Oh! Gizmo

By Andrew Liszewski

Even if you work in an office full of high-tech gear, a simple whiteboard still seems to be one of the best ways for a group of people to brainstorm ideas. So Qipit provides an easy to use online service that will convert a digital photo of your whiteboard into a PDF file that can be easily shared.

The service relies on “sophisticated, highly optimized image-processing algorithms” that are also able to convert photos of smaller paper documents, in addition to whiteboards. Obviously the quality of your cellphone’s camera will effect how the PDF turns out, so the website includes a section where you can select your phone from a list, and see what services it’s compatible with. For example the camera on the iPhone is fine for converting whiteboards and hand-written notes, but is not recommended for converting docs with printed text.

At the moment the Qipit service is completely free to use, and only requires you to create an account since you have to login to download the converted PDF files.

[ Qipit ] VIA [ MobileWhack ]

By Evan Ackerman

If you spend any time at all on the internet, you know just how full of crap a lot of it is. I blame most of that on Web 2.0, since before that, people had to invest at least some modicum of effort to make a public spectacle of themselves. The StupidFilter Project is stupidly simple: it’s designed to be “open-source filter software that can detect rampant stupidity in written English.” From the sound of things, it’ll either work server-side (preventing users from, say, posting comments on a forum that contain excessive misspellings, exclamation points, use of text abbreviations, or suffer from terrible spelling or no punctuation) or client-side (quietly replacing “OMGLOLZ!!!!!!!!111″ with “!,” for example). The big question is, of course, exactly what qualifies as stupid. After the jump, read what the developers have to say on the matter: Read the rest of this entry »

By David Ponce

Here’s a little bit of geek fun. If you Google the term “Cancel Google”, the first result brings you to the page of Kevin Cheng, and Tom Chi. The website is called “OK/Cancel”, and on September 26th, 2004, Kevin wrote a post titled “Google Answers HCI PhD Program”. And just like that, their site has become the #1 destination of morons worldwide who’d like to cancel The Google.

They’re leaving comments by the droves, asking to… well, cancel Google. Damn, people are stupid! It’s a wonder they managed not to confuse their PC mouse with the foot pedal of their grandma’s sewing machine. Here’s a sampler:

- “I WANT TO TAKE GOOGLES OFF OF MY HOME PAGE.”

- “Google is stopping me from shopping at my oLancome site with your pop up blocker.!! Would you quit it!!!”

- “Google is the front door of my conscience. I am regretting the Google. Am Google me it? For wanting no Google, simply Google “no Google”.”

And it just goes on, and on. Keving initially deleted the comments, but later decided to leave them. They’re damn funny, that’s why.

Check it out.

[ Cancel Teh Googlez ] VIA [ Gadgetopia ]

By Evan Ackerman

Every time I go to the UK, I fall in love with Tesco all over again. All those tasty and cheap and sorta kinda healthy pre-made sandwiches… Mmm mmm good. But Tesco is good for more than sandwiches (and cheap wine); they’ve just launched the Tesco Internet Phone, which is a USB stick with a mic, earphone, and some VoIP software. You can use it to make phone calls from any broadband connected PC in the world, which I guess means that the software is all internal to the USB stick. The hardware is £19.97 (which includes 1gb of storage on the stick itself), and unlimited worldwide calling and voicemail is £8.50 a month. A UK phone number is required which could be a good thing if you’ve got annoying friends. Oh, and Tesco is set to open their first US stores in California and Arizona by the end of this year, hooray!

[ Tesco Internet Phone ] VIA [ Ubergizmo ]

By Evan Ackerman

A while back we wrote about PixelLetter, a service which takes your digital documents and turns them into physical mail and sends them off for you. Earth Class Mail is a service that does the same thing, only backwards… They’ll receive all of your physical mail (you can pick a physical mailing address in any of 19 cities), scan each envelope, and then make the scans available for you online. You can chose what to do with each piece of mail, from having them recycle junk mail, to forwarding you more important items, or (most appealing to me) opening your letters and creating PDFs of the contents for you to download from their website.

The downside is that you have to wait a bit regardless of what you decide to do with the items Earth Class Mail receives. If you want a scan, it takes a business day, and if you want the physical item, well… Back through the post office it goes. According to Earth Class Mail, however, most people using the service don’t want the mail itself, which I can totally understand, since I’d much rather have a digital copy that I won’t misplace. The company plans to integrate some kind of check depositing service in the near future. And if you’re worried about security, they hire employees with government security clearance (including many retired veterans). In fact, they don’t allow any recording devices into the mail handling area, not even pencils.

Monthly pricing plans start at about $15 a month for 30 pieces of mail or less. Forward shipping mail and package handling does cost extra… Check out the pricing plans here.

[ Earth Class Mail ] VIA [ RFJ ]

By Ryan Nill

[ I'm hiding this one after the jump, less I spend the entire day responding to hate mail over auto-playing music. -Ed. ]

You might want to turn your sound down (or even off) for this one, folks. [Don't bother unless you read the full article. -Ed.] The uniqlock Interpretive dance clock tells time online via 5 second bursts of highly confusing dance. Also comes included an exceedingly catchy tune. It is both free and highly entertaining. Performance art never looked like so much fun. You can also insert it into your site.

Hit the jump to see what we’re talking about.

Read the rest of this entry »

By Andrew Liszewski

While that goody two shoes Joost always chose to play by the rules its cousin Joox.net was a wild child that preferred to throw caution to the wind. And it’s for that reason we all fell in love with the site. (Well that and the hundreds of free streaming movies and TV shows.) Over the past few months Joox.net has occasionally gone down causing a bit of panic for those who’ve come to enjoy its services but the site always re-appeared a few days later. This time though it looks like Joox.net’s time has finally come. The following comment was posted to my original Joox.net story:

We had to officially shut down the site due to repeated warnings about theft and copy-right violations. Truth to be told, the managers, myself included, don’t really give a crap about any copy-right violations, but after someone threatened to sue, I felt I didn’t have a choice.

Sorry for the inconvenience, but you can visit stage6.com if the urge to stream high quality videos persists.

I’m thinking of starting a site myself, and the Anonymous post above has a point; stage6 do give out their links freely, and embedding isn’t actually against the law. So screw those people who are jealous of our success and worry about us violating their rights to the wallets of people like you.

Here’s to the memory of Joox. We had a good run.

It was a good run indeed. You will be sorely missed.

Update: So it looks like those 3 hours of Journalism classes I slept through really paid off. Joox.net appears to be back up and my report of its death were premature.

[ Joox.net (sniff) ]

By Evan Ackerman

A while back, ecoIron calculated that if Google were to use a black background instead of a white background on its search page, over the course of one year 3000 megawatt-hours of electricity would be saved (assuming that 25% of people are still stuck with CRTs). And that’s the idea behind Blackle. Blackle is a fully functional Google clone, except it’s gray text on a black background. When your monitor displays a predominantly white webpage, it uses about 15 more watts than it does while displaying a predominantly black webpage. Google’s 200 million (ish) queries a day over one year adds up to something like $75,000 worth of energy spent on that white background. Not only does it save energy every time you use Blackle as opposed to Google, but it’s a good reminder that lots of people taking easy little steps to save energy can make a big difference. And, you know, it goes with my nail polish and eye liner.

[ Blackle ] VIA [ geeksugar ]

By David Ponce

Google Maps just added a fascinating layer of data to its already impressive feature set. In select cities (New York, Las Vegas, San Francisco, Denver and Miami) it is now possible to get a viewpoint called “Steet View”, which allows you to get a street level 360 degree view of any point on that given map. In any of the above cities, just press on the “Street View” button, and a little humanoid appears. Drag him to any location on the map, and instantly a window appears with street level pictures. It’s possible to zoom within the picture, and rotate 360 degrees. And yes, we know it’s not the first such initiative, but Google’s implementation is elegant and flawless.

Google achieved this by getting teams in the Bay Area to drive around every single street for about a year, with special cameras mounted on board. The rest of the cities were mapped by contracting a company called Immersive Media. The above picture shows Times Square, but I must have wasted a good hour just checking out different neighborhoods and landmarks, and there’s no better way to kill a Thursday than by doing this. There may be plans to expand this to other major metropolitan centers at a later date.

[ Google Maps ] VIA [ Lost Remote ]