iPhoto ‘09 kicks Picasa’s Ass!

Remember way back to yesterday with Picasa for Mac was released, and I was very happy over it, even though iPhoto ‘08 did an excellent job already. Well.. iPhoto ‘09 was just announced… and it’s GLORIOUS (sounding)

Here are some great things you can look forward to in iPhoto 2009:

• Two more “events” for photo storage
  • Faces
  • Yes, this is facial recognition!
  • It can totally guess people in photos, and then it asks you to confirm its guesses
  • and Facial tagging ripped right off of Facebook
• And the #2 event
  • Wait for it
  • GEOTAGGING – yeah take that Geotag free Picasa for the mac!
  • Apple appears to use google maps to assist you in geotagging your own photos… so I guess google still wins a little here
  • iPhoto geotagging syncs with Flickr’s geotagging
  • and they have added increased facebook support
  • The face detection is used for slideshows, so that faces are centered
• Also, Travel books, I suppose this is just another event group to show off a trip

All in all, good stuff from Macworld 2009!

Stay tuned for more!

Excuses Excuses Excuses: A distraction from Greatness

Excuses Excuses Excuses: A distraction from Greatness

It seems that some people always have an excuse. “I haven’t had a chance to sleep” “It’s too cold out” “The economy sucks right now” “Life is just too hard” etc… The New York Times is calling this phenomenon “Self Handicapping”. These excuses and beliefs can drag a person down significantly! I know we’re all guilty of this stuff from time to time, and it’s very easy to fall into the excuse trap, but it is just a trap.

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• Check out this New York Times Article, or the Lifehacker Article referencing it.
• Also, check out this blog from oranization place on some good examples of excuses to you use you choose to ignore the above advice.

Picasa for Mac: It’s finally here!

Picasa for Mac: It’s finally here!

I know I’ve been waiting for this to come out. Although I really love the new iPhoto as well. Tough, but free, choices!

Global Map of Accessibility

Global Map of Accessibility

Travel time to major cities (in hours and days) and shipping lane density

A map released by the European Commission and the World Bank models the accessibility (and isolation) of various parts of the world. It’s a heat map that shows the travel time to major cities (here defined as 50,000 or more people). The oceans show shipping lane density. Via MAPS-L.

It’s interesting to note that only 10% of the earth is more than 2 day trip from a large city

Animals Sitting Like Humans

Animals Sitting Like Humans

I think this needs no other description!

Pictures of animals sitting like humans have started surfacing in staggering numbers recently. This is likely the first sign of an uprising a la Animal Farm. You’ve been warned.

The Best Online Game Ever!

The Best Online Game Ever!

This game rocks more than you can possibly imagine, and they use Pete Cetera’s Glory of Love!

Also check out the Offcial Strategy Guide!

Thanks to Tif for originally pointing me to this game, and to Ken for continually keeping it in the forefront of my thoughts!

OnStar, the mobile version of Big Brother?

OnStar, the mobile version of Big Brother?

So apparently if you have OnStar, and do something stupid, OnStar will call the cops right up and tell them to “help” you. Possibly to a free blood test!

From the Morning Call:

A 22-year-old Monroe County man whose OnStar navigation system sent an alarm when his vehicle got stuck in the mud got more help than he expected.

State police ended up giving him a ride — for a blood test.

Paul W. Sinker III of Stroudsburg was arrested on suspicion of driving under the influence of alcohol after two state troopers were dispatched to his vehicle through OnStar’s automatic crash response system.

A news release said the troopers from the Swiftwater barracks were sent to Rim Rock Road around 1 a.m. Thursday to investigate. They found Sinker attempting to free his vehicle after getting stuck in mud while turning around, state police said.
Troopers said while they talked to Sinker they smelled alcohol on his breath. After he failed a field sobriety test, they arrested him.

Map

Google Maps Mobile offers Monkey and Chicken Sounds!

Google Maps Mobile offers Monkey and Chicken Sounds!

From Lifehacker:

My most-used app on the iPhone, Google Mobile, has a hidden settings panel called “Bells and Whistles” that lets you customize the colors and sounds. To reveal the new pane, go into Google Mobile’s Settings area, scroll to the bottom of the page, and swipe up several times until the “Bells and Whistles” entry appears. Then tap it to set the app’s theme color, sounds (chicken or monkey), and turn on a live waveform for voice search. Neat!

Last.FM / MySpace Blog Mashup!

Last.FM / MySpace Blog Mashup!

Ok, I spent way too long working on this project, so please people, try it out and tell me what you think of it.

The project is a reader that I designed to take any Last.FM user name, and find their most listened to bands.

It then Googles the bands’ names and finds their MySpace pages.

It then looks on MySpace for the bands’ MySpace blogs, and displays them for you in a pretty little reader!

This is pretty much open source, so I will email you the code if you want it! The reader is based off of code found here: http://sourceforge.net/projects/rssreaderwajax/ and the myspace blog to RSS code referenced is found here http://makedatamakesense.com/myspace/

Future enhancements include:

1. Making It Faster (caching the band URLs to a XML file or a database)
2. Aggregating all of these fields into one RSS feed
3. Making a better looking User Name entry screen

They Might Be Giants New Years Eve!

They Might Be Giants New Years Eve!