By Mark Wilson, Gizmodo – June 11, 2010 at 02:40PM
Most extended battery packs for the iPhone are drab boxes. How we have lived in such a world, I do not know. More »
IPhone – Apple – Smartphone – Handhelds – Business
By Lee Mathews, Download Squad – June 11, 2010 at 12:00PM
Filed under: Open Source
Dubbed SparkleShare, Bons is building his project using Mono, GTK+, and Git. Like Dropbox, SparkleShare sets up a local folder which is automatically kept in sync — though not in the cloud. Instead, you and your friends/coworkers set up connections to each other’s shares (or you can keep everything to yourself, of course). That’ll make SparkleShare an extremely interesting option for teams who need to collaborate via the ‘Net — and for users who want to keep files in sync without floating them in the cloud.
And since you’re hosting your own server, there’s no monthly fees to worry about — which is always a bonus.
A Linux release is the first item on the agenda, with OS X and Windows versions to follow. Bons is seeking contributors — if you’re interested in helping out, drop him a line on the SparkleShare web site!
[via OMG! Ubuntu]
Coming soon: an open source Dropbox alternative with collaboration originally appeared on Download Squad on Fri, 11 Jun 2010 11:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Dropbox – Open source – Download Squad – Microsoft Windows – SparkleShare
By Lauren Pon, Lifehacker – June 11, 2010 at 11:30AM
Tugboat bowlines, fisherman’s knots, sheet bends. The best knots are named for their jobs on the ocean, but they have numerous, practical uses on land as well. Here’s how to tie the versatile bowline (and more properly tie any knot).
There are dozens of knots with hundreds of uses. Tied properly and with suitable material, they are extremely reliable—the very reason that sailors have been relying on tried and true methods of knot tying for centuries.
Sailors, rock climbers, boy scouts—anyone schooled in the practical art of knot tying—will tell you that tying a knot is one thing, but tying it properly is another. You can improve your knots by dressing them properly and, of course, with practice.
Photo by MShades.
When a knot is properly dressed, it means that each part of the knot is in the right place with the correct tension. The rope doesn’t cross itself unnecessarily, and nothing is more slack or taut than it should be. Knots that are improperly dressed can lead to excessive stress and rubbing on the knots, which will gradually weaken the rope and, eventually, cause the knot to fail.
The above is a properly dressed knot. Note the adjacent rope in each part of the knot; there are no unnecessary crossovers or tangles. What this really boils down to is practice and patience – take care to keep your knots neat as you’re tying them, fixing as you go as well as when you set, or tighten, your knot.
The bowline (pronounced “boh-lin”, and pictured at top) is a knot that’s used to form a fixed loop on the end of a rope. In sailing, it’s commonly used to attach a line to the head of a sail, or has other objects passed through it. Even if you don’t know more knots than how to tie your shoelace, learntosail of Hubpages.com has a quick lesson on how to tie this useful knot. According to learntosail:
There are over 200 different types of bowline knots out there. But few are more secure or faster to tie than the one used in this sailing story.
You can tie the quick-tie bowline blindfolded, in the dark, behind your back, or underwater. It will hold your boat in a storm and you can tie it around yourself as a safety line.
The bowline has many uses, and with practice, you can tie one in under ten seconds. Master this knot and you’re sure to find uses for it in your everyday hacks. Better yet, check out the previously posted video above on how to quickly tie a bowline.
And finally…
We’re no strangers to a good knot or two, and the best way to make better knots is to practice and expand your knowledge base. From tying up a serial killer to marking your luggage, here are some of our best posts on useful knots and how to tie them.
By KipKay, MAKE – June 11, 2010 at 09:00AM
Spin activated lights for your butterfly yo-yo.
Thanks go to Eric Chu for the original article in MAKE, Volume 22.
View the PDF of this project. and then subscribe to MAKE magazine for other great projects
you can do over the weekend.
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By Mike Masnick, Techdirt. – June 10, 2010 at 05:47PM
A few years back, you may remember, that former Alaska Senator Ted Stevens got a lot of attention for his infamous description of the internet as “a series of tubes,” as part of a longer talk that repeatedly highlights that he didn’t quite understand what he was regulating:
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By Mike Masnick, Techdirt. – June 10, 2010 at 03:40PM
If you go back to the original intent of copyright law, it was to improve learning and knowledge. “Promoting the progress of science” really mean “knowledge” at the time it was written. But, these days, we’ve lost pretty much all touch with that original intention. Last year, we noted that there was a growing battle over whether or not teachers could sell their lesson plans, with some districts claiming copyright over all teacher curricula and lesson plans to make sure that only they could determine how those plans were used. Of course, in the past (and, for many, the present) teachers often freely shared curricula and lesson plans with each other, in an effort to spread the knowledge and help each other out.
But throw in a bit of copyright, and a chance to “profit” — even for a public school — and apparently the whole concept of sharing gets tossed out the window. Kevin Donovan alerts us to the news that publishing giant Pearson has signed a multi-million dollar deal with a public school district. Basically, Pearson is giving the Montgomery County Public Schools $2.25 million for the right to their curricula, which it will sell. The schools will also get a 3% royalty. Pearson can change the curricula if it wants, so it might not even be what the teachers there put together, but they’re apparently trying to build up a big brand around this school district, which tends to do well in various metrics.
Of course, some people are quite uncomfortable with this. Now the teachers won’t be able to share the curriculum they themselves develop. And that could come back to haunt them. Will teachers at other schools be willing to share their own curricula with schools that are locking down and selling their own? One of the dissenting school board members (only two were against the deal) is reasonably worried that deals like this may turn teachers into sales people, rather than teachers.
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By Erica Ho, Lifehacker – June 10, 2010 at 02:30PM
Summer brings sunshine, fresh air, and, sometimes, ants into your home. If the ants become troublesome this year, home improvement site DIY Life suggests drawing lines with chalk around the house to keep the ants at bay.
Photo by photogirl17.
With some chalk, apparently it’s not hard to keep ants away from particular areas of your home without using harsh chemicals.
To keep ants out of your house, draw chalk lines around your doorways and windowsills. Ants won’t cross a chalk line. Why? It’s not entirely clear, but some say the ants don’t like the particles sticking to their feet, while others say they’re averse to the calcium carbonate in the chalk. Whatever the reason, this nontoxic solution will keep ants outside where they belong.
It may sound absurd (okay, it does sound absurd), but a quick Google search shows a lot of support for this method. And if that doesn’t work, consider other natural remedies like using cucumbers to keep the ants away. Got other nifty tricks for keeping the bugs out of your home? Sound off in the comments.
By Kyle VanHemert, Gizmodo – June 10, 2010 at 01:40PM
Built with the blue-laser diode of a dismantled Casio projector, the $200 Spyder III Pro Arctic is the world’s most powerful portable laser. It can permanently blind you and set your skin—or anything else, really—on fire almost instantly. More »
Laser – Business – Physics – Optoelectronics and Fiber – Electronics and Electrical
By Karl L. Gechlik, MakeUseOf – June 10, 2010 at 11:31AM
Do you use Malwarebytes as much as I do? I use it 4 or 5 times a day on average. I use it to clean machines that have become infected. The antivirus software on the machines in question have either been compromised or they are not up to date.
The only disadvantage of Malwarebytes is that it takes a long time to run a full scan. I have started using NoVirusThanks before running Malwarebytes and it is pretty quick and catches a lot of infections.
Let’s take a look at it. You start by downloading the free malware remover from here. It is 1.2MB and downloads pretty quickly.
It requires Microsoft .Net Framework 3.5. Please install it before the installation if you do not already have it. You can grab the .Net Framework from here if you need it. After the quick installation you will need to launch the application from your start menu.
The authors describe the free malware remover as follows:
NoVirusThanks Malware Remover is an application designed to detect and remove specific malware, trojans, worms and other malicious threats that can damage your computer. It includes also the ability to remove rogue software, spyware and adware. Scanning time is very fast and does not use or need much memory even with other high-resource programs are running.
Next you will see this screen:
We see a standard antivirus-like scanning interface. Before we start the scan we will take a look at how to configure and update the application. Click on the settings tab near the top left of the window. That will take you to the settings page where you will see the following:
In the general tab we have three options. The first one that reduces the applications memory usage will indeed use less resources but your scan will take longer. This is better on slower (older) machines. Work in background will minimize the application to a system tray icon and the final option I feel is a must after installation. Auto update database before scan will automatically download the newest update before it starts scanning. This is a no-brainer.
The next tab is the scan tab which contains options about your scan. The scan type I would leave on quick scan unless you will be leaving the machine for a long period of time. The full scan takes much longer to run but is much more intensive. The limits of scanning files less than 5MB and only scanning well known file extensions will speed up your scan but they can be unchecked when your scan is run.
At the bottom of the settings we have four options. The only one that is not selected by default is to use their Paranoid scan. This will scan EVERYTHING and takes a very long time. Again if you will be leaving the machine for 12+ hours to return the next day then it can’t hurt. If you want a quick scan then do not check this option.
The report option only has one tab which is enabled by default to save the report when the scan is finished. The backup tab allows for two options. They are to backup files before deleting them and to alert the user if a backup fails. These options are checked by default and should be left alone.
Under the last settings tab entitled delete there are two options that are disabled by default. Use aggressive deletion. This will kill files even if they are in use or somehow protected. This is a good option to use when infected files were not able to be removed after the first scan. The second option is to create a system restore point before deleting files. This option I check before running the application.
If you did not check the check box to automatically update the database before scanning you will need to go to the update tab and manually update the definitions like so:
If you need to change your interface’s language you can do so via the language tab.
Now we are ready to run our scan. Click back over to the scan tab and press the scan button show below:
The status of the scan will update at the bottom of the interface. If you have the update database before scan option selected it will do that first:
And then it will start scanning. As it finds suspicious files it will list them in the grid:
When it is complete hopefully you are all clean like I was but if not simply hit the remove button to start the removal procedure. My scan on a 200GB SATA drive took about 27 minutes. Not too shabby! I have tested it on some heavily infected machines and it really did its job.
What do you think of NoVirusThanks? Do you have another free malware remover that you use? Let us know in the comments.
Do you like MakeUseOf articles? Do share our articles with others! It’s really important to us.
By Whitson Gordon, Lifehacker – June 10, 2010 at 11:00AM
We’ve seen the speed benefits of Solid State Drives (SSDs), but they also have the downside of a more limited number of writes. Technology blog Ghacks shows us how to increase an SSD’s longevity by moving oft-written caches to a RAM disk.
Photo by Yusuke Kawasaki.
The constant writing and erasing of caches and other temporary folders on your computer will wear out your SSD faster, so one way to get as much life out of your SSD as possible is to move these folders somewhere else. If you have a regular hard drive installed alongside your SSD, you can move those caches to the magnetic drive, but if your computer is only running on an SSD drive or drives, you’ll have to be a bit more creative.
Ghacks has put together a guide to not only moving these caches (for anyone interested in doing so), but shows you how to turn some of your RAM into a storage device called a RAM disk. If you have a good amount of RAM in your system (around 3 or 4 GB should be fine), you can save your caches there instead, thus saving your SSD the constant writes and erasures. Hit the link for the full guide, and share your SSD optimization tips in the comments.
