that emerge from that open and competitive arena as big winners, to become choke points. So it would be wise to prepare to monitor what happens, and be ready to intervene by imposing neutrality rules on them when necessary.”

But what does it even mean when we talk about applying “neutrality” to search—which is all about subjective rankings of relevance?

“Telling a search engine to be more relevant is like telling a boxer to punch harder”

James Grimmelmann, an associate professor at the New York Law School, ran through eight main principles that underlie various “search neutrality” arguments. He found every one of them “incoherent.”

Grimmelmann’s resulting paper, “Some Skepticism About Search Neutrality” (PDF), has just appeared as a book chapter in The Next Digital Decade, and it’s an intriguing look at the foundations of search neutrality. At bottom, the paper understands search as an inherently subjective enterprise that makes a mockery of attempts to regulate it into some sort of neutral form. Indeed, trying to do so is almost a categorical mistake.

Here are the eight possible bases for search neutrality regulation:

• Equality: Search engines shouldn’’t differentiate at all among websites
• Objectivity: There are correct search results and incorrect ones, so search engines should return only the correct ones.
• Bias: Search engines should not distort the information landscape
• Traffic: Websites that depend on a flow of visitors shouldn’’t be cut off by search engines.
• Relevance: Search engines should maximize users’’ satisfaction with search results.
• Self-interest: Search engines shouldn’’t trade on their own account.
• Transparency: Search engines should disclose the algorithms they use to rank webpages.
• Manipulation: Search engines should rank sites only according to general rules, rather than promoting and demoting sites on an individual basis.

Most of these are dealt with by the simple (and obvious) objection that “systematically favoring certain types of content over others isn’’t a defect for a search engine——it’’s the point. If I search for ““Machu Picchu pictures,”” I want to see llamas in a ruined city on a cloud-forest mountaintop, not horny housewives who whiten your teeth while you wait for them to refinance your mortgage. Search inevitably requires some form of editorial control.”

As for transparency, which usually involves revealing the algorithmic underpinnings of a search engine, Grimmelmann argues that it’s simply a recipe for competitors to copy and for website operators to game.

All eight principles are weighed in the balance and found wanting. (The piece is quite a good read; do check it out in full if the issue is of interest.)

All of this is fine as far as it goes, and the arguments make a great deal of good sense in general, but they open Grimmelmann up to some obvious charges of supporting a behemoth like Google—and if you can’t imagine any way in which the company could “be evil,” you’re severely lacking in imagination.

To deal with real problems that can be caused by search engines, Grimmelmann remains open to traditional methods of oversight. “It doesn’t follow that search engines deserve a free pass under antitrust, intellectual property, privacy, or other well-established bodies of law,” he notes. “Nor is search-specific legal oversight out of the question.” Should Google simply start extorting websites into a “pay for placement” scheme that is not disclosed to end users, then the government should step in.

But when it comes to the question of applying “neutrality” principles to an inherently subjective enterprise, Grimmelmann has nothing but skepticism.

(from arstechnica)

Well, here you have a DIY tip:

SNOWPOCALYPSE!

No matter how much we swear we’ve learned our lessons, Seattle always seems to get caught by surprise by the snow. There we were, minding our own business with our feet all toasty in our sandals and socks, when the temperature plummeted and it turned into Juneau in January. While this year the City did a much better job than last year at preventing widespread carnage and destruction, we at Dutch Bike Seattle still didn’t bring in studded tires because it never snows in Seattle. Even if we had stocked them, I’m not sure they’d sell because it never snows in Seattle, right?

We found something else, though. Something else entirely.

You’re not going to believe it at first.

It’s quick, it’s cheap, and yes, it looks completely ludicrous.

BUT. It works. It works beautifully.

I can accelerate, brake, and corner with aplomb, even on the vile snowpack/sheet ice mix the plows leave in the bike lanes. The zip ties dig nicely into the hardest packed surfaces, but they’re thin enough not to bounce the bike around at low speed or on short pavement sections.

I’ve cunningly positioned the tie heads to dig in as soon as the bike goes into a corner while staying up and off the ground in a straight line. This is the place that the ties are most likely to interfere with the fenders, so if you’re installing these yourself be careful to make sure you have or can create the clearance.

It is at this point that I must admit that I didn’t dream up this amazing technique. It pains me to admit this not because my ego suffers, but because the zip-tie-DIY-bicycle-snow-chains idea appears to have originated with my favorite bicycle industry whipping boy: fixed gear hipster culture. Several years ago, I’m sure, some bright child with extremely tight pants and an asymmetrical haircut had a genius-caliber idea, and I hate that it wasn’t me. So here it is: Fixed gear street bike hipster guys, I’m sorry for the things I’ve said over the years. It’s not true that the only drink you like is 4Loko. It’s also not true that you’re not allowed to wear shoes that don’t match your bikes. You can wear whatever you want. And finally, you have come up with a good idea besides brightly colored deep-section rims.

(from dutchbikeco.com)

But that doesn’t mean a year in front of your television. There are still plenty of ways to cut costs. Here are 11 strategies — and some useful Web sites — to help you save on travel this year.

1. SHOP “PRIVATE SALES” A growing number of Web sites, including SniqueAway.com, TabletHotels.comand Jetsetter.com have flash sales of 20 to 60 percent off hotel packages to travelers on an invitation-only basis. Jetsetter, for example, recently offered a Friday night in January at the Angler’s, a boutique hotel in Miami, for $255 a night, down from the $359 offered at the hotel’s site. Another site, TripAlertz.com, works like Groupon for travel, meaning that the more people who book a deal, the lower the rate. For example, a four-night, all-inclusive stay at the Hilton Papagayo Costa Rica Resort & Spa was initially offered to members for $1,496, or 15 percent off, last month. After 55 bookings, the price dropped to $1,220. At TripAlertz and LivingSocial.com, which offers last-minute getaways, all you have to do is create an account to access the deals. A Google search for “Snique Away invite” turned up a registration form for SniqueAway.com that got me in.

2. BUY ON TUESDAY Most airlines begin sales on Monday evenings, and by the following day other airlines have usually matched the lowered fares on the same routes, said Anne McDermott, editor at Farecompare.com, which tracks price trends. Last month, for example, Virgin America had a sale on Dec. 13, with one-way fares as low as $79 on some routes, according to Farecompare. The next day, there were sales from AirTran, Southwest and American, with one-way fares from $59. Because sales are hard to predict, travelers looking for the best deal should start their searches three to four months in advance, when airlines begin to look closely at which routes may need a sale to fill seats.

3. SEARCH FOR COUPON CODES Practically every travel site includes a box at checkout for a promotional discount code. Sites like PromotionalCodes.com orCouponWinner.com organize such codes into categories so that you can search specifically for airline, car rental or hotel deals. A recent search turned up codes for deals like $94 flights between New York and New Orleans, 15 percent discounts on Avis weekly car rentals and $75 off of three-night Westin Hotels packages.

4. ASK FOR A REFUND Many airlines will refund the difference in price if the fare drops after you purchase a ticket (minus a change fee). Yapta.com helps get you that refund by tracking the price of your ticket and sending you an e-mail or Tweet when the price drops so that you can call the airline to claim the credit. A new site, Autoslash.com, offers a similar service for car rentals.

5. AVOID ROAMING CHARGES Skype and Truphone offer free apps for making cheap international calls using Wi-Fi, with rates that start at pennies per minute. You can pay as you go or sign up for monthly plans to make unlimited calls in certain countries for a flat fee: $13.99 a month for Skype calls to land lines and mobile phones in more than 40 countries, or $12.95 a month for Tru calls in 38 countries with TruUnlimited. Another option: the Vonage Mobile app for Facebook allows travelers to make free international calls over Wi-Fi to Facebook friends who also download the app.

6. CHANGE YOUR CREDIT CARD Most American banks charge currency conversion fees, typically up to 3 percent when you use your credit or debit card outside the United States. But there are some exceptions. Capital One does not charge foreign transaction fees, and Chase recently began waiving the fees on its British Airways Visa Signature Card, its Hyatt Card and the Priority Club Select Visa.

7. SAVE ON PARKING YOUR CAR Bestparking.com steers drivers toward the cheapest parking at off-airport lots near 79 North American airports. Rates are updated frequently, and sold-out lots are highlighted. A recent search for parking near Newark Liberty International Airport offered a snapshot of rates and locations on a map. The Renaissance Hotel lot was among the cheapest at $12 for 24 hours. There is also a free app for iPhone, Android or BlackBerry users.

8. WAIT A WEEK Avoid the crowds and save by traveling the week after a major holiday. A five-night ski vacation in Breckenridge, Colo., during the last week of December was priced at $1,988 a person, including airfare from Chicago, at Orbitz.com. For the following week, the same trip was listed at $1,037 a person. Similarly, a vacation including airfare from New York and five nights at the Walt Disney World Dolphin Resort dropped from $821 to $580.

9. NEGOTIATE Though many hotels say that they offer their best rates online, it pays to ask the front desk for a lower rate. My colleague Seth Kugel regularly uses this tactic, as he pointed out in a column last summer: “I arrive with a solid reservation but then check out five or six other hotels and go back and forth between them in an attempt to set off a price war.” The strategy saved him $20 a night in León, Nicaragua. I have had similar successover the phone with reservation agents at New York hotels like the Ritz-Carlton New York and 60 Thompson.

10. TRAVEL LIKE A STUDENT Student travel agencies like STA Travel, StudentCity and StudentUniverse have begun to extend their low prices to nonstudents and older travelers. While some of the deepest discounts are offered only to travelers enrolled in an academic program, recent college graduates can often save 10 to 25 percent with “youth fares.” For example, a recent search for flights in March on STATravel.com, which limits certain deals to nonstudents under the age of 26, turned up seats for $926 round trip on V Australia Airlines. The best rates for the same dates on Kayak.com were $1,187. Though it is not common for older travelers to use student travel agencies, it is possible to do so. There were no age restrictions for a discounted four-day Inca Trail trek with STA Travel for $674 a person, down from $899.

11. DON’T PAY TO CHECK A BAG Checking bags can quickly add up, with airlines charging between $15 and $35 a bag. Delta’s SkyMiles-branded American Express card allows you and up to eight others on the same reservation to each check a bag at no cost. And American Express introduced a travel-rewards card — the Blue Sky Preferred Credit Card — that offers travelers an annual $100 allowance to cover checked baggage, in-flight meals, entertainment or Wi-Fi purchases, and other fees, on any airline.

(by MICHELLE HIGGINS from NYTimes)

Your head spins, your stomach clenches, your heart pounds furiously. You’re thousands of feet above the ground with nothing but glass keeping you from teetering over the edge in a lengthy and final fall. Do you have the guts to look down? Hundreds of feet in the air, these 13 tower platforms and observation decks – often with transparent floors – offer absolutely breathtaking views of cities like Shanghai and landscape features like the Grand Canyon.

Burj Khalifa Observation Deck, Dubai

(images via: unique buildings, mithunonthe.net, le grand portage)

You’re never going to get a higher vantage point from a free-standing structure than that attainable at the Burj Khalifa observation deck in Dubai. Unless, that is, somebody builds a structure even taller than this world-record tower, which reaches half a mile into the air. The observation deck is on the 124th floor of the Burj Khalifa (formerly known as the Burj Dubai) and on a clear day, it provides absolutely jaw-dropping views of practically the whole of the United Arab Emirates.

Stockholm SkyView at the Ericcson Globe

(images via: globearenas.se)

You’ll literally feel on top of the globe when you hitch a ride in one of the glass ‘gondolas’ at Stockholm Skyview, a moving observation deck that travels up two sets of rails on the exterior of the Ericcson Globe Arena in Sweden. Each gondola can take 16 people over 426 feet into the air for an unforgettable view of the city of Stockholm.

Top of Tyrol, Austria

(images via: aste architecture)

Virtually invisible against the snow in the winter, ‘Top of Tyrol’ was designed to blend seamlessly into its environment and provide a vantage point that most people couldn’t achieve without some serious mountain climbing abilities. Designed by Aste Architecture, Top of Tyrol cantilevers nearly 30 feet out from the pinnacle of Austria’s Mount Isidor, about 10,500 feet above the ground.

Shanghai World Financial Center, China

(images via: kanegan, bernt rostad, le grand portage)

Before the Burj Khalifa came along and shattered all kinds of records, the observation deck at the Shanghai World Financial Center was about as high as it got. The glass observation corridor, which spans the summit of the building, is half a kilometer in the air – but the faint(ish) of heart can still get a thrill by checking out lower decks on the 94th and 97th floors instead.

Five Fingers Viewing Platform, Austria

(images via: goldenrochs.at)

Get five different views with five different features in each jetty of ‘Five Fingers’, a viewing platform in the Austrian Alps. The first has a picture frame for souvenir shots, the second a glass floor for that vertiginous feeling, the third a trampoline for the foolhardy (this one is only open for special events, lest tourists bounce themselves right over the cliff), the fourth a hole in the floor to peek through and the fifth, a telescope.

Sands Skypark, Marina Bay Sands, Singapore

(images via: marinabaysands.com)

On the top of three skyscrapers, 656 feet in the air, Singapore boasts a 1,246-foot-long rooftop deck by architect Moshe Safdie offering an incredible view of Marina Bay. The curving Sands Skypark is shaped like a ship and equivalent in size to the Eiffel Tower laid on its side. Among its most notable features is a 150-meter-long infinity swimming pool, which makes guests feel like they could swim right over the edge.

Landscape Promontory, Switzerland

(images via: etienne deffinis, architonic)

Designed by Paolo Burgi, Landscape Promontory is a suspended metal platform that almost looks like an insanely oversized, modern version of a carnival ride – except that it (thankfully) doesn’t move. The viewing platform extends out from Cardada mountain in Switzerland and is marked with symbols and explanations that tell of local history and literature.

Willis Tower Skydeck, Chicago

(images via: charlotte speaks)

Step out onto the deck of the Willis (formerly Sears) Tower ‘Skydeck’ – an enclosed balcony made almost entirely of glass – and you’ll feel, for a moment, as if you’re about to hurtle to a rather unpleasant death on the streets below. Or perhaps, if you’re the brave type, the height won’t phase you at all and you’ll just be completely entranced by an unparalleled, uninterrupted view of the Chicago skyline.

Aurland Lookout, Norway

(images via: todd saunders)

You know that stomach-clutching, heart-in-your-throat sensation you get on roller coasters just as you’re coming up to the edge of a terrifyingly steep drop? That moment is drawn out indefinitely at the Aurland Lookout in Norway, a stunning wooden overlook that puts nothing but a sheet of plate glass between you and the countryside below. Designed by Todd Saunders & Tommie Wilhelmsen, the minimalist structure celebrates the region’s natural beauty and exemplifies its spare, modern design sense.

Eureka Skydeck, Melbourne

(images via: eurekaskydeck.com)

They named this thing ‘Eureka’ for a reason – it’s about the tamest exclamation that would emerge from your mouth as you walk out onto it. As you look down through the glass floor, you become acutely aware of the fact that you’re nearly 1,000 feet above street level. Jutting 9 feet out the side of the building, the Skydeck offers the highest public vantage point in a building in the Southern Hemisphere.

Grand Canyon Skywalk, Arizona

(images via: vistor.com)

Stepping out onto the Grand Canyon Skywalk is probably the closest you’ll ever get to walking on air. The U-shaped walkway, considered quite a feat of engineering (or an over-developed eyesore, depending on your viewpoint), extends 66 feet from the canyon’s edge and its two-inch-thick glass floor lets you gaze down 3,600 feet to the canyon floor below.

House on the Rock Infinity Room, Wisconsin

(images via: panaramio, gadling)

As you emerge from the cluttered depths of one of America’s most bizarre roadside attractions, The House on the Rock, you can clear your head on a cantilevered viewing platform that extends 218 feet over the forest floor. Once you reach the end of the ‘Infinity Room’, which has 3,264 windows, you can look out the final pane of glass, which is set into the floor at the tip.

i360 Tower, Brighton, UK

(images via: e-architect.co.uk)

England’s Brighton Beach will get a 600-foot needle tower with a circular glass viewing platform that can hold 125 people, following years of delays. The i360 Tower – which might get a name change by the time it’s complete – is set to become Britain’s highest observation tower, granting 360-degree views of the coast.

When snow begins to pile up, snow plows head out to take it down. These glorified power shovels are a triumph of basic technology against the forces of nature, and even then there’s room for adaptation, customization and decoration. So clear the way for these 10 cool cutting edge snow plows… or better yet, let THEM do it for you!

Porsche 968 Snow Plow

(images via: Eastbounddown and Pelican Parts Forums)

Ever wonder what the snow plow driver drives? No, it’s not a shop… but the Porsche 968 Snowplow isn’t exactly what it appears to be, either. “In honor of April Fools Day, each April I write my column about something humorous,” explains Bruce Corwin, owner of the 968 above. “One year I took the snowplow off a friend’s truck and parked my 968 behind the plow. I took a few photos that looked like the plow was attached to the front of the Porsche and wrote a column about the Porsche ‘snowplow option’.”

(image via: Found Shit)

We’re guessing the Corvette Snow Plow above was “constructed” along the same lines, though the flashing orange light on the roof is a nice touch.

Roofus Radio-Controlled Robot Snow Plow

(images via: ConceptPop and Gizmodo)

Meet Roofus, the Radio-Controlled Robotic Snow Plow who’s gonna tell ya somethin’ good: plowing your driveway just got as easy as playing a video game! Shiny orangeRoofus was originally designed to clear snow from roofs – hence the name – but snow is snow and Roofus just eats it up. Roofus rides on twin caterpillar tracks and packs two electric motors plus a gasoline engine – it’s Mr. Freeze’s Prius! Bolt on some peripheral attachments and Roofus can mow your lawn, sweep the drive and more… actually, YOU can, by just flexing your thumbs.

Russian Jet-Powered Snow Plows

(images via: Mileanhour and Dark Roasted Blend)

When General Winter gets all ornery-like and threatens to put the kibosh on your holiday travel plans, who ya gonna call? Snow Busters!… now equipped with Klimov VK-1 jet engines upcycled from Red Army surplus MiG-15 fighter planes. These bizarre jet trucks are used in Russia and the former Eastern Bloc to clear snow off airport runways and, on occasion, de-ice airliners. If you thought flying Aeroflot sucked, guess what? It blows, too.

(image via: Dark Roasted Blend)

Train tracks also get the blow-dry treatment in eastern Europe, as the makeshift snowblower above illustrates. Now that’s one loco locomotive!

Yuki-Taro Robotic Snow Plow

(images via: Pink Tentacle and Geekologie)

Anyone for some Japanese over-engineering with a dash of cute overload? Arigato, snowplow roboto! The cute (of course) creation above is Yuki-Taro, an environmentally-friendly snow plowing robot that seeks out snow with two video cameras (one in each “eye”) and an on-board GPS receiver.

(images via: Ubergizmo and Techeblog)

Yuki-Taro was designed to help elderly homeowners clear their driveways and walkways. As for what to do with the cleared snow, 880 lb Yuki-Taro simply eats it – whereupon internal compactors form the snow into uniform bricks which are then excreted out the back. If a coalition of several Japanese universities and research institutions didn’t design Yuki-Taro, we’d have to guess a bunch of Japanese kids did. Toss in the eyebrows and the Pikachu mod and we’re sure of it.

Fabulous Fifties Snow Plows

(images via: Travelpod/Hildreth75 and Perimeter Run)

They say time goes by slower up in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, and the winters, well, they seem to last forever. That still doesn’t explain this four door, four wheel drive, 1955 Buick snow plow. We can’t explain it either, so simply gaze upon it in awe and wonder.

(image via: Club Chopper Forums)

One of the most iconic cars of the finned, fabulous Fifties was the 1957 Chevy, ideally as a fuel-injected 2-door Bel Air convertible. The snow plow sedan version… not so much. Even so, you’d have to be Mr. Plow to be any cooler than the driver of this tricked out, chrome-bedazzled rig.

Hybrid GOAT ROBOT 22T Lawn Mower/Snow Plow

(images via: Techeblog)

“Hybrid Goat Robot” sounds like the title of a very bad B-movie we’d nevertheless love to see, but the Hybrid GOAT ROBOT 22T from Eva Tech is actually a tank-like treaded vehicle that maintains your yard and drive season in and season out.

Check out the Goat Robot 22T making a baaad winter goood:

Remote Control Snow Plow, via Lmedinaxyz

(image via: Eva Tech)

You’ll need to put out $11,999 for the pleasure, mind you, but that’s probably cheaper than keeping your own living goat – and they don’t plow snow all that well.

Hell’s Snow Plow

(images via: TheAllisonRose and ZhenPanda)

Train snowplows are all kinds of awesome from the get go and there’s really no need to jazz ‘em up – so when that happens, it’s off the rails awesome… so to speak. Take the Evil Clown artwork on the train snowplow above… Hell’s Snow Plow indeed!

(image via: John Vass)

When this Bozo on expired steroids comes roaring down the track somewhere in the wilds of rural Montana, be afraid, be VERY afraid, be Stand By Me afraid! Oh and we love the single gold tooth, nice touch there.

RoboPlow

(images via: AutoMotto)

When Robocop wants to plow his driveway, you’d better believe he’s not plowing it – he’s a robotic cop, right? Besides, odds are he’s got RoboPlow: the leanest, meanest, robotic snowplow there is. Don’t be surprised if if rolls up – on 6 wheels, no less – and booms out “Clarence Boddicker, I’m here to shovel your driveway!”

Here’s a promotional video from RoboPlow’s creators, IdeaLABORATORIES, showing this badass mutha in action:

ROBOPLOW, via IdeaLABORATORIES

(image via: Godlike Productions)

RoboPlow sports a wicked 50” wide angle-able blade and packs 660 amps of power. It features a pair of 10-watt LEDs for night-plowing (not the same as night-putting), a pair of flashing red LED brake lights and a fully articulated camera on top to freak people out – if looking like a runaway dwarf casket wasn’t enough. When the cam turns your way, you half-expect a Martian heat ray to blast forth! Available in any color you want – as long as its black.

Pedal-Powered Snow Plow

(images via: 1World2Wheels and Simply+Green Solutions)

From the wild to the mild – we give you the pedal-powered snow plow. No motors, no LEDs, no GPS or frikkin’ laser beams and yet, it’s still awesome… AND fun! It might not be mean but it sure is green. “It probably took me 50 to 80 hours to complete the pedal plow,” says crafty DIY-er Kevin Blake. “With a little bit of mechanical aptitude, some metal working resources and a couple of old bikes, just about anyone can make a pedal-powered snowplow.”

Pedal Powered Snowplow, via MrPlowKevin

(image via: Mother Earth News)

Thanks to Kevin’s exhaustively complete directions, just about anyone CAN build themselves a pedal-powered snow plow. We’re not sure what Kevin’s regular job is, but with ideas like these he should tell his boss to “take this job and shovel it!”

Long Island Railroad Snowplow W83 “Jaws III”

(images via: RMLI and TrainWeb)

Looking like a cross between the boss Blue Meanie from Yellow Submarine and a Curtiss P-40 Warhawk in Flying Tigers livery, snowplow W83 “Jaws III” was probably the most exciting thing to ever ride the rails of the Long Island Rail Road. Built by the LIRR machine shop atop a 1907 flatcar way back in December of 1915, W83 cleared snow along the main line for decades before being rebuilt and repainted in November of 1978.

(images via: TrainWeb)

After a further 8 years of faithful service, the LIRR finally retired snowplow Jaws III (or perhaps by then, “Dentures III”) in 1986. The larger than life, toothy rolling shovel was handed over to the Railroad Museum of Long Island and remains parked just outside the Greenport Freight House.

(images via: Busted Tees and Culturish)

“Call Mr. Plow, that’s my name, that name again, is Mr. Plow!” Ahh yes, Mr. Plow cruised into pop culture consciousness on November 19, 1992, on the ninth episode of The Simpsons’ fourth season. There it has remained, stuck like a snow plow buried beneath an avalanche on Widow’s Peak. Just consider, though, if “Plow King” Barney had been driving any of the above 10 snow plows he’d never need to be rescued and consequences (and Springfield history) would never be the same.

(from weburbanist)

So what if Google knows and remembers all our data, at least it’s turning that stuff into something useful. The latest enhancement to its Gmail client is a neat Contacts restoration option, which can rewind you back to a maximum of 30 days ago, offering a chance to recover rashly deleted email addresses or to remedy an ill-advised sync with any of your other contact-keeping services. As is par for the course with Gmail, it’s a neat and seemingly minor improvement that’ll probably keep users from leaving it for greener pastures over the long term as they grow accustomed to its security. Just how Google likes it.

Here is my list:

Apple

• iPad (Great to consume content)
• MacBook air 11″ (sexiest laptop to take with you everywhere)
• iPhone 4 (the best phone ever, with the best camera)
• Time Capsule or Airport Extreme (the first if you have a mac to forget about local backups, the second if you just want a great wifi network at home)

Android:

• Samsung Galaxy Pad (7″ android tablet. Great size, with cameras, more features than the current iPad)
• Samsung Galaxy S (iPhone 4 equivalent in Android)

Other:

• Kindle 3 (best ebook reader)
• Pogoplug (plug an external HD and build you own cloud)
• Synology DS1010+ (best NAS)
• Bose QuietConfort 15 (best active noise cancelling headphones if you travel)
• myfox (wifi home alarm)
• GPS logger (great for tagging your DSLR photos)
• Vue Zone (simple IP cameras)

Internet services:

• Evernote (my second brain)
• Google storage (if you use picasa, google docs, etc… cheap storage)
• Flickr pro or smugmug (for your photos online if you have a lot of photos and look for unlimited storage)
• crashplan (best backup in the cloud solution)
• sugarsync (best sync solution, better than dropbox)
• toodledo (great todo management tool)

Now, time has passed. I have tested everything it was new. At the�beginning it was fun: having badges and mayors with Forusquare, leaving stuff and taking stuff with Gowalla… but with time I don’t really care about all this games, and that is why in my post I said I was betting for tellmewhere, which was simple, you checked in, you could add tips and add places and photos. A bit of a mix of the best of both Foursquare (which has the tips) and Gowalla that now you can add photos.

Tellmewhere, from day one had this, but, unfortunatelly, it did not have the hipe the other two have… I guess a bit like betemax and VHS… VHS was the winner but Betamax was better….

Well, now there is a disruptor in the game, and I have also talked about. Facebook places.

Facebook places has still some road to go, but at the end of the day why are we going to check in? Because we want our friends to know. Where are our friends? Probably in facebook. In Gowalla, Foursquare, twitter, you have followers mostly. Not your real friends… so that makes Facebook places, with time, the winner.

I hope they learn from the others soon, and they allow us to edit places, add new places, add photos, add tips… because honestly, we don’t care about badges, objects and other games. Maybe promotions and local based offers and advertising.

The prospects for facebook are very good. For the other two… well, I don’t used them anymore. Only once in a while.

After rebooting the server after a year or so, I noticed weird things, like “who” �and “top” were not working, some directories were not there (like the log one), cpu was 100% all times… yeap, tokao server was compromised on the 26th of October, so yesterday after taking a careful look at what have been done, I closed all ports to the manchine and tonight I have migrated tokao to another more secure server.

Tokao was running on centOS and the rootkit was done via a hole in my old apache. The server was at home with a big UPS and 1Mb DSL upstream, enough for tokao. I had secured ssh with webknock.

Well after 8 years, this is the perfect excuse to upgrade my old CentOS to the newest Ubuntu.

Now tokao is in a VPS Ubuntu machine with the latest updates… while I decide where to host it. I have not tested all. I see that some stuff still does not work (like url rewrite). Working on it ;-)

.

I would like to share with you some tips in order to have a great trip diary, using the latest techonologies.

Checklist

Option A

When I travel I pack my nikon d300 with a 10-20mm and a 18-200 lenses. My nikon has a 16Gb memory card. Unfortunately most DSLR do not have GPS unlike the iPhone or other smart phones, but there is a work around. Keep reading.

I also pack my GPS (Garmin Oregon 300), rechargeable batteries and the charger sure. If you don’t have a GPS you should consider getting one, and they are now very cheap. You don’t need a fancy GPS, you just need a GPS logger. No bluetooth even. No screen, just a GPS logger, that when you switch it on it starts recording your trail, and once back home or with your laptop, you just plug it in and extract the .gpx file. I will explain what to do with it. You can but very cheap GPS at Dealextreme a Hong Kong based online shop full of gadgets at ridiculous prices… and shipping anywhere int the world is free. You can have a GPS for $35.

Now if you travel to remote places you can consider a good GPS with SOS function such as the SPOT.

Also if you don’t want to take the gpx file from the gps and use one of the ways I described further down there is a GPS logger (ATP Photo finder) that you sync the time with your camera, insert the SD card, and it tags them automatically. Not for Compact Flash and not for RAW images though…

If it is going to be a long trip, and I plan to blog properly, then I take my old sony vaio t series (10 inch screen) and an external 2.5inches Hard Disk.

Option B

Just your iPhone 3gs or 4. (Has a decent camera and GPS).

Option C

Both. Option A for more elaborated blogging, Option B for quick on the spot.

Which option?

Nowadays with an iPhone 4 you have more than enough to take good quality videos and photos. Take a look at this blog entry for tips on how to take the best photos with the iphone.

In addition to have a 5Mpx camera and shoot HD videos, the new smart phones have GPS so videos and photos are geotagged, and programs such as picasa (for Mac, PC and Linux) or iPhoto (for Mac) plot all your photos in a map which is great.

If you really like photography then you choose to take your DSLR with you, so then you have to take a laptop (and an external HD if it is an old laptop like mine) so you can take the photos out of the camera and put the in your blog, site or community. Or just to empty your camera.

I take both.

iPhone apps and Everytrail

When I first bought my first GPS (Garmin Vista) it was quite a job to be able to do something with the tracks you save. You needed a windows computer, nothing for mac, and the software that came with it was pretty bad.

Then Google Earth would allow you to import the tracks (.gpx files). It was great. It is still great!

Everytrail

Now there is a website that I love and I use as a main stop for GPS logging: Everytrail.

Everytrail is free. You can upload your .gpx file even directly from your gps, and there you can have all your tracks store, that you can tag, put some text, add waypoints with explanations, and edit them!! yes. You can make them public or private. Very very powerful tool.

Everytrail also gives you an embed code that you can put in your blog, where you see the trail you have uploaded, the waypoints you have inserted, stats of time, altitude, speed… and more.

Geotag your photos with Everytrail

Once I have written about my photography workflow. Now when I upload them to flickr, make sure you create a set for those photos in the same GPS track. So if you go out switch on your GPS logger, then all the fotos you take until you switch it off should be in the same set.

With Everytrail, you can select the flickr (or picasa, or uploading manually) set and it will import it. As the camera has a clock it will know when they were take it, and plotted into your trail map. Great.

Now you have to fine tune that. There might be a bit of missmatch between the time in the GPS, the timezone and the camera clock. You take one photo you know exactly where it was taken, drag it to the right place and , then click on “update offset based on this picture” and the rest will follow. Magical!!

Now you have your trail uploaded into Everytrail, you have corrected it, you have added notes as waypoints, and you have uploaded the fotos from flicker that have been geo tagged in Everytrail.

With Everytrail alone you have already a good blog for your trip, because you have a space to write, to give tips and to have the track an dall the photos along it.

In addition to this you can have the embed code and put it into you blog.

Everytrail in your iPhone

Everytrail is available for the iPhone. They have two apps, a free one and a paid one. They are not very good. There is a free app, though, that uses Everytrail as a back end which is absolutly great!

Trailhead iPhone app (from the north face)

Last August the north face released an iphone app (free) that uses everytrail track. This app is just awesome. When you start it you have two main options, start tracking (and it is reasonable on what you use of battery) or see nearby trails. You can track even if you don’t have GPRS or 3G. In this case you don’t see the maps (in the pro app for everytrail you can download offline maps).

Then when tracking, at any given point you can add a photo or a note (not a video yet).

So in summary, with the iphone alone you do what I explained before without the need of a camara, a gps, a computer and a website.

Blogging tools

When traveling often you don’t have internet. Blogging everyday is therefore difficult.

For that reason you should use an offline blogging tool. The best one out there is Windows Live Writer. For the mac you have Ecto or MarsEdit, but Live Writer is much better.

The advantage of using one of this offline tools is that you can write every day, add your photos and so, and when you have internet, then you upload everything.

If you are planning to use GPS info with everytrail, you should do it online though.

This offline tools are good for blogs such as wordpress, blogger etc…

I use wordpress and there is a great plugin called mappress for having a google map where you can easily add a waypoint with html code in it if you wish. It is handy if you want to show your readers where you are sleeping, or what to visit for instance.

Alternatively you can simply go to google maps, log in and under my maps, create a map. It is very easy. Then you can copy the embed code and past it into your blog.

Blogging sites

If you don’t have a blog, and you don’t blog regularly, they you can use one of the dedicated free blogs for travelers. My favorites are:

• Travelpod
• Mapvivo

Travelpod is a great place full of good tips and travelers. You have maps, you can upload photos, … it is a tailored blog for travelers.

Mapvivo is more of a travel diary. It is based on having a map and putting what you do in it.

Geotagging your photos at home

To geo tag the photos using everytrail is OK, but you will probably would love to have your photos in your PC/Mac geotagged as well.

Well there is a way to do it too, even if you camera has no GPS.  As I mentioned with a GPS logger, and a normal camera you can.

Select the photos you took within the period of geotagging. Then use one of these programs:

The best one is GeoSetter (just for PC unfortunately)

GeoSetter (free) allows you to take your photos, the log file of the GPS and geo tag the photos automatically. You can easily take one that you know exactly where it was taken, position it and the rest will follow. GeoSetter will write in the EXIF header of the file, so if you now import them to Picasa, iPhoto, Flickr, etc… they will have GPS information.

For Mac there is a paid program which does pretty much the same: Geophoto. It is even nicer, but not as complete as the Geosetter.

Also GPS photo linker. (tags Raw and it is free). Take a look at the demo, for me is the winner.

With this I modify my photography workflow. The first thing to do is to geotagg the raw photos, then apply DxO for corrections and to create JPEGs.

Here an example of the embed code from a trip with photos in everytrail in Puerto Rico. If you mouse over the bottom you can see a link to the stats and to the slideshow. Also mousing over the spots of the photos.
San Juan de Puerto Rico

What I do have with me is my iPhone 3GS (waiting for the iPhone 4).

I am pretty happy with the quality of photos and videos the iPhone 3gs does, and I am looking forward to the iPhone 4 which is much better.

For the photos I would like to recommend 3 apps that will make you a better iPhone photographer:

Autostich

Autostich is an app that will allow you to make panoramas, so you don’t need wide angle lens ;-)
The beauty of this app is that you take photos that overlap a 20 to 30% side by side and they the app puts them together on a single panoramic photo.

In addition to this you can even take a second row of photos and add it too!

Here you have a couple of photos using this app:

Hipstamatic

Hipstamatic transforms your iphone into an old camera. You can change the lense from the typical John S, to a Jimmy, Kaimal Mark II, Helga Viking, Lucifer VI, etc…

Also you choose the film: Blanko, Ina’s 1969, Ina’s 1935, Kodot Verichrome, Blackeys B+W, etc…

And the flash (simulated), from a dreampop to redeye gel or berry pop…

The results are amazing. Take a look at the photos I just took:

Pro HDR

Pro HDR is a great app for when you are facing a contrast, like a photo at home with the window. Either the inside is OK and the outside is burned, or the outside is OK but the inside is black.

HDR has been introduced to the iPhone 4. The technique is simple, you take an overexposed photo and an underexposed and you mix them. The result is not natural but it is great. I use this technique with my nikon too. I read that this app is far better than the one coming with the iPhone 4.

Take a look at the photos:

• Most of the inputs will be on my mobile device: now an iPhone, but in the future probably android.
• That it can be done offline on my phone when I am roaming, it is synchronized.
• Synchronization is done to:
  • Desktop client (Mac mainly, but PC too): so not a stand alone phone program
  • Cloud (using specific service or using Google docs or Evernote) – ideally a free cloud service that would sync mobile with desktop clients
  • Syncs due date tasks with my google calendar and iCal (using busyCal in mac it does not matter as I use google calendar). Most of the solutions offer due dates for the todos but in their own calendars… but I already have a calendar, I don’t want to use theirs.
• It is simple: todos, with a note, due dates, recurring todos and tagging. I don’t need fancy priorities, focus areas and so.
• That can manage projects which are basically an indented todo.

I have tested a wide variaty of iPhone apps, web apps and desktop apps, and believe it or not, I did not find the perfect solution…

Scenario: I use now Google apps: my domain with google. Email, Calendars, Docs and tasks. I have an iPhone connecting with Google apps using Exchange.

I have a Macbook pro (main computer) a windows XP laptop for travel, and a windows 7 computer. At work I have a PC (so I live in a browser, chrome synchronizing bookmarks with xmarks).

In the past when I started (just after reading Getting Things Done from David Allen) I decided to use an custom approach for managing my todos.

Reviews:

Things

From Cultured Code, it was the first GTD program I used. It is available for the Mac (not PC) the iPhone and now the iPad. You can sync all of them with the Mac using bonjour (wifi) which might not be available in your office.

I love the look and the way it works. It has a very clever way of tagging stuff and and filter stuff by tags. You can add due dates, recurring stuff and so. It was perfect except for one key thing… I could not access to my todo’s in my work place. No cloud, no PC no nothing.

This was the reason to leave it, but if they would have a free cloud way to access my tasks, even if they would not have a PC version, I would probably have stayed with them. In principle they are working on it, but I am not willing to pay for a service like this.

Pros: It is beautiful and both the desktop client and iPhone clients are great.

Simple and yet powerful thanks to the tagging, that if done intelligently removes the need of location based todos, and so. I click on shift command and T and I create a todo wherever I am. I am on an email a link is added to the notes part to that email, which is great (see right screenshot).

Also the todos can be synchronized to your iCal/mac tasks.

Cons: Just Mac and iOS. Sync over wifi (not all). No cloud, no PC, no web.

GeeTasks pro

When I moved my domains to Google Apps I though that I would stick to Google Tasks. Well I still do. They are very simple which is good. May be too simple. You can create lists and inside this lists add your tasks. You can indent them, add a due date (but not recurrent) and a note to them.

You can’t add tags and this would be good, so you can be disciplined and create tags for location, responsibility, etc… like I do for Things or Evernote. I will write a post on how I organize my tags sometime this week.

You can create todos from email using the web client and it creates a stupid Tasks calendar that cannot be syncronized with anything and that only shows the due dates task of the list you have opened, so pretty useless.

Pros: As most of the input I do it using my iPhone I found that GeeTasks pro, and after testing the rest of what you have below, I am still using this… I have it offline in my iPhone, and syncs when online, it is simple and very well integrated with my mail client. I can create todos from my mail (see right screenshot) and in a way there is a calendar with my tasks (not ideal though because I cannot see it from my iCal).

Cons: No tags, no recurrent tasks, no desktop client and no good integration with my iCal or even google cal. No API basically. Now I use fluid which is sort of dedicated browser to my tasks, but if I am offline on my mac, that’s it…

I Kept looking for other solutions….

Well I wanted to test the rest of Todo’s to see if there was something better. First I though thought there was different ways to have the sync and web access:

• A product with their own site
• Linking to existing cloud services, in particular Evernote (which I am a heavy user) and Google Docs
• Linking to ToDos services with open APIs such as Toodledo and Remember the Milk.

Remember the Milk

Remember the milk might be one of the most well know online todo managers. It is very good and powerful and free. You can pay $25 a year if you wish to have an add free version.

The iPhone app is also free. It is full of features: priorities, due dates, repeat, estimate times, tags, location, URL… You can sort by Today, Tomorrow, This week, or lists (Inbox, personal, work1, etc…)

It is a very good product. In the web you can share, have your list of contacts and subscribe to iCal, which is great.

Pros: free, great web interface, rich of features, iPhone app. I love the fact that I can subscribe in my calendar, that they have add ons for firefox and chrome and google to see the task within your gmail.

Cons: design is not like Things, not simple and very ugly. Again, there is no desktop (sure you can do it with fluid). Too complete for me. I don’t need location, sharing, and so many things. I want something simple.

Toodledo

Toodledo is similar to Remeber the milk, but other apps use it as a back end thanks to their API.

They have a free version (that does not allow you to have subtasks…) and two paid ones for $15 ad $30 which allow you to add subtasks, have collaboration, stats, location (more than 5), history (you loose if you are on the free one)… they compare themselves with other products here.

Other apps use it in a very smart (but dirty way) so you can have (in the App) projects, and subtasks, by inserting a header in the notes, that surely you cannot do if you go the other way around (using the web as input).

The web interface is crowded with tons of features with an ugly UI. It is very powerful, even more than Remember the Milk, but I don’t need HOT lists Location and so many other things… It is not GTD friendly.

The iPhone app is free and it is also complicated, full of features. Take a look:

Pros: Rich on features. There are other iPhone apps using it as a backend, like Todo iPhone app. It is the best and most powerful backbone for managing apps with more elaborated iphone and ipad apps (theirs are very ugly). A great feature is that you can create a webcal feed that you can import in your ical or google calendar and another one the fact that you can have a secret email address so you send emails directly to feed toodledo, or to have a gmail gadget to see your toodledo in your gmail, something you can only do with an online service like this…

Cons: The free version has a lot of limitations. Again no desktop client. I did not see a link to subscribe in my calendar. The web design is really ugly and cluttered.

TouchTodo

Well, while looking for the perfect todo, I found ToucTodo, and I tested it too. Why? They have the best sync with google calendar out there.

This one could have been a winner for me. I had 2 parts: todos and projects. You can sync with google calendars (you select with which calendar) you can back it up to google apps as an excel sheet, and restore from an excel sheet, so I could have used Google apps to enter data at work.

Then I realized that the projects are not backed up and that the todos that have not a due date are not in the calendar (sure!) so they are not online, unless you export it to this xls in google docs, and that it is not a project…

So it looked great, but…

Pros: Great synchronization with google calendar and google docs. Great back up and restore option to your Google account. Simple: todos, and projects. Today, tomorrow, next and someday. You can add a note, reminders, due dates, repeat and level of importance (focus they call it).

Cons: If I want to input stuff from my PC, there is no desktop app, and via web I could do it in the excel thing in google docs, but it is not great. For the events that have no due date, they are not in the calendar or todos, which is understandable but not acceptable to me.

Awesome Note

The idea of using Evernote as the back end for my todos and notes was very appealing. I am a heavy user of Evernote, and I love it.

Then I found out that Evernote it is not ready for that. I had to test two products to get to this conclusion.

The first one was awesome note or aNote as they call themselves.

I have to say that is one of the most awesome todos I have tested, and I loved it. Again there are reasons why I chose not to go on with them. Let’s see:

It can back up your notes to Evernote and or Google Docs, and it does it great. You have to select a default to do so and not do it by default to both which is a petty. The iPhone GUI is awesome. Really.

aNote has both, notes and Todos. By default you create notes, then you can click on the todo button and you create this note as a todo. So far so good. You can add a due date, but you can not add a recurrent one. This is not good for a task manager… You can select different backgrounds, and ways to filter your views. All nice. Also sort by dates, etc… I really like it. I would say that visually is the one I like the most. You can add photos and even maps (maps are not sync to evernote or google docs).

Now, how it syncs with Evernote? It creates a set of notebooks like [aNote] name of your list, like [aNote] Inobox or [aNote].No Folder for those that are Notes not linked to any folder.

The folders you can create: inbox, next, someday… and they will all be folders in your Evernote.

Each note/todo will be an entry in your evernote. You will not distinguish what is what, and here the problem with evernote, you will see if it has a due date, priority (that the program can manage) or whatever. Here was when I realized that both Evernote and Google Docs are not good enough for backing up your todos. They simply cannot back up your due dates, recurrent appointments priorities and so.

How does it sync with Google Docs? It creates a folder called Awesome Notes, and inside this folder subfolders with the different folders (inbox,etc…) and inside each of these folder a document for every single todo/note. Again, nothing for dates, priorities and so. Not the fault of aNotes, but the backend.

Pros: Beautiful design. Easy and very very flexible. Notes can be converted into todos, add due time, add photos, maps, create a journal if you wish. It has quick note entry. It syncs with evernote and google docs.

Cons: Not a problem of aNotes but a problem of the support for backing up. If I want to add stuff from my office laptop, I can use google docs or evernote, but I will not be able to add a due date. You cannot, in any case, add recurrent appointments. No desktop client, sure, apart from Evernote with the limitations I mentioned. Personally I don’t like that I have to have specific notebooks in Evernote (that I can’t rename).

Egretlist

Continuing with Evernote sync, the one to try was Egretlist. Like Awesome note, a beautifully designed app.

Egretlist is more elegant in the way it syncs with Evernote. It does not create a set of new notebooks, it is more clever and if you get use to it, because it is not an easy app, it can work like charm. The learning curve is steep though.

The way it works is that is it scans all your entries in Evernote and those which have a checkbox in it, it is added to the iPhone app. Smart eh?

So if in your already existing notebook inbox you create a new note with a checkbox it will be a todo in egretlist. In addition to this it will use all your tags seamlessly.

So here in the screenshots you can the categories are just tags. Whenever I tag something with next (I define which ones are the relevant for egretlist), it appears under categories. If a list has a star it will also appear under lists (not seen here). Then a list of the notebooks with checklists in the notes. In this cases I moved the notes to the [aNotes] notebooks (previous app) but it looks like in the third screenshot.

Pros: I really wanted this to be the one. It has a great way of using evernote, great with tags, taking the notes with checkboxes… really smart. Great looking app. You can add images, voice notes, videos, and decide which note to send to a specific task the calendar (ical).

Cons: very hard to understand at the beginning. It does not support recurrent appointments or even sorting the tasks in any way, what make it unusable for some of us… but again, this is Evernote’s fault, due dates and so cannot be seen in Evernote, and therefore not entered if you don’t have the iPhone with you. Petty because this could have been the winner for me as I said.

After testing this I realized that Evernote, as it is now, will not work for me for todos. I need to feed my task from the phone and from the web and if evernote cannot create due dates, etc.. then that’s it.

Todo

This is probably one of the most known and popular iPhone todo apps. I guess the reason why is because the got the TODO name for the app… and this is exacly what you search in the iTunes store.

Don’t get me wrong, it is a very good app from appigo.

It can syncronize with Toodledo but if you are using the free account (from Toodledo) no subtasks…

As a todo app is great, it syncs also with iCal (when I say iCal I also mean Outlook). You can tag stuff and search by tags. In the home screen you clearly see those task due by today, tomorrow, Next week and at the end those with no due date. You can star and prioritize tasks. You can create lists, like shopping list and then subtasks, and add contexts (@home, work, etc…).

Pros: It does the job. You have lists (inbox, work, home), focus, priority, due date, repetition, … everything. It syncs with Toodledo so good if you need a web interface for easy entry. Again toodledo web is not very nice but it is functional. It can sync with your local calendars.

Cons: No desktop. I don’t quite like Toodledo and the free version is very limited compared to Remember the Milk. For me this is just one more ToDo app.

edit 29/9/2010: They have released a web version 15 days trial otherwise $19.99 (i don’t know if for a year). Is pretty beta, but a good step on the right direction.

Producteev

When I discovered Producteev I thought it was Things on the web and I was very excited. So beautiful and simple web client… I loved it and I decided to download the iPhone app (free).

Producteev is a collaborative tool. For free you get two users, but I guess the beauty of this product is for a team to work together in a sort of ticketing system more like a todo way.

I loved the interface and the fact that it is socially integrated. You can add/receive todos via google talk, email, etc… neat.

The problem for me was that it is thought for a group, and not for an individual. In the iPhone app you see who entered the task (me) and who has to do it (me again) which makes no sense when screen space is the iPhone is critical.

As you can see from the iPhone screenshots it is pretty much the same than any other todo, but with this team focus. You have stars, hot (I see this over and over… and I don’t quite understand, I rather order stuff myself and the ones on top of the list are more “hot” than the others…).

Pros: It has one of the best web interfaces out there. Beautiful and useful. A trillion way to input data (email, IM, etc…). Is team oriented.

Cons: the iPhone app is not that good looking. No desktop (offline) client. I did not like the fact of having creator and responsible if I am using this on my own. No recurrent appointments. You use workspaces for projects and labels are not transferred from one to another.

2Do

I tested a few more apps. One of them is 2Do. This one is also fancy and good looking. I has locations, syncs with toodledo, and can export to iCal (it uses its own calendar but using toodledo you can have an ical live). I did not mention but some of this apps, including this, you can back up the tasks, but being in the same wifi network, you go to the ip of your iPhone and download the file with the backup… not something you do everyday. I would rather have this transparent on the back towards and online service, like touchtodo.

Well, here you have locations, like this is where you are and this are the things to do here. Fancy but I am would be happy just by tagging that says home, work, supermarket and when I am in one of these places voila.

You can add audio, attachments, photos, location… very easily and intuitively. Those you can’t sync with Toodledo though.

Pros: Good looking app. Can sync with Toodledo, ical (outlook), has push, and a lot of features (location, attachments, voice…). Toodledo back end is powrful: you can feed it via email, create subtasks (pro account), have calendar sync. It is by far the best app for sync with Toodledo. I will play more with it.

Cons: No desktop but Toodledo has a lot of widgets. What I did not like is that you cannot sync with both, Toodledo and local sync using the program they have for PC and Mac. One or the other, so I choose Toodledo.

eTodo

eTodo is from BitAlpha and the design is awesome and beautiful. Simple. If you don’t need sync then consider this one.

It is very basic, yet it has most for the stuff.

When you add something it goes to your inbox. You collect everything there. Then you go to something in the Inbox and decide if you have to take action or put it into next or someday. Big icons. Nice way to see tasks details. You can back up in the web server way (accessing your iPhone ip). I has due dates, repeat, priorities, you can add notes and tags.

Pros: simple yet it does a lot. Nice icons and clear workflow.

Cons: no sync, no desktop, no projects, no ical.

Put things off

Put things off is again a very very simple app. Even simplier than the previous.

In this app you just add a thing to your inbox and  decide if you do it today or you put it off. Once it is done, it is on done. That’s it.

For some people it would be enough. Not for me.

EasyTask

I found this one by chance. It looks promising:Orion Belt has a nice desktop app for Mac and PC, and iPhone and iPad app… it syncs with ical and… a web based app! So in principle it has most of what I need.

The desktop version is $20 so pretty affordable. You have a trial period.

Here you have projects (home, work 1, etc…) context (@home, @office, @computer, @telephone…) and finally the categories: inbox, today, next, someday… so far so good.

So, you can sync like things using wifi with your iPhone and desktop app. In addition you have a Windows version and … and that is the best, an online version too: http://www.easytaskmanager.net/

Now, it is not perfect… the web version basically sucks. Very simple. With Safari and Chrome I was just able to view not to add new tasks. Not even edit. See the revision log.

Also EasyTask does not support tags which is pretty important for me.

Pros: GTD stile, with desktop apps for Windows, Mac, iPhone and iPad. The iPhone app is good, syncs with wifi to your computers and to the cloud. You can access your tasks via web but the web interface is in a very infant state. You cannot add or edit tasks. I guess you have to wait but others will catch up. The local app syncs with ical and it is pretty good.

Cons: No tagging. The web interface is only to view, not to edit or add tasks. You cannot create lists with sub tasks. For that you have to create a project and then add the tasks there.

Simple note

This is the last app I tested. It is not really good for todos, but it is very good for notes. For me there is no use, because now I can sync notes with iPhone and IMAP via google. I also use 1Password with secure notes, and Evernote mainly for everything, but this little app has a web version (very nice and easy to use) and desktop versions for Mac and Windows.

Pros: simple, nice.

Cons: too simple.

Conclusion

Well after an extensive testing no app or service is fulfilling my needs, so for me there is no clear winner.

All have their own strengths and weaknesses, but no clear winner.

I learnt that Evernote and Google apps are not good enough as a back end. That only a couple have desktop versions (Things, EasyTask), that few have a cloud sync (Toodledo, Remember the Milk, EasyTask, Google Task)…

I think EasyTask is promising but I miss tagging and sub tasks and the web interface is not good.

I love Things but there is no Windows version, but if the cloud version is as good as producteev it can be the winner for me.

If you want good integration with iCal (Outlook) it is better to have a desktop app.

If you don’t want to spend money and the iPhone+ web is good enough, the Remember the Milk is very good.

If you need a tool for your team to manage things, then Producteev is good.

In my case, I continue with GeeTask Pro and google Task, until something better comes, or Google decides to do something good about the Tasks… ideally Things if they don’t make me pay for the cloud thing…

In paralel I will play more with Toodledo as it looks like it is the winner and most apps connect to it. Maybe is just a question to get used to it…

I will write another post soon with further testing and to explain which is my solution and how I use it.

Edit 9 Jan 2012:

Finally part 2 of this post: http://tokao.com/2012/01/09/gtd-todos-task-managers-part-2/

“I created the first one in 2009 because at that time there was an energy crisis in Europe,” Mr. Tsvetkov said. “I just created it to amuse my friends but when I put it up on my website so many people liked it that I decided to really focus on the project of mapping the stereotypes based on different places in Europe. I was surprised by the reaction because I never really expected it to take off like this.”

Europe according to the French

Europe according to the Germans

Europe according to the Italians

Europe according to the British

Europe according to the Americans

Calling all shopaholics and sacks addicts: we’ve got your fun bags right here! These 15 weird & wonderful shopping bag designs take the concept of “love handles” to a whole new level while consigning the basic, bland, brown bag to the boredom bin.

Shopping Unplugged

(images via: Ads Of The World)You know those Smart Electricity Tips your power provider often includes with your monthly electric bill? The ones you glance at and then toss in the trash? Meralco (the Philippines’ leading power company) had a better idea: give away cool designer shopping bags that have “Electricitips” printed on them.

(images via: Ads Of The World)Not only do Filipino power users keep their electricity tips handy, they also look cool toting the reusable, faux power cord handled shopping bags wherever they go.

Leather & Laces

(images via: Kong Online)Kong Shoes wants you to remember them, any time and any lace… laces, actually. Yes, it’s the old “cinch your bag by tightening the shoelaces” trick, gets me every time. I guess that’s the idea.

Not Your Father’s Golf Bag

(images via: Wisdom By Woody and I Believe In Advertising)When French advertising agency Agence V was charged with raising the visibility of the VW brand at the 2009 Paris Auto Show, they whipped up this neat shoulder bag that displays part of the door from a Volkswagen Golf GTI, then gave out free bags to everyone who attended the show.

(images via: Creative Guerilla Marketing)Not only was traffic at the VW booth noticeably higher, show-goers took the versatile bags home with them, thereby spreading the VW brand long after the auto show ended.

Bags Under Your Eyes?

(images via: Coloribus)The somewhat disturbing “Eye Bag” was conceived and created in 2009 by the Leo Burnett Frankfurt advertising agency to help promote Max Factor False Lash Effect Mascara. The cute yet creepy bags were distributed to customers at selected department stores and included a free sample of the mascara inside.

Amused By Muse

(images via: This Next and AdGoodness)The Muse Beauty Salon (c/o Tokyu Agency Inc., Tokyo) has come up with an ingenious alternate use for those twisted and braided samples of dyed hair commonly displayed at the hair dye rack. Maybe “twisted” cuts a little too close to the bone, but carrying ANYTHING by its hair just seems a little odd. On the other hand, it’s so easy a cave man can do it.

Bag Those Braids

(images via: ThinkAboutIt and Humor.com)Former Ukrainian Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko‘s claim to (fashion) fame was her trademark golden hair braid. At least, it’s better than being known as the “Gas Princess”. In any case, someone with mad photoshop skills decided her crowning glory could be put to a more prosaic use – carrying a load of perogies, perhaps?

Bags To Make You Blush

(images via: Adverbox)So you’re a lingerie store in the heart of Berlin, Germany, and you want to show the general public how nice your lingerie is – by showing how nice it would look on your customers. That’s the challenge thrown down by Blush, the Berlin lingerie store, to ad agency BBDO. We think BBDO did a great job if the photos above are any indication. Then again, we haven’t seen photos of Hubbies or grandmothers carrying the bags – danke schoen!

No Waisted Effort

(images via: Lab092)This cleverly designed bag – called the “Burn Bag” – was used in the Philippines to advertise GNC‘s Burn 60 fat-burning supplement. If only it were that easy to shrink your waist a few inches… which seems to be the message GNC’s trying to tell you.

LIFE (Or Other Magazines) Behind The Burka

(image via: Duval Guillaume)When P Magazine from Belgium wanted to get people thinking of what life behind the burka was like, they came up with this clever shopping bag that burka-izes the beauties featured on their magazine covers.

(image via: Adtention)The idea for the Burka Bag grew out of an article in P Magazine about the daily life of women in Afghanistan, where wearing a burka is commonplace. The magazine commissioned over 100.000 black bags designed with a burka cutout at the level where most standard-size magazines show the eyes of their cover girls. Indeed, as the above image shows, most any magazine featuring a full cover shot of a woman can get burka’d by being bagged.

Shop Until You Drop

(images via: AdGoodness)Graphic artist Antje Gerwien treads a fine line between groovy and grotesque, the the above bag designs illustrate so well. According to ReVital, who commissioned Gerwien to create the bag design, the intent was to “focus on putting the demographic curve back to normal”. We see… so, are we there yet?

The Choice Of Teabaggers Everywhere

(images via: I Believe In Advertising and Mastione)This shopping bag was designed in the form of an extra-EXTRA-large Lipton Clear Green Tea bag. Created by the DDB Integrated advertising agency of Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, the bags included actual sample bags of Lipton Clear Green Tea and were given to shoppers at area malls.

Breakfast, Lunch & Dinner Of Champions

(images via: Bored Panda)Wheaties, more than most breakfast cereals, has always striven to break new ground in attention-grabbing advertising. The “six-pack abs” bags above are a prime example. Lift a few fullWheaties shopping bags on a regular basis and you, too, could look like a champion!

Migraine, No Gain

(images via: Directory Journal)Panadol wants to be what you grab when you’ve got a headache, so they whipped up a series of excruciating ad bags to bring that fact to your attention. The full effect is realized when you either grab the bag by the grips (above left) or swing it by its strings.

I Wanna Hold Your Hand

(images via: Directory Journal and Ads Of The World)One of the classic trompe l’oeil (“deceive the eye”) techniques involves associating a real object with the image of another. The shopping bags above do just that, with an orangutan and a human child.

Case Closed

(images via: PicForMe)Speaking of six-packs… no need to brown-bag your bottles anymore, thanks to this graphic bag that literally has nothing to hide. Designed to advertise Shumensko, a Bulgarian beer, this bag comes in handy when you need to tote anything beer-related or otherwise – there’s an otherwise?
(image via: Odd Stuff Magazine)With the use of shopping bags as advertising media on the upswing, one wonders how long before we’ll see bags featuring flexible OLED screens showing video ads and commercials. We’re guessing it won’t be long… can you handle it?

(from weburbanist)

Ohlife is a free online diary, compleatly private. They even log you off from the site often, which is good.

So, what is what makes ohlife special?

It is simple, neat, beautiful. Every day, at the time you wish, it send you an email saying: What have you done today?

You just answer the email and voila, it goes into your diary. It couldn’t be easier. Just responding to an email. Even with photos if you wish.

Downside? Well, I have tested it for a couple of days only, but there is no calendar so you can navigate easily to other years or months. You have to scroll…

Also nice that in the web you can edit your entries.

Give it a try. It is free.

I try to keep keep all my inboxes to zero. Whatever I have in my inbox requires action. Once the action is taken, and action could be just answer quickly, then I archive them.

I have unified inbox, meaning that my inbox has emails from 5 different accounts.

I have the following folders on all my accounts: inbox (sure…), Waiting For, Read Review, and the rest of achieves. I don’t have them by people but rather by location. I go up to 2 levels of depth, so something like this:

• inbox (aiming to zero, only things that should have some action)
• read review (things want to read but are not urgent so I don’t want them in my inbox)
• waiting for (air ticket for tomorrow, a delivery yet to arrive, etc…)
• friends
  • local (I don’t live where my family is)
  • home (my friends in my home country, school, university…)
  • abroad
• family
  • wife
  • mum
  • kids
  • other
• work
  • waiting for (sometimes I mix private email with work stuff… bad bad)
  • job 1 (if you do have more than one job, then here)
  • job 2
• personal
  • key stuff (sort of starred items, email with driving license, passport, tax, passwords)
  • statements
    • bank (if you receive a lot of e-statments then create a folder with statements, then bank, telephone, electricity, etc…)
  • jokes
  • travel
  • shopping
  • newsletters
  • other

Then some tips to manage large amount of email:

You can keep your responses short and add a signature following the http://three.sentenc.es/ tips.

“Treat all email responses like SMS text messages, using a set number of letters per response. Since it’s too hard to count letters, we count sentences instead.

three.sentenc.es is a personal policy that all email responses regardless of recipient or subject will be three sentences or less. It’s that simple.”

Example signature:
——————————————–
Q: Why is this email three sentences or less?
A: http://three.sentenc.es
——————————————–

Alternatively you can add “Sent from iPhone” under your short responses.  People don’t expect long responses when you’re on your phone.

Sure, count on me!!
Sent from iPhone.

If you do really have an email problem you can create a ‘VIP’ filter.  Add your boss, close friends and family. Flag them red and throw them in a separate folder. This is the first place I check every morning.

If you are using Gmail or Google apps and you are giving away your email address to a lot of sites you try or places that potentially can spam you, they you can give your regular email +name of site or group or whatever, example: yourname+namesite@gmail.com. You can then filter those emails into a specific spammy folder you check periodically.

If you are using apple Mail or similar program and you really can’t cope with the inflow of emails, you can create a filter that auto-responds to all unopened emails > 14 days old w/the following message:

Your email (below) is now 14 days old and has not been opened.  To minimize email buildup your email has now been placed in the archive.  Should you still require a response simply respond back and you’ll automatically be added to the priority queue.  Thank you.

Good luck

Currently the map shows the location 0f over 12,000 caves and 361 grottoes. As well as displaying the location of caves the map includes geological overlays for America, Australasia, Europe and the Poles.

If you click on any of the plotted caves on the map you can get further details and links to any relevant websites about the selected cave.

Then take a look at this. I’m sure you’ll like it…

You can buy this at this etsy shop. It cost $45.

Halfway towards 2015, a lot more needs to be done to meet the Millennium Development Goals. Ahead of the United Nation’s 25 September High-level Event on the MDGs, which will identify gaps and determine how to accelerate progress toward the MDGs, theUN has launched a blog to stimulate the discussion on how to make the most of the upcoming 7 years. Have your say!

Take a look at the google earth map or to the map they have online to se realtime progress towards the goals. We are 5 years and 134 days away from the “D” day. Still a long way to go. Unfortunately the site is not very well maintained. Google earth link does not work and map displays data old from 2007…. petty.

All praise the zipper: the ubiquitous, maintenance-free, no muss, no fuss fastener that trumps both buttons and Velcro! Zippers operate smoothly, silently and safely day in and day out, often in close proximity to our most sensitive bodily parts yet they rarely – “There’s Something About Mary” excepted – cause us anxiety or grief. These 10 toothy examples of zany zipper art illustrate the mix of appreciation, admiration and YKK-stamped tabs by which society holds these fascinating fasteners.

Zippered Walnut

(images via: Ellen Rixford Studio and WebMD)

Artist Ellen Rixford knows how to grab one’s attention, as this zippered walnut shells, er, shows so well. The walnut is actually crafted from clay, is 6 inches long and is highlighted by an industrial zipper. Rixford created this striking image for a drug company advertisement… perhaps regarding a non-surgical treatment to replace testicular surgery.

Juming Museum’s Zipper Lotus Pond

(image via: BIG art)

Fly fishing anyone? Get your rod (and reel) to Taiwan, where the lushly landscaped grounds of the Juming Museum are graced with a most unusual pond. Designed by respected Taiwanese artist and sculptor Ju Chun, the Zipper Lotus Pond was completed in 2009.

(images via: My Confined Space and Broccoli City)

Sharp eyes may notice that the zipper slider carries the logo “JU-JUN”. It’s not clear exactly what the artist’s intent was in using this logo though the similarity to his name may offer a clue.

Zipper Tongue

(images via: Stylelist and Snopes)

When zipping your lips isn’t enough… yes, this is a photoshop. Not completely though, the zipper hardware was added to an actual “lingua bifida” body modification for a Worth1000 photoshop contest. Considering the increasing number of bodymods that have crossed the Net of late, we may yet see an actual zippered tongue some day. You just won’t see it in my bathroom mirror.

Life In The Fastener Lane

(images via: Pixyard, TACO and Telovation)

This group of images highlights zippers that have been painted or otherwise integrated into streets, avenues, boulevards and other paved pathways. One might ask (in a Seinfeld-esque voice),“What’s the deal with zippers and roads?” Perhaps artists note some correlation between the role of roadways in society and the functionality of zippers on an individual’s clothing. Or, maybe they just need sufficient space.

(image via: Impact Lab)

While paint and chalk make sense for roadway artwork, more obtrusive installations such as the Big Zip above are best suited to sidewalks and soft shoulders. Pedestrians and bicyclists may disagree, however.

Sebastian Errazuriz’s Zipper Dress

(images via: Britannica and Newslite)

Guys who already have trouble “unwrapping” their dates aren’t going to be thrilled by the Zipper N3 dress. Designed and created by 31-year-old Chilean artist Sebastian Errazuriz, the intention wasn’t to facilitate hanky panky but instead provide women with a so-called “credit crunch dress” that can be adapted to form over 100 different styles. Errazuriz used 120 zippers to make the dress, which he hopes to have mass-produced by a major clothing firm.

Amalia Versaci’s Upcycled Zippers

(images via: AmaliaVersaci and Amalia Versaci – ETSY Shop)

Amalia Versaci has got a name made for fashion and indeed, the Rhode Island School of Design grad focuses her creative energies on clothing and accessories. Her special emphasis is on the zipper, however, and her designs often employ zippers and parts thereof in original yet appealing ways. Versaci has taken a special interest in vintage and upcycled zippers, taking inspiration from the shapes and designs popular when zippers were as new, exciting and futuristic as Velcro is today.

(images via: Amalia Versaci)

Hear no evil with Amalia Versaci’s zipper slide earrings! I SAID, HEAR… ok, we’ll move on. Upcycling vintage zipper slides and adding today’s colors, tones and shades adds up to an attractive combination well suited for today’s New Traditionalists.

(images via: Amalia Versaci)

Jewelry isn’t the only purpose Versaci dedicates her zipper creations. Above are magnets made from heavy-duty YKK industrial zipper slides and collages crafted from vintage zippers still attached to their backing fabric strips.

Hirotoshi Itoh’s Grinning Stones

(images via: ScienceBlogs Bio-ephemera)

Part of the fascination of fossils is that what’s been locked in rock for countless millions of years is suddenly displayed before your very eyes. Hirotoshi Itoh’s zippered stones are something like that, except weirder. From skull-like grinning boulders to congealed coin purses to a soupcon of seashells secreted in silica, Itoh offers a glimpse into the heart of rocks whose concealed treasures are revealed with a mere casual zip.

(image via: Jiyuseki)

Creepiest, of course, are Itoh’s granitic grinning stones. Funny, I don’t recall Han Solo smiling as he gazed out from Jabba’s imprisoning block of Carbonite… unlike Itoh’s mouthy marbles, I guess he just wasn’t into it.

Benoit Lemoine: The Zip Tape Experiment

(images via: Benoit Lemoine and Design-Milk)

The cool thing about zipper tape is that it can be used to reveal heretofore un-noticed shapes and structures that COULD be zipped but aren’t. Forked tree limbs, bipod street lights, anything that conforms to a Y-shape (don’t get cheeky now)… just zip it! Benoit Lemoine has made somewhat of an artistic career for himself being the Banksy of Zipperdom, an odd avocation if there ever was but hey – someone’s gotta do it.

(images via: Stupid.com)

A variation on the zipper tape Lemoine chooses to use is Popped Zipper Tape, which makes your parcel, package, briefcase or whatever look like it, well, popped a zipper.

Karen L. Davidson’s Zipper Mosaics

(images via: Zipper Mosaics by Karen L. Davidson)

Winters are long & cold up in Minot, ND, and residents have come up with some interesting ways to avoid cabin fever, snow blindness and the like. One of the coolest (sorry) ways to get through those frigid months – the ones with an R in them – is Original Zipper Art as practiced and promulgated by Karen L. Davidson. From pins to plates to Christmas Trees and more, Davidson knows how to make a zipper do tricks that’ll bust your buttons.

(images via: Zipper Mosaics by Karen L. Davidson)

Davidson takes advantage of the wildly diverse color palette bestowed upon today’s plastic, polyester and metal zippers by manufacturers, thus avoiding messy paints and volatile solvents. A bonus is that the colors are either baked on or mixed into the zippers’ substrates. Designed to be long lasting from the start, Davidson’s zippers do the same for her art!

Zipping Across The Ocean

(images via: Asiajin)

Japanese artist Yasuhiro Suzuki set out to make a big impress ion at the 2010 Setouchi International Art Festival, and one would have to agree his zany zipper motorboat helped him succeed in spades. Suzuki must have noticed that the long, radiating wakes left by boats on smooth water look a lot like zippers unzipping… well, somewhat. In any case, inspiration led to construction and the result was the world’s only Zipper Motorboat. Here’s a short video of Suzuki unzipping Neptune’s fly:

Zipper Motorboat at SIAF 2010, via Shumiyama

(image via: Funny-Potato)

Zippers: where would clothing (and zany art) be without them? Buttons and Velcro have their good points but zippers are faster than buttons and they make a cool sound; not that painful ripping sound that so irritated Morty Seinfeld and doubtless many others. The Art of the Zipper simply completes the zipper’s long interaction with modern society by meshing the functional with the creative. Not much more to say… so I’ll zip it.

(from weburbanist)

Back in August ;-)

Now with ebooks this is changing. There are still a lot of people who still things that all this kindle, iPad, Sony book reader are not the same, that they prefer to have a book in your hands. The smell of the book, the pages, the fact that there are no issues with direct light or if you take it to the beach… but if you think like this is probably because you are over 30.

Ebook readers have room for all the books you can have in a life time.

The parallelism would be CDs and MP3. Are you still buying CD’s? If you do, then traditional books are still for you.

Well what I wanted to discuss here is how do you organize your books. The ones you have on paper and the ones you have in your ebook reader and the ones you have in audio (this is my favorite now…).

For the paper ones, I take photos of each of them and I upload them to evernote. I have talked a million times about evernote, but briefly is a software that makes your photos indexable, so the text in it is searchable. I tag them and I put them all in a notebook called books.

Now every book has a note, so you can even add if you have lend it or tag it so.

True you have similar more dedicated software, but for me evernote works like charm. Same for the wine ;-)

If you want to have them in the cloud, so you can share, review, publish in facebook and so, there are 3 very good tools you should look at:

Visual Bookshelf from Live Social: This is a free software that it is fully integrated with facebook (and also they have a stand alone website), which is great for the following reasons:

You can have your full collection of books, those you have read, those you want to read and those you are reading.
You can publish at anytime in your wall that you are reading it. When you finish you are offered to give a rating and to write a review and then to publish it in your wall.
You can see what your friends are reading, which is the future of advertising. Direct recommendations from friends, who you trust in taste.

I started using this because my friend did.

Then I found:

Goodreads: They also have a dedicated site for this, also fully integrated into facebook. I also used it. I first exported all my books from Visual Shelf and imported them here. I prefer this site, but unfortunately none of my friends use it, and the fact I use and recommend this sort of sites is for the social aspect.

Finally:

Google Books: As a google fan boy I had to try this one. I don’t think they have an facebook extension, but I imported the book list too. It is ok because is google, but zero social

Conclusion:

For me Visual Shelf is the one that most of my friends use, so I use it, but I keep the three of them updated. Be aware you can import and export from all of them. Sometimes is not trivial though.

Expensify is an application developed with the premise that the process of creating accurate expense reports doesn’t have to be nearly as difficult as most people make it. Rather than letting receipts pile up and manually typing each item you’ve purchased into a massive spreadsheet, Expensify lets you import expenses directly from your credit card without any typing, photocopying, or calculator usage required. Although the application is aimed at employees, accountants, freelancers, contractors, and students, it could really be used by anyone at all who needs to keep track of expenses for tax purposes or to receive reimbursement from work.

To start creating expense reports with Expensify, create an account with your Gmail, Google Apps, or Yahoo! login. The application also integrates with FreshBooks, QuickBooks, and SalesForce, which means people who already use these services can input even less information before getting started. To begin creating expense reports, add your credit card or online banking information, and watch as Expensify begins populating the page with all of your most recent transactions. Click on any purchases that were business-related, and Expensify will automatically gather and save the e-receipt for that purchase. If an e-receipt isn’t available for the transaction, then Expensify will prompt you to scan the original receipt to be saved and archived as a PDF file. Once all of your receipts have been uploaded, Expensify will handle everything and produce an accurate, complete expense report without any math required.

In addition to handling basic expense reports, Expensify also offers a number of advanced features such as mileage logs, time trackers, and mobile applications that let you input expenses directly at the time of purchase. For managers who are responsible for reimbursing employee expenses, the application lets you approve expense reports online and reimburse via credit card or direct deposit. Now that paper receipts are increasingly becoming a relic of the past, Expensify is positioned to become the new way that expense reporting is done at businesses across the country.

Practical Uses:

• Create an expense report in minutes
• Take a photo of your receipt with your mobile phone and save it online
• Get reimbursed for purchases without a paper receipt by getting an e-receipt instead
• Receive expense reimbursements via credit card or direct deposit

Insider Tips:

• Download the mobile app to input expense information on the go
• Email a scanned copy of a paper receipt to Expensify to be added to your account
• Export any expense reports to QuickBooks
• Track cash purchases by sending a text message to Expensify with the transaction information

What we liked:

• Expensify calculates expense totals for you and reduces the chance of human error
• Mobile application lets you snap a photo of any receipt, to be saved in the system
• Creating expense reports with Expensify takes much less time than manually copying and adding up each receipt
• Expense reports can be approved or rejected in a matter of minutes, since everything is automated online

What we didn’t like:

• Expensify only handles expense reports, and users must use separate web-apps for other financial business matters like invoicing or accounting

Alternatives:

• ExpenseCloud – expensecloud.com
• ExpenseWire – www.expensewire.com
• FastDue – www.fastdue.com
• Freelance Total – www.freelancetotal.com

Company Info:

• Launched: May 2008
• Privately Held
• Headquarters: San Francisco, California
• Founded by: David Barrett
• Web site: www.expensify.com

Costs:

• Free to create and submit expense reports
• Free to approve expense reports from 2 employees (submitters) per month
• $5 per submitter, per month for additional expense reports

Rating:

• 5 out of 5 (wow)

(via appvita)

The best:

Folders: I used to have 7 or 8 screens, now I have only 1.
All inboxes in 1: I keep my inboxes to zero messages. I love to see all the incoming email in a single place, from any of my email accounts. Now you have subtile improvements such as highlighting stuff like telephone numbers, addresses, dates, so you can take action.
Bed mode: When you double click there is now an icon to block the screen so it doesn’t rotate. Great for reading in bed.
Tap to focus in videos: Great. The Zoom for photos not that great, but handy. Camera seems to be faster when shooting.

The disappointments:

Multitasking: is it a joke? True that there are not many apps making use of multitasking but the fact of having all the apps down in the dock when double clicking home and when you click on any of them is just like opening like before, makes it a joke. Where is skype? IMs? I guess it will improve in the future, but today, it just sucks. The only app I use regularly that uses multitasking is Evernote, and it is not that great the implementation they did. I read you can record a note and do other stuff but…

It is fine…

ibooks: ibooks app rocks. Far sexier and better than kindle. Bookmarks sync with iPad and books look great, but… who read books in an iPhone? I prefer a trillion times to listen to books, put the iPhone in my pocket and listen.
Tip for ibooks: they use .epub extension, so if you have any .epub books, just drag them to your iTunes and you’ll have them in your iPhone. Just great.

Now that I have iOS4 in my 3GS, do I really need to buy an iPhone 4???

I am sure a lot of people is going to be asking this question. What else do you get? A better display? A better camera? Maybe the killer feature for the switch is facetime, but I still don’t know how it works. Do you have to start a regular call before starting? If so, it is now worth it for me. The other end cannot be a computer and I don’t know anybody with an iPhone 4.

Now if you have to make a call, lets suppose my mum in Spain buys an iPhone 4, then I have to spend a lot of money to call her first to Spain from a Swiss phone. If you can start the call over wifi (no need to make a call) then it is a different story. It might be a good thing.

By the way, is Fring or Skype going to support the front camera? if that is the case, then yes…

First make sure that:

• If you have a Jailbroken iPhone 3GS with the OLD BOOTROM and you DID NOT use Spirit to jailbreak then you can create the ipsw with PwnageTool 4.0 and restore with your jailbroken recovery mode.
• If you have an iPhone 3GS with the NEW BOOTROM this is NOT supported by PwnageTool 4.01

This is what you have to do:

1. Download Official iPhone iOS 4 for iPhone 3GS here (official from Apple).
2. Download Pwnage Tool 4.01 from any of this locations:
   • http://www.iphone-storage.de/PwnageTool_4.01.dmg
   • http://dl.finalgaming.de/dev-team/PwnageTool_4.01.dmg
   • http://www.stimp.nl/mirrorfiles/PwnageTool_4.01.dmg
3. Download iTunes 9.2 (you can do that but opening iTunes and look for upgrades)
4. Now run the PwnageTool. If it is in the same directory of the image ipsw image you downloaded in the step 1, then it will see that it the image to use. Just use Simple Mode and this image. This will create a new image that by default will be placed on your desktop. You can then close the PwnageTool.
5. Now before you upgrade your iphone, you could consider installing from Cydia AptBackup (from BigBoss). That will know which Cydia apps you have installed and in a later stage restore them.
6. Now, back up your phone, by connecting it to iTunes
7. Switch off your phone by holding on the top button and sliding to switch it off.
8. Make sure that it is connected it to the mac with the image you created and iTunes is open. Now hold the top and home button to enter into recovery mode.
9. iTuenes will tell you it is in recovery mode. Now you have to hold the Option key and click on restore. That will allow you to select the image on your desktop.
10. That’s it. The restore upgrade will not take a lot of time. What takes time is once you have iOS4 to restore you latest config.

If you have gone to the 10 steps you should have an iPhone 3GS with iOS4 and after more than an hour (in my cases) the same you had before.

Now you go to Cydia and install AptBackup, click on restore and voila, all your Cydia apps.

I had a problem though. My iPhone had a safe mode due to a problem with an app in Cydia. The app in question was MyFi. I had to remove it and now everything is OK.

Anthropomorphic design is nothing new, but these furniture objects are quite literally made of people. A cross between art photography,performance artand home furniture design, these strange shots show us a surreal artistic perspective on everyday household objects. These photographs may not be safe for work … nor are the creations they depict safe, and they do not really work.

From stacked human shelves to place settings set on structural bodies, arched figures holding entertainment systems to a lamp-headed person, these images shot by photographer David Blazquez feel almost uncomfortably raw and personal.

The feeling of discomfort is augmented, of course, by the nudity of the posed figures – but is also tied to the surreal depictions of familiar forms. The composite ‘people furniture’ seems at once stable and solid yet also simultaneously soft and poised to collapse.

Sensual or sexist? Simplistic or sublime? It is said of the best and most controversial artists in history that they were masters of their craft before they broke away from mainstream techniques, materials or approaches. Likewise, Peter Rolfe did not simply start by making suggestive and erotic pieces of furniture – he began by becoming a master of fine wood furniture design and construction.

These forms may come as a shock to moral sensibilities – or might not, depending upon the cultural context of the viewer. Either way, however, the layered, carved and polished wooden forms are incredibly well-made despite the complexities involved with having opening and closing doors, drawers and other moving elements.

Whether sublime, sexy or something else entirely, each part is carved with incredible delicacy and precision – from the human forms themselves to the props with which they interact – such as the supporting object above designed to look the part of an remarkably life-like cloth draped over a dresser.

Before you begin to wonder whether this work is more sexist than sexual, it is worth noting that he has crafted male forms as well as female ones.

Still, some of the women are modeled with arguably unrealistically ‘perfect’ curves by societal standards – and the locations of some of the drawer openingsand storage spaces do leave open questions about just how erotic these pieces truly are. But perhaps that is their purpose, or at least part of the point: to create conversations, spark controversy and question our avoidance of sexually suggestive forms in contemporary furniture design.

(from dornob)

Remember The Milk

If you are one of these guys living in the cloud, using google docs, or zoho, online calendars… then you probably also use online task management tools. Maybe you are happy to use your outlooks todo lists, or you do it in the cloud using Google tasks or remember the milk.

BaseCampHQ

If you work with clients then you are probably looking for a way to manage your tasks, sort of ticketing system but not necessarily for IT projects, a way to organise your work and the work of your team: a project management tool in the cloud. The king up to new has been  37 signal’s star product basecamphq (click here to see the tour).

Now you have other players in the market that do it equaly or better than bascamp and that you should consider:

Assembla

This is the one I use. It is free and I can create a space for each of my clients. They can also create a free account and add tickets or tasks to it, that I can customize in terms of organising the fields, milestones, etc.. (content, newsletter, technic) etc…

I like assemble because I can track the time I spend on a ticket, so at the end of the month I can bill by hours of work if I wish. You can have a wiki, upload files, etc…

Producteev

They just launched version 2. Very very nice. I just opened an account. It is the more social oriented ticketing system. You can add tickets or tasks via IM, email, they have a nice iPhone app… very nice. Simple though. You cannot indent task or add projects but you can have different workspaces add tags and link it to your calendar. It is nice to be able to feed it via IM, email or iPhone.

Screencast Producteev Two from Producteev.com on Vimeo.

Trac

Open source. The king tool for managing your files in a team. Try the demo.

Redmine

This one is an open source solution. Never tried. Demo here.

Teamwork Project Manger

This is a good alternative to bascamp. It is cheaper and here you can see how they say it is better.

Unfuddle

This is good tool to ticketing. This is the one I used when I was working at Shelter Centre and developing the new Drupal site. You can also track time (money) manage your code, etc… They support trac and check ins for code. Assembla does too.

Others:

• http://achievo.org/
• http://www.projectpier.org/
• http://www.springloops.com/
• http://fogcreek.com/FogBugz/
• http://www.jivesoftware.com/products/employee-community
• http://collabtive.o-dyn.de/?lang=en
• http://www.hyperoffice.com/task-manager/
• http://www.myintervals.com/
• http://www.deskaway.com/

CERN (European Laboratory for Particle Physics) *

EFTA (European Free Trade Association)

GAVI alliance

IATA (International Air Transport Association)

ICC (International Computing Center)

ICRC (International Committee of the Red Cross)

IFRC (International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies)

ILO (International Labour Organization) *

IOM (International Organization for Migration)

IPU (Inter-Parliamentary Union)

ITC (International Trade Center)

ITU (International Telecommunications Union)

ISO (International Standards Organization)

OCHA – Relief Web (United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs)

SITA ( Société Internationale de Télécommunications Aéronautiques – NGO International Company)

UNAIDS (Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS)

UNCC (United Nations Compensation Commission)

UNCTAD (United Nations Conference on Trade and Development)

UNHCHR (United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights)

UNHCR (United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees)

UNOG (United Nations Office Geneva)

WCC (World Council of Churches)

WHO (World Health Organization) *

WIPO (World Intellectual Property Organization)

WMO (World Meteorological Organization)

WTO (World Trade Organization)

* With online application system.

You can also check: http://icsc.un.org/joblinks.asp

Please note that all UN organizations (UNCC, UNCTAD, UNHCHR, UNHCR, UNOG,..) have a common online application tool (e-Galaxy).

WHO and UNADS have a common online applications tool as well.

This are my thoughs on how I would like this sort of cameras to evolve in the next years:

1. Pixel-wise they are OK already. Around 12 to 20 Mpx is more than OK.
2. I would rather improve the sensor to be able to shoot at nights. I hate flash and noise. Nikon D3s in in these lines. My future camera should be great shooting with low light and have nearly zero grain (noise).
3. They should geotag photos. These cameras should come by default with a GPS. Now you can buy an external one (see my latest post), but ideally it should be integrated.
4. I shouldn’t bother to connect the camera to a PC. I should be able to get home, and via my home wifi (or you could configure this) the camera should be able to upload the photos to your media centre, to your flickr, smugmug, picasa or whatever service you use for online backup. Now you have eyefi doing something similar, but it should be out of the box with the camera, being able to configure it: local pc, HD, online service… or if you are traveling and find a hotspot, then be able from the camera menu to upload them somewhere.
5. HD video, sure.

Most of this things can already be done with your phone. Phones are getting beter and better on photos and video, with 8Mpx and HD video… so DSLRs should not be less. They will always be beter optic-wise and sensor-wise.

(from engadget)

How It’s Done

It’s surprisingly easy. Now that Google makes it simple to embed a Wave in any blog post, starting a Wave-based live blog is as easy as copying and pasting a URL into a Web form.

Step 1: Start a Public Wave

To create a public Wave, simply head over to Google Wave and start a new Wave. By default, Wave’s are not public. To make this live-blogging wave public – so that your readers can later see it on your blog – you have to add public@a.gwave.com to the new Wave. This account is probably not in your contacts yet, so just copy and paste the address and add this account to the Wave.

Now you have two options: 1) you can give your readers full access to your Wave, which means anybody can comment as you live blog, or 2) make the Wave read-only and don’t allow others to edit it. To change these settings (even after you start), simply click on the globe icon that represents the public@a.gwave.com account and change the access settings. By default, all public waves are set to “full access.”

Step 2: Get the Embed Code and Embed Your Wave

Now you need to get the embed code. Just copy the URL of the wave from your browser’s address bar and head to the Wave Elements tool. Paste the URL into the form, hit Return so that the tool recognizes the new URL, set the desired size of the embed, and then head to the bottom of the page where you can find the updated embed code.

After this, all you have to do is head over to your favorite blogging tool and paste the embed code into your new post.

Step 4: Start Blogging

Head back to Wave after you finish setting up your post and start blogging. Your readers will see every letter you type in real time.

Lessons Learned

Here are a few things we learned today:

• Wave worked like a charm. We did not experience any hiccups and our readers were very happy about seeing us type the updates in real time – live blogging really doesn’t get more “live” than this. Having Google’s infrastructure as the basis for your live blog definitely helps when you have lots of people hitting your blog at the same time.
• Adding a few extra people to Wave allows you to share the workload. If possible, have at least one extra person around to create and upload screenshots. We used a Skype backchannel during the event to coordinate in the background, but you could also use a second Wave for this.

A Few Things to Keep in Mind

• The default font size in the Wave embed is too small, and changing it for every new wavelet takes too long. Hopefully Wave will soon allow us to set a slightly larger font size as the default.
• Wave didn’t work well for Safari users and is obviously also still an issue for Internet Explorer.
• Uploading screenshots to Wave is easy, just click on the attachments icon, pick the desired image and hit submit. Sadly, you can’t just drag and drop images from your desktop onto your browser (yet), so having a second person to manage that is helpful.
• Spell checking in Wave is still a bit difficult even when you have a second person edit your posts.

One thing to remember when you use Wave to live blog is that your readers aren’t likely to reload your page often, so your page views will likely be lower than if you just posted regular updates into a static blog post. We think this is a worthwhile trade-off, given that the experience for our readers is superior to using a static post, but that’s a decision every publisher has to make individually.

(from readwriteweb)

It is a petty because I have tons of photos. It is a petty also that those that I have in norai I have not a full size copy of them as I just did it for the web…

I have a very peculiar workflow for photos. My media server with 2x2Tb HDs has about 150Gb of Jpegs and 150Gb of Raws.

When I take a photo with my nikon d300 I take it in Raw (only for the past couple of years), then I save it in a Photos Raw folder with the date-event folder. Then I process them with DxO which generates a Jpeg with the corrected noise, lens distortion and so. I move the jpgs to a folder named the same in a Photos folder.

Picasa is the program I use in the media centre to  see the photos.

On the other hand, the photos I take with my iPhone are in my Mac using iPhoto. I don’t know why… but I take a lot of photos with the iPhone.

Up to now I used to upload the Jpgs to my servers downstairs where I have Gallery2 from menalto. It is good, but videos are not great and again it is here and I am trying to move away from depending on my server.

Now I was considering to have an offsite copy of all my photos. I could go for something like backblaze (or mozy, though I prefere the first), pay $5 per month and forget, or go for an online cloud gallery. This backup solutions are good. Backblaze lets you back up usb drives connected to a machine, even if they are not always connected. I have the Media server with 2Tb and then it has 1Tb USB drive and a 500Mb one… so it would be a good option… but the stuff I really need is in my mac (320Gb) which backs up to a TimeMachine in the Linux Server….

The two major players are Flickr and Picasaweb. Sure you have Smugmug which is the one that looks the best and others such as expono, snapixel.

For me the ideal would be picasaweb basically because I don’t care about the community (where flickr is strong) and it is just a switch in picasa to have everything sync with the web. If I work on the face tags or locations, everything is happily synchronised. In addition to this I like the fact that I can keep my folder structure in the media server and picasa will just be a layer to display it and synchronise it with the web.

So what is wrong?

Google sells space. Basically 20Gb for $5 per year or 200Gb for $50. I have 150Gb of Jpgs. Unfortunately there is NO SERVICE that would allow me to upload my NEF (raw files) and they will create the Jpgs or something.

This is expensive. I would have to go for 200Gb so $50 per year.

Another problem is that there is no good iphone app to upload from the iPhone your photos and videos to picasaweb (hello!!).

Then we have Flickr. Flickr is cheap. $25 per year for unlimited space. If I just want a backup then why not go for flickr?

I don’t like it. I know the community is the best one, so if you want to promote your photos then it is far better. If you want to make profit by selling them then smugmug pro is the winner ($150 year).

Flickr has not desktop app. They don’t respect my folder structure. If I choose flickr and I have 150Gb to upload, I would love to keep my folder structure in sets (this is what flickr considers folders) but the flickr uploadr doesn’t allow that. So I would end up with 50.000 photos in a bucket and then do the job online to classify them on sets, collections do the map thing (which sucks compared to google map) and faces… (again!!).

So here I am. On one side the winner is google, but I think they are expensive and I don’t know how fast my storage demands will grow, but for me today is twice the price of flickr.

On the other side, everybody use flickr. I guess you get use to it, but the sycn and the process of uploading the photos… for that I continue with gallery2 in my servers, I copy everything to an external HD, I plug it in my mums and I rsync it once in a while. But then what do I do with the videos I take with the phone? Put them all in youtube?

Maybe…

Anybody went to this hard choice?

Anyway, why my next phone is going to be an iPhone 4G and not an Android?

Having migrated all my email to google apps myself (I was hosting it at home with zimbra up to now), I have thought several times that the best next phone for me would be an android based phone. I’m sure there is nothing better for Google apps integration, and I am a heavy user of google apps (mail, calendars, tasks, contacts, docs), but…

I love my current phone (iPhone 3GS) and even if sometimes I feel tempted to go for more powerful, quick and feature rich phone, such as the nexus one, droid incredible, evo… they are still behind apple’s iPhone in terms of the amount of apps, the simplicity and in terms of sync with google apps, I am pretty happy with exchange for having pushed email, calendars and contact from google, and geetasks app for the tasks.

Again I am not questioning the fact that android phones might be much better integrated, but, and this is the main reason why I am going to buy an iPhone 4G, and it is something everybody should consider:

I am not ready to see that my handset is obsolete after a month or two in the market. That there are trillions of handsets so always something newer and better than the one you have.

Same applies for android OS. They release versions like popcorn. Today you buy a motorola droid with android 2.1 and tomorrow you have the droid incredible and android 2.2.

With apple this is more reasonable: maximum one new handset per year, and the releases of updates maximum every 6 months, but always compatible with old handsets and easy and transparant to update.

Now you might also argue that android is not policed like apple is. True. That is why I get the most out of my phone by jailbraking it. No limits: MyWi, SMS confirmation, sbprefs, install apps from ssh…

My iPhone is my all-in-one gadget it does everything for me: I control the music on the mediacenter computer (windows) with iTunes using remote app, I see and control my IP Camera from anywhere, it is a terrific iPod, I listen and watch netcasts, listen to books, music, constantly!!, Navigon tells me how to get to a place when driving, I check in in places, write comments, check the web, have my email pushed, have my life archived (mail, bills and so) with evernote, I tweet, I see my webdav server, I can connect my computer with MyWi using 3G, I take quality photos and videos everywhere (I have thousands)… and if now I am going to be able to have skype running in the back with a front camera…

what else? ;-)

Now I would like to try to predict what what it is going to happen to what I think is one of the key avenues for social real time media.

Location as it is now I think it will change. Now you are forced to take your phone, open an application, locate yourself using GSM triangulation and GPS, then check in at a place that should be in the list (or create a new one). Most of the apps are like games: with gowalla you leave and take stuff, with foursquare you become a mayor of a place and earn badges… and tellmewhere has (under my point of view) gotten worse, while it was the one I was betting for.

In the future we should ask ourselves why would you check in in a place. As it is now is more like a trend. Fashion. I would see it useful if you could: get information of the place where you are: menu, promotions, how many people now in, etc…

Also with the right privacy settings, see who is there, and let them know (to those you want) that you are there. This should be done without check in, at least to a close group of friends.

To do it publicly, like it is done now should be done carefully and as it is being done now, baring in mind that it is not that advisable to keep broadcasting your precise location… not safe. Some one could check you are not at home and rob you, for instance. There was a funny site where you could see were people was located so you could go and rob their houses. (It was a funny site sure, not serious).

Continuing with what we would expect from such technology is a tool to broadcast to “your” public (closed group of people) where you are, what are the tips about that place, etc… A tool where you could upload photos, videos, stream, leave tips, comment on the menu, a reward program if you go often, order from your phone products or complementary services or packages, pay,etc… The potential is huge.

This is how I see location based apps in the future. The problem I see is that most of the times venues are in buildings where there is no GPS signal, so no precision in locating people automatically. Also I see the privacy issues a key delicate topic.

Gadgets:

Macbook pro
iPhone 3GS (as soon as the 4G is out… then … ;-) )
Nikon d300 with nikkor 18-200 and  sigma 10-20 (I wish it was a nikon d3s though…)
Fonera2.0n (great concept and community. I have two an convincing friends to join)
IP Camera (pan tilt) wifi
I hesitate about the iPad. I might wait for the second gen (with hopefully a camera for video chats)

Services:

Google apps
Google sync
Zoneedit (to manage dns)
Evernote (my brain basically)
Delicious (and a plugin for chrome)
Dropbox

For the mac (I have tons…):

Google Chrome
BusyCal
AppCleaner
Audiobook builder (to create audiobooks and put them in iTunes)
Backuplist + (to rsync my docs to my webdav)
Copypaste Pro
Mikogo (free app to share desktop with anybody, browsing together and granting control over your machine)
Paparazzi! (to create a snapshot of a website)
ScreenFlick (to make screencasts)
Skype (I use it via Adium)
Adium (all Instant Messengers into one: Skype, Gtalk, yahoo, msn, facebook, aol, etc…)
Proxifier (to put all the apps into a box, then you can tunnel them via ssh into a machine with squid)
1Password (to manage logins and passwords. Syncs with iPhone)

For the iPhone:

Tweetie (in fact for iPhone and mac)
Brightkite (like twitter on steroids: with images, location, notes, checkins)
Facebook
Foursquare, Gowala, Tellmewhere (location based apps. You can use http://check.in to check in at the same time in some of them)
GeeTasks pro
AutoStich (to create panoramas with several photos)
Pixelpipe
1Password
MyWi (use your 3g connection to become a wifi hot spot)
ezShare (remote desktop, VPN and access to network drives like webdav)
IP Vision Pro (to access you Ip cameras)

I don’t have but I wish I have (I am not in the US… that is why):

Google Voice
Mint

One of my favourite authors for this is David Allen and his “Getting Things Done” book and now philosophy. It does not fit my needs 100% but you can get a lot of good ideas. It is a read I recommend to anybody who would like to take a step back and see how to improve his/her workflow on executing stuff, not just at work but in your personal life.

I will write one day on which are my workflows but in the post I just wanted to briefly explain how I organise my todos.

First to clarify that I am heavy user of my iPhone and I could not live without Evernote. I take photos of everything, and I classify it all in evernote: from photos of all (yeap, all) incoming mail, to receipts (yeap…) to all my books, visiting cards, wines, etc… even when browsing it I constantly click shift and the evernote button to get a pdf of what I want to save.

For tasks and priorities I used to use things (a mac and iPhone program) but since I migrated my email to google apps, I use google tasks (as I mentioned in my previous post).

I have the following “lists” that I rather call “projects”.

@action (the @ is to bring it to the top) where I put most of the stuff I have to do and does not fall under a more complex task. Before I used to have an @inbox with the idea to drop everything there in a previous step and then put it in the right list in a second step, but I found out I could be disciplined enough to classify staff as it was arriving. In my Evernote and at home for my paper stuff, I do use an @inbox though.

Then I have a @wating for list. Here I put stuff like, waiting for an ebay thing I bought, or if someone is supposed to take some action on something that should come back to me, if you delegate a job for instance.

lent and borrowed lists. Don’t you hate when you lend a book to someone and it never comes back? Then you don’t remember who was it or which book. Well I keep track of everything I lend and I borrow, of course.

someday list. Here stuff that I have to do eventually but does not fall into the action list. Stuff like make a copy of the keys for the neighbours, upload latest holiday photos, etc…

scheduled list. Even if some of the stuff above can have a deadline or a day they should move to the action or you should execute them, the scheduled list is more for stuff that can be recurrent or that is far in time to be in the action folder but not as vage as someday. Examples: date that the subscription to a paper expires, an annual summer jazz concert…

wish list. Here I put all that I want to do, but that I am not necessarily do: buy a nikon d3s, go to x restaurant, buy x wine, visit japan, etc…

The specific project lists. One that it is always there is shopping where I write all the stuff I have to buy in the short term (salt, shoes, pasta, pesto…), you could add all this in the @action list but the idea of clustering similar stuff into projects is very convenient.  You could have lists such as: job hunting (and all the places you want to apply for), house works (and all the stuff you want to fix at home), etc…

This is in a nutshell how I organise my ToDo’s.

Another day I will explain how I organise my email, and Evernote.

This is how I manage mine:

I use google apps (you could use gmail tasks) and I use the tasks there. You can create a calendar with the tasks with due date.

In my iPhone I syncronize it with Geetasks pro which is a great app that syncs your tasks in google with your iphones… and works offline!!

Then, in my mac I use fluid. Fluid (which is free) what it does is it creates a program in your applications folder with a custom browser unique for that app (Site Specific Browser (SSB)), so when I launch norai tasks it opens a window with the tasks alone. Like a program. You can even choose the icon you want for the program.

For the URL you have to use something like (what I use):

https://mail.google.com:443/tasks/a/yourdomain/ig

or if you want a list on the left and the tasks on the right (nice if you are a heavy user)

https://mail.google.com:443/tasks/a/yourdomain/canvas

or if you want to see it like in a phone (you can use iPhone at the end instead of android but works better with android):

https://mail.google.com:443/tasks/a/yourdomain/android

Take a look at this site to know more about how to do it, but pretty straight forward.

The pros is that in my iPhone (main tool for tasks) I have them offline also. When in the office you can use google site or the second lint (canvas) to manage your tasks and projects.

The cons is that in my mac I have to be online (with fluid). It would be nice to have gears for that…

Reflecting their creators’ desire to step far, far away from the sheepish architectural clones that our culture has grown to accept as “normal”, these outstanding structures are among the unique global jewels that convey a quirky sense of personality tucked within an even more wackadoodle shell. While it may be hip to be square, these slightly left of center buildings demonstrate that marching to the beat of one’s own drummer – whether you’re of the animal, vegetable, mineral or architectural persuasion – is actually a whole lot more fun.

Ferdinand Cheval’s Le Palais Idéal or “Ideal Palace” (Hauterives, France)

(Images via: Nobiwan, The Bodacious Belgrade Blog, Arts Library)

Throughout a 33 year period, rural postman Ferdinand Cheval – who lacked any architectural background whatsoever – collected all the individual stones necessary to create his elaborate carved limestone and shell studded structure via pocket, basket and wheelbarrow. Incorporating a bizarre conglomeration of architectural styles inspired by Hindu and Biblical mythology as well as Algerian, Northern European and Chinese elements, he finally completed his outstandingly quirky monument just one year before his death in 1924 at the age of 88. Grottos, flying buttresses and statues of animals collide in what is today one of the most outstanding examples of “naïve art” architecture and France’s most beloved cultural landmark.

Waldspirale (Darmstadt, Germany)

(Images via: Pakway, Memucan, Germany Tourism, CheapOstay)

Viennese architect and painter Friedensreich Hundertwasser conceived of this fantastical, U-shaped, multi-earth-toned 12 floor residential building complex which emulates the layers of sedimentary rock that you might see in a jutting outcrop deep in the mountains. Completed just 10 years ago, his “Forest Spiral” features 105 apartments, 1000 different shaped windows, a café/bar, an inner courtyard with an artificial lake plus a diagonal green roof studded with botanical elements such as trees, grass, shrubs and flowers. Built by the Bauverein Darmstadt company, it currently serves as the home base for hundreds of lucky German residents.

Eliphante (Cornville, Arizona)

(Images via: Dymaxionweb, Organic Architect, Somethin Beautiful, You Live Where, Trip Advisor, Eccentric America)

An exercise in artistically imaginative organic architecture, this dwelling – built into 3 acres of natural Arizona landscape by husband-wife team Michael Kahn and Leda Livant – would likely trigger Seussian envy in Theodor Geisel himself. Consisting of five separate hand-crafted structures linked together by their shared idiosyncratic themes, the main living quarters are housed within Eliphante and connected to a meditation zone, art gallery, bath house, sculpture garden and wading pond. Raw materials were scavenged from the desert and integrated into the homestead with decisive artistic flair along with stone and glass mosaics, wood, tile, plaster and metal sculptures, yielding a one-of-a-kind home that lives, breathes and communes with Mother Nature.

The Ice Hotel (Jukkasjarvi, Sweden)

(Images via: Multemusic, Culture Shoq, Sophistikitty, Ice Luxury Items)

Quite like short-lived, seasonal treasures such as the emergence of cherry blossoms that are here today and gone tomorrow, Jukkasjärvi’s Ice Hotel exists just 4 brief months out of every year. The nearby Torne River is relieved of tons of its ice, which is then used along with well over 30,000 tons of snow to form the ethereal exterior structure, central supports, shimmering rooms and infamously surreal ice bar. At the end of the spring, what remains is recycled and stored for next year’s incarnation — which is just one of several eco-friendly efforts (including self-generated renewable energy) that add to the hotel’s carbon negative aspirations that they intend to achieve by 2015.

Experience Music Project (Seattle, Washington)

(Images via: Washington.edu, Steve Picture Place, Travel Dudes, About.com, Mibazaar)

An architectural train wreck or simply just a brilliant collision of our world’s most memorable landmarks? In fact, this Frank Gehry-designed museum – which offers a cultural exploration of science fiction and music within – pays homage to the Gehry Tower, Guggenheim Museum Bilbao and Walt Disney Concert Hall among other works created by the designer’s firm. Of course, critics have referred to it as being somewhat hemorrhoidal in shape and among the most supremely ugly buildings in the entire world, and while it IS risky with its clashing colors, textures and overall architectural identity crisis, the Experience Music Project kind of grows on you after awhile. Perhaps it’s high time for a little extra dietary fiber ;)

The Sheep Building & Sheepdog Building (Waikato, New Zealand)

(Images via: Cool Mags, Uphaa, Ray Tomes)

Known for its rolling emerald hills dotted with what can only be described as a sea of terrestrial sheep, it’s rather fitting that in a land where wooly creatures out number humans twelve to one that Tirau boasts the world’s only known corrugated iron sheep-shaped structure along with a companion sheep dog version. Housing a wool and craft shop, the sheep building provides a perfect complement to its canine compadre (which happens to be the location of the town’s i-SITE Visitor Information Center). Both are crafted by local artist Steven Clothier, the brains behind “Corrugated Creations” and the reason why this small New Zealand locale is now covered with hundreds of smaller scale but equally quirky iron sculptures.

The Urban Cactus (Rotterdam, Netherlands)

(Images via: Vision Decor, Arts Library)

Rising up into the sky like an alien urban desert invader, this 19 floor Rotterdam high rise offers city dwellers an opportunity to get their funk on along with their green thumbs. Conjured up by the visionary design team at UCX Architects, the graduating structure with star-shaped levels enables natural light to stream through the living spaces while also offering residents access to ample outdoor patio areas, all while overlooking the Rotterdam Harbor. Sounds and looks divine!

“Inversion”…Also Known as “The Hole House” or “Tunnel House” (Houston,Texas)

(Images via: Listphobia, David Airey)

Prior to its imminent demolition, the Houston-based art trio of Kate Petley, Dan Havel and Dean Ruck decided to make the most of a doomed dwelling in a Montrose neighborhood by transforming it into a short lived but very memorable installation called “The Tunnel” or “Hole” house. With its central vortex narrowing into a tunnel that spilled out into the exterior of the structure, local spectators were able to experience their own personal Alice in Wonderland fantasies (or nightmares as the case may be) before the whole thing was leveled in 2005.

The Mushroom House aka Tree House (Cincinnati, Ohio)

(Images via: at: 5chw4r7z, Rocketeer, AnDy631, The Wondrous)

Sprouting up in Cincinnati’s Hyde Park section, professor of Architecture and Interior Design Terry Brown – along with his students – hand crafted this one bedroom residence throughout a period of 14 years until its completion in 2006, at which time it was put on the market for $525,000. Sadly, Brown met his untimely demise just two years later in a car accident, but his Mushroom House – constructed with multiple types of metals, tinted glass, ceramics, wood and shell – serves as his most outstanding legacy and one of Cincinnati’s most esteemed landmarks.

Hang Nga Guesthouse a.k.a Crazy House (Dalat, Vietnam)

(Images via: Webady, TrippyDoo, Travel Spot Cool Stuff)

Tumbling out of the imagination of architect Dang Viet Nga, Hang Nga’s Guesthouse and Gallery is…well…all sorts of crazy, from its rustic tree-like base with spiderweb windows to winding, nook-and-cranny laden interior that promises to keep you guessing at every turn. The artsy designer and daughter of Vietnam’s former president tapped into her entrepreneurial spirit by wisely charging admission to the storybook structure, knowing full well that spectators would happily gobble up its funhouse like details, including seemingly melting interior and exterior facades punctuated by somewhat goofy ‘what are THEY doing here?’ zoo animals keeping a watchful, protective eye upon the premises.

Mind House, Part of Park Güell (Barcelona, Spain)

(Images via: Unusual Architecture, Kripo)

Spanish Catalan architect Antoni Gaudi, known for his fantastically original architectural works that can be found throughout Barcelona, incorporated intriguing mythological imagery within his Park Güell, including an outstanding colorful mosaic lizard and a sea serpent-shaped bench which took its unforgettable form thanks to the impression of a woman’s curvaceous derriere in the wet clay. Slightly more memorable than his naked buttock design technique is the overall gingerbread-like layout of his enchanting city garden boasting a thicket of 88 twisted rock pillars along with meandering walkways that appear to exist symbiotically with the lush green landscape. Serving as the focal point of the sprawling botanical zone is the Pavilion or Mind House, a rock studded masterpiece with whimsical jesture-like roof crowned by a polka-dotted mushroom shaped turret.

Conch Shell House (Isla Mujeres, Mexico)

(Images via: Couture Carrie, Art Style Online, Home Away)

Located just 20 minutes away from Cancun, this Carribbean Ocean-surrounded oasis — crafted by Octavio Ocampo — certainly leaves a distinctive impression with its 180 degree ocean views and seashell inspired design. The 5500 square foot dwelling, incorporating concrete as well as structural materials plucked straight from the beach and surrounding region, has no angles…just smooth flowing lines that mirror real seashells. With an interior that is just as alluring as its façade (thanks to creative design details that make the most of real coral and assorted conch shells), Ocampo’s structure – which is available for vacation rentals – offers a true escape into an ocean bound paradise.

Grand Lisboa (Macao)

(Images via: Cool Mags, Nightlight, Wayfaring)

We’ve all seen the ritz and glitz of modern casinos, so this entry may not seem like it’s treading unchartered waters, however the Dennis Lua and Ng Chun Man-designed structure happens to be among the world’s tallest skyscrapers…so that’s somethin’. An eight-story spherical platform pulsing with ostentatiously gaudy neon lights supports an equally Liberace-like lotus leaf, providing onlookers with seductive eye candy which baits them into gambling their cares and bank accounts away. With 58 floors of 5 star debauchery, the $375 million dollar project is said to be among the most opulent, in part due to the ample bling scattered throughout…such as crystal balls, 580,000 Swarovski crystals, gold leaf accents and the permanent display of a flawless 218 carat diamond called the Star of Stanley Ho.

The School of Art, Design and Media at Nanyang Technological University (Singapore)

(Images via: Architecture List, CPG Corp, Kamwise Miao)

Blurring the line between nature and architecture, this 5 story learning institute is an outstanding example of green construction with its fluid, grassy roof which appears to nestle its inner structure with a protective hug. Amid an urban landscape traditionally studded with buildings that automatically conduct heat, CPG Consultants’ award-winning design offers innate cooling properties along with a roof top rainwater harvesting system and smart sensors that only hydrate the greenery when necessary. It almost seems as though the glass, concrete and metal structure is carved into its wooded valley, acting as a natural extension of what Mother Nature was like long before man stepped into the mix.

The Crooked House (Sopot, Poland)

(Images via: Xcitefun.net, Panoramia, 2Bored4fun)

With little elbow room to breathe due to its curious location amid a long string of boutiques and cafes in Sopot’s Rezydent shopping center, it’s not surprising that architect Szotynscy Zaleski’s 4000 square meter cartoonish structure is suffering from a serious squish factor. However, it’s all by design and reflective of the art of Per Dahlberg and Jan Marcin Szancer, both of whom created fanciful scenes that are brought to life in The Crooked House’s off-kilter lines and somewhat saggy overall demeanor. Containing three stories packed to the gills with shops, restaurants, bars and a handful of touristy sites, Zaleski’s most photographed landmark is memorable just as much for its quirky appearance as it is for its sheer artistry and rather pitiful, gravity-succumbing sadness.

(Top montage images via: iFood TV.com, Instant Shift, Vision Decor, Wayfaring, Top 10 Thailand, Jassy World, Art Style Online, Cool Mags,  Design Top News)

(from weburbanist)

Animoto does nice videos from your videos and images automatically. The output is pretty impressive and it is very easy to use. With the free account you get 30 sec videos.

Take a look at the one I just did for my son. It has taken me few minutes to do. Just upload some photos a couple of videos and write a bit of text:

Create your own video slideshow at animoto.com.

Last week, the newly renamed Google Places added a ton of features to help local businesses create a directory page right on Google. Today, Google’s Street View is joining the party by showing links to local business listings right in Street View. As you turn around in Street View, names of local businesses and other “Google Places” will show up overlayed on top of buildings. As you hover over those names, a small pop-up window shows some of the listing details such as business name, phone number, and ratings.

There have been links from business listings on Google Maps directly to Street View for almost a year, but now those business listings appear right within Street View itself. Google clearly wants to own local and is sprinkling these listings everywhere it can.

The next step I’m waiting for is to see Street view in a mobile augmented reality app, so that you can just point your phone camera at a building and see the businesses listed inside. That would be so Tonchidot of Google. Our augmented reality future awaits.

(from techcrunch)

J.K. Rowling Speaks at Harvard Commencement from Harvard Magazine on Vimeo.

At her Harvard University commencement speech, “Harry Potter” author JK Rowling offers some powerful, heartening advice to dreamers and overachievers, including one hard-won lesson that she deems “worth more than any qualification I ever earned.”

(Images via: Make Sweet, Spot Cool Stuff Travel, Cool Family Vacations, Trendir, Dirwell, Momoy, Juvan Design,  Restaurant Tycoons, Home Architecture & Interior Design, Modeco Design, Autojogja, Momoy)

Feeling a little peckish? Longing for a dining experience that transcends the ordinary, taking your taste buds on an otherworldly journey into hot damnnnn territory? Fret not, foodies, for the act of eating can be easily elevated to that of a culinary adventure when good food melds with even greater digs. Tantalizing our taste buds traditionally begins with fresh ingredients, masterful preparation and an aesthetically pleasing arrangement, but once the extra ingredient of architectural genius is added to the mix, a perfectly satisfying meal becomes that of an event that lingers within our minds long after we unceremoniously lap up the last scrumptious crumb from plates. (Waste not, want not…mom would definitely approve.) You might want to make a point of visiting at least one or two of the following radically designed chow palaces for an experience you’ll undoubtedly dine for!

Germany’s Fully Automated, Quick-n-Quirky Restaurant

(Images via: Crust Station, s Baggers, Be Update, Anita Coco, 2Day Blog)

Boasting a Wallace and Gromit-like, spiral-configured and entirely automated gravity feed rail system, Michael Mack is the brainchild behind ’s Baggers highly entertaining and quite efficient automated ordering and direct-to-table delivery service. Essentially rendering waiters and waitresses obsolete, his patented, computer-networked process could enable other restaurateurs to focus on the business of serving good food and pass their saved personnel costs onto patrons. Endowing diners with greater control over the pace of their meals, the novelty aspect alone is enough to help Mack gain a devoted following and court fast food chains like McDonald’s, which he is very eager to license the idea to.

Japan’s Deeply Rooted Eatery

(Images via: Storm Seed, RVM Gratz, Cube Me, Best House Design, Cyana Trendland)

Upon initial review, this novelty restaurant perched atop a rustic looking tree is quite impressive with its 20 foot tall weathered foundation and internal elevator which transports patrons up to the main dining area. The hearty vines ensconcing the trunk add to the overall impression that this is a tree with a storied life, but in actuality, it possesses the heart and soul of plain old concrete. In spite of that buzz kill, the Naha Harbor Diner has earned a reputation as offering an outstanding view of Onoyama Park and the harbor as well as serving up really tasty, locally sourced organic ethnic cuisine running the gamut from Japanese and Indian to Italian.

A Maldivian Deep Sea Spectacle

(Images via: Elite Choice, Sydney Table, Koormann, Trip Advisor, Funking Dave)

For those who never quite got their sea legs down pat but still long for the hypnotic views that only the ocean can provide will undoubtedly be enamored with the Maldivian spectacle known as Ithaa, which in the region’s native tongue means “pearl”. Indeed, the $5 million restaurant is an ocean bound treasure, located 15 feet below the Indian Ocean to be precise, but you better be prepared to sell off any spare gold dental fillings you might have or at least a whole bunch of platelets to afford their $120 lunch or $250 dinner. Still, some might feel that it’s an experience well worth the bank account damage. Situated on Rangali Island, Ithaa restaurant is believed to be a one-of-a-kind underwater restaurant encapsulated entirely in very thick clear, aquarium style R-Cast acrylic, enabling patrons to enjoy 270 degree views of coral reefs and the naturally indigenous marine life.

Funky French Archipelago Dining Design is Especially Tres Fine

(Images via: Komokokomoko)

In a land dotted with endlessly quaint outdoor cafes, French designer Matali Crasset conceived of a vibrant indoor eating configuration that offers a modern interpretation of an archipelago with multiple satellite dining zones. Located inside a shopping mall at Cab 3000, St Laurent du Var, this Nouveau cafe design concept offers a dash of eye candy as well as a festive indoor solution to the open air dining culture that is so intrinsically a part of the French lifestyle. Even better, the designer created a fully movable unit which can be easily relocated to future locations that may be more optimal.

The Bee’s Knees For Diners Who Speak Chinese

(Images via: Ricarch, Shenzen Party)

Have you heard what all the buzz is about in Shenzhen, China? Ever since SAKO Architects constructed the 1300 square meter Honeycomb restaurant, area residents have been enjoying its large public space for special events as well as its intimate dinner nooks, all stylistically divided with a white spiral honeycomb-studded staircase. Featuring sleek transparent acrylic plastic partitions, undulating wave-like white aerated room sectionals, black granite flooring and mirror-like ceilings, the contrast of carefully appointed details with a space-age undercurrent work harmoniously to create a dynamic dining space that any diligent worker bee would happily want to cool their heels off in.

Pricey Crane-Bound Vittles a Light-Headed Thrill (or Chill)

(Images via: Spot Cool Stuff Travel)

Better not be afraid of heights if you step on board the swinging platform of Dinner in the Sky’s instant movable restaurant with a view. Hatched up by an apparently wacky and thrill-seeking Belgium company, they seem to be doing quite well given the fact that they are offering their distinctive crane-hoisted experience in major cities around the globe, including directly above the Grand Canyon, Paris’ Notre Dame, the Las Vegas Strip and naturally, glitzy Dubai. For the equivalent of an average blue collar salary ($30,000), you too can achieve new heights of dining glory with (hopefully) 22 of your closest seriously seat-buckled friends as you clink glasses at a height of 162 feet for two ever-so-brief yet undoubtedly memorable hours. Mangia!

Darkness Abounds in a Lviv, Ukraine Din-Din Shroud

(Images via: English Russia)

A Ukrainian undertaker and funeral home director must have thought to himself, “Egads! I know what’s been missing from the dining scene for far too long…a little dash of death to help us digest the bitter pill of our mortality!!” In keeping with his whopper of a brainstorm, the enterprising entrepreneur created a massive pine coffin restaurant replica called Eternity — acknowledged by the Guinness Book of World Records as being the largest in the world — and adhered to dreary thematic touches such as funeral music, depressingly crummy carnation wreaths and multiple human-sized coffins propped up against the black landscape plastic-lined walls. Whoo-eee, that’s one heavy scene. Who’s craving a Hello Kitty eatery instead?

Dining Kiwi-Style at What Seems Like a Mile (High, That Is…)

(Images via: Homedit, Cibo Archittetura, NZ Tramping, Springwise, Technovegy)

Standing 12 feet tall and spanning an equally impressive 10 feet in width, New Zealand’s plantation poplar-constructed Yellow Treehouse restaurant – nestled on the forest edge and accessible via a meandering 60 meter pathway – accommodates 18 diners in seriously lofty style. With its chrysalis-like vibe that spirals upward toward an open ended top, the organic design employs structural timber trusses which work in tandem with its central Redwood tree base to support the entire restaurant. Overall, the final look is one of an enchanting childhood fantasy come to life.

Airy, Woven Beauty With a Japanese-Themed Interior

(Images via: Dezeen, Design Boom)

With its bi-layer steel lattice exterior offering a practical yet highly dynamic way to repurpose what was previously an old house, Tori Tori Restaurant – located in Mexico City – is the exciting result of a collaboration between industrial designer Hector Esrawe and Rojkind Arquitectos. Filtered light streams through its open air pattern and into the perimeter of the very successful Japanese eatery, creating what seems to be an organic yet structured representation of the surrounding ivy-covered walls. This is one of those stop-and-stare structures that easily demonstrates that the days of cookie cutter box designs are fortunately over and done with – good riddance!

Sky-High Wood Pile (Better Keep the Splinters Out Of Your Eyes!)

(Images via: Ricarch)

Without its chaotic cacophony of criss-crossed wooden pieces streaming from four central cores and emanating up onto the ceiling, Sliver restaurant might easily be relegated to the ranks of attractive, modern dining spaces that are nevertheless easily forgettable at the end of the day. Fortunately, Russian based Dark Design Group exceeds our wildest design expectations with their simple yet incredibly compelling effect…as if a turbulent tornado of stripped trees is swirling overhead. Just be sure to shield your dinner plate from the splintery fall-out!

(from weburbanist)

I am running my time machine backing up in a Samba server (linux machine).

This new update is deletes your old time machine in order to create a new one probably in a newer and more stable format. I decided to go ahead.

The first part deletes the time machine partition on my samba, then it tries to start a new one but obviously, it can’t. So here some tips to create a new time machine in your samba server:

You will need to do this with the terminal ( Finder>Applications>Utilities.Terminal)

First you need to have the ethernet mac address of the machine that you want to backup:

ifconfig en0 | grep ether

This will give you a number like:  00:23:32:d2:f7:a0  keep it.

Now you create a new file with the sparsebundle that you will have to move to your samba machine:

hdiutil create -size 500g -fs HFS+J -volname “TimeMachine  tokao” tokao_002332d2f7a0.sparsebundle

Where in red what you have to change. In my case tokao will be the name of my machine and the mac address (en0 even if using wifi) 00:23:32:d2:f7:a0 will be 002332d2f7a0 (this is in my case, sure)

Once you have done this in your Users/you you will see this sparsebundle file. You have to move this file to the Samba where you want to back up.

You can copy it by draging it using the finder or by copying it

cp -R tokao_002332d2f7a0.sparsebundle /Volumes/YourSamba/

Then from the time machine preference you select the samba machine and that’s it!

What do they do – Their program supports broadcasters in meeting the needs of local small-scale farmers and their families in rural communities, and helps broadcasters build the skills to develop content that responds to local needs.

The Network facilitates an exchange of information that:

• is aimed at increasing food supplies and improving nutrition and health;
• is simple, safe and practical;
• is ecologically sound and environmentally sustainable;
• can be clearly communicated by radio;
• has been proven useful and transferable within the developing world;
• requires only resources ordinarily available to small-scale farmers;
• requires little or no technical help to implement; and
• meets the needs of both women and men.

How they work – Radio is their primary method of communication. We gather and research information about successful, low-cost practices in sustainable agriculture, nutrition, health and community development, and produce radio scripts for our partner-broadcasters and others engaged in rural development. They, in turn, share the information with an audience of millions of farmers and their family members around the world.

How to help – Read about their program, current activities, and challenges facing farmers in Network News. If you want to get involved or have any questions, they’d like to hear from you.

Facebook

First it was Facebook. They changed a lot. Before they had this bar at the bottom of the page with the apps, chat and so, which is now back to the traditional menus in the top and left.

People complained at the beginning, but this is normal. Changes of this type should be done in consultation with users, but in a dictatorship way. What do I mean with this? People do not like change. When people is used to a way of seeing information and to interact, to change it will always mean to go for worse, at least at the beginning. Over time, users will recognize that the changes were for good.

Twitter

Twitter was the second to change. The strength of twitter is updated tweets, and trends.
I have talked about twitter many times. At the beginning they struggled to cope with growth and they were down very often. Now they struggle to catch up with things like brighkite (which I love) does: location and photo. Even they could have video, maps and so… but no, they keep it simple. It remind me the fight between video VHS and Betamax. Betamax was the best technical option but VHS won. Well, twitter is not the best, but they have the most important ingredient: success.
Now popular topics, tweets, and users are clear in the frontpage. A “Top Tweets” section that dynamically updates using a custom algorithm to decide what is popular or of general interest. I have always though that the trends are absolutely useless but top tweets could be good, unless we start seeing “good night” or “followfridays”… They also have added a dynamically scrolling list of trending topics that when hovered over explain their trending status.

Youtube

The last redesign was for YouTube. Again people complained. If you take a look at YouTube you will be surprised by the simplicity. It is basically no design. Nothing. Very interesting that such a successful website chooses this simplistic approach. Their secret is in the ajax-like movement of things, with a new commenting system that highlights top-rated comments,  a “like/dislikes” rating system that replaces the previous five star system and a new “next video to watch” sidebar that is “smarter”. It feels different but not a lot. Take a look at the menus, the footer menu, just plain text. No lines no nothing. Is this more user friendly? It is less cluttered, that is for sure. Maybe because it is a google product and googles is not… well particular at design?

Then to Geneva.

We went to the lighthouse and to the beach, then we went to Boaters Grill, where we had some seafood before taking the car and drive to the airport.

End of trip. We took the plane, of course Iberia did not give us the right seats, but there was a very nice lady who gave us hers, so we could put Kai in his little bed.

We walked around and went to downtown. After that we took the car and drove to little Haiti and the design district where we had lunch in a very nice Italian restaurant (no pizza). After lunch we drove to coconut groove, visited a commercial centre and finally went back to Miami Beach. That day we had dinner at the hotel by the pool. Very nice.

There was a lot of people with incredible digital cameras just to photograph the birds. The wild life in the everglades was incredible, honestly. We took a boat the took us through the canal and to the lakes. Very nice experience, seeing all kinds of animals and birds.

When we arrived we took the budget shuttle that took us to budget where we took our car for the next 4 days.

First we had breakfast at bagels Einstein or something like this. Then was to visit fort Lauderdale. They said it was the Venice of Florida, and it is quite a Venice (huge extensions though).

We went to the river side, to the beach, where we had lunch, and then at around 6pm to Miami beach to check in at our new hotel: Indian Creek, no so centric, but with swimming pool and bigger rooms.

We realized that last time we did not see anything. Atlantis is huge! and you can spend a full day without managing to see it all. It is a sort of disneyland but in aquarium, with all sort of fish and sea life. To get it is 35 usd, but you can go around. We had a nice day there.

Road town again was a nice colonial town. Small.

We did not take any of the excursions suggested in the MSC Poesia.Normally it works this way: they are expensive. When you go down to the harbor, you have a pile of tour operators offering you the same thing cheaper. If you go out of the port, there you find the good deals, so this is what we did. We took a tour around the island. It took us to several places and it was fun and nice.

We stopped at a rum distillery, very very crappy but I bought some old rum. See the photo, it looks like a dirty place anywhere in Africa… but the rum, that I tasted yesterday, was not bad. Not great either but a nice souvenir.

The tour took us also to a beach crowded by the cruise people. We were there only for 15 minutes, but we soon continued our tour. There we met a couple from texas. The guy had big land where a farmer was growing cotton and where had some oil excavations. They were nice people. We also went to a hill (not a lot in these islands) where we could see the tons of little islands that are part of the Virgin Islands (american, british…), and of course the harbor with our “little boat”.

All these little islands had to accommodate their ports to this big cruises. Now they are digging even more in order to be able to have the “oasis of the seas” from Royal Caribbean.
Road Town, Virgin Islands
EveryTrail – Find the best

Philipsburg was a very cute place. A long and narrow town, small and with the ocean at both sides.

The weather was variable. When the sun went out it was terribly hot, but when cloudy it was OK. It rained for a while.

When a ship of the caliber of the MSC Poesia arrives to a city like this, the town feels crowded and I am guessing that during the rest of the week, when no ships are there (normally they all go on the same day) it is a dead city.

Nuria had a bath in the sea and we had lunch there.
Philipsburg in British Virgin Islands
EveryTrail – Find the best

I did not have the time and the occasion to take the photos of the big camera out, so no photos now, but I will update this same post later on.

San Juan is a beautiful place. I wouldn’t mind staying here a couple of days. Honestly.

I am now editing the post again, from home. I am adding a couple of photos from the iPhone.

Puerto Rico was very nice. The old town beautiful and full of life. So far and now with the perspective of being back home, I can say that Key West and San Juan (both US) are probably the destinations we liked the most.
San Juan de Puerto Rico
EveryTrail – Find the best

We spent most of the day in the pool area. I am reading “the Help”, from Kathryn Stockett which is about maids in Louisiana on the 60’s.

It was the gala day, with the captain and the nice dinner. Everybody (except me) with suits, ties….

Before I went to have a hair cut here at the ship’s hair dresser. Wow, beautiful with great views  over the sunset.

After the captain’s cocktail we went to listen jazz for a while and then to the theatre. It was Island, a story with dancers, magicians and more. Very nice.