Portent

Wikimapia- Wikipedia meets Google Maps

admin — Sun, 16 Nov 2008 19:28:19 +0000

The picture shows London, where I live and I’ve highlighted the Old Essex Cricket ground (until 1977) as I live within a couple of hundred yards of it. WikiMapia is a Web 2.0 project to describe the whole planet Earth. It was created by Alexandre Koriakine and Evgeniy Saveliev.

Wikimapia combines Google Maps with Wikipedia entries that are located on the map. Users can add them local to them. Not all places have a corresponding entry in Wikipedia. I’m not quite sure what happens with those.

Before places can be added they have to be voted in and at least 24 hours old. It’s an interesting idea and judging by the site’s popularity is getting a lot of attention. So if you want to put your place on the map just sign up. It’s free

Link

Warning about Dodgy Websites - Mywot.com

admin — Sun, 16 Nov 2008 17:03:36 +0000

There are a lot of dodgy websites out there. Not dodgy as in my spelling but sites that are likely to try and infect your computer.

This site (mywot.com) provides a browser plug-in for Firefox that shows a green or yellow circle against websites found in searches. Wot is short for Web of Trust. Green are good guys, red are bad. for instance I was spammed by someone about a site called grouply.com. Mywot.com gives a warning about dodgy sites and lets you see comments from users. Out of 21 million websites covered, over a million are considered dodgy. This is what Firefox says about Grouply.com when I try to go there.

As you can see from the little badge in the top right hand corner, I’m happy to let the world know about Mywot.com. It was foundered two years ago by two Finnish students.

Link

Images have becomed Web 2.0′d

admin — Sun, 09 Nov 2008 16:56:14 +0000

It’s a bit gimmicky! Thanks to an add-in in WordPress, all the images show the bottom bit inverted as in a reflection in water.

30 seconds - 50 Unusual Buildings!

admin — Sun, 09 Nov 2008 16:49:31 +0000

This is a website that has photos of unusual shaped buildings from around the world. You can vote on which are your favourites or suggest new ones.

http://unusual-architecture.com/Link

Software - 3D Virtual World of the Forbidden City, Beijing

admin — Sat, 08 Nov 2008 19:34:34 +0000

(from Wikipedia) The Forbidden City was the Chinese imperial palace from the mid-Ming Dynasty to the end of the Qing Dynasty. It is located in the middle of Beijing, China, and now houses the Palace Museum.

Built from 1406 to 1420, the complex consists of 980 surviving buildings with 8,707 bays of rooms[1] and covers 720,000 square metres. If you can’t visit it in person, you can now, thanks to a collaboration between IBM and the Chinese authorities take a virtual tour on your PC (Windows, Mac or Linux). The software is a largish install (over 200 MB for Windows) which installs the front end to a 3D world. if you register, you can take snapshots of the virtual world and email them as postcards.

This is not just running on your computer but you are in a virtual world and can interact with other visitors. You can just observe, take part in activities or follow a tour guide. I haven’t explored more than a fraction of the world but it installed easily, was easy to use and because there are lots of tour guides and it’s easy to lose yours, if you drift off it will pull you along.

When you run the software, you have to login and then wait about a minute while it downloads data. You get atmospheric music. Controls let you have different point of view,including zooming in and you can put notes (and your “photos”) into a scrapbook.

The default viewpoint is third person, ie seen from behind and movement but you can view yourself from above, or looking at yourself or a first person view. It takes quite a while to move about but if you view the detailed map you can click on places and instantly be there. There are activities such as helping an archer practise archery. You control the strength and direction etc.

As a piece of free educational software this is remarkable but note, you will need an Internet connection. Highly recommended.

Link

Ringtones You Can’t Hear!

admin — Fri, 07 Nov 2008 22:03:44 +0000

I don’t normally frequent ring-tone websites but this was a bit more interesting as it has inaudible ones.

Well not entirely inaudible, just to anyone over 30. These are mosquito ring-tones at different frequencies. i can hear up to and including 12Khz which is spot on for my age. I can’t hear any of the other higher frequencies, and that’s normal for my age (49) except for the two at 20Khz and 21Khz. I don’t hear those loud but I can just hear them. It varies from no sound to barely audible if I move my head left or right or nearer or further away but the sounds are a little like the electronic buzz you sometimes get off monitors.

Anyway they’re free and you can download them or listen to them on site as I did.

Rejected Valentines Cards

admin — Sun, 02 Nov 2008 17:37:28 +0000

These reminded me of the Postsecret cards, not in appearance but in poignancy. There are 21 cards drawn by artist Ehdom. You can buy the complete set on Ebay. Possibly to send to anyone of the opposite sex who humiliated you or rejected your advances at school etc!

Link

iPhone App Review - All Shakespeare’s Works (Free)

admin — Sun, 02 Nov 2008 17:18:39 +0000

What can you say about the works of Shakespeare? I wasn’t that keen at school, having Macbeth and the Merchant of Venice forced down my throat but over time have come to appreciate the cultural contribution and story telling that his plays brought.

For instance these words were first seen in his plays, though that doesn’t mean he invented them, just used them.

Eyeball
puking
skim milk
Obscene
Hot-Blooded
The Game is Afoot
Epileptic
Wormhole

None of which is relevant to this review! That said, it’s elegant, fast and lets you view all of the plays act by act. And it’s free. If you like Shakespeare and you have an iPhone then it is a no brainer. It was released in early September.

Link (to Shakespeare in the App Store)

ShotCode - Free Graphical URL Links

admin — Sun, 02 Nov 2008 13:24:11 +0000

Computers can read text on pictures but it’s not easy so visual representations like QR Codes or Shotcodes (shown) are used instead. Shotcode generates a circular image encoding of a url and if you have the software running on your cell or mobile camera phone, you take a photo and the software extracts the url and you can go to it. It’s mainly a marketing

The shotcode pictured is of course from Portent, so feel free to copy it and spread the word! As well as the free .org there is the commercial shotcode.com which lets you create and use shotcodes for advertising etc. Pretty soon more people will browse the internet using mobile phones than computers so anything that reduces typing may be a good thing.

SiteStuff

admin — Sat, 25 Oct 2008 09:20:07 +0000

Aplogies for the last couple of weeks. Some of the side widgets seem to be stopping or badly delaying the main page being shown. Hopefully that’s now sorted.

iPhone App Review - LootWars, a Multiplayer game

admin — Sat, 25 Oct 2008 09:16:00 +0000

This is a bigger review than usual, complete with animated gif which I’ve put together from screen dumps. I’ve been playing LootWars for a week or two now on my iPhone so feel qualified to give an in-depth review.

Its a Multi-player Mobile Game (MMG or MMO?) which is significant itself and not that expensive at just over £1. the object is to get to the top of the leader-boards by picking up scrap and bashing othr people to steal theirs. But you are limited to holding just 6 pieces of scrap.

Gameplay: After you run the App you get the first screen with rusty logo. Top right is your three important stats: A for attack total, D for defence and E for energy. the latter is important as it maxes out at 20, is used when you scavenge or fight and only recharges at the rate of 1 per 20 minutes of realtime. The game is server based but plays over 3G, Edge or Wifi.

At the start you loot (2nd icon) and when players trash your items after they beat you in a fight. The 2nd screen shows my player (portent by the way!) not looking too healthy because I’d just scavenged two low power items. the attack is the sum of the 6 items attack, defence is the total of the items defence. Scavenging gives you the odd good item but mostly crap so you have to beat people and swap your inferior items stuff for their better ones.

Fighting takes place in the arena. You can search for players matching a name (or part name so a matches a number) but you only so 24 or 25 maximum. It would be better if you could see more or there was a next button. If you put in a and search you get the first 24 that match a every time. Press refresh and you get a random selection. Once you pick someone- I picked ordieth who was a lot stronger than me (the colour codes show green weaker, yellow about the same and red stronger) a fight takes place which I won. Items always seem sorted by total value with weakest at the top. Ordieth had what I call a 80-93 spread. His weakest item was 80, strongest 93.

After I defeated him, I swapped my weak Sheriff badge (26) for his strong DVR box (93!) that must have pissed him! (There are over a 1,000 items with levels and other factors that are hinted at in the help. You can trash someones items rather than swap yours with theirs.

So it’s a simple albeit repetitive game that is quickly played. I tend to leave it for a few hours, do a few fights to recover what I’ve lost and hopefully get stronger. I get the feeling that the creators are tinkering with the game. Some people were dropping crappy items so they couldn’t be attacked. If you have 5 or 6 items you are vulnerable. 4 or less and you can’t be attacked. But they have stopped players dropping items temporarily.

I think that with a few minor tweaks they will have a better game; its not bad now but could be improved. I could think of a few different ways to improve it but they can’t make big changes suddenly. for instance you can visit the town to mingle and swap items but I’ve never seen that work. Some more info on the item colours would be good.

So my experience has been scavenge to get initial and replacement (for trashed ) items then fight to improve items. I’ll keep you updated on how this progresses. Currently I’m starting to find it a bit stale. But I think it will improve so I’m hanging in there. They do encourage feedback but haven’t responded or acknowledged mine. You can also visit the their website.

Graphics are very nice though are just window dressing. It works well even over edge and they’ve just changed servers which suggests they’ve got overwhelmed with players. It’s significant as one of the first wave of multi-player games for the iPhone. So if you like games and have an iPhone, give it a try! Rating 7 out of 10.

Link

UK Government Released UFO Files 86-92.

admin — Fri, 24 Oct 2008 20:53:29 +0000

Cue theme tune:doo doo dooo doo… nope no Sculley or Muldaur here, just the UK Government releasing UFO archives from 1986–1992. It’s a collection of PDF files.

While probably 95% of all reports can be explained away there are some that are intriguing eg this report from a retired US pilot who saw something very big. Was it a secret experiment or a real UFO?

“I had a lock-on that had the proportions of a flying aircraft carrier,” he added. “The larger the airplane, the easier the lock-on. This blip almost locked itself.” At the last moment, the object disappeared from the radar screen and the high-speed chase was called off.

Take a look and judge for yourself…

Link

Imgfave - Easy Way to Save Images.

admin — Wed, 15 Oct 2008 19:17:58 +0000

Imgfave is a free service (registration required) that lets you save a copy of any image you find on the web so you can get it later. Technicall it’s an image bookmarking service.

To make it easy to use they provide a bookmarklet, a small piece of JavaScript that you save on a toolbar. On a page with an image just click the bookmarklet and drag the image and it will be saved. Quite a neat idea although it possibly breaks copyright…

Link

The Spoof - Made Up News

admin — Thu, 25 Sep 2008 19:15:06 +0000

Sites like the Onion have been around for years but The Spoof is new to me. As something of a writer (not rich or award winning!) I am tempted to have a go myself

The site has a somewhat British flavour albeit with American spellings (e.g. humor) but that may just be the particular writer involved. Both Us and UK headlines get spoofed. And from what i’ve seen no target is immune. So if you’re witty and want to take a literary pot shot, get writing. I don’t think they pay though but at least you are guaranteed a good read.

Link

Global Map of Disease Outbreaks

admin — Sun, 14 Sep 2008 08:48:38 +0000

If you are a hypochondriac then this is probably one to avoid! It uses Google Maps to plot disease outbreaks across the world over the last 30 days.

You can zoom in by disease or affected country. for example though avian flu doesn’t make the news as much as a year or two back when the press would have you believe doomsday was imminent, there were 53 incidents. The site uses Ajax to update the controls so when you select a disease it adds the countries affected to those you can select; that’s nicely done. You can also narrow the date range as well. Ultimately this depends upon the quality of the reporting sources but definitely one to take a look at.

Link